▷S4E12 Cheryl Kingan, Student of Liquids
When she's not playing the baritone sax, Cheryl Kingan sells wine in New York City. She previously worked in specialty coffee for many years. Cheryl's interest in drinks is not only culinary: this passion has naturally led her to advocate for sustainable agriculture and community development. She loves educating her clients and the public about indigenous grape varieties from Greece, Eastern Europe, Italy and Slovenia.
Cheryl and Rose Thomas talk about the life of a "student of liquids," a term coined by the bartender who inspired RT's journey into drinks: the natural synergy between baristas and bartenders, the adventure of visiting vineyards and coffee farms around the world, tips for getting started tasting wine or coffee, and the potential of tasting notes to be internationally delightful.
Cheryl sells wine for Eklektikon:
eklektikon.com
Including this producer from Corfu:
pontiglio.gr
Listen to Cheryl play music with the bands below!
thesceneisnow.bandcamp.com/music (featured in the episode)
tierslafamilia.bandcamp.com
75dollarbill.bandcamp.com
Note from Rose Thomas: Cheryl and I are friends and she plays in a band with my husband. We are both certified sommeliers through the Sommelier Society of America, where we also both work as educators.
sommeliersocietyofamerica.org
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Intro: Welcome to Modo di Bere, the podcast about local drinks and local sayings. I'm your host, Rose Thomas Banister.
RTB: I'm so excited today to be interviewing Cheryl Kingan. Cheryl spent 12 years helping to build the coffee program at Cafe Grumpy in Brooklyn, the latter six years as their coffee buyer, tasting coffee and building lasting partnerships in Latin America and East Africa. She is committed to sustainable agriculture and community development. And her current role in wine distribution is centered around wine makers in Greece, Eastern Europe, and Italy. Cheryl's also a seasoned musician and plays baritone sax with 75 Dollar Bill and The Scene is Now.
[Music]
She also sings and plays synths in Tiers La Familia. Cheryl was born in New Jersey and has called New York City her home since 2005. Cheryl, welcome.
CK: Hi. So happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
RTB: Thank you for coming on the show. Before we start the interview, I have a request. If you're a big fan of the Modo di Bere podcast, tell a friend. I hope someone in your life comes to mind who would enjoy the show. Whether that's someone who loves learning about languages, that wine student in your life, or anybody who likes to hear about fun travel adventures, I hope you take a moment to share this episode with them. I really appreciate your help in spreading the word about Modo di Bere.
Back to Cheryl Kingan. If you follow Modo di Bere on Instagram, you may recognize her from a funny reel about funny grape names. For those who haven't seen that real, Cheryl, should we start off by talking about Baratuciat?
CK: Well, yes, Rose. I think we should start with that.
[Video clip]: This is a grape variety called Baratuciat which means cat's testicles in Piemontese dialect. This is a skin contact expression. Uh six days of skin contact both fermented and aged in cement and has some really beautiful aromatics. Um some cool spice character and some fantastic texture. This is called Ette and it's made by Summer Wolff. One of the reasons why it has that nickname too is this grape variety can sometimes have a Sauv Blanc-like cat piss—
RTB: Oh!
CK: —smell. This expression of it I think doesn't quite do that
RTB: Oh it's good.
CK: Yeah super yummy really floral.
RTB: Rare grapes from Piemonte is like a hobby of mine, and I have never heard of this. [Music]
CK: So I know that you are a collector of not only obscure grapes but of local kind of very specific dialectical sayings. And so when I saw you at a portfolio tasting recently, I was very excited to introduce you to a Piemontese grape called Baratuciat, which is a word that means cat balls or testicles. So it's kind of a funny one.
RTB: So what does the wine made from the Baratuciat taste like? Can you tell us a little bit about that?
CK: Well, it's a white grape variety and the version that we tasted together was one that had a little bit of skin contact. So, kind of an orange amber color, a little hazy from being unfiltered. Um, kind of nice ripe orchard fruits, medium pretty balanced acidity, and a nice long finish.
RTB: Baratuciat. And that's from Piemonte from in northern Italy. I know that was so fun. I just there's just like endless endlessness. That's something that I love.
So, speaking of languages, what languages have you studied and how have they helped you in your work with coffee and wine?
CK: So, I spent most of my middle and high school and college days studying Spanish. My mom and sister studied French and so I was doing Spanish, a little bit to be contrary just because, you know, sometimes that's what the youngest child does. But Spanish of course is incredibly helpful to have both for coffee, for living in New York, for working in restaurants and just for being a citizen on planet Earth. So I have no regrets in the decision. But because of their influence, I was also interested in French. I love foreign films, so I also studied a little bit of French just for personal interest. And then spending some time traveling in East Africa. That came in handy because of someone I had a crush on. In college, I studied classics. So, I got into ancient Greek and actually ended up doing my last semester of undergrad in Greece. So, I studied a little bit of modern Greek and that sort of ties in now to my work with some wines that are from Greece, which is very cool.
RTB: Oh, that's so cool. What about some fun Greek wine names?
CK: As you know, in Italy, there are tons of indigenous varieties. I think maybe one of the biggest, if not the most kind of widespread amount of of indigenous varieties, but Greece has some really fun ones. Uh I feel like the more familiar ones for people are Assyrtiko, Xinomavro, Agiorgitiko sometimes be called St. George. There are some interesting island grapes like Vardea and Mavropatrino and Chlori. And I could go on and on. There's an an interesting winery that we work with on the island of Corfu and the name of the winery is called Pontiglio which means stubborn in Latin and then the name of the wine that they make the grape is called Kakotrigis which means hard to harvest and then the name of the cuvee is just uh Lianoroido which means skin contact. So basically it's it's a winery that celebrates their stubbornness because Corfu is you know a very touristy island. So you know has been descended upon by many people and has lost much of its sort of historical identity. So they're really proud to sort of keep it real, keep it traditional. Just work with the native grapes in their own way. And even the label for that wine is kind of a funny cartoon of this woman with her hair kind of flying back and she's got like the scissors at the vines and she's sort of struggling and fighting against the vine. So it's sort of a fun one that ties everything together.
