Holy cow!!! This week I’m interviewing a well known author, wine journalist, teacher and mentor, Karen MacNeil. Not only is she the author of my personal favorite wine reference book,  the Wine Bible (which has sold almost a million copies around the world), she is also the only American to have won every major wine award given in the English language!

Annnnnd......This week we’ve got an International Sip Spotlight AND Listener Questions! 

Listen in to this extra special episode as Karen and I talk about: 

• An unexpected wine from Sicily
• Her surprising food pairing with Sparkling wine and Champagne 
• How and why wine can be such an emotional beverage
• How she has greatly influenced my journey as a woman in the wine world 
• The creation of Wine Barbie, based on her!
• Her tips for expanding YOUR wine enjoyment 

Find Karen's beautiful wine glass collection here.

Purchase Murgo Sicilian Sparking Brut Rosé from our Sip Spotlight Here!

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Karen: You would be like, no, I'm not going to just eat chicken and carrots my whole life. But a lot of people drink very narrowly their whole lives. And so they're missing out on all the mangoes, all the, I don't know, all the salads, all the pork chops, all the other things in life. So if you eat broadly with food, and most people do.

Nikki: So I wanted to kick off this week's episode with a shout out to two of our loyal and enthusiastic listeners, and that's Lisa T in California, Joey V in Florida. Thank you both so much for your support of the podcast, for sharing, for letting me know your feedback and your excitement. It really means the world to me.

Nikki: So I'm sort of still beside myself with what I'm about to tee up here. Karen McNeil is a very well known author, journalist, TV personality, instructor, mentor in the world of wine, and when I started this podcast and made a list of everything Everyone that I would want to have on as a guest one day. She was at the top of the list.

Nikki: It has sold close to a million copies worldwide. She also has been a winner of the James Beard Award for Wine and Spirits Professional of the Year. She's won an Emmy for her TV show on PBS called Wine, Food, and Friends with Karen McNeil. She's had a Barbie crafted after her. Y'all have to listen in to hear more about that.

Nikki: We'll get her take on the topic of why does wine matter? Something that I did an episode on. back all about. And we'll also hear how she entered into the world of wine as what she calls herself an outsider. Someone who didn't come from a wine family or a wine place and who was a woman in an industry that back then really had little to no female representations.

Karen: I have a glass of something with bubbles in it every night of my life. I'm, I'm almost religious about it. I, I feel like, you know, I, I don't spend a lot of money on clothes or on cars or on whatever you could spend money on. Champagne and sparkling wine. That's my thing. One indulgence, and it's not even really an indulgence.

Karen: Um, but I, I began to see many years ago that, you know, when you hand someone a glass, let's say in particular champagne in a flute, you know, people look sexy, they stand up taller. It's, it's just, it's so, feels so sexy. Sleek and so good. And the bubbles are great, right? Because you've got this long linear glass, but you can't swirl the glass.

Karen: And if you can't swirl it means you can't really smell the wine very well. And if you can't smell the wine really well, then you probably aren't tasting it fully. So over time, I've come to the realization that, of course, all sparkling wines are wines first. They just happen to have bubbles in them. But you need to be able to swirl them and you need to be able to smell them.

Karen: Thank you for asking. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

Nikki: And so I get a lot of questions from listeners just about things that we would say are, are fairly elementary, but important about glassware and aerating and decanting. So that's when I love to teach them and share with them. So that was just a great introduction right there. So

Karen: I don't think there are any elementary kinds of questions.

Karen: I mean, wine is idiosyncratic. It's, it's kind of complex. It doesn't always logically follow. And so, uh, you really have to ask whole bunches of questions, um, before you really get to the heart of the matter. I mean, I probably written about wine for a number of years before I asked myself the question, why is red wine red?

Nikki: Well, the way that you just responded to that is why you and I are here. What I do want my listeners to know is that the 12 years that I have been in the wine industry and the experiences that I've had, as I've told you, are very much thanks to you and the work that you do. So if you remember just a tiny bit about my background, I was, I'm from New Jersey, but I was there through college.

Nikki: But sitting in a classroom with you and hearing the way that you described things, right? And you've already said some of them in our short time together here about how wine is idiosyncratic. And I have notebooks of, of Karen quotes of wine. And now as a wine educator myself, I find these things coming out of my mouth.

Nikki: So thank you.

Karen: Aw, . Thank you.

Nikki: And I have this page in my notebook. I love to take notes. I'm a copious note taker. And hopefully this is pretty verbatim what was coming out of your mouth, but I think this could be a great, great sort of starter to our conversation here. So ask yourself about wine. Why should anyone drink it? How does it feel?

