Wine Talks with Paul Mabray: Navigating the Digital Evolution of the Wine Industry

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A glass of wine is a time capsule that

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transports you across time and space

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to a location. So you're tasting France from 10 years

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ago in a glass. You're tasting France from yesterday. So whether

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you're looking introspectively at what's. In the bottle, it is that. That kind of

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space time machine. Sit back and grab a glass.

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It's Wine Talks with Paul K.

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Welcome to Wine Talks, and we are in studio today in Monroeville, California. Beautiful

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day in Southern California. We're broadcasting all the way up the Napa Valley with Mr.

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Paul McBray. I'll get to the introductions in just a second. Wine

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Talks, of course, available on Pandora, iHeartRadio, Spotify, wherever you

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hang out for your podcasting, we are there and always sponsored by the original

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Wine of the Month club, now sporting the Sweet series, biodynamic and

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Napa series. But let's get to our guests because this is gonna be a ton

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of fun. We're gonna talk old times and new times and what's going on on

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the H here. This is Paul McBray, and he is president and

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CEO of Pix. Wait, Pix. Wine.

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Wine. See, I sent you an email. I sent you an email And I put

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pix wine.com and that got all sent thing. But welcome to the show.

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Thanks for having me. It's good to be Paul Squared here on the show. It's

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nice. Yeah, that's right. Paul Squared. Yeah. We

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have a lot to talk about. We've got a lot of fun stuff to talk

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about in the industry. We want to talk about what's happening in the industry. And

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I want this to be sort of interesting for the

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people in the industry that we talk to every day. And I want the consumers

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to understand sort of what we're up against on the things that are happening every

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day and get a feel for your background and what your

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prognostication is, which I can't wait to hear, frankly.

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Yeah, no, no. It's the best time to be a consumer ever for wine, I

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think, ever in the history of the world. I think you're right. We're

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going to talk about the COVID effect and the post Covid effect, but you've had

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a storied history in the consulting side

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of this business as well as the digital side, because you

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looks like based on your experience here, starting at Nimon Coppola, the

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famed Francis Ford Coppola Winery, having bought

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one of the original wineries in Napa Valley, Right? Yeah. The old Gustav

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Niebaum, who is inglenook Winery that was owned by Hugh

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Blind. It got bought over and got turned into that kind of lower class wine.

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But it was one of the original. Great wineries of the Valley. Inglenook, you

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know, he's a ship captain. Yeah. That's interesting. I

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forgot about the Hubland part of that. Which would have been one of the

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first, like sort of corporate takeovers, if you want to call it

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that, in the Napa Valley. Yeah. Huber Line was one of the first kind of

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corporate entities coming in with spirit side. Didn't they have Cuervo, I think, in that

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time? Yeah. Right. The other one was Nestle, came in pretty big and

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then Behringer, if you don't. If you remember way back when. So

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that's a great rattling of the cage here

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because the growth of the wine

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business is obviously phenomenal. A lot to do with the judgment of Paris. We'll talk

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about that a little bit. But back in those days, and I Remember featuring

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a 79 Charbonneau from Inglenook.

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So that was before or after Francis Ford Coppola bought it?

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That was probably after he bought it. He bought in the

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70s, but he bought the front end estate, the Inglewood estate. So he bought the

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actual house behind the est. The big property. And I think it was

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right. Somewhere around that time he bought the front end of the state from New

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Blind and then kept buying more of it over time. I'll have to look in

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the history books. Yeah, he loved it. He was popular.

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I remember buying the wine and it must have been like, well, I

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didn't. I bought it, so. And I didn't buy the company from my father till

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1988. So the wine was already like 10 years in the bottle. But it's

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Charbono. Right. So you gotta, you gotta. Right. You gotta let it have

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10 years. So going back to those days,

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you were mentioning that you were sort of the club manager. And, you

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know, my father handed me this sort of a

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binder full of things happening in the industry that. And I got to go back

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and pull that out. But 1988, he says here, you know, you're going to take

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this over. I bought it from him, actually. We negotiated, actually. And then he said,

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here's what I understand about what's going on. And I think for sure there

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were five wineries that seemed to have embraced this

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idea of a monthly club. A club where there's a direct to consumer

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concept. We didn't even call it that back then. Right. It was just part of

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the club. Right? Yeah. It was a wine club, and it. Was an extension of

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people just showing up in the valley and they realized that they could send them

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wine, almost like a paid tasting program. It was like a cash

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registering. And Earl Martin, who was the president, said, hey, everyone else

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is doing clubs. Go analyze the entire valley's clubs and let's build our

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own. And it was a very unique wine club. It actually came with Pasta,

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a movie from Francis Ford Coppola, American Zoetrope magazine. So

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it was really kind of that first lifestyle package. And now it

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seems really innovative, but. It'S like plated plus wine today. Right.

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It's like all these new subscription and comedy things way back in the mid-90s.

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So pretty exciting. I can tell you. The shippers hated us. You know, you'd have

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long fettuccine or different pieces to pack. It was

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a fun time. It was a fun experience. Well, it certainly was a different time

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when it came to shipping, but I'm fascinated to hear this. I'm

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going to make a note about the subscription model, and we'll move it forward

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a little bit later, but certainly from the shipping side, and I'll Never forget

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this, UPS would pull up, you know, you did a 15

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handwritten manifest, you know, with carbon paper, and, you

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know, if you threw 25 extra boxes in the truck, no one really even noticed

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or cared. And you pretty much shipped where you felt like it,

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not knowing that actually there were problems going on. And

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my wife just sat through a whole seminar yesterday with ship compliant, and there's all

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these new. So much more coming down the pike. We'll talk about that in a

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minute. But. But that was rather, you know,

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groundbreaking, even though there were a handful of other

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clubs, was that the idea that the winery can go direct

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to the consumer to the extent that they can get tasting room prices for their

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wines and augment the experience of being

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part of their experience. Well, let's go back in history a little bit

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even more about that. I mean, it was not only innovative in the sense that

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they were trying. To connect with consumers, but the backlash from

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wholesalers back in those days saying, like, if you ship wine dtc, we

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won't carry your wines. Right. That was a real. Or they would say

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to the world that, hey, wines that we're going to ship from the winery would

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encourage underage drinking, that you wouldn't be able to collect taxes from them.

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There's no system to record this. And I'll give you another

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interesting anecdote that you'll like. So back then, the wine club

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Grew very fast. And they had almost library cards where they had the

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consumer's information written and they'd hand key in the credit card and it would

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take three weeks. Handkerchief in the kit card. We actually hired a guy, his name.

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Was Rob Crumb, and he wrote Access for Dummies.

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And he programmed the first wine club processing software ever for Nibaum

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Coppola that took those three and a half, four weeks of hanking and

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made it into 72 hours. And we thought we were superheroes, Right. So

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we were all part of this. Revolution of digitizing and

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changing those tools that opened up Wines west was the first

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fulfillment house, you know, if you remember that. Yeah, right, that's right, sure.

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That's fascinating because when I was laughing,

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My father's 92 now, and I saw him a few weeks ago, we were laughing

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about. We had binders, and every

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binder had a sleeve for a customer. And he had bought

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an embossing machine. So he would fake, effectively fake

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the credit card to the extent that it was. You could emboss

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a. You know what they used to call it, a validator. You know, we used

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to slide the thing across at the. At the department store. You know, if you're

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buying something, they would slide that across and emboss the. The

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credit card slip. So every customer of ours had one of those

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homemade embossed credit cards along with the. An address of

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the same, same method. And we would hand validate the address. So,

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you know, it's interesting that you. That you talked about this access thing. Well, let's

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go back to the wholesalers for a second. I used to have to fake my

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way into the wholesaler spirits wine. The

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wholesaler spirits warehouse. What's it called? Wholesalers Association

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Wines and Spirits, wswa. So they did

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not want to see me around there. And I used to have

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a friend, Tom Gosh, in the business, and he would give me his badge

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and then I'd gonna sneak around and just hear what they're saying. Because the lobby

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group and I want the listeners to understand this. The lobbyists for the liquor

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industry and the wine industry is very, very strong. And that seems to

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be loosening a little bit. But it's all leftover

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prohibition things, including the fact that I want to get a liquor

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license now here, and I can't. A third

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party has to get it because prohibition

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didn't allow you to manufacture things and sell them retail at the same time

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at that point. So that's just interesting. It is

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changing. You probably sense that that

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stranglehold is not quite as strong as it was, of course. It's been

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what, 50 years, 30 years.

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Yeah, it fractured in 2005 with Grant. Yeah, it

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fractured in 2005 With Grant Home. And that was the first domino. And it's just

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the beginning of the dominoes and it's accelerating and I think Covid will even accelerate

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it more. Not just in technology

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but in the regulations. I mean the consumer is going to get what they want

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at the end. Of the day, even as much as. You lobby, you know,

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over time. Yeah. So you're talking about software and

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the first program, which is great because I've been doing a lot of

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research. I've had, I can't tell you how many demonstrations

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I've had on software. And when I bought the company in 88, in

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1993, I put it on its first network computer system. You know, it

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was novel, I think it was. Right.

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And I, and we've, I've evolved this subscription model behind the

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scenes here, the database over the years I wrote part of it with the guy

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that designed the software. And as I've looked around trying to

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find a replacement and a front end for the web, I have not

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found anything is capable. Now I understand my thing is

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clunky because it's old school, but as far as its functionality, as far as

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what it does and the granularity of the selections, the way the system

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thinks, I have not seen yet. And we're rewriting

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it now with the premise of what we know works

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for what we do and then modernize this, the technology

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and get a customer facing website and all that. But I'm

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fascinated by the idea that some of the stuff that we've thought of in 1993

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hadn't been thought of yet or hasn't been implemented.

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Have you seen some of the latest things out there and what's going on with

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these pieces of software? Well, for sure, I mean I was the guy

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that drove them. I mean, in 2002 I founded Wine Direct, which was the First

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e commerce SaaS omnichannel software solution. So it

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was wine club processing, it was E commerce and it was point of sale all

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integrated in one. And it was groundbreaking.

