I am re-releasing one of our most talked about episodes because EVERYONE needs to hear this. So if you missed it or would like a "re-visit" (as we call it in wine tasting)... I'm bringing one of our first and most popular episodes to the top of our now 80 episode catalog!

I first met Dr Hoby Wedler when he led my wine education team and I through his signature “Tasting in the Dark” experience. We were blindfolded and tasting the wines  we thought we knew very well, in a whole new light (or lack thereof). 

Dr. Hoby Wedler is a Chemist, Sensory Expert, Motivational Speaker and Entrepreneur who happens to be blind since birth.

After your virtual time with Hoby, you’ll have a new perspective on how to take in the world around you, especially when it comes to things like Seeing Flavor and Tasting Color!

You’ll hear about: 

• The call from Francis Ford Coppola that inspired him to create Tasting in the Dark
• His first chemistry teacher who questioned how chemistry would “work for him”, until he told her “No one can see atoms”…. (Mic drop)
• His thought on the questions around the health benefits of wine
• How he identifies color
• His uncensored reaction when I snuck my newly released 2021 Sollevato Sangiovese into our “blind tasting”

You can find and follow Hoby here!

www.hobywedler.com

IG: @hobywedler

Email him at hoby@hobywedler.com

Get our Sip Spotlight Wines Here!

Wine #1- Hoby's Choice: Chianti Classico

Wine #4 -The trick I played on him with my own wine: Sollevato Sangiovese

If you'd like to Support the Podcast, you can buy me or Hoby a glass of wine, we would be so grateful!

Nikki's Links:

Follow me on Instagram to get the scoop on upcoming episodes and behind the scenes looks!

My Super Tuscan Inspired Blend, Sollevato "Fortunato" is available to be shipped to most US States. (Use the code PODLISTENER for 10% off.) It's a delicious, medium bodied, aromatic red wine that is perfect with pizza, pasta and your charcuterie spread!

Our 2022 Sollevato Sangiovese just took the Gold Medal at the Sunset International Wine Competition! Get yours here! (Use the code PODLISTENER for 10% off.)

Enjoy some of MY FAVORITE THINGS from our Sponsors:

You NEED some delicious California Olive Oil from our awesome sponsor American Olive Farmer. Use code SipWithNikki for $10 off your order!

Check out Sena Sea's website  to get your hands on some beautiful wild-caught Alaskan fish shipped right to your door! Use code sipandsea for 10% off your order and sign up for their email list (great recipes!) and be entered to win a monthly $50 gift card drawing.

Please consider Rating, Reviewing and Following Us on Apple Podcasts!

“Delightful and fun. Now I love my Monday Commute” (kpjscarbs). 

Sound like you? I’d love for you to leave your own review!

How? Click Here, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate with Stars and select "write a review" and let us know what you loved most about this episode! 

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Questions, suggestions and guest requests? nikki@sipwithnikki.com

It is percolating on my tongue.

Oh, yes.

With dryness and astringency.

I feel like I can see purple when I taste that.

Dude, stop rocking my world with statements like that. Okay, so you've created associations to mark color that are related to aroma.

Yeah. And flavor. Because I've never seen color, I've just had to listen to people and what they say looks a certain way.

I tend to make my own funny associations, some of which I'm sure are very far from correct.

Hello and welcome to Sip with Nikki. I'm Nikki Lamberti here in Sonoma County, California, and I've got one word to kick off today's episode.

Gold.

Yes.

It means people other than us and our wonderful customers and our friends and family have validated that our wine is in fact delicious. And those people are professional judges and sommeliers. And so it's a really nice accolade to be able to shout out to all of you.

And at the time of this recording, we are not quite sold out of this gold winning wine.

So make sure you visit solavatowines.com to try to get your hands on One of the 861 hand numbered bottles of this beautiful California Sangiovese that belongs on your table with pizza, pasta, charcuterie, and all your favorite yumminess.

Speaking of favorite yumminess, I decided to re release sort of an encore episode, if you will, today of, and I probably shouldn't say this, but one of my top five favorite episodes. And this is number 80 today. I try not to rate them. All of my guests are wonderful. I love my solo episodes.

But if you've been listening for a while, you have heard Dr. Hobie Wedler, who is a very good friend of mine, on multiple episodes. But I wanted to reshare our very first recording together because it's been over a year and.

And if you haven't scrolled all the way back to one of the first episodes, you are missing this gem of wisdom that comes from my dear friend Hobie. Now, Hobie has been blind since birth. He is a California native and he's a chemist. In fact, he has a PhD in organic chemistry.

And he's also a wine professional. And he and his partner Justin work with winemakers, businesses, and entrepreneurs on formulations of food and sensory. And he's also a teacher.

In fact, you'll hear us share how we first met over a decade ago, but it was in an experience that Hobie calls tasting in the dark.

And since we recorded this last year, I just attended about a month ago, a tasting experience led by Hobie down at the Culinary Institute of America in Napa.

And it was so fascinating because he talked about pairing wines with music, and we were blindfolded, and he played different songs while we smelled and tasted wines. And then we talked about how the music changed our perception of the wine, and it was mind blowing. And this is what Hobie does.

