For this 13th episode of the Podcast, we go meet Fabrizio Bucella. We were lucky to film our interview at G IV in Paris, a superb wine bar we recommend. Fabrizio opens up about his journey and his various books. We hope you enjoy the interview and if you do, don’t forget to share it.
Fabrizio, can you introduce yourself?
My name is Fabrizio Bucella, I was born in Milan and I live in Brussels. I arrived in my parents’ luggage at age 6. I’m a professor at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, I’m a physicist and a doctor in sciences. So I teach mathematics and physics. I also have a second life that’s growing: that of an oenophile.
How did your passion for wine come about?
This passion for wine came from a trip in my final year of high school at age 17. They took us to Avallon in Burgundy and we visited Burgundy. It was a revelation: a new sensory universe I didn’t know. I came back telling myself, one way or another, wine will be part of my life. It was a kind of promise I made to myself at 17. Wine ended up being part of my life.
When I went to university, I started taking introductory oenology classes. After my doctoral thesis, I got a sommelier qualification. As an academic, you feel that to be able to discuss wine, it’s better to have a title. As an anecdote, at the end of the final oral exam, they asked me “why do you want to get involved in the wine world?” and I answered “because I want to be like you”. I wanted to do what he was doing: teach wine and pass on a passion.
Were you already doing your doctorate on wine?
One point was already connected with wine but I hadn’t realized it. It’s sensory analysis. I did a doctorate in acoustics. I had to analyze speech signals and set up a sensory qualification. Unlike with wine, we had objective information. I discovered the fundamentals of sensory analysis which I find fascinating and which I now apply in wine.
Are you considered an unusual person in the academic world?
Yes, totally. That’s certain. Physicists have a reputation for being the most offbeat scientists. It’s certain I’m considered offbeat. In the wine world, you can see it from the way I teach: I always refer to research articles and a scientific corpus. In all my books there’s a substantial bibliography that comes from researchers. It’s the most interesting thing: making sure to popularize results that would otherwise stay internal to a small scientific community.
What happens after your doctorate?
While I was at the university I had representative mandates. They sent me to a ministerial cabinet where I become chief of staff to a minister. After a while this story tires me a lot and I take back my teaching duties and classes. I stop these political stories and the passion for wine develops more and more.
Did you manage to keep being passionate about wine during your time in the ministerial cabinet?
I do nothing else. I leave the cabinet sometimes at impossible hours, but I do tons of tastings, I run friends’ clubs. It’s a bit crazy in terms of involvement. At one point, I no longer knew how to do both things at the same time. There’s a kind of sincerity in the wine world that has always struck me and always touched me. So many people are great enthusiasts. Obviously, you shouldn’t be naive about the wine world but at the end of the story there’s a sincerity through this product that can’t be relocated, by the women and men who make it. I find much more fulfillment in the wine world than in the political world.
Every morning I get up telling myself I’m incredibly lucky to have the life I have. My mom tells me “as long as it lasts”. That’s what Napoleon’s mom said. My mom tells me regularly with a smile.
How did your loved ones experience your move into the wine world?
I have the habit of always consulting a lot and listening, except for decisions that are intimate. My loved ones experienced it as they experienced it. One morning I got up and I said “this is how it will be”. My loved ones looked at me telling themselves it was another one of my whims but it’s now been a few years it’s lasted.
Let’s go back to your first book: l’antiguide du vin
I absolutely didn’t have the idea for the book. It’s an idea from my editor and my publisher: the house Dunod. They had noticed the countless articles I was publishing. Between this first contact and the signing of the contract, a year went by. The idea was to make an extremely mainstream book with questions you don’t dare ask. To take an example: does red wine help to have a better erection. The answer is yes provided you take only one glass of wine and preferably pinot noir.
The making of the book is completely Bucellian. I gathered my students many times to create the questions. We had a database of 500 questions. We then drew 90 from it. There’s still room to make a volume 2 or a volume 3.
How is this book perceived in the wine world?
The wine world received it very well. We find ourselves on April 4, 2018 after an epic on a motorcycle taxi, I arrive live on Julien Courbet’s show. It was the exact day of the book’s release. We were number 1 in sales the next day. There was a kind of popular success and great reviews from specialists. The latter recognized that, despite the lightness of the questions and their treatment, there was always at least one study that validated the point.
You then publish Pourquoi boit on du vin? How does the transition between these two books happen?
It doesn’t happen. I wasn’t yet in the relationship I was in with my editor. I have a coffee with her to discuss l’antiguide and I tell her I have the idea to make a book about my classes and my conferences. “Pourquoi boit on du vin?” is composed of 10 chapters that correspond to 10 conferences. Everything was reworked, summarized or extended.
I explain to my editor that I had this idea and that I had contact with another publisher who would be delighted to do this project with me. My editor tells me “that’s great, but we’re going to do it together”. And I answer “of course” because I’ve always been absolutely correct in all the places I’ve been. I contacted my interlocutor again to tell him I’d do it with my editor. Now we have other projects with Dunod with a new book on umami.
Pourquoi boit on du vin? It’s a book made from your classes.
Exactly. A large part of the book is written from transparencies. Today you’d have to say PowerPoints or slides. I really like this maxim from a colleague: “to teach is to learn twice”. It’s absolutely true. When you put a class on transparencies and teach it, you master it much better. I never redo the same class twice, it’s always reworked. So there’s an improvement each time of this content. I usually say this book is the result of 9 years of work and 9 months of writing. I’ll surely do a sequel but not right away. I didn’t pull it out of my pen just like that. This kneading, this intellectual rumination took time. If people pay for a book, they should get their money’s worth.
