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

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I do think it's time for brands to really look at what's working

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and pour gasoline on it. If you're seeing any signs of life, if you're new

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in upstart brand, if you, if you're seeing growth and you're seeing honest

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opportunities, pour gasoline on it. Follow that, that

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light, sit back and grab a glass. It's

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Wine Talks with Paul K.

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Hey, welcome to Wine Talks with Paul Kay. And we are in studio today in

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beautiful Southern California to have a conversation with Lewis. Did you

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go by Lewis or Louie to everybody but mom and dad?

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Louis. Louis Lewis Kelly, because your mom

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probably puts your middle name in there because she's upset with you about something.

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Yes. Hey, welcome. And the third, she always adds the

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third, right? Welcome to the show. I'm looking forward to having this conversation. You

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know, Louis Collie has built a career across retail, wine

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hospitality, direct to consumer marketing, consulting, winery

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experiences and executive leadership. His perspective is valuable because

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he bridges consumer behavior and winery

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strategy. And that's a really important feature. And I want

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to read why you're on the show. This is really why you're on the show.

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I may follow you on LinkedIn, I'm not sure, but when I read this,

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wine has gotten so unbelievably soft, which is your

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title for this article, it walks around whining and making

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apologies. That was the greatest opening line I've ever

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read. And maybe it sounds,

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you know, trivial, but because of the industry today, with

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so many, you know, so much whining, so

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many complaining, so doom and gloom, so this. Oh, that. And just kind of

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like, you know, people seem to be making a platform out of just

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complaining instead of like doing something about

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it. I would agree. You know, I've been, I've been doing consulting for

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quite some time and not only whining

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and complaining, but continuing to do the same thing,

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polishing the same stone harder. Well, we need

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to generate cash flow. So we're going to take a wine that was $150 yesterday,

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put a new label on it, charge $250 tomorrow and sell

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20 cases. But I've seen

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lately, particularly with all the health things that have come about in the,

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in the past five to seven years, the World Health Organization, the studies

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are saying no amount of drinking is healthy, particularly as you age.

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And instead of wine kind of

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in my mind, instead of wine trying to kind of rediscover

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itself in that reality or maybe leaning more into what it actually

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is, into its edges, the thing, the reasons that people align with

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it to Begin with. Particularly on LinkedIn, which

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is kind of its own weird ecosystem. But

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you see everybody saying, well, yeah, but the study is

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wrong, because, yeah, but this or, yeah, but that, but wine

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is. And it's become this weird,

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weak, whiny kind of culture

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of, oh, woe is me. Oh, oh, no. Like

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the World Health Organization said, alcohol is bad for you. Like, they invented

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that concept. Yeah. And retreating

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rather than going on the attack, which. Which I think is

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an opportunity that's missed for a lot of brands, not every brand. The

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French paradox. There you go. I mean, like, how is it this radically

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changed from 1990, where it suggests here that

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it's a huge component of a healthy lifestyle

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compared to the generational change today,

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which is like. Like we were at the fancy food show a couple years ago

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in Vegas when they moved it to Vegas, which I was happy they did because

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it was in San Francisco, which

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the thematic backbone of the show for

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beverage was non alk, and you can't even

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drink this stuff. And I don't understand the value of a non alk wine when

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it comes to. What are you trying to prove when you're just walking around a

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party with a glass of wine that you can't really stomach and

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it doesn't add any romantic value because it doesn't taste good.

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What do you think that's come from besides the World Health Organization?

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Because what bothers me more is

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it's not a huge market and everybody's jumping all over it. I mean, we're making

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all kinds of stuff and it's almost being forced

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upon us. Well, this is the classic industry thing. Anybody

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that's been frontline in this business has seen this play out countless times. I mean,

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I could tell you back in the 2000s, when I was in restaurants and retail,

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when it was at the renaissance of kind of the new New Zealand Sauvignon

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Blanc, right? And the trait of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc

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that everybody was like, ooh, it's got grapefruit, it's got grapefruit. Within two

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years, the market was flooded with grapefruit juice. Sauv

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Blanc, that was nothing but liquid lightning, right? And. And nothing but acid.

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And that's not necessarily a bad thing, but this is kind of what the industry

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does. Oh, everybody needs seltzer. Oh, everybody needs wine in a can everybody want. I

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mean, I. Winemakers right now that are actually labeling

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their Sauvignon Blanc as low alcohol, despite the fact that the alcohol's never

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changed on it, right? Like, it's 11%. So it's lower than

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13%. So I'm going to market it as. And, and I mean, great. Good for

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you. I mean one of the most famous moves of all time was Robert mondavi

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in the 60s saw Blanc wasn't selling very well. So he remarketed it as Fume

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Blanc and it flew off, flew off the shelves. I mean Even in the 2000s

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I was still selling a ton of that stuff. So I, I do think there's

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some of the. Oh no, right. As. As which is a natural reaction. Like things

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are changing, right? We got to release a no alk line. We got to get

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lean more into the no alk side rather than taking a breath and like

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looking at the data, developing a strategy of something meaningful and moving forward

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rather than just throwing more product at the market. I

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agree with that completely. I don't think product is a solution. The product's

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too ingrained in the human society, you know,

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thousands and thousands of years old for it to be

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directed by packaging a pouch. I mean, can you imagine the

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romantic experience of this new pouch that came out? I mean like a

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baby, like an applesauce. I mean who would do

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that? And it is a knee jerk reaction to,

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to the consumption change. And that's part of

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life in the world of business. You know, people ebb and flow. Just like

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you said, Fume Blanc, you know, Robin Mondavi's experiment with Fume Blanc.

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How about, you know, you could Sancerre, you could buy all day long

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five years ago and now it's like this hot product and it'll soon be no

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longer the hottest product. There'll be something else, tannat or something will come out of

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the woodwork as the great, as the great beverage. But it

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seems to me, to me our woes are more tied in

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business trying to maximize the value of their industry.

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And so they plant more. They try to predict five years down the road what

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the consumption is going to be. They've overplanted because it's changed.

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I mean, let's not forget 2004 when most of

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pastor world was just hanging on the vine because there were no contracts

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and the consumption was off and there was way too much supply. Isn't

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that just part of it? I think there's always

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going to be two sides to the pendulum, right? Like it's going to swing both

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ways. I do think what we're seeing now though is not,

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is not a small swing. This is a generational shift in attitude

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in, in, in culture. You know, we're, we're Seeing something that

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everybody needs to get right with. And the thing I'm privately

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excited about as someone that lives and has lived in smack, the smack dab in

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the middle of wine country in Napa Valley for the last almost 20 years

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is that we're moving into the kind of thing private equity hates.

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And private equity came in, saw,

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saw blood in the water, and they started buying up brands, creating these,

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these brand houses and taking

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bulk projects, putting labels online and brands, brands, brands, brands, brands.

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I mean, there's a reason if you go into a grocery store in Portland, Maine,

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you see 80% the same wine set as a grocery store in Napa Valley, Right?

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And so I think selfishly,

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what we're going to start to see is not the death of the wine industry,

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this doom and gloom. I mean, yeah, change is happening. What we're seeing is a

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correction. And what we're seeing is the weak brands are failing

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and that private equities no longer smells blood in the water. They're going to other,

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deeper oceans. Right? And so I think we're in

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the midst of a much needed and very scary industry

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correction where the middle is being hollowed out. The weak

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brands on the low end are really using. But as the really

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losing. But as the 2026 SVB Winer Port saw,

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the brands on the other end are actually winning. There are brands absolutely winning right

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now, their brands doing well, their brands seeing growth. And so there are

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some positives here. But. But to your point, more product is definitely

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not the solution. In fact, it's the opposite of it. I think it's more serious

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product that is honest about who they're trying to speak to. I mean, I. One

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of my classics that's been around for many, for decades, that's still

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considered one of the great wines of the world is done. I love their website.

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I love their messaging, I love Randy, I love Mike. I love everything about

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them. You know, you go to their website and it's clear they are. There's a

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picture of randy from the 80s on a tractor having a beer,

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right? Like, there's. There's a collection of

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patina, weathered viticulture and enology

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journals that they've collected over the years with a bunch of dried rattlesnake

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skins hanging next to them. Like you know what you're getting into. And they know

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who they're talking to and they know their purpose and why they

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exist and they're not afraid to speak that language. And, and I'd

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just like, I'd like to see more brands start to do that. It

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seems like, you know, that I have this term which maybe I

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didn't make it up, but you know, an honest glass of wine. I, I have

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this romantic view of what will be happening.

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And it's exactly what you're saying. We're settling on the established

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brands in the sense of that they have a message and they have a, they

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have an honesty about them and they have a story about them and they have

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a, a reflection of what wine is supposed

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to be, which is a sense of time and place. And I think

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that honest approach is important and it goes back to kind of what happened

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in the 70s when wine was becoming popular and the judgment of Paris was

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around all that, which is sort of this experiential side of wine where we get

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to experience what wine is talking about. Rattlesnake skins

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hanging on, hanging on, you know, the side of the wall, which is

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sort of showing us our history because it is about the

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story. And the story can't be, I got this for three

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bucks on the Internet, right? Yeah, that's not a good story and

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the wine's not good either. But I want to go back to your venture capital

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thing. It's really interesting because when I was running the Wine of the Month club,

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it was really obvious what was going on in the financial world because I

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belong to one of these organizations where you put your name up as an expert

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in some field and you could tell when

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they're putting their toe in the water. Because I'd get these phone calls for these

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one hour brainstorming sessions and I'd get paid 750

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bucks to answer their questions. And what's interesting to me

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about those times was the questions were really

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misguided. They were, they showed a complete lack

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of understanding of what they might be getting into and,

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and maybe hence some of the reasons why so much has failed.

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Let me ask you this question. Why then are we seeing John

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12's Jean Charles buying up every winery

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he can find? Why are we seeing Chanel buy into

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Rud? Why are these, is this a, a glimpse into what

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people think that's going to happen to the industry in the future? So I have

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some interesting, a unique insight on jcb because I worked for

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him. Specifically I worked for Patrick, his, his now

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VP of marketing. Brilliant guy, phenomenal marketer.

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Jean Charles is, is such a,

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I, I, he's basically the P.T. barnum of, of

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wine. Right, See, that's a great way to say it.

