Can you really taste “minerality” in wine? Sunny Hodge offers a Cynic’s Guide to Wine

Natalie MacLean 00:00:00 Can you really taste minerality in wine? What gives? Champagne and other traditional methods? Sparkling wines, their signature bready flavor and creamy texture? And how has natural wines sparked a deeper conversation about how we farm and produce food and drink? In today’s episode, you’ll hear the stories and tips that answer those questions in our chat with Sonny Hodge, author of the terrific new book The Cynics Guide to Wine. By the end of our conversation, you’ll also discover how Sonny’s engineering background influenced his approach to learning and writing about wine. Why Sonny was skeptical about the influence of soil on wine. What surprised Sonny about our technical insights into wine so far? How Sonny found the balance between sharing complex wine science and making it interesting to the average wine lover. Why Sonny believes we should apply cynicism to the world of wine. What funky means in the context of natural wines. How sunny sources unusual wines for his wine bars in London, England. What hummus is and how it influences wine character, and how it’s not to be confused with hummus and how plants absorb nutrients from the soil.

Natalie MacLean 00:01:19 Well, that is a lot, and we’re going to dive right into it. 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 350. So on city TV’s breakfast television show, I recently chatted about terrific barbecue wines. We kicked off things with a fun little game because that’s what we like to do. So I told the hosts about a wine, and then they had to tell me which grill grub pairs best with it.

We started with Casillero del Diablo Pinot Grigio from Chile, a zesty white wine with notes of green apple and lemon zest.

Natalie MacLean 00:02:39 It’s dry, it’s crisp, like a summer breeze in a glass, minus the humidity and bug spray. Thank God. Fascinating fact. Casillero del Diablo means the Devil’s cellar, a legend created by the winery’s founder to keep thieves away from his best bottles. I find that diabolically inspiring. In fact, you know, I’m going to start labelling my stash of cookies cursed to cut down on family thievery. So which barbecue dish would this pair best with? So I made them guess. Was it veggies? Seafood? Chicken, pork or beef? They got most of them wrong, but they were good sports. So this one would be grilled veggies like zucchini, mushrooms, and peppers. The wine’s juicy acidity cuts to the char and earthiness of the veggies, giving them a squeeze of citrus they didn’t know they needed.

I also had the Casillero del Diablo Sauvignon Blanc with notes of gooseberry and grapefruit. It’s got that classic Sauvignon Blanc zing that wakes up your palate like someone bottled a perfect day at the beach. Fascinating fact: this Sauvignon Blanc hails from Chile’s Casablanca Valley.

Natalie MacLean 00:03:53 Known for its cool climate and morning fog that preserve the grapes’ vibrant acidity. So which barbecue dish would it pair best with? Ha! This wine sings with barbecue salmon or grilled shrimp. There’s my shrimp. Its zesty acidity lifts the smoky richness of the grilled seafood. It’s like a lemon wedge that never quits.

Next up is the Lavis Pinot Grigio from Italy, with notes of lime and white flowers. It’s a steal at just $15, less than half the price of other top-notch Pinot Grigio, and it tastes even better. Fascinating fact: more than 800 small, family-owned farms grow grapes for this wine. It’s the wine version of an Avengers team-up, but with more stainless steel and less spandex. The grapes are grown on steep alpine slopes, which give this wine its vibrancy. So which barbecue dish does this wine pair best with? It would be great with grilled lemon rosemary chicken. It has this mouthwatering juiciness that complements the herbs beautifully. It’s the kind of pairing that makes your taste buds want to write you a thank-you note.

Natalie MacLean 00:05:01 And up next is the rosé from Provence, France. It is a glow-up wine with notes of wild strawberry and pink grapefruit. If a sunset had a flavour, this would be it. Fascinating fact: Minuty Rosé was one of the first wineries in Provence to earn the prestigious Cru Classé status in 1955. In wine terms, that’s like getting into Oxford University, but with less fuss and better snacks. Which barbecue dish would it pair best with? This was a trick question. It’s actually chicken again, though in this case I’d suggest grilled chicken skewers. The wine is elegant and effortless, like a breezy outdoor dinner when you’re wearing chiffon. It’s waffling and waffling in the wind. You don’t even know if those are verbs. Anyway.

Next up we have the Cono Sur Viognier from Chile, bursting with notes of apricot and orange blossom. This is mango salsa in a glass — or just salsa itself. It’s so lively. Fascinating fact: Cono Sur’s commitment to sustainability has earned them the coveted B Corp certification. Their vineyard workers still ride bikes between the rows of vines, a nod to their eco-friendly roots and to the logo on the label, which has somebody on a bike.

Natalie MacLean 00:06:23 Which barbecue dish would this pair best with? Yes — spicy pork ribs or grilled sausages. Its lush and tropical flavours will cool down the heat in the meat.

And finally, something for our red wine lovers. The Lamole di Lamole Maggiolo Blue Label Chianti Classico is a bold red with layers of black cherry and a whisper of smoke. It’s incredibly food-friendly. Fascinating fact: Lamole di Lamole’s vineyards date back to the 1300s and sit at one of the highest elevations in Chianti, which gives this wine its finesse and fierce finish. And which barbecue dish would this pair best with? By process of elimination, I’m sure you’ve guessed by now — that would be beef, grilled strip loin to be specific, or a burger with aged cheddar melting on it. Think of this wine as your steak’s soulmate: tall, dark, and a little brooding in all the best ways.

