The Romance Between Food & Wine- It’s The Pathway To Our Hearts

Hey, thanks for coming. Welcome to the Love Shack.

Sam.

Hi, and welcome to the Love Shack. Here we are again in our little old place where we can get together and explore fresh perspectives, eavesdrop on juicy conversations and uncover mysteries that nobody else talks about, but absolutely influences our relationships. If you're struggling in your marriage, just starting out in a new relationship, or are single and looking to do better next time, this show is a great place for you to be. My name is Stacey Bartley and I am here with my co host and lover, Tom.

Good day, everybody.

Good to be here together.

For the past decade, we've been teaching and loving on people from around the world with the sole purpose of helping individuals and couples to love more and fare less on their relationships, both with themselves and others. And a quick shout out, quick shout.

Out to our podcast listeners. Love Shack Live airs live. That's hence the name Love Shack Live, every Thursday at 1pm on 1150 KKNW. So I bring this up in case you ever find yourself wanting to ask us a question or share with us live. You can do so. But wherever you are in this moment, thank you so much for listening. It's great to be here together with you.

Yes. Today on our show, Tom and I are going to be joined by Dr. Grover Lee, who just happens to be a master winemaker and restaurantier and the owner of Wise Villa Winery here in Lincoln, California.

So.

So together, the three of us are going to dive into some romance of the pairing of food and wine. And I don't know about you, but that's a heartfelt romance for Tom and I. Right, honey?

That seems to be a predictable pattern of pleasure.

Well, that's good.

Predictable pattern of pleasure.

That's a lot of peace. And also how we can use this understanding of food and wine to create more connection and romance in our hearts. So we'll be right back with Dr. Lee.

Ready to learn the most important thing you can do. Revitalize your relationship today. Go to stacybartley.com fairydust stacybartly.com fairydust this is the number one thing Stacy teaches her VIP clients that has the power to improve the health of your relationship. Today, learn how sprinkling a little fairy dust in your relationship can stop arguments in their tracks. Rekindle your spark and take your difficult conversations from the struggle bus to easy street.

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Do you find yourself attempting to get your point across to friends and family and notice their feelings become hurt instead? Do you tend to feel misunderstood and taken for granted the majority of the time? Instead of listening to others in a conversation, do you find yourself formulating your next response to prove your point? Are you having a difficult time showing up to say anything but you think about doing it a lot? When we feel like we are being the jerk or the doormat in our relationships, we tend to criticize ourselves harshly. The reality is we've never been taught how to share ourselves effectively with those who we care about and love. Your skills as a salesperson, master negotiator, or expert debater will only lead you into a fight. Matters of the heart require different skills for a limited time. Get half off the regular price of a communications workshop designed to help you gain the understanding and skills you need to navigate through your communications with others, giving you the ability and experience to feel heard, appreciated, and a sense that you matter to the people you care about the most. Get all the juicy details@staceybartly.com communication.

Do.

You feel like your love life is on life support? It's time for a turbocharged relationship resuscitation with an alternative to marriage counseling. Head over to stacybartley.com to learn more about their proprietary programs their clients use to save their relationships. Staci b a rt l y.com visit stacybartley.com today wherever you go, Alternative Talk 1150 is here for you.

Well, welcome back. Today we're going to be talking about the romance between food and wine and how it's the pathway to our hearts. And as I mentioned before the break, Dr. Grover Lee will be joining us on the call. And before we do that, though, I just want you to maybe take a look and recall a moment that's one of your most cherished moments in life and see if, like me, you find that food and wine are, by chance at the heart of doesn't take me long before I realize that many of them revolve around food, like the sharing of Tom and I having coffee in the morning, right is definitely one of our favorites. I love to have a Chilled bottle of sparkling wine and a charcuterie board on a warm Sunday afternoon. That's one of my favorite ways to spend it right there in your space. Grover, how about the preparing of a special holiday celebration with all of our family favorites? Or, you know, in simple ways, too, like eating popcorn on the couch for a movie night? It seems as though food and beverage are often a large part of the experiences that shapes our lives. Now. Yes, I would agree that the people that we gather together are indeed the most important parts of our memories, but it's the sharing of our food that we use to connect us. So allow me to introduce our guest. And thank you so much, Grover, for taking the time to come and be here. Dr. Grover Lee is a winemaker and owner of Wise Villa Winery, which he built in 2005. He learned a lot about vineyard management by working in the vineyards from grammar school through high school. And Grover attended Cal Poly, where he earned a Bachelor of Biological science and a graduate degree in biochemistry. It was here that he started studying and reading about the world of wine and wine chemistry and classic winemaking techniques. Grover has a PhD in biochemistry and a doctorate degree in clinical pharmacy. And when I read this, it makes me wonder what I've been doing with my life. Grover, welcome so much to the show. It's great to have you here with us.

