Bartholomew Broadbent on Wine Trends, Myths & Making Quality Accessible

Summary

In this episode, Laurie Forster sits down with Bartholomew Broadbent for a lively conversation about his remarkable path in the wine world. From his family’s legendary influence to his own trailblazing ventures, Bartholomew shares insights on how wine culture has evolved, the buzz around English sparkling wines, and the fast-growing demand for non-alcoholic options. He talks about his mission to create high-quality yet affordable California wines, clears up misconceptions about sulfites, and reflects on the personal relationships and guiding values that continue to shape his work in the industry. 

Takeaways

• Bartholomew Broadbent reflects on his family's wine legacy.
• English sparkling wines are gaining popularity and quality.
• Quality and affordability are key in Bartholomew's new California wines.
• Sulfites are not the cause of headaches from wine consumption.
• Additives in wine can lead to negative reactions for some drinkers.
• Chateau Musar is a prime example of natural winemaking.
• Bartholomew aims to make wine accessible to everyone.
• Personal connections and values are crucial in the wine business.

Wines Tasted

Gusbourne Brut Reserve Sparkling Wine 

Broadbent North Coast Chardonnay

Broadbent North Coast Cabernet Sauvignon

Check out the Broadbent Selections website for more about the wines he imports and his own line of wines!

Transcript

Laurie Forster (00:28)
today on The Sipping Point, we're going to talk to Bartholomew Broadbent, one of the most influential figures in the wine world, an importer, the son of Michael Broadbent, who you'll find out about later. But in the meantime, I just wanted to remind you that in two weeks on September 24th is my virtual tasting, Fall in Love with the Rhone Valley. We're going to taste three of my favorite Rhone Valley wines, talk about them, where they're from, what they taste like, what to pair with them.

and just have a whole lot of fun. Also then on Sunday, September 28th, we are going to be talking about my trip to Tuscany in 2026. We're gonna have an information session at noon that day with my travel partner, my local guide in Tuscany. And if you're interested and wanna learn more, you definitely wanna register for that. Both of these events can be found at thewinecoach.com slash events. And you can sign up, register, do.

All those things, you can always email me, lori at thewinecoach.com. All right, today's guest is Bartholomew Broadbent, founder of Broadbent Selections and one of the most influential figures in the wine world. After helping to reintroduce Madeira to the US and building a reputation as a leading authority on port, he launched his own importing business in 1996 and has been twice nominated for Wine Enthusiast Best Importer Award.

Named by Decanter Magazine as a global wine leader, he shaped the future of this industry. He carries on the legacy of his father, Michael Broadbent, a master of wine. Beyond his work as an importer, Bartholomew is a sought after judge, lecturer, and host, bringing his passion to wine's heritage. He lives in Richmond, Virginia with his wife and two children. Let's go ahead and bring him into the show.

Laurie Forster (02:16)
Bollew welcome to The Sipping Point. Should I say again? Again, I love it. I'm so excited that you're joining me. About 10 years ago, you came on The Sipping Point and things are so much different since then, right? So I'm so excited to have you rejoin me. I told everybody a little bit about your background, but I know they would love to know.

Bartholomew (02:20)
Again.

Laurie Forster (02:37)
because you actually did grow up in a wine family, a little bit about your wine journey and how you got to come to the import and wine producer business that you have now. So what's your story?

Bartholomew (02:49)
Wow, it's extraordinary because last time I was on was in June 7th, 2015. Since then, my kids have doubled in age, now 20 years old. My mother died 10 years ago. My father died five years ago. So a lot has changed and my company's completely changed. I grew, you're right, I grew up in the wine business. We had a long talk about my background and

June 7th, 2015. So hopefully some people will go back and listen to that one. For the sake of brevity, I'll recap a little bit. Yeah, I grew up in England. My father was called Michael Broadbent and he started the wine auctions for Christie's in 1966. He wrote for Decanter Magazine for 433 consecutive columns.

Laurie Forster (03:17)
Mm-hmm.

Bartholomew (03:37)
And he also wrote numerous books, whether partially or fully over 50 books, but about four of them are really important books, which are still in publication today. He died in 2020 on March 17th, so right the day of lockdown. But he had a fabulous

Laurie Forster (04:01)
Mmm.

Bartholomew (04:02)
He was 92 years old when he died. But the previous year, 2019 on May 2nd, he turned 92. On May 1st of 2019, he published his last book. And on April 25th, so one week before his 92nd birthday, he got married for the second time.

Laurie Forster (04:24)
Wow, okay, so he was not sitting still.

