For our 50th Episode, I knew I wanted so do something extra special. So Michael and I flew to Orlando, visited Walt Disney World and got to spend time with George Miliotes of Wine Bar George. George has been on my "list" as a dream guest since starting this podcast, and with a little faith+ trust + pixie dust, dreams can come true!

In his Library room on the second floor of Wine Bar George, we got in to:

• How and Why he become one of 281 Master Sommeliers in the world
• What a train-wreck a holiday table can be and what wine pairs with it
• Why he proudly offers coveted wines $150 an ounce and why they cost what they do
• A delicious (and steal) Sip Spotlight Wine
• His feelings on the controversial wine word, YUMMY
• How Merlot is not a "lesser" grape
• What he drinks when he just needs a hug
• And so much more....

Links and Resources:

Visit George's website to sign up for your 90 Minute Tasting event!

Follow Wine Bar George on Instagram

Visit the Miliote's family's favorite spot Enzo’s Longwood.   

Get our Sip Spotlight Wine that we taste together: Chanrion Cote De Bruilly

Get the famous Pride Mountain Vineyards Merlot here.

Did you know I make my own wine here in Sonoma County? My 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 me 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? Guest requests? nikki@sipwithnikki.com

What is the Spider Man?

With great power comes great responsibility.

Alright, I'm going to make a play on that.

Not exactly.

I'm not saying I'm Peter Parker,

but.

You're my Peter Parker.

I have.

I have.

My wife and I have this restaurant that's at Disney Springs.

A lot of people come into the Springs.

So there is an obligation, a responsibility to do something that is not just the normal place.

And I hope that we do something here that is not just what everybody would expect out of a solid wine bar.

There is the responsibility to do something cooler and better.

There's nothing normal about what you're doing here in a wonderful way.

Well, hello, it's Nikki Lamberti here coming to you from Sonoma County, California.

And thank you for joining us for our 50th podcast episode.

I cannot believe it.

With weekly episodes, that means we're almost at our one year anniversary.

And I just want to say thank you so much if you're a first time listener, excited to have you here.

And if you have been listening all along the way, I see you and I am so grateful for your listenership and your support.

Now, I knew I wanted to do something special for our 50th episode, and the stars just aligned with the timing.

And Michael and I had a trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando, where I used to work.

And While we were there, we were lucky enough to sit down with George Meliotis at Wine Bar George at the Disney Springs.

Now, for those of you who are Disneyphiles, whether you are fellow cast members and employees like me or just enthusiasts, you probably know that name and hopefully you have visited Wine Bar George at the Disney Springs.

It is a fantastic location with over 200 wines.

That you can try literally by the ounce, by the glass or by the bottle.

And George recently won the best short wine list in the world by the world of fine wine.

And we get to talk all about that.

Last year, when I was flying home from a Walt Disney world trip in the Orlando airport, I was leaving out of the new sea terminal and I was surprised and delighted to see that wine bar.

George actually has a location.

In the airport and he's got over 70 wines by the ounce by the glass and by the bottle and beautiful food So I sat and had a charcuterie board some gorgeous wine while I waited for my flight to depart So if you're passing through terminal C, you can check that out as well He started his

journey with Disney food and beverage and was part of the opening team of what is still one of my favorite restaurants on Disney property, the California Grill up at the top of the Contemporary Resort where you can see the magic kingdom of fireworks with a glass of champagne in your hand.

One of my favorite things to do when I visit.

And then he spent some time with Darden restaurants and during that time George was one of the founders of Seasons 52 restaurant.

Another favorite in the area.

During that time, he achieved what only 280 other people on the planet have done.

He is a master sommelier, and we talk all about what that process was like and what inspired him to go for that.

We talk about his thoughts on Thanksgiving and other holiday meals being train wrecks and what type of wine can belong on that type of table.

And he was kind enough to open and share a beautiful bottle with Michael and I in our Sip Spotlight this week.

Hint, it is a French wine.

I get his take on a Controversial word in the wine world.

And then we took some of your listener questions that you submitted and just had a phenomenal conversation.

We've got so much to get to.

I cannot wait.

Here we go with master sommelier, George Miliotis of Wine Bar George.

First and foremost, as a wine nerd, as a longtime Disney cast member, and as a foodie.

My head is exploding a little sitting here with you because I feel like I'm in the presence of food and wine royalty

Having

Michael she's definitely

talked a lot about you.

She's been nervous about this day No, you

know that she's like really no need to be nervous.

I'm excited.

I'm excited.

This is amazing.

So thanks for having us So, as we were chatting, you started to tell me about you and your wife and getting all of this started.

So, I feel like that's a great place for us to jump in.

How did we get here?

It is an interesting story.

When I was working at Darden, helping run Seasons 52 in the Capitol Grill and Eddie V's and their whole beverage program, that's 120 restaurants and lots to do and flying around in airplanes.

It's horrible.

They were great things.

They're not so great things.

And so part of the window into here and why we love here and doing what we do, when Disney offered, hey, do you want to build your own restaurant here and run it?

My wife and I had this thought that there'd be local business, because I was born and raised here, she was born and raised here.

So we'd have local business, and we'd have tourist business.

And they'd be two kind of separate buckets of business.

So when you think about tourist business, A lot of times the thought is, all right, they're here once, and then they'd go.

But the heart of what we do, just like when you asked about our function that I do here, the heart of that function is repeat tourist business.

And so there is a subset of Disney.

people who they come once a year, twice a year, three times a year, depending upon their financial wherewithal.

