Family Philosophy Plays In The South Of Francee. Gerard Bertrand Credits His Father For The Passion.

0:00 Purchasing wine is an emotional experience and controlling people's emotions is more of the realm that you're going into, and that's storytelling. So I would say that I think if you are trying to pull a lever, pull a heartstring in someone, I think storytelling is. It sounds almost religious to be preaching storytelling. I think at the end of the day, that's what you want to do. At the end of the day is enjoy a great story. And if your bottle is a story you can look forward to, that's actually the most beautiful thing. Sit back and grab a glass. It's Wine Talks with Paul Kay. Hey, welcome to Wine Talks with Paul Kay. And we are in studio today in beautiful Southern California about to have a conversation with the famed co founder of Wine Folly, Madeline Puckett. Depending on how you say it. Hey, I want to just introduce something really quick along the road of this wine tasting and. And wine business. I've stumbled across so many aspiring stories of immigration to the US that I start a new podcast. The first release is coming out in a few days and that is called the Song of America, which is the title of a book by man named George Mardi in one of the famed restaurant tours of San Francisco in the 50s. I borrowed his name, of course, with the permission of his family to start the show and start talking about some of these inspirational stories of people that have come to America with a dream and accomplished that dream, whether financial, political, social, or

1:31 whatever your measure of success is. So have a listen to that coming out. But not why we are here. Here to talk to Madeline. How are you this morning? I'm great. Yeah. You know, I. Here's the first question I wrote on my, my iPad here. Who are you? Who. No, and I say that, I said it's so tongue in cheek because you. Wine Folly, which is incredible name for a wine education site, started in 2011, you just kind of burst onto the scene. Yeah, I kind of did. I. I got. I'd become a certified sommelier at that point. I was working in restaurants and I felt like there was a difference between my level of knowledge and the customer's level of knowledge. And I was like, what? It. There was more information on the Internet that was fun to look up because wine is fun.

2:20 I think more people would like wine and more people would know how to ask for what they want. And so that's why we started Wine Folly was as an adventure into wine. You know, let's dig right into that subject because it's become, in my opinion, pertinent and Controversial because I think it's always been that way. In fact, this patch right here, which is from the 70s, it's called Les Amid Event. As you would know, it means the Friends of Wine. And it was a wine education group throughout the country, 150 chapters. And if you owned a wine shop or a restaurant, you could join it and start your chapter. This is my father's chapter. And it was exactly that, but it was, it was an experiential version of that, where you got the dinner for dinner, you got together and heard Robert Mondavi speak.

3:10 So I think that this idea of wine education is critical for the ongoing support of our industry. I couldn't agree more. And I think what happened was when I was starting to create this content and write about wine and create visual infographics and maps and that kind of a thing, we hadn't really wine writing or wine communication was, was, was a writ. It was the written word. It was in a book, it was in a magazine. It was. There were some, there was actually some good wine blogs around at the time, but they weren't communicating in a way that was relevant to the everyday person. Like, what could you find a trader? What. Like what could you find at Trader Joe's or Safeway that is palatable and delicious and help me find the wine that I'm looking for? And so I kind of started writing about the things that were in everyone's sort of purview, so they had some kind of a way to get into wine. And I, as a graphic designer, I have a degree in fine art and actually music technology, so time based editing and that kind of a thing. And I was starting, I wasn't really a great writer, not at the time. And I was thinking, well, I know how to draw and I can make visual,

4:41 informational, graphical things and help people get into wine. So I launched a few infographics and one we posted up on Facebook and by the second day we had figured out where we would get it printed and we had a little ebay link to sell it as a poster because I had made it poster shaped basically. And that was the start of, from the brand, which had started as this like simple, fun thing to like, oh my goodness, people are actually willing to pay for this fun educational content. And that completely transformed what we were intending the business to be. So do you think that that enthusiasm in general has grown or it's sort of relative to the generations and we're all talking about millennials and Gen Z's and whatever letter we're on that, you know, there's a whole different propensity towards fine wine and there's white claw and also nice things out there on the marketplace and. But I'm wondering, you see a relative increase in people that are, want to learn, they want to understand that, want at least what, have a better experience when they go to a restaurant, look at a menu. So I would call, I would classify myself as a millennial elder. Maybe I'm a comedian, but that's, that was my generation. Essentially we're the millennial group. So we were the people who were putting all the things online. They were starting to do things online, we were

