Stop Overthinking Wine | Tim Gaiser | Barrels and Roots

In this episode of Barrels and Roots, I sit down with Master Sommelier Tim Gaiser for a conversation about making wine feel less intimidating and more human. We talk about why so many people feel overwhelmed by wine language, restaurant lists, grape varieties, regions, and tasting notes that do not always connect with real life. Tim breaks down wine in a way that makes it easier to understand, comparing it to music, cars, food, memory, and personal experience.

We also get into how beginners can start building their palate, why tasting different styles side by side helps you understand what you like, and how simple things like acidity, tannin, alcohol, sweetness, and smell memories shape your wine preferences. Tim shares practical advice for walking into a wine shop with more confidence, choosing approachable wines, pairing wine with food, and learning how to taste with more attention.

Beyond the technical side, this conversation is really about why wine still matters. Wine can slow us down, bring people together, connect us to a place and time, and turn a simple meal into a memory. Whether it is a legendary bottle or an affordable everyday wine, the best glass is often the one shared with the right people.

What is one wine, meal, or memory that made you slow down and really enjoy the moment?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Everyone's got their own taste, you know, and their own flavor profiles that they love, you know. But I that's what I wanted to ask you, because you've taught thousands. What's the fastest way to actually get better at tasting and to learn what you like?

SPEAKER_02 0:13

Well, I think, you know, um, you know, there's several different ways. What comes to mind is, you know, you just taste different things. So especially when you go into a restaurant, try different wines by the glass. And now, usually it depends on state law, ask to taste things to say, you know, I'm interested in this. What does it taste like? Would you mind pouring me a taste of these two things, then I'll make a decision? And that way you can, you know, associate names of grapes or places with what a wine's tastes like.

SPEAKER_03 0:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

But uh, and from there, the most important thing you can do is just taste and drink wine on the regular, you know? And before you drink wine, you open the bottle, you stand at the kitchen sink, you smell the wine, ask yourself, what are you smelling? And then you take a sip, you hold it in your mouth for five seconds at least, you spin it out, and you really pay attention to what's going on. The spinning part's important because it's a pattern interrupted. It makes your brain pay attention to what you're doing. Because otherwise, drinking equals quenching thirst and survival. So you don't pay attention. Uh and then from there, you know, just start to what I talked about, the taste sensations, start to separate them out, right? What is sour, what's bitter, and then the heat, the richness from alcohol, right? Because over time, you're gonna, in fact, not even over time, you're gonna discover your sensitivities really fast and what you like and don't like.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Welcome everybody back to the Barrels and Roots Podcast. I've got an awesome guest with me today. Would you like to tell people who you are and a little bit about what you do?

SPEAKER_02 1:44

Sure. My name is Jim Gazer. Uh, I'm a longtime wine professional. I'm a master simmelier. I'm based in New Mexico, and uh now pretty much what I do is write and blog and substack, and I still do teaching and examining for the quartermaster someliers, and then I have a small number of clients that I still do projects for.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

That's awesome. Like, I'm not gonna lie, Tim. When I saw Master Sommelier, I was like, I am not a wine professional, I am a guy who loves his Vino and is really good at podcasting. And so I grew up in Napa and I I I grew up in St. Alina in the Napa Valley. And my parents moved there to work at a college when I was in high school, and I got to be around some really amazing people who were growing amazing wine. And I'm not gonna lie though, I still feel really intimidated around wine and wine people because you know I can handle the growers, I can handle the great growers, but like when it talks about like things that like flavors and what that's supposed to, I get intimidated. And why does wine feel so intimidating to normal people?

SPEAKER_02 2:52

Uh, you know, there's a number of reasons, okay. You know, first of all, I mean there's the whole traditional thing of the snooty sommelier in the in the old school French restaurant with the tuxedo and the ashtray around the neck. I think more practically, you know, I'm looking at your background and I see guitars, okay? Yeah, and I see what looks to be like a martial amp or a marshall speaker on looks like a little mini marshall amp, yeah. Okay, all right. So you play guitar.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

And by the way, okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

So I get to that in a second. I want to tell you that I saw Matteo Mancuso about six weeks ago. Do you know Mateo Mancuso?

