Go With Your Palate
Joe Wagner, 5th Generation Winemaker, presents the podcast "Go With Your Palate." A podcast about wine, entrepreneurship, and whatever the F else. So buckle up - this isn't your normal wine podcast.
Go With Your Palate
E93 Evan Roscoe | Joe Wagner
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“Wine is boring.” Yeah… we went there.
Evan Roscoe—wine disruptor and creative strategist—breaks down what the wine industry is getting wrong and how it can actually win over the next generation.
This one’s honest, unfiltered, and a little controversial (in the best way).
🎙️ Go With Your Palate: Evan Roscoe | “Wine Is Boring?” Let’s Talk About It
This week we’re joined by Evan Roscoe—Napa native, creative strategist, and one of the most unapologetic voices shaking up the wine industry right now. If you’ve seen his content, you know he’s not here to play nice—he’s here to call it like it is and push wine into its next era.
From viral takes like “wine is boring” to calling out the endless list of “don’ts” that turn people off, Evan is challenging the industry to drop the ego, ditch the gatekeeping, and actually connect with modern drinkers. We get into the real state of wine today—what’s broken, what’s working, and what needs to change if wine wants to stay relevant in a world competing for attention.
We also dive into his journey—from hospitality to creative strategy—and how he’s now working with brands to rethink storytelling, branding, and what it means to actually stand out in a crowded space.
And because this is Go With Your Palate, we don’t keep it too buttoned up… we get into everything from biblical wine takes to men’s scrunch shorts (yes, really), a little “America, F yeah!” energy, and plenty of laughs woven into some real, honest conversation.
If you love wine—but think it could be way more fun, more inclusive, and a lot less uptight—this episode is for you.
Grab a glass and get ready for a conversation that might just change how you see wine. 🍷🔥
All right, welcome back to another little episode, a preview called Wet Your Palette. Today we got a special guest, Evan Roscoe. Yeah, dude. Uh we don't know what to call him. He's an influencer, he's a disruptor, he is a native of Napa Valley and truly loves wine. He's worked in hospitality, and he's got quite a story to tell about where he's come from and where he's at today and what he's doing to bring uh new light to be shed on wine country and how we can all change a bit to make sure that we're catering to the next generation of consumers and people that are just kind of curious because right now wine marketing's not doing it.
SPEAKER_02We're also talking about polarizing content that you might not even find polarizing, but just kind of calling out shit the way you see it and being free to speak your mind. You know, the wine don'ts, how the everyone should be more polarizing. That's the message.
SPEAKER_00I like that. I think that's the if if you think that everybody should be more polarizing to keep the conversation going and keep it honest and on track, because that's what it's all about, right? Pinging left, pinging right, figuring out where that middle ground is. Come be objectionable with us.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. We also have fun mentions of elk meat and peptides and if Joe should be wearing the scrunch shorts for men. Yeah, that's that's the highlight we need to be talking about.
SPEAKER_05Let's pull up that shot of his crotch again real quick.
SPEAKER_00That's not even gonna make it into the fucking podcast. In all realms of wine, you have the snobs that really ruin
Wine snobs ruin wine for everyone
SPEAKER_00it for everybody else. And whether they're Psalms or they're they're, you know, producers or just consumers, they really kind of downgrade the opportunity of bringing more people into it. And and I think that's the biggest issue. And a lot of the a lot of it stems from like that kind of austere European sort of traditional mindset. But I do remember this one lady, her name was Carol, I'm not gonna remember uh mention her last name, but she used to sell wine. Uh like with I used to work with her, like back in in the Kemis days, like when Bell Gloss was young and all that stuff, and and she was French, like like relatively fresh off the boat, French. And we had opened some first growth that was, I don't know, 20 plus years old, and we're all tasting it, like thinking, like, oh, this is gonna be a great wine. We're like, I don't quite get it, you know, whatever. And so kind of like the evening continues to roll on, and so we we revisit the wine, and uh we're like, yeah, it still doesn't have it. She was oh no, you missed its moment. Like it was 10 minutes ago.
SPEAKER_04You're like, you had a moment with this wine? Like, that's bullshit.
SPEAKER_05I mean, well, I also I largely blame the French for the bad culture in wine because it's it's the hobbyists, they take something that they really want to be good at it, and it's really hard to be good at something that's completely subjective, you know, of tasting wine, of you know, there's there's technical things and objective things on making it, you know, that you have to do in order for you know not introduce taint or or flaws and stuff. But in terms of tasting, you know, what a person tastes is what a person tastes. Yeah. And and there's this kind of thing of let's try and make this subjective uh thing, let me find objective things that then I can go and say, Oh, well, you just didn't you didn't get this. Which if you've ever talked with a French person, there's a lot of like I know my world.
