Is Champagne Overrated? Why French Winemakers Are Betting on California’s Anderson Valley: Arnaud Weyrich

0:00 Champagne as a whole, I mean, sparkling wine, there's something less intimidating than, for example, red wines, where you have to know your appellation, you have to know more your chateaus and all your terroir versus champagne has a little bit of that feeling of like it is a fun product. Right. I don't have to know all about it, but what I like is the. Either the look of the bottle, I just like the sound of it in the bottle. I like the fact of enjoying it with friends because it's. You said camaraderie, exchange. Sit back and grab a glass. It's Wine Talks with Paul K. Hey, welcome to Wine Talks with Paul K. And we are in studio today in beautiful Southern California having a conversation with Arnaud. I'm going to say it, I'm going to say it. Which way should I say it? The German way, The French, the, the English way. Remember? Yes.

0:51 Are you the director of the rotor Estate in Anderson Valley? Is that what you call it? Right. I would not call myself the director, but no, general manager. I'm the. Yeah. Under gm. Yep. It's interesting because in, in France it would have been the director. Right? There's. But in America we have different nomenclature for different positions. But like somebody at, in France that runs the entire winery, overlooks the winemaking, overlooks the administration. So in champagne, you have that very specific title. It's called Chef the Cav, you know, the master of the setter, which is very Champagne in its meaning. Meaning you're really in charge of everything that happens, you know, in the winery, but also, you know, sometimes it expands into the vineyard. So that's very much the, the style of the. The house of Louis Rodrier and Rodriguez in general is like the chef de cavre has that master control over everything. Is that where you started?

1:45 Actually, I did not start, you know, in, in Champagne. I. I'm an alumni of the same school as Jean Baptiste Le Cayon and also Jean Claude Rousseau also went to Montpellier. So that's the connection. And my predecessor at Rotter Estate was also an alumni of that school and he was a professor. So he would always take interns from that school. Really kind of give a chance to the younger generation to start in the business. And I was one of those interns taking my backpack and going to California to discover the wine World. In 1993, I made my first steps, know, into the Anderson Valley in California. So that's how you got started.

2:31 I. I find that personally, really fascinating because I've had a lot of French winemakers on the show, you know, Mr. Guillaume from Tanger, he's up in Willamette Valley. You know, it's just to have the culture, the French culture, to grow up in the French culture, Alsatian culture in your case, and come to America and then spend, you know, a lifetime here making wine. I find that a fascinating transition. Was that hard you to do or you was, it was sort of a explorative thing in the beginning or you knew you were coming here to make one? No, I, I, I, quite frankly, I didn't know I was going to stay. I, I, actually I, I had to come back to France.

3:12 Just know because for usual know you, you need to get your paperwork straight. So it's not always as easy. We don't watch you guys here unless you're. Yeah, legit. Okay. So in 93 I was supposed to stay just know, six months and then take an internship and then go back. I was supposed to go to Germany after that. I, I used to speak German, which I don't anymore. Now I speak Spanish. You. So I had to learn. Wow. The short story is like, yeah, it was supposed to be just a short discovery of California in 93. And if you remember in those late 80s, the felloxera crisis was taking a foothold in Napa and basically the vineyards were starting to fail. And the reason was the philoxera was actually spreading across those vineyards. And when I came in in 93, it was part of my background. It's like my viticulture background from my Master's of science. It's like, okay, as an intern, let's go out in the vineyard and try to find if we have phylloxera in the vineyard. And that's how it got started because I found that we had phylloxera in the vineyard and we had to start the whole basically plan to how to mitigate the spread of the Fluxora and start replanting. So my six month internship ended up a two year internship. Exactly. It got expanded until I had to make a choice to either stay or, or leave. Well, so you didn't come here to make wine then. You came here as a master of science student to help with understand philoxra and the vineyard disease or. Yeah, exactly. So it was really. No, it was really to discover the, the

4:43 world in the 90s, obviously the new world had already been discovered. Right. There was a lot of winers that made that move to the, to the gold rush of the winemaking to California. That's over. Yeah, that's over exactly. But back in the 90s, it was, it was still happening. So I think it was discovering, you know, having that open mindedness to discover what was happening outside of France. I think that was my, you know, that's kind of the intrigue for me. My father's an immigrant, came from Cairo seeking a different life, fleeing not oppression, but fleeing a difficult political situation. And culturally it's so different.

5:25 And you come from. And I found this with many of the representatives that sell me wine, that sold me wine over the years that were from France, particularly the women that were leaving to find something new to do and to escape the. I think that not the patriarch society, but to escape the embedded society, the stoic, we're here, this is our history, this is who we are to come to really what would be new world. Even today, America has this sort of mystique about its newness. I think I took the opportunity. So I left in 1995, went back to France and worked for a total different company for five years.