6:13 living online. And the group beyond the group passed me the Z's, the lennials, Gen Z, whatever you want to call them. These folks have grown up with the Internet as always in the background. We were sort of this transitional generation that had phones that you would pick up and call people. And then we learned how to use the Internet. And the early adopters, I was part of the early adopter group. I super nerded out about computers and technology and stuff because my dad was, he was an engineer. And this, this group sort of built the foundation of the Internet and the Z's came and they lived in it. This was their home. There wasn't a world without it. And so they use the Internet in a very different way and they use it as a connecting tool, as a discovery tool. And they, they don't. Especially now with AI, there's not a need to think like a computer in order to find what you're looking for. You can just have a thought and then answers or stuff will fly your way, options will come your way and it's this wealth of over information actually. So you kind of try to find the groups that you love and are interested in or that speak to you in a way that you can connect to. And so social media networks were really the rise after the basic Internet, the social media networks and the.

7:37 I had, I had the opportunity to hang out with a group of Gen Z people speaking at a wine conference, being frustrated with the amount of, of over explaining and too much. And it reminded me of the same kind of feelings that I felt when I was getting into wine that, oh, we can't talk about sweetness because it's, it's, it's not something that's determined, deterministic in the wine. A Malbec isn't dry. It depends on what the winemaker does, you know. Yeah, right. So, so now I'm trying to go, well, is it Sweet or is it dry? I just want to buy a dry Malbec. How do I do that? And that's the kind of questions we're starting to see, again, the kinds of sort of basic wine understanding, like how many calories does a glass of Sauvignon Blanc have in it? And that's an important question when you're young and you're concerned about, you know, getting a hot date and having a good time out there in the world. Don't sell us old guys short. You know, we're looking for no kidding.

8:44 You know, maybe you want a, a Sauvignon Blanc, then perhaps dried Sauvignon Blanc, you know, with just a 90 calories, you know, a glass, you know, if it's, if it's dry. So I would say that these onboarding questions are just as important, if not more important, and to, to take them seriously and legitimately, because the one thing these have over the millennials is they're smart. Well, millennials are smart, too, but they really know how to seek information, and they have a good sense of what bad information is. So generally speaking, because they've grown up with a world of fake news, surrounded by fake news in every, you know, way, shape, or form. So they really want to get to the bottom of something, and they want a good summary of, of what that means, and they're trying to find their way into wine. At least this is my opinion. And I think brands that are connecting to the Z's are focusing on the hero's story. There's maybe an outstanding winemaker that's able to connect, you know, of any age, right.

9:52 That is authentic in who they are, and that is a strong connection piece for someone who's just getting into wine right now. You know, that's very interesting because in my opinion, that really hasn't changed anything. Certainly the delivery of the information has changed radically. And this is more accessible. And I use AI every day to ask questions. So you're right. The baseline of where we get information from. And you know, what I had to use now, I had a computer that, that had a operating system called cpm. Okay? It predates dos and it still works. But the point is, you know, the more that baseline grows and that your access to information grows and generationally, then you can process more and deal with more. And it's, it's, you know, rather voluminous at this stage.

10:41 But it doesn't seem to change the narrative that I'm seeking some experience, some story. I want to understand wine. And because there's this consumption drop right now and there's this, you know, non alk awareness and low alk and you know, man, we went to the fancy food show at Vegas last year and one of the prevailing themes for beverages was non alk. And that like most of it was undrinkable. But it is a, it is a blip I think in the radar of consumption. But yet what you said is right on it. But it hasn't really changed this idea that fine wine, the story of wine is what we're seeking, it's just the delivery of it. And so I'm wondering because of this consumption drop if you think that there's a percentage less of people in the generation, Gen Z's or whatever generations are coming up in the appreciation of it or they're going to come around one of these days to this idea. I, I, to be where the people are is maybe the number one thing to do is to be where those conversations are happening, whether it's on TikTok or Instagram, to be present there and to be part of that community I think is very important because like you said it's, it's not, nothing's changed really foundationally nothing's changed. It's just the delivery method that has changed and, and also the

12:13 expectation of availability. I can go and I think there's this, this model now where I can't go to the store and find what I'm looking for. I have to find it online now because it's so difficult to just, you can't just walk out the door and go find the thing. So you have this audience that has a built in expectation that DTC is how they get what they really want, which is very powerful for brands that build direct to consumer models. And so that I think that is maybe the, like you said, it's the same story always. We need some onboarding mechanisms. We need to answer these questions. We need to help people find what they love and we need to love all the things that they love.

