Building Wine Experiences: Kerrin Laz on Napa, Innovation, and Giving Back

0:00 Growing up in New York, you know, de Una Duluc, an iconic brand. I knew it very well. I stopped there for a cup of coffee. I asked if they might be hiring. My resume had, like, nothing on it. And they asked, well, what are you interested in? And I was like, I don't know, like, maybe food or wine. And I remember they looked at me and they were like, well, which one? And I said, wine, I guess. Sit back and grab a glass. It's Wine Talks with Paul King. Hey, welcome to Wine Talks with Paul K. And we are in studio today, but to have a conversation with Karen Laz way up there in Yountville. Introductions in just a moment. Hey, have a listen to a new podcast coming out. It's going to come out next week. Actually, it'll come out the third week of April. And this is called Song of America. And the inspiration came from hearing so many incredible stories of immigration to America and success in social, political, academic, financial, disability. It doesn't matter. It's just stories of why we're here and what America's all about that's coming out soon. And I have an incredible collection of people to listen to right out of the shoots, but not while we're here. Here to talk to Karen Laz of Karen Laz Wine. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Paul.

1:12 You call yourself president of Karen Laz Wine. What do you call yourself? I don't even think I've given myself a title, to be honest. Oh, well, yeah. TBD. Let's do that now. TV day. It's only been 10 years, so hopefully soon I'll figure that out. Well, maybe we'll figure that, but you're a wine. You're a philanthropist in the wine world, so to speak. And I. We'll talk about that. But also a native of Long Island. Yeah. Which there's an interesting thing in your bio about planting Bordeaux varietals. Now, I've been doing this a long time, and the wines from the east coast have always been focused on mostly German whites and some interesting, you know, maybe some indigenous grapes. But all of a sudden, red wines have been coming out of there. How did that happen? What did they do that made it, you know, suitable to grow red grapes? It's, you know, it's.

2:04 It's funny because my dad continually reminds me that Long island is making some good wines and I should maybe pay attention more to that area. And I finally. And he said it so many times that I finally had to just say to him, look, I think there's some good wines coming out of there. In their best vintages, they might be very good, but I don't think, I think given their climate, given their location, given the tour, it's hard to grow Cabernet, it's hard to grow Pinot to make it exceptional. So, you know, they're focusing a little bit more on like the Merlot and the Caffe Franc blends. I think they can do pretty well there. There are some good Chardonnays I tasted out of there, but I've yet to taste like a great Cabernet or a great Pinot Noir. So you don't have, you know, one those like heavy hitter varietals. I think it's a little tricky for them, but what they focus on is like this incredible agro tourism approach. And so, you know, you've got enough of a density of population with Manhattan alone and New York surrounding to more than make up for, you know, exceptional wines. And, you know, they're good and they bring, you know, folks out to the East End. And, you know, it's great for the local population, it's great for the local industry and the economy out there. And it's fun to go wine taste. And I've done it numerous times. And the funny thing is I actually tried getting a case of wine shipped to me to California.

3:30 And the, the person that was hosting us was like, we actually don't ship to California. I was like. Which is like the. I was like, you think that would happen? Yeah, I would think it would be a pretty natural thought. And they said, we don't, we actually don't ship outside of New York. And I was shocked. And so we had a little chat about that and they said we don't really have to ship outside in New York. We have enough of an audience to make up for, you know, the fact that we, we don't ship outside in New York. So I was actually blown away by that. But yeah, you know, it's interesting. My daughter used to live in Manhattan and so we used to visit the sort of local farmer's markets and they always had a wine stand, somebody from Long island or from Virginia or someplace nearby. And in my 17 years or 35 years of selling wine, DTC monthly subscription, I only featured one Eastern wine and that was from Virginia. It was a Chardonnay. It was very good. Prince Michelle, I remember it well.

4:26 But isn't Nova Catamart the famed master of wine? Isn't she making wine in Long island as well as Napa? Do you know her? I don't know her. I think she's very proud of that. And the last time I had anything to do with Eastern wine, we got off this thing. But I flew to Poughkeepsie, New York, okay, For actually a bottle of wine club out of New York. And it was like February, and these guys were out in their dry suits, you know, pruning the vineyards in three feet of snow. And I thought, you know, what could become of this? Yeah, it's, you know, it's. It's interesting because I actually remember as a. As a kid, I remember when, you know, the east end of Long island, especially the north fork, which is where most of the wineries are, which would be, you know, going out to Orion Point. So it's the north fork. We have two forks. It's the North Fork versus the south fork, which has Montauk Point, the Hamptons.

5:25 But the north fork was just absolutely bucolic. I mean, it actually reminds me a lot, like here in Sonoma in that. Just very agro. Very agriculturally driven farms about miles as you could go. And what they really. Their forte was actually in nursery, and it was also in sod farms and potato fields. And all of a sudden you started seeing these potato fields and these sod farms changing out to vines. And it was kind of these, like, really. This is interesting. But Long Island, I think, started in the 70s. It's not like it's a brand new thing. It's been around for a. They probably have over 100 wineries now. And I think it's.

