EP 45: All About WINE with Sommelier, Macy Vance | Part 2

Hey, there. Today's episode is part two of last week's interview. So before you dive into today's episode, make sure you listen to part one, which aired last week. Enjoy!

So when I am drinking a bottle of wine, it's very common to be having a conversation, because frequently I'm drinking it with my husband or my parents, who, you know, just my whole family loves wine and conversation around wine. So it's common for me to, in the moment be learning these things and listening to what other people are tasting versus what I'm tasting. But what I fail to do is keep note of it for next time, and I think that, even if it's just like in a note page in my phone or something like that, just like keeping like some notes about you know, like I did really enjoy like. Okay, so maybe, as a rule of thumb, I didn't think I liked wines from France, but this bottle that I had with this meal, I really enjoyed it because of this and this. I think that would be really helpful.

Yeah, and then, you know, you take a picture of that bottle, you remember the region in which it comes from and you you go back and you buy the same thing next time or you buy something similar and eventually you have a little self travel around the world via wine.

You should make an APP for that. Yeah, yeah, I've thought about that. I've actually thought about how difficult it is to read wine labels and how cool it would be to have an APP that scanned a bottle and took the keywords and let consumers know what that means. What does that indicate about the wine? Because it's really confusing for most people because sometimes I feel like you, when you're looking at bottles of wine at a store. It's like, you know has cherry notes are like, you know, stuff like that, and it's like so that wine tastes like Cherry. It's not super clear unless you already have some level of education or experience that like you know for yourself. If you just like are brand new to like trying different wines, I feel like it could be ten thousand times more intimidating trying to pick out something because it's not super clear. Like I don't want wine to tastes like Cherry. And that's the thing with wine. That's what makes it so fascinating but intimidating is, yeah, at the grocery store there's really nothing else that takes up that much real estate that's made from one thing. And what other beverage can display at the same time something kind of smokey or, like you're saying, cherries or reminds us as the smell of a funky cheese. Nothing else has that capability. So it is very complicated and there are a lot of things to taste and learn and just to have fun with it. I think is the most important part. You know.

Yeah, it's like kind of to your point of like being a somm. There's just you don't reach capacity, ever, for knowledge. I think it's like that, if you choose for it to be so, to just a a wine drinker who enjoys the journey of learning about what they're drinking. You know, like this is something where it's not about the final destination. It is a hundred percent the journey. And I just gave myself chills. It's got to be the pregnancy hormones. You're thinking about wine and you're like, oh my gosh, I want to have a journey with a glass, not the destination. Wine is a journey, that is for sure.

Okay. So kind of on like a similar topic and I also feel like another loaded question. How can we best taste wine, you know, and like pick up on the things that, you know, like the smokiness or the cherry notes or things that a somm is telling us well, we will likely experience as we're tasting that wine. How do we do that? Are there tips?

Yes, there are, there are. It is a fair question and it's it's it's hard to answer. But for me, my approach for the for this in terms of how to improve my own tasting, it really comes down to, and this ties into, you know, the Think Happy Community. Drinking wine, like consuming anything else, can be mindless or it can be mindful. So you can gurgle down your wine, you can, you know, scarf down your food, or you can really be present with that thing and think about what it is that that is displaying to you. And so that's one of the one of the things that I love about my job is it's really meditative to taste a wine and smell all of those things. So my my tips for for for the everyday person is take that into your whole life. When you're at the grocery store, smell things, smell the fruit that you're buying. Smell what's being baked. When you're at a restaurant, what does that smell like? What does your food smell like when you're cooking? What does that spice smell like that you're using? That's, of course, how you improve your sense of smell overall and taking that into your glass wine. So, instead of drinking it, as you know, just a pastime. You're not thinking about it, you're just kind of okay, what's going down the smoothest here. Be there with your glass of wine and think about what what is the viscosity of this beverage? Does it feel heavy? Does it feel light? Um? Is it coating my mouth? Um, what are the flavors? I'm I'm smelling and tasting. What does this remind me of? And the first few times you may just say, like a lot of people do, it my tastings grapes, yeah, it tastes like wine. It tastes like wine, yeah, and but eventually, as you become more, you know, present and mindful with your consumption of food and wine and just your day to day life. What does this smell like? What does this flower smell like? What does this room smell like? Um, you, you will gain um a smell memory. You know, and and we, we are capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit for as humans.