And those are the guests that to us come back and they love the fact that we do the six wines through whites, three reds, but they're never the same six.

I always move them around.

And so if they want to play the game, They can play the game every week.

They can play it every other week.

They can play it when they're in town.

So we get locals who come out all the time, people who've been to like 20 of them.

And then we get the people who, hey, I'm down here for three months and they'll come to one each month or two each month while they're down here for the winter.

You have a special snowbird event

for

those

people.

They all, they're ready to come.

Nothing makes me more happy than when, whether it's the middle of summer or the snowbird thing, when a guest comes and tells me, yeah, we checked in, we put our bags in the room and we came right over here and I'm like, good, there's somebody who's got their priorities right.

That,

you just described me, right?

Okay.

So I lived here for 15 years working for the company, but when I moved to Napa and Sonoma in 2012, study wine and make wine and work at pride and all that stuff.

I'm back here once or twice a year.

We're always here.

So technically I'm a tourist.

Now I'm a specific tourist, but I cannot wait to come back here every time of year.

And so you are the lifeblood of what we do seriously.

And there's every single day they come in and they're like, we've been waiting to come eat at your place because it's, we always have it for the last meal.

We always have it for the first meal, whatever it may be.

To me.

Yeah,

it is a fun thing

that tells you're doing something right?

Yes.

Oh my god

And

these events are these three and threes.

It's like an hour Hour and a

half.

Usually we go a little bit over time.

Like today we went from noon until about two.

Has it changed as far as your demographic?

Like young people doing in your twenties, thirties, forties?

I get it.

Every single part of the demographic which is really cool.

And we even have one family from Tampa who, it's two kids over 21 and the parents and they come over.

It's a genuine tasting.

Absolutely.

Love.

It's As cool and as gratifying as it gets because they're like they want their kids and like I think about my kids because I have two who are old enough to drink and one just not quite there.

Yeah, but we love going out and doing things as a family when we can get everybody together.

The two that are older are off in other places working.

But there's great joy in a family event.

And that's part of the allure of the event.

Part of it is learning about wine and having a little bit of fun.

But the other part of it is There's so little for adults to do that's fun and entertaining and maybe educational that for an hour and a half you can set aside everything else in your life and in your world.

Put the phone away.

Correct.

Make some eye contact.

And drink

some beautiful wines and taste them.

And I tell them they drink wine.

Pickler, Gruner, Veltliner, then we did Trimbach, Gewurz.

We did Dumas Chardonnay, which was delicious.

Yes, as do I.

We did Chanrion, Cote du Bruit, Ramirez de Piscina, Grand Reserve at 16 from Rioja.

And then finished with Andrew Will Cabernet.

And as I told them before, like, you can tell anybody who knows something about wine, any of the six wines you're tasting today, and they're going to back me up.

That's quite a lineup.

It's all right that you got to drink those wines.

And they

journeyed across multiple countries.

Yes, and multiple

styles.

One lady asked, what's the difference taste and aromalize between American and French oak?

And I'm like,

I

said, wine number five.

Has American oak and wine number six has French oak.

We're going to do this ourselves so that you can discern.

Now I'll coach and help make sure we stay within the boundaries of the field.

So, you know, I can just say that you think the French oak smells like bubblegum, but.

We are gonna see the difference and you can discern the difference yourself.

Everyone

can, almost everyone can when they have them side by side.

It's like a light bulb.

Yes, and it was

because and like the Ramirez de Piscina, it's got this kind of toasted coconutty soy sauce thing going on that is all about American oak and people are like, wow, it does smell like toasted coconut.

Yes, it does.

How fun.

Yeah, it was a good time.

I am going to put the link in the show notes for this episode to encourage our listeners when they are here at Walt Disney World to not only come at least for a visit, but if their schedule allows to do an event with you and it overlaps, I'm actually going to encourage them to do that.

Here's my question.

We know about Darden for many years, but prior to that, California Grill.

Correct.

We're going to talk a little bit about wine, but first let's talk about wine.

You're a part of part of the opening team.

One of my still to this day, most favorite restaurants still rock solid

restaurant.

We went up

and had drinks the other day.

It's just it's nostalgic, but it's fantastic.

The wine list.

But prior to that, you said Orlando native.

How do you get into one?

How does young George decide up?

This is the path.

My father lost his job in 1971.

He was working for S.

T.

P.

down in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and.

Didn't have a job or had a very high powered job.

My mom had this idea that it'd be cool to open up a humble gourmet food shop up here that she'd seen one in a mall down in South Florida when moved back up here to Orlando.

And my dad opened it up, but my sister, my brother, and I would all go in on weekends and help out at the restaurant.

And so I got this early schooling in, in gourmet food, but in wine also, because the back of the restaurant and gourmet food shop had a wall of wine, because it was Germanic in origin.

There was one third of the thing was taken up by German wine, German wine labels, while when you first look at them are not that intuitive as to what they are.

But yeah.

But when you learn, particularly if it's the first label you learn about.

It seems all very Germanic and by the book and you got all the keys to unlock what is going on in the wine.

And so that was the first wine I learned about.

And my dad would make me face the bottles and clean the bottles and make sure they had a price, a price sticker on them.

And that was my first job.

But it's funny while I learned when I was, you know, 12, 13 years old, how to read a German wine label.

By the time I was at the advanced level of Master Somme, and people were desperately trying to unlock what went on in a German wine label, I was like, why are you worried about a German wine label?

They're the easiest.

I've done this since I was 10.

Correct.