RTB: What's the name of that producer?
CK: Pontiglio is the name of the winery. Yeah.
RTB: Cool. Cool. And that's something that you're representing in your work in in in wine distro. That's so cool. That's so interesting. I love Greek wines. They're delicious. I really feel like there is so much cool stuff going on in the Greek wine world in general and it's something that people should just order if they see it out at a restaurant. Give it a shot.
CK: Yeah, I think it's one of those kind of cool underdog varieties that can really deliver much more than its value. Great with a variety of cuisines and yeah, there's some really unusual and beautiful stuff coming out of Greece.
RTB: It's so interesting in terms of indigenous grapes and in biodiversity in general, but it's really feels akin to and is cultural preservation, you know, and I think a lot about like the work that people do to try to maintain, you know, dead or dying languages, local dialects, kind of undersung tongues, and then also these less famous local grapes. You know, maybe it wasn't something that was so successful that got planted all over the world like Chardonnay, but you know, there there's it really makes the world richer to have have these things. So, I love to hear stories about people doing the work to to deal with the fussy or hard to understand grape, but to just kind of keep it from going extinct and letting us taste it.
CK: Absolutely. Well, and I think something we see all over the world too is these more common, more famous varieties that showed up as a result of colonization and war and all kinds of different reasons. But you know, Chardonnay, Cab Sauv, the sort of like most famous things that everybody sort of feels comfortable with and knows as you know, wine. I'm doing air quotes, but you know, just not being afraid to encourage a wine maker to make wine like perhaps their grandfather or their great-grandfather, you know, to kind of go back and take a step back and not worry about what's on trend or what's in fashion or what you think will sell or what you, you know, what someone is telling you makes sense or, you know, kind of trusting your intuition or having someone who believes in you and says like, "Hey, do it the old school way because that's going to be more rewarding for you and it's going to like you said kind of preserve this really cool cultural tradition that otherwise would totally disappear.
RTB: No, that's I mean that's really the whole reason for doing the whole Modo di Bere project is just interest in kind of finding these ways of life and it is fulfilling. It is it is a way of life for people to to stay connected to those traditions. And I've been thinking recently about I guess it's kind of a globalization thing, and you know French wines are incredible and I love them. Of course I love them and you know they have this amazing reputation for being so important in the history of quality wine making. Although there are other stories of other countries that maybe aren't heard as often who also have such a long history. Certainly Greece, certainly Italy. But when I think about, you know, those Bordeaux style blends that were so popular for so long and going back to this fun event in the 60s called the Judgment of Paris, 60s7s, right? '70s, right? Judgment of Paris. So that was like a blind tasting where people proved that California Bordeaux style blends were also good. And I feel like there was this way of proving that you in maybe an up and coming region, proving that you made good wine turned out to be by making a Bordeaux style blend. And it kind of became this benchmark or this showing that you can do this thing in this one certain style. But yeah, you know, I mean things can be a victim of their own success and absolutely and then the quality for the consumer when everybody's doing something. I mean this even with some of the indigenous grapes and they get right. I mean think of like Pinot Grigio for instance.
CK: Yeah. And things just become super homogeneous and uninteresting and often times just not good.
RTB: I know! And that's like the sad thing because it's not the grapes fault.
CK: No, no. Right.
RTB: And Pinot Grigio is awesome, you know, and and a lot of these grapes too, I think particularly with these indigenous grapes, they end up getting a bad reputation because someone overcrops it. So they they really push the production and then it just becomes this watery sad thing when and everyone's like, "Oh, that that's not good. I know that that's bad wine, bad grape." And it's like, "No, it's not. It's not the grape's fault." There's amazing examples.
CK: And it's it's tough because we are so impressionable as humans, right? One bad experience with something can be enough. You know, first impressions, like people aren't always willing to go back to something if they yeah, they really hated it for whatever reason or made them sick or, you know, I'm thinking of oysters or something, but you know, it's just like yeah, it can be a really tough thing to break out of that habit if they have a bad experience or yeah, you're just having something that's always on one-noted no matter kind of where you're pulling it from.
RTB: Well, you know, people have their comfort zones and that's totally fine. You know, like enjoy it and whatever you enjoy is is cool.
CK: There are no rules!
RTB: You know, you don't always have to be trying something new every single day, but let's say you were wanting to get interested in more indigenous grapes and and kind of widening your palate. What's your advice for people trying new wines from different places?
CK: I feel like you would offer similar advice, but don't be afraid to talk to people. You know, when you're at a wine shop, ask for a recommendation. You know, when you're at a restaurant, ask your server, ask the somm, just say, "Hey, what are you really excited about right now?" You know, I kind of like things that, you know, give them give them something to work with. Whether it's a red wine, if you want to try skin contact wine, if you, you know, you love crisp whites, don't say "dry" because, you know, that's not going to help. Most of the wines that we drink here in the US are dry. So, give them a little something. Do you like acidity? Do you like something that's kind of rich and full body? Do you like something spicy? Do you like something that has stone fruit? Just one one thing and then say, "I really love wines that have this kind of what do you recommend?" And if you're in a restaurant and it's something by the glass, you'll usually get a little taste.
RTB: Yeah.
CK: Which is awesome. And then you can say, "Oh, yeah. I that's for me. I love it." Or maybe something, you know, I am going to play it safe and go with Pinot Grigio or something that I know that I like. But yeah, I would just And and in a wine shop too, it's a whole other world, right? It's a huge huge selection. I don't want to say the playing field is leveled. Obviously, there's all price brackets, you know, but give them a price point, give them a a couple cues of a flavor profile, or maybe there's a country! Maybe you want to explore Spain, maybe you really want to get to know whether it's Greece or Armenia or something really unusual. Yeah. I mean, everybody who is in the industry is willing and excited for those questions that come their way and they want to give you a cool experience.