6:10 I think it's great. I think it's great for the wine industry. Anytime we see some region, like, coming into play, I think it just makes the industry stronger as a whole. It gets people interested. Are the wines exceptional? Are they going to compete on an international stage? Maybe not, but I think it brings excitement. I think it's a great starting point for a lot of people that are just starting to get into wine. You know, like, why not go to the place down the street from you or, you know, get on a train or get on a jitney and then, like, go check it out for a day. I think it's awesome that they're doing it, but, yeah, it's interesting to see. Let's talk about that for a second. Because we. Last time we were at Napa wasn't that long ago. I was sitting with Violet Gurgich. She was talking about her taste room. Traffic being down, you know, 30%. We have good friends up in the hills. The Promise Winery which is a membership only kind of thing. Yeah.

6:59 You know, tourism seems to me one of the few bastions of success that's going to be left here for short term. I don't think we're in the doom and gloom part of the wine business. Wine's too old, too established and too connected to the human soul for it to dry up. But I think tourism really is one of the places that growing and people are. I mean, obviously I do it everywhere I go. I try to find some place to go visit. But a lot of people that are novices at wine do that. Have you experienced that at your shop, for one, in Yonville? And. But then I see wine. Wine tasting rooms closing up as well. Yes, the.

7:43 I think that's a good point. When, when people travel, I think food and wine is just so it's an integral part of traveling. Right. And if, if you have the means to be able to travel and you're going to a place like wine country or even to, you know, not even like the most renowned regions of the world, but places where they do have wineries and stuff, I think it's an interesting thing to check out. It's a cool, you know, it might be an afternoon that someone spends doing it or a day trip off of some other area. And I think it's just really kind of an integral part of where you are visiting.

8:24 Right. So I mean, it's your surroundings. I mean, you wouldn't go to Tahoe and probably not, you know, check out a mountain or put on some snowshoes. You know, it's like if you're going to be in wine country, probably going to check out a winery or two. And for those that are younger, getting into traveling more, I think if you're going to be in a wine region like you are going to visit, we do have guests that come in. We have the most experienced collectors and we have the most novice newcomers to the scene. And fortunately we can play in that spectrum to both. And I think it's actually sometimes even better when you have somebody who's so new, new to wine, who's basically like, let's just try an array of different types of wines. And it's a really good way to get, to get that, that guest kind of into learning about something on a more macro level approach. So, you know, when guests visit us, I mean, we're customizing every tasting, we're asking in advance a bunch of questions. So when they come in, that lineup is very specifically for them based on varietals, based On a slew of other questions we're asking. And so we've kind of honed in on like, where we think that sweet spot is for them to taste wines. So, yeah, I think that we've had really good success with that in that, you know, we're tasting thousands of wines a year. So the wines that we bring to the table, it could be anything. So we're bringing the ones that we're most excited about that we think are going to be the most intriguing for that

9:55 group that's coming in that day. Right? Yeah. So I think an important thing for sure. Yeah, I think that's. I think that's. It's right on. What do you think the consternations for innotourism in Napa are right now? Like, this is what I heard and you just validate this or you can move on from it. But we were talking to some winery folks up there. The hotel prices don't seem to have gone down. We usually stay at the estate Yonville down the road from you, and you know, those prices haven't changed and the concept. But their occupancy is not, is not high. It's like 30 or 40%. And I, I heard that they, they feel like they can run a skeleton crew, not pay as much in overhead and live with the rates at a 30 occupancy than. Than to drop the prices and be full. But then that has pull through issues with tasting room traffic and the rest. Or is it just the cost of traveling to Napa right now that that needs to find a new home in order to get people to come back up?

11:01 I had a really strong opinion about hotel rates in Napa Valley specifically, and I can't speak for other areas, but I had very strong opinions for the last couple years about this. And then I was talking to a friend who used to be on town council, who's way more educated in the intricacies and used to own hotels as well. And he basically said you have to understand the deeper logistics, like the deeper economics behind hotels before you can really talk about it. So it has adjusted my opinion slightly. But I do think that yes, hotel rates, I thought for a long time were just, you know, they went up and then they never came down. And partly, yes, I do think that a hotel who's running at a 50% occupancy rate probably is going to have different margins, and the margins might even be a little bit better if those rates stay up and labor stays down and, you know, the costs stay down. That being Said I also realize now more that there are quite a few hotel owners that would love to have more of an occupancy, but getting the staffing has been really challenging. It's something that we have had a problem with since the pandemic when a lot of staffing moved because they had to and then they never came back.

