Rebel School of Wine with Tyler Balliet

Welcome to the Sipping Point Podcast. Join , Laurie Forster the wine coach, as she guides you through the world of wine, food, and so much more. Lori brings a fresh and fun approach to the world of wine. So whether you're a seasoned wine lover or just getting started, this is the place to explore how to sip.

Savor and live your most delicious life. And now here's your host, . Welcome to the latest episode of the Sipping Point. I'm Laurie Forster , the wine coach. I'm so excited for this week. Every week I'm excited because we get to talk about my favorite subject. Food, wine, travel, spirits, beer, all of those things.

And I want to really answer your questions and bring on guests that you're interested in. So don't forget, if you have anything you want to know about any of those topics. Email me, laurie at the wine coach dot com. And this week I'm excited we're going to bring in Tyler Balliet, author of The Rebel School of Wine.

He has an amazing background in wine and he's like me, a little bit of a rebel trying to just get the snootiness out of the wine world. You're going to love him. But first up, I'm going to cover a topic that one of you emailed me about, , asking about how not to be so overwhelmed and confused when you're out at a restaurant and ordering off the wine list.

This topic is very important to me and it's something I am very passionate about because this is one of the reasons I even Came to become the wine coach and have a career in wine is that I used to sell software back in the good old days, the late nineties, if you remember those. And I would have to wine and dine my clients.

And I really was a beer drinker at the time. I did not really drink wine except for maybe a, , occasional glass of Kendall Jackson Chardonnay. That was big at the time. And I was always really nervous about ordering wine when I was out with clients, making sure it was something good. I pronounced it correctly that it would go with the food.

And I know a lot of you feel the same way, especially the, , the listener who emailed me. So here's a couple of tips. , for you, I actually have a full size audio interview, , that I did a few years back about this with seven secrets to demystifying the wine list. And I'm going to post that on the blog page at thewinecoach.

com with this episode when it airs. And so you can just go to thewinecoach. com, click blog, but I'm going to share just a few of them with you this week before we bring Tyler on in here. And we're going to taste these two amazing dry Rieslings when he joins as well. So the very first thing you can do to outsmart the wine list or demystify the wine list is if you know where you're going ahead of time, you can do your homework.

And guess what? Most restaurants have their wine lists posted on their website. So you can go there. You can get an idea of how the wine list is organized, the price points, the types of wines they have. You can even start Googling some ideas. If you find wines. in the price point you want to be and find out a little bit more about them.

So doing your homework, understanding a little bit about what you're getting into to begin with. Some lists have a very great affordable section and have, wines in all the different price ranges. Some restaurants, it's all the high end stuff and maybe just a few affordables for buy the glass that possibly you can also order by the bottle.

But just getting to know what that is before you land can really help you. Now I know it doesn't always lend itself to that. You're traveling, you're somewhere, you end up at a restaurant and there was no time. To do your research, do your homework, , no problem. One of the other things that I always tell people is you can stall a little bit if they hand you the list and then they're back right away and want to know, what you're looking for by just ordering a glass of a sparkling wine or a light white wine.

Or even a bottle of bubbly for the table while you guys are gathering ideas about what you're going to order, what you might want to order for food and just getting the lay of the land, getting to know your waiter or your SOM. So that gives you a little time to take it all in and come up with a game plan.

And then yes, if there is an amazing informed waiter or there is a sommelier. at this restaurant. Do not be afraid to ask for help. That's why we in the business do what we do. We want to help you find the best wine for you. The one that's going to go with your food, the one that's going to be in your price range and the one that you're going to love to sip.

So don't feel intimidated like, Oh, if I asked for help, it looks like I don't know what I'm doing. No. It's totally fine. We want to help you. And I'll, share a little secret with you. I'm not drinking 50, 100 bottles of wine, , every night or even every month. I'm looking for great, affordable wines.

And most of us in the wine business get excited about that. So you're probably going to find some values, some great, interesting things that you might not find if you were just surfing that wine list all on your own. So don't be afraid to ask for help. We want to do that. And in the process of doing that, what you might find, and even if you find and go looking on your own in the wine list, Look for the wines that are in offbeat locations, somewhere interesting, like we're going to be tasting a Finger Lakes Riesling.

