WINYL Anthony Bozza

In the final episode of our capsule collection with the wonderful folks at Sauced Wine Bar, Anthony sits down with one of his favorite Brooklyn musicians, Anand Wilder, co-founder of Yeasayer and a gifted multi instrumentalist singer-songwriter. The two discuss the dissolution of Yeasayer, Anand’s incredible first solo record I Don’t Know My Words, the heyday of 2000’s Brooklyn, the hard to navigate popularity of natural wine and one of Anand’s favorite records, Mellow Gold by Beck. We found a perfect pairing for the asynchronous funk of Beck’s major label debut in Fallen Grape Wine Company’s debut The Mother, a honey-colored blend of Grenache, Riesling and Semillon from a promising new label out of the Santa Ynez Valley in Central California.  
 
Guest: Anand Wilder Album: Beck, Mellow Gold Wine: Fallen Grape Wine Co, The Mother

 
In this episode, Anthony sits down with lyricist Bill Augustin, whose 2005 musical adaptation of the Y2K queer film classic But I'm a Cheerleader took London's West End by storm when it was revived in 2022. The two discuss the unparalleled brilliance of musical theater legend Stephen Sondheim and the beloved original cast recording of Into the Woods. The play has two very distinct acts, one ethereal and light and one menacing and crepuscular so it only seemed fitting to pair the album with two wines. The first is a rosé by Schrammel, an unfiltered pet-nat by the eponymous husband and wife micro-producer, and the second, Tzum Feis, a syrah-predominant Oregon field blend by winemaker Nate Ready of Hiyu wines.     
Guest: Bill Augustin
Album: Into the Woods, Original Cast Recording
Wines: Schrammel rosé, Tzum Feis, Hiyu Wines

In the first installment of the Winyl x Sauced collaboration, Anthony sits down with an icon from the raw wine movement, the first female French Master of Wine Isabelle Legeron, to discuss the trials and tribulations of getting raw wine recognized and how far the industry has come. Over a lovely bottle of sparkling wine from Catalonia, Anthony and Isabelle discuss her very favorite band Pink Martini and her favorite song of theirs, "Lily."

Iconic drummer Mick Fleetwood has been playing in bands professionally since the age of fifteen. He began on the English blues scene in the early sixties before cofounding Fleetwood Mac, the group that bears his name, in 1967.

Anthony became Mick’s official biographer in 2015, when the pair wrote Mick’s autobiography Play On, and this chat captures their easy simpatico. Sitting in a Manhattan hotel a day before Fleetwood Mac played Madison Square Garden, the pair ran through Mick’s greatest hits and biggest influences in rock n roll. Split into early groundbreaking artists and the next generation to follow their lead, the conversation demanded two expressions of the same grape, Mick’s favorite, the ethereal Gamay. We chose a 2017 Morgon for its earthy, dark chocolate tones to reflect the originators and a fresh and spicy 2017 Edmunds St John Bone Jolly Gamay to reflect the innovators.

Guest: Mick Fleetwood
Album: Too many to name
Wines: Marcel Lapierre, Morgon 2017 and Edmunds St. John, Bone-Jolly Gamay Noir 2017

For over a decade Jared Scharff was the lead guitarist for the Saturday Night Live Band, as he still was when we did this interview during the freewheeling, pre-pandemic Before Times. He has since left the show and relocated to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a songwriter, a session musician, and a solo artist, releasing music under the name Pearl Lion. The move seems to have paid off: on his own and as part of the production team Queen Sixties, Scharff has been a part of four albums that debuted at Number 1 in the past two years, by a diverse range of artists from Da Baby to Machine Gun Kelly.
 
Jared joined Anthony to discuss Radiohead's iconic 1997 masterpiece Ok Computer. An album of this depth, magnitude, and detail required adequate and appropriate fortification, so Anthony chose two huge names in California Zinfandel, to reflect the album's moody grace and dead-serious themes:  a 2018 Ridge East Bench Zin and a 2015 Ravenswood Big River Zin. Two expressions of the same varietal were chosen to mirror both the album's ethereal, angelic harmonies and its gloomy, deep, and dour dissection of contemporary consumer culture.
 
Guest: Jared Scharff
Album: Radiohead, Ok Computer
Wine: Ridge, East Bench Zin 2018 and Ravenswood, Big River Zin, 2015

Alan Light is an insightful journalist who has been editor in chief of Vibe, Spin and Tracks. He is a consultant for the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame whose writing has appeared in Rolling Stone and The New York Times. Alan has authored and co-authored a number of books including Let’s Go Crazy: Prince and the Making of Purple Rain, The Skills to Pay the Bills: The Story of the Beastie Boys and My Cross to Bear, with Gregg Allman. He is also the cohost of Debatable with Mark Goodman on Sirius XM Volume. 
 
Alan dropped in to discuss the Beastie Boys’ sophomore album, the 1989 classic Paul’s Boutique, over a bottle of exquisite 2016 Leviathan. Recorded over two years, the album is a masterwork of layered samples, a freewheeling hip hop opus that dropped before sampling laws became an income stream for music publishing companies. According to a 2011 article in The Atlantic, if released that year, the album would cost Capitol Records $20 million in sampling clearance fees. Paul’s Boutique established the Beasties as visionaries beyond the party boy antics of their debut, License to Ill. It seemed fitting to pair this layered and powerful hip hop classic with a wine that is a similar behemoth. Leviathan is a red blend curated by star winemaker Andy Erickson (Screaming Eagle, Harlan, Favia, Mayacamas and more) who, each year, coaxes the best of each varietal in the blend from notable vineyards throughout California, creating, essentially a sampled masterpiece.    
 
Guest: Alan Light
Album: Beastie Boys, Paul’s Boutique
Wine: 2016 Leviathan, Andy Erickson