The Honest Truth: Is the Wine Industry Too Elitist for Its Own Good? Louis Calli tells all.

0:00 I do think it's time for brands to really look at what's working and pour gasoline on it. If you're seeing any signs of life, if you're new in upstart brand, if you, if you're seeing growth and you're seeing honest opportunities, pour gasoline on it. Follow that, that light, sit back and grab a glass. It's Wine Talks with Paul K. Hey, welcome to Wine Talks with Paul Kay. And we are in studio today in beautiful Southern California to have a conversation with Lewis. Did you go by Lewis or Louie to everybody but mom and dad? Louis. Louis Lewis Kelly, because your mom probably puts your middle name in there because she's upset with you about something.

0:41 Yes. Hey, welcome. And the third, she always adds the third, right? Welcome to the show. I'm looking forward to having this conversation. You know, Louis Collie has built a career across retail, wine hospitality, direct to consumer marketing, consulting, winery experiences and executive leadership. His perspective is valuable because he bridges consumer behavior and winery strategy. And that's a really important feature. And I want to read why you're on the show. This is really why you're on the show. I may follow you on LinkedIn, I'm not sure, but when I read this, wine has gotten so unbelievably soft, which is your title for this article, it walks around whining and making apologies. That was the greatest opening line I've ever read. And maybe it sounds, you know, trivial, but because of the industry today, with so many, you know, so much whining, so many complaining, so doom and gloom, so this. Oh, that. And just kind of like, you know, people seem to be making a platform out of just complaining instead of like doing something about it. I would agree. You know, I've been, I've been doing consulting for quite some time and not only whining and complaining, but continuing to do the same thing, polishing the same stone harder. Well, we need to generate cash flow. So we're going to take a wine that was $150 yesterday, put a new label on it, charge $250 tomorrow and sell

2:11 20 cases. But I've seen lately, particularly with all the health things that have come about in the, in the past five to seven years, the World Health Organization, the studies are saying no amount of drinking is healthy, particularly as you age. And instead of wine kind of in my mind, instead of wine trying to kind of rediscover itself in that reality or maybe leaning more into what it actually is, into its edges, the thing, the reasons that people align with it to Begin with. Particularly on LinkedIn, which is kind of its own weird ecosystem. But you see everybody saying, well, yeah, but the study is wrong, because, yeah, but this or, yeah, but that, but wine is. And it's become this weird, weak, whiny kind of culture of, oh, woe is me. Oh, oh, no. Like the World Health Organization said, alcohol is bad for you. Like, they invented that concept. Yeah. And retreating rather than going on the attack, which. Which I think is an opportunity that's missed for a lot of brands, not every brand. The French paradox. There you go. I mean, like, how is it this radically changed from 1990, where it suggests here that it's a huge component of a healthy lifestyle compared to the generational change today, which is like. Like we were at the fancy food show a couple years ago

3:42 in Vegas when they moved it to Vegas, which I was happy they did because it was in San Francisco, which the thematic backbone of the show for beverage was non alk, and you can't even drink this stuff. And I don't understand the value of a non alk wine when it comes to. What are you trying to prove when you're just walking around a party with a glass of wine that you can't really stomach and it doesn't add any romantic value because it doesn't taste good. What do you think that's come from besides the World Health Organization? Because what bothers me more is it's not a huge market and everybody's jumping all over it. I mean, we're making all kinds of stuff and it's almost being forced upon us. Well, this is the classic industry thing. Anybody that's been frontline in this business has seen this play out countless times. I mean, I could tell you back in the 2000s, when I was in restaurants and retail, when it was at the renaissance of kind of the new New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, right? And the trait of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc that everybody was like, ooh, it's got grapefruit, it's got grapefruit. Within two years, the market was flooded with grapefruit juice. Sauv Blanc, that was nothing but liquid lightning, right? And. And nothing but acid.

5:00 And that's not necessarily a bad thing, but this is kind of what the industry does. Oh, everybody needs seltzer. Oh, everybody needs wine in a can everybody want. I mean, I. Winemakers right now that are actually labeling their Sauvignon Blanc as low alcohol, despite the fact that the alcohol's never changed on it, right? Like, it's 11%. So it's lower than 13%. So I'm going to market it as. And, and I mean, great. Good for you. I mean one of the most famous moves of all time was Robert mondavi in the 60s saw Blanc wasn't selling very well. So he remarketed it as Fume Blanc and it flew off, flew off the shelves. I mean Even in the 2000s I was still selling a ton of that stuff. So I, I do think there's some of the. Oh no, right. As. As which is a natural reaction. Like things are changing, right? We got to release a no alk line. We got to get lean more into the no alk side rather than taking a breath and like looking at the data, developing a strategy of something meaningful and moving forward rather than just throwing more product at the market. I agree with that completely. I don't think product is a solution. The product's too ingrained in the human society, you know, thousands and thousands of years old for it to be directed by packaging a pouch. I mean, can you imagine the romantic experience of this new pouch that came out? I mean like a baby, like an applesauce. I mean who would do that? And it is a knee jerk reaction to, to the consumption change. And that's part of life in the world of business. You know, people ebb and flow. Just like you said, Fume Blanc, you know, Robin Mondavi's experiment with Fume Blanc.

6:31 How about, you know, you could Sancerre, you could buy all day long five years ago and now it's like this hot product and it'll soon be no longer the hottest product. There'll be something else, tannat or something will come out of the woodwork as the great, as the great beverage. But it seems to me, to me our woes are more tied in business trying to maximize the value of their industry. And so they plant more. They try to predict five years down the road what the consumption is going to be. They've overplanted because it's changed. I mean, let's not forget 2004 when most of pastor world was just hanging on the vine because there were no contracts and the consumption was off and there was way too much supply. Isn't that just part of it? I think there's always going to be two sides to the pendulum, right? Like it's going to swing both ways. I do think what we're seeing now though is not, is not a small swing. This is a generational shift in attitude in, in, in culture. You know, we're, we're Seeing something that everybody needs to get right with. And the thing I'm privately excited about as someone that lives and has lived in smack, the smack dab in the middle of wine country in Napa Valley for the last almost 20 years is that we're moving into the kind of thing private equity hates.

