Introduction
Why are orange wines appealing to beer drinkers? Why does it pay to be promiscuous when shopping for wine? Why is there so much confusion around natural and raw wine?
In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I’m being interviewed by Elizabeth Schneider on the Wine For Normal People podcast.
You can find the wines we discussed here.
Highlights
- Why is there so much confusion around natural and raw wine?
- What is the natural wine movement about?
- What makes a good celebrity wine?
- What’s the problem with diet and alcohol-free wines?
- How is global warming affecting the wine world?
- Are prominent wine regions taking proactive steps to mitigate the effects of climate change?
- What makes orange wines great for beer drinkers?
- How has the wine industry evolved from celebrity-type critics to wine influencers and beyond?
- What do you need to know about finding a good bottle of wine?
- Is the wine industry dying?
- Why do Elizabeth and I love a good wine in a box?
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About Elizabeth Schneider
After graduating from Wesleyan University (CT) and starting my career in Boston, Elizabeth quickly realized that her heart was more in her hobby than in her high-tech job. Trips to the wine shop often yielded awesomely poor (but hilarious) results, so Elizabeth and her sister finally took a course at the Boston Center for Adult Education to learn how to taste and appreciate wine. And that kicked it all off.
A stint in St. John in the Caribbean to wait tables and just unwind for 8 months (yes, she quit my high-tech corporate job, packed two bags, and hopped on a plane), was followed by a great two years completing my MBA at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (where she met M.C. Ice, her podcast partner, and husband) and since then her career has been solely about wine.
Resources
- Connect with Elizabeth Schneider
- Unreserved Wine Talk | Episode 51: Wine for Normal People with Elizabeth Schneider
- My Books:
- Unreserved Wine Talk | Episode 60: Mark Oldman: The Wine World’s Greatest Showman
- My new class The 5 Wine & Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner And How To Fix Them Forever
Join me on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube Live Video
Join me on Instagram Live Video, Facebook Live Video or YouTube Live Video every Wednesday at 7 pm eastern for a casual wine chat.
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Tag Me on Social
Tag me on social media if you enjoyed the episode:
- @nataliemaclean and @natdecants on Facebook
- @nataliemaclean on Twitter
- @nataliemacleanwine on Instagram
- @nataliemaclean on LinkedIn
- Email Me at [email protected]
Thirsty for more?
- Sign up for my free online wine video class where I’ll walk you through The 5 Wine & Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner (and how to fix them forever!)
- You’ll find my books here, including Unquenchable: A Tipsy Quest for the World’s Best Bargain Wines and Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass.
- The new audio edition of Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass is now available on Amazon.ca, Amazon.com and other country-specific Amazon sites; iTunes.ca, iTunes.com and other country-specific iTunes sites; Audible.ca and Audible.com.
Transcript
Natalie MacLean 0:00
Some of the best celebrity wines are those that don’t even have the celebrity’s name on the bottle like Jon Bon Jovi’s Hampton water Miravalle Brangelina brown Angelina pink her two wolves wine in California. She kept it a secret pink as trained multiple enology courses helps make the wine. And you’d never know it from looking at the label front or back. She’s nowhere to be seen. It doesn’t make it more authentic. But I think there’s an approach a mindset there. That’s saying I’m setting out to make good wine, not just a product line extension, you know, along with my golf set and my oven mitts or whatever.
