Wine Master Answers The Internet's Questions

Five and a half years ago I decided that I wanted to make the world taste better by sharing wine stuff on YouTube. I didn't think that there was enough great content out there and I wanted to build an independent wine channel to share honest reviews and accurate information about the beautiful world of wine. After spending a lot of time learning about shooting and editing videos I posted my first video on the 2nd of June 2020. I was pretty excited when it went live and dreamt about it reaching the world and getting people excited about wine. I was also a little scared of people making fun of me or telling me that the video that I worked on for days was terrible. So what happened next? Pretty much nothing. It took 222 days for it to reach 1000 views which is pretty terrible. The first comment came in from at margaritamartini0105 and she is still a subscriber to this channel. Things progressed slowly and then faster and at the end of last year we hit 200 000 subscribers which is absolutely amazing. I recently ran the numbers and you guys have watched more than 2.4 million hours of my content. That's 100 000 days or 274 years. Amazing. Crazy. Whatever you want to call it. So thank you for tuning in, commenting, liking and saying hi at events. I'm very grateful. Today I want to do something you don't see very often on YouTube anymore. I asked you for your questions and I'm going to answer as many as I can. There were a lot so I'm not able to go through all of them. So let's dive in. All right question number one. Simeon Hess6836 asks is there a mount of corks and caps behind the camera right now and could we see it? No there isn't and no you can't see it. But yeah I mean I clean that up regularly and then I collect them somewhere else. So there's a mount of corks and caps somewhere else in my house. All right OA Vodopianov asks what happened with self-made wine from Pinot Noir and why we don't see tasting video? Good question. I actually finished that wine and bottled it but we only have one bottle and I did that on one of my seller class courses. I think it was the seller class raw course and I still have some left here though. Some that hasn't been bottled yet so it's probably going to be horrible but this is probably the best time to to taste it. Let's let's check it out. All right that's that's the stuff. Looks looks funky. All right for everyone who hasn't seen the video I made a video about making my own Pinot Noir in my cellar and the video did pretty well but for whatever reason I never got around to doing part two where I actually finished that wine. So yeah I'm sorry for that but but let's let's check out what this tastes like. I'm using this to kind of make sure that I'm not picking up any of the stuff that is floating on top. This looks crazy. Okay so this is definitely not how you should treat your wine. You shouldn't keep it open for years without moving it around but but I also learned that if you don't move the wine around it still keeps quite well for a really long time as long as it's stored at a cool consistent temperature and isn't moved around so so you don't let any oxygen get in it it can yeah maintain its freshness. So the Pinot actually was quite nice when I tasted it from the big flask from a big glass balloon. This I'm expecting to taste a little funky but let's let's see. So it definitely is very light in color and kind of kind of amber which doesn't just suggest that it's that it's going to be delicious. It looks quite oxidized. Let's let's taste it. Oh this smells of blue. This smells pretty bad. So there's quite a lot of VA so volatile acidity there is a lot of funkiness but there's also some fruit flavors so like cherries and raspberries well cherries more than raspberries. Ah this is this is this is terrible as as I should have expected but yeah. All right this was a disaster but maybe I'm going to make another wine this year. Let's let's see. So what's next? Art King V and Lars Loken 4787 both asked the same thing. Well actually they're asking they're saying we need a cellar tour and yeah I've been thinking about doing that but to be honest I'm I'm worried that in your head my cellar is something really precious and quite fantastic and I'm not really sure whether doing a cellar tour will just shatter that beautiful image in your head. So so I might do one but maybe I'm not going I'm never going to do one. We don't know. We'll see. All right next up we have Fibo Nachi 21 and he asked a few different questions but the first one is which wine in your cellar are you saving for a special occasion in the future? There are quite a few but I'll get one. One sec. All right there are quite a few but this one I've been eyeing quite closely recently. This is the 2008 Francois Lamarche Clos Bourgeois and this one has a long history for me. Francois Lamarche is also producing La Grande Rue and this was the first wine that really blew my mind. Not this exact label same producer different vineyard also a Grand Cru site. So I might open this this year just to get me inspired again because yeah sometimes you I mean even though I really enjoy wine still I sometimes feel like I lost that passion that I had initially that that really great passion that you have when you first discover something really exciting. So so