Strikes, Somms, and Screwups: Schulner’s Wild Ride Beyond Hollywood

0:00 You know, wine is all about stories. Like, I can sell a bottle of wine. I can make you fall in love with a bottle of wine before you even try it. And that's, that's what I do as a somm. Sit back and grab a glass. It's Wine Talks with Paul Kaye. Hey, welcome to Wine Talks with Paul Kaye. And we are in studio today in beautiful Southern California. Going to have a conversation with David Schulner. Let me read against his will. The AI is in the conversation. The prompt was 75 words. It says, today's guest has spent his career creating stories for the screen, but his latest chapter unfolds among vineyards. David Schulner, co-creator and showrunner of Netflix's upcoming series Uncorked, has moved from scripts, sets, and Hollywood pressure into the slower rhythms of soil, Seasons in Wine. I'm Paul Kaye, and today we explore how the creator of The New Amsterdam is becoming the storyteller's eye to wine, bringing the storyteller's eye to wine, and what happens when success gives way to different calling. First of all, I don't even like the way that's written. Good. Yes.

1:12 As a member of the Writers Guild of America who was on strike in 2023, the use of AI in creative materials is a stance we have. It is really bad. Good. Yeah. I mean, I've done— I've done— I use a lot of it for different reasons to really shorten the cycle of what I do by myself. Yes. But, uh, every time I try to get it to be creative, it just— Right. Same with editing too, right? I mean, it's like, um, we haven't— it can't— I will say something though. I did take— we were in Ireland and I did some still shots knowing I was going to put them into, uh, an animation software. and then try and create a funny travelogue from the show with my friends. It had comedy built into it. It was okay. But it changes your face and stuff, but it's just a tool in my opinion. That's right.

2:03 But let's explore this comment though. It talks about you going from the Hollywood side of things into wine. And you said you grew up in Miami. Yes. And you were a struggling artist, being a writer. Yeah, but that was— I signed with William Morris when I was 22, when I was still in college. Flew me to New York, and they said, we want to represent you as a playwright. Are you interested in television, movies? And I said, no. I said, I only want to do theater. Only want to do plays. Says no one ever. I think 22-year-old playwrights, and again, this was 30 years ago, so TV, isn't what it is now. Yeah, of course. But no, I wanted to be Arthur Miller. I wanted to be a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago. Wow. I wanted to be a playwright. And so— That's interesting because it's a dramatically different part of writing would be playwright versus Hollywood scripting.

3:03 But I think a lot of screenwriters start as novelists or playwrights. It's definitely definitely a pathway. How did you know that feeling? I was just— you just reminded me of something. I was reading this exposé on Gene Tierney, the famed actress. And she got offered something at Warner Brothers, like this extraordinary amount of money at the time. And her dad said, no, you're going to Broadway. Oh, wow. And I thought, that's just kind of the same story. Well, Broadway was romantic to me. Being a New York playwright was like the dream. being in Hollywood wasn't all that interesting. Says no one ever again.

3:44 So what did you end up doing? So I waited tables. So my friends started a theater company in Minneapolis. So I moved to Minneapolis and we had a theater company together. I got into Juilliard for playwriting, but— and it's free tuition, but you still have to live in New York. You still have to get a full-time job to be able to afford to live in New York. And so the playwriting teacher at Juilliard told— who was John Robin Bates at the time, who's now a famous screenwriter and playwright— he said, you should stay in Minneapolis where you can write more and just send me your plays and I'll critique them. I'll give you notes. I mean, was that a path that kind of made sense back then? Would it make sense today? I think they still talk about me as the only person to have refused the Juilliard scholarship.

4:38 I guess that's my sad claim to fame. But after waiting tables more than writing, I realized— oh, and my first Off-Broadway play at the Atlantic Theater Company was trashed in the New York Times. Just complete career-ending flop. Wow, that type of thing. Yeah. So I quickly— and the calls literally stopped coming. I think the next day I was supposed to meet with Lynn Meadow at the Manhattan Theatre Club, and I think in my head at least, the meeting was canceled. Yeah, that's right. Like after this review by the lead theater critic of the Times. Is that all it takes? That's all it took for me. Maybe a better playwright or a stronger person could have weathered that? Well, I don't know. I mean, I suppose that's the standard, you know, starving artist type scenario where, you know, you're on the cusp the whole time, right? I was on the cusp. You're always on the fringe. Yeah. And so, Ed Zwick read a play of mine. And my first meeting was with Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, who'd created Thirtysomething and My So-Called Life. And They asked me to write television for them. So I said yes. At that point, you're like, let's do it. At that point, yeah. Yeah, I said yes very quickly. And did that— was that transition like a difficult transition? It was. I was not a very good television writer.

6:05 It's that 10,000 hours thing, you know. You know, what do you think? Well, that's true. Is it like an actor where it seems some actors can pick it up Momentarily? Yeah. And others take time, but you can learn it? Yeah, absolutely. And I was great with dialogue. I was bad with plotting. I was bad with story. Yeah. And in theater, you can hide that with, like, all my— looking back, all my plays were nonlinear. They all played with time, which was basically a way for me to hide my inability to tell a linear story. Oh, that makes sense. But I couldn't do that in TV. So I really had to learn how to tell a story. I never thought about that because TV is linear. Yeah, most of it. You go from start to finish. Yeah, for sure. And all my plays were jumping around in time and relied on an emotional through line rather than plot. You know, that's it. Everybody, at least— not everybody, because my wife doesn't, my kids probably don't, but I have the aspirations to be as creative as I can. Yeah. And I find that difficult as well to break away. I find it difficult to break away from a time sequence and go back in time or go forward in time and then create a story out of that. I find that very hard creatively. Yeah, me too. I'm pretty secure of why. But linear— Yeah, but, you know, wine is all about stories. Like, I can sell a bottle of wine. I can make you fall in love with a bottle of wine. before you even try it. And

