¿Qué necesitas para ser un gran catador?
Descubrelo de la mano de una de los mejores catadores del mundo.
[Music] hello my friend how are you my dear friend very good thank you thank you we are excited to have you here with us yeah anything i can do for you anything i can do to help i will so what are your question what do you want to know marco flores yeah first of all yeah let me present these guys most of them are going to participate in a contest that i call it a blind wine taster so you know some of them because the last time that you came to mexico you were testing together and i i was thinking that you could be kind of a mentor today to give any advice about how do you practice your blind tasting at home for example and that’s and maybe it’s the first question how do you prepare yourself for a blind tasting that is one of the biggest challenge that you have uh since you were applying for master soldier for example and then for bossam leader of americas and i think that uh how should we start because i mean there’s a lot of information around and sometimes the the first problem is how should i start training yeah i mean one of the things that people should be doing is trying to smell things you know and um we don’t smell things enough we don’t smell the food that we ate and there’s maybe 10 000 aromas in a glass of wine so somebody can say oh this is pineapple this is guava this is whatever i mean it doesn’t really matter what you see it’s in the glass what matters is it makes sense to you the second thing that makes the is very important when blind tasting is to have theory instead of trying to find what’s in the glass you need to assess what’s in the glass so be honest it melt this and this and that and smell it it tastes this and this and that and then after trying to make a logical conclusion because everybody say that food and wine is subjective it’s not subjective it’s objective when you start being objective about things you start having greater result and a higher percentage of guessing what the wine is and i would like to present a very small uh share screen where i will tell you a few tricks that i do in the blind tasting so we see image and that way you can maybe it’s going to resonate with you if that makes sense marco yes make sense hello yeah you can share it now if you want this is a presentation i did last night for a client i mean they are not professional taster but is trying to democratize i mean this is foie gras this is the one university where i’ve been chateau where i work in london where i work in sydney when i win best young family in the world new york santa cruz in california americas then i live in quebec city and here we go so the idea here is that the first thing you want to do when you taste wine is to have a look at the glass you want to have a look at the glass and by having a look at the glass the color you can already start to collect evidence evidence like if you are playing a clue game you know you want to say oh it’s colonel mustard in the living room with the chandelier that killed da da da da da you don’t want to say oh oh this is a cabernet sauvignon from bordeaux that doesn’t make sense you know nobody can do that you want to say because the color like this because it’s now that because the tannins are high and it tastes like oak it is bordeaux from meduc on 2015 a very ripe vintage you want to try to make something logical so this is very professional advanced taster but if you are a amateur taster you want to go with your guts feeling you know with whatever you’ve tasted in your life you want to say oh this remember a good night you know with marco flores when we drink bordeaux so it is bordeaux you know you gotta you’re gonna listen to yourself now if you want to train to a higher level you gotta face you’re gonna be logical and you’re gonna think about it like a detective you are not trying to find what it is but you are collecting evidence to build the case and then accuse a type of wine or a varietal or a vintage if that makes sense yeah so 90 of the taste and the color of wine is within the skin you know that if you grow grape in mexico where there’s a lot of sun the berries they cannot put sunscreen on so the the the skin goes thicker and it produces a more concentrated in color wine that’s why if you go to california or australia where it’s very very sunny you have very very deep style of wine a lot of color so when you see a wine with a lot of color you should say oh two things possibility number one it’s coming from a sunny region possibility number two it’s coming from a great varietal that has the capacity to have a thick skin and then it’s all about theory right you need to know what are those great varietal and you need to know which region in the wine world are sunny when we produce red wine we put the skin with the juice because the juice is clear that’s why there is blonde noir in champagne a white champagne produced with pinot noir a black gray varietal so you see in the picture here what is the skin and the juice together that produce red wine when we produce white wine we only use the juice and when we produce orange wine well we use the skin and the juice of the white wine and that’s why we have a tinted color and something that goes orange because it oxidized now you want to smell the wine and this is a very good picture at best summery of quebec where i don’t know what is the wine i cannot find it i don’t see anything that i recognize so i open my mouth just like when you eat and you swallow you have ritual faction going by opening your mouth you’re smelling with your nose but it also goes into your mouth and it goes into your bulb effective bulb and then you perceive aromas and instead of going into the glass you take the glass to your nose and a little bit like a german shepherd at mexico city airport you try to do small sniff not because you will not sell smell anything when you take deep breath is for meditation when you try to smell short breath okay okay then 90 of the grape varietals smell like strawberries but what you want to try to find as a professional taster a little bit like a mussels car rpm you want to find is it like fresh strawberries wild strawberries strawberry compote strawberry jam strawberry candy it’s still the same smell of the strawberry but imagine the guy the the picker of the grape that goes into the field when they decide to pick the grape two days earlier two days after very important the the jamminess the quality of the fruit you can smell it if you buy strawberry at the supermarket and you leave them on the counter they’re gonna rotten but before rottening they’re gonna be very sweet and they smell different if you put some sugar and you do a compote it smell like compote if you put a little bit of pectin in the compote it smell like jam it’s still the same exact same strawberry same thing goes with lemon same thing goes with a lot of aromas so the professional taster by smelling strawberry jam it is impossible that the wine come from a fresh region like loire valley in northern france it has to come from a sunny region where the ripeness is intense and that’s why that’s what we try to find as professional taster the fact that it smell like strawberry is not helping me the fact that it smells like fresh strawberries like in beaujolais or very ripe strawberries like in chateauneuf-du-pape will help me still the same strawberries but different level of ripeness then you need to spit because the more you drink the more you get intoxicated and when you get intoxicated your focus your concentration is not there very different to taste than to share a bottle of wine with friends and then there is four things that you need to think when you’re putting the one on the pallet the first thing is tannins tannin is a protein that get associated with your saliva and create dryness if you put the tea pouch into hot water for too long it creates dark uh it create dryness if you roast the coffee bean too much