Roman Wine with the Inner Loop: Lazio Goes with Lit for Locavores

Class Transcript:

Roman Wine with the Inner Loop: Lazio Goes with Lit for Locavores.m4a

Thank you for that reminder. Release the hounds! Welcome back, everybody, uh, welcome back one and all, uh, I see a Coliseum background there very fitting, uh, someone is very on brand, uh, Courtney Sexton, uh, is in our midst with one of our illustrious authors, thank you so much for joining us and, uh, we have Elizabeth in the mix here, uh, as well, uh, with a spectacular celestial background, uh, well done uh to you both, uh, I'm Courting, I'm guessing that is an honest-to-God background and not, uh, yeah it's it's nice those are very nice, like, uh, porch vibes amazing porch vibes there, Court, um, welcome, uh, everyone, um, Zoe and I, uh, are thrilled to be back.

With you, it's been a minute, uh, certainly, uh, we haven't done this in a while and we're trying out a a new format um for the sake of uh wine class, the idea being that um everyone gets a chance to purchase the wines early in the month um drink them at their own leisure and then uh we will rally at month's end uh to talk about them um so uh tail up Goat Wine School here reborn as Revelers our wine club um four full bottles for you, we're going to work our way from sparkling to still white uh both from the same esoteric uh varietal uh from just outside of Rome called Bologna um move into an orange wine um uh from uh yet another idiosyncratic grateful pastorina into uh easy drinking summary red from canaiola um and we're going to uh kind of punctuate the lesson uh with readings from our authors and uh courtney saxon's going to tell us all about uh the inner loop which is her uh local um network um for creative writers and uh this just being one of the many events uh that uh they host uh virtually and uh soon enough uh in person um i don't have anything else to add uh for the sake of buying time um you know there's no wrong or right way to to do this you know if you are a you know waiting uh to uncork all of these at once i i hope uh for your sake you have someone to share four Bottles of wine with or that you're going to meet them out, uh, over the course of the week.

Um, if you already enjoyed them, uh, please feel free, uh, to hop on the chat and let us know what you enjoyed about them. I'm going to, uh, shut the f**k up, uh, for the sake of um, you know, wine introductions, and, uh, we're gonna do kind of a cool like synesthesia thing, uh, for the sake of these wines and experiencing, uh, these work of arts uh works of art as well. So um, you know, when we initially move through wines, uh, we're just going to be, uh, tasting and taking in, um, these various authors' works. Uh, so hopefully that'll be something fun, uh, for, uh, you all who have Been with us for a while to try that's a little different than uh, what we've done and uh, maybe a little less uh, literal as such um, but uh, equally delightful in and of its own way uh, so uh, without further ado um, in the you know words of Zach Sali for the sake of uh, you know the title of his uh novel let's get back to the party um, just a reminder uh, if uh, you all um, need Wednesday night plans that we will be flying blind at Revelers Hour um, it's part of our irregular Blind Tasting Series I can purchase tickets uh online for that one on the right-hand side which is our four uh 53rd rather so 53rd uh edition of Wine School, so starting off anew. Year and inaugurating a new era um of uh revelers our wine club it's collaboration uh with uh inner Luke and only fitting uh as such that we kick it off uh with a bit of verse as always given that uh we are uh traipsing through the vineyards of uh Lazio, uh only fitting should share the work of one of Rome's finest.

This is, of course, a statesman poet, Horace of Carpe Diem fame. This is a brief ode called Strategy for Living. Luke Hono, why try to know the future which cannot be known, or what the Assyrian numbers say of your fate and my own? Put it away. Don't waste your time. Winter will come on and break the lower sea on the rocks while we drink summer's wine. See in the white of the winter air, the day hangs like a rose. It droops down to the reaching hand. Take it before it goes. I feel like Horace wrote the same poem like a million different ways. You know, that whole bit of verse is, you know, kind of, you know, very Carpe Diem on the nose, but love the summer. Summer's wine reference there.

As I mentioned earlier, we're joined by Courtney Sexton and a couple of the authors she works with as part of the Inner Loop, but I want to kick it over to Courtney first and foremost to begin this class to give us a fuller sense of what she does with the Inner Loop. Courtney, welcome. Thank you, Bill. Also here is Rachel Kuhn. Rachel is my partner in the Inner Loop and we are thrilled to be here. Can you all hear me okay? You're great. Yeah, cool. Well, thank you so much for putting this on. I love that Wine School is still going. It was definitely something that kept me happily imbibing in the early days. So it's really cool to have this collaboration. It's nice. It's nice to have an excuse.

It's nice to feel like, you know, you're not just drinking, you're doing it educationally. Although, Bill, you would probably be very ashamed because I just literally popped this bottle all over myself. Zoe, you also. Oh, no. There's a proud sommelier tradition of spilling sparkling wine all over yourself. You're in good company, Courtney. It feels really good and celebratory. Absolutely. So, yeah, just to give you a little bit of background about the Inner Loop, we were founded in 2014 here in Washington, D.C., and we are a community and network for creative writers in the DMV. We host monthly reading series featuring one celebrated award-winning author each month, along with nine other local writers reading in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Since last April, we went virtual as well.

And we continue to do our monthly events virtually, and we're thrilled to be going back in person outdoors next month in August. So, our next live reading will be, I think, August 17th. 17th. And then, in addition to those readings, we sponsor a bi-annual writing retreat out of the Porches in Virginia, which is a great little artist space. We have a summer residency program for local writers to do a commuter residency at the Woodlawn and Polk-Lakey House and the Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture. And we have a podcast, The Inner Loop Radio. You can reach Local Lit anytime, anywhere with bi-weekly episodes that come out. And really, our goal is just to serve as a platform, an amplifier, and a bit of a fun merrymaker for writers, creative writers, artists in the area, and lovers.

Yeah. And those who may just want to read stuff. And this project, I don't know, Bill, do you want me to talk about Authors' Corner specifically now? Sure. Yeah, go for it. Okay. Actually, this is a bit of Rachel's green child, so I'm going to let her take the lead here. We just launched Authors' Corner in June, and it is a platform marketing campaign for authors who've published a book with a small to medium-sized press, and they don't have the budget for their own publicity team. So, we keep that open and feature one author a month, and we feature them in our reading series, on our podcast, on our website. And we've partnered with Washington Independent Review Books for them to do guest posts, with Potter's House for them to have a feature corner of the bookstore that features their book for sale.

And obviously, we have a lot of other books that we're working on. So we're also a restaurant partner with Revelers Hour, Shaw's Tavern, and Pie Shop DC to feature this little menu insert, which Courtney has right here, in their takeout orders with a little excerpt from the book and a QR code for people to learn more and purchase the book. So it's really designed to support authors who are publishing in the smaller presses, and basically to connect local consumers with the local artists. It's so cool. And, you know, I think, you know, DC gets typecast as, you know, policy wonks and, you know, a government town, but there's this, you know, thriving, you know, vibrant community of artists and authors equally. And, you know, one that, you know, deserves to be engaged with and celebrated more than it commonly is.

