Hey, welcome to wine talks with Paul Cade. We are in studio today about to
have a conversation with Reid Connet. Calls himself
winemaker, assistant winemaker. Introductions in just a moment. Hey, have a listen to
Yves de Launay. He is an expert in luxury
goods, having been with Sotheby's Cartier
LVMH, selling Louis XIII Cognac, and now with
Chateau Angelouz in Bordeaux and Saint Emilion. Incredible
conversation about lifestyle and the consumerism. Also,
crazy good conversation with Michael Higgins. He is a
wine photojournalist and has written three wine travel books.
We're going to Bordeaux in May. I'm taking his Bordeaux book with me
because it's got so much inside information. Inside baseball in Bordeaux,
but also written one in Argentina and Central coast. Hey,
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21. Never understood what that meant. I guess if
you just, just say, be 21. Welcome to the show,
Reed. Yeah, thank you. Somebody said, well, they mean you have to be
21 to drink. I said, we know that, but like, be
21. Put some effort into it. Yeah, imperative be 21.
Yeah, fine. That's no problem. So, hey, welcome to the show. Glad you're done here.
What are you doing down in SoCal today, this week, anyway? Yeah, I'm down in
Southern California trying to do some sales, pay for some
grapes. So I've got kind of a
tangled web of things I'm involved with.
I have a personal brand of 90 cases or
three barrels of wine of Zinfandel called fairy ring.
And then I also have a wine that I make called toy
box for a client. And that's Napa Valley
Cabernet mainly. And then
also I am the assistant winemaker at a
winery in Petaluma in downtown Petaluma called Brooksnote, and we're
Pinot noir specialists. You know, Petaluma, I had
trombetta on the call on the show a while ago last year,
probably sometime, Ricky, actually. Yeah, I think it was during COVID actually.
But, you know, that was, she was part of the instrumental getting
petaluma as an appellated place. And it's so obvious,
you know, to me, when you taste the wines from Petaluma, that they deserved and
needed to have their own appellation. But the
headwinds to doing this are so complicated. But they are
fascinating wines. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's an interesting
place. I mean, Sonoma coast was, I think, a frustrating
appellation for people before, and now
it's been carved up into so many pieces
with west Sonoma coast and
Fort Ross Seaview, and that coming earlier
on, and then the Petaluma gap in 2017.
There's definitely distinctions there. The petaluma gap's really cool, though, because
it crosses county lines, for one, like Carneros does,
and it crosses a bunch of soil types, which is
not very common within the Avas. And it's all
based on the patterns of the wind. It's not just russian river anymore, is
it? No. Sonoma being such a large swath of land for wine
and having such, like you said, diverse districts. I mean,
seaview, Fort Ross,
amazing. You know, terroir for P and o. It's kind of interesting to
me. Maybe you could take it, give your take on this. You're young in this
industry. You came here when to
start this idea of getting into this whack job
business? Well, you know, I. My opinion of
that, absolutely. Yeah. No, we're all nuts, for sure.
So I was a server in bartender in Long
beach in the mid two thousands, and another industry full of whack
jobs. That's true. Maybe
the whack job part is the passion, because you're so passionate about something that
you come off as just like. You must be a zealot. Yeah.
And capable of making good decisions. Right.
That's funny. So, yeah, I
really got interested in wines while I was working as a
server. I was working in a
place called Virginia Country Club with my friend Ernie Henson back in the
early two thousands. And he was the bar manager there. And he would call me
in for tastings and learned a lot
that way. And then I ended up working at a short lived restaurant called Da
Vinci, right on Long beach airport for a little while,
and really learned a ton with my friends Corey
and Zeke there about italian wines. And
that was just incredible
experience there. You think that happens a lot,
that a bartender, waitress, waiter, a server,
actually embraces this mysterious world called wine, and they just
kind of go through their day and just forget about it. I mean, I think
that's the way to wine and wine professionals for a
lot of people. I think a lot of wine reps
have kind of come through that pipeline, for sure. And there
are a fair amount of winemakers
that have gone through that route as well. I can't think of any
off the top of my head. These sams have gotten involved, clearly, in
the last ten years in making wine quite a bit like Rajpar and folks like
that. I mean, you're out there serving, and you
look, I did this for 35 years. I keep saying this, but
some of the employees that came through here embrace it. Many, after we sold the
company, went on to continue their career in the industry. On the
admin side, some could care less. And so I would look at
blank stares when I'm tasting through the wines with the staff because I wanted them
to know. Right. And other ones were taking notes, trying to figure it out, you
know? Yeah. Even for me, I was. I did this probably for
15 years before I started realizing how cool it is. Yeah. You
know, I mean, I think wine has a way of finding the people
that, you know, that are just interested
and curious about, you know? And that's the thing with me, is, like,
I just love the intersectionality of wine. There are so many different
entry points, whether it's history or science or agriculture or art.
