How Did a World Memory Champion, a Theatre Director, a Voice Coach, a TV Actor, and a Professional Magician Help Gerard Basset Win the World’s Best Sommelier Competition?

Natalie MacLean
Apr22nd

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Introduction

How did a world memory champion, a theatre director, a voice coach, a TV actor, and a professional magician all help one person win the World’s Best Sommelier Competition? How do top performers use nerves and adrenaline to their advantage? What do high achievers do when they accomplish the dreams they’ve been chasing for years?

In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I’m chatting with Nina and Romané Basset who have just published the commemorative edition of Tasting Victory: The Life and Wins of the World’s Favourite Sommelier, Gerard Basset.

You can find the wines we discussed here.

 

Giveaway

Two of you are going to win a copy of Nina and Romané Basset’s commemorative edition of Tasting Victory: The Life and Wines of the World’s Favorite Sommelier by Gerard Basset.

 

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 two 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.

I’ll be jumping into the comments as we watch it together so that I can answer your questions in real-time.

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Highlights

  • Why are narrative associations and humor often more powerful than rote memorization?
  • What did a brutally honest voice coach help Gérard change about the way he communicated?
  • Why did Gérard’s near-perfect performance in Athens unravel?
  • What was the hardest part of the Master of Wine journey for Gérard?
  • How did studying The Economist help Gérard learn to think and argue in the style the Master of Wine exam demanded?
  • What happened when Gérard achieved the last great title that had driven him for years?
  • How did Gérard evolve when old methods were no longer enough?
  • Why did writing his memoir become so important to Gérard?
  • Why was a commemorative edition of Tasting Victory necessary?

 

Key Takeaways

  • Why are stories often more powerful for learning than rote memorization?
    • Gerard hired a world memory champion, a theatrical director from Paris, a voice coach, a TV actor, and a professional magician, all to prepare for a single wine competition. So they came to the house quite regularly, actually and Gerard found them really helpful. they broke down all of these very complicated names of wines or regions of wines or lots of different grape varieties and they gave Gerard a way of remembering them through association. So, for example, the Japanese wines, the idea of the motorbike was because motorbikes have sometimes Japanese names like Kawasaki. So they connected let’s have a story of you riding on a Kawasaki with a very attractive lady on the back of the bike, and you ride to… and they would they would create a story. And because it was a story, it was much easier to remember it in your head than if you were just learning by rote all of these different names of different types of sake.
  • How do top performers use nerves and adrenaline to their advantage?
    • For the Athens 2004 final competition, the audience gave him a standing ovation. Then he writes that he relaxed too much, talked too long with guests during the decanting and ran out of time for the wine correction. What he learned ultimately after that contest was, you needed to use the adrenaline and the nerves in a competition to your advantage and never relax so much that you feel like you’re at home in your own restaurant. when we train sommes, we always say you need to feel at ease, think that you are in your own restaurant. But of course, in your own restaurant, you don’t have a time limit. You don’t have a clock ticking, saying you’ve got five minutes to do a decantation. So I think it taught him a lot in terms of it’s great to make your customers feel that you’re in control while you’re on the stage. But you mustn’t let that adrenaline be lost. You have to use it to your advantage.
  • How do high achievers cope when they accomplish the dreams they’ve been chasing?
    • Can you speak to the way Gerard set his ambitions? Was there always a horizon beyond the current horizon? Yes, I think there was until after the 2010 contest and in fact, that was something that concerned him because he’d always had a goal. He’d always had something that he was aiming for. Whether it was to become a master sommelier, to become a master of wine, to gain his wine MBA, to do his Master of Science qualification, to attain the ACI Best Sommelier of the world. There was always something that he was planning. Sometimes it would be 2 or 3 years ahead. And then suddenly in 2010, he’d won the world championship. And I remember him saying to me, what do I do now? I haven’t got any other goals. I don’t have an obvious and logical next step now.

 

About Nina and Romané Basset

Nina and Romané Basset are Co-Founding Trustees of the Gérard Basset Foundation, the Charity set up to fund education, mentorship and training in the wine, spirits and hospitality industries to honour the legacy of Gérard Basset.

 

Resources

 

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Thirsty for more?

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  • 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 00:00:00 How did a world memory champion a theater director, a voice coach, a TV actor, and a professional magician all help one person win the world’s Best Sommelier competition. How do top performers use nerves and adrenaline to their advantage? And what do high achievers do when they accomplish all the dreams they’ve been chasing for years? Good question. In today’s episode, you’ll hear the stories and tips that answer those questions in part two of our chat with Nina and Ramani Bass, who have just published the commemorative edition of Tasting Victory The Life and Wines of the world’s favorite sommelier, Gerard Bass. You don’t need to have listened to part one from last week first, but if you missed it, go back and have a listen after you finish this one. By the end of our conversation, you’ll also discover how a brutally honest voice coach helped change the way he communicated. The hardest part of the Master of Wine journey. How reading The Economist magazine helped Sarah learn to think and argue in that style. For the Master of Wine exam, and how genre evolved when old methods were no longer enough.

Natalie MacLean 00:01:19 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.

Natalie MacLean 00:02:01 Welcome to episode 386. So what’s new in the drinks world this week? Well, surprisingly, shockingly, there.

Natalie MacLean 00:02:10 Is only.

Natalie MacLean 00:02:11 One one animal. Related story A vineyard in northern Italy has not let us down. They have installed motion triggered speakers that play classical music. When wild boars approach the vines, the animals are either deterred or simply have different tastes and composers. There’s far more news this week of this synthetic kind in Verona, Italy, during the Italy trade fair on April 15th, a robotic sommelier named Bacchus one successfully identified the vintage and vineyard of a Barolo in a blind tasting, though it accidentally drank the sample by venting it into its cooling fan.