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I used to knock on winery stores and say guys, there's this thing called the

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Internet. We're going to sell the wine. And they're like, oh Paul, you're so

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cute. Come back when that Internet fad goes away. And here's a funny

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wine club processing story. Credit card gateways

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had never seen transaction loads like we were putting together. So we had,

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you know, hundreds of wineries sometimes processing in the same day,

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which, you know, means thousands upon thousands of people's credit

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cards. And we get calls from the gateway saying, you know,

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or, you know, the policing. Are you trying to spoof credit cards and rob

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people? And they turn us off all the time because they thought we were

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like this big puppy mill of stolen credit cards that we were processing math

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that. Was early on in this concept. Right. I mean.

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Well, you're going to go back that time. That's interesting because. Go ahead.

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Yeah, but the modern stuff is great. Commerce 7. If you haven't checked them out,

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they do an amazing job off the shelf. Yeah.

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They may not be suitable for your kind of business because you're probably pretty mature

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and you've got some parts kind of codified and hardened that

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you're going to have trouble breaking loose. But they're the best of breed right now.

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Yeah, it is. Yeah. I would say part of it is

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we're used to what we're doing. And so, and I understand it right, you're in

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the technology business. I owned a software company for years which was

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not in this industry. But it's hard to break loose from the

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manual system and implement it when you got to think

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differently to make things more effective. But I think the

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consumers demanding more Amazon like

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service and capabilities and that's very hard for a small company

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to put together and compete and well, especially.

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I mean, look, fighting against Amazon is a losing battle,

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necessary. So we should take what's smart from them. And because we're a luxury good

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product, we should fight asymmetrically. We have different advantages that they

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don't have about how we can present service or how we can do things that

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the consumer wants different. And so I'm looking at you right now. You have that

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nice bottle of Opus wine on your table. The consumer doesn't want. Is that

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showing publicly. I should. I'm kidding.

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But they don't want coming in a hot truck. They don't want

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a yellow tag on their door. They want to get that wine when they want

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to pay premium for that, for that quality of wine. Right. Our case of that

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or two cases of that. So we have to remember that we're different and we

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can play differently accordingly. That's a good point.

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Well, you've got the experience to understand that. I mean, you

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were the first and any podcast. I've

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done over a hundred and talked to some old timers that even

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remembers the term. Virtualvineards.com yeah.

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And people don't know that listener that that was the predecessor of

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wine.com and I had the luxury of. And maybe

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you were there, I don't know. I went to two seminars. One was from

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the finance side where they were looking for the money to, to

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make this work and the other was the marketing side where they had

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discussed what they were doing to, to the Southern

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California Direct Mail Association. And one of the things that was

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fascinating back then and maybe you can reflect on this. I had

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four customer service reps and one IT guy. This is 19

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whatever virtual vintage was shopping and they

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had four IT guys and one customer service person. And I've

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never forgotten that ratio flip and not understanding it really because

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the Internet was new and you know. But didn't they burn through

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a couple of slugs of a couple hundred million dollars each before

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they landed on their feet as wine.com? So

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both they merged with wineshopper.com who. Raised hundreds of millions of dollars from.

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Kleiner Perkins which was a big vc, and Jeff Bezos. So they

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had a partnership with Amazon. Wine shopper did virtual vineyards. They both

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bought and elevated prices, bought the URL, wanted to come and merge and

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burn through probably about 400 plus million dollars together.

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And then that went completely kaput like

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everything else. And I think that there's a lot of stories of why that happened.

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I mean a lot of that infrastructure that they built is

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the infrastructure that the industry uses today to do three

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tier or dtc, whether it was the technologies

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or the warehouse fulfillment centers. The other

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piece is there was a. Pretty bad cultural clash between those two

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organizations. They were psychologically different types of businesses.

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Meaning that the virtual vineyard guys were amazing wine buyers and

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stewards and the wine shopper guys were a lot of brand

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managers and wholesaler district

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managers. So those are like the opposite mental model

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in the same building. And I'll never forget one day we were in the streets

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fighting like almost like Backstreet story. We were knives

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in the, in the alley and the next thing you know we're seeing the cucles

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next to each other. So it was a really weird west side story. Digital west

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side story, huh? Exactly. West side story. Sorry. Yeah,

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yeah, it was. Well that's interesting. You know we,

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we all, we all saw the, the. Not just with virtual vineyards

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or wine.com or lots of dot com debacles. I

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remember somebody coming to my father in law's and wanted to sell early

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on in the Internet custom furniture building online you can design your

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own furniture and get it built. And that probably didn't work either.

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But it's fascinating to me that here we are in

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2021 and it took the

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pandemic to bring many, many people to the

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web to buy wine. And as you probably have seen and

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all of us are starting to witness, yeah, we're not going to have that same

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sustained spike that Covid brought to us because people aren't shut in

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anymore. However, it's not going back to the previous levels

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because there's some trust now that you can get good

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wine on the Internet and you can have a guarantee, you can have

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customer service. And my theory is, and maybe you. Can.

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Shed light on this, my theory is

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that took a long time to come around from the time the

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dot com bust of virtual venues. In other words, if

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nobody really understood.com back then, and then

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trying to buy an emotional product like wine that it took

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40 years to get, it's not really a theory. But to get 40 years forward

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for us to or 30 years to be confident in that,

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is there more of that to come?

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So when I first started Wine Direct, I would have never thought that

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shoes would beat wine as a category online. Zappos

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proved us quite wrong with $1.3. Billion right in that piece.

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I think wine's problems were multifaceted

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and. I think that that was part of the issue. So we can always talk

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about the regulatory hurdles that caused it, the permitting. And

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retailers didn't get the same licensing as wineries, so there was no access point.

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As Granholm opened up, it was also. About the

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apathy that most of the wineries had towards E. Commerce was also a

295
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hindrance to that, meaning that we were getting double digit growth in

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either volume and then obviously in dollars after that.

297
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And so why change that? And in 2009, when we had our first kind of

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big hiccup with the recession, everyone switched to dtc. But

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DTC meant tasting room and our innotourism at every

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juncture across all of the the major wine regions, whether it's

301
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Napa, Sonoma, Santa Barbara, Oregon is huge.

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They have a huge volume of people going through there. So why care

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about E commerce? Why feed that horse when you're

304
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getting fed every day by this huge volume? I think that the stats, depending on

305
00:18:40,720 --> 00:18:44,520
who you talk to, Napa gets 2.9 to 4.2 million people a year

306
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that come through this valley. That's a pretty good feeder pool, to be honest.

307
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If it wasn't broke, why fix it. On the winery side? On the retailer side,

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they've definitely suffered from being left behind. They did not get to Follow

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us in gran home. We actually abandoned them, the wine industry and just said, hey,

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we're going to do it for wineries and retailers figured ourselves out. The bad news

311
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for that is that or the good news actually, to be honest with you,

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is we prove wrong everything that the wholesalers were saying. They said,

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oh, there's going to be unreach drinking. Oh, there's going to be no permanent. Oh,

314
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there's going to be no taxation. We built that infrastructure. And the retailers

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grant home check is in the mail. I think's coming soon, I promise

316
00:19:22,010 --> 00:19:25,650
you. You know, that's I've always said and this I'm going

317
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back 20, 30 years. Fine. You know, if

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the wholesalers got a problem with this, let us pick a wholesaler

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and pay a, pay a fee to, to

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just, you know what I say, a competition fee, because that's what they're worried about,

321
00:19:41,370 --> 00:19:45,210
right? All the we know the excuses that they gave the government, the government's

322
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about underage drinking, all that is a bunch of hogwash. They just want to protect

323
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their base grit. Okay, I'll pay you. You know, if

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you don't carry my brand, I'll, I'll pay you something just to filter through your

325
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system. Just let's just do it. Why, why restrict the consumer

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access when it's just a political, you know, stonewall.

327
00:20:04,090 --> 00:20:07,730
Well, you said something about the, the, the model up in

328
00:20:07,730 --> 00:20:11,340
Napa, and I, I had a conversation with the Napa Valley

329
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Register beat writer for the wine business just before COVID I mean, I think, I

330
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think it was early March last year or late February. Name is Sarah

331
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Clearman. And I thought it was going to be this great writer.

332
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She's a good writer. And I thought we met at the Oxbow and I thought

333
00:20:26,340 --> 00:20:29,340
it was gonna be this glorying article about Paul Calum Carey and what a great

334
00:20:29,340 --> 00:20:33,060
guy I am. But I don't think she ever wrote the

335
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article actually. But she was asking me questions. And the questions that she

336
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was trying to, to understand for herself was how are we going to

337
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help these small wineries that have to charge $150 a bottle because the cost of

338
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grapes is so high in Napa right now. And you know, how do we get

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00:20:48,000 --> 00:20:51,560
them to digitally market because many of them are relying on tasting or

340
00:20:51,560 --> 00:20:55,320
traffic. Unless she was prognosticating what was going to happen with, you know,

341
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COVID 19, I don't know because it was just not

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really on the horizon yet when we spoke. But her comment to me was

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fascinating. What she said, we're just learning how to chat here.

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And I thought, okay, this is interesting because we're really

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farmers, right? I mean, if you want to live the lifestyle of a wine owner

346
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and a winemaker, you got to be a farmer. So if I'm a

347
00:21:18,550 --> 00:21:22,390
farmer, what do I know about putting somebody in front

348
00:21:22,390 --> 00:21:26,230
of a monitor and waiting for the chat button to ring so I

349
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can have customer service? And so we kind of hatch that out a little bit.

350
00:21:30,850 --> 00:21:33,570
Yeah, I think I actually bumped you out of that article because I was in

351
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the article about the taste here.

352
00:21:38,050 --> 00:21:41,730
Holy cow. Maybe not. But you say that about

353
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farmers. And yes, there is a large group of farming that's involved in wine.

354
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But the reality of most winery ownership, they're gentlemen

355
00:21:48,970 --> 00:21:52,570
farmers. I mean, look, they were barons of industry in another industry, great

356
00:21:52,570 --> 00:21:56,410
CEOs or doctors or venture capitalists and now

357
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bought properties. And they have people that farm. They don't. Or maybe there are.

358
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There is still a good subset of the world that do farm. But it's a

359
00:22:03,290 --> 00:22:07,130
synergy between business and farming. I think that the problem is that we've been so

360
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product focused and maker focused that we're not

361
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seller focused. I think that's the key. We focus on what great wine we make,

362
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but once you make it, you gotta sell it. And that's the part we've left

363
00:22:17,890 --> 00:22:21,610
behind. And I think that that's the growth of the industry.

