Is It Going To Work? Ancient Wines, Modern Idea: How Armenia Is Sharing Its Bottles: Vahe Baloulian.

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The idea is the second week of November is

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Armenian Wine Week globally. Mm-hmm. And that includes a

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challenge. Every Armenian buys 2 bottles of

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Armenian wine, gifts one to his non-Armenian friend, and challenges

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his 3 friends to do the same. Every Armenian is a boat that

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can take this wine to the ocean of wine drinkers.

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You know, we don't have to be drinking that wine, but if you buy 2

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bottles before Thanksgiving, put one bottle on your table, and gift one

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to your neighbor, your friend, your colleague, and say, here is from my

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ancient land, and challenge your friends to do the same.

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Sit back and grab a glass. It's Wine Talks

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with Paul Kaye. Hey,

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welcome to Wine Talks with Paul Kaye. And we are in studio today, beautiful Southern

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California, kind of warm out here in Monrovia, California. About to have a

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conversation with Vahé Baloulian. He is the co-owner of

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Trinity Canyon Vineyards, as well as the first wine bar in

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Yerevan, Armenia, in vino, as well as a Club 6100 and more

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things. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for calling me

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and checking it out. You were, um, you were

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with Ara, and I think he's my cousin. We haven't determined that

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completely yet, but he's, uh, at LAC

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Distributors. And so he carries, uh, the Trinity Canyon wines?

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Yes, he does. How long has he been doing that? Because I've never seen them.

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Actually, he was our only distributor since we

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started. I can't remember the exact year, but there is a

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2013, our first vintage year. So, they brought

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that. It's been that long? It's been that long, yes. You know, I'm a little

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disappointed that no one's ever brought them to me to taste.

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But you tasted them in Yerevan. I tasted them in Yerevan. Well,

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let me just tell you a quick story. When I went out to Yerevan the

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first time in 2000— well, we went in 2007. We'll talk about that in a

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second. But then we went back when the

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industrialization or the commercialization of Yerevan sort of occurred already. Now we've

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got restaurants and places to go. And

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somebody said, you've got to go see Mariam at

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Invino and put on the show. And I, I don't know anybody there.

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And we sat down and it took me about 3 seconds

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to figure out that she understood what she was talking about and that there was

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a keen interest in the wine trade coming from Invino.

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Then it so happens the next night my nephew was holding a mixer there

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who lives in Los Angeles, but he had heard about

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Invino as well to hold this financial mixer.

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And so I showed up and we had a great time together. How did that

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happen? Tell me, tell me a little bit about it. The idea of a wine

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bar in a country and in a city that almost no

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one knows about. What was your impression? Well, I moved. I

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lived around the world. I lived in about 10 countries because of my

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work. Lived, not visited. Just where

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you go shopping, you take kids to kindergarten, that kind

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of lived in a country. And in

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2004, we opened our first restaurant, which is called The Club,

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which is quite legendary place in Yerevan. And when

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in 2011, we kind of made a move

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from— at the time we lived in Vienna. We made the move to

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Armenia on a more permanent base because we

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wanted to take our kids to school in Armenia. We didn't want to stay in

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Europe and come back to the US. And I

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kind of saw that there is no place that you could go and just have

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a glass of wine as I'm used to doing in Spain when I lived there

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or in Austria or anywhere. Yeah, that's true. In most

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places and without having like a heavy meal. You could go to the club and

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other restaurants and wine, but you have to

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order some food with it. And I decided to open this

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wine bar. We found a place on Saidian Street, but I told my

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partners that I don't want to work with the old folks anymore.

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They were my age. So, I offered their— So, I

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offered their children, as Maryam told you in your conversation with her, that

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I offered them to become partners at In Vino. I said,

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we'll do everything together. And they jumped in on the

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opportunity. Marianne was 18 at the time and

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she stuck around. The other son of my other friend

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left, Alexander, and she became

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really a very important person in the wine industry in

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Armenia because she also dived into it

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and she learned about it. She went to academy, she teaches in academy and all

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that stuff that she— Well, it is. So

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it was born from you traveling international, and certainly wine

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culture is an international— in fact, I consider one of the top

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5 markers of a culture, right? Absolutely.

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Land, language, if there's one, food, music,

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wine, right? Agreed. That's what you think about, right? So, you're in Spain

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and you're going to have a nice glass of wine, or you're going to go

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to Austria, you're going to go to France or Italy. And no one really

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thought of Armenia as that place. In fact, in 2007,

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and I was the wine guy from Los Angeles that showed up, it was

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virtually undrinkable. Yeah. There

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were people who would still carry the tradition and

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continuously make wine. That's how we got actually

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into the winemaking because in the club, we used to sell Armenian wine. Some

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bottles were good. The same bottles with the same label were terrible.

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And we complained a lot, and this is a known story. We complained a

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lot and our friends, winemakers, told us, you know what? Shut up. We'll

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get you— go buy your land. We'll help you out do it. It was all

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in a friendly manner and they helped us to do it. The first wine we

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did, I think, with Kers, with Bahar. Second wine was

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with Maran and others. They helped us. And in

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'13, the '13 vintage, we did on our

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own with our winemaker, Artem Parsayan. And

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that's how it went on. Armenian wine, when

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we started opening, when we decided to open in Vino, people were saying, oh, it's

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not going to work. It's also a very famous story. And the funny thing is

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that a lot of distributors who worked with us, they said, oh yeah, we'll you

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the wine, you'll pay us when you sell it. Second week we opened, they

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called and asked us to cover the— to pay the bills because

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everyone was scared that it's not going to work. Yeah, right. I was going to

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say that. Reality set in. Reality settled in. But we

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did. We had no problem doing it. And

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then it kind of took off with time when people

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started educating themselves about wine. They learned more

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and they understood that you don't have to be scared of

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People would come and say, I don't understand anything about wine. I said, I don't

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understand anything about cotton, but I wear this shirt because it

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fits. That's clever. Yeah. So I used clothing a lot to

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sell it. The idea that we don't understand how— where it

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is made, what's the length of the thread and all that stuff, but

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we wear it. And if I'm interested, I will go and find out where it

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was made and that kind of stuff. So wine is the same

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thing. I say, you drink it, you like it. The point is to buy wine

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from a good place where you know it's a good wine, not a fake wine.

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wine which tastes good. You know, it's funny you use that analogy

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because I, I sold a lot of stuff over my career, and

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that's what I kind of am. But, um, and we'll talk about this idea that

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wine, if you set out just to sell wine, it's

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then devoid of any passion. It, it can't, it can't

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work, right? But I used to tell people, because I sold

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equipment that was very expensive compared to my competitors, and I would say

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Is that the cheapest suit that you can buy or the best suit that you

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can buy? You know, that makes you look good. Yeah. And so that's the way

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my equipment was. It was not the cheapest, but it was the best for your

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purposes anyway. So how does that explain to

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me then from 2007, now we're at

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17 years after freedom, we're still making wines that are

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virtually undrinkable. I tell the story about, we, I forgot

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which winery it was and where we were going on the bus. We stopped. Not

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in either village. I've heard that. Yeah, you drank it.

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Yeah, but it was a concrete vat, open

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air, and they had been sealed with like, you know, tar.

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And of course, you know, I'm like looking at it going, oh my God. And

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of course, I have to tell him because of the Armenian pride situation, this is

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really good, when it virtually almost made me sick.

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But how does it— how did that happen so fast? Obviously, you were part of

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that transition from let's just say 2007 to

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2026, where there's some world-class wines coming

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out of the country? Yeah, like with

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everything, we started learning about things and we started learning

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about good food, good drinks, good wine, and

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people started questioning why we can't make our own good wine. And

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there was good wine in the country, it just was hard to come by and

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you couldn't know which good wine,

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which bottle carries this wine, because they all have the same label. But in

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one bottle, they had good wine, then they would run out of it and they

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would just bottle anything else into that bottle. That's not good. That's not good,

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but because nobody cared. They understood that people didn't really care. They

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put some sugar in it and you would sell it as a semi-sweet wine. And

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in the weddings, they would drink vodka anyway. So,

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that's how it went. But then came people who,

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like Ernő Kan and Zsolik and

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Everyone who was interested in making good wine and our

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local Armenian winemakers also decided that— there are some

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people who decided that, look, we have to pay attention to

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quality and make really wines that would compete with everyone in

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the world. And that's how in 2010,

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'11, '12, '13, the good wines started showing up on

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the shelves, which you could safely say,

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if I drank this wine with this label, I open second bottle, it's going to

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be the same. Do you think it competes? I

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think it more than competes. The misunderstanding is that people

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say, you know, this wine is— for $20, I can buy good

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wine, French wine or Spanish wine. And my argument is no. For

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$20 that you pay for Armenian wine, you can buy maybe good,

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similar quality wine for $40, $60. We

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underprice Armenian wine because we're not known. So,

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you buy a quality Armenian wine for $20, $25,

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Same quality, you cannot buy for French— for that

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money, you cannot buy French or Spanish or Italian wine. You

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have to pay a lot more to get that quality of wine. You can buy

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cheap, crap Armenian that they sell in the supermarkets today.

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I was in LA. Has that happened as

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America— this is my dad's wine shop in 1975. There was a whole row of

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things like Matusse and Lancers and Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill. And then there was a

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fine wine section. So, let me see if I can articulate this question.

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In that if you go to the supermarket in Los Angeles and you

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walk down the aisle and you see all the same stuff, Apothic Red and Josh

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and Snoop Dogg, and almost all of that stuff, if

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not all of it, has been played with. It's been acidulated, it's been sugared,

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it's been, uh, it's been actually normalized so that

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somebody that buys Josh can buy it again and know it's going to

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be similar. And the only way that you can do that just to add crap,

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right? Is— does Armenian—

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do Armenian wines do that in general? I don't mean add crap, but I mean,

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do they— are they more sympathetic

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to the terroir and more sympathetic to the grape quality,

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more sympathetic to the naturality of the wine than— I think

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the small producers and some big producers, uh,

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that have a part of their production treat

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as a small producer. They make industrial wine that they can send

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out to Russia and everywhere else and give— Yeah, the Russians will give to them.

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Sell to weddings where also they would drink anything, people, because they

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don't care. They just have to have one bottle of wine and everyone drinks

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vodka. But the small

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producers really care a lot about the

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quality, the land, the terroir. One thing

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we don't pay much attention to still is vintage.

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You could order a vintage of '22, they would send you 3

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bottles of '22, 3 bottles of '23, because they run out of '22.

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That's also changing. They're changing by the

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attitude of restaurants who say, no, no, I ordered

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'22 because I priced '22 lower than '23, because

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'23 was better vintage than '22. And they go, What

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are you talking about? But they learn it, as we learned

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about the land, about quality of grapes, about selection, about

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not hand harvesting, and everything else that

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brings quality to wine. So it's a learning process.