7:37 that's what I do as a somm, you know? Well, you went from— okay, we're gonna break right into it since this was a wine talk. It's wine talk. It's not a playwriting talk. I'm such a frustrated actor/writer that I wanted to hear about it. I'm happy to. Yeah, the wine. Well, I'll even start with this. I did this for 35 years. I sold wine. We sold a lot, tasted that literally documented taste of 100,000 wines in my career to do this. And that was an earnest attempt to bring to the customers the best thing I could find for the price range that we were offering, which was $18 or something. And, but it took me about 10 to 15 years of business side of it to realize the emotional side that you were just talking about. Right. Did you go to the emotional side first? Because I think so, because that's, You know, all my vacations, once I started making money in television, all my vacations revolved around wine. Wow. Like, I hiked all of Burgundy from Marsannay to Santenay, just walking through vineyards and— Wow. What a way to learn it. Yeah. Because you really kind of have to do that to figure out Burgundy. Right. But I don't, I can't, I couldn't, I don't, I can't remember any, where, I can't remember where we stopped to taste. I can't, I can tell you the restaurants we went to, but just all I knew was I loved wine. Walking through vineyards was my idea of heaven. So all my trips revolved around wine because I loved it so much. But you know that people, when I have conversations in a regular part of the day and I'm talking

9:08 to people and my ability to recall geography is only because of wine. I didn't study it in school. I never paid attention. Yeah, for sure. So even if you don't remember where you tasted, walking a place like Burgundy, which is, you know, these micro vineyards, has to be just an amazing experience. It was amazing. Locked away, like when somebody says Marsanne, you go right to it. Yeah, for sure. So you're traveling, you're in TV, you're making shows, you're being successful there. Yeah. And then all of a sudden this wine opportunity came up. What, you were writing already? It was the writer's strike. So 2023, writer's strike. Yeah. New Amsterdam, the show I did on NBC for like 5 years, just wrapped. Had this big overall deal at Universal. Had this gorgeous office on the LA River. Like, this was like my time. Wait, isn't that a dichotomy? A gorgeous office on the LA River? Does that even— Yeah, right in Frogtown. So there's like, you have Salazar and La Colombe, and they've reclaimed the LA River. They planted these gorgeous trees and native brush. Wow. People are kayaking. There's a jogging path. Hills, you know? Oh, it was bucolic for LA. But it was like, it was exactly where I like dreamed of being. And then the writers' strike happened. And they suspended my pay. I lost my assistant and my development

10:39 executive. And I lost, you know, I just, I lost my salary. Because there was no production, zero production. there was zero production and it was a mandated strike. So basically you had to picket for 3 hours a day and pick your own studio. My studio was ironically Netflix, who I'm now working for, because it was the closest studio to my house. Right. So I was picketing Netflix for 3 hours a day, and when it became clear that the strike was not going to end anytime soon, I was like, I gotta do something. I can't write. What else am I gonna do during this time to make it feel like I accomplished something? I needed to accomplish something. Yeah.

11:29 Financially, I was prepared for this moment, even though it was strange to not be making money for the first time in, 35 years. So psychologically, I was really struggling. Well, you're prepared for retirement then, because that's what happened to me. Yeah. Go ahead. Well, every writer knows you just— you save during the boom times to make up for the busts. But psychologically, I was really struggling, and I was like, am I going to learn a new language? Am I going to go through all the classics, listen to all the classics while I was picketing, all the books I was always supposed to read but never did. Yeah, right. It's like, what can I do to mark this time? And I realized the only thing I loved as much as writing was wine. Wow. So I thought, well, what can I do in wine? So I thought, okay, I have 3 hours a day where I'm picketing. I'm gonna— I'll study and try to pass the Court of Master Sommeliers. Certified exam.

12:35 So that's what I did. I just set a goal for myself. What'd you do? You read podcasts? So every day during picketing, I would listen to podcasts, and then I had flashcards on my phone. So I'd hold my picket sign like this, and I'd just do flashcards. You're walking in circles for 3 hours a day. So I did flashcards and podcasts, and then I'd go back to my office and I would blind taste. wines. Wow. Um, in brown paper bags by myself. Yeah, that's really hard. And go through the grid. Um, so let's go to that cart— course, some of these, because it's, it's not new. It's been around, I think, since the '80s. And certifications in the wine trader certifications, they tell somebody, an employer or somebody you're talking to, that you've, you've studied, right? And would you recommend that to the average waiter, waitress, uh, person who just wants to learn about wine. Oh, for sure. Opportunity to, to have a structured way to study wine. Absolutely. And I thought I knew a lot about wine.

13:36 I went in there a little cocky, like, and I realized how little I knew, um, once I started studying. Yeah, yeah. Because I interviewed the guy at the— who runs the Napa Valley Wine Academy, and it didn't take long for me to realize that's really critical. that there's a certain granularity to studying wine at that level, which is kind of like music where you need to know how to do the really— in order to do the really fancy things, you have to know the real basic things. Absolutely. You have to know those by absolute rote, and then you can move on to more granular things. Yeah. And I think nothing's more evidence than when you try to study Burgundy. And again, I've only been a SOM for 3 years. Wow. So what level you were— sorry, what level of the court did you go? So I went up, I passed the intro course immediately based on the knowledge I did have. And then from start to finish, it took me 6 months because I'd been drinking for 30 years. Yeah, right. Well, you've been driving for 60, 45. And I'd been to a lot of the wine regions, which helped me understand what I was reading. What did you think you were going to do with it?