364
00:22:21,610 --> 00:22:25,240
And, you know, the fragility of the. Wine tasting room model has been exposed for

365
00:22:25,240 --> 00:22:28,840
some time. I'm sure you watched Robin Millen do Silicon Valley Bank Report. Every

366
00:22:28,840 --> 00:22:32,400
year that model has shown its. Fragility through

367
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fires, earthquakes, brownouts, you know,

368
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and over, you know, the lack of the tasting remodel, how it's

369
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doing, seeded tastings. We knew it was weak. It was the perfect

370
00:22:43,600 --> 00:22:47,240
storm, though, of COVID plus fires. It

371
00:22:47,240 --> 00:22:50,500
showed us we can no longer depend on it. We have to go broaden our

372
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search for E commerce. So that's that great awakening between

373
00:22:54,140 --> 00:22:57,780
wineries now knowing they can sell and it's successful for

374
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them. They actually see the proof. Consumers knowing that they can buy and

375
00:23:01,460 --> 00:23:05,300
retailers selling and saying, look, let's start getting more aggressive about breaking down

376
00:23:05,300 --> 00:23:08,940
these barriers and finding more interesting ways is the beginning of the golden age of

377
00:23:08,940 --> 00:23:12,780
wine online. That's what Covid really has catalyzed. And it's just going to

378
00:23:12,780 --> 00:23:16,320
get better. I mean, it's like an engine that starts,

379
00:23:16,480 --> 00:23:20,240
right? More and more people are investing in it. You're going to see more

380
00:23:20,240 --> 00:23:23,680
and more competitors coming into it, but also more knowledge sharing, more

381
00:23:24,160 --> 00:23:27,680
expertise, better tools so you can talk about Commerce seven.

382
00:23:27,760 --> 00:23:31,280
They'll get better. Maybe they'll be able to adapt for your model quickly because

383
00:23:31,600 --> 00:23:34,480
more people are adopting it and using it, making it better.

384
00:23:35,680 --> 00:23:38,560
Well, we started from scratch. We're using

385
00:23:40,400 --> 00:23:43,700
of all the E commerce platforms, the one that I thought was the most

386
00:23:43,700 --> 00:23:47,420
comprehensive with Be Loyal as far as what we do business, and

387
00:23:47,420 --> 00:23:51,020
then putting a WordPress over it and

388
00:23:51,020 --> 00:23:54,180
then of course, all the connections. And it's interesting with getting a little

389
00:23:54,660 --> 00:23:58,500
digitally geeky and database geeky. I was talking to the

390
00:23:58,500 --> 00:24:02,180
guys at the wine exchange down here, which they're wonderful marketeers and

391
00:24:02,180 --> 00:24:05,940
good pallets. And we were talking at a lunch and

392
00:24:05,940 --> 00:24:09,420
he's like, yeah, it's cool the way these things work, right? You've got this

393
00:24:09,420 --> 00:24:13,030
database, you tie in all these services like

394
00:24:13,030 --> 00:24:16,590
ship compliant or UPS or your credit card billing company.

395
00:24:16,830 --> 00:24:20,590
The problem is those guys don't talk to each other. So you've

396
00:24:20,590 --> 00:24:24,230
got to write something around the idea that if possible, the UPS

397
00:24:24,230 --> 00:24:27,990
person needs to talk to another piece of the software that's tangential

398
00:24:27,990 --> 00:24:31,390
part of your database. And that part is a very important piece of

399
00:24:31,550 --> 00:24:35,070
making these things function properly. But we won't get into that granularity.

400
00:24:35,230 --> 00:24:38,940
But I got an interesting scenario for you. I was on

401
00:24:38,940 --> 00:24:42,740
a panel for USC business school, gosh, for a couple years

402
00:24:42,740 --> 00:24:46,420
now, and I was sitting between two completely opposite

403
00:24:48,580 --> 00:24:52,300
wine theories or philosophies. The guy on my left

404
00:24:52,300 --> 00:24:55,460
was a friend of mine from college. He owns the winery

405
00:24:55,460 --> 00:24:59,060
Hammersky in Paso Robles. He hosts weddings and

406
00:24:59,060 --> 00:25:02,860
chapels, and he's got tours and he's got the tasting room. And we all

407
00:25:02,860 --> 00:25:06,690
know how hard that is, right? It's you, all the pieces are

408
00:25:06,690 --> 00:25:10,170
moving. And the right side of me was a

409
00:25:10,170 --> 00:25:13,330
gentleman that had just started a brand, and so he was renting,

410
00:25:13,970 --> 00:25:17,810
alternating proprietorship. He had an O2 somewhere and he was, you

411
00:25:17,810 --> 00:25:21,570
know, renting the barrels and renting the winemaker and all that. And beautiful, beautiful wines,

412
00:25:21,570 --> 00:25:25,370
but inherently very expensive just because of the methodology

413
00:25:25,370 --> 00:25:28,930
for making the wines. If you and I did that one of those two today,

414
00:25:29,980 --> 00:25:33,660
which one would you give a chance to

415
00:25:33,660 --> 00:25:35,900
make to actually turn a profit?

416
00:25:39,340 --> 00:25:43,140
Yeah, tough one. That's exactly. Everybody's going to rush out after you answer

417
00:25:43,140 --> 00:25:46,860
this and try and do it. So you go, well,

418
00:25:46,860 --> 00:25:50,700
look, I mean. Neither of them are the right answer. I mean, the

419
00:25:50,700 --> 00:25:53,500
right answer is what is. You know

420
00:25:54,460 --> 00:25:58,100
what my answer would be? Which one of those brands is trying to reach consumers

421
00:25:58,100 --> 00:26:01,340
in Boston and Austin that are not getting on the plane and flying to Paso

422
00:26:01,340 --> 00:26:04,600
Roland Place to Taste their wines. Right. How are they going to touch a. Consumer

423
00:26:04,600 --> 00:26:08,280
in South Beach, Florida, or Anchorage, Alaska,

424
00:26:08,760 --> 00:26:11,800
and be able to let them buy their wines? And how are they

425
00:26:12,120 --> 00:26:15,800
communicating their value exchange? And I think whether that's a luxury expensive

426
00:26:15,960 --> 00:26:19,560
product, that's $150 suggested retail price, or it's

427
00:26:20,440 --> 00:26:23,560
a good story of a farmer or the hammer skies, which is good wines. I

428
00:26:23,560 --> 00:26:27,000
mean, it doesn't matter. The reality of it is they have to get out past

429
00:26:27,000 --> 00:26:30,530
the taste room. The chasing room is not a sustainable growth model. It's a limiting

430
00:26:30,530 --> 00:26:34,290
factor. It's a stupid model. I mean, it's cool. If you can't sell

431
00:26:34,290 --> 00:26:37,970
wine, it's the most effective model. Right. If you can get someone in front of

432
00:26:37,970 --> 00:26:41,090
you in the taste room in a beautiful setting that.

433
00:26:42,370 --> 00:26:45,970
Hey, doggies. In their office.

434
00:26:45,970 --> 00:26:49,490
Yeah, beautiful setting. You know, a little

435
00:26:49,490 --> 00:26:53,210
drunk with their loved ones. Yes. If you can't sell

436
00:26:53,210 --> 00:26:57,010
wine doing that, you can't sell wine anywhere. Right in that piece. So. And it's

437
00:26:57,010 --> 00:26:59,810
a dumb model because you're asking people to get on a plane and come to

438
00:26:59,810 --> 00:27:03,170
you and then ship the wine home to them to acquire them as a customer.

439
00:27:03,170 --> 00:27:07,010
That's a really ridiculous concept. Is that any dumber than some

440
00:27:07,010 --> 00:27:09,530
of the state laws that. I think most of them are gone now, but for

441
00:27:09,530 --> 00:27:13,050
a while there, that in order for you to receive wine at your state, you

442
00:27:13,050 --> 00:27:16,130
had to have visited the winery in the first place. I think.

443
00:27:19,810 --> 00:27:23,450
That compounds the dumbness and. The stupidity level goes to

444
00:27:23,450 --> 00:27:27,120
10 at that point. Yeah. Well, there's a scenario right now

445
00:27:27,120 --> 00:27:30,320
that's happening, and I think what you're saying, and part of it is, and this

446
00:27:30,320 --> 00:27:33,280
is your specialty in this industry is brand building, which is a hard thing to

447
00:27:33,280 --> 00:27:36,960
do in any industry, you know, particularly when you've got

448
00:27:37,200 --> 00:27:40,960
try and get shelf space on the retail side or, you know,

449
00:27:41,440 --> 00:27:45,080
a house poor at a restaurant. Those are hard things to do with the competition

450
00:27:45,080 --> 00:27:48,680
that's out there, particularly with the consolidation of some of the wholesalers and their

451
00:27:48,680 --> 00:27:52,400
books are getting thicker and they're sending people to Hawaii, you know, to spiff

452
00:27:52,400 --> 00:27:55,550
you if you sell 10 cases or something. It's very hard for you and I,

453
00:27:55,630 --> 00:27:58,590
as an upstart winery to get the presence that we want.

454
00:27:59,230 --> 00:28:02,950
And so there's a. There's a group out there. Let's just talk

455
00:28:02,950 --> 00:28:06,590
about the category. I mean, yeah, there's no other product in the world like

456
00:28:06,590 --> 00:28:10,069
wine with that. That much competition for mouth share and

457
00:28:10,069 --> 00:28:13,670
stomach share, meaning that, you know, what was 160,000 new

458
00:28:13,670 --> 00:28:17,390
wines are coming this. Year to the TTV. Think about that. There's not 160,000

459
00:28:17,390 --> 00:28:20,990
types of milk under 60,000 types of butter

460
00:28:20,990 --> 00:28:24,790
or bread or cereal. And it compounds because it doesn't go

461
00:28:24,790 --> 00:28:28,390
bad. Right. The wines stay good. So next year it's not 160,000,

462
00:28:28,390 --> 00:28:31,830
it's going to be 320,000. And then it goes on. Yes. Some of the white

463
00:28:31,830 --> 00:28:35,630
wines degrade out, but like right now, I estimate there's about 1.2

464
00:28:35,630 --> 00:28:39,270
to 1.4 million products for sale in the United States. Everything from

465
00:28:39,270 --> 00:28:42,790
some old port from 1919 to,

466
00:28:42,870 --> 00:28:46,070
you know, a bota box. Right? Yeah.