It's just endlessly fascinating. I like that word
crossroads, because I'm following some folks on
LinkedIn and whatever, and it's a younger generation,
obviously, than I am, everybody younger than I am. But
they think they're being disruptive, which is the new word of an
industry. That is not disruptible, really, in my
opinion. Or if it is to be, it's very slow to
do because
it's steeped in tradition, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think
there's something to be said about that and that we have to honor that
rather than try to change it, because
changing it, you know, hey, there's too many crossroads, you
know? Yeah, I just thought of that. If you're gonna change the wine
trade, then you're gonna affect the crossroads of those. Of
that intersection. Yeah. I mean, you know, I think
that's a pretty grand view of yourself, to think that you're a disruptor in something
that's thousands of years old. Right. That's my general
contention, yeah. I mean, we live within
a, you know, a tiny sliver of time
compared to the history of wine. Right. Yeah. You know, and
I was listening to your podcast with Brian Talley
on my way down here, and it was either him or Doug
Frost talking about
how we're drinking the best wine now that we ever have. Right. And I
think, well, we can stay on the subject for a
second. Disrupting
the. I don't know, maybe they're trying to
disrupt the outlook of the consumer on wine or the way the
wine industry looks out to the consumer. And I have this
contention that canned wines, tetra packs,
somebody just came out with a paper box, which is tetra
pack, but it's a little bit different. Trying to reduce the carbon footprint. I
think that's important. Sustainability is a part of our industry. If anybody's to be
sustainable, the wine industry should be. But
at the same time, the quality and the ethereal value of that
glass of wine couldn't change or shouldn't change
unless you are just drinking for alcohol. And that's. Hardly anybody does drink
wine just for the alcohol. There's other ways to do that.
So I'm interested to peel this back
further with younger generations like you
to understand. Let me just turn off this do not disturb. Whatever you gotta do
here. What do you gotta do? Oh, focus. There it is. Do not disturb. Okay.
So I see those things as
blips, cans, tetra packs, trying
to solve a political problem rather
than this passion problem, you know, this passion about wine. Yeah,
well, I mean, I think that there's a
sincere, I think, desire for a lot of people to actually decrease the
carbon footprint. And I love that idea. You know, topless Creek's doing
bag and box with, you know, their rose and bedrock's got the
odalulu and bag and box
as well, so. And I think that,
like, you know, there are wines that you put in the
cellar and there are wines that you drink soon. And I think
also, you know, it opens up
new consumers. Some people are going to
look at a can and say, you know what? That's like my
vibe versus all the pomp and
circumstance with a wax on your bottle and
all that stuff. I think that's accurate. I think that's very accurate.
Consumerism is what drives this and always has driven this industry.
Yeah. And you kind of want to. I always kind of want to put wine
on this pedestal and it's like, this is the way it is. This is what
we're going to be you're going to enjoy it or you're not going to enjoy
it. You figure it out. You don't figure it out, whatever you want to do
with it. But I think you're right. I think the consumer drives the
need for some of these changes, but I don't think
it changes the value of that glass of wine as to why you
drink it. Right. How you drink is probably one thing, but why
you drink it's another. Yeah, I mean, I. You know, I have different beverages
for different times. You know, like, so modelo
especial, you know, on a hot day when I don't feel like being
challenged, an orange
wine on those days where I'm feeling like being pensive or something,
but in general, I would like my
wine to come from a certain place and
evoke a certain kind of feeling.
I've always tried to, through this club,
after all this time, to get a
consumer to the point where they feel like
something to drink and it changes. In other words,
you and I come home from work and we go. Like you said, I feel
like a modelo. I often feel like gin. But if I'm in
the wine world at that moment, do I feel like a burgundy or a
pinot, or do I feel like a cab or do I feel like a
lean wine from Spain? I mean,
whatever memory
that those wines have evoked in you, that you feel like that.
And one night, not that long ago, I opened three different bottles before I
got to a profile that I was trying to crave. Yeah.
Yeah. That's frustrating. Yes. Well, you know, my wife drank one of
them. Yeah. But that was my objective, was just to
have people understand the nuances and not necessarily understand why or what
you, you know, whether it's clay or slate or whatever, who cares at that point?
Cause I think the wine industry does self propagate. The
aristocracy that, you know, has plagued the industry. But if you
can get people to understand that there's a difference between a petaluma gap
pinot and one from the central coast, you know,
we've kind of done what we've done. Yeah, absolutely. Are you trying
to pull out of these wines that you're making that
exact story, that the terroir like this is where it's coming
from? Yeah, I mean, I think that
if you're not. I mean, we all want to make a delicious wine. That's gotta
be the goal. And clearly, you're working with
factors with weather and
things like that, that kind of push decisions one way or the other, and
logistical challenges and things like that. But if you're not
trying to make, in the world of fine wine, a wine that's
expressing a site, I don't know why
you're doing it. And that's the magic, especially with something like Pinot
Noir. Pinot noir is just so expressive of sight.