Bartholomew (04:27)
He was not well, and then sitting is the operative word because he was, but he was sitting still or what he was doing in June of 2019, a month after his wedding, he fell off a chair and broke his back. So yeah, but don't worry, they fixed the chair. So he's a goner, but it's like he's still.

Laurie Forster (04:42)
Well.

I'm

Bartholomew (04:49)
in my life because he's such a big thing in the wine business that you hear his name mentioned a lot. You see him quoted a lot. He's omnipresent in my business world. But I left England when I was well, I went to Australia when I was 19, worked in wineries there, worked in Cognac in France. And I really left England when I was 20, went to Montreal, spent four and a half years in Canada.

Toronto and then moved to San Francisco when I was 25 to work for the Symington family. I started their company, which is called Premium Port Wines, did that for 10 years, then started Broadbent Selections, my own wine import company, which will turn 30 years old next year. So time has flown. ⁓

Laurie Forster (05:35)
Wow, it really

has. And it's so expanded. So I'm so excited. We're, you know, we kind of focused on your Portuguese wines, which I love, and your vinho verde, which is just wildly popular here in the U.S. One, because it tastes great, but two, because the label is so gorgeous. And I'll provide everybody, if it's got this red poppy on it from your niece's picture she drew for you.

But now you've, and I have had the pleasure since we talked last to go to Portugal. So that makes it even more exciting to know those wines. But you've expanded way beyond what you were covering 10 years ago in your import business. And then a little bit later, we're gonna talk about the wines you make under your own name, Broadbent, of course.

Bartholomew (06:18)
Yeah, so we now represent more than 40 wineries. And during COVID, we actually launched a lot of new categories. Before COVID, we didn't have any Italian wines. We didn't have any French wines. We now have four Italian producers. have, well, four French producers. But one of the Burgundy producers has about

four or five wineries. So we have a lot of Burgundies before. And then, of course, English sparkling wine 10 years ago was not a thing, didn't exist. Well, did. I mean, English wine existed, but it wasn't very good. But in the past 10 years now, they're making some of the greatest wines in the world, some best, better than champagne even sometimes quite a lot.

Laurie Forster (07:01)
Yeah. And

I'm glad you brought that up because you sent me one that you carry in your line, the Gusborne Brute. And I actually knew about this from an interview I did with the Tasting House in California, the Somms from there, and they had recommended to me already. And in a lot of the reading that I've been doing about the rise of the English sparkling wines is that it has something to do with our

whether it's global warming or climate change, whatever we want to call it, that has actually made it more hospitable? Is that part of the reason why the wines are improving and more widespread?

Bartholomew (07:37)
Yeah. Yeah, 100 percent. mean, this it's totally global warming. That's that's climate change that has done it. England just did not have the correct climate for for it. But now with the climate change, England is much warmer and it's the same soils which come from in the champagne and they they come under the English Channel and pop up at the White Cliffs of Dover.

very chalky soils, but then on top of those same soils, we have our own sort of more complex soils, gravels and other things. So we have the climate and it's to such an extent that several champagne houses, Pommery Tattinger I think another one, have already started making wine in England. And the quality is

I mean, Gusbourne is making one wine, 51 degrees, it's called it's a $350 wine to go against the really important champagnes. But in general, the brut which you have, the blonde de blanc, which is my favorite. Actually, I didn't have a bottle to send you when I sent you this. I sent you the brut, but the blonde de blanc I love. if you're buying a

a champagne at the same price, you're getting a much better wine with the English sparkling wines and not just Gusbourne Gusbourne is the best, but there are a bunch of them which are now making really, really good English sparkling wine.

Laurie Forster (09:06)
And the area where they're located is in the southern part of England, correct?

Bartholomew (09:11)
Yes,

yes. So mostly in Kent and Sussex and Hampshire, those are the three main ones, but also other places like Dorset, Steven Spurrier made one in Dorset and a bunch of some other places. those three counties are the top ones. And Gusbourne I think it's in Kent, just on the Sussex border.

Laurie Forster (09:18)
Mm-hmm.

Bartholomew (09:35)
very close to the oceans. It's got ocean influences. It's really as you, I think you're tasting it now, you can tell us how good it is.

Laurie Forster (09:42)
Yeah, citrus,

green apple. I mean, it has a wonderful, maybe even some stone fruit there, but the nose is great. When you take the sip, this is traditional or champenoise method, however you want to say it. So it's made in the same method as champagne. So the elegant bubbles that are just integrated to the wine, this is just so wonderful that

You can close your eyes and then, you know, think you're drinking champagne. Like you said, it really is that same style. I see that there's majority of Chardonnay in the blend. And so that does give it a little bit more elegance, like your favorite Blanc de Blanc. And I love that it's a female winemaker too, if I'm allowed to be excited about that.