And I know it's, and I would never have said anything like that, but the thought was like, My dad didn't know I was going to want to become a master sommelier, but he certainly did teach me everything I needed to know about a German wine label that today I can still take and ride on

that even though German wine law has changed and morphed a little bit, all the basics are there and even One of the other thirds of the wine selection was, um, American wine, and 1974 was this monumental vintage in Napa.

And so we were selling, like, Sterling Vineyards Reserve 74, which I wish I still had a little, because I'm sure it is a delicious wine.

74s.

74s are spectacularly good.

Because

it's close to my birth year.

Yeah.

It's

like, oh my.

Yeah.

They're fabulous wines.

Yeah.

It's fantastic.

Fantastic.

Fantastic.

At that time, Suha Newton and her husband Peter owned Sterling, and Suha would tell the story that Mr.

Mondavi would come by once a week or once every two weeks and ask them how they were doing and say, maybe you want to do this, maybe you want to do that.

And you think about the atmosphere, uh, there's a lot of business.

And this is pre

Judgment of Paris, pre 76, pre Napa Broom on the map.

Correct.

Mondavi's there and a handful of others.

Yeah, so hot.

It's

like the beginning of Vegas, right?

Like the Brad Pack.

Like all the farmers talking about it before it became this

thing.

Yeah.

And so, like, people don't understand that Robert Mondavi and Andrei Tilochev, they went around the valley and helped everybody.

I'm sure they have their own personalities and their people.

They liked helping.

Maybe others didn't like helping so much.

I don't know.

But I do know that I heard that from the horse's mouth and that we wouldn't have known what we were doing or we wouldn't have done it as well without their assistance.

That's so interesting.

I'm so glad that you brought that up because people ask me about that.

As someone who lives and works in the wine country and works at a winery and started my own wine label, people always ask about the competition and are you allowed to tell me other places I should go visit?

We talk all the time about, even now today, almost 50 years later, it's so collaborative, it's so supportive.

For the most part, there's always a couple of wrenches in there, but for the most part, everyone is just helping everyone, sharing ideas, swapping ideas, sharing grapes because you lost your grapes in a fire and I was on the other side of the road and I didn't.

It's amazing.

I've sold Philip Tony's wines for a long time, and we were up there two years ago and we were talking with Mr.

Tony's daughter, who makes the wine now, and she was talking about during the fires, they had pretty much resigned themselves to the fact that they weren't

going to have a house or a vineyard, and then out of nowhere, the Kendall Jackson, the Jackson family, people who are not brave right up the road show up, today.

With their own personal fire department and save the day

and it just

that was the right thing to do in that situationapers

and that situation your neighbors

and you're like, yeah, there's competition in the business But there's also this beauty in Napa Valley as a group That we're going to do things right, take care of everyone.

And so it really is a cool, it's a cool place.

It

is.

And it's really how Michael and I were able to get our brand off the ground with our first vintage in 19.

It would not have worked if people were not so open to helping the people that still have day jobs, a nurse and a wine educator and part time still Disney, right?

We just, we ask and we ask and we use our resources and everyone has been so helpful to help the new little guy get started.

And it's been really pretty cool and endearing.

And we were so grateful.

Absolutely.

So grateful.

Okay.

So you mentioned master some.

So it's funny because when I do the research, I've read how many different numbers there's 279 in the world, 273 in the world.

No, of course, it depends on

281 to

81.

So I can say this definitively right

this moment.

Now,

George says he is one of 281 people in the world on this planet to achieve a master sommelier status.

Yes,

that is true.

What made you decide to go for that and to go all the way?

When I started on my journey, there are I think around 150.

And I was running California Grill, the quartermaster, so many days came by, we did an introductory exam.

It was a really cool experience for me.

Did you ace that exam?

I did alright.

Just based on your business knowledge.

I did well enough that they said, hey, you should think about this.

Yeah,

yeah,

yeah.

And.

So that started the journey, but the journey was still a 10 year journey from when I took the intro to exam to when I passed.

And even with my good base, you have life and you have job changes and you have kids and you have other things, but you got to be obsessed to pass it and obsessed in a good way, because it is.

And still to this day, while there are more support structures around, it's still self directed.

And from when you make wine, at some point there's all the help, but at another point, you got to do the work.

Yeah.

And if you don't want to do the work, then all right, it probably won't happen if you don't want to do it.

And

so we get lots of people come in and say, Oh, it'd be cool to be a master sommelier.

It would be cool.

Absolutely.

But at some point if the person is serious about talking about it, you got to realize that there's something else that you're going to give up or maybe two somethings else that you're going to give up if you really want to become a master.

So

what did you have to give up?

Any free time that I had for 10 years.

You were already

married though, at the time, right?

I

was already married.

God bless Leanne for dealing with that portion of your journey.

So, a lot of people talk about, Oh, my wife supports me, or there's a good woman behind every successful man.

And that's not, uh, deal with my relationship.

Both professionally and personally with my wife.

We are a team, we are equals, we help each other in every single way.

So it's not one behind the other, it's two right next to each other.

Getting done what needs to get done.

And we're both fairly driven is the word.

But we like to have fun, we like to eat well, we like to do well in business.

None of the three kids are in jail.

Hey,

look

at that!

Two of them have jobs where they don't ask us for money.

One's still in college, so.

And they all like wine?

Oh, they all love wine.

Like they

had a choice.

But the thing is, like, the bigger thing for us is they all like to go out to dinner and enjoy each other and enjoy friends and realize what drinking is for and what wine is for in particular.

And it's not this binge thing, but it's this thing to be respected and to be enjoyed.