Natalie MacLean 00:02:52 Hahaha. In California, a tech startup debuted Wine Sense glasses on April 17th, which use haptic feedback to vibrate against the drinker’s lip if the wine is served even point five degrees outside its optimal temperature range. Very fussy. A London cocktail bartender trained an algorithm on thousands of classic recipes and now serves drinks it invents on the spot, which is either the future of mixology or the beginning of a machine quietly judging your palate. A vineyard in Argentina hosted a night harvest lit up entirely by drones in the sky, creating a glowing canopy over the vines that looked like a gathering of thousands of fireflies. In her April 4th column for The Telegraph magazine, Victoria Moore unpacks one of the most controversial shakeups in the wine world right now. And it starts with a joke when the character Basil Fawlty in the British TV comedy show Fawlty Towers from the 70s, played by John Cleese, Sneers at a guest who couldn’t tell a Bordeaux from a claret. The joke, of course, was really on him. Until recently, they meant the same thing.

Natalie MacLean 00:04:05 Victoria reports that the French regulatory bodies have now officially split them apart, designating claret as its own legal subcategory of red Bordeaux. Starting with the 2025 vintage, in a movement to stop steeply declining sales of Bordeaux, the original meaning of the term claret meant pale or clear, used to describe red wines that were lighter in colour. The new style, described by Bordeaux managing director Stephanie Snook, is fresh fruit, forward and approachable and can carry up to 7g/l of residual sugar and is designed to be consumed chilled. Targeting a younger, broader audience who might describe them, she says, as a mashable red for British wine merchants who have spent decades building claret brands around tannic, dry, savoury styles that most people associate with the word. This is a problem. Victoria quotes a British wine merchant about his best selling. Own label claret. Put a claret in the fridge. I think we’re going to have to struggle to get customers to take it off. The Aga. Aga is the British term or brand of stove in the weird but wonderful world of science.

Natalie MacLean 00:05:14 Did you know that the foam on your beer, known as barium, is actually a complex physical structure held together by Lmp1 proteins? These proteins are hydrophobic, meaning they hate water, so they cling to air bubbles to escape the liquid, effectively creating a protective protein coat that preserves the beer’s aroma while preventing the bubbles from popping too quickly. The compound most responsible for the banana note in many young wines and beers is isomer acetate, and here’s a twist it’s produced in higher amounts by yeast that’s under stress. Stress the yeast just enough through temperature, sugar concentration or fermentation speed, and it releases more of this ester as a kind of metabolic pressure valve. Wine that smells like banana candy is essentially documenting its own stressed out situation. This is why freshly fermented Beaujolais Nouveau and some German Riesling share that fruit candy character in youth. Cold temperatures stressed yeast isolate acetate. The yeast panicked, and the result can be delicious or just downright weird. The distinct, earthy smell of a damp wine cellar or certain aged spirits is often caused by jasmine, a compound produced by soil bacteria.

Natalie MacLean 00:06:36 Humans are evolutionarily hypersensitive to this scent, capable of detecting it at concentrations as low as five parts per trillion. To put that in perspective. You could detect a single teaspoon of jasmine diluted into 200 Olympic sized swimming pools. And did you know that the diamond crystals sometimes found at the bottom of a cold bottle of white wine, are actually potassium by citrate? These crystals form when tartaric acid, a natural component of grapes, binds with potassium in cold temperatures. And while they look like shards of glass, they are completely harmless and are actually a sign that the wine was not heavily chemically stabilized. And finally, for your drinks calendar, April 22nd brings two celebrations worth stacking. Earth day, which launched in 1970 and now draws more than a billion participants globally, making it one of the largest civic observances on the planet, is a natural excuse to open something from a producer committed to regenerative or organic farming. Host a blind tasting of organic versus conventional wines to see if you can taste the difference, or build a cocktail from every leftover citrus peel in your fridge.

Natalie MacLean 00:07:49 It also happens to be National Jelly Bean Day, and that just makes me happy. Honoring a confection that became a staple in U.S. military rations during the Civil War because its hard shell kept the centers fresh during transport. To mark both at once, try dropping a handful of spiced or pear flavored jelly beans into a sparkling wine as a garnish, or use gourmet beans as the base for a guess the flavor cocktail game, or even build a jelly rattler by combining your favorite wheat beer with whatever jelly bean flavor matches the season. April 23rd is National Picnic Day, which traces its origins to the French Revolution, when royal Parks were first opened to the public. Embrace that democratic spirit by packing a screw cap Riesling in a chilled tote, pre batching a thermos of Negroni for the park, or simply eating outside with something good in your glass. It’s also National Cherry Cheesecake Day, honoring a dessert with roots stretching back to ancient Greece, making it one of the oldest still celebrated food traditions on Earth. Mark it with cherry cheesecake shots, a dessert and digestive pairing, or a competitive plating contest where everyone pretends they work at a michelin starred restaurant.

Natalie MacLean 00:09:05 April 24th is National Pigs in a Blanket Day, honoring the salty, buttery snack first popularized in the 1957 cookbook Betty Crocker’s Cooking for Boys and Girls. I can just imagine the cover of that See Jane run. This is one of the greatest pairing tests of our time. The salty, fatty richness of the snack begs for a high acid contrast, so girls and boys make it the perfect moment to pop a sparkling wine. As long as you’re of drinking age. Or build a mustard martini for a mommy and daddy. Using savory infused vodka and a tiny blanket wrapped cocktail sausage on the rim. Oh so cute. April 22nd delivers a double feature of the snack and grape. National Pretzel Day celebrates a snack that Pennsylvania Dutch immigrants brought to North America in the 18th century, and it pairs beautifully with beer. So this is the day to dip salted pretzels into a stout based chocolate fondue rim, a spicy, bloody Caesar with crushed pretzel bits and celery salt, or simply open something malty and Bavarian. It’s also International Viognier Day, celebrating one of the most extravagantly perfumed white grapes in existence, a variety so aromatic with peach, apricot and violets that early botanists mistakenly classified it as related to Riesling.

