It’s All Natural

Editor’s Note: I first met Chris Lingua back in May of 2021 in Phoenix, AZ. I had absolutely zero ideas what all-natural wine was. And yet, by the end of our private tasting with Chris, I knew I was a fan of his for life.

Chris’ ability to create and tell stories about wine is first-class. However, the best part about him is his low-ego attitude to what is arguably one of the world’s snobbiest industries. I’ve had the pleasure of dining at some of the world’s best establishments, but drinking wine with Chris may top them all.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the entire conversation here.

Chris’ Origin Story

Cornelius McGrath
Who the hell is Chris Lingua? And how does he think about the world?

Chris Lingua

Oh boy. If I have to go to my most elemental self, I am someone who is very sensitive in the sense of my surroundings and how my presence affects other people and how I can enhance other people’s experiences around me. Since I was a little kid, I’ve always loved pointing out things that I think will make people happy. I was cooking and worked in restaurants for a long time and worked in corporate distribution, and there were always those same common denominators. I just loved showing people things that I think would make them happier.

They were always things that I was passionate about. I could never really fake it. And ultimately, that was great for me in the corporate world, but that’s also what pushed me out of it because I didn’t believe in everything I was selling, and I wanted to do that. And then that’s how we landed on these low intervention wines, and thus the whole back half of my life is what it seems.

So tell me, as a kid, how would you make people happy before you could drink?

It was always situational, but it was almost always around food for the most part. There were times when I was little. I was born on the West Coast in California, but I lived in Miami in Florida for about five, six years. When I was a kid, one of the earliest times I can trace back was a little bit of pain and pleasure. I was swinging on this gate with my neighbours in Florida, and they have these trees that have roots that come up out of the ground. The gate had caught one of those roots, and it hit me in the face, and it almost cut the corner of my eyelid. I wasn’t so bothered by that, but the neighbour’s mother was really upset and hoping that I was okay.

And she just asked if she could make me anything. And she said she was going to make grilled cheeses for her kids. And I asked her very politely if she had any Feta cheese. I had discovered Feta cheese the week before randomly. I think my mom had put it in a dinner or something. And just that experience of having something change my perspective or just enhance even a salad or a sandwich for me as a kid. I wanted to share that with other people. And so not only did I ask her for it, but I went and got some from my house and used it on my sandwich, which in hindsight, isn’t a delicious-sounding sandwich. But it really was the first moment I remember saying like, “Hey, have you heard of this? Let me show you. I think you might like it.” That carried me through life.

So tell me about the food environment you grew up in. You obviously mentioned your mom throwing a bit of Feta on a meal. Are you from a family of foodies and people who really know their stuff?

The most important thing that happened when I was growing up was that my mom hated cooking the same thing. So by default, I was just automatically trying new things every night, whether I liked them or not. At the time, I would like most kids get stuck on one thing or like, “oh, I wanna make this again, or let’s have this again tonight.” She always forced me out of that by what she wanted to make. And so that was something that I resisted at first, but then came to love and kind of made me who I am as far as how I approached food and beverage from a living perspective and for pleasure. When I took up cooking when I got started getting serious about it, like after high school, my dad also kind of really got into it. It became a hobby of his, so he’s a great cook. But it wasn’t something that we did early, and it was mostly mom’s influence at the time.

Wow. And so tell me, when you tell me the moment when you knew you wanted to get serious. Was it a specific meal or conversation?

Well, there were several moments that then reinforced each other, and it built on top. And I remember my dinner for my 21st birthday. I remember an experience that was the first time I ever had anything, in my opinion, that was a complete meal. Meaning starts off with a certain beverage that’s meant to be started off with. It’s meant to start your experience. Then transition into something that goes with each course. And then a finishing, not necessarily a nightcap, but just something that goes with dessert and something that you sip on at the end. And I had never had a full bookend meal like that. And it was revelatory. When I was getting out of high school is when Emeril Lagasse was taking off on the Food Network.

And so I really gravitated towards, I think first, the passion that he expressed in what he did. And I’d never seen that. Dining out as a teenager, you’re usually going to just some rink-a-dink Italian joint, which is great and very nostalgic to this day. But you never have any interaction with a chef. Yeah. So it was really kind of a behind the scenes “is this what all of them are like?” kind of moment. And it was really the start of what I think is eating and drinking today. So we’re talking about like 1999, 2000, 2001 when that kind of TV chef exploded or started, and then gave way to what we see today: top Chef and all these other things. There was none of that before. It was just Julia Childs.

And maybe if you were in Europe, you had someone on a local station. But it was few and far between. I didn’t know any male figures that were chefs because you always thought of either your mom cooking or, like I said, a Julia Child’s figure where it was something that mothers did. It was their love language. And so seeing someone who was not only a professional at it and had restaurants and was successful but show it as something that could be their love language too. I attached to that early on. For the first kind of quarter of my interest in food and beverage, it was always around cooking, and it was at the time I just wanted to open a gastropub, and I wanted to just do really great food simply. That’s never changed, but that was the first of things that made me think, “this is gonna be my path.”

And so, where’d you go from there?

Before I decided it was going to be my path, I grew up in a family of many medical professionals, and my father was an ophthalmologist. So I figured, “well, I’ll be an optometrist then”, and I’ll do that half of the business, and you do the other half to do this surgery side. And maybe we could do that. And he was like, “well, you know, give it a crack. I hate for you to feel pressure to do it, but you know, if, if you truly wanna do it, go for it.”

And so I applied to only one school, and it was kind of a thing where I was like, “if I don’t get in, then that’s my sign. And if I do, then that’s a sign as well.” So I applied to Berkeley optometry school. And it just was one of those years. I got a call from them and a letter saying, “Hey, you’re a great applicant, but we had a boost in applicants this year kind of raise the bar a little. A quarter higher than it normally is. And these are schools that we recommend you apply to.” And yeah, and I stuck to my guns. I treated that as a sign that it just wasn’t meant to be. And so, instead of reapplying, I moved out to Arizona and figured, “Hey, this is a place that’s got a burgeoning dining scene, but it’s not as saturated as the southern Los Angeles market. So why don’t I go there?” It’s still within an arms reach of home, but I think that’s where I would like to grow with a city rather than kind of enter a saturated market.

