Why Open That Special Bottle Tonight + Smell's Role in a Full Life with Jim Duane

Introduction

Why should you open that bottle of wine you’ve been saving? What makes Icewine such a difficult and expensive wine to produce? Why is the sense of smell such an important part of living a full life?

In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I’m being interviewed by Jim Duane, winemaker and host of the Inside Winemaking Podcast.

You can find the wines we discussed here.

Join me on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube Live Video

Join the live-stream video of this conversation on Wednesday at 7 pm eastern on Instagram Live Video, Facebook Live Video or YouTube Live Video.

I’ll be jumping into the comments as we watch it together so that I can answer your questions in real-time.

I want to hear from you! What’s your opinion of what we’re discussing? What takeaways or tips do you love most from this chat? What questions do you have that we didn’t answer?

Want to know when we go live?

Add this to your calendar:

Highlights

Where are the major wine regions in Canada?
What makes Icewine such a tricky wine to produce?
Why is there so little Canadian wine in the US?
What’s the response to US wine in Canada?
How can you learn more about food and wine pairing with my free material?
Which dishes pair well with California Grenache?
What are the most common questions I get from wine newcomers?
Why should you open that bottle of wine you’ve been saving?
What are the most memorable aromas from my childhood?

Start The Conversation: Click Below to Share These Wine Tips

The US is such a huge market, it’s really hard to break in. - Natalie MacLean Natalie MacLean Click to tweet

The best way to experience and drink Canadian wine is to come visit. - Natalie MacLean Natalie MacLean Click to tweet

People wait too long to open wines. - Natalie MacLean Natalie MacLean Click to tweet

The sense of smell is an important part of living a full sensory life. - Natalie MacLean Natalie MacLean Click to tweet

About Jim Duane

Jim Duane studied biology at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington then worked at Brancott Vineyards in New Zealand. Hauling rocks in the vineyard, he says, helped him get ready for graduate school at the renowned University of California at Davis oenology program. In 2004, he moved to Napa where he’s been ever since.

Jim is now the winemaker at Seavey Vineyard in California’s Napa Valley. Prior to that, he worked at Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars and Robert Mondavi Winery.

In 2014, he launched a podcast called Inside Winemaking, which is ranked one of the most popular wine podcasts. In 2021, he launched Terratorium Wines as a direct result of his podcast and winemaking classes. Jim and his wife Erin have two daughters that keep them busy. Recently, he notes, they logged four pulled-teeth in a 36-hour period.

Resources

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
People by far wait too long to open wines. It’s a really sad thing if the wine has already peaked, and it’s on its downward trajectory. It’s a mental mindset. I’m waiting for a special occasion before I open this, but you can make it a special occasion by opening it. It’s like waiting till, I don’t know, I lose 20 pounds before I’m gonna buy myself a nice dress or suit. Well, how about feeling good about yourself and buying an outfit and because you feel better, then maybe it’ll be easier to lose weight. Sometimes tasting wine is tasting life. Don’t wait. No one’s promised tomorrow.

Natalie MacLean 0:44
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 191. Why should you open that bottle of wine you’ve been saving? What makes ice wine such a difficult and expensive wine to produce? And why is the sense of smell such an important part of living a full life? You’ll hear those tips and more in Part Two of our chat with Jim Duane, winemaker and host of the popular podcast Inside Winemaking. You don’t have to have listened to Part One from last week first, but I hope you’ll go back if you missed it after you listen to this one. Now on a personal note, before we dive into the show with the continuing story of publishing my new wine memoir Wine Witch on Fire: Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, Depression, Defamation and Drinking Too Much. When you look at the back cover of most books, you’ll see quotes from someone well known saying something nice about the book. These endorsements or blurbs are absolutely vital for encouraging potential readers to buy the book. They’re the social proof that the book is not only worth your time and money, but it’s also the right story for you. In the good old days, publishers secure these blurbs for authors. Now with drastically reduced budgets and staff, it’s up to the author to get them. I’m at that stage now. And I’m cringing. I believe strongly in my book and its message but I’m feeling just a little ill about asking people for this favour. Especially those I don’t know well. It’s the big names who will mean the most on the cover. So who would these people be? Well, they could be in the wine and food industry like celebrity chefs, sommeliers and writers. But I hope this book will find a wider audience beyond food and wine lovers. Yes, I want it to include them. But I hope it gets out there more broadly because the message is wider than just food and wine. Therefore, great endorsers could also be best selling authors, especially memoirists, and celebrities and other fields such as TV, movies, sports and other areas. I’d love to hear from you with your suggestions for anyone you think I should approach even better if you or someone you know has a connection with the person you’re recommending and you can introduce me, I’d be forever grateful. Either way, I’d appreciate your suggestions. I’ve posted a link to a blog post called Diary of a Book Launch in the show notes at NatalieMacLean.com/191. And this is where I share more behind the scenes stories on the journey of taking this memoir from idea to publication. If you want a more intimate insider seat beside me on this journey, please let me know you’d like to become a beta reader and get a sneak peek at the manuscript. Email me at [email protected]. Okay, on with the show.

