From Endless Summer to Carmel Wines: The Creative Journey of Walter Georis

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I don't do anything to the wine

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to manipulate it to be able to commercialize

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it. A vintage is a vintage and it's the

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expression of the terroir that

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particular year. Sit back and grab a glass.

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It's Wine Talks with Paul K.

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Hey. Welcome to Wine Talks with Paul Kay and we are in studio today in

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beautiful Southern California about to have a conversation with Walter Gioris up in the

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Carmel Valley. Introduction collections in just a minute. Hey, have a listen to a

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show I just recorded with Adam Kablani and he is a winemaker,

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high tech success who turned winemaker in

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Armenia trying to bring the wines to America. Great conversation yesterday.

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That's coming out in a day or two but not while we're here. I'm going

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to read. Walter, welcome to the show. Well,

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thank you. Great to be here. That was, I mean that was so easy to

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get, to get it going but it's a, it's all right.

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Yeah, I'm going to read to you what, what Chap GPT

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said. As I said, give me a hundred word introduction

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for Walter. George says today's guest is a true

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California original. Someone who's creative, creatively has shaped

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American surf culture, fine dining and the wine world. In

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the 1960s he co founded the Sandals and wrote iconic music

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for the Endless Summer, a soundtrack that helped define the spirit and

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adventure of generations of surfers. But the story

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doesn't stop there. He moved to Carmel, became an artist, restaurateur and ultimately

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pioneering vintner in the rugged hills of the Carmel Valley.

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His life work, bridges, art, travel, food, a deep

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respect for place. Please welcome the musician, the visionary,

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the winery founder, Walter Giors. How about that?

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Well, that kind of wraps it up. It's a bit

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more complicated than that but for the sake of

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diving into it, that'll work. Well, it's interesting

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because the reason I reached out to you and so

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happy you took, took the email and responded was a friend of

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mine who I served with growing up in Palos Verdes

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and he was, couldn't sleep one night and for whatever reason he was

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thinking about the movie the Endless Summer and decided to google information

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on it and your name came up as the author of the music. And he

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says my name, my nickname is Cal. He says, cal, did you know that

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the author of the music owns

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a winery? I said no, this is incredible. But so you're, we're

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talking San Clemente, the south, Southern California.

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Right. And this was a band, the Sandals, which I

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remember. Yeah. And who was in that band?

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Let me see it Depends at what, which period of time.

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But officially is myself, John

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Blakely, my brother Gaston, Danny

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Bronner and John Gibson.

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And this is. Was this a high school inspiration amongst you guys?

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Actually, we started

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in eighth grade. Wow. Yeah.

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And we went to school next to the school called

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Concordia, which is right next to

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what became the Western, or at least White House.

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Oh, wow. Right by the state park. Yeah, Nixon's place.

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That's right. We used to practice on

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Trafalgar Street. That became a very famous surf spot

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as well. Wow, how interesting. So, but you guys got together,

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you wanted to play music. I mean, even I, I played the banjo growing

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up and we tried to, you know, play some gigs and stuff. It was just,

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just a hobby. Do you think that maybe we are going to make a career

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out of this? Well, you know, we. We did it all day

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long, you know, that's all we talked about. That's all we

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did. We'd practice at least four or five hours a day as

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kids. I was 13, 14 years old.

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And we got better equipment as we could afford it

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and we taught each other.

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The inspiration for a lot of our music came

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from guys like Dwayne Eddy.

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You know, there's just a lot of the hot rod, hot rod songs

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like Stick Shift and so on. And we're just

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surfacing just a little bit after the Ventures

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started. Oh, right. So that's that the classic

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surf beat, you know, rhythmic music. Yeah,

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yeah. And so. But you had. I suppose as a

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teenager you had aspirations to make this big. How many albums did you guys produce?

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Or how many? 45, I guess at the time, you. Know, not that

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many. I think we released.

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Actually we recorded about three or four albums, but

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really released the only one, the Endless Summer.

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Oh, wow. Which originally was called Scrambler.

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I had the idea of doing motorcycle

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music because cars were the big thing for nine

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and that kind of stuff. I figured, oh, the next wave is going to be

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motorcycle. And so it was

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called Scrambler and it says, includes theme to the Endless

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Summer. Wow. And so that, you know that

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I'm thinking I have a. I just got a new video game. It's built

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in 2006, but it plays music from that era,

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I guess, non commission music. And there are a lot of songs

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about cars and there's even some motor sounds in this thing.

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And you play. It's a bowling game. So you're bowling, which is, you know, my.

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I love. I love the Americana of bowling.

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And certainly the music of the surf culture

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is pure Americana. Absolutely. Yeah. And

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so it's so it's. So, for me, it's just

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goes close to the heart because I grew up on this. On this music.

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But when you reached out to the

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production company, did you reach out to the production company for Endless Summer? I mean,

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all the bands of all the world that could have produced the music to this

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iconic movie, how did that come about? Well,

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actually, our

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drummer, Danny Bronner, was a

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glasser and a foreman at Hobie Surfboards. Oh,

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really? Yeah. So he was the old guy in the band.

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I think he was three years older than we were. When you're 18,

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that's a big difference. And so we

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would play for some of the parties

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for some of the early

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manufacturers, if you will. Grubby, Clark,

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Hobie. Bruce Brown was in the loop.

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Quite a few people that I didn't even know. Because it may come

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to a surprise to you that I'm a terrible swimmer. I've never

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surfed in my life. So.

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Yeah, yeah, it's just. It's like asking a

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vegetarian to do some. Yeah, right. Some

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beef dishes or something. Yeah. But no, I was always on

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the beach, kind of hanging out where the girls were at that time. Yeah,

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of course. And so we played for a lot of the

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parties. And one particular party

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actually started at LAX when Bruce

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Brown was receiving and welcoming a young surfer from Australia

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at the time. And we played in the hallways there at the airport

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and got paid for it. I think we got paid 75 bucks

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for the. For the three of us. And we got

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gigs from that, from people coming off the plane,

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including the owners of Kranzellerbach.

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So we would play all of their Encino parties at

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El Calbeiro Country Club. But we ended

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up being invited, and this. I don't recall how that happened

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to play for a Long beach

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surf industry, surf fare. And that

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was our first big gig where there were

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5,000 people and we were not equipped for it at

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all. There are no monitors or anything at that stage.

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You know, I had a hard time seeing the other musicians or even

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hearing them. But at that surf fair, Bruce Brown

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was showing a lot of his films, which,

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interestingly enough, the early surf films didn't have surf music. It was

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mostly jazz and,

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you know, like Bud Shank, et cetera.

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And. And those came from World

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Pacific Recordings. And

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after that particular evening,

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I approached Bruce Brown. I said, oh, Bruce,

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can I send you some tapes, some

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demos? I said, yeah, yeah, kid. And I still have an accent, but at that

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time, more of one, because I'm from Belgium and French was my native

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Tongue. Yeah. And says, yeah, yeah,

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kid. Well, within a week I had a tape going to

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him and I drove it up there and left

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it real to reel. And a couple days

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later I got a call from him at my house, my parents

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house where I was living. And he says, you know, I'd like to get together

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with you. I love the music. And

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we're totally stoked and we're saying, hey, you know,

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if we're going to do this, we'd like to be able to release a record

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because as young kids that's what you want to do. And so he

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says, yeah, I'll put you in contact with Dick Bach from World Pacific

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Records. And I took that same tape

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and took it to him and he listened to me. I was 18 years old

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at the time. And he kind of smiled and you know, I.

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I didn't know what I was doing except I was excited to be

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in the environment at the recording

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studio. And so I said, yeah, we can do an album.

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And that album was really driven by the idea of the theme

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to the Endless Summer, which my brother and John Blakely

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composed. I started the song with

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an acoustic guitar, a little vintage Martin

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guitar. We wrote that in the garage in San

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Clemente like a lot of bands have done

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in the past. And we had one of our friends

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ride a scrambler to fit 50

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motorcycle up and down the street as we followed with a

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mic to get a motorcycle sound. Wow.

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Yeah, it was a trip, but a two track

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Tanberg recording recorder.

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And I didn't really realize that Bruce Brown

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was a motorcycle fan. And I think that

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also kind of hooked him into

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the music as well. So that's what

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happened. The film was only, as you probably know, and you may have seen it,

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shown only as a 16 millimeter and live

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performance where he would speak and react to the

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crowd and his usual humor. And then

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he was trying to bring that up to 35 millimeter. And

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nobody really believed in the idea until,

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well, you know, the history. I think it was first shown somewhere

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in Midwest in the wintertime. And

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it was an incredible response, you know, but

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the production company or distributor says, well, you know,

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16 millimeter, you're blowing it up to 35.

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And they said, you know, the, the

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definition is not very good. And Bruce would say, did you

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see the waves? You know, the

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subject of this whole thing. That's right, yeah. Let me

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stop it there for a second because you said a lot that's so interesting. For

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one, I have to say, to hear a native French

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speaker say stoked and It's a trip is great

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because my father spoke French and I speak with it. I spoke with him before

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he passed. But yeah, you know, they're on my wall in Hermosa Beach.

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I have all these old posters or copies. I got them from the guy. He's

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a San Clemente as well. He don.

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This guy was the owner of Old Guys Rule.

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That was last name anyway. But going My Wave, have Board, Will

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Travel or some of these movies that were going on then. And I thought of

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something where you said that when you. They played it in the Midwest.

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Yeah. So much of America believes that the Beach

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Boys and that surf culture that you defined in the Endless Summ Summer is

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really what is like pure American, pure

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Americana. And it's how we live here on the West Coast. I mean,

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that their whole image of life. Right?

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Yeah, it's amazing. It's very much like those

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postcards from the 50s of seeing the

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orange trees and then seeing the snow

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on the mountaintop and just a freeway

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with very few cars on it. It's like

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really a beautiful dre. Dreamy, idealistic

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lifestyle, somewhat innocent, if you

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will. And it became a very.

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Kind of the very center of the

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industry. San Clemente always kind of competed with

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Santa Cruz for that title. And of course, home ground was always

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Hawaii. Well, you know, we had. We had Hobie in

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Hermosa. We had Dewey Weber. You know, I live here in Arcadia now,

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and we go to the Sierra Madre, which little village, you know, basically Old Town.

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And I wear my Dewey Weber shirts all the time. And I get so many

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comments from characters our age that sort of say, hey, I remember those

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guys. They still, you know, the whole thing. They're in San Clemente now. But, you

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know, there's something. I went to an event not too long ago, and the

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Safaris were playing and they, you know, it was like

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a Rotary Club or something. Oh, really? Yeah. And he was talking

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about they were 16 years old or 18 years old

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like you guys were. And here they were thrown into this limelight of.

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Of Hollywood or music. All that. Was that a. Was

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that shocking to you guys was this sort of this. We. We said

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stoked about it, but I mean. Yeah, yeah. You know, we had

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no idea that we were part of this, what was going

239
00:15:06,730 --> 00:15:10,450
to be a huge movement. We knew. We knew what we're

240
00:15:10,450 --> 00:15:14,210
doing as young people can. To

241
00:15:14,290 --> 00:15:18,050
limited extent, but we were really going following

242
00:15:18,050 --> 00:15:21,650
our hearts. So our first gig, actually,

243
00:15:21,650 --> 00:15:25,050
it's interesting. You're talking about the Safaris. Our first gig,

244
00:15:25,290 --> 00:15:28,250
we got paid $5 each

245
00:15:29,130 --> 00:15:32,810
to play for the Lions Club. Really? Oh, wow. And

246
00:15:32,970 --> 00:15:35,930
we were 13 at that point. And

247
00:15:36,570 --> 00:15:39,690
I think we're just like, cute, I guess. And

248
00:15:40,410 --> 00:15:42,970
we were at the entertainment during their lunch.

249
00:15:44,490 --> 00:15:48,010
So that was along the coast highway, a place that's no longer there,

250
00:15:49,950 --> 00:15:53,710
but that's how it started. So we got, and I still have,

251
00:15:53,710 --> 00:15:56,830
by the way, those five bucks silver certificate.

252
00:15:57,150 --> 00:16:00,430
Paper certificate. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

253
00:16:01,790 --> 00:16:05,310
But you know what's interesting? We were like the other kids

254
00:16:05,310 --> 00:16:08,910
hanging out at the music store because that's where

255
00:16:09,070 --> 00:16:12,030
equipment came in. That's kind of where

256
00:16:13,310 --> 00:16:16,710
kind of the mentor of a lot of the young

257
00:16:16,710 --> 00:16:20,020
musician kids. And, you know, we started,

258
00:16:20,970 --> 00:16:24,810
we learned our basic chords and so on, and then we

259
00:16:24,810 --> 00:16:28,650
became teachers to little kids. And it allowed us

260
00:16:28,730 --> 00:16:32,010
to make a few bucks. We charged like $3 an hour.

261
00:16:33,130 --> 00:16:36,930
And then if the kid bought a guitar, we'd get a little commission and

262
00:16:36,930 --> 00:16:39,850
then we'd be able to buy a guitar at a discount.

263
00:16:41,370 --> 00:16:44,410
And so we got one of the first piggyback

264
00:16:44,890 --> 00:16:48,700
Bandmaster. Fender Bandmaster. This was

265
00:16:48,700 --> 00:16:51,980
back late 59 or early 60s.

266
00:16:53,820 --> 00:16:57,620
I probably got some thunder geeks out there saying, oh,

267
00:16:57,620 --> 00:17:01,340
those weren't the dates, but it was an original,

268
00:17:01,500 --> 00:17:05,300
a 12 inch Jensen speaker.

269
00:17:05,300 --> 00:17:08,980
And we went and bought it at the music store and

270
00:17:08,980 --> 00:17:12,660
we blew it up at the first gig at a place called the Casino

271
00:17:12,660 --> 00:17:16,469
at that time in San Clemente where, you know, high school kids

272
00:17:16,469 --> 00:17:20,269
would come out and dance, do the Surfer Stomp and that kind of

273
00:17:20,269 --> 00:17:23,869
stuff. Well, the whole band played on that one speaker

274
00:17:23,869 --> 00:17:27,509
and blew it up. So the

275
00:17:27,589 --> 00:17:30,869
gentleman who had the music star was so kind to drive us

276
00:17:31,189 --> 00:17:34,789
into the orange groves in Fullerton. And we met Leo Fender

277
00:17:34,869 --> 00:17:38,469
there and. Leo Fender, wow. Yeah. And Leo

278
00:17:38,469 --> 00:17:42,309
Fender says, well, I'm going to set you guys up. And he put in

279
00:17:42,780 --> 00:17:46,420
the first band master with two with

280
00:17:46,420 --> 00:17:50,260
twin 12 inch. And that worked for a while, and

281
00:17:50,260 --> 00:17:53,980
then we were able to afford other amplifiers and

282
00:17:53,980 --> 00:17:57,620
so on. So over

283
00:17:57,620 --> 00:18:00,980
time, we got equipped pretty well for small

284
00:18:00,980 --> 00:18:01,580
gigs.

285
00:18:04,540 --> 00:18:07,020
And that's how we got into it, you know. But

286
00:18:08,620 --> 00:18:12,300
yeah, it was a pretty exciting frontier

287
00:18:14,220 --> 00:18:17,580
at that time. My first banjo, which I bought from

288
00:18:17,580 --> 00:18:21,340
Amendola Music in Playa Del Rey, was a Fender

289
00:18:21,420 --> 00:18:25,060
and it was named the Leo. Interesting.