Amen.

Amen.

When the Meliodas family is going out in the Orlando area for a family celebration, where you going?

So we'll come here sometimes, but there is a restaurant in Longwood, which is a northern suburb of Orlando.

So it's a good 30, 40 minutes from here called Enzo's, not the Enzo's here.

Uh huh.

And it's been around since I was in high school.

Um, and my dad and Enzo who has since passed away, we're very good friends.

And when I was in high school, we'd go visit there and I'd get the ravioli.

He'd pack up a second plate of ravioli for me on his China with to go boxes.

And there wasn't really a thing then.

And we'd bring the China back when we came back the next time we were in the restaurant kind of thing.

But he's been written up twice in the New York Times as an authentic Italian restaurant that they really didn't expect to find in Orlando.

There's a lot of good water and special times at that restaurant.

Nice.

Family, not that there are not a lot of great operators here.

Of

course.

That we go to from time to time, but when people ask me what's the Orlando restaurant that I go to, that's

perfect.

Sounds like you send over the family connection.

There's a large family connection.

Oh, I love that.

I love that.

Thank you for sharing that.

Yep.

Should we taste some wine?

Yeah.

So we're going to do what we call our sip spotlight.

So I asked you to pull something that you wanted to share, talk about, and highlight today.

So what are you pouring for us?

All right.

Gorgeous burgundy glass.

We're

going to back into what exactly this wine is.

So first, it's right before Thanksgiving.

And your Thanksgiving meal, no matter who you are, where you are, is always a trainwreck of food.

But if you think about, we got 18 sides.

Exactly.

Cranberry, all with different flavors.

And yes, yes.

Chili con queso.

If you're michael, he makes it like

everyone mixes their own ethnic foods into it, right?

So we have like chile con queso or but you're just you're making my point.

It's a train wreck in a good way It's a

train wreck.

Nonetheless, because you got turkey here.

You got gravy here.

You got cranberry sauce here.

You've got sweet potato pie with marsh

Everything is yeah

just so what do you serve?

Like I remember I served a very It's like a fabulously expensive bottle of Cabernet one Thanksgiving, but nobody said anything about the wine because frankly, it didn't go all that well with everything that was on the table.

And so today we're going to try something that I will probably be drinking on Thanksgiving when I sit down after we've served some people here.

Thanksgiving meal.

Oh, we're open.

Yeah.

I

saw that.

Yeah.

365 days a year.

Wow.

And so I love Cru Beaujolais at any point in time, but for Thanksgiving.

Excuse me, I think it's a pretty facile wine to go with all the different flavors.

I picked a very specific maker who's near and dear to my heart.

This is Chanrion Côte de Brouilly made by Nicole Chanrion.

She's roughly my age, a child, grew up during the 60s and 70s.

When it wasn't the easiest thing to be a female winemaker and still in France and still isn't but it was

18 percent

Yes

on the planet women.

All right, so there you have

one

of them.

There you have one of

281 Yes, i'm one of 18 18

percent, which is a fairly small percentage when you think about it But now I think she's the greatest winemaker in cote de brulee and certainly one of the top three or four winemakers in all of beaujolais

This makes my wine You nerd head explode as well because today being Beaujolais Nouveau day, and this is not nouveau, but this is Beaujolais.

My listeners, if they are regular listeners and they've done their homework, the episode that's live this week is all about Beaujolais.

What I love about their style and really good crew Beaujolais as a whole, is that it's not necessarily about power and tannin, but more about elegance and everything being in order.

There's fruit here, there's tannin here, there's freshness here.

Beaujolais Cru is the most specific, perceived as the

highest

quality, because it's more specific.

The magic is that as you go out of the rest of Burgundy itself, when you cross over into Beaujolais and the 10 crew are all in the north of Beaujolais, You get to granite soils.

And granite soils are the difference.

That's why you don't grow Pinot Noir there, and you grow Gamay.

Gamay likes granite, Pinot does not like granite.

It is beautiful, and it's elegant, and that's what I want for Thanksgiving.

I don't want something to try to overpower everything because there's too much power that's going on there.

I want something that's going to play well in the sandbox with everybody.

Yeah, I need something that can just really blend right in with all those different flavors.

Gamay is the new Pinot Noir.

Used to, when there'd be steak, chicken, fish, vegetarian, and pasta at the table, what would you order?

You'd order a bottle of Pinot Noir.

Nowadays, I order Gamay more often.

There is gonna be more than one bottle on your Thanksgiving table.

What else are you drinking?

Yeah, I think maybe we're gonna do some dry Riesling at some point maybe to start the day.

Like while you're cooking?

Yeah.

I do that.

Just enough coffee during the parade until I get all my prepped up.

Yeah, there you go, and then you get We're going bubbles, we're going white, we're progressing through the day.

We'll probably start with something lean and acidic or rich and balanced with white.

I'm thinking probably Selbach Oster, but a drier style.

I love dry Riesling.

It's still probably going to be.

In the 70s, maybe the 80s that day, but I want something with a little bit of brightness to it and leanness that'll help with the weather that day.

And if you want to drink white with your Thanksgiving meal, I think dry German Riesling is a really good, you could do that too, or a drive from Washington State.

What do you think of this now that it's opening up?

So I think about raspberry jam.

Yeah.

And I think about, I got a thing of raspberry jam here.

I've got my pepper mill here.

I put it to about as fine as it can go with black peppercorn.

So I've got raspberry jam and powdered black pepper kind of thing going on here.

And then,

on the palate, I get that raspberry thing.