So, why do we drink wine?
I drink it to talk about it. That’s what we’re doing here! I really love teaching and passing on. I’m a transmitter of knowledge. I find fulfillment in my overall activity as a teacher. I drink wine to be able to do that and, for now, it works so as long as it lasts.
How do your students perceive you?
I have a first-year math class where there are 460 at the start of the year, today there are 400. This year it was the generation of 2001. Since last year we’ve moved to another millennium. How they perceive me is a good question but you’d have to ask them. I try, in my classes, to be as dynamic and interesting as possible. I have only one rule: there’s no gift for teaching. There’s only work, work and work. When you’re going to give three hours of class, you must know your class, have reviewed it, have anecdotes. If you have class at 9am, I don’t go to a restaurant the night before. There’s a physical side. It prepares ahead of time. You have to be physically fit because that’s the minimum of what I give to the students. They give me what they have most precious: their time.
How do you find the time to do everything you do?
It’s seen quite quickly. I’ve always been hyperactive and I’ve never been treated. I fill my days well to allow myself to do all these things. There’s a gently pathological side but as long as it stays for the good and I’m not bothering anyone, all is well.
Pourquoi boit on du vin is a success?
Yes it’s rather a success. For an essay, it’s rather a success in terms of sales and feedback from critics. They asked me a lot to give conferences for example. It was hugely requested in universities and schools. When possible I take advantage to make a tour in the châteaux. I teach at the University of Bordeaux so I know the vineyard relatively well. When I was in Marseille I took advantage to tour around Aix. I’m always very happy to do it.
You then release “mon cours d’accords mets et vins”, how did you write it?
It was a horror to write. There are other classes in this collection (notably a class on oenology by Marie Dominique Bradford). I give food and wine pairing classes that are extremely well dialed in. I told myself it would be a week’s job. In fact not at all. We drowned in this work. It’s really the book I would have wanted to have when I learned to do food and wine pairings. That’s where I put in place the method I explain with the cross diagram. In this book we start from the wine to pair with the right foods and the right meal.
There are many pairings I’ve tasted and many pairings I do in my classes. For example, the pairing with mozzarella, oil and lemon juice that I must have done dozens of times in my classes. All the pairings present in the book have been tested. The idea is for the reader to make up their own mind. I give them the basics of understanding food and wine pairings and the underpinnings of these.
I received a message from Olivier Bompas who told me he really liked the book. Having that kind of recognition is really wonderful.
Buy Mon cours d’accords mets et vin
Can we say a word about your latest book on umami?
Yes, of course. So the book is about umami. It’s about monosodium glutamate which is a derivative of the fermentation process. We find it in wine, but also in beer, in chocolate, in sauerkraut, sausage, yogurts, cheeses. It’s a flavor enhancer produced on a large scale by the agri-food industry to be able to sprinkle very poorly made dishes. What the book wishes to explain to the reader is first the history of monosodium glutamate, how to recognize it. To go further, the book seeks to explain how to cook with ingredients that naturally contain monosodium glutamate but by banning all foods that have added monosodium glutamate. We open the door so the reader can have pleasure in modifying their preparations. The book ends with about forty recipes from traditional Italian cuisine.
On top of all that, there’s IWD which you direct. What is it?
It’s a wine school. We teach how to talk about wine. We teach students (without speaking of age) to taste, to describe a wine, to be able to master the codes of tasting. There are three levels. At the end, they get a tasting aptitude certificate that allows them to participate in international competitions. The objective is to make this knowledge available to as many people as possible. We have both corporate requests and consumers we follow for as long as they wish.
There’s online training. It’s a whole thing. We have free online training that’s on the YouTube channel. It allows you to get a lot of basics and I’m interested in getting feedback about it.
So don’t hesitate to follow Fabrizio on Instagram to give him feedback.
Have you had a recent favorite tasting?
Yes, it’s nothing new but I really love rather acidic and fresh wines. I always have a favorite wine that follows me. It’s the famous Morgon Côte du Py by Jean Foillard. He’s a historic Beaujolais winemaker in a biodynamic, organic, natural trend. I really love this wine, it’s dense, there’s volume, magnificent acidity and no deviation. It’s not a current favorite but a favorite period. It’s a wine that’s deceptively easy with exceptional winemaker work.
Do you have a wine book to recommend?
I recommend a book made by a colleague from the University of Burgundy. It’s Christophe Lucand who made a magnificent book called Le Vin et la Guerre. It’s a fairly dense work that just came out in paperback with a slightly reduced edition. He manages to talk about this complicated period with arrangements with the occupying power. He does it with a neutral side, getting away from romanticized stories that we want to tell. History isn’t always pretty to hear but it’s well documented and never preachy. It’s a very nourishing work that reads very well. I recommend the paperback edition which costs a few euros and reads very well.
Do you have a person to recommend for the other interviews?
I could recommend you interview Christophe Lucand but I’ve fired the cartridge. I’d go to Jacques Dupont. He’s the wine correspondent for Le Point. He’s a friend in terms of ideas and worldview. He has one of the most beautiful and most structured visions of wine. He’s a fabulous storyteller. He’s well-read and quotes books from memory. He has an extremely aesthetic and very democratic approach to the wine world. He put his intelligence at the service of wine. Another characteristic is that he systematically refuses all press trips to be neutral and independent. He’s lucky to have a media outlet that supports him but there’s no story of gifts and counter-gifts since he’s a bit detached. I have a lot of admiration for him.