SPEAKER_00I like I like how you just distilled that down because it's like you can have a bottle of white Zinfandel that somebody loves, but if you have a bottle of white Zinfandel that has cork taint, that's a technical flaw. And it it should be it should be characterized as such. And and that's where it's like drink whatever you like, drink whatever you want, know the basics of it so that you know if you're getting duped. I mean, you know, when people have an experience with a cork bottle of wine, it's like they don't they don't oftentimes know. They're just like, I don't like it. But if you just know the basic like the like five basics, I'd say is probably what it is. And then after that, you're you know, drink whatever the hell you like. See, I maybe skip the beatbox.
SPEAKER_05I I say pull even further back than that, I was listening to the daily and it had uh uh interview with the former food critic of the New York Times, and he was talking about how he would taste through stuff. You know, he would look at it, he would give it, you know, like 30 seconds of like looking at it, and then he would smell it and give that, you know, 15 seconds or 20 seconds, and then he would taste it and just let it sit in his mouth, and then and then the thing is you just have to eat through the rest of the dish, you know, without like pausing to keep analyzing because like there's the like okay, this is what I taste, but a huge part of the experience is you know, just drinking the fucking thing. Yeah. Well, that sounds like a good idea.
SPEAKER_00No, I completely agree. I was actually just thinking about that, like just recently. I was like, if you you know, jug wine, right? Just put a like God bless jugwine. Just have a you know, you're you're gonna have that first taste, you're gonna analyze it and whatever else, and the rest of it is just drinking. So like that first bottle is what oftentimes matters. And then after that, it's like, you know, you can go to something a little more simplified. And and by the time like you're on your fourth, fifth glass of wine, it's like just you know, just just you don't need to be opening like you know, fancy pants, bottles of wine.
SPEAKER_05No, I mean, and your taste buds get burnt out, but like this is even a thing like in in the old testament, like when you have weddings, like you open your nice wine first, and that's the very first day of the thing. But you know, five days into this wedding celebration, you know, we're just drinking Clara. I've I've never heard that.
SPEAKER_00So that wasn't the first testament? Uh so that's in the I like the Bible's telling you you start with the good shit, and then it doesn't matter on day five when everybody's fucked up.
SPEAKER_02You know, it also is there's some commandments we're missing, dude. I know.
SPEAKER_00Where is where's the 11th commandment here? Yeah, you know, I shall not drink great wine on the fifth day of thy wedding.
SPEAKER_05I'm a really big fan just of the, you know, like every six days you have to take a day off. Because that's also that's really hard for people to do. Now you're with vineyards. Um, in order to keep it kosher, you're supposed to farm for six years and then kind of you know, not mothball it, but you know, just kind of let the land recover and not like do too much to it on the seventh year. Okay. And you know, it's finally we're getting a chance with with how bad the grape growing industry has been to see if this has any measurable effect on the wine.
SPEAKER_00I'm I'm curious. I've I've actually never heard that philosophy. So letting getting getting six years in of allowing that uh that vineyard to kind of be catered to and and get you know proper root system, and then let it just kind of go back to nature in year seven. Yeah, I mean there's different ways of doing it.
SPEAKER_05There's a wine labeled covenant wine, which is kosher, which I mean. So this is truly a kosher. So they've yeah. Okay. There's there's like there's like a whole set of covers. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so I mean, there you go. There's your yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, my yeah, well, my my wife's Jewish, so it's like, yeah, it's and uh what today's first day of Passover?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it's the all the firstborns have to fast. I'll have to tell my sister-in-law. Yeah, is she is she firstborn or yeah, she's the firstborn. No, she shouldn't be eating, huh? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, hey, I think we should do the intro. I I mean we're just getting deep into it, man.
SPEAKER_02We're already dying into fasting, you know. I've I've fasted.
SPEAKER_00We're already getting biblical, and yeah, I'm learning new things.
Welcome Wine Disruptor, Evan Roscoe
SPEAKER_00Uh well, welcome to Go With Your Palette. We got a special guest today, Evan Roscoe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, we got myself, Joe Wagner, Fat Mario, Chris Rubio over there as a co-host. And uh, and so we're here talking about, I think, overall, I mean, disruption, influencing. So you're you're a local here in from Napa, born and raised. Um, and in the more recent years, you've become something of a phenomenon as far as uh as far as being an influencer in on online and on uh well Instagram, but also some other platforms, or is it predominantly Instagram?
SPEAKER_05I it's it's pretty much it's all on Instagram. Okay, but I think the influencer thing is so strange because when I crossed over to 10,000 followers, I started getting people reaching out to do like ad deals and stuff like that, which it did not make sense to me because I pretty much only speak to wine industry professionals. Yeah, people don't make purchasing decisions off of what I do, you know, other than like I mean, honestly, I don't really know that anybody makes any decisions based off of what I do other than making a video. Have you taken any ad dollars? I did what I've I've kind of structured it to where if you want to pay me to do that, I'll direct something and shoot something. Okay. And then they'll use it as like UGC.
