Umami Podcast

Elise
0:00:00
You're listening to the Umami Podcast, conversations with producers, purveyors, and scholars exploring food choices we make as a culture. I'm Elise Ballard, and I'm here with my friend and co-host, Chris Feifel. Thanks for being here.
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Hi, my name is Elise Ballard, and I'm here with my friend and co-host Chris Pfeifle. Today we're talking about wine, about what wine is exactly and why it matters now more than ever before. Wine is in the throes of a renaissance these days, in part fueled by the natural wine craze, those pet-nat, skin contact, orange bottles with colorful labels and a frequent sidestepping of the appellation system. Some are really delicious, others are difficult. However you feel about them, they deserve a closer look. Our friend, Mark Papineau, has been filling our wine glasses all over the Seattle area for decades. He's the proprietor of Cantina Sauvage, a wine shop that recently opened in Melrose Market in Seattle alongside Cafe Suliman. Marc curates a selection of independent wines he identifies as “unfucked with”, meaning wines that have been only minimally altered by human intervention. This is a stark contrast with big-name, mass-produced wines that are manipulated to have a certain flavor profile or an exact level of alcohol. We're going to talk to Mark about what exactly natural wine is and whether it supplants the traditional wine system. We'll ask how he goes about selecting his wines and find out what questions to ask when you’re looking. Let's pop into that conversation.
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Marc
0:01:53
Out of the Ardèche in France, that's kind of deep Loire before you drop down into the Rhone. And then a Burgundy, a Coteaux Bourgignons from Julien Altaber of his winery, I think he calls Sextant, but he also just bottles under his name, which is here. And then Hauvette, named after Dominique Hauvette, who is the winemaker and proprietress, or proprietor of the domaine in Baux de Provence. A little red blend from there. So you got Grenache, Carignan, and Mourvedre.
Chris
0:02:42
Now I'm immediately intimidated by that lineup, and I'm not sure where I can find myself in any of it, whether it's regions or what I want to pair it with, or if I need to ask, and Elise, I know you've got a little bit more experience in this than I do, but like, which one of them is dry? You know, if we can, I know we're not going to get to the bottom of it here, but if you can parse out maybe what would be a nice one to start with this conversation?
Marc
0:03:20
I don't know, maybe the quince wine. It's a little bit lighter. It isn't 100% dry, but maybe got a little bit of residual sugar. And it's probably the lightest, although the Brasserie Mosaiqye is also super light. There's only like 3% alcohol in this. It's very, very minimal alcohol on that.
Chris
0:03:48
Does the alcohol content, sorry, sorry, Elise, but does the alcohol content influence if it's a dry wine and how would you describe a dry wine?
Marc
0:03:59
No, it doesn't influence it. Higher alcohol means that everything's been fermented. You can have lower alcohol wines at 9% that are not dry, but you can have them dry as well just depending on where they come from. But higher alcohol is not an indicator of one in that it's a sweet wine or not a dry wine. Although there are some that are 18% certified.
Chris
0:04:29
If I'm describing it as dry, is it a reason for how it is leaving my palate or how it's staying on my tongue? We were having this discussion before you got here. I'm not even sure. What What is dry to you?
Marc
0:04:50
Yeah, I know what you mean. For me, and I think, well, kind of a broad definition of it is an absence of residual sugar is a dry wine. So no residual sugar, the wine is dry. And then in that land, you can have some really ripe wines that are dry, but give a hint or suggestion of sweetness just because of the fruit that's in them, which can be super ripe. It doesn't mean that there is residual sugar or that you're necessarily getting sweetness, but you can get this really ripe black fruit that can suggest sweetness. Just as you can have a dry wine, it can also be a drying white wine, like if it has tannins in it, you know, and tannins are what you are encountering in your gums
Marc
0:05:40
and sometimes on the back of your tongue, depending on what kind they are, where they suck the spit out of you. That's a drying wine too, but it's not necessarily the hallmark of a dry wine.
Elise
0:05:52
Talk to us a little bit about what is residual sugar? What is the science of that?
Marc
0:06:02
Well, it's not just a science in as much as a tradition. A lot of areas like in Mosul in Germany, Sauternes in France, Vouvray in the Loire all have designates of sugar levels or residual sweetness. Sauternes is a sweet wine. No other way. That's what it's made to be. It's a late harvest.
Elise
0:06:32
It's a dessert wine.
Marc
0:06:32
Yeah. Or you could drink it as an aperitif. You could drink it with foie gras. Most people know of it as kind of a dessert wine, but it's pretty versatile too. But it's sweet for sure. You see something that's 13% alcohol, you can be pretty sure it's dry. It's 9% alcohol. It's probably not. It's probably got some residual sugar.
Chris
0:06:54
Beautifully, beautifully articulated.
Elise
0:06:59
Yeah. So I'm interested in this podcast to take a step back and become more elemental, about what is wine? Forget about what natural wine is for a second. What is good wine? Let's start with that. What is good wine? Give us a picture of some of the vignerons you know who make a truly beautiful bottle of wine
Elise
0:07:36
and what makes it beautiful
Marc
0:07:39
Well, um, that's a hell of a question because I think I mean, honestly it is to me. It's a subjective thing. I mean wine is a very subjective thing. I can give you my opinion. It's only mine, but I do have a lot of producers who I think are just fantastic And it's not just because they make great wine. It's because of the way they go about it, where they live, what they're doing, how much of it is their life. I mean, I carry a wine, for instance, that I would not usually carry, but it's from Walla Walla, it's like 15-16% alcohol wine. And it's kind of like a passion project. I mean, I love this shit. This is the shit that turns me on. Um, he goes out and harvests his own geese so he propagates these off birch bark off gooseberries off flowers and then uses them in his ferments It's amazing. It's crazy shit.
