Breaking Traditions: Collaboration, Diversity, and Modern Strategies in the Wine Industry

1
00:00:00,560 --> 00:00:04,320
A lot of people talk about the Gen Z

2
00:00:04,320 --> 00:00:08,160
problem or the Neo prohibitionists and they talk about all these different

3
00:00:08,400 --> 00:00:12,000
things. The one thing that no one talks about

4
00:00:12,320 --> 00:00:16,040
in the wine business is how in five years they've gone from

5
00:00:16,040 --> 00:00:18,960
7,500 wineries to over 11,000.

6
00:00:20,160 --> 00:00:23,960
Sit back and grab a glass. It's Wine Talks

7
00:00:23,960 --> 00:00:27,640
with Paul K. Hey,

8
00:00:27,640 --> 00:00:30,880
welcome to Wine Talks with Paul Kay and we are in studio today in actually

9
00:00:30,880 --> 00:00:34,640
beautiful Southern California on a fall day. About to have a conversation with Barbara

10
00:00:34,640 --> 00:00:38,320
Gordo. Introductions in just a moment. Just got back from a wine tasting

11
00:00:38,320 --> 00:00:41,680
yesterday, Bordeaux tasting in Beverly Hills. Incredible conversations

12
00:00:42,080 --> 00:00:45,760
with some of the leading Bordeaux makers which included Christian Moecks and

13
00:00:45,840 --> 00:00:49,600
Veronique Sanders. Van Beek, you'll hear from that

14
00:00:49,600 --> 00:00:53,200
shortly. But now while we're here, I'm going to read this from

15
00:00:53,280 --> 00:00:56,680
an AI thing. Barbara, it's good to have you on the show, but

16
00:00:57,080 --> 00:01:00,040
there was a lot to say and I couldn't write it down. So I had

17
00:01:00,040 --> 00:01:03,520
chap gtt to this. Barbara Gorder is the president of Undisclosed

18
00:01:03,520 --> 00:01:07,120
location Unlo, a Sonoma based brand strategy and

19
00:01:07,120 --> 00:01:10,960
creative consultancy specializing in the wine and premium consumer goods

20
00:01:10,960 --> 00:01:14,760
sector. She's also a longtime strategic leader and moderator of

21
00:01:14,760 --> 00:01:18,280
the DTC Wine Symposium. Of course, close to my heart,

22
00:01:18,600 --> 00:01:22,320
shaping discussions around direct to consumer innovation, growth strategies

23
00:01:22,320 --> 00:01:26,150
and consumer engagement. Her background includes agency experience

24
00:01:26,230 --> 00:01:29,830
at Leo Burnett and ddb, building major consumer

25
00:01:29,830 --> 00:01:33,430
brands with a focus on cultural relevance and

26
00:01:33,430 --> 00:01:36,790
disciplined creative execution. Wow, that's a mouthful.

27
00:01:37,670 --> 00:01:41,310
Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Paul. It's very

28
00:01:41,310 --> 00:01:44,870
generous of you. That's a really interesting point

29
00:01:44,870 --> 00:01:48,710
here that we peeled back which is

30
00:01:49,030 --> 00:01:52,750
coming to the table from a non wine world and

31
00:01:52,750 --> 00:01:56,550
there's a handful of folks like you that have done that. Tell me about that

32
00:01:56,630 --> 00:02:00,230
transition. What, what prompted that? Luxury goods are luxury

33
00:02:00,230 --> 00:02:02,950
goods, but you know, alcohol and wine are a little bit different.

34
00:02:04,230 --> 00:02:07,670
So I moved to California in

35
00:02:07,670 --> 00:02:11,350
2009 and I figured that the wine

36
00:02:11,350 --> 00:02:15,150
business would be something I was interested in. I always liked wine. I had an

37
00:02:15,150 --> 00:02:18,470
affinity for Chateauneuf du Pape, which was sort of my first

38
00:02:18,550 --> 00:02:21,640
aha wine which as people call it because I got

39
00:02:22,280 --> 00:02:25,720
tasted in a 2000 year old cave which I thought was super impressive when I

40
00:02:25,720 --> 00:02:29,120
was 18. But I had been doing wine on expense

41
00:02:29,120 --> 00:02:32,760
accounts for large agencies and so when I went to South

42
00:02:32,760 --> 00:02:36,400
Africa, I got to drink South African wines. When I went to Spain and spent

43
00:02:36,400 --> 00:02:39,640
a month there working on global product, I got to experience

44
00:02:39,880 --> 00:02:43,640
Spanish wine. So it was something I had an affinity for. So the first

45
00:02:43,640 --> 00:02:47,160
thing I went to was the DTC Wine Symposium in January

46
00:02:47,160 --> 00:02:50,830
of 2009 with a friend. And it

47
00:02:50,830 --> 00:02:54,470
was a very different affair at that time, much

48
00:02:54,470 --> 00:02:58,190
smaller. It was older white guys

49
00:02:58,190 --> 00:03:02,030
in suits, a handful, and I do mean a handful of women, and everybody was

50
00:03:02,030 --> 00:03:05,510
the same color. It was. It was not a diverse

51
00:03:05,510 --> 00:03:09,350
audience in any way, shape, or form. And they were talking about things

52
00:03:09,430 --> 00:03:13,270
that the rest of the CPG world or

53
00:03:13,430 --> 00:03:17,190
other advertisers had been doing for years. So

54
00:03:17,190 --> 00:03:21,010
I was like, okay, so this is obviously category that's ripe for

55
00:03:21,010 --> 00:03:24,690
change and ripe to do different things.

56
00:03:24,930 --> 00:03:28,450
So that's how I got involved in the DTC Symposium. And it was.

57
00:03:29,170 --> 00:03:32,770
For years, it was run by Jeremy Benson and also Brian Baker,

58
00:03:32,770 --> 00:03:36,530
who's my partner currently. And it was all about

59
00:03:36,530 --> 00:03:40,210
raising funds for Free the Grapes, which basically ensures

60
00:03:40,210 --> 00:03:43,570
consumer choice and helps with regulations

61
00:03:44,050 --> 00:03:47,090
and legislation across the country. So it was a good cause.

62
00:03:47,990 --> 00:03:51,670
And so I decided to become a volunteer. And because

63
00:03:51,750 --> 00:03:55,510
I had a very extensive contact list both globally

64
00:03:55,510 --> 00:03:58,950
and in the US in all kinds of different kinds of marketing

65
00:03:58,950 --> 00:04:02,670
aspects, I was the logical choice to choose

66
00:04:02,670 --> 00:04:06,230
keynote speakers and people who were outside of the business.

67
00:04:06,390 --> 00:04:10,190
And as the conference grew and changed and

68
00:04:10,190 --> 00:04:13,980
morphed over the years, I learned a lot.

69
00:04:14,380 --> 00:04:17,980
You know, I had moved back to California to be closer to family from Chicago,

70
00:04:17,980 --> 00:04:21,620
and so that was cool. And then I became

71
00:04:21,620 --> 00:04:24,860
involved with a lot of different people and met a lot of different people and

72
00:04:24,860 --> 00:04:28,540
started working inside the business and found that

73
00:04:28,540 --> 00:04:31,980
there was profound need for change.

74
00:04:32,620 --> 00:04:36,460
And so let me. Let me. Let me back all the way up, okay?

75
00:04:37,260 --> 00:04:40,980
Because you said something important that's generationally important. And we're going to talk

76
00:04:40,980 --> 00:04:44,340
about the diversity side of wine. We're going to talk about Free the Grapes. Remember

77
00:04:44,340 --> 00:04:48,080
the organization? Well, we'll talk about Brian Baker, who's an old friend

78
00:04:48,080 --> 00:04:51,840
as well. But you said something that I think is really pertinent. And

79
00:04:51,840 --> 00:04:55,520
I just read an article this morning about tourism and EO tourism and wine. Had

80
00:04:55,520 --> 00:04:59,120
a wonderful woman on the show recently from Armenia who's trying to, you know, that

81
00:04:59,120 --> 00:05:02,720
whole industry is trying to grow. And that is. You said you were

82
00:05:02,720 --> 00:05:06,480
18 and you were in a cellar. You tasted a Chateauneuf du Pape. Now,

83
00:05:06,480 --> 00:05:10,320
first of all, Chateauneuf du Pape, probably not the most popular wine in Southern California

84
00:05:10,320 --> 00:05:13,740
right now, but regardless, they're wonderful wines and very

85
00:05:13,740 --> 00:05:17,300
pedigreed. But more important, you said, I was impressed

86
00:05:17,780 --> 00:05:21,580
being in the cellar. It was 2,000 years old. It was built by

87
00:05:21,580 --> 00:05:24,580
the Romans. So why was that impressive?

88
00:05:25,140 --> 00:05:28,100
Because I was an art history major. I didn't go.

89
00:05:30,260 --> 00:05:33,420
I didn't give a fig. For once, I didn't care about wines. I went to

90
00:05:33,420 --> 00:05:37,220
go see the cathedral that had been bombed in

91
00:05:37,220 --> 00:05:40,940
1944. I was with my art history professor and he

92
00:05:40,940 --> 00:05:44,600
goes, you need to see this cave that was built by the Ro. Romans 2000

93
00:05:44,600 --> 00:05:47,920
years ago. And then when I was in the cave, I tasted the wine. So

94
00:05:47,920 --> 00:05:51,640
it was a experience, as they say today. But it was a very

95
00:05:51,640 --> 00:05:55,240
impressive experience to be part of that history. But you're.

96
00:05:55,240 --> 00:05:59,080
Since you're tied to DTC and for the listeners that don't know the term,

97
00:05:59,080 --> 00:06:02,800
it means direct to consumer, which applies to all industries that deal,

98
00:06:03,440 --> 00:06:06,560
just about anything in Amazon would be dtc, right? So

99
00:06:08,480 --> 00:06:12,120
there's an. What I was trying to get to on that is there's experiential

100
00:06:12,120 --> 00:06:15,560
part of that aha moment for you was being in this cave. And this is

101
00:06:15,560 --> 00:06:19,400
cool history. And you're being a history major, had this affinity just

102
00:06:19,400 --> 00:06:23,240
to be there, but. And then DTC

103
00:06:23,240 --> 00:06:26,840
kind of removes experience from the consumer

104
00:06:26,840 --> 00:06:29,840
side of things. And so what I. What I want to peel back a little

105
00:06:29,840 --> 00:06:33,640
bit is how do we get wineries to produce

106
00:06:33,640 --> 00:06:37,440
an experience for people to say, ah, I remember

107
00:06:37,440 --> 00:06:41,260
this wine. You'll never forget that Chateauneuf du Pape you tasted, right?

108
00:06:41,260 --> 00:06:44,900
Because you were in this cave. Never. How do I do that? And then

109
00:06:45,220 --> 00:06:49,060
you get to, you know, as your life and your career go on

110
00:06:49,860 --> 00:06:53,700
much later in life. I met the Haas family. I met

111
00:06:53,700 --> 00:06:57,020
Jason Haas's father on my first big wine trip to

112
00:06:57,020 --> 00:07:00,260
California when he was establishing Tablas Creek.

113
00:07:00,660 --> 00:07:04,140
Then later on I get to meet Jason and work with him on Free the

114
00:07:04,140 --> 00:07:07,540
Grapes and about his commitment to regenerative farming.

115
00:07:07,780 --> 00:07:11,340
And so it's. And all of the different, you know, varieties of

116
00:07:11,340 --> 00:07:14,900
wine that he's producing from Chateauneuf du Pape. So it's kind of a full circle.

