Episode 8 - Katie Melchior

In Episode 8 of Wine With Friends, host Marcus Ginyard welcomes French educator and wine influencer Katie Melchior, better known as The French Wine Tutor.

Joining us at The Rabbit Hole, Katie shares how she built a platform dedicated to making French wine more approachable — including helping people confidently pronounce French wine regions, grapes, and terminology.

Marcus and Katie dive into her journey into the wine world, her travels throughout France, and her passion for discovering smaller producers where she can connect directly with the people behind the wine. She explains why those personal connections are at the heart of truly understanding what’s in your glass.

This episode is about curiosity, confidence, and breaking down barriers so more people can enjoy and engage with wine.

Pour a glass and join the conversation. 🍷

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Welcome to Wine with Friends, where meaningful connection and thoughtful conversation are always present when we share wine intentionally. Tonight I have a very special guest. Katie Melchior is here all the way from New Jersey, New York City area, wine educator, food and wine, and travel blogger, French wine enthusiast, otherwise known as the French wine tutor. Katie Melchior, thanks for coming.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. This is great.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

So excited to see you.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Welcome to North Carolina.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

First time in North Carolina.

SPEAKER_02 0:45

Yeah. And first time meeting you in person.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

First time meeting me in person. That's great. I'm glad you brought that up. So one of the things that I love about wine is the fact that it can connect people from all walks of life from all over the world.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

If I'm not mistaken, we first connected on Instagram perhaps when I was living in France.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Yeah, probably.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

I feel like I was getting a lot of Instagram content around wine. I was kind of falling in love with wine. And you were obviously producing a bunch of content. One might call you a wine influencer.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

But tell me about how you remember us getting connected through wine, through Instagram, and what it means to kind of come full circuit to be in here in North Carolina right now.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Oh my gosh, it's crazy. I don't remember us connecting at all. You were just a little bit more. We just had like, you were just in my inbox and we were just chatting. And I don't remember. Maybe you commented on something that I posted or or you followed me, and I remember like going to your profile and being like, oh, this guy has this guy has a lot of followers. And I was like, who is he? And so I kind of like Wikipedia you found your like your Pro Ball um sort of like resume, which is on there now. And I was like, oh, he's like lived and played like basketball in France. That's super cool. Um and then yeah, I guess it just kind of we just kept the the DMs open uh since then. So well, great.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Well I'm so glad that you're here. Thanks for being here. And again, welcome to North Carolina. Yeah. I would like to just start this episode by saying thank you to the rabbit hole for being such amazing hosts and offering you this lovely experience to like see this as one of your first experiences here in North Carolina. We're very grateful to have this lovely um establishment to record in. So again, welcome to welcome to the rabbit hole.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

All right. So when I was trying to connect with you on Instagram, I remember thinking about how much I was learning from your page.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Yay! Right?

SPEAKER_00 2:41

It's like really cool to see a whole bunch of folks out there, and again, we'll we'll I will use the term wine influencer, and I want you to kind of talk about what that means to you. But I was always learning something from your page. So can you tell us a little bit about like where this started? Why did you think about becoming a wine educator?

SPEAKER_02 3:00

Yeah, definitely. So um this all started because of an influencer trip, actually. So um my full-time work has always been um in social media marketing. Um, and so I I still do that, um, but at a at a different agency now. But at the time, I was hired to be the first full-time social media manager for um a French um uh agency that specialized in marketing French products in the US uh and abroad. They have many, many um locations across the world. Um, and I was starstruck because I had never worked in French wine before. I've lived in France um several times before that. Um, and this is my first job in New York. Um, and I came into it and was basically told from day one you have 13 clients in French wine, and you have to create social media content for all of them by the end of the week. And I was like, ah. Um, and at the time there was very little English um uh educational materials available that were loose-free. So all the wine regions had had something in French, and then a couple of them had it in English. But obviously, being fluent in French, I always prefer to read the materials from the source. Um, I feel like that's how I learned the best. Um, so basically, I was immersed in this from that job, and a couple of years into it, I had the opportunity to take um two influencers to the Loire Valley and do an immersion trip. And we drove from Nantes to Sancerre.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Nantes.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

Uh I know, I know. We'll talk about Nantes later too, because I love Nantes and I live there um as well, and uh it holds a very special place in my heart. But um, I did this influencer trip as like the the agency representative, effectively. So I was with these two um influencers, one of whom uh is still influencing. Her name is Nicole from Grapechic.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

Okay, great.

