Link to Episode HERE.
What if everything you knew about wine and food pairing was wrong?
This week’s guest, Tim Hanni, Master of Wine, drops bomb after bomb on the wine world’s biggest myths: from the nonsense of “red wine with red meat” to why sweet wine drinkers may actually have more taste buds.
We also get deeply personal. Tim shares his journey from drinking three bottles a day to getting sober, while still working in the wine industry. We talk perceptual science, umami, ADHD, and why true hospitality means adapting to each individual guest, not showing off your wine vocabulary. And that’s just for starters (he may even include his actual cell number in the convo).
🔍 Expect to Learn:
- Why wine language is broken
- The science of perception and taste
- Umami, steak, and red wine pairing myths
- The real reason sweet wine gets a bad rap
- Tim’s story of addiction, recovery, and reinvention
Mentioned in our conversation:
I talk to people in and around the service industry space, trying to make sense of this wild, beautiful mess of a life. You can find more of my work at my blog, and all my social links are at the bottom of that page.
Classic Episodes You May Like:
-#3:My 1st and Most Powerful Conversation with Shane Alexander
As always, I’m just here taking notes, trying to figure out what it all means.
Cheers
Transcript (note, not cleaned up yet, to be done!)
So Tim. Yes. For the listeners out there, what is it that you do? That’s a big question. My wife would like to know that. I’m sort of phasing into retirement. So I just, I turned 73 in February and I’ve been at this since 1966. So there’ll be what I don’t even want to think. So I’m a consultant for the industry. I used to do a lot of work in China through the past almost 30 years, but obviously since COVID and with the ebb and flow of life that’s gone away. But I work with wineries, wine organizations. My focus has become in two areas that I work. The pragmatic half of my bipolar nature is the business of wine. And so I’ll work with wineries, restaurant operations used to do a huge amount of international work for all sorts of hotel restaurant chains and so forth. And then I’ve got a company called winebusiness.com and we provide online, as far as we know, the only readily available wine business education program in combination of videos and financial workbooks that are proprietary that we’ve created. And then with that, I’m on faculty at Washington State University and Linfield University and work with Hong Kong Polytechnic Institute, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and a number of other universities in their wine education areas. And then the second half of what I do is evolved from a dissonance I’ve always had with wine and food pairing to actually a study of perceptual sciences. So in perceptual sciences, being defined as how sensations in our sensory system actually create our perspectives, our opinions, the meaning that we have of the universe, including wine. And the area of my focus is how vastly different two individuals can be, regardless of their education and their training and so forth. So I look at the genetics, what’s called the neural pathway conditioning that creates positive or negative response to stimulus over time. So how we acquire tastes and how we dispose of tastes and that kind of stuff. Neuroplasticity, which is learning and actual changes in the brain and then psychology. So those are the four areas that make us all unique in what we perceive. But in the context of wine, it really goes a long way to answer why even experts can’t agree on crap. It’s just everybody, oh, my palate’s the best palate and we all have to learn the right words to use and so on and so forth. But just this research alone crashes the whole wine and food pairing bullshit. If I can use that word. Oh, yeah. No, you’re among friends here. You can use any of the words. Oh, anyways, that’s kind of what I do. Okay. So yeah, that is one of the things I wanted to touch. I’m glad you did that right away. So this phrase I hear from you and some of your interviews, perceptual individualism. So that is the area that you’ve been focusing on. So are we doomed then? Is there no right answer when it comes to wine? Well, here’s the fascinating thing. Nobody’s doomed. In fact, the opportunity just kind of explodes from what you’ve learned in your wine education and so have you ever had any section of anything is, okay, now we’re actually going to learn about perceptual, the perceptual system in our perceptual differences and how to accommodate people that don’t understand the complex language and the metaphors and the BS, the descriptive language. Have you ever seen anything like that in any wine education program? Wine education, no. Hand-to-hand combat, yes. Yes, because other people apply this way. What my work affords the possibility is it can be called adaptive communications. So just from spending a couple of minutes with a person or even moments at a table side, oh, that wouldn’t work. And everybody comes up with the reasons why we shouldn’t change and why we shouldn’t adapt as an industry. And this is the biggest problem facing the industry now is we haven’t adapted to young consumer needs. There’s no conversation with the consumer. It’s, oh, what food are you having? Oh, then you should have this wine. Well, what kind of crap is that? You don’t even know what the person likes. And what we’ve done is we’ve intimidated consumers to the point, the ones that really would like some help would rather lie than tell you what they like, especially sweet wine drinkers. Oh, yeah. No, I’m not going to admit to liking Moscato, even if I do. Yeah, but here’s the funny thing. If you ask a Moscato drinker what wine they like, they’ll make a bad face about the wine they like. But what you don’t know and what you’ve never been taught is somebody liking Moscato or White Zinfandel is one of the number one ways to determine they have the most friggin’ taste buds. They’re not super tasty. They’re not stupid. We’re the dumbasses because we’ve created this thing. Oh, Americans like Coca-Cola or like sweet wine