Episode 37: A Journey through the World of Wine with Jennifer Dombroski

Angie Orth:

Imagine yourself perched high on a hill, leaning back into the wide arms of a comfy lounge chair.

In your right hand, you've got a thin slice of baguette smeared with a creamy dollop of Delice de Bourgogne. In your left hand, your fingers delicately grasp the stem of a bold glass of burgundy. As you sink your teeth into that buttery bite and wash it down with a rich sip of red, overlooking the verdant hills dotted with centuries-old estates, you think to yourself, "Why haven't I been traveling like this my whole life?"

Food, wine, and travel go together like peas and carrots. Well, better than peas and carrots, if you ask me. This week, we are toasting this terrific trio. Whether you're a seasoned sommelier or a weekend wino, you'll learn a little bit more about the world's most famous fruit juice. We'll talk about where to find it, how to pair it, and tell you about some of the most unique experiences you can have with a wine glass in your hand.

I'm so excited to introduce our listeners to Jennifer Dombroski to chat with us about food, wine, and travel; all my favorite things. Jennifer is a Pennsylvania native who has traveled the world as a writer and photographer. She covers luxury, adventure, travel, and food and wine experiences, among other things. She's also a dog mom to one of Instagram's favorite canines, Coco the Traveling Samoyed. Thank you for joining us, Jennifer.

Jennifer Dombroski:

Thanks, Angie. I'm so excited to be here.

Angie:

A few years ago, you were living in Italy. I remember you saying that you really wanted to move to Bordeaux and write about wine, and now you've done it. You are living that dream. Can you tell the listeners what sparked that for you and your journey to how you ended up in Bordeaux?

Jennifer:

Yeah, it's kind of a crazy journey. You and I met in Italy when I was living there, and I ended up there because my husband, Tim, was in the Air Force and we got stationed in Italy, so we ended up spending 7 years there and I didn't really want to go back to the United States. Our follow-on assignment was going to be in England, and I had recently been to Bordeaux on a press trip for my blog, and I fell in love with the area and thought to myself, "Hmm, could I go live in Bordeaux for a year? I think I can. I think I can go and write about Bordeaux and wine travel there." What was really interesting is at the time, this was 2016, there actually wasn't very much information in English about Bordeaux. I found that crazy because it's one of the most famous wine destinations in the entire world, so I saw it as a really great opportunity to come here. If I hated it, it was going be a year so it was going to fly by. Here I am, 7 years later and sitting in my apartment in Bordeaux and chatting with you about wine travel.

Angie:

Isn't that wild? What a journey. I don't think either of us saw that coming.

Jennifer:

Definitely not.

Angie:

I want to share some fun facts I learned about wine when researching this episode, so tell me if you know this. To match the level of antioxidants you find in 1 glass of wine, you have to drink 20 glasses of apple juice or 7 glasses of orange juice.

Jennifer:

Wow, I did not know that.

Angie:

Doesn't that sound like it's a health beverage? That seems healthy and delicious.

Jennifer:

I mean, it is grape juice.

Angie:

We can justify just about anything. The oldest bottle of wine in the world was discovered in Germany, and it dates to before AD 325, which is not surprising because people have been drinking wine probably as long as there have been people.

Jennifer:

Absolutely. You hear about the Roman Empire and how it just expanded everywhere. They built amazing structures and there are coliseums and aqueducts all over Europe and into Turkey, but another thing that people maybe don't realize that the Romans brought with them is wine. They actually started a lot of the viticulture across Europe, all the way into Greece, Turkey, and even France. Most of the vines that have existed here in Bordeaux go back to Roman times.

Angie:

Wow, I didn't even think about that. Really the history of what you're drinking, it's not just about the vintage of that specific bottle, but it's about hundreds if not thousands of years of those grapes coming down. I also read that there's more wine produced than consumed and that surplus is distilled to make spirits like brandy, cognac, and grappa—grappa is intense.