And and really it's a natural way I mean if like just to talk about yeast for a minute, you know One of the hallmarks or one of the stepping stones or things to look at in natural wine is do they use ambient yeast versus industrial made yeast. The reason for that being that through the last 50 or 60 years there's been a lot of industrial yeast that's been used to get a certain kind of flavor in a wine like, Beaujolais Nouveau, that yeast that goes in that, that's like fucking industrial made yeast to make it taste like strawberries and watermelon. And a lot of big producers will use it to kind of give a consistent flavor profile because their consumers are like, I like that Chardonnay, I wanna do that Chardonnay again, I like this cab, I like, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And erase as much as possible the natural variation that happens in a wine. And it still happens in wines like that. Wine is a living thing even when it's been fucking killed.
Elise
0:10:00
So it's not just about like the sort of like homogeneity doesn't just come from sulfites, it comes from other things. What are sulfites, by the way?
Marc
0:10:04
Well they're naturally occurring in a grape anyway. You can't get away from them. But the argument, and I think where a lot of people draw their battle lines, which I don't like to participate in, is do they sulfite the wine or do they not? And the dogmatic natural wine community would say zero, zero all the time, no matter what. If they use sulfite, anything from the outside that isn't naturally occurring, it's not a natural line.
Marc
0:10:37
I don't personally adhere to that. But what they do is they help stabilize the wine. They also help to mitigate any unwanted bacteria that may be extant in the winery or coming in at the bottling if things get in. And oftentimes, especially wine that's going to be coming overseas, even natural winemakers, while they might not sulfite their wine that stays on the continent, will sulfite their wine that's coming to the States.
Chris
0:11:02
Is that because of how long it takes to distribute when you're going overseas or is it because of a change in environment? And does sulfiting versus natural wine influence how long that wine can be aged for and what window it has to be a viable, drinkable wine instead of turning into like an investment or something like that?
Elise
0:11:26
It can, though that's not the law that it has to be that way.
Elise
0:11:36
It's not the law that it has to be that way?
Marc
0:11:36
Exact. What I mean is that there are ways to make a natural wine and still have a wine that is good for longevity. And I think really that has to do with the material that you're putting into it for one and also how clean you keep your winery and how, you know, insistent you are at bottling about you making sure that your bottles are clean and sterile.
Chris
0:12:04
There's some physical and artistical compounding effects that might happen in any of those stages.
Marc
0:12:08
Exactly. And like, I'm not saying that somebody who's just like, let it do what it does. And then I gently shepherd that juice into bottle or into a vessel and into bottle, no matter what it is, it's going to be what I'm going to put out. I respect that. I think it's fucking awesome. And I don't think there's a producer of wine out there that is like, fuck you if you add sulfites. You know, they're just like, I'm just making the wine that I want to make, that I'm passionate about, and everybody else can do what they're doing too. It's a community. I think the message gets lost in the kind of faddishness that has come about with natural wine.
Elise
0:12:58
But there is a currency, and maybe it is part of that faddishness, if I'm not mistaken, in both how interrupted a natural process is, in that the less, to use your term, fucked with a wine is, the more pure it is, the more valuable it is, the more natural it is. Is that right?
Marc
0:13:23
Yeah. I mean, right or not, yes, I agree with that, yes.
Elise
0:13:25
And some of that fucked with-ness has to do with adding a sulfiting agent?
Marc
0:13:41
And, you know, it doesn't just end there like because Industrially made wines that that you see on a supermarket shelf. It's not just that they add sulfites. It's not just that they use industrial yeast.
Elise
0:13:53
Yeah, tell us about a tank wine like what happens there?
Marc
0:13:58
Well, I don't know exactly but I do know that you'll never see an ingredient label on a wine ever. You know, you look at your cereal or whatever, you see all kinds of shit on there, right? That goes into making it crispy, keeping it crispy, holding the color. You'll never see that on a bottle of wine. And one of the things that Chad Stock did, who I really respect, he was ahead of the game when he had his label Minimus. He was advocating for winemakers to put the ingredients on the label. They should be held to putting in what they're drinking. It's not just grapes. There's something more than grapes. There's more in there. And it can go in the form of enzymes. There's all kinds of things that are done in the winery to stabilize, to create a flavor profile, to, I mean, water it back if it's too alcoholic, if it's too dry, if it can't get enough alcohol, which seems to be increasingly less needed these days as we warm up.
But, you know, that and that, you know, just those two things, watering back and chaptalizing, I mean, it's been around forever and ever. Like back in the day when you couldn't get a ripe crop, you would add sugar to get that wine up to like the 12% of the wine.
Elise
0:15:14
Is that chaptalizing?
Marc
0:15:19
I'm sorry adding sugars and then the waterizing is the reverse of that. Exact. If you've got like something super high alcohol you want to lower the alcohol you add water takes it down rather than picking early where the potential sugars are not there yet to ferment and Then you get a lower alcohol wine. And then the argument behind that... The argument behind that has been that, you know, a grape isn't ready to harvest until the pips, the seeds, have reached veraison. I think it is. You can look it up. Veraison. V-E-R-A-I-S-O-N, or that might just mean the ripening of the grape, but there is a word for the browning of the pip, and it's similar to veraison if it's not, but I'm taking that. And the argument is that if those those pips are not brown, as in fully developed, they make for bitter wine, that pressing. They make for bitter wine. They add a bitter component to the wine.