290
00:18:25,060 --> 00:18:28,460
Yeah. Commemorative to him. Yeah, interesting.

291
00:18:29,020 --> 00:18:31,660
And I must tell you something really interesting.

292
00:18:32,780 --> 00:18:35,980
We played our whole career, musical career,

293
00:18:37,160 --> 00:18:40,880
on Gibson guitars. Wow. We never use

294
00:18:40,880 --> 00:18:44,520
defenders. Where are those guitars now? I still have mine.

295
00:18:44,680 --> 00:18:47,160
Oh, my goodness. Those things. Yeah.

296
00:18:47,880 --> 00:18:51,560
1961 Gibson 330

297
00:18:52,039 --> 00:18:55,160
TD, I believe. Yeah. That's beautiful. And

298
00:18:56,600 --> 00:19:00,280
so was the movie when you. Produced the soundtrack, which. Yeah,

299
00:19:00,360 --> 00:19:03,240
you know, I played it the other day for somebody and they just go, oh,

300
00:19:03,240 --> 00:19:06,970
that's Endless Summer. You know, it's just. It's so recognizable. Yeah. You know,

301
00:19:07,050 --> 00:19:10,010
it's such an interesting movie. I happened to watch it the other night. Not the

302
00:19:10,010 --> 00:19:13,770
other night, but for whatever reason, long before we decided to do this. Yeah.

303
00:19:14,090 --> 00:19:17,930
And it's almost timeless. The music is timeless to the era.

304
00:19:18,410 --> 00:19:22,210
And I think even today's generation who's looking for fast

305
00:19:22,210 --> 00:19:25,610
cuts and all kinds of action can watch the show and go, wow, this is

306
00:19:25,610 --> 00:19:29,330
really, you know, it's like a slash documentary, slash sort of

307
00:19:29,330 --> 00:19:33,050
surf culture expose on the thing. It's really quite fascinating as a product.

308
00:19:33,130 --> 00:19:36,800
Was that the. Was that the pinnacle of. Of the Sandals

309
00:19:36,800 --> 00:19:40,600
career or did you go on? Well, no. Yeah, we went on, but

310
00:19:40,600 --> 00:19:44,040
before I explained, we went on all the way to the San Francisco

311
00:19:44,040 --> 00:19:47,680
scene. We played a lot of gigs, light shows, did that whole

312
00:19:47,680 --> 00:19:51,480
thing, and we did well with that. And

313
00:19:51,480 --> 00:19:55,080
I would produce shows and et cetera, et cetera. But

314
00:19:55,160 --> 00:19:58,360
something that I neglected to say about inspiration.

315
00:20:00,210 --> 00:20:03,490
Having gone back on a summer vacation back in Belgium,

316
00:20:03,890 --> 00:20:07,410
I had my brother in law, or at least at that time, boyfriend of my

317
00:20:07,410 --> 00:20:11,210
sister. He had a record store and I would go in the

318
00:20:11,210 --> 00:20:15,050
booth and take the records and listen to all the

319
00:20:15,050 --> 00:20:18,850
different records as part of way of passing

320
00:20:18,850 --> 00:20:22,650
my time while I was there. And one of the

321
00:20:22,650 --> 00:20:26,470
big influences was a group called

322
00:20:26,470 --> 00:20:30,310
the Shadows. And the Shadows

323
00:20:31,510 --> 00:20:35,230
were Fender guitar players. And they're a backup band at that time

324
00:20:35,230 --> 00:20:38,710
for Cliff Richard. And therefore

325
00:20:38,870 --> 00:20:42,270
in our album, there's two cuts, one called

326
00:20:42,270 --> 00:20:45,910
Drifting and the other one's called Jet Black. And

327
00:20:45,910 --> 00:20:49,750
those are two songs that came from the Shadows. They

328
00:20:49,750 --> 00:20:53,030
inspired us. So when you listen to our sound

329
00:20:54,190 --> 00:20:56,270
were really not your typical

330
00:20:57,870 --> 00:21:00,270
Fender high echo

331
00:21:00,990 --> 00:21:04,830
reverb band. It's a

332
00:21:04,830 --> 00:21:06,110
bit more sophisticated.

333
00:21:08,830 --> 00:21:12,350
We weren't really like heavy duty

334
00:21:12,430 --> 00:21:16,270
drums and stuff. We were a bit more refined. How many

335
00:21:16,270 --> 00:21:19,630
pieces total? We're four of us.

336
00:21:20,910 --> 00:21:24,430
Because the soundtrack is very pure. No, we're five. We're five

337
00:21:24,990 --> 00:21:28,750
soundtrack. And you know that. That little

338
00:21:28,750 --> 00:21:31,710
haunting harmonica sound

339
00:21:32,590 --> 00:21:35,390
in the theme, that's a Claviera, which.

340
00:21:36,750 --> 00:21:39,710
The first time I saw that, it was made in Italy.

341
00:21:41,070 --> 00:21:44,350
The first time I saw that. Oh, God,

342
00:21:47,360 --> 00:21:51,160
Steve, he had a show on television. The keyboard

343
00:21:51,160 --> 00:21:54,200
guy, It'll come to me. But he played the

344
00:21:54,200 --> 00:21:57,960
Claviera and that gave my brother an idea. That would be kind of

345
00:21:57,960 --> 00:22:01,680
a nice haunting sound for

346
00:22:01,759 --> 00:22:05,400
this particular song. Well, and it's like

347
00:22:05,400 --> 00:22:08,120
a. Was it like a three hour Movie or something. I mean it's just like

348
00:22:08,120 --> 00:22:11,800
a. It's pretty long, right? I don't know if

349
00:22:11,800 --> 00:22:15,270
it's that long. No, I don't think it's that long. Yeah,

350
00:22:15,750 --> 00:22:19,190
but you know, we never really looked at footage and

351
00:22:19,270 --> 00:22:22,950
wrote music to it really. He just

352
00:22:22,950 --> 00:22:26,310
dropped the needle where, where he thought it should go.

353
00:22:26,950 --> 00:22:29,630
Well, that's an interesting way of putting. I mean, can you imagine that today and

354
00:22:29,630 --> 00:22:33,110
today's, with today's digital production and how,

355
00:22:33,510 --> 00:22:37,230
you know, you can drop beats now and everything. That's amazing. So after then

356
00:22:37,230 --> 00:22:41,040
this, I'm assuming this gave you national, if

357
00:22:41,040 --> 00:22:44,120
not, you know, worldwide? Yeah, it was bizarre.

358
00:22:45,320 --> 00:22:49,160
We never made a lot of money out of it. You know,

359
00:22:49,160 --> 00:22:52,360
we're kids so we didn't know what kind of contract we're signing.

360
00:22:53,960 --> 00:22:57,720
We shared Harbach Publishing, got

361
00:22:57,720 --> 00:23:00,680
the publishing and we were happy just to have a record.

362
00:23:02,280 --> 00:23:05,880
We got off and on some royalties, but never to the

363
00:23:05,880 --> 00:23:09,180
extent today that that would be

364
00:23:09,660 --> 00:23:13,460
a very questionable situation. You mean it wasn't

365
00:23:13,460 --> 00:23:17,220
like automatic, like somebody didn't say you need an agent and that's how you're going

366
00:23:17,220 --> 00:23:20,620
to manage this. That probably back then was more innocent than that that you did.

367
00:23:20,620 --> 00:23:24,260
It was much more innocent. I was a band member. I wore a different

368
00:23:24,260 --> 00:23:27,500
colored jacket because I was the band member

369
00:23:27,740 --> 00:23:31,180
at 18, 19 years old. I got the gigs

370
00:23:32,460 --> 00:23:35,800
and that was it, you know. And we did vocals also, you know,

371
00:23:37,720 --> 00:23:41,520
rock and roll vocals. We did

372
00:23:41,520 --> 00:23:45,040
a variety of music and we played different gigs. We played a lot of

373
00:23:45,040 --> 00:23:48,600
gigs at Camp Pendleton. Really? The Marines there,

374
00:23:48,600 --> 00:23:52,320
huh? Oh yeah. Every weekend. How fun is

375
00:23:52,320 --> 00:23:55,986
that? Every weekend we drive from San clemente just about 10,

376
00:23:56,054 --> 00:23:58,840
15 miles, play our gigs, come home

377
00:24:00,360 --> 00:24:03,740
and when it, we just moved out of our parents house.

378
00:24:03,980 --> 00:24:07,820
We pay one gig and we pay for all of our expenses

379
00:24:07,900 --> 00:24:11,420
like rent, food and everything. So

380
00:24:11,660 --> 00:24:15,460
was this like here you are, you're young and you're thinking, yeah,

381
00:24:15,460 --> 00:24:18,820
either you're thinking, this is big. We're going to be like, you know, the Beatles

382
00:24:18,820 --> 00:24:21,500
really weren't happening when they're just happening, but

383
00:24:22,860 --> 00:24:26,700
that whole movement, the whole rock and roll movement was happening. And there's this genre

384
00:24:26,700 --> 00:24:29,980
of surf music and you were sort of a jazz side of that. But

385
00:24:30,540 --> 00:24:34,330
were your vision, was there vision in the band to we're really

386
00:24:34,330 --> 00:24:37,690
going to kill it or we're just, we're just having a grand old time making

387
00:24:37,690 --> 00:24:41,410
rent and you know. Yeah, I, I think it was that way. We

388
00:24:41,410 --> 00:24:45,130
all had Danny, the drummer was

389
00:24:45,130 --> 00:24:48,770
making boards, you know, he was, he's still doing it Matter of fact. Really?

390
00:24:48,770 --> 00:24:51,570
Wow. Glassing boards down at Dana Point.

391
00:24:53,490 --> 00:24:57,130
And I had some other interest. I loved the

392
00:24:57,130 --> 00:25:00,810
music, but I. I was always interested in art, painting.

393
00:25:01,130 --> 00:25:04,410
You know, it's funny because you were talking about your. Was it the drummer who's

394
00:25:04,410 --> 00:25:08,050
a glass. Who's still glassing? Well, he's working out of his

395
00:25:08,050 --> 00:25:09,850
home. Yes, but he's still

396
00:25:12,090 --> 00:25:15,130
assembling or glassing, I should say.

397
00:25:16,009 --> 00:25:19,210
Surfboards. That's. Danny brought her.

398
00:25:19,690 --> 00:25:23,330
I was. My son in law at the

399
00:25:23,330 --> 00:25:26,450
beach. We're here in Hermosa beach. When we go to Hermosa Beach. There's an old

400
00:25:26,450 --> 00:25:30,060
board there. I forgot where I even got it. And he goes, let's get this

401
00:25:30,140 --> 00:25:33,820
repaired. So I took it down the street. I hadn't seen a place like

402
00:25:33,820 --> 00:25:37,500
this since I was a teenager. And there's probably

403
00:25:37,500 --> 00:25:41,340
the last glasser in Hermosa beach under the old sort

404
00:25:41,340 --> 00:25:45,140
of school working. So you walk into this. This sort

405
00:25:45,140 --> 00:25:48,940
of industrial little warehouse complex which I wish I owned, and

406
00:25:49,420 --> 00:25:53,180
it's. You were walking on years of

407
00:25:53,180 --> 00:25:55,510
resin in fiberglass.

408
00:25:59,990 --> 00:26:03,630
It's got all sorts of layers and layers and

409
00:26:03,630 --> 00:26:07,390
colors. Yeah, it's pretty cool, actually. It was

410
00:26:07,390 --> 00:26:11,110
so nostalgic. And the smell is so great. I mean, I

411
00:26:11,110 --> 00:26:14,750
tried to glass a board or two in those years and of course

412
00:26:14,750 --> 00:26:18,510
they're really crappy, but. So was

413
00:26:18,510 --> 00:26:21,680
that somebody else is doing it? Yeah, let's do it.

414
00:26:22,240 --> 00:26:25,720
Was that. So we were talking a little bit about the career of the

415
00:26:25,720 --> 00:26:29,160
sandal and how you weren't sure you were signing

416
00:26:29,160 --> 00:26:32,560
contracts, you were getting paid, you know, that you thought this was wonderful. But

417
00:26:33,760 --> 00:26:37,120
was there ever a point where you guys sort of sat down and said, look,

418
00:26:37,360 --> 00:26:41,040
we have a shot at this and let's really get serious. Or

419
00:26:41,680 --> 00:26:45,400
it just sort of played itself out over time and, you know, you went on

420
00:26:45,400 --> 00:26:48,830
your separate ways. I think it kind of played

421
00:26:48,830 --> 00:26:52,390
itself out. There was obviously a

422
00:26:52,390 --> 00:26:55,510
change in the genre of music

423
00:26:56,630 --> 00:27:00,270
from surf to Jimi

424
00:27:00,270 --> 00:27:04,070
Hendrix. True. Quote him, it says surf music is

425
00:27:04,070 --> 00:27:07,870
dead. It didn't totally die. There's

426
00:27:07,870 --> 00:27:11,510
more layers of music. Certainly the whole San Francisco thing

427
00:27:11,510 --> 00:27:15,110
was happening and we

428
00:27:15,110 --> 00:27:18,550
had. Each one of us had individual personal

429
00:27:19,910 --> 00:27:23,510
things we wanted to do. My brother who was a professor,

430
00:27:24,070 --> 00:27:26,870
Danny, who had a good job at Hobie

431
00:27:27,670 --> 00:27:31,470
working as a foreman. John Blakely was

432
00:27:31,470 --> 00:27:34,950
a great guitar player. He moved on and played with

433
00:27:35,190 --> 00:27:38,870
Stone Ground. Maria Moldart country to go

434
00:27:39,030 --> 00:27:42,790
a lot of the San Francisco group. He did some recording with Van

435
00:27:42,790 --> 00:27:46,590
Morrison. Yeah, a lot more.

436
00:27:46,910 --> 00:27:50,670
And I. I kind of traveled and wanted to go back

437
00:27:50,670 --> 00:27:54,390
into my true interest and that was painting. And

438
00:27:54,390 --> 00:27:58,110
I didn't want to really kind of depend on attorneys, producers

439
00:27:58,430 --> 00:28:02,230
and the industries to kind of guide on how I

440
00:28:02,230 --> 00:28:06,030
was going to live. And so that's

441
00:28:06,030 --> 00:28:09,710
what I pursued. And I wanted to get out of LA because in the

442
00:28:09,710 --> 00:28:13,420
60s, LA still, you know, was

443
00:28:13,420 --> 00:28:17,140
still using leaded fuel and it was just an

444
00:28:17,140 --> 00:28:20,780
awful place to live. So I kind of wanted to go

445
00:28:20,780 --> 00:28:24,580
north. I overreacted and tried to go into

446
00:28:24,580 --> 00:28:28,260
Lincoln City, Oregon, stopped in

447
00:28:28,260 --> 00:28:31,780
Carmel and rented a place. And I said, I'm going to

448
00:28:31,780 --> 00:28:34,940
paint. Wow. And I did. And

449
00:28:35,980 --> 00:28:39,710
I bought a house close to the Beach. This is 1970.