Jim Duane 4:25
What are some of the most well known wine regions in Canada because I’m really only familiar with BC.

Natalie MacLean 4:31
Sure. So in BC that’s further the sub appellations, that sort of the Russian nesting dolls if you will breaks down into the Okanagan Valley is the biggest one in BC. Similkameen Valley, Fraser Valley, the Vancouver Islands and the Gulf Islands. And then when you get to Ontario, you’ve got the major big blocks are. Niagara is the biggest by far and that will break down into even smaller regions like the Niagara Bench or Niagara on the Lake and so on. And then you’ve got Pelee Island and Lake Erie North Shore, which is our most southern tip of the country. And then up north or a little bit more north of Toronto is Prince Edward County, which experiences the coldest weather by far. They have to hill the vines have to you know, push the dirt up against the vines, so that the vines don’t die in the winter from winter kill or frost kill. So that’s Ontario and BC. Then if you go to Quebec, it’s the Eastern Townships, the far east of the province. The most South because you’re gonna get the warmest area there. They produce a lot of cool climate grapes, German grapes, but also a lot of cider. And then in Nova Scotia, it’s in the Annapolis Valley. So you’ve got the Bay of Fundy, which has the world’s highest tides, moderating the temperatures just like Lake Ontario does in Niagara. So it’s making the summers less intensely hot, the winters less intensely cold. And the valley is a bit of a you know, a dip that’s protected. And that’s where you get most of the wineries in Nova Scotia.

Jim Duane 6:10
All right, very cool. You know I had a podcast listener wants write me an email. He was producing wine and Prince Edward

Natalie MacLean 6:18
County. Yes.

Jim Duane 6:20
And I ended up checking out his winery website and the area. And I realized like, that’s tough country. He’s gonna be hardcore to work up there. I’m sure it’s not easy to grow grapes every year.

Natalie MacLean 6:32
No. And they call it extreme winemaking. So it’s on the edge of everything, including, I think, a nervous breakdown for a lot of these winemakers because it’s just, it was like, gonna, you know, is it gonna work this year. So not only is it the cold, but also if you’re making ice wine, you’ve got all the natural predators like the starlings and the deer and bears and everything else, because the hang time is right into December, January, before you’re going to even pick those grapes. And you get approximately one drop per grape because they’ve shrivelled. They’ve desiccated. They’re dehydrated. So they’re like little frozen marbles, and they’ve been known to break presses too. And you get one drop per grape. It’s like these are pathological optimists I tell you like I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m fascinated with them.

