Latest / The Realtor Who Wines / Building a Wine Brand with Purpose that Creates Leadership, Loyalty & Delicious Oregon Wine

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Building a Wine Brand with Purpose that Creates Leadership, Loyalty & Delicious Oregon Wine · The Realtor Who Wines

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Realtor Who Wines podcast.
• 0:02
  I'm Rachelle Newmeyer, your hostess with the mostest a student of life, a connector, a passionate wine enthusiast, and your local favorite guide.
• 0:10
  Join me as we explore the vibrant Pacific Northwest.
• 0:14
  Savor the finest wines and champion the spirit of entrepreneurship.
• 0:18
  Each episode, I'll sit down with inspiring guests, supporting business ownership and uncovering the stories that make this community unique.
• 0:25
  So grab a glass of wine, settle in, and let's embark on a journey of discovery and connection together. Cheers.
• 0:32
  Hi, everyone.
• 0:32
  Welcome back to the realtor who owns podcast.
• 0:35
  I'm Rachelle Neumeyer, your local realtor who loves to whine.
• 0:38
  Today we are on a beautiful location and I can't wait for you to hear more about it.
• 0:42
  Steve, thank you so much for having me here.
• 0:45
  Cheers to you.
• 0:47
  Thank you for coming.
• 0:48
  Yeah.
• 0:51
  Thank you for having me.
• 0:52
  Jackie just taught me how to properly. Cheers.
• 0:54
  Can we teach everybody at home?
• 0:56
  So if you're watching, obviously you'll be able to see if you're listening.
• 1:00
  Go check out the YouTube video so that you can watch it. But she was saying the bottom of the glass.
• 1:05
  Yeah. Barrel is the strongest part of the glass.
• 1:07
  Yeah, the lip is the weakest part.
• 1:08
  So your chances of chipping a glass is greater up there.
• 1:11
  Yeah. And you said it sounds better.
• 1:14
  It sounds better. Yeah.
• 1:14
  It makes a nicer toast.
• 1:16
  Thank you so much for having me.
• 1:17
  Will you please introduce yourself to anyone that's listening? Sure.
• 1:20
  I'm Steve Saxton and, my wife Lucy, and I own river cellars here in Amity.
• 1:25
  We also have a tasting room in in downtown Newburgh.
• 1:27
  But we've been there for nine years here for five and a half on the vineyard property.
• 1:31
  And, and we, are big fans of big, bold red wine there.
• 1:35
  Yeah. Same. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:37
  Talk to me a little bit about this adventure for you.
• 1:41
  And, like, what started you on this path of having your own vineyard and creating your own wine?
• 1:46
  I was in my 50s, living in California and and knew that the career I'd had for 33 years in the health and fitness industry would come to a close someday.
• 1:54
  I just came out of it and wanted something I could do till I died because I'll never retire.
• 1:59
  Yeah, I'm that way, knowing that I'm going to work.
• 2:01
  What is it that I could do?
• 2:03
  And at the same time, I was writing and I was writing screenplays and I created a cartoon line, but I couldn't monetize it.
• 2:10
  No. No one was paying me to write screenplays, to write a book.
• 2:14
  And, at the same time, my wife and I had a big interest in red wine.
• 2:17
  We were living in Lodi, California.
• 2:19
  They have great wines down there.
• 2:20
  We loved wine, and we were volunteering for a winery down there.
• 2:24
  And so in our spare time, I was either I was either writing or we were at the winery.
• 2:29
  And I realized, you know there might be an opportunity here in the wine industry for us.
• 2:34
  Yeah.
• 2:35
  And so we spent ten years working for free volunteering time for a winery in Lodi.
• 2:41
  But loving it all the time. Yeah.
• 2:42
  And like learning along the way to everything from, from from the field to the to the bottle and everywhere in between. It was.
• 2:49
  We just did it because we loved it.
• 2:52
  And anytime I'm that passionate about something, I love to find a way to make that work for sure.
• 2:56
  For work. Work. Yeah. Absolutely.
• 2:59
  So it was a ten year process.
• 3:00
  It wasn't just like, hey, let's just go.
• 3:01
  Yeah, sure. Sounds fun. Yeah. Yeah.
• 3:04
  It's like a hallmark movie.
• 3:05
  Like, let's just buy a winery and everything.
• 3:06
  So people do that, and it doesn't usually work out.
• 3:09
  Yeah.
• 3:10
  But we were very passionate about about the wine industry and with my career in business.
• 3:14
  I knew a bunch of winemakers in Lodi who owned their wineries and, and they didn't really understand the business side.
• 3:20
  Sure. Yeah. They were great, artisans but not business people.
• 3:25
  I came at it from a different angle as a businessman.
• 3:27
  Right.
• 3:27
  And said, I can always hire winemakers, hire technicians.
• 3:31
  Why not?
• 3:31
  But I didn't know anyone who no one had done that.