Jennifer:

I lived in the north of Italy, not very far from where grappa is primarily produced, so any time you go to a local restaurant, the owner will bring you a little glass of grappa at the end of the meal to wash everything down. Yeah, it is definitely intense. The faces that you're making!

Angie:

Yes, thank you!

Jennifer:

100%

Angie:

All our listeners won't know, but I am making the faces from the first time I went to Italy and was like, "What is this stuff?" It is a real punch in the face. I don't know if it's an acquired taste; I haven't acquired it yet, but it's one of those things, somebody, a sweet little Italian grandma offers to you, you drink it, and you try not to make the face that I've been making.

Let's talk about wine in general because I think for a lot of people it can feel like an intimidating subject. It's complicated. You start talking about things like terroir, notes of oak, and things like that, and I think that can be overwhelming for some people. For the casual connoisseur, which I would definitely place myself in that category, can you help us demystify wine?

Jennifer:

You don't have to be some wine aficionado with all of this knowledge and appreciation, out to buy the most expensive bottle that there is. Wine regions are some of the most beautiful destinations. Of course, you're out in nature, so it's farmland, but some of them have rolling hills with these beautiful vineyards and the most amazing charming houses that you've ever seen. Other places, like Germany, have intense wine regions where they build straight up the cliffs from the river and you have these amazing terrace vineyards with castles on the top of the hill. Seeing those places is awe-inspiring, you're like, “Wow, I'm just in some of the most beautiful places in the world,” and then you taste the wine and the food and it's heavenly.

Angie:

It's not just a castle on a hill, right? It's the castle on the hill that you toured and then you drank the wine that was produced right there at the terraces on the hills. It all connects and it makes a stronger travel memory.

Jennifer:

I mean, it's a really cultural experience. Everything is produced right there. It's so much more than just drinking a glass of wine. You end up learning all of this culture, history, and really appreciating everything. Particularly when you visit Europe, it's usually the winemaker or the owner who are showing you their vineyard and conducting your tasting. It's such an intimate luxury that doesn't have to be super expensive, and you don't have to be some super wine aficionado to really appreciate that.

Angie:

Let's discuss some of the greatest wine and food experiences and regions in Europe. Obviously, France comes to mind because you live there—there's Bordeaux, there's Burgundy. When I studied abroad in France, I did this great tour of the Loire Valley. What is it that makes France so beloved among wine aficionados?

Jennifer:

Viticulture here is a national treasure. The winemaking techniques that have been perfected here over not only centuries, but millennia at this point, they're really revered around the world. People in California actually brought the grapes from France to California to start some of the first vineyards in Napa Valley, which is the most famous wine-making region in the U.S. The finesse that the French have given to winemaking is just so appreciated around the world that those techniques end up being adopted because the French did it right.

Angie:

You don't need to reinvent the wheel. France already figured it out and let's just do it that way, right?

Jennifer:

I'm going to be biased because I live in Bordeaux, and it is the largest wine region of France. A great thing has happened here in the last 7 years since I moved here. It was really considered a snobby wine region. Until recent years, it was closed to the public. There actually wasn't wine to be sold to tourists that were coming, so the winemakers didn't see a lot of value in opening their doors to the public and allowing wine tourism and tastings in their vineyards because they had work to do and they had nothing to sell to the tourists. With wine tourism really grabbing hold and this becoming a niche type of travel that people have gotten into in the last couple of years, wineries in Bordeaux are opening their doors and they're not only just giving tastings, they're doing really cool experiences.

Angie:

Wine plus a cool experience, sign me up. What kind of experiences are we talking about?

Jennifer:

One of the wineries here has a treetop tasting, so you have to be really adventurous and in good physical condition because you climb up a tree like you're a tree surgeon. They have this amazing several-hundred-year-old giant… I think it’s a redwood, that was brought over during the times of the Grand Tour when people would bring exotic things back, and it's massive. They've built this treetop nest where you can do a wine tasting and overlook the chateau, the castle where the wine is produced. Who would've thought 10 years ago that people would come to Bordeaux to climb trees and have wine tastings in a little tree house overlooking a castle? These are how times are changing.