So thank you so much for affording that work. We are kind of diving into the wines of Lazio, which begs the question, why Lazio? For local artists, local authors, we're kind of celebrating a body of works that, you know, deal with, you know, these kinds of really profound themes of identities, lost and gained, grief, grit, wonder, and wolves. So there are all sorts of events. There are all sorts of animals, particularly in the two poetry collections, rife with wolves, these books are. And, you know, in, you know, the, you know, recesses of my brain, I went to, you know, the most famous mythological wolves I could think of, which would be Romulus and Remus, the, well, it should be the she-wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome.

And, you know, we've done quite a bit of diving into the Italian wines. But we've yet to tackle Lazio, and Lazio being the region around Rome is this, you know, wonderful kind of pastoral landscape that turns out quite a bit of wine. It doesn't get the credit it deserves for the quality of the juice it turns out. And, you know, D.C. an underdog for the sake of its art scene felt fitting to feature a bit of an Italian underdog from, you know, Italy's historic capital city. So this is Lazio. You can see Rome dominating. The region there in the middle, but all sorts of these, you know, beautiful hilltops, towns surrounding Rome. That's the sixth or seventh largest wine producing zone in Italy, depending on who's doing the measuring.

Home to 27 DOCs. So DOCs would be the, you know, kind of standard Appalachian designation in the Italian scheme. Three DOCGs, which is like the most illustrious of the designations of origin. Dozens of native grapes. You know, yet it is neglected compared to the 20 other, you know, zones of Italy. Rome, I really like, is called kind of the most rustic of European capitals, the eternal city. I'm going to read a quote from this amazing book about Lazio food and wine called Popes, Peasants, and Shepherds. It's just like the greatest title for a cookbook ever. And it's a quote about the heritage, the agricultural heritage of Rome. And the author I read, Zen and DeVita, says the pastoral and agricultural heritage of Rome, of Lazio at large, is an inextricable part of the city itself.

Albeit residents of kings, emperors, and popes' seat of government and its bureaucracy, the capital's genetic imprinting has ensured that the peasant soul of Rome coexists with its urban dimensions. Rome has always contained gardens, meadows, and places for food storage. Even the place itself, you know, is littered. It's littered with names from its historic center to the periphery that echo the themes of rural life. There's a goat seller's street, hay seller's, hay lofts, vegetable gardens, oil press, and plow. Not chosen arbitrarily, but truly to capture the kind of agro-pastoral sphere that has always existed in the city. And, you know, fascinatingly enough, you know, the cuisine of Rome is very much poor person's cuisine. They talk about the fifth. Fourth, they say quinto quarto, which is like the forgotten kinds of meat.

You know, all the stuff that no one else wants to eat, tripe, heart, liver, spleen, sweetbread, brains, tongue, tail, that, you know, are so kind of inextricably associated with Roman cuisine. And then, you know, all these other kind of peripheral communities. I think, you know, some of the greatest food in Rome comes from the Jewish quarter. And, you know, those are. Dishes that, you know, now we associate with with Rome that formerly would have been and existed very much on the periphery. The Romans themselves, you know, celebrated wine, much like the Greeks, and they kind of assumed and absorbed all of these traditions from various empires that they conquered over the centuries. Initially, you know, that Greek tradition, but also the Carthaginians and the Celts. And they expanded on these traditions.

They took these great ideas and they essentially propagated them. And I think wine was, you know, the greatest of those ideas in a lot of ways. The Greeks, you know, brought wine to the center of the ritual life, but the Romans made it available to everyone from prince to plebeian. And it brings to mind this great quote from Monty Python's Life of Brian. You know, there's this moment in The Life of Brian where they're, you know, agitating against the Romans. On the fringes of the empire, and someone asked the question, what are the Romans ever given to us? And the retort is, all right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, the education, the wine, public order, irrigation, roads, fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

And, you know, I think wine, you know, really a great, you know, sales tool, you know, first for Rome, but later for the Christians that, you know, ultimately became an inextricable part of the later history. Empire, and, you know, this wine took many forms from Grand Cru to Piquet, which was, you know, this watered down wine, like beverage, but everyone was entitled to it in a way that, you know, hadn't happened before. And much of this wine was from, it should be said, Lazio. The Romans, particularly Pliny the Elder, celebrated the great Roman Grand Cru. And Hilarion was first. He was first and foremost among them, but the other Cru's, the other, you know, three that he identified, Albin, Cacuban, were in Lazio proper, and certainly some of the other great Roman first Cru's were in Lazio proper.

And, you know, that kind of begs the question, what was this wine like? The Romans adopted many innovations when it came to winemaking. You can see here, this is in Pompeii. Many of the fermentation vessels were kind of portico. They varied kind of like the Greek, the Greek cobriar today. But the Romans trained their vines in a more sophisticated fashion. They recognized terroir in a more sophisticated fashion, particularly the, you know, kind of the saddle, the center slope of hills. They pressed their wines. They recognized a distinction between the greatest free-run juice and the pressed wine. They were scrupulous about hygiene. They introduced barrels. They had their own sommeliers that were called hostors. They were more concerned with, you know, blending and watering.

They were more concerned about, you know, getting down the wine than they were, you know, necessarily picking the right bottle. But, you know, it was a very sophisticated wine culture that, sadly, over time, after Rome was sacked, thanks a lot, vandals, you know, kind of fell from tradition. You know, it persisted in the Middle Ages in some forms. Popes, you know, European regents were celebrating the wines of Lazio well into the 16th, 17th century. But as peasants left the land, particularly in the 17th and 18th centuries, you know, they were more concerned about the wine culture. In the 19th century, you know, the tradition, the great tradition of wine in Lazio fell by the wayside and is only now being revived. But there is so much to celebrate.

There are so many strains to pick up, so much tradition to celebrate, you know, that you know we have this wealth of source material that we can now revive in the forms of these wines. And that's what we're doing today, which brings us to our first reading. So I chose for the sake of Zach Sully's novel, Let's Get Back to the Party, a pair of wines. The novel itself, as I was led to believe, deals with kind of like this, intergenerational, you know, struggle in the gay community after the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. And I thought it'd be fun to try a pair of wines from Lazio from an amazing grape called Bellone. Ian Dack calls it a magical grape with a luscious texture, juicy acidity, delightful honey, citrus, tropical fruits.

We have two different versions here, one styled out like champagne, one made in a more still fashion from a site that itself is home to ancient ruins. And I want you to taste them side by side as we consider the quote, as we consider an excerpt from Zach's novel. That Courtney is going to be reading forthrightly. So kick it, Courtney. Tasting sparkling wine and still from the Lazio specialty, Bellone. Well, I'm just mesmerized by the bubbles here. Sorry, I had to. So Zach couldn't be with us today. He was really bummed and wanted to thank everyone for joining in and ask that I just read the beginning. So. Let's get back to the party and we're going to start with one Sebastian. Here we go. He arrived at the wedding dressed for a funeral.

