#102 - Reeze Choi: Best sommelier of Asia & Pacific and rising winemaker

Hi Riz. Hi. Thank you very much for being here. I'm super happy to do this interview with you. Yes, my honor. Yes, I'm so excited about this as well. You were among the first person that we actually met in Hong Kong. When arriving, we, Marin and I, we did a job of sending the aims and trying to find out who we should meet to get to know the wine people here. So you were among the first. Thank you. We were like, "Okay, let's do an interview in the next few months, but then you were busy because it was so many competitions." Yes. An office. 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? Sure. So my name is Riz. First of all, very nice to be sure and thank you very much for this opportunity for the podcast. I'm a sommelier and I'm a wine consultant. I own, I run my own business, my company called Stombs Philosophies and we provide a consultant service to restaurants and bars. So I'm also a consultant. I'm an ambassador of field brands like Citroes Parking Tea, Vivon from Taiwan and I also choose wine for supermarket in Hong Kong, Koyata. So and I'm also a wine maker. Now I'm now slowly changing my career path to wine makers, making wine in Japan in Hiroshima, Miyoshi, a small town in Hiroshima. And I also have been competing for 13 years in the past 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 a grow up in a very healthy family. So I got a chance to work in the high-end restaurants before in Hong Kong, Italian restaurants. And at that time the manager came to me and then to say and she said, "Okay Riz, let's learn about wine and becoming so many and then you will have the highest salary." And I was like, "Okay, let's do it." I heard your salary so let's go. Yes, yes. So from the beginning it was all about money. So I learned, I started to learn about wine and I started to, you know, when you know more about this thing, you love this. You get more and more like this beverage because when you start to know about it, you started to realize that wine is not just a beverage or a lake quick. It's also about life, about history, about culture, everything. So I started to get more interested about this. So yeah, yeah. And so, sorry. How did you get interested in 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 by yourself and with the people around you to grow in this. Yeah, yes. Just by myself because when I decided to, you know, my models 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 so many or started to learn about wine, I told myself, "I need to be the best." So I started very, very hard and then I got some, 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 years. 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 a zool about myself, but, you know, when you started to compete in a competition, you got a mentor. My mentor is, his name is Henry and he helped me a lot during the journey. And so when you do this first competition, sorry, it's a tasting competition, so the, or it's a summary competition. So many competitions. So the goal is, of course, to taste and recognize some wines, but to provide the service and the descriptions and so service, blind tasting, theory, test, everything. And so from this first competition, your goal is to win it? No, I did pretty well. The president of Hong Kong Swimming Association, he actually praised my presentation. And that gave me a lot of energy to keep going, you know, but you know, there's the first time and then I couldn't do well in the practical, 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. And so now it's been, so 13 years, roughly of competition and a moment of things, but you've been also doing this for 13 years and you recently won the best sommelier of Asia, Asia Pacific in this one. So first congratulations. Thank you for this. It was great. We followed you on Instagram and we're rooting for you. What did you learn along the way on how to prepare? Like, it's 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 like seeing you as a model or as something you aspire to? How would you not speed up, but you know, like, what mistakes would you avoid and what would you do to prepare yourself? Yeah, that's a good question because, you know, I'm not, people say I'm a talented sommelier, but I don't think so and I'm definitely not a talented sommelier because a talent sommelier wouldn't take 13 years to become a champion. Maybe they would take maybe first one or two years to make it. So it's about hardworking and then I think that I can't, we all can't avoid any mistake. 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 the second thing is the we, you have to be a consistent and have to be have a very strong self-discipline life for the condition. You know, when before the condition, 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, you know, discipline life like you didn't have to sleep early and wake up early and then you have to work out to go to the gym, make sure you have a very good condition to be yourself in shape and then be sharp all the time. So that's what I have been done for for many years. So and then you have to give yourself a very clear schedule. And then in second or four, you need to, you know, you have to have someone to guide you through. You can't, especially if I am not a talent, I definitely need some 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. It's funny, it's funny that you said that you know, to remember, 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 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 the 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 a disappearation, produce is a displace, this geography, produce this type of wine, it's like theoretical things like that. Or you also go into more practice of tasting of maybe both. You know, competition is about everything. So of course, about the knowledge I study region by region, also country and also producers, etc, 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, cigars, cheese, everything. So you need to make sure that you learn enough for