Nikki: You said the word self taught a moment ago. Where did this come from? How did you develop this approach to wine? Because it's so effective for so many.

Karen: It came from being an outsider. When I started in New York, uh, you know, a long time ago in the late seventies and early eighties, there were very few women in the wine business.

Karen: There were no wine schools in the entire United States. Kevin's really had just started Windows on the World. And so there was no way in. Most wine was written about by British authors, many of whom had gone to Oxford or Cambridge. They were very privileged, they had often grown up with parents who had cellars, and Oxford and Cambridge themselves had cellars.

Karen: You can't just sit there and have it in your head and think, okay, I know what I taste. but I just can't tell anybody about it. And, and when you find your own way you are immediately tested out, right? Because people either read your articles and like them or they don't. And when you look out over a sea of students, you can see in their eyes.

Nikki: When you say, you know, looking out into the sea of students and seeing on their faces, what resonates, I'm like, well, if Nikki Lamberti is one of your students, you're seeing tears and you're seeing goosebumps because when I do have those aha moments and I remember them, they can be really touching and emotional.

Nikki: And I think when I started studying wine, And we had such a great class. There was a small group of us that were together in your program for a while, and we're still close to this day. But I was a little bit self conscious because I was new in this wine world. I think I was an outsider, right? The girl from Disney is now starting wine.

Nikki: And it's why I, You know, made a complete life change to, to, to be here and to do this. So, um, yeah, if it's, if it's Nikki in your classroom, you're probably seeing teary eyes and even two years ago, you know?

Karen: But you know, I, I so respect what you've just said because I cannot tell you the number of people who have cried.

Karen: in my classes. And when you say that to someone who, let's say doesn't drink wine and they're like, What? That makes no sense. But if you are a wine person, that makes total sense to you. You realize that wine is an emotional beverage. It just is. Does part of the reason that once you fall in love with wine, you almost never fall like out of it.

Karen: And it's why you stay connected your whole life. Yeah.

Nikki: When I reached out to you a couple of weeks ago and, and asked you if you'd be so kind to spend a little bit of time with me today, you've been on my list of reach guests since I started this podcast. But what really was the catalyst for me to reach out and finally ask you to do it was something that you had shared in the past.

Nikki: And she's the one who posed that question and she can give us her thoughts. So can you just share with our listeners where that question came from and why do you think that wine is important? Well,

Karen: having been a wine journalist now for amazingly enough, 40 years, I'm feeling a little older. I know when I say that, but.

Karen: You know, I, I'm the kind of note taker who writes everything down. I mean, in the, in the early days, you didn't really have recorders and recorders. I want to just actually be able to feel and touch my notes. So I'm like a stenographer. So for 40 years, I've written down so many things that winemakers have told me around the world, right?

Karen: Why, why does it, why is it different than anything else? And again, no slam on beer or spirits or anything else. A cold beer on a hot Saturday afternoon is fantastic. Of course it is. But it's, it's also wine is a different kind of experience. So why does wine matter has always been a really important question to me.

Karen: And I told each of them though that I was going to sequentially ask them, they were not in the room at the same time, they came in one after the other, and they didn't know the question. I said, there's only one question. And I think a lot of them felt like, maybe it would be like, what is your extraction method for Cabernet Sauvignon?

Karen: They were like, Oh. And I thought, I can't believe that you don't have an immediate answer to this, is what I was thinking. But admittedly, it wasn't the question they were expecting, and it is a big question, and it is a question worth, like, taking a pause and, holy God, yes, let me think about that. Why does, why matter?

Karen: But it did make me think. You know, we don't ask. We, even in the industry, and, and I'm sort of a side juncture to the industry as a journalist, but it made me think, wow, that, that question isn't asked maybe enough. Because if five prominent Napa Valley winemakers pause a little too long, in a way, That's an interesting point to me.

Karen: I think they feel like they're in that and they are in that circle of life, of nature. It's certainly the unspoken motivation for so many winemakers who realize that they're now in this grand cycle of nature and life. And that's, uh, that's, that's powerful. It's powerful and it's emotional.

Nikki: I like to say along the same lines, it, it speaks of a place, right?

Nikki: Like you said, it's, it's nature into your body. I mean, especially a, a well meant wine that really is reflecting the place where it was grown and the people who grew it. It is a reflection of, of a place and it's a way to experience different places in the center of Manhattan or New Jersey or Orlando, wherever you are, right?

Nikki: I had so many different things, but as I told you, I've just got Sicily on the brain because I'm going to be visiting for the first time next month. And I also know your love of sparkling wine. So it was kind of the mashup of the two with this. So why don't we just talk about this wine for a minute. We call this our Sip Spotlight.

