Pour yourself a glass and listen in as Laurie Forster (aka The Wine Coach) and host Nikki Lamberti dive into the demystification (is that a word???) of wine. It's an engaging discussion filled with tips, personal anecdotes, and a shared passion for making wine enjoyment accessible, fun and FUNNY for everyone.

They explore why many people feel intimidated by wine, discussing common misconceptions, including:

• The myths surrounding sulfites in wine
• The relationship between wine color and quality
• Laurie shares her journey from a wine novice to a wine coach, emphasizing that wine should be fun and approachable.
• The conversation also touches on food pairings, encouraging listeners to relax and enjoy their wine without the stress of strict rules.

This week's Sip Spotlight Wines:

Laurie's Viberti Nebbiolo

Nikki's Pride Mountain Vineyards Chardonnay (call for availability)

Guest Links and Resources:

Follow Laurie on Instagram

Find her book "The Sipping Point" on Amazon

Listen to the Sipping Point Podcast

Check out her live events and wine course on the Wine Coach Website.

Other Podcast resources and links:

Find and Listen to "Seeing Flavor" with Doctor Hoby Wedler.

Podcast website: www.sipwithnikki.com: Sign up there to be part of our SIP Community and receive Nikki's free Wine Tips download.

Nikki's 2021 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!

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

If you'd like to Support the Podcast, you can buy Nikki a glass of wine and get a shoutout on a future episode.

Please leave a RATING or a REVIEW (on your podcast listening platform), or thumbs up and subscribe (on YouTube!)

Questions? Comments? nikki@sipwithnikki.com

Please Follow Nikki on INSTAGRAM

But I thought, you know, I don't really want to do standup because I kind of want the wine thing to be part of this too. And comedy clubs don't have the greatest wine selection.

Hey, welcome to this week's Sip with Nikki. I'm Nikki Lamberti here in Sonoma County. I'm so excited to have you here at the time of this recording.

It's not quite sold out and it is a delicious medium bodied, juicy red wine with some spice.

Each bottle is hand numbered and made with love by yours truly and it is fantastic with pizza, pasta, red sauce, especially charcuterie boards and all the things.

Check out the link in the show notes for solavatowines.com and make sure you use the discount code podlistener and I will give you 10% off your order and ship it to your door. I'm so excited about my guest this week, Laurie Forster, AKA the Wine Coach.

She and I met years ago, actually hosted her and her husband on a wine tasting at Pride Mountain Vineyards where I worked as a wine educator and Lori is a wine educator. So how fun is that? You had two wine nerds.

So spending two hours together in a tasting and I knew that we would stay in touch, be friends and hopefully collaborate one day in the future. Lori also has a wine based podcast called the Sipping Point.

She was kind enough to have me as a guest a couple of months ago and now I'm reciprocating because that's how it works in the podcast world. Lori has a book called the Sipping Point and I'll put the link in the show notes to today. She's a certified sommelier as well as WSET certified. And probably the best part of all of it, she is a fellow Jersey.

Girl and she is all about demystifying wine one glass at a time. So in our conversation I asked Lori why do we think that wine needs to be demystified? Why do people need a wine coach in their life?

And why is there space in the world for people like she and I as wine educators to help people make sense of it? There's definitely a need. You'll hear us talk about some common wine myths, including sulfur and sulfites in wine.

What you can tell about a wine from its color. We talk about her appearance on the Dr. Oz show and a very funny spin that she puts on her wine tastings and courses that she offers per huge.

I've said too much. Here we go with the wine coach, Laurie Forster. How long have we been talking about making this happen, Ms. Laurie? Years, if you want to think since we met, but a couple of months, really.

Well, thank you for reciprocating.

I was recently on your wonderful wine podcast, the Sipping Point, and here you are now on Sip with Nikki. And we're just a bunch of sippers, I guess. I don't know.

I love it. And I'm sipping, and if you hear any sounds in the background, that's my husband Michael, making some chicken piccata.