Sharp black suit, shiny black shirt, skinny black tie, polished black boots, black hair crust over black sunglasses and an artist's wave. I said that wrong. It's an aura. I'm sorry. And my bell's ringing. That's Sondra, by the way, an animal by my side. All right. Sorry about that. I turned away from the grooms and watched him tiptoe to an empty back pew on the opposite side of the aisle. Oscar Burnham. I hadn't seen him in 10 years, but underneath that violent head of hair, bowl cut when we first met as children, shorn in rebellion when we'd last met as undergraduates, was the same slim boy slipping inside the ceremony like a snake. Would you remember me? Probably not. After the service, I stepped out of the church into the haze of another high Washington summer.

I searched the crowd for Oscar but couldn't find him, as if he'd just floated in and out of the wedding briefly like an errant leaf or a ghost. At the foot of the church steps, under a full tree draped in white ribbon, someone laughed. I heard a photographer attack the wedding party back inside. Loving it, the photographer said. Give me more. Cocktail hour. I lingered outside with a beer. Guests milled around the back lawn and garden of the Georgetown estate. Very Afro-Pan. Bar tables swaddled in white cloth and crowned with swollen floral arrangements dotted the clipped grass. Beyond that, in a brilliant patch of sunlight, the grooms posed for more photographs, smiling, hugging, kissing, whispering, chuckling their chins, nuzzling their noses.

I'd been watching them for the past several minutes, forcing my face into a look of fondness so the other guests wouldn't realize I knew absolutely no one. I was just standing there. Danny, my date for the evening, had abandoned me for the restroom and a fresh glass of wine. There was nothing more for me to do but stand there and sip, smiling at the people who passed by, at the couple out on the lawn. Trying, unsuccessfully, not to dwell on my own recent uncoupling. There, Oscar's long black shape slicing through the space between wedding desks. It paused at the opposite end of the massive stone porch, leaned against a wrought iron balustrade, watching the groom; no, he was not a phantom; he was here, occupying physical space to look at him.

You'd think Oscar was in danger of being blown off the porch by the slightest breeze; he was so slender. He reminded me of something by Egan Shelly Sheila - sorry, tall, lanky, otherworldly with his eyes hidden behind those glasses. Oscar's gaze was mysterious, unreadable; he was all body, no expression, and I'll stop there, thank you, court... um, uh, Zoe... Uh, I know that you didn't get a chance to, uh, try uh these wines, uh, we're thrilled to have you back with us. Um, uh, any uh questions about these or questions about the inner loop? Um, I should say for the sake of both these offerings; um, uh, they come from smaller, uh, family producers... um, I'm gonna pull up a picture of the here...

This is Bologna as an undergirl grape; um, uh, I love you know, uh, definitely getting wedding vibes from the bubbles; uh, the bubbles, uh, come from an organic, uh, state... 24 months on the lees, and, uh, it was founded in 1986; um, fourth generation, uh, farm, uh, and, uh, just south of Rome; and then, uh, major waterfront vibes from, uh, the still wine... It should be said so, uh, the second offering uh hails from, uh, Vines so, a six-year-old ungrafted vines because they're planted to sandy soil, um, and, uh, those are from Anzio which is a, basically, a resort town just outside of Rome, uh, it looks like a terrible place to visit, um, and, uh, you know I like that this this, uh, grape, you know, accomplishes, you know, something, you know, just at least summery, um, you know I like that this grape, you know, accomplishes, you know, something,

it is fresh, um, it's, you know, fruity, um, it's slightly honey but decidedly dry and and uplifting, um, and, you know, that feels, you know, kind of consistent uh with that opening passage, court, and then, um, you know I will say, you know, definitely Um, you know the fizz, you know that sense of um ephemera, um of you know being revisited by a ghost of you know a lover past or someone you know from um you know a previous life, um you know what, what evokes that better uh than than sparkling wine uh? What do you guys have no questions on the Bella Nice so far, a little bit of interest into um the Jewish Quarter into Lazio if we don't mind like taking a complete bunny trail and going left on on some more info on that just seemed incredibly interesting, yeah i mean i take that and so i mean it's not Lazio's Jewish Court as much as Rome's Jewish Quarter, um uh, and um you know the greatest dishes.

that i love from you know a lot of southern italian cooking and rome is very much you know it's ostensibly center central italy but um geographically culturally and economically has kind of followed the trajectory of the south more than the the north you know a lot of those greatest dishes are are you know derived from you know the cucina of the jewish quarter of rome and you know i came into that through two amy's um you know a few words you know um looks nice for the way a mom has been cooking uguavat and Peter Passon, who loves that cuisine, you know, and, you know, kind of embodies it for the sake of that restaurant to Amy's, But I don't know what they were drinking, though, you know, that always is the question that occurs to me.

You know, wine, obviously, in Jewish ritual life, you know, plays much the same role, you know, similar role it does, you know, in, you know, the life of Christians. You know, obviously, they don't have, like, the, you know, drinking in a blood sacrament, but, you know, it is hugely important, you know, for the sake of, you know, the Passover ritual in particular, but, you know, very much a necessary ingredient for the sake of their religious life, and I don't know exactly what they're drinking, you know. People would have tended vines within the city walls of Rome until, you know, the early 20th century, so, you know, this agrarian past that feels very different in visiting Rome right now is, you know, only decades old, you know, not even centuries, and, you know, I think, I can't think of a city that lives with its produce, that lives with, you know, that, you know, kind of intimate relationship with the land quite the way that Rome does, and I think in, you know, out of reach of, you know, kind of, you know, the smaller Roman towns, they look to Rome, you know, for the sake of, you know, Setting the agenda for the cuisine in the same way, so it's just really vibrant, push-pull for the sake of the traditions there. How common is Bologna exported outside of Italy? That's the rub with these wines, though, is that, you know, there's just not a lot of them. Typically, it's a blending agent, honestly, so traditionally, it went into Frescati.

Frescati is, you know, the best known of Roman wines. I think, like, Queen Victoria was a huge fan to the extent that she was drinking it all. I don't know if she was drinking, you know, Bologna. I don't know if Frescati or not. Bologna adds this nice kind of fleshy fruitiness to a lot of those wines. It should be said that, like, stylistically, you know, the, you know, Lazio wines until recently tended to be, like, a touch sweeter, you know, although, you know, they moved in this, like, brighter, more bracing direction. I can see Frescati here is the kind of lighter purple, like, the grimmest color, just kind of south and east. Or, you know, just, you know, to the right and below Rome, you know, but you don't see a lot of single varietal Bologna.

These two producers are, as far as I know, to the foremost modern champions, and their wines just happen to be imported stateside. You know, these are, you know, for a big estate in the Bologna, you know, the Castelli del Giglio is a, you know, a bigger producer, definitely more modern for the sake of their vinification. But they're working with Native East, and, you know, it's kind of wine in place in a delightful way, and I think it's, like, slammable. It's just, like, a great bistro wine. I would drink the f**k out of it, you know, and not be ashamed to do it. And I think it works nicely in fizz as well. Is it usually seen in fizzy wine, or is it usually seen in still wine?