117
00:07:14,980 --> 00:07:18,700
You know, that's wine. He was on the show

118
00:07:18,700 --> 00:07:21,940
recently and I kind of freaked him out because

119
00:07:22,820 --> 00:07:26,540
Robert Haas and the Rhone Rangers used to meet at Laleem's in.

120
00:07:26,540 --> 00:07:30,340
In Berkeley, which is owned by a guy in Armenia named Vahed Kashkarian.

121
00:07:30,580 --> 00:07:34,220
It was also the restaurant that Alice Waters went to when she was

122
00:07:34,220 --> 00:07:38,020
tired of, you know, Chez Panisse. So it's kind of an interesting story, but.

123
00:07:38,100 --> 00:07:40,820
So you brought to the DTC world,

124
00:07:42,340 --> 00:07:45,620
I suppose, experience and education from previous

125
00:07:45,620 --> 00:07:49,260
industries, you know, being at Leo Burnett, one of the great PR agencies of the

126
00:07:49,260 --> 00:07:52,100
world. Marketing work,

127
00:07:52,660 --> 00:07:56,340
huh? Marketing, not pr marketing. What was it?

128
00:07:56,340 --> 00:08:00,020
How, how is, how did that come to the Table. How did that feel?

129
00:08:00,180 --> 00:08:03,940
You know, transitioning from the wine, from that business into the wine side

130
00:08:04,740 --> 00:08:08,590
there too? Like moments of when I'm first getting into

131
00:08:08,590 --> 00:08:12,270
the wine business, the first I get a meeting with

132
00:08:12,270 --> 00:08:15,790
a very famous and well known iconic Napa Valley

133
00:08:15,790 --> 00:08:19,470
producer. And I say to the guy, said, because a lot of my

134
00:08:19,470 --> 00:08:23,190
experience came from marketing to women and, and going

135
00:08:23,190 --> 00:08:26,990
out, whether it was athletics or CPG products or whatever. I

136
00:08:26,990 --> 00:08:29,510
said, so what are you doing in your winery to market to women? He goes,

137
00:08:29,510 --> 00:08:32,790
oh, we're not really doing anything to women. The man owns the credit card, he's

138
00:08:32,790 --> 00:08:35,929
in charge of the wine club. And I'm like, wow.

139
00:08:36,729 --> 00:08:40,449
So this is 2010, when I had that meeting. And the

140
00:08:40,449 --> 00:08:44,169
other one was an Ava that I pitched was probably one of the first Avas

141
00:08:44,169 --> 00:08:47,289
I pitched. And there were 16 people in the room,

142
00:08:47,689 --> 00:08:51,329
myself and the banker. And we were the only two people who were

143
00:08:51,329 --> 00:08:55,009
not related by blood or marriage. And that

144
00:08:55,009 --> 00:08:58,769
was also a moment where I realized, okay, this is

145
00:08:58,769 --> 00:09:02,440
a completely different category and you're going to have to

146
00:09:02,440 --> 00:09:06,200
approach it. And a lot of people are not. I've

147
00:09:06,200 --> 00:09:10,040
dealt with, you know, startups and people who didn't have experience in marketing all

148
00:09:10,040 --> 00:09:13,120
my life. And then you end up being an educator one way or another.

149
00:09:13,680 --> 00:09:16,880
But this was going to be a special category that had particular

150
00:09:17,120 --> 00:09:20,800
challenges. You know, this is interesting

151
00:09:22,000 --> 00:09:25,120
because we were talking about that diversity side of this and, and you went to

152
00:09:25,120 --> 00:09:28,880
the DTC consumer, which is what we've done. The word DTC

153
00:09:28,880 --> 00:09:32,640
is relatively new to the world of consumerism. I don't think

154
00:09:33,100 --> 00:09:36,660
when the BMG Music or whatever that company was that used to

155
00:09:36,660 --> 00:09:39,980
send you, you know, 12 CDs for a dollar and then you had to buy,

156
00:09:39,980 --> 00:09:43,660
you know, 12 at regular price, they didn't call it DTC then.

157
00:09:44,220 --> 00:09:47,660
When my dad started in 1972, they didn't call it DTC then.

158
00:09:49,580 --> 00:09:53,340
But it's. A thing when, when he

159
00:09:53,340 --> 00:09:56,860
handed this company over and I, he will. He would have argued today that

160
00:09:57,020 --> 00:09:59,420
I bought it from, from a dollar, which isn't true.

161
00:10:02,090 --> 00:10:05,610
In 1988, he handed me and I could find this

162
00:10:05,610 --> 00:10:08,810
document somewhere in my archives here. The list of

163
00:10:08,890 --> 00:10:12,730
wineries in Napa Valley that had what now is called dtc.

164
00:10:13,050 --> 00:10:16,649
And it was basically five. It was like, you know,

165
00:10:16,649 --> 00:10:20,490
Inglenook Martini, you know, the, the four or five

166
00:10:21,050 --> 00:10:24,690
known wineries at the time. Why, why would that

167
00:10:24,690 --> 00:10:28,500
take so long, in your opinion, to come to the surface?

168
00:10:28,580 --> 00:10:31,460
Not 2009. There was a symposium on it and

169
00:10:32,980 --> 00:10:36,780
it still seems to be in its infancy. And Understanding what

170
00:10:36,780 --> 00:10:40,540
the proper methodologies are and where to go with it. I

171
00:10:40,540 --> 00:10:44,220
think we've come a long way. I mean, the symposium now is this will be

172
00:10:44,220 --> 00:10:47,220
in January 2026, will be our 19th year.

173
00:10:47,940 --> 00:10:51,660
And so at this time, we actually are

174
00:10:51,660 --> 00:10:55,300
living in best of times from a marketing perspective because we are

175
00:10:55,300 --> 00:10:58,910
able to utilize things like AI to

176
00:10:58,910 --> 00:11:02,550
do creative. We're able to utilize OTT and CTV from a

177
00:11:02,550 --> 00:11:06,270
media standpoint where small enterprises can get in the

178
00:11:06,270 --> 00:11:09,590
game, just as social media did

179
00:11:09,830 --> 00:11:13,550
10 years ago when people started reaching out that way, and

180
00:11:13,550 --> 00:11:17,230
then the rise of meta and those kinds of different

181
00:11:17,230 --> 00:11:20,630
things. So there are tools out there for people,

182
00:11:21,110 --> 00:11:24,770
but how they utilize those tools is often the

183
00:11:24,770 --> 00:11:28,450
challenge. And one of the things we're going to talk

184
00:11:28,450 --> 00:11:32,130
about and we can talk about this is a through line

185
00:11:32,130 --> 00:11:35,850
for the conference this year is about collaboration. And I think

186
00:11:35,850 --> 00:11:39,370
that that's going to be really important because from an amplification

187
00:11:39,370 --> 00:11:42,970
standpoint, if you have 3,000 case

188
00:11:42,970 --> 00:11:46,730
wineries and you have 15,000 case wineries, how are people

189
00:11:46,730 --> 00:11:50,570
going to interact in order to sell more wine and bring more people under

190
00:11:50,570 --> 00:11:53,130
the tent? And I think that's one of the most important things we want to

191
00:11:53,130 --> 00:11:56,760
talk about at this year's conference is. And that's. Collaboration is

192
00:11:56,760 --> 00:12:00,480
not something that the wine industry is known for. There's been a

193
00:12:00,480 --> 00:12:03,880
lot of gatekeeping, secret keeping, keeping

194
00:12:03,880 --> 00:12:06,720
numbers, keeping things behind the wall. And I,

195
00:12:07,760 --> 00:12:11,439
I see that the rise of women, and now I would say the conference is

196
00:12:11,439 --> 00:12:14,640
over 50% women, probably closer to 60

197
00:12:15,520 --> 00:12:19,360
women are collaborative and they're going to come up with those solutions in

198
00:12:19,360 --> 00:12:23,090
order to sell more wine. And I think that's super important. You know, that's a

199
00:12:23,090 --> 00:12:26,890
really interesting concept because, you know, the Wine of the Month club

200
00:12:26,970 --> 00:12:30,570
during its heyday, and I'm going to say probably 2007

201
00:12:30,570 --> 00:12:34,410
through 2015, we were, we were monthly club, which we're

202
00:12:34,410 --> 00:12:36,490
going to talk about a little bit here in a second, which is not typical

203
00:12:36,490 --> 00:12:40,290
of most wineries. But I used to have

204
00:12:40,290 --> 00:12:44,090
lunch with my main competitors, California Wine Club, Golden

205
00:12:44,090 --> 00:12:47,210
Gold Medal Wine Club, the Vanesse. And we would share

206
00:12:48,170 --> 00:12:51,610
stuff that we felt we could share, you know, with. We had a cautious approach

207
00:12:51,610 --> 00:12:55,290
to our conversation. However, the closest

208
00:12:55,450 --> 00:12:58,650
and the most confident

209
00:12:58,890 --> 00:13:01,530
Confiance. Confiance is French

210
00:13:02,970 --> 00:13:06,410
Conf. The. Wow, I'm having trouble my words here.

211
00:13:06,650 --> 00:13:10,370
The, the, the. The manager of the company that I most

212
00:13:10,370 --> 00:13:13,930
confidence in and trust with having conversations

213
00:13:14,010 --> 00:13:17,730
was a woman at California Wine Club.

214
00:13:17,730 --> 00:13:21,130
And she's still a very good friend. And so we hit it off when we

215
00:13:21,130 --> 00:13:24,610
first sat next to each other, and we sort of confided in each other along

216
00:13:24,610 --> 00:13:26,770
the way with our competitors of what we were doing.

217
00:13:28,690 --> 00:13:32,330
But, you know, it's an interesting thing because I just read a LinkedIn

218
00:13:32,330 --> 00:13:35,290
post from a friend of mine. Not a post, but he sent me a message.

219
00:13:35,290 --> 00:13:38,450
And he owns a winery in Lalonde de Palmiral. He's a

220
00:13:38,770 --> 00:13:41,970
Frenchman who has Bordeaux here. He's got 4,000

221
00:13:43,170 --> 00:13:46,850
bottles of 18 Bordeaux here in America.

222
00:13:47,730 --> 00:13:51,210
And like most people that do this, don't know. Doesn't know what to do with

223
00:13:51,210 --> 00:13:54,770
it. And he wrote the other day, and I just.

224
00:13:54,770 --> 00:13:58,130
Just noticed it. All we need is

225
00:13:58,130 --> 00:14:01,930
6,000 members to take 24 bottles a year, and I can

226
00:14:01,930 --> 00:14:05,250
get this stuff out of here. And I wrote back, I said,

227
00:14:05,490 --> 00:14:09,110
all you need is 6,000 members. Do you have any idea what

228
00:14:09,110 --> 00:14:12,510
it's going to take and how much it'll cost? I said, that is a separate

229
00:14:12,510 --> 00:14:16,030
business and I'll help you with it. But, you know, that didn't just happen.

230
00:14:17,150 --> 00:14:20,590
So when you sit. No, I mean, that's a huge nut.

231
00:14:22,430 --> 00:14:26,150
Yeah. So are we talking mostly at the

232
00:14:26,150 --> 00:14:29,710
DTC symposium, wineries who are looking

233
00:14:29,710 --> 00:14:33,350
for ways to embellish their clubs and

234
00:14:33,350 --> 00:14:37,000
get the wine in the hands of the consumer, or is it a

235
00:14:37,000 --> 00:14:40,560
mix of third parties like the Wine of the Month club was, and

236
00:14:40,560 --> 00:14:44,160
wineries? You know, the thing that's been

237
00:14:44,160 --> 00:14:47,880
interesting about the conference is we've always had a very diverse audience

238
00:14:48,360 --> 00:14:52,080
in terms of, like, enterprise. So we have people who

239
00:14:52,080 --> 00:14:55,760
are coming there. I had a lady who wrote me from Los Olivos who literally

240
00:14:55,760 --> 00:14:59,440
makes 150 cases of wine a year. And then I have

241
00:14:59,440 --> 00:15:03,000
people from the Gallo organization, from the Jackson family organization.

