Introduction
Why do the wines change when you’re pairing them with kale versus other greens? Why should you avoid storing wine in the fridge? What’s the best question you can ask a sommelier in a restaurant?
In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I’m chatting with Vanessa Price, the author of Big Macs and Burgundy: Wine Pairings for the Real World and the wine expert for The TODAY Show.
You can find the wines we discussed here.
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Highlights
- What inspired Vanessa to pair wine with classic McDonald’s foods?
- How did Vanessa pair pastrami sandwich (with a dill pickle) with wine?
- What gives Chilean Carmenère a bell pepper taste?
- How do the characteristics of different greens lend themselves to different types of wine?
- What is meant by the “shape of acidity” and how can it help you to learn more about a wine?
- Why shouldn’t we leave bubbly in the fridge for more than one to two weeks?
- What were some of the challenges Vanessa encountered when writing her book?
- How was Big Macs and Burgundy received by the wine industry?
- How is Vanessa localizing Big Macs and Burgundy with each new translation?
- What was Vanessa’s approach to curating the wine list at Mavericks?
- Which rare and special wines have been included in Mavericks wine list?
- Why did Vanessa create a skin contact section on the wine list and which types of wine are included?
- What’s the best question you can ask a sommelier for a wine recommendation?
- What is Vanessa’s favourite wine book?
- What’s Vanessa’s favourite wine gadget?
Key Takeaways
- Vanessa’s advice wasn’t focused only on fast food and candy. She also shared great tips about healthier foods. For example, the wines you pair with kale versus other greens change based on the bitter edge, lightness of the greens and other factors.
- We should avoid storing wine in a food fridge because the low humidity can dry out the cork, causing shrinkage, etc.
- I also liked her advice that if you pay more attention to the shape of the acidity and the shape of the impression of the tannin, you can probably learn a lot more about a wine.
- The best question you can ask a sommelier in a restaurant is sharing information about what you like already, even if that’s simply showing them a picture on your phone of a label from a wine you like.
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About Vanessa Price
Born and raised in Kentucky, Vanessa first caught the wine bug working in a small winery down south. She followed her passion for wine and moved to New York City in 2007, starting as a sommelier on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Vanessa has spent almost two decades in the wine industry as a trained sommelier and is the author of best selling book Big Macs and Burgundy: Wine Pairings for the Real World. Vanessa is a certified Level 4 sommelier, resident sommelier for The TODAY Show and the Wine Director of Wildflower Farms, an Auberge Resort Hotel. She has also taught classes for The Wine & Spirit Education Trust, and has written for and been featured in New York Magazine, Vogue and many others. Mavericks, the new stylish modern steakhouse in Montauk, is Vanessa’s latest venture, which reimages the traditional steakhouse with a menu of local Montauk seafood and produce from James Beard-nominated chef Jeremy Blutstein (previously of Crow’s Nest and Showfish at Gurney’s Star Island), alongside a wide variety of steaks and an unmatched, extensive wine selection from around the world She is the Creative Director and Founder of The Vinum Collective, an all-things wine education platform. Vanessa is a graduate of and instructor for The Wine & Spirit Education Trust® where she also has her certified Level 4 Diploma of Wine and Spirits.
Resources
- Connect with Vanessa Price
- Nick Jackson’s Book | Beyond Flavour: Wine Tasting by Structure
- Jancis Robinson’s Book | Wine Grapes: A Complete Guide to 1,368 Vine Varieties, Including Their Origins and Flavours
- Diary of a Book Launch: An Insider Peek from Idea to Publication
- Wine Witch on Fire Free Companion Guide for Book Clubs
- My Books:
- Unreserved Wine Talk | Episode 109: How to Pair Wine and Chocolate with Chocolate Sommelier Roxanne Browning
- My new class The 5 Wine & Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner And How To Fix Them Forever
Tag Me on Social
Tag me on social media if you enjoyed the episode:
- @nataliemaclean and @natdecants on Facebook
- @nataliemaclean on Twitter
- @nataliemacleanwine on Instagram
- @nataliemaclean on LinkedIn
- Email Me at [email protected]
Thirsty for more?
- Sign up for my free online wine video class where I’ll walk you through The 5 Wine & Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner (and how to fix them forever!)