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It hasn't been long. It's 2007. No, but it's done amazing things.

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It's 20 years, and it didn't start in 2007.

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They bought— Ernkan and Armas and others bought these huge

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plots of land, and they put a lot of work in it to fix it.

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We bought our land in— we started in 2008. In

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2009, we incorporated. So, it's not that much

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of a time. Like, Van Ardi came in the same years. They

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also— so, there was a lot of effort put into bringing that

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quality to Armenian wine. And what you said about

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learning about country from using wine as

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one of these 5 pillars— Yeah, cultural expression. Cultural expressions.

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I absolutely agree. I mean, people, we, you know, we in our village, in our

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vineyard, grow tomatoes, cucumbers,

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aubergines for our restaurant. But people don't come to Trinity because we

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grow tomatoes. They come because we grow grapes and we

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make wine. And people don't travel to Armenia to say, oh, we have to

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go eat tomatoes there. They come because— In one

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part also because they want to know it's one of the most ancient

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countries that made wine, and they want to see it and

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experience it. And a lot of people get pleasantly surprised when

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they come to Armenia nowadays. That's a

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funny— I laugh because that's true. They probably don't

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fly to Armenia now that there's more ways to get there to

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taste tomatoes. But man, when you taste a tomato there, you

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realize, what have I been missing all this time? They should come for that as

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well. The apricots, the cherries. And I always tell people, we went to a

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wedding not that long ago. I'd

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never picked a cherry. I look for fresh

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fruits all over the world whenever I travel. Like, if I can pick a pear

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up in the Dolomites, you know, and taste what a pear off the tree tastes

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like, I want to do it. And the first time I ever tasted a cherry

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like that was at this wedding. There was a cherry tree at the church,

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and I was able to taste a fresh cherry. And it's like, it's a whole

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world of difference. I wonder if they bring that You know,

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the story of— and you have this bottle of wine here, the 6100,

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00:15:20,368 --> 00:15:23,493
which is the theoretical age of Adamy Cave—

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is that story relevant, do you think, in the wine world internationally?

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It's relevant. It opens doors, but you cannot sell story all the time.

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Like, you cannot sell, uh, a sob story all the

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time. People, at one time, they start, uh, this

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empathy disappears. And of course, we have a beautiful

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history to tell about. It's a door opener, I think. When

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people ask why we should drink your wine, we say, because we have unique grape.

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And also, this grape has been grown since the time

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immemorial where it all started. And I'll tell you a very

259
00:16:01,011 --> 00:16:04,560
interesting story why it resonates. In

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2000— I don't know the exact year, I

261
00:16:08,314 --> 00:16:11,969
won't remember, but it's easy to find out. We were at Vinexpo in Bordeaux, and

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the vino was already open. And I

263
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was thinking of importing champagne. So we went to

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Trappier stand, and I talked to

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someone. I said, look, we are from— we would like to import your

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champagne to understand how much it costs, what are the conditions, this and that.

267
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And the lady gave me the card. It was the daughter of the

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It's a family-owned, or maybe not family-owned, but family-run. And

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she gave me, and the last name was Drappier on the card. So

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she said, where are you from? And I said, Armenia. She said,

271
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give me a moment. She ran and she brought her dad,

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00:16:50,709 --> 00:16:54,527
who was the head of Drappier House, and said, you're from Armenia? I

273
00:16:54,576 --> 00:16:58,137
said, yes. He said, you know, it would be an honor to have my

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champagne in a place where it all started. These were his words.

275
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Wow. Yeah. And we were like, Do they really care? Yeah,

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no. But so I'm bringing his wine to

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Armenia, but he's saying, it's an honor for me to be in a place

278
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where it all started. Wow. So he knew that story already?

279
00:17:18,068 --> 00:17:21,113
Huh? He knew that story already? It was after

280
00:17:21,113 --> 00:17:24,367
2011, so they knew the story because Amina opened in

281
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2012. So it was after that. They knew the story

282
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and they honored it. They really appreciated it and they understood.

283
00:17:32,078 --> 00:17:35,749
So I think it does open the doors, but then you have to give

284
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quality. wine. You cannot ride on

285
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that story for too long if you sell crap.

286
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I like the language. What's interesting is there—

287
00:17:46,939 --> 00:17:50,303
somebody forwarded me, and I'm a huge

288
00:17:50,416 --> 00:17:54,055
fan of Champagne. There's Widow Clicquot's book right

289
00:17:54,055 --> 00:17:56,393
there. Yes. She's a friend, Tilar Mazzeo.

290
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And I, unfortunately, I taught my son-in-laws how to drink Champagne.

291
00:18:02,508 --> 00:18:06,004
And now it costs me too much money. But somebody forwarded me the other day

292
00:18:06,701 --> 00:18:09,921
either an Instagram post about an Armenian-owned champagne house.

293
00:18:12,588 --> 00:18:15,673
I don't know exactly the story. I've heard that, you know,

294
00:18:15,802 --> 00:18:19,322
there's a champagne factory in Armenia, which during

295
00:18:19,355 --> 00:18:22,922
Soviet times, we had no problem calling it champagne. Yeah, that's right. So they still,

296
00:18:22,987 --> 00:18:25,311
it's a Yerevan champagne factory, I think.

297
00:18:27,152 --> 00:18:30,851
I don't wanna tell something I don't know 100% about, but I

298
00:18:30,883 --> 00:18:34,079
know that they had, place in

299
00:18:34,335 --> 00:18:37,287
Champagne, but I might be wrong. I've been trying to—

300
00:18:38,089 --> 00:18:41,393
But it's not hard to find out. No, I found the guy and I keep

301
00:18:41,393 --> 00:18:44,971
emailing them and I keep finding a way. And what I was trying to ascertain,

302
00:18:45,019 --> 00:18:48,837
and I have— no one knows this answer yet, but somebody you

303
00:18:48,837 --> 00:18:51,788
did, which was, does the guy have

304
00:18:52,526 --> 00:18:56,312
a relationship with Armenia? Does he— is his heritage an

305
00:18:56,312 --> 00:19:00,033
important part of his culture in Champagne? If that's the case, I want to

306
00:19:00,130 --> 00:19:02,830
I want to go out there and see him and do a show with him.

307
00:19:02,830 --> 00:19:05,790
But you know the name? I, I'll look it up when we're done. I don't

308
00:19:05,790 --> 00:19:08,680
remember his name, uh, but we'll find it.

309
00:19:09,750 --> 00:19:13,490
So we were talking about the story about the Armenian culture. When I

310
00:19:13,490 --> 00:19:17,110
was at Wine Paris— and Vinexpo is amazing,

311
00:19:17,110 --> 00:19:20,030
right? I mean, like this 1-mile-long

312
00:19:20,030 --> 00:19:23,730
building. Yeah, I was in both in Bordeaux and

313
00:19:23,730 --> 00:19:27,450
Paris, but then I moved to Paris. It's crazy. But so I was in Wine

314
00:19:27,450 --> 00:19:30,110
Paris last year in February. This now be an annual trip.

315
00:19:31,266 --> 00:19:34,608
And, um, I went to the Armenian booth, of course.

316
00:19:36,729 --> 00:19:39,412
But what hit me when I walked around— and I knew a lot of people,

317
00:19:39,476 --> 00:19:42,923
a lot of friends, a lot of people have been on the show, uh, done

318
00:19:42,939 --> 00:19:46,651
business with over the years— I couldn't think of any other product in the

319
00:19:46,715 --> 00:19:50,410
world where you would go to a trade show and every single

320
00:19:50,523 --> 00:19:54,304
booth has the exact same product. In other words, they're trying for

321
00:19:54,304 --> 00:19:58,036
the same space in the same shelves at the same restaurants at the

322
00:19:58,036 --> 00:20:01,325
same bulk sale, whatever they— however they market their wines,

323
00:20:02,222 --> 00:20:05,925
everybody in those 7,000 booths are

324
00:20:05,925 --> 00:20:09,757
selling the same thing. And the only way

325
00:20:09,757 --> 00:20:13,508
to differentiate yourself is some kind of story. And

326
00:20:13,700 --> 00:20:17,531
but the story is not enough. That's the first thing I've determined, because you just

327
00:20:17,531 --> 00:20:21,363
talked about it. It could be that this 6,100-year-old, um, cave

328
00:20:22,020 --> 00:20:24,905
is becoming a little tired of a story. Everybody tells it.

329
00:20:26,206 --> 00:20:29,835
And it's kind of— it kind of hit me that the story has to

330
00:20:29,899 --> 00:20:32,420
be an earnest story. It has to be a real

331
00:20:33,415 --> 00:20:37,237
heartfelt story, meaning it comes from your

332
00:20:37,285 --> 00:20:41,122
passion, Vaya's passion to be in

333
00:20:41,122 --> 00:20:44,543
this industry, because it takes nothing more or less than that, right?

334
00:20:45,538 --> 00:20:48,091
Pure passion, purpose, pursuit,

335
00:20:48,444 --> 00:20:52,054
perseverance. The margins suck,

336
00:20:52,776 --> 00:20:56,286
right? The headwinds are enormous. And

337
00:20:56,527 --> 00:21:00,246
the only way to prevail is to not give up. Yes. Is that—

338
00:21:00,775 --> 00:21:03,997
and I think this is what's been happening. And I'm hoping the Armenian culture of

339
00:21:04,061 --> 00:21:07,524
wine recognizes that. Yeah. A

340
00:21:08,149 --> 00:21:11,996
lot of people got excited and they started making wine in Armenia by

341
00:21:12,012 --> 00:21:14,593
buying fruit from somebody else and

342
00:21:15,619 --> 00:21:19,226
playing with it and creating their own juice and their own wine and

343
00:21:19,226 --> 00:21:22,722
putting their own label. Some of them disappeared. Some of them

344
00:21:22,916 --> 00:21:26,515
persevered, but I don't think Armenia can

345
00:21:26,563 --> 00:21:29,097
survive only based on

346
00:21:29,291 --> 00:21:33,032
Armenians drinking this wine, Armenian wine

347
00:21:33,080 --> 00:21:36,478
industry. We will become a small, you know, in some

348
00:21:36,542 --> 00:21:40,374
forgotten place where if we don't spread out our wings and

349
00:21:40,487 --> 00:21:43,556
go to the world and show what we can do. And

350
00:21:45,092 --> 00:21:48,842
being passionate about it and loving it is extremely important because when

351
00:21:48,956 --> 00:21:52,296
Imina opened, we were happy to see that quite a few wine bars opened.