467
00:28:46,950 --> 00:28:50,500
Actually the other day I had a wooden 3 liter Bordeaux

468
00:28:50,500 --> 00:28:54,100
box and I thought it's brilliant packaging. I don't know if it's.

469
00:28:54,420 --> 00:28:57,220
But it was actually a wooden box with a bladder inside of it.

470
00:28:58,180 --> 00:29:01,780
So what do you make then of. Of a consumer walking

471
00:29:01,780 --> 00:29:05,220
into Vons, as I do quite often in Hermosa beach, and every

472
00:29:05,220 --> 00:29:08,980
single wine has a shelf talker and it's

473
00:29:08,980 --> 00:29:12,100
either got us rating on it, which is like, you know, you know, a whole

474
00:29:12,100 --> 00:29:15,740
nother industry we can talk about, or the discount price based on,

475
00:29:15,740 --> 00:29:18,730
you know, six bottles or whatever it is is. I mean, what does a consumer

476
00:29:18,730 --> 00:29:22,570
do when they see this? Yeah, it's paralyzing. I think that's the problem.

477
00:29:22,570 --> 00:29:25,610
That's what one of the things that I'm trying to solve is. It's a tough

478
00:29:25,610 --> 00:29:29,450
situation. Right. How do you help people make a decision and discover.

479
00:29:29,450 --> 00:29:32,890
Because really, wine, one of the reasons that there it's hard to have brand loyalty

480
00:29:32,890 --> 00:29:36,650
is it's easy, easy to be promiscuous. You walk into Vons one day

481
00:29:36,650 --> 00:29:40,170
you walk into a wine store the next day you go to a restaurant. You

482
00:29:40,170 --> 00:29:43,850
don't. There's so much selection that it's amazing that discovery is part of the journey

483
00:29:43,850 --> 00:29:46,810
in wine. And, and even if you find a blue chip brand you like,

484
00:29:47,450 --> 00:29:50,090
you're never always at the same place at the same time or you don't want

485
00:29:50,090 --> 00:29:53,850
to drink the same thing all the time either, so. Well,

486
00:29:53,850 --> 00:29:57,490
I'm glad you said that. It's an important part of consumerism. My

487
00:29:57,490 --> 00:30:01,330
wife buys Tide and she buys Woolite, and those

488
00:30:01,330 --> 00:30:04,410
are the brands that she trusts. Wine's a more

489
00:30:04,730 --> 00:30:08,450
emotional product than that. And if, you know, I've talked to my

490
00:30:08,450 --> 00:30:12,090
clients and people come into our tasting room and, and digitally

491
00:30:12,090 --> 00:30:15,930
speak with them about the idea of wine is a

492
00:30:15,930 --> 00:30:19,610
wonderful subject. You can learn as much as you want. You'll never stop

493
00:30:19,610 --> 00:30:23,450
learning. The MW that got their degree in 1964 is a

494
00:30:23,450 --> 00:30:27,210
totally different experience for the MW trying to get their degree today. There's so

495
00:30:27,210 --> 00:30:30,650
much more to know and that will continue to grow. But as a consumer,

496
00:30:31,210 --> 00:30:34,730
you can decide that I like this brand and I'm going to continue to buy

497
00:30:34,730 --> 00:30:38,380
it. And at some point, I think everybody sort of their palate

498
00:30:38,380 --> 00:30:41,620
says it's time to change, then we're going to look for something else.

499
00:30:42,020 --> 00:30:45,060
And then we go to the shop. And then I got a shelf talker and

500
00:30:45,060 --> 00:30:48,660
a rating from James Suckling on everything there is. And it's hard to understand.

501
00:30:48,900 --> 00:30:52,340
And I think that puts a ton of value in not only a wine shop

502
00:30:52,340 --> 00:30:56,140
owner who's tasted the wines for you to help you understand your palate and guide

503
00:30:56,140 --> 00:30:59,940
you to something interesting, or the department manager of

504
00:30:59,940 --> 00:31:03,390
the store or your wine club purveyor who, whatever it is

505
00:31:03,630 --> 00:31:06,990
to help you sort of walk down the. Down the path.

506
00:31:07,230 --> 00:31:10,710
But it is an emotional product. Let me run this scenario by you. There's a

507
00:31:10,710 --> 00:31:14,270
group kind of trying to bring some caucus wines in. I'm Armenian

508
00:31:14,990 --> 00:31:18,790
and Armenians making wine. I mean, they found the oldest intact

509
00:31:18,790 --> 00:31:22,510
winery in Armenia 6,000 years ago, right. Somebody. Somebody left their shoes.

510
00:31:23,150 --> 00:31:26,990
So. But this is an interesting scenario.

511
00:31:26,990 --> 00:31:30,580
And I had that conversation with the president of KJS the other day about

512
00:31:30,580 --> 00:31:34,300
it. It's such a different product that you can't come

513
00:31:34,300 --> 00:31:38,060
out of business school with your thesis and say you're going to

514
00:31:38,060 --> 00:31:41,820
apply this and take over the industry. Right. You

515
00:31:41,820 --> 00:31:45,260
can do all the things that you would normally do to sell a widget. You

516
00:31:45,260 --> 00:31:47,740
can do the videos, you can do the media, you can do the Facebook and

517
00:31:47,740 --> 00:31:50,820
do all the things you wanted to do. And you might get some traction. Somebody

518
00:31:50,820 --> 00:31:54,500
because you got a better widget than the other guy. But wine,

519
00:31:55,350 --> 00:31:58,870
that's a hard decision for me for somebody to make to change

520
00:31:59,830 --> 00:32:03,350
and to come into the industry. And this is happening.

521
00:32:03,430 --> 00:32:06,870
I'm going to take over the network. I'm going to have my own wholesalers, I'm

522
00:32:06,870 --> 00:32:10,070
going to have my own salespeople, supplier reps on the street trying to sell this

523
00:32:10,070 --> 00:32:13,830
wine. It's not a popular area, it's not a popular grape. No one's even heard

524
00:32:13,830 --> 00:32:17,470
of it. And I'm going to try and get some traction with the

525
00:32:17,470 --> 00:32:21,270
consumer in the wine world by covering all

526
00:32:21,590 --> 00:32:25,390
the business school bases and then finding out that

527
00:32:25,950 --> 00:32:29,710
it doesn't really work. Well. I mean,

528
00:32:30,750 --> 00:32:33,950
the problem with using business school basics versus

529
00:32:34,510 --> 00:32:38,230
applying the context of wine is the situation in the context of wine

530
00:32:38,230 --> 00:32:42,070
has a lot of complexity, not only in the product selection the route to

531
00:32:42,070 --> 00:32:45,790
market, but also the consumer behaviors at different times. So, I mean, micro

532
00:32:45,790 --> 00:32:49,550
targeting and really profiling behaviors is key,

533
00:32:50,100 --> 00:32:53,620
but it's about discovery and introduction. Like you talk about, you know, that

534
00:32:53,620 --> 00:32:57,420
wine, it's very hard to. To try. Let's call it Canary

535
00:32:57,420 --> 00:33:00,940
Island Wines. Like, why would you try that wine unless someone

536
00:33:00,940 --> 00:33:04,340
introduced you to it and helped you discover why it was. And helped you understand

537
00:33:04,340 --> 00:33:07,300
why it had that kind of salinity in it. Right.

538
00:33:08,180 --> 00:33:11,980
Why did you choose Canary Island? You

539
00:33:11,980 --> 00:33:15,540
know what? It just was an obscure place that makes amazing

540
00:33:15,540 --> 00:33:19,170
wines. That came to head in my head. Yeah. So just had one

541
00:33:19,170 --> 00:33:22,490
last week and I was floored by it. They're great. I'm having a

542
00:33:22,490 --> 00:33:25,730
colores tonight where I'm taking the team out to have a white coladas. If you've

543
00:33:25,730 --> 00:33:28,530
never had that from Portugal, though, like the smallest, most

544
00:33:29,490 --> 00:33:33,250
aba in the world. That's like going extinct. The beaches. It's amazing. Yeah.

545
00:33:33,250 --> 00:33:36,370
I have colossal. I have to go back and look at my tasting notes, but

546
00:33:36,930 --> 00:33:40,690
I was floored by this Canary Islands. Lubro Negro

547
00:33:40,690 --> 00:33:44,290
or Nero or I forgot the name of the grape, but I.

548
00:33:44,290 --> 00:33:48,090
I just bought it to put in my cellar because. And that maybe that

549
00:33:48,090 --> 00:33:50,970
goes back to what we were talking about, which is when I get home from

550
00:33:50,970 --> 00:33:54,050
work, I want a profile.

551
00:33:54,610 --> 00:33:58,450
So we. We no longer say what's for dinner? We say

552
00:33:58,450 --> 00:34:02,250
what is in the glass. You know, what do I feel like drinking? And

553
00:34:02,250 --> 00:34:06,010
then we're going to try and cook around it or. Or doordash around it.

554
00:34:06,010 --> 00:34:09,530
But. But, you know, it

555
00:34:09,530 --> 00:34:13,170
seems that. And I've had this conversation with many people that the

556
00:34:13,170 --> 00:34:16,650
variety of wines and the variety of palates and the variety of flavors is now

557
00:34:16,650 --> 00:34:19,610
sort of guiding us. And usually with aficionados and

558
00:34:19,930 --> 00:34:23,610
foodies. You know, we're talking about what we're drinking first,

559
00:34:23,770 --> 00:34:26,890
rather before what we're eating. You know, I think that

560
00:34:27,690 --> 00:34:31,330
even you, as we are a spectrum as humans. I mean, like. So, first of

561
00:34:31,330 --> 00:34:35,090
all, wine is a big category. It's everything from alcohol delivery

562
00:34:35,090 --> 00:34:38,490
to existential. Experience in a glass. Right. That's what it is. And

563
00:34:38,790 --> 00:34:42,110
some days I know you and I have probably come home and you're like, I've

564
00:34:42,110 --> 00:34:45,190
had a long day and I want red or white, I want it cold, I

565
00:34:45,190 --> 00:34:48,270
want it tasty. And I don't care what it really is. It's just been one

566
00:34:48,270 --> 00:34:51,110
of those days. Other days I'm. I'm trying to introduce something to some friends. I

567
00:34:51,110 --> 00:34:54,550
want it to be really magical. And other days I just like a good palette

568
00:34:54,630 --> 00:34:58,390
Cleanser that's interesting to me, but not. Not crazy. And it matches the food.

