Husband and Wife Team Transforms Passion into a Thriving Wine Bar: Chuck and Amanda Azar

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There's no greater gift than you telling your friends and

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family how wonderful we were. 'Cause no matter how much we tell people

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that you know that we don't know, they're not gonna believe us, but they'll believe

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you. Sit back and grab a glass. It's

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Wine Talks with Paul Kaye.

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Hey, welcome to Wine Talks with Paul Kaye. And we are at an away game.

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Well, not that far away for me, Hermosa Beach, my favorite stomping ground. About

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to have a conversation with Chuck and Amanda Azar of the, I'm gonna

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get it wrong. Mara— Malandrina. See, I

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don't know what's wrong with me. Nothing. I do this all the time. I

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just— we just get into it. Hey, welcome to the show. Cheers.

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Thank you. You know, we were here July 4th,

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and my wife and I were just walking down, and we saw that you were

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open, and we thought, we have to find out what this is. Now,

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I had already had 2 Manhattans at this point. But I still wanted to find

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out. Couldn't tell. And we were so taken by your

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story that I wanted to get out here as soon as I could to tell

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the story. Because you've only been open since when? 4th of July.

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It was like 5:46 PM. We came through the door. Barely. And we

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said, whatever happens, happens. Like, it can't get worse than what

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we've just been through the last 30 days. Well, that's— let's start with that. This

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is a Taller. You're a tasting bar, but it looks like a little retail.

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Yeah. You're gonna do some retail here? Uh, well, yeah, but that's more of our

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library. That's just for our backstock. Everything— I know, honey, I'm

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sorry, but, uh, everything that is on our list

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is also for sale for retail. So we have

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plenty of people coming in and buying whatever they want, taking it home. But this

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is more of a showcase of what we're doing. We have an inside joke because

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when we were building this place, Chuck kept telling everyone that came in,

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we're gonna have a library. I was like, you should really clarify that it's not

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a library library. This is gonna be mine. That's a library as far as I'm

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concerned. Yes, right. A library of wine, a

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library of books, or— Well, look,

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I spent 35 years doing this and I know what a tall order this is.

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And it can only take tons of passion,

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tons of perseverance and pursuit

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to do this. You're with a winery right now as

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a— I do. I run the operations for Tensley Winery.

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Which I had not heard of before I got here, which is very crazy. But

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somebody else I told this story to recently said they I knew Tenzily, and you

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were with corporate booze there for a while. Since

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2000. I hate to say it, but, you know, 26 years in the making,

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and the last 8 have just been extremely difficult.

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And I'm watching the landscape of the wholesaler

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side just continue to get worse and worse and worse. And I was

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driving home in San Francisco while Amanda's here in LA,

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and I just said, honey, I think it's just time for us to figure something

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out. Like, How does a wine bar sound to you? And she's like, I love

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the idea. And I'm not joking, within a

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month we already had a business plan, a

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goal that we set, everything that we wanted to do

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to be successful. And not to mention, I know people are going to think I'm

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fucking crazy, but I have 2 kids and Amanda has 3. So now we're a

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family of 7. So 5 kids from—

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I'm sorry, the podcast is over now. We can't comprehend that kind of— Well,

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there's a reason why we're in the alcohol industry.

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Well, that's— it's— but no, there's a, there's a ton that you just said there

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that I want to peel back a little bit because corporate America,

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corporate America in itself, and then corporate liquor and wine is a whole

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different animal. And I can't tell you how many times, not that I've

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consulted with people, but I've heard the story where they bring to

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the counter to do something in the wine business

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because they came from clothing or they came from rugs or they came from somewhere

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else and they realize it doesn't work. Right. It's such a unique

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industry. But you have insight. You have insight to this. I

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have. I have more insight. I have more brand

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knowledge than— I don't want to brag, but

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I'm just saying the 26 years that I've been a part of the wholesaler side,

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I've launched probably a good 10,000 brands

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into the market. And with that being said, I've seen

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99 of them 99% of them fail. So

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just having that kind of background, and I'm

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talking the most successful people on the planet, even like, I don't mean to

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name names, but like professional quarterbacks have come to us to launch

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brands and guys that I thought were

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my idols. And I'm like, this is never going to fly.

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Don't care how much money you're going to throw at this, it's not going to

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go anywhere. What do you think it is

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that's so enamoring? Because you and I, we know

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the inside baseball of this, right? And I've seen the same thing you have.

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What is it so romantically enamoring for someone

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like a professional quarterback or anybody else that says, oh, I want to

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be in the wine business, or I want to start? Is it the billion dollars

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that what's-his-name got for his tequila brand, or is it

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The romantic side of the lifestyle? What do you think they're looking for? Can I

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be completely frank? I want you to be frank. I honestly think they need to

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lose money every single year. They are doing this to drive

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reverse profits. Really? I do think so. I think that their

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tax bracket is so far on the other side that they need something

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to balance it out. Like I said, I don't think that there's enough money on

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the planet to launch— let's just talk, you know,

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Chuck Azar, professional quarterback for X amount of team, won

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3 Super Bowls, is launching an energy drink. And you're like,

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this is so-and-so. He's a class act. He's an idol.

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And within 3 months, it completely bankrupts.

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But I've seen that over and over and over and over again.

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You probably already know this, but at some point, the celebrity endorsement was

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the thing, right? Yeah. Same brand, just somebody said, oh, I drink this stuff.

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And then, then they thought they're getting into it, they're doing it, and

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they're part of the process. It's still just as big a failure.

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And I don't understand. It can't be just to lose money. It

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has to be some— It, first of all, the chips are

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100% stacked against them, no matter what they try to do. They don't

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have the right consultants, the right PR firms, no matter

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what they're trying to do. They're on the other end of it. If you're not

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entrenched in this business every single day and you don't have

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hardcore connections with people, you're not going to go anywhere. I've

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been doing this for 26 years. I've been in Northern California.

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I'm in Southern California and I'm dealing with local people in LA

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and I know their bosses' bosses and they're like, how do you know these people?

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And I said, I mean, from where I came from,

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the state's not that small. You know, like everybody knows someone. And

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once you're into this industry, you're connected with someone.

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So if a professional quarterback or a professional baseball player tries to

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come in and they're not dialed into every aspect of that

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business, they're not going anywhere. I think it's like you said before,

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it's, you know, not everybody understands the intricacies of the

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industry and people can't come from another industry

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and make it work. It doesn't work. Yeah, it doesn't work. A lot of

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times it'll fail. So, you know, we were lucky that we come from both

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the supplier side and the distribution side, and

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we had the vision. And like you said, the passion, you know, wine was a

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passion for us. And so this was an immediate head nod between the husband and

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wife, like, because that doesn't happen very often at my house. So, you know,

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you're like, we have to do this. And you know it from

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the supplier side, and you know it from the distributor side, and you've seen all

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these things fail. And you've seen them succeed and you think, you

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know, we've got at least a fighting chance to make this work. I think we

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have probably the best chance to be successful

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between me and Amanda. Our business is not going to be geared

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for one channel. It's not just a wine bar. It's not just the restaurant.

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It's not just the private label we're doing for Malandrino. It's

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everything that we're doing. It's all-inclusive. Like,

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there's nothing that— there's no stone we haven't turned and we're turning like

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Within 10 days, people are amazed where we

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are. It is amazing. It's

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mind-blowing. Friends and family of mine, people in the industry are like,

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how the fuck did you do that? And there's a guy across the street and

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they've been closed for 6 months and they probably got another year in construction.

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And we were able to push this project. I think I told you earlier, it

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was a 2.5-month project. I pushed it in less than 26 days. I'm

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a little jealous. It took me months to transfer

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his license. He has a Type 21. Yeah. To my wife and

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I. It took months for this to happen. Right, right. And so, you know the

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ins and outs. But what's the dream? What's the— when you

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head nodded and said, yeah, honey, I think I want to do this. And you

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probably had some idea what the headwinds were going to be, but maybe not all

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of them. But what was the dream for this? We kind of had this

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vision. And again, you know, we met through a work event and

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Chuck was living in San Francisco and still is part-time. And I'm down here in

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LA. So we spent a lot of time time going back and forth and,

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you know, on the Central Coast and in wine country. And

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we obviously love to check out wine bars because it is a passion for us,

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not just a job. Every wine bar that we went in, we

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spent the entire time going like, oh, we were just— either the wine

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list was awful, the food was awful, or just the

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environment. Yeah, the ambiance, the service. There's something that just

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fell short regardless of where we went. And again, We've gone to a

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lot of places between San Francisco and LA, but we would always

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leave not disappointed, but just like, man,

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if they just had X, it would have made our experience

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more eventful. Like, we would definitely come back. And there's not a lot of

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places we've gone back to. So from both of our cultures, we come

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from backgrounds of hospitality and

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family and friends and getting together around food and wine. And

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that was really important for us to bring here. We just wanted a place where

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people would come sit down with a glass of wine, you know, put their feet

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up on the couch with the girlfriend and be comfortable and cozy. And

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from our complimentary pour when you walk in to

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our service staff and the food and the quality of the wines

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on our list and the value of them, we wanted everybody to be able

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to come in, be comfortable, happy, and walk out of

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here feeling like that was a great experience.

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That's— you nailed it. I mean, you nailed the idea, right?

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Thank you. Because of the turmoil the industry's in with

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packaging and Tetra Paks and cans. And I saw the other day

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somebody started a pouch. Who the hell wants to drink wine from a

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pouch? How does that support this experience?

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It's not for us. And I really believe, and you've been in the industry long

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enough to know that, that really experiences drive all of this.

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And it got away from that for a while. And I think it needs to

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go back to that in order to not survive, 'cause it's never going anywhere,

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but to reignite a generation that skipped it, that missed what

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we know already. And so what a noble thing to do to,

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to say, we want you to connect. Is there any other beverage since you've sold

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so many that does that? Honestly? No.

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No. That's not urban. No, no. And truth be

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told, like, I've worked with

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Nobel Peace Prize winners

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and I know them on a first-name basis. And the gentleman

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is just a complete amazing human

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being. And just the passion that he oozes, I have

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always wanted to— there's 2 people in my life that I

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One of them is Bob Long, and he was a

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mentor of mine, honestly, a father figure to me.