SPEAKER_02 4:56

So um she was one of the ones, and we, you know, were just together in the Loire for five days. And at the end of the trip, we were sitting at this cafe in Paris, and both of them looked at me and they were like, You should like become a wine influencer. And I was like, What are you talking about? Why would I do that? And they were like, Because you speak French French flu fluently, excuse me. And um the the whole trip, I had kind of been doing some translation because we went to, we had my client who was there um as well, who was helping. Um, but we had a lot of producer visits to very small family-owned producers, and their English was, they were not always confident in their English, which I think is an interesting thing um to talk about, also, because I think most French people are better at English than they think they are, but they're afraid to speak. And the same is true for English speakers learning a second language as well, is it's really like that confidence part of it. Um, so anyway, I was doing a lot of translation and kind of like teaching them pronunciation for their content. And they were like, you should like launch a page where you teach people this um and see how it goes. And so I did, and now we are here.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

And it went very well. Yeah, it went pretty well.

SPEAKER_02 6:11

So well, great.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Well, I'm really glad that you did that. Um, I'm excited to continue to follow your journey as a wine educator and as a wine influencer. Yeah. Um, you certainly have influenced me. Oh, and so very, very grateful to have you here. And so um, speaking of small producers and French wine, I thought um it would make all the sense in the world for us to have some French wine tonight from a smaller producer that, quite frankly, I do not know a ton about. Uh, but I was very fortunate to be gifted. Um, well, I had the opportunity to purchase this wine. I was not gifted this wine, but um, a good friend of mine in Limoges uh is a chef and had a restaurant up until this year. He just closed it down, but this was one of the wines that he was serving at his restaurant back in the time when I was living there. And so this became one that I liked um, you know, to have with some frequency, and so I've not had one in a while. Um, so looking forward to sharing that with you this this evening.

SPEAKER_02 7:03

That's a great story. Also, you're really good at foil cutting. I'm terrible at it.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

So I wanted to talk about that a little bit too because um, you know, there's some etiquette involved in opening wine that I don't know that I'm always the best at.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

But all right, I'm judging. No, I'm just kidding. Absolutely not. No, I've never been a psalm. So that that's the other thing. And I have like mad respect for sommelier. They're, I would say the majority of the people who follow me are actually sommelier because they're the people who use French wine pronunciation on the daily. Um, so I could never like do that professionally. I'm not very good at opening bottles. So if you see on my videos, I always open with myself opening a bottle to prove that I'm actually drinking the wine during my video. But there's a lot of cuts because I mess up a lot. Um, so especially with the foil. Yours was much smoother.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Oh, great. Well, thank you for that. Would you like to taste?

SPEAKER_02 7:57

Yeah, let's do it.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

Make sure that we're in a good spot here before we decant this. Um so yeah, wine from uh the Cote de Gascogne. Tell me how to do with my pronunciation.

SPEAKER_02 8:07

Yeah, well, you're a French speaker too, so just a touch, just a touch.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

So we have Tanat, Cabernet, and Servedou. Don't know that one. How are we doing? Great. More?

SPEAKER_02 8:23

It's delicious. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

And so small producer here. I did a little bit of reading, just a little homework. Apparently, uh that's been in the family a hundred years. Oh, this winery. I do not know how many bottles they produce, but the mere fact that this bottle is numbered.

SPEAKER_02 8:43

Well, yeah, that should tell you. That tells me a little something.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Um so we have bottle number 1,552.

SPEAKER_02 8:52

Wow, okay.

SPEAKER_00 8:53

Very small production.

SPEAKER_02 8:54

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

All right.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

Well, cheers. Okay. There you go.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

All right, so when did you fall in love with it sounds like France? Yeah. Right? Like you were studying French at a young age, if I'm not mistaken. Um then obviously this kind of escalates to to loving French wine, but where where did your love for France start?

SPEAKER_02 9:15

Yeah, I would say, so I started taking French when I was 11 years old.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 9:21