12:23 Right. So I mean, we definitely still have a problem with staffing, especially for hotels. You know, my, my organizations, I haven't had a hard time, but like, I'm a tiny organization compared to like what it takes to have a hotel running and operating. Right. So I do think I've seen prices come down a little bit in the last year. I've seen them come down. They're definitely not pretty pandemic pricing. But then you have to think about that. That's, you know, we're six years later, five years later and the costs have increased. You know, we look at costs across the board and so many things and they, you know, our prices are not what they were, you know, five years ago. So that's a good point. We're coming up, we're going to find out. We're coming up, I think the week of the 20th for a few days, do some podcasting. So we'll find out exactly where they're at.

13:15 The litmus test. Yeah. Yeah. So interesting. I was reading about your career here and you were with Dina DeLuca. How is a young girl in Long island move into hospitality, particularly wine? And then of course, Diane DeLuca being a high end food and purveyor as well. Yeah, it was pretty accidental. I think you'd probably hear that a lot. You know, either people were like, absolutely, like razor focused. This is my through line for life. It's going to be hospitality. And I think a lot of people, actually it was accidental for them and for me it was totally accidental. I went to, I did my university in North Carolina and was poli sci in journalism, nothing to do with wine and kind of went sideways. Yeah. And I think it was really sci degree.

14:01 What's that? The old poli sci degree. But actually I really thought I was going to be, I wanted to be a journalist. That was really my thing. And needless to say, I did not go that route. But, but having that backing, being educated to be able to write and to be able to kind of know what's going on in the world has not hurt me at all. Even in this world. Like you take that with you. And yeah, so I accidentally got into the wine business. I was working with A restaurant in Durham, North Carolina. And they had outlets in Chapel Hill and in Durham. And the idea was that I was going to take over this restaurant. And it was a restaurant that had been around for a very long time. Time. They were doing farm to table long before farm to table was even a thing.

14:51 And it was just this totally like, revered place. And the owner, Mary Bacon, was getting kind of tired and of. Of running it. And she'd been doing it for, you know, 20 plus years, 30 years probably. And the idea is that I would learn all aspects of the restaurant business and then take it over. And I started back at the house. I became the kitchen manager. I learned how to cook, which was incredible. I lear how, you know what every piece of seafood weighs, every piece of produce, all that stuff moved to front of the house and then started getting into wine. I did it for a year and I had totally burned out. I had no life. And I'm like 21 at the time, and I'm like, this is just totally not going to be something I can do. And I have huge respect for active owners to this day who do this day in and day out. I did it for one year and I was like, there's no way I can do this again. So I needed to get a job. And I was interviewing for some places up in D.C. knowing that ultimately I was going to move up to D.C. i had a bunch of friends that lived up there, and I interviewed for jobs in all different directions. Entry level jobs with journalism and then also with.

16:05 With food and wine. And I stopped at Dean and DeLuca for a cup of coffee. And growing up in New York, you know, Dean and DeLuca, an iconic brand, I knew it very well. I stopped there for a cup of coffee. I asked if they might be hiring. My resume had like nothing on it. And they asked, well, what are you interested? And I was like, I don't know, like maybe food or wine. And I remember they looked at me and they were like, well, which one? And I said wine. And it was one of those things. And so it was a series of interviews and then I wound up getting the job. I moved to D.C. i became the buyer of the Georgetown store, Dean and DeLuca. Wow. And then within a couple years, I had taken over more of the operating side for multiple channels. And then we became licensed to sell wine on our website and catalog, which was pretty exciting.

16:54 And that was like 2000. When did I move? 2007, I guess. So I moved out here in 2007 and I've never left so did you work with Dean DeLuca on Highway 29 there? So we had offices south of the store. So I oversaw that store as well. And ultimately I wound up doing work for our international licensees, helping them get up and running on the wine side and then also always overseeing wine domestically, knowing that ultimately if I left the company, that's what I would want to do, would be starting my own company. I worked on strategic partnerships, getting Fairmont as one of our partners, Lexus as one of our partners, which was basically Dean and DeLuca being kind of the wine purveyor for wine clubs and kind of for their different events and stuff, which was all great.

17:51 And then we actually wound up selling at the end of 14 and I just had, I mean, just this incredible opportunity. The previous owner who was really close with me, Leslie Rudd, he basically helped pay the way for me to be able to kind of carve the direct to consumer business for myself. Because I had really, I grew it, I nurtured it, I kind of made it for what it was when we sold. And going forward, the new ownership were like, we want to build like, you know, 300 Dean and DeLucas in 10 years. And like an extreme number. And I was like, this wine program doesn't make sense in this fold. And like it's not interesting to me. And what we're doing now is so velvet glove curated. Like it's just totally. It's what Dean and DeLuca was. It was, you know, finding the best foraging purveyor, you know, finding the best purveyors new model, not interested. But I was able to carve that business for myself and start Kayla's wine collection. And so I always say it was a startup, but it was a startup with about, you know, 10 years on its back. So yeah, it's interesting.