- You’ll find my books here, including Unquenchable: A Tipsy Quest for the World’s Best Bargain Wines and Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass.
- The new audio edition of Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass is now available on Amazon.ca, Amazon.com and other country-specific Amazon sites; iTunes.ca, iTunes.com and other country-specific iTunes sites; Audible.ca and Audible.com.
Transcript
Natalie MacLean (00:00):
What’s the best question you can ask a sommelier for a wine recommendation?
Vanessa Price (00:04):
I usually ask, what is it you gravitate towards? Do you love Napa Cab? Do you find yourself just always enjoying a Willamette Pinot? Are you a diehard Malbec fan? If you can figure out just a few descriptors, that will go such a long way when you sit down with a somm saying this is what I like, what are some options that you might have? You could almost see their shoulders come out of their ears because like someone’s communicating what they want. So being able to have just a little bit of information to share with the somm in terms of preferences for or against it goes a long way to making it a fruitful pun intended conversation in terms of helping them to direct you to something that you’re going to enjoy.
Natalie MacLean (00:54):
Do you have a thirst to learn about wine? Do you love stories about wonderfully obsessive people, hauntingly beautiful places and amusingly awkward social situations? Well, that’s the blend here on the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. I’m your host, Natalie MacLean, and each week I share with you unfiltered conversations with celebrities in the wine world, as well as confessions from my own tipsy journey as I write my third book on this subject. I’m so glad you’re here. Now pass me that bottle please and let’s get started. Welcome to episode 271.
(01:40):
Why do the wines change when you’re pairing them with kale versus other greens? Why should you avoid storing your wine in the fridge? And what’s the best question you can ask a sommelier in a restaurant? In today’s episode, you’ll hear those stories and tips that answer those questions in part two of our chat with Vanessa Price, the author of the bestselling book Big Macs and Burgundy: Wine Pairings for The Real World. You don’t need to have listened to Part One from last week first, but I hope you’ll go back to it if you missed it after you finish this one.
(02:19):
In personal book news, I’m thrilled that Wine Witch on Fire: Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, Defamation, and Drinking Too Much is one of three finalists for the 2024 Gilda Prize. I’m quoting here from the award site. The Gilda Prize is named for Gilda Radner whose comedic performances made her an entertainment legend and whose courage won our hearts. It is awarded for memoir, novels, and collections of personal essays that show us something important about the human spirit and make us laugh even when we want to cry. I love that Winners will be announced in April, so please cross your fingers and broomsticks for the Little Wine Witch. If you haven’t yet got your copy of Wine Witch on Fire and would like to support it in this podcast that I do on a volunteer basis to ensure it continues, please order it from any online book retailer now no matter where you live, it usually arrives in a day or two, and of course, the ebook is instant. Every little bit helps spread the message in this book of hope, justice, and resilience. I’ll put a link in the show notes to all the retailers worldwide at nataliemaclean.com/271.
If you’ve read the book or are reading it, I’d love to hear from you at [email protected]. I’d also love to know which other podcasts you listen to. They don’t need to be wine related though. I’m interested in those two. I’m always looking to expand my playlist. On with the show.
Natalie MacLean (03:56):
You also paired wine with all the items on a McDonald’s menu. Why were you inspired to do that? What’s the backstory on that?
Vanessa Price (04:04):
Well, the title of the book was Big Macs and Burgundy. And so to do a chapter on the classic foods of McDonald’s seemed like a lot of fun to do. It was also fun because we got to part and parcel the nuance of things like is it the same wine for a Quarter Pounder as it is for a Big Mac? And I found my answer was no, but those sort of fun things.
Natalie MacLean (04:25):
And so why was it different between a Quarter Pounder and a Big Mac? We want to know.
Vanessa Price (04:31):
Yeah, we’re going to get technical about McDonald’s. So a Big Mac, right? You have a bun and then you have a really thin patty, and then you have another bun, and then you have another thin patty, and then you have a bun. So the bun to meat ratio is actually a little bit more bun than meat. You also have just fresh crunchy lettuce and special sauce. Special sauce definitely has a tangy quality to it, right? As opposed to that with a Quarter Pounder, you’re talking about a significant quarter pound piece of meat, the significant patty. So the bread to meat ratio is completely changed. The meat itself is much more significant, it’s much more robust. You also don’t have the special sauce. You’ve gotten into heavier cheeses and ketchup and that sort of thing. So the entire profile changes.
