WINE 101: FOR BEGINNERS PART 1

Hi, I'm Julie Lynn Moray and welcome back to my channel. Today I have a very special guest, Simone. Simone has been 27 years in the wine business. He is a wine expert, executive winemaker here at Chateau Hollande, as well as vice president of the Georgia Wine Producers. Welcome, Simone. Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah, so you're gonna give us a crash course on wine. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, I'm trying to, you know, pack in 15 minutes the history of the world because Okay, so tell me a little bit about yourself, like what was your path to get here? Yeah, so I was born in a vineyard basically in northern Italy is it's just a huge vineyard like such as all Italy itself and then My it's keep the generation. My father didn't want to go into the vineyards and winemaking I think my grandfather was a little too strict And then, you know, it just passed into me I I started, you know food science and then I was just You know drive into the winemaking world And of course if you have just a little interest in the winemaking you are in Italy, then you become a winemaker That brings me to my first question. What is the biggest difference between East Coast and West Coast wine? it's like saying the difference between Australia and Italy or Northern Italy or Southern Italy with the Northern France. So we're talking about completely different areas and scenarios so In the wine world, there are 6,000 varieties if you can mention 10, you're lucky There is 6,000 actually and so everything is adapted to a specific soil and a specific weather So East Coast tremendously different from the West Coast and therefore also the wine you can find are not only stylistically different but are also different varieties, so Different style I would call the West Coast power and the East Coast elegance Okay, that's good to know. I did not know that. And what would you say is different about like the Georgia grapes? So region like Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina they have the unique opportunity of Choosing their path meaning that These areas are challenging in viticulture, so it's harder to grow grapes in the East Coast than in the West Coast So you really have to be precise when it comes to varieties that you grow so that you can Express the full potential of the variety and of the territory in a very good quality wine Can you explain to me like what are all the different types of wine like within the reds and within the whites? In the world we have 6,000 varieties and we said before so these 6,000 variety are probably 50-50 are white and 50 are white, 50 are reds And then you find the rosé in between and then you find the style port, sparkling, red, young, red, aged White, sweet or dry. So I would say the main differences into the wines are stylistically and then Varieties, okay So you have these two blocks, a Chardonnay doesn't smell like a Sauvignon Blanc, a Cabernet doesn't smell or taste like a Pinot Noir But at the same time they have the same kind of production technique So the wines the probably the most charming factor of the all wine because at the end You know wine is alcohol and water and some color and some flavor Right, but the charming factor of the wine is that there are so many Nuances and so many differences and it's up to the winery and it's up to the territory to Recreate and to make something very special and unique So one of my most important questions and I think a lot of people out there have this question is why do some wines give You terrible headaches or hangovers and others don't? There is one main factor that is actually Provoking the hangover and headache if sometimes even instant headache, you know, and I call that sulfites now People have different sensitivities to sulfites. Someone is very reactive like me and someone and some other is not so You can tolerate more or less, but the main reason assuming that you're not drinking a full case of wine Which would be responsible for your little hangover the next day But other than that, you know It should be in my opinion are the sulfites and when I say my opinion is that after drank and produce not drank produced probably close to 25 million bottles in my life I now came to the conclusion that you can produce wine without Sulfite over with a very very limited amount of sulfite which is not going to give you any hangover It's not going to give you any headache unless you're really sensitive. So when I'm talking about producing healthy wine the Absence or limited use of sulfite is the key player in my all technique And I do believe sulfite are the responsible of the headache Tell me what dictates the price of a bottle of wine. Is it the Fermentation is the grape is the marketing like what should make me buy one bottle over the other? Okay, all the three components are important in to deciding the price point So yes grapes in areas With the cultural areas So perhaps you're in Napa Valley and in Napa Valley because of the appellation because the Napa Valley is very famous Marketing wise then the Cabernet Sauvignon grapes in Napa Valley. They cost a lot more maybe five times more Than the same Cabernet grapes coming from 20 miles far from Napa Valley the reason is that the reason is marketing you can put Napa Valley in your on your Bottle as an appellation and all of a sudden you can sell your wine ten dollars or thirty dollars more Because of the appellation. Okay, so that's a good that's a very big reason technique wise In the winemaking how that has an impact into the pricing Red wine are usually more expensive than white wine, right? because Number one you keep the wines longer in stock to age So that's a fixed cost that is going to add up to the final price of the wine Also, you use barrel at least I use barrel on all red wine one barrel produces 30 cases of wine One barrel is about thirteen hundred dollars and you have to buy that every year Okay, so it's a big it that has a big impact in the final bottle not only but barrel Evaporates so you have to refill each barrel. So on 200 barrels you have in your cellar every month You lose one barrel in the air. That's just wine gone. Now. The good thing is that what goes in the air? is water Contained into the wine right inside the barrel and so the wine concentrate itself and