7:47 And private equity came in, saw, saw blood in the water, and they started buying up brands, creating these, these brand houses and taking bulk projects, putting labels online and brands, brands, brands, brands, brands. I mean, there's a reason if you go into a grocery store in Portland, Maine, you see 80% the same wine set as a grocery store in Napa Valley, Right? And so I think selfishly, what we're going to start to see is not the death of the wine industry, this doom and gloom. I mean, yeah, change is happening. What we're seeing is a correction. And what we're seeing is the weak brands are failing and that private equities no longer smells blood in the water. They're going to other, deeper oceans. Right? And so I think we're in the midst of a much needed and very scary industry correction where the middle is being hollowed out. The weak brands on the low end are really using. But as the really losing. But as the 2026 SVB Winer Port saw, the brands on the other end are actually winning. There are brands absolutely winning right now, their brands doing well, their brands seeing growth. And so there are some positives here. But. But to your point, more product is definitely not the solution. In fact, it's the opposite of it. I think it's more serious product that is honest about who they're trying to speak to. I mean, I. One of my classics that's been around for many, for decades, that's still considered one of the great wines of the world is done. I love their website.

9:15 I love their messaging, I love Randy, I love Mike. I love everything about them. You know, you go to their website and it's clear they are. There's a picture of randy from the 80s on a tractor having a beer, right? Like, there's. There's a collection of patina, weathered viticulture and enology journals that they've collected over the years with a bunch of dried rattlesnake skins hanging next to them. Like you know what you're getting into. And they know who they're talking to and they know their purpose and why they exist and they're not afraid to speak that language. And, and I'd just like, I'd like to see more brands start to do that. It seems like, you know, that I have this term which maybe I didn't make it up, but you know, an honest glass of wine. I, I have this romantic view of what will be happening.

10:02 And it's exactly what you're saying. We're settling on the established brands in the sense of that they have a message and they have a, they have an honesty about them and they have a story about them and they have a, a reflection of what wine is supposed to be, which is a sense of time and place. And I think that honest approach is important and it goes back to kind of what happened in the 70s when wine was becoming popular and the judgment of Paris was around all that, which is sort of this experiential side of wine where we get to experience what wine is talking about. Rattlesnake skins hanging on, hanging on, you know, the side of the wall, which is sort of showing us our history because it is about the story. And the story can't be, I got this for three bucks on the Internet, right? Yeah, that's not a good story and the wine's not good either. But I want to go back to your venture capital thing. It's really interesting because when I was running the Wine of the Month club, it was really obvious what was going on in the financial world because I belong to one of these organizations where you put your name up as an expert in some field and you could tell when they're putting their toe in the water. Because I'd get these phone calls for these one hour brainstorming sessions and I'd get paid 750 bucks to answer their questions. And what's interesting to me about those times was the questions were really misguided. They were, they showed a complete lack of understanding of what they might be getting into and, and maybe hence some of the reasons why so much has failed.

11:33 Let me ask you this question. Why then are we seeing John 12's Jean Charles buying up every winery he can find? Why are we seeing Chanel buy into Rud? Why are these, is this a, a glimpse into what people think that's going to happen to the industry in the future? So I have some interesting, a unique insight on jcb because I worked for him. Specifically I worked for Patrick, his, his now VP of marketing. Brilliant guy, phenomenal marketer. Jean Charles is, is such a, I, I, he's basically the P.T. barnum of, of wine. Right, See, that's a great way to say it.

12:15 See though, I always get that reaction. But I also always tell people Google Greatest marketers in history. Just Google it and tell me the list. You will not find one without P.T. barnum on it. And the reason is he was the first published to really understand his audience and exactly how to speak to them. Jean Charles has this character, this Persona, and he's made himself part of the brand, but when you get him behind closed doors, he's crazy like a fox. The guy is very savvy. And I recently had somebody said to me, did you Hear JCB closed five tasting rooms or four tasting rooms or whatever it was in 2024, you know, Buena Vista. And then the, the one in Youtville that I actually, that was one of my last duties, was helping the team open that.

13:01 But he's closing four because he opened four. He had the guts to go out and test and say, hey, we think this. I have a hypothesis. Let's go run it. And they run it, but then in five years, they run the math, which is, quite frankly, something I see over and over, is that wineries love to have ideas, but then the idea never has to defend itself. It achieves permanent citizenship. Because nobody wants to have the awkward conversation. Let me tell you right now, Jean Charles is not afraid of having an awkward conversation. In fact, he's. He loves having it to your face in front of people. And so I think I like, I don't agree with everything he's doing, but I like that he's honest about who he is. Right. Like whether that resonates with you or not. And, and I like that there's still somebody in the business because he's not an outsider. I mean, his family is one of the most famous and legendary winemaking families in France.

13:57 And, and, and he's an insider that deeply, not only cares about the industry as a whole, but this valley, he really, genuinely does. And, and so I like that he's at least willing to try things. Right. They may be insane, they may be totally, but they're not private equity plays. They're not, you know, calling a guy and giving him $700 for his, for his advice, asking weird questions and then throwing money at the problem. He, he, he, he comes at it from the perspective from the place of a wine guy, which I love. May not be the one guy I am, may not be the wine guy you are, but, but he's a wine person. He's an industry person that wants the industry to grow. And so I think I, I like that. From the JCB perspective, I do think we're going to see more brand acquisitions. I mean, we're already seeing it. You know, Vintage Wine Estates failed a couple years ago, went belly up at a couple friends that were casualties of that.