maybe this will revitalize my passion for wine. Let's let's see. Next question comes from Emidio Audachis 68 59 and he asks I would be interested to hear how did you go about building your wine collection and what criteria you apply? Yeah I mean to be honest I now have a really big collection I guess. I mean there are bigger ones but but I think I'm I have round about 2000 bottles in my private collection and I didn't really follow a strategy there. I just kind of started buying what I liked and I have some wines that are really investment grade and can be kept for a long time but also have lots of drinking wines. So I think at this stage I should really go through all of the bottles and decide which wines I actually want to drink and which wines I won't drink and then just give away the ones that I don't want to drink and make some space for for new stuff. So yeah to be honest it's a bit of a mess. I have wines from all around the world, some really great bottles but also quite a few wines that are just daily drinkers. Next question comes from Daniel Puccini 25 72. How come you ended up becoming a sommelier? Did your parents approve of your choice? Well first of all I'm not a sommelier. There are quite a few comments asking me about being a I would not call myself a sommelier but I'm aware that other people in my position might say that they are sommeliers but I really just think the person who's working in restaurants on the floor who's doing the hard work there is allowed to call themselves sommeliers. Everyone who's not working in a restaurant shouldn't call themselves a sommelier. That's just my opinion. The term is not protected so pretty much anyone can just call themselves a sommelier but I just think this term belongs to the people who are doing the work at the restaurant. But I used to work as a sommelier and how did I get into this? I mean I did an apprenticeship that's how you do it in Germany and in many of the Germanic countries. You do two or three years of learning and kind of working at the same time in order to improve your skills and then you start working full-time somewhere. I did my apprenticeship in Germany at a very nice hotel in Baden-Baden and then I moved on to Dublin and worked as a sommelier in a two-star Michelin restaurant there, restaurant Patrick Giebel and that was it. That's how I got into it and I really enjoyed it there but that was also my last position as a sommelier and that's now a long time like 20 years ago. 20 years ago I finished working as a sommelier so I stopped working as a sommelier and my parents they were very supportive so they really were behind me and yeah they're great. So the next question comes from Toomb2289. Congratulations what are your tips for helping others find what kind of wines they love when they are new to it all? Great question. This channel was really created in order to make sure that people who are new to wine or people who have more experience find new wines, get exciting input in order to kind of discover their palate, their ability to taste and that's really what I'm still trying to do here. So yeah I mean if you're new to it come here and listen to to what I'm saying and maybe you feel inspired. There are other great creators on YouTube on other channels and also on other platforms too where you can find nice input and some great information on wine. There are magazines but most of them are not that exciting anymore in my opinion. There are great books so there are some really great authors. One of my favorite is definitely Jancis Robinson, Master of Wine. She's written lots of really great books and well if you just read her books you know pretty much everything you need to know in order to enjoy wine. And then I really think it's just about experiencing wine. So just open a bottle of wine and share it with someone else or many other friends and just kind of taste it or form a tasting group where you can get together, share bottles. It makes it easier for you to access interesting wines. Your friends will buy other wines than you would so your eyes might be open to new styles and you can also share the cost. Next question comes from Laura Kanner 2201 and she asks have you ever found yourself in a situation where you couldn't find aromas and flavors smelled by other wine judges and you had to challenge that because they were clearly biased. Yeah I mean I definitely have found myself in many situations where another judge or another taster had other descriptors for the wines for the that I was tasting as well. That's completely normal. Our noses are different, our palates are different so we are able to smell different things in wines and that means that we naturally have to have different descriptors for the same wine because yeah just our palates are just just different. I don't quite know how that relates to being biased but there's certainly quite a lot of bias when it comes to wine competitions and wine judges and I think that whole world is kind of in a difficult situation right now. I mean many of the magazines that are supposed to rate wines independently have to rely on income generated from wineries so they can't really judge the wines independently and most of those competitions are really just based on wineries paying for judges to taste their wines with the expectations to get a medal in