Places I Remember with Lea Lane
On this monthly award-winning travel podcast, host Lea Lane shares travel memories and travel tips with passionate travelers, travel experts, and savvy locals around the world. Lea has traveled to over 100 countries, is the author of nine books, a blogger at forbes.com, and a contributor to dozens of guidebooks. Smart. Fun! Over 100 episodes!
Places I Remember with Lea Lane
Wine And Sightseeing At Special Vineyards In France, Italy And Spain
Thatcher Baker Briggs, the founder of Thatcher's Wine in LA, spills the secrets to crafting the ultimate wine vacation, balancing leisurely tastings with relaxation, over the perfect four to five-day getaway. Thatcher offers invaluable tips on wine tasting etiquette, like the art of spitting versus drinking, especially when you're behind the wheel, and emphasizes the importance of pre-arranged transportation in Europe's charming but Uber-less wine regions.
Discover how to navigate the diverse costs of tastings across various regions and get insider advice on dining experiences that will elevate your wine adventure.
Embark on a sensory journey through Europe's most captivating wine regions, starting with the French Riviera and its Provençal allure, then onward to the Champagne region where bubbly meets French fries for an unexpectedly delightful pairing.
Experience Italy's Piedmont region, where medieval towns, stunning landscapes, and exquisite wines like Nebbiolo await. Imagine the aroma of truffles in Alba and the cultural tapestry of Turin. Finally, savor the culinary masterpiece of a paella in the heart of Alicante, Spain, celebrating the joys of European cuisine and the art of wine. Cheers to travel, taste, and the tales that bring them to life!
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Thatcher Baker Briggs is the founder of Thatcher's Wine in LA. He is a sommelier, and a frequent traveler to the great vineyards of Europe.
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Podcast host Lea Lane has traveled to over 100 countries, and has written nine books, including the award-winning Places I Remember (Kirkus Reviews star rating, and 'one of the top 100 Indie books of the year'). She has contributed to many guidebooks and has written thousands of travel articles.
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Our award-winning travel podcast, Places I Remember with Lea Lane, has dropped over 100 travel episodes! New podcast episodes drop on the first Tuesday of the month, on Apple, Spotify, and wherever you listen.
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Wine regions are some of the loveliest areas in the world climates where grapes thrive, filled with charming towns, with farm-to-table food and, of course, great wine. Canadian-born Thatcher Baker Briggs is founder of Thatcher's Wine in LA. He travels the world discovering wine regions and new and excellent varietals. He's just returned from one of his European wine trips and has much to share with us. Welcome, Thatcher, to Places I Remember.
Thatcher Baker Briggs:Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Lea Lane:Great. Well, I know your journey began as a restaurant dishwasher at the age of just 13 and brought you to Michelin star restaurants across the world. Tell us a bit more of your experiences in the culinary scene and how this turned into your deep interest in wine.
Thatcher Baker Briggs:I had a passion probably when I was around nine or 10, and I was obsessed with cooking and ingredients and food. It led me down this path of chasing my dreams to become a chef, and I just happened to get an early start on things and traveled all around Canada and then wanted to work in the Michelin star environment. So I moved to San Francisco and I was at Qua, which was a two and three Michelin star restaurant. I was cooking and tasting wine and, realizing that I don't really know anything about wine, I wanted to really dive in. So I started studying and I just got hooked. Then started pursuing my sommelier exam. I ended up at another three Michelin star in San Francisco.
Lea Lane:Were you the youngest ever course- certified sommelier?
Thatcher Baker Briggs:I wasn't the youngest ever. I started at 21, which is the earliest you can do it in the US, and I passed, I think, just after my 22nd birthday.
Lea Lane:So recently you, Thatcher, and your partner Courtney, combined a relaxing vacation with wine work. So before we talk about some of the regions you explored, let's talk about what you think makes a great wine vacation. I know it depends where you visit, but what do you consider an ideal length of a wine tour, just from a logistical standpoint? How much is too much?
Thatcher Baker Briggs:Twenty days is too much. I will say that I have an import company and so we started just about four years ago. We've been trying to find the next generation winemakers a lot of time in Europe in driving and so we do these longer trips. To be honest, I would never advise anybody doing a solely 20 day wine tour, driving about 2,000 kilometers, because it's quite exhausting. I think that the best amount of time is somewhere around four to five days. I think you want to get to the wine region, take a day to breathe and just sort of be in the place, and then you can do four days of tastings and then at the end take another day or two to just relax a little bit. You do consume a lot of wine, and while you might be at home drinking a bottle of wine every night, those afternoon or morning wine tastings do kind of wear on you pretty quickly.
