From Beirut To Bordeaux; Who Does That And Why? Ask Gabriel Asseily!

0:00 What I think the winemaking world needs to find again today is it's about sharing. It's about meeting people. I mean, why do people make wine? Why do people drink wine? I mean, seriously, I mean, it's to share and spend a moment with someone. It doesn't matter what the bottle is, but the bottle should not be the focus of the evening. It should just be something that accompanies the evening. Sit back and grab a glass. It's Wine Talks with Paul Kaye. Hey, welcome to Wine Talks with Paul Kaye, and we are in studio today in beautiful Southern California. We're gonna have a conversation with Gabriel Assely.

0:40 Did I get it right? That's fine. Assely, which has actually got an Arabic twang to it, right? Exactly. So, uh, Gabriel is the winemaker at Château Biac, a family-owned estate in Languedoc-Roussillon. Very good. Well, I gotta get that because we'll come to visit you. Definitely. In the Côtes de Bordeaux appellation, he grew up in the connection to a property his family acquired in 2006, and he has since taken on the craft of making wine from alongside the cellar master known for the stories he weaves around every bottle. Gabriel travels the world bringing Château Biac to tables, tasting rooms, and conversations exactly like this one. Thanks for being here. Thank you very much for having me. I'm sorry the wine didn't get here in time that we don't get to taste it, and that you have to travel around LA trying to find Château Biac somewhere. Well, the good news is that way it gives you the excuse to come and have it on the property. That's right. Well, we're, you know, I was trying to hustle, uh, my wife doesn't listen to this show, so I can say this. I was trying to hustle my wife into going to Armenia. Yeah. Because I wanted to shoot some shows on wine there. Oh, so nice.

1:42 I have a crew there, uh, friends that wanna do it and then head to Bordeaux afterwards and then come down and visit you. But we'll have to wait until Wine Paris. Oh, that's okay. That's perfect. It's not far. Do you guys go to that? Uh, we actually just applied because it was a last-minute decision. Uh, and unfortunately they're fully booked. So we can understand. No, no, no. We literally got the email. Mum got the email this morning saying, thank you for your interest. Unfortunately, we're like chock-a-block. So— Wow. So I didn't realize it was that popular. Yeah, well, it's taken over quite a bit. It's become very much the in thing to be in. And it's good because it shows that there's still resilience in the industry, which, as I'm sure you've heard— Well, I've had this conversation a lot lately about the industry, of course, and we'll talk about it, but Yeah. You know, the Wine Pair, we were there last year for the first time. I can see why it's so intriguing. What was funny for me is that people are selling their badges outside the venue. Exactly. Like people are hitting me up like, hey, you wanna sell your badge? I'm like, no, I'm planning on using it. So you're from, your family's from Beirut?

2:49 Yes, correct. And they went to London? Yeah. So my parents are originally, well, they are Lebanese, not originally. I'm originally Lebanese, but I was born in London. So dad is actually from Beirut. Mum was from a little bit all over. And dad did most of his higher education in the UK. And he had started working in finance for Schroders back in the day. And he met mum through a very funny story, but I'll let you come to the property to learn that one. But all I can say is dad did not make the best first impression on mum. But it turned out to be a very good— So what would you do? Exactly.

3:29 So it was a very very good meeting in the end because, well, 6 months later he proposed and they got married. So is it unusual then in his generation to seek higher education out of Beirut? No, the Lebanese, I mean, a lot of people keep saying it used to be the Paris of the Middle East. There's a huge expatriate community for the Lebanese. I mean, we're Phoenician, of Phoenician origins, I guess. And so we're very, how to say, the trade was naturally part of like the culture. So a lot of people went out and studied abroad and there we go. Because my family has connections to Beirut.

4:11 My uncle's a brain surgeon in Boston. I think he's almost 100 now, but he was educated in Beirut. My aunt, my dad's sister, was educated in Beirut. So yeah, I can see that makes sense. Well, I mean, for me, my memories of, my first memories of Lebanon, I was 10 when I first visited because obviously of the war. We went in '92 after the ceasefire was signed. And I just remember going and even though everything was war-ravaged, you still saw people smiling and just getting on and moving forward with life, which was quite crazy. But then every year when we'd go back on holiday, it was very funny because slowly, slowly you start getting the adverts on, you know, the planes. So this is before you have your touchscreens where you can skip everything. Yeah, right. And on Middle East airlines, you still have the ads for Lebanon. And they still have the same adverts, which is medical tourism, because we have some of the best surgeons in the world who train because there's a huge medical industry. But there's also the side, which is, I hate to say it, they're very good at plastic surgery. And for a while, it was the only country where it's legal to get a loan to get plastic surgery. Really? I promise you. Well, he became, my uncle became the head thoracic surgeon at Harvard Medical School. I mean, this was a lot of doctors in LA that are now older or passed were educated there. Yeah, that's really interesting. I didn't know that there was such a thing as medical tourism there. Well, that's, uh, I mean, especially for a lot of

5:43 people from the UK know that because it's much cheaper for them to fly out. Let's say the hair transplant is a thing, something I had a lot more of before I did wine. But, uh, a lot of people go to Turkey, for instance, because it's literally half the price or a quarter of the price sometimes. So was, was wine part of your culture growing up? London, of course, is a very important part of your history. So London was great because it had a lot of similes. And people always say, so what's it like being Lebanese and English? And I always say, you know, the two might be very far apart in most people's mind, but they both have one thing which religion is obviously something which people talk about quite a lot, especially being in Lebanon. We have over 20 subsections of religions. So it's quite a lot. But the UK is, or was, still is, hopefully, a melting pot of lots of cultures. And my religion, I always say, is food.