13:01 I hear a lot of, you know, in the fine wine market this looking to what's popular and then everything else is garbage. Right? And that's not true. There is excellent examples of sweet wines that are aged in Solaris for nearly 100 years, right? And you can buy them DTC for around $40 a bottle, which is obscene. Like that is an obscene value when you think of the work and the time that went into producing this exceptional wine with this exceptional story. So those stories are still valuable and valid and I think we're going to find that potentially future generations are gonna have a palate shift. Right.

13:53 They've grown up accessing kombucha and absolutely sugar free, like sparkling flavored sparkling waters. So they've grown up with different things as part of their purview than my generation. And your generation, like a kombucha would be like, oh, this is bad. I've had biodynamic wine. It tastes like kombucha. Well, there you go. Who do you think it's for? Well, I think I, I think that's the, the again, it's not a novel thing anymore. Every generation's had that entree into the industry. My dad, you know, stopped at Sutter home in 1974 and talked to Bob Trincaro and he didn't know what to do with this, you know, a shiner of, of white, of pink wine. And so I think every generation's had that. My dad's wine shop had Bartles and James and all those kinds of coolers. But it's interesting that you said about the DTC side because I just had an interesting conversation this morning with the woman in Ireland who's working on European dtc.

14:55 And when, when we were running the shop and wasn't only two years ago, and we had, we had Amazon and we had, I had put all this time and effort to pump my whole entire inventory, you know, Grand Cru, Burgundies, Bordeaux Classified Growth. And all they bought for me on Amazon was Stella Rosa. And, and that's, and that's kind of interesting because it's. What you're saying, it's kind of moving away from that because they got, you can't go to the store these days unless you have a fine wine shop in your neighborhood and find something interesting. And so now they're looking online finally to find interesting wines that they can share and tell a story about. But not that long ago, it was the type of buyer on Amazon that knew what they wanted.

15:39 They were willing to pay me 30% more than what they could get it at Target for because it was convenient. And what you're saying now is we're going to, we can find Solaris style, you know, Maderas and things online and know what they are and tell that story. Yeah, you can use that as an opportunity. Suddenly you're suddenly just making the wine and giving it to your distributor is not enough. The product has to have this deep story associated to it in order to be considered great. We're used to looking at an incredible amount of metadata, like when you look up a car, you're like, well, what's it, 60, 0 to 60?

16:20 Like that's the thing. How Earth powers does it have? What's the, you know, like all the little details? We are like meta information people. There's an expectation that that's there foundationally. And so when your wine goes to market, it needs to come with it. All this media, like maybe even a video with the winemaker talking about what that vintage was like this year and what they was like making the wine. And then that gets shared out into the world whether it's on Instagram or on TikTok or whatever. But that's your story. And you have just like a winery has to continue to tell their story. Every single time someone walks in to the wine, their, their winery. That story is the same story that needs to get told continually to the, an online, to a digital first audience. And it's funny because I think I've been saying this for at least a decade and it's only now starting to hit different because of this downturn in the sales. But the downturn of sales that we've seen is predominantly high volume wines. It's not, it's, it's not the wines that we're thinking about. These independent producers, independent producers are definitely having a difficult time right now. And I want to respect that. That's a legitimate issue.

17:48 But it's because this like large volume market of, of of basic grocery store wine is not getting sold. We have like xx inventory and that kind of a thing. I think that a correction, we haven't seen a correction really in the US marketplace since the wine, since wine started to become interesting. Not a correction like this. There certainly have been in changes that we've observed, but this is a, this is a real correction in the wine marketplace. And I think it's gotten everybody to like get a little bit more serious and step up and consider their marketing strategies a little bit more seriously, you know, because you can't just go home and play in your vineyard anymore and make one and have a great vintage and get it all sold. It's, it's, it's a real, it's, it's a challenge. It's, it's looking a lot like other farming and agricultural industries right now, you know, which suggests a surplus situation. It's an interesting problem.