So for a Big Mac, I went with a Burgundy because you need something that is a little bit lighter, a little bit fresher, something that’s not going to overpower the Big Mac, and sort of be a nice answer for the tang in the special sauce, and then a super Tuscan for the Quarter Pounder because you need something that is a bit more robust, just like the Quarter Pounder. But not something that’s so big and lacking in acidity that it’s just going to murder the meat.
Natalie MacLean (05:39):
And this ties back to a childhood story and Beanie Babies, right?
Vanessa Price (05:43):
Yeah. So if everybody, it’s actually kind of funny. I saw there’s a movie that came out about it recently. I haven’t watched it yet, streaming the obsession with the Beanie Baby craze. So that was born from when everyone thought that they had to be the one to collect all of the Beanie Babies from the McDonald’s Happy Meals. And some were super rare, and it was going to be like a lifetime investment and us making all this money if we could have the expensive Beanie Baby and all those things. And my mom would drive us around after school to different McDonald’s and convince them to put certain beanie babies in our Happy meals and all of that. But because we were a family that didn’t waste, all of these happy meals that would come home would get frozen, and then we would eat them at a later date.
Natalie MacLean (06:29):
Wow. What did that taste like? I find when McDonald’s cools down, I don’t want to taste it how frozen and reheated.
Vanessa Price (06:36):
At this moment, I probably wouldn’t love it. As a child, it was a delight.
Natalie MacLean (06:40):
Yeah, I’m sure. And then you also had a pairing for McNuggets because they have 12 different sauces. So did you go buy the sauce rather than the McNugget?
Vanessa Price (06:51):
Yeah, so I decided that for that one, I would do a little bit of an exploration in terms of going into the hybrid world and talking a little bit about the differences in some of the grapes across states here in the US that get less attention and use different sauces to pair those.
Natalie MacLean (07:07):
Okay. Yeah. I imagine there’d be quite a difference between hot mustard and creamy ranch.
Vanessa Price (07:12):
Yes. Well, one of the points of debate whether or not honey should be considered a dipping sauce. Adam and I contended greatly on that one. I insisted that it should. He insisted that honey’s not a dipping sauce for chicken nuggets. But I’ve had so many people in the subsequent three years say, thank you for validating the fact that I use honey on my chicken nugget.
Natalie MacLean (07:31):
Yes, absolutely. I think you paired that one with the Hawaiian pineapple wine, which is great. Great again for the diversity. And then you had the Cat’s deli pastrami sandwich with a dill pickle. What played a role there in the pairing?
Vanessa Price (07:45):
So that one was done with a Chilean Carménère. And the idea behind it was that you wanted something that definitely had a little bit of that herbaceous green tone to it to sort of cut against the meat itself and the preparation of it. You also needed something that was hardier and bigger in alcohol because inevitably this is a meaty piece of sandwich also that herbacious that every wine from Chile sort of has, this very unique and specific green bell peppery sort of character, which the pickle of course compliments well. And I just find them to be delightful wines.
Natalie MacLean (08:21):
Yeah, absolutely. Why do they have that bell pepper taste? Do you know?
Vanessa Price (08:25):
Well, so technically it’s a form of a pyrazine, right? So it lives in that same category as grassiness or anything like that. Scientifically, why vinifera grown in Chilean soil presents with that more? I’m not sure. I mean, those are predominantly sandy soils. I don’t know if that plays a role into it or altitude or what it might be, but I’m always grateful when I have a Chilean wine in a blind tasting because it’s so singularly Chilean, and I’m like thank you for being one I can find.
Natalie MacLean (08:53):
Okay, cool. And the book also does have pairings, as you mentioned, for healthier foods, like different types of greens in a salad. So how would that change your wine would change between say kale and seaweed?
Vanessa Price (09:05):
Well, it depends on the preparation of seaweed. I think in the book I did seaweed snacks, which are obviously dry and hard. That’d be very different than a wet seaweed salad. For that one, I just went classic Chablis or something. That’s kale based. Kale’s interesting because it’s a leafy green, so inherently it’s not super heavy, but it is, especially if it’s like a fresh kale, it’s very bitter. And so how do you balance the bitter with it not being so big? So finding something that will work with it but not overpower it. I think for the kale salad, we did a Rosado, so we did a richer juicier style of Rosé, something that had a little bit more of a tannic structure to hold against that bitter edge of the kale, but still played in that fresher, more vibrant category of food.