6:36 I mean, technically, if you really wanted it, I'd be Greek Orthodox. But my religion is food because I find food puts everyone at the same level. You need to eat to live. You don't need to drink alcohol to live, but you definitely need to eat in order to live. Yes. So everyone is always welcome at the table and you can agree to disagree. And the UK, The UK was a mixture of cultures, which I liked a lot. And I learned that from watching mum and dad, to answer your question. They used to have dinners with their friends, and wine was obviously a part of that because dad always loved wine. So he used to buy it en primeur, but back in the day, I mean, sorry, dad, I won't mention how old you are, but dad is twice my age. And he used to get wine en primeur back in the day when it was like €20 a bottle. Wow. Yeah. 20 francs a bottle. Yeah. So it's not the same anymore. You know, it's funny you say wine— food is your religion. And particularly the— certainly the Beirut, the Middle East culture, wine has a completely different place at the table. I mean, food, than the UK culture. And I spent a lot of time in the UK. My uncles, my dad's cousins lived there. I was in Wimbledon many times.

7:50 It's an interesting irony because they just are different, you know, the way they see food. Yeah. So there was wine on the table generally. Was there interest in the industry, uh, other than that? Zero. Then what the hell, 2006, you guys buy a winery in a little Appalachian— So you can thank the French air traffic controllers for that. Uh, basically what happened was, uh, we are 3 kids, uh, well, we're adults now, but we were 3 young kids back in the early '90s and we wanted to go on holiday and the French air traffic controllers went on strike. Like they do every summer just before the summer holidays so that they can negotiate their salaries. And I'm probably gonna be hated for this, but whatever.

8:36 But that being said, all short-haul flights were basically out. And so mom went up to dad and said, honey, I love you, but there is no way I'm getting on a long-haul flight with 3 young kids on my own. So because the Gulf War had started and the internet didn't exist, so dad had to stay close to London just in case something happened. Yeah. Working in finance. So she said, I'm not getting on a plane on my own with 3 young kids. So find a way for us to spend the summer holidays together somewhere, or it's a divorce. And so dad, not wanting to get divorced, was thinking, what do I do? And his parents used to take him to Arcachon, which is next to Bordeaux, when he was a young kid. Now, there wasn't much to do in Arcachon back in the day. There was a mini golf, basically. But he thought, well, I like wine. It's still there, maybe.

9:20 It's still there, exactly. So he was like, well, I can afford to buy wine. I like wine. And Bordeaux is only a 10-hour drive. So we actually ended up renting a house. that summer. And we loved it so much that we rented the same house for the next 10 years every summer. Wow. And Bordeaux became like a second home. So when mom and dad were looking for a place to retire, it was between Bordeaux, which had become like a second home to us, and Lebanon, which is our home country. But there were definitely 2 rules for Bordeaux: no vines and definitely no wine production. Because, you know, we had made a lot of friends. We knew how hellish it could be. The thing is, we ended up renting the guest houses of Biac as, because the other house was no longer available as the owners wanted to keep it for their grandkids. And we came in through the top gate, which I'm sure you'll come and see.

10:08 Sunset, July, and the view was just enchanting. And what happened was when mum and dad were looking for a place to retire, like I said, they were looking to buy in Bordeaux. And every time they'd see a place, it was very nice, but it was never the view of Biac. They saw these beautiful houses, but it just wasn't the same. And eventually the owners called up and said, well, we want to sell the house and the guest houses, but we want to keep the vineyard. So we thought, perfect, that's exactly what we want. The only problem was the house is in the middle of the vineyard. And the last thing you want is an angry Frenchman on his tractor at 6 AM saying, oi, get off my land. Yeah. So the negotiations actually fell through. And kind of one thing led to another. The ex-owner, the lady of the house, had moved back up to Paris to be with her friends because she was bored of Bordeaux. And he was getting bored of being alone without his wife and kids. So he went back up to Paris and the lawyer called and said, look, they want to sell the whole thing.

11:09 Would you be interested in buying the whole property? And mom and dad organized a meeting in Paris and they went. not knowing what they were going to do, but why not? And they started negotiating and eventually Dad said, you know what? It's my wife's birthday today. Happy birthday. And he signed on the 4th of May, 2006. Wow. So you went from, she went from, it's gonna be a divorce to happy birthday, you own a vineyard. Pretty much. And then she, mom still says to this day, she would've been happy with a handbag. Yeah. But she's very happy on the vineyard. Well, I'm encouraged to hear there's a guest house that is still there. Yeah, absolutely. That's great. That district though, you know, I looked it up when we were, when you were coming in, I, had never heard of it. It's a little bit south, southeast of Bordeaux a little bit.

11:56 And it's— the writings about it are that it's getting some recognition lately. It is. Because of you driving around, going around the world pitching it, or because— I think the world of winemaking has changed a lot over the years. And— That's an understatement of the world. Sorry. And I think the thing is, a lot of people, it's especially with modern winemaking techniques, things have changed. It's very difficult to make a bad wine. Yeah. It's easy to make a good wine. It's exceptionally hard to make a very good wine. And I think a lot of people have started going back towards— it's very funny. It's a bit of a cyclical thing. The US, for me, what they did is they made wine accessible because they started saying to people, this is a Merlot, this is a Cabernet this is— so people understood, as opposed to, oh, I need to know which château I need to buy, or which domaine, or which, et cetera. But now people are trying to go back and be curious, which is great, and find smaller properties, which don't necessarily— because a lot of the properties in the Côtes de Bordeaux, for instance, are family-owned and are very small, and most of them have never sold outside of France. Yeah. Or tried. Because this is that picture there of my dad's shop in 1975. The import section was my dad having been multi-language and traveled the world himself, you know, was, was felt he was required to have that. But then

13:28 there was the '70s, domestic wine was becoming popular, the Judgment of Paris and all that occurred. Yeah. And but one of the things that did happen then when the French started to bring in and wine became part of American culture They weren't labeling things Pinot Noir from Burgundy. They were labeling things Cabernet from Bordeaux. Yeah. So they were using American varietal names. Yep. On what would've been normally appellated wines. Yep. And that, I think you're right. I think that is changing now. People are interested in understanding the history of and the value of, and no longer want to be placated to dumb down to say, this is Cabernet. What is, what is grown in, in this district? Primarily. So we have Languedoc. Sorry, I got something stuck in my throat. Honestly, you're allowed in our appellation to grow in the reds.