Jim Duane 7:20
Back in 2002, I was working in New Zealand. I was down to the Brancott that had worked in that vineyard. It’s part of Montana wines. But the one of their biggest states was Brancott Estate, and they had a lot of white grapes. And just a little bit of Pinot Noir, but they had a couple of pretty big blocks of Riesling that they had saved for a sweet wine. I don’t think they were really even trying for an ice wine. They were just trying to make, you know, a concentrated sweet run out of this reasoning sheet. So I worked in the vineyard during the growing season. And I was friends with the vineyard manager, and John Arda, who’s a really lovely man, kind of a early mentor for me. And so I’ve been working in the winery during harvest, but I went back out to see the vineyard and he took me out to that Riesling block. And he was there with his dog. Kills me I can’t remember her name, but she was a Lab. And we were walking through this block and you know, the leaves were gone. Riesling just looked terrible, but it was still hanging on. And as the dog was running between the rows, she would hit some of the wires. And you could just watch the grapes fall off the clusters. And so she’s running, knocking them off. And then he starts screaming at her to stop running, which had the opposite effect. And so she’s going crazier. And we’re just watching like 1000’s of dollars of Riesling berries just fall to the ground because they were so so loosely held to the cluster. It was. It was a sad scene.

Natalie MacLean 8:46
Yeah, absolutely. A similar story, but it’s birds. So the starlings, they just hate them in Niagara. They’re like, you know, lots of winemakers call them rats with wings. They just, you know, somebody in the 1800s brought over starlings to New York Central Park because they thought Central Park should have every songbird mentioned in Shakespeare’s sonnets. So that idiot really was responsible for all the starlings migrating north and eating the grapes. But you’ll see these kind of beautiful netting white nets that look like wedding gowns or something in the middle of winter or through the fall because the starlings, they will do like these large murmurations. These sort of formations in the air and then they all start you know diving for the grapes even with the nets on. So you can just see hundreds of thousands of dollars being lifted into the gullets in the air.

Jim Duane 9:42
Natalie, there’s so little Canadian wine in the US. Are there trade barriers are taxpayers are is just the wine being consumed in Canada is such that there’s not much available to come down to this export market.

Natalie MacLean 9:57
I think it’s a combination of that we don’t produce a lot, that we do drink our wines, though not as much as the wine marketing associations, the provincial wine marketing associations, would like.
We could do a better job of embracing our own wines, actually, so, but then they’re sure there are tariffs. But the US is such a huge market, it’s really hard to break in. So I think a lot of it has been trying to target prestigious wine lists in restaurants. I think the best way to experience and drink Canadian wine is to come visit.

Jim Duane 10:35
Alright, well noted. And then for American wine coming up to Canada, you guys get to pay a hefty extra tax is that right?

Natalie MacLean 10:44
Oh, but you’re worth it.

Jim Duane 10:46
I would hope so, but I’m not sure everything is.

Natalie MacLean 10:50
So yes, well, with the exchange rate alone, like ignore taxes, it’s about 30% right now, so that it positions you as very premium. I think we might be your number one market for export, Canada. I may be wrong on that. But I know that California wines specifically are very popular in the liquor store. So you know, we get lots of different wineries, lots of different grapes and styles and regions. Now there’s no tiring of California wines. They just seem to increase in popularity every year. And I think your marketing organization, the California wine Council does a great job up here. They have a wine fair that’s coming across our country in April and May and June. And they hit five major Canadian cities. They do an event for the trade. So restaurants and media, and then in the evening, they do one for consumers. And the turnout for that is really great.

Jim Duane 11:49
Very cool. I’m glad you’re getting to taste some. For your sort of body of work and the wines that you’re tasting, do you tend to focus on any specific place? Are you really going all throughout the world to try the whole variety of countries and productions?

Natalie MacLean 12:06
I am universal in my tastes and scope. What I try to focus on first is wines that are available in Canada so that my readers can buy them. But increasingly, that is a pretty wide range. Because my site visitors come from coast to coast, and so the availability varies widely, so the selection is huge. But I also have lots of readers from the United States, or visitors and podcast listeners and from other countries. So when someone wants to send me wines that aren’t necessarily available in Canada, I welcome that too. It just takes a bit more paperwork and an Ontario agent so that they don’t get stuck in customs. But yeah, I taste everything. I’m open to everything. I’m very thirsty.

Jim Duane 13:00
Okay, so I’m gonna talk a little bit more about pairing. Can you describe the list of courses that you currently have available? I know you have some free materials. Intro material. Where does it go beyond that? Sure. So maybe you can talk about that free material. So if listeners are interested, they can check that out.