Natalie MacLean (09:54):
Okay, cool. Now, one of your favourite childhood foods, is there one that you really recall and stands out and what would you pair with it today as an adult?
Vanessa Price (10:04):
Favourite childhood foods? I feel like I covered most of them in the book. Yeah, I feel like I covered. One of my favourites was definitely my grandmother used to make, and then my mother used to make basically a Mexican salad is what we called it. But it was basically just like canned refried beans, canned tamales, sour cream cheese. I think we call it a seven layer dip in the book, and that we did with a California Chardonnay. So something that was big and robust, but had a lot of really yummy saltiness to it to go with the tortilla that you would pair with it and that sort of thing.
Natalie MacLean (10:41):
Cool. And now I’ve heard you talk about the shape of acidity and wine. What do you mean by that, especially as it relates to pairings?
Vanessa Price (10:48):
So that is something that is really interesting to talk about, but I can’t lay claim to the concept. So there’s a Master of Wine named Nicholas Jackson who actually wrote a book about it called The Flavour of Wine. Flavour spelled the British way. And his whole theory is that especially when it comes to blind tasting, if you pay more attention to the shape of the acidity and the shape of the impression of the tannin, you can probably learn a lot more about a wine and sort of intuit what it might be if it’s blind and just sort of recognize its characteristics if you pay attention to those as opposed to getting lost in sometimes the nuances of dried rose petal and ramble fruit and forest floor undergrowth. As much as those things very much exist, sometimes they can be a little bit distracting from what are the differences. And so he actually goes wine by wine, and I find it absolutely fascinating how he describes the different shapes of acidity and et cetera.
Natalie MacLean (11:49):
The shape. Does he mean by that how much acidity there is or where it hits your palette?
Vanessa Price (11:55):
It’s sort of all of those things, but it’s ultimately the impression of how it moves through your mouth. Like Sauvignon Blanc sort of moves in a straight line. Chardonnay moves in a spherical fashion. So it’s how the acid itself presents shape wise in your mouth.
Natalie MacLean (12:11):
Fascinating. And why shouldn’t we leave bubbly in the fridge for more than one to two weeks?
Vanessa Price (12:16):
We shouldn’t leave anything in the fridge for more than one to two weeks. It doesn’t matter what it is if it’s under a cork. So what makes a food fridge so great for your food is that is an anaerobic environment with low levels of humidity. You need humidity for a wine. If it has a cork, you need something that’s between 70 and 80% humidity, which is why a wine cave is very different than a food fridge, because what happens in a food fridge is that low, low level of humidity that keeps your vegetables crisp is going to eventually dry out your cork and it’s going to cause it to shrivel. And once that happens, aeration begins to happen. Seepage begins to happen. It just kind of kills the wine.
Natalie MacLean (13:00):
Yeah, absolutely. And yet people have bottles of bubbly or sometimes a white wine in there for weeks, months, sometimes.
Vanessa Price (13:07):
Years. Yeah, it’s a good way to kill a wine.
Natalie MacLean (13:10):
Yeah, absolutely. So what was the most surprising insight you discovered while writing the book?
Vanessa Price (13:16):
How hard it is to write a book.
Natalie MacLean (13:17):
Yeah.
Vanessa Price (13:21):
Someone sent me a quote when we were near the finish line. I think it was Hemmingway. He said, to write a book is the closest man will ever come to knowing childbirth. I have not birthed a child, so I cannot speak to that. But having gone through what it takes to create a book, not just to the research of it, the writing of it, the editing of it, the killing of your babies, because you end up writing this thing, but then it’s like you got to tighten it up. You got to bring it in. So the killing of the babies is always a hard one. Then you have to design it, and then as you design it, then there’s more structure that has to change in terms of how knowledge is presented. And then you have to, well wait a minute, but we’re missing this piece. And there’s so many hands involved in terms of your design team, your editing team, myself, my co-write, my photographer, my illustrator. There’s so many human beings involved in it that it’s a lot.