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:29

Okay, so you have someone who who not only is mastered electric guitar by age 30 like him, but his technique is changing how people play the electric guitar, versus you have someone who just loves to strum and play their favorite songs and they can't even read music, they don't care if they ever learn. So wine is kind of the same way, and I say that too, because uh I'm a classically trained musician. You know, I have two degrees in music, trumpet was my instrument of a master's in classical trumpet, played professionally. So music is either ranges from Mary Had a Little Lamb to Box Art of Hugues, right? It's like as deep as you want it, and wine is kind of the same thing. I mean, it can be, you know, uh a plastic cup out of uh like a box of wine, or it can be a single domain burgundy that costs thousands of dollars, and there's everything in between. But the problem is that with at least music, there's a universal language, and with wine, there's no inherent vocabulary. And so the language with wine has been borrowed and begged and stolen from unrelated fields, and it can be confusing. And then add to that, you just have wine from all over the globe, especially from places in Europe where you have multiple languages involved, and they don't tell you the great variety it's made from, they don't tell you if it's sweet or dry or what it's going to taste like. So there's just a lot you have to learn if you decide to scratch the surface and go beyond. And uh, you know, here I've been in the business for 40 years and I'm still learning stuff. So yeah, it just never stops, which is to me, is is is such a great thing about it.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

I love it because I do love what you said there. And I I think there's one thing that I I'm learning about the wine industry because I think wine industry is like the car automobile industry in ways. Yeah, one of the things that I'm noticing, and let me explain that because it's a little bit of a weird analogy. Um, there's all types of cars out there. There's Toyota, Honda, you know, there's big cars, little cars. But what cars do people like to talk about? We talk about the Ferraris, we talk about the Lamborghinis, we talk about the Rolls-Royces, we talk about those, but like the reality is there's a lot of other stuff out there. And you know, I I've got a Toyota. I love my Toyota. I'll drive Toyotas for a long time. I they they've they've treated me right, and it doesn't mean that I don't like Torgias or Lamborghinis.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

By the way, I mean, we drove you know, Toyotas for god 25 years. We have Volvos now, right? And love Volvos, love Volvos too. But you know, if you see the light come on, you go, Oh, we're gonna go write a thousand dollar check to Volvo now, you know.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

Whereas with Toyota, Volvo, that's it, man. 100%. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:13

Really safe cars, wonderful cars. Um, but you know, Toyotas, I mean, they're yeah, they don't break very often, they're inexpensive to fix, and they're just good cars. So, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of wines you can compare to Toyotas, and that's frankly what people go into a restaurant and drink by the glass or what they can afford usually on a restaurant list. You know, because wine, I mean, unfortunately, and then and again, this is not old man yelling at clouds, but this is 40 years ago when I first got into wine, the very top wines were affordable. So I could, you know, if it was a birthday or you know, an anniversary, I could buy a bottle of first growth Bordeaux. It was steep, it was 150 bucks, but I could buy it. I could buy a ground crew burgundy for around the same price. So your average, you know, bottle price for first growth Bordeaux starts at$800 now and goes to over$2,000 for the same burgundy, it goes several thousand dollars. So so the top wines are like they're like luxury goods, and the disparity now is just it's it's insane.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

So anyway, I'm with you, and I one of the things too, I think with that, because even when I, you know, when I was uh updating myself as well, when I you know graduated college in the Napa Valley, we could buy some pretty nice wines at our affordable prices, you know. Wine was way more affordable, even at that time, you know, and we could buy some good stuff, man. And like I would go around and and the cool part was is like you would see all these famous brands, and like, yeah, that's that guy right there. And it was just this more, but suddenly something shifted and the prices went astronomical. And now the challenge with that is is how do we bring new people to wine when it's so hard to enter, you know? That's one of the things that I keep hearing people ask that question.