Also, since we first recorded this, his Instagram has exploded. So make sure that you follow him. I'll put it in the show notes, but it is Hobie Wedler. So it's just H o b y w e D L e R Hobie Wedler.

And he is doing these regular videos where he's tasting, wait for it, fruit and vegetables and very simple things. But people are going crazy for his descriptions on how he talks about experiencing smell and flavor.

So make sure you check that out and follow him on Instagram. I'm so excited for you to hear him talk about the right way to really experience a wine in the glass, from aromas and flavors and textures.

We talk about wine as therapeutic parts of our life's rituals. And this is a hot topic right now as everyone's examining the health of wine, or lack thereof, or should you be consuming alcohol or not.

And the man is a chemist, so you'll want to hear what he has to say about this. And finally, we do a blind tasting where we each brought two wines to surprise the other.

Can't wait for for you to see flavor and taste color with Dr. Hobie Wedler. Here we go. I'm so glad that you're here today, Nikki.

Thank you so much.

I remember the first time I met you. I think that's a good starting place for conversation today.

So when I was working at Pride, you came and actually taught the tasting room wine educators in a quote, unquote, blind tasting.

Tasting in the dark.

Yeah, we did the whole sensory experience with different aromas, and we featured the Pride wines and just let people understand, hey, how this growing region in where we are in Northern California, Napa, Sonoma particularly, just shines through the amazing wines.

It was such an interesting experience because I remember you had special blindfolds for us and you lined us up in the wine caves. We were like single file, and we kind of choo choo trained into the Room where the tables and all the glassware were set up.

This is at least 10 years ago.

I'm trying to think back yet at.

Least 10 years ago, I think it was. And then you had glasses in front of us with all of the different wines that the winery makes. And reds and whites were interspersed.

They were interspersed in.

And everything was at the same temperature. And I remember there was a moment where I picked up our Viognier, which is a very full bodied white wine, very floral and aromatic.

And for a quick moment when it hit my lips, I was like, is this Cabernet franc, which is a very floral, aromatic red wine Listener, I can.

Completely understand that association because they're both big and flowery. And when you can't see the wine, that doesn't happen. So you end up kind of second guessing yourself.

Just like you're saying for the listeners who like to try a lot of different wines and who are nerdy like us.

Excuse me, what did you just call it?

Nerdy like me?

Yeah. No, we are two nerds sitting here at my kitchen table. Yes, we love it.

But seriously, try a Viognier like Nikki mentioned next to a Cabernet franc and you'll notice they're really similar. And by the way, because they were grown in the same area on the same mountaintop, they're going to be even more similar.

Gosh. I have so many things I want to talk about with you.

Can you share with our listeners a little bit about what brought you into the world of wine and what brought you into the world of chemistry with your PhD in chemistry and which came first and how does one help you with the other?

Oh, man, I love this question. So I would say that wine actually came first because I grew up in southern Sonoma county in the town of Petaluma.

Petaluma.

And I've always had this love for what I call hyperlocality. So things that are happening right around me that people notice.

And my parents are not in the industry, but they were home winemakers a few years before I was born.

I don't know if I knew that.

Yeah, I don't know if I told you that. But my dad and mom together made some really nice Zinfandel from Dry Creek and Cabernet actually from the Sierra foothills.

I got to smell and taste little bits of in my early childhood because they were still drinkable then. It was just thinking through this love for hyperlocality, for where does the water come from that enters my house?

Where does gray water go when it leaves the house. How does power get to the house? These sorts of things.

And I just had this innate interest in the wine industry because I knew that grapes were being grown virtually in my backyard and then turned into this world class juice and then sold around the world as Sonoma County Wine. So I would like smelling wines and going out to vineyards and listening to tractors move earth and smelling.

And you know, when a tractor digs up a big pile of earth and you just smell that beautiful wet soil, it's just incredible. So I've always loved these sorts of things. And then I did go to school at UC Davis and took a couple of wine appreciation classes.

One on an Intro to winemaking and one on wines of the World.

And actually, this was during your undergrad?

During undergrad. And then.

And then while I was a grad student, during my first year, one of my electives was really delving into the biochemistry and organic chemistry of wine, which was.

Sorry, I just. Okay. No, I'm good. Continue.

No. Which was a lot of fun to study that stuff.

When I hear the words organic chemistry, this just like involuntary rolling under my tongue starts. I'm still getting over being scarred from my undergrad, but please continue to. Just don't say the OC word.

She did very well in that class.

Oh, so well. I took it twice because I didn't pass it the first time.

No. But I. For me, it was an experience that really pulled me into wine with family. My partner, Justin's stepfather, actually got us excited about wines.

Really nice California wines. He's the one who introduced us to Pride.

Wow.

And it was just this stunning glass of wine. Those were the Bob Foley days.

It was big and ripe and cool and, I don't know, just full of flavor and full of this really interesting complexity that had never tasted before.

And then when I was just finishing my undergraduate tenure and starting grad school, I got a call from Francis Ford Coppola's team who wanted to do an interesting, truly blind tasting, which developed into tasting in the dark for their guests as a hospitality experience at their Sonoma county wineries. And when Francis Ford Coppola calls and asks if you'll do something, you say, yes.

And then you hang up the phone and realize, oh, no, what did I just agree to? But he really gave me the reins with it and let me innovate.

