From IT To Wine. Garry And Joanne Brooks Could Not Shake The Dream Of A Winery

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I think wine is the least pretentious thing. It's like we're just rotting

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fruit. Right. It's sort of ideally we do it well, sometimes we

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don't. That's what I'm saying. It's the same beverage as it was. It is, right?

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It's the same beverage that it was. And I think that when

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you make it too pretentious, it makes it hard for people to be really

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interested in it. 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 K. And we are in studio today in

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beautiful Southern California, about to have a conversation with Gary Brooks, the chief

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bottle washer at Brooks Note Winery. Introductions in just a second.

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Hey, listen to my new podcast called Song of America. The first release

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is coming up soon. And Song of America is the name of a book written

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by George Mardickian, the famed restaurateur who was

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President Eisenhower's culinary expert who traveled the world fixing

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the army's food. And he wrote a book called the Song of America.

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And it's a great story of coming to America and being

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successful at his trade. So I got permission from the family to use

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the name and that. Hence Song of America coming out. First show is the

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Agojanian family, one of the great racing families in

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America, as well as Armenian heritage as well as LA

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history. So have a listen to that. But now while we're here, here to talk

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to Gary Brooks. I'm glad you stopped by, Gary. We've had a lot of fun

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having this conversation, but welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me.

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Pretty cool. It's your first adventure out of Petaluma.

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In a minute since COVID Yeah, it's sort of.

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Yeah. I mean, we've done a couple little private parties around, but this

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is really my first time getting out and meeting a bunch of folks in

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la. It's been fantastic. We're all right, huh? Yeah.

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Yeah. Turns out so. But did

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you. Were you. Did I say something? Were you raised in Petaluma? You know, I

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grew up in Annapolis, Maryland. So, you know, and

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I was in the Navy. My naval. Isn't the naval school

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in Annapolis. Yeah, when you grow up in Annapolis, you realize you don't want to

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go to the Naval Academy. Those poor guys are out there

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and ladies, they're marching around in 103 degree

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weather and 100% humidity and it looks horrible. So

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I did ROTC and I went to Duke, but my first

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ship was in San Diego. And if you had told me

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when I was 17 that I would be living in California. I would

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have told you you were crazy. Really? San Diego's really cool, though.

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It's really cool. And then, I mean, so don't cry. For my service.

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I was in San Diego for a couple years and then we moved home ports

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to Pearl Harbor. So another tough duty

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station. And I did that. And then

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the segue into wine is that as I was flying

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back from Pearl harbor to get my MBA at the

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University of San Diego, I sat next to a young woman who was

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starting her viticulture and enology degree

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at UC Davis. And I kind of did this mental head slap. Like

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growing up in Annapolis, I didn't know any winemakers, and I didn't even know that

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was a job. And then I learned that

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you could go to wine school. I'm like, what?

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You could do what? Yeah, that was pretty. So that's interesting because

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that is. That is one of the paths. In fact, I just sent one of

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my interns here at the Wine of the Month Club to

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Cornell. She was so interested in wine that she also.

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Also another great school. Like another. It's. Who knew? I guess there's, there's. I

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mean, when I, When I kind of started down this path 20 years ago,

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there weren't as many wine programs, but now I think there's

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maybe one in all 50 states or at least one big wine. You know,

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that's a lot different than investing in creating. And it looks

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like you have. We have six varietals here on how many wines you're making

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now, but too many. We're making too many. They're delicious. But,

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you know, it's probably more skews. Than again, going to school.

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And we could probably take the path of conversation now. Going to school versus being

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a seller rat and working your way up. And that's. I'll challenge you with a

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question later. But you get out of

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school and you like, okay, I need probably capital and I need a place.

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And I have to decide if I'm going to go to Europe and try to,

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you know, know, cut my teeth. Out there first or you know what I think?

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So for me, I was lucky.

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I had some fantastic advice. When

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I jumped off the cliff, I quit my day job.

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It took me a minute, thanks, to get to the wine business. So

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I was in consulting for a little bit. I met

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my wife Joanne at Accenture. Back in the day,

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when you got. Married, what were you doing? I was in lower

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middle management working in a cube. I was an IT

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project manager at Gap in downtown San

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Francisco. And your wife said, this is okay, but we should completely chase a wild

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hare. I know, right? Like, I got lucky.

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No, she encouraged me. I was not fulfilled going to my

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cube every day. And we

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had planted a Little Vineyard in 2002 at my sister in law's

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house. And going up to prune

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300 vines, it was a little bit like

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Christmas Eve. It'd be Friday night, and I'll be all excited.

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And I was never that way about going into the office. And my

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wife encouraged me to jump off the cliff

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and head in a totally different direction and so give up

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some actual income and go to work in the

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wine business. So I got lucky. But one of her friends

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was the family that

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owned Old World Wines up in Windsor. So

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Derek Trowbridge, and he gave me some great advice. He was like, listen, there's a

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couple different ways to get into the wine business. And

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one way to do it is to try to go to school and

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start at the top. And the other way is to go and be a seller

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rat and start at the bottom. And I did both of those

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while I was going back to school. Turns out that my C's in

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chemistry from college were not good enough for UC

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Davis. So I went and I had to take a bunch of other classes.

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But while I was doing that, I went to work at Ravenswood

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in the lab, in the cellar. And so I was.

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You know, they hired me for a harvest, and then

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they were generous enough to let me come in and work in the

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lab on weekends or work in the cellar

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when I could. And I did that for the couple

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years that I was taking the classes I needed to get into Davis. And then

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once I was in, I finished up the whole winemaking program in

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Davis. And I was like, 13 months. Are they still around Ravenswood?

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No, they're not. Something happened to them. Yeah, I don't

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really know. I think that the brand got sold,

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probably bought up. Yeah. Pretty prolific wine at the time, though. It was pretty

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prolific wine, but I met. So I worked for Joel Peters,

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and Morgan probably doesn't remember me, but

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I was at Ravenswood when he was doing one of his first harvests in the

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wine business. So kind of when Bedrock.

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Morgan Peterson. Yeah, yeah, he's been on the show, actually. Well,

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and now Morgan is a. He's a rock star. I am still

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slogging away. Well, this is interesting because I

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have the woman, the young girl I sent to. I didn't

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send her, but who got into Cornell, whose interest was partially inspired

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by the Club. Their parents planted a Little Vineyard, about

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150 vines, and that was part of her sort of

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indoctrination and inspiration. But the difference

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is, her father is a good friend of mine, is a developer by trade, says,

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this is the stupidest business I've ever been in. Oh, it's terrible. It's

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like, as a. So that's a big difference, you know, and you sort of. You

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sort of start off in this, and you're like, oh, man, one day I'm gonna

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have my own wines and have my own brand and that kind of stuff.

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So I worked for the man for a little bit and made wine along the

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way. And then my wife and I started BrooksNote in

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2012 with 35,000 bucks.

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Wow. But 12 years or 13 years, now, that's pretty good

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run. Tilting at windmills for a while. And

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we were selling. I always say we were selling wine off the back of my

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truck, but it's like going to little tastings and meeting

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people and kind of growing the business

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and. Yeah, it's terrible. Like, it takes a lot

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of capital. Like, you don't see any return on your investment for three

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years. And if you do. If you do.

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But. But it's a. It. You know, I. It helps that you. If you

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love what you do, then you don't really. There's a whole bunch of metrics out

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there. Talk about. Well, one of them is, like, probably 4000 or 5000 winemakers in

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California alone. And you know that not every one of them is this passionate

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person that could do what you're doing. Right. Some just go to corporate. Corporate

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winemaking, and they. They love it, but they're not prepared to jump in. I

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think they have to go to corporate winemaking, but, you know, at some. Point, but

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get out and do your own. You know, I'm lucky. It's sort of, you know,

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we're in a position where, you know, my.

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My folks actually kind of moved with us up to

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Northern California. And so when I was going back

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to school, I had somebody who could help us take care of the kids. We

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didn't have to pay for childcare. You got all the breaks, didn't

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we? We got a lot of breaks. Like a village to make a winemaker,

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you know, and if. If you'd taken all of the money that, you know, we.

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That. That we saved and invested in this, I. You'd think I'd

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be in a more lucrative, lucrative job, but. Well,

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look, chasing dollars, you certainly did

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not and would not know whatever tell you unless you're

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chasing the wine business for the dollar. In other words, I've had people sit

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in that chair, that their whole ambition clearly was to do something

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in the wine trade, that they would get bought up and gobbled up by some

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big, big thing and make their, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars because they

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have market share on the shelf at the supermarket. And

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yeah, I mean, like, doubt. That's definitely, yeah, I think that's

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the, I, you know, that's the,

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that's certainly one path. I mean, we, you know, I, I, I

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really love what I do and I,

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you know, I fell in love with Pinot Noir along the way, which,

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which has been fantastic. And, you know, I, I guess you could say

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that what we do, what I do is art. And, and

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I have a, I have a really specific perspective on, on what we do.