SPEAKER_02 8:06

Yeah, well, you know, it's um, you know, that's like the perfect storm because what you need, you need a way, you just need good wines to introduce them to the don't cost a lot of money, and they exist, trust me. Um, and then you just need some a little instruction and a little guidance, but not too much. And then you just kind of turn them loose and and you show them, especially you connect wine with food and you show them why the two together work so well. And uh, you know, because there's no magazines called vodka and food, right? There's food and wine, but not vodka and food. So, and I know cocktails are great and there's they can be so enjoyable, but they they don't pair as well with food as wine does, and plus there's a whole ritual about dining with food and wine, and that could be takeout pizza and cheap wine, or it could be really expensive, you know, meal at a good restaurant, but you're sharing that meal with people, hopefully, that you care about you to your family, and it's that dining ritual that I think really hooks people because then they get they see how cool that is, and they see that how valuable slowing your life down at least once a day, and just sitting there enjoying somebody's company and you know, a decent glass of wine with some food. I mean, that's uh to me one of the greatest things there is.

SPEAKER_00 9:19

My wife, I'm married to a uh a Vietnamese woman, and she is a fierce Vietnamese woman and lover of food. She fiercely loves food. And one of the things that when whenever we travel back to the US, she is like, what is happening? Because the Vietnamese live to eat, they live to eat. And like whenever we go to the US, it's like this eat to live mentality, you know, like the food is it's it's more of like this commodity that you go out and buy. And it's not like the pleasure that is coming in. Like you see it with with a lot of different groups around the world that this food experience is so is such a core part of the culture, you know, and we we've had it. We go out every weekend, we go out for a family dinner. Me, my wife, and our her sister and their kids and my my in-laws, we go out as a family unit and we have a dinner somewhere together. You know it doesn't have to be expensive, it often is not. But we've started this culture of being present, of slowing down, and you know, and and like I love adding a glass of wine to that, you know, because my daughter and her cousins, we sit there and say, Hey, um put the devices away. Like, there's no device right now, you know, and and like even the other day, I'm gonna go off on a tangent right here. I went out and bought all of these books for them to go read. And we were like sitting there going, we got to push back about all this high-speed stuff and find a slower pace. And my daughter had a tablet that she had kind of taken from it, was like my old tablet that I hadn't used. And I she just suddenly was like, This is mine. And suddenly my wife and I sat down, we looked at each other, and we're like, we got to make a change, and that changes a slower pace of things. And yeah, we the tablet went away, it went, it got locked away in my camera cabinet because I'm a photographer, it's locked away, and during the weekend she can look at it for arts and crafts videos. What I'm getting to is that she's been upstairs reading the last two nights in a row for 45 minutes, you know, straight. And she's like, these books are so good. We see so many people that are just running, running, running, active, active, active. But if we all could sit down and have a glass of wine together, you know my favorite thing with a glass of wine, literally my favorite things. I love listening to the album My Favorite Things, but on that dual jazz, you know, I throw it on, that jazz comes on. I'm listening to that album, and I'm just like Coltrane, Coltrane does that album right. It is my favorite thing. Uh that plus a glass of whatever I can find. That's mine, that's my go-to thing. You know, and it's it's a little piece of heaven, and when I can share that with other people, it's the best.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

Yeah, yeah, it is. Yeah. Well, you know, I have music on all the time, you know, when I'm writing, and uh, this is my office, and I'm in here hours every day. Uh, but you know, for way over 30 years, Carla and I, uh, my wife, I mean, we both worked in the restaurant business for a long time. So dinner, dinner means you're cooking something and you're plating it, right? You're plating it and serving it, and there's wine, and there's a lit candle, and there's tunes in the background. And it's not fancy, but at the same time, it's this ritual we have, and that's what our kids have grown up with. And my daughter Maria is now in her mid-30s and is married and lives in uh North Carolina. She says that's what she misses most about, you know, home life is the fact that we hung out at the dinner table for probably an hour and 90 minutes. And uh yeah, and wine is part of that.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

100%. One of the things, too, like for people who are just getting into it and they think, you know what, it all tastes alike. What would you say to someone who has not developed that palate yet and really wants to be getting into wine more?

