Behind the Scenes of Rimasa Riccioli: A Culinary Adventure in Rome

Forrest Kelly: 00:00:00

Welcome. Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast with Forrest Kelly.

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:00:09

Sorry, I wasn't, I didn't know you were doing it right this second. But anyways, all good.

Forrest Kelly: 00:00:13

The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:00:16

Hi, this is Lindsey from Rimasa Riccioli and the Riccioli Wine Club.

Forrest Kelly: 00:00:19

So to be clear, we're going to Rome, the capital city of Italy. And after you go to the Coliseum and the Pantheon, the Sistine Chapel, the Vatican museums, your next stop is Ramessa Rosselli.

It's a restaurant, a wine bar, a tasting room, the epitome of the italian experience.

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:00:38

Yeah, so, Rimessa, actually, there's a. It depends on who you ask. If you ask Google to translate it, you're going to get a different answer.

It can mean the boat shed, it can mean the warehouse, storage, garage. It's kind of got a variety of different meanings.

The way it was born was from the concept of garage, because we had done Anthony Bourdain's filming for Remesa Richoli in what your storage, you could kind of say in the warehouse of Richoli. So it was just a room that was dedicated to storing some wines kind of acting as a cellar.

It had a table in the center in case someone was sitting down, maps on the walls, books on the walls.

And it was really just kind of like the garage or the concept of vin de garage is also a commonly used phrase in the wine world, which is kind of small, artisan made wines that are literally made in garages. So the idea was working with artisans, smaller producers, and then really Remese also kind of has the terminology of warehouse.

And that was where we ended up putting the first remese. Richole was actually opened in the warehouse of which was technically illegal, not allowed to be a restaurant in a warehouse.

They're not licensed, obviously, the same way. And so we got away with it for about six years, being kind of like a speakeasy in a warehouse, using a hot plate to cook the pasta.

But then after six years, or the municipality said, yeah, you can't really be a restaurant inside of a warehouse. So they kicked us out and we found a new location.

Forrest Kelly: 00:01:55

So when you say speakeasy, was it really like that? It was just kind of word of mouth and you had to, you know, say a word to get in?

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:02:02

Not exactly, because, I mean, it was organized through Richoli, but it was in the warehouse of Richoli. People would often go to the wrong Richole.

They would go to Saloumedia Richole, which is our main restaurant, because most people didn't even know that this tiny little place existed behind a few streets. It's only about a three minute walk, but you have to make a ton of turns. And so it's kind of in this little secluded, little tiny alleyway.

And so not really many people actually even knew all the taxi drivers still, seven years later, ten years later, were dropping people off at Saloumeria or choli, not at Rimasa, because it really was kind of a word of mouth kind of place.

Forrest Kelly: 00:02:36

So let's rewind a little bit about and find out about Lindsey. You were born where?

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:02:42

Not far outside of Detroit, Michigan.

Forrest Kelly: 00:02:45

What led you to where you are now?

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:02:46

Basically, I grew up in Michigan. Obviously, there's not much wine around there, so I don't even know where my passion technically started from.

Except I do remember because I started drinking wine. I shouldn't say what age, because it was illegal in the US, but I started drinking wine at an early age.

Nothing too crazy, like 13 or something, or five. But anyways, I studied abroad in London, which I ultimately ended up tasting a couple of really good french wines, a sancerre, a viognier.

And I didn't know if those, those were places or grapes. I knew nothing about those wines. And so I looked them up, and I realized that there's kind of a whole world behind wine other than just the grape.

And so I got home from that trip, and having loved those wines, and I bought wine for dummies at 19 years old. It's actually quite informative. And just started. My passion just started snowballing bigger and bigger.

And then I started traveling to Napa Valley a couple of times in my twenties. Loved it out there.

Eventually moved out to Santa Barbara and met, if you've seen the documentary, some Brian McClintock, who was one of the four master sommeliers who was in that documentary, he had a wine focused on old World wines in Santa Barbara, and we became good friends. And I frequented that place at least three, four times a week.

And he said, you know, at some point he said, you know, about wine, why don't you study it more formally? So I thought, okay, that's the next logical step.

So I started studying with the court of master sommeliers, finished the level one, was studying for the level two, and really, the level two started making me lose all of my passion for wine because it's way too technical. And I realized that nobody cares, not even us who are interested in wine, care about a lot of these technical details.

And everyone I was speaking to about wine, which is my mom, especially would just say, Lindsay, can you just drink the wine and stop talking about it?

So I just realized that there was a disconnect between what I was doing, and I kind of was losing my, the real passion I had for wine, which was being on vineyards, which was being in nature, which was understanding what affects the taste of a wine, and seeing that in person, speaking with the winemakers.