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So here's the, here's the thought of the word of art in wine because

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you went to school, you did all the metrics, you did the science and the

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chemistry and the biology. And you, you know, and as, you know, as people in

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the show have heard that it starts in the vineyard and you have to take

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with, you know, what, what you get and make a wine.

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And I had this conversation yesterday with this French

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winemaker and he goes, I'm going to use that. And that comment was,

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you know, there's no such thing as a bad vintage. If you're

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making an honest wine, you're doing it the right way and you're, you're representing what

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Petaluma is giving you in the different vineyards in the different areas,

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and you do that, then the wine is successful, regardless of the fact that

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it may not be as tasteful as the one you had before. But if you

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create an honest wine that represents the vintage and the place, then there's no

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bad vintages. But that's not the point. In order to get

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there, the art seems to be not

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in the phenolic ripeness, not in the ph, not in the acid content, not

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in the brix, not in the things that you do to help guide your

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harvest, but in your ability to understand

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going into that harvest, what you think is happening and what

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that wine will be like. You know, I think you're right. So

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you start off with a perspective on,

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well, you start off with some fruit, right? You've got a vineyard that

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you're working with. In a perfect world, you've made wine from there

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for before long time. So you have an idea of

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what you're going to get from the vineyard. And then

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Mother Nature Just throws a bunch of curves your way.

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And sometimes it's rain, sometimes it's

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cold, foggy weather, sometimes it's a late bud break, and

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sometimes it's smoke and fire.

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You have a perspective, and then you have tools.

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So the chemistry that you learn at Davis

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or working in a lab or wherever you kind of picked it up, and the

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biology and the craft that you learned working in a cellar,

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you put all of those tools together and

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you try to create the wine

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that you had sort of in your mind's eye when you started the whole process.

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And then you have to adjust along the way. It's sort of. It's the.

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Maybe you get the heat spike and the

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fruit is riper than you want it to be. And so you were thinking you

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were going to do something that had a little restraint, but. But

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the grapes arrive and they're 27 bricks, and you're

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like, okay, well, so now what do we do? So

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how do you take what you've been given? And maybe you've got these

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tools that you've developed over a couple years of

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working on your own or working for the man, or however you get there,

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and you try to put together

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the best wine you can from the circumstances. You were at corporate.

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I would say Ravens would be corporate at that time. Especially in the. The that

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era, they were pretty popular wines. What did you learn there?

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Or maybe you didn't learn anything in this regard as to what headwinds you might

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encounter building a brand. Because the wine business

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really is two businesses. Making wine and putting in the bottle. Which is great,

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but it's the easy part. What are you going to do with it? Yeah, I

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can tell you that the club, the. That's my father in that picture there, that

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he started in 1972, really was based on the premise that there's always

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something really good to buy that people just didn't know what to do with.

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There is. And so. So I would say it

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really wasn't until I went out on my own and I started

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BrooksNote that I figured out

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how hard it was to actually be in business.

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I mean, so at Ravenswood, you know, you think about it. My first

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day at Ravenswood, I sampled.

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I'm sure that this is OSHA approved, but there were

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six high stacks of barrels as

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far as you could see in the barrel room. And I sampled a lot.

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That was 1,000 barrels of wine. So

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at Ravenswood, the scale was

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enormous. But the thing that was really cool about that

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job was that, you know, we would

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have 200 tanks fermenting at a time.

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And my job was to come in at 4:30 in the morning

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and measure the sugar level and write down the temperature. This was

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before networking and taste

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every single tank. So throughout the course of harvest, I got a

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chance to taste hundreds of wines. And

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some of them were great. You don't really always learn the stuff learned very much

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from, like, if that tank tastes great the whole time, then

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you don't really learn anything. But when it tastes terrible, and then you

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see the winemakers and the things that they do to sort

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of fix those problems or adjust the fermentation

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so that it goes in the right direction, I get a chance to see that

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over and over. And I think that was the value there. And then I

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worked a harvest at Acacia, which was super fun. I was

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the grape sampler there. No, Acacia was still sort of a

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private group, smaller group. You know, they had just got bought

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when I was there. They were still functioning probably they were. Still kind of

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in transition at that point. And

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Paul Hobbs had just kind of come on as their consulting

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winemaker. But my job was mostly in the vineyard. So

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I was the grape sampler. I would. I strapped two buckets to

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the side of my mountain bike and I went for a six

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hour ride in the vineyards every day. Wow. It was in good shape. I was

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in great shape. Holy cow. And then I got

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hired after that at Costa Brown. I was enologist there for a couple years.

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I mean, and really that's. I think I learned how to

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make pinot from Michael and Shane

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Finley and Ryan o' Donnell. And that was,

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you know, what I do today isn't that different from

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what I did there. So Petaluma, it's

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a relatively new appellation. I think I had the

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Trombettas on the show and she was sort of part of that group that

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created Petaluma for the listeners. Petaluma runs east, west,

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kind of dumps itself into Sonoma Valley. Was that in the middle of the

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Sonoma Valley? Well, you know, it's kind of at the. So the way I

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00:17:40,390 --> 00:17:43,830
explain it is that. So there's a break in the coastal range right around the

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town of Bodega Bay. And as the air heats up

281
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in Sacramento, it pulls wind and fog in from

282
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the coast. And it's the wind that makes the Petaluma Gap

283
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such an amazing place to grow grapes.

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It's sort of. If you, I don't know, think back to your grade school

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00:18:03,910 --> 00:18:07,710
geometry, the Petaluma Gap sort of looks like a rhombus. I got an A

286
00:18:07,710 --> 00:18:11,430
in geometry. Yeah. Good. That's. That's the. This will. This will. That.

287
00:18:11,430 --> 00:18:14,470
That'll help with the analogy, then. So it's like.

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00:18:15,190 --> 00:18:18,670
It looks like a rhombus, with one side of the

289
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rhombus is the. Is the coast, and the other side, the west

290
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side, is the coast. The east side is the ridgeline of Sonoma Mountain

291
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and the Katati Grade, sort of the

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northern end of the Petaluma Gap. The southern end, there's

293
00:18:33,990 --> 00:18:36,310
actually a little triangle that dips down into Marin County.

294
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But that area in there is the Petaluma Gap, and it's defined by wind.

295
00:18:41,510 --> 00:18:45,310
So it's. The average wind speed during the growing

296
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season is 7 mph above. And if it's

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lower than that, you're not allowed to be in the Petaluma Gap. Way

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up in the. My favorite California district

299
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for Pinot was Way up by Seafarer and

300
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Wayfarer and way up. Oh, yeah. But the

301
00:19:03,630 --> 00:19:07,470
complexity and the finesse and the genteel nature of the

302
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Petaluma wines is fast becoming one of the. One of the great

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00:19:11,270 --> 00:19:14,870
districts of California, in particular, Pinot Noir. Well, and when I was at. When I

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was at Costa Brown, I think, you know, I was

305
00:19:18,550 --> 00:19:22,190
no, in no way involved in decision making in the. You know, in

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making that. That 2009 Sonoma Coast

307
00:19:25,830 --> 00:19:29,630
Pinot was the Wine Spectator wine of the year. But about 85% of that

308
00:19:29,630 --> 00:19:32,390
was from the Petaluma Gap, from Terra do Permisio

309
00:19:33,350 --> 00:19:36,710
and Gap's crown. But how did you end up there?

310
00:19:37,110 --> 00:19:40,910
How did I end up at. Yeah, I mean, that's. Well, you know how. It's

311
00:19:40,910 --> 00:19:44,429
like, all roads lead to kind of

312
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converge Burgundy. You know what?

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When I finished my harvest dedication, I actually

314
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went back to Ravenswood for a minute. I started looking for a gig, and

315
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I saw this crazy article in the Spectator about

316
00:20:00,360 --> 00:20:04,200
Costa Brown and these cool guys that were making this amazing Pinot.

317
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I was like, damn, I want to do that. And I sent my resume in

318
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because I'd been working in the lab at Ravenswood for, I don't

319
00:20:12,200 --> 00:20:15,880
know, two, three years at that point. And I'd been working in the cellar there

320
00:20:15,880 --> 00:20:19,320
a bit, too. And it turns out that Shane Finley

321
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was the associate winemaker there. He went to.

