Carson Leno, Fallon. Now it's wine talks with Paul K. Hey, welcome to Wine Talks with Paul K. And we are at home in Monroe about to have a conversation with Fred. Frederick J. Ryan out. Where are you at right now? I'm in Washington, DC. In Washington, DC. Introductions in just a moment. Wine talks, of course, available on iHeartRadio, Pandora, Spotify, wherever you hang out for podcasting. Hey, always find what you love at
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Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly. Be 21 since we have Mister Ryan on the show today, I wanted to alert my listeners to a show I have with my father because his, his story is going to come up in a minute as we talk about wine in the White House.
And my dad sat down with me just before he passed about two years before, and started to tell the stories of being a Trojan, about coming to America from Cairo and how he got into the wine business, which is what we're going to talk about today. So that show is up. And also have a conversation about Angela McCray, who's now the CEO of the association of African American Vendors. And we just got back from their show in Napa Valley. It was incredible opportunity to meet the African American
Vendors association and the members and the wines they're making. So have a listen to that, but not why we're here. We're here to have a conversation with Frederick J. Ryan, the author of the book Wine in the White House a History. Welcome to the show. Thanks, Paul. Great to be with you. You know, this not I was trying to figure out what you do every day today cause you were Trojans together. We'll talk about that. But what would you say today is your title today?
I'm chairman of the Ronald Reagan Presidential foundation and Institute based in Washington, DC. But we also have the presidential library out in Los Angeles. You know, we were talking about our relationship with our friend Mister Yankee, and I brought your name up the other day at breakfast. I have a breakfast club on Tuesday mornings to a political operative friend of mine and I said, I'm having a conversation with the guy
that is at the Reagan Foundation. I said, frederick J. Ryan. He goes, oh, yeah, for sure. Everybody knows him. I'm like, wow, you've gotten around the political world. But you said something very interesting in the first page of your book. I found myself in the White House. How does one just find themselves in the White House? Like, you left college. Yeah. I wasn't just taking the
tour. Maybe I should clarify that I had graduated from USC, as we were talking about earlier, as fellow Trojans, and went out of law school. And during the course of that time, I met then former governor Ronald Reagan. And this was even before he announced he was going to be running for president. I met him at a reception in Santa Monica, and here I was, a law student, and I introduced myself, started talking to him, and I just found that this guy
was really paying attention to me. It felt like an hour. It was probably 20 minutes. So here I am, a student, and I was just very impressed with him. And I said, I understand you might run for president, and if you do, I'd like to volunteer on your campaign. And sure enough, six months or so later, he announced he was running for president. And I walked down to the headquarters and said, I'd like to
volunteer. And one thing led to the next, and next thing, I was traveling across the country with him and working as an advanced man in different states during the election. When the election was over, he offered me a role to come and work in the White House, and that led to me just kind of finding myself there, as you said, paul. So actually, the way I found you, because I saw a video discussing wines of the White House cellar and sort of the history of pouring wine on a video.
And it took me a little while to find the contact information, but I think it was under a bar association listing of some sort. And were you pursuing a lot of gree? I mean, I lost a career. Yeah. You're very resourceful, Paul. You found me. I went to law school, took the bar, passed the bar, and then went to work shortly after that in the White House. And I'm still a member of the bar, but I would strongly urge you and your listeners not to seek any legal advice
from you. Darn that. That cuts out half the podcast right there. I thought I was going to get into some of this. Well, it's a very funny story that you told and why we're here today, which is you must have been taking a sorority girl on a date, because any sae, or sleeping, as we call you, would, would do. And he went to the derby, which is a famed restaurant in Los Angeles known for its chili and
Groucho Marx visiting quite often. And you ordered a bottle of wine against the sommelier's recommendation. That's right. I guess we all have a story about what really caused us to dive into wine. And you're describing the wine for me. I was a student at USC, and there was a woman I was trying to impress on a first date. You know, if I didn't impress her, she'd probably date Steve Yonke, and then I would never be. But. So I
made all the arrangements. I thought, what would be a great restaurant? The Brown Derby. You know, I heard that this role, the movie stars hung out. I went in the restaurant, picked her up, we drove there, sat down, and they gave me the menu and the wine list, and we decided, we're going to have prime rib. That was the special of the house. And by the way, the stuff about the movie stars, that had been a decade or two before, back in the area, there weren't any movie stars, at least
any that we could recognize there. But then they brought me the wine list. I looked at it, and all I saw were very long french names, and not speaking a word of French, I picked the shortest one. It was called Chateau d'arche. Garch. And I said, I'll have the chateau d arch. And Sonoye said, no, I don't think that's the wine you want. I said, no, wait. I always have that. And he goes, with your prime rib? I said, yes, I always have that wine with my prime rib,
trying to impress my date. So sure enough, they bring us the prime rib. Then they come out with this chilled bottle of dessert, sauternes, chateau d'Arche, and they pour it in both of our glasses. And even my date, who didn't know much about wine, knew that I had really screwed that up. Like I said, how do we all get into wine? I was going to go try to learn about wine, and I signed up for wine classes at USC. You may have been in there, the seat next to me, but learned about wine
there, and then started making trips up the Napa valley. And that was kind of the beginning of my interest. Well, I was a beta, so we didn't really have wine. You were drinking milk. That was milk at the beta house, right. It was always, whether or not you're gonna have a keg of beer at the chapter meeting was my decision as the president. But that's a great story because. And I looked it up. I didn't know. The wine certainly understand Saturn, but
it's a grand cru Southern. So this, you're. You're some. That was some serious stuff. And certainly with the sugar content of Saturn, you're probably not going to do well with the prime rib. I mean, did you ever date the girl again or. No, that was a one and done.
