How to Gamify and Humanize Wine Tasting with Barb Wild, the "Good Wine Gal" | 7

Wine educator Barb Wild joins us to discuss approachable, sensory-based wine tasting, confidence-building, and the BC Wine Tasting ChallengeTM.

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In this episode, host Isabelle Leschaeve welcomes Canadian wine media expert Barb Wild, the “Good Wine Gal.” 

Together, they explore how to make wine tasting accessible, fun, and meaningful for everyone.

• Barb shares her journey from hospitality entrepreneur to respected wine educator, including her refreshing approach to tasting and teaching wine.
  
  
• Discover why listening to consumers, avoiding intimidating jargon, and trusting your senses are key, whether you’re a hobbyist or a wine pro.
  
  
• Plus, get a behind-the-scenes look at Barb’s BC Wine Tasting ChallengeTM and tips for building wine confidence through mindful, sensory-focused practice.
  

If you want to rethink how you experience wine—with less pressure and more enjoyment—this episode is for you.

Get a glass and join us!

Links from today’s episode:

• Connect with Barb Wild on social
  • Website
  • Instagram
  • Facebook
  • YouTube
  • Vitis Magazine
  • Good Life Vancouver
  • Good Wine Gal Blog
    
    
• Two free guides from Barb
  • Good Wine & How To Find It
  • Pocket Guide to BC Wine - Okanagan & Similkameen Valley

Your Free Resource from Isabelle:

Discover the five mistakes turning your guests away – and how to fix them!

Connect with Isabelle:

• Learn more about working with me on my website
• Connect with me on LinkedIn
• Connect with me on Instagram
• Subscribe to my YouTube channel
• Leave Isabelle a message

Transcript

Isabelle [00:00:02]:

Welcome to today's episode of We Taste Wine Differently. I'm your host, Isabelle Lesschaeve, wine sensory scientist, educator, and tasting coach. I am delighted to welcome Barb Wild, the good wine gal, to the show. I'm excited to explore her approach to tasting wine differently. But first, let me say a few words about Barb.

Isabelle [00:00:44]:

Barb Wild is a recognized Canadian wine media personality who brings a wealth of experience and passion to the world of wine. With a background that spans education, writing, business, and media, Barb has established herself as a trusted authority on good wine and how to find it. Her motto is: “Life is short. Drink good wine.” Now, who can disagree with that? She was born and raised in Western Canada and currently living in wine country. I'm very jealous. Barb is a Canadian wine professional based in British Columbia. It's great to have a fellow Canadian on board.

Isabelle [00:01:27]:

And I will add that Barb has a robust educational foundation in wine, a WSET diploma, Canadian wine scholar certification, and a certified specialist of wine. So she writes, teaches, judges, and travels for wine. So we connected through a friend and discovered similar goals to make wine more approachable to consumers by creating different tasting experience so that people can taste wine differently. So I'm really excited to welcome you to the show, Barb, and welcome.

Barb Wild [00:02:01]:

Thank you so much. It's just I'm so excited to be here because I just love how we met and I love how dedicated your career has been to the study of and articulating of the sensory skills needed to become a wine professional.

Isabelle [00:02:22]:

Oh, thank you. Thank you for your kind words. Appreciate. So we have prepared a few questions, but again, you know, we can go on and off as we want to share. And yeah, you said that you love the fact that, we met recently, but when we first met, you mentioned that you had been an entrepreneur all your life, mainly in hospitality, and that you became a wine student later in your career. I think you mentioned you use the word mature, mature or mature wine student. So can you maybe share your wine journey with us from discovery to your current project?

Barb Wild [00:02:58]:

Well, thank you for that question because it's always fun to do a sentimental journey, but I went to hotel school many years ago and perhaps even before I went to hotel school when I was in university, because I was started when I was 18 in university, you know, the ability to get something fizzy other than beer on a Friday night to go to the mixer, you know, I think the. The flavor at the time was something like Baby Duck, I dunno. Lone Ranger or something like that. Lonesome Charlie, maybe. But it was this fizzy, sweet bubbly, you know. And maybe that was my first experience on my own, going to hotel school. We had a beverage class.

Barb Wild [00:03:49]:

Herrar Berberoglu, we called him Mr. B. Became famous because he would bring international wine into this beverage class and we would all taste, but there was no protocol, and everybody just drank everything that was in all the glasses. So that was the best class of the semester. But, you know, at the time, if you tasted any of these wines in the early 80s, I mean, honestly, Plonky Plank plonk. At least that's how I felt about it. So I developed a love for single malt scotch whiskey, which is just pretentious as all get out, but whatever. But anyway.

