S3E24 · Mark Coffer: WINECAST

Hello everybody and welcome to Winecast. What is Winecast you might ask? Well it's a podcast about wine and who better to join me for the first episode of Winecast than I call him the mayor of Montalto. Helps run one of the biggest and most successful wineries on the Mornington Peninsula, Mark Coffer. Hello. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you, thank you for having me. It's approaching a pretty crazy time of year. I mean all year is pretty crazy in your realm which is hospitality but just getting even more nuts now isn't it? Yeah as soon as the sun comes out that's it.

People go bananas hey. I mean it's you know we've had a few summers where they've been non-existent so yeah actually coming into one where we have no kind of lockdowns, no fires. Touch wood. No it's going to be good. Time for celebration. Because how long have you been in Australia now? Coming up to 10 years now. Yeah we always in the hospitality realm when you moved over. Yeah used to run some venues, lots of different places in London. There was bars, clubs, pubs so on. Yeah before we get into that we're just going to fill the audience in.

What we're going to do today is we've got a collection of wines here. Me and Mark are going to sit here and drink a wine. If you want to crack a wine with us feel free. We're going to talk a bit of shit about wine. I'm going to ask Mark some really obnoxious questions about wine. We'll chat about his journey from the UK over to Australia, cultural differences between the two countries, your love of hospitality and that'll be it. Talk a bit of shit about UK music. Lovely. Well how well do you think you know the Montalto wines Mark?

I would, I'm 70% confident. Yeah do you have a bit of a taste for it? Like I'm one that I pretend to know what I'm talking about but I don't whatsoever like I can't taste notes or anything like that and that's the same with coffee or beer or whiskey like it all tastes the same to me. Do you taste any? You have too much of it. That's it? I smash it too much. Do you taste any notes or? Yeah I reckon. You know done a fair few courses in wine and you know used to run a wine bar in London as well so we have a lovely little thing at work which is called wine dollars.

Everyone earns wine dollars to then you know be able to purchase their own wine. And that's Montalto wines or? Yeah wines, gin, someone like that so I call it educational. How does one earn wine dollars? Got to work there. Got to work there? So I can't earn some wine dollars by doing some deeds. Oh depends what deeds. Yeah mate I'm desperate for wine dollars at this time of year. So if you could just close your eyes for me and I'm going to pour us a glass of the first one. So this is a bit of a, pretend you're blindfolded.

And we're going to see how well you know the Montalto wines. We're going to have a sip of this one and you can tell me what you're tasting and have a guess of what Montalto wine we're, we're knocking back. Now we've got a brand new Persian rug on the set of the podcast so we've got to be really really careful not to make a mess on that. Or Lockie might have an aneurysm so you can open your eyes now so. Now it's a bit of a spoiler, it's a darker wine obviously. But you don't know which one.

So like what do we, because people swirl their wine around like what's all that about? Is there something to that or is that people being wanky or? It looks wanky. Yeah, it definitely does. But it's to aerate it you get more of the, the smells, the perfumes coming out of the wine from doing that. Aerate it. So again, just me asking obnoxious questions. What does that mean? The air goes through the wine and it helps lift everything up. Cool. I did a course with, it was a specific glass company and I thought it was super wanky because there's like different shaped glasses for different wines.

And I actually thought how like this is just a gimmick. But we went to it and they had six different glasses and one of them was like a little plastic sippy cup and actually showed you and you know the science behind it. And it's different smells and so on have different densities in the air. And so it will be better and it will smell better in certain glasses because of the shape of it. That's crazy because I've always thought that like if you're at a, if you're at an event like a festival or a race

day and they're serving drinks in a plastic cup compared to like when you get a drink like in a pub like in a nice glass, like it just tastes that much better. Is there a taste element to it too or it's just like the smell? You get the smell and some of it's like a taste element. So they would put in say Cabernet and a Pinot glass and you get mint out of it. It was really odd. It was crazy. Incidentally enough, sippy cup came third overall for best overall. Yeah. You know, put in everything in it.

Okay. That was quite interesting. I know. Let's knock this one back. Yeah. I know what it is already. Go on. Monty Pinot. That is the Montalto Pinot? Do you know what year? Would you be able to tell the difference between the years? Oh, it really depends. Like I can tell between the really heavy years and the really light years like the real sunny ones and the really cold ones. Do you want to explain to the audience what that exactly means? Cause you gave me a good education the other night and I found this fascinating. Yeah. Basically how I train my staff and so on is I say like the difference between different years.

The main point of it is the climate in terms of how it changes the flavours, the aromas, the textures and you know how warm it is, how cold it is and you know essentially what that does for everything and the way that I explain it to people is, you know, you think you've got say a piece of lamb and you can either put it in a slow cooker or you can put it on a barbecue and you know, it starts off as the exact same piece of meat but vastly different flavours, vastly different textures by just essentially cooking it different.

It's the same thing with grapes. The warmer it is, the quicker they ripen, the more sugar, the more alcohol and the colder the climate, the more sort of delicate, more elegant style wine that you'll end up with. So like if you're in a country that's close to the equator, like they're going to be producing really, would you call it bold flavoured wines? Yeah, bolder style wines, you know, there's different bits of I think it's 42 on the equator where you know it goes through loads of different parts of France, parts of Italy, parts of Argentina, Chile, California, someone like that.

So it's definitely some big, bolder styles coming out of those countries. And so I guess in an Australian perspective, in years where we've had, you know, such as this year and the years, the far preceding where we've had La Nina, and it's been a bit cooler, the wines that you've produced, have they been a bit more, would you say delicate? Yeah, overall, I mean, 2013 across the peninsula was a crazy warm year, like super, super, super hot. So all the wines are incredibly rich, bold, even in, you know, their structures and how long they, you know, even that flavour, like if you were to drink the 2013 in 2013, it'd be super intense.

