The Wines the World Forgot & Why It Matters w/ Ashwin Muthiah (Part 1)

Ep 146

You probably learned about wine the same way most people do. A handful of regions, the same familiar grapes, and a lot of unspoken rules about what matters and what does not.

In this episode, Ashwin Muthiah challenges that narrow view and asks a bigger question. What if the wine world has been leaving out entire regions, cultures, and histories all along? He shares how travel shaped his curiosity, why Georgia (the country not the state) is essential to understanding wine’s origins, and how formal wine education often skips over more than it explains.

We also dig into why only a small number of grapes dominate store shelves, how thousands of others are quietly disappearing, and what pretension and gatekeeping have to do with the way we drink today. Ashwin breaks down how branding, consumer habits, and industry power shape what ends up in your glass.

You will also hear how his curiosity and years of travel eventually led him to create a wine club focused on sharing wines most people never get the chance to try. This conversation is less about telling you what to drink and more about noticing what has been missing all along. Throughout the conversation, Ashwin reframes wine as culture, history, and agriculture rather than just a consumer product.

If you are tired of defaulting to the same bottles and want to understand what the wine world is not talking about, this episode is a must listen! It will change how you think about wine.

Skip the waitlist to join Ashwin’s UnPINNED Wine Club with this exclusive link just for pod listeners - https://unpinnedwineclub.com/pages/access-upwcqrz

Thank you to our exclusive sponsor, Last Bottle, for sponsoring this episode. Go to www.lastbottlewines.com and use code CORKANDFIZZ for 10% off your order! (And be sure to sign up for their mailing list so you never miss a bottle!)

Connect with Ashwin

Website - https://unpinnedwineclub.com/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/unpinnedwine/ 

Episode Highlights:

• Why wine education skips entire regions
• Georgia’s role in wine history
• How only a few grapes dominate the market
• What happens when grape varieties disappear
• Pretension and gatekeeping in wine culture
• Why grocery store wine limits choice
• The origin of Unpinned Wine Club
• Real wine vs manufactured wine
• How younger drinkers are changing wine
• Why curiosity matters more than credentials