Barb Wild [00:04:31]:

Fast forward through my life, I guess. You know, in the late mid-90s, I suppose I tried my first South African red. It was a Zonnebloem Merlot. And it stopped me in my tracks. It was like, whoa. Like, this is like a nice blanket around my shoulders. I'm just feeling warm inside. I'm having it with lamb.

Barb Wild [00:04:58]:

And it was just delightful. Delightful. So suddenly there was this air of sophistication that you needed to have something delicious with what you were eating. And I think that's kind of when that started because I was already a foodie. Like, the business was marketing and selling gelato, you know, that was made from 80% fruit and 20% sugar. And, you know, it's very authentic in its flavor and delicious. Yeah. Anyway, so having had this palate for delicious food, why wouldn't you develop a palate for delicious wine? So somewhere.

Barb Wild [00:05:38]:

Yeah, somewhere I was sitting in a restaurant in like, let's say 2001 in Calgary. We were on some fundraising adventure. We're at the famous Caesar's restaurant where they were doing, you know, tableside Caesar salad and, like, grilled ribeyes and all that very classic restaurant. And someone after we had eaten, ordered a bottle of Amarone. And it was in the beautiful bottle and the cheese plate came out. And so then you're just tasting Cambozola or some Italian blue, and you're sipping this beautiful red wine. And again, it was like this epiphany, like, oh, you can have wine all the time.

Isabelle [00:06:24]:

Yeah. And I love the way you described how you, the wine made you felt at the time, you know, there was no about, I perceived these smooth tannins and, beautiful aromas.

Barb Wild [00:06:37]:

It was just like a feeling, which is so. I don't know, I was like, let's say in 2009, I was kind of like, what should I do now? Everything else has failed. And so in my search, it came up. That wine was this everlasting possibility of a career. And I hadn't really thought about it at all, but I was like, oh, okay, well, what does that mean exactly? Like, what kind of jobs are can you do? And the long and short of it is I just enrolled. I had started studying sustainability. So it was a two year program. It was continuing studies at University of British Columbia. So I was doing that, but I was like, I really want to study wine.

Barb Wild [00:07:21]:

Because, Barb, I invented my own scorecard. So I didn't know there wasn't. Like, I didn't know there was a scorecard per se. Like, I had an idea, but I just thought all the wine professionals just created whatever they wanted their own card and why not? Anyway, so I was boldly put that out as a blog or in 2000 and whatever, only to take it down because I was so embarrassed that I'd actually had that idea. So after you enroll in studying and they teach you a particular way of approaching wine, everything changes, which means you become a student. And that's not bad. However, what I didn't maybe realize is that your palate is something you have developed over the course of your life. It's personal.

Barb Wild [00:08:10]:

And the universal explanation of wine is particular to your palette in the sense that if you don't know what quince is, you're never going to use the descriptor quince, you know, Anyway, so, blah, blah, blah. I decided to get a job in wine retail. And someone, a friend of mine said, oh, you need to do this course. And it was the diploma. And I had not. I just had decided I was never studying again. I'm old, I don't want to study. And I was like, maybe it'll propel my career.

Isabelle [00:08:45]:

Why not?

Barb Wild [00:08:48]:

Why not? So I did the intensive immersion as I would do 18 months, flying to Calgary once a month to sit in a weekend long session to taste whatever, 48 styles of wine and to write handwritten tasting notes and review descriptors and study regions. And I have to say, I loved it and hated it. It's just the greatest love-hate relationship I've ever had. I am forever grateful, but it does. You have to always have an open mind, which at the time was pretty closed.

Isabelle [00:09:27]:

Yeah. So diploma. So did you pursue your career at retail?

Barb Wild [00:09:34]:

And I have no rewards. There were no rewards offered for having a diploma other than I got the job, but the pay was terrible, and that didn't stop my studies. So then I was like, oh, I don't know that much about Canada is not spoken in the international wine study guides at all. A little bit ice wine. And I was like, there's more than ice wine here. Like, look around. So I did the Canadian Wine Scholar program with fine vintage, and then I wanted to become an educator, but I didn't want to go the WSET route.

Barb Wild [00:10:09]:

So I started the certified specialist of Wine with the Society of Wine Educators. Anyway, all of that to say. I wasn't convinced by the time I was done all that, that I could teach wine in any of these manners and feel confident that I was doing something right by the people sitting in the room. Because I think one of the things I had to let go of was how I tasted wine before I studied.

Isabelle [00:10:47]:

How. How come.

Barb Wild [00:10:48]:

Because I never talked about the descriptors. I never said dry, medium body, medium plus tannins. You know, who talks like that? And you can't talk to customers like that. You can't. Like, customers are looking at you going like, what the hell are you talking about? Especially if they're new to wine. I mean, one of the great lessons for me was the way to put a boundary between you and your customer is to start talking in a language they don't understand.

