What Makes a Wine Feel Soulful? Jordan Salcito Shares the Secret in Smart Mouth: Wine Essentials for You, Me, & Everyone We Know

Natalie MacLean
Jan28th

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Introduction

What makes a wine feel soulful, transporting you beyond taste into a deeper emotional connection? What does experiencing harvest firsthand reveal about winemaking that never show up in books? What makes Northern Rhône Syrah come across as black peppery, smoky, and reminiscent of pastrami?

In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I’m chatting with Jordan Salcito who has published Smart Mouth: Wine Essentials for You, Me, & Everyone We Know, which was just selected as one of the best wine books of the year by the New York Times.

You can find the wines we discussed here.

 

Giveaway

Three of you are going to win a copy of Jordan Salcito’s terrific new book, Smart Mouth: Wine Essentials for You, Me, and Everyone We Know.

 

How to Win

To qualify, all you have to do is email me at [email protected] and let me know that you’ve posted a review of the podcast.

It takes less than 30 seconds: On your phone, scroll to the bottom here, where the reviews are, and click on “Tap to Rate.”

After that, scroll down a tiny bit more and click on “Write a Review.” That’s it!

I’ll choose three people randomly from those who contact me.

Good luck!

 

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Join the live-stream video of this conversation on Wednesday at 7 pm eastern on Instagram Live Video, Facebook Live Video or YouTube Live Video.

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Highlights

  • How did Jordan’s father shape her earliest understanding of wine as family and connection?
  • How did working at Restaurant Daniel shift how Jordan understands wine, fine dining, and food and wine pairing?
  • What does Jordan mean when she describes certain wines as soulful?
  • What’s the difference between the old world approach focused on place and the new world approach focused on control and construction?
  • Why did working harvests in Burgundy teach Jordan that could never be learned from books?
  • How did molecular gastronomy pioneer Wylie Dufresne help her see restaurants as a legitimate intellectual and creative path?
  • How did an early rejection from The New York Times become a signal to redirect her goals?
  • Why did failing the advanced sommelier tasting exam become the foundation for eventually passing the Master Sommelier tasting on her first attempt?

 

Key Takeaways

  • What makes a wine feel soulful, transporting you beyond taste into a deeper emotional connection?
    • For me, it’s like a wine where I feel it in my bones. Like a wine where I take a sip and I’m transported. And it’s a moment where you’re sort of one with the philosophy of whoever it was making this wine, and presumably anyone who’s doing a great job like that is also, like, deeply respectful of the land. I guess it almost can also be summed up by the word for winemaker, which doesn’t exist in France, the winemaker, the word is vine grower. There’s this reverence to place and to expressing that place, and to the viticulture and the growing of the vine without all this intervention.
  • What does experiencing harvest firsthand reveal about winemaking that never show up in books?
    • N: You talk about soulful wines, but this is you experiencing the harvest with your bones, feeling it bodily, that slope, or the rain hitting you, or whatever, like all of that very physical as you say.
    • J: Very physical and then understanding how decisions are made in real time, because there are a lot of things that would never make it into a book. there’s the physical and the logistical understanding of how decisions get made.
  • What makes Northern Rhône Syrah come across as black peppery, smoky, and reminiscent of pastrami?
    • The Syrah was from the Northern Rhone and for me, the way I remember it was like black pepper and leather and bacon and smoke and a little bit of pastrami and meat. I think it’s that sort of like gamey black pepper for me. That’s I’ve just always registered it. And I now don’t really eat very much pastrami, certainly not here in France, but even in New York, I think the last time I had a pastrami sandwich was over a decade ago, but I don’t know, it has that very pronounced, gamey, but black peppery smell that always reminds me of a pastrami sandwich.

 

About Jordan Salcito

Jordan Salcito is an award-winning sommelier, author, and entrepreneur. A wine industry veteran, she has over a decade of experience as a sommelier at restaurants including Momofuku, Restaurant Daniel, and Eleven Madison Park (where she was part of the team to win the award for Outstanding Wine Service from the James Beard Foundation). Her wine programs at Momofuku were regularly recognized in The New York Times, Eater, and Food & Wine, and were named “Most Creative Wine List in the World” by the World of Fine Wine magazine.

Long a student of wine, Salcito passed the tasting portion of the Master Sommelier exam on her first attempt and feels fortunate to have learned so much though working harvests at world-renowned wineries in Burgundy, Tuscany, California and Patagonia.

A pioneer of the ready-to-drink beverage category with her organic Italian spritz company, Drink RAMONA, Salcito will also publish her first book, Smart Mouth: Wine Essentials for You, Me, & Everyone We Know, with Penguin Random House’s Ten Speed Press this October. Jordan lives in Paris with her family.

 

Resources

 

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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

 

Books and Wine, Books: Wine, Boxed Wine, Food & Wine Pairing, Podcasts, Serving Wine, Taste Wine, Wine Question, Wine Style, Wine Tasting, Wine Tasting Notes, Wine Trends, Wine Writing, Women and Wine