450
00:28:40,430 --> 00:28:44,110
And I had no idea what was going

451
00:28:44,110 --> 00:28:47,190
to happen through real estate. And I bought a house for

452
00:28:47,190 --> 00:28:48,510
$42,000,

453
00:28:50,590 --> 00:28:54,350
Carmel beach with $4,000 down, which

454
00:28:54,350 --> 00:28:58,150
is all I had. And I couldn't afford the

455
00:28:58,150 --> 00:29:01,070
payments and so I got a roommate. My payments were

456
00:29:01,070 --> 00:29:04,790
$232 a month, but I got a roommate that

457
00:29:04,790 --> 00:29:08,230
paid 150. So it was costing me 70 some

458
00:29:08,230 --> 00:29:12,050
bucks a my payments and my whole house

459
00:29:12,050 --> 00:29:15,810
got turned into a painting studio, quite frankly. And how old were

460
00:29:15,810 --> 00:29:18,650
you then when that happened? I was 25.

461
00:29:19,610 --> 00:29:23,170
So the sandals really. I don't know. We're going to sit, sit on

462
00:29:23,170 --> 00:29:26,490
Carmel now for a second. But just, just to highlight that because I,

463
00:29:27,050 --> 00:29:30,530
having dabbled in media now with this podcast trying to

464
00:29:30,530 --> 00:29:34,330
monetize, of course things are radically different, but what's not

465
00:29:34,330 --> 00:29:38,160
different is the relationship between talent and all the rest

466
00:29:38,160 --> 00:29:41,840
of the people that play in the media space and who you report

467
00:29:41,840 --> 00:29:44,760
to and how you try to get money and how you try to, you know,

468
00:29:45,240 --> 00:29:48,920
jobs. The talent part of it seems like, you know, it's the,

469
00:29:49,000 --> 00:29:51,960
not even the primary part of the whole thing. It's all about the other guys.

470
00:29:53,880 --> 00:29:57,680
That's what it feels like. So you landed

471
00:29:57,680 --> 00:30:01,320
in. Now, last time I was in Carmel, I have never played Pebble

472
00:30:01,320 --> 00:30:04,880
Beach. I've been there many times. I was in the Concord Elegance. I told you

473
00:30:04,880 --> 00:30:08,320
we visited, which is an incredible thing. I'm sure it's terrible for residents

474
00:30:08,800 --> 00:30:12,480
about the traffic and the parking that goes on. Yes.

475
00:30:12,800 --> 00:30:16,640
So is that, is that the area around pebble beach? That

476
00:30:16,720 --> 00:30:20,000
whole enclave of homes that, you. Know, that beautiful

477
00:30:21,360 --> 00:30:25,160
half circle white sand with cypresses

478
00:30:25,160 --> 00:30:28,760
down on the beach? That's. I was three

479
00:30:28,760 --> 00:30:32,600
blocks from there. Wow. Yeah, Beautiful. It's really beautiful. It must

480
00:30:32,600 --> 00:30:36,390
have been in the 70s. Well, let's, let's talk about that. You were, you,

481
00:30:36,390 --> 00:30:40,070
you left LA leaded gas. You know, it's very

482
00:30:40,070 --> 00:30:43,710
interesting because when you get behind a car today, that

483
00:30:44,910 --> 00:30:48,510
even though there's no leaded gas still, those cars, you.

484
00:30:48,510 --> 00:30:52,190
You remember the smell, right? And you think, how did I even

485
00:30:52,190 --> 00:30:55,910
live with this? Remember the smell like your father's cigars when you

486
00:30:55,910 --> 00:30:59,590
were little. That's right. How did you even live with that back then? How do

487
00:30:59,590 --> 00:31:02,550
we do that? But anyway, so you went. You went up to Carmel. It must

488
00:31:02,550 --> 00:31:06,300
have been a completely different place, as most towns are, but it had to

489
00:31:06,300 --> 00:31:10,140
be very rural at that point. You know, it was a

490
00:31:10,140 --> 00:31:13,980
place for a bunch of little cabins. Basically,

491
00:31:14,780 --> 00:31:18,060
artisans could afford to come in, which I was one of them.

492
00:31:19,340 --> 00:31:22,700
And a lot of vacation homes for

493
00:31:22,940 --> 00:31:26,740
people out of Bakersfield, Fresno, because when

494
00:31:26,740 --> 00:31:30,540
it gets hot in the summertime, they would come into Carmel, kind of hang out.

495
00:31:31,020 --> 00:31:34,780
You could park all day long on the major track of Ocean Avenue.

496
00:31:35,500 --> 00:31:39,260
You could park anywhere. In the wintertime, there

497
00:31:39,260 --> 00:31:42,980
was nobody in town. In fact, after

498
00:31:42,980 --> 00:31:45,700
opening a restaurant, we would close the whole month of December.

499
00:31:47,700 --> 00:31:51,500
Things were reasonable. The parking ticket was three bucks. Oh,

500
00:31:51,500 --> 00:31:54,980
wow. What? Did you realize that you, you know, painting

501
00:31:55,940 --> 00:31:59,300
was your thing? I mean, like, oh, as a child. As a child.

502
00:31:59,940 --> 00:32:03,580
Oh, yeah. Back home in Belgium, was there creativity and

503
00:32:03,580 --> 00:32:06,980
music in your family prior to that? It's really interesting.

504
00:32:09,220 --> 00:32:12,340
There are a couple of musicians, but my whole town

505
00:32:13,300 --> 00:32:16,500
in Belgium, my hometown, it was an

506
00:32:16,500 --> 00:32:20,340
extremely creative community, especially

507
00:32:20,420 --> 00:32:24,260
musically. We had to take music, and I took

508
00:32:24,260 --> 00:32:27,780
solfege at that time. In third or fourth grade.

509
00:32:27,780 --> 00:32:31,140
Third grade. Our music

510
00:32:31,300 --> 00:32:34,420
teacher was the organist at the cathedral.

511
00:32:34,990 --> 00:32:37,790
Wow. And so we. We were taught actually

512
00:32:38,510 --> 00:32:41,870
theory at a young age. Wow, that's interesting.

513
00:32:42,110 --> 00:32:45,670
When I was three years in third grade, I could

514
00:32:45,670 --> 00:32:47,950
sight read music.

515
00:32:49,790 --> 00:32:53,390
That's amazing. At third grade. It's incredible.

516
00:32:54,350 --> 00:32:56,710
My mom tried to get me to play the piano, though. I just sit down

517
00:32:56,710 --> 00:33:00,110
the other day and looked at the notes for

518
00:33:01,590 --> 00:33:05,270
Sound of Music and I kind of remembered it. I. There you go.

519
00:33:05,510 --> 00:33:07,910
Pick it out. My wife's like, who? What are you doing? I said, I don't

520
00:33:07,910 --> 00:33:10,150
know. I just got there. I played the banjo.

521
00:33:11,510 --> 00:33:15,350
Yeah, I played the banjo for, I don't know, 10 or 15 years

522
00:33:15,350 --> 00:33:19,190
and. And to play, could read the music, but never

523
00:33:19,510 --> 00:33:22,230
no one wanted to sit down and listen to me. So that's

524
00:33:23,670 --> 00:33:27,350
not the music. The banjo, yes. It doesn't really sound that great. Right.

525
00:33:28,370 --> 00:33:32,090
So, you know, it's interesting. Did you have to take the Bach? Was

526
00:33:32,090 --> 00:33:34,770
it the Bach in Belgium? You know, the French

527
00:33:35,970 --> 00:33:39,410
requirement at eighth grade? I think it is, where you determine whether you're going to

528
00:33:39,410 --> 00:33:43,010
become a tradesman or a academic.

529
00:33:43,170 --> 00:33:46,850
Actually, I left Belgium just Before that. Oh, I see. Okay.

530
00:33:47,010 --> 00:33:50,850
Belgium. It already is. It was at that time

531
00:33:50,850 --> 00:33:54,370
in fourth grade. Wow, that's really early.

532
00:33:54,450 --> 00:33:57,810
Yeah. Either you had the capacity to go on

533
00:33:59,010 --> 00:34:02,450
and. Or not. If you didn't,

534
00:34:02,770 --> 00:34:05,810
you would go to night school and also learn the trade.

535
00:34:06,850 --> 00:34:10,450
Wow. I don't think it's that much different really today.

536
00:34:10,450 --> 00:34:14,050
It's maybe a little more eighth grade. I think it's. You still

537
00:34:14,050 --> 00:34:17,490
take. You still take that test, and you still sort of get pigeonholed into

538
00:34:18,210 --> 00:34:22,050
something. Well, you know, I

539
00:34:22,050 --> 00:34:25,890
think it's a favor to everybody, to society. You end

540
00:34:25,890 --> 00:34:29,610
up with craftspeople that are really good, disciplined,

541
00:34:29,690 --> 00:34:33,330
and well trained. If. If in Belgium, you. You.

542
00:34:33,330 --> 00:34:37,090
You become a carpenter, you'll have gone to school for that. You

543
00:34:37,090 --> 00:34:40,930
just don't pick up, you know, a skill saw and a couple hammers

544
00:34:40,930 --> 00:34:44,170
and. And drills and just go to work as a goat.

545
00:34:45,070 --> 00:34:47,950
When you went, you. You already were qualified.

546
00:34:48,750 --> 00:34:52,510
I don't know what they call a journeyman or something like that, but

547
00:34:52,910 --> 00:34:56,750
certainly by 16, you. You were actually working and you were

548
00:34:56,750 --> 00:35:00,589
a professional. I. I kind of agree with that in

549
00:35:00,589 --> 00:35:04,110
the sense of we're. America got rid of that.

550
00:35:04,190 --> 00:35:06,750
We're gonna get on. We're gonna get on the Carmel here in a second. But

551
00:35:06,750 --> 00:35:10,030
this is an interesting thing because, you know, when I was in high school

552
00:35:11,110 --> 00:35:14,950
and the young man that told me about your career in wine

553
00:35:14,950 --> 00:35:18,750
that stumbled across the end of the summer story, you know,

554
00:35:18,750 --> 00:35:22,510
we. There was trade tax. You. There was auto school, and there was wood shop,

555
00:35:22,510 --> 00:35:25,830
and all those things happened, and they're all gone now, and they're coming back in

556
00:35:25,830 --> 00:35:29,590
the US And I always thought the European model for that was. Was

557
00:35:29,590 --> 00:35:33,390
a good one, as well as protecting the

558
00:35:33,390 --> 00:35:37,110
food, you know, the regional foods, the regional butter, the regional cheese,

559
00:35:37,550 --> 00:35:41,270
regional wines, I think is an important aspect of

560
00:35:41,270 --> 00:35:44,830
the European lifestyle that the Americans kind of lost. And we'll talk about that in

561
00:35:44,830 --> 00:35:47,830
a second. We're talking about your restaurant. So you're. You're in your hot. You're in

562
00:35:47,830 --> 00:35:50,430
this. Your. Your shack in Carmel.

563
00:35:51,870 --> 00:35:55,150
It's a pretty cool house. Oh, was it okay? I would say for

564
00:35:55,150 --> 00:35:58,510
42,000, you got a cool house,

565
00:35:58,750 --> 00:36:01,230
kind of Mediterranean, built by a local

566
00:36:01,950 --> 00:36:05,730
artisan, curved ceilings, you know, nice

567
00:36:05,730 --> 00:36:09,570
hardwood floors. You could actually move to Carmel and buy a

568
00:36:09,570 --> 00:36:12,690
$12,000 house, which was kind of like a

569
00:36:13,490 --> 00:36:16,930
batten board type. Yeah,

570
00:36:17,010 --> 00:36:20,810
right. Cabin. You could put your finger through the walls. But you

571
00:36:20,810 --> 00:36:24,290
were in Carmel. There's a couple of hotels there that. That

572
00:36:24,610 --> 00:36:27,450
rent those. Right. I mean, I think I stayed in one, which is Sort of

573
00:36:27,450 --> 00:36:31,170
just a little. Yes, two bedroom, one bedroom kind of thing. Not even. Yeah,

574
00:36:31,170 --> 00:36:34,850
yeah, yeah. Close to the beach. Yeah. Right. Wow. But you

575
00:36:34,850 --> 00:36:38,450
just start painting with no idea how you're going to sell this, earn a

576
00:36:38,450 --> 00:36:42,210
living. What did you do? Did you go find galleries or did you.

577
00:36:42,530 --> 00:36:44,530
Well, it's interesting. First of all,

578
00:36:46,530 --> 00:36:50,210
I, I drew every day and I'm talking

579
00:36:50,210 --> 00:36:53,250
about. I was drawing eight hours a day.

580
00:36:53,810 --> 00:36:57,330
Wow. I was chopping wood here. And

581
00:36:58,130 --> 00:37:01,480
it was my life and I was determined.

582
00:37:02,440 --> 00:37:06,200
I had the discipline from the music industry and when I was.

583
00:37:06,200 --> 00:37:09,080
To the clothing business in la,

584
00:37:09,960 --> 00:37:13,120
I knew how to focus in and understand the

585
00:37:13,120 --> 00:37:16,440
abstraction of painting. I was not into painting

586
00:37:16,440 --> 00:37:20,280
prefectures or representing, you know, doing

587
00:37:20,280 --> 00:37:23,720
a painting of Cyprus on the beach. I was a

588
00:37:23,720 --> 00:37:27,450
conceptual painter and I wanted to surround myself as

589
00:37:27,450 --> 00:37:31,090
a young man, young painter with some

590
00:37:31,090 --> 00:37:34,610
influential people. So I did find two people

591
00:37:34,690 --> 00:37:38,410
and I was fortunate that Carmel at that time had a couple

592
00:37:38,410 --> 00:37:41,490
really great painters

593
00:37:41,970 --> 00:37:45,810
and we became friends and I learned through them

594
00:37:46,370 --> 00:37:50,170
and I excelled really fast because I knew how to handle a

595
00:37:50,170 --> 00:37:53,580
paintbrush and how to see.

596
00:37:53,900 --> 00:37:57,420
But I needed to understand some of the theory, the abstract theory

597
00:37:57,980 --> 00:38:01,740
that applies to realism or abstract paintings

598
00:38:02,380 --> 00:38:06,140
or any genre, matter of fact. So that was

599
00:38:06,140 --> 00:38:09,820
part of it. So I painted, I would say at that point, about

600
00:38:09,900 --> 00:38:13,500
three years every day until I took a painting

601
00:38:13,820 --> 00:38:17,180
and hung it in a gallery. Wow. Then I

602
00:38:17,340 --> 00:38:21,000
belong to an art association where I was able to

603
00:38:21,000 --> 00:38:24,640
show and a couple of galleries and I did

604
00:38:24,640 --> 00:38:28,360
quite well. That's fascinating. You know, the

605
00:38:29,880 --> 00:38:33,600
art galleries, my, my, my sister in law just had opened one here in

606
00:38:33,600 --> 00:38:37,400
Glendale for mostly Armenian artists. It was very nice, but, you

607
00:38:37,400 --> 00:38:39,560
know, a tough business to make a go

608
00:38:41,160 --> 00:38:44,850
and let alone the artistry side of it. That's, that's. I mean

609
00:38:44,850 --> 00:38:48,210
there's the term starving artist is there for a reason. Right.