So that's kind of a fun story to jump off into the wine part of this, because you've written the book wine and the White House a history, and I've been through most of it, fascinated by the stories, the accuracy, and I have a story to tell about my dad and Queen Elizabeth, but. So you decided not. Maybe it was embarrassment, maybe you just thought, wow, this is so interesting that I was so far off that
I got to figure out what this is. And you just started studying it and tasting and purveying it. Yeah, I think that maybe the combination of the embarrassment got me started. But then I think, like so many people who enjoy wine, as you get into it, you learn more. You learn about the regions, the varieties. Just, you can find like minded people who also like to share a glass of wine and talk about new discoveries they have. So I just found myself getting more and more
interested. And, of course, going to USC, going every year up for that northern California game against Tyler Berkeley, we would all tie in a visit to the wine country while we were there. So that made it very convenient as well. It's a lot different than it was then today, that's for sure. So this became, then a pursuit, and you've been involved with the politics and that part of the world for most of your
career. Was this an ongoing pursuit where, you know, you continue to taste, you continue to read, you continue to study, you traveled, and all of a sudden, now you're consumed with learning more? Well, it did. It was an interest that I continued to enjoy. I came to Washington, which kind of gave me new opportunities. Cause it's a very international city. Even at that time, California wine was not really the dominant wine here. It was still french and other
imports, because all the embassies are in Washington. There's 170 embassies. So there are so many different restaurants that reflect different types of cuisine and the wines of those countries. And so that was a way to learn a little more. A second thing was that Ronald Reagan, who I was working for, had been the governor of California at the time that the California wine industry was really coming of age and had a deep interest in wine.
Going back to his movie star days, he had got pneumonia, and he went to his doctor, and once he recovered, and the doctor said, you know, if you drink a glass of wine every day, it'll probably be good for you. And at that time, Ronald Reagan come from the midwest and didn't really know a lot about
wine, but he started studying it and learned about french wines. And this is back when he was in his late thirties, then he became governor of California, when the Mondavis and all the big kings of California wine were just emerging. And he did a lot to advance the California wine trade, and he got to know people in the business, so he brought that knowledge. So here I'm working for somebody, albeit at that time at a fairly junior level, who
had a great interest in wine. And then the third thing was, I don't know if I mentioned this book, but I would go into, on Saturday mornings, I would go into a place called Addie Basson's MacArthur liquors in Washington, DC. And it was kind of the place that wine interested people go and you taste a few wines. And there was this guy who would, most Saturdays would be there sitting at the counter with his brown printed reviews of wine. Robert Parker. Wow. And he was based here, and was.
He was from Moncton, Maryland, just out near Baltimore. And he wasn't of the, you know, they've called him the emperor of wine. He wasn't, he hadn't quite arrived to that level yet, but he was a very knowledgeable person. So we would get to hear his ratings on wine and buy a couple bottles. So all those things kind of, to answer your question, all of those things kind of led to my increased interest in wine.
Well, I'm going to talk about this toward the end of the show. We're going to talk about the contemporary issues that face the wine industry, because there's plenty. Consumerism is a mess. Online sales are diving. And I think it's going back to. I really believe it's going back to the experience that you're having, where you have these face to face handshake tastings,
where you get to learn the stories and have the thing. But I'm going to tell you a quick story, and then we're going to talk about wine in the White House. My father invented the idea of wine in the mail in 1972, but prior to that, in 1959, he was reading the LA Times at his pharmacy in Inglewood, where he started his career as a pharmacist. And it was announced that Queen Elizabeth was coming, and President Eisenhower was pouring a Krug special
select. And my dad calls his Lions club friend, who owns the liquor stores, which is not a wine shop, but he gets him a case of, I think it was the 56 or the 58 or something. And I got to researching to validate my dad's story. Now, I'm pretty confident, my dad's very confident about the idea that he was staying at this
pharmacy, and he was reading the LA Times. And I found the article in the LA Times through the archives, but it turns out it looked like he did pour this Charles Crueg Cabernet for the queen. But it wasn't a state dinner, and it wasn't until, I think, Lyndon Johnson poured the same wine, actually, at a state dinner for, I don't know,
Pakistan or something like that. So is there any accuracy to the idea that they might have started pouring american wines, you know, before the state dinners, like more like at lunchtime or some other kind of meeting? Yeah. It's interesting to look at the history of California wines. And as you know, there was a whole evolution over the years, George Washington's time up to the present, of what varieties were served, where they were from, which countries,
and then, of course, american wines. And in the Eisenhower administration, they did start. But the very, very first time that I could find any connection of California wine with the White House goes all the way back to Abraham Lincoln. Wow. In 1864, he was sent a case of California wine, 1859 vintage from a guy he'd appointed to a presidential appointment up in San Francisco. I think it was the commissioner of the San Francisco Bay. And as a gesture of gratitude, he sent him this kind
of unique gift, California wine. Who'd heard of that? Now, I don't know if Lincoln drank it, and he didn't drink much anyway, so I don't know what happened to that wine, but I knew it reached the White House. But that's all the way back in 1864, if you fast forward to the time you were talking about, we had prohibition, and that eliminated most of the production of american wine. And then we had world War two, and that eliminated the importation of wine.