because they grew up on Coca-Cola. But in all your education, and you can’t find this in any of the text in WSET or Master Song materials, up until about 100 years ago in France, French champagne as it was consumed in France was 30% sweeter than Coca-Cola. Oh, yeah. Well, I will say my wife is Russian. So the czars of Russia too, it was even more. 300, we figured Russian champagne was like a lava lamp. You know, there’s a big bubble. You’d open it and go, bop. 300, that’s 30% sugar. And that was the Russian standard. And then we’ve got this language that is just absolute bullcrap. Dry wine is a relative term, but even technically today, dry champagne, sec, technically, legally, is somewhere in the neighborhood of, I think, 1.8 to 3.2% residual sugar. Extra dry, talk about confusing, is the next, then brute, which was a French way of mocking the English for wanting dry wine, because the French wanted it sweet. And so we’ve created this fricking mess. And what’s been lost is the conversation with the consumer without absolutely asinine, ridiculous judgment of their opinions. We have become an industry of inhospitality, because there’s nothing about the consumer involved in any of the education or the program. So it’s us telling people what they should like and why they should like it based on false information. And then we wonder why we’ve got a global problem. And why? I see that soap box. I’m starting to get that soap box. You brought it today. Yeah. And I keep seeing these trends that younger people basically aren’t drinking anymore. I wonder how much of that happens to be health consciousness and how much of it is just, how can you sort head to tells out of any of this? Well, the wine industry ever since I’ve been in it, we absolutely suck at being able to forecast consumer trends, because we don’t understand consumers. Go figure. If you went into a phone store, what would you expect when you say, hi, I’m looking for a new phone? What would you want? Yeah. What would you like? Well, no. I mean, seriously. No, no. I would expect someone to say that. Or like, what are you planning? Are you thinking iPhone? Are you thinking Android? Yeah. What are the, and what features would you like? Because that’s going to help you determine the macro decision iPhone or Android, right? And then, so there’s a very specific decision tree. You don’t walk into a phone and store and somebody starts to tell you what you should have and how it works and the history of it and the chips that are in it and whatever. They have a discussion. How are you going to use it? What features are most important to you? How important is the camera? What kind of apps are you going to use, et cetera, et cetera? What kind of interface do you like? Do you prefer Android? And there are geeks. There are people that have strong opinions that, and they carry around the judgment, oh, you’re an Android user or whatever. But there’s no consumer product in the world that I know where the industry is so abjectly stupid and ignorant about the people who they’re selling to. How’s that? Well, most of the listeners to the show are service industry. So my thought here is, I think back to 15 years ago when I was starting and the best thing that I could do was memorize a few facts about some lines and when asked kind of spit it out. And so I’m wondering for that new server bartender, where do you start? Wine is such a big world that it’s almost hard to get in there. What would you recommend to that new server bartender? So my vision for the world, which will never be realized because I’m almost dead already, it should start with perception. So imagine you go into a wine tasting and say, OK, we’ve got six wines here. We’ve got a sweet white. We’ve got a dry white wine. We’ve got a dry white wine that’s higher alcohol and sort of oaky. And then we’re going to do three red wines. And one’s going to be light and not very high in alcohol and so forth. And then we’re going to have sort of middle intensity. And then we’re going to have some big ass red that’s really strong and intense. And where we’re going to start actually those, we’re going to take you through a little process. This is called phenotyping. It’s from the word phenotype. But we want everybody to understand where you fit in the perceptual world. And then pay attention to how different everybody in this class is. Because when you go out on the floor, you’re going to have people of every walk of life, all levels of sensitivities and so on and so forth. And so there’s simple tests I can start with you. And the first first question is how much do you like salt, Andrew? I would say I’m probably bottom quartile. Like I do not enjoy too much salt. Yeah. OK. Do you know anybody who does love salt to the point? Without a second thought. Yes. Yeah. OK. So what I’d like to tell you, whenever you meet somebody who’s grabbing the salt shaker, they haven’t even tasted their food. Say to them, well, I just learned that that is the number one sign of having the most taste buds and that you experience bitterness at a level other people can’t comprehend. And I have and you should know that because I know people give you a hard time about your preference. But that’s actually what’s going on with your salt preference. Self medication, essentially. No, it’s it’s it’s like putting sunglasses on when you’re out in bright sun sunlight. Well, yeah, I meant more like self correction. You don’t want to. Oh, yeah. They know they need the salt and and there you’ve you’ve probably, I’m guessing, had no education or training on actually why salt is in food and the role that it plays with wine. And so take the bitter pill with a grain of salt if you want to go back centuries. Next time you get a chance, put a little salt and lemon juice on your hands, some strong tannic wine, sip the wine, lick your hand, try the wine, smooth the silk. That’s why they’re doing it. And people don’t add salt because they like the taste of salt. They look they can’t taste the food until they get past the bitterness. And this is very well documented research. This is out in science, but we’re clueless. We’d