6:06 But I kept the connection with the family. So Jean Clauzo and I were exchanging, you know, our usual New Year's Christmas cards. Hey, Jean Claude, how are you? Best wishes for the New year. And one year he replied to me like, you know, thanks for your best wishes, but by the way, what are you doing right now? And I was like, well, I'm doing this and quite frankly, I would like to maybe move on or go back to the winemaking. And that's what he said. Well, no, your predecessor, Michel Salg, is actually trying to retire from being the Salah master, sorry, the chef de cave at the winemaker at Holodo Estates. Would you be interested at, you know, applying for the job? And I say, yes, I'm going to do this. Wow, that's really great. And I came back in 2000 and the opportunity was I was in my 30s and I don't think I would ever had such an opportunity in Champagne to take over the reign of something as large as interesting as taking over Rotary State. Because in your 30s in France you're still considered as like you have not made enough proof.

7:13 Yeah, you're not an experienced enough. Exactly. Wise enough. But this is California, this is America. And then Rodri said it was a startup. It was a startup that Jean Claude had really created from scratch in California. So there's also that very bold, interesting startup feeling mentalities like you needed somebody that was willing, wanted and that energy. And we worked together in the 90s on that philoxera crisis. So I was not totally an unknown person to him either. I correct myself. It was Monsieur Gwambas with Louis Jadot, not Petit Anger up in the Wamba Valley. But why the Anderson Valley? I frankly have never been to the Anderson Valley to taste wine as part of my career. I don't know why. And I need now having this conversation. We'll come and see you. But what is it about the Anderson Valley? Is it. We mentioned early off camera that it doesn't have limestone. So it's not a champagne clone, but they make sparkling wine.

8:16 Stromsburg's famous for going to China in 1968. Oh, Richard Nixon. Sparkling wine from Napa Valley. What is it about the Anderson Valley that was so attractive to the French to do this? So, Paul, you officially invited to come to the Anderson Valley and visit. That's the end of the podcast. Thank you. It's officially. It's on camera. So, you know the reason. There was multiple reason of why they picked the Anderson Valley. First of all, in fact, except if you go in the central coast, there's not really a lot of limestone in California if you want to establish a vineyard that would be similar. But what the fandom was trying to do is trying to find something where you could get something as close as champagne as possible in terms of how you get to the wine itself. So if you look at what champagne is about, it's inland, it's far away from the Ocean, but it's a 46 north latitude and Anderson Valley is 39. So how does that work? It's because you're close to the Pacific Ocean. So north coast of California, Mendocino County. Anderson Valley is within the Mendocino County. The ocean is pretty cold, so that fog is that marine layer that comes in every day, cools down the grapes. And I think there's one number that caught Jean Claude's eyes, that the average yearly temperature in the Anderson Valley is about 53 Fahrenheit versus champagne is about 51 Fahrenheit. And those numbers date from about 30 years ago. So global warming, I'm pretty sure all of those numbers crept up a little bit. So it means you wear. Yes, Anderson

9:46 Valley is a tad warmer than a Champagne, but it's cool enough that you can get that ripening length that Pinot Noir and Chardonnay actually can thrive to make a nice crisp, acid driven base wine from which you can make a meto champenoise sparkling wine. And I think that's what they wanted to do. And back then. So that was in the 80s, there were a Couple of wineries already established. Namely, it could have only been a couple. I mean. Right. But he tasted wine from them, and he actually liked the style. He said, like, this is something that I like as a style. So Navajo Vineyards had been making wine since the seventies in the Anderson Valley, and he happened to taste some of the wine they made and said, like, well, if they can do this, very likely then we'll be able to grow the grapes to make something that would work for sparkling wine. You know, that's interesting because up until maybe it was the 90s, maybe it was the early 2000s, I mean, wine still had this boutique feel about it. Of course, there were the gallows around and the.

10:54 The large houses still, but there was still this uniqueness. Certainly the judgment of Paris had a lot to do with that of. Of wine. Clearly, in the Anderson Valley in the 70s, 80s, 90s, even 2000s, it was driven by the boutique houses for the passion about wine. Not to try and make as much as possible and sell it for as cheap as possible. It still feels like that there. And is that part of the rotors attraction to the area? That's still that. I say hometown, but boutique champagne house. So there's a very hippie feel to the Anderson Valley in Minnesota County. And Jean Claude was definitely not a hippie, but a French hippie. I don't know.