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I kind of had a falling out with him, and shame on me, because like

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I said, the guy would've took a bullet for me. The second person

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is George Sandeman, and I worked with George Sandeman several times

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in San Francisco. And between the two of them,

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if I can be 5% of the men that they were, that was a passion

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of mine. My father is my greatest inspiration. Wow. Person in my

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life. He's my inspiration. He's my best friend. He does

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everything I— no questions asked. Like, he's never said no to me.

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And that was how I was raised. So

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that's pretty amazing for those 3 men.

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I will say I hope my oldest will be half the

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man that I am. And I know that he will be. But it's there.

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I've just been built on Just, you

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do everything in your power to be the best human being you can be. And

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those 3 men have just proven that to me every single day. It must be

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our Middle Eastern background that drives that kind of thing. It is.

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People don't understand what it's like to be Palestinian to begin with. But yeah, you

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know, sure, I get it all the time. Like, how far is that from

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Pakistan? Yeah, same with everything. Look, I'm really

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sorry that they're not even on the same, like, Whatever. But

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so there's not that joke where the Sicilian and the Palestinian walk into a

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wine bar. Oh, sorry. Just— no, but you should come up with

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it. But Amanda's got a great story because, you know, we have

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our Moor heads here. So, yeah, right. That's right. Do you

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know? I was trying to convince my wife to buy a couple of these things

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when we were in Palermo. In Sicily. Yeah. So the backstory behind the Moor heads,

222
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and it's a little bit morbid, but they're basically these

223
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ceramic heads that are ornately decorated with fruits and plants, and you're

224
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supposed to plant something inside of them. But the backstory is

225
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that an Arab came to Sicily and fell in love with a

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Sicilian woman, and their love was kind of

227
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forbidden. So the family of the woman killed them,

228
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beheaded them. But— I think I remember that. It is a love

229
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story. Yeah, it is a love story about an Arab

230
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man and a Sicilian woman falling in love. So

231
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they definitely needed to have a place here. Well, what, uh, what

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ethnicity did not overrun Sicily anyway? Totally. So there's something going

233
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on anyway, right? So

234
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when your goal was to create

235
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a place for people to gather, and this comes

236
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from the background at home, it comes from your experience

237
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in the industry. I mean, wine was

238
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part of my growing up, and I, I was wanted to dovetail off of what

239
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you said. There's not a day, even today, even though I don't sell

240
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anymore, not directly, that I don't thank my father for getting me

241
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into this industry. As hard as it was and how much headwinds and how much

242
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work it was, that the payoff of being part of

243
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this, this lifestyle is

244
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unbelievable. But was it part of your lifestyle growing up? It

245
00:15:18,913 --> 00:15:22,747
absolutely was. You know, growing up with a Sicilian

246
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mom, I think it was a little more challenging because my dad was in the

247
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Air Force, so we moved around a lot growing up. But

248
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when, you know, wine in the Sicilian culture, it's

249
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meant to be drank with food. It's not a social thing. You know, it's

250
00:15:38,617 --> 00:15:42,397
part of your everyday life. So growing up, from the time I was 10

251
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or 11, you know, if we were having wine with dinner, we were

252
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allowed to have a glass of wine too with dinner because it was part of

253
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the culture. It wasn't, you know, frowned upon. It wasn't

254
00:15:52,638 --> 00:15:56,254
thought of as like this negative thing in social society. It was just a part

255
00:15:56,254 --> 00:15:59,747
of everyday life. That's right. Yeah. Is that different between Americans and

256
00:16:00,883 --> 00:16:04,551
most of Europe, if not all of Europe? That

257
00:16:04,697 --> 00:16:08,048
cultural divide between how

258
00:16:08,338 --> 00:16:11,892
family sits and enjoys? I'm jealous of

259
00:16:12,134 --> 00:16:15,820
the European culture that way in that they protect their

260
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wines, they protect their butter, they protect their cheese. But at the same

261
00:16:19,564 --> 00:16:23,184
time, America's the new frontier to come and try to do new

262
00:16:23,265 --> 00:16:27,095
things. You don't have to grow Nerello Mascalese, you know, in

263
00:16:27,207 --> 00:16:31,003
Napa Valley. But to me, that's a fascinating part

264
00:16:31,522 --> 00:16:35,222
of life in Europe is that it is culturally part of

265
00:16:35,254 --> 00:16:37,450
what you do every day. It creates a— I

266
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don't know, it creates a different lifestyle. It creates a different pace,

267
00:16:41,712 --> 00:16:45,359
doesn't it? Is that in your house the same? It is.

268
00:16:45,472 --> 00:16:48,761
And I was going to say, I mean, my father's background is—

269
00:16:50,066 --> 00:16:53,464
God, you know, there's a

270
00:16:53,464 --> 00:16:57,169
gentleman in my family who's writing a book and my father is one of the

271
00:16:57,169 --> 00:17:00,836
main characters in it. Is it fiction? Is it nonfiction or fiction?

272
00:17:01,774 --> 00:17:05,169
Is this a true story? It's a real deal true story. Really?

273
00:17:05,637 --> 00:17:09,442
Wow. My dad, when he was 15, left Palestine and went to go

274
00:17:09,523 --> 00:17:13,371
work in an oil refinery in like Kuwait. And then

275
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he was working in Kuwait again at the age of 15,

276
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up until like the age of 18, where he had to— he had

277
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an opportunity to— and forgive me, I don't remember which was first, but he—

278
00:17:25,351 --> 00:17:28,959
I think he went to Sweden first and lived in Sweden for

279
00:17:28,959 --> 00:17:32,664
about 8 years. And then he also had another opportunity also in the same

280
00:17:32,712 --> 00:17:36,288
industry. He was a welder by trade. So oil

281
00:17:36,416 --> 00:17:40,236
refineries, oil Containers and stuff like that was kind

282
00:17:40,252 --> 00:17:43,848
of what he was doing. From Sweden, he went to France and lived in

283
00:17:43,864 --> 00:17:47,316
France for about 8 or 10 years as well. And

284
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then he met my mom and they got married.

285
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Here I am in Detroit. But to your

286
00:17:55,504 --> 00:17:59,164
point, yes, my father used to believe in

287
00:17:59,758 --> 00:18:03,242
you go home at 3 o'clock, you see the wife and kids and make sure

288
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that everybody's happy and healthy. You take a nice 2-hour nap, then

289
00:18:07,065 --> 00:18:09,379
you go back out into the trade or do what you need to do and

290
00:18:09,411 --> 00:18:12,913
come back for dinner. My father was

291
00:18:13,411 --> 00:18:15,147
truly a workaholic and he

292
00:18:15,291 --> 00:18:18,842
spent 99% of his day

293
00:18:19,195 --> 00:18:23,003
like providing. But the 30 minutes or an hour that we

294
00:18:23,051 --> 00:18:26,891
had before bedtime, it was quality time for all of us.

295
00:18:27,068 --> 00:18:30,217
I mean, he made sure me and my 2 siblings, my 2 younger brothers and

296
00:18:30,217 --> 00:18:33,958
my youngest sister, checked on

297
00:18:33,974 --> 00:18:37,553
us in every single which way. And it was a hug and a kiss before,

298
00:18:37,746 --> 00:18:41,341
you know, pat on the butt and off to bed. Wow. And my father is

299
00:18:41,518 --> 00:18:45,113
one of those gentlemen that he never raised a hand

300
00:18:45,289 --> 00:18:48,804
on us, not even once. It was just the look in his eyes

301
00:18:49,318 --> 00:18:53,025
that would terrify the hell out of you. And that's

302
00:18:53,234 --> 00:18:57,006
one thing that I learned very delicately with my children.

303
00:18:57,102 --> 00:18:59,638
Like, I've never raised my hand on my children. I've had to put them in

304
00:18:59,670 --> 00:19:03,234
a corner. But just the shackles. But it's— no,

305
00:19:03,638 --> 00:19:05,708
yeah, maybe. But

306
00:19:07,502 --> 00:19:11,213
a lot of who I am comes from my father, so

307
00:19:11,374 --> 00:19:14,065
I'm very grateful for it. Is that why you fell in love with him?

308
00:19:16,256 --> 00:19:20,075
Yeah, he reminded me a lot of my Sicilian grandpa, actually. Really? Yeah.

309
00:19:20,949 --> 00:19:24,121
With the cigars, too. I mean, it seems like that's a

310
00:19:24,266 --> 00:19:27,930
baseline for hospitality. You know, you probably see it every day. You

311
00:19:27,930 --> 00:19:31,768
already examined a bunch of— it's funny because I had a coffee club for

312
00:19:31,768 --> 00:19:34,189
a while when I— besides the wine club, and I did the same thing. I

313
00:19:34,189 --> 00:19:37,235
went to all these cafes up and down the coast and I would investigate and

314
00:19:37,235 --> 00:19:40,393
all this stuff. And you'd find something that you think you could improve on,

315
00:19:40,906 --> 00:19:44,561
coffee, whether the hospitality. But hospitality,

316
00:19:44,994 --> 00:19:48,216
there are a lot of people that shouldn't be in it. And I think a

317
00:19:48,216 --> 00:19:51,855
lot of it has to do with this story. It's true. I swear you can

318
00:19:52,031 --> 00:19:55,754
ask any one of our staff members. They were treated like family

319
00:19:55,899 --> 00:19:59,739
even before we took the keys to this place. We

320
00:19:59,739 --> 00:20:03,564
have a young lady who served us the night before

321
00:20:04,881 --> 00:20:08,320
we finally made the decision that we were going to buy this place. And

322
00:20:09,477 --> 00:20:13,317
of course, we walked in and I was like, there's no effing way I'm going

323
00:20:13,317 --> 00:20:16,483
to drink anything on this guy's wine list. I'm not

324
00:20:16,965 --> 00:20:20,530
going to poison myself. I don't want to torture Amanda,

325
00:20:20,530 --> 00:20:23,970
honey, it's all you. If you want to go through the pain and suffering, buy

326
00:20:23,970 --> 00:20:27,310
it for me. So I took the menu and I told the young lady, I'll

327
00:20:27,310 --> 00:20:30,230
say, I'll have this glass of wine right here. And I pointed at an

328
00:20:30,230 --> 00:20:34,070
IPA and she looked at me and she goes, okay. And then she

329
00:20:34,070 --> 00:20:37,830
dropped the beer as she dropped the sparkling wine for Amanda. And Amanda just

330
00:20:37,830 --> 00:20:41,590
gave me an elbow and she's like, what? You're supposed to be punished

331
00:20:41,590 --> 00:20:45,410
with me. And I said, I refuse to, like, I'm already picking up the

332
00:20:45,410 --> 00:20:49,130
check. So like, I don't want to,

333
00:20:49,130 --> 00:20:52,976
to suffer anymore. You know? I like the twist. Torture him with drinking.