242
00:15:03,950 --> 00:15:07,590
So. Wow. Obviously, you know, so we have. And every

243
00:15:07,590 --> 00:15:10,990
and everything in between. And so huge diversity.

244
00:15:11,390 --> 00:15:14,990
It's. It's a huge business diversity because people

245
00:15:15,150 --> 00:15:18,910
understand that, you know, DTC marketing has become a

246
00:15:18,910 --> 00:15:22,270
$4.2 billion channel. Right.

247
00:15:22,990 --> 00:15:26,710
So depending on how that works for you and

248
00:15:26,710 --> 00:15:30,510
your business, it's an important to. For some people, it's their

249
00:15:30,510 --> 00:15:34,080
only channel or it's their major channel. But in the case of the

250
00:15:34,080 --> 00:15:37,920
larger enterprise people, it's a minor channel, but important to them.

251
00:15:37,920 --> 00:15:40,920
And they saw how important it was during the pandemic. And

252
00:15:41,480 --> 00:15:43,720
enabling customers to buy that wine online.

253
00:15:45,080 --> 00:15:48,280
Can they learn. Can those two organizations learn

254
00:15:49,079 --> 00:15:52,080
the same thing from one. Let's just go. Let's say I attend one of the

255
00:15:52,080 --> 00:15:55,800
seminars not knowing the subject. Let's say AI Stephen Mock is teaching AI

256
00:15:55,800 --> 00:15:59,280
to such a. That

257
00:15:59,280 --> 00:16:03,110
Diverse. Diverse. A Clientele, meaning the woman who makes

258
00:16:03,110 --> 00:16:06,830
150 cases in the Jackson family. Direct to consumer club

259
00:16:06,830 --> 00:16:09,590
manager. Obviously completely different

260
00:16:09,990 --> 00:16:13,790
requirements and needs. But can they learn the same lessons from what you

261
00:16:13,790 --> 00:16:17,430
guys teach? I think overarching. I think the first thing that everybody can

262
00:16:17,430 --> 00:16:21,070
learn from is that it's the best networking on in wine. I

263
00:16:21,070 --> 00:16:24,830
mean, that's number one. Because when people meet and they talk to

264
00:16:24,830 --> 00:16:28,180
each other, the conversations are invaluable.

265
00:16:28,340 --> 00:16:31,980
So start with that. And then I think what we try and do with the

266
00:16:31,980 --> 00:16:35,740
programming and I think we've done a really good job this year in, you know,

267
00:16:35,740 --> 00:16:39,580
building a media plan on ott, which people who

268
00:16:39,580 --> 00:16:42,980
are probably more sophisticated and want to do that can do that.

269
00:16:43,140 --> 00:16:46,660
Or if they want to talk about how automation is going to serve their wine

270
00:16:46,660 --> 00:16:49,220
club, they can do that. So we try and provide

271
00:16:50,340 --> 00:16:54,120
content and programming that is going to go to both of

272
00:16:54,120 --> 00:16:57,920
those things. Our keynote speakers, obviously Steve Gross

273
00:16:57,920 --> 00:17:01,640
gives State of the State, which is one of our best. And

274
00:17:01,640 --> 00:17:05,480
then we also bring in, we have a DTC marketer from outside the wine business.

275
00:17:05,480 --> 00:17:09,120
He's going to talk, he's worked with Calvin Klein and pet food

276
00:17:09,120 --> 00:17:12,400
and art and snacks. So he's going to talk about his

277
00:17:12,400 --> 00:17:16,200
experiences. And then Elaine Brown is going to come

278
00:17:16,200 --> 00:17:19,970
in and she's going to talk about the future, which I think

279
00:17:19,970 --> 00:17:23,410
is an important thing that we all need to talk about right now. And then

280
00:17:23,410 --> 00:17:27,250
Dusky Estes. So we have, we have a. So it's sort of like those

281
00:17:27,250 --> 00:17:30,730
keynotes are kind of up here, Blue Ocean. And then the

282
00:17:30,730 --> 00:17:34,490
sessions are more about education. The breakouts. Yeah,

283
00:17:34,490 --> 00:17:38,250
we're doing boot camps for the first time this year, which is an experiment where

284
00:17:38,250 --> 00:17:42,010
we're asking people to bring their laptops and actually doing

285
00:17:42,010 --> 00:17:45,770
an hour and a half session to learn how to. If that lady from

286
00:17:45,770 --> 00:17:49,410
with 150 cases wants to learn how to build and a meta

287
00:17:49,410 --> 00:17:53,150
campaign and spend a very small amount of money. I

288
00:17:53,150 --> 00:17:56,790
have Mike sit coming in from Augusta, Missouri and he's going to show her

289
00:17:56,790 --> 00:18:00,310
how he did that for the nice people in Augusta,

290
00:18:00,310 --> 00:18:03,870
Missouri and all the very tiny wineries that are there. Well, let me ask you

291
00:18:03,870 --> 00:18:05,030
this question. Because of that,

292
00:18:07,510 --> 00:18:10,750
the Wine of the Month club, when we found it, it was in a store

293
00:18:10,750 --> 00:18:14,430
and so people walked into the store. Then we, my

294
00:18:14,430 --> 00:18:18,140
dad invented the newsletter for the wines and he, you know, all those things

295
00:18:18,140 --> 00:18:21,700
that come along with today's DTC world. But then we decided

296
00:18:21,700 --> 00:18:25,540
to, he was starting to do shows. So that first change

297
00:18:25,540 --> 00:18:29,180
in my dad's career for marketing the Wine club was

298
00:18:29,500 --> 00:18:33,300
stand at a booth. And it was very interesting because he would

299
00:18:33,300 --> 00:18:36,900
go to the legal, the legal shows and the dentist shows and the

300
00:18:36,900 --> 00:18:40,380
doctor shows and the, you know, the gun shows and

301
00:18:40,700 --> 00:18:44,380
was, you know, it was some return. There was an acquisition cost issue.

302
00:18:44,460 --> 00:18:48,300
It was fine, it was survivable. But the loyalty was

303
00:18:48,300 --> 00:18:50,440
very high then. Then

304
00:18:51,800 --> 00:18:55,200
somebody said you ought to go to the LA County Fair. So in 1984 he

305
00:18:55,200 --> 00:18:58,440
set up a booth LA County Fair, which was free at the time and

306
00:18:58,760 --> 00:19:02,280
doubled his membership like in 20 days. And that was

307
00:19:02,440 --> 00:19:06,080
realized that, you know, that was a huge venue. Well those, those things don't

308
00:19:06,080 --> 00:19:09,680
really work anymore, I can tell you that. My acquisition

309
00:19:09,680 --> 00:19:13,400
cost in 19 and 2007 was

310
00:19:15,150 --> 00:19:18,110
$9. Can you imagine that? And then

311
00:19:18,830 --> 00:19:22,510
the, the year I stopped, I'm sorry, that was 1996. The year I stopped doing

312
00:19:22,510 --> 00:19:26,110
shows was 2007. And that acquisition cost is the same exact show was

313
00:19:26,110 --> 00:19:29,710
$150 unsurvivable, you know, at a $30

314
00:19:29,710 --> 00:19:33,310
wine package. So what I'm getting to is

315
00:19:33,310 --> 00:19:37,070
then we moved into cataloging in, in direct mail. We were selling,

316
00:19:37,150 --> 00:19:40,870
moving a million pieces of mail a year. And then that

317
00:19:40,870 --> 00:19:44,710
all evolved into Groupon, you know, coupon marketing. And then it moved into

318
00:19:44,710 --> 00:19:48,150
affiliate marketing and moved into influencer. All that stuff comes around.

319
00:19:48,630 --> 00:19:52,150
How do you, how do you position the,

320
00:19:52,150 --> 00:19:55,750
the symposium around the radically

321
00:19:56,390 --> 00:20:00,030
advanced changes in marketing? And you came from

322
00:20:00,030 --> 00:20:03,190
Leo Burnett, which is a marketing firm, as you mentioned. Man.

323
00:20:04,230 --> 00:20:07,830
Kevin o' Leary said it on the show. What works today won't work tomorrow. Work,

324
00:20:07,830 --> 00:20:11,520
work yesterday is not going to work today. How do we keep

325
00:20:11,680 --> 00:20:14,880
dynamic, how do we teach the dynamic part of this?

326
00:20:15,920 --> 00:20:19,320
Well, I think that we all have to get invested in the idea of selling

327
00:20:19,320 --> 00:20:22,600
wine at the 50,000 foot level. And there's been a lot of

328
00:20:22,600 --> 00:20:26,320
conversation about this recently. A lot of people are trying

329
00:20:26,320 --> 00:20:29,920
to understand it. I think the whit and

330
00:20:29,920 --> 00:20:33,440
bid situation in California. We're going to have a program

331
00:20:33,600 --> 00:20:37,240
about that. There's been a lot of controversy, as I'm sure you're well

332
00:20:37,240 --> 00:20:41,080
aware in Sonoma County. So we're going to do it as a very

333
00:20:41,080 --> 00:20:44,300
journalist holistic panel and have people from five different

334
00:20:44,700 --> 00:20:48,300
areas of California who are at different phases of

335
00:20:48,940 --> 00:20:51,660
adoption, you know, Temecula leading the bunch.

336
00:20:52,460 --> 00:20:56,300
And so we're blessed to have like team members on the steering

337
00:20:56,300 --> 00:21:00,060
committee who come from all of these areas and who we want to

338
00:21:00,060 --> 00:21:03,580
keep it pro con difficulties and

339
00:21:03,580 --> 00:21:07,180
reporting out because these things have been very

340
00:21:07,180 --> 00:21:10,700
controversial because it's a tax that people don't particularly want to pay.

341
00:21:10,860 --> 00:21:14,260
But that said, it requires them to market

342
00:21:14,420 --> 00:21:17,940
their product and market their area. And I think that we can do

343
00:21:17,940 --> 00:21:21,780
one better if we were to create a wine campaign.

344
00:21:22,420 --> 00:21:26,180
And Rob McMillan called for this several years ago. It was called Wine Ramp.

345
00:21:26,820 --> 00:21:30,660
And people have to get in the business of familiarizing themselves

346
00:21:30,660 --> 00:21:34,380
with beverages. And if you look at what wine

347
00:21:34,380 --> 00:21:37,540
spends versus beer or spirits, it's

348
00:21:38,090 --> 00:21:41,690
negligible. So we have number one, selling

349
00:21:41,690 --> 00:21:45,450
wine and number two, what kind of wine and

350
00:21:45,450 --> 00:21:49,290
what do you want? And I think that another through

351
00:21:49,290 --> 00:21:53,010
line will be different ways of looking at targeting consumers that is

352
00:21:53,010 --> 00:21:56,570
outside of demographics, which I think is completely

353
00:21:56,570 --> 00:22:00,250
antiquated. And the wine business is very lazy about. And

354
00:22:00,250 --> 00:22:04,050
because they have everyone's birthday, they think that, okay,

355
00:22:04,050 --> 00:22:07,850
Gen Z consumers are here and boomers are over here and,

356
00:22:08,810 --> 00:22:12,530
and ascribing particular behaviors to these particular age

357
00:22:12,530 --> 00:22:16,210
groups, which nobody in CPG marketing has been doing

358
00:22:16,210 --> 00:22:19,290
for 20 years. I mean, it's not how,

359
00:22:20,330 --> 00:22:23,770
you know, as I had this conversation with

360
00:22:24,089 --> 00:22:27,850
Rob McMillan and I said, hey, I'm a boomer. I like

361
00:22:27,850 --> 00:22:31,450
tacos, I like to hang out and drink Rhone varietals with my

362
00:22:31,450 --> 00:22:35,270
dog. And you know, and I see people, the Gen

363
00:22:35,270 --> 00:22:38,630
Z's there. And so it's like we're enjoying the same experience.

