- Speaker #0
Hi Riz.
- Speaker #1
Hi.
- Speaker #0
Thank you very much for being here. I'm super happy to do this interview with you. It's my honor. Yes,
- Speaker #1
I'm so excited about this as well.
- Speaker #0
You were among the first person that we actually met in Hong Kong. When arriving, Marine and I, we did a job of like sending DMs and, you know, trying to find out who we should meet to get to know the wine people here. So you were among the first.
- Speaker #2
Thank you.
- Speaker #0
And so we were like. Okay, let's do an interview in the next few months, but then you were busy because it was a sommelier competition.
- Speaker #2
Yes,
- Speaker #0
and a half-ass. So it was difficult, but now we have this time together. We'll talk about a lot of things, but can you start by introducing yourself?
- Speaker #1
Sure. So my name is Riz, first of all. Very nice to meet you and thank you very much for this opportunity for the podcast. And I'm a sommelier and I'm a white consultant. And I own... I run my own business, my company called Storms Philosophies, and we provide a consultant service to restaurants and bars. So I'm also a consultant. I'm an ambassador of a few brands like Sideshow Sparkling Tea, Vivant from Taiwan, and I also choose wine for a supermarket in Hong Kong called Yatta. And I'm also a winemaker. Now I'm now. slowly changing my career path to a winemaker making wine in japan in hiroshima miyoshi a small town in hiroshima and uh and i also you know uh have been competing for 13 years in the past for 13 years so yeah a little bit of everything everything about wine and alcohol so before talking about this very specific topic how did you get into wine yes It was all about money I wasn't born in Grow up in a very wealthy family So I got a chance to work In a high-end restaurant before In Hong Kong, Italian restaurants And at that time The manager came to me And she said Okay, Rhys, let's learn about Why to become a sommelier And then you will have a higher salary And I was there okay let's do it i heard i hire salaries or let's go yes yes so it was from the beginning it was all about money so i learned i started to learn about wine and then i start started to you know you know when you know more about this thing you love this you know you get more and more uh like this uh beverage because to when you start to know about it you started to realize that wine is not just a beverage or a liquid. It's also about life, about history, about, you know, culture, everything. So I started to get more interested about this. So, yeah.
- Speaker #0
How did you get interested into this? So you were training with this person at the restaurant, but did you, like, did you say, okay, now I need to go to some lessons or took a few things, or you just did it like... By yourself and with the people around you to grow in this? Yeah,
- Speaker #1
just by myself. Because when I decided to, my motto is you either don't do it or you need to be the best in your industry. So when I started to work at a sommelier or started to learn about wine, I told myself I need to be the best. So I started very, very hard and I got a good team. Some good friends in Hong Kong, we learned about wine together. And then I got a chance to compete in a competition. The first time was in 2012 or 2013, I forgot, around that year. So I started to compete in a competition. So that's the other energy, the other momentum to me to improve myself. So yeah, I can say along the way, I got it's all about myself. But, you know, when you started to compete in a competition, you got a mentor. My mentor, his name is Henry, and he helped me a lot during the journey.
- Speaker #0
And so when you do this first competition, so it's a tasting competition, or it's a sommelier competition?
- Speaker #1
It's a sommelier competition.
- Speaker #0
So the goal is, of course, to taste and recognize some wines, but also to provide a service and descriptions.
- Speaker #1
Service, blind tasting, theory test, everything.
- Speaker #0
And so from this first competition, your goal is to win it?
- Speaker #1
No, of course not. I did pretty well. You know, the president of Hong Kong Sommelier Association, he actually praised my presentation. That gave me a lot of energy to keep going, you know. But, you know, this is the first time, and I couldn't do well in the theory and the tasting. But I learned from the mistake. So, yeah, that's a very good experience, even though I can't win it.
- Speaker #0
And so now it's been 13 years, roughly, of competition and among other things. But you've been also doing this for 13 years, and you recently won the Best sommelier of Asia.