What I love about her wine in particular, just about every vintage, is we go from this ripe raspberry, because raspberries are hard to get ripe.

Like a lot of times they're just sour.

But I get this ripe raspberry up front, not jammy like the nose is, but ripe raspberry up front all the way to a little bit of sour raspberry at the back, but it's bright and fresh and yummy.

And I think with the amount of acidity that's in this wine, if I wanted to play a game and take two cases of this, age it for five years, and two cases, and the next vintage, and the next vintage, I'd think you'd

see that a little bit of age on it also would make it even more complex and deliciousness, and maybe a little bit more earthiness would come out of the wine.

You used a wine word that I want to go back to.

So on my first day of my wine certification at the Culinary Institute in St.

Helena, our instructor, and I feel like if there's only 281 in the world, you know each other, Tim Geiser.

Yeah, I know Tim very well.

Tim was my instructor, and we're all sitting there in this lecture bowl in the start of this two month program, and he says, we are going to work on using our wine vocabulary, tasting systematically, and there's only one word you are not allowed to use in my classroom.

You have Tim in your phone.

I do have Tim in there.

Are we going to FaceTime him?

No, I'm just saying Tim is my friend and I do know

him.

And so he said we weren't allowed to use the word yummy and it was this big joke but sometimes man you just taste the wine and yeah we can talk about all of our wine words but sometimes there is no better word and it's just.

Freakin yummy.

Booey, this is yummy.

There's taste good and there's yummy.

And taste good sometimes doesn't cover how good the wine tastes.

And yummy does a little bit more cover why you like the wine.

And yummy says I want to drink more of it.

Whereas taste good simply says that it tastes good.

And we're splitting hairs here a little bit.

But I don't have any problem with yummy.

The wine is yummy.

It is yummy.

Sometimes it's just the best word for it.

Yes.

Okay, I want to just go back to the process of becoming a master song.

First of all, did you pass that exam on the first try?

No.

I was early and often in taking the exam.

Yeah.

Does

anyone pass it on the first try?

Oh yeah.

There have been some.

Oh yeah, Andy McNamara who lives here in Tampa and is a good friend and I help out with anything that he wants me to help him with.

He passed on his first try.

Is that like a thing between the two of you?

Nah.

I don't.

If anything, he'd have the moral high ground of grinding me as opposed to me grinding him, but he would never grind.

Okay.

And there's some days you wake up and you can tell what everything is when you just put your nose in the glass.

There are other days maybe where it's the wrong set of wines for you or you don't bring your best game for whatever the reason.

A

hint of a cold, and then that's it.

You're done.

Correct.

And athletes have good races or good games.

I think there's a little bit of that going on.

I think the first time that you take the exam, you can over prepare in ways that aren't helpful, and then under prepare in the ways that would have been helpful.

And so, there you have it.

I will say the whole process to me was enjoyable and was good, and I learned so much, both about wine, about myself, about so many things, that yeah, the 10 year run was a good 10 year run.

Congrats again.

Thank you.

281.

Yeah.

All right, let's do some listener questions.

Listener questions.

So this first one is from Jeff in Southern California.

He is aware, as am I, when I reached out to you that you just recently won a pretty cool award for best in class short wine list for 2024.

You have over 200 wines.

By the bottle, by the glass, by the ounce.

Jeff would like to know what goes into creating that best in class wine list.

It's really nice when the award says best in the world.

And so getting a world award is pretty cool.

Yeah!

And this is the world of fine wine?

Yes.

It's not a thing where you can tell all the servers to wake up at 2 a.

m.

and start clicking in the computer.

There's five.

Oh, it's not

like me voting for Dave Matthews to get inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

That's not the way it works.

There are five professionals who are really competent professionals who decide who wins.

And so we like that idea, but what goes into it is the list right now is the conglomeration of my experience from when I was 12 years old until I'm 62.

So that's crazy.

But there are plenty of other people who help.

There's Zach is my general manager and Hyro and Juan and Andrea and Olivia and the whole bartending team.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so all of this is much about everybody getting together and figuring out what needs to go on the list.

There's the idea that everything is served by the bottle, the glass or the ounce.

Thank you Coravin.

That's yes.

That allows us to do things that weren't doable even 10 years ago.

And it's still, it boggles my mind that there's nobody who's decided to use Coravin to its full advantage.

And so I think all those things together and I'm Proud of it because there are things that are my personality, but there's some of Zach's personality, Hiro's, Juan's, Andrea's.

So it's collaborative

with the team, the selections that you guys make.

Absolutely.

Do you taste a lot of wines together and then decide who

you're bringing in?

We do taste a lot of wines together and decide who we're bringing in at any point in time.

Now there are some things that like, if this is available, it's on the list.

It's on, yes.

Correct.

And sell box wines are always on the list.

Um, you've

had pride mountain vineyards where I also work

always

since I first set foot in here.

Was that from day one?

It's pretty much.

Yeah, I can't remember all the way back then, but if it wasn't on day one, maybe it was day five.

And we love Pride Mountain Merlot.

We think it is as delicious a Merlot as possible.

It also allows us to juxtapose for people.

This thought that Merlot in Napa Valley is some lesser

Still.

Still.

I talk about it.

One movie.

I talk about it multiple times a week with guests, still telling the story.

And

it's crazy.

It's like at Pride, just at Garjulo, and at one time at Schaefer, the grapes don't come in, and you say put the Cabernet there, so we can take better care of it.

the Merlot over there in the sun, so it turns into a bad wine.

Old

destabber for the Merlot, correct?