610
00:38:49,410 --> 00:38:53,250
So was there, you know, in your mind, was there any connection between,

611
00:38:53,410 --> 00:38:56,610
you know, the abstract portion of music,

612
00:38:57,170 --> 00:39:00,370
understanding music and your ability to paint or

613
00:39:00,370 --> 00:39:03,490
visualize on our. Yeah, well,

614
00:39:05,090 --> 00:39:06,610
I think if I had been,

615
00:39:09,090 --> 00:39:12,910
if I dove into that, the abstraction to music, I

616
00:39:12,910 --> 00:39:16,390
would have become a better musician. So

617
00:39:17,030 --> 00:39:20,750
I learned by ear. Here's a C chord, here's a

618
00:39:20,750 --> 00:39:24,390
D going up. The fretboard at that time was a little bit

619
00:39:24,390 --> 00:39:28,150
more abstract. Yes, Right. That kind of stuff. So

620
00:39:28,630 --> 00:39:32,110
I was able to play gigs. But where my

621
00:39:32,110 --> 00:39:35,910
abstraction came in, or at least my DNA

622
00:39:35,910 --> 00:39:38,950
gift, if you will, is I knew how to connect with people

623
00:39:39,680 --> 00:39:43,520
and put the music and the people together. And that of putting

624
00:39:44,240 --> 00:39:48,000
music and the people together applied to

625
00:39:48,000 --> 00:39:51,440
painting and that is, I've got the paints,

626
00:39:51,600 --> 00:39:54,800
I got all the equipment and then I've got the

627
00:39:54,800 --> 00:39:58,600
mindset on how to paint and

628
00:39:58,600 --> 00:40:02,360
deal with subconscious, with intellect and

629
00:40:02,360 --> 00:40:06,120
know where to work that fine line and then know when to

630
00:40:06,120 --> 00:40:09,920
put the paintbrush down before I. Before I

631
00:40:09,920 --> 00:40:12,920
ruin it. So the signature

632
00:40:13,640 --> 00:40:17,120
gioris on a painting and Carmel meant something to the

633
00:40:17,120 --> 00:40:20,600
locals. And how widespread did that

634
00:40:20,600 --> 00:40:22,520
get? Well, it's very interesting.

635
00:40:25,000 --> 00:40:28,760
I was selling paintings at that time. I'd sell a

636
00:40:28,760 --> 00:40:32,220
painting, you would pay the rent for the month. Wow, that's

637
00:40:32,540 --> 00:40:36,260
start. But when I was doing music, I'd pay one gig

638
00:40:36,260 --> 00:40:39,860
and pay rent for the month. Right. So I. Those

639
00:40:39,860 --> 00:40:42,620
things existed. There was a middle class of business,

640
00:40:44,700 --> 00:40:48,540
so. And then some of the

641
00:40:48,540 --> 00:40:51,820
designers that came into town and as

642
00:40:53,180 --> 00:40:57,030
the real estate market developed, the following

643
00:40:57,110 --> 00:41:00,790
become greater and greater. I start doing really large

644
00:41:00,870 --> 00:41:04,670
paintings. Then I had San Francisco collectors come

645
00:41:04,670 --> 00:41:08,230
in and buy my paintings. I had out of Palo

646
00:41:08,230 --> 00:41:11,949
Alto a gallery that would show my pieces. I would do one man

647
00:41:11,949 --> 00:41:15,750
show over there. Then the museum in Monterrey asked me to

648
00:41:15,990 --> 00:41:19,590
do a one man show at the museum, which is unusual because they never

649
00:41:19,670 --> 00:41:23,390
feature local painters unless they

650
00:41:23,870 --> 00:41:27,070
really believed in the work itself.

651
00:41:28,030 --> 00:41:31,670
Do you call this abstract? I'm a

652
00:41:31,670 --> 00:41:35,230
figurative painter, but I can get very

653
00:41:35,230 --> 00:41:38,950
juicy. In my early days I started with

654
00:41:38,950 --> 00:41:42,790
more conservative pieces, little still lives and

655
00:41:42,790 --> 00:41:46,550
stuff and loosely painted. But if you took a very small section

656
00:41:46,550 --> 00:41:50,210
of that, it looked like an abstract painting. I started

657
00:41:50,690 --> 00:41:54,530
making it larger and so I did for about

658
00:41:54,530 --> 00:41:58,130
a year. I did all erotic paintings that were

659
00:41:58,130 --> 00:42:01,850
just kind of, kind of a piece you'd find in New York

660
00:42:01,850 --> 00:42:05,650
perhaps. Yeah. And I also had my favorite

661
00:42:05,650 --> 00:42:09,090
painting painters, you know that

662
00:42:09,410 --> 00:42:12,770
international painters that obviously inspired me and

663
00:42:12,930 --> 00:42:15,710
directed me in different show as well.

664
00:42:16,740 --> 00:42:20,580
Did you, did this surprise you? This popularity that you. That grew

665
00:42:20,580 --> 00:42:24,340
and, and people were seeking to put you in their shows,

666
00:42:24,340 --> 00:42:27,780
put you in a museum? No, no. That's really

667
00:42:27,780 --> 00:42:31,580
strange. I, I've. I've never thought, I never thought

668
00:42:31,580 --> 00:42:35,300
that was important. I always

669
00:42:35,300 --> 00:42:39,060
had a basic economic structure

670
00:42:39,380 --> 00:42:42,990
that allowed me. And I, I could talk about

671
00:42:42,990 --> 00:42:46,270
it now, but that allowed me the freedom

672
00:42:46,510 --> 00:42:50,350
of expression regardless of what I've done. Including the

673
00:42:50,350 --> 00:42:53,950
wine. Yeah, well, I think

674
00:42:54,670 --> 00:42:57,269
we'll discuss that in a minute. But when it comes to wine, you better be

675
00:42:57,269 --> 00:43:01,070
in a pretty good position because it's

676
00:43:01,070 --> 00:43:04,830
pretty hard. Oh yeah. So you left your

677
00:43:04,830 --> 00:43:08,630
painting, you're probably still painting, but somehow you decided

678
00:43:08,630 --> 00:43:12,100
hospitality was a great direction. And

679
00:43:12,100 --> 00:43:15,820
Carmel of course known for its food and it's sort of nouvelle cuisine.

680
00:43:15,820 --> 00:43:19,140
It's. I never decided that

681
00:43:20,660 --> 00:43:24,460
actually my sister and her boyfriend wanted

682
00:43:24,460 --> 00:43:28,180
to get out of Southern California as well. He came up here, I think

683
00:43:28,180 --> 00:43:31,780
he was 20 years old. And they didn't have the money and

684
00:43:31,780 --> 00:43:35,330
I had a few bucks. I decided I'll be asylum partner.

685
00:43:37,560 --> 00:43:41,160
I don't think that's the case. And here I am, the solo guy.

686
00:43:41,320 --> 00:43:44,880
Yeah. So what, what's the name of the

687
00:43:44,880 --> 00:43:48,280
restaurant? We have a restaurant called Casanova.

688
00:43:48,280 --> 00:43:52,120
Casanova. And then. So that was started then you were supposedly

689
00:43:52,120 --> 00:43:55,600
going to be just. And I don't know in the

690
00:43:55,600 --> 00:43:59,400
restaurant business. We have very successful cousin here in Southern California.

691
00:43:59,720 --> 00:44:03,500
The restaurant called me Piache 37. In the years, as you know, on the, you

692
00:44:03,500 --> 00:44:07,140
know, it's interesting to me. Let's touch on that for a second. The

693
00:44:07,140 --> 00:44:10,620
French culture, Belgian culture, restaurants are

694
00:44:10,620 --> 00:44:14,420
lineage their family. It's not unusual to

695
00:44:14,420 --> 00:44:17,900
see a 30, 40, 50 year restaurant. It's not unusual to see third

696
00:44:17,900 --> 00:44:21,580
generation. But America, that's really not the case.

697
00:44:22,220 --> 00:44:25,860
You know, they're business, business enterprises. How fast can you get in,

698
00:44:25,860 --> 00:44:29,260
get out and, and move on to the next one? Well, how can you

699
00:44:29,340 --> 00:44:32,740
convince somebody to be contributing

700
00:44:32,740 --> 00:44:36,340
financially and take the loss for a period of four or five

701
00:44:36,340 --> 00:44:39,980
years? That's true. It's a write off. They try to get some hot chef

702
00:44:41,340 --> 00:44:45,180
who's like elite guitarist who wants to move on to a different band. You

703
00:44:45,180 --> 00:44:48,060
know, that's the vulnerability

704
00:44:48,860 --> 00:44:52,460
and that's the anxiety. Whenever you

705
00:44:52,460 --> 00:44:56,270
have a restaurant who's who the real draw is

706
00:44:56,270 --> 00:44:59,470
the chef. You're in trouble unless the chef's the owner.

707
00:45:00,350 --> 00:45:03,870
Chef centric. Yeah. If the chef leaves all of a

708
00:45:03,870 --> 00:45:07,710
sudden the identity of the restaurants out. You're right.

709
00:45:07,710 --> 00:45:11,510
I've seen that happen many times and I've seen some, some you

710
00:45:11,510 --> 00:45:15,190
know, migration successful and the restaurant's still, still

711
00:45:15,190 --> 00:45:19,030
handling it. But yeah, we're, we're, we talk about that a lot because of our

712
00:45:19,030 --> 00:45:22,610
experience with our, our, with our cousin. So. But you, you weren't

713
00:45:22,610 --> 00:45:25,610
planning on that. You funded the thing and then.

714
00:45:26,650 --> 00:45:30,210
So what happened that you had to become an operator? Oh, that first

715
00:45:30,210 --> 00:45:32,010
restaurant was called La Boheme

716
00:45:34,650 --> 00:45:38,250
Song. Yeah. Right. So

717
00:45:38,570 --> 00:45:42,130
La Boheme is kind of a painter song, the blank

718
00:45:42,130 --> 00:45:45,810
canvas, you know. And that

719
00:45:45,810 --> 00:45:49,580
eventually became La Bicyclet, which is still there

720
00:45:49,580 --> 00:45:53,340
today. Very popular. Probably one of the

721
00:45:53,340 --> 00:45:56,940
most popular restaurants on the west coast.

722
00:45:57,980 --> 00:46:01,620
But that had a Jors name on it at one point. Yes, it still does.

723
00:46:01,620 --> 00:46:04,860
But on my brother's side now

724
00:46:05,260 --> 00:46:09,100
I see. Yeah. So French

725
00:46:09,100 --> 00:46:12,700
cuisine, obviously it's kind of a

726
00:46:12,700 --> 00:46:15,440
hybrid. It's, it's more

727
00:46:15,440 --> 00:46:19,280
Mediterranean, slash California. Okay, so we were

728
00:46:19,280 --> 00:46:22,600
just have to tell you, this is your.

729
00:46:22,840 --> 00:46:26,120
Your native language is French. We. We're in Paris,

730
00:46:26,840 --> 00:46:30,360
Texas. Yesterday, I was in there. My wife's still there. Yeah.

731
00:46:30,680 --> 00:46:34,440
And it's a great town. It's a rural. Like

732
00:46:34,440 --> 00:46:38,040
the movie. There's a movie called Paris, Texas. Yeah, Right. In this. The town.

733
00:46:38,040 --> 00:46:41,880
The. The movie that's most recent about the girls that go there. That's. None

734
00:46:41,880 --> 00:46:45,560
of us filmed there, unfortunately, except for the Eiffel Tower. But. But I.

735
00:46:45,560 --> 00:46:49,160
I had two things going. I had. I did a podcast with last year's

736
00:46:49,160 --> 00:46:52,360
winner, the grand champion of the state championship

737
00:46:52,360 --> 00:46:55,960
barbecue. Oh, okay. And so I went to it Saturday.

738
00:46:56,520 --> 00:47:00,200
If you've ever had a beef hangover, which maybe you've had one before. Jesus

739
00:47:00,440 --> 00:47:04,200
Christ. It was. It was amazing. Anyway, the reason

740
00:47:04,200 --> 00:47:08,050
I brought it up was there's a new restaurant there. This is a very,

741
00:47:08,050 --> 00:47:11,890
very cute, prideful town. So the restaurant's

742
00:47:11,890 --> 00:47:14,290
called Bonfire, and it says on the window,

743
00:47:15,250 --> 00:47:17,490
French Texan cuisine.

744
00:47:18,930 --> 00:47:22,290
And so we're walking in, I'm like, I wonder what that means, you know? And

745
00:47:22,290 --> 00:47:25,410
so I had French onion soup with brisket in it.

746
00:47:26,130 --> 00:47:29,970
Oh, my God. It's

747
00:47:29,970 --> 00:47:33,810
a brisket too. But it was

748
00:47:33,810 --> 00:47:37,580
pretty good. But I just thought it was pretty unusual. Anyway, so.

749
00:47:37,740 --> 00:47:41,340
But did you enjoy that part of the business? Because

750
00:47:41,340 --> 00:47:44,460
operating a restaurant is, you know, tireless work.

751
00:47:45,500 --> 00:47:49,300
Well, yeah, it's

752
00:47:49,300 --> 00:47:52,380
really. Aside from the food with.

753
00:47:53,580 --> 00:47:56,380
My sister's boyfriend was a chef.

754
00:47:57,100 --> 00:48:00,140
It's really the show business. Yeah, right.

755
00:48:01,880 --> 00:48:05,520
The servers or the actors and the customers are

756
00:48:05,520 --> 00:48:09,200
on stage with you. There's music being

757
00:48:09,200 --> 00:48:12,920
played. There's a rhythm to

758
00:48:12,920 --> 00:48:16,720
it. You hope at the end of the night that you've

759
00:48:16,720 --> 00:48:20,200
done good numbers so that you can open the next day.

760
00:48:21,400 --> 00:48:25,000
And the longevity of that is, in fact,

761
00:48:25,560 --> 00:48:28,820
knowing how to manage food costs, labor costs,

762
00:48:29,530 --> 00:48:32,650
and all of those things, which are very mechanical,

763
00:48:33,210 --> 00:48:36,810
easy to study, oftentimes neglected.

764
00:48:38,570 --> 00:48:42,170
But, yeah, it was fun. You get to meet people.

765
00:48:42,250 --> 00:48:44,810
Especially in our restaurants, we get to meet people,

766
00:48:45,850 --> 00:48:49,570
all sorts of. You know, we get all people from all

767
00:48:49,570 --> 00:48:53,330
over the world. We got all the movie stars, all the

768
00:48:53,330 --> 00:48:56,490
musicians come in, all the sports team,

769
00:48:57,460 --> 00:49:00,980
of course, all the golfers, the people that race cars at

770
00:49:00,980 --> 00:49:04,660
Laguna Seca. So we're kind of a international

771
00:49:06,100 --> 00:49:09,540
Casanova. Is an international restaurant

772
00:49:09,940 --> 00:49:13,260
in an artistic community. Less

773
00:49:13,260 --> 00:49:17,020
artistic now than before, but just one of the

774
00:49:17,020 --> 00:49:20,820
most beautiful places in the world, quite frankly. That's a

775
00:49:20,900 --> 00:49:24,620
really interesting perspective. I didn't think about the clientele base because of the.

776
00:49:25,170 --> 00:49:28,210
Because of Laguna Seca, of course. Pebble beach and

777
00:49:28,290 --> 00:49:31,890
Spyglass and all the rest of them. You probably get an amazing cross

778
00:49:31,890 --> 00:49:35,690
section of people that hear about Casanova. Oh, yeah. And want

779
00:49:35,690 --> 00:49:39,490
to experience it. Yeah. All the movie actors, Jack Nicholson,

780
00:49:40,130 --> 00:49:43,850
you know, all the Tonight show guys, the

781
00:49:43,850 --> 00:49:46,690
musicians from the bands, the

782
00:49:46,690 --> 00:49:50,090
49ers, Eric Ryan, Joe

783
00:49:50,090 --> 00:49:53,780
Montana, Bobby Ray hall, you know,

784
00:49:53,940 --> 00:49:57,700
really good. Everybody comes through our restaurant.