So we found ourselves, after the war, kind of in this Truman Eisenhower era, as a cocktail nation. Cocktails were more popular drinks at the time, but the White House, following the traditions, would still serve very fine wines to distinguished visitors. We were. This tradition early in our history began, and we wanted to have to show the rest of the world that we'd arrived. We had a beautiful mansion, the White House. We had incredible art on the wall. We had this amazing glassware,
the decanters and the glasses. With the presidential seals and all the engraving. And we wanted to serve great wines, so we continue to serve wines. But just as you've identified, american wines had not yet arrived and they didn't have the prestige that Bordeaux's had and Burgundy's had. So Eisenhower would serve them, but he wouldn't serve it at the main event. He would serve a first growth Bordeaux, maybe at the state dinner, but when a head of state comes, there are other
events. There's often a lunch, there's a reciprocal dinner. And those were times where the president would have a chance to serve, maybe as a bit of a novelty, an american wine to a visiting, distinguished guest. That is so fascinating, because looking at the list for the listeners, this book is fabulous. It's heavy, but it's got amazing dossiers of the menus and the wine served with the food and who served it, and some handwritten notes next to those
vintages. It was just fascinating to see the burgundies and, I mean, I just saw somebody was pouring in echoes. I mean, it's amazing to see that and how important it is for the culture of the White House. You may not put that together, but it seems rather indicative of what a president might have thought about estate dinner, how involved they got with choosing the wines, how they wanted to impress a
particular guest with a particular wine. And yes, it is a litany of who's who in the wine business, particularly the french wines. But what I find fascinating, and this, you can shed some light on this, as I was looking at some of the american wines poured, that became more regular. Almaden, blanc de Blanc. I mean, we sold out my dad's liquor store, you know, Ingle, Nick Chardet, which you
probably still have some pedigree, Louis Martini, Cabernet. All these brands have become these huge mainstream corporate brands now. Are they pouring more boutique things now? It's kind of evolved. If you were to look back, as we're talking about Eisenhower, and then you got to say the Kennedy administration, as you know, with Jacqueline Kennedy, really focused on so many things. French, french food, french design. In the White House, there was a big emphasis on french wine.
And if any of us could go back in time and pick a state dinner that we wanted to attend, based on the wine served, I would urge going to the Kennedy dinner, because they were first growth Bordeaux, Chateau Margaux, Chateaubriand Lafitte, Mouton. It was Latour. And then, as you mentioned, the Grand Cru Burgundies. And at that time, they were serving the best wines in the world. They were serving wines that today are over
$1,000 a bottle. It's evolved now to the point where the presidents don't try to serve necessarily the most expensive wine they want at a state dinner. They want to showcase great things about America. So they might have a great chef come in and prepare a meal. They'll have great entertainment. They'll invite interesting people, and then they'll pick a wine that showcases just great american winemaking. It won't necessarily be occult wine. It'll
certainly be a wine that meets the standards. So no guests would be offended and they would enjoy it. But it's not the most expensive star wines. It's often new discoveries or wines that have a connection to the guest. For example, if italian prime minister is coming, they might serve an american wine, or they would serve an american wine, but it might be made by an italian winemaker who lives in the United States. And this goes back. Actually, Ronald Reagan is the one who began
this. He had the prime minister of France, Jacques Chirac, who had been a longtime friend of his. They knew each other well, and they both had interest in wine. And Jacques Chirac. Ronald Reagan had invited him to come to the White House for a state dinner. So this is like the superpower of wine is coming. What do you serve? How do you manage that? So he didn't want to offend his guests, but he wanted to also showcase great american wine. So he chose opus one joint
venture. That's right. Rothschild and Robert Margaret. So both sides could claim victory. That's a very political decision. I love that. You know, it's interesting you just said this. I'm wondering. Cause I don't think in my career, and I think we talked about a little bit what I've done in tasting wines every Tuesday for 35 years, have anybody come to me and said, oh, we're there, poured this at the White House. I mean, I saw Claude
Vallo been poured. Certainly we talked about some of those other things, but I wonder, is it forbidden to talk about what's poured, even though it's public record? If your wine is poured in the White House, you are. It won't be poured again if you become aggressive in the marketing, really. But they allow you to showcase that it's been done. For example, a great example is Stromsburg sparkling wine. That wine, by the way, has been served by more presidents than any other wine,
and it's been served at state dinners. It was originally served by Richard Nixon, who was very knowledgeable about wine, and he brought it when he did that first trip that opened China, he wanted to bring appropriate bottle of wine. So he brought. It was 1972. The trip took place. He brought a 1969 vintage of Stromsburg Blanc de Blanc, and every single president since then has served it. Now, they don't advertise as the wine of the presidents, and that would probably cause the White House to
retreat a little bit. But if you go into Stromsburg, they've got a beautiful museum, basically, that shows the history of their wine being served at all these important occasions. And they have the menus on the wall. So they strike a balance of letting the winemaker express their pride in being chosen by the president of the United States to have their wine served. But they don't want you to be aggressively marketing off of it. I remember that my father's store carried it. I was
teenager. But we told that story. We told the story. This is the wine that Nixon took to China. And I think that year of the seventies, you're talking about 72, and, of course, the judgment of Paris. We'll talk about that in 76. Changed the landscape for american wine. You go back to 1859, I was trying to figure out. I don't think Napa was really doing much. They just sort of started then. Most of the wine was coming from Los Angeles at that point, or just before
that. And fascinated to hear that Abraham Lincoln received a case. You wonder if it was palatable. That's what I wanted to know. I don't know. That would be a serious question. But it's funny. I put the receipt. I found a copy of the record of that wine being shipped to the White House. I put that receipt in the book so you could see it all the way back to Abraham Lincoln's time. That's why the book, Paul, that's why the book is over 450 pages and weighs six pounds.