SPEAKER_02 13:29

Yeah, I think the easiest thing to do to fix that is to have them taste pairs of wines that show extremes, you know, for uh white wines, a really oaky Chardonnay versus Alzaske Hurstraminer, you know. So you've got a wine with oak that's probably really rich with higher alcohol, really powerful flavors, against one that's really floral and fruity, and maybe a little sweet and earthy at the same time. And it's like universe is colliding. And you can do the same thing with reds. You can do a really light wine like a Pinot Noir from Russian River, versus a Barollo from Northern Italy, which is just like Rottweiler in a bottle, right? It's tannic, powerful, high acid, high alcohol. Yeah, and and and the show, so you show them the range of extremes, and you just go, you know, sorry, wines they're all different, you know.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

I'm gonna say though, a rottweiler in a bottle has to be one of my hands-down best descriptions of a wine I've ever heard ever. See, that's how I want to hear people talk about wine, you know, because that makes sense to me.

SPEAKER_02 14:29

Yeah, but Barella and Barbaresco, I mean, it's grown-up wine. Come on. I mean, it's just you know, your Aunt Bernina from Des Moines is in town. She drinks one glass of wine a week with Sunday dinner. You do not want to serve her that wine. She would hate it. She would probably never drink wine again because it's bone dry, it's really high acid, but it is powerfully tannic, and it is really rich. And wow, it's just like, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:55

That's intense, man. But I I love it though. I I love that to be able to describe things like that, you know, and it's one of the things too, is like, I think that helping people see the color of these things, that the the tone that you can have, the fun. I uh I did an episode where we compared different wines to different pop stars, and another one where we're comparing wines to different Harry Potter houses because it's stuff that people can reference, you know, like all right, which house would this wine fit into? Because the Barolo, man, is that gonna be, you know, Slytherin or is that gonna be Ravenclaw, Gryffindor? I don't know, man.

SPEAKER_02 15:27

It would be Slytherin.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Yeah, come on. See, that's what I was thinking though, right?

SPEAKER_02 15:32

Yeah, it's like you know, you think you taste it and you think this thing's gotta have a dark side, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:37

You know, see, but see, that's the type of stuff that like I can reference. I couldn't reference it's got you know hints of black uh of black current. I'm like, I don't even know what black current tastes like. So you're not speaking my language right now. Yeah. I want to ask you this because like someone's in a store overwhelmed, no clue what they're doing. What's your what's the first move they should be making?

SPEAKER_02 15:58

Uh it's funny you mentioned that because uh I just finished a manuscript uh called First Glass. And it's not a book necessarily for beginners, but it's for hobbyists. And one of the chapters is called uh at the retail shop. And so here's the deal: regardless of what kind of wine shop it is, it could be a grocery store, it could be a small wine merchant, you have to do some homework before you go in. So you have to know, you have to have a general idea of what you're looking for. Okay. Um, you know, do you want white wine, pink wine, or red wine? And from there, hopefully you have some favorites. Like you say, well, I really like southern French Rose, or I like New Zealand, Southern Ya-Blanc, or I like Malbek from Argentina. So you know that, and then you can go in and you have types to look for, okay? From there, you know, there's no guarantee that someone's going to be there that you can talk to. You can say, hey, here's my favorites. What's good? What do you like? And I don't want to spend a lot of money, right? But at least, you know, a lot of the bottles now have QR codes. You got a phone, take a look at the QR code, bring it up, take a look at the information on the wine. Odds are you can make a pretty good decision, you know. And by the way, all three of those wines I just listed, those are kind of, I wouldn't call them safe zones, but those are wines where consistently across the board you're going to get good quality, right? I mean, uh, New Zealand, Sauvignon Blanc, and Malbec from Argentina, Mendoza, those wines, regardless of price point, tend to be very good wines. And pretty much the same for Provence Rose, as long as you stick to a really recent vintage, like at this point, 2023 or 2024.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

Interesting. You know, if you had someone come in in front of you, um, and I I I I in the questions I sent you, I said one, but like you've got someone coming and sitting in front of you, and um you've got three glasses that you're gonna pour them, you know, for starting. What are the three glasses that you're gonna pour for someone? You know, whether it be varietals or specific um, you know, locations. Tell me what you think you'd pour for that new beginner.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