SPEAKER_00Got it. Because you also do photography and and uh you know other content for people, right? As part of part of your business. So and I do want to get into kind of all the pays my bills. Yeah, I want to get into all your repertoire of what you do in in a in a little bit. But uh, I first want to get into um just I I think what you're doing and the the kind of approach you take with wine industry, especially so local. I mean, you seem hyper local on Napa. And I mean, you get outside of the wine industry and stuff too, but the way you do it, like this is where I spend all my time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05But like you talked about Washington right after I did a Washington trip, you know, it's it's it's it's totally travel-based.
SPEAKER_00But the like little little things like
Napa Valley but the numbers…Supply vs Demand vs the Land
SPEAKER_00uh like Napa by the numbers. I think that was one that a post that you did where I think, you know, maybe because I'm in the industry, I found it really, you know, informative and interesting where you kind of break it down, and I'm thinking, like, if I was a a consumer and I've never kind of thought about the numbers behind this game, and you just get this simplified, like, and it wasn't simple. I mean, it was it was but it it kind of just lays it out to a point where you're like, oh wow, okay, there there is there is a like tidal shift right now going on.
SPEAKER_05And even that, that was like a very conservative estimate for you know, the actual numbers of like mothballed vineyards or ripped out vineyards or you know, loss of farm worker pay hours, um you know, and then the other half of that, which is super hard to quantify, is okay, we have not enough of demand for wine right now, and we kind of have an oversupply in bottled inventory, due to you know, grape plant and all that, but with the aggressive reduction in vineyards and mothballed vineyards that are gonna need to be, you know, ripped out because now disease has set in because they weren't taken care of. You have a problem. My estimate is probably five to eight years down the road, where you know, if supply bounce, if uh demand bounces back a little bit, supply is just not going to be able to meet that, which will then cause people to just keep rising, raising their prices. And then, you know, that just kind of keeps hammering the supply and demand curve in the wrong way.
SPEAKER_00I'm I'm curious to see where that ends up because I've I've heard differing opinions on that. And I I do think that we're overcutting to a large degree, but you also have to think about the import side of the business um and and then how policy will affect that going forward.
SPEAKER_05And and let me just say at the beginning, I am very much a pessimist on all of this stuff, and I would be delighted to be proved wrong. Nothing would make me happier than being wrong.
SPEAKER_00Um you know, I I do think that one interesting thing and just talking to other vineyard managers around the area and kind of hearing, you know, what are they seeing? Uh, what's going on with their customers, their clients, a lot of them just growers, right? They're not necessarily always managing for a winery in the estate vineyards. Um, a lot of people are taking the opportunity to just say, like, hey, I got a 20-year-old vineyard, I got a little virus in it, um, and I'm gonna upgrade, or I I didn't like the clone or rootstock choice that we did when we planted. We think we can do better. Um, and and this constant like, you know, evolution of vineyard. You know, technology is seen in every aspect of every industry right now. And and that that's also you know seen in the growing of grapes and what root stocks are available, how you can better you know prepare your soil for your planting, your trellising system, irrigation, whatever. Um so a lot of people are taking it as an opportunity to upgrade while we have this depression, so to speak, in Napa, and they're saying, all right, we're gonna go four or five years, just let it redevelop, and then once the market recovers, which I would imagine by 2030, 2031, it's gonna be recovered, maybe out of balance, but maybe we'll start to see some more productive vineyards coming uh on on the scene that are gonna be able to sustain some of that uh that opportunity.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I it's the you hope that the demand recovers, and I think like just given the way that cultural stuff swings back and forth, it'll probably it'll probably come back. But like you say, you know, there's vineyards that probably needed to be ripped out four years ago that weren't because great prices were still really high and you gotta make hay while the sun shines, and like really great that those people didn't rip out their vines a couple years early and got another couple harvests in while while prices were still high.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, I I think uh I I I'm curious to see where this all ends up. Napa's such an insulated area. I mean, you spend so much time here. Um, you know, and and and so I I look at other areas like Santa Barbara County, we farm down there, even Monterey County, those seem like they have been really heavily hit um as far as and and and quick tradeouts too. Like they're like, oh, grapes aren't making money, I'm gonna go to like lettuce. And they'll just rip out their whole vineyard and go to lettuce for like four years.
SPEAKER_05So well, I mean, and especially like Lodi is is hit super hard by the non-American imports like being allowed in American wine, too. Like if you look at the increase of of like South American and Australian wine imported, like it pretty much almost exactly matches the decrease in Central Valley fruit pot.
SPEAKER_00What would you do with what would you do if you had a magic wand and you you could change what's going on with the importation of bulk wine?
Wine PSA: Merica, F Yeah!