the end as well. So there is a lot of bias in this world anyways. Next question comes from Fred Lanting 5570. I wonder what style of music do you gravitate towards the most? Good question. All right Spotify tells me that my favorite artists are Rodriguez, MF Doom and well also Nirvana and Bob Dylan so I'm quite eclectic when it comes to music just as I'm eclectic when it comes to wine. I just like good stuff. I don't follow a certain genre. I just enjoy good quality music and wine. Right now I'm listening to Mazzy Star which is kind of chill cool music slightly depressive which is perfect for this kind of weather. Next up is Standard 0805 and he or she asked your thoughts on Falstaff wine rankings? Tricky. So like I said I mean I think wine magazines are in a difficult position right now and I'm not quite sure whether they are really serving their key audience. But yeah I mean no one buys magazines anymore these days. I mean people do but fewer and fewer do and I think they will have to reinvent themselves in order to be really successful and to be really great sources of inspiration and information. The next question comes from Cristobal Sanchez 4339 and he asked the wine world could remain oblivious to the AI but AI is there. How could AI be part of the wine world? Yeah I think AI is already part of the wine world and I use AI quite a bit for creating stuff for researching things and it can be a really useful tool. I think when it comes to wine for the consumer AI could be an amazing suggestion machine helping you find new wines interesting wines that actually match your taste. AI is already used in agriculture and in winemaking quite a bit and it will help improve the quality of viticulture and winemaking also for smaller estates which is quite important because it is it can be quite costly to buy expensive equipment but software solutions can be quite a bit cheaper so I think this will help combat climate change and will also help increase the quality of grapes which will result in better wines. John Constantine 4249 asks if you could have a second bottle of any one wine you've had on the channel what would it be? That's an amazing question. So I think well I it's it might be a little bit boring but it it should be the 1863 Coletta Port that I opened on this channel. It kick-started this channel or it really helped grow the channel significantly. It also was an amazing experience because it was such a beautiful wine and it had survived such a such a long time and I think all of the bottles are now gone. I mean I don't find them online anymore they were kind of sold out pretty quickly the the few that remained were sold out pretty quickly internationally after I released the video so so yeah that that would be nice just to taste that stuff once again. All right Gaga Nega great name asks do you ever go a day without alcohol in your system? Yes I don't drink well I definitely drink fewer days that than I don't drink so so yeah there's a lot of time for having breaks and I think if you really enjoy something you enjoy it even more if you let go of it every now and then and spend some time without it and that's what I do with alcohol that's what I do with most things so sometimes it's nice to just take a break but it's also nice to drink good wine and I am very much in favor of drinking good wine in moderation. Next comes from samc5209 and it's is WSET level 4 enough to get a high paying job? I don't think so I mean you definitely need some some other elements as well you should have some kind of career in wine in order to find a great job and WSET level 4 I think helps it definitely helps you understand the world of wine and a lot of fun to learn about wine so so it should also be just fun on its own but you doesn't that definitely doesn't mean that you get a high paying job I mean the wine world is very competitive and there are quite a lot of really intelligent talented people who are not making great salaries so I think just having WSET level 4 isn't enough it needs to be part of part of a bigger package. The next question comes from Rubens Silviero 37 33 and he asked give some tips for someone who is begging his career but I guess he means who is beginning his career yeah I definitely think that the two things you should focus on when you're starting your career is learning and networking meaning that you shouldn't go for the most comfortable or most high paying job instead you should look for the roles that give you the biggest exposure to information the ability to learn to dive deeper into the subject and you also should make sure that you meet as many interesting and important people as you can so you should connect with people who already did what you want to do in order to really lay the foundations of your career that's certainly what I did in the beginning I didn't chase money or great career opportunities I really just wanted to expose myself to as much as possible I traveled to many different countries I worked in many different countries I learned as much as I could and now I have a very solid foundation of my knowledge I know many people all around the world who are in the business and this becomes so valuable as you grow up as you get older so yeah I would I would approach it that way next question comes from Dirty Harry Z who asks how much did this content