And so I decided to leave my job for ten weeks, and I went to Spain, France, and Italy by myself and got down to Rome, and I actually did the wine tasting as a client at Rimasa Riccioli, and then kind of had a little five day affair, fling style, with the sommelier at the time, who was Alessandro, who's now my business partner. Yeah, we had a little eat, pray, love story for about seven years.

We ended up breaking up about a year and a half ago, but nonetheless, we're still partners and still friends.

Forrest Kelly: 00:04:55

Welcome. Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast with Forrest Kelly.

Forrest Kelly: 00:05:01

We continue our conversation with Lindsey Gabbard, co founders Sommelier Ramessa Roscioli in Rome, Italy. In part one, we heard about your journey from Michigan to Rome. Let's get the rest of that story.

Forrest Kelly: 00:05:13

The Best5 Minute Wine Podcast

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:05:16

I basically had to go back to the US after my ten weeks being abroad.

And then I came back and surprised him a month and a half later and stayed out there for another two weeks, started working beside him pretty much every night I was there. And then after my 90 days renewed again, I came out to Italy for another three months and again was working beside him. And then we opened up.

After we got kicked out of the old location, we opened up temporarily in a place for eight months that had two tasting rooms. So I had to do one of the tastings, and he did the other in the other room. And that's when we started really formally working together.

And then eventually, eventually, that was only an eight month lease, so we had to find another location. And the new location we found was much larger. And so we decided to form a partnership with, four of us with the Riccioli family for Rimasa Riccioli.

Forrest Kelly: 00:05:59

Once we're in Rome, can you kind of explain how we find the restaurant, the wine bar, the tasting room?

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:06:06

Sure, if you. Well, most people would know Campori Fiore, so if you come from Campori Fiori, we're kind of, like I said, we're also still tucked away a little bit.

We're not on the main. Our main restaurant, Salome de Chole, is on kind of a main road there called via de Juvenare.

We are about 300 meters behind Salumeri Riccioli, going closer towards the ponte sisto. We're about a two minute, three minute walk from the Ponte Sisto, which is the bridge that connects trastevere over towards Campo de Fiori.

Forrest Kelly: 00:06:34

So you're doing all of these activities to make Remeccio Riccioli a success. I gotta ask, how's your italian?

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:06:41

I'm still learning it every single day, but I didn't know any before I came, so it's really been just since I've got here. But even the first five years, I was mainly speaking in English because I host the wine tastings in English and I sound when I spoke in English, so.

And you can really get around in Rome without having any Italian, so really, it's not until the last few years that I really started speaking it.

Forrest Kelly: 00:07:01

Once you arrive at Ramessa Ruscioli, there isn't a lack of things to do. You've got tastings, you've got the restaurants, you've got cooking classes, got the food tour, you've got private groups.

Let's kind of go through all of that. When somebody shows up, what can they do?

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:07:16

er service actually starts at: 05:00

ffer an a la carte service at: 07:00

So if you can do the math there a few turns, we have a few hundred, a couple hundred people coming through, probably about an average 170, at least, in the evenings. But we're also open during the day for cooking classes. So if you add that on top, we kind of just don't stop.

Forrest Kelly: 00:07:52

Yeah, let me rewind a little bit. And so describe the business, because it's.

The website is very expansive, and I was going down rabbit holes left and right, just like, wow, they pretty much do everything. But basically the. The first part you do is what?

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:08:08

Yeah, we're. We're definitely a pretty multifaceted business. We're not just your typical restaurant or wine bar.

We were born from the idea of a fixed menu of wines and foods which were paired together, six wines paired with different fruit foods and a plate of pasta, tiramisu, et cetera. So that was the way we were born for about eight or so years, that was just the concept of Rimasa Richoli.

When we opened up the new location, like I said, we had a lot more space, so we decided to add an a la carte menu. We also offered extra virgin olive oil tastings. We have now cooking classes throughout the day.

We then also, after probably about seven years ago at this point, we also created the Richoli Wine Club.

So beyond just all the services that we do in our Rome restaurant and location, people who want to kind of continue their journey with all that we do can also subscribe to our wine club. And we ship 24 wines per year from similar concepts.

ross to the US. We have about: 2500

Forrest Kelly: 00:09:16

Welcome. Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast with Forrest Kelly.

Forrest Kelly: 00:09:22

We continue our stay in Rome, Italy, where they have a museum dedicated entirely to pasta. It starts with the invention of dried pasta, which of course allowed it to be stored indefinitely and shipped all over the world.

And one of the best places to get pasta, Ramessa Rochelle. Right, Lindsey?

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:09:40

Exactly. Exactly.

Forrest Kelly: 00:09:42

That's five minute wine podcast.