Elise
0:16:32
I certainly have tasted a grape with seeds in it where the seed is like green and has a mucusy weird thing around it. Maybe that's...
Chris
0:16:34
Is there an industrial process or an artistic process to then maybe torture it into doing what you want?
Marc
0:16:56
No, I don't think there is. But maybe.
Elise
0:16:32
Is there a “torturization” process? ;-)
Chris
0:16:48
Yeah, you know the boiling of a not quite yet ripe fruit, you know, will still bring out some of the sugars.
Elise
0:16:56
Like the acceleration of ripening or something like that. Is that a thing?
Marc
0:17:00
There's not really a way you can do it because it's a grape, right? What are you gonna do? Fucking put it in the oven? Well, maybe. But really the way it happens is you just leave it to ripen fully. And then you press.
Elise
0:17:14
What about the picking of the grape and those like vagina-like machines that come through vine sections versus not that.
Marc
0:17:22
That's just not. There's a big argument for that not being allowed and I would say there were most people who make natural wine do not use machine harvest your think of whatever is living on that vine, it's not like they're picking out the frogs and the snakes and whatever might be extant in the vines. They're getting everything, including the leaves. They're shaking it off. It's all going into a bin. It's getting carried to the winery and it all goes into the fermenter. That includes the frogs. It includes the fucking snakes. It includes any bugs.
Chris
0:17:57
Anything. Yeah.
Elise
0:17:58
That seems so like how could they not dramatically influence the flavor of a wine if everything goes into it versus cutting off just the precious, perfectly ripened section of grape. But when I was in France in 2019, I went to pick some grapes and these were grapes that needed to be preciously like cut, you know, cluster by cluster.
Chris
0:18:28
Coddled grapes. I think it's coddled grapes. I think that's the term.
Elise
0:18:32
They talked about the machine sort of cultivating, and based on what I saw, I couldn't imagine how that wouldn't dramatically change the flavor of the cutting of the perfect.
Marc
0:18:48
But here's the thing too is like most machine harvesting is going into wines that are going to large tanks on tank farms. They're making cheap grocery store wine and all those wines have all kinds of shit in them to mitigate the problems extant in crushing wildlife. I mean we're talking about
Chris
0:19:13
byproduct and we in some of our conversations through this podcast we've crossed over with some sort of Farming mechanism which is happening either on land or in the water and the byproduct that is coming with the industrialization of that process
Elise
0:19:29
Saying like every conversation on the Umami Podcast has been about that. I'm noticing a trend. Yeah that
Chris
0:19:36
It does come up from time to time here. And of course, how could that not influence? And, you know, as a small wine farm, I imagine you can have X amount of people to help you perfectly cut your, you know, your grapes and your produce. I don't know how to make wine. It's going to be obvious here. But as soon as you scale up, there's going to be those concessions that need to be made and how long those concessions are influencing the flavor profile and how long you can extend that flavor profile, all with additives or counterbalances or so, has to affect the product. I don't have a palette enough to, you know, sense this bottle of wine from the store at this price point.
And honestly, that's where I kind of use my regulatory input is, when I'm standing there, I go, that's too cheap to be good. That's, that seems, this $23 bottle of wine seems like most of the people cared in the, in the making of this, but there's definitely some snakes in here. Is there a way that we can decipher when we're in a store that maybe doesn't specialize in selling wine, how to find a wine that's worth buying?
Marc
0:20:58
Yes. And to me, if you care, then you're not in a grocery store buying wine, you're probably going to a shop. You know, especially now, what really the consumer, somebody who truly wants to try something different or know why a wine is this price or not, or what's in it, you should go to a place where they know their wine. They buy their own wine, and they're there for that, to answer those questions.
Why is this bottle of $23 bottle of wine worth 23? Is it, you know, is it industrial made, is it not? But, you know, going into a place, say, well, like most Safeways or those wines are all, you know, you're getting an $8.99 liter of something, that's industrial made wine.
Elise
0:21:53
The price is an indicator. Also, is it that being in a place as big as something like Safeway or Costco or Trader Joe's, they have to be producing on a scale that is impossible to manage natural--whatever that means--production. Am I right about that?
Marc
0:22:16
I think so. I mean, for, I would say 99% of those producers that you're finding in Costco are not, they're not going to be naturally made wines. And like I'm just thinking of what I see in Costco. And Costco, to their credit or discredit, I don't know which, will purchase a whole like vintage, a whole of from one producer that and that producer may not be, it could be really good wine. That, is it gonna be all natural? No, there's no way, agreed, no way. But there's gradations of it.
You know, like, they carry, I think they've had Dunham wines. Those are great wines in their way. They're not 100% natural, but they're also hand harvested, handmade. They're, you know, estate wines. So I don't wanna totally throw every producer that works with Costco under the bus. But by and large, yeah, that's the case for large grocery store chains.
Chris
0:23:18
I think that's what we're dancing on a little bit here is wine, getting into wine, feeling like you have an educated idea of what you want to order. There's so many variables that are happening. It feels like it's tough to just step into the stream and say, well, I like this purveyor and I'll drink this. I think that's one of the barriers for people to get into confidently ordering something. And it lends me to feeling like if you're ever in that situation, just ask the professional. Ask the professional and say, I want to eat this and I'd like to have a nice glass of wine. Help me walk through these waters.
Elise
0:24:08
Just ask. Stop pretending you know. Most people don't know. Most people walk in with a few buzzwords they've been told to say, but they don't know. And I want this podcast being like oh I should ask next time I'm in a wine shop I should ask or at a restaurant.