you burn them and it creates dryness so the tannins how much it dries your mouth feels very important because according to the great varietal well cabernet sauvignon very high in tannins pinot noir very low in tannins so if you are able to recognize the level of tannins already you’re going in one direction or the other the other thing is acidity acidity is salivation when you bite into a lemon you salivate because you have acidity so your ph in the mouth feels trying to recreate if you drink lemonade you salivate if you drink gruner vetliner from austria which is very fresh white wine from a fresh region you salivate if you drink chardonnay from california you don’t salivate too much so you got to pay attention to the level of acidity and the level of acidity is linked to the latitude the gray varietal and the wine region then sugar most of the wine that we taste are dry because sugar is consumed by the yeast and the yeast produce alcohol and that brings me to my last point alcohol when you drink mezcal or tequila you have the burnt ear you know it burns you drink a nice beer after to refresh but when you you you taste a wine from california for example or mexico where it’s very hot it means the grape are very sweet so if they are very sweet they are very high in alcohol so again you need to pay attention to the alcohol level if you drink german riesling nine percent alcohol you don’t smear you don’t feel anything so you gotta pay attention if you’re tasting something that burn a little you might be in a hot or sunny region if you taste something that doesn’t burn at all you’re in a fresher region and then it all comes down to balance all those things together bound and it create balance and every great varietal every region have a different balance this is spain obviously we all know and this is the end of the presentation because it was on spanish wine i mentioned yesterday that i was tasting garnacha a very very very simple garnacha that sell for 10 from the region of manchuela manchuela is south of madrid very high altitude grenache garnacha and it produced a very simple one easy to drink great with tapas very very easy to drink a little bit like a beaujolais but with the spiciness of the garnish so when i smell when i look at this wine i see a wine that is a little pale in color spain is a very sunny place but grenache you need to know for instance with that great varietal that it’s like the pinot noir of the south very thin skin so never too much color in grenache or garnacha the advantage of grenache why it’s planted in spain in california maybe in mexico it’s that it’s drought resistant so it can resist to a lack of water and that’s why you have it a lot in spain in california for example south of france as well then i see a pale wine but when i smell it’s very ripe so the first thing i see in my head not a lot of grape varietal can be pale and very ripe so i start thinking and collecting evidence then why it’s very ripe because the strawberries smell compote because there is this kind of cherry aroma but cherry preserved in alcohol there is a little bit of cinnamon spice coming from the grape varietal very few grape varietals smell like spices because there’s no oak on the wine it’s purity of fruit very cheap easy drinking wine there’s a little bit of pepper and there is also something like salsichon you know like a cured meat something meaty very few grape varietals smell meaty maybe syrah maybe game maybe a few but very few but if it was syrah it would be much darker than that because i know syrah has a very thick skin varietal so maybe it’s gammy maybe it’s ganache that’s what i’m thinking so i put it on the pallet almost no italians i’ll call it swarm so it cannot be beaujolais because beauje is fresh region always 12 percent alco this one tastes like it’s ripe it’s warm there’s not a lot of tannins there’s not a lot of acidity so it’s a very warm place you know the grape or rice still very delicate and very short on the palette you know i i just taste it and i don’t taste it anymore but that’s the idea behind the wine is a simple delicious glass of wine but if it doesn’t last on the palate like bordeaux chateauneuf-du-pape burgundy blah blah blah well it has to be cheap because what is very expensive in food and wine is things that last for a long time caviar black truffle foie gras i don’t know what you call it marco but the the eggs of the ants how do you call that the one escamoles you know things that are very rare but also that tastes for a long time that has a special texture are pricey so when you are tasting pricey wine it tastes for a long time and that’s what is merso all the great wine this is a simple one you know so i’m also thinking from a professional taster if it’s simple it cannot go for a lot of money because you cannot ask people to pay 100 for a bottle of wine that doesn’t taste like much it’s a simple wine it’s a vino de la tierra you know it’s simple table wine but the delicious you know things does don’t need to be complicated all the time it can be simple and delicious and that’s what it is so then i will replace maybe and then i will do what i call a first conclusion so my first conclusion i’m saying to myself well you know because of the meatiness the spiciness it is probably old world it’s probably european now because it was spicy and a little bit of alcohol i think it can be ganache i think it can be a blend of movies because i’m talking about certain regions so monastery grenache i’m thinking maybe it could be sierra but there was no tannins but i’m just doing a little bit of a preconclusion i’m thinking out loud maybe it is those varietal from this country and it was feeling quite fresh so if it’s feeling quite fresh it’s young so maybe one or three years we are in 2021 so between 18 and 21 i mean it’s possible then when i do my final conclusion i need to accuse the colonel mustard with the chandelier in the living room so i will explain why because i say it’s spicy because i say there’s some warm some alcohol not too much tannin and a light wine for me it speaks of meat to grenache from a spanish country because it’s a simple one and most of the ganache and friends are in bland or they are a little bit more complex on a 2019 vintage i can even say the price it’s probably something that will go for 10 or 15 bucks and then i can even say with what i would like to eat the wine you know yesterday during the presentation we have a nice um you know a classic catalano uh artisanal foot you know pork sausage with a little bit of um of uh salsa the uh tomato fresco a little bit of garlic grilled bread and olive oil simple you know tapas very simple but something that you know i smell a little bit of sun dried tomato the acidity of the tomatoes gonna bring my palate to salivate you have the one that is a little richer it’s gonna mix well with the shark tree boom boom boom done simple simple food simple wine i don’t want something too complicated so why not having a nice taco with a little bit of the smoky chipotle crema or something like that in that kind of idea i’m not a specialist of taku but something smoky because it all it smells very spicy almost smoky but no oak which is very characteristic of ganache but i want some richness i want some fat in the in the palette because there is alcohol you know you want something a little greasy but rich that’s why i’m thinking pork and then that’s it but when you are a professional taster this happens at a very very very fast pace it goes like boom boom boom boom boom boom boom in your in your mind and this is practice if you are a football player like el matador you need to practice every day to become a legend what people think they think that they gonna smell the glass they’re gonna find it and that’s it that’s not the way that’s not the way if you want to be a good cook you need to cook every day if you want to be a good taster you need to taste almost every day usually i don’t taste on sunday i have a nice