So I love chicken piccata. I've met your other half, Michael, who is a great cook, just like my other half, Michael, who is a great cook. And we have that in common.

I would love to know, did you open the wine that you opened specifically thinking, I'm gonna finish this with chicken piccata? I did. So let's start there. Let's just jump right into our Sip Spotlight. What are you drinking? Sip Spotlight.

I brought the Varberti Nebbiolo from Piedmont, Italy. And this is the 22. I love this because I'm a huge Barolo fan, but, you know, on a normal Thursday night, I'm not breaking out a $50 bottle of Barolo.

So this is about $20, maybe a little over $20.

Oh, not.

You didn't even break that rule. For this special occasion of you and me podcasting, we still have 20.

I know that your listeners want to find those great affordables, so I'm just doing this for the listeners. But, yes, I love Nebbiolo, and I thought this would be great, and it ties with a couple things we're going to talk about.

Okay, well, cheers. Well, because you are on the east coast in Maryland, and I am here in Northern California, we had to split the difference with our time zones.

And so it kind of is actual happy hour for you at 6pm it's barely happy hour for me at 3pm I kind of ended my workday a little early, so. So, because the sun is still out, I'm opening something lovely and white.

Usually, if it's later in the evening, I would tend to go red, but I'm a homer, and I'm gonna open some Pride Mountain Vineyard Chardonnay. And I thought it'd be fun because this is where I met you.

I know that fateful day that we drove that windy road up the mountain to come to Pride Mountain. And you are very gracious, tour guide and wine educator. And here we are this many years later.

But I'm a huge fan of the wine, so I'm glad you brought that to the table. We have a white and a red, so things are perfect.

So, you know, it's funny, in some episodes, I wait and we do the wine later, but I feel like, no, why wait? Cheers, friend. Cheers.

Cheers. I would love for you to share with our listeners a little bit about how you became the wine coach. Why did you think people need coaching?

And how did we get here? So catch us up.

Yeah. Well, gosh. So I just celebrated 20 years since starting the wine coach, which is the name of my business.

I really was not a wine drinker way back when, when I was in the software industry. But I did have to, according to my boss, wine and dine my clients.

So that got me into situations where I felt very intimidated with these amazing wine lists, you know, at the Green Room or Ariol. I mean, nice restaurants, amazing wine lists. I knew nothing because I was a Budweiser drinker at the time. So, yes, malt beverages were my first love.

But, you know, like many in our generation, I didn't grow up drinking wine at the dinner table. My mom would have wine at parties, you know, like jug wine, but I never really knew anything about fine wines.

And so when I got into those situations, I just started seeking out classes, one of which I met my husband, Michael, at a food and wine pairing class. He's a chef and, you know, touring, going to wine country out in California, where you are. When I was in San Francisco for work, I'd jog over there.

And the more I learned about it, the more I fell in love with it. But not the little snobbiness, which, oh, my gosh, it's so much better. Whatever do you mean, snobbiness in the wine world?

Yes. You know, it seems like for me, it's light years better now than it was when I was first starting to learn.

And so it even felt like an insider's club that you could just never get into. And so when I started learning, I started doing tastings for friends.

But I really, along the way just figured out I love the inspiring people to try more wines, to feel more comfortable with it, to make it fun. And I know you and I bond on that whole thing. I wrote a book called the Sipping Point and I do a lot of live events. That's my absolute passion.

But I love doing podcasts and videos like this as well. But wine should be fun.

It should be fun. Which actually leads to my next question.

When I first met you and then learned a little bit more about you and what you were doing, something that was so interesting to me was your comedic spin on some of your teachings. And I have a background in improv and I've recently dusted that off and been back in some improvisational theater classes again just cause I love it.

So tell me about that and that whole comedy overlay onto your wine teaching.

Yeah, I mean, and make it funny. Yeah. Oh, thank you. I'm trying. Well, you know, I grew up in New Jersey and everybody makes fun of me. Hey, that's funny.

