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

0:00 A lot of people talk about the Gen Z problem or the Neo prohibitionists and they talk about all these different things. The one thing that no one talks about in the wine business is how in five years they've gone from 7,500 wineries to over 11,000. Sit back and grab a glass. It's Wine Talks with Paul K. Hey, welcome to Wine Talks with Paul Kay and we are in studio today in actually beautiful Southern California on a fall day. About to have a conversation with Barbara Gordo. Introductions in just a moment. Just got back from a wine tasting yesterday, Bordeaux tasting in Beverly Hills. Incredible conversations with some of the leading Bordeaux makers which included Christian Moecks and Veronique Sanders. Van Beek, you'll hear from that shortly. But now while we're here, I'm going to read this from an AI thing. Barbara, it's good to have you on the show, but there was a lot to say and I couldn't write it down. So I had chap gtt to this. Barbara Gorder is the president of Undisclosed location Unlo, a Sonoma based brand strategy and creative consultancy specializing in the wine and premium consumer goods sector. She's also a longtime strategic leader and moderator of the DTC Wine Symposium. Of course, close to my heart, shaping discussions around direct to consumer innovation, growth strategies and consumer engagement. Her background includes agency experience at Leo Burnett and ddb, building major consumer brands with a focus on cultural relevance and

1:33 disciplined creative execution. Wow, that's a mouthful. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Paul. It's very generous of you. That's a really interesting point here that we peeled back which is coming to the table from a non wine world and there's a handful of folks like you that have done that. Tell me about that transition. What, what prompted that? Luxury goods are luxury goods, but you know, alcohol and wine are a little bit different. So I moved to California in 2009 and I figured that the wine business would be something I was interested in. I always liked wine. I had an affinity for Chateauneuf du Pape, which was sort of my first aha wine which as people call it because I got tasted in a 2000 year old cave which I thought was super impressive when I was 18. But I had been doing wine on expense accounts for large agencies and so when I went to South Africa, I got to drink South African wines. When I went to Spain and spent a month there working on global product, I got to experience Spanish wine. So it was something I had an affinity for. So the first thing I went to was the DTC Wine Symposium in January of 2009 with a friend. And it was a very different affair at that time, much smaller. It was older white guys in suits, a handful, and I do mean a handful of women, and everybody was the same color. It was. It was not a diverse

3:05 audience in any way, shape, or form. And they were talking about things that the rest of the CPG world or other advertisers had been doing for years. So I was like, okay, so this is obviously category that's ripe for change and ripe to do different things. So that's how I got involved in the DTC Symposium. And it was. For years, it was run by Jeremy Benson and also Brian Baker, who's my partner currently. And it was all about raising funds for Free the Grapes, which basically ensures consumer choice and helps with regulations and legislation across the country. So it was a good cause.

3:47 And so I decided to become a volunteer. And because I had a very extensive contact list both globally and in the US in all kinds of different kinds of marketing aspects, I was the logical choice to choose keynote speakers and people who were outside of the business. And as the conference grew and changed and morphed over the years, I learned a lot. You know, I had moved back to California to be closer to family from Chicago, and so that was cool. And then I became involved with a lot of different people and met a lot of different people and started working inside the business and found that there was profound need for change.

4:32 And so let me. Let me. Let me back all the way up, okay? Because you said something important that's generationally important. And we're going to talk about the diversity side of wine. We're going to talk about Free the Grapes. Remember the organization? Well, we'll talk about Brian Baker, who's an old friend as well. But you said something that I think is really pertinent. And I just read an article this morning about tourism and EO tourism and wine. Had a wonderful woman on the show recently from Armenia who's trying to, you know, that whole industry is trying to grow. And that is. You said you were 18 and you were in a cellar. You tasted a Chateauneuf du Pape. Now, first of all, Chateauneuf du Pape, probably not the most popular wine in Southern California right now, but regardless, they're wonderful wines and very pedigreed. But more important, you said, I was impressed being in the cellar. It was 2,000 years old. It was built by the Romans. So why was that impressive?

5:25 Because I was an art history major. I didn't go. I didn't give a fig. For once, I didn't care about wines. I went to go see the cathedral that had been bombed in 1944. I was with my art history professor and he goes, you need to see this cave that was built by the Ro. Romans 2000 years ago. And then when I was in the cave, I tasted the wine. So it was a experience, as they say today. But it was a very impressive experience to be part of that history. But you're. Since you're tied to DTC and for the listeners that don't know the term, it means direct to consumer, which applies to all industries that deal, just about anything in Amazon would be dtc, right? So there's an. What I was trying to get to on that is there's experiential part of that aha moment for you was being in this cave. And this is cool history. And you're being a history major, had this affinity just to be there, but. And then DTC kind of removes experience from the consumer side of things. And so what I. What I want to peel back a little bit is how do we get wineries to produce an experience for people to say, ah, I remember this wine. You'll never forget that Chateauneuf du Pape you tasted, right?

6:41 Because you were in this cave. Never. How do I do that? And then you get to, you know, as your life and your career go on much later in life. I met the Haas family. I met Jason Haas's father on my first big wine trip to California when he was establishing Tablas Creek. Then later on I get to meet Jason and work with him on Free the Grapes and about his commitment to regenerative farming. And so it's. And all of the different, you know, varieties of wine that he's producing from Chateauneuf du Pape. So it's kind of a full circle. You know, that's wine. He was on the show recently and I kind of freaked him out because Robert Haas and the Rhone Rangers used to meet at Laleem's in.