334
00:20:53,024 --> 00:20:56,678
That's really funny. The young lady that evening, as

335
00:20:56,935 --> 00:21:00,782
she was just sweet as can be, we wrote her a

336
00:21:00,782 --> 00:21:04,228
note on the back of the receipt and we just said, Chuck and Amanda, we'll

337
00:21:04,228 --> 00:21:07,819
come back and see you in— we'll come back and revisit.

338
00:21:08,412 --> 00:21:12,098
Wow. See us again or something along those lines. And the

339
00:21:12,563 --> 00:21:16,266
day that we took ownership of the place, she walked in

340
00:21:16,266 --> 00:21:19,263
and it was her last day working with the last ownership.

341
00:21:19,857 --> 00:21:23,483
And she said that she had gotten a call the night before saying that the

342
00:21:23,548 --> 00:21:27,367
business is no longer under the old leadership and she needs

343
00:21:27,367 --> 00:21:30,415
to come in and collect her check and her belongings and stuff like that. And

344
00:21:30,415 --> 00:21:34,010
she was devastated. She was like, oh my God, I gotta find work

345
00:21:34,010 --> 00:21:37,796
again. I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'm a student. She's studying to be

346
00:21:38,166 --> 00:21:41,985
an attorney here. And she's just a lovely, lovely young

347
00:21:42,097 --> 00:21:45,210
lady. And we fell in love with her that night. We said, even if she

348
00:21:45,210 --> 00:21:48,838
has no wine knowledge whatsoever, We will find a way to

349
00:21:48,918 --> 00:21:52,613
train her into the hospitality that we love. And she

350
00:21:52,677 --> 00:21:56,227
walked in and she was completely devastated. And she tells this to every

351
00:21:56,227 --> 00:21:59,905
single person that walks in here. She goes, the second I saw you two

352
00:21:59,905 --> 00:22:03,407
standing there, she said, I had tears of joy. Wow.

353
00:22:03,616 --> 00:22:07,214
She said, I just knew that I had family, a

354
00:22:07,214 --> 00:22:10,988
place that I was going to be secure with. And we oozed that

355
00:22:10,988 --> 00:22:14,473
to every single person of our staff. And every single person walking in the door.

356
00:22:14,521 --> 00:22:18,310
We do absolutely treat everybody like family. And again, that does go back to

357
00:22:18,310 --> 00:22:22,002
both of our cultures and that sense of, you know,

358
00:22:22,163 --> 00:22:25,342
just wanting to bring everybody together and be a happy

359
00:22:25,775 --> 00:22:29,403
family. So, yeah. Based on the size of the pour you gave me the other

360
00:22:29,403 --> 00:22:33,160
night, I could see that. We do. You know, for us, it's about— We're

361
00:22:33,160 --> 00:22:36,917
very generous in everything that we do. We don't hold any punches. We

362
00:22:36,917 --> 00:22:39,485
have a dog walking group coming in tomorrow.

363
00:22:40,706 --> 00:22:44,288
And I walked outside, and this podcast will be probably

364
00:22:45,026 --> 00:22:48,624
after the event. Yes. I walked over to the young lady and I said,

365
00:22:48,737 --> 00:22:52,078
look, it's not just about hosting you, it's about hosting

366
00:22:52,832 --> 00:22:56,575
your animals as well. I said, I will have 3 watering

367
00:22:56,767 --> 00:23:00,526
containers, but beyond that, I want to do something

368
00:23:00,686 --> 00:23:04,477
for the dogs as well. And she said, okay, like, what are you

369
00:23:04,477 --> 00:23:08,170
thinking? And I said, well, I know I can't serve chicken, so let's

370
00:23:08,234 --> 00:23:12,023
just, let's just remove that from the equation. But I said, we do our

371
00:23:12,023 --> 00:23:15,812
grape leaves in-house, and it's a rice and ground beef mixture with

372
00:23:15,812 --> 00:23:19,007
a whole bunch of seasonings and a whole bunch of delicious stuff. But I said,

373
00:23:19,392 --> 00:23:22,202
what I'll do is I'll cook rice and the ground beef, and I'll mix it

374
00:23:22,202 --> 00:23:26,007
up, and I'll give the dogs like a 1-cup portion. How nice. And I

375
00:23:26,007 --> 00:23:29,731
said, I will go out of my way to overthink everything

376
00:23:29,844 --> 00:23:33,470
just for you to come back and celebrate with us. Every kid that comes in

377
00:23:33,615 --> 00:23:36,966
gets watermelon. The babies, we steal. I think I'm going to come. We steal and

378
00:23:36,966 --> 00:23:40,542
hold the babies. We steal babies left and right. And I mean, mom and

379
00:23:40,590 --> 00:23:43,444
dad will be out here having a great time and they're having a glass of

380
00:23:43,460 --> 00:23:47,245
wine and the baby might be fussy and come to Uncle Chuck and Auntie Amanda,

381
00:23:47,630 --> 00:23:51,125
you know, and we'll take the babies off their hands and we'll still

382
00:23:51,254 --> 00:23:55,070
work while the mom and the parents are having fun and the baby is

383
00:23:55,102 --> 00:23:58,887
happy as a clam. You guys call that dolma or sarma

384
00:23:59,015 --> 00:24:02,840
or? So in Palestinian, we call it waraq dawal. It means

385
00:24:02,840 --> 00:24:06,530
literally the leaves of a grape.

386
00:24:06,680 --> 00:24:10,420
Oh. Dolmas is the Greek version. The Greek version. In Armenian, it's called sarma or

387
00:24:10,420 --> 00:24:14,120
dolma. But anyway, well, that's it. I think that I'm going to come

388
00:24:14,120 --> 00:24:16,920
for the dog thing and just— Be here tomorrow. I'll crawl in and I'll get

389
00:24:16,920 --> 00:24:20,490
some— Oh, I'm not joking. Like, I'll get a cup of something.

390
00:24:21,740 --> 00:24:25,440
Yeah. And long of the story, Sarah was outside and I've

391
00:24:25,440 --> 00:24:28,954
never met her before. And I just said, look, we are We are

392
00:24:29,483 --> 00:24:33,249
going to do everything we can to go above and beyond anything you've ever

393
00:24:33,249 --> 00:24:36,934
experienced because we want you to come back. We want you to tell every single

394
00:24:36,934 --> 00:24:40,507
person that you know how special our hospitality was.

395
00:24:41,084 --> 00:24:44,865
There's no greater gift than you telling your friends and

396
00:24:44,865 --> 00:24:48,567
family how wonderful we were, because no matter how much we tell people

397
00:24:48,567 --> 00:24:51,819
that you know that we don't know, they're not going to believe us, but they'll

398
00:24:51,819 --> 00:24:55,649
believe you. It's true. You're right on. And the hospitality

399
00:24:55,665 --> 00:24:59,254
is going to drive this, and it obviously is part of your DNA. Yeah. And

400
00:24:59,287 --> 00:25:02,572
that's critical because like I said before, you run into so many places where you

401
00:25:02,572 --> 00:25:06,337
just don't believe the person who's serving it. You just don't believe

402
00:25:06,337 --> 00:25:10,039
that they're sincere in their earnest value to

403
00:25:10,648 --> 00:25:14,398
create an experience for you to enjoy. And that's— we have to do that.

404
00:25:15,231 --> 00:25:18,645
That's what this— By the way, we have to do this. I mean, it is

405
00:25:18,757 --> 00:25:22,110
part of us no matter what. Again, and that's what wine is all about. It's

406
00:25:22,110 --> 00:25:25,890
about making those memories and the connections. And, you know, the

407
00:25:25,890 --> 00:25:29,610
story about the employee, which is interesting because I know the place that was here

408
00:25:29,610 --> 00:25:33,390
before, I won't mention any names. I always thought their menu was so, it

409
00:25:33,390 --> 00:25:36,990
was so voluminous that they couldn't make any one thing right. Right. How could you

410
00:25:36,990 --> 00:25:40,710
possibly? I heard they had a good fish taco. Their food

411
00:25:40,710 --> 00:25:44,000
menu. I'm not joking. For a French bistro, I'm sure they knock it out.

412
00:25:44,270 --> 00:25:47,790
Exactly. But someone else told me that they also do sushi and I was like,

413
00:25:48,196 --> 00:25:51,947
Yes, I just— Wow, really? That's interesting. That's so old school. You

414
00:25:52,220 --> 00:25:55,923
get a menu like that. Their wine list was interesting. And they

415
00:25:56,051 --> 00:25:59,466
weren't a wine bar, so, but they did have a pretty big wine

416
00:25:59,578 --> 00:26:03,410
list. And Chuck makes fun of me because I do like to torture

417
00:26:03,426 --> 00:26:06,776
him with drinking shitty wines. But again, that's part of,

418
00:26:07,273 --> 00:26:10,816
you know, my viewpoint on learning. And it

419
00:26:11,153 --> 00:26:14,390
doesn't matter how many years you've been in the industry. I'm sure you still learn

420
00:26:14,390 --> 00:26:18,200
things every day, right? And for me, it's about try everything.

421
00:26:18,430 --> 00:26:21,930
It doesn't matter if you know it's going to be shitty. It doesn't matter if

422
00:26:21,930 --> 00:26:25,470
you think it's going to be fantastic. Just try everything.