- Speaker #1
Pacific,
- Speaker #0
yeah. Asia Pacific. Yes. Award. So first, congratulations. Thank you very much. For this. Thank you. It was super great. We followed you on Instagram and we're rooting for you. What did you learn along the way on how to prepare? Like, is 13 years just the time it takes to, you know, from good to great? Or do you have some advice? for someone starting his career as sommelier and seeing you as a model or as something he aspires to? How would you, not speed up, but what mistakes would you avoid and what would you do to prepare yourself?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, that's a good question because people say I'm a talented sommelier, but I don't think so. And I'm definitely not a talented sommelier because a talent so many wouldn't take 13 years to to become a champion maybe they would take maybe first one or two years to make it so it's about hard working and then uh i think that i can't we we all can't avoid any mistake uh we but we need to make sure that we learn something from our mistakes so this is the rule number one and then i think that's just the second thing is the you have to be consistent and have to have a very strong self-discipline life for the competition. Before the competition, maybe about one year or half year, I study every day about eight hours average, eight hours per day. And then you need to have a very disciplined life. You have to sleep early and wake up early. And then you have to work out, go to the gym, make sure you have a very good condition, keep yourself in shape. and be sharp all the time. So that's what I have been doing for many years. And then you have to give yourself a very clear schedule. And second of all, you have to have someone to guide you through. You can't, especially if I am not a talent, I definitely need someone to guide me through the whole thing. So I'm so lucky to have my mentor, Henry. And he actually gave me a lot of support. And then he gave me, you know, sort of like mentally guidance and also practically guidance as well along the journey.
- Speaker #0
It's funny that you say that, you know. It makes me remember, I'm not a super fan of football or soccer, but, you know, every soccer fan takes the difference between Messi and Ronaldo, you know. and like uh Messi, it's like this gifted guy, super talented, and that's it. And in front of him, you have Ronaldo, not the same talent, but just a man who works every single day and continues to train and is still at the top. Maybe not at the top of his level right now, but like at a super, super high level. So, yeah, definitely something. And so when you study like that, you basically study wine region, by wine region like it's this appellation produced is at this place this geography produce this type of wine it's like theoretical things like that or you also go go into more practice of tasting of maybe
- Speaker #1
both you know competition is about everything so of course about the knowledge i'd study region by region also country and also producers, etc. And also the category of the beverage as well. So it's not only about wine. It's also about sake, beer, spirits. Yes, and then coffee, tea, cigar, cheese, everything. So you need to make sure that you learn enough for everything. And secondly, I think that the blind tasting skill, you have to have another schedule to train your taste buds because To me, I'm not very good at blind tasting, so I need to work harder on that. And thirdly, I think that's the practical. I actually spend a lot of time with my mentor. We went to restaurants. We asked for, please give us a place to train our practical. So we went to different restaurants and then we train like we pretend we are in competition. My mentor gave me some tasks to finish.
- Speaker #0
within times so you need to have different uh training for different parts uh in a competition yeah it's a it's amazing to watch i don't know if uh if it was on youtube or if there are videos available from the competition you did uh youtube yeah youtube so we'll try to to link the these videos uh in the in the description of the podcast because it's always something that is super impressive to me. It's like you just have like... These five people are on the table. And they're like, okay, so we'd like this type of spirit to go. And you have like specific timing to serve everyone. You need to entertain them at the same time, bringing information, bringing knowledge, but still being like cool or not super academic.
- Speaker #1
Yes.
- Speaker #0
So it's very impressive.
- Speaker #1
I think that the most difficult thing is how to deal with your nerf. because Day back to 2023, we was in Paris. We have done the world competition. We were on the stage. But imagine that there's 4,000 people down there watching you to do your presentation. That's a lot of stress. And then you have to know how to deal with that stress. And still, you have to make sure you are elegant enough. and then you have to, you know, still keep your knowledge in your brain because sometimes when you deal with, you stress, you forget everything at the same moment. So I think that's the most difficult part in a competition as well.
- Speaker #0
And one thing that is also, that must be difficult for you in that sense is that when you serve at restaurant, first, you don't have like specific timing to serve. Like if you take 10 more seconds, clients won't be like okay that's it it's like it's a bit different and the other thing is also that maybe in restaurant if something goes wrong or if you need a little bit of time for yourself even though you're in service you can just like go to a private part of the restaurant like the kitchen or whatever just like breathe and then go back and there is no one watching you while you're like care
- Speaker #1
ah this table i can't take it and then you're you're just like you know some foul language yeah yes that's that's the yeah that's how that's why we train for competition that's how uh that's so also during the training of the competition you train how to deal with problems and then you train fast because especially in hong kong come on you don't have 20 minutes of time to open a bottle of wine that's we have we have packed of customer Hong Kong is busy all the time, so you have to work fast. So we learned how to improve our service skills during the competition as well, the training, I mean.
- Speaker #0
And so what you do, so you're a sommelier yourself, but what you do is that you also train other sommeliers now in restaurants across Hong Kong, but across a variety of locations in Asia to level up their service and that type of thing. This is what you do with your company?
