An Interview with Travel Host Vince Anter

Estimated reading time: 11.5 minutes (2326 words)

Wine is one of the most ancient and widely-loved drinks in the world. There are more than 10,000 varieties of grapes grown around the world, including the Midwest. But for many people, wine can be a confusing, overwhelming, and exclusionary experience.

Vince Anter started his YouTube show V is for Vino to counter these perceptions and educate people about wine from every walk of life. His show takes him around the world to wine growing regions where he meets growers, producers, chefs, and everyone in between. His channel has gained more than 50,000 subscribers and he is now on his fourth season.

Below, he talks about his background, his passion for wine, and his plans for the show.

You’re from Cleveland originally and went to DePaul for school. What drew you to Chicago in the first place and how do you view the city now?

I came to Chicago because I wanted to get a music degree. I wasn't into wine at this point. I got into the music program at a few other schools in Ohio and Michigan but I visited DePaul and I just fell in love with the city pretty instantly. I was just incredibly taken aback. I'd never really been to a big city. I grew up in Cleveland. We didn't travel that much as a kid and it just had this great energy about it. I knew I wanted to be here.

I actually didn't get into the Music School at DePaul but I came anyway because you can go to the school to get your general education requirements out of the way and then you can try again for the Music School. The second year I attempted it and I didn’t get in again. I was just devastated.

After I didn't get into music school, I ended up going to the IT school and there was an opportunity to study abroad. It was a government program. They were trying to encourage collaboration between international schools, so I took the program.

I studied a year abroad for free because the government subsidized it. It was six months in France and six months in Sweden. During that time, I fell in love with travel, and culture, and wine culture and all of that. I just decided that I was going to have to find a way to do this the rest of my life.

What got you interested in wine specifically, as opposed to beer, spirits, or other aspects of the hospitality industry?

I'm actually in all of it. The reason I ended up leaning deep into wine is because I feel like you can go deeper with wine, but I like all of it.

I went to L.A. to try and continue to be a musician after I got my IT degree. So I was still working in restaurants and bars to pay the bills. I liked that there was like a never ending well you could go to for wine. You could just keep learning and keep diving. I liked it. It was so intrinsically connected to food. I'm really into new food experiences.

Sure, cocktails and beer can pair but I do think wine is at a different level. The pairing component of it was fun to me. I just love that with wine, whatever your niche is, whatever you're into, you can find it. If you'd like to get your hands dirty and be in the dirt you can get into a bit of culture of style. If you're a history buff, there's tons of history with wine. If you're a soil nerd, there's that. If you're a lab nerd, you can get in there and be part of the technical side. If you're into commerce, you can get into collecting and trading. It really has all of these aspects to it and that's one of my favorite things about it.

You said that food and wine pairings are one of your favorite parts of learning about wine. In your opinion, what's your favorite food and wine pairing that you go back to?

I'm a sucker for off-dry wines and spicy foods. That could be riesling and Thai food, or a slightly off-dry Gewürztraminer with Indian curry. I like that sweet-spicy contrast combo. Those tend to be some of the most interesting combinations you'll find. It brings something new to the palate.

Let's take a step back and talk about your show V is for Vino. Where did the idea for the show come from in the first place?

When I was in Chicago I wanted to work at a restaurant in Lincoln Park called Sappori Trattoria. Initially they wouldn't hire me because I didn’t have wine knowledge. So I said “all right, how do I get this wine knowledge?” I Googled it and I did my best to learn and I found that there were no good resources out there, in my opinion.

I went through the formal Sommelier education and it was really challenging and really inaccessible and really expensive. It also took the fun out of it. For me, I didn't mind taking this formal class where you have to take a test and then you have to do this big service exam and you have to wear a suit and do flashcards and give up a year of your life. I was happy to get that certification. But it's not for people who aren't in the industry.

What if you're just an average consumer? When I got out of that process I decided “how can I make this simpler for people?” My initial plan was actually not to make a show. My initial plan was to make a wine club that then happened to have some videos attached. But I learned quickly that it's just insanely challenging to ship wine in this country. You really need a lot of resources. I could go on for a long time about how the system is rigged by lobbyists and wholesalers who keep small competition out. But the reality is it just wasn't an option for me.

I already made some videos and I put those out and those got traction. People will really reach out to me and they say “I've learned more from your videos than I did from years of going to tastings.” There was an instant demand for what we had done in the first season of the show, which was all bootstrapped. I just paid for it myself. So I said, “Hey, why don't I just lean into this component of it?”

Fast forward and we're building our fifth season. We’ve got 18 episodes out and a couple more coming this year.

Tell me a little bit about the process for putting an episode together. How do you decide on a destination and what's the filming process?

It's a long process. I'm simultaneously working on a couple different episodes at a time. From the beginning of deciding where we're going to go, pitching that, and putting it together to release the product, it’s usually over a year, maybe sometimes even a little longer depending on what it is.