This is a real number. We can detect three trillion different AROMAS, which is something that most people will look over and say no, that that can't be true. But what I'm telling you trillion with a T, and you know I'm not saying that that right now. You can all smell three trillion different things. But just to paint a picture, if if you were in a room and lined up in that room we had different um roses. One of the roses just came off the bush, the next one, you know, was there for five days, the next for ten days, the next for thirty days and the next had been sitting there for three months. And you were blindfolded, your nose would be able to detect the difference between all of those roses. You may not be able to say this has been sitting here for ten days, but you know that smells different. So it's about training and declaration of smells. That helps us to build up the capability to smell and taste more things in our food and our wine.

Wow, deep thoughts like that, and I think that, like having conversations like this and like getting to have you as a friend and the winery that you work at, Nice Winery, here in Houston. I think that, like just the conversations that you guys promote and allow people to have with, you guys help your clients, including myself, you know, start to put those pieces together to make sense because, like you had said earlier in this episode wine is such a personal experience for people, and I like, I love hearing one person's interpretation of a wine and comparing it to my interpretation of that same wine, because people, you know, like they think to explain things differently that my brain would not have thought to say, but like I still resonate with what they're saying and I think hearing these different ways of describing one thing helps that sense of smell also, and mostly it just helps me be able to put words to the senses that I'm feeling, that I'm having with that wine, if that even makes sense.

No, it definitely makes sense. And one thing to remember is there is no wrong answer. So when the somm is sitting there and telling you, Hey, this is what I smell and taste, that's also their personal experience. If you are are sitting there and you're like, you know, this reminds me of the smell of my grandmother's cherry pie or the smell of, you know, mesquite burning, there is no one to prove you wrong and in fact you're right. That is your experience with that beverage. So there's no one you know. Once you lose the intimidation, there is no wrong answer. You can feel comfortable declaring. You'll hear somms say the craziest things. This smells like, Um, a pool toy. This smells like wet concrete, this smells like a basement. So don't feel weird saying whatever it is that you're perceiving in that moment. There is no such thing as a wrong answer.

That does give me some peace of mind.

Yeah, like pressure is off a little bit, pressure is totally off. I feel like the key is just like owning what you say. Yes, this smells like the pool toy that I played with the middle school summer. Just own it. Yeah, don't, don't sound unsure if you're going to say something, but you know, it's like own the tasting note that you have.

Yes, that's a good takeaway from this episode. Just own it, okay, yeah, just declare it an own it.

So earlier in the episode we had touched like a little bit on some things that social media push out about wine. So I have two specific questions.

First of all, clean wine. I feel like it's definitely all the rage right now. What does that mean? Is that just a marketing phrase or what the heck is that?

So it is absolutely a marketing phrase. You know, it is just like us ladies deal with us all the time with our beauty products. This is a clean beauty product that's not regulated by anyone. So the same thing is true with the term a clean wine. You can describe a wine as clean, you can have the perception that it that it tastes clean, but there is no tangible this makes a clean wine. Um, so it's not something that's regulated. And when you see that on your wine bottle, it is marketing, or when you see that on a website, it is marketing. And so you know what what you're really looking for and and the the concept is not necessarily a bad thing. We do want to have wine that is made in small batches, that's low intervention and of course we want to support the little guy. We want to support the small wine makers, the family owned wineries and things like that. And so what you're really looking for is wine that's made with just grapes first of all. So Um, and that's something that the producer can tell you. You you won't always find that information just laying out for you will you will have to dig for it. So you go to that that small winery, you travel to a certain region, you meet these people and you discover what their production style looks like. You're looking for wine that doesn't have additives. So kind of like we touched on earlier, that it's it's around eight own the wine industry in the United States is owned by large corporations. It's just three large corporations that own so most of our wine highly monopolized. Most of our wine is made in massive factories by chemists with other additives. So if you're concerned, you want to drink what's, you know, quote unquote clean wine, which is not regulated what you're looking for really is small batch, family owned producers that have low intervention wine, that are making it in a traditional way with with just grapes, like we touched on earlier. Thousands of years of making wine as humans with just grapes. We know that you can do that. We know that's the best way to do it. So search for that and that's what you're really looking for. But don't be, don't be deceived by the marketing terms that genuinely don't have meaning behind them.

That's really good to know and it's a conversation that we've had with a handful of other guests on the show about various topics. Also, just this notion of like, quote unquote, clean being a non regulated term and just this vague marketing term. Yeah, and you know, my professional background is in marketing. So, like, I have all the love for marketers, all the love for marketers, but it is as a consumer I think it's really important to be educated and like what exactly it is you're buying, even if it does have clean slapped on the label or clean slapped on the Instagram ad. Right, what does it really mean? What am I really looking for here?

Okay. So also on the same in the same vein, and especially on Instagram, because this pregnant girl has been getting hit hot and heavy with non alcoholic wine advertisement. What? What? What's the deal here?