322
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I don't remember. It was vmi, something like that. But he really liked to hire

323
00:20:26,320 --> 00:20:29,880
military guys. And so my Navy background

324
00:20:30,280 --> 00:20:33,960
and my degree from Davis and my experience at Ravenswood

325
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somehow got me a job at Costa Brown. And that was when Costa

326
00:20:38,040 --> 00:20:41,480
Brown was. They were

327
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the new cult Pinot on The block. And so

328
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it was, I'm gonna have. To drink a bottle tonight just because I was telling

329
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the story. It was so really lucky on

330
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my part. And then I work ass off. I worked hard. And there

331
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are some things that they were doing there

332
00:21:02,020 --> 00:21:05,620
that really fit into my background, too. So I'd come out of consulting.

333
00:21:05,620 --> 00:21:09,340
I'd worked at Accenture for a couple of years. And so I had this

334
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real process orientation. And

335
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Costa Brown was growing like crazy at that point,

336
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and they were looking for ways to.

337
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To help keep the quality

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of the wines as they grew. And I

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think Ryan o' Donnell and Shane both recognized that

340
00:21:33,490 --> 00:21:36,610
one of the things that was going to be successful in that was

341
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documenting processes and kind of the boring stuff that

342
00:21:40,770 --> 00:21:44,450
corporate America does all the time that I had been doing for a minute.

343
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And it was great, because then I was using these skills that I had picked

344
00:21:49,370 --> 00:21:52,330
up, you know, in the. In my previous life

345
00:21:53,050 --> 00:21:56,810
while I was working in kind of a dream job. It's kind of funny how

346
00:21:58,890 --> 00:22:02,650
in this case, you're reading the News Spectator. It could.

347
00:22:02,650 --> 00:22:04,490
It doesn't have to be even in wine. It could be,

348
00:22:06,410 --> 00:22:10,010
I think, for me, for podcasting, after selling, you know, 17

349
00:22:10,010 --> 00:22:13,810
million bottles of wine, and I saw it happening, I went

350
00:22:13,810 --> 00:22:17,620
to go visit. It's very interesting story. Real quickly,

351
00:22:17,780 --> 00:22:21,500
I was asked to come consult with somebody to start a wine

352
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club, and it was a very famous comedian. Adam Carolla.

353
00:22:25,100 --> 00:22:27,900
Yeah. And I thought, why would I go? Why would I want to tell them

354
00:22:27,900 --> 00:22:30,620
how to do a wine club? They'd be competing against me. But I went because

355
00:22:30,620 --> 00:22:33,740
I get to see his car collection. Sure. Well, that sounds good. And then he

356
00:22:33,740 --> 00:22:36,260
walks in and he's gonna go in the studio and look in the street. I

357
00:22:36,260 --> 00:22:39,740
want to do that. I mean, it's. All of a sudden the light bulb goes

358
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off, and you're saying, you know, hey, this looks pretty interesting.

359
00:22:43,600 --> 00:22:47,280
Yeah, I kind of want to do this. And it shapes,

360
00:22:47,280 --> 00:22:50,800
like, your decision making, and it creates a goal.

361
00:22:52,240 --> 00:22:55,880
You know, I think that, you know, when you step into the wine

362
00:22:55,880 --> 00:22:59,520
business, it's, you know, it's

363
00:22:59,520 --> 00:23:03,320
bright lights and, you know, and twinkly stars, and

364
00:23:03,320 --> 00:23:07,160
there's. You're in a candy store. Like, there's. It's the

365
00:23:07,160 --> 00:23:10,680
coolest thing ever. And so

366
00:23:10,840 --> 00:23:14,680
for me, I was a little overwhelmed just

367
00:23:15,640 --> 00:23:19,480
learning from a fire hose or

368
00:23:19,480 --> 00:23:22,200
drinking from a fire hose. I think that's the analogy we're looking for. Yeah.

369
00:23:25,480 --> 00:23:29,000
And then you go and you work at some place like Costa Brown where you.

370
00:23:29,800 --> 00:23:33,640
So you learn these skills about how to Make Pinot Noir.

371
00:23:33,640 --> 00:23:36,600
So I remember watching Tough Michael Brown,

372
00:23:37,490 --> 00:23:38,930
and, you know, he

373
00:23:42,130 --> 00:23:45,850
just. Incredible. There would be 250 barrels down on the

374
00:23:45,850 --> 00:23:49,250
floor, and he'd be putting together the Russian river blend.

375
00:23:50,770 --> 00:23:53,890
And he would, you know, out of 200 barrels, you know,

376
00:23:54,930 --> 00:23:58,690
you'd get a chance to sort of taste through those barrels. And every once

377
00:23:58,690 --> 00:24:02,090
in a while, you get invited to taste the wines as they were going through

378
00:24:02,090 --> 00:24:05,790
it. And. And he would change

379
00:24:05,790 --> 00:24:09,270
out three barrels and it would be a totally different wine. Yeah.

380
00:24:09,510 --> 00:24:13,190
And. And. And so you got it. You wanted that skill. Oh, God,

381
00:24:13,190 --> 00:24:17,030
yeah. I mean, that's. That. That was so cool. Taste wine now. What. What do

382
00:24:17,030 --> 00:24:20,830
you think? You're like, my skill set is like, I know

383
00:24:20,830 --> 00:24:24,150
the value, like, instantly. You know, what it should sell for.

384
00:24:24,390 --> 00:24:28,030
That's what I did. That was my. My bent. I. You know, I pick out

385
00:24:28,030 --> 00:24:31,610
flavors, and structure is huge for me. I can. That's very

386
00:24:31,610 --> 00:24:35,250
important. But if you were to say, you know, Gary, I'm really good

387
00:24:35,250 --> 00:24:38,050
at when it comes to tasting, blind tasting,

388
00:24:38,770 --> 00:24:42,570
picking out the, you know, mushroom, foraged mushrooms. What I am not

389
00:24:42,570 --> 00:24:46,130
good at is, like, if you put seven Y's in front of me and say,

390
00:24:46,130 --> 00:24:49,930
which one of these is the cabernet from, you

391
00:24:49,930 --> 00:24:53,650
know, Argentina? And tell me the vintage, I'll be like, I have no idea.

392
00:24:53,970 --> 00:24:57,570
But I'm pretty good blender.

393
00:24:58,440 --> 00:25:02,000
And I think I learned that from

394
00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:05,640
Michael and not just watching him do it

395
00:25:06,200 --> 00:25:09,560
and going back behind him and sort of figuring out

396
00:25:10,120 --> 00:25:12,600
what he did. So what do you do? Do you think it's important to be

397
00:25:12,600 --> 00:25:15,640
able to do that? I mean, do you think, well, no, not that part. I'm

398
00:25:15,640 --> 00:25:19,080
talking about the person that goes, well, I can taste six

399
00:25:19,080 --> 00:25:21,320
cabernets from the same vintage, and I can tell you which part of the world.

400
00:25:21,320 --> 00:25:23,830
I mean, is that important to anybody? I think it is fair, for

401
00:25:24,950 --> 00:25:28,550
there are some people in the wine business who. I think that's essential.

402
00:25:28,630 --> 00:25:32,390
I think if you're a psalm and you're at a

403
00:25:32,390 --> 00:25:34,950
really fancy restaurant and you're trying to

404
00:25:37,110 --> 00:25:40,950
find the right wines for your customers, I think that's really

405
00:25:40,950 --> 00:25:44,710
important. But I don't have that skill. I mean, I have a very

406
00:25:44,710 --> 00:25:48,270
different set of skills. I can

407
00:25:48,270 --> 00:25:51,470
tweak. You know, we'll. So

408
00:25:52,190 --> 00:25:55,950
the Weir vineyard Pinot is on the table in front of us. And so our

409
00:25:55,950 --> 00:25:59,550
Weir vineyard, there are three different clones there. There's

410
00:26:00,030 --> 00:26:03,550
the two. A clone, which is a Swiss clone.

411
00:26:04,670 --> 00:26:08,470
It's kind of brought in by the state of Washington, named by scientists because they

412
00:26:08,470 --> 00:26:12,070
have the best names 2A. And then there was a Pomar clone that Joe

413
00:26:12,070 --> 00:26:15,600
Roccioli brought back. And then there's a. A clone

414
00:26:15,600 --> 00:26:19,240
that Paul Masson brought back, purported to be kind of from

415
00:26:19,240 --> 00:26:23,080
Romanee Conti. And sometimes whenever somebody says the word Romanee Conti, you

416
00:26:23,080 --> 00:26:25,520
might have skepticism. Yeah, right. I do.

417
00:26:26,640 --> 00:26:29,920
But each one of those does a really different thing in the wine.

418
00:26:30,400 --> 00:26:33,920
And so figuring it. For me, my

419
00:26:33,920 --> 00:26:37,760
skill set, I think, is in figuring out

420
00:26:39,360 --> 00:26:41,120
how much of each one of those we want to. Use.

421
00:26:43,520 --> 00:26:47,040
What the oak treatment's gonna be, and then

422
00:26:47,840 --> 00:26:51,600
pulling a little bit more of one thing and pulling a

423
00:26:51,600 --> 00:26:55,400
couple little levers to make the best wine we can.