Thank you. Thank you.

I want to ask you right out of the gate if you would share with us, please, what was your moment of personal inspiration to create fantastic wine and food along with that beautiful place that we are privileged here in California to visit, Right? Essentially, yeah.

I think. I think it was really in college when I really started studying about the regions of wine and the wine world around the world. And then I started traveling extensively in Europe and spending a lot of time there. And we have some relatives in Germany and in Sweden and England. And I just started to fall in love with the idea of what I was in. It was all about everything. It wasn't just the wine. It wasn't just the food. It was the experience of being in a place that I was just, like, melting in. And the whole idea of, someday I would like to do this. I would like to bring Tuscany home with me and have something that I would really, really like. That is what I say. I'm never going to retire. I'm just going to have fun. And I have a party to go to every week, almost every day. We're open seven days a week. So I just have a whole lot of fun. And, you know, the part of that dream was to. I learned a lot about wine, and I learned a lot about vineyard management my whole life. And I really loved everything else I was doing, but wine was always. I started when I was, you know, teaching at the University. During my PhD work, I would start off the class with 10 minutes or so of something about wine, wine world, wine, chemistry, whatever. And everyone would be early.

My class, for good reason.

Right. Yeah.

I wanted. I was just going to suggest, you know, because so many of our listeners aren't familiar with how Wise Villa looks.

Let's.

Let's describe it for a moment so that our listeners can kind of take a ride with us. Do you want to do that or do you want. Want me to. Or maybe we'll both take a crack at it.

Yeah, I'll take a little bit of that. You know, I've been to almost every country in Europe. I don't think I've missed any of them. But my idea of being in Tuscany and driving up to a winery, you go through this nice rolling hills with vineyards as your entryway, and then you round the corner and you see this beautiful Tuscany building of some sort, and you see these cypress trees on the hill with a little castle on it or something. And then they almost always have food. They don't have wine tasting like we do. It's wine tasting with food. And yeah, the. That is the picture that I had in my head. And that's when I. When I built the winery and the restaurant that we have. That's what I wanted people. I wanted them to come away from where they're. Wherever they're coming from. I want them to enter into Tuscany and walk into, and the music that's playing is not going to be something that they typically are humming on the way there or humming on the way back. Hopefully it's something different. It's either some French singing music or some Italian or something that gives you a feeling of being somewhere else and then having a wonderful chef and then the idea of having wine worthy of the experience and worthy of the food and worthy of the ambiance around you. That took some work.

Yes, that.

That takes a lot of work to do what I wanted to do. And you've been on my tour before, and we do some crazy, crazy things to. To make the best possible win I could possibly make. And it's. It's not, it's not easy, and it is. Takes a lot of. A lot of extra work. That is very labor intensive.

Yes.

Yeah.

Let's talk about the wine for a minute. And Then we'll come back and talk about the food. Your space is so beautiful, and I love it when you're standing on the property and you invite us to close our eyes as we look afar and see the little church that sits in the heart of Tuscany, just like those little places do, right?

Yes.

And you can see, see it in your mind's eye. Right. It feels just like you're being in the heart of Tuscany for sure. With the, with the, all that you've gone into intentionally creating there. So the wine. Right. You have such darn good wine. And to date, I understand that you've created about 30 different types, right?

Yes.

So what makes a great wine, in your opinion? Like, what is it?

Well, to me, what I look at as a great wine are, are two things, and I, I mention this all the time. I, I want a wine that is varietal specific in character. That means the fresh fruit of, say, a Pinot Noir grape. That is the exact character that I want in my wine. When it's a bottle of wine and you, and you pop the cork and pour that wine into a glass, I want you to smell the, the soft cherry, strawberry characteristics of that Pinot Noir, fresh fruit. So varietal character is essential for me. And to do that, specifically, you need 100% of that grape. And I always seem to mention to people that I'm around that almost all wines that you will get, at least from the United States And California is 70 plus percent of all that wine is. The wines are blends. And, and 75 is what's on the bottle if it says a Zinfandel or a Pizza Ra or Pinot Noir whatever whatever. And 25 is something else, anything else. You can put any, any other grape, varietal you want in there. And so that, to me, destroys the characteristic of that varietal character, which is very, very important.