RTB: That's such good advice. Yeah. And I would say too, just don't be worried that you're going to say something wrong.
CK: Yeah. Correct.
RTB: Asking questions.
CK: That's it. That's how you learn.
RTB: Exactly. Exactly. [Music]
RTB: So, let's go back to coffee for a second. So, I always I always think of the person who really probably got me into drinks, who was a bartender. I was, um, Cheryl and I are both musicians. I'm a singer-songwriter. I play guitar and piano. And I had a music series at a bar in Lincoln, Nebraska. And there was this bartender there. He was—everything gets out there a little bit later. So it was a little bit later than the cocktail revolution that rediscovered historic classic cocktails on the East Coast and the West Coast, but he was like very kind of the 2010s or or earlier, 2000s, 2010s like vest, you know, vest, bow tie, poker face. I've talked about him before on the on the podcast because it was something that really inspired me and he had a little he would write handwrite the specials and put them in a little picture frame and have a have a little candle. His name is Ian. I remember seeing later an interview about him and he just he said this phrase which was he called himself a "student of liquids." I love it. And I thought it was a really really adorable way to basically say "I'm into coffee and also wine and cocktails." And sometimes I'll I'll joke about it. I really did love this statement, but I I'll joke about it sometimes when I'm sort of trying to free pour something into a bottle without a funnel and be like, "It's okay people. I'm a student of liquids."
CK: Nice.
RTB: But you are a student of liquids. So with coffee, how did you get into coffee? And how did you end up traveling for coffee?
CK: Like so many people I think in any of our industries, it happened by accident. I moved to New York when I finished college. I was doing an internship at the Guggenheim Museum. So fancy! Of course, not getting paid, as everyone has to make the choice, of office work or service work. The Guggenheim was kind of a taste of office work and I was like well this is probably the coolest office I could ever work in but it's still a lot of computers and not much... You know, there were some very cool events that I got to attend and I have zero regrets. It was an awesome experience. But yeah, I needed to make some money and so the first job I took was in the West Village at a coffee and chocolate shop called Chocolate Bar. Mostly hot chocolate, truffles, etc. But they were working with Gimme Coffee, which was one of the best kind of early roasters, specialty roasters that came to New York from Ithaca.
I didn't really know anything about how to make espresso. We had a an okay espresso machine, nothing fancy, but we didn't know anything about steaming milk or latte art or any of this stuff that now we almost take it for granted. You could trip over a cafe. You know, there's so many fantastic, and not so great, but just so many like specialty and specialty adjacent coffee is everywhere in New York now, which is incredible. When I first moved here and we were saying this is like 2005, 2006, there were a handful of shops really doing specialty coffee and doing it justice.
So anyway, someone came in to give a a wholesale training from Gimme. I just remember being like, "Wow, there's kind of a lot to this." Like it's very scientific. It's a cool I think in wine and cocktails are like this too. It's a cool blend of science, art, creativity, flavor, you know, it's just all these things kind of coming together. And so this training, I was like, "Wow, this is really cool." Like, I kind of want to get more into this.
I ended up moving on to another job that was a little more coffee-centric, but still not quite what I was looking for. And then Cafe Grumpy was just starting to expand at that point. So there was only the cafe in Greenpoint, one location. And I believe now there's at least eight, but maybe even 10 locations, but they were just about to open the location in Chelsea. So, they were starting to hire the more folks to come on board. And, you know, I thought, okay, well, the Craigslist says competitive pay. Let's see what it means.
And I had such an inspiring interview and it was like, basically started something that became a career that I never anticipated. But immediately I was like fell into this training and this cool group of people and I was like wow! this is like really something I can feel proud of and excited about. It's nerdy but it's also cool and it's like, I don't know, it was combining all of these interests and actually in a really similar way those cocktail bartenders at that time too were also: it was a small scene and a lot of them saw us as people who were also making this really beautiful handmade thing and so we had a really cool relationship. We had some bartenders from Little Branch and all those cool like Atta Boy and Milk and Honey and that that scene, you know, they were like our friends and we would go and and watch them make drinks and learn about cocktails and they would come and geek out and have nice coffee from us and it was like a very special time because there was only a few of us. Everybody knew each other. We all supported each other. It was like sort of a secret handshake. It's like, "Oh, you can make a Rosetta. Sweet." Like that's awesome.
Over time, Grumpy, we started as a multi-roaster. So, we were pulling in coffee from a lot of different people around the country that we thought did a fantastic job. And we were really the first place, I think, to do single cup brewing across the board. We were using those crazy Clover machines that Starbucks later bought out. Actually, after seeing them at Cafe Grumpy, Howard Schultz came into the location in Chelsea and was like, "That machine is incredible. I'm going to try out the company."
RTB: Can you explain?
CK: It's kind of a fun like it looks like a big giant space age rectangle with like a faucet over the top and then there's a big circle that is a micron filter that would drop down. There's a piston so it would drop down. I've done this I've done this explanation so many times but it would drop down. You put in the coffee grounds. You used a little wire whisk to stir and get them all sort of situated in the water and it would brew for honestly like not even a minute was like 45 seconds or something. And then there was a vacuum that would suck the coffee into the machine and the puck of coffee grounds would rise to the top on the filter and we would use a squeegee to pull the grounds into a little like waste receptacle that we would just toss into the compost or the trash when it got full. And then there was a button on the front that you could push and it would dispense through the front and you could program it for a 12 or a 16 ounce cup, but you could make a very quick, very tasty, programmable in terms of brew time and temperature cup of coffee. And so we were the really I think it was before all the pour-over craze that you know you see them very often now, but we didn't have a batch brewer at all.
So it was espresso or you would choose from a list of four or five different coffees from mostly Latin America at that time and yeah from these different roasters that we were working with. It was really exciting. It was like kind of fun to explain to people and being in New York too. Some people were just like this takes way too long. I can't handle it. I just need like a quick, you know, I just need a drip coffee and get out the door. You know, I don't want to sit and watch this machine doing this thing.