7:26 In Berkeley, which is owned by a guy in Armenia named Vahed Kashkarian. It was also the restaurant that Alice Waters went to when she was tired of, you know, Chez Panisse. So it's kind of an interesting story, but. So you brought to the DTC world, I suppose, experience and education from previous industries, you know, being at Leo Burnett, one of the great PR agencies of the world. Marketing work, huh? Marketing, not pr marketing. What was it? How, how is, how did that come to the Table. How did that feel? You know, transitioning from the wine, from that business into the wine side there too? Like moments of when I'm first getting into the wine business, the first I get a meeting with a very famous and well known iconic Napa Valley producer. And I say to the guy, said, because a lot of my experience came from marketing to women and, and going out, whether it was athletics or CPG products or whatever. I said, so what are you doing in your winery to market to women? He goes, oh, we're not really doing anything to women. The man owns the credit card, he's in charge of the wine club. And I'm like, wow.

8:36 So this is 2010, when I had that meeting. And the other one was an Ava that I pitched was probably one of the first Avas I pitched. And there were 16 people in the room, myself and the banker. And we were the only two people who were not related by blood or marriage. And that was also a moment where I realized, okay, this is a completely different category and you're going to have to approach it. And a lot of people are not. I've dealt with, you know, startups and people who didn't have experience in marketing all my life. And then you end up being an educator one way or another. But this was going to be a special category that had particular challenges. You know, this is interesting because we were talking about that diversity side of this and, and you went to the DTC consumer, which is what we've done. The word DTC is relatively new to the world of consumerism. I don't think when the BMG Music or whatever that company was that used to send you, you know, 12 CDs for a dollar and then you had to buy, you know, 12 at regular price, they didn't call it DTC then.

9:44 When my dad started in 1972, they didn't call it DTC then. But it's. A thing when, when he handed this company over and I, he will. He would have argued today that I bought it from, from a dollar, which isn't true. In 1988, he handed me and I could find this document somewhere in my archives here. The list of wineries in Napa Valley that had what now is called dtc. And it was basically five. It was like, you know, Inglenook Martini, you know, the, the four or five known wineries at the time. Why, why would that take so long, in your opinion, to come to the surface?

10:28 Not 2009. There was a symposium on it and it still seems to be in its infancy. And Understanding what the proper methodologies are and where to go with it. I think we've come a long way. I mean, the symposium now is this will be in January 2026, will be our 19th year. And so at this time, we actually are living in best of times from a marketing perspective because we are able to utilize things like AI to do creative. We're able to utilize OTT and CTV from a media standpoint where small enterprises can get in the game, just as social media did 10 years ago when people started reaching out that way, and then the rise of meta and those kinds of different things. So there are tools out there for people, but how they utilize those tools is often the challenge. And one of the things we're going to talk about and we can talk about this is a through line for the conference this year is about collaboration. And I think that that's going to be really important because from an amplification standpoint, if you have 3,000 case wineries and you have 15,000 case wineries, how are people going to interact in order to sell more wine and bring more people under the tent? And I think that's one of the most important things we want to talk about at this year's conference is. And that's. Collaboration is not something that the wine industry is known for. There's been a

12:00 lot of gatekeeping, secret keeping, keeping numbers, keeping things behind the wall. And I, I see that the rise of women, and now I would say the conference is over 50% women, probably closer to 60 women are collaborative and they're going to come up with those solutions in order to sell more wine. And I think that's super important. You know, that's a really interesting concept because, you know, the Wine of the Month club during its heyday, and I'm going to say probably 2007 through 2015, we were, we were monthly club, which we're going to talk about a little bit here in a second, which is not typical of most wineries. But I used to have lunch with my main competitors, California Wine Club, Golden Gold Medal Wine Club, the Vanesse. And we would share stuff that we felt we could share, you know, with. We had a cautious approach to our conversation. However, the closest and the most confident Confiance. Confiance is French Conf. The. Wow, I'm having trouble my words here.

13:06 The, the, the. The manager of the company that I most confidence in and trust with having conversations was a woman at California Wine Club. And she's still a very good friend. And so we hit it off when we first sat next to each other, and we sort of confided in each other along the way with our competitors of what we were doing. But, you know, it's an interesting thing because I just read a LinkedIn post from a friend of mine. Not a post, but he sent me a message. And he owns a winery in Lalonde de Palmiral. He's a Frenchman who has Bordeaux here. He's got 4,000 bottles of 18 Bordeaux here in America.

13:47 And like most people that do this, don't know. Doesn't know what to do with it. And he wrote the other day, and I just. Just noticed it. All we need is 6,000 members to take 24 bottles a year, and I can get this stuff out of here. And I wrote back, I said, all you need is 6,000 members. Do you have any idea what it's going to take and how much it'll cost? I said, that is a separate business and I'll help you with it. But, you know, that didn't just happen. So when you sit. No, I mean, that's a huge nut. Yeah. So are we talking mostly at the DTC symposium, wineries who are looking for ways to embellish their clubs and get the wine in the hands of the consumer, or is it a mix of third parties like the Wine of the Month club was, and wineries? You know, the thing that's been interesting about the conference is we've always had a very diverse audience in terms of, like, enterprise. So we have people who are coming there. I had a lady who wrote me from Los Olivos who literally makes 150 cases of wine a year. And then I have people from the Gallo organization, from the Jackson family organization.