• 3:33
  So I didn't have like a model to follow that.
• 3:36
  Sure.
• 3:37
  So I kind of created my own. Yeah.
• 3:39
  And what took you from Lodi to Oregon?
• 3:41
  How come you didn't open up a shop in, like, Lodi?
• 3:44
  We considered it.
• 3:44
  It was there.
• 3:46
  We would have been like just about every other winery.
• 3:48
  Where.
• 3:48
  Where the line up is pretty much the same.
• 3:51
  But I was born and raised in Oregon, graduated from Oregon State, wanted to come home.
• 3:55
  Yeah.
• 3:55
  And Lucy and I had come up here every year to see family and friends, and we'd always toyed with the idea of maybe living the autumn of our lives in Oregon.
• 4:03
  And so we looked at the business model and said, what's the same business model in Lodi or Oregon?
• 4:08
  But there we'd be like everyone else and up here we'd be pretty unique.
• 4:12
  And so I met with the OC and said here's what I would like to do.
• 4:15
  We'd like to bring up all this California wine.
• 4:17
  And the guy said, well yeah you can do that legally, right.
• 4:21
  I'm not sure that's the smartest business model, you know.
• 4:24
  And I don't think they're going to embrace you as a Californian coming up.
• 4:26
  You're doing that right.
• 4:28
  And that helped lead us to the name of our winery.
• 4:30
  Because bravado means doing something risky or daring.
• 4:33
  I love it well. Yeah.
• 4:34
  So we thought, well, if we pull this off, we're Bavaro.
• 4:37
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 4:39
  Nine and a half years later, we're still here, going strong.
• 4:41
  And we are. Bravo. Yeah.
• 4:43
  And you do have an estate grape.
• 4:45
  And you do grow here. Well, actually, you have a couple of varieties.
• 4:47
  Or you have the Chardonnay and the Pino.
• 4:47
  Do you grow anything else up here?
• 4:50
  No. Okay.
• 4:50
  Just, you know, Chardonnay, three, three clones of Pino that we blend together.
• 4:54
  And then you get a lot of your grapes out of Lodi.
• 4:56
  98% of the fruit comes out of that.
• 4:58
  But to give like back to your point of kind of being different and stuff, you do have a lot of wine varieties like you don't see at every tasting room in our area, which is nice. Yeah. Not at all.
• 5:08
  You don't find a lineup of Zinfandel, Petite Sorolla, Tempranillo, Ribera around? Yeah, absolutely.
• 5:14
  So we like the uniqueness of what we're doing.
• 5:17
  And we seem to have two customers that either they like variety.
• 5:21
  Their Pino fans are fine with Pino but they really like variety in their wines or they just don't like vino.
• 5:26
  And then they're looking for something else.
• 5:27
  Plenty of both. Yeah.
• 5:29
  I remember actually my first time I was introduced here winery was actually at a Women's Council of Realtors event.
• 5:36
  We had a wine bus that went to a couple of different stops, and this was one of our stops.
• 5:40
  And I instantly because I love big, bold reds.
• 5:42
  I was like, this is my place.
• 5:44
  I found my place.
• 5:45
  And then when I found out you had a tasting room in Newburgh, which is like closer to home for me too, I was like, oh, this is a win win for me.
• 5:51
  So I was a big fan for my first time.
• 5:52
  I visited for sure.
• 5:54
  Talk about getting the vineyard and like that.
• 5:57
  Like trying to pick the right location.
• 5:59
  Like we're there already. Grapes here.
• 5:59
  Did you plant?
• 6:01
  So we were already in the Newburgh tasting room.
• 6:03
  We got first, right?
• 6:04
  And the initial plan was for for Lucy and me to have, just us, the only employees will grow as big as we can grow.
• 6:11
  The two of us can handle zero days off.
• 6:13
  Well, all the things you to be ready?
• 6:15
  Yeah. There's no years off. Yeah.
• 6:18
  But then we.
• 6:19
  This property came up, came to our attention.
• 6:22
  They were.
• 6:22
  It was a couple here that ran a winery and retired.
• 6:25
  And they put on our newsletter that were retiring and had this property for sale and was interested.
• 6:30
  And one of our wine club members saw that and forward it to us and said we've been there.
• 6:33
  You might want to take a look at the property. Yeah. Cool.
• 6:36
  So it had a 15 year old piano and chardonnay vines at the time, and we didn't really want to do Chardonnay and piano because that wasn't our big, bold business model. Right?
• 6:45
  And so I went to the county and said, we're going to we're going to sell these grapes and just do our red wines.
• 6:50
  And they stamped my application, rejected.
• 6:53
  I said, well, this is a problem.
• 6:54
  Yeah, because we need to have a tasting room here.
• 6:56
  Yeah.
• 6:57
  So so what do we have to do differently to get that approved?