424
00:26:55,400 --> 00:26:58,880
And it's what I learned at Costa Brown, which I had

425
00:26:59,280 --> 00:27:02,960
always thought about flavors and forest floor and raspberries and mushrooms

426
00:27:02,960 --> 00:27:06,640
and whatever. And at Casa Brown, I learned about

427
00:27:07,120 --> 00:27:10,830
texture and mouth feel, because that's. That's what

428
00:27:10,830 --> 00:27:14,150
those wines are all about. And, like, beautiful floral

429
00:27:14,230 --> 00:27:17,870
aromatics. So let me just stop for a second. This is a

430
00:27:17,870 --> 00:27:21,470
very important part of our trade now. Yeah. And there's this whole

431
00:27:21,470 --> 00:27:25,230
movement, and with the younger generations, and I, you know, with

432
00:27:25,230 --> 00:27:29,070
wine being around for 12,000 years and 6,000. We know of it in Armenia,

433
00:27:29,070 --> 00:27:32,630
at least. You know what, it's the same stuff it's always

434
00:27:32,630 --> 00:27:36,230
been. Now you've, you know, it's been refined, and you're able to,

435
00:27:36,500 --> 00:27:39,620
you know, blend from different vineyards and, you know,

436
00:27:39,940 --> 00:27:43,540
basically create the sum is greater than the whole of its

437
00:27:43,540 --> 00:27:47,300
parts. Well, we have to stop the pretentious of

438
00:27:47,300 --> 00:27:50,500
wine. We don't need to talk about Pomar clones. We don't care about, you know,

439
00:27:50,740 --> 00:27:54,500
DRC forging from, you know, palm of. We don't care

440
00:27:54,500 --> 00:27:57,820
about that. We just want good stuff, and we want to be able to have

441
00:27:57,820 --> 00:28:01,140
a drink. And I. I don't think wine is ever that. Ever

442
00:28:01,380 --> 00:28:04,920
that it has

443
00:28:05,240 --> 00:28:09,080
attraction. That's why the market's full of

444
00:28:09,080 --> 00:28:12,880
wines that you and I probably would never. Drink and dumbasses like me that

445
00:28:12,880 --> 00:28:16,640
are. Making it, but it's full of wines, and people go

446
00:28:16,640 --> 00:28:20,040
there and they buy their Josh, they buy their Apothec red, and that brings them

447
00:28:20,040 --> 00:28:23,720
to the table. But one day, I think everybody that has

448
00:28:23,720 --> 00:28:27,400
a glass of a wine, like a Brooks Note, realizes

449
00:28:28,130 --> 00:28:31,970
that there's something very special about this. I

450
00:28:31,970 --> 00:28:35,650
think everybody. Not everybody goes through that. Right? But to start

451
00:28:35,650 --> 00:28:39,330
off, I'll say wine is a zero or a one, right? It's like,

452
00:28:39,490 --> 00:28:43,090
if it's a zero, set it aside. If it's a one, dig in, right? It's

453
00:28:43,090 --> 00:28:46,410
like A binary code. It's a binary code, right. It's either you like it or

454
00:28:46,410 --> 00:28:49,890
you don't like it. And in a perfect world,

455
00:28:50,450 --> 00:28:54,200
you get to try some wines that you really enjoy, and

456
00:28:54,200 --> 00:28:57,440
that could be like, maybe that's your level of enjoyment,

457
00:28:57,840 --> 00:29:01,600
and that's cool. But maybe you'll have a dinner

458
00:29:01,600 --> 00:29:05,240
sometime and there will be a wine that really brings out something

459
00:29:05,240 --> 00:29:08,760
different in the food and you get kind of excited about that. Or you go

460
00:29:08,760 --> 00:29:12,280
on a trip and you visit a vineyard and

461
00:29:12,280 --> 00:29:16,040
it's beautiful and you have some wines that maybe you've never had

462
00:29:16,040 --> 00:29:19,760
before. And I just think it's a really different experience

463
00:29:20,930 --> 00:29:24,730
for everyone. And I guess for

464
00:29:24,730 --> 00:29:28,530
the new generation, I think wine is the least pretentious

465
00:29:28,530 --> 00:29:31,330
thing. It's like we're just rotting fruit. Right. It's sort of

466
00:29:33,570 --> 00:29:37,370
ideally, we do it well, sometimes we don't. That's what I'm saying. It's

467
00:29:37,370 --> 00:29:40,610
the same beverage as it was. It is, right? It's the same beverage that it

468
00:29:40,610 --> 00:29:44,130
was. And I think that

469
00:29:45,010 --> 00:29:48,430
when you. When you make it too

470
00:29:48,430 --> 00:29:51,910
pretentious, it makes it hard for people to be really interested in it.

471
00:29:51,910 --> 00:29:55,590
Okay, so stop right there. Yeah. If we're

472
00:29:55,590 --> 00:29:59,190
talking about clonal selection and the things that turn us on to

473
00:29:59,190 --> 00:30:02,749
understanding what a wine is, that's clearly very small

474
00:30:02,749 --> 00:30:06,430
percentage of the wine drinking public cares nor wants to know. Right. But,

475
00:30:06,430 --> 00:30:10,030
you know, I think of that as, like. So if you were to ask me

476
00:30:10,030 --> 00:30:12,910
to. I'm sorry, I'm a Luddite, but if you were asking me to put together

477
00:30:13,820 --> 00:30:17,660
a really good impactful TikTok video, I would have

478
00:30:17,660 --> 00:30:21,340
no idea. And you would start talking to me about tools that you use.

479
00:30:21,900 --> 00:30:25,340
Like, maybe it's the lighting, maybe it's the music, maybe it's your

480
00:30:25,580 --> 00:30:28,900
knowledge of what your friends like. I don't know. But it's. There's some set of

481
00:30:28,900 --> 00:30:32,020
tools that you're going to bring to the table that you know about that I

482
00:30:32,020 --> 00:30:35,340
have no idea. That's true. And so when I talk about that stuff, I'm not

483
00:30:35,340 --> 00:30:38,860
trying to be like, I know it all. And I'm just trying,

484
00:30:38,940 --> 00:30:42,760
like, those are the tools that I know a little bit about

485
00:30:43,240 --> 00:30:47,080
that help me craft this thing, that in a perfect world,

486
00:30:47,240 --> 00:30:51,040
you have maybe a little transformative moment when you're like, oh, man, that's really

487
00:30:51,040 --> 00:30:54,840
good. I'd like another sip of that. I think when I say that,

488
00:30:54,840 --> 00:30:58,560
all people come to it. Everybody that has an

489
00:30:58,560 --> 00:31:02,320
honest wine could almost invariably agree that

490
00:31:02,320 --> 00:31:05,920
it's good. May not have something that appeals to them, like the binary code. I'm

491
00:31:05,920 --> 00:31:09,710
not sure I agree with you on the binary code thing, where at

492
00:31:09,710 --> 00:31:13,230
that moment, at that wine, that time, I don't like it. But it

493
00:31:13,230 --> 00:31:16,790
doesn't explain the people that go on vacation

494
00:31:17,270 --> 00:31:21,070
and have this Chianti, and they're sitting in front of the Parthenon, and then they

495
00:31:21,070 --> 00:31:22,990
come back and ask me to buy it, and I buy it for them. They

496
00:31:22,990 --> 00:31:26,630
tell me it doesn't taste the same. Right. Because the emotional connection.

497
00:31:26,630 --> 00:31:30,470
Right. It was the experience. And so what's interesting about this is

498
00:31:30,870 --> 00:31:33,990
you can go to dinner, and I'm sure almost every dinner you have, because you're

499
00:31:33,990 --> 00:31:36,960
in the manufacturing side, but certainly in my side as a retailer,

500
00:31:38,070 --> 00:31:40,950
if I'm at dinner, people know I was in the trade or in the trade,

501
00:31:41,750 --> 00:31:45,110
the conversation always comes around to what's in that glass. And

502
00:31:45,430 --> 00:31:49,190
it's not an intimidating conversation. It's just a conversation. Right. Which you

503
00:31:49,190 --> 00:31:52,430
don't do with other beverages. You do it with wine. And I think that's the

504
00:31:52,430 --> 00:31:55,110
ethereal value of it. In your case,

505
00:31:56,390 --> 00:31:59,750
the more complexity you can bring to the table and the more interest

506
00:32:00,390 --> 00:32:03,430
that when you taste that wine, I think people detect that. They just don't know

507
00:32:03,430 --> 00:32:06,630
how to explain it. 1. I mean, I'm okay with that. Like,

508
00:32:07,030 --> 00:32:10,630
heck, when I taste our wines,

509
00:32:10,950 --> 00:32:14,790
I taste with my assistant winemaker,

510
00:32:14,790 --> 00:32:18,550
Reid, and my hospitality manager, Savannah. And I

511
00:32:18,550 --> 00:32:21,750
do that because I can't pick out all those flavors that

512
00:32:22,870 --> 00:32:26,510
we all have certain sensitivities, and I get some of them and

513
00:32:26,510 --> 00:32:29,510
other people get some, and together we're better.