Did you speak to him?

Actually, him Talked to one of his business partners.

Okay.

And they were like, hey, this is something we want to do. We met him several times later, but it was.

You talked to his consigliere?

I think so. I think that's exactly who she was. And that's hilarious.

And this experience got launched, One thing led to another, and soon the national sales team picked it up.

And the lucky thing for me about being a computational organic chemist is my laptop was my laboratory, and I had an advisor who really understood what I was doing and wanted me to try all sorts of different pathways. So he was totally fine with me traveling a lot and exploring as long as I got my graduate work done.

But I met all these amazing people in this industry, and that's the thing that I would say first and foremost about the wine industry, is that people are amazing. Just, they pull you in. Right.

Because we're birds of a feather.

Because we're not only a little bit nerdy with how things make us feel when we smell and taste and wondering why, but we just tend to be, I don't know, a little more high feeling on the feeling scale. Generalizing.

But we all are artists that happen to be scientists as well, you know.

And you just said it so much better than I was trying to say it. Say that again. That's awesome.

We are, as wine people, we are both artists and scientists.

And I think wine is this amazing little micro field, if you will, where we can straddle that intersection that is so fine between art and science, figuring out what is science versus what is art. Wine is bold. I consider winemakers artists who happen to know a little biochemistry. And because it's your craft, you are a winemaker.

And I can say this to you. Your art form goes into that bottle and is what you taste, what your friends and customers taste when they enjoy your wines. Right.

So I just got pulled in and attracted to this industry. Tasting in the dark has expanded to beer and spirits and oil and vinegar and all sorts of markets and industries around the world. But it's like this.

Whenever I get to work with wine, it brings me home. Wine feels like home in so many respects.

And going back to chemistry, when I was in high school, I took a chemistry class and just fell in love with the science.

And the instructor really wasn't sure how this would work and was not very motivating to the fact that I loved chemistry and wanted to study chemistry at the undergraduate level. Until I told her that, hey, nobody can see atoms. Everything we do is cerebral. You might be able to see A reaction change color.

You might be able to see some gases effervesce or being evolved from a reaction flask.

But we actually spend huge amounts of money in the chemical industry designing eyeballs, designing things that can see and detect light at wavelengths that we cannot see.

Because if we look at the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves, which are very long, almost 2 meters long, all the way to gamma rays, which are on the scale of picometers, long, the little tiny range we can see is from 400 to 700 nanometers. Right? That's a little tiny speck.

The way I look at it is if you were to draw a line from here, where we are sitting in northern Santa Rosa, down to Petaluma, the range, and that represents the whole electromagnetic spectrum. The range that we can see in visible light is probably about a tenth of a mile. I did that calculation before coming here just to make this point.

So much of chemistry is non visual, and I fell in love with that part of it and the fact that I can do organic chemistry and. Sorry about the word, and use my mind for what I've had to do ever since I was a toddler, for my survival as a blind traveler.

Because I can't see anything. I visualize things.

And literally the thought of turning one finicky molecule into another is not that different than thinking about how to get from here to the local Safeway on foot. It's the same sort of thing.

I can imagine streets and buildings and think about atoms and how they connect by bonding in the same exact vein to bring this back to wine. You know, for me, when I smell wine, I literally see flavor.

I really feel like it's the closest thing for me to looking at a painting when I smell a glass of wine and think about it and understand it. And some art forms, we're very objective with visual art. You might look at a painting and say, yeah, that's gorgeous.

You might look at another one and say, oh, this is hideous. Why would I hang that on my wall? But the same thing is true with wines.

People are so often so subjective about wine because they don't necessarily quite know what they like.

So I advise all listeners to drink more wine and be decisive and see what you like and see what you don't like, because wine is a tapestry of flavor and color and aroma and texture.

And what I love about wine and about the product development work that I do all across the wine and spirits industry and food industry too, is that I'm able to use my chemistry every day. And I'm able to teach about chemistry, so I'm able to do both things that I've always loved.

You speaking about being a big feeler, you took my breath away about two paragraphs ago with something that you said, and I'm still recovering because it was so beautiful. When you said about when you smell wine, it's like the closest thing you can have to looking at a piece of artwork. Am I paraphrasing it?

You're saying exactly right. Or being in nature or these things that I imagine what it's like to see. I feel like the same neurons are stimulated when I taste wine.

And for me, honestly, Nikki, it's not like my palate was developed just because I'm blind and I have heightened senses. Even though a lot of people think training your palate as you've learned as well takes practice.

It's like learning to play a musical instrument really well.

We really have to drink so much wine.

I know what to do to get good at this, right?

But it's like when you're walking down the ground grocery aisle, smell the celery, smell the parsley, smell the cilantro, smell the basil, smell the Asian pears, smell the blackberries. So when we can taste wine and we say, hey, Nikki, do you taste the lemon in here? You say, yeah, I do. And you remember what lemon smelled like.

Because so often we use our eyesight to obtain 85 to 90% of our information from our surroundings, right? Which means that aromatics and flavors are just another language. They're just words in another language.

But so often our aromatic vocabularies aren't where they should be.