• 7:00
  And they said, well, you have to make wine from the grapes on the property.
• 7:03
  So we said okay it's not hard to do.
• 7:05
  We just added Pino and Chardonnay to our repertoire.
• 7:07
  And and then our Pino just last year won Best in show at the Portland Wine.
• 7:12
  Delicious. Yeah. So.
• 7:13
  Well and it is nice for you to have a piano because we are in piano country.
• 7:16
  So for the locals that do like that's their favorite.
• 7:19
  Not that you have it on the menu too.
• 7:19
  And that's really nice.
• 7:22
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 7:23
  And then also they get to see where it's made and harvested and all of those things.
• 7:28
  When you were doing work in Lodi for the ten years that you guys are volunteers, was I also like in the fields where you're learning about the grapes and like growing the grapes, or do you have a farming background at all? Not at all.
• 7:38
  But we learned because it was a hands on thing and we started from cleaning bins, to, to thinning shoots in the, in the vineyard.
• 7:46
  And we did everything every single step of the way because the guy had ten acres of Cabernet.
• 7:50
  Okay. And so we helped him do anything.
• 7:52
  We were, we were just students who wanted to be pupils.
• 7:56
  You just just you wanted to learn.
• 7:58
  I'm a student of life too.
• 7:58
  Like just learning.
• 8:00
  Yeah.
• 8:00
  A craft, even if I don't plan to have a job with it, I would like.
• 8:03
  I just love learning about different things.
• 8:05
  So we did that from the from the field to, and, and outdoors.
• 8:09
  A lot longer season there than it is here.
• 8:11
  So most of the year we were we were outdoors or then we moved into the barrel room.
• 8:13
  And so we did a little bit of everything with him teaching us not to to have a winery.
• 8:20
  Right. We just want to learn the business.
• 8:21
  Yeah.
• 8:21
  And John was curious. Yeah. I love that.
• 8:24
  And then, from what you learned there, have you still had teachers here that have helped you with the grapes, or did you partner with anybody like, hey, Nelson, I have this vineyard.
• 8:34
  Do you want to come talk to me about it?
• 8:36
  Our our connections are still pretty much Lodi.
• 8:38
  Yeah.
• 8:39
  We have a winemaker up here and two down in Lodi.
• 8:42
  And the one up here makes our our Pinot noir and our Chardonnay.
• 8:44
  And the two down there make everything else.
• 8:46
  We didn't have three.
• 8:46
  One of them passed away last year.
• 8:48
  Oh my gosh I'm sorry to hear that.
• 8:50
  He's the guy who taught us for ten years.
• 8:51
  Yeah Dave taught us everything about the business.
• 8:55
  What was it for you?
• 8:55
  Yeah, it's a huge loss.
• 8:57
  And if you're out front, there's 1947 Dodge truck out front.
• 9:01
  And that's Dave's truck.
• 9:03
  His wife gave us his truck.
• 9:03
  That's so sweet.
• 9:05
  She was up here last week and saw the truck.
• 9:07
  And when we pulled in the driveway and she saw his truck here.
• 9:10
  She said, I'm sure she got a Dave.
• 9:11
  Dave has a new home.
• 9:12
  Yeah.
• 9:13
  So glad that Dave is here with us.
• 9:14
  Because he is. He's why we're in business.
• 9:17
  I love us so much.
• 9:18
  So if you come visit the tasting room and Amity, make sure you take a selfie with the truck and tag Dave's truck.
• 9:24
  Take a take a picture with the truck we love.
• 9:26
  Yeah, I love that so much.
• 9:27
  So have you just been learning then by doing for farming out here?
• 9:32
  Yeah, we have a crew that does the work or arrangement with them.
• 9:35
  It's pretty much that we take care of the ground and they take care of the vines. Okay.
• 9:38
  And so they do that.
• 9:39
  We can do anything we want to do.
• 9:39
  We want to go drop fruit.
• 9:42
  We can do that.
• 9:42
  We want to thin shoots. We can do that.
• 9:44
  But we have them under contract to take care of the vines for us.
• 9:47
  Nice.
• 9:48
  And how did you go about finding the crew to do that.
• 9:50
  They were already here.
• 9:50
  Oh okay. That's nice.
• 9:53
  We inherited them and we interviewed them because the the wine that had been made here wasn't very good.
• 9:59
  And so when we bought the property I asked her, I told her look the grape here does not have a history.
• 10:04
  The wine doesn't have a history of being good. Yeah.
• 10:07
  What's the problem.
• 10:08
  Was it the winemaking problem.
• 10:09
  Is it the vines issue?
• 10:11
  No no no.
• 10:11
  These are grape vines.
• 10:13
  The grape vines that did not get enough TLC.
• 10:15
  So if you'll invest in the vines then you'll have you're going to be fine.
• 10:19
  And sure enough it went from an okay Pino to as I said best in show last year.
• 10:25
  Yeah it's amazing.