Angie:

I would actually probably need some wine to climb the tree on the pulley, but I mean that goes hand-in-hand, right? It's a perfect fit. I've never heard about that anywhere in the world.

What about Italy and Spain? You lived in Italy, and I'm sure you've been to Spain and drank all the wine there. Do you have any favorite regions, specific tastings, or fun experiences in Italy or Spain?

Jennifer:

I've traveled Italy extensively and drank wine from top to bottom, including Sicily and Sardinia. I really love the Veneto, which is where I lived. You have the Prosecco wine region in the Veneto, so if you're into sparkling wine, you want Italy's answer to champagne. You definitely want to visit Prosecco. It's one of the most beautiful wine regions in Italy. You have these terrace vineyards where the vines are planted in rows up really steep hill sides, and the views are just exceptional as you sit and sip your Prosecco, and maybe have it with a bowl of pasta with some wild boar ragu. Barolo is also super, super gorgeous. There are really affordable bottles of Barolo out there, and there are a lot of different wineries that you can visit in the wine region. If you want to bring a souvenir home, you don't have to break the bank to do that in Barolo.

Angie:

When you're thinking about wine regions in Europe and wine regions in the U.S., and really around the world, is there any kind of geographical context you can give us to help us understand what makes a wine region good for wine production? Why are the wine regions where they are?

Jennifer:

It has a lot to do with the weather and climate of the area. I'd say some of the great wine regions around the world are around the 45th parallel; you have the wine-producing countries, Italy, Spain, France, the U.S.

Angie:

For travelers who love food and wine, what are some of those travel experiences you've had as a travel writer that have incorporated both?

Jennifer:

This is a really sort of up-and-coming, growing niche sort of travel. The cruise industry, particularly the river cruise industry, has really jumped on this. You've got a lot of great river and barge cruises; if you don't know the difference, you have maybe around 150-200 passengers on river cruises, and they primarily travel along the rivers of Europe, which of course, wineries are mainly situated along. With barge cruises, they can traverse some of the much smaller canals. Typically, barge cruises are anywhere from 2 to maybe 12-16 passengers. You can often take the cruises right to the wineries. The ships, particularly barge cruises, will have a chef who will go into the little town markets and buy what's fresh that day and prepare local specialties that will pair with the wines. It's a really great way to really appreciate food and wine pairings from that local area.

Angie:

I didn't think about the chef going into the markets and getting the local stuff. Food that has recently come from less than 10 miles away is delicious.

Jennifer:

It's called “Kilometer Zero” eating here in Europe, meaning it came from really, really close and it's all seasonal ingredients. So, barge cruising and visiting the markets in April versus cruising and eating in November is going to be different because different things grow at different times of the year.

Angie:

According to the International Organization of Vine and Wine, Americans are the biggest consumers of wine worldwide, and the U.S. is the third-largest importer of wine. That's surprising to me because we do have so many wine regions in the U.S. We've talked about California being the obvious one. It's the fourth-largest manufacturer of wine in the world. I think that's behind France, Italy, and Spain. Does that sound right? California is basically its own wine country. Have you been to any of these other wine-producing regions in the U.S. and do you have a favorite?

Jennifer:

I have traveled a bit around wine-producing regions in the U.S. You mentioned in the beginning that I am from Pennsylvania, and you probably don't think about Pennsylvania being a wine-producing area, but it is. Along with New York, you have the Lake Erie and Niagara wine region, which is one of the larger ones in the U.S. So, I grew up in a wine-producing area.

I also really love Washington for viticulture and wine-producing areas. It's got to be one of the larger ones in the U.S. They have 20 AVA, that's American Viticultural Area. You have the San Juan Islands of Washington and you have some really boutique vineyards there.