Nikki: Mergo is the producer. Are you familiar with this or do you know much about them?

Karen: It's funny because they're smack dab in the middle of the Mediterranean there, but they, remain somewhat unknown as a wine region. I'm envious that you're, you're going there. Um, I'm surprised by this wine because, I'm surprised but not surprised, I was going to say I'm surprised because it's so fresh and lively.

Karen: and juicy and very alive, which you associate in part with acidity, which this wine has a lot of really beautiful crisp acidity. And you think of, wait a minute, it's going to be pretty hot in Sicily right there in the center of the Mediterranean. Sicily is a volcanic island. That's right. It's a mountain out of the sea.

Nikki: very welcome. I actually found this in our local bottle barn, you know, which is such a wonderful wine shop here in Santa Rosa.

Nikki: Their Italian wine section is really intense, but I've not. I've enjoyed a lot of Sicilian wines, and I think this is probably the first sparkling Sicilian that I've had. So, of course, once I bought this wine home and getting prepped for today, I opened up my wine bible. You know, the one that's, has sold almost a million copies around the world.

Nikki: Do you know that one, maybe, perhaps? Um, side note. My first exposure to the wine bible was day one of class. At the Culinary Institute. I didn't have the book prior to coming out here. Like I said, I was a wine drinker, but not studying. And my classmate sitting next to me was Ryan Bailey. Do you remember Ryan?

Nikki: And I remember on the first day of class, you signed it for him. And he never was without this wine Bible in his hand. That was my first exposure. I said, I need to get me to get this book and have her sign it for me. So that was my first exposure to the book. But I jumped into the Sicilian section just in preparation for today, and I just highlighted.

Nikki: But I

Karen: see you have the second edition. I just want to say, you have to get the third. Third edition because the third edition, which came out last fall has a much expanded section on, on Sicily because Sicily is, which is, you know, hitting the baseball out of the park. And, and this Margo that you've turned me on to sparkling wine.

Karen: And North Berkeley imports, Has a lot of really good wines. So when I see that they're the importer, when they're the importer or Kermit Lynch or Skurnik is the importer, I'm like, Ooh, there's a good chance that this is going to be a really fascinating wine. I don't know anybody by the way, at North Berkeley imports.

Karen: Um, I don't know a single person there, but whoever is buying their wine. has a real clear

Nikki: Yeah, so we'll get the third. Mount Etna's reds are not for the faint of heart. They're generally based on two grapes. Norello Muscalese. Am I saying it right? Norello Muscalese, which is what our Brut Rosé that we're tasting today is made from these grapes. And one thing I didn't know, and I was so excited to read, it is related to Sangiovese, which is a grape that I'm very passionate about.

Nikki: You know, that's what I make for my wine. So we're tasting, uh, an offspring, yes, in this case. Norello Mascalese. What else do you know or like about this grape? Yeah, I think one of the

Karen: most amazing things about Italian winemaking in general is that if you think about grapes that we all know, like Cabernet Sauvignon, right?

Karen: So what is it about these Italian grapes that they don't travel? Well, that's, that's. That's the first question that I ask myself. And the answer, I don't know why it is, viticulturally, almost every Italian grape has an incredibly strong personality in its place. So Nerella Mascalese in Sicily, you can say, tastes like this.

Karen: But it's not really the taste of the variety. It's the taste of the place. Because the, the variety doesn't have any transference. It doesn't really do anything very much, any other. Place. And this is a, a variety, a lot of Italian varieties are both high in acid and bitter. Bitter sounds like it's going to be bad, but the Italians are remarkable at good bitters.

Karen: And then this slightly lemon peel bitter edge that is really interesting. And of course, the Italians cook with all of those bitters, you know, they'll shave a little. Lemon zest on top of a pasta. I mean, they would do things that we wouldn't think to do to add a complexity of flavor. So Italy is a world unto itself.

Nikki: No, thank you. We love reading it.

Karen: Oh my God, the first Wine Bible, I, I left Italy to the end because I was so terrified to try to write about it.

Karen: This was a big mistake. I was exhausted. The whole book had taken me 10 years to write, and now I had left one of the giant chapters to the end. So the second edition of the Wine Bible, I thought, all right, I'm getting Italy, out of the way early on. And then I thought, about three chapters in, I thought, okay, let me tackle Italy.

Karen: Wikipedia is quoting us, right? We're, Wikipedia is not a source. We do all of our own primary research, which means you have to go to the exact source. So with Italy, here's the irony. The exact source is called the disciplinare. That's the governmental body of information that catalogs. Every law in Italian wine, the disciplinare, it is so not disciplined in Italian wine.

