Red Fern Book Review by Amy Tyler

Summer Reading 2025 with Tall Mike

• Amy Mair • Season 5 • Episode 9

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I was thrilled to join The TallMikeWine Podcast for the third time to talk about two of my favourite things: reading and wine! We chatted about perfect summer reads, and I even got a mini wine education—turns out there's more to wine than just red and white. Ever heard of orange wine? Tune in for book recs, wine talk, and lots of laughs.

Wines discussed:

2024 Saintly, The Good Rose , British Columbia

2020 Tolaini Cabernet Sauvignon, "Legit", IGT Toscana

Books discussed:

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

Table for Two by Amor Towles

Real Americans by Rachel Khong

Fortune Favors the Dead by Susan Jane Wright

Podcasts discussed:

Monica Lewinsky - Reclaiming

Fail Better with David Duchovny

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Website: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1435309
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tallmikewine/

Follow Red Fern Book Review:

Website and to leave a voicemail: https://www.redfernbookreview.com
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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/redfernbookreview/


Follow Red Fern Book Review:

Website and to leave a voicemail: https://www.redfernbookreview.com
Instagram: @redfernbookreview
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/redfernbookreview/
Newsletter: https://www.redfernbookreview.com/newsletter

Amy Tyler:

Coming up on the tall Mike wine podcast, Hey,

Unknown:

aren't we cool? Isn't this amazing? Drink our wine? Yeah, it's cool. Hey, you want a hat? Hey, do you want a shirt? Hey, drink our wine. Aren't we cool? It's the scrolling. Amy, it's the scrolling. It's true. So not only is it delicious, I got another deal, and I love that. I love that more than almost anything.

Amy Tyler:

And now the toll like wine podcast,

Unknown:

the cell phones have been silenced, the wine is poured, and just like that, the podcast begins, the Tull Mike wine podcast, the wine podcast, that's not all about wine. If it were all about wine, even I wouldn't listen to it. Say nothing of hosting it, and I am the host, the namesake tall guy who brings you the show, the wine podcast like no other, heard on six continents, in 89 countries, and 48 of these United States, coast to coast, from Kirkland, Washington to Leesburg, Virginia, from Fort Worth, Texas to Sterling Heights, Michigan, where, if you're sitting in traffic on mound road, I thank you for joining us and wherever you are, many thanks for lending me your ears. I hope you're subscribed to the podcast so you don't miss out when there's a new episode. Also a five star rating would be cool. I know five stars so limiting, but I don't make the rules. And now you can show your love for the podcast in the form of dollars. Become a sponsor and help keep the podcast commercial free. Click the support the show link in the show notes to find out more, and thank you in advance for the help. Now it's time to roll into the podcast with my guest who's joining us via zoom. I'm here at my dining room table in Novato, California, and she is in Vancouver. BC, yes, she's Canadian. She's making her third appearance on the podcast. She's the host of the Red Fern book review podcast, and she's just back from tennis camp. Please welcome Amy Tyler, and Happy belated Canada Day to you and welcome back to the podcast.

Amy Tyler:

Hi Mike. It's good to be here. Well,

Unknown:

I'm so happy to have you. How was camp? How is your tennis game?

Amy Tyler:

Camp was good two hours away in Whistler British Columbia, and we did something called live ball. So if anyone's listening and plays a lot of tennis, they'll know about it. I'd actually never played it before. It's kind of like, I don't want to say dodge ball when you were a kid, but basically, there's a king of the court, so you there's a somewhat a pro, throws the ball in, and if you miss, then you're out, and then someone moves up.

Unknown:

You're not standing on one side of the room with a tennis racket in your hand, with people on the other side of the room with tennis rackets, and everybody's pinging balls at each other. It's

Amy Tyler:

like one game with people jumping in live ball. It's called live ball.

Unknown:

Okay, that's that sounds cool. I'm sure I can find video on YouTube,

Amy Tyler:

but because we're not 16, at tennis camp, we did tennis camp in the morning, and then we went to the pool and we went out for dinner. And you

Unknown:

had some nice dinners, had some good dinners with some nice wine. Maybe

Amy Tyler:

had some nice wine, Canadian wine, yes. And I shouldn't say this at the restaurants, but you can't get, well, I don't know about currently, but you can't always get American wine at the stores now,

Unknown:

yeah, yeah, because somebody decided they wanted to take the economy down into the toilet where he came from, and do all this mucking around with with tariffs, but we don't have to talk about that. Okay, it sounds like you had a good time. I did. This might seem a bit late to the game, but we are here to make summer book recommendations. We had such a good time last year. We just didn't get the episode up and running, and now the summer has begun. But if you have yet to pick a few good reads for vacation. We've got suggestions. Well, Amy does. I'm just here to ride her coattails. We will also make a wine connection. So stick around for some wine geekery. How many books do you have to tell us about? We're going to talk about four books today. And how do you go about selecting the why the books? What's the process like? How do you pick them? I almost said, how do you go about selecting the wines, which is what people ask me about the podcast. How do you how do you pick the books?

Amy Tyler:

This time, when I did one thing I thought about is not to have a hardback because just also, it's summer, you might want to get to the beach, right? It's a little less expensive, actually, though not that much less expensive, but so I went. Most of the books have been out for a year, because, if you may already know this, but books come out in hardback, and they're in hardback for one year. Some come straight to people. I

Unknown:

didn't I didn't know that they it was a year. Some are released in trade paperback, which is a bigger form of the paperback, right? Some don't go to hardcover. Some

Amy Tyler:

never. Do. But most of the books I picked had, you know, I picked a mystery because I figured someone wants that. I picked a family saga because people like that, and it has a little science stuff in it, so I thought that would be good for anyone in the family. And it's sort of hard to find book that crossover. So a husband and wife or two partners could probably both could like this book that I'm going to recommend. And then I did a full on beach read, because I think you always need to have

Unknown:

that something a little saucy, yeah.