SPEAKER_05If you are going to call something American, it should be fucking American. Fuck yeah. There's no there's no justification that you can give to say like this is American, but we should like still include the Argentinian stuff in it. Like that makes no sense whatsoever. You know, it's we don't have necessarily the same subsidies for grape farmers as we do for other farmers. The subsidy is that you know everything's appellated and things need to come from a certain place if you want to have that label on the bottle. You know, we've got that whole system set up right now. Yeah, you know, there's just some of the some of the largest wineries are taking advantage of a system. And you know, for those people, I feel no remorse for them having issues with them being able to sell their wine.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05You know, it's if you're if you're gonna support American farmers and you're gonna support you know farm workers, you know, indirectly through that, and you know, everyone else in the industry, yeah, like great, I will give you full-throated, you know, rah-rah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_05But if you're gonna if you're gonna dip around that, then you know, don't expect any of us to be on your side.
SPEAKER_00I mean, you're you're speaking my language because I've I've been talking about this ever since that everybody's asking about tariffs, right? It's like, yeah, I know we're gonna lose our export business and whatever else, and that that'll come back. But everybody was asking about tariffs on imported wine, which we haven't actually seen a huge, there's not been like a big increase in the cost of imported wine. But the the thing I've been harping on for years now is the fact you nailed it, subsidies. Other countries give their governments give subsidies to grape farmers or wineries to try to keep them in balance, keep them competitive, keep their vines growing, especially if they're you know historic areas. And and I just always thought like that's that's totally not cool for like our wine economy. And it does trickle down to your your farm workers at the end of the day. Like that's that's who's gonna be suffering most right now.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and I mean, and subs I think that the use of subsidies has to be really careful because then you have stuff like that happens in the dairy industry where you get the dairy industry gets heavily subsidized due to a decrease in consumption, and then you just have an overproduction so that people can farm, you know, as they're farming for the subsidies, and then you end up with government cheese. And like there's just a whole yeah, there's just like a whole cascading problem. Like, we've created an artificial market here that you know maybe people should have switched to another thing, you know, there should a hundred percent be for really swift changes in market dynamics. You need to have some sort of a safety net for farmers that can't, you know, pivot into something else, you know, immediately. Like they're they work on a like a couple year time frame. Yeah, and there needs to be a safety net there. But you know, like for wine, I don't necessarily think that subsidies are the right answer outside of like, you know, last year there's people that couldn't sell their crop because it didn't get you know ripe enough. You know, there should probably be a subsidy for that, or like with 2022 when you had fruit damage because it got way too hot and you know, you had grapes coming in at 130 degrees.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, I I would prefer if other countries weren't providing subsidies to their industries in in wine in particular and grapes, but um, you know, that's where like crop insurance comes in. That's where we should all be reliant upon the other opportunities that are out there to keep us protected in the case of fires and smoke or frost or or you know, sunburn or rot mildew. Um, but it at the same time, it's just you know, how do you keep a balance in the competitive landscape of the American wine consumption market? That's the that's the hard part. And I don't think America does they're not looking at that enough from a federal standpoint to to assist in in kind of putting American wineries, and when I say American, like 100% American wineries, right? Like so I'm not talking about like, you know, this is an American wine, even though it's South and and North American.
SPEAKER_05Um but which great wines come out of South America, great wines come out of Australia. But no, you're just shouldn't be called America.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. They should be they should be labeled as such, right? Like we actually thought about putting, you know, flags on the back of our labels or stating, which they're now apparently allowing, which TTB did not allow for a long time. Uh to to put a flag on it or like an American flag on the label.
SPEAKER_02Oh, really? There's there was only one vineyard that I knew that actually had the rights to that, which was Sherwin's Sherwin Vineyards. Yeah. And I always thought that was badass, but at that point, when they when they did it, they were the only ones that were allowed to do it. So you're telling me now they're kind of opening it up?
SPEAKER_00I've heard I haven't tried. We haven't tried for label approval on that, but uh yeah, like the Sherwin story that I heard was that they submitted, and it was kind of like an eagle with the flag, right? Like waving, and they submitted, and and somebody just kind of let it through. And that's the thing, you'll have like five different uh people approving labels. You might get somebody who just overlooked it, and then when you're re-y don't need to go for a whole cola, you just resubmit with like your new alcohol, your new vintage, whatever else. It's not like a full approval process, and so they just rode that thing out until you know.
SPEAKER_05I I don't know if they're still doing it, but so I just I just went through this with there's a a sparkling agave wine um brand, which like the sparkling is so low on it that it's you know it's barely sparkling. But for legal purposes, it is above the sparkling threshold. Um, but it's called Freedom Juice, and we like went through this whole thing where we were trying to put the like a flag on the can, and we had like a lot of back and forths until finally they were like, This is just as acceptable as you know will allow. You know, you had to we had to remove a bunch of stars, like you can't show all the stripes, like has to had to be in like black and white, like we you just had to play around with it until someone was like, Yeah, that's fine. So they let that one by and like was but it was notably an American flag. Yeah, I mean, okay, so the whole premise of the brand is we have three people that I grew up with, and they dress up as revolutionary war figures and go around and do stuff. Oh, really? Do you do this too? I I used to I used to help them out when we when they started the brand, and then now I I just got too busy and I couldn't allot time to it because they're moving like a heavily into um like Texas and like the southern market, and I got a kid I can't I can't drop everything and travel every weekend. Are you part of this? Uh at the beginning I was. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Oh wow.