I don't know how much of a like with the fizzy wine question, you know, I think, you know, at the end of the day, the, you know, the, the big, you know, unanswered elephant in the room is whether there's any tradition of making sparkling wine there at all. And, you know, very much a modern development in this corner of Italy to make intentionally sparkling wine, particularly like this one in, you know, the method traditional, just like champagne. I just think it works at the end of the day. I mean, I don't give a rat's ass whether it's traditional or not. You know, I think it carries off, and it's fresh, and it's fruity, and it's, you know, it's, you know, it's, you know, it's, you know, it's, you know, it's super fun.

You know, there are people that worry about, you know, this variety retaining acid. Apparently, there's like local folk wisdom that bologna thrives in the sea air, you know, because, you know, the seed, approximately the seed gives you that cooling influence that is, you know, really important for a grape that, you know, struggles to retain its acid. But I don't get that at all with either of these wines. You know, they're bright, they're bracing, they're, you know, like mineral driven, and I think they're just like fabulous. And, you know, I think at its best, that's what these Roman wines do. They feel like the ultimate vacation wines for me. You know, it's like, you know, you're sitting at a Roman Trattoria, and you drink something, and, you know, you're having great food, and, you know, it's like the whole of that experience is greater than some of the parts.

And, you know, sometimes it feels like when you bring those wines home, and you have them outside of context, they, you know, fall flat. They fail to live up to, you know, this like exalted memory that you have of them. But when you're paying these prices, you know, it's like, who cares? They're just super fun. A couple other images for you all. So, in addition to making wine, the second estate that makes this still Bologna, Castello di Giglio, which feels like really close to Gigolo. I don't know if it's the same Italian root or not, but at any rate. And I didn't get into the etymology of Lazio. Lazio comes from the Latin Lazione, which means broad or wide, for the same reason that latitude is latitude.

But it is wide because, you know, we're dealing with like hilly, you know, kind of farmland. And, you know, that's what this region evokes for Romans. You know, they got seven hills, and then Lazio has many more hills thereafter. But there are names dropped. I referenced the ancient Roman ruins, #ancient Roman ruins. And if you've got them, you know, you got to market them. But Casale has them on site. And this is a geographical, or this is not a geographical, a kind of archaeological site, still being developed to this day. It's an ancient Roman settlement called Satricum. And it dates back to the, it predates the Romans, actually, it would be like, it would date, you know, back to the Latins themselves before they got, you know, overrun by the Etruscans.

I've never been to a city that lives with the past, you know, quite the same way. And if you like, you know, traipse through the catacombs, if you know, something that's like almost maudlin about it, you know, at times, it almost, you know, it's not like you're in a city that's like Feels morose, uh, but I think you come full circle on it and you just like come to terms with living with gross and it just feels like a natural thing, um, in the best possible way, and you know. Eternal City feels like a fitting so we'll get to that end, um, which is a great feel, like a great segue, um, uh, for the sake of um our our verse here.

So we've got, um, we have orange wine, uh, coming up next to go with, uh, to go with poems, um, and a beautiful work of poetry um from the perspective of of three different, variously reliable narratives, one of whom uh is an honest-to-God wolf, um, and it should be said that I, I gave away our last bottle of uh the orange wine so I'm gonna show a picture of the wine itself. It hails from a grape called Passerina, um, and the wine is the wine is from Pilo which is better known for its red wine, so the the kind of most prominent local red varietal uh it's called Chesanèi see, um, great internal rhyme scheme on these you know uh local Lazio varietals but um this is a white wine from um you know a region uh famous for Chesanèi see and um Passerina is a great thought to hail from a little further east but uh widely grown in Lazio and this Is a nerdy um, you know hipster some uh white wine on the skins uh 12 to 16 hours um for a uh a bit of a work, a collection of poems um that itself, you know felt kind of savage and untamed um and uh felt fitting to uh pair alongside so um without further ado, I give you Elizabeth Deanna Morris Blake, and a selection from uh her book of poems, Ashley Sugarnox and the world. Hey everyone! Um, can you all hear me?

Well, yeah, acses and uh the like the Huckabee Hubble space telescope background is is fire! It's the Veil Nebula, oh nice nice! It's just as like beautiful, that's why I have it. I mean, I'm assuming you don't want to see my like, king bed duvet. I don't know, whatever, whatever, whatever makes for the best you know conditions for reading, um, but I do have I just moved in the past month and I now have this window that gives me like the most beautiful light so like I just look incredible right um, so yeah I'm gonna read from Ashley Sugarnox and the world I'm gonna read a wolf poem um, that's about fruit um, so in the book there's Ashley and all of her poems are in prose poems and then there's the wolf and all his poems are either in syllabics or some sort of form like a villanelle or a sestina um, but this is uh just in syllabics.

The wolf wonders if Ashley's right I stewed blackberries. For dessert last night, Ashley and discovered something. The berries were dark; it had never been when raw, turned bright red when exposed to heat. Then, as you stir, they burst: each pustule, each heart surrounding a seed disintegrated to a tart slime. But I think they're supposed to be like that - pre-grown full blisters. I tear my blisters open always; the liquid inside is blood without the blood parts: red, white blood cells, platelets, serum not even coagulants are left. I only know this because I looked it up. How could I now recognize blood without everything that made it so? Blisters are supposed to protect us just like the juice sacs surrounding.

the blackberry seeds but the blisters hurt they are swelling from attacks our skin couldn't handle the berries when cooled lost their jeweled red veins i need to stop comparing you to fruit ashley i'm not good at this at being a human like the rest of us but you are you see fruit for fruit even if you can't see your own form as right your mind and body come as one composed piece i'm sure you saw the blisters on your feet too and wondered what let your body change without asking you first um i love that uh i love that i love that i love that i love that i love that i love that i love that i i'd actually uh um i love that that poem uh i had A chance to, uh, read that, um, kind of flipping through the collection prior to this class.

I'm really glad you read it, um, and I love the, um, you know that last, uh, you know little bit that speaks to that like metamorphosis, um, that that like that alchemy, um, and you know wine is all about that alchemy, um, uh, you know it's all about that, um, you know kind of juice of this, um, you know uh kind of uh vine that came to us from the old world, you know, uh, transformed, uh, through the ages of this kind of like, um, you know, uh, molecular actor into something else, something more exalted, and, uh, I love the way, um, you know that the poem speaks speaks to that thank you yeah i picked that one because it didn't have any abuse and i thought it would be a little bit lighter for our wine drinking uh yeah yeah no no and i think it's important not to you know no no universe exists in a vacuum you know i just got back from a uh uh recently conference and you know we we hosted a panel on you know diversity and inclusivity in in the wine world um which is you know something that the wine world has never really addressed um uh you know prior to you know this this moment and you know i think it's important to recognize that no no world no industry exists in a vacuum and and to have those tough conversations And I think you know, wine wine invites that and hopefully, um, you know, uh, can make those, uh, dialogues a little easier, uh, a little less painful, occasionally makes it more painful, but, um, uh, yeah, hopefully you can do that.