family meal and i drink the wine without thinking about it but i try to taste every day and new things all the time and i try to pay attention because three times a day we eat uh i don’t drink three times a day but i pay attention to what i put in my mouth and what i put in my body and that’s very important when you start paying attention you are slowing the pace down slowing the time but you are realizing things you know because you’re paying attention to detail if you think about pablo picasso why he’s a genius he was taking his time you know he was paying attention to detail that’s why you can do things that are still remembered today i’m not trying to be pablo picasso i’m just trying to tell you that we are living in a very fast-paced world and if you don’t take your time you will miss on a lot of good opportunities and tasting is no different do you have any question marco yeah wow yeah i have a question i have a few questions uh before a competition for example or when you pass the master exam before your competition what kind of exercises do you do in the morning for example before you go there do you think this before did you do something extra you do meditation or what do you do before to do the tasting in the competition hey i’m gonna i’m gonna switch because you don’t see me i’m like in the dark here okay yeah it’s gonna take one minute okay i’m just just turning up the camera yeah it’s going to take one minute okay pay attention this is important every day okay that’s better guys sorry for that don’t worry okay so it’s better but it’s not true let’s try to bring that light closer ah yeah you put it in front of you yeah yeah like that okay so here we are so the idea here is the same with football i go to football pitch and i see father and mother telling the young kid oh you didn’t do well you didn’t shoot or you didn’t pass what are you doing i mean this is not gonna get your kid to become better it can push him to persevere but at some point you don’t win with negativity so when you want to taste and have a good day or whatsoever one of the thing that is very important to do is to think about a place where you are in security where you are happy where you are well you know so you were talking about meditation i’m not really doing meditation before tasting but i’m trying to close my eyes or to think about something positive something that i love when i was a young people a young a young boy i was going to sleep and i couldn’t sleep and my mother my grandmother they used to tell me think about something beautiful and you’re going to fall asleep think about a nice field with roses think about your friends at school think about things that you love that makes you feel good you need to feel good to be good okay what you say is what you are so that’s the first tip the second thing that i start realizing with competition is a very funny story one day i was studying i think it was for bestselling of the americas studying a lot a lot a lot every day like military you know boom boom boom boom boom and it was the the birthday of my father-in-law so my wife she said we need to go to the country to celebrate my father’s birthday and in my mind i was like i don’t give a [ __ ] about this about my father-in-law i don’t want to celebrate his birthday i have a competition to win stop bugging me but you know in in a good marriage you need to do effort and i finished i didn’t say that to my wife i was thinking it but i said okay let’s go it was a winter day there was a little bit of a snowstorm i mean we went to the country and the place where my father-in-law lives is where my wife was born and it’s the same village where i was born about 500 people live in the village very small town and we had a dinner we had a little bit of a laugh uh we had a nice cake to finish you know simple family dinner you know anniversary uh or should i say birthday yeah when i went to the house i um i look at the scenery outside the field the wind the snow the darkness of the 9th of march it was and i said to myself wow i really feel like home here it’s a special place you know i really love it not at my father-in-law’s place but in the village i feel like really good the day after i have a practice a training session for the competition the day i arrive i arrive not prepared without studying without being obsessed by anything i just arrived and i did it and it was one of the best day of my life i felt so good and i start asking myself questioning myself you know what yeah you can train as much as you want but life is about momentum and peaking at the right time it doesn’t matter if during the season you are the best team in the nfl if you go to the super bowl and you lose to the new york giants talk to tom brady and randy moss best team in the nfl 17 win the best quarterback of all time one of the greatest wide receiver they come to the super bowl flat nothing they lose against eli manning and the new york giants the odds in las vegas was crazy but they lost why because they didn’t peak at the right moment it’s about momentum you know life is multiple cycle sometimes it’s good sometimes it’s bad it doesn’t matter think about you marco you had covid you had a business a family and this and that and suddenly nothing and you start doing those instagram and continue to us all and we had a conversation and i’m a little bit lost i don’t know what to do i mean i used to do a lot of business with people and being in front of people and i cannot anymore where are we going with the crisis hotels in mexico crazy tourists crazy nobody’s is traveling anymore okay it’s about momentum there’s things you can control there’s things you cannot control but you need to control yourself and if you taste good if you taste bad is you only you so why not put yourself in a good condition before before before tasting think about it a wedding or baptism baptism is always the best you can feel the energy in the church because everybody is in a good mindset and i believe a lot into that if you think positive things positive happens to you if you think about well you know things happens to you so if you want to have a good day you start your day with a beautiful smile nice cup of coffee and even if it’s not an easy day you say well i’ll do my best and that’s it and i really think that by projecting yourself positively in the future or in the next hour on the next 10 minutes you will and i’m not here to do that kind of speech but you asked me the question you will sum up the result you will somehow get the result for me there’s no way intention it’s not about visualization or any of that [ __ ] there’s people talking about that and that’s okay maybe it works for me it’s about the intention when you love you love when you give you give when you share you share so it’s the same thing with tasting you go the stress is there why the stress is theirs because you care but at the end of the day the intention do it with the intention and good thing is gonna happen you know and it’s a it’s a lot about learning too it’s a learning curve you know you need to fall to stand up again like a baby you know you need some time to hurt yourself to feel what is pain but you need also to go through joy and good time and so on you know when it’s raining it’s rainy but it will be sunny after the rain and when it’s too sunny and we need rain for the field because the avocado needs to grow it’s going to be rainy at some point but we don’t control that we don’t control that yeah wow it’s it’s a very very good advice i think to be positive it’s all about the attitude as you mentioned yeah i agree with you and you you change my mind immediately in another way to think about a contest because sometimes when you are more focused in theory practicing you never think about this kind of situations it’s very important to to know your point of view and i really really appreciate it so in terms of our tech and techniques i always have problems with different applications that gives me some