On Chris’ Move to Arizona

Was there much thought into Arizona? Were there other cities like your list of schools you were thinking of?

It was really the closest large market that, like I said, was still half days drive from home. And to be honest, I really actually do not enjoy the heat at all. So on paper, it actually made no sense. So it was really just an instinctual thing. And at the time I was kind of just learning to listen to my instincts. And it was one of those times where it was just, I couldn’t explain it. It was just, it was truly a calling to just come out here because otherwise if you asked me now, I’d be like, “why’d you not go to the Pacific Northwest where you love the weather? Why would you go to the dry, hot desert?” So, yeah, it was truly one of those moments where it was almost not up to me anymore.

So you arrive in Arizona. What was the first gig you had? Were you immediately in the kitchen?

When I arrived, I decided the easiest way to kind of get integrated was to just pick up an associate’s degree from one of the culinary schools. So I was like, “you’ll meet some of the instructors they’ll have connections. You can get a place to live, you can get a lead on a gig pretty quickly.” So that’s what happened. I had a professor reach out to a local chef who I still know today and got a job interview within the first couple weeks I moved here. They actually were a restaurant group that was gonna open three or four concepts simultaneously within the next year.

Now, this is 2008 kind of pre-market crash. They were gonna do this aggressive rollout and they were like, “well, we’ll definitely hire you for one of these kitchens, but in the meantime, we’ll have you at our flagship restaurant. Just bus tables, drop off waters, like a server’s assistant.”

At the same time, I was going to school. And so I was cooking during the day and then doing that at night. And rather quickly, someone was out and called in sick to the kitchen one night. And I got onto the dessert station. After that, I did so well that they just kind of kept plugging me in. And then before I knew it, I was actually working in the kitchen there and not working in the front of the house anymore. I still know all the people from that job today. And they have restaurants of their own now. That was the first kind of contact I made with that group and everything branched out from there.

What do you think they noticed about you?

There are those moments where I realized that there is a certain path I have to walk down and I can kind of just feel it in my bones. I don’t know if they felt the same thing. If they noticed it through talking to me during the interview because it was a very short interview. But I was basically at the time just like,
“whatever it takes. It doesn’t matter to me. You could put me on the roof, sweeping out the gutters. It doesn’t matter. I just want to start here have this be my entry point.” It was pretty relentless, but they didn’t have to make me prove how relentless I was. It was more, “OK. Yeah, you’re in, we’ll just stick you somewhere and then eventually you’ll find your way and that’s exactly how it happened.”

And so how long did you spend in restaurants?

Well, once I moved here I was in them for four and a half years. From the beginning of 2009 till about the middle of 2013. And within those four and a half years, it was a flurry of positions. Just trying to get the most experience I could possibly get. From cooking to managing to bartending. Any job to just kind of round my skill set out, I would take it. And so I did. And you kind of had the string jobs like that together at the time too. Because not a lot of them paid a lot unless they were some of the gigs that had gratuity involved. But I was just like I’ll string together whatever I can. The most important thing for me is just learning this industry as fast as I can and getting to the part where I put my foot out there and show I can offer something up to the scene. And that’s exactly what happened.

What vision were you chasing? I’m so curious what your inner monologue was.

Well, rather quickly what you discover when you go into working in a kitchen especially some of the more higher-end, more militant kitchens. You discover very quickly that the most valuable thing that they can give you, even more than money, is the experience working under these chefs. This is slightly changed since. I would say there’s still plenty of high-end restaurants, and apprenticeship programs to work in those restaurants, but it’s not a fever pitch that it was back then. And at the time it was very much earning your way and the whole expectation was for everybody to start at the bottom. And so you learn that if I wanted to go that route and I wanted to actually be a chef-owner you’re either at the top or the bottom and there is really no between.

And when you’re at the bottom, you’re literally working for daily pay and it’s really hard unless you have that drive in that direction. And I discovered that I loved it and I loved being creative with food and I loved cooking and it truly was the closest thing to a love language for me. I liked it much more informal and especially sharing within the comfort of your house or in somebody’s home. To show family members and people I care about that I do. But not something I wanted to do for a living. It almost kind of took the fun out of it for me. When I decided, “well, OK, well then we’ll just start doing everything that that you are attracted to in this industry at the highest level you can do it.”

And so I went after that, it was like, “well, OK, I still wanna be in restaurants, but you know, earn a little bit more money.” And so that’s when I kind of transitioned into the front of the house and bartending. It was a key moment where those people that hired me in the very beginning that I still know today, left to go do their very first project a couple of years after I’d started working for that group. And when they did, it was kind of a mass exodus of three or four groups of management within that company.

They all got their opportunity to do their own thing at the same time when the light started coming back on with the economy. And when that happened, the owner of all the businesses was never reluctant to take a chance on somebody and he gave me the keys to his wine bar and said, “look, you can run this. You can be the general manager. You can be the lead bartender and you can do the food menu.” And I did all those things and I did them for about two and a half years. I kind of put my head down and just went go, go, go and did not let off the gas for a while. You tend to burn out quickly when you do that, but then you also really get just an immersive rapid education in every angle of the hospitality industry. So I did that, it worked out great and I learned a lot of things that I still implement today.

Especially in selling wine rapidly and still getting people on wines quickly. My biggest gift is being able to put somebody on a wine with a few questions. It wasn’t conscious, it just kind of happened where I learned to just ask very pointed questions to somebody and was able to get them on a glass of wine because we were very busy without compromising the service or the romance of the exchange, but never missing either. It was almost a competition for me to just make people trust me. And so that’s when I kind of started understanding that there were more things that I was really good at and could make a living doing and still just cook for pleasure on the side.