And thank you so much for for sharing the phone; of course, are you drinking any wine at home? No, not right now. Okay, I actually think I have my first cold in the past year and a half which sucks. Yeah, that's been happening a little bit at the restaurant too, it feels like we all, um, you know, uh, managed to forget about infectious diseases because everyone was so scrupulous about not interacting, uh, that, uh, you know, there's Like, this shock to the system of oh wow, if I you know interact with people without a mask and you know I'm hugging regularly, you know I'm gonna get someone else's pathogens. Yep, well thank you so much for joining us, um Elizabeth, uh and and uh I'm thrilled, uh to have this, uh signed signed copy, um and uh and look forward to, uh to reading through, um uh cheers, um uh Zoe, uh any any thoughts from the commentary on, um uh verse or wine?

Now we're all a little quiet, we're a little timid today, uh yeah I think we're sedate. I could either it could have gone both ways for the sake of you know just this like wellspring of um you know uh commentary. that people need to get out of their system but um it does feel a little more sedate uh just because you know we're not uh forcing you know um massive flights of wine on people people can manage uh and um you know kind of dose out their drinking um uh more kind of like concerted uh uh way um i i love so um you know for um elizabeth's verse i love this picture of the vine you know if you're going to pick a uh vines if you're going to pick a vineyard for this poetry collection i think it's a great one um so these are our pergola trained vines um pergola is kind of ancient roman form um the through the ages of the carthaginians so romans were they were better uh um co-opters of other people's innovations than they were innovators themselves uh so the carthaginians were they pushed um viticulture forward really well and then uh the romans um ransacked uh their libraries but kept uh the best viticultural tomes uh for themselves uh the romans did know that they should pull the leaves and expose the fruit to the sun uh but they persisted with uh pergola trained vines um you know throughout you know the better part of uh their empire um and and you know toward the end started to innovate for the sake of um you know training vines close to the ground uh with individuals Individual stakes, but especially in Lazio, especially in Campania, just to the south, you'll still see a lot of these pergola-trained vines and you know for a farmer historically they would have allowed you to work with other crops um underneath the canopy of grapes um uh but it is a very you know traditional form of viticulture and one that persists for the sake of this producer, Avianova, um and uh you know as I said um they're in you know kind of this like red wine uh zone but turning out um uh you know in this case really fabulous uh orange wine um uh full-bodied, fresh from the palate, rich with tension um and backed by beautifully Balanced, uh, acidity, um, and, uh, they are equally, uh, committed to natural farming methods, biodynamic principles, and, uh, they go further, um, they're, um, kind of, uh, students of this, uh, famous Japanese, um, agrarian agriculturalist named, um, Masanobu Fukuyama, um, who was a big no-till advocate, so he's, uh, you know, kind of wanting to ensure these conditions; you can see that like, you know, the vine between, you know, the land between rows here hasn't been worked at all, um, and, uh, they want to create this ideal natural environment for the grapes that can endure, um, from one vintage, uh, to the next, fluid, um, so cheers to you, orange. Wine cheers to you, Elizabeth, uh, for the sake of, uh, the beautiful bit of, uh, poetry uh that you shared with us and, uh, let's move on now, um, to, uh, our red wine, um, such as it were, um, and, uh, this one comes from Canaiolo, um, which is, um, not a native, uh, varietal, um, to Lazio as I mentioned Chianti Nacy is really the grape of choice, um, throughout, um, Lazio as a native red varietal, uh, but it should be said that Canaiolo exists throughout, um, central Italy, it's typically associated with Tuscany and until the 19th century Canaiolo was the most widely grown and planted grape in Tuscany not Sangiovese but Canaiolo is. A pain in the ass to graft and, uh, post phylloxera phylloxera being this yellow aphid devastator that came from the New World to the Old, blighting the vineyards of the continent; um, grafting became essential, uh, to the survival of viticulture, grafting onto American rootstock that was resistant to this pernicious yellow aphid, phylloxera. And so, a varietal in Canaiolo, um, that had trouble on being grafted was necessarily a great Phylloxera loser; and suddenly Sangiovese comes to the fore, and it should be said that you know a lot of what we take for granted, um, as far as a landscape on the continent when it comes to, you know, the most Ubiquitous vines is a very modern phenomenon, historically. You know these tenant farmers, you know they would have planted a variety of grapes, and you know the grape that you know was most prevalent wouldn't necessarily be the grape that we're used to now. And here you have three childhood friends that are dedicated to preserving Canaiolo, such as it is, uh, in a northern province of uh Lazio so you're in Viterbo, so you're in kind of the light tan zone, uh, just south of that big lake of Bolsano um uh and uh just south of Umbria there and uh this is you know um like the orange wine very much a wine that belongs to uh the natural wine Revolution in Lazio, um, and uh, the label is super cool, um, you know anytime you can show someone like racking wine, uh, in cartoon form, and uh, and you know kind of funneling wine um if you will, uh, you should take advantage of that opportunity, uh, I'll pull up a picture of um, the three blokes uh, that do the the wine making here uh, great Italian names um, uh, on this one so we got uh Daniel Manoni, uh, Marco Fuccini and Nicola uh Ben Cialia, um, they kicked it off in 2014, I apologize to any Italians uh, in, in the mix, I tried to lean into that one but um, these are more traditional um, uh, you know kind of um cordone trained vines uh, row by row um.

Uh, and the vines themselves are a relatively um, ger um by old standards 20 plus years old, uh, but the wine is made in a non-interventionist style, uh, it doesn't get mousy in the least, uh, but, um, you know they're after something kind of fresh fruity, uh, super fun, uh, for the the sake of of summer drinking, um, in a beautiful natural environment and, you know, something that we haven't really spoken to yet is the kind of natural beauty, um, of this of this landscape and it feels really feeling fitting, um, for the sake of our last bit of verse which is uh, coming from Megan Albert, um, who is joining uh, Megan Albert and her uh book of poems, uh, winner.

Of the airy prize, um, all about um, you know, uh, cycles of grief and uh, rebirth, um, and uh, you know, I think, uh, you know, the revival of you know this forgotten varietal feels very fitting, uh, in the midst of that, so uh, without further ado, um, Megan, um, would you share one of your, uh, poems, uh, for us here? Sure, thank you so much, um, I uh, like Elizabeth, I was um, looking searching for a poem that was um, wine tasting appropriate, uh, so I'm gonna read this one called 'One Must Go'. It does not have wolves but it has a dog, which is similar, it's like wolf adjacent, yes, uh, yes, very much so.