Transcript

0:00

If you love wine but hate overpaying, listen up. Today's sponsor, Last Bottle Wines, drops one deeply discounted sommelier-picked wine every single day. I'll tell you why I'm obsessed later in the episode, but for now, head to lastbottlewines.com and use code CORCKANDFIZZ for 10% off. Interested in learning about wine but not sure where to start? You're in the right place. Welcome to the Cork and Fizz Guide to Wine Podcast. I'm your host, Haley Bollman, and I'm so glad you're here. I'm a wine enthusiast turned wine educator and founder of the Seattle-based wine tasting business Cork and Fizz. It is my goal to build your confidence in wine by making it approachable and lots of fun. You can expect to learn everything from how to describe your favorite wine to what to pair with dinner tonight, and so and so much more. Whether you're a casual wine sipper or a total cork dork like myself, this podcast is for you. So grab yourself a glass and let's dive in. Hello and welcome back to the Cork and Fizz Guide to Wine podcast. I am so excited today to introduce you to Ashwin Muthiah. Ashwin is the founder of Unpinned Wine Club, a wine subscription built around discovery, storytelling, and breaking the rigid rules of wine industry. Each month he curates 6, or there's a mini option with just 3 wines, uh, but his normal box is 6 underrepresented wines from around the world. These are grapes and regions that are often overlooked by mainstream distribution, and he pairs them with storytelling, tasting notes, and food pairings that bring each bottle to life. Recent shipments, well, to be fair, these are recent shipments as of recording. So these might have been shipments, uh, in late 2025, but they included themes like Forgotten Grapes. This featured Hungary's volcanic Győrgyi and Portugal's rare Azal. Another theme was Georgia versus the World, where he compared ancient Qvevri wines to global counterparts. His journey in wine has been shaped by time living in Georgia, Italy, Hungary, and Serbia, where he immersed himself in local tradition and learned directly from the winemakers. These experiences gave him a firsthand perspective on the culture, history, and resilience behind the world's most distinctive wine regions. Now, I gotta be honest, I have followed Ashwin on Instagram for quite a while, so this was very exciting to get to talk to him, and his wine club Unpinned is one of the first wine clubs I plan to join once I'm drinking again. I have a lot of my go-to favorites, but overall, one of my favorite things about wine is trying new, never heard of. Wines, especially when made by small wineries around the world. So without further ado, let's get into the interview. Hello, how are you? I'm doing well. How are you? Good, good. Thanks for having me. Thrilled to be here. Yeah, I'm excited to talk about it. I've been following you on Instagram for a while and I love what you're doing and I think it'll be really fun to talk about all these different grapes and just how you, you got into what you're doing. So let's dive right in with one of my favorite questions to ask pretty much any person that works in the wine world, how did you fall in love with wine? Wow. Let's see. I think, I mean, it was travel, which is probably something you hear often. I was really fortunate as a kid. We traveled a lot. And the funny thing was, as a kid, you know, we'd be in Croatia or Italy or Peru, and I would just want chicken fingers in the hotel room and it would drive my dad crazy, which is like kind of normal. You know, you're like 10 or 11, you're like, I just wanna play my Game Boy and I just want pizza and I just wanna like watch TV. It was like one of those things that one day I was like that, and then all of a sudden, just, you know, one of the trips you're just like, oh, I want to like eat this weird thing. I want to eat this like chicken liver pâté. And oh, like, what is that wine? Let me try that wine. And all of a sudden, like, I don't know when it, the switch flipped, but it definitely flipped while traveling. And I think one of the kind of like conceptual things that I find so exciting about wine that probably really just like did it for me was It's liquid history in a bottle. So it tells you something about a place and a time that you can only quote unquote read by drinking it. Like you can only consume this history. The only way you can get to know this story is by opening this bottle and drinking it. And that, that to me is just like so fantastical. And I think some people think it's crazy that you can tell something about a person or a place by just like tasting something. But I mean, you, you can, you absolutely can. And yeah, I think it's just such a, such a moving experience when that happens. Yeah. Well, and I think that ties in well with the, the next question I was gonna ask is especially with, you know, the idea of history in a bottle. So when you, you know, made the decision to learn about wine, you took a trip to Georgia, the country, not the state, rather than somewhere in like, let's say France. I feel like when a lot of people think of like, oh, I wanna learn about wine, I'll go to France or, I'll go to Italy, right? How did that shape your view on wine going to Georgia rather than, you know, one of the more common countries we would think of? Absolutely. You know, it's me going to Georgia happened a little bit