[RTB laughs]
CK: And then suddenly people got really into it. They're like, "Actually, this is kind of cool and we can slow down for a sec and like enjoy this thing and like, you know, maybe I'm going to sit actually and have it to stay because I want to read the paper and like, "Nice."
RTB: And that reminds me of that that moment in craft cocktails, too. Yeah. People were like, you know, making a drink, making a rum and coke versus making a whiskey sour with an egg white. And there was this moment for for consumers. We like, you know, it started going back to that guy who people were like, "What the heck is he doing?"
CK: Yes. Well, right. And and also we did not allow laptops, which was a big deal because it was a cafe. It was a coffee shop. That's what you do in a coffee shop. You go to work and be on your laptop.
RTB: And the coffee is just fuel.
CK: Exactly.
RTB: It's not a It's not a gastronomic experience.
CK: Correct. No, we really we wanted it to be a place where people were having conversation and actually, you know, you're meeting your neighbors and you're having a little community experience. And I remember one of my favorite things about it was like, you know, on a busy afternoon or a weekend, it sounded like a bar almost because everybody's just chatting, you know, that sort of like nice pleasant murmur of everyone just kind of having a good time. I was like, "Wow, that is so cool." Because otherwise it's like this thing where you know it's this and we we would allow laptops in the Greenpoint Cafe. So it would get like this sometimes where you you know you have your barista who likes the really ambient music and it's like super quiet and everybody's doing their thing and like someone gets a phone call and everyone's furious
[RTB laughs]
CK: and like you know anybody who's actually talking everyone's sort of like shush you know and you're just like no it's okay like there should be that like we want that that's good it's important you know?
RTB: I love this I love this idea of you hanging out with the the bartenders hanging out with baristas and and and vice versa. It's like the circle of life, the cycle of the day. Day to night.
CK: It really is! It does. It's like we need each other, you know, we balance each other out. So, yeah.
RTB: I've got another interview for the podcast with the food writer Giulia Àlvarez-Katz. And she did a series about "third places," you know, the place that you go that's not work or or home to just be with other human beings. And and a lot of times that's centered around drinks and not just alcohol.
CK: Well, for sure. and right the social aspects of it and I think that you know what what the best of the beverage industry is right it's this this fuel for conversation right and I think even historically with coffee right it was like a meeting spot for the revolutionaries for the thinkers for the well what do you know it's like the meeting place that's where people would come to hang out exchange ideas maybe get into a fight have a debate whatever you know but that was the spot you know and similarly the bar gives you a different kind of freedom and a different kind of energy. Um, so yeah, I think they're really important social spaces.
RTB: I love how in Italy it's the same place. Yeah. And and the bartender is the same person.
CK: Yes. All day. They know you. They know everything.
RTB: Making your coffee versus, you know, making your making your cocktail.
CK: Correct.
RTB: Or your glass of wine. When you had developed your palate around coffee and became a coffee buyer, you started taking these coffee trips.
CK: Yes.
RTB: Tell me about that experience.
CK: Sure. So, I guess you had asked about how, yeah, how I sort of got there. So, I got a little sidetracked by the cafe stuff, but we, you know, eventually decided to start roasting our own coffee. And when we did that, my good friend Liam sort of spearheaded the program. And then when they were looking for someone else to start roasting, you know, I was like, "Yeah, I really want to like do something else, you know, figure out how to get deeper." And we had another person on the team, our friend Colleen, who, she was doing the first stage of the green buying, just because she had connections from some previous coffee jobs and she was really eager and she did a fantastic job setting us up with our first couple of really strong relationships. But I got a chance to travel to Nicaragua with our, another good friend and former supplier from a previous roaster before he did his started doing his own importing named Steve Mirsch. His family has at least eight farms in in Nicaragua and invited a couple of us to travel. And that was the moment where I was like, "Oh, okay."
Being in the back of the pickup truck, going up the mountain with a couple friends through, you know, this kind of misty coffee jungle and sort of being like, "This is where coffee comes from. Like this rules. I want to be here. Like I want to figure out how to be here and like engage more with these people and learn more about what's happening on the ground," and and all that stuff. So, it was a really big and really special moment. And then with Colleen, I got to travel to Honduras and to El Salvador a couple years later and that was amazing as well. And and then she ended up deciding she wanted to go to nursing school and I was like "It's my chance!" you know, and yeah, they the the owners of of Grumpy didn't want to like force the job on me, but you know, they were starting to put out a hiring thing and I was like, "Guys, I really want to do that job." And they were like, "Oh, really? Okay, great."
So, yeah, it was a pretty awesome and sort of natural progression. I kind of went from being a barista to a barista and a roaster part-time to a roaster for most of the time, then to a buyer and a roaster some of the time. And then as we grew, we were expanding. We opened um the cafe. I think when we started roasting was around the time we opened the cafe in Park Slope. So we had three locations and then they opened the Lower East Side and Grand Central and sort of more growth started happening and soon we needed to get a bigger roasting machine and it was it was great because we were able to to grow with some of the producers we had developed our very first partnerships with. Colleen had really set a lot of the stage in Latin America. So for that it was kind of maintaining maybe stretching out a little bit. But when there was room to do, so or I was introduced to someone, I was like, "Oh, this is like someone I really want to work with and I dive with and I love their coffee."
But I was really excited about East Africa. So that was sort of my area that I wanted to develop and focus on finding really great partners there. And yeah, like every industry, there's big conferences that happen and there's one that happens in the US every year that's hosted by the Specialty Coffee Association and that's tied in with a barista competition, a roasting competition, what they call the cup tasters competition. And of course, it's a big expo, you know, it's like a long weekend with tons of events and panel discussions and—
RTB: Everyone's literally buzzing.