Maybe not that offbeat, but I don't know how many people have actually tried them before. And, or maybe it's, a new region in Argentina or a local wine region. If you can't pronounce it, so odd grapes and odd varietals, you should be drinking it. That's where you're going to find your value. New and upcoming regions, new and upcoming varietals or interesting wines that you may never have tried.

And don't be afraid to go there. And then if you have a group of people and everyone's ordering something different. Fish, steak, pork, chicken. You're all over the board and you're trying to find a white and a red. That's going to really work for everyone. Listen a little bit longer. When we bring Tyler in, I'm going to be talking about these two great dry Riesling's one from the finger lakes.

One from Austria, one of the most food friendly white grapes out there is dry Riesling. And then if you want one red that's going to go with the gamut of foods, it's going to be a Pinot Noir. So those are two sort of universal picks, a dry Riesling, a Pinot Noir, that can really make everyone happy.

There's many more tips to demystifying the wine list, and I'm going to post them on my blog so you can check them out. But I'm just so excited to bring in Tyler Balliet, he's the author of The Rebel School of Wine. And Tyler is an amazing wine expert who really is like me, trying to demystify the world of wine, turn it on its head.

And he was named, , as one of the 40 Under 40 by Wine Enthusiasts. He was the promoter and founder, creator of the Wine Riot, which was an amazing wine event that would draw over 25, 000 participants. And most recently he created the Rosé Mansion in New York City, which was a cool place you could go, learn about how rosé was made, taste rosé, and take amazing Instagram pictures.

He started getting into wine after, , college when he moved to France for a little while, drank a lot of great wine, but then realized he didn't know a lot about it. So when he came back to Boston, he started working in a wine shop and then, , you know, he was bit by the wine bug like most of us. I'm so excited to bring him in.

Let's welcome in Tyler Balliet, author of The Rebel School of Wine and so much more. You're just one of the coolest. Wine educators, wine experts, I feel like that I've come in contact with. I think we've known each other over 10 years now, Tyler. So welcome to the show. I know everyone's going to love hearing from you.

Thank you. It's so good to be here. Awesome. I've always been attracted, I think, to your sort of take on wine. And if they haven't figured out rebel school of wine, you're bucking the traditional systems. And that's really what I was attracted to when I first met you, when you were producing your wine riot events and just really making wine fun and approachable, which, I'm super passionate about as well.

So I'm excited. I bet this as any book is, was a labor of love. And so I know we're going to talk about that and then we're going to, We're going to talk about some wines, but tell me when did you conceive of putting the book out? And how long did it take you from idea to bookshelves? Yeah. I actually came up with the idea for this book 15 years ago, like, , my partner, Morgan and I, and we've, we were the ones that like, we built like Wine Riot, we built Rosé Mansion.

So we've always like worked together and collaboratively. And, , we wrote this outline 15 years ago, I think, I believe we pitched it to a major publisher in 2009, 2010. And I looked at how much work it was going to be. And I'm like, nope, not doing that. And just put the outline away. And we were running like, , we were running Rosie mansion.

We had a giant wine theme park in the middle of Manhattan. It was like 32, 000 square feet. We had a hundred employees. We had in one year, we sold 225, 000 tickets to this thing. It was wild. You could jump out of a giant cake and throw confetti. You could swing from a giant chandelier. And then when COVID It was so fun.

I got to visit and I had a great time there. And when COVID hit we didn't make it right. And, we had a big, huge space. We couldn't stay open. We had a short term lease, so it didn't really work out. And that's when Morgan went like, poke, poke, guess what we have sitting in a Google drive folder, an outline for a book.

And she went and helped me get a book agent and got a book deal. And before even writing a single word I had a deal with a major publisher to produce this, and then I had to actually do it. Yeah, that's the hard part, isn't it? Yeah, and I really thought I could just bang this book out in six or eight months.