14:49 Just have something to mark this weird strike, to mark this weird time, to say that I— I'm David Shulner, and I'm— No, not— it was just the fact that I had a certifi— I did something. So, you weren't considering a career in it necessarily? No, no. You were going to go right back to writing? I was going to go right back to writing. But then the strike kept going. Yeah. And then the actors joined the strike. So it became clear that this was going to go on even longer. So I got the certification and I started applying for jobs. Wow. Where'd you land first? So again, my wife thought I was going through a midlife crisis because no one wanted to hire a 50-year-old out-of-work writer who hadn't worked in a service in 25 years. Well, that's a bargain itself.

15:38 So no, I couldn't even get an interview. Wow. Even though on all my applications, I said, being a showrunner is my— the best training for being a showrunner in television is working in service. 'Cause as a waiter, you know, you had 5 tables, and they're all at different stages in the meal. Right. Someone's on apps, someone's on desserts, someone needs a main refired. And it's the same as being a showrunner. As a showrunner, I'm in the writer's room all day breaking episode 9. Episode 2 is being shot. Episode 3 is being edited. Episode 7's being written. Wow. And so I have all these episodes at different stages, and I have to do them all at the same time. Wow. So I was a really good showrunner because of service, because of working in restaurants. That's so interesting. And then, and what were they— when you asked them, can I come see you or talk to you, they would say, thank you, no? Well, I would just write up— I would interview, and I am sorry, I would send in my applications. I'd never hear from anyone. Yeah. Um, were you headed at the restaurants or retail or what?

16:45 Uh, just restaurants. And I just— Michelin star restaurants. Well, I guess that would narrow the field. It narrowed the field. I thought, if I'm going to do this, I want to do it at a, at a high level. Yeah. Um, but again, I wasn't applying for a SOM job. I was applying for a waiter job, a service job, because I had no— and I was gonna say, I have no credits, speaking in TV terms. I had no— I hadn't had any experience in 25 years. So finally, Gwen, it's a Michelin-starred steakhouse run by Curtis Stone. Yeah. It's the closest Michelin-starred restaurant to my house. They were hiring. Joel McHale, who lived across the street from me, who's an actor, comedian, host, he and Curtis did a TV show together called Kitchen Confidential. So I called Joel and I said, hey, Gwen's hiring. Will you ask Curtis if I could come in and meet?

17:48 So I got an interview. And they hired me. Well, this is interesting because it's clear, and I think even the listeners would know this, the viewers, that Hollywood is about connections. I mean, just to get your voice. A good friend of mine is David Zucker, the director. He actually directed me in a couple commercials. You know, he's, he's was having trouble getting traction recently just because, you know, he's been around so long. And so here you are leveraging the same sort of thing you need to do. It was harder to get a job in the restaurant industry than it was for me to get my first job in Hollywood. Wow. That's crazy. So, and yes, I, and I used my connections to get in the door to, to become a server. You just became a server? I became a server. And on my first day, I said to, I asked the wine director if I could be a part of the wine program. On the first day? On the first day. Are you a Gen Millennial? No, you're not. I'm, no, I was 50. So, um, that'd be a Gen Z Millennial thing. I wanna be, can I run the show, please? That's right. And just not run the show, just be a part of the program. Just be a part of the program. And, you know, I jumped around in time a little bit.

18:55 At that point, I had not passed the certified test yet. So he said, pass the certified and we'll talk. Well, okay. Gave you a goal. Gave me a goal. And even before— so what happened was, even before that happened, he got— the wine director and the somm, I think both got COVID or got sick. This is still like, people are still wearing masks at the time. They both got sick, and they called me and said, would you be the somm tonight? And I said no. What is it with this no? You keep telling people no to how many things? Because I realized how much I didn't know.

19:37 Yeah. Were you frightened at that point? Yeah. I had never been in the cellar. At that point, I had never tried a Grand Cru Burgundy. In my life. Oh, that— I had never used a Durand. Um, I, I knew all the things I didn't know. Yes. And at a Michelin-starred restaurant, I didn't want to mess up. Who'd they put there? Me. I called my wife and she said— It didn't matter what they said. She said, call back and say yes. So I did. And so I saw him that night, and it was amazing. It was everything I hoped it would be. That's incredible. What a great story. It was like a party. Yeah. It was like hosting a dinner party for all my best friends. Did you feel like you were walking on the eggs most of the time? Walking on air. I was walking on air. So actually it felt really good. It felt great. It felt like— You didn't feel like maybe you're gonna misstep and ruin somebody's evening because you hadn't tasted the Grand Cru? No, the first thing was a waiter came up to me and he said, I have a guest and they want a very light Grenache.

20:37 And they're thinking of the one we have from the Priorat. And I was like, no, those— no, like, let me get in there. And so the fact that I— the fact that I knew that— Yeah, it just came to your head. I was like, they can't— let's, let's figure this out. Well, that's great. Yeah. So I felt like I knew exactly how to help and how to guide them. And what was the restaurant's management's response to your first night as the thumb? It was great. Yeah. Um, we— the Curtis's second restaurant called Maude, Michelin-star tasting menu, maybe 7 seats, 7 tables in Beverly Hills. The same, our floor somm was supposed to work there on Saturday night to help them out, but they were still sick. So they asked me to come on Saturday to Maude. Is Maude like a seating thing? Like, is it 5 seatings, 2 seatings a night or something like that? 2 seatings a night. 7 tables, 20 guests a night. Wow, crazy.