Lea Lane:Let me ask you about spitting out the wine versus drinking it. In terms of driving, how do you manage that situation?
Thatcher Baker Briggs:If you're driving the same day, you have to be obviously super mindful and spitting. It's nice to do in pairs, so my partner, Courtney, and I will take turns. Sometimes you end up at a winery where you're drinking some of the best wine in the world and it's a very hard thing to spit.
Lea Lane:It's very hard, I agree.
Thatcher Baker Briggs:And so that often leads to last-minute pivoting, and needing to reschedule some tastings. Never book too many tastings in a day, because it's impossible to make it on time to all of them. Give yourself a little bit of a buffer, because you never know what the winemaker is going to open.
Lea Lane:Also, you can take tours. You can take Uber. There are options today where both of you could be drinking right. Yeah, also, you can take tours. You can take Uber. There are options today where both of you could be drinking right.
Thatcher Baker Briggs:Yeah, unfortunately there's no Ubers in most of Europe, in the wine region. So in the bigger places like Bordeaux, you'll be able to get an Uber, but if you're in Burgundy or a smaller place like Piedmont, there's no Ubers, there's no taxis. There's some drivers that you can book, that the hotel can arrange, which is always my piece of advice, but if you're going from Italy to France all within one day, then you're kind of on your own, unfortunately.
Lea Lane:Let's talk costs. How do you pay for wine tastings? Are there discounts on wine? Do you need to factor in any other costs that we don't know about?
Thatcher Baker Briggs:It depends really on the region, so that's a little tricky to answer. In some of the smaller regions, generally speaking, the tastings are always free. It really just depends on the producer and where you are. If you can do a little bit of research and find a smaller producer. A lot of the times they're more than welcome to just accept your email and invite you in for a tasting, and there's usually no cost associated with it. But it depends. If you're in a larger wine region, like Bordeaux, for example, there could be a pretty hefty cost associated with the tasting somewhere between 100 to a couple hundred euros and it depends on the winery. Oftentimes, but not always, you'll be able to purchase a case of wine and the price is better than what you would be able to buy the wine for in the US. The one thing having to carry around a case of wine with you is always a little tricky.
Lea Lane:Well, great wine pairs with great food. How do you plan your eating experiences when you're traveling to wineries? Do you have your main meal at lunch, or how does it work?
Thatcher Baker Briggs:We're traveling for work and we're visiting these wineries for business. The most important thing is to find the best restaurants in the regions. Most times we ask the producers, we ask the winemakers hey, where do you guys go for lunch, where do you go for dinner, where do you go for special occasions? And we try to make sure we have a couple of hours in between for lunch and then, of course, for dinner at one of the best regional restaurants in Europe. For lunch, specifically, there's no such thing as a 30-minute lunch. Every lunch is about two hours and has three courses, especially in France.
Lea Lane:Sounds good, sounds like not a big problem.
Thatcher Baker Briggs:It's not a bad problem at all.
Lea Lane:Right, no. Now what are typical accommodation options, and what about staying at the vineyards?
Thatcher Baker Briggs:So some wineries have their own hotels, some do not. In Italy, they have the agriturismo small inn, if you will, and which is always a lovely place to stay, and then you get to spend a little bit more time with the winemaker and build a personal connection. There's always Airbnbs, which are lovely in these smaller regions, and then, of course, there's some really great hotels.
Lea Lane:Because everybody loves wine.
Thatcher Baker Briggs:Exactly Right, exactly. Makes sense.
Lea Lane:Okay, there are many beautiful wine regions around the world, many of which we featured on Places I Remember, including South Africa on episode 101. New Zealand on episode 28. Australia, episode 84. Portugal, episode 51. United States, episode 47. So we are aware of the great idea of taking wine trips, but let's talk about the highlights of your recent European wine trip, and I'll add some information too, because I've done a few of these myself. Let's start with France. You recently went to Provence, which accounts for nearly 10% of the world's rosé production. Provence is the one wine region of the world where pink is the main color. How is rosé made compared to red and white wine?