In school. Um, I grew up kind of all around the US, but um, where I started taking French was Wisconsin. And I actually grew up on a street called Bordeaux Rue, which I think was like kind of like a cosmic Yeah, totally. Neither of my sisters work in wine, though, so they'd be like, excuse me. I'm rude. Um But um so I grew up on a street called Bordeaux, uh, and I studied, and and French really there is there is really a culture of the French language in Wisconsin because of the French fur trappers. So like I went to a high school um elementary school called L'Anglade. Um, you know, there was another place, uh a high school or middle school, I forget, somewhere around there called Joliet. Um my best friend lived uh on a street called Chantier. So it was very like everything was very frankified, uh French, Frenchified. Um, and so it can't be too surprising because I do feel like looking back that it was everywhere, although obviously not everybody gets that. So maybe that's just something that I took out. Um but I had a great like French teacher, um, and she was so passionate and so excited, and I just kind of like grabbed onto it, and then I never stopped. So I studied French all the way through the rest of elementary school into middle school and then high school, and then I became a French major in college. Um, I studied abroad in Paris and then um came back and switched my major from vocal performance to French. Okay. Um, so that I could like really dive into it because I had truly fallen in love with Paris during my time there. Um, and then after I graduated, I went back to France and I lived in Nantes uh for a time as well and loved Nantes, yeah. Oh, so good. It's and it's such an interesting thing, too, because you know, a lot of people, I feel like right now Paris is getting a bad rap, which I think is wrong for so many other reasons. But France has a lot of really great mid-sized cities as well. Like Bordeaux is amazing. I was just there too. I love like Marseille is great, Dijon uh and Nantes, of course. There's just so many. Strasbourg is amazing too. So there's just so many of these, like, you know, sort of second tier, I wouldn't even call it that because they a lot of them are pretty sizable as well. But um, there's just so many great places uh in France outside of Paris, too. So awesome. It was awesome.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

And so your first time to France, to Paris, was when you studied abroad? Yeah. What was that like?

SPEAKER_02 11:49

Uh it was overwhelming because like you study French your whole life, and I I lived a very like sheltered life because we always lived in the suburbs, whether Wisconsin, Florida, anywhere else we moved. And so, like, I really didn't hear many other languages um growing up, which is a real shame and something I wish I had heard more of. But I like didn't really put two and two together that like this is a real language, and like people don't speak English, they don't they only speak French. And it was like, as like a 20, yeah, I think I was 19 or 20 when I went, I was like, this is crazy. Like, this is how the world works. Like looking back at it, I was like, oh my god, I was so naive, like, what an idiot. But it's like, if you don't know, you don't know. Um, so it was a very um overwhelming uh and humbling experience. I feel like my French got much, much better than it had been before because my host mother refused to speak English to me at all, which was great. Yeah, that's how it should be. Um, and she also had a little bit of a lisp.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

So you had to pay attention.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

Yes, exactly. I really had to pay attention. But yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

Oh, that's awesome. So um, and you know, you talked about it a little bit just now about Paris getting a bad rap. What was it do you think you took from that trip? What did you experience about Paris that you didn't know about before, or you maybe had heard about and you experienced differently?

SPEAKER_01 13:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

What are people saying about Paris right now that you think is wrong? Walk through what how you see Paris right now.

SPEAKER_02 13:20

Yeah, oh my god, this is amazing.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

In France, I think in France in general as well, not just Paris.

SPEAKER_02 13:25

Totally. Um, I feel like when I went to Paris for the first time, and this was in like 2011, so I'm aging myself a little bit here, but um, it was very different than what it is now. And by that, I actually think that Paris in many ways has changed for the better. Uh, and I think it will continue to change for the better. At the time, it was not very tourist-friendly. Uh, I I felt that at least. I felt like my family actually came to visit me. And before they visited me, I famously wrote them an email of what not to do so that we don't stick out.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

I need a copy of that, by the way. Please.

SPEAKER_02 14:03

Seriously, it was like, don't be too loud, don't wear bright colors, like it was like all kinds of crazy stuff, which I don't think is necessary, probably wasn't necessary then anyway, because we were all speaking English, so we were gonna stick out anyway. But um I don't think it's necessary to the same extent now because I feel like my last time in Paris earlier this year was um post-Paris Olympics. And I feel like in the time leading up to the Paris Olympics, there was really this cultural shift of tourists are our friends, they bring us money, they're not our enemies. Um, and when I was studying abroad in Paris, I felt like if I spoke English, just the world would end, you know, and it and it's crazy. And so most of what I did, and I think why my pronunciation is pretty good, is that I didn't want to stick out at all. And so I really like invested time into like my my ears and like understanding like how they form all the words and all of that stuff so that I wouldn't stick out and made sure to carry myself and dress myself like a French person while I was there, as best as possible, so that I didn't like cause any um attention or disruption. Um, and so this cultural shift, and I also think that the food scene in Paris has gotten amazing in the last decade or so and a half. Um, very different from what I remember when I studied there. There were still amazing Michelin star restaurants, but I was a student, so like I wasn't going to those places. Um, mostly I was eating like baguette and clémentine and some cheese.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

Which is not a bad meal.