14:53 And a lot of those brands have been bought up. But then like the CEO of Vintage Wine Estates went out and bought Sojourn Fire the staff like the next day. And, and so we're going to see a lot of change as, as part of this correction. And, and a lot of brands are going to fade, some brands are going to rise. Money will always be around. Money will always be in the wine business. Money will always be here to, to try to squeeze every drop out of the turnip. Right. Every drop of blood out of the stone. But I, I, we're going to see a softening of it and I think we already have. And, well, that was part of the point of the question. I'm glad you brought up Vintage Wine Estates. I mean, there's a company that went public and failed like within 12 months, wink, not as a crazy company, went public and failed in a few months. I sold my company in 2023 and we were actually in a position just to walk away from it because 2023 was going to be such a poor thing and we had done it for 35 years. My wife and I were like, well, you know what, we don't want to process 38 tax returns in the next quarter, so we'll just go away. When they bought it, but oddly it was sold. I didn't even bicker on the price because I didn't want to lose it to the price because somebody offered us something.

16:10 Well, that company that bought it sold it 12 months later and sold it to the guy who was the lowest price offered when I first sold it. So I know he did, I know he didn't overpay for it. So, so there's, I mean, that's classic. That's classic. Remember, remember when Costa Brown was like the Pinot everybody had to have. It's like, William, sell him Sea Smoke coast of Brown. Right? Those were, those are three pinots everybody had to have. They made 600 cases, everybody wanted them, yet it was like a two year wait list. Now they make like 16,000 or 6,000 or something. The brands change hands like three or four times, maybe more. You know, I mean, we see it repeatedly and I wonder, you know, there is a romantic reason to get in this industry. There's people always feel like, and I used to say this all the time with earlier days when if you were a successful freeway contractor and you finally got to build your winery or you're a successful real estate guy, or you're a successful surgeon. And, you know, the attraction of the lifestyle up in Napa Valley is by your big chateau and, you know, hire a crew and make wine. Then you realize this is really hard. You can't make any money. The margins suck, and it's not so romantic anymore, and you have to really try to work at it.

17:21 But you're right. There's an emerging brand. I had Jean Noel on the show who owns Chateau Patel, which was vgs. Yeah. And he was. Yeah. Well, his story is incredible. And I bought a lot of zinfandel from him back in the day as chef de botel. And then you probably know the story, got sick, and then he sold everything. And then now he's back and, you know, he's doing great. And it's all dtc. There's no marketing, no social, there's no nothing. And he sells everything he makes. And I find that fascinating that, that he's able to make that work. And I'm wondering what the deaf, you know, how. This is what you do. How does. How does that winery find that path? You know, rather there's a can or trying to, you know, roll with the punches of the marketplace. How does that Branding. I guess if we knew the million dollar question, but how does that. How do we peel back that brand? How do we find our. Our path to do that? Well, it's going to be very hard for any brand now to do what Chateau Patel has done, because that's. That's like saying, well, how do I build the next Ridge? Well, you start Ridge in 1974. Right. Like, that's, That's. That's how you build that. Right. The. The CEO of Ridge is a good buddy of mine, Ryan. He's been in the industry for, For a long time. I just had lunch with him a couple weeks ago.

18:40 He's been with Ridge, I think, like, 15 years now. But they're doing great. The broad market's feeling it, but they're killing it because they're Ridge. Right. But they've stayed. Ridge is one of the few wineries that stayed very, very, very true to their roots, but also found ways to evolve within that messaging that not just being stale and not just being like, hey, heritage, buy us. You know, Hyde's tried that, and they really struggled, you know, 10 years ago. But Ridge is doing very well because of that kind of commitment to. Radical commitment to who they are and the truth. Honest, honest wine. Right. Montebello will always be a classic Their Zen's will always be classic. They got a tasting room paso that's, that's doing really well because they set realistic expectations for it.

19:25 They're making a passo appellated wine. I believe so. In fact, I think, and Ryan would correct me on this, I believe Pasta Ridge was the first winery to put Pasta Robles on their label. I believe. But amazing ones. But then you've got Chateau Patel. I used to sell Chateau patel in the VGs back in the two. I carried it. Yeah. Carried it in retail. I did very well with it. So they've got legacy, but they've also got a founder story that's meaningful. Let's, let's face it, there's a lot of Napa wineries nowadays. The founder story is I made a gajillion dollars doing something else. I loved wine because I traveled to Nat Valley, I bought a winery fleet. Malcolm makes it, Jim Barber farms it. Tada. Right.

20:06 Like there's, there's a lot of, and there's a lot of great wine made that way. Don't get me wrong, it makes some phenomenal wine, but it's not, it's not really a story. But the Chateau Patel story is a story. You know, here's a founder who saw, sold his brand, saw what happened, had his own struggle, health struggles and came back and is, is slugging it out in the trenches again. Right. Like, and everything that comes with it you get. And it's true for somebody like Adam Lee, you know the, that did Suduri. Right. His fans are rabid fans. He could make pretty much any wine. And his new wine Clarice, which Adam Lee wines are freaking amazing, is doing really well because they attached to Adam Lee. They didn't attach necessarily to the brand. Like, tell me what you're working on, Adam. I'm in, like, keep me on your list. I, I love your personality. I love the way you make wine. I love the flavor profile. And so I think there's, there's a lot of that true for Chateau Patel, but new brands, there's, there's still room for new brands to win, but it's going to be harder. It's, it's, it's, it's a lot harder. And it's going to be different. It's, it's a, you can't keep polishing the same stone. I think it's accurate. I was, I'm not going to name any names here, but there's interesting approaches and there's this one guy on LinkedIn that talks about the old sales And I'm an old sales guy. I lived in Breathe Sales. I'm from the Xerox training schools and I sold.