514
00:32:30,910 --> 00:32:34,430
I think that when you're. It's

515
00:32:34,750 --> 00:32:37,710
just that moment of transformation where you're like, oh, man,

516
00:32:39,070 --> 00:32:42,270
that sip was really cool. And

517
00:32:42,750 --> 00:32:45,550
whether it's over dinner, whether it's because you're

518
00:32:47,230 --> 00:32:49,230
at a certain place or you're

519
00:32:51,310 --> 00:32:55,030
at a certain time with your friends, with your fiance,

520
00:32:55,030 --> 00:32:58,800
whatever. And then I think by

521
00:32:58,800 --> 00:33:02,120
the argument, you mean, yeah, well. And then I think that

522
00:33:03,880 --> 00:33:06,960
there's gonna be some times where you can't pick up that, you know, you're like,

523
00:33:06,960 --> 00:33:10,680
oh, this isn't as good. But there's also gonna be times you're like, man, that

524
00:33:10,680 --> 00:33:14,120
flavor takes me back to that time and that place and those people,

525
00:33:15,000 --> 00:33:17,080
and it's pretty magical. And, you know,

526
00:33:18,840 --> 00:33:22,480
all of the coronas that I drank in my life, I

527
00:33:22,480 --> 00:33:25,600
enjoyed them at the moment, but they don't always take me back to a moment

528
00:33:25,600 --> 00:33:28,770
in time. You know, it's interesting we said that

529
00:33:30,130 --> 00:33:33,890
flavors. I'm going to ask you this question later. I used to

530
00:33:33,890 --> 00:33:37,570
wrap this up. Usually I do with French winemakers because the book was written in

531
00:33:37,570 --> 00:33:41,210
French originally. But it's about wine is the best medicine. But it

532
00:33:41,210 --> 00:33:45,010
is probably one of the most memorable senses, if not

533
00:33:45,010 --> 00:33:48,610
the most memorable sense you have is smell and taste.

534
00:33:48,610 --> 00:33:51,730
Yeah. And that you can be

535
00:33:52,500 --> 00:33:56,340
50 years later. You sense something. You'll recall that. And

536
00:33:56,340 --> 00:33:59,820
you're like, oh, my mom used to make that, or whatever. Right. And it can

537
00:33:59,820 --> 00:34:03,660
take you to that place, the time. I think

538
00:34:03,660 --> 00:34:05,780
that's super cool about wine. And I think

539
00:34:08,420 --> 00:34:12,020
I hear an awful lot out there about the

540
00:34:12,260 --> 00:34:15,900
people ringing the death knell of the wine business because it

541
00:34:15,900 --> 00:34:19,620
doesn't come in a can and it's. It's not

542
00:34:19,620 --> 00:34:23,180
a ready to drink beverage. But I also think about

543
00:34:23,820 --> 00:34:27,620
something that's been around for 6,000 years. There's a reason why it's been

544
00:34:27,620 --> 00:34:31,420
around. Yeah. Nothing like is

545
00:34:31,420 --> 00:34:35,180
one of those few things that's so complex and can be

546
00:34:35,180 --> 00:34:38,820
transformative. You can enjoy it, and while

547
00:34:38,820 --> 00:34:42,140
you're sipping it, you can get in and get as nerdy as you want about

548
00:34:42,140 --> 00:34:45,820
that wine. You can dig deep into the corners and, you

549
00:34:45,820 --> 00:34:48,900
know, and figure out all of the flavors and the. And,

550
00:34:49,460 --> 00:34:52,740
you know, and it lends itself to both of those things. And

551
00:34:53,060 --> 00:34:55,860
two people who bring something

552
00:34:56,820 --> 00:35:00,460
very different to that same glass of wine will

553
00:35:00,460 --> 00:35:03,700
experience it differently, but they can both enjoy the hell out of it. And that's.

554
00:35:04,020 --> 00:35:06,940
I think that's really cool about wine. When my kids started and I have three

555
00:35:06,940 --> 00:35:10,710
girls. You have two when they started in Little League and we played

556
00:35:10,710 --> 00:35:14,550
our very first game. And it's my sport. I love baseball. I loved coaching

557
00:35:14,550 --> 00:35:18,390
it. Still coaching my grandson now. But I'll never forget this

558
00:35:18,390 --> 00:35:21,870
quote from a guy. And it applied. Just hit me when you said that,

559
00:35:22,190 --> 00:35:25,710
which is, we played this game. They're seven years old. There was nothing

560
00:35:26,590 --> 00:35:29,670
remotely close to what baseball is, you know, in this game. And I was at

561
00:35:29,670 --> 00:35:33,310
third base. Coach. And he was for. But he. After the game, he goes, I

562
00:35:33,310 --> 00:35:36,840
could talk about that game for a month. Right, Right. In its most

563
00:35:36,840 --> 00:35:39,560
elementary form. There was so much going on

564
00:35:40,600 --> 00:35:43,960
in that hour and a half or whatever it was that it

565
00:35:44,040 --> 00:35:47,760
inspired the human psyche to want to talk about it. And

566
00:35:47,760 --> 00:35:51,560
wine does do that. And do you crave, like, I drank

567
00:35:51,560 --> 00:35:54,840
beer growing up. I drink that down. My dad owned liquor store, for God's sakes.

568
00:35:55,080 --> 00:35:58,760
And I never craved, you know, having

569
00:35:58,760 --> 00:36:02,570
a beer. Well, beer maybe on a hot day, but you never craved having a

570
00:36:02,570 --> 00:36:06,370
Jack Daniels. But, man, there are days when I'm

571
00:36:06,370 --> 00:36:10,010
going to Come home and I'm waiting to grab a Petaluma Pinot or I'm

572
00:36:10,010 --> 00:36:13,650
waiting to grab a Bordeaux. Yeah, I mean, I think you're right.

573
00:36:14,770 --> 00:36:18,130
And for me, a lot of it is food. Like, I took a

574
00:36:18,450 --> 00:36:22,130
brief detour in my journey to

575
00:36:22,530 --> 00:36:26,210
take a couple classes in culinary school and I thought about being a chef. That's

576
00:36:26,210 --> 00:36:30,030
great. And, and so you got it before. In the morning anyway, so you

577
00:36:30,030 --> 00:36:32,630
might as well. I know, right? You're like, hey, why wouldn't that work?

578
00:36:34,150 --> 00:36:37,950
It turns out that the stuff I loved about cooking you don't get to do

579
00:36:37,950 --> 00:36:41,790
when you're a chef. Yeah, right. It turns out it's more

580
00:36:41,790 --> 00:36:45,350
of a job. And. But so for me,

581
00:36:45,510 --> 00:36:49,310
the wine and food thing is like, that's where, you

582
00:36:49,310 --> 00:36:52,870
know, I think about what

583
00:36:53,120 --> 00:36:56,800
set of flavors I want to have in that glass with dinner. And

584
00:36:56,800 --> 00:37:00,600
that makes a big difference. We're not even in the

585
00:37:00,600 --> 00:37:03,840
marketing yet and I want to talk about it. But at this tasting yesterday at

586
00:37:03,840 --> 00:37:07,200
this podcast I did at Chateau Potel, and

587
00:37:07,680 --> 00:37:11,040
it'll lead into this conversation about marketing, he had.