11:36 I would not describe in that way. But no, he. He had a bold vision, maybe a little rebellious. Yeah. And. And he didn't mind going to the Anderson Valley because mainstream other wineries went to Napa because it felt established and known. And I don't think he wanted to do something the same as the others. Anderson Valley felt a departure, and he told me, and I think he must have said that to other people as well. It's like, if he had done it for the money, he would. He should have had chosen Napa. Yeah. But because of the quality of the product, he really thinks he made the right choice to go to Innocent Valley because it was difficult at first. It was a not very known appellation. In fact, when he bought the land in 1982, Anderson Valley didn't exist as a navy. It got actually established as a Navy in 1983. So the year. The year later. So he. He really believed that he made the right choice for the quality of what could be made in place. So he didn't make it for the money. Even though at some point, you know, he must have no scratches. Like, why did I do this? Well, of course, it takes anything does that right it takes time.

12:43 It was really the startup feeling. There was really no starting something from scratch and really establishing it. It took some time. It took 10 years to really establish Rotary State. As the new kid on the block that knows how to make method trompenoise in a fantastic way from the Anderson Valley, I would think that anybody that got into the wine business then and soon after is scratching their head today as to why they did this unless they got this established brand going on. Let's go back for a little bit. I want, I want, I want to set the stage for the listeners a little bit because my father, there he is in the picture. There was. We always talked about the romance of the French culture and the French wine. He spoke French in champagne. The district seems to be able to grab this romanticism, romanticism about wine despite the volumes. In other words, we're going to talk about it now.

13:43 I was looking at a list of champagne makers and the volumes of wine they make and it was by supplier so it wasn't as granular as necessarily the house. But I mean let's, let's put on the table, you've got something like V Clicot, which is. There's the book there, Madame Tlar Mazzio's book. It's an interesting story, 25 million bottles. But from the branding standpoint, something like that, people just think this is, I'm drinking champagne, I'm drinking the concept of champagne, not drinking the dream. Right? Yeah, the dream of champagne but in reality is Rotor Estate Titanjay, you know, some of the other smaller houses and that, that small. But there's. They're certainly family driven and more boutique ish. How does that happen? Do we know?

14:34 How do you combat that? How do you look at a Rotor Estate from Anderson Valley and say, look, we've got it also and it's a little more romantic. It, it, the, that's the. I'm French, so I'm, I'm. I'm so amazed at how there were able to create champagne as such a powerful brand. And it's the work of generations of wineries and winemakers of the fantastic marketing at creating that dream about the brand as a luxury product that a must have. So it's extremely powerful.

15:14 It vehicles the idea that if you want to have something exceptional on a fantastic day of your life, your wedding, your anniversary, something, it has to be champagne. And it worked because now in the imaginary of people, this is what you must have. So in my humble way, you know, I am making a sparkling wine. So not champagne. I'm not in the region of Champagne, but I'm using all of the tools of the trade. That would be like, it looks like Champagne, feels like Champagne, but it is a sparkling wine from California. But you're. You're fighting, you're. You're up against them with the Lemur tage, which got 100 points, which is unbelievable wine. And we discussed it when we were tasting the wines just now, which is. I sense this structure of the wine, and that's all the wines I've tasted. My 100,000 wines. Kind of where I figured out where my palate is, is how things are structured, is less about the flavors, but more about how that feels in your mouth. And the transitions was very much French. Yes. The terroir is very much Anderson Valley. And this is a virtual DNA. We owned by a French family. My predecessor and myself are both no French winemakers. So there is a little bit of that touch that you want to bring as the understanding of how to make the wine, and I might have said that also earlier, is that when California. And actually the way to make the wine, how to select the lots of wine, is to actually make it not too Californian. So that's very interesting.

16:36 I'm in California. I'm trying to make something not Californian. The idea is like to make something very classic. There would be no traditional method in spirit in the making that if you were to taste blind, you would not be able to find if it's actually, actually from Champagne or not. And I think that was the point from the beginning. It says rotter on the label. So it's that kind of the promise of you buying something from a known label, a known family, that embodies and shows a taste profile. How much intervention or daily intervention, weekly, monthly, does the French counterpart have with them? No, it's not daily, but we're in contact on a regular basis, my predecessors or myself with the winemaking team. Team at Roederer. Why? Because again, it says Rotor on the label. So we have to be held to the standard of what the Rotor family expects of a wine. So Jean Baptiste, the chef de Cavill, comes once or twice a year. We taste together. I call that my annual booster shot of the house style.

17:44 Right. Because if you're in Champagne, that would make sense. Everybody around you, dreams, thinks, speaks Champagne all the time. Because Champagne is a very large region. If you're in Edison Valley, basically, you're very few people around you that actually are in the same project of making sparkling wines. That's a very compelling Part of what we do is that camaraderie, the exchange from what we get to have these conversations like we are right now. And I try to use this podcast to invite people into that feeling, because I was thinking about yesterday, about the consumer. Wine's consumer driven. Without the consumer, we have nothing. And so we have to market, then we have to brand. And you've got 25 million bottles of Clicko coming, being manufactured.