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See though, I always get that reaction. But I also always tell people

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Google Greatest marketers in history. Just Google it and tell me

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the list. You will not find one without P.T. barnum on it. And

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the reason is he was the first

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published to really understand his audience and

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exactly how to speak to them. Jean Charles has this character, this Persona,

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and he's made himself part of the brand, but when you get him behind closed

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doors, he's crazy like a fox. The guy is very savvy. And I recently

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had somebody said to me, did you Hear JCB closed five tasting rooms or

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four tasting rooms or whatever it was in 2024, you know, Buena

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Vista. And then the, the one in Youtville that I actually, that was one of

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my last duties, was helping the team open that.

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But he's closing four because he opened four.

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He had the guts to go out and test and say, hey, we think

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this. I have a hypothesis. Let's go run it. And they run it, but

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then in five years, they run the math, which is, quite

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frankly, something I see over and over, is that wineries love to have ideas,

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but then the idea never has to defend itself. It achieves permanent citizenship. Because

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nobody wants to have the awkward conversation. Let me tell you right now, Jean Charles

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is not afraid of having an awkward conversation. In fact, he's. He loves having it

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to your face in front of people. And so

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I think I like, I don't agree with

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everything he's doing, but I like that he's honest

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about who he is. Right. Like whether that resonates with

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you or not. And, and I like that

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there's still somebody in the business because he's not an outsider. I mean, his

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family is one of the most famous and legendary winemaking families in France.

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And, and, and he's an insider that deeply, not only cares

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about the industry as a whole, but this valley, he really, genuinely does.

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And, and so I like that he's at least

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willing to try things. Right. They may be insane, they may be

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totally, but they're not private equity plays. They're not,

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you know, calling a guy and giving him $700 for his, for his

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advice, asking weird questions and then throwing money at the

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problem. He, he, he, he comes at it from the

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perspective from the place of a wine guy, which I love. May not be the

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one guy I am, may not be the wine guy you are, but, but he's

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a wine person. He's an industry person that wants the industry to grow. And so

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I think I, I like that. From the JCB perspective,

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I do think we're going to see more brand acquisitions. I mean, we're already seeing

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it. You know, Vintage Wine Estates failed a couple years ago, went belly

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up at a couple friends that were casualties of that.

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And a lot of those brands have been bought up. But then like the CEO

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of Vintage Wine Estates went out and bought Sojourn Fire the staff like the next

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day. And, and so we're going to see a

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lot of change as, as part of this correction. And, and a lot of brands

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are going to fade, some brands are going to rise. Money will always be around.

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Money will always be in the wine business. Money will always be here to,

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to try to squeeze every drop out of the turnip. Right. Every drop of blood

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out of the stone. But I, I, we're going to see a softening of

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it and I think we already have. And, well, that was

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part of the point of the question. I'm glad you brought up Vintage Wine Estates.

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I mean, there's a company that went public and failed like within 12

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months, wink, not as a crazy company, went public and failed

251
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in a few months. I sold my company in

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2023 and we were actually in a position just to walk away

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from it because 2023 was going to be such a

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poor thing and we had done it for 35 years. My wife and I were

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like, well, you know what, we don't want to process 38 tax returns in

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the next quarter, so we'll just go away. When they bought it, but

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oddly it was sold. I didn't even

258
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bicker on the price because I didn't want to lose it

259
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to the price because somebody offered us something.

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Well, that company that bought it sold it 12 months later

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and sold it to the guy who was the lowest

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price offered when I first sold it. So I know he did, I know

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he didn't overpay for it. So, so there's, I mean, that's

264
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classic. That's classic. Remember, remember when Costa Brown was like the

265
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Pinot everybody had to have. It's like, William, sell him Sea Smoke coast of Brown.

266
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Right? Those were, those are three pinots everybody had to have. They made 600 cases,

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everybody wanted them, yet it was like a two year wait list. Now they make

268
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like 16,000 or 6,000 or something. The brands change hands like three or four times,

269
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maybe more. You know, I mean, we see it repeatedly

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and I wonder, you know, there is a romantic reason to get

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in this industry. There's people always feel like, and I used to say this all

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the time with earlier days when if you were a successful

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freeway contractor and you finally got to build your winery or you're a

274
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successful real estate guy, or you're a successful surgeon. And, you know, the

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attraction of the lifestyle up in Napa Valley is by your big chateau

276
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and, you know, hire a crew and make wine. Then you realize this is really

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hard. You can't make any money. The margins suck, and it's not so

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romantic anymore, and you have to really try to work at it.

279
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But you're right. There's an emerging brand. I had

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Jean Noel on the show who owns Chateau Patel,

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which was vgs. Yeah. And he was. Yeah.

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Well, his story is incredible. And I bought a lot of zinfandel from him

283
00:17:36,660 --> 00:17:40,380
back in the day as chef de botel. And then you probably

284
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know the story, got sick, and then he sold everything. And then now he's back

285
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and, you know, he's doing great. And it's all dtc. There's

286
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no marketing, no social, there's no nothing. And he sells

287
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everything he makes. And I find that fascinating

288
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that, that he's able to make that work. And I'm wondering what the deaf, you

289
00:17:57,960 --> 00:18:01,680
know, how. This is what you do. How does. How does that

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winery find that path? You

291
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know, rather there's a can or trying to, you

292
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know, roll with the punches of the marketplace. How does that Branding. I

293
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guess if we knew the million dollar question, but how does that. How do we

294
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peel back that brand? How do we find our. Our path to do

295
00:18:19,940 --> 00:18:23,660
that? Well, it's going to be very hard for any brand now to do what

296
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Chateau Patel has done, because that's. That's like saying, well, how do I build the

297
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next Ridge? Well, you start Ridge in 1974. Right. Like, that's,

298
00:18:30,860 --> 00:18:34,580
That's. That's how you build that. Right. The. The

299
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CEO of Ridge is a good buddy of mine, Ryan. He's been in the industry

300
00:18:37,060 --> 00:18:40,780
for, For a long time. I just had lunch with him a couple weeks ago.

301
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He's been with Ridge, I think, like, 15 years now. But they're doing

302
00:18:44,660 --> 00:18:48,500
great. The broad market's feeling it, but they're killing it

303
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because they're Ridge. Right. But they've stayed. Ridge is one of the few

304
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wineries that stayed very, very, very true to their roots, but

305
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also found ways to evolve within that messaging that not just being

306
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stale and not just being like, hey, heritage, buy us. You know,

307
00:19:02,460 --> 00:19:06,220
Hyde's tried that, and they really struggled, you know, 10

308
00:19:06,380 --> 00:19:10,140
years ago. But Ridge is doing very well because of that

309
00:19:10,140 --> 00:19:13,980
kind of commitment to. Radical commitment to who they are and the

310
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truth. Honest, honest wine. Right. Montebello will always be a classic Their

311
00:19:17,760 --> 00:19:21,560
Zen's will always be classic. They got a tasting room paso that's, that's doing

312
00:19:21,560 --> 00:19:24,920
really well because they set realistic expectations for it.

313
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They're making a passo appellated wine. I believe so.

314
00:19:29,000 --> 00:19:32,480
In fact, I think, and Ryan would correct me on this, I believe

315
00:19:32,480 --> 00:19:36,160
Pasta Ridge was the first winery to put Pasta Robles on their

316
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label. I believe.

317
00:19:41,160 --> 00:19:44,320
But amazing ones. But then you've got Chateau Patel. I used to sell Chateau patel

318
00:19:44,320 --> 00:19:47,820
in the VGs back in the two. I carried it. Yeah. Carried it in retail.

319
00:19:47,820 --> 00:19:51,340
I did very well with it. So they've got legacy, but they've also got a

320
00:19:51,340 --> 00:19:54,860
founder story that's meaningful. Let's, let's face it, there's a lot of Napa wineries

321
00:19:54,860 --> 00:19:58,580
nowadays. The founder story is I made a gajillion dollars doing

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something else. I loved wine because I traveled to Nat Valley, I bought a winery

323
00:20:02,500 --> 00:20:06,340
fleet. Malcolm makes it, Jim Barber farms it. Tada. Right.

324
00:20:06,740 --> 00:20:10,100
Like there's, there's a lot of, and there's a lot of great wine made that

325
00:20:10,100 --> 00:20:12,940
way. Don't get me wrong, it makes some phenomenal wine, but it's not, it's not

326
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really a story. But the Chateau Patel story is a story. You

327
00:20:16,770 --> 00:20:20,570
know, here's a founder who saw, sold his brand, saw what happened, had

328
00:20:20,570 --> 00:20:23,890
his own struggle, health struggles and came back and is, is

329
00:20:24,210 --> 00:20:27,970
slugging it out in the trenches again. Right. Like, and everything

330
00:20:27,970 --> 00:20:31,050
that comes with it you get. And it's true for somebody like Adam Lee, you

331
00:20:31,050 --> 00:20:34,770
know the, that did Suduri. Right. His fans are rabid

332
00:20:34,770 --> 00:20:38,530
fans. He could make pretty much any wine. And his new

333
00:20:38,530 --> 00:20:41,650
wine Clarice, which Adam Lee wines are freaking amazing,

334
00:20:42,210 --> 00:20:45,940
is doing really well because they attached to Adam Lee. They didn't attach

335
00:20:45,940 --> 00:20:49,020
necessarily to the brand. Like, tell me what you're working on, Adam. I'm in, like,

336
00:20:49,020 --> 00:20:52,420
keep me on your list. I, I love your personality. I love the way you

337
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make wine. I love the flavor profile. And so I think

338
00:20:55,940 --> 00:20:59,700
there's, there's a lot of that true for Chateau Patel, but new brands, there's,

339
00:20:59,700 --> 00:21:03,500
there's still room for new brands to win, but

340
00:21:03,500 --> 00:21:07,220
it's going to be harder. It's, it's, it's, it's a lot

341
00:21:07,220 --> 00:21:10,610
harder. And it's going to be different. It's, it's a, you can't keep

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00:21:10,610 --> 00:21:14,290
polishing the same stone. I think it's

343
00:21:14,290 --> 00:21:18,050
accurate. I was, I'm not going to name any names here,

344
00:21:18,050 --> 00:21:21,730
but there's interesting approaches and there's this one guy on LinkedIn that talks about

345
00:21:21,730 --> 00:21:25,370
the old sales And I'm an old sales guy. I lived in Breathe

346
00:21:25,370 --> 00:21:28,530
Sales. I'm from the Xerox training schools and I sold.