Bartholomew (10:19)
Yes,

absolutely, Mary and Mary. And then I like to think of you closing your eyes and not thinking this could be champagne, but closing your eyes and thinking what on is this is even better than champagne.

Laurie Forster (10:33)
OK, all right, I'll do that. I'll do that. That's wonderful.

And they do have several different styles that you already talked about. I love that. In general, what would this in the US, what would this price out at?

Bartholomew (10:45)
The one you're drinking is probably around $50, the $55, the blanc de blancs is around $65. And then the obviously the really big ones are $350 or 51 degrees. And then we've got Rosé as well and we've got some other ones, but yeah. So the.

Laurie Forster (11:04)
And how

accepting in England are people of English sparkling wine? Because I know like sometimes here in the US, you live in Virginia, which has a great wine culture and winery network. And Maryland, where I am, we're growing for sure. And it's getting a lot more. But people tend to be like, it's from Maryland. It's from Virginia. People in England embracing this? Or are they still thinking French is better?

Bartholomew (11:31)
Yeah, no, it's interesting because I live in Virginia now after 21 years in San Francisco, I moved to Virginia 18 years ago. And the interesting thing is that still to this day, even though Virginia makes spectacular wines as good as anyone in the world, a lot of people who live here still poo poo at thinking, oh, Virginia wine is not good. But but the English, on the other hand, have really embraced does.

not just Galsbourne, but English Sparkling Wine. English are not very good at winning. They're usually losing all football matches and everything they tend to lose. So they're really good at losing, but we're not really good at winning and praising. But the English Sparkling Wines are really winning and winning the hearts of the English. The English really do embrace it.

there's major sponsorships as well. Like I was this summer, I went to the Cowdry Polo Gold Cup, which was sponsored by Garsbourne. So I luckily went into their tent and drank lots of lovely bubbles. But it's become a very, very high end image. It's high end image wine in England. And it's certainly giving champagne a bit of concern.

Laurie Forster (12:34)
Yay!

Love it. Well, good. mean, they need to run for their money, right? So since it's been, yeah, since it's been 10 years since we spoken, at least here on The Sipping Point, I wonder what you might say it, you know, obviously you've had so much experience in the business, but just over the last 10 years, not necessarily just your business, what do you see as the biggest change in the world of wine?

Bartholomew (12:49)
Plus the French, you

Laurie Forster (13:09)
versus 2015 to 2025, what are we looking at now that we did not see 10 years ago?

Bartholomew (13:15)
Well, one of the things probably the most important change right now and really this has been the past three years, I'd say is non-alcoholic wines. We are finally bringing one in, it's called Leila, it's made by Markus Huber in Austria, but it's, you know, I've been looking for English for a...

non-alcoholic wine that's drinkable. And a lot of them are not very good. That's the problem, but they're getting better. And this one we found is delicious. But my sister rang me from England and said, look, you really need to be doing non-alcoholic wine, because here in England, that's what people drink. If they go out to dinner, they don't drink. If they're driving, they just don't drink wine. the non-alcoholic wine is a massive.

Laurie Forster (13:39)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Bartholomew (13:58)
massive growth industry in England. We're succeeding selling it very nicely here, but it's a worry because it does pose concerns to the wine industry that people are not drinking as much wine. Really in the past two years, there's been a big drop in consumption of The neo-prohibitionists are

Laurie Forster (13:58)
Mmm.

Bartholomew (14:24)
I've been working on it for a long time and unfortunately having their impact. I was shocked when my kids were in school, they had this woman come in and give a lecture on alcohol and she said, absolutely zero alcohol. There's no alcohol that can be good for you. I asked her and listened to her, which she did the same talk for parents so that parents would know.

And she basically has never drunk anything. She grew up with an alcoholic parent who drank bottles of whiskey a day. And she had no idea when I stood up at the end, I said, you're wrong that wine is unhealthy. Moderate amounts of alcohol can be very good for you, especially wine is extremely good for you. And she had no idea, but these private schools,

Laurie Forster (15:10)
Mm-hmm.

Bartholomew (15:12)
are hiring this woman to go around the country lecturing about alcohol when there's no balance. It's not surprising that kids get scared of alcohol. But I mean, that said, daughter's drinking as much as any college student I've ever known.

Laurie Forster (15:26)
Yeah.

Absolutely. Same. have a 22 year old. So absolutely. Yes. All right. So yeah, I agree. And I actually interviewed recently a gentleman who started a company with drinks that are infused with THC, which is the ingredient in marijuana. So there are other drinks like that as well that people. So I guess there's just either more competition from alternative drinks.