Forrest Kelly: 00:09:45

Visually, what do we see when we walk in the storefront? Are we opening the door and we get the bell on the top of the door dinging?

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:09:53

We love to call the restaurant. We say we're shoalizing. It's easier to say it in Italian, like Roche oilizing, basically, which is taking.

The whole room is covered from floor to ceiling, more or less, with different wines, foods, our gastronomy, extra virgin olive oils, semi dried cherries, tomatoes, all different jars, tuna, all sorts of possible things you can imagine to eat and drink that kind of just kind of hug you around the space when you walk in. Both at Salomeri Chole and at Rimasa Richole, that's kind of always been the concept is not having kind of like decor, such as like pictures.

Well, actually, we have even those two because we have. The mother of Alessandro's son is an artist and she has done some of our superhero paintings. So we have a fat Batman who's going into it.

We have drunk Spider man, who had too much crude to drink and got tangled up in his own web instead of saving the world. So there's a variety of collection of superhero prints that we have on the wall.

So actually we just kind of COVID you from floor to ceiling with creativity and delicious foods and wines, et cetera.

Forrest Kelly: 00:10:56

Being one of the co founders, I imagine that you're qualified to do pretty much everything. What do you say?

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:11:02

Like for you, I mainly run the wine and food tasting dinner at this point, but I also do a lot of other type of digital work. I manage the Richole wine Club, which is more, obviously a lot of more computer work than it is from being physically in the restaurant.

We go and travel quite often, so, I mean, I don't know how many times per year we're traveling throughout Italy, going to visit winemakers to select new wines for the wine club. Also, because all the wines in our wine club get a video of the producer. Every bottle has a QR code on the back.

That was an initiative I implemented during COVID because I became obsessed with QR codes, so that people could, while they're drinking the bottle, just scan the QR code and have direct access to see where the wine was made, see the winemaker who made it, learn a little bit about wine. They also can know which grape it is, how to pair it, when to drink it, by the whole story of how the wine was made.

Try to make that as easy as possible for someone to access when they're drinking the wine, instead of going to a website or getting out a brochure that we put in the box.

Forrest Kelly: 00:11:57

Looking at the website, the picture looks like the main dining room. It is filled with wine from floor to ceiling, all sides. I bet you know every single one of those, don't you?

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:12:09

Every single one. Maybe not, because we are for people that choose wines, and one of our colleagues is.

He loves natural wine, so he sometimes finds these little, little tiny producers, some of them his friends and people that we get connected to. And so some of those bottles, Gaetano is more the master of, but, yeah, more or less the rest of them.

I mean, we have, I don't know how many bottles between Richoli. Probably some 60,000 bottles. Our cellars so hard to know all of them.

Forrest Kelly: 00:12:36

When you say natural wine, is that a category?

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:12:39

It's a category that's very. The French are trying to put some parameters around it, but it's a term that's used a bit as people please.

So there's not really a proper definition around what makes a natural wine. As some people would like to say, a natural wine is vinegar. A natural wine wouldn't stop at wine. It would keep turning.

If you just let it be and no one stopped and intervened in the process, it would turn into vinegar on its own. The general concept between natural wine is that nothing is added in and nothing is taken out.

So the wine is made just to be a pure, true expression of the terroir of the region. And that is it. And those are the main words.

We don't use the word natural wine so much at Rimasa, we use the word artisanal wine, like our wines are all made from small producers.

In general, yes, we have the big stuff for when people come in and want to do a high end tasting, like sasicaya and Ornalaya and all the ayahs that we like to joke about. But basically, more of our 90% of our wines are from small producers that manage their own.

We don't even have to use the word estate farm, because all of our producers just farm on their own property. But they usually make about, I don't know, 20,000 to 50,000 bottles maximum per year, some of them even less.

And those are the wines that you don't have to worry that they're adding in all the additives, because they don't mind if one bottle is different from the other.

It's when you have the wines, obviously, that are being made in the, you know, 10 million, 20 million, 200 million per year, that every single bottle has to taste the same. And those wines are the ones that have to be manipulated to always be giving specific taste to the mass market.

Forrest Kelly: 00:14:05

Welcome. Welcome to the best 591 podcast with Forrest Kelly.

Forrest Kelly: 00:14:11

Lindsey Cabbard, co founder and sommelier of Ramessa Ruscioli in Rome, Italy, continues as our guest. In our last episode, we kind of closed out with. You were talking about QR codes on your wine bottles. Tell me more about that.

Forrest Kelly: 00:14:25

The best five minute wine podcast so.

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:14:29

That people could, while they're drinking the bottle, just scan the QR code and have direct access to see where the wine was made, see the winemaker who made it. Learn a little bit about wine. They also can know which grape it is, how to pair it, when to drink it, by the whole story of how the wine was made.