Thatcher Baker Briggs:Rosé is really just allowing the skins of red grapes to come into contact with the wine for just a little bit longer. So you can make white wine from red grapes, you can make red wine from red grapes, and that's often just because of how long the skin, the juice itself, is actually white. That's the process for rosé and they've been kind of famous for it. It works super, super well with a lot of their food: grilled fish, squash, blossoms, tomatoes - just really like summery things.
Lea Lane:I can only visualize this, eating squash blossoms and rosé on the coast of.
Thatcher Baker Briggs:It is exactly like that. It's pretty amazing.
Lea Lane:Well, you and Courtney spent a week staying at a hotel in Nice, enjoying the sights and the sounds and the amazing food and drink. What are some of your favorite things that you enjoy beyond the vineyards in that area?
Thatcher Baker Briggs:I actually went to a tennis academy when I was there. He was the former coach of Serena Williams and he has this whole tennis resort, Patrick Mortiglier Tennis Academy. It's a really cool facility. The hotel itself is quite nice and the food is delicious, but to be able to go and be athletic for a few days was amazing before a long journey. So if you're a fan of tennis, I highly recommend it, and they do a really great job of putting people together in all different levels. That was one of the highlights.
Lea Lane:I love the old town. You just walk around there. There are lovely shops. You can buy the beautiful Provençal prints, placemats still that I use. I love the museums there too the Chagall Museum, Matisse and the whole area. The French Riviera is a gem. We covered that in episode 94. It's lovely to think of that area and wine together. And what could be bad? Right? Area of Champagne. Tell me about that.
Thatcher Baker Briggs:Yeah, I love Champagne. It's one of my favorite regions. I'm lucky to go to Europe about four times or so a year and almost every time we go, we do go to Champagne. It's a absolutely massive region. There's two main centers, there's Rheims and Empernay, and they're about an hour and a half or so drive apart, near Paris, if I may add, they're only about 150 kilometers east of Paris, so it's a day trip.
Thatcher Baker Briggs:Exactly so. We often fly into Paris and then we drive up to Champagne. Whether you're coming from New York or California, you tend to land in Paris around anywhere between 7 to 10 am. We always fly in in the morning and then just go straight to Champagne right after. But it's a huge region. If you go from the top to the bottom, it could be two, three hours of driving. But for me, the heart of Champagne is Rheims. It's a really beautiful little city, tons of walking, there's really beautiful parks, there's some amazing restaurants. There's also some great restaurants there that are not necessarily French. One of my favorite restaurants is called Restaurant Mala. It's a Chinese noodle restaurant. Incredible local, organic products highlighting these Chinese techniques. So you get this really spice but really high quality product. And if you are eating French food for the past week or two weeks and then you go and you eat something a little different.
Thatcher Baker Briggs:That's always a really great place.
Lea Lane:Well, I read that you said you can hit McDonald's if you want to get away from it and have champagne with your French fries. That sounded pretty interesting.
Thatcher Baker Briggs:I will say champagne and McDonald's. French fries are one of the greatest pleasures in the world. In France they actually use real potatoes. The quality of McDonald's fries is much higher. Of course.
Lea Lane:That's a town in the area. It's very medieval in the old town. It has timber-framed houses, Gothic churches, Very, very charming. I want to ask about the champagne houses, the maisons. That's a very special thing in Champagne area that you can stay in these older homes and many of the vineyards have connections, right.
Thatcher Baker Briggs:Yeah, they do, for sure. There's two different kinds of camps in Champagne in terms of Champagne makers. So you have these big maisons like Dom Perignon and Krug they're the larger houses and sometimes they have accommodations in which you can stay. And then you have the smaller grower producers, and these are often what I would still kind of consider the farmers of Champagne vineyards, where Krug doesn't. They own a small percentage of their vineyards, but oftentimes too, some of these smaller producers they do have just like really small boutique two- room places. They might just provide breakfast in the morning, and then you get this really beautiful experience of getting to know somebody very intimately.
Lea Lane:Sounds delightful. Again a glass of Champagne at night as well, and you can drink what you want and go to sleep.
Thatcher Baker Briggs:Exactly, exactly.
Lea Lane:Okay, well, let's go into Italy. There are 20 wine regions, about 350 official Italian wine varieties and rumors that there were over 2000 different Italian grapes throughout the centuries. You went to the Piedmont area in northwest Italy, which is one of the main grape growing areas. It's at the foot of the Western Alps. Tell us a little bit about your visit there. What are the highlights?