Karen: It is not disciplined. People, uh,

Nikki: Like how

Karen: they drive

Nikki: in Naples, not disciplined.

Karen: So everything that you think you can deduce is just, you just go over the hill and somebody else will say, no, no, no, it doesn't work that way at all.

Nikki: But it was also some of the most emotional and exciting wines. For me, in that week that we spent studying Italy, which is what led me to find the few acres of Sangiovese that are planted by Mr. Joe Ramazzotti in Dry Creek and convince him to sell me a ton because, A, there's not a lot left, and so, yeah, yeah.

Karen: Good there's not a lot left. No. That's great.

Nikki: I keep asking him every year for more than a ton, but we've not got more than 1. 1, uh, but I'll take it. And it's fantastic. And they're, you know, 35 year old vines. And it's wonderful, but it's rare.

Karen: That is really good because age of Sangiovese really matters. So good for you.

Nikki: Sure. Uh, the first one is from Jennifer, who's actually in Santa Rosa and she wants to know who would you want to play you in a movie about your life?

Karen: Um,

Nikki: I don't know. Have you ever been asked this question before?

Karen: I have not, but I am writing a memoir. Which is an interesting point. And, um, I've been told that, I don't know, maybe this could be a Netflix series.

Karen: Maybe everybody is told this. So, I don't know. You know, all right. I just have to say, I don't know. Thank you, Jen. And again, I'm going to let. Let you decide who should

Nikki: play me. I think what comes to mind for me is obviously someone very classy, articulate, and kind. I think of like Annette Bening. She's just like, she's stunning, and she's lovely, and she's smart, and she's warm, and I don't know.

Karen: Here she is, but yes, so I have a wine Barbie that is modeled after me. And actually I was wearing exactly these clothes. Wine Barbie is holding a glass of red wine.

Karen: And so how this came about was a few years ago, I did a tasting seminar for the board of Mattel. And they came to the Napa Valley. gave this, I hope, wonderful tasting for them. And then they all thought it was great. I left. That was, that was that. And about three or four months later, I'd completely forgotten about this, of course.

Karen: And here's Wine Barbie. And they had taken a picture of me. And they actually created a Barbie

Nikki: doll. It looks like you. It's crazy. What is that money to look at yourself as a Barbie? I've never been able to ask someone that.

Karen: I don't, I mean, it is exactly, it looks exactly like me. It was so funny, uh, to me.

Karen: So, yes, Wine Barbie exists. There's only one in the world. Um, And

Nikki: here she is. Wow. Okay. This is from Catherine. Catherine would like to know, if you could only listen to one song while drinking one wine for the rest of your life, what is the song and what is the wine?

Karen: The whole idea of wine. is to keep having these different expressions that touch you in different ways. It's not like many other things. You feel like you discover, oh, this is what I like. This is my color. This is my car, whatever. But wine isn't like that. There is no This is my final one. I've sometimes said to students, the best way to learn nothing about wine is to continue to drink what you already know you like.

Karen: That I think is not really there. I am not

Nikki: surprised by that answer. So thank you. That's along the lines of what I would have expected. So this is kind of a derivative of that question, but more importantly, it's not asking about one wine. It's asking about when you were a young writer, and then you moved to New York, and you were Today Show, and USA Today, and all these publications and shows and TV.

Karen: Definitely. It cost 89 cents, Bulgarian red. I was 15 years old and I drank a glass of this every night while I was doing my homework in high school and. I was just struck by how beautiful it was. I never actually walked all the way into a wine store because I was too terrified, but this would come from the, the sale bin at the end of the counter, all of which were 89 cent wines, and On the weekends, as a really special treat, I would sometimes buy myself a bottle of 1.

Nikki: Same, same here for me.

Nikki: I mean, that's, that's where we start, right? So, so that leads to my question now, kind of directed to the listeners. As I mentioned, I have a lot of listeners who just enjoy wine and they're learning and they're exploring. So what is your advice to people who are maybe very new to drinking wine or All that they know about it is that they like it, and not much deeper than that.

Nikki: What is your advice for them?

Karen: Yeah. On the other hand, It's hard to expand your knowledge if all you drink is the one wine you know you love. So even as a young person in my late teens and early 20s, I would allot myself a kind of experimental budget. Mind you, this was like six dollars a week. It wasn't big. I was definitely drinking from the bottom shelf in the grocery store.

