E91 Matt Heil | Joe Wagner

The guy who finds the grapes behind Belle Glos Pinot Noir and Napa Valley Quilt Cabernet is finally on the podcast.
Matthew Heil—Copper Cane’s Director of Fruit Supply—is the energizer bunny of the wine world, constantly on the move scouting vineyards and building the relationships that shape every bottle.
In this episode, we go deep into what really happens before grapes ever hit the crush pad.

🎙️ Go With Your Palate: Matthew Heil | The Man Who Finds the Grapes

This week we go straight behind the vines with Matthew Heil, Director of Fruit Supply & Grower Relations at Copper Cane Wine & Spirits and one of the original team members who’s been with the company since day one in 2014. A true wealth of knowledge—and what we lovingly call an energizer bunny of the wine world—Matt is constantly on the move scouting vineyards, building grower relationships, and helping secure the fruit that becomes some of Copper Cane’s most celebrated wines, from the legendary Belle Glos Pinot Noir to the renowned Napa Valley Quilt Cabernet.

Coming from a lineage of farmers, Matt walks us through how he found his way into the wine world and what he’s actually looking for during those long vineyard walks across Napa, Sonoma, the Central Coast—and even Oregon during Copper Cane’s earlier chapter there. We dig into grower relationships, fruit sourcing, climate challenges, and the behind-the-scenes decisions that ultimately shape every bottle.

We also uncover the origin story of Matt and Joe’s Napa Valley bromance (which somehow involves two World Series and Fat Mario getting a lil jelly lol), plus some candid insider vineyard stories from years spent traveling wine country.

This episode only scratches the surface of Matt’s knowledge, which is why he’s officially joining us as a recurring expert guest to help break down the winemaking season—especially during harvest later this year.

Wine nerds, this is your chance: drop your vineyard, grape-growing, or wine industry questions in the comments, and we may bring them back to Matt on a future episode.

If you’ve ever wondered what really happens before grapes hit the crush pad, this one’s for you.

Grab a glass and come walk the vineyard with us. 🍷🌿

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right, welcome to a little episode of Wet Your Palette, where we tell you a bit of a preview of what we just did. Now, we just had a two-part series, the first time we've ever done it in two separate days. Uh, but with the one and only Matt Heil, who is the director of fruit supply at this boutique wine company called Copper Cane Wines and Spirits. It was a pleasure having you, Matt. We got to get into the ins and outs of what a whole growing season looks like when you're working with growers, managing vineyards, uh, running logistics. I mean, any highlights and beyond like the kind of stories that are a little close to home and secretive in the Napa Valley. How you know, but what yeah, what any any highlights that we talked about?

SPEAKER_03 0:38

Yeah, it's challenging. Um it the the environment that every year is a different, it's like talking about art, as we were discussing. Every year is a new a new framework or a new uh palette or whatever you want to do. There's a new new canvas to be painted for each year, and every year's different. And you know, I knew guys down the central coast that always said, I don't even know what normal is because every year is a different year. He's never seen the same year twice. And it's it's so true. And I the guy's name is Rich Smith, he was down the central coast, really great guy, passed a few years ago. But I always thought, you know, like, come on, there's got to be some continuity between years that are similar, but I've never seen it.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

And it's so I think that I think the continuity is the uh is really just the the flow of the season, but every year has different challenges. Yeah, absolutely. Um and I I think we or you outlined and demonstrated a lot of the details of of what goes into it. Now, while we did this in two parts, there is gonna be a third part because we didn't get to go through all of this stuff. So you're getting this little preview for these first two parts in the series, but we're gonna get into the nitty-gritty at some point, too. Like six pages to go, right? Or something, Christian. We didn't even touch a page, dude.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

We just started talking and it was like gripped and we're not gonna be.

SPEAKER_03 1:50

There's a lot of crazy stories.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

But there's there's also gonna be an opportunity for you to drop in the comments to ask questions because we're gonna bring those back for when Matt comes back.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

And we're gonna put him, we're gonna put them through a huge rapid fire. What'd you say, two hours?

SPEAKER_00 2:04

It'll be two hours of rapid fire questions, and probably a whole lot of shit that we are gonna have to edit. All right, go check out the episodes. Cheers.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Hey, have you have you met the other Matt Heil? I have. You've just met him like a big thing.

SPEAKER_03 2:32

Backstory, I got hired at Mandavi in 1996, and they put the job posting that I had been hired, and David Heil thought it was a joke that someone was gagging him with a joke on the company, intercompany newsletter. Anyway, long story short, I I hooked up with um David Heil. This is like in 1997, the spring, and found out that he found out I existed and that I was really Matthew Heil and I'm from Sonoma. And he's like, we never met. I'm like, I yeah, weird. So then years later, I got him and my dad together to talk, and they're both from the same town or same area of Germany in Prussia, which is beyond eastern Germany, where Prussia used to be. And they both emigrated through Hamburg at the same time. Their family is Roman Catholic, our pr family is Protestant, Lutheran. They ended up in Indiana, our family ended up in um in Nebraska. And it was one of those things like, you know, we're leaving the church and like we're let's say we're brothers, and like we'll never talk to them again, and you're live in the same town. But oh god, really one side's Lutheran, one side's Catholic.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

And did did you ever find out if you guys are related ancestry-wise?

SPEAKER_03 3:30

I guarantee you we're related.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

I never did, but Heil's actually a very common name.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

It's a very common name, yeah. Um, this is so I did not know this. This is so weird, like Napa Valley shit.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

I just thought it was. No, but but it but it goes back way before that's the cool part. Way before Napa Valley.

SPEAKER_03 3:46

He he looks exactly like my dad's uncle on my dad's side, my dad's great uncle.

SPEAKER_00 3:50

But did you never know? Like Edward Norton is a direct descendant of Pocahontas.

SPEAKER_03 3:56

Edward Norton is? Yeah, the actors.

SPEAKER_01 3:59

Shut up.

SPEAKER_03 3:59

Shut up. Hey, look it up, please. Edward Norton is related. That's weird. But anyway, long story short, um, I worked on the Central Coast and he worked up in Napa Valley, and then he um and his son, his family, so David Heil and his wife, they've got like nine kids or something like that, live here and or maybe six, sorry. Um but they live here in St. Lena and they founded the Montessori school.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

Wait, we we should probably get this recording. We're we're good now. He's Chad needs to work on his communication. Hold on. We are recording? We are just now, yes. Jesus Christ. You know, Matt, they're not usually this unprofessional.

SPEAKER_03 4:37

That's right. I'm not usually this fucking late either, but anyway, then here we are.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

It took me an hour to get home from Napa last night at 8 30. The road work. It's it's ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

I told you to do the road work right now. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

I've had to go to Napa last night, uh, two nights ago last night, and I'm going again tonight for like whatever it was, like, you know, our distributor dinner, whatever else. You're like, Jesus Christ. It's not the drive there. The drive there, you know you're gonna hit traffic at like four or five p.m. It's just really bad traffic right now. But coming back at like 9 p.m., where there's usually it's like a 20-minute drive, it's just painful.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

This is like this is like some local shit, if anyone's like listening to this, but there's like two roads in from like downtown Napa into like Rutherford, St. Helena, Calasoga. You're either taking Silver Radio Trail or you're taking Highway 29, and they decided to do fucking road work on both roads at the same time, and everyone here is a little painful.

SPEAKER_03 5:32

I mean, you mean to it could be worse, it could have done during harvest, which is always awesome.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

You mean to say that a government agency made a decision that makes life difficult for its citizens?

SPEAKER_01 5:43

Weird no litigants, Chris.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Nah.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Did you have to take did you have to take anything like to for your write-up? I mean, to like keep you awake. Do you do that? Do you like heavy caffeine and coffee drinker? I know.

SPEAKER_03 5:55

Coffee and Coca-Cola are a really good mix to drive long distance. That's real. He doesn't he's real.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

That's coffee and coke, Coca-Cola, not cocaine.

SPEAKER_03 6:03

20 ounce a cup of coffee, half of it's coffee, half of its Coca-Cola, rest of it, you know, some ice, and nothing will keep you wired. I mean, you can drive here straight through to Portland from here. Easy. Okay, because I wanted to say Sackroads and a whole bit, and you're freaking wired. You just eat like apples and fruit, oh shit, then it's on. Your brain's just you don't put that in the Coca-Cola coffee. Eat fruit while you're driving, it keeps your brain going.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

So you're just cocking lots of water. Yep. Regular Coke, I'm guessing.

