E218 Mandy Naglich

This week's guest is Mandy Maglin, who joined us from New York City. Mandy is an author, journalist, and educator covering all aspects of our beloved booze industry. Mandy's book, How to Taste, a Guide to Discovering Flavor and Savoring Life, which we counselor adventures in the world of professional tasting, is a spirited awards finalist. In our conversation with Mandy, we discuss Mandy's journey from winning the National Home Brew Competition in 2016 to becoming a successful professional taster, the art of tasting and teaching.

We talk about the complexities of taste perception and how it varies from person to person, as well as understanding flavor, profiles and culture. Mandy talks about the process of writing a book, plus we also cover some of Mandy's future plans and a plethora of other topics. We had a terrific interview with Mandy, and as always, make sure you check out the show notes for all the links discussed today. Enjoy the show.

We are back with another episode of the industry podcast. My name is Kip. This is Dan. What is going on?

Oh, not too much, right? I'm just hanging out, getting ready for Christmas. So this will be a couple of weeks prior to when this gets released. So Chris was probably going to buy.

And what about you? Yeah, I guess the same. You were just sitting around the globe again. Yeah, that's right on a work trip.

I had a fun time in. I was in the city of Luxembourg. There you go. Beautiful cities for Christmas.

I had to say pretty stunning. Like all the lights at Christmas markets. People come out all the time there and just hanging out. It's actually a really nice community kind of event.

So quite different than here? Yeah, totally. Yeah. The equivalent is going to the local mall.

Oh, yeah. But it was great. Lots of boozy events. You know, certain lots of boos.

It's surprisingly not. People drink and get drunk, but not rigiously drunk. It's a different way to do things. Yeah, I don't know.

Our prohibition liquor lives here from the 20s and 30s are just great. Yeah. Really loving it. So, yeah, if you listen to us, you're probably already finished your holiday season.

So hopefully everybody had a good one. If you are not totally spent or boozed out from your holidays, you should come visit one of my bars. You're going to get your waterloo. There's sugar run, downtown Kitchener.

That should run bar on Instagram or I almost forgot to name my other bar Babylon sisters. In uptown Waterloo. We are really in the sleepy Christmas season now. Babylon sisters is the name that plays at Babylon sisters bar in uptown Waterloo.

You want to check that out. You're also going to want to check Kip at Babylon Sisters.ca, the email there for any wine or spirits needs. That's for Malivoir, winery, terroir wine imports and allure to Stilling Co. So if you need boos or wine, I'm your guy.

Perfect. We should also work together to get a second to shout out to our good friend Ali at Alchemist Ali on Instagram. So that's A-L-C-H-E-M-I-S-T-A-L-I-E at Alchemist Ali. She is your person to check out if you want a bartender for a private event.

She's a full stop shopping service for that. Contract your house does the whole event for you. Makes unbelievable cocktails. So check her out Ali at Alchemist Ali on Instagram.

DM her directly for that. And if you'd like to be a guest on this show, you can DM us at the industry podcast or you can email us in votetheindustrypodcast.club. That's the place to check us out for sponsorship as well. And the Instagram artwork is done by our good friends, Zac Hanna at Zac Hanna.co.

No, put links to all that stuff at the show notes as well if you're looking for any of those links. So make sure to check that out. Subscribe, rate, review, follow the show, all that helps a great deal. Tell another friend because that's the easiest thing to do.

Takes about a minute. All of that stuff. So yes, all the show notes will be, all of that we just mentioned will be listening to the show notes. You can check that all out.

And now we're going to check out our guest, Mandy Naglitz. How are you, Mandy? Good. It's so fun to be here.

Thanks guys. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks very much. You said you're just very close to the Dead Rabbit, a very famous bar in New York.

I'm sure most people have not been there heard of it. Yeah. Out of one window, I can see up to overstoring them in the front of my apartment's out to a Dead Rabbit. So two great options among many others down here.

Yeah, I heard there's a couple bars to go to in New York. So Mandy is the author of How to Taste, which is a finalist for a spirited award at Tales of the Cocktail this year. So you're also an author, a journalist and author and what a professional taster I guess. Yeah, tasting consultant, traveling taster I guess I could say.

But yeah, lots of different things. And you said you're going to go via my bio and there's a lot going on in that bio. Yeah, that's it. The show's over now.