CK: Everyone's literally buzzing in all the ways. It's a long, it's a very kind of joyful, partying, exhausting, all of the things weekend. But I found out about, wasn't quite the same, but a similar idea that was happening in Africa that's called AFA, which was called the African Fine Coffee Association Conference. I believe it was 2013 that I went on my very first trip and I went to Burundi to the conference because I thought well what better way to meet a bunch of people from different countries and I was also interested in Burundi and that turned out to be a life-changing experience because I met this woman who became a fantastic partner and friend and many many other people who had become good partners and friends at that event too.
Those events though sometimes can be overwhelming and kind of silly, they can also be very fruitful and wonderful.
RTB: Oh, that sounds amazing. So, what's the difference of this physical experience from a coffee farm in East Africa versus some of the ones that you visited in Latin America?
CK: Good question. So typically one of the major differences is that the farms in Latin America are usually owned by independent families, whereas in East Africa it's a lot of larger cooperatives. So people in East Africa might just have a couple trees at home or a small very small plot of land that wouldn't be enough to produce even a bag of coffee, right? So they join together. Sometimes these are thousands of people, cooperatives that deliver to a central washing station, combine their efforts, combine their resources, you know, work together for fertilizer, for food, for funding, everything that they need kind of works in this cooperative way.
Whereas in Latin America, it's usually there are co-ops there too, of course, but usually single families that are, you know, generations worth of these bigger parcels of land, especially I mean Brazil is sort of its own universe because it's like large flat more commercially viable like biggest producer globally biggest producer and Colombia as well is like just a really gigantic scale but much more mountainous and not as excess possible like in Brazil they can actually use kind of like tractor type of farming. Colombia is much more hand harvesting and a lot more diversity and elevation. But yes, so it's it's usually much bigger operations versus very very tiny group efforts in in East Africa.
RTB: Oh, that's so interesting. That's so interesting. [Music]
So, it sounds like you really investigated every area of the coffee business and then you went to a new place. You went into wine. So, tell me about that transition of coming into the wine world. Of course, we're both alums of the Sommelier Society of America where we have a shared mentor who the great Rudi Eilers, who sadly passed away recently. This is another field with a lot of science and culture and agriculture and everything. So what what was that transition for you like moving from the coffee world into the wine world?
CK: Kind of as we were talking about earlier my initial interest was a little more cocktail-centric in the alcoholic realm and for a long time I was like I can't like wine too because it's just too expensive and I can't afford to like all these things! And then at some point, you know, a little voice in my head, I was like, "But there's got to be like wines that aren't that expensive that are like pretty good, right? My partner and I started exploring like Portuguese wine and Spanish wine." It's like there's a lot of killer value wines and just little by little like, oh, and like Riesling, like what is it? you know, it's like, you know, it's good, you know, it's cool, but what you know, it's so that's another like really vast, but that was something we were always like, we like, we know we like that, but it is like it's a huge umbrella. It's so many different things.
And also having a couple of friends say like, oh, check this out, you know, asking for those insider tips and not being afraid to to try something strange and maybe a little out of your comfort zone.
It was like right going sort of into the pandemic, I was starting to think about transitioning into wine and wasn't really sure like how it would feel or if I really wanted to or exactly how it would how it would work. And I ended up working with someone who I consider now to be a mentor too because she really opened my eyes to a lot of amazing natural wines, my friend Lauren who was doing the wine program at Cafe Kitsune because of the pandemic got to we we we got to come become a bottle shop for a second and I just took that opportunity to buy everything. I was like, "This is going to be my chance to learn everything about these wines."
And she did a really cool job of choosing in this way that I used to do these small producers. And I would try like three or four different wines of theirs, like back to back. And it was just so cool because I was like, "Oh, this is what they're doing. Okay, this is like great." In terms of flavors, I mean, just like with what I was doing in coffee, you know, it's like the same thing you're doing as a somm and a professional evaluator of anything, right? You're you're smelling it, you're tasting it, you're thinking about the acidity, the body, the mouth feel, the finish. It's like I I was telling Rudi and Dylan at SSA when I first started, I was like, "There's a score sheet for coffee that's just like this!" And I was kind of showing them and I, you know, I don't know if they were like, that geeked on it, but I was just like, ah, you know, like cool. It's obviously a little bit different. And I think one of the fun things about the wine part of it is you're also analyzing age, which with coffee, you really are dealing with something fresh or you want to be dealing with something fresh. There are different schools of like some people now will like freeze coffee and try aging it and some regions I think like maybe Sumatra which is a pretty kind of unusual one and usually has like a—I'm going to say the f-word funky!—flavor profile but usually more earthy a little more like kind of cedar and spice and sometimes can even taste a little bit dirty but stuff like that can sometimes benefit in a way from age anyway wine I think is Cool. Because you're dealing with age, you're dealing with vessels like, you know, is it oak? Is it stainless steel? Is it amphora? Is it cement? Is it a combination of those? Is it filtered? Has it had lees contact? Like all these cool things that impact the flavor, which a lot of those same things exist in coffee. There's a fermentation phase. There's skin contact.
RTB: Yes.
CK: You know, there's like the natural process, which is where the coffee is dried with the skin on, so it's much fruitier. It also can be a little more like fermented-tasting. Honestly, it can have a boozy quality to it. And that's also really common in, Ethiopia, I feel like, is really famous for their natural coffees that have like a blueberry and vanilla kind of profile.
RTB: I think I forget that coffee is a fruit.
CK: Yeah. Yeah. Right.
RTB: And they're both—can you describe to us, what does the plant look like?
CK: Yeah. It's a shrub. It's a shrub with big big leaves. But yeah, it's a cherry. The coffee it's, yeah. literally just like a grape. It's not a cluster. They're individually, you know, picked per perfect ripeness by color, but there's something. It starts as a flower, you know, and then it's a little green bud and then it turns more kind of purpley red. My expanding my finger to show the growth inside of the fruit. There are two seeds and that's what we that's what we get, those two seeds. So, it's two seeds of this this fruit that goes through all of this crazy stuff. That's another huge difference because once it is out of the coffee grower's hands, it still has to go through so many other processes, right? So once it gets shipped, somebody has to buy it, somebody has to roast it, somebody has to grind it, somebody has to brew it. So there's a whole lot of other steps that make it.