We gotta have a quick comeback, you know what I mean? Two Jersey girls. Here we are on the podcast.

Always had that going, right? You just have to or you're not gonna make it. But I always had this idea of doing standup.

I've always been like enamored with SNL and all of that, but me too. It's a very scary thing. So for years and years I thought about it. Never even did anything with it when I lived in New York City.

But eventually we were here and I decided to take a stand up comedy class at the DC Improv. And you're taught that your best comedy is about your life.

So my jokes were about being married to a chef, being in the wine business, what my daughter's teachers think I do for a living, and, you know, all kinds of craziness. And then I did the graduation, which is, you know, a standup set of five minute. It's frightening. It was like an out of body experience.

You just don't even almost know what's going on because it's so overwhelming the first time you do it. But I definitely enjoy. But I thought, you know, I don't really want to do stand up because I kind of want the wine thing to be part of this too.

And comedy clubs don't have the greatest wine selection, but you do have a two drink minimum. Definitely a more malt beverage option.

So I Worked with another comedian to put together a one woman show. I'd call it a comedic wine tasting. And there's some standup, there's a placemat with wine glasses.

So there's wine tasting instruction in a really fun, cheeky way. There's games, we sing a song together. It's just really fun. But people do walk away with knowledge about wine that they wouldn't have.

But what's really great is you've probably seen it in the tasting room or other tastings. There are the people that really wanna know a lot, but then there's the people that get drug along with them that just wanna have a good time.

So there's really something for everybody. I call it something to whine about and I love doing it. And it really allowed me to sort of get that comedy thing in. It's really fun.

I would love to participate. Partner, we gotta figure this out. Next time I'm back home in Jersey visiting family or next time you're out here.

I know we've talked about this before, but this would be so fun for us to do this together because I think we're very much on the same page with like, it's not too deep, like, keep it light, have fun, right? And it's. And it's entertainment. It's edutainment is what I call absolutely. When we're teaching and having fun at.

The same time, that's my focus. So, you know, I do that probably several times a year, mostly at wineries or different venues.

And I do other things, corporate tastings, wine dinners, things like that. But that's really, to me, fun and light. And my jokes are just really authentic, like craziness of my life kind of thing.

I love it. I love that we have so much in common. Your sort of tagline of the wine coach and the sipping point is demystifying wine one glass at a time.

And I love that. My question is, why do you think there is such mystery?

Why do you think people like you and I actually have a place in this world as wine educators trying to peel away the mystery, the pretension, the overwhelm. Why does it need to be demystified?

I always go back to that feeling of how I felt when I was first starting to learn. Because I feel like many people, you know, at various ages get to that point where they love drinking wine, but now they want to learn about it.

Not everybody gets there, but the people that do are the people that are probably attracted to what we do. And I feel like in the wine business is There's a secret language that we're all speaking that's not normal for everyday people.

You know, we talk about the wine's legs and the aromas and all these fancy smells that people probably, you know, have never smelled. Lychee. This wine has a long finish with silky tannin and notes of cassis.

Yeah, I know. So really, that's what I mean by making it more approachable, making it more fun.

You know, all this make it simple, down to earth is just kind of taking away the value of wine, which I totally disagree with. It's like the wine people were all talking to each other, and then the consumers are sitting there like, huh, What? What are they talking about?

And people don't do that in beer. People don't do that with cheese tastings. You know, we want to sell the story of the wine, which I know you're so great at.

We want to sell the feeling you're going to have. You know, Nebbiolo, which is the wine I brought to the table. It's the grape of Barolo. The Barolo was my first. Aha.

Wine that I was like, wow, this is so unique for a red wine that you know that you have roses that you're smelling, but also tar. You have earthiness and fruit.

And that's my favorite tagline for the wines of Piedmont. And the Nebbiolo grape is tar and roses. And the first time that was explained to me, I was like, huh?

And then I stuck my nose in the glass and tasted it. I'm like, that is such a great way to think about it.