Natalie MacLean 13:17
Absolutely. So if you go to my homepage, Natalie maclean.com, there is the Ultimate Food and Wine Pairing Guide and you can download that. It’s a template that you can either keep on your phone, or your laptop, or you can print it out if you want. Some people like to have it in the kitchen or the cellar. And it’s kind of every type of, just it’s groupings of wines. So you know, red wine from light to full bodied white wine, from light to full body to sweet dessert, and so on sparkling, and then all kinds of different dishes and pairing ideas to go with those groups of wines. So that’s kind of a good entry point. That template kind of simplifies it, but not so much that it’s not useful. At least that’s what people say. And then from there, you can use the wine and food pairing tools that are interactive tools. There’s no cost to those or my mobile apps. The tools are on those as well. And then you get to the courses. So the flagship course is the Wine Smart Course a Full Bodied Framework to Taste, Pair and Buy wine like a pro. And it is open to both novices and experts. I do love the mix of people. And we go deep dive into every type of food pairing that you can imagine. Plus there are other tips, you know how to serve wine and temperature and all that sort of thing. But the core focus is all about pairings. And then I have a separate course where a pair just cheese and wine. And as you know Jim cheeses, I think almost are as varied as wine. There are so many types of cheeses and different rinds in different countries and inoculations. Like if you’re talking Blue cheese and all the rest of it. And I just think wine and cheese were made to go together. You know, just like peanut butter and jelly or ice cream and chocolate sauce. I mean, they’re both natural liquids. Milk, grape juice go through fermentation. Go as they age, they develop all of these complex characteristics that makes the more interesting. And so we take a deep dive into cheese. Because we can’t do that within the main course to the extent I’d like to we definitely get into cheese, but this course is all about cheese. So it’s somewhere between 25 to 35 types of cheese, and then all the different wines that pair with it. So those are my main courses right now. I kind of like to focus on those.

Jim Duane 15:44
Okay, and then this is for my own benefit. I’ve started making a Grenache from Paso Robles. And so I’ve been thinking about good or ideal pairings for Grenache. So if you think of you know Grenache being light in colour, maybe big on spice, some earth you know, fruit kind of depending on a site, I would say my Grenache is quite fruity. What are dishes that come to mind that would work well with a Grenache? Not a French Grenache that might be higher in acid but California Grenache that’s a little bit more full and opulent.

Natalie MacLean 16:23
Sure, like you can start simply and I think that’s good for a lot of people. It’s less intimidating than starting with some dish that requires a lot of ingredients and cooking preparation, but just pasta and meat sauce, even spaghetti and meatballs would be fun, you know, even meatballs with a little bit of spice added to them. Any sort of meaty dish I think would go beautifully. I love Grenache because it’s got all this flavour and yet it’s so smooth. So you don’t have to worry about I think with the California Grenache that I’ve tasted. They’re not tannic, like something that you might have to worry about more with Cabernet. And so with that smoothness I love ,you know, lamb dishes, something equally juicy and opulent as well. But it’ll also go with many cheeses. Hard cheeses would be great. And even just you know, mixed nuts, walnuts, whatever, you know, because you know, walnuts are going to give you those tannins, that drying mouth sensation. So how do you compensate? Bring in a juicy wine to whet your palate again, so that sort of contrasting of flavours and textures is really fun for your mouth.

Jim Duane 17:34
I’ve never heard someone suggest nuts, specifically walnuts. So that’s something I’m gonna try tonight. Appreciate that.

Natalie MacLean 17:40
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s how I describe tannins to my students. Because tannins can be such a hard thing to figure out if you’re new to it. By I say think about you know, you’ve just eaten walnuts a mouthful of walnuts or sipped on way over steep tea. That’s Tannin. That’s the feeling of, you know, your mouth puckering and just drying up. And what we want to rush in there is a nice juicy wine with no tannins or smooth tannins.

Jim Duane 18:09
Right, right. What are some of the most common questions you get from people that are new to wine?