Try to make that as easy as possible for someone to access when they're drinking the wine, instead of going to a website or getting out a brochure that we put in the box.

Forrest Kelly: 00:14:49

So you've got a production crew that's going with you when you. When you film these?

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:14:53

Oh, yeah. We usually travel in about five people. So it's. I think we spend more money on videos than we do on food in the restaurants.

But nonetheless, we are definitely. Alessandro came from documentary and film and videos, so that's always been a passion of his. Is more on the creative side.

He's also a writer, so also in the box for the wine club, we put our little Richole Wine Club Times, which is where we write a collection of our stories from traveling and the things that we quote, unquote, talk about.

When we talk about wine, which is often not even wine, which sounds silly, but we like to not get too caught up in the idea that everything needs to be about the wine. We think that there's just a lot more going on around that should be spoken about than just the what's in the bottle.

Forrest Kelly: 00:15:36

Right. And wine is kind of a social lubricant and lets you expand your normal. How's the weather? Conversations.

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:15:43

Exactly.

Forrest Kelly: 00:15:44

Okay. Whet my appetite. Tell me, what, like, a typical night or a typical day, what are we looking at on the menu?

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:15:51

If you're eating in the a la carte menu, it's mainly roman, but with a little bit of experimentation, because we don't want to be an exact replica of Salomeri roscioli, which is our main restaurant.

We wanted to, you know, offer, of course, the traditional plates, because in Italy, tradition is kind of first and foremost, but at the same time, we had to put little spins.

So on the a la carte menu, you can also find, you know, various fish plates and, I don't know, different pastas from various regions that aren't necessarily just the roman pastas, like amachana carbonara and cacio pepe.

They'll do, you know, we'll sometimes have even chefs come in from other restaurants that we enjoy from our visits in different regions, and we'll invite them to do a collaboration with us. So we have. We do a lot of that.

If you're doing the wine tasting dinner, which is kind of, like I said, what we were born from, it's gonna be six different wines paired with six different plates of food. So you start with the different fresh cheeses.

Buffalo, ricotta, buffalo, mozarella, buffalo, and then burata, and then some other different gastronomy for the next, and salumi for the next two wines, a plate of cacio pepe, a meatball tiramisu, and that's it. But then, like I said, we also do even.

We also do a variety of different tastings for the Italians, which will also be having different chefs come in from other places as well. But we do a lot of different things.

We'll have a lot of times a winemaker who just walks from table to table and brings his wine or her wines, and we'll, you know, just speak very generally about them and pour them. As people are dining, we keep busy.

Forrest Kelly: 00:17:16

Is there a dress code?

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:17:17

No, not at all. We are super casual. We want people to relax. Wine for us is like water on a table, so it's not anything that needs.

People need to think about in a fancy level. We're very casual and social and convivial. We have all mainly social tables in the a la carte part of the restaurant as well. So it's.

It's meant to be relaxed.

Forrest Kelly: 00:17:35

So after the restaurant, is there something else besides I see you have a Richole food tour. Explain that a little bit.

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:17:42

Yeah, that's a tour that happens during the day, which is a way, because a lot of people don't understand. They hear the name Richoli, but they don't understand that we're technically four different restaurants.

So it's a way to introduce them to kind of the world of Richoli. It's kind of turning into a universe of Richoli these days. And so we do a stop at Richoli Cafe to start with to do an espresso and a maritozo.

Then we walk over to the forno and grab the pizza altaglio, and they can kind of see where we were born as the bakery. And we take that into one of the Richoli cellars and have some pizza and usually a prosecco or something to start off with.

Then we move over to Rimasa Richoli. We'll do a kind of like a cooking demonstration on the different various pastas, like the amachri, chana, cacio, pepe, and carbonara.

And they'll eat those with us for lunch as well. Have a full wine tasting and paired alongside that and finish with some tiramisu.

But, yeah, then they get a nice introduction to the four different bases that we have.

And we're also opening up a fifth one just behind remasterly, probably around September, which is where mainly the experiences that we offer, like the wine tasting dinner, cooking class, and olive oil tastings will happen. And then downstairs shortly after that, we'll be opening up.

I can't really call it a jazz club because it won't be licensed, I don't think, as a full jazz club. But at the same time, we'll have a lot of performances and music and different kind of happenings that happened on there.

Forrest Kelly: 00:19:01

Well, we know you guys are rebels, so you're gonna be pushing the envelope.

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:19:06

We're in Italy. That's, you know, rules are mainly suggestions.

Forrest Kelly: 00:19:10

Welcome. Welcome to the best 591 podcast with Forest Kelly.

Forrest Kelly: 00:19:16

Fresh handmade pasta meatballs, tiramisu, paired wines, working side by side with an expert chef. How good are the people that are taking your cooking class at Ramessa Rochelli?