569
00:34:58,470 --> 00:35:02,230
So I think that we forget that we're not one dimensional either.

570
00:35:02,310 --> 00:35:06,080
Right. You're. There's not. An enophile. Is not always an enophile.

571
00:35:06,160 --> 00:35:09,200
Sometimes it's just red or white. Sometimes it's just bubbles. You know,

572
00:35:10,800 --> 00:35:14,400
bubbles too. A new part of my

573
00:35:14,480 --> 00:35:18,040
consumption regiment. After having

574
00:35:18,040 --> 00:35:21,520
Steven Spurrier on a call, tasting some Bride Valley and

575
00:35:21,760 --> 00:35:24,400
Giesborne English sparklers,

576
00:35:25,280 --> 00:35:29,000
I. I became a huge fan. And so now everybody looks at me

577
00:35:29,000 --> 00:35:32,390
like, what are you celebrating? I'm like, I'm not celebrating anything. Celebrating life. I'm just

578
00:35:32,390 --> 00:35:36,150
gonna have a glass of sparkling wine because it just part. It should be

579
00:35:36,150 --> 00:35:39,630
part of your regimen. I was looking at your

580
00:35:39,630 --> 00:35:43,350
PowerPoint presentation that you. Looks like you had put together

581
00:35:43,350 --> 00:35:46,990
for some Burgundian makers. Is that what that was for?

582
00:35:48,590 --> 00:35:51,790
The one in Dijon a long time ago? Yeah, yeah, in Dijon. Yeah.

583
00:35:52,510 --> 00:35:56,350
It was your. There was no audio to it, but the

584
00:35:56,350 --> 00:35:59,630
points were rather valid and I understood where you're going with it. But have you

585
00:35:59,630 --> 00:36:02,230
seen an international difference in

586
00:36:03,270 --> 00:36:06,950
approach to the market? Because their shipping royals are a lot easier than

587
00:36:06,950 --> 00:36:10,230
ours and their palates are a lot different than ours. And

588
00:36:10,790 --> 00:36:13,390
it's part of their lifestyle from when they were a child. In fact, I just

589
00:36:13,390 --> 00:36:17,110
got done. You'll laugh at this. I do speak

590
00:36:17,110 --> 00:36:20,350
some French and I'm learning. Continue to learn. I was watching a video the other

591
00:36:20,350 --> 00:36:23,830
day. It was about as recent as 1981.

592
00:36:25,040 --> 00:36:28,000
The French law now prohibits

593
00:36:29,120 --> 00:36:32,400
wine at high school lunches. But until

594
00:36:32,400 --> 00:36:35,560
1981, you could have a glass of wine at your lunch in high school. And

595
00:36:35,560 --> 00:36:38,760
I can't imagine that in Palos Vee's high school when I was there. But so

596
00:36:38,760 --> 00:36:42,400
it's pretty. That's pretty recent in my view. So

597
00:36:43,120 --> 00:36:46,440
their lookout on wine and their daily life is different than

598
00:36:46,440 --> 00:36:50,050
Americans. So what do you see as a difference in the

599
00:36:50,050 --> 00:36:52,650
industries and the marketing of wine throughout Europe?

600
00:36:53,850 --> 00:36:56,970
So you can break the world into two kind of the new world old world

601
00:36:56,970 --> 00:37:00,810
pretty easily, and they behave differently accordingly. So in the. The

602
00:37:00,810 --> 00:37:04,410
old world is pretty reticent against. And they

603
00:37:04,410 --> 00:37:07,850
are much more farmers, but they're. They're reticent against direct to consumer.

604
00:37:08,010 --> 00:37:11,610
They're reticent against technology. And each of the individual countries

605
00:37:11,690 --> 00:37:15,330
are not very. They're not great explorers of

606
00:37:15,330 --> 00:37:19,030
wines. Not from their countries. Right. So France and Italy don't. Outside

607
00:37:19,030 --> 00:37:22,710
of France and Italy, they. They're

608
00:37:22,710 --> 00:37:26,470
changing quickly for sure. Especially since COVID the new World is definitely

609
00:37:26,470 --> 00:37:29,830
much more digitally savvy, much more trying to connect directly to the

610
00:37:29,830 --> 00:37:33,189
consumer and trying to understand who they are. Much more

611
00:37:34,070 --> 00:37:37,750
trying to find tools, websites, e commerce and everything.

612
00:37:38,150 --> 00:37:41,710
The other ones are used to selling to, you know, negociant who sells to an

613
00:37:41,710 --> 00:37:45,230
importer, who sells to a wholesaler who sells to. So the amount of

614
00:37:45,230 --> 00:37:48,910
layers, they just want to make the wine and sell it differently. And then

615
00:37:48,910 --> 00:37:52,470
there's some cultural differences. Like until recently in Italy,

616
00:37:52,870 --> 00:37:55,870
if you ask people in Italy about E commerce, they didn't want to use E

617
00:37:55,870 --> 00:37:59,710
commerce because they didn't trust it. Even though it's the same country. They didn't

618
00:37:59,710 --> 00:38:02,310
have a trust level that that person was going to send them the right thing

619
00:38:02,310 --> 00:38:05,910
or that's changing. But there are all these different

620
00:38:05,910 --> 00:38:09,750
cultural barriers that occurred from this. This is the way we've done business for

621
00:38:09,750 --> 00:38:13,340
hundreds of years. Essentially. That's, that's, you know, what

622
00:38:13,980 --> 00:38:17,500
the whole response is right there. This is the way we've done it for hundreds

623
00:38:17,500 --> 00:38:21,020
of years. Right. The famed chef Joaquin

624
00:38:21,020 --> 00:38:24,620
Splashao who started the Patina group and he just is now

625
00:38:24,780 --> 00:38:28,299
making wine in the Provence on a domain

626
00:38:28,299 --> 00:38:31,820
cala and he was telling me the other day, you know, he

627
00:38:31,820 --> 00:38:35,340
signed on with a German direct to consumer

628
00:38:35,340 --> 00:38:39,110
company and they're killing it with his wine and he's,

629
00:38:39,110 --> 00:38:42,950
you know, whatever he ships to America is a hand sell. And it's,

630
00:38:43,030 --> 00:38:46,870
of course it's west coast and rose's not big here yet,

631
00:38:47,110 --> 00:38:50,910
it's getting bigger. But there was a huge difference in the, in the

632
00:38:50,910 --> 00:38:54,470
viability of the market in Germany compared to

633
00:38:54,550 --> 00:38:58,390
Los Angeles even, which I thought was pretty fascinating. You know, I was,

634
00:38:58,390 --> 00:39:02,150
my wife was talking about. Yeah,

635
00:39:02,150 --> 00:39:05,920
I mean. Well, I don't know, I'm sure you've seen it, but it seems

636
00:39:05,920 --> 00:39:09,600
to me all the great regions in the smaller

637
00:39:09,600 --> 00:39:12,600
regions of the world now are making some kind of rose out of their indigenous

638
00:39:12,600 --> 00:39:15,880
grapes. And so you get wonderful array of

639
00:39:15,880 --> 00:39:19,320
character in rose from Tuscany to Bordeaux to

640
00:39:19,320 --> 00:39:22,360
Purat. I mean, it's fascinating to taste

641
00:39:22,920 --> 00:39:26,680
and I'm enjoying it actually. Getting a chance to span the globe

642
00:39:27,320 --> 00:39:31,040
doing that. I don't think they have time to talk about canned wines

643
00:39:31,040 --> 00:39:32,910
or plastic bottle wines, but we'll try.

644
00:39:34,990 --> 00:39:38,510
My wife was listening to the SHIELD compliance seminar yesterday and they're talking about some

645
00:39:38,510 --> 00:39:41,470
of the rules that were changing out there.

646
00:39:41,870 --> 00:39:45,710
Winery direct versus retail versus three tier. All the stuff

647
00:39:45,710 --> 00:39:49,150
that we're used to talking about in a lot of wineries. Now apparently

648
00:39:49,710 --> 00:39:52,830
states, apparently Michigan stung somebody and

649
00:39:53,390 --> 00:39:56,950
you know, caught them not selling Only the

650
00:39:56,950 --> 00:40:00,720
brands that they make that they're coed to. And I started to think

651
00:40:00,720 --> 00:40:04,560
about this. The cola for the listeners is the federal registration

652
00:40:04,560 --> 00:40:08,360
of the brand and the label and all the pertinent information that goes with

653
00:40:08,360 --> 00:40:12,200
that. And it gets assigned to you as a winery. So only you can

654
00:40:12,200 --> 00:40:16,040
produce that wine unless you assign that cola to somebody else. So

655
00:40:16,040 --> 00:40:19,640
it's sort of the legal link between what's in the bottle

656
00:40:19,640 --> 00:40:23,280
and what's on the label and what you're buying.

657
00:40:24,080 --> 00:40:27,770
So a lot of states now are saying, we're going to allow wineries to

658
00:40:27,770 --> 00:40:31,530
ship direct. So if you have a cola, if you have a

659
00:40:31,530 --> 00:40:35,250
O2, you can make a wine. And then all of a sudden, of course,

660
00:40:36,050 --> 00:40:39,490
and it seems more popular now than it has been, you can buy.

661
00:40:39,650 --> 00:40:43,450
You've always been able to buy juice. The Wine Institute used

662
00:40:43,450 --> 00:40:46,970
to say about 95% of wine is not bottled by the

663
00:40:46,970 --> 00:40:50,730
estate, something like that. Maybe I'm wrong with that and you can shed some light

664
00:40:50,730 --> 00:40:54,360
on that statistic. But it seems like now

665
00:40:54,360 --> 00:40:57,160
the state legislature, the point I'm trying to get to

666
00:40:58,040 --> 00:41:01,320
are kind of forcing everybody into some kind of

667
00:41:01,880 --> 00:41:05,480
branding, private labeling ways to

668
00:41:05,720 --> 00:41:09,240
get wine into that state where we require you to go buy juice from

669
00:41:09,240 --> 00:41:12,800
somewhere else. If I'm a retailer and I want to sell wine to

670
00:41:12,800 --> 00:41:16,400
Michigan, I have to have the control of the wine, the legal control of the

671
00:41:16,400 --> 00:41:19,280
wine. And so I might just go out and buy some juice, put in a

672
00:41:19,280 --> 00:41:23,120
bottle, brand it to my brave vineyards and ship it in.