21:29 And so it has a different approach and I don't think, I don't. And he, he talks about that approach no longer works in the distribution side of things. I don't necessarily agree with that completely, but let's just talk about that for a second. When Covid was starting and we were in Napa. I've told this story before. I, I had a conversation with, with Sarah the, the wine beat writer at the Napa Valley Register at Oxbow and I thought she wanted to interview this glowing report about the Wine of the Month club and the first guy that ever did this. And no, she wanted really me to help her understand what was going to happen to the wineries that weren't tech savvy, that didn't have a chat bar on their website going into co. What was going to happen. And as you know, Covid was incredibly successful for anybody that was online. We were up 30%, could do no wrong, could sell anything I wanted to. But that leads to this idea since you're talking to winers and consulting that this three legged approach to balancing their sales volume and hopefully one makes up the other at least balances the other one. That would be of course trade walk in traffic at the tasting room. It'd be distribution traffic which is of course the least profitable. And then there's DTC which is the most profitable. Do you see that as a valid balance still this three legged stool to, to keep things going or, or do, do we need to invest in, you know, less channels and more focus on the channels you have?

22:55 I, you know, the, it depends on your goal really. I mean if, if you're, if you're trying, it's easy to say DTC is more profitable, which obviously is true. Right. Like you own the margin. But when you, if you're dtc, only marketing costs and, and tasting room, you know, leases and insurance and salaries and can eat that very, very, very quickly. And, and if you're in a winery, that's a position that you sell two containers with one sales guy on the east coast, what the hell would you ever go dtc, right. Just because the cost of generating a customer is massive.

23:37 Particularly if you nowadays and if you rely on, on online only the days of, of social media being, you know, being the way you generate a thousand paying customers is, are gone. It's pay to play. Everything's pay to play now. That's right. And so, and so you need a place where people can a get introduced to your brand. And if you don't have a tasting room, and even then, if you don't have a tasting room in the right location, you're going to lose so much money on the lease and just the operations of the tasting room alone that there's no point. But at the same time, Broad Market's getting killed right now. From what I'm hearing, it's a bit of a bloodbath for a lot of brands out there. I mean even just getting placements. And then if you get a placement and you sell out, somebody just replaces your wine on the shelf with something else and you never get reordered. It's hard.

24:30 There's definitely no money button. But I think the wineries that are winning, that are seeing growth, are going back to what I originally said. They're not playing it safe. They're willing to take risks and willing to speak to a certain person. Aligning with different things, aligning with art, aligning with lifestyles, letting the customer see themselves in the brand. But to answer your original question, I don't think that we've completely passed the era of you need to be three legged, right. Like you needed to be distribution. I don't think we're outside of diversification yet, but I do think it's time for brands to really look at what's working and pour gasoline on it. If Broad Market's a real struggle for you, but you're seeing even a little bit of growth, I mean, my dad's a cardiologist. He just retired after 50 years.

25:25 Yeah, and, and, and he always says, you know, when someone's at the end of life or you have somebody like on life support, if you see any improvement, even small, you keep going. Right. And so now nowadays in what we're seeing in the wine business, if you're seeing any signs of life, if you're new in upstart brand, if you, if you're seeing growth and, and you're seeing honest opportunities, pour gasoline on it first. Follow that, that light. But I really don't think we're at the point yet where we just say we get rid of Broad Market, we're DTC only. I mean, you want to have a great conversation about that, talk to Dave Senegal who owns Senegal Winery.

26:06 He's actually seeing improvement in Broad Market. He's gotten really innovative with his strategies and his sales strategies and the team he's building is doing a fantastic job. And so he's seeing a lot of growth out There. So there's winners on both sides of the coin, but it's more about kind of picking a path now and picking your pony and sticking with it. So. Which is an important thought because, and I'm not going to throw anybody on the bus here, but I was just having a conversation with like one of the big brand, I mean, you know, top five well known brands in Napa. And you know, she was complaining that, not complaining, but she was mentioning that their walk in traffic was off 50% or 30%. Oh yeah, and then we'll get into the Napa Valley woes in a second. But at the same time, a new rep took over the North North Bay accounts. And those people, even the regular buyers of the brand hadn't seen a rep for like three years.

27:03 And so you. And maybe because they're sitting on the laurels of the DTC and the brand name, but now it's like, oh, we better get a rep out there and start talking to these people. And I'm very close to the rep as a friend and using my Xerox sales skills and territory management skills and all those things, I was telling her how you got to go back and find these people again and, and get, get out there and start shaking the tree and then you got to find new people because that's, that's part of the leg if, if walk in Traffic is off 30, where you get membership signups and, and you know, house poor fees. You know, something's got to give here and you can't, I don't think you can give it up because I had a conversation with one of the VWE marketeers, Jessica Kogan. Brilliant woman and she was from the Cameron Hughes side of things at some point and we both agreed on this podcast and this was like probably three years ago before VW closed, that the social side of this business, the marketing side, was going to implode on itself. In other words, what you just said, the pay to play on social and the cost of acquisition is just through the roof. And if you're not really, really, really good at it and really efficient with it, you're just not going to be able to afford to pay $100 for a customer to get 75 out of them. How long can that last? Yep. In fact, it wasn't that long ago when Kevin o' Leary was on this show and he was looking. And the reason I met him was he was looking for a partner and

28:34 we were doing, I don't know, 40,000 bottles a month or something like that at the time to augment his Leary family wines. And he said that specifically said, I've looked around this industry and all I can find is people paying $100 to get a customer to get 80. That's it. And how long can do that? The era of passive growth is dead. It's gone. For many, many years, the industry was just able to grow because it was wine, right? And because we had the luxury of every publication talking about us, Wall Street Journal had a wine writer. In fact, I did a survey for, for a very, very, very well known winemaker to his, his list of 16,000 verified buyers. And one of the questions we asked was, where do you discover new wines? Number one. Number two were predictable. Once wine enthusiast Robert Parker, right? Wine advocate, or I'm sorry, Wine Spectator and Robert Parker Wine Advocate. Number three, ahead of wine enthusiasts was Golf Digest, was. There's been people talking about it. Wine was everywhere. And it just grew and it just grew and it just grew and it just grew. But a fa. But a favorable market conditions don't prove a sustainable business model, right? I think I said in one of my articles, it's the old black swan theory, right? Like 10,000 white swans don't prove all swans are white. One black one proves they aren't, right?