- Speaker #1
Yes, my company provides a consultant service. We create wine lists. We choose the wine for our clients. And also we provide service training, wine training or knowledge training to our customers as well, the staff in the restaurants. So that's the core service that we provide.
- Speaker #0
What do you notice from that? Like when you have a consultancy with a restaurant, do they already have... a wine list and you're like okay guys i think you you could actually have more revenues from your wine because your selection is too i don't know like too narrowed focus or you don't have enough spread in your wine list so you basically don't allow clients to spend money so just like extend
- Speaker #1
it is it that that type of mission that uh that you do sometimes uh we got two types of clients so some some clients they they already have the wine list so they they want you to improve the run program or They want to have sort of like marketing exposure. So they started to work with us. And the second type is now recently I'm working on a new restaurant, which is opening in December. So they are. completely from the beginning. So without any wine list or any wine selection, we start from zero. And then I choose all the wine items for them and then create a layout of the wine list. And then I start to, you know, sometimes the customer, they want to do some wine pairing for their seasonal menu. So we also do that because I, to be honest, so I pretty, I love wine pairing. And then I create all, create wine pairing all the time for different clients or even those i i last year i went to a couple of countries like finland uh japan and taiwan so we had a different collaboration with different restaurants and chef and also so many to to create a special wine pairing among these countries and um and then when you train the staff um i guess you have a lot of like do you spend time explaining the wines or do you train them more on the service part and on the behavioral part yeah uh service standard is very important and and i think that's to teach them because i i'm not there all the time so i choose the wine i need to make sure they know what is going on in the wine list and then i need to make sure that they know how to talk to the customer this is the because you can't just choose the wine and then... Just let them do whatever they want. So after I choose the wine, I provide the wine's training to them according to what I have chosen for the wineries. And also I teach them how to, I create some small wine cards for them to read before they go to the customer. So make sure that they know about the story and how to briefly talk about the wine as well. So I think this is very important.
- Speaker #0
in the wine program yeah this is a this is super important like when you are in restaurant choosing wine if the sommelier doesn't like doesn't know about this wine it's super disappointing for you you know especially for clients like me actually sorry but i'm always super curious of what i'm drinking you know so i always trust the sommelier with their choice or whatever but i want to know what it is and when you like this knowledge Then it's super frustrating for me. And I guess for the restaurant, if you have sommeliers that are trained to talk about the wine, I guess you sell way more wine. Because you're able to discuss about it with your clients and be like, I think with this dish, you should choose this specific wine. And maybe they wouldn't have chosen wine if the sommelier wasn't here or, you know, telling a story.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, you know, just like we are in Hong Kong. you can easily find a wine in everywhere, you know, in a restaurant or once a retailer or online. So I think that's the most important thing for so many what they do in the restaurants. You know, imagine that you can open a same bottle in the other restaurants. Why should I open this bottle with you, with this so many? I think we are providing service, of course, but also we are providing experience. We are providing trust. So, you know, telling a story of the wine and then serve it at the right temperature or right condition to a customer to build up the trust. That's the key of success of a good sommelier. That's what I think.
- Speaker #0
How long have you been doing this? The last 10 years as well?
- Speaker #1
For the consuling service, I started to come in since 2019. the last day of 2019 so technically 2020 okay it's funny to start a company on the
- Speaker #0
31st of December but good resolution in advance you know like this year I'm starting a company yes you started the day before tomorrow okay and so now you told me you're transitioning more and more into wine production so winemaking so you started in Japan right yeah How did you start this?
- Speaker #1
You know, it's just by chance. You know, people keep asking me, why don't you produce wine in China or this, that, there? I think that's just, you know, I always follow the flow of life. So whenever or whatever chance comes, just take it. So I got a chance to know about this winery. And then the winemaker was open enough to accept a foreigner to make wine with him. So, oh, let's do that. Why not? So it is from Hiroshima. Miyoshi is the central part of Japan, is western side of Japan. So it's not a well-known region. So I'm so curious about this wine. When I first know about wine, it was a, you know, wine. competition so i was a judge so i blind taste the wine and i was so curious about okay the wine was good and then i saw saw the name oh it was from hiroshima so i was like i'm so surprised about the quality and i wanted to know what is going on in that region because i'd never heard of wine from from hiroshima before before that tasting so i asked uh oh should we do sort of like collaboration or let me come to your the region to learn about winemaking and then stay upset the the offer so we started that the whole thing yeah what is your um your view of japan winemaking like honestly i know nothing about this you
- Speaker #0
know uh so i'm way less advanced in the theoretical knowledge of wine that you have um but i'm still a wst3 so it's good you know
- Speaker #2
Is that including any Japanese wine?