352
00:21:54,300 --> 00:21:57,800
And they thought that we would be angry that they're competing with us and we

353
00:21:57,800 --> 00:22:01,440
would go and congratulate them with the grand opening, bring the bottle of

354
00:22:01,440 --> 00:22:04,920
wine. Everyone was shocked why we would go and congratulate our competitor

355
00:22:04,920 --> 00:22:08,520
because we understood people would drink. We don't like opening

356
00:22:08,520 --> 00:22:12,120
chains. Every— our restaurant has its own unique

357
00:22:12,120 --> 00:22:15,780
personality. We don't open Twin Vinos. Right. You don't

358
00:22:15,780 --> 00:22:19,620
duplicate that. No, because you cannot. It's bullshit and it's not going to

359
00:22:19,620 --> 00:22:23,320
work. But many of them closed. I mean,

360
00:22:23,320 --> 00:22:27,120
all of them closed because most of them didn't really care

361
00:22:27,120 --> 00:22:30,700
about wine. They thought it's a, you know, my friend

362
00:22:30,700 --> 00:22:34,300
does good, my neighbor does great pizza, I can do better and I will sell

363
00:22:34,300 --> 00:22:38,000
the pizza as well. And then there are 600 pizza shops

364
00:22:38,000 --> 00:22:41,180
opening and then I'll die. So, the Armenian

365
00:22:41,180 --> 00:22:44,860
way. Yeah, it's actually probably global way. More than

366
00:22:44,860 --> 00:22:47,900
just Armenian. In some way, yeah. So, a lot of places, they came and said,

367
00:22:47,900 --> 00:22:51,600
oh, we will sell our glass by— our wine by glass for 700

368
00:22:51,600 --> 00:22:55,260
drams instead of 800 that you sell. I said, if you think people come

369
00:22:55,260 --> 00:22:59,060
here for this 100 drams, try it. I don't know, maybe

370
00:22:59,060 --> 00:23:02,721
they do, but I was sure they didn't. And that price actually

371
00:23:02,737 --> 00:23:06,351
didn't change for the last 14 years. We still sell wine glass by

372
00:23:06,351 --> 00:23:10,060
800 yuan, which is like $2.50. You know, I

373
00:23:10,060 --> 00:23:13,738
don't think— and I think you've just said it— but there's an American colloquialism,

374
00:23:13,818 --> 00:23:16,645
build a better mousetrap and people will beat a path to your door. And it's

375
00:23:16,645 --> 00:23:20,338
not true because you can have all the best mousetraps in the

376
00:23:20,338 --> 00:23:23,920
world, but if no one knows about it, nobody senses I

377
00:23:23,920 --> 00:23:27,540
mean, you have to have a gleam in your eye when you're selling wine. You

378
00:23:27,540 --> 00:23:31,280
have to have a passion and inspiration that you

379
00:23:31,280 --> 00:23:34,950
can convey to the client, either directly to the client when they're tasting wine

380
00:23:34,960 --> 00:23:38,680
or to the distributor who's selling you the wine or to the winemaker who's

381
00:23:38,680 --> 00:23:42,320
making the wine or vice versa. You know, that has to be interchanged because without

382
00:23:42,320 --> 00:23:46,160
that, it's just another product and there's not enough money in it

383
00:23:46,160 --> 00:23:49,700
for just another product. Yeah, exactly. We did it because we loved it.

384
00:23:49,700 --> 00:23:53,460
Actually, the funny story is at the time when we opened in Vina and

385
00:23:53,460 --> 00:23:57,185
then a few years later, I was CEO of a very large IT company in

386
00:23:57,281 --> 00:24:00,976
Armenia with a few thousand employees. And one of the

387
00:24:00,976 --> 00:24:04,574
employees in the evening, he came to Invino, he saw me drying glasses,

388
00:24:05,233 --> 00:24:08,847
and he went to the founders and said, I just saw our CEO

389
00:24:08,847 --> 00:24:12,269
washing glasses at Invino. Are we not doing great? Wow, what

390
00:24:12,783 --> 00:24:16,365
an interesting story. And the founder said, now you know how

391
00:24:16,558 --> 00:24:20,269
to do business. You will learn this. In Armenia, it's not used to that.

392
00:24:20,895 --> 00:24:24,445
They're not used to owners doing things that much. Especially in

393
00:24:24,445 --> 00:24:27,494
restaurant business. So in the morning, they would see me sweeping the

394
00:24:28,120 --> 00:24:31,828
asphalt in front of the sidewalk in front of In Vino.

395
00:24:32,390 --> 00:24:35,456
And then I would go and give them advice how to run their company. And

396
00:24:35,456 --> 00:24:38,297
in the evening, I would serve wine at In Vino. So

397
00:24:39,356 --> 00:24:43,032
when we just opened, after a few years, obviously

398
00:24:43,305 --> 00:24:46,804
we still do that, but I do it in restaurants, in our restaurants. I run

399
00:24:46,836 --> 00:24:50,496
the restaurant side and Mariam does it at In Vino. I

400
00:24:50,528 --> 00:24:53,660
don't know how you— That's the only way to do it. Yeah. And I think

401
00:24:53,660 --> 00:24:54,897
that's an international requirement.

402
00:24:57,834 --> 00:25:01,192
I mean, and I always find this fascinating. In LA, let's just take LA for

403
00:25:01,192 --> 00:25:02,188
instance, even America,

404
00:25:04,486 --> 00:25:08,230
hospitality has— it's been ebbs and flowing right now. In

405
00:25:08,422 --> 00:25:12,005
general, hospitality is not in a very good place. The people aren't there

406
00:25:12,214 --> 00:25:15,235
that understand and train in hospitality properly.

407
00:25:16,215 --> 00:25:19,994
But it's interesting to me, like the French, the Italians, there's this legacy of restaurants.

408
00:25:20,753 --> 00:25:24,416
that, you know, Trois Gros and, and, uh, Ferdinand Point

409
00:25:24,609 --> 00:25:28,320
and places like that where it's a

410
00:25:28,320 --> 00:25:32,063
lineage. And to, to be in business in LA for 30 years,

411
00:25:32,420 --> 00:25:35,674
you know, is a, is un— very unusual as a restaurateur

412
00:25:36,208 --> 00:25:39,520
and usually doesn't survive the next generation. But culture and

413
00:25:39,520 --> 00:25:43,360
hospitality in different parts of the world are part of the process, a

414
00:25:43,490 --> 00:25:46,715
part of the family, a part of what you do. It sounds like that's

415
00:25:46,715 --> 00:25:49,723
what Yeah, our restaurant is 22 years old,

416
00:25:50,589 --> 00:25:53,186
the club. Yeah. We opened in 2004.

417
00:25:54,436 --> 00:25:57,946
Imbina is almost— what is it now? 26. So,

418
00:25:57,963 --> 00:26:01,377
14 years old. Will be 15 soon.

419
00:26:02,034 --> 00:26:05,689
That's amazing. We do it because we love it. If I

420
00:26:05,737 --> 00:26:09,504
stop it, it's like I get rid of my child, and I

421
00:26:09,504 --> 00:26:12,518
won't do that for anything, you know?

422
00:26:13,255 --> 00:26:16,333
Because it's something that grabbed— my kids were

423
00:26:16,622 --> 00:26:20,293
raised there. Yeah. I spent the night before my daughter was

424
00:26:20,485 --> 00:26:24,172
born in the club because it was close to the

425
00:26:24,172 --> 00:26:27,426
hospital. So, there are a lot of memories there. And a lot of people say,

426
00:26:27,458 --> 00:26:30,664
oh, I grew up in the club. Oh, I saw this concert in the club.

427
00:26:31,209 --> 00:26:33,630
The club is the name of the restaurant, but we used to do a lot

428
00:26:33,630 --> 00:26:37,477
of cultural events. Same with In Vino. Some winemakers, they tried

429
00:26:37,958 --> 00:26:41,308
wine at In Vino first. Now they're making wine because they

430
00:26:41,308 --> 00:26:45,075
discovered wine at In Vino. Yeah, right. And it's a place

431
00:26:45,075 --> 00:26:48,794
where people gather because they don't look at it as a

432
00:26:48,922 --> 00:26:51,952
place where they will sell me something.

433
00:26:53,331 --> 00:26:57,178
We make wine, but we have a wall with all Armenian winemakers' photos on the

434
00:26:57,194 --> 00:27:00,962
wall, special wall for Armenian winemakers. So, if somebody drinks this

435
00:27:00,962 --> 00:27:04,729
wine, say, you know, this guy is the guy who makes it. So,

436
00:27:04,809 --> 00:27:08,608
there is a relation. They understand connection. They understand connection. And

437
00:27:08,640 --> 00:27:12,119
then they would come and see a lot of winemakers doing their business meetings or

438
00:27:12,488 --> 00:27:16,143
seeing their friends at Envino. It's a competitor store.

439
00:27:16,480 --> 00:27:20,080
But then nobody looks at it as a competitor still. You know, I think,

440
00:27:20,080 --> 00:27:23,160
uh, all, you know, rising tides float all boats. You know,

441
00:27:23,530 --> 00:27:27,020
they— I don't think people understand that in general in business, particularly

442
00:27:27,020 --> 00:27:30,680
restaurateur, where if you're the only restaurant in a town, it's

443
00:27:30,680 --> 00:27:34,400
your destination. But when there's more than one restaurant, they— and you're not necessarily

444
00:27:34,400 --> 00:27:38,120
competing, but you're bringing the whole— absolutely bringing everybody up. Now, I

445
00:27:38,120 --> 00:27:41,940
didn't— when I sold the Wine of the Month Club in 2023, you know, that

446
00:27:41,940 --> 00:27:45,220
was a very important consideration of mine. I was not gonna be able to hand

447
00:27:45,220 --> 00:27:48,845
this to my kids. But at that time, the way industry is, is and still

448
00:27:48,909 --> 00:27:52,629
is, you know, I wouldn't— I didn't want them to be fighting

449
00:27:52,966 --> 00:27:55,243
that I was fighting the fight I was fighting. And it was gonna be the

450
00:27:55,291 --> 00:27:59,092
first year probably in 50 years that we weren't gonna

451
00:27:59,092 --> 00:28:02,588
make any money. And that, you know, that's sort of depressing. And it was— Yes.

452
00:28:02,685 --> 00:28:06,437
And I didn't see the horizon changing for a couple of years at

453
00:28:06,437 --> 00:28:10,206
least. And now it's already been 3 years and it's still, it's still a struggle

454
00:28:10,446 --> 00:28:14,135
to be in that part of the business. You know, what's interesting to

455
00:28:14,135 --> 00:28:16,906
me And I'm not gonna name any names,

456
00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:21,502
but you've been in business all your life. You've been in

457
00:28:21,534 --> 00:28:25,341
consulting, you're in high tech. I see

458
00:28:25,503 --> 00:28:28,900
it every year. I see a handful of people come out of

459
00:28:29,177 --> 00:28:32,863
business school, whatever school, from a different industry,

460
00:28:32,895 --> 00:28:36,426
from selling shoes, from selling clothes

461
00:28:37,592 --> 00:28:40,692
to try and apply all those

462
00:28:40,805 --> 00:28:44,402
principles to the wine business, and they've never worked.