14:24 What we have personally for the reds are Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Merlot. Okay. So you're allowed to also plant Malbec. And for the whites, you have Sémillon and Sauvignon Blanc. And so the regular Bordeaux varieties, the regular Bordeaux varieties. That's part of, yeah, essentially. Could you try to grow anything else? I could do, but we only have 25 acres worth of vines. So 10 hectares if you want hectares. Yeah, you're the first person that's ever used acres sitting in that chair. That's great. I had to learn it. There we go. So yeah, so we have 25 acres of vines, but because we have the Garonne River that curves in front of us, we basically don't make either a left or right bank wine. We can do both banks essentially, because the soils change completely. We had to restructure the vineyard. So it's Entre-deux-Mers? Well, Entre-deux-Mers. So you have Côtes de Bordeaux, which is next to the river, and then behind you have the Entre-deux-Mers, and then you get the Dordogne on the other side. So we have the Garonne in front of us, basically. Wow. So yeah. Was Middle East culture part of your life when you were a kid? I mean, the food. Yeah, the food, definitely. Definitely bizarre. So I actually started with wine very late. I was 18 when I first started drinking wine.

15:43 My first foray with an alcoholic drink was me being a bit curious when I was— oh God, how old was I? My grandmother was still living in London. I opened the fridge, so it must have been after 1990. So I must have been 8 or 9. I was 8 or 9. And I just remember I opened the fridge and I saw a green bottle and I was like, oh, okay, this is sparkling water, like Badoit or San Pellegrino. Right, yeah. And I opened it. I didn't even think about it. I was like 9 or 10, and I just opened the bottle. And so I, the bottle was already open, so I took out what I thought was, I thought it was a bit weird, but whatever. And I start drinking it. It took half a bottle of champagne down. Wow, nice. Yep. Before I realized, I was like, this water tastes weird. Yeah. Sparkling water. Good bottle of champagne.

16:30 Hey, that's a, that's a great way to get involved in the beginning. Pretty good. So I started with cocktails, and then when I was 18, I started shifting to wine. purely by accident. When your dad handed this birthday gift to your mother in Paris, were they like, oh crap? Pretty much. Or you have a, so you actually have in France, when you buy a property, you have a 14-day right of refusal without any kind of like buyer's remorse kind of thing. Buyer's remorse kind of thing. Exactly right. And you don't have any kind of like fines or whatever if you go back on the deal. And so they say that for the next 14 days, they were looking at each other kind of saying like, What have we done? You know, what have we really, seriously? But they didn't say anything. And so in August of that year, they were sitting on the terrace and they were thinking, oh my God, this is so beautiful. But what have we done?

17:19 I mean, we know how to drink wine really well, but to make it, zero. But there was a crew there at that time. So there was someone who supposedly knew how to do everything, but it was made very quickly obvious that the property was in a bit of disrepute. Basically, and through no fault, the ex-owners were more interested in the real estate than they were in making the wine. What was nice was because we had made a lot of friends over the years, we had rented a house. We were introduced to a couple of people because Dad, being smart, he knew that Brussels was subsidizing ripping out vines in France, like they're still doing today. Too much wine in France. Yeah. So he thought, well, if you can't make a good wine, you know, rip out the vines. I'll smoke my cigar and drink my friends' wines, which was the original plan, I think. The thing is, they ended up going to a dinner, and at this dinner, there was Denis Dubourdieu, who was there, who was the president of the Faculty of Oenology, and he was an authority in Sauvignon Blanc as well. And he said, oh, congratulations, you've bought Biac. It's the most interesting property in Bordeaux because you have the entirety of Bordeaux just in one place. It's amazing. It's fantastic. Congratulations. But I'm old, I'm retired, and quite frankly speaking, you're competition to my wife's property that's like 5 minutes down the road. So Good luck, but can't help you. Wow. So that was like, okay. How do you like it so far? Yeah, not bad. Exactly. And then they went to another dinner. And at this dinner, there was a very tall Frenchman with a big, big nose, swilling his glass of wine. And their friend said, oh, the Asselies,

18:52 they bought a place in the Côtes de Bordeaux. And he said, hmm, that's interesting. But you have to be very— to make a great wine, you really have to have a very particular property in the Côtes de Bordeaux, because there are a lot of places that can make good wine. But to make a great wine, you really need a place. And for me, there's only one which I think would be good. So, Dad was thinking super duper, it's not us. I'm going to rip out the vines and smoke a cigar, and that's that. And Mom asked him, which one would that be? And he said, I mean, you wouldn't know it. It's called Biac. So, they almost fell off their chairs. Come on. That's hilarious. No, seriously. And what's crazy is, well, when they said that they had bought it, he almost fell off his chair. And who was this man? It was Patrick Léon. And Patrick Léon was the technical director for Mouton Rothschild for 25 years and helped create Opus One and Alma Viva with the Mondavis. Wow.