19:00 You nailed it on the head for one. If you start a winery and you and I know how difficult that is and how, you know, how the margins suck and all that, you want to make money even if it's just a hobby. If you made your money as a surgeon or government contractor and you went to Napa, you bought your plateau. Eventually you hope that you can pick the Grace fermented bottle and sell it and make money at it. And. And you're subject to the agricultural whims of the world. I mean, there's. You have to be five years out minimum to think about having a vineyard. And how do you Predict consumption in 5 years? What you had just identified would maybe think about this is if we're a boutique winery, a Bordeaux house, a Burgundy house or Napa house, we're trying to get our name told. We need to have this story out there and we need to use dtc because on the other side of the fence, where the traditional methods of marketing were, the distributors, they're all consolidating. And the boutique guys that used to be able to handle some of these smaller brands and make the sales calls, they're not around anymore. They've been gobbled up. And now the Southern has a book, you know, 2 inches thick and in RNDC, etc. And so you're sort of in this. And I think that you're talking about is this metamorphosis of the industry is changing right now because of these two sort of opposing forces of what we're doing. Let's not forget how much regulation puts a damper on any good ideas. Yeah, that's

20:33 true. And it's really tragic. If you're doing DTC as a winery just to be able to ship your wine legally to a state where somebody bought it, you have to have like thousands and thousands of dollars of permits that you pay every year just to have the right to maybe sell six bottles in that district. You know, so it's untenable for producers, independent producers, to. To try to actually make a difference. And they need to. And so therefore, they have to work with interesting creative retailer models that maybe solve that problem so they can get their path to market. You know, I. I'm observing the meteoric rise of Last Bottle, you know, right now being like, everyone's scared about the market right now, but Last Bottle is booming and they're like buying up everyone and everything right now. It seems like every other day in the news there's something about an acquisition. So I'm like, look at who's being successful right now and learn something from them. I've seen some really fascinating beverage companies, and I'll reference Erica Ducey because she did the research and she's actually interviewed these people and she Found a wine, a wine brand that was baked basically in a juice box and it was kind

22:04 of a flavored, fun sort of cocktail beverage, wine type of thing. And it great success in a juice box because what you can take that to a music show, you know, no glass on the beach, that kind of a thing. So some of these brands are being creative in how they're packaging and their path to market in terms of their, their branding, that kind of a thing, or even the product itself. I think the juice box brand, depending on what state they're in, they'll either be malt based, wine based or liquor based because of the regulatory issues. And that's pretty clever. It's depressing, but it is pretty clever and it is contributing to their success.

22:53 Let's, let's delve into that depressing. What do you say that? Well, I've looked at, you know, I'm a nerd, so I've looked at all the regulation sort of around the TTB and there's definitely a propensity to being a beer brand in terms of the taxing. I wish that, I wish that all beverages were created equal in terms of if your alcohol level was a certain alcohol level, you were taxed based on the alcohol level and not the type of alcohol that it is. But because beer is treated separately to wine, is treated separately to spirits, they're taxed in totally different models. And I think it's not fair.

23:35 Do you think that's changing? Do you think that ever a chance error in the world, Free the Grapes and all the other organizations that have come through this on, changing on this. And by the way, you've touched on so many subjects that I can't even decide which one to go with. But you know the, everybody's got this, even Amazon, you know, there was this whole idea that they were going to throw millions and millions of dollars to getting the feds to change their mind. I just don't see that bureaucracy changing relatively any soon. It's not even a word really. If you wanted to do something in the next four years might actually be the time. I've seen a lot of things go down in the last couple of days. It's kind of, it's kind of nutty. You know, it's funny, you're talking about the story and innovation for one. So my romantic view of wine and this didn't come around until later in my career in this industry. For me it was business. I bought it from my dad. You know, we taste on Tuesdays, let's sell some Wine. But this, you know, visiting the, the world's regions of wine and having these conversations with amazing people, you know, has sort of led me down this path of the, the romantic side of wine and the, the ethereal value of a glass of wine and the human value of a glass of wine. And so I'm sort of, when you said depressing, depressed at these ideas of fruit flavors and tetra packs and can linings and that just takes away from the romantic side of wine. But certainly, you know, kudos to the people that can sell millions of bottles or millions of tetra packs of, of. Wine,

25:07 Millions of tetra packs. But you know, there was a, somebody on Facebook the other day posted that they were at Wine Paris and they were talking to this guy and he had sold 24 million cans of some peach flavored fermented grape juice. And I go, wow, that's, you know, congratulations on the number. But oh my goodness, I guess that's the entry level stuff, right? That's what we need. I think you hit it on the head. We need some entry level stuff for the kids and we need to, and, and then they can get to the fine bottled wines with corks in them. But they, but we all, I should say we all. There's 1 in 5, 4 in 5 of us still romanticize bottles and this experience of wine and we want to get into it and we're very intimidated. It's a long path to learning. So it, and where do we start? So where do we start investing in that? That right now is very exciting to me and it's, and I have to say I was worried that wine folly was going to become irrelevant. You know, everyone's already learned everything and you know, around the time 2020, 2021 rolled around, I was like, there's so much information out there. Am I valid? Does it even matter if I keep doing this anymore? And I think it was like the beginning of this year, towards the end of last year, I saw