Bartholomew (15:34)
You do, yeah.

Laurie Forster (15:54)
for sure and maybe different ways of thinking that 10 years ago weren't necessarily mainstream that have somehow become mainstream.

Bartholomew (15:54)
Yeah.

Yeah,

marijuana itself, you when Colorado changed the laws to allow recreational use of marijuana, we saw a drop in consumption of wine in that state. We saw an increase in high-end wine. So the more expensive wines actually increased, but the volumes decreased in general. So we know that marijuana has had an impact.

But then there are all sorts of other things going on which are decreasing alcohol consumption. Like 10 years ago, if you went into a bar in New York, you would have a glass of wine for eight or $9 and a fancy cocktail bar. They were selling cocktails for $18. Today, if you go to New York, you can't get a decent glass of wine for...

Laurie Forster (16:53)
Mm-hmm.

Bartholomew (16:57)
for less than $18 and it's cheaper to drink cocktails. So if you go to New York today to some restaurants, you'll see more cocktails on tables than wines. And I think this is a terrible, the excuses that some of the excuses I'm hearing is that your restaurants are opening up since COVID. They had trouble getting people to work for them. So they were opening.

Laurie Forster (17:10)
I agree.

Bartholomew (17:22)
fewer days. So instead of being five or six days a week, they're open four or five days a week. And they're trying to make up the lost revenues by selling by overcharging for the wines. And I mean, I think that's just a real problem.

Laurie Forster (17:36)
Yeah, that's not good.

Well, one of the things that's changed when we talked last year, import business, like you said, was focused more on Portugal and South Africa. Now you've added in France and Italy. And we've talked about some of the England with the sparkling wine, which is delicious, by the way, people go out there and find it. Forget you ever heard the word champagne and embrace it. But.

You are also at the time we were tasting your Broadbent vinho verde, which I love. But you are now making some wines under the Broadbent name out of California, specifically the North Coast. So I know one of the ones you sent me is the Chardonnay. And I thought maybe you could kind of tell me about this. You know, these two are from the same region. We have a Cabernet as well. We'll talk about this is new, I believe, since we talked last. So tell me how this all came about.

Bartholomew (18:28)
Well, it came about before the...

tariff situation has been playing out. But we are increasing our presence with California wines because of the tariff situation. We predict a decline in wines, at least temporarily, for wines which have a very high tariffs. We represent 14 wineries from South Africa and they've got 30 % tariffs now. So that's really

really scary. I was listening to one of your interviews last week when I was driving, listened to the one with Robert Parker and he mentioned in there that he was looking for good value wines from Napa that are, or good value wines under $25. And he referenced Napa ⁓ wineries

being very overpriced. It doesn't cost more than $30 to make any wine in the world. And so I knew that Napa Valley wines don't have to be expensive. So we are making various wines in California. We make Auctioneer, which is a Napa Valley wine, which is around

$30 bottle and we have a Howell Mountain Reserve as well from brought from auctioneer and auctioneer. Obviously the name came from my father because he did the Christie's auction and then helped start the Napa Valley Wine Auction with Bob Mondavi. And so that was an obvious shout out to him. But then we also make a wine called Architect and that's from the Alexander Valley. And that's more like a $25 bottle and

We make that because my father, we call it architect because of my father again, before going into the wine business he trained as an architect. And in fact, the label on the drawing on the label was something he did in

1947, when he was an architectural student at school. And it's a hand drawn label. It's amazing, beautiful label. And then we also make under our own Broadbent name, some wines from the North Coast. And those came about, you know, I have very deep ties with California, but I lived there for 21 years in San Francisco.

Laurie Forster (20:38)
Nice.

Bartholomew (20:53)
I have a lot of contacts. so we have people, we have the contacts in the vineyards to supply us with fantastic wines. so the Robent North Coast Cabernet Sauvignon, for instance, we launched and it's about $12 bottle. And I took it to Emeril Lacasse's

Laurie Forster (21:12)
Wow.

Bartholomew (21:16)
Canna Valley Du Vin, he has an annual wine auction to raise money for charity and very high-end buyers at this event. And I was pouring them my $12 cab blind and asking them to guess how much this wine would retail for. And the lowest price was $35, the highest price was $150. And they couldn't believe, in fact, I think they were a insulted.

that I was pouring a cheap wine for them, but a cheap and cheerful, you know, delicious wine that completely over delivers and it's doing incredibly well. And we've actually launched the launched a Chardonnay under the North Coast label as well. We're about to do Pinot Noir and yeah, and we're going to

Laurie Forster (21:45)
Hahaha! ⁓

Yes. ⁓

Amazing. And I

really applaud you because there's so many people that are really looking for good things in that price point, maybe economic issues, or I think about our daughters just starting out into wine and maybe not having the budget to have the $30 bottles of wine, but you want them still to be able to enjoy a nice glass of wine with dinner or at school or what have you, yeah.