So we ran out of time to talk to you. Well, I'm very curious. How did you get involved in, I guess we would start with the tasting part of it because I've sort of what led to writing books and articles and whatever. So how did you find yourself as a tasting consultant or professional taster?

How would you like to try yourself? Yeah, I was pursuing a certification called Master Sistroen. It's kind of the beer equivalent of being a psalm and master song. So same thing as far as difficulty, you know, it takes people many years to pass the test.

I was coming out from advance and trying to take master. And one of the qualifications everyone thinks you should take is getting the certified beer taster, where we are actually tested on 36 different compounds. So it'll be like, this three hexanol spiked in a beer, which is a very green, bright flavor next to like beta demaskinone, which is spiked, which is you have to be able to identify as like it's tinned cranberry kind of flavor. So taking that course, I just kind of got obsessed with the chemistry of flavor and how that beta demaskinone can also be found in wine.

If you found it spirit, you know, it's all over the place. This is all used in like packaged foods. And I kind of, you turned, I never got the certification. I went and started studying flavor chemistry, working with flavor scientists, talking to professional tasters in all different industries.

And that kind of became my niche. I started teaching classes, wine tasting classes, doing consulting, doing a teacher foundation, things like that. And then here came COVID and nobody wants to get in a room and taste together anymore. So another you turn into kind of turning what I learned in some of my curriculum into the book that has gone off really well, which is nice.

Yeah. Well, we'll have notes. We'll have that listeners showing up and get a copy of your book as well for people who are interested in checking it out. I saw it's doing pretty well on Amazon today.

So congratulations. Yeah, black right. It's a good big process. So when you say you take all these certifications and then you got into teaching classes like and consulting, obviously, the process, you know, you're not going to be able to do that.

Obviously, the process, you don't just wake up the next day and you're doing that. How did you start teaching classes? How did you get into consulting? How does that process go?

A lot of our listeners are interested in sort of the process of how you become successful at something like this. Great question. I did skip some parts. In 2016, I won the National Home Group Competition kind of out of nowhere.

It's not something that women do very often and I wasn't in a club or anything. So that got some attention just kind of where to this person who's very good at brewing beer come from. And I started, I had a buying pair column for three years by winning that competition. I also started working with more corporate breweries like in bed, CN Adams and things like that.

So getting those kind of contacts in the industry and also getting behind the bar here and there when I needed to between things. But definitely growing from the column, I had a lot of contacts. I was able to interview a lot of people and then starting to lecture work with people in those kind of bigger, more corporate brands. Then when people from those corporate brands go start their own brand or they're working out of bar or things like that, then they're looking for someone to come in and help them.

And from there also a lot of articles that I've written have gotten interest from different corporations and things like that. Yeah. It's kind of like one of those things that sort of snowballs, right? Like once you start doing a couple of these things and you start getting reached out to do some of these other things, next thing, you know, you're doing a whole bunch of different things.

One of the things we've really discovered since COVID with a lot of people we've interviewed is how many people have sort of springboarded like one thing they were doing into a multi-faceted career, almost like a gig economy situation where you're doing 40 different things and all of that encapsulates how you make a living. And that's kind of sort of what happened to you as well. You're teaching and you're consulting and then you're writing a book and next thing you know you're doing all that stuff at once. So how do you prioritize all, how do you prioritize what you're doing in a given week?

Good question. This is my big question for 2025. So I think it's tough because there's definitely things where you're like, I need to make an income. I need to pay my rent.

I love the New York City. So you have like your anchor clients that I know I'll do big projects with four times a year. I'm never going to let their email slide or anything like that. But then there's the things that I'm excited about that are doing more educational, more talking to consumers or people who are actually behind the bar.

I get a lot of, like that's what I really enjoy. I love educating. I love like being curious with other people. Those tend to be things that I kind of have to hustle for.

As for, you know, have contacts like, oh, if you ever want a master class or you want to workshop, apply to speak at different conferences and things like that. Work with my agent to get more book talks. So those, yeah, those are like things that kind of require a lot of work without me. Not a huge monetary payer, but what I really enjoy.