26:37 a change that inspired me to be like, no, don't stop. Congratulations. This is, this is, this is a necessary thing. We have an entire generation of half of the Z's. Gen Z have some percentage of the Gen Z. I think it's less than half, is not even 21 yet in the United States and that means they can't even legally drink. So we got a little bit of time. And I think this transition, you know, landing on the other side of this transition is, is going to require staying the course because I, I don't think that the, the Romanticism or the value of that glass of wine will ever change. It hasn't changed in thousands and thousands of years. And that every generation comes around, some later than others, to understand that, you know, when you're. I don't know about you, but I think about what I'm gonna have when I get home.

27:37 Not what I'm gonna eat, but what I want to drink. And it's not because of the 14 alcohol. It's because I want to feel something. And that's just from years and years of experience. And I think everybody has that. You know, I had this interesting conversation yesterday. A guy named Chad Ludington. I don't know if you know who he is. Complete academic. Complete academic on wine, incredible historian on wine. But he talked about a professor, and I forgot the university that can. That can articulate why our palette will grow. After you start drinking Apothec red or Josh, whatever you're drinking, and you get bored of that simple style, and you start to seek complexity, acid, balance, structure, all the things that we. We appreciate. And I wait for him to tell. Send me the article, because it's quantifiable change in your palate to. To lean towards that. I think that's part of what the. The value of a glass of wine is.

28:43 So leading to the. Go ahead. But why did I start loving Riesling? And now I love Riesling again. Was it always? I'll have to read the article. I don't know. I feel like. I feel like. You're right. It did. Your palate does change. Absolutely. Oh, my wife is my biggest critic, and when we got married, she drank, you know, Gallo rind wine, and. And now I can't get, you know, Syrah past her because she knows immediately what I'm trying to fool her into, because I wanted to appreciate those things. But no, it's. It's Bordeaux Ridle, man. That's what. That's what I have to serve. Oh, no, you're stuck. So let's go back to the marketing side of this, because you.

29:25 I'm gonna say something tongue in cheek, and it's. It's kind of funny, actually. I was looking for an email I sent you in 2013. So you're only into this for two years at this point, and not sure where you were at in the cycle, but probably, obviously the very beginning of learning to educate customers. And I said, you know, maybe we can work together. And. And you wrote back, like, what? Oh, my goodness. And I. I don't remember what I. If I responded. I. You Know, was slammed at the time, and we were just, we were growing, you know, 2,000 at that time. That's hilarious. We were about to hit our biggest year a couple years later, and. Oh, my gosh. And yeah, I'm, I'm. I'm not very good at email. I try to stay.

30:10 It wasn't a criticism. Funny like this. This part of. Of the industry now is what I think plagues a lot of people, and that's the content generation and the, the marketing of. And they're not marketeers. We're farmers, right? I mean, I'm not. I'm not. I'm a horrible farmer. But in general, I start the wine business because I want to. I think I want to be a farmer, and I think I want to be in that lifestyle. And then now I have to go sell something, and this becomes more difficult. And I think that one of the differences between market. Even back in 2011, when you started, though, it was just emerging. Certainly When I started 1989, there were very quantifiable, definable campaigns. It wasn't a commitment to marketing. It was a campaign. I would mail 300,000 pieces of mail, wait for the results, refine that result, and then send out it again. Three times a year, I run an ad in the newspaper and I'd put a promo code and then they'd call and I'd know how. How that new ad did. That was a.

31:11 But it's not that way anymore. It's a commitment to the strategy. There's. And the benefit of social networks marketing and content marketing is you can start and stop anytime you want, but the moment you stop is the moment that people stop paying attention and you can start up again without any penalty. And. But it's a commitment, not right. It's not a. You don't campaign things anymore. You can still have campaigns, but you do need that baseline. It's kind of like going to the gym. You know, you got to stay fit, so you're going to the gym and you're keeping that baseline health taken care of. That's your baseline content marketing. And so you got to be consistent. That's the secret. Whatever you're doing, you're consistent. But you can. Then you need to add campaigns on top of that. So it is hard. It is hard. It is a huge ask. I think that. I think it is a big ask for sure. I think for small companies, you know, the reason the YMF club, you know, I was fortunate enough to sell it.