SPEAKER_00Um and is it is it canned or is it a RTD kind of thing? Or is it yeah, it's canned. Okay. There, there it is. Cool.
SPEAKER_02Oh wow. I did not know about this.
SPEAKER_00Anti-Sami's Liberty. That's that's really cool.
SPEAKER_05I'd like to do that. Yeah, we couldn't use Uncle Sam. We also couldn't use Uncle Sam, so it's anti-Sammy's anti-Sammies? Anti-Sammies. I love it. Oh man.
SPEAKER_00And then it's Liberty Lime is the other, is the other one. Oh, that's cool. So uh like you're talking revolutionary and civil war reenactments. That could be a good one. Just revolutionary. Revolutionary K. You know, I don't think you want to get involved in the Civil War reenactments.
SPEAKER_05It's no well, we we say stay away from that one. But it's crazy, like we would go down to um like ASU to film and and do stuff, you know, just have it be seen around people that like are freshly twenty-one rather than the wine industry people which are older and not as down to have a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And it's Kids are crazy.
SPEAKER_00Have somebody shotgun this stuff?
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Yeah. Oh, there was a the craziest clip we ever filmed. Um so there's I f I forget his last name, Ethan. He just got called up to the UFC. Um but so we were down at uh at a UFC fight, no, not UFC, but MMA fight in Los Angeles, where we had sponsored and like had a table, and we met with like one of the you know with one of the fighters and the next day he's like, Oh, we're gonna go shooting in Bakersfield if you want to join. So naturally we wake up at 5 a.m. get in the car, drive out to like the middle of the desert outside of Bakersfield. Yeah. You know, and they're shooting, and we have a clip of um one of the founders opening the can with a nine millimeter. Oh, yeah. Which is it's just a crazy clip. I was like, okay, this this definitely is something you can only do when you're a really small brand.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I think we could do it.
SPEAKER_05Well, we're we are a really small brand, but yeah, it's not sure how that works with the bottle of wine. I think that one might be a little bit well put some gloves on first.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah, you gotta have some fun with that. Um are you a big UFC fan?
SPEAKER_02Or was this like a supporting a friend?
SPEAKER_05So we had a fighter that we sponsored. Okay. And and he was our connection to everything, Javi. He's a he's a he's a wild guy. Um, and then his friend, Ethan, I'd have to look it up, but he just called he got called up to the UFC like with like 48 hours notice, won his first fight, like he's going back again. Like the dude is just like he is incredibly smart, professional fighter, yeah, locked in. But we just you know, there's something about having an American themed brand that like people are just like, hell yeah, let's do this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, even something as simple as a statement of grown, like 100% grown and produced in the United States. And that's something like I would I would settle for that on our back labels. Um because I think that that is that's a it's becoming a more and more important thing. But then also once the export markets open up, then it's like we're gonna have have to have a different label because I don't think Canada is gonna look positively but yeah, we we have a branding problem. Yeah, so Canada's interesting. I mean they they appreciate American wines,
Canada/Europe vs USA wines (Imports & Exports)
SPEAKER_00they kind of think of like the American red as pretty much like Zinfandel. Everything else is is like kind of like you know, just an afterthought. But they they do good with cab and Pinot as well.
SPEAKER_05But it's a crazy dynamic because we've built up the idea uh and narrative of French wines and like European wines so much that American consumers are willing to eat the markup that's put on that. Which accounts for stuff, but like if you go over to Europe, like those wines don't have those markups. Like you can buy really, really good French wine for like compared to what you pay in the United States, nothing.
SPEAKER_00You can get decent wine over there for like you know, less than 10 euro. Yeah. Like on a retail shelf. It's just they don't have a route to market in the U.S. I mean, that's that's another challenge for them, but like there's plenty of wine over here that we've got to support. I wish there was something a little more reciprocal. I didn't expect us to get into like this import-export conversation so much, but I wish there was something a little more reciprocal in those states where it's like, hey, we're you know, we're allowing Italy, France, Spain, you guys dump as much wine on our shores as you possibly can and find a market for it. If you if it sells, it sells. But we can't sell a bottle of American like our stuff. We sell a bit in Germany, some in Switzerland, like Denmark, um, predominantly because we don't really compete with those areas with our varietals. You know, I don't think we could sell a bottle of Riesling in Germany, I'll say that.
SPEAKER_05There they also like you see videos online all the time of like at the Spanish border, like Spanish-French border, like each side, like just like stopping trucks and breaking every bottle in there because like they're importing cheap wine. Like, yeah, that's a that's a rough business to be in. Like I like the businesses where everything will get delivered and on the shelf, like you buy it and then smash it. Yeah, could you imagine if we did that with like organ?