So encourage anyone who wants to get more into wine, just as a consumer or as a winemaker, build that aromatic vocabulary so you can speak about the flavors and textures and aromas of wine. And once you do that for wine, you can do it for anything.

I love when you talk about this topic, because I have tried to explain it to people over the years. When you say, smell everything, Smell the flower, smell the produce, right? I call it developing that card catalog in your brain.

That's what it is.

Because you're not gonna be able to say, oh, this wine has hints of currant.

No.

If you can't identify and remember what a currant smells like. So by smelling it and filing it away in that drawer in your brain, then having the recall to then notice it, recognize it in wine, and.

And be able to pull that drawer out, remove that card, and say, yep, that's current.

That's it. And it's so funny because we do that with color. You have the card catalog in your mind of color when you're a child. Right.

I tested this with my nephew, who's six years old. I held a red pen up in front of him, and I said, hey, Rito, what color is this? And he said, uncle Hobie, that's a silly question. It's a red pen.

But then I blended up some peach in a cup, and I didn't let him see it. And I said, what does that smell like? He said, I don't know. Sweet.

And I did that to prove that we need to take some time to hone those card catalogs for a sense that we don't often train enough.

That's. Ugh. I love it.

And I have to give a shout out to all of the European Union. They just focus so much. We do a lot in Italy. I know. Your family's from Italy originally.

Yes.

Red has a really soft spot in both of our hearts. The whole country of Italy in a time.

Although you've spent more time there, I think, in the last three years.

I don't know.

I don't know.

But I'm just saying that food and beverage are so important there in Europe, and I just. I want so badly for people in this country to realize the importance of taking time to smell things.

When you're driving to work and you're feeling stressed, open the window and smell the air. I don't care whether it's raining or whether it's blazing hot outside. Smelling things will relax you.

Why do you think that is?

For me, it's because.

And I can't speak for other people, but for me, it's because I know when I'm really in tune with these senses that I have to be focused and not focused on other things. So it's a way for me to clear my head. It's almost meditative for me.

I love that.

And by the way, I always. Maybe I drink more wine than I should, but for me, it doesn't matter what night of the week it is.

But coming home after a long, stressful day, even if I have been remembering to smell my surroundings and smell the air, having a glass of wine while I cook is just therapeutic.

Oh, I'm right there with you.

Goes right at the top of my cutting board. It just hangs there.

And not drinking to drink, but drinking to smell and taste and analyze the wine and think about it and almost take it as a challenge. It's just fun.

It is. And I agree. Wine is a part of My cooking ritual as well. And that's why I was like, yeah, I'm not even gonna think. Think about the dry January.

Sorry, folks. Because it's such a part of the cooking ritual itself. Right. So we're on the same page with that.

There's this kind of movement that I don't want to get myself in trouble, but the neo prohibitionism movement, where the millennials and gen zers are looking at what everybody else is doing trending on social media now. A lot of them are not drinking anything and doing cold plunges into icy ponds. And I'm like, wait a minute.

I can't say that alcohol is healthy, but let me tell you about the complex organic chemistry that's present in a bottle of wine. Wines have these.

Go ahead. Make chemistry sexy.

Go. Wines have. Thank you for that opportunity. I always love when I can make chemistry sexy. Wines have these compounds in them called flavonoids.

And flavonoids are flavorizing molecules. One of the most common ones is resveratrol. And if you look it up, it is so incredibly healthy.

It's antioxidant and anti aging. Right. Resveratrol and lower blood pressure skin care products.

Yep. And red wines have more of it than any other food or drink that we'd necessarily eat.

Well, that's why I look the way I do. Right, Hobie, look at me.

Look at you. Don't look a day over 20. Okay. The other thing that really is amazingly healthy is a class of compounds called catechins and particularly epicatechin.

Epicatechin is this amazing class of antioxidant that is also in the class of flavonoids that is like a miracle drug. Anti diabetic, blood pressure lowering, heart health, all this stuff. And you get it by drinking red wine.

And there's another fact here that I think is really cool, which is that your cells have membranes which we call selectively permeable. Some things are allowed in, some things aren't. Alcohol can permeate most cell membranes very easily and readily.

So when alcohol gloms on to some of these really healthy things, like glom.

A official chemistry word.

Oh, totally.

Okay.

We glom all the time. When I wrote my doctoral thesis, glom was probably appeared more times than it did glam.

Gl o m o m. Glom together. Lam glam.

When these things glom onto ethanol molecules, they come into your cell, and then often the ethanol goes out and the little goodness stays in your cell. So the other really good compounds in wine are polyphenols, biphenols antioxidants in general.

Wine is the best antioxidant for you, just in so many ways. And we're talking about red wine. White wines also have some good chemistry too.

But the four wines that you and I are about to taste right now are all red. So there's that. Correct.

We're about to taste red, mostly reds. And what I'm trying to say is that a little bit of wine is not bad for you.

Okay, let's have some. That's a perfect point to move into our Sip Spotlight. Sip Spotlight. This is the first time that we are having a quadruple Sip Spotlight.

So when you and I were prepping, we had a plan, you and I, that we would each bring one wine to the table that we would, cover and, quote, blind taste each other on so we don't know what it is. And we were each supposed to bring a wine, and I couldn't decide, so I picked two. And when you showed up today, you had two wines as well.