32:16 And speaking of last bottle, you know, Alex was part of that conversation. Didn't land in his plate though. But with an on staff digital designer, et cetera, like I told you, and the campaigns required and the commitments to have content all the time. And then one of the reasons my wife and I decided to sell after 35 years was. You said it already. She goes, I don't want to process 38 tax returns next quarter. So this is first quarter 2023. You know, March 31st was the end of it. And we're like, yeah, you're right. You know, the overhead to carry everybody in this company for another three months and then have to process 38 tax returns to get through the regulations. Because we did our own compliance and the overhead of these three marketeers, we didn't see the light at the end of the tunnel at that point. It had been a long good run, so we just decided to, to move on.

33:15 But this is hard. You know, those are just those two subjects alone for a small winery is ominous. That is extremely ominous. Yeah, yeah. You need a partner. You need a partner who can help you. Yeah. Which is interesting because when I, when we merged the company with Global Wine Database, I really wanted that technology, this database technology where you can be a, like it's producer controlled wine information. It's a product information management system. So a winery can add their winery in and then they can add their individual bottles of wine. And my hope was or is still is, because we're building it, we already have multiple region guides, is that if you learn about Bordeaux and you go to Pomerol, the Pomerol section to learn about Pomerol, you can see wineries and wines from Pomerol and if that producer continues to add their wines in every vintage. Right.

34:16 That's part of your vin, your work. They'll continue to show the, their current vintage of the wine as a discovery model, as a learning discovery model. And so that's what, that's the entire reason we, that's the entire reason we, we have Wine Folly database now. It's the entire reason we started Wine Folly plus is that maybe a marketer needs to be the best at communicating wine and then you have an opportunity to get in front of that audience. And that was my hope for the future was something where I could get the details, the meta information about an area and see all the wineries on a map. Like that was my dream. Just show me all the wineries I just want to see and I don't want to be distracted by other things. I actually want to focus on what's there because maybe I'm having a glass of Pommel right now and I want to see where that winery is and I want to see what other wineries around it because maybe I want to buy more. That's really interesting. You know, I had a, I did a video, I went to a tasting with, you know, Don Schliff from Wine Warehouse, used to be the one where he's probably one of the great port collections in the world. Top five. Anyway, he does a tasting annually here in Los Angeles and you know, the sucklings come and the Darrell Cordy comes and all the famous people come. And I took a video of him opening a bottle of vintage port with his custom made red hot tongs. You know,

35:48 an old guy standing in front of a noisy bar with no voiceover and no music. And I have over 4 and a half million views on Tick Tock and like million and a half on Instagram. That's awesome. And of course zero sales volume came from that. None of the, you know, just an awareness. And I think this is part of the, the conversation which was this, this overhead to producing this stuff. And then virality really doesn't mean anything except that people learn who you are and hopefully one day they buy something from you. But you, I, I tell you, I've only been worried a couple of times in my career of doing this when I saw a new club, one of them was in the Wall Street Journal Club started and I knew they had backing and it was, it was limestone and you know, that was going to be big and they had the ability, they had a relationship with their, with their, theoretically with their financial clients. But the other one I thought was gonna, that, that, that I was a little concerned about starting when, when it started was the Wine Folly Club because we already had enough clubs in the world. And I thought, wow, she's got a, you know, she's got a database and she's got, people are following her. And what did you see when you started a DTC company for wine that you didn't expect or you know, and I know you didn't you relaunch it or didn't you send it over? We had a, we were, we've always been doing it with a joint, as a joint venture with a retail partner. So we didn't have to deal with the 38 fulfillment tax

37:20 returns because that isn't for our business as untenable. So we had always structured it where we would pick the wines and do all the wine education associated to each club. And was that that essentially is the model. And the club is still really popular. It's. It's interesting because why you join a club is it. It really needs to fit your price point. Like your price point. And then wines. The wines that you want every month. I don't know. I felt like it was gonna really take off in a way that I was super excited for. And when it's still very popular, but it's not in the way that I was hoping. I was hoping for problems of wine. Finding enough wines. Right. And finding enough good quality, small producer wines to actually fulfill the club.