785
00:49:57,700 --> 00:50:01,380
Clint Eastwood. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I'm sure

786
00:50:01,620 --> 00:50:03,700
he was a regular. I had to bring that. I had to. I had to

787
00:50:03,700 --> 00:50:06,939
throw that in. He had a shop down the street. Yeah, yeah. We had to

788
00:50:06,939 --> 00:50:09,540
show that in there. So that. That turned into.

789
00:50:11,780 --> 00:50:14,420
This is. I don't think this is horribly unusual.

790
00:50:15,460 --> 00:50:19,260
And I just had a podcast with Chef David Slade here in Hermosa beach,

791
00:50:19,260 --> 00:50:22,840
who continues to open restaurants, and they continue to be successful. So you understand

792
00:50:23,240 --> 00:50:26,880
that. That task. But he also features wines on his list

793
00:50:26,880 --> 00:50:30,440
from Slay Vineyards, which is a real

794
00:50:30,440 --> 00:50:34,120
place in Santa Ines. And

795
00:50:35,960 --> 00:50:39,760
it's. The wine trade, as you know, is. Is not an easy

796
00:50:39,760 --> 00:50:43,520
trade. Did you find this alluring from the restaurant

797
00:50:43,520 --> 00:50:46,570
side of it? In other words, wouldn't it be cool to have a wine on

798
00:50:46,570 --> 00:50:50,050
a list here or you fell in love with some other. Well,

799
00:50:50,210 --> 00:50:53,810
it was never ego driven. I

800
00:50:53,810 --> 00:50:57,090
come, as I may have mentioned earlier, from

801
00:50:58,370 --> 00:51:01,409
farm families, you know, back in Belgium.

802
00:51:02,130 --> 00:51:05,690
To me, the seasons have always been something that

803
00:51:05,690 --> 00:51:08,970
I've always enjoyed. The winter, fall, the dropping of the

804
00:51:08,970 --> 00:51:11,570
leaves, you know, all that kind of stuff.

805
00:51:12,840 --> 00:51:16,600
So farming and the dirt has always been

806
00:51:17,480 --> 00:51:19,720
in my DNA. I had no choice.

807
00:51:21,000 --> 00:51:24,760
So wherever I lived, automatically the garden was a big

808
00:51:24,760 --> 00:51:28,560
part of it. The house I have now in Carmel, I grow most of

809
00:51:28,560 --> 00:51:32,200
our produce right in the front yard. Wow.

810
00:51:32,360 --> 00:51:35,480
We're in a little sun belt now. Not the same house, by the way,

811
00:51:36,040 --> 00:51:39,720
a more interesting house a little further from the beach, but a larger property.

812
00:51:40,620 --> 00:51:44,340
And that part kind of

813
00:51:44,340 --> 00:51:47,900
dovetailed right into the restaurant, the wine

814
00:51:47,900 --> 00:51:51,580
part. I remember as a child, the first wine I ever

815
00:51:51,580 --> 00:51:55,340
drank was a Alsatian wine. I think it was after my

816
00:51:55,820 --> 00:51:59,540
first communion. I must have been, oh, my

817
00:51:59,540 --> 00:52:03,020
buddy and I drank a bottle of Alsatian wine and then

818
00:52:03,500 --> 00:52:06,940
didn't get tipsy, but we acted a little bit tipsy because we thought

819
00:52:07,350 --> 00:52:10,230
that was the protocol. And

820
00:52:11,670 --> 00:52:14,790
we had a grocery store where we sold nice wines,

821
00:52:15,190 --> 00:52:18,950
but my grandparents always had a barrel of Burgundy

822
00:52:18,950 --> 00:52:22,150
and a barrel of Bordeaux in the

823
00:52:22,230 --> 00:52:25,350
cellar. Really? Yeah, in those days.

824
00:52:26,390 --> 00:52:30,110
Hence comes the terminology, you have chateau barrels

825
00:52:30,110 --> 00:52:32,630
or transport barrels, because

826
00:52:34,460 --> 00:52:38,180
prior to the 60s, all of the wine out of

827
00:52:38,180 --> 00:52:40,620
France was being shipped in barrels.

828
00:52:41,500 --> 00:52:45,260
Transport barrels. Because the roads were so

829
00:52:45,260 --> 00:52:47,900
bad that you could not ship bottles.

830
00:52:49,500 --> 00:52:53,260
The roads were bad, the distance, the weather fluctuation.

831
00:52:53,820 --> 00:52:57,660
So it was always shipped. And then it was bottled in Belgium

832
00:52:57,980 --> 00:53:01,630
by local wine distributors with

833
00:53:01,630 --> 00:53:05,270
the Belgian label. But of that chateau, and also they

834
00:53:05,270 --> 00:53:09,070
ship to Germany, to Holland, to England, and still

835
00:53:09,070 --> 00:53:12,910
today you'll find that you'll find some of the old

836
00:53:12,910 --> 00:53:16,470
vintages saying bottled in Belgium, et cetera.

837
00:53:16,630 --> 00:53:19,370
Even sometimes you'll find a 7,

838
00:53:19,623 --> 00:53:22,950
730 ML bottle instead of

839
00:53:23,430 --> 00:53:27,150
750. Interesting. Yeah. And. But if they

840
00:53:27,150 --> 00:53:30,710
did send wine in bottles, they would drop

841
00:53:30,950 --> 00:53:34,230
one or two drops of eau de vie of

842
00:53:34,550 --> 00:53:38,230
alcohol for the journey, you know, to protect the wine.

843
00:53:38,230 --> 00:53:41,950
Sure, yeah. Well, I mean, part of that was the

844
00:53:41,950 --> 00:53:45,670
negociant system that was prevalent in Burgundy and Bordeaux during

845
00:53:45,670 --> 00:53:49,270
all that. That period until the 70s, I think it was. It still

846
00:53:49,270 --> 00:53:52,710
is rather popular methodology, but. But I can see the other

847
00:53:53,110 --> 00:53:56,390
problem that Madame Clicquot had the same problem in the late

848
00:53:56,390 --> 00:53:59,950
1700s. Things get blown up on her because of the roads and the

849
00:53:59,950 --> 00:54:03,750
shipping. I wanted to mention. I'm not sure I answered your

850
00:54:03,750 --> 00:54:07,190
question. Sometimes I'm listening to my head and not paying as

851
00:54:08,310 --> 00:54:12,110
forward to the sentence, I'm dropping out here. So

852
00:54:12,110 --> 00:54:15,030
for me, I had a restaurant,

853
00:54:15,430 --> 00:54:18,890
Casanova, and I had 30 wines on the wine list.

854
00:54:19,210 --> 00:54:22,970
Okay. As I tasted the wines

855
00:54:22,970 --> 00:54:26,570
and so on, and having been in the environment of not

856
00:54:26,570 --> 00:54:30,210
producing wine but in Belgium, it was

857
00:54:30,210 --> 00:54:33,969
part of our environment through the selling of

858
00:54:33,969 --> 00:54:36,890
wine and consumption as well, even as children,

859
00:54:38,250 --> 00:54:41,370
I kind of want to connect that earthiness

860
00:54:42,010 --> 00:54:45,140
with the idea of wine.

861
00:54:45,700 --> 00:54:49,220
And having lived in Los angeles for about 10

862
00:54:49,300 --> 00:54:52,100
plus years, a little bit more,

863
00:54:52,980 --> 00:54:56,420
I realized that there are no seasons in Los Angeles.

864
00:54:56,580 --> 00:55:00,100
You've got kind of spring, summer, and that's it.

865
00:55:00,260 --> 00:55:02,980
And a year is gone within six months. Right.

866
00:55:04,100 --> 00:55:07,700
And I wanted to go further north and do something that would

867
00:55:07,860 --> 00:55:11,290
put me potentially in the vulnerability or the

868
00:55:11,290 --> 00:55:15,090
challenges or the excitement of seasonal

869
00:55:15,650 --> 00:55:18,610
activities. Pruning

870
00:55:19,250 --> 00:55:22,530
to training, to harvest, to

871
00:55:23,250 --> 00:55:26,970
making of the wine gave me a different sense of

872
00:55:26,970 --> 00:55:30,730
the calendar and therefore a different sense enrolled my

873
00:55:30,730 --> 00:55:34,370
life and my position within that.

874
00:55:34,930 --> 00:55:38,690
And however, the years are going just as fast, but at least

875
00:55:38,930 --> 00:55:42,450
I have better distractions. Yeah, that's like a

876
00:55:42,450 --> 00:55:45,810
biodynamic life, isn't it? That's something

877
00:55:45,970 --> 00:55:49,770
it's always been. It's always been even when I had the

878
00:55:49,770 --> 00:55:53,570
band that collected wines. So when I would cook

879
00:55:53,570 --> 00:55:57,330
dinner for the band and I'd have a bottle of wine at dinner

880
00:55:57,330 --> 00:56:00,810
time, we all ate and we had this beautiful eight Bedroom

881
00:56:00,810 --> 00:56:04,450
Victorian in Riverside, where we all lived.

882
00:56:04,450 --> 00:56:08,180
And it was like, yeah, we really did it well.

883
00:56:08,180 --> 00:56:11,900
Riverside, Cucamonga, you know, the birthplace of really of California wine in the

884
00:56:11,900 --> 00:56:15,580
1700s. But this is an interesting thing. Let me see if I can articulate

885
00:56:15,580 --> 00:56:19,380
this. The seasonality of food is

886
00:56:19,460 --> 00:56:22,900
critical, I think, for the health of the food and the healthy organisms.

887
00:56:23,940 --> 00:56:27,540
And I always thought it fascinating that, for instance, with organic. Let's just go with

888
00:56:27,540 --> 00:56:29,940
organic wines in this case.

889
00:56:31,220 --> 00:56:34,900
They were always. Were organic. The wines that you. Your parents drank in the

890
00:56:34,900 --> 00:56:38,700
60s were organic. They weren't. They weren't pesticides around or insecticides.

891
00:56:38,700 --> 00:56:42,380
They didn't use them then. And. And they now.

892
00:56:42,380 --> 00:56:46,180
And then we butcher them. We butcher, particularly in America, we butcher our

893
00:56:46,180 --> 00:56:49,620
farms and they produce a ton of stuff, but it's all crap.

894
00:56:49,940 --> 00:56:53,060
And then now we're going back to seasonal

895
00:56:53,380 --> 00:56:57,180
foods, which is so critical, and organic

896
00:56:57,180 --> 00:57:00,910
or biodynamic wines. And we. We applaud ourselves for

897
00:57:00,910 --> 00:57:03,550
doing this. And it's like. But it always was this way.

898
00:57:04,750 --> 00:57:08,590
We screwed it up. I have a lot of comments. Obviously,

899
00:57:10,110 --> 00:57:13,790
you know, I studied

900
00:57:14,190 --> 00:57:17,990
winemaking and working in the vineyard pruning in Bordeaux for

901
00:57:17,990 --> 00:57:21,150
a couple of years, in and out of Bordeaux.

902
00:57:21,630 --> 00:57:25,320
And I kind of, as a mentor, was an

903
00:57:25,320 --> 00:57:28,440
old gentleman in Margaux.

904
00:57:29,080 --> 00:57:32,200
Very little vineyard under capitalized.

905
00:57:32,920 --> 00:57:36,680
But I learned what

906
00:57:36,680 --> 00:57:40,520
I already knew from my childhood and that

907
00:57:40,520 --> 00:57:43,720
was how to deal with the earth,

908
00:57:43,800 --> 00:57:47,640
recognize the vulnerabilities and the advantages and what

909
00:57:47,640 --> 00:57:51,330
that ground can produce and tying it

910
00:57:51,330 --> 00:57:55,170
in to produce. I really believe, and

911
00:57:55,170 --> 00:57:58,490
I've always used this as an example to make a point

912
00:57:59,450 --> 00:58:03,170
in Germany. I really believe that part of the strength of the

913
00:58:03,170 --> 00:58:06,170
German people in the past, and perhaps still today,

914
00:58:06,810 --> 00:58:10,410
was the cabbage that was being grown in these particular

915
00:58:10,570 --> 00:58:13,610
soils that were high in the

916
00:58:14,010 --> 00:58:17,670
minerality. And you look

917
00:58:17,670 --> 00:58:21,230
at. That's interesting. Probably one of the best food

918
00:58:21,470 --> 00:58:25,190
that you probably could eat, you know? Yeah, interesting. It's a

919
00:58:25,190 --> 00:58:29,030
natural probiotic and so on. So natural. Let's go

920
00:58:29,030 --> 00:58:32,350
back to natural. At that time, you basically

921
00:58:33,630 --> 00:58:37,430
improve the soils by manure. That

922
00:58:37,430 --> 00:58:41,030
was it. Okay. Yeah. And so you depended on the

923
00:58:41,030 --> 00:58:44,670
local villagers that had cows, sheep, horses,

924
00:58:45,070 --> 00:58:48,920
whatever that was. And we had one of those

925
00:58:48,920 --> 00:58:51,840
farms. My godfather, uncle

926
00:58:52,640 --> 00:58:56,080
had one of those. And the urine from the cows

927
00:58:57,120 --> 00:59:00,760
was spread over the fields where the cows would eat the grass

928
00:59:00,760 --> 00:59:04,560
and the little daisies and they made milk. The

929
00:59:04,560 --> 00:59:08,160
fertilizer was spread also in the gardens. And we

930
00:59:08,160 --> 00:59:11,840
grew things. Wow. No

931
00:59:11,840 --> 00:59:15,010
pesticides. Because if there were some

932
00:59:16,050 --> 00:59:19,570
economically, didn't make any sense. It was too expensive.

933
00:59:20,130 --> 00:59:23,810
Okay, so now to winemaking. You

934
00:59:23,810 --> 00:59:27,570
see, most of these small

935
00:59:27,570 --> 00:59:30,210
producers in France and all over Europe

936
00:59:31,490 --> 00:59:35,130
prior to the 70s were small,

937
00:59:35,130 --> 00:59:38,810
the small producers, except some of the first growth, but small

938
00:59:38,810 --> 00:59:42,550
producers all. And we always know that the better market

939
00:59:42,710 --> 00:59:46,350
usually is one geographically close to you. It

940
00:59:46,350 --> 00:59:49,910
requires less shipping, you get your money faster, et

941
00:59:49,910 --> 00:59:53,190
cetera. So that's how it happened.

942
00:59:53,990 --> 00:59:57,750
So I bought bottles of chateau Petrus for 75

943
00:59:57,750 --> 01:00:01,510
bucks in the 70s or

944
01:00:01,510 --> 01:00:05,310
good luck, you can't buy the empty. Yeah, that's

945
01:00:05,310 --> 01:00:09,150
right. So, so how do I, how does do I relate

946
01:00:09,150 --> 01:00:12,870
to that? Well, I traded that original house, the

947
01:00:12,870 --> 01:00:16,710
42,000, for 40 acre ranch, and I

948
01:00:16,710 --> 01:00:20,230
planted vines on it. Wow.

949
01:00:20,470 --> 01:00:24,310
And then I had a friend of mine make the wine who had a small

950
01:00:24,310 --> 01:00:28,110
winery. And once I tasted the wine, I said, now I can go to the

951
01:00:28,110 --> 01:00:30,470
bank and borrow some money to build a winery.

952
01:00:31,840 --> 01:00:35,280
Phenomenal. So 40 acres. So what's now planted? How many?

953
01:00:35,520 --> 01:00:39,240
I will have 13 acres planted and I've got

954
01:00:39,240 --> 01:00:42,800
about 6 acres, 700 olive trees.