18:59 I mean you said a lot there that I wanted peel back one of them. The fact that hospitality is. Is so difficult. And I just had a podcast with Nancy Silverton who's been doing that I just business for like 40 years. Yeah. And it does take a certain, it does take a certain character. My daughter's a baker by trade. She, I mean she thrived on getting up at two in the morning and going down and baking in New York because that's just. She would now she's got a house mom. But I, I think she's chomping a little bit to get back at it. It does take a certain character of that. But what an interesting path for you to land on wine and then enter the fray of not only selling wine retail, but making it. And I just tasted the two wines. They're gorgeous. And I, I. The Sauvignon Blanc was just blew me away just out of the glass. I love that one. Yeah. And the cab itself, even though it's, you know, monikered Napa Valley, was very expressive, driven by, you know, terroir character that you don't get a lot in Napa sometimes, but in Napa Valley is a large swath of land. But this certainly had reminiscence of Bordeaux in the sense of that I felt something. I felt it was coming from somewhere, not just, you know, over extracted Cabernet from Thank you Valley. But it's, it's a tough racket. I mean, we know this already. And so when did you start Klaz? And you know,

20:30 how. What are you doing with it? Is it purely subscription? Is it retail? So Klaas wine collection, we just had our 10th year anniversary last year. Congratulations. You know, you blink and it happens and yeah, it's flown by, though. Like, it literally like it has flown by. We are in a process of expanding now. So, you know, in the last couple years, you know, for me, I've seen, you know, we've seen some challenges in the industry and, you know, we're in a time right now that's I've never witnessed anything like, I've never been a part of what we're dealing with, you know, now. And in the last year, what we've been dealing with in 24, the saying that I kept thinking was, I had heard from somebody saying was survive for 25. So we survived for 25, and then we got into 25, and I was like, oh, this is an interesting year. So 25. It's been incredible.

21:31 That being said, I have to knock on wood. We've been on the right side of this and we've been really smart, we've been leaning, we've been very thoughtful with what we've been doing. And we had a good year, and it could have been a really bad year, but we had a good year. And I also think that there's some opportunity and in times where there's challenges, I think there's some incredible opportunities that can be had. And so for the last year and a half, I've been thinking about this new concept that's just like an extension of what we're doing, but kind of a little bit in a parallel direction to what we're doing, but a little bit different.

22:13 So we actually are starting construction June 1, and there'll be some announcements that are going to be made. But I been basically game planning this new concept that we'll announce in the next month. And so we're in a period of expansion. I see opportunity. I think it's going to be an expansion in Napa Valley of all places, where we are probably seeing more challenges than other regions. But I think that there's an incredible opportunity for the concept that I'm going to bring to the table because one, it doesn't exist and two, it should. And in most wine regions, there's like a hundred of me and the fact that there isn't even one of what I'm doing right now to grow the business I think is kind of unbelievable. I mean, that's kind of a tease. I don't want to interrupt you, but it's kind of a tease here.

23:04 I'm going to do it. You brought it up. I wasn't even going to say anything. We're never going to talk about it. We're not going to bring it up. I wasn't even going to say anything. You asked. So I was like, I can't lie. So I'm like, I have to come up here in our part two session, then we'll really talk about it. Okay. But yeah, we're not having to and not ask you to expose it at all. I'm just teasing it. But I have a serious issue with some of this and I, with some of the things that have been going on now. I was part of the, the wine trade and I sold my company in 2023. So it's not that long ago. But. But the failure of the wine trade was post 2015 or so when these 50 cent a liter Valencia whites were coming from Spain being bottled in all these different brands and they're being 50 cents, just junk.

23:53 And they were being marketed on the Internet. And Groupon, which was the death of part of the business because people had no loyalty when they bought some really bad wines that looked, look really good and they thought they're getting a deal for five bucks. And even at five bucks it was not good. So that shaped a lot of what the consumer did. And not only that, the marketing side, Groupon fostered no loyalty. And so now you got these, the segments have always been there, but you've got these fighting varietal, which is an old term, but you walk down the supermarket at Ralph's and you see all the shelf talkers and everything competing for the same space. And that's not you. You are catering obviously to A high end client. I'm not sure if they're collectors necessarily, just somebody that appreciates a finer glass of wine. This is the point I wanted to make. On the flip side of that, on the other side of this trade, there's this whole conversation of innovation.

24:48 Now, innovation, what I mean, I saw that they're putting wine in a pouch. I don't think that's innovation because I don't think anybody wants to enjoy a nice glass of wine, let's say a Klas Cabernet from Napa Valley in a pouch. That's not the experience. And it sounds like, and I've always, and I support this all the way, that the experiential side of innovation in wine trade is where we need to be. How that feels to you as a human being when you get to experience a glass of wine. Totally, you're right. That's what's been ingrained in me coming out of the recession in 0708 when we saw traffic go down in Napa Valley. So needless to say, during the recession, the dtc, the private client division that I forged, was born out of the recession. And it was the idea of bringing the best of wine country to people's homes. And it sounds like today everybody's doing it, but if you think about it, in 2008, far less people were doing that. So the idea was, hey, look, you might not be coming to Napa Valley for economic reasons, for the optics, whatever it might be, but we'll come to you. So we'll bring Dean and DeLuca to you. So the idea was that we would ship cheese and charcuterie, we would ship the wine, and then I would fly out or one of someone on my team would fly out and we would bring wine country to them. And it was