Is that the objective I see at your toy box? Which is funny, I looked
up in my database of tasted wines, which I've tracked
everything I've ever tasted, at least here at the office, all the stuff I've
tasted off campus doesn't get recorded. Well, it does get
manually recorded. Is that your objective with toy box?
Is like, produce something, or is the proprietor of toy
Box more interested in just getting a value oriented wine
that has a little less character based on terroir because they get
a better price, or what's the objective? Well, I think
our top tier wine, generally, year
over year, is going to be our Cabernet Sauvignon, and
that's a Napa Valley appalated wine.
And with that, it's something we sell on our website for $90
a bottle. So at that price point, I think
that you've got to be doing more than just making something that
tastes good. You've got to be getting to that next level.
And particularly when it says Napa Valley on the label, you've got to be
achieving a. A certain level of quality and then a certain level of
typicity. And what do you think's happened with Napa and
its typicity? It's a good word.
You know, if you'd look, if you talk to some folks that are sort of
new into Napa wines, they're going to tell you about silver oak and camus and
these sort of fruit forward big bombs, extracted wines.
Sure. And then the other day, I had a
wonderfully balanced, structured,
acidic napa cab. And that would. That excited
me, that, you know, enthused me that we're not headed down this path of
sheer opulence in a wine. Absolutely. I
think my goal is to strike a balance with that. And I know that
that's clearly a subjective word, and about ten
years ago was a real controversial word in the wine
industry. But I can tell
that you and I probably like a similar style of wine where
there's good structure and acidity in the wine. It's something you can age in the
cellar and it's something that's not destroying your palate
with tannin and oak after a sip. And so
I think that we've definitely seen the pendulum swing back. I
think that the wines of
the late nineties and two thousands got really out of
control. And I came up being interested in
european wines. And I
think in this last ten or 15 years, we've
really seen a lot of new California producers producing wines that are more restraint
and balanced. And there's people that have been doing it the whole time, like Kathy
Corson making some of the most
elegant cabernets out of Napa Valley, for sure. Steve Mathias.
And has been kind
of the lead, the tip of the spear with that kind of new
California producing more restrained,
acid driven and structured wines. But there are
a bunch of others too. I really like the wines from
cade. I like the wines at Lark Mead. Have been
really great over the years. And those are the wines that, to
me, they have a nice, rich fruit
profile but not too much oak and pronounced
acidity that really reign all that fruit in.
I would say, you know, those are some of the wines that
inspire me from Napa. It's kind of funny. We've
had, at least compared to the Europeans, we have a young
industry, but compared to other countries. I'm gonna pick
on Armenia a little bit because it's my heritage. But I've been there and
I've tasted a lot of wines. And here's this infant, infant industry. Even though
it's been around 6000 years at least as we know
of since the soviet rule, which
was. I had this conversation last night with somebody
that no progress was made in winemaking
during the USSR. And so when countries
like Armenia and Hungary and
Croatia, not Croatia, but Lithuania,
became free, really the industry started
over all these techniques. There were no techniques
and nobody really cared. And it was the old farmer who was just making grapes
for brandy. And that's what they were doing. So they're really, really quite young.
And prohibition here did the same thing, right? Yeah, that's true.
Yeah. Pretty much prohibition. The same thing. We went to the prohibition museum in
Savannah, Georgia last two weeks ago. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Sorry, I didn't
mean to take you off topic. You know, actually knew stories that I. That I
had not heard because I've read books on prohibition. You know,
let's just touch on. It's really funny when people think that
prohibition outlawed drinking. It did not outlaw drinking. It outlawed
manufacturing for the purposes of retail sale and
bars. You could make booze at home and you
could wine and you could drink it. It wasn't illegal to drink.
Everybody challenges me on that, but I know that's the case. Well, yeah. I mean,
they were sending train loads full of grapes back
east. And you talk to all these
guys. They're like, oh, these italian guys. Yeah, my grandfather made wine in the
bathtub and all that stuff. And it was legal. It was perfectly fine
to do that. It was actually a great trade, the truckloads of.
And that's just a section. There's a chapter in one of the books I was
reading. It was just about the perils of transporting grapes in
train cars during parts of the year, you know, that
destroyed. But we're getting back to what we're talking about. The
Armenians are challenged with the idea of oak, let's
say. I don't think their indigenous grape, Adoni, does well with oak.