Amy Tyler:

Oh, and then another one's just a personal favorite author. And I pick short stories because I think those are very digestible in the summer. Sure you can

Unknown:

set it down. Come back to it. Set it down because you got other things. You got other things going on. All right, let's, let's, let's get into the first book. I'm going to queue up some nice bookish music.

Amy Tyler:

So the first book I'm going to recommend is the full on beach read, and it's also corresponds. Oh, am I allowed to say that? So the wine I picked goes with this book, or does that matter? Which

Unknown:

is, like, that's totally fine. That's great, because you're going to reveal the wine at the end of this review. Okay, okay, this particular book, then we'll talk about the wine that's in your glass.

Amy Tyler:

So this book is called the wedding people. Just even the name, you know it's going to be a beach read by Allison s patch. And I'm not sure if that's how you pronounce your name, but the story is, it's a book about her. Name is this woman's name, Phoebe, and she's an English professor, and she wakes up one morning, and her husband is left her for another woman, and she's super despondent and depressed, and she's living in St Louis, so she decides to go to Newport, Rhode Island, to take her life. And she goes to this beautiful hotel, and she thinks she's, I think she thinks she's gonna be the only person there, but it is. There's a bride who's taken over the whole wedding, and that bride think she's taken over the whole hotel, but she's actually left one hotel room, and this woman takes it. And so they have this sort of Clash where this woman figures out what she's up to, and she's like, No, no, no, that's not happening at my wedding. And

Unknown:

then off yourself in the midst of my wedding party. And

Amy Tyler:

then it becomes a bit of a rom com, and she gets involved in the wedding, and I think gets pulled into the wedding party. And it's the sort of, I think they are kind of helping each other, and the woman who's the bride is a nightmare, bride. Bridezilla, yeah, Bridezilla. It's just kind of, I think it's a light, dark comedy. I was

Unknown:

gonna say, you said light. It starts out very dark, because she's right. My husband's leaving me. I'm gonna kill myself.

Amy Tyler:

But that's not happening, because Bridezilla has got other plans. Okay, so they and they form a friendship. I think it's heartwarming and but, you know, I have to say I made a mistake, because the cover of the book shows these hands coming out of an ocean, but they clearly have champagne. And I know Champagne is what you think of with at a wedding, but I picked rose a because that's what I drink if I do go to a wedding and it's summer. And also, I personally picked this rose because I drink it and I want to hear what you have to say about

Unknown:

it. Oh, okay, okay. Well, I don't have it in front of me, of course, because you're there and I'm here, and you sent me a picture, and it's Canadian wine. So the first book, give me the name and the and the author again,

Amy Tyler:

real quick. It's the wedding people by Allison s patch, and it came out July 30, 2024

Unknown:

Okay, so it's a year old because now it's in paperback, you can carry it in your beach bag and not weigh yourself down. All right. Now reveal to us the wine that you have in your glass, the wine that you're imagining having at this wedding reception. I'm

Amy Tyler:

going to bring the bottle back. I just got out in the fridge. It's called saintly, and the tagline is the good rose, a what I wanted to do? I wanted to pick a BC wine, just because that's where I'm living. And then I did ask the person at the wine store, I said, could you give me the closest you have to a French rose, which is, obviously, it's not a French Jose, but, and they said it would be this one. Okay? And I'm restraining myself because last time I was on I asked if I could put ice in my wine. And you kind of, I could tell that wasn't I. You said I could, but you weren't impressed, and so I am not drinking really ice in my wine, my

Unknown:

usual, that's not my usual reaction, my usual reaction. If it makes you like the wine more than you should put ice in your wine. Well, what

Amy Tyler:

you told me was it will not the flavors. It'll obviously dilute it.

Unknown:

It'll. Diluted. And if you're drinking wine ice cold, you're not only diluting it, but you're also drinking it a lot colder than your taste buds can comprehend flavor if you, if you drink anything really super cold, you won't taste all the flavors because some of them are muted by the chill on your tongue. And that's that's just a that's just a physiological fact, that's one reason that we drink beer ice cold in this country, is because when the when the breweries reopened after Prohibition, prior to prohibition, there'd been a lot of smaller breweries, like we have now, micro breweries, and then they all had to close, and prohibition came because they didn't have anything else they could do. But the big breweries, they could mill grain and do other things, they stayed open. And when they reopened after Prohibition, there were just a few breweries, and they got together and said, hey, you know, if we, if we really dumb down our beer and make it with cheaper ingredients, we can make a lot more money, and we'll just convince people that they need to drink it ice cold. Because up until that point, beer was beer was served like it is in Europe, kind of its cellar temperature. You know, refrigeration is not a thing that's been around forever. That's so interesting. People would drink beer that was a little bit cold, but not ice cold. So this new thing all about icy cold beer, and all the frosty mugs and all that stuff that that came about through some collusion with the larger breweries who were trying to cheapen their product, but not not have anybody notice. So Hey, chill the beer. You want a nice cold beer, don't you? It's a hot day. You want a cold beer. So that is why, to this day, they still market beer as, oh, it's got to be ice cold. But if you go to micro brewery, you know they're, they're, they're not so concerned that it's super, super, super cold, right? Okay, interesting. Yeah, we just went on a tangent there, didn't we? It's the wine podcast that's not all about wine. Amy, tell me what's in your glass. Or did you already say,

Amy Tyler:

yeah, it's saintly, is the Oh, that's right. And it's, they're calling it the good rose