347
00:21:29,330 --> 00:21:32,490
And so it has a different approach and I don't think, I don't. And he,

348
00:21:32,490 --> 00:21:36,170
he talks about that approach no longer works in the distribution

349
00:21:36,170 --> 00:21:39,250
side of things. I don't necessarily agree with that completely, but let's just talk about

350
00:21:39,250 --> 00:21:42,790
that for a second. When Covid was starting and we were in

351
00:21:42,790 --> 00:21:46,430
Napa. I've told this story before. I, I had a conversation with,

352
00:21:46,510 --> 00:21:50,310
with Sarah the, the wine beat writer at the Napa Valley

353
00:21:50,310 --> 00:21:53,990
Register at Oxbow and I thought she wanted to interview this

354
00:21:53,990 --> 00:21:56,710
glowing report about the Wine of the Month club and the first guy that ever

355
00:21:56,710 --> 00:22:00,190
did this. And no, she wanted really me to help her understand

356
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what was going to happen to the wineries that weren't tech

357
00:22:03,790 --> 00:22:07,430
savvy, that didn't have a chat bar on their website going into

358
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co. What was going to happen. And as you know, Covid was

359
00:22:10,900 --> 00:22:14,660
incredibly successful for anybody that was online. We were up 30%, could

360
00:22:14,660 --> 00:22:18,460
do no wrong, could sell anything I wanted to. But that leads to this

361
00:22:18,460 --> 00:22:22,180
idea since you're talking to winers and consulting that this

362
00:22:22,180 --> 00:22:25,780
three legged approach to balancing their sales volume and

363
00:22:25,780 --> 00:22:29,420
hopefully one makes up the other at least balances the other one. That would

364
00:22:29,420 --> 00:22:33,140
be of course trade walk in traffic at the tasting

365
00:22:33,140 --> 00:22:36,340
room. It'd be distribution traffic which is of course

366
00:22:36,740 --> 00:22:40,460
the least profitable. And then there's DTC which is the

367
00:22:40,460 --> 00:22:44,180
most profitable. Do you see that as a valid

368
00:22:44,180 --> 00:22:48,020
balance still this three legged stool to, to keep

369
00:22:48,020 --> 00:22:51,139
things going or, or do, do we need to invest in,

370
00:22:51,700 --> 00:22:54,740
you know, less channels and more focus on the channels you have?

371
00:22:55,220 --> 00:22:58,660
I, you know, the, it depends on your goal

372
00:22:58,820 --> 00:23:02,250
really. I mean if, if you're, if you're trying,

373
00:23:03,050 --> 00:23:06,770
it's easy to say DTC is more profitable, which obviously is true.

374
00:23:06,770 --> 00:23:10,610
Right. Like you own the margin. But when you, if you're dtc, only

375
00:23:10,610 --> 00:23:13,530
marketing costs and, and tasting room,

376
00:23:14,650 --> 00:23:17,930
you know, leases and insurance and

377
00:23:18,010 --> 00:23:21,850
salaries and can eat that very, very,

378
00:23:21,850 --> 00:23:25,690
very quickly. And, and if you're in a winery, that's a position

379
00:23:25,770 --> 00:23:29,460
that you sell two containers with one sales guy on the east

380
00:23:29,460 --> 00:23:32,300
coast, what the hell would you ever go dtc, right.

381
00:23:33,020 --> 00:23:36,780
Just because the cost of generating a customer is massive.

382
00:23:37,580 --> 00:23:41,260
Particularly if you nowadays and if you rely on, on online

383
00:23:41,340 --> 00:23:44,219
only the days of, of social media

384
00:23:44,860 --> 00:23:48,620
being, you know, being the way you generate a thousand paying customers

385
00:23:48,860 --> 00:23:52,420
is, are gone. It's pay to play. Everything's pay to play now. That's right. And

386
00:23:52,420 --> 00:23:56,100
so, and so you need a place where people

387
00:23:56,100 --> 00:23:59,060
can a get introduced to your brand. And if you don't have a tasting room,

388
00:23:59,060 --> 00:24:01,860
and even then, if you don't have a tasting room in the right location,

389
00:24:03,380 --> 00:24:06,980
you're going to lose so much money on the lease and just the operations of

390
00:24:06,980 --> 00:24:10,739
the tasting room alone that there's no point. But at the same time,

391
00:24:11,460 --> 00:24:13,860
Broad Market's getting killed right now.

392
00:24:15,540 --> 00:24:18,580
From what I'm hearing, it's a bit of a bloodbath for a lot of brands

393
00:24:18,580 --> 00:24:21,860
out there. I mean even just getting placements. And then if you get a placement

394
00:24:22,640 --> 00:24:26,320
and you sell out, somebody just replaces your wine on the shelf with something

395
00:24:26,320 --> 00:24:29,280
else and you never get reordered. It's hard.

396
00:24:30,480 --> 00:24:34,200
There's definitely no money button. But I think the wineries that

397
00:24:34,200 --> 00:24:35,840
are winning, that are seeing growth,

398
00:24:37,919 --> 00:24:41,600
are going back to what I originally said. They're not playing it safe.

399
00:24:42,000 --> 00:24:45,840
They're willing to take risks and willing to speak to a certain person. Aligning

400
00:24:45,840 --> 00:24:49,120
with different things, aligning with art, aligning with lifestyles,

401
00:24:49,680 --> 00:24:53,460
letting the customer see themselves in the brand. But to

402
00:24:53,460 --> 00:24:56,460
answer your original question, I don't think

403
00:24:56,940 --> 00:25:00,460
that we've completely passed the era of you need to be

404
00:25:01,500 --> 00:25:05,340
three legged, right. Like you needed to be distribution. I don't think we're outside

405
00:25:05,340 --> 00:25:08,939
of diversification yet, but I do

406
00:25:08,939 --> 00:25:12,780
think it's time for brands to really look at what's working and

407
00:25:12,780 --> 00:25:16,500
pour gasoline on it. If

408
00:25:16,500 --> 00:25:19,460
Broad Market's a real struggle for you, but you're seeing even a little bit of

409
00:25:19,460 --> 00:25:23,260
growth, I mean, my dad's a cardiologist. He just retired after 50 years.

410
00:25:25,240 --> 00:25:29,040
Yeah, and, and, and he always says, you know, when someone's at the end of

411
00:25:29,040 --> 00:25:32,680
life or you have somebody like on life support, if you see any improvement, even

412
00:25:32,840 --> 00:25:36,680
small, you keep going. Right. And so now nowadays

413
00:25:37,560 --> 00:25:40,600
in what we're seeing in the wine business, if you're seeing any signs of life,

414
00:25:40,600 --> 00:25:43,920
if you're new in upstart brand, if you, if you're seeing growth and, and you're

415
00:25:43,920 --> 00:25:47,680
seeing honest opportunities, pour

416
00:25:47,680 --> 00:25:50,200
gasoline on it first. Follow that, that light.

417
00:25:51,400 --> 00:25:54,840
But I really don't think we're at the point yet

418
00:25:55,160 --> 00:25:58,920
where we just say we get rid of Broad Market, we're DTC only. I mean,

419
00:25:59,000 --> 00:26:02,760
you want to have a great conversation about that, talk to Dave Senegal

420
00:26:02,760 --> 00:26:04,040
who owns Senegal Winery.

421
00:26:06,360 --> 00:26:09,880
He's actually seeing improvement in Broad Market.

422
00:26:10,040 --> 00:26:13,640
He's gotten really innovative with his strategies and his sales strategies and the team

423
00:26:13,640 --> 00:26:16,920
he's building is doing a fantastic job. And so he's seeing a lot of growth

424
00:26:16,920 --> 00:26:20,600
out There. So there's winners on both sides of the coin, but it's more about

425
00:26:21,090 --> 00:26:24,370
kind of picking a path now and picking your pony and sticking with it.

426
00:26:25,170 --> 00:26:28,930
So. Which is an important thought because, and I'm not going to throw

427
00:26:28,930 --> 00:26:32,090
anybody on the bus here, but I was just having a conversation with like one

428
00:26:32,090 --> 00:26:35,930
of the big brand, I mean, you know, top five well known brands

429
00:26:35,930 --> 00:26:39,610
in Napa. And you know, she was complaining that, not

430
00:26:39,610 --> 00:26:42,770
complaining, but she was mentioning that their walk in traffic was off

431
00:26:43,090 --> 00:26:46,890
50% or 30%. Oh yeah, and then we'll get into the

432
00:26:46,890 --> 00:26:49,970
Napa Valley woes in a second. But at the same time,

433
00:26:51,340 --> 00:26:54,540
a new rep took over the North North Bay

434
00:26:54,940 --> 00:26:58,700
accounts. And those people, even the regular

435
00:26:58,700 --> 00:27:02,220
buyers of the brand hadn't seen a rep for like three years.

436
00:27:03,100 --> 00:27:06,780
And so you. And maybe because they're sitting on the laurels of the

437
00:27:06,780 --> 00:27:10,140
DTC and the brand name, but now it's like, oh, we better get a rep

438
00:27:10,140 --> 00:27:13,020
out there and start talking to these people. And I'm very close to the rep

439
00:27:13,340 --> 00:27:17,020
as a friend and using my Xerox sales skills

440
00:27:17,020 --> 00:27:20,060
and territory management skills and all those things, I was telling her how you got

441
00:27:20,060 --> 00:27:23,750
to go back and find these people again and, and

442
00:27:23,750 --> 00:27:26,910
get, get out there and start shaking the tree and then you got to find

443
00:27:26,910 --> 00:27:30,710
new people because that's, that's part of the leg if,

444
00:27:30,950 --> 00:27:34,550
if walk in Traffic is off 30, where you get membership

445
00:27:34,710 --> 00:27:37,110
signups and, and you know, house poor

446
00:27:39,190 --> 00:27:42,550
fees. You know, something's got to give here

447
00:27:43,030 --> 00:27:46,700
and you can't, I don't think you can give it up because I had a

448
00:27:46,700 --> 00:27:50,220
conversation with one of the VWE marketeers, Jessica

449
00:27:50,220 --> 00:27:53,900
Kogan. Brilliant woman and she was from the

450
00:27:53,900 --> 00:27:57,380
Cameron Hughes side of things at some point and

451
00:27:57,780 --> 00:28:01,500
we both agreed on this podcast and this was like probably three years

452
00:28:01,500 --> 00:28:05,340
ago before VW closed, that the social side

453
00:28:05,340 --> 00:28:09,060
of this business, the marketing side, was going to implode on itself. In other words,

454
00:28:09,060 --> 00:28:12,500
what you just said, the pay to play on social

455
00:28:12,740 --> 00:28:16,410
and the cost of acquisition is just through the roof. And if you're not

456
00:28:16,410 --> 00:28:19,330
really, really, really good at it and really efficient with it, you're just not going

457
00:28:19,330 --> 00:28:23,010
to be able to afford to pay $100 for a customer to get 75

458
00:28:23,090 --> 00:28:26,890
out of them. How long can that last? Yep. In fact, it wasn't

459
00:28:26,890 --> 00:28:30,569
that long ago when Kevin o' Leary was on this show and he was

460
00:28:30,569 --> 00:28:34,090
looking. And the reason I met him was he was looking for a partner and

461
00:28:34,090 --> 00:28:37,010
we were doing, I don't know, 40,000 bottles a month or something like that at

462
00:28:37,010 --> 00:28:40,450
the time to augment his Leary family

463
00:28:40,450 --> 00:28:44,250
wines. And he said that specifically said, I've

464
00:28:44,250 --> 00:28:47,930
looked around this industry and all I can find is people paying

465
00:28:47,930 --> 00:28:51,730
$100 to get a customer to get 80. That's it. And how

466
00:28:51,730 --> 00:28:55,410
long can do that? The era of passive growth is

467
00:28:55,410 --> 00:28:59,130
dead. It's gone. For many, many years,

468
00:28:59,130 --> 00:29:02,810
the industry was just able to grow because it was wine, right?