Marc
0:24:35
Agreed. I mean that's what I'm doing it for is to help people figure out what they like and provide them with something that's awesome. That's the whole reason you do it for me. Here's the other fucking thing I love is it's things that have a story, you know As a purveyor and as a buyer I love to hear stories about people like families that have interesting things to say about why they do what they do. Hmm. How long they've been doing it, where they've come from to get there I think that's all a huge part of it and that to me is what informs a line.
Because I'm not gonna say, well I will say that comes out in the line to me. Somebody's, somebody's struggle, somebody's story, somebody's passion goes into the making of that wine. They have to make a thousand fucking decisions in the process. When do they pick? When do they go out to pick? What, how much do they pick? You know, what are they going to put it in? How are they going to crush it? All those things are informed to me. If it's just a scientific, you know, well, let's not reach this sugar level yet. The metrometer's not showing the right thing. Not to say that passionate people don't use technical know-how but in the end it I feel like it comes down to their decision and the feeling of when it's right to do something and I think that it comes through in the line.
Elise
0:26:17
So that perhaps is a good opportunity to talk about the appellation system and you know I've noticed that a lot of natural wines are outside that system. Why is that and tell us a little bit about that system.
Marc
0:26:36
Well the appellation system wine. And that came into being I think in the late 20s. And I think at that time and throughout a lot of the progressing years, there was a good reason for it. Wine was brought in from Italy to fortify a wine, to give it more body, to get the alcohol levels up. Wine was brought in from the south of France to go into Burgundy so that it wasn't just Pinot Noir, it could also be Syrah, Grenache, and a number of things. Not to say it's a bad thing, whatever.
Elise
0:27:30
Is champagne a good example of why there is an appellation system? I mean, being that, you know, it used to be that anybody could call a bubbly wine a champagne, and then with appellations, no, you have to be from the Champagne region.
Marc
0:27:48
That is, that's a little bit, not only is it AOC or AOP, it's also a trademark. Okay. Champagne name is a trademark. The only people that don't adhere to it are the Americans and maybe in South America or Australia.
Elise
0:28:11
Somebody at my New Year's Eve party had a bottle of champagne that was like Kirkland Signature brand. It said champagne. It was all inside. I don't know, is that relevant?
Yeah, I think it is.
Chris
0:28:28
Tank farming, like yeah.
Marc
0:28:30
But the AOC system, I mean, has kind of, like anything, as I think you're seeing in natural wine now, it's outgrown its usefulness. What it was started to help and did help, it's now hindering. So people who are making wine in the Loire Valley out of Cab Franc, they make it as vin de France because they don't adhere to the AOC laws. What those are, I don't know, but I can tell you that in Chateauneuf du Pape, the wine has to be at least 14% alcohol before it can be called Chateauneuf du Pape. It has a minimum alcohol level of 14%. And that's just an example of some of the kind of archaic thinking that goes behind that. And so a lot of producers... And it costs money to be in the AOC. OK. It's not cheap. I think you pay some dues to get into that.
Elise
0:29:23
A lot of hoops to jump through.
Chris
0:29:32
You pay to have somebody come inspect your wine.
Marc
0:29:34
So why would you want to fucking do that? It's antithetical to me to what natural wine is, right? Why the fuck do you need somebody to tell you if it passes this or that?
Elise
0:29:52
These traditional standards.
Marc
0:29:54
It's bullshit. And, it also makes it more necessary for you to know your producer. And so you're even not more dependent, but the purveyor of that bottle is even more useful. Did you see the bottle of wine? It's red. It says vin de France. It could have come from anywhere. You don't know. Your friendly neighborhood purveyor can tell you. I can tell you. I've got the word right here for you. I can tell you.
Elise
0:30:20
What do you think is the reason for, it seems to me, that little independent bottle shops have sprouted throughout at least the U.S. in the past five, nine years. Like why is that? What caused that resurgence?
Marc
0:30:53
Well, I don't know if it's a resurgence or if it's a brand new thing, but what I do think is that wine has been, in the best way, into the popular mind. You know, like a lot of people will go out and buy a bottle instead of buying a beer. They might have a glass of wine instead of a vodka soda. That's a really good question. Is it because, well for one I think with the advent of social media, huge, huge, huge thing. People are telling their stories by video. Wine makers and purveyors.
Marc
0:31:41
Yeah, they can reach a much wider audience.
Chris
0:31:43
I also think it may be a function of an evening. So if there's a couple, instead of saying let's split a six pack, we can say, let's have a bottle tonight. And maybe two in the night, but it's a way to govern your evening. A bottle of wine between two people, as far as lubricating a night and having something good to eat, that does it. You know when you crack the second bottle.
But with some other smaller distributions, beers and pouring yourself whiskeys or so, it's a slippery slope because I've had three beers, but they're only Budweiser. And I've had… But when you when you kind of call out a bottle, you almost frame the evening. I think that that's part of the part of the maybe the rise to it.
Marc
0:32:37
It's a really good point.
Elise
0:32:38
Yeah. So it's like it's like a safer option.
Chris
0:32:44
We're going to stay in. We're going to have a bottle of wine, make some dinner. And, you know, if you're cracking the second, you're stepping into another realm. One bottle of wine, that's the evening, we're all fine, we can all go to work tomorrow. Two bottles of wine, it's questionable. Can you call in late?
Elise
0:33:08
So many evenings where I couldn't help cracking the second and maybe drinking most of it, I don't know.
Chris
0:33:14
Well, I mean, the social aspect to sharing a bottle of wine or sharing a fermented drink and, you know, all the variety that Marc brought us here, there is a ritual to it. There's obviously a history to it. And those are some of the mystiques that I'm intrigued by.