Welcome Legend Grape Road Warrior, Matt Heil (Director of Fruit Supply/Grower Relations at Copper Cane)

SPEAKER_00 6:30

Yeah. So I know Matt Matt's a Matt's a road warrior. Like, I mean, the amount of we're gonna talk about your mileage and all that. Let me introduce him first. So today we've got special guest on a Go With Your Palette podcast, the famous Matthew Heil. He uh he has a a very amazing and large role at a company like no other, Copper Cane Wines and Spirits. And he is the director of fruit supply. Uh and we'll we'll talk about our history together, but we're really happy to have you on the podcast to tell your story uh and what you know what it is you do um and how how you do it, because I think that's that's probably more impressive than what you do because it's it's not a it's not a it's not an easy thing to do. Um but uh welcome Matt and uh thank you. I did want to start by asking have you ever been back to the USSR?

unknown 7:20

No.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

So let's start there. Let's get a little bit. Let's let everybody know the Eastern Europe the history. Yeah, so it's starting from Eastern Europe, the Heil family, and and and we're gonna tie this into the other Heil family, other Heil family here in Nabah.

SPEAKER_03 7:38

Oh, you're referring to the David Heil family. The David Heil family. All right.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

But let's talk, let's talk about the uh did you say Lutheran Protestant family, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:46

Yeah, so our family uh originated, my dad's side of the family is from Prussia, which is in eastern Germany now, but formerly the Republic or Kingdom of Prussia, if you will. Emigrated back in the mid-1800s during the depression in Germany, and uh came to the U.S. Um, out of the port of Hamburg, in through New York, and then ended up in Nebraska. So my dad's side of the family has been farming the same piece of ground for about 160, 170 years now, back in Nebraska. They farm soybeans and corn. Um, how we got here, dad studied poultry science at the University of Nebraska, ended up working for a poultry company over in Sonoma called Nicholas Turkey Breeding Farms, and uh worked there for over 40 years. Um and uh so I grew up in Sonoma Valley, so that's where I grew up, went to Sonoma Valley High School, graduated in 85, um, started working in tasting rooms in 1983 on an after-school work program with Mick Chandler at the high school in Sonoma Valley High, had a work school work program after school and worked at Buena Vista, uh winery cleaning bathrooms and um stock and shelves. At the time, minors could handle wine. There wasn't restrictions on you, just couldn't pour, you couldn't serve, all that stuff. But got to do um do that and then uh was packing orders for flying tigers and UPS for the wine club on the side, and that was during the summer, and I did that for six years. Um went to Sack State, got a degree in history, didn't want to teach high school history, went back to Sonoma and then got an opportunity to work with Peter Haywood up at Haywood Winery in the tasting room. Um I got with him and I asked him for more hours. They didn't have anything in the bottling line. They had a little bit of stuff, cleaning barrels and um doing work in the cellar, odds and end jobs. And then um in the summer I asked him, is there anything else? He says, Well, you know, I've got jobs out in the vineyard. He goes, You're welcome to work out in the vineyards. He goes, You'd start Monday morning, um, six o'clock. It's an all-vineyard uh Hispanic crew, they only speak Spanish. He goes, You're welcome to work. There's plenty of work out there, and um yeah, all I can say is good luck. And I said, Well, why? I've never had a white guy last more than two weeks. So and I got out there with the crew, we were suckering Cabernet front grapevines and shoot thinning and leaf pulling at the time. This is relatively new um practice in the wine industry, and I got totally hooked, and I just lived for it, and then I knew I found my place.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

So, how long did you last in the in in the vineyard there?

SPEAKER_03 10:11

Uh I've been in vineyards ever since. So I'm gonna work with the crew that whole summer.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, you I I know you made it way past two weeks. Yeah. Did they give you like a nickname?

SPEAKER_03 10:22

Yeah, Mateo, which still hangs to this day. My first day and my first hour. I still answer the phone and like Mateo.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

What's up, my baby Mateo? What's up, sweetie?

Matt Heil & Joe Wagner bromance (When Wine Industry Leaders Collide)

SPEAKER_00 10:33

That's how you answer the phone when he calls? Well, no, Matt and I talk so much. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 10:41

This is good. Okay, it's getting good. It's getting good.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

Like the amount of phone calls I get, we're like, we touch base quite uh quite often. Uh and so my wife tells me one day, she goes, if you're ever cheating on me, just save her phone number under Matthew Heil and I won't ask any questions. So then from then I on I started answering the phone. I'm like, hey baby, what's up, honey bunny? And so now it's a what's a now it's like a joke.

SPEAKER_04 11:05

I like it.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Oh, yeah, all the time.

SPEAKER_03 11:07

Different every time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:09

What's up, honey bunny? You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

I'm not jealous.

unknown 11:12

No.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

I can tell. I mean, when I call, he's just kind of like, what's up, fucker? Like, what's up, you little bitch. You little bitch. What's up, you little bitch? That's if he answers. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:25

Do you say you say it like too short, like beat, or no?

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Yeah, well, we when you says it like that, then it's kind of cool. Because then I'm like, I take that as a compliment because we grew up like listening too short. Beatch!

unknown 11:36

Beatch.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

So, okay, you started with

Local Insider Wine Country Info (23 and Napa Valley)

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Haywood, worked there. Give us like the next couple years of your career, and and but I want to make sure. So we have a Heil family here, the David Heil family here in Napa Valley. I grew up with them, I think it's five or six kids uh that all went to high school with us. And uh, and so um it was, you know, they were they were a big, like the big family in town. Um, and so uh so when I first heard about you and and met you, I didn't know if there was a relation, but uh I want you to kind of go into into that part of your career.

SPEAKER_03 12:10

Okay. Yeah, so I worked at Haywood for a year and then Haywood sold out to Buena Vista Winery, which at the time was known to Allied Demek. Um so Haywood moved out, Ravenswood bought the facility and moved in, and the joke was I went with the property. And um so I started working in the vineyards, working in the taste room, and then the tasting room thing, they had their own crew, so I was mainly in the vineyards in the cellar, and then um got to work out their pruning uh the vineyard right across the street from Haywood. Um, and probably a really cool story there was to tie it all together is that I got to prune the vineyard and work with the crew that was picking the grapes that we then delivered down across the street to the winery that we crushed and then put it in stainless steel tanks and then barreled it down and barrel fermented it. And then later I got to do barrel stirring when we were doing malolectic fermentation and it like tied it all together. Like at that point in time, I'd already swallowed all the fishing gear on viticulture and winemaking. It was just totally in. So it was really fun. I worked there during that time. They encouraged me to take classes at San Rosa JC. So I did that with Rich Thomas up at San Rosa Junior College, a viticulture program. Um, and as I got there through the second year, they said, you know, you seem to be really into this. Um, you should probably look at going to school. So I looked at Davis and Davis really wasn't didn't work out for me, but uh got into present state, applied to present state, studied viticulture, and earned a master's degree in cop science. So I did that for three years and then was hired at Mundavi in 1996, which is then the David Heil story comes into play here because David Heil is a viticulturist for Robert Mundavi at the time up in Napa Valley. He has a son named Matthew Heil, one of I think five or six kids. And um, David was down on a viticulture tour in the central coast, and I got to meet him. He's like, So you are real? I'm like, Yeah, what do you think? And he told me the story about he thought that the folks at Mundavi were joking around that they put Matthew Heil as hired as a um, I forget, viticulture technical manager on the central coast from Mundavi, and his son's name was Matthew Heil, spelled exactly the same.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

But we also went to high school with.

SPEAKER_03 14:06

Yeah, and you guys all went to school with up here in St. Lena. And I think they founded the Montessori school. David and his wife founded that. So what that's there's that whole story.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

What I think is really cool though, is like, okay, so similar part of eastern Germany. Yes. Right? The Heiles.

SPEAKER_04 14:20

That, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Uh different religions. Yes. Okay. Which uh and then but then immigrated probably around the same time. Yes. And then you go you ended up in uh uh your family ended up in Indy Indiana. In Nebraska, in Nebraska, sorry, and they were Indiana. Indiana, yeah, correct. And then you all a few of you ended up here in Wine Country.

SPEAKER_03 14:39

Yeah. They came out here, I think David moved out and went to school at Stanford and met his wife and then moved up to Napa. And I don't know, what do you study business or plant science? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

But you guys have never done a 23andMe to see if there's any No, no. Not yet, but I mean you never know. There was you know You could.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

You could there's a chance that you that's I think this is wild that there's a chance that like you guys could be related. I mean, everyone right now, you're getting like behind like the scenes, deep root, like Napa Valley, like local shit right now. Yeah. But like, because I remember when I first started at Copper Kane about like seven years ago or uh eight years ago, I heard your name and I pictured it was gonna be the other Matt Heil. That's right. So then, yeah, and then I was just like, ah, dude, he's kind of changed a little bit. Like, I mean, like from what I remember, dude. This has been like an ongoing kind of joke, but you're saying there's a chance you guys could actually be related.