problems i would say for example uh when you taste brunellos versus barolos uh sometimes i said oh this is a brunei no no no this is a barolo at the end of the time both of them are from italy very very similar but sometimes it’s very hard for me to understand those differences the same thing happens to me with rioja and pinot noir but in all vintages for example and same thing with the chablis with some sensors i don’t know because the minerality it’s too much and things like that so okay i don’t know if you can get me okay i will help you but what you are asking is very very very fine-tuning okay okay you need to understand that let’s say you are repairing cars right you are repairing cars it’s your job i mean you’ve seen it all you’ve been doing it for the 30 years i mean you are a very good mechanic but then if you want to work in formula one is about very small detail so what you’re talking about is very small detail here okay very small detail and you know details is hard you know the everything is in details the difference between a very good taco and a good taco is that they take the tortilla and they put it on the meat before very small detail but it changed the taco you know but if you don’t know if it’s not in your culture and you don’t pay attention you’re not doing that and you have a dry taco and when you eat it’s dry so anyway what i want to say is that if you take brunello for me the biggest difference is in the tannins both are iron tannins and very very dry but bagolo tends to uh it’s about texture for me it’s a little bit more like needle tanning like very small tannin and they attack your gum not your cheeks your tongue everything but your gum as well okay so that’s tactile but then you need to taste taste to taste this that’s for me that’s the main difference then if you talk about older wine like rioja and pinot noir well old wine they don’t smell like fruit anymore they just smell like old wine so you need to pay attention to the texture and then again rioja is always always with oak aging and new oak aging and often american oak so you have this profile of coconut and you have this profile of sandalwood and esparto you know like that feel of almost almost like um dusty something like a red urch you know like when the wind goes in the desert as opposed to pinot noir which is a little silkier why pinot noir is legendary is because it’s satin like you know very delicate but you need to pay attention because it’s small details yeah yeah and then chablis and sansei well chevrolet chevron sunset is virtually neighbors same soils same latitude different great varietal very mineral in both case but there is something very different if you think about sunset it’s sauvignon blanc sauvignon blanc is aromatic okay a lot of green what we call pyrazine so kind of green bell pepper asparagus peas anything that is green mint thai basil cilantro whatever it tastes green and it’s aromatic chardonnay it tastes like nothing and the reason why chardonnay is planted everywhere on the planet is because it’s a good translator of tewa depending where it’s planted it’s a great chardonnay for coming from california great chardonnay coming from chablis great shiny coming from australia great chardonnay coming from spain it’s a very versatile grape right now because if you think chardonnay it’s it tastes like nothing so you need to put it in new oak so it tastes buttery and creamy and there is no new oak in chablis so what they do is they steer the leaves so the dead cell of yeast that eat the sugar to produce alcohol they stir it and when you stir the leaves you have the fresh bread aroma and you have the the the malolactic that goes into it why because it’s so up north that if you drink chevrolet with no malolactic it tastes you need to take tons you know anti rough flocks pills so it always smell like creamy or something like creme fraiche or crema mexicana or even somebody said one day it smelled like when the baby like you know yes don’t add any ring in sunset why because it’s aromatic so when you have aromatic varietal you don’t need to add another aroma to it it’s already aromatic so i would say that the detail between chablis and sunset is a lot on the creaminess the least earrings so something yeasty or something creamy which you never really have in salsa apart maybe from two producers that do things but you know this is again it’s detail because there will always be an exception you know always be an exception canada one gold cup it’s an exception it’s an exception an exception it will not happening yeah yeah i agree wow here we have two questions and jose sandoval is asking how many wines do you use for this daily training exercise uh you don’t need to taste a lot because the more you taste the less attention you pay but you need to do it every day so if you taste too wine every day at the end of the year you will taste a 600 wine it’s a lot okay but you know like when i was working in a restaurant we always take a little bit of a taste but instead of just checking if it’s cork or no cork i pay attention you know so it’s about paying attention and trust me two weeks ago uh for some uh reason we have a discussion with my wife and she said okay let’s try to stop drinking i stopped drinking completely okay from one day to another and i continued to taste and i was paying attention even more when you slow down you pay attention imagine you take a fork or you take a taco or whatever and you take a molly and molly molly is very good example because molly is very complex right very complicated to make every bite you take it you chew and you think about what you are eating and the flavor not necessarily trying to find the spice but just realizing that you are in what we call in french plan conscience so full awareness of what you are going through instead of just eating and saying oh it’s good i’m eating i need to i’m starving i’m eating you are full awareness by being full awareness you’re paying attention and then suddenly you’re realizing oh that molly is no good it’s powder they used the packet of moly or wow that molly is made by somebody that understand molly because there’s balance of that and balance of that and it’s so so complex and long and da da da da but if here alexis soulier go to mexico never add mole in his life where do i start i have my own background of i know what is good food and bad food but i never had mole so i start somewhere where i need to start somewhere i need to pay attention and then i go with marco and we taste five different mole and then at the end marco didn’t say anything to me and i said listen i think the first movie was like this a second like this and then he can explain me the subtleties even though it’s not part of my culture i am intelligent enough to understand the context around molly how it’s made why there is chocolate why the the chicken is poached why it’s done that way and why this one is very good so on and so on and so on the same thing with wine if you are not paying attention you don’t need to taste a thousand wine it’s not about the quantity it’s about the quality is like me and marco i don’t see him a lot but when we see each other we take the time we have a good laugh we take care of each other it’s meaningful you know yeah i don’t see him every week i see him maybe once a year but this is pre-covered but when we see each other he’s a friend i think the time if we take a coffee we take a coffee we are not on the cell phone rushing after something else we we care it’s the same thing if you decide to smell the wine you need to take your time stop trying to find things let the wine talk to you speak recognize pay respect pay attention you do this twice a day two different wine in one year from now you can present yourself to a master summa challenge i trust trust me you don’t need much you just need to be quality when you’re there don’t do it to say that you’ve done it yeah last thing i work in three michelin star restaurant okay it costs 500 