Natalie MacLean (14:14):
Yeah, it’s hard. Lots of very graphic comments like that, just open a vein and bleed. That’s how you write. It’s like let in a lot. It’s so personal, too. It takes everything from you in a way, but it’s also deeply satisfying like a child. What’s the most interesting thing someone has said about your book?
Vanessa Price (14:32):
It’s not necessarily the most interesting thing that someone has said. I think what has been fascinating, and I’ve been very pleased with learning, is the number of people in this industry. I just wasn’t sure how it was going to be perceived. Obviously, there’s a little bit of an irreverence to the title. Hopefully anyone that actually reads it understands that it’s tongue in cheek, and there’s actually a lot of very rich information in the pages. But just the number of folks that are very well respected members of the culinary and wine community. Danielle Jonas Instagramed the book, even the restaurant Danielle gave us a shout out. It’s been for sale in some of the most prestigious wine shops in Burgundy, which that one just about bowled me over that the French wanted to carry this book. And so to just see such amazing and incredible members of our industries get behind it and say this book is awesome, has just been really, really neat to see.
Natalie MacLean (15:33):
Oh, that’s great. And is there anything you’ve learned since then, or has anyone suggested a new pairing that you would add to a new edition if you were to publish a second edition?
Vanessa Price (15:44):
Well, I mean there were so many that were already cut from this one. I think we started with 500 something pairings and then worked our way back from there. So there’s a whole other book that we could do based on that. But I think what’s even more fun is one of the agreements that I made with my publisher was that any foreign language translations, I would do a new chapter with foods from that country. And so we just finished the Korean translation. It’s available for sale in Seoul and across South Korea now.
Natalie MacLean
Oh, great.
Vanessa Price
And our Korean publisher chose a whole list of snack foods, savoury foods, classic Korean fair. And then I actually worked with a girl, a very dear friend of mine who is family is from South Korea, who has her level four WSET as well, our diploma. And we wrote a chapter together that was about pairing food and wine from her country, which was a lot of fun. So wonder I would love the opportunity to do more countries.
Natalie MacLean (16:35):
Yeah, that sounds great. So let’s talk about this new restaurant, Mavericks New Steakhouse in Montauk. For those who are not familiar with the region, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it’s in East Hampton, along the southern shore of Long Island, New York.
Vanessa Price (16:48):
It’s part of the Hamptons. Montauk is part of the Hamptons. Yes.
Natalie MacLean (16:51):
Okay, cool. And you are wine director and partner with the James Beard, nominated Chef Jeremy Blutstein.
Vanessa Price (16:58):
Blutstein .
Natalie MacLean (16:59):
Okay. So tell us about the wine list that you’ve put together. What was the organizing principle? You’ve got some local wines from New York and then regions around the world. What was your approach?
Vanessa Price (17:10):
Well, one of the things about the Hamptons, for anyone that spent time there knows, that while there is an extraordinary amount of expendable income, there isn’t necessarily so many places that you can go and have wines of any sort of high caliber. And certainly you’re probably not going to get traditional wine service. It’s not uncommon to go somewhere and they’ll have $2,000 Burgundies on the list, and when you order them, you’re going to get these squat little lead wine glass. It is a very sort of casual atmosphere, and that is an absolutely wonderful, awesome thing. People come out to kick their shoes off and get salty and sandy and spend time at the beach. And so it makes sense. But what we wanted to provide was a little bit more of a – I hate to use the word fine dining because there’s definitely a casualness to us – but a higher touch of service, finer style of dining than is typically expected to be seen in the Hamptons.
And definitely Montauk the surfer town, but it has become a bit of a culinary destination. A lot of the best restaurants in the East End are in Montauk now. And so we wanted to sort of be a new spice in the spice rack sort of thing. And so I wanted to build a list that was something for everyone. I’m a big believer in that. I don’t think that if you want to sit down and you don’t want to have to think and you just want to look at a list and pick a wine that and order it and move on to the wonderful company that you’re sharing and whatever it might be. I want to have those wines for you that you could just open it up and say, give me one of those. I know it. Had it a hundred times. Or if you want to go on a discovery path and whether that discovery is on a budget or you’re looking to splurge a little bit, I have those as well. And if you’re coming in because there’s nowhere else that you can have crystal stemware and traditional fine wine service and have extraordinary wines, we can do that too.