Natalie MacLean 00:10:28 Viognier nearly vanished in the 20th century, with fewer than 14 hectares remaining under vine at its low point. To celebrate pouring sangria from France, if you can find one or mix a floral white wine, spritz with a lavender syrup and a sliver of fresh peach, then wait for someone to ask if you added perfume. April 27th is National Prime Rib Day and National Marceline Day, which is the most unexpected pairing of a steakhouse classic with a deeply obscure grape. National Prime Rib Day honours the cut, traditionally called the King of Roasts, which calls for a big, bold red try a smoky, old fashioned whisky cocktail. And while the prime rib rests, raise a glass to World Marceline Day, a crossbreed grape created in 1961 by French leaf scientist or ampelographers Paul Trudel by crossing Cabernet Sauvignon with Grenache, giving it the structure of a cab and the fruit, forwardness and smoothness of a Grenache in a single variety. Marcellin has become big in China, where it thrives in warm climates, but almost no one outside the wine trade recognizes its name to celebrate.

Natalie MacLean 00:11:38 Find a Languedoc example if you can. April 28th closes the week with National Blueberry Pie Day honoring the official Berry of Nova Scotia. Toast it by mixing a blueberry thyme shrub with sparkling water and gin cocktail, sipping a chill Late Harvest dessert wine or simply putting a slice of blueberry pie. Next to the best off dry Riesling you have and call it a day. Back to today’s episode. Two of you will win a copy of Nina and Roman’s new book, Tasting Victory. If you’d like to win a copy, please email me and let me know you’d like to win. It doesn’t matter where you live, I’ll choose two winners randomly from those who contact me at Natalie at Natalie MacLean dot com. Keep them for yourself or give them as gifts. If you’re reading the paperback or e-book or listening to the audiobook of my memoir, Wine Witch on Fire Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, defamation, and Drinking Too Much, a national bestseller in one of Amazon’s Best Books of the year. I’d love to hear from you at Natalie at Natalie MacLean dot com.

Natalie MacLean 00:12:37 I’ll put a link in the show notes to all retailers worldwide at Natalie MacLean. Com forward. 386. Okay, on with the show. For the 2004 Athens competition, Gerard hired a world memory champion, Dominick O’Brien, who took him for a walk and taught him how to turn lists of soccer terminology, the Japanese rice wine into vivid, exaggerated personal stories involving motorbikes and mischief, and he worked with another memory champion, Jonathan Hancock. How did that work exactly? What were they doing for him? Like, what were some of the specific techniques that they taught him that helped?

Nina Basset 00:13:21 They came to the house quite regularly, actually, and Gerard found them really helpful. How it worked was that they broke down all of these very complicated, you know, names of wines or regions of wines or lots of different grape varieties. And they gave Gerard a way of remembering them through association, for example, the Japanese wines. The idea of the motorbike was because obviously motorbikes have sometimes Japanese names like Kawasaki or something, and so they connected.

Nina Basset 00:13:52 Let’s have a story of you riding on a Kawasaki with a very attractive lady on the back of the bike, and you ride to and then, you know, they would create a story. And because it was a story, it was much easier to remember it in your head than if you were just learning by rote all of these different names of different types of saké.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:11 That’s true. Our brains are wired for stories.

Nina Basset 00:14:13 Yes, exactly. So it was a much easier way. And of course, he would then tell that story to somebody over dinner, because it was a funny story to retell, and that would help him to remember the names because everyone would talk about the story. So. So it was a very clever way of learning.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:27 Yeah. Was there any other memory techniques that he picked up from them?

Nina Basset 00:14:31 Probably. But I wasn’t learning the memory techniques, so I can’t remember them.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:35 No worries. No, it reminds me of studying for exams. And, you know, you make acronyms of the five principles of whatever it is, chemistry or.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:44 You know something?

Nina Basset 00:14:44 No. Actually, yes.

Nina Basset 00:14:46 No. You’re right. So what he would do is he would draw maps every day. So he would study maps, and then he would redraw them in all different colors. And he would write all his notes, all of his study notes. He would write them longhand into all different folders. And then nearer the competition, he would take all of those notes and he would write them on little cue cards. You know, he would summarize them and put them on cue cards. So for him, it was writing all the time. Yeah. And condensing it down.

Nina Basset 00:15:14 Yeah.

Natalie MacLean 00:15:15 So that one little piece of information can expand in your mind to a full.

Nina Basset 00:15:20 Well, exactly.

Natalie MacLean 00:15:21 Essay answer or whatever. Yeah. No. That’s great. I love this. He was so dedicated. Now, Gerard had a voice coach in London who stopped him after 15 minutes of a presentation and said, point blank, my God, it sounds so boring. You speak in such a monotonous way.

Natalie MacLean 00:15:36 You are sending me to sleep. And he came back two weeks later and told him you have improved. Not bad at all. What had he done to improve his voice quality?

Nina Basset 00:15:46 So I remember he came back absolutely incensed. Not that he’d been criticized, but the way he’d been criticized. It was in a very kind of brusque and quite harsh manner. The lady in question had sort of brushed him off and said, you know, it’s rubbish, and you’ve sent me to sleep. And he came back, really crossed that he’d failed. You know, Gerard didn’t really enjoy failing and then not trying again. I mean, obviously he tried again seven times to get his world championship, so he was determined that he was going to do better. So he said to her, okay, I’m going to come back. And she said, fine. But you know, I’m not sure it’s worth it. And anyway, so he practiced, you know, every day he would stand in front of me and he would practice talking about, you know, a scenario in a restaurant.

