My latest fascination

I started writing this newsletter entirely for myself all the way back in 2019. I was spending my days drowning in meetings, and I could feel the creative energy draining from my body little by little. I knew that my work at that time wasn’t going to provide a good opportunity to restore that energy, so I decided to carve out this space just to keep up the habit and practice of writing and articulating ideas.

That feels like maybe a necessary reminder ahead of this week’s installment, because this is one that definitely goes deep down a weird rabbit hole based on a new fascination I’ve been cultivating this year. So if you enjoy seeing someone start to nerd out somewhat obsessively about random things, then come on along! (Also, if you’re particularly into sparkling wine)

This Sparkling Year

As the year started, I looked at the gray bleakness of Dutch winter, I looked at the impending inauguration in the US, and I could feel that little seed of despair inside my chest…and I decided to push back against it at least a little bit. But I also didn’t exactly have a huge reserve of energy or motivation, so I decided to start with something extremely basic: I decided to find as many moments as possible that are cause for celebration and gratitude and commemorate them with a glass of bubbly.

Man, I know how much this risks sounding extremely douchey…but also, I feel like it’s so easy to get inundated with media narratives that trumpet the vile & corrupt, the shocking, and even the heroic or redemptive - the kinds of stories that lend themselves well to big reactions, that play well in a 24 hour news cycle. Simple, quotidian acts of gratitude don’t play as well, so it’s easy to lose sight of just how much of our lives those things can account for. So I’m slowing down for it.

Ironically, I’m writing this the day after Ash Wednesday when I’ve decided to give up alcohol for Lent. But in case you didn’t know - there is a cheat code for the Lenten fast: whatever you’ve given up, you’re allowed to restore on Sundays in order to fully participate in the celebration of the Sabbath. So, for the next few weeks I’m only drinking sparkling wine on Sundays…

I am, by the way, notoriously terrible at observing Lent. 2 years ago, I was in San Diego for a workshop presentation and met up with one of my colleagues to hash out the final details. I had just stopped at Winchell’s Donuts where I had grabbed both a cinnamon roll and an apple fritter, and I was working my way through the latter pastry. “Didn’t you tell me you gave up baked goods for Lent?” she asked. And I had indeed told her that and indeed meant it, and I had literally just forgotten. I wasn’t trying to be furtive about it - it was just the farthest thing from my mind. I had been walking over to meet up with her, saw a Winchell’s and stopped in. I’m bad at this, but I think I can actually stick with it this year - not least of all because I consume alcohol far less frequently than I consume baked goods.

One way I'm trying to keep it a little closer to top of mind is by recording a weekly toast on Sundays when I do pop a bottle. Here's the first one from this past weekend

Down the rabbit hole: sparkling wine as luxury good…and what about coffee?

A thing that has been bouncing around inside my brain related to sparkling wine and coffee: no one thinks twice about a bottle of champagne priced at $50. They might not be in the market for it, but it doesn’t seem absurd. A 250g bag of coffee priced at $50, on the other hand, causes jaws to drop. Why? In both cases, almost all of the labor that has been done to bring the product to market has been done by hand. For something to be certified as champagne, the grapes have to be handpicked and the bottles have to be manually riddled (twisted while the second fermentation is happening) by a person. We accept that the price of individual labor is high and translates into quality. With coffee, anything at that price point has also been hand picked and hand roasted in a small batch - no commodity coffee is going to sell for that amount of money. But that bag of coffee is at the very top end of the quality spectrum - it’s a competition grade coffee - where the comparably priced bottle of champagne is fairly mid-tier, a Moet & Chandon or a Taittinger.

I think there are at least 3 reasons that factor into this:

• I suspect there’s an implicit belief that the process of producing champagne creates all of the value in the experience of drinking champagne. Once the bottle reaches the consumer, all that’s left for them to do is open it, pour it, and drink it. There are small quality differences that can come from that process, but they’re really minor and likely only visible to deep experts. With coffee, on the other hand, the consumer is still doing a lot of the work to produce the quality from the bean. The consumer has to grind the bean, choose the right method of extraction, and then actually extract the coffee from the grounds. That produces a huge range of possible outcomes for the same beans. Even if you’re not a coffee expert, you would be able to taste the difference between that $50 bean extracted on some Mr. Coffee automatic drip brewer compared with a hand poured V60.
• Champagne has successfully crafted its image as a luxury product, whereas coffee is still mostly viewed as a commodity. What is strange, though, is that coffee is a far broader category than champagne. Champagne is a sub-category of wine (probably even a sub-sub-category, from wine to sparkling wine to champagne). In the same way that the category of wine has Charles Shaw, the category of coffee has Nescafe. So there should be room in the category of coffee for a luxury product.
• As a consequence of the first two points, we place a higher value on the labor that goes into producing champagne than on the labor that goes into producing coffee. This is honestly a huge problem in the coffee value chain; the wage premium for labor increases as it gets closer to the end consumer, in part because the nature of where coffee is grown versus where it is consumed has an embedded power dynamic in it. The best coffee roasters today have strong relationships with the farms they buy from and pay a premium to work with them, and that translates into the purchase price. I have a huge preference for importers and roasters who are working to ensure fairer pricing for growers.

A few videos I’ve enjoyed as I’ve gone down this rabbit hole…

I’ve seen a few of André Mack’s other videos, and I think he’s an excellent example of the difference between a snob and a connoisseur. Drawing a distinction on the basis of quality doesn’t automatically make someone a snob. I see an important distinction between being a snob and a connoisseur: a snob judges other people’s choices, whereas a connoisseur appreciates quality while also recognizing the value of different quality levels.

I learned more watching this one video than from any other resource I’ve come across.

But second place goes to this one. Incredible density of both concept and detail in such a short video.

One more loose thought

Wine has a bit of a reputation as stuffy and elitist. Over the last month or so, however, I’ve been dropping into wine shops to ask for recommendations…and in 3 out of 4 places, the proprietor has shown so much enthusiasm and expertise (and in the 4th, in hindsight it was less of a wine shop and more of a liquor store with a pretty deep cellar). I am a total novice, but I go in with a really basic question: I’m exploring sparkling wines, and I’m looking for something different than the well known houses (and then I usually give a price range I’m looking for). The amount that I learn in this interactions is massive, but also - the way this endears the shop and the proprietor to me, the way it makes me want to return. It’s really delightful in exploring something new to find it so welcoming.

With that in mind…

• if you’re in Toronto check out Grape Witches!
• in Amsterdam, head on over to L’Atelier du Champagne!
• anywhere in Europe, use on-wine to order directly from grower-producers - and in Utrecht, stop by their concept store!

I’ll be back later this month with the next installment of Pursuit of Play in the aftermath of our next tournament in Stockholm, Sweden. And if you can’t wait a couple weeks, I’ll be dropping the next Nerd Notes before we head out.