Without talking to each other, we ended up with four instead of two.

We're both nerds. We're both overachievers. And we better get working, because we got four wines here.

And for me, what's so special about tasting wine with someone like you is that it's not about tasting and guessing. And the tasting in the dark event that we do is not at all about guessing or anything like that. The blindfold is really.

And we're not blindfolded here or anything. The blindfold in that. Should I be okay in that tasting?

The blindfold is just meant to focus your attention a little bit differently than it's normally focused. But here, Nikki and I are just really into flavors and aromas and regions and this sort of thing.

So we're going to talk about what these wines taste like and just have a casual but I'm sure nerdy discussion about.

Thank you, Justin. Justin is here on the side of the wine.

Hey, Justin.

Pouring this beautiful wine. And. Okay, so here's a confession. So immediately, I want to talk about the color of this wine.

Let's do it. And if you can explain the color to me, that would be really fun.

Is that the right thing to do, or am I relying on my 85% of sight?

In my experience, we're both in our normal environment. You're still. So feel free to explain the color. But first, cheers, friend.

Cheers. I am just looking at it right now, and the first thing I noticed when it was hitting the glass, it is not purple.

Right.

It has A very garnet, ruby, almost brickish color, which immediately leads me to believe it might have a little bit of age on it because of the saturation of color and also because the. The edges of the wine that go to the glass feather out and look a little watery. And I know that's not water. Cause I know the chemistry of wine.

But that is.

And these glasses were dry, by the way.

Yes, yes. But the color differentiation between the outside of this wine and the middle of this wine is different.

Yeah.

Which is also for me a clue that again, this is probably not a wine from a year or two or five years ago, but maybe a little bit older. Am I on the right track?

Yes. And it might be from a little bit of a different region than you might be thinking right now. Okay, so let's smell.

Okay.

So when I smell that wine, it is really interesting. The first thing that comes to mind is honey.

And I got like licorice or like star anise.

Oh my gosh. I totally see what you mean. Star anise. And then for me, there's some really nice BlackBerry, ripe BlackBerry.

And then for me, when I cover the glass with one hand and swirl, this wine pops out with just amazing floral aromas. So we're gonna hold our hand on top for just a second.

Yeah, I just did that. You always remind me to do that. And I love it. And I don't know why I do it. I don't do it more often.

Just concentrate the aromas in there and then move your hand away and it's like how. And it's.

And it almost to me is a little bit herbaceous, but I also get a little bit of Daphne. You know, the flower that.

Who's she? What does she smell like? Daphne.

But it really is. If you haven't smelled the flower Daphne before, you should find it.

Because you see, that is not in my card catalog. I can't recall Daphne.

I'm gonna find a Daphne flower and bring it to you. Because it blooms so romantic, late February, early March. And it has this amazing citrus slash herbal character that I love.

My mouth is watering to taste this wine. I haven't tasted it yet. I've just been admiring it and the beauty of the subtlety of the color and those notes.

Let's taste it. Some wines as they age, get a kind of tobacco nose.

I was just going to say this wine has one of my most favorite notes that I don't get on every single 10 plus year old wine, but on many. And it's dried tobacco. Like when you Pick up an unlit cigar in the cigar shop and hold it like a mustache under your nose.

I've been knowing you do a lot.

Of this, and I absolutely got that on this coupled with a really nice pucker of acidity that made me squinch my mouth a little bit, but in a yummy way. And then it made my mouth water.

Just because we're nerds, I picked up something that really strikes me in this wine. It's that tobacco. Yes. But it's also like old leather.

Yes.

So what I get reminded of here is like walking through an old university library. That old book smell. You would get that little dusty. But then you know, what library doesn't have a really nice cigar just hanging out in the stack?

You'll get booted. Expelled from that library smoking a cigar in there.

Is that what happened to me? Is that why I got it spit on? Probably is.

This line is stunning. There's lots of layers in the glass. I want to sit on my leather recliner on this rainy Saturday with this and just let it tell me its story.

It's fun, it's unique, and it's something I really wanted to share with you. What do you think if I were to ask you, what country is this from?

Wow.

Now, think about our common interest.

I'm going to say Italy.

That is correct. That is correct.

But I can't say that there was anything glaring in the glass. I'm not good enough. Where I'm guessing that because of something I smelled or tasted. I'm guessing that because I know you and you know me.

Think about the lighter color.

Yeah.

Lot of the Italian red wines don't have that purple hue that we see in California red wines.

Yeah.

So it's got that. It might not actually be quite as old as we think. This is actually a Chianti Classico.

Nice.

From Italy. And considering our common interest, I thought it would be really fun to share this.

Basilica Solaccio. Is that how you say it?

Yep. So this is. I believe this is coming from Basilicata. And what year is it?

20. I had to put on my new progressive lenses to read it.

That's one thing as I get older that I'm excited I'll never have to deal with.

Oh, shit, Obie.

I gotta give the start, too.

Oh, my God.

I love it.

So not quite that old.

11 years old, but I said 10 plus, so we're there. That is a beautiful wine, that. And it has the Chianti Classico Black rooster on it, which Is the mark of authenticity.

And of course, this is from Chianti.

Yeah, that's gonna be delicious. With our wood fire pizza night that we're doing when this is over.