What I try to do is to create a balanced season. I want different places and I want different styles of wine. I want different cultures. I want to try and balance. I always try and do one domestic destination.

This season, we did Virginia for domestic and I want to try to do one of the classic regions. Rôhne just came out. For this season we hadn’t done anything in South America, so now we have Chile. We filmed it and that's coming out in the next couple months. And I was like “what else is off the beaten path that people wouldn't expect?” So we're going to Lebanon.

Those are the main episodes for this season. I just try and vary it so that it's a little bit everything.

Do you have any tips specifically for people who are new to wine and they're not sure where to start? Wine can seem very overwhelming, a little bit exclusionary, a little bit elitist. For somebody in that mindset, what are your top tips?

I definitely have some good insights and some of them are going to be a bit painful.

People don't like to hear it but number one, and it's always my number one, is just don't buy wine from the grocery store. Never. There's structures in place that are put there by lobbyists, and basically all the shelf space in all major grocery stores are dominated by a few brands. Even though it looks like choice, it's the illusion of choice because there are a lot of wines that are owned by the same conglomerates. They're all made in a very ubiquitous style. They're meant to be inoffensive to anybody. Wines that have interesting and unique character are frowned upon in the grocery store.

The other thing is that a grocery store chain has to have wines that can go in every single one of those stores. These are big mass produced wines in America in particular, and not so much in Europe because they have laws against it. But in America, the big mass produced wines means producers will manipulate and add all sorts of additives and flavorings.

Number two: taste your wine side by side. What happens is that people try one wine one day and one the next day. It’s very, very important to taste two wines side by side. Start with having them very, very different. Get polar opposite wines and then you can start to say, “Okay, I liked this one. I didn't like this one.”

Number three: start drinking the way that a lot of Europeans do, which is based on the place and not based on the grapes. In America, we list everything by grape, but in Europe, they list everything by place. There's a reason they do that. To me, the place is more indicative of the style of wine, and what you're gonna get, then just a grape alone.

I really, really preach that if you find a place that you'd like, try more wines from that place. So if you're like, “Oh man, I had this great cabernet from Bordeaux, France,” well then try the Merlots from Bordeaux. Get into their white wines, try more from that place because a lot of times the place is so indicative of the style.

This seems to be a polarizing question in the wine community, but what's your take on natural wines? Some people say it's a cult and other people are all about it. Where do you stand?

That's the problem, that it’s usually one or the other, right? I always equate it to classical guys versus jazz guys. They think that the other side is just insane.

I don't mind them. I think most wines have an occasion. A lot of people use the term “natural” to cover up and diminish fault in the wine. There's faulty wines that are well made and not natural, and there's faulty natural wines. Sometimes a natural wine will be faulty and people will say, “Oh, well, it's just natural. That's just what it is.”

There are some amazing natural wine producers out there and there's also some amazing biodynamic wines. I'm fine with anything as long as it's produced well. There's a lot on both sides that are produced well, and there's a lot produced poorly, so that's more important.

Do you have a favorite wine shop or a wine bar in Chicago?

Yeah, my buddy's wine shop, Juice@1340. He's got a great shop, but he's moving for a larger space.

I also love Good Funk Winebar. I love the Somm there, his name is Colin. He’s the Somm for the entire restaurant group that also does the restaurant Porto. Now Porto is a really, really high end Portuguese restaurant, so if you want to do that, go do that experience. They have this great bar that has a lot of conservas and they have a great wine list. I think most of it is natural. That's an example of a good natural wine bar that I think is awesome and the food is amazing.

Binny’s also has a good selection because it's a wine-specific shop. They have relationships with producers, and I don't consider Binny’s a grocery store. They specialize in wine. They have some cheap stuff too, but if you're looking for something specific, a lot of times Binny’s will have it.

Can you offer any sneak peeks for upcoming episodes? You teased Chile on your Instagram, but I'm curious what's in store for the season.

Chile is coming and that's a special episode. We've been trying to get to South America for so long and finally we were able to do it. We're gonna throw people for a loop because we're actually going super high end with this episode and showing a different side of Chile. That will be really fun.

We're filming Lebanon in September, and I cannot wait for it. I'm half Lebanese so I've been trying to go there for a long time. Telling their stories is super important.

And then I am filming Languedoc as well. I'm going with Gérard Bertrand as the featured producer in that episode. He’s a really special guy who basically defined and pioneered that region.

I typically do episodes where I try to feature at least three or four wineries, if not more. But every once in a while there's a story that I think makes sense to tell in the region and Gérard Bertrand is one of those, so that'll round out the rest of this season.

I'm already pitching for next year. I've got one location locked in for next year, too, which is hopefully the Loire Valley in France, which is a region that I've wanted to go to for a long time. My favorite wines on the planet come from the Loire Valley. I'm super excited.

"With wine, whatever your niche is, whatever you're into, you can find it:" An Interview with Travel Host Vince Anter