21:37 And completely different. So it was wine pairings. It was completely different. If Gwen was like a party, Maud was like a quiet, like a quiet dance. Yeah. And the GM at the time was also a Psalm. So she was all over me. My pours were too light, my pours were too heavy. I poured at the wrong— I poured too early, I poured too late. My thumb was on the label. So she was all over me all night. And it was, I loved it. It was incredible. It was exhilarating. Do you think that's— there's a million questions that just came outta that conversation, but the one that just popped in when you said what her discipline was like, Do you think that's noticed, egregiously noticed by the consumer when those kinds of things happen? I got you, I got my thumb in the wrong place, stuff like that. Or is that an internal thing that, that in its summation creates a better experience? I think any, any misstep can add up, and so you don't want one, because if you're allowing one piece of service to not be held to the highest standard, then you're setting it up for a lot of people to make a lot of little mistakes because it doesn't matter. Right. And then that adds up. That will definitely add up to a bad guest experience. So keeping every standard at the highest level

23:10 ensures that everyone is— it won't allow for even the slightest misstep. I told this story many times. I just told you the other day. We were in Palermo at a seaside restaurant, and I ordered, uh, supertuscan guadalattasio, you know, that antinori thing. I just had it here, actually. I go, I know my— I have to play song with my friends because I know each one's palate, and I have to make sure I get stuff that they're all going to say, wow, that was really good. Yeah, because they say to me, that was average, or that's not bad, then I'm losing my credibility. of what I've done here. But the point is, I think this guy was Serbian. And I paid, I gave him a big tip on the side by myself because his service was so inspiring. And it wasn't the most expensive wine on the menu, but he made you feel like you were getting treated, A, B, you ordered the best thing in the world. Yeah. And he respected that bottle so much that it came through in his service. Then I had the exact opposite experience recently in Beverly Hills. Won't throw anybody under the bus, but it was the sommier who knew everything and wanted to know who you knew and wanted you to know what he's tasted and wanted to know what tastings he's been to. And I thought, what an ironic difference between how you bring service to the table. And I think this is what you've learned from this. Yeah. And I had a horri— I'll, I'll say, Nate, I had a horrible ex— my first Michelin-starred restaurant that I ever went to, After I got my job on Once and Again, which was my first TV show with Ed Zwick and Marshall

24:43 Herskovitz, I treated myself to Jean-Georges in New York. Oh, really? And the sommelier made me feel like I didn't belong there. He made me feel uncomfortable and self-aware and embarrassed. He made me feel awful. And I never forgot, I was 27. I'll never forget that experience. And so, I knew immediately what I didn't wanna do. Of course. And how not to, and like you said, to make everyone feel special. Everyone's spending a lot of money to come to these restaurants.

25:24 They should be made to feel— It kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier, which is, Some people are naturally hospitable and naturally want you to feel welcome wherever they do, and others have to learn it. And sometimes when you have to learn it, it's obvious, you know, it's just not part of the nature. And it's same with storytelling. It's same with, I have an audience. I need to take the audience by the hand. I need to make them feel comfortable to draw them into my story. And then I can push, I can push things. I can push their I can push their points of view. I can show them things that make them uncomfortable, but only after I've earned their trust. And I think that's what we try to do in hospitality as well. There was a— when I was at Xerox, my first job was at corporate America, and there was a young man who wrote a letter to all the sales reps and he called it the red carpet treatment. And I used it regularly in my customer service meetings with my company. And that was this.

26:24 If Rosia, who is one of my customer service reps, invites me to dinner at her home, and I get there and I bang on the door, and she creeps the door open and peers out with one eye and says, hi, I'm not going to feel good about being there. I'm going to feel like, why am I here? But if she swings the door open and says, I can't believe you're here, thank you for coming, and invites me in with this wonderful smile. Yeah. And I— and then it led to the idea that we can't The people can't see us on the phone because we were largely internet and phone sales. So now we've gotta equate that smile onto the phone. Right, yeah. And that's when I realized that at some point after all these employees I had, that some people just, it's just not natural. Yeah, that's right. It's obviously natural to you. It is, it is. It's just a pleasure. I've been waiting tables since I was 16.

27:16 I love it. A part of me missed it for sure. I would, my daughter's a French-trained boulangère. In fact, she earned a star with her chef in New York at Benno's before COVID and it closed, COVID. Now he's at Jean-Georges' new restaurant. Okay. And so she was the baker of record at the time. And so we were always in New York doing things and constantly evaluating, so to speak. And I would do nothing, it'd be nothing more than— and now she's had 4 kids and she's back in LA. We're talking about a bakery, you know, commercial and local. It would do nothing more for joy for me to be the front man.

28:00 Yeah. You know what she told me? You have to interview. I'm like, okay, where and when do I do this interview? What do you think of of this idea. There's a book by a guy named Patrick Hugh. He runs the Strand House in Hermosa Beach now. He wrote a book years ago called The Last Days of Haute Cuisine, and it's about Pavillon restaurant in New York from Henri Soleil. And it's about the couple sitting on one side of the table and enjoying, and that, that's their table for the night. Mm-hmm. And that it's all about the presentation and the meaning and the, the idea of this high-level cuisine. Is that still a thing? Is haute cuisine still on the upswing? Because certainly, let me equate it this way.

28:48 The high-end wine area is still very solid. Yeah. I just got a huge order for some Grand Cru and some classified growth where the middle stuff is kind of suffering. Right. And then the low stuff is just slugging it out in the trenches at the markets. Right. But is haute cuisine still a thing? People still— You know, everyone's been asking me, like, is Napa dead? Well, I can answer that question. Go ahead. Well, I would say no, but I would say there is room for everything. There's room for haute cuisine, and there's room for tacos. There's Broadway, there's Off-Broadway, There's La Mama, and then you have stuff in New Jersey. Like, there's room for all of it.