My sister went out to see while I stayed at home with the dog, the animal warmth Of him solids my hands he smells of kippers wet branches my sister's body bloody after battle heaving on the floor of the ship I never came to anyone in dreams I have one sword leaned against the wall my sisters knocked over repeatedly by the dog He wheels and gruffs, like when they came to collect her, four of them, the dead army sound of their knock, shaking the frame. The kettle cracked. One, they said, and my sister's eyes took shape as they pointed past me. She stomped, floor shaking, out the door. A year later, she was clean. The next, she lost a hand. The next, an eye.

She appeared to men in dreams, menstruous, huge, to draw them out further, their ships wrapped to splinters. My sister, knocked, shaking, out further than I ever. Windows suck ash against their railings, and I am on the kitchen floor, my animal hand alive in the dog's fur. Thanks. That's beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that. Yeah, I mean, do you have any of the wines with you, Megan? Sadly, no. We'll have to do a better job of that next time, for the sake of distributing the wines. I don't know, do you find it helpful for the sake of readings to be a couple glasses deep, or do you try to stay snow and cold sober for the sake of your oratory? I'm not the kind of person who gets any, like, smarter or more interesting after a few glasses.

I just get, like, more sleepy. Oh, okay. Well, it's good to know that. It's good to know that about yourself. It's not like foreign language skills, where there's this, like, sweet spot a couple glasses in, where suddenly you become, like, fluent in a language you were only proficient in before. I actually have experienced that. My Spanish gets a lot better after a glass of wine. Yeah. And I've talked aloud about this with, you know, friends who speak other languages, and we always wonder whether our linguistic skills are actually better, or whether we only think they are better after a couple glasses. But that was really beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing. And, you know, throughout pandemic, we were curating these wine packs, and occasionally people would give us bits of verse to, you know, kind of select wines according to.

So it feels super fun to do that, to flip that and kind of do it in reverse. And, you know, some of my favorite, you know, work when it comes to wine. We collaborate with this artist. He does these, like, cartoon-like renderings of tasting notes. And, you know, I think, you know, a lot of times it's really fun to take a medium that's not commonly associated with describing something like wine and make those associations across disciplines. And I'm grateful that we were able to do that today. Yeah, I never would have dreamed that somebody would pair my book with wine. So it's pretty exciting and a very creative idea. Yeah, and I think, you know, especially for, you know, so we're dealing with, for the sake of a pair of, you know, poetry volumes, you know, tackling these really, you know, hard personal truths with natural wines that are, you know, similarly uncompromising, you know, ragingly acidic, you know, rustic, refined in their own way and incredibly profound.

And it feels like. It feels like a really fluid, you know, kind of synergy there. Zoe, do you have any questions or further thoughts from the commentary? Have people livened up a few more glasses in? A little bit. I definitely think that that alcohol parabola of foreign languages is definitely true, but perhaps with questions as well. Is this, is Canaiolo usually served chilled or is this a Bill prefers it? Wow. So that's a. That's a great question. So, you know, for me, you know, ostensibly, this is not, it almost tastes like it's carbonic. It almost has this like Nebbiolo-ish character to it that makes me think it'd be whole cluster, you know, which tends to give that, you know, juicier, fruitier quality to the resultant wines, but it's fully destemmed and then styled out in concrete, you know, and I think that's just like attributable entirely to the grape.

You know, I haven't had a ton of single varietal Canaiolas. It does really well in rosé. You know, for me, it's like a case-by-case thing, but this wine just feels kind of wrong at regular white, like regular red wine temperature. You know, it just, you know, it's so racy and bright and, you know, it's got this like pomegranate current, like dusty earth thing going on that, you know, I feel like if I'm not serving it chilled, I'm doing it a disservice. But there aren't enough single varietal Canaiolos for me. You know, personally, Zeta points to make blanket judgments about how I would want to serve single varietal red Canaiolo for the sake of serving temperature. But I do think like a lot of these reds from Lazio, like especially the Natty reds, you know, do better with the chill.

That said, you know, Chesanese, you know, can make these really like bracing tannic wines that, you know, you'd want to serve at normal cellar temp as opposed to, you know, closer to white wine temp. Fair, fair. I do have some irrelevant information, but the gilet, of course, is a lily, but gigolo comes from the giguet etymology from French, which means leg. Oh, which means what? Which means leg. Leg. In America in the 1920s, we used to start using the gigolet, which means dance hall, but it mostly meant women in terms of like a dancing partner, which is now where gigolo comes from. So. So it's like leg turned into dance partner in the gigolo way. So it was like loose women dancing was the original connotation? Yeah.

So it went from like the leg to dance hall to. Fascinating. Dance and dance halls to dancing partner. But then, Zoe, why do I think male gigolo? What makes me go to a male gigolo place? Like I used to say gigolo with like dudes. Yeah, because it is. It is now known as a partner in the. In the male form for a hetero view. But what did it jump from women to men? You know, I don't know. I want to answer, Zoe. I should be said, I stumbled upon a great, to that end, talking about, you know, loose women and, you know, terms for loose men. There's a great Roman epitaph, Tiberius Claudius Segundus, which is equally a great Roman name. Tiberius Claudius Segundus.

And on his gravestone, apparently inscribed, 'Baths, wines, and sex corrupt our bodies, but baths, wine, and sex make life worth living.' So, you know, true bit of wisdom. I don't know if I want that inscribed on my grave as such, but, you know, it's good Roman folk wisdom about their wines. It's a whole other spin on bathhouse, too. Yeah, I mean, the Romans did love a good bathhouse. Yeah. Yeah. What are the most common grape varietals coming out of Lazio that maybe would be more visible in America? So, honestly, I don't know about American visibility, but, you know, for the sake of Lazio's, you know, historic wines, you know, the grapes under vine there would be mostly Trebbiano. Trebbiano is the workhorse of Italy. It is identical. It's identical to Ugni Blanc.

And then Malvasia in some form. And in the course of, you know, doing research for this lesson, I didn't realize Malvasia has a million different forms. There are actually like 17 different kinds of Malvasia in Italy, only four of which are related. So, a lot of different Malvasias, but it would be either Trebbiano or Malvasia. And there's another grape that has a really fun name. It's kind of like Bologna. That's called Bombino. Bombino makes some really good occasionally single varietal wines. But you would see those. There is kind of like in, you know, Tuscany, we got our Super Tuscans. There is like Super Lazio. For the sake of Super Tuscany is a term, it should be said, for wines in Tuscany made from more ubiquitous international varietals.

Like Cab Saab, Cab Franc, Merlot, you know, your Sasakayas, your Ornelayos of the world. Super Tuscans. That, you know, exists outside of, you know, the traditional Sangiovese sphere. You know, originally on the coast in Marema in Tuscany, which is historically swampland. But, you know, has come to be home to these like internationally, you know, regarded wineries. And there's a little bit of that Lazio happening as well, where people plant Syrah, Bordeaux varietals, and they've done well. And there's like a Super Lazio thing happening. But. But otherwise, you know, it's the grapes I've identified. You know, Cessanese, I think, for the sake of bread, is one that people really are starting to embrace more. And then, for Scotties, almost, it is the most famous white wine, but it's almost always a blend of Trebbiano, Malvasia in some form, Bellone, Bombino, you name it.