• 10:26
  So we put a lot of money and time into the vines.
• 10:29
  Yeah. Well, and it shows to you if you come out here to.
• 10:31
  You can see how much care and time you guys put into it when it comes to harvesting and stuff.
• 10:36
  I always joke around that.
• 10:37
  I think a lot of people envision like the I Love Lucy situation, just like stomping around in grapes and doing all these things.
• 10:44
  I don't think a lot of people realize a lot of times you harvest by hand.
• 10:47
  I'm assuming you said yes. Yeah.
• 10:50
  So how many people do you have to have out here for harvesting?
• 10:52
  Okay, so you're not going to believe this, okay.
• 10:54
  But this is the truth.
• 10:55
  So I hope everything's truth.
• 10:58
  But this is just.
• 10:59
  This is mind blowing.
• 11:00
  Yeah.
• 11:01
  So we only have two acres of grapes, 2000 vines, two acres of grapes.
• 11:05
  And when they start, they're paid by the bucket.
• 11:07
  Not by the hour.
• 11:09
  You've never seen people work this hard.
• 11:11
  They harvest these 2000 vines in 90 minutes.
• 11:14
  Oh my gosh. Really.
• 11:17
  It's like a crew, like maybe a dozen different people.
• 11:20
  And they are running up and down the road with buckets and grapes, throwing them in the bins, running back for 90 minutes.
• 11:25
  They're done.
• 11:26
  Oh my gosh.
• 11:26
  People are going to be calling, you know, like, who were they where people wanted to show up for for harvest.
• 11:30
  Can we come and watch us?
• 11:31
  Yeah, but don't be late because you'll get to turn it into, like, the harvest game.
• 11:35
  It's like Chardonnay versus Pino.
• 11:37
  Who's going to finish first?
• 11:38
  Have people rooting and sharing.
• 11:40
  It can be a whole event.
• 11:41
  And we can sit back in the observation long back to the state over and watch the overview of the vineyard. Like, I was just praying.
• 11:46
  Let's just like hoses and stuff, like cool off water stations.
• 11:50
  Oh my gosh, that's crazy.
• 11:52
  That is probably the fastest harvest I've heard. Well, it's a small vineyard.
• 11:55
  Well, but still, even just like that quick of movement.
• 11:58
  That's a crazy.
• 11:59
  Well done.
• 12:00
  Yeah.
• 12:00
  So late September, if you want a date on which you know.
• 12:03
  Yes, I'll be here.
• 12:04
  I'm going to watch that for sure.
• 12:06
  That's nuts.
• 12:09
  I know that you and your wife obviously have a big love for wine.
• 12:12
  And one thing that you guys do that I think is super cool is take tours overseas, like you go to France or different and do, like a little cruise, or sometimes it's a tour, like in town or you talk a little bit about that.
• 12:22
  Sure.
• 12:23
  We started in Bordeaux because we're big.
• 12:24
  We're big Bordeaux blend fans.
• 12:27
  And so we took a group of 50 people to wine club members to, to Bordeaux, France.
• 12:31
  And, and were there for, for two weeks.
• 12:34
  And then last year Lucien I went down to Santiago, Chile and Mendoza, Argentina, which is kind of their Napa valley of.
• 12:42
  Yeah, Chile and Argentina and loved it so much that we organized another tour to go down there.
• 12:48
  It's not a river cruise tour. It's a land cruise.
• 12:50
  Yeah, but we're taking 36 members down there.
• 12:53
  That's more bus and going to both of those markets again.
• 12:57
  In February of this year we went to, to Spain and Portugal.
• 13:01
  And that was, that was wonderful.
• 13:02
  It was a really good trip through the wine regions of, of Spain and Portugal.
• 13:06
  I took 56 wine club members on that.
• 13:08
  Yeah.
• 13:08
  It's a goal of mine to go on one of these like trips with you guys.
• 13:12
  When you do that do you have relationships over there in LA or like do you reach out and like say I'm a winery coming out this way that showcase your wine?
• 13:20
  Like, what all do you do for prep to go out there?
• 13:23
  We customize the package tours.
• 13:25
  They have package tours already, but we look at the winery part of it because even though it's a wine tour, a lot of times they'll throw in some extra castles or churches or things to see.
• 13:33
  We nixed most of those. To put in more wine.
• 13:35
  Yeah.
• 13:35
  You're like we're here for the grapes.
• 13:37
  We're we're here for the rest of the wine tour.
• 13:39
  People are coming for wineries right. Yeah.
• 13:41
  So we vary those tours to, to customize them.
• 13:45
  Heavy heavy wine.
• 13:47
  So we went to to it's my kind of vacation.
• 13:49
  Oh it's good.
• 13:50
  Tomorrow Spain which is the birthplace of Tempranillo.