Thatcher Baker Briggs:Piedmont, I have to say, is probably one of the most beautiful wine regions in the world. Typically, you'll fly into Milan and then drive. It's about anywhere between an hour and two hours, depending on traffic getting out of Milan. But it has these rolling hills and it's so vast, so green. In the summertime it's really a breathtaking place. Hot air balloons flying around. It's really spectacular. There's five little villages, if you will, within Piedmont, and the sixth being Alba, which is a larger town, but I recommend just driving to a little town like La Mora, which is one of my favorite places. I feel like it's even more medieval. There's all of these really old, old buildings, small towns, most of the little towns you can walk around within 25 to 30 minutes, La Mora being a little bit bigger one with more shops and there's some museums and absolutely breathtaking place. Don't think I've ever had a bad meal in Piedmont. It's one of my favorite places to eat.
Lea Lane:You have to mention truffles, right.
Thatcher Baker Briggs:If you can go, November, December are the prime time. I always love going around the first week of December for truffles specifically. It's usually towards the end-ish season of the truffles. You tend to miss a lot of the super crazy busy tourist time because during truffle season and for the truffle festival it can be quite hectic and with a lot of people and during that last week of December everyone is always gone.
Lea Lane:There are lots of tours now where you can go on truffle hunts with the pigs. Alba is a lovely place. Turin is the capital. It's a very vibrant city with art and music and good shopping. There's a Royal Palace which is a museum of ancient art, so I think it's a lovely trip.
Thatcher Baker Briggs:It really is.
Lea Lane:Tell me a little bit about the wine of the region.
Thatcher Baker Briggs:It's mostly focused on reds. There are some whites, particularly Arnaz. Some producers do a great job, but the reds are really the focus. In Piedmont it's Nebbiolo is the main grape. There's also a little bit of Barbera and Dolcetto. You'll find some early drinking, younger, pleasurable wines, and then you'll also find wines like Barolo need quite a few years of age on it as a minimum aging requirement. You would never really see a bottle in the US unless it's about five years old.
Lea Lane:I've seen Barolo at many restaurants and it's aged.
Thatcher Baker Briggs:Yeah, yeah, amazing with Italian food.
Lea Lane:Well, from Italy you traveled to Baden and Rheinhessen in Germany along the Rhine River. I know you're really excited about this area. It's great for year-round travel and, like some of the other more coastal towns, We featured this area in episode 69 of Places, I Remember. Let's see, what kind of wine is the region known for.
Thatcher Baker Briggs:Germany is definitely home of Riesling. There's a really big push right now in Germany to have dry wines. I think a lot of times people think of Riesling as the like fruity sweet wine, but there's a big push to make dry wine. So if you see Riesling on a wine list or anywhere, you can ask if it's dry.
Lea Lane:Oh, it's delicious If it's a good wine oh, I love it.
Thatcher Baker Briggs:But in Baden, in the southern part, and also a little bit in Rheinhessen, there's been a big focus recently on red wine. Historically, it's been too cold in Germany for the red wines to really ripen, but with global warming there's been such a significant change and now it's a big focus. It's getting quite hot, and especially in Baden, which is the hottest place in Germany it can sometimes get up to 90 degrees and so Pinot Noir is quickly becoming a focus in both in Baden and Rheinhessen.
Lea Lane:Interesting. Of course, you could always take a river cruise along the Rhine and stop. I remember I've taken cruises on the Rhine and on the Moselle. Both times there were stops to go to the vineyards and sample the wine, so it's a nice way to do it if you don't want to drive and again you're taken there. You can drink your wine while you're there at the vineyards. Very beautiful too, just to look out and see all those gorgeous vineyards sloping down to the river. Yes, it's another lovely area. In Europe, Spain now there are many famous wine regions, but on your trip you focused on Valencia, which is overlooking the Mediterranean and has more than 300 days of sunshine a year, so it's a lovely area for weather. Tell us a little bit more about Valencia in terms of wine.
Thatcher Baker Briggs:This is a really exciting place for me. It's one of my favorite places in Spain to eat, specifically.
Lea Lane:And I know what you ate. You ate paella, right, Of course you have to eat paella.
Thatcher Baker Briggs:We flew into Valencia and we spent a little bit of time there, and then we spent a little bit of time in Alicante. It's quite close, it's about an hour and a half drive or so. It's really interesting because in Alicante, in Valencia, they're both famous for the rice. For the paella they make it differently. In Valencia you have food that is seafood driven, and then Alicante, which is a bit more inland, you have well, it's a desert, it's one of the most breathtaking places, but you're basically just looking at rocks the entire time, and so you have food that's more, maybe beef or rabbit.