That's gonna be. Be wonderful.

Okay, should we do your second wine next?

Let's do it.

Okay. Already.

Y.

This wine has a lot deeper color.

And every time I. I pour a new glass of wine in a glass that I've just sipped out of, I like to really roll the glass around to coat the inside with juiciness as possible. Smells like. Ooh, Smells like California, does it not?

It does. Like fruity preserves just jumped out of the glass into my nose in a beautiful way.

You bet.

Oh, wow.

Strawberries.

So different than the last wine that we just had.

Totally different.

So different.

And the color here, maybe you can describe that to us.

It definitely has more of a purple hue than the last wine, which was more bricky. Garnet red. Ready? And not so feathered on from the outside to the inside. That tells me this is not as old as the other one. This wine has high tannin.

Yes.

It is percolating on my tongue.

Oh, yes.

With dryness and astringency.

I feel like I can see purple when I taste that. I don't know.

Dude, stop rocking my world with statements like that. Okay.

I don't know what purple looks like, but we were walking the other day, and I pulled a leaf off of a bush, and I said, justin, this smells like what green should be. And it's like this fresh cut, grassy, like, earthy smell. And he said, oh, I can see that.

So you've created associations to mark quote color that are related to aroma.

Yeah. And flavor. Because I've never seen color. I've just had to listen to people and what they say looks a certain way.

I tend to make my own funny associations, Some of which I'm sure are very far from correct.

Like, my dog is white like snow, which is actually very correct. This is fun, but so different than what we just saw.

So different. And it is very different in the grape varietal as well.

I think it's from California.

Totally.

Almost zinfandel with the ripe fruit leave.

Take a sip of this wine and breathe some air through it and really oxidize those tannins. This is. You feel the astringency grow. Right.

And this wine is higher alcohol definitely than the last one. Not in a bad way, but I'm aware of it. We would say hotter, giving it weight and body in my mouth too.

The other thing that I Love.

About that little trick of oxidizing the tannins and feeling the astringency pop out is it shows you on a very granular level why it's important to open red wines a little bit before you drink them and let them oxidize themselves to bloom those tannins out.

Now, here's my chemistry question.

Yeah.

Sorry. I just took a piece of bread to cleanse my palate.

When you decant or aerate a wine, my understanding of the chemistry of what's happening is that the tannins themselves aren't actually diminishing.

Correct.

But the other elements of the wine are coming forward, which changes the perception of the tannin.

Yes. And it really takes it. You nailed it. What did I say? Artists, biochemists.

I know a little.

You know your stuff.

Okay. Yeah.

I want you to take one more sip of the wine.

Okay. Because that's all I have left.

And I want you to swish it around your mouth like mouthwash.

It's very bossy, you guys.

Very bossy. I can't control it. Sorry. And then breathe a little air through it and tilt your jaw up and literally move your mouth as if you're chewing.

I literally just chewed my wine.

Mm. And it's crazy, right?

It changes the texture of the wine. Like, now I have these beautiful tannins, and I like tannin in wine. I have these beautiful tannins on my teeth, and I love it.

But a piece of cheese would neutralize the heck out of that. In a good way.

Totally.

And I also feel like when we chew on our wine, we're showing our palate different aspects of the wine that we wouldn't necessarily be seeing, for lack of a better word, because we don't normally chew on liquids.

Yeah, no. I love to chew my wine. So are you gonna stop keeping me in suspense and tell me what this wine is?

I'm very excited to tell you what this wine is. This is not available on the market. This is Francis Ford Coppola's family wine that they give folks that work with the winery as a gift.

And I wanted you to taste this because it's a really fun. It's made from the Rubicon. The Engelnook estate in Rutherford, Napa Valley. Yep.

And he influences all the winemaking process, but this is the one where he really gets his hands dirty and helps make it.

Oh, my goodness. Hobie, thank you for sharing this. Sorry, guys. No link in the show notes to get.

Sorry. This does not sell. But this will also be good later.

You'll have to go knock on Francis's door and ask him if he'll share the family wine with you. That is a special treat. Thank you.

Cabernet Sauvignon?

Yes.

Yeah.

California Cab.

You've been cellaring this at your home, and this is what you picked to bring to the podcast recording?

Heck yeah.

I love you so much.

I was so excited about doing this. Okay. I am, like, so excited to try your first wine.

Okay. So you guys, I just poured my first of two wines, and I made sure that it was covered up with a bag so he couldn't see the label.

I like to cheat.

Cheater, cheater, cheater.

So what's the color on this, Nikita?

It is more subtle in its color. More of that purple hue than the brickish red.

Okay.

Color's not as concentrated as either of the last two wines that we had.

So it's a little bit more garnet, if you will.

Yeah, yeah. It's in the middle of the last two. It's not as purple as the Coppola. It's not as brickish as the aged Chianti.

It's brickish. Got it. Got it.

It's bright and.

Yeah. So it's probably looking like a wine just color wise from within the past five to seven years.

Yes. Yep. Not a huge differential in the middle to the outside, that rim variation, as we call it.

I'm gonna say cheers on your first wine.

Chee. Cheers.

Heck yeah. I never miss an opportunity to clink. I'm gonna smell this. Okay. Wow.