18:36 But it's not to take away from the idea that this is a wonderful trade and you as a consumer can digest as much as you want. You can decide that you want to learn about l' Ouxlicot and go that you can decide you're going to go up to Anderson Valley and taste wine at Rotor Estate, or you can just say, I really like this and leave it at that. Right. And I want people to feel what, what you feel. I think champagne as a whole, I mean, sparkling wine, there's something less intimidating than, for example, red wines, where you have to know your appellation, you have to know more your chateaus and all your terroir versus champagne has a little. That feeling of, like, it is a fun product.

19:21 Right. I don't have to know all about it, but what I like is the. Either the look of the bottle. I just like the sound of holding the bottle. I like the fact of enjoying it with friends. Because it's. You said camaraderie, exchange. Sometimes I say the best food pairing you can have with a bottle of. Of sparkling wine and champagne is friends. Just bring friends over and have a bottle of no. With them. That's. That's, That's a good way to exchange a good. Do you think we should drink champagne every day? I would think so. Maybe the surgeon general would not accept that marking on the back of the label, but. Right. That's right. Let's go. Let's go to the practicality of it all. Champagne has suffered in this last few years with consumption.

20:09 The alcohol trade in general. Wine is down. Talk to restaurant tours here in Los Angeles. Some of their bottle sales are off 50%. How is the region and is that a. Is that affecting Anderson Valley, the Rotors brand? And then how is the region dealing with this? Yeah. So overall, nobody's spared. No. By the, that move of, of, you know, the healthy move, which I, I totally agree. And I would think I'm, I'm part of it. You know, we all pay attention to what we eat and drink every day. And obviously, you know, we are impacted. Our sales are down. Obviously, you know, we are not, you know, this is not a product with a high percent of alcohol in the wine. So, and I always try to promote this is not alcohol first. This is wine first. This is the French way to do it is you have a bottle of wine at the table, so you're having a meal, lunch or dinner with wine. It's part of like having bread at the table. So this is not like something you just drink by yourself or by itself. So it's a. And I always train to talk about it that way. It's not about the alcohol, it's about, yes, there's alcohol, but it's the acidity that all of the other components that make the wine as a fantastic food pairing companion. I wonder if that's the reason, because look at my, my romantic opinion of wine is never going away. Of course, it's been around thousands and thousands of years. It has ebbs and flows. There's always some kind of contemporary marketing. There's packaging, there's, you know, Bartles and James, you know,

21:42 sparkling, you know, strawberry wine. All kinds of different things have come and gone. And I've had people sit in the chair you're sitting at, purporting to put wine in a pouch, you know, and that just certainly takes away from the concept of what wine should be and is. Which is your definition, what you just said, which is it's always on the table, it's always part of the meal, it's part of the culture of living. And I think if, if wine is too intimidating, you might cut yourself off from the next generation that would want to dab into drinking wine, but they can't because they don't have the knowledge. And then suddenly you cut yourself off from them. So if there's a way to make the wine approachable, interesting, fun, not intimidating, bubbles in it and put it and serve it at anniversary. Yeah. So obviously there's something that, you know, you don't want to do with sort of sparkling wine in a pouch would not, definitely not work. But if, if, if you can have format, half bottles are something that's kind of like fun, it's kind of cute. And then if people can try it because it's it, there's the cuteness effect. And then they end up trying wine and feeling that actually it's good. And then they, they enjoy it, then that's the consumer how you, you, you get them to stick around and, and, and keep drinking wine. You imagine I had a. This is, and this is a true story not that long ago, maybe it Was a year ago I tasted a Method Chambois in a can. Yeah, it's. I mean, it's. How do you do that?

23:15 How do you discourage a can? So you get, you, you have to transfer. So it's like, you know, it's, you know, in, in champagne, obviously, I don't think it was, you know, a champagne, you can't do that. But you, you have to bottle and age a wine in that bottle. But everywhere else in the world you don't have that regulation. So you can actually ferment in a bottle. So metho champenoise and then transfer. And then you transfer. Yeah, maybe she did that. I thought maybe she just left all the leaves and the stuff and it's floating around. Yeah, I don't think you can because you have to disgold and I don't see how you could do it. So basically you ferment in the bottle or magnum and then you transfer from those bottles. So it's metal champion noise sometime on the yeast, but it's in a can, so it's practical. And I just don't find that attractive. Like, I can't see my. Maybe that goes back to your definition where you're sitting at dinner time with your family and you go, you know, that doesn't really work in the grand scheme of things. Maybe it's for pre drinking, something like that.