rather say, oh, you’re killing the food. You’re embarrassing me. I mean, you need to shut the hell up. We need to just get smarter. OK. Now, in your. Let me let me ask you a second question. What happens when you have artificial sweetener? Ah, especially the old ones like like you’re talking like a little Splenda in my coffee, that sort of thing. Yeah, but but the older verse, Splenda was actually created because it doesn’t have a certain characteristics of perceptual diversity. OK. Have you ever had like aspartame or the pink or the blue? Pink or blue? I don’t I may not honestly. I usually don’t have sugar in my coffee. Don’t anyway. OK. Yeah. Yeah. And how Splenda or how Stevia for you? I I’ve never had it. I just I don’t drink sweetened. Yeah, I don’t do the sweetened coffee. Sorry. No, no, that’s a bad example here. Again, this is part of the conversation. What you’ll find, though, is if you ask people, there’s a large percentage of people when they have artificial sweetener. It’s this horrible, metallic, disgusting experience in for other people at sweet. Weird. And so how do you rationalize that? But the reason we ask the question is this. This is part of a process. With your clothes, do you ever find tags irritating? Do you have to buy tagless clothes or cut out tags? I never have. Yeah, never. I mean, this is this is perfect. And then in your coffee, do you ever put a little milk or creamer? I do cream, low fat cream. Yeah. How much do you like or dislike Starbucks coffee? I have done Starbucks coffee. I haven’t had one probably in five years, but there’s a period when I was in college. I did it probably once a day. Not at all. OK, great. So you’re very likely what we call a tolerant phenotype. OK. Now, here’s here’s a challenge. You’re going to think there’s a judgment in here and there isn’t. Tolerant phenotypes have less taste buds, and that’s a good thing. It’s not a bad thing. Tolerant phenotypes have less tactile sensitivity. They have certain traits, they have certain behaviors associated with the perceptual world that they live in. You wouldn’t happen to be colorblind, would you? No, no, I can see color. Yeah. Because it’s 10 percent of men are color. A lot of a lot of people go through life never knowing they’re colorblind. But the highest percentage are in the group that you’re in. I had a friend in college who was colorblind, so I got to see the test. And I was like, wow, you can’t see that that word. Exactly. OK. There it is. You’re very unlikely to have this, but you know how some people hate cilantro. OK, so. So that’s a genetic variation. It’s a cluster, a genetic cluster called OR6A2. I want to taste soapy. And if you have that genetic cluster, it is a speck of it is abjectly disgusting. And yet people in the whenever I do groups of the people who love salt, love me, the people who hate cilantro, love me because I get their world. But other people don’t. So the people who have the OR6A2 are constantly, oh, you haven’t tried cilantro. Oh, oh, try my recipe. You’ll learn to like it. I learned to like it. It’s bullshit. They never will. And it’s not a matter of their palate being mature or this or that. They they have a genetic variation that makes it taste like soap. Yeah. And and how are you going to adapt to that? Julia Child had it. If there was a speck of cilantro in her food, she would send it back and she would say, you should be a little bit more clear about what goes into a dish on your because it was inedible. Yeah. So there are hundreds and very likely thousands of these variations and individuals can have one and not the other and this and that. They’re the general sensitivity. Some people have 500 taste buds. Other people have 12,000. And the people who have 12,000 are the ones that think they have no taste buds. Because they’ve learned this is the neural channel conditioning in in brainless. They’ve been told, oh, you you put too much salt on your food. You must have no taste buds. You they can’t find the descriptors for wine because they’re getting so much input. They’re getting like up to 10, 10 fold the sensory input. So it makes them hard to makes it hard to to single out and articulate certain things because, you know, some people are hearing individual notes and then other other people, it’s just white noise or pink noise. And yeah, when you when you hear the symphony, can you pick out the one violin player? Yeah, exactly. Second seat. Yeah. And you may be able to be trained to do that. So that’s a perfect analogy. OK. Oh, now I know what the violin tastes like. Now I know this. But we what we what we’ve adopted in wine is metaphorical descriptors. The plums and the blueberries. This is a bold wine, a heavy wine. What does that really mean? Because if you take your a Moscato and pour Cabernet into it, the Cabernet will float. Moscato weighs more than Cabernet because of the specific gravity of the sugar. And I and it’s lower in alcohol, the higher the alcohol, which has a much lower specific gravity, the more the clear separation. So heavy wine is an is a contra nem. It means exactly opposite of what the word means. Heavy means weighs more. A dry wine is is what kind of what what do you mean? A wine is wet. So that’s a contra nem because wine isn’t dry. It’s wet. And then on the whole sweetness thing, that’s a train wreck because it’s we haven’t been taught a a proper and industry standard way to describe what a dry wine is. And people will naturally think a tannic wine is a dry wine because of the loss of lubricity and the oral cavity by the denaturing of proteins. And then we take our metaphors and we put them all together. And so I I demand that you do this and anybody who watches this cook a steak. Rare, nice, nice and fatty rib eye, New York strip, whatever the hell you want. No seasoning whatsoever. And you can put a little canola oil on it or something to keep it from sticking. Taste the wine, try the fat, taste the wine. It gets more bitter and more astringent. The whole premise of red wine and red meat is absolute bullshit. Absolute. Try the protein. Oh, so the fat coats your mouth and does this and