All right. Where you can find these wines? Of course. On my website and on Instagram. Follow me there at Natalie MacLean. Wine. I’ll post links to all of these wines in the show notes at Natalie MacLean.

Natalie MacLean 00:07:35 350. Back to today’s episode. Two of you are going to win a copy of Sonny’s terrific new book, The Cynics Guide to Wine. I also have two copies of A season for that lost and found in the other southern France, and a copy of decanter magazine’s new book, The Ultimate Travel Guide for Wine Lovers. If you’d like to win a copy, please email me and let me know you’d like to win. It does not matter where you live, I will find you. Or at least the books will. It’d be creepy if I actually hand-delivered it, I’m sure. Anyway, I’ll choose five winners randomly from those who contact me at Nathalie at Natalie MacLean. Com. You know what’s coming next. Another bookish news. 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 and one of Amazon’s best books of the year, I’d love to hear from you at Natalie at Natalie MacLean.

Natalie MacLean 00:08:32 Com. I’d be happy to send you beautifully designed, personally signed bookplates for the copies you buy or give us gifts. Order it now because it has a real seasonal Halloween kind of feel. I delve into the history of witches. I’ll put a link in the show notes to all retailers worldwide at Natalie MacLean. Three. Five. Zero. One note. Before we begin, Sonny was recording this podcast with me from his wine bar in the heart of London, England. So you’re going to hear the sounds of a busy restaurant in the background, as well as police sirens. Rest assured, there was no wine crime committed during our conversation. Okay, on with the show. Sonny Hodge is the founder of two multi-award winning wine bars in London, England. He is also an international wine judge for the IWC, very prestigious as well as decanter. He writes for Waitrose Food magazine and has been a wine expert and commentator for the Evening Standard, The Times, The Guardian, food FM, Monocle Radio and ITV’s Love Your Weekend.

Natalie MacLean 00:09:43 His new book is The Cynics Guide to Wine, which delves into the science of wine from soil to flavor, dispelling so many wine myths along the way. And he joins us now from his wine bar, Aspen and Mirco in London. Hey, sunny. So good to have you here with us. Welcome.

Sunny Hodge 00:10:01 Hey, it’s great to be here. Thank you for having me, Natalie.

Natalie MacLean 00:10:05 Awesome. So, hey, just before we dive in, I get myrrh. So that’s, you know, famous Burgundian wine. But what’s aspen referred to with your wine bar?

Sunny Hodge 00:10:14 So, Aspen MSO is a natural wine bar. And I wanted this juxtaposition between the connectivity of nature and the disconnect of mankind. So, bizarrely, MSO is not the wine region. It’s a character from a book that Albert Camus wrote called La Change or The Stranger, if you’ve heard of it.

Natalie MacLean 00:10:38 Yeah. Okay, so this is not going to be a light and fluffy conversation.

Natalie MacLean 00:10:42 I love it though. I love it.

Sunny Hodge 00:10:44 But yeah, long story short, his main character, mosso, was very disconnected from mankind and aspen.

Sunny Hodge 00:10:50 The trees are all connected under root. So I wanted something that signified mankind looking at nature, not understanding the connection. And then I was realizing, wow, it is all connected and it all plays together. So yeah, there’s a lot to unpack there.

Natalie MacLean 00:11:05 Holy smokes. Just in the name of the wine bar itself. Wow. Okay, so this isn’t your regular Cowboy’s Ranch wine bar. Okay, we’re going to get into all this because you have a fascinating background. But before we dive into your wine bar, you are a remarkable street skater. Now, I watched a video of you. I’m going to say roller skating. That’s probably not the right term, but people might understand better what I’m saying. From one rooftop of a, you know, building in London to another and other sorts of breathtaking feats. I mean, what got you into that?

Sunny Hodge 00:11:38 When I was at school, I hated sports, I hated football, and I was like, this is not for me. My mom was an athlete.

Sunny Hodge 00:11:45 She was a professional athlete.

Natalie MacLean 00:11:47 Oh, what sport, by the way? She was an athlete.

Sunny Hodge 00:11:50 She competed in 400 meter hurdles.

Natalie MacLean 00:11:52 In the Olympics. Right?

Sunny Hodge 00:11:54 In the Olympics as well. Yeah. Wow. It was at a time where my mom was super sporty. And then I was like, I don’t like any of the normal sports. And I got into skateboarding and I found my way into rollerblading is what they call it. And I was like, this is me. And you meet a range of people from all types of backgrounds, different cultures, growing up in London through skating. And that was me. Yeah, I loved it.

Natalie MacLean 00:12:18 That’s fantastic. We’ll put a link to the video in the show notes that people can see. It’s wild. This is not your regular rollerblading.

Natalie MacLean 00:12:26 Oh, yes.

Natalie MacLean 00:12:27 No, it’s very impressive. Oh my goodness.

Natalie MacLean 00:12:30 Do you still do it? Thank you.

Sunny Hodge 00:12:31 As much as my body allows me.

Natalie MacLean 00:12:33 Okay.

Natalie MacLean 00:12:35 Things change as you age. Yes, absolutely.

Natalie MacLean 00:12:37 Though you’re not very old.

Natalie MacLean 00:12:39 Is it true.

Natalie MacLean 00:12:41 You were shot in London. What happened?

Sunny Hodge 00:12:44 It is true. Growing up in London, especially spending so much time rollerblading on the streets, you’re exposed to all different types of people. And being shot, I guess, is one of the the things that happened. I’ve been maced as well. All robbery related London streets, similar to many capitals. They’re not the safest places in the world. So yeah, getting shot was amongst one of many, let’s say, colourful things that happened to me growing up.