29:37 Mm-hmm. There's room for the $250 tasting in Napa, and there's room for the walk-in tasting room in Napa. You don't need to choose one or the other. There doesn't need to be a fight, a fight fest, a smackdown between, you know, the $100 Napa Cab and the $25 cab. Like, there's room for all of it. All of it can coexist. Well, let's see if we can peel that onion back because it's a very complicated issue with Napa itself. And since you're there working with Netflix on the show Uncorked, which— is that the working title or is that the real title? That's our working title.

30:19 Because come on, man, you can do better than Uncorked. There's already a show, a movie on Netflix called Uncorked. And once a Once a show's on Netflix that Netflix made, it rarely leaves the platform. Yeah. So we'll see. 'Cause I mean, I was working on a show and we'll talk about that maybe off camera, but, and we call it, the producer, he's one of Bourdain's producers and he wanted to call it Through the Grapevine. I'm like, dude, anybody could have come up with that title. Anyway, so let's just, I'm gonna just lay this premise down and then we'll talk about it because I had Violet Grgich on the show recently and here's, tasting room sales are off 30%. We're there regularly, and the hotel prices have not changed even though occupancy is like 30%.

31:08 And then I was talking to Stephen McPherson, who used to be the president of ABC TV. Probably know who he is. And he owns a vineyard called The Promise. Mm-hmm. And it's a members-only thing. It's beautiful. It's great. We have a really good relationship. And his tasting room manager at the time was telling us that that it's kind of known in Napa that the hotels are keeping their occupancy low, running a skeleton crew, not paying all the payroll that needs— they need to do, and living with 30% occupancy but still getting the, the revenue. If they lower the prices, we'd have more visitors, right? But that equates to lower walk-in traffic at tasting rooms. And, you know, Napa has evolved. It used to be you could just walk in and it would be $25 for tasting, and now it's we want to do appointments, and it becomes much harder to navigate Napa than it used to be. And I think that's loosening again because of the troubles we're having. But I was talking to Jan Krupp. You ever heard of this guy? No. It's a crazy good story. I'm going to publish it in the next week. He's an MD who just gave up being a very well-known doctor when he created Stagecoach Vineyards. It's his vineyard. Okay. He, he bought it and made it what it is and then sold it to Gala for like $200 million. Right. Which is crazy. And I— and one of the questions I asked him was, would that happen today? Would you have gotten $180 to $200 million? He's like, no, I wouldn't even gotten half of it. I wouldn't even gotten a quarter of it, probably. Yeah. So that's how different Napa

32:40 is. And we were discussing this idea that Napa landed on this opulent over-extracted, micro-oxygenated wine. And that seems to be loosening too. So where is, where do you see it going now that you're studying it and you're working there? Like I said, there's room for all of it. Just because, you know, Realm is making these, I'll drink those, I'll drink those reductive, velvety, smooth wines all day long. And I'll also crave wines that Brad Grimes is making at Abreu, which are full of tannin and full of acid and full of fruit, and are wild and untamed, and require a lot of aging.

33:25 Mm-hmm. But are exciting. Like, there's room for all of it. And yes, there's a downturn in Napa, but I was talking with Tor Kenward, who makes Tor, And Thor's been around forever, and Thor thinks it's a good thing. He thinks that it's gonna shake out the people who are there for ego or don't need to be there, don't have the passion that a lot of people have and need to stay in the wine business. Well, that's his viewpoint. But Bordeaux's, everyone's, Bordeaux's struggling. It's not just Napa. We were in Wine Paris and the, the couple of quick observations. One was, yes, everybody— here's what's interesting to me about wine in general, and that's my dad's store in 1975, same problem as it was today. It always is the same problem. Yeah. James Conaway wrote those Napa books like American Eden or something in the '90s. Yeah. No, 1990. And it was all about like how Napa's going downhill. I mean, Look, every industry I've ever wanted to be in is on the death knell.

34:33 Yeah, right. I wanted to be a Broadway playwright. I wanted to be a TV writer. And now I wanna be in the wine business. Like, everything I love is like, people say is dying away. And, but because it's, you know why? Because these professions are vulnerable. There's an artistry involved. There's real people involved. You need to be vulnerable. You need to be working on a very kind of intimate level. And those things are always gonna be in danger. You said exactly right. And what I've learned was, has been, and I don't think it's ever gonna change, the business of wine is entirely different than the perceived romanticism of wine. That's right. Right. And the margins suck, and it takes nothing but what you said— passion and perseverance— to make it work. It's kind of like real estate. In the good times, all brokers— you know, the good times floats all boats. Yeah. But the, the, the lousy brokers, when the times are tough, fail. That's right.

35:44 And you can't get into the wine business without the earnest passion to present a product that represents what your philosophy is in life, really, right? Is it— what are you trying to do here? Yeah. And, but there's also this weird thing, and I was going to bring it up with Wine Paris. I realized walking through with just thousands and thousands and thousands of vendors, 6,000 wineries were there, and each with 10 to 25 bottles. So you're talking about 100,000 bottles of wine there. all in doing, trying to do the same thing. Yeah. It's not like a tech show where you go, there's some guy selling a semiconductor and somebody else is selling memory in the next booth. Yeah. Everybody in that building is trying for the same customer, whether it's retail or on-sale or off-sale, whatever. Right?