And so then that’s when I started kind of veering off into, “well, let’s think about this. You love wine, you always have. And that was always gonna be a part of your future, but maybe never the main driver and, and maybe that is the calling.” At the time that this exchange was going on in my head, I was really diving deep into the world of mixology at the time. It was really starting in 2011, 2010 in Arizona. I mean, it had started a few years earlier in New York and Brooklyn and places like that. But we were starting to roll it out there and, and that was what attracted me because it was like cooking. You’re putting together ingredients, you’re playing with flavour profiles.

There’s a plating session because you’re designing a drink, and especially in very culinary-driven drinks, using arugula and things like that. It was attractive to me. I had to scratch that itch at the time, but I was mentally starting to move towards wine anyway. And that’s when I was like, “OK, well then what’s the next evolution you need to learn. You need to learn what goes on behind the scenes in the sales department. Working for distributors.” And then it became a slow kind of working my way out of the very late nights at that place in a very busy part of town to, “OK, let’s take a step back and start applying to distributors.” It was probably a year later that I got my first. It was exactly a year later that I got my first distributorship job. And then I went down that hole that led me to where I am today.

On Chris’ Move to Wine Distribution.

Why did this guy give you the key to his wine shop? And can you tell me a little bit more about that relationship?

Well, I was pretty reliable. I never called. I acted like and considered myself kind of a soldier. There were no sick days. I just worked very, very, very, very hard and very long. First in the kitchen last out of the kitchen, kind of just a very old school approach. I probably looked a little unhealthy at the time. Because I wasn’t eating a ton, but at the same time I was just very driven and I think that he really had no choice. There wasn’t anybody else that ruly was completely devoted to it and, and could pull that off.

I would come up with featured plates and part of being sensitive is I’m also not very good at masking how I feel. Especially something I’m passionate about. It’s pretty obvious that I am. He’s just he always had a good eye for things, or for talent, I should say, but it was also just I think right place, right time. And there was, was truly no one more hungry than I was at the time.

And what was driving that hunger?

When I’m in France, for instance, just whenever I’m there, it’s the only other time I felt this feeling and it’s just this infinite Abys of energy, life, and, and there is no slowing down. It’s the closest thing to a natural high I’ve ever had in my life. And every minute of every day that I’m in France, for whatever reason I, I’m never tired. I don’t need coffee. I have this wellspring of energy constantly. And I don’t know how else to explain it other than when I find something that’s so true to me in, in whether it’s the culture, whether it’s the culture around eating and drinking, whether it’s the history of the place.

I can’t say it’s any one thing. I think that back then too it was the same thing. I’m one move away from finding out exactly what I want to do. And I was just always chasing that. And never ran out of energy. Never was exhausted. It was physically taking a toll, but it didn’t matter. I mean I was sleeping four hours a night and it was just go, go for that entire time.

Tell me about the world of wine and spirits distribution. I know that’s where you got your start and also where you kind of discovered natural wine. I’m just so curious about that kind of transition away from front of house. How transformative was that for you just in terms of the knowledge it now takes to, to run Sauvage?

So much. It’s like being a road manager for a band. The value in what they know is how to cut corners and save money and where you get taken advantage of. That was my intention in taking that job and moving to the corporate distribution side. To find out what goes on behind the scenes and how to put myself in the best position one day when I will have to be purchasing alcohol in some form. I didn’t know which form at the time. And so when I got hired, it was it a mentor of mine from when I had just gotten out of cooking and was really taking up the mixology mantle.

It was the first kind of “here’s how you do this person.” And they had just gotten a bunch of national awards and were really flying high here locally in Arizona. And it was great. That was my start. And we connected then, and two years later that same person was offered the opportunity to create a whole craft spirits division within one of the or under the umbrella of one of the local distributors. And so they did, and they called me and brought me on as the first of five people to work under them. And so my first entry into the distribution world was through craft spirits. And that was great. It was the perfect pace, but it also offered a lot of travel opportunities and exposure to other things that I didn’t have otherwise.

And it was also great to begin establishing a kind of reputation for being a resource and, and knowing, and, and truly loving what I do within the industry. And that was what I took out with every day while doing that. And then only a year I was in that position and then got moved up to key accounts, which waslike a contractor on a job site where you just kind of make sure the electrician and the plumber are talking to each other and everything’s getting connected correctly for some of the largest accounts here in Arizona. So it was a lot of country clubs resorts and the larger kind of independent chains. And so that was great to kind of also understand how those businesses worked, what worked for them and what didn’t.

And I was constantly just paying attention to that. I was able to do my job well, but for my own self just be constantly observing and taking notes on what works, what doesn’t, what I’m attracted to, what isn’t attractive or how I want to do something. And so, and then that was another two and a half years in that position. And while I was in that position, that’s when I was first onto my longest trip to France. And that’s when I discovered I discovered natural wine. And then I came back and immediately had another trip to Manhattan where as part of a kind of prize for doing really well in some category.

It was William Grant, which is a big scotch importer sponsored the trip. And so they set me up with this reservation at this restaurant. I asked them about what I had just discovered in France and gotten exposed to. And it was just kind of really starting here and really ramping up here and got taken for a whirlwind that night. And I still have the pictures on my phone of those wines and you know, discovering how unfiltered they were and seeing all the sediment in the bottle and just being completely captivated by this whole new. It was almost like the veil was lifted and everything you had thought you knew was no longer held up. And it was one of the most revelatory moments of my life as those two events have happened back to back. And then everything after that was just: “ how do I get out and sell this myself? And share it with Phoenix?” Because if there was no, there was no scene for it at the time.

On Chris’ Love Affair with All-Natural Wine.

For the new listener who’s saying, “what the hell is all-natural wine?” How do you explain it in a few sentences?