• 13:53
  So in Bordeaux which we're drinking Tempranillo today because you and I both love Tempranillo in Bordeaux we went to the birthplace of Kaprizov.
• 13:59
  Yeah. And so.
• 14:00
  And we just booked another tour in Eastern Europe.
• 14:03
  Well, we're we're going from Vienna, Austria, down through Serbia and Croatia, which is the birthplace of Zinfandel.
• 14:07
  Oh my gosh.
• 14:09
  So we're hitting all the places that the grapes that we love so much.
• 14:13
  And it's worked out really well. Yeah.
• 14:15
  And so you're gone for normally two weeks.
• 14:17
  How many wineries do you think that you hit on average during those two weeks.
• 14:21
  Dozen.
• 14:23
  That's I mean A22A day or so.
• 14:24
  You can't do much more than that. Yeah.
• 14:26
  And then do you guys do like meals together or do you guys separate and people go off and kind of do their own thing?
• 14:31
  Some of both.
• 14:32
  Yeah.
• 14:32
  Usually on the two week trip a week of that is on a cruise ship.
• 14:35
  Small cruise ship only holds 150 people. Sure.
• 14:38
  And so we're back on the ship.
• 14:39
  Sometimes it's like half the ships, you guys. It is. Yeah.
• 14:42
  They only give us half the ship.
• 14:43
  Yeah.
• 14:44
  So we've sold it out in two weeks, and they filled the other half of the ship with people from other parts of the country, around the world.
• 14:49
  But it's a combination of being on the ship and being off at vineyards.
• 14:53
  That's amazing.
• 14:54
  And do you have to be a wine club member to go with you guys, or can you?
• 14:57
  You do? Yep. Okay. Why?
• 14:59
  Because we fill it up with our wine club.
• 14:59
  Yeah. Which makes sense.
• 15:01
  You guys have a great wine club.
• 15:02
  Do you want to talk a little bit about the wine club membership?
• 15:05
  Well, we we created a wine club.
• 15:06
  Like, we would actually want to join, which maybe, I don't know.
• 15:10
  You know, I've been a member for four years now, I think.
• 15:13
  Yeah. Yeah. But there's no fee to join.
• 15:17
  You can quit any time.
• 15:18
  Most of like a year period or something.
• 15:20
  You can cancel any time. Yeah.
• 15:21
  And you choose the wines each quarter.
• 15:23
  So I send out a list.
• 15:24
  I love that a few weeks in advance of here's all the wines that are available.
• 15:27
  What do you want.
• 15:28
  And you pick.
• 15:29
  Yeah.
• 15:30
  It's I don't want we don't want to send people wine that they don't want.
• 15:35
  I, we belong to several wine clubs.
• 15:37
  And every one of those we get wine that isn't necessarily our favorite.
• 15:40
  Right. We didn't want to do that.
• 15:41
  The people you always have the option to choose what you want.
• 15:43
  Yeah.
• 15:44
  The couple things that your wine club offers that I really appreciate is one.
• 15:49
  Obviously I frequent a lot because I like to bring visitors and guests and clients and things like that, but I don't always need to do a tasting because I already know, like, what my favorites are.
• 15:57
  I love that I can just have a glass of wine for my friends, have a tasting, and like, chitchat with them.
• 16:03
  I love that I can switch it out for my favorites.
• 16:06
  Or sometimes I'm like, oh, actually, I'm kind of in the mood for this.
• 16:09
  It's not even that.
• 16:09
  It's not one of my favorites, but I just want to switch it out.
• 16:12
  And then also, I like that when I bring guests and stuff, they also get to enjoy my discount while they're there with me, which is always nice too.
• 16:21
  So I had a blender with me yesterday in our tasting room in Newberg, and he went home with wine.
• 16:24
  He was like, my wife will be modifying.
• 16:24
  I'll take something home.
• 16:27
  And so you take a Pinot Noir home tour.
• 16:29
  So yeah, it was nice to be able to, like, share my discount with him, too.
• 16:32
  It feels like a common sense wine club to me.
• 16:34
  It's like, well, why wouldn't you do that? Yeah.
• 16:36
  And if friends are there, why wouldn't they get your wine club price?
• 16:39
  I've been to places where you got all.
• 16:41
  But, the members all buy the wine, and we got saying you give me the money.
• 16:44
  Yeah. It's just, like, silly.
• 16:45
  Yeah, it's a silly game. Just. Yeah.
• 16:47
  Well, and I like a cousin, like, either coming up here or being in the tasting room.
• 16:51
  It really just also feels like an extension of, like, my own home, because, like, I'm just like, oh, yeah, this is like, my place to, like, welcome.
• 16:57
  I want to show you the wine and things.
• 16:59
  And that's what like the wine clubs are meant to do, is.
• 17:01
  And like, create ambassadors for you that bring people in to.
• 17:05
  We want it to feel like when you come here, like this is your backyard.
• 17:08
  Totally.
