LISA HALEY, SOMMELIER

Photo Credit: Viranlly Liemena.

Lisa Haley talks Bloom with Susan McKenzie.

Hey Lisa! It’s been 5 or 6 years since Nicole Campbell and the Grape Witches connected you with MascallDance and BLOOM.  Are you still a grape witch?

I'm a grape witch for life!

If you had to say one thing that has evolved since you began with BLOOM, what would it be?

The process has become more tuned in. It was a new way of approaching wine. I remember it taking hours to pair wines with the dances the very first time. I was wrapping my head around “how did I want to approach the selections?” “How might those adjectives lead me to a wine?” There were lots of rabbit holes. Normally we're selecting wine to match food, first and foremost, or an occasion, or a line-up of other wines. Not usually adjectives that are going to apply to dance. But now the elements speak to me a lot faster. Feeling yourself evolve in a process and having connections happen a lot faster is part of growing into almost anything, isn’t it?

Are there parallels? Do you – by chance or design – pair wines  with other elements - music, say, or colour, a painting, a film?

Not me personally. I know that out in the world that there are lots of opportunities to pair wine and art and experiences, but this is the only one that I do.

 What sommelier inspires you, and why?

My husband Bryant Mao is also a sommelier. I'm harder on him than probably anybody, but he really inspires me. He's run some of the best wine programs in the city, and emphasized mentorship in his career.  It’s inspiring to watch his career develop and grow, and also watching the people who’ve worked with him develop and grow their careers and go on to become some of the other best sommeliers and most respected sommeliers, not just in Vancouver, but in the country. We have very different approaches - I think it's always great to be around somebody who does things differently than you do because of how it reminds you of other approaches.  He excels at remembering very specific detail about producers, their locations, family histories, and he’s so good at developing relationships that way. Whereas I tend to focus more in the moment, on the experience and what is called for right now. He really has an encyclopedic memory.  But if you were to sit us down for a theory exam, I would crush him.

Tell me something you love about doing BLOOM.

I love the opportunity to do something outside of the everyday of what I do and the world of wine. I was an English literature and creative writing student in my previous life. So playing with words and wine and be able to make those connections together is really exciting to me.

 As you know, these choreographers provide me with 3 adjectives. Sometimes I get a title for the piece as well, but no other information. One of the things that has always struck me in this process is the possibility of committing intentional fallacy and, you know, applying some idea based on these adjectives that are maybe not the choreographic intention at all. My personality tends to be a little bit contrarian.  I've sometimes had adjectives from choreographers who knew there was going to be wine were conjuring a wine with those adjectives. And it's in my personality to not give it to them. Like ”I know you want a Napa Cabernet, but you are not getting it.  I'm more creative than that”. As a sommelier I frequently pair wine to food. People tell me what they want and it's my job to make that happen for them or to discern what they want even if they're not completely sure. I provide these experiences. Whereas here, there's a lot more creative licence!

Do dances as a whole tend toward particular wines or types of wine?

No, because I don't let that happen. I want the audience to experience tasting different things. I actually approach the event more as I would a restaurant tasting menu. I don't want them to have three full bodied reds. That's too much of the same.  I’d never give three sparkling wines, even if the adjectives are lending themselves that way.  I always ensure a progression of wines, in fact the need for this tends to somewhat dictate the order we present the dances in. If I serve you a big heavy red and then a light, delicate white, your palate won't enjoy that light, delicate white. So even when the adjectives keep pushing towards the same style of wine, I push myself to find something that gives us variety.

Talk a bit about the highs and lows of Bloom for you?

Well COVID led to a video as well as live version of BLOOM, so the last time I did a BLOOM, we filmed the commentaries separately from the dances. I'm not shy on video, but I'm an extrovert so much of my energy feeds off the energy of other people being in the room. And I didn't get to witness the dances in person.  There's something really magical when, you know, the wine comes and then the dance, and then the comedic interpretation all in one with the energy and feedback of the audience at the same time. But not having the audience and not being there with the dances, and not getting to hear the comedic interpretation? I am really excited to return to the total live experience again!

Photo: Lainie Taillefer

Sommeliers Bryant Mao and Lisa Haley

Have you found affinities between the art of wine and the art of choreography?

I think the biggest is that when you're talking about real wine, handcrafted by real people and real places, you're always to some extent talking about a piece of art. It is an agricultural product, but so much relies on the human hand to bring it to life and  make it the thing that it is.  In a family-owned winery when there’s a generational shift in a family-owned winery from one set of hands to another, we know that the wine changes.