What I always tell people is my goal with everything is to always put things in the simplest terms. The most important thing to understand is that if you are a person who believes you can go to the farmer’s market and buy spinach, and if you were to then go to Walmart and buy spinach, that there will be a difference in that difference in that spinach, as far as the quality and what went into, or didn’t go into growing that spinach, then you already understand natural wine.

Natural wine is an agricultural product, but it is one of the last kinds to catch up to people being aware of what’s in it. Long ago, people started paying attention to what was in their food, reading labels, but there are no labels on wine. There are lose to 200 things allowed in wine that aren’t grapes. No one has any idea that that’s the case. Just like with most beer, unless we’re talking about these wild, new age kind of beers that have peanut butter and stuff in them. Previously, Coors Light, Miller Light, all those, all these kinds of generic vodkas, everybody just thought it was three ingredients and there couldn’t be anything else in there.

And the same assumption was with wine. And so if you understand that anything that you want to take from nature and produce on a big scale, you’re going to have to override nature at some point and make mother nature give you more than it naturally would. And when you do that override, you are almost always doing it with things that were created in the lab.

Things that will change a process and standardize the process so that you have consistency. Nature is not like that. Weather is not the same every year. The waves are not the same. The clouds are not the same. Nothing is standardized. And so if you start to do that you’re gonna introduce things into that wine. It could also affect how you feel when you drink that wine. And the wines that I believe are the most expressive and represent where they’re from the best are ones where mother’s nature’s arm isn’t bent or forced into producing something. That’s not what it wanted to give. And as a result, just like when you eat that spinach from the farmer’s market versus spinach from Walmart, you’re gonna feel different after you consume it, it’s gonna treat your body different.

This is something that can be very beneficial when drinking in moderation, just like everything else that we try to do in our lives. For those of us that are conscious of out what we put in our bodies and how it makes us feel and how we go about our day as a result of those ingredients put in our bodies. I think not only does it satisfy that purest part of my personality, but once things are in their raw form. I love records over digital files of music for the same reasons. I love wines produced in this style of doing the least amount possible to achieve the most delicious wine that represents the weather and the climate and the soil, of that place in that time of that year. And that’s really it.

And so how quickly did you fall in love? You talk about this trip to France. Was it instantaneous?

Going back to what we discussed early – what I truly am at my core is someone who likes making other people happy by showing them things. And so this was that next opportunity to do that. It was like, “look what I’ve found everybody. Family, everybody in the industry, you need to try to this, you need to see this, you need to understand this, you need to experience this.” And so I’ve been riding that wave ever since that moment and still do that today, every day in the shop. That is how everybody’s approached if you’ve never had it before. But then all of my folks that have been coming and seeing me for the three years who have just gone on such an amazing journey through the world and had different likes and dislikes and inspirations and favourites and bottles that they opened when they’d gotten married or when a child was born. Some of the most amazing kind of moments not only of my career but just in life It’s something that I feel like truly caters to that more so than something that is that the soul is kind of polished out of.

I love this idea of kind of pursuing something in its rawest form. The history books have shown us great things come from groups of people doing that simultaneously. It could be in the space of business, fiction, golf or tennis.

No interference, right? That’s really, it. There are no extra factors. There’s no X factor. There’s no, “Oh well maybe there’s another reason that you don’t see why you would make this decision.” We wanna strip everything away and just look at it and its raw form and being the most honest with ourselves. And if you can connect that, those two things to anything, you really are gonna find yourself in a place where you don’t really work anymore where you just do what you love.

I adore that. I’ve studied several communities. The Junto being one of them. If you look at the pattern recognition of communities and maybe think about communities here through the lens of like a grape, or something that’s emerging from the ground, it’s really twofold. A lot of these communities come out of hardship, so it could be a recession, it could be something like COVID 19. But the thing that really unites him is the pursuit of something in its truest form. And you’ve got these amazing examples of that throughout history. The Junto with Franklin in the early 1700s. You’ve got the Saturday Club in Boston. You’ve got the all England lawn and tennis club, which is now Wimbledon.You have Augusta, which became, you know, the most famous golf club in the world. And what’s really interesting is you actually look at these things at their inception. All they were were a Chris lingua in their domain looking to pursue something in its truest form. And then obviously the economics, the fame, the the commercial side comes a hell of a lot later, but it’s just that pursuit. And it’s that curiosity tea that it’s is really terrific.

On Chris’ Vision For Sauvage.

So, Chris, I’m so curious. You’re in love with all-natural wine. Tell me what Sauvage had to be for you. Tell me about the story of the shop thus far. You mentioned you’ve kind of been around the last three years. How has the early development been? Where do you think you’re gonna be able to take it as a result of your being this wine DJ that never misses?

So Savage had to be for me a place where not only is it just my showroom to introduce people to something that I think will make their life better. But it had to take all of the things that I didn’t like about selling wine, the wine world itself and strip them out.

And most of those things were the things that I felt would inhibit people from buying wine, pretension, making people feel like they needed to know a lot of information before stepping into a wine shop. They, and I just thought it was the silliest thing that arose out of kind of the commercialized wine world that people would feel like the information was, was a prerequisite to the enjoyment of wine. And that bothered me so much that, that I, I wanted to, to strip all that out.

And, and really my whole, I would say not only approach, but just how I work every day and make decisions is truly to just me make someone discover something based on a few questions that will make them a little better than when they walked in the shop.

And in order to do that, I fell back on the kind of self-taught line of questions that I would present to people back when I was running the wine bar. And in order to carry this shop out, which is, you know, I’m in 160 square feet, it’s a tiny shop. But I maximize every inch of that thing. And it’s just me. So in order to be efficient, not have anybody wait too long, but also skip all of thesignal crossing and just get down to exactly two things and design the shop around these two things, as far as set up and, and the flow of the shop that are the most important thing to someone buying a bottle of wine, in my opinion. And I haven’t been proven wrong in three years.