Isabelle [00:11:24]:

Yeah. And that's really, you know, what the debate is currently, you know, do we need to change the way we interact with consumers? And obviously you have changed the way you interact with consumers since a long time, which, congratulations for that. But it's really about, making wine approachable by the language and talking. But, I always say, like, listen more than you talk because you really want to learn from the person or the people you have in front of you before deciding to share a level of, you know, what. To what depth of, my knowledge that I have acquired, through all these experiences that you have, to what level of depth do I need to go. And, maybe, with some people, you need to have those profound conversations about, the technical sheet of the wine. But for the majority of people, it's more about, you know.

Isabelle [00:12:16]:

Yeah. Do you want to like to try this one? You know, I like it because. Well, you know, please.

Barb Wild [00:12:23]:

But, you know, like, I feel sorry now when I look back at some of my poor customers, because, honestly, they'd ask me a question, and I would stop talking, 45 minutes later. And what did they. What did they understand? You know, one man said to me, at some point, just tell me if it's a good wine. And I was like, oh, my God. And of course, me understanding that question was kind of like, well, where do we start? You know, like, what's good wine for you? What's the last wine you had? What do you think is good wine? Because it's not about what I think, which was the mistake that I perhaps. I love sharing. You know, I'll talk your ear off, Isabelle.

Barb Wild [00:13:00]:

You know, to be a good listener in wine only works 50, 50. You have to take it in, you have to digest it, and then you have to have enough tasting breadth that you can say, ah. Because it's not only what's good wine, it's what is the price. And, you know, what is like, right? There's a whole bunch of qualifiers. It's like, I like to compare wine to, like, wine shopping to kind of like. Or wine drinking to, like, golf. You know, your ability to develop your skills around tasting.

Barb Wild [00:13:41]:

It's like it's practiced.

Isabelle [00:13:46]:

It is. It is. Practice, practice, practice. You know, my students are fatigued by me saying all the time, you have to practice. I cannot do the work for you. I mean, you can read all the books, but if you don't practice, listen to your senses, trust your senses and practice aroma recognitions, you don't go anywhere. And it doesn't have to practice drinking bottles of wines every day. It's more about being mindful and letting go of all your knowledge and just feeling the wine that we were as we started this conversation.

Isabelle [00:14:24]:

It's really more about feeling with all your senses and knowledge. Help after to decide what a good wine is.

Barb Wild [00:14:31]:

You know, in order to give context to wine, you must know a place. Many places I like to say to people, if you want to know a place, pick up a handful of dirt and, you know, taste it wherever you are, because that is going to be a source of influence for the grapes that make the wine. Doesn't mean you should eat dirt, but it's just one piece of the great puzzle of wine.

Isabelle [00:15:07]:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's multifaceted, and that's why we love learning about it.

Barb Wild [00:15:13]:

That's, like, why we love traveling to the places of and why we love to sit and contemplate. I should be called the thinker, because I just love to sit and inhale aromas. And people are, like, already drinking, and I'm like. And. And when I say drinking, I spend a lot of time with people who don't know a lot about wine, and they lean in because they want to know, but they haven't developed that skill of spending time over a glass of wine where you just. It's kind of like that meditation where you take it in and you take it in again, and you take it in again.

Barb Wild [00:15:47]:

It's like five times. Just at least five times. And people are ready to celebrate. They're in a hurry. No. Or maybe they don't have the context for what they should be sensing.

Isabelle [00:16:02]:

Yeah, yeah.

Barb Wild [00:16:04]:

Like, where do you start?

Isabelle [00:16:07]:

So is, this post that, you know, you advocate we need to have before starting, sipping the wine, is it what you motivated you to start the BC Wine tasting challenge?

Barb Wild [00:16:21]:

No, I think what started. I mean, not initially, but what initially started me was I was running a cute little wine shop in West Vancouver. And so people came in and said, oh, we want to do an event for 60 gentlemen for this private school, and they love wine, but what could we do that would be interesting? You know, I'm like, how do you gamify wine but still make it fantastic? Because you're tasting fantastic wine? So the first time I developed this, the first iteration was a card, and there were three clues on each at each table. And it was really just countrywide, like, what country are we in? So there was a bottle of wine at each table. There were three clues. They had to pick a clue, and they had to go around the room, and that meant they had to interact. And the idea of this was all the fathers getting to know each other. And so it was interesting because these wines were in bottles, brown bags.

Barb Wild [00:17:28]:

And I don't know that any of the gentlemen had ever spent time like that before. So, you know, that for me, it was a great. To listen to them have their conversations without saying anything. Was fascinating to see what they were trying to figure out with each other, which wine was from. You know, it's like Shiraz was like Australia, Italy, Northern Rome, some such thing like France. It was very generic. And then, when we announce the winners, or like, you, you show the bottles, which is very exciting. And then you go through the scorecard, and whoever got the perfect score then won the prize.