SPEAKER_03 15:32

Well, I looked at old pictures with my dad. So years later up at uh ACV, my dad came up with me to just check it out. He was interested in the industry, and David Heil was there. So we got together for dinner that night, and my dad and David, Matthew Heil's dad, um, hashed it all out, and they know we're from the same area of Prussia. We we're both into what happened is our family probably left the Catholic Church and they said, fine, we'll never talk to you again. It's like one of those kind of cousin things. Then they turned our back, and we live on this side of town, they live on that side of town, and everybody got it out of Germany at the same time. And and but there's pictures in my dad's photo of them of like a great uncle on my dad's side, and then he looks exactly like David Heil. Same, like you could just look at him, same thing, same guy.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

That's that's what you just never know. I mean, like that's like you know, the Edward Norton thing being a direct descendant of Pocahontas. Which I know you you yeah, I knew I know you don't believe it. Edward Norton is a direct descendant of the 17th century Native American figure Pocahontas and her husband, John Rolfe. Making her his 12th great grandmother. Dude, I hey, I'm just saying the internet said it's true, it's gotta be.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

Yeah, dude, it's like, hey, I never never lied, dude. Hey, I never lied. Wait, okay, can you can you actually solve something for me then? Is Bill Burr and the singer of Smashing Pumpkins? Billy Corrigan. Thank you. Are they related? Are they actually really because they were on a podcast together and Bill Burr is not happy about that.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

I know. I'm just I'm just wondering when AI said that tells me that they're related to AI.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Billy and Bill. Yeah, Billy and Bill, right? And it's like the same dad.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

They and they look exactly the fucking same.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

So I know, I'm just like, I it's just a back and forth. They were on a podcast. I want to know, was it confirmed?

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Is it confirmed? You gotta yeah, you gotta see this, dude. Matt, you gotta turn around and see this picture. That's Billy. Fuck, I I don't even know which one is Bill. Bill Burr's on the right, Corrigan's on the left.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

Corrigan claimed his father, a touring musician, musician, had multiple families, suggesting a potential connection.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

I like how Bill Bill Burr just doesn't even want to rip the band-aid off and try to find out. He's like, that's the past. I've never known this guy or this family. I don't want to deal with any drama that's gonna come out of it. So, okay, so it's left out there. You know, I mean, I think that was a common thing where like people would travel, like I mean, that the Bill Burr, Billy Corgan thing's different, but like families just separated. There was no communication, right? There's no lines of communication.

SPEAKER_03 18:01

No, we're the ones that probably left the church and were like David Hill side of the family's like, we'll never talk to them again. And that was just as we're too German for happen.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

As fate would have it, you both end up working in viticulture. Yeah, here in Napa Valley in Napa Valley.

SPEAKER_03 18:14

Yeah, still talk to him every six or eight months or so, talk to David and check in and say hi. And easy. It's like still consulting around here, so yeah, it's kind of cool. So but we joke around, like I see Matthew Hile in a coffee shop here in St. Lena. I'm like, wait, you can't be here when I'm in town. You know that, right? There's a rule, like there can only be one Matthew Hile in St. Lena. Yeah, small towns. You gotta let you know, you know, you can work your work schedule around that. So you can not be here joking around.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

I know I I think that that should be a rule.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Yeah, it's pretty fun. So we jump to your guys' love story or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

Well, I'll let me jump in on this because I there I know we got a lot of stuff to cover,

Back to the Legendary Wine Industry bromance (Fruit Supplier meets Winemaker)

SPEAKER_00 18:47

but uh, so I know you you were at Mondavi and Mondavi was acquired by Constellation Brands. Yes, sir. Okay, so Constellation, publicly traded company, uh maybe soon to be getting out of the wine business altogether. Um, which is not you know, not a bad thing. I don't know if it's a good thing. I don't know. We'll we'll see. Time will tell. Yeah, weird thing. There's a lot of weird shit going on in the industry right now. But um so uh so I I used to manage all of our own fruit supply. And this is during the days like, yeah, we had Bell Gloss and managing those vineyards, but then Mayomie was growing, we were buying a bunch of fruit, and uh, and I had I there I was trying to hire somebody, and I'd like I'm driving up and down the central coast, being a road warrior like Matt does, and I'm talking to like brokers that that manage you know potential you know fruit sources and whatever else. And uh and and so I'm about to hire this one uh lady who I've I'd known for a couple years, all the paperwork signed and everything, she calls me up, she's like, I just found out I'm pregnant, and I don't think I I don't think that I'm gonna carry through with uh this is my career, meaning like wants to be a mom. Like, totally understand. Thank you for letting me know. Instead of just jumping on board and then, you know, um taking advantage of like a year of employment and then I gotta start from ground zero.

SPEAKER_02 19:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

Anyway, so this uh one guy, Matt Turentine, down on the Central Coast, he keeps telling me, like, he's like, you gotta talk to this guy, Matt Heil. He works for Constellation. And and at that time, I'm like, this like this Matt Heil dude is like the god of fruit supply, right? Like he's he knows every fucking in and out of vineyards everywhere. Why would why do you want to come and work for like a small company and like manage our fruit supply?

SPEAKER_03 20:24

That's a long story.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

And so finally I'm like pulling my hair out, and I'm just I'm frustrated because I'm like, I'm trying to manage thousands of tons coming in, making the wine, marketing the wine, all this stuff. And like we great, I had a great team already. Like it was, don't get me wrong, but yeah, it was adding a lot more stress than than uh than than I really needed at the time or could could handle the time. So I call you up one day and uh and just introduce myself and I was like, wow, he's actually a nice guy. Um because some growers would would refer to constellation as constipation. Oh yeah, which because I think I because I think you can negotiate, you know, well. Yeah. Um so and so uh so I think it was like the next day. I was like, well, I'm already I'm down in uh I was like driving from Santa Maria to Monterey, and uh you're like, yeah, let's meet up in um let's meet up in in Monterey somewhere. So we met up in like I don't know, Las Alturas, Mercelay somewhere in Mercalay, yeah. And uh and and like the news broke that morning that that constellation, the company you were working for, uh had just acquired Mark West at the time, like the largest Pinot Noir brand. And so you're like, oh fuck, I gotta hold it.

SPEAKER_03 21:33

I had to delay meeting with you because we were up from three in the morning on six a.m. East Coast time because they're going to make an announcement on the stock market that day that they were acquiring Mark West, but we had to have all of our phone calls done with all of our growers between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. I think I met you at like 10 a.m. And we just got done calling all the growers for Mark West on the Central Coast. And everybody had a different area. Like there were guys up in the north coast in Napa or Sonoma or Lake County or over in Lodi and And yeah, and that had just happened. And you were like, all right, let's meet at 8. I'm like, yeah, I'd love to, but you know, we I got some stuff going on. I'll see. I can meet you at 10. So we've met at 10. And then he finds out. He's like, yeah, you guys just bought Mark West. Yeah, I've been on the phone all morning dealing with that, trying to call growers and make sure everything's all square.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

At that point, like that year at in in your role, how many tons were you managing the supply of?

SPEAKER_03 22:23

About uh, say probably 120,000 tons and 350 growers.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

So I just want to like put that into perspective. Like 120,000 tons. Like we're a small, medium-sized winery with like 10,000 tons. Yeah. That's a lot of fruit. Yeah. That's it's insane just to think about. Like that's to manage that volume. Um, anyways, you could you could take the story from there because I think the the the uh signing you want, I'll talk to you like like you're a baseball player. Yeah, it looks wild. Yeah, no, the

A true World Series event

SPEAKER_00 22:54

the sign-on was uh was was pretty awesome.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

It's an all-star player you're trying to recruit, right?