24:08 You know, in the 1700s, the late 1700s, there was a 15 year, you know, cold snap. Right. There was a climate change, effectively climate change. How is the industry dealing with that in Champagne? I know it's affecting it there. I don't know how much it affects you in Anderson Valley, but because California doesn't seem to have been affected as much as the European vineyards. But do we see this as just part of that cycle or are we preparing ourselves for a larger, longer change in the climate? So I have only a. I would say a 30 year view of what's happening. Yeah, but in 30 years I've seen some changes. I've seen that the Anderson Valley has a little less fog. So what used to be the fog kind of cooling down things, slowing down that maturity. And then suddenly you can pick. And you have enough time to pick your fruits within those three, four weeks because fog helps you to mitigate that California sunshine. And what some years that fog is. No. Is missing or not every day.

25:15 And then suddenly that harvest becomes like a race to pick as fast as you can before you get to know too much ripeness. And I see that happening in California. You were talking about the first events. That's the beauty of the new world. The new world established itself on new land, and land was inexpensive, so you could actually have enough space for other things than just the vineyards. So the intensity of the vineyard planting allowed to also have, like, reservoirs to store water, places we can put pumping stations. So if you could do this, most of California has those systems where you can actually frost protect by sprinklers, which is the most effective way to protect yourself against frost. But if you go some places, like Burgundy of Champagne, the intensity of the vineyard is massive. So the Appellation is covered 100%.

26:08 However, you can plant a vineyard, actually grow something of quality, it's planted. There's not much more space for this infrastructure, which is piping, pumping, and storage of water. And I think now you see that the effect of it can be important, because if you don't have a way to mitigate those frost events, you don't have the space to do this. You're limited to just wind fans or all those we call the bougie, you know, the warming those. But I'm wondering, like, how my. My personal opinion is this is just part of the earth cycle, and we're going to go to a cold freeze at some point, you know, it's just going to change. But let's say that's not the case. You know, the resistance, certainly in Burgundy, you know, we're not going to try to grow other grapes in Bordeaux. They're trying some other grapes, but I can't see, you know, Tarrega national inside a bottle of the feet. Right. And so when's it going to. If it. If it does snap, when is it like, oh, my goodness, we need to make some dramatic changes, which leads to this concept, which is, you've been there 30 years.

27:13 I've heard enologists say we can't. We won't even know what a region can do for 100 years based on the, you know, the infinite number of combinations of weather and soil changes. So you have ways in vineyard management, you know, and that's a bit. That's my background, you know, you. You have ways to. Between now and it's the. The fifth, the next 50 years, the next cycle, we're gonna have to replant your vineyard because it's. It's. It's gonna be a cycle. Yeah. Your next replanting, this is when you will scratch your head like, okay, am I now ready to switch varietals in between? You can mitigate some of the issue, and then it's a lot about canopy management. Canopy management is creating shading or creating air movements, getting cooler, wetter. Then you need more air movement otherwise you're going to develop so much rot that you will never able to get any grapes in anymore. Or you want to protect yourself from sunburn. And it's something for example, that's been fairly typical in California. There's sunshine in California.

28:13 So protecting ourselves from sunburn was something that we had to do. And champagne is somewhat learning, it happened basically two years ago that you can have a heat wave, you know, and maybe it is going to happen this year as well. It's pretty hot right now in, in, in Europe. So do you have to mitigate those events by doing some canopy management that would be typical of California. Now you have to basically start those same. That's kind of interesting in Champagne as well, creating enough shading so that when a heat, you know, comes you actually protect your grapes from, from that. So it sounds like maybe the French are learning something from the California lifestyle here. Right. So, so, so Jean Baptiste, the chef de cav at Louis Renai by the fact of coming and visiting and has been involved for the same. No. Over 30 years with the, the estate in California, you know, has I'm pretty sure learned and seen things that we had to do in the California climate that can give him ideas of what it could be possible to do in champagne as, as a way to mitigate what's going on.

29:19 On, on some of those years. Shifting gears a little bit. I had a gentleman sitting there named Zaya Yunan who's now, he's not going to take on lvmh but he wants to create a luxury brand of everything. Cigars, whiskey, wine, champagne. He's just got this fascination as an immigrant at 13 years old. He came from Iran and he fled, I mean literally fled and now has attracted to, with his wealth to this idea of a luxury brand. And certainly champagne was always considered a luxury brand, even though I don't necessarily agree it needs to be. But you know, luxury right now doesn't seem to be in the forefront of the generation. Gen Z's, they don't seem to be part of the millennials. Even though my daughter, my daughter and my son in law think that, you know, they're entitled to luxury brands like champagne. I told you that earlier. I taught them how to drink champagne and now I've just, I'm suffering greatly from my, my inventory. But, but does the, does the industry see luxury as being threatened right now by some of these generations but and on the flip side of that comment is, I mean Chanel just bought winery in Napa. So there seems to be some investment in the luxury brands into wine and champagne right now. Yeah, I would hope, and then