The third thing that I always say I need to prioritize more because when I'm prioritizing it, things happen faster for me. I do create a lot of content on social media and I get a lot of incoming interest from different videos that I do. So it seems like a lot of work and every time I do it, I'm very happy. So I'm constantly kind of fighting with myself.

Like, do I just say this one day? We're no matter what? I'm going to make something once a week. Do I like set off three days and make five things and schedule them?

So yeah. You have to be in sort of a creative mindset to do that, right? And to do those videos and you're not always feeling it. So it's kind of hard to schedule in when you're going to feel like doing something like that.

But then the flip side of that is kind of like writing a book. If you don't schedule the time every day to do it, you might just not do it. Right. Or there's like the big blooming.

Like I have four invoices I need to send. So I'm just going to rush through making something. It's not going to be that good because I need to do like a lot of top work where you're just kind of getting through checklists. But yeah, it's definitely easier when I find inspiration and I can like fire something off really quickly.

But I would say, I mean, you guys know you've got a podcast for now. 200 episodes which a lot of people give up on. But I mean, once you start doing it, there's so much reward you get. So like contacts people are interested.

You find people who are interested in what you're interested in which the whole point of doing everything I feel like, you know. For those of all the social media stuff you do and we should start by telling our listeners what your Instagram handle is so they can follow you. Drinks with me. Okay.

You don't want to see alcohol, how to taste book, but I'm not very good at posting on that stuff. Just stick with Drinks with me. I'm putting the show notes. That's my truth earlier.

That whole social media thing because I find even doing it for my businesses, like you can't avoid doing it now. If you want to promote yourself or your business or what you're trying to do. But it is a lot of work filming something, getting it right, editing it. Like we said, putting the time outside every day to do it.

So how do you keep up with that? As a journalist too, a lot of it is I'm a freelance journalist, so I'm not like full time it went out. So I do a lot of pitching and sometimes I'll put work into a pitch for a story that just no one picks up and wants to run. So then I'll kind of turn that pitch into something that I can put on my own platform.

So usually if I'm inspired enough to write a pitch about it, there's enough kind of meat there that I can make it. So just trying to repurpose things. But as like a writer and journalist, that's what I went to school for. And that's what gets me excited.

I do find inspiration and like kind of writing, even if there are many stories like that little videos or anything that I think is interesting that I think other people would like to share. I like making them just like finding the time and then setting up in my small apartment like some kind of light. So I'm not totally in the dark. But it's definitely a whole fucking job.

That's the thing. There's a reason why there are people who just do social media. I don't know how they do that because I've done a few of those social media partnerships and stuff. Yeah.

And the funny thing to do is that I've hired people like that to work in my business before. And I'm just like, they do a great job. But because they're not emotionally or personally invested in my business, they don't get the feel right. I find like the sort of guns for hire for the social media.

So it's almost always better if you do it yourself. However, you got to find a time to do it. So that's great. Every now and then, like I found people who got like those really great brands.

I was lucky for like six months. I was drizzled. You remember that company? I don't know if you have it in Canada.

It was like alcohol delivery, but it's owned by Uber. I was their drinks expert. And they literally let me do it every one of it. They had Uber money.

But then of course Uber shut them down. They're just like, sorry, I'm sorry. I dropped some clients and stuff because I don't make it. So it's good to show.

You can never put all your eggs in the same basket. It's kind of work. I want to talk about the book, obviously. But before we get into that, and this will sort of lead directly into it without giving too much away from the book.

If we do people want people to buy it and read it. How do you teach someone how to taste properly? Or like how you go like, we will start with your classes that you should teach maybe through how you would teach a class on tasting. Yeah, so for the actual book, and even before when I was teaching classes, I had spoken to people in all different issues.

I had scientists, olive oil tasters. I talked to a mustard tamale. I took a stock egg course. All things like that.

So really learn. A mustard tamale. Yes. Yeah.

If you studied for like a year and a half in France, you had a certification. You can look at a mustard seed and know what it will taste like, just how it looks. You can identify the species of it and everything. It's very, I guess people can do it great.

You know, but like, you just look at a mustard seed and know how much oil should be mixed in to make a good mustard with it and stuff like that. He was incredible. I love mustard. So you did all that studying with all these different people.