SPEAKER_03 22:59

Well, yeah, so like as Joe mentioned, he called and talked to me on the phone and said I was a good guy. And I get home and I had this meeting with Joe, and I told when talked to my wife. Well, instantly she wants to know all about Wagner and Caemas Vineyards and all this stuff. And we start looking at videos and and we're both like, oh my God, he's like genuine, he's sincere, he's like really nice. I go, yeah, if you met him in person, that's what you would see. And so we watched all this stuff. She's like, All right, well, you've been frustrated for quite a while, but you've been, you know, powering through it. And um, if you think this is a good move, then you know, then let's think about that. So um later we met again, like in August, and then uh and then lined up to get together. And I'm talking with Gina, Joe's still executive secretary now, um, about a signing letter. Like you have to sign, I forget. An employment, you know, acknowledgement of the intent to work for somebody. I don't know how you offer letter. What's that? Offer letter. Offer letter, yeah. So offer letter. So uh we talk on the phone that morning and we got everything done, and then um and I tell Joey, like, this is just a a more amazing day. It is this is a great day in more ways than one. He's like, How's that? Like, I said, Well, not only am I gonna come work for you, but I'm going to the World Series tonight. And Joe's like, Really? Because I'm going to the World Series too. I'm like, no shit. So I was like, because this is like eight or nine in the morning, and then we anyway, I was going with guys from William Salem. William Salem was one of our growers on the central coast, and so I was really thick with those guys. Still am today. And um, really, you know, producers of really world-class Pinot Noir, West Side, Sonoma County, and they own a winery in Italy, and they do a lot of really Millbrook winery in New York is another one. Anyway, so I was going with them and their whole crew from William Sallium. We're all meeting in San Francisco at like the Fairmont, and then we're all gonna walk down the street or get down to the ballpark. Well, I'm at the Fairmont, we're all hanging out, everybody's drinking champagne, we're all having a really great time, and I get this phone call, and it's Joe. I'm like, oh crap, like I excuse me from people like everything okay. I'm like, yeah, no, it's my wife. I gotta take this call. So I go outside. Joe's like, um, hey, uh uh, I'm on the ferry right now and coming to the game. I go, yeah, and we talked, I'm gonna want to meet you, but I gotta ask you some questions. I go, what's that? He goes, Who is um Steve Smith and Dave Magnasco and Glenn Greg Fowler? I'm like, Jesus, Joe, what? And he's like, Well, I'm going with Mark Couchman from Silver Auto Partners and all these guys from Constellation. I'm like, well, so like Steve Smith is my boss's boss. Dave Magnasco is is my boss, and Greg Fowler runs the whole West Coast for Constellation brands. Like, you're with them. And meanwhile, Joe's got this back.

SPEAKER_00 25:36

No, no, I had a I had a briefcase. I'm the only dude that goes to a fucking World Series with a briefcase with paperwork in it.

SPEAKER_03 25:42

And it's my offer letter.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 25:44

Yeah, and we're gonna meet at the game and sign. I had no idea he was with all the constellation guys. I didn't know either. He didn't know, and I'm like, my heart's just like going, oh my god, like it was wild. And so we get there, and um everybody I have a lot of friends that gave me crap about this, but I have this yellow, fluorescent yellow Nike jacket, like a running jacket that I put on so he could see me. And and all my friends are like, oh yeah, I can't sure event staff. Anybody will give a reason to try and get in a game. And I that's I wasn't event staff, I was there, but I wore this yellow jacket. Call him on his phone, and he's like, Yeah, I see, I got I got eyes on it, and he's in another area somewhere nearby with this whole group of guys, and I'm like kind of wearing the jacket so he can see me, but I'm also trying to say low-key, I don't want to run into any of those guys. Like, why are you here? Current employers, current employers had no idea I was gonna leave and didn't know until like November 15th of that year when I gave him or November 1st.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

We wanted to get through a smooth harvest and all that, you know. Yeah, and so we I think we met in the eighth inning.

SPEAKER_03 26:41

Fifth inning, uh, fifth inning, and we met uh bottom of the fifth, and Sandoval had already hit two home runs, and we met down at the bar down below the in the like the lounge behind home plate, and we met and we're talking and have a glass of wine together, and we're sitting there, and I'm looking at the paper, and people were all watching the game. Sandoval gets up, I sign the letter, hand it to him, and Sandoval hits his third home run out of the game right then and then right right after that happened. It was like wild.

SPEAKER_00 27:10

And then you got a great picture that was that was at that game, like and then there was it was it was one was it a was it a flyball or no?

SPEAKER_03 27:18

It was it was No, it was a picture of um Barry Zito was in the game and he was coming out and he had kind of a tumultuous career with the Oakland A's, and he finally got under the Giants and he was pitching a World Series game and he was lights out. He had like given up like a run or two, and he's coming out of the game and he's tipping his hat to the crowd. I'm wearing still wearing my lovely yellow jacket, and I have my arms in there like going, yeah. And it was on the cover of the sports section of the New York Times.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

It was funny. So he's in it in his fucking yellow.

SPEAKER_03 27:49

And I have I have his letter in my pocket, and Zito's coming out of the game, and like in the background or anything.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

No, the growth, the growers that I the growers that I was with, we weren't we weren't like right above the dugout. We didn't have seats that good.

SPEAKER_02 28:04

Oh shoot.

SPEAKER_03 28:05

It was like guys with uh William selling winery. So John John Dyson and David Bova, and they're both the John's one of the ownership group, and then David works these family uh works. Oh, here it's good. There he is, right there in the yellow jacket. Here's the yellow, here's the event staff boy.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

You you you are easy to spot.

SPEAKER_03 28:23

Yeah, it was weird, and so here's one other yeah. So here's John Dyson, here's um Bob Cabral from um the winemaker, Peter McGowan. That's Peter McGowan. That's Peter McGowan's son and Peter McGowan's daughter. And then I'm here, and then here's Miguel next to me. Miguel was the vineyard manager at uh one of the Williams selling vineyards, and the whole rest of the crews all around us in there. I couldn't tell you all of them. It's just awesome. I thought that was that there was all going completely nuts, you know. Because Zito is like he had he he's a great pitcher. He grew, I think he's from the East Bay and ended up getting on the A's, and then it just didn't really work out, and then he got on the Giants, and here he is, you know, just locking down. He was going head to head against the Yeah, they won three World Series in five years. Is that right? Yeah, that was the second of three.

SPEAKER_00 29:07

That was some exciting those were some exciting times. I know this is in the baseball podcast, but like that was fucking awesome for San Francisco to to be on a run like that. And they were such like a young underdogish team. Oh yeah. And like I don't I I'm not a I mean, I'm more of a sports fan now than I was, but like back then I was not at all.

SPEAKER_03 29:24

Yeah, they fought fought the uh how was it? They uh fought from the loser's bracket all the way through, both in 10 and in 12. So and then 14 they did pretty well too. But you know, so it was really wild to you know, hook up not hook up, but yeah, yeah, say hookup. We hooked up, it was a great first week. So we've been didn't he? Like, actually. And I signed, you know, to come work for Joe Wagner, and I'm starting uh in December.

SPEAKER_00 29:48

So we have we've been to two World Series together. Yeah.

unknown 29:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:52

Did you been to two? Yeah, and I've got a I've got a baseball that both of us have signed from both of those games that we went to. Yeah, it was pretty on my desk. Really? Yeah, yeah. They're like I've got they're like a little like those little like balls.

SPEAKER_01 30:05

I'm just so I'm so happy for you guys.

SPEAKER_00 30:07

Yeah, it was really it was really fun.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

I know we're sounded like we got a little deeper relationship. No, I mean it's great. I mean you went to two world series together. That's awesome, you know?

SPEAKER_04 30:16

Like you know, there's the first one like in the first game together.

SPEAKER_01 30:20

The first one at that game, I went and the second anniversary anniversary. I love this. I never heard that story. It's so cool that you couldn't even made that photo and everything.

SPEAKER_00 30:36

It just always like that is a great like I think that was a great way to just that was a long opening for a podcast, but man, that was like I think like especially everybody internally, I like would love to hear it, everybody in the company, but I think like even just the takeaway of so and I mean we could talk about what you do now, but but the fact of where you started, that's that's the most awesome part of the story overall. Like, and if people like younger people were listening, it's like, hey, if you don't know what you want to do with your life, go try something. Like the wine industry is a goddamn blast. Because yeah, you started in tasting rooms, you took jobs learning viticulture, worked a bit in the winery, like all that stuff, and all of a sudden you, like you said, you got hooked. Hook, line, and sinker. Yep. There's so many different aspects to wine that you'll find a place and have a blast, like very rewarding.

SPEAKER_03 31:22

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 31:22

And and just not just a great uh career, but a great lifestyle.

SPEAKER_03 31:26

And I would say for the industry, giving people a chance is huge. And Peter Haywood gave me a chance, uh, Joel Peterson gave me a chance at Ravenswood. Um, I thank them. Anytime I see them, I always thank them for that, you know. And um, same with like what you know, Robert Mendavi winery. I see all my former Mundavi colleagues from time to time, and you know, just thank them for the opportunity. I'm still friends with Marilyn Wolf. Marilyn ran girl relations over for Woodbridge from like the mid-80s. And um, I remember my first interview with her. Um, I was just like, oh my God, like she's very, very serious, very focused. And I was like, I don't know if I'm gonna get this job because it just she was like cold, but she was really good, and she and um I still stay in touch with her to this day. So that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 32:07

Yeah, when I what I was hearing too, which I think is really interesting, is that and correct me if I'm wrong, but you got um education and viticulture through schooling. Yeah. And but winemaking, which

Enology vs Viticulture, School Theory vs Hands-on Winemaking

SPEAKER_01 32:20

some people go to school for winemaking inology, you chose actually hands-on experience to get that education, right?