Bartholomew (22:26)
Yeah,

one of these bidders at the Emerald Le Cassis Carnival de Valle auction said to me, why don't you put it in a heavy bottle and you can sell it for a lot more and make a lot more money. And I said to him, that's not the point. I want to make a really outstanding wine that's accessible to everyone. And I didn't want to make a few hundred cases of very expensive.

Laurie Forster (22:48)
Mm-hmm.

Bartholomew (22:53)
wine. I want to make thousands of cases of inexpensive but equally good wine and it can be done. You know, it's it's not I'm a career wine person. I'm not some one who's made a lot of money elsewhere just putting it into a trophy winery to sell expensive wines to impress their friends. I'm actually someone who wants to make wine accessible to everyone and and it can be equally good wine at a

Laurie Forster (22:59)
Yes.

Bartholomew (23:20)
$12 as it can be at $45 or $50. ⁓

Laurie Forster (23:23)
Yeah, the

nose on the Chardonnay is beautiful. You obviously have the apple and the citrus and maybe peach or something going on there, but the creaminess. people, if you are one of those people like, I can't do Chardonnay. This is not, this is not your oak bomb I saw that it was, I think 30 % neutral oak and then the rest of it's stainless steel. So you're not trying to overly oak this, is,

Bartholomew (23:26)
Thank you.

Yeah.

Laurie Forster (23:48)
A lot of people have been turned off by that style in the past. And I think, you know, that's changed, thankfully, for a lot of producers. But this is like the nose already. know I'm gonna I'm gonna be loving this. what what was the vision? And another female winemaker, I think, if I read that correctly.

Bartholomew (23:54)
Yeah.

So yeah, I the vision of this is, you know, I like more acid driven wines. We were not a Chardonnay selling company until we've discovered in South Africa, a winery called De Wetshof De Wetshof were the first people to plant Chardonnay in South Africa. Their cuttings came from Drouhin Clods de Mouches, it's planted on limestone, just like Burgundy.

They make a very similar wine to white Burgundy. And we discovered this and brought it in. And and it's a style of wine which I love. And anyone who says I'm an ABC person, anything but Chardonnay or they say they don't like Chardonnay, I give them this to prove them wrong. They do like Chardonnay. They just don't like the way it's made in by a lot of wineries. But so so the inspiration for this

Laurie Forster (24:53)
Mm-hmm.

Bartholomew (24:57)
Chardonnay that we're making in the North Coast is really the South African Chardonnays or the good Burgundies. They're not the of oaky, woody sort of overly woody types.

Laurie Forster (25:11)
Yeah, it's beautiful. And are both of these in that $12 range? Yeah. And I noticed that both of these also are 90 plus or not, you know, 90 or 90 plus rated wines as well as just, I love that you're proving, proving it wrong that you can do an affordable price wine that is top quality that people, you know, can enjoy. And it sounds like this is a

Bartholomew (25:14)
Yep, yep, absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah.

Laurie Forster (25:35)
segment of the market that's really working right now.

Bartholomew (25:38)
It is. mean, we we launched this. I did a tasting. It was a private club in Richmond, Virginia, where each year they have this massive tasting. I was pouring it blind again there and asking people to guess what it would cost. And most of them said guests that are in the 35 to 45 dollar region. But that club that evening, it was a bigger selling wine of the night and that club.

that just one account this year sold 150 cases of it. And that's just a huge amount of wine. It's been very successful.

Laurie Forster (26:12)
That's great.

You have to be so happy. mean, obviously you're helping other brands come into the US and be successful, but it's got to be really rewarding to have your own brand and be able to achieve that success as well.

Bartholomew (26:22)
Yeah.

It's and it's not only our own brand. It's not the only one we would say. Obviously you mentioned the Broadbent Vinho Verde but we have a lot of other brand wines under our name. So we make table wines and Madeira called Broadbent. We have Broadbent Port. We have Broadbent Madeira. We have Dow White and we have Duoro Reds and we're going to do a Dow White soon. A Duoro White. mean,

Laurie Forster (26:32)
Mm-hmm.

Nice.

Bartholomew (26:50)
And then we also have a couple of brands which you don't know or might not know belong to us. For instance, Curator in South Africa, that's our brand. And we produce that and we sell that in England as well as Quebec and Norway and America. And then Gusbourne I'm a shareholder in that. I can't say it's my own line, but I am a shareholder in that one.