Nina Basset 00:16:33 Or we would we would practice different aspects of service and so on. And, and I would say to him, well, I think you need a bit more of liveliness here or a bit more intonation there. And then he went back two weeks later and gave it his all. And because of the way the lady was, I think for her to say, well, it’s quite good now, you know. That was the biggest compliment that he was ever going to get from her. And so he came back elated that he’d he’d done it.

Natalie MacLean 00:16:58 That’s great. Every aspect here covered. So for the Athens 2004 final competition, Gerard planned to suggest an 1896 Madeira linked to the first modern Olympics and, to Greece’s surprise, Euro 2004 football victory over Portugal. The audience gave him a standing ovation. Then he writes that he relaxed too much, talk too long with guests during the decanting, and ran out of time for the wine correction. What does that story say about where he was most vulnerable?

Nina Basset 00:17:28 What he learnt ultimately after that contest was you needed to use the adrenaline and the nerves that happen in a competition to your advantage, and never relax so much that you feel like you’re at home in your own restaurant.

Nina Basset 00:17:46 I mean, obviously, you know, when we train songs, we always say you need to feel at ease. Think that you are in your own restaurant, but of course, in your own restaurant, you don’t have a time limit. You don’t have a time, you know, clock ticking, saying you’ve got five minutes to do a dictation. So I think it taught him a lot in terms of it’s great to be relaxed. It’s great to make your customers feel that you’re in control while you’re on the stage. But you mustn’t you mustn’t let that adrenaline be lost. You know, you have to use it to your advantage. And then by the time you got to Chile and, and and the winning competition, in his mindset, it was, you know what? I have nothing to lose. I’ve done this so many times. I’m going to do it this once final time. Or if I win, it’ll be amazing. I’m just going to step on that stage and enjoy it and enjoy every moment of it.

Nina Basset 00:18:36 And I think that was the sort of the turning point really for him, because I think he suddenly felt there was no pressure on his shoulders anymore. He decided he was going to have one more try. If it failed, then he’d have done his absolute utmost and he he had said he would retire. I don’t believe that he would of I think he would have carried on, because I can’t imagine that he would have ever hung up his sommelier apron until he had won that title, because it was the one that eluded him for so long. But but it showed on the stage, you know, he stood on that stage in Chile and looked like he was enjoying himself. It didn’t feel like he was competing. Well, it didn’t feel like it for him. It felt like it for all of us.

Natalie MacLean 00:19:19 Sure. Now, Gerard failed the theory section of the Master of Wine exam four times before passing it. Which is not unusual, by the way. It has a notoriously low pass rate of about 10%.

Natalie MacLean 00:19:32 He he had left school at age 16, wrote essays in a second language for this exam, and describes spending hours studying The Economist magazine to understand how a well-constructed argument is built from beginning to end. He writes that the unofficial motto of the exam is investigate like a fine detective and argue like a brilliant barrister. What is the specific part of that journey that he found most humiliating? And how did he talk about that later?

Nina Basset 00:20:03 I’m not sure. Humiliation, but certainly in terms of frustration. And I think probably it was the writing of the essays, because, you know, in terms of the tasting, he was doing tastings as a sommelier in terms of the learning he was learning for his other kind of life that wasn’t exams, but his contest life. So the thing that eluded him was the essay writing, because he didn’t do that, you know, in his day to day work, he didn’t need to write an essay In his exams, he might have needed to write an essay about the style of writing essays was completely different from what the M.W. were wanting.

Nina Basset 00:20:41 So he took again. He took the expertise and the experience of somebody who was a writer, a very nice lady who, who came every week to the house and made him write essays. And she said to him, you know, read The Economist, because the style of writing the way that the MW wants you to write The Economist is in a similar sort of style, and it will help you and does keep practicing and practicing. And so, yeah, I don’t think it certainly wasn’t humiliation, it was frustration. And then, you know, just again, this determination that he would crack it and he would learn to write essays. Well, and he did. He became a really proficient essay writer.

Natalie MacLean 00:21:25 Wow. Remarkable. Now, he won the Bollinger Medal for tasting excellence in his first attempt at the Master of Wine practical section, then recalls a conversation years earlier when the Bollinger CEO of the company had said it would be wonderful if Gerard ever achieved both the qualification and the medal. These long game conversations clearly mattered deeply to him.

Natalie MacLean 00:21:48 Can you speak to the way you are? Can you speak to the way Gerard set his ambitions? Was there always a horizon beyond the current horizon?

Nina Basset 00:21:57 Yes, I think there was until after the 2010 contest. And in fact, that was something that concerned him because he’d always had a goal. He’d always had something that he was aiming for. So, you know, whether it was to become a master sommelier, to become a master of wine, to gain his wine, MBA, MBA, to to do his Master of Science qualification to attain the ACI Best Sommelier of the world. There was always something that he was planning. Sometimes it would be 2 or 3 years ahead. Sometimes he would have to jump through various hoops to get to where he wanted to go, but there was always something. And then suddenly in 2010, he’d won the world Championship. And I remember him saying to me, what do I do now? You know, I haven’t got any other goals. And I said to him, I’m sure you’ll find something.

Nina Basset 00:22:51 And he said, yes, but you know I can’t. I’ve always had. It’s always been there. It’s always been the obvious and logical next step. I don’t have an obvious and logical next step now. So he threw himself into becoming very involved with the ACI, which is the International Sommelier Association. He became their technical director. Ultimately, later on, he became their sort of master of ceremonies for the competitions and so on. And he loved it. You know, he was travelling around the world with sommeliers, immersed in the world of similarly. But I think probably deep down, if he could have taken, if he could have found another competition or another exam that he could have got his teeth into. He would have loved to.

