Reflections on Wine, Family, and Finding Passion in Life’s Unlikely Journeys

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So I was trying to set the other camera up so that I wouldn't have

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such a big nose. But I guess it's inevitable. Of course, I've been dealing with

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this all my career in life, having many nicknames

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that dealt with the size of my proboscis, meaning like a

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toucan because of the beak on the bird, the schnoz from Jimmy

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Durante, big bird, you name it. I've had the

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nickname if it dealt with a large nose.

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And you know, they call it a Roman nose because it roams all over my

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face, which I use that joke endlessly while we

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were in Rome, actually. Anyway, I'm in the office today. Happy

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Thanksgiving because I came to get some wines for our Thanksgiving

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event at my brother in law's. And one of

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the young ladies that's going to be there is my niece Lisa,

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and she was the intern at Chateau

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Bailly. So naturally I am taking some Chateau

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Bailly. And so this kind of reflects on, you know, Thanksgiving.

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We should reflect on what we're grateful for and what we're

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blessed to have. And I have said this many times on the show,

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but I just, you know, you can see in the background here my

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father at his wine shop. And I had no intention

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of being in the wine business. When I graduated from usc, I went to

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Corporate America, which, thank goodness it formed a certain opinion

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of how to run a business, at least at that level. And then I went

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on to a very small software company that only had a fishbowl full of business

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cards and a two line phone in my apartment. And we started to sell

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software. And so those two extremes set me up for

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the moment. My father called and said, listen, I've got an offer

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here at Wine of the Month Club and just thought maybe you'd take

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a look at it before I sell it. And

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I thank him every day for that. And I

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talked to my brother and sister this morning. We had a little joint call here.

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And it was just kind of refreshing to reiterate that to both

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my siblings that this was truly a blessing for

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me and to be in this industry and because of people

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like Veronique Sanders, Van Beek,

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Alexander Van Beek, her husband, who runs Chateau Guiscord, who just got 100

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points in a wine, by the way, and Veronique, who I

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saw recently in la, and it's like family.

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This is a person whose native language is French. She's across the

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pond, so to speak. She has a different life completely than what we have

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here in Southern California. But man, when we get Together,

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it's like a family because we understand each other, we understand the

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strifes of this business, we understand the love of this business,

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the passion it takes to be in the wine trade. It's a.

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It's a slugfest. And then they took on Lisa as an

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intern. And what's really, really fun about that story, and I can't wait to

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talk to her more about it today, is she said,

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uncle Paul, you know, they want to put me in the vineyard. Now, this is

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when Veronique had sent her offer to Lisa to

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come intern in June of 2025 to, you know,

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work at the winery. And as you know, not much goes on

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in a winery during June. It's all planning for harvest and, of course,

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marketing and event planning. But

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she said, uncle Paul, I wanna. They wanna put me in the vineyard. And I'm

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like, honey, girlfriend, if you want to be a winemaker, you're going to be in

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the vineyard. That's where it starts. That's where wine is.

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That's where it's made. We can just kind of get out of the way as

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winemakers. And so, of course, when she got to France, they put her in the

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vineyard. And. And she now loves being in the

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vineyard. And I think that's really cool that she came

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around to that way. And so going back to this, this

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sort of fraternity sorority of the wine trade,

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it is interesting. I've had some really great phone calls,

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podcasts coming up. I did two yesterday, which both got

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interrupted from Internet problems. One of them was Nick

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Karavitas. He's been in the business 45

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years. He's done all of it, and, wow, it was becoming

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really interesting. So I can't wait to finish that one. And the next one was

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even cooler in the sense of its

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arrival. To me, a good friend of mine, I grew up on Palos

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Verdes, who was one of my surfing buddies, and we played ball

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together. He was Googling late,

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early in the morning, like two or three in the morning, couldn't sleep. He Googled

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the Endless Summer, a movie that came out in

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1968, which was a great anthology of the surf

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culture, the worldwide surf culture, not just Southern California.

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And he determined that the writer of

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the music, which is an iconic song, owns a

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winery in Carmel Valley. Walter Gioris.

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And I reached out to the winery via their information email

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address and was able to procure this podcast that went off

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yesterday. We got about 25 minutes in before his Internet prevailed.

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And man, what a crazy, serendipitous

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route to the wine trade. And I guess that's

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kind of what the point is. It tracks everybody

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and anybody. You could be from any walk of life and

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land on the appreciation and the passion

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for a proper glass of wine. And in this

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guy's case, he was from France. He's from Belgium. In Belgium. I

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don't know if you know the Belgium. Their native language in Belgium is French.