Natalie MacLean 0:47
Do you have a thirst to learn about wine, the love stories about wonderfully obsessive people, hauntingly beautiful places and amusingly awkward social situations. That’s the blend here on the unreserved wine talk podcast. I’m your host, Natalie MacLean. And each week, I share with you unfiltered conversations with celebrities in the wine world, as well as confessions from my own tipsy journey as I write my third book on this subject. I’m so glad you’re here. Now pass me that bottle please. And let’s get started. Welcome to Episode 149. Why are orange wines in particular appealing to beer drinkers? Why does it pay to be promiscuous when shopping for wine? And why is there so much confusion around natural and Rob wine. You’ll get those answers and more wine tips in part two of my chat with Elizabeth Snyder host of the wine for normal people podcast. If you missed the first part last week, no worries, you can still listen to this one now. But go back and take a listen afterwards as it was lots of fun. In the shownotes you’ll find a full transcript of our conversation, links to both of my books, and how you can join me in a free online wine and food pairing class plus where you can find me on zoom, Insta Facebook and YouTube Live video every Wednesday at 7pm. That’s all in the show notes at Natalie MacLean comm forward slash 149. Now on a personal note before we dive into the show, so I’m watching Season Two of the morning show with the delightful Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, I just love watching these two veteran professional women anchor the show, with all their flaws and ambition. Reese is actually my favourite because she still has that sort of underlying vulnerability that I’m really drawn to in humans. Now, which wine to pair with the next episode? I think a strong full bodied wine that doesn’t have a bitter finish. Like Mr. Roni, what would you pair with it? Let me know. Okay, on with the show.
Elizabeth Schneider 3:16
We’re gonna spend the next part of this podcast talking about the wine industry, and what is going on? And we’re just going to talk about these subjects that are always up for grabs, and people are wondering about them. So number one, Natalie, for $100.
Natalie MacLean 3:38
Alright, ready,
Elizabeth Schneider 3:40
then natural wine movement, clean wine, raw wine. Whatever wine. You talk about a first I’ll chime in after Sure.
Natalie MacLean 3:51
So I think when it comes to natural and raw wine, I think the terms are sometimes used interchangeably there. There’s a lot of confusion. There’s just little or no definition. Sometimes they’re used as marketing crutches. So there’s just baseline, there’s a lot of confusion, not a lot of regulation or anything clear cut for consumers. I think the good thing about some of these movements is that it’s great if encourages winemakers to let the land express itself and be guardians of the earth and get consumers looking for winemakers who make wines like that. I know personally, I love drinking, unfiltered wines, biodynamic and so on. But I think especially natural raw wines have become fetishized in some areas like cults or religions. It’s almost like the debate over vinyl records versus digital, which is the truest best sound and all the rest of it and it just, you know, I’ve tasted some natural raw wines that were just absolutely horrible. You know, so
Elizabeth Schneider 4:50
Well, I think that they’re confused these people in the natural wine movement. There’s farming farming is one thing. I don’t consider a normal Organic or biodynamic wine to necessarily be a natural wine because when I think about natural wine, I think about the winemaking part of it. And that’s when I don’t want any of that wine usually, unfiltered. Right? There’s a lot of unfiltered wines. But I’m talking about people who are not actively pursuing the winemaking process. They’re kind of taking it and then saying we’re just gonna let the grapes do what they want. Those are not wines that have been shepherded through the winemaking process. I think those don’t necessarily taste good. They have a lot of flaws. That’s where I have a problem, but I don’t understand what the natural wine movement is. Because are they talking about farming, then I’m totally with them. Are they talking about this process of making these wines that are flawed? I don’t know. Right?
Natalie MacLean 5:46
Right. Or even are they talking about just philosophy, philosophical approach to life and winemaking? For me, natural line and there are experts who can correct this and they probably will when they listen to this podcast, but they don’t listen to this podcast. Oh, okay. We’re safe good. It’s on a spectrum. So as you mentioned, you have organic and biodynamic winemaking, which is just trying to avoid pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, all the rest of it, but then it can continue I think with natural wine the simplest definition I’ve seen is nothing is added to or taken away from wine but I don’t know that that seems like a Yeah, risky. I mean sulfites are a wines friend just stability shelf stability, of course we don’t want to over sulphur anything but unless you have the privilege of living closely to a winery that produces these things you might be in for something that’s really funky and weird, not to your taste and and i don’t know celebrating flaws, like they’re good things. I don’t know, like, you know, especially for the average consumer,
Elizabeth Schneider 6:54
I will admit I like in a burgundy like a tiny bit of Britannia. Maya sees that farmyard thing. I do like a little bit of that. But when we go too far, in any wine, it gets to be kinda whatever. So this goes into clean wine and celebrity wine, where now all of a sudden you have who was a camera and camera. Yes. Oh my gosh, that was just a train wreck. But there’s still people buying this wine. Now there’s some celebrities, Kyle McLaughlin who flies under the radar. And he’s got some good wines. There’s some other people that are making decent wines, who are celebrities. But here’s something funny. I heard Drew Barrymore on a podcast saying she doesn’t really drink. And now she has a wine, right? Sure What?