How long can a natural wine stay good on the shelf? Or have you had, you know, a great wine that was just past its time? You know, what was the oldest bottle that you've ever drank that you just missed where it was good? And you're like, okay, this turned, but this was something six years ago.
Elise
0:33:55
Yeah, what in general about aging a natural wine versus a conventional.
Marc
0:34:05
Yeah. I think a lot of people would say that you can't age a natural wine, that it's good for a few years and then it's just going to kind of fall apart. And I think that that can be true.
Elise
0:34:20
Sorry, you introduced us to Jarad Hadi and we had him on the show. He was in an episode last year. I listened to that one a little bit today, too.
Elise
0:34:30
Okay, good, good, good. And he said, I make my wines to last for, you know, my overall goal is to make them last for 100 years. Yeah. Possible?
Marc
0:34:41
Possible. I wouldn't say all of his wines will last 100 years. There's no fucking way. But I do know the wines that he's thinking of when he says that, and that's like his premier cuvee, that Chardonnay that he makes, which is pretty fucking amazing. It's like drinks on a quality level of a cru burgundy. And will that wine make it for 100 years? Probably not. But point being is that wine will definitely make it for 25, 30 years again, if it's kept properly.
Marc
0:35:15
So he has some, but his other, like, Plein Air and Nebbioso, those aren't wines that'll last a hundred years, but they're also not made to last. They're made to be drunk today, in the next year, the next two years. So are there natural wines that can stand the test of time? I think so, yeah.
Marc
0:35:33
But the thing is, too, there have been wines that are being naturally made long before now. This is one of them like this. I'm not trying to plug this woman, but this is Domaine Hauvette, her current release. It's a 2014. Nobody releases a wine, hardly anybody will release a wine from that vintage as their current release. That means that it was 14, now it's 2014. 10 years old.
Elise
0:36:01
Wow, 2014 and it just came out. So how has it been setting for that long, 2014 to now, where's it been? In a tank? In a bottle?
Marc
0:36:16
No, in bottle. Yeah, they don't, I mean, they'll bottle it the following spring, but then they'll let the bottle sit. Champagne, on the other hand, if they're doing vintage champagne, may keep that in barrel or in tank and then bottle as needed. And that's actually an interesting thing to know is you can actually see the bottling date if you know what you're looking for on a champagne label. And it's interesting, it gives you an idea, and if you see two of the same cuvee with two different bottling dates, you should pick them both up and then you get to taste how different they are.
Marc
0:36:51
Anyway, but this has been in bottle, like probably since the following spring, or maybe the next year. And it was just released in the last year. And it's a naturally made wine. Okay, she probably does use some sulfites in bottling.
Chris
0:37:06
And are sulfites like, what did we say, MSG? Madison Square Garden?
Elise
0:37:12
The new MSG, we were wondering about that you know the the Umami Podcast is the name of this show umami is inextricably associated with MSG. Is sulfite the new MSG? ;-)
Chris
0:37:32
But how do you add site sulfites to it? Does it come in a bag? Is it a, you know, you take three scoops for for this. Obviously it's measured and metered and temperature regulated. Yeah. But is it literally an additive?
Marc
0:37:50
I'm pretty sure it comes in a powdered form and you add it and it dissolves. It goes into solution.
Chris
0:37:54
And it says everything will be good for the next 10 years?
Marc
0:37:59
Well not necessarily. I mean like somebody like this person will tell you how many parts per million they put in in sulfur. And a lot of things, you know, a lot of people have problems with sulfites in big amounts, they're allergic to them, they give them headaches, a lot of people won't drink red wine anymore because of the sulfites, they say, or because of the phenolics. But in most cases, if you're making wine as unfucked with as possible, you're going to put as little as you can just to stabilize that wine.
Elise
0:38:33
Minimal intervention. Exact. And that is kind of “unfucked with” is what we're going to name this episode.
Marc
0:38:42
That's great.
Elise
0:38:43
And which is the, that's your term. That's what you've come up with. That you've, your whole career you've been talking about unfucked with wine. Talk a little bit more about that.
Marc
0:38:52
The way I got into “unfuckedwith wine” was more because I was pairing wine with food, number one. I was working at the Corson building in Georgetown with Matt Dillon, and he never said, he never gave me any limits to what I paired with, never any parameters, none of that. He was like, never said anything. I just did what I want. And the more I paired food with wine, the more I tasted wine that I was thinking might go with food, the further away from the conventionally made wines I was moving. Not to say there weren't a bunch that I did, But the expressiveness of these wines was just, to me, amazing. I mean, a wine that has in its way the same thing that a food has. I mean, a good wine does anyway.
It has a little of this, a little of that. You can call them out on their own. They're beautiful in their way. They all come together and they work. They work really well. And that's how I kind of went in that direction. And when we opened Bar Ferdinand, it went even more so. And it took me a long time to really call the fucking distributors that would come by to sell me shit.
And I don't mean shit, they're just like, this great glass pour price. And at first maybe that was fine, but at some point I was like, I don't want this shit anymore. Don't bring it. Bring me something that has something to say that will work. That is fucking, you know, got something to it. I don't want a wine just because it's $9 a bottle and it's red and it's light or whatever, you know what I'm saying?
Yeah. Um, and that's just the way it went. I never was like, I'm doing natural wine now. It wasn't like that. But I did find that those were the producers who were like blowing my mind.