RTB: Yeah. Whereas with wine, other than making sure that you store it properly, right, you open it, it's a finished product. You pour it into a glass.
CK: It's a finished product. Yeah.
RTB: But of course it's been through different sorts of aging and you know there's a lot of steps. Now I love what you were talking about with the tasting. I like to tell my students I I teach now at the at the Sommelier Society that it's a multi-factorial analysis and there's so many different variables. It's you know, it's something that is really really endless, but there's definitely crossover. Another crossover I'm thinking about is terroir, sense of place. You were talking a little bit about that with Brazil and using a tractor versus hand-harvesting, differences in elevation. What are some other things that, when you got into the wine world, your understanding of coffee terroir opened you up to, as people were talking about wine variables?
CK: I guess it's something that's happening in both industries right now in a way that's sort of confounding is that people are trying to make things taste like other things. If that makes sense.
RTB: What do you mean?
CK: What I mean is people are processing coffees now in a way to try to make them taste like coffees from other regions. So doing things like carbonic maceration and doing things like different types of skin contact or fermentation with like fruit juice like pomegranate juice or you know different different things to try to bring out or enhance or just adapt or change the flavors.
And I think in wine similarly there's you know people who are experimenting with obviously the craze of orange wine but different kind of levels of fermentation or different kind of vessels and are doing less traditional things. So when you do a blind tasting or you are giving someone kind of with like a sly wink like oh this is a Pinot Noir or like and it's gone through some crazy—there are things where you're like I would never guess that this was what you're saying it is, because it's it's gone through this certain type of process with the skin contact or the amphora aging or whatever it is. And I feel like there's a trend of like pushing sort of the envelope in both of, like what can this be?
But, I think in both there's a beauty to and an importance of having the sense of place and having the thing taste like what it "should," I'm doing air quotes again, taste like. So there's kind of a fun in between world where there's like yeah that thing where uh I'm thinking this morning I visited Cafe Grumpy just over the weekend to wish them a happy new year and was given a bag of coffee from Honduras and just been enjoying it so much because it tastes exactly like I remember exactly like it's supposed to and it brings me there. I feel like a great comfort in tasting it. It's not trying to be anything else. It's just beautiful and it's what it is.
RTB: Yeah. I love what you were saying about blind tasting being kind of blown up by—But you know that's what I love about this. That's what I love about it.
CK: It's fun and it's crazy.
RTB: I know. No, that's I mean. I teach this, right? But and I love it. I love it because and it's something, I adore about the natural wine world because at the same time this thing that feels so experimental is also really a lot of time I mean some stuff is completely new and and the for instance making skin contact sometimes so-called orange wines all over the world where they you know had been traditional to to only specific certain areas that would be an example of a total innovation and change. But then also people rediscovering wine styles and grapes. I mean, that's been so wonderful. People reviving grapes that had completely fallen out of favor and having to look back a couple of generations to try to figure out what those wines were supposed to taste like because it had fallen out of favor.
I think the thing to remember is that just because some people wrote a textbook at a certain point in time, that doesn't mean that that is wine.
CK: Yeah.
RTB: Or that that is coffee. I mean we have hundreds thousands of years of tradition to go back where the plants themselves were changing and evolving as well as human practices as well as the climate as well as everything. I mean, people used to the most prized world wines in the world were like sweet and fortified wine. There were grapes that we we know of that you start to look into grape genetic history that started out as a white wine and somehow changed. So I mean just you know to not be too precious about these things and to realize that everything changes.
But speaking of changes, talking about climate change, talking about how getting into drinks gets a person into agriculture and sustainability. How did those experiences for you of traveling, whether in a coffee farm or in a vineyard, inform your thinking about sustainability?
CK: It's kind of crazy, you know, to see what's going on on the other side because there's a lot of just the way that resources are used in other parts of the world versus the United States. People are very aware of their usage and they have, you know, a respect and a limitation, and water is a huge deal. Turns out. This is, you know, similar in the wine world, too. And I know some of the folks that we work with in tiny appellations in Hungary and stuff, they just don't have water. There are places that are totally dry farmed.
And Brazil, coming back to them. Like their coffee there is almost entirely naturally processed or dry processed because there's just no way they could use that much water. It would be just impossible. Like actually like not feasible or smart or I don't think actually like literally possible. So yeah, it makes you think about all kinds of things. And yeah, I got to do a really cool thing in Uganda. Gosh, I think it was in 2015 or '16 where I got to spend a week helping an importing partner of mine train a team of people how to use some roasting equipment so that they could have like a quality control lab at their milling station. And they were doing a competition like a these these are kind of common in coffee. They call them microlot competitions where people will have like you know it could be the equivalent of I don't know it's usually at least half of a bag so like 50 pounds or something worth of green coffee that they'll put into an auction and people will compete against each other to get their placement of you know notoriety and then people will bid on the coffees, right?
So we're training this team in a very rural face. The electricity was really shaky. It rained all the time. The power went out constantly. We were trying to encourage them to use filtered water because it has like a more neutral flavor. That's another thing about coffee. The water is a huge thing, right? Is it's mostly water. What you're drinking is mostly water. So, if you're using filtered water, where you are, what your tap is like, all of that stuff makes a huge difference, right? So, we're trying to like encourage them to use bottled water but or filtered water, but we're like that's not a long-term they're not going to do that. They can't do that, really. So, it was like something that we kind of were working through with them.