It's super cool because now you're reaching out to the field beyond your own. I think a lot of people would just sort of be like, okay, your sort of your entry to this was through tasting beer. And you would kind of stick with that. But I think it was really smart that you sort of reached out to tasters of all these, because I guess they do exist for almost anything, right?

Right. And so the thing about tasting is that we get kind of in our little pockets, like people who do tequila tastings really kind of do this the same way. And I think they use like, I'm glossary. I want to use something like that.

And so learning the science and understanding just your senses allows you to teach people how to taste anything. So the classes I used to teach cheese classes, I would do, yeah, still a lot of your obviously a lot of blind tasting prep for people who wanted to be some or a cis-rown. But basically I try to teach chase by learning about your senses and how your brain kind of works with your nose and your tongue. Because it's really more about your nose.

About 80% of what we consider flavor is coming from aroma, not from anything that's touching your tongue. So learning how to smell literally there's seven different ways to smell something. Learning how to smell with the back of your nose, learning how to kind of help your brain categorize those things. And just was doing a big tasting at AB Indev's offices here in New York.

When you're doing blind, just like compounds and there's like a piercing that smells like green pepper, a piercing that smells like potato skins and a piercing that smells like cocoa, vanilla, nutty. And a bunch of us almost identified the potato skin as the vanilla nutty one, just because that wasn't in our flight. And it's like our brain kind of went to a piercing area and we just kind of misfired a little bit. But it's just amazing how once you start to know how to characterize those things, if you're in wine, you can start to taste the different regions, you know the different soils.

You're going to taste the different molds. Spirits, you can definitely taste the bases that were fermented and what kind of esters and things are coming from that. So learning how to taste not by kind of memorization and just really understanding your senses and where all the flavors come from is what I like to teach. And it's so personal.

That's interesting because like when I was taking the W-SAC courses, a lot of it was framed towards memory work. And I think more than anything else, a certain sense reminds you of a certain grape and therefore you should be able to identify the region or at least get it close. So I sort of like that idea of sort of forgetting about the memorization part. Because the one thing I have about is when I used to do blind tastings and then when I stopped doing them for years or whatever, it's hard to pick it back up because I've lost the memory work from it.

But if I had learned properly maybe the way to taste just through the sensory experience rather than just from the sort of memory work that you get, then I would probably still have that skill. Right. And I have a bunch of W-SAC certifications. I'm not like, but I think the thing is when you learn that way, when a new region comes out such as global warming, we're seeing kind of our wine region shifts.

And you get a savvy on long from South America or something that's totally different than what you get from New Zealand. Just memorizing what it would taste like is not really what's going to help you in your career. Like you're thinking about what it tastes like so you can pair with it or what it tastes like so you can mix into a cocktail. What does it taste like so you can recommend it to people?

Kind of smelling something and knowing it's from this region, I don't think it's as helpful as being able to describe someone, what it's going to taste like, what it's going to taste good with, what they should expect, when they drink it. That's what a happy customer is someone whose expectations are met and exceeded as far as flavor. Anyone who's expecting something and you give them something that tastes different because someone who's unhappy. So the better you can set them up to get what they're actually going to taste, your menu, your descriptions, or your staff trading, the happier your people are going to be.

Right. And so the other thing I'm sort of interested in this whole teaching people how to taste properly is the other thing that we all learn is that everyone has a very distinct and unique palate. So what I taste from something is going to be different than what you do. I mean, probably we're going to get a lot of the same similar aspects because there's just certain foods and fruits and whatever it tastes and smells a certain way.

But when you're talking about like a wine or a beer or a whiskey, because there's so much complexity and the flavors of all these things, everyone's going to get something a little bit different from it. And when I'm teaching these courses, that's what I would tell people, you're not wrong. Tell me whatever you think you're getting from this. You're not wrong because that's what you're getting from it.

So when you're writing a book about like how to taste or teaching a course on this, how do you address that? Because it's different when you're doing it in person because you can be like, say just what I just said. But when you're writing a book about it, like how to taste, how do you address that sort of unique palate thing? So I think it's even beyond the complexity.

Like you said, the more trained you are, the more you kind of take through those complexities. But really so much of this is about genes. The whole first third of the book is kind of setting up why, whether it's the environment you're in the culture you're up with or your personal genes, why taste is going to be different for each person before we get to the tasting method in chapter four. But for example, one of the things I posted about Beta I known is this floral compound that's in violets, but about two thirds of people are completely blind to it.