And I have confirmation, and I have agreement on many winemakers from that
area. But in the world of winemaking,
you should put oak in it. And all the great cabernet from Napa have oak,
and all the great Bordeauxs have oak and burgundy, and so we gotta put
oak. And not everything does well with oak. And so it takes
vintages and vintages, vintages and generations almost
to land on where some of this stuff from where you're
buying your grapes or from the vineyards, which wines and which grapes. I guess that's
your skill set requirement. How do you feel about where you're at with that?
Oh, with oak? Yeah. With your training and the number
of vintages you've done and how much you want to learn more and what,
I. Mean, I think no matter how long you've been doing it, there's always
something to learn. And I think if you're really dedicated to
your craft, that you're always exploring
new ideas. Those costly sometimes, like, you
know, well, I'm gonna carbonic. I'm gonna macerate the grapes
carbonically and see what happens all of a sudden. Oh, my God. That didn't work.
Well, you gotta start small with anything. You've gotta be able
to either say, okay, well, we're gonna bottle this
50k slot of this one wacky thing,
or be able to blend it away as a
component and like, one of your other kind of
bigger skus. My dad used to say back in the day, he says, you know,
if they make a wine and it's not very good, you know, you may not
want to put it in the bottle with your brand on it. So we're going
to sell the juice, which we all know happens just for the listeners. I mean,
like, it's a hard number to ascertain, but 85, 90%
of wine is not bottled by the grower or made by
the grower, it's bought and sold in bulk or bought and sold as grapes and
maids, and that's just the way it is. And so sometimes it doesn't
turn out and you put it in the bottle, blended with some other stuff and
you kind of just move the volume around. That's.
That's just the way the industry is, you know? Yeah. I mean, last year was
a year where we had two of our growers that didn't sell all their grapes,
and so we made
a bunch of pinot noir and we're helping
them sell it. Wow, that's great. Yeah, I mean, and it's going
to make some really lovely wine for somebody. It's
just we can't put it into our bottles, not because it's not good enough,
but because we just don't have the ability to sell that much wine.
One of the California agricultural agencies, I forgot which one, has
recommended we pull out 50,000 vines of grapes
because the glut and the change in consumerism and the reduction
in volume, and we just need to plant
pistachios and almonds and things like that. And I find that
fascinating because I think also for the listeners,
it's hard to get your arms around the fact that it's really an agricultural product
and you don't have all the control in the world and it's based on
demand and yields aren't always the same. And the
boat turns slowly. Yeah, the boat turns slowly. That's the go. I like
that. What were some of the headwinds that you, once you got into this
industry, looked at this
and he said, gee, I didn't expect this or,
wow, that's unusual or anything that sort of
stumped you, as they say, the marketing of wine. You're down
here schlepping with your box, trying to sell some, get some people to
taste the wines. Yeah, I
think everyone's grappling right now, trying
to figure out the market. Right. Things have
changed. You know, I think, you know, when I came up in the
early two thousands, there were no California producers, for the most part,
trying to make european and inspired wines. I mean, there may
have been a few people here and there, you know, Randall Graham's been,
you know, kind of making interesting wines that are. Names
them such. Yeah, yeah. And far from over the top,
I think. But back, you know, now there's dozens
and dozens of micro producers making
wines under 14 or under 13, in a lot of cases,
percent alcohol and acid driven and very little
oak. And you've got
a lot of options now. And you go and try to sell wine in San
Francisco, and it's got to kind of achieve that style. That's
the style of nearly every place you go in San
Francisco wants that european style wine, which is wonderful
as a drinker, but there's just a lot more competition. The. It's hard
to find the points of differentiation and to find an angle
and an entry point. And I think, just
as it has always been, it ends up being about
going out and meeting people. And
it's a hand sell. Yeah, it's a hand sell, but it's like, you know,
you've got to actually go out and meet people and make friends and
tell the stories. And that's what it's really all about. I
mean, when you talk about european style wines, and
it wasn't that long ago, for instance, when we went to
1989, I think it was the second year that the Pinot festival
in Willama Valley was held. And they invited the Louis Jeddeaus and
the Druins and all these folks to come and share, which is great
about the industry. They do share their technology and their ideas.
But most of the wines of the Willama Valley at that time were. There's only
a few houses that were bigger. Bigger anyway.
And the wines were okay. But it was a common
thing to say, hey, this is very burgundian. And it was very common to
say, this is Bordeaux esque, and you don't hear it as much
anymore. But now you're saying, well, we're trying to make wines of the european
style, which I understand that because we don't have. Well, I'm sure they have them.
But coming through my doors here, we still try to get
representative wines of the Provence or from Bordeaux or from wherever you're talking
about. But do you talk like that behind the scenes? Well,
so, I mean, just as a. To define you european in style, like,
you know, I think that the reference point is
basically those big, extracted, heavy wines that we
were talking about dominating what, you know, traditionally
we've thought of over the past 20 years as like a California wine. Right.
And, you know, people either generally
will like those bigger, richer wines or more restrained balance wines.