So you know, non alcoholic wine is a fantastic thing for for people who maybe maybe you can't consume alcohol. Maybe you know you're pregnant, you have some sort of reason why you why you can't have alcohol at the moment. That's great. Give out and give it a try. Give non alcoholic wine and try. Um, I'm not going to sit here and say that yes, it's fantastic, oh my gosh, drink it, because alcohol is a very big component to what makes wine wine in terms of the body and the viscosity, even the flavor. So the alcoholic components actually of a wine um are what bring the aromas to our nose. They're volatile components. So non alcoholic wine, if you're interested in it, you want to try it, great, but be sure your expectations are not in a place where you think it's going to taste exactly like what you were drinking before, because that's it's certainly Um, not the case. It's impossible for that to be the case. So it is great for those who are looking for it, um, but if you can drink alcohol, go for the real stuff. You'll enjoy it way more.

Yeah, yeah, okay, that's a very fair answer. I personally am not a fan of Non Alcoholic wine. Yeah, in case it wasn't clear already.

Okay, so I have one more wine question for you before we wrap this up, and this one is kind of fun. It is like wine and food pairings. Okay, so I have a couple of different types of wine listed and so tell us how to pick food to go with them.

Absolutely.

So the first is my non pregnancy favorite, champagne, slash prosecco, slash just bubbly.

Yes, so bubbly is fun. It's something that a lot of people don't pair with food. It's usually consumed on its own, but it's really fun because it offers a textual experience to consume in sparkling wine or champagne with food. So, as a general rule, and you know, you can use this on any type of grape or wine pairing that you're looking for. We want to pair like with like and we're pairing our our food and wine. Um, and so, for for a sparkling wine, something that's a little bit fatty is really good because we've got a lot of acidity in the wine. So, you know, there's a lot of very fancy ways you can pare champagne with food. I Love Fried Chicken with Champagne. It's salty, which is great to pair with white wines, really really salty, it's fatty and it's got a textual component to it that's very fun to have in combination with champagne. So things like that. You can also pair it with light young cheeses, fish, um, different things like that. Chicken, lighter meats like that are going to be fantastic with champagne. Mac and cheese, I mean fried chicken and Mac and fried chicken and Mac and cheese. Yeah, with some bubbles. Call me anytime I'm there. Um Sounds we're getting hungry now. Well, I'm just craving wine. Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm so sorry.

Okay, so what about what my friends and I call savvy be Savvy B yeah, Savignon Blanc.

So that is notoriously a very high acid wine. It can be very herbal as well. So again, like with like, if you know, there's components about that wine. Take those components and say what food is high in acid, what food is a little bit herby? So this again with lighter meats, so fishes. Um, you can even do pork, chicken and maybe with a little herbs, herbs type of sauce. Le Sauce is nice. Rub, a nice rub. Then again, young fresh cheeses, so goat cheese, Chev Mozzarella, things like that. Um, high acid salad. So if you've got like a lemon based or vinegar based salad dressing, that's going to be great with Sauvignon Blanc as well. Pairs great with a patio and a pool as well.

Yeah, savvy B with a body of water, kind of same with the bubbles too for me, honestly, yeah, sunshine and a body of water.

Exactly.

Okay. One of my other favorites Pino Noir. Yeah, so I like these are my favorites. I know. Yeah, like to let me know what I should do when I'm done being pregnant.

So a phrase we use at at the Nice Winery is pork and Pino. Pork is like made in heaven to pair with Pinot Noir. It is that kind of medium meat. It's usually very, very salty, which is nice. Peanut Noir, again, is a higher acid red peanut war is lighter in body. So it's not something that you necessarily want to have with the bigger meats, not a huge red meats Um. So pino with things like that. I Love Pinot Noir with with any type of any type of pork, honestly. And then you get into the area of some sort of medium cheese, is Manchego with things like that. Those kind of middle ground ones are really good with peanut noir as well.

Okay, and then what about a cab? A cab this should be fairly obvious for most of us. So I feel like this is the one that people know.