And those two things are: 1) what flavors do they like or not like? And what’s their budget? That’s it. The rest of it is now on me to then connect them through a few questions to the eventual buy, but we have to start somewhere. And that’s the lowest point. You can start, whether someone is a complete professional or has been around a wine their whole life, or someone is just starting out. Those two things are present in both situations. So I actually take all the technical speak out of it. Yeah. And just describe flavors, textures. And then I make sure that that shop is stocked with options at every level. And at the same time, it’s so small. I have to rotate inventory constantly. So I have to bring in 12 or 15 new members of the cast every week minimum. So also the shop always has a good vibe when you come in.

But the theme kind of changes as the seasons change. You come see my shop coming out of the spring. You’ll see a little less reds than you saw previously. In the prior couple months, you’ll start to see more roses come out in the spring. So the color pattern of the wall as all my bottles are displayed horizontally on the wall for you to see there’s nothing blocking them. The bottle is kind of the presentation and the whole color pattern of the wall will change. And, the goal is that if you came in every day to the shop, you were just in theneighborhood or a neighbor of mine, you would always see something different every day. You could have a new bottle every day, no matter what. And so in designing the shop, in opening the shop, how the shop was run in, in how it’s been practised to this day. Mm. Those have all stayed the kind of original pillars of Sauvage.

On Chris’ View of the Wine World

Why do you think there’s been such idolization of Sommeliers? Have you felt any tension from more established savants? What do people in the wine world think of you? And do you even care?

So the first part I wanna address is the idolization I think was an extension of the rockstar movement of the celebrity chef. And so you had these figures who, before, 20, 30, 40 years ago, were considered some hired help. It wasn’t really a profession, it wasn’t really something you did, if something didn’t work out it wasn’t anything like the world of musicians. And slowly they started to merge where you had the platform of food network and television shows where it was now these people that were almost not even cooking anymore, they were just kind of shaking hands and kissing babies and doing interviews and maybe doing a little cooking competition here and there, but they weren’t even cooking in their restaurants.

Some of them still did, but a majority of them kind of took on this new or blazed this new trail of the celebrity chef. And so I think once that kind of peaked and then kind of leveled off, and especially during the financial collapse of 08 or 09. A lot of people lost their restaurants or downsized big time as a result. Then you had this reemergence of cocktail culture and the attention went from the back of the house now to the front of the house. And of course there was always these people, flare bartending, like Tom Cruise and cocktails in Vegas and places like that.

We had been in the nineties and the two thousands drinking flavored vodkas and, and cosmos, and just all these kinds of goofy modified spirits. I’ve always noticed that, throughout time, whenever you start to kind of industrialize and take something in a commercial way, there’s always this snapback of an artisanal approach. And so just like with chefs now whether it be because of Anthony Bourdain or just sourcing all these new ingredients or making pork belly and f ,these inner kinds of these new exotic ingredients that everybody wanted and we are focusing on preparing everything with the best possible care and technique especially with French cooking. That kind of rose and, and plateaued a little bit.

And so then the next kind of bastion to have this happen was the world of bartending. You kind of saw the rainbows of vodkas behind the bar go away and you start to see these importers and thus these bartenders be able to get their hands on these really kind of historic and kind of prohibition era ingredient. As a result of bartenders going, well, “wait, wait a minute. Let’s look back and look at this old world of this artisanal approach to bartending when they did take it seriously. And it wasn’t just shaken, flavored vodka drinks and, and stuff in volume in a nightclub. And so cocktail parlors started to show up and, before, you know it, now those guys are the rock stars right now they’re are the ones you know, leading the show on stage behind the bar every night. And so, like anything, then it’s like, “well, what’s the next area that needs a little revamp?” Well, that was definitely the world of wines that were not only idolized, but then as a result, the sommelier followed.

What were the wines that were garnering the biggest price tags? Well, wines at Napa. Why were they garnishing the biggest price tag? Well, because of the point system that exists to give wine points. Well, how does that exist? Well, it’s one guy’s pallet. It’s like, “okay, so there’s one guy that’s telling you what is worth it and, and has a point scale and that completely dictates what the market prices or demands something?” And so you kind of just fall into this like, “oh, well, that’s, that’s what I know. So that must be the way it is.”

And, and then you can kind of see how you know that eventually gave way to you the moment that I had in France and in New York, where it was kind of, the veil was lifted. But then for everybody really to then go, “well, now it’s time for wine’s artisanal branch off, just like the other two categories. And let’s look back to how things were done, pre commercialized the flavored vodka version of wine.” Okay. What’s that world have in store for us? Oh, every single thing we open is a completely new experience. How great is life now? And that is the arc that each not only each category has, not only that whole kind of fairytale idealization phase with the kind of leaders in each category. And as that comes up and goes down, you have some that abuse their power and that’s really awful. Each one kind of went through a similar little cycle just within the last 20 years. And it’s amazing. The last 50 years of technology is more than the rest of recorded history, right. As far as innovation, and it’s the same thing in this world, it’s kind of like each one is going through these quick little half lives and you’re getting these different versions. And taste is personal. I always believe that. So it’s not like anybody has the wrong taste yeah. For what they like, but just know all your options.

On Chris As The Wine DJ.

So you’re not Bourdain, nor the Napa Wine Points Guy. But you have used this idea of a DJ, which I think is fascinating. And so I’m just curious, like, what character are you in this plot? And is there a character already in the zeitgeist that comes to mind when you think of yourself doing this in a small-scale personal way?

I would start by saying that I’ve always believed that it’s not what you do. It’s how you do it. So natural wine one by nature; the whole point of it is not to push the output of mother nature. If you can’t push the output of mother nature, you can’t scale to a massive volume. And so it’s limited in a way there’s kind of a somewhat of a cap on it because as more interest grows for this more and more places, open and points of distribution open the demand is gonna get higher. Now, granted, there are people discovering more and more producers and little hidden pockets all over the world of this stuff that have been doing it for centuries. From the earth giving the fruit to the farmer, to the farmer, selling the fruit to the distributor, to me. The whole ethos is not to scale and do it.