And so people say, What do I do when I look at a wine list?

The first thing I do is I go to the Merlot section and see what the best buy on the list is was the Merlot is going to be the best buy on the list.

If you can't get as much for your Merlot as you can for your cabernet, but it and it has nothing.

Absolutely nothing to do with the time or It's just that Merlot grapes, for whatever crazy reason, movies and other things, are not as expensive per ton as Cabernet.

I always tell people, too, when you look at a cluster of Cab and you look at a cluster of Merlot, the day that you pick, Cab is tiny, smaller, you get less juice, you need more grapes to get a bottle.

You need more aging to calm down the tannin.

Merlot, you get a little juicier.

Cost of production, you can measure that a little bit, too, between the two, but perception.

Pride.

I've worked there for so long and I'm close to the family that just on behalf of the Pride family, I will say thank you.

Oh, you're for introducing the world of Disney Springs to Pride Merlott.

We know it.

We love it.

We thank you for that.

I have a person in three nights ago whose family is deep in the Spanish wine business, and she tried L Gil Next Pride.

You know, l.

Pretty expensive well known wine and she's wow that pride mountains pretty frickin good Yeah, it is right and

it retails for yes

There's a lack of a zero Maybe two zeros

on the price.

Yeah, Michael I feel like I've got like

a two part question because I think it might be easier her you get a lot Younger demographic that comes here to your wine bar Do you think because of like how you guys saw it from an ounce to a glass to

a bottle I don't see here like wine walls like it's starting to pop up everywhere right where all the bottles are in machinery Yeah Do you feel that is gonna help the newer generations bridge that gap or do you feel?

They're gonna lose something because they don't get it the way you

do it here All right, so I'm not against the enigmatic machines and in the right application How am

I Down the I 4 at the wine room.

How I learned about it.

You didn't exist yet.

In the,

yes, in the right application, they're brilliant.

My thought process here is I could have very easily put up walls of wine and it probably would be easier to run.

But I'm as much about an interaction between human beings as I am about a machine on the wall that you stick your credit card in.

And I'd much rather train a team of servers over a long period of time and be in the restaurant and have my certified psalms, my advanced psalms, my psalms that

are sitting for the master sommelier, working the floor, talking to guests, making a personal connection and helping everybody on their journey in the wine world.

Then, pull it out of the, out of the machine, put your phone on the QR code, and it'll pop up your description for the wine.

Yeah, but that doesn't tell the whole story.

And I'm not against them, and in the right application, they're brilliant.

It's just not the application I want.

That's a personal thing.

All right, I just see now starting to pop up a little bit more here in there I just wanted you to feel it.

I personally like the personal touch too because you can't ask these questions to the machine

No, you can't can you

you can't ask how's this or you're pairing it with some cheese or something else, correct?

So yes, I do understand that it and this is why I said I love this wine bar.

Do you feel like a 500 bottle of wine Is five times better than a hundred dollar poem, and I asked this question.

Let me get the contents because I know one of the Amazing unique things that you offer to guests here is they can taste First growth Bordeaux and some

of it like an ounce of some of these very expensive things So just can you talk a little bit to the pricing on some of those things for a general wine?

Enthusiasts, so

I do get people come in the restaurant who actually know a little bit about wine You And they're like, look at the price of Lafitte at 150 an ounce or 3, 500 for a bottle.

And they're like, that's stupid.

I'd never buy it.

And on one level, I totally understand.

But then on another level, the reason that I sell it and I sell it with pride is that guy, Thomas Jefferson, you heard of

him?

All

right.

So.

Thomas during his time was one of the great party animals of the world and he'd go to France and at that time, like Vegas, what went on in France stayed in

France.

Except I think some cuttings came home in suitcases.

Yes, okay.

That came home, right.

Correct.

Yeah.

And so they knew what tasted good all the way back in the 1700s and what tasted better than other places who were making the same thing.

And so if we think about the market for fine wine in the 1700s, you had Western Europe and you had this tiny demand in the Eastern United States and maybe tiny demand, even more tiny in South America.

And that was demand.

And now demand is everywhere.

On a much more global scale and while Lafitte probably makes more wine now than they did in the 1700s, not exponentially to the number of people that there are in the world who are interested in good wine.

So if you want to have what has universally been considered one of the greatest wines for the last, what, 200 plus years, that's different than saying I want to have this wine that's only been made for 20 years.

And demand is demand, supply and demand drives what that cost is, and if at some point in time the world starts to think that it's not worth that much, the value will go down.

I enjoy drinking Lafite.

Particularly when y'all are paying.

I thought that's what we were tasting today.

What's

wrong with him?

And so I, the question to me isn't, is it worth five times as much?

No, I can drink Philip Tony 01 Cabernet against 01 Bordeaux's.

And I think Mr.

Tony's wines, they're going to hold up as well as, if not better than some of the 01 Bordeaux at a far lesser price.

But, while Mr.

Tony's been making wine in Napa since I think it's 1953, the vineyard hasn't been in operation since the 1700s.

And so, I do when their time comes around that you got to put your money up to drink a first growth or one of the great burgundy's or whatever it may be, I do think it's worth the money if that's what you're into,

especially at an ounce, not having to go into a bottle.

That's amazing that you offer that to people.

Have you ever had a guest, whether it's one of those ounces or just anything that you share with people?

Have you had guests be brought to tears from a wine?

I don't know about brought to tears from a wine.

I think I've had a couple guests who've been brought to tears by the experience of being able to come here and have a non confrontational learning experience across maybe eight wines that they've only dreamed of tasting.