Thatcher Baker Briggs:The wines from both Alicante and Valencia are some whites. They tend to be more red, heavy, and some of the wines can be --it is quite a hot region --can be very heavy and rich. Where the region is warmer or hotter, the wines always get riper, so there's a higher content of alcohol. But there's a really interesting movement that's happening, particularly in Alicante, with some of the younger generation winemakers. They're understanding how to harvest and how to work in the vineyards and so they're trying to make these much more elegant style wines.
Thatcher Baker Briggs:We flew from Champagne. We went to Spain just to visit one producer in particular for one day, with a winery called Bodega Serran, and the kids are making a small project from the family winery and the wines are beautiful. It's really interesting because the whole region is surrounded by these really heavy, dense wines, but they've been spending the last few years working in the vineyards and the wines are so delicate, so elegant. It's really remarkable and for me, I love that style, because when you're in 110 degree weather, you really don't want to be drinking this 17% alcohol wine, and so I love what they're doing and I highly recommend a visit.
Lea Lane:We're all adapting in our ways, right? This is one of them.
Lea Lane:I just want to mention Cofrente, a little village in the Valencia region. It's considered one of the most beautiful and it has a wonderful castle built in the 12th century. So there's again things to do outside of the vineyards and all of these regions we're talking about, and I would say, try to leave time, if not every day, at least, like you said, a day or two, to separate from the wine and to explore, because there is such beauty in this area. Well, the name of the podcast is Places, I Remember. So, Thatcher, would you please share a personal travel memory of your wine travels?
Thatcher Baker Briggs:Four or five years ago, when we were starting this import company, there was one particular producer that I had tasted the wines of, and fell in love with, and we were talking for years and years and years, and he had an importer in the US already, so unfortunately, we couldn't work together. Years later, some things changed, and the reason why on this trip we ended up in Alicante was for this producer, as I mentioned. So we got a call from him and we're in Champagne, we have a flight booked out of Paris, we're supposed to leave. He says oh, you know, I decided to make a change and OK, so we're like, all right, we'll be there tomorrow. It turns out I left my wallet at the hotel and we were rushing and didn't know how to get there, and so we had to ship my wallet and then it got missed. And so we kept getting pushed and we ended up somehow driving super fast, made it to the airport in Paris, flew to Spain, went to go see him, and it was this really amazing experience where we were all together. And he says to us hey, do you want to go eat the best rice in the world? And I said, well, of course, after this crazy travel period and tasting a bunch of wine. We jump in his little car and it's like a winery car, it's very small and we're driving down this road. We're driving for probably an hour and a half into the desert and we have no idea where we're going. We get to this tiny restaurant in the middle of nowhere and we walk in and he's like this is the place, and it's this absolutely incredible restaurant.
Thatcher Baker Briggs:The chef learned from this master of paella, if you will. They cook everything over the vines of grapes, which is really incredible. And they do the traditional Alicante style, which is a rabbit and snails, which is a type of paella that I've never heard of before. And we're sitting there and they bring us into the kitchen and it's this really special thing because they add just the perfect amount of vines of grapes into the fire and once you add the vines and you add the broth, if you will, to your rice, you can never add more fire and you can never add more liquid.
Thatcher Baker Briggs:So you basically have this one shot, this one chance. There's no scales, there's no recipes, it's just the feeling of the chef. And so we're sitting there and we're like, wow, we've been traveling for 20 days, we rushed. We drove about 200 kilometers an hour to make it to the airport. Now, all of a sudden, we're sitting here in this kitchen in the middle of nowhere, with a winemaker that I've been wanting to spend time with for years and years, and years, and then we eat this paella, and it was really one of the greatest foods that I've ever eaten in my life, and so, if you ever find yourself in Alicante, there's a restaurant called Restaurant Elias E-L-I-A-S, and I highly recommend it.
Lea Lane:It's worth any journey, as somebody that traveled about a thousand kilometers for it. It's worth it. Thank you. That was a really, really sharing the pleasures of eating, drinking and enjoying some of the loveliest areas of Europe. A toast to you, chin chin, salute, a and cheers to wine and to travel.
Thatcher Baker Briggs:Amazing. Thank you so much.