Well, okay, so um, you know, for for wines that they would do well with, the three I just mentioned, if you're talking about wines that are going to temporarily change their life, then it would have to be pork, okay, because you'd have to cover the four major styles of wine. So I would want somebody to taste a great prestige cabet champagne, like Krug, like Bollinger, like uh Pau Roger Sir Winston Churchill, right? A great champagne. Next up, a great white wine, and that could be white burgundy, you know, like Cortan Charlemagne from Bonno Martre, or I would head for a great dry Riesling from Germany, like Kieter Grafenberg from Robert Weil. And then, you know, red wines, there's just it's a big universe. Could be a great red burgundy, right? Uh, like uh Le Musigny from Comp Vogue, or it could be a classified growth Bordeaux, or it could even be the Barolla we were just talking about. And then finally, a shockingly good weapons grade, sweet matrytis wine, right? So something like Chateau Ecamp from Sautern, or uh going back to Germany, a Baronouse Laser from uh Franz Kunstler in the Rheingau, right? Something amazingly and so shockingly sweet but acidic and powerful that it just stops you in your tracks. And all four of those wines would, you know. But I think for the you know what I would pour, I would pour somebody a grey champagne. That's what I would pour.

SPEAKER_00 19:27

Always good, right? I I that's one of the things that I found is that champagne is one of the I have um, you know, my barrels and rips podcast, and all the time my workers I I run a media production company and I'm always talking about wine. And they're like, all right, we'd like to try some wine. And so I brought um this nice big knack camp and I was like, try this. And they were like, what the hell is this? And they weren't they were just like, what is this?

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Why do people like this?

SPEAKER_00 19:53

Yeah. And then so I was like, all right, yeah, let's let's I poured them some so I was like, right, let's let's jump over to the sparkling stuff. And they were like, now this is what we're talking about. They were able to handle it. Yeah, and it was like it was a foot in the door, and I think that's one of the things I have to remember is that everyone's palate's different, you know, and you gotta meet people where they're at.

SPEAKER_02 20:12

Yep, yeah. Well, people have, you know, the structure in wine. So the acid, alcohol, tannin, people have different sensitivities to those three things, and that really directs what they like to drink for wine. You know, there are people who don't like things that are sour. My wife Carla loves acidity, so there's no such thing as too much acidity. Some people don't like tannin, they don't like bitter, right? And so tannic red lines like the Cabernet Sauvignon you mentioned, no way, right? For them, red wine has to be Pinot Noir or similar. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

It's interesting because I I it is so everyone's got their own taste, you know, and their own flavor profiles they love, you know. But I that's what I wanted to ask you, because you've taught thousands. What's the fastest way to actually get better at tasting and to learn what you like?

SPEAKER_02 21:02

Well, I think, you know, um, you know, there's several different ways. What comes to mind is, you know, you just taste different things. So especially when you go into a restaurant, try different wines by the glass. And now, usually it depends on state law, ask to taste things to say, you know, I'm interested in this. What does it taste like? Would you mind pouring me a taste of these two things, then I'll make a decision? And that way you can, you know, associate names of grapes or places with what a wine's tastes like.

SPEAKER_03 21:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

But uh, and from there, the most important thing you can do is just taste and drink wine on the regular, you know? And before you drink wine, you open the bottle, you stand at the kitchen sink, you smell the wine, ask yourself, what are you smelling? And then you take a sip, you hold it in your mouth for five seconds at least, you spin it out, and you really pay attention to what's going on. The spinning part's important because it's a pattern interrupted. It makes your brain pay attention to what you're doing. Because otherwise, drinking equals quenching thirst and survival. So you don't pay attention. Tension. Uh and then from there, you know, just start to what I talked about, the taste sensations, start to separate them out, right? What is sour, what's bitter, and then the heat, the richness from alcohol, right? Because over time, you're gonna, in fact, not even over time, you're gonna discover your sensitivities really fast and what you like and don't like.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

So true. I I I think that one of the things that I realized when I started tasting wine uh was that there were flavors I really didn't like. I realized that I don't like yeasty flavor tasting wines, things that taste uh uh like lease fermentation like just doesn't sit with me. I I I I can't handle it for some reason. I don't know why, but it was something that I didn't realize until I tasted wines that were done that way, you know? So it it's just I guess it because I was like, tastes like bread. I kept feeling it was tasting like bread to me, you know. True.