everything. And secondly, I think that the blind tasting skill unit, you have to have an 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 go to, 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 within times. So you need to have different training for different parts in a competition. Yeah. It's amazing to watch. I don't know if it was on YouTube or if there are videos available from the competition you did. YouTube. Yeah. YouTube. So we'll try to link these videos 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 around the table. And I 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 a super academic. Yes. So it's very impressive. I think that the most difficult thing is how to deal with your earth because day back to 2023, we were in Paris. We have done the world competition. That was we were on a stage. But imagine that there's 4,000 people down there watching you to do your presentation. There's a lot of stress. And then you have to know how to deal with that stress. And you know, still keep, you have to make sure you are elegant enough and you have to still keep your knowledge in your brain because sometimes when you do it, you stress you forget everything at the same moment. So I think that's the most difficult part in the competition as well. 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, the clients won't be like, okay, that's it. 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, ah, I can't take it. And then you're just like, you know, some foreign language. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's that's how that's why we train for a competition. That's how that's also doing 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 water. That's we have packed of customer Hong Kong is busy all the time. So you have to work fast. So that's learned that's we learn how to improve our service skills during the competition as well. That the training. And so what you do, um, so you're somebody yourself, but what you do is that you also train also somebody a now in restaurants across Hong Kong, but across our via Tio location in Asia to like level up the service and that type of thing. This is what you do with your company. Uh, yes. I, you know, my company provide a customer service. We create wine list. We choose the wine for our clients. And also we provide the service training, wine training or knowledge training to our customers as well, the staff in restaurants. So that's the core service that we provide. What do you notice from that? Like when you have a consultancy with a restaurant, um, do you like, do they already have a wine list and you're like, okay, guys, I think you could actually have more revenues from your wine because your selection is to, I don't know, like to narrow focus or you don't have enough spread in your wine list. So basically don't have a client to spend money. So just like, big stand it. Is it that type of mission that they should do? Sometimes, uh, we got two types of clients. So some, clients they already have the wine list. So they want you to improve the wine program or they want to have sort of like marketing exposure. So they started to work with us. And the second type is the now we're essentially I'm working on the new restaurants, which is opening in December. So they, they are completely from the beginning. So without any wine list or any wine selection, we start from the 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 why I pretty, I love wine pairing. And then I create all, create wine pairing all the time for different clients or even those I last year I went to a couple of countries like Finland, Japan and Taiwan. So we had a different collaboration with different restaurants and chef and also so many to create a special wine pairing among these countries. And then when you train the staff, 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. Service standard is very important. And then I think that's to teach them because 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 key because you can't just choose the wine and then just let them do whatever they want. So I, after I choose the wine, I provide wine training to them according to what I have chosen for the wine list. And also I teach them how to, I create some small wine cards for them to read before they go to the, to the customer. So make sure that they know about the story and then how to, how to briefly talk about the wine as well. So I think this is very important in the wine program. Yeah, this is a, this is super important. Like when you are in restaurants choosing wine, if the, the somebody doesn't, like doesn't know about this wine, it's a pretty 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 somebody 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 restaurants, if you have so many as that are trained to talk about the wine, I guess you say, well, more wine. Like because you're able to discuss about it with your clients. Yeah. And like, I think with this dish, you should choose this specific wine. And maybe they wouldn't have chosen wine. Yes. This is what you wouldn't hear or you know, telling your story. Yeah. You know, just like we are in Hong Kong, you can easily find a wine in everywhere. You know, in restaurants or wines, once we tell or online. So I think that's the most important thing for so many what they do in 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 not, we are also providing, 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 service service at a right temperature or right condition to a customer to build off the trust. That's the most, the key of the sets of a of a good so many. That's what I think. Yeah. How long have you been doing this the last 10 years as well? For the customer service. I started to come since 2019. Yeah. The last day of 2019. So technically it's 2020. Okay. It's funny to start a company on the 31st of December. Good resolution in advance. You know, like this year I started the, I'm starting a company. Yes. I started the tomorrow. Okay. And so now you, you told me you're transitioning more and