364
00:22:39,510 --> 00:22:43,270
So help me understand how exactly we're different. It's

365
00:22:43,590 --> 00:22:46,670
a really interesting thought because when, when I would buy lists back in the day

366
00:22:46,670 --> 00:22:50,430
for the, for the direct mail and you know, the demographics was all

367
00:22:50,430 --> 00:22:53,390
you had. And so you would say, oh gee, I wonder if the, you know,

368
00:22:53,390 --> 00:22:56,670
these, if, if the Victoria's Secret

369
00:22:56,670 --> 00:22:59,830
catalog, you know, buyers and you learned a lot,

370
00:23:00,480 --> 00:23:03,600
it wasn't about the demographics. What ended up being the most driving

371
00:23:04,560 --> 00:23:07,520
force for direct mail at the time was, and probably still is

372
00:23:08,080 --> 00:23:11,600
that that the person had responded to a direct

373
00:23:11,600 --> 00:23:15,440
mail piece, almost didn't matter what the product was that they had responded to.

374
00:23:15,440 --> 00:23:18,600
But if they were used to opening their mail and checking off the box like

375
00:23:18,600 --> 00:23:22,080
my father in law would buy anything he got in the mail, that was the

376
00:23:22,080 --> 00:23:25,920
most important driving factor. But today, you know, the variables

377
00:23:25,920 --> 00:23:29,770
and the targeting and the ability to get, you know, your message in front

378
00:23:29,770 --> 00:23:33,210
of the person that most likely would buy has to be infinitely more

379
00:23:33,210 --> 00:23:36,970
granular. Well, especially when you look at a wine audience,

380
00:23:36,970 --> 00:23:40,090
right? I mean if you, I had somebody run the numbers for me one time

381
00:23:40,090 --> 00:23:43,890
and it's like the wine audience of people who drink wine on a regular

382
00:23:43,890 --> 00:23:47,330
basis in the United States, which would be once a week or more,

383
00:23:47,650 --> 00:23:49,570
is somewhere around 10 million people,

384
00:23:52,210 --> 00:23:55,890
given the Size of the country, it's not that big. So

385
00:23:55,970 --> 00:23:59,090
you have to, so what you have to do is you have to, number one,

386
00:23:59,090 --> 00:24:02,730
increase the size of the market, and number two, figure out how you're going to

387
00:24:02,730 --> 00:24:06,530
target those people. I mean, Tom Lark had an excellent article out this

388
00:24:06,530 --> 00:24:09,930
week talking about, you know, how people should be targeting

389
00:24:09,930 --> 00:24:13,450
customers. And then there's been the entire

390
00:24:13,450 --> 00:24:16,930
conversation about, you know, whether it's grocery store

391
00:24:16,930 --> 00:24:20,330
wine or whether it's things that are better.

392
00:24:20,410 --> 00:24:22,580
That's podcast.

393
00:24:24,100 --> 00:24:27,820
Well, it is, but it's like, so. It's so disappointing. And I'm listening to these

394
00:24:27,820 --> 00:24:31,660
people spiel on and on and on about it, and I'm sorry, they might know

395
00:24:31,660 --> 00:24:35,220
about wine. They don't know anything about marketing to

396
00:24:35,220 --> 00:24:39,060
people. What are you doing? That's. Well, that's

397
00:24:39,060 --> 00:24:42,860
a very hilarious. That's an important feature. And I want to go back to

398
00:24:42,860 --> 00:24:46,060
the statistic for a second because I, I'm, I was way off all these years,

399
00:24:46,060 --> 00:24:49,580
though. I got my numbers from the Wine Institute back in the day. But the,

400
00:24:49,580 --> 00:24:53,260
the, the comment used to be, if you asked 100,000 people in

401
00:24:53,260 --> 00:24:56,940
America, do you drink wine? 25,000 would say yes, which would be

402
00:24:56,940 --> 00:25:00,700
25%. However, that includes the, the, you know, the person

403
00:25:00,700 --> 00:25:03,779
that goes to Olive Garden and gets the house Chianti, they would raise their hand,

404
00:25:03,779 --> 00:25:06,980
I drink wine. But they're certainly not a candidate for a DTC program.

405
00:25:07,380 --> 00:25:11,140
So your numbers are even more specific and, and, and more

406
00:25:11,220 --> 00:25:15,070
constraining. But. So you just nailed, you just hit it on

407
00:25:15,070 --> 00:25:18,790
the head, though. People come to this industry, at

408
00:25:18,790 --> 00:25:21,950
least, for instance, the woman who's making 150 cases or,

409
00:25:22,990 --> 00:25:26,670
you know, Terravaz Winery in Kansas City

410
00:25:26,990 --> 00:25:30,550
because of the romance, the idea, the, the, the, the

411
00:25:30,550 --> 00:25:34,270
challenge, whatever it is it takes for you to bite off this industry.

412
00:25:35,630 --> 00:25:39,390
Aren't they reluctant to try and understand marketing and testing

413
00:25:39,390 --> 00:25:43,230
and, you know, realize, oh, man, I, I don't think

414
00:25:43,230 --> 00:25:46,910
I really care about acquisition costs and, and Roas and all the rest of the

415
00:25:46,910 --> 00:25:50,230
metrics. Is that hard? Do you know why I love the wine industry?

416
00:25:51,910 --> 00:25:55,670
Is this a setup? No. The reason why I love the wine industry,

417
00:25:55,750 --> 00:25:59,590
it's the same group of eccentrics, weirdos,

418
00:26:00,390 --> 00:26:03,950
oddballs with diverse education. They might have an

419
00:26:03,950 --> 00:26:07,270
engineering degree, they might have a poetry degree, but they all

420
00:26:07,710 --> 00:26:11,510
are passionate and they love it. Do they love marketing? In fact, they do

421
00:26:11,510 --> 00:26:15,230
not. Which means they don't have a job until I want to

422
00:26:15,230 --> 00:26:18,910
retire, apparently. But the point is, is that

423
00:26:19,630 --> 00:26:23,470
what we're seeing is we're starting to see the shift it started during COVID and

424
00:26:23,470 --> 00:26:27,150
you're starting to see it where I think people, and especially the younger generation

425
00:26:27,150 --> 00:26:30,790
coming up, understands that they are going to have to bring their products to

426
00:26:30,790 --> 00:26:33,470
market, they're going to have to pay for marketing and they're going to have to

427
00:26:33,470 --> 00:26:37,110
do something about it. And so whether that's, you know,

428
00:26:37,110 --> 00:26:40,550
newsletters, social ott,

429
00:26:40,630 --> 00:26:44,470
whatever that is, they're gonna have to do it. Whereas I think there is

430
00:26:44,470 --> 00:26:48,230
a generation of guys that

431
00:26:48,310 --> 00:26:52,070
basically said, my wine sells itself. I mean, I'm sure you've been in this business

432
00:26:52,070 --> 00:26:55,030
a long time. You know, a lot of people who would say that, right.

433
00:26:56,150 --> 00:26:59,750
They've been saying since who knows when, right? But,

434
00:26:59,750 --> 00:27:03,070
you know, be that as it may, I mean, go back to. Go back to

435
00:27:03,070 --> 00:27:06,230
Bartles and James, which was a very undistinguished product,

436
00:27:06,870 --> 00:27:10,530
but they sol lot of it. And how did they sell that?

437
00:27:11,090 --> 00:27:14,450
They sold it with a great advertising campaign that was humorous,

438
00:27:14,690 --> 00:27:18,490
something no one in the wine industry is doing. And I've. I've talked about

439
00:27:18,490 --> 00:27:21,970
this a couple of different times, but it's like phrase they. Had a

440
00:27:21,970 --> 00:27:24,610
catchphrase at the end. The two brothers stand there that

441
00:27:25,810 --> 00:27:29,610
it was very fun. It was hell ry I think it was

442
00:27:29,610 --> 00:27:33,370
in the late 70s or 80s sometime there. But I mean, it was brilliant

443
00:27:33,370 --> 00:27:36,940
work, but I mean, it wasn't very good product. And I think

444
00:27:36,940 --> 00:27:40,460
that there is a generation that looks at marketing

445
00:27:40,460 --> 00:27:43,060
as being in some way, shape or form

446
00:27:44,180 --> 00:27:47,780
not worthy of their product. And, well, you know,

447
00:27:48,180 --> 00:27:51,620
people are getting over that. Look at what, look at what Lois Cho is doing

448
00:27:51,620 --> 00:27:55,380
with Wieden and Kennedy. She's a bright young woman. She was just in

449
00:27:55,380 --> 00:27:59,140
Wine Business Monthly called out and that's cool. She's coming to

450
00:27:59,140 --> 00:28:02,500
the conference to give a talk. But I mean, the point is, is that

451
00:28:02,900 --> 00:28:06,370
now it's like now people are starting to get, hey,

452
00:28:06,930 --> 00:28:10,770
I'm in. I'm selling wine in Oregon. Why don't I go get some of the

453
00:28:10,770 --> 00:28:14,370
best people in the business from Wyden and Kennedy and have them work with

454
00:28:14,370 --> 00:28:18,130
me and they'll get something out of it and I'll get something out of it.

455
00:28:18,370 --> 00:28:22,090
That's smart. There's a book I was reading. I do

456
00:28:22,090 --> 00:28:25,770
like reading wine books that are written years and years ago because

457
00:28:25,770 --> 00:28:29,170
it's sort of a different perspective on what was happening at the time the book

458
00:28:29,170 --> 00:28:31,570
was written. Plus it goes back in history.

459
00:28:33,720 --> 00:28:37,560
What's that, broadband? Yes. Well, actually, I have a dozens

460
00:28:37,560 --> 00:28:41,280
of Les Ami Devant magazines, which are great

461
00:28:41,280 --> 00:28:45,040
magazines. A precursor to sort of a Spectator. My Husband worked in the restaurant

462
00:28:45,040 --> 00:28:47,800
business in France for 25 years. Oh, he knows. Okay.

463
00:28:49,640 --> 00:28:53,280
What'S, what's interesting there is in 1930, something when,

464
00:28:53,280 --> 00:28:57,120
when there was a Burgundy Appalachian meeting, one of the

465
00:28:57,120 --> 00:29:00,740
vendors said, hey, you know what? My wine sells itself. We

466
00:29:00,740 --> 00:29:04,580
shouldn't allow advertising and marketing in

467
00:29:04,580 --> 00:29:08,300
this new appellation that they created. And everybody thought he was

468
00:29:08,300 --> 00:29:11,700
nuts because we all know as Oddity Global

469
00:29:11,780 --> 00:29:15,620
basically puts out there is that wine is about consumerism. And

470
00:29:15,860 --> 00:29:17,860
that's why I've always wondered. And that was

471
00:29:19,460 --> 00:29:22,180
the pretense of the question. I'm going to take it one more step further.