creation help you learn more about wine great question again I mean this definitely helped me a lot I mean it helped me learn about stuff like cameras and sound and so on but it also really helped me learn about like teaching about communicating and that knowledge is essential to everything I do nowadays it also helps me stay on top of current issues in the wine world I'm tasting wines here that I wouldn't taste otherwise that I wouldn't want to taste otherwise because I think this might be relevant to you guys so I'm opening bottles that I purchased at Aldi I'm tasting wines that are non-alcoholic I'm tasting wines from wine regions that don't necessarily interest me much and in the process I learned so much and I also really discover new stuff that I wouldn't have discovered otherwise next question comes from Joey DeCarlo 2532 what is your main job source of income I assume not YouTube is it doing educational talks and seminars do you actually work at a restaurant question mark well so YouTube is actually generating money and I'm I'm quite blessed I mean this is amazing to be able to do this share stuff with the world get great feedback from all around the world and also make money with it but it's not my main source of income I have an import and distribution company called Baum Selection that I started more than 11 years ago now and I also have a communication agency we do lots of things lots of events educational seminars all around Europe and we are also doing stuff like seller class for example my online education platform so that's kind of how I make money and yeah and that's how I manage to keep this channel independent that's how I'm able to purchase all of those wines that I'm tasting in my videos in order to make sure that I'm actually able to judge those wines as a customer rather than someone who is dependent on sources to ship over samples next question comes from Jan W8964 and he asks do you drink beer and if so what is your favorite style yes I do like beer I actually really love beer I'm German after all and my favorite style I mean I like many different kinds of beers I think beer is also a really complex and interesting topic but my favorite is probably IPA which is maybe a bit of a hipster thing to say or maybe a little boring but but I do like this kind of zingy freshness that I also enjoy in wines next question comes from Lucas Smiths 7083 and he asks you are dropped off on Mars and can only take one grape variety with you which means that will be the only wine you'll be drinking the rest of your life what would it be I don't know what would it actually grow on Mars I guess I'd probably go for something easy to kind of cultivate and make decent wine from maybe it's Riesling I don't know yeah I wouldn't want to just drink one grape variety for the rest of my life that's just so boring next question comes from Puk Fook what is it like to have a passion become a profession do you feel that you have lost a hobby at times or do you turn to other outlets and interests outside wine when you need to unwind that's a great question I mean wine definitely has become an obsession and it's great to be able to do something with your passion but it sometimes can make your passion feel less interesting to you I certainly have many interests that's sometimes a bit of a problem I for example right now read a book on cameras and creating videos and that is another passion of mine I'm also reading a book on history so I really like history and my favorite podcast at the moment is the rest is history great podcast but I also yeah I just yeah find other outlets as well I mean if you just spend time thinking about wine it gets a little bit boring and fortunately my family doesn't care about wine I mean they are drinking wine and they are interested in wine but but and also most of my friends are not from the wine business and they are not interested either so I don't really have to talk to them about wine which is which is a good thing I think next question comes from lyrics0110 what do you think of the future of drinking alcohol is this something we will be doing in 10 20 30 years from now that's such a yeah that's such a current issue I guess people are very much worried about the impact of current trends people are drinking less there's less money so people are spending less money on wine but yeah I think as humans we are really bad at predicting what is going to come in the future it really helps to look back rather than to the future in order to understand the world that's maybe also where my passion for history comes from and I mean look back and was there ever a period when alcohol wasn't part of social life for the last 8 000 years no I mean it's always been a part of our our culture and I think it will always be part of what we do maybe there will be a time where we drink it more in moderation are more conscious of issues also coming from alcohol and that would be a good thing in my opinion but but yeah alcohol will will still be around in 100 years I'm pretty sure about that next question comes from ericzu9921 and he asked what motivated you to start doing youtube in the first place and what's the most surprising thing you've learned through the experience great question and well I like I already said I really wanted to share my passion for wine share my knowledge