Yes, and so you know, this goes again, and we're talking almost in categories here. If you, you know, compare these great varietals to others, there's stuff that fits in this category you can use as well. But cabernet Sauvignon, it's a huge wine, it's a tannic wine, and so you're gonna want to pair it with huge food. Steaks, red meats, sausage, open flame, cooked meats, things that are smoky Um. That is your best bet. And then, of course you get into those really funky cheeses as well. That's it's gonna taste the best with cabs, so blue cheese, anything that you know you may have not liked as a child. Right, those really, really funky cheeses are going to go well with these huge wines. And so that's across the board. Um, I'm thinking, all fun would it be to have like a girl's night with this big long charcuterie board and like on the left side of the charcouterie board you start with like the young cheese, the like simpler cheeses that would go better with like the Sav Blanc, the bubbles, the stuff like that, and then your cheese progresses and then but the wine that you're drinking that night progresses too. I don't know, like I just feel like that would be so fun. Yeah, it is. So that's what I do at Nice Wine at the time. Cheese pair tastings, food pair tastings, where you take a little taste but adventure and those experiences I think, stay in our mind the most in terms of teaching us going forward the rules to use one pairing food with wine. So do that at home. Come to you know, a seated guided wine class and try it out. It will imprint in your mind so much more than just the words you're hearing. Oh my gosh, this is taste good with this and better than it tastes good with this cheese and this cheese tastes good with that and that type of food. You'll learn. Your taste bodes will learn over time and you won't forget it.

Yeah, I feel like I should put a disclaimer on the description of this episode. That says "don't listen to on your way to work, but listen to on your way so you can have that glass of wine”.

Exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah, you'll be thinking about wine all day at work if you listen to this in the morning.

Yes, and that would be torture.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I have wine all day long. So as soon as I think, as soon as I think about it, it's there.

You get it, but what a glorious life.

Yeah, if you can't drink wine on the job, listen to this on your way home.

Okay, Macy. My final question before we wrap up. Do you have a life or happiness, hack that you find helpful that our listeners might want to adopt in their own lives.

Yeah, so I, you know, on the side of being Um, you know, writing about wine, wine education, things like that. I have my own, you know, routines and things that keep me sane. I've been a journal or for six years now. Yes, yes, so, I have just like cover to cover journals from the last six years and it's so helpful. It is like digesting your life on a piece of paper. I highly suggest that. And then, you know what, closed that journal and when you're done journaling about that thing, you don't have to think about it anymore. It's it's somewhere. It's an outlet. So I love journaling. Um, I've recently, in the last like five months, gotten really into meditation. So I do thirty minutes in the morning. Um, you know, it's not something that is easy at first sitting. I'm sitting by yourself, with yourself, with your thoughts for thirty minutes. You can think a lot of things in thirty minutes, but the point is that you're not thinking. And so it is. Once you get into it, it's like massaging your brain and when you're done for free. Yeah, there is no charge on this. So when you're done you feel so much better. Um, and I highly suggest it takes some time to be silent, to think nothing. I used to think that, you know, taking a bubble bath and reading my book was the same thing. It was, you know, but no meditation. That absolute silence is so helpful. It's soundful. Is there a guide that you use for your meditation or do you just wing it? Yeah, so I did guided meditations for a while. Um, but what I do I have an APP called insight timer and on that there are guided meditations, there's recordings, there's you know, you can do like twenty eight day, you know, X Y Z. What I do is I use their basic timer where I set thirty minutes and these bells go off after a certain amount of time to indicate to me, all right, you're you're going into the twenty minute mark or you're going into the ten minute mark, and that has been the easiest way for me to meditate. And I use my speaker to play something kind of Zen just in case there's any background noise in the area to kind of drown it out. That's been the best for me, and doing breathing exercises during it too. I think that was the reason I was able to get into meditation. The breathing exercise has really helped me because you can stay sort of actively engaged and then once you get used to the breathing, you don't even think about it anymore. So I love that.

What a good hack! And just thank you for being here.

IT was such a pleasure. Yes, has been so fun. I look forward to a glass of wine sometime soon.

Yeah, we will be having a glass of wine together as soon as we can be. Will be here probably late October, okay. And so the best part of that is like, come holiday season, it's like game on.

I love that.

We will set something up, we'll have a glass of wine, definitely.

Yeah, we won't tell you how much. We'll get that to ourselves, but we will be having wine. We'll just leave it at that.

Okay. So where can the listeners find you? Connect with you? Keep learning from you?

Now I'm done with my exam and I recently opened an Instagram, because now I've got all this knowledge, I need to share with people! it's called @macyintertwined on Instagram, yes, where I will be sharing just facts and, you know, talking about different regions and types of wine and wine labels and things like that, Um, and also, you know, including some of my writing about wines that I enjoy, Um, and and just sharing that knowledge with people. So if you enjoy wine, come come find me on @macyintertwined.

Thank you very much. So all right, you guys. Well, yeah, I just really hope you listened to this like in the second half of your day, not the first half of your day. Yeah, but no matter what time you're listening to it. Thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode. Don't forget to rate the PODCAST, review it, subscribe to it. All of that really helps to grow this show and just thank you for being part of the Think Happy Community and I will be back in your ears next week.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for joining me for this week's episode of the think happy podcast. If you just can't get enough, find me on Instagram @thinkhappy_co and online at ThinkHappyCo.Com. See you next week.