423
00:26:25,740 --> 00:26:29,390
Because at the end of the day, trying them is learning. You know, you're never

424
00:26:29,390 --> 00:26:32,870
going to know what that 100-point

425
00:26:32,870 --> 00:26:36,210
wine should taste like if you haven't drank the really shitty

426
00:26:36,210 --> 00:26:39,920
stuff. My dad used to say, you're tasting it. I don't care what you smell,

427
00:26:40,010 --> 00:26:42,850
you're going to taste it. You'll never know the flaws if you don't taste it.

428
00:26:42,850 --> 00:26:46,600
Exactly. And you mentioned something when we sat down that You recently tasted

429
00:26:46,600 --> 00:26:50,080
60 wines in a day. And that, my Tuesdays were 9 to 2 every Tuesday

430
00:26:50,080 --> 00:26:53,920
for 35 years. I tasted probably 60 to 75 wines, and that was my

431
00:26:53,920 --> 00:26:57,520
job. I considered it the job. Yeah. Because, and it wasn't a

432
00:26:57,520 --> 00:27:01,359
fun job necessarily, 'cause at 2 o'clock you're pretty tired, right? I mean, you taste

433
00:27:01,359 --> 00:27:04,000
60 wines in a day, you're pretty tired. Yeah. Or you go to the Southern

434
00:27:04,000 --> 00:27:06,900
tasting and you walk through all those tables and taste as much as you can.

435
00:27:06,900 --> 00:27:10,720
It's tiring work despite the fact that people say, oh, what a glamorous job.

436
00:27:11,502 --> 00:27:15,349
In order to provide the service and the level of quality you want to

437
00:27:15,349 --> 00:27:19,147
provide, it takes a lot of work. Were there other headwinds to this

438
00:27:20,077 --> 00:27:23,779
that you didn't expect? You did an amazing job

439
00:27:24,324 --> 00:27:27,658
on the speed side, but were there things that you went, oh, the health

440
00:27:27,690 --> 00:27:31,504
department, oh my God, all those things? Everything that could go wrong

441
00:27:31,761 --> 00:27:35,591
went wrong. Murphy's Law loves us. I'm just going to

442
00:27:35,607 --> 00:27:39,037
be honest. Is that Sicilian Murphy or is he Palestinian?

443
00:27:39,854 --> 00:27:41,673
He was It's not from our family. He had

444
00:27:42,351 --> 00:27:46,191
definitely some horns on his head. I mean, he

445
00:27:46,239 --> 00:27:49,950
was evil as fuck. He wouldn't give us a break to

446
00:27:49,950 --> 00:27:53,665
save our lives. We went through every challenge under the sun by

447
00:27:53,665 --> 00:27:57,316
trying to do what we thought was necessary.

448
00:27:57,997 --> 00:28:01,497
And again, Amanda had a great vision on what she thought

449
00:28:02,207 --> 00:28:06,030
the budgets should be, some of the headwinds we were going to run

450
00:28:06,079 --> 00:28:09,685
into, some of the challenges that we were going to have, And

451
00:28:09,942 --> 00:28:13,379
everything that could have went wrong went wrong. And I truly mean

452
00:28:13,636 --> 00:28:17,234
everything. Wow. And we are— we were still battling

453
00:28:18,085 --> 00:28:21,811
stuff as of this morning. I literally had 2 different plumbers coming in, one

454
00:28:21,988 --> 00:28:25,650
for the gas company and one for the actual plumbing company. And that was at

455
00:28:25,650 --> 00:28:28,894
6 AM. And we didn't get home until 11:30 last night. Oh, we didn't leave

456
00:28:28,894 --> 00:28:32,492
here until 11:30 last night. Where are the kids? Luckily,

457
00:28:32,829 --> 00:28:36,539
luckily I have one at college, so he's on his way home. And my daughter

458
00:28:36,539 --> 00:28:39,880
is— we split custody, me and my ex-wife. So she's in Northern

459
00:28:39,896 --> 00:28:43,671
California. Amanda, her 3 boys are with their

460
00:28:43,687 --> 00:28:47,140
dad this week. Yeah. So it's, I mean, there's a

461
00:28:47,301 --> 00:28:50,883
balance to that as well. But I, in true honesty,

462
00:28:51,638 --> 00:28:54,689
we have not had a normal day in probably 2 months.

463
00:28:55,396 --> 00:28:58,448
And I don't know who asked me this morning, but I just said, no, we

464
00:28:58,448 --> 00:29:02,255
won't get a vacation until like 2030. Yeah. If we're lucky, you

465
00:29:02,255 --> 00:29:06,028
know, and And we just want a date night. I mean, we just want to

466
00:29:06,076 --> 00:29:09,913
go out just one time uninterrupted. Honey, tell them

467
00:29:09,929 --> 00:29:12,787
about— Not Baja Sharkies, I suppose. No, we

468
00:29:13,173 --> 00:29:16,994
ran an errand last week for paper

469
00:29:16,994 --> 00:29:20,703
for the menus, and we pulled over just to grab a burger and a

470
00:29:20,703 --> 00:29:24,363
beer. Oh God. Yeah. Go ahead, honey, because I, I talk way too

471
00:29:24,396 --> 00:29:28,056
much. But— Oh no, I couldn't even get through a quarter of the beer, and

472
00:29:28,088 --> 00:29:31,683
we must have had like 10 calls and texts. So we're like— Like the place

473
00:29:31,683 --> 00:29:35,341
was burning down. Yeah. Would you trade that? No. Would you

474
00:29:35,389 --> 00:29:39,079
trade that to go back to— No, there's no way in hell. This is our

475
00:29:39,079 --> 00:29:42,689
baby. And I really mean this. Between me and Amanda, we poured our heart and

476
00:29:42,689 --> 00:29:46,090
soul into this place. I mean, every penny that we

477
00:29:46,523 --> 00:29:49,555
have ever saved is into this place.

478
00:29:50,309 --> 00:29:53,791
You can tell. That's what it takes, though. Yeah. And

479
00:29:54,063 --> 00:29:57,815
I mean, Again, failure is not an option at

480
00:29:57,847 --> 00:30:01,117
this point. There's too many people that are counting on both of us, including each

481
00:30:01,117 --> 00:30:04,338
other. I mean, not unlike

482
00:30:04,899 --> 00:30:08,746
the allure of the wine trade. And I got stories I

483
00:30:09,371 --> 00:30:13,154
want— these stories are about your story, not mine. But the

484
00:30:13,154 --> 00:30:16,552
allure of the wine trade is so strong. And you already have that passion.

485
00:30:17,225 --> 00:30:20,896
Entrepreneurship has that same allure, right? It just has

486
00:30:20,992 --> 00:30:23,950
this feeling that you are in control. You may not be in control of all

487
00:30:23,982 --> 00:30:27,812
the individual headwinds that you encounter, but you are in control

488
00:30:27,941 --> 00:30:31,513
of the destiny. And you're not when you're with corporate America.

489
00:30:31,562 --> 00:30:35,200
So I was balancing 2 different things. Sorry, honey, I wasn't sure if I cut

490
00:30:35,200 --> 00:30:38,537
you off, but my family's been independent

491
00:30:39,970 --> 00:30:43,255
operators for at least

492
00:30:43,448 --> 00:30:46,636
45 or 50 years. My dad's had many restaurants, many operations.

493
00:30:48,862 --> 00:30:52,411
Both of my younger siblings have their own establishments too.

494
00:30:53,904 --> 00:30:57,484
Like, it's always been a passion of ours to just do something

495
00:30:57,757 --> 00:31:01,370
on our own. And being in corporate America, I was

496
00:31:01,386 --> 00:31:05,143
just too, you know, zoned into what I needed to do from

497
00:31:05,384 --> 00:31:08,772
8 to 10 o'clock. And I was lucky to have

498
00:31:08,772 --> 00:31:11,983
weekends off and I had, you know, my healthcare was paid for and, you know,

499
00:31:12,047 --> 00:31:15,307
put my kids through private schools and all that was great. But There came a

500
00:31:15,355 --> 00:31:18,887
time when you're like, I can't give this company 200%

501
00:31:18,967 --> 00:31:22,789
anymore. They don't fucking deserve it. And that's truly what it came

502
00:31:22,901 --> 00:31:26,241
down to. That's right. If I give them

503
00:31:26,273 --> 00:31:30,111
200%, what is my family getting? And I don't want

504
00:31:30,111 --> 00:31:33,916
to go home spent. I could barely keep my head above water.

505
00:31:34,944 --> 00:31:38,717
Poor Amanda. We would leave here at 11, 12, 1

506
00:31:38,717 --> 00:31:42,095
o'clock in the morning. And between the driveway

507
00:31:42,481 --> 00:31:45,927
and the first light on the corner is less than a

508
00:31:46,281 --> 00:31:50,052
10th of a mile. And she'd put her head on my shoulder and

509
00:31:50,295 --> 00:31:54,115
she would— Wow. And I'm like, I know, I

510
00:31:54,115 --> 00:31:57,614
know you're fucking tired. I still got to

511
00:31:57,614 --> 00:32:01,338
drive home, you know? And it's still— You're exhausted too. But

512
00:32:01,338 --> 00:32:05,048
no matter what, neither one of us will ever let

513
00:32:05,048 --> 00:32:07,824
each other down. That's the one thing between the two of us.

514
00:32:09,099 --> 00:32:12,621
There's a partnership and a level of love that neither one of us had before.

515
00:32:13,315 --> 00:32:17,128
And that's the reason why there's no way either one of us are going

516
00:32:17,128 --> 00:32:20,685
to let each other fail. The other thing I truly want to mention,

517
00:32:21,038 --> 00:32:24,814
I know I need to stop talking, but I told Amanda when I first met

518
00:32:24,814 --> 00:32:28,451
her that she will never, ever, ever have to go through life on

519
00:32:28,451 --> 00:32:32,050
her own ever again. She now has a partner in crime in

520
00:32:32,082 --> 00:32:35,859
everything that she does. So she never— she'll never need to suffer in anything, whether

521
00:32:35,859 --> 00:32:39,283
it's even laundry or dishes or financial. Yeah. Or the

522
00:32:39,283 --> 00:32:43,067
boys, or whatever the case may be. Our general manager came to work for

523
00:32:43,116 --> 00:32:46,788
us, and it's a huge overtaking. Like he's a young man;

524
00:32:46,804 --> 00:32:50,477
he's never done what we're asking him to do. And I said, "Dude,

525
00:32:50,733 --> 00:32:54,566
you are blessed that you have us because you will

526
00:32:54,678 --> 00:32:58,495
never have to work a day on your life on your own.