38:23 Yeah. And when that didn't happen, I was like, this is not the model right now. That's. This isn't what someone wants right now. They don't want to be carried along in the club. And maybe that's the change that's happened between my generation, which is a club generation. Right. I started a wine club. My dad bought me a wine club when I was 21. Two bottles would come in every month. And when I was going to college and. And those were the fanciest wines that I ever put in. The fanciest anythings that I would put in my body in a month because I was eating basically like brown rice and beans. And then I would have these. Yeah. Top ramen and. And coterone. And so, like, it was really. It was an incredible experience. It helped pave the way and get me into wine.

39:10 Right. And so I thought that might be the same with the younger generation, but I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Maybe they have enough information that they want to go and discover on their own and buy the things on their own and pick out what they want. And then you see the rise of the last bottle thing. And it's this idea, this storytelling they do for every wine is so incredible. It's so much detail. And you really become enamored with the wine even before you even think about, like, you're just. It's just casual. And then you be. You fall in love. And so there's something there with that. Hey, it's a.

39:51 It's gonna sell out. There's only this many. It's a. It's on a super sale. It's. When it's gone, it's gone. There's this tension that gets built with this, like, I have to buy, otherwise I miss out. It's fomo. Yeah. Generation. Those things have come and gone a lot of times. I'm glad they're doing well. I mean, Trader Joe's was founded on that same principle. You Know, Trader Joe's success was not only their foodstuffs, but their, their wine. A guy named Bob Bernie used to buy for them. And it was, they would tell you in the, in the Fearless Flyer, we only have 2,000 bottles and we got 20 stores. So you figure you do the numbers and it's going to be gone. You know, the Wine of the Month club, we peaked, we peaked around 2,014 or 15 or something. And I had close to 18, 000 members.

40:38 Wow. And, you know, that's unheard of really these days on a month, this is monthly, not just wines. So. But we had that problem. And since you're talking about segmentation of the people that are buying, we had that problem. You know, I'd have to buy 1500 cases of one red and about 8, 7, 900 cases of white in a price point that I could afford to sell for 12 or 13 a bottle. That became a problem. But it's also founded on the idea that there was always something around. And the other reason I got out was that idea was, was starting to thin out because there were the last bottles of the world and wine Access and I forgot the other guy, guy on the east coast, you know, they were buying up some of these allocations too, and some of these, these odd lots and so they're hard to find. And I was finding myself going into Europe for, you know, $2 a liter stuff and $1 liter stuff and just, you know, not producing the wines that I really wanted to show the clients. So the premise had changed considerably on what we were doing. But yeah, at that point, going by, you're saying it's completely price point driven. Yeah. And I, I think that was the problem is like, I wanted to have, I wanted to, I want to, you know that our club is a, you know, $120 a month. It's, yeah, it' big, you know, expense and you do get high quality wines. But if we wanted it to scale, like the potential of going into this danger, period,

42:11 right now, it's the right size where we can, we can find really incredible stuff from small producers and put it in the club and be really stoked about it. But then it's, it, it's not designed to scale, so it's not going to work. And so I, you know, I. What do you do? Like, you want to, you want to help people get into wines and you want to give them examples of great wines to try that are in a price point that they can afford. And that's essentially what we had. We were trying to do. I'm the club. I think I'm not as excited about now. Since we've launched Wine Folly plus, we've gotten so much more signal with that. It's an online platform. You log in, you access all of. You know, we started selling posters, you access all of our infographics, you access all of our maps in great detail, super zoom level detail so you can learn and discover these parts of the world. So right now, it's already an incredible value at $100 a year. But we're continuing to grow that product. You know, we have a product roadmap to continue to offer and additive features for Wine Folly plus members. And, you know, I thought that our, I thought that our wine club was going to grow at the rate that Wine Folly plus is currently growing. I was expecting that, that people wanted at the end of the day because they would always ask, why don't you just include wine? Right? Why don't you just include wine? And so we're

43:42 like, all right, we'll do it. But I, I don't know that I need to touch wine. I don't know that that's what I'm supposed to do. I think my job is to touch everything but wine and get you right to the front door and you can decide to go through that door and find what you actually want to buy through the education, through the like agnostic education, you know, that we offer. So I think you're right on. I can't tell you how many people, how many saw, particularly in the retail side. Now you're talking about earlier part of our career and part of wine. I mean, you know, Jim, Jim Barry used to come into my dad's wine shop all the time. So that's how, how long ago we've been doing this. But along the way, watching retailers see our success.