And yeah, I love how you describe, when you, you know, give the example in your wine tour, that when you bite into an apple or an orange, right.

It's.

That's, you know, what that tastes like. Right. And we don't think about that when it comes to our wines as well. And you had said something interesting about the esters. Tell us a little bit about that.

Oh, yeah. Well, biting into that nice fresh fruit that the peach or pear or whatever. And what, what is it that you, what is it that you're smelling when you're tasting that wonderful fruit characteristic? It's these small, volatile little molecules called esters, which is the essence of fruit and the Essence of fruit is extremely important for that fruit. I mean, what goes to your brain and says nice peach when you think about it? Well, like, how do I know that's a nice fresh fruit? Well, that's, that's the esters, okay? And having, having these esters as the ult me for the fruit characteristic is, is essential. Now, if you know how fruit ripens, though, it gives you another picture of the fruit. When fruit ripens, when it's green and it's not, it's not ripe like an apple, for instance, it starts out with no sugar, but it also starts out with high acidity. And the sugar rises and the acidity drops. And you have this balanced spot with the sugar rising and the acidity dropping. And right in between, where the sugar and the acidity are balanced, crackle, crunch on the apple, vital character on the fruit. That's where I want to pick my fruit. Now, if you think about the varietal character and how important that is, that makes sense. And the idea of sugar rising, acidity dropping in the fruit, that makes sense. But if you think about what happens with normal fermentation process to making wine, for thousands of years they've made wine, the process, pretty easy. You pick the grapes, crusted grapes, you start a fermentation, and about a week later you have wine. I mean, that's pretty easy. Now, a typical fermentation is very, very hot, high 80s, 90s plus degrees, warm, very hot. And the process takes about a week. And then you have wine. Now, if you think about hot fermentation, small volatile molecules called esters, guess what happens? You lose the essence of fruit. Now, most winemakers know that their, their option is pretty simple. They just say, let's leave the grapes on the vine a little longer, get a little more sugar content on there, and we'll get a little more, more fruit characteristics coming out of the fruit, because that sugar increases will make it nice and fruitful. And that is absolutely true. And so the idea of having a little more sugar content will bring out more sugar, more, more of a fruit character. But again, if you think about how that works with the fruit, the grape, no sugar when it's not ripe yet, lots of acidity, and the sugar rises and the acidity drops and the sugar rises and the acidity drops. And can you picture the sugar way up high and the acidity very low. And now the winemakers has time to pick. Have you had a bite of that apple? It's kind of mushy, A little sweet and a little mushy, yes. The varietal character, you passed it and the acidity kept dropping and the sugar kept rising. And the big deal about this is that the structure of the wine has changed dramatically. The acidity, the crispness of the fresh fruit is very low and the sweetness is very high. And that sweetness, yes, will bring out more fruit characteristic and make that fruit sweeter and so forth. But the sweetness of the fruit, when you pick it, sweeter. That sweetness goes to alcohol when you start fermenting. And the whole idea of alcohol is a whole great big deal to me. The whole thing about alcohol is if you want to know a lot about wine, there's one number. Alcohol level. 14% alcohol is essentially to know a lot about wine. 14% is where you start to taste alcohol and wine. 14% is a demarcation of alcohol level. 14 and up is considered high. Alcohol below 14 is considered lower alcohol. All right. And if you think about alcohol level of 14%, that's where the government says it's not just wine anymore. It is now considered a high alcohol beverage. The tax rate starts changing then also. But that's another subject. So if you think about the alcohol level of wine, 14%, you start tasting alcohol in wine, California wine, which is basically U.S. wine. What is our alcohol level? What is normal today? 14 15. That's what's normal. 14 15. Wait a minute, I said 14. You start tasting alcohol. What about 14, 15, 15, 5, 16, 16, 5, 17, 17 is brandy, by the way. 17, 5, 18, 18. Are you kidding me? That's yeast made wine. Yes. Okay, so the idea of tasting alcohol and wine. Whoa. All of our wines at 14, 15 is normal. And we have all these higher, higher, higher, because the grape was left out there. Longer, longer, longer, and get higher, higher sugar content to bring out bigger, bigger fruit character. To have a wine that tastes good, though, and not taste the alcohol, you have to fix it. And I, I always refer to this. Fixing the wine so that a. 14, 15, 16%. 17% alcohol. Wine tastes good. It does, but you have to fix it. I call this fix the cocktail syndrome. What's what. So what's a cocktail? You get a glass and you pour some alcohol in the glass, and then you take some sugary fruit juice of some sort and you pour that in there and you take some fruit and hang it on the end of the glass and then you. Maybe a little umbrella would help. Yeah, yeah. You know, maybe like, like a pina colada or something like that. You have a pina colada?

Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, certainly.

Well, I always I always say that. Well, you know what I know about pina coladas and pina coladas. There is no alcohol in pina coladas. There is none. No alcohol and pina coladas at all until you stand up.

Exactly.

Yeah. Pina coladas are perfect fruit drinks. They're wonderful. You can have 10 of them. No, you can't. They have alcohol in there. Yes. You don't taste the alcohol. Why?

Covered up with the sugar?

Yes, the sugar is masking the alcohol. And it also brings out more fruit character in that fruit that's in there. Okay, Compare with.

Oh, excuse me. I just wanted you to point out. Compare it to the European wines. Right. You had mentioned that this is some of your inspiration. And so compared to our sugary, high alcohol wines here that we have in the States.

Yes.

What's a European wine look like?

Yeah, European wine is very different on that. Their alcohol levels start around 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. Those are pretty typical European wines. Very, very low alcohol. Our alcohol levels, as I said, our normal is 14, 15, 16, 17. Very, very high alcohol. A lot of residual sugar left in the fermentation so that that residual sugar that has not been fermented is going to mask the alcohol and bring out a lot of fruit character. And if you think about our wines at 14, 15 is going to have a little residual sugar. Sugar that has not been fermented in the fermentation process and stopped so that it can mask the alcohol and bring out fruit. And the higher the alcohol goes, the more residual sugar you leave in the wine so that the fruit characteristics starts changing. As alcohol goes up, more and more sugar is needed to bring out a bigger and bigger fruit character. The higher the alcohol, the bigger the fruit character. That's basic science on wine. Okay. European wines are very, very low in alcohol. Now, if you think, where does alcohol come? It comes from sugar. So the lower alcohol wines before below 14 means that the sugar level is lower, means the alcohol is lower. That means the acidity is a little higher. 14% is a demarcation line number. 14%. So as you drop lower in alcohol, you have a little higher in the acidity. And when you're thinking about European wines being lower alcohol wines, basically, I mean, they have. They have very low and they have some high, but the average is pretty low. It's in that 9, 10, 11, 12 range. I just had a European wine last night for dinner and it was 12, 5. It's just a very typical European wine. And what does the a little higher acidity do? When you're talking about food, anything with a little acidity makes your mouth water. Yes, that happens. You ever have your mouth water when you're just hungry? Yeah. And how was the food? When you were hungry, because your mouth is watering, your water wanted to have some food, you had some food and food tastes pretty good?

Yes.

Yeah. It didn't matter what it was, but if it was really good food, then it would be great. Okay.

Right.

The higher, a little higher in acidity, what that does is it cleanses your palate, makes your mouth water. And when your mouth is watering, by the way, why, why did that food taste so good? When your mouth is watering, it engages your taste buds. Your taste buds are engaged. It tells your brain, I think I'd like some food. And then when you actually have food, because your brain is already saying, I want food, and your taste buds are saying, yes, I do, the food tastes good. And then you take a sip of the wine and it cleanses your palate, makes your mouth water, makes you want to have food. Then you taste some food and the food tastes good. And you sip the wine and cleanses the palate, makes your mouth water, makes you want to have food. Food tastes good. That is a structure of a wine that is very European in structure. And it is a structure that encourages the, the combination of food and wine. Food tastes better because of the wine, and wine tastes better because of the food. And, and if you think about that, that's exactly what happens in Europe. Europeans have 20 plus gallons of wine per person per year. Americans have 1/2 to 1 gallon per person per, per year. Americans are having Americans stand up and drink wine like cocktails. Europeans sit down at a table, they have a lot of food, they have bottles of wine. Couple hours later, more food, more wine. That's lunch. Yes.