the because of colloidally suspended phenolics being denatured by proteins in wine making, right? Egg white finding, that kind of stuff. We’ve extrapolated that as pseudoscience to protein in the mouth and that if you have the steak, it’ll restore that. It doesn’t sip of wine, rare piece of steak, sip of wine. It gets more bitter and astringent. It’s complete bullshit. Put salt on it. Guess what? Reduces the bitterness of stringency has nothing to do with. The steak and Moscato lovers, reeseling lovers and for centuries in regions around the world where maybe only white wines grown or sparkling wine or whatever, they’ve had steak with their wines and nobody’s ever complained. It doesn’t overpower it. It’s not this metaphorical military, you know, you’re going to kill the wine or kill the food. Yeah, we just we’ve made all this shit up and you didn’t know that, did you? You know, the thing I’m most surprised about is that steak experiment. So I do want in my head, I’m thinking, is it really the salt that it’s always been reacting with? And I clearly have done it before. So I wish I had a steak right now. I’ve done it with thousands of people. I’ve done it. I’ve I’ve been doing doing this. So after I passed the master of wine exam in 1990, I had a couple of things going on in my life. I was working at Berenger. I was global ambassador. Jansis Robinson had had had actually proclaimed me the guru of wine and food pairing. But deep in my heart, I knew something was really wrong in all this crap. And I knew I could sit down with experts and taste the wine. And one person literally saying this is the best they’d ever had of this type of wine and a person the same exact day, two masters of wine sitting across from each other, actually, in Rutherford, California, one proclaiming this is best best of its type. And the other saying, are you kidding? This is not even commercially acceptable. So how do we then rationalize just the wine and then you throw the wine and food into the mix and one person, oh, I’m getting this clash. They they’re not they’re they’re not harmonizing. And another person’s having this miraculous epiphany of wine and food magic. You know, how do we do it? So I passed the master wine exam. I was getting divorced. I was getting ready to marry the singer in my Rock Motown band. We’ve been married now. What, thirty two? Oh, hell. After tomorrow, it’ll be thirty three years. Happy anniversary, early. Thirty two years, which is also my my sobriety birthday. Thirty two years. Congratulations, relation there, but we can get that. And so I passed the master wine exam. I said, you know what? I’ve got the credential now. I’m going to see if I can run down the sciences and why people can’t agree. And and and also I am a gastronomy trivialist. I’ve been reading LaRus Gastronomy. It’s it’s in my bathroom just next door here on the table. Their advice was pair the wine to the diner, not the dinner. So when you’re serving the lafite and the coat roti and this and that, or if the guests prefer the sweet wines, the sauté and the bar sack, ron wines, which all used to be sweet prior to World War two, all the white ron wines, but we’ve lost all that. And unfortunately, the the the more things progress, the less of this it’s going to get passed on to generations like you. So can it be that simple if you drink what you like and eat what you like? You’ll be happier. And understand what’s called and this is a technical term. Understand that shit happens, which is it’s called a sensory modulation. OK, sensory modulation is the rising and the falling of sensitivity to something easily demonstrated by the idea of brushing your teeth and drinking orange juice. Have you done that? Only once. How’d that go? Yeah, it’s not pleasant. When you have sweet wine or sweet food and dry wine, you will get dependent upon how dry the wine is, how much bitterness and astringency against how sweet the dish is. You will get sensory modulation. So how’s my Moscato going to be with this, you know, mahi mahi with a pineapple mango relish? Well, that’s that’s going to be dependent on two things. One, what’s the flavor profile of the Moscato? Is it a sweeter one, lower alcohol? Shit, you’re going to be fine. But try that with. Oh, I had a central coast chardonnay with this tropical fruit, so it pairs. So so why did food pairing is just this total bullshit thing that goes on in our heads with metaphors and whatever that sets up what’s called a confirmation bias so that if you’re an expert, you go, oh, yeah, I’m getting it, whether you are or not, you’re making it up in your fucking head. And it’s just this is La La land with the Moscato drinkers seriously enjoying their Moscato with it. And if you ever heard of the chef Jeremiah Tower. No, it doesn’t sound familiar. Look, look him up. He’s he’s he was the first chef at Chez Panisse and Oakland credited with with inventing California cuisine and whatever. And and 30 years ago, he had a restaurant in San Francisco, Cisco called Stars. And I had taken him through this, the whole basic program that that didn’t have a lot of the sciences back 30 years ago. But I understood the the modulations and the driver. And he said, oh, I can do this with all my food. And so and that was one of his first experiences. And he said, oh, I can do this with all my food. And so and that was one of his signature dishes was my he my he with with a mango pineapple salsa. And and all here’s and so you get to do this also next time you make a marinara sauce, even if it’s out of a can or whatever, take take the wine you want to serve. Take a sip, take a little bit of the sauce, try the wine again. If it gets more bitter and acidic, just put in a little bit of lemon juice or balsamic for some acidity, add just a teeny titch more salt and the wine will become smooth. Yeah. And he gets to try marinara. And the food will taste better also. That’s that’s the other bonus of all this BS. I am glad that you brought up the lemon juice and the acidity because that was actually the next thing I was going to ask you about, you know, you’re talking salt, flavors, bitterness. I have heard