Natalie MacLean 18:16
Is this wine any good? And how much is it worth? I got it as a gift. So everybody wants to see if they can sell it somewhere. No, but pairing questions definitely. Pairing is the number one category of questions I get asked, so often it’s their starting with a dish. Ossobuco what pairs well, of course, that’s an easy one, you know, something like a smooth red or Burgundy. But also people love to experiment with cuisines. So I try to get them to think out of the box and you know the back to that off dry Riesling with something spicy. The other category of questions is how long will this wine keep? And people hold on to wine I think too long. Especially special bottles that they bought because they were expensive or they loved them back from a visit or whatever. And on the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, one of my favourite guests, there a husband and wife couple who used to write the Wall Street Journal column, Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher. And they instituted open that bottle night. So this ties in with the question when should I open the bottle. Tonight, usually. Now some wines do need some ageing, of course. And that’s great. But people by far wait too long to open wines. And it’s a really sad thing if the wine has already peaked, and it’s on its downward trajectory. But I think people it’s a mental mindset sometimes. I’m waiting for a special occasion before I open this. But you can make it a special occasion by opening it. It’s like waiting till I don’t know, I lose 20 pounds before I’m gonna buy myself a nice dress or suit. Well, how about feeling good about yourself and buying an outfit and because you feel better and you look good, then maybe it’ll be easier to lose weight. I don’t know, probably a really twisted metaphor there. But they told me some great stories on the podcast about people who had bought a wine, you know, a man who bought a wine with his wife years ago. They were going to open it for their anniversary. She died, you know, which is sad. But then he opened it, and it brought back memories of their trip together. And he loved it. And you know, they got a thousand letters on that column. The first column they wrote about open that bottle night, it’s actually every February, every February 27, we’re coming up on it. And they were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for that column, because it had so many human stories. And you know, sometimes tasting wine is tasting life. Don’t wait. As they said, no one’s promised tomorrow.

Jim Duane 21:01
I can’t tell you the number of times, I guess it’s not crazy number, but where I have been in social settings, where I get introduced as the wine guy. And then it’s always men that will take me to their wine collection and show me their prized bottles. And I’m not talking about like, super sophisticated consumers here. But you know, people that are just mildly sort of interested in and have a couple of bottles that they’re holding on to. And they show me the bottle, they’d be all excited about it. They’ll tell me about it. And then we’ll go back and they’ll open some much cheaper bottle on us. Let’s be nice about it. It’s just, it’s just like a prize object to look at. It kind of makes me cringe. I don’t know what they’re waiting for. But

Natalie MacLean 21:44
It’s like looking at life through amber, a glass. Like no actually go for the experience. Stop looking at it through glass.

Jim Duane 21:54
And then the worst part about it is oftentimes it’s not a wine that’s really going to age well. So, I don’t want to be rude. I’m polite and compliment them on their, you know, wonderful ageing skills. But yeah, wine has to be drunk.

Natalie MacLean 22:09
It is . It is to be shared. And it’s that experience. I mean, you know, this Jim like, smell is big part of wine taste, but especially smell. It’s the only sense tied directly to memory and emotion. And you open that bottle, and you can go back to exactly where you were. Where you had it the first time or where you purchased it or whatever. It just, it’s like a little wire that touches off those neurons in your brain brings you right back there.

Jim Duane 22:38
So absolutely right. So that kind of tees up question which is, what did your childhood smell like? Or do you have any strong memories of growing up? You said Nova Scotia. Is that right?

Natalie MacLean 22:48
Nova Scotia. No one’s ever asked me that. I love that question. What did my childhood smell like? So aside from the lima beans, which I’ve brought up probably too many times, now, I would go to an island like back in these days, children where they could go and do things on their own. But I would go to an island, there was a lifeguard and there was swimming, but I remember all these wild roses, and so they grew in big bushes. So I go in to the freezing cold water come out. And I remember drying myself in the sun, letting the sun beat down on my shoulders, but right at my head, like just a few feet away from my head with these rows and rows of wild roses. And I remember the smell of the roses, baking in the sun as I dried off. And I just love that smell. And sometimes I’ll get it on some wines. And I’m right back there on that beach. It’s just a beautiful, beautiful smell. The other smell or aroma is being out in the backyard of my grandparents home in the summer. And she would hand make blankets. And I loved it because they smelled like her and smelled like her biscuits and all sorts of things. So I would spread a blanket in the backyard and just lie down in it and sleep because it smelled like her and everything good and safe and calm. And I would just nuzzle up putting my nose in our blank to sniff at the blanket. Weird little child but I loved those smells.