Natalie MacLean 00:23:35 He would have done it. Okay, so for that 2010 competition, Gerrard assembled a team that included a business coach, two former proteges, his usual training group and a PR consultant named Rebecca Williams, whose children attended the same school as you. Rebecca used Gulliver’s Travels as a framework for encouraging Gerard to think differently about self exposure and vulnerability.

Natalie MacLean 00:23:59 What did that mean exactly? How is she using Gulliver’s Travels to help Gerard?

Nina Basset 00:24:04 So I wasn’t privy to their conversations, because they were very, sort of. They were 1 to 1. It was actually me who suggested that he speak to Becky, because up until 2010, he had been learning in the same sort of style. you know, he he had a formula that worked and, and it had stood him in good stead. But we realized that, you know, from when he’d been competing the last time to 20 tens competition, things had changed. He was older. He had to kind of up his game in some way. And so I said, maybe you need to.

Nina Basset 00:24:41 How old was he at this point?

Nina Basset 00:24:43 No, I can’t remember how old he would have been in 2010. He would have been, yeah. Late 40s. Early 50s. Yeah. So I said to him, you know, you you need to take somebody who is not involved in the wine world, but who you trust enough and feel comfortable enough to work with.

Nina Basset 00:25:01 But somebody from outside who comes with a completely different perspective. And Becky will definitely make you think outside of the box. She’s a very clever, very, very astute lady and very gentle and calm in the way that she speaks to people. So I knew that that would work for Gerard. And they, you know, obviously he knew her because the kids were at school together, but he really enjoyed having the sessions with her and trusted her judgment and trusted her expertise. And so they would go off and have these sessions over tea at Chewton Glen, actually, which is where Gerard used to work many years before, and they would discuss Gulliver’s Travels, and he would come home and he’d say, I’ve got it. You know, she’s really she’s just turned a key in my head and suddenly the door is opened and I see what I have to do. And he never explained what or how. But whatever it was, it worked. Because, you know, he then went on to win the next time he competed.

Nina Basset 00:26:00 So he was very interesting. Becky.

Natalie MacLean 00:26:02 Yeah. Now Giraud gave Corinne Michelle the head some of the a position at the Hotel Devon, Birmingham when she was in her early 20s, barely speaking English herself, having arrived as a komi just the year earlier. He told her the news and she nearly fell off her chair. Can you tell us another specific story of him identifying something in someone that was not yet visible to them.

Nina Basset 00:26:27 Yeah. I mean, I think probably every protege that Gerard has ever been involved with would tell you that they, they gain something from Gerard being able to unlock something within them that they didn’t even know that they had, or that he empowered them or so. Yeah. I mean, I, I think he just had this ability with people to find what it was that made them get excited about something. And if it was.

Nina Basset 00:26:58 One like Laura Reese, the ballerina, I mean.

Nina Basset 00:27:02 Laura Reese, we called her the ballerina because she was always running around very elegantly. Very.

Nina Basset 00:27:08 She was just a joy to watch in service because it was like watching a ballerina circling the floor.

Nina Basset 00:27:15 But it was beyond technical accuracy.

Nina Basset 00:27:18 Yes, for sure, it was just something. And sometimes it wasn’t even necessarily his songs. You know, sometimes it would be one of the chefs. He would just see something in a chef and just I think because he had time to talk to people, he would spend the time that was needed. There was never, you know, it was never looking at his watch and saying, I’ve only got five minutes. He would sit and talk to people for as long as it took and give them the time that they needed to find whatever it was inside of them that made them flourish.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:49 Now, his diagnosis of cancer of the esophagus came in October 2017, and he continued to write the book continued to push on. What was it like? I don’t know if he even can capture this into words, but that he finished writing it the day before he died. Do you think he was holding out to finish this thing? Like the way he was so determined to to win these competitions, do you think? You know, I’ve got a job to do, and I’m not leaving before it’s done.

Nina Basset 00:28:18 Yeah. I think the book became something that was very important for him because when he was diagnosed, he said to me, you know, I don’t know how to cope with my life changing. I, you know, I’ve been used to traveling a lot and suddenly I can’t travel. I’m going to have to be at home. What am I going to do with myself? And I said, you should write a book. And he said, I’ve written a book. It, you know, even even I used to say to him, if you’re tired and you’ve got insomnia, read your book because it would send you to sleep. I mean, it wasn’t that bad, but it was, you know, it was a very technical book. And so it was always joke between us. I’d say, oh, I’m tired. Let me have your book. I’ll read it and it’ll make me go to sleep. So I said, but not that kind of book, you know, not a technical book.

Nina Basset 00:29:00 You need to write a book about you, about your story, because people will want to read it. And he said, don’t be ridiculous. Of course nobody’s going to want to read it. And I said, I think they will because you have so much to give, so many inspiring stories to tell. And so I said, if nothing comes of it, just write it. Just. But don’t. Because what he would do, he was a perfectionist. So normally he would write something, reread, read it, rewrite it, read it again, rewrite it. And I said, you haven’t got time to do that. You just need to get it all down. Just brain dump it onto the page. And I think he found that really useful. And he actually started to enjoy writing it. And so by the time he was actually, you know, really very, very poorly, and he’d been in hospital for a lot of weeks, he, he knew that he had another final sort of chapter to write.