588
00:37:11,280 --> 00:37:14,760
This never happened to me on a podcast or really at a

589
00:37:14,760 --> 00:37:18,320
regular tasting. And so he had put out his six wines he wanted to

590
00:37:18,320 --> 00:37:21,750
taste and he had the local Michelin star restaurant Latok

591
00:37:21,910 --> 00:37:25,670
by Ken Frank, make the pairings. And so I

592
00:37:25,670 --> 00:37:29,270
sat there and of course, it was just before dinner

593
00:37:29,430 --> 00:37:33,030
and there's six, you know, artichoke velote and

594
00:37:33,510 --> 00:37:37,190
a rondelina pork. And it was just, everything was paired together and it was

595
00:37:37,190 --> 00:37:40,550
fabulous to do it that way. But let's talk about that for a second. The

596
00:37:40,550 --> 00:37:43,820
marketing side for him, he's also 100%

597
00:37:43,960 --> 00:37:47,760
DTC. Pretty much 100% DTC. Now, I gotta tell you

598
00:37:47,760 --> 00:37:51,240
something. When I sat with Inglewack yesterday as well,

599
00:37:52,680 --> 00:37:56,400
my brain went to the day that my dad and I negotiated the

600
00:37:56,400 --> 00:38:00,080
purchase of the Wine of the Month Club. And he had listed the five competitors

601
00:38:00,080 --> 00:38:03,920
that we knew of in 1988 and one of them was Zinglenook. Oh,

602
00:38:03,920 --> 00:38:07,560
there you go. Because the only DTC companies that occurred, that we were the

603
00:38:07,560 --> 00:38:11,200
only first third party company but that were winery

604
00:38:11,200 --> 00:38:15,020
based and it. And I don't think that caught

605
00:38:15,020 --> 00:38:18,580
on for a long time. And now he seems to be

606
00:38:18,580 --> 00:38:22,140
essential. I mean, so we're lucky. So,

607
00:38:23,020 --> 00:38:26,780
you know, all of that selling wine off the back of my truck, you know,

608
00:38:26,780 --> 00:38:30,300
as I, as, as my wife and I grew from

609
00:38:30,540 --> 00:38:33,980
2 tons to 20 tons of

610
00:38:34,300 --> 00:38:38,140
production. Wow. That was, you know, and

611
00:38:38,140 --> 00:38:41,740
we're, we've, we're a little Bigger now. But

612
00:38:42,220 --> 00:38:45,740
all of that was learning how to sell wine. And it's a.

613
00:38:47,900 --> 00:38:51,740
So we were. Because I'm not

614
00:38:51,740 --> 00:38:55,180
big enough to have distribution. And I

615
00:38:55,180 --> 00:38:56,860
realized really early that

616
00:38:58,940 --> 00:39:01,820
the margins in wholesale are terrible.

617
00:39:03,660 --> 00:39:07,460
That if I wanted to support my grape habit, I had to

618
00:39:07,460 --> 00:39:11,280
go out and learn how to sell wine. And so we

619
00:39:11,280 --> 00:39:15,000
built a DTC winery. And so we're

620
00:39:15,000 --> 00:39:17,040
about probably 90% direct to consumer.

621
00:39:18,960 --> 00:39:22,320
And I remember my friends telling me, like, kind of, right, going into Covid,

622
00:39:22,720 --> 00:39:26,480
you know how crazy I was, how they had grown a lot

623
00:39:26,480 --> 00:39:30,000
faster and were a lot bigger by going

624
00:39:30,080 --> 00:39:33,760
wholesale. By going wholesale. And then their lives just, you know,

625
00:39:33,920 --> 00:39:37,440
their wineries just stopped during COVID because there was no such thing as

626
00:39:38,080 --> 00:39:41,700
there was no more restaurant, there was no more on premises stuff. It all went

627
00:39:41,700 --> 00:39:45,540
away. And as a deliverer

628
00:39:45,540 --> 00:39:48,540
of wine, I was an essential worker, at least that's what I told myself.

629
00:39:49,260 --> 00:39:53,060
So we kept delivering wine and

630
00:39:53,060 --> 00:39:56,300
made it through Covid because of that dtc.

631
00:39:58,140 --> 00:40:01,660
And we're pretty lucky that that's where we are now. I think

632
00:40:02,220 --> 00:40:05,540
you were saying that how many. There's a lot of winemakers in

633
00:40:05,540 --> 00:40:07,180
California. So

634
00:40:09,370 --> 00:40:13,090
a lot of what I do now is Tupperware

635
00:40:13,090 --> 00:40:16,850
with wine, basically. So a little guerrilla marketing. One

636
00:40:16,850 --> 00:40:20,530
of our fans or family or somebody who

637
00:40:20,530 --> 00:40:23,770
I can kind of cajole off the street invites us

638
00:40:24,330 --> 00:40:28,090
to a party at their house. And I bring the wine, they bring their

639
00:40:28,090 --> 00:40:31,610
friends, we hang out and we

640
00:40:31,610 --> 00:40:35,450
introduce 12 more people to. To

641
00:40:35,450 --> 00:40:38,530
BrooksNote. And we do it outside of.

642
00:40:39,410 --> 00:40:42,610
When you go to places where there aren't a million winemakers,

643
00:40:43,650 --> 00:40:46,290
you swing a cat in California, hit like three winemakers.

644
00:40:48,610 --> 00:40:51,330
A stuffed cat, Not a real cat. Don't swing real cats.

645
00:40:52,530 --> 00:40:55,490
Cat juggling. Yeah, that's bad. No, cat juggling.

646
00:40:56,850 --> 00:41:00,570
But you go to someplace where maybe there's not

647
00:41:00,570 --> 00:41:03,810
as many of us out there, then it's kind of neat because. Because

648
00:41:04,930 --> 00:41:08,730
like my experience growing up, I never met a winemaker and I didn't even know

649
00:41:08,730 --> 00:41:11,410
it was a thing. And then all of a sudden, there's somebody in your living

650
00:41:11,410 --> 00:41:13,810
room and they can talk to you about why wine is so cool,

651
00:41:15,650 --> 00:41:19,490
or at least their perspective on why wine is cool. And so, you know, God,

652
00:41:19,490 --> 00:41:22,930
I love if you get

653
00:41:23,170 --> 00:41:26,810
the chance to meet an artist and talk to them and talk to them

654
00:41:26,810 --> 00:41:30,410
about their work, or you talk to a chef and you talk to them

655
00:41:30,410 --> 00:41:33,770
about their cooking. It's kind of

656
00:41:33,770 --> 00:41:37,570
magical to listen to someone who has some passion about what they

657
00:41:37,570 --> 00:41:41,250
do. And I think that that comes

658
00:41:41,250 --> 00:41:44,050
through in that sort of face to face Interaction

659
00:41:44,850 --> 00:41:48,210
in a living room with 12 people. Let me just stop there and say. And

660
00:41:48,210 --> 00:41:51,450
Inglenook's bigger than that, by the way. I don't know that they ever had living

661
00:41:51,450 --> 00:41:55,290
rooms with 12 people like that. Maybe when they started 100 years ago. Share

662
00:41:55,290 --> 00:41:59,020
a couple things you struggle with. One, the COVID thing, which you know why in

663
00:41:59,020 --> 00:42:02,140
the month club was 30 up and it was like do no wrong. But

664
00:42:02,620 --> 00:42:06,260
Silver Oak came as came. They would have never

665
00:42:06,260 --> 00:42:09,820
paid attention to a company like mine at this day and age.

666
00:42:09,980 --> 00:42:13,660
Maybe back in the earlier days. But they said, you know, we're.

667
00:42:14,220 --> 00:42:18,020
We're not selling anything. Right, Right. All the restaurants, because they. They went after

668
00:42:18,020 --> 00:42:21,820
on premise. Right. And I said, I'll buy, but don't

669
00:42:21,820 --> 00:42:24,860
forget me afterwards. And they did. So I'll give them that much credit. We still

670
00:42:24,860 --> 00:42:28,180
have access to it if we want it. But

671
00:42:28,980 --> 00:42:32,420
also after Covid came all the wholesalers that

672
00:42:32,420 --> 00:42:36,180
decided, well, we better get into dtc. And so they were looking for people

673
00:42:36,180 --> 00:42:39,820
to help them understand that. And I think what most of them landed

674
00:42:39,820 --> 00:42:43,420
on was it's a different business like we were talking about.

675
00:42:43,420 --> 00:42:46,660
Podcasting is a different business. So if you. There's no

676
00:42:46,660 --> 00:42:50,350
relationship between making wine and. And selling it

677
00:42:50,350 --> 00:42:54,150
a dtc, those are two different animals. Right, Right. But. But

678
00:42:54,150 --> 00:42:57,550
you said something really important and interesting and we used to do this and

679
00:42:57,870 --> 00:43:01,710
there are some very famous companies that came out of the home wine making, home

680
00:43:01,710 --> 00:43:05,270
wine tasting scenario and maybe, maybe up in your

681
00:43:05,270 --> 00:43:09,110
heads a little, you know, because you said it's remote, more remote, it's more

682
00:43:09,110 --> 00:43:12,590
interesting. But I used to send crews out

683
00:43:12,910 --> 00:43:16,030
and they put on tastings and I had rules like, you know, we're gonna do

684
00:43:16,030 --> 00:43:19,350
the tasting. But, you know, this is where you get paid by how much you're

685
00:43:19,350 --> 00:43:22,110
going to sell and how many members you sign up. And our goal was to

686
00:43:22,110 --> 00:43:25,430
sign up members. I didn't really care if we sold any bottles that night. Right.

687
00:43:25,510 --> 00:43:28,950
Because the margins are really in the next shipment, as we all understand.