Just because no book has ever been done on this subject. And I started off doing this with a much more modest idea in mind. And it was, I think, as you know, it was published with all the proceeds. 100% of every penny in the price goes to the educational fund of the White House Historical association. So I decided, as I did this, I kept finding more and more information, things that I'd never heard of, never seen before. And I thought, if this
is the only book, I better put it in there. And things like. I was talking to the proprietor of Chateau Vikim, which, as you know, is one of the great wines of the world. Saturn Laton. Been around for pure, pure Laton. Yes. And it's been around for hundreds of years. I was talking to him about this book because I've gotten to know him over the years. And he said, and I was talking about the presidents. And he said, oh, I have a letter from Thomas Jefferson on my
desk. And I said, well, that's kind of interesting. I don't think too many of us can say we have letters from Thomas Jefferson on our desk and what's it say? And can I have a copy of it? And he gave a copy and put the book. And this is when Jefferson was advising George Washington, who'd just been president of the United States. And Jefferson writes to Shatoh Kim and he said, our new president, general Washington, has an interest in
wine and I think he would like yours. And he goes on to say, so please send him 30 dozen bottles. And while you're at it, send me ten dozen bottles as well. So first president of the United States, and here's his emissary to France, obtaining chateau Ykim for him to enjoy. That's a fascinating story, and particularly a Saturn, which is just for the listeners, very sweet wine and very expensive wine because it made from molded and
dried grapes. So the juice content is pretty low. Let's talk about Thomas Jefferson a minute, because I had Anne parent on my show years ago, and it's a biodynamic farm in Burgundy, Pomar and things like that. And she said that Thomas Jefferson was there and brought home her cuttings, her parents or her great grandparents cuttings. Is that, are you aware of that? And then was that his
soiree into the wine world? Because even at the african american wine tasting I went to two weeks ago, there were four wineries there from Virginia. I've tasted many virginian wines and there's actually decent wines. But was that what his sort of personal travels brought him to do and see if he could make it work? And I know he had trouble doing it the first time around. Well, he went
here. He gets dispatched to Paris as our emissary there, and he finds Benjamin Franklin there before him and sees that Benjamin Franklin already has kind of discovered the world of french wine and french food and has a cellar with more than 2000 bottles in it. So Jefferson starts to learn from him. But then, being very curious on his own, he goes out and tours the wine regions of France and Italy. He went through Burgundy, he went through Bordeaux. He even did his own ranking.
As you know, the famous 1855 classification had the five different levels, premier crew. He made his own ranking and he had four out of the five that were technical that was 75 years later. He had Margot Aubrion, he had Lafitte and Latour, the top four. And then it wasn't for another 75 years that that official ranking took place. But he traveled, he tasted them, he got to know the
proprietors, he made copious notes. And then when he returned, he knew how to try to get wines and have them shipped over. But I don't know that he brought back those cuttings from Burgundy. I do know once he was president and we left the office of presidency and he went to Monticello, his country home, where he was going to retire, he tried to plant grapes and grow wine. And he had this guy from Italy, Philippe Mazet, whose family, as you know, they've been in the
wine business now 26 generations. Wow. And he had cuttings brought over and they tried to grow the grapes, but they were never successful in his lifetime of being able to grow the grapes and make the wine at Monticello. But as you said today, there are some really exceptional wineries in that area. There's one called early Mountain. I don't know if you've tried that yet. That's. Jean and Steve Case have launched that and they've really tried to aim for high quality.
There's one closer to Washington, actually, you ask how wines get picked for the White House. There's one closer to Washington called RDV. So the proprietor is Rutger de Vinck, and he really is focused on growing in great, great grapes and making a terrific wine. Well, during the Obama administration, Michelle Obama, who was kind of the wine enthusiast in the family, President Obama is more interested in beer, but she knew wine and she would have her girlfriends
come over for a wine tasting every once in a while. They went out to the Virginia countryside while she was first lady and went to RGV vineyards and they tasted the wine and she liked it so much that she served it at the next state dinner at the White House. Wow.
What a great story. Yep. So there. So Virginia is making great wines now, but unfortunately, Thomas Jefferson, although he was, I believe, the, by far foremost president with expertise and knowledge, kind of the founding father of wine for Americans, he did not make wine during his lifetime. I'm going to pull that episode up and listen to her and see if she gives us more information. It's a labor of love to do that on the east coast, just to veer
off for a second. I was out in Millbrook, New York, years ago buying a small wine club and it was 3ft of snow and there's people out in their dry suits. Pruning. Yeah. And I'm thinking, what are you pruning for? I mean, there can't be, it can't be very good, and you're going to make wine here. But I, the wines I tasted the other day were rather solid and I did feature a Prince Michelle. I think it was in the club years ago. So it's interesting because there's
a guy, his name is Jerry Eisterhold. He was written up in the Smithsonian magazine recently, and he's discovered twelve to 15 vidis Lambrusca for the listeners, the second tier of wine grapes just below vidis vinifera, which are the grapes that we're used to making wine from. But he found this book, and I think it's around 1860, of a gentleman, and he has propagated all these vines, so he's now reproduced about twelve of these varieties of american grape varietals to make wine from.