955
01:00:43,040 --> 01:00:46,800
And we just finished the olive harvest. We got three tons.

956
01:00:46,800 --> 01:00:50,640
I think. You monetize the olives as well or just for fun?

957
01:00:51,120 --> 01:00:54,720
Yes, well, it's kind of just for fun and the wine too,

958
01:00:54,720 --> 01:00:58,040
quite frankly, because your profit margin or just like

959
01:00:58,670 --> 01:01:02,350
you're buying it to a lifestyle. And I never understood why

960
01:01:02,670 --> 01:01:06,110
people that have a lot of money would do a winery

961
01:01:06,990 --> 01:01:10,790
if they're not winemakers. It didn't make sense to me. I

962
01:01:10,790 --> 01:01:14,590
think they just like to be there and be there. Then I'm the owner of

963
01:01:14,590 --> 01:01:18,070
a winery that's got nothing to do with making wine. And the

964
01:01:18,070 --> 01:01:21,910
farming side, if you're not taking care

965
01:01:21,910 --> 01:01:25,640
of the vineyard, the viticulturist, and making the

966
01:01:25,640 --> 01:01:29,440
wine, you're not going to make great wines. You know, that's a really

967
01:01:29,440 --> 01:01:33,080
important question. We could probably talk for a whole podcast on

968
01:01:33,080 --> 01:01:36,400
that alone. But it's very important because this is what happened to

969
01:01:36,400 --> 01:01:40,200
Napa in that, you know, a lot of money. You're

970
01:01:40,200 --> 01:01:43,720
government contractor, surgeon, successful eye surgeon, whatever. And you,

971
01:01:43,800 --> 01:01:47,440
you think this lifestyle is what you want because you can have your own brand.

972
01:01:47,440 --> 01:01:51,130
But then you get there and you realize it is farming. And

973
01:01:51,130 --> 01:01:54,450
I'm not a farmer. Absolutely. Interrupt you.

974
01:01:54,930 --> 01:01:58,730
Go ahead. You can't make great wine if you don't have a

975
01:01:58,730 --> 01:02:02,530
great piece of land. You have to have those soils.

976
01:02:02,530 --> 01:02:05,810
And people only look at the top of the soil. It's

977
01:02:06,290 --> 01:02:10,130
all the way 20ft down. You have layers of

978
01:02:10,130 --> 01:02:13,850
minerality where the vine pulls

979
01:02:13,850 --> 01:02:16,770
from. And obviously we're familiar with the

980
01:02:16,770 --> 01:02:20,460
microclimates. But part of the microclimates are actually

981
01:02:20,460 --> 01:02:24,220
the people themselves who take care of the

982
01:02:24,220 --> 01:02:27,780
vineyard. Right. The bird life, the trees around

983
01:02:28,180 --> 01:02:31,700
the vineyard, who also who the roots

984
01:02:32,020 --> 01:02:35,700
connect with the vineyard and communicate.

985
01:02:36,340 --> 01:02:39,860
There's a lot of factors in

986
01:02:40,740 --> 01:02:43,380
how to produce good fruit.

987
01:02:46,290 --> 01:02:49,250
Let me add to that equation for a second, see if you agree with me.

988
01:02:49,650 --> 01:02:53,370
I had May Elian Longson on

989
01:02:53,370 --> 01:02:56,890
the show. She's 100 now. She was the Comtesse of

990
01:02:56,890 --> 01:03:00,690
Pichon Longville and she was 15 when her,

991
01:03:00,930 --> 01:03:04,730
when the Nazis came into her chateau and shot it up. And she remembers,

992
01:03:04,730 --> 01:03:08,490
she saw it. And I contend not only

993
01:03:08,490 --> 01:03:11,870
is the terroir what you're talking about, the soil and the depth of the vines

994
01:03:11,870 --> 01:03:15,550
and the, and the caretaking of those vines, but it also kind of

995
01:03:15,550 --> 01:03:19,270
should include or does include these stories that was handed down from

996
01:03:19,270 --> 01:03:22,470
generation to generation of what happened here and what.

997
01:03:23,190 --> 01:03:26,750
You're not going to taste it in some kind of tannic acid or fruit component,

998
01:03:26,750 --> 01:03:30,550
but you're going to the lesson learned from all those

999
01:03:30,550 --> 01:03:33,910
different types of, of environmental changes to

1000
01:03:33,910 --> 01:03:37,510
somebody's life and the family's life, I think show up in the

1001
01:03:37,510 --> 01:03:40,880
bottle as part of the terroir. They, it crafts

1002
01:03:41,200 --> 01:03:44,920
part of the wine. And I think that's, that's the part that's

1003
01:03:44,920 --> 01:03:48,040
lost. I'm in a

1004
01:03:48,040 --> 01:03:51,840
crossroads. Wine's consumer driven. We have to sell it, we need to make money

1005
01:03:51,840 --> 01:03:55,520
at it. But at the same time, it's like no other product in the world

1006
01:03:56,000 --> 01:03:59,800
as it represents a place and a time and a

1007
01:03:59,800 --> 01:04:03,600
culture balance that. Well, well said.

1008
01:04:06,180 --> 01:04:09,860
I may add something that you may not have thought of During World

1009
01:04:09,860 --> 01:04:13,660
War I and World War II, the women

1010
01:04:13,660 --> 01:04:14,820
were making the wine.

1011
01:04:17,540 --> 01:04:21,380
Good point. Right. Well, I did learn during my studies. I was. Well,

1012
01:04:21,380 --> 01:04:24,900
you know the book Wine and War, I'm sure with the clad strips, they're good

1013
01:04:24,900 --> 01:04:28,540
friends, they wrote the book. But it's interesting that

1014
01:04:28,540 --> 01:04:31,220
they found, let's go back to that for a second, that In World War I,

1015
01:04:31,690 --> 01:04:35,410
the invading armies were tearing up the vineyards and they've ruined some

1016
01:04:35,410 --> 01:04:38,890
of champagne, still can't plant there from all their phosphorus

1017
01:04:38,890 --> 01:04:42,570
bombs. But World War II, they, they knew better and

1018
01:04:42,570 --> 01:04:46,210
so they were like took over the wineries and you know, Hitler had a 80,000

1019
01:04:46,210 --> 01:04:50,050
bottle seller and didn't. It didn't even drink. So they want the

1020
01:04:50,050 --> 01:04:53,770
wine of the cognac. For sure they wanted the wine of the cognac. So

1021
01:04:54,170 --> 01:04:57,950
do you have these conversations with your guests when

1022
01:04:57,950 --> 01:05:00,950
your guests come to the winery, if you're there hanging out in the tasting Room.

1023
01:05:01,430 --> 01:05:05,150
Do they get pretty ethereal like that? Pretty deep about what wine

1024
01:05:05,150 --> 01:05:08,590
is, or it's mostly consumer tourism type? I think

1025
01:05:08,590 --> 01:05:12,350
it's mostly consumerism. However, I've

1026
01:05:12,350 --> 01:05:15,350
been in Carmel now since 1970

1027
01:05:16,310 --> 01:05:19,830
through the restaurants. We have a couple other restaurants,

1028
01:05:20,630 --> 01:05:24,470
one that's called the Corkscrew Cafe. It's right next door to

1029
01:05:24,470 --> 01:05:28,230
our tasting room. And our son, who has Michelin

1030
01:05:28,230 --> 01:05:31,390
accolades, has a place called In

1031
01:05:31,390 --> 01:05:34,190
Seaside. People come there

1032
01:05:35,550 --> 01:05:37,710
because they know it's different.

1033
01:05:39,150 --> 01:05:42,790
My establishment are designed kind of old world, if you

1034
01:05:42,790 --> 01:05:46,110
will. I've always replicated what felt

1035
01:05:46,110 --> 01:05:49,550
comfortable to me, and that's what I, you know, usually

1036
01:05:49,710 --> 01:05:53,530
you kind of go back to your childhood for

1037
01:05:53,530 --> 01:05:56,610
many reasons. And so they like coming to our

1038
01:05:56,610 --> 01:06:00,370
establishment. And I make honest wine,

1039
01:06:00,370 --> 01:06:04,090
and I need to kind of define what that means.

1040
01:06:04,250 --> 01:06:07,730
I love that. That's my favorite word. I want to hear your

1041
01:06:07,730 --> 01:06:11,410
definition. Okay, well, definition is I don't

1042
01:06:11,410 --> 01:06:13,610
do anything to the wine

1043
01:06:15,690 --> 01:06:19,410
to manipulate it, to be able to commercialize

1044
01:06:19,410 --> 01:06:22,810
it. Excellent. A vintage is a vintage,

1045
01:06:23,130 --> 01:06:26,450
and it's the expression of the

1046
01:06:26,450 --> 01:06:29,850
terroir that particular year. Okay.

1047
01:06:30,490 --> 01:06:34,130
Now, what I will do, however, as a

1048
01:06:34,130 --> 01:06:36,890
winemaker, I am good at blending.

1049
01:06:38,330 --> 01:06:41,970
So when I harvest, even though I have 13

1050
01:06:41,970 --> 01:06:45,250
acres, I will have seven or eight different lots

1051
01:06:46,530 --> 01:06:50,290
because they mature at different times or different varietals

1052
01:06:51,410 --> 01:06:54,930
at different age divides. So I keep those

1053
01:06:54,930 --> 01:06:58,050
lots independent of each other.

1054
01:07:00,370 --> 01:07:04,090
Ferment them separately, pick them, obviously, at different

1055
01:07:04,090 --> 01:07:07,770
times, and then I. Taste them through the year, and then I

1056
01:07:07,770 --> 01:07:10,690
decide at which point we start doing our blend.

1057
01:07:11,820 --> 01:07:15,420
So we bring out the glasses, the graduates, and we

1058
01:07:15,420 --> 01:07:19,140
start figuring out how can we make the best wine

1059
01:07:19,140 --> 01:07:21,980
possible from our state fruit.

1060
01:07:23,340 --> 01:07:26,300
I'm going to go back to that definition of honest wine. This is what I

1061
01:07:26,300 --> 01:07:29,980
add to it, because you're not touching it.

1062
01:07:31,180 --> 01:07:34,420
And it's a definition that I came up with with a French winemaker sitting here

1063
01:07:34,420 --> 01:07:36,660
in the studio. And they go. He goes, you know, I'm going to start using

1064
01:07:36,660 --> 01:07:40,420
that. And that is the concept is if you're making honest wine,

1065
01:07:40,420 --> 01:07:43,820
in other words, it's the best example of what you can produce for that vintage.

1066
01:07:43,980 --> 01:07:47,340
Obviously, vintage division, the beauty of wine is that it's different every

1067
01:07:47,340 --> 01:07:51,020
vintage, is that there's no bad vintages. Meaning

1068
01:07:51,340 --> 01:07:54,980
under the definition that I'm going to make what's been presented to

1069
01:07:54,980 --> 01:07:58,700
me the best that could be presented, then that's an honest wine.

1070
01:07:58,700 --> 01:08:02,380
That's a good wine, period. Well, honest,

1071
01:08:02,870 --> 01:08:05,830
there are no hidden things. The only thing that we add

1072
01:08:06,550 --> 01:08:09,510
is a certain level of SO2

1073
01:08:10,070 --> 01:08:13,670
based on the ph and the acidity of the

1074
01:08:13,670 --> 01:08:17,510
wine. Right. Well, that's normal. We want to have a balance there. Okay.

1075
01:08:17,750 --> 01:08:21,190
So. So 2. And possibly tartaric acid

1076
01:08:21,350 --> 01:08:24,390
if your ph is too high. Okay.

1077
01:08:25,030 --> 01:08:28,800
Not very often, but when necessary, it's

1078
01:08:28,800 --> 01:08:32,360
the thing to do in order to protect the wine, in the integrity of the

1079
01:08:32,360 --> 01:08:35,640
wine. That is it. Yeah, that. That's a

1080
01:08:35,640 --> 01:08:39,440
preservative. This. Preserve it, basically. Well, it's not preservative.

1081
01:08:39,440 --> 01:08:43,280
It's natural. It's a natural preservative. Preservative is not the word because we

1082
01:08:43,280 --> 01:08:46,240
associate that with chemistry only and

1083
01:08:46,880 --> 01:08:50,240
whatever you can use to preserve it. You know, everyone

1084
01:08:50,560 --> 01:08:54,030
has its lifespan based on the

1085
01:08:54,030 --> 01:08:57,590
structure that the fruit is going to provide. Right.

1086
01:08:58,150 --> 01:09:01,510
And the environment that it's being stored. All right.

1087
01:09:02,070 --> 01:09:05,830
So we make wine on great vintages,

1088
01:09:05,990 --> 01:09:09,430
which I would say is probably the great ones. As one out of three,

1089
01:09:11,190 --> 01:09:13,910
those will age 30 years, no problem.

1090
01:09:16,710 --> 01:09:20,540
The one lighter vintages year into about 10

1091
01:09:20,540 --> 01:09:23,820
years. Yeah. But they all will age so great.

1092
01:09:24,300 --> 01:09:27,660
What are you growing? I know you have Syrah. No,

1093
01:09:27,900 --> 01:09:31,700
no. Syrup? No, I've got. Well, we may

1094
01:09:31,700 --> 01:09:35,220
have bought some syrup to do an endless summer red.

1095
01:09:35,220 --> 01:09:37,100
Yeah. That's the only reason I know it is.

1096
01:09:38,860 --> 01:09:42,540
That's what I figured. What we have as an estate wine,

1097
01:09:42,700 --> 01:09:45,830
we have. We grow Merlot. Wow.

1098
01:09:47,190 --> 01:09:50,910
Cabernet and Malbec. All

1099
01:09:50,910 --> 01:09:54,470
Bordeaux varietals. All Bordeaux varietals. I do

1100
01:09:54,470 --> 01:09:58,030
have a little over an acre of Pinot

1101
01:09:58,030 --> 01:10:01,590
Noir, and I just planted between

1102
01:10:01,750 --> 01:10:05,470
rows a white varietal called Pic

1103
01:10:05,470 --> 01:10:09,270
Poul. Oh, Pic Poul de Panet. Yeah. One of my favorite wines at

1104
01:10:09,270 --> 01:10:12,760
the Wine of the Month Club when I featured them. Yeah. So when we first

1105
01:10:12,760 --> 01:10:16,400
established the vineyard, the rows were like eight

1106
01:10:16,400 --> 01:10:19,720
feet wide. But we have equipment so that we can go

1107
01:10:20,120 --> 01:10:23,560
between the rows. In one part, we put some pig pool.

1108
01:10:23,880 --> 01:10:26,120
That's pretty interesting. Yeah, it's pretty. Where

1109
01:10:28,280 --> 01:10:32,120
the Monterey never known, at least in the general area, for

1110
01:10:32,280 --> 01:10:36,120
Bordeaux varietals, though, there have been some good ones. Now I think everybody's learning.

1111
01:10:36,360 --> 01:10:38,840
But. But where is the vineyard that you. Well,

1112
01:10:39,800 --> 01:10:43,440
Monterey doesn't want to produce Bordeaux

1113
01:10:43,440 --> 01:10:47,080
varietals. Okay. The climate was produced

1114
01:10:47,480 --> 01:10:51,160
Sauvignon Blanch, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and some

1115
01:10:51,160 --> 01:10:54,880
other less popular, if you will. Where

1116
01:10:54,880 --> 01:10:58,360
are Carmel Valley Appellation,

1117
01:10:59,080 --> 01:11:02,680
which is a sub appellation within Monterey County?