SPEAKER_04We just like set up shop at the end of the street. Just park them at the siskews.
SPEAKER_00Like you see this truck, like drive it down. You're like, it's full of organ wine. Fuck them. Yeah. That's uh glad it's not happening here.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, but no, let's let's uh let's jump into a little more of like, I mean, how would you if you were to self to self-describe yourself, your career, like your what do you what is it right now? I called you a disruptor, influencer, photographer.
SPEAKER_05What how would you describe I mean it it changes every three to six months? You know, it's it's I I kind of view myself as rather than any label, I am someone working in wine imaging in branding. You know, just anything I can do to kind of help the image of wine or the direction that wine is moving in, you know, I take every advantage to yell nonsense at people until they until they make a decision to move in the right direction.
SPEAKER_00Well, I and I think you do a really good job of that. Your your posts being very engaging, the music selection, the visuals, which I assume you're doing all yourself. Yeah. Um and and except for the music. I don't make the music.
SPEAKER_02It's mostly the case. But you choose it. You choose like the artist.
SPEAKER_05I do the really hard job of clicking shuffle on my Apple Music and then picking the first song that shows up.
SPEAKER_00Hey, ask a DJ, man. They they don't need to make the music, they just got to select it.
SPEAKER_02But yeah, but I like what caught me is I I like the kind of polarizing factor, and I think that you both have like this in common, and it's kind of like I feel like you're saying what a lot of people won't but like are thinking. Like stuff like wine is boring or you know, wine is full of don'ts, you know, and all this kind of stuff, and you go into it, which what surprises me.
SPEAKER_05What is this me is I don't think it's as controversial as people think. Like there's some things that I've said where I've gotten a lot of guff, but largely like these are all things that everyone in the
Be Polarizing and change the wine culture
SPEAKER_05wine industry has thought, but nobody wants to say, because then if someone says that they're wrong, you know, I'm as insignificant of a figure. Like if nobody hired me tomorrow, the wine industry barely changes.
SPEAKER_00But you're a the images get a little bit worse, but other than that, but you're a neutral party giving your perspective as not just a born and raised local, but also your perspective of how people continue to market wine that is proving to not work. And you're calling them out. And I mean, like this, I just want art, there's one right here in the middle of the page. You you shouldn't use your farm workers in your advertising. So you you're just calling it out.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so for those of that are just listening, let's say go to we can talk about this, what you're actually a little bit of silence. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Because they're like hearing this music, they're like, what's he calling out? I know, I know, yeah. What's he doing?
SPEAKER_02But I I like this.
SPEAKER_05So uh if you want to kind of like dive into it, because I I've seen this video too, and I I I just got really tired of like going to somewhere and and them being like, We really, we really want to highlight our farm workers, and you show up and like it's an H2A crew that like they're on this property once. This guy will probably never set foot on this property again. And talking about them as like custodians of the land, you know, you're using their image without a full like circle, you know, profit participation. You know, this is a guy who touches the land once, gets paid. You know, we pay better for farm workers in Napa than pretty much anywhere in the US. I will say that. Well, we better. And yeah, fuck. At $200 a bottle if you're if you're paying your farm worker minimum wage, that's pretty fucked. Yeah. I think that people should show farm workers in footage and in their marketing, but you have to run it, you know, like places like England and Joseph Phelps, where like you show up on on a Monday in January for pruning, and you show up at harvest, and it's the same guys. You know, those people have health care, they've got benefits, they've been working with p them for like 20 years, and those are the crews that you know, one, they also all really want to be on camera. Yeah, yeah. But you know, those are the guys that I think 100% you should show them, you should feel good about purchasing from brands like that. Um, but for brands that you know use a lot of contract labor or you know, so small that you wouldn't it doesn't make sense to have those full-time crews like you know, you can still talk about you know how important the farm working is, but it just it it doesn't ring the same to have those guys represented in the way that you would with a brand that's actually giving benefits to its employees.
SPEAKER_00Well so and I also think there's you know, number one, there's the seasonal aspect, because I've I've I mean I've worked in in farming as well as as wine. There's the seasonal aspect of farming, and a lot of people simply want to come up just for like three months.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And then make make a great amount of money and then go back to Mexico or or you know, anywhere in Central America and enjoy the next nine months of of their year with their family and like the chill life. And like I really do appreciate that. Like that's you know, they're they're just like, nope, I've I've got this, this is what I want to do, this is what I'm comfortable with.