36:30 Yeah. Or bulk sales or whatever they're doing. And I go, wow, what an interesting industry. And the other thing I realized is that none of cross-industry strategies work in the wine trade. I can't tell you how many people over the years have come to me to sell me wine that failed because they brought, um, a different industry of business sense. Right, right. And most recently, uh, this young man came to me. He was from MIT, Master of Business. And I tried to do a deal with him, and I offered him— he wanted $120 frontline for a case of wine, and I offered him $108, and he said no. And that was the end of the conversation. There was no negotiation. That's not the way we do it.

37:13 Doesn't meet my pro forma, right? Done. And I never heard from him again till I saw him at a show like 5 years later. Yeah. And we'd never met. And I shook his hand, I said, told him who I was. He says, dude, I'm so sorry. He goes, I had no idea what I was talking about, right? Because he realized that those pro forma business school things don't apply. Yeah. I've seen it with rug manufacturers trying to apply to the wine trade. Doesn't work. And I think it's what you're saying. It's that passion and perseverance. And the people, and like, I think it's so easy to say anything, all the things people have been saying about Napa. But as soon as you meet the people making the wine there, you, I think you'll stop saying those things. Yeah. The real people. Real people like Graham and Alex MacDonald.

38:02 Like, they're the future of Napa. Chris Morosoli, the grower. future of Napa. Like, these are great people with great stories who are making great wine and who have integrity and passion and, and, and care about pushing the ball forward. So it's interesting. You just triggered a thought. I've interviewed the Baird family. The Bairds used to walk in that store all the time. In fact, Beau, Beau will tell you that most likely, and this is, cracked me up because he said, we celebrated when my dad got home from Bordeaux, that he's on a trip at the time that they won the judgment, with a bottle of Meursault. Mm-hmm. He goes, I'm pretty sure we bought it from Pee Wee Liquor. They bought it from my dad. So why would you be celebrating beating the French, you know, Burgundies with the Burgundy? I guess maybe that would be the irony of it all, right? But anyway, that generation '70s, and even before that, the Mondavis of the world and the Napa Valley Vintners Association with Brother Timothy and Mr. Martini and all those guys. That would— that probably was that essence of passion and pursuit because they had no idea they're gonna make any money at it. Right. Right? Yeah. And then the romanticism hit, and, you know, the, the badge of honor of having your own brand and building this great château. And some of them are really ugly. Sorry, I just had to throw that in there. And then, and then Now, maybe that is, maybe this is right. Maybe this is a settling of passionate people. Every business has an

39:33 evolution. Every business has an up and a down. Like, it's, and Napa was like during COVID like, I think wine sales were booming. Oh, we killed it here. Yeah. So every, it's just a natural evolution of any industry. You know, one of the byproducts of COVID here was They would buy anything I told them. And we were prolific digital marketers and we were mailing. I mailed 33 million emails in 2022, you know? So it's just, we were really good at it actually. So I started to collect. I'm not a collector. In fact, before you leave, we're gonna walk to the cellar. And then when they bought the company in 2023, nobody, they didn't want any of that stuff. I had all this wonderful wines. Wow. And they did. They only wanted the wines they knew they could sell. Now I could have sold those things during COVID but COVID didn't last long enough, unfortunately. So I ended up with this great cellar of wine for the rest of my life here. But COVID did that. I could tell them any— in fact, Caymus at the time and Silver Oak too, you know, the 2 icons of the Valley right now, or they were anyway.

40:44 Still are. They would never— they would've never come here because I was a club and it was, that it was passé for them. They didn't need the sales because they were on-premise. They all wanted on-premise. Why wouldn't you? But when they did come, finally, they go, will you help us? I said, if you stick with me after this is over, yeah, then I'll sell some of your wine. I could not keep Caymus 1 liters in stock. They gave me 18 a week. Wow. And I sold them instantly at $140 when now they're $89. Yeah, right. Yeah. So that's how good COVID was, and it just tanked. And I, I wonder what— since they brought it up, what you were in— were you in hospitality then about that time? No, I was just drinking a lot. Oh, because I'm wondering what happened if there was a resurgence, the opposite spike on on-premise sales when off-premise sales plummeted after COVID was over. I mean, we literally just back to 2019, even before. Right. I wonder if that happened, if the hospitality on-premise sales rose or people just sort of backed off drinking a little bit. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure. Interesting. So what are you finding when you're shooting the show for Netflix? I don't know what you're allowed to divulge about what the show is about, but what surprised you of all this? So we're still, you know, so right now, so I'm writing with Darren Star, who created Emily in Paris. So, Darren's in Paris

42:15 filming the final season. So, once Darren gets back in the fall, we'll start the writers' room. And then we'll start filming around May of next year. And what do you think this is about? Can you say yet? Sure. I think it's about— it's funny, Darren and I, the Napa Valley Vintners asked us to come to their annual meeting. And one of the questions was, who's this for? Like, who's the audience of this show? And I— You asked that or they asked that? They asked that. Yeah. And I thought that was a great question. I don't know. And I thought about it and I told them this story. So when I was waiting tables in Minneapolis, the most expensive wine on our list was Silver Oak. So that's what I tried to sell the most of to make the most money. So I would tell the story of Silver Oak, how we only get 2 bottles a week. It's highly allocated, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so I'd say, at the end of my spiel, it's like, so if you'd like a bottle, please let me know before they're gone. And I'd probably sell one a night. So I think we definitely got more than 2 a week. Yeah, of course. So that was my spiel. I don't even remember ever being allocated like that, but good. Minnesota, maybe. So when I moved to California, the first thing I wanted to do was go to Napa, and go to Silver Oak, 'cause I'd never even tried the wine, never had it before, but it was the wine I was selling so I could make the most money. But that was my dream. So I rode my bike to Napa from LA, 'cause I wanted to see California, and I thought that was the best way to do it. That's all

43:48 uphill. All uphill against the wind. So I get to Napa and it rains the whole time. I can't afford a hotel, so I'm camping. Camping in the state park. And I finally make my way to Silver Oak, drenched, muddy. I pay my $25 for the tasting, and whoever I'm talking to at the hospitality there, tell them I'm a waiter. And she says, oh my God, all the tastings are free if you're in trade. They refunded my money, and they asked where else I was going, and I said nowhere. Like, I can't afford to— I can't afford all the tastings. Yeah. So she made calls for me and booked me for appointments at Caymus, Opus One, Grgich Hills, um, and I think maybe Robert Sinskey.