Just genetically they found the one gene it's tried to. Two thirds people have the gene where it's off, one thirds has it where it's on. So some people love aviation. It's their favorite cocktail.

They order it every time they see it. And that's what they probably can smell violet. Two thirds people. There's nothing more fun than doing, I do these palette training classes for bar staffs.

I can't smell it. Tell me when you're spraying it. It's not your genes. You just cannot pick it up.

So beyond even just how well the trained person you are, there's things like Androstinone, which is kind of that stinky sweaty characteristic that some people genetically are super sensitive to. They don't like stinky cheeses. They don't like clunky rubs. They don't like natural wine.

And that's like their genes. They can smell that stink more than someone who's not sensitive to it. And it's kind of like, oh, funky. I like that.

I wish it's really popular in the coffee industry for everyone to kind of taste together rate, bitterness on a scale rate on things like that. You don't see it as often in restaurants, bars, cruise ships, things like that. But I think we're getting there where every bartender is going to think they're in a different level of bitterness, not just because of their training, their experience, but literally because of your genes. We have there's five different different receptors in everyone, depending on your genes.

They're going to be different sensitivity to each of those kind of bitter compounds. So that's something I cover up front to just let people know. We're never going to get to a place where everyone smells something and it smells exactly the same to all of us. And we're never going to understand our inner workings.

And doing overseas too is so fun because people who come from, like, would you smell cinnamon? What kind of things that come to your mind? Sorry, if I smell cinnamon, what comes in? Yeah, what would you think would maybe be made in the kitchen?

Or what season is it? Cookies or baked goods or something like that, right? Yeah, apple pie. If you're in London or in South America, people will think of moles and curries and things that are savory is what they're doing.

So you're kind of starting, your staff is just starting from different places that is often never addressed. That's really interesting. Yeah, and everyone thought about that. So how would something like that specifically affect your sort of identifying flavors and taste in like a beer-frens?

Knowing that genetic background as far as I think I'm finding it's going to be yours. Not going to change so much. That really is just like you said, wrote practice. You smell a lot of times.

I can smell cinnamon all the high to know if it's coming from wood or if it's coming from actual cinnamon. But if you're doing many development and one person on your staff is maybe the head barks under things like this, this streak is gross because they're used to savory cinnamon and it's an apple pie, I don't know something. I think that's where in the consulting, it's just like understanding what's going to make your guests happy as well as your staff and where kind of blind spots can be. It's always really eye-opening to people.

And so in a situation like that, it just comes back to what crowd you're trying to entertain anyway, right? If you're doing it in North America, then maybe you're looking for people who identify cinnamon as that apple pie sort of thing. So even if you had someone on staff who was more into the savory side, it was just like, well, in this scenario, what we're aiming for is. It just gives you a fine of gross.

That's really interesting. I never thought about it that way. That just the way different cultures use different spices would affect the way that they taste something made with that spice. Yeah, and somewhere like New York where we're having global people come through every day, like I said, it's so much about setting up that expectation, right?

So knowing how to taste and understanding how to describe flavor also helps just when you're telling someone this is going to be sweet. And so you're just trying to make a lot of our American palettes like that creamy, fatty, kind of heavy texture that other people find repulsive. So if you make some of our grasshopper cocktails down in parts of South America, they're like, what the hell is this? So yeah.

On the cress, if you have to limit exposure to some for you personally, like in your job, to certain foods or experiences, just to keep your taste senses up at a high level, obviously you're not smoking two packs of cigarettes a day and make three pons of coffee. Is there stuff you have to stay away from? Like, can't you do any spicy foods, for instance, some like build some senses? No, I mean, so honestly, unless it's like I'm coming up to a test situation or I'm judging something, I don't think it's the end of the world.

If I had something spicy before and I go, I kind of know what I'm describing and I'm pretty familiar with all the flavors. I think people who are constantly saying like they don't drink black coffee because of their flavor, I think it's a little blown out to what our senses are ever pretty quickly. So I wouldn't need to worry about that. But yeah, I don't have any reason to go read any exams, but if I did, if I decided I wanted to get, there's a coffee certification called Q-Grader, where you have to really, they're very small, like on threshold in the different spikes they test you on.