so the reason why we're using barrel, although we're losing wine is Because it concentrated the good thing of the wine So the wine becomes but if he's good it becomes better with time in the barrel itself what? differentiates one wine versus another It can't always be like the price right because I've had expensive wine not expensive expensive like $1,500 expensive like $25 expensive and it wasn't great. And then I've had wine that was like maybe $12 and it was phenomenal. There's a big limbo of wine Between $12 and $30 where you can find anything and everything Prices is not actually an indication of quality at that at that stage Okay, because you can find brands that decided just Randomly to place themselves at $25. It doesn't mean that wine is better than the $12 one. So Long story short, you have to know your brand you have to experience yourself There's nothing you can do to understand if that is better than this if you don't try and taste it Now there is actually a mark and I'm talking about Retail pricing. Okay, so you go total wine or or you go grocery stores, etc And you choose you make your choice of wine There is a price point which I believe being $35 for domestic product where if you don't find good wine above that price Then it's obviously a mistake from the winery and from the retailer to to have chosen that wine and to a place at that price point but the Probability that you drink well above $35 on domestic wine is very high When it comes to international wine and you want to try Italy France Spain, Australia Well that even that is different story is a different story Usually those prices are always very high mostly in u.s. So You have to be prepared to spend to my my opinion above $45 in order to make sure you are drinking a good product Below that it's a guessing it's a guessing game You really don't know unless you know exactly the producer and you made your you know researches Okay, so explain to me about vintages because you always see the year on the wine bottle. What does that mean? It's extremely important Remember you grow grapes, you know outside outdoor and the season can be really unpredictable You can have extremely hot season extremely cold season extremely rainy season or dry so that the you know, depending on how the season evolved from March to October then you have completely different profile on the grapes You have grapes with more sugar with more concentration or with less sugar less concentration. So Vintages are extremely important because they tell you What to expect from the wine So if you go in the high-end area the vintages of the same wine at different prices because Some vintages were better than other vintages So if you go in the book of the Bordeaux or the Barolo you have the last 50 vintages described as best or Medium high-end etc, etc based on that you find different prices too and the quality is extremely different as well So tell me does the color of wine have anything to do with the taste typically 80% of the time when you see a Deep intense color then, you know that you will expect some powerful and heavy body when you see a light color Typically is also a lighter wine. So tell me what are tannins? Tannins are the responsible for the big impact of tannins is the astringency So when you drink wine and is it dries your mouth basically It's very astringent is because the tannin are reacting with your mouth And and so suddenly you need either to eat something or to have a glass of water, etc So tannin for the most part do that to Whoever is drinking it, but tannins also have other activities such as they are natural antioxidants, so In replacing the use of sulfite which are antioxidants you can actually enhance the action of the natural Tannins contained into the grape so they will do what the chemical would do So they will protect the wine because they are there. So tannins. Yes They give you that astringency and part of the tannins is also the color is just a component of the tannins But tannins are extremely important to me because they are the natural antioxidant component of the grapes itself See you learn something new every day. So what do you do here at Chateau L'Anne that makes your wines very unique? I think that There is two things the wine are unique, but the experience is unique, too You don't expect coming in Georgia To have a choice of 29 wines of very different styles so my decision of making very different styles and with very different varieties is was because As I said as I mentioned previously you're free to decide your style in a growing winemaking area such as the East Coast as long as you guarantee the quality of the product at the end. So Other than choosing having 29 wines from probably 30 different varieties that I grow both in Georgia and in California, so that's the unique process Everything is processed over here But the grapes are grown in the state and we are the largest producer of Georgia grown grapes Of wine from Georgia grown grapes and then we also harvest in California We transport the grapes over here and we make the wine over here The reason is Everything has to grow in the right place in order for me to give you the best quality So that's pretty unique to find such a diversified offer. We also have three different Program with abroad wineries. One is in Tahiti So in the middle of the ocean we make wine from pineapple over there Yes I'm working together with that company that makes fruit juices from the From the fruit grown in the island and as well a pineapple sparkling wine that we offer uniquely here at Chateau Island as well I have two other twin program in Italy for the Moscato and Dolce Rosso two Unbelievable wines that we only have over here. So the program is very unique and the way I make wine With the extremely low use of sulfite No filter no finding agent Vegan certified all the Muscatine wine are vegan certified. We are the only the first Winery in the southeast who have been certified vegan It's just a matter of healthy and sustainable technique and that's what we do here through Gaudi online Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for educating us Please stay tuned for our part two series where Simone gives us a crash course on wine tasting Have a wonderful day. You too. Thank you. Cheers. My pleasure. 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