Granted, he's decided that four of them absolutely just can't make wine that's worth a damn. So he stopped it completely. But I told him, I said, you must be, and he's in Missouri. I said, you have all the variables ahead of you that you've got to figure out. I mean, how do you know with twelve grapes you've never heard of that, never been planted recently, and the different soil types and the different elevations you got to work with, you
have permutations that are going to be mind boggling. He goes, yeah, it's pretty hard. Grapes have never heard of. But, you know, when you're telling these stories, you said something about connecting history. He says that it's so important, the history of wine, the stories that you're telling now change your perspective of what you're drinking. If I can pour a Charles Krug special select, I think that's what they call it, and say, yeah, this wine was poured by Eisenhower to Queen Elizabeth.
Pretty confident if we dug deeper, we'd find that out. Cause my dad would have. It was his first case of wine. And that brought him to the wine industry eventually, because it was just such a fascinating thing. How important are the stories in your career with finding these wines and researching this to the consumers that you speak with? Well, first thing is it was just eye opening to me how much time our presidents spent with wine,
particularly our early presidents. And here's, as I said earlier, Thomas Jefferson advising George Washington and procuring wine for him. I found letters from other presidents to our ambassadors over in Europe asking them to acquire wines to be sent and served at the White House. So there's a whole history now, as you know, the evolution of the wines we were talking about a little bit earlier, at the very beginning of our country, before our independence, the wines that were served were often
Madeira. And the reason was, as you know, it's. It's from that little island off of the. Of Africa. It's. It's a very hardy wine. It's very sturdy. It had to live across the. Sailing across the ocean and the heat and the rough seas. And a lot of people thought it arrived better after all of that. So that was kind of the first wine that was served. But then, particularly with Jefferson's help, they began to find ways to get America. Excuse me, to get
french wines to America. And I even found notes where he was changing shippers because one had more pilferage and breakage than the other. But he would, and this was Jefferson himself advising the shipments. So then the french wines arrived. We had this long period of french wines, and then you could see, as american wines were coming of age, american wines slope first as a novelty, as you mentioned, like with Eisenhower, and then today
it's exclusively american wines. But the lessons to the wine consumer are that one that we try to showcase things that are best about America and wine is certainly one of them. That's why they're a part of every state visit, that. It's also that just the. The formality, the tradition of filling one's glass with wine and raising it and doing a formal toast to your guest that's continued for so long, hundreds of years, and that things that connect to our
lives. I'll tell you one kind of funny thing I learned in the book about presidents, and we talked about Jefferson. And as I said, Jefferson was by far the number one president when it came to wine. But a couple of others who were big, Richard Nixon was one. Richard Nixon knew his wines, which was a bit surprising because he grew up in a very humble. He had humble origins. Was it Ladera Heights? No, he was out just in Whittier. Whittier,
California, yeah. And very small house. That's where his presidential library is today. But he had a curiosity. He wanted to know the world. And in the course of that, he learned a lot about wines and developed a really exquisite taste. And he would personally pick the wines that were served at the White House. And he. And they were always very good. But what I had heard about the thing I really wanted to find out was there was a story out that Nixon would pick a very good wine for his
guests. During the state dinner. But there would be another wine, an even better one, where a wine steward would be standing over in the corner with a towel around the bottle so nobody could tell it was different. And that would be only for Nixon. And the expression was called pulling a Nixon. So I talked to a lot of people. I talked to people in his administration. I talked to the White House staff,
people. I went all around. And no source less than Woodward and Bernstein of the Washington Post confirmed that indeed, Nixon would have a one wine for the rest of the group and a special bottle just for him. And that was called pulling a Nixon. So I was talking to a group about this, and a guy raised his hand. He said, I have to confess, I've pulled a Nixon.
So what do you mean? He said, my daughter's wedding. I had one wine for everybody else, but at our table, we had a different wine, and another guy raised his hand, said, I guess I pulled the Nixon, too. We realized throughout our lives, certainly at big events like weddings, there might be two tier wine service. No, this is very funny, and I'm glad now there's a coined phrase of it, because I wouldn't know, because I did it Wednesday at a funeral service for my father in law, and I was pouring
Austin Hope, which is a fan favorite. People love it. It's not inexpensive for thing like that. But I had a bottle of chateau lagrange in the pantry, because I just had Matthew Borden in the shop, and we did a nice podcast. I bought some wines. I go, you know what? I'm not drinking that. I'm going to drink something as good with shish kabbard. Our friend Steve Yonkey does the opposite. He serves a pretty decent wine to his guests, but he's got an ipa beer waiting for.