SPEAKER_03 32:27

So I I feel that's working in the seller crews, working on the bottom lines. I mean, I have an appreciation for it from all different aspects. There's so much work that goes into it that your general consumer has no idea all the all the aspects of the other. I think that's the beauty of it.

SPEAKER_00 32:40

It's like I know it's like the old adage of like art in a bottle, but like you see all of the elements that go into it, and and yeah, you get hooked, you're like everybody participated, there were all these processes, and and you're you're working towards this end goal of like this single bottle of wine that you know hopefully somebody enjoys and and can kind of read through their palette as art. I think that's that's pretty awesome. But I I I mean so but I back to like the uh the the part of working, learning about kind of the basics, and then going back to school specifically for it. Yeah. Did you feel like that was I mean, advantageous for you to actually have kind of some logical understanding as to what you needed to do, but then getting it formalized in your mind? And uh like did you feel like you may have learned more than somebody who was just going through the theory side of it rather than the practical and then theory side of it?

SPEAKER_03 33:34

Uh I got driven by it because one summer we had a broken irrigation line that was three feet down, we didn't know where the break was, and I had to dig probably close to a hundred yards across the field to fix the broken irrigation line so we could continue irrigating the vineyard. This is at Ravenswood at the time. And uh that summer it was like, I don't know, I was like two weeks into digging this damn trench. And I thought, you know what? I could be doing this when I'm 50 or 60 years old, and I'll be wiped out. And there's just no way. Like, I love what I'm doing in these classes at Center's JC. And it just inspired me, like, all right, I need to bust ass. Use the brain, appreciate what you've done here, appreciate anybody and all the physical labor that goes into it, whether you're pruning or tractor drivers or sprayers, or the guys in the cellar, the guys on the bottom lane line, there's so much work that goes involved with it. I appreciate that. But I was like, if I'm gonna have any kind of longevity in life, I've got to use my brain and I've got to study this and get into a role where I'm not having to dig ditches every day. And that that kind of pushed it home for me was like, I don't want to do that when I'm 40 or 50 or 50 years old. So um, but um having seen all the work that goes into it from every aspect of it, where you're pruning to making the wines to bottling and making sure the fill heights are right, to making sure that the labels go on correctly. At the time, we were using glue labelers. Oh god. So you had to get the labels on, or if the labels weren't on right, or if you had a glue pot that got you know jammed up or gummed up. Oh my goodness, it was you know, there's so many aspects of it.

SPEAKER_00 35:01

I do still like the smell of that glue though. Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:06

Really provide a sense of calm, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:08

I know it's such a chill experience being young and doing this. Blue left, dude.

SPEAKER_03 35:12

What inspired me and you know getting to uh back to you know, back to Frozen State and then doing what I worked on there. We were involved in everything. We were involved with winemaking trials, viticulture trials, tying it all together with the idea. It was like what happens in the vineyard goes to the winery, but you're only as good as how you make it, but you've got to bottle it, package it, and market it and sell it. And that's there's so much to this that you know I wouldn't say it's easy to make wine, it's a lot of work to make wine. A lot of people could do a lot of hard work and effort to make a great bottle of wine, but then the next aspect is how do you sell it? How do you how do you market it? And I remember working with Joe my first year was uh Las Alturas Vineyard, and I was like enamored with the whole Bell Gloss story with his grandmother and everything and um how he founded the brand. And um we get up to Las Alturas and it's like late August, and he's like, All right, so now you're gonna run harvest. I'm like, what

Calling A Prime Time Grape Pick...what it really means

SPEAKER_03 36:04

do you mean? Like, who's gonna call the no, you're gonna call the picks? I'm like, okay, so I've known you.

SPEAKER_00 36:11

We'd never work hand in hand for a while before. Oh, yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_03 36:14

But he handed that over to me and he's like, Don't fuck it up.

SPEAKER_01 36:16

I'm like classic line. That's the power of World Series, dude. Oh well, I mean power of World Series, yeah. Like you guys, yeah, you guys catapulted your relationship.

SPEAKER_03 36:24

It got in. Like, here you are, you know, at Las Alteras, which is a really amazing vineyard, and we're at we were out in the vineyard several different times, and then he's like, All right, well, now you're gonna call the pick on this. I'm like, you shitting me? Like me. Like, really? You're talking to me, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:41

Oh, we could talk, could we like so calling the pick? I mean, it's you're calling what time when the pick is gonna start.

SPEAKER_00 36:47

I'm saying you're saying can I I'm gonna jump in just a little bit because there are every company I'll say has a different perspective on how you do this, right? Um and and and sometimes it comes down to one person, uh, sometimes it comes down to the the the you know, meat and potatoes of the contract, as simple as that, right? Um so larger companies by and large they they go by the letter of the word, right? And so it's like here here are the parameters, go ahead and pick it. And you know, being involved and seeing what's going on and monitoring, you know, the whole season and all that, that all still gets done at if you're at a high level of performance like Matt is, regardless of the size of company, you're gonna be able to do that. So but uh but for us, I think it it can be a big change in pace for people who've worked in vineyards in the past, where we we don't we want to know the chemistry, you know, see the bricks, the pH, TA, racidity, whatever. Um uh but uh we want to see a little bit more development physiologically, and so everybody knows the copper cane philosophy and and whatnot. And so kind of changing that gauge of of when to pick, where it could be dimpling, it could be pushing like dehydration, like getting close to raisiness, um, which we don't necessarily want, but every season's different, and we'll call the pick based on what we think will make the best wine for what our style is. Yeah, and so that was something you know, I don't even know. How how was your learning curve in that? Was did you feel like you evolved into it pretty quick?

SPEAKER_03 38:17

I evolved into it pretty quick. It was interesting because Joe likes to pick at a higher level of maturity than I'd ever been used to picking at. So, you know, when we would have programs for say, you know, Merlot, for example, on the Central Coast, we'd start at 23-5, but don't go over 25-5. Well shit, we didn't even start considering picks until it was 25-5 on Pinot. And it was like, oh my God. And you know, I'd send a load in and be like, yeah, no, we need to wait a little bit. And be like, seriously, it's like, yeah, no, it's not ready.

unknown 38:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 38:47

And so we'd wait another week, we'd sample it. And I'm, you know, at the time, which is the coolest thing was going back to when I first worked at Mundavi, we looked at bricks PHTA on every single lot, every single clone, every single block. And you know, as we evolved my career into other wineries that I worked for, um, we were looking at bricks, you're looking at condition of the fruit, you're looking at some flavor, but you know, we had thousands of tons to get through different facilities um every week. And so you had to hit a mark. If you waited for everything to be perfectly ripe, you're gonna jam winery up and you wouldn't be able to get throughput of getting those tanks fermenters turned. Get to copper cane, and we're like, we're waiting for like the what is it? The there's a term that uh optimum

Convergence? Wine Grape Ripeness

SPEAKER_03 39:34

Fred Nunes had this convergence of physiological maturity and ripeness, and they would come together at this optimal time.

SPEAKER_00 39:42

It doesn't happen. Uh no, it sounds romantic, but no, he was so he was a grower out in Russian River, is a grower out in Russian River. Yeah. Um, but uh you know, like a perfect year is like when you hit perfect physiological ripeness with what your target sugars, acidity, and pH are, right? Doesn't necessarily happen every year, but it doesn't mean I can say like 2025 was one of the best years we've had for Pinot Noir. Yeah, from a quality perspective, I don't know, you haven't tasted them yet, but man, like the dairy man stuff got a Russian river off the charts. I can taste it yesterday. Um and uh and so but you know, was that the convergence? Like, well, I thought it was really fucking good, but yeah, I don't know. I don't know that it was like optimum. I I I don't want to say that it was the best because I want to imagine that there's better vintages in the future too.

SPEAKER_04 40:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:33

Um, but yeah, so it's in every year's a little bit different. But yeah, that that's that's where I think uh going based off physiological nature uh is better than just chemistry.