So, there's a lot of bulk wine, honestly. A lot of like shitty Italian supermarket wine. You know, but, you know, they're equally. You know, these kind of smaller, you know, family-owned artisanal states that are making wine in a, you know, more, you know, thoughtful manner. And those wines are slowly but surely trickling their way stateside. I don't want to direct a conversation elsewhere so intentionally, but we have some questions about Riesling VanCube, exactly what it is. All right, all right, all right. So, yeah, so, I know, we can, we can, let's, let's, so I have one more quote for you, and then I want to, actually, let's, Courtney, where can people buy the, the books that they heard Ex-Servant took today? Yeah, that's a great question, Bell.

You can, you can purchase Liz, Megan, and Zach's books at the Potter's House, locally, here in D.C. That is the preferred means, or you can also get them online at the Potter's House through their bookshop.org, right, bookshop.org site link. Oh, great, great. And needless to say, they are all available online as well, but let's support our local independent bookstores. So, the Potter's House is right on Columbia Road, just a stone's throw away from Rebler's Hour. They do amazing outreach for the local homeless population as well, and they have one of the most thoughtfully curated bookstores you are likely to find in any major metropolitan area. You know, especially for the sake of poetry. We've got other American bookstores, you know, which have, you know, more specialized resources, which often, you know, get overshadowed when it comes to thoughtfully curated bookstores.

So, yes, you know, we have, you know, the politics and prose of the world, but let's celebrate Adam S. Morgan's own as well there. Courtney, I just want to thank you again, and thank Elizabeth and Megan for sharing their work with us today. We've got one more quote. I did want to show this, from Luigiü Varinielli. And, he'll take us out. And, kind of, just addressing this one, and I know we've been, you know, heard this a lot, but who actually, we've been? Larger notion of drinking wine and learning about it, which is you know what we're doing for the sake of our first edition of 'Revelers Hour One' club and uh, 50th, 53rd um, uh class for the sake of Tailgate Wine School.

Luigi says, 'The sense of taste by itself is not sufficient to create relationships between wine, food, palate, and culture.' Only through education will you obtain pleasures that are not only sensory and sensual but also reflections of your soul. So, cheers to that! Alone together, reflections of our soul, food, wine, poetry, and culture. Solid! Alright, Joey, uh, recently band camp hit me! We joke about it as being 'recently camp.' Would you like to put um actual words into yes? So, uh, recently I say, 'Recently band camp' for the sake of our staff because it seems appropriately niche and goofy given the subject matter. The greatest white wine grape on earth, but uh, it should be said that it is uh, you know, but one leg of the international Riesling circuit um, which has uh stops in uh the Finger Lakes, North America, Germany on the continent, and Australia, uh, in the antipodes, and we trade off um, uh.

It is officially called 'Excursion'. Uh, everybody loves a good poem, but flx for the finger-like excursion, like it's an excursion there. Um, anyway, I gotta vote it for the sake of naming rights on that one, but um, uh, it's amazing. Um, gathering of people that love you know this grape in a particular way. I, you know, can't speak to what other wine trade conferences are like because I've only ever been involved with this one and I'm on the steering committee for it, but um, everybody lets their nerd flag fly, you know. And uh, I think you know the audience, the spirit reflects the fact that we're dealing with a grape that can equally be flirty and fun, and you know, make wines.

That are wildly inexpensive and, um, you know, craft some of the most profoundly delicious age-worthy terroir-driven offerings in the world; it does everything, um, and it's an underdog grape, um, yeah. I think a community of people that love it is smaller than the community of people that love Pinot or Cab or whatever, you know. You're never gonna break out recently to impress your clients; it's inherently nerdy; it is inherently a sommelier's um, kind of crush object, um, and, um, the Finger Lakes is like the perfect venue for that. You know, the Finger Lakes is this land that time forgot, um, you know, there are all sorts of these. Enduring American institutions like the dairy bar and the drive-in that somehow have persisted there, and you know fallen by the wayside everywhere else.

And um, the winemaking community there is collegial, um, it's unpretentious. You know, there are weddings, like people have their weddings up there, their wedding venues, but it's not like Napa, it's not like you know a wedding venue that happens to make wine, you know. The winemakers have dirt under their fingernails, and I think there's a sense for most of the people there, I mean, there are petty, there are petty rivalries just like there are in any, you know, small community. Of people that love one thing too much, um, but I think there is this larger sense that you know the rising tide lets all boats, and you know, um, yeah it's just it's a really, it's a really special place, and um, it's exciting to you know welcome an international, broader international community of people, um, there uh for the sake of uh this this event and connect with with old friends.

What did you learn? Oh, um, what did I learn? Um, I learned a lot, I learned actually a lot about the Finger Lakes, um, geologically, meteorology, meteorologically, so they had a presentation from um, uh, a geologist uh that works at Hobart and William Smith which Is in Geneva that was really interesting and then, um, I learned about lake effect snow and smaller lakes, um, which doesn't have like a huge direct bearing on, you know, uh, you know the wines of the Finger Lakes, but was really fascinating. I continue to be impressed with the way the scene's evolving so, um, there should be younger folks, um, making wine there it's really awesome, in particular this has been a white team out of Hammondsport and Keuka Lake, um, they have a project called Living Roots, um, and, uh, they're making wine, uh, in both, uh, northern and southern hemispheres so they spend harvest, uh, here and then harvest in Australia.

Um, in the Adelaide Hills, making like Aussie hipster wine um, uh there and then making uh, um, you know finger lakes wine here um, and that's really exciting because you know, um, you know at the end of the day you know, uh an industry a local industry that's static you know isn't going to be able to do that survive it's going to fall by the wayside so it's exciting to me to see you know all of the producers that I deal with continue to evolve, you know at Beamer uh Herman Beamer, you know that takes the shape of you know their biodynamic project, you know at Red Newt, you know Kelby's playing with these like uh, the winemakers playing with All these, like, fun one-offs for the sake of, you know, you know, wine under floor and, um, you know, these like single, you know, more kind of like highly, um, you know,