So, you know, if it's rested a few years, it starts softening a bit and the acids and the flavours start developing. Yeah, that was gonna be an issue. What does ageing do for a wine? Like the phrase, it's aged like a fine wine, like, yeah, dusty and locked in your cellar. Yeah. What does that do to the taste, like locking it away? For different wines, different things. So for say, like, a Chardonnay, like it will soften some of the acids and it will start coming out like a bit more buttery and creamy sort of over the years.

Like a Pinot, what happens is this is like really fruity. So what will happen is the fruit will start dropping off and more sort of savoury characteristics will start coming out. So it really depends and it depends what you like. Like, some people really like a really light, light style fruity Pinot. So drink a young Pinot, there's no issue with that. Everyone likes different things for a reason. Yeah, you know, if we didn't we'll all be in porridge and drinking water. Yeah, that's so true. So when aged wine isn't always a better wine, it's just personal preference.

No, a lot of people, you know, why it's more expensive is because you've had to house it as well. You've had to store it. That makes sense, yeah. I suppose there'd be less of it, yeah. So that's why it's more expensive, but it doesn't always mean it's better. And it's actually incidentally good at looking at what that year was because sometimes, you know, you might have a terrible year that was, it was just miserable all round and produced some poor wines and you might end up paying through the nose just because it's old rather than it's actually good.

Yeah, and I think that's where people get confused and that for a lot of things, not just wine but cheers to you, but anything like that. They see the price tag and they automatically think, you know, it's a mint, it's a premium service or product, but, you know, it doesn't always mean that, eh? No, definitely. And what I say to people, it's all about value for money. And that could be anything from, you know, if it's someone's anniversary, people don't care about paying for top-notch champagne and this and that and so on, you know, they know it's the experience of that.

But if you're, you're out with, you know, some of the boys after footy and you just want a happy hour or whatever, and like even if you want like a $5 happy hour wine, you're happy sipping that. Yep. All right. And that's value for money. Like it doesn't have to always be something that's expensive. Yeah, I think a lot of people think it's a big dick swinging contest. Like how much can I lash out on a wine or a whiskey or a whatever? Yeah. Well, some of it's prestige as well. You know, there's a lot of people who do have money and part of it is these things are rare.

Like owning a Rolex. Yeah. But it's also something that it's, it's a consumable, so it's gone, it's gone. So it's not like, you know, they can keep producing these things. Like once it's gone, you know, it's absolutely gone. It's one of those things like, is there ever a perfect moment to pull out that really expensive bottle of wine? That's it. I mean, I say to people who just keep hoarding and hoarding and then, you know, everyone's going to die eventually. Then like, it's gotta be a time where you have to pick it out. And it might be when, you know, probably not when you've just come back, you know, absolutely sloshed off.

Probably not the greatest time to do it. That's exactly right. Like in uni, one of my best mates that I've lived with had this Kartner, like just five, like apparently really nice cigars again. I wouldn't fucking know, but like we always said, we're going to save them for like one of our last days at uni before we all move away. And like the amount of times we got home, fucked just from a random night out and dipped into the cigar stash. Like it's ridiculous and such a waste. But again, it doesn't matter. Hey. And hey, what I learned is you can't age a wine once you've cracked it open.

No, that was a bad one. No. So at the, at the Virtus men's night a few months back, we, um, there'd been a cracked open bottle of what we're drinking. This is a fresh one, but it was a cracked open bottle of the Montel Topino that had been sitting there for about six months. Yeah, vastly different. And I'd dipped into it and I knew something was off. I don't know my wines that well, but I knew something was off, but just kept drinking it anyway. Cause I didn't really know better. Incidentally, the wine was off and it was off.

Wine can go off. But yeah, my time's at uni and we've had cracked open wines that have been there for months and months. We've dipped into it. So you're not going to get sick. You just, it just tastes a bit weird. Yeah. It goes like vinegary. Funky. Yeah. You're fine with goon though. Yeah. Oh yeah. Mate. That's a, that'll survive a Holocaust. Not a Holocaust. Jesus. That'll survive a nuclear bomb. Jesus. Moving on. Yeah. Moving on Mark. Hey, um, what did you get started in the hospitality industry as we finish off this Montel To Red? Uh, used to do it at uni.

Like, uh, did business have been at uni when I was, you know, a bit younger and, uh, yeah, I started working at the, um, student's union then vastly different size, uh, venues. Yeah. Varsity different size venues there. Like that whole, just shy of 3000 people for a student union, which is pretty full on nuts. Good fun. Is it something, what were you studying at uni by the way? Business have been. Yeah. So it's something that you grew up wanting to do or just once you were at uni, you sort of grew up for it, grew into it.

I mean, if you've known from some of my sessions that I'm half complete and don't mind the chat. Yeah. We get through some. Yeah. 75%. Yeah. Mr. Jeff loves Jeffrey deck. Yeah. I'm going to get him on. Oh yeah. You and him sit back to our session of that. Yeah. Um, so you were studying in the UK whereabouts in the UK where you located a place called Portsmouth South, South coast. And what was the life like growing up in the UK? Family life, early life. What'd you want to do when you were a youngster? Like a proper youngster, proper youngster.

I think everyone wanted to be like fireman or astronaut. Yeah. Football player. Oh yeah, definitely. Football player, musician. Nice. Nice. At the same time, very difficult job. Where abouts did you grow up? Like same place you went to uni? No, no. Um, in the UK it's quite tradition for people to move vastly out from, from where they live to go to uni. So you don't tend to live with your parents at uni. You go sort of go find yourself a bit, you know, get a bit of growing up going on. What did that look like? The finding yourself process?