But just yeah being in this small building where the power kept going out and we just kept figuring it out and we were using all these electric kettles which, even in the US, you trip the breaker if you have more than two, three going at once you know so being like oh yeah this is how we do it and this totally makes sense! Like, no. You have to, like, every time this happens this guy has to get on the roof do a thing. I feel like most places will use like a gigantic kettle because it just makes more sense for them. But yeah, just seeing how things actually function and figuring out a way to have a language of quality control and sharing.
Even tasting notes, you know, it's like what you taste and what other people taste are different. The fruits you taste, the sweets you taste, the sugars you taste, sugar cane versus panela versus honey, what kind of honey, you know, and like that's the kind of stuff that like we would try to get really deep on, but it's like, is that fair?
Tthey need to have access to these. You know, there's kits that the Specialty Coffee Association offers that have sort of like here's a jam that's like you don't have blueberries where you are, but this is how we describe what this thing, you know, but it's like—
RTB: That has to be translated. That has to be translated. And and think in in terms of diversity of experiences, if the people who write the tasting notes are all from one place and one culture—
CK: Totally. It doesn't work!
RTB: Well, and and also just there's this whole realm of experience that's lost.
CK: No, for sure.
RTB: And like, oh, this tastes like jackfruit. Okay!
CK: You know, and it's subjective. Like it's not nobody's experience is invalid. It's like it's—
RTB: Oh, I love I love talking about this! Because in terms of learning how to taste and developing a palate and something— there's these two differences, right? There's a translation of your cultural palate, you know, based on the fruits and the the flavors that are available to you in your area and your culture. And then there's also we are all in different bodies.
CK: Yeah.
RTB: We all connect a little differently to our brains. I do think of it as a translation in the world of tasting these things. You have this tip of the tongue sensation. Oh, what does that smell like? And so you're what you're really honing is your ability to quickly name to make stronger and quicker associations between those sense memories. And that's very intimate, you know, and the moments I think where people end up sort of crying or something. It can be because, oh, this is so good and this is so fine, but it can also be, oh, this reminds me of this jam that my grandmother cooked or something like, you know, it's a very intimate experiences.
CK: Of course. And that's the cool thing about sensory, just in general is like, yeah, smells and tastes! There are things that like suddenly you're like, "Oh, I'm in a really specific, you know, like I'm in a room."
I actually had a really cool moment when I started repping. And that actually there was like a tie-in somewhere along this conversation. Sales was the one job I never did in coffee. So, I ended up being excited to try it because it was something I never did. And it's so fun to work with tons of different people all over New York City. It's like the most
RTB: It was fun. I loved that job.
CK: Yeah. just really cool experience and way to connect with folks you would never get to meet.
I had this really cool experience in one of my earlier um phases of repping where I took out a wine. It was a Greek wine to one of my accounts and someone really like closed their eyes. I could tell they were having a really personal moment and they were just like, "This takes me to like a riverbank." Like they were just having a really specific moment and it was really cool.
But then one of my coffee friends was visiting and the same day had almost the exact same reaction. And I was like almost like crying! Because it was so cool that these two totally different people from these to totally different places had this connective but separate moment with the same wine. And I was like this rules! Like what is h—like that's so beautiful. It was just a really magical. There was just, yeah, it was just kind of like this deep earthy muddy like just wet leaves like I don't know. It was all of these. It was like a childhood like deep dive moment. And I was like I feel so grateful to witness this. And it's like such a cool thing like that your senses can do. That you lock these things in and you have no idea when they're going to come out. It's such a neat thing when uh when you're not expecting it, to just be taken away.
RTB: I love that we're talking about this because I see a bit of a moment right now where people are turning away from tasting notes on the grounds that they're exclusionary. And I just that's not my experience with tasting notes. And I can see if it's the thing that says, "This is what I taste and if you don't taste this, you're wrong or you're stupid," you know and and I can see that you misused that maybe that tasting notes could have that effect, but that's not my experience at all.
I love tasting notes because they can do what you just described. It's it's kind of like confusing the land for the map, right? But it's I mean maps are really useful, but you don't want to just read a map.
CK: No!
RTB: You want to go into the land, which actually kind of describes the experience of studying wine, you know, because if you haven't a chance to travel to all these places, but what I'm saying is that something like you just described where this experience of flavor brings people together, being able to creatively and humbly present, describe what a wine or coffee tastes like and smells like it and makes you feel I think tasting notes when they're at their best. They do bring in the human experience and they communicate a human experience that other people can relate to. It's not esoteric. It's not, it doesn't push people away. It should absolutely bring people together.
CK: Yeah.
RTB: What I hope is when people hear about something that's not familiar to them that we can respond with curiosity.
CK: Mhm.
RTB: You know, I do see people trying to move away from subjective tasting notes towards things like structure, acidity, things that are supposedly objective and that we can all agree on.
CK: Yeah.
RTB: As a way of being more universal. But I don't know. Well, I think maybe I'm just romantic because I have a poetry degree, but I think that these kind of more romantic, subjective, memory laden, context laden tasting and aroma cues, I hope they can bring bring people together.
CK: I think they can. I will tell you I had a a really like something that also transformed my way of thinking while I was working with Lauren was I had spent so much time with coffee trying to make not super literal tasting notes but pretty pretty literal, pretty specific, pretty like, honest and simple, like you know, what is representing the flavor the acidity the mouth feel like three you know is it chocolate orange almonds you know like starfruit that's like a fancy one, but you know, starfruit, blueberry, vanilla, whatever it is, like what's something that represents the sweetness? What's something that represents sort of the overall effect? And then, yeah, is it like a fruit thing, a non-fruit? Again, wine, like fruit, non-fruit.
The menu that Lauren launched when she was doing the wine program at Kitsune was really fun and really cheeky. And at first when I looked at it, I was like, is this real? You know, and then people loved it. People responded so well to it. It was like a really like for me it was like I didn't know if it was I don't know it was just
RTB: You're like is this correct? Is this right? Can we?