19:41 So the kicker, he had tried to buy Biac twice in the '90s, but it wasn't for sale. Wow. In the day. So he, just like everybody else said, well, I'm very happy for you, but I'm old, I'm retired. But he put us in touch with the soil technician from Mouton who's called Gilles Rey. And Gilles came and ran an audit of the property and he said, look, I mean, I have good news and bad news. You're like Burgundy in Bordeaux. Every one of your plots is like a climat, which a lot of people from Bordeaux will probably get angry that I just said that, but whatever. It's okay.

20:22 I'm there. I'm going to stand by it. He said, look, you've got the soils of Mouton, you've got the soils of Pétrus, and you've got the climate of Aubryon, but half your varietals are planted in the wrong soils. the average age of the vineyard is too high, and the soils are in major need of some TLC because there was, the property was, again, not maintained to the level which it could have been. And so Dad at this point was smitten, and he found a project. Patrick Léon came out of retirement to be our winemaker until he sadly passed in 2018. So he helped us make the reds. We have Christine Sourdesse, who's the first lady to have a lab of analyses in the region. and who does Château Guiraud and Château Mirand, amongst others. She's still with us to this day.

21:12 So she helps us with the dry white and sweet. The dry white is an accident because we planted Sauvignon Blanc thinking we might need it for the sweet wine, because sometimes sweet wine can be a bit too cloying. And turns out we use it at 1% and 5% max one year. Wow. So we ended up making a dry white. And then Dad said, look, this is costing a lot of money making 2 or 3 barrels of dry white. We should sell it? I said, we can drink it. It's only 900 bottles, but— We'll get through it pretty quickly. Yeah. So, uh, we started making a dry white as well. And, um, I mean— So this, do you think this is just, I don't know. I mean, there's, I guess it'd be blind luck that, that, that this happened, or were there other factors that sort of led this besides the fact you stayed there on vacation and things? But I mean, what a serendipitous event to be talking to this person, and they tell you that there's only one château in the whole— You know, I think it's, in a way, it's very serendipitous, and luck has some— you make your own luck, I always say to people. And I think that's part and parcel of what I think the winemaking world needs to find again today is It's about sharing. It's about meeting people. I mean, why do people make wine? Why do people drink wine? I mean, seriously, I mean, it's to share and spend a moment with someone. It doesn't matter what the bottle is, but the bottle should not be the focus of the evening. It should just be something that accompanies the evening. Well, you have to agree then, and I've had this

22:45 conversation all the time as one of the main focuses of this. And I had, I went to an event last night. I sat with some old friends I hadn't seen for years, and they had listened to a couple of the shows. which is bizarre. And that— and they came away with that conversation at dinner last night. Yeah. Though I was drinking tequila. And it— but that conversation is that, A, not every wine does that. In other words, like, we went to another event, they were pouring this sugared-up Sonoma wine at a big event, and it's like I didn't want to drink it because it did nothing to me, right? Not educated drinkers. So I suppose that's one of the reasons. But they were talking about how we talk about the experiential side of wine. Yeah. And I think that experience comes from the fact you are pulling from these plots, the proper nutrients in the soil. And that evokes, without defining them, that just evokes this camaraderie around a bottle of wine. Absolutely. And I think, you know, it's— so we— there are 2 philosophies when it comes to winemaking in terms of the ageing.

23:58 We, once we redid the winery in its entirety, you know, we learned a lot from Patrick. We've learned a lot from Christine. Bertrand, his son, has actually started working. So things changed a little bit when I joined in 2018, but The thing is, the 2 philosophies are as follows. You blend everything and then you age it in different barrels, and then that's that. Or you age everything separately, and then 2 months before you put into bottle, then you blend. So some people will say, well, that's like blending wines. And some people will say, well, I say to them, yeah, but you don't know how things are going to kind of like progress. So it's like, it depends how you like to cook. Yeah. Winemaking is a bit like cooking. And our blends change every year because we cannot make the same wine every year, but we work on identities of wine.

24:52 And if you are a winemaker and you're trying to express what the land is giving you, well, one year the Cabernet is going to be riper, one year the Merlot is going to be riper. So if you want a bold wine, you can't put, for instance, give you an example, 2021, We had a pretty kind of rubbish season up until about mid-July, at which point we had— That's the first time in that word you've used, a rubbish season. Very English. Well, yeah, my British side comes out every so often. But we had a pretty rubbish season up until about mid-July. I mean, we had a very kind of tropical weather in June, but we were having downpours and it was very humid in the afternoons.

25:35 But there wasn't a lot of light. And then from about mid-July onwards, we had this most amazing Indian summer. But Cabernet loves light and heat. Except once you go past the summer solstice of 21st of June, you get less light. So the Cabernet Sauvignon had zero structure. It had taste, zero structure behind it. That's interesting. So our Merlot that year was what formed the basis of our— we do 2 blends nowadays— formed the basis of what made our more opulent blend. And then in '22— Is that tricky? Sorry to interrupt you. Is that tricky to— and that was one of the most more articulate expressions of why every year we have a difference in the blend and the fact that Cabernet will ripen or be different based on all the things you just said.

26:29 That was, that you can, you can visualize that comment, but how do you balance that with brand recognition? Like making sure there's some continuity. Yeah. Okay. Uh, so mom and I have very different ways of, we're metaphor people. We have very different ways of saying this. Uh, but the way I look at it is as follows. Um, we used to do 3 blends of wine. because we needed to get the property up and running. It was on life support basically in the beginning. And the way I used to describe the wines when Patrick used to make them when we were doing 3 wines is as follows. If my parents are the vineyard, they have 3 kids. They don't prefer one more than the other, supposedly. Yeah, I'm accused of that. Go ahead.

27:16 Yeah. So, but we each have our own identity of who we are as people. And every year, we go through different experiences in life. But every year you can recognize us through our core identity of who we are as people. That plus the fact that I have 2 sisters. So if you're confusing me for my sisters, it's either a compliment to me or an insult to them, one of the 2. But, and that's the same thing with the wines. Your brand, you will, you're not going to vary the taste that much, but making the exact same thing year in, year out, That's what a baker does, because a baker is precise. It's a disservice. You need to represent what the vineyard gives you.