Jim Duane 24:24
No judging.

Natalie MacLean 24:27
But those are definitely the iconic smells that I remember now. I appreciate you asking that.

Jim Duane 24:31
Yeah, sure. You know I bought the kit. The forgive my turn. The Vin de Nez? Yes, thank you that one. Its a spendy kit but I have a great time with my two daughters. We have done it twice in the past week. In fact where we sit at home and it’s got 54 different aroma samples. But number 28 is Rose and there is no aroma in that kit that elicits the sort of positive sort of emotion, I think you just described with your quilt in a blanket like Rose. My daughters love that smell. And it’s very interesting that different smells like some are just, you know, it’s orange. It just smells like orange. And, you know, it’s kind of easy to identify. I like that my kids are much better at this than I am, it maybe has to do with memory, and they’re young, fresh brains. But

Natalie MacLean 25:28
That’s great. It’s great that you’re training them to like.

Jim Duane 25:32
Because I can’t have them taste wine. So this is kind of like the most parallel type activity, I think.

Natalie MacLean 25:37
Exactly. And, you know, we train kids or teach them all sorts of things. In terms of visual, you know, they learn to read, they learn to do all sorts of things at school, but no one pays attention to the sense of smell anymore. And it should be part of an education. Because it’s part of our world. It’s part of living a full, sensory life, whether you drink wine or not. I mean, we get, I don’t know, 80 to 90% of our input, visually, but the smell is so powerful. It’s so ancient. It’s tribal. I mean, I think it’s how people fall in love. And yet we ignore it for the most part.

Jim Duane 26:16
I used to play this game when I was a kid. I would go with my friend down to the grocery store. We could walk from his house down to the grocery store. And we would take turns, one person sits in the cart and covers her eyes, the other person pushes the cart and go through the aisles of the grocery store. You would have to identify the aisle, just based on the smell. There’s a couple aisles of packaged goods that were really hard to identify because there’s not a whole lot of aroma. But it’s suggested anyone try this because there’s some real surprises. Produce is pretty easy to nail. The meat. And the fish section, obviously pretty easy to nail. But since those in-between aisles, like some are hard, but some are like the paper towel and the paper goods aisle, like you’d be surprised how quickly people can identify that. A lot of it is because of the you know, the scented compounds that have been added to those products.

Natalie MacLean 27:11
Sure. That’s brilliant. I love that idea. I think that should be part of sommelier training or winemaking training.

Jim Duane 27:17
Right? I mean, it’s free, we would do that and we’d go across the street to Taco Bell, and we didn’t have money. So we would just smell the Taco Bell. And it was great. We get hungry. And we had, you know, an afternoon for zero dollars.

Natalie MacLean 27:27
It’s great. How creative.

Jim Duane 27:30
And you know, we just fell into that. But it’s one of those things where I look back and I’m like, oh yeah, I’ve always been interested in scent, maybe a little bit more than the average person.

Natalie MacLean 27:40
Sure. I think that’s probably what draws a lot of us to wine. Like it’s that yearning to not only to experience those scents, but also to find them again, and to identify them so that we can recapture those experiences. I mean that drove me from the first time I had the aha wine. I thought I need to know how to put this in words, and find it again so I can keep having this experience.

Jim Duane 28:04
Right. But you know, what pisses me off to the nth degree is my continual inability to differentiate chocolate and vanilla. That’s a tough one. That’s in that kit. I get it right 51% of the time. And it’s just maddening how many times I cannot get it right.

Natalie MacLean 28:23
Well, you just have to what is it 10,000 hours, and you’ll get it.

Jim Duane 28:28
I should leave them out in the kitchen counter. Every day when I get home. Natalie, is there anything else that you want to talk about? Or mentioned from all of your work before we start wrapping this up?