30:00 And so I think we're seeing that now. And you know, back to the point of, of the, the social media and the customer generation thing, when I, I hear from, from everybody, right? Chris Kohler, chopped winner, had his amazing chocolate shop in V Shops. That, by the way, V Shops in Yountville was like 10 years ago, was a spot, tons of boutiques, galleries. It was a great place to shop. There is now one tenant in V Shops in Yountville, and Chris Kohler just closed his, his chocolate shop. And I got to talk to him not long before he closed it, and he was like, yeah, man, this town's kind of a ghost percent of the year now, right? Like Bouchon's no longer serving lunch during the week. I mean, look, all of these little data points like Bounty or Rob Report used to do an annual car, the release annual car of the year show in Napa. They did one in Florida, one in Napa. They don't do the Napa one anymore because they were struggling to sell tickets, right? So all these little things side by side don't seem significant. But when you push them together, you're like, hang on, okay, there's something bigger happening here. Myself and two other vintners opened a wine barn, unfortunately, 2020, simply because of this, These. Oh, it was a disaster. That could be a whole podcast on its own. It's also kind of a cool success story in a weird way. But.

31:20 But the idea came about because we were having these conversations in 2017, like, hey, what's your taste room traffic like? Or, hey, are you finding it harder to get and keep club members? And it's down, right foot traffic is down. So you can sit and cry about it, you can blame somebody, and you could say, well, it's the industry. Well, look, when we opened our doors on March 6, 2020, and I got a call from the health department, we were packed to the brim. We had a line out the door, and the health department called me on March 16 and said, get everybody out and close your doors. We cry about it. We whine. We could say, you know, this is all BS masks, whatever. We didn't. We got to work, right? And, and we started doing speakeasy dinners and on wine tastings. And, and by the end, we were closed for a year to the day. A year to the day. We were only open 10 days, and by the day we opened, we had 212 club members. Right? Wow. And. And so, and so, but it, but it was doing the work. I put 87, 000 miles on my car in two years, right? And, and so, like, I mean, two and a half years. And so I, I. The brands are gonna get wins here. But if you're tasting wrap, traffic's down. What are you doing?

32:29 What are you doing to combat that? Right? Like, where are you going on the road? Are you spending the money, even just on local Google Ads to tell people you're open? Are you still by appointment only, right? Like, do you have a free tasting? What are you doing to combat that? You know, it's interesting. Every time you say something, I. There's a billion thoughts. But just on that thought alone, I sent an intern off last summer to Bordeaux. She got a great job at a great chateau, and she worked the summer. Well, that chateau reached out to her, and she's a Cornell enology student, and she's coming home for the summer, and that chateau reached out to her and said, we're wondering if your family would host a dinner.

33:14 Will you curate the list? And, you know, you have these people for dinner, and we'll bring the wine. And I thought, wow, how interesting. I mean, certainly there's a relationship between her and the chateau, which is great, and I advising her to do it as fast as she can do it, and. But that's really reaching out from France to. To California to host dinners to get people to taste the brand. And I thought that's really grassroots stuff. Yeah. And I think. And something you wouldn't expect from Bordeaux. No. But a critical in today's marketplace I think to have these experiences. Let me tell you a quick funny story. Just even it's a little off subject but you said the Golf Digest and that's fascinates me. And I'll tell you. Isn't that crazy? I'll tell you why it's interesting to me because years ago I won the right to be the PGA Tour Golf Wine Club. It was called pure. The gentleman that organized this link between the PGA and the Wine of the Month Club was. I can't remember his name now but you'll find it when I. When I find. I'll send it to you because he'll. The stories were crazy. But anyway we ended up flying to West Palm beach making. I was up against Diageo, Terlado and a couple other big brands but of course David and Goliath. Yeah. So we. The DT Special and he really wanted to do business with us now separate story but we won it. And the day that we. It's crazy. It took about six months for the PGA attorney and everybody to

34:44 organize the contract. It was a three way contract between the Wine of the Month Club, the PGA and this gentleman who was. Who's sort of the. The brokerage. The broker of this whole thing. The day that we received it in our inbox to start reviewing what. What the terms were. He was walking from the second, the first green to the second T in Chicago somewhere. And he was playing with, I don't know, president of one of the big golf accessory companies going over something and a tree fell and killed him out of nowhere. No wind, no rain, no nothing. They hadn't. They were walking off. They were not walking down the path, they were walking down the side of the fairway and to get there or wherever they were and then the PGA and I negotiated a couple more times and then they had to drop the whole concept because it was. They didn't have the inside power, the horsepower to do it. Can you imagine that? Wow. It's crazy. And I remember his name before we're done. But it was in the stories all over the web at the point at the time. But I want to go back to something.

35:48 We were talking about your tasting room there briefly and I had a really interesting conversation with a brilliant woman in Napa now and she's the one taking over JCB's Atelier in youn Feel. And she's coming. She's. I'm waiting for the invitation for the opening, but a concept, she says, that hasn't been tried yet, that hasn't been used as a unique concept. She wouldn't divulge what that concept is, but I'm hoping it's something that brings people to the table to create the experience around what, you know, what an honest glass of wine is. And to recruit maybe academic interest. I'm not sure if that's the right answer, maybe to recruit intellectual interest in what wine is because it does take a little curiosity to try and digest some of this stuff. It does. But I think. I think. I think that's a bit of an issue. And I think it's one of the reasons that quite frankly, what we did sort of resonated with people. So when we opened our wine bar, we chose Danville and we chose Danville. Very specific. Specifically, Danville is the downtown for Alamo Blackhawk.