44:30 And I tried retail. I've had probably four wine shops. None of them have done really anything of any consequence. I think one year I made some money, but we were good at DTC. We are good at marketing. We. I sent 33 million emails my last full year. I, I produced 300 promo codes and 300, you know, graphics and 300 text for those graphics. And that's what we did. And sometimes, particularly in our industry, because of the rules and the regulations and the lousy margins, you know, and I think that's one of the last bottles success. Their margins are good. You know, I know how he buys. They're really good because there's so much distress.

45:11 Good quality distressed merchandise, not Distress and quality, distressed and availability. We kind of have a distressed period in the 2004-2007, maybe 2008 period where wine was really affordable. There was lots of. From Australia that was like, wow, for the price, it was really good. That's how I got into wine. That was the era that I got into wine. And you're like, oh, God, that dates me. But like. It'S true, though. It was affordable. It's true. Yeah. So having affordable good product is like the best onboarding mechanism. It's such an emotional buy. You know, I was in the market the other day with one of my social networkers.

45:56 Not the other day, a little while ago, but a woman I know, you know, not by first name, but she knows who I am in the neighborhood. I think I coached her kids in little league kind of thing. And she was looking. She actually said, why? We're doing some social network videos in the wine aisle at the supermarket. And I. I go, what? What are you looking for? She goes, something other than what I usually drink. I go, what do you usually drink? She said, rodney Strong. I said, well, but here's some stuff that's kind of like that, that's different that you may want to try. And it's such an. She knows who I am. She knows I've been in this business for a long time. I sell wine. And whatever. She didn't. She left. And I think she came back later when I wasn't there, because it's such an emotional purchase. Despite the fact that. That, you know, you're recommending the wines, they. To make that decision. It's so emotional. And all my best friends that know what I do will still sometimes, like, kind of want to do what they want to do on their own, which is perfectly fine with me. But I think that's part of the headwinds to. To any subscription model, particularly in wine, is, you know, that acquisition cost gets so high because you're trying to find the person that's going to say, oh, I really respect what Madeline's opinion is of these wines. I'm going to try this. And, you know, 120 bucks is inexpensive. Last subject, because we're almost done here.

47:14 We're. We're 47 minutes. There's a lot of lip service on the web right now from generations of people that haven't done this, haven't cut their teeth on the mistakes we've made. And so some of the stuff I read about, really basic sales skills, I learned, you know, at Xerox, and I'm like, you know, this isn't new stuff you guys are talking about, but one of the conversations is innovation. And I. I had. I had the professor of innovation on the show and still got no further along with. With the definition in our trade than I did on my own. But what does that mean to you? What.

47:55 What would innovation of the wine trade mean to you? Innovation is where you take something that's over here in some other market or industry or technology, and then you apply it to another industry, market, technology, community, whatever. That's innovation. And in our industry, easy. Well, the great thing about wine industry is that it is a little bit of a Luddite. So there's so many things you could borrow from other industries, technologies. In theory, yes. In theory, will it work? I think you kind of hit it on his head. Is purchasing wine is an emotional experience, and controlling people's emotions is more of the realm that you're going into, and that's storytelling. So I would say that I think if you are trying to pull a lever, pull a heartstring in someone, I think storytelling is the. Is the. It's. It sounds almost religious to be preaching storytelling, but I think at the end of the day, that's what you want to do. At the end of the day is enjoy a great story. And if your bottle is a story that can, just like you said,

49:27 you can look forward to, that's actually the most beautiful thing. So I used to put a lot of stock in information because we could make really cool things with information, and we certainly still need all of that information in order to direct people down the right avenue. So they're walking down the road they want to be on, so to speak, in terms of wine style. But then when it comes time to picking the story wins. At the end of the day, if we're looking at the same price, same quality level about. If we've got all those things, it's gonna get zero to 60 in four seconds, you know, whatever it is. Well, here's my quip.

50:14 We know this much, at least on the furthest end of the spectrum of storytelling, which is the story is not. I got this for five bucks on the Internet. That's not a story. And so I. I'm just. I was so anticipating this conversation because I've watched you grow, and it's amazing. And I think. I think staying the course for wine folly is probably the best medicine things you. The ship will write itself eventually. And if you're there to. To catch the. The growth of wine knowledge and the people that are interested in seeking that knowledge, you'll be in the right place. It's. I know you have a lot to do today, a lot of content creation, and I do as well. Once I finished the studio kind of got upended recently, but we're working on it. Such a pleasure to meet you virtually and have this conversation. It is, it is.

51:06 And we'll do it again, I hope, as things evolve. And wine Folly plus, which I'm going to check out, continues to evolve as well. Yeah. Thank you so much.