Lot of alcohol. Stock standard. So the cultures aren't too different in that regard then? Oh yeah. Just a lot cheaper. Yep. You know, 50 pence shots, one dollar shots. Oh man. Yeah. So a bit different. Yeah. A little bit different. No RSA. That's a vastly different thing. Tell us about that. What do you mean no RSA? No, if you can, anyone can pour a drink for anyone. Well, literally if you were carried to the bar, passed out with your mates, you'd still get served a Jager bomb. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Makes for some interesting times. And I initially was like, when I came out here, I was like, what do you mean?

Like, you know, because people getting cut off after like, you know, six beers and so on. And so like there, can you refer, refuse people at all? I mean, you can, but no one does. Yeah. You know, I suppose it's business. I can tell when I serve a bunch of UK people out here because they don't drink water when they're drinking. It's just not done. It's not part of the culture. You know, they say it's almost like a weak thing to do where, you know, a little bit smarter out here with the sun. Oh yeah. You don't get the sun much there.

How'd you find that? Like moving from the UK to Australia where the sun does a substantial, especially with this thing. Yeah. Especially with the, with the dome. If you're listening on Spotify, Mark's got a bald head. How'd you find that adjustment to the climate? Weirdly enough, not too bad. You know, I do like the warm weather and I found myself burning my head more in the UK than I did out here because here I just know it's going to be hot. I just chuck on sunscreen. And you just prepare for it. Yeah. Whereas in the UK you just go out and then, you know, slowly turn to a crisp during the day.

That's a little bit different. Close your eyes for me. We're going to crack open the next one. We, and it's a spoiler, it's a white and we're drinking it out of a glass. We've just had red in, so I hope that doesn't affect the taste too much for us. A bit of a rosé, rosé mix. Don't even know what that means. We'll get into that though. Yeah, with me battling a bit. There we go. Do you know what ASMR is? No. So it's this sub-genre of videos on YouTube and it's just sounds like this of

people doing stuff like pouring drinks and you know, making sounds with their mouth really close to the mic and a lot of people, myself included, find it really, really satisfying. Oh yeah. And can sometimes fall asleep to it. And have you got a guess what it's going on? Nah, nah. Like you sort of click on the video knowing what it's going to be and it's just people making these weird but soothing sounds. Soothing sounds and yeah, you just listen to it and it calms you down. So no whales and dolphins and jumping into the sea? Nah, nah, nothing like that.

Right yeah, we're on. Cheers to you. Chin chin. That's sweet. Mmm, that's smashable as one would say. Technically not sweet. Okay, right. There's my, there's my obnoxiousness. Nah, it's fine. It's honestly fine. It's one of the most confusing things in wine when people ask for a sweet wine. What quite often they mean is fruity. So this is fruity. Yeah, so sweet is specifically. But would fruity not be sweet? Technically no because it's the amount of sugar that's actually sugar per litre that's in this wine and there's a minimal amount of sugar. This is still classed as a dry wine because the amount of sugar in it.

But the notes that you're getting is fruity. Yeah. So you do get notes, you just don't know it. Okay and that's just a thing of practice like knowing what is fruity and what is dry and what is. Yeah, a lot of it you end up, so dry is pretty much most wines unless you're going for like Moscato or you know the fortified or the sweet wines like stickies and you'll see from them straight away from how much more like viscous and essentially thick. So if you think of wine like between water and milk like when you're drinking it, where is it on that kind of scale?

And then some of them almost end up past that, almost like a watered down honey stage. Yeah, okay. Hey, I didn't get your guess for what this was by the way. Savvy B. Savvy B. Incorrect, Mark. Is that actually the shardie? It is the shardie. Ah Jesus. On the Savvy B though, because I know, what does sauvignon, am I pronouncing that right? Savignon. Savignon, like because you get sauvignon blanc but then there's a red like savignon. Cabernet sauvignon. Cabernet sauvignon, what does sauvignon mean? It's the grape name, it's like all the different ones you know Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, Pinot Noir.

So how can the same grape produce both a red and a white wine? So it's technically all different grapes. Okay. So incidentally enough you can actually make a white wine out of red grapes. So like if you have a red grape at home and then you press it, the juice like runs clear. And it's incidentally like when you're making a red wine, you actually need the skins and then they soak the skins for a long time and that develops a lot more of the flavours. It gives it the red colour? Yeah. So that's how they do rosé but they leave it in two hours to a day, up to a day, that's it.

And rosé is like a sparkling... No, you can have a still rosé, sparkling rosé but rosé you can make out red or white but they use red skins to actually colour it and give it a little bit more depth and that's what it is. And so whereas with a white wine they discard the skins like immediately if it was a red grape. Not always. There's something also called like an orange wine which they keep the grape skins on and then turns it a little bit of a tinge of orange and that makes it that way.

But majority of the time they press the grapes or crush the grapes and that ends up with your white wine and then with reds they press it all and keep the skins in there. But how they can make different ones, so like for instance in America they're big on a wine called white zinfandel. So zinfandel you can have as a red wine, a white wine, rosé like it's huge in California but they use the red grapes to actually make the white wine. It makes it like a slightly heavier white wine in terms of its body and something like that.

They do lots of crazy stuff now to mess around with it all. That's really fascinating because I've always just thought red wine they've made with purple or red grapes, white wines are made with green grapes and that's it but there you go. So you can make white with red and you couldn't make like a red with a green grape though. Doesn't go the other way. Technically you could if you had red skins. You could technically but it's called a different wine anyway. Incidentally it's got to be a red wine or a white wine to be classified as red or white.