30:49 we are working towards it that basically the ultimate luxury would be that the products by itself has that zero impact. It's so luxurious that basically you're trying everything around it to make, to make that product to be non impactful because of the choice of the technique, the technology, the recycling or something like that. And obviously I would justify the higher price because you actually, that is a, would be like, you know, fully, fully circular type of system. So that would be my hopes and expectation. We're doing some of that at the winery. You're going to lightweight bottles. You're trying to use material that you can recycle. We use labels, foils, boxes, all of this. You can make choices where they're sourced from, where they're coming from. And maybe I diverge a bit on the part of the luxury, but I think this is maybe the expectation from the next generation that I'm 100% solar. So I'm 100% solar since last year that you know, my, my impact would be zero on the term of, of energy. So I love that I didn't think of that before, but what if luxury meant that that would be fantastic and I think that would help the new generation basically embrace the luxurious way of life, which would mean it's a, it's a zero impact. So obviously maybe it's a pipe dream, but you know, let's dream. I think that's a really interesting concept. I never thought of that before because we went to the fancy food show in Los Angeles in Vegas a couple years ago. We used to go every year when we sold things and you

32:21 know, the preeminent beverage theme was non alk. Non alk distilled spirits, non alk wine, non elk sparkler, non alk Prosecco. I mean it was just. And they're terrible. You can't drink them. And there's, I don't think, I don't think there's any way to make them drinkable. You know, from a technical standpoint you can't take the alcohol out and put it back water. And they're coming with new methods of dealkylization and it's just, I don't get the point of it. You know, if you want to drink a sparkling, why not have a soda water with something, you know, instead of trying to fake it. But maybe in that, that might Be a contemporary nouveau thing to do for a generation. But what if that nouveau thing to do was to drink something sustainable or drink something that's zero carbon footprint or whatever the, the definition of luxury, maybe even in the clothesline. Etc, you know, when it comes to clothes, do you think that our industry spends too much time thinking, talking to itself and not talking to the consumer? Like, you're out now on this trip, you're. You're seeing consumers, you're doing dinners and things and. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. No, I'm. I mean, in la, you know, obviously visiting longtime customers and discovering new and new customers. So it always that nice exchange of about the wine and the expectation. And then you see that in days you have everything from a knowledge that's very high, that's of everything to the new consumer or new, that doesn't

33:54 know much about the product itself. So you have that discussion that can span and basically the whole array of the winemaking from like, okay, this is winemaking 101, to very specific questions. And at the end it's all about, why am I buying this? Why would I enjoy that product? Because it actually is a very nice complement to some kind of food. Because again, we were talking about it earlier, why do you have restaurants? Because you want to go and enjoy the ambiance or because you have with friends or with your girlfriend, your dates, your future wife, your kids. And this is an exchange time. Wine is part of it.

34:37 So again, not making intimidating, but making more of a way of exchanging. And then the wine. Sometimes it's a discussion point. Like, people have been talking about wine, we are talking about wine. People have written about wine, people have, in the Romans, the Greeks have written poems about wine and how great it is. So the exchange about it has been all going on. So maybe we don't want to talk about sports, but what about talking about wine as a way to break the ice? That's a good way to put it, because the irony of wine, and we've talked about this, you talked about a little bit the, the intimidation of wine and the conversation about terroir and grapes and different appellations of the world does intimidate people. It is intimidating. But almost invariably, whether I'm with friends who drink consumptions of wine, you know, have a cellar maybe to complete novices, it does always come around wine. And it's not intimidating at that point. It is just a conversation people want. They just don't want to be pressured into knowing.

35:42 But my dinnertime conversations almost always involve a conversation about wine, whether it's with a rookie novice wine drinker or an experienced one. And then you said something that just triggered a thought which is so elementary, but it's so real that there's always novices. Always, always, always. The cycle of humanity will always create somebody new that we need to speak to. Right. And so it's a continuous education. And to that point, that's part of my visit, it's kind of educating, educating about who you are as a brand, educating about what the wine is about. It's method is difficult. It's like, well, how do you do this? Well, how they come that you have pressure in that bottle? How do you do this? So even the concept, the mechanics, the physics of it is kind of exciting. So you. Sometimes people like it for the technical press of doing it, and sometimes just like it tastes really good. Let's have a glass together. I think that's a. Interesting point and I think that the consumption. I'm looking at some of these questions here, but there's a friend, a very good friend of mine makes sparkling wine in Armenia. His name is Vaikushkari and I think he's one of the most brilliant winemakers in the world. He's been all over the world making wine and he went home to his homeland. He wasn't born in Armenia, born in Syria, but he makes. And it's kind of interesting, he went there and decided he was going to make sparkling wine, which would be insane to go to a region no one's heard of, where most of the grapes no

