Wine is more than just a beverage; it’s a catalyst for connection, a way to bring people together and share experiences. This week, I'm excited to invite you to join in on "Share and Pair Sundays", a campaign that encourages you to invite friends over to enjoy good food and wine together. (sounds simple, cause it is).

Similar to the Come Over October initiative this past fall, it also emphasizes that it’s the moments and connections around food and wine that can bring us the most joy and fulfillment.

In this episode, I'm explaining what it is, how and why you can get involved and re-sharing my favorite clips from my conversation with wine writer and campaign co-creator, Karen MacNeil and my friend and chemistry nerd Dr.Hoby Wedler about why these movements are so important.

You'll hear how:

• Residual pandemic habits have led many of us to stay comfy at home, making social gatherings feel more special than ever.
• Wine is more than just a drink; it’s a bond that brings people together and creates community.
• Share and Pair Sundays encourages us to connect over food and wine, emphasizing joy and togetherness.
• The campaign aims to counteract the trend of isolation by promoting the act of inviting friends over.
• Wine has the power to transform strangers into friends and foster connections through shared experiences.

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Check out the Share and Pair Sundays website for more info, tips and ways to have fun with the movement!

Our Sollevato Sangiovese 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!

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We have gone inward, especially since COVID and especially now.

It's so easy and so convenient to stay home, whether it's because of the cost of going out, but also because we have Amazon and we have Doordash and we have Stitch Fix. I mean, I love all these things.

You literally could just stay in your house and have the world brought to you on your doorstep through your smartphone. And we're all, I think, more and more guilty of this. Hello, friend. Welcome to Sip with Nikki.

I'm Nikki Lamberti here in Sonoma County, California, and I'm so excited that you are spending some time with me today. I started my morning making pizza dough balls. So you've heard me talk about how Michael and I love to do at home pizza. I.

I like to consider myself a home pizzaiola. And we have our sourdough starter and we love to have friends over for pizza night. And it often falls on Sundays.

I would say we do it at least once a month, if not more than that. And that's happening today. So we are in the food prep point to have some dear friends of mine who also work for Disney.

They are in town and coming over to to make pizza and drink wine with us this afternoon. And how fitting, because today is the first day of Share and Pair Sundays.

Now, Share and Pair Sundays is essentially a continuation of the Comeover October campaign that started this past fall. And if you heard the episode where I interviewed Karen McNeil and Hobie Wedler back on October 7, this should sound familiar.

If you haven't listened to it, it's okay, you can go back and you can catch up.

But I'm gonna give you some highlights from that conversation today because the same team that created that initiative has now rolling out starting today, Sharon Pear Sundays. And it's going for the next 10 Sundays, so all throughout the spring into the summer. The last one will be May 25th.

And I wanna tell you why it's important, what it's about, how I'm participating and how you can participate. You know, it's an interesting time in the world, don't get me started.

But in wine specifically, as someone who not only has the podcast about wine, Michael and I make wine and have a small wine brand. I still work at Pride Mountain Vineyards as a wine educator. So wine is a big part of our lives.

And we are all seeing some interesting trends happening of late that just bottom line is softer sales and softer drinking and softer visitation. And the Napa Valley and Sonoma county where I live. And it's not any one thing that's leading to that. But there's a few things.

It's concerns about health risks associated with alcohol, the new generation that just has different behaviors and how they imbibe or don't or what they're choosing to do it with the economy. There's just all of these things that are a part of it.

So I'm so excited that we have something that we can come together not only as wine industry professionals, but as human beings who take pleasure in food and wine. That's you. If you're listening to this podcast that is literally you.

And we can make a difference and we can support the industry and in turn add just a little bit more joy to our daily lives by inviting people over, opening a bottle, cooking, ordering in, going out. But we're gonna break down all the elements of Share and Pair Sundays, but we are for sure gonna be doing that today.

If you check out my Instagram ickylamberdi, I will create a highlight bubble on there and you'll actually see our kickoff Share and Pair Sundays pictures and video of the gorgeousness that we're going to enjoy with our friends today. It doesn't have to be fancy. You don't have to be making pizza dough from a sourdough starter.

You can order a pizza, you can do one of my favorite pairings, which is sparkling wine and fried chicken. It could be Nacho night. Get creative, but keep it simple and really just all about coming together and sharing joy through food and wine.

So so here we go with Share and Pair Sundays.

I'm so excited about this new springtime campaign called Share and Pair Sundays that Karen McNeil and her partners Gino Colangelo and Kimberly Noel Charles have created. And it's basically a continuation or an expansion, a compliment to the Come Over October campaign that they started this past fall.

Karen McNeil was an instructor of mine in my wine certification program at the Culinary Institute of America. She's also the author of multiple editions of the Wine Bible and she's a very well known wine writer.