472
00:29:24,340 --> 00:29:27,800
My niece started a direct to consumer

473
00:29:28,600 --> 00:29:32,120
salad dressing. And it's very good. It's,

474
00:29:32,280 --> 00:29:35,800
it's individual servings. She's an incredible job

475
00:29:36,360 --> 00:29:40,200
and she's at this juncture where her organic marketing

476
00:29:40,280 --> 00:29:43,840
has been very successful, but it's starting to now

477
00:29:43,840 --> 00:29:47,400
peter out. And so she's going to have to invest in and learn how to

478
00:29:47,640 --> 00:29:51,400
spend on marketing. So I brought out the whiteboard and she was an intern

479
00:29:51,400 --> 00:29:54,240
here actually at One of the month club before she started this. And I said,

480
00:29:54,240 --> 00:29:57,980
okay, let's go over return on ad spend, let's go over

481
00:29:57,980 --> 00:30:01,540
acquisition costs, let's go over the various prongs of

482
00:30:01,540 --> 00:30:05,140
marketing that you can do and how you're going to decide which ones work and

483
00:30:05,140 --> 00:30:08,940
which ones don't. And her attitude was, I don't want anything to do with it.

484
00:30:10,860 --> 00:30:14,660
You know, this, this is my brainchild and I'm the marketeer and I

485
00:30:14,660 --> 00:30:18,420
really don't have time to understand those things. And

486
00:30:18,420 --> 00:30:21,820
I said, well, then we're going to have that conversation in the future

487
00:30:22,300 --> 00:30:26,030
because. And she's at a point now where this organic

488
00:30:26,030 --> 00:30:29,350
side and the influencer side of things is just sort of. And she made a

489
00:30:29,350 --> 00:30:32,750
very interesting comment. Let me ask you this. If you've heard this in the wine

490
00:30:32,750 --> 00:30:36,550
side, I think one of the great influencers

491
00:30:36,790 --> 00:30:40,630
that she had bugged to review her salad dressing did it

492
00:30:40,869 --> 00:30:44,590
and it got, I don't know, 500, 000 views or something. I don't know,

493
00:30:44,590 --> 00:30:48,150
some huge number, but only sold $6,000 worth of product.

494
00:30:49,190 --> 00:30:52,880
And she said, I was very disappointed in this. I said, well, you'll just

495
00:30:52,880 --> 00:30:56,640
learn a huge lesson, you know, that kind

496
00:30:56,640 --> 00:31:00,200
of marketing is not going to produce, you know, the

497
00:31:00,200 --> 00:31:03,280
revenue that you expect it to do. It seems like the numbers are big when

498
00:31:03,280 --> 00:31:07,120
you have a half a million people viewing the thing, but that's just views.

499
00:31:07,120 --> 00:31:10,680
They don't mean a thing really, when. It comes, it's a reminder it's why people,

500
00:31:10,760 --> 00:31:14,480
it's why people in the wine business think that social is. Is a

501
00:31:14,480 --> 00:31:17,560
be all and end all. It is absolutely not, is a reminder.

502
00:31:18,510 --> 00:31:22,070
It is not. I always say it's a you're damned if you do and damned

503
00:31:22,070 --> 00:31:24,590
if you don't. Like, if you don't do it, then you look like a square

504
00:31:24,590 --> 00:31:28,030
and you don't have any presence. But if you do do it, don't expect

505
00:31:29,150 --> 00:31:32,190
this huge revenue stream just from that. Oh, no.

506
00:31:33,230 --> 00:31:36,950
And just another word on acquisition costs. Last year when I was doing

507
00:31:36,950 --> 00:31:40,670
my budget workshop about marketing, I asked a room

508
00:31:40,670 --> 00:31:44,030
full of 70 people if they understood customer acquisition cost.

509
00:31:45,350 --> 00:31:48,630
And I had one person raise their hand. Wow.

510
00:31:49,030 --> 00:31:52,550
Not only that, but I asked a very well known person from a very well

511
00:31:52,550 --> 00:31:56,390
known winery and I said, so you know what your acquisition cost is, don't you?

512
00:31:56,470 --> 00:32:00,310
Person? And they were like, we do all our work in house. And I'm like,

513
00:32:00,710 --> 00:32:02,870
this is not the answer to the question.

514
00:32:04,310 --> 00:32:06,710
Oh, I see. Okay. It makes it. Well, then you really should know.

515
00:32:07,910 --> 00:32:11,730
You need to understand what you're putting out. How is that, how is

516
00:32:11,730 --> 00:32:14,730
that aligning with what your strategy is and what you're going to do?

517
00:32:15,450 --> 00:32:19,210
And yeah, no, there's a lot that's phenomenal. But

518
00:32:20,410 --> 00:32:23,290
you all know I have to put my dad in this.

519
00:32:24,010 --> 00:32:27,130
Can you see this painting here? You probably can't. No.

520
00:32:28,330 --> 00:32:31,930
There's a picture of my father in 1975 sitting in front of the wine shop.

521
00:32:33,610 --> 00:32:37,410
I remember when he started the Wine of the Month club and he had gone

522
00:32:37,410 --> 00:32:41,130
to Nathan Croman, the famed critic here in Los Angeles and

523
00:32:41,130 --> 00:32:43,750
writer for the LA Times, and Lawrence Bowser.

524
00:32:44,790 --> 00:32:47,390
He may have even bounced it off. I know he bounced it off. Warren. When

525
00:32:47,390 --> 00:32:51,030
Yarski and a couple other locals, Jim

526
00:32:51,030 --> 00:32:54,550
Barrett, was a regular of our store. Not to drop

527
00:32:54,550 --> 00:32:58,310
names, but I remember going to Hawaii as a kid

528
00:32:58,550 --> 00:33:02,310
and he had every, maybe five different books on direct

529
00:33:02,310 --> 00:33:06,070
to consumer marketing or direct marketing at the time. And he was

530
00:33:06,230 --> 00:33:09,930
doing those metrics he had, you know, it was on paper and

531
00:33:09,930 --> 00:33:12,690
a pencil and saying if I could get

532
00:33:13,570 --> 00:33:17,410
$5 a bottle and it cost me a dollar for the wine and whatever

533
00:33:17,410 --> 00:33:21,010
the numbers were. And I have a dollar left over for profitability and a dollar

534
00:33:21,010 --> 00:33:23,930
left over from my pocket. He had all these numbers down and what it would

535
00:33:23,930 --> 00:33:27,690
take to do it. And that's an old, old concept. And I'm wondering if

536
00:33:27,690 --> 00:33:31,290
that's not what I'm talking about here, which is you take a farmer and you

537
00:33:31,290 --> 00:33:34,250
put them into the farms and they start making Wine. And they go realize, we

538
00:33:34,250 --> 00:33:37,250
got to sell some. And now they end up at the DTC consumer

539
00:33:37,930 --> 00:33:41,610
symposium going, you know, their heads are spinning when they see these numbers.

540
00:33:41,690 --> 00:33:45,490
Yeah, there's a lot of that. It's a great service. Tell me about Unlo.

541
00:33:45,490 --> 00:33:48,490
What. What do you do with undisclosed location, which is a great name.

542
00:33:49,770 --> 00:33:53,569
I started about 20 years ago when I left Burnett. And, you know, I

543
00:33:53,569 --> 00:33:57,130
was in. I was a, you know, senior vice

544
00:33:57,130 --> 00:34:00,770
president and I had run new business for them for several

545
00:34:00,770 --> 00:34:04,130
years. And I had done a lot of different things because I was a. I

546
00:34:04,130 --> 00:34:07,890
was a pitch specialist. So it made them two of the most profitable

547
00:34:08,050 --> 00:34:11,730
years they ever had where they made $600 million. But the problem

548
00:34:11,730 --> 00:34:15,410
was, is that I was in the creative department, but they

549
00:34:15,410 --> 00:34:18,930
didn't, you know, Burnett wanted to pay. They wanted you to stay in your lane

550
00:34:18,930 --> 00:34:21,649
at that time. So you got to go into certain

551
00:34:22,610 --> 00:34:26,410
aspects of IT strategy or business development. But

552
00:34:26,410 --> 00:34:30,210
they didn't. That was different. And I was a woman and I was an art

553
00:34:30,210 --> 00:34:33,570
director. So there's another two strikes against me. And I was like, okay,

554
00:34:34,190 --> 00:34:37,430
so I want to be in business and I want to learn because I. I'm

555
00:34:37,430 --> 00:34:40,910
a lifelong learner. That's what I love. I love learning businesses. And

556
00:34:41,390 --> 00:34:45,190
so then I started working for companies. And in the 20 years I've been doing

557
00:34:45,190 --> 00:34:48,590
it, I've only worked for one advertising agency when I was

558
00:34:49,230 --> 00:34:52,790
basically advising a CEO about. She was pitching

559
00:34:52,790 --> 00:34:56,510
wine business. And I was. I basically was sort of behind her

560
00:34:56,670 --> 00:35:00,470
saying, these are the things they'll want to hear. But the one thing

561
00:35:00,470 --> 00:35:03,320
I wanted to go back to before we leave leave, that is

562
00:35:04,120 --> 00:35:07,960
a lot of people talk about the Gen Z

563
00:35:08,040 --> 00:35:11,880
problem or the Neo prohibitionist, and they talk about all these different

564
00:35:12,120 --> 00:35:15,800
things. The one thing that no one talks about

565
00:35:16,040 --> 00:35:19,760
in the wine business is how in five years they've gone from

566
00:35:19,760 --> 00:35:22,680
7,500 wineries to over 11,000.

567
00:35:24,040 --> 00:35:27,760
Now, I went to art school. You're talking

568
00:35:27,760 --> 00:35:31,510
about the TTB licenses. But

569
00:35:31,510 --> 00:35:35,230
I did take a few economics classes. And what people

570
00:35:35,230 --> 00:35:38,350
do not want to discuss in these particular

571
00:35:38,590 --> 00:35:42,390
challenging times is that what you have is more

572
00:35:42,390 --> 00:35:46,149
than anything else, enhanced competition. And

573
00:35:46,149 --> 00:35:49,870
we see it. We've been lucky at the DTC show to bring people, and

574
00:35:49,870 --> 00:35:53,590
we've had some people from Iowa, from Illinois. We've got a super strong

575
00:35:53,590 --> 00:35:57,140
contingent from Michigan who's, you know, been

576
00:35:57,140 --> 00:36:00,780
coming New York state. So people have been growing

577
00:36:00,780 --> 00:36:03,900
the wine business in regions outside of

578
00:36:03,900 --> 00:36:07,740
California. This is creating competition. And what happens when you

579
00:36:07,740 --> 00:36:11,060
have competition? We need to market your products.