26:20 totally novel at the time. Like you just didn't see a whole lot of like retail establishments doing that. And that's what Daniel and DeLuca was. At the end of the day, we just gave it. We gave retail more of an experiential component. And to me, that's what it's all about. In the days when we have tougher times, I think anybody can say this, and in any sector, not just wine, relationships are going to be what keeps things going. Right. And so we created a very loyal mailing list off of that. Right. So even if there were those that weren't participating in the program and we weren't going to their homes per se, or their businesses per se, it was a great reminder that we would do that. And that's something that we offered, and it became kind of this partnership with our clients, right? I mean, they were like, we want to bring the best people to the table. And we said, look, this is on us. But we ask that you bring 5, 10, 20 people to the table that are as into wine as you. That was the give back. So now they're trying to bring their best wine drinking buddies to the table. So it's worth our while, it's worth their while, you know, that kind of thing. So, you know, when I started Kayla's, it was all about the relationships. I did not even think to start Kayla's wine collection without getting buy in from the wineries, because I was like, look, if I don't have the wineries working with me, there's nothing to offer, right? And those wineries that I had either

27:52 brought to, you know, the stage at a really broad level, because you think about Dean and DeLuca, we were an international, we were national. So, you know, my mailing list is from all. All over the country, all over the world. And so, you know, the, the wines that we bring to the table, they're not the wines that you can find on the street, because that doesn't behoove us to do that. Right? So the wines we bring to the table, they are either the old guard Colt wineries, we'll call it, the wineries that have just stayed relevant and are iconic now, they love working with us because we are new. You know, we just bring new people to the table all the time. And then the newer garden wineries, where, you know, we helped put them on that pedestal and we said, okay, you're a new wine. Day one. We're buying into this and we're going to put you in a lineup with four other wineries or five other wineries that we think you're aligned with from a quality standpoint that they could never do, right? We couldn't say to that winery, you know, that winery could never say, we're going to do a comparative tasting and we're going to taste, you know, Brian and Colgan and Screaming Eagle and Harlem, because that's where we're aligned with. They couldn't do that. But we could do that because we could say, yeah, you're. You're in that. You play in that field.

29:02 You know, you're. You're right in there. So it's created great loyalty and it's created great partnerships with the wineries we work with. We've had the fortunate ability to, you know, have. Have an incredible Mailing list. Like our, our clients are great and I can tell you, the ones that weren't so great, we just stopped, you know, they were just not getting the emails anymore. So we've kind of, you know, and I hate to say that, but I mean, that's just the reality of things. Like you want to work with people you really enjoy working with and those that you know, aren't so great. You know, it's just like life is short, you know, it's like we can't. We just have to move on. So we have an incredible following and thanks to Dean and DeLuca days and then going forward with what we've been doing at klas. But yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, it's all about the relationships. I'll give you a little metric here. Well, the worst year I had until 2023 would have been the worst year I ever had. But the worst year I ever had and I still profitable was 2009. So when you talk about the recession, I mean, it affected our volume. But then we grew again and then Covid was of course really good for us. And then it started to fail again. And after 35 years, my wife and I, you know, we don't want to, I don't want to fight it, slug it out anymore. So we sold it. We were even fortunate to sell it because there were no real buyers and it already sold since then. So you know, that they weren't doing it because they're making too much money. But

30:33 I sent in 2022, my last full year, I sent 33 million emails. So it was quite prolific to get the same volume I would have gotten years earlier, you know, maybe on a million emails. But we were sending, wow, 250,000 at a time. And again I was in a different price range and a different type of consumer. And that's why I'm intrigued by what you're doing because that consumer that I was dealing with was always looking for the best deal on the volume. And how can we support this though? Covid was, Covid was really good to us. Do you think then that. And I always, I worked for Xerox before I started in the wine trade. And I always felt like the corporate America thought process, the brand building, all the things that go into working for a large organization with a bureaucracy was very helpful. I came to a small company with my father at the time and to make things happen, the structure, the discipline, the totally the know how that you brought that to the table for klas, coming from the east coast, to be honest, and I think I'm gonna get killed for saying this, but growing up on, growing up in New York is. Is one thing.

31:47 Studying on the east coast and working and getting your first job on the east coast is. It's. To me, it was a great thing. Like I, I carry that with me. I carry that work ethos with me. When I came to California working for a company that was basically an east coast company with a one west coast outlet, we were east coast mentality. And you know, I was getting up very early in the morning to deal with the east coast stores. So my day didn't start, you know, when I went to my office, you know, just south of the St. Helena store, it started at like six in the morning because I was having to deal with the east coast stuff. When we started dealing more with international and when I started working more with the international, you know, outlets for Dean and DeLuca then like you're dealing with, with round the clock stuff.