Chris
0:40:58
But what's the direction to take though with pairing wines? To bring this back a few minutes ago when you had mentioned it, I have no clue other than red wine doesn't go with fish. And if I'm gonna eat a steak at a nice restaurant and I ask for a glass of wine, I'm probably going to go with a red wine. There's somewhere in there. I've got a slight understanding about sweetness and if it's time to be sweet or if I want something more base. But what is there a guideline? Is there a baseline to pair anything with what you're eating?
Elise
0:41:38
Or is the answer like, just ask, just always ask. Don't pretend you know just ask.
Chris
0:41:38
I imagine it is, go with a professional. It's gonna be my default from here on out. Ask a professional.
Marc
0:41:44
You know, yes and no. You could ask a professional, but also explore on your own like maybe you don't just get one glass of wine with that steak maybe you get that fucking big syrah or cabernet and then maybe you get like a Burgundy, a white Burgundy. See what that tastes like. Maybe you do get like a residually, a residually sweet wine. There's plenty of like rich white wines in my opinion that can work with red meat. It's hard to beat grill marks. Grill marks are tough, it's true. And in that case, yeah, I definitely usually air towards something like a Syrah or a Bordeaux, but it's not a fucking law, you know? And you can pair red wine with fish. I believe in it, 100%. Chill it down. You can drink a chilled gamay with some, like, cioppino. You know? So good, so good. So there's no law, and that was the thing is, for one,
I never took a class on how to pair food with wine, ever. And I went through sommelier training. I came into this business through the classical training side. I went through levels of sommelier training. I ran wine programs at hotels. So it's not like I've always been doing this. But what the fucking good thing about that was is that it gave me the framework to eventually say fuck this.
It's not what I want. What I worry about for people coming into wine is that they drink these orange wines or something super volatile and they're like, this is good fucking wine. And I'm not to say it's not good wine, but there is a whole world out there that you're missing if you just say I only drink natural wine.
Elise
0:43:48
Because not every wine bothers to identify itself as such. In fact, maybe there are-
Marc
0:43:58
Like this right here, naturally made. This is naturally made wine from back before, and the tradition here is, before the 50s, a lot of wines were natural. Most, it's with industrialization and the commodification and wanting to get wine into bigger markets and get it across the sea that you started having to stabilize shit, that you started having to create fucking uniform taste.
Elise
0:44:33
So all wine used to be natural wine?
Marc
0:44:34
At one point, yeah. Yes indeed. So this is nothing new. It's not new. You're going back to wine before time in some ways and not that long ago. Like Clos Rougeard, a producer in the Loire Valley. Fucking expensive wine. Really well made. Never, always made their wines naturally. That was their tradition. Like Henri Bonneau in Chateauneuf. Slab, made his wine, spit on the floor. His winery, his barrel room, reputedly covered in black mold. He had the biome to make brilliant wine. That's natural wine!
Elise
0:45:18
Wow. Was he like, this black mold needs to be here?
Marc
0:45:21
Yeah. He fucking spit on the floor, he never cleaned. And his wines were amazing. Wow. And Clodo Gerard, another one. When they started getting recognition in later years, with the advent of natural wine, they're asked about. So in so many words, like, so how does it feel, you know, now that, how does it feel to have this notoriety for making these natural wines? And what do you do? Like, we just make wine the way we've always made it.
Chris
0:45:51
Making wine.
Marc
0:45:52
That's, and that's it right there. Exact.
Chris
0:45:55
Where were you guys yesterday when I was still here doing this?
Elise
0:45:59
So it may be true that natural wine labeled as such is pretty much an American phenomenon. Like, the French may not need to know that something is natural because they may assume that if it has an appellation such as Côtes du Rhône or Beaujolais or whatever that it is natural because it should be. Am I right about that? I don't know.
Marc
0:46:30
I would say that there's definitely a natural wine identifying natural wine bars in France, for sure, that carry wines only naturally made.
Elise
0:46:42
Okay.
Marc
0:46:42
And that that is much more integrated into everyday life there. Okay. Yes, it's not such a polarizing term. Natural wine in the United States or in any hip-ass little bar you go to is a polarizing thing, is it naturally made, or. In Europe, you know, there are definitely natural wine bars, but I think it's more of an opinion like, of course it's natural. We're just going back to some things that were here before.
Elise
0:47:23
I have wondered about, I'm from the tiny mountain west state of Utah, and in Utah, the government controls all the liquor that comes in, including the wine, and you can only procure liquor at a state-run liquor store, including wine, or at special restaurants, but it all runs through the state. And so my question is, could they possibly have natural wine in the state of Utah? No, because they have to have a scale to supply to all of the state liquor stores. They would have to be purchasing from someone who is large enough to be able to carry that volume. Right. What do you think about the logic?
Marc
0:48:15
I see what you mean. I would say that because it's true in Quebec in that the state-run system, the wine, but different state-run stores have different wines because each state-run store can approach the government about what they want to bring in. I don't know if it's the same in Utah. So it might be that there's a state-run store with a manager there that's like into it and secures through an importer and says I want this to come in and state maybe.
Elise
0:48:53
Possibly. I imagine that there are a whole bunch of states in this country that are, have state-run, state-controlled liquor boards and there's probably an amalgam of all of them and a purchasing body. Yeah. That really has to be big and it really has to be major to.
Chris
0:49:12
Like a major food purveyor for restaurants and any other system that has a gatekeeper as far as what they can bring in and sell.
Elise
0:49:22
Yeah, you might get like a Joseph Drouhin, but you're not going to get, you know, Grape Ink, for example.
