How to Be a Savvy Wine Buyer: Season 3 Takeaways (and What to Drink Next)

(upbeat music) Well, hello and welcome to the Wine Access Unfiltered podcast. If you've been listening to this show all season, you've probably noticed that we weren't trying to turn you into a sommelier. We weren't trying to have you memorize ventages or regions or tasting grids. What we were trying to do is something much simpler. And honestly, I think much more powerful. We were trying to help you become a more confident, more curious and more intentional wine buyer. Season three was all about taking everything that we learned up until that point and then sending you out into the wild with it, asking better questions, understanding who to trust, recognizing where value may or may not live. And most importantly, realizing that wine doesn't belong to the gatekeepers or the critics or even the price tags, it belongs to you, to you, the person buying and drinking and hopefully enjoying the wine. So today at the end or beginning of this new year, we are closing out season three by revisiting some of the moments and conversations and really highlighting some of the key takeaways that I think helped us to become more savvy wine buyers. I hope that you, over the course of listening or watching these episodes, have become a more savvy wine buyer. I hope that it's changed the way that you walk into a wine shop or look at the wine list or, you know, because hopefully you're buying on wine access, clicked add to cart. I hope that it shaped a lot of the decisions that you made around wine and that you made them confidently. That was really the goal of this entire season because I've been there, guys, I know what it feels like and still know what it feels like to be a little bit apprehensive when you are trying to buy a bottle of wine. I know there's a lot of mental tests going on in your brain and so hopefully this kind of cleared some things up to you. But if it didn't, maybe this episode is a great way to revisit some of my favorite talking points and to kind of give you what I think are the most salient takeaways. So let's get into it, shall we? Okay. If you are drinking with us, you should have a bottle of Kianti. It's a blue bottle. It's got a little orange seal on it. I love Kianti. I think that we've sort of waxed poetic across this season about Kianti both as a region and as a wine. When I first started traveling again, post COVID, Tuscany was the first place internationally that I went and I just completely fell in love with it. I loved everything about it. It changed the way that I saw and drank and enjoyed Italian wine. But I think the biggest takeaway for me was Kianti. And even though I was visiting Montessino and drinking beautiful Brinnella de Montessino, Kianti was just the most perfectly simple, wonderful and misunderstood wine that I had kind of shifted to the side a little bit and not really paid attention to, which is a mistake on my part. So today we are drinking a Kianti. So 100% or I should say close to 100% San Juveza, which is the predominant grape of Tuscany. We will find a few others and they will be blended into some Kiantis like this is here. But mostly we're talking about San Juveza, which is a grape that sort of mimics peanut or water in some ways. But a lot of times it gives you a little bit more strength in some places depending on where and how it's grown. I think this one is really representative of the Kianti style quote unquote. So I think this is, it gives you that really bright, cherry, big profile that we love about Italian wines, that there's something so focused and beautiful and elegant and weirdly simplistic about Kianti and the San Juveza grape that just works so, so well both on its own and with food. So as we get into this episode, I'm going to sort of unpack a little bit about why I think Kianti is just a great choice for wine in general. But also why it's one of my favorite wines to just have on hand because it pairs so well with Italian food. And if you're someone like me that makes a lot of pasta, if you're a red saucy kind of gal, Kiantis and wine that you should just have on hand. And the best part is that it's not that expensive. Usually you're finding Kiantis for under $30. And I will tell you that this year, we saw a really great Kianti make some super, super top 100 list of 2025, which was very exciting to see. So if you're fan of Kianti, yay, welcome. If you're not, welcome to the club. We're excited to have you. OK, so let's get into some of my favorite talking points of season three because there were so many of them. I had some great conversations with some of my favorite people, both in the wine industry and outside of the wine industry. But we kicked it off season three, episode one, with one of my favorites. Someone that you guys probably may be familiar with already. If you've been on your wine journey, you've definitely heard of Karamick Neal, author of the wine Bible. She's one of the most trusted and most realistic voices in wine. She is just a brilliant, brilliant writer and Karen approaches wine from the standpoint of having a brain of an academic. She's incredibly smart and incredibly witty. But she has the instincts of a consumer, which I think makes her one of the best people to talk about wine with, because she just gets it. She is a true lover and appreciator of wine. She's someone that drinks wine every single night, I think. But she also understands the intricacies of wine. And one of my favorite quotes from her was The Challenge for Any of Us, when we buy wine, is overcoming overwhelm. The good part is that there are a lot of choices. The bad part is that there are a lot of choices. And I think she was absolutely spot on with this. Wine is incredibly overwhelming. And it's normal to walk into a store or look at a wine list and just kind of have your mind go, "Oh, this is a lot." Frankly, I think it's a