more into wine production. So wine making. So you started in Japan, right? Yeah. How did you start this? You know, this 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 it's, 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 whamaker was open enough to accept a foreigner to make wine with him. So let's do that. Why not? So it is from Hiroshima. Miyoshi is a central part of Japan. It's west and side of Japan. So it's not a well known region. So I'm so curious about this wine. When I, when I first know about wine, it was a, you know, wine competition. So I was a judge. So I blinded him. the wine and I was so curious about okay the wine was good and then I saw the name oh it's 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 ask oh should we do sort of like collaboration or let me come to your region to learn about why making and then stay upset the the offer so we started that the whole thing yeah what is your your view of Japan wine making like honestly I know nothing about this you know so I'm well as advanced in the theoretical knowledge of wine that you have but I'm still a WST3 so is that good you know is there any including any Japanese wine is it but it's absolutely not including Japanese wine I think it's not even mentioning Japan it's a pity like it's mentioning it's a pity it's mentioning China yes but it's mentioning China with one nine yeah say they do one in China in Ning Cha okay period that's much more than that yeah so so much more than that but they don't know they don't even talk about Japan at all so so what can you tell me like for someone like me and I think a good part of our origins doesn't know that they're making wine in Japan I think yeah honestly so so what can you tell us about wine making in Japan great 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 wine making history only and then now we have we have over 500 winery over Japan so you can typically you can basically find at least one winery in every single professor including Okinawa from the south so there's only not only one professor they are not producing any wine or don't have any winery in their professor which is Sakka in western side of Japan but you can basically find at least one winery in every single different professor in Japan so and you know Japan is a rainy country we have a lot of rain during summer and then during winter time there's bloody cold especially in Hokkaido so this is quite challenging to make wine in Japan I personally think that's the in France you can talk about Tehua in Italy of course you can talk about Tehua but in Japan we can't really talk about this term I think that's in wine making world of Japan 70% is about person it's about human involvement in in France you can you can find a or maybe a lower in terms in French lower intervention wine maker saying that's okay I can do nothing because let the wine do is do the work itself let's tell what talk that's what they do sometimes right so you you're about that's the organic or bio dynamic or natural natural wine makers talk about that in Japan it's impossible you have to do something because when the rain come how do you do with the problems well in the in the vineyard how do you deal with the disease how you deal with 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 no Japanese a very long country so from the north we get Hokkaido and from the south we have Okinawa so the the climate 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 the most of the winery concentrated in Yamanashi Nagano and Hokkaido so Yamanashi is we consider this is the the place that we started to wine or the capital the wine capital of Japan Yamanashi so this place got a more unique climate because the rest of the the rest of the Japan got so many rainfall and then earthquake everything so in Yamanashi and Nagano they are surrounded by mountain and then had a higher altitude so they are drier sort of drier and then so most of the performance going Hokkaido now they produced the most expensive wine in Japan famous for the epi in the north and because of the cool climate regions there's so many Pinnoan that's so famous nowadays Takahiko Domainui Domain Monts very many very famous even itian itian Montiel Domain de Montiel the the the the Pergen D Y maker he established a winery in Hokkaido in Hokkaido now so and produced very very good Pinnoan and cycles and and go down to the Yamanashi and Nagano that where I mentioned previously their famous for their local grape koschu which is a pink skin grape and and also and also Muscavaliate a red grape and then also for the Nagano this famous for its Merlot they produce some of the the best red wine in Japan now I think personally think that's Nagano now produced the best red wine redo and then you go further south we got yeah you know some professor like Okayama and then of course us Hilo Shima and then we produce international grape like Shardonnay of course sometimes Hino Noir and Bodo grape Sobion Blanc semi-ion etc etc and you go further south you got Miyazaki that there's a wine we call Tsuno very famous for the Shardonnay Muscavaliate come out early that's kind of the hybrid grape and then that's the the the brief landscape of Japanese wine it's first thank you very much because it's amazing for us to discover this and it's a definitely a country we have to visit in places we we have to go to to discover those wines and you mentioned something about the difference between Taiwan in France and Europe and 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 like feel where it comes from you can like really recognize is it the same for Japan but you can recognize the the person doing it yeah yeah I feel that way yeah I think that's for the wine making technique we we can feel the wine from which producer especially for you know when we buy taste the Pinnoir from Hokkaido you can definitely tell some of the wine are from certain whi makers because of that so extreme wine making technique from them but you know but it is hardly to tell or that I can feel that this wine is from Toyama is wine is from from from