44:39 And I had free tastings. Wow. All these places. When was this? 25 years ago. And so I was treated I was wet, muddy, on my bike, couldn't afford a hotel room, and Napa rolled out the red carpet to me, and I was in awe. That's crazy. I was treated like royalty, and I was a waiter. And I said, that's who the show's for. I wanna show Napa how I experienced Napa. What Napa— when Napa rolled out the red carpet for me, Like, that's why I wanted to give the audience that special treatment. So here's what I wrestle with, with wine media. I was on the— we were on a flight from Paris, and I see this wonderful production value wine show. It was on Grüner Veltliner, which I just thought of itself was really silly because you can't even pronounce it, let alone who's gonna watch this. And it was— the production value was really high.

45:42 Fighting grapes. It was the worst. I was so embarrassed that a steward would see me watching this. And I thought, there's got to be better media than this. And of course, I'm a friend of Jason Wise of SomTV, etc. And there's another gentleman, Klaus de Jong. He was on the show recently. He called Wine Masters. He creates incredible footage, and it's mostly European marketplace. Mm-hmm. But we were in— we— I took 12 people to Bordeaux 2 years ago. And I'll never do that again because it worked and it'll never work like that again. Right, right. How is that possible? But anyway, there's 2 parts of this story. One is during Wine of the Month Club as a one-man show, basically, we sold 17 million bottles of wine. We tasted 100,000 and we treated a lot of thousands and thousands and thousands of customers to the idea of wine in the $20 price range. And that credential was interesting, but never really carried any, um, persona weight with it. Nobody really cared. It was just a business. But when I show up with a podcast card, uh-huh, and they Google the name and they look and see what's going on, I'm treated like— I'm like, I get the best treatment in the world. I'm like, I don't even deserve this, but I'll take it. So anyway, the story goes, we were at Cheval Blanc. We're in the vineyard with Monsieur Clouet, and we're having, you know, $5,000 worth of

47:13 samples. And one of the NBA stars from, uh, from France came down, Michael Pietrus, and we had a nice chat and blah, blah, blah. And I thought, I'm not gonna let this be what my friends think it is. Right. Like, they were extraordinarily flattered and happy to indulge, but I said, I want them to kind of see the other part. So I called ahead to a friend of mine who owns Château Canon-Chaigneau, which is a Landes Pomerol. Great wines. And we'd pull up on our bus and here's this cute château from the outside, but obviously not Cheval Blanc, not LVMH. Yeah. There's rusted pliers on top of the fermentation tank and the seats and the chairs in the tasting room don't match.

47:57 And the glasses have spots on them. And I go, this is kind of more realistic Right? And so the point I'm trying to get to is I'm not into these vineyard drone shots, you know, in, in, in wine media. And I think that adds to the intimidation. And maybe your stories clearly points out it's not the intimidating. Well, I also, we wanna, we're definitely gonna romanticize wine. We're gonna romanticize the farming and we're gonna show You're getting stung by wasps during harvest. Yeah, right. And you gotta wait, you're getting 5 hours of sleep, and it's brutally hot, but also— Okay, so that's a good counterpoint to this romantic lifestyle. Yeah, but we get to show both. It doesn't need to be one or the other. No, that's true. We get to show all of it. I had the same experience. I went to Cheval Blanc, and then at Vue Sertan, which is right next door, the winemaker at Vieux Sertan, like, there was cardboard boxes everywhere. Same experience. Cobwebs. Yeah, right.

49:00 And I love them both. Yeah. And they were both— No, it's great. And it was great. But yeah, you don't— I think you can do all of it. But like you said, what you're getting at is it's not just one thing. There's many experiences. And I think the drone shots through the vineyards are a cliché now, right? Just as is the Reservoir Dogs, your leads walking towards camera in slow motion, right? Right. There's certain things that have become cliché now, and it's our job to circumvent that. Because what's in the bottle is critical. And there's a group called Adani Global, and she's out of— they're out of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. It's Pauline Vicard and some famous women that work in that area, Côte d'Avontoux kind of thing.

49:49 But they're, they're a think tank, and their, their position in life is to bring to the table the realities of the wine trade to the vendors. Okay. Like, wine is about consumerism. Let's face it, you and I can be as romantic as we want, but if nobody's buying it, you know, there's no industry, right? And, and there's a lot of doom and gloomers on Facebook and LinkedIn, all that, about the industry's in the tank or hope it still survives. It's like, come on, dude, it's been around for 6,000 years. It's not going anywhere. That's right. It's people like you and me which are always going to, you know, bolster the, the, the feeling of wine. Because it does— how you— how are you going to portray to the viewer this inspiration that you took to the table when selling a bottle of wine like Silver Oak in Minnesota? How are you going to do that? Because that's what we need. Well, I think, you know, like, it's a weird comparison because my kids can't drink. But when I make dinner at home, the kids are gone in like 15 minutes.