u.s for one meal they receive the plate they take the phone they take a picture i go to see the guests i say listen if you have more pleasure telling instagram that you are having this food then eating the food you don’t need to stay for long we do a photo shoot and it’s going to be done you don’t need to pay for the meal we do a photoshoot every month for our instagram account i will give you the picture don’t come here to lose your time and pay 500 us dollar to take picture of food [Laughter] you eat i mean you you are journalists what what is what what’s going on you know but this is the world we live in and we need to respect each other yeah if you are you are doing things you better do something else and if you don’t feel like being there do something else do something that you like yeah yeah i agree wow i will start i will i will stop uh posting updates in my instagram hey marco this is about business i don’t know i don’t like to do that i don’t like to do that but this is part of the new reality if you stop doing it you are not in the 21st century and you are missing on something because i love looking at your picture and your stories the only thing that i say is that if you take 20 minutes before eating your steak because you need to take picture and text your community and blah blah blah you’re not eating steak anymore yeah taking a picture okay so it’s the same thing with wine you know like i’m not telling you oh be focused all the time the the worst thing with passion is that the closest thing to passion is obsession you don’t want to be obsessed you take a picture you take a picture if you start being obsessed by your cell phone different level yeah yeah i agree yeah um and we have a question from roberto roberto chris yes thank you hi pierre er robert from mexico city i have a question about the temperature the temperature in wines for testing training should be the same like in service because i have in my mind that supports you in service is i’m sorry to achieve the pleasure but i don’t know if that temperature can help me to collect the the more possible information about that wine yeah i mean it’s a good question i think a professional tasting or tasting wine trying to blind taste is very different than enjoying wine okay and it’s the same thing with food there is optimal temperature but obviously if the wine is too cold we don’t smell a lot if the wine is too hot we kind of um we perceive things differently see if you drink coca-cola ice cold if you drink coca-cola hot then the same if you drink coca-cola with no bubbles or with bubbles it’s not the same it’s still the same coca-cola so of course temperature in back the perception but realistically if you are looking at the competition most of the one would be served around the same temperature so maybe 18 degree for the red and 10 degree for uh for the white then it depends you know i’m just saying that as to give you a range everybody has their different standard but it’s true that if you want to to find the wine to have always taste at the same temperature is is good but imagine that you always taste at the same temperature and in the competition they decide it’s a different temperature you need to be able to adapt i think to go back to your question tasting professionally is very different than enjoying wine in in a dinner scenery you know um i like personally when i go to mexico unless i’m inside uh i like to have the wine red white rose always in an ice bucket because it’s so hot that when you pour that much even if it’s at four degree in one minute it is already at the good temperature same thing when i go to spain and portugal and italy after it i go in in tapas bar and they keep the wine on the counter on the shelf and i say i want the ice bucket and they look like me oh [ __ ] tourists come on man put the red one in the ice bucket i don’t want to drink a red wine that is the temperature of my coffee especially that it stayed on the shelf all day but this is me um i mean i think also that perception is different when it’s hot when it’s cold the way we taste is different when it’s summer we want to eat certain things when it’s winter we want to eat other things and one is no different and the temperature one is no different you know if you drink a nice glass of port and a big piece of blue cheese when it’s july in mexico but when it’s december and it’s christmas it makes sense yeah okay thank you so much thank you and we here we have another question how to blind taste blends it is more complicated yeah it is somehow because you know when you have a single expression it’s like if you if you listen to uh celine dion or if you listen to john lennon it’s one guy if you listen to the beatles or if you listen to black sabbath it’s a group so it’s two different philosophy one is the pinnacle of a single individual pinot noir blah blah blah whatever a blend is multiple gray varietal that adds a little bit of everything into the symphony so you’re going to pay attention even more because uh you’re gonna be into details and whatsoever but let’s be honest for one second okay i want to be completely transparent with you guys if you think about classic wine in the world blends are fairly rare bordeaux yeah chattanooga what else are yeah that’s it most of the wine that are classic are mano varietal single varietal so if you are start starting to think and imagine that it’s a symphony and instead of being one singer well you can start thinking about bordeaux though that’s pretty much it there’s a lot of blend but most of the blend are grown in a place where a single varietal cannot express itself by itself most of the place that do single varietal they are at the northern limit of being there riesling doesn’t grow north of germany pinot noir doesn’t grow north of burgundy except maybe in champaign but they do a sparkling wine it’s completely different cabernet franc doesn’t grow north of loire valley sierra doesn’t grow north of kotrochi it stop growing so because it’s at the snorton latitude same thing with san jose it’s at this pinnacle but when you go in south of france in south of italy in mexico because it’s too warm to grow mostly those varietal you need a lot of different varietal to add to the mix because you are not at the pinnacle of something but mexico has the pinnacle of agave you know agave doesn’t go north of mexico that’s why nobody produced tequila that is why it is the pineal of this product and you need to think about that you know like you need to think about that in a lot of local product in the americas that are native to our land i produce maple syrup and north of my region there is no maple tree and i really start reflecting on that while i was doing the project and so on if you think about it when you are at the northern limit of something you are at the pinnacle also of something and you see the same thing in in in the u.s if you go to north of florida there’s a lot of pekin it’s the northern limit where the trees grows and they are delicious if you go in the desert of california in palms palm desert it’s the northern limit where you can grow dates and they are delicious you know so on and so on and so on we can give so many examples yeah yeah well another question and cecile is asking how can i describe wine that is not complex but it’s good what describers can i have i think simple is the is the world that describe it the most but you know what is a simple wine and what is a complex one for me a simple wine is one or two category of aroma if you see it smell like strawberry and it smells like spices this is two family of aroma but if you see it smell like strawberry cherry and raspberry this is one family of aroma three aroma one family it’s the same thing it’s red fruit but if you start saying let’s say we have an old bordeaux in front of us oh it smelled like cassis it smelled like green bell pepper it smell like pencil shaving it smell like roasted coffee beans it smell like hurt it smell like leather