Season 3, Episode 4
Champagne might be the king of bubbly, but that doesn’t mean it’s the surefire option for every situation. Sommelier Matthew Kaner—former SommTV host and current wine correspondent for Men’s Journal—joins us to discuss the unique characteristics of the world’s best sparkling wines and how they can play a starring role … starting with Italy. While Emilia-Romagna might be best known for cars and food—and Venice for Gondolas—both serve as home base for Italy’s most famous apertif-friendly wines. Plus, we talk the challenges for wine writers in today’s landscape and how America became to Prosecco’s greatest ally.
Wines Featured on This Episode:
2022 Fattoria Moretto Canova Lambrusco Grasparossa di Castelvetro Emilia-Romagna
https://www.wineaccess.com/catalog/fattoria-moretto-canova-lambrusco-grasparossa-di-castelvetro-emilia-romagna_67b2399a-dc82-41d4-b3e5-4a4204556e93/
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Links and Mentions
📰 Nothing Left to Say? By Karen MacNeil
📰 Men’s Journal Wine Column
https://www.mensjournal.com/wine/
📰 Wine News in 5 on IG by Samantha Cole Johnson (Senior US Editor , Jancis Robinson)
https://www.instagram.com/samanthacolejohnson?igsh=am15d3RkMTR0MWFu
[Music] well hello and welcome to the wine access unfiltered podcast it is no secret that I am a huge huge champagne fan and I think most of us are on the same page around champagne sort of being the king of the sparkling wine category right like we can all agree that when we think of when we think of sparkling we say champagne in fact we interchange champagne a lot with other types of sparkling but there are lots of other sparklings out there and so today’s podcast is solely dedicated to anything but champagne sort of play on this old anything but Chardonnay motto that we used to talk about that we’re not talking about anymore because we did a whole episode on why we love Chardonnay Chard is a great grape and in fact often used in things like champagne and sparkling wine but over the last few years I sort of come to this realization that in addition to the fact that there are other categories outside of champagne it’s not quite as higher goal as we like to think it is like there’s not really a good a bad a better a worse there’s just different categories and they sort of slot in to different places in our lives so for example if you go to Venice like I just was with my guest who’s with me today you drink prco and prco feels good there there’s a reason you drink prco if you go to places like Emilia rmania in Moda you drink another sparkling beverage that’s not champagne I’m not going to tell you what it is I’m going to I’m going to save that for later but I will just sort of tee us up with we’ve come a long way for those of you who remember the the 80s commercials about it the really bad ones that I honestly think should maybe make a comeback we’re gonna talk about that and to do that with me today I’ve enlisted some professional help in the way of friend wine expert writer Matthew Kaner is here hello how are you man you can give me an intro any day hello there thank you doing well good to see you it’s been a while it’s been a couple weeks I love having guests on who I’ve recently traveled with it’s really kind of a selfish thing because I get to re relive the experience but also I think there’s so many things that when you’re on these trips together you see different things that I see like we’re all exposed to the same things but our takeaways are different so so true maybe we’ll just like before we get into the beat and potatoes of the podcast like we have to talk about this trip that we just went on because it is pretty extraordinary I’d say yeah from from the moment we all saw each other in New York and got on the plane together until you know the water taxi from the airport to our hotel which have any of you listening watching ever had a water taxi take you to your airport or to your hotel from the airport come on wild crazy so crazy I went to Venice when I was like 20 years old I was in college uh studying abroad in London and like for our fall break we went to Venice and I do not remember ever taking a water taxi like I remember a bus I don’t remember a water taxi but I was also very poor we stayed at a hostel so it was it was a very different experience going with um our friends at mietto but it was a really cool experience because I didn’t see it through the prco lens which is sort of how we experienced it and I promise this is not to like brag about our trip but it was like a really cool experience because it’s so much more prco is so much more about the lifestyle than it is the wine like we’re excited about the wine the wine is cool but like it really is there’s something about drinking prco in the land of prco on the water with your friends eating you know all the food yeah and prco is analogous to a smile a moment in time watching the boats on the water having a great Spritz being in the Hills having great TiVo and chete prco is so much bigger than just have a glass of sparkling wine it really is I love that about it and that this is my point about this entire podcast is like champagne is champagne like we’re not going to keep compete with champagne because we don’t need to compete with champagne because there are moments like sitting on your deck on a beautiful day we’re like you just want something relaxing and easy to drink and I think there are different Cate these subcategories within sparkling wine that sort of fit those little positions in our lives and you worked as s in Hospitality for years so you know you know exactly how this Falls in right yeah I mean I would always have at the wine bars that I owned and was the wine director of we’d have a champagne by the glass but i’ always have either um you know kont lir kont sauce sparkling wine from Australia sparkling wine from um South America sou sparkling wine from South Africa sparkling wine from America and then I’d always have a sparkling Rosé as well that was non- champagne always and giving people the option what’s funny about it is they just don’t know the options out there until you make them aware of it and that was for me part of the whole thing is you got to give the access for them to know it’s part of what they can have did you find that the reception to it was great or did you find that people just kind of universally were like I’ll just have a glass of sparkling or I’ll just have a glass of champagne so to your point earlier people will say I’ll have a glass of champagne and they don’t necessarily realize that that’s a luxury thing they they they think they’re saying I want sparkling wine but what they’re actually saying is I would like something at a wine bar or restaurant that’s at least 20 to $25 a glass and that’s not always what they mean to say so we trained everyone to say are you looking for champagne proper from the Champagne region or just something bubbly it was a 100% a follow-up question that I trained all my people to ask because the quality level you can get outside of champagne has risen so dramatically the last 20 years depending on your budget depending on your knowledge base depending on some people just can afford to drink gron crew champagne every day