And for the majority of the time, over the
last 50 years, people that like those more restrained wines are gonna have to
go to Europe to find those.
And I think that there's
blowback from a lot of people when you say
burgundian or
Bordeaux esque or whatever, because those are
places. And of course, the EU is very protective
of all of its place names. And so I understand
that. And as a Chardonnay lover who has
had many discussions with people about Chardonnay, when people
say, oh, we make a lean, crisp style, and they say, it's like a chablis,
I'm like, no, it is not. There's almost nothing
like Chablis in the world. There's nothing like champagne in the world.
And those are places that
you can't. So I don't like evoking, necessarily a place name far
away. Well, that was part of the
culture in California wine, though. That's what you did. You would go to
the tastings. I reflect
on some of these great days of the early wine trade of
California. I would go to a tasting, and Fess Parker would be there signing
autographs with his Daniel Boone hat, but pouring off
his wines. And then next booth would be Dicky Smothers pouring up
his sonoma wines, and Pat Paulson, the famed comedian, pouring
off refrigerator white.
And those are the conversations you would have, and I'm glad we don't
do that anymore. You're right. Those are places. And so we
shouldn't be comparing our place to their place,
because we aren't that place. Right. Well, yeah, I
mean, I think, to your point, like you're talking about in the early days,
we're still in the early days. Yeah, that's true. We're still trying to figure out.
I mean, I think we've got a pretty good handle on, you know, where you
can find good Pinot and where you can find good cab, where you can get
great roan varieties. But I think, you know, when it
comes down to it, we're still figuring everything out.
And so I think that all of our wine traditions in this country,
you know, the troops came home from World War Two
and wanted wine all of a sudden. And so the wine industry
was reborn. And so, you know, all that planting
started in the sixties and seventies. Seventies. And
so you have to have a place to give people
context for the wines. My dad only bought vineyards in
72 instead of starting a wine club.
Because those are the guys that don't have to charge $90 a
bottle. Yeah, because they paid for the land a long time ago. Sure.
Yeah, yeah. But it is. California is
in its infancy. I mean, it always will be compared to its
counterparts in other parts of the world. It's interesting,
too. They just got done with the master of wine program, the Institute
of Masters of Wine, dropping the term
old world from description
and use during the academic pursuit
of wine trade. And I think certainly the master of wine,
psalm diploma. W said, are
important academic accolades to earn depending on where
you want to land in the wine business. But I just thought it
was interesting that they dropped that nomenclature. Have
you heard this? I haven't heard about it.
I think there's a value to it, to using it.
Yeah. Not only a style, but a
location. Sure. I mean,
I think it sounds like, oh, these are like wines from the. Old country
or something. Right. I mean, I think that these
days, that word just people know what it means
to a certain degree. And, like, what does it mean? Right. Like, why wouldn't you
just talk about Europe when you're talking about, you know, wines? Or, like,
why wouldn't you talk about a specific country? So, I mean, I can
understand maybe why someone might kind of balk at
that a little bit, but, I mean, that's certainly nothing that I would
vote for pushing out. I've always argued that it
not only deals with just defining, let's say,
more modern regions like Argentina. Oh, yeah.
California, Australia, New Zealand,
versus the historic vintages. Regions
like Burgundy and Bordeaux in the 12th century, 11th century.
And look, you've got to think and look at your
career already that everything you do
becomes influenced in the bottle
eventually. In other words, if I've got a vineyard that was being
farmed by Charlemagne in
Burgundy, that these lessons have rolled forward,
maybe they get truncated and diluted, but eventually
they become part of the terroir. Right. The knowledge
base becomes part of the terroir. And I think that's fascinating about wine.
No other product in the world has that
ability. I mean, maybe like
en modena or, you know, and reggiano,
they might disagree with that. I mean, but that's. Yeah,
that is like, you know, the centuries and centuries of tradition.
You know, that's a beautiful story, for one,
and it's really special. And so I think
tradition is a really beautiful part of wine.
And I think that, back to when you're talking about, are
you trying to make wines that express. Express a
place? I think that's what, at
the top level of winemaking that you're trying to do is
you've got grapes grown on a piece of land that are turned into
wine, and then your job is to basically make sure
that you make the wine taste delicious, but
also manage not to stomp and
muddle the message from, you know, from the
point where you've harvested the grapes to the point where people are drinking it. One
of the greatest expressions of that was from a young woman who's making wine in
Armenia her name is Julia de Guilla, and she runs a pretty
large winery, and she runs one in Argentina for the same owner.
And she goes, what other product can you carry halfway across the
world? Plop on the table and say, this is when we were, and this is
who we are. And I go, that's a fascinating expression that people do
that I have this, again, going back to my romantic view of wine,
that when somebody tastes
a wine like that, that's true to its origins.