Laurie Forster (27:10)
⁓ well smart investment

there, smart investment.

Bartholomew (27:14)
And we also make

a broad bent Gruner Veltliner in Austria made by Markus Huber. So we have a lot of wines under our own labels or brands which we own. And I think that's really important for the stability of a company because you know, once in a while a winery will leave an importer and you know, if every winery left us, we would be no longer a company.

Laurie Forster (27:25)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Bartholomew (27:39)
to having the protection, the insurance of your own brands that you can never lose is a very good way of stabilizing a company. Everything else could go away and we would still be able to make the payrolls basically.

Laurie Forster (27:53)
Yeah,

that is so smart. I, know, from the beginning, when I got into the wine business and, you know, learned about the system and how it works, I've always been intrigued by importers because it seems like such a, just a fascinating side of the business. And I always tell people, you know, turning that bottle around and what you find something you love, turn the bottle around and see who the importer is. Because there's so many great importers like yourself.

and specialize in different areas. That if I know I turn one around, it says Broadbent, and I love it. I turn another one around and I see that it's kind of like, okay, you're my personal shopper in a way. ⁓ So that can be a little shortcut because I don't care who you are, even if you're in the business or not in the business, you could go into a large wine store and you're not gonna know every brand on the shelf. So I find that it's a great shortcut.

Bartholomew (28:29)
Ha ha ha.

Laurie Forster (28:43)
And that, you know, you and other importers are out there to sort of weed through the wines and really bring, you know, what you think is great. But I love that you also are able to express your own brand. Love Marcus Hubert, by the way. So I love that you're doing that with him.

Bartholomew (28:55)
Yeah.

He's great. Of course, I wrote to you earlier today suggesting a bunch of our wineries that you want to interview and we'll get to that. Hopefully we'll do some of them. there's something else which I wouldn't have mentioned back in 10 years ago is we've really defined who we represent and there are basically six criteria. First of all,

Laurie Forster (29:07)
Yes.

Bartholomew (29:21)
Every winery has to be family owned. Secondly, it has to be the best wine from the region or if not the best wine, the same quality as what's perceived to be the best wine. Thirdly, every wine has to have a good story. Fourth, every wine has to be good value for money. Fifth, they have to be as naturally made as possible given the constraints of geography, et cetera.

And six, which is very important to me, all the wineries that we represent, the owners must be honest, ethical, fun and nice.

Laurie Forster (29:53)
Ah,

I like that you had fun in there too, with ethical.

Bartholomew (29:56)
Yes.

Yes. Well, literally we, we dropped one wine. I won't mention it, but we dropped a wine recently because they were not nice people. They, they called one of my female employees a very nasty, nasty name. And I said, right. And so you're right. ⁓ We don't represent people like you. So they have to be

Laurie Forster (30:13)
Yep.

Love that. You got to have

your values, you know, and stick to them.

Bartholomew (30:18)
Yeah,

and the stories have to be good. Everyone's got a good story to you have to have a good story to sell a wine. Our biggest brand that we represent is Spy Valley from New Zealand. That's but the wine with the very best story of all is Chateau Musar. And of course, you're going to be interviewing Mark Hochar soon. Yeah.

Laurie Forster (30:29)
Excellent.

Yes, I'm so excited about that. Straight

from Beirut, I believe, is what he said. Sunny Beirut. Yeah. Well, great. Well, speaking of stories, tell me the story of this North Coast Cabernet. This was the third wine that you sent me to try. I know we hear a little bit about the sort of the area and the two price point wise, but, you know, California Cabernet, you know, this is quintessential what people think of.

Bartholomew (30:41)
Yeah.

Laurie Forster (31:01)
when they're thinking of red wines a lot of times, what were you trying to do stylistically with yours?

Bartholomew (31:06)
Stylistically, well, with all of the California wines, Napa, the Snowman, the North Coast wines, what we wanted to do is produce wines which we would want to drink. They are the wines which I don't want to drink are wines that are too alcoholic, wines that are too extracted, wines that are over ripe, wines that are over oaky, wines that are sweet.

what we wanted is basically wines that I grew up with. And my father was a huge fan of Napa wines in the seventies and sixties and eighties, even the eighties when they were very elegant. And so we have more acidic driven wines, more elegance, more, but still incredibly good fruit, but not overly concentrated, just balance. Balance is what we're looking for.

Laurie Forster (31:53)
Mm-hmm.