Marc
0:49:31
And interestingly, that's a big question, is in my business, we in Seattle or to a degree or I would imagine anybody in any city that isn't New York, San Francisco, Portland maybe, or Los Angeles, like how the fuck do I get these wines? Why the fuck are they all just getting bottlenecked in New York and never makes it out here? And that also creates the the mystique of hard to get, I really want it, you know.
Elise
0:50:18
How does it happen? Well it does make it out here. How do they not all end in New York?
Marc
0:50:22
Well because increasingly, you know, distributorships don't want to just stay in one place and especially a lot of the people who they represent are like yeah I don't want just my wine just to be drunk in New York and I would love to sell it in Chicago or Seattle or and is there enough to go around? No like shit I get allotments of things sometimes it's like six bottles that came to the market. Well maybe three cases came to Seattle and my allotment is three bottles or six bottles and another six goes over here or whatever but supply in natural wine It's not easy and that is where the larger groups are getting on the bandwagon So there are natural wines being made by big ass winemakers these days, big ass places on an industrial level, calling themselves natural. Are they? I don't know.
Elise
0:51:19
Maybe they are. But I would never buy them because it defeats the purpose. Why do you fucking want natural wine from a fucking tank farm? You don't.
Chris
0:51:27
The point of it is- It's Nestle. Nestle company selling water.
Marc
0:51:40
Exactly. I don't want Nestle water or Nestle anything for that matter, but this is the thing right there is is Why do you do what you do? Why do I do what I do because I like working with the small people I like working with the people who are super into what they're doing. It's not about selling all their wine. They're they're not about trying to make their butt. I mean everybody wants to make a living. I'd like to make a living. I mean, I have a shop.
Do I want to open three? Not really. But I would like to be able to make a living and be present in my space to do what I do.
Elise
0:52:16
Let's talk about your space. Let's talk about your new space.
Marc
0:52:21
Cantina Sauvage - we just opened about almost seven weeks ago now, just after Thanksgiving, with my friend and I call him a compatriot, and he really is. He does the food, I do the wine. He's Cafe Suliman, I don't mean it that way. What I mean is insane how good it's been. So good. Because it's just he and I, nobody, like we just do what we want. And people are receptive to it. Will it be sustainable down the road? You know, I don't know. But right now, we are just so excited about what we're doing.
Like we get done at work at night, and we're just like, boom! Clink a glass of like…This is our space! Our space!
Elise
0:53:29
Such a great space. And Cafe Suliman is, would you call that Arabic cuisine, like pan-Arabic or something?
Marc
0:53:41
Kind of a Levantine.
Elise
0:53:42
Levantine, okay. So there's Arabic…
Elise
0:53:46
And it's in Melrose Market, which is a legendary place.
Marc
0:53:52
You've seen a bit of a renaissance.
Elise
0:53:53
Yes, a renaissance.
Marc
0:53:56
That's what you've got to say. Natural wine to see a bit of a renaissance. But yeah, and we feel like we're helping to revitalize that market and that whole block. We're really excited to be there.
Elise
0:54:17
It's great that just down the street on Pike Street, no, Pine Street, is the new Convention Center. So a lot of building happening along there. And it just seems like Capitol Hill is being revitalized in a lot of ways, being revitalized and revitalizing itself. I mean, there are some beautiful restaurants along there, but Melrose Market in particular, I think went through a, took a hit for a while. Your place, Bar Ferdinand, was originally in the very spot that you are now, right?
Marc
0:54:58
Yep, that's a huge deal to me.
Chris
0:55:02
How do you settle with that? Are you excited to be back, like a return to grounds?
Marc
0:55:10
For sure, there's a lot of that. And honestly, like, when we closed Bar Ferdinand, and particularly that Bar Ferdinand in the lower space in Melrose, and I actually opened Cantina Sauvage months later, like in New Year's Day of 18, we closed in 17. And when I opened Cantina Sauvage, I was like, I really want to remove the wine experience from the food and wine experience. Because the things that…
Elise
0:55:43
The wine experience from the food and wine experience. Okay.
Marc
0:55:47
Yeah to push the idea or to illuminate the idea of wine as not a thing of its own. It's not just the wine, it's about who made the wine, like we were talking about earlier. It's also what the wine engenders as far as conversation and ideas and obviously drunkenness. But really to kind of take it out of that, like, I don't know, it just felt the confines of food and wine, the restaurant experience, the bar experience, and that's why I was doing events out of my apartment and in other people's floral studios, like Nisha's Place at Flourish and at, you know, doing pop-ups more or less. But wanting to have the producers there to talk about their wine and why it matters and why it's so fucking awesome and have these people they get to meet each other.
Elise
0:57:04
And not have to only talk about it in the context of the food that was being served.
Marc
0:57:08
Exact. Even though
Chris
0:57:42
This goes well with this. Yeah, you know.
Marc
0:57:12
Yeah, and they're artists. Winemakers in their way are artists. And to bring people in who are artists themselves in whatever form, like it's a natural. So that's why I opened and started Bar Ferdinand, but then pandemic hit, it turned into a online, I was just sending out emails and delivering to people. But doing the write-ups, I love writing.
Chris
0:57:42
Was that sustainable through the pandemic? Was that sustainable for how many months, a year?
Marc
0:57:53
It was about a year, maybe a year and a half. And those were so far probably the best year I had in business.
Marc
0:57:57
Yeah.
Chris
0:57:58
Really? Was it because there was a lot of intentional clients, a lot of intentional customers who were seeking you out in this weird time?
Marc
0:58:03
Little bit of both. People who were, people who couldn't go out, and I was providing not just wine, but six of a certain kind of five or whatever, writing them up and delivering them to their homes.