527
00:32:58,752 --> 00:33:02,585
You have us as leaders and people who are hands-on in everything

528
00:33:02,617 --> 00:33:06,308
we do." The young Our staff, every

529
00:33:06,308 --> 00:33:10,131
single one of them has the same exact treatment in everything they do. I'm

530
00:33:10,243 --> 00:33:13,922
mopping floors, I'm doing dishes. Amanda's doing 100

531
00:33:13,922 --> 00:33:17,263
other things in here all at the same time. She's doing all the cooking and

532
00:33:17,312 --> 00:33:20,733
basically all the cleaning. And we have people that we are paying,

533
00:33:21,633 --> 00:33:24,990
they're on the payroll. But if we can't do it, then—

534
00:33:25,906 --> 00:33:28,894
sorry, if it's good enough for us, it's definitely good enough for you. But you'll

535
00:33:28,894 --> 00:33:32,717
never be on your own. And that's something we appreciate. That's a huge thing. Every

536
00:33:32,717 --> 00:33:36,554
single day. I mean, you talk about the woman that you displaced originally when,

537
00:33:36,747 --> 00:33:40,279
when the restaurant left, and I don't think people realize the

538
00:33:40,279 --> 00:33:43,378
impact they have on someone like that whose life is

539
00:33:43,956 --> 00:33:47,553
always teetering on, who knows, financial, social, political

540
00:33:47,730 --> 00:33:51,278
ruin. And that one little thing like losing your job for even a

541
00:33:51,358 --> 00:33:55,003
couple of weeks. Yeah. I mean, when Starbucks closed here on 14th,

542
00:33:56,079 --> 00:33:59,804
we heard an earful of, of from the people working there, like,

543
00:33:59,949 --> 00:34:02,358
what am I going to do? Where am I going to go? I don't have

544
00:34:02,358 --> 00:34:06,067
that much time to dilly-dally around. So that's

545
00:34:06,067 --> 00:34:09,889
really an amazing feeling for an employee. In all fairness, we interviewed

546
00:34:09,970 --> 00:34:13,342
everybody that was on the old regime staff.

547
00:34:14,482 --> 00:34:18,031
Well, excuse me. We did it for the sake of like, would you fit

548
00:34:18,031 --> 00:34:21,371
in what we're trying to do? Do you understand where we're coming from? Do you

549
00:34:21,371 --> 00:34:25,145
understand our passion? And can you at least meet us halfway? Yeah.

550
00:34:25,546 --> 00:34:29,265
And a few of them did. We kept a couple of them. Generationally, we have

551
00:34:29,313 --> 00:34:32,343
issues. I mean, there's that kind of thought process isn't very

552
00:34:32,680 --> 00:34:36,399
prevalent with some of these generations behind us, particularly even on the wine drinking

553
00:34:36,399 --> 00:34:39,541
side. For me, it was really— I think that was my number one

554
00:34:39,589 --> 00:34:43,260
priority with the front of the house and, you know, opening this is

555
00:34:43,917 --> 00:34:47,572
if you don't have good staff that are going to create and

556
00:34:47,604 --> 00:34:51,227
carry out the experience that you want your guests to have, then you're going to

557
00:34:51,275 --> 00:34:53,946
fail. I mean, how many times have you gone to a place where it's like

558
00:34:53,946 --> 00:34:57,794
the food is great, but the service was shitty? You know, like the experience

559
00:34:57,794 --> 00:35:01,336
was crappy because, yeah, you know, it kind of ruins the whole

560
00:35:01,336 --> 00:35:04,588
experience for you. And again, wine's about connection. So

561
00:35:05,216 --> 00:35:08,984
we worked really hard to build a team

562
00:35:09,322 --> 00:35:12,868
that we knew could connect with our customers. And they're

563
00:35:12,868 --> 00:35:16,708
not all, you know, experts at wine.

564
00:35:17,288 --> 00:35:20,128
Most of them just have a passion for it. That's lovely. Yeah, most of them

565
00:35:20,128 --> 00:35:23,881
just have a passion for it. And we've taken a lot of time to

566
00:35:23,897 --> 00:35:27,559
train them, and we've brought in suppliers to train them as much as possible.

567
00:35:27,768 --> 00:35:31,141
And I think it's great to hear which wines that they've really, like,

568
00:35:31,446 --> 00:35:35,204
grown to love and why, you know, whether it's the story

569
00:35:35,300 --> 00:35:38,657
behind. Yeah, on why they chose that. You know, when the— with the Wine of

570
00:35:38,673 --> 00:35:41,628
the Month Club, since we didn't get a chance to see the person's face,

571
00:35:42,945 --> 00:35:46,447
I, I— every month I tasted everything we were selling that month, the selection.

572
00:35:46,945 --> 00:35:50,784
And I can't tell you how many customers on the phone not seeing

573
00:35:50,816 --> 00:35:54,383
anybody's faces or expression, would say, what did you like? To

574
00:35:55,314 --> 00:35:58,801
a person that's not educated in wine, but they tasted the wines and they can

575
00:35:58,801 --> 00:36:01,848
say, I tasted this and I really like this. Or if you like this style,

576
00:36:01,865 --> 00:36:05,464
you like that style. I think I told you when we were here

577
00:36:05,514 --> 00:36:09,197
last, this— the irony between the 2

578
00:36:09,197 --> 00:36:12,571
experiences I had almost back to back. One was in

579
00:36:12,587 --> 00:36:16,427
Palermo. Did I tell you that story? No. Okay, so we were in

580
00:36:16,427 --> 00:36:19,537
Palermo at the seaside restaurant, the new little village they've done over there. It's really

581
00:36:19,729 --> 00:36:23,224
nice, really fun. And the restaurant was a fish restaurant, obviously.

582
00:36:23,961 --> 00:36:27,551
And I think the guy was Serbian, the song. And I ordered a Guido

583
00:36:27,728 --> 00:36:30,389
del Passo, you know, the Antonori. You told me this story. I told you this

584
00:36:30,389 --> 00:36:34,204
story. And this guy, I was enamored to watch

585
00:36:34,300 --> 00:36:37,906
him take such passion to open the bottle and decant it for us.

586
00:36:38,788 --> 00:36:41,625
You know, I just thought, wow, this guy really loves what he's doing. And then

587
00:36:41,850 --> 00:36:45,542
we were in Beverly Hills at a fancy tasting. And oh my goodness, they

588
00:36:45,542 --> 00:36:49,107
had some just bored the stiff out of me. Just, and I thought,

589
00:36:49,396 --> 00:36:52,977
this is the difference. Yeah. Because it's not about the juice is

590
00:36:53,090 --> 00:36:55,242
important. You've got to have good juice. We're going to talk about that right now.

591
00:36:56,366 --> 00:36:59,257
But then you got to make it feel good. You got to make people feel

592
00:36:59,257 --> 00:37:02,918
like they're really getting something special. Yeah. You got to make them feel

593
00:37:03,047 --> 00:37:06,660
the backstory to it and like they're there and they're in a different place.

594
00:37:06,741 --> 00:37:09,680
And, you know, they're— everything about wine is

595
00:37:11,490 --> 00:37:14,780
So when you get a sommelier in here, when you get somebody in here, you

596
00:37:14,780 --> 00:37:18,500
guys taste 60 wines a day, and somebody comes in, and

597
00:37:18,500 --> 00:37:21,180
there's a whole bunch of stuff on LinkedIn about how to approach it. And I'm

598
00:37:21,180 --> 00:37:24,180
an old sales guy. I spent my career at Xerox in the beginning. So I

599
00:37:24,180 --> 00:37:26,950
learned all those techniques and all that type of sales business.

600
00:37:28,000 --> 00:37:31,600
But I had a certain type of salesperson that would come into the wine

601
00:37:31,600 --> 00:37:35,160
shop at Wine of the Month Club and say, and I would immediately

602
00:37:35,160 --> 00:37:38,800
know, like, Where this person's coming from, what their goals are. That happened

603
00:37:38,832 --> 00:37:42,348
yesterday. These make me cringe. I want to strangle them. I swear to God, that

604
00:37:42,348 --> 00:37:46,154
happened yesterday. Really? So tell me about it. You don't have to

605
00:37:46,154 --> 00:37:49,975
name any names, but what was it? What was working? So

606
00:37:50,472 --> 00:37:53,973
again, we poured our heart and soul into this business, right?

607
00:37:54,470 --> 00:37:58,163
And everything that we do is 100% Chuck and

608
00:37:58,163 --> 00:38:01,695
Amanda and everything that we ooze out of us.

609
00:38:02,440 --> 00:38:05,203
But this gentleman went out of his way yesterday,

610
00:38:05,267 --> 00:38:09,080
probably half a dozen to a dozen times, to tell us

611
00:38:09,144 --> 00:38:12,900
what we needed. And every time he opened up his mouth and he

612
00:38:12,900 --> 00:38:16,332
says, I'll tell you what you need, and I literally want to

613
00:38:16,428 --> 00:38:20,183
climb over the bar and choke him out. And Amanda says,

614
00:38:21,025 --> 00:38:24,766
honey, if it was a female and she was to do that, you wouldn't be

615
00:38:24,766 --> 00:38:28,038
that way. And I said, I'll take someone's recommendation.

616
00:38:29,003 --> 00:38:32,793
But after the 5th or 6th time you're telling me what we need,

617
00:38:32,937 --> 00:38:36,582
well, do you think we fucking built this place without you? Yes. Do you

618
00:38:36,614 --> 00:38:39,328
have any idea how hard it was for us to get to this point? And

619
00:38:39,360 --> 00:38:42,684
you're going to tell us that we're missing a single region,

620
00:38:42,957 --> 00:38:46,666
whatever the hell it is, on our wine list? If

621
00:38:46,730 --> 00:38:50,214
it doesn't marry with every single dish that's on our

622
00:38:50,214 --> 00:38:53,891
menu, we won't even consider it. But you're going to come off the street,

623
00:38:54,533 --> 00:38:58,140
and tell us that we need a Spanish red and a sake in a

624
00:38:58,140 --> 00:39:01,747
Mediterranean place. And I wanted to just climb over the counter and kill them.