SPEAKER_02 15:35

Which is not a bad meal for sure, but um, it felt like the places that I did go to for food at the time that were like classic French were kind of disappointing. And I feel like that's changed a lot because there is this um, you know, movement for the new bistro and um reinventing French food and um bringing local organic high-quality ingredients back to the table, quite literally. Um, and so I do feel there has been a massive shift, but Paris still gets a lot of hate on TikTok. Oh, okay. And I think it's because people like still have this vision of what Paris was at a at a point in time or what Paris should be. Like it should be perfect and clean, and um, you know, all the French people are gonna be nice to you, and it's fine if you know you only speak English and don't say bonjour or like, you know, merci, like nothing like that. And I think they're disappointed when they see like it's a functioning city, so there's garbage and there's rats, and there's you know, people who are hustling and bustling. I I compare Paris to New York a lot because I feel like the mentality is very similar. Like when people come, when I'm walking on the street and I have a place to be, if you're a tourist and you are asking me a question, I like am not here for you. Like it's just like I'm sorry, but like I have a place to be, and that's very much how the Parisians are. Um, and so I think people like are turned off by that, but I I find it so silly.

SPEAKER_00 17:03

So you know, but you mentioned people only speaking English and not saying bonjour. Merci. Um how have you experienced maybe friends that are visiting, or even in your experience, the difference and the shift of how you may be perceived or how you can experience the world in France or Paris specifically when you do give a little bit of effort to speak French.

SPEAKER_02 17:28

It's automatic, it's like immediate the the shift in tone, even now, even though I feel like again, like pre-Olympics, like Macon like had a thing to like all hospitality work because he was like, you guys, like we have to be nice. And so that changed. But even now, after that, I still feel the effects of it. And it's like, even when like my husband doesn't speak French really at all, he knows restaurant French, but I have like taught him that he needs to say like bonjour, merci, um, simple things like that. And when he comes up and like we'll start the conversation, bonjour, they're like, Oh my gosh, hi, you know, and then I'll continue the conversation in French, and then they're like, Where are you guys from? And we're like, we're American, and they're like, Wow, vous parlez très bien forcé and all this stuff, um, which is amazing because it's like it really makes a world of difference. Yeah, that's been your experience as well.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

It has been. And I was very similar to you, like when I was living in France, got to the point where I wanted them to at least be unsure about whether I was French or not, or maybe from somewhere. But I hate to say it, but like I did not want to be in that stereotypical American box.

SPEAKER_02 18:40

No, of course not.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Um, so I did everything that I could to try to make a push to again, you know, not be disruptive in that way and and try to do things the way that I saw other people there doing them and the way that they were living their lives, and the way that they were very quiet and respectful, and you know, moved very slowly and and and intentionally and not being kind of loud and boisterous and all over the place. So yeah, um, yeah, definitely experienced that as well, which is pretty cool. But I I try to tell people every time someone says, Oh, I hate parents parents, they're so mean, or I don't like French people. I I have had uh some of the most incredible experiences with French people.

SPEAKER_02 19:17

Oh, me too.

SPEAKER_00 19:18

And um I truly think about uh them as my family. Um but uh it changes a lot when when you meet them halfway, at least a little bit. Maybe not even halfway, but you you know you gotta show them that you're thinking about them. I always think about it as like, well, imagine if someone comes to New York and the first thing out of their mouth, they just start speaking Russian to you.

SPEAKER_02 19:39

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

And it's like, well, first of all, what do you what are you saying? What do you want? What you know? Like it just like kind of throws people off to assume that someone's gonna know what you're saying and that you you're the most important thing because they should be understanding what you're saying, and I don't know, it just like leads off the the whole interaction on the wrong foot.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

It does, yeah. And I actually had an experience like that recently. I was in Grand Central waiting for a friend uh on a Sunday morning, and there was this woman who I guess like she was she wanted to take a picture because Grand Central is beautiful. Um, and I was like in the way of her photo, but instead of saying like hello, sorry, or anything like that, and like pointing, she just like and I was like, I am sorry, I don't know what's going on. Like I was very put off, like I'm gonna help you, but also like what? And I looked over and I saw her friend like had her phone out and was like trying to adjust it, and I was like, you know, I get it, but also like a couple words just to like connect with somebody else makes a huge difference.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 20:42

So more good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:44

So what are you now working on with French Wine Tutor? I know you got a lot of different things. You got some series where you're doing some pronunciations. Um, one of my personal favorites is the short series that you've done with your husband. Uh he's the chef. She's a psalm. I do love that. Hope we can get some more of that in the future. Um but I know you're doing a couple of different videos. I also just saw that um you have a little collaboration right now with with Wine Enthusiast. Yeah. Which, and also please tell us uh Wine Enthusiast Future 40 award.