15:03 So. Wow. Obviously, you know, so we have. And every and everything in between. And so huge diversity. It's. It's a huge business diversity because people understand that, you know, DTC marketing has become a $4.2 billion channel. Right. So depending on how that works for you and your business, it's an important to. For some people, it's their only channel or it's their major channel. But in the case of the larger enterprise people, it's a minor channel, but important to them. And they saw how important it was during the pandemic. And enabling customers to buy that wine online.

15:45 Can they learn. Can those two organizations learn the same thing from one. Let's just go. Let's say I attend one of the seminars not knowing the subject. Let's say AI Stephen Mock is teaching AI to such a. That Diverse. Diverse. A Clientele, meaning the woman who makes 150 cases in the Jackson family. Direct to consumer club manager. Obviously completely different requirements and needs. But can they learn the same lessons from what you guys teach? I think overarching. I think the first thing that everybody can learn from is that it's the best networking on in wine. I mean, that's number one. Because when people meet and they talk to each other, the conversations are invaluable.

16:28 So start with that. And then I think what we try and do with the programming and I think we've done a really good job this year in, you know, building a media plan on ott, which people who are probably more sophisticated and want to do that can do that. Or if they want to talk about how automation is going to serve their wine club, they can do that. So we try and provide content and programming that is going to go to both of those things. Our keynote speakers, obviously Steve Gross gives State of the State, which is one of our best. And then we also bring in, we have a DTC marketer from outside the wine business. He's going to talk, he's worked with Calvin Klein and pet food and art and snacks. So he's going to talk about his experiences. And then Elaine Brown is going to come in and she's going to talk about the future, which I think is an important thing that we all need to talk about right now. And then Dusky Estes. So we have, we have a. So it's sort of like those keynotes are kind of up here, Blue Ocean. And then the sessions are more about education. The breakouts. Yeah, we're doing boot camps for the first time this year, which is an experiment where we're asking people to bring their laptops and actually doing an hour and a half session to learn how to. If that lady from with 150 cases wants to learn how to build and a meta campaign and spend a very small amount of money. I have Mike sit coming in from Augusta, Missouri and he's going to show her how he did that for the nice people in Augusta,

18:00 Missouri and all the very tiny wineries that are there. Well, let me ask you this question. Because of that, the Wine of the Month club, when we found it, it was in a store and so people walked into the store. Then we, my dad invented the newsletter for the wines and he, you know, all those things that come along with today's DTC world. But then we decided to, he was starting to do shows. So that first change in my dad's career for marketing the Wine club was stand at a booth. And it was very interesting because he would go to the legal, the legal shows and the dentist shows and the doctor shows and the, you know, the gun shows and was, you know, it was some return. There was an acquisition cost issue.

18:44 It was fine, it was survivable. But the loyalty was very high then. Then somebody said you ought to go to the LA County Fair. So in 1984 he set up a booth LA County Fair, which was free at the time and doubled his membership like in 20 days. And that was realized that, you know, that was a huge venue. Well those, those things don't really work anymore, I can tell you that. My acquisition cost in 19 and 2007 was $9. Can you imagine that? And then the, the year I stopped, I'm sorry, that was 1996. The year I stopped doing shows was 2007. And that acquisition cost is the same exact show was $150 unsurvivable, you know, at a $30 wine package. So what I'm getting to is then we moved into cataloging in, in direct mail. We were selling, moving a million pieces of mail a year. And then that all evolved into Groupon, you know, coupon marketing. And then it moved into affiliate marketing and moved into influencer. All that stuff comes around.

19:48 How do you, how do you position the, the symposium around the radically advanced changes in marketing? And you came from Leo Burnett, which is a marketing firm, as you mentioned. Man. Kevin o' Leary said it on the show. What works today won't work tomorrow. Work, work yesterday is not going to work today. How do we keep dynamic, how do we teach the dynamic part of this? Well, I think that we all have to get invested in the idea of selling wine at the 50,000 foot level. And there's been a lot of conversation about this recently. A lot of people are trying to understand it. I think the whit and bid situation in California. We're going to have a program about that. There's been a lot of controversy, as I'm sure you're well aware in Sonoma County. So we're going to do it as a very journalist holistic panel and have people from five different areas of California who are at different phases of adoption, you know, Temecula leading the bunch.

20:52 And so we're blessed to have like team members on the steering committee who come from all of these areas and who we want to keep it pro con difficulties and reporting out because these things have been very controversial because it's a tax that people don't particularly want to pay. But that said, it requires them to market their product and market their area. And I think that we can do one better if we were to create a wine campaign. And Rob McMillan called for this several years ago. It was called Wine Ramp. And people have to get in the business of familiarizing themselves with beverages. And if you look at what wine spends versus beer or spirits, it's negligible. So we have number one, selling wine and number two, what kind of wine and what do you want? And I think that another through line will be different ways of looking at targeting consumers that is outside of demographics, which I think is completely antiquated. And the wine business is very lazy about. And because they have everyone's birthday, they think that, okay, Gen Z consumers are here and boomers are over here and, and ascribing particular behaviors to these particular age groups, which nobody in CPG marketing has been doing for 20 years. I mean, it's not how, you know, as I had this conversation with

22:24 Rob McMillan and I said, hey, I'm a boomer. I like tacos, I like to hang out and drink Rhone varietals with my dog. And you know, and I see people, the Gen Z's there. And so it's like we're enjoying the same experience. So help me understand how exactly we're different. It's a really interesting thought because when, when I would buy lists back in the day for the, for the direct mail and you know, the demographics was all you had. And so you would say, oh gee, I wonder if the, you know, these, if, if the Victoria's Secret catalog, you know, buyers and you learned a lot, it wasn't about the demographics. What ended up being the most driving force for direct mail at the time was, and probably still is that that the person had responded to a direct mail piece, almost didn't matter what the product was that they had responded to.