Natalie MacLean (19:06):
That’s great. Tell us about one of your rarest or most expensive wines. What is it and why did you opt to put it on the list?
Vanessa Price (19:15):
So a lot of those are just about what I’ve been able to get any sort of allocation of. So we’ve got some Domaine de la Romanée-Conti on the list, we’ve got some Chateau Rayas on the list. We’ve got some older vintages of Biondi Santi on the list. We’ve got older vintages of Ponsot. Yeah, there’s a lot of fun stuff. Older vintages of Mascot, some really cool things that I’ve been able to get allocations of. And so I definitely wanted to list those in terms of the splurge and the classics. And I wasn’t sure how people would respond since it is a little bit more vacation mode for a lot of people. But people come in wanting to have discoveries, wanting to have grand wines in a grand dining room because it’s certainly a very, very, very, very, very beautiful dining room. And so it’s been cool.
Natalie MacLean (20:00):
Great. Now you’ve also created a unique skin contact section with education on the categories. The categories are light pink, deep pink and orange skin contact. Tell us what those are and why you created that.
Vanessa Price (20:14):
I wanted to put those together because I feel like a lot of times what Rosé is, and by virtue of that as an extension, what is a Rosado style? And then by extension of that, what is orange wine? The context of what they are is lost a lot of times. And since all of those style categories are dictated by skin contact, I decided to put those together in one grouping because it was a way to hey if what you want is Provence Rosé, we’ve got it. We’ve got it. But by taking each of the page where the Provence Rosé is, you’re also going to see richer Rosado from Spain and interesting orange wines from France and that sort of thing. And there’s a little bit of an explanation on the wine list as well that explains stylistically what the differences between them are and how they get to be that way. And I think it has led to definitely a more even sales of each of those categories as opposed to if I just had a page of Rosé. I think people would just go to that and order the same thing every time. So it’s been nice to offer an avenue of discovery without it being too complicated.
Natalie MacLean (21:20):
That’s a great way to approach it. And then finally, what’s the best question you can ask a sommelier for a wine recommendation?
Vanessa Price (21:27):
I think the best thing, this is what I do with a lot of people, people, somebody that I’ve gotten to be friendly with and they’re like, tell me what to order when I go somewhere. And I’m like, well, that’s not really a thing. It’s not order the chicken. You know what I mean? Every wine list is unique and stylistically, every Appalachian, every grape, everything is different. So I can’t say without looking at a list what someone can order, but what I can do is help you understand what it is that you do. And so I usually ask folks, what is it? What do you gravitate to towards? Do you love Napa? Can, do you find yourself just always enjoying a Willamette Pinot? Are you a diehard Mabe fan? Right. And if you can understand, I’m so sorry, the tractor in my vineyard is going past us. I don’t know how loud it is. I really
Natalie MacLean (22:15):
Apologize. Alright,
Vanessa Price (22:16):
Harvest starts next week. So we’re
Natalie MacLean (22:19):
We’re live air. Yes.
Vanessa Price (22:22):
So if you can figure out, just sort of identify like, okay, I know I like this. And if you can look up a little bit about the grape, like wine folly for example, I find to be a great source of information in terms of she’s got those one and off visual charts that tells you this level of acid, this level of alcohol, this level of body. These are the common aromatic and flavor profiles that you find in the wine. If you can just understand a little bit, okay, I understand that I like low alcohol, high acid white wines. I know that I like deeply tannic, fruit driven red wines. If you can just figure out just a few descriptors, that will go such a long way in terms of when you sit down with a song saying, this is what I, what are some options that you might have? You could almost see their shoulders come out of their ears like, oh my gosh, someone’s communicating what they want. Because I find that a lot of times when I’m on the floors, people are like tell me what I like.
Natalie MacLean (23:24):
Yes, true.
Vanessa Price (23:25):
That’s like saying, tell me what kind of music I like. Tell me what kind of dress you like. You know what I mean? It’s very abstract. It’s a consumable commodity, meaning it’s different for everyone. And so being able to have just a little bit of information to share with the somm in terms of preferences for or against, if you can say I do not oak in my white wine, they’re like, gotcha. Understood. You know what I mean? And it goes a long way to making it a fruitful pun intended conversation in terms of helping them to direct you to something that you’re going to enjoy.