32:34 But I think my work ethic and I think my tenacity for branding definitely came from Dina DeLuca branding and kind of building an experience and curating and how we talk about wine and how we share the stories about the wines. I think very much comes from Dean and DeLuca days, for sure. I mean, it totally formed like how I started Klass and it, it was one of the easiest decisions I made to start klas. I don't even think I thought about it more than like maybe like three days I LLC probably three days after my last day with Dean and DeLuca. And I called it, I called it KLAS Wine Collection because I literally couldn't think of another name. So it was one of these things. Well, you know, no one's taken my name, so let's just use my name.

33:30 Lack of creativity or maybe lack of budget to come up with, you know, get a branding company on board and all that stuff. But I was like, this is what we're doing. And it kind of stuck. It was one of the easiest things I did. It was one of the most challenging. But it just all made sense. And even, you know, getting it up to launch, my biggest concern was make sure this mailing list is active. And that's why I called it klab's Wine Collection because the last week we had that email offering from Dean and DeLuca. An email went out to everybody person on the mailing list saying, hey, Karen's taking this business for into her own And Dean and DeLuca is going in this direction. Kayla's wine collection is formed here. It was so important for that to go out. And then the next week, emails were going out again about wine, same idea. And there was no, there was no loss of momentum. That was huge.

34:26 The other thing was. Hold on, let me stop it there. So you're. They gave you the list? Yeah, I mean, they, they were like, you know, these are all your contacts and we're not using them and you forged them and they're yours and. Wow, that was very kind of them. Because that's not corporate America. Like, well, I mean, you know, it was like inadvertently playing like the long game, which I didn't even try to do. I mean, I was probably with the company. I was one of the most veterans, you know, team members with Dean and DeLuca. And you know, that's just. That shows you the turnover with retail, I guess. But like, you know, I've been with Dean and DeLuca for over 10 years and it was, you know, if I had left earlier, that never would have happened. I think that was a huge gift. Yeah. I can't for the life of me remember the gentleman's name that he has a New Jersey wine chain that took over the building on Gary. Yeah, Gary's food. Yeah. And I thought that was interesting because I had him. I was actually in the shop and we podcasted.

35:22 He goes, you know, while you're here, why don't you fill out a job app. I need some, some guys that know how to sell wine. I thought, well, not sure he really did. Yeah, he did. You know, but it's interesting because you're talking about the east coast and you know, that's. He's very successful in New Jersey and does a lot of work there and, and either the location in St. Helena or the size of the store or the. I don't, I don't know what it is that made it so difficult to earn money there. But so are you seeing. And I want to get into your philanthropy here in a second, but I kind of want to focus on the consumer a little bit. It was a compliment to me when people would join my entry level club, which at the time was 20 bucks for two bottles plus shipping and outgrew it. You know, they said they call this. And the key for me was catching them before they canceled because they outgrew it and not give me a chance to upgrade them to a different club. Are you seeing a growth in the consumer's interest in the wine subject?

36:29 The academia of wine and not w set stuff. But I'm just talking about wanting to Understand more for sure. I think that we call it graduating, but for sure it's actually a really good thing when someone drops out of the club because they want to become a more active buyer. And so like two shipments a year isn't enough for them. And we're like, that's amazing. That's like our best dream, right? Or they elevate to the next level. Right. So we have four different levels for our clubs. We also, but we, a lot of our business is also, you know, private client basically, which is texting, phone, whatever. They want to reach out to us is how they reach out to us and to buy wine. And so when those that have a less expensive club move up to your point to a higher end club or they leave a club because they want to buy more frequently from us, that's great. And that happens regularly, which is really nice to see. The thirst to learn more is the best part. And I think when we get the return guests, which we frequently do have, are the return guests and word of mouth to me is, is more important and more interesting than getting great write ups. And we've been written up with every major publication you can imagine and it's been huge. And some have been so impactful. There's three or four where it just like we're like, that was huge for us, right. And you literally could quantify that and look at the results

38:02 and. But that being said, the word of mouth is huge for us and you know, the return guest is great because, you know, we hone in on everything. I mean, we, we know every wine they've tasted with us, every wine they've bought with us. Data is so important. We're continually improving our data, you know, systems to try to make sure that we're not missing anything. But you know, when we know every wine that we've shared with a guest and then which ones they've liked, we can even narrow in even more. So that next tasting and that next visit, the next wine seminar we host for them because it's not really a wine tasting, it's more of a wine Semin we are going. And I think that's been part of our success. It's not like here's five wines and here's what's in the glass and here's a two minute spiel on each one. It's a deep dive and it's a deep dive into the trends going on right now.