50:49 Like, I cook for an hour. Yeah, I thought you'd say that. I love it. I love cooking. I give myself an hour, and 15 minutes, they're off, and it's just me and my wife. When there's a bottle of wine at the table, every meal lasts longer. When we're out to dinner and there's a bottle of wine, Like, the time you have with your friends, with your family, increases exponentially with the amount of wine on the table. No question. And I think there's such, you know, being a playwright is a lot like now, it's like being a poet.

51:31 It's kind of out of fashion. It's not sustainable. No. But there's something pure and magical about the theatrical experience or an incredible poem. And wine is art. Wine is history. And wine is— great wine is made by several individuals. What is your contemporary— well, first of all, do you like to cook? Sorry? Do you like to cook? I love to cook. And are you the main cook? I am the main cook in my house. Me too. Yeah. My daughter now lives with us because she's displaced by the fires, though she didn't lose her house, but they're still not there. Yeah. And so she and I work together. We started this new thing in the house, and I'll get to the real question, but we started this new thing because, you know, you fall into a rut sometime and you're making the same thing every few days. So we started to pick a cookbook. Yeah. And just find a couple recipes that, that are family-friendly to make. And, you know, like even Nancy Silverton, who was on the show recently, said Look, that cookbook you bought, you know, she, my daughter bought me an older cookbook. She goes, you really have to have a restaurant to make the recipe because the prep time takes so long. It's like, you really can't just do it, do it at home. But so we pick a restaurant. I just, we just did one from Jess Lander's Napa Valley Cookbook, which I wrote to her. I said, you know, we made this salad and these meatballs and they were incredible and they were relatively easy to make. Yeah. And she goes, thank you. That lit up my day that somebody actually opens the book anymore. Right. But it's a process that we like to go through. But you're right, having that

53:04 bottle of wine, and that's— you have to show that romantic reason to have that bottle of wine on the table. And even in my house, here's the other thing I find. And are all your friends wine drinkers? No, no. And I think it's interesting, as I get older, a lot of people have stopped drinking wine. Yeah. Or can't tolerate it as well as they could have. In fact, 2 of my, one of my cousins who was the greatest collector, and he used to tell me all the stuff he had, he goes, I stopped drinking. Yeah. I was just sitting there with a friend of mine who has a beautiful underground cellar here in Arcadia. He goes, I have 2 bottles in it right now. Wow. And he turned off the air conditioner. Wow. Um, which is sad in my opinion. Very sad. But, um, do you find that even this, this part's really interesting to me. In as intimidating as people think wine is, if you're not educated in it or you don't have the time to study it, you can still have an incredible conversation at a dinnertime or at a restaurant.

54:01 And for me, the conversation always ends up, or at least part of it, is about the wine on the table without the intimidation. People that would, would've said the day before, I don't wanna learn about wine, it's too intimidating, end up in a conversation about wine. Mm-hmm. And I don't know if it's because at the moment, and they're tasting it, and something seems interesting, and they want to know more about it. And as long as you and I, or anybody else in this trade, aren't snobby about it, you know, you just release the information that you feel like, you dole it out, what you think is digestible. But it fascinates me that that happens. Yeah, and a lot of times, you know, you don't even have to be talking about the wine. But the only reason you're having the intimate conversations you're having with your friends and family is because of the wine.

54:49 So whether you're talking directly about châteaux or soil or varietals, you could be talking about a memory you had back in high school, and the only reason you're there is because of this bottle. Right. So— We're not drinking Boone's Farm now, are we? No, exactly. Sugarized. We're already out of time, which is hard to believe it's been an hour. I hope we can do this again. Yeah, I'd love to. You know, we can share a lot of stories and probably move the needle a little bit on all kinds of things when it comes to doing this. So you're not in hospitality today? I am. I am still working at Gwen. Oh, you are? I am. I used to be every— I used to be the Tuesday night. Tuesday night was my night on the floor. I had to leave for, uh, to work on Uncorked. Um, but now I'm on call, so anytime Assam wants to go on vacation, gets sick, I'm, I'm, I'm there on the floor. They have, uh, just cocktails as well? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, full bar. I don't, I don't know why, you know, we, when we travel, we use the Michelin Guide because a couple reasons, but let's peel that back a little bit. There's a wonderful French movie called Le Huit, La Casa de los Ocho, which is the chicken the wing and the— anyway, it's a comedy between what would be Michelin and a rival, maybe Gault&Millau or something.

56:14 And it's very funny. It's all in French, but it's very funny. And I'm wondering if that still has teeth. Now, I use it because I don't trust people that are on Yelp. What do they know? Yeah. Right? We can't possibly equate our palates and our experience with some guy that— oh, I love the Michelin Guide. Yeah, so the Michelin Guide, at least it's a regular and it's an internal rating based on the people that are educated inside. Yeah. And also, like, you know, I think a lot of people in service will say this, but like, we're a little— we're ruined. Like, I can't— bad service is really hard to stomach. Well, I suppose that was kind of the question about haute cuisine, if it's still valid. Obviously it is with— and LA just got Michelin back a few years ago, so now we actually have starred restaurants. And I found it interesting, mostly Asian. But, um, where is Gwen?

57:09 Gwen is, uh, Sunset Boulevard, right in the middle of Hollywood. Um, Australian Wagyu, um, Creekstone, uh, incredible steaks, dry-aged in-house. This is not the— this one, did you just make a reservation? Yeah, yeah. Make a reservation. We, you know, or just come in, sit at the bar. Full menu. Great, great wine list. We're gonna have to do that. Yeah. Great wine list. Great wine. You know what it is now? Sorry? You know what it is now? The wine list? Yes. Yeah. I know where to find the wines now. I know where the cellar is. That's great. Pleasure having you in. Pleasure. Thank you. My pleasure. Thanks, man. Cheers.