SPEAKER_02 21:15

Yeah, yeah, I won that one a few years ago. So that's awesome. Well, congratulations. I'm a little late for that. No, that's awesome. That's fine. I feel like it's always an honor for me because Wine Enthusiasts is great, and the people that they pick on that list, I'm I'm always like blown away by the talent, and I was very humbled to have become part of that list that year. So um, so yeah, so we um I think we'll always have kind of an ongoing um relationship with wine enthusiasts, which is fantastic. Um and we just finished a three part series on just like uh French wine pronunciations, and they basically, for the first one, we kind of like picked words at random, and then it did so well, and people asked so many questions that we were like, well, let's like keep doing this. So we did two more installments, um, and we We kind of took like uh questions from the people who commented on the first uh reel and then also who wrote to me after that. Um, and then the next two were kind of just like what people wanted to hear, which was great. Um, so if you do leave me a recommendation or a request for a pronunciation, I do get to it. It just sometimes it takes me a minute. So um, but yes, so that was that was fun with wine enthusiasts. Um, and I'm also working on a partnership with um the French Ministry of Agriculture's um kind of US arm called Taste France, where um we we did a French day trip outside of New York City, a French-themed day trip, um, in search of French food and wine. Um, and so we went to three different um French eating establishments, I would say. Um so we went to a French bakery, we went to a bistrot, and then we went to a creperie. Uh, and we interviewed the people who founded the business or who work there and who are French inspired or French, you know, derivative, I guess I could say. Um, and I also got to like work in a bakery, which is crazy.

SPEAKER_00 23:05

So you get to like make a baguette?

SPEAKER_02 23:07

It was terrifying. Yeah, I was like, ah, they move so fast. Like, it's insane. It's a tiny space. They move super fast. They they make like when they're like uh cutting the little air holes in the baguette and stuff, they have this tiny little razor and they just go and I'm like, ah, I'm gonna drop these baguettes all over the place. So yeah, it was a fun experience.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

Yeah, that sounds incredible. All right, so tell us about your baguette. How'd it go?

SPEAKER_02 23:31

God, okay. Well, first of all, a disclaimer I did not make the dough for the baguette. So I'm not responsible for the taste. Okay, go ahead. However, I'm like you'll see in the video because we tasted a couple of them. Mine was very misshapen because it's actually really hard to roll out a baguette. You have to like it, because you have to make the shape with the points at the end, and it's like very specific. And so you have to like start in the middle and you have to like go out, and then you have to like roll it up so that the point will stay. And I completely flub that. Like, that is not my calling. I'm gonna stick with the wine. I'll let the bakers uh stick with the bread, but I'll let the big one.

SPEAKER_00 24:12

But it's I mean, it's art street, right? Like it is a form of art.

SPEAKER_02 24:14

Yeah, oh a hundred percent. Yeah, no question in my mind. It's super precise, like most things in French pastry, French things in general. I feel it they have like a precision French gastronomy and stuff like that. Wine, obviously.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

Exactly. Perfect. Bring me right back around to wine. The art of wine. How have you experienced wine as as an art form? You know, like I'm guessing you've spent some time out with wineries and winemakers, and you know, what have you seen as you've kind of explored the world of wine of how this is very precise and calculated and scientific and also creative?

SPEAKER_02 24:47

Yeah, it is. It's like um it is kind of like a little bit of magic. Um, I try to go to at least one new to me French wine region every year. I haven't visited all the French wine regions, but I'm working my way through them. I have a few left um to get to. But I feel like it's very like controllable and uncontrollable at the same time. And I I think that's the beauty of like what a good winemaker knows is that like there's only so much you can control, like mother nature and um chemistry and the way that the environment naturally is. Uh, but then you can also make important choices um that inform the way a wine ends up. And it's the combination of those two that feels like an art because if you don't understand nature and the cycle of nature and your you know using chemicals versus like organic or biodynamic where you're really listening to the earth and like God, this sounds so frou-frou. Listen to the sound like Pocahontas. I'm like, listen to the colors of the wind over here. But um, but um, but no, I feel like it's true. Like people um talk about like wine as this like expensive luxury, like high-end product, and it is, but it's also an agricultural product first. And I think good winemakers understand that, and that it's a luxury product in the sense that like humans don't need it to survive, right? But it doesn't always have to cost $500 plus a bottle. Like, I don't know how much this bottle costs, but I would imagine that it's not a hundred dollars either.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

No, not even. I think this was when I purchased it in France, might have been maybe 25 euros. Yeah. Maybe.

SPEAKER_02 26:35

That sounds about right.

SPEAKER_00 26:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

Well, I'm gonna argue the fact that we do need wine to survive.

SPEAKER_02 26:41

We but well, especially now.