Nina Basset 00:29:50 And as was his way, always, you know, he didn’t want to leave something unfinished. And, and he said to me, I need to finish my book. I can’t do it here in the hospital. And he begged the doctors to allow him to come home. And the doctor said to us both, if he comes home, he won’t be going anywhere other than, you know. Unfortunately, he will pass away at home. We can put a system in place to make sure that he’s as comfortable as possible. But, you know, we would prefer for him to stay in hospital. We understand that he has this real need to go home. He wanted to be with his dog as well, you know, he wanted to be with mumsy. He loved her desperately. And so they let him come home and they put an amazing structure in place to allow him to be home with nurses and so on. And he was home seven days. And in those seven days he would write, but obviously he couldn’t write like he had been previously.

Nina Basset 00:30:44 He couldn’t write for hours on end, but he was writing a little bit each day, and he was very proud that he’d been able to do that. And that kept him going, I think. And then when he’d finished the chapter, you know, he’d finished what he had to say, literally, he laid his pen down and he said, I’m ready. I can go now. I’ve done it.

Nina Basset 00:31:06 Wow.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:08 That’s quite something.

Nina Basset 00:31:10 Yeah. Wow.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:11 Okay, so the foundation has a major fundraiser, the Golden Vines auction, which has raised more than, or nearly £1.2 million, I presume. At its first event in 2021, and the UK singing sensation Kylie Minogue performed and dedicated a song to Gerard, wow. Ronan and Storm Keating have returned every year since. How did those relationships come about? How did they start participating in this?

Nina Basset 00:31:46 So Kylie was was actually there was no previous relationship with Gerrard other than he was. He loved Kylie, you know, he was a great fan of Kylie.

Nina Basset 00:31:55 He used to play all her songs, always in the car and so on. And so it sort of felt fitting when we had the opportunity to ask her to be involved in the very first one, and she said yes, we were thrilled. And of course, you know, when I went to thank her for being involved and I said, you know, Gerrard was a great fan. And she said, well, you know, I think it’s amazing what, what he managed to do in his life. And and I think what you’re doing is great. So I’m going to dedicate a song to him. And she did. And, I was so overwhelmed with the emotion, I can’t remember even what the song was because, you know, it was just one of those moments. You think, oh my gosh, you know? So everyone says to me subsequently, what did she sing? And I’m like, I can’t remember. But it was amazing, whatever it was. And then Ronan and Storm were actually at the first event, and Ronan actually stood up and very impromptu, gave her an auction prize.

Nina Basset 00:32:51 It wasn’t planned, but he did. And then because it was such a popular prize, he actually gave it twice. So we raised double the amount of money. And then he said to us, you know, I really want to continue to be involved. What can I do to help? And so subsequently, he and storm have, have been presenters at the Golden Vines event subsequently. But there was a connection with Ronan before. He probably wouldn’t remember, but he when he was in his boyband Boyzone. Many, many years ago. They used to perform around the country and they used to come and stay at Hotel Divan in Bristol, which was one of our hotels at the time, and Gerard used to come home and say Ronan was there today or, you know, the boys from Boyzone were there and they were nice boys. And so he never kind of, you know, he never sat and had dinner with them, but obviously he’d sort of seen them and, and maybe said hello once or twice, but but no, we’re hugely grateful to to Ronan and Storm that they are so generous with their time and that they are so involved, vulnerable.

Nina Basset 00:33:48 And it’s great.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:49 That’s fantastic. In reflections, the chapter called reflections, Gerard writes, quote, I was not blessed with the strength and skills of great athletes or sportsmen that I admired. I did not enjoy the stunning good looks of the likes of Paul Newman or Brad Pitt. Equally, I did not have the brilliant and sharp intellect of Garry Kasparov or Stephen Hawking. However, one feature I’ve been privileged to possess is rock solid determination. Absolutely. I mean, that just clearly comes through, but I just had to share that line from the book. The epilogue closes, which are I writing? I would do it all again. What do you think he means by all just going through his entire life as it unfolded from his childhood to the failed jobs to, of course, the the glory and winning the competitions. Do you think that is what he meant?

Nina Basset 00:34:41 Yeah, I think he did mean that. Even though, you know, there were times when he had ups and downs like everybody, I think he would, because he would say that those failures, those many attempts at exam and competition success, all of that shaped him and made him.

Nina Basset 00:34:58 And he would say it made him a better person. It made him understand his failings and what he would have to do to start all over again. So yes, I don’t think he regretted a moment of anything he would have, because if he hadn’t have lived the life he lived, he wouldn’t have been the man he was. So I don’t think he regretted anything that he’d done.

Natalie MacLean 00:35:20 That’s marvelous and true testament to his influence. More than a thousand people came to his memorial at Winchester Cathedral. That is amazing. Now, in the museum of Gerard Bessette, which three objects do you think you would put in the central display? Nina.

Nina Basset 00:35:36 Oh, I think that’s quite easy. Just before he died, he said to me. He had an office and no one was ever allowed in his office. In fact, you couldn’t open the door to his office because it was so full of books. And he never used his office, but it was like a shrine to books. And he said to me, when you eventually go in my office and you have to clear it out, you’ll be really cross, because in my desk you will find something or things and you’ll be amazed.

Nina Basset 00:36:00 And I was thinking, gosh, what am I going to find? So when I did go eventually into his office to clear out his books and and I opened the drawers of his desk, there were probably more than 3000 odd luggage, all corkscrews of all different types, different styles, different colors. All of the world champions of ACI had allegedly created for them, and he had hundreds of each of one of those. So I would definitely have to have a legible corkscrew in that museum of Gerard Bass. I would definitely have to have wine books because they were what, you know, he just loved. He would collect wine books like other people would eat a hot dinner, you know, he would buy the first edition and then that would be the one that he would use to study. So because he was using that one, he would buy another one just to have on the shelf. So it was pristine. And then of course, if it was republished, he would have the second edition, the third edition and so on.