you’re like six different family of aroma so it is complex you know if you smell an apple it’s not like an apple and that’s it but if you smell a apple compote with a little bit of cinnamon a little bit of cane sugar a little bit of um of nutmeg and then it’s put into a tart with a beautiful crust made with lard it’s it’s much more complex there’s luck i mean you eat the apple fresh but you eat the apple pie it’s not the same thing more complex there’s more flavor something is baked there’s spices there’s the crust then you put a little bit of ice cream on it it’s not the same it’s the same apple and i think you know when it’s simple it’s simple smell like it and that’s it and to say that the one is simple is as important as saying that it smell like fresh strawberries for me because it’s part of the identity of the wine i’m sorry for the sorry for the interruption hola yeah because there were some sounds here but i emanated hello yeah can you hear me yeah i can hear you man yeah okay i’m sorry and here’s another question uh how do you choose or delete delimitate your budget when you for your everyday tasting what would you be a okay budget per bottle uh that’s a good question when we are training yeah this is crazy because you know money is always like anything if you go to university it costs money so if you want to train it’s going to cost money and all my life i mean i was working in the restaurant and using their stock and blah blah blah and nowaday i receive a lot of simple and i buy a lot of wine and blah blah blah but you know to be honest after 15 years in this business it is much easier for me to taste anything that i want if i ask for than any before but when i was a young guy it wasn’t the case you know and it’s weird because when you win a competition people they pay attention you don’t go to competition they don’t care about you that’s the way business work when you win a competition you wake up in the morning and you go to bed at night you are the same exact person but the people they don’t see you the same right so when i was younger i start making group of tasting and even today i still have a tasting group this morning we taste with my tasting group we are five or six people so if we buy for 200 wine it cost us twenty thirty dollar but if i buy for two hundred dollar wine for myself it’s a lot of money and i don’t wanna waste money so i wanna drink the wine and then it’s dangerous but when you split it’s an american concept the tasting group concept but i believe into it people meet once a week bring the wine everybody to their turn it’s very hard at the start because we don’t know why and how and this and that but it’s the best way community care people that are trying to do the same thing have the same objective and you split the bill because to start buying simple uh wine by yourself is very hard and a lot of the classic wine are famous chattanooga burgundy bordeaux rioja whatever and they cost a lot of money so if i buy a bottle of pomegranate and i never had palm oil in my life and it’s 200 u.s if i don’t have people to share with me a little bit of glass of wine to experience i mean it’s impossible i even me even me not that i’m better than anybody but i don’t want to pay 200 for a bottle of wine it’s too much you know i taste those wine i know those wine but between me and you i mean do do you think that my tongue has the taste to taste 200 bottle of wine no and at that point marco you did those tasting where you were sharing really cool wine that’s another way yeah sharing is caring you know if you are a corporate business and you pay wine at a very high price it’s a different story but if you are a young somebody and you need to pay hundred dollars of dollar for a bottle of wine it’s crazy so you need to make friends and make groups of tasting that’s the only advice i can give you yeah for sure yeah we can have a group i mean besides this we can create some groups to taste and i will let you know uh in in the week during the week what we can do and you know marco um there’s something i saw with the pandemic with the kovin 19 pandemic before the wine producer they were coming to canada to us to mexico they we taste the wine blah blah blah we buy the wine but today they cannot do it so they are shipping small bottle of wine so we can do a little tasting i think that’s genius nobody never talked about that before the pandemic but think about it two ounces of of wine there’s 25 ounce in about all 26. you can do 10 or 12 people you split the price everybody receive their little bottle you do a zoom session boom takes one hour even if you want marco we could do i give you an example because now with the technology with zoom and everything everything is there we you could tell me hey pierre i’m gonna go to the the store i’m gonna buy those two or three wine okay you buy your two or three one i buy them in canada we taste live the same wine everything is possible today everything but you need to do it on a regular basis because most of the tasting group they last for one two three four weeks and then it’s done and if you don’t practice you will not become better every week is difficult but you need to persevere yeah sure i will do it and for sure and i i will you know i thank you my friend for for this and um jose sandoval is asking what varieties do you think are the easiest to identify in blind tasting and on what do you think are the most difficult it’s different for everybody very different for everybody but you know personally i i always think that in a white wine i had trouble with gruner vetliner and albarino very difficult for me to find those great varietal but very easy to find let’s say sauvignon blanc from new zealand and i think it’s easy for a lot of people because it’s so i mean it’s so unique yeah and then in red wine i say that um i had difficulties by finding uh um i mean it’s not true i mean i’m trying to find i mean for a long time i had difficulties finding the difference between american and american merlot and american cabernet sauvignon because you know uh cabernet sauvignon has a little bit of green but in california they are so ripe but then i live in california and i got drunk on cabernet sauvignon american cabernet sauvignon and i drink cabernet sauvignon and now i think i can i can see what is american cabernet sauvignon but you know sometimes we taste we taste we taste but you also need to drink the wine so you have the full experience yeah it’s very important but in terms of red wine i think lois valley cabernet is very easy to find australian shiraz is very easy to find but again let me be uh real for a moment if you live in canada if you live in london where i work you are able to taste all those wine from the world every day if you want you go to the grocery store you buy them boom done but if you live in congo if you live in indonesia if you live in mexico if you live in bolivia you don’t necessarily have access to those wine and what is important here is that what is easy for you is not easy for me and vice versa you know i live in australia so for me shiraz from australia is i serve it every day every day for lunch for dinner i know all the great producer it’s it’s there because it’s also memory yeah i live in california cabinet souvenir easy i went to napa valley every week super easy it’s also experience but then you know what is easy for you might not be easy for me and when you are blind tasting i mean nobody is deciding what’s easy for any for for for any other competitor okay in tasting what percentage is knows and what is taste for you 70 30 if i need to do a percentage seventy percent tell me today and thirty percent of those because you know yeah the nose you smell and then you put in the palate then you feel tactile you do ritual faction so you smell at the same time that you have it on the palate and then you swallow or you spit i mean that’s where you are confirming everything that you see on the nose or you’re changing so i think