Natalie MacLean 00:13:14 So were they trying to rob you or were robbers running out of the bank and you got accidentally shot? How did.

Natalie MacLean 00:13:18 It happen?

Sunny Hodge 00:13:19 No, they were trying to rob my friend. So we finish up in a skating session in Peckham and Peckham is back in the day. Especially notoriously dodgy area. My good friend, we used to call him Portuguese John because his English was very limited. These guys had come up and try to take his phone.

Sunny Hodge 00:13:36 It became a little bit of a scuffle. I managed to get the phone back. I was never particularly strong, but I was like quick and nimble. So I got the phone back. John gets his phone, he runs on a bus and now I’m on my own. And these kids come back with an air rifle of some sort for killing animals. And then, yeah, it all played out. So I was soon in hospital.

Natalie MacLean 00:13:59 Oh, an air rifle. Does that have bullets? Like, is there lead bullets in an air rifle?

Sunny Hodge 00:14:03 Yeah. They’re meant for, like, killing little animals. So I got one in the back of the head, one of the jaws, er. And we had to remove it surgically. Yeah. The guy’s actually got caught. I think they got done for attempted murder or something like that.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:16 Oh thank goodness.

Sunny Hodge 00:14:17 At the time I was out of the country and I was like, leave it be, let it go. So I think they’re still out there.

Sunny Hodge 00:14:24 I hope they learnt some lesson.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:25 Well let’s hope. And so did this affect your ability to smell? I’m going to lasso everything back to wine of course. But did it have any connection for you?

Sunny Hodge 00:14:34 I’m told no, but I have severe memory issues. But I’ve always had it. I’ve actually been to a few clinical neurologists to better understand, like how my memory works. And through all those neurological testings, I have discovered that I’m unaffected by the incident. So no is a short answer to that. Luckily.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:54 Okay. Yes. Luckily. Do you have a memory of the smell of lead or that shot? Anything like that? I imagine it’s tied to some big emotions for you.

Sunny Hodge 00:15:05 Yeah, for sure. I think you’re tying it back a little bit with the book, which is really cool. Which brings up the question, like, can we smell metals? And that again ties in with ideas of terroir. And when we have like rocks in the soil, can we actually smell them? Do they have a link with wine? I guess the smell of that sort of singeing metal quite close to my nose and in my head really brought back a lot, but also it is infused with emotion.

Sunny Hodge 00:15:33 But then the question is, did I actually smell the metal or was I spelling something else?

Natalie MacLean 00:15:39 And which was.

Sunny Hodge 00:15:40 It? Well, tying back to ideas of terroir. We can’t smell or taste metals. There’s no way that we can do it. We can smell some geological materials like salt and some minerals, but most minerals and metals we’re unable to smell and taste. And those metals that we feel that we can smell and taste. So I’m talking like, you know, when you have a coin, you put it in your fingers and it has a really distinct smell. But that’s actually a tertiary influence of our oils reacting with those metals. So a freshly minted coin has no smell. But as soon as we touch it, as soon as we interact with it and our oils start breaking it down, then we smell those reactions. So technically, metal and many other minerals, most other minerals except for salt, don’t have smell or taste.

Natalie MacLean 00:16:26 That’s fascinating. And what about that smell? I love the word.

Natalie MacLean 00:16:30 I think it’s called Petrarca. It’s that spring rain hitting fresh rocks or whatever. And after the air clears that smell in the air, they say it’s petrol. What is that?

Sunny Hodge 00:16:42 Is the byproduct of soil bacteria, like little bacterium in the soil making a compound called geo Smith and geo Smith is a compound and aroma compounds that’s directly related to these earthy smells. So even like beetroot, like beetroot, is quite earthy, that’s full of jessamine. And jessamine is simply part of the chemical family of terpenes that are used as animal and insect attractors in detractors in nature. So this bacteria creates this in under certain conditions, especially when it’s been quite dry. They start creating it. And as soon as you have rain that hits all of that, jasmine is made volatile. And then we can smell it. And that is the smell of petrol.

Natalie MacLean 00:17:28 That’s great. Geo Smith, how do you spell it?

Sunny Hodge 00:17:31 G e o s m I n g o.

Natalie MacLean 00:17:35 Oh, gee. Awesome. Okay. And terpenes, you mentioned.

Natalie MacLean 00:17:39 I hear that all the time. Are those aroma molecules or precursors to aromas?

Sunny Hodge 00:17:45 They could be both. So you have bound terpenes and unbound terpenes. Free terpenes. They can be bound to many things, but in a wine context, they’re largely bound to glucose molecules. So, like the family of terpenes, as we mentioned, are a huge variety of aroma compounds. Use within nature to signify and indicate to animals to either go away or to come towards them. So even like in flowers, right? Roses have loads of terpenes that they give out. And those are the floral things that you smell in roses and in wine. The fun thing is, most terpenes are bound to a sugar molecule. So during fermentation, when your yeast is eating your sugar, it’s also cleaving a little bit of a turbine off whatever turbine that might be. And then suddenly, after fermentation, you can smell the thing. So it’s really cool. You know, when you smell a grape and you’re like, why does that not smell like wine? One reason would be bound turbines suddenly becoming unbound after fermentation.

Sunny Hodge 00:18:49 And then you can smell the stuff.

Natalie MacLean 00:18:50 Oh, that’s a great description. That is great. As you can tell, we’re we’re already six feet under the earth here.