So I mean you think about all different varieties of apples they start off as different apples. I mean they're all different varieties but it's essentially an apple but they all have vastly different flavours and sweet and sours and you know every different profile. What's your favourite type of apple? Or jazz over here? Yeah jazz are good. I'm a big Fuji man. Yeah? Yeah. Rayburn in the UK which doesn't exist out here. What's that? It's called Rayburn in the UK which doesn't exist out here. Hey back on the UK what are some things you do miss about your homeland?

I mean it's been ten years now but what are some things that you miss that we don't quite get here in Australia? I'm glad the World Cup's on at the moment. Yeah. So everyone's pretending to care about football for a few weeks? Well I'm glad you called it football. Yeah yeah I'll show you that respect. Thank you thank you. You know I do let people know that they're still attempting to speak English when they say the word soccer. But yeah definitely the football the times when stuff's on it just doesn't work. It doesn't match up at all.

I'm a big European sport fan I'm a huge tennis man. Yeah. Yeah it's the middle of the night. Yeah. And like hilarious before, so we're shooting this podcast about half an hour after the planned time because Mark I'd sent him the Google calendar link and he's like he messaged me we're on for 7pm right? I'm like nah 6am he's like oh I've got 7am in my Google calendar and he's still running on the UK time. I just saw 7 to 8. I love it I love how he's still running on the UK time. Do you miss the music scene in the UK?

We've got a pretty good music scene over here. He's good he's good. The main thing is though is that I note there's a difference is you get that one bit so you saw the Wombats the other day. Oh phenomenal. Yeah awesome but what would happen is you go to a little festival and it would be 10 different bands or they would have you know a couple of different support acts. So you know when I went to go see the Foo Fighters back in the day in the UK 7 different bands came on Queen's Stone Age Motorhead it was awesome.

It's huge. Yeah it was so you find that it's that one band only and you know a little support act. Yeah yeah whereas here you've actually got to go to a music festival if you want to see more than one act. Yeah and then you know you look at some of the line ups at you know Glastonbury and Tea in the Park and you know V Festival which was running back in the day and it's you know the top 12 people there are all headliners. Oh it's enormous. It's crazy. Yeah what are some of the best live acts you've seen over in the UK?

I'd say Monkeys for sure. Yeah yeah we had a good talk about that the other day. So good so good everything from you know just their stage presence to lighting and obviously the music itself everything was just like you know but yeah like little euphoria going on. They just tick all the boxes like that was the same with the Wombats the other night for me like you know I was at a music festival back in Ballarat which is where I spent five years of my life before I came to Mornington and you know was with

a lot of my best friends that I don't get to see much anymore and you know with a lot of other people that you hadn't seen in a long time and it was Golden Hour and the Wombats are singing Let's Dance to Joy Division and that part at the end where they say we're so happy they like they just repeated that over and over for about two or three minutes and it was just like absolute ecstasy mate it was phenomenal. But then I'd love to like see like one of those bands like the Wombats or

Arctic Monkeys not that I have seen them I'd love to see them over in their in their homeland in the UK like is there a band is there a British band that you've seen both in the UK and Australia and do they put on a better show in their homeland or it's? I saw Bastille out in the UK and then I saw him out here as well and I saw him at the corner in Richmond and it was really cool there because it was only about 500 people it was real intimate. I love the intimate

vibe yeah through into the crowd and yeah and with Paddy on the back and you know it was really cool there was when I saw him in the UK it was um I mean it wasn't a crazy huge it was about 30,000 people but it's it's bigger now it's still big yeah you know a lot bigger than 500 people but um so yeah completely different how it went about from you know massive artistic show um to a more intimate style and they both had their merits absolutely yeah it's cool seeing the differences. You saw the Foo Fighters the other night?

Ah no the Foo Fighters sorry I asked Guns N' Roses Guns N' Roses yeah just talking about the Foo Fighters yeah uh tell us about actually we were talking on the show though sorry I saw the Foobies in the last year long show yeah got pissed on too yeah rained a lot oh yeah forgot my jacket that was terrible um tell us about Guns N' Roses because we were talking about this off camera he said it was started a bit flat it was good um I said the it wasn't quite flat like it was just

the fact that first few bits you know it was still light the atmosphere wasn't quite there people still shuffling in uh and uh played a bit of their um kind of more modern newer stuff which definitely people weren't there for and you know it started off with Welcome to the Jungle and then there was like phones out everywhere yeah and flashy recordings and so on like that and then when it started playing the next sort of few songs after that you could tell it dwindle down the atmosphere a bit and uh you um you initially

kind of wondered if he still had the voice but then you know he started getting the old stuff and yeah he pulled out all the stops that's it you've always got to start with the banger and like you sort of feel for artists or bands that have produced a lot of new stuff and they want to show that off and play that but you know they know and everyone knows that a lot of people there are probably there to see old stuff and that would be a tough situation to be in and like definitely um

I remember Lincoln Park back in the day would um they wouldn't play a lot of their old songs so they sort of reimagined them and start playing them in different ways yep so you were still you knew the lyrics you knew the song yeah that's like a cool new way of experiencing and that's a great spin on it whereas um what's that band foster the people that sing pumped up kicks they I don't know if they still do but I know a few years ago they flat out stopped playing pumped up kicks because it was

just the one song everyone was there for so they stopped playing it entirely and I don't know whether they've put it back into their rotation or not where they just crack the shits which I don't think is the right way to go about it like I don't I mean people follow you for a reason so you can't just go we're not going to give you what you want yeah you know they're still turning up and paying money you don't want people to go I'm disappointed absolutely I wouldn't be surprised if like don't get me wrong

for some people they're still great band but would 20% of the people turn up if they knew that that song wasn't going to get played have you ever been to see a live act that you were so keen on keen to see this one song and they just didn't play it um only through sheer hope of that they were going to play it you knew they probably weren't going to play it but they definitely wasn't yeah I've definitely had that yeah but yeah only through like sheer hope of that it wasn't one of their main