SPEAKER_05And there's that part of it's a great, it's a great way for them to make a living. And it's not just in, you know, wine and and farming. Like I worked with the bus boy in Chicago when I was running restaurants out there, that the guy he would work for nine months and then he would go back to Mexico for three. And you know, and he had his green card and everything, and his wife lived in Mexico, and you know, he had put his kids through, I think one was a veterinarian, one was a psychologist, and like, and the other was a doctor. Like, he'll put them all through college, and then after that, he just kept building additions onto his house every time he did. And it's so funny. I went back to Chicago in June. I tried to tried to find him, and I was talking to another one of the busters. He's like, Oh, yeah, his wife doesn't let him come to the US and make any more money because he keeps building onto the house and it's too big.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's funny. Yeah. But I I I also see that there's a lot of people that that do see and believe in the American dream that it's still alive and well. So um, you know, the the journey, like just one journey that I've seen is, you know, coming into America, working in field labor, usually Central Coast, Central Valley, working up into more skilled labor in the in the vineyards, and then eventually uh either being you know crew foreman or working up the ladder into vineyard management or jumping off and jumping into the winery and then working your way up in into that realm. And I I will say like give it less than 20 years, and everybody that's actually running these wineries are going to be uh of like you know Mexican or Hispanic descent. And that I mean that's that's what that's what we see.
SPEAKER_05It's already it's already starting to happen, and those labels you see you see different wines coming out of there because there's no communication breakdowns when you go to the vineyard, you know, people can make holistic decisions, yeah. You know, also based off of experience and family experience. You know, people have a more complete picture of of what's going on. You have some really fantastic Mexican wines. If you go to
Love for our hardworking Farmworkers (Hispanic Inspirations)
SPEAKER_05have you been to a Mava event, the Mexican American Venture's Association. I have not been to one. You should go to one and and have the wine because these are people that are either farming their land or buying what like for other people you would traditionally think of as cheap fruit. Yeah, and they're making insanely good wines out of it. Okay. You know, it's that's they know how to farm the land, they know how to make the wine, you know, they've been doing all of the work.
SPEAKER_00They've been they've been doing everything, they've they've worked every level of it. They've worked every level of it. That's something you don't see coming out of uh this is where I have an issue with with the traditional schooling of of wine, right? So you go to Davis, you go to Cal Poly down in San Luis, and you you learn theory and you learn kind of one segment that you're gonna specialize in. And uh and and and and so you jump into a role that is that specialty role, usually at a larger organization, get your experience and whatever else, but you have now pigeonholed yourself into learning every aspect of uh every element from establishing a vineyard through to the farming of it all the way through to winemaking, bottling, and and even packaging. So if you're able to work through it, like I would say after 10, 12 years working in the industry and just about every aspect, if you've worked from the bottom to top, you're now a doctor of that profession.
SPEAKER_05100%.
SPEAKER_00And and and I'd much rather have a doctor of that profession through work ethic than I would a degree on their wall.
SPEAKER_05I mean, like that's the joke. Like if you want to hire someone who will do research but only research, you hire someone from UC Davis. If you want to hire someone who can do research but, you know, isn't afraid to get their hands dirty, you hire someone from Cal Poly. And if you want someone who is going to have an idea, be able to follow it through to execution and just get the fucking thing done, you hire someone from Fret Snow.
SPEAKER_00I've never heard that.
SPEAKER_03I haven't heard that either. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I mean, I totally agree with the uh with the the sentiments of Davis, not to talk shit about it, but theory is theory, and there's a place for that, and that's that's more science-based and that's more, you know, progressing to uh I mean, whatever they're working on now, new root stocks or or mildew resistant, you know.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, fantastic, fantastic research coming out there. But eventually eventually you have you have to do work. Yeah, you gotta do it. You're gonna hire research people for research. But someone's gotta make the wine.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly. I like how you mentioned though getting hands dirty here because just like going back to some of your content, and I thought it was like interesting because I get it too when you're saying I don't real I don't understand why this is polarizing. I don't understand why people get all fussy when you say stuff like about the wine is full of don'ts and stuff. But what I see is that it's when you have something like that, it's kind of taking power away from the wine elitist or maybe the like the psalm commies, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I call them kami-samies. The ones that are like, you're gonna drink this and you're gonna like it. Trust me, I know everything.
SPEAKER_02So all these people, there's all these people being like, you should hold it this way, you should do it this way, you can only do it in this, making wine more exclusive. But a lot of times you can even turn and ask these people, have you I mean, if you're making all these rules or you're kind of taking this high point of your higher than, have you gotten your hands dirty? Have you made some wine? How many harvests have you worked? Have you had gone through like the blood, sweat, and tears of of working with the crew?