SPEAKER_02 22:56

Well, same process, right? So, but I would say this is that you know, over time your palate changes. Yeah, in fact, there's uh, you know, I mean, it changes dramatically, and you go from liking slightly sweet wines to white wines with oak to all of a sudden red wines. You like red wines, and then you realize that you know the greatest wines are all about subtlety and nuance, and so you you pull away from powerful wines, and then suddenly you find yourself going to slightly sweet wines again, so you go full full circle. So it's pretty interesting.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

That's super interesting to me. Well, I wanted to ask you this because that's something that um, you know, are there any tricks, first of all? Are there any things that actually make the wine someone better at tasting wine? Are there tricks or is it just practice, you know?

SPEAKER_02 23:45

Yeah, well, it's uh, you know, it's a skill and it's reps, you know. Um, you know, unless you have adnosia where you can't smell, everybody can smell and everybody else smell memories, right? Uh, but you know, wine is just very specific in the context, and you your memories for smell have to be applied to it. With that, the one thing you can do to get better at smelling and tasting wine quickly is to, apart from actually tasting wine with wine and a glass in your hand, is to work for with your smell memories for the two dozen or so the most common aromas and flavors in wine. That you know, it's the old 80-20 rule where you've got these 25 things that show up in about 80% of the wines, okay? But you have memories for all those things already. I mean, things like flowers, like vanilla, like mushroom, like lime, like apple, like peach, things like that. And so you work on, you have memories for those and you practice bringing up memories for those things. And by the way, that's internally visual for practically everyone. So you make pictures of peaches, and all you what does it smell like? Smells like this, tastes like this, and all of a sudden you pick up a glass of wine, and the software for recognizing and perceiving those things in the glass is fired up, and you can do it much better.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

I love that. You know, I'm gonna talk about uh a uh an experience I had. I learned to speak Vietnamese, so I can speak Vietnamese, and it's not an easy language to learn. Um there's tones, there's a lot of tones, and there's things that when you don't have the experience with it, it's hard to hear the tones. Like I say sin tiao bang gay cow, there's a bunch of different tones in there. Now, if you say sin, all of those are different words, like meh meh meh meh meh, like all of those are different words. Although here's the crazy part for the first year that I was learning Vietnamese, I couldn't hear a thing. But there was one day where suddenly I it was like I don't know what it was, but it turned on. The ability to hear those tones turned on. And it was like like night and day. Suddenly I was just like, oh, I can hear it now. But it took being exposed to it, being around that sound, being around those those tones. And suddenly I was able to hear some of these overtones and all these other things. And I was just like, it reminds me of like whether you're listening to music, whether you're eating certain foods. Some, you know, when I first had fish sauce, wow, that was that was special. When I first had stinky cheese, I was like, what is this? Now both of them are things that I absolutely enjoy. Yep. But it took time, it took the ability to get out there and to try it because you know, those reps were not easy. But as you got into it more, you can start to um understand it. And that leads to my next question: like, what is the difference between drinking wine and actually understanding it? Because those are not the same.