Natalie MacLean 28:41
I’d love this chat. I’d love to our last one too on my podcast. So I mean, we’ve covered a lot of ground, you know. People are welcome to connect with me on social or at my site NatalieMacLean.com. And as I mentioned, I’d love if any of your listeners would like to be beta readers of my new book. Just email me [email protected]. And yeah, I just love to connect over those experiences.

Jim Duane 29:08
Okay, and I apologize, I’m not going to be a beta reader. But that’s only because I struggle with reading. But one thing that I hope you will do, and I’m sure that you will do, is to insert some honesty, because I’ve read a few wine books, and that was enough to make me never want to read sort of wine biographies, again, I think is the Robert Mondavi story, which is a total fluff piece. So you actually baring your soul a little bit is going to be only to your benefit.

Natalie MacLean 29:37
I hope so. Yeah. Sorry to hear you’ve been scarred by wine memoirs. Let’s hope we can heal that somehow.

Jim Duane 29:44
They haven’t all been terrible, but just the Mondavi one was just bull from beginning to end.

Natalie MacLean 29:49
Oh, well, good to note that. Mine will come out as an audiobook. So maybe you can listen to it.

Jim Duane 29:54
Certainly will, since it’s on audio and you’re reading it, right?

Natalie MacLean 29:58
Yes, absolutely. I’m a control freak. It’s like, I know where to laugh or to cry. I’m doing this.

Jim Duane 30:06
Well, thank you for taking the time. This has been a lot of fun. Your social media handles that your name is well Natalie McLean.

Natalie MacLean 30:12
Yeah, most of them are. It’s either Natalie Maclean or Natalie MacLean Wine if Natalie Maclean was taken, so yeah.

Jim Duane 30:17
Okay. we can find you.

Natalie MacLean 30:21
Yeah, absolutely. Any time. This has been great, Jim, I really love this conversation. I mean, just definitely, as I mentioned before, I’m gonna have to do it in person someday when all the craziness of COVID is done.

Jim Duane 30:33
Yes, yes. Very much looking forward to that. Okay. Natalie, thank you so much. This has been wonderful. All right.

Natalie MacLean 30:37
Cheers, Jim.

Jim Duane 30:38
Alright. Good luck with the book.

Natalie MacLean 30:39
Thanks. Bye. Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed my chat with Jim. In the show notes, you’ll find my email contact, the full transcript of my conversation with Jim, links to his podcast and website, and where you can find the live stream video version of these conversations on Facebook, and YouTube Live every Wednesday at 7pm. You’ll also find a link to my free class called The Five Food and Wine Pairing Mistakes that can Ruin Your Dinner, and How to Fix Them Forever. That’s all in the show notes at NatalieMacLean.com/191. Email me if you have a sip, tip ,question, or want to be a beta reader of my new memoir at [email protected]. You won’t want to miss next week when I chat with Joy Ribar, a mystery writer whose novels are set in wineries. In the meantime, if you missed episode 32, go back and take a listen. I chat about orange wines and pairings for meatless burgers. I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite. Orange wines are white wines that are made like red wines. Are you confused yet? They start out making a white wine. That’s what they do. Their intention first is white wine, but then they leave the grape skins on during fermentation just as red wines do, and white wines do not. This imparts a distinctive colour, flavour, and texture whereas the skins are removed to ferment white wine. Orange wine also has more exposure to oxygen, which adds a savoury character called umami. So that’s the fifth taste along with sweet, salty, bitter, and sour. Umami, often described as deliciousness. You get it in Parmesan cheese and cooked mushrooms and so on. It’s made from fresh white or pink vinifera or permitted hybrid grapes. All the grapes are macerated and fermented on their skins for 10 days to achieve the colour of orange. 10 days. If you liked this episode, please tell one friend about it this week, especially someone you know who’d be interested in the wines and stories we discussed. Thank you for taking the time to join me here. I hope something great is in your glass this week. Perhaps a Canadian ice wine or Orange wine.

Natalie MacLean 33:16
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 NatalieMaclean.com/subscribe. Meet me here next week. Cheers.