Bartholomew (31:55)
not too alcoholic obviously, and just delicious yummy wine. the North Coast in particular, there's a very large wine landowner who makes ultra ultra premium wines for a lot of wineries or grows ultra premium grapes for a lot of wineries.

we have access to their vineyards. We don't actually name this wine grower for the simple reason that the people who are selling $80 wines from the same vineyard would get very upset if we were saying, well, you could get a $12 wine from that vineyard and it's the same quality. So we, but we just.

Laurie Forster (32:18)
well.

Right.

Bartholomew (32:39)
We're lucky that we have the pedigree of grapes thanks to the contacts that have been growing over 30 years.

Laurie Forster (32:48)
That's amazing.

Lots of blackcurrant, dark fruit here, some cedar, just really lovely nose. And I love what, you know, the way you're describing it and that's what I experience is the balance, you know, it's not like, my gosh, fruit bomb or wow, I just got hit in the head with tannin. It's got tannin there. It's got all the elements

So I really enjoy this. I see they're both around 14 and a half percent alcohol. Tell me, I know, yeah, I was gonna say, cause last time we talked a little bit about this,

Bartholomew (33:15)
Yeah, which is a high end for me, but.

Laurie Forster (33:22)
And I found it fascinating what you shared. You know, if you have a 12 and a half percent wine versus if you have a bottle of a 14 and a half percent wine, there really is a huge difference, even though you're like, oh, it's only 2%. But how does that come into play with, you know, glasses and bottles and what's the difference? I think last time you said a 12 and a half versus a 15 % is like three more cocktails or something.

Bartholomew (33:47)
Yeah.

Well, yeah, mean, if you have an entire bottle of wine that's 12 % alcohol and an entire bottle of wine that's 15 % alcohol, the difference is three and a half vodka tonics in that bottle. Or 12 % alcohol, two four ounce glasses of wine, you're still under drink drive limits. It's 14 and half percent alcohol if you haven't been eating food and various other things.

factors you would be over the drink drive limit with two four ounce glasses. But you have to work with what you've got. For instance, our Napa Valley Auctioneer, we've had a few vintages now. Summer have been as low as 13.5 % and as high as 14.5. You'd have to depend on nature a little bit. But whatever the alcohol content,

It has to be an approachable wine for me. We it has to be wine I want to drink. For instance, we were looking at we were looking at Pinot Noir for the North Coast literally a few weeks ago. And and one of one of my team members said this is amazing to have a Pinot Noir at this price. It's fantastic. We should do it. And I said no.

we're not going to, it's not something that I want my name on. So we went back to the drawing board and did a lot more research and tasting and sampling and we found a Pinot Noir, which is actually we found two which were delicious and I'm really having a tough time deciding one's Monterey, one's North Coast and I just don't know which one we're gonna buy. It is a better problem, yeah, yeah.

Laurie Forster (35:25)
Yeah, well, that's a good problem to have, I guess, right?

Well, the...

Bartholomew (35:29)
But we have a fabulous

one from Napa and a fabulous one from Sonoma too, so.

Laurie Forster (35:34)
I can't wait to try that. I love peanut butter. Have you made anything out of Oregon yet?

Bartholomew (35:38)
Not yet. And I don't have such deep context there. I mean, I a lot of winemakers up there, obviously, but also I think because they're probably bottling all of their own juice for their own labels, whereas a lot of wineries in Napa and they have a lot of wine that's available, which is not going into their own label. the vineyard growers sell

their grapes and their wine to other people. If you look at the labels of Napa Valley wines, I would say probably 75 % of them don't actually own wineries or vineyards. There are some big grape growers who supply grapes to a lot of wineries. it's, how do you make a small fortune in the wine business?

Laurie Forster (36:04)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Start with a large fortune. Yep.

Bartholomew (36:25)
Start with a large fortune. Yeah, if

you're gonna build a winery and you're gonna buy vineyards, you're not gonna have any money left. So the solution is to establish relationships with grape growers and buy their wines, their grapes.

Laurie Forster (36:35)
Yes.

So you brought up

the idea, like two glasses of this or two glasses of this without food. And it brings me to a wine myth that keeps coming around that I hope you can help me dispel. And that people will say to me, and I do some tours, I'm going to do a tour to Bordeaux and to Tuscany next year, as you know.

And people will say, I went to France or I went to Italy and I drank all kinds of wine and I felt fabulous the whole week. I'd never had a headache, never had a hangover. But when I drink the same wines, you know, from US producers or in the US, I feel terrible. And so they must just be putting so much sulfites in the wine that it's just making me sick. And I keep trying to explain to people that, you know, great producers are not

using tons of sulfites, whether it be here, there, or anywhere. They're using the bare minimums to preserve the wine. But I feel like it's because in Europe, I drink more water and I'm never drinking two glasses of wine without food because food seems to be part of the equation. Here in the US, I feel like let's go have a couple glasses of wine and then we'll eat, which doesn't always set you up for success. So

Since you've lived all over the world and have been in the business for so long, what is your stance on that?