38:52 It might be farming, it might be what was going on during that vintage, it might be, you know, where are we now? Versus where we were during that year when those wines were made. The people behind the stories is so important that the, you know, so we're kind of touching on all of that. We're more of macro level, I guess, but we can go real deep or we can keep it like a little. We can read the guests appetite, we can read the guest knowledge without overwhelming them or underwhelming them. And I think that's kind of been our forte. So, yeah, return guests. It's even better because we're like, okay, let's peel the onion a little bit more, you know, take one more layer off this. So it's kind of great. Well, let me just. Before. It's hard to believe, but we're almost out of time anyway. But I wanted to just continue that thought for a second, then we'll get into the philanthropy here. But I had this theory when we were heavily into social all the metrics. I can't tell you how many consultants I burned through that didn't know what they were doing. Not that they know what they're doing, but they were reluctant to understand the wine business, which is so different than any other business that none of their plays worked and they were unwilling to make them work or try to figure out what the problem was. Right. So the question is then, are you dabbling in those metrics in the affiliate marketing, in the ROAS market, all that stuff? It doesn't sound like you need to, you know, because you're avoiding it. Such a great question.

40:25 I've had conversations about this in the last couple days, actually. Social media, it is its own entity now. And at a certain point, and we do our own social media. I basically do most of the social media. And I will admit I'm not very good at it and I'm not consistent and I'm doing all the wrong things. I know I am. But the one thing that I can say for sure is that it's authentic. So I don't think that's developed with all of the intentions of what we're doing at that moment. There's nothing scripted. It's not like, okay, what's the schedule? But I think we're missing a little bit.

41:11 And I know that there's an opportunity. So that has been part of the discussion in the last couple of weeks, which is maybe we need some help and we can maintain our storytelling and we can maintain the authenticity and being very genuine to whoever is following us. We get pretty good reception from the followers that we have. But yeah, we need to give it a Little bit more tlc. And I don't think I'm that person. And I didn't just mean social because. Sorry to interrupt you, but I didn't mean just social because social's damned if you do, damned if you don't. If you don't do it, you look stupid. If you do do it, you realize it's a lot of work for almost very little monetary value in return. And certainly paying for ads is. I, I, I think it personally, that's it.

41:59 It's imploding on itself because it's just the consumer just barraged. Yeah, but I'm, there's all that back end stuff, you know, all like for instance, you were talking about word of mouth and your customers, how they tell bring their friends. And that's like the most important part of what you do. It has to be because. Correct. The other way that the other way is, is for instance, top 10 wine clubs, you know, from Forbes magazine. Well, that's all paid for. That's all affiliate marketing where somebody comes in and bids on the highest spot. And I used to drive me nuts because I was never included in those. And I never thought that there was that there's any monetary value associated with those. But if you're not on them, you can't point to them. And so it's just become this vicious cycle. Right. Anyway, we'll get into that the next time. Time tell me. There's an article, there's a conversation here about your mother and she had Alzheimer's and you had this concept to create a philanthropical. Philanthropical. Philanthropic.

42:59 That's an interesting word. Philanthropic organization in the wine business in Napa Valley to raise money. Not just Alzheimer's, but is it just Alzheimer's? Alzheimer's and dementia. Yeah. And you have an event that's coming up. Actually, it's like April 24th to 26th. Very much. Coming up. Three day inspire Napa Valley Spring Wine Weekend. And where does that take place? So it is day one will be the VIP dinner. The kickoff is at Gamble Estates at Tom Gamble's place. Oh, yeah. In Oakville. So it is going to be kind of a deep dive into Oakville. His place is amazing. And people, I mean, there's no signage or anything. So I mean, you go high, you go up Highway 29. You'll miss it every time. I've missed it a couple times and I've been there so many times and I still miss it sometimes, but yeah. So that'll be the kickoff night and then Saturday morning we have a really Exciting. It's. My scientific advisors will be kind of talking in a roundtable discussion about kind of where we are now, where we're going with research, clinical trials, kind of all the advances. Because right now, what's happening in the Alzheimer's and dementia space is so promising, and it's so quickly moving, and it really hasn't been that way until, like, the last, like, five years. It's on this, like, incredible

44:30 trajectory right now. So that'll be really exciting to share with the guest guests. And then we'll lead and we'll follow that with the wine seminar, which will be led by Antonio Galloni, who is the founder of Vinnis, and my friend Ray Isle, who's the executive wine director of Food and Wine magazine. They come out every year. They've been supporting, Inspire, flying them, getting themselves out to be a part of this. And then we'll round that out with. With panelists, Maya Dalaval from Doll Vineyards, Michael Salachi from Opus One, Bruce Phillips, who owns Vine Hill Ranch, and we got Tom Gamble. And trying to think if I have anyone else there, that's six of them.

45:17 Memorable. Very small group. The main event will be at Louis Martini. We had it there last year. It was a great setting. And. And it's a grand tasting of 40 wineries. And these are 40 wineries that you would never, ever see in one space, tasting their, you know, sharing their wines. And I can say that I've been to every event throughout the country, and I could tell you these 40 wineries never assemble in any other places. That's pretty special. We keep the audience down because I want. I'm not a fan of, like, huge crowds. 2. When you get this caliber of wineries to the table, I think it's really important that there's actual connectivity with the guests and the wineries.