that if you’re betting on one thing to bet on acidity, is that a more reasonable guide in your mind or no? Yeah. How can you say that when you don’t know the person? Oh, yeah. So so where you’re going to find is pay attention. If you want to do a follow up text me, anybody out there want to text me, I don’t care, 707-337-0327. Not enough people listen so you won’t be flooded or anything. That’s right. But but but here’s what happened in the 90s. A number one, that’s how I passed the master of wine examination. I was working for Berenger that was very quietly and and wonderfully owned by Nestle, you know, the the big bed giant. And I was looking at research by mostly wine and wine and food interested parties at UC Davis and and whatever. And I just I found the research BS. So I started to I because of the association with Nestle, I was director of international business development for Berenger. And I started seeking out sensory scientists. And and I ended up that I would not work with any sensory scientists involved with wine because their their biases are already so great that their work is useless. So there are a lot of well known wine sensory scientists who hate my guts. But one of the things that I kept hearing about and you’ve heard about now, it’s called Umami, right? Oh, yeah. Did you know that I am the one who actually introduced the concept out of the scientific community into general knowledge in in the in Western culture? No, no, tell me about that. I am the Swami of Umami. So in my book, why you like the wines you like, the appendix on Umami was actually written by the scientist, Dr. Steven Roper. He and his wife at University of Miami or found the human receptor responsible for Umami taste. So that’s how deep this shit goes. So so I knew that sweetness created a modulation that increased bitterness and astringency in wine and decreased fruitiness, smoothness and whatever. So that’s that’s predictable and so forth. I knew in the early nineties that the it’s Bob Mondavi used to call it Tim’s tequila trick. Hey, get some lemons and salt over here. We want to want to show y’all something. And that’s the lemon and the salt and that creates the opposite. And you can actually create what’s called flavor balancing in your food. By leveling it out, but then still serve some lemon and salt on the table and stuff so that people can adjust it to their own preference. All right. So so something was going on with certain seafoods, with certain vegetables, with ripe cheese versus fresh cheese. And I and I had made some inroads with some really, really top individuals at Monal Chemicals Census Center in Philadelphia and within the Nestle scientific end of things. And also at UC Davis, a guy named Michael Oma Honey pronounced Omani is Irish. And something was was happening in this word. Umami kept coming up and I literally asked what’s what’s umami? They say never mind. Because it was just too arcane to explain and whatever. So I found that I could do a sensory science search of umami through the Nestle portal to the largest food science database in the world. And I requested papers, recent research on umami taste. And I got a this is before the internet was invented. I got the stack of papers at the top of the first one I read was seasonal fluctuations of glutamate levels and palatability in sea urchin gonads. I was hooked. I thought this is funny shit. And by the way, that’s uni. Uni is sea urchin gonads. OK, yes. So. So when I found out what umami was in and over the course of many years, umami taste comes from a combination of glutamate, levatory glutamate, which is natural. 150 pound human is four pounds of glutamate. Your brain won’t work without it. It’s a neurotransmitter. All right. And boy, back 30 years ago, there was so much BS and false information about glutamate. And then the second second part of glutamate is called nucleotides, five, five prime ribonucleotides. When you put glutamate nucleotides together, you get a huge increase, almost 10 fold increase in umami taste. Parmesan cheese has glutamate. Anchovies has nucleotides. Combine them, you get umami rama. And you get a Caesar salad. Big gastronomy thing. Even if you don’t like anchovies, you like enough of it to synergize the crystals of amino acids in the parmesan cheese, which are primarily glutamate. Right. But so there’s all these condiments from to catch up. So often there’s sweetness and almost always salt in the condiments like tie fish sauce and, and, and catch up with the sweetness and whatever. But umami taste humans crave. It’s probably the most important taste we can recognize. Okay. Uh, when you have high levels of umami taste in food, the, the, the modulation of the wine flavors is similar to sweetness. And if you have umami and sweetness, it’s even more of a, an unpleasant modulation. Okay. So guess what vegetable, what vegetable do you think is supposedly the enemy of wine most often? I’m going to go with asparagus. Okay. Highest in glutamate. Asparagus. Yeah. So if now 90, 90 to probably 95% of people have absolutely no negative. Reaction with the wines they love, whether it’s Cabernet or, or Biscato or anywhere in between with asparagus. So there’s really no problem in the first place, but a small percentage of people will get an unpleasant bitterness and, and, and increase in, in tannin. A drop of lemon juice and a titch of salt that’s gone in the first place. Excuse me. What’s the problem? Um, you’ve had fresh brie, right? And it’s sort of the textures, not as good. The flavors not there, but let it sit out and start to ooze and gets really wonderful and gooey. The fresh brie is known to cause very little modulation with wines. The ripe brie and cheeses like it create a very intense modulation for many people. And guess what? The primary flavor differences between the two. While that brie is undergoing its changes, it’s creating nucleotides that are synergizing the glutamate, giving it stronger umami taste. And that’s why it’s changing. Parmesan doesn’t have that, even though it’s aged a long time because of the high salt content, brie is a much lower salt content. So Parmesan typically has a self neutralizing element, the salt, that prevents it from being as reactive and on and on and on and on. And again, so we argue and we proptilitize and we tell people what they should like and shouldn’t like. We have no ability to listen. But we’re the ignorant ones. They’re not uneducated or ignorant or unsophisticated. We are. We’re the problem. Okay. So how do we get out of this pickle? I don’t know. No. You should have been around 30 years ago. I mean, literally people would walk out of presentations when I talked out of umami, they would get angry. Those bullshit. This is in on the early days of the internet, the threads and, oh, this is stupid. Here goes Tim again. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And this is at the Society of Wine Educators, the global flavor and sensory conferences that I would be keynote speaker. I would actually speak on umami, which is a, a lot of people think they know what umami is and a lot really don’t, but they teach about it. So it comes from a Japanese word meaning good, umai. It’s probably the Zen word all the way back to oneness with the universe, which is being in the womb. And, and is the core word umami comes from the Arabic and the Sanskrit for the word mother, mama, uma, Thurman, umai, which is the word for mother in, in, in a lot of the Middle East and in two thirds of, of, of Africa. Uma Thurman, did you ever see Kill Bill? Oh yeah. Yeah. Uma Thurman is named after Uma, who was the Arabic goddess of all goddesses, mother of all mothers. So umami was, was coined in 1908 and presented by a doctor, Ikeda in Japan as a fifth primary distinct taste and has now been widely adopted as such. So anyways, that’s more than anyone needs to know about umami. Actually knows what everybody should know about umami. Whatever one should. Yes. Yeah. Um, you know, I have a feeling that we could talk about wine all day. There is one thing I did want to ask you about if I can. A lot of, uh, a lot of my conversations over the last couple of months have revolved around alcohol in the food service industry and how difficult it is to, to live and work in an industry that kind of spits you out onto the streets at one a.m. And the only thing open is a dive bar. I know them. I found, I found you actually through a, you know, a story done onto you and how you’d given up drinking, even though you’re so involved in the world of wine. And I was just wondering how, how you came to be in that position and what you might tell people who are also asking, you know, am I drinking a little too much or, you know, how do I, how do I have longevity in this business? Yeah, got it. So, um, so, so, uh, I have to be very, very careful with this and very responsible with this because I’m not a counselor. Uh, it’s, it’s fascinating that especially the neurological, uh, conditioning, uh, and neurotransmitter end of my work has a lot to do with this. Uh, and cool. Yeah. Oh, I know it’s, it is cool. And so number one, there is life after alcohol. All right. And it’s usually not easy to get there, but it is possible. All right. So, uh, the second thing is if, if, if you’re wondering, seek professional help. You know, it probably even worse than all the bullshit of wine language and wine values and opinions and stigmatizing consumers and so forth, even worse in, in the whole wine and food train wreck is the stigma attached to being an alcoholic. And it’s perhaps less than when I started, certainly not, you know, it’s, it’s anywhere close to the stigma of when my dad, you know, uh, tried unsuccessfully to, to seek recovery, but the stupid stigma that it’s a weakness is this and that. People still believe that and they should be taken out and stoned or something. Not that kind of stone, but through, you know, maybe apples or tomatoes. Um, for me, I, I, um, I have three neurological things going on. One, I’m dyslexic. So I transpose things differently in, in my head. Um, many people are, there’s, uh, degrees of, uh, uh, severity of dyslexic, but it’s a learning disability. And why that’s, uh, why I bring that up is from grade school on, uh, I was checked out of learning. I was a horrible student. Uh, I had to find coping mechanisms because in the sixties, uh, dyslexia wasn’t a known thing, but people, you know, from first grade, one plus one equals two. I’m not seeing them in that order and see Jane run, see Dick run. Uh, how do you, how do you get that out of that? I don’t get, I don’t get that. Uh, and so, so I became the class clown in a pain in the ass. And I’m not stupid. I just, I mean, for the listener, if you’ve never heard of master of wine, it’s one of the world’s hardest certifications. Yeah. Honestly. Yeah. And I got it. Exactly. And I was first American in history. Joel Butler and I were the first two, two Americans in history to do it. So anyways, the second thing is I’m ADHD. If you have a kind of guest already. And so my brain goes at a different rate, but because also this gets into perceptual individualism, and this is what having the most taste buds and being at the high end of perceptual sensitivity is not necessarily a good thing. Cause you and I are talking and if a road runner goes by my window, I see it. And I can be looking directly at you. And all of a sudden my attention is diverted for this or that or, or whatever. And so my, and my, and my ability to, to carry a thought is very short lived. Cause I’ll start on something. If I, when I’m out of graphing my books, somebody will say something and I forget how to write my name because I get distracted. You know, so anyways, that’s, that’s two. And then the third, third thing is this is non professional and non research, but, but, but pretty plausible. Everybody’s bipolar to some degree. Some of us are more or less. All right. In the degree of the hyper excitement, the, the degree of depression, you know, the manic and depressive kind of, of dynamics. And I’m, I’m, I’m perhaps a little bit more than, than others. So I get really fired up and then I can’t move kind of a thing. All right. So I’ve always sought out things that work with the way my brain