SPEAKER_03 40:43

And you're looking at seed maturity too, what he's referring to. It's like you're looking at seeds ripen as the flavors develop, you're looking for the acidity, you're looking for really the way I describe it to people ask, like, well, how do you know? It's like, okay, if you buy a plum off the shelf at the grocery store and you bite into it and the pith still, the the meat of the fruit's still sticking to the seed or the pit of the of the plum and it's still got acidity and it's not quite there. Well, okay, you you picked your plums too early. Or if you pick plums off a tree and it it has that. Now, if you pick a plum and you bite into it and the pit just separates from the pith from the actual fruit, the meat of the fruit right away, you know you're there. It's the same thing with wine grapes. You can bite into grapes, taste them as the seeds dissociate from the pulp, they just slip apart and they're brown and they're crunchy, and you know you're in the zone.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

There's no astringency to that pulp. Yeah. There's no like it. I think the the plum is a really good example uh because that that really shows in a more magnified way uh how that bitterness towards the center, uh you you want it to be like sweet all the way through. Some people like the bitterness. Um, I think the same thing with wine. Some people like that that that bitterness, that acidity, that astringency. Um they're called kami-samis, but you know we make wine for people that like actual good stuff. Um we pick it right.

SPEAKER_01 41:58

Um, so are there any other details like that from it uh from except from the fruit, say, that you could look for? Because I obviously copper cane, we've got we've gone why where the name kind of comes from. So if we're looking at the canes, um, is there any other kind of details that you look for that for making a great wine when you're walking through the vineyards?

SPEAKER_00 42:17

Because I think you gotta ask Matt about more like run us through your season, what you're

Matt runs us through his grape season and what he looks for...

SPEAKER_00 42:23

looking at. And I'll chime in from time to time about some of the things I look at, because uh we may look at different things, some of them very like some of them very analytical, some of them very just extremely primitive. Um, but yeah, so if you want to start with where do you want to start pruning?

SPEAKER_03 42:39

I'd start with pruning, and then when you're out in the field at pruning, you can tell a lot by a vineyard. Let's say we're talking say mid-January and a grower is about to prune the vineyard. You can look at the cover crop, you can tell like going primitive for a second, just basic. No soil pits, no aerial maps or anything like that. You can look at a vineyard, you can tell by the cover crops alone if it's a really thick cover crop or if it's got areas that are patchy and sparse with sparse growth. You can tell a lot by what's in the vineyard, in the soils of that vineyard. And then you can look at the growth of the vineyard too. So you're looking at if the is the vine growth really uniform across the vineyard? Is the are the canes nice and mature and um with that beautiful copper cane mahogany color to them across the whole vineyard? You can see that. Is the growth uniform from one end of the vineyard to the other? On the really good vineyards we buy fruit from, um, you can have some variability in the vineyard, but typically if it's very uniform, that's a really great sign as to that you're gonna have a better chance of making a good wine.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

If there's lower-did it fill out the canopy completely, are there weak patches? Is the girth of that that cane wood um all consistent? Uh, or are there really thin spots where it's you know, like call like uh pencil thickness versus uh the

It's about that Girth and Uniformity (lessons learned from other wine experience like Matt's work at Ravenswood)

SPEAKER_00 43:50

thickness of your pinky, right? So like So is the pinky girth what you're looking for? It's really subjective. Every every person likes a different girth.

SPEAKER_01 43:58

But but pinky girth is good. What we're saying?

SPEAKER_00 44:01

That could be too much vigor. But no, generally speaking.

SPEAKER_03 44:05

Having vigor is a good one. Generally speaking. Go on a different tangent here, but anyway, we're not.

SPEAKER_00 44:10

Generally speaking, pinky is like at the base is kind of what you want it.

SPEAKER_03 44:13

I mean, everybody's got a different size pinky, but if it's the size of like a pencil, like a number two pencil, that's too small and you need to prune it hard to try and invigorate the plant to grow at that spot. It's called a micro spur shoot.

SPEAKER_01 44:24

A micro chute. It's thicker than your pinky, say like the girth of the phone.

SPEAKER_03 44:32

If it's the size of your finger, your pointer finger on here, and you've got two good spurs on it, you've probably got a decent decent vigor or decent growth on the plant. I'm generalizing in a large way here, but if you've got really good lignification all the way up from the base of the chute all the way to the top of the canopy, and then the laterals that may have formed off of that are also lignified, and you've had uniform senescence, which means the leaves are dropping off the vine. You'll have weak plants out there that are still holding under their leaves, say in late November, early December, going out to the vineyards. I learned this a long time ago from some of the guys at Ravenswood, is they go out and look at vineyards after and say, okay, where are my weak spots? Where are my issues in the vineyard? And they go out and just look at where the leaves are, where the leaves are senessing. That's usually your areas that the weak patch, not weak patches, but um lighter soils or lower vigor soils or soils or vines that were in balance that were already um had good cane lignification, already matured and already gone dormant really well and uniformly in that pack. You'll have some other parts where they're still holding on to the leaves. And that could be weakness, it could be virus. There's a lot of levels to it.

SPEAKER_00 45:36

So yeah, going back to so every vineyard you're going to assess differently. Uniformity is probably the main, the main point that you want to achieve or or see. Um and if there needs to be corrective action to it attain mature uh uniformity, then then that's another story. But you can tell a lot, like Matt's saying, from cover crop, from you know the the the girth, the filling out of the canopy, what was because you have no leaves on it at this point, right? This is prior to pruning. Get into pruning. And and one thing I think that that Matt does really well is how do you balance a vine? If you do have a weak vine or a young vine, you're not gonna leave all of those buds uh that are potentially going to become shoots and carry a crop. You're gonna cut that back heavier, um, or you have a uh you know more vigorous vine, or the rest of the vineyard is uniform. You're gonna try to stay as consistent as possible so you have a uniform amount of shoots, uniform amount of uh clusters and fruit, um, so that you have uh continuity throughout the entire block.

SPEAKER_03 46:35

We usually look at things like um in a vineyard, if there's 10% weak plants, you look at those plants, you talk to the grower and say, okay, I want you to prune these like this, and here's why. Because I'm trying to build those plants to become more uniform like the other 40 or 50 percent that are out there. So you can really get them to be more uniform and like more like the other other vines. So you're trying to develop those. You're you're looking at a bell curve. What you want is your bell curve to be a lot of it in the middle. You don't want a lot of weakness on one side or a lot of excess vigor on the other side. You're trying to get that thing into a zone. And it's usually the weak vines are the ones that you're trying to get them to bring them into the middle or the median, if you will.

SPEAKER_00 47:11

So I'll say that Matt's not only a you know, fruit supply manager. That that seems like a you know, that's just a title, right? And we don't really take titles so seriously around here. Not anymore. But you're you're like you also act as a consultant. You act as a consultant as to to the growers. So uh if you see a weak spot, uh, I know Matt will be out there talking to the growers and saying, you know, hey, maybe I'd recommend a compost mix uh this you know uh tonnage per acre in just this area, and he'll go out and he'll actually mark off. And this does isn't just for like you know, before pruning to help vigor. This will be for areas to pick because you may not have uniformity in picking throughout. We have a lot of the season to get through, but we're we're just we're just starting here. But um, he'll go out and mark with marking tape, like pick up until this vine and and then and then stop, we're gonna wait on the rest.

SPEAKER_03 48:05

And you're GI Joeing it across rows to say, okay, here's the vigor line that goes down across, you know. You don't have the time to run in and out of every row to mark. You basically you're you know, crawling underneath between drip lines and irrigation wire or trellis wires and marking it out so you can tell the guy, like, here's the area, and then you can like do a Google map or something and map it out. But that's great. You hand it to a guy, but they're gonna get out there. I'm like, well, I think he stops here. But if you flag it with flagging tape on there, you can tell, tell um you can inform the grower about what to do and other aspects like nutrition management or pest and disease management. You know, we work with them on like if they've got disease issues, let's work on improving their spray program. If they've got nutrition issues, work on that. We had one vineyard over in Lodi and they had a big patch like of the 50-acre block, 10 acres of it was weak. It's like, is it nematodes? Is it soil? Is it the railroad tracks that went through and they excavated soil out of there so there's less soil or topsoil in that area? And they went through and aggressively put on um a compost in that area to try and invigorate it to get it to be more uniform. And it's helped, it's a work in progress, but it's been there for like 30 years. It's like, well, what happened in this? Was it a peach orchard? Was it is there something in the soil in this area that's different? Yeah, do they scour the topsoil off?

SPEAKER_00 49:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:19

And so you just don't know. So yeah, you get in the growing season, like making sure they're doing the shoot thinning properly, that they're doing their wire moves at the right times, they're doing their leaf removal um properly as we get, say, April into May, so that the fruit zone is nice and uniform and open for providing for good um pesticide or fungicide applications into the fruit zone, and then you also have good airflow and you also have good sun exposure too. So you can try and you know uniformly ripen the crop without getting sunburn.