I would probably take a couple of weeks and not have coffee, not really the strongest stuff that messes with your nose for days. So campfires, such as guaya calls from woods, things like that would be more when I would avoid spicy stuff. You're kind of like a little bit pretty quick. But I mean, that's the same philosophy behind why you taste certain spirits or wines in a certain order as well, right?

Because you get to like a super pewdie scotch. You want to leave that to the end as opposed to like a non-pew scotch because otherwise that flavor is going to overwhelm the original one. Exactly. There's a whole chapter in the book about judging me when I kind of think of some of these competitions.

It's not personally I talk to a lot of people, but like perfume are sort of testing musk perfumes or perfumes with smoke in them will literally only smell too perfumes a day. Because they're like, there's just no way your old factory bowl is recovering from those super strong smoke notes where they can actually do their work. So if you're judging a flight of scotch, I find it, yeah, basically you're the luckiest listener in the world if you were a scotch one or two on the line up. Like I really think it's a tough thing.

And there's some scientists who have done really interesting studies about like basically your guarantee to certain metal in wines if you're in this place in the flight. And just basically there's no way for you to really judge 678 drinks in a flight in a way that's so I don't judge anything because I used to because I'm like I can't make this chapter and keep doing it. We had a guy on the show a while ago who did whiskey judging and he was kind of saying the same thing. Sometimes he was doing like 20 whiskeys in a competition by whiskey 20.

What are we talking about here? Right. And when they started doing sense like judging at home for COVID where they send you samples, there's so much research behind just the colors of the wall in the room will change what you think so much. The lighting lights are slightly blue.

It makes everything taste a little bit saltier, a little bit over seasoned people. So I can't imagine how this is a data specific. Yeah, that's like in chapter 2, I talked about the sounds in a room, colors, the temperature. So if you're really trying to run a competition where you're saying this is judging and influence, I know they're trying their best, but I just think it's a tough thing to do.

This is empirically the best of any. Well, it's already like a very subjective thing before you even get into any of that. And then you add the fact that by the time you get to whatever number you're tasting that day, your pal has been totally overwhelmed by things you've already tried. There's no way it could be a fair competition.

Right. So it's like the more you learn. There's so many interesting ways to use your senses and then there's so many things that the more I learned about it, you just see the limitations and that's what the human is. And people are going to have their favorites and there's kind of hard, it's really tough to be really objective about this kind of stuff.

Well, and that's why I was like people like when I'm talking about tasting wines and whiskies with people, it's just like whatever you like is fine. I know however you like to drink it or experience like it's just the same way like I really like to cook your eggs is fine because it's the way you like it. And like I'm going to like different wine and you're going to like and there's a million reasons for that and sometimes it's just pal development. But a lot of times it's just like you said, jeans like that's like I'm never going to like say what I'm just not saying this for real.

Just like I'm never going to like a California shirt and a right like and I'm just never going to. It doesn't matter how it's going to drink. Yeah, big buttery. Well, no, that's the thing.

And it's also going to be the opposite. You went on your first date or like long weekend with your now spouse to California. You only drank short nights every time you smell it. It's like in your memory that it's like the happiest best.

Yeah, it's just crazy. It's one of the coolest things about drinking alcohol is this whole experience, right? And like you say how the whole experience is so sensory and it does remind you of different points in your life and like whether they were positive or negative is the same as listening to a piece of music that you hold a positive or negative association with. You're like, I can influence your how you feel about a whole genre music or a certain band or whatever, not just the one song, right?

So when you're writing a book about it and you're like how you start like the books called how to taste. So how do you again we want people to buy it. So don't give away anything that's going to preclude that. But like I am curious like what's the you mentioned you started out with letting people know that everyone's different and they're responsible different, et cetera, et cetera.

But when you get into the teaching people how to taste something, give us the basics of that. Yeah, so there's the chapter four is called the tasting method and it's basically I talked to 100 like kind of walks down somewhere over 110 people started using to inboxes when I was thinking people. But basically it's seven steps. It's all S's.

You know, I'm sure people have seen versions of this before where it's like sips sniff me pull up exactly before I misquote myself. But basically I go through each thing literally how to look around your setting and know if it's cold in here, how it's going to affect my taste. What kind of glass should I use or does it really matter? It doesn't really matter.