works or doesn’t work and, and whatever. When I was 14, my dad would let me have little bits of wine. This is his, uh, Shender rotisserie, uh, certificate from 1967 growing up in Miami. And I found, wow, okay. My dad’s an alcoholic. His dad’s an alcoholic. Um, and, and I was allowed to have wine and I started to study it. I started to read wine books, uh, because I didn’t have to take a test on it. And because I could sort of flip around in whatever and I could, I could get a buzz on. Uh, so I, you know, somebody might have guessed, okay, your dad’s an alcoholic, your mom’s an alcoholic and bipolar, your granddad is an alcoholic. Maybe there’s a problem here with a 14 year old learning how to say bone. So he could go buy wine in a liquor store because back then if you could pronounce a two syllable burgundy, you would never get carded. Um, and I also started cooking, uh, when I was 15, pretty much. Um, so I’m reading French gastronomy in, in cookbooks. I’m cooking, uh, the wine was a thing. And by when I was 15, I decided I wanted a career in wine. And when I was 18, I actually, uh, I got a job in the kitchen at Burnstake house in Tampa, Florida. I dropped out of college to go to work at Burns, the largest wine list in the world came back. So I worked 10 years professionally as a chef, which is also a great place to hide for hypersensitive ADHD bipolar people. Oh yes. I’ve talked to many chefs on the show. And, and so is the floor. Oh, yep. And in my research about perceptual individuality, we’re able to actually create segments of people to show why they behave, why they have the attitudes, why they have the opinions they do. And people in the hospitality industry typically are in much more of the hypersensitive range. They can’t stand being in an office. They like, they, the best ones thrive in the chaos and, and whatever. But anyway, so back to this. So, um, so that’s what I’ve done, you know, and, and for a very, very, very long time. And, um, uh, I was a high functioning alcoholic, uh, drinking probably three bottles of wine a day, three packs of cigarettes. Um, and knowing about wine wasn’t an in thing when I started into it. So it also gave me, look at me, I’m special kind of shit. That’s another trait of alcoholics. Thinking we’re special. So I, uh, 1989, I was one of the most epic failures in the history of the master of wine program. And, uh, I went to a writing seminar and went to the wrong one for three days, spent three days in disruptive innovation and critical thinking for electrical engineers, shattered my world. Next year I passed the master of wine exam. I got divorced from my alcoholic wife of 14 years, who I loved to death and, but knew, you know, that was never going to work. Um, and I married the singer in the Rock Motown band I was playing in. And through some, some things that she had done, uh, pertaining to her previous husband, who was, uh, uh, a drug and addiction recovery therapist, who never recovered, who died of his disease. And I mean, that’s how ridiculously insidious this shit is. I got up one day in 1992 and I said, yeah, 1993, I said, I’m going into recovery. And you’d think, Oh, oh, this, what a great decision. She goes, what are you crazy? You’re a master of wine. You can’t quit drinking. I said, I said, I’ve got to. So long story short, I, I checked into a recovery program and I made the decision for the first time in my life. I was going to follow the rules. I was going to do what I was told to do. And if you’re going into recovery and you try to wiggle on that and, oh, well, I’ll, I’ll find the best program that works for my life and whatever. You’re probably not going to last too long. So I went into my recovery program. I had just been, uh, uh, elevated to director of international business development at Beringer. Uh, you know, I was on the stage with, with my wine and food nonsense and my master of wine things. I was traveling all over the world. And, um, and I, I, I had and have an absolute commitment that I do not drink. And there you go. So it’s now, uh, December 16th will be 33, 30, 32 year, 33, 30. Who, who, you know, who would think that, right? Um, I had to change who I was hanging around with because alcohol and alcoholics tend to, you know, and whether they’re painters or doctors or whatever, uh, uh, that were in the wine industry or that were in hospitality is very rarely the cause of being alcoholic. We’re there because we are alcoholic. And if we had become an airline pilot or an insurance salesman or a day labor, or we probably would have been an alcoholic also. And that’s, this is, there’s many different forms, both prevalent form of alcoholism that I’m aware of is a neurotransmitter, um, uh, uh, issue where the, the neurotransmitters that, uh, uh, suppress pain and, and have you feel, uh, normal. If you start to, to, to have external forms of medication and suppression and whatever prescriptions and alcohol and so forth, the brain stops producing those neurotransmitters. And so, so you say, oh, I’ll, I’ll not drink for a couple of days. Your brain’s going, oh yeah. Yeah. You’re going to, yeah. Cause you’re going to feel like stress. You’re going to wake up feeling like shit. You won’t feel any better. And the only, I’m not going to give you help anymore. The only way you’re going to get it is from your alcohol or your pills or, or whatever. And, and so that begins a cycle and a cycle of behaviors and whatever. So that’s really how if, if, if you feel you or someone you know and love or care about screw the stigma, you’ll confront a person and say, I love you, you know, I care about you and you really need to, to seek some help. And in, in 2008, I was written up in the, the Wall Street Journal and a big article about my recovery. And I get calls from like from you and from all around the world. And, and I glad if, if you think you seriously have a problem and are seriously thinking about recovery, call me if it’s a loved one. I talked to somebody in New Zealand about their son who’s a winemaker and who had somehow stumbled across my raggedy story. And they said, you know, so I’m glad to talk