Forrest Kelly: 00:19:27

Best five minute wine podcast.

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:19:30

I would say 90% of them have probably, you know, never even made homemade pasta ever before. So it's their first time even making pasta from scratch. So, no, there are more beginners that come. It's a very light and easy cooking class.

It's not meant to be a formal, you know, master chef kind of style class. It's meant for more everyday people who are interested in, you know, just having fun with cooking.

There's also all the different pastas that are made. You'll eat during the after the cooking class. Some of it's demonstration and some of it's actually cooking it and making the actual pasta.

It's a mix of hands on and demonstration. And then, like I said, you eat the pasta pastas after and have a wine pairing with a sommelier after as well.

Forrest Kelly: 00:20:14

It can get pretty boisterous. I can imagine everybody, it just sounds like so much fun.

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:20:19

It's probably one of our. I mean, between the cooking class, if it's a daytime experience, I'd say the cooking class is probably the most popular event that we have by far.

The nighttime experience, the wine tasting dinner is also probably one of the most, I mean, for sure, the most important experience that we have.

There's also a tasting that we do called taste the legends, which is for more connoisseurs and, you know, really focused wine collectors and things like that. Not even necessarily. We have different levels. There's three different levels of it.

One menu offered at 170 per person, another one at 250, and another one at 500. So the wines will vary based on the price of the menu. So some people who are really, really, really serious might want to do the higher priced menu.

a nice chance to taste about: 1014

There's no one we can.

Forrest Kelly: 00:21:13

No.

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:21:13

And we want wine to really be really something that anybody should feel comfortable approaching from someone who understands it to be white and red all the way. We want to be able to have different levels and different ways for people to approach it.

Forrest Kelly: 00:21:26

So in your personal wine, do you have your favorites or are you constantly experiencing tasting new?

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:21:33

I did notice, though, that this year, these people always one of the favorite questions is, what's your favorite wine? And I said, guys, it's impossible for me to have a favorite wine when I taste hundreds of them every year.

And I actually started to notice, though, that we had one particular wine that we had made as a private label for our wine club. Called it a Cesanese from Lazio made in Amphora. We tasted it and bought the entire amphora because we loved it so much.

And I noticed after a period of, I don't know, six months that every single. I mean, we have, I don't even know how many bottles of wine open every single night, and they constantly are changing.

But I started to notice that whenever that bottle was open, it's called jarroko. I was constantly going only to that bottle. And I can still say that two years later, I still go to that bottle when it's open.

So it's really, I can, I think, say that I have kind of a favorite everyday wine at this point, but I'm always open. I love trying new things. I love tasting, tasting, tasting.

Usually it happens that once you find a favorite, there's diminishing effects, because if you keep drinking the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, at some point, you usually kind of lose a little bit of the luster that it had on those first couple of times that you were excited by it. So I also don't like to get stuck in a rut and drinking the same thing over. I like to let something surprise me from time to time.

Forrest Kelly: 00:22:44

In our next episode, as we continue our conversation with Lindsay Gabbard of Ramessa Rusholi, I finally get to talk about, because I try to be healthy, get to talk about olive oil. And Lindsey puts her life in danger.

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:22:57

By revealing oil should be made from olives, for starters. Unfortunately, a lot of the stuff in Italy isn't even because the mafia has gotten their hands into that world as well.

Forrest Kelly: 00:23:07

What?

Forrest Kelly: 00:23:08

I'm gonna make them an offer he can't refuse.

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:23:10

Then I said to my wife, for justice, we must go to Don Corleone.

Forrest Kelly: 00:23:15

Before we close out the episode, I just wanted to say thank you. As in the past six months, been hovering around the top 200 mark of the top podcasts. There are over 2 million podcasts.

So we finally cracked the top 200. And with the help of you and the episodes like Ramesha Ruscioli and Lindsay Gabbard, we reached a new peak of position number 136.

So thank you again for listening and supporting the podcast. Really appreciate it.

Forrest Kelly: 00:23:41

Welcome. Welcome to the best. 591 podcast with Forrest Kelly.

Forrest Kelly: 00:23:47

Did you know when olive oil met wine at a party, they discovered they both make everything taste better. And we know how wine loves olive oil, always bringing out its best qualities. Let's talk olive oil.

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:24:03

I mean, olive oil should be made from olives, for starters. Unfortunately, a lot of the stuff in Italy isn't even because the mafia has gotten their hands into that world as well.

Forrest Kelly: 00:24:14

What?

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:24:14

And so often olive oils that get exported are made from soybean oils. And put a little bit of chlorophyll in there to give them that nice green color. It makes them look a little more sincere, and off you go. So, ugh.