688
00:43:29,750 --> 00:43:33,190
So that's a. And I think that what you're doing

689
00:43:33,430 --> 00:43:36,790
is right on. Because wine is

690
00:43:36,790 --> 00:43:39,510
experiential anyway, and the experience

691
00:43:40,310 --> 00:43:44,110
is important to. For that memory. And here you are in

692
00:43:44,110 --> 00:43:47,950
their living room with these gorgeous wines saying, yeah, this is the

693
00:43:47,950 --> 00:43:51,750
story. And you know, and then you

694
00:43:51,750 --> 00:43:54,870
try to multiply that too. It's like, so you meet people,

695
00:43:55,430 --> 00:43:59,150
you try to offer them that great

696
00:43:59,150 --> 00:44:02,790
first experience, and then maybe they come and visit in the

697
00:44:02,790 --> 00:44:06,270
tasting room and you try to have, you know, you try to

698
00:44:06,270 --> 00:44:10,110
continually make that connection and

699
00:44:10,110 --> 00:44:13,870
sharing what you love, like, I don't know, like it's.

700
00:44:14,260 --> 00:44:16,740
It's an easy process

701
00:44:18,420 --> 00:44:21,860
that you end up repeating. And ideally

702
00:44:23,540 --> 00:44:27,300
it supports the grape habit. Like, that's kind of the. And you meet these really

703
00:44:27,300 --> 00:44:31,100
cool people that you kind of connect with along the way. I had

704
00:44:31,100 --> 00:44:34,820
people before, even when we sold the company, there were people in the

705
00:44:34,820 --> 00:44:38,340
database that had been getting wine since the 80s. And my dad used to work

706
00:44:38,500 --> 00:44:41,730
the state fairs and that's learned how to work a booth like that.

707
00:44:42,130 --> 00:44:45,570
And he even had a cot in the back of the booth so he could

708
00:44:45,570 --> 00:44:49,090
sleep while my mom was selling. And that experience.

709
00:44:49,330 --> 00:44:53,050
I remember your dad. People are like, I remember your dad, you know, sold me

710
00:44:53,050 --> 00:44:56,810
my first chance of tasting wines. And I go,

711
00:44:56,810 --> 00:45:00,450
wow, that is pretty impactful. But there's another story by

712
00:45:00,450 --> 00:45:03,250
Bruce Neers, who's one of the old timers now at

713
00:45:03,970 --> 00:45:07,650
Napa. And he would tell you, and this is fascinating to me, let me see

714
00:45:07,650 --> 00:45:11,290
if I can articulate it. Load up the station wagon,

715
00:45:11,290 --> 00:45:15,010
come to Los Angeles. He was the sales manager, Joseph Phelps, and he

716
00:45:15,010 --> 00:45:18,770
would stop at five stores, you know, the Green Jug, Wallies, Pal

717
00:45:18,770 --> 00:45:21,730
Streties, Wines and Spares, my dad's shop and a couple others, and go back and

718
00:45:21,730 --> 00:45:25,530
hopefully the van was empty. Right. And here you are literally

719
00:45:25,530 --> 00:45:28,930
doing the same thing. Now, wait a minute, let me get to this thought. It

720
00:45:28,930 --> 00:45:32,770
could be that that is what it is. And it's always going to be at

721
00:45:32,770 --> 00:45:36,480
some point to do what you did. And the supermarket wines are always going to

722
00:45:36,480 --> 00:45:40,200
be the supermarket wines. And maybe the Internet wines have taken over, you know,

723
00:45:40,200 --> 00:45:43,200
the digital buyer of the supermarket style wines.

724
00:45:43,920 --> 00:45:46,880
But your brand is still an experiential. Brand

725
00:45:47,600 --> 00:45:51,440
that requires connection 100%, I think, because

726
00:45:51,440 --> 00:45:54,400
how else are you going to know about me? Like, how else? Like

727
00:45:55,040 --> 00:45:58,840
I make 2,500 cases, which is. I think we used

728
00:45:58,840 --> 00:46:02,240
to spill that much on the floor at Ravens when we were racking barrels. Like

729
00:46:02,240 --> 00:46:05,800
it's the. How else will you get to meet me? Yeah.

730
00:46:06,520 --> 00:46:10,160
And how else are we going to catch fire? I mean, I'm a technological

731
00:46:10,160 --> 00:46:14,000
Luddite, so like, you know, I'm not. You're not

732
00:46:14,000 --> 00:46:17,800
going to see me on TikTok, but so I

733
00:46:17,800 --> 00:46:20,760
have to try and I have to find a way to meet you. And you

734
00:46:20,840 --> 00:46:24,440
ever have leftover inventory? Not yet, but

735
00:46:24,440 --> 00:46:27,400
that's the crazy. We sell everything we make. I mean,

736
00:46:28,200 --> 00:46:32,040
and we're lucky. You know, where I. The wine's on

737
00:46:32,040 --> 00:46:35,720
the table in front of you. So there's a couple 23 pinots, there's a

738
00:46:35,720 --> 00:46:39,160
couple 22 pinots in there. We have a 21 cab. But

739
00:46:39,720 --> 00:46:43,160
we're a little ahead of the market. Right. So I've got some friends that

740
00:46:43,400 --> 00:46:46,680
they're selling these really beautiful 21

741
00:46:46,840 --> 00:46:50,600
pinots, and we're kind of

742
00:46:50,600 --> 00:46:54,360
out ahead a little bit. It's like, we're

743
00:46:54,360 --> 00:46:58,120
lucky. We work hard at it. I work hard to get out and try to

744
00:46:58,440 --> 00:47:02,280
meet people and. And pitch the wines. But, you know, so

745
00:47:02,280 --> 00:47:05,920
far, we've sold everything we made. That's great. Congratulations. It's a.

746
00:47:06,560 --> 00:47:09,920
Like I said, it's. It's all just supporting my grape habit. Like, that's the.

747
00:47:10,240 --> 00:47:14,080
There was a story about Palmeyer, you know, going to Burgundy and trying to

748
00:47:14,080 --> 00:47:17,480
buy some land, and it was an escrow to buy it. And then they pulled

749
00:47:17,480 --> 00:47:21,320
some 12th century rule on him, and they wouldn't allow him to buy it.

750
00:47:21,320 --> 00:47:24,480
And now he ended up in north. North Sonoma county

751
00:47:24,800 --> 00:47:27,880
with Clo. Cleo. Cleo Palmier.

752
00:47:28,680 --> 00:47:32,160
Is that the fascination of Pinot? I mean, is it because it's such a

753
00:47:32,160 --> 00:47:35,920
conduit to the soul, or. I mean, to the soul,

754
00:47:35,920 --> 00:47:39,520
but to the ground, That's a challenging grape on the

755
00:47:39,520 --> 00:47:43,160
outset, anyway. Many winemakers never get as successful with it.

756
00:47:43,480 --> 00:47:46,600
So for me, it was. I remember

757
00:47:47,560 --> 00:47:51,200
the minute that I fell in love with Pinot Noir. We were doing a Burgundy

758
00:47:51,200 --> 00:47:54,760
tasting with some friends. So I. I was working at Ravenswood,

759
00:47:55,080 --> 00:47:58,600
and we get, like, 10 friends together,

760
00:47:58,680 --> 00:48:02,280
and we'd get 12 bottles of wine, and we would

761
00:48:02,280 --> 00:48:06,080
focus on a specific region for these tastings. And all

762
00:48:06,080 --> 00:48:09,920
my friends, they would do. They'd bring a cab. They'd organize a cab

763
00:48:09,920 --> 00:48:13,440
tasting or a Zinn tasting. And I kept doing these Pinot

764
00:48:13,440 --> 00:48:17,040
tastings, and I did one from Burgundy, and it was only

765
00:48:17,040 --> 00:48:20,600
six bottles because Burgundy's expensive. And

766
00:48:20,760 --> 00:48:23,440
I just remember we tasted around once,

767
00:48:25,520 --> 00:48:28,880
and the wines were good, but they were kind of tight, and they hadn't opened

768
00:48:28,880 --> 00:48:32,320
up yet. And then we kind of went back around again.

769
00:48:33,360 --> 00:48:36,960
And the second time I tasted this wine,

770
00:48:38,320 --> 00:48:42,120
it was like fireworks. It was like there's a symphony playing

771
00:48:42,120 --> 00:48:45,920
in my head, and it's like. And I saw

772
00:48:45,920 --> 00:48:48,720
all of these things that I hadn't seen the first time around,

773
00:48:50,880 --> 00:48:54,620
and this nuance, and I just wanted more of

774
00:48:54,620 --> 00:48:57,660
that. And so. And then I've been chasing that ever since.

775
00:48:58,460 --> 00:49:01,660
So I think that was my. That's my. My step into the world.