I know.

So the more we can do to make people comfortable with wine, to understand why you're making an investment in $30 for a bottle of wine versus having, you know, a six pack for $15 or whatever it is.

Let's face it, we have a challenge right now in the wine industry in selling wine, because there's a lot more wine than people are drinking right now. And we have to kind of figure out how to make wine. The cool kid again, fun.

He's always been a cool kid in my book. But yes, I agree with you. That's not always the case for people. Right.

And the market is crowded, and I don't just mean the amount of wines that people have to choose from. But then beers and cocktails and whiskey and bourbon and self service and canned cocktails and all these things. It's crowded, right?

So we gotta raise our hands and be like, hey, look at this magic that you are missing. And I think that's what you and I love to do, right? Yes. What things specifically? If you could pick maybe just two or three, do you think that wine drinkers are the most confused about?

I think pairings is one. You know, I think we need people to, like, chill out about the pairings. I think chill the f out on the pairings.

With pairings, certainly there are affinities for different foods and wines together. And you don't want to clobber a fish with a huge cab, and you don't want to have a really delicate pinot grigio with a sticky steak necessarily.

But you know what? There aren't a lot of pairings that are going to totally blow up your dinner. So just, you know, we. We do need to stop stressing.

And I always tell people, I thought it was a memorization thing in the beginning, right? I'm going to memorize this chart. And chicken goes with this and steak goes with that, and, you know, all these different things.

But to memorize every different sauce that goes on, every different protein and this and that, just to really understand the elements of what's in your food, you know. So the chicken piccata that Michael's making, right, you have your capers, so you have really saltiness in there, right? Is that some butter? Is that some butter?

Is that some butter? So you got this medium weight dish, but you have some saltiness.

So you need a wine medium weight that has some good acidity, and the nebbiolo delivers on that with not overwhelming tannins. We don't need that for this dish. So. And I think also how to ask for what they want, and that's.

That's kind of a deep thing because I spend a lot of time about teaching people how to taste, whether it's in the comedy show or other tastings and how to ask for what they want in a simple way that it would be nice if they could just say, give me a wine that makes me confident. Well, okay. But you want to tell them, hey, I like crisp white or I don't. I like buttery big chardonnays. Just something to give them to go on. A little bit of vocabulary helps. Yep. Yeah, the vocabulary.

So you think it's pairings. You think it's Just knowing how to ask for what you want.

Maybe one other thing that you think that wine drinkers are most confused with or any myths that people might subscribe to and be unaware that they are truly just myths and not truths.

Yeah, one of them, and I hear this one over and over in tastings. People believe. Cause they go to Europe on vacation and they drink all kinds of wine while they're in Italy or France or Portugal or wherever.

Fabulous place. And they're told that the European wines don't have sulfites. And that's why they don't feel hungover the next day. They don't have headaches.

But then when they come home. The wines that we have here and make here in the US Are huge offenders in this regard. I hear it all the time too.

Yeah. Okay. So I don't know how this started. All wines have sulfites. It's part of the fermentation process, as you know.

But some sulfite is also used to preserve the wine. It's a natural compound. Hopefully people use it judiciously.

I bottle my Solevato wines at 30 parts per million of sulfur, just to protect the wine, especially for cellaring and aging. 30 parts per million is less concentration of sulfur than most fruit has in the produce section. Especially dried fruit.

Yes. Dried apricots, like, huge. So the thing is, when you're in Europe, I find there's always water on the table.

You drink a lot more water than you do here. We just. I don't know what it is. I don't drink as much water at home as I do when I'm over there and out to dinners.

And they're always offering you water. So I think that's part of it. You know, you're on vacation, you're sleeping in, you know, all of those kinds of things.

So that is one I hear over and over. And I just like, ah, it's not true.

It's not true. They are used just as much in European wines as they are in California wines.