Linda. But Linda, actually, Linda knows her wines. She's very good at it. I put up Steve's dartboard. If you ever went to his house in Arcadia and played darts, it's because I was there previously installed his dartboard for him. So,
you know, there's something important, though, that we're talking about. You brought it up in the book, and I've yet to be able to define this, that what it is unique about wine that makes us do this, and that's collect the mementos, the bottles, the corks, and political buttons. And history and experience is the same that way. But from a beverage standpoint, why do we do that? What is it that wine brings to the
table? And this is strictly an opinion. I don't think there's a real answer that makes us feel like this, that there's something to cherish and something to remember or better days. What is it? I don't know. I would say we've all saved the cork from a special bottle or steamed a label off to. To save. And I would say it's like saving the ticket from a football game. You want to. It's a reminder of the event. It brings back memories when you see it. And some people collect them and
they organize them. But I think that's probably it. It's just a way to. In a visual way to maintain the. Memory, because I could tell you that I had many. I had a couple of betas, actually. One of my beta brothers had gone to Italy and tasted a wine, and he ordered the wine from Italy, and it got sent here, and it got sent back, unfortunately, because he didn't have a license. And eventually I said, you know, why
did you buy this? He goes, well, we were sitting in front of the Parthenon, and we were having a glass of wine, and we were just enjoying ourselves, and I just want to remember that. And then the wine I got him eventually, actually, I ended up buying it from America. He goes, it doesn't taste the same. I said, well, yeah, it's the same wine. It's the same vintage. Just because you're not in front of the Parthenon with your wife and nobody's tugging on your shirt tails,
because wine is so experiential. And I wonder if you think that along that line, that all these stories that have been handed down, and let's just think about World War Two. And you were talking about world War Two and like the 45 Lafitte. My dad ordered a 45 Lafitte at Tour d'Argent in 1993, and it came up in the basket with the thick coating of dust and debris. The ullage was huge. So my dad, in French, he spoke French. He goes, I tell you what I'm going to do. He says, you open it.
If it's good, I pay for it. It's $3,500 at the time. If it's not good, you pay for it. The guy goes, no, I'm not doing that. So he sent it back, and we got a Costa L 62. So it was still very good. You did all right. You know, these stories that you're bringing forward, and I think the easiest one to sort of to parallel it is the Nazis coming to Bordeaux, that those stories that are handed down from generations have to end up in the bottle as part of the terroir of a wine.
Yeah. And as you know, there's a great book, wine and war, and it was just amazing that the French viewed wine rightfully, I believe, as a national treasure. They didn't want to have the wineries the great Chateau seized, and they didn't want to have their wine taken by the Nazis. So they were, as you know, tour d'Argent was one place. They were putting up fake walls where the Nazis would get in the cellar and they would see a brick wall, not knowing that there was a fake wall and the whole
cellar was on the other side of it. They were taking wine and burying it in huge plots out in Bordeaux. They were putting it in ponds just to have it disappear. And then, very cleverly, they were finding the worst wines from the worst years, and they were slapping labels on them saying special reserve, and those were taken off and shipped to Berlin. But I just did last Saturday's Wall Street Journal. They have
that section on five books that you might recommend. They asked me to write in about five books that I would recommend on wine, and one of them was wine and war, because I thought just the story of what the French did all the way through this pine. Cause the Germans sent these guys that they called wine furers France, and they were supposed to manage taking the wine and all the antics the French went through to thwart the efforts of the wine fuhrers. Barrels of wine were seized and put
on trains to go to Berlin. And as the trains were leaving the station, the French would punch a hole in the barrel. And by the time they got to Berlin, it would be an empty barrel. They took empty barrels and they moved resistance fighters around in the barrels. It was incredible the way the French stood up to protect their country and protect their wine. So that's the point. The cladstrokes, by the way, they're still around. They live in Paris. Had dinner with them not too long ago.
Oh, wow. He was the. We had a great conversation because he was the ABC correspondent in Europe and covered the armenian earthquake and tells these stories about sleeping in a monastery. I mean, a monastery but a mausoleum and, you know, with bodies around him, but. Fascinating couple. And she's sort of the Gertrude Stein of. Of wine. They just finished a book called Champagne Charlie, which I haven't seen. I got to read that. But she's. She's very Gertrude Stein ish. She's
just really bright woman. Well, it's a great book. And they did. I mean, they went to the original sources. They found the documents, they talked to people in both armies on both sides, the german and the french army resistance. They talked to the chateau owners. It was extremely well done, in my opinion. It brought me to the conversation, actually, the reason I found the book was I was trying to understand why at the artsakh war in Armenia, one of the first things the soldiers did was
steal the four whineries that were in that region. And I've had two of those people on the show, and I started asking that question, why is wine a spoil of war? What's so fascinating about that? We would take it, and maybe it is to. To poke in the tradition of that invading of the army. I'm sorry, the country you're taking over. In other words, to go after them in a moral way, I would think. You'Re seizing their treasures. And if it's a country that's renowned for being great in the wine
space or even not, it's just something. These are valuable assets to countries, I learned. Kind of interesting thing. And going back earlier in american history, you know, we had the war of 1812 with England. And in 1814, the English marched on Washington, and they burned the White House to the ground.