Barb Wild [00:18:07]:

And very few. I think there was, like, maybe one man, and he was a wine agent. So very unfair. He should have been eliminated. But he won. And that was really because he practiced so much and he had orientation towards spending time thinking about what he was tasting. But most of them would walk up to the table swirling. So it wasn't until someone said to me once, when you taste, when you are doing this, like, you have to inhale, your eyes are open, you can't, you know, swish the wine all over you.

Barb Wild [00:18:44]:

But when you taste, after you have been inhaling the beautiful aromas, you should close your eyes and just taste with your eyes closed. And that for me was this aha moment. And that's the moment I really want to share with people, is that if you can tune out all the distractions and just be with your blast for a moment, it will change your life.

Isabelle [00:19:15]:

Yes. Well, we can say it out loud, you know, it can change your life or your relationship with wine. So, you went through traditional wine, education, wine tasting education. You tried, different formats to help people understand, wine. You change, maybe your approach to talk about wine. So where are you at right now in terms of, what you found, the most. I was going to say efficient, but it's not about efficiency, but the most beneficial way of leading a wine tasting, for people to really understand what you're trying to convey. And,

Isabelle [00:20:02]:

I'm relating to your wine tasting challenge, but that might be something else.

Barb Wild [00:20:06]:

I think the current form of the wine tasting challenge is to give people a foundation. I value a systematic approach to tasting. I still think your approach to tasting wine has to be systematic. I think if you don't develop your sensory skills, however, it's very difficult to progress. So practice. When I worked as a wine buyer in Vancouver, I must have tasted, I don't know, like thousands, thousands. Every day, a wine, three or four agents would come in with their three or four bottles. And so every day you're tasting 12 too.

Barb Wild [00:20:46]:

So your palate becomes familiar with what is good wine. That's what I think. And it is about the scale that I use now in the BC Wine tasting challenge, which is just very simplified for the purposes of bringing people into the idea, into the experience of tasting wine to evaluate it, which is quite different than tasting wine to enjoy it, although once you get to the other side of the evaluation, then you get to enjoy it. So it's this. Yes. What is the scale the basis of the BC Wine Tasting Challenge is the judgment in Paris. And Steven Spurrier, rest his soul, used a 20 point scale and it was four categories, appearance.

Barb Wild [00:21:46]:

So he used it like eyes, nose, mouth and harmony. This is 76, this is 1976. So it says something about how we've developed this whole idea as well. So equal points assigned, which that also has changed completely. And maybe it wasn't even used like that. I didn't really get all the details on how this judging was done, but so in the current iteration of how I do the BC Wine Tasting Challenge, and it was France, BC versus France this year. Wonderful.

Isabelle [00:22:22]:

Woohoo.

Barb Wild [00:22:24]:

They look at the glass and they rank. They look for clues. Be the investigator, be the private eye. What do you see? Is it clear? Does it coat the inside of the glass? Is the color so concentrated or is it light? It's trying to tell you something. So out of five points, then you move on. Okay, so now that we've looked at what's in the glass, now we get to smell what's in the glass. What are we taking in? What are the aromas? Are they giving us so much it's overwhelming? Is it restrained? Then can we find something precise or is it generic? Then once we get past that, is what is something that you can identify that's precise? That's out of five points.

Barb Wild [00:23:11]:

Is it generous and giving and there's a lot going on, or is it so out of five points? So now we've got 10 points down. So the next one is taste in your mouth. So we're looking for a bit more here because you've got to match kind. Well, you don't have to match. But what did you smell? Does it show up on the palate? Is it dry? Where's the acidity? Is there tannin? So you've got this drying sensation and then that's out of five points and that it gives you everything you need to know and then you move on. Harmony. I thought this was lovely.

Barb Wild [00:23:45]:

Harmony is a lovely. A lovely word for the balance in wine that you want. I just love that word so much. So anyway, it was like, okay, is this harmonious? Are all the bits and bobs meeting each other gently, kindly, lovingly, or in a way that you say, wow, this is amazing. And that's out of five points. So it's out of 20. And this is for. Go ahead.

Isabelle [00:24:14]:

Yeah. I really love the fact that you place people as private investigator and not as judge because I think when you put yourself in A judgment mindset, it's good or bad. Whereas, you know, in the approach, we talk about how we taste wine differently. So, you know, you say, well, we want to find cues and, or clues. And so I'm just curious, for people who are more novices in wine or new to wine. So when you start talking about tannins and, other sensations or even acidity, sometimes for people it's difficult to really relate to what you mean. So did you have like a little, warm up exercise to put them at ease on how to share their feelings or they just went on and as a group played in, basically.