- Speaker #0
But it's absolutely not including Japanese wine. I think it's not even mentioning Japan.
- Speaker #2
It's a pity.
- Speaker #0
Like it's mentioning China. Yes. But it's mentioning China with one line. Yeah. Say they do wine in China in Ningcha.
- Speaker #2
Okay.
- Speaker #0
Period.
- Speaker #2
That's much more than that.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. So much more than that. But they don't even talk about Japan at all. So what can you tell me like for someone like me? and I think A good part of our audience doesn't know that they're making wine in Japan, I think. Yeah. So what can you tell us about winemaking in Japan? Great.
- Speaker #1
So Japanese wine, we don't have a long time, long history of wine producing history compared to France, Italy. So we got only 150 years of winemaking history only. And then now we had... We have over 500 wineries all over Japan. So you can basically find at least one winery in every single prefecture, including Okinawa from the south. So there's not only one prefecture, they are not producing any wine or don't have any winery in their prefecture, which is Saka in the western side of Japan. but you can basically find at least one winery in every single different profession in Japan. So, and, you know, Japan is a rainy country. We have a lot of rain during summer. And then during wintertime, there's bloody cold, especially in Hokkaido. So this is quite challenging to make wine in Japan. I personally think that in France, you can talk about Taihua. In Italy, of course, you can talk about Taihua. But in Japan, we... We can't really talk about this term. I think that in the winemaking world of Japan, 70% is about person, it's about human involvement. In France, you can find maybe a lower intervention winemaker saying that, okay, I can do nothing. Because let the wine do the work itself. Let's tell our talk. That's what they do sometimes, right? So you hear about that's the organic or biodynamic or natural. natural winemakers talk about that in japan is impossible you have to do something because when the rain come how do you deal with the problems when uh in the in the vineyard how do you deal with the disease how you deal with the the lack of concentration so there's lots of human involvement in it so i would say 70 of human involvement and 30 of the nature and now we have You know, Japan is a very long country. So from the north, we got Hokkaido. And from the south, we have Okinawa. So the climates can be so different from the north to the west or south. So now we have five GI, just like the AOC in France, five GI. Hokkaido, Yamanashi, Nagano, Osaka, and Yamagata. So they are basically from the north. And most of the winery concentrated in Yamanashi, Nagano, and Hokkaido. So Yamanashi, we consider this is the place that we started to wine, or the wine capital of Japan, Yamanashi. So this place got a more unique climate because the rest of Japan got so many rainfall and earthquake, everything. So in Yamanashi and Nagano, they are surrounded by mountains and had a higher altitude. So they are drier, sort of drier, and it's more suitable for grape growing. Hokkaido now, they produce the most expensive wine in Japan. famous for their Pinot Noir. And because of the cool climate regions, there's so many Pinot Noirs that are so famous nowadays. Takahiko, Domaine Huey, Domaine Mont, many, many, very famous. Even Etienne Montil, Domaine de Montil, the Burgundy winemaker, he established a winery in Hokkaido now and produced very, very good Pinot Noir and Saigon. And go down to the Yamanashi and Nagano, where I mentioned previously, they're famous for their local grape, Koshu, which is a pink-skinned grape, and also Muscabarie, a red grape. And then also for the Nagano, it's famous for its Merlot. They produce some of the best red wine in Japan now. I personally think that Nagano now produce the best red wine, red wine. And you go further south, we got, yeah, you know, some professors like Okayama, and then of course us, Hiroshima, and then we produce international grape like Chardonnay, of course sometimes Hinonua, and Bordeaux grape, Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon, etc. And you go further south, you got Miyazaki, uh There's a winery called Zuno, very famous for the Chardonnay, Muscat Barrier, Campbell Early. That's kind of a hybrid grape. And that's the brief landscape of Japanese wine.