• 17:09
  And so we didn't put $1 million into marble columns and fancy stuff, and a person to park your car is like, not right.
• 17:15
  This is a casual experience.
• 17:17
  Come casual and.
• 17:18
  Yeah.
• 17:18
  So you'll feel like you're home. Yeah.
• 17:21
  What is some tasting advice that you would give?
• 17:24
  So if I was like a brand new baby novice wine drinker, and I was visiting Oregon for the first time, what's a couple of tips and tricks you would give them for doing a wine tasting?
• 17:33
  Don't overthink it. That's a great advice.
• 17:36
  There's so much you can get as technical as you want to get.
• 17:39
  We try to keep it simple.
• 17:40
  That's why we don't give tasting notes.
• 17:42
  I don't want to tell you that you're going to smell cinnamon and a hint of clove on them.
• 17:45
  You know what you taste and smell is what you taste and smell.
• 17:48
  Right. And you like it or you don't.
• 17:50
  And start there.
• 17:51
  And then it helps people to feel like like they're not being talked down to.
• 17:56
  Right.
• 17:56
  They're like oh that's all I have to do is well I do like that.
• 17:59
  Or I didn't care for that one as much as the first one.
• 18:01
  There's no wrong answers. Right.
• 18:02
  You're not going to be like offended at someone's like, oh, it sounds not really my favorite, but I loved this. Yeah.
• 18:08
  I think that's why, some people get nervous about going wine tasting because I think they think they have to, like, speak to it or, like, is anyone I'm going to judge me if I'm not like, oh, I just get notes of vanilla on that kind of a thing.
• 18:20
  So I do like that.
• 18:22
  You and others in the area are very welcoming, and it is casual, like you don't have to be all fancy.
• 18:27
  Sunday. Best coming up to the winery. Kind of a thing.
• 18:31
  What?
• 18:32
  Talk a little bit about the different wines.
• 18:33
  Like what was some of your first bottles?
• 18:35
  And now you guys have, like, quite a few wines that you offer your menus quite large.
• 18:40
  What wines did you start with and then how did you decide to grow?
• 18:44
  We make 10 to 12 wines every year.
• 18:47
  We started we made our very first bottle in 2009.
• 18:49
  We made a barrel of Tempranillo.
• 18:51
  And that was part of our education with, with Dave.
• 18:54
  And it was it.
• 18:56
  My wife I don't have children.
• 18:58
  And the picture of us in our tasting room with us standing next to a half ton of our first Tempranillo grapes is like two very proud parents.
• 19:05
  Oh for sure, I'm fat.
• 19:05
  We are so proud of that. Yeah.
• 19:08
  And so we we nurtured those grapes for a year and a half and every weekend.
• 19:12
  We couldn't wait to get that back out to the to the barrel room to see how our wines do and run tests on it and stuff.
• 19:17
  Yeah, I'm sure that was so rewarding seeing it from start to finish.
• 19:21
  And we still have about a case of it left.
• 19:22
  You know, you do 16 years later.
• 19:24
  Yeah, I love that.
• 19:25
  It's not very good, but it's still it's nostalgia.
• 19:29
  Yeah.
• 19:29
  And so the next year we made two barrels and there was like five barrels.
• 19:33
  Pretty quick.
• 19:33
  We had we had a lot of wine, but we realized the process is a two year process and time we buy the grapes until that's in your hands, that's two years.
• 19:41
  Yeah.
• 19:42
  That's that's a that's a lot of investment.
• 19:44
  Absolutely.
• 19:44
  So we can't afford to go wrong.
• 19:46
  And that's why we price all of our wines at the same price.
• 19:49
  Because we remove price from your taste buds this way people buy what they like.
• 19:54
  Yeah. Not what they like based on the price. Right.
• 19:57
  Because price really does affect your taste buds.
• 19:59
  Yeah for sure.
• 20:00
  So for that two year gamble period for us we need to know what people like.
• 20:05
  So we can get more of those grapes.
• 20:07
  And for us it's been Tempranillo.
• 20:08
  Zinfandel and Petites are had been the three anchors of our lineup.
• 20:12
  Yeah that makes sense because you know like like we said you can't get that in a lot of tasting rooms in this area either.
• 20:17
  So like it makes sense that those are your we like those in the lineup all the time.
• 20:21
  So unless we just run out of it.
• 20:24
  We have those three.
• 20:25
  And that way we make smaller lots of Barbera and Petit Verdot and other things that are best in show blend things that we work in around those other two.
• 20:33
  Yeah. But we try to keep those three all the time.
• 20:35
  I love the best in show.
• 20:36
  That's one I like to give, my friends and family that are just starting to dabble in reds because it's a red blend, and I think it's so nice and smooth.
• 20:44
  It's not too dry, it's not too sweet.
• 20:46
  It's like right in the middle and it's always well received.
• 20:48
  But I think the name Best in Show is like perfect for oh, we name it that.