23:15 But if they were used to opening their mail and checking off the box like my father in law would buy anything he got in the mail, that was the most important driving factor. But today, you know, the variables and the targeting and the ability to get, you know, your message in front of the person that most likely would buy has to be infinitely more granular. Well, especially when you look at a wine audience, right? I mean if you, I had somebody run the numbers for me one time and it's like the wine audience of people who drink wine on a regular basis in the United States, which would be once a week or more, is somewhere around 10 million people, given the Size of the country, it's not that big. So you have to, so what you have to do is you have to, number one, increase the size of the market, and number two, figure out how you're going to target those people. I mean, Tom Lark had an excellent article out this week talking about, you know, how people should be targeting customers. And then there's been the entire conversation about, you know, whether it's grocery store wine or whether it's things that are better.

24:20 That's podcast. Well, it is, but it's like, so. It's so disappointing. And I'm listening to these people spiel on and on and on about it, and I'm sorry, they might know about wine. They don't know anything about marketing to people. What are you doing? That's. Well, that's a very hilarious. That's an important feature. And I want to go back to the statistic for a second because I, I'm, I was way off all these years, though. I got my numbers from the Wine Institute back in the day. But the, the, the comment used to be, if you asked 100,000 people in America, do you drink wine? 25,000 would say yes, which would be 25%. However, that includes the, the, you know, the person that goes to Olive Garden and gets the house Chianti, they would raise their hand, I drink wine. But they're certainly not a candidate for a DTC program.

25:07 So your numbers are even more specific and, and, and more constraining. But. So you just nailed, you just hit it on the head, though. People come to this industry, at least, for instance, the woman who's making 150 cases or, you know, Terravaz Winery in Kansas City because of the romance, the idea, the, the, the, the challenge, whatever it is it takes for you to bite off this industry. Aren't they reluctant to try and understand marketing and testing and, you know, realize, oh, man, I, I don't think I really care about acquisition costs and, and Roas and all the rest of the metrics. Is that hard? Do you know why I love the wine industry?

25:51 Is this a setup? No. The reason why I love the wine industry, it's the same group of eccentrics, weirdos, oddballs with diverse education. They might have an engineering degree, they might have a poetry degree, but they all are passionate and they love it. Do they love marketing? In fact, they do not. Which means they don't have a job until I want to retire, apparently. But the point is, is that what we're seeing is we're starting to see the shift it started during COVID and you're starting to see it where I think people, and especially the younger generation coming up, understands that they are going to have to bring their products to market, they're going to have to pay for marketing and they're going to have to do something about it. And so whether that's, you know, newsletters, social ott, whatever that is, they're gonna have to do it. Whereas I think there is a generation of guys that basically said, my wine sells itself. I mean, I'm sure you've been in this business a long time. You know, a lot of people who would say that, right.

26:56 They've been saying since who knows when, right? But, you know, be that as it may, I mean, go back to. Go back to Bartles and James, which was a very undistinguished product, but they sol lot of it. And how did they sell that? They sold it with a great advertising campaign that was humorous, something no one in the wine industry is doing. And I've. I've talked about this a couple of different times, but it's like phrase they. Had a catchphrase at the end. The two brothers stand there that it was very fun. It was hell ry I think it was in the late 70s or 80s sometime there. But I mean, it was brilliant work, but I mean, it wasn't very good product. And I think that there is a generation that looks at marketing as being in some way, shape or form not worthy of their product. And, well, you know, people are getting over that. Look at what, look at what Lois Cho is doing with Wieden and Kennedy. She's a bright young woman. She was just in Wine Business Monthly called out and that's cool. She's coming to the conference to give a talk. But I mean, the point is, is that now it's like now people are starting to get, hey, I'm in. I'm selling wine in Oregon. Why don't I go get some of the best people in the business from Wyden and Kennedy and have them work with me and they'll get something out of it and I'll get something out of it.

28:18 That's smart. There's a book I was reading. I do like reading wine books that are written years and years ago because it's sort of a different perspective on what was happening at the time the book was written. Plus it goes back in history. What's that, broadband? Yes. Well, actually, I have a dozens of Les Ami Devant magazines, which are great magazines. A precursor to sort of a Spectator. My Husband worked in the restaurant business in France for 25 years. Oh, he knows. Okay. What'S, what's interesting there is in 1930, something when, when there was a Burgundy Appalachian meeting, one of the vendors said, hey, you know what? My wine sells itself. We shouldn't allow advertising and marketing in this new appellation that they created. And everybody thought he was nuts because we all know as Oddity Global basically puts out there is that wine is about consumerism. And that's why I've always wondered. And that was the pretense of the question. I'm going to take it one more step further.