Do you know what I think when people say, oh, I don't get headaches when I drink wines in Italy, but I do get them here. Usually the culprit of the headache is the alcohol. Right.

So generally speaking, especially in red wines, California red wines have a higher alcohol by volume than most. I'll say Italian for this example. Now, we're not talking about a huge difference.

We might be talking about the difference of 13.5 versus 14.5, but over three glasses, and that 1% alcohol by volume is significant.

So I believe what most people, if they're experiencing any type of headachy thing, typically is from alcohol dehydration, slow slash, not drinking enough water.

Yes. And typically people that have a sulfite allergy or a sulfite sensitivity, it's redness, it's hives, it's even asthma if it's in an extreme case.

And headache is not the thing. So there's a lot of factors. But all wines have sulfites, people. And the US Is not the only one using sulfites to preserve the wine.

So that's a myth we need to just nix right now.

Yeah. Sulfur is an antioxidant. Right.

It prevents against the oxidation reaction, the same oxidation reaction that turns your apple slice brown when it's sitting on the counter. I always tell people there is a fine line between wine and vinegar, and the bridge between those two things is oxygen.

That's how you make red wine vinegar is you have a barrel of red wine and you let it sit half full forever and ever and ever. And that oxidation, acetic acid. Right. All of that is how you make vinegar.

So to protect wine and keep it fresh, protected not only against oxygen, but microbial things that love to live in barrels and wineries and take over wines. Sulfur dioxide specifically, which is what we typically use to protect wines that are aging in the barrel, is antimicrobial.

So it's a natural compound on the periodic table. It is an antioxidant, it is antimicrobial, and I am with you believe that that is not the cause of headaches for 99% of the population.

There are other factors in wine that can cause that. Histamine is another one too. Wines have histamines in them.

So sometimes if you find you're getting like, sneezy, you know, itchy, hay fever type reactions, some wines have more than others, and that's just naturally in the wine as well. So. Yeah. So many myths.

Yeah.

I often said if it feels like an allergy headache the next day, especially with reds, because they are higher in histamines, it could be from histamines. Right. So there's a lot of factors. I mean, the one factor in all of this we talked about is more water. Yes. So drink more water. People just. It just kind of is the solve for everything, right? It is. It is.

You want to lose weight, drink more water. You don't want to get a headache. Drink more water. You want to be in a better mood, drink more water.

I mean, it's like the theme and that you think About.

And I feel like you and I.

Not only growing up in New Jersey, but I think we're definitely the same generation. We never had a water bott. Did you bring a water bottle to school? No, we took a slurp from the. Fountain, you know, in between gym and English and like, or that water.

We were all tired out back. If you were at home, I mean, that's the way it was. We didn't have the Stanleys and all these fancy water bottles that people walk around with.

But, you know, hey, it's good. It's good to have more water.

It's good. One of my favorite comedians, Sebastian Maniscalco, love him all his Netflix specials. Seen him live. And he has young kids right now.

And he always talks about, like, getting them ready. Where's the water bottle? Where's the water bottle? He's like, this is the most hydrated generation so true ever.

It is like, yeah, we didn't do.

That before we move on. Do you want to do any other wine myths? Do you want to talk about wine color or anything else?

The reason why I brought the Nebbiolo to the table, other than I love it and I'm gonna love it with that chicken piccata. Is that one of the things that's quite misleading about Nebbiolo? And I don't know that on this lighting you see it, but it's pretty light in color.

You can see through it. Like you could see through a Pinot Noir, if you will.

And that's something you probably do too, that, you know, when we talk tasting and you're trying to decide is it like a pale, a medium or opaque wine or whatever is. Can I see my fingers through the wine? And I can in this case. So Nebbiolo is. So must not be good quality, right?

Must be crappy wine, right? Yeah. People think the more inky, the deep, it's going to be a higher quality and it's going to make it a bigger wine.

Well, Nebbiolo, this is an extremely high quality wine. And it's extremely bold red grape because it has a really good amount of tannins. You know, Barolos are made more tannic than, say, my Nebbiolo.