Miyazaki this wine from Hiroshima it's very hard to tell that's the place but you can definitely tell that's oh this whi making technique maybe it is from certain whi maker oh this is whole bunch this is a hundred percent whole bunch why maybe this from Takahiko or the similar whi making technique from from Hokkaido etc etc so you can maybe you can tell but it's hardly tell where they from but you can definitely think feel that who is making that the wine and the conception of those wines it's mainly locally or do they export also a little bit yeah that's a very good question suit you know 90% of the wine winery in Japan they have family run they are super small like us we produce about less than 14,000 bottles per year only three person working in the winery and it's impossible for 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 the winery they for example like killing group their own shuttle mission which is the biggest winery in Japan and then Santori also some very famous whi maker like Grace wine from Yamanashi like Takahiko from from Hokkaido this kind this winery started to export their wine and as I'm helping our winery to export our one 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 one 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 winery so that's a pity and then that's why that's what make Japanese wine can't be so famous now but you know don't be mantial and Grace Takayuko, they are so famous because they start to export their wine a long time ago. So, yes, I think that's we need to draw more attention from the market. First of all, we need to export the wine. Yeah, plus, I guess maybe it's kind of cliché what I want to say, but you can find very, very, very good Japanese restaurants in, I guess, every country in the world. Potentially, on my case, a 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, then maybe it can also flow from there, like, you know, yeah. And it's also a way to make people discover those wines. You mentioned also that you're working in Kazakhstan right now, so it's the same you're making wines there? No, no, it was, I've been there, it was my first time to go this country, and it was about their national so many competition. Yeah, so, in fact, me as an international judge, I mean, for their competition. So, I got a chance to go there, to experience the country and answer 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 around the by-horses. That's my imagination about this country. But, you know, when you land, you immediately feel that it's a completely different story. So, it's a huge country. I went to Amantie, and there was a lot of late nights life, and it's a busy country, busy city. And we got over 40 candidates for the competition, which is a huge competition. So, everything just, you know, blow up my mind in a week. And then they are super friendly. They are very good at hospitality, and they bought me to everywhere that I should go in the city. So, and then I was visiting some winery there to a winery called Alba. It's impressive winery to do good. So, yeah, that's a very nice visit. We love to go to CanX10 as well. It's the type of countries I love, you know, like very underrated. Nobody is going to be great. Exactly, yes. It looks a wonderful country. Do you like meat? You guys, yeah. So, they fit me, they fit me, they fit me horse meat. Oh, nice. Yeah, cow horse, yeah. And then they gave me the milk. Yeah, the horse meal. Just fermented milk. Yeah, yeah. That I taste, at least I taste. Yeah. But it's really not my cup of tea. The same, we were in Mongolia last summer. Yeah, for my kitchen. Yes, yes, that is the same. Like, they, they, it's shit down of meat like it's always every, every lunch dinner. It's mint, mint, mint, very low vegetables. And they have the same milk ferment in milk. Yes. It's pretty fun to taste. It wouldn't be something I drink every day, but pretty fun. Okay, so no wine making in Kazakhstan yet. But I guess something. And I hope I hope. Something you will probably do. I have a question that I think is interesting. So you told us you're transitioning from sommelier to wine making. Or actually, it's like when you started your career, it was 100% sommelier, zero% wine making. And now it starts to balance a bit more. What are the things that you thought were true when you were sommelier? And you realize it was completely wrong when you became a wine maker. You know, like what things you were thinking about wines that turned out to be completely false when you were starting making it? So if you are a sommelier, you think of, you think a lot of romantic thing about wine making or wine. Or, you know, you're just judged the whine makers. Okay, oh, why, why, why you put salver? Why you do a parasite in your winery? Why you, you know, why, why you are caught in the bottle with a school cap? You have a lot of judgment about the wine. But when you become a whine maker, you look at the whole thing in a different perspective and ask that. So you have to do whatever you need to do. Because at the end of the day is the production. This is the money that you fit your family for a small company. So you have to make sure that some wine to produce every single year. So if, you know, you know, in the winner, okay, it is romantic to say that's, oh, we never use parasite 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 that's not no longer a romantic story to tell. This is the business decision to make. So this is quite different from when I was in a work as a so many. And then suddenly when I become started to learn about why making 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 so many, you, before you experience the wine making you never, you can't never tell us that's making wine super, super, super hot. It's about daily work every day, you know, we're from the morning and I finished at the late night. And then it's, you can't imagine how hard it is. So I suggest every so many to go to a wine and we work at least maybe one week or experience a harvest to feel how hard it is and then to feel the hard work behind the label. And