776
00:49:02,300 --> 00:49:05,340
We were going to dinner to some friends tonight. I was going to take them

777
00:49:05,900 --> 00:49:09,420
a Bordeaux that they. That they've liked in the past. But you know what? And

778
00:49:09,420 --> 00:49:12,860
now I've been spent so much. Time talking about Premier

779
00:49:12,860 --> 00:49:15,820
Cruz Burgundies and the Master of the.

780
00:49:16,780 --> 00:49:19,980
I mean, well, it's the. I know my wife likes it. There you go. That's

781
00:49:19,980 --> 00:49:22,850
a. That's always a good choice. Yeah, right. But,

782
00:49:23,800 --> 00:49:27,320
you know, I just think Pinot is such an amazing food

783
00:49:27,320 --> 00:49:30,200
grape. It goes great with steak.

784
00:49:31,240 --> 00:49:34,600
It goes great with kind of anything that you're going to put in front of

785
00:49:34,600 --> 00:49:38,440
it. Not blue cheese. Like, I would stay away from Pinot. That

786
00:49:38,440 --> 00:49:42,280
is a Cabernet function. Right. But almost everything else,

787
00:49:42,600 --> 00:49:44,920
it's going to be such a great wine for.

788
00:49:47,640 --> 00:49:51,370
And you know, the thing that I really love about

789
00:49:51,370 --> 00:49:55,170
Pinot Noir is that if you pick it at the right spot,

790
00:49:55,170 --> 00:49:58,650
so not too ripe, you don't use too much

791
00:49:58,650 --> 00:50:02,490
oak, you don't use too much whole cluster, you can tell

792
00:50:02,490 --> 00:50:06,170
where it's from. So you can fall in love with terroir

793
00:50:06,410 --> 00:50:10,090
in a way that, you know, and you

794
00:50:10,090 --> 00:50:13,890
can get as fancy about this conversation as you like. But

795
00:50:13,890 --> 00:50:17,220
I think what I love about it is that an Anderson Valley

796
00:50:17,220 --> 00:50:21,060
Pinot tastes different than a Russian River Pinot,

797
00:50:21,060 --> 00:50:24,820
and it tastes different than a Petaluma Gap Pinot. And I

798
00:50:24,820 --> 00:50:27,140
just think that is super cool. And

799
00:50:28,420 --> 00:50:31,780
my job as a winemaker, in addition to

800
00:50:32,020 --> 00:50:35,780
making good wine, ideally, I can help you find

801
00:50:36,260 --> 00:50:39,900
that journey too, which I think is really cool. It's very cool.

802
00:50:39,900 --> 00:50:43,580
And we're out of town, actually, we're long. But I have to do this. This

803
00:50:43,580 --> 00:50:47,300
is called Wine is the best medicine. Dr. E.A. murray

804
00:50:47,300 --> 00:50:50,980
is written in the 70s. He was a French MD as well as a

805
00:50:50,980 --> 00:50:54,780
French homeopathic doctor. And he's got a lot. You can find them online.

806
00:50:54,940 --> 00:50:57,020
And this book is available in French as well.

807
00:50:58,860 --> 00:51:02,700
So he takes human maladies and assigns

808
00:51:02,940 --> 00:51:06,780
grape wines to them too, and has a reason.

809
00:51:06,940 --> 00:51:09,780
So this is much like the Master of Wine test. And by the way, just

810
00:51:09,780 --> 00:51:13,440
to understand it's always 30, I'm gonna give you three choices. And

811
00:51:13,440 --> 00:51:16,520
right now, the accuracy of the question, the answers is 33.

812
00:51:16,920 --> 00:51:20,600
Right. No one really has a, you know, a statistical edge

813
00:51:20,680 --> 00:51:23,160
on doing this. So,

814
00:51:24,200 --> 00:51:27,600
yeah, like in the Master wine test, you know, you may get it wrong. Like

815
00:51:27,600 --> 00:51:31,280
this is a Cabernet from Chile. But you have to justify the

816
00:51:31,280 --> 00:51:34,920
answer, right? Why you think it right. Just like the CP test, you

817
00:51:34,920 --> 00:51:38,450
gotta do your work right? So that's why I'm more interested. So there's.

818
00:51:38,530 --> 00:51:42,370
If you want to lose weight, this one of three

819
00:51:42,370 --> 00:51:45,090
wines that will help you do that. Oh, my goodness.

820
00:51:45,970 --> 00:51:49,490
It'll be a Santa Millen a cote de bonne

821
00:51:49,730 --> 00:51:53,570
or dry champagne. And then, like, why did you give me

822
00:51:53,570 --> 00:51:57,010
the answer? Regardless if it's right or wrong, I'm. Gonna go with dry champagne.

823
00:51:57,330 --> 00:52:00,930
Why? Lower alcohol, little less

824
00:52:00,930 --> 00:52:04,060
sugar, so lower calories. That's a good one.

825
00:52:06,620 --> 00:52:10,300
And if it's because the coat de bone, I'm going to want

826
00:52:11,020 --> 00:52:14,740
four glasses of that. And

827
00:52:14,740 --> 00:52:17,740
the champagne, I can still have two, and it's relatively guilt free.

828
00:52:18,460 --> 00:52:22,140
Well, the answer was the cote de bone. Really? All right, well, see,

829
00:52:22,380 --> 00:52:25,100
clearly I did not do my homework.

830
00:52:26,300 --> 00:52:29,980
Sometimes I set people up on purpose, give them a chance by picking the

831
00:52:29,980 --> 00:52:33,580
grape that they're used to. But the funny thing is, I don't

832
00:52:33,580 --> 00:52:37,340
see the answer in the longer

833
00:52:37,340 --> 00:52:41,060
version of the question. There's

834
00:52:41,060 --> 00:52:44,660
no w. The last thing is urinary

835
00:52:44,660 --> 00:52:48,260
stones. Yeah. Well, there you go. Not for no weight loss in there.

836
00:52:48,260 --> 00:52:50,940
No, it's not in here. So it doesn't tell me why they think coat to

837
00:52:50,940 --> 00:52:54,700
bone is good for weight loss. You know, I think obesity.

838
00:52:54,700 --> 00:52:57,330
Let's try that. There we go. That might be it. No, because the answer for

839
00:52:57,330 --> 00:53:01,090
obesity is rose from the Provence or dry whites from Sancerre. So

840
00:53:01,090 --> 00:53:04,330
that's not even the right thing. Yeah, well, here's another one. All right. Okay. Old

841
00:53:04,330 --> 00:53:08,130
age. What am I. Do I get

842
00:53:08,130 --> 00:53:11,970
three choices? Yes. So it's going to be dry

843
00:53:11,970 --> 00:53:15,450
white wines, Champagne or l' Occoutane.

844
00:53:15,530 --> 00:53:17,770
I'll tell you what I'm going to drink tonight, though. I can tell you that.

845
00:53:18,010 --> 00:53:21,530
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I. You know what I don't have.

846
00:53:21,690 --> 00:53:25,530
I don't have a. I'm not sure. I know. I think a l' Occretin. Really?

847
00:53:25,530 --> 00:53:29,190
All right. The Burgundy wines, for their part, are rich in mineral elements, which an

848
00:53:29,190 --> 00:53:30,710
old person often lacks.

849
00:53:34,310 --> 00:53:37,430
I don't know. My kids might say I get too salty as I get older.

850
00:53:37,510 --> 00:53:40,030
Yeah, that could be the problem. Well, I have a couple of glasses of bone

851
00:53:40,030 --> 00:53:43,630
of lox Cortana. That sounds lovely. Let's see. Yeah, it's so

852
00:53:43,630 --> 00:53:47,430
funny, it doesn't say weight loss. It's here

853
00:53:47,430 --> 00:53:51,190
in the back. That's the. Anyway, such an honor to

854
00:53:51,350 --> 00:53:53,910
have you here. I'm so excited to hear your story, and I'm glad you're able

855
00:53:53,910 --> 00:53:56,950
to be here in our beautiful town of Monrovia before.

856
00:53:57,750 --> 00:54:01,430
What's your next stop today? I think we're headed

857
00:54:01,430 --> 00:54:04,150
out to. To the Saltner.

858
00:54:05,350 --> 00:54:09,110
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Taste a little wine. And.

859
00:54:09,590 --> 00:54:13,350
And. Are you guys doing a dinner that night, Nick? No, just

860
00:54:13,350 --> 00:54:17,110
a little visit. Yeah, she. They do a lot of dinners and stuff

861
00:54:17,430 --> 00:54:21,160
one day. Yeah, she'll have me. They're great. I proud of

862
00:54:21,160 --> 00:54:24,760
them. Because that's not an easy, easy run. Tough

863
00:54:24,760 --> 00:54:28,240
gig. Yeah. Cheers. Thank you so much. This was really fun.

864
00:54:28,720 --> 00:54:30,000
I really enjoyed it. Thank you.