She has been on the podcast multiple times and I'm so grateful for her mentorship. And as Karen shared so beautifully, as she always does as a wine writer in her most recent winespeed newsletter that I get every Friday.

Wine is about unity and coming together and creating community. And there are some really fascinating message points that are at the root of not only Come Over October, but the new Cher and Pear Sundays.

And the first one is one that you've heard me talk about in one way or Another in multiple of my episodes, that wine is a communal beverage, right? It brings people together. You know, I love to talk about this.

It's also rooted in the fact that moderate consumption has an authentic, beneficial role in society. It can mitigate social isolation.

And in a moment, you'll hear Karen talking about this, about how we have gone into inward, especially since COVID and especially now.

It's so easy and so convenient to stay home, whether it's because of the cost of going out, but also because we have Amazon and we have Doordash and we have Stitch Fix.

I mean, I love all these things, but you literally could just stay in your house and have the world brought to you on your doorstep through your smartphone. And we're all, I think, more and more guilty of this.

And so getting back to the basics of wine, having that role of getting us out, getting us together, having people over, going to someone's house is so important now more than ever. Wine is also a natural agricultural product, right? It is born out of a respect for nature and for the environment.

I've spoken at length about this, about how this industry really rests on the backs of farmers and farming families, and how we couldn't make this very sexy end product, which is a bottle of wine that's on a store shelf or showing up on your doorstep in a wine club without farming and land. It's why someone like me with a degree in environmental science has gravitated towards wine, because it really is that natural product.

It's agriculture.

You'll hear us talk a little bit about how wine protects the culture of rural communities, and that goes hand in hand with the whole agriculture piece, but how it is such a integral part of a lot of communities, obviously here in California, where I live, but really all over the world, how there is such an economic impact on growing and making and how it's really livelihood for so many people. And the other message point, and you've heard me speak about this, is how wine is food's natural companion or partner at the table.

You know, I love to talk about food and wine pairings. Hopefully you've listened to the pairing schmearing episode where I talked about Evan Goldstein's book, Perfect Pairings, and great news.

Evan has agreed to be a guest on the podcast, so stay tuned for that. But, you know, they just elevate each other. So we need wine to elevate food, and we need food to elevate wine.

And then finally, Karen speaks about how wine and food are really just among the most basic foundations for living well, right.

And again, we talk about moderation, everything in moderation, but how enjoying wine and food and community and companionship and socializing together, that is just such an important part of enjoying life, having a full life and having a fun and positive life. So I've pulled just a couple of my favorite clips from our conversation back in October where Karen McNeil, Dr. Holby Wedler and I gathered in St.

Helena in the Napa Valley and we met in Karen's office and the three of us sat around the table, we tasted a couple of wines and you can go back to that episode. It's all about Come Over October. It aired on October 7.

I would go back and listen to that because this is just a couple of highlights, but I wanted to set the foundation for what this team is doing because everything that we spoke about with Come Over October absolutely applies to the new Springtime Share and Pair Sundays. In addition to Karen's voice, you'll also hear my dear friend Dr. Hobie Wedler, who is becoming a little bit of a regular on this podcast.

If you listen, you've heard Hobie multiple times.

Hoby was born without sight and has a PhD in organic chemistry, and he and his partner Justin have a consulting business where they help food spirits, all different types of producers, with formulations and branding and packaging. He's a think partner of mine.

In fact, go back and listen to our damp January episode where we tasted a whole lineup of non alcoholic or de alcoholized wines. Because guess what? You can still participate in these initiatives and campaigns even without the alcohol.

So take a listen and then I will come back and let you know what's next and how you can get involved.

Come Over October is a national campaign encouraging people to do something very simple and to do something that we, as people who love wine, do all the time, which is simply to invite a friend, a neighbor, a colleague, a family member to come over to share some wine.

And the idea came to me this past spring when I found myself reading so much of what was being written about wine that I felt was incredibly negative. And what saddened me the most was that the conversation around wine had devolved to simply being a conversation about alcohol.

And to me, wine is more than alcohol, right? It's threaded into a rich tapestry of culture and religion and art and emotion. It is way more than just alcohol.

And we all know that if alcohol was your only goal, there are faster and cheaper ways to do it.

Yeah, exactly. So I also felt that the wine industry was not yet telling its own positive story.

And so one morning I was walking the dog and I was muttering to myself like, damn it, why isn't the wine industry standing up for itself? And then I just turned to myself and said, you're a word person. You should do something.

And so I thought about writing an article, because all writers, that's sort of what they will immediately think. But I realized that one more article, while helpful, wasn't enough.

That we needed to galvanize, in a sense, the entire community of wine lovers nationally. And people needed to do something. Not just read something, but do something.

And so it popped into my head, well, wouldn't it be cool if every wine drinker in America just invited a friend over and shared some wine? Because we know that wine leads to friendship. It's led to our three friendships.