- Speaker #0
First, thanks very much because it's amazing for us to discover this. And it's definitely a country we have to visit and places we have to go to discover those wines. You mentioned something about the difference between terroir. in France and Europe and the people behind wine in Japan. So, you know, I feel when you taste wine in France, depending on the wine you taste, but you can feel where it comes from. You can really recognize. Is it the same for Japan, but you can recognize the person behind it? Yeah, I feel it that way.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, I think that's for the winemaking technique, we can feel the wine from which producer, especially for, you know, when we blind taste the Pinot Noir from Hokkaido, you can definitely tell some of the wine are from certain winemakers because of the so extreme winemaking technique from them. But, you know, but it is hardly to tell that I can feel that this wine is from Toyama, this wine is from... from uh from miyazaki this wine is from hiroshima it's very hard to tell that's the place but you can definitely tell that's uh oh this winemaking technique maybe it is from a certain winemaker oh this is whole bunch this is a hundred percent whole bunch wine maybe it is from takahiko or the the similar winemaking technique from from from hokkaido uh etc etc so you can maybe you can tell but it's hardly tell where they're from but You can definitely feel who is making that wine.
- Speaker #0
And the consumption of those wines, it's mainly locally or do they export also a little bit?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, that's a very good question, Sue. You know, 90% of the winery in Japan, they are family-run. They are super small like us. We produce about less than 14,000 bottles per year. Only 3% working in the winery. And it's impossible for this kind of winery to export their wine. So most of the wine consumed in the country. But nowadays, there's some of the winery, for example, like Kirin Group, they own Chateau Mation, which is the biggest winery in Japan. And then Santori, also some very famous winemaker, like Grace Wine from Yamanashi, like Takahiko from... from Hokkaido this kind this uh winery started to export their wine and as I'm helping our winery to export our wine to the other countries as well yeah so why Japanese wine can't be so famous like the other country I think this is the uh one uh one of the reasons behind because they rarely export their wine so yes people talk about Japanese wine but but you when you go to Finland if you go to Sweden you hardly you can never find a Japanese wine in the wine list so that's a pity and that's why that's what makes Japanese wine can't be so famous now but you know Domino's too
- Speaker #0
And Grace, Takeo, they are so famous because they started to export their wine a long time ago. So, yes, I think that we need to draw more attention from the market. First of all, we need to export the wine.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, plus, I guess maybe it's kind of cliche what I want to say, but you can find very, very, very good Japanese restaurants in, I guess, every country in the world. potentially a omakase restaurant that are absolutely amazing and so maybe if you start by putting your wines there you know you're confronted to very high-end clients people are really into tasting drinking and stuff and then maybe it can also flow from there like you know yeah I guess it's also a way to make people discover those wines you mentioned also that you're working in KSX 10 right now? So it's the same You're making wines there?
- Speaker #0
No no It was I've been there It was It was my first time To go this country And It was About Their National Sommelier competition Yeah So I Invite me as International judge For their competition So I got a chance To go there To experience the country And to witness The whole thing And I was so surprised For everything You know Before I land to this country, I thought that I'm going to land in between of the fields surrounded by horses. And, you know, that's what I, that's my imagination about this country. But, you know, when you land, you immediately feel that it's a completely different story. It's so, it's a huge country. I went to Amenti and then there was, there's a lot of night, late night life. And then it's so, it's a busy country. busy city and as we we got over 40 uh candidates for the competition which is a huge competition so everything just you know blow my mind in in in a week and then uh they are super friendly they are you know very good at hospitality and they brought me to everywhere that i should go in in the city so and then i was visiting some winery there to a winery called alba it's impressive uh Uh,
- Speaker #1
winery to the goat so yeah that's a very nice business we would love to go to kazakhstan as well this is the type of countries i love you know like very underrated nobody's exactly kazakhstan but it looks a wonderful country and do you like meat you guys yeah you know uh
- Speaker #0
they they fit keep feeding me horse meat oh nice yeah cow horse yeah and then they they gave me that the milk the The horse milk.
- Speaker #1
The fermented milk.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, yes. I taste, at least I taste. But it's really not my cup of tea.
- Speaker #1
But same, we were in Mongolia last summer. Yeah. For vacation. Ah, yes,
- Speaker #0
yes.
- Speaker #1
It is the same. Like they eat shit ton of meat. Like it's always, every lunch dinner, it's meat, meat, meat. Very low vegetables. And they have the same milk, fermented milk. Ah, yes. It's pretty fun to taste. Wouldn't be something I drink every day, but pretty fun. Okay, so no winemaking in Kazakhstan yet, but I guess it's something.
- Speaker #0
I hope.
- Speaker #1
Something you will probably do. I have a question that I think is interesting. So you told us you're transitioning from sommelier to winemaking, or actually it's like... When you started your career, it was 100% sommelier, 0% winemaking, and now it starts to balance a bit more. What are the things that you thought were true when you were a sommelier and you realized it was completely wrong when you became a winemaker? What things you were thinking about wines that turned out to be completely false when you started making it?