Bad vintage are good. They were talking about the bad vintages of Bordeaux at a
tasting the other day, and I'm like, yeah, but so you express what
you got. It may not be as pleasant as the
1990 Bordeaux, but you
express that vintage. And so if I taste green or I
taste whatever I taste in this wine is because you express
that vintage. I think that's really important, maybe a little too romantic,
but I always feel like, and it happens all the time
with my friends at dinner, if I bring out a wine that I just think
it's fascinating and they don't know why it's
really good. Yeah. You know, they just go, this is really good. They don't have
to know why. Right? But I think that happens to people
at a proper vintage, at a not proper. A proper wine,
properly made wine, an honestly made wine, let's put it that way, that you
didn't put sugar in it, you didn't throw acid into it, you didn't change the
color with mega purple, whatever that stuff is. You just made the wine,
and that's expressed. And somebody goes, hmm, I'm
starting to get this now. You don't have to understand the soil, the schist, and
all of the crap in there, right? I mean, well, I mean,
for the average wine drinker. No, I mean, that's the thing with wine,
is the layers are there if you want them, and they're not if you don't.
You can turn that off. I mean, it's hard for when you're in the business
to turn it off. It took me a long time to be able to go
to a party at someone's house and drink a cheap, you know, kind of
plain glass of wine. I poured a popular wine last night at the
funeral, and I went to my car
and brought something in that I had brought just in case. And I
know the wine well that I served, and everybody loved it. I
couldn't drink it. Yeah, I mean, that's the scary
part. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, when it comes to vintages,
though, you know, I think, like, the way that we define vintages
is difficult. You know, the people selling the
wine and the people in the press
basically just want something that's juicy and
ripe and fun, you know, right out of the gate.
Right? And so, you know, these cooler vintage wines, you know,
you know, if you look at 2011, you know, Kapa Cabernet right now.
Right. You know, they're gorgeous, right? You know, so those are just wines that you
put away in the cellar and take your time on. And I understand that
because when you're going out pouring wine for people, you know, you're not going
to tell the person at the restaurant, like, oh, here, buy this wine from
me now, and then keep it in
your wine cellar for ten years. I mean, I know there
are wonderful, amazing restaurants that do things like that,
or maybe a distributor will hold back a little bit and
try again in a few years, but that's just not the model that
98% of people are operating on. I would imagine that's true.
And most the argument, I think it's 48 hours.
Like, 80% of the wine bought at the store is open in 48 hours. Right?
So, I guess. And I guess that goes back to this consumerism thing. I mean,
even Madame Clicquot was brilliant at figuring out the consumerism
of the Russians and the English to get wines to them that they
liked. And they were different. There were different cuvets that went to different countries.
And I guess it's always been driven by consumers. Which leads me to this
question, why the hell are you making Zinfandel?
Well, yeah, so the fairy ring Zinfandel
is, um, my own little 90 case, uh,
project. And so my, um, two
other jobs that I have, I wouldn't call the fairy ring a job as. As
so much as an obligation. Right. Uh, but the, uh, Brooks
note, the winery in Petaluma that I work for, and Toybox, who is a
client of mine, we get all of the cab and cab
franc out of a small vineyard in Calistoga. And so,
um, toy box, before this, was making wine out of Pope Valley.
But in 2020, the Cadden family
vineyard that we sourced from actually caught on fire in
2020. Yeah. So we kind of had to
shift our production in 2021.
I was working in a place called Joseph Sellers in Calistoga,
and one of our clients there was Heidi
Barrett. So we worked on the La Sirena and Lambourne family and
Barrett. And Barrett wine. So that was a great experience. But the vineyard
manager for Joseph Sellers was a guy named Gerardo,
and I just asked him, hey, I'm looking for a little
cabernet, you know, of anything. He says,
I think I can help you. Meet me at this address, you
know, this afternoon. And so I went and met this guy
named Jack Smith, who's got this tiny vineyard called Marcy's Vineyard
in his backyard across the Napa river
from the fairgrounds in Calistoga. And
we went down, he's got this shipping container kind of
three quarters of the way buried into the bank of
the Napa river there. And we went down there and tasting
barrels. Wow, how cool that they had kind of just made
there on site with no forklifts or anything,
just all by hand. And so
toy box and Brooks note split all of the
Bordeaux varieties out of the vineyard. And Gerardo then said, well,
you guys want the zinn, too. There's, like five rows of Zen.
Wow. And I said, no, neither of my guys wants the Zen. He's like, well,
what about you? I said, I don't have any money, you know? He said, well,
let's work something out. And so I ended up trading 15
cases of wine for my first ton of grapes. Wow. Congratulations. That's great. That's
what I loved about the really wine business. There's a lot of bars going on.
Yeah. I mean, you know, it's like we've all got, you
know, one person's problem is another person's solution. Right.