625
00:39:02,404 --> 00:39:06,107
So— I think it's like what we talked about earlier. There's just this perception,

626
00:39:06,236 --> 00:39:09,843
because it happens so often, of people trying to

627
00:39:10,324 --> 00:39:13,979
get into the wine industry, whether making their own brand labels or opening a wine

628
00:39:14,011 --> 00:39:17,586
bar. And they usually don't know that much about

629
00:39:17,698 --> 00:39:21,129
wine. So I think there's a perception when people come in that they don't

630
00:39:21,145 --> 00:39:24,079
understand that we have the background in many different ways.

631
00:39:25,235 --> 00:39:29,023
Well, but with good salesmanship, and everybody that called

632
00:39:29,023 --> 00:39:32,620
on me because they're regulars every Tuesday knew how I bought,

633
00:39:33,005 --> 00:39:35,510
and they knew I wasn't going to throw any punches. And you don't seem like

634
00:39:35,510 --> 00:39:38,126
the type to throw any punches. Maybe you'll squeeze a buck or two out of

635
00:39:38,142 --> 00:39:41,867
the whole, you know, case one price or whatever, but you have an

636
00:39:41,931 --> 00:39:45,399
earnest value built into this place that you

637
00:39:45,528 --> 00:39:49,220
want to make sure is expressed with what's on the shelf. Why

638
00:39:49,220 --> 00:39:52,623
aren't we asking questions about that philosophy of you

639
00:39:53,024 --> 00:39:56,700
so that we can align our focus. In all fairness, there

640
00:39:56,700 --> 00:40:00,263
were plenty of wines that we will probably buy from the

641
00:40:00,311 --> 00:40:04,083
gentleman, but just every time he opened up his mouth and continued

642
00:40:04,083 --> 00:40:07,854
to tell us what we needed, like, do you have any idea what we

643
00:40:07,854 --> 00:40:11,112
just went through in the last 35 days? It has. It has.

644
00:40:11,369 --> 00:40:15,044
And you think we're missing one red by the

645
00:40:15,060 --> 00:40:18,607
glass in your portfolio? It just blew my mind. That's going to change the

646
00:40:18,607 --> 00:40:22,215
projection of the whole thing. Shit for brains. Like, I'm not joking. We

647
00:40:22,215 --> 00:40:25,740
just worked 22 hours a day for the last month.

648
00:40:26,541 --> 00:40:30,370
If we're missing something, it— I mean, it could have been on backorder. It could

649
00:40:30,370 --> 00:40:33,478
have just fell through the cracks. It could have been something else. But just his

650
00:40:33,574 --> 00:40:37,324
approach to how it was necessary for us to listen

651
00:40:37,356 --> 00:40:40,608
to him, I tuned him out from hello. And

652
00:40:40,800 --> 00:40:44,261
I'm sorry. I just— it's just the god-honest truth. Like,

653
00:40:44,566 --> 00:40:48,155
if you're not going to meet me halfway and understand our passion and what we're

654
00:40:48,155 --> 00:40:51,845
trying to do, then we're just not for you. You know, to your point, a

655
00:40:51,845 --> 00:40:55,215
good salesperson learns, you know, it comes in like, what's your

656
00:40:55,215 --> 00:40:58,473
concept? You know, what type of wines are you bringing in? What's your price

657
00:40:58,762 --> 00:41:02,260
range? Before they ever showcase any wines.

658
00:41:02,758 --> 00:41:06,096
There was 2 Southern reps right when I sold the— right when I was selling

659
00:41:06,096 --> 00:41:09,723
the company, 2 new Southern reps came in and they were young

660
00:41:09,755 --> 00:41:12,965
guys. And we were in the tasting room and they're like,

661
00:41:13,944 --> 00:41:17,703
they had sort of the same attitude, right? And so I thought, and they

662
00:41:17,703 --> 00:41:21,481
go, you know, we're both WSET 1. I'm like,

663
00:41:22,349 --> 00:41:25,093
you know what, that's— I think I've heard enough. So I made them come into

664
00:41:25,141 --> 00:41:28,516
my conference room and sit them down and say, so what?

665
00:41:29,275 --> 00:41:32,391
I don't care. I go, you have to have WSET 1 just to get a

666
00:41:32,391 --> 00:41:36,225
job. So tell me why you are— what you're going to

667
00:41:36,225 --> 00:41:39,043
do for me is going to help me. And they just stood there like,

668
00:41:39,885 --> 00:41:43,046
it's like their second sales call in their career. In the chat.

669
00:41:43,724 --> 00:41:47,469
So, so what do you do when you— when they come in besides

670
00:41:48,163 --> 00:41:51,875
trying to interpret their technique? What do you look for? What are you

671
00:41:51,924 --> 00:41:55,134
looking for in a wine? I'm just looking— oh yeah, I leave all the wine

672
00:41:55,231 --> 00:41:59,039
stuff for Amanda. I know exactly what I like from the second I

673
00:41:59,039 --> 00:42:02,680
taste it. I put on a straight poker face. I let her take the

674
00:42:02,680 --> 00:42:06,366
notes. I let her figure out what she wants, and then we'll come back and

675
00:42:06,366 --> 00:42:10,013
we'll regroup. But in all fairness, I

676
00:42:10,190 --> 00:42:13,447
want to treat this— cheers. Cheers. I want to treat this as

677
00:42:13,640 --> 00:42:17,331
Amanda's baby more than mine. This is a

678
00:42:17,331 --> 00:42:20,605
dream of mine. And from the very beginning, I told Amanda,

679
00:42:21,407 --> 00:42:25,194
as a good partner and someone who loves her with all my heart,

680
00:42:25,291 --> 00:42:28,837
my job every single day is to elevate her. If I

681
00:42:28,885 --> 00:42:32,544
can't take time out of my own day and elevate my wife, my partner in

682
00:42:32,641 --> 00:42:35,193
crime, and everything that we do, Are you

683
00:42:35,306 --> 00:42:38,793
taking notes on this? This is

684
00:42:38,793 --> 00:42:42,247
true. He tells our GM that every day. Are you taking notes? I,

685
00:42:42,922 --> 00:42:46,553
I'm not joking. So I'm no good to Amanda if I can't

686
00:42:46,634 --> 00:42:50,249
elevate her. And we both had relationships that probably fell a little

687
00:42:50,249 --> 00:42:53,768
bit short. But if I can't give her the level of comfort and support that

688
00:42:53,768 --> 00:42:57,608
she needs to be the amazing person that she is, that I know she is,

689
00:42:58,347 --> 00:43:01,558
then what am I doing? I'm doing everything wrong. And there's going to be a

690
00:43:01,558 --> 00:43:04,844
day where she's going to need me and I'm going to need her. And the

691
00:43:04,844 --> 00:43:08,563
fact that we hold no punches to each other, we tell everybody every single

692
00:43:08,563 --> 00:43:12,074
secret that we, we go through every single day. But

693
00:43:13,260 --> 00:43:16,931
that's my— so when it goes back to the wine, I trust her in everything

694
00:43:16,947 --> 00:43:20,730
that we do. What do you look for? I'm not sure

695
00:43:20,730 --> 00:43:23,839
if I can let my wife listen to this, but she'll listen to it anyway.

696
00:43:24,737 --> 00:43:28,350
We have very— we worked together for 35 years. She might. Your wife is

697
00:43:28,350 --> 00:43:31,330
a lovely young woman. We had a window between us. She would close it when

698
00:43:31,330 --> 00:43:34,190
she didn't want to hear what I was talking about, but that's different. But what

699
00:43:34,190 --> 00:43:37,970
do you— I mean, you have an incredibly interesting list here. I remember the first

700
00:43:37,970 --> 00:43:40,970
thing I looked at, I said, wow, this has been thought through. You know, it's

701
00:43:40,970 --> 00:43:44,330
not just Southern coming in and printing the menu for you kind of thing. No,

702
00:43:44,330 --> 00:43:48,110
we didn't ask anybody for one fucking penny. So what are you looking for

703
00:43:48,110 --> 00:43:51,670
to round this list out? For us, we're looking

704
00:43:51,670 --> 00:43:55,472
for, I think, balanced and approachable wines. And, you know,

705
00:43:56,514 --> 00:44:00,058
I think— In all fairness, it

706
00:44:00,138 --> 00:44:03,939
has to marry to our menu. That's the one thing

707
00:44:04,051 --> 00:44:07,547
that I tell our staff, every single server. If you can't draw

708
00:44:07,676 --> 00:44:11,332
something from the right and something from the left, it doesn't matter

709
00:44:11,364 --> 00:44:15,053
where they meet, somewhere the lines got to cross. Like, they get— you got to

710
00:44:15,053 --> 00:44:17,699
connect them in everything that we do, whether it's bubbles for

711
00:44:18,484 --> 00:44:22,012
oysters or whatever the case may be. Like, we've thought of

712
00:44:22,012 --> 00:44:25,688
everything, and I don't think our Our list sucks. So someone coming

713
00:44:25,801 --> 00:44:29,399
in and telling us what we need, again, is just a complete turn-off. So let

714
00:44:29,399 --> 00:44:33,173
me ask you this question, because this is— food pairing is an interesting subject in

715
00:44:33,173 --> 00:44:36,482
our industry, and some people don't believe it. I'm a little skeptical on it

716
00:44:36,482 --> 00:44:40,192
necessarily, just because of, you know, what I like and what you like are 2

717
00:44:40,192 --> 00:44:43,774
different things. But I think it's a great premise to

718
00:44:43,774 --> 00:44:47,516
start with, to say, okay, in typical, if we're going to have oysters de la

719
00:44:47,580 --> 00:44:50,583
Saône or some kind of very fresh salt And there's a quote from

720
00:44:51,820 --> 00:44:55,272
Ernest Hemingway in A Moveable Feast, this story about

721
00:44:55,272 --> 00:44:58,820
Paris, which he tells us in his way how

722
00:44:58,965 --> 00:45:02,658
he drank the white crisp wine and ate the oysters. And I

723
00:45:02,658 --> 00:45:06,158
began to make plans. Like, it just changed his

724
00:45:06,254 --> 00:45:09,594
perspective on things. I read it all the time. It's a really cool comment. I'll

725
00:45:09,594 --> 00:45:13,335
send it to you. But do you look at it that way? Like, we're gonna—

726
00:45:13,415 --> 00:45:17,203
do customers walk in and say, Just,

727
00:45:17,267 --> 00:45:21,037
do we know yet if the customers are going to ask us, we trust

728
00:45:21,037 --> 00:45:24,791
your judgment, we like oysters or something? Yeah, we look at it that way.