673
00:41:23,360 --> 00:41:27,160
Is there a shift in what is on the shelf

674
00:41:27,160 --> 00:41:30,640
because of that? Trying to net out that whole comment.

675
00:41:30,800 --> 00:41:34,560
We've been making a transition towards private label control label for some time. I

676
00:41:34,560 --> 00:41:37,160
mean, if you look at us versus the uk, they did that a long time

677
00:41:37,160 --> 00:41:40,840
ago. I think we were. Yeah, I mean, they're like 70% private

678
00:41:40,840 --> 00:41:44,600
label, 30% branded. And we were the opposite, you know, or less. Even less

679
00:41:44,600 --> 00:41:48,390
so. And look, there's a lot of value in that piece. There's margin

680
00:41:48,390 --> 00:41:52,110
release. There's interesting trust. You know, they trust you as a retailer, they trust you

681
00:41:52,110 --> 00:41:55,910
as a thing. But I don't think it's a regulatory thing. I

682
00:41:55,910 --> 00:41:59,030
think it's more just an adjustment of the market in general. They're trying to understand

683
00:41:59,110 --> 00:42:02,910
how to keep their brands. I mean, if you're a retailer and you build

684
00:42:02,910 --> 00:42:05,430
all these brands and they don't allocate it, they don't give it. To you, you

685
00:42:05,430 --> 00:42:08,110
know, you're not making. That, you don't have equity in that to sell later on.

686
00:42:08,110 --> 00:42:11,520
Whereas if you own that brand as your private label, it becomes a part. Of

687
00:42:11,520 --> 00:42:15,240
your asset base. Right? That's right. Yeah. And if you sell a lot of it,

688
00:42:15,240 --> 00:42:18,960
then it's even a bigger asset. Right. You can just sell the brand off and

689
00:42:18,960 --> 00:42:22,000
keep the retail shop. Right. You just made a big. So, I mean, there's a

690
00:42:22,000 --> 00:42:24,560
lot of. Interesting things, which is its own sort of industry.

691
00:42:25,600 --> 00:42:28,160
Yeah. Because

692
00:42:29,200 --> 00:42:32,800
I pitched this idea and you said it already, that

693
00:42:32,800 --> 00:42:36,560
wine can be an existential experience. And I tell

694
00:42:36,560 --> 00:42:40,220
stories all the time about it with my consumers. And we want that

695
00:42:40,380 --> 00:42:43,700
to continue. We want people to feel something Right. When they have a glass of

696
00:42:43,700 --> 00:42:46,620
wine. A good glass of wine makes you feel something, makes you connect to the

697
00:42:46,620 --> 00:42:50,340
earth. It makes you shut down for the day. It makes you think, it makes

698
00:42:50,340 --> 00:42:53,820
you talk. I mean, whatever it is. Right. Sometimes you talk too much, but whatever.

699
00:42:55,820 --> 00:42:59,660
But there is an ethereal value to a glass of wine that's different

700
00:42:59,660 --> 00:43:03,020
than all over the beverages. Can you define that? Because

701
00:43:03,340 --> 00:43:06,900
I have a hard time defining why is that different for a glass of wine

702
00:43:06,900 --> 00:43:10,380
than a glass of Jack Daniels or even a craft

703
00:43:10,380 --> 00:43:14,220
beer? So a glass

704
00:43:14,220 --> 00:43:18,020
of wine is a time capsule that transports

705
00:43:18,020 --> 00:43:20,380
you across time and space

706
00:43:21,820 --> 00:43:25,420
to a location. So you are tasting France from 10 years

707
00:43:25,420 --> 00:43:28,860
ago in a glass. You're tasting France from yesterday.

708
00:43:29,020 --> 00:43:32,840
And oftentimes you're doing in a social situation mostly that

709
00:43:32,840 --> 00:43:36,640
you're engaging with someone else. So whether you're looking introspectively at what's

710
00:43:36,640 --> 00:43:40,080
in the bottle, it is that, that kind of space time machine that you're

711
00:43:40,080 --> 00:43:43,720
traveling through that and understanding how Veracitates or

712
00:43:43,720 --> 00:43:47,440
Australia or New Zealand, you're experiencing the different place and also, like I said,

713
00:43:47,520 --> 00:43:51,360
a different time. It came from the past right on that piece.

714
00:43:52,320 --> 00:43:55,840
And then the fact that it is a social beverage is the

715
00:43:55,840 --> 00:43:59,600
social beverage. Right. You're not outpouring Jack Daniels with all your buddies. You

716
00:43:59,600 --> 00:44:02,000
have a bottle. You don't drink a whole bottle of Jack Daniels. If you do,

717
00:44:02,000 --> 00:44:05,740
it's a bad day. The wine is meant to share a

718
00:44:05,740 --> 00:44:09,340
vehicle that's built at the right alcohol level, at the right size level,

719
00:44:09,660 --> 00:44:12,220
perfectly suited for sharing at a meal.

720
00:44:13,420 --> 00:44:16,700
Doesn't it seem like then I'm sure you deal with this all the time with

721
00:44:16,940 --> 00:44:19,900
friends and family that aren't in the business, that

722
00:44:20,860 --> 00:44:24,620
so much of the conversation at the dinner table will come around to the glass

723
00:44:24,620 --> 00:44:27,300
of wine. I mean, you might be a real estate person talking to the wine

724
00:44:27,300 --> 00:44:31,110
person talking to somebody that sells mattresses, but if you're having a good glass of

725
00:44:31,110 --> 00:44:34,870
Wine, the bottle gets passed around. They look at the label, they read

726
00:44:34,870 --> 00:44:38,630
the back, and all of a sudden, the conversation is on wine. Because they

727
00:44:38,630 --> 00:44:41,550
want. People are inquisitive about what it is.

728
00:44:43,310 --> 00:44:46,430
Well, it's by nature also a complex product.

729
00:44:47,070 --> 00:44:50,870
Right. It's not a simple product. It doesn't have a simple taste profile. I mean,

730
00:44:50,870 --> 00:44:54,350
there's so much difference in different bottles of wine and different

731
00:44:54,350 --> 00:44:58,130
varietals, from Pinot Noir to Syrah, from Sauvignon Blanc. And even

732
00:44:58,130 --> 00:45:01,930
within the varietals, there's so much variation that it's always an adventure. It's

733
00:45:01,930 --> 00:45:05,290
that discovery component. And, you know, what hits your nerves

734
00:45:05,610 --> 00:45:09,370
in that discovery piece is also part of that inspiration. And you're like, wow, I've

735
00:45:09,370 --> 00:45:13,170
never tasted gooseberry. Or I've never. This is like stone fruit. What

736
00:45:13,170 --> 00:45:17,010
is a stone fruit? And it kind of. So

737
00:45:17,010 --> 00:45:20,810
these are. When you find those flavor metaphors in your mouth and you're

738
00:45:20,810 --> 00:45:24,100
like, wow, that's. Something I didn't expect. Or something. Or it's. It's almost like

739
00:45:24,100 --> 00:45:26,500
Ratatouille, the children's movie. Where he goes,

740
00:45:27,700 --> 00:45:31,420
the aha moment. The aha moments. Right. And that's. That's what

741
00:45:31,420 --> 00:45:35,060
the mat is. And that's. It is fascinating about wine.

742
00:45:35,300 --> 00:45:38,820
Now, you say that. That you can. You can continue to have those aha moments,

743
00:45:39,139 --> 00:45:42,700
like what I had with the Canary Islands Red. All of a sudden it's like,

744
00:45:42,700 --> 00:45:46,420
aha. I've never tasted this before. Hard to describe. Some

745
00:45:46,420 --> 00:45:49,700
people are better at than others, but you sense something,

746
00:45:50,390 --> 00:45:54,230
and that creates that moment. Going back to the business side

747
00:45:54,230 --> 00:45:57,510
just for a second. Sure. I had a great interview with

748
00:45:57,830 --> 00:46:01,670
Mike Houlihan of Barefoot Sellers, and I've told the story a few times, but

749
00:46:01,990 --> 00:46:05,670
isn't it great? And he came into my office in 1989 trying to sell this

750
00:46:05,670 --> 00:46:09,190
Chateau Lafitte, you know, the Lafitte of California. And I thought. I

751
00:46:09,190 --> 00:46:11,790
literally thought, when he walked out of the place, one of the stupidest thing I

752
00:46:11,790 --> 00:46:15,550
ever heard of. Right now, it's the biggest brand in America. So that tells you

753
00:46:15,550 --> 00:46:19,130
how much where I'm coming from. But he made a good point. And this

754
00:46:19,130 --> 00:46:21,850
is kind of goes back to the shelf talker thing. It kind of goes back

755
00:46:21,850 --> 00:46:25,170
to the. The private labels. I mean, almost any

756
00:46:25,730 --> 00:46:29,490
name that's got Ridge Creek, Napa, Sonoma,

757
00:46:29,890 --> 00:46:33,130
Cliff, you know, they're all taken, right? So we're starting to see all these crazy

758
00:46:33,130 --> 00:46:36,130
names that are showing up on shelves, as well as

759
00:46:36,530 --> 00:46:40,290
labeling and merchandising. And it is merchandising. And we are in the

760
00:46:40,290 --> 00:46:43,450
business to sell things. And a winery wants to sell its wine so it can

761
00:46:43,450 --> 00:46:47,050
make some wine next year. So let's not, you know, take our eye off the

762
00:46:47,050 --> 00:46:50,530
ball, what we're trying to do. But he was told by the buyer at

763
00:46:50,530 --> 00:46:54,330
Lucky's, you know, the old market chain,

764
00:46:54,570 --> 00:46:58,170
I want to be able to see your label from four feet away when

765
00:46:58,250 --> 00:47:01,690
somebody's walking up to the wine section. And that's how he came up with

766
00:47:02,170 --> 00:47:05,970
stealing the name from Barefoot Bynum with this foot on

767
00:47:05,970 --> 00:47:09,730
the label. So simple, you know, white background, blue foot

768
00:47:09,730 --> 00:47:12,990
or whatever the color was. And I can see it. And it turns out the

769
00:47:12,990 --> 00:47:16,550
guy never bought it from him. But are we not

770
00:47:16,550 --> 00:47:19,430
barraged with branding and

771
00:47:20,150 --> 00:47:23,910
labeling and colors and embossing and foil tops? And, I mean,

772
00:47:24,070 --> 00:47:27,750
now a lot of glass is changing in shape. You're seeing all kinds of

773
00:47:27,830 --> 00:47:31,310
contorted bottles and things. And what's. How's that playing out to the

774
00:47:31,310 --> 00:47:35,070
consumers? Look, everything is branding.