Natalie MacLean 7:40
It’s a marketing plates and marketing plays a brand extension. Again, we’re in sync here. I think some of the best celebrity wines are those that don’t even have the celebrities name on the bottle and I’m not trying to be a purist here. But when I think about like Jon Bon Jovi’s Hampton water Miravalle Brangelina brown Angelina, formerly pink, her two wolves, wine and California, I mean, you wouldn’t even know and she kept it a secret pink as trained multiple enology courses helps make the wine and you’d never know it from looking at the label front or back she’s nowhere to be seen. It doesn’t make it more authentic but I think there’s a motivation and an approach a mindset there. That’s saying I’m setting out to make good wine, not just a product line extension, you know, along with my golf set and my oven mitts or whatever.
Elizabeth Schneider 8:34
It’s so the George Foreman Grill. No, I agree with you because I think the most serious known wine like the biggest one is Miravalle that would be the best example because they contracted with the parent family. Brad Pitt is a serious wine lover. But it is true when these celebrities are like okay, well like here’s my wine and then to not take the courses and not know what you’re doing and then to talk about clean this and that not go Yeah, I don’t think so. Well, the clean lines
Natalie MacLean 9:02
are a whole other category of of mess. Whether it’s camera deals or not, but I think they can be downright misleading. Like some people are treating clean wines, like their self care that they are definitely healthier for you. I just want to say Don’t be an idiot if you are trying to get healthy. Stop drinking so much wine or stop drinking wine like right being wines are not good for you. moderation is good for you.
Elizabeth Schneider 9:29
Right? And that’s the other thing the diet wines, right? The low calorie I mean wine is not that caloric. You drink an entire bottle of wine, and it’s less than a burrito from AAA. You know what I mean? It’s an entire bottle of wine is like 650 calories or something like that. It’s 120 calories a glass. It’s not that bad. either do it or don’t do it. Okay, now my question for you is alcohol free or no low wines, no or no alcohol wines. Obviously the wines of Germany and cooler climates are going to have naturally lower alcohol levels because the grapes are less ripe or there’s sugar in the wine. But what do you think about these alcohol free erielle and free and bla bla
Natalie MacLean 10:09
bla, okay, so again, one little caveat there good for those who don’t want to drink or designated drivers or can’t drink whatever. So great. I’m glad there’s a product that looks like you’re having wine, if that’s what you want socially can be poured in a wine glass, but alcohol is the scaffolding that holds wine together right here is flavour. It adds body it’s like it’s unnatural to take alcohol out of wine. It is a less natural wine, especially when you get into spinning cones and all kinds of other things. To your point I love naturally low wines, German Riesling, there’s a winery in New Zealand I think it’s called the doctors and his Sauvignon Blanc is like eight 9% and what he’s done is left the canopy on like the leaves on the vines so that there’s not as much sun getting through to ripen the grapes because if ripening grapes, more sugar, more sugar, more alcohol to direct math equation. So I love those natural methods because the flavours will develop. But you know, when it comes to light wine, alcohol, free wine and all the rest of it, if people again are looking for something that has the flavour, they’re not going to get it if they’re just going for fewer calories. Sometimes they don’t even realise calories come from both alcohol and sugar. So sometimes you can get this low alcohol why but what they’ve done is just trade it off for more sugar and you’re actually not saving on calories. We
Elizabeth Schneider 11:31
had a conversation about this on my Patreon page about the no and low alcohol wines. And it’s like wine is not a good product to do no alcohol with because of your exactly excellent point about the scaffolding. spirits are way better to do this with because there’s already so much sugar in mixed drinks. And there’s so much more alcohol and spirits that you can replace it with sugar or some sort of sugared like product and that will satisfy in a way right if you’re not looking for the buzz to it works for spirits that does not work for wine in my opinion
Natalie MacLean 12:06
at all. And then consumers come across to the wine category expecting they’re going to get the same taste experience because they did with their spirits. And they’re not and and you know Elizabeth, like when I taste a wine that’s 14% alcohol versus 13 versus even 12. There’s a huge difference in order my body and the taste 1% makes a huge difference. So
Elizabeth Schneider 12:28
sometimes if a winemaker is very good, it can be high alcohol and the balance is there as you can’t taste it. But many times you’re right, you can absolutely taste the heat, begin heat climate change in various places. What do you think is going to happen here? I mean, is Canada or future for big Cabernet?