And you know, one of the things that I think every wine drinker has experienced is being with someone who is a stranger, sharing some wine. And after that, you are no longer strangers, you are now friends. And that's a really mystical ability that wine has. Nothing else compares to that.

And there is something very deeply connective about wine that allows us to feel good in the company of another person. It is, at its essence, a shareable communal beverage. And that's an important social fact.

That's why it's had such an important role to play cultural, culturally, for centuries.

Amen.

I shared a story in a recent podcast just from a couple weeks ago. Michael and I went to Rutherford Grill.

One of our favorite spots.

And we love to sit at the bar there. Cause we always meet such interesting people, whether they are locals. Cause a lot of us do hang out there or people that are visiting.

And there was a gentleman sitting next to us who turns out was a driver for one of the wine tour companies. And it was the end of the day and he was having his dinner there. And Michael and I had ordered a really nice bottle.

And it was so natural for this guy who we had just met and started talking, hey, bartender, can we get a glass for our new friend? And would you like to try this wine? And he said, yes. And I joke and I say, if.

We were sitting drinking Old Fashions, which.

Is fine, nothing against the Old Fashioned. It probably would have been a little less natural to be like, hey, stranger, would you like to try my Old Fashioned?

You want a sip?

It's just not the same, Right? It's not the same.

And Karen, to that point, in a recent video that I was watching of you talking about this wonderful advocacy and this campaign and this movement, which is really what it's become. You said that wine is about generosity and goodwill and community.

It is so true. And I suppose that those ideas probably feel right now, more important than ever. The world is so divisive right now.

And so I would almost go so far as to say we need wine, right? We need to sit in the company of each other and share something. And I do think that the idea that wine is always served in a communal package, right.

A bottle of wine.

Amen.

Goes back a very long way in history and its very essence is to be shared. And I think what's happening is that the whole idea of Come over October has hit an emotional nerve.

People have said to themselves, dammit, friendship is important, being together is important. And I need to make that happen in my own life, 100%. And the beauty of the idea, in part, is that it is so simple. Everybody can do it.

Right?

And the thing that I would add to that, wine is complex. And there are molecules in wine that are not harmful to your body at all. In fact, they're quite the opposite.

So one of the main ones that we find typically in red wine is a very powerful flavonoid, we call them, flavor molecule and antioxidant called Epicatechin. Epicatechin has been known to reduce blood pressure big time, reduce heart disease risks, reduce diabetes risks and all these things.

My sort of claim here is that wine is not bad and it has elements of the grapes that you eat. When we talk about, oh, you should eat five fruits and vegetables a day, is that from the 90s or is that. No, I don't think it's that.

On the triangle, the food pyramid, I'll quote it now.

Yeah. When we drink wine, the amazing thing about it, because it's just fermented and then aged, it's not distilled.

We keep around a lot of those amazing nutrients that we would get if we ate that many grapes. If you drink a glass of wine, you're actually ingesting a little over a pound of grape nutrients. That's a lot like, imagine eating a pound of grapes.

It's a lot of little grapes. But imagine drinking a glass of wine, you're getting that same nutrient packed punch that it's just fun and it makes your body sing.

Thank you for sharing that, Hobie, because I think, and I've heard Karen talk about this, and I certainly echo it, we do not have the PhD in organic chemistry, nor are we medical professionals.

Right.

So we're certainly hesitant to start talking about health Properties and benefits. But when the man with the PhD in organic chemistry from UC Davis starts talking about nutrients in grapes, I feel.

Like you're allowed to go there because.

You know the science, right?

Dr. Rudler prescribes one glass of wine every day in October.

I love it.

I am a doctor, not a physician. I'm very careful about that.

Yes, very good to make the distinction when you were talking about wine bringing people together.

Something very timely that falls within this month just accidentally is, I think you both know this, that I live in the Coffee park neighborhood in Santa Rosa. And we're coming up on the seven year anniversary of the Tubbs fire. And our entire neighborhood was demolished. And many of us have rebuilt.

And it's a positive thing now. Right.

But the reason I bring this up is because during the rebuilding process, one of my neighbors, I wish I could take credit for this, but one of my neighbors started a Wine Wednesday. And we were all displaced, some of us all over the state in temporary housing. But we came together and I happened to live on a cul de sac.

And I think there's symbolism in the circular nature of the cul de sac. And whoever could be there would be there checking on their site, talking about permitting, talking about builders and contractors.

And there was always wine.

It might have been grocery store wine.

In a solo cup. Cause that was accessible at the time when no one had kitchens or cellars anymore.

Or you know, as we got further along doing this for over a year, every Wednesday, we started upping the game and bringing things. But what made me bring this up is that next week, October 9th, the neighbors are having a seven year anniversary. Cause it's on Wednesday.