- Speaker #0
So if you are a sommelier, you think of... You think a lot of romantic thing about winemaking or wine or, you know, you always judge the winemakers. Okay, oh, why you put silver? Why you do patisserie in your winery? Why do you, you know, why do you call to the bottle with a screw cap? You have a lot of judgment about the wine. But when you become a winemaker, you look at the whole thing in a different perspective and aspect. So... You have to do whatever you need to do because at the end of the day, it's the production. This is the money that you fit your family for a small company. So you have to make sure that some wine is produced every single year. If, you know, in a vineyard, okay, it is romantic to say that, oh, we never use pesticide or we want to protect the soil, we protect the land. Yes, everyone wants to do the same thing. But when the problems come, you have to deal with it. You have to make sure that's the production. So there's no longer a romantic story to tell. This is a business decision to make. So this is quite different from... when I was in this, when I worked as a sommelier. And then suddenly when I become, started to learn about winemaking, you learned about this kind of, you know, decision you have to make behind. So this is the first. And the second thing is, you know, when you are a sommelier, you, Before you experience the winemaking, you can't never tell that making wine is super, super, super hard. It's about daily work every day, right from the morning and finish at the late night. And you can't imagine how hard it is. So I suggest every sommelier to go to a winery to work at least maybe one week or experience a harvest to feel how hard it is. and to feel the hard work behind the label. And so that you can treasure more about wine and every single drop of the wine you pour to your customer or you drink yourself. So yes, it's pretty different.
- Speaker #1
It's funny what you said, because when we were in France, I interviewed Laure Gasparotto. So she's a journalist at Le Monde, so the main daily publication. in france like the main newspaper in france like uh the i don't know the i don't know the equivalent but like uh here but but like see uh china daily post or like something like that i don't know the real name here but uh you know like main publication daily of news and and whatever and so she was specialized in wine and she also uh started making wine in the south of france and It was funny because she told me before this, I was romanticizing how we make wine. But actually, I came to the conclusion that there is... So she didn't tell me about business decision, but she was telling me about daily life happening, you know. And it was like, yeah, so this winemaker was telling me that he wanted to have more... vegetal aspect in his wine this year blah blah but the truth is he was just like on holidays or taking care of his family you know he just took one week off during the year turned out it was the wrong week to take off it was raining and so then at the end of the year you're like yeah but i i got to justify that and i can't just say yeah i was on holiday and so you you just have like basically life going on it was pretty poetic because she was telling me but everyone is a testimonial of
- Speaker #0
life of someone also going on so it's a it's a great point to to see you know yeah and and i think that you have to love the nature enough to stay in a winery because mostly that normally the winery is always in the countryside so you need to get rid of your your your nightclub you know there's no light nightclub for you in the countryside and and it's it's quite it is a quite different lifestyle. as a sommelier and as a winemaker as you said every day you make the same thing every year you make the same thing you face the same landscape all the time but sommelier you face different people every day and then you have the time to have a day off to hang out with your friends but in a winery during the harvest season forget about day off there's no day off and we experience because me and the winemaker we experienced a couple of days that we started to work about 8 o'clock And then we finish the work about 11 o'clock in the evening. So it's about like 15 hours of work. And it's just focusing on... Yes, so yeah, that's tough.
- Speaker #1
So you know this now, when you open a bottle of wine, please enjoy it because there is... Yeah,
- Speaker #0
and don't waste any drop of wine. Drink it all.
- Speaker #1
Drink it. It's the most important lesson. Do you think that you're... So knowing that, do you think that you're... Behavior in service and what you teach to other sommeliers now and how you train them has changed?
- Speaker #0
Yes. Yeah. You know, I praise more about the work behind the label instead of telling, okay, I think that's the climax, the terroir, the story is very important. I'm not saying that that's not important. But I also think that the work behind is, I think this is the most important story to tell. Especially, we always say, okay, so many is the bridge between the winemaker and the customer. you are representing the winemaker to tell the story to the customer. Of course, you need to tell the terroir, the place, but I also talk more about the winemaking, the hard work, the story about the person more nowadays.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, I have a good analogy on that. It's in France as well, but there are two guys I really like. It's Pierre and Louis Trappé. So, you know, they have a domain in Burgundy and in Alsace as well. And I've seen them a few times in Paris. And every time, because they are here to, you know, present their wine and meet clients and everything. Every time I see them, so they are in Paris, but you can see that they have their hands like in the, I don't know how to say, but like in the cracks of their hands. You can see that there is like dirt, you know, like, and that they were just. working uh probably this morning or yesterday in the vineyard and they came for the night in paris of course they wash their hands and stuff but you know it's just like so deeply yes luckily i didn't start it it's just like so deeply inside their hands that you can see that they were just like yeah working in outside or in the vans in the vines or whatever and just like what they do every day so it's great that's amazing absolutely I think we've covered a lot of everything. Do you think that you will transition more and more into winemaking or do you want to keep this balance now?