Sunny Hodge 00:18:57 Yeah, we’re in the thick of it.

Natalie MacLean 00:18:59 Exactly. Oh my goodness. So it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise to people. But you mentioned the introduction of your book. Your journey began with mechanical engineering at the University College of London. How did your background in engineering shape your approach to understanding why? We’re already getting a taste of it? Your analytical? Your scientific. Your methodical? Is there something more in terms of what mechanical engineering did or gave to you with wine?

Sunny Hodge 00:19:28 I don’t think I realized how much of an engineer I was until I got into wine. So during engineering I really did not enjoy doing that degree. I finished it just because I wanted to get it done over with and then onwards and upwards. So when I got into wine, I had been in hospitality for quite some time and a lot of it didn’t make sense.

Sunny Hodge 00:19:49 And then I’m like, hold up here. There’s got to be a better way to learn this, because especially in hospitality, it’s quite anecdotal learning like somebody ahead, sommelier or sommeliers are teaching you stuff that they know, and they might be teaching you stuff that they were told by somebody else. Huge, I guess prepositions for inaccuracies that are told. It’s sort of like passed me down information. And then I was thinking, okay, like I want to learn more about this. I did my wine studies and I still didn’t understand any of the why. So then my inner engineer was like, hey, why don’t I understand if any of this is accurate or true or not? Because I’m just learning stuff for the sake of learning. sort of a rote learning style approach to understanding wine. So only when I really wanted to understand wine and in hospitality, it was my weakness for quite some time. Did my engineer hat on? And then I was like, okay, let me start to take this apart.

Sunny Hodge 00:20:45 And I think the one thing that truly shaped the way that I work in wine is an engineer’s ability to take apart, I don’t know, a car, a clock or a watch, and in this case, wine. I understand all the different components because your engineer who’s making a car didn’t make the button. You know, he’s not a rubber expert for tires, but he can pull all of those sciences together and then make that understood and then possibly make it more efficient. And in my case, help other people understand the really intangible, misunderstood subjects. So I think personally, I like understanding stuff. I like taking stuff apart and putting it back together. I don’t need to be a soil scientist or a neurological experts to understand how it all works and then tie it together. Because I think if you pigeonhole yourself in one direction, that’s where you’ll stay and you won’t be able to understand the bigger picture.

Natalie MacLean 00:21:39 That’s great. Wow. Okay. And then before we just dive into The Cynics Guide to Wine, I did mention your mother was an Olympic athlete.

Natalie MacLean 00:21:46 That’s incredible. She was also a single mother raising you. How did she impact you? Maybe not as a direct relation to wine, but what was her legacy to you?

Sunny Hodge 00:21:58 So growing up, it was just me and mom. She was my role model. She was everything. Thinking back, her, I guess moral guidance was everything. Mom was really, really honest and we were both quite honest with each other. So as strong as I saw her as this, you know, little boy growing up, not really understanding everything, you know how it works. She was quite vulnerable and honest in terms of her emotions and what she could do, what she couldn’t do, what we could afford, what we couldn’t afford. So I think having those conversations were really key to me. I guess raising a team and operating two wine bars and also interacting with the rest of the world, we we both had very little like ego. We just appreciated what we had rather than just thinking, oh, I want this, I want this, I want this.

Sunny Hodge 00:22:47 And she gave me full freedom to do whatever I wanted. I didn’t have to check in. And I think when when you’re given that much freedom at an early age, it does teach you responsibility quite quickly. And when you’ve only got one person in the world that’s going to support you, you realize that they’re really important in you. I didn’t really want to piss her off.

Natalie MacLean 00:23:07 Good for early staff training. Okay. So your wonderful book, The Cynics Guide to Wine takes a scientifically rigorous approach to explaining wine. You talked about the sort of received wisdom people hand down from one person to the other in terms of teaching about wine. Was there a specific piece of wine, BBS or romance that kind of like you questioned or. Thought that can’t be right, or you later discovered wasn’t right. That maybe triggered the desire to write this book.

Sunny Hodge 00:23:36 I think most soil chat, unless it’s technical soil science stuff. A lot of it didn’t make sense to me. And then only by understanding how roots work in all plants can you start to dissect if the wine soils does make any sense in terms of how that impacts your wine and its flavor? So soil was the first thing that really, really stood out to me is, hey, is this true? Is that accurate?

Natalie MacLean 00:24:03 Right.

Natalie MacLean 00:24:03 So you literally started at the ground up. Okay. And we’re going to get there. But what was the most surprising insight you discovered while writing the book.

Sunny Hodge 00:24:11 As a whole? It was like I started writing the book to help me remember all of it, because it’s quite dense. There’s so much information there, and I found it was really fun to, like, build those connections as you go. But I think my biggest, my biggest learning from the book is how little across the spectrum a lot of us in wine understand technically about the subject. A small example is like like yeast. Autolycus, we all may not have heard of that term before. It’s the process that gives champagnes and traditional method wines. They’re real bready, yeasty, what we would call like auto flavor. We’re all used to saying it, but like, who knows what it is actually like, what is or what is.

Natalie MacLean 00:25:02 Yeah. And what is it like? Can you define it in a sentence or two?

Sunny Hodge 00:25:07 So Tola says, is when a yeast thinks it’s going to die, it’s not in a great place and it’s pretty stressed.