29:24 My niece started a direct to consumer salad dressing. And it's very good. It's, it's individual servings. She's an incredible job and she's at this juncture where her organic marketing has been very successful, but it's starting to now peter out. And so she's going to have to invest in and learn how to spend on marketing. So I brought out the whiteboard and she was an intern here actually at One of the month club before she started this. And I said, okay, let's go over return on ad spend, let's go over acquisition costs, let's go over the various prongs of marketing that you can do and how you're going to decide which ones work and which ones don't. And her attitude was, I don't want anything to do with it.

30:10 You know, this, this is my brainchild and I'm the marketeer and I really don't have time to understand those things. And I said, well, then we're going to have that conversation in the future because. And she's at a point now where this organic side and the influencer side of things is just sort of. And she made a very interesting comment. Let me ask you this. If you've heard this in the wine side, I think one of the great influencers that she had bugged to review her salad dressing did it and it got, I don't know, 500, 000 views or something. I don't know, some huge number, but only sold $6,000 worth of product. And she said, I was very disappointed in this. I said, well, you'll just learn a huge lesson, you know, that kind of marketing is not going to produce, you know, the revenue that you expect it to do. It seems like the numbers are big when you have a half a million people viewing the thing, but that's just views.

31:07 They don't mean a thing really, when. It comes, it's a reminder it's why people, it's why people in the wine business think that social is. Is a be all and end all. It is absolutely not, is a reminder. It is not. I always say it's a you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Like, if you don't do it, then you look like a square and you don't have any presence. But if you do do it, don't expect this huge revenue stream just from that. Oh, no. And just another word on acquisition costs. Last year when I was doing my budget workshop about marketing, I asked a room full of 70 people if they understood customer acquisition cost. And I had one person raise their hand. Wow.

31:49 Not only that, but I asked a very well known person from a very well known winery and I said, so you know what your acquisition cost is, don't you? Person? And they were like, we do all our work in house. And I'm like, this is not the answer to the question. Oh, I see. Okay. It makes it. Well, then you really should know. You need to understand what you're putting out. How is that, how is that aligning with what your strategy is and what you're going to do? And yeah, no, there's a lot that's phenomenal. But you all know I have to put my dad in this. Can you see this painting here? You probably can't. No. There's a picture of my father in 1975 sitting in front of the wine shop.

32:33 I remember when he started the Wine of the Month club and he had gone to Nathan Croman, the famed critic here in Los Angeles and writer for the LA Times, and Lawrence Bowser. He may have even bounced it off. I know he bounced it off. Warren. When Yarski and a couple other locals, Jim Barrett, was a regular of our store. Not to drop names, but I remember going to Hawaii as a kid and he had every, maybe five different books on direct to consumer marketing or direct marketing at the time. And he was doing those metrics he had, you know, it was on paper and a pencil and saying if I could get $5 a bottle and it cost me a dollar for the wine and whatever the numbers were. And I have a dollar left over for profitability and a dollar left over from my pocket. He had all these numbers down and what it would take to do it. And that's an old, old concept. And I'm wondering if that's not what I'm talking about here, which is you take a farmer and you put them into the farms and they start making Wine. And they go realize, we got to sell some. And now they end up at the DTC consumer symposium going, you know, their heads are spinning when they see these numbers.

33:41 Yeah, there's a lot of that. It's a great service. Tell me about Unlo. What. What do you do with undisclosed location, which is a great name. I started about 20 years ago when I left Burnett. And, you know, I was in. I was a, you know, senior vice president and I had run new business for them for several years. And I had done a lot of different things because I was a. I was a pitch specialist. So it made them two of the most profitable years they ever had where they made $600 million. But the problem was, is that I was in the creative department, but they didn't, you know, Burnett wanted to pay. They wanted you to stay in your lane at that time. So you got to go into certain aspects of IT strategy or business development. But they didn't. That was different. And I was a woman and I was an art director. So there's another two strikes against me. And I was like, okay, so I want to be in business and I want to learn because I. I'm a lifelong learner. That's what I love. I love learning businesses. And so then I started working for companies. And in the 20 years I've been doing it, I've only worked for one advertising agency when I was basically advising a CEO about. She was pitching wine business. And I was. I basically was sort of behind her saying, these are the things they'll want to hear. But the one thing I wanted to go back to before we leave leave, that is a lot of people talk about the Gen Z problem or the Neo prohibitionist, and they talk about all these different

35:12 things. The one thing that no one talks about in the wine business is how in five years they've gone from 7,500 wineries to over 11,000. Now, I went to art school. You're talking about the TTB licenses. But I did take a few economics classes. And what people do not want to discuss in these particular challenging times is that what you have is more than anything else, enhanced competition. And we see it. We've been lucky at the DTC show to bring people, and we've had some people from Iowa, from Illinois. We've got a super strong contingent from Michigan who's, you know, been coming New York state. So people have been growing the wine business in regions outside of California. This is creating competition. And what happens when you have competition? We need to market your products.

36:13 It's like, I'm so tired of reading why Gen Z isn't like, you know, drinking wine. Well, you know, if you're selling $50 Pinot, probably not. Not their price point. Let's start there. But more than anything else, there's also beverage. There's wine, there's beer, there's. There's kombucha. There's. There are things that didn't exist. I mean, I. I grew up drinking Gallo Hardy Burgundy in, like, La Jolla, California, in the squatty bottle, which still makes the best sangria there is, in my opinion. But, yeah, they still make that? I think so, yeah. Yeah, I think they do. So the point I'm trying to make is this, that people jump to all of these. This terrible doom loop about our society, and these are the conditions and how. And with absolutely no structure or resonance behind all this, when they're leaping over the most baseline problem, which is increased competition.