Elise
0:58:16
Are you continuing that now? Yeah. Your mailing list.
Marc
0:58:20
Yeah. I haven't written a lot lately, as you would know, because since opening this, it's really kind of taken away from sitting in front of the computer and writing.
Elise
0:58:31
Keeps you busy.
Marc
0:58:32
But hopefully, I'm hoping that as things settle out, that will return. I definitely will do some kind of a bottle club, I think, for the bar. I'm not sure what form it will take.
Chris
0:58:44
It seems like you enjoyed that connection, though, during the pandemic times when you trying to adjust having that outreach and maybe reciprocal conversations that you're having with patrons instead of just there was a brown hair person who came in here for dinner and a glass.
Marc
0:59:00
Yeah, hanging out, talking to them on their porch for a while.
Chris
0:59:04
Yeah, neat.
Marc
0:59:05
It's super sweet, you know, or dropping their wine off and taking a picture of it and texting it to them with a little heart on it, you know, that makes it, you know, gives you, gives them and yourself that touch and reason to be doing what you're doing.
Chris
0:59:21
It's like the artist's hand in the making of the wine, the artist's hand in purveying the wine. Where do you think, in your life, growing up or, you know, whenever, that you started realizing you had a penchant for going down this kind of rabbit hole because you're obviously studied and you have a direction and a drive that's taking you down this direction. I'm going to use direction a few more times in this description.
Marc
0:59:53
Direction, direction, direction.
Chris
0:59:54
But I mean is this a quirk of yours you had growing up or did something light your fire to get you into this direction?
Marc
1:00:01
There were two things that happened. The first of which is like a quirk that I was born with, but that didn't have to do with wine. It had more to do with taking care of people. Like being, I've always been in the restaurant business. Even when I was in high school, I went to college in the restaurant business. But my bent has always been to take care of people. That's why I have like 10,000 children. I have five kids and I've been a father since I was 22 years old, right? Here I am, 58, and I've been a father since I was 22. Because I enjoy being responsible.
And the next thing was when I was working at Campagne in Seattle, downtown, and if you know the restaurant scene in Seattle, Campagne was like one of a kind. It was kind of a first in its genre, like fine dining, very French-specific. And they had an owner and maitre d', Peter Lewis, that guy was the fucking shit. He would look at you in the eye and you were the most important person in the world. You were just like, thank you, thank you so much, I'll sit wherever you want. And he was a huge inspiration for me. And he, I would call my first real mentor. And not only that, they were into wine at Campagne. And that's where I started learning about wine. And that was in 1998. And before that, I didn't even know what cork wine was. I worked at Septieme, another sweet cafe.
Marc
1:01:45
On Broadway. Well, I worked at that and the one in Belltown, which was his first. Anyway, I thought I knew my shit, having worked for Kurt. Because Kurt's another one of those kind of savants in like putting things together and making it look beautiful.
Elise
1:02:02
Timmermeister.
Marc
1:02:03
For Timmermeister. When I went to work for Peter, I started to learn about wine. That's where I had like my, you know, they say, what was your aha moment with wine? I did have one, and it was with a bottle of Collioure, which is a little appellation in the Côtes du Roussillon, and it's a Grenache dominant. I was like drinking it after work one night, just had a sip and all of a sudden it just hit me.
And the thing is, it doesn't hit you, like good wine isn't about the wine, it's everything. You're sitting outside, you have a cigarette, it's the end of a long night, it's a summer night. What the, and a bottle, you know, you have this bottle and mixes with your cigarette, the smoke from your cigarette, the garlic from your breath, the smell of the ocean coming up over the top, all of those things go into that thing. It's not just about the wine. It's never. I mean, I wouldn't say never, but that's, to me, what makes wine so magical.
Elise
1:03:07
That is so well said. I love that. all of the environmental factors that go into what you taste that night, the situational factors. Yeah.
Marc
1:03:19
A shitty Côtes du Rhone tastes great in Paris on a sidewalk cafe. Not so much when you bought it from the fucking PCC and you took it home
Elise
1:03:30
Even less so when you bought it from a gas station with a pack of Camel Lights or something.
Elise
1:03:38
Right. I was like, right. Oh yeah, well I think that's really a great place to end. And I want to end this with just a word about your wine shop and why wine shops like yours are really important and new. Yes, we've had wine shops before. Yes, we've had McCarthy and Schiering and all of that, but this is new. This seems to be a trend that's happening. And I want our listeners to notice that there are sweet little bottle shops sprouting up all over.
Marc
1:04:18
Yeah. Thank you. And that's true. Its important to support, you know, your small, not just wine shops, but businesses, butchers, anybody that's just doing something and that's what they do. It's their shop. They make t-shirts or they make onigiri next door to us or whatever it is. Those people are there for because it's passion. They're not there to make money because they wouldn't be there. They'd be fucking working for Amazon or some shit, right? It's not about the money. Just like so much better an experience than Costco or Trader Joe's or whatever and yeah that happens too I guess but mmm I love that local experience walking into your wine shop and shops like it. Yeah.
Marc
1:05:08
Appreciate that. You right now looking intensely at you.
Elise
1:05:16
Cool. Well, um, Ca y est.
Elise
1:05:18
The Umami Podcast is produced by T&E Networks. Find us anywhere you get podcasts and on Instagram at the Umami Podcast. Also, don't forget to check out our website where you can find tons more resources about today's subject. While you're there, consider supporting us with a small monthly donation or one-time gift. And, please tell a friend about us.
Chris
1:05:50
You're listening to the TNE Network.