problem. I think we have a little too many wines out there right now. But it's not a problem that we're going to be solving on that front anytime soon. Here's sort of the solution for that at this time, because too many choices does not mean that you are bad at this. It means the system's complicated. And so we have to approach it with the mindset that we're not going to solve the problem. We just have to approach it with a different mentality. And I think as I considered the fact that there are so many choices and there is just so much wine in the market, I kind of thought to myself, one of the hardest things to be positions to be in is the position of the consumer. You're being asked to make this decision, often a financial one, without having all of the information. And wine is especially tricky because it's opaque by design. The labels don't tell the full story. Regions often assume prior knowledge, kiancy, sort of being a great example of that. And the consequences of a quote unquote bad decision feel oddly personal. And then you also have this other problem where you have this very strange power dynamic at play, which I have been on both sides of in the restaurant, in which you can be a consumer, but you can also, as I was, a sommelier, where on one side as a consumer, you're the one spending the money. And on the other side, as a sommelier, the retailer or the salesperson, you have more information than the person sitting in the seat who's actually spending the money. And the thing that I sort of realized is that the power doesn't really belong to either one of us. It's very much shared. So my sort of takeaway from all of this was that instead of handing over total control in either direction or trying to take a blind swing at the wine list, trying to figure out on your own, the smartest move that we've talked about many times is putting yourself back in the driver's seat and asking questions. And I acknowledge that that is one of the harder things to do as someone who went through life and went through school, being very afraid to ask questions because I didn't want to look stupid or silly. I realized maybe too late in my if that, asking questions was actually the stronger of the moves. You don't have to give up control to ask for help. You just have to understand that dynamic and not pretend to know more than you do because while it might feel like you're being a little bit vulnerable, asking questions isn't a signal that you don't know something. It's a signal that you're curious and curiosity is the single most important thing that you need when it comes to exploring wine. Trust me, if you're gonna be wandering down this path of wine education or just enjoyment of wine, I promise you that curiosity is the key. We've talked about this a lot. And sort of in the way that passion tends to invite passion, curiosity tends to invite generosity. And someone who sees that you are genuinely interested not testing them, not trying to prove any. thing, it opens the door to a better conversation and at the end of the day, a better conversation is going to get you to that better bottle. So if you're curious and you stay curious and you acknowledge that you are curious and you are openly curious, it's a sort of conversation unlock. So the moral of the story is ask questions and be curious. And I think some of you may be sitting there thinking, well, what questions do I ask? And I think that's a great question. I think starting with if there's something in conversation that just doesn't necessarily register for you, you have to raise your hand. So for example, I started this episode talking about this bottle of Kianti, right? If someone said to you, this is a bottle of Kianti and it's made from Sandra Vaze and Kianti wasn't familiar to you and Sandra Vaze wasn't familiar to you, raise your hand. Hey, is Sandra Vaze a grape? Is it a place? Is it a color? Is Kianti a region? Where is it? These are all questions you can be asking because ultimately knowing the answer is to those questions means that you are going to understand what's in the glass. When it comes to wine, it's all cause and effect. Everything that we talk about when it comes to wine has an effect on how it's tasting. So understanding that a grape can affect how this wine is going to taste. So for example, this is the Sandra Vaze grape. The Sandra Vaze grape is always going to taste a certain way, sort of no matter where it's grown, but where it's grown is also going to have an effect. And I think understanding what that effect can be and how that can present in the glass is incredibly insightful to your wine-tringing experience. So it's not only just asking the questions to better understand what someone's talking about, it's also asking the questions so that you can understand how it's going to react in the glass and whether or not that's going to be preference for you. So that's the first real skill of becoming a savvy wine buyer. It's just asking lots of questions and I'll be honest guys, I know that the whole vulnerability part is really really tricky. I understand that not every person out there is going to give you the same open-minded response that you hope for. I get that. But if someone is snobby or juggie or has a little bit of air to them when they respond to a question, just know that it has no bearing on you. That's a reflection on them and you get to be the better, bigger and more curious person by asking the question in the first place. I think it goes back to when we were all kids and we were told there are no dumb questions. I think that's maybe true and why. And I know as adults, it's very difficult to kind of take yourself out of the driver's seat and into a place of vulnerability of asking questions, but I promise you, you will be so much better for it. It's so much more fun and I think once you get used to asking questions again, it will become easier. It will become just