Bartholomew (37:56)
Well, first of all, it's definitely not sulfites. There are more sulfites on the leaf of lettuce or the outside of an apple than any bottle of wine in world. Sulfites do not give headaches. There is less than, know, 0.00 something 1 % of the population that is allergic to sulfites, but they can't.

have any canned foods, can't have it. It's a real problem. it doesn't cause headaches. If you can eat canned foods, if you can eat vegetables and fruits in America, you can have cell fights because they're all stuff. The other thing is that...

I think what does cause the headaches are additives, and I'm not sure which ones. There are over 500 additives which are allowed to be put into wines in America, much fewer in Europe. In fact, Europeans don't really use many additives. It's very strict. And really the bigger the winery, the more chances of additives because they are

owned by shareholders. They have to have a consistent revenue profit. They have to make wines that are pretty consistent. They don't like vintage variations because that can cause fluctuations in income. So a lot of wines are homogenized and mass produced and those are the ones which can give you headaches. I mentioned Chateau Musar. I was doing a dinner

Laurie Forster (39:25)
Mm-hmm.

Bartholomew (39:29)
in Nashville, of all places. And the woman sitting next to me said that she couldn't drink red wine because it gave her headaches and it gave her violent headaches at night. And she threw up at night after drinking red wines. her husband next to her was a lawyer and he said, you know, I agree, she just can't drink red wine. And I said, you...

I don't want to make you ill, but I guarantee you with Chateau Musar unless you can't eat grapes, you should be able to drink Musar because Musar is nothing is added to it. It's the most natural wine in the world. In fact, the natural wine movement was started when a guy called Luca from Italy went to visit Chateau Musar and said, wow, if you can make wine this way, we could do it in Italy.

and they started an actual wine movement based on copying what Chateau Musard did, making wines completely naturally. And so this woman at the dinners said, okay, I'll taste it. She drank a whole glass and she liked it so much she had a second glass. And the husband rang the next day and said, I've got some good news and I've got some bad news. I said, what's the good news? And he said, well, my wife didn't have.

headache and she didn't throw up in the night and what's the bad news the bad news is she likes that expensive wine

Laurie Forster (40:47)
That's kind of good news.

when we make a wine non-alcoholic, it has to have nutritional information on it strangely. But if it's regular wine, it does not. But some wineries are actually moving to doing that even though it's not required.

I almost wish that we had that required because then we would know who's putting those 500 additives in the wine and who's not. And it's not the family wineries that you represent and support. And so...

Bartholomew (41:01)
Yeah.

Yeah,

no, would love to see ingredient labeling, you know, when it comes to Chateau Musar, say fermented grape juice, that's pretty much ⁓ it. But with some wineries, yeah, there'd be a laundry list of additives. But yeah.

Laurie Forster (41:20)
Yes, yeah, there you go. That's all you need to know.

Yeah.

Well, Bollew this has been so fabulous. I could talk to you for another 45 minutes, if folks just want to check out your website, your portfolio, see the things that you do, where can they go to check that out?

Bartholomew (41:39)
Yeah, so my website is called broadbent.com, very simply broadbent, B-R-O-A-D-B-E-N-T, broadbent.com. It's a very useful website. There's a resource button on it where if you tap that, you can see the resources. Like there's a whole list of women winemakers. There's a resource tab for organic and vegan and vegetarian and natural and all that type of stuff.

Also, my Facebook, we have a very good Broadbent Selections Facebook page, but I'm very active personally on my Facebook, which is Bartholomew Broadbent.

and Instagram.

Laurie Forster (42:18)
I will post

the links to your website, your Facebook page, and the wines, of course, that we tried today so people can check that out. And I thank you so much for coming on The Sipping Point.

Bartholomew (42:29)
Well, thank you and we'll calendar this for next in 10 years time we'll do it again. No, we'll see each other before then. We'll see each other before then for sure.

Laurie Forster (42:35)
Well, let's not let it go that long. That's not maybe five, maybe five. All right. Well, cheers.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Laurie Forster (42:43)
What a wealth of knowledge. What a treat to have Balo on the show and hear about his decades of experience in the wine industry. I'll post the links to the wines we tried as well as his website Broadbent Selection so you can check it out. And just a reminder, go check out thewinecoach.com slash events, everything about my virtual tasting on September 24th, the information session on my Tuscany trip on the 28th, and so much more.

All right, guys, I am so thankful you're here. If you love this show, please share it with another wine lover in your circle. And until next week, cheers.