But we also know we have no control over what happens with that product once it's out in the world. You can't control the way that people consume it, observe it, understand it. And that’s such a strong parallel between wine and dance for me – we are talking about really subjective experiences.  

An industrial wine that has been manipulated to be a certain thing, taste a certain way and to always be the same; that’s not quite the same thing. But I think especially when we're talking about the work these artists do and that it is always evolving and always changing, wine, too, literally evolves and changes in the barrel, in the bottle and so on.

Bloom brings this to light for us, with the tasting that leads into the dance experience and then of course the comedic interpretation afterwards. Obviously they're looking for things that are funny in the dance, but I think it always pushes the audience to see something that they didn't they didn't personally see in that before.

Each week I host blind tastings for my staff and a group of local sommeliers and the same thing happens.  we're looking to for the most correct, objective interpretation of the wine – but around a table of 15 people there are debates. Is it sweet? not sweet? But then more subjective things, like what's the ageability of this wine? When would you enjoy it? Who would enjoy it? What’s the application of this wine? How much should it cost?

The wines and the dances go out into the world and you have no control after that as to how it's perceived.

@chuttersnap_unsplash

Is it true that one persons’ associative memory, sense of smell their palate can be very different than another persons, making a wine (or a dance!) a different experience for each individual?

There are technical differences in our palate, such as people who genetically don't perceive bitterness. On the other hand, there are super-tasters who have a heightened sense of taste and associated memory - they're able to conjure the taste of just about anything that they've had before. We can also do things to the palate over time, like smoking, which change it. And we can train the palate!  Somebody having their first sip of wine in their life will probably not be able to find all of the things that somebody who has trained their palate to be able to interpret these things will find. And then, of course, there's the associated memories. If I have never tasted toast, how would I know a wine tasted like toast? Maybe I would apply a different kind of flavour to that. I wouldn't be having the same shared experience as the person sitting beside me. People experience spice differently – a palate acclimated to spice is very different than someone who has a relatively bland diet. The trained dance eye sees things an untrained eye doesn’t.  Dancers make physical feats look very easy, but if I attempt it I become well aware of how difficult it is. The choreographer’s capacity to put those things together, interweave it with music and other elements is a skill that's absolutely developed.

Tell us a little more about how you experience BLOOM presentations?

What always strikes me is the opportunity to get to interact with people about wine who are not my usual audience. It’s entirely lovely to be in a room experiencing something with thers who so much want to be there. The audience at Bloom is always so lovely; it isn’t huge - those who come are always so invested in the entire event, either a big fan of the program of connected to one of the artists.  At pretty much every Bloom I’ve done someone has come up to me and said, “Wow, you know, that one wine was really amazing”  and “I didn't know that you could buy something like that for that price” or “I had never tried a wine like that. Thank you so much for introducing it to us. “ And that, for me, is all I want to do at all in my career - give people things to drink and eat that they haven't tried before and that they get really excited about. And at Bloom I find I get more opportunities to do that than any other time.

These days I run a wine store - you come in to buy wine. I'll can maybe get you to try something you haven't had before, but you're already bought in. You're not “ I don't know. I've never had wine before. Like, hook me up.” When we do pairing restaurant venues, we put people in front of things they haven't tried before, but they're already curious. Serving wine at a food and wine paired dinner, I'm with people who've paid probably $250 or $300 to have food and wine, and are probably experienced with wine. The Bloom audience is not usually an audience of wine experts. And so that opportunity to connect with them is super exciting to me.

Tell us what you’re up to these days?

For the last year I've been running a retail wine store, a really big change for me, and I love it!  After working in fine dining for almost 15 years, I love connecting with a much broader audience retail mixes together.  I'm at the Sutton Place Wine Merchant, right downtown in Bloom's old West End neighborhood, and we're working on a lot of really exciting things. We have store tastings every week and we're about to open up to some educational things the way the Grape Witches are doing in Toronto.  And we’re having so much fun at the store, putting exciting products in and we have such a beautiful staff.

I'm also working on the Board for the Canadian Association of Professional Sommeliers and putting together an education program for them. And I’m involved with Top Drop Vancouver. It’s a trade-focussed wine festival, but it has two consumer tastings that come along with it.  They’re really fun and have become kind of Vancouver’s premier wine event of the year – an opportunity for people who really want to taste real wine to conme out and see what it’s all about.

You clearly have way too much time on your hands!

Right! Oh, and a 3 ½ year old toddler is my side project just to make sure I don't actually get any sleep! 

Get some rest, sister! Thanks for talking - see you at BLOOM!