If it was more of an approach, just strictly for capital, they don’t go together. They just, they can’t, it’s like going through all the trouble of leaving your wine very with very little intervention and then adding sugar at the end. Like it just doesn’t doesn’t make sense. And so for me, I don’t, for starters, need a fleet of Bentley. I get all of the enjoyment out of life in connecting people with these and sharing great with people over food and wine. That’s all I need. Those are my riches. Those are. And if I’m able to live a comfortable life and have those kinds of moments, those simple pleasures, then that’s all I need. And so that’s my approach to everything I do is that like, “look, I’ve started it just like everything else kinda at the bottom. When I rapidly need to either get a promotion o size up a little bit, that’s what I want to do, but it’s not to size up to say open four more stores. It’s to size up into just a large so that I can offer a little bit more at any one time.

But that’s as much as I need based on knowing how to make that successful financially. That’s all I need and that’s all I want outta life. And that’s all I wanna do for the rest of my life is be in this world. The hidden layer or kind of hidden vein through all the whole thing is that it just so happens that if you care about these wines and how these producers produce this product that you consume, you’re pretty much a thoughtful person in the rest of your life too. And so every single person that I meet that is interested or captivated by these wines, I, I can’t think of one of them that was kind of salty or had an edge to them, or just kind of a bad personality.

Every single one of them is bright and thoughtful and just a caring person. And I’ve met some of the greatest people in doing it. And again, because in every single layer of the whole thing, the intention is purely just to discover these wines and enjoy them. That’s all these folks want to do. It never quite reaches that level. And if it does reach that level, then really the ethos chain is kind of broken and they we’ll kind of go off into the distance and not really be in that kind of trusted ambassadors of you know, the pure intentions of what we, not only based all of our pleasure on, but also our livelihood. And so you can see how through our kind of discussion today that everything has an entry point and an exit point, they all connect.

There’s a string that you can thread through everything through each moment, each interaction, there’s always a little venn diagram overlap in each thing. I always consider that there’s always room for something done well. Whether it was seeing Seattle’s Best right next to a Starbucks coffee back in the day before Starbucks bought Seattle’s best. And they were both busy and they’re both selling the same thing they’re right next to each other. How does that work? And that’s where my curiosity and obsession with human behavior affects how I approach what I do is. How does that happen in someone’s brain? How do they choose one over the other? Tey’re doing exact same thing, and there’s maybe a couple tweaks, but why are both fully successful in, in many locations?

And it’s truly because there’s always room for something done well. And I believe that it makes me not rush decisions. I do wait to trust my instincts. That’s kind of always been my MO is to be patient and make sure that something does contain that feeling. That’s just undeniable, like I’ve had through those other experiences. And as soon as I feel that there’s no looking back and it’s almost impossible to prevent me from doing that. And so that’s how I approach most things, but how I also approach the trajectory of the shop. And that is really just to become and now remain the biggest ambassador of this wine in this entire state.

And again, I don’t need a lot of room to do it. But at this point it’s time there’s some more things that I can introduce into the things that drive me, which is just showing people things that make them happy. Now, I wanna kind of connect them with some of the little simple pleasures of food and bring in other chefs from the community to highlight the food portion of the equation and combine that with music and wine and do that every night. And I can’t do that out of my current setting, and that’s what I’m looking to create next. And there’s examples of it working in other parts of the world, but it would be the culmination of everything I’ve done and all the lessons I’ve learned.

On Going Beyond Wine.

I know Melody Wine Bar in LA is a shop you’re taking a lot of inspiration from. You’ve talked about creating a nightly menu of new food and wine experiences. Connect the two for me and help me understand what Sauvage’s next chapter looked like.

I love the idea of a place that you’re going to enjoy, but the costume kind of changes each night or the setting kind of changes. Vibe stays the same, the theme kind of changes. As I always kind of try to look ahead of everything, and we kind of come out of this kind of post pandemic world, I think folks don’t gravitate towards finding something they like, and going over and over and over and over again. Very quickly you eat yourself through a menu and you’re done, and you find yourself kind of itching for another one.

Now that’s, if you’re like me. And who’s like me? Well, everybody that’s really into natural wine. And why are you into it? Because it’s not the same thing every time, every year, every vintage. And if you’re like that, and you can kind of combine those two things – a menu that is of a chef that is not tethered to a specific restaurant and just kind of bounces around to join up with like-minded individuals – then you’re gonna have these little residencies of two or three day stretches.

“Well, I want to go to this place that I love, but I get to pick what kind of experience I have.” It’s almost like giving the keys back to the person attending and saying, “well, you know, if you come on Tuesday, we’re doing these incredible but very simple cheeseburgers. Next day, we’re doing Filipino food. Next day, we’re doing Thai food. Next day, we’re doing Hawaiian. You can keep going and going and going and still have it be the same people, bringing you these experiences that you’ve connected with, but it never, you never reach the end. There is no end. It’s just constant exploration.

You’re kind of still going down the same path with the wine of constant exploration, but now you just have another passenger and it’s food. And then, music of course is always the most important thing in an experience when dining out or, or just in any informal or formal dining experience. And so I combine those things together to all kind of go together and they all change as they each change.

Going forward this is gonna be something that my instincts tell me people will really gravitate towards. And when I started looking out yes for inspiration of that, I found a place doing that. Like I said in the Echo Park part of Los Angees. Melody does an insanely brilliant job at that. And, and not only that, they have a great talent pool to call upon these chefs to come in there. They’re doing it at a tight level and it’s, it’s informal, it’s like coming to somebody’s house. You know the owner, they’re very visible. The transparency, not just for the wines and inherently in natural wines, the transparency of the dining experience, it really forces people to put their guard down, and explore and not feel any kind of pressure or pretence or anything like that.