I was like, I don't know, it's COVID, I'm in the middle of nowhere let me, I could just write this. And when I started really trying to write down all the stories about wine that I've been telling over the years and trying to like, take all the things that like I knew and when you write it actually down on paper, it turns out there's a lot of kind of like holes in the wine stories that a lot of people tend to tell.

And it's not, it doesn't mean they're not true, but it means that there's just, I felt were like major pieces missing. And so I called my editor and I just said, I asked look, this is not going away and I have another 6, 8, 12 months. And she was like, yeah, go for it. And so what I thought was going to take 6 to 9 months took me 3 years cover to cover.

Wow. I didn't want it to take that long, like the big thing was that like, again, touching on like the wine education piece, and like what I've always felt was like, I felt like wine education has always existed, like in this like vacuum. And I wanted to make sure I connected it to things that people knew and people like understood.

And that led me to reading history books, reading science books. Reading books about how the brain works reading books about economics of different countries that were unrelated to wine to try to tie this all together. Yeah, my partner Morgan would be yelling at me cause she'd be like, you cannot spend an entire month writing one page.

But that's what I did. Yeah. I love that because I always feel like wine makes you interested in all these subjects that maybe. Otherwise, science, okay, but the science of wine, now you have my attention. So I love that you tied it in with all of those things because I feel wine does connect us to so many different facets of life.

And who would you say this book is for? I was holding it up earlier. It's full color in addition to the great, , you know, chapters that you wrote, there's great pictures and diagrams. And yeah. It's not the boring, wine book that people may envision, but who do you see this book being for? Yeah, it's so there's 450 custom illustrations and we worked really closely with an illustrator where like , we would draw like with a crayon and a fist yeah, we draw with a crayon and a fist. A lot of like diagrams and like we have every single grape illustrated and these are all anatomically correct. They're all like the leaf shape and the berry shape. And so I wrote the book that I wish I had, , when I started learning about wine, right?

I was looking back and saying what yeah. What was I missing? Knowing what I know now, what do I wish I knew? What would have helped me 15, 20 years ago? And I also had a lot of questions still that I didn't know the answer to. And COVID was a good reason to sit down and just I bought every wine book I could find.

I got an Adderall prescription and it turns out, I have hardcore ADHD and I can read books now. It's amazing. It's amazing. And I also wrote this book for people, like with ADHD, like you don't have to read it cover to cover. I made it so you can just flip through and what you want.

You could look things up like as a reference. Yeah, it's like a comprehensive book. It's the book that I wish I had. That's perfect. And it really does give you a very holistic view of how wines are made, how to taste them, pairing, regions, even how the wine business operates with the, pricing. I love that you covered that.

And the whole three tier system, a lot of people don't totally understand how our alcohol system works in this country. So there was so much good stuff and I'm sure if you go to amazon. com or anywhere where you buy your books, it's going to be available. Rebel School of Wine. But one of the things I thought that would be really fun, you had a great topic that you wanted to talk a little bit about sort of old school wines and new school wines.

And how, how that ties together. So we each brought sort of a, , an old guard winery wine, and then the same kind of wine from a newer winery. So, , I'd love to delve into that. How do you want to get started with that? And your setup is so much better than mine. I don't have them on display.

Oh, that's all right. You can hold them up and we'll get the idea. I don't know if you want to cover yours first, and then I can tell you what I brought to the table. Yeah. Okay. I love sparkling wine. I actually, I wasn't even thinking about it. I wore my champagne shirt. I like, Oh, that's perfect.

It's like my new hobby is I'm making these. But anyways so I brought a classic champagne, right? Rotary champagne. It's like they're not, it's it's the workhorse, right? This is the one that's like, All over the place. It's they make a lot of it. They've been making it the same way for a really long time.

And then I brought a new winery Las Harris wines. And this is out of California. My friend Joel makes this. And it's like a, it's a pet Nat style, but it's like really sparkling wine. Like he is, or at least he was like obsessed with making sparkling wines. He started this winery because he was working at Shandon and he started making magnums of sparkling wine in his garage.