1118
01:11:04,570 --> 01:11:07,930
Different influences of wind. Oh, yeah. We're in the little Valley,

1119
01:11:08,810 --> 01:11:12,570
and I think we may be five or six wineries there

1120
01:11:13,850 --> 01:11:17,410
in a couple of vineyards. And it gets hot in the

1121
01:11:17,410 --> 01:11:20,090
summertime. Monterey does not

1122
01:11:21,130 --> 01:11:24,850
where Pinot Noir grows. So we get the temperatures and

1123
01:11:24,850 --> 01:11:27,690
what is unique about, again, that's part of the terroir

1124
01:11:28,410 --> 01:11:31,130
during the day. In the summertime, we get temperatures

1125
01:11:32,360 --> 01:11:36,040
up to possibly 95, mostly upper 80s,

1126
01:11:36,520 --> 01:11:40,360
and the nights drop down to the 50s. Wow, that's great.

1127
01:11:40,680 --> 01:11:44,120
40 degree difference. Yeah, that's great. What that does.

1128
01:11:44,600 --> 01:11:48,440
And I learned this from a guy that grows cherries in the foothills of

1129
01:11:48,440 --> 01:11:51,400
the Sierras. It brings on color,

1130
01:11:53,400 --> 01:11:57,000
so we harvest later because we're not like

1131
01:11:57,000 --> 01:11:59,790
napa, where it's 90 degrees at midnight

1132
01:12:00,990 --> 01:12:04,830
and the fruit's hot. Our fruit is cold

1133
01:12:06,350 --> 01:12:09,990
in the morning from the night, and so it needs to

1134
01:12:09,990 --> 01:12:13,630
start up again through photosynthesis, as you know.

1135
01:12:14,190 --> 01:12:17,950
So our harvest is usually

1136
01:12:18,110 --> 01:12:21,590
towards the end of October. Napa is done by

1137
01:12:21,590 --> 01:12:25,390
September. September 15th. That's right. You're going deep into the.

1138
01:12:25,850 --> 01:12:29,610
Almost to the fall now. So you know about making a good sauce, right?

1139
01:12:30,090 --> 01:12:33,810
It's got to go slowly. Yeah. You can't make a good sauce.

1140
01:12:33,810 --> 01:12:37,530
Just hot heat, make it quick. So

1141
01:12:37,850 --> 01:12:41,290
I like to use that. It's a great analogy if you like the five mother

1142
01:12:41,290 --> 01:12:44,970
sauces. And you have to know that. Yeah, yeah. So

1143
01:12:48,810 --> 01:12:52,610
basically, for quite a while, we used to raise on part

1144
01:12:52,610 --> 01:12:55,610
of our property, we used to raise sheep for personal

1145
01:12:55,770 --> 01:12:59,490
consumption. And eventually my

1146
01:12:59,490 --> 01:13:03,210
insurance company. This is a boring story, but they said, do you have livestock?

1147
01:13:03,210 --> 01:13:07,050
Yes. Well, your insurance is doubling. I said, why?

1148
01:13:07,050 --> 01:13:10,850
Because they could run on the road and cause an accident. I said,

1149
01:13:10,850 --> 01:13:14,530
okay, we're getting rid of the sheep. We're going to put a plant, a

1150
01:13:14,530 --> 01:13:18,170
vineyard. That was their reason. Well, they'll find any

1151
01:13:18,170 --> 01:13:21,850
reason, but whatever. But it ends up

1152
01:13:22,650 --> 01:13:26,430
that that's the best parcel. And the way

1153
01:13:26,430 --> 01:13:30,070
I found that, well, was as I mentioned earlier, we do.

1154
01:13:31,110 --> 01:13:34,310
We keep the parcels separate of each other with

1155
01:13:34,710 --> 01:13:37,830
Vinify. And I had a psalm from France

1156
01:13:38,870 --> 01:13:42,470
from Van Gogh's Maison Van Gogh

1157
01:13:43,030 --> 01:13:45,590
north of Paris.

1158
01:13:46,710 --> 01:13:50,460
I had a connection with that

1159
01:13:50,460 --> 01:13:53,900
establishment. He came and we did barrel

1160
01:13:53,900 --> 01:13:57,340
tasting. And he says, God, those three barrels over there are really good and

1161
01:13:57,340 --> 01:14:01,020
exceptional. Now, this was a guy that drinks only French wines.

1162
01:14:01,740 --> 01:14:04,940
And I went back, looked at my record, and it was from that vineyard.

1163
01:14:05,660 --> 01:14:09,460
And I'm going, okay. Now, we harvested separately all

1164
01:14:09,460 --> 01:14:12,780
the time, and we ended up producing

1165
01:14:13,660 --> 01:14:16,130
a wine called Clos des Moutons.

1166
01:14:17,480 --> 01:14:19,640
Clos de Mouton. Not Mouton or Shield.

1167
01:14:20,920 --> 01:14:23,800
Yeah. Cheap. Yeah. But Clos de Mouton, which is

1168
01:14:24,520 --> 01:14:27,560
a cloister where we kept the sheep. Wow.

1169
01:14:28,360 --> 01:14:31,960
Now, that particular vineyard

1170
01:14:32,360 --> 01:14:34,680
clone, a friend of mine had visited

1171
01:14:36,040 --> 01:14:39,720
Chateau Petru's vineyard in the wintertime

1172
01:14:40,120 --> 01:14:43,390
and they were cutting out some of the vines and. And he picked up a

1173
01:14:43,390 --> 01:14:46,710
couple cuttings and sent them to me. Wow.

1174
01:14:47,030 --> 01:14:50,750
I planted them and propagated that. And

1175
01:14:50,750 --> 01:14:53,510
Claude Mouton is Chateau Petrus cologne.

1176
01:14:55,270 --> 01:14:59,030
Hey, that's pretty pedigree stuff right there. The wine

1177
01:14:59,990 --> 01:15:03,830
we had a. I have a distributor in Japan with a

1178
01:15:03,830 --> 01:15:06,630
blank tasting and our clothing with D

1179
01:15:08,000 --> 01:15:11,680
won the blank tasting with Petrus being the other

1180
01:15:11,680 --> 01:15:14,400
wine. Wow, that's pretty.

1181
01:15:15,840 --> 01:15:19,680
I know the winemaker and I own some

1182
01:15:19,680 --> 01:15:23,280
of that wine and I've drank older vintages back in the

1183
01:15:23,280 --> 01:15:27,080
50s and so on that I was able to get in Belgium and some

1184
01:15:27,080 --> 01:15:30,880
of the family cellars. But

1185
01:15:31,360 --> 01:15:34,790
the wine's exceptional. I've got to get your address, by the way.

1186
01:15:35,980 --> 01:15:39,820
Well, it's funny because I was telling this story about our first episode

1187
01:15:40,300 --> 01:15:44,020
to. I have coffee at Starbucks in the morning usually. And as a

1188
01:15:44,020 --> 01:15:47,780
regular guy there and regular friend. And I

1189
01:15:47,780 --> 01:15:51,260
told him, he goes. When I got. He got home that morning and he

1190
01:15:51,260 --> 01:15:54,980
faxed, texted me a picture of the endless bottle that

1191
01:15:54,980 --> 01:15:58,620
he apparently bought at your winery. He knew all about

1192
01:15:58,620 --> 01:16:02,460
you. And I thought, wow, how interesting is that? How random is that?

1193
01:16:02,460 --> 01:16:06,090
That I'm in Starbucks at Sierra Madre. Yeah. And he showed me the bottle. I

1194
01:16:06,090 --> 01:16:09,850
thought that was. That's why. Only reason I knew there was Syrah somewhere around. Right,

1195
01:16:09,850 --> 01:16:13,530
right, right, right. But I find this fascinating that you're making these

1196
01:16:13,610 --> 01:16:15,370
Bordeaux style wines and having.

1197
01:16:17,770 --> 01:16:21,210
Having this success with this. I think it's fascinating.

1198
01:16:21,690 --> 01:16:25,210
And the reason I brought the end of the story bottle is because Stephanie

1199
01:16:25,210 --> 01:16:29,010
Bois was here from Chateau Angelouz and

1200
01:16:29,010 --> 01:16:32,370
I did a tasting with her and they, they have a bottling of their

1201
01:16:32,370 --> 01:16:36,210
007 or 2007. Angelou's

1202
01:16:36,290 --> 01:16:39,570
in a magnum that celebrates

1203
01:16:39,890 --> 01:16:43,490
the movie Casino Royale with. With James

1204
01:16:43,490 --> 01:16:46,850
bond. Yeah. It's $7,000 retail.

1205
01:16:47,330 --> 01:16:50,450
Yeah. I think I can pick it up for a song at 3,000 for the

1206
01:16:50,450 --> 01:16:53,490
wholesaler. But they, but they don't.

1207
01:16:54,770 --> 01:16:58,450
They only have a handful of bottles left. And I've been trying, I was

1208
01:16:58,450 --> 01:17:02,130
trying to kind of court her into getting. Letting me buy one through the

1209
01:17:02,130 --> 01:17:05,970
distributor here in Los Angeles. You mentioned

1210
01:17:05,970 --> 01:17:08,690
though, you use Japan. We're going to be out of time here a second. We're

1211
01:17:08,690 --> 01:17:12,330
going to have to do this again because it's really fascinating. But use a

1212
01:17:12,330 --> 01:17:15,130
distributor in Japan. Do you make enough to

1213
01:17:15,610 --> 01:17:19,290
handle distribution that many countries? No,

1214
01:17:20,010 --> 01:17:23,750
no, I only just. I have one distributor that's in Japan.

1215
01:17:24,060 --> 01:17:27,900
That's it. Okay, this is going to loop around to one of the

1216
01:17:27,900 --> 01:17:31,580
questions about the economics. I have a wine

1217
01:17:31,580 --> 01:17:35,180
club and I have

1218
01:17:35,900 --> 01:17:39,620
three restaurants. So that's why you

1219
01:17:39,620 --> 01:17:42,940
can afford to have a winery. And so

1220
01:17:44,460 --> 01:17:48,100
the good Belgian business sense is, for me, I

1221
01:17:48,100 --> 01:17:51,190
wanted to make wine. I wasn't looking to make money,

1222
01:17:52,150 --> 01:17:54,470
but I knew it had to pay for itself.

1223
01:17:55,990 --> 01:17:58,950
So I'm able to do it because I have

1224
01:18:00,070 --> 01:18:02,870
the tasting rooms and the restaurants

1225
01:18:05,349 --> 01:18:08,950
and Japan, and I sell out.

1226
01:18:09,510 --> 01:18:13,310
That's a really, really good model, the Clos de Mouton. I

1227
01:18:13,310 --> 01:18:16,470
only do under 200 cases, depending on the vintages.

1228
01:18:17,000 --> 01:18:17,560
That's me.

1229
01:18:21,080 --> 01:18:24,680
And then the other flagship

1230
01:18:24,680 --> 01:18:27,240
wine is called La Chapelle. Okay.

1231
01:18:29,160 --> 01:18:32,440
The other thing that's interesting, Paul, is that

1232
01:18:34,920 --> 01:18:38,680
Sideways, the movie really damaged the industry

1233
01:18:39,480 --> 01:18:42,320
of anybody that produced Merlot. Right.

1234
01:18:43,270 --> 01:18:46,510
So people didn't know about it 10 years. It took more than 10 years to

1235
01:18:46,510 --> 01:18:50,350
recover. Exactly. So immediately I

1236
01:18:50,350 --> 01:18:53,030
figured I got to stop making Merlot.

1237
01:18:54,230 --> 01:18:57,510
But I'm Gros Merlot. So I changed my label.

1238
01:18:57,910 --> 01:19:01,190
The design was the same. I called it La Chapelle

1239
01:19:01,750 --> 01:19:05,350
and Crudemouc. That's

1240
01:19:05,350 --> 01:19:08,900
smart. So La Chapelle is a blend of Cabernet. ILF

1241
01:19:09,290 --> 01:19:12,570
fluctuates in percentages, so I'm not stuck

1242
01:19:12,970 --> 01:19:16,730
to the definition of the varietal

1243
01:19:16,890 --> 01:19:20,410
and those percentages. It's all about making the better wine.

1244
01:19:21,610 --> 01:19:24,650
All right. Yeah. But I still do

1245
01:19:25,450 --> 01:19:29,210
a little bit of Merlot from whatever's left from my

1246
01:19:29,210 --> 01:19:32,970
final blends. There's usually some odds and ends, and those are

1247
01:19:32,970 --> 01:19:35,610
being sold at a different price point.

1248
01:19:36,510 --> 01:19:39,950
Okay, so what is interesting now?

1249
01:19:42,430 --> 01:19:46,030
I don't remember which one it is, but one of the great

1250
01:19:47,310 --> 01:19:51,110
Pomerol, I believe producers has

1251
01:19:51,110 --> 01:19:54,430
decided because of the climate change

1252
01:19:56,430 --> 01:19:59,470
that they're going to be able to buy

1253
01:20:00,510 --> 01:20:04,120
fruit from outside of the appellation

1254
01:20:04,520 --> 01:20:08,360
in order to be able to make a better wine. And it will

1255
01:20:08,360 --> 01:20:11,720
not come out. Do the research. And it will not come out

1256
01:20:12,120 --> 01:20:15,960
as a Pomerol or Satign. I forget what

1257
01:20:16,760 --> 01:20:20,600
can't. Yeah, but it's going to come out under their label. But no

1258
01:20:20,600 --> 01:20:24,280
appellation, because they feel they can produce a better wine that

1259
01:20:24,280 --> 01:20:28,090
way, which means they extend their option for blending.

1260
01:20:29,450 --> 01:20:33,250
You know, that. That's a very historical viewpoint as well. But I think

1261
01:20:33,250 --> 01:20:37,010
I. I thought the Right bank, unlike the. Unlike the

1262
01:20:37,010 --> 01:20:40,770
classification where classification only classified the

1263
01:20:40,770 --> 01:20:44,410
chateau, it had nothing to do with the land necessarily. And in the Right bank,

1264
01:20:44,410 --> 01:20:48,250
it is the land that is being classified. But, you know, it

1265
01:20:48,250 --> 01:20:52,090
wasn't that long ago that all that stuff was perfectly accepted. I'm

1266
01:20:52,090 --> 01:20:55,760
talking about maybe the 40s and 50s, you know, they were buying juice

1267
01:20:55,760 --> 01:20:57,880
from all over the world and putting. It in Bordeaux

1268
01:20:59,400 --> 01:21:02,200
in the docks over in Bordeaux. There are

1269
01:21:02,920 --> 01:21:06,360
hoses coming out of there from north, you know,

1270
01:21:07,080 --> 01:21:10,439
and they needed color. They weren't getting color right.

1271
01:21:11,800 --> 01:21:15,560
And in Bordeaux, at the end of the roast, they would always have these other.

1272
01:21:16,360 --> 01:21:20,160
I don't know what the varietals are, but in French they call them vin

1273
01:21:20,160 --> 01:21:23,340
tatterrier. Wine to dye

1274
01:21:23,980 --> 01:21:27,460
color. Dye the wine. Oh, wow. Strictly for

1275
01:21:27,460 --> 01:21:31,100
color. I don't know that term. Yes.