It doesn't really matter all that much. You can get your nose in there. You're pretty good. So that's like setting and it literally goes into visually like how you look at things.

How does that change how it tastes? The darker red. You know, we've all heard of the studies where sounds that fooled by red wine that was dyed red just because what our visual exploitation said. Then describing all the different sniffs.

There's three different tastes. The matte chase, the mouth feel taste and after taste taste, which I think after taste is like the biggest ignored thing in tasting when we think as professionals pairing. You're more pairing with the after taste of things. Whatever the after taste of your wine is what kind of combining with your food, whatever the after taste of your cheeses is what's combining with your wine.

So a lot of professionals and industry really focus on that. How long is the after taste is a bitter? How does it end? That's kind of how you remember something.

Then I talk about professional spitting. I don't know. Are you even saying your stuff in professional bitters? I don't believe in spitting.

I think it's supposed to be saying. I went to this like huge champagne event and I was watching all these songs just spit across the room and to about it. Tell them up and they were doing cheese development on their R and D tasting and they could spit cheese. Women, gorgeous.

Like you would not be like, you're spitting cheese. It was like beautiful. Like just swan diving into the bucket in the corner of the room. I like to ask everyone how to spit and then crop this egg now.

It hit a cup pretty far away. But I actually think sitting is important. If you're going to do it to kill a tasting or something like that, like we said, you're not going to make it to kill a three before. You're kind of desensitized.

But yeah, spitting and then there's a whole section on how to synthesize how to make remember how to kind of stick a flavor into your brain if it's something that you want to remember long term, whether for a test or just for the memories. The whole third part of the book is what infections is about tasting in our memory, tasting in our happiness, tasting in our health. And it's really incredible. People who have larger olfactory bulbs which are from practice paying attention to your smell.

We're less likely to have long COVID. Less likely to have dementia. One of the first signs of Alzheimer's is when you can stop selling things like lemon and rose. You can no longer smell them.

Doctors are really petitioning that every physical should have a smell test as part of it because it's one of those things that can really indicate brain health. Almost immediately. And they think everyone had a whole life of where you can see how you were smelling. People would catch Alzheimer's car through something like that a lot earlier and have a lot happier ends of life.

That's interesting. There's tons of the book. I'm not worried that we'll get everything away. We'll learn it.

Sounds like it. I wanted to take it to write it because we were very vulnerable, very curious about the process of writing the book. I did. I will say I kind of rushed it out a little bit.

They were excited about it was when during COVID everyone was like, how do I get my smell back? I wrote the whole thing in like seven months and then it still takes about a year to get anything out. Especially there was all these supply chain issues with China getting books away. I wrote it in about seven months.

Then he goes through edits and then he goes through it. That's a lot of people wrote books. How did you find motivation to write something? Did you just do it whenever you had free time or you just have a set schedule?

Like I write between these hours or what worked for you? I did. I had an advance. I was able to take a little time off and things with COVID were messed up already.

I was just like a bastard. I can get this out. Your advance. I don't know if you guys talked about how it works with books.

I know a little bit about it, but we haven't talked about it on the show. I'm like a huge paycheck. You should fight for free if you're an author. You get paid up front when the contract goes through.

Then you get paid when you turn in the draft. Then you get paid when it hits shelves. If you don't push on your under, it's going to be a long time. I was trying to write a set to get to that from signing to draft at least.

I got two thirds to my dance before getting it on the shelf. It's not a super lucrative thing. I had a great time at the time. For the process of you getting the advance in the contract, you pitched this book idea to a publishing house and then they agreed to it.

Then you signed a contract. That's how it worked. I pitched it to a bunch of agents. I ended up three that were interested.

I'm kind of, you know, that's an area of them. My agent, we had four publishers who did it on it. You can go into a bid and say you won't take the high bid, but I say that you are contractually going to take it. That's what I did.

Good. I just thought we're obviously on the show. We talked a lot about barartending and cooking and all this stuff. We've only talked to a few others now, but I just find that whole process fascinating.

I think a lot of people listen to show where people who are like, oh, maybe I'll write a book about something one day. I think just the nitty gritty of the day to day of how you do your writing, how you get the book published, etc. It's interesting to people. I know you and Emma on and I think a lot of people, like you said, if there's people who do, they have an idea for a book.