SPEAKER_00 49:46

So I think maybe let's relate this to another uh crop, right? It could be it could be plums, it could be almonds. Uh there they'll have a contract

Grapes to Plums to Almonds

SPEAKER_00 49:55

to send to you know a um uh a packer, right? And and that contract, they're not there's not like a farm plan typically put to these contracts. There's an expectation of the product arriving at the packing uh location uh and hitting the certain parameters. But by and large, if they if they do it right, they're gonna hit those parameters. But you're not really you're not you're looking much deeper into grapes, in in my opinion, in the sense that you need to follow a pretty stringent farm plan to be able to achieve the style or level of of quality you want. Uh because it's it's easy enough to say, you know, we're gonna throw a bunch of nutrients, we're gonna throw a bunch of water, we're gonna grow the hell out of these vines, and we're gonna set the biggest crop we can, and and and we're gonna send it to the winery when it hits 25 bricks, and they're gonna make whatever the hell they make, we don't give a shit. That was the organ mentality, by the way. I I will say, I'm gonna throw Oregon under the bus. The organ mentality is very much the grower tells you when they're bringing the fruit in. Our growers, the ones we worked with, well, Matt worked with and and and really, I think, taught them a shit ton. If you think about who you taught the most to, and what I've seen, you taught organ more than you've taught anybody. Like you brought them out of the dark ages.

SPEAKER_03 51:10

But um from picking everything in macrobins on car trailers to picking fruit in you know six-ton gondolas on large semi-trucks. So it was kind of kind of fun. But uh but it was fun to evolve the yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:20

They brought the efficiencies into it, but I think the the farm plan is what I wanted to get to here, where you've developed a farm plan that goes with every contract. And then and then it's also the involvement, the follow-up, the the guidance and that that kind of again, kind of consulting. Like you're a free consultant, and in my opinion, too a lot of these persons. But on yeah, on behalf of the winery so that we get better fruit. And I think that the growers really they've all appreciated it. They're like yeah, they'll they'll come back and be like, Man, I, you know, either I learned so much. Uh it was great to have the guidance and and the extra eyes in the vineyard and and you know, meeting with the crews, whatever else. And I mean, tell us a little bit about your farm plan overall.

SPEAKER_03 52:00

We look at all aspects of how the vineyard's prune to the shoot thinning, the leaf removal, to pest and disease management, to crop load management or crop yields, because we're trying to get growers to farm to a level that's in balance with the size of the canopy. So you've got a canopy growth, say 48 inches to 60, four to five foot panel of grapevine shoot growth. Um, but you're trying to get that in balance with the amount of fruit that's on the vine. Now, if the clusters are really huge and well-filled, like they look like table grapes you buy at the grocery store, it's probably a good chance, depending on the size of the clusters, that they're going to be overcropped. So you're trying to get in a balance that the canopy can handle ripening in the crop to achieve the parameters of what we're working on. We pick very ripe, but we make some really beautiful wines. And the wines that we make have got really good, really good flavors and really good flavor development, and they're rounded and full-bodied and got really good structure and intensity. The intensity comes from ripening, in my opinion. And I would think you'd agree with that.

SPEAKER_00 52:57

Definitely.

SPEAKER_03 52:57

Um, but we're looking for seed maturity, is probably the most paramount thing. That and then the copper cane thing. When he first told me about copper cane, I'm like, what, copper cane? Like, what is and then he explained it. I'm like, okay, you know, that that's legit, that's cool. You know, like the copper cane vines. Yeah. And I use that in presentations all the time, talking to people about how when a vine senesces and it goes in fully dormant from a green shoot during the growing season, as it lignifies, it lays down lignin in the shoots. And lignin's just wood. And as it lignifies properly, you get really good, beautiful color. If you get a really good copper to mahogany color to it, that's a really good sign that you've got a balanced vineyard. So as you go through the growing season from summer into varation or color change, and as the fruit starts to ripen up, you'll start to see the shoots are lignifying, they're forming wood, and they're starting to transition from I hate the word transition, but they're they're changing from. So we'll have to strike transition.

SPEAKER_04 53:50

Leave it in. Because you're not transitioning here. There's no hormones involved. There's no, yeah, there's no hormones.

SPEAKER_03 53:55

Well, there is hormone, plant hormones involved. But we're not injecting hormones. Injecting hormones, injecting hormones. No, sir. Um Wow, we went down that rabbit hole.

SPEAKER_01 54:05

Um I like this flow of conversation.

SPEAKER_00 54:08

But I do, I do agree with like, I mean, everything Matt's saying, like, and I think this might be a fun time for us to do kind of like a bit of a rapid fire uh round, because like I I think people don't realize all of the steps, and it's not a whole lot of steps, but if we broke it into the main part of um the main two parts, right? So you have your let's let's call it your vegetative cycle of your your plant, yep. And then you have your ripening cycle of your plant. Yeah. And the things that need to go on during during those things. So starting the vegetative cycle, just give me like three things you're looking for at pruning in a vineyard.

SPEAKER_03 54:45

At pruning

Rapid Fire: Start with vineyard pruning...

SPEAKER_03 54:46

in a vineyard, um, uniform lignification, uniform growth or stem caliper to the actual shoots themselves. And then also after the vineyard's pruned, if the spurs or the fruiting units have been evenly distributed along the so if it's a cordon trained vine, so you've got an arm, there's spurs along the arm, are they evenly distributed? You typically want to see good distribution between, like, say, a hand width or a thumb, all the way to your knuckle or fist, if you will, between those spurs, or with canes that the canes aren't left too long, and you don't end up with like vine that can handle two canes, or vine that can maybe handle four canes, that the canes are uniform, they're uniformly lignified, they're not weak, they're not discolored. So you'll see some vines that are overcrop that if there's a cane up on the wire and there's part of it's um got hardened off and lignified and part of it's still like green or green tissue, that's not a good look. And and that's one another aspect of it. And I'm gonna go off on the phone.

SPEAKER_00 55:38

I'm gonna add to each one of these rapid fires took along with you. Uh so uh uniformity, right? So or balance in in and and uniformity, where you want to assess an individual vine and say how many buds are we going to allow? And we talked about this in a sec. So that's gonna tell you roughly how many shoots and roughly how many clusters, and then and then you'll pair back from there. Um so that that's something that I I also look at when it when it comes to pruning, whether it's cane or cordon pruned, and positioning. Positioning is so key when like a a good uh a good operator is going to be able to assess in the moment where that chute is going to grow. You don't want things growing into each other and congesting the canopy and congesting the fruit zone. So if you have a decision of these two spurs and there's two more spurs over here, one's higher, one's lower, you might actually allow the higher spur to be the one you're focusing on to reposition the growth in the next year. Because you're not thinking one year with pruning, you're thinking two.

SPEAKER_03 56:37

Two or three.

SPEAKER_00 56:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:39

And and then allow for growth here. So you're you're going to continue to keep your positions low as low as possible, but also not congest the fruit zone. Yep. So then jumping next into let's go, shoot thinning.

Vineyard Shoot Thinning

SPEAKER_03 56:52

Shoot thinning that it's done properly. The typical in a head train cane prune vine that the heads opened up nice and even. You've left a couple of shoots, it'll be the renewal shoots for the following year, or renewal canes, if you will. They're shoots now, but then they harden off, become the canes you're going to leave as fruiting for next year. Um, that it's done anything in the weak shoots, or a shoot, let's say it's less than my my from my elbow to my fingertip, but it's a weak shoot, so it's say 15 to 18 inches in length, and it's straggly looking and it's got two clusters on it, it's not going to ripen up properly. It's already usually typically they're stunted. I've always heard growers tell me, oh, well, no, it'll grow out of it. Never grow out of it. They're all full of shit. Then if you have a weak shoot, it stays a weak shoot, and it doesn't change.

SPEAKER_00 57:32

And and the next year's shoots are going to be a little bit more.

SPEAKER_03 57:34

And then you've got it stunted. Yeah. So that weak position leads to another weak position the following year. So if you have pruned it properly, you don't end up with a weak shoot now. Consider the season you're in right now, and you get rid of those types of weak shoots. You focus the growth on fewer shoots across the fruiting area, whether it's cane or along a cordon, and they end up with really good growth, and then they're likely to be able to ripen up the crop, to what we're trying to do. But I also want to see the fruit nice and evenly distributed along the fruit zone, too, because it's going to evenly ripen. And then when it gets to get picked, if it's spaced out properly, you don't end up with pest and disease issues. Not always the case. Sometimes you can end up with a hail event or a rain event, and you end up with rot that you weren't counting on. If they're really congested in there and the clusters are all jammed up on top of each other, um, you don't get good airflow, you don't get good fungicide applications. Um, and then when you do get a rain event, you can end up with um botrytis or bunch rot um developing on the fruit. And so it causes a problem.