463
00:28:44,980 --> 00:28:48,802
I've never seen anybody buck the regular

464
00:28:49,541 --> 00:28:53,234
pathway to the consumer through one of the

465
00:28:53,234 --> 00:28:56,864
methods that they learned in business school. And I can

466
00:28:56,864 --> 00:29:00,268
cite examples— again, I won't name any names— but, um,

467
00:29:00,702 --> 00:29:04,460
you know, high-level MBAs who decided that

468
00:29:04,492 --> 00:29:08,232
they were going to apply all this stuff they learned to wine.

469
00:29:09,146 --> 00:29:12,787
And then all the laws, the regulation, the margins, the

470
00:29:12,819 --> 00:29:16,652
methodologies, the, the fact that wine really

471
00:29:16,828 --> 00:29:20,212
is— when people say it's subjective, it is subjective what you like,

472
00:29:20,918 --> 00:29:24,109
but the subjectivity is a very emotional subjectivity.

473
00:29:24,847 --> 00:29:28,167
Like, there's no reason why you have to walk into the market and buy the

474
00:29:28,167 --> 00:29:31,743
same exact thing every time you buy it, but it's so emotional you have to.

475
00:29:32,561 --> 00:29:35,865
It's very hard to break out from those kinds of things. But have you seen

476
00:29:35,913 --> 00:29:39,734
that where where people come into this industry, whether it's restaurateur

477
00:29:39,927 --> 00:29:43,634
or the wine business, with this magnanimous vision of

478
00:29:43,634 --> 00:29:47,196
what this is gonna be and realize it's a cold slap in the face?

479
00:29:47,777 --> 00:29:51,475
Actually, I've seen both, but I separate

480
00:29:51,878 --> 00:29:55,592
in my mind, not technically, not scientifically, just

481
00:29:55,737 --> 00:29:59,461
for me, like you say, emotionally. There are 2 different

482
00:29:59,461 --> 00:30:03,104
types of wine industry for me. One is a traditional industry,

483
00:30:03,314 --> 00:30:06,345
which I'm more adherent to and a fan of. And there's industrial industry,

484
00:30:08,760 --> 00:30:12,557
When you look at the industrial part where they look at wine as a product

485
00:30:12,557 --> 00:30:16,114
that you have to produce, that you have to stamp

486
00:30:16,146 --> 00:30:19,766
it, and it's in a conveyor, and then it

487
00:30:20,167 --> 00:30:23,948
works because they don't care and the drinkers don't care about that wine. They

488
00:30:24,076 --> 00:30:26,656
just need something on the table. They would buy it. It's cheap.

489
00:30:28,002 --> 00:30:31,382
The bottle looks nice. The label is shiny. They would buy it.

490
00:30:31,943 --> 00:30:35,308
And then there is another section of the wine industry where

491
00:30:35,308 --> 00:30:38,471
it's family-owned, where it's Or

492
00:30:38,471 --> 00:30:42,198
it's friends who are passionate about it and they won't give up for

493
00:30:42,263 --> 00:30:45,194
any reason. And this part is

494
00:30:46,100 --> 00:30:49,613
what attracts me a lot. So those guys from

495
00:30:49,613 --> 00:30:51,184
MBA, from the schools,

496
00:30:54,053 --> 00:30:57,880
I worked as a consultant and I worked as an executive. So I have both—

497
00:30:57,880 --> 00:31:01,674
Yeah. I've been in both shoes. And my former CEO, when he

498
00:31:01,674 --> 00:31:05,000
learned about that the owners are sending a

499
00:31:05,049 --> 00:31:08,456
consultant to to give us advice. He said, I hate

500
00:31:08,456 --> 00:31:12,201
consultants. He was a self-taught millionaire. And I said, why? He said, they

501
00:31:12,409 --> 00:31:14,707
tell you, give me your watch and I'll tell you what time it is.

502
00:31:19,352 --> 00:31:22,404
So these people would be successful in this industrial

503
00:31:23,002 --> 00:31:26,684
environment because they look at wine, they don't see wine,

504
00:31:26,716 --> 00:31:30,010
they don't see the passion, they don't see the villager, they don't see the grower.

505
00:31:30,090 --> 00:31:33,625
They see a product that has to be sold. So they look at the

506
00:31:33,641 --> 00:31:37,379
marketing and this and that, And they really don't care about the rest.

507
00:31:38,677 --> 00:31:41,722
And they understand that it has to be good product as well. So it's not

508
00:31:41,722 --> 00:31:45,393
like they sell bad wine, but— Right. That's the approach. When we look

509
00:31:45,393 --> 00:31:48,983
at wine, it's for us part of our soul. And if they say, you have

510
00:31:49,015 --> 00:31:52,861
to change this so it sells well, we might fight tooth and nail and

511
00:31:52,861 --> 00:31:56,708
say, if I change that, it might sell well, but then it's like

512
00:31:56,708 --> 00:31:59,817
I betrayed myself and I don't care if it sells well anymore.

513
00:32:00,394 --> 00:32:04,129
Because if it sells well, who cares if I'm not happy?

514
00:32:04,530 --> 00:32:08,310
It can sell 10 times more. If it doesn't make me happy, then

515
00:32:08,310 --> 00:32:11,590
I don't care if it sells 10 times more. That's a good point. It's not

516
00:32:11,590 --> 00:32:15,390
only financial. You can have

517
00:32:15,390 --> 00:32:18,910
a child who is very successful, but he's a criminal. I mean, you're

518
00:32:18,910 --> 00:32:22,630
upset. You're not that happy. Some parents maybe not, but I would be very

519
00:32:22,630 --> 00:32:26,330
upset. That's an interesting point. But if he's happy and he's

520
00:32:26,330 --> 00:32:29,870
rich and he's doing well, then it's a totally different

521
00:32:29,870 --> 00:32:32,570
story. So there is this

522
00:32:32,570 --> 00:32:35,991
separation for me. You know, I have to—

523
00:32:38,026 --> 00:32:40,821
I wanted to be a media— I wanted to act.

524
00:32:42,159 --> 00:32:45,704
And I know that it's just a struggle, right? Even when I retired and sold

525
00:32:45,704 --> 00:32:49,487
the company, I went to acting school. Yeah, it's probably not for you.

526
00:32:49,535 --> 00:32:52,926
And I thought to myself, would you have enjoyed that lifestyle

527
00:32:53,314 --> 00:32:56,785
but been happier? Not that I'm unhappy, but that you're

528
00:32:56,785 --> 00:33:00,619
pursuing this idea of entertaining people

529
00:33:00,619 --> 00:33:04,405
and inspiring people by what you do. but probably not making a whole lot of

530
00:33:04,437 --> 00:33:08,205
money and just fighting it the whole time? And I don't know the

531
00:33:08,205 --> 00:33:11,172
answer to that question, you know, because I, I have a daughter who's a

532
00:33:11,236 --> 00:33:14,957
French-trained boulanger. You know, she's— what she

533
00:33:15,085 --> 00:33:18,870
does inspires me to no end. And, you know, it's not the most lucrative business

534
00:33:18,870 --> 00:33:21,708
in the world, and we're working on something right now,

535
00:33:22,542 --> 00:33:26,054
but it makes me feel so good that she's able to

536
00:33:26,070 --> 00:33:29,295
inspire people with what she creates. like that.

537
00:33:30,419 --> 00:33:34,080
You know, you were talking about consultants at the Wine of the Month

538
00:33:34,096 --> 00:33:37,789
Club, which was contemporarily extraordinarily digital.

539
00:33:38,351 --> 00:33:42,044
We did everything. I mean, there isn't a piece of digital marketing that we didn't

540
00:33:42,461 --> 00:33:46,090
understand and tap with the metrics, the whole thing. And I

541
00:33:46,138 --> 00:33:49,157
went through probably a dozen consultants

542
00:33:49,751 --> 00:33:53,139
from not just the 50 years, but just the part where digital started to make

543
00:33:53,139 --> 00:33:56,967
sense. And, uh, and where you need to understand Google

544
00:33:57,031 --> 00:34:00,307
Ads, you need to understand Facebook Ads and influencer marketing and affiliate marketing and all

545
00:34:00,517 --> 00:34:03,885
the email marketing, all this stuff. In fact, in

546
00:34:03,885 --> 00:34:07,596
2022, we sent 33 million emails. Okay,

547
00:34:08,081 --> 00:34:11,361
so we understood it. But the one thing that bothered me at the end of

548
00:34:11,361 --> 00:34:14,896
the day with the consultants was, and I started to push back, was

549
00:34:15,397 --> 00:34:19,213
you don't understand what I do. Like, if I'm selling a widget, okay,

550
00:34:19,377 --> 00:34:23,204
there's some of those metrics applied. But wine is so different and so emotional and

551
00:34:23,204 --> 00:34:26,509
so hard to find the people that are gonna be interested in a wine that

552
00:34:27,023 --> 00:34:30,809
I realized I was paying the consultant to be educated in

553
00:34:30,809 --> 00:34:34,580
my— in what I do. Exactly. Right? And then half the time they

554
00:34:34,580 --> 00:34:38,398
didn't get it. And so they would move the needle a little bit and

555
00:34:38,430 --> 00:34:41,928
say, look, we moved the needle, but there wasn't any profit in that needle.

556
00:34:41,976 --> 00:34:45,618
So who cared? Right? They didn't understand that. And I think that's the difference in

557
00:34:45,650 --> 00:34:49,410
the wine trade nobody gets this emotional

558
00:34:49,458 --> 00:34:53,240
tie that comes with purchasing wine, either

559
00:34:53,240 --> 00:34:56,803
at a restaurant or at a store. And

560
00:34:57,140 --> 00:35:00,596
you spoke about the boats lifting everyone. It's a

561
00:35:00,692 --> 00:35:04,517
California story, actually, as well, where everyone came together

562
00:35:04,533 --> 00:35:08,321
and then they sent these people to Paris for the Judgment of

563
00:35:08,353 --> 00:35:11,839
Paris classification, right? In Armenia,

564
00:35:12,066 --> 00:35:15,497
it's We use a lot of consultants, but

565
00:35:16,891 --> 00:35:19,598
because we are generals, we know better than them.

566
00:35:20,590 --> 00:35:23,770
That's right. But we learn. We learn a lot.

567
00:35:24,335 --> 00:35:27,773
Even our name, we have a very good

568
00:35:27,805 --> 00:35:30,725
French friend who does organic wine in Vantoux.

569
00:35:31,660 --> 00:35:35,238
And we were looking for a name, and it was 3 friends, and

570
00:35:35,367 --> 00:35:39,028
he turned and said, À Tétoie Trinité. À Tétoie. And that's how it

571
00:35:39,028 --> 00:35:41,793
started. We were looking for Armenian name, this and that. And he said, and we

572
00:35:41,793 --> 00:35:45,544
didn't want to we said

573
00:35:45,544 --> 00:35:49,290
it's probably— there is a reason behind it. It's nothing religious,

574
00:35:50,029 --> 00:35:52,826
although Maryam's father thinks he's a saint, but he's not.