Barb Wild [00:25:12]:

So that's a great question because I wonder if that would have been a good thing to do. But I just tasted with them. So we did three flights this year. So I would taste with them on the first flight and I would try to demonstrate the steps and what I'm looking for and we would do it together and I would ask questions. And one of the words for acidity that people who aren't trained, they use, sharp, it tastes sharp. And I thought that was really interesting. So I could translate what that meant. I don't know all the terms.

Barb Wild [00:25:48]:

And I think this is one of the clues, I think, to how to break this down into like a layman's language versus a professional language. But people who are doing this just for fun, they're not studying it. They don't, I don't want to say they don't care because of course they care. And they want their wine life to be wonderful. Of course they do, but to help them understand. So I would just, express where I'm feeling the wine on my tongue, where I'm feeling it on my gums, if I was. And then they would do the next flight by themselves and the last flight by themselves. One of the shifts that I made was that I would do the reveal after the flight rather than saving it all to the end because then they had a sense of whether they were on the right track around their curiosity, private investigator.

Barb Wild [00:26:54]:

And I think that helped.

Isabelle [00:26:59]:

Yeah, that's the concept of, giving feedback. That's something we do a lot in sensory science when we train people to develop their palate and their sensory skills. You let them experience and then you give, feedback in terms of do we agree or if we disagree, on what point and if we have a true answer, which only happens when we doctor the wines, when we add more acid in a wine so we can say, well, yes, it's more acidic, then we give them the feedback. And we really showed how it improved confidence, but also precision in people developing their skills. So I encourage you to continue.

Barb Wild [00:27:40]:

Well, the confidence is the key, I think, because what started to happen is people were very clear about whether this was a good wine or not a good wine. Of course, the difficulty in all of this is to find wines that really are comparable. And that's so hard because in Canada, as you know, we are run by monopolistic government agency that set prices. And so to find a Pinot Noir of a certain efficacy or beauty and then a BC wine of the prices just were not close together. Like. And we have.

Barb Wild [00:28:22]:

This is another conversation entirely. But, what should I pay for a bottle of good wine? It's like, oh, my God, where are we shopping? And that became challenging because you were working within a budget to put on an event so that the tickets are reasonable price. And yeah, so someone said to me, well, that's not a fair comparison. I said, well, that is what your palette is going to tell you. And that is the learning for everyone in the room. So it's not bad.

Barb Wild [00:28:58]:

It's still good. It's still learning.

Isabelle [00:29:00]:

Yeah, yeah. So during your workshop, how many flights did you have?

Barb Wild [00:29:07]:

Three flights of each. Yeah. And it would be like, I tried to make it fun and mix it up, but whatever. And the glasses. So I think this would be a good question for you.

Barb Wild [00:29:20]:

So the thing that happened was I trained on ISO, and there's such a pushback against ISO glasses. Like, oh, my goodness. Such a pushback. Like, come on. Oh, well, the white wine should be in this style and the champagne should be in this style. The Bordeaux should be in this style. The Pinot.

Barb Wild [00:29:39]:

Like, come on, people. Like, when you're tasting to evaluate wine as a wine professional, you don't know. I think you should have the same glass for everything because that becomes a standard if you want to enjoy wine with friends and, you know, have fancy glasses, great. I've done the Riedel, like a needle testing, where you have the different styles of wine and the different glasses against my ISO. And it was like, okay, I get it. Wonderful. What a great discovery.

Barb Wild [00:30:10]:

But it's very difficult to then ask judging parties to not have standardized glasses because, I mean, I just don't know. What to do about that. So that was a challenge in the sessions because we were in a cooking school and we were using white wine glasses and. Yeah, Chardonnay glasses and Bordeaux glasses. Like.

Isabelle [00:30:40]:

Well, I mean, to the question, ISO glasses, per se, or, you know, can we go over them? I mean, as a researcher, I looked at the results and, they are really good at helping us pick out, aromas from the nose. And then, it maintain a small volume of sipping because, you put just 2 ounces or 60 mil in the glass and that's plenty to perceive the aromas and then to swirl and then to sip. I know there are a lot of pushback of people who have find difficult to put the nose in the glass. So, you know, a point taken. But I know there are lots of. What is the word that I'm looking for? Not standard, but universal glasses. So I don't know if it's more like a marketing push or.

Isabelle [00:31:41]:

Indeed they are fantastic for any wines. And I will put that in the show note, there is a recent MW research paper that was about comparing universal glasses and other more specialty glasses. Unfortunately, they forgot the ISO glasses to put in the comparison. So I was very disappointed. But the conclusion was the universal glass seems to stand out in terms of comparing, on being, preferred to as a container.

Isabelle [00:32:21]:

To smell and taste, whatever wine style. So I love ISO glasses and they are not too expensive for what we want to do.