27:57 Yes. And so we're a small property. Our maximum production, actually, funny enough, was my first year on board, yay, which was about 35,000 bottles odd in total, which is only about 2,500 cases, almost 3,000 cases. But the thing is, when people the variance in the taste doesn't change that much. Even though you're using a bit more Cabernet or a bit more Merlot, most people actually focus more on the structure of the wine as opposed to the taste. I mean, obviously, if you have a year that's very cold, then you're going to get slightly greener notes. But if people like, on the whole, warmer, warmer notes, even if the blend changes, it's not going to vary that much. You know, you just define something, which is, I've always, I asked this question, you already answered it, which is to what end? Like you said, winemaking technique has changed all these years. Mm-hmm. And that's true. And you, it's very hard to make a bad wine because of those techniques. Mm-hmm. And so the question always was, for me, was to what end are we refining these processes to do what? And you already answered the question, which is to produce in the bottle what the vineyard gives us in its best way of expressing it, right? Pretty much. Which then leads to the concept that there are no bad vintages, because if the vintage— if what's in the bottle expresses that time and that place, it's not a bad vintage. Maybe different. Yeah, exactly. You know, unless you screwed it

29:27 up, because we can screw that up. Oh yeah. Um, but I— that you said something, trying to articulate this. I was going to ask you a question about the war, World War II, and And the Nazis occupying Bordeaux and all that story. I didn't, I don't know what happened to that part of Bordeaux when it came to the occupation. Was it occupied by the Nazis? Yeah, absolutely. In fact, there's a submarine base in Bordeaux and actually they do light shows there, which is really, really nice, but it's actually really impressive to kind of like walk in there and just see the structure from inside. That's near, but that's near. That's in Bordeaux city, Bordeaux center. But about, what about the long Longueron.

30:08 Well, I don't know where they were up in Longueron, but Longueron was— But they were on that side. They were, they most probably were. But the thing is, what was interesting is there was a book called, I think, Wine and War or something. That's the one, exactly. But it's very interesting to see how they hid some of the bottles in special places and sometimes in very shallow places, which which, you know, I mean, they thought were definitely going to get found out, but in the end they didn't. The Clastres are good friends and they live in Paris. And next time we go, we'll have dinner with them. But that's kind of the reason I brought it up, because part of their story is that Monsieur Houet, who was in prison, all that. And that leads to this other thought process, because for him, this idea, this vintage of Vouvray at the time, kept him alive of this memory of this vintage. So then I had this thought process, and you had talked about it already, experiences in life. You are— your experiences every year are different than your sisters and your parents, and those then, that defines a personality. Completely. Right?

31:15 And I always think that the terroir— and I just did a LinkedIn post on this— that certainly the terroir of a wine includes your experiences and your outlook on life. We can't say that the tannic acid comes from, you know, the fact that you— No, of course not. But I like that because it's, I mean, I always tell people I'm a convert by de facto. I'm the biggest extremist in terms of I chose to leave London and become a winemaker. I mean, mom and dad keep saying they made me an offer I couldn't refuse, but trust me, I lost my hair over it. But the thing is, it's very funny because you notice certain things that the, how to say, the theory does not hold true.

32:06 I was in IT before. I used to work for myself. And in IT support, you had a process, which was elimination by doing XYZ. If you do this, this happens. Except 80% of the time, if you did that, that did not happen. Yeah, right. And it's the same thing with a vineyard. You learn to know your plots and you learn to see which parts of your vineyard are suffering, or which parts are doing great, or what the plants need. I know it sounds a bit airy-fairy. I'm not a hippie in that kind of sense, but I do believe that there is a direct link to it. So if you take care of the vineyard, you give it 5% of your time, it will give you back 150% in results.

32:47 And when you talk about experiences, if you go into the vineyard miserable, you're going to make a mistake. It's as simple as that. If you go into the vineyard and you say, this is what I got to do, then you do it. And sometimes it's great. I found a fawn, so a baby deer, the day my nephew was born. Yeah, fun story. That's cool. That was pretty funny. And the French equivalent of the Wildlife Protection Agency basically told me, like, well, just go with your tractor. That's cool. the RSPCA in the UK and say, look, I don't want to kill this thing. What do I do? And they said, well, get a bottle and get some powdered goat's milk. And if its mom doesn't come back, then get ready to be a dad. So, I had these visions of greeting people. People have their dogs. I had this vision of having this Glenfiddich stag kind of come up and see Conan and say hello. How funny. But anyway, his mom came. But that being said, to go back to it, if you take care of the vineyard, then the vineyard just grows.

33:50 And that's what's great. It's the fact that we hit soil nirvana, what I call soil nirvana, after 16 years of working on the nutrition and working on it. And that shows as well in certain of the plots. Our Merlots, we have one plot of Merlot that's a powerhouse compared to the Cabernet Sauvignon. And super embarrassing moment, one year I'm doing a barrel tasting with some journalists and they say, oh, wow, this Cabernet is amazing. And I just kept my mouth shut. And then they said, can we taste your Cabernet Sauvignon? And they said, well, could we try some Merlot? They said, that's what you've been drinking. They could not believe it because that plot of Merlot has a tannic structure that's just unbelievable. More structure and all.