SPEAKER_05I mean, it's important to remember that these are our industry's equivalent of schoolyard bullies. And they can say everything they want to, but like you
Standing up to the Wine “School Yard Bullies”
SPEAKER_05don't have to listen to them.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_05If you ignore them or just you know refute the premise, you the what are they gonna do? You're gonna come to my house and and make me drink better wine? Like, oh no, please don't do that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. You know, and and a lot of the psalms like you know, they they I think need to open themselves up to the people behind the brands. I completely get it when they're like, okay, it's a it's a fabricated brand from a marketing, you know, group that just made something up and then we're like, hey, winemaking, we need, you know, 20,000 cases worth of this light mineral white, just come up with something to fill boom, brand marketing pitch, whatever else. Um, I get the frustration if you're if you're at all a traditional, you know, wine enthusiast or some. Um but but if you actually get to know people that are behind products, and I'm not just speaking for ourselves in this, uh, it's amazing to see how far or how quickly they come to the table. When you you can sit down with them and just like, no, this is what we do. You might not agree with everything, you might not like our wine style, but this is what we do, and this is why it is as it is. And and they'll actually like you see the light go off. And I think that that that really does help. But it's also getting them to put themselves out there. That's the issue we've had where it's like, we want you to come in, we want you to learn, we want like we'll we'll actually like spend like three days with you in the winery, but you gotta you gotta put the time aside to do it, otherwise you're just gonna be out there spouting off. But and so I I challenge those those Psalms and those buyers out there to really you know get out there. Now, I mean to your point, you know, uh you got criticized for your uh your you know don't go to tasting rooms or something, right? Or you're oh yeah. I like this one. They really hated that one. So which I don't I completely agree with you on. It's
Stop going to bad Tasting Rooms
SPEAKER_00like you you don't go learn like about where it actually is coming from.
SPEAKER_05And also it it wasn't don't go to tasting rooms, it's don't go to really bad tasting rooms.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, don't don't go to the bar and pay twenty or forty dollars and just get a half-assed story from somebody who's retired. I mean, I hate to characterize it as such, but there are some tasting rooms like that.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and I mean it's there are tasting rooms that almost it almost seems like they're trying to do something so clean and sanitized for the like the sake of the design that they built, um that just kind of removes completely from their messaging, which is so like intensely teraby-based. Like if you made your thing like we're 100% a design focused brand, and our experience in that tasting room is thing like you can make that argument and execute on that and probably do it well. But when there's a messaging disconnect there of saying, you know, we are going to put you in the most disconnected from nature box possible and then talk about nothing but nature, that just doesn't that doesn't make any sense. And there there's a couple people that took you know, took vehement stances against that. I was like, I am really sorry for making a pro-terroir statement to people who spend all day talking about how great terroir is.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. What so in that case, so I'm assuming is that comments? You got that in the comments? Comments and DMs.
SPEAKER_05So in a case, it's it's DMs. No, I don't good. I'll I will delete comments that like so on my uh other reel where it's the farm worker talking to the camera while holding the bin, I started going through and deleting some comments on there, which were just you know, trolls or rage baiting stuff there. Okay. Um or you know, there's there's some things where you look at it and you're like, this doesn't really add to a conversation, you're just trying to provoke a reaction, or you know, like you're actively calling for something that's like unsafe. Like and they're actually trying to boost their own comment for some chat. I mean, there was one whatever. Yeah, there was one on that farm worker one where they were like, we need to find where this guy lives, and like and they were starting to like work on it in the comments, and I was like, I'm I'm deleting this. We're removing it. Did you find out where you live? No, where the where the farm worker guy lives. Okay, and he's fully permitted to work, like it's it's a crazy thing. They were talking about it like they wanted to like sick ice on him? Yeah, like to sick ice on him. Oh, geez. Oh, which is nuts. Okay, that's yeah, it's and I I I won't tolerate that in my comments. But if you're gonna if you're gonna just like come at me like I don't care, I don't have to read your well, and you can use that as an educational point uh as well, right?
SPEAKER_00I mean, like further that education. If they have some dumb comment, you're like, oh, well, let me straighten this out.
SPEAKER_05Um And there's a lot of that where you just respond to it and people, you know. It's the other thing, most of the people in wine are wimps. Yeah. And if you confront what they said or like refute it and like can stick to your guns, like they'll come around to you know, they'll actually listen to what you have to say.
SPEAKER_02Yep. You know? But not but not all wine guys are wimps. I mean, some do Pilates.
SPEAKER_05Joe's just recently getting into Pilates and scrunch shorts and yeah, I don't
Pilates, Men’s Scrunch Shorts, Elk Meat, oh my!
SPEAKER_05know whether that was in the cold open, but the the scrunch shorts with the pouch.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the scrunch shorts with the pouch. Yeah, I'm not wearing those. I'm not wearing those. And I don't do Pilates, Chris.
SPEAKER_02Wait, I don't mean to derail this or anything, but can we bring up a picture of scrunch shorts for men with the pouch that kind of bring out your package?
SPEAKER_05Now, when you finally get them to wear this to the workout class, I'd like for you to use this audio and then immediately cut to him. You don't need for a shot.
SPEAKER_02Listen, hey, I'm bringing you on to that mission, okay? Yeah, we're just okay, yeah. I mean, it's not like a full-on tangent, but we're actually doing uh at the tasting room in downtown Napa, quote unquote. Um it's gonna be in a couple weeks doing like a body rock Pilates class that Joe's gonna be uh taking part in. Without the reformer. Without the reformer. You know, this is Matt Pilates, man. You're