later in my wine journey, and it's because of what the industry kind of teaches you. So if you go to any of the, you know, wine courses, whether it's Court of Masters, SOMS, whether it's WSAT, whether it's whatever, National Wine School, like any of the wine courses, like you're only talking about French grapes, like, you know, 90% only French grapes and mostly wines from France, some from the US, maybe a little bit from Spain, some Italy, but you're just ignoring these large swaths of the world that produce wine. And as it turns out, have like produced wine for longer than a lot of these other places. And so it was like, you know, I started my journey, I went to wine school, so I was getting exposed to just like Bordeaux and Burgundy and Barolo and this and that. And it's like, yeah, these wines are good. Like they're undeniably good, but like, what the fuck is happening to all of the other stuff? Like, where is everything else? And why are we not even tasting one? Like, why haven't I tasted a single Georgian? We've tasted 400 wines. I haven't tasted one from Georgia and that's where wine was born. And so my wine journey started just like everyone else, kind of in France and US and Italy. And it was like a little bit later on where this like curiosity got bigger and bigger and bigger. And I started to realize this just feels like the dirty little secret, except it's not a little, it's like a dirty humongous secret that the wine industry is keeping from everyone. And then that was what like propelled me to Georgia. So it was, hey, this country has been making wine for longer than anyone else in the entire planet and nobody knows about it. I know very little about it. Let me go D, what's the deal? Like, do they just suck at it? Like, have they been doing it forever, but they suck and that's why no one drinks these wines? They don't. They're amazing. The wines are awesome. I immediately ruled that out, but that was what took me there. And then obviously, like, had, it was like very formative in my opinion on the wine industry and the types of wines we drink and more importantly, the types of wines that most of us don't drink because we just don't know that they're there. Yeah. So, yeah. No, I think that's such a great point. It's so funny when you think, like, when I look back at, yeah, when I was learning about wine, you learn about, oh, the old world, which is like where wine, like essentially what you say, like where wine grapes started. And then, and then you bring it to the new world and then somewhere down the line you learn, oh yeah, there's also this like ancient world thing that we kind of call it. And like, that's, that's actually where wine started, but like, don't you worry about that. Like, let's go back to this other thing. And it's like, right. It's like, it's scandalous. It's like once when you really start to think, I remember being like really upset. Like I, I was, when I started really digging into this, I was like, like, I was this is fucked. Like, this is messed up. This is just wrong. Like, how could, how are we just ignoring this entire country, this entire culture? And then you, you start to learn and realize how ingrained wine is in their society. Currently I'm living in Italy. I live in Florence. Wine is like very ingrained in Italy and Tuscany and in Chianti. It's like a really big deal. It's a part of your everyday life. But in Georgia, it's like, you know, exponentially more ingrained in your everyday life. And interesting. Yeah, it's like, I think 1 in 30 Georgians is a winemaker or something like that. Wow. It's like some, like there's 3-ish million people that live there. There are over 100,000 registered family wineries and that's just like registered, right? Wow. Like everyone has a family member, at least one that makes wine. Like you never, you don't buy wine and take it to a friend's house. It's like, oh, I'm bringing my family's wine to my friend's house. It's just, it's on another level and it's amazing. And it's been really fun to like kind of blow people's minds whenever I pour Georgian wine because like we ship a lot of Georgian wines in my wine club and it's like everyone should know, you don't have to like it, but at least taste it and then decide as opposed to just like not knowing about it, which is the current state of affairs. Yeah, exactly. Well, what did you, did you ever come to a conclusion on why the wine world doesn't teach that ancient world or kind of skips over that? Like you said, you're like, first you're like, are they just really bad at it? And you're like, that's definitely not the answer. Did you find another answer? I mean, I think it's like branding meets capitalism meets pretentiousness. So you have, you had these like brands that built like hundreds of years ago, right? Like Bordeaux has been famous for hundreds of years. Burgundy, like you had the classification of 1855 and the crus and everything. Burgundy's been famous for a long time. And then you had like all these weird rules with how plots get divided with when, like when there's a death and then all of a sudden you have all these tiny, tiny plots. And so like some of these can like nerd out. So you have this like brand building that started hundreds of years ago with like the advent of kind of like the capitalist economy that we now live in. Plus like the wine industry historically, and I think even