580
00:36:13,700 --> 00:36:17,260
It's like, I'm so tired of reading why Gen Z isn't

581
00:36:17,260 --> 00:36:20,780
like, you know, drinking wine. Well, you know, if you're selling

582
00:36:20,780 --> 00:36:24,440
$50 Pinot, probably not. Not their price point. Let's start

583
00:36:24,440 --> 00:36:27,880
there. But more than anything else, there's also

584
00:36:27,880 --> 00:36:31,240
beverage. There's wine, there's beer, there's. There's

585
00:36:31,240 --> 00:36:34,960
kombucha. There's. There are things that didn't exist. I

586
00:36:34,960 --> 00:36:38,600
mean, I. I grew up drinking Gallo Hardy Burgundy in, like,

587
00:36:38,680 --> 00:36:41,400
La Jolla, California, in the squatty bottle,

588
00:36:42,920 --> 00:36:46,760
which still makes the best sangria there is, in my opinion. But, yeah,

589
00:36:47,400 --> 00:36:51,130
they still make that? I think so, yeah. Yeah, I

590
00:36:51,130 --> 00:36:54,850
think they do. So the point I'm trying to make is

591
00:36:54,850 --> 00:36:58,490
this, that people jump to all of these. This

592
00:36:59,130 --> 00:37:02,970
terrible doom loop about our society, and these

593
00:37:02,970 --> 00:37:05,890
are the conditions and how. And with

594
00:37:05,890 --> 00:37:09,450
absolutely no structure or

595
00:37:09,530 --> 00:37:12,730
resonance behind all this, when they're

596
00:37:12,890 --> 00:37:15,850
leaping over the most baseline

597
00:37:16,490 --> 00:37:19,130
problem, which is increased competition.

598
00:37:21,370 --> 00:37:24,970
You know, it's interesting. There's all these angles, and I agree with you

599
00:37:24,970 --> 00:37:28,450
completely. I. I'm so angry. I get

600
00:37:28,450 --> 00:37:32,290
angry, really. When I read some of these articles that are posted

601
00:37:32,290 --> 00:37:36,050
about these problems, they're all doom and gloom. Not only not doom and gloom, but

602
00:37:36,050 --> 00:37:39,850
they. They offer no solutions. Right. They just say we should

603
00:37:39,850 --> 00:37:43,590
and we need to. And one of the important business lessons that

604
00:37:43,590 --> 00:37:47,310
I've taught myself when I've talked to anybody who's doing anything

605
00:37:47,390 --> 00:37:50,990
is re. Is. Is staying away from.

606
00:37:50,990 --> 00:37:54,110
You should because no one wants to hear. You should.

607
00:37:55,230 --> 00:37:58,350
Because it. As the famed movie,

608
00:37:59,230 --> 00:38:03,030
the one about the king. It's easy to give advice

609
00:38:03,030 --> 00:38:05,750
from the veil of COVID than it is to use it at the point of

610
00:38:05,750 --> 00:38:09,580
attack. And so it's fruitless to say

611
00:38:10,380 --> 00:38:13,740
we have neo prohibitionists, we have all this competition

612
00:38:14,300 --> 00:38:18,020
without providing an angle. For instance, I

613
00:38:18,020 --> 00:38:21,540
went to a restaurant recently, and the guy was complaining that his

614
00:38:21,540 --> 00:38:25,380
bottle sales were off 30%. I'm like,

615
00:38:25,380 --> 00:38:29,060
wow, that's a lot, you know. And I said, but how about your servers? Are

616
00:38:29,060 --> 00:38:32,860
they educated? Oh, they don't know shit. He said. I'm like, well, hello, Maybe

617
00:38:33,580 --> 00:38:36,460
that's one of your problems. Hey, you know people.

618
00:38:37,660 --> 00:38:41,040
No, I mean, you're never. If you. A fantastic

619
00:38:41,040 --> 00:38:44,880
sommelier that you can have fun with. It's. And

620
00:38:44,880 --> 00:38:48,080
there's more and more. There's people, you know, if you can find anybody on the

621
00:38:48,080 --> 00:38:51,560
floor, you can find. Yeah. You know,

622
00:38:51,800 --> 00:38:55,440
and you. You know, this is what I'm looking for, you know,

623
00:38:55,440 --> 00:38:58,920
and. And then they want to have. They want to have fun too. Right?

624
00:38:59,480 --> 00:39:03,240
What do you think? What do you think of this reading all those magazines you.

625
00:39:03,240 --> 00:39:06,680
You reading Michael Broadbent stuff, obviously, it's very

626
00:39:06,680 --> 00:39:10,140
sort of educated things. And it's, you know,

627
00:39:10,540 --> 00:39:13,820
changing the language of wine, I think is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Because

628
00:39:14,460 --> 00:39:18,220
if you change the language to Gary Vaynerchuk's language and talk about, you know,

629
00:39:18,220 --> 00:39:22,060
Captain Crunch and Fruit Loops, you know, you're going to confuse half the people

630
00:39:22,140 --> 00:39:25,500
again. And the next time they change the language, it's going to confuse the next

631
00:39:25,500 --> 00:39:29,140
half. So it's not. That doesn't really do anything. But I don't agree with

632
00:39:29,140 --> 00:39:31,580
that. You know, so, like,

633
00:39:33,690 --> 00:39:36,730
when you. When somebody says change the language line, what does that mean to you?

634
00:39:38,730 --> 00:39:42,170
And do you think it's necessary? Here's an example that people,

635
00:39:42,330 --> 00:39:45,770
people in the wine business absolutely hate this example. They really do.

636
00:39:46,090 --> 00:39:49,810
But when Cameron Diaz and Catherine Power came out with Avileen and they

637
00:39:49,810 --> 00:39:53,530
started about clean wine, people lost their freaking minds,

638
00:39:53,690 --> 00:39:57,210
okay? Those ladies went out and sold like 5,000

639
00:39:57,210 --> 00:40:00,950
cases and sold out. And here's what I think. Clean

640
00:40:00,950 --> 00:40:04,590
wine comes from clean beauty. It's consumer language

641
00:40:04,750 --> 00:40:08,350
that consumers, like it or not. And all in the whole

642
00:40:08,350 --> 00:40:12,030
wine community was, oh, my God. And it's like,

643
00:40:12,270 --> 00:40:15,910
you know what? It's like, we should be welcoming those ladies into the

644
00:40:15,910 --> 00:40:19,550
tent. We should be welcoming all of those consumers who buy

645
00:40:19,550 --> 00:40:23,190
her wine. And it's like, I have

646
00:40:23,190 --> 00:40:26,950
heard things from people I have been with, highly educated people, even guys

647
00:40:26,950 --> 00:40:30,350
like David lynch who have taught me a lot about the business and

648
00:40:31,860 --> 00:40:34,660
lead pencil and baby diaper and like

649
00:40:35,060 --> 00:40:38,500
crunchy gravel. I've put up with it. Come on now.

650
00:40:38,660 --> 00:40:42,020
It's like, couldn't you put up with clean wine? I mean, it's like

651
00:40:42,660 --> 00:40:46,300
I went tasting at Walla Walla with Sam Katturi and he was

652
00:40:46,300 --> 00:40:50,060
like, he said, he goes, taste this wine. He goes, look for the graham cracker

653
00:40:50,060 --> 00:40:53,860
notes. And you know what? Damn if they weren't there. And.

654
00:40:53,940 --> 00:40:57,780
And so it was like. But that was cool. That was interesting. So

655
00:40:58,190 --> 00:41:00,990
do I think that we all need to be using the same language

656
00:41:01,230 --> 00:41:05,070
100%? No. And I think. And just

657
00:41:05,070 --> 00:41:08,630
the last point I'll make about that is like, we've got Elaine Shukin

658
00:41:08,630 --> 00:41:12,390
Brown who's giving a speech to talk about it. And

659
00:41:12,390 --> 00:41:16,110
Elaine is a. She's a wonderful speaker. She's a highly educated person.

660
00:41:16,590 --> 00:41:20,110
She's a PhD. We also have ISIS Daniel, who has

661
00:41:20,110 --> 00:41:23,950
140,000 TikTok followers, and she's a young African

662
00:41:23,950 --> 00:41:26,910
American woman from the D.C. area. She's been on the show.

663
00:41:27,800 --> 00:41:31,360
So I think both of those women have an

664
00:41:31,360 --> 00:41:34,680
audience and something to say, and they both say it different ways.

665
00:41:35,960 --> 00:41:39,240
Well, I'm not sure I'm challenging that

666
00:41:40,360 --> 00:41:44,160
because certainly the idea that the idea of clean wine, which

667
00:41:44,160 --> 00:41:47,560
is sort of a style more than it is language,

668
00:41:48,120 --> 00:41:51,800
what I was driving, that maybe I'm wrong in this and maybe I misunderstood

669
00:41:51,800 --> 00:41:54,040
the idea of changing the language of wine, which is.

670
00:41:55,800 --> 00:41:59,440
If my dad would describe a wine, he would. He would have a fit when

671
00:41:59,440 --> 00:42:02,600
I would use fruit impressions, when I would tell him about a wine, because back

672
00:42:02,600 --> 00:42:06,040
in his day, they didn't use fruit impressions. They use other types of impressions.

673
00:42:06,280 --> 00:42:09,760
And so my point was, if I'm going to change the language of how I

674
00:42:09,760 --> 00:42:13,560
describe a wine, no one's going to understand me. A

675
00:42:13,560 --> 00:42:16,400
generation ahead of me is not going to understand what I'm saying. And the generations

676
00:42:16,400 --> 00:42:20,080
behind me already don't understand what I'm saying. But I think your idea

677
00:42:20,080 --> 00:42:23,780
of change, the language of wine could be the presentation of the

678
00:42:23,780 --> 00:42:27,540
wine, the language of wine. In other words, a clean wine, I think makes perfect

679
00:42:27,540 --> 00:42:31,260
sense and it's less of a. So,

680
00:42:31,660 --> 00:42:35,420
so let's put it, let's put it this way. There's only. Wine

681
00:42:35,420 --> 00:42:37,740
is the only category. And I've worked across.

682
00:42:39,100 --> 00:42:42,740
You name a category, I've worked in selling it. It is the only

683
00:42:42,740 --> 00:42:46,460
category where the words that are meant to sell the product

684
00:42:47,020 --> 00:42:50,820
come from the producer, not the consumer. When Nike

685
00:42:50,820 --> 00:42:54,340
does a great ad, they're lifting things out of cultural

686
00:42:54,340 --> 00:42:57,980
consciousness. Or Apple or any other advertiser

687
00:42:57,980 --> 00:43:01,460
used to working with wine wants you to use its

688
00:43:01,460 --> 00:43:05,300
language. They do, and they feel comfortable there.

689
00:43:05,300 --> 00:43:09,020
They're like, yes, this is something we all understand. Guess what?

690
00:43:10,860 --> 00:43:14,540
People that we want to bring in under the tent, they have the

691
00:43:14,540 --> 00:43:18,130
vaguest idea of what you're talking about. I mean, and they don't really care.

692
00:43:18,530 --> 00:43:22,250
I think that's. That's right on. And it's. I just got back

693
00:43:22,250 --> 00:43:23,970
from a very, very fancy tasting

694
00:43:25,890 --> 00:43:29,690
last week and I was talking to the Psalm

695
00:43:29,690 --> 00:43:32,850
who was in charge of it. I won't mention names and I won't mention restaurants.

696
00:43:33,730 --> 00:43:37,410
And I left the. With the impression a knowledgeable guy, but I, I left

697
00:43:37,410 --> 00:43:41,090
with the impression this is the exact reason that the aristocracy of wine

698
00:43:41,090 --> 00:43:44,790
is propagated. It. It's a protection, it seemed to me,

699
00:43:44,790 --> 00:43:48,590
for, in this guy's case, a protection of his knowledge base. He

700
00:43:48,590 --> 00:43:52,190
spent all this time studying and doing the stuff and getting a

701
00:43:52,190 --> 00:43:55,870
job, and you don't want to have that diluted or lost

702
00:43:55,870 --> 00:43:59,710
in translation. So you use the, the words and you use the approach

703
00:43:59,710 --> 00:44:03,270
and you use the lofty service level,

704
00:44:03,350 --> 00:44:06,870
which I think is important in wine, but to basically

705
00:44:07,680 --> 00:44:11,400
like forcibly intimidate people. And I don't, it's not like

706
00:44:11,400 --> 00:44:15,120
intimidation the way I intimidate my grandkids, but intimidation.