And then it led onto this whole winery. Yeah, the differences are like, it's interesting seeing like the similarities and the differences, between the two wines. Like you have that same like depth of flavor that you get in like Champagne because it's like aged and I'm pretty sure it's like aged on the leaves for a long time.

This is like a 2020 vintage a little while, but then the coolest thing is like they work with the artist Jen Stark, who is a pretty famous, well known artist to do the labels and they're like holographic and I don't know, I just love the style of it. It's make really great wine, right?

And you do it in a more modern style, something a little bit brighter, something a little fresher. But then you make the packaging something that's like more exciting, oh yeah. And I like the old style packaging too on certain things. If I'm going to a white tablecloth restaurant and having like old school French, I want old school labels.

But if I'm cooking at home, I want something more like this, maybe hold them both up real quick so we can just see them side by side. I realized this one's all shiny, so it doesn't, yeah, no, but it's gorgeous. So yeah, that is like the classic old school, looking champagne label there.

And then you have this nouveau, like I don't know, psychedelic, , situation going on there. Very psychedelic. With a cool, a cool back label that's also shiny. And they get rid of the foil. I've noticed that about a lot of the more modern have the need for the foil. Yes.

Actually, one of mine does the same. I brought a couple of whites. Do you want to, there obviously is a difference in place in those two, right? California, France new startup, old guard, what would people be surprised, to find out about, if they were looking at these two choices on the shelf, like what, what should be people be thinking about when they're shopping?

What I will say is it's a lot easier to buy French wine if you understand like all the wine terms, right? This one says fruit on the back of it, right? And this one? Nice. The other one? No. It gives you information. Like the French wine does give you information. It doesn't have a date. And so like then you know it's non vintage.

It says brute, so you can it points you in the right direction, right? Yes. If it's champagne, you know what grapes they used. I'm even friends with Joel and I don't know what, I forget which grapes he uses on this one. And I think it even changes from year to year. And so it's not like good or bad, it's just like pros or cons.

Like I think if you know exactly what you want and there is nobody there to help you, cause that's what it really, what I wrote in my book is I don't Probably the top question that I get asked, and you probably get asked this a lot too, which is people are like how do you buy good wine?

Like, how do you know how to get good wine? I'm like, the best thing is that you don't have to, right? You have to build your wine team, find an independent wine store that you like and let them get to know you. And they will always make sure that you find Wines that you like and a wine like this, if it's a bit more of a crap shoot.

, 'cause it doesn't, you don't know what it's gonna taste like. And they're the same price. They're both like about 50, 50 bucks, okay. Yep. So yeah, that, that's a good tip. I feel like if you find a wine store that you love and there's even, it might even be a specific person. I used to work at Astor Wines when I lived in New York City, which is a huge store.

Oh, no way. Yes. To talk about that. I don't live that far away. Okay. Yeah. And it was such a great place. , for my first wine job, because it's a huge selection and you get to do a lot of one on one with clients. And you find maybe one person at the store that really gets your taste maybe more than others, or points you in the direction.

But I always like to get people trying new things, which is why I love, of course we know we're going to love champagne because it's champagne but then to have, that newer upstart pet mat. For something different because, you don't want to drink the same thing every single night.

There's just too many different types of wines and places that it's such a shame. If you pigeonhole yourself just in that one place. And, in this case, someone may be attracted to that wine via the label, and it sounds like they're going to be happy on what's the inside. That's not always the case, but in this one, it sounds like it is.

Yeah. And half the people, I think. I love this wine. It's a rosé. It's fizzy, but not too fizzy. It's really wonderful. I've had this wine probably, I've had 15 bottles of this. I've had a lot. Oh, nice. Okay. All right. So you love this. So I actually was in Pennsylvania yesterday, state controlled liquor store, but they actually do have a really good selection at this store.

I knew it. So I was like, okay, you had given me a task to find the same kind of wine, but one from an old school winery and one from a newer upstart. And so let me show you what I have and we'll see what you think. I've never tasted until today either of these, but I'm actually quite pleased with both.