36:55 Danville. I think the, the average household income is like 420,000 in the area. Right. Like, it's an intensely wealthy area. And the, the Alamo Safeway is, is one of the top Safeways for wine sales in, in California. And at least according to the research that we had. So it seemed like a slam dunk. And in some ways it was. And unfortunately the most important ways it wasn't. But we learned a lot. And I. What one of the interesting statistics I found was if there was a game on, we were far more likely to sign up club members. Right? We had a TV and we played Giants games. We play Niner games. And if the game was. It was amazing how much more likely we were to sign up if there was something else that people were interested in going on. It was, it was kind of a weird little, little statistic. And I think part of the, part of wine's barrier is the knowledge barrier, part of the thing and to be fair, and part of its mystique that there's this intense intellectual element to it. But what I found in my career on the front lines, both as a wine buyer in retail and then as a wine director on restaurant floors, and also the guy after hours that was hanging out with people drinking wine till three in the morning in my much younger days, is that it also attracts, as you said, intellectual people that may not want the wine itself to be an intellectual experience, but the history and the mystery and the mystique around it is just

38:28 enough for them to want to add it to their Moment, right. Like, just because it should attract curious people, that doesn't mean they have to be curious about wine. And that, that right there is, is, is, I think a big barrier is that so many experiences in nap it have become this intellectual exercise, right, like, where you can't, like, just taste one to talk about football. Right. Like, and everything has to be like, I'm gonna sit down with you for an hour and a half. It's 150 bucks. And I want to see this wine hit you emotionally, like, off. Right? You know, like, I mean, sorry about that. Sorry, aunt. I know your aunt listens to that. I'm sorry. Sorry. He won't. He warned me.

39:09 So, so, you know, and there's room for some of that. There'll always be room for some of that, as there was 10 years ago, 15 years ago. But 15 years ago there were also places that you could just wander into and it'd be packed and there'd be shoulder to shoulder people at the tasting bar. And like, for, for those of us on the other side of the bar, that was fun too, right? The energy, the, the, the, the camaraderie, the crazy conversations that, you know, I used to. My favorite Saturdays working in tasting rooms were the ones that were just slamming where you finished the day and, and everybody was tired and you lost like five pounds because you got 27,000 steps. And, and you see you talk to 150 different people from 10 different countries and, and, and they had fun and they connected with wine and the way they want to connect with wine, not the way that was forced upon them. And so I, I think while there will always be. And it's one of the reasons that I still love wine. I love the subtleties, I love the earth, the stories. You know, the way that if a vineyard is planted next to a eucalyptus grove, it might smell like mint, but it won't taste like all those little things, right? I like those little things, but I also like to just have a glass of wine and talk about art or movies or, you know, my Indiana Hoosiers or what. Like, wine is an accompaniment to a moment for me, right? Because there's, there's a story in it, but wine doesn't have to be the moment, right. I think one of the, the brilliant things about a show like Seinfeld is kind of a sidebar for me here. New York was always a character in the story, but it wasn't a character in the story, right? Like, New York was very much character. Story.

40:41 Wine can be a character in the story in somebody's story without having to be the story. Right. And there's sometimes when it is the story, when you. When you're sitting down with people that want to export, that are naturally curious about the origin and the process and the earth and the time and all the things that it takes to make a really subtle, truly exceptional wine. And there's somebody that wants to hear about that for 30 seconds and then just enjoy the way it tastes with the moment that they're in. And I think that the future of wine is that there's always going to be the Harlans and the Screaming Eagles of the world. There's always going to be that. And I'm not even saying there's not room for more brands like that. I'm saying that if that's what you are, be honest about it and be open to the fact that the version of that winery that existed 10 years ago may not be the version that can succeed today as a startup brand. That's exactly right. And I think that bears out in so many stories that have come to Napa and realized that they got us just to get started, they had to be over $150 a bottle. And now you've got to develop a brand inside of a very small niche of people that would spend that kind of money, that would appreciate collecting that kind of wine. I have two or three customers left over from Wine of the Month Club that only collects, and they call me and they go, can you fill in my vertical for Mouton? I need a two, you know, 2019. I need a 2018, you know, and I look for this stuff. But let me. This is an interesting concept. You just brought it up.

42:13 There's two things I wrote down, and we're almost out of time. We were in Portugal, and I've told the story before, but we had. It was the most incredible wine service I'd ever experienced. And I. I tipped the guy ���60 privately, other than the table tip, because it was such an enthusiastic. And it was a, you know, it was a nice Italian super Tuscan. But I wasn't orn a lie or anything like that. But it was, I think, Guido Tasso Antonori's wine. Great one. Yeah. And he. But he made you feel like you were just part of the program. And I. It was his Slovenian guy who ended up in Palermo. And I thought. Then I went to a dinner at Steakhouse in Beverly Hills and gotten a conversation with the Psalm. And he was the exact opposite of that. He was the guy touting the vintages he's tasted and the snobbery of the wine and what he knows about wine and didn't let you get a word in as wise. And I thought, I wonder if we're not only self propagating, some of this aristocracy and some of this 100% are as part of it. Yeah, we absolutely are. You know what the best hospitality. And I've told this story, I actually wrote about it on LinkedIn.

43:23 The best hospitality experience I've had in Nap Valley was at the vacuum shop. Been around 40 years on Jefferson Ave. Yeah, like kind of set back from the street. It's kind of place you'll drive by 100 times and you know it's there. I needed a vacuum. I'm kind of, when, when, you know, you talk about buyer Personas. Right. Well, I'm a local board. If I need something, I'll always look to try and buy it locally. Before I go to Target, before I go to. So I walked into Napa's vacuum shop that I knew had been there forever and I, I wanted a vacuum. That's it. There was nothing emotional about it. I wasn't invested. I wanted a vacuum and I want to shop local. Please sell me a vacuum. So I go in there and I didn't even know it was for sale, like from a marketer and retail guy. All I see are like tons of missed opportunities and clutter and like signage isn't anywhere. There aren't any prices on anything. I don't know what's getting fixed, what's, what's actually a floor model. Like it was crazy.