• 20:52
  Not because it won anything, right, but because we donate money from that wine to a dog charity every year.
• 20:56
  Oh, I did not know that.
• 20:58
  That's I think oh that's amazing.
• 21:00
  We'll take a different dog charity.
• 21:00
  Oh my gosh.
• 21:02
  Now I love it even more.
• 21:04
  That's the thing I always said was like, well, it's best in show.
• 21:06
  I've never had one person where I've given it to them and they're like, I don't know about that. You know?
• 21:10
  So I was like, oh, it must be like one of their top producers.
• 21:13
  Oh my gosh, that is so interesting.
• 21:15
  I have no idea.
• 21:15
  My sauvignon and patisserie blend. Yeah.
• 21:18
  How did you decide to donate to the dog show then.
• 21:21
  I don't know where that started.
• 21:23
  We have two dogs. We're big dog fans.
• 21:25
  Yeah.
• 21:25
  And we just, I don't remember getting started.
• 21:28
  I came up with the name Best in Show because the dog world, they call it best in show.
• 21:32
  In the wine world, they call it best of show. Right.
• 21:35
  I don't know, I just had the two different things.
• 21:37
  Yeah. So we called it that tomato. Tomato?
• 21:40
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 21:41
  But we pick different, different dog charities and and have fun doing that.
• 21:44
  I love that. That's so cool.
• 21:45
  Now I'm going to have to tell everybody like, hey, if you guys get best in show, it's actually it goes to a charity to say know.
• 21:51
  So you might want to talk to you about it.
• 21:53
  Unless you don't like dogs apparently.
• 21:55
  Then I'll just like do twists. I'm a little bit, I love that so much.
• 22:00
  So how did you then grow up to, like, 12 wines a year?
• 22:03
  Because you were saying you started with a couple, and then how did you go?
• 22:06
  Well, more.
• 22:07
  When we go to a tasting room, we like to taste different wines and we would frequent the same wineries often.
• 22:13
  And so going back, having the same wine each time, I was like, would be nice if there was something different. So.
• 22:19
  So we like to our menu changes almost every other month.
• 22:23
  It was sold out of something or we just have it with that many wines we have to change our menu.
• 22:29
  But it's a part of the variety.
• 22:31
  We want to have 10 or 12 wines because I want there to be more than just 4 or 5 wines that you have all the time.
• 22:37
  Yeah, I think that would get old.
• 22:37
  Yeah it does.
• 22:39
  And then since you have two winemakers in Lodi and one here is bottling, hopping and Lodi two then and bottling, having here or around March is when we bottle.
• 22:49
  Okay. All of them.
• 22:50
  Yeah.
• 22:50
  It's been in the barrel for 18 months by then because we harvest typically in September.
• 22:54
  So by March a year and a half later, that's when we're bottling.
• 22:57
  Okay. Yep.
• 22:59
  And then do you have everything stored in one spot or like so everything comes up here this year our temperature controlled warehouse is always 55 degrees.
• 23:07
  Yeah.
• 23:07
  And it's insulated and protected and.
• 23:10
  Yeah.
• 23:11
  We bring it up in a truck.
• 23:11
  So we bottle in March.
• 23:13
  So sometime around April.
• 23:14
  Well we can still temperature still.
• 23:17
  Yeah.
• 23:17
  We bring it up on two semi trucks from California.
• 23:19
  Put it in the warehouse.
• 23:20
  Okay. Stays happy there.
• 23:22
  Yeah for sure.
• 23:24
  I like I said I was in the tasting room yesterday and I asked, like, are there any pressing questions I should ask Steve?
• 23:30
  And one that was suggested is who's your favorite employee?
• 23:32
  And you cannot say your wife because she's your partner and not an employee.
• 23:36
  But I was like a joke.
• 23:38
  I was like, oh, it's him on the spot.
• 23:39
  Like, which tasting room person is your favorite? You have a great.
• 23:42
  I'll never answer that.
• 23:43
  No, I know it's like choosing your favorite child.
• 23:44
  You have a great stuff there. Like, it doesn't matter who's in there.
• 23:47
  It's always a great time.
• 23:48
  I just we realized the other day that in our nine and a half years in business, we've never lost an employee.
• 23:54
  That's I mean, no one has quit and we've never fired anybody.
• 23:57
  Like, does that ever happen?
• 23:59
  Well, especially if you think about what has happened even in the last five years, like tasting rooms are closed, like people weren't out and about.
• 24:07
  You and I were just talking to that, like wine sales have been down a little bit more because mocktails are at an all time high.
• 24:13
  The younger generation isn't drinking the way some of the older generations have.
• 24:17
  And, how is that like impacted like how you think about how many like, hum, how much grapes to actually turn into wine or how many things to bottle.
• 24:29
  Yeah, we're going to have to cut our production a little bit because our sales are down slightly.