- Speaker #0
I will try to keep the balance because selling wine or making wine can't be profitable. Especially, I work with the winery. I'm taking 10% of the wine production, which is a thousand. maybe 1,200 per year. That can't fulfill my living cost.
- Speaker #1
You have to sell them very, very expensive.
- Speaker #0
So I will keep going my sommelier work. I will keep all my business. You know, sometimes I talk for wines. I give lectures in different occasions. So I will keep doing that. and and um who knows maybe I will start my own wine bar in Japan who knows I don't know much about the future but I will keep doing my sommelier work and I will keep going back to the winery and work with the winemaker to learn about you know winemaking I will keep doing that but you know
- Speaker #1
I will try to make a balance yeah and it's good to keep one feet into this because you then you know you are always killing the game and in relations with the people making wine so that's great and so i have three last question uh the first one is do you have books many books about wine that you would recommend that so you you came with the book so so it's super kind yeah
- Speaker #0
i i have i got two books uh to recommend so i i i have one i'll just first talk about this one this is a book written by a japanese and it's uh he his name called Shinya Tasaki. So he was the world champion in 1995, and he was the first and only Asian champion in the world for now. So he is the only one. And this book is about the presentation of sommelier. The presentation means that not the work, but how they speak. So it is this book teach us how to describe a wine or describe. a sensitivity of a human. So I think that's the, lots of sommelier has a lot of knowledge in the brain, but they don't know how to express the knowledge and don't know how to express the feeling to let the customer feel the same thing that they feel. So it's not about only wine, but the food as well. He teach us how to describe food, how to understand the flavor. texture, the temperature of the food and also to to teach us how to describe a wine as well and how to train our sensitivity and train how to turn it into words to explain to the customer. So I think this is a very good book.
- Speaker #1
This one, unfortunately, I won't be able to read right now.
- Speaker #0
I think they, yeah, this is Chinese version. They also have the Japanese version, of course. It's a totally different cover. and I think this is the the same
- Speaker #1
this is the chinese first i don't i'm not sure they have it in english but i i do hope that they have yeah it's a it's a good so i'm learning chinese but uh i'm still not good enough to long way to go but uh yeah we'll put a link for you guys in the description for for these books and just before you present the second one there's a question i i didn't ask but since you won Asia Pacific is your goal to be one day the world champion?
- Speaker #0
And, you know, I'm working on it. Our next world competition will be in Portugal, Lisbon, next year, October. So,
- Speaker #1
my heart will be split between you and Pascaline Le Pelcher, but,
- Speaker #0
she is great. She is really, like, very powerful, very strong, very precise person. I love her very much. And,
- Speaker #1
yeah. I will root for the two of you. So that's no jealousy. Okay. Okay.
- Speaker #0
So the second book here, it's a very new book to me. I haven't finished it, but I started to work on it. The name is called Concept in Wine Technology, Small Winery Operations. So it's a really good book written by a PhD, Margalit. My winemaker suggested that book to me. and it is all about everything from the vineyard to the winemaking for a small winery. So it talks about all the operations, how to measure a sulfur level, how to measure pH of a wine and how it works with the bottling line and then the barrels, the cork, everything about winemaking that you need to know about. So it is a very interesting book. And then you can see a lot of chemical things inside. I am not really good at that, but I'm picking up my essence of talking about potassium, magnesium things and sort of like winemaking things like that. And I found that this is a super interesting book to read.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, it's amazing. It looks amazing, actually. But it's crazy because I'm like, from what I've seen in the wine world and in the people we met is that making wine is a life but if you want to do it it's like we know how to do it you know like there is a playbook of how you should do from you have a grape to you have a wine yeah and if you basically follow it you will have wine at the end like it's not that hard uh with a lot of commas and limitation to what i'm saying but i mean you have the playbook But the thing is, if you want to do it great, if you want to, you know, really invest yourself and create a real good wine, shape something that is really nice, then it's just like another level of commitment. And so, you know, it's crazy because it's basically like it's chemical reaction happening. And like we can describe, we can mathematically describe everything that is going on in a barrel, in a tank. But there is a magic behind that.