37:21 You know, it's interesting. There's all these angles, and I agree with you completely. I. I'm so angry. I get angry, really. When I read some of these articles that are posted about these problems, they're all doom and gloom. Not only not doom and gloom, but they. They offer no solutions. Right. They just say we should and we need to. And one of the important business lessons that I've taught myself when I've talked to anybody who's doing anything is re. Is. Is staying away from. You should because no one wants to hear. You should. Because it. As the famed movie, the one about the king. It's easy to give advice from the veil of COVID than it is to use it at the point of attack. And so it's fruitless to say we have neo prohibitionists, we have all this competition without providing an angle. For instance, I went to a restaurant recently, and the guy was complaining that his bottle sales were off 30%. I'm like, wow, that's a lot, you know. And I said, but how about your servers? Are they educated? Oh, they don't know shit. He said. I'm like, well, hello, Maybe that's one of your problems. Hey, you know people.

38:37 No, I mean, you're never. If you. A fantastic sommelier that you can have fun with. It's. And there's more and more. There's people, you know, if you can find anybody on the floor, you can find. Yeah. You know, and you. You know, this is what I'm looking for, you know, and. And then they want to have. They want to have fun too. Right? What do you think? What do you think of this reading all those magazines you. You reading Michael Broadbent stuff, obviously, it's very sort of educated things. And it's, you know, changing the language of wine, I think is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Because if you change the language to Gary Vaynerchuk's language and talk about, you know, Captain Crunch and Fruit Loops, you know, you're going to confuse half the people again. And the next time they change the language, it's going to confuse the next half. So it's not. That doesn't really do anything. But I don't agree with that. You know, so, like, when you. When somebody says change the language line, what does that mean to you?

39:38 And do you think it's necessary? Here's an example that people, people in the wine business absolutely hate this example. They really do. But when Cameron Diaz and Catherine Power came out with Avileen and they started about clean wine, people lost their freaking minds, okay? Those ladies went out and sold like 5,000 cases and sold out. And here's what I think. Clean wine comes from clean beauty. It's consumer language that consumers, like it or not. And all in the whole wine community was, oh, my God. And it's like, you know what? It's like, we should be welcoming those ladies into the tent. We should be welcoming all of those consumers who buy her wine. And it's like, I have heard things from people I have been with, highly educated people, even guys like David lynch who have taught me a lot about the business and lead pencil and baby diaper and like crunchy gravel. I've put up with it. Come on now.

40:38 It's like, couldn't you put up with clean wine? I mean, it's like I went tasting at Walla Walla with Sam Katturi and he was like, he said, he goes, taste this wine. He goes, look for the graham cracker notes. And you know what? Damn if they weren't there. And. And so it was like. But that was cool. That was interesting. So do I think that we all need to be using the same language 100%? No. And I think. And just the last point I'll make about that is like, we've got Elaine Shukin Brown who's giving a speech to talk about it. And Elaine is a. She's a wonderful speaker. She's a highly educated person. She's a PhD. We also have ISIS Daniel, who has 140,000 TikTok followers, and she's a young African American woman from the D.C. area. She's been on the show.

41:27 So I think both of those women have an audience and something to say, and they both say it different ways. Well, I'm not sure I'm challenging that because certainly the idea that the idea of clean wine, which is sort of a style more than it is language, what I was driving, that maybe I'm wrong in this and maybe I misunderstood the idea of changing the language of wine, which is. If my dad would describe a wine, he would. He would have a fit when I would use fruit impressions, when I would tell him about a wine, because back in his day, they didn't use fruit impressions. They use other types of impressions. And so my point was, if I'm going to change the language of how I describe a wine, no one's going to understand me. A generation ahead of me is not going to understand what I'm saying. And the generations behind me already don't understand what I'm saying. But I think your idea of change, the language of wine could be the presentation of the wine, the language of wine. In other words, a clean wine, I think makes perfect sense and it's less of a. So, so let's put it, let's put it this way. There's only. Wine is the only category. And I've worked across.

42:39 You name a category, I've worked in selling it. It is the only category where the words that are meant to sell the product come from the producer, not the consumer. When Nike does a great ad, they're lifting things out of cultural consciousness. Or Apple or any other advertiser used to working with wine wants you to use its language. They do, and they feel comfortable there. They're like, yes, this is something we all understand. Guess what? People that we want to bring in under the tent, they have the vaguest idea of what you're talking about. I mean, and they don't really care. I think that's. That's right on. And it's. I just got back from a very, very fancy tasting last week and I was talking to the Psalm who was in charge of it. I won't mention names and I won't mention restaurants.

43:33 And I left the. With the impression a knowledgeable guy, but I, I left with the impression this is the exact reason that the aristocracy of wine is propagated. It. It's a protection, it seemed to me, for, in this guy's case, a protection of his knowledge base. He spent all this time studying and doing the stuff and getting a job, and you don't want to have that diluted or lost in translation. So you use the, the words and you use the approach and you use the lofty service level, which I think is important in wine, but to basically like forcibly intimidate people. And I don't, it's not like intimidation the way I intimidate my grandkids, but intimidation.