songs by any means but yeah I don't know if you've listened to the Inspired Unemployed podcast but um the boys they went to see uh Bon Iver and they wanted to hear him play Skinny Love which is like the song he's most known for didn't play it you're kidding me that's stiff that's that's refund material that's refund material that's on the same that's worse than pumped up kicks yeah definitely any notes you're getting from this uh Chardonnay by the way I mean quite high acid high acid yeah so you got your cheeks elevating a bit

what what does so your cheeks like saliva yeah through so you know like you've had like a sour lolly before and so on that's the acid coming through a bit yeah right if you had quite acidic wines that's that's what happens especially the white wines that's what tends to happen so would this would sour be a good way to describe this or you'd go for more like fruity and acidic and yeah it's quite a fruity Chardonnay it's definitely a modern style there's not a lot of oak there um it's um uh more like citrus sort

of grapefruit pith coming through like big on the citrus tell us about your training to develop that palette and like did it come naturally or and how did you develop that and I've always been awful at that did you have like uh you know do you have someone telling you like you're right or you're wrong or do you just to a certain extent yeah you have different grey varieties that are meant to have certain you know uh flavor profiles and so on um and you know whether this one's meant to be lychee or this one's

meant to be gooseberry and whatever like you you're kind of taught that but obviously everyone's palette's different and I've always been terrible at like um I know what's good I know it's not good and um but I'm uh yeah trying to figure out like specific that's taken a long time and what's really interesting is there was in the UK there was a group of so sommeliers and like professional wine connoisseurs essentially and we just call them soms because you can't be asked to pronounce the whole thing so um there was a whole group of soms

and master soms who were put into a wine tasting complete blind wine tasting and what someone had done is they had actually put food coloring in a white wine and they all guessed a red and it's it's crazy how much different senses influence that and like placebo is huge huge like and people like shit on placebo but like placebo is so and we can't quite explain it with science but it's that big that every scientific study has to control for placebo like it's that big and we just can't quite um I never used to believe

in it until I mean I must have been what 20 or so 21 and I was working at a place where one of the guys he used to get from the regulars he used to come in he used to get on it so much that the his friends that he was with were worried about him so what they used to do on one of the days a week was they would order not let him pay for anything and they would order from him like non-alcoholic beers or get it poured into a pint glass and then

he would drink that all night and did he get pissed he was hammered jesus and I never honestly I never believed in it until I saw that and I was like this can't be right like seriously it's fascinating because people want to shit on placebo like whether it's a product or a drink or a supplement or whatever and they say oh it's placebo it doesn't work or it's an exercise but like for me as long as there's no ill intent of pulling the wool over people's eyes to make money if placebo is making you better

and move better perform better and happier then fucking so be it I reckon I mean Channel 4 in the UK they did this massive hello Mr Wallace they did this massive drug study and it was they took all like they got the police to hand them over all the drugs from Glastonbury festival got everything confiscated they tested everything but they also got like it was 16 different people to actually test pure ecstasy and they gave eight of them a placebo and even the real drug all 16 of them pretty much described their feelings and like

euphoric status all in the same way and it was it was done live on Channel 4 across four different episodes and it was nuts and like to actually see how different and they also showed you know their brain waves and like people's dilated and everything it was all similar for all 16 of them because all 16 of them believe that they've been given the actual drug yep so no I'm definitely after seeing a couple of those things who's definitely didn't believe it before but now I already well and truly bored into it but now after

hearing that like that's fascinating probably bought a few placebos over the years Mark let's knock that one back we're down to our final one eyes closed please mark so it's another white you're you're one from two 50% not great radio we're ready to roll cheers to you cheers but you this thing isn't even recording that's definitely don't do that to me up made every single podcast I record I get halfway through my heart skips the beat like fuck is this thing on but we are on the tree line I reckon I'm gonna blame you for

the last one I reckon you threw me when he said it was free and sweet that's that placebo again mate yeah going my head psychological aspect but yeah that's that's savvy be that is correct this is most definitely savvy be and what makes you say that so pungent on the nose pungent yeah for some people a good way some people are not I'm gonna say that breathing just like gently just like normally if you do that yeah she's like go okay nostrils yeah okay so yep okay and what do you smell in there cuz I

gotta say I'm not smelling much but again this is my uncultured nose and like tropical flavors so you think about stuff like almost like mango pineapple but again like again this is my obnoxiousness that's fruity isn't it that's just fruit it's true yeah yeah but that's the difference between fruity and sweet so this is a more sweet wine you saying still dry wine yep there's not a lot of sugar in there what what are some of the sweeter wines so there's something called like late harvest wines where they let them ripen more and you get

loads of different ones they're called like noble noble rots and things like that they've gotten away from noble right is that just because it's ripened to the point where it's almost like rotting yeah it is and it's a horrible name so they just call it noble wines now yeah you wouldn't be selling too many noble rots surely and they've gotten away from that for marketing purposes yeah but yeah there's quite a lot of them they now call a lot of them late harvest which you basically let it go and go and go and go and

you get not a lot of juice from it but the juice that comes out is super viscous super sweet like real high sugar content so the more you let it go the higher and higher the sugar content goes so you know you get even places where they they do it's called ice ice wine or ice wine in places like Austria Germany and Canada and some different places where they actually have it where they essentially do a similar technique but it's under extreme temperatures and you get minuscule amounts per grape like of of juice yeah right

and I suppose they'd be really expensive too then wouldn't they yeah yeah but they're very concentrated in flavor okay yeah but it's um they're pretty delicious to be honest like it's not like you can have a whole glass of them but you know like great with desserts cheese so they're not smashable as you'd say definitely not smashable yeah um so are there non-alcoholic wines like what does the addition of alcohol to the wine do to the flavor and like a couple of things I mean the the most difficult thing is you can make non-alcoholic wines