something that you do and I know for myself, even a decade plus into the industry, I ask a lot of questions still and I try not to feel self-conscious about doing it. I will admit every now and then I'm like, "Ugh, so that's the question, I don't know." But then I always feel so much better for having asked it. So, moral of the story, ask the questions, do the thing, let me know how it goes and let's move on to the next section of how we are becoming more savvy wine buyers. Seeking out the wine diamonds in this world, knowing what to buy, you to trust, there's so much choice. And then you have the complication of it changing from vintage to vintage, obviously internal issues within wineries with changing of the guards and various transitions can impact things. And so it becomes very difficult even when you are curious, even when you do ask all the questions to know what is a safe bet versus what is not a safe bet. And I think that we covered a lot of the ways to make that easier in this season, including the one that we just mentioned, which is having conversations with some liais with people who are making those purchasing decisions and asking questions. But I do think that if there were one takeaway that you had from this whole season in terms of what you can do to figure out whether or not you're going to like a wine before you even try it, before you do any research on it, I think that there's one above them all. And I know a lot of people will say, you know, follow the critics. And I will never say that following critics and using them as a resource is a bad way to find a bottle. I don't. I think critics are great. I think they're incredibly good at what they do. But I also don't think it's the most effective or long term strategy for a couple of reasons. Number one, they're reviewing wines from all over the world, which means there's a lot of wines out there and scoring them in this sort of one, subjectively objective way, in which, you know, they're always going to have some sort of personal bias around it. But also objective in the sense that they're grading these wines on this numerical scale for the most part, mostly it's 100 point scale. What happens is you are effectively grading or rating a $20 Pinaugragio against a $250 bottle of white burgundy on the same scale, which in turn makes it like your sort of comparing cotton to cashmere, right? They're both great for different things, but at a fundamental level, cashmere is going to score higher than cotton because it's a more premium product at a fundamental level. And even though Pinaugragio may give you a lot of pleasure, especially on a hot day by the pool, what Pinaugragio can't give you is nuance and depth and ageability and all the things that we look for in a more so. And so I think what happens is you have this numerical grade assigned to these wines and you kind of look at it in this up and down system and go, well, this merso is going to be better than this Pinaugragio, which means I should get the merso, which isn't necessarily the case, right? And as I mentioned, there's also a lot of wines. So kind of sifting through all of this is really problematic. So all that to say, don't not follow the critics, but I think maybe the better way to go about this, especially if you are buying wines from other countries, if you're living in the US and buying wines from other countries, we talked about this sort of ad nauseam. You guys have to look at the importer. So you're going to look at, you're going to, so this is county again, you're going to turn it around and you're going to look at the back of the label and you're going to see on here, it says, Lira fine wine importers, right? These are the guys who are making the decision going around to all of these wineries, oftentimes in countries that they're very specialized in and making the decision to import them into the US. Here in the US, we have the three-tier distribution system in which wines have to kind of come through various channels. You can't necessarily just buy direct from producers. They have to come through people. And so the importers become sort of gatekeepers in a weird way, but also they become trust agents. They become the people who sort of are able to do the legwork for you and become the best judges of what is going to not only work in the US, but also it becomes a reflection of them as importers. And so what I found is that it's sort of like, you know, movie studios, for example, you know, I love films. I think I've talked about this before. Anytime I see that A24 production studio has a new film coming out, I get very excited because even though I know the films aren't necessarily going to be the same or the same genre, I know that there's a similar ethos to them. And wine importers are very much the same. They often operate and select producers who have fit the criteria of their particular ethos. The wines are going to taste different, but maybe, you know, they're all wines that have been farmed organically. And maybe they're all wines that fit, you know, sort of a style that works with food. Maybe it fits with a style that's more for opulent drinking pleasure. Maybe it's wines that have incredibly long aging potential. Whatever it is, there's often some sort of through line between the producers of an importers portfolio. And so the reason that I'm telling you to turn these wines around to look at the importers is to familiarize yourself with who's resonating with you on the importer front. Because oftentimes if you find a wine that you really like and you've never heard it before, you can go to that importers website and you can look through their roster and their roletex producers and say, "That actually looks like a producer I would like to try." You can find new wines that way. You can make new discoveries and you can reach out to them directly and say, "Hey, I really liked X, Y, and Z producer. I think I want