And I was curious, because Thomas Jefferson, when he was in the White House, as the second resident of the White House, our third president, but as you know, George Washington didn't live in the White House. Adams was the first one to live there. Then Thomas Jefferson moved in, and he moved in, and the White House was still like today. We'd say it's kind of like in the punch list state. There's a list of things still to be done. And one of them that he discovered was there
was no wine cellar. So Thomas Jefferson built the first wine cellar in the White House. He built it right in front, underneath the grand portico in the front of the White House. And if anybody wants to see what it looks like, he built an identical one out at Monticello, his country house. And I have a picture of it in the book, so you can see what the original White House wine cellar looked like. But he built it, and he stocked it with wine. And what I was wondering was, okay, there's a
wine cellar. It's in the White House. We hear about Dolly Madison, who gave the instructions to take down that famous picture of George Washington and make sure that it doesn't get burned as they're leaving the White House. So as we're interested in wine, I wanted to know what happened to the wine. There was a wine cellar. What happened to it? What happened, I discovered, was the British came. They burned the White House. And as it was smoldering, they left
to go to Capitol Hill to burn the Capitol. Then the american troops arrived at the White House to defend. The British are gone. The White House is burned. But they see there's this wine cellar down the front. So the american troops went down and they drank the wine from the president's wine cellar. So our own troops got to enjoy the spoils of war. That's amazing. What a great story. That was. Actually, the question I had. It was like, is there a cellar
there? And I think the video I watched, you were in the cellar, but is it active? Do they, you know, this is something that will disappoint all wine enthusiasts, and it's something I found out years ago when I worked in the White House. I wanted to see the White House wine cellar, and I asked the guy who was in charge, and he said, well, busy now, whatever. And he finally won. August, when the president and first lady were gone, he said, all right, I'm going to show you the wine cellar
now. I had these visions that there would be this giant wine cellar with big domes and dust and rack after rack and maybe a bottle of Thomas Jefferson's wine sitting in the corner or something. And no, by the way, the Queen of England has 38,000 bottles of wine. Wow. Hangering on now. It's in the royal collection, 38,000 bottles of wine. The Elysees palace in Paris has more than 18,000 bottles of wine. So I'm all excited. I want to see the wine
cellar. I go in there. I learned the White House no longer has a wine cellar. It has a very small closet that can hold maybe 300 bottles. And they typically buy wine on an event by event basis. So if there's a state dinner coming up in a couple of weeks, they'll select and decide on the wine. They'll buy it, and they'll let it sit in the. In the boxes in the wine
closet before they serve it. And there are a few bottles and little racks in case the president has a guest come over who wants to have a glass of champagne or sparkling wine or glass of wine. There's some there. But unfortunately for us, those of us who are saying that that's the case. Has a bowling alley. Doesn't have a bowling alley. Bowling alley. There is a bowling alley. There's tennis courts. You can throw horseshoes.
There are a lot of different things, but there's no wine cellar. But maybe one day we'll find somebody who says, if you elect me president of the United States, I'll build the biggest, best, greatest wine cellar of any head of state around the world. Because when I sold the company in May, the gentleman bought it. And he all bought all my regular stuff. Which is mostly $15 to $20 retail stuff. And I had, I don't know, like close to 3000 bottles that
collected during COVID and whatever of Grand Cruz. And some classified growth and all kinds of interesting things. He wanted none of it. And I didn't have a seller either, actually, after all these years. So I built one and still only holds like, 900 bottles. But not enough. But that'll get you through a couple weeks. Things could be worse. Coming over. Yeah, that's right. Tell me about the toasting that goes on at the White House. Is there
a tradition there? You know, like the French have a toast, the Armenians have a toast. Is it part of the curriculum at a state dinner? It is. And I learned a lot about toasting, by the way, in this book, as you'll see, there's an entire chapter on toasting. The origins of it. And then some of the toasts that presidents have given over the years. But just going back to the origin of it. It was a little less than glamorous when I learned how. Cause I wanna know, where did this come
from? It went all the way back to the days of early Rome. And there was a tradition when there was a big banquet. They would have a big urn that they would fill with wine. And each person would take a drink of it. And then they would turn to the person next to them and wish them good health. And then they would drink. It would go around the room. Well, the wine probably wasn't very good to start off with. And by the time a lot of people have drank out of this,
it wasn't getting any better. So they would burn a piece of bread and they would drop it in the vessel. And it was designed to absorb the impurities that were in the wine. Essentially, a piece of toast. Charcoal filtering. Toasting. Yeah. The term toasting got associated with this act. So it moved forward to present day life. And it's part of every diplomatic, every big event. And all presidents do it. But it's kind of been shortened now where
it's two to three minutes. At one point, they'd stand up and they'd do these half hour, 45 minutes toasts. And they became foreign policy speeches. So the protocol people on all sides, okay, two to three minutes, talk about the relationship between the countries. And it evolved when to change a bit. When Jimmy Carter was
president, he had the president of Mexico there. And typically, he'd wait till the end of the evening, and the finale would be a nice toast and a tribute, and you'd end it with a clinking of the glasses, and that was it. Well, Jimmy Carter, for some reason, just stood up at the very beginning of the evening, before his wine had even been poured, walked up the podium with his water glass, and he made the toast. And then he realized he didn't have any wine, and it
wasn't a wine glass. So he went down and he got his wine glass filled, and he went back up, and he made the toast again just to make sure that it was official. The wine. Every single president since then has followed that example. They get the toast out of the way at the beginning so they don't have to think about it all evening. They can enjoy themselves and have good conversation and good glass of wine with their guests.
It is intimidating, right? I mean, you're thinking, what am I gonna say? What am I gonna say? What am I gonna say? And then you try to say it, and it doesn't come out the way you wanted it. You know, there were some. I mean, the presidents, and I included them in there. Some were serious toasts. Some were funny toasts. Some of them would talk about, typically, they talk about the historical connections between our countries. I included them in there, but I
also, Paul, included this other section in the book. I found, as you saw, and you went through, I found all these short little quotes by presidents or by prominent people in the wine space. And I thought they might be useful for people who want to use them in a toast, or they might want to. If you're making a speech, you might want to quote it. So I have a number of
them from our presidents and all, but. And I put them every couple pages. You'll see just a little two or three sentence toast or little witty statement, but the one that I really love the most, because you can't talk about wine without talking about Winston Churchill. And he came to the White House, and Roosevelt entertained him. And I got the list of the wines that every meal had. Wine or brandy or scotch or champagne, serve breakfast, lunch, and
dinner. But there was a great quote by Winston Churchill that he put in there, and he was talking about, as you know, bottles of wine. There's the regular sized bottle, and then a double bottle is called a magnum. And as you know, they get larger and larger. So the quote he had was, he said, a magnum of wine is the perfect size bottle for two gentlemen to enjoy over lunch, especially if one isn't drinking. Wow. He was known for that. Anyway, actually a big fan of armenian brandy as well.