34:40 So, so when— that leads me to the— just on that one thought, but I had another question. But the idea is you're sustainable, biodynamic, organic. What do you— Okay, so we operate something called— How do you farm? Okay, so we farm using something called vive harmonie. We work with a company. It's a term that was coined between Gilles Rey and a company in the Southeast called Cuisine Jean-Pierre Cousinier started this. My guilty pleasure to this day is still to make sure that my schedule is completely free, make myself a giant coffee, and I call up the company in the Southeast hoping that I'm going to get Jean-Pierre. I can listen to him for hours. And one day he literally spent an hour explaining to me the bioavailability between the sulfur of Etna and Stromboli and why they went over for one over the other. Super passionate guy about that kind of thing. It's like amazing.

35:33 But so they coined a term called Vivarmonie, which is essentially about finding the right balance. Organic farming uses copper to shield the plant from mildew, which is public enemy number one when it comes to diseases. Of course. The problem with copper is that it washes off after an inch of rain. So as soon as it washes off, you need to go and reapply a layer of copper. Now, in Biac, we have stepping, which is huge on the property, and we're in an amphitheater. So when you take a tractor and you go through the vineyard within 24 hours of the rain, you will literally, it's happened to me, slide back because the tractors lose power, and I got held back by the wires. That's, I can tell you, I thought I was more manly than that until my voice went up about 10 octaves.

36:19 Wow. So we use science to help, but not take over, basically. So we use some products. It's basically, we've got the certification of high environmental value. So we're not going to put stuff on the vines that we don't want. We do everything by hand. So we reintroduce manual labor into the vineyard. We till the soils, obviously using the tractors, and do the spraying of the vines mechanically, but everything is harvested by hand. And you notice that when you go through the vineyard and you actually spend time in the vineyard, that's when you identify things. And that's the key. So did the previous owners insecticide, pesticides, herbicides. Uh, you know, this leads to a question because I— for centuries, Yeah. none of that was used. Then we screwed it up, and America has butchered most of its vineyards, uh, its, uh, crops, apples and wheat, etc. And now we're going backwards— not backwards, we're going back to what it should have been in the first place. And I think in wine to express terroir, that's what you have to do. I think horses for courses. So no philosophy of how you make wine is bad. It's a personal choice. And that's something that I learned. And that's why I think a lot of people use— go back to nature to try and refocus themselves, because you got to take

37:52 executive decisions. So when you're pruning a vine, for instance, you can't hesitate. That decision is final. You can't go back and stick the stick back on. You're like, okay. Crazy. But when it comes to biodynamic versus organic versus environmental value versus full chemical, I think a lot of things have been maligned. Everyone kind of likes to skew things their way, but it's a personal choice. And Yeah, if you're going to bombard your stuff and feed it too much, et cetera, et cetera, you're going to weaken your crop in the long run. But that being said, if you have rain, you're going to get mildew. What are you going to do? There's a point where you can keep putting on more copper, fine, but copper is toxic for your soils.

38:38 So we do go organic as much as possible, but we work on the nutrition of the plant first. But you'll need, yeah, you'll need that. That makes sense. And I think that's the key. that if you can be, great. I'm not going to, I mean, unfortunately for me, I love food and wine a little bit too much. So I tend to kind of eat too much, but it's the same thing, whatever. But it's the same thing with plants. Plants are like people. In other words, if you feed them too much or you give them the wrong thing or you make them lazy, they become lazy. Yeah. And so the quality of the wine goes down, but it's not because one person does one thing, that I can copy them because what works for them isn't going to work for me. You guys have learned a lot in the short amount of time to revive Château Biac. And I mean, we all know that there's that element of what you're talking about now, which is the manufacturing side of it, trying to create this, the best product you can that expresses where it's from and when it was from. But then you got to sell the stuff.

39:36 And, you know, it's— I always— I haven't asked this question in a long Yeah. But the question always was, would wine be a different product if profitability had nothing to do with it? Like, I know that's an impossible situation, but let's just say you were making wine because the government took care of you already. I don't know. I don't know the answer, but would it be a different product? So, I don't know what mom and dad will say if they hear this, but whatever. We're in a weird position Uh, where the, I mean, a company is a company, full stop, whether it be a winery or whether it'd be a clothes manufacturer or whatever it is. The thing is, luckily for us, we are not bound to the winery to, to produce and to make the wine. We're doing it because we want people to enjoy the wine. Okay. And I think that's the key.

40:36 Would wine be a different product if profitability didn't matter? I don't think so. I think people make great wines, and I think people try their hardest to make good wines. I think some things could be maybe a little bit better if the costs of production weren't so high. That's for sure. I mean, wine producing is expensive, and I don't think people realize exactly what goes behind making a bottle of wine. Because a bottle of wine often is not just one person's life. It's about 35 people minimum who've gone into making that one bottle. And it's a whole year of people's lives to produce that one bottle.

41:19 Would wine be a different product? No. I think maybe people would enjoy it a little bit more because today a lot of winemakers are very concerned about their livelihoods. Well, I would think so. And it's— the question also comes from when you walk down the aisle at the supermarkets, you see the same shelf talkers and there's just this competition is huge. You're pulling up vines in Europe, you're pulling up vines in California. And I wrote this article the other day, brief, a short article about what happened in my side of the business, which was the direct-to-consumer business. And, and you bought this in 2006, and I would say that our best consumer year was around 2015, probably, where we peaked out. Like, the biggest day I ever had was like December 18th of 2015, the biggest single day we ever had. Yeah. And, and it seems to me that, um, consumerism's changed a ton since then. And what happened in 2000— I'm gonna say right around 2006, maybe just a little bit after— is when in America this 50-cent-a-liter junk was coming in from Europe, from the middle of Spain, coming into New York, being bottled under all these fancy labels, and being sold to people as wine through the internet and Groupon. Yep. And I think that soured the taste of wine from a lot of people thinking this is good, but you you