575
00:35:53,942 --> 00:35:57,452
But there is no religious thing. Maryam's father is my partner, Hovhakim,

576
00:35:58,167 --> 00:36:00,328
in the Trinity with Andronik and Koyan.

577
00:36:01,983 --> 00:36:05,599
So now, when we opened Invino, the

578
00:36:05,599 --> 00:36:08,569
idea was to lift all those boats, to give a place.

579
00:36:09,086 --> 00:36:12,868
First, the simple idea just to have a drink without

580
00:36:12,868 --> 00:36:16,400
food, but also to have a place where we could sell only

581
00:36:16,560 --> 00:36:19,980
good Armenian wines. Good, not by my taste. Good

582
00:36:21,136 --> 00:36:24,812
by— even now, we don't select wines for INVINO,

583
00:36:24,989 --> 00:36:28,682
Armenian wines. When a new wine comes out, they bring it

584
00:36:28,682 --> 00:36:32,486
to INVINO. We call a panel of specialists— Mm-hmm. —of 15,

585
00:36:32,535 --> 00:36:35,874
20 people, and they do blind tasting, and the winemakers can

586
00:36:35,906 --> 00:36:39,486
participate. And if it doesn't collect a certain number of

587
00:36:39,518 --> 00:36:42,680
points, we can't sell it. it. Because everyone is a friend.

588
00:36:43,434 --> 00:36:46,931
That's amazing. That's how we select wine. So nobody can come and say, I

589
00:36:47,156 --> 00:36:50,429
know you, you're my friend, can you sell my wine? No, I can't. I will

590
00:36:50,429 --> 00:36:54,119
be happy to if it goes and you can participate. It's a blind

591
00:36:54,119 --> 00:36:57,937
tasting. Because when you drink it at your vineyard, everything

592
00:36:57,969 --> 00:37:01,660
tastes great. But when you drink it in comparison with others, it might

593
00:37:01,660 --> 00:37:05,494
taste great, it might not. We had that conversation. I'm

594
00:37:05,494 --> 00:37:09,313
going to interrupt But it's an important topic. And then I want

595
00:37:09,313 --> 00:37:12,981
to talk to you about your, your grassroots movement here.

596
00:37:14,726 --> 00:37:17,050
At the Wine of the Month Club, every Tuesday at 9 o'clock, I went to

597
00:37:17,050 --> 00:37:19,277
the tasting room, which was just on the other side of this wall, and I

598
00:37:19,309 --> 00:37:22,972
waited until 2 o'clock, and whoever showed up showed up. Sometimes the

599
00:37:22,972 --> 00:37:26,586
winemaker came. Sometimes— this podcast started because winemakers would come

600
00:37:26,586 --> 00:37:30,137
and very important château owners would come. Yeah.

601
00:37:30,799 --> 00:37:34,075
And so, yeah, it does make a difference if it's blind or not because you

602
00:37:34,075 --> 00:37:37,684
can And what the conversation I had with Mariam was,

603
00:37:38,841 --> 00:37:42,311
she would tell them, to the winemaker, look,

604
00:37:43,002 --> 00:37:46,745
you know, this is— Absolutely. And I could never do that.

605
00:37:47,902 --> 00:37:50,184
No, it was part of the deal. But I think in Armenia— They give all

606
00:37:50,184 --> 00:37:53,509
the notes. I think the point there is

607
00:37:54,570 --> 00:37:58,201
Armenia is at that point where you need to have those conversations, honest

608
00:37:58,265 --> 00:38:01,813
conversations about what you're serving. But they're also expecting it. When we say we

609
00:38:01,813 --> 00:38:05,308
cannot sell your wine, they say, why? What can we do differently? And we say,

610
00:38:05,324 --> 00:38:08,947
look, here are the notes that people wrote about your wine. So, you can read

611
00:38:08,947 --> 00:38:12,762
them and you can understand why it didn't collect this

612
00:38:12,858 --> 00:38:16,449
many points. That's great. And it came also because

613
00:38:16,561 --> 00:38:20,056
one day I was at the expo with one banker

614
00:38:20,553 --> 00:38:24,384
from Armenia, and she said, you know, when people come to us, winemakers

615
00:38:24,560 --> 00:38:28,375
asking for money, for loans, and we say, give me proof,

616
00:38:28,744 --> 00:38:32,463
give me an idea why you think you'll succeed, they say, our wine is

617
00:38:32,463 --> 00:38:36,170
sold at Invino. And it's not because Invino is such a— because

618
00:38:36,459 --> 00:38:40,214
of this panel, because they know if wine is sold at Invino, it means 20

619
00:38:40,712 --> 00:38:44,531
specialists, sommeliers, wine educators, winemakers decided

620
00:38:44,531 --> 00:38:47,805
that it's a good quality wine. You know what that— you know what that is?

621
00:38:47,982 --> 00:38:51,127
Let me interrupt you again. I'm going to say

622
00:38:51,849 --> 00:38:55,364
that's 1975, that picture,

623
00:38:56,584 --> 00:39:00,387
and that is the beginning of that kind of logic in

624
00:39:00,419 --> 00:39:04,127
America. So I think in its, in its,

625
00:39:04,431 --> 00:39:07,994
um, proper form, Armenia is, you know, 50

626
00:39:08,123 --> 00:39:11,557
years behind the trend of what is done,

627
00:39:12,070 --> 00:39:15,023
but that's the right place to be. Because my father was the first guy in

628
00:39:15,023 --> 00:39:18,538
LA virtually that said, no, just because it says

629
00:39:18,634 --> 00:39:21,362
Robert Mondavi on it, I'm not putting it on my shelf unless I taste it.

630
00:39:21,699 --> 00:39:25,118
Yeah. And he would convene doctors who supported his

631
00:39:25,214 --> 00:39:28,982
pharmacies upstairs in the tasting room that I set

632
00:39:28,982 --> 00:39:32,012
up and taste the wines and they would do the same thing you're doing.

633
00:39:32,685 --> 00:39:36,404
That doesn't happen anymore. I mean, there are certainly fine wine shops who do that,

634
00:39:37,174 --> 00:39:40,989
but most of the subscription model today in America is

635
00:39:41,342 --> 00:39:44,773
full of, you know, 50-cent-a-liter Tetra Paks of crap

636
00:39:45,590 --> 00:39:49,438
because the margins are there. Yes. You can have a case of wine that

637
00:39:49,438 --> 00:39:53,221
costs you, what's that, $4.50 in the juice and $1 a

638
00:39:53,526 --> 00:39:56,299
bottle and you could sell it for $5 a bottle. You're making money. There's something

639
00:39:56,331 --> 00:40:00,087
money And that's what was going on. I tell you something, when I read

640
00:40:00,585 --> 00:40:04,085
trade publications about wine in America, I'm very

641
00:40:04,197 --> 00:40:07,890
bothered by the language. There is no soul in that

642
00:40:07,890 --> 00:40:10,426
language. No. It's SQAs, it's

643
00:40:11,743 --> 00:40:15,403
these cases that— the language used is very

644
00:40:15,515 --> 00:40:19,272
industrial. I agree with you. It doesn't speak to me, and I

645
00:40:19,272 --> 00:40:22,900
don't want to be part of that kind of thing. It's funny you brought

646
00:40:22,900 --> 00:40:26,304
up Judgment of Paris. Jim

647
00:40:26,754 --> 00:40:30,302
Barrett, who was the maker of— Yes, of course. Orichette de Montalegre,

648
00:40:30,447 --> 00:40:33,112
used to come in the store all the time. They were neighbors of ours. And

649
00:40:33,112 --> 00:40:36,677
in fact, I sent an email yesterday to his youngest son,

650
00:40:36,773 --> 00:40:40,193
Kevin Barrett, because it's, it's Beau who's the president now.

651
00:40:40,787 --> 00:40:44,561
His young— his younger brother's name's Kevin. I surfed with him back in

652
00:40:44,577 --> 00:40:48,350
the day. And it's my 50th high school reunion is coming up

653
00:40:48,350 --> 00:40:51,974
next month. And I emailed Kevin. I said, you bring a bottle of Château

654
00:40:51,974 --> 00:40:55,276
Montelena to the union, and I'm gonna bring a bottle of Château Lascôme.

655
00:40:56,125 --> 00:40:59,796
And why? Because that's where Jim Barrett was sitting when the

656
00:40:59,796 --> 00:41:03,147
phone call came through that they had won the white side of the Judgment of

657
00:41:03,179 --> 00:41:06,625
Paris. I said, wouldn't it be fun to taste those 2 wines just, just as

658
00:41:06,625 --> 00:41:10,392
a history memento between your father and my father? But,

659
00:41:10,857 --> 00:41:14,560
um, you're, you're, you're out with a grassroots

660
00:41:14,560 --> 00:41:18,347
campaign Yeah. And, and this is important, I think.

661
00:41:18,445 --> 00:41:22,089
And I'm gonna dovetail into Gini Fest and a

662
00:41:22,089 --> 00:41:25,134
couple other conversations I've had with some Armenian winemakers and distributors.

663
00:41:25,813 --> 00:41:29,644
First of all, um, I have been to

664
00:41:29,773 --> 00:41:33,443
dozens and dozens and dozens of wine events,

665
00:41:33,572 --> 00:41:37,241
tastings, hundreds of tastings, but dozens of

666
00:41:37,980 --> 00:41:41,740
regionally specific tastings put on by the region. Paso Robles,

667
00:41:42,077 --> 00:41:45,896
Napa Valley, Sonoma County, Wines of the World,

668
00:41:45,913 --> 00:41:49,738
which are all international. Does the Armenian—

669
00:41:51,381 --> 00:41:55,006
is there a coalition of Armenian winemakers that would produce a show like

670
00:41:55,006 --> 00:41:58,791
that in the diaspora? It's not a show. That's

671
00:41:58,791 --> 00:42:02,577
the thing. You know, when I look at all kinds of events

672
00:42:02,577 --> 00:42:05,041
that failed, done by Armenians,

673
00:42:06,920 --> 00:42:10,700
I saw 3, 4 things that the reason they failed. That,

674
00:42:10,700 --> 00:42:14,400
in my opinion, one was that we were trying to do

675
00:42:14,400 --> 00:42:18,030
it as teamwork. It doesn't work in Armenian culture. There is no teamwork.

676
00:42:18,200 --> 00:42:21,700
Yeah, I wonder why. Look at the sports. Our boxers, our

677
00:42:21,700 --> 00:42:24,780
weightlifters, our wrestlers are doing great. Our football team

678
00:42:24,780 --> 00:42:28,440
sucks. All our— Oh, the team sports you were talking about.