Karen: But I would buy something that I knew, like my Bulgarian Red or Liebfurmilch. And then, every now and then, I would take my six dollars and buy, like every week or two, buy something else just to expand my horizons. And God knows, maybe I liked it even more. Maybe I couldn't make sense of it. Maybe it was terrible.

Karen: You would be like no I'm not gonna just eat chicken and carrots my whole life, but a lot of people drink very narrowly their whole lives. And so they're missing out on all the mangoes, all the, I don't know, all the salads, all, all the pork chops, all the other things in life. So if you eat broadly with food, and most people do, then your drinking should

Nikki: be similar.

Nikki: And I sat at the bar and I had a glass of Falanghina and I had never had that Italian, beautiful white grape before. And it was on my radar. forevermore because of that homework assignment. And that was new to me in the first week of this class, right? Where I was now being immersed in the world of wine.

Nikki: So thank you for that homework assignment. It's actually one of my favorites now.

Karen: Hmm. Thank you for telling me that. Yeah. I'd say, I mean, as homework assignments go, it's pretty good, right?

Nikki: It's pretty awesome. Okay. Final question. I was listening to another podcast that you recently did and the host was asking you about your favorite food and wine pairings.

Karen: potato chips. You sure did. Yeah, you know, crunch and bubbles. Oof. I mean, what better textural combo could there be?

Karen: There's a professor at Oxford who initiated a whole field of study called gastrophysics. In several of his experiments, actually, he showed that not only are textural matches like that fascinating, but that sound is a very big predictor of flavor. So he took Pringles potato chips, and it turns out in the experiment that the more sound a Pringles potato chip made, the higher it was rated.

Nikki: I love that. But I think about, you were talking about chicken and carrots before and I'm like, carrots are loud. Carrots are crunchy. They don't give me as much joy as a potato chip because they don't have the salt, right? They don't have the salt. Yes. The salt. The salt is important. The salt is important.

Nikki: So Italian. Oh my goodness.

Karen: Yeah. So again, a famous chef came over and then they had a great dinner that everybody had a great time at. And then they wrote those down. Yeah.

Nikki: They sound fantastic, but I'm going to go with potato chips. I agree with you. That would be fantastic. So before we say goodbye, I'm going to read your descriptor here for WineSpeed.

Nikki: So it's a new style of wine media. for the modern era. Tell me a little bit about this project and why you think our listeners should be a part of this community.

Karen: Yes. So we began Winespeed a few years ago, and it's a digital newsletter that comes to your inbox every Friday. It's really fascinating, fast.

Nikki: Okay. Maybe a little bit. Yeah.

Karen: Yeah. We, you know, hundreds of subscribers all over the United States and people will write me saying, Oh, I'm on like a 30 week, you know, role.

Karen: I've gotten every quiz, right? Uh, that's not me. No, I'm not on that role. I began Wine Speed because, of course, the wine bible is well known, it's big, it's a book. But I thought, wouldn't it be great to have like a weekly dose of wine education that wouldn't require you to work very hard, you didn't have to do anything, you didn't have to open a book, it just came to you.

Karen: And I like to think of myself as a good writer, but. I'm also a good researcher. I'm on top of my, my stuff and my facts. And I don't want to say anything that is like, not really true. So Winespeed is fun, fast, fascinating, and. And underlying that is a researcher who wrote the Wine Bible. And it truly is fun.

Karen: We'll give you that code for any listener who would like to, to see what WineSpeed is all about.

Nikki: That's so kind. Thank you. That's wonderful. I will definitely share that.

Karen: I just want to say that thank you for doing what you're doing. Wine is It's a people business above all else. It's one person talking to another person talking to another person.

Karen: And having a podcast like yours where you're very individually touching other people is, is how the wine world works. So congratulations on your podcast and for, for deciding to do this. Because I know you're the kind of woman who just, decides I am going to do this. So bravo, brava to you. Thank

Nikki: you. I decided.

Nikki: So thank you for that.

Karen: Thank you. Oh, that's very sweet. Thank you, my friend.

Nikki: I'm still floored. over the whole thing, but that I was able to share with Karen McNeil a wine that she hadn't experienced before. So I also have to give a shout out to Liz who works at Bottle Barn for helping me to find that wine and reassuring me that that would be a good one for Karen to taste. Liz.

Nikki: Like she said, it's Every Friday, great emails, quizzes, discount codes for things wine related. When you subscribe at winespeed. com, just use the code SIPWITHNIKKI20, SIPWITHNIKKI20 for 20 percent off your subscription. Thank you for that, Karen. I'll also put in the show notes links to the Wine Bible and also links to her beautiful wine glass collection at Macy's and Amazon.