This one is called Turk, and it's a 300 year old winery in Austria, in the Kremsdal region. And it is, , their riesling, it's a bone dry style riesling. Yeah. from their Weinberg, , single vineyard screw cap, as we know, not social suicide people. Don't worry about that. And then it has that classic Austria striping there.

So this one old school and I've always admired the Rieslings of Austria. So that attracted me. And then I thought, okay, let me go and find something newer. And this is Forge Cellars out of the Finger Lakes, Seneca Lake in upstate New York. It's their dry, classic, , Riesling and they were started in 2011.

So 14 years ago versus 300 years. Although what I didn't know when I chose this is that Louis Barol from Chateau Saint Côme, which is an absolute favorite winery of mine, is one of the two partners behind this wine in the Finger Lakes. So I guess they have some old school know how since Saint Côme has been around since 1490 or something like that.

So that was really interesting and It was really fun to taste these side by side. I got a little preview before I dialed you in here, but of course both have that great stone fruit citrus notes. minerality and a little bit of floral, but the New York way more acid than the Austrian, which was very surprising to me.

Yeah. I wouldn't think that. I know. And I don't know. I'll have to go and compare these vintages to see, if maybe it was a warmer vintage. In Austria, the normal or a cooler vintage in the finger lakes. But, , I was super pleased with both of these reasonings. They're delicious. They seem very food friendly, but I know we have Thanksgiving coming up.

These either of these or both make it a fun tasting at the table would be great, , to have with, but. I found it really fun and maybe a great idea for people to have a little party like this at home. I love compare and contrast and I think the thing that people get hung up on is that they're like, oh, I don't know enough to know what the flavors and you don't have to, you can just compare and contrast labels, you can compare and contrast.

Regions or grapes or, whatever, because that's the best way to do it is to like, okay, we're going to try this one. And now we're going to try this one similar, but different, similar, but different, and when you do it side by side like that, which in the wine business, when we're doing tastings, we do a ton of side by sides.

But when you're tasting them at the same time, you can really compare versus a traditional wine dinner. A lot of times you'll have one wine, then you go to the next, you go to the next. It's harder to go back and forth and be like, Oh wow, that one really is way more zing, way more acidity. And when you go back and forth, it's really fun to see.

These were in similar price points. There wasn't a huge differential between these two, but, , I, I love them both and I'll post links to these two that I chose and the two that you have there. So if so, folks are inspired because bubbly is perfect for Thanksgiving as well. So either of those wines.

Would be would be also a great addition. So in your book, what do you think now? I think I mentioned in my EMR, my daughter, Michaela did a speech in college and she used your book as a reference to a talk about how to taste wine. And so I know she really connected with the book and, is just getting into enjoying wine.

What is one thing in the book that you think is surprising for people? Or a chapter that people just really resonate with. Oh man, there's a lot. I wrote, I ended up submitting 130, 000 words. That's a, there's a lot there. Yes. But I think the one that people, it's like the simple ones, right?

And it's like the ones that like, people keep coming back to, which is how do I buy wine? How do I get wine? And I have whole sections about the difference between the wine stores, like difference, like the difference between a, a big box grocery store and an independent grocery store, and like how to buy wine at Trader Joe's versus how do buy wine at Costco versus how do buy wine at independent store.

And I think those are the ones that like, you know, like resonate. Something that was surprising for me is the food pairing is something that I wrote like last, I saved that. Not intentionally, mostly just because I don't know, I thought I'm like, Oh, I can write this thing for a second.

And I had this idea in my head of what I wanted to do, which would be like, Okay, here's how you pair this wines with this foods. And this was because as wine people like we enjoy wine. And this is something that we do. And we think we find this is really fun. I feel like the hobby aspect of it comes into like wine pairings, right?

For professionals. But when you're trying to give advice to, like people that are just looking to get pointed in the right direction, like it really hit me that nobody cooks like a French meal at home. They don't cook five courses and then open five bottles to pair with each course.

If you do that, amazing great. You probably aren't, here saying, asking me what to pair with these. But, almost all meals everywhere serve family style, and so it's about finding wines that people like and they want to drink, and I originally had, like, all these pages I was gonna put for wine and food pairings, and I still have some good things okay, here's the classics here's cheese and stuff like that, but, I don't know, I thought it was really interesting seeing me be like I never do this at home.