Cause this is for everyday drinking. But this is not a wimpy wine just because it's light in color.

And the other myth is that with big commercial wineries, some of them are using grape juice additives. Mega purple. It's a contrast to make the wines darker in color because it's just like sort of adding to this whole myth that, ooh, it's dark in color.

It must. Yeah. I don't get it.

Oh, yeah, that's a good one. It's so true. Right? The color in the wine.

Assuming the wine is made with minimal intervention, like what I make and what I drink and none of the concentrate added stuff that's out there, but assuming just all things natural, especially when we're talking about red wine. All of the color that makes red wine red comes from the anthocyanins, which are the color compounds in the skin. Right.

And just based on the genetics of the grape, some grapes, like Pinot Noir, have different or less, and some, like Cabernet Sauvignon, have more. And that's also tied to the size of the grape. Smaller grape, more skin, more color. Bigger grape, Pinot Noir, less skin, less color. Right.

So, yeah, it definitely is a perception thing.

But it's funny because I know that I do that, like, even when I'm pouring a wine or in a tasting, especially if, like, a petite Syrah is hitting my glass, I'll be like, ooh, look at that color. Like, I have to comment about it. It's gorgeous.

It is gorgeous. And maybe I'm just admiring and appreciating it. I know better than to correlate that to quality of the wine. Right.

But I do admire it, and I'm just always like, look at the color of that wine. I mean, it's just part of the enjoyment. Right?

There is an article I read about a study.

What they did was they had people taste a white wine, and then they made all their observations about the wine, and then they added food coloring to that same wine and served it to the people as a red wine. And people made their observations about the red wine. It wasn't really red. And there's something called unconscious synthesis.

It's part of how we process things in our brain.

And basically, when you see that the wine is white or rose or red, you're already making up assumptions and descriptions and all of these things before you even get it under your nose. I went, Kendall Jackson, tasting room, that's in Healdsburg.

And they do a little thing where they serve you a wine in a black glass, opaque black, and you're supposed to guess, what if it's a white or a red? And I believe I had a really big Chardonnay. And they say often people will mistake that for a red.

Yeah. Some of my previous episodes with my good friend Dr. Hobie Wedler. Hobie was born blind, and he works in the wine industry with a PhD in chemistry.

Going to wineries and teaching people and teaching staff sensory and how to evaluate the wines without sight. So we get blindfolded, which is essentially the same thing as having a, you know, a black opaque glass.

And when you hear Hobie, go back to the episode in my first season called seeing flavor with Dr. Hobie Wedler.

And when you hear him talk about, without that bias of sight and color, how he perceives wine and smells wine and tastes wine, it's really fascinating. It is definitely a bias that we have when we have that to evaluate wine. So, yeah, definitely another myth.

He and his partner Justin are good friends and they live locally here. They were just over for dinner a couple weeks ago and we recorded a whole episode tasting non alcoholic and de alcoholized wines. Nice.

Sort of in the spirit of damp January, because we don't do dry January around here. And it was really fascinating for all of us.

But again, especially to hear his perception of these wines, especially because his sense of smell and taste are so off the charts. Off the charts. Shout out to Hobie. I would love to know about. You've done a lot of TV appearances like Dr.

Oz and some morning talk shows, and so maybe a fun story from. Or just an experience that you had doing this kind of stuff on television.

Yeah, the Dr. Ozone was, I mean, of course, thrilling because it was a national, but it was a national TV show.

So I, I've done regional or I want to say local, like Baltimore area, or if I was traveling, you know, I'd maybe be on a morning show in Chicago or something like that. But that was the first time, you know, to show that was nationally syndicated, I guess, if you will.

And I almost deleted the email when I saw the email because you know how you, you used to get all those spam emails like Dr. Oz says, take this for weight loss or whatever.

I thought it was one of those emails and I almost just deleted it out of like, you know, you're going through all your spam and you're just like, delete, delete, delete. But for some reason I quick looked in there and they had actually seen, if you remember the show Scandal.