Sunny Hodge 00:25:16 So what it’ll do is it’ll go on this like kamikaze mission to self detonate essentially. And your yeast is made up of loads of little enzymes and there’s like a cell membrane. So if you have a style of fermentation that’s stressed or as alcohol levels pick up and your yeast knows it’s going to pass away soon, its enzymes will switch on to a different mode. And this is your auto mode. They’ll start eating away at the cell membrane of the yeast, and eventually they’ll make little puncture holes, and all of your insides of your yeast will end up within your liquid. Normally, yeast keeps its insides in like most of us, right? That self detonation of yeast in stressful environments is what gives the physical texture to your wine. That’s why auto lytic wines have that texture. And it gives you those yeasty, bready flavors because you’re you’re essentially drinking yeast guts.

Natalie MacLean 00:26:15 As it eats away at the yeast and sort of shreds itself. Is that what we call the lees? Lee’s. Lee’s.

Sunny Hodge 00:26:23 Yeah. So Lee’s are another term for dead yeast, and Autolycus is a name for that process.

Sunny Hodge 00:26:28 Traditional wines would have gone through some form of yeast photolysis. The dead yeast you call lees.

Natalie MacLean 00:26:36 Okay, okay. Cool. What was the most difficult part of writing this book?

Sunny Hodge 00:26:43 It was. It was tricky to make it accessible. It’s some pretty complex science in there. I enjoy it. What was fun for me is to sort of check its proof of concept in service at the bars. So like, add the bars. I can talk to guests about specific technical aspects of wine and see if they cared about it or not. And that’s a really good gauge because my readership is normal wine people, not wine experts. So that was really fun to check whether concepts were interesting or not. But I think the trickiest thing was then to articulate that in words and to make it interesting, because not everyone is into science, so to make it really accessible was one of the trickiest things. There are scientific orators like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Brian Cox. I listen to them and I’m in awe. I’m like, oh my goodness, how did you break down all this astrological or so easily and make it so interesting? So like I’m hinging on their every word thinking, oh my goodness, how do you guys do it? So I think expressing that in the book, making science accessible and making it interesting, was one of the trickiest things that I was like hyper focused on, and I hope I did a good job at it.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:53 You definitely did succeed. I mean, I was just gripped by it and I dropped chemistry in grade 11 and then what was next to go? I forget physics in grade 12, so thank you for bringing me back through your. It was great writing, good storytelling.

Sunny Hodge 00:28:08 Thank you.

Natalie MacLean 00:28:09 You are currently at Aspen and so that’s your second wine bar. But your first wine bar was and still is a going concern is called Diogenes the Dog in London. And you open that in 2018. So let’s talk about the unusual name you select. I’m just going to give a slight background because I had to look this up myself. It refers to Diogenes, the ancient Greek philosopher who was one of the founders of the cynic philosophy that challenged social norms. He was known for his unconventional behavior, such as living in a large ceramic barrel in the marketplace of Athens, and he was famous for carrying a lamp in daylight, claiming to be looking for an honest man. Diogenes embraced the nickname The dog given to him by his critics.

Natalie MacLean 00:28:54 Cynic in Greek means dog like, so that all fits with your approach, etc. however, cynicism, as you know, has some negative connotations of believing that people are motivated purely by self-interest. So how does that sort of go together, mesh with wine that celebrates the pleasures of life and the generosity of spirit, and sharing it with others?

Sunny Hodge 00:29:15 The term cynicism, its meaning has evolved over time. When I pitched cynicism at the bar and in The Cynics Guide to Wine, I mean the original understanding of the philosophical movement and the original way the word was used. That is literally just about questioning. Diogenes questioned everything. He questioned his politics around him, why people did certain things, why his his nation was going to war. He questioned other philosophers. And in the same way, if we don’t question stuff, we just take it for granted and assume that’s how it works. And I think it is something as old school as wine that hasn’t really had a shake up. We have to put our cynical hat on in the old sense of the term and start thinking.

Sunny Hodge 00:30:00 Is all of this accurate? How do we reform how we talk about this to make it better understood and for us to understand those concepts?

Natalie MacLean 00:30:08 Okay. That satisfies that one now. How does cynicism mesh with your focus on natural wines at your wine bars When natural wines have no definition or regulation, as you know, they seem to defy science, and they often receive the most skepticism or cynicism from both industry folks and consumers. So how does that all fit for you?

Sunny Hodge 00:30:29 I’m a huge fan of natural wine. Personally, I’m always very careful about my personal opinions on things, especially wine things, versus like the science chat that I’m trying to put forwards. Huge fan of natural wines myself, and I think the one thing that natural wine has done, which is why I’m a massive fan, is make it question how we farm and how we produce all food and drink, not just wine. It’s of all food products. Wine is one that we can talk about and have a real discourse without it getting too boring too quickly.

Sunny Hodge 00:31:02 People have time for wine. Compare that to potatoes and cabbage. We’re not going to sit around the dinner table talking about different types of potatoes and and this potato that I tried in this other restaurant one day. So already with wine, you have this discourse and you’ve got this time to speak about bigger topics and bigger subjects. And with natural wine, those bigger topics and subjects are how do we farm? What are the pros and cons of how we farm now, and how are we making our food and drink? Like when we talk about wine, we rarely talk about the nitty gritty of farming and production. But then that’s how your wine came about. So I love natural wines for that same cynical, questioning approach like it really challenges the food and the drink that we’re bringing to the table.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:52 I never looked at it that way, but you’re right. And natural wine is. Despite the lack of definitions, most people will just say it’s the least interventionist. We’re trying to let nature express itself, terroir, etc. but the other thing that happens with natural wines, when I’m at least in a wine bar and I order one, it’s the wine most likely to make me go, What’s this? It begs the question in the glass.