Another area that I actually haven't been to, but I'm hoping to visit soon, is considered to be one of the up-and-coming wine regions of the U.S., and it's in Connecticut. It's called the Connecticut Wine Trail. When I think of Connecticut, I'm thinking of Gilmore Girls. I'm definitely not thinking of wine, right? You're thinking of these historic little towns, maybe a little bit of lobster fishing, definitely not wine. Connecticut has wine. They've been developing this wine trail and wine tourism around it, and they've got a great app that makes it super easy to plan your trip. That's kind of what I'm doing right now.

Angie:

I never knew growing up how much wine there was in the U.S. and how many different wine-producing regions there are. The Finger Lakes in New York, stunning. When we went up there to film our show, everyone was like, “Where's the Finger Lakes? What is that?” It's amazing and just as great as California, and probably cheaper and easier to drive around, and maybe less crowded. If you're a wine person, you are never far from a winery, a tasting experience, or some kind of unique adventure in the wine world.

Jennifer:

Even Arizona has a wine region. I've been back and have done some super fun experience wine experiences in Arizona. One of the things that I did there was whitewater kayaking to a winery in Arizona.

Angie:

OK, that sounds fun! Tell me more.

Jennifer:

It was really fun. It was a few hours of whitewater kayaking on a river, and then you end that experience by literally kayaking up to the dock of what looks like a Tuscan castle in Arizona and they have a winery. The wines were great, they had food pairings to pump you up after all that hard work to get there, so it was a super fun experience.

Angie:

You're not worrying about calories, you're not worrying about too much wine. You're like, “I kayaked here or I climbed a tree, so I will be drinking whatever I want and eating whatever I want at the top of this tree.” I love that. That's my new way of drinking wine; close my Move ring to be able to do it.

Let's say you're in a restaurant and you want to pair the right wine with your meal. Do you have a simple way of thinking about wine pairings that people can keep in their minds when they go?

Jennifer:

If you're having red meat, you more often than not should have red wine with the red meat. If you're having chicken or fish, typically you're going to have a white wine with chicken or fish. Now, there are always exceptions to those rules. One of the things that you can do is ask at the restaurant. The chefs often select the wines for the menu. They want their wine list to complement their menu, and so it's absolutely OK to ask and they can make the best recommendations.

Angie:

If I order a powerful, beefy, heavy red wine and I get fish, is that embarrassing for me? Am I going to ruin the meal for myself if I don't pair my wine according to suggestion?

Jennifer:

It's just a suggestion because at the end of the day, when it comes to wine and food, it's what you enjoy and it's how you experience it. Sometimes, you discover these amazing pairings of wines that you just never would've thought went with something. Or I ask and I'll say, “I don't really enjoy white wine. Could you recommend a red that will go with this?” And they might say, “Well, this dish is a little bit lighter, so maybe you want to lighter red wine then. A Bordeaux wouldn't be great with that because it's just going to overwhelm the flavors in the dish.”

Angie:

That's very helpful. So, you don't have to feel like a jerk if you're not doing it exactly right. There is no right way. There are just suggestions and your own palate.

Jennifer:

Yeah, absolutely.

Angie:

Is there a dining wine tasting experience that you've had that you think everybody should have? Like it was just that great hands down, and you tell everybody about it.

Jennifer:

I went to a chateau here in Bordeaux, and one of my favorite experiences was being surprised with a vintage from my birth year, and being able to try that during the tasting and compare what a wine from 1980 was like versus a wine from 2016.

Angie:

Was it a good wine? Did you like it?

Jennifer:

It was red. It was a red Bordeaux.

Angie:

I love that. That's so personal and kind and thoughtful, and you'll never forget it. Right?

Jennifer:

Exactly.

Angie:

Do you have any favorite festivals or experiences that are food and or wine related?