37:14 one's ever heard of, in fact, entirely. And then felt like he needed to create champagne from Pinot Noir and Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier. And he planted them and realized that, you know, I don't really need to do that. I should probably make sparkling wine out of my. My own indigenous grapes. So now he makes sparkler out of Voska Hot and Kangoon. You've never heard of it? That's right. The reason I brought it up was they just had the Concour Mundia de Bruxel there and it was an amazing spectacle. I missed it, unfortunately. I wanted to go, but I couldn't go. And here's this burgeoning region of the world, new Appalachian, new grapes. And people from all over the wine world got to come to Yerevan, Armenia, and experience the Armenian culture and the wine and of course, judge worldwide wines. And I'm wondering about this constant evolution of appellations and places to go, things to see the wine trade in general as a.

38:18 As a As a tourism type thing. How is the tourism in Anderson Valley? This is very much the defining factor of the Anderson Valley in Minnesota County. It's a pretty. It's a very rural part of California. And what creates actually the wine business to be thriving over there is because it's the corridor for people from the Bay Area to come to the coast to Mendocino, Fort Bragg and enjoy the beauty of the coast. So as they travel through the Anderson Valley, they see the beauty of the valley and they see the vineyards and they see the wineries dotting the road along there. So, yes, it's that communion between, I think, the beauty of the space. If you go around the world and you look at vineyards, it seems like the vineyards are always located in a pretty beautiful part of the world.

39:05 Some steepness. Well, well, because, you know, in the old days, the old timers, they would plant the flat land because this is where you could get the crop, where you could, you know, you know, grow your food. Wheat, barley, something like that. And whenever you would have some steepness or rocky soil, what would, you know, grow there? You know, olive trees and basically and grapes. So the less rich part of the land would be dedicated to those other crops that could be hardy enough to grow there as a use of the space. But that, if you look at it now, it's actually usually dramatic spaces, landscape and shape. And I think it's very appealing to people. So if you go do wine tourism, you end up going to places that actually are gorgeous.

39:50 I mean, can you go to Germany and the Mosel Valley, like, my God. Or the DRO in, in Portugal? Look at how they have amazingly created terraces in those spaces to use such steepness and. And locations. I wonder. You've seen this 30 years is a huge career, particularly what you've seen in the trade change, the dramatic change in 30 years. And one of them is, is, you know, tourism, you know, Napa Valley. When I tell people I'm going to the Napa Valley, we're probably going to go in a couple of weeks. It's really expensive. And you used to be able to taste wine for nominal fee, sometimes no fee. And now just to walk in the winery is 85 to $100 to taste something. And then of course, you get discount if you buy more. And the wine brands, if you and I start a winery, Napa tomorrow, together, we buy a vineyard. We can't sell it for less than 200 a bottle, 180 a bottle, just to break even.

40:51 Where's the Anderson value? Anderson Valley in That range is it sort of like Napa 20 years ago where you could go, have a good time, it was reasonably priced, visit some wineries and have a rural experience rather than this luxurious lifestyle experience. Yeah. So the Anderson Valley and maybe that, that was part of your very first questions. Why no Jean Claude nor Rodhai no came to the Anderson Valley back then in the 80s the land was really cheap. So if you were creating something from scratch and you didn't want to over, you know, expose yourself to a financial burden, buying, you know, cheaper land was. No, no. A key. So that was part of the situation was this part. Are the French cheap people? I know they are kind of. All right, let's say you, there's always the value. You pay attention to that. And I think that's also part of the DNA of the family is they are very wise and they don't like to overpay for things. Right. I like that idea.

41:45 Yeah. So then they can definitely know buy something. But it's all about the value you get. And I think that's why the family has been in business for 250 years. That's it. They've been very wise with their investment. So if I drive the hotels availability, reasonable price. Yeah. So Anderson Valley is not very pricey. It has a little bit of that hippie feeling that it's had no. For a long time. And land is getting more expensive. It's California, unfortunately. But you know, it's not as expensive at Napa. And there's no big, you know, five star luxury hotel in the Anderson Valley. You have nice family run like the Boonville Hotel or the Madrones that are quirky and kind of like fun but good looking. So it's kind of like a visit out of the beaten path of what the wine world, Napa, Sonoma were 20, 30 years ago when it was more approachable and easier to get to and enjoy. So yeah, Anderson Valley is kind of like different in feeling.