Yeah, I had a guy who showed up and sat at that table right over there and He's, I'm from Germany.

I read about what you do.

I've always wanted to taste Grange Hermitage and I've always wanted to taste a first growth.

And so he came in, he got a 15 sandwich and a two ounce pour of those two wines and said, this is one of the greatest afternoons of my life.

That's really cool.

But see, it's obviously into wine, but I'll have our buying a bottle of Grange and a bottle of Lafite effort, but we, the restaurant, allowed him to do something that he'd only dreamed of.

It's amazing.

It's pretty cool.

That is cool.

Thank you for doing that.

It is cool.

It

just makes it accessible and it's, it's amazing.

All right.

Not to what is the Spider Man with great, with great power comes great responsibility.

All right.

I'm going to make a play on that.

Not exactly.

I'm not saying I'm Peter Parker.

But, you're my Peter Parker.

I have.

My wife and I have this restaurant that's at Disney Springs.

A lot of people come into the Springs.

So there is an obligation, a responsibility to do something that is not just the normal place.

And I hope that we do something here that is not just what everybody would expect out of a solid wine bar.

There is the responsibility of doing something cooler and better.

There's nothing normal about what you're doing here in a wonderful way.

But

I don't forget that it's still food and it's still beverage.

Okay.

And it has to be real and good.

So I don't want to get too far ahead of myself.

But yeah, and we have fun doing it too.

Like we're smiling when we do it.

Yeah.

It's not so overwrought with craziness that I'm at this white tablecloth place where you can't make a noise.

Nah,

we have fun.

The guy who had those two one ounce pours had a sandwich, not a caviar.

No, it was cool.

It was really cool.

I

love it.

I love it too.

That leads me to another listener question.

This is question number two from Jeff.

Jeff had a lot of questions.

He's a big fan.

He lives in California, but just so you know, every time he's in Orlando for business, he's here sitting at your bar.

Good looking and intelligent guy.

He

is.

You've probably met Jeff multiple times.

Jeff wants to know what is the most surprising wine and food pairing that you enjoy?

Let me think about this.

Is there something that gives you Remy

Ratatouille animated fireworks in your brain?

So I will say that I don't drink that much dessert wine.

I was like, we should just cut the podcast right there.

He says, I must say I don't drink that much.

No, I drink a lot of wine.

I

drink more than my share of wine.

We all do.

Dessert wines are, you open up a bottle, and even if you have a Corvin, it just, the opportunity doesn't present itself.

But, when you have a really good piece of blue cheese, Maybe a triple creme blue or stilton that's just right and a dessert wine whether it's chateau cam or bernal slice or dolce.

Yes, that

and blue cheese are this like, why didn't somebody tell me about this long ago?

Because if I want to do something cool, whether it's just Leanne and I, or if it's with a group, I'll blow anybody's mind with that pairing.

Even the people that are like, me, I don't like Boutis, right?

Yeah.

Like

you just try this.

Or people say, I don't like dessert wines.

I'm like, yeah.

I'm going to ask you to drink a glass.

Take a sip.

Take a sip and have some fun because there is beauty and things that are very special there.

I agree from experience.

Do you offer that here?

You have beautiful cheese boards here.

We, so when we get people who are interested in dessert wines in particular, sometimes we might even bring out the blue cheese just to bring out the blue cheese with it.

I love it.

Michael's rolling his eyes over there because he is in the school of, I don't like blue cheese, but yet Gorgonzola on a pizza and he's going to town.

It's the same family.

Blue vein, Michael.

Blue vein G.

Same camera.

Do you have a question?

No, I'll just read the screen on that one.

Okay, moving on.

Everybody has their

thing.

One more listener question.

Listener questions.

This one's from Scotty.

Scotty's a nurse.

And I actually hosted him at Pride a couple months ago, him and his partner, and we started talking about Disney, and they started going on and on about you, and Wine Bar George, and they're big fans, and they listened to the podcast.

He wanted to know, what is a wine that you open for comfort?

It's just something's not right, and you just are having a moment.

You need a comfortable wine to feel good when you drink it.

I love how he looks at this wall of wine that's behind him.

I'm looking at my wall of wine.

Yeah.

And we'll go from figure picture and then funnel down.

I love Rioja, and if I'm having weather, It's a hamburger, or a steak, or beef tartare, or, which are also comfort foods to me.

I don't eat them all the time, but yeah, there's something about that.

I find Tempranillo to be delicious, and those Spaniards like eating their beef.

But I'm gonna go a little bit off center on it.

Toro is a wine region that, when you go there, they're pretty sure they were the original place that Tempranillo was grown.

And in the 16th, 17th, and most of the 1800s, if you were Spanish royalty, you drank Tempranillo from Toro.

Rioja became ascendant for a number of reasons.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that.

Toro still makes brilliant wine and, interestingly enough, in a style that, you know, What Americans love is it is a little bit just slightly more New World y is maybe the easiest way to put it.

And then there's a specific wine, Vitanorena, is all 120 year old vines and very expensive.

Regular Vitan is all 80 to 100 year old vines and around 100 bucks on my list.

And so I always have Vitan in my cellar.

I have a little bit of Vitanorena.

So if I really need comforting, it might be vitamina.

If it's a moderate amount of comforting, it'd be the regular vitamina.

Okay,

okay, heard.

Whether it's a

burger or a ribeye, I'm like good anywhere in between that also.

And this thought of Older vines just make better wine, and a lot of times that better wine is about mouthfeel more than it is about flavor or anything that the winemaker does in the winery.