44:16 There is. Intimidation. People are intimidated. I was in Italy with, with a whole bunch of people and they were all, they were lawyers and judges and a friend of mine who had gone to UCLA business school and she was hosting and these people, like, you know, it was, it was a Michelin starred restaurant and they gave me like the book and I make a lot less money and have probably, you know, X amount of wine education. And they, they're like, you take, you deal with the guy. These are people who have multiple degrees and they were super intimidated. And I'm thinking if we're intimidating those people, that's the wrong thing to be doing. I mean, that's what I think. And we did, we did a. And, and, and Evan Goldsmith, who's the, who's the sommelier for the, for the Giants, and Ed Foycheck did this a few years ago. We talked a lot about the language of wine and I think it is changing. I think with the inclusion of a lot more people in wine, both, you know, bring in Filipino influences and different kinds of food and, you know, all this kind of stuff. So we need different words to talk about it. And that's okay.

45:31 It's funny because when that gentleman told me that his bottle sales are off and that his wine, his servers had no idea what they were talking about. I said, you got to, I didn't say you should. I said he was bringing a new song, as if that was the problem. And I thought, And I went to a restaurant recently in Hermosa beach and they had reorganized their list. Now I, and I was confused, frankly. But their list was instead of regions and grape varietals, it was styles, so light and airy reds and heavy and heavy and deep reds and whatnot. And I, you know, for me, I'm an old guy. I, I had a hard time because I was looking for. I know my wife will only drink Bordeaux varietals. And if I, every time I try to stump her with something from the Rhone, she goes, what is this? So, So I was, I had a hard time finding the calves, though, obviously big and rich, but was. It was organized differently than what your expectation was. Exactly. So then I told the sommelier, the restaurateurs, why don't you create Two lists, one like that and one traditional. And give half your servers one list and half your servers the other. And see if, if the consumer responds, it's not going to cost you anything, and it's not going to certainly decrease sales because your, your benchmark is going to be what you've already done. But maybe you'll find out if the consumers is responding to that change of language, which is describing wines by their style rather than their region. And I think, of course he thought I was nuts, but at least I

47:03 thought I was a solution. Knowing your customer, right? I mean, it's like it's gonna, it's. You're not gonna get 100% of the customers that are gonna be 100% happy all the time. But I think it's actually a great idea. Karen McNeil told this great story last year when she gave her piece, which was cool, she was talking and this was like back in the 90s in New York. And, you know, they had a list and it was fairly comprehensive. And on the last page of the list they had chef's favorites. She goes, like 70% of their wine sales were from that list. And so if you're at a very nice restaurant in New York, it makes sense. And you're going there because you think Chef is doing really interesting things. Hey, you must know something so that. So now you're making it easier for me if I don't know anything and I'm the consumer and I go, oh, gee, there's a Chardonnay he recommends. I like Chardonnay. And he recommends it.

47:58 Boom. Okay, let's go. You know, I think it's very important to be earnest in that. In other words, really make it the chef's favorites. Really make. Really have him taste or her taste and say, yeah, this goes with this because part of the DTC world and we're done here with time wise. But I want to, I want to get to this quick point. The original wine and muthka was found on the fact that there was always something around. And I told you stories before of the great vintages we found throughout the years in this club. But it started to change toward the end here, where we were being not forced to, but being forced to taste anyway. You know, 20,000 liter tetra packs from Europe with 50 cent a liter wine in it being packaged under a variety of labels. And that was not an earnest approach to the wine trade. And so this was junk, and it tasted like junk. And almost all of my competitors were using this junk. And I know I could Name them off still today that still use this stuff. And the uneducated consumers thinking, I get it for five bucks, you know, so not so bad, which is a bad for the wine industry. But it also put a lot of bad taste in the mouths of. Of the consumer for club subscriptions and wine. Because, like you said, you're not going to please all the palates all the time, but if you need to please them, sometimes you need to sort of strike a chord. And. And then maybe that chord is, you know, for the Wine of the Month Club, all these years was the story of the. The

49:30 club and why you're getting this wine and what the story behind the wine was and what the story behind the purveyor was, and what the story behind my father was or myself. That was an important story to tell somebody at a dinner table. But if. And I highlight this by the woman from Punch Drink came out to watch me taste one Tuesday. And in between tasters, in between vendors, I opened some stuff that had been sent to me. And one of them was a Saturday Night Live Beaujolais, current vintage. I think it was 2019. And we're in 2020 at the time. And it was. She goes, this is awful. I said, yeah, can you imagine? Somebody bought that because they're devotees of Saturday Night Live, or they wanted to have their friends over and have a glass of wine when the show is on and they open this stuff and they. They don't know how to react. They're not sure if this is bad or good. They bought it because of some branding, and I think that put a bad taste in the mouth of the general consumer for general wine clubs. Do you agree with that?

50:38 Yeah, I think, you know, I had a friend bring the Game of Thrones wine to my house one time. I know the wine. You came to me, I'm like. I'm like, come with me, my friend. We're gonna go and taste some really good wines. But I mean, what I will say is, like, what people want us to do is they want to give us reasons to buy their wine. So I look at. Look at the organic market, which is like something that has shifted enormously in the last 10 years, right? So we always used to ask people, you know, would you be willing to pay more for organic wine? And boomers traditionally said, I'll drink it, but no, now you have. It's one of the few categories that's up. You know, it's up. Up around 8% in the market, right? So if you're telling an organic story, Or a regenerative story as part of who you are as a brand that's. That's happening. And people and younger people care about that.