Jennifer:

Every year, Bordeaux hosts what is called Bordeaux Fete le Vin, and this is a massive wine festival. It stretches over 2 kilometers long along the river here in Bordeaux. All of the wine producers from the region come and they have booths where you can taste the wine. There are concerts, these authentic ships that are around sail in and you can tour the ships, there are different events and artwork, and all kinds of things going on. That happens every June.

There's a really crazy wine festival that happens in the La Rioja wine region of Spain. Everyone gets dressed up in white and you come with water guns, but you fill your water guns with red wine. Now, whatever you want to wear should be something that you're not particularly fond of and you can toss it in the trash later. It's called La Batalla del Vino and it's just a massive wine fight. Of course, you drink and eat, as the Spanish do. That's kind of a crazy wine festival that you can check out if that's your vibe.

Angie:

When it comes to food, people have been much more interested in recent years in agricultural practices and sustainability and in the world of wine we have the natural wine movement. What can you tell us about that?

Jennifer:

Natural wine is definitely a newer, up-and-coming thing. There are a lot of people who are interested in drinking natural wine exclusively. If you don't know what it is, it just means wines that are produced in all-natural methods, there are no unnatural fertilizers in the soil, no growth hormones that are used on the vines, no pesticides that are used.

The way that vineyards are doing this is they're delving into all sorts of techniques, from getting bug experts to come to their vineyards and help them develop really great biodiversity at their vineyards. They're installing bug hotels which help to attract pests away from the vines, but also help to attract the good bugs that would help to control the pest bugs. They're doing different things like using sheep to mow the grass and help manage the grass that grows between the rows. They might be using horses to till the vineyard. There are a lot of different techniques that you can use to achieve a natural wine. There are some really great award-winning wines, and a lot of Bordeaux vineyards are even converting in more recent years. So you have some of the most famous wine labels that are now using natural techniques to produce their wine.

Angie:

I assume that's because it's both safer for the people drinking it and safer for the environment and nature.

Jennifer:

Yeah, it's much better for the environment in a lot of ways. Of course, returning to these more natural techniques helps to reduce your carbon footprint. Ultimately, when we talk about climate change and how that's affecting wine regions, converting to natural methods where you're using horses and sheep as opposed to tractors that need fuel to power them and things. It's all part of the bigger picture.

Angie:

Can you give the aspiring wine aficionados who may be listening some beginner tips on understanding their wine palate? How do you start and not be overwhelmed?

Jennifer:

A lot of people when they think about wine, they get really nervous and they think that they need to develop a palate, but really just start trying wines and find what you like. As you widen your spectrum of what you drink, you'll develop more of a palate. You don't have to go take a class; you don't have to feel out of your depth when you're going to a wine tasting. I would say that 9 times out of 10 if you're in a group wine-tasting setting, most of the other people are just like you. They're there just to enjoy it and have the experience, and they're not there to talk about the tobacco taste from the toasted oak barrel. It doesn't have to be like that.

Angie:

You can just have fun with it. You can pick the wines you like and drink them wherever: the top of a tree or in a river. You can drink red wine with fish. It's up to you. If you're enjoying it, then you're doing it right.

Jennifer:

Exactly. The whole point is to enjoy it, right? So, if you don't like the wine, try a different wine and find something that fits you and your tastes.

Angie:

What is your favorite wine? Like, you see it on a menu and you're just like, “That is my jam.”

Jennifer:

I'm a seasonal wine drinker. So right now, it's hot, it's summertime and I've said that I'm not a big white wine drinker, but one of my favorite summertime wines is actually white Bordeaux. Whenever I see it on the menu, that's what I'm drinking. For me, it’s super refreshing and it's going to be cool and crisp in the glass, and I'm just going to super enjoy it on a hot day.

Angie:

I love that. Jennifer Dombroski, thank you for joining us today.

Jennifer:

Thanks so much for having me.

Angie:

Thank you to our listeners for being with us. If you're planning a trip, be sure to connect with AAA Travel Advisor, check out AAA.com/travel, or visit your local branch. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe. I'm Angie Orth, thank you for traveling with AAA.