there's a couple of different I mean there's multiple different companies now but the companies who do it well what what they've done in not even just the wines like the spirits there's a few really good companies where they actually employ those like master sommeliers who are incredible they can just you know they're like a bloodhound they can detect everything and they you know they will taste and smell certain different wines and they will know the breakdown and they will essentially get alcoholic versions of that blend it together until they're happy with essentially a recipe that

they've made so non-alcoholic wines quite a lot of it's made obviously from veggies instead other fruits and vegetables such as I mean everything like literally everything parsnips apples oh wow yeah you know lots of different fruits and veggies put some spices in there as well you know some might have like fennel seeds go through it and it's crazy is there an argument that that's not even wine technically yeah technically it isn't because you know it's not gone through a fermentation process and yeah is that the belief you hold that that's not wine that's just to

me it's like you know juice yes to sell it how you sell it is technically I mean what they've done is they've made a non-alcoholic product into a wine style that's what they're doing which makes sense so it goes the same with the spirits you know there's loads of non-alcoholic gins but having the alcohol so you can you can go both ways you can actually technically make a gin and you can actually use a it's called a centrifuge to take all the alcohol out of it and the ethanol out of it but what that does

is it strips the so going back to that kind of water to milk kind of like kind of mouthfeel yeah it's it will make it thinner so it's you lose some of that effect from it and it does take away from some of the flavors so people are getting quite creative or how do we still make it a gin how do we still make it this and that and so on and it's normally quite easy or not easy but it's easier for the dark spirits because you know it's a lot sugar-based you know rum sugar-based

and there's lots of sugar in say bourbon corn-based and so on so you can substitute a lot of that with sugar and non-alcoholic flavors I like the way you said you can market it however you want it's like the impossible like the fake the fake meat that's not meat but they market it as meat hey yeah you market it as whatever you want you can do yeah I do find it very odd that's you know that's probably one of the ones that I do put my foot down on just say I'll find it odd mate

don't get me started I could do a whole podcast on that but we might I just don't understand you know the idea is to I understand completely different people's beliefs and so on you know if you don't want to eat animals for the fact of harming animals and so on completely up to you genuinely completely up to you but then why would you eat a version of something that is still imitating yeah what why you're craving that's like your body trying to tell you something now yeah but you know I understand it's quite funny like

you know I know a couple of vegans who wear leather jackets yeah they won't eat meat but they wear leather jackets but like I don't care like each their own you know you're not harming anyone go nuts yeah that's one market that I find fascinating like they know especially especially in your industry too like you'd go and you'd cop a lot with you know people's beliefs yeah and requirements hey well it's crazy over the last you know 10 years it's been incredibly interesting that it used to be allergies you know it used to be you

come to my restaurant you tell me hey I can't eat this because I'm gonna die is there a way that you can make me not die we're like sure of course yeah or we'll tell you no we can't but now people are on you know hey I'm on this kind of diet hey I'm not eating this at the moment yeah can I even weird ones like one of the favorites is can I get a prawn pizza without the prawns so and I suppose like back a decade ago you could just tell them that you know

and actually say get fucked being just say no but like whereas today in the age of social media and Google reviews where they're also very important to the success of your business like you almost like gotta just bend over backwards some people yeah places that are now start putting their foot down saying they're not gonna cater for any dietries and what they mean by that is they'll still cater for allergies yeah like they'll have gluten-free options and yeah absolutely and then they'll cater for a celiac and they'll look after those people but they won't go

like hey I'm not into this today can you alter this for me can you pick the tomatoes off or how about you just order something different yeah I call it the handbrake you know you have someone who has a certain preference and so on they're most likely to go pick the venue because the people who don't have preferences will go wherever yeah so you get the person with the preference and don't get me wrong absolutely cater for allergies you know you have to in this day and age oh yeah you know it's not just a

business thing it's a moral thing oh it's borderline a form of discrimination it is yeah absolutely no you should absolutely be able to cater for people but then you do get the borderline ridiculous with the yeah I can't eat this today or I can't eat this shade of you know whatever and the I call it the handbrake if you do not cater for that person then them and their four other friends aren't coming they're out yeah so if you don't do that you haven't just lost that one person you've lost potentially you know a couple

a group whatever it may be and any of their referrals if they have a great time at your restaurant or whatever and they tell their mate but I guess you're right I did a full function back in the UK and it was what 150 people and we have 53 dietries which is you know as a third of the yeah it is and reading up in the study at the time that was a that was a little while ago only at that time four to six percent of people across the planet had allergies but it was

up to 30 percent believe that they had an allergy so there it is this is a probably a bit of an outdated study now you know it was 10 years ago but it was interesting to see those kind of facts and then you actually seeing that in real life yeah and back swinging back to placebo there's also no SIBO which is you know placebo you have the sugar pill which someone tells you it's going to give you superpowers and you get superpowers the opposite no SIBO the sugar pill someone tells you it's gonna kill you

and then you start actually feeling sick and like you're gonna die they they did a study and I can't give you a PMID or a year or anything up on people with celiac disease they gave half of them you know actual gluten and they gave another half of them these muffins that they told them they had gluten but they didn't actually and I think all of them had a reaction to it yeah right so yeah the opposite is true on that placebo thing yeah UK hospital you were just talking about before comparison to Oz hospital

we chatted about there's no RSA there any other glaring differences in the scenes um the I mean RSA was different you know the one of the places I ran we used to have MMA fighters as a security team you'd feel safe you'd feel incredibly safe it was just lots more fight and if you had a lot more fights a lot yeah well I'd imagine the opposite oh no I came out here and I started like I was out here traveling around and you know what do you mean you can't get obliterated and everyone's getting cut

off oh okay so you didn't have actual MMA fighters no my security team in the UK was yeah and that's just so there's more fights in the UK oh crazy man when I've been certainly working in hospo I was like guys it's no fights yeah I feel safe is do you know of a reason why there's more fights over there people would just get absolutely hammered and that's you reckon that's associated with the no RSA thing yeah so yeah well I think think about it this way I mean probably you know you know one of

two people who have been completely obliterated by war and someone's accidentally bumped into them mmm this is if you were on the level on the air right sorry man yeah yeah yeah vastly different reactions yeah of course and like I've got like two my two best mates are over in the UK at the moment and like fascinating like you can go and what was that I left here yeah they you can go to a park and just drink and walk down the street with the can and it's no worries yeah literally I went back in