Nina Basset 00:36:53 So he had hundreds of books. So it would have to be a book. And I think probably then also it would have to be photographs of his two beloved dogs and Roman, of course. So yeah, a trio of photos. The two dogs and Romy. Yeah. Me too maybe. Yeah.

Nina Basset 00:37:11 Yeah, I hope so.

Natalie MacLean 00:37:13 And if you think Gerard could share a bottle of wine. If he were with us today, if he could share a bottle of wine with any person outside the wine world, living or dead, who do you think he’d share a bottle of wine with and excluding family members?

Nina Basset 00:37:27 Okay, so I think I can’t exclude a very close friend. I will give you somebody from outside of the wine world, but in terms of a close family friend who really has been instrumental in his life, subsequently, to him passing away more than he was while he was alive, although they were great friends while he was alive, and that somebody called Louis Chester, who has been the the person who has created the Golden vines, who has helped to ensure that we have the financial means to run the foundation.

Nina Basset 00:38:02 So without Louis, none of what we do would really happen. He’s a wine collector. He rang Gerard up one day and said to Gerard, you know, I want to learn more about wine? I think you’re the man to teach me. Will you do so? And they became firm friends. In fact, Lewis was the only person who came to the hospital to visit Gerard because Gerard didn’t want anybody else at the hospital. He didn’t want to have his other friends and were there to visit. But Lewis was allowed to. And so I think he and Lewis, in fact, did drink a very special bottle of wine together and both loved it. And it was a very special moment for them both. And so I think if they could recreate that again, they would. And that was it was a bottle of Le Pas 1996. And, you know, it was just one of those very special moments.

Natalie MacLean 00:38:48 Famous Bordeaux, just for those who don’t know.

Nina Basset 00:38:51 Yeah. So if I.

Nina Basset 00:38:52 Had to choose people from outside of the wine world, I think it would have to be Garry Kasparov.

Nina Basset 00:38:57 He mentions him in the book. Gerard was,

Nina Basset 00:39:00 The chess player.

Nina Basset 00:39:02 Yes. He was very keen on chess, and I think he would be fascinated to share a glass of something with Garry and Explore his, his abilities as a chess, professional and a chess champion. And probably, of course, I can’t say I can’t leave out a footballer because I love football, so I suppose he would love to have the chance to sit down with somebody like Zidane and, and talk about football over a glass of something nice.

Natalie MacLean 00:39:32 Forgive me. Who is Sudan?

Nina Basset 00:39:34 Zidane is, is a very famous French football player. He played in the World Cup, represented France, and, you know, he’s a he’s an idol in French football. He’s a legend. And yes, if they were going to be drinking something. Gerard loved all wines, but probably fortified wines, champagnes and burgundies were some of his favorites, so I suppose he would have to have had something like that. So there would definitely have to be a Madeira in there somewhere.

Nina Basset 00:40:04 There would definitely, probably have to be a sherry of some sort, probably a fino or mama. And then he would probably choose a very delicious, I don’t know, a champagne or wiener or, cru Bollinger. I mean, it could be any one of them putting it on Rio. I mean, he loved them all. So yes, they would have fun, whatever they would choose to drink, for sure.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:29 That sounds wonderful. This has been terrific, Nina. Of course, the book Tasting Victory the commemorative edition is now available. It’s published by Academy Library and it’s available on their website and all the major book sites, Amazon chapters, Barnes and Noble, etcetera. Waterstones. Is there anything else you want to add as we wrap up that we’ve not covered?

Nina Basset 00:40:52 No, I don’t think so. I mean, thank you very much for having us on. Just to maybe one thing people say, you know, why do we write a commemorative edition? Why did we want to write additional chapters? Because hadn’t Jarod covered everything himself? But I think it’s really important that people understood that.

Nina Basset 00:41:09 Yes, he wrote a book. Yes, he saw it completed to a point, but. And it was very much a you know, he wanted it to be a legacy of what he’d what he hoped that he would be able to inspire people after he died. But we wanted it to be very much that it continued to inspire people. And I thought it was really important that people understood that. He had no concept that we were going to create a foundation in his honor. We never talked about that. And so, you know, to be able to add some extra chapters that talk about the foundation and talk about the fact that people are still seven years on after his death, still talking about Gerald with the love and respect that they do. He would be so humbled by that and completely shocked that, you know, people are still remembering him. And so I’m immensely grateful to Hermione Island and the Academy driven library for allowing us and giving us the opportunity to republish the book. They weren’t the original publishers, so for them to take it on and run with it and really believe in the book as they have done.

Nina Basset 00:42:13 You know, for Romany and I would we feel truly appreciative of that. So thank you, Hermione and the Academy.

Nina Basset 00:42:20 Yes.

Natalie MacLean 00:42:20 Hermione is a wonderful editor person publisher all around.

Nina Basset 00:42:25 Yes, yes.

Natalie MacLean 00:42:27 All right. Nina. Well, thank you again. I’m going to say goodbye for now. Thank you. And good luck with everything you’re doing with the foundation and the book itself. It’s a it’s a marvelous story of Jared’s life and the values that go beyond his life, too. And you are helping you and your son Romani are perpetuating those. So congratulations.

Nina Basset 00:42:48 Thanks very much, Natalie.

Nina Basset 00:42:50 All right. Cheers. Well, there.

Natalie MacLean 00:42:57 You.

Nina Basset 00:42:57 Have it. I hope.

Natalie MacLean 00:42:58 You enjoyed our.

Natalie MacLean 00:42:58 Chat with Nina.

Natalie MacLean 00:42:59 And Romani. Here are my takeaways. Number one, Gerard hired.

Natalie MacLean 00:43:04 A world.