44:14 And then all of a sudden this guy pops up from behind the counter with like one of those like monocles, those magnifying monocles. And he's like, hey, how you doing? Give me one second. And so he comes out, he wipes his hands off, shakes my hand and it's like, you know, starts off with like his dad joke. Like, I'm guessing you're here for a vacuum. I was like, yeah. And, and, and, and he, he was, and I was like, yeah, I just, I need a vacuum. I don't know, like, like ours broke and I need a new vacuum. I like to shop local. I've driven by you guys a few times. I again, I went in expecting, here's my card. Give me that vacuum. Have a nice life. Right? Like that was what I expected that transaction to be. He starts asking questions, he's like, well, do you have pets?

44:58 What kind of pets? How many do you have? One floor or two hardwood well, is it actually hardwood or is it luxury vinyl tile? Is it. Is it. How old is it? Right? Like, do you have carpet? What kind of carpet is. Do you have a picture of it? Right? You know, what are the. What are the breeds? All these questions, and he starts talking about canned versus non canned and bagless versus bagless and why Dyson sucks and why mine broke and why, you know, all the. An hour later, I walked out with an $1800 vacuum that I'm certain is the Bugatti of vacuums. That I have never been more. I. I have never in my life been excited about a vacuum. I couldn't wait to tell my. I show people to come to the house. I'm like, check out this vacuum, right? Like, it's. It's. And it is amazing. He was 100% right. I have two German shepherds that all they do is shed. And it's amazing. But here's this guy that has owned this business for 40 years. And I walked in the door, and his service completely changed the context of how I viewed his business.

46:06 Because now I don't see clutter. I see the shop of an extremely learned man, right? He's an expert in his craft. The one time I had a problem with the vacuum, he's like, bring it in. Fix it in five seconds. Like, good. Good to go for another five years. See that? Right? And. And he. He made the vacuum about me. He brought. He made my story, the part that chose the vacuum. And. And so now this weird little Mila vacuum means more to me than 99% of the bottles in my cell. But that's. That's beautiful. And. And that's what it is, right? Like that. That's what it really is. That's why people. That's what resin resonated with people about our wine bars. They had the owners behind the bar, our vendor behind the bar, right? Like, they had. They had somebody that cared, right? That, like, really cared, wasn't paid to care, wasn't just a passionate person.

46:57 It's why the owner will always outsell the best employee, right? Because you're talking to the person that's in. That's invested it, that's there. That. That relationship put. Yeah. When I was selling, the. The cycle of the Wine Month Club was we started in a wine shop, and so we met everybody that came in the shop. Then my dad stumbled across this idea of going to a food show or a state fair. Landed at the state LA County Fair for free for 20. 20. 20 by 2020. Booth in 1984 and doubled his membership from 400, 800 in 20 days. And all of a sudden we realized, and I credit this, and I use this all the time when I talk to wineries or DTC companies.

47:44 That handshake was. What was the reason we had such enduring loyalty. Like when the Internet came and Groupon and all the freebies that you could get created this terrible loyalty. And so your average customer went from, you know, 24 months down to two or four or three months. And so you can never get your money back when you spend acquisition costs. But anyway, that's that what I brought up. What I thought was interesting, what you said was, this is, this is the part that on LinkedIn is that I object to because what he did was probably just naturally because he loves the subject, but what he did was he made you part of, of the conversation in that I'm going to find out what your needs are, and you may not even know what they are. You know, I. You're going to tell me I need to pick up dog hair, but I need to ask you more questions to understand what that dog hair is and how often it is. Whatever goes into deciding what feature of a vacuum will solve your problem.

48:45 That's old school sales. I mean, we set hours in Xerox sales school learning how to, how to create the need or peel back the need, understand it. And I don't, I don't think that's over with. I, I don't think how you can ever sell anything without understanding the consumer's needs and making them feel like you're doing them. You're on. You're connecting their needs with your solution. And that's how this deal got done. You just said, this is $1,800. This is 200. You would have walked out the door. Yes, you hit something. You know, in part of my consulting, I do a lot of frontline training, training, sales staff training. You know, my buddy is like a God of own sales, phone sales. So I'll bring him in to train on that, you know, and his big thing is building relationships. One of the things I teach in building relationships is if you want to start a relationship with somebody, take an interest and then tell them a secret, right. Ask questions, right? What are you into? What do you like? When I'm training a young one, the first thing you should ask, don't tell them about a wine. Don't force one on them. Ask them what they usually drink. Start there like, what are you into?

49:55 What do you usually drink? I don't care if it's not wine, what are you into? If you don't drink wine, you know, but then tell them a secret. And this is. This guy did this perfectly because he was like, so why do you need a new vacuum? Do you just break? Why did it break? I was like, well, you know, we got these dogs. And he's like, oh, what kind? You know, and we start talking about dogs, and he's a dog guy. And he was like, well, you know, with dogs and the carpet that you have, certain vacuums can actually void the warranty of that carpet. I was like, what? He took an interest and he told me a secret. Now I'm in, right? Like, and now he's got me. The biggest problem with this, though, is it doesn't scale, right? There's. There's. It's very, very, very difficult to scale through relationship building. You can train how to ask questions. You can train how to be personable. You can train how to listen. You can train how to take notes. You can all those things. You can have the CRMs, you can have AI, you can do all the fancy stuff.

50:51 But it's very difficult to scale actual relationship building. And it's a word you hear more and more on wine. Scale, scale, scale. Whereas the wines that are lasting, the wines that you see now, the Chateau Patels, the ridges, the ones that go on for decades and decades, didn't start to scale. They started to make great wine and talk to people that wanted to drink great wine and whether they wanted to talk about great wine. They made them part of the story and brought them into the transaction. They brought them into the ark, right? And people saying it for years. There's members of Ridge that have literally been members of Ridge longer than I've been alive.