Unknown:

a, the good rose a. And here it is, okay, I'm gonna take a picture of you with the glass in your hand. And this is all for the fine folks on the Instagram feed. Well, here's what I think of it. I think the wine is probably fine. I just couldn't find a lot of information about it on the winery website, because the winery website was more like, Hey, aren't we cool? Isn't this amazing? Drink our wine. Yeah, it's cool. Hey, you want a hat? Hey, do you want a shirt? Hey, drink our wine. Aren't we cool? Now, when I go on winery websites, I typically go to the area, you know, you click on the little menu and it says, For the trade, which means, if you're in the trade, you sell the wine. You want to you want quick access to something we call a tech sheet that gives you all the technical data for the wine and in rose, what I want to know is, what grape did you use? Rose is made from red wine grapes. There was no such animal on this particular website. It was basically, Hey, isn't this cool? Isn't this great? We're cool. Isn't this rose cool? So I couldn't get through the whole marketing thing. It felt to me like they're just trying to make something really hip and really cool, and they don't, they don't want you to nose around too much. They don't want you to know. Maybe, maybe they don't want you. Maybe they maybe don't care. And they just don't care if you know what the what the grapes are, or how it was fermented. And then you told me it came from BC. And on the on the website, the only the good rose a they had was from Ontario. So what I did was, and this is two days ago, I emailed them and said, Hey, I'm going to feature your rose on my podcast I'm recording tomorrow, and I would like some technical information on this wine. And I mentioned the confusion over the BC versus the Ontario, and I didn't hear back from anybody. So oh my goodness. I said, Could you please send me a text sheet? And I didn't hear back from anybody. So I hope it's good. If it's good, if you like it, it's good. Okay, this is what Duke Ellington said about music. If it sounds good, it is good,

Amy Tyler:

you know. Okay, I have a question for you. Okay, so the the wine's fine, like it's drinkable, it's it's nice. I mean, it's not. It's just nice price point. But the one thing I will say about Rose is I don't like it when the rose is a deep red. And is there anything to that, or is it just, I don't it doesn't appeal to the way it looks to me. Is there anything with the taste there, like I automatically feel like it's too much or too sweet or too heavy, and I base a lot of it when it's like a deep, orangey color. I was just curious if that's like a kind of a placebo effect in my mind, or if there's, there could be that, there

Unknown:

could definitely be that the color is, is a, see, huge thing with wine. People always kind. Man on the wines color. I work at a winery where the main red is Pinot Noir, and Pinot Noir is the lightest color of the red wine. And a lot of times people say, Oh, look at that color, because it's different. And you can tell some people are like, Oh, it's so late. And I say, you know, they named a color after that. And they're like, What are you talking about? I said, there's a little region in France where Pinot Noir is the main thing. And it's probably the most well known region of the world for growing Pinot Noir. And that region is called burgundy. There's a color, all right, so it's named after the color of that wine, which is, can I go off on a tangent? Ask another question? Of course, let's keep going. But let me, let me finish this one first. Okay, the color of the rose is going to be determined by how long they left the skins unprocessed, right? So, Rose is made from red wine grapes. They throw the all the grapes into a tank, and they let some of the juice flow and get in contact with the skin, and the skin starts to turn pink. If you just leave it in there and ferment it for a few weeks. You're going to have a red wine. If you stop just a few hours in, and then you throw everything into the press, the juice that comes out is going to be pink. And then you will throw that into a big stainless steel tank and ferment it like a white wine. And your rose a will be darker if they leave the wine on the skins for a longer time, and if they leave it on the skins for a longer time, it will begin to feel more like a red wine, because it's getting more color and flavor and texture and aroma. Okay, what the juice is doing to the skin is one of my favorite wine making terms, extracting. It's pulling the color out of the skins. It's pulling flavor, texture and aroma out of the skin. So the longer you leave it in there, the darker your rose is going to end up being, and the more like a red wine it's going to be. So if you like a nice pale pink or pale salmon color rose, that means you like a rose that's a little more like a white wine than a red wine. Okay, what's your next question?

Amy Tyler:

I'm seeing at some wine bars around here. I went to one down the street. They have orange wine. And I'd never heard of that before. I can't say I loved it, but I thought it was kind of cool and different. And I just was wondering if that's available where you are. And oh, yeah,

Unknown:

I've had, I've had a few orange wines. You see them on the menu at wine bars that are frequented by people. I don't know what the Canadian term for it is, hipsters. Oh, younger people. The younger people will talk about orange wine, and the orange wine process is basically like that process we just talked about where we dump all the grapes into the tank and we let things ferment. And that's why that's the way you make red wine. Now, if you do that same thing with certain white wines, leave the skins in there, some of them will turn orange, and your wine will be orange. The next question is, well, why haven't they ever done this before? It's like, well, they have done it before, but it's just not something that people are really into. We have red wine that's red. We have white wine that's white. We have pink wine made from red wine grapes. Those are kind of the basic flavors this orange wine just kind of comes and goes once in a while. It's like, Hey, this is a thing that nobody does. I'm like, well, nobody does it for a reason. I've had, I've, I've had only a few orange wines, and I haven't, I can't say that. I can really embrace the concept they're not, they're not terrible. But if I, if I'm given the choice of white wine or red wine or pink wine or orange wine, orange wine is going to be the last on the list. Okay, good to know. Thank you for asking. Okay, this has been great. We're only like 20 minutes in, and we've already been venting about things. All right. We're gonna get to some fun facts about the reading habits of the general population in a few minutes, but first, I want you to tell us what the second book is.

Amy Tyler:

Go into a book that I have. I'm just I haven't read, and I'm just so dying to read it. It's called, let's pull up my notes table for two by Amy tolls. Oh, and it's short stories came out last year. He's an exceptional

Unknown:

novelist. He's somebody. He wrote a big book. He wrote,

Amy Tyler:

What are you thinking of Jim and Moscow? Or yes, that's his big book, right? Well, there was one before that that kind of put him on the map, called rules for civility. But I actually think you might be right. I think German Moscow was the one that, yeah, that

Unknown:

blew him, that blew him up big time.