I used to do sort of a weekly segment on a pairing, you know, the Olivia Pope pairing of the week. Because that show was so loved.

Scandal loved it. And I loved how she laughed herself. Yes, those, I call them the Olivia Pope. Big, tall, sexy stems.

And she would often have popcorn and wine at the end of one of her long days, which is one of My favorite pairings. Right?

Yeah. And so they had seen that, and that's how we connected. So that was kind of interesting to see that.

Oh, like, people do actually find this stuff on YouTube. And so our first show, which ties in so well with what we're talking about today, was all about headaches or different ailments in wine.

But they had three guests that had different issues with wine and wanted advice on what they should drink. One was said segment strictly about sulfites and where we go through the fact that apricots have more sulfites than, you know, a glass of wine.

And what they had did is they sent a bunch of wines to a lab and they tested the sulfite levels in the wines, and that was very interesting. Some of the wines that were purporting to be organic were kind of off the charts with some of the sulfites. So it was a little controversial.

And then we did another one about finding lower calorie wines, which basically, I explained, means the lower. The alcohol, the lower alcohol. Because that's where the calories are coming from if the wine is dry and the sugar's gone. Yeah.

And I do think that's a myth. You know, there's some wines out there that saying, like, they're sugar free, but, you know, that's not a myth. That's called creative marketing. Exactly. This has basically no sugar to it. Yeah.

My prime Chardonnay is no sugar, but this is a dry wine. All the sugar became alcohol. There's probably less than 0.1 grams per liter of sugar in here to make it a dry wine.

And yet nowhere on the label does it say low sugar.

I know, and I almost. And I know the wineries will probably hate me for saying this, but when you de alcoholize wine, then you can list all this stuff on your labels.

The ingredients, the calories, all these different things. But the minute it becomes real wine, now we don't get any information on the label. That's right.

So I really wish we got more information, because I think it would be nice for people to know that this does have added color or this does have powdered tannins, or, you know, these are things that a lot of bulk commercial wineries may do. I'm not saying they all do, but some of them do.

And I, as a consumer, would want to know, you know, you and I probably know when we go into a grocery store, okay, it's called this brand, but I know it's really coming from this company or vice versa. But the everyday consumer that's not obvious to them any of this.

So I think the more information we can give, I'd love to see that somehow be more accessible for consumers.

It's so interesting that you say that, because when we tasted those eight de alcoholized wines a couple weeks ago with Hobie, the one thing I noticed was every single one of them had a nutritional label on it, which wine is not required to have because it's just in a different product category. These wines that are made to be wine and then the alcohol is literally removed.

What I did notice, because they all did have those nutritional labels, is that the sugar in those products, some of them were as high as 12 and 15 grams per liter of sugar, because when they take the alcohol away, and I won't get in the weeds with this, go back and listen to two weeks ago's episode people, but they usually add back in some juice or some concentrate just for flavor and aromatics and things like that. So there was a lot of sweetness in those products, but it was on the label because they weren't considered wine anymore.

So I could go on and on with you about all these topics. What have we not covered?

Well, you didn't tell us about your Chardonnay. I mean, we knew it was from Pride, but tell me a little bit more about the Chardonnay, because that's our second wine we brought to the table.

Yeah. So we'll do my Sip Spotlight, Sip Spotlight, which is Pride Mountain Vineyards Sonoma Coast Chardonnay.

So for those of you who have not listened before, I have worked as a wine educator at Pride Mountain Mountain Vineyards for This will be 13 years this year. And this property is located on the top of a mountain. It's just about 2,000ft up. And these Chardonnay grapes are grown on the property.

And what's unique about the location, it's above the fog. So most mornings, Napa Valley and the Sonoma side where I live are really under fog and that marine layer till they burn off.

Whereas these vineyards on the mountaintop are usually above the fog and full blue sky and sunshine, you know, the minute the sun comes up. So it's a very unique situation up there, a very unique growing condition.