Or aperio.

Right. The whole, the whole idea of food and wine is something that I really, really enjoy. And that's why I have a restaurant. The idea of having, having wonderful gourmet, real chef prepared food. And then if you think about how, how and why, you would want to know a little bit more about wine and food. If you're going to have wine and food, it would really help to know a little bit about that combination. You know, I make a wine called Albarino. It is a Spanish varietal wine. It's a white wine. It's, it's primarily grown in the northwest corner of Spain, up by the Atlantic Ocean. A lot of seafood there. If you're going to have this 10% alcohol wine by the way when I say 10%, can you tell me what do you think the acidity level would probably be a little lower or a little higher?

A little higher.

A little higher.

Aha. See, you got it already. Because if it was over 14%, you would say the alcohol is a little higher, but the acidity is a little lower. Not so good for a structure of a wine. If you're going to have food with a 10% alcohol wine, the structure is now set up that you have a little higher acidity level. The fruit character isn't real big because the sugar level is low, is a little lower. And but this, this characteristics of fruit of this wine is a citrusy kind of a lemon lime kind of characteristics of the wine with a little higher acidity. Now you think, I guess that would be an okay sipping wine. But I guess if you were having seafood. Oh, seafood. Now we're talking. That lemon that you squeeze on your fish, it's already in the wine. It tastes that. It has that nice citrusy characteristics. You take a bite of a nice fresh fish and all of a sudden the wine all of a sudden tastes better.

I so agree. And by that way, that Albarino is fantastic.

Oh, good, good, good.

There truly is a romance between food and wine and there is a starting to describe it. Let's, let's come back and you can give us a little mini lesson perhaps on the best way to pair the two together. What to look for, what to pay attention.

Oh, right.

What do you say?

Oh, yeah, sure. We'll be right back. When we come back.

Yeah, we'll be right back. Don't go anywhere.

Ready to learn the most important thing you can do to revitalize your relationship today? Go to stacybartley.com fairydust staceybartly.com fairydust this is the number one thing Stacy teaches her VIP clients that has the power to improve the health of your relationship today. Learn how sprinkling a little fairy dust in your relationship can stop arguments in their tracks, rekindle your spark and take your difficult conversations from the struggle bus to easy street.

Do you find yourself attempting to get your point across to friends and family and notice their feelings become hurt instead? Do you tend to feel misunderstood and taken for granted the majority of the time? Instead of listening to others in a conversation, do you find yourself formulating your next response to prove your point? Are you having a difficult time showing up to say anything but you think about doing it a lot? When we feel like we are being the jerk or the doormat in our relationships, we tend to criticize ourselves harshly. The reality is we've never been taught how to share ourselves effectively with those who we care about and love. Your skills as a salesperson, master negotiator, or expert debater will only lead you into a fight. Matters of the heart require different skills for a limited time, get half off the regular price of a communications workshop designed to help you gain the understanding and skills you need to navigate through your communications with others, giving you the ability and experience to feel heard, appreciated, and a sense that you matter to the people you care about the most. Get all the juicy details@staceybartley.com communication.

Do.

You feel like your love life is on life support? It's time for a turbocharged relationship resuscitation with an alternative to marriage counseling. Head over to staceybartley.com to learn more about their proprietary programs their clients use to save their relationship relationships. S-T A C I B A R T L Y.com visit Stacy bartley.com today conversation you won't find on the rest of the dial alternative talk 1150.

All right, welcome back. If you're just joining us, we've been talking with Dr. Grover Lee about the wonderful aspects of wine and the beautiful Wise Villa winery that he has very intentionally created. And we're going to dive into a little mini lesson right now on the best ways to pair food and wine together. Now, I know that, right. I know there's volumes of information on this, Grover. I mean, books and shows and that kind of thing. But I love how you just succinctly help us focus on what's important as far as the basics go. So take it away. Tell us how to do this. If I have a food and I have a wine, how do we pair these two to get the experience you were just talking about?