to try this. Who carries it in my state?" And that's a great way to go about it without having to do a lot of the legwork and while also knowing that you probably have someone who's already done the legwork on the quality front for you. So you're not really taking a huge risk in that way. So I love utilizing the importer hack. Oftentimes when I'm shopping blindly, if I know that I want a bottle of European wine, I'm kind of in the $30 ballpark and I'm looking across the shelf, I'll just start flipping them around to see who's imported what and if I see it's a Cermet Lynch wine or a Becky Wasserman wine or a Neal Rosenthal wine, those are all importers that I trust that I know probably are going to be pretty good and even if it's not my particular cup of tea or a glass of wine, I guess in this case, it's a bottle that has been produced with some quality behind it. So some of the other ones that we've talked about, some of the episodes that you can reference, We talked about what it is to be a wine importer with true north with imports as that was Jonah and Sarah Beer. We also talked to Jennifer Fields from German wine collection. So she's specializing in all things German wine. Those are two really great boutique wine importers. The ones that I just mentioned as well are a little bit on the bigger side. They're not big, big, but they're bigger than the other two. And then I will also mention on the Spanish wine front because we had Katie Flaneryon was a two episodes ago from Flanery Beef. We talked about the Jorge Stakes. So Jorge Ordonia is a great importer of Spanish wine. So those are all a handful of importers that you can reference. But keep a notebook. Make sure you're when you're taking pictures of your bottles that you're spending them around and taking a photo of the back because it's a great way to kind of just easily cross reference for yourself. All right, so so far we've had importers and we've had asking questions. But the other really big takeaway that I hope that you guys got from this season is that value lives where people aren't looking. One of my favorite quotes was one that was actually part of an episode that I did at Ask in Food and Wine where I interviewed a few of my favorite food and wine friends. It was fairly early on in the season. I think it was episode eight. And the quote was from my friend, Juner Diel, who's a master's sommelier. She had done a couple of presentations. And she I knew she was doing presentations on German wine and Bergen D. Sy, questions for her. And I specifically had a question about German wine and I said, what's a good hack for German wine? She said, the longer the name, the better the bottle, if it's from Germany. And I was like, that's that's so true. And she said, her contention was that when the Germans keep adding things to the name, it's because it's more special to them. And I think that I think that she was spot on. And I, you know, the other thing is, even though it does tend to make us in the consumer side a little more intimidated, she's absolutely right in that the best bottles are often where people aren't looking or are too afraid to look. Wine has produced all over the world, but many regions have become expensive simply because they're more popular. Now, that doesn't mean that the wines are bad or not worth the money, but your dollar can extend much further. If you venture off the beanpats of places that don't carry the same level of cachet as somewhere like Sanser or Burgundy, right? These are all places that just because of their location are expensive. And June talks about that in the episode, and I think she's spot on. And so we covered this in a bunch of ways across the season, especially not only with June, but also in episode 13 with Vince Anter, who said, and I thought this was such a great quote, when we were talking about value, wine value specifically, he said, you can have grape, and you can have place, but you can't have both. I think that was a great assessment, right? If you want the most popular grape in the most popular region, if you want the Napa Valley Cabernet, you're probably gonna pay for it. But if you want Napa Valley alberino, you probably won't have to pay quite as much. And I think conversely, the scene can be true, right? If you were looking for Cabernet in another region that isn't as popular as Napa Valley and say, like, County, you can find value there. So you just have to understand that value does exist in the wine world, but it's often in the places that people aren't necessarily looking. Another great example of this was when I spoke with Sack Music, also from the German wine collection. And we talked about Pinot noir from other places. Pinot, obviously, a very popular grape, one that maybe you really love, but Pinot is produced in a lot of places that aren't necessarily familiar to you. So it's produced in places outside of Bergen, the it's produced outside of places like the Willamette. And it's produced in places like Germany. It's produced in South America. It's produced in Tasmania. It's produced in the Finger Lakes. It's produced in all these places where you can have incredible quality without the price, I can't, it sort of plays into that quote from Vince, where you can have place, you can have grape, you can have both, right? So if you're looking, if you love, you're just a lover of Pinot noir. And that's a grape that you just want to stick with. Just start looking where Pinot isn't quite as popular. Go to the places that we talk about in that episode. And Sack is such a wealth of knowledge, even though he's working for German wine collection. He's a former sommelier who had a very tenured career. So he has a lot to offer on that topic. So continue to kind of venture out a little bit. This year was the year that I got to Germany myself, which is a very exciting trip for me. I loved it there so much. And I do think that Germany is one of