775
00:47:35,070 --> 00:47:38,870
I mean, look from the regions, naming themselves regions so

776
00:47:38,870 --> 00:47:42,070
that you can understand. What the value you're getting from Bordeaux or Burgund.

777
00:47:42,770 --> 00:47:45,930
There's always been branding. You know, the reason that the Lafittes put their name on

778
00:47:45,930 --> 00:47:49,770
it was that wine was their brand from the beginning, and it

779
00:47:49,770 --> 00:47:53,250
represented a quality level and the transformation

780
00:47:53,410 --> 00:47:55,570
that you're seeing. Yes, there's not the same creeks, but, like,

781
00:47:57,010 --> 00:48:00,490
the world of wine has changed from, you know, the aristocrats

782
00:48:00,490 --> 00:48:03,490
owning wine or landowners in Europe to

783
00:48:04,610 --> 00:48:08,450
real human beings. Normal kind of, you know, American dream here in Cal

784
00:48:08,770 --> 00:48:12,050
and then spreading across the world. And of course, we're trying to find different ways

785
00:48:12,050 --> 00:48:14,640
to touch the consumer that makes them happy. I mean, you and I are old

786
00:48:14,640 --> 00:48:18,440
enough to remember critter labels. You know, there was a

787
00:48:18,440 --> 00:48:22,280
whole trend for just years where there was like, koalas and kangaroos

788
00:48:22,280 --> 00:48:25,880
and dogs could believe dogs, emus and, you know,

789
00:48:26,200 --> 00:48:29,920
raccoons. It was everything. Like, I think what we're trying to find is what hits

790
00:48:29,920 --> 00:48:33,560
the nerve ending of a consumer and, you know, one of the greatest brands, and

791
00:48:33,640 --> 00:48:37,240
I'm not saying necessarily the quality of the juice in the bottle, like

792
00:48:37,320 --> 00:48:40,730
the Prisoner is one of the most magical stories of a wine in history.

793
00:48:41,130 --> 00:48:44,570
Right? You know, Dave Finney and those guys made a wine that was a California

794
00:48:44,570 --> 00:48:48,410
blend that had an SRP that was equal to a single,

795
00:48:48,410 --> 00:48:52,090
you know, vineyard or an appellated cabernet here. And now

796
00:48:52,330 --> 00:48:56,050
that is. What did they do? They hit the nerve of a consumer. It's not

797
00:48:56,050 --> 00:48:59,130
even about the flavor profiles. All of the GESTALT of those things. Together,

798
00:48:59,690 --> 00:49:03,530
the label, the name, what was in the bottle, and

799
00:49:03,530 --> 00:49:07,290
it worked. You get. So I guess

800
00:49:07,290 --> 00:49:11,040
somebody wines here on Tuesday, and you catch a label once

801
00:49:11,040 --> 00:49:14,360
in a while or a name where they've sort of tried to. And this is

802
00:49:14,360 --> 00:49:18,200
interesting part of branding. And I'm going to touch on one last subject

803
00:49:18,200 --> 00:49:21,320
then. It looks like we almost got 45 minutes under our belts already.

804
00:49:22,040 --> 00:49:24,840
But the

805
00:49:26,440 --> 00:49:29,960
innocent bison, you got all these names now that they're sort of trying. They're sort

806
00:49:29,960 --> 00:49:32,560
of, in other words, in the back of the mind of the winemaker, of the

807
00:49:32,560 --> 00:49:35,840
proprietor, they're thinking, oh, maybe it's the name the prisoners what made the

808
00:49:36,150 --> 00:49:39,590
successful. And it's partially true, but

809
00:49:39,830 --> 00:49:43,630
so much as sometimes just luck, blind luck in branding and getting

810
00:49:43,630 --> 00:49:46,910
on the street. But, you know, there's a lot of knockoff names, you know, the

811
00:49:46,910 --> 00:49:50,750
fugitive, innocent bystander, all this stuff. And you kind of look at it go,

812
00:49:50,750 --> 00:49:53,750
okay, I understand what you're trying to do, but that really isn't the point. It's

813
00:49:53,750 --> 00:49:56,950
something else that it made this. This successful and

814
00:49:57,430 --> 00:50:01,230
kind of evidenced by this. And this is the business part. And maybe I just

815
00:50:01,230 --> 00:50:04,930
heard from a retired Gallo, you know, guerrilla marketer

816
00:50:04,930 --> 00:50:08,450
back in the day, and I was making a comment about Snoop

817
00:50:08,450 --> 00:50:12,170
Dogg's Cali Red, and it was front and center, the best spot on the

818
00:50:12,170 --> 00:50:15,650
shelf the other day at the market. This is about, I don't know, during COVID

819
00:50:15,650 --> 00:50:18,810
sometime. And I walked in the market, I go, what is. I mean, come on,

820
00:50:18,810 --> 00:50:22,610
we know what this stuff is, right? It's criminal mind, sugared up, whatever, but whatever.

821
00:50:22,850 --> 00:50:26,610
And, but right front, you turn your head, I'm six foot two

822
00:50:26,690 --> 00:50:30,410
is right there. So it's the best spot in the shop. Two weeks

823
00:50:30,410 --> 00:50:34,170
later, I went back and it was on the bottom shelf. So I couldn't decide

824
00:50:34,170 --> 00:50:37,690
whether it was bumped down to the bottom shelf because it wasn't selling, or some

825
00:50:37,690 --> 00:50:41,490
guerrilla marketer, AKA Gallo style, just came and moved it.

826
00:50:44,050 --> 00:50:47,570
I'm sure I'm not asking for an answer, but both of those

827
00:50:47,570 --> 00:50:51,170
scenarios could have happened, right? Yeah, but I mean, look, that. Look,

828
00:50:51,970 --> 00:50:55,530
I'm not soup dog of the wine. And you're right, it is a

829
00:50:55,530 --> 00:50:59,360
flavor profile. It doesn't match my palate, but it's a million cases this year, so.

830
00:50:59,670 --> 00:51:03,470
Right. And let's, let's talk differently like that. Introducing people to

831
00:51:03,470 --> 00:51:06,870
the category is what? Like someone like Michael Hulan. Whether I liked his wines or

832
00:51:06,870 --> 00:51:10,590
not, which I didn't, but I love the man. I would never drink barefoot

833
00:51:10,590 --> 00:51:14,270
wines Myself personally. But it introduced a whole category. Center home White Zinfandel

834
00:51:14,270 --> 00:51:18,110
brought so many people to the category. And some of those people moved up and

835
00:51:18,110 --> 00:51:21,670
that's what we need. We know more of that entry level because we're not fighting

836
00:51:21,670 --> 00:51:25,510
against each other. We're fighting against hard seltzers. We're fighting against

837
00:51:26,290 --> 00:51:29,970
other alk bev beverages that consume our mouth share and stomach share.

838
00:51:30,930 --> 00:51:34,210
That's a really good point. We're competing against those new

839
00:51:34,290 --> 00:51:37,770
beverages and white Zinfandel. My dad had met

840
00:51:37,770 --> 00:51:41,489
Bob Trincaro the day about the week he made that stuff and

841
00:51:41,489 --> 00:51:45,010
was like, didn't know what to do with it. And here that was

842
00:51:45,010 --> 00:51:48,850
really the door opening for many people to drink wine in

843
00:51:48,850 --> 00:51:51,170
the first place. And now.

844
00:51:52,780 --> 00:51:56,500
Yeah, that's right. Bartle and

845
00:51:56,500 --> 00:52:00,180
James. I was talking to San Antonio guys. I was talking to San

846
00:52:00,180 --> 00:52:03,500
Antonio friends. It was the Riboli brothers and they're, you know, great friends of mine.

847
00:52:03,500 --> 00:52:05,340
And they of course presented to the

848
00:52:06,940 --> 00:52:10,380
Stellarosa and we were talking about it. They're doing,

849
00:52:10,540 --> 00:52:14,060
I don't know, rumors are doing 3 million cases. I don't know

850
00:52:14,140 --> 00:52:15,900
if that's true or not, but

851
00:52:18,150 --> 00:52:21,190
he made the comment and I bought it when it first got here, and I'm

852
00:52:21,190 --> 00:52:24,470
talking about 20 years ago. He said, you know, it took us 20 years to

853
00:52:24,470 --> 00:52:27,830
do that. You know, here's a wine that's sweet,

854
00:52:28,630 --> 00:52:32,350
it's got a nice package. It's very indigenous looking

855
00:52:32,350 --> 00:52:34,550
to the Lombard region of France, of Italy.

856
00:52:35,750 --> 00:52:39,590
It's certainly palatable. There are better

857
00:52:39,590 --> 00:52:43,150
Moscatos all over, more pedigreed ones. But this one people

858
00:52:43,150 --> 00:52:46,870
like and now this part I don't agree with. It's

859
00:52:46,870 --> 00:52:50,590
got blueberry flavoring and pompomuse and all kinds of different things,

860
00:52:50,590 --> 00:52:53,950
but people are buying it. But the point of that comment is

861
00:52:54,190 --> 00:52:57,470
that was a 20 year, you know, brand,

862
00:52:57,950 --> 00:53:01,670
you know, grinding it out in the marketplace to get recognition and

863
00:53:01,670 --> 00:53:05,470
now be very, very successful. Can it take that long or can it take

864
00:53:05,470 --> 00:53:09,030
a week? Well, it's all. I mean, look, they're lucky

865
00:53:09,030 --> 00:53:12,420
successes. There's all kinds. We don't know exactly what pops.

866
00:53:12,660 --> 00:53:16,180
Either a luxury brand or a general brand. I mean, look at Butter and Jam

867
00:53:16,340 --> 00:53:19,780
with John Truchard. I mean, that's what a great success story for him.