- Speaker #0
depending on the efforts in the soul that you're putting to the wine that for me shapes the thing completely different and yeah and yeah i think it's crazy so yeah so i think this is the that that book is about the basic this is already the basic and you got so many things that you don't really know about uh about it but this is the basic that i think that's all the winemaker should know about this basic no matter you are going for the classic winemaking technique or you go for the natural wines uh technique because especially for natural wine people think that oh natural you don't really know need to know anything about the wine but if you want to go natural or lower intervention you had you better have a very very strong basic knowledge or the the technique in your brain to know how to be natural or how to do less in your wine because you need to control a certain like you don't want the wine go wrong you don't want your wine being very dirty or So... has a lot of bread or wine fault. You need to deal with that with your knowledge instead of using chemical to put into the wine. So I think this is a very, very important thing to learn.
- Speaker #1
This is very true what you're saying because actually you can... I see that a lot in the natural wine world, is that you have two types of natural wine. You have the good ones and the bad ones. And so, you know, for some people, the fact that it's natural wine is just an excuse for producing something that you basically don't want to drink. That actually I don't like, and I think it's full of defects and something that we shouldn't have in wine. But when you have natural wines that are good, I think it's, of course, amazing, and it's part of, like, the good wines. part you know because the winemaker know what they are doing exactly like being natural is not an excuse it's a it's a it's a bet it's something they wanted to do but it's not an excuse for producing exactly so for me it makes a difference I won't make friends saying that but whatever next question do you have a recent tasting that you loved a bottle that you loved recently yeah I thanks to my friend
- Speaker #0
Taku Ikuro his Actually, he is a sommelier in Tokyo, and he sent me two bottles to Hiroshima to congratulate my winning of the Asia-Pacific Sommelier Competition. So he sent me two bottles. I opened one of them, which is a Black Chalk, the name called Black Chalk, Wild Rose 2020, which is a Jose wine, Jose sparkling wine from England. which is a very mind-blowing sparkling wine that I recently tasted. Very, you know, very elegant, really refreshing, with definitely a couple of layers on the palate. It's a really nice sparkling wine. I really, I have never tasted that before. I didn't even know about the winery. So it was a very mind-blowing experience to me. And I also taste... a new discovery, a champagne, Cassette Tipot, which is a grower champagne. I tasted it in Hiroshima. A wine bar owner recommended that to me and I found that it's a very amazing sparkling wine to taste as well. So two sparkling wines recently.
- Speaker #1
We love sparkling wines. Very good recommendation. Thank you for that. And last question is who is the next person I should interview?
- Speaker #0
Yeah. I highly recommend to you the same wine person from Japan. His name called Toru Takamatsu. He is now, he is a master sommelier. He based in New Zealand or Australia before. I forgot which country, but now he's back to Japan and he started to work in Hokkaido with a winery called Takahiko. Domingo Takahiko is one of the most famous winery in Japan. And then now he's working in the winery with Mr. Takahiko. And he speaks fluent in English. So I think he is the one who you need to interfere with because he knows about wine. He's good at English and he knows about the wine in Hokkaido. So if you want to know more about Japanese wine, you have to go to this person.
- Speaker #1
You just gave us a wonderful excuse to visit Japan. So that's perfect. I didn't ask for more during this interview. Riz, thank you very much for this time. Thank you very much. I learned a lot. It was super nice to talk with you. Thank you very much for all that you brought here. We'll put the link in the description of the books that we talked about, the wines that we talked about, of course, your winery and everything you're doing. Your social network as well. You have Riz Le Fermier and Riz.
- Speaker #0
I forgot to mention about the wines. Now my wine is called Project 933. But in 2025, I will produce a completely new branding, new name called Lieu Ordinaire. It's a humble name. I love this name. It's a new wine, but same wine producers. Really look forward to let you try next time with my wine. And thank you very much for this opportunity, by the way.
- Speaker #1
Thanks, Riz. Thanks, everyone, for still being here. If you like this interview, share it with at least two friends who need to discover wine from Asia and from Japan. Thanks for being here and see you next time.
- Speaker #0
Thank you.
- Speaker #1
Bye-bye. Perfect.
- Speaker #0
Was it good? Oh