July my first night out was just a night out with my younger brother and it literally ended up as that it literally ended up as drinks in the park first someone trying to punch on later yeah like and it was like I'm back in London I'm home home sweet home yeah yeah other differences yeah not a crazy amount to be honest a few different things like you got a hat system over here to rate restaurants where it's you know kind of rosettes or Michelin stars in the UK what's the hat system because that's that's new

to me oh so different people get rated whether it's one two three hat restaurants yeah okay peninsula in the awards just came out this year had montato go pretty good we we always strive to be a one-hat restaurant in the restaurant part and then we retain that this year which is good cool and the peninsula did really well this year really really well is there a reason why it's sat like geographically or climate or whatever that's such a wine region down this way it will be from the literally the climate yeah there's a place in

France called Burgundy and they grow Pinot Noir and Chardonnay they've been doing it for donkey's years you know and it worked really well over there and obviously Australia isn't that older country but what they did is they looked at the different climates of what works well for wine around the world and the answer you know France Italy Spain and so on and they looked over here all these different geographical spots and they were like let's plant this let's plant this it works well in that climate well Australia's done incredibly well is one they've got every

climate of the planet in one country but two they've got some climates that other places don't have yeah so Chiraz is over in I better finish this oh my jam coming out they got some really big desert weather you know you think Barossa McLaren Vale like just hot and dry yeah really arid kind of weather and there's you know there's a few wine producing countries that have that but probably not as harsher climates as where we are and do you think about like the Chiraz is over here they're literally so full on and punchy and

bold you know they're going into 16% wine territory which is huge for a wine and so what does that like 16% alcohol yeah yeah is that not just a you know decision by whoever's making the wine or no it depends I mean if you look at the back of that one that's probably what 13 13 and a half so this Montalto Pino it's a that's your one mate where does it say I can't find it yeah there you go yep 13 and a half and so then that's not a decision by the one maker you

technically can make it bolder and so on you can punch it up a little bit yeah but from then putting more alcohol then you're sacrificing yeah different different elements flavors and so on yeah mouthfuls and so on but the the peninsula what's you know it works with predominantly the same grapes with Chardonnay and peanut or other obviously other stuffs grown here and it's great to find new different things is Queley Winery who put Pinot Gris or Grigio on on the map down this end and they they do a beautiful beautiful version of that and they

would pretty much the starting of that element down here but they were showing that you can produce other things down here as well which was good and it's great to see other people producing lots of different styles not always they're going to be the best sellers or they're going to be the most profitable but it's nice to have variety what are some other wineries on the peninsula doing really really good things that you want to give a share that too definitely I mean Yabbie Lake yeah because that's one I've actually never heard of yeah I

only ran a corner so wow you know take you about 15 minutes from here to get to them but Yabbie Lake really really good they're they're single vineyard Pinot like their top of the range Pinot just phenomenal Peringa literally do not make a bad wine major sponsor of the Red Hill Football Club shout out yeah there you go I was paid to say that yeah okay don't make a bad one like they're genuinely they are about the quality but it's also not you know you've got the top range stuff even their sort of drink now

stuff as I say I don't like to say like entry level because he's not entry level like goons entry level they're kind of like drink now stuff like the stuff that you don't age you just want to have now yep amazing doesn't break the bank genuinely really good and that's just their nation they're just really really good at the they're really good at the top quality stuff as well like that's definitely their niche up there but what they do with they they don't they still don't compromise on quality with the the drink now stuff okay

yeah and then 10 minutes is probably the other one that I would shout out to 10 minutes yeah that's not long I've heard of here you go so 10 minutes by tractor they're really really good um great great restaurants in Paringa and 10 minutes um they they did great they both got two hats this year so nice some phenomenal very nice what's one got to do to get a hat bigger who is the judge of who gets hats and like who oh there's multiple different people who's the governing body of hats so there's multiple different

people who go around and you know there's different food writers and so on who all go around to different places and it's a continuous job and they have a review season and they go during those periods and literally go to different restaurants and you have one you know one outing with them so quite a few of them are known now but some of them are still unknown or they've come on a day where you haven't caught them or whatever it may be so they can just rock up yeah so yeah well always have booking normally

come as a couple like there's two of them that turn up um like whether it's one and a friend or whatever it may be but they essentially review everything from you know the aesthetics of the place the uh the staffing there suppose like the white staff and everything yeah service has gone cutleries like was things the cleanliness of the building to absolutely every aspect of their outing so you know so it's not just food and wine that they turn up and look at can you pick them out like can you pick two people that and

you say yep they're they're coming to test us out i mean they don't sit there and ask questions yeah they're incognito yeah definitely but certain people are they've been doing it a long time so you know you know that they're just like the way they carry themselves and well not just that like you know their faces from being on okay yeah yeah that's it so certain people you go oh that's john yeah and you know and um and is that on the same level as a michelin star or is a michelin star a bit more