729
00:45:24,887 --> 00:45:28,144
We're not, you know, when we're tasting the wines, it's not about like, oh, this

730
00:45:28,240 --> 00:45:32,090
will go with this dish. For us, it's just in general,

731
00:45:32,107 --> 00:45:35,010
you know, like what we enjoy drinking, we know are going to go with the

732
00:45:35,074 --> 00:45:38,764
foods on the menu. And I think,

733
00:45:38,844 --> 00:45:42,310
you know, everybody's palate's different. We have 1 or 2 wines on our

734
00:45:42,310 --> 00:45:45,069
menu that are definitely crowd pleasers that,

735
00:45:46,127 --> 00:45:49,733
Our staff loves it. You're going to be like Stella, right? Like, you know, they

736
00:45:49,733 --> 00:45:52,825
run out every other week. I'm joking.

737
00:45:53,659 --> 00:45:57,473
You know, you have to meet people halfway, but we

738
00:45:57,521 --> 00:46:01,207
definitely have trained our staff that, you know, there are

739
00:46:01,207 --> 00:46:04,988
ways to educate staff or educate the customers in a

740
00:46:05,053 --> 00:46:08,786
gentle way if they are looking at that buttery shard or, you know,

741
00:46:08,899 --> 00:46:12,693
where can we like kind of change their perspective a little

742
00:46:12,693 --> 00:46:15,849
bit to find something on our list that will

743
00:46:15,849 --> 00:46:19,633
still be what they're looking for, but maybe be more

744
00:46:19,633 --> 00:46:23,228
our style of wine that we're drinking. And I think your

745
00:46:23,325 --> 00:46:27,072
palate just changes all the time. I've seen our staff's palate

746
00:46:27,072 --> 00:46:30,908
change over the last couple of weeks. I remember— It's

747
00:46:30,908 --> 00:46:34,748
fun though, isn't it? I know. I remember being on a

748
00:46:34,748 --> 00:46:38,185
business trip with my boss, Joey Tunsley, and I

749
00:46:38,394 --> 00:46:41,529
bought a bottle that I had loved in my

750
00:46:42,701 --> 00:46:46,298
20s. And I was like, this is a great wine. And it

751
00:46:46,298 --> 00:46:49,894
wasn't a bad vineyard, still isn't a bad winery.

752
00:46:51,050 --> 00:46:54,615
And I opened the bottle and I was like, wow, this wine

753
00:46:55,128 --> 00:46:58,340
is not what I remember it to be. That's interesting. Yeah. And he's like, well,

754
00:46:58,420 --> 00:47:01,535
I don't think that the wine has changed. He's like, I think your palate has

755
00:47:01,647 --> 00:47:04,906
changed because the last 3 or 4 years

756
00:47:05,500 --> 00:47:08,872
you've been drinking my style of wines. And we spend a lot of time

757
00:47:08,952 --> 00:47:12,500
traveling together and having dinners together. So my

758
00:47:12,549 --> 00:47:16,232
style of wine changed to what he preferred. It wasn't a

759
00:47:16,362 --> 00:47:20,147
bad thing. The style

760
00:47:20,196 --> 00:47:23,790
that I think we gravitate to is more

761
00:47:23,983 --> 00:47:27,628
like that clean, not oaky, just really letting the

762
00:47:28,276 --> 00:47:31,321
vineyards tell the story and

763
00:47:31,354 --> 00:47:35,047
not over-influencing the wines and just

764
00:47:35,793 --> 00:47:39,108
really wanting to let the varietals themselves show through. You believe— this has

765
00:47:39,206 --> 00:47:41,436
lots of controversy. We're almost out of time here.

766
00:47:44,111 --> 00:47:47,718
What goes together, what grows together goes together. Do you believe in that?

767
00:47:47,896 --> 00:47:51,600
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's something, in my opinion, I agree with

768
00:47:51,633 --> 00:47:53,863
that. You get a lot of headwinds on that comment, but

769
00:47:55,284 --> 00:47:58,998
going to Sicily, for instance, and having a Nerello Mascalese or

770
00:47:58,998 --> 00:48:01,856
a Cataratto or something like that, and you just kind of go, wow.

771
00:48:03,434 --> 00:48:07,058
Some of my favorite wines that are not necessarily well known, but

772
00:48:07,058 --> 00:48:10,504
because they're so influenced by the Mediterranean and the salt air, it

773
00:48:10,520 --> 00:48:14,008
just You just get it and it has to work.

774
00:48:14,817 --> 00:48:18,603
There has to be this human connection between

775
00:48:19,185 --> 00:48:22,923
the wine and the soil and the food. I believe that.

776
00:48:23,085 --> 00:48:26,095
I got to jump in too. And I know I've— Please do. Way too much.

777
00:48:27,879 --> 00:48:31,728
I am a firm believer every single day your palate not just changes,

778
00:48:31,922 --> 00:48:35,690
but it adapts to things that you like and

779
00:48:35,690 --> 00:48:39,476
you start to train yourself on things that work for your

780
00:48:39,610 --> 00:48:40,932
palate and what you enjoy.

781
00:48:43,410 --> 00:48:46,450
What kills us is how many things are

782
00:48:46,981 --> 00:48:50,681
commercial. And what is commercial, everybody

783
00:48:50,681 --> 00:48:54,248
thinks is supposed to be good. And our goal, every

784
00:48:54,248 --> 00:48:58,012
single person coming in here, is for us to show you something that isn't

785
00:48:58,012 --> 00:49:01,816
commercial and to train your palate to actually what

786
00:49:01,981 --> 00:49:05,643
is drinkable and enjoyable. And that's our goal

787
00:49:05,917 --> 00:49:09,492
every single step of the way. We had a couple of gentlemen from New York

788
00:49:09,492 --> 00:49:13,292
stop in literally first day, and they parked outside

789
00:49:13,582 --> 00:49:15,647
and they ordered a bottle of

790
00:49:16,825 --> 00:49:20,487
Nebbiolo. Really? And they were like, wow, it's $80.

791
00:49:20,600 --> 00:49:24,233
Domestic Nebbiolo? For a bottle. $80 for a bottle. Yeah, they were like,

792
00:49:24,314 --> 00:49:28,083
$80 for a bottle of Nebbiolo? Like that? No. But it wasn't Piemontese.

793
00:49:28,181 --> 00:49:32,010
It was a domestic Nebbiolo. No, it's not. It's not domestic. I

794
00:49:32,010 --> 00:49:35,168
think it's right down there, honey. But the long and the short is he says,

795
00:49:35,265 --> 00:49:39,000
you know, have you ever thought about like reducing your price from like $14 a

796
00:49:39,048 --> 00:49:41,853
glass to like $12? And I said, no.

797
00:49:42,975 --> 00:49:46,197
I said, what do you think you're gonna get for $12? Yeah. Like, do you

798
00:49:46,261 --> 00:49:49,980
really think you're gonna get a quality wine for $12? Yeah. Because I'm serving you

799
00:49:50,092 --> 00:49:53,924
what we think is the highest quality wine that you

800
00:49:53,956 --> 00:49:57,787
will, you'll be able to purchase for $14. And if you don't

801
00:49:57,787 --> 00:50:01,538
think you could stretch your budget $2 more to get something that we think is

802
00:50:01,570 --> 00:50:05,163
fantastic, Versus what the consumer thinks is supposed to be

803
00:50:05,243 --> 00:50:09,013
awesome at either Safeway or BevMo or Trader Joe's or whatever the hell the

804
00:50:09,013 --> 00:50:12,719
case may be. If you can't see that what we're trying to offer

805
00:50:12,719 --> 00:50:16,409
you as an experience for $2 more isn't worth

806
00:50:16,409 --> 00:50:19,682
it for you to sit here and enjoy a glass of wine with us, maybe

807
00:50:19,682 --> 00:50:23,179
we're not fit. Well, no, that's a good point. Is that restaurants right now are

808
00:50:23,228 --> 00:50:26,805
definitely ruining the industry in some sense because

809
00:50:27,078 --> 00:50:30,830
it is the same. 10 wines on every wine list

810
00:50:30,830 --> 00:50:34,261
across the country. And again, you know, 99%

811
00:50:35,479 --> 00:50:39,278
of America doesn't live here in California within driving distance to

812
00:50:39,342 --> 00:50:43,157
wineries and vineyards and the, you know, exposure that they would have

813
00:50:43,189 --> 00:50:46,315
here. So I think they've been trained,

814
00:50:47,341 --> 00:50:50,291
to Chuck's point, to drink what is on those

815
00:50:50,627 --> 00:50:54,426
menus. I hate shit. You know, you know the reason for that. I mean,

816
00:50:54,491 --> 00:50:57,376
you, you sat in all the sales meetings all your life, and people are going

817
00:50:57,376 --> 00:51:00,987
to go to Hawaii if they sell 10 cases of Josh and get in there,

818
00:51:01,229 --> 00:51:04,085
and the poor little winery that makes better wine doesn't get a fair shake. But

819
00:51:04,294 --> 00:51:07,795
it seems like the client here

820
00:51:08,392 --> 00:51:11,870
over time will appreciate this mentality and this outlook

821
00:51:12,357 --> 00:51:16,070
and want to come in because you just defined the

822
00:51:16,086 --> 00:51:19,714
regular issue that was at my dad's store in 1975 in Palos Verdes.