you know what but not everyone can so we don’t want to take away the joy of someone having a great 122 to $15 glass of sparkling wine somewhere just because they use the wrong quote unquote wrong word and and I noticed a lot of people when we would show them other things other Alternatives a lot of the response would be oh I like this better than champagne well they taste different right I mean even outside of the price of champagne if you’re talking about a gr crew champagne versus a prco like they’re they’re made they’re made to taste different they’re not made because one is more expensive versus less expensive like there is an obvious price difference but one is really made to age and one is made to be consumed in its Youth and I think if you know that going into your drinking experience it kind of like I think it takes the pressure off in a lot of ways to not always feel like you have to have champagne or not always feel like you have to preco I think there’s opportunity to have both at different times and Lord knows this wine fridge to my right is stacked with so much champagne but I also have a ton of other types of sparkling ranging as you said Australian sparkling Oregon sparkling California sparkling prco lamb Brusco which we’re going to talk about um I’m very EXC to talk about uh yeah I I know I kind of buried the lead a little bit with that but um before we get into that we’ve got to talk about what is happening in the wine world all right so things are happening you of all people know exactly what’s happening because you’ve been you you are what is your title at Ben’s Journal you’re writing for them on the wine front but I don’t what your title yeah so my technical title is the wine correspondent and so what I get to do is I run the wine Channel and Men’s Journal men’s journal.com wine and I publish at least one article a day through the channel mostly from my own work I also have been able to bring in additional contributors and writers and awesome people who I meet on trips or I know them their wine writing and our whole point you know we’re we’re not the New York Times we’re not San Francisco Chronicle this is more news-based and a little bit more topical what’s happening now just because the the way that people’s attention span and bandwidth is it’s hard to get attention from people and we’re noticing they’re reading a little less and less so I’ve leaned into just trying to get great stories in front of people that are based on news and based on current events and based on what’s Happening Now well what is happening now according to our friend Harin mcneel who’s been on the podcast she was actually episode one of this third season and I I love tremendously and I think she always has something poignant to say it’s always well thought out and I think this article sort of Dropped a Bomb when it landed a few weeks go it’s called Nothing Left to say the end of wine rating and it was something that she had sort of come out of this this speech that she had given um at the for the Walt cleans leadership series at the Robert mandavi Institute at UC Davis and her contention is that wine writing is effectively gone uh people are not drinking as much as they used to there is it’s you know it’s a lot of the same things that we’ve been hearing right like jenzie is not drinking wine sales are down um in Bordeaux there’s Vineyards being ripped up uh and wine writing is not what it used to be and I love that she breaks down the difference between a wine critic versus a wine writer because they are two very different things I highly encourage you to read this article but I think my takeaway from this is one you know Karen’s a smart person I think of all of the wine writers that have ever existed on the planet she is the one that has really evolved and pivoted as times have needed and you see this like on her social media you see this in the fact that she you know she’s a published author she’s written the wine Bible she is a you know she’s won James Beard awards I mean she’s done it all right but she’s also started a wine blog she does a lot on social media she does the video content and she’s really done her best to continue wine communication through all the different mediums that we have available to us but her contention is that like we’re in a very different place now wine writers are not getting paid what they used to in fact she cited an example in which she had talked with I think Newsweek about doing an article and at the end of you know the conversations she said what do you pay and they said nothing we we pay absolutely nothing and it was kind of wild because she cites like decanter as being one of the last remaining Publications that actually pays their writers so I think like as a writer I’m sure you have a lot to say on this topic so as a new wine writer especially you know I I had a 19-year wine career before I got given this opportunity and I was uniquely positioned because I have a lot of relationships I’ve traveled a lot I’ve got a lot to say and to Karen’s point I got this opportunity at a time when we’re seeing dwindling readership and the numbers like the amount of people reading is not lower it’s literally how long they’ll spend right sometimes we’re seeing 45 seconds in engagement 45 seconds right and so for those of you out there who have watched whether articles are posted on Twitter LinkedIn you know Facebook wherever you see links to get things maybe in a a tweet or in a um you know a text thread you have with your friends it will show you the actual time that it takes to read the article because people get to then decide do I have the time to do that and yeah I started thinking about the psychology of it and it all is based on the fact that so socioeconomically Wine’s getting more expensive and traditionally it’s been a little bit hard to break into the younger less you know pocket heavy wallet heavy people and now we’re seeing the younger generation who have gotten probably a a message that’s not consistent about whether Wine’s healthy or not for them so they’re just not drinking wine a lot of times and that has trickle down effects and on the wine writing front first off is there more to say look there’s always more stories to tell there’s always things to highlight there’s always great things we can amplify I think the void goes to who’s reading it and are we wasting our time at times and I I’ve seen this where I can spend hours writing an article I’m so excited to put it out and then I get you know I see the analytics and I see how few people are reading it and it’s crushing truly yeah and all the points she makes about you know first off there’s little to no money in it and I have so many freelance friends who they struggle month-to-month to make their rent and they don’t know how much they can pull from certain Publications it’s no one’s fault this is the scenario but this is the world we live in now of wine writing is because people aren’t reading it’s hard for them to justify the spend and places like Forbes and where I am at Men’s Journal it’s all click based and ad-based so whilea you out there the more you click our Men’s Journal articles the more people might get paid contributors might make a living but the same is true