And if I am at a restaurant, they will tell me what to pair. And so then I don't necessarily need to know that, and it is more of a fun art to do rather than. Yeah, so it's just don't sweat it. Just buy wine you like. And, if you get wine, you like and you get food, you like and you put it together like the worst that's going to happy is you get drunk and you're full like I can't.

That's like the baseline. It only gets better from there. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I do think that when people actually sit down and when I do tastings, we always try the wine first without any food. And then of course you go to the food, then you go back to the wine. And when you notice you can get people to focus and notice that, wow, that wine, maybe it tastes just the same and just as amazing.

Or it tastes even better. And then you're like, Whoa, I just hit the jackpot on the food pairing. Or you might notice that the wine doesn't taste like anything anymore. And that's when, something's not jiving with the pairing. So just focusing, it's more of an art. Then it is a chart I used to think just give me the chart.

Cause I can memorize anything, right? I'll memorize chicken with this fish with that artichokes. Okay. We need seven young Blanca Grunervelt leaner. There's just all these little pairing things, but it's more about like you say, like taste tests. Yeah. Trying it, tasting it, and and that's what chefs do when they're cooking.

I'm married to a chef. And is he standing there with a recipe? Absolutely not. He doesn't need a recipe. He's tasting it, he's adding a little this, adding a little that, and that's how it goes. So I love that idea of, yeah. Take the pressure off, just have more fun with it. Yeah. You really can't screw it up.

It's impossible. You can't, you can burn food, you can't burn wine. That's true. If people want to check out more about your book, your, I know you do some events in New York City as well and I'm sure you have big things coming. In the future, maybe not a rosé mansion, maybe a chardonnay chalet.

I don't know. But where can people go to find out more and connect with you? Because I know after hearing this, they're going to want to. Yeah. You can follow me on Instagram, , the book, , rebel school of wine have a whole Instagram for that. I run that personally. So it's like you're talking to me and then you can also just follow me personally, which is just Tyler Balliet is my Instagram handle.

Right now that's the best way to do it. And we're constantly making and running new things. That's like what I really love to do. And that's like my partner Morgan and I like to do together is like we like to create fun new experiences. We have a , we have a fun champagne thing that we're trying to like, get in the works.

Ooh. A celebration bar. We have a, we have, there's a lot of irons in the fire. We just have to figure out which one to do first. Love it. No shortage of fun ideas. I know that from you, Tyler. I love the book. It's gorgeous. It's very giftable. So if you're looking for a hostess gift for Thanksgiving or you're just starting your holiday shopping, this is certainly should be on the list.

I'll post all the links to the wines that myself and Tyler brought to the table so you guys can check them out. Tyler, thank you so much for coming on the Sipping Point today. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me here. It's so great. Oh, of course. Cheers. Cheers. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Sipping Point with Tyler Balliet of the Rebel School of Wine.

You can find his book on amazon. com or wherever you buy your books. It's super amazing, full color with all those amazing pictures I showed you earlier, check it out. And if you're starting to think about maybe some holiday events for your team, or maybe just a great group of people, I have wine will travel, can do live events, virtual events.

Just shoot me an email at laurieatthewinecoach. com. And if you want to know more about demystifying the wine list, tasting, serving, pairing, enjoying wine, go to the winecoachsecrets. com. You can just put your email in, you'll get my free video series with all of those topics covered and more. And you'll find out about all the great upcoming episodes and events that I have going on around the country.

If you love The Sipping Point, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts. And then on YouTube on the WineCoach channel, I'll be posting some video clips from these interviews and so much more. As always, if you have ideas for guests or topics, email me at laurieatthewinecoach.

com. Thanks for listening. And until next time, Keep on sipping. Thanks for joining us on the Sipping Point Podcast. We hope you enjoyed this fun and flavorful look at the world of wine, food, and beyond. If you liked what you heard, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share with your fellow wine lovers.

Until next time, keep on sipping!