Natalie MacLean (23:58):
Absolutely. And even if you don’t know the terms. If you’re not deeply into wine, you don’t know tannic or full body, you could at least say, I, the last wine I loved was say La Crema Pinot Noir, and they’ll know what you mean. That it’s low tannin, that it’s medium bodied and so on. If this then that kind of thing.
Vanessa Price (24:18):
Sure. And take a picture of a label the next time you have a bottle of. It’s like the number of times you’re like, oh, I had this wine and I loved it. And I’m like, what was it? And they’re like, I don’t know. You know what, it’s okay if you don’t remember, but just the next time take a picture of the label and then you can pull it out and go here you go.
Natalie MacLean (24:33):
Absolutely. Absolutely. So alright, so as we wrap up into the lightning round. What is your favourite wine book?
Vanessa Price (24:40):
What is my favorite wine book? It depends on what it’s for. I think that in terms of where I am right now, because I am hopefully starting my Master of Wine soon, I’ve really been getting into Nicholas Jackson’s book Beyond Flavour. I just find it to be so, so helpful. But even if you’re just starting out, I usually gift it to new employees at my winery. Even if they don’t really know that much about wine, it’s a great opportunity for them to start to go oh okay and make sense of things and sort of put things together.
I find that in general for someone getting into wine, Wine Folly is a really great way to go. For folks that are starting to get into wine, have maybe gone through levels two and three. One of the things that a lot of programs like WSET and CWS do well is they teach you a lot about the theory of wine, but they don’t necessarily teach you about the producers. And that’s one of the toughest things is like, okay, well now I understand how significant Chinon is as a region in the Loire Valley of France, but not knowing who Olga Raffault is, it’s like, well then you’ve missed a big piece of the puzzle. And Noble Rot has a great book that sort of goes to those iconic, iconic producers from the iconic regions around the world. So I find that to be very helpful. And then Jancis Robinson has an encyclopedia of grapes. It’s like this thick. I think it’s just the greatest thing that ever existed if you’re a wine nerd. But there’s such a diversity of books in the world of wine, so it’s really hard to say.
Natalie MacLean (26:10):
Sure, absolutely. And of course you’re own…
Vanessa Price (26:13):
Big Mac. Burgundy.
Natalie MacLean (26:15):
There you go. Product mention. What’s the most useful wine gadget you’ve come across?
Vanessa Price (26:21):
I find it surprising how many folks, especially people who are collecting or getting into older wine, don’t have an Ah So. It’s a very simple tool to have at the ready. And if you’re opening an older cork, you can save yourself a lot of time and headache by using an Ah So as opposed to a traditional wine key. I just find them to be a very useful tool that often not around if you’re doing any sort of foray into older wine.
Natalie MacLean (26:47):
And is it the two prongs that go on either side of the cork? You squeeze so that if it’s a crumbling old cork, it’s not going to all fall apart.
Vanessa Price (26:54):
So there’s two different versions. One is the two prongs, and then there’s another, which is the one that I would recommend, which is actually. It’s two pieces. The first piece is a traditional spiral you find in a wine key that goes down and then you take the two, so that goes in first, then the two prongs go in. So basically what you’ve done is you sort of put a pin through the middle and then you take the prongs and they become the compression on the outside of the cork. And then as you turn, it’s sort of, it’s basically holding it in its hand and lifting it out as opposed to just ripping through the center of it or not being able, because also what that spiral does is it keeps the cork in place while you wiggle the tongs in. So it’s a very secure method of removing a cork intact so that you don’t end up with, it’s not that a broken cork is a big deal, it’s just a pain in the patosh to deal with if it’s stuck in the bottle or it goes in the wine and you end up feeling like you’re doing surgery on a bottle. It’s like, so it’s just a really helpful tool to have.
Natalie MacLean (27:48):
Absolutely. And we’ll put a link in the show notes to that if people are looking for it. And lastly, if you could share a bottle of wine with any person in the world outside of the wine world, living or dead, who would that be and where would you meet if expense was no object?
Vanessa Price (28:02):
It would be my baby sister who I miss very much. She passed away in a car accident three years ago.
Natalie MacLean (28:07):
Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.