Natalie MacLean 12:50
Come in, move up? Join us?
Elizabeth Schneider 12:52
You know, I looked into it at one point, and it’s so expensive. There’s just no way you I’ll make it very hard for Americans to come up there.
Natalie MacLean 13:01
Sorry about that you don’t want. We do we do. You know, I heard an expression, it’s not so much global warming as global weirding. We’re getting these extreme weather events. So even apart from the wildfires, which are crazy are getting these extremely high temperatures, or hail when we shouldn’t when the spring budbreak is so critical for the vines or Frost’s that come out of nowhere. So in terms of what’s happening, I do see a move northward. Like what is it viable range of wine growing is just as they’re starting to make wine in Scotland. So yeah, sure, Canada, but they see, for example, their major wind region is the last 30 miles of the Sonoran Desert, it is blazing hot, they’re already in the wildfires are affecting them as well as the western coast of the United States. So I guess I don’t know I have to move up, way up. I don’t know what’s gonna happen. But there’s gonna be lots of changes to wind styles, the kind of grapes that work the variety. I wonder if that’ll suffer, but but certainly prices, I think there’ll be an impact on prices going up.
Elizabeth Schneider 14:07
My concern, and I’ve been saying this for a long time is in a place like Napa where they’re so concerned with economics, that they’re not taking the proper steps that they need to to make the change before the stuff really hits the fan. It’s concerning, because you see in Bordeaux, they’re already they’re planning a lot for what’s going to happen. They’ve had a lot of foresight there, but I don’t see that kind of proactive behaviour. Especially Napa and somewhat Sonoma, it worries me for us wine, but I haven’t been there in a really long time. And when I did go to BC and people who have listened this podcast, I actually got the most hate mail I’ve ever gotten from a podcast from when I did the BC episode.
Natalie MacLean 14:49
Surely it couldn’t have come from Canadians came from Canada. To be nice. I know I was. I was shocked when they doing
Elizabeth Schneider 14:57
that, but look, I went on a trip. That was For the wines of BC, and they sent me to a lot of wineries that were not very serious wineries, I would say, and you know, unless you go to some of the selected cherry picked areas in Oliver and suelos, you’re not going to get always the best stuff and some of your tourist wine. But I do think I need to go back there because I think there’s changes and I think it’s getting better. What about orange wines? And then you and I were talking about this blue eyes. What on earth that came out of Portugal, right? or Spain couple years ago? Yeah,
Natalie MacLean 15:34
it was Spain first and then there was a bin to go from France. Wink wink, there’s even now purple wine Elizabeth out of Australia. It’s just
Elizabeth Schneider 15:44
wine isn’t purple from Australia already. I mean, isn’t it already purple because of all the extraction.