single vineyard offerings, and, um, people are playing around with racing on the skins, people are playing around with, you know, a lot of different styles of pet nap, people are playing around with new varietals, um, people playing around with new fermentation vessels, so, um, you know, it's exciting to see that, you know, kind of, um, play out, um, the wine community is is like really narrow and specific but it's equally, um, global, and, you know, to see those ideas. Exchange is really cool, um, and then it was fun to see the Germans so they let some of the Germans that, um, I'm friends with in, uh, including the good Dr. Ernie Lucen, um, uh, and uh Johannes Selbach who's just like the great old man of wrestling, um, he's like the you know awesome grandfather that you wish you got and, um, it's it's really you know exciting to see them interact with kind of like a newer generation of blind lovers and you know Johannes in particular, like he's really open-minded for the sake of like, um, trying on six feet long on the inside these new and different styles, um, but you know equally drawing a line for himself. Terms of what he wants to embrace, you know, like I was giving him a hard time tasting with living roots because they're making all sorts of pet nat and you know they're just doing a lot of different like fun, you know, kind of natty things with wine and I was asking Johannes what his, you know, fun new and different thing was and for Johannes it's Gewürztraminer, you know, so uh, you know, it's just it's just kind of cool to see that um, and then you know I think uh, to see the community equally like address these larger forces, um, you know, no, no industry exists in a vacuum, um, and uh, you know, I think a lot of wine conferences are, I imagine. I mean, again I've never been to other ones, but like I imagine they're pretty narrowly focused on what's in the glass, but I was proud that you know, for the sake of uh, you know, our event which had like five panels, you know, one of them was on diversity, inclusivity in the recent world and another one was on, you know, um, how to leverage the internet for the sake of, you know, spreading this, you know, wine that we love, and um, I don't think that you can, um, you know, stick to what's in the glass narrowly; I think at the end of the day, like um, you know, you have to understand how your, um, you know, love object, you know, how your crush. objects exist in context and um you know i'm proud that we were able to kind of try to address that in our in our own way um and it should be said like all this stuff's going online uh people want to catch it in syndication um you know this is a great place to be and i think it's a great place to be and i think it's not you know it is not a thing that has global reach um it's okay that's a niche you know um you know certainly our wine school is niche but um no that's something i did gain uh there's this kind of cool like marketing phenomenon like smallest viable audience um uh that being the best size of the audience the smallest viable Audience, um, and uh, I think you know sometimes we push that idea to its extreme here, but I like, I like that idea, you know. I would rather engage a smaller community people that are like really excited about something like that, and I think that's something that casts the widest net for the sake of people that are like you know just engaged at a really like surface level. I was gonna ask who you're most excited to meet or like who your like largest nerd VIP was to meet, was it Johannes or it was mostly yeah, honestly it was just like reconnecting so I was really excited that Johannes was able to make it, I'd never met I'd never met him.

Wife, she's a really lovely woman. Skurnik is this major importer of German Austrian wrestling champagne, and I'd never met there's this guy that I work with there that's kind of taking over that portfolio named Gabe who I'd never met. So this is all like real inside baseball, um, you know. So it was, it was fun to to hang out with them. It was honestly like a lot of, there's a strong New York song contingent and they're always fun to hang out with, um, you know. Washington's just a really tiny wine community and New York has a million songs and they're all like, um, you know, they always come correct, you know, the  I just think just like level of sophistication in that market um for the sake of how they address wine is is just elevated um in a really cool way you know that's not saying that we're dumbing things down in dc it's just like a it's a matter of scale you know they just have like way more people with way deeper pockets you know doing things like you know six seven million at a time instead of dc which is like barely cracking you know a million in the city and not even um it's just never been so i i enjoy that energy i'm glad i don't live there but um it's fun it's fun to kind of access the people and um you know see see what they're about and see how they love the same thing and honestly like that's what's cool to me about reesling too is that like you know the song community there's like you know a bunch of lgbt people bunch of like you know every every hue every color like i'm the i'm the normie blonde guy but you know i think reesling is a great that you can engage you know coming from a lot of different places and you know i think it's a great place to be and i think it's a great place to be and i think it's a great place to be different backgrounds and it goes with like so many different cuisines and these like awesome ways and you know the diversity of that community I think it's really exciting, especially in an industry that's been monolithically me.

Absolutely, I didn't actually think about how Reisling is such a common denominator on an international stage when we think of it from like a pairing. It's just fucking yeah, it fucking goes with everything and that's awesome, like who wants to drink? Like, you know, even Latah is delicious, but I don't want Latah to be like... I don't want Latah to be like, with, like, you know, um what's the famous Thai like Papaya salad, like uh, you know, like the green Papaya spiciness? Like only Reisling works with that, you know, like, uh, and you know. It goes with everything, and it's like really dynamic and awesome. It's this great skeleton key, and so it's just like this common nerd language for people that want to nerd out about wine, but equally, this great equalizer for people that just love food at a particular level and want it to be to belong to all people.

Um, and it feels weird because, like, the riesling world is like Germanic and really white. I felt kind of like I felt hugely awkward because, um, you know, to answer your earlier question, I got to uh, uh, I was on a panel, and um, um, winemaker from Nikolai off um, was like zooming in; it was awesome! I was really excited to you. Know I engage with him about his wines, but the the wine that we were showcasing was just part of this like panel for like diversity inclusivity in the wine world and I didn't want to like you know totally like you know let him off the hook for the sake of that or not involve him in that dialogue so I asked him, you know what um you know uh you know the the winemaking industry in Austria um you know was doing to make the you know uh um kind of wine world more diverse and inclusive there which really a really weird question ask an Austrian winemaker because you know I mean Austria has and you know immigrant populations um you just look at their national soccer team you can't help but see that but you know i i imagine that the average austrian tasting room is much more milquetoast than the average even finger lakes you know tasting room which is pretty milquetoast to begin with um uh but he had a good answer you know for him he said you know it was about like various entry and he felt like the cool thing about austrian wine is that it didn't you know they made really amazing wines these world-class wines at nikolai off but they weren't hugely expensive so you know there's just like more um you know approachable uh approachability uh for the sake of That of that culture, um, but you know it felt like kind of a weird question to ask remotely to someone that's famous for their, you know, pre-Roman sellers, um. But by the same token, like equally important to ask for that reason that's great, um. I think that Miguel de León would be happy with that as well, oh yeah he was there, maybe he was there, um, yeah yeah, um.

And I mean that's the other thing too, I think that like, uh, um, you know a lot of these songs who I was saying out with a lot of these people that love in particular way, like they've been some of the most, um, you know they've been some of the strongest advocates, um, for for change. in this industry and and for you know um in the course of you know the dual pandemics you know we had like covid but then you also had you know the things that covid you know made us more aware of as a as a society and you know systemic racism was certainly one of those and and um you know i i think it was it's really amazing to see um you know this people group of people who happen to also love reselling like respond to that in a really you know thoughtful and and and dynamic um and you know it was it was cool to um you know touch base with them as part of that too that's beautiful i'm out of questions out of questions well thank you thank you to uh whoever asked about recent bank camps always fun to uh unload about recent bank camp uh courtney you rock um uh thank you so much uh elizabeth and megan um i hope you get to change a chance to raise a glass uh later today elizabeth i hope your cold subsides um uh or hot toddy maybe a little hot toddy action uh later for you all um and uh you know excited to you know uh continue uh to engage um you know this audience um you know it remains as viable as ever even if it is niche and um you know i feel honored to be you know captain of the ship such as it were uh cheers to you all so.