about it anytime. There are thousands of us in the industry, winemakers and, and, and notable wine people, some I can disclose many I can’t. But, you know, there, there is a way to do it, but it really, and by the way, if, if you’re drinking or using, don’t call me, only call me if you’re sober or straight, 707-337-0327. And, you know, and this also helps me, this part of my giving back to the program that saved my life. No, it’s, it’s a huge thing. And, you know, I’ve had friends, I’ve had loved ones. I’ve seen people pass away and I’ve, yeah, old bosses and coworkers and it, it doesn’t stop. Well, and for me, the, you know, the, the, the biggest thing that I had going into my recovery was, was my relationship, which I had already actually decided it was over and this is with my current life. And thank God it wasn’t over because she’s the woman of my dreams. And I was with my recovery counselor. He says, and, and I was doing what, what, what we all do in recovery. And I know time wise we’re getting a little short, but I said, can I go back? You know, if, if I have, you know, years of recovery, can I go back to drinking? He says, okay, well, let me ask you this question. How are you doing in relationships? And we had already determined I never had had a functional relationship in my life up to that point. Right. And I always sought out people who used or were alcoholic or whatever. It’s part of our little net safety net. We do that. I just declared bankruptcy the year before I passed the master of wine examination in my first marriage. And things were generally in shambles, but I was high functioning. I’m now a master of wine. And he said, okay, so, so I said, if I get my relationship in order, get my finances, can I go back to drinking? And he goes, why the hell would you? Why? If for the first time you like, you actually had your life was working, why would you even risk it? I said, oh shit, I figured you’d have a, have a good point. Yeah. And then the second question was, can I still work in the business? He says, the long and short of it is you’re going to work in some business and you’re an alcoholic. So what if I were to tell you, you couldn’t work in the wine business? I said, well, I cook, I am a relatively smart guy. I could find something to do. He said, the way you answered that question gives me, give some measure of you might be able to. And I said, what do you mean the way I answered? He said, well, you didn’t seem to like, oh, I have to work there. You know, you didn’t seem to defend it. You, if you’re willing to give up working in the industry for your sobriety, then you might have a chance working in that. But it would be an absolute, not a maybe, not a, oh, I’d think about it. But if you ever get to that point that you find you can’t work in the industry, if you don’t walk away, you will relapse. Yeah. So there you go. Because at that point you’re using it as a safety blanket. This is my plan B when things fall apart. Sort of thing. And then here’s how all this crap kind of wraps up into a nice ball. I’ve become the observer of what wines you like and how I can best serve you. I know what conversation to have. And I could have it table-side in about 20 seconds and get you wines that’ll rock your world. And I don’t need to taste them. I know who loves the big, intense Cabernet’s. I know what Parker represents. No, no wine system is wrong. It’s just people in different perceptual worlds with different facilities and mental processes have designed. I know, I know what people will align best to Janssen Robinson’s recommendations or to Gary Vaynerchuk or whoever. It is. And so that elevates me in my sense of hospitality because I’ll have a conversation with the individual. I will understand what’s driving. And I will ask question like, do you want to stray far? You know, you want to go on an exploration or do you want something comfortable that, that, that, you know, that you know you’ll love. And when somebody says, oh, I’m having this hot, spicy dish instead of, oh, sweet, Reese’sling pairs best with that. I actually know that there’s a source for the hot, spicy. Do you know anybody that carries their own hot sauce? Oh, yeah, my wife. Oh, no kidding. All right. Did she love salt more than you? I would say so. Yeah. Yeah. Ask her about the tags. Ask her about the artificial sweetener. All right. So you, and this is why you guys have a battle over the thermostat also because it correlates to which temperature related world you live in. She has a really cool thing where when she gets the hot, burning, spicy, it fundamentally gives her an orgasm. You don’t know this. She doesn’t know this. But it burns. It burns even more for her than it does for you. But then it triggers a neurotransmitter dump of dopamine and endorphins and adrenaline into her bloodstream. And it hurts really good. Just like it does with runners high is the same phenomenon. Say don’t massacism. Interestingly. And if you don’t get that, you can’t imagine how they could enjoy that. And she doesn’t want the burn put out. You do. So you have your goddamn reasoning. Then let her be on her own to explore. You know, she might. All this. I don’t like to have her name, but I’m getting more of this Harry Met Sally moment, you know, and whatever. So if you don’t understand it, how do you make a recommendation? So there you go. Right. Tim, there you go. Hey, Tim, thank you for taking the time today. I’m really enjoying it. Absolutely. Pleasure. Thanks for reaching my listeners. Where can they find you? Or what are you up to these days? Anything exciting? Sure. If you want to read more about the background, this is the book that I published. It’s about 12 years old now, but fundamentally all still done. My cell number is 707-337-0327. And my email is Tim at Tim. H A N N I dot com Tim at Tim Hannei dot com. So let me know and Google me. Google me in the word asshole and you’ll find all the people who don’t like me. I will actually include all of those in the links in the show notes, except for the Googling him and the word asshole. So thank you, Tim. You’re very welcome, Andrew.
Leave a Reply