51:38 So it's worth the money to them because there is money to be spent. But oh yeah, you know, the grocery store and the distribution is something that we could do an entire podcast about and why people buy what they buy. But I would say that if they have interests, wine is like great jazz music. You can like Miles Davis when you hear it on, you know, on a podcast or whatever. But you learn about it over time. Wine's the same way, you know, you learn about it over time. I'll always be learning. I have a son. We just got back from Paris, Texas. Ever heard of it? The movie? Yeah, the recent movie about the reality TV show. And the girls go out, they kind. Of go to Paris thinking the foreign film that was from the 90s. Well, my son in law got moved there and my daughter went and. And obviously. And we got to spend four days with. It was great.

52:37 But it's a dry county. Well, it's. I went to school. It was dry too. Yeah, we don't know exact rules. You can get a drink at a restaurant or glass of wine, but you. And I think you can buy wine at the market, but you can't. I could not find a bottle of gin anyway, so we stopped the Whole Foods on the way in and look, I'm gonna toot my horn here just a second. I sold 17 million bottles of wine DTC and I tasted a hundred thousand documented wines. So I feel like I might have a grasp on at least the consumer side of this. And I walked into Whole Foods and I was desperate to find something that I. That I thought would speak to its appellation and is varietal about two Bordeaux.

53:26 I bought a Russian River Pinot and I bought a domestic cap. Brands, I understood, not mainstream brands, but. And my son in law, who's very peculiar, loves Beaujolais, loves to not, you know, stuff like that. He's very specific in his non mainstream wine consumption. All four of my selections, two of them are undrinkable not because they were bad, but because they were so sugared up and so mainstream in their palette that a guy like me who's done all this and my son in law who's only interested in unusual varietals and locations, we couldn't drink it. And I was disturbed by it. I personally believe not in this administration, but perhaps further on down the road that content will matter more to these people. And sugar is a, is a problem. You know, Adam Lee did that with dial tone where he showed one bottle of Maomi and then like 18 bottles of Dial tone. And then the people at Maomi wanted to sue him. I mean, sugar is, sugar is out there and it makes things taste good and people talk dry and they drink sweet and all those things.

54:37 Yeah. So it's a problem. And the people at Ridge came up with a beautiful label in the 80s and that's incredibly transparent and I think it's great. I was so bummed. I was embarrassed because, you know, I, I, it gave me a certain pause. A pause because I thought, how does a consumer choose now? Maybe the consumer palette is, is sweeter than my palate. It absolutely is. But. Nondescript. There was nothing different about these wines. And I thought, I was really bummed. Anyway, that's, that's between you and me as wine geeks.

55:18 When's the symposium? It's January 20th through the 22nd and you can go and register now. The full program is published. It's dtcwinesymposium.com do you have, it's mostly. You know, vendors or consumers. Is there, is there a trade show, so to speak, as part of this? Absolutely. We have an awesome trade show. We have a lot of new people this year in the trade show which is super exciting. And we're almost actually sold out of sponsorships. It's been really successful. Brian's been running the whole sales part of it. That's been amazing. Ian, Vicki, Thomas are. And it's not a consumer show. It's, it's really, it's a business to business show. So it's great show. Yeah. You know, I mean about 40% of our audience is either VP to owner. So it's decision makers and people who want to understand the future of the business. And I think, I think that's where we have to get together and I think the entire wine business. Absolutely. You know, I used to work in fashion. I used to work in cosmetics. Do you ever see like fashion and cosmetics, like people going, oh no, people aren't using mascara anymore. You know, no one would ever talk about mascara.

56:28 Sales were down. I'm just saying. Wow, that's interesting. It's a really good thought. Well, I look forward to that. And say hi to my friend Brian. I've seen him for a little while. Come up. Well, I think I'm going to come up and I think I'm going to spend, book some appointments to make some podcasts. I owe a lot of People podcasts that I met recently at some tastings. Yes. We're going to have a podcaster room and we're going to have a content creator room. So come on up. We're going to have more content creators at this show than we've ever had before. The winemakers are there. I don't do you know, the couture and all those people peeps, those are our main media partners. But we're going to have ISIS there. We're going to have a bunch of different people who are coming up and doing podcasting. I think MJ's coming. So what we want is for people to meet and understand content creators of all types. If you're on YouTube, if you're on podcasts, we want the word out about wine. We want to make a big tent.

57:27 Whether you're doing non alcoholic wine. I know there's, I have a lot of friends who just, just don't like it. I get it. But I also have a lot of people who can't drink and they're very happy about it. So let's bring everybody in under the tent. Let's come, let's meet in Monterey in January and Free the Grapes is the beneficiary. And that's a really good cause for everybody because everybody should be drinking better wine. Well, we're going to have to do a podcast just on, on Free the Grapes since a very important movement and it's been around for a long time. I mean, it's been a great conversation and been. I've, I really enjoyed talking to you and you know, I'd love to bring Brian in and we could have a chat at the show. So register now. Great.

58:11 Excellent. Thanks for being on the show and good luck out there. We'll, we'll come see you in Monterey. I mean, come on. The worst case is go to Monterey, right? Yes. And fantastic. Which, which actually is the source of one of my, one of my favorite stories of wine during the Concord Elegance. And I'll tell you that later here. But cheers. Thank you. All right, very nice. Thank you very much, Paul. Appreciate it.