Amy Tyler:

But he's unusual, because, as we you shared some notes, people aren't reading as much as they did, or it's hard to grab people's attention. And he is a literary novelist that's also popular, so kind of like Ann Patchett, if you know who that is, and I do, and that kind of level of writing. Thing very clever. He had a former career in investment banking, kind of came to the party a bit a bit later, and he wrote this book called Rules of Civility, and it's about kind of a Girl Friday in, I think, the 30s, who is in a typing pool in New York City and finding her way and ends up in the upper echelons of New York society. But what was amazing about it was the dialog, and it's very snappy and fun and clever and very much reminiscent of movies and from the 30s and 40s. When

Unknown:

you said the dialog is snappy, I thought, Well, why isn't there a movie? I don't think

Amy Tyler:

there is, actually, you'd think there would be, but it's very good. And then a Gentleman in Moscow is just an exceptional book. It's interesting I say this. I mean, I haven't heard this from other people. So what that story is about is about a count in the 19, I think 1930s in Russia, who writes a poem that's against the government, so then he gets locked up in a beautiful hotel just for writing this poem. And apparently that kind of thing actually happened. So what's really unbelievable about it is he's sort of in denial. He gets up every morning and reads the paper and puts on his outfit and hangs out in this beautiful hotel, but he actually can't leave. But what was interesting about it, it did remind me. It came out, let's say, eight years ago. I'm not exactly sure. Yeah, it was, it was pre COVID. I knew that, but it reminded me of COVID and,

Unknown:

Oh yeah, right,

Amy Tyler:

yeah, house arrest kind of a beautiful problem if you were lucky enough to be home with your family and have a nice place to be, right? But yet, there's, it's there. It's kind of a prison too. And

Unknown:

there's an underbelly, a sinister thing that's kind of lurking, yeah,

Amy Tyler:

so he's written this book. He is from the New York area. He lives in Gramercy Park with his wife, and it's short stories. They all take place in New York City, and they take place at the turn of the into the 21st Century. That's kind of an interesting time to set a book, because it seems dated, but we've all lived through it. And it's, you know, fairly current, you know, but it's like the things that stand out, or the phones that they're using, or the way people are communicating.

Unknown:

Well, that was, that was that sort of hazy period when not everybody had a cell phone. Some people right? Some I didn't. Did not. I think I got mine in 1998 but a lot of people did not have them, and a lot of people still had landlines. You know, I have a phone at home. Why do I need a phone in my car?

Amy Tyler:

The one thing that's interesting is, so it's a bunch of short stories, but then it's also a novella embedded in it. And what he did was he took one of the characters from that first book, The Rules of Civility, and sends them off to Los Angeles to kind of make their way in Hall, I think, Hollywood, and set at the time of Gone With the Wind. And so he plays with all like the things that were going on at that time, and the famous movie stars and that whole land. And so I think it would be a lot of fun for summer.

Unknown:

I'm going to admit something, and I hate this, really, it's the fact that I'm down to about one book per year as a reader, I suck. What happened to me? I went online a couple days ago and did some poking around, and what's happening to us. Here's some solace, maybe, if you're not reading as much as you used to according to a 2022 Gallup survey, Americans are reading fewer books and spending less time reading in general. There's also a book called How to read now by Elaine Castillo, and she says massive corporations have basically captured the capacities in us for reading, that's social media, which is what I always blame for reading fewer books. It's the scrolling. Amy, it's the scrolling. It's true. And 21% of adults in the US are illiterate. I didn't know it was that high

Amy Tyler:

that what is that? Okay? Is that because maybe they have come to the country and they're learning the language, or these people that have I'm curious. That's

Unknown:

a good question. That's a good I just took this as some raw data that was in a report that I read. But

Amy Tyler:

anyway, that's a high number. Regardless, it's

Unknown:

a pretty high number. Considering the other the other end of that is 79% of the country can read, which is, well, that sounds great, but shouldn't be higher than that. 2024 the average reading scores on The Nation's Report Card declined by two points for both fourth and eighth grade students compared to 2022 this steepens the three point decline seen in both grades between 2022 from 2019 so we're not. Reading as much, and the younger people are having a harder time reading and focusing on things I have, well, my wife, she's a teacher, she says it's hard to get kids to read anything that's printed on paper.

Amy Tyler:

Well, you know, it's funny when I don't know if we've talked about this before, but I have two grown sons, and so what's interesting, when I was growing up, a lot of the books that I would read to me and I read were quite old, because that's just how it was. Like, one of the most popular books was called a secret garden, and I think that was written in like 1900 but those books just kind of stuck around, and they're classics. So I tried some of those books with my kids, and they were like, I didn't even say that they were from my generation. And they were like, stop with the old timey books. And so, you know, something like Charlotte's Web, which is amazing. Typically, if you go back and look at those books, they have no problem spending many chapters before they get exciting. And I remembered that even then, but that doesn't work anymore.

Unknown:

To jump off on a tangent, something that somebody that still is in the radio industry told me, you know, I spent 15 years in radio as a disc jogging. There's this part of most popular songs called the intro, where there's an instrumental passage. It goes on for a while, sometimes as long as 30 seconds, which is just like data, and then somebody starts singing. And that's, that's what a lot of disc jockeys enjoy talking over on like top 40 radio. You know, they they start the song, and they start talking, telling you what's, what's coming up on the show. And then they say, Now, the song by this person, and then the vocal starts. Now, songs have much, much shorter intros, or some have no intros at all, because the intro is a tune out. It's like, oh, there's just music. I'm waiting for the lyrics. So the whole thing is, it's a little off putting, because it just points to the attention span of people in general. In case you're wondering, I read the vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff back in February, while I was on vacation in Washington, it rained a lot, so I had some good reading weather. Do you know Lauren Groff? Do you know that name? Yes,

Amy Tyler:

she wrote a big book, like a couple years ago. You're gonna, do we know what it is? Well,

Unknown:

the vaster Wilds was a pretty big book. It was on Barack Obama's reading list from 2023 I think. And I was going on vacation, and I had read another book by her called Arcadia that came out a few years before, which was right up my alley, because it was this sort of 1970s story about people who lived in a commune and then some bad things happened. And I just love it when bad things happen.

Amy Tyler:

Well, yeah, it's not very fun if it's just going along matrix. Matrix is the book that I'm aware of. I haven't read it.