the palette is so important you know and and the problem that i see i will tell you i see people i will tell you what not to do and what to do okay not to do okay too much too much movement in the mouth impossible to pay attention when you eat something delicious you go to quinton do you eat like this no no no no take your time you chew you taste the different flavors you take your time you pay attention now when you taste one you should do the same when i see people shaking the wine in the mouth like a washing machine it’s impossible it’s impossible to taste like that and be a good taster maybe it is possible for certain people because it became a habit and i don’t judge but i like to let the wine sit feel like you feel the texture of a rose chicken or you feel the texture of a nice taco or you feel the texture of anything i don’t need more than that i let it sit i touch my cheek it touched my my teeth my gum ritual faction not too aggressive then i spit and the less you taste the better it is and that’s why you need to pay attention because if you taste four or five times the same wine your brain is telling you okay i don’t taste anymore the thing that happened with uh sorry my phone is ringing but the thing i want to say is that let’s say that you go into a taqueria or a restaurant and it smell very good after five or ten minutes you don’t smell like it smell very good yeah your brain is blocking so if you taste five or six times the same thing you are not serving yourself you better taste once twice pay attention that’s it but when you drink very good wine let’s say you me and marco we sit at the restaurant in arientina gaucho a nice piece of steak and we drink catena zapata early vintage nin casia vineyard very complex one we taste the wine we eat the steak and then you go back to the one you go back to the one and it’s fascinating the wine is changing all the time and that what is also high quality expensive wine is not something that stays the same if you buy potato chip they all taste the same but if you drink great wine every sip is different and that’s what is intellectually stimulating because you become curious about going to the next sip same thing with food complex food good food tasty food there is good food that makes you feel good but when you eat very high-end food it should be like celebral like a picasso you know picasso is art it brings emotion it’s celebral is the heart it’s the taste so he brings an emotion it’s celebral and it’s confusing if you put a dog in front of a picasso there is no emotion but human we have we are sensitive that’s why you need to pay attention okay perfect so roberto do you raise your hand you want to say something yes yes please uh pure another question um for beginners in training the wine testing how do you recommend to start the training with the same variety from different regions here to contrast the differences between that region or is tasting the different varieties at the same time to contrive the differences between the grapes or literally start with one variety yeah i think roberto you have multiple questions and one question so i will try to answer i think great varietal is where you should start because between me and me me and you sorry me and you if you say that the one is back by esco and it’s bavalu or if you say it’s barbaloo and it’s barbara school you know the two villages are next to each other you know so there’s no difference for me it’s not where we are trying to to be smart this is very small detail but if you don’t know that nebulo is the great varietal of barbaresco and barolo and what tastes nebulou it’s going to be very hard to become a good taster you know so i think there’s a lot of theory into tasting and understanding because i did competition and all my life i’ve been learning things reading learning going to school and then very recently i realized that i need to stop to learn but i need to start understand when you understand it’s much easier to retain the information where you are trying to learn 500 villages or premier cru in burgundy it makes zero sense but when you understand that it was called le zanzenya because it was the teachers of a monastic order that at the plot of land and that’s why it was all these women that took care of that place and it’s very high quality and not so well then it makes sense you understand when you understand something it makes sense and one thing that is important into why is to have a little bit of understanding of latin language italian portuguese spanish you know german english because when you understand what’s written on the bottle it’s much easier to understand what’s inside the bottle you know what i mean yeah yeah got it thank you well well a lot of a lot of things to learn my friend thank you thank you very much for all these advices i mean it was very clearly precise and not only about techniques not only about the experiences also about the very deep words that you gave us something in me is now it’s i now i got the the writing for my blind tasting my personal blind tasting because let me tell you something i think that i use in my life too much the nose instead of the texture or palette and i pay too much attention on that part and now now i think that i have to come back again and to pay more attention in the texture of the wines and and to see the differences because yeah hey marco do you smell the taco or do you eat the taco you need to start eating the wine instead of smelling the wine yeah yeah yeah probably i smell too much and i drink now i drink too much as well but not not paying attention not paying attention yeah yeah for sure well thank you thank you my friend you are a master and i really like the way that you teach that you share and it’s very amazing the tips that you gave us today i don’t know guys you have any other question before we finish uh it’s the time is the right time can i ask the last question yes robert please i promise you’ll draw a question no no no it’s okay you are the only one who wants to talk thank you i believe that before in a competition before they start the the testing the bottle of wines will be up in it sometime before to start then did you think there is a good idea for training he opened my bottles of wine sometime before to start my my training because i think that time can change the aromas or senses in the wine so roberto what do you do for a living you’re an engineer yes yeah so you are trying to think how the competition is built to figure out the final result so if you don’t understand how it works it is impossible for you to find the solution that’s how it works in your brain now you need to stop paying attention to all those small details focus on what’s in the class try to be try to stop being a robot and always replicating the same movement and feel listen to your little voice to your feeling you have feeling you have emotion you have talent don’t try to overthink the competition what you are dealing with right now is small detail it’s like somebody trying to make a coffee should i eat the kettle at 180 degree fahrenheit should i wait the coffee should i wait the amount of sugar i put in the coffee should i take the temperature of the milk that i put in the coffee should i choose the type of earth where in what is made my cup of coffee so i can enhance my experience of coffee drinking roberto start drinking the coffee please because what you are is very intelligent because no trust me you are detail-oriented you are thinking of how the competition is built try to control the environment like a scientist and this is brilliant but at the end of the day you still need to taste the wine so you can train opening the wine in front controlling the temperature you can try to taste in the same glass that’s going to be there in the competition but you are focusing so much on the final result that you’re going to miss the bus of tasting the wine because it’s a wine tasting competition not a wine temperature not a wine