for Publications like Forbes and they’re one of the biggest out there so right the model shifting and for Karen to get up there with the the podium she’s on and the audience she has to be able to like really get this information out unfortunately it’s ripping off a Band-Aid and scaring a lot of people and um exposing a lot of people who don’t want to be exposed but at some point someone’s got to make the statement right well and I think it should be her I think she’s so well researched and she always has she always has something to say and it’s always something that I want to hear whether or not it’s maybe I don’t want to hear it but I I need to hear it and I think you know one of the things that she says at the very top of the article is like you know the ship is sinking and we’re rearranging the furniture on the Titanic like that is literally what’s happening in the wine industry right now like we are in this and we’ve been in this place for a long time you know I started on social media almost a decade ago talking about you know about wine and also telling wine makers and telling wineries like hey like this is probably going to be a thing like you can see it everywhere else in the world like fashion makeup food sports like it’s all going to this direction like you should you know look alive and it just feels like the wine industry is just like um I just don’t know like I just feel like we should keep doing what we’ve been doing and that will just keep working and the harsh reality is it’s not working the numbers keep telling us that it’s not working yeah and then we have the additional uh the additional issue of like the World Health Organization talking about how zero alcohol is good for you like not even a drop uh to drink is good for you you know while the rest of us are like all right well we’re drinking in moderation like we’re not going to stop drinking like it’s not going to happen like thanks World Health Organization but like I’m not a doctor but wrong I’m just going to tell you they’re wrong right they’re wrong you know and I also I live in the world of social media and she does talk about the wine influencer and I do think that there is this is sort of the new wave of the wine writer is the wine influencer like are we doing what the wine writer was doing is it taking the length of time to research one article absolutely not but I can I can put out content multiple times a day if I want to on various topics and have crazy amounts of reach and I can also get paid to do that and that’s you know effectively how I support myself so I you know as much as I I respect her opinion and and she’s not wrong wine writers are not getting paid writers in general are not getting paid this is not this is not unique to Wine um you know I do have to wonder for those you know wine writers out there like you know is it time to look at things a different way like I love um there’s someone working for Janis Robinson who do who does a um you know just she she talks to the camera and she gives like you know three or four articles a week um her name’s Samantha if you want to follow her she’s great I’ll link her underneath but she you know she just talks to the camera and she talks about what’s going on and it’s like it’s nothing fancy I’ve talked to her about it she does a great job but I think it’s you know she’s still managing to get the message across and I just think that if we can just shift a little bit it would go a long way and you do it too I mean you you always put all of your articles out on social media and I think that really helps because I’m I’m clicking through I appreciate that it’s it’s uh it’s an interesting balance of not everyone’s willing to put themselves on camera and be out there and have I mean there’s I’m sure you see it in your comments whether you’re writing the greatest or rather putting out the greatest video there’s haters there’s people who have negative comments that they’re out there tell you you’re wrong challenge things that you’ve decided to put out and you know I get the same with the writing stuff it’s it’s a hard world to put yourself out there as a content creator in any way but the truth is the world we’re living in now wants a short quick bite video that they can learn from pull from and then be inspired to go learn more if they’re inspired to learn more from and you’ve been amazing you you’ve done such an amazing job of that no it’s it’s so true and people who are effectively communicating the way that maybe wine writers were 15 20 30 years ago are people who have moved to the video format um I’ve had great advice from friends of mine who have had success in that world and for me the issue has been I’m not good at doing it myself I don’t like sitting in front of a camera by myself getting inspired to have a script written and then edit it all I just it’s not who I am yeah and I’ve had times in my life where I luckily had the film crew and an editing team and I’ve been blessed and also now I don’t have it so it’s hard to to go back and kind of start from square one but those who are the best at it the most effective at it don’t let that be a challenge like yourself I mean your your content’s incredible thanks it I mean it never feels normal right no of course all right something for all of you guys to get excited about is the wine that I am about to open and enjoy I’m not gonna have it with pizza because I’m recording a podcast you guys but uh if you are joining us on our podcast wine club Adventure I.E if you’re a member of the wine access unfiltered podcast wine club the longest name for a podcast wine club in wine club history uh please grab this bottle of lamb Brusco that was the wine we’re having lamb Brusco today this is the ftor moretto and um I’m going to open it when we get back in a second if you haven’t done that already you will notice that there’s going to be a little hop when you pull that cork so stay with us and if you’re not a member of the unfiltered podcast wine club well now is your cue to do that all the information is below join subscribe do all the things thanks Matthew uh and um yeah we’ll see you when we uh get back with all things sparkling all right you guys as I said I’ve got the Lambrusco with us um I have wax poetic far too many times about lamb Brusco in this podcast and finally when we started talking about this season and all the different shows we wanted to do I was like if lamb Brusco is not part of this podcast wine club I’m out done thank you very much see you never um truly I really wanted a Lambrusco to be part of it however the issue is the quality of Lambrusco is all all over the place so to find one that we could include in the wine club was a little bit of a challenge so I went back through my archives of like everything that I’ve tasted there was one in particular that I remembered having when I was up in mesino you have you been up to mesino yeah but not in a while it’s been a few years I’m going to get back hopefully soon I was staying up there and I went to this pizza shop and the hotel that I was staying at actually had a little wine shop in it and I was like oh we’re going to have pizza it would be so so great to have lamb Brusco and this was actually and I’m having trouble