SPEAKER_00 26:43

Totally understand.

SPEAKER_02 26:45

But yes, but it's not like I mean, one of the winemakers that I visited um in Alsace, uh, Alsace just kind of went through uh an interesting, I won't I won't say revolution, but I will say like a lot of changes. French wine is very dynamic. People don't think that about French wine, they think it's like always the same and doesn't change and all this stuff. But there's like a big conversation right now going on about climate change and how they can change their processes and what's permitted and what's not permitted to allow for the industry to continue as it is. Um, and I was in Alsace a few years ago, and at the time it was on the ballot as to whether they were going to allow the um winemakers to irrigate the crops because traditionally in France uh you're not allowed to irrigate if you want to keep the AOC. There are some exceptions because it's France, so there's always exceptions, just like the language. There's always exceptions. So you can't say it's always like this because that's never the case. But um, and so they voted to allow it. Um, and I spoke to one winemaker about it, and he told me he was like, I first of all, most of the like quality producers never want to do that because they feel it dilutes the quality of the wine in general. It makes the grapes uh they the vine doesn't have to suffer as much, and so the grapes become um like more uh juicy and it dilutes the flavor, it doesn't uh give you as concentrated of a wine. Um, but he said, I'm ethically opposed to it because it would mean that I would be taking water away from humans or animals. Interesting, or the crops that we need to feed ourselves and keep ourselves alive, or our drinking water. Whereas, like I love wine and I love making wine, um, he said, and it's obviously a huge part of my livelihood, but I will not put it above the importance of a human being's life. And I thought that was a really profound way of looking at it because in America there is like basically no debate. Like everybody kind of irrigates or talks about or is open to irrigating. Not everybody, again, there are exceptions, but um, it's just a very different cultural approach. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:49

So totally. And so tell us a little bit about some of these wine regions that you have on your radar to visit. Um, you said you like to go to new ones to you, you know, as often as you can. What are some that are on your radar or that you haven't been that you're excited to visit?

SPEAKER_02 29:05

Yeah. Um so I haven't been to Corsica.

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 29:09

It's very high on my list because my husband and I love hiking as well. And apparently there's some amazing like hiking adventure type sport in um Corsica Corsica. Um, I went to the Sudwest many years ago, before I was into wine when I was living in Nantes. Uh, and I did not do any wineries, but I loved the region. Fell in love with like majestic is the best way I can do it it's just like it's so incredibly beautiful. Um and the Languedoc uh Rue Sillon, I had never been to either. Um, or Jura and Savoie.

SPEAKER_00 29:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 29:44

So I know, I know, I gotta get going. It's her face, you're like, she's got like a link. Listen, I got a lot of places to go too, but that's great.

SPEAKER_00 29:51

Yeah, it's good that you got them identified. Yeah, that's really cool.

SPEAKER_02 29:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Um tell us what you think about the wine.

SPEAKER_02 29:57

I think it's lovely. Um, you said it was a mix of tanks and assemblage.

SPEAKER_00 30:04

Assemblage. A blend.

SPEAKER_02 30:09

Alright, and ferved. We say um local to the region. The origin is it is the sudden west. And um, it's for that he made a ferved on the vin rouge. And it's a sapage that is very uh fonc, I think, on robe and color. Um, but not so. Uh fruit, it's plenty um uh it was the fruit.

SPEAKER_00 31:08

Y'all got that? Y'all got that? All right, we'll we'll we'll throw some.

SPEAKER_02 31:12

We'll keep speaking in French and then. The internet will be like, wow, but also you mess that up. It happens to me all the time. I know. I'm like, dang it. All right, fine. Well then I'll never do it again. Um bye. I know. I really I actually should do more of that because it's hard in the US to keep your French, as I'm sure you know.

SPEAKER_00 31:34

There's not a lot of people out there that that are French speakers. Yeah, um, and then obviously it's challenging when you're in the US, even if you are around other people that speak French, like why are we gonna get together in Carborough, North Carolina and speak French?

SPEAKER_02 31:48

You could, you could have a little French. I mean, you do work at the school now, so you could have a little French dejeuner and you can all go in with the French majors, and it's not a bad idea. I mean, I'm just saying you heard it here first.

SPEAKER_00 32:02

So, Katie, earlier today we had a chance to talk a little bit over brunch. Um, you know, one of the things that we both love about wine and why we were actually sitting here today is because we both have experienced the way that wine can bring people together and the connections that can be formed through wine. Will you tell us a little bit about some of the most interesting, maybe even the most impactful, um, you know, kind of connections that that have been made through wine for you and your life?

SPEAKER_02 32:31

Wow, that is a deep question.