469
00:29:03,210 --> 00:29:06,650
And because we had the luxury

470
00:29:07,200 --> 00:29:10,760
of every publication talking about us, Wall Street Journal had a wine

471
00:29:10,760 --> 00:29:14,480
writer. In fact, I did a survey for,

472
00:29:15,120 --> 00:29:18,960
for a very, very, very well known winemaker to his, his list of

473
00:29:18,960 --> 00:29:22,800
16,000 verified buyers. And one of the questions we asked was,

474
00:29:23,760 --> 00:29:27,440
where do you discover new wines? Number one. Number two were predictable. Once

475
00:29:27,440 --> 00:29:30,960
wine enthusiast Robert Parker, right? Wine advocate, or I'm sorry, Wine

476
00:29:30,960 --> 00:29:34,680
Spectator and Robert Parker Wine Advocate. Number three, ahead

477
00:29:34,680 --> 00:29:36,640
of wine enthusiasts was Golf Digest,

478
00:29:38,940 --> 00:29:42,700
was. There's been people talking about it. Wine was everywhere. And it

479
00:29:42,700 --> 00:29:45,780
just grew and it just grew and it just grew and it just grew. But

480
00:29:45,780 --> 00:29:49,580
a fa. But a favorable market conditions

481
00:29:49,660 --> 00:29:53,500
don't prove a sustainable business model, right? I think I

482
00:29:53,500 --> 00:29:56,900
said in one of my articles, it's the old black swan theory, right? Like 10,000

483
00:29:56,900 --> 00:30:00,540
white swans don't prove all swans are white. One black one proves they aren't, right?

484
00:30:00,620 --> 00:30:04,060
And so I think we're seeing that now.

485
00:30:05,260 --> 00:30:08,850
And you know, back to the point of, of the,

486
00:30:09,010 --> 00:30:12,130
the social media and the customer generation thing,

487
00:30:12,690 --> 00:30:16,410
when I, I hear from, from everybody, right? Chris

488
00:30:16,410 --> 00:30:20,050
Kohler, chopped winner, had his amazing chocolate shop

489
00:30:20,050 --> 00:30:23,730
in V Shops. That, by the way, V Shops in Yountville was like 10

490
00:30:23,730 --> 00:30:26,290
years ago, was a spot, tons of boutiques, galleries. It was a great place to

491
00:30:26,290 --> 00:30:29,810
shop. There is now one tenant in V Shops in Yountville,

492
00:30:30,450 --> 00:30:33,770
and Chris Kohler just closed his, his chocolate shop. And I got to talk to

493
00:30:33,770 --> 00:30:36,610
him not long before he closed it, and he was like, yeah, man, this town's

494
00:30:36,610 --> 00:30:40,390
kind of a ghost percent of the year now, right? Like Bouchon's no longer

495
00:30:40,390 --> 00:30:43,870
serving lunch during the week. I mean, look, all of these little data points

496
00:30:44,430 --> 00:30:48,270
like Bounty or Rob Report used to do an annual car, the release

497
00:30:48,670 --> 00:30:52,430
annual car of the year show in Napa. They

498
00:30:52,430 --> 00:30:55,110
did one in Florida, one in Napa. They don't do the Napa one anymore because

499
00:30:55,110 --> 00:30:58,950
they were struggling to sell tickets, right? So all these little things side by

500
00:30:58,950 --> 00:31:02,510
side don't seem significant. But when you

501
00:31:02,510 --> 00:31:05,950
push them together, you're like, hang on, okay, there's something bigger

502
00:31:05,950 --> 00:31:09,550
happening here. Myself and two other vintners opened a wine

503
00:31:09,550 --> 00:31:13,230
barn, unfortunately, 2020, simply because of

504
00:31:13,230 --> 00:31:16,470
this, These. Oh, it was a disaster. That could be a whole podcast on its

505
00:31:16,470 --> 00:31:19,310
own. It's also kind of a cool success story in a weird way. But.

506
00:31:20,429 --> 00:31:24,110
But the idea came about because we were having these conversations in 2017,

507
00:31:24,190 --> 00:31:27,550
like, hey, what's your taste room traffic like? Or, hey, are you finding it harder

508
00:31:27,550 --> 00:31:31,180
to get and keep club members? And it's down, right

509
00:31:31,180 --> 00:31:34,860
foot traffic is down. So you can sit and cry about it, you can blame

510
00:31:34,860 --> 00:31:38,380
somebody, and you could say, well, it's the industry. Well, look, when we

511
00:31:38,380 --> 00:31:42,220
opened our doors on March 6, 2020, and I got a call from the

512
00:31:42,220 --> 00:31:45,020
health department, we were packed to the brim. We had a line out the door,

513
00:31:45,100 --> 00:31:48,260
and the health department called me on March 16 and said, get everybody out and

514
00:31:48,260 --> 00:31:51,820
close your doors. We cry about it. We whine. We could

515
00:31:51,820 --> 00:31:55,180
say, you know, this is all BS masks, whatever.

516
00:31:55,900 --> 00:31:59,560
We didn't. We got to work, right? And, and we started

517
00:31:59,560 --> 00:32:03,400
doing speakeasy dinners and on wine tastings. And, and by the end,

518
00:32:03,400 --> 00:32:06,120
we were closed for a year to the day. A year to the day. We

519
00:32:06,120 --> 00:32:09,720
were only open 10 days, and by the day we opened, we had 212 club

520
00:32:09,720 --> 00:32:13,520
members. Right? Wow. And. And so, and so,

521
00:32:13,520 --> 00:32:17,240
but it, but it was doing the work. I put 87, 000 miles on my

522
00:32:17,240 --> 00:32:21,000
car in two years, right? And, and so, like, I mean, two

523
00:32:21,000 --> 00:32:24,820
and a half years. And so I, I. The brands are

524
00:32:24,820 --> 00:32:28,220
gonna get wins here. But if you're tasting wrap, traffic's down. What are you doing?

525
00:32:29,020 --> 00:32:32,060
What are you doing to combat that? Right? Like, where are you going on the

526
00:32:32,060 --> 00:32:35,780
road? Are you spending the money, even just on local Google Ads to tell

527
00:32:35,780 --> 00:32:39,460
people you're open? Are you still by appointment only, right?

528
00:32:39,460 --> 00:32:43,060
Like, do you have a free tasting? What are you doing to combat

529
00:32:43,060 --> 00:32:46,740
that? You know, it's interesting. Every

530
00:32:46,740 --> 00:32:50,450
time you say something, I. There's a billion thoughts. But just on that thought

531
00:32:50,450 --> 00:32:53,690
alone, I sent an intern off last

532
00:32:53,850 --> 00:32:57,050
summer to Bordeaux. She got a great job at a great chateau,

533
00:32:59,210 --> 00:33:02,650
and she worked the summer. Well, that chateau reached out to her, and

534
00:33:03,210 --> 00:33:06,850
she's a Cornell enology student, and she's coming home for the

535
00:33:06,850 --> 00:33:10,570
summer, and that chateau reached out to her and said, we're

536
00:33:10,570 --> 00:33:13,770
wondering if your family would host a dinner.

537
00:33:14,650 --> 00:33:18,220
Will you curate the list? And, you know, you have these people for dinner, and

538
00:33:18,220 --> 00:33:21,820
we'll bring the wine. And I thought, wow, how

539
00:33:21,820 --> 00:33:25,340
interesting. I mean, certainly there's a relationship between her and the

540
00:33:25,340 --> 00:33:29,020
chateau, which is great, and I advising her to do it as

541
00:33:29,020 --> 00:33:32,579
fast as she can do it, and. But that's really

542
00:33:32,579 --> 00:33:36,140
reaching out from France to. To California

543
00:33:36,140 --> 00:33:39,900
to host dinners to get people to taste the brand. And I thought

544
00:33:39,900 --> 00:33:43,670
that's really grassroots stuff. Yeah. And I think. And

545
00:33:43,670 --> 00:33:47,430
something you wouldn't expect from Bordeaux. No. But a critical in today's

546
00:33:47,430 --> 00:33:51,190
marketplace I think to have these experiences. Let me tell you a quick funny

547
00:33:51,190 --> 00:33:54,070
story. Just even it's a little off subject but you said the Golf Digest and

548
00:33:54,070 --> 00:33:57,910
that's fascinates me. And I'll tell you. Isn't that crazy? I'll tell you why

549
00:33:57,910 --> 00:34:01,470
it's interesting to me because years ago I won the

550
00:34:01,470 --> 00:34:04,830
right to be the PGA Tour

551
00:34:05,390 --> 00:34:09,120
Golf Wine Club. It was called

552
00:34:09,120 --> 00:34:12,840
pure. The gentleman that organized this link between

553
00:34:12,840 --> 00:34:16,640
the PGA and the Wine of the Month Club was. I

554
00:34:16,640 --> 00:34:19,480
can't remember his name now but you'll find it when I. When I find. I'll

555
00:34:19,480 --> 00:34:23,280
send it to you because he'll. The stories were crazy. But anyway we ended up

556
00:34:23,280 --> 00:34:26,040
flying to West Palm beach making. I was up against Diageo,

557
00:34:26,520 --> 00:34:30,320
Terlado and a couple other big brands but of course David and

558
00:34:30,320 --> 00:34:34,000
Goliath. Yeah. So we. The DT Special and he really wanted to do business with

559
00:34:34,000 --> 00:34:37,760
us now separate story but we won it. And the day

560
00:34:37,760 --> 00:34:41,160
that we. It's crazy. It took about

561
00:34:41,400 --> 00:34:44,880
six months for the PGA attorney and everybody to

562
00:34:44,880 --> 00:34:48,680
organize the contract. It was a three way contract between the Wine of

563
00:34:48,680 --> 00:34:52,440
the Month Club, the PGA and this gentleman who was. Who's sort of

564
00:34:52,440 --> 00:34:56,040
the. The brokerage. The broker of this whole thing. The day that we

565
00:34:56,040 --> 00:34:59,880
received it in our inbox to start reviewing what. What the terms were.