We're at 51 minutes already, but I have so much to talk about. Probably have to do this again. But there was one thing. There was a question that somebody had asked you, prior thing, and it was about Woodrow Wilson and the Volstead act. And we just got back from Savannah. We went to the prohibition museum. And so maybe this is a more contemporary question, but it wasn't really repealed. It was just broken up into 50 different versions and in some cases, still dry states or states control all the
alcohol. Is there any active pursuit to remove that act and just give control back to this regular like any other product? Yeah. Well, as you know, the history of this, and it is worth noting how it happened. There was, back in the late 19th century, before prohibition, there was what was called the temperance movement, and that was a little bit religious, but just more broadly, it was an effort led by many women across the country
to just eliminate the consumption of alcohol. And it was funny, we talk a lot about the presidents, but there are also some first ladies who played a big role in our wine history, and one was the wife of our 19th president, Rutherford B. Hayes. He was a leader of the temperance movement. As you know, he was elected president. And as soon as he got there, there was a very important state dinner coming up. It was the son of the russian czar, who was a very important
relationship to us at that time. And the diplomat said, you have got to serve wine. It will be a major faux pas, diplomatic catastrophe if you don't do it. So she acquiesced and she allowed wine to be served. That was the only time it was served, the
entire time he was president. But they had this, as I was talking a little bit earlier, these presidents over the years had purchased this very ornate glassware, beautiful glasses and decanters and carved crystal, and she used that at every meal, but she would serve fruit juice in it. Wow. So she was given the name lemonade Lucy because of the fruit juice, but that happened. And then prohibition from 1920 to 1933, and Woodrow Wilson was president, they passed the 18th amendment, and then the
Volstead act that you mentioned was the Congress passed it. It was the legislation to implement prohibition. And Woodrow Wilson, he liked wine. He vetoed it. And then Congress overrode his veto, so it became the law. And a year later, he left the White House. His term was over, and he had his own wine collection, and he bought a house in Washington, DC. He wanted to move his wine from the White House to the new House he'd
purchased in Washington. And it took congressional approval because the Volstead act at the time prevented the selling, buying, selling, or transporting of wine. You could have wine and you could drink it, but you couldn't buy any or sell any or transport any. So he wanted transport. So he needed special exception. But to answer your question, today there are efforts underway, and, you know, it's this arcane system of distribution in every
state here in Maryland. It's in Montgomery county, where I live. It's controlled by the county. The same people work in the wine store who work in a county library, and it's a county outbreak, but there are efforts underway. There's. What's a free the grape? There's a large wine caucus members of Congress are involved in. So there's a lot of activity. I don't know when all these laws will change, though, because things. There are very
influential interests on all sides. It's the WSWA wholesaler, spirits, and wine distributors that, you know, I wouldn't even allow. I was, as a retailer at the time, and being a guy that shipped wine, I wasn't even allowed to the meetings. They would not let me. I had to use this different badge, somebody else's badge. Wow. To go listen to what they're. Why they're fighting people like me to ship wine into a state. And, you know, Utah has thrown people in jail
for shipping wine or beer into their state. Not me, but they've their friends. You know, it's an interesting thing. We have to wrap it up, and we're going to have to do this again because we didn't even touch half of the subjects. But I think the synopsis of all this in your book, which is fascinating for the listeners, you have to get a copy. It's called wine in the White House, a history, a Tome, really, of history. And you bring it up in the book as well, where there's
such connection. Wine is such a connecting beverage that it connects you to history, it connects you to geography. It connects you to stories like this that bring things to light that otherwise may get lost without wine being part of the subject. Even the cladstrup's book, this book that you just finished, my knowledge of world geography is completely, exponentially better than it was when I started the study of wine. And it's just an interesting product and still has that ethereal value
that is human. It connects you to something. It connects people. I think the next time we talk, we're going to talk about the consumerism of wine. I've been joking with people today at the tasting, and somebody started a club during Christmas as a competitor of my old club called Vino Cheapo. And I'm thinking, you know, to going back to what you're saying, that's not a story you don't like. You're sitting around dinnertime and somebody goes, this is pretty good.
Which they probably wouldn't if you had a wine from Vino Chiba. But if you did, you're probably a little more embarrassed to say, hey, I got it for $5 than being proud of it, right? You're probably like, yeah, thanks. That's the end of it. I don't want to tell you I got it for $5 at the 99 cent store. Anyway, regardless, had I known that this was the Frederick J. Ryan friend of the Steve Yonke, I could have just called him and got your email address and not have
to go through pages and pages of Google searches. But such a fascinating conversation. It's such a great book. Thanks, Bob. I've enjoyed the chance to talk to you about it and look forward to continuing the conversation. I appreciate it. Cheers. Thank you for listening to wine talks with Paul Callum, Cary. And don't forget to subscribe because there's more great interviews on their way. Folks, have a great time out there in the wine world. Cheers.