And we will be having a big Wine Wednesday in Scarlet Place in Santa Rosa.

Oh, interesting.

Now, looking at all these beautiful homes around us where the neighborhood is about 90% rebuilt, it just made me think about how wine was. You used the word therapy. But how it really brought neighbors that I didn't even know before that together.

And we're gonna get to come over October in the Cul de Sac next Wednesday. You're both invited. Karen, you're in some other country, but it's just, I think, a great example of how it really bring people together.

And if you, if you turn the binoculars around for a second and think about the fact that when you ask someone what was an important moment tasting wine, just as you just described here, a very emotional get together with other people who have suffered so deeply as a result of those wildfires, you imagine the wine, but you always know who you were with. And even when you ask someone what's the greatest wine you ever had, sometimes people cannot remember the name of the wine, but they remember.

I can tell you who was on my right.

Yes.

Who was on my left.

I love it.

There you go.

And you guys, let me just paint another picture here. This is exactly what my brain does with wine.

So what I love the most about wine is how non visual it is how you can show people photos of a wedding that happened five years ago and they could look around and smile and laugh and see themselves standing around.

But if you ask someone what was the highlight of that wedding and tell me what, what was served at the wedding, what wines were served, they can tell you what they were drinking with their dinner and who was at their table because you related to something. Right. And when I drink wine, sometimes I get teary eyed. When I drink wine, it just happens to me.

You and I cried on the podcast. Mine makes me cry all the time. That's why I'm good.

That's right.

No judgment.

And sometimes when I taste a wine, it is the closest thing I can imagine to seeing something, to seeing color, to seeing a landscape, to seeing artwork. So for me, wine is to see. And there's an element to this that is so non visual about what Karen just said.

Wine is made in all 50 states, and wine is a very important employer of jobs. It is an important source of taxes, and it is the economic lifeblood of thousands of rural communities. It is, in the end, a form of farming.

And so it's no surprise that congressmen across the United States are very interested in supporting local agriculture, which includes local viticulture.

It's amazing.

So that's incredible.

It's one thing to say wine is impact, and then we can back it up with numbers. Right?

And the thing that I think is so special about wine, when I think about it, is that it impacts positively so many lives, from the people who grow the grapes to the people who harvest the fruit, to the people who make the wine.

We all are benefiting from this industry and all the way to the consumer, to the person who just wants to have a really nice time to take it all in and have a glass of wine and think about, honestly, how many people you're helping by doing that.

What do you want our listeners to do. What are the actions? What are the steps? What are you encouraging them to do?

Not only in October as this annual campaign that's kicking off, but just in.

General, I would say do what you know to be true. What you know to be true is that friendship matters, generosity matters, being together matters.

And doing those things, getting together with people you love and people you will love if you get to know them more, is important. And wine is often the beverage on the table that helps old friendships deepen and new friendships form. And it doesn't have to be an expensive wine.

It doesn't have to be a big party, and it can be someone you know. It can be your spouse or partner. But sharing wine has an unbelievable mystical ability to bring us together, and we all need that.

For me, the point is to use wine to level the playing field between us all and make us see the world for what it is and talk to each other and connect with each other and think about who we are and how we can be good and how we can respect and help each other. Because I'm sorry, wife is way too short to not enjoy a glass of wine with folks who you love. Use wine to bring us together and talk again.

Because the power of what the three of us have done just now in a room together, sharing wine, having deep conversation, is something I don't want to miss out on any other day of my life.

Amen to that.

Thank you for all that you do, the thought and then the initiative to bring it to reality, the partnerships that you've brought in to bring the momentum behind the impact you've made in such a short time.

Thank you.

And Hobie, thank you for all that you do.

Thank you. Nikki, thank you for inviting us on the podcast. It's an absolute pleasure. Just proud to be with you both.

Cheers.

Cheers.

Okay, so now you know what it is, who's behind it, what the goal is. And now you're probably wondering, what do I do? How can I get involved?

Invite people over, gather together, enjoy beautiful food and wine, and then use the hashtag shareandpairsundays.

You can also tag or mention the shareandpair Sundays Instagram account, as well as visiting shareandpairsundays.com for lots of tips and ideas of how you can play along. Just have fun with it.

And I'll put the links in the show notes of this episode for all these things so you can find them quickly and not try to remember them while you're driving, which you probably are. It's very simple.

And my Sangiovese which is a medium bodied fruit forward little bit of spicy red wine will sit in the pocket with so many of those things. Visit Solavate to wines.com to place your order. I can ship to most states in the US and make sure that you use the discount code podlistener.

I'll give you 10% off your order. Go forth Share Pair have fun with it. Tag me. Tag them.

And thank you so much for being not only a listener but for being a supporter of something that is very important but also fun to be a part of. Whatever you do between now and our next time together, I hope that you sip well.