566
00:35:00,120 --> 00:35:03,950
He was walking from the second, the first green

567
00:35:03,950 --> 00:35:07,790
to the second T in Chicago somewhere. And he was playing with, I

568
00:35:07,790 --> 00:35:11,630
don't know, president of one of the big golf accessory companies going

569
00:35:11,630 --> 00:35:15,030
over something and a tree fell and killed him

570
00:35:16,390 --> 00:35:19,910
out of nowhere. No wind, no rain, no nothing.

571
00:35:20,390 --> 00:35:24,110
They hadn't. They were walking off. They were not walking down the path, they were

572
00:35:24,110 --> 00:35:27,710
walking down the side of the fairway and to get there or wherever they

573
00:35:27,710 --> 00:35:30,940
were and then the PGA and I

574
00:35:30,940 --> 00:35:34,420
negotiated a couple more times and then they had to drop the whole

575
00:35:34,420 --> 00:35:38,260
concept because it was. They didn't have the inside power, the

576
00:35:38,260 --> 00:35:41,980
horsepower to do it. Can you imagine that? Wow. It's crazy. And I

577
00:35:41,980 --> 00:35:44,940
remember his name before we're done. But it was in the stories all over the

578
00:35:44,940 --> 00:35:47,980
web at the point at the time. But I want to go back to something.

579
00:35:48,300 --> 00:35:51,740
We were talking about your

580
00:35:51,740 --> 00:35:55,460
tasting room there briefly and I had a really interesting conversation with a brilliant woman

581
00:35:55,460 --> 00:35:58,660
in Napa now and she's the one taking over JCB's

582
00:35:58,660 --> 00:36:02,340
Atelier in youn Feel. And she's coming. She's.

583
00:36:02,660 --> 00:36:06,420
I'm waiting for the invitation for the opening, but a concept,

584
00:36:06,420 --> 00:36:10,100
she says, that hasn't been tried yet, that hasn't been used as a unique

585
00:36:10,180 --> 00:36:13,700
concept. She wouldn't divulge what that concept is,

586
00:36:14,180 --> 00:36:16,500
but I'm hoping it's something that

587
00:36:17,620 --> 00:36:21,380
brings people to the table to create the experience around what,

588
00:36:21,460 --> 00:36:24,340
you know, what an honest glass of wine is. And to recruit

589
00:36:27,150 --> 00:36:30,830
maybe academic interest. I'm not sure if that's the right answer, maybe to recruit

590
00:36:31,230 --> 00:36:35,030
intellectual interest in what wine is because it

591
00:36:35,030 --> 00:36:37,870
does take a little curiosity to try and

592
00:36:38,430 --> 00:36:41,710
digest some of this stuff. It does. But I think. I

593
00:36:41,950 --> 00:36:44,590
think. I think that's a bit of an issue. And I think it's one of

594
00:36:44,590 --> 00:36:48,150
the reasons that quite frankly, what we did sort of

595
00:36:48,150 --> 00:36:51,870
resonated with people. So when we opened our wine bar, we chose Danville and we

596
00:36:51,870 --> 00:36:55,510
chose Danville. Very specific. Specifically, Danville is the downtown for Alamo Blackhawk.

597
00:36:55,590 --> 00:36:59,430
Danville. I think the, the average household income is like 420,000

598
00:36:59,510 --> 00:37:03,350
in the area. Right. Like, it's an intensely wealthy area. And the,

599
00:37:03,510 --> 00:37:07,150
the Alamo Safeway is, is one of the top Safeways for wine sales in,

600
00:37:07,150 --> 00:37:10,950
in California. And at least according to the research

601
00:37:10,950 --> 00:37:13,710
that we had. So it seemed like a slam dunk. And in some ways it

602
00:37:13,710 --> 00:37:17,150
was. And unfortunately the most important ways it

603
00:37:17,150 --> 00:37:20,390
wasn't. But we learned a lot. And

604
00:37:21,600 --> 00:37:25,360
I. What one of the interesting statistics I found was

605
00:37:25,760 --> 00:37:29,120
if there was a game on, we were far more likely to sign up club

606
00:37:29,120 --> 00:37:32,400
members. Right? We had a TV and we played Giants games. We play Niner games.

607
00:37:32,720 --> 00:37:36,400
And if the game was. It was amazing how much

608
00:37:36,400 --> 00:37:40,160
more likely we were to sign up if there was something else that people

609
00:37:40,160 --> 00:37:43,800
were interested in going on. It was, it was kind of a weird little, little

610
00:37:43,800 --> 00:37:47,560
statistic. And I think part of the, part of wine's barrier is the

611
00:37:47,560 --> 00:37:51,360
knowledge barrier, part of the thing and to be fair, and part of its

612
00:37:51,360 --> 00:37:54,860
mystique that there's this

613
00:37:55,020 --> 00:37:58,700
intense intellectual element to it. But what I

614
00:37:58,700 --> 00:38:02,380
found in my career on the front lines, both as a wine buyer in

615
00:38:02,380 --> 00:38:05,340
retail and then as a wine director on restaurant floors,

616
00:38:06,460 --> 00:38:09,940
and also the guy after hours that was hanging out with people drinking wine till

617
00:38:09,940 --> 00:38:13,660
three in the morning in my much younger days, is

618
00:38:13,660 --> 00:38:17,100
that it also attracts, as you said,

619
00:38:17,100 --> 00:38:20,900
intellectual people that may not want the wine itself to

620
00:38:20,900 --> 00:38:23,640
be an intellectual experience, but

621
00:38:24,600 --> 00:38:28,440
the history and the mystery and the mystique around it is just

622
00:38:28,440 --> 00:38:31,800
enough for them to want to add it to their Moment, right.

623
00:38:32,040 --> 00:38:35,840
Like, just because it should attract curious people, that doesn't mean they

624
00:38:35,840 --> 00:38:39,360
have to be curious about wine. And that, that right there

625
00:38:39,360 --> 00:38:43,000
is, is, is, I think a big barrier is that

626
00:38:43,320 --> 00:38:47,080
so many experiences in nap it have become this intellectual exercise,

627
00:38:47,240 --> 00:38:51,090
right, like, where you can't, like, just taste one to talk about football. Right.

628
00:38:51,090 --> 00:38:54,610
Like, and everything has to be like, I'm gonna sit down with you for an

629
00:38:54,610 --> 00:38:56,810
hour and a half. It's 150 bucks. And I want to see this wine hit

630
00:38:56,810 --> 00:39:00,570
you emotionally, like, off. Right? You know, like, I

631
00:39:00,570 --> 00:39:04,290
mean, sorry about that. Sorry, aunt. I know your aunt listens to that. I'm

632
00:39:04,290 --> 00:39:06,610
sorry. Sorry. He won't. He warned me.

633
00:39:09,410 --> 00:39:13,130
So, so, you know, and there's room for some of that. There'll always be room

634
00:39:13,130 --> 00:39:16,930
for some of that, as there was 10 years ago, 15 years ago. But

635
00:39:16,930 --> 00:39:20,530
15 years ago there were also places that you could just wander into and it'd

636
00:39:20,530 --> 00:39:24,170
be packed and there'd be shoulder to shoulder people at the tasting bar. And like,

637
00:39:24,170 --> 00:39:26,570
for, for those of us on the other side of the bar, that was fun

638
00:39:26,570 --> 00:39:30,090
too, right? The energy, the, the, the, the

639
00:39:30,090 --> 00:39:33,930
camaraderie, the crazy conversations that, you know, I used

640
00:39:33,930 --> 00:39:37,370
to. My favorite Saturdays working in tasting rooms were the ones that were just

641
00:39:37,370 --> 00:39:41,050
slamming where you finished the day and, and everybody was

642
00:39:41,050 --> 00:39:44,160
tired and you lost like five pounds because you got

643
00:39:44,160 --> 00:39:47,360
27,000 steps. And, and you see you talk to

644
00:39:47,360 --> 00:39:51,200
150 different people from 10 different countries and, and, and

645
00:39:51,200 --> 00:39:54,440
they had fun and they connected with wine and the way they want to connect

646
00:39:54,440 --> 00:39:57,840
with wine, not the way that was forced upon them. And so

647
00:39:58,160 --> 00:40:01,440
I, I think while there will always be. And it's one of the reasons that

648
00:40:01,440 --> 00:40:04,920
I still love wine. I love the subtleties, I love the earth, the stories. You

649
00:40:04,920 --> 00:40:08,160
know, the way that if a vineyard is planted next to a eucalyptus grove, it

650
00:40:08,160 --> 00:40:11,400
might smell like mint, but it won't taste like all those little things, right? I

651
00:40:11,400 --> 00:40:14,810
like those little things, but I also like to just have a glass of wine

652
00:40:14,810 --> 00:40:18,650
and talk about art or movies or, you know, my Indiana Hoosiers or

653
00:40:18,650 --> 00:40:22,370
what. Like, wine is an accompaniment

654
00:40:22,370 --> 00:40:26,170
to a moment for me, right? Because there's, there's a story in

655
00:40:26,170 --> 00:40:29,170
it, but wine doesn't have to be the moment, right. I think one of the,

656
00:40:29,650 --> 00:40:33,050
the brilliant things about a show like Seinfeld is kind of a

657
00:40:33,050 --> 00:40:36,410
sidebar for me here. New York was always a character in the story, but it

658
00:40:36,410 --> 00:40:40,050
wasn't a character in the story, right? Like, New York was very much character. Story.