presently has been like very pretentious. And so most people are, and understandably so, are scared to ask questions like it's, and this is why, like I used to do a lot of in-person wine tastings and I would joke, I have a job because most sommeliers are assholes. Like you don't want to ask them your questions so that like, I'm here, like I'm nice. Like I, you know, I drink light beer and like, I love watching football and I just happen to really like wine and we can like just, and it just disarms the whole room. And then you can have a really like frank and honest conversation about the things that you do and don't like and what you do and don't understand. And so because the wine industry has been so pretentious, they're able to just like say like, no, those wines are bad. And then everyone just listens. You're like, I don't know anything else about it. Exactly. And actually, I think a more accurate representation is like, they just don't even talk about it. And then as a result, no one knows to even ask. It's like nefarious. Yeah. I don't like it. Well, we're changing that. We're definitely changing that. I, I love to hear it. Yes. And then, so let's talk a little bit about what, what you've done to kind of change these views. So from the bit of research I've done, you've explored a lot of different avenues. So, you know, you wrote a book. Filmed a documentary, you share content on social media, you have that online wine course, those private tastings, and now you're curating a wine club. Can you tell us a little bit more about that journey and how it led you to now starting the Unpinned Wine Club? Totally. I mean, I'll start from the end and work my way backwards. Sounds good. Because where I am now is where I always wanted to be, which is I've met dozens, maybe hundreds of amazing winemakers from around the world. And for the longest time I could do nothing more to support them than just like personally buy their wine and drink it. Right. I'm only one person. I, you know, it's like I have a wife, so we're two people. We've only got two livers. Like there's only so much wine from these amazing winemakers I can like drink, you know, like purchase and drink. And so this has been the culmination of 10 years of work where now we've got an avenue to be able to share with like almost anyone in the US. All these incredible wines that the world forgot. And it's such a meaningful thing to me because there are like thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of wines that are incredible that the world just forgot. Like we just don't even know that they're there. And so that's like the primary way right now. I feel like I'm like supporting this cause. It's like we should, you know, we're not huge. We just launched a few months ago, so we're, we're not like We're not moving macroeconomic trends in wine yet, but I hope one day we will because the wines we're shipping, like we don't have a single Chardonnay or Pinot Noir or Merlot or Sauvignon Blanc. Like we're shipping Vidal Blanc and Rkatsiteli and Mtsvane and Juvarc and Sapurnakos and Tinomavro and all like all these things that you might think I'm saying are gibberish, but they're actual grape names that have history and they taste amazing. So that's what the wine club is all about. And I think the really interesting thing that I've noticed as I've gotten older is how I want wine to be supportive of a healthy lifestyle and not like a, this is my vice. Yeah. Because for a lot of people like wine, you know, wine can be their vice, but I drink wine almost every day and it's a part of what makes me healthy because the wine I'm drinking is, is just grapes. Like there's not, there's not like 30 other random chemicals. It's like, It's just grapes. It's just like sustainably farmed grape juice that like underwent a fermentation almost always from the wines we choose. It's natural. So you just like let the grape sit there and they start fermenting and it turns into wine and then you drink it. It turns out it's like really quite healthy as long as you're not drinking like 5 glasses of it. Fair. So that's, that's where we are now. That's where I am now. The kind of the buildup to getting here, it was It was like a meandering journey, both self-discovery and world discovery. So it was a combination of, hey, I want to live— like there's certain things in my life that are really important. I want to be able to travel a lot. I want to spend time with my family. There are a lot of careers in wine that aren't as conducive to that because you're, you know, nights, weekends, holidays, you kind of need to be somewhere physically all the time. It's like, oh, so how can I find a journey that allows me to live the lifestyle that I want? While also like discovering more about the world. And that's where all the traveling came in. That's where while I was traveling, I was taking tons of notes. And then those notes, I sat down during the pandemic. I stopped traveling. I just had a year at home with all my notes from like traveling to however many different countries we were in. And that turned into the book or a manuscript. It hasn't been published yet, In Pursuit of Flavor. And then I bumped into a film production crew and we went to Georgia and we shot the documentary.. And so one thing kind of snowballed to the next, but yeah. Yeah. No, I love it. And I think that's such a great point too, of like