And, you know, so long as you're dealing with
quality stuff, like, there's no real problems. Yeah. They'd rather see it made
into wine and make a deal on it than get it. Let it hang there
forever. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, the Zinfandel
just kind of landed in my lap, and I. And, you know, I've been at
this for a little while now, and, you know, every winemaker wants to kind
of have their own sort of project. And so I just felt like
it was.
I felt like it was nudging me in a direction. And that's great.
You know, it's like when you're thinking about having kids, you're never
really ready. Right. And so I
just figured it was a good thing just to get started and
working on it. Isn't it a great versatile grape? Yes.
Can produce port style wines. It can produce white Zinfandel and can
produce, you know, structured, acidic wines and has great.
It has a capability to absorb terroir as well. Yeah.
You can tell when one is from Lodi or one's from Napa. So that's. Yeah,
I think that's great. So you have 90 cases, which, you know, certainly
you're not going to retire making and selling 90 cases. You have
ambition to grow that brand into. I'm
taking it slow right now. I've got two other jobs
that I'm working on, and I got a seven year old daughter
that I really enjoy spending time with.
Yeah. And so
I'm taking it nice and slow. I don't want to rack
up a bunch of debt and then not have time to go out and sell
something. So right now, it's at a fun level right now
where I can go out and work on selling it if I need to. I
can share it with friends. I can donate it to my daughter's school for
dinners and things like that. And you get
a little more experience every time you do it, right? Yeah. A little more understanding,
a little more. Yeah. And so with
Zinfandel, I'm definitely
into making a more kind of restrained style.
And I have no dogma about
when I'm in a picket and what the alcohol needs to be or anything like
that. Just gotta taste delicious. It's gotta have no residual sugar in
it. It can't taste like a box of
raisins. That's tough. And so
I think, so far, what I've been able to do with it is make
a medium bodied,
acid driven Zinfandel that's got beautiful
kind of layers in it of various fruits. I blended
a little petite syrah into the 22 vintage, which kind of gave it a
little bit of depth and darker fruit flavors and things like
that. But the vineyard wants to do this
really beautiful, floral, peachy, hibiscus
kind of thing. So.
The notes that the zimpandel provides naturally are just gorgeous. But I
do like that petite syrah in there, just to give it a little bit more
of the low end. A little bit more dark fruit, little acid. Yeah, a little
more. Well, therein lies the thing. I want to tell you a quick story, because
I went up to. I went to the African association of
African American Vendors, and they had a tasting two Sundays
ago at the copia, the CIA
copia by oxbow, and I tasted about 75
wines, all of african american
descent, which is a growing issue in the
industry. BIPOC women in the trade
trying to get past the
aristocracy. I've never thought there was a
deliberate, exclusionary part of the wine trade.
It's just an intimidating industry. But for
oddball stuff that we, you know, and not that Zinz oddball,
because it's obviously mainstream, and it was very popular in the seventies,
but it's, you know, it's. It's a tougher sell in a market where it's congested
with Cabernet and Pinot things. A woman was making
a canned method champagne. Champagne.
Wow. And so your first question is, as I was standing there was like, how
do you disgorge it? She goes, we don't.
Hmm. So now. Yeah, see, that's it.
So, you know, the rose actually
was pretty palatable wine. It was pretty interesting. But, you know,
you've got this yeast thing going on in there, this spent yeast cells in
this can. Yeah. And I was thinking, you know, how they, you know, they have
the SWOT analysis, you know, you go heavy light or whatever, how they figured out,
like, light beer was a. Was a potential marketplace, and
you plug the holes. So where she saw
cans and then method champagne wa. Was this empty
space, but felt like that there was a marketplace for it.
I'm trying to figure that one out, because so much of what we do is
marketing, branding, and. Yeah, I think your strategy for your zin
to grow slow and get some traction and see if it
gets a hold, because building a brand on the wine business is almost, you know,
virtually impossible. Yeah, well, there's only five rows in this vineyard,
so that's how you're gonna grow, right? Yeah, I mean, you know,
there are some. I mean, you know, I live in Santa Rosa,
and, you know, Napa's got great zen, for sure.
You know, folks like Biale and, you know, once in
future, you know, Ridge. Yeah.
And Montellaina has been making a great zen for years
and years. And then you go over to Sonoma county and, yeah, you've got, you
know, Sonoma Valley, which has all those wonderful field blends, and
litten springs, as you mentioned, ridge, you know, dry Creek Valley's just
got. I worked very good for. Yeah, I worked for Moritz and family
out there for about a year, and they're
making great zin. So there's a lot of opportunities and plenty of vineyards up
there, even in the russian river, there's some really great old gnarly
zin vineyards out there. So I think there's opportunity, but I think
I want to try making a couple other things as well. And it's kind of
nice to have a California classic if you've got to pick
one wine to show somebody from another country. What is
California wine? I mean, this is the true, unique kind
of wine of the area. Well, before
DNA testing of grapes, it was possibly
considered an indigenous Vitis vinifera
grape. For California, but it's later. It's been disproven that. Maybe even for
Persia, but that's a good point. It would be
something that we would call Hazarathi. Brought it in 18. Whatever.