659
00:40:41,150 --> 00:40:44,870
Wine can be a character in the story in somebody's story without having to be

660
00:40:44,870 --> 00:40:48,710
the story. Right. And there's sometimes when it is the story, when you.

661
00:40:48,710 --> 00:40:51,870
When you're sitting down with people that want to export, that are naturally curious about

662
00:40:52,030 --> 00:40:55,790
the origin and the process and the earth and

663
00:40:55,790 --> 00:40:59,470
the time and all the things that it takes to make a really subtle,

664
00:40:59,630 --> 00:41:03,470
truly exceptional wine. And there's somebody that wants to hear about that for

665
00:41:03,470 --> 00:41:06,950
30 seconds and then just enjoy the way it tastes with the moment that they're

666
00:41:06,950 --> 00:41:08,210
in. And

667
00:41:10,850 --> 00:41:14,130
I think that the future of wine is that there's always going to be

668
00:41:14,690 --> 00:41:17,930
the Harlans and the Screaming Eagles of the world. There's always going to be that.

669
00:41:17,930 --> 00:41:21,570
And I'm not even saying there's not room for more brands like

670
00:41:21,570 --> 00:41:25,250
that. I'm saying that if that's what you are, be honest

671
00:41:25,250 --> 00:41:28,730
about it and be open to the fact that the

672
00:41:28,730 --> 00:41:32,450
version of that winery that existed 10 years ago may not be the

673
00:41:32,450 --> 00:41:36,260
version that can succeed today as a startup brand. That's

674
00:41:36,260 --> 00:41:39,580
exactly right. And I think that bears out in

675
00:41:41,420 --> 00:41:45,180
so many stories that have come to Napa and realized that they got us

676
00:41:45,180 --> 00:41:48,780
just to get started, they had to be over $150 a bottle. And

677
00:41:49,100 --> 00:41:52,900
now you've got to develop a brand inside of

678
00:41:52,900 --> 00:41:56,540
a very small niche of people that would spend that kind of money,

679
00:41:56,700 --> 00:42:00,460
that would appreciate collecting that kind of wine. I have two or three

680
00:42:00,460 --> 00:42:03,670
customers left over from Wine of the Month Club that only collects, and they call

681
00:42:03,670 --> 00:42:06,510
me and they go, can you fill in my vertical for Mouton? I need a

682
00:42:06,510 --> 00:42:09,790
two, you know, 2019. I need a 2018, you know, and I look for this

683
00:42:09,790 --> 00:42:12,910
stuff. But let me. This is an interesting concept. You just brought it up.

684
00:42:13,870 --> 00:42:17,670
There's two things I wrote down, and we're almost out of time. We were in

685
00:42:17,670 --> 00:42:21,110
Portugal, and I've told the story before, but we had. It was the most incredible

686
00:42:21,110 --> 00:42:24,950
wine service I'd ever experienced. And I. I

687
00:42:24,950 --> 00:42:28,510
tipped the guy ���60 privately, other than the table

688
00:42:28,510 --> 00:42:32,350
tip, because it was such an enthusiastic. And it was a,

689
00:42:32,350 --> 00:42:35,670
you know, it was a nice Italian super Tuscan. But I wasn't orn a lie

690
00:42:35,670 --> 00:42:39,350
or anything like that. But it was, I think, Guido Tasso Antonori's wine.

691
00:42:39,350 --> 00:42:42,870
Great one. Yeah. And he. But he made you

692
00:42:42,870 --> 00:42:46,230
feel like you were just part of the program.

693
00:42:46,470 --> 00:42:49,590
And I. It was his Slovenian guy who ended up in

694
00:42:50,070 --> 00:42:53,830
Palermo. And I thought. Then I

695
00:42:53,830 --> 00:42:57,520
went to a dinner at Steakhouse in Beverly Hills

696
00:42:57,920 --> 00:43:01,400
and gotten a conversation with the Psalm. And he was the exact

697
00:43:01,400 --> 00:43:05,120
opposite of that. He was the guy touting the vintages he's tasted and the

698
00:43:05,120 --> 00:43:08,280
snobbery of the wine and what he knows about wine and didn't let you get

699
00:43:08,280 --> 00:43:11,600
a word in as wise. And I thought, I wonder if we're not only self

700
00:43:11,600 --> 00:43:15,320
propagating, some of this aristocracy and some of this 100%

701
00:43:15,320 --> 00:43:19,120
are as part of it. Yeah, we absolutely are. You know what

702
00:43:19,680 --> 00:43:23,040
the best hospitality. And I've told this story, I actually wrote about it on LinkedIn.

703
00:43:23,650 --> 00:43:27,490
The best hospitality experience I've had in Nap Valley was at the vacuum shop.

704
00:43:29,410 --> 00:43:33,170
Been around 40 years on Jefferson Ave. Yeah, like kind of set

705
00:43:33,170 --> 00:43:35,770
back from the street. It's kind of place you'll drive by 100 times and you

706
00:43:35,770 --> 00:43:38,730
know it's there. I needed a vacuum. I'm kind of, when, when, you know, you

707
00:43:38,730 --> 00:43:42,050
talk about buyer Personas. Right. Well, I'm a local board. If I need something, I'll

708
00:43:42,050 --> 00:43:45,810
always look to try and buy it locally. Before I go to Target, before I

709
00:43:45,810 --> 00:43:48,170
go to. So I walked into Napa's vacuum shop that I knew had been there

710
00:43:48,170 --> 00:43:51,780
forever and I, I wanted a vacuum. That's it. There was

711
00:43:51,780 --> 00:43:55,580
nothing emotional about it. I wasn't invested. I wanted a vacuum and I

712
00:43:55,580 --> 00:43:59,260
want to shop local. Please sell me a vacuum. So I go in there

713
00:43:59,580 --> 00:44:03,100
and I didn't even know it was for sale, like from a marketer and

714
00:44:03,100 --> 00:44:06,700
retail guy. All I see are like tons of missed opportunities and

715
00:44:06,700 --> 00:44:10,300
clutter and like signage isn't anywhere. There aren't any prices on anything. I don't know

716
00:44:10,300 --> 00:44:13,900
what's getting fixed, what's, what's actually a floor model. Like it was crazy.

717
00:44:14,550 --> 00:44:17,910
And then all of a sudden this guy pops up from behind the counter with

718
00:44:17,910 --> 00:44:21,470
like one of those like monocles, those magnifying monocles. And he's like, hey, how you

719
00:44:21,470 --> 00:44:24,870
doing? Give me one second. And so he comes out, he wipes his hands off,

720
00:44:24,870 --> 00:44:28,670
shakes my hand and it's like, you know, starts off

721
00:44:28,670 --> 00:44:32,190
with like his dad joke. Like, I'm guessing you're here for a vacuum. I was

722
00:44:32,190 --> 00:44:35,190
like, yeah. And, and, and, and

723
00:44:35,830 --> 00:44:39,670
he, he was, and I was like, yeah, I just, I need a vacuum. I

724
00:44:39,670 --> 00:44:42,480
don't know, like, like ours broke and I need a new vacuum. I like to

725
00:44:42,480 --> 00:44:44,400
shop local. I've driven by you guys a few times.

726
00:44:46,640 --> 00:44:50,360
I again, I went in expecting, here's my card. Give me

727
00:44:50,360 --> 00:44:54,200
that vacuum. Have a nice life. Right? Like that was what I expected that transaction

728
00:44:54,200 --> 00:44:57,840
to be. He starts asking questions, he's like, well, do you have pets?

729
00:44:58,160 --> 00:45:01,840
What kind of pets? How many do you have? One floor or two hardwood

730
00:45:02,640 --> 00:45:05,800
well, is it actually hardwood or is it luxury vinyl tile? Is it. Is it.

731
00:45:05,800 --> 00:45:08,960
How old is it? Right? Like, do you have carpet? What kind of carpet is.

732
00:45:08,960 --> 00:45:11,280
Do you have a picture of it? Right? You know, what are the. What are

733
00:45:11,280 --> 00:45:15,060
the breeds? All these questions, and he starts talking about

734
00:45:15,060 --> 00:45:18,780
canned versus non canned and bagless versus bagless

735
00:45:18,780 --> 00:45:22,500
and why Dyson sucks and why mine broke and why, you know, all

736
00:45:22,500 --> 00:45:25,980
the. An hour later, I walked out

737
00:45:26,380 --> 00:45:29,660
with an $1800 vacuum that I'm certain

738
00:45:30,140 --> 00:45:32,460
is the Bugatti of vacuums.

739
00:45:34,060 --> 00:45:37,820
That I have never been more. I. I have never in my

740
00:45:37,820 --> 00:45:41,340
life been excited about a vacuum. I couldn't wait

741
00:45:41,580 --> 00:45:45,140
to tell my. I show people to come to the house. I'm like, check out

742
00:45:45,140 --> 00:45:48,900
this vacuum, right? Like, it's. It's. And

743
00:45:48,900 --> 00:45:51,940
it is amazing. He was 100% right. I have two German shepherds that all they

744
00:45:51,940 --> 00:45:55,500
do is shed. And it's amazing. But here's this

745
00:45:55,500 --> 00:45:59,300
guy that has owned this business for 40 years. And I walked

746
00:45:59,300 --> 00:46:02,620
in the door, and his service

747
00:46:02,780 --> 00:46:06,460
completely changed the context of how I viewed his business.

748
00:46:06,780 --> 00:46:10,260
Because now I don't see clutter. I see the shop of an

749
00:46:10,260 --> 00:46:14,010
extremely learned man, right? He's an expert in his

750
00:46:14,010 --> 00:46:16,450
craft. The one time I had a problem with the vacuum, he's like, bring it

751
00:46:16,450 --> 00:46:19,410
in. Fix it in five seconds. Like, good. Good to go for another five years.

752
00:46:19,410 --> 00:46:23,210
See that? Right? And. And he. He made the

753
00:46:23,210 --> 00:46:26,810
vacuum about me. He brought. He made my story, the

754
00:46:26,810 --> 00:46:30,610
part that chose the vacuum. And. And so

755
00:46:30,610 --> 00:46:33,130
now this weird little Mila vacuum

756
00:46:34,170 --> 00:46:37,260
means more to me than 99% of the bottles in my cell.