about wine with the world and what surprised me was that there are so many people who are interested enough to watch my videos and I'm also sometimes really stunned when I meet you guys on the street at trade fairs at wineries and I listen to those stories where people actually tell me that they got into wine because of my videos that's just amazing for me and some of those people have then kind of built a career in wine which is just extraordinary I would have never thought that my youtube videos can change the lives of people but sometimes they do which is which is nice next question from davidc6863 hey that's the same guy okay well anyways why did you stop what's in my glass it was the best wine questionnaire fun and informative I know I many people I've actually had people tell me that they prefer the quiz to the videos that they that they are more keen on and yeah I'm bringing that back but but yeah I don't have enormous amounts of time so sometimes I have to kind of cut stuff away but but I think I'll have to bring that back next question comes from ruva5271 and he asked or she asked do you ever forget about assessing the wine and just drink to excess and get drunk like me and most of your subscribers yeah for sure I mean well I mean forget about assessing yeah I yeah I mean I definitely do enjoy wine and I don't always have to think too much about wine while drinking it and I also sometimes get drunk because it can be really fun but it should happen with other people around at the right occasion in order to ensure that you get the maximum benefits from it but I think actually getting drunk every now and then like every now and then is a great thing the next question is how do we make wine feel more accessible and less pretentious snobby sometimes it feels the industry is designed this way intentionally I think I mean the industry isn't but but I think wine communication historically has been designed like this because it helps keep people out undesired people out and I think that's just stupid I want to make wine accessible and that's why I do what I do because I'm trying to reach someone who's just getting started and also someone who's maybe the world champion of some of these or a master of wine so I definitely want to reach as many people as as possible in order to really get them passionate about wine the next question comes from instagram and it's how did your wine enthusiasm start and is there a certain wine related to that moment well my enthusiasm for wine started working in hospitality and I didn't taste great wines in the beginning it was more about the process of tasting a wine and then talking about it which I found quite exciting and then one of the first wines I can actually remember was Gigal's Cote d'Uron I haven't tasted that one in a while but back then I was kind of like oh this is really good and it wasn't expensive so you don't necessarily have to go for the most expensive wine the rarest bottle the oldest bottle in order to really enjoy wine you can start with cheap and easygoing stuff and identify the wines that you like in that group before moving on to the next price bracket the next question also comes from instagram and by the way if you don't follow me on instagram yet do follow me on instagram because I post regularly on there you see stories of me traveling through the world eating pain au chocolat so so yeah follow me there as well and the question is do you have any advice for people thinking of switching from don't do it no well I mean yeah I think I mean you really have to think about what you want in your life and sometimes the better option would be to have the good paying job and being able to afford great wines and enjoy wine as a hobby rather than as a career but if you really want to make wine a career then go for it but be aware that it's competitive that it's not that easy and that yeah that you really have to build your path through the wine world I mean it's not it's not as as clear cut as in many other industries where you have a clear career path in front of you but yeah I mean I definitely enjoy what I'm doing now and I really never regretted choosing this career being able to do what I'm doing is just amazing but yeah I mean just be aware of what what the downfalls are as well and don't just jump in without really thinking too much about it but then again maybe you should just jump in and try and in most cases you can go back to your old career anyways at some point that's kind of at least how I'm trying to live my life I really don't want to be the guy at the age of 65 or 70 thinking I really should have done this that or the other back then when I was younger and able to I think this is the worst thing I think it's better to fail at something rather than to regret never having attempted it so so yeah go for it go for it all right I think that's it for today I answered quite a few questions but there were definitely more there were a few hundred of them so I couldn't go through all of them but thank you all for asking questions and thank you all for being there and I hope this year we can take this channel to the next level and then to the next and to the next I definitely want to continue doing this on YouTube and I already have quite a lot of things planned for this year so stay tuned but whatever you do stay thirsty