then so that's you can treasure more about wine and then every single drop of wine you pour to your customer or you drink yourself. So yes, it's pretty different. It's funny what she said because when we were in France, I interviewed L'Orgasse-Parotto with, so she's a journalist at Le Monde. So you know, the main, like the main daily publication in France, like the main newspaper in France. Like the, I don't know the equivalent but like here but like China, Delhi post or like something like that. I don't know the real name here but you know like main publication daily of news and whatever. And so she was specialized in wine and she also started making wine in the source 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, yes, so this wine maker was telling me that he wanted to have more digital aspects in his wine, this year blah blah blah. But the truth is it was just like on the other days or taking care of his family, you know, just one week off during the year, it turned out it was the wrong week to take off, it was raining and so then at the end of the year, like yeah, I got to justify that and I couldn't just say yeah, I was on the other day. And so you just have like basically life going on. And it was pretty poetic because she was standing me but everyone is a testimonial of life of someone or so going on. So it's a great point to see, you know. Yeah, and I think that you have to love the nature enough to stay in a winery because mostly the normally the winery is always in the countryside. So you need to get rid of your nightclub. You know, there's no nightclub for you in the countryside and it's quite, it's a quite different, different lifestyle as a souvenir and as a wine maker, as you said, every day, you make the same thing. Every year you can make the same thing. You face the same landscape all the time. But so many years, face different people every day and then you have the time to have a day off, to hang out with your friends. But you know, winery during the half a season, forget about day off. There's no day off. And we experience, because of me and the winery, we experience a couple of days that we started to work about eight o'clock and then we finished the work about 11 o'clock at the evening. So it's about like 15 hours of work. Yeah, it's just focusing on. Yes. So yeah, that's tough. So you know this now, when you open a bottle of wine, please enjoy it because there is a and don't waste any trouble drinking at all. Drink it. So the most the most important place. And do you think that you're so knowing that, do you think that your behavior in service and what you teach to others, somebody else now and how you train them has changed? Yes. Yeah. You know, I I pray more about. the work behind the label instead of telling, okay, I think that's the the climax the Tehuat's soil 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 behind the between the Weimaker and customer. You are representing the Weimaker to tell the story to the customer. Of course, you need to tell the Tehuat the place, but I also talk more about the Weimaker, the hard work, the story about the person more nowadays. I have a good analogy on that. It's in France as well, but together I really like it's Pierre and Louis Trape. They have a domain in Burgundy and in Arzaz as well. I've seen them a few times in Paris and every time because they are here to present their wine and mid-clients and everything. Every time I see them, they are in Paris, but you can see that they are their hands like in the 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 but and that they were just working probably this morning or yesterday in the vanyard and they came for the night in Paris. Of course, they were the handed stuff, but you know, it's just like so deeply. It's just like so deeply inside the hands that you can see that they were just like working outside or in the van or in the vines or whatever and it's just like what they do every day. 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 wine making or do you want to keep this balance now? I will try to keep the balance because it's, I mean, selling wine or making wine can't be profitable. Especially I produce, I work with the winery. I'm taking 10% of the wine production, which is maybe a thousand to a hundred per year. That can't fulfill my being cost. I will keep going my so many work. I will keep my all my business. Sometimes I talk for wines. I give lectures in different occasions. So I'll keep doing that. And 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 so many work and I will keep going back to the wine you in work with the wine maker to learn about wine making. I will keep doing that. But I will try to make a balance. It's good to keep one fit into this because you're always keen in the game and in relation with the people making wine. So that's great. So I have three last question. The first one is do you have books, many books about wine that you would recommend that? So you came with the book. So it's super kind. Yeah, I have, I got two books to recommend. So I have one, I'll just first talk about this one. This is a book written by a Japanese. His name is 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 so many. The presentation means that not the work, but the how they speak. So it is this book teach us how to describe a wine or describe a sensitivity of the human. So I think that's the, lots of so many. It has a lot of knowledge in the brain, but they don't know how to express the knowledge and then 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 is he teach us how to describe food, how to understand the flavor, the texture, the temperature of the food, and also to teach us how to describe a wine as well. And then how to train our sensitivity and train how to turn it into work to explain to the customer. So I think this is a very good book. This one unfortunately I won't be able to read right now. I think they they they they they this is Chinese version they have they they also have the Japanese version of course it's a totally different cover. And I