those places that despite its long and vast history in the wine world, it still kind of remains this weird hidden gem where people don't necessarily look first. It's so funny and there's so much quality there. I love German wine so much. And I talked about that a little bit in episode, well, a lot actually in episode 34 with Laura Koffer, who went to Herb Bucket List region, which was Eurogay, another great sort of undiscovered place. So make sure you're venturing out, looking for lots of different places. I think a great way to do that, if you're going to a wine shop is to say, hey, I really love this grape. I know that it's produced next wine, see places where else would you recommend. And I think the other point of this, and this sort of plays into the importer side of it all, is it takes a lot for a bottle to make it onto the shelf. I think if you understand the business side of wine, that part becomes very clear and has become very clear to me, having been on the business side for so long, because if you consider, for wine is produced in Argentina, right? And you're just a small producer in Argentina. And to get that bottle to the US, it takes many, many steps. It starts with someone coming to your winery and tasting your wine and going, hey, I think people might like that here in the US. And so they start by saying, hey, can we import your wine? So they import your wine. So one person brings it to the US. Then the US gets it, and then it has to go to a distributor. And that distributor has to say, hey, I really like that wine too. I think I can pick this up and I think I can sell it. Then that distributor has to take it to a retailer or restaurant. And then a restaurant or the retailer has to say, hey, I really like this wine too. And I think I can sell it. That's three layers that a wine has to pass through in order to make it to the shelf. So I think, you know, if a wine, especially one that's sort of esoteric that doesn't necessarily have all the bells and whistles that we associate with some of the more popular wines, if a wine like that can make it to the shelf, then I think you should probably give it a try. It's probably worth looking for. The last point I want to make on this is the one about Kianti. And even though I know I would hardly call Kianti an undiscovered or hidden region or looking outside of the norm, I do think that Kianti sort of fits into the German side of it all in that it's a place that people have definitely heard of. It's but it's a wine that has a reputation that was soiled a little bit in the '70s. And so I think, you know, if there are wines that maybe you have written off because of reasons like that, because it has maybe a reputation that isn't the best, it might be time to revisit, especially if I'm the one or someone else is telling you to give it a try. It's probably trying to make a comeback and that's worth acknowledging as well. Okay, the last sort of takeaway that I really want for you guys, this is less about, you know, tips, you know, flipping the label around, doing the thing. And this is more about understanding where wine fits into your life. And believe me, this is harder than it looks, but I think once it clicks for you, it will start to make sense. And there's a few steps that you'll have to take in order to make this happen. But the big takeaway I want for you is, I want you to be buying for your life. I want you to be buying wines that suit the way that you eat, the way that you live, the way that you drink. The best wines, no matter whether or not they're from a unique or hidden region, whether they're vetted by an importer, whether a sommelier says, this is the best wine in the world, regardless of all of that or heavy praise from a critic, the best wines are the wines that fit your life and your needs. So if that is a $20 pre-negregio that you can drink, every Tuesday Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, on your porch, then that's the wine that you should be buying. And I think once that starts to make sense for you, it starts to open up a world of possibilities. I think once you understand where and how wine can fit in with your particular life, things start to click. The other sort of piece of that is understanding that you need to kind of have wines on hand to make that possible. Now, if you are the person that's just drinking PinoGruzio 24/7, cool, enjoy. Bye all means, live that life. But if you are someone who wants to broaden your horizons, you need to take all this information that I just gave you and you need to put it into action by way of purchasing wines broadly and kind of keeping them in your home. And I say that because when you're home and when you're drinking and making selections for yourself, when you start to have a little bit of agency in your choices, when you're-- start to put your outfits together, put your wines together with your food, that's when things will start to click. And that's what I mean about buying for your life. Knowing that on Tuesday nights, you make tacos. On Wednesday nights, you make lasagna. On Thursday nights, it's takeout. And I think if you can understand where wine can fit into maybe those three categories for yourself, it makes the buying of it all so much easier. We talk about this a lot in episode 38, with Jessica DePuis. She's a wonderful wine writer who's also a mom and also really dives into this with me. And we talk about some of the wines that are great to have on hand for things like that. But as much as I can tell you that Kiantia is great with pasta and Albrino's great with tacos, if those are two things that you don't eat at home, then maybe we need to find other wines for you. And so that's what I mean about buying for your life. Understanding that wines need to fit your lifestyle. Don't buy $150 bottles of Napa Cabernet if that's not what you want to drink with a regular basis, right? Don't buy those wines that