51:38 What a crazy testament, right? Like, what a. What a crazy testament to customer loyalty. And so I hope this new place gets back to that, right? I hope this new place kind of gets back to that. Bringing curious people in, regardless of whether or not they're actually curious about wine. Putting them around a table and keeping them there. Well, Jan, Phil could use it. Holy cow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to close with this thought because we were talking about the experience of wine and the conversation of wine at dinner time. And I find this really fascinating because of my experience. Of course, we're going to dinner tomorrow night with some friends. Wine will be part of the conversation. It won't be the reason for the conversation, but it'll come around to that, because particularly if I bring a bottle or Two for the celebration. It won't be the primary subject, but at some point it will be talked about.

52:35 And the point I'm making is with the aristocracy of wine and most 99% of the population. Well, I mean, if you listen to the Wine Institute of California, 75% of the population doesn't drink wine. Those are the 75% of the people that are slightly intimidated to even have a conversation and will tell you, I don't know what I. I don't know what I'm talking about. You know, if you bring it up the wrong way, but if you pour a glass of wine and somebody said, this is really good, and you tell a brief story, or you just say, yeah, this is. We have so many conversations about wine that otherwise wouldn't have happened if I didn't open the bottle of port over some other conversation, like something else was going on. It was dinner or that we're having guests or somebody was from another country and we were talking about their. Their. Their culture, and all of a sudden the conversation occurs and it's completely unintimidating. It's completely, you know, not opinionated, but it's. It's just partially opinionated. Partially. And they start to ask questions without intimidation, without feeling like they're going to barrage with an answer that's going to numb their brain after they're done with it. And it just fascinates me that aristocracy exists, but at the same time, there are these unintimidating conversations occurring every night at people that deal with wine. Isn't that the premise of shows like Drops of God, things like that, where the subject is wine, but it's not wine, you know? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think, you know, you go back and you see the classic poets like Baudelaire and Keats, right,

54:07 writing these long and lengthy odes to wine and its place kind of in society. But I think wine's magic wines trick the thing it has, I think, over everybody else. I wrote an article called why I Never Found its country song, right? Because you've got whiskey and beer that are very, very cleverly aligned and clearly aligned with lifestyles, right? Like they align with that rural. They align with country. I mean, find me a modern country song without the word whiskey or beer in it. I dare you. And. And.

54:48 But Whiskey in. In, to its credit, has also aligned with the luxury consumer very well. It's. It's seen a massive resurgence in the past 10 years, and luxury whiskeys are a very real thing and a very successful category. But. But what wine Wine has this. This kind of incalculable mysticism to it. It's got this magic, it's got this sexiness, this. This. This allure, right, that appeal a secret part of ourselves. There's a reason that this has been the drink that's attracted, you know, poets and actors and chefs and kings and paupers and alike for centuries, right? And that. That hasn't changed. Right? That. That hasn't changed. And. And for me, as someone, as a professional that tries to figure out how to. To talk to people and how to get them interested, lately I've found myself not wanting to talk to people that aren't interested. If they want to talk, great. Just have. It's like an album. Have it on in the background, right? Have it part of the moment. And don't be afraid to put ice cubes. Is it hot outside? Don't give somebody a refrigerator. Chilled Chardonnay. Put five ice cubes in a glass green aux blanc. Don't tell them what it is. Put them in a solo cup. Just be like, here, check this out. This is good. And then stop talking about it, right?

56:14 Make it part of the moment, part of the event. And if they want to know more, they will tell you. If not, just let them freaking enjoy it. You gotta. I've gotta grab a piece of paper because I gotta read this to you. This is from Hemingway's Movable Feast. Okay. And I. I will close with this because we're already at an hour. As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea in their faint metallic taste, that could. That the cold wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture. And as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling. It began to be happy and to make plans. And that just that. Just when I saw this and I made a big, giant copy of it, it just reached into my. My brain and my heart about what wine is. And I lost that empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.

57:12 It was so powerful. Well, since you did that to me, I'm going to end with my favorite one. Keats is ode to a nightingale. Oh, for a draft of vintage that have been cooled a long age in deep delved earth tasting floor in the country green dance and Provencal song and sunburnt mirth. Oh, for a beaker full of warm south full of the true, the bl. Blushful hip cream with beaded bubbles winking at the brim and purple Stained mouth and this is the part I love. That I might drink and leave the world unseen and with thee fade away into the forest dim.

57:54 Sometimes wine is a moment alone. Right? Sometimes it's not you wanting to be loud. It's not you wanting to. To talk to anyone or chat about golf or be, hey, you know, making merry with your buddies. Somet. Sometimes it's just you in a moment, quiet, not on social media with a glass of wine. Whatever your thoughts are and not what anyone else thinks. And I love the way he said that because in modern marketing, so much of wine is social. So much of wine is people drinking together around a table. And I get that that's a massive, massive part of wine. But the beauty of wine is there's a solitude in it as well. And I love that. That I might drink and leave the world unseen within Modern. In the modern world where everything you do online is tracked and every company tries to treat you like their best friend and everybody needs to be a thinkfluencer. You're not going to get job offers.

58:50 Sometimes it's just nice to sit quiet with a glass of wine and tell the world to just stay outside. I love it. Been an honor to have on the show, Louis. I think we should do it again as needle moves forward on some of this other stuff. Stuff. And maybe we'll solve a problem or two. Yeah, I'd love to. This has been great. Thank you for having me. We're up all the time. Maybe we'll tilt the glass together. I sometimes I'll bring my little portable studio and just sit the hotel lobby or in a conference room and do other podcasts. So we'll keep you posted. Well, and maybe we go check out that new spot in the Outville when it gets open. Yes. Karen Laz. That's who it is. Oh, in that case, I'm very excited to see it. Yeah, that's what he's doing it. Cheers. Cheers.