Barb Wild [00:32:29]:

And they work for all bits of whether it's fortified wine, cognac, whiskey, wine. I mean, exactly. Champagne was on my exam.

Isabelle [00:32:43]:

Yeah. Well, that’s my favorite wine, as you probably know.

Barb Wild [00:32:50]:

Well, you're from champagne, aren't you?

Isabelle [00:32:54]:

I am, I am.

Barb Wild [00:32:56]:

That's why we'll meet there. I love champagne. I love Rons. I love Epernay. I just loved it so much. Oh, my goodness. Yes.

Isabelle [00:33:04]:

Yeah, yeah. So going back to the challenge, you had maybe a mix of professional and people new to the world of wine. What kind of unexpected feedback did you receive from the participants beside, this is not fair comparison.

Barb Wild [00:33:27]:

Well, I told myself every time one of these events started, Barb, everything's going to work out for you. Don't worry. But I felt like I was playing Russian roulette because I didn't know what the outcome was going to be. And we are in the heart of wine country, British Columbia, in Kelowna and so I had a winemaker in the room who was the owner of some of the wines we were tasting. So I was terrified about how that was going to go. We had a gentleman who is a judge in Brussels and at the London Wine Fair in the room. So I was like, oh, my God, what is he going to ask me? Like, I had friends that I have who work for Wines of British Columbia or who are working as agents.

Barb Wild [00:34:20]:

I mean, you just, it was. You just had to know that the effort behind this was an uncovering and discovery. This was not giving you an answer. And there was no right or wrong, really. I mean, we voted. So it was democratic and there was a consensus, which, again, would be my style. I'm not here to tell you right or wrong, because I say right at the beginning, you know, what the judgment in Paris taught us was that everyone has an opinion. There is no one expert.

Barb Wild [00:35:00]:

Palates are personal, so drink what you like. That's kind of the whole summation of what I really believe. But the discovery was in doing something like the Judgment in Paris, I called it. The Judgment in Kelowna was really about, can we. In a wine region that's been poo pooed for, like, ever. You know, we're young, we're 50 years old, we don't make good wine. Like, it's just in. When I was studying international wine, the arrogance around BC's wines are terrible anyway, so we don't really need to have them in the.

Barb Wild [00:35:43]:

It's like, how did you arrive at that? Like, it's a 50 year history, you know, So I wanted to kind of bust that myth, which I think we did successfully, and that was that we showcased wines at different prices. Like one of the ones that I remember distinctly was a Viognier. And I'm not saying I could afford a Condrieu to put in the flight, because that's just not possible here. But you find a Rhone white and a reasonable price. There's lots of them, reasonably priced. And then you had the single vineyard, Viognier, which again, is not exact comparisons, but the style of wine. Anyway, so some of the. What was the original question? The pushback, was it.

Isabelle [00:36:35]:

No. The unexpected feedback from your participants because you had like a diverse.

Barb Wild [00:36:41]:

Yes.

Isabelle [00:36:41]:

A diverse audience.

Barb Wild [00:36:42]:

You will like this. I think people who came to the event, I think liked B.C. wine and wanted to see this experience, wanted to see if they could. So there was a bit of a bias in that people are consuming B.C. wine. So the thing that happened quite regularly was this you'll love this. So they could identify which wine was from British Columbia, but which wine was of lesser quality or lesser score had to be the one that was the B.C. wine.

Barb Wild [00:37:21]:

In other words, it wasn't that they were assuming that the wine that they tasted and they gave a higher score to, they thought that was the international wine. And when the reveal came along and it was revealed that this was the BC wine, I think the summation would be in general, BC wine is identifiable, especially to people who are drinking it regularly. And I didn't expect that. I didn't think there was, based on my experience in international wine. I just didn't. I mean, it's not the mainstay, but it is, or at least it's recognizable. Yeah, So I thought that was lovely. I thought the diminishing, which, the wine that's the poorest in the flight has to be the B.C.

Barb Wild [00:38:19]:

wine. I thought that was interesting. And then the surprise at the end would be that I knew it. Like there was this total flip. Total flip.

Isabelle [00:38:30]:

Yeah. So it's kind of a prejudice that, people have, integrated in their mindset that, we are inferior to France, which really there are so many wine regions that it depends what's coming. And, and I've tasted, wonderful BC wines when I was in Canada. So I totally agreed that, we should be proud of what we produce in British Columbia. And so good for you for doing that.

Barb Wild [00:39:00]:

Well, you know, someone has to, it's like a debunking, let's debunk this. I think that's really my motivation is like, I have friends that are just never going to try it. They're just never going to. And they're international people. That's okay, but these are. If you want to spend 300 in British Columbia, you'll be hard pressed to find a bottle at that price because we just don't have wine at that price. But you can get amazing bottles at $50 and $60 a bottle that will blow you away and change all your mindset ideas about BC wine.