What I love about this Chardonnay is that it has, what we say, a kiss of oak. And it has a kiss of butter. Right. And, God, we could do a whole episode about the myths of Chardonnay. And oaky. And buttery. And this is not an oak bomb.

This is not an oak bomb. When I smell it, I don't Smell wood. Hehe. I smell. I smell fruit. I smell citrus. Like. Like it's.

Lemon zest is the first thing I always smell in this wine. I love it.

And it's not buttery because it hasn't fully gone through that secondary fermentation, which is what causes butteriness in especially wines like Chardonnay, that malolactic fermentation. This wine started that process, but then it was stopped.

So there's a little bit of richness and roundness when it first hits your mouth, and then that acidity comes in it. It still has that brightness, that freshness on the palette.

And the winery puts on an amazing staff Christmas party every year with multiple courses paired with all different Pride wines and library wines. And, you know, we had just started dating, so this was all very new to him. And this party was amazing.

There was, like, the photo booth where you do the costumes and the food and all the courses, and quite a party. And the next day, I said to Michael, so, like, what did you think?

Like, what is your impression of Pride and the people I work with and what'd you think of that party? He's like, I don't want to say. I said, what do you mean you don't want to say? Like, how was it? What was your favorite part of the party?

And he goes, chardonnay. And I was like, why are you saying it like that? Because he was that dude up until that point that was like, I don't know, drink Chardonnay.

And yet the moment he had the butternut squash soup that it was paired with, with the drizzle of creme fraiche and olive oil on the top and this Vintner select Chardonnay. And he had that, like, ratatouille moment that we're always chasing with the fireworks in your brain.

And it made such an impression on him, he didn't even know how to handle it because he was so enamored with the Chardonnay.

Aw. I just can't wait to get out there and see you again.

And one of the unique things I remember about Pride, other than the amazing wines and the tour, is that it literally sits on the line between Napa and Sonoma. I remember you telling us that. And when you move it from one side of the winery to the other, it has a lot of ramifications.

So I Found that quite fascinating, too.

Yeah, it's very unique about the property.

And so this Chardonnay, the spots on the property where this grows, they happen to be on the Sonoma side, which is why the label says Sonoma for this particular Pride wine. But it depends on the wine because some of the grapes are grown on both sides. So now I'm the opposite of you.

You knew what was for dinner and then you picked the wine to go with it. Because it's earlier in the day here. I don't know what's on the menu yet for dinner, but now I've picked the wine and we're gonna pair the dinner.

We're gonna make the dinner go with the wine. Wine first pairing.

I love it. I love it. Thank you for having me.

If folks wanna check out the Sipping Point podcast, it's out there, Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast and love to connect. If there's wine industry people and you want to come on the show, I'd love to hear from you. Just email me@lorinecoach.com.

Well, I'm definitely going to put the links to all your goodness in the show notes. So your podcast, your book, your tastings that you do, your website. I love following you on Instagram and Facebook, all of your content.

So thank you for paving the way and doing what you do. And together, we're gonna demystify. Not Remystify, Demystify. We'll make it fun. We're gonna make it more fun. Cheers and appreciate you. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

I'll be there for chicken piccata in eight hours. Getting on a plane now. Come on over. Now.

You want chicken piccata and nebbiolo, don't you? You and me both. I had so much fun with Lori.

I'm gonna put the link in the show notes for both the Nebbiolo that she was sipping, as well as the Pride Mountain Vineyards Vintner Select Chardonnay that I was sipping, as well as her book, her podcast, her website, her course. It's all in the show notes.

I encourage you to follow her on Instagram because just like me, she's passionate about helping you find more joy in food and wine and sharing all the tips along the way. I want to thank Lori for her time. She is super busy and this was really a special, special treat.

I look forward to you joining me again next week for another episode of Sip with Nikki. But until then, Sip.

Well, it. But.