757
00:46:39,170 --> 00:46:42,890
But that's. That's beautiful. And. And that's what it

758
00:46:42,890 --> 00:46:46,330
is, right? Like that. That's what it really is. That's why people. That's what

759
00:46:46,330 --> 00:46:49,690
resin resonated with people about our wine bars. They had the owners behind the bar,

760
00:46:49,690 --> 00:46:53,090
our vendor behind the bar, right? Like, they had. They had somebody that cared,

761
00:46:53,250 --> 00:46:56,770
right? That, like, really cared, wasn't paid to care, wasn't just a passionate person.

762
00:46:57,250 --> 00:47:01,090
It's why the owner will always outsell the best employee,

763
00:47:01,170 --> 00:47:04,690
right? Because you're talking to the person that's in. That's

764
00:47:04,690 --> 00:47:07,970
invested it, that's there. That. That relationship put.

765
00:47:08,370 --> 00:47:11,090
Yeah. When I was selling,

766
00:47:13,090 --> 00:47:16,450
the. The cycle of the Wine Month Club was we started in

767
00:47:17,170 --> 00:47:21,010
a wine shop, and so we met everybody that came in the shop. Then

768
00:47:21,410 --> 00:47:25,090
my dad stumbled across this idea of going to a food show or a state

769
00:47:25,090 --> 00:47:28,658
fair. Landed at the state LA County Fair for free for 20.

770
00:47:28,722 --> 00:47:32,530
20. 20 by 2020. Booth in 1984 and doubled

771
00:47:32,530 --> 00:47:36,360
his membership from 400, 800 in 20 days. And all of a

772
00:47:36,360 --> 00:47:40,120
sudden we realized, and I credit this, and I

773
00:47:40,120 --> 00:47:43,240
use this all the time when I talk to wineries or DTC companies.

774
00:47:44,200 --> 00:47:47,760
That handshake was. What was the reason we had

775
00:47:47,760 --> 00:47:51,080
such enduring loyalty.

776
00:47:51,560 --> 00:47:54,520
Like when the Internet came and

777
00:47:54,920 --> 00:47:58,680
Groupon and all the freebies that you could get

778
00:47:59,480 --> 00:48:03,040
created this terrible loyalty. And so your average

779
00:48:03,040 --> 00:48:06,680
customer went from, you know, 24 months down to two or four or three months.

780
00:48:06,680 --> 00:48:10,120
And so you can never get your money back when you spend acquisition costs.

781
00:48:10,280 --> 00:48:13,000
But anyway, that's that what I brought up. What I thought was interesting, what you

782
00:48:13,000 --> 00:48:16,840
said was, this is, this is the part that on

783
00:48:16,840 --> 00:48:20,560
LinkedIn is that I object to because what he

784
00:48:20,560 --> 00:48:24,400
did was probably just naturally because he loves the subject,

785
00:48:24,400 --> 00:48:27,990
but what he did was he made you part of, of the conversation in

786
00:48:27,990 --> 00:48:31,270
that I'm going to find out what your needs are, and you may not even

787
00:48:31,270 --> 00:48:34,550
know what they are. You know, I. You're going to tell me I need to

788
00:48:34,550 --> 00:48:37,990
pick up dog hair, but I need to ask you more questions to understand

789
00:48:38,150 --> 00:48:41,190
what that dog hair is and how often it is. Whatever goes into

790
00:48:41,510 --> 00:48:45,110
deciding what feature of a vacuum will solve your problem.

791
00:48:45,670 --> 00:48:49,310
That's old school sales. I mean, we set hours in

792
00:48:49,310 --> 00:48:52,960
Xerox sales school learning how to, how to create

793
00:48:52,960 --> 00:48:56,640
the need or peel back the need, understand it. And I

794
00:48:56,640 --> 00:49:00,400
don't, I don't think that's over with. I, I don't think how you can ever

795
00:49:00,400 --> 00:49:04,000
sell anything without understanding the consumer's needs and

796
00:49:04,000 --> 00:49:07,440
making them feel like you're doing them. You're on.

797
00:49:07,520 --> 00:49:10,960
You're connecting their needs with your solution.

798
00:49:11,680 --> 00:49:14,800
And that's how this deal got done. You just said,

799
00:49:15,360 --> 00:49:18,630
this is $1,800. This is 200. You would have walked out the door.

800
00:49:19,420 --> 00:49:23,180
Yes, you hit something. You know, in part of my consulting, I do a

801
00:49:23,180 --> 00:49:26,940
lot of frontline training, training, sales staff training. You know,

802
00:49:27,180 --> 00:49:30,580
my buddy is like a God of own sales, phone sales. So I'll bring him

803
00:49:30,580 --> 00:49:34,140
in to train on that, you know, and his big thing is building

804
00:49:34,140 --> 00:49:37,900
relationships. One of the things I teach in building relationships is if you

805
00:49:37,900 --> 00:49:41,420
want to start a relationship with somebody, take an interest

806
00:49:41,500 --> 00:49:45,340
and then tell them a secret, right. Ask questions,

807
00:49:45,750 --> 00:49:49,190
right? What are you into? What do you like? When I'm training a young one,

808
00:49:49,190 --> 00:49:51,870
the first thing you should ask, don't tell them about a wine. Don't force one

809
00:49:51,870 --> 00:49:55,270
on them. Ask them what they usually drink. Start there like, what are you into?

810
00:49:55,510 --> 00:49:57,750
What do you usually drink? I don't care if it's not wine, what are you

811
00:49:57,750 --> 00:50:01,389
into? If you don't drink wine, you know, but then tell them a

812
00:50:01,389 --> 00:50:04,950
secret. And this is. This guy did this perfectly because he was like, so

813
00:50:05,110 --> 00:50:07,990
why do you need a new vacuum? Do you just break? Why did it break?

814
00:50:08,150 --> 00:50:11,150
I was like, well, you know, we got these dogs. And he's like, oh, what

815
00:50:11,150 --> 00:50:14,640
kind? You know, and we start talking about dogs, and he's a dog guy. And

816
00:50:14,640 --> 00:50:18,280
he was like, well, you know, with dogs and the carpet that you have,

817
00:50:18,600 --> 00:50:22,360
certain vacuums can actually void the warranty of that carpet. I was

818
00:50:22,360 --> 00:50:25,560
like, what? He took an interest and he told me a secret. Now I'm in,

819
00:50:25,960 --> 00:50:29,720
right? Like, and now he's got me. The biggest problem with

820
00:50:29,720 --> 00:50:33,200
this, though, is it doesn't scale, right? There's.

821
00:50:33,200 --> 00:50:37,000
There's. It's very, very, very difficult to scale through relationship

822
00:50:37,000 --> 00:50:40,800
building. You can train how to ask questions. You

823
00:50:40,800 --> 00:50:44,640
can train how to be personable. You can train how to listen. You

824
00:50:44,640 --> 00:50:47,660
can train how to take notes. You can all those things. You can have the

825
00:50:47,660 --> 00:50:50,660
CRMs, you can have AI, you can do all the fancy stuff.

826
00:50:51,940 --> 00:50:55,620
But it's very difficult to scale actual relationship building.

827
00:50:56,260 --> 00:51:00,020
And it's a word you hear more and more on wine. Scale,

828
00:51:00,020 --> 00:51:03,860
scale, scale. Whereas the wines that are

829
00:51:03,860 --> 00:51:07,700
lasting, the wines that you see now, the Chateau Patels,

830
00:51:07,700 --> 00:51:11,260
the ridges, the ones that go on for decades and

831
00:51:11,260 --> 00:51:14,720
decades, didn't start to scale. They started

832
00:51:15,200 --> 00:51:19,000
to make great wine and talk to people that wanted

833
00:51:19,000 --> 00:51:22,600
to drink great wine and whether they wanted to talk about great

834
00:51:22,600 --> 00:51:26,000
wine. They made them part of the story and brought them into

835
00:51:26,560 --> 00:51:30,280
the transaction. They brought them into the ark, right? And people

836
00:51:30,280 --> 00:51:33,440
saying it for years. There's members of Ridge that have literally been members of Ridge

837
00:51:33,440 --> 00:51:34,640
longer than I've been alive.

838
00:51:38,080 --> 00:51:41,680
What a crazy testament, right? Like, what a. What a crazy testament to

839
00:51:41,680 --> 00:51:45,360
customer loyalty. And so I hope this new place gets back to that,

840
00:51:45,520 --> 00:51:48,640
right? I hope this new place kind of gets back to that.

841
00:51:49,440 --> 00:51:53,280
Bringing curious people in, regardless of whether or not they're actually curious about

842
00:51:53,280 --> 00:51:56,960
wine. Putting them around a table and keeping them there. Well, Jan,

843
00:51:56,960 --> 00:52:00,760
Phil could use it. Holy cow. Yeah, yeah,

844
00:52:00,760 --> 00:52:03,040
yeah, yeah. I'm going to close with this thought

845
00:52:05,290 --> 00:52:06,890
because we were talking about the

846
00:52:09,930 --> 00:52:13,650
experience of wine and the conversation of wine

847
00:52:13,650 --> 00:52:16,650
at dinner time. And I find this really fascinating

848
00:52:17,370 --> 00:52:21,169
because of my experience. Of course, we're going to dinner tomorrow night with some

849
00:52:21,169 --> 00:52:24,930
friends. Wine will be part of the conversation. It won't be the reason

850
00:52:24,930 --> 00:52:28,130
for the conversation, but it'll come around to that, because particularly if I bring a

851
00:52:28,130 --> 00:52:31,930
bottle or Two for the celebration. It won't be the primary

852
00:52:31,930 --> 00:52:34,510
subject, but at some point it will be talked about.

853
00:52:35,710 --> 00:52:39,350
And the point I'm making is with the aristocracy of wine and most

854
00:52:39,350 --> 00:52:42,790
99% of the population. Well, I mean, if you listen to the Wine Institute of

855
00:52:42,790 --> 00:52:45,710
California, 75% of the population doesn't drink wine.

856
00:52:46,510 --> 00:52:50,350
Those are the 75% of the people that are slightly intimidated to even

857
00:52:50,350 --> 00:52:52,830
have a conversation and will tell you, I don't know what I. I don't know

858
00:52:52,830 --> 00:52:55,990
what I'm talking about. You know, if you bring it up the wrong way, but

859
00:52:55,990 --> 00:52:59,590
if you pour a glass of wine and somebody said, this is really good, and

860
00:52:59,590 --> 00:53:01,630
you tell a brief story, or you just say, yeah, this is.