Sure. White wine. Let's start off with white wine. White wine, by looking at the wine, it tells you a lot about the wine just by looking at it. It's white. That means there is no red color. That means there is no tannins. And when I say anything about wine in the wine world, when I say always, that means almost always. But it really means always. But it really means almost always. Okay, got it. All right. White wine has no tannins. Roses have no tannins. So that means the color of white means there's no anthocyanin molecules in there that goes along with the tannins. So white wine has no tannins. That's a good point. Roses have some color, but how they get the color is different than a light red wine. Roses are a type of wine that is made specifically to get only a little color to a white wine. So rose, if you put it in your head that it's a white wine, then the color won't fool you. And light red wines means that it has light tannins, because that color molecule goes along with the tannins. So the color will tell you how much tannin it is. A medium colored red wine has medium tannins. And a big, dark, heavy, dark red wine probably has lots of tannins.

So look through the wine and see like, like how, how dark it is. That's going to give you an idea.

Of how light it is, how dark it is, knowing that roses are white wines. All right, so starting off with that, white wines have no tannins. If you're talking about white wine and fish, like, would you want to have white wine and fish? Why? Well, there is actually some pretty good reasons. Number one, white wines are typically have more acidity than red wines. All right? That's. That's a very typical thing. White wines have more acidity. They have no tins. And the thing about fish is fish has something called omega 3 fatty acids in them. Omega 3 fatty acids are good for you. We all know that. The problem is that when you have. When you have a red wine with tannins and omega 3 fatty acids in your mouth, it causes a slight metallic taste. Not overwhelming, but it's there. It's just enough to say something's a little long with the fish or the wine's not that good or something's wrong. It's a metallic taste coming from the omega 3 fatty acids and tannins. Okay? Now, if you want to have a red wine with fish, then if you went to a red wine that had a rose would work. No tannins or a light, light red wine. And talking about varietal character, this is where varietal character is extremely important. Like a Pinot Noir in Burgundy, France would be a very light colored wine. It would be lower, very low in. In alcohol, which tell you automatically that the acidity level is a little higher. And it would be very appropriate for fish. Okay, and then let's jump to the other extreme. I don't know how much time I can go on with this, but how about big red wines? What kind of food would a bigger red wine that has lots of tens.

Big red steak.

Yeah, steak. That sounds good. And what do you always see? You always see like. Like when you see pictures of red Wine and so forth, you always see like cheese, right? Why do you always see cheese with, with big red wines and stuff? Well, the tannins that I talked about causing that little gripping right on your, your both sides of your cheek when you're tasting a red wine. And that grip that you feel, that sensation of gripness, okay, that's a red wine and red wine with, with tannins that gripping when you drink it all by itself, it's, it's tastes nice. But when you have a little bit of cheese and then have the wine, what does that wine taste a little bit better? Well, because the tannins that are attaching to your epithelial lining of your tissue towards the back of your mouth on both sides of the cheek, the tannin gripping is now gripping on the protein of the, of the cheese. And now when you taste the wine, that grip is a little lighter and the fruit characteristics, you can come out a little bit more. More, and all of a sudden that wine tastes just a little bit better.

Yeah.

And then when you're talking about meat protein, like a nice barbecued filet mignon or something, and now, now you take a sip of the wine and you take a bite of your wonderful steak and that protein now is being attached the wine, the wine tannins are now latching on to the protein of the steak. And that steak with that nice barbecue characteristics and stuff, that's some of the characteristics of the toasting of the barrel that is in the bigger red wines that is very, very nice match characteristically in your mouth. And then the lighten, the lighterness of the dripping from the chemistry of the tannin and protein going on. It's easier tasting on the wine and the meat characteristics that are, A lot of those characteristics are found in the wine. And I know how much time I have to go.

Well, let me, let me just kind of consolidate. I think what you're saying is, so if I have a light wine and it's white, then I'm going to be pretty safe to pair it with like white food or light.

There you go. That's right.

And if I have a big bowl of red one, like the darker it gets, the more fatty I want to get right. Like cheese and steak and beef.

Yeah, something with, with big proteins and. Yeah, that, that is basically it. And the, and the food characteristics of the food also is very nice. Basically. I, you can look at it two, two or three different ways, and light wines, lighter foods, the lighter red wines, the medium foods, like from pasta to, to lamb, duck, chicken, Those a pork. Okay. The, the lighter, medium bodied colored wines. Nice. And then the bigger, the bigger meats, the steaks and, and the roasts and things like that, you can go with the bigger red wines. All right. The food characteristics of those, that's one way of looking at food and wine. I love that way of looking at food and wine. And that is, if you're having Italian food, why don't you try looking at Italian wines?