42:52 had trouble drinking it. I remember getting 2 cases of samples from a company that only sold those wines on the internet. A $69 case, free shipping. Yeah. Well, think about that. That's $5.33. Yeah. Landed here. I mean, that's insane. And so, uh, and I— and I— they sent them to me to taste because they needed to move some merchandise through the wholesale side. And And I couldn't drink any of them. And I thought, wow, they're selling this stuff? This is actually one of— these are their products? So I'm wondering if that confluence of bad wine, at least in the United States, everybody jumping in, and those people, that was driven by profit-minded only, going back to this idea of nonprofit only, right? Like, if I can make 5 cents, you know, 10 cents on a bottle or whatever the number was, which is what it seems to be. Yeah. Then I'm gonna be in good shape. And, and I think that had a lot to do with the consumer side of this business. So, yes, but let me put it to you this way. What is the image you would have of the wine world today if, let's say, you're, well, 21 in the States, you're 21 and you say, right, I wanna get into the world of wine. How high is that entry bar? are. And I think that is probably more so than the cheap wine, because everyone's had a bad bottle of tequila, but tequila's becoming fashion again. Yeah. But, and for the record, I

44:23 love tequila. But the thing is, the entry point into wine, what happened was people associated, and to this day still think, oh, I'm not an expert. And when people come to the property and they taste, they say, I'm not an expert. And to me, it kills me inside because I want— I tell them, I say, do you know what an expert is in wine? And they say, no. I said, it's someone who's drunk more than you. All right. And I've drunk a lot. But let me tell you something. I'm no expert. Right. Because you need to— this is a very Lebanese way, but dad always used to tell me, like when I used to fly back from Beirut back to London, you're allowed 50 cigars. It doesn't matter if it's 5 boxes of 10 or 2 boxes of 25.

45:11 But he always said, get a box you like and get a box that you don't know and stay curious. And it was the best advice ever. And that's how I approached wine as well. Yeah. Because you'll be more pleasantly surprised by trying different wines than disappointed. And I think more than the profitability question, it's more the fact that the wine industry shot itself in the foot because they wanted to be They forgot what the pleasure of having a bottle of wine was. It's about sharing with people. It's not, maybe to some people it's a status symbol. It's not meant to be a status symbol. We're not curing cancer here. We're making glorified grape juice. And I said it. There we go. Okay. You can turn the cameras off now. But that's, and, but if that bottle brings you a moment of pleasure, then that's all that matters. I've told this story recently on the show. Clarice has probably heard it 3 times, but But that, that, uh, description, the irony between the, between the people that want to pontificate about wine and the guys that just want you to appreciate it.

46:13 This goes back to a restaurant in Palermo where he had wine service from, I think he was Slovenian. Yeah. Somm. And I was intrigued. And that's me being in this business for 35 years with the way he made you feel, just the way he presented it. You felt like a king. king and a queen. Yes. And he didn't spout off any, you know, adjectives about the wine. He just had reverence for what he was doing. Yeah. And we all just were like in awe. I wish I had filmed it. Then weeks later, I went to an event in Beverly Hills at a very famous steakhouse, and I was completely bored with the— with this erudite conversation with the somm who only wanted to tell you how much he knew and where And I don't think that's the part that people go, I'm not an expert. Yeah. You're an expert if you know what you like. There we go. If you taste it and say, I like this, you're an expert. Exactly. And then it leads to the idea, I think more people will say, I like this.

47:10 There we go. If they drink an honest glass of wine, not the sugared up stuff I had the other night at dinner. I think you used a very important adjective just there. Honest. Yes. Honest. Because we've had people who've come to the vineyard, And the most memorable moment was, in fact, a very good friend who's in LA right now, who lives in LA. He came because I had met him and he asked, so I could come and stay for a week and help out in the harvest? And I said, sure. And 3 years later, lo and behold, I get a phone call. He's like, hey, do you remember? Was that like a joke or not? Yeah. And I said, no, why not? Anyway, he came and there was another guy from the US. They're both very successful and they both wanted to participate in the winemaking because they liked the idea of Biak and et cetera, et cetera. And they came.

48:08 And then one night, mum and dad were going to take him out to dinner, but mum and dad were a bit tired. So I said to them, hey guys, look, Seb, So the whole team in Biac, well, they're all important. No one is more important than the next. But Seb is the cellar master. And I said, look, Seb, Cyril, and I, we're working late tonight. We're going to just throw something on the barbecue and kind of like work. Would you like to come and have dinner with us? We're in the cellar and we're just going to open a couple of bottles and have some cheese and do just literally kind of thing. Sounds pretty good. To this day, to this day, they talk about it like it was the most amazing kind of like experience they ever had.

48:49 And I just saw Street Fighter yesterday in the cinema, but to quote Royal Julia, for me it was a Tuesday. And, but what they said was it was the most honest moment they ever had. Oh, that's a good word for that. And that's what I liked about it because it is honest. It's simple. It's not rocket science. It's not meant to be. It's, look, we're working, we're having fun. So that's— look, well, that goes a thousand directions, not the least of which is, uh, it's a hand sell. Yeah. This lifestyle. I think people that go to Napa, at least in the earlier days in the '80s and '90s, were going to Napa because they wanted to buy that lifestyle. And, and they found out that you got to make money in order to buy it, and this is very hard, but the lifestyle still exists. And that's a it's an organic lifestyle. Yep. I mean, this is something that's known for centuries.

49:39 Exactly. And it's around. And like, you love tequila. I had tequila last night. It wasn't very good, but I had it. Bourbon. I'm a bourbon guy. I love American whiskey. We were in Ireland a few months ago, and I learned to appreciate Irish whiskey. But none of that, none of this honest moment happens with those beverages. It only happens with a glass of wine in the cellar or at a time of your life where you— no, of course. I know what you're saying. It shuts down, you know, you get to shut down your life a little bit while you have cheese with your friend in the cellar at Châteaubriac. And I think that's the key. It's all about, you know, just the world is kind of like, life is hard, full stop. So you know what? Enjoy what you can. Yeah. And if you have— is hospitality a big part of Châteaubriac right now? So we usually receive people by appointment only because it's usually either mom, dad, or myself who do the visit.