Natalie MacLean 15:50
This is dyed purple with botanicals and weird stuff. And anyway, Lord, but what gets me is they’re marketing it to as more healthful drink because they’re avoiding additives, but they’re adding this purple botanicals anyway. But orange wines. Of course, what’s old is new. That’s one of the most ancient styles of winemaking, as we know, it goes back to Georgia, the country not the state 1000s of years ago, and so it’s all coming back again, like long lapels, I don’t know. But it’s bell bottoms. Yeah, exactly. So you know, I haven’t tasted 1000s of orange wines, but of the ones I’ve tasted, I’d kind of like 5050, maybe in terms of the ones that I like, and they can be something more unusual for your palate. Even though I grew up with beer and whiskey, I didn’t drink because I found it all bitter, because later I found out I was a super taster and very extreme sensitivity to bitterness. But with orange wines, you get sort of that hybrid I find it can be a beer drinkers wine, like some of them tastes like IPA ales or something. probably say get around, but that nice, bitter, that sort of tea, herbs. So I like some of them. And I like the ones that are trying to offer something authentically to use an overused word. And not just some marketing hook. Hey, it’s orange. Yeah, the big
Elizabeth Schneider 17:08
trend behind it is sort of died out. I think natural wine is about to see that too, because the definitions are dicey. And I think orange wine might be a little dicey, too, because all it is, is skin contact wine. Right? So the thing that they forgot to tell people is that a lot of white wine has skin contact, they have a couple hours of skin contact or something like a diverse demeanour, how else you’re going to get those flavours then from the skins. So for things that are light amounts of skin contact, I think that adds especially Pinot Grigio because you need that. But then these extreme versions, again, it goes back into that the orange wine, natural wine stuff is tied together somewhat and then they just go, everybody’s got to go to this extreme thing. And then I think the real thing that kills me and this goes to our next topic, which is the wine critics influencers thing, someone tells somebody that this is the wine, you have to drink, and everything else is crap. And then because we’ve done this horrible thing, and the wine industry, which is undermined everyone’s confidence that they know what they’re talking about that then people are like, Yeah, what you said, or it just becomes something like you feel that you should like it, or maybe you do like it. But then you decide that that’s the thing you like, and you’re like anything else, which is really limited? Sure,
Natalie MacLean 18:31
sure. Sure. Sure. So I think again, we’ve seen lots of pendulum swings from the heyday of Robert Parker, the US critic who is just sort of really popularised the 100 point scale score lines. I talked to him on the phone. Not in person. He was nice. Yeah, it’s one of his very factual he was a lawyer by training. So he had a sharp mind and was very blunt, but not rude. Like just very to the point Boom, boom, boom. And so you had the rise of single critics single name, then you had panel tastings and so on, and then you get the swing to everybody’s a critic, starting with, again, the bloggers and now we’ve moved to the influencers. And you know, what is a critic who should you trust and so on, and then into that blend with added again, I think misogyny because a lot of the wine influencers tend to be women taking beautiful pictures, and then they get chased for not knowing wine. But I think, you know, I step back and look at all of this, because it’s kind of a tangle as well. But I think the more voices the better, especially if we can bring people to the category because you know, wine is under attack from hard seltzers, which we can also talk about, but I guess it’s just a matter of what is your taste to find someone you trust, who recommends Why is it make you happy, and whether you get that from a pretty picture on Instagram or a score from Robert Parker back in the day, that’s fine.
Elizabeth Schneider 19:57
That’s definitely true, but the thing that I hear from people is, in some ways, this shelf talker and the number was so much easier. And now, who do you trust? And what do you do? You do review wines. And that is incredibly helpful. I don’t do that it’s too much for me to handle. And it’s not my passion. So I can recommend a wine, I generally recommend regions and that exploring them. But it’s hard when you’re at the shelf level to decide. And then we all know it’s been like the emperor has no clothes that some of the stuffs been exposed, we know that some of this stuff is paid for play, we know that some of it is you line up 50 bottles of Cabernet, what is the 50th one get at the end doesn’t get a whole lot of attention, right? Plus, if you went to school, and there was no fine gradation between what a C was and what an A was, where we are, right, there’s no it is nobody gives out CDs, no CDs, you know, if you don’t 90 point, if you have 100 point scale, it’s meaningless because the first 85 numbers are not given. They’re not
Natalie MacLean 21:05
relevant. And there’s two sides to that. So any liquor store is going to try to sell everyone they like. So what they do is they go shopping for scores and find the highest scores. And not all consumers are aware that just because it says 98 from so and so may not mean much sometimes. Yeah, I’m
Elizabeth Schneider 21:22
somebody’s cat, frankly, is what I’m trying to say. Like my dog. Ellie says that that wide is awesome. You can find a score from anything, there are a little score anything well, and it doesn’t matter. You look at the names and you’re like, wow, that’s interesting. I’ve never heard that. That’s because it’s like the owners cat.