Vanessa Price (28:08):
And she was also in my industry, so she would definitely appreciate a good bottle and I think that we would probably meet anywhere she wanted.
Natalie MacLean (28:17):
Which bottle of wine do you think you would open with her?
Vanessa Price (28:20):
Good bubbles, good Champagne, good bubbles.
Natalie MacLean (28:22):
Lovely, lovely, lovely. Alright, and as we wrap up, Vanessa, is there anything we haven’t covered that you’d like to mention?
Vanessa Price (28:30):
I feel like we covered so much. I really appreciated. Thank you. Thank you for all the wonderful questions.
Natalie MacLean (28:35):
Oh, my pleasure. And how can people best get in touch with you online?
Vanessa Price (28:39):
So my Instagram is just my name Vanessa Lenore Price, the middle name is in there because Vanessa Price was taken by the time I came around to Instagram, but I manage my account, so I’m always on there. I have a website, it’s www.venom co.com. So if there was a more specific inquiry, there’s an inquiry page on there. But yep.
Natalie MacLean (28:59):
Perfect. Vanessa, thank you so much for your time. I raise my glass to you and good luck with that second book, your restaurant, your vineyard, everything else you’ve got on the go. So cheers. Thank you.
Vanessa Price (29:09):
Yes, thank you very, very much.
Natalie MacLean (29:11):
Alright, bye for now.
Natalie MacLean(29:19):
Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed our chat with Vanessa. Here are my takeaways. Number one, Vanessa’s advice wasn’t focused only on fast food and candy pairings. She also shared some great tips about healthier foods. For example, the wines that you would pair with kale versus other greens change based on the bitter edge or the lightness of the greens and other factors. Number two, we should avoid storing wine in the fridge because the low humidity can dry out the cork causing shrinkage. Number three, I also like her advice that if you pay more attention to the shape of the acidity and the shape of the impression of the tannin, you can probably learn lots more about wine. And number four, the best question you can ask a sommelier in a restaurant is sharing information about what you like already, even if it’s simply showing them a picture on your phone of a label from a wine that you like.
(30:15):
In the show notes, you’ll find the full transcript of my conversation with Vanessa, links to her website and books, the video versions of these conversations on Facebook and YouTube live, and where you can order my book online now no matter where you live. You can also find a link to take a free online food and wine pairing class with me called The Five Wine and Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner and How to Fix Them Forever. And that’s at natalie maclean.com/class. I’ll put all of these links in the show notes at nataliemaclean.com/271.
Email me if you have a sip, tip, question, or if you’ve read my book or are in the process of reading it at natalie@natalie maclean.com. If you have suggestions on how to improve this podcast or guests I should interview, please let me know. I’d love to hear from you.
If you missed episode 109, go back and take a listen, especially with Valentine’s Day coming up. I chat with Roxanne Browning, a chocolate sommelier about pairing wine and chocolate. I’ll also be talking about this topic on CTVs Morning Live show this week. I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite.
Roxanne Browning (31:26):
I’ve got it down to an art and a science where I taste a Pinot, for instance. I know not to pair that with a very intense chocolate of a 75% or better because Pinot is a delicate grape. So I may want to try that with a 60% or 66%. And I have several also with Fusion, so I’ll taste three or four. And if I’m working with a sommelier or a wine maker, we’ll go oh my God this is the pairing. We wait for that aha moment where there’s a balance between the wine and the chocolate and one does not overpower the other, and it leaves you with a very nice after taste that is just lingers and it keeps on changing. It’s very complex. So that’s what I’m looking for when I create pairings earnings.
Natalie MacLean (32:17):
You won’t want to miss next week when we chat with Scott Sexsmith, host of Up Close and Personal. If you like this episode or learn something from it, please email or tell one friend about it this week, especially someone who’d be interested in learning more about wine pairing and talking more effectively with sommelier. It’s easy to find my podcast. Just tell them to search Natalie MacLean wine on their favourite podcast app.
Thank you for taking the time to join me here. I hope something great is in your glass this week, perhaps a wine that pairs perfectly with fresh, crisp kale salad.
You don’t want to miss one juicy episode of this podcast, especially the secret full bodied bonus episodes that I don’t announce on social media. So subscribe for free now at nataliemaclean.com/subscribe. Meet me here next week. Cheers.