Unknown:

Lauren Groff matrix, I've not heard of that one, although I'm not aware of her books, really, in general, I just, I know that I liked Arcadia, and then when I saw the vaster wilds, which is a really interesting story, but it's, I don't want to say it's one dimensional, because, like you said, literary fiction. This is it's written beautifully. The prose, the descriptions, all that stuff is amazing, but it's, it follows uh, one character throughout the whole novel, and this character is on the run. And so it's all about what's happening to them and what they're thinking about it, and the memories they're having about how they ended up on the run. And It delves into colonialism, and It delves into all these other things that are much, much, much, much, much bigger picture things. So the novel really touches a lot of bases, but on its face, it's a very simple novel about this woman who's on the run interesting. That's the vaster Wilds. So I read that in February. That's my one book this year. There might be other books. Maybe I'll read one of your books this summer. I'll try and break

Amy Tyler:

away. Maybe, I think maybe you might want to read table for two, possibly

Unknown:

awesome. Table for two. Sounds great. I'll, you know what, I'll go out and buy it tomorrow, and that will make me read it. Because if I buy a book, I have to read it, because I'm a guy who doesn't like to waste money on stuff. Amy, do you still have your official Tom, like, wine, podcast, coasters? I

Amy Tyler:

don't, you know. I know you. I know you moved. Amy,

Unknown:

had a lot of, a lot of stuff happen to her the last year or so. Had a lot of moved. She moved, she got divorced, she changed her name, although

Amy Tyler:

that's a problem. So I just got divorced, and I went down to the so I live in a different country, and I call DMV, but it's not that, it's the licensing bureau. It's a long story, but I My name is not changed, but I still call myself my name,

Unknown:

so it's official, because that's what I'm calling you. Yes, that's Amy Tyler, that's right. If you need more coasters, just send me your new address. Okay, mail you some more coasters. I will do that, and that goes for you too. If you would like your very unofficial stack of tall mic one. Podcast coasters. You can send me an email. I just need your address. My email is Tom Mike wine@gmail.com let's talk about another book. Are we up to book number three now? Yes, okay. What is it?

Amy Tyler:

Okay? This book is called Real Americans by Rachel Kong, and there's a couple reasons why I chose this. First, the one of the reasons I chose this, though I'm curious, do you have because you have buzz sprout. Podcast is hosted by Buzzsprout.

Unknown:

My podcast is hosted by Buzzsprout. That's the that's the internet site that sends it out to all the apps. That's what I upload it to, and that sends it out to all the apps like

Amy Tyler:

the hosting site, anyway, they have this newish thing called fan mail. And

Unknown:

that actually I did, I got a couple of texts from a couple of people after one of the episodes that I did a few months back with Spencer Christian the weatherman, they just said, Hey, that's great. That was great episode. And it's, it's right there on my homepage. If you are looking at the notes. The first thing says, hey, send me a text. But nobody sends me texts. So

Amy Tyler:

I got my first fan mail about this book, and I was so excited from Lisa from Los Angeles. So Lisa from Los Angeles, if you're listening, this is one of the reasons why I recommended it, and she did. It was a while ago. It was in the fall, but she read this book, and really wanted to hear what I had to say about it. So I have read it a little while ago. I read it last year, and I read it because of her. The reason why this is an interesting book, first that I think, is because it is a family saga, and it is about a Chinese American family told over three generations. It's got a bit of a mystery. It's eerie, and there's a little bit of genetic ethics in there, which is kind of it's kind of creepy, and It delves into what does it be to be American? It's about class, striving, race, inheritance, and it's interesting, though, even in just a year This book takes on. There's a different vibe to it based on what's happening currently in the United States. It's about so many things, but now that the US has changed even within that time, so it kind of takes on in

Unknown:

the last couple of weeks. Amy, it's hard to keep up.

Amy Tyler:

I can't keep up. She's young. I mean, I call her young. She's 40, the author, and so I like that she's kind of got a fresh way, a fresh way of writing. I can't really put it in one specific genre, okay, I just like the idea of what you do know for sure is that things are not exactly as they seem. And it starts out, there's a character named Lily Chin, and she's doing an internship in New York City, and she falls in love with a very wealthy man named Matthew Allen. But you just know there's something kind of off, and you're not really sure why. You're not told why, but you just feel it, and it's a bit eerie. And then she is Chinese American, and then It delves back into her family, goes back, going back three generations. And then there's, there ends up being a connection between Matthew and Lily that goes back beyond before they met. So I don't want to say too much more, because then I'll

Unknown:

reveal, right, yeah, don't, don't give us the big plot twists. But I think that it's, it's eerie. I love that. Eerie is great. I think I just bumped Amy tools out of the top spot. Okay, I'm gonna buy this book tomorrow. Okay,

Amy Tyler:

real

Unknown:

Americans, that's right. And what's the name of the author? Again? Rachel Kong, okay, real Americans. I love it. I love it. It sounds amazing. Now it's time to reel what is in my glass. Okay, my glass tonight. The wine has nothing to do with books. It's a it's a wine from Italy. I'm sure they read books in Italy. So, yeah, it has everything to do with books. This is a wine we're actually checking in with a wine I had on the podcast about two years ago. I found a wine online, and it had this amazing picture on the label. And there will be a picture on my Instagram. So if you want to see the label of this wine, and it's a cool picture of a guy with sunglasses on, and if you look in his sunglasses, in the reflection, there is piano, and he's got his hands on the piano. And I thought, you know, that's really cool. I very rarely buy wine based just on the label, but it was a Cabernet from Italy. So I thought that's interesting, because there aren't a lot of straight up Cabernets coming out of Italy there. There are some wines that have Cabernet blended in. So I bought a few bottles of this wine, and I liked it. I liked it a lot. And then I did some research on this wine, which I often do, and I found out the picture of the really cool guy on the label is Thelonious Monk, the jazz guy. And I thought, well, that's more interesting. Now, the name of the wine is legit, legit Cabernet Sauvignon, and it's from Tuscany. It's actually. The IGT, Toscana Raso, which means it's, it's not a it's not officially ordained by the government as one of their main wines. It's an IGT, which means, oh, yes, wine we make, but we don't really have a classification for it, so we just call it an IGT. All the super Testaments are in that same category, but this is 100% Cabernet. So, you know, I I wondered a little bit about this wine, like, why do they use Thelonious Monk, and how do they use the picture of Thelonious Monk on the label? So I reached out to somebody at the importer here in the United States to tell me a little bit more. And they hooked me up with the woman who's in Tuscany, whose father founded the winery, and I heard all about it, and we talked. We had a nice conversation via zoom. She was in Tuscany. That is an episode from about two years ago called all that jazz. Leah Banville, whose father is the guy that founded the winery tolaini, and his story is interesting too. Do you want to hear it? Yes. Okay, Leah, who chatted with me on the podcast couple of years ago. Her father is Pier Luigi torlaini, who is a native of Tuscany, and he immigrated to Canada. Oh Canada in 1956 he planned to work for a few years, make some money, then go back to buy a farm and marry his high school sweetheart and make some good wine in Italy. He didn't go back to Italy for 45 years. He ended up starting to work in Canada, making some good money. He made some connections. He started a whole big business for himself, and he did very, very, very well 45 years later, as he's an older man, he goes back to Tuscany and does buy a farm and begins to make wine. So that is why we have a winery called tolaini, because of Pierluigi, who's no longer with us, but his daughter, Leah, runs the winery now. She was delightful to talk to about her father and the story and the history. And if you want to look back through my podcast, you'll find it a couple of years ago. So I had this wine legit. I think, I think the wine that I was having was like from 2013 or 2014 or something, and I was enjoying it. I put a whole bunch of bottles of it and drank it for a few weeks. And then just a few weeks ago, I was at Costco, and guess who was staring at me from the Costco wine shelf, none other than Thelonious Monk. There was the legit Cabernet at Costco. And I thought, Oh, that's interesting. I would never have imagined that wine would show up at Costco, but it did. So I bought a bottle. It was $20 I thought, I'm going to check in with Thelonious Monk. So this is the wine that I have in my glass. This is the 2020, edition of the legit cab from tolaini. And it's it's really delicious. It's an easy drinking cab. And I would expect a 2020, cab to be a lot more tannic than this is, but the tannins have smoothed down, and it's quite nice. It's all about red and black, fruit on the nose, little bit of floral. It's probably a cab for people who say they don't like cab because it's too uh, something too tannic, too dry, too harsh, because the tannins here are all nice and smoothed down, so it's delicious. Here's what some other people say about the legit cab. 2020. From tolaini Wine Spectator gave it 93 points. Keep in mind, I just bought this Costco for 20 bucks. Not bad. Another website, Venus gave it 93 points. It's 100% cab, by the way, and Venus says it's bright and nicely focused with plenty of varietal character, married to Tuscan energy. God, I wish I'd have wrote that Robert Parker's wine advocate gave it 91 points. Wine Enthusiast, 91 points. James suckling another guy gave it 91 points. It's pretty delicious, and I'm impressed that I got it at Costco for 20 bucks. Because if you go on a wine or a wine website that sells wine and find it, it's like 45 so not only is it delicious, I got it on a deal, and I love that. I love that more than almost anything, really. Are we ready to move on? Yes. Go ahead. One question

Amy Tyler:

about the label. Okay, so the label is, you see, a lot of these kind of labels where they're just sort of having fun, have a clever name, and even the wine I'm drinking, you know, they're calling it saintly.

Unknown:

That's kind of the epitome, the epitome of that, like, hey, a fun label, but let's sell some wine.

Amy Tyler:

But when I think of Italy, like, it just seems like a classic place to sell wine. Why aren't they selling Italy? I see why they would do that in British Columbia, because they do that all the time, because it's not known. You're not known for wine here. So why? Why have that kind of bold, fun label and name, when you could really have something kind of classic and just sell that whole idea of old Italy or something I don't know. I'm just

Unknown:

curious my opinion on that, and it is an in line with the whole conversation we had just a few minutes ago. About reading and how people don't have the attention span, and how the what we have come to know as the tradition is really not something that people in the next few generations coming up after us really give two shits about. Okay, you know, the wine industry is shrinking in the United States because the baby boomers are aging out of wine, because they're just getting older, they can't drink as much wine as they used to. And the baby boom generation was a generation that allowed the wine industry to grow and grow and unlimited growth, basically, for many decades, and now they're aging out. And the generations after them are like, yeah, wine, whatever. That's grandpa stuff. So this, this whole tradition thing, it's just not as hip as something that the younger generation, the Instagram generation, wants something a little more flashy, a little more like, tell me what I need to know, not what my dad used to know. That kind of thing. They they found this actually. Leah told me the synergy story. She said that they made this wine and they weren't sure what to do with it, because they had the idea, let's make a cab from this particular part of our vineyard, because it's going to be delicious. And it turned out to be delicious. They they let a lot of people taste it, and they said, that's really legit. It's a legit cab, you know, that's where the name came from. And then her son said, I think I've got an idea for this. And he was the one that came up with this picture of Thelonious Monk, which is from a very famous Concert Poster. And they contacted the estate of Thelonious Monk and got permission to use it as the label. So I think it's one of those things where the baton is being passed from generation to generation, and things are going to be a little different than what we are used to and we expect, and what we think about wine and tradition and all of those things. The wine is tasty, by the way. Did I mention that? You did? I'm loving it. And I'm like, Oh, look at that. It's nighttime. I'm drinking this bottle. All right. When are you gonna come back to Sonoma again? Amy,

Amy Tyler:

well, I am actually coming to Sam. Well, I do come down to Central Coast fairly regularly to see my mom, but I am coming to San Francisco in the fall for a wedding. Okay, my niece is getting married. Oh, how lovely. We can meet up, because I'm gonna be in Sonoma. We could hopefully make meet up. So we'll see.