679
00:42:28,440 --> 00:42:32,140
Every player is great, but the team sucks. I

680
00:42:32,140 --> 00:42:35,780
mean, it doesn't suck, but it doesn't win. Team players are not part of our

681
00:42:35,780 --> 00:42:38,880
game. It's not in us. Second,

682
00:42:39,634 --> 00:42:43,181
We always find somebody to blame why it didn't work. Yeah.

683
00:42:43,261 --> 00:42:46,985
Stepan in Guinea Fest didn't organize it well. This guy didn't ask too much

684
00:42:47,081 --> 00:42:50,789
money, this and that. And the third one, that everyone wants to

685
00:42:50,870 --> 00:42:54,497
be a sayer but not be responsible for it. So

686
00:42:54,690 --> 00:42:58,510
he wants to contribute that this should be green and this should be yellow, but

687
00:42:58,510 --> 00:43:01,383
when it comes to taking responsibility, we kind of step away.

688
00:43:02,089 --> 00:43:05,845
So with this initiative, we kind of— this initiative

689
00:43:05,878 --> 00:43:09,699
took all these 3 things out. There's no event. There is no one

690
00:43:09,811 --> 00:43:13,601
to blame if it doesn't work. There is no

691
00:43:13,746 --> 00:43:17,455
restrictions on how you can change everything. The idea

692
00:43:17,664 --> 00:43:20,297
is the second week of November is

693
00:43:20,570 --> 00:43:24,087
Armenian Wine Week globally. Mm-hmm.

694
00:43:24,810 --> 00:43:28,487
And that includes a challenge. Every Armenian buys

695
00:43:28,599 --> 00:43:32,421
2 bottles of Armenian wine, gifts one to his non-Armenian friend,

696
00:43:32,598 --> 00:43:36,433
and challenges his 3 friends to do the We're not great wine

697
00:43:36,529 --> 00:43:40,312
drinkers yet, but we can introduce our wine to people who drink

698
00:43:40,312 --> 00:43:44,159
wine. They will recognize, if they like it, they'll go and buy

699
00:43:44,159 --> 00:43:47,798
it. So that's the main challenge. Here,

700
00:43:48,087 --> 00:43:51,918
everyone can do whatever they want. The Trinci can take

701
00:43:51,918 --> 00:43:55,701
2 6100s and say, buy 2 6100s, give it to your

702
00:43:55,701 --> 00:43:59,516
friend. Vaskevas can do his own wine. Nobody has to follow

703
00:43:59,532 --> 00:44:03,283
any rules. Yeah. So everyone makes his own. They don't even have

704
00:44:03,315 --> 00:44:06,810
to use the logo. They can change it and use it as long as

705
00:44:06,922 --> 00:44:10,576
they push the challenge, introducing Armenian—

706
00:44:11,073 --> 00:44:14,582
every Armenian is a boat that can take this wine to the ocean of

707
00:44:15,656 --> 00:44:19,310
wine drinkers. We don't have to be drinking that wine,

708
00:44:19,422 --> 00:44:22,964
but if you buy 2 bottles before Thanksgiving, put 1 bottle on your

709
00:44:23,028 --> 00:44:26,858
table— you have to have wine anyways. You have to have wine on the table,

710
00:44:26,874 --> 00:44:30,656
right? Yeah. Anyways, at least 1 bottle, and gift 1 to your

711
00:44:30,656 --> 00:44:34,166
neighbor, your friend, your colleague, and say, here is from my

712
00:44:34,406 --> 00:44:37,499
ancient land, and challenge your friends to do the same.

713
00:44:38,156 --> 00:44:41,827
We'll see if it works. It's totally grassroots. There is no money

714
00:44:41,923 --> 00:44:45,578
collected. So you can't say, you know, I spent— I

715
00:44:45,610 --> 00:44:49,442
gave them $20 and it didn't deliver. There is

716
00:44:49,810 --> 00:44:53,497
no restrictions. It's done by winearmenia.org,

717
00:44:53,545 --> 00:44:57,088
which is an informal network of Armenian— everybody connected to

718
00:44:57,088 --> 00:45:00,470
Armenian wine. Mm-hmm. In collaboration with Vine and Wine

719
00:45:00,534 --> 00:45:03,949
Foundation, with the diaspora, High Commissioner of

720
00:45:03,981 --> 00:45:07,796
Diaspora. Cooperation means they reach out through their channels

721
00:45:07,972 --> 00:45:11,691
asking to do this challenge. There is no government

722
00:45:11,691 --> 00:45:15,505
involvement in any way, but we'll reach out to Ministry

723
00:45:15,505 --> 00:45:19,174
of Foreign Affairs and ask them, tell your ambassadors to buy 2

724
00:45:19,206 --> 00:45:22,587
bottles of Armenian wine, give it one to ambassador of Georgia or

725
00:45:22,732 --> 00:45:26,257
Belgium, and to do a tasting in your consulates.

726
00:45:26,658 --> 00:45:30,183
You don't do it? Fine. Do it? Great. So there is no—

727
00:45:30,968 --> 00:45:34,734
people say, how do we measure success? Well, when distributors start ordering wine,

728
00:45:34,814 --> 00:45:38,164
we will measure success. That's how we'll know there is success.

729
00:45:38,902 --> 00:45:42,492
And so it's very simple. No response, no,

730
00:45:42,605 --> 00:45:46,259
but everyone is responsible for it. So you can't blame anyone else

731
00:45:46,372 --> 00:45:50,059
if you don't do anything. Even people who don't do anything, they

732
00:45:50,059 --> 00:45:52,832
will be beneficiaries because even those

733
00:45:53,569 --> 00:45:56,839
retailers or distributors who decide not to push anything,

734
00:45:57,432 --> 00:46:01,151
we say buy any bottle of Armenian wine. People will go and ask for

735
00:46:01,183 --> 00:46:03,572
their wine. There will be website from September,

736
00:46:03,604 --> 00:46:07,371
armenianwineweek.com and armenianwine.com. Interesting.

737
00:46:07,612 --> 00:46:10,720
Anyday.com, where you would find all the

738
00:46:10,752 --> 00:46:14,420
distributors everywhere, whoever signed up, the

739
00:46:14,420 --> 00:46:18,249
shops, the letters that you can send to your shop saying, look, I

740
00:46:18,249 --> 00:46:21,598
buy my wine from you, but you don't carry Armenian wine. This Armenian week is

741
00:46:21,614 --> 00:46:25,234
coming. Here are distributors. Order a case. I'll have my friends buy a

742
00:46:25,234 --> 00:46:28,567
couple of bottles too. So to push everyone, start carrying

743
00:46:28,743 --> 00:46:32,411
Armenian wine. There's chef talkers

744
00:46:32,748 --> 00:46:36,337
or fact sheets, media stuff. There's all kinds of

745
00:46:36,369 --> 00:46:39,990
digital assets that will be on this website. But you don't have to use it.

746
00:46:40,920 --> 00:46:44,222
You can create your own. There are no restrictions on color,

747
00:46:44,687 --> 00:46:48,246
letter, you know? So, we took out all that so that

748
00:46:48,246 --> 00:46:51,436
nobody can say, oh, it didn't work because I didn't like the color of the

749
00:46:51,436 --> 00:46:54,129
poster. Well, you didn't like the color, make your own color.

750
00:46:55,187 --> 00:46:58,328
That's an important— you said a lot of things that are really

751
00:46:58,328 --> 00:47:02,176
important. For one, when I talk about

752
00:47:02,176 --> 00:47:05,783
this at events, it's like you need to

753
00:47:05,783 --> 00:47:09,357
ask the restaurateur when you're there, do you have any Armenian wines? You need to

754
00:47:09,373 --> 00:47:12,007
ask the wine shop over there, having Armenian wines because,

755
00:47:13,536 --> 00:47:17,116
and this is gonna lead back to Guinée Fest for a second, because that's the

756
00:47:17,132 --> 00:47:20,840
only way. I mean, there's enough press now, and this

757
00:47:20,904 --> 00:47:24,530
is somewhat, we're, we're covering a lot of, of ground here, but

758
00:47:24,691 --> 00:47:28,335
there's been a lot of articles lately. They've been in, in historical trade

759
00:47:28,335 --> 00:47:31,842
mags. They've been in trade magazines for wine

760
00:47:32,585 --> 00:47:36,238
about the 6,100-year-old cave and all those things have been written about. And so I

761
00:47:36,238 --> 00:47:38,923
think enough restaurateurs and enough wine shop owners

762
00:47:40,470 --> 00:47:43,497
have heard at least of the Armenian wine brand. Yeah.

763
00:47:44,371 --> 00:47:47,334
And there are a handful, and I haven't tasted all of them, obviously. I've tasted

764
00:47:47,366 --> 00:47:50,797
many, many. Like when I go to Guineafest, I taste everything that's out.

765
00:47:52,058 --> 00:47:55,456
And there used to be close to 100 wines. Now it's down to like

766
00:47:56,184 --> 00:47:58,953
25 wines. And I'll tell you why. But

767
00:48:00,947 --> 00:48:04,011
just, I want to know what they taste like. And there are many Armenian wines

768
00:48:04,108 --> 00:48:07,936
that I would just do that to. I have no— I would just go

769
00:48:07,936 --> 00:48:10,501
into my wine cellar at home if somebody's over for dinner, and I'll— there's a

770
00:48:10,501 --> 00:48:12,953
couple Armenian wines I'll just pull out without any

771
00:48:14,252 --> 00:48:17,763
apprehension to them thinking this, what is this?

772
00:48:18,676 --> 00:48:20,969
There are a lot of Armenian wines still that you would say, what is this?

773
00:48:21,225 --> 00:48:25,056
But these are like, wow, what is this? That's, that's what you

774
00:48:25,088 --> 00:48:28,936
want people to do, right? So let me explain to you why I

775
00:48:28,936 --> 00:48:31,950
think in, in the LA marketplace why Guineafest has

776
00:48:31,950 --> 00:48:35,527
just by admission through the

777
00:48:35,608 --> 00:48:39,444
organizers that, you know, it's not what it was. And the main reason

778
00:48:39,556 --> 00:48:43,358
was, is it does

779
00:48:43,455 --> 00:48:46,578
no good to teach, to taste to a consumer

780
00:48:47,319 --> 00:48:51,166
when there's no place to get it. If there's no distributors carrying

781
00:48:51,198 --> 00:48:54,268
this stuff, or if the distributors aren't selling it well, and this goes back to

782
00:48:54,268 --> 00:48:57,588
the wine problem, distributors are no longer brand builders.