Natalie MacLean 21:40
Yeah. So consumers what what happens? They learn not to trust scores, I don’t know, like, and then you think well, is it such a big deal? It’s a bottle of Shiraz. But we all work so hard at different jobs. I’m not just talking about what we do is why writers, but everyone works hard these days. And why? For those times when you can relax, whether it’s with family over dinner, whatever, with a good bottle. So I do think it’s important that consumers can trust some guidance. Yeah, it’s not, you know, you don’t lose your investment portfolio from bad advice. But I mean, what’s the point, if you can’t have pleasure in life, and trust, some advice to get that pleasure?
Elizabeth Schneider 22:20
If they can’t find a review from you, which they should go on Natalie MacLean calm and look, thank you. If they can’t then go to a wine store, where you have found that they usually have good wines that you Yes. And don’t be monogamous. Don’t ever just pick one wine shop. That’s the worst idea possible, because then you get stuck into their palette. But there’s lots of different places. But I think that’s where we’re moving. We’re moving towards who’s got a taste? And who’s going to push you out of your comfort zone. And I think that matters, I think selection matters to his
Natalie MacLean 22:57
stuff. Exactly. So we’re going full circle, again, to pre Robert Parker, how do people make decisions, they talk to their local merchant, or else a friend recommended a bottle there was less invested in trust in scores and so on. So is that a bad thing? No, it’s probably a good thing, because then there’s at least a conversation beyond a number. Because people will look and say, Oh, 94 for this Beaujolais, but they hate light wines. So that 94 should be meaningless. But you don’t know that if you don’t know what wine style that is, you just see the 94 must be good. Who I don’t like it. I guess these numbers don’t mean anything.
Elizabeth Schneider 23:33
So I had this big wine store. That was great for me, because I think if you didn’t know what you were doing, the staff was there was only one guy that really knew what he was doing. And I think you really get lost in there. But there was a guy, I remember one day going in there. And he had the Wine Spectator top 100 with a shopping cart, and he’s just going through being like, he got this one, you got this one. I was like, Oh my gosh, is a disaster. Why? And that shop certainly wasn’t going to be able to help him. They’re just looking for the wines, they’re not going to be able to guide him or ask him what he wants, because they didn’t know. So I I like this personal. I think that’s a good thing. Frankly, I think it’s I did learn about wines from people like us, and then get guided and then go find the places that sell the good stuff. The good version.
Natalie MacLean 24:19
Absolutely. I think wine and books are very similar and that they’re long tail categories. There’s just 1000s, hundreds of 1000s of choices. And in the early days, when someone wrote a book, they would go around to these small little groups and do book readings and now we’re into zoom and massive everything, but I think it’s going to return both wine and books to the very personal small acolytes and trust. Yeah, do you think that would be a good thing?
Elizabeth Schneider 24:45
honesty, you did mention wine and white cloth and spirits and the shrinking of the wine market. So I want to hear your opinion about that. Because the wine trade is constantly like the wine industry is dying. they pronounce it how many times In the last I’ve been in this for 15 years, how many times they say the wine industry is dead? Oh yeah, every single year, the wine industry is dead every year, the year old beverage is going away.