868
00:53:19,780 --> 00:53:23,140
Huge, huge. Blew up. I mean, you look at

869
00:53:23,220 --> 00:53:26,780
Apothec, which is the opposite. Apothec was years of them sample

870
00:53:26,780 --> 00:53:30,420
testing it at Gallo and came out with a formula people like and their

871
00:53:30,420 --> 00:53:34,060
innovation on top of that, making even seasonal lines, which is something we've never seen

872
00:53:34,060 --> 00:53:37,860
before. I mean, you see seasonal candies, you know, during Halloween and,

873
00:53:38,530 --> 00:53:41,890
and they make the wines which is, that's not bad either. And what they find

874
00:53:41,890 --> 00:53:45,650
those, those seasonal wines, not only they didn't take or cannibalize from

875
00:53:45,650 --> 00:53:49,370
themselves, they added more to. The car during those periods of time. So this

876
00:53:49,370 --> 00:53:53,090
is good for our industry. I know people poo poo those wines, but we need

877
00:53:53,090 --> 00:53:56,890
more of those entry wines. And I think Gallo's really settled into their shoes saying

878
00:53:56,890 --> 00:54:00,330
we are the gateway to bring consumers to the market. You guys do what you

879
00:54:00,330 --> 00:54:04,130
want after that. Del is the same. The wine group,

880
00:54:04,130 --> 00:54:07,520
it's working. But yeah, and they do a good job at it. I mean, look,

881
00:54:07,600 --> 00:54:10,800
they're good humans. They, you know, they make, they train to do good guys

882
00:54:11,680 --> 00:54:15,480
sustainability. I mean the big wine could be

883
00:54:15,480 --> 00:54:18,360
really bad. And they're not. They're good. They're. They're trying to do the best they.

884
00:54:18,360 --> 00:54:22,200
Can for our business and for, you know, the world. I had a great

885
00:54:22,200 --> 00:54:25,680
conversation with Pat Roney not too long ago and they're going public and

886
00:54:25,920 --> 00:54:29,680
he does a great job. I may even buy some juice from here

887
00:54:29,680 --> 00:54:33,210
in the future. The last question, what do you, you think media,

888
00:54:33,850 --> 00:54:35,530
Facebook media, video,

889
00:54:37,050 --> 00:54:40,770
GIFs, webinars. You think this

890
00:54:40,770 --> 00:54:44,410
is a must have for the future of marketing of wine from a winery?

891
00:54:46,250 --> 00:54:49,770
So I think that our job is to meet the

892
00:54:49,770 --> 00:54:53,570
consumer where the consumer is. And if they're using GIFs, if

893
00:54:53,570 --> 00:54:57,330
they're on video, if they're on Facebook, on their Twitter,

894
00:54:57,330 --> 00:55:00,410
it's our job not to make them come to us. It's our job to meet

895
00:55:00,410 --> 00:55:03,770
them where they are and to touch them where they're. And we do it at

896
00:55:03,770 --> 00:55:06,570
our own detriment by ignoring them. You know, I used to run a big social

897
00:55:06,570 --> 00:55:10,370
media company called Vintink and I can't tell you how many people would tweet

898
00:55:10,370 --> 00:55:13,970
or Instagram at wineries. They never answered because they didn't believe in Instagram at wineries.

899
00:55:14,050 --> 00:55:17,210
If you take that metaphor and you apply it differently, you say, look, if you

900
00:55:17,210 --> 00:55:20,450
had a phone in your office called Instagram and it rang every day and you

901
00:55:20,450 --> 00:55:24,090
didn't answer it, is that really doing healthy thing for your business? That's a good

902
00:55:24,090 --> 00:55:27,890
point. Right? It's ridiculous. And so just because you don't believe in it doesn't

903
00:55:27,890 --> 00:55:31,570
mean it doesn't believe in the other consumers don't. So. So I don't know. The

904
00:55:31,570 --> 00:55:35,290
prioritization of those, how you grow into all those platforms over time is a

905
00:55:35,290 --> 00:55:38,610
different story. But the Reality of this is there are

906
00:55:38,610 --> 00:55:42,410
gigantic places where consumers are interacting with wine, and they're calling your phone.

907
00:55:42,570 --> 00:55:45,930
And if you choose not to answer, you do it to your own detriment.

908
00:55:47,370 --> 00:55:50,930
Let me just throw something out there. Then we'll call it quits and tell you

909
00:55:50,930 --> 00:55:54,610
my plans. I'm coming up, I think, in a couple of weeks. But

910
00:55:54,610 --> 00:55:58,120
that's a really important part, and it has a lot to do with the comment

911
00:55:58,120 --> 00:56:01,680
from Sarah Clearman about the chats. When Covid hit

912
00:56:01,680 --> 00:56:05,520
here, you know, I had customer service dropped on the phone. And we

913
00:56:05,520 --> 00:56:09,040
do email marketing, we do text marketing, and

914
00:56:09,680 --> 00:56:13,280
when we turn the phones off because Covid became too onerous, the

915
00:56:13,280 --> 00:56:16,680
sales volume spiked so fast that, I mean, literally, like three days after the

916
00:56:16,680 --> 00:56:18,880
17th, it's like, wait a minute, what's going on?

917
00:56:20,640 --> 00:56:24,440
We realized that we could handle four or

918
00:56:24,440 --> 00:56:28,210
five chats at a time, and when you can only

919
00:56:28,210 --> 00:56:31,530
handle one call. And so we've re. And

920
00:56:31,770 --> 00:56:34,690
everything's moving that direction anyway. People are used to being on their phone. They're used

921
00:56:34,690 --> 00:56:38,250
to texting an order. They're used to replying with one ball or two or 12.

922
00:56:38,570 --> 00:56:42,330
And now they're used to communicating via text. I'm not

923
00:56:42,330 --> 00:56:45,930
sure it's a good thing for human communications, but it's a good thing for

924
00:56:45,930 --> 00:56:49,610
business because one person can literally do four times the amount of work

925
00:56:50,730 --> 00:56:54,270
on the chat with a keyboard. And that was an

926
00:56:54,270 --> 00:56:57,870
interesting thing to find. Look, technology is just a scaling

927
00:56:57,870 --> 00:57:01,710
factor for more human connections. And let's also remember, we're not homogenous

928
00:57:01,710 --> 00:57:05,510
either. So different age groups, different people like different messaging and different

929
00:57:05,510 --> 00:57:09,110
platforms. Some people love call still. Some people love a catalog

930
00:57:09,110 --> 00:57:12,830
mail still. Deciding on who those customers are and their value

931
00:57:12,830 --> 00:57:16,390
to you and then using those tools is fundamental. And I think you're right.

932
00:57:16,470 --> 00:57:20,070
Absolutely. My wife, she runs a winery, a boutique winery here in

933
00:57:20,070 --> 00:57:23,910
Carneros. And I'm always harping on her about more digital, more digital. She constantly reminds

934
00:57:23,910 --> 00:57:27,650
me. She's like, look, I have old boomers. Most of those people, you

935
00:57:27,650 --> 00:57:31,130
know, have a flip phone. Paul, you're asking me to text, so you need to

936
00:57:31,130 --> 00:57:34,930
calm down a little bit. I can't text my brother

937
00:57:35,730 --> 00:57:39,450
because he has a flip phone. And so he's right.

938
00:57:39,450 --> 00:57:43,290
But we have to. We have to balance our customer footprint and

939
00:57:43,290 --> 00:57:47,090
plan for the next generation and. Build infrastructure to support as each of.

940
00:57:47,090 --> 00:57:50,900
These platforms become more pervasive. And we can test what works

941
00:57:50,900 --> 00:57:54,660
best for those customers. Been a pleasure having on the

942
00:57:54,660 --> 00:57:58,380
show a wealth of information. I'm coming up on the Fourth

943
00:57:58,380 --> 00:58:01,180
for the Raymond Vineyards release of the new

944
00:58:02,220 --> 00:58:05,180
entryway and hang out with JCB a little bit.

945
00:58:06,219 --> 00:58:09,980
Hopefully get a chance to see you or. I think I gotta fly up. I'm

946
00:58:09,980 --> 00:58:12,860
gonna fly up during the day in the morning and hang out. And I'll probably

947
00:58:12,860 --> 00:58:15,780
leave a Saturday afternoon. My wife's gonna be out of town. Well, maybe I should

948
00:58:15,780 --> 00:58:19,600
stay too, longer than. Huh. So I'll let

949
00:58:19,600 --> 00:58:21,720
you know if we get together. It'd be great to do get to see if

950
00:58:21,720 --> 00:58:24,920
not. I hope we can do this again. Yeah, both of those. Please let me

951
00:58:24,920 --> 00:58:28,440
know. I'm happy to host you and then have you a couple glasses of wine

952
00:58:28,440 --> 00:58:32,280
together. And I love John Charles. He's. He's one of my favorite people and he's

953
00:58:32,280 --> 00:58:35,720
great. Nice. You know, I did a podcast with him and I was in the

954
00:58:35,720 --> 00:58:39,440
Raymond pool house, which is incredibly, you know, French, and

955
00:58:39,520 --> 00:58:43,250
I was supposed to be interviewing Dan Knudsen, and Jean Charles

956
00:58:43,250 --> 00:58:45,610
was supposed to stop in and say hi and just sort of sit in the

957
00:58:45,610 --> 00:58:48,730
chair and talk a little bit. He ended up staying for an hour, an incredible

958
00:58:48,730 --> 00:58:51,850
conversation about Baccarat Crystal and the light and all his passion,

959
00:58:52,250 --> 00:58:55,450
and end up getting two podcasts out of the thing because then Thane stuck around.

960
00:58:55,450 --> 00:58:59,250
We had another hour. So I was really appreciative of

961
00:58:59,250 --> 00:59:03,010
his humility to do that. And we, you know, he's a very interesting

962
00:59:03,010 --> 00:59:06,810
guy and, you know, obviously very knowledgeable in our.

963
00:59:06,810 --> 00:59:10,530
In our industry, so pleasure having you on the show, Paul. Thanks so much. Hope

964
00:59:10,530 --> 00:59:14,240
to see you soon. And I'll let you know what my plans are. Yes, please.

965
00:59:14,240 --> 00:59:18,000
Paul, great to meet you. I'm looking forward to. My pleasure. Thank you.