I think it's a great idea to team up with an experienced writer or someone who's done it before because it's a whole different way of working. I've been behind the bar for a while, but just sitting down, not stimulating, getting things on paper, I think it's tough. Being able to talk to someone who then can translate your idea into words and then go author on a few books and then get to review what you wrote and tweak it, but it more in their voice. I think it's really helpful if you're someone who hasn't written before and you think you want a book to find a co-author.

Well, you obviously have a lot on the go, so what's next? Oh my gosh. I know. Like you said, we're right here before 2025.

I'm trying to do like the last week of just kind of figuring that out. I have some exciting travel coming up. I definitely, I've started doing more talking to bartenders and bar staff structs and I found it really rewarding. I'd like to do that more.

So I think I'm trying to figure out how to offer that, how to make it work for both of us. As much as I love doing all these corporate things and corporate trainings, I think it's really fun to talk to people who are interacting directly with guests. And I'm doing a lot of TV stuff as well. Anything you can tell us about?

I'm just going to start doing some like wine and drinks, recommendations for Bloomberg. Actually, my first one shoots Friday, but I'm going to do those regularly and nothing. I'm working with my agent on some ideas. I'll see you in a part of the chart.

I just want to touch briefly on that whole corporate tasting because I've done a bunch of those as well. Those are tough because if you, let's say you're doing a group of like 100 people and it's like a corporate event that's a big book for this party that whoever is in charge of booking the event thought, well, maybe this is something different we can try instead of like, let's going axe throwing or whatever. We'll do this corporate tasting. I find those really difficult because I would say like there's 100 people there.

There might be 10 people who actually give a shit about what you're saying. I definitely think taking it back, like I said, not focusing so much on the medium. Just like those things, I'm telling you guys, like, oh, the facts about lavender. There's a lot of interesting things about people who can smell gin socks and kind of setting them in a way that they're just generally interested.

Even if like you said, they don't care about the whiskey they're tasting at all. I feel like people look at it and I end up doing a rosé tasting and I get in and it's just because the person who's booking the event like rosé. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're like, okay, let's just talk about wine generally then.

It is a little like, you've got to build a room. Yeah, and like I'll always go to like whoever organized and be like, okay, just give me a hint here. Like what, like the general knowledge of the people here, what do they actually, are they just here to drink some booze and that's all they really care about? Because we can do that too, right?

Or are they interested in the intricacies or they want knowledge on terroir or do they want knowledge on like how to taste like how basic are they? Like all that information, usually you just get out, just do whatever. I like to let people know it for me. Like if you want to impress people the next time you're out drinking wine, like if they leave, they can take like two or three little ideas about like understanding wine or what's the year cheese more and kind of being able to impress their spouse or whoever when they go home and say like, well, today I learned whatever, then they go happy and they go home.

But I do a lot of corporate tastings too, like at like distillers and working with people who are working on their R&D lines or their QC teachers. That's a crowd that can do it. Yeah, I know they have to listen to their jobs. Well, this is awesome, Andy.

Thanks so much. We really appreciate you coming on. Tell our listeners the best spot to find your book. Oh, yeah, and you're pretty much anywhere you find books, especially Canada.

It's a lot of places, but Amazon's great. Anywhere you can leave a review. I know you guys podcasting thing. Reviews actually really, really helps.

So, yeah, good reads are Amazon. You can just leave a review of you and read it anywhere you want to get it. It's in a lot of libraries. I know a lot of people talking about from the library and I'd rather have you read it and think for it.

So, yeah. Well, that's good. I would totally be like, no fucking buy it. Turn it, turn it on my record.

Yeah. Just kidding. But yeah, thanks so much for coming on the show and we'll look forward to anything new coming up. Stay tuned to Mandy's Instagram and she'll maybe she'll be dropping hints on what's to come.

So, we really appreciate you giving us the time and enjoy your holiday. This is our last show we're going to be recording before Christmas. So, yeah. Last record of 2024.

Yeah, who knows? If the world ends in 2024, you'll be officially the last industry podcast guest. Happy 2025 to the future us. We've already pre-nailed it.

Yeah, exactly. Thanks again, Mandy. Alright, thanks guys. Thanks, Todd.