you only want to save for the future. And if you want to drink 150 dollar Napa Cab on a Tuesday night, I mean, go for it. I'm not going to stop you, but if that doesn't fit your lifestyle, then that's not the right wine for you. Kianti fits my lifestyle tremendously. I'm a pasta girl, as I mentioned. So anytime that I am making bolonies, which is with some regularity, this is the wine that I'm whipping out for that. I think it's delicious, it's perfect, it's bright, it's light, it's lovely, and it works so well with bony's. And I encourage you to do that if this is your, if this is your jam, but there's so many episodes in which we talk about different food and wine pairings. And as you kind of go through them, that's what I would encourage you to kind of just make mental notes of like, hey, they said, you know, tacos goes with this and bolonies goes with that. Make those mental notes and make sure that you're buying specifically for your own lifestyle and under, you know, sort of like planning your shopping, right? You just kind of have to make sure that you have the right things in your house in order to make the right decisions. The last few points I want to make are just really short ones. You know, I sort of alluded to this when I was talking about being a Grigio a few times throughout this episode, but I love that if you're drinking Pina Grigio, like I said, continue doing that. But also the only way that your palate is going to evolve if you want that for yourself is for you to drink broadly is to kind of continue pushing out of the realm of what you're doing normally. So continue to explore a little bit. Wine access does a great job of suggesting bottles, but also just being a member of this wine club or any wine club is a great way to expand your palate to drink things that have been, you know, pre-vetted that are already known to be delicious, that you might not have otherwise chosen for yourself. Number two, just always ask to see the bottle. Whenever you are ordering a glass of wine, wherever that may be, it may not happen right away, but I think that asking to see the bottle of whatever it is you're drinking helps you to create that sort of mental snapshot and also gives you familiarity. So just a really quick little takeaway for that because it's hard to memorize wines. Labels are not always the easiest, but sometimes you see thing you can make a mental snapshot that can be really helpful. Use apps or notes or things that might be helpful in helping you to remember those things. So when you do ask to see that bottle, take a picture of it. Remember, we're going to spin the label around, take a picture of the importer if it's not from the US. Trust people whose palettes align with yours, you know, even though I said critics aren't necessarily the best way to go about things, sometimes they are, especially if you find a critic whose palette does align with yours. There are plenty of them out there and they're wonderful, wonderful critics. In fact, Vanessa Coleman, who was my former podcast co-host, is now doing some reviewing of wines with Lisa Prattie Brown. So make sure you check out what she's doing, especially if she was someone who you really enjoyed listening to on the wine front and let your taste evolve without shame. This is the biggest part of it all. I think wine drinkers tend to be very judgy. I don't know why, but I just want that to go away so bad. So if you're someone who loves wines that are like big and opulent or really sweet or really dry or whatever it is, whatever the wine that you're enjoying, drink it with pride, have no shame about it and just lean into what it is that you really love about that and make no apologies for it. I think the worst thing we can do is apologize for something that we like on the wine front. What a terrible way to live and we're all just trying to enjoy wine and have a great day. Last but not least, and I will continue to borrow from my friend Vanessa Drink promiscuously. That's my closing statement. That's a philosophy that we've sort of adhered to throughout all of the seasons of this podcast, which is drink promiscuously, drink broadly. Those are things that will help you to become a more savvy wine buyer and in turn, a more savvy wine drinker that will hopefully help you to live a more delicious and balanced wine life. I think all that to say, so yeah, I think that's all I have. That was a lot to wrap up for 43 episodes of a season, but I will say that I'm super, super grateful that you guys have stayed with me. We recorded over 100 episodes of this podcast in total, which is just bananas. I am looking forward to season 4 getting off in just a few weeks. I'm not going to tell you what the theme of this season is yet, but I will tell you that I don't think any of you will be surprised given the past couple of years of my life. I hope that it will continue to add value to yours, but it's going to be very exciting. So I look forward to sharing more wines with you. If you guys are not members of the Wine Access Unfiltered Podcast Wine Club, which has now been going for two seasons, you can find everything that you need to join in the description below. It's four bottles shipped to you every other month, selected by me with often the help from the Wine Access Wine Team, who travels extensively, like me, and to find incredible bottles all over the world. Let me deliver to you to 120 bucks that includes shipping plus tax, but you do get 10% off of all of your wine access purchases. So some sort of interesting girl math there that makes it a really great deal. Okay, I know you have a lot to get to. It's the beginning of the year. You've got a lot of wine drinks, so I'm going to let you go. But thank you guys so much again. It's been my pleasure to be your host in this podcast for season three. I look forward to season four. Without any further ado, cheers to your new year. See you guys soon.