working in the wine world. A lot of people always ask me like, oh, will you like ever like want to take it, you know, as your full career and, you know, doing this. And for right now, that's not something I want to do. Cause like you said, the priorities are like, I want to be with family. I want to be able to do this. And a lot of the wine jobs out there don't allow that. I'm always amazed with sommeliers that work in restaurants of just like, You put in so much work and now you work these like really insane hours and people don't always realize how much work you put into it. And yeah, it always just kills me with like some of the jobs in the wine world can be so hard, but with starting this wine club, like you said, it lets you do what you wanna do of supporting the small wineries while also getting to kind of discover and travel, which is so fun. Exactly. And hopefully it grows to the point where, you know, like Right now it's not my primary earning source. Yeah, but I hope it will be. I totally hope it will be. Yes. Yeah, it's got to start somewhere, right? 100%. Okay, so let's talk about the name. I feel like that's something where I'm very curious about Unpinned, and I know this didn't start with the wine club. I think it was the, the wine course was also called this. Where does the name Unpinned come from? Who doesn't want incredible wine for a steal? Today's podcast is brought to you by Last Bottle Wines, a Napa Valley-based online wine shop with a super fun twist. Some of the best bottles I've ever opened, AKA the ones my friends still talk about to this day, came from Last Bottle. And I love when they say, this is incredible, and I get to reply, yep. And it's usually an $80 wine. I only paid $25. At Last Bottle Wines, they offer just one handpicked wine per day until it sells out. New day, new wine. It's like a fun little daily surprise. And the deals? Wild. We're talking 30 to 80% off retail, so you can try amazing bottles without the scary price tag. Their team tastes hundreds of wines every week, so you know what you see is worth grabbing. There's no subscription, no minimums, and free ground shipping when you buy 6 or more bottles. Use code CorkandFizz for 10% off and go see today's wine at lastbottlewines.com. Yeah. So this is like one, we just, we like the sound of it. It kind of, it kind of has a little bit of a rebellious feel about it. And where it comes from is sommeliers wear pins and, and they wear the, they wear these lapel pins that kind of give them the right to say, I'm smarter than you is often how they're worn. That's not how I think they should be worn. And there are plenty of sommeliers who are genuinely there to help. But my experience was like, when I think about the stereotypical somm, it's like, it's usually a dude and it's usually a dude with a big ego that's going to try and make me spend more money than I want. Like that, that was what I thought. That's like kind of how I felt about it. And my view is, oh, we're trying to do the exact opposite. We want to be down to earth and humble and give you the room to ask whatever questions you want and allow us to show you the full world of what wine has to offer so you can make your decisions. With all of the information as opposed to like having very little information and then going to the person that's got all the information who's kind of mean and then trying to like, you know, figure out what you want. So that's why we're like in the first chapter of the Unpinned Wine Course, you see me like take off this, you know, the sommelier pin and like put it down and be like, yeah, that's, we're not doing it this way. I love it. I think that came to my mind at some point when I was reading it and totally forgot this morning. And I was like, Where are like pins and wine club and what are we— or pins and wine? And no, that makes sense. A sommelier kind of like, I have this official title. I learned. And again, I wonder if it also connects too, cuz like you get those by going through formal training, which again, doesn't even include a lot of the stuff that you are planning to teach people about and that you're wanting people to explore. Which is what's crazy. So the sommelier's role. Is so wine for a lot of people is complicated, right? That's why sommeliers exist. It's like me, the average person. I'm like, I don't know anything about, I can't really understand the world of wine. So I'm going to go like, there's this expert that has all this information and can digest it and then share it with me. If those experts don't know anything about Hungarian wine, Georgian wine, Croatian wine, Greek wine, like they're not being taught about them. How in the hell is the average person ever going to know that Assyrtiko is phenomenal, right? Like they have no chance and it's not even their fault. Like the people that they would lean on to like teach them aren't being taught. So it's like a really like structural fundamental issue. Yeah. That, yeah, we're trying to turn into an opportunity. I love it. I feel like we've kind of talked about this already, but I'm gonna ask it directly. Why is it so important for you to include these rare and underrepresented wines in your wine club and specifically leaving out the more common ones. Yeah. In the US, 20 grapes account for 99% of the wines we drink. There are over 10,000 known wine grape varietals on the planet. I'm just