And that’s I think in my opinion, when most of the most magical experiences you can have with food and wine happen. It’s almost as if it were indirectly happening and it’s not forced. Everything just kind of is flowing down the same, same stream, the same current, nothing’s trying to swim upstream. And I think that those are when I’m always looking for that most elemental level of things. Those are when every moment that I’ve had, that I’ve read about, that I’ve been told about, always happens in that unique climate. You’re just there and there’s no regimented structure. It’s very informal. But it is very hospitable and I think is the breeding ground for those times. If my one goal is to always just kind of make people happier than they were when they walked in, then I’m gonna always be able to achieve that if I can keep that, if I can create that climate and, and hold it.

Why is that environment so historic for curating these amazing experiences?

Well, I don’t think it’s unique to food and beverage. If you think about some of the best conversations you’ve ever had, were they things that you planned? As far as them being revelatory? Were they something that you were like, “I’m gonna design every aspect of this entire thing, including the answers I’m gonna get back?” Most often there has to be that little element of surprise. I mean, it happens in film. It happens in music. It happens a lot of areas of life, but that little element of surprise that little, like kind of outside, didn’t see that coming thing is, is really what I think actually kind of stamps it onto your memory as opposed to things that just kind of are fleeting, that you know know were great, but you don’t really remember the ones you truly remember and, and kind of reshape how you approach things are always something that you didn’t expect quite how it was.

And if you can get someone to drop their guard, then you can catch them with something that’s not expected. And those moments are also going to create people that are yours forever. They’re gonna trust you every single time. And to be able to not have any boundaries or barriers.What could possibly be better as someone who just wants to show people things than to not have any barriers between them? All these things kind of unlock like little cogs on a wheel that kind of all have to turn, and then they unlock these moments where you catch people with something they didn’t expect. It’s more than they expected. And it’s something that they didn’t know could make them happy. And if all of those things hit like if you walked into a gas station and started talking to an attendant and all those things happen for you within a quick conversation with that station attendant, you’re not gonna forget that gas station or that station attendant. Combining all of my loves and all of my interests really, it’s hard not to be able to do this well if I just stay true to it.

On Reviving The Saturday Club.

I love it, man. So let’s talk about the wine club because after hearing you talk more about the future of Sauvage and Melody, the wine club is just another medium through which you can exist and is another medium through which you can DJ, almost from afar.

You’ve already prepared the playlist mixed the tracks, but then people are gonna be listening to them among a bunch of strangers, which I think is fascinating. So I’d love to kind of go deeper on it. And I’m curious what you’re excited about because it is kind of this beautiful meeting point of scale, right?

Without any lack or drop in the experience itself because Savage, as I’ve always said to you, is one space, but I think what you represent is actually very universal and so finding ways to replicate it without ruining its essence is I think the entire game or is at least how I approach business.

So I’m really excited about the wine club. Again, it just gives me another opportunity to show people things that enrich their lives in a little way. And like you said it has the potential to enrich their lives in a lot of ways. The only small ask is that people are open-minded. That’s all you need to start. And the wine club itself, for me, just like everything else, had to be reimagined slightly and kind of strip it away the things that I didn’t like and keep the things I did and really where I landed with that was just exclusive and was something that’s really exciting to anybody in any way. But especially when it comes to feeling like you’re getting to experience something that most people don’t.

And so to start there and be in that mindset of “I’m about to experience something special” Then you can kind of start tacking things on like food, like a conversation where everyone’s guards down now and where we’re still having adult beverages, which everybody knows helps kind of initiate that. But also you’re in this kind of well what’s next moment. So it’s like, “well, okay, these wines are great. Well, what’s next? Well, the food’s next. What’s next after that?” I wanna keep feeling this feeling. Well that conversation is next. Now we get to learn about this person and how did we get here?

With the small ask of having zero expectations and all of the emphasis on exploration through conversation, food and drink, there’s no other club I’d rather be a part of or facilitator of then something that’s most likely to give you the raw look or behind the scenes look at everybody participating. And without any kind of judgment or, or preconceived way that you’re supposed to behave. It’s just, “here’s the template, here’s the format.”We can taste these wines and learn about who made them and why they taste the way they taste. That’s all great. We can figure out things that we now like, or, or don’t like, or just understand ourselves better through the wine.

And then connecting people. So the wine myself, I just consider like the conduit and, and thankfully with shipping the way it is, we can do this. We can bring what I do in the shop to other cities and still connect and still have the story be told and have the connections be made without having to physically be there. And so, I mean, for me, it’s a very exciting opportunity to just broaden my reach. Of course it won’t change anything of the excitement or the wines we source. That’ll all stay the same. Because again, it’s not like I’m doing this for everybody on the planet or 50 states. This is still at a size where we can control that part.

And still make that it is as close to walking into my shop as if you were in Phoenix. So I’m incredibly excited. I think that it’s gonna be great to not only broaden people’s horizons, but also kind of create a new you know discipline for people of not maybe how they approach everything in their life will be similar to this experience that they will have through these kinds of remote wine sessions. You may have somebody that really gets inspired and then wants to actually do it too. I think most importantly is like-minded people coming over, coming together that wouldn’t normally and, and getting to share something that will never happen again ever as it does at each of those times. That’s always something to remember. In those moments, those same people will never be drinking the same thing at the same time on the same day ever again in history. So each one of them is pretty special, so I’m truly excited.

On How Chris Chooses What To Drink Next.

How do you follow your curiosity and source your wines? Do you have any kind of complex spreadsheet where you have your own ranking and notes where you drank things and how it made you feel?

So I originally started off with sort of a formula to where I would make sure that I had representation in almost every texture and flavor of wine at a general range of prices. And what happened quickly is I discovered that even that was too much kind of organization. Forcing the conversation that I had to actually take a step back and be more instinctive in my purchasing based on the conversations I was having in the shop. Chicken before the egg. You get into it rather by listening to the patterns and where my conversations normally go based on what I sell and then having that influence how I purchase. What happened rather quickly was that I got to a point where it became a little more fluid and it became where I said, “okay, well, based on what’s available, based on what’s exciting to me, based on what I’m hearing from my feedback loop in the shop because I literally handle every single transaction that has happened in that shop.”