Natalie MacLean 25:11
Yeah, exactly. Just like the dinner party is dead year after year after year after year. That’s Yeah, that’s always good. Whether it’s white claw are the other hard seltzers they’ve got a lot of advantages. They taste good, they’re easy. They don’t require a special implement to open them. You can port them easily to the park, especially when glasses and allowed you don’t need a vintage chart. I mean, I sound like I’m selling like law here. But I think the wine industry can take a big lesson from that. So I do applaud canned wines, wine spritzers anything that can get and keep people in the industry. It’s not a bad thing if people want to drink hard seltzers but I just I hate to see wine losing out because it’s locked itself up in some tower of all of this other stuff, the packaging the implements to open at the ceremony and the sniffing and the glassware and everything else when there’s so much pleasure to be had from wine. But yeah, it’s a wake up call and those who heated are going to survive and those who don’t will have their lunch drunk on them.
Elizabeth Schneider 26:09
Canned wines have come so far at first, I was super against them because they tasted horrible. You know when you taste the Budweiser, which tastes terrible anyway, but you could taste the metal in the can. Well, I learned from bridge lane leave on Long Island because they do a lot of canned wine that they have worked so hard on the liners. Yeah, make sure and so now I have come around on canned wines At first I was like if it’s gonna taste bad and it’s convenient that’s not helping. But now that they’ve figured that out and I have had some good canned wines, I don’t generally buy them just because honestly they’re not great value. I mean let’s be honest and I drink enough wine so I’m generally having in bottles but I do wish I wish that better wine came in boxes frankly
Natalie MacLean 26:55
oh yes well boxes have so many advantages. I mean the environmental footprint alone is like half a bottle of wine so you get you know those three litre boxes I’m doing the wrong measurement here but it’s equal to
Elizabeth Schneider 27:10
four that’s right three litres so it comes three litres and then now they’re starting about one and a half litre boxes and that’s more in the UK there’s they call them cardboard Oh koerber. Joe, I love that. Oh, bad. enums bag numbers is the other thing. Yeah, that’s great. But
Natalie MacLean 27:24
you know, there’s so many advantages. I mean, just it’s the best wine preservation system on the market. So if that bag gets drained from loose B got, its shrinks. And it’s an airtight seal. It’s so good. It’s easier to port not just for consumers, but for wineries to ship. So you get into the lower environmental stuff going on. But now better and better wines are coming in boxes. And I mean, you know, like if you still got hang ups about serving your friends box wine, decanted into a fancy decanter in the kitchen, who will know what those on the kitchen stays in the kitchen, we just, we’ve got to get over it like we had to get over screwcaps and
Elizabeth Schneider 28:00
screw caps are the greatest thing ever. But hand winds and box winds have huge potential, I still don’t think the winds are quite good enough, at least the stuff that’s available here in box. But you know, it’s really interesting. I did a research project again, because I’m all about research about transportation to the biggest environmental impact and why does actually not on the farm is transportation. And you’re exactly right. One of the hugest problems about wine bottles, and actually there’s a winery in erg y that’s trying to overcome this is the space between the bottles. So how much waste because you’ve got to pack them so they don’t break, they’re round. If you have square boxes, you can really pack stuff in there, you’re packing more wine. So this winery is actually making flat plastic bottles. They’ve got the longer neck but you can stack them so you can get many more per box and they’re much lighter weight. So it makes a lot of sense to do something like that that kind of innovation we’re not seeing I mean they’ve got flasks, right we could put wine in sort of a nicer flask, you could still do it with glass if you’re worried about the plastic flavour, but sure there’s not that innovation going on. And I wish I
Natalie MacLean 29:14
were absolutely and I’ve heard that there’s somebody making flat bottles that will fit inside a standard mail envelope slot so you can mail them, like they must be plastic. You could send them like an envelope of wine.
Elizabeth Schneider 29:27
Maybe it may be the same winery because they are really pioneering that and they are going full throttle on it. I think it’s a great idea i glass is a sustainable thing if you can find someone to recycle it. But that’s the other problem. At least in the United States. A lot of places are no longer recycling coloured glass and communities don’t know that people don’t know that you put it in the recycling bin and it goes in the landfill. Now there are some I’m fortunate that I live in a community where they do actually put it back in the roads and stuff like that, but there are plenty that Don’t do that. And so thinking through, what could you recycle? What could you do to reduce the amount of glass or to make it easier so that you can fit more stuff? And when things are flying in planes, recognising that sometimes that has to happen or going in cars that you’re fitting 24 bottles versus 12 inside of grace, I think that’d be very cool.