SPEAKER_02 26:52

Yeah, you know, I'm gonna get back to I'm gonna answer that question, but before that, you know, so there's there's easily an equivalent. I mean, what you're talking about with language, I mean, just the tonality, just auditorially, what you have to separate with Vietnamese with what we do in English. I mean, it's triple A in Major League, right? And I'm curious, you know, when you say it's one day it snapped, me, I'm as a strategist, I'm always curious what changed inside your head. So I will say something similar, but doesn't sound as complex happened for me to a point early on when I smelled wine and it smelled like wine. Okay. And then Christmas dinner 1982, I'm in graduate school having Christmas dinner with my trumpet professor and his wife, and another professor and his wife, and my friend had given me a bottle, and you'll know the wine, Silver Oak Alexander Valley Cabernet, 1976. So that was our okay donation to Christmas dinner. So, you know, my trumpet professor is carving the roast beast in the kitchen with his wife, and he says, Why don't you go ahead and open your bottle and pour it? And so I did, and I poured the glasses around and I put my nose in the glass, and all of a sudden, wine didn't smell like wine, it smelled like things. And all of a sudden, I was assaulted by the tsunami of blackberry jam and spice box and violets and all this stuff. And I put the glass down and I was stunned. Okay, so years after the fact, you know, I work with a behavioral scientist and he stood next to me while I was, you know, for two film sessions for about three hours, and I would smell and taste wine, and he would stop me constantly, and he was tracking eye movements and patterns and language patterns. And basically, what we came up with is that when I put my nose in the glass, really, first of all, there's set eye patterns eye accessing cues that I use when I smell and taste wine. And from there, I make images of what I'm smelling at light speed. And there's not only that, there's patterns and there's a collage, and there's they live in certain places once I basically figured out what they are. So I'm curious then. So, and and that's not just me. I've interviewed probably two dozen masters of wine and master sommelier's. Practically everyone does something similar to what I do, but we all have different ways of doing it. But spell and taste are visual internally, which makes sense. So I'm wondering if for you, if you know what clicked for you is somehow there's a unconscious visual representation of how you're, you know, able to parse out all those sounds because that's that's a skill, if there ever was one. Okay. So that's a lot. And now probably I'll get to answer your question.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

Awesome. Well, you know, it's interesting too, because like like you said, I think that it is a lot, and I think that one of the things that I would say um that makes the most sense to me um is that it's just a little there was this cool story, and it has nothing to do with wine, but it's still a cool story. Uh, there was this guy, and he's actually been studied by science now. He uh was this dude from I think Wisconsin that decided that he wanted to study venom. And he's a herpetologist, he's like this snake expert guy and he just wanted to study venom. So what he started doing was he started doing like microdosing of like snake venom into himself cobras, king cobras, type hand, like all of the deadliest snakes. And he ended up in the hospital many, many times. Now he's since stopped this, but the wild part is that he developed a universal anti-venom in himself. And the scientist went in and started playing out, and what it was is that over time we have the ability to learn, to adapt, to feel these things, to experience new things. And I think that one of the things that for me with Vietnamese, it's not obviously venom to my body, but there was just this piece by piece, and suddenly you hear it, you feel it. But there's something deeper than that too. It's this language of a place. And when I have certain flavors, they are flavors of a place. When I open up a bottle of a certain drink, it's the it's the flavor of that place. When I have a cup of this tea, it's the flavor of a place and a time. And I think that wine to me has always been special like that because it's also a flavor of a place and a time, and there's something like that that allows us to remember it stronger. I don't know if that makes any sense, but that's one of the things I found with the language. It's like not just one thing, it's you learn the language. That's the reason kids that people that try to learn a language in isolation, it's so hard. But if you are you want to learn Spanish, well they go to the the Spanish restaurants, go to the places that you can, you know, or the the places where they speak Spanish, the Mexican restaurant, the Argentinian restaurant, go there, hear the language, be around the food. It makes the whole thing easier to understand.

SPEAKER_02 31:49

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. To me, you know, it is for there's so many wines where I was fortunate enough to taste them in situ where they were made. You know, uh for instance, spending a week in Austria last year. So now I taste Krunavaldina or Austrian Riesling, you know, I think of the places where it was, and I connect it to that time and and the feelings that you get from being there.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

I think that there's something that you can't, you can't like that's one of the reasons I love going and tasting wines at places, is because it is where it's from and it has that experience with it. I wanted to ask you this. I was looking for something because I was thinking about the question that I was gonna ask you, but why should anyone care about wine beyond just drinking it in in 2026? Why is wine still important?

SPEAKER_02 32:38

Well, you know, I again to make the parallel with music, you know, why why is music so important? Because it brings us so much pleasure. And it also, you know, wine in and of itself doesn't demand that you know a lot about it, it just demands that you enjoy drinking it. And um, that's it, it brings pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 32:56