1276
01:21:36,300 --> 01:21:39,580
Well, let's. We're going to wrap this up now. I don't want to. This is

1277
01:21:39,580 --> 01:21:42,540
a whole show in itself, but. And we'll do it again. Actually, we're going to

1278
01:21:42,540 --> 01:21:45,020
come up to Carmel and I'll bring my little studio

1279
01:21:46,140 --> 01:21:49,670
and we'll sit down there at the chateau and in the wine tasting room and,

1280
01:21:49,980 --> 01:21:53,500
and talk again. But you know, there is this current

1281
01:21:53,900 --> 01:21:57,700
issue with the trade. I'm not an alarmist, I'm not a doom

1282
01:21:57,700 --> 01:22:01,500
and gloomer. I think wine, wine

1283
01:22:01,500 --> 01:22:05,100
is the one product. This is what I try to tell people that

1284
01:22:05,180 --> 01:22:08,460
talk about how we need to change our way of thinking and we have to

1285
01:22:08,460 --> 01:22:11,700
put it in cans or put it in 100ml or whatever we're trying to do

1286
01:22:11,700 --> 01:22:15,260
to attract the consumer. Look, white Zinfandel did it in the 70s,

1287
01:22:15,640 --> 01:22:18,840
Lancers, you know, Matuse, all those.

1288
01:22:19,240 --> 01:22:22,600
Boone's Farm. I had to tell you a funny story. I met this barbecue

1289
01:22:23,000 --> 01:22:26,800
in Texas. It's this championship and I went and visited

1290
01:22:26,800 --> 01:22:30,320
a couple of his trailers as they're smoking their meats and the guy's literally

1291
01:22:30,320 --> 01:22:34,160
drinking Boone's Farm out of a bottle. And it

1292
01:22:34,160 --> 01:22:37,560
says wine on the label. So look, we need those kinds of wines into the

1293
01:22:37,560 --> 01:22:41,030
industry. But the point I'm going to make is wine is

1294
01:22:41,340 --> 01:22:44,860
wine is the product that doesn't shouldn't change.

1295
01:22:44,860 --> 01:22:48,700
Wine is what you're doing. An honest glass of wine is produced

1296
01:22:48,780 --> 01:22:52,580
based on what the vineyard provided. And it doesn't change for

1297
01:22:52,580 --> 01:22:55,740
the consumer. The consumer has to change for it.

1298
01:22:56,380 --> 01:22:59,940
And that's a unique part of the product. Any other product in the world you

1299
01:22:59,940 --> 01:23:03,740
can manipulate to do something, but it takes away from its

1300
01:23:03,740 --> 01:23:07,130
honesty. And so the industry's

1301
01:23:07,600 --> 01:23:11,240
suffering a little bit. You're not in the sense of you have you built this

1302
01:23:11,240 --> 01:23:14,880
beautiful model where you're selling. Of course the wine has to be.

1303
01:23:15,040 --> 01:23:18,000
What's in the bottle has to be very good in order for this model to

1304
01:23:18,000 --> 01:23:21,720
work. That's the key. But a lot of people that

1305
01:23:21,720 --> 01:23:25,520
over planted that Were projecting five years down the road, and now we

1306
01:23:25,520 --> 01:23:29,280
have a glut. They're tearing out vineyards. And my

1307
01:23:29,280 --> 01:23:31,920
advice to most of these people that are in the honest side of it is

1308
01:23:31,920 --> 01:23:34,820
just, you got to stay the course. You know, if you can afford to stay

1309
01:23:34,820 --> 01:23:38,580
the course, it's going to. The honesty is going to pay off. The

1310
01:23:38,580 --> 01:23:42,380
honesty is going to be dyed in the wool.

1311
01:23:43,020 --> 01:23:46,780
Well, I have to. If I may interrupt you. I'll

1312
01:23:46,780 --> 01:23:50,580
add two to that. You'll find very few people that are the

1313
01:23:50,580 --> 01:23:54,300
winemaker, viticulturist, and owner.

1314
01:23:54,620 --> 01:23:58,220
Yeah. Very few. Good point. And those that

1315
01:23:58,220 --> 01:24:00,290
are not over planting

1316
01:24:01,880 --> 01:24:05,680
because they know intuitively. Intuitively

1317
01:24:05,680 --> 01:24:08,840
what's going on. That makes a ton of sense. The other thing is

1318
01:24:09,800 --> 01:24:13,000
there may be a reduction in

1319
01:24:13,160 --> 01:24:16,920
consumption, but I

1320
01:24:16,920 --> 01:24:20,760
look at the wine almost like a perfume. Not

1321
01:24:20,760 --> 01:24:23,400
everybody can afford the special quality

1322
01:24:24,280 --> 01:24:27,970
scents that are expensive, that have been made from

1323
01:24:29,490 --> 01:24:33,010
essential oils and so on. But the best stuff

1324
01:24:33,410 --> 01:24:37,250
is all. Always gets sold. Yeah. Because there's always

1325
01:24:37,250 --> 01:24:40,210
an enthusiast for that. And I always say,

1326
01:24:40,770 --> 01:24:43,890
drink less and better. That's my

1327
01:24:43,890 --> 01:24:47,690
philosophy. And I, you know, my. Similar to that. I drink as much

1328
01:24:47,690 --> 01:24:48,690
as I can, but better.

1329
01:24:51,570 --> 01:24:55,350
I can afford. Well, it's good

1330
01:24:55,350 --> 01:24:59,070
to have good friends. Yes, that's right. Well, you know, my.

1331
01:24:59,150 --> 01:25:02,830
My daughter. Unfortunately, her home was not burned in the fires in

1332
01:25:02,830 --> 01:25:06,350
Altadena, but it was affected, so they're living with us. Oh.

1333
01:25:06,830 --> 01:25:10,670
Which is fine. I. I have my three grandkids. Special time. It's a very special

1334
01:25:10,670 --> 01:25:14,110
time. We had a great time. The only negative to it is

1335
01:25:15,230 --> 01:25:18,590
when I sold the Wine of the Month club, the buyer wanted none of my

1336
01:25:18,670 --> 01:25:22,380
premium vintages here. And I have. I don't know, I had like 3,000 bottles of

1337
01:25:22,540 --> 01:25:26,300
all kinds of stuff, including Petrus Magnums, but all kinds

1338
01:25:26,300 --> 01:25:29,980
of boutique Napa and all kinds of classified growth

1339
01:25:29,980 --> 01:25:33,340
and lots of Grand Cru and Premier Crew Burgundy. And

1340
01:25:33,660 --> 01:25:36,620
they didn't want it, which was great. So I have this stash.

1341
01:25:37,340 --> 01:25:41,140
So I built a cellar at the house, which holds about 900 bottles in our

1342
01:25:41,140 --> 01:25:44,860
kitchen. Nice. But the depletion is going much faster than expected,

1343
01:25:47,540 --> 01:25:51,340
so I have to thank goodness I still have my licenses. I can

1344
01:25:51,340 --> 01:25:54,660
still buy stuff wholesale, but whatever. There you go. There you go. I have a

1345
01:25:54,660 --> 01:25:58,300
special relationship with somebody. That's right. Let me know if you have a

1346
01:25:58,300 --> 01:26:02,020
problem. It's a great honor to have you on the show,

1347
01:26:02,099 --> 01:26:05,500
and I look forward to meeting you in person and doing it again, because we

1348
01:26:05,500 --> 01:26:08,260
have a lot to talk about. Let me know. We'll open up a nice Pile

1349
01:26:08,260 --> 01:26:11,380
of Claude. I'd love to do that. That sounds like a fun.

1350
01:26:12,030 --> 01:26:15,630
Okay. Thanks again, Walter. I really appreciate the time. And good luck.

1351
01:26:16,350 --> 01:26:19,390
Good luck means keep doing what you're doing.

1352
01:26:20,110 --> 01:26:23,390
Exactly. And thank you for taking me on this journey of

1353
01:26:23,390 --> 01:26:26,990
reflection and kind of digging in a little bit and

1354
01:26:27,710 --> 01:26:31,430
not losing sight of what's important. Well, you

1355
01:26:31,430 --> 01:26:35,270
know, it's funny you said that and appreciate that. It is about the

1356
01:26:35,270 --> 01:26:39,050
stories and it's. That's what builds businesses,

1357
01:26:39,050 --> 01:26:42,570
of what builds a life and what builds. I just realized this when I got

1358
01:26:42,570 --> 01:26:45,370
home from Paris, Texas. I was there for a week. My wife's there for a

1359
01:26:45,370 --> 01:26:48,050
month. My daughter had her fourth child.

1360
01:26:49,170 --> 01:26:52,450
You know, when I take the kids to the barbecue,

1361
01:26:53,010 --> 01:26:56,690
then there's huge barbecue and he's. I think they're 4 and 3

1362
01:26:56,690 --> 01:27:00,290
or 5 and 4. Those are the stories that they're going to tell.

1363
01:27:00,930 --> 01:27:04,370
Those are the influences they're going to have in their lives. And. And you get

1364
01:27:04,370 --> 01:27:06,830
to do that with your wine and your restaurant. And that's

1365
01:27:08,020 --> 01:27:11,620
sometimes hard to keep that target

1366
01:27:11,860 --> 01:27:15,140
because people that walk into your restaurants and get that experience.

1367
01:27:16,500 --> 01:27:20,260
It's got to be warming. It's got to be. Yes. Thing I

1368
01:27:20,260 --> 01:27:23,980
may not have told you about this is. You can

1369
01:27:23,980 --> 01:27:27,460
edit this out, but during the Battle of the

1370
01:27:27,460 --> 01:27:30,660
Bulge is when I was born and

1371
01:27:30,980 --> 01:27:34,790
middle of it, my parents had to evacuate from the

1372
01:27:34,790 --> 01:27:37,710
house. Wow. To the next village

1373
01:27:38,510 --> 01:27:42,150
where my mother gave birth to me in a

1374
01:27:42,150 --> 01:27:45,910
wine cellar. Wow. How crazy that we should have

1375
01:27:45,910 --> 01:27:47,230
started with that conversation.

1376
01:27:50,910 --> 01:27:54,670
That's pretty incredible. That's incredible because I forgot the Baston.

1377
01:27:55,470 --> 01:27:58,730
Yeah. If you look it up

1378
01:27:59,600 --> 01:28:03,320
later, my hometown was Malmedi, where there

1379
01:28:03,320 --> 01:28:06,400
was a huge massacre. That's in the movie.

1380
01:28:07,680 --> 01:28:11,280
They talk about that town in the movie. Yeah. So that's where I was

1381
01:28:11,280 --> 01:28:14,919
raised. Oh, my gosh. And our farm. My

1382
01:28:14,919 --> 01:28:18,760
father was a farrier. In our backyard, in the garden, we

1383
01:28:18,760 --> 01:28:22,000
had two American tanks broken down. Tanks

1384
01:28:23,040 --> 01:28:26,890
still. Not now. When you grew up. When you grew

1385
01:28:26,890 --> 01:28:30,650
up. I grew up, yeah. Wow. And when

1386
01:28:30,650 --> 01:28:34,450
the snow melted, 1945 was a very cold year. When the

1387
01:28:34,450 --> 01:28:38,210
snow melted, there was a hand sticking out

1388
01:28:38,210 --> 01:28:41,770
of. Out of the snow. And it was

1389
01:28:41,770 --> 01:28:44,570
like a young 16 year old German soldier.

1390
01:28:46,330 --> 01:28:50,170
And my mother never planted vegetables there again. She just planted

1391
01:28:50,170 --> 01:28:53,240
flowers. That is an amazing story.

1392
01:28:54,360 --> 01:28:57,640
That's what I'm talking about. That's what's going to come back into your wines. How

1393
01:28:57,640 --> 01:29:01,000
can you. How can that not be part of your history? Exactly.

1394
01:29:01,720 --> 01:29:05,480
So leave it at that then. That's amazing. And as kids

1395
01:29:05,480 --> 01:29:08,440
we would look for bullets. And take.

1396
01:29:08,840 --> 01:29:12,280
Separate the shell and light the gunpowder

1397
01:29:12,280 --> 01:29:15,480
powder. The gunpowder burn. Look at me around.

1398
01:29:15,880 --> 01:29:19,020
Burned our hair often and. Yeah.

1399
01:29:19,980 --> 01:29:23,340
You know what? Do you travel to Paris much? Yeah,

1400
01:29:24,620 --> 01:29:28,220
I think, you know, we're there. Well, I would live there if I could.

1401
01:29:28,460 --> 01:29:32,300
Yeah. The clad strips live there. They're. He's a. They're

1402
01:29:32,300 --> 01:29:35,660
American expats. She just finished the book called

1403
01:29:35,660 --> 01:29:39,500
Eugenie, about the Princess Eugenie, which is a

1404
01:29:39,500 --> 01:29:43,340
great story. It just got published. And they're also, like I

1405
01:29:43,340 --> 01:29:47,160
told you earlier, the. The authors of the book, Wine and War,

1406
01:29:48,040 --> 01:29:51,880
which started with a conversation with Monsieur Hue, you know,

1407
01:29:51,880 --> 01:29:55,400
from the Loire, and he was just opening a bottle of

1408
01:29:55,400 --> 01:29:58,920
45. I guess it's

1409
01:29:58,920 --> 01:30:01,560
Sauvignon Blanc or chin a blanc. Huh. And.

1410
01:30:03,400 --> 01:30:07,000
And they. He. He says, guess what this is? And they were

1411
01:30:07,000 --> 01:30:10,770
guessing in this. This is about 2000, 2001. They were guessing it

1412
01:30:10,770 --> 01:30:13,450
was from the 70s. He goes, no, this is. This is the vintage that kept

1413
01:30:13,450 --> 01:30:16,850
me alive in the prison of war camp I was in.

1414
01:30:17,250 --> 01:30:20,290
Because he was at Cayet. Yeah. And

1415
01:30:20,930 --> 01:30:24,730
it would be a fascinating dinner if we ever. Oh, wouldn't

1416
01:30:24,730 --> 01:30:28,130
that. Yeah. And they're wonderful people. He was the ABC

1417
01:30:28,130 --> 01:30:31,890
correspondent for. For 40 years in America, in France,

1418
01:30:32,210 --> 01:30:35,330
with. When our kids were little, we moved to Paris for a year.

1419
01:30:35,980 --> 01:30:39,780
Took him out of school because I always felt, never let school

1420
01:30:39,780 --> 01:30:42,780
interfere with your education. So.

1421
01:30:43,420 --> 01:30:46,380
Il sa Louis. The little island behind Notre Dame.

1422
01:30:47,180 --> 01:30:50,740
Wow. Yeah. Beautiful. We lived above Bertillon. Ice

1423
01:30:50,740 --> 01:30:54,220
cream. And by the way, to wrap it up, my last

1424
01:30:54,220 --> 01:30:57,020
name is Greek.

1425
01:30:57,900 --> 01:31:01,420
Yes. Georis,

1426
01:31:01,930 --> 01:31:05,650
from the earth. Oh, wow. It's all come together,

1427
01:31:05,650 --> 01:31:09,290
full circle. It's like.

1428
01:31:09,450 --> 01:31:13,210
What? I love it. I look forward to having this

1429
01:31:13,210 --> 01:31:16,490
conversation in Carmel. Yeah. Come on up.

1430
01:31:17,369 --> 01:31:20,370
We'll have a bite to eat and have a nice bottle of wine. I love

1431
01:31:20,370 --> 01:31:24,010
it. Okay. Look forward to it. Take care, Walter. Thanks so much.

1432
01:31:24,010 --> 01:31:25,130
Bye. Bye. Bye.