Natalie MacLean 30:23
Absolutely. Absolutely. So many advantages. Yeah.
Elizabeth Schneider 30:27
Natalie, you are a gem. I’ve taken up way too much of your time. Thank you for sharing your insights. You’re awesome. I’m so glad that we’ve become friends over this pandemic year, someday we will meet in person,
Natalie MacLean 30:39
we definitely will meet Elizabeth thank you so much for for asking me not only to talk with you, but to, to open up for the first time on on that issue. And I cannot wait, we absolutely need to get together for a glass or three, or bottle or three.
Elizabeth Schneider 30:55
I don’t know something.
Natalie MacLean 30:56
I don’t care if it’s flat. If it’s round, we just need to Yeah, box of whatever. Right. Awesome. And
Elizabeth Schneider 31:02
I appreciate you. I think you’re a fantastic and you have a lot of courage. And I appreciate you coming on and talking about this. I think you’re just a fantastic person. And I really appreciate you so thank you so much. And we’re looking forward to your next book, which you’re working on and we’ll kind of actually but in the meantime, why are you not promoting the old but I mean, like I’m gonna get back into that promo so good. Yeah. All right. And if you want to take Natalie’s classes also you can find that on her site, too. So with that this has been another episode of wind for normal people. Thank you so much for listening, and we’ll catch you next time.
Natalie MacLean 31:41
Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed my chat with Elizabeth Snyder. in the show notes, you’ll find a link to the full transcript of our conversation. How you can join me in a free online food and wine pairing class. links to both my books where you can find me on zoom instead of Facebook and YouTube Live video every Wednesday at 7pm. That’s all in the show notes at Natalie maclean.com forward slash 149. You won’t want to miss next week when I chat with Felicity Carter, the executive editor at pics wine, a global wine discovery platform. She was previously editor in chief of men angers wine business international magazine for 12 years, and her work has appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald, the age the Guardian, and decanter among others. Felicity has a delightfully wide range of interests, having also written about astrology, oil and gas, the funeral industry and skateboarding for boys. As a romance novel editor, her main editorial note was quote, this is not physically possible. And quote, I just love my chat with her, and she’ll join us from her home in Germany. In the meantime, if you missed Episode 60 go back and take a listen. I chat with Mark oldman, the wine world’s greatest showman, he is so entertaining. I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite.
Mark 33:04
But a really cool thing to do, which wine snobs do and Telegraph’s that you’re an insider? is they’ll take an empty glass and smell their empty glass. And why are they doing that Natalie,
Natalie MacLean 33:20
because of our cue told me they’re looking for impurities, right?
Mark 33:24
Exactly. They
Natalie MacLean 33:25
looking for detergent. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Mark 33:29
It will intimidate the restaurant because you know, they’re gonna have a really bad English shots. And suddenly, we’ve got a serious wine snob in the house. treat this person very well. And especially these wine oriented restaurants, they will take notes on you. And when you reserve again at the restaurant, we’ve got that Insider, even if you’re the butchers, third cousin, you’re still in the business and they’re gonna treat you extremely well. So sniff your empty glass and you will telegraph that you’re in the business, even if you’re not.
Natalie MacLean 34:08
If you liked this episode, please tell one friend about it this week, especially someone you know who be interested in the wine trends we discussed. Thank you for taking the time to join me here. I hope something great is in your glass this week. Perhaps a wine that you like, naturally.
Natalie MacLean 34:32
You don’t want to miss one juicy episode of this podcast, especially the secret full body bonus episodes that I don’t announce on social media. So subscribe for free now at Natalie MacLean comm forward slash subscribe. You’ll be here next week. Cheers.