46:02 And so we limit the number of guests. I know we could probably raise more if we opened it up to more guests. We could also probably raise more if we had more auction lots. But, you know, auctions can get really long, and people stop paying attention, which really annoys me. And, you know, everything is getting donated. So when you're doing these big asks and you're really asking these small wineries to give of the way these guys are giving, I want people paying attention. Like, I want the guests to pay attention. I want the wineries to get the most that they can out of being a part of this. So we'll do grand tasting followed into a Wine country dinner paddle raise. We'll do 12 auction lots max. And then Sunday we have. This is the one constant. Everything else has changed intentionally. The VIP dinner, the theme. I change the theme every year. But Sunday is the farewell brunch. It's one of my favorites. It's my favorite event.

46:55 It's like I. You can take a breath. It's at Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc Gardens. So the gardens behind Ad Hoc in Yonville. So that kind of finishes off the weekend. That's really fun. What's that? Isn't it. Isn't there a burger thing in the back of that property? Yeah. So they'll open that memorial weekend, which is ad hoc. It's cool. It's picnic tables, it's gardens. It's super chilly. Yeah. And so you've raised 8.75 million since the inception of this Inspire Napa, which is a formidable sum of money, and that goes to various Alzheimer research grants or funds or where does it go? Yeah.

47:36 So as of finishing 2025, we've raised over 9 million. We had our winter event, which kicked us over the 9 million threshold. And up until that point, we were giving 100%. I was giving all of the proceeds. I was giving everything to the Alzheimer's Association. I set up the foundation. 2026 is the first year. It is in my mother's name, the Judith F. Laz Foundation Inspire Napa Valley is the dba. And this is our first year where, with the help of my scientific advisory board, we will be direct funding into organizations in addition the Alzheimer's Association. So I have already earmarked out giving funding to the local Alzheimer's association chapter. I think the local chapters are incredible. They help families and caregivers navigate getting a diagnosis with loved ones and trying to figure out there's no playbook. So it's very complicated to what do you do? How do you deal with this? How do you go forward? I think the local chapters are great for that. I've also earmarked funds to be given to.

48:53 It was called collaborative Care, but it's basically our local Napa Valley center that help again, those who have been diagnosed, caregivers, you know, dealing with the diagnosis. And then with the help of the scientific advisors, the remainder, which is going to be the majority of funds, we'll figure out how to direct into clinical trials, how we develop or how we fund research organizations, whether it be universities, whether it be different clinics, stuff like that. So we'll be announcing that after we get together, and it'll be more than likely in the summer, we're going to Try to figure out where we give the funds. But the whole point is to one, this has to grow because it is so much work. This had to grow. It also has to give efficiently and effectively. We're not going to hold on to the money.

49:46 We're going to give it, we're going to raise it, we're going to give it. And we're going to be doing inspired Napa valleys throughout the country. Country. So that's kind of our growth phase. So starting probably 2027 in January, we'll have an inspired Napa Valley in New York. And we're going to have one in D.C. we're gonna have one in Scottsdale, Arizona. And stay tuned. Texas will probably be another one. And all these places that we're doing it, it's not because I just like threw a dart. It's because what are the strengths of the regions, you know, these locales for klac. So I'm leaning on that, I'm leaning a lot on the Klass connections to get inspire going where the wineries strong. And that makes sense because we got to get wineries to help us.

50:29 And then also, you know, these are going to be intimate events. The three day weekend will always be in Napa Valley. This is going to be the more like intimate. You know, it might be 50 to 100 guests. It's going to be leaning very heavily on one great connection I have that is, is like basically will open the doors of that city for me. So, you know, I have some great friends that are like, hey, you know, we'll, we'll get you into DC. How many guests do you want? 75, 100 guests. It's like, great, let's do it. So, you know, again, it's the relationships that's going to keep this going. Such an important philanthropic, you know, what's the word I'm looking for? It's such an important subject in the situation at the tip of everybody's tongue these days with the, with the use of Alzheimer's and dementia. So congratulations on the success. Thank you. And it continued. I mean, as my mom would have said, you don't let moss grow under your feet. You're obviously clearly driven not only for business, but philanthropy. Yeah, I got that one right. You got that right this time. And I'm so, I'm honored to have you on the show and I'm honored to hear and keep tabs of what's going on. And I hope we get a chance to, to sip a glass of wine next time we're up if you're going to town because you'll be, you'll be very into, into this, getting this project going. But we're up all the time. And this is very inspiring and it's been an honor to have honor to have you on the show. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me on, Paul, I'd love to see you when you come into town. I'd love to raise a glass

52:01 and I'd love to have you as a neighbor at some point, you know. So I'm working on it. My wife, she's like, you know, any way I can help? Yeah, so we'll have that conversation with her and maybe you can sort of. That will work. Yeah, I can, I can, I can help. I can help. I can help you with that message for sure. Thanks so much. I appreciate it. Cheers.