Unknown:

Yeah, if you make some time, we can record another episode of the podcast, or we can or we can just go to dinner and get silly. Okay, either of those things would be fine with me. Amy and I met a few years back. It must have been 2021, the year that I started the podcast at the winery Nicholson ranch. Was that a girls trip? It was a girls trip. One of my coworkers came up to me and she said, and she pointed across the courtyard. She said, she has a podcast, and pointing you out across the courtyard. Very soon you were on the show. So right, yeah, it's time to it's time to get you back down here in person, because we've done a few of these zoom things, which is nice, but in person, much better. We'll go out to dinner, we'll get silly, and I'll talk about it on the podcast. Okay, sounds good, all right. Now is this book number three, book number four. Book number four. Look at that. I've drank enough legit Cabernet where I've lost count.

Amy Tyler:

So this book, you're not gonna have heard of it, and that's kind of exciting, because I love to sort of tell you about a book you don't know about, and I

Unknown:

haven't I you know. Okay, so let's take let's keep track here. I haven't heard of two of the books. Actually, I haven't heard of any of the books you've talked about so far, but I have heard of the one author and

Amy Tyler:

merchant of the one author. What's neat about the book that I've selected is I am doing some work with the Canadian book club awards, and I'm talking to their winners. And this particular author is one of the winners. She's written a mystery thriller. I really liked it a lot, and so I wanted to tell you about it, because I think you always need to have a little mystery in your beach bag. And the story here, it's called Fortune favors the dead. And the author is Susan Jane Wright. It's a classic mystery. You can tell that the author has read a lot of them. There's a heroine that you can get behind. It takes place at the Banff Springs Hotel. Have you ever heard of that

Unknown:

hotel? I've heard of Banff, but not of the particular hotel

Amy Tyler:

to kind of set the scene, the Canadian National railroad, when it formed, started to throw up these very gorgeous over the top hotels. So people have places to stay, and they all kind of look the same. There's stone there. A lot of them look like a chateau. One of them was the site of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. It's in Quebec City. The Empress is very famous in Victoria. Love the Empress Hotel, yeah. So there, if you know that hotel, there. All kind of like that stately, stately, you know, when you have a murder mystery, it's always good to have, um, like a manor home or a fancy hotel, like an old fashioned setting, there's lots of places to hide. So what happens is, the protagonist is her name is Evie Valentine. And this is the third in a series. In the series, so she's the heroine, and this is the third mystery series that this woman's written, and she is gone to celebrate her favorite law professor. His name is Finn tanberg. Interestingly, on the back of the book, it says the wine is uncorked. But I didn't pick it because it didn't say what wine the food is waiting to be served. So what happens? There's this big ballroom and they're all getting ready to celebrate him, and he doesn't show up. No. So he's been murdered. And then the story follows, like, what's happened? It's set in Alberta, and it involves a visit to Drumheller, which is a major archeological site where there's dinosaur bones. It invites, involves the rare gem and Jewel trade. And then, specifically, there is a I've seen it actually it's, I guess we call it a jewel or a stone. It's called ammonite, and it's from Alberta, and it's made from fossils, from, I think, snails or something. But the result is very it's like a looks like a rainbow. It's not really my, I wouldn't choose it, but it's kind of amazing. It's like, Yellow, Green, Blue, all the stone. Anyway, it's a classic mystery, and this woman has a background in anthropology and law, and it's a page turner, and there's a little bit of humor. So I think it's just kind of a fun little read. And I love, like, I don't like horror, but I do love a murder mystery. Because for me, I never get caught up, like when the person falls off the balcony is happens here. I don't get caught up in that. That doesn't bother me. I just figure that's like, it's not even real. It's all the things that happen.

Unknown:

Just part of the story, you have to have a murder, and the murder is going to happen. Somehow it's going to happen. It's all about, how do they figure out who done it? Yeah. Oh, and

Amy Tyler:

then there's also a natural disaster that could happen. There's there's a flood that might stop everything. So they have to figure out what's happened before the flood happens. So in the front of the book, you can see there's rising water. So liked a lot tell me the name again, Fortune favors the dead. Okay? By Susan, Jane Wright, well,

Unknown:

thank you so much for your recommendations. Thank you. There will be another book themed episode of the podcast coming soon. Have you heard of this guy? My pal, Adam Roberts, no. He's a food blogger. He goes by the name of the Amateur Gourmet. I've been following him since the early 2000s and I had him on the I had him on the show because once I got the podcast up and running, I wanted people on the show that I thought were interesting. And he's a foodie. He's a guy who cooks a lot blogs about it. He worked for Food Network for a short time. He's a former law student who got, you know, he went to law school because his, you know, basically his parents told him to go to law school, and then he decided he hated it and started teaching himself how to cook. He started blogging in the early days of blogging, and then he went to Juilliard and got a master's degree in playwriting, and eventually he wrote a novel, and he has his first novel out. It's called Food person. And I was trying to get him on the show before he went on his book tour, but I was unsuccessful. Now he's back from his book tour. So I'm hoping to have him on the show sometime soon. But look that up, food person by Adam Roberts. That might be something for you to check out. It sounds like a fun, fun book. Okay, all right. You putting it on your list there. Okay, good. So your podcast, the Red Fern book review podcast, now has a sponsor, as you just mentioned. How did that come about? What does it mean? Does it mean for you?

Amy Tyler:

So they approached me. So in truth be told, I have been I've had some life events happen, so I've been a bit distracted. Yes, we talked about it, and then I've done I've had to work on more paying work, so I'm doing more editing writing. But they approached me and we talked about it, and they needed, and wanted a Canadian book podcaster to talk about, it's Canadian book club awards. I said, Sure, I've actually never done this before. I'm curious if you have two. I just did it, and it went really well, but I was pretty nervous. I juggled four authors together. In fact, there should have been five, but he didn't, oh, that was the, that was the episode you just put out. Yeah, three. Sorry, three authors supposed to have been four, but it was, you know what? It went really well. And you know why it went well was because they were all so excited, because they've just published their books, and they were kind of all exchanging information. It was

Unknown:

kind of self perpetuating, kind. Conversation among the three of them, that's right?