Barb Wild [00:39:38]:

So I think there were some other interesting things that happened too and that people show up and they didn't realize maybe that they don't read. People don't read anymore. Do you see that? Yeah. Like you put out an announcement, you tell them what's going to happen. There's a whole list of things they're going to get. Blah, blah, blah. They just never read. They don't know.

Barb Wild [00:40:02]:

So they get there and they're like, oh, we're tasting this. Can I start now? No, no, no, no, no. Just wait till you know. So, but to your point, it might have been a good idea to do a tasting together when they first arrived. Maybe a little glass of bubbles. Okay, what are we noticing? Because it's, fresh acidity on the palate and livens everything up and gets you oriented. But we also had pairings, little tasting, little bites.

Barb Wild [00:40:33]:

And that was also very interesting because people also don't understand that wine can elevate your experience. In other words, wine is delicious, food is delicious. I always say you put the two together and it elevates your entire experience.

Isabelle [00:40:53]:

Yeah, that's a principle. Although they are. You know, we could talk about food and wine pairing on another episode as well, but there are sometimes some suppression, which, when the wine is too dominant, the food doesn't taste as good and vice versa. But I guess you have more experience than me to do that.

Barb Wild [00:41:10]:

You need some experience to find the right food pairings, to create this elevated, to demonstrate it's possible. Because otherwise, you know, my mother's a great example. What are we having? I'm having Merlot. Doesn't matter what we're eating. She's having Merlot. And it's like, you know, it's okay. But this goes back to the original story and said, you drink what you like.

Isabelle [00:41:44]:

Yeah, exactly. And that's a good segue to my question. The purpose of this podcast is really to encourage everyone to think about the consumers when we host tasting and to try to think differently and offer different tasting experience, which doesn't include, you know, necessary. Put it, jumping, but more about, the discovery of wine through the senses. So maybe to help our listeners, if, I gave you two minutes to teach me how to get better at making consumers feel at ease in a wine tasting. What would you tell me to do? Based on your experience.

Barb Wild [00:42:28]:

If you were interfacing with consumers and you wanted to put them at ease, what would be my recommendations? Oh, goodness. Well, I would first start by letting you know that it's okay to ask a lot of questions. You really need to know where they are in the world of wine, and you might even want to ask them if they have a favorite style of wine so that you can address that by offering a tasting that fits into that realm so that they feel Comfortable, because they have an orientation around, oh, I really like. For example, maybe it's Pinot Gris, or maybe it's Chardonnay or whatever. But, you know, if I only drink Chardonnay and you come to a tasting bar, then you want to maybe start with what they know, and then you want to progress the tasting. Yeah, but I think we blast people that come to a tasting with information that they have no context for.

Barb Wild [00:43:44]:

Okay, you're going to find this look, this vintage, and it was like, okay, this dry, and it's like, good acidity. And it's like fine balance. And it's like, people are like, what? Like, I don't understand what we're talking about. Like, what would be a lay. So I think if you can find a common ground and then say, well, if you've liked this Chardonnay, we have a Roussanne Marsanne over here that we like. We think people like as an option instead of Chardonnay, would you like to try it? You know, like. Or options after the first one? And how successful is the dialogue going? Because not everyone feels comfortable in an environment like that because they don't know what they're supposed to do.

Barb Wild [00:44:31]:

And in the tasting room environment. And I laid that on you. I don't know if that's correct. But, this whole thing about. Well, there's a tasting fee, but if you buy some bottles, like, already, the tasting fee will be waived. So already the consumer is stressing about which bottle they're going to buy, so not really paying attention to what they're tasting. And lots of tastings. You're not given a piece of paper and you can make notes or.

Barb Wild [00:44:57]:

There's no instruction about when we're going to taste. The best way to keep track of the wines we're trying is to use your phone, take a picture of the ones you like or something. Just something.

Isabelle [00:45:08]:

Yeah, make people at ease by, meeting where they are at, as we always say, but, giving them options to experience the tasting, the way they are the most comfortable.

Barb Wild [00:45:21]:

Yeah, this is. That. That's more than two minutes. I'm pretty sure. I don't even know if that was.

Isabelle [00:45:28]:

That's okay.

Barb Wild [00:45:31]:

I could go on, But I. I think, yeah, maybe. No, but I think you’ll understand where people are when they approach you has to be where you try to find common ground. But, I don't know. Maybe that seems obvious to me, and maybe it is obvious. To everyone. But it sometimes doesn't happen. Or maybe it doesn't happen a lot.

Barb Wild [00:45:54]:

It's kind of like.