I love that it does, and it brings people together. I like how some well, someone told me that wine was a social lubricant, it's a way that people can bridge this this space that we have between us, and right now the whole world is going crazy. And I would love to get people from here and people from here and then bring them all together. I was flying recently over the Middle East. We flew over Qatar, we flew from Vietnam, Qatar, Qatar to the east coast of the US. And as we flew over Qatar, I fly flew over Qatar, I flew over one place and I looked down. I was like, oh, Muscat. Like, that's where the Muscat grapes come from. Yeah, where the name came from, you know, and you go all these different places, you know, flying over Bordeaux, flying over this, and it made me realize all around the world people have made wine and have had these grapes, and it's something that has united mankind for thousands of years, thousands of years, and certainly right now there's a small group of people that are like, we're not gonna be drinking wine, but like, you know what? Your your great grandchildren and and great-great grandchildren will be. It's still gonna be here long after we are gone. Like, that's the reality, you know? Yeah, but you know, one of the things that I think about is um it is like this more beautiful part of the experiences of life, the flavors of life. The there was this movie a couple years ago. I don't know, it's a really, really obscure movie called Baraka. And it was a silent movie that just shows all of these places around the world, and it's like the sensory treat of music, of sound, of just uh this environmental message. And then you finish watching it and you're like, oh my goodness, because not not like hardly any words are uttered the whole movie. But it's the experience of that, like I grew up in the Napa Valley, and the idea I I I tell this story a lot after I was working at Meadowwood, which is a resort in the Napa Valley, owned by Bill Harlan, who has is the owner of the Napa Valley Reserve and Harlan Estate and all those places. And I was I I was not not fancy, I was working at the Pool Terrace Cafe in college, it was a summer job, and there was a guy who came down there and he had a bottle of Screaming Eagle, and he opened it, he had one glass, and then he's like, All right, I'm done. You guys can finish this off. And he gave it to me and the other waiters. We drove out to a lake, we were sitting in the dirt out at this beautiful lake. If you go out beyond Meadowwood, straight down that road that goes out to Meadowwood, it takes you out to this place called Lake Hodges, and there's this beautiful area where there's all of these birds and it's just quiet. We sat out there as the sunset and had this glass of wine, each of us, and we tasted the flavors of that place. We tasted some of the best uh that that area could offer. And it was just like so magical to be able to experience that, to be able to be there and have that. And like it was can I explain to people what Lake Hodges smells like, the sounds that you hear on a late summer evening? I I can't. But if you ever get a chance to go there and you can sit at that spot and have a glass of great wine, yeah, there's nothing like it.

SPEAKER_02 36:22

Well, okay, so I have to ask, how was the screaming eagle?

SPEAKER_00 36:26

Big and bold. I don't think I knew what to expect. It was just big and bold. Like all I could know at that time was like there were a couple things I noticed. First of all, it wasn't even about the great wine, it was about me sitting with three of my friends that I probably I was working with that summer. I haven't seen them since. I haven't seen those guys since. Okay. And the three of us came together, and none of us would have been able to afford that wine in college. Like, no, no way, much of this.

SPEAKER_02 36:56

No way it was now, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:58

Yeah, and we sat there and we had something that was beyond what we could, you know, fathom being able to, you know, to be able to acquire. And it was just phenomenal because I don't remember what it tasted like. It was big and bold, but I can I can tell you, I remember the sunset, I remember the sounds, I remember the smells, I remember the guys' faces. And that wine made it better. It just made it, it was the thing that brought us together in that moment. Does that make any sense? And it it was that catalyst for something more beautiful. And I think that's what to me the best wines do, whether it's a thousand dollar bottle or a fifteen dollar bottle, you know?

SPEAKER_02 37:40

Yeah, but the price is really no object.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

Yeah. All right. Two last questions for you. Um, if you were to pour a glass right now for yourself, what are you drinking right now?

SPEAKER_02 37:53

Uh a German cabinet Riesling from the Mosul.

SPEAKER_00 37:57

Mean.

SPEAKER_02 37:58

That's a good morning, Wally. So 8% alcohol, uh, high acid, mineral driven, a little bit of sweetness and delicious fruit. That'd be perfect.

SPEAKER_00 38:08

That's awesome. Well, where can people go to find out more about you and what you do, what you write, and all of the stuff that you share about wine?

SPEAKER_02 38:17

Yeah, well, tingGazer.com, both of my books are listed on it. I write a blog. I also write a Substack too, and just my name.com. That's the best place.