prestigious prestigious than getting a hat it's technically more prestigious so michelin star is from back in the day the michelin tires yeah and it was the same company yeah really great great marketing what they did is they started a guide of good restaurants to go to to try and make people drive more which wears down your tires you want new tires which is incredible great that's even mind-blowing i know how clever are those people so it started off like that but then it became a we want a michelin star we want people to drive to

us yeah so it just got better and better and better over the years and it's incredible the standards now um it used to be about for a little period about how fancy everything was because they rate you on literally absolutely everything like literally everything from what glassware you have to what color you have to everything and but it's interesting now over the last few years to see who else has got michelin starts and they're scaling it back a little bit more to not be well it's only the most expensive restaurants so it's easier to get

a michelin star these days then it's easier okay um i would say it's slightly different parameters yeah so uh there's uh a few food trucks who's even got you know that's crazy yes it's crazy and there was this um i think she was in her 70s or 80s this um vietnamese lady who got a michelin star and she's literally just been cooking the same stuff for donkey's years from house family recipes for years and years and years and it's incredible to see the fact that she's been given that and grafted that and received that from

all of her hard work for all the years but for something that she does literally out of pretty much this tiny you know this this tiny outfit that's and bad it's literally takeaway food like it's uh but it's amazing how different you know it's it's kind of the parameters have changed rather than being who's the fanciest which it did get that way for a while so now who's what's good it must be what are people like it must be hectic takeaway food imagine getting that after a night out and oh hey on that why does

everyone in the uk get a curry after a night out we don't we get kebab yeah we get a curry during the night during the night out what's what's that all about wouldn't you you have no idea how happy i was when i went to the uk and got a curry like um they literally had everything on the set menu that i loved uh big bottle of 660 mil cobra indian beer to go with it and they just knew my language straight away but um the curries out here is so different like your butter chicken

is more uh is a lot more similar to a chicken tikka masala in the uk like your chicken is that like mild or well your chicken tikka over here there's no capsicum in a chicken tikka like literally it was invented in scotland it was by you know we have a big indian um pakistani population in the uk and the curry is mind-blowing you know you've um got a huge repertoire of cultures in the uk and that's evident of our food and thank god because otherwise it would be so bland that's so you're saying like the

the curries are not as spicy here or they're like weaker or it's just different really different so there's a uh so chicken tikka masala for instance was invented in scotland it was literally a guy who had chicken tikka pieces come out and he asked whatever you got like a tomato around any sauce you can put with this guy knocked something up next week more people more people more people like and then it became like literally a dish all over the uk that's absolutely a treasured it's not so you said it originated in scotland correct yeah

it's nuts because i think most myself and i reckon most people with me that they think it originated in india and it's like a very typical indian cuisine i mean it was an indian family who came up with it okay yeah but he was in scotland and that's where it all came from that's not you you've dropped some bombs on this episode and i reckon that might be the biggest of them all actually the michelin tire one was pretty fucked yeah hey what's next in the life of mark coffer in the life of montelto and

you and we're just the next 10 years take you oh 10 years is a long time well actually yeah that is a long time i don't know where the next 12 months takes me yeah what do you hope the future holds for you the last little bit um well get through summer for one yes yeah yeah gonna be a hectic summer be a hectic summer be a good summer like i'm looking forward to it you know we're um got some really good people there like really really good people uh but uh it's also gonna be

nice the fact that we're not like last summer what took away from it always um yes we had to deal with all the parameters of covid and so on but you turn up you got you for your function and so on i've got to check in everyone one by one and so on shit you know but we're starting off everything this time everything's not positive yeah and it's like actually wasn't that long ago hey that we were scanning the qr code and checking in and wearing masks but once you sat down you can take it

off and like uncle brian aunty mary doesn't have a smartphone yeah go through all them like why can't they come into our wedding yeah it was hectic and like covered vaccination certificates yeah you know to the point where people were actually going like oh they've forgotten their phone and someone's on photoshop like it was ridiculous and like because i was one that i didn't have my certificate linked with my check-in app so i would always take a couple of minutes when i'm booking into places and i'm thinking fuck like they must hate me and they're

probably getting 50 people just like me every single day yeah we did i um it was the people who got super aggressive about it as well i i really respect your industry and what you do mark because i worked at kfc hamilton for a few years and that was a fucking nightmare mate so i bet i um yeah i really hey how do you go at cooking chicken now uh not good not good no no no tips and tricks you picked up i got nothing i don't know the 11 secret herbs and spices i um

didn't pick up a whole lot from that job other than it was 11 though other than a little bit of uh pocket money to piss up yeah um anything else for the viewers anything yeah what do you want the vertice community to learn to know anything you want to pass on i reckon they can teach me a lot more than yeah yeah anything you want to pass on to the listeners before we wrap up um i would say have a good christmas just enjoy yeah what are you doing for your christmas uh we do a

little orphanage every year um because i'm out from the uk family isn't out here uh so we've got a few of us my best mate moved out here about five years ago so we always do a little what we call an orphanage christmas dinner yeah that always works out pretty well that's epic man where's that at uh it's in williams landing which is plus point cook nice so we're doing that this year it's his his turn to host beautiful mate enjoy your orphanage christmas and yourself uh back home to hamilton yep see the fan it's

not to kfc not to kfc won't be going anywhere near that joint it'll be the second time i've been home to hamilton since last christmas yeah don't get down there that much so i'll um i'll enjoy that time off very much so yeah other than that thanks so much for your time cheers absolute pleasure let's finish this uh montalto pino and i'll see you tomorrow at montalto for our staff christmas party i'll be able to looking forward to it i'll be able to tell them all about all the stuff i've learned i'll be able to

give them give them an education yeah i'm going to tell them they can't they can't do the wine tasting you're going to run it yeah i'll run the wine tasting yeah beautiful mate thanks so much