Natalie MacLean 00:32:16 As opposed to, you know, your commercial, large scale Cabernet. There’s nothing wrong with that when that’s what you want. But a glass of natural wine. Often you’ll get some unusual flavors and aromas. It’s a wine that asks a question and makes you want to learn more if you’re the curious, type. So I can see that going together with cynicism as well.

Sunny Hodge 00:32:38 Yeah, I agree, and I think a lot of the associated funk, which is what I assume you’re touching on there, you’ve got to think like, where’s that from? And then as soon as you realize where that might be from, you’re like, oh, okay. So those are normally killed in conventional wines by the addition of sulfites or whatever it may be. And I’m not saying sulfites are bad, but I’m like, they’re normally killed in normal wines. But then you got to think like, how did we make wine back in the day before the technology that we had, and we’ve had sulfite for a long time, but there are many means of wine production and wine in farming that we didn’t do back in the day.

Sunny Hodge 00:33:13 And we’re talking about prize vintages of wines that we all loved and were renowned. I’m making a huge assumption. Most of those are your natural wines, because we didn’t have the tech that we do now to produce conventional wines.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:24 Absolutely. And when I was referring to the smell and taste of natural wines, I wasn’t thinking of just the funk, but just that it has such a wide range of unusual flavors and aromas. Some I like, some I don’t. But funky is often a word that people will use to describe natural wines when they don’t know how else to describe it, especially. But what does funky mean to you? Or is it a broad category of this is just something I like this unusual? How would you tell someone what funky smells like in a wine?

Sunny Hodge 00:33:56 Yeah, it’s a great question. I think operating in a natural wine bar or in any wine bar, anything the guest gives it me. I’m in detective mode. Even if it’s common terms like dry. There are so many different ways to dissect what that might mean.

Sunny Hodge 00:34:12 Like me and you would associate dryness with just sugar levels in a wine. But then your guest is sitting in front of you might associate that with tannins. Like maybe it gives them a real drying feel. I think with everything that is said, regardless of the funk, it needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. When you’re talking to regular people who enjoy their wine, to dissect it and think, what is it that they’re talking about? For me, the funk would either be a little mix of Brettanomyces, which is, I guess, like the cousin yeast to Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is our normal winemaking yeast, which gives some pretty farmyard sometimes like sticking plaster. Medicinal?

Natalie MacLean 00:34:55 Yes.

Sunny Hodge 00:34:57 Precisely. It can give this foamy medicinal aromas, which most people are not used to in wine. And of course, if there’s lots of it, it’s pretty. Pretty rough. Or it could be volatile acidity. Maybe a little bit too much acetic acid in your wine, which sort of lifts all those aromas.

Sunny Hodge 00:35:13 For me, it’s a mix. It could be a mix of the two.

Natalie MacLean 00:35:16 Yeah, absolutely. Well, and when I first started drinking wine, before I ever had a thought about writing about it, I would hear about dry wine, I think, well, all wine is wet. What do you mean by dry wine? Yeah. Anyway, there’s just like. What a weird term to describe. This is a very dry milk. Anyway, you have a wildly wide ranging wine list with your selections at your wine bars, as you’ve described from Taiwan to Texas. And I believe you might even have something from Canada in there. So how do you scope out your new wines for your list? I mean, I’m sure you’re taking tasting trips and you’re tasting a lot at home, but is there is there a technique or a tip or something that you use to try to find the unusual wines to put on your list?

Sunny Hodge 00:36:01 So with difficulty is a sort of one liner. How do I how do I source? Also operating hospitality joints.

Sunny Hodge 00:36:10 I’m on the floor a healthy amount. Getting out of the bar and into other countries is pretty tricky. And every wine that I source will have a completely different story. The Texan wine was me moving a Harley, a Harley Davidson from Houston, Texas to Colorado Springs. And then I hit up all the wineries that we can go on the way, because I knew that I wanted to bring in Texan wine. I just didn’t know any, and no one’s bringing it into Europe. So that was how we found Messina Hof, like our Texan winery, that we work with, the Taiwanese wine that we bring in. I was judging with a lady called Leonor De Pasquale for the IWC, and she’s like an expert in Asian wines, and I sell a lot of Asian wines. So she introduced me to Clara from Whitestone Winery, and that was just because she knew I would be into it, and I’d bring it into the country and we’ll represent them really well. So every wine has a completely different story.

Sunny Hodge 00:37:03 I think. Tips on trying. Wine as a whole is be open minded. I would call it like a Buddhist mindset on life. I’m not religious in any way or form, but I think I’m open minded enough to think is this good and enjoyable? And not just for me. So I think when I’m tasting, I always have my commercial hat on and think, who’s going to like that? How will my team get engaged and what will they talk about when it comes to that? And it’s as simple as that. Because when you’re choosing for wine bars or restaurants, all you’re thinking is, are people going to be into this at that price point? And how am my team going to deliver that? Like, you’ve got to think, what are they going to talk about? What are the exciting, interesting scientific points or nuanced storytelling that they’re going to speak about to deliver that to the table? If it’s about you just trying new things, you ought to be open minded. What we like and dislike is great, but we don’t like and dislike those things every single day.

Sunny Hodge 00:38:05 I like pancakes, I don’t want to eat pancakes every day. So I think knowing and being open minded, you’ll come to expect and enjoy things later down the line that you don’t enjoy immediately is really important to just being open minded about food and drink.