SPEAKER_00 32:35

That's why we are here. Um, a little more wine.

SPEAKER_02 32:37

I know, yes, please. Um gosh, some of those meaningful conversations.

SPEAKER_00 32:43

Or or just interesting people that you've met, you know? I've got some really interesting people for you know what you're doing on the on the business side of things, or just having traveled to France and you know, being at a winery and having met a cool winemaker or even another a fellow traveler, or just anything that you can tie back to an experience with wine.

SPEAKER_02 33:02

Yeah, I would say um, well, I had this amazing experience um earlier this year. I booked a last-minute flight uh to go to Pomos. And um one of the wineries that I visited, and I will preface this by saying that, you know, my my ethos is that as I was saying earlier, not every wine is $500. And I I really have a heart for small producers and the little guy. Um, and so that was kind of my goal when I went to Pomons. I really wanted to not focus on the big brands because Pomons has really come that way, and everything is about Lamarque and all of these things. Um, and so I focused on two smaller appellations, um, one of which is called Palette. And I went to Palette and I toured this place called Chateau de Trois Sautes.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 34:00

It is, uh you won't be able to find it over here, which is unfortunate. They are one of the newest producers in this region. Um, but I I try to book all my um wine tastings in French because number one, I need to practice and keep it up. And number two, I like to hear producers express themselves in their native language. Even if I don't understand every single word or every single expression, I feel like I get to learn more about the wine um in that context, and they're more comfortable. Um, so I booked this tour, and the thing about this specific chateau is that they started off as a goat cheese farm. So they didn't start off uh making French wine, and that came a little bit later, uh, very recently, in fact. And so they still have this troupe of like a hundred or so female goats that are still on the property, and they take them out every morning to like graze effectively in the mountain range, and they have like a shepherdess or a goatess, I don't know, I don't know why you would say, who like literally shepherds them, and they have like working field dogs that like are with these goats all day. Um, and so when I booked the tour, um, unfortunately the goats were not there. Um, but I did the tour in French with this group of uh Quebecis girls who were like randomly in France at the same time. And we like were so obsessed with the goats, and we did this like goat cheese tasting with the wines afterward. Um and it was just amazing. It was like one of those things where it's like a very, it's a very small, family-owned, they really only have a handful of hectares. Um, and they're just so passionate about like animal ethics, and like these goats like basically live this like luxury lifestyle. They have like this amazing like place that they have like star stabled in, I guess. I'm sorry if you're like a goat farmer watching this and you're like, this woman is using the wrong terms because I'm not a goat influencer.

SPEAKER_01 35:51

I don't know if we're gonna have any goat farmers watching the show, but you never know.

SPEAKER_02 35:55

Never know. Um and so no, and they live, I mean, they they like graze off the mountainside and they like get to like stay with their mom. And like, you know, um, they're they're handled by people with love and care from a young age, and they actually get to grow their horns out completely, which is crazy because it's like you'd like never see that. And it was this interesting like mix of like kind of like back to the old times where you know uh winemakers were not just winemakers, it was not a monoculture, like especially in France. Like, if a farmer wanted to survive, he had to have or she had to have multiple crops at once. So, and I think that was true in the US as well. So you had like a dairy or you had a um goat cheese farm or you had like olive trees or like blueberries that you made jam from, or like all of these different uh, you know, eggs uh from hens and all this stuff. Um, and so it just felt like I had stepped into this time capsule where these people are like, but like still very modern at the same time, um, where it it was just really special. It was a very special, like authentic, rustic um experience.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

I absolutely love that.

SPEAKER_02 37:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:03

We've been having so many conversations recently in this kind of world of wine about stories over scores. You know, we get so caught up in the score and who said that this wine is great, etc. etc. But like I want some wine where there's goats on property, right? And like the the story about the connection with that you make with the winemaker and being there and what your experience was like, to me, that speaks so much louder than what someone says that this wine is worth with a score.