Yeah, that's a great idea. Or Mexican food or spicy food with Mexican wines. Right?

Yeah. Or the varietal characteristics of that wine. I mean, we have lots of American wines that have, have Italian varietal character. Grapes. All right. And, and same thing with the French and so forth. So I make, I make French wines, Italian wines, German wines, Spanish wines, Portuguese wines, Argentine wines, chili wines, which means really good wine. Yeah, yeah. So the country, the country that the food came from has been there. Typically, if you're talking about the European countries, especially small communities, small villages that, that developed the grapes and the wine that they made wine and they made their food for the local village. Types of food that grew there and made there. And after, you know, 500 years or so, they finally figured out that this wine they liked a lot with this food.

I want to point out something here about food and wine, right? And the reason why we're talking about this today, right, is to bring it back to the idea of romance. And it's interesting to point out here that eating includes all five of our human senses. When it looks good, when it smells amazing, when it tastes delicious, and the texture in your mouth is tantalizing right along with how it sounds when you're chewing it. It's no wonder the food creates so much pleasure for us as human beings. And we want to, of course, share that pleasure with each other. So we get so excited to do that, don't we? I mean, it's like if I'm cooking. Oh, hey, hey, hey, taste this, taste this. Oh, you're going to love. This is going to be so great. I was going to be so great with the wine. And what I love is when you dive into the history of food and wine, that it goes back to 7,000 BC archaeologically. Like, we've been doing this a really long time. So now that we have a really great understanding of the food and the wine. Thank you so much to your wise wisdom. And enjoying them creates so much pleasure for us because we combined all those senses. Right. I want to point out. Let's take it a step deeper, right? Let's create an experience of romance now. And why is it that we experience romance with the food and the wine? Because we now know that our senses are heightened. Right. All five of them at the same time is what us humans typically describe as that feeling of romance. So let's talk about environment for a moment because that plays such a key part right now. We've got the food, we've got the, the wine. Let's talk about the environment or the space. And wise Villa does a fantastic job of this, you know, stimulating our five senses. Sight, smell, taste, touch, sound. You got the dim lighting, ooh la la. You know, the beautiful art and music that as you had mentioned in the background. And all of this begins to create that funny feeling of romance inside of us. Like, this is really amazing. And I want our listeners to know that with a little bit of intentionality, right. You can create a bit of romance at home. That this is why it's the pathway to our hearts. Right. If we have a beautiful place to be good, beautiful wine and food, there's no place else you want to go, right?

That's right. That's absolutely right. I absolutely believe that. You know, I, I, I say this all the time also. I said, you know, I though someone will buy a bottle of wine and they'll say, I love this wise villa wine. It's so wonderful. And I'm going to cherish this. I'm going to keep this one for a special time. I said, you know, Tuesday night dinner is a very special time. Exactly. I love how you said that. It's so. I am totally serious. You know, the idea of buying something that I can go on and on about this idea of, of aging wine. My idea is like, you know, today in modern times, we have, you know, planes, trains and automobiles. We don't have to put them on ships and not know if the ship was going to return in 10 years or not. So a long, long time ago, aging wine actually made some sense to it because it was a real time factor in when you would ever see that kind of wine again. If the ship came, I mean, if you lived in England and the wines were coming from France or Portugal, I mean, you had no idea when you're gonna see that again.

I love it. So let's, let's give our listeners some simple ways that they can create a little romance at home, shall we?

Yes.

The first one that I have on my list is let's start, start from finish. Let's set the mood, right, by pulling out some beautiful dishes and a Tablecloth. And maybe light some candles and some flowers. Flowers, gentlemen. I love that.

And then gotta have some flowers there. Okay. Some candles. Dim the lights. Okay. The candles will be enough. And put some soft. Wonderful. And if you. You know what I've really got hooked on on some soft, like, French or Italian or, you know, Spanish love song music. That's that you don't know, like, you. Makes you feel like you're somewhere.

Oh, I love that.

And you want to do, you know, I don't know. You know, it just starts. You just start bouncing there at the table a little tiny bit. Just arms start going a little bit.