823
00:51:20,472 --> 00:51:24,229
You know, you sold the stuff that people bought at some point, and you

824
00:51:24,261 --> 00:51:26,486
hope they educate along the way. Do, because what does

825
00:51:26,535 --> 00:51:30,047
support the wine trade is that supermarket shelf where

826
00:51:31,026 --> 00:51:34,523
everything probably tastes the same, right? And that you are

827
00:51:34,795 --> 00:51:38,421
fortunate to understand the difference and teach the

828
00:51:38,421 --> 00:51:42,238
difference. And that's the value. And I think customers will appreciate that

829
00:51:43,056 --> 00:51:46,537
over time. They'll understand what your objective is. It seems,

830
00:51:47,868 --> 00:51:51,381
you know, I had this experience just over the weekend. One of my favorite wines

831
00:51:51,429 --> 00:51:53,980
in Napa is called Ad Vivum. There's a guy named Chris Phelps. He worked at

832
00:51:53,980 --> 00:51:57,801
Petrus. He worked of Dominus. But he makes this incredibly

833
00:51:57,817 --> 00:52:01,445
complex cap out of Yonville.

834
00:52:02,553 --> 00:52:05,989
And I took— I didn't take it. I sold some to my friend, and

835
00:52:06,278 --> 00:52:09,907
then she brought it to dinner down in Newport Beach. And we both were just

836
00:52:10,020 --> 00:52:13,488
flabbergasted at the complexity and the value. And she's not a

837
00:52:13,953 --> 00:52:17,598
sophisticated drinker. She's a good drinker. She understands wine. She likes Austin Hope in general.

838
00:52:17,679 --> 00:52:21,438
She likes Caymus, all the regular stuff. But then And I want— the

839
00:52:21,438 --> 00:52:25,178
question is here, you will see, or do you

840
00:52:25,178 --> 00:52:28,789
think you'll see, bringing in a novice, somebody that's

841
00:52:28,789 --> 00:52:32,382
just learning, and you give them that really interesting, complex,

842
00:52:32,512 --> 00:52:35,934
layered wine, and they go, whoa, you

843
00:52:35,934 --> 00:52:39,532
know, lights go on. And everybody can agree to that, I

844
00:52:39,613 --> 00:52:43,329
think. Yeah. And honestly speaking, like, you can go across the

845
00:52:43,329 --> 00:52:46,558
street and grab every single commercial wine you can think of,

846
00:52:47,397 --> 00:52:50,990
And they're priced very fairly. And I'm not knocking,

847
00:52:51,680 --> 00:52:55,145
you know, whoever it is, but the fact of the matter is, if we try

848
00:52:55,193 --> 00:52:58,609
to elevate your experience and it costs you literally

849
00:52:58,609 --> 00:53:01,929
120 cents, it's so

850
00:53:01,929 --> 00:53:05,619
minimal that— 120 cents. Yeah, I like that. You can't even

851
00:53:05,619 --> 00:53:09,452
wrap your mind around something like so petty. Like, you

852
00:53:09,452 --> 00:53:12,067
can't even go to Starbucks and grab a cup of coffee at less than $4.

853
00:53:12,355 --> 00:53:16,190
If we elevate your experience for $2 more, You got to

854
00:53:16,206 --> 00:53:19,771
appreciate that. And in all fairness, and I know this is a

855
00:53:19,883 --> 00:53:23,624
dream of both of ours, but this should be a destination in a year.

856
00:53:24,315 --> 00:53:28,008
We should have people coming from all over LA and our surrounding

857
00:53:28,008 --> 00:53:31,845
areas to come visit not just me and Amanda, our dream

858
00:53:31,861 --> 00:53:35,651
and our passion, but just to be part of the— what

859
00:53:35,715 --> 00:53:39,007
we're— part of what we're trying to do every single day.

860
00:53:39,713 --> 00:53:43,020
And I— that's the one thing when you asked

861
00:53:43,020 --> 00:53:46,640
me, like, what— why we think we're going to be successful.

862
00:53:46,640 --> 00:53:50,040
And I think it's this. It is that. It's this

863
00:53:50,040 --> 00:53:53,100
because we're not doing something commercial and

864
00:53:53,100 --> 00:53:56,639
we are doing everything in our power to prove that we

865
00:53:56,639 --> 00:54:00,360
are leaps and bounds above everybody else. It's sorely

866
00:54:00,360 --> 00:54:04,060
needed. Yeah. Well, we are out of time. And

867
00:54:04,060 --> 00:54:07,120
this— I know we could talk forever. We could talk all day. And we're going

868
00:54:07,120 --> 00:54:10,380
to do it. We're going to come back without a doubt. I love that. We're

869
00:54:10,380 --> 00:54:14,003
actually down here for 3 weeks starting the 23rd.

870
00:54:14,500 --> 00:54:17,612
So we'll come in and share glass. Nothing,

871
00:54:18,606 --> 00:54:22,439
comp. I want to participate in supporting the brand. And this is really

872
00:54:22,519 --> 00:54:25,951
exciting. I'm really excited. We didn't even talk about the brand. Yes. Which

873
00:54:26,223 --> 00:54:29,912
that, and if we have 30 more seconds, but— Oh, please do. Amanda and

874
00:54:29,912 --> 00:54:33,424
Joey have, well, Joey, mostly Joey.

875
00:54:33,504 --> 00:54:36,519
Joey has been truly a blessing

876
00:54:37,529 --> 00:54:41,124
for Amanda. Joey is. Joey Fentley, my friend.

877
00:54:41,718 --> 00:54:45,475
So Joey and Amanda have been collaborating to try

878
00:54:45,475 --> 00:54:49,216
to do something under Amanda's personal label. And when you come

879
00:54:49,312 --> 00:54:52,909
in for the experience, please enjoy a glass of Malandrini,

880
00:54:53,519 --> 00:54:56,473
Malandrina, and just look at the label.

881
00:54:57,581 --> 00:55:01,386
This is like full circle, everything that we do. Amanda has gone up

882
00:55:01,386 --> 00:55:04,709
there and picked the grape leaves that we're serving

883
00:55:05,767 --> 00:55:09,310
daily from Joey's vineyard. Joey walked the

884
00:55:09,374 --> 00:55:12,852
vineyards with— Are you— no salt in the hoop? You put them in brine? Yeah,

885
00:55:12,980 --> 00:55:16,683
you just boil them and then— Yeah, right. Wow. But the

886
00:55:16,747 --> 00:55:20,258
full circle is Joey has been Amanda's

887
00:55:20,594 --> 00:55:24,409
true mentor, and we're very lucky to have him on our side, and

888
00:55:24,441 --> 00:55:28,160
he's been just a blessing. But Amanda goes up

889
00:55:28,160 --> 00:55:31,526
there and she's like, I walked his vineyard. I kind of like what I'm seeing.

890
00:55:31,591 --> 00:55:35,360
I, you know, So and so and so and so. And Joey says, well,

891
00:55:35,665 --> 00:55:39,515
how do we make this for you? And part of how we came

892
00:55:39,611 --> 00:55:43,220
to this was the fact that Amanda wanted to do

893
00:55:43,300 --> 00:55:46,092
kind of her own little wine bar. And it was just like a little

894
00:55:46,749 --> 00:55:49,396
pop-up where she can promote her own label.

895
00:55:50,182 --> 00:55:53,695
And this came about. But what I wanted to say was

896
00:55:53,904 --> 00:55:57,706
it's so full circle, not just from Joey giving us a hand, Amanda picking

897
00:55:57,818 --> 00:56:01,590
the grape leaves off the vine, to coming home and like rolling

898
00:56:01,590 --> 00:56:05,330
the grape leaves herself. But I'm going to call him

899
00:56:05,330 --> 00:56:08,310
our 11-year-old son, even designed the

900
00:56:08,310 --> 00:56:11,710
labels. And when you see it, I mean, it's just

901
00:56:11,710 --> 00:56:15,529
truly breathtaking. People, people don't believe us. And then I go

902
00:56:15,529 --> 00:56:18,550
to the office, I grab my briefcase, and I was like, here's the sketches from

903
00:56:18,550 --> 00:56:22,030
Nathan. Yeah. And I'm like, the kid didn't even charge us a patent for this

904
00:56:22,030 --> 00:56:25,230
thing. Oh, he charged me. All right. Well, he charged you, but he didn't charge

905
00:56:25,230 --> 00:56:28,038
us. Of course, tomorrow you go home, he'll be reading a book on patent and

906
00:56:28,038 --> 00:56:30,816
trademarks. Yeah, right. But that's truly how

907
00:56:31,667 --> 00:56:35,201
family-oriented we are. Like, everybody who we run into,

908
00:56:35,425 --> 00:56:39,039
we want them to just feel our love and just understand

909
00:56:39,039 --> 00:56:42,701
that's why we will be who we are. There must be

910
00:56:42,909 --> 00:56:46,748
a Palestinian saying, like, we spoke— my parents spoke Turkish in

911
00:56:46,748 --> 00:56:50,377
the house, they speak Armenian— that says good luck

912
00:56:50,522 --> 00:56:54,039
or, you know, good courage, bon courage in French.

913
00:56:54,553 --> 00:56:57,636
Yeah, it must be something like that. There is. I

914
00:56:58,326 --> 00:57:01,859
don't know how this came about because my father— I never met my

915
00:57:01,923 --> 00:57:05,423
grandfather. My grandfather, his name is

916
00:57:05,423 --> 00:57:09,068
Shukri, which comes from the word giving thanks.

917
00:57:10,031 --> 00:57:13,580
And I don't know how it came about that it

918
00:57:13,580 --> 00:57:17,401
just fit who I am or it helped me be the person

919
00:57:17,498 --> 00:57:21,272
I am. Just understanding that that's who he was and that's what

920
00:57:21,272 --> 00:57:25,047
he stood for. We are very grateful.

921
00:57:25,529 --> 00:57:29,048
And you'll see that every single person who would walk through these doors,

922
00:57:29,481 --> 00:57:32,773
if they can't feel our love for who we are to each other,

923
00:57:34,225 --> 00:57:37,952
then, you know, maybe we're not for you. But that's our goal. That's our

924
00:57:37,952 --> 00:57:41,432
passion. And that's who we stand for. So my father would say in Arabic,

925
00:57:41,980 --> 00:57:45,651
which is like, good job, good boy. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers.

926
00:57:46,005 --> 00:57:48,927
Thank you for being on the show. Truly an honor. Thank you. My pleasure.