SPEAKER_02 37:34

Fully. Yeah, and it's I do feel like in a sense we're moving away from scores. Um, but like I I actually started my one of my biggest projects for this year has actually been reviewing all the French wines that I drink. So every month I do kind of like a roundup blog post and I go through and I share my unfettered opinion um about it. And it's been interesting to go through that because a lot of times for me, I'm not tasting it as like a a straight critic would, where they're in, you know, like a room, maybe around like this, and they're all sitting around a dining room and they're tasting it blind, and then they write down their immediate impressions and then they spit it out and they move to the next one. For me, wine is about the experience that you have. So, very similar to why you launched this podcast of wine with friends, is like, I think this wine is so much better than I might think it would have been if I was sitting at a table drinking it without any context, because we're having this great conversation. And that fully for me changes the experience that I have with the wine. Did I have it with food? Was it good with the food or was it bad with the food? Is it a wine that's great with food or not? Like, not all wines are. Is it better to have it by itself? You know, like an anniversary bottle, or like my husband and I saved a handful of bottles from our wedding that we're like slowly working through for like big milestones. And those wines are always gonna taste great to me because they're from our wedding. Um, so it's been really interesting because I try to be like somewhat quantitative. Like I do have a scoring system, but at the same time, I'm like fully aware that like my emotions and my experience of the wine makes it less unbiased than if I were just tasting it blind in a room. Yeah. Um, but it's interesting that you mentioned that about scores because I do feel like I don't have the same taste as somebody like Robert Parker. I just don't. I'm not into big Napa caps. Right. I'm never gonna be into that. And everybody has their own palate. And so, like, he would rank like a hundred points for Screaming Eagle, and I would have a glass of that wine and I would not enjoy it. And that's fine. It's not, but I think for for people who are just getting into wine, they're like, well, if I don't like it, then I must not like wine. And that's not true at all. Like, what what else have you tried? Like, have you tried prosecco? Do you like champagne or do you like things that are not bubbly? Like, I famously went through a phase where I didn't like any sparkling wine at all.

unknown 40:08

No.

SPEAKER_02 40:09

Your face. Most people have this uh reaction. Don't you dare say that. I know, I know, it's like so mean because they're such good cremol, and uh, I'm getting into it now, but for the longest time, like I just couldn't do it. Like, I didn't grow up with anything carbonated, I didn't drink soda, I didn't drink uh sparkling water, like nothing. And so I had like no taste buds or like reference for it, and so it took me a long time to really get into it and appreciate the texture of what it is. Um so yeah, I hope people stop looking at scores. Great.

SPEAKER_00 40:43

No, I agree. All right, Katie, this bottle here. Yes. If you had to share this specific bottle of wine with anyone, past or present, who would it be and why?

SPEAKER_02 40:55

Um, so I mentioned this earlier, but I I have been to the Sudwest, the region where this is from. I went uh when I was living in Nantes, uh, and I would want to share it with the um person that I went to the Sudwest with again. She was wonderful, and um, we're still we're still good friends.

SPEAKER_00 41:14

That's great. That's awesome. Um what what was it like that trip to the Sudwest?

SPEAKER_02 41:19

Oh my god, it was magical. Um, have you been?

SPEAKER_00 41:22

Not no, not really. I mean, well, tell me where where it is add it to your list. Well, tell me where you were in Sudwest. I mean, I've been on the coast in the in the southwest, but not like inland. Inland, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:37

Yeah, we were pretty much in the wine region. I really don't know why we didn't go.

SPEAKER_00 41:42

You know, because I was in the Biarritz.

SPEAKER_02 41:44

Okay, yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:46

Saint Jean de Lutz. Yeah, okay, nice. Um, kind of going down towards San Sebastian, so yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:50

I've been there too. Um, but this was more inland, so going east of Bordeaux. Um, so we did go to Gascogny, um Roca Madur. Okay, which is insane. It's like this medieval hill that is a medieval village that is built out of and into a hillside. Interesting. And so you like the landscapes in the Sudwest are ridiculous. It literally looks like it came from a storybook, and I remember having that experience at the time because it was my second time living in France, and I was working, so I had a little bit more disposable income than I did the first time when I was a student, and so I was able to travel a lot more. And I was blown away by just the magnificence of the landscapes that were there, and how kind the people were and how delicious the food was. Um, that is like duck country. So you have to eat duck. That is where like foie gras is like the specialty, it's on everything. So is this gonna sound weird, but garlic soup.

SPEAKER_00 42:57

I'm here for it.

SPEAKER_02 42:58

It is a specialty, and they basically just puree garlic into a soup. Oh wow, it's so delicious and like warming. We went in like November, so it was chilly, so you need something that's gonna like warm you up from the inside. Um, but this this wine reminds me um of that trip, and it would have been a perfect wine to pair. And I'm sure we drank many wines that were similar to this at the time. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:21

Well, Katie, thank you so much for spending some time with us here in North Carolina. We really appreciate having you on the show. Thank you for sharing your passion, sharing your knowledge, um, and and and being an influencer in the sense that you know you're doing it with integrity, with intentionality, um, and and as your authentic self. Um really appreciate it, and thank you for for highlighting all the lovely things that that wine can do, all the great experiences that we can have. Um, let me share one.

SPEAKER_02 43:49

Yeah, well, personality, serious.