SPEAKER_00 58:32

Yeah, you're saying I'm I'm hearing like uniformity uh positioning as well. That's that's also another thing you know correctively you can do uh catering to the the vine where the vine should be putting its energy. So you're getting rid of anything that's in excess, that's uh that's that's not uniform in growth, that's going to be consistent in creating a crop that that is going to be quality. And then I'd also just add suckering into that with again redirecting the energy of the vine rather than it going to suckers or like just random shoots that are popping out. I'll simplify it by saying that's what it is. Uh that that uh that you're you're continuing to push the vine to focus on what you want it to focus on. And you'll have like doubles. I think that's something people don't uh ever realize. Like you'll have one bud that pushes out two uh two shoots.

SPEAKER_03 59:20

Yeah, the primary shoot and the secondary shoot all push out of the same bud. Now you've got two buds at one location, so you have to get rid of the secondary shoot.

SPEAKER_00 59:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 59:27

Um and you get to pick which one you want to keep.

SPEAKER_00 59:30

So uh so then when you when you think about like there's one thing that I I think uh it's not controversial, it's just a preference. Uh, because then you go into leafing. But I actually prefer when you're knocking the leaves, the basal, the lower leaves off while shoot

Vineyard Leafing

SPEAKER_00 59:45

thinning. Yeah. Is that what do you what do you think? Do you have a preference on either leaving them or do you care?

SPEAKER_03 59:50

I think the bottom two to three leaves on the canopy interior. So if you've got a fruiting zone that's like wide like that, I don't know if this is helping out, but if you've got shoots that are growing up in there, you want to pull the interior leaves in there and try and retain leaves on the outside so you don't end up with sunburn or sunburn issues. But typically you're trying to turn it up with the basal.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:09

That's actually the uh on the leafing pass, but on the morning side. Yeah, but on on the during the shoot thinning period, when when those lower leaves are generally not really gonna they're not gonna be providing the true like coverage for shade. Right. In either case, I think it's just kind of like do you want to do the job now or later? Um, but part of it is also like shoot thinning, you want to be able to just knock these off, right? Like and so there's a period of time before the the shoot itself becomes like think of it like the roots of that shoot are becoming really part of that vine, and now you're gonna have to cut them off. You can just pop them off with your finger for a period of a couple weeks.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:49

It's easy to do earlier in the season. Um, I'm a little bit more biased towards if you can go through with mechanical air shear leaf remover devices during bloom or between bloom and set. Um, up in Oregon, I worked with one of our growers up there, and that's they went from trying this, the collard uh implement on say 50 acres and then ended up doing 160 acres, and they did it um the first year they tried it and they liked what they what they got, and they had an issue with botrytis and they had no bunch rot in that area where they did the machine leaf removal, and it was pulling off the bottom three to four nodes of leaves on the outside of the canopy, and then they do a hand follow-up pass. Well, then the following year they did two passes, and they didn't have to do any hand follow-up on the outside or the canopy interior. And it was getting rid of the leaves in the fruit zone, it was really effective. And we're talking 165 acres where the hand cruise would go through on the areas like the swales where they're more vigorous areas to open them up and do a follow-up pass. But early in the season, it does getting rid of those leaves early on is great. You can have laterals that will form and throw lateral shoots after you get rid of the that leaf in the fruit zone. And so sometimes that has um occurs also.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:57

Um so let's talk, because

Vineyards and Machines

SPEAKER_00 1:02:00

I do want to keep going through this rapid fire thing, but the mechanization piece of it and the evolution of that, um, and you've brought a lot of that into our world of growers because I think a lot of people think of that as low quality. Um when managed properly, uh, if whether it is doing 50%, 80% of the coursework, uh, and then you come back through and have to do a final, like just let's call it a manicure pass. Like it's gotta be hand done to just hit that perfect level of what you're trying to achieve. Yep. That's where the value for high-end wine uh finds mechanical farming beneficial. And you're reducing injuries, you're keeping your crew, you know, focusing on the the the high level of what you're trying to execute rather than them getting tired out of like I mean, pre-pruning as an example. Right. You can go through cut off like 80% of all of this dead, this not dead wood, but this uh this wood that you're not going to be utilizing. Yep. In the past, it was you make your cuts, and then you've got a pruning crew just ripping out all of all of this brush through these wires. Vines have tendrils, they're holding on to these wires. You're getting people getting whipped in the face. I mean, if you're not wearing glasses now for protection, you can you can have eye injuries, you can have back and shoulder arm injuries.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:17

Upper back injuries of neck and shoulder um issues, back issues for pulling the brush out of the canopy.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:22

Yes, mechanization not only has assisted in attaining quality more efficiently, but also reducing potential injury for uh for your workforce.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:30

And it makes it more efficient because they're going through with that pre-pruner, they're removing all the brush from the canopy with a machine if you're cordon and spur pruning, and there's still some follow-up where the the trello system impedes the implement from cutting all the canes. But you're paying the crew to go through, and all they're doing is they're cutting. You're paying them to make those cuts to even out the the spurs that you're leaving. Or if they go through and cane prune, they're you're paying them to do the proper cuts. But um, there's still a lot of work left to be done to do.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:57

There's a lot of optimization for cane, but there is a lot of work, but you're no longer looking at like a forest. Right. That's right. I think that's the beauty of it, is that like you you just immediately funnel the attention into the important parts, yeah. And and and makes it not just more efficient, but really more guided into getting to that level of quality for that specific task. Yeah. So uh next up, crop thinning.

unknown 1:04:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:20

We're not we're not gonna talk about sprays or anything on this one, just because it's always a pain in the ass. But crop thin

Vineyard Crop Thinning

SPEAKER_00 1:04:26

crop thinning with growers. Yeah, that's always a pain in the ass. Yeah. We're not gonna talk about that. We're not gonna talk about the pain of the end.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:33

You get with them and you talk to them, and there's some guys that'll do the pass, and it'll say, well, we did the pass. I'm like, okay, well, great, but you did it badly. So now we need to go back through the field again. And you give them the parameters of, you know, basically the crop thinning for me, it starts with the weak shoots. So if there's weak shoots that are out there from the fruiting wire to the first set of catch wires, if they're below that, all the clusters come off of that. You can, if it's a potential location for a spur for the following year, you retain the shoot, but you clip the clusters off. If it's um an area where um uh the chut maybe makes it between the middle catch wires and the upper catch wires, like halfway. If you think you can handle one cluster, then you just leave one cluster. But um typically you're trying to outline this. One thing I was gonna provide is that we do an example. So for leaf removal or chute thinning, we always like flag an area of 15 to 20 vines. So if I can't show the girl what I want to do or want them to have their crew do, then how good are we? So you have to leave an example for these guys so they can bring their crew and say, okay, the crew leader or the vineyard manager meets with the crew leader and says, Okay, here's the example of but what the winery is expecting to do. Because we're trying to set the example for like this is how we want the vendor to look after the crew goes through the whole field. So it's with that, or if you're doing crop thinning, I'll thin 30 or 40 vines and I'll say, Here's the example of what we'd like to see done. Ejemplos ar bueno.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:53

What's that? I said ejemplos are bueno. Examples are good. Examples are good.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:58

Thank you. All right, that's right. Come on, Mateo. Come on, Mateo. Yeah, you were like basically.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:04

I was going spanglish there. Um, but uh so okay, so we've gotten up to uh crop thinning and and the crop thinning there's a couple parts of it, right? You have your decongestion pass where you want to make sure there's no touching clusters that are growing into each other. Uh and then I uh we're gonna get into varasian, but I'm gonna have to make this a part two because we've got a lot more to talk about.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:27

I think it's gonna be like a part three.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:29

We got through the vegetative cycle and the history of Mateo Hile. And there's a lot here and where we're at right now. We got so much more to talk about, but I gotta go meet with one of our retailers in uh in Pleasanton. Uh so I gotta get I gotta get on the road. Uh but thanks for being here today, Matt. We're gonna jump into our our next opportunity to be able to finish recording this. And uh hey, everybody come back for part two because there's a shit ton of information. I think that the vegetative cycle to the ripening cycle, like how could we have a better break than this?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:00

Yeah, everyone's at the edge of their seats right next to the next one.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:08

Yeah, and and harvest, which gets you more exciting. That's it. Yeah, so we will have different fits too.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:14

Come on back, y'all.