See, you're saying wow. And for me, and maybe it's just. Cause I know what it is. It's not leaping out of the glass, punching me like the last two did.

It's just a little more subtle on the nose.

This is very fruit forward, but it's got a lot of really neat, sort of viney character. Like a bit of a leafy character on the nose, which I really like.

A little bit of green pepper, which is also really nice, which is making me think this is. I know this is very early, but it's making me think it has some Cab franc in it.

I will tell you, it's 100% really of one variety, as far as I know.

Okay. I'm.

Cause I used my Vivino app in the store. I love my Vivino app. My listeners have heard me Talk about it before. I was definitely scanning this label.

I love Vivino. That is really nice. You know what I like about this, Nikki, is that the acid level is a little bit higher.

It's a little bit acidic, so it really crisps the palate. Not horribly tannic.

No, no, not horribly tannic. So that would guide us to guess certain grapes and maybe eliminate others.

So I would probably eliminate what I call the Bordeaux reds. I'd probably eliminate Cabernet Sauvignon, Cab Franc, Merlot.

This wine has a funny finish on my mouth because it's been about 25, 30 seconds since I had a sip, and it's hanging out. But I don't know if I love what is hanging out.

What I taste are some wood tannins, a slight bitter note. I'm gonna guess this to be an Italian. A grape that originates from Italy.

Nerd.

But maybe not from Italy. But maybe from Italy.

I'm don't second guess your instinct, sir.

It's got a lightness like an Italian grape, and I can tell it's probably one of the many amazing Italian grapes, but it has this interesting depth that I don't feel like the Italian climate offers. So I think it's an Italian grape grown in California. If I had to guess, it is.

An Italian grape, but it's from Italy.

Oh, my gosh.

Is a Sangiovese from Puglia.

Really?

It is not from Chianti.

Tuscany.

Chianti Classico. And this wine was $4.99 in Trader Joe's today.

I love it. I freaking Love it.

$4.99.

It does not drink, like, a $4.99 bottle.

And what I love about this, too, is that Puglia has such a great wine growing climate that about. I think it's about 70% of the Italian wines that we see in the United States are actually grown in Puglia.

So here's our fourth wine of our tasting.

Fourth and final.

Okay. It's in front of you, sir.

Thank you, my good friend.

Welcome.

Now, thoughts. Initial thoughts about color here.

Darker than the one we just had.

Okay.

Medium concentration of color. It appears to be a younger wine because I'm not seeing a lot of the feathering of color on the edges.

So that leads me to believe I know what this wine is. If I didn't know, I would use that to guide me to say that this is probably a wine that's only in the last five years.

Sure. And I'm just gonna smell it here. Wow. The aroma. Definitely a younger wine because the aroma is really bright. I get a lot of, like, cherry compote.

If you took cherries and baked them with some sugar and some vanilla, it's really nice there. Oak notes are coming out. A lot of vanilla, purple, little purple flowers.

Like violets or something like that. Yeah.

Or like honeysuckles or like that tropically flower note.

And the more I swirl this wine, it's. I'm gonna do your hand over the top of the glass while I swirl.

I'm gonna do it too. I feel like this is opening up a lot as it sits in the glass.

I agree. It's changed just from when I smelled it a minute ago, which is fun.

Yeah. This is really cool. And there's a little bit. Oh, we didn't. Let's do it, friend. What I get here, too, is, like, almost a very light cinnamon smell.

Cinnamon, brown sugar, cool appley note.

Apple, like, baked apple.

Apple that you might find in an apple crisp or something.

Crumble.

Wow, that is complex.

What does that mean for people that don't know what that means?

And for me, I don't even know what that means. Like, so there's a lot going on. When it hits my palate, first of all, I get really amazing mouthfeel.

So I get this really nice, like, blooming juiciness is the way that I describe it. It, like, pulls it.

Blooming juiciness. This is our first merchandise apparel item that we're going to sell on the podcast.

But it's got this, like. It pulls from your mouth. It's almost. It's an astringency caused by the tannins, but it's very what I would call extracted. So there's so much flavor.

The difference between, like, a really mellow chocolate cake that doesn't have that much cacao in it versus, like, oh, my gosh, this is such a decadent cake.

Or like a torte where it's.

This is, like, flourless. Oh, but it's not. I'm not trying to imply to our listeners that this tastes like chocolate.

No, no. Yeah.

But it's that mouthfeel. And then the flavor is full of fruit. There's the floral note.

There's the spice notes that we discussed, and then the oak adds a layer of additional stuff. So the three most complicated fluids that we know of.

Excuse Me, I feel like this is going into another podcast with another rating on it.

The three most complicated fluids that we know of. Our blood red wine and olive oil. And this, to me, like, when I say I can see flavor, like, when I taste, this is. This has a lot going on.

This is a symphony with a lot of instruments. You've got the fruit in one section, all the different.

A little bit of grapefruit, a little bit of fig, a little bit of cherry compote berries, a little bit of green apple. But, like, baked apples. That's like the fruit section, right? And then you've got the spice section.

And the imagining, this orchestra in my mind of this wine. This is most certainly a California wine.

Correct.

And I know that because it's got so much on the palate. It's got so much fruit. It was in the sun. It was a wine that, like, these were happy vines.