It’s a very unique vantage point. I can see both from the 30,000 foot view and then the kind of boots on the ground view. And when you combine them, you kind of have this inventory that moves as you do as your, as your crowd does. But I make sure to, of course, at the end of the day kind of keep it just one step ahead of the crowd, so that it’s always moving in a direction. It’s not getting stagnant. And so in order to do that, it’s very hard for the very large distribution companies to do, and find that wine and when they find it, there’s only one case available. It’s just too small a scale for them.

And so what happened here in Arizona is I had formed a great connection with a guy who was doing the same thing as I was, but just on the distribution inside. He was kind of a one person show and was curating a portfolio that I was buying from him. And so we kind of came together and I curated his portfolio with the wines that I wanted to bring in, and then he would take them out to other people or leave them as exclusives to me. And so that’s kind of how it started to form itself a month or two into the opening. And so it’s been that way ever since. It’s constantly looking ahead and bringing in not only producers that give you a “old school look of natural” – natural wine by nature is kind of the oldest school way, but just kind of the guys that were like kind of the first champions to kind of lead the revival.

And so I wanna always have a presence for those. Show where it’s coming from. And then have new school folks. Folks from Australia or South Africa. Places that never had any of these producers saying, “Hey, wait a minute. Like we wanna, we wanna farm biodynamically. We wanna leave our little better than we found it. We think these wines are the most representative of where we’re from.” Not some guys that has a point scale that then sells it for a certain price based on what they think is valuable coming out of Australia or South Africa. So I had to make sure that it wasn’t thenChris show in the sense that it was Chris’s palette on the wall.

But it was, “I have the music selection that I can play anybody, any song they want to hear, even if they don’t know what song they want to hear, I can play that song.” But through the lens of my one true threshold which is this low intervention wine. The size, the availability in the states and the size of the shop. It all just fit together. And sourcing almost dictated itself as a result. Because these smaller companies can do those one-off cases. So we can behave the way we do.

If everything wasn’t exactly the way it was in Arizona, I wouldn’t be able to do it exactly the way I do it. As I change, they change. And as they change, I change. But we all it’s all going in the same direction. So as they grow, they have bigger wingspan and they can grab more wine from different corners of the world. And thus I can offer more unique experiences. So I love it, man.

I think that’s kind of the other side of the scale Everybody always immediately goes to the lack of commercial viability that sometimes exists with a lack of scale. But it also gives you freedom; time and patience to do different things.

On Chris’ Favourite Quotes.

To close – I asked you to share some quotes either from text or movies that are foundational to how you think. I’d like to read the ones you gave. First, “it’s not a party if it is every day.” Second, “it takes everyone forever to realize that they know nothing” Third, “the part of enlightenment is the middle path.” Fourth, “perfection is the enemy of progress and creativity.”

The quotes that you just read all connect. They all fit into each other. Taking forever to realize you know, nothing. To me, that truly means that you are more of a steward of something rather than someone who is keeping the information to themselves, allowing only certain people to understand it or making them feel like they need to know something in order to enjoy something. And when you do that, it easily slides into the sort of maniacal pursuit of perfection starting to become about your thought of what perfection is rather than what’s the perfect moment for this person.

Some of the most successful leaders and coaches realize early on that everybody has a different button, a go button. Fr some people it’ treating them like a drill Sergeant or some people it’s a little more nurturing for some people it’s you have to scare them.There’s all sorts of things that will push that person’s go button and energize them. Realizing that I think that’s how you can kind of create not only a setting for creativity and progress. But it’s almost like a flu shot. You’re getting shot with last year’s flu. If you’re trying to perfect something, that’s based on what you’ve understood up and to this point. So by definition, it’s hard to perfect something and, and also have it be something that is a hundred per cent innovative. You can still innovate a little bit and perfect something. Sure. There’s some overlap there, but if you’re trying to perfect something based on what you’ve understood that has happened previously.

To truly be innovative, I feel like it is to allow yourself to have a little scratch or a little blemish on something in order to then keep moving in a forward direction rather than being stagnant. And just trying to get something to the way that you’ve either experienced before and hold up as perfection or what a book tells you or a textbook tells you is the best up until that point. So yes, in order to move forward I think that getting too bogged down on perfection is something that I learned early on. And then also I think it’s kind of an illusion. Perfection can be a fleeting moment. What’s perfect yesterday could not be perfect today. So I wanted to connect those two. Yeah. Especially because they really did kind of stem from each other and there’s a lot of overlap between the two.

Well, Chris, I think you did a beautiful job. It’s been a hell of 90 minutes and really refreshing to hear, I think, such a different kind of philosophy on business and life, but one that is rooted in exploration experience, and then transferring, you know, mostly positive feelings, you know, to others in really cool spaces. I mean, I just think that’s a great philosophy regardless of what you’re selling.

What’s the easiest and best way for folks to get in touch?

@sauvagephx is the Instagram handle. You can simply put my name together for my email, it’s just “chris@sauvagephx.com.” I also consider myself also kind of a concierge of Phoenix. I love giving people restaurant recommendations. So I get people reaching out to me or sending me pictures of wine lists from restaurants around the country, all the way to, you know, where to eat now that they just moved here, where to go to catch a concert. I mean, truly, I just like being that resource. And so anybody can reach to me with anything that way you know.

I am my shop and my shop is me. As it goes, I go, and what it does is just truly an extension of me. And so anyway you want to get a hold of me is good. Every day is quite the gift to be able to do what you want and continue to kind of push it to be the way you wanna do it. But it is really truly not working. It is, it is just getting to be myself and this is the vehicle. And I’m just very appreciative for the opportunity and to be able to have a tiny impact on some other folks’ lives.

Thank you so much for the opportunity, Cornelius.