Natalie MacLean 00:38:21 Absolutely. It’s literally an acquired taste, like you develop a taste over time for some things. All right, let’s dig down into the soil. So you start with the soil. Your book is very methodically organized soil. And then, you know, you progress up from there. I love this because I never read about or heard about some of the stuff you’re talking about. So you make a really compelling point that we rarely credit. Hummus h u m us. And I’m not talking about tabulae and hummus, but that with influencing wine character. So hummus or is it hummus? Am I pronouncing this right just right off the bat here.

Sunny Hodge 00:38:58 I say hummus, hummus.

Natalie MacLean 00:39:00 Okay. Hummus is the organic matter in soil created by microbes as they break down plant and animal matter.

Natalie MacLean 00:39:07 And you can stop me any time if I’m saying something incorrect here. So how does that contribute to vine health? It’s breaking down the plant and animal matter. Is it making it more digestible? Take up a bull by the vine roots. Is that what it’s doing? Hummus.

Sunny Hodge 00:39:22 Yeah. As you explained, hummus is just like decaying organic matter. That’s all it is. But we’ve been using hummus for 12,000 years of agriculture, right? We’ve been throwing cow poo on soil. We’ve been putting dead leaves back on our plants, whatever they may be, to help them grow. So when you look at how soil works, a lot of what we talk about in wine is geology. And of all the geological materials like rocks that are in the soil, clays tend to hold what is called the highest exchange capacity, which is essentially a unit of fertility.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:02 Oh, can I just stop you there for a minute? First of all, did you say cation or cation? Cation? Cation. Because we need to talk about that.

Sunny Hodge 00:40:11 I think the British is cation. And then the American Canadian would be cation cation okay.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:20 Because you’ve slipped it in there. So we should define it because I got and we’ll come back to what we were just talking about. But if I understand correctly, cation exchange is how plants obtain nutrients from the soil. Cations are positively charged ions in the soil. So the plant groups are absorbing that. Is that correct? What? That is a cation and a cation exchange.

Sunny Hodge 00:40:42 Yeah. So cation exchange location exchange is a huge topic to unpack. But what I may do if it’s cool with you, I’ll finish off our hummus and then I’ll come straight back to patient exchange.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:54 It’s hard to know which layer to go with first.

Sunny Hodge 00:40:56 Yeah, yeah, it’s really tricky because it’s nature. There’s no systems in nature and it’s all biology. So like, it’s really complex. But simplistically creationists change is our units of soil fertility. Of all of the rocks that exist, clay has the most is the most fertile.

Sunny Hodge 00:41:17 Humus, which is just a decaying matter, is way more fertile than all of the stuff that we’re talking about, than all of the clays and stuff like that. It also is really porous and is perfect for our soils to allow for an environment that allows creation exchange to happen and for bacteria and microbes to grow. And it’s also full of nitrogen, which your soils can get themselves. But in conventional farming, they tend to struggle to get nitrogen from the soil. So you have to add it by synthetic fertilizers. So humus is like the trifecta of gold on soils. I would say it’s way, way, way more important than a lot of the geology that we talk about. So I think that that’s why I put importance on Hermes going back to an exchange or cation exchange. It’s a really big process to unpack. So at risk of boring you, I’ll speed it up a little bit. A cation is a positive ion cations. Most of them enter the soil from above. So when you’ve got like a rock above the soil or a tree, and when that’s broken down by nature erosion, those cations enter the water supply.

Sunny Hodge 00:42:30 They hit the water table underneath the earth. And now underneath your soils you have mineral water full of Kashan minerals and Kashan ions. Now, for any plants, occasion that has a benefit to the plant is called a nutrients. We can think of occasions just simplistically as nutrients that you can use them interchangeably. Our roots for all plants have a system because they can’t really move that quickly. And there’s occasions everywhere. They’re like moving around really, really quickly in the soil, water. So our roots need a way to get those to get those locations that they need, because those are the nutrients in the soil. So simplistically, when you have rocks in soil, they tend to have a negative surrounding like a negative charge around them. And they attract loads of different occasions and those occasions in the soil water. We’re talking magnets here right. So you’ve got positive charged ion negative charged rock like a magnet come together. If a stronger charged location comes by that will now displace the location. And now the location is free in the soil.

Sunny Hodge 00:43:44 Water. If there’s a tiny, tiny, tiny occasion that comes by, it is physically closer to the surface of that rock. And just like two magnets, when you put them together, if they’re very, very close, they’ll want to sort of slap together really, really quickly. So the hierarchy of what caissons get attracted to rocks are based on two factors. Number one, the charge of the location. How highly charged is that occasion. And number two is the size of the location. How small is it? Smaller stuff will be closer to the surface and will get attracted. All plants now have a problem in their hands. They’re like, okay, so we’ve got rocks that are surrounded by cushions. Our roots, which are super, super slow to get there. How do we pry those locations off those rocks? And the beauty of nature here is our plants can synthesize hydrogen ions and hydrogen ions on that hierarchy, that pyramid locations of what’s most likely to get attracted to a rock. Hydrogen ions are at the top of that pyramid.

Sunny Hodge 00:44:47 They’re the smallest. There are protons inside. So the tiniest, tiniest, tiniest little locations. And because they’re so teeny tiny. The tiniest of the lot, they are the strongest attracting vacation around. So they’re the top dog cushion that will always displace other locations on a rock. Other nutrients on a rock. So our plants, through photosynthesizing, they take in water. They draw in water from the roots, which is H2O. Photosynthesis means that they take in carbon dioxide and they release oxygen. So now you get a free hydrogen to play around with. If the plant wants, it can sense a rock that’s got, you know, loads of free caissons, loads of nutrients, and it’ll release those hydrogens. Those hydrogens will get attracted to your rock because they’re super, super, highly charged are the top dog cushion. And that’ll free up loads of nutrients in that moment for the plant to take up. So plants have a way of concentrating the soil water around them to be really, really rich and nutrients, and then they’ll take them up.