783
00:48:58,846 --> 00:49:02,558
It's very hard. Like, especially in LA, we've lost all

784
00:49:02,558 --> 00:49:06,317
these distribution networks and all these small guys all went out of business. We're down

785
00:49:06,317 --> 00:49:10,093
to Southern and Wine Warehouse or Breakthrough Beverage and a couple other ones in Harbor,

786
00:49:10,157 --> 00:49:13,611
you know. Well, if, if you don't invite the

787
00:49:13,627 --> 00:49:17,130
buyers, if you don't invite the wine shop owners, if you don't invite the

788
00:49:17,146 --> 00:49:19,989
restaurateurs— and I would tell them

789
00:49:21,002 --> 00:49:24,086
for 2 hours, no one's allowed into the Guineafest

790
00:49:24,215 --> 00:49:28,016
except Except the buyers. And there are— those lists are available. I

791
00:49:28,016 --> 00:49:31,576
know many lists, the guys that do this, and they'll charge you a small amount

792
00:49:32,090 --> 00:49:35,778
to access the list and let these people come and they go, wow,

793
00:49:35,938 --> 00:49:38,970
Armenian wines, I've been reading about this in The Wine Spectator and The Wine

794
00:49:38,970 --> 00:49:42,418
Enthusiast. And this is the place to go to taste a bunch of them in

795
00:49:42,418 --> 00:49:46,251
one place. But instead, we're selling— we're tasting

796
00:49:46,251 --> 00:49:49,169
the consumer on it who says, where can I get this? And they go, I

797
00:49:49,169 --> 00:49:52,905
don't know. And that's not the way you do it.

798
00:49:53,322 --> 00:49:56,544
Your idea is, it's a great idea, this grassroots idea.

799
00:49:57,249 --> 00:50:00,904
And throw in there, like you said, ask the restaurateur,

800
00:50:01,016 --> 00:50:03,966
hey, I would really like a bottle of Trinity

801
00:50:04,703 --> 00:50:08,358
Canyon today. Oh, we don't have that. Well, can you get it? Oh, here's how

802
00:50:08,390 --> 00:50:11,372
you get it. Here's how you get it. Yeah. That was the idea that you

803
00:50:11,372 --> 00:50:15,139
put all the distributors, all the shops, all the restaurants that

804
00:50:15,139 --> 00:50:17,960
carry. And you can say, if you get it, I'll ask them to put your

805
00:50:17,960 --> 00:50:21,503
name on the side so people will know that they come and dine at your

806
00:50:21,551 --> 00:50:25,144
restaurant. and have a bottle of Armenian wine. But it all

807
00:50:25,257 --> 00:50:28,806
depends if people move there and do something about it. Of course.

808
00:50:28,903 --> 00:50:32,537
It's not going to work one organization doing— there is no organization. No.

809
00:50:32,957 --> 00:50:35,909
Wine Armenia is informal network. There are no leaders.

810
00:50:37,018 --> 00:50:40,779
There are coordinators, but there are no people making these tough decisions

811
00:50:40,891 --> 00:50:43,109
and organizing. There's nothing being—

812
00:50:43,382 --> 00:50:47,199
there's no organizing committee. There were a

813
00:50:47,248 --> 00:50:50,784
few things that worked when Armenians came together,

814
00:50:50,801 --> 00:50:54,253
like Armenian American Museum or, you know, said, the

815
00:50:54,253 --> 00:50:57,976
genocide commemoration where everyone came together. So this is more

816
00:50:58,249 --> 00:51:01,877
grassroots attempt. It's a social experiment to see

817
00:51:02,519 --> 00:51:06,098
if we have nobody to blame, if we have

818
00:51:06,612 --> 00:51:10,287
decision-making capability, and if we don't have to come together to do

819
00:51:10,287 --> 00:51:14,059
something, can we do something? Well, that's a great idea. And

820
00:51:14,075 --> 00:51:17,382
it's sort of top-down, right? If you start with the client and go to work

821
00:51:17,446 --> 00:51:20,849
it backwards, when normally you go the other way. And the beneficiaries are many, from

822
00:51:20,961 --> 00:51:24,653
the villager who grows the grape, from the butler, and they

823
00:51:24,653 --> 00:51:28,179
all live on the on the near-border villages. Most of the

824
00:51:28,356 --> 00:51:31,992
places where the grape grows is on the border. So if

825
00:51:32,281 --> 00:51:35,980
these villagers can have an opportunity to sell more of their grapes or the

826
00:51:35,980 --> 00:51:39,181
winegrowers can grow more, more people will stay in these villages.

827
00:51:39,776 --> 00:51:43,040
And everyone benefits. This one initiative is funny because there is

828
00:51:43,088 --> 00:51:46,832
nobody who will not benefit

829
00:51:46,832 --> 00:51:50,527
if they participate because there is no negative. Yeah, right. Shab

830
00:51:50,527 --> 00:51:53,706
benefits. All he has to do is put up a poster saying, did you select

831
00:51:53,706 --> 00:51:57,123
your 2 bottles for the next week? Restaurant benefits,

832
00:51:57,573 --> 00:52:01,185
distributor benefits, winemaker benefits, everyone. I can't

833
00:52:01,201 --> 00:52:04,268
find one— You can't find one problem. Well, here's an interesting thought that you did.

834
00:52:04,316 --> 00:52:08,090
I didn't think about this until just now, but you're saying the

835
00:52:08,090 --> 00:52:11,815
Armenian, I have a couple bottles of wine, I give lots of friends to

836
00:52:11,863 --> 00:52:15,588
drink wine. Here's a bottle of what I really like. And to a

837
00:52:15,588 --> 00:52:19,040
non-Armenian, okay, so no, to an Odars, the listeners will know

838
00:52:19,265 --> 00:52:22,923
Odars. That's an important part of it

839
00:52:23,099 --> 00:52:26,882
because it wasn't that long ago, maybe it was last year, maybe it

840
00:52:26,882 --> 00:52:30,616
was Gini Fest last year, where the comment was made to

841
00:52:30,648 --> 00:52:34,174
me, there aren't enough Armenians to drink all the

842
00:52:34,174 --> 00:52:37,892
Armenian wine that's coming here. There are enough, they're not drinking it. They're just

843
00:52:37,892 --> 00:52:41,387
not drinking it. A lot of Armenians you talk, they're now Mexicans, they drink

844
00:52:41,387 --> 00:52:44,993
tequila. Before we were Russians, we were drinking vodka.

845
00:52:45,778 --> 00:52:49,416
You know, we're more loyalty to tequila and vodka than to Armenian

846
00:52:49,480 --> 00:52:53,179
wine that we that our villager grows, which I have no problem

847
00:52:53,195 --> 00:52:56,090
with in a sense, because I cannot push people to drink what they don't want

848
00:52:56,090 --> 00:52:59,647
to drink. Of course not. But I can try to push them to

849
00:52:59,728 --> 00:53:03,367
introduce others to this drink, even if they

850
00:53:03,367 --> 00:53:07,184
don't drink it. Because there is history in it, there is culture in it,

851
00:53:07,232 --> 00:53:11,023
there is pride in it. And it's just, you have to

852
00:53:11,023 --> 00:53:14,786
make sure you buy proper wine, not the crap they sell in

853
00:53:14,818 --> 00:53:18,404
the supermarkets. I'm thinking of Michael Flanagan. Michael

854
00:53:18,436 --> 00:53:21,959
Franzese's methodologies. I haven't had the

855
00:53:21,959 --> 00:53:25,481
wines, but he's out at Costco and he's literally

856
00:53:25,980 --> 00:53:29,499
taking a bottle out of the bucket, the case, and putting it in

857
00:53:29,548 --> 00:53:33,106
people's baskets. It's a good— actually, I've

858
00:53:33,268 --> 00:53:37,084
listened to your podcast with Samvel, I think. I don't know

859
00:53:37,150 --> 00:53:40,904
him, but it's an approach. For

860
00:53:40,904 --> 00:53:44,362
me, it has benefits and negatives, but

861
00:53:44,476 --> 00:53:47,524
negatives are very small in the sense that

862
00:53:48,582 --> 00:53:51,852
for a lot of people that I spoke, they don't relate to it as Armenian

863
00:53:51,949 --> 00:53:55,620
wine. Right. They relate to it as Michael Franzese

864
00:53:55,716 --> 00:53:59,226
wine. But they sell a lot of product that grows in

865
00:53:59,339 --> 00:54:02,705
Armenia. So there is a huge benefit, right? Because people sell their

866
00:54:02,769 --> 00:54:06,552
products, it comes to the market. And eventually, I

867
00:54:06,552 --> 00:54:09,405
think it will trickle down to the thing that they drink and say, where this

868
00:54:09,518 --> 00:54:13,012
wine comes from? And it will benefit. Some people might have

869
00:54:13,189 --> 00:54:16,956
issue with the name, it's a mob connection, not Not

870
00:54:16,956 --> 00:54:20,660
everyone believes this revelation, this finding God

871
00:54:20,660 --> 00:54:24,348
and all that stuff. But it's a non-believer's

872
00:54:24,348 --> 00:54:28,148
problem. If they don't believe it, they don't believe it. Who cares? As long

873
00:54:28,276 --> 00:54:32,077
as they properly introduce, and

874
00:54:32,109 --> 00:54:35,861
I've seen a couple of videos where he introduces it, Armenian wine, it's

875
00:54:36,358 --> 00:54:40,207
from the land where it all started and all that. So, you know,

876
00:54:41,008 --> 00:54:44,247
I'm not a proponent of, by any means,

877
00:54:45,658 --> 00:54:48,944
doing things by— but this is not it. This is not by any means. This

878
00:54:48,944 --> 00:54:51,894
is just one of the means. This is guerrilla marketing. Yeah, this is

879
00:54:52,102 --> 00:54:55,709
marketing in its sense. But if you could do it with—

880
00:54:56,318 --> 00:55:00,101
if they did it with another celebrity who is Armenian, who would agree to do

881
00:55:00,101 --> 00:55:03,452
that, the people would have less problems or no problems. I agree with that.

882
00:55:03,772 --> 00:55:07,571
Here is a connection. Even when I talk to retailers, they say, we

883
00:55:07,571 --> 00:55:11,370
sell this wine, we can ask them to participate as well.

884
00:55:12,108 --> 00:55:15,634
Although it's connection to MUB and they don't think of— it's not

885
00:55:15,634 --> 00:55:19,369
connection to MAB is conversion from MAB, but they still look at

886
00:55:19,433 --> 00:55:22,979
MAB, MAB, MAB, and it doesn't have this good connotation.

887
00:55:24,394 --> 00:55:27,606
So I think they're doing a great job selling a lot of wine.

888
00:55:28,239 --> 00:55:31,759
I haven't tried the wine because actually in Armenia, I couldn't

889
00:55:32,213 --> 00:55:35,837
find it. I mean, I didn't put a lot of effort to

890
00:55:35,870 --> 00:55:39,606
find it, but I hope it's a good wine, a good

891
00:55:39,671 --> 00:55:42,888
quality wine, because if wine has so much

892
00:55:42,921 --> 00:55:46,045
distribution and it leaves a bad taste in your mouth— I haven't tasted it either.