gonna like pause for a second and let that hang in the air. That's so many. That is, it is so many. It is so many. That most of us will never see, touch, taste, smell. Like we, we, they just like, we don't even know that they exist. And so when there are that many out there, it's not like, I mean, sometimes people are like, dude, why do you hate Pinot Noir? I'm like, I don't hate Pinot Noir. I think, I mean, it's fine, it's great, but I don't think it should account for like, you know, like 5, whatever, 50 million. But I don't know how many millions of bottles of Pinot Noir get consumed in the US as compared to Tiroma, bro. I'm sure the disparity's probably like 10,000x, right? I'm like, that's my problem. It's not that Pinot Noir is bad, it's that like it is overrepresented by like just orders of magnitude. If you want Pinot Noir, go talk to someone. There's like a billion, no, maybe not a billion. There's probably a million qualified people to tell you about all the amazing Pinot Noirs that you can drink. I'm not one of them, but I can tell you about Ciro Machbro and there's very few people that can tell you about it and like why it's so relevant to Nausa and how it's got this, it's like, Thick skin and this like beautiful acid. And I, and we can, so that's why it's really important to me is because there's so much diversity out there in the world of wine and that diversity is disappearing. So when we don't drink these other grapes, like they start to disappear because winemakers, you know, and this hap— this has happened all over the world. It happened quite a bit in Greece where, you know, like in the Greek islands and Santorini and stuff, they're just like, all right, well, we can just like, nobody's gonna drink. Let's just like rip up all these vines and then let's just like build a resort instead and we can just like plant some Chardonnay over there. And then people drink Chardonnay from Santorini and they're like, oh, it's like not that good. And then I'm left kind of scratching my head like, hey, yeah, obviously Chardonnay in Santorini is not good. Like it doesn't belong there. It's not from there. It's not, it doesn't make sense for it to grow there. And so you have this like really vicious cycle where just amazing things don't get consumed and then when they don't get consumed, they disappear. And we've seen that like in so many different categories of our nourishment in the US, right? Like bananas, there's like, I dunno, dozens and dozens of different types of bananas, but like you walk in any grocery store, like you've got one choice, you've got a Chiquita banana and that's it. Interesting. I never thought about it that way. What happened to the other 50? Yeah. They're just gone. There's like, they're just gone. Interesting. Yeah. 'Cause if you, if you never think of it, you just think, yeah. You're like, oh, that's a banana. And you're like, well, there are other types. And you're like, Wait, what? And you would hate for wine to get that way where you're like, oh, that's the, you know, that's the white wine or that's the Chardonnay or, you know, like that's the thing you think of. Yeah. And it's kind of happening. Yeah. Just think about it. Like when you walk into the, if you walk into like, and this is why I tell everyone never buy wine at a grocery store. Like for God's sake, don't buy wine at a grocery store at Total Wine or Costco. That's like, it's the worst place you could ever go to buy wine. And it's like, just supports the opposite of what we want in the world in terms of like diverse and healthy wines for us to be able to drink. But I mean, if you walk into a grocery store, like we know there are 10,000 different grapes on the planet, but how many do you see in the grocery store? Like 6. Yeah. Like it already happened and we're trying to like undo the damage, but you know, it's like them 50 bananas are gone. Like it's happened in wine too. And we're just, we're trying to like get'em back before it's too late. Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny cuz it, it's really like, I feel like you've gone full circle from as a kid, always ordering like the chicken fingers. Cause I feel like that's what, like, I always relate it to that with folks where I'm like, I know it can be like overwhelming or a little scary to try a new wine, but imagine if you just went to a restaurant and always ordered like the chicken fingers or the chicken nugget and, and just like only ever ate that. Like you could, but that'd be boring, right? Like you, you've tried other So You have things. boring. to try. Other food on the menu because you trust that if it's on a menu, it's pretty good. Wine is kind of similar. Like, they're not going to have success making wine if it's not good. And obviously there's a little bit of your taste, right? And the same, it's the same with food. Like, I'm one of those people that can't handle cilantro. Cilantro is on food, I don't like it. It tastes like soap. I've learned that about myself. You can just do the same thing with wine, but you have to try all the things to figure out. What you like and don't like, and you have to go beyond your chicken fingers. 