Aw. That makes my heart happy just thinking about those happy vines. Are you ready for me to tell you what it is?

Any final thoughts on this wine before we unveil it?

But this wine is.

Wait, what was the T shirt?

Blooming first juiciness, I think.

Blooming juiciness. I need. I drank it all, so I need more in my glass. I'm going to put a little more in your glass, sir.

Okay. Thank you, friend.

All right. What do you think this is?

It is Sonoma or Napa. I'm taking the bag off so Justin can see what this is.

Yes, yes. This is also Sangiovese, isn't it?

Why ever would you guess that?

Because it's got that Dry Creek fruit smell that I love so much, but.

It was masking as a cab a little bit. Hobie, is this your juice? This is my freaking wine, dude.

Oh, my God. I love it.

Oh, my God. Bravo. I'm raising my glasses to celebration.

Get in the bottle with the label, to the market branding.

Yes, it is. I thought you were gonna guess that's what I was gonna put in there. That's why I had to throw the Trader Joe's vine in there to lure you for a loop.

I thought you might try to trick.

Me, so I was Thinking this is my wine.

I feel very special and honored. No, this is really. This is a beautiful glass.

Thank you. I'm so excited for you to try this because you have been so close to the project.

Thank you.

And you've tasted the 19, our first vintage. And you've tasted the 20.

Oh, my goodness. And one of my favorite things to do with a wine is I like to go outside because the outside air does something crazy special to wine.

So as soon as we're done here, I'm gonna take my glass outside and I'm gonna sniff and taste the wine.

Now, if it's pouring rain out, how does that change that experience?

I think the air when it is raining is the cleanest it ever is. And I love the smell of wet earth with wine, so I think it enhances it. So much fun.

Post podcast recording. You guys are sticking around and we're doing pizza night. I thought we're going to open one of these to have with our beautiful dan richer.

Episode 1 inspired sour dose starter pizza.

Oh, my goodness, you broke out. Gladys.

Gladys, she's in the house. Gladys, you guys, is the name of our sourdough starter and the reason we call her that.

I think I've told you this because she used to be in a gladware container.

I love Gladys. She smells good.

Daphne. Gladys. You and all these old ladies. Hobie, I didn't know this about you. Are you ready for our final segment, which is listen or question?

I can't wait.

Here we go. Woo. Listen to question.

Amanda wants to know what's one thing that you love teaching people about how you navigate the world, either the wine world or the everyday world.

I live as a blind person in a sighted world. Things take me a lot longer. I have to be more patient.

And what I've learned is that absolutely anything is doable with the right attitude, with a positive attitude and a mindset that just lets you do whatever it is you want. Because the only thing in the way of you and your wildest dreams is your brain.

And if you can let your brain empower those dreams, you're gonna rock it.

Oh, I think that's good advice relating to anything and anyone, right? Thank you, Sally, an avid listener and perhaps a previous guest.

Yes.

Hey, Sally, would like to know, what assumptions do you notice sighted people making about flavor based on visual information? And what technique do you teach them to get past that bias?

People look at things and they know what they think it's going to be. And even if it's nowhere near what they think it should be.

They're going to think it should be that way and they're going to taste it and think that their first impression is going to dominate, is what I've found.

Just like when you might look at someone and immediately judge them, if you look at someone that's in ratty clothes in the subway station, you're going to think they might be not someone you want to talk to, when they might be one of the greatest people of all time. So I just, I like to say you can't judge a book by its cover.

And the way that I get around this with folks is that if I don't let people look at things before they taste them, they can't make those automatic assumptions.

Well, there you have it, people.

And if I were to give your listeners just a few words of, of some final thoughts, if you don't mind. Never let your eyesight use it because it's valuable, but never let it get in the way of your overarching experience with life.

You, whoever you are with, whatever you do, are amazing at what you do. Remember that. You're amazing. You do good work, every one of our listeners here. You also are enough.

As long as you deliver your personal best, that's enough. Nobody's alone in this world. We've got each other. Remember that your listeners can reach out to me anytime they want.

Please put my email in the show notes.

I'm gonna put your email, your website bio, your TED Talk, all the things will be in the show notes.

You're so sweet.

I love you so much.

I love you, Nikki.

What a beautiful note to end on.

This is great.

Cheers and thank you for all your help with Solavato.

Oh, it's been amazing. And the best is yet to.

I truly learn so much every time we spend time together.

And Michael and I and Hobie and Justin, we spend a lot of time together because we've become very good friends over the years, especially with our shared love of Dave Matthews. In fact, I failed to mention when I told you in the introduction about that tasting in the Dark with Music at the Culinary Institute last month.

It was all Dave Matthews songs and it was Blenheim Vineyards wines from Virginia, which is owned by Dave Matthews. So I digress. Make sure that you follow him Obiewedler at Instagram.

We also have a very small amount left of our very first blend, Fortunato, which is Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon and Petite Syrah. That was one single barrel that we made and it is inspired by the super Tuscan wines that Michael and I love to drink.

I hope next time you pour yourself a glass of wine you will think about that experience differently based on Hobie's wisdom. And I hope whatever you do between now and our next time together that you sip well.

Wa Sam.