It's just that product, while maybe the vine doesn't put out as much, the vine has something about it where

It's well trained.

It's well trained.

It knows

what it's doing.

And it's

yummy.

50 and 80 And it's old, yummy vines.

Correct.

And so, I love Tempranillo.

It's always a nice hug when I'm not feeling all that happy.

He said Tempranillo

was a

hug.

Vatan is like a good hug.

It's

an embrace.

It's an embrace.

There's some, all hugs are good, but there's some hugs that are better than others.

Amen to

that.

And

the Vatan hug is my favorite.

Amen

to that.

Michael, you know anything about Tempranillo or Rioja that you would like to share?

I just went and visited Caro and It went up there for a good time.

Yeah, it was beautiful up there.

George

We did a med cruise.

We're all over Spain, Italy, France, Sicily together.

And then I got to fly home and go back to work.

He's I'm going to stay in Spain, go search out my people.

He went to the town Briones, which is his last name, and sought that out, which is in Rioja.

So, yeah,

it's cool.

Yeah.

Got to taste a little bit difference in the Tempranillo out there and all the grapes out there.

It was beautiful.

We love Tempranillo.

We love Rioja.

Juan Muga was like, go to the gin bar, and if Juan Muga tells me to go somewhere, I'm going.

Those

croquetas in that town were by far some of the best ones I've ever had.

I don't know if it was the wine talking or the, but they were great.

We had

Juan Muga's Muga earlier this week at Toledo Restaurant at Coronado.

We had two bottles of it, and it was great.

They know how to make wine.

On

the table.

Is there anything that we haven't talked about or highlighted?

At the wine bar, we are a restaurant and wine bar, so we got great food too.

But if you are interested in wine, 220 choices all available by the bottle, the glass or the ounce and the person that's going to come pour for you is going to know what they're talking about and doing.

So if you're interested in wine, please come by and see us.

We'd love to have you in and talk some wine smack.

Yeah, wine smack.

What

percentage of your staff are at some level of some certification?

All the managers are at some um, level of some certification and they're probably another 12 servers out of the 20 servers that are at some level of line search.

There's a lot of flash cards floating around.

There's a lot of flash cards floating around in this thing.

I was going

to say also, the great thing about your events that you host for your students, that's another thing that's really great.

And it's, if you're interested in wine and you like learning and you want to know a little bit about blind tasting and being a master sommelier, yeah.

It tastes like a master that program or experience that we do.

You can find it on the Disney experience.

Just put in sommelier or wine tasting and it'll pop up.

It's good times.

And I do them all.

So you have George.

Do you sleep,

George?

I do.

Come eat, George.

It's

great.

I would love to take that.

Thank you so much.

And I'm going to share obviously the Instagram for the restaurant is fantastic.

Your tutorials that you do there and on YouTube, you just talked about Thanksgiving wine on there.

You give tutorials about the right way to open a bottle, which so many people need to watch.

So I will share links for all of these things so that our listeners can come and check you out.

But I just want to thank Thank you for what you're doing, because as someone who, wine has really changed my life to the fact that I left this place, Orlando, a place that I loved and thought I was going to be forever working for this company.

I got into wine, I moved out there, it has been completely life changing, but I'll always come back here and sit at your bar and have an ounce or two of something.

And

awesomeness.

Thank you for sharing this beautiful Beaujolais.

It has opened up.

It has opened up nicely.

It's delicious.

It's mouthwatering.

And just thank you for your time.

My pleasure.

Thank you.

Cheers.

And

thank you for photographing and videoing.

Cheers.

That's okay.

All the best for the

holidays too.

Yay.

Thank you.

Awesome.

Definitely one of those pinch me moments.

I still cannot believe that Michael and I got to spend that time with George.

I want to say a huge thank you to him.

I know George that you're so busy and this was such a special treat.

Also a shout out to our good friend Anne who joined us and was taking video and photography during our interview.

If you've seen any of the promos on social media, that is thanks to Anne.

And it was so lovely having her join us as well.

So if you are heading to Walt Disney World or even just the Orlando area, definitely encourage you to check out Wine Bar George.

Check out their website.

I'll put the link in the show notes to sign up for one of George's 90 minute How to Taste Like a Master Sommelier classes.

If you're swinging through Terminal C in the Orlando airport, have a delicious cheese board and a glass of wine.

At the end of our time together, we gave George a bottle of our Solovato Sangiovese, and that was also a little bit of a surreal moment.

If you're not aware, Michael and I have a small wine label that we started in 2019 where we make Sangiovese from Dry Creek here in Sonoma County, and I was able to share a bottle with George.

And I can't wait to hear his review.

If you'd like to try our Solovato Senge of AC, the link is in the show notes.

We can ship to most states.

And if you use the discount code PODLISTENER, we'll give you 10 percent off your order.

It is a medium bodied red wine made from the senge of AC grape.

So in an Italian style, it's fruity, it's spicy, and it just won a gold medal in 94 points in the California wine competition.

As always, if you have enjoyed this episode, please share, share, share, share this episode.

You can text it as a link from most podcast platforms.

And please take a moment and leave us a rating or a review in whichever platform you are listening in.

Don't forget, you can be an angel and support the podcast with a donation.

Link is in the show notes to do that as well.

And buy Michael and I a glass of wine.

Whatever you do between now and next week, I hope that you sip well.

Pum, pum, pum, pum.

Pum, pum, pum, pum.

La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la,

la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la Alright.

Bye bye.

Bye bye.

Bye!