Natalie MacLean 00:43:04 Memory champion, a theatrical director from Paris, a voice coach, a TV actor, a professional magician, all to prepare for one single wine competition. As Nina says, they came into the house quite regularly and Gerard found them really helpful.

Natalie MacLean 00:43:19 They broke down all of these complicated names of wines and regions and grape varieties and rules, and gave Gerard a way of remembering them through association and storytelling. So, for example, the Japanese wines they attach to the idea or story of a motorbike, because sometimes these have names like Kawasaki and then they built on that. You’re riding this motorcycle, there’s a lovely lady with you on the back, and you ride off in the sunset to where, etc. and this story was much easier to remember than if you were just trying to learn by rote all the different saying names and types of sake. Number two how do top performers use nerves in adrenaline to their advantage? So in the Athens 2004 final competition, the audience gave Gerard a standing ovation. And then he writes in the book that he relaxed too much, then talked too long with guests during the decanting portion and ran out of time. As Nina adds, what he ultimately learned was that you needed to use adrenaline and nerves to your advantage and never relax so much as you feel like you’re at home or even in your own restaurant.

Natalie MacLean 00:44:36 And although the sommeliers they trained need to feel at ease. But of course, in your own restaurant or any restaurant, you usually don’t have such strict time limits as you do in competition. There’s not a clock ticking unless you’ve got one of those really pushy types. Nina says that really taught Gerard a lot in terms of making customers feel like you’re in control while you’re still on stage, while you’re doing it with ease. And number three, how do high achievers cope when they accomplish all the dreams they’ve been chasing for years? Nina says that it was after the 2010 contest where he won it. He was concerned because he had always had that goal for many years, and it was something he had been aiming for repeatedly. It took him seven attempts to get it, as she said, he was always planning to achieve something, whether it was Master Sommelier, Master Wine, his MBA, his Master of Science qualification. But suddenly he had it all and she remembers him saying, now what do I do? I don’t have any other goals.

Natalie MacLean 00:45:43 And that’s something I think we all have to think of. Side note I’m watching The Testaments on Hulu, which I think is owned by Disney, and it’s based on the Margaret Atwood book. She wrote, The Handmaid’s Tales, and this is a spin off anyway. I love the show. There are all these young girls are going to a school for wives. They’re going to be the wives of the commanders. And one of their big tests is for the aunts who are going to place them be marriage makers, matchmakers, when they’re big tests, is serving a formal tea to the aunts and their own mothers or surrogate mothers. Anyway, it just reminded me so much of the service portion of the sommelier competition where everyone’s watching you pour the wines or decant or whatever, and I just had so many resonances, except, you know, of course, with the sommelier exam you can be free and actually drink alcohol, whereas women can’t in Gilead. Anyway, don’t get me started, but I love the show.

Natalie MacLean 00:46:45 All right, if you missed episode 15, go back and take a listen. I chat with Leslie Brown with the Canadian Association of Professional Sommeliers about what to ask your sommelier when choosing wine from a restaurant list. I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite.

Lesley Brown 00:47:02 This one always comes to the top of my five most embarrassing stories, and I was with a colleague and we were fortunate enough to visit Graham’s courthouse at the time, and the owner himself, Rupert Symington, was showing us the round, and we had stepped into the old lagers where they had stomped the grapes back in the day in order to extract the colour and make an optimum part. And in these cement lagers, which are big troughs, they had these windows. So my colleague and I thought it would be really fun to take photos of each other through these little holes in the wall, until Rupert Symington informed us that’s where the men would pee during their break on the foot stomping. So that quickly ended our giggling and fun, and we took things a little more seriously.

Natalie MacLean 00:47:49 As they were well framed.

Natalie MacLean 00:47:50 Those photos.

Lesley Brown 00:47:51 Two embarrassing stories right off the bat. Excellent.

Natalie MacLean 00:47:54 You are one of.

Natalie MacLean 00:47:55 Us, Lesley.

Natalie MacLean 00:48:01 You won’t want to miss next week, when we chat with Michael Finnerty on pairing wine and cheese and the many colorful stories he has to share from his new book, The Cheese Cure from Stink quaestors. What are they? Just celebrity encounters. And to give you a taste of future guests, we’ll have professor Mark Scalia on the intersection of wine and religion, doctor Dave Nutt on wine and health, Ben Hawkins on port and sherry. Global bartending champion Caitlin Stewart on fresh new cocktails for spring. Humorist Maurice Chevrier on how to sound wine smart. Karen Newman on 40 cocktails to close out any evening. James Chatto on the iconic recipes and drinks that have shaped our taste. Liz Gilbert on rosé. Christine Westray on Sark. And Doctor Charles Knowles on why we drink too much. And Marisol de la Fuente on the wines of Argentina. Do you have a question for any of our guests? Please let me know.

Natalie MacLean 00:49:03 Do you know someone who would be interested in learning more about what it takes to become the world’s best sommelier, and what great restaurant wine service really is? Please let them know about the podcast. Email or text them now while you’re thinking about it. It’s easy to find the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. Just tell them to search for that title or my name Natalie MacLean Wine on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, their favorite podcast app, or they can listen to the show on my website at Natalie MacLean. Podcast. Email me if you have a tip, question, or if you’d like to win one of seven drink books I have to give away. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this episode, or if you’ve read my book or are listening to it. Email me at Natalie at Natalie MacLean dot com. In the show notes, you’ll 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 at Natalie MacLean.

Natalie MacLean 00:50:03 And that’s all in the show notes at Natalie MacLean. 436. Thank you for taking the time to join me here. I hope something great is in your glass this week. Perhaps a wine that reminds you of a memorable story?

Natalie MacLean 00:50:25 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 Natalie MacLean. Com forward. Subscribe. Meet me here next week. Cheers.

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