Yeah. You know, that's where we hang our laurels. You know, there's
a guy in Missouri. You should listen to the podcast. Jerry
Eisterhold, he was on the show a few weeks ago, who's
done this amazing research and found these
Lambrusca grapes that made all of the wines
before prohibition that were american. Cause
that part of the world, at least part of the country, was very prolific wine.
Louisiana, Ohio, you know, Michigan, all those places. The first Ava
is in Missouri, right? Yeah, right. He's
propagated like a dozen, maybe even more of these
grapes, and he's already abandoned four of them going. I don't know how you make
wine out of this, because it's just not working. But
the Smithsonian wrote about him, and I got the Smithsonian
four pack. It just got delivered last week. Of wines. Of grapes you
and I have never heard of in our lives. And I'm not sure
if I invite friends over to taste them with me or not.
Well, yeah. It's got to be the right friends. To figure this
out. So we're almost at. We're already at 47 minutes,
which is unbelievable. But I did want to touch, you know, you. You have an
interesting history with some of these winers, with Joseph Sellers, you
know, Barrett. And Barrett. I know Bo Barrett. I mean, I went to school with
his brother Kevin, but Claire Bowen and
Churchill, I mean, that's what a fascinating group. And they make dry
riesling, and one of my first wines I ever bought as
a. In the wine club and always a go to when I
needed something because the wines are such quality. What'd you do there? I worked my
first harvest there. Really? Yeah. Yeah. So I was going to Cal Poly slow,
and at the time, I just
really was interested in making stuff that was different. And so
they make some nice pinots, and Edna Valley is a great terroir for
Pinot Noir. And, yeah, I was really
interested in just, you know, making. So glad they're still
around. Yeah. Yeah. Clay and Frederica are wonderful
folks. I still think about every harvest
that Frederica would come down with, you know, these
beautiful sandwiches that were homemade and wrapped in wax
paper and all that stuff. And
my friend Kyle, who's got his own brand called Minus Tide
with my friend Brad and Miriam,
he was the other intern there with me and Kobe
Parker Garcia was the winemaker he's got a brand called El
Lugar out of San Luis Obispo as well. So
I have a lot of great memories from that first harvest. I think most people
do, if they landed at a decent place, have a lot of
memories from their first harvest, and those were all great folks.
And think back on that, there's a. Lot of loyalty in this industry.
Not on the selling side. From the distributor standpoint, there's no
loyalty, but from the. The authenticity of the
winemaker and the winery. And so, like I said earlier, you know, my
dad did some clair Bone and Churchill. I did a few. And
whenever my back was against the wall to find something domestic that I thought would
be interesting to show the club, I reached out to him. Yeah. And they always
appreciated it. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. They always just thought, you know, thanks for calling.
Maybe it was 24 months between or three years even before I would contact
them, but they always had something, and they're always a
little bit different than the other guys. You know, I always really appreciated that
relationship. So, you know, we have a. We could talk again.
I have to move on today. It's been a
fascinating journey in your career. Yeah.
And I wish you all the great luck. Well, thank you. I appreciate it. This
industry brings to the table because it's fascinating and it's
fun, and it's. I think
Hinman, he was the winemaker at Yao
Ming's place for a while, and he said, I meet amazing people,
go to amazing places, drink amazing wine, eat amazing food. I may
not make a lot of money, but you know what? It's not bad.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's a fun industry to be in,
and you work hard and there are
challenges, but being around people that kind of love
what they're doing and have a shared passion is always
great. What's next? Today I'm headed down to the
wine country in Long beach. My old. I was the domestic buyer at
the wine, Randy Kemner. Yeah. So I worked with them for
a year, and that's actually where I came up in my
journey in wine, was learning about european wines by going to
tastings there with Samantha, the champagne buyer, and GM
there. And they've always been
great to me. And it's always fun to go back and visit and pour the
wines now that I'm out making wine. That's great. He's a great guy. Been doing
this for a long time. Yeah. And talk about passion. You know, those folks are
really passionate. And, you know, if you love champagne, if you love rose.
That's definitely a place you gotta visit. I was
fascinated to watch him because he was in the wholesale trade for a while and,
you know, opening a store, brutal hours.
Retail is retail. You know, he can't change that. And
he's successful at it. And that's pretty unusual these days. So
say hi to them for me. Will do. Cheers. Cheers.
Thank you for listening to wine talks with Paul, Callum, Cary. And don't forget to
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Folks, have a great time out there in the wine world. Cheers.