opening and not a glassware of wine competition so you need to go back to the first objective tasting the wine that’s what it should be your main focus then if you control all the small details of course it can help you know when you are doing pastry you wait everything the salt the sugar the flour the liquid ingredient and you do always the same result the pastry is always the same result when you cook you cook with a little bit of spice and today is a little bit more humid so you need to work that way put a little bit less liquid and da da da da da so it’s a little bit more intuitive if you want to be a good taster you need to be a good balance between technique what you are trying to put up front and intuition it’s a good balance between the two if you are too much into technique you’re gonna be like a robot if you are too much into intuition you’re gonna be like a clown so yes of course it makes a difference by pre-opening your wine by controlling the temperature by controlling the glass where all small detail make it this a a difference i told you you need to pay attention and and the difference is in detail but if you are unable to taste and you don’t know that pinot noir grows in burgundy you can control all of those detail it’s not going to bring you anywhere man okay thank you thank you so much perfect so we have last question oscar you want to say something okay thank you er well maybe it’s linked to the previous question and reply because yes how to balance your senses and your experience in tasting versus a methodology or there are many different technologies so you could have your own or a technique to to do the blind tasting no because in my case i was many years a wine lover and with no real technique and i enjoy it but then i decide to to go and explore the techniques and to go through certifications and things like that so i went to a certain point that i was a little bit confused between my my senses or my experience and the technique and most of the time finally finding the right balance was a little bit difficult for me so how to balance that and and and don’t hesitate because sometimes if you hesitate you got it wrong and for example in my case also when i do blind tasting i put some very slight music there is even some music for wine tasting and it helps so what do you think about that well askar you told me all about your life and i appreciate but what is the question yeah how to balance your senses and your experience in tasting versus a technique yeah so it’s a very good question because you know we eat three times a day you know but do you eat to survive or because you are hungry or you eat because you want to have a nice meal with friends or you nee you eat because you enjoy assert escamoles and it’s this time of the year when they are out or you eat because you are a professional taster and you are tasting testing the menu of the saint ridges in mexico city five different reason to taste you know you’re talking in your story what i see is that you are amateur enjoying wine and then you want to understand what is enjoyable into wine so you’d go to different formation and blah blah blah and then you learn standardization you know the word standardization trying to standardize something to optimize something so that’s where you are at before you were just drinking having fun emotion curious fun and then suddenly you get stuck up into that mold of standardized medium plus this medium minus this and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah this is what we call a curve so i don’t know where you are in that curve but you need to find a balance because life is about equilibrium so you were the amateur that didn’t know anything about wine that was drinking wine and having fun you went to the professional kind of thing that you need to learn how to taste wine and blah blah blah blah blah blah and then you lost the joy of drinking wine because it becomes so celebral and then you got to be in between understand what you’re drinking but enjoy what you’re drinking and i think a good taster is a good mix between the two if you are too technical you are almost like a robot and if you are too intuitive like you were at the beginning when you were amateur you’re a clown because you will try to guess things so you need to use the tools when it’s right the problem with all the standardization and optimization is that people they don’t reflect anymore they use this to find the solution so you have tools in your um in in your mind that you learn at your different classes you have the tools you just need to understand when to use the right tool do you take a screwdriver to it on a nail no you take a hammer but it’s the same thing with one tasting get different tools understanding the process but then you still gotta live the process because it’s not only understanding and having the toll that makes you a great chef for example the people they have professional kitchen great copperware great ingredient and they cook like [ __ ] even if they follow the recipe because the recipe is on internet but it’s like jimi hendrix you know the partition is on internet you can play jimmy and bricks and you can play jimmy and drinks bubble but nobody can play jimmy and drake’s like jimmy and drake’s so even though you know you understand you master all the technique in any field you still need to do it that’s what i was trying to explain to roberto he’s absolutely right he’s ashing down the process and understanding it and trying to assimilate and asking questions because he’s smart but he still need to taste the wine you know okay and when we are enjoying as an amateur we are not thinking about that because it’s pure pleasure okay wow thank you thank you pierre thank you my friend so oh i don’t want to take your time too much now uh it’s it’s been a pleasure to be with you tasting and with all this information uh i will i will i will come back again to do like a a beginner i will try to do it again you know it’s one of the things that i love from wine that you can start at any time and learning in a different way now i will try to do it in a different way following some things that i get from you today it’s very amazing the way that you are tasting and i this kind of things surprise me every day so guys any other comment questions otherwise i would say to my friend pierre thank you thank you uh thank you very much and i hope to see you very soon bro anywhere peace marco and uh let’s let’s try to do it you know anytime you want to do a small session we send a small bottle we taste we can even say what is the wine and just describe the one and try to understand them whatever you want you know at the end of the day like i said you ask me and i will show up and one year ago it would have been impossible to think that we can have this discussion online and zoom impossible yeah i didn’t even know what was zoom and today you can sit in mexico i can sit in canada and we can have a tasting session and as soon as the border reopen boom i go to mexico we take two four five six days if you want if people they want to meet at some place and we do tasting i mean it’s so i mean i don’t mind to give you the partition because i know you cannot play it like me no i’m kidding i’m kidding i’m kidding everyone plays different i believe and believe i believe in giving the recipe more than hiding the recipe it’s two different philosophy great chef they don’t want to know they don’t want to tell you what’s in the recipe i am not in that philosophy i give everything and if you can do better than me i hope somebody do better than me you know at the end of the day yeah it’s different yeah that’s why we’re friends we are in the same road the same kind of view i mean the same philosophy i always like to share it yeah yeah bro thank you thank you so yeah i contact you as soon as i create the group i will contact you for sure and guys thank you very much for your time also and we keep in touch okay my friend bye [Music] bro