861
00:53:03,710 --> 00:53:07,310
We have so many conversations about wine that otherwise wouldn't have happened if I didn't

862
00:53:07,310 --> 00:53:11,070
open the bottle of port over some other conversation, like something else was going on.

863
00:53:11,070 --> 00:53:14,910
It was dinner or that we're having guests or somebody was from another

864
00:53:14,910 --> 00:53:18,630
country and we were talking about their. Their. Their culture, and all of a sudden

865
00:53:18,630 --> 00:53:22,350
the conversation occurs and it's completely unintimidating. It's

866
00:53:22,350 --> 00:53:26,030
completely, you know, not opinionated, but

867
00:53:26,030 --> 00:53:29,690
it's. It's just partially opinionated. Partially. And they start to ask

868
00:53:29,690 --> 00:53:32,490
questions without intimidation, without

869
00:53:33,210 --> 00:53:36,650
feeling like they're going to barrage with an answer that's going to

870
00:53:36,810 --> 00:53:40,530
numb their brain after they're done with it. And it just

871
00:53:40,530 --> 00:53:43,770
fascinates me that aristocracy exists, but at the same time,

872
00:53:44,970 --> 00:53:48,650
there are these unintimidating conversations occurring every night at people

873
00:53:48,650 --> 00:53:52,370
that deal with wine. Isn't that the premise of shows

874
00:53:52,370 --> 00:53:56,220
like Drops of God, things like that, where

875
00:53:56,220 --> 00:54:00,020
the subject is wine, but it's not wine, you

876
00:54:00,020 --> 00:54:03,780
know? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think, you know, you go back and you see

877
00:54:03,780 --> 00:54:07,380
the classic poets like Baudelaire and Keats, right,

878
00:54:07,380 --> 00:54:11,180
writing these long and lengthy odes to wine

879
00:54:11,180 --> 00:54:13,580
and its place kind of in society.

880
00:54:14,940 --> 00:54:18,460
But I think wine's magic wines

881
00:54:18,620 --> 00:54:22,410
trick the thing it has, I think, over

882
00:54:22,410 --> 00:54:26,130
everybody else. I wrote an article called why I Never Found its

883
00:54:26,130 --> 00:54:27,250
country song, right? Because

884
00:54:30,290 --> 00:54:33,490
you've got whiskey and beer that are very, very

885
00:54:33,490 --> 00:54:37,090
cleverly aligned and clearly aligned with lifestyles,

886
00:54:37,170 --> 00:54:40,690
right? Like they align with that rural.

887
00:54:41,890 --> 00:54:45,010
They align with country. I mean, find me a modern country song without the word

888
00:54:45,010 --> 00:54:48,750
whiskey or beer in it. I dare you. And. And.

889
00:54:48,750 --> 00:54:52,470
But Whiskey in. In, to its credit, has also aligned with

890
00:54:52,470 --> 00:54:56,070
the luxury consumer very well. It's. It's seen a massive resurgence in the past 10

891
00:54:56,070 --> 00:54:59,070
years, and luxury whiskeys are a very real thing and a very

892
00:55:00,030 --> 00:55:03,630
successful category. But. But what wine

893
00:55:03,950 --> 00:55:06,350
Wine has this. This kind of

894
00:55:07,310 --> 00:55:11,030
incalculable mysticism to it. It's got

895
00:55:11,030 --> 00:55:14,590
this magic, it's got this sexiness, this. This. This

896
00:55:14,590 --> 00:55:16,510
allure, right, that appeal

897
00:55:19,050 --> 00:55:22,850
a secret part of ourselves. There's a reason that

898
00:55:22,850 --> 00:55:26,650
this has been the drink that's attracted, you know, poets

899
00:55:26,650 --> 00:55:30,250
and actors and chefs and kings and

900
00:55:30,410 --> 00:55:34,210
paupers and alike for centuries, right? And

901
00:55:34,210 --> 00:55:37,690
that. That hasn't changed. Right? That. That hasn't

902
00:55:37,690 --> 00:55:41,130
changed. And. And for me,

903
00:55:41,850 --> 00:55:45,330
as someone, as a professional that tries to figure out how to. To talk to

904
00:55:45,330 --> 00:55:48,730
people and how to get them interested, lately I've

905
00:55:49,370 --> 00:55:52,970
found myself not wanting to talk to people that aren't interested. If they want to

906
00:55:52,970 --> 00:55:56,730
talk, great. Just have. It's like an album. Have it on in the background,

907
00:55:57,050 --> 00:56:00,570
right? Have it part of the moment. And

908
00:56:00,730 --> 00:56:04,490
don't be afraid to put ice cubes. Is it hot outside? Don't give somebody a

909
00:56:04,490 --> 00:56:08,290
refrigerator. Chilled Chardonnay. Put five ice cubes in a glass green aux

910
00:56:08,290 --> 00:56:10,330
blanc. Don't tell them what it is. Put them in a solo cup. Just be

911
00:56:10,330 --> 00:56:13,450
like, here, check this out. This is good. And then stop talking about it, right?

912
00:56:14,980 --> 00:56:18,180
Make it part of the moment, part of the event. And

913
00:56:18,500 --> 00:56:21,580
if they want to know more, they will tell you. If not, just let them

914
00:56:21,580 --> 00:56:25,300
freaking enjoy it. You gotta. I've gotta grab a piece of paper because I

915
00:56:25,300 --> 00:56:27,700
gotta read this to you. This is from Hemingway's

916
00:56:29,220 --> 00:56:33,020
Movable Feast. Okay. And I. I will

917
00:56:33,020 --> 00:56:36,540
close with this because we're already at an hour. As I ate the

918
00:56:36,540 --> 00:56:40,380
oysters with their strong taste of the sea in their faint metallic taste, that

919
00:56:40,380 --> 00:56:44,060
could. That the cold wine washed away, leaving only

920
00:56:44,060 --> 00:56:47,820
the sea taste and the succulent texture. And as I drank their cold

921
00:56:47,820 --> 00:56:51,180
liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine,

922
00:56:51,500 --> 00:56:55,220
I lost the empty feeling. It began to be happy and

923
00:56:55,220 --> 00:56:58,860
to make plans. And that just that. Just

924
00:56:58,860 --> 00:57:01,740
when I saw this and I made a big, giant copy of it, it just

925
00:57:01,740 --> 00:57:05,380
reached into my. My brain and my

926
00:57:05,380 --> 00:57:09,040
heart about what wine is. And I lost that empty

927
00:57:09,040 --> 00:57:12,120
feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.

928
00:57:12,840 --> 00:57:13,960
It was so powerful.

929
00:57:17,160 --> 00:57:20,520
Well, since you did that to me, I'm going to end with my

930
00:57:20,680 --> 00:57:24,280
favorite one. Keats is ode to a

931
00:57:24,280 --> 00:57:27,640
nightingale. Oh, for a draft of vintage

932
00:57:28,200 --> 00:57:31,840
that have been cooled a long age in deep delved earth tasting

933
00:57:31,840 --> 00:57:35,680
floor in the country green dance and Provencal song and sunburnt

934
00:57:35,680 --> 00:57:39,300
mirth. Oh, for a beaker full of warm south

935
00:57:39,300 --> 00:57:42,940
full of the true, the bl. Blushful hip cream with beaded

936
00:57:42,940 --> 00:57:46,620
bubbles winking at the brim and purple Stained mouth and this is the part I

937
00:57:46,620 --> 00:57:49,780
love. That I might drink and leave the world

938
00:57:49,780 --> 00:57:53,540
unseen and with thee fade away into the forest dim.

939
00:57:54,580 --> 00:57:58,420
Sometimes wine is a moment alone. Right?

940
00:57:58,820 --> 00:58:02,460
Sometimes it's not you wanting to be loud. It's not

941
00:58:02,460 --> 00:58:06,300
you wanting to. To talk to anyone or chat about

942
00:58:06,300 --> 00:58:09,940
golf or be, hey, you know, making merry with your buddies.

943
00:58:10,260 --> 00:58:13,840
Somet. Sometimes it's just you in a moment, quiet,

944
00:58:13,920 --> 00:58:17,640
not on social media with a glass of wine. Whatever your thoughts

945
00:58:17,640 --> 00:58:21,280
are and not what anyone else thinks. And I

946
00:58:21,280 --> 00:58:25,120
love the way he said that because in modern marketing,

947
00:58:25,200 --> 00:58:28,960
so much of wine is social. So much of wine is people drinking together around

948
00:58:28,960 --> 00:58:32,720
a table. And I get that that's a massive, massive part of wine. But

949
00:58:32,720 --> 00:58:36,200
the beauty of wine is there's a solitude in it as well. And I love

950
00:58:36,200 --> 00:58:39,490
that. That I might drink and leave the world unseen within

951
00:58:39,570 --> 00:58:43,410
Modern. In the modern world where everything you do online is tracked and

952
00:58:43,410 --> 00:58:47,170
every company tries to treat you like their best friend and everybody needs to be

953
00:58:47,170 --> 00:58:50,450
a thinkfluencer. You're not going to get job offers.

954
00:58:50,690 --> 00:58:54,530
Sometimes it's just nice to sit quiet with a glass of wine and tell the

955
00:58:54,770 --> 00:58:58,330
world to just stay outside. I love it. Been an

956
00:58:58,330 --> 00:59:01,970
honor to have on the show, Louis. I think we should do it again

957
00:59:01,970 --> 00:59:05,770
as needle moves forward on some of this other stuff. Stuff.

958
00:59:05,850 --> 00:59:09,690
And maybe we'll solve a problem or two. Yeah, I'd love to. This has

959
00:59:09,690 --> 00:59:12,930
been great. Thank you for having me. We're up all the time. Maybe we'll tilt

960
00:59:12,930 --> 00:59:16,690
the glass together. I sometimes I'll bring my little portable studio and just sit the

961
00:59:16,690 --> 00:59:19,970
hotel lobby or in a conference room and do other

962
00:59:19,970 --> 00:59:23,530
podcasts. So we'll keep you posted. Well, and

963
00:59:23,530 --> 00:59:26,130
maybe we go check out that new spot in the Outville when it gets open.

964
00:59:26,130 --> 00:59:29,290
Yes. Karen Laz. That's who it is.

965
00:59:29,770 --> 00:59:33,570
Oh, in that case, I'm very excited to see it. Yeah, that's what

966
00:59:33,570 --> 00:59:36,250
he's doing it. Cheers. Cheers.