42:41 You can't go to Napa without. If you want to stay in a regular decent hotel, it's seven, eight hundred dollars a night. And then like I said, the tastings are expensive. Then forget the food. I mean you go to Bouchon or French Laundry or the press or any of these fancy restaurants and you're out, you know, $200 a person. I, I find it unapproachable. I. Somebody told me this. Somebody's chasing the lifestyle of Napa. Retired media president, you know, know, stumbled into this idea, wanted to make wine, now is realizing it's Business. And it's really hard to do when you've got to, you know, come up with an angle. But he was saying that in Napa, tourism is way down. If you talk to, for instance, you know, one of the famed wineries, Girgage Estates, Violet Girgish, will tell you our tasting room traffic is off 30%. You know, that's pretty big number. And they're saying it's because no one's reacting to the tourism fall because the cost of labor is so high in California that we'd rather run skeleton cruise at 30% occupancy of the hotel than a full crew at 100% occupancy. It's cheaper the other way. And so we keep our prices up so less people come so that now the taste room. So this whole pull through effect. And I. I really believe that the wine business, industry, and this is our last thought because we're out of time. Needs to get back to the experience of. Yes. If people don't cannot travel and visit and experience the place, you're cutting

44:13 yourself off from your next generation of aficionado and consumers. Right. You want to bring people. So Anderson Valley has actually, you know, a little state park that's called Handy Woods. You can come and just know, have. No, plant your tent or your RV and you don't have to pay 300 a night in a hotel if you want just experience the basic discovery of what the valley can. So you have. I mean, I'm not saying that this is the magic, you know, option, but you can go and just know, plant your tents, you know, in the local campground or in state park and enjoy wine around it. Well, I think that's the key, right? We want to relax. And then when we come home to our regular busy lives and we open a bottle of Le Mertage or Rotor Estate.

44:56 Anderson Valley. We remember that moment. Yes. That time that Arnaud came out to the tasting room and sat with us and we tasted wine. I'm going to ask you a question as we get this book, since I have a French. Yeah. Winemaker here. This is a book. This is our last thought. Dr. E.A. murray, this book from 1974, Wine is the Best Medicine. The original version was in French. I have a copy of that. But I can't make head or tail of it. So I'm going to give you a human ailment and I'm going to give you three choices to cure that element. Okay. And then you're gonna. It's kind of like the master of wine test in that it is a.

45:39 It's more like the reason you chose the. The answer, not necessarily the end. The. Right. Okay, so here's the question. If you had coronary disease, you could have a Burgundy, a dry champagne or a young Beaujolais to help your coronary troubles. And there's also a dosage when it comes to this. Oh, now, nobody gets this. Nobody ever gets it right past the fact that I gave you three choices. You have a 33% chance of getting it right. That's the average accuracy in this. So what would you have? Burgundy, dry champagne or young Beaujolais to cure your coronary troubles, inflammation? So I am biased. I'm going to go for champagne, but I'm highly biased.

46:31 Well, you're right, but the question is, why? Oh, the why. For me, I'm feeling this as obviously champagne by design as, you know, low alcohol, because you're a scientist by trade, sort of. Right. So there's a scientific reason, there's a chemical reason. Right. Carbon dioxide, know, is kind of, you know, as a way also to basically, you know, refresh yourself. Refresh, you know, some of that carbon dioxide goes know, into the bloodstream. So you've, you know, through the. The calcium carbonate. I'm pretty sure that, you know, you must not create in your blood and something like that. So that. And how much did you have? What's the dosage? Oh, the dosage, doctor, can I have it every day, please? Dr. Arnaud says, well, the answer, according to Dr. Murray, is that you should have two glasses before a meal. So that's effectively a bottle a day almost. And the reason is the potassium bitartrate, which consequently strengthens the cardiac systole and thus, consequently affect better oxygenation of the heart. All right, but you were right. So that's. You were part of that 33%.

47:44 That's the test. But no, it feels like no, sparkling wine is just for the acidity of it. And I think, you know, it's something that always. I would. I would tell people, just have a glass of wine before a meal because the acidity of the wine makes actually yourself, your stomach ready for. To enjoy the next. The next dish. This comes like. It's true. It's kind of like creates that. Where you can see that pipe cleanser. You can see. You can see your stomach kind of like being ready, kind of like, oh, it's moving. It's like, oh, yes, bring me the food. Right? It's been an honor having you here, and I wish a good day and a good travel home back to the Anderson Valley and we will definitely come see you. Thank you. Paul. Take advantage of this lifestyle.

48:29 That's retro. To the wine trade, which is really great. Yes. It was a pleasure having me on your show. Thank you, Paul. Cheers. Cheers.