You know, in terms of what you look for, it's tough, because even the ones that say made in Italy aren't always made in Italy. I don't know. At remaster, we have all the small artisans that, again, that's just the way we work with. We go meet them all in person before we ever.

We never let someone just send a sample and say, okay, that was good. We'll take it. We go beat people.

Richole has always done an extreme amount of research on the products and the producers and the land where things are coming from. We go and see these places. We don't just. And you can tell this because we do videos.

We have probably 600 videos of winemakers and cheese makers and olive oil producers on our YouTube channel. It's a labor of love, but it's a lot of work. But it's the only way to really understand exactly what you're getting.

So, unfortunately, if you're just in the average consumer, there's not a specific thing I could tell you to look for.

Forrest Kelly: 00:25:13

Well, yes. Yeah. So you're putting the pressure on these people to produce and actually say what they are. So when you're fact checking, as you will.

But I've never interviewed a winery or anything to do with wine that had a tasting of extra virgin olive oil. There's different tastings. Obviously, it's not the same taste for every olive oil, right?

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:25:31

Oh, gosh, no, that's for sure. There's something like 600 different olive cultivars from north to south, and they vary.

Usually the ones that come from the north are gonna be a little bit on the lighter side. The Tajasca olive is a little bit lighter that you find from Liguria. Then you get into, I don't know, Lazio Tuscan.

I don't really love the tuscan olive oils personally as much as I do some of the Lazio ones, there's canino that I really enjoy. Those are maybe a little bit more on the kind of middle bitterness, middle spiciness.

And then you get down to Puglia and Sicily and you can start to end up having some pretty spicy, powerful, rich olive oils that maybe you wouldn't use on a salad, but you'd use more for grilling and cooking. And they just bring out the maximum flavor in everything you're cooking. The good stuff should almost make you cough.

And that's kind of scary for some people because they say, why? Why would I want to cough if it's good? But that's when it's got all the polyphenols and all the good juju in there that makes it healthy for you.

Forrest Kelly: 00:26:25

So I see where we can shop so that everything that everybody experiences kind of there, they kind of, if they want to take it home, they can go into like a grocery store.

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:26:34

We basically, I mean, more or less anything you taste, you can almost bring home with you. Everything's more or less available for takeaway, for shipping. We, we can ship wines and foods as well.

There are some restrictions based on the countries of what can be shipped in terms of that, but we have online websites, so shop dot remesschole.com. we also have shop dot ru cholewineclub.com. and a lot of our products are now going to be even based in New York.

So that wines don't have to ship from Italy, they'll also ship from New York for the us customers.

And that'll allow them to receive the wines in a matter of two, three days and, or depending on where in the country, up to a week, maybe, depending on where they are, instead of three to four weeks, which is the traditional shipping time for internationally, for wine.

Forrest Kelly: 00:27:18

Because Ramessa Ruscioli does everything top notch. Can't wait to hear about the wine club. Tell me about that.

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:27:25

Yeah, so we have four different levels currently.

Probably they will end up becoming three because the legends level is, we just can't accept new members because the wines are so allocated at that level. But we basically have one that would be about 800 per year as the, what we call the essential or level one wine club.

would be around a little over: 1000

You'll get different levels of wines. Like, for example, a roasted Montalcino would go in the level where a Brunello di Montalcino would probably go in the level two and more of one.

That's maybe a vintage or, you know, slightly older. Brunello could go in the level, the collector's level, the level three.

But you're gonna get wines from all over Italy, from, generally speaking, like I said, really small producers. We try to mix up the varietals. We almost always include a Barolo in the level two and a brunello.

We want to give a nice array of wines so that people are introduced to things that they're not familiar with. And all the wines in general, we want. Want to be. That are not accessible in the US.

Forrest Kelly: 00:28:29

In the box, they're getting not only the wine, obviously, but to mention the QR code, the story behind it.

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:28:35

The wine club is really meant to be a complete experience with wine.

It's not just to be, you know, where you get your twelve bottles of wine, you open it up, you maybe have a brochure that you flip through it, throw it in the garbage, which is what most people. I mean, I was part of wine club, so I know how people use them.

We wanted to really bring you as close as you could be to actually being on the vineyards with us.

Because for us, that's where the magic happens, is walking on these vineyards with the producers, listening to them tell their story, what they're passionate about, where their family maybe came from, what got them into wine. We want you to hear it from their side of the story and to really immerse yourself in the experience and not just have it be about consuming wine.

We want people to drink with care is kind of the phrase we use, which is understanding, because people also appreciate what they're drinking so much more when they know the story behind it.

Forrest Kelly: 00:29:20

Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast with Forrest Kelly.