707
00:44:16,480 --> 00:44:20,080
There is. Intimidation. People are

708
00:44:20,080 --> 00:44:23,800
intimidated. I was in Italy with, with a whole bunch of people and

709
00:44:23,800 --> 00:44:27,600
they were all, they were lawyers and judges and a friend of mine

710
00:44:27,600 --> 00:44:31,360
who had gone to UCLA business school and she was hosting and these people,

711
00:44:31,360 --> 00:44:35,160
like, you know, it was, it was a Michelin starred restaurant

712
00:44:35,160 --> 00:44:38,960
and they gave me like the book and I make a lot

713
00:44:38,960 --> 00:44:42,520
less money and have probably, you know, X amount of

714
00:44:42,520 --> 00:44:46,360
wine education. And they, they're like, you take, you deal with

715
00:44:46,360 --> 00:44:50,160
the guy. These are people who have multiple degrees

716
00:44:50,160 --> 00:44:54,000
and they were super intimidated. And I'm thinking if we're intimidating those people,

717
00:44:54,480 --> 00:44:57,360
that's the wrong thing to be doing. I mean,

718
00:44:58,800 --> 00:45:02,520
that's what I think. And we did, we did a. And, and,

719
00:45:02,520 --> 00:45:06,350
and Evan Goldsmith, who's the, who's the sommelier for the, for

720
00:45:06,350 --> 00:45:09,710
the Giants, and Ed Foycheck did this a few years ago. We talked a lot

721
00:45:09,710 --> 00:45:13,430
about the language of wine and I think it is changing. I think with the

722
00:45:13,430 --> 00:45:17,070
inclusion of a lot more people in wine, both,

723
00:45:17,070 --> 00:45:20,670
you know, bring in Filipino influences and different kinds of

724
00:45:20,670 --> 00:45:24,350
food and, you know, all this kind of stuff. So we need

725
00:45:24,350 --> 00:45:28,070
different words to talk about it. And that's okay.

726
00:45:31,590 --> 00:45:34,950
It's funny because when that gentleman told me that his bottle sales are off and

727
00:45:34,950 --> 00:45:38,290
that his wine, his servers had no idea what they were talking about.

728
00:45:39,010 --> 00:45:42,690
I said, you got to, I didn't say you should.

729
00:45:42,850 --> 00:45:46,530
I said he was bringing a new

730
00:45:46,530 --> 00:45:49,090
song, as if that was the problem. And I thought,

731
00:45:50,450 --> 00:45:54,089
And I went to a restaurant recently in Hermosa beach and they had reorganized

732
00:45:54,089 --> 00:45:57,730
their list. Now I, and I was confused, frankly.

733
00:45:57,810 --> 00:46:01,490
But their list was instead of regions and grape varietals,

734
00:46:01,490 --> 00:46:05,260
it was styles, so light and airy reds

735
00:46:05,260 --> 00:46:08,180
and heavy and heavy and deep reds and whatnot. And I, you know, for me,

736
00:46:08,180 --> 00:46:11,180
I'm an old guy. I, I had a hard time because I was looking for.

737
00:46:11,180 --> 00:46:14,940
I know my wife will only drink Bordeaux varietals. And if I,

738
00:46:14,940 --> 00:46:18,780
every time I try to stump her with something from the Rhone, she goes,

739
00:46:18,780 --> 00:46:22,620
what is this? So, So I was, I had a hard time

740
00:46:22,620 --> 00:46:25,980
finding the calves, though, obviously big and rich, but was. It was organized

741
00:46:25,980 --> 00:46:29,580
differently than what your expectation was. Exactly. So then I told the

742
00:46:29,660 --> 00:46:33,290
sommelier, the restaurateurs, why don't you create

743
00:46:33,290 --> 00:46:36,930
Two lists, one like that and one traditional. And give half

744
00:46:36,930 --> 00:46:40,610
your servers one list and half your servers the other. And see if,

745
00:46:40,850 --> 00:46:44,450
if the consumer responds, it's not going to cost you anything,

746
00:46:44,850 --> 00:46:48,690
and it's not going to certainly decrease sales because your, your benchmark is going

747
00:46:48,690 --> 00:46:52,210
to be what you've already done. But maybe you'll find out if the consumers

748
00:46:52,690 --> 00:46:56,130
is responding to that change of language,

749
00:46:56,370 --> 00:46:59,990
which is describing wines by their style rather than their

750
00:46:59,990 --> 00:47:03,550
region. And I think, of course he thought I was nuts, but at least I

751
00:47:03,550 --> 00:47:07,150
thought I was a solution. Knowing your customer, right? I mean, it's like it's gonna,

752
00:47:07,150 --> 00:47:10,710
it's. You're not gonna get 100% of the customers that are gonna be 100%

753
00:47:11,030 --> 00:47:14,750
happy all the time. But I think it's actually a

754
00:47:14,750 --> 00:47:17,750
great idea. Karen McNeil told this great story

755
00:47:18,390 --> 00:47:22,230
last year when she gave her piece, which was cool, she was talking and this

756
00:47:22,230 --> 00:47:26,030
was like back in the 90s in New York. And, you know, they had

757
00:47:26,030 --> 00:47:29,110
a list and it was fairly comprehensive. And on the last page of the list

758
00:47:29,110 --> 00:47:32,630
they had chef's favorites. She goes,

759
00:47:32,630 --> 00:47:36,310
like 70% of their wine sales were from

760
00:47:36,310 --> 00:47:40,070
that list. And so if you're at a very

761
00:47:40,070 --> 00:47:43,910
nice restaurant in New York, it makes sense. And you're going there because you

762
00:47:43,910 --> 00:47:47,710
think Chef is doing really interesting things. Hey, you must know

763
00:47:47,710 --> 00:47:51,510
something so that. So now you're making it easier for me if I don't

764
00:47:51,510 --> 00:47:55,270
know anything and I'm the consumer and I go, oh, gee, there's a

765
00:47:55,270 --> 00:47:58,350
Chardonnay he recommends. I like Chardonnay. And he recommends it.

766
00:47:58,820 --> 00:48:02,420
Boom. Okay, let's go. You know, I think it's very important

767
00:48:02,820 --> 00:48:06,620
to be earnest in that. In other words, really make it the chef's

768
00:48:06,620 --> 00:48:10,380
favorites. Really make. Really have him taste or her taste and

769
00:48:10,380 --> 00:48:14,100
say, yeah, this goes with this because part of the

770
00:48:14,100 --> 00:48:17,660
DTC world and we're done here with time wise. But I want to, I want

771
00:48:17,660 --> 00:48:21,300
to get to this quick point. The

772
00:48:21,300 --> 00:48:24,260
original wine and muthka was found on the fact that there was always something around.

773
00:48:24,880 --> 00:48:28,360
And I told you stories before of the great vintages we found

774
00:48:28,360 --> 00:48:32,160
throughout the years in this club. But it started to change toward the

775
00:48:32,160 --> 00:48:36,000
end here, where we were being not forced to, but being forced

776
00:48:36,000 --> 00:48:39,360
to taste anyway. You know, 20,000 liter

777
00:48:39,760 --> 00:48:43,480
tetra packs from Europe with 50 cent a liter wine

778
00:48:43,480 --> 00:48:47,240
in it being packaged under a variety of labels. And that

779
00:48:47,240 --> 00:48:51,020
was not an earnest approach to the wine trade. And so

780
00:48:51,020 --> 00:48:54,820
this was junk, and it tasted like junk. And almost all of my

781
00:48:54,820 --> 00:48:58,420
competitors were using this junk. And I know

782
00:48:58,500 --> 00:49:02,180
I could Name them off still today that still use this stuff. And

783
00:49:02,180 --> 00:49:05,060
the uneducated consumers thinking, I get it for five bucks,

784
00:49:05,859 --> 00:49:09,460
you know, so not so bad, which is a bad for the wine

785
00:49:09,460 --> 00:49:12,940
industry. But it also put a lot of bad taste in the

786
00:49:12,940 --> 00:49:16,500
mouths of. Of the consumer for club subscriptions and

787
00:49:16,500 --> 00:49:20,260
wine. Because, like you said, you're not going to please all the palates all the

788
00:49:20,260 --> 00:49:23,780
time, but if you need to please them, sometimes you need to sort of

789
00:49:23,940 --> 00:49:27,780
strike a chord. And. And then maybe that chord is, you know, for

790
00:49:27,780 --> 00:49:30,300
the Wine of the Month Club, all these years was the story of the. The

791
00:49:30,300 --> 00:49:33,340
club and why you're getting this wine and what the story behind the wine was

792
00:49:33,340 --> 00:49:37,140
and what the story behind the purveyor was, and what the story behind my father

793
00:49:37,140 --> 00:49:40,820
was or myself. That was an important story to tell somebody at a

794
00:49:40,820 --> 00:49:44,600
dinner table. But if. And I highlight this by

795
00:49:46,360 --> 00:49:50,040
the woman from Punch Drink came out to watch me taste one Tuesday.

796
00:49:51,000 --> 00:49:54,520
And in between tasters, in between

797
00:49:54,760 --> 00:49:58,080
vendors, I opened some stuff that had been sent to me. And one of them

798
00:49:58,080 --> 00:50:01,400
was a Saturday Night Live Beaujolais,

799
00:50:01,720 --> 00:50:05,560
current vintage. I think it was 2019. And we're in 2020 at the time.

800
00:50:06,600 --> 00:50:10,050
And it was. She goes, this is awful. I said, yeah,

801
00:50:10,610 --> 00:50:13,970
can you imagine? Somebody bought that because

802
00:50:14,370 --> 00:50:17,570
they're devotees of Saturday Night Live, or they wanted to have their friends over and

803
00:50:17,570 --> 00:50:20,370
have a glass of wine when the show is on and they open this stuff

804
00:50:20,370 --> 00:50:24,170
and they. They don't know how to react. They're not sure if this is bad

805
00:50:24,170 --> 00:50:27,650
or good. They bought it because of some branding,

806
00:50:27,730 --> 00:50:31,250
and I think that put a bad taste in the mouth

807
00:50:31,330 --> 00:50:33,650
of the general consumer for general

808
00:50:35,020 --> 00:50:36,620
wine clubs. Do you agree with that?

809
00:50:38,620 --> 00:50:42,140
Yeah, I think, you know, I had a friend

810
00:50:42,140 --> 00:50:45,100
bring the Game of Thrones wine to my house one time.

811
00:50:45,900 --> 00:50:48,380
I know the wine. You came to me,

812
00:50:49,660 --> 00:50:53,220
I'm like. I'm like, come with me, my friend. We're gonna go and taste some

813
00:50:53,220 --> 00:50:56,620
really good wines. But I mean,

814
00:50:57,340 --> 00:51:01,110
what I will say is, like, what people

815
00:51:01,190 --> 00:51:05,030
want us to do is they want to give us reasons to buy

816
00:51:05,030 --> 00:51:08,710
their wine. So I look at. Look at the organic market, which is like

817
00:51:08,710 --> 00:51:12,070
something that has shifted enormously in the last 10 years, right?

818
00:51:12,230 --> 00:51:15,989
So we always used to ask people, you know, would you be willing to

819
00:51:15,989 --> 00:51:19,710
pay more for organic wine? And boomers traditionally said, I'll drink it,

820
00:51:19,710 --> 00:51:23,110
but no, now you have. It's one of the few

821
00:51:23,110 --> 00:51:26,640
categories that's up. You know, it's up. Up around 8%

822
00:51:26,800 --> 00:51:30,600
in the market, right? So if you're telling an organic story, Or

823
00:51:30,600 --> 00:51:33,680
a regenerative story as part of who you are as a brand

824
00:51:34,720 --> 00:51:38,400
that's. That's happening. And people and younger people care about that.