100%. I mean, yeah, I mean, there are some people out there who are perfectly happy eating chicken fingers every day and they're actually happy. And so obviously for those types of people, like this advice does not apply. I think they're the minority. I think most people are craving new, exciting experiences, and that's where the magic is. When you're willing to try something new and it blows your mind, that's the memorable experience. Yes. When you eat the chicken fingers for the 55th time, it's not gonna be memorable from the previous 54 times. It was memorable probably the first time, but then after that it's just kind of like, oh, I'm just like, it's good and I'm just doing it, but it's not, I'm not, it's not memorable. No, I, I totally, I totally agree. And I feel like this kind of the, the other question I was gonna ask was about like, I feel like there is a thirst for new and like unique things in the upcoming generation. Of wine drinkers. And especially, you know, if these new and unique wines come with a story. Like I've noticed a lot of like, you know, a lot of the things that are like, oh, Gen Z aren't drinking wine, or, you know, young millennials aren't drinking wine. It's like, it's not that. They're just not drinking wine the same way that, you know, the previous generations were. And it seems like there's this thirst for like, what's new, what's different? They get excited when they see something new. And then also what's the story behind it? Tell me about the winemaker. You know, is it not just that old white guy that's been, you know, that we, we know has been making wine Is it forever? something, you know, different, or is it not just this big corporation more so actually? Do you see that as well with the, the upcoming generations? 100%. I couldn't agree more. And it's so funny when people ask me about like, oh, all these trends about like the wine industry's in decline and no one's drinking wine and Gen Z doesn't like it and blah, blah, blah. And I think there are two big things that come to mind for me. One is something we were talking about a little bit earlier. It's like, The wine industry has been an asshole to pretty much anyone it could have been forever. It's like, if you didn't have a ton of money, we're just going to treat you like shit. And now you've met a generation that's just like, fuck you. And then everybody's in panic, right? Everyone's like, oh my God, what do we do? What do we do? What do we do? And it's like, well, the answer is actually really simple. Just be nice. It's really, it's super simple. So that's, that's like, that's one thing. And then the other thing that comes to mind is that this younger generation of consumers, like they're just way more discerning, which is amazing. We need that. The previous generations of consumers were more like, they were, it was a little bit more herd mentality. It's just like, oh, everybody's just drinking this. So I'm just going to drink it. And everybody's eating this. So I'm just going to eat it. There just wasn't the habit of asking the questions of like, why is this here? Where did it come from? And what, like, What value chain am I supporting by spending my dollar here? And like today's consumer, like I ask that about everything that I buy. And if it's like, oh, this is going to support this like giant conglomerate that like contributes to like a ton of like carbon emissions. I'm like, I don't really want to give you my money. Whereas like if I spend my dollar over here, like I went to the butcher shop this morning and he showed me the picture. He literally pulled out his phone. He showed me the pictures of like where the chickens are being raised and how beautiful it is. Like, I want to spend my money there. Like I wanted, I want that farmer to get my money. I want you, Mr. Butcher, to get my money. And then you give some of that money to the farmer. Like that's where I want my dollar to go. And today's like kind of, you know, modern younger consumer is like that. And it's a really good thing for the world in my opinion, because it means we're going to have more responsibly sourced products across the board. And so that means like, you know, I could name names, you know, fuck it. I'll name names like Prisoner or Maomi or Yellowtail or Whispering Angel, like all these like ginormous, like tasteless manufactured product. That is not wine. That is just like, that is just like, it's manufactured. I don't even know what to call it. And the younger generation's like, yeah, I'm not drinking it. I don't want it. Whereas if you put like, you know, a skin contact wine from some, like from Sicily in front of them and you tell them how like, hey, look, this is a wine made using the whole fruit. Whereas like most white wines, you like just rip off part of the fruit and don't use it. We use the whole fruit because we think it's the right way to make wine. You should try it. Like all of a sudden someone's interested. It's like, oh, that's cool. I didn't even think about the fact like, yeah, why, why did they just throw the skins away in white wine? Like, okay, let me taste what it looks like if you, if you have the whole fruit. So those are my two thoughts. It's one, the wine industry has been an asshole to everyone it could be, and hopefully they'll stop. And then two, it's like we've got more discerning consumers and I think that's really positive for the world. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's like we realized at this point we're like, we can change the world with like how we spend our money. Like we are making choices cuz it's as soon as you're starting to, you know, you're spending money with a large corporation, you're continuing to support them. And, and like you said, with all these wines that are disappearing, if we don't spend money on those, they disappear. So the, the best way, I mean, you know, obviously like there are other ways to support if you can't spend the money on it, but it's like it's better if you just bought one or two bottles, you know, that are a little more expensive because it's coming from a smaller producer, you know, and they, they put on the, in all this work versus like a $10 bottle from the grocery store that, like you said, and it's even been proven that like, and they'll even admit to it, all these companies, they're making the wine in a certain way so it tastes a certain way, you know, so that they're making it the same way you'd make soda or any other consumer product of like, we just want people to like how this tastes. And that's all we care about. And it's like, for anyone who's a wine nerd of any kind, it's just like, that, that's exactly what you said. That's not wine. That hurts. The whole point of wine is that. It hurts your soul. I mean, you can drink that like maybe when you're like young and just drinking to get drunk, but at some point we all turn into adults and realize we don't need to do that. And we should be— and like, that also brings in like the health consciousness, I think, of a lot of folks. So they're like, oh, like younger generations aren't drinking alcohol. And it's like, No, I don't think that's true. I think they're just being more discerning about the alcohol that they are drinking. Exactly. Exactly. 'Cause like, I mean, think about this, the FDA requires and well, nowadays I don't know anything about kind of, or the institutions and what, how they support consumers or not, but I think this is still true. And if it's not, it was true. The FDA requires that all the ingredients that go in a product be labeled on the packaging for almost everything that you put in your body. Despite that, there are known carcinogens in like foods that are on grocery store shelves, right? Imagine what a manufacturer will put into a bottle if they do not need to disclose what they put in there, which is the case with wine, right? Like they don't need to put the ingredients on the bottle so they can literally put whatever the they want into that wine. And if it costs less than $15, the things that are going— and it used to be $15, now it's more like $18,$19, just with inflation and everything. Like if it's under $20, like the things that they're putting into that bottle of wine, if you saw it, you would never, ever in a million years touch that with a 10-foot pole. You know, like why? You know, like in the factories, like with hazmat suits on and gloves to deal with the products that go into the thing that I'm supposed to drink. Like, Water, please. Just, I will just take water. Well, and especially when use the. Other—. You. I'm not joking. Yeah. Oh no. And, and we've seen, and I've talked about wine additives on the show before of some of them that are like, you know, they're common or like they're, they're things that other, you know, smaller wineries will do. But there are some, yes, that are very concerning. And especially the thing that kills me is that there are other options out there, but you do have to look for them, right? I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Cork and Fizz Guide to Wine podcast. You can learn more about Unpinned Wine Club by going to unpinnedwineclub.com. And if you want to join now, you can skip the waitlist by clicking the exclusive link in the show notes. If you need help finding that, let me know. Always happy to help. You will get 6 underrepresented wines from around the world paired with storytelling, tasting notes, and food pairings, all for for$227 a month. There's also the option to purchase the box as a one-time purchase or gift if you are not ready for the subscription, or you can get the mini version, which is just 3 bottles for $137 a month. And be sure to follow Ashwin on Instagram to learn directly from him all about wine and his journey to discovering the wines he puts in his boxes at Unpinned Wine. If you love this episode as much as I did, You know what to do. If you haven't rated this podcast or left a review, I would so appreciate if you just take 5 minutes to do that. It shows me that you are enjoying this and really just, just makes my day. And if you'd like to show additional support for the show, you can become a paid subscriber. Click the link in the show notes and become a monthly supporter for $10 or less a month. This is not required. All of these episodes are available to to you free, including my entire backlog. But if you wanted to show some more support, you can do that. You'll get a shout out in the next episode I record. Plus, if you choose the $10 per month option, you'll get to choose a topic for a future episode. In next week's episode, you will hear part 2 of my interview with Ashwin, where we talk more about unknown grape varieties. He gives us 3 of his favorite at the moment, or I think he actually might list 4 of them. He also tells us more about how he chooses the wine to go in his boxes and what he has planned for the future. Thanks again for listening, and if you want to learn more about wine, come follow me at Cork and Fizz on Instagram. Cheers!