893
00:55:48,180 --> 00:55:51,980
Yeah, as Samvel said, it's a fraud if they do that.

894
00:55:52,080 --> 00:55:55,520
In your podcast, you asked him the same question. I'm trying to get Samvel to

895
00:55:55,520 --> 00:55:57,900
bring him here. He lives in Orange County. But

896
00:55:57,900 --> 00:56:01,360
if you want grassroots

897
00:56:01,360 --> 00:56:04,980
guerrilla marketing, that's— I've heard different comments

898
00:56:05,620 --> 00:56:09,360
about the wine from different people. So unless I taste it,

899
00:56:09,360 --> 00:56:12,640
I won't be able to say. Well, it's important. I mean, you're right. Some said

900
00:56:12,640 --> 00:56:16,140
it's good, some said it's not good. But again, people

901
00:56:16,140 --> 00:56:18,040
sometimes don't differentiate their taste

902
00:56:19,980 --> 00:56:23,360
goes into this not good. It may not be your taste, but it's a good

903
00:56:23,360 --> 00:56:27,140
wine. You may not like Zinfandel, but it's a well-made wine. You

904
00:56:27,140 --> 00:56:30,720
may not like that. Welcome to the wine world, right? Yeah. So, as I always

905
00:56:30,720 --> 00:56:34,480
say, if people come to Invino and say, well, give me some

906
00:56:34,480 --> 00:56:37,960
good wine. And I say, all wines are good. What do you want it

907
00:56:37,960 --> 00:56:41,440
for? Well, it doesn't matter. Give me some good wine. I say, well, if you

908
00:56:41,440 --> 00:56:44,460
go to Ralph Lauren shop and you say, give me good clothes, they will ask

909
00:56:44,460 --> 00:56:47,480
you, are you going to play football? You're looking for pajamas or you have a

910
00:56:47,480 --> 00:56:51,283
business meeting? Same goes with wine. You tell me what it

911
00:56:51,283 --> 00:56:53,869
is for and I will give you good wine. But the point is to get

912
00:56:54,495 --> 00:56:58,205
a place which doesn't sell bad wine. And in US

913
00:56:58,205 --> 00:57:02,043
supermarket, in Armenian supermarket, Armenian-owned supermarkets in US,

914
00:57:02,219 --> 00:57:05,833
you find a lot of bad wine. And that's a problem because people don't

915
00:57:05,833 --> 00:57:09,671
differentiate. And from the same producer, you can find a good wine and

916
00:57:09,687 --> 00:57:13,445
bad wine. So it's a price. That's the nature of the business.

917
00:57:13,525 --> 00:57:16,640
Yeah. But by the price, you can more or less determine the You

918
00:57:16,640 --> 00:57:20,280
know, when I go to the supermarket, and I do this all the time,

919
00:57:20,360 --> 00:57:23,820
particularly Ralphs or Vons or Safeway, I mean, there's a shelf talker and there's a

920
00:57:23,820 --> 00:57:27,640
hang tag on every single bottle, so it's impossible to decide. And one

921
00:57:27,640 --> 00:57:31,300
year at Easter, Armenian Easter, my family's

922
00:57:31,300 --> 00:57:34,800
side, I forgot to bring the wine. Then we were down in the desert, and

923
00:57:34,800 --> 00:57:37,220
so I had to go to the store and buy some wine. Now I'm thinking,

924
00:57:37,220 --> 00:57:40,860
I'm an educated guy, I've tasted 100,000 wines. I know, you know, virtually

925
00:57:40,860 --> 00:57:44,562
every wine on the shelf I've tasted sometime in my career. And I chose

926
00:57:44,594 --> 00:57:48,376
2 wines and one was not that great and one was really good. And what

927
00:57:48,376 --> 00:57:51,902
did I have to work with? Well, I hadn't tasted that particular

928
00:57:52,127 --> 00:57:55,957
grape in that particular bottle for that particular vintage. I tasted a lot of the

929
00:57:55,973 --> 00:57:59,612
wines from that same winery. Yeah. And so I, all I had to go

930
00:57:59,740 --> 00:58:03,586
on, just like any other American or Armenian, is the

931
00:58:03,602 --> 00:58:06,888
way it looks, how much it costs, and what I know about the

932
00:58:07,337 --> 00:58:10,398
location and what I know about the winery. And most people don't know anything about

933
00:58:10,398 --> 00:58:14,229
any of those, right? So they just, it's a blind buy. With Armenian, it'll be

934
00:58:14,229 --> 00:58:18,060
easier because of the lack of the quantity

935
00:58:18,413 --> 00:58:22,148
issue. We don't have that many wines here. So you don't have to

936
00:58:22,164 --> 00:58:26,011
get lost. If you go to— if Vons ever carries

937
00:58:26,011 --> 00:58:29,698
Armenian wine, one day they will carry. The other day I saw lavash that

938
00:58:29,794 --> 00:58:33,433
they sold in my local Vons. Yeah. So Armenian lavash

939
00:58:33,433 --> 00:58:37,072
from Armenian bakery. So one day they will

940
00:58:37,152 --> 00:58:40,021
carry and they will not carry probably 60 or 100

941
00:58:41,015 --> 00:58:44,793
bottles. They will carry 5, 6, 10. So if you go and you try to,

942
00:58:45,121 --> 00:58:48,287
but there are a lot of local Armenian shops that carry Armenian wine.

943
00:58:50,130 --> 00:58:53,445
One next door to me, they carry about, I don't know, 15

944
00:58:53,639 --> 00:58:57,359
different labels. So from 15 labels, you more or

945
00:58:57,359 --> 00:59:00,611
less can select something. If you don't go for the

946
00:59:00,611 --> 00:59:04,050
cheapest wine, because cheapest not going to work. Yeah, right. At

947
00:59:04,147 --> 00:59:07,988
least, you know, 14 and above, then you can

948
00:59:08,020 --> 00:59:11,843
find very good quality wine. You know, when I— when, uh, when

949
00:59:11,843 --> 00:59:15,074
you said that, it was important because I— and we're out of time, but I,

950
00:59:15,235 --> 00:59:17,804
I do want to cover something because

951
00:59:19,777 --> 00:59:22,689
when, when, um, Charles Shaw came out in 2004,

952
00:59:23,780 --> 00:59:27,547
there was a huge glut in the wine trade. Grapes were hanging on the vine,

953
00:59:27,595 --> 00:59:31,025
never picked. And so, but I did— I reversed the math,

954
00:59:31,524 --> 00:59:35,343
right? I took the bottle cost, the label cost, the box cost, the

955
00:59:35,343 --> 00:59:38,347
transportation, the profit for a trader Joe's profit for Shaw

956
00:59:39,295 --> 00:59:43,070
and determined that somewhere around 49 cents a

957
00:59:43,070 --> 00:59:46,572
gallon for the wine and, you know, wholesale.

958
00:59:47,006 --> 00:59:50,749
And, you know, back then, $7 to $10 a gallon

959
00:59:50,797 --> 00:59:54,123
for good Chardonnay, you know, average Chardonnay was what you would— if you and I

960
00:59:54,155 --> 00:59:56,838
would pay if we went to go buy it in the open market. And so

961
00:59:57,207 --> 01:00:00,950
I determined it couldn't be any good just from the sheer mathematics of it,

962
01:00:01,063 --> 01:00:04,436
right? Are the manufacturing costs in Armenia Are the costs

963
01:00:04,436 --> 01:00:08,075
in Armenia lower than the rest of the world? No, they're

964
01:00:08,075 --> 01:00:11,313
not lower because we import everything.

965
01:00:12,050 --> 01:00:15,128
Glass, corks, labels. Glass, more or less. There's a

966
01:00:15,433 --> 01:00:19,216
glassmaker, but also they don't make now quite the

967
01:00:19,344 --> 01:00:23,191
transparent glass, so we have to import. And everything else is being imported,

968
01:00:23,512 --> 01:00:27,055
including most of the equipment. So that's that. The

969
01:00:27,055 --> 01:00:30,790
land is scarce. We're more like Switzerland. We have very small land,

970
01:00:31,046 --> 01:00:34,877
so we produce premium wines. We can't compete with $3 bottle wines.

971
01:00:35,070 --> 01:00:38,916
It's not going to be wine. It will be something we bought from somewhere else,

972
01:00:38,980 --> 01:00:42,697
colored it, and sold it as wine. So if you want

973
01:00:42,745 --> 01:00:46,559
to drink a good wine, as I said in the beginning, Armenian wine

974
01:00:46,607 --> 01:00:50,052
is now in a position where we sell very good stuff for a very low

975
01:00:50,052 --> 01:00:53,770
price. So it's a good time to buy because once it becomes more

976
01:00:53,818 --> 01:00:57,471
famous, more accessible, the prices will go up because

977
01:00:57,984 --> 01:01:01,750
the quality is there. And the supply is going to be short. Yeah. And

978
01:01:01,750 --> 01:01:05,520
the quality is there. That's why. Well, I wish you great luck in

979
01:01:05,520 --> 01:01:09,320
this. Thank you, Matthew. And I'm going to use this podcast to spread the word.

980
01:01:09,320 --> 01:01:12,330
We're going to send you some reels if you want to use them.

981
01:01:12,720 --> 01:01:16,560
Absolutely, we will. And I will send you the website link. Yeah. You can promote

982
01:01:16,560 --> 01:01:20,080
it. We'll put that on there. It's everybody's business. It's like in

983
01:01:20,080 --> 01:01:23,860
vino, we sell everybody's wine. So this Armenian Wine Week is

984
01:01:23,860 --> 01:01:27,560
everybody's wine. Even in the marketing materials, we

985
01:01:27,560 --> 01:01:31,300
tried to use as little as possible, 6,100,

986
01:01:31,300 --> 01:01:35,120
about the history. So nobody will say, oh, you're pushing

987
01:01:35,120 --> 01:01:38,820
your wine. So it's for everyone. I don't really care if we don't sell any

988
01:01:38,820 --> 01:01:42,580
bottles. Well, it's a refreshing approach, and I wish you all

989
01:01:42,580 --> 01:01:46,200
the success. I think it should be an ongoing thing, not just

990
01:01:46,200 --> 01:01:48,940
this one time. Yes, it's yearly. It's going to be yearly. Just keep doing it

991
01:01:48,940 --> 01:01:52,400
and I feel people get it. And I'll do my part. Thank you very

992
01:01:52,400 --> 01:01:55,499
much. And good to have you in our Well,

993
01:01:55,997 --> 01:01:59,564
thank you. And I really appreciate you and Ara reaching out to me

994
01:01:59,837 --> 01:02:03,485
last week or 2 weeks ago. And thanks to Ara. He

995
01:02:03,485 --> 01:02:07,228
suggested it and I really grabbed

996
01:02:07,228 --> 01:02:09,349
the opportunity. Cheers. Thank you.