Forrest Kelly: 00:29:25

So if I can't fly all the way to Rome, Italy, to get the full Ramesse Rochelle experience, where can I go?

Forrest Kelly: 00:29:33

That's five minute wine podcast.

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:29:35

New York started about maybe eight months ago at this point, so it's been open. There's an upstairs and a downstairs.

The upstairs is meant to replicate a little bit more of Salumedia Richoli, which is only an a la carte restaurant. And downstairs was meant to replicate a little bit more every mess of rusioli, which is the kind of concept of food and wine pairing fixed menus.

And there's even a beautiful cellar down there, which is incredible for hosting private parties and smaller tastings. I think it hosts about 20 people or so, maximum. No it's. They're also now open for lunch.

We have a slight kind of a smaller deli section as well, where people can come purchase some products for takeaway as well. There we're 43 McDougall street, which is right in the heart of Soho.

Forrest Kelly: 00:30:16

It's just been fascinating to hear about everything that you do with such a great passion and attention to detail.

Looking forward in the future, have you kind of exhausted all the opportunities and how you can stretch the boundaries of imagination of what Ramessa Rusholi can do?

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:30:33

Oh, I mean, we do some pretty cool things. One of our biggest focuses that kind of intertwines into everything we do is on sustainability.

Obviously, naturally, by working with smaller producers, smaller producers always in general, have a little bit more of sustainability in terms of the way they farm, in terms of the way they think of the environment. So they also think more about sustaining communities. So not just sustainability for the environment, but the idea of sustaining communities.

So we also, this past year, used the first sailboats to ship some of our wine club boxes from Europe, while we. The boat leaves from St. Malo, France, and it arrives in Brooklyn.

But we sent 300 boxes of wine on the first commercial sailboats that launched in the last 160 years. Basically, the project is with ground to sail, and we hope to be able to continue to find unique, sustainable ways to ship.

Our shipper also patented a really unique packaging for the interior of the wine boxes where we ship the wines for the wine club, made from actual popcorn. So it's completely biodegradable. So in the future, as soon as that officially can launch, we'll be using popcorn as the interior of the wine boxes.

Some people, the first time we did a test with it, some people thought we shipped them popcorn to eat, which you could eat it, and you're not going to die, but it was actually meant to be the packing materials. So that's one of our biggest, biggest things, is thinking about community sustainability from, I mean, green hosting for our website.

Everything we do, we think about the environment. So that's probably one of the other kind of biggest initiatives that we're taking on. And we're also going to be in the future.

We've bought some small vineyards, try to save them, essentially, because some vineyards, they get up to 70 years old, maybe someone's about to abandon them. And you abandon 70 year vineyards, you don't get those back for another 70 years.

If someone decides to replant them and, you know, as good of care as the previous owners did, which we're not so good about that anymore. We're getting Lazier as human beings.

So we've saved a couple of vineyards that we'll use for making wines for our wine club in the future, partnering with some of our artisan winemakers in those regions. And then we're also going to have a little house on some of the different properties where our wine club members can go and stay in the future.

So that'll be a future project that we're. And then people can be more involved in the winemaking process itself as well, because usually people are quite curious about that.

So we, like I said, we really try to give a full, full experience with everything that we do with our restaurant and wine club, etcetera.

Forrest Kelly: 00:32:49

Wow.

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:32:54

Thank you very much.

Forrest Kelly: 00:32:55

The crowd is going crazy. That's just insane that you're doing this. You called it Grande sale.

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:33:02

Grande Sale is the name of the company that we, we've worked with in the past.

Forrest Kelly: 00:33:06

How do you spell that?

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:33:06

G r a I n, like grain. D s a I L. Sale. The wine, meat, good care of the land. They, you know, they farm organically, biodynamically.

And then, you know, of course, you know, the ideal situation would be like a lot of Italians do, which is they just drink locally and things sometimes don't even get bottled.

You just go to your neighbor's house with a two liter levistima water bottle and fill it up from, you know, the bulk style wine that they're making, and that's it. But unfortunately, we live in a world where we want to be able to exchange culture, and we want to continue to facilitate this so that people can.

Can be connected to italian wines.

But this will also allow the alignment, you know, the way the wines get shipped, because it would be really, just really frustrating when the winemakers spend this much time caring about the environment. And then we throw the wine on a plane, and this is the only. This has really been the only or a big barge boat.

And this has really been the only way that you can ship for the last 160 years, while even left for planes, of course.

But we are really excited to find alternative means to ship things in a more sustainable way that aligns with the way the wines are being produced themselves. So that was really the exciting part for us.

Forrest Kelly: 00:34:07

I'll have more details in the show notes about how Ramessa Richole is trying to protect wines during transit with recyclable materials, sailboats to ship wines. In fact, their website is on a carbon neutral server.