Isabelle [00:45:57]:

And with technology nowadays we have, means, you know, if people pre register to go to the tasting, you can have like a very short questionnaire to know where they are at and you know, when they arrive. They, if you call them, you know, welcome them by their first name and, say, well, you know, we have, you might have like maybe three or four fixed tastings, but you can orient them to what you think based on their answers might be a good start and being flexible in terms of the options and okay, I will receive a lot of pushback. I'm not running tasting room and there is staffing issue and time constraints. But at the same time, if we're just rushing everybody, that's not how we build long lasting relationships. So I think there is a trade off and there are opportunities, as you say, to connect before, connect during, give people what need and to understand.

Barb Wild [00:46:57]:

To understand what are they looking for? Are they looking to sell our wine or are they looking to have wine with dinner? Are they looking for wine at the beach, a patio? Like, how sophisticated are we? Not everybody is there to buy wine they're going to put away for five years. And life changes in five years. So quite frankly, I see that as a diminishing value proposition. But, you know, that's just me. I have friends who have these enormous cellars that are like, what am I going to do? It's like, well, you're going to have to start having parties because.

Isabelle [00:47:34]:

Put everything in auction.

Barb Wild [00:47:35]:

Well, and here, that's so difficult here. Yeah, so difficult here in Canada to do wine auction. Oh my goodness. And people like, oh, I'll just sell it to my neighbors. It's like, well, be careful because that's not legal either. So anyway, blah, blah, blah.

Isabelle [00:47:49]:

Yeah, well, I mean, time, you know, goes fast when we have fun, as we always say. Is there anything, that, you wanted to, to talk about, Barb, about your experience and the way you approach, tasting wine differently that we haven't touched upon.

Barb Wild [00:48:06]:

Oh, that would be, I don't really know. I just really enjoyed speaking with you. I think I, I could learn much from you. And I think for me the idea that, you know, this is a lifelong journey, developing your palate. You know, it's like you can play golf your whole life. Well, you'll never maybe break 100 or you'll never have a, you know, par round, but you keep trying. And so I think with that same mindset, it's like you just keep practicing, you keep tasting and you keep thinking about how will I express this to someone who knows nothing about wine? And that way we really want, like I want people to come to wine. I don't want people to think wine is boring.

Barb Wild [00:48:54]:

Wine is life. There's so many stories behind wine. It's just totally invigorating for me, especially when you start traveling. So I think there's an opportunity. I have a friend, she started a small business and it's like before you travel to a destination, she'll taste through some wines with you of that region so that you have some orientation towards it. It's lovely. And then the other thing is, if you don't know anything about wine, my ebook is Good wine and how to find it. And it's just all the tools, the tips, the tricks on how to find something you like.

Barb Wild [00:49:31]:

I'm not telling you the wines. Like people are always like, oh, I wish you would make all these recommendations. It's like, well, they'll be mine. And then, you know, they might not be yours. Try them. But I always try to point out the wines that are maybe under $20 that offer great value so that the bar to entry is low and the satisfaction of this experience could be high because the expectations are misaligned with what is good wine.

Isabelle [00:50:03]:

So that's a good point. Yeah. And the barrier to entry, really want to minimize that. Great advice. So you’re based in Kelowna.

Barb Wild [00:50:14]:

Yes, I hope you come and visit.

Isabelle [00:50:16]:

Yes, I will, I will. So how can you know people listening to the podcast can get in touch with you? To learn more about your ebook that we’ll put the link in the show notes. But if they want to talk to you or find out what you are doing these days.

Barb Wild [00:50:34]:

Well, it's a very sad truth that I'm everywhere and nowhere. I'm on social media, so Instagram and Facebook as Good Wine Gal. I'm also on privately or personally as Barb Wild. Wild Barb, I like to say and. But I have a website that has all the downloads and the ebooks. I just recently published a new one called the pocket guide to B.C. wine and it recommends places where you can go and get good education at a tasting bar where you could do sit down tastings where they're a bit longer and you could learn if you're interested and inclined that way. But yes, LinkedIn.

Barb Wild [00:51:14]:

Barb Wild Good wine gal. Yes, it's sad. I'm everywhere. Everywhere and nowhere. And it's Wonderful. I have 3000 friends from all over the world.

Isabelle [00:51:29]:

Wonderful, wonderful. Well, at least, you know, people will find you, which is what we want. And we will put all those links in, in the show notes. So it's been an absolute pleasure to have you and have this conversation and share, get to know you even more. And I'm sure there are, there will be a lot of opportunities to continue our conversations and hopefully to taste wine.

Barb Wild [00:51:54]:

I would love that. Champagne Kelowna. Wherever in the world you go, Isabelle, you keep me posted.

Isabelle [00:52:02]:

I will. Well, thank you very much, Barb. And it's been a pleasure again.

Categories: : Podcast