825
00:51:38,800 --> 00:51:42,640
So it's worth the money to them because there is money to be spent.

826
00:51:43,120 --> 00:51:45,600
But oh yeah, you know,

827
00:51:47,040 --> 00:51:50,760
the grocery store and the distribution is something that we could do an

828
00:51:50,760 --> 00:51:53,360
entire podcast about and why people buy what they buy.

829
00:51:54,630 --> 00:51:58,110
But I would say that if they have

830
00:51:58,110 --> 00:52:01,950
interests, wine is like great jazz music. You can like Miles

831
00:52:01,950 --> 00:52:05,550
Davis when you hear it on, you know, on a podcast or

832
00:52:05,550 --> 00:52:09,190
whatever. But you learn about it over time. Wine's the same way,

833
00:52:09,270 --> 00:52:13,070
you know, you learn about it over time. I'll always be learning. I have

834
00:52:13,070 --> 00:52:16,390
a son. We just got back from Paris, Texas. Ever heard of it?

835
00:52:17,750 --> 00:52:21,190
The movie? Yeah, the recent movie about the

836
00:52:21,590 --> 00:52:24,310
reality TV show. And the girls go out, they kind. Of go to Paris

837
00:52:25,890 --> 00:52:29,610
thinking the foreign film that was from the 90s. Well, my

838
00:52:29,610 --> 00:52:32,770
son in law got moved there and my daughter went and. And

839
00:52:33,010 --> 00:52:36,450
obviously. And we got to spend four days with. It was great.

840
00:52:37,170 --> 00:52:40,770
But it's a dry county. Well,

841
00:52:40,770 --> 00:52:44,370
it's. I went to school. It was dry too.

842
00:52:44,610 --> 00:52:47,970
Yeah, we don't know exact rules. You can get a drink at a

843
00:52:48,130 --> 00:52:51,770
restaurant or glass of wine, but you. And I think you can buy wine

844
00:52:51,770 --> 00:52:55,060
at the market, but you can't. I could not find a bottle of gin

845
00:52:55,540 --> 00:52:58,660
anyway, so we stopped the Whole Foods on the way in and

846
00:52:59,460 --> 00:53:02,740
look, I'm gonna toot my horn here just a second.

847
00:53:03,540 --> 00:53:07,340
I sold 17 million bottles of wine DTC and I tasted a hundred thousand

848
00:53:07,340 --> 00:53:10,980
documented wines. So I feel like I might have a

849
00:53:11,140 --> 00:53:14,780
grasp on at least the consumer side of this. And I

850
00:53:14,780 --> 00:53:18,100
walked into Whole Foods and I was desperate to find

851
00:53:19,310 --> 00:53:22,350
something that I. That I thought would speak to its

852
00:53:22,590 --> 00:53:26,270
appellation and is varietal about two Bordeaux.

853
00:53:26,270 --> 00:53:29,990
I bought a Russian River Pinot and I bought a domestic

854
00:53:29,990 --> 00:53:33,790
cap. Brands, I understood, not mainstream brands,

855
00:53:33,790 --> 00:53:37,190
but. And my son in law, who's very peculiar, loves

856
00:53:37,190 --> 00:53:40,670
Beaujolais, loves to not, you know, stuff like that. He's very

857
00:53:41,150 --> 00:53:44,560
specific in his non mainstream wine consumption.

858
00:53:46,550 --> 00:53:50,270
All four of my selections, two of them are undrinkable not

859
00:53:50,270 --> 00:53:53,830
because they were bad, but because they were so sugared up

860
00:53:53,990 --> 00:53:57,710
and so mainstream in their palette that a guy like

861
00:53:57,710 --> 00:54:00,950
me who's done all this and my son in law who's only interested in unusual

862
00:54:00,950 --> 00:54:03,750
varietals and locations, we couldn't drink it.

863
00:54:04,710 --> 00:54:08,550
And I was disturbed by it. I

864
00:54:08,630 --> 00:54:12,350
personally believe not in this administration, but perhaps further on down the road

865
00:54:12,350 --> 00:54:15,750
that content will matter more to these

866
00:54:16,290 --> 00:54:20,010
people. And sugar is a, is a problem. You know, Adam

867
00:54:20,010 --> 00:54:23,810
Lee did that with dial tone where he showed one bottle of Maomi

868
00:54:23,810 --> 00:54:27,130
and then like 18 bottles of Dial tone. And then the people at

869
00:54:27,130 --> 00:54:30,370
Maomi wanted to sue him. I mean, sugar is,

870
00:54:30,610 --> 00:54:33,970
sugar is out there and it makes things taste good and

871
00:54:34,210 --> 00:54:37,490
people talk dry and they drink sweet and all those things.

872
00:54:37,570 --> 00:54:41,330
Yeah. So it's a problem. And the people

873
00:54:41,330 --> 00:54:44,960
at Ridge came up with a beautiful label in the 80s and

874
00:54:44,960 --> 00:54:48,800
that's incredibly transparent and I think

875
00:54:48,800 --> 00:54:52,440
it's great. I was so bummed. I was embarrassed

876
00:54:52,600 --> 00:54:56,360
because, you know, I, I, it

877
00:54:56,360 --> 00:54:59,880
gave me a certain pause. A pause because I thought,

878
00:55:00,200 --> 00:55:04,000
how does a consumer choose now? Maybe the consumer palette is,

879
00:55:04,000 --> 00:55:07,760
is sweeter than my palate. It absolutely is.

880
00:55:07,760 --> 00:55:08,120
But.

881
00:55:10,930 --> 00:55:14,730
Nondescript. There was nothing different about these wines. And I thought, I was

882
00:55:14,730 --> 00:55:17,730
really bummed. Anyway, that's, that's between you and me as wine geeks.

883
00:55:18,850 --> 00:55:22,650
When's the symposium? It's January 20th through the

884
00:55:22,650 --> 00:55:26,210
22nd and you can go and register now. The full

885
00:55:26,450 --> 00:55:29,730
program is published. It's dtcwinesymposium.com

886
00:55:30,690 --> 00:55:34,450
do you have, it's mostly. You know, vendors or consumers.

887
00:55:34,450 --> 00:55:37,810
Is there, is there a trade show, so to speak, as part of this? Absolutely.

888
00:55:37,810 --> 00:55:40,890
We have an awesome trade show. We have a lot of new people this year

889
00:55:40,890 --> 00:55:44,670
in the trade show which is super exciting. And we're

890
00:55:44,670 --> 00:55:48,430
almost actually sold out of sponsorships. It's been really successful.

891
00:55:48,430 --> 00:55:51,950
Brian's been running the whole sales part of it. That's been amazing. Ian, Vicki,

892
00:55:51,950 --> 00:55:55,510
Thomas are. And it's not a consumer show.

893
00:55:55,510 --> 00:55:59,270
It's, it's really, it's a business to business show. So it's great show. Yeah. You

894
00:55:59,270 --> 00:56:02,950
know, I mean about 40% of our audience is either VP

895
00:56:02,950 --> 00:56:06,710
to owner. So it's decision makers and people who

896
00:56:06,710 --> 00:56:10,080
want to understand the future of the business. And I think,

897
00:56:10,800 --> 00:56:14,240
I think that's where we have to get together and I think the entire wine

898
00:56:14,240 --> 00:56:17,720
business. Absolutely. You know, I used to work in

899
00:56:17,720 --> 00:56:21,120
fashion. I used to work in cosmetics. Do you ever see like fashion and

900
00:56:21,120 --> 00:56:24,640
cosmetics, like people going, oh no, people aren't using

901
00:56:24,720 --> 00:56:28,360
mascara anymore. You know, no one would ever talk about mascara.

902
00:56:28,360 --> 00:56:32,080
Sales were down. I'm just saying. Wow, that's interesting. It's a really good

903
00:56:32,080 --> 00:56:35,680
thought. Well, I look forward to that. And

904
00:56:35,680 --> 00:56:39,450
say hi to my friend Brian. I've seen him for a little while. Come up.

905
00:56:40,170 --> 00:56:42,490
Well, I think I'm going to come up and I think I'm going to spend,

906
00:56:42,730 --> 00:56:46,130
book some appointments to make some podcasts. I owe a lot of People podcasts that

907
00:56:46,130 --> 00:56:48,490
I met recently at some tastings. Yes.

908
00:56:50,010 --> 00:56:53,530
We're going to have a podcaster room and we're going to have a

909
00:56:53,530 --> 00:56:57,290
content creator room. So come on up. We're going to have

910
00:56:57,290 --> 00:57:00,250
more content creators at this show than we've ever had before.

911
00:57:00,970 --> 00:57:04,810
The winemakers are there. I don't do you know, the couture and all

912
00:57:04,810 --> 00:57:08,530
those people peeps, those are our main media partners. But we're going to

913
00:57:08,530 --> 00:57:11,970
have ISIS there. We're going to have a bunch of different people who are coming

914
00:57:11,970 --> 00:57:15,730
up and doing podcasting. I think MJ's coming. So what we

915
00:57:15,730 --> 00:57:19,090
want is for people to meet and understand content

916
00:57:19,170 --> 00:57:22,930
creators of all types. If you're on YouTube, if you're on podcasts,

917
00:57:23,410 --> 00:57:26,850
we want the word out about wine. We want to make a big tent.

918
00:57:27,250 --> 00:57:31,090
Whether you're doing non alcoholic wine. I know there's, I have a lot of friends

919
00:57:31,090 --> 00:57:34,640
who just, just don't like it. I get it. But I also have a lot

920
00:57:34,640 --> 00:57:38,280
of people who can't drink and they're very happy about it.

921
00:57:38,360 --> 00:57:42,000
So let's bring everybody in under the tent. Let's come, let's meet in

922
00:57:42,000 --> 00:57:45,680
Monterey in January and Free the Grapes is the

923
00:57:45,680 --> 00:57:49,320
beneficiary. And that's a really good cause for everybody because

924
00:57:50,040 --> 00:57:53,800
everybody should be drinking better wine. Well, we're going to have to do a

925
00:57:53,800 --> 00:57:57,600
podcast just on, on Free the Grapes since a very

926
00:57:57,600 --> 00:58:00,840
important movement and it's been around for a long time. I mean, it's been a

927
00:58:00,840 --> 00:58:04,530
great conversation and been. I've, I really enjoyed talking to you and

928
00:58:04,610 --> 00:58:07,770
you know, I'd love to bring Brian in and we could have a chat at

929
00:58:07,770 --> 00:58:10,370
the show. So register now. Great.

930
00:58:11,570 --> 00:58:15,210
Excellent. Thanks for being on the show and good luck out there. We'll, we'll come

931
00:58:15,210 --> 00:58:17,970
see you in Monterey. I mean, come on. The worst case is

932
00:58:18,930 --> 00:58:22,290
go to Monterey, right? Yes. And fantastic.

933
00:58:22,850 --> 00:58:26,090
Which, which actually is the source of one of my, one of my favorite stories

934
00:58:26,090 --> 00:58:29,810
of wine during the Concord Elegance. And I'll tell you that later

935
00:58:29,880 --> 00:58:33,480
here. But cheers. Thank you. All right, very nice. Thank you very much, Paul.

936
00:58:33,480 --> 00:58:34,120
Appreciate it.