think this is the same this is the Chinese first I don't I'm not sure they they have it in English, but I do hope that they they have. Yeah. So it's a good so I'm learning Chinese, but I'm still not good enough to. But yeah, we'll put a link for you guys in the description for for this book. And just before you present the second one, there's a question I didn't ask, but since you you won Asia Pacific is your goal to be one day at the world champion? And you know, I'm working on it. Okay. At our our next world competition will be in Portugal, Lisbon, Lisbon, next year October. So my my heart would be split between you and Pascanin Le Penche, but she is great. She is really like a very powerful very precise person. I love her very much. Yeah, I will root for the two of you. So that's a no-jerry zero. Okay. Okay. So the second book here, it is a very new book to me. I haven't finished it, but I started to work on it. It is to name is called Concept in Wine Technology, Small Winery Operations. So it is a really good book written by a pig and PhD. My wine makers suggest that that book to me. And it is all about everything from the vineyard to the wine making for a small wine winery. So it it talk 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 wine making that you need to know about. So it is a very interesting book. And then you can see lots of chemical things inside. I am not really good at that, but I am picking up my ascent of talking about potassium and asium things and sort of like wine making things like that. And I found that is a super interesting book to read. Yeah, it's amazing. It looks amazing actually. But it's 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. And if you basically for which you will have wine at the end like it's not that hard 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 coming home. 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 in a barrel, in a tank. But there is a magic behind that depending on the efforts in the cell that you're putting to the wine. But for me shapes definitely completely different. And yeah, and yeah, I think it's crazy. So yeah. So I think this is the that book is about the basic. This is already the basic. And so you got so many things that you don't really know about about it. But this is the basic that I think that's all the whimaker should know about this basic. No matter you are going for the classic whimaking technique or you go for the natural wine technique because especially for natural wine, people think that natural you don't really know need to know anything about the wine. But if you want to go natural or lower intervention, you better have a very very strong basic knowledge or the technique in your brain to know how to be natural or how to do less in your wine because you need to control certain like you don't want to wine go wrong. You don't want your wine being very dirty or has a lot of bread or wine for it. You need to deal with how you need to deal with that with your knowledge instead of using chemical to put into the wine. So I think this is very very important things to learn. This is very true, what you're saying. We 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 treat. That actually I don't like, and I think it's full of defects and something that we should have in wine. But when you have natural wines that are good, I think it's, of course, amazing and it's part of the good wines, because the wine may get no water there. Exactly. Like being natural is not an excuse. It's a bet, it's something they wanted to do, but it's not an excuse for producing something that 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, thanks to my friend, Taku Ikulo, he's, actually he is a souvenir in Tokyo, and he sent me two bottles to Hiroshima to congratulate my winning of Asia Pacific Sominic Competition. So he sent me two bottles, I opened one of them, which is a black chalk, the name called "black chalk", while Rosé 2020, which is a Jose wine, Jose sparkling wine from England, which is a very mind-blowing sparkling wine that we recently taste. Very, very elegant, really refreshing, with definitely a couple of layers on the polettes. It's a really nice sparkling wine. 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 people, which is a croix champagne. I taste that in Hiroshima, a wine bar owner recommended that to me, and I found that this is a very amazing sparkling wine to taste as well. So do sparkling wine recently, isn't it? We love sparkling wines, of course. Very good, very good recommendation. Thank you for that. And last question is, who is the next person I should interview? Yeah, I highly recommend you the same wine, wine person from Japan, his name is "Toru", "Toru Takamatsu". He is now a master's domain name. He based in New Zealand or Australia before. I forgot which country, but now he is back to Japan and he started to work in Hokkaido with a winery called Takahiko. Domain Takahiko is one of the most famous winery in Japan. And now he is 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, is good in English, and he knows about wine in Hokkaido. So if you want to know more about Japanese wine, you have to go to this person. You just gave us a wonderful excuse to visit Japan. That's perfect. I didn't ask for more during this interview. Thank you very much for this time. Thank you very much. I learned a lot. It was a 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 a risk of the firmness and the risk of the loss. I forgot to mention about the wines. Now my wine is called Project 933, but in 2005 I will produce a completely new branding, new name called Liu Ordinair. It's a humble name from, I love this name, it's a new wine, but same wine producers. I really look forward to to let you try it next time with my wine. Thank you very much for this opportunity. Thanks Riz. Thanks everyone for still being here. If you like this interview, share it with at least two friends. We need to discover wine from Asia and from Japan. Thanks for being here. See you next time. Thank you. Bye-bye. Perfect. Was it good?