• 24:34
  Not nearly as much as what we hear.
• 24:35
  The industry is down.
• 24:36
  Yeah, but but traffic is what concerns me the most, because our wine club is so strong that our wine club is.
• 24:43
  And loyal.
• 24:44
  Yeah, our wine club is our business.
• 24:46
  Right.
• 24:46
  And the, the tasting traffic is down because so many fees have gone up so high that people stopped going tasting.
• 24:56
  Yeah, you could go tasting for, you know, 3 or 4 wineries at $10 apiece and make a day of it. Yeah.
• 25:02
  And now a $10 tasting fee is almost unheard of.
• 25:05
  It's it really is unheard of like in this area.
• 25:08
  I'd say the average tasting fees, like 45 bucks.
• 25:10
  We opened nine years ago. Our tasting.
• 25:12
  If it was $10, it's still $10.
• 25:14
  Yeah. To me it's bizarre.
• 25:16
  It's a barrier to entry.
• 25:17
  And people want to taste the wine before they buy it.
• 25:20
  Right.
• 25:20
  But so so why would you make it difficult for them to taste.
• 25:23
  The higher you raise that price the more difficult you make it for them to taste.
• 25:26
  Yeah for sure because they're lowering ours to $5 because I want people in the door.
• 25:30
  Because when they come in the door they're going to buy, they buy wine.
• 25:33
  Yeah absolutely.
• 25:34
  I, we rarely collect a tasting fee because people buy wine.
• 25:38
  Yeah. If I do collect a tasting fee, I consider it a loss.
• 25:40
  That means you didn't like my wine enough to buy a bottle of it.
• 25:43
  Yeah, we lost that. Absolutely.
• 25:45
  Well, and I've noticed too, like, sometimes the tasting fees are 35 to $45.
• 25:49
  And then even if you buy two bottles in, the average bottle at that place is like 60 to 75.
• 25:55
  The only wave like one of the tasting fees.
• 25:57
  And it's like, well, this stop just cost me 200 bucks.
• 26:00
  And so to your point, you can only go to one of those, right?
• 26:03
  A lot of times, especially if you're just out for the afternoon.
• 26:05
  So I do appreciate that that like you have that different mindset of just come enjoy the wine.
• 26:10
  Well I would go home.
• 26:10
  I wish it didn't affect everyone. Right.
• 26:13
  But just as a rising tide lifts all boats, lowering tide lifts all boats.
• 26:17
  That's true.
• 26:17
  And so when people don't go out tasting I don't have a shot at them.
• 26:21
  That's true. You don't go anywhere. Yeah.
• 26:25
  Yeah.
• 26:25
  So I'm not happy right now with all these high tasting.
• 26:27
  Yeah for sure.
• 26:29
  But anyone listening now, you know it's only $10 and you can come enjoy this beautiful view if you're in Amity or if you're in the Newberg area, pop into the tasting room there too as well.
• 26:41
  With that being said, too, we're also talking about I wish that more people realized, like everything that went into wine making, like we've talked a lot about it today, like the years it took you to like learn the business, plus hiring others, growing the grapes.
• 26:56
  Like when I buy wine, I know I'm, like, supporting a farmer, a whole team.
• 27:01
  Like you said, you have a whole team that works.
• 27:02
  The grapes, the tasting room, the family.
• 27:05
  Like.
• 27:06
  That's why it's so much more to me than just like, oh, bottle of wine fun.
• 27:09
  That's fun.
• 27:09
  Like, it's like supporting local and multiple people.
• 27:12
  It's not just you and your wife.
• 27:14
  It's like all the families you employ and everybody else that's also on your team.
• 27:18
  So don't forget that when you're out shopping and drinking and, buy the bottle to support local for sure.
• 27:25
  Is there any messaging that you would give a young winemaker out there, or somebody that's thinking about getting into the business, like words of wisdom?
• 27:34
  Only only to do what you love and don't ever compromise your passion?
• 27:38
  Yeah, I love that.
• 27:39
  I've spent my entire life in careers that I work when people play.
• 27:45
  And so whether you're out wine tasting, I'm working.
• 27:47
  When I was in the health and fitness industry, you know, after work you would go work out, do your work.
• 27:52
  That was my work.
• 27:53
  Always been in places where people come into my place in a good mood and leave in a better mood.
• 27:57
  Yeah.
• 27:58
  And so I, I would never compromise doing something that I'm passionate about.
• 28:02
  I would never just have a job. Job.
• 28:03
  I've got to love what I do. I'm not doing it. Yeah.
• 28:05
  I love that so much.
• 28:07
  Thank you so much for having me here.
• 28:08
  I really appreciate it. Cheers.
• 28:10
  One more time to you.
• 28:11
  Thank you for teaching me that.
• 28:13
  Thank you, everyone for listening and I hope to see you next week.
• 28:17
  Cheers.