Sunny Hodge 00:45:49 So understanding that helps you understand how rocks affect your vines, and also what vines physically take up. They’re not taking that rock. They’re taking the the random array of nutrients that surround that rock. But they’re not taking that rock.

Natalie MacLean 00:46:06 Right? Because they can’t synthesize rocks and minerals. Yeah, they need organic matter to take up.

Sunny Hodge 00:46:12 They need patience to take up. And that teeny tiny. But the rock is too big. So once you understand that mechanism, then you can get your head around. Do rocks directly make a difference to the flavor of our wine? Or is the mineral composition of our soil water more important than the rock itself?

Natalie MacLean 00:46:36 Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed our chat with sunny. Here are my takeaways. Number one, can you really taste minerality in wine? As sunny explains, we can smell some geological materials like salt and a few minerals, but most minerals and metals, we can’t really smell or taste them. And then he gives an interesting example. When you have a coin and you put it in your fingers around your palm and it has a really distinct smell, that’s actually not the smell of the coin.

Natalie MacLean 00:47:04 That’s a tertiary or a third influence of our oils interacting with the metal. A freshly minted coin has no spell, but as soon as we touch it and our oils start breaking it down, then we smell those reactions. So technically, metal and other minerals do not have taste or smell, except mostly for salt. Number two what gives champagne and other traditional methods? Sparkling wines, their signature bready flavor and creamy texture? Sonny says yeast photolysis, yeast eating itself till it’s dead is the process that gives champagnes and traditional method wines their bready, yeasty flavor. Autologous is when the yeast thinks it’s going to die and it gets pretty stressed out. And I don’t blame those poor little organisms. It’ll go on this kamikaze mission to self detonate. Yeast is made up of loads of little enzymes. And there’s a cell membrane. So as the alcohol levels tick up, you know, as fermentation carries on, the yeast knows it’s going to pass away soon. So it’s sad. It’s enzymes will switch on to a different mode.

Natalie MacLean 00:48:09 And this is a Telesis mode. They’ll start eating away at the cell membrane of the yeast itself, and eventually they’ll make a little puncture hole in it. And all of the insides of the east end up in the liquid. So that self detonation of the yeast in stressful environments is what gives you a physical texture to your wine. Those little tiny bits, often you can’t even see them, but it does add to the texture. And that’s why automatic wines have that texture that gives you those yeasty, bready flavors. I just love it, although it sounds very sad for the yeast. And finally, number three, how has natural wine sparked deeper conversations about how we farm and produce food and drink. Sonny says natural wine makes us question how we farm and produce all food and drink, not just wine. Wine is the one he feels that we can talk about and have a real discourse without it getting too boring. And that’s probably because we’re drinking wine as we talk. People have time for wine. Compare that to potatoes and cabbage.

Natalie MacLean 00:49:08 We’re not going to sit around the dinner table talking about different types of potatoes or this potato, this type of potato. I tried in this restaurant the other day, but with wine, you’ve got the time and attention to speak about bigger, broader topics. And with natural wine, it brings up how do we farm? What are the pros and cons of our farming methods, of what we’re consuming? In the show notes, you’ll find the full transcript of my conversation with Sonny, links to his website and restaurants, and the video versions of these conversations you can find on Facebook and YouTube live, and where you can order my book online now, no matter where you live. If you missed episode 330, go back and take a listen. I chat about the surprising science of booze and wine with Adam Rogers. He has some really interesting insights. I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite.

Adam Rogers 00:49:58 As our dessert course came, the couple. Sitting next to us was ordering a dessert wine, and she was running down with the options and was talking about a sweeter wine.

Adam Rogers 00:50:06 And the guy said, oh, is that a van de glacier or a noble rock that like two different ways to make a sweet wine? You can use botrytis, which is this fungus that grows on the grape and makes Sugar express more as you get to your thing or fondue Glacier. Chill it so that you get a colder product at the end. But just the fact that he was informed enough to know that there were these two methods, and that that would have a bearing on what he would be tasting, and I had always been that kind of person in bars, certainly with wine, where you sort of look at these different colored liquids and all the different shaped glasses and wonder, what the hell are all those things? How do they do that? You know? And here was this person who was operationalizing that sort of interest to make his meal better. You know, he wanted to have more fun. But.

Natalie MacLean 00:50:49 You won’t want to miss next week when we continue our chat with Sonny. If you liked this episode or learned even one thing from it, please email or tell a friend about the podcast this week, especially someone you know who’d be interested in learning more about the weird and wonderful science of wine.

Natalie MacLean 00:51:04 It’s easy to find the Unresolved Wine Talk podcast. Just tell them to search for 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 SIP tip question, or if you’d like to win one of five copies of the books I have to give away. I’d also 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. 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. Com forward slash. And that’s all in the show notes. At Natalie MacLean. Forward slash 350. Thank you for taking the time to join me here. I hope something great is in your glass this week. Perhaps a champagne with that seductive, freshly baked bread aroma.

Natalie MacLean 00:52:12 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. Meet me here next week.

Natalie MacLean 00:52:30 Cheers!