Amy Tyler:

And at one point, which I cut this out, they kind of forgot I was there, right? And I didn't mind that. I thought, Well, that's good, because they're all, you're doing

Unknown:

a great job if you facilitated the conversation to the point where the guests, I can't imagine having multiple guests. You know, when you see it on TV, when there's all these boxes, yeah, all these people, and they're like, let's talk about this person. Let's talk to you. Now, what do you think that's not what I want to do. But no, the episode was great. I like the way they were all talking to each other and kind of bouncing off each other, and congratulations to you for for putting something like that together.

Amy Tyler:

Thanks. It was fun. I mean, I really enjoyed it, but I was surprised because I wasn't really looking forward to juggling multiple people. Someone gave me some advice, because initially what I was doing was just kind of asking each person, trying to spotlight each person, and someone said to me, why don't you figure out some commonality? Each question should apply to more than one of them, and then

Unknown:

that sure they're all authors, so there's questions that will apply to all of them, sure,

Amy Tyler:

but find something that they had in common, and it kind of went from there.

Unknown:

That was a fun listen. Thank you. That's the latest episode, right? Yeah, Amy's podcast is the Red Fern book review podcast. It's available wherever you find podcasts. That was a great selection of books, potential summer reads. Are there some podcasts you're looking forward to catching up on this summer? Are there podcasts you hear about and think, oh, I should check that out and then just don't get around to it, because who has that much time, right?

Amy Tyler:

Well, what I wanted to do, I wanted to recommend two that I've just gotten into that I don't think everyone's listening to that. Maybe you might like one is Monica Lewinsky has a podcast. Oh, I it is really good. What's it called? It's, in fact, it makes me cry. It's amazing. It's called reclaiming, okay, it's actually really good. She just has a variety of people on what happened to her comes up, but it's more what I find very interesting is everybody on that automatically comes on and is super vulnerable with her because of what

Unknown:

she's been through, right, right? What she is famous for, she doesn't come

Amy Tyler:

across as bitter, you know, she's moved on with her life, but, but that's, you know, it's just a fascinating thing, because she is known everywhere she goes, and she struggled to get jobs. She hasn't, yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure, her term relationship, but she's, she's, hasn't had a lot of things happen that probably would have happened for her, but she's a very good interviewer. And then the other one that I really like is David Duchovny has podcast, and it's really good. He went to Yale. He's kind of got this. He does not have an energetic personality, but he's

Unknown:

very low, low energy. Is that what you're saying?

Amy Tyler:

Kind of low energy, but has really cool people on, has really cool discussions. Okay? It's called fail better. And the idea is to fail, I think, quickly and often. So one he just had on, James fry. Do you know who that is? So that's really interesting. So James fry has on a new has a new book out, and they had a really interesting conversation. I

Unknown:

had heard about that because there was some, you know, headline somewhere about James fry and what he was, what he's also very infamous for,

Amy Tyler:

for people that don't know you probably do know. It depends, I guess maybe on your age. He wrote a book. It was picked by Oprah, and he wrote about his drug addiction. But it turns out that it he majorly

Unknown:

embellished, certain Yeah, it was, it was, it was, to a certain extent, a phony story.

Amy Tyler:

Well, it's interesting, though, because he talks about, now there's a term for it, called Auto fiction, and he says, I kind of coined that. But it is interesting. It is interesting. He did lie, but it is a little bit about the industry itself, and it's a whole bunch of things. You know, he's had a lot happen, but it was a really good

Unknown:

conversation. What's the David Duchovny podcast? Called, again, called fail better. I was hoping it was called, The truth is out there, Scully.

Amy Tyler:

And you know, of course, where that? You know, of course, where the X Files was filmed? Was it in

Unknown:

Vancouver? Yes, I didn't know that. Truth be told, I never watched The X Files.

Amy Tyler:

Well, people got mad at him because he used someone asked him, How do you like Vancouver? And he says, It rains too much. Oh, yeah. And then everyone got mad at him here, but, I mean, it does rain a lot here. I mean,

Unknown:

rains a lot there. I you know, I'm from Seattle. It's the same kind of thing.

Amy Tyler:

It's a true thing.

Unknown:

I don't know. He's just telling you the truth.

Amy Tyler:

It rains all the time. Well, that's true.

Unknown:

Thanks for coming back on the show. Well, thanks for having me, even though our president is an idiot who thinks Canada should be the 51st state. What do they think up there about that?

Amy Tyler:

Well, I'm gonna try to stay out of the politics. But what I will say, I do like our the new prime minister. Oh, yeah. And there's a I will say. There are a couple of funny if people want to Google it. There's a funny little video where he's in a lineup. It was at the g7 conference, and he's standing next to Macron and Trump is talking, and he turns over and does a very, very subtle wink at I just also saw another video of him dancing. He enjoys live music, and so I thought that was kind of fun, that he's a person.

Unknown:

And what I say a lot of the times is it's a good thing there is wine.

Amy Tyler:

Yes, it's true.

Unknown:

The tall Mike wine podcast was conceived and is written, produced, edited and maintained by yours truly, to see behind the scenes pictures of all the wine and my continuing mastery of reels. Follow me on Instagram at talm like wine. How about some official tall Mike wine podcast coasters? Send me an email, and I'll get some out to you. The email is tall Mike wine@gmail.com now I'd like you to seriously consider becoming a paid sponsor of the show, just a few bucks a month, three, 510, well, 10, if you're someone in that tax bracket, it will help out a lot. You know? What else would help you? Sharing this podcast with a friend. If you like this episode, share it with your bookish friends, or your Wino friends, ideally, you have friends who are both, and be sure you're subscribed, because there'll be a new episode coming soon. For now, thanks to Amy Tyler for hanging out and thank you for hanging out. I'm Mike stone. Keep swirling. Keep sniffing, keep sipping. Cheers. You.