50:38 Because it's not that we don't trust our staff to do it. It's just because we're there and we want to share the story with people. So we don't usually do lunches or dinners, but we receive people. And it's very funny because people say, so it's an hour long? And I said, well, depends why. And they said, no, we just need to— We'd just like to know. I said, well, my longest visit started on a Friday and finished on a Tuesday. So it's literally, it can be like that. And— So Longuaron, is there a wine trail of sort? Like, you, like, it's not Napa, although Napa's now appointments only as well, pretty much. Yeah. But even in Pauillac, you can't just walk into a château and, you know, go across the street to Château Pichon.

51:25 So you have a lot of properties. Like I said, there's a lot of family properties around the area of the Côtes du Bordeaux. So there are properties where you can just walk in and, you know, it's the, like I said, the only reason we do by appointment is to make sure that one of us can kind of like do the visit. But Cadillac is an appellation like Cadillac the car. And in fact, the story gets progressively worse depending on which version you go for. But GM actually launched the first electric EV, in Cadillac, which is like 5, 10 minutes away from, from Longueuil. Yeah. Yeah. Because the story is that the Baron of Longueuil was one of the initial investors in the city of Detroit. And that's where Cadillac comes from. I promise you it's referenced. Look it up. But the story does get progressively worse if you read the Wikipedia page.

52:17 It's like, we'll stick with the kind of like nice version. Yeah. But I'm going to look for Studebaker and the other towns in Longueuil. But Cadillac is an actual, is an Yeah, I know that's the actual link. Yeah, but that's the actual link with, uh, that's amazing. So, uh, and every year, uh, they have like cars going and, and stuff like that. So it's quite funny. But, uh, so the, the, you can go and you can visit around the area. Longuaron, the probably the biggest claim to fame, if you want, of Longuaron is 2 things. One, there was a French football player called Alain Giresse who was from Longuaron. Your kind of football. Uh, I'm not a— yeah, sorry. Soccer. True.

52:57 And the other thing is we have a bridge that crosses the Garonne River, and that was made by Monsieur Eiffel from the Eiffel Tower. Monsieur Eiffel. Exactly. Well, this has been a fascinating conversation. We're out of time, but I do like to do this with my French visitors because this is a book that is called Wine Is the Best Medicine. It's by Dr. Murray. He was an MD, but he was also a holistic doctor, homeopathic And so, he has a list of maladies, human maladies here, and the wine that would at least alleviate the symptoms, if not cure it. Cool. And there's a reason that he has a— he substantiates each of these cures with a reason for it. So, the question to you is going to be, I'm going to give you a malady, I'm going to give you 3 choices. They're all French regions. And you can tell me which one of those will cure this particular malady. And then you got to tell me why you think that is. Okay.

53:54 Now, no one gets it right, though yesterday they got it right. Okay. But it's usually 33% of the time. Okay, exactly. So we're going to run with, well, menopause is probably not a good one for you. Nervous. I'm going to go with nervous depression. Nervous depression. And you can either have A young Beaujolais, a dry Champagne, or a Médoc red. Let's see what nervous depression— one of the cure— one of them, by the way, is flatulence. I haven't used that for a while. It's not bad.

54:39 Uh, you know, so it's not going to be the Champagne. I would actually err towards the Médoc, actually. It's either the Bourgogne or the Médoc. Wow, that's 2 days in a row that somebody's got it right, which would buck the 33% thing. That's right. It was a Médoc red. There's a dosage that goes with this. Okay. What do you think that is? Dosage? Like, like, uh, as in glasses or bottles? Glasses. Uh, in glasses. Okay. I would say it would be something along the lines of maximum 1.5 glasses or something like that. I would say it would be about a glass. Man, you are right on. This is— it says 1 to 2 glasses before and during meals, which would ultimately, depending on the size of your glass, be a bottle a day. Be a bottle a day. Exactly. Yeah. It says because the glycerin it contains combines in the intestine with the phosphates of the fermented grape juice, to form glycerol phosphates of natural lime, which have tonic virtues and which do not interfere with the functional integrity of the nervous system.

55:46 And the reason I didn't go for champagne is because that's my kind of like chemistry nerd side that was hitting in there. And I was just thinking white wines and champagnes tend to kind of like hit your head a little bit more with the acidity. And then the Beaujolais would have been too light. So it would've probably kind of like not adult. So that was quite the deduction. Uh, you can actually— uh, this is an English version, there's a French version. Well, and then there's— he's on YouTube, this guy, when he was alive, and he talks about this stuff in French. Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna try and find that book. That's cool. My dad collected wine books. I got hundreds of wine books and different things, and it's really fun to read old wine books from written in the '40s and '50s and '60s because they start from that point and they work backwards. Yeah. And so there's the, particularly the books on Burgundy are really interesting for, for that purpose. Yeah. But such an honor to have you here. Well, thank you very much for having me. It's, it's been good fun. I hope you, you have a successful day and I hope you get to find some wine to taste with people. Yeah, it would be nice.

56:45 But I, I look forward to having you on the property. Thank you. The way I sell this to the missus is we'll go to Wine Paris, we'll work for a few days, and we'll just jump on the train and head down to Bordeaux. It's a 2-hour train ride. So yeah. And you know what, I'll leave you with a picture of the property that will help with the decision-making. Thanks for being here, Ciro. Thank you so much for having me. My pleasure.