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And he ended up in Southern California, San Clemente, heavily

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accented, as he puts it. And here he is writing

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one of the most iconic theme songs, one of the most iconic

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surf movies in the history of surfing. And

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it's still, it's. I haven't even gotten to the wine business yet. We were 25

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minutes on how this happened for him as a, as a

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musician. So I'm looking forward to finishing that one, too, which is coming up as

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well. So look for those two podcasts regarding

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just two serendipitous ways to get to this place. And the passion, though,

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and that's the kind of the beauty of this. You've sensed the passion

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through all of it. And one of the points I was making with Mr.

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Caravides and I had to be on my toes to articulate what

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I'm trying to say here. Having spent so much time

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with iconic brands like Chateau Bailly and tasting with

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Mouton Rothschild. The other day, I had a tasting with Christian Moex, one of the

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great wine families of the world. You

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tend to feel like there's this two parts of the wine trade, two things going

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on. Of course, we always want wine to be sold, that it's a

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consumer product. If you make it at home for yourself, that's different.

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But if you're going to be in the public eye, you need to sell it.

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That's how you stay alive. But given that

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there seems to be the premium

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sector, which of course, in all products, there's a premium sector and then there's this

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fighting sector where you're out in the street slugging it out on the

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supermarket shelves. And I don't think they're, they're

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mutually exclusive in their marketing, in their,

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their demographic. I have collectors that buy from me

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still only these premium vintages, but they also

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are, are separated by this

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honesty of what the, what wine is. And

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you know, you can, if you want to slug it out in, in, in the

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wine world and, and create a wine that's for Gen X like,

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like Whiny Baby is, and get bought by Gala. That's great.

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From a business standpoint, that's great. But certainly it doesn't Speak

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to this terroir. Driven, leaving

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my senses and moving to Bordeaux. As I sit

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in Southern California having a glass of Chateau Bailly or whatever, I'm drinking

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two different things. And I think it's okay to separate them. I think it's okay

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to define them

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differently because you can't put them all in the same bucket and then

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say, this is how we're gonna approach the business. And so there's this whole idea

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of rethinking the wine trade, you know, whatever that means,

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because it's hampered by the fact that it's only once a year. It's hampered by

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the fact that you really don't know what's going on. And years and years

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ago, somebody had written an article about the fact that wine

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needs to come around to the consumer. We need to produce what the consumer

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wants. And I think that's what you see on the supermarket shelf and the whiny

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babies of the world and cans and all the different format

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changes that have occurred because of contemporary marketing.

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So I don't. But I don't agree with the concept. If we need to come

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to the consumer, wine is probably the only product in the world, if not a

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handful, that can. That in its true form

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is exactly what you get from the vineyard. It's what you

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get from the soil. And if

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you're making an honest wine, then that's what you're making. And you're representing

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yourself as this is what it is. This is what I'm trying to reflect. Any

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good winemaker will tell you I'm trying to reflect what was given to

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me. And that

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then does not become a consumer driven, or at least

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a consumer demographic driven product. It no

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longer is. Well, if they like sweet, we better get them sweet. If they

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like dry, we'll get them dry. If they want Muscat, let's get a Muscat. It's

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not driven by that. It's driven by

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this sincere need

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to produce what's been given from the ground, from

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the earth. And therein lies what I think the

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essence of honest wine is the

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essence of a

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representation of a place and a time. And the first

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time I ever heard that line was from Mike Salachi at Opus One.

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Wine is to represent a sense of place,

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of course, terroir, in a sense of time, that vintage.

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And I think that's. That has to be remembered. And I'm so proud

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of one of my nephews who is in corporate

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America, which I remember well when I was at Xerox, one

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of the largest sales organizations in the world at the time. And

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I kept telling him, you know, you need to understand wine

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so that when you go to the corporate dinner table that you are

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can take that menu and you have a pretty good guess of what you're going

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to get because you understand label reading, you understand the appellations of French

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Bordeaux or Burgundy or California Napa, and you understand the

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makers. And that takes a little bit of time. But

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man, don't you think from a career standpoint, if you're with an

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international organization and you're with, who knows, maybe some French,

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French business people are Korean or Chinese and you're able

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to decipher a wine list at one of the great steakhouses in Less in America,

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I'm thinking, wow, that's a pretty cool thing. And so I gave him his first

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test yesterday, sent them some entry level

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Bordeaux I think are really good and just start

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asking questions about them. And so I'm excited for that to happen.

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Anyway, that's today's little short short podcast for this

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afternoon. Cheers and

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Happy Thanksgiving. And I look forward to

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bringing more wine stories and human stories

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to the table for you to enjoy and be

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entertained and learn. Cheers.