CK: And it's it should be fun. And I think that's the other thing that you know wine sort of struggles to to find the balance with is taking itself too seriously or being you know, fun and conversational and easy and approachable, right? Which is what I think all of us really want at the end of the day. But yeah, there was just something about the approach that worked so well and it was simple. It was really simple and just, you know, it was like a one-liner. Maybe it did say something about the taste or the smell. Maybe it was totally like I want this color. I want this I'm trying to remember the specific one. It's like I want this shade. No, I want this color as a lipstick. Basically, I'm trying to Yeah.
RTB: Like, yeah, just, you know, sort of I'm thinking of our friend Rudy talking about a certain wine being something that you would drink at home on a Thursday night watching Law and Order, right?
CK: And that's a totally valid tasting note, right? Or not a tasting note, but a descriptor. A way to talk about the wine.
RTB: It's comforting. It's not too fancy. It's not for showing off, but it's just like a nice sweet spot.
CK: Yep.
RTB: Old favorite. Yeah. And you know, as long as you know what Law and Order is, you know, you immediately knew what he was talking about. I think what got us into trouble with tasting notes was just sort of celebrity critic culture and everybody assuming that just not having enough voices involved. you know, if there's only one voice involved, you know, or only a few voices involved, a few very similar voices, with this kind of critic score rating system—
CK: And things get homogeneous and people take things at face value or too seriously—
RTB: —or or then that that starts to affect the market and and what's available.
RTB: Exactly. Everybody's here, everybody's drinking, everybody's tasting, and whatever you're tasting, you're not wrong. You're not wrong!
And and there can always be ways that we can refine and improve our communication and our appreciation about things. You know, there's certainly wines that I tasted initially that I just didn't understand and then after learning a little bit more about the process, I'm like, "Oh, that's why this flavor arises"—or acquired taste, all these different things. Yeah. I just think jumping into these things, if you think if people are so shy and they're so worried about saying something wrong. I think that a lot of things about the wine world are accountable for for this, for pushing people away. But, you know, if you're in there and you you want to get in there and you're interested, just I mean, bare minimum, maybe I'll answer this for wine, and you can answer it for coffee.
How to taste something, how to start tasting. You look for one thing you see, one thing you smell, and one thing you taste.
CK: Yeah.
RTB: Write down something about the color.
CK: Yes.
RTB: Write down something about you sm—and and write something subjective!
CK: This reminds me of This is actually something you and I talked about recently that I'm going to I'm going to throw in here, but let it sit! If it's coffee, let it cool down a little bit. If it's wine, let it warm up a little bit. The flavor's going to change. Different things are going to jump out. Things are going to unlock for you. Let it sit. Maybe the coffee is going to get a little sweeter. Maybe the acidity is going to get a little brighter. Maybe it's the finish is going to last a little longer. With the wine, maybe it's going to get a little the body is going to express itself a little differently. Maybe you're going to get more fruit. Let the temperature adjust a little bit to the room. Don't be afraid to let it sit. Don't feel like—the hardest thing with coffee when it's really hot, you just it tastes like coffee. It doesn't taste like, I don't want to say, it doesn't taste like anything. It does, but it's it's less expressive than when you let it cool down a little bit. And I feel like a lot of the time the tendency to add milk and sugar comes because you taste it at this duller kind of less expressed moment because it's really hot. You want it to cool down. You want to drink it. You need caffeine. You're tired.
And milk and sugar are delicious, by the way. They're totally fine. There's not a wrong way. If it's good for you and it makes you feel good, it's okay. Like, go with it. Trust.
Yeah. I would say don't be afraid to to let it hang out for a minute.
RTB: I love how this brings it back to this vision that you gave earlier in the interview about bringing in a fancy coffee machine that takes a little longer and making New Yorkers sit sit still for a second. I imagine New Yorkers with this hotcup of deli coffee with tons of sugar. Blazing hot! Versus this this experience of really taking in.
CK: Well and it's also funny to call it a long process when it's like a minute, long! To make a thing, right? Which is like, in real time, nothing. And now that people are doing pourover and, that's like three or four minutes! Like are you kidding?
I'm pretending to pull out my hair but it's like are you kidding me? When that became a thing people really lost their mind. And I think again it was a balance of like the people who were like, "No, actually this is cool and I'm here for it." And then everyone else could get espresso. You know, we did eventually put in uh drip coffee at Chelsea [Cafe Grumpy], but like yeah, we have filtered coffee, too. And that's great. The drip, it's like delicious and awesome when properly dialed in. But yeah, you know, it's like it's a thing. It's nice to take a minute and like just hang out.
[Pause]
RTB: How do you make coffee in the morning?
CK: I use a Chemex. So, a pourover takes about five minutes. It's not a big deal, but it is a nice process where it's like you get up, start the water, maybe I jump in the shower, come back. I have an electric kettle, so I'm not leaving the stove unattended. Don't worry. But come back, get the coffee ready, grind it, smell it, just feel happy and excited, you know, prep the filter. I usually just wet the filter a little bit, put the coffee in, start brewing. Couple minutes later, I'm in my happy place.
RTB: That sounds great, Cheryl. That sounds great. Oh, it's so nice to talk to you. We didn't even really get to talk that much about music. I think we'll send off the show with a little clip of you playing music of you playing the saxophone. So, we'll let that fly.
CK: Wonderful. And until then, thank you so much for talking with me today.
CK: Pleasure. Yeah.
RTB: And to all of our listeners, thank you for being here. Wherever you go and whatever you like to drink, always remember to enjoy your life and to never stop learning.
[Clip of The Scene is Now, live performance]
Support us on Patreon. Grab the newsletter at mododibere.com and subscribe to the YouTube channel @mododibere to watch the travel show Mododibere TV. Music for the show was composed by Ersilia Prosperi for the band Ou. Purchase their music at the link in the notes.
Music composed by Ersilia Prosperi for the band Ou: www.oumusic.bandcamp.com
Produced and recorded by Rose Thomas Bannister
Audio and video edited by Giulia Àlvarez-Katz
Audio assistance by Steve Silverstein