I totally agree. And. And if you enjoy some cooking, then, you know, search up some doable recipes. And yes, just like you had mentioned, let's step outside of our normal fare. Let's do something we've never done before. Right. And. And if cooking isn't your thing, guess what I need to tell you. If you're local here, Wise Villa has a takeout, so you can swing by, pick up a beautiful gourmet meal. Right. And don't forget dessert. And this is the point where I need to tell you your truffles are fantastic. And then we. We take our.

I like lava cake with. With vanilla ice cream myself.

Is that your favorite? And then we pair and pour our wine. Right. Remember, white with white, dark with dark. Right. And the lights and in between are kind of in that medium. The best part, Grover, and I've heard you mention this a couple of times. We get to now relax and linger over a meal, and we get to share ourselves with each other and actually have a con.

Yeah, we don't have TVs, by the way. We don't. We don't. We don't have, you know, super bowl day, and we have an event called and super bowl with an X or, you know, come out and. And if you. If you're not a big, you know, sports fan, then we have a quiet oasis for you and I. I want people to sit across from each other and look at each other and put. And I say this a lot of times. I go to the table, I say, I'm sorry, phones are not allowed to be used in this place. And I kid, of course. All right? I smile and I say, I'm kidding. But talk to each other. I say that a lot. Yeah.

And if.

Take your time.

Yes. And you do such a great job of creating that experience. You know, just pulling onto the property gives you that experience of slowing down. I love that. And here's the. Here's the reality. I think we've gotten so caught up, right. With hurry, hurry, Distraction, distraction, that sometimes we forget that we don't know how, or we know how, but we forget how to have a conversation. So if that's the, if that's the case, I just want to throw out a plug for my conversation cards here because. Right. It's as simple as put them in your purse, put them in your pocket. You don't know what to say. Just draw a card. It's got some profound questions on there. That gets us sharing and talking. And it's amazing how one question. You got it.

I want that.

We'll bring you a box the next time we come.

Because we get bottled up sometimes, right? And we're like, oh, I know this is the point in time where I've got the table set, the dishes out, the flowers, the music. I got the whole thing. And I'm looking into your eyes and I, I don't know what to say.

What do I tell you? What, you know, I like what you're saying. There's one more thing that I really need to plug in here, and that is with that nice soft music, stand up, put her in your arms, and dance slowly. I do that always. Even when I'm out. Sometimes I look weird, but I'm okay. I'm not normal.

Oh, I love that. And you know what? That creates, Grover, that we talk about a lot over here.

Yeah.

An experience that tingles your toes.

That's it. And when you come back to sip the wine, the wine is really good.

Well, gosh, guys, it's time for us to go today. We've got another episode to wrap up here at the Love Shack. Thank you so much for being here with us and listening in. And Grover, thank you so much for joining us today. This was so much fun. Any last thoughts that you, you want to share here in a.

Sure, sure. I always like to leave with saying, be smart, drink wise.

I like that.

And then. I know, I know.

Dr. Dr. Lee, you have some, some, if you're, if you're blessed to be local like we are, you've got some share with us. You have a couple of lovely events, you know, coming up as well. And then what states are you allowed to ship to? I know you've shared with us outside.

Yeah, I, I, we ship to.

Every.

State that we can ship to. There's probably 35 or so states that we ship with no problems.

Okay.

A few states that have some weird laws, but okay. Yeah, we do ship a lot.

Let me Just put this in there. Wisevillawinery.com is his website. You can get all the juicy details about upcoming events as well as seeing if he ships to your state by visiting his website. And you can purchase those connection cards. Not you, Grover. We're going to send you some. But the rest of us, you can purchase your connection cards by visiting my website@staceybartley.com cards. Coming up next week, we're going to have Mariola Porres, beautiful woman from Guatemala. She's here to help share with us some healthy living tips on how that impacts your ability to love. And that starts to make sense, right? You said dancing and we can't dance if we don't feel so great. Thank you again for our listeners and all of those who have been here with us to share and enjoy this. If you've enjoyed today's show, we're going to ask you to please share it on the podcast platform when it's uploaded. And to bring our song to a close, we're going to share with you a song that perhaps you can play in the background for that romantic evening. One of our favorites, Blanken Jones Relax Edition number three, Die Blay Sude. And you can use this to set the mood. And don't forget to dance, just like Grover suggested. Until we connect again, know that we're sending you extraordinary love along with the power to create it today. We look forward to seeing you next week.

Thanks, everybody.

Thank you.