We've got one more episode as we close our conversation with Lindsey Gabbert of Ramessa Rascioli.

Forrest Kelly: 00:34:26

Welcome. Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast with Forrest Kelly.

Forrest Kelly: 00:34:32

As we close out our episode with Lindsay Gabbert, let's talk obstacles.

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:34:36

Financial, if you love to throw that word. The salaries in Italy are comical. We're a very multifaceted group because we have a couple of Italians in the group.

Me being the american, we think about different things, from efficiency to tradition. We try to make it. We just really try to make it a nice faceted. We all have our different strengths.

I was the one that thought about the QR codes during COVID about putting them on the bottle, trying to make it as easily and accessible to get to the videos that Alessandro wanted to be promoting. So we all work together. We all work together. Really. No one can take all the credit, right?

Forrest Kelly: 00:35:12

Exactly. During the meeting, you mentioned QR code, and he fell asleep, and then you mentioned about videos could be attached to that. Then he woke up.

I could get behind that now. Okay, so the last question for you is this kind of biggest obstacle that, like, the.

Like, when you go to these wineries and these vineyards and you meet these people and you feel their passion and things, and you find out their story behind them.

So, in Lindsey's life and getting to this point and where you've got so much passion with all of these different things and you're so busy, so active, was there a big obstacle that you had to overcome to get where you are?

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:35:50

Financial? If you love to throw that word out, the salaries in Italy are comical.

You could almost say, I don't think I've ever earned as less as I have being the owner of a wine club and restaurant as I have, even graduating college and doing an internship. So we're not gonna talk about salaries.

Thank God I enjoy so much about what I do, and thank God this country doesn't cost so, so much to live and enjoy your life. And unfortunately, my job doesn't really feel it blurs.

I don't really know sometimes when I'm working or when I'm traveling and getting to go to vineyards, so I'm paid in other ways. We could say, thank God. And then, of course, you know, like, the language, really.

The thing is, when you come over here, and until you really speak the language, language, you really can't fully immerse yourself. You miss too much on the beauty of this culture.

So, really, I'm grateful that I had to kind of throw myself into the fire at one point because we had two employees that didn't speak any English, and I had to force myself to speak Italian with them because once you understand the language, you're able, you just open so many more doors to really understanding and really diving into the beauty of this country. And still it's going. There's another segment that we just started doing last year, business, which is hosting wine.

They're kind of wine tours, but they're also, we partner with another group of three women who are experts on history and culture from various regions of Italy.

And we do kind of a wine, food, art and culture tour for about, on average, they're about six to nine or ten day vacation, not, well, vacations, wine tours, where we go to the artisan producers and they manage, I manage more of the food and wine parts. Lily Pans manages the history museums and that portion of the tour. And they are absolutely incredible.

So we're going to do about four to five of those per year in various regions, from Piemonte to Sicily to Puglia. And I think that's going to be the ideal place that I get my mom to come visit.

Forrest Kelly: 00:37:45

Is there a website for that?

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:37:46

They're not launched on our website. They're on Lilypan's website, which is lilipans.com. and this year, I believe they are all full.

There might be a few spots left in this one of the first Sicily tours we're doing, and then we'll launch the next year's calendar, probably in the next several months because we want to give people the ability to book about eight months in advance. But if you're subscribed to our newsletter on richoliewineclub.com, you can subscribe to the newsletter.

If you're subscribed there, then you'll get all the information. Yeah. So there's remesarascholy or I for the restaurants, richoliewineclub.com for the wine club, although we manage those side by side.

So if someone reaches out to the restaurant about the wine club, no problem, or vice versa, we can still flip flop. And then, of course, we're on social.

But we also realize that social isn't necessarily the, it's a little window to your, to your business, and that's about it. So we don't really post in a crazy amount on social, but we do have Instagram.

Probably the best, most enriching spot you can, location you can find us on is our YouTube channel, which is, Richoli is the name of the channel. And most of those videos are going to be in Italian, but they all have english subtitles, so those can be turned on in the settings.

And we also have the Italian, excuse me, the English Channel, which would be under Riccioli Wine club.

Forrest Kelly: 00:39:07

Are these videos kind of some of the videos that you're going to see on the QR code?

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:39:12

Exactly. All of those and a whole, whole lot of other ones.

Forrest Kelly: 00:39:15

Thank you very much for your time. Oh, it's been a pleasure. Thank you.

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:39:18

My pleasure as well. I'm glad it worked out. Okay. Ciao. Ciao.

Forrest Kelly: 00:39:21

The best five minute one podcast.

Forrest Kelly: 00:39:24

Don't forget my favorite part.

Forrest Kelly: 00:39:26

Please, please like and follow.

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:39:33

Close.