opening it this was actually the bottle that I ended up having and I had never had it before but I did what I always do and Matthew I’m sure you do the same thing I turned it around I checked to see who imported it and it was Kermit Lynch and I was like great I am probably in fantastic hands and as it turned out I was it was delicious it was wonderful it was bone dry um but for those of you who are unfamiliar with lamb Brusco we have some things to talk about Matthew since uh you do not have this wine you have a different wine which one do you have with us yeah so I brought a producer who was the first Lambrusco producer I got obsessed with but a whole new take on it so this is me called fermento and this is more a frante style which we can get into kind of what the the world has expected from because look there’s what Lum Brusco is there’s what we expect Lam Brusco to be there’s been a disconnect between what’s available in the United States versus what they’ve been working on in The Amazing parts of Amelia rammana so I don’t know what style you’re having but I’m guessing it looks a little more on the red wine style a little more dense we’re about to find out yeah so it is CL is grosa it’s grasosa yeah so we have we have so much to unpack with lambco we are going to talk about lots of different sparkling wine so don’t worry if you’re not a Lambrusco fan you’re about to be converted but also we’re going to talk about Lots Lambrusco we are in the region of Amilia Romania as Matthew already said uh this is in the north of Italy kind of a long province that stretches East all the way at the border almost to the Western border and at the North part you’ve got like Milan Verona and Venice kind of stretch to C to the top and then underneath of that on the south part you have Tuscany so it’s sort of wedged in between those two big regions and what’s super interesting about ailia Romania is that despite being wedged between like basically pedmont and Tuscany Italy’s two most proud regions for making wine Emilia Romania is not really a place known for wine making it’s known for uh two other pretty famous things in fact two of Italy’s greatest exports which are cars and food um if you’ve ever visited the region you know that it’s a beautiful place to visit you’ve got mod you’ve got bolognia Parma of course um but wine is not really at the center of the culture it really wine is really meant to serve as the vehicle by which you continue eating which you do a lot of in mod and lamb Brusco is the bever of choice um I assume have you been to Amilia rmania yeah I’ve been I’ve been a lot I I’ve spent a lot of time there I’m quite a fan I’ve been to the the Northwestern part which is where Moda and Parma are I’ve spent a little less time there uh I’ve been to bolognia multiple times and then I’ve been mostly in the kind of on the Kings Road down toward the Adriatic in um Chessa and cheso and for Le and where the um sanes de ranana and um albana Vines are so like as your pointed was put it’s not known for wine the same way but there is really great value really great San ja really great albana’s this kind of um golden colored a lot of skin contact happens with it white wine and then L Brusco depending on the style it just I want to drink it all day and it’s easy I mean mostly easy to do I will say when I went to lusco last year it was for World lamb Brusco day I think I’ve talked about in the podcast this was the one where they like flew me to Paris and we did the whole thing on the Eiffel hour and then the following day we we flew to um to bolognia and then spent some time in Mona when we got there the first day they’re like we have a 165 lamb brusos for you to taste yeah so R quality I’m sure look at the ranging and quality um and it was at like the the consortio building right so we’re like you know kind of in this like classroom style there’s five of us and they’re like you don’t have to taste all of them and one of the girls God bless her she was like no we want to taste all all 165 lambusa and they were like really and she was like yeah and I was like all right well let’s just do it it was an aggressive amount of Lambrusco to taste I will just put like tasting that many sparkling wines of any kind is a lot but then when you’re talking about wines that also have residual sugar and like tanin it’s like a recipe for my teeth have not recovered let’s just put it to like they’re still they are still staining from this adventure but what I learned was there’s so many different styles of lamb Brusco than what we know so we kind of have to back up a little bit and not be after I give you a little history in L Brusco we have to talk about this producer because it’s it’s actually a really interesting producer um we have to talk about something that I you’re probably too young for this and I’m I’m too young for it but I assume you know about like the whole re feel not I haven’t thought about it in a while okay so back in the 80s you know re reun R IU n it reun on ice so nice that was like the jingle this is like a very big thing in the ‘ 80s it was a super super popular wine it was like one of the most popular wines in [Music] America it’s Rion ice AAR time right now Rion is Twice As Nice on ice because it’s specially priced and um unfortunately what happened was they found Trace Amounts of dline glycol which is a major component in uh antifreeze so not super delicious anyway they found a little bit of that in about 1.2 million cases of the wine and so they had to have a huge recall that resulted in like 10% of the company’s total sales um and so it kind of like gave lamb Brusco a really really bad reputation and in some ways it hasn’t recovered like we still think of lamb Brusco in the same way that we think of these like Basket keanes in some way kind of similar to like the Austrian wine Scandal remember that one was a very it was a very similar ordeal and in fact the whole reason that they test this was because there was like there was all of this these things that were happening with like diine whatever it’s called getting into the wine anyway they they have since made things right um but as a result Lambrusco has really really fallen out of fashion and in my opinion I think is one of the most delicious exciting food friendly wines on the on the planet um one thing that champagne cannot do is go with a red sauce pizza and lamb Brusco can true and that is I will die on that hill all day um this is a producer that’s been doing it for a long time organically farmed um and as we pointed out earlier you’re gonna see on the front of this it says la lusco grasosa de Castle can never say this CLE vetro cetro kro uh grar Roa is the so liso is a family of grapes right so that there’s there’s 12 different varieties within the lusco family and then you have like all these Doc’s and this is one of them so when you see lusco Gras perosa Castle vro uh generally this is going to be a darker Lambrusco a little more tannin um a little more structure right but you could also have like Lambrusco di Sabara or Lambrusco D salamino my least favorite of them but they do exist and they could be anywhere from white to Rosé to Red there’s so much to unpack here Matthew what do you have to say yeah I mean you you have Gras perosa and I have the sorbara and um for the most part I mean these are oh you do can I see it again I didn’t get to see the color that so the the label is a little oh yeah so it’s like yeah it’s kind of this like pretty like like it’s a violety pinky oh it’s more like fuchsia it’s like a fuchsia color it’s a little bit more like seethrough not quite as like like this looks like mine looks like a red wine yours looks like a dark Rosé is opaque and mine has you I can see my finger and my hand through it but this is a style so this producer that I’m having the meter they’re 150 years in five generations deep and this was a call back to the way it used to be going back to the method ancestral so trapping unfermented wine basically in a bottle and allowing it to continue fermenting pet net style kind of what we know today and that has been while it was maybe what they were doing 200 years ago it has not really been the way they’ve been doing it as far as I understand they’ve been using autoc clovs and adding their own from U CO2 the same way we saw in prco uh you don’t see a lot of bottle conditioning there some people are doing it but it’s just not as common so with red wine style which lamb Brusco tends to be in our it’s always meant to be quote unquote frante not sparkling the same way champagne or prco is but right the culture and this is what I said earlier like the culture of what people want has changed actually what they’re doing in the production and now like even my petnat style is really sparkling super sparkling yeah you got lots of bubbles on top there yeah how much bubbles did you have in yours it didn’t seem like it was that much not as much as mine at least so yes interesting I didn’t I didn’t get to see what the closure was on yours are this is like a straight up Cork that you pull out with a wanky yeah you had a crown cap and so you’ll see lots of different closures for Lambrusco because lamb Brusco unlike some of these other regions that we’re going to talk about you can make lamb Brusco pretty much however you want like it can be made in the champagne method it can be made in the charmat method it can be made method incestral it can it really like runs the gamut there is no like quote unquote wine law that dictates how you can make lamb brus go like even within the docc that you know say how much sorbaro gaspara has to be in the blend it actually doesn’t really dictate how you can make the wine and so for that reason there’s and I think this has also been a huge issue with lamb Brusco is like there are so many styles and they can range from bone dry to super super sweet and the other issue is like I walked into the PA state store the other day because we were going to have like we were GNA have like pizza and hogies right which is like Del like all I want is lamb Brusco with pizza and hogies and I’ll tell you when in a second they walk in the state store and like hey do you have any Brisco and they point me to this wall and literally all that is on the wall are like seven different formats of reun it’s like jug form Magnum form box form little wine form that’s all it was and it was like it was one type of wine in multiple different forms and I was like well [ __ ] no wonder nobody is into lamb Brusco because this is like you know this is like a whole State’s worth of what they’ve got and so you do have to do a little bit of digging and it does require you know someone to kind of like guide you because you don’t always know what you’re going to get into like I said with the grasper Rosa you can especially like this particular one um you can almost guarantee that the quality is going to be a little bit higher when it’s when it’s grass Barosa d cetro uh but then when you get outside of that dooc it is a little bit of a you know you got to ask some questions to get there but this is this has they’re saying this is bone dry I think there’s a little sweetness on this but it’s like a nice amount of sweetness um it’s 11 and a half% alcohol and the reason I like it with pizza hogies is one pizza sauce tends out have sugar um which like a little bit of sweetness to it like depending on where you go also the dough can be a little bit sweet sometimes and for that reason I like to have a a tiny tiny amount of sweetness to go with that to kind of like match it um and I want acid which is coming from the CO2 so I like to pair piece with that but the other reason that I like to do with hogies especially if you go to somewhere like Stakes Wester shout out to them uh they use like real and real like really good meats on theirs and if you go to mod all you’re going to eat there if you don’t go to Oar frana all you’re going to eat there are plates and plates and plates of shuder it is like it is the capital of shuder land and they’re going to give you a glass of lamb Brusco to go with it and to me it is like one of the great like I I’m still recovering from this trip that I was on because it was so much shakery but like one can only have so much salami but it was delicious and like that salty meat with like high acid and tannin and sweetness like what a delicious combo yeah mine’s 11 and a half% alcohol 7.6 grams per liter of acidity crazy wow yeah it’s up there doesn’t the like the Tex sheet doesn’t say the sweetness but I’m guessing residual sugar is probably three to four grams per liter just otherwise it wouldn’t be as balanced as it is right now but mine’s you know more on the Rosé side um not not a lot of of skin contact and mercuration I think again to see the color this has a lot of really amazing red fruits it’s a little floral on the nose um this would do quite well with a pizza do really great with some I I really loved aged paragano regano uh I think it’s when you get the crystals that’s some of the best cheese on the planet I love it yes you guys I’m telling you shakuri cheese pizza like if this is all you eat during the summer like I do with like the occasional salad yeah lamb Brusco just stock up on it it’s so good and I’m really excited that the team like at wine axis and I got together and I was like I really want this wine and they were like yeah great amazing I’m so excited because I feel like this is one of those wines that I can’t always find so I’m excited this in the shipment um also another producer that we should definitely call out and I’m sure you know this producer Matthew is Piner yeah very good completely different style than what we’re talking about uh this is like it’s very small production and he really doesn’t work with I mean he works with grasosa but it’s not you’re not going to see a lot of like the dark Inky colored ones he does a lot with the lighter Styles so he does a lot with like the salamino and a lot with the svara um but those are really beautiful and those are all for the most part bone dry and they would remind you of something that you would get like a like a true pet nut style um they’re a little funkier they’re definitely not what you think of when you think of lamb Brusco but I think this stigma around lamb Brusco is really falling by the wayside aside from the fact that you’re still walking into the PA stay store and seeing reun like mostly what you’re seeing at restaurants anymore if they’re putting lamb Brusco on the list it’s because it’s a quality producer like you rarely see garbage out there and doesn’t um doesn’t a scar scarpeta like makes a lambur A can too right they do yeah yeah they do which is kind of delicious yeah I look I’m I’m a big fan of Bobby and Lin and their team and all the things that they accomplish and you know to be a frean producer but also making Lum Brusco is pretty cool I love lambco I was actually just I was reading the um you know some of the soil types and it’s like this one in particular is like I was I was reading it to my fiance it was like clay like heavy soils very Rocky and I was like what does that sound like cuz like outside here I’ve just been working in the yard all week and it’s just like heavy clay rocky soil and I was like see we could plant like old Lambrusco Vines here and we could make Lambrusco here in Pennsylvania so you could you never know maybe we could he’s like it’s high elevation I was like don’t worry about it it’s it is high elevation but don’t worry about it yeah I love it anyway so that’s lamb Brusco I love lamb Brusco if you have more questions on lamb Brusco DM me I’ll talk to you about it all day it’s so good we’ll keep drinking this and circle back to it but we have to talk about um what I would sort of consider and I never really considered this until we went to Venice and started drinking it because you know the way that lamb Brusco is sort of a lifestyle forco is very much a lifestyle you know it’s not a wine that we talk about the text sheets a lot about we just kind of drink it and it’s easy and it’s there um prco made from the glera grape coming from the Veno region and sort of similar and that it’s a lot of these like small plots of Vineyards like these little family hamlets that are speckled throughout you have like little you know portions of uh of the region that have higher quality Vineyards like CTI but um prco you know is not champagne as we pointed out earlier it is made in the charmat OR Martina charmat method which means that unlike champagne where that secondary fermentation is happening in the bottle you’re getting the contact with the leaves that’s having that autolytic uh characteristic come out so that’s where you’re getting that rosi toasty croissan thing and champagne you’re not getting that with prco prco it’s done in a tank it’s immediately racked off of anything that would be on there to give it that toasty character and it’s done in that way to retrain freshness and fru and vibrancy and it’s intended to be drunk young you’re rarely going to see a vintage on a label of prco unless it’s rosé unless it’s like a very special single Vineyard for Seco and it is really it’s really done so so that you can sit outside add some appol if you want to make an appol Spritz and just have it with some cheese I mean what else what else do you need and you you touched quickly on the Rosé thing I mean the Rosé is a brand new revelation for them I think in the last 20 years it’s literally just got approved for them to be able to make Rosé and have red varieties go into the wines um they’re they’re evolving so our hosts were mietto and they’re a curious one because enor who’s their CEO of the company was literally the guy showing up in New York 25 years ago with a briefcase full of information on prco and wines to show people in New York and America had no context for it we didn’t know what it was he did the hard work did the door knocking did literally the like traveling salesman pitch and 25 years later America’s the biggest market for prco on the planet it worked oh that’s so interesting I didn’t know that yeah it’s amazing that’s why me andto you know the orange label is so iconic and so intertwined in like a smile and an orange bottle of prco for me it’s I’m kind of orange myself so I love it it fits my color palette but they really are part of the American story of prco in a way that you can’t really escape and also appol and and just the sprit style being from Venice it’s such an amazing thing we were you know while we were there they were showing us their apertivo both the alcoh coholic version and the non-alcoholic version which is about to launch very excitedly and they have an alcohol removed sparkling wine as well they’re literally making the choices for people regardless of am I drinking alcohol or not mionetto and their team smartly are trying to have everyone kind of part of the conversation and we’re seeing prco Brands know that because they are a Lifestyle brand because they’re a party wine because it’s something you sit by the pool it’s not necessarily a wine that you buy a bottle of and sit and age for 20 years like maybe some Champagnes they really do want to be the every person wine and me as a wine bar owner in the past I would always have prco because we could use it for happy hour we could get someone a great1 to2 glass of prco it wasn’t that investment someone had to make to get the more expensive stuff but the truth is there are some really great wines and you talked about carti we went there to the hill of carti and these are some of the most coveted grapes in all of Northeastern Italy it’s unbelievable most expensive real estate in Italy wine real estate in Italy which is wild what they say like it was like a million an acre or something I think 2 million actually and 2 million and before anyone gets all upset and starts you know keyboard worrying about this the reason why they’re able to say that and it be true is because literally no one is willing to sell so in order for you to to get someone Cox into selling you’d have to offer more than they’re selling in bolo otherwise no one would sell yes and it it will say it on the label like if you and me and does make a you know single cartis bottling um it’ll say it like right across there it’ll say car there’s many different cartis bottlings and there are like single Vineyard bottlings um like Beil 15 1542 like makes some beautiful ones as well and when I’m at Aspen food and wine uh in June if you’re if you happen to be there I’m I will be featuring both meeto and bizol in my seminars alongside lots of different sparkling wines because I think it’s important to see how these wines can play different roles in your life champagne is champagne prco is prco they do different things you don’t wear a cocktail dress to go farming in your yard you don’t wear jeans to a gallet they do different things and that’s a good thing we need wines to fit different places in our life and for me prco is that summertime wine where you’re just sitting outside you have a cheeseboard your shaku you just have something simple and easy like Matthew I don’t know about you but I you know usually when I’m on these wine trips I’m like I’m whed out like I don’t want any more whatever we’ve just been drinking for the last like 5 days I got home and I craved a glass of prco and an appol Spritz that is that’s never happened it’s uncommon for me to get sick of sparkling wine Andor apparal Spritz I just I love them I could drink appol Spritz all summer and the only reason why it was a little hard for me to do exactly what you did was I got home was home for one day and then went straight to uh to Houston Texas for a whiskey event so I all of a sudden had to shift into a whiskey mine for a day and then I just was back in Texas for a big um the the Buffalo Gap wine Summit which was awesome at Pini Ranch and so we were drinking a lot of red wines as you can imagine but I’m um I’m a fan of prco in a way that I didn’t used to be because I think I was evaluating it from a S mindset and not necessarily from it’s easy to do like we can say well it’s not champagne it’s not kont Lair it’s not to your point what you said they’re allowed to be their singular home and their own thing and prco Doc is a totally different thing than valo bad or corano or carti they’re not the same thing individually within the same region so I think if we allow it to have its own personality to be fresh and Lively and to have these moments in our life again by the pool by the water side in a spritz and stop being so kind of nose up on it like it’s just allowed to be delicious yeah and I I love that prco like knows its place they’re like no we know that we’re your jeans in your closet and we’re like we’re happy to be the Levis like yeah it’s all good like y’all everybody else who wants to give you a champagne like go for it but we’re going to do our own thing over here um speaking of other things that compete with champagne because we have to talk about other categories that do compete with champagne there are other regions that will do charm at method prco style LM Brusco well not lusco style but definitely Sharm method outside of the region but these are the two places that you’re going to find them but what you do have are lots of other places that are sort of emulating the champagne style making the wines in that traditional or method champenois method so they’re doing that secondary fermentation in the bottle yes I was going to bring that up the Cusco from frena corz so yes even within the region of look at you with the swag even within the region of Italy within the country of Italy you have other places that are making champagne esque wines French aorta of course being one of them trentodoc being another I know you and I talked about um visiting the Ferrari producer at uh vill V Maron right um those are two places that you should definitely yeah those are an beautiful beautiful places brunch of Corda in the Lombardi region um you know really making sparkling wine in that champagne method using predominantly Shard a little bit of Pinero um and I think a little p Bianco as well right for sure what’s really interesting about these regions is that they are still making Wines in this method but I find with French of there’s incredible value there um one the Aging requirements are like crazy uh especially as compared to Champagne like for example your non-vintage is a minimum of 18 months on the leaves that it has to be aged if you have the Satan it’s a minimum of uh 24 months for non-vintage and even more than that for vintage um I love that you you put up the Kosco which is one of the you know the most famous French Accord producers and they make a beautiful uh qva called the Anamaria Clemente that I’m a huge fan of if you see it on the wine list one to order all time wine beautiful wine I had actually had it about this time last year um with another guest of ours uh and two other guests Anthony jilo and Ray Isle when we were at the Kentucky Derby Ray was the one who introduced me to it he was like oh we should order this and I had never had it it was beautiful but they are trentodoc and frenchak corta two separate regions Trent do being you know sort of in the in the dolomites right so you’re at elevation again very Chardon a heavy making Wines in that champenois method um those are emulating the champagne style and get pretty close if I’m you know I’m I’m not going to overstep here and say they’re the same thing but they do get pretty close are you a fan of both either I love both so I’ve been luck luckily able to visit both froner CA and trento Doc I’ve been to K Bosco I’ve hung out with our friends at Ferrari multiple times and also I want to me mention kind of on the same quality level and in the same mindset cont in Alta pamon you know what what Giorgio retti and his team did when they bought the winery I think in 2 or 2011 you know this is a sparkling wine producer that’s been around actually longer than Ferrari which they’re from 1903 and I think cont was the late 1800s that they were established so Italy has a long tradition of making sparkling wines on that level that quality and we don’t necessarily think of it as a champagne alternative when you’re in Milan you’re drinking champagne but if you go to Venice if you go to uh bolognia if you go to other cities like champagne is not not as commonly found I haven’t really been to Rome yet I’m curious to see what the culture is like in Rome for sparkling wine but like the the um kind of huge well I guess when you’re in Alba and in The Villages of Baro and barbaresco you’re more likely to see Alta pamon sparkling now but contat has this a long history they were originally one of the wines of the Queen of England for a long time they have a Ros that was made for the queen they’ve got their you know I can get into a lot of history with them but they’ve been around a long time what um kabas has been around since the 60s and Anna Maria Clemente being the The Matriarch and the homage to the woman who literally made the choice to take her home and turn it into an amazing Vineyard and plant Chardonnay and Pino Bianco and um that choice that was made now ripples through and the docg there I think came in the 80s um that Winer had their hands and all of it and trento Doc would trento doc be what it is without Ferrari which we’re not talking the cars gu no we’re talking so they actually have this interesting statement they make that the sparkling wine Ferrari trento Doc is the masculine Ferrari where the Carr is the feminine Ferrari I know we’re trying to get away from masculine feminine feminine and wine but they still are able to say that because these two amazing family names with Enzo and then um Julio Ferrari from the the sparkling wine producer you know these guys were basically disrupting their industries from an early time and both of them mattered and that name matters in two different Industries so C crazy that that’s the case they do pour um the Ferrari at F1 even though they’re not technically related they do pour the Ferrari at1 no uh Ferrari is the official sparkling wine of the the winner circle now for F1 so they have a specific and you can go to one of my men’s journals articles and read all about it back from last year when it all went down um yeah they they make a um a magnum only that whoever wins in the top three people for each F1 race get to use a a magnum of spefic specific for that event Ferrari sparkling one pretty cool Trenta do so cool yeah yeah I I think you’re I mean Trenta do is it is Ferrari is by far the biggest producer and they are definitely putting the most money into championing the region and getting other people to recognize Tren it’s trento doc by the way this is always a little bit confusing to me trento is the region but we call it trento doc trento doc because that’s the you know doc just that we see it anywhere else in Italy um but it is you know it is such a special region they not terribly far from each other when you look at frencha corta and trentodoc um but they do make very different wines you just have to think of them as like frena corta to me is like a little softer and I find that like the trento do wines because they’re at such high elevation they they tend to be a little zippier a little brighter um definitely lean more into the acidity so if you want you know different styles of champagne adjacent sparkling those are definitely two regions to look to in Italy outside of Italy you can of course go to Spain and look at cava they are a different quality you know I think um I don’t think I think there’s some great cavas being produced but it’s different grapes um they are still made in the champagne method but I you know I find Cava is like it’s it’s not prco adjacent but I do treat it in this in a similar way when I don’t want something that I want to have to think about too much unless we’re talking about like a you know a super special C but where where do you feel Cava slots in so Cava has done a good job of trying to keep the quality High while also letting people you know they they’ve allowed production outside of the Northwest the Northeast rather not specifically in Catalonia so doing that and allowing the region to grow is something that could be scary and I think that’s really what happened when the corput organization kind of came out of that energy but Cava itself can be a 9999 on the the Shelf wine or it can be an $80 retail Le aged you know single vintage wine it there’s an amazing range of what you can find there now from the kind of mindset of production I was an ambassador for a while for codu reventos and I got to know a lot of what they did I love what they do a small producer called Han Ventura been a big fan of for a long time um the mionetto family is part of fren and their whole uh kind of conglomerate they have going on sigur curas exactly yeah so there’s there’s some really incredible wines being made there and I think the Spanish style the Spanish lifestyle in general calls for a lot of sparkling wine with the seafood heavy especially Catalonia Costa Braava whether you’re you know in barcalona or whether you’re also up in the bass country near to the ocean whether it be in bilau or S Sebastian Cava makes sense in a lot of context with food there and it’s one of the most gastronomic places on the planet I don’t like going on record and saying favorites that’s not a term I love but food in Spain it’s kind of hard to beat and especially like if you think about the food and like and if that’s the decision that you’re like if you’re between prco or frora orava like just consider what you’re eating and like the regions that these places represent right that should lend itself to your decision like are you going to be on the water then it probably should be prco are you eating lots of like seafood are you eating very like Spanish cheeses then it probably should be Cava um and then the last place we have to talk about you know obviously there’s tons of domestic sparkling right yeah domestic meaning California Oregon even Washington um and then Australian and Tasmanian sparkling which we’re not going to have a second to talk about today hopefully we’ll have like another whole episode to talk about maybe New World sparkling yeah maybe I should have titled this like anything but champagne but also in Europe outside of champagne you have all of the regions of champagne who produce what’s called cremont a cremont crl crl which is always confusing because there is a region in Champagne called Caron but it’s c m n t not C m& but this is a great hack in life right if you’re looking for a great bottle of sparkling wine kont de the region so crant de laar crant de bordo crant de lemu all sauce we love all sauce um these are all great places to look to um for sparkling wine that is a fraction of the price of champagne um and made with the grapes that are from that particular region so always a good hack in life there’s t T of them on wine access do you have any favorite producers of kont from any particular region so from the lir I love uh Arno lambar and all the bre wines from samur big big big big big fan I’m an ambassador also for all sauce if there’s any professionals who are going to be in New York next Monday hit me up in the DMS you’re going to see this this week so hit me up quickly come to our all sauce rocks tasting and I’ll help you see amazing kont kont alas uh alamont lner big fan of their rosé one of The alltime Producers um haven’t been to Lemieux specifically I’ve been to the obviously the langad do a few times but um we made a TV show about sparkling wine with S TV a few years ago and we had this great producer who OB of course uh domain DEA Fett oh I know I love deangela Fett H I actually have a I have a bottle actually um wine access featured it I I have a couple of bottles from them both the Rosé and their their brute fantastic fantastic kont producer yeah also so uh shout out to langua which is a the bolog affiliate in the Kant lir um some really really great ones you can find lots of them on wine access uh this LM Brusco keeps getting more delicious and the weather keeps looking like it’s getting warmer so I’m going to go ahead and order um a hogi h because I am from Philly good call yeah I’m pretty excited I’m telling you salty Meats in Lamb Brusco or pizza like this is this is where it’s at it’s hard to go wrong this is one that I stock up on for the summer I also I love the minichi Mr producer as well there’s some great ones all over Lambrusco all over ramania that you can find um you just have to do a little research and I am sorry about that this is not the easiest category to navigate but I think between Matthew and I hopefully we can make it a little easier for you guys um Matthew thank you so much for joining and for popping a cork on something delicious with me pleasure uh I hope that our paths crawl again in some other beautiful delicious country and then we get to share lots of meals and glasses of sparkling together um where can the people find you yeah can find me on Instagram LinkedIn x Facebook threads in Los Angeles on an airplane find me anywhere at Matthew J caner um and if you would like to read the the words that I put out daily men’s journal.com wine please and thank you I love it I love it thanks for doing all the work that you’re doing and uh thank you guys for listening and joining us once again if you’re not a member of the wine club you can do so by joining below it’s 120 bucks you get four bottles every other month I pick them shipping is included tax is not but then you also get 10% off of all of your wine access purchases so if you’re thinking about stocking up on things like carmont or lamb Brusco you could probably do some gr math there you could probably make it so that if you bought enough this would all make it worth it right just joining the wine club so just just a little nudge nudge for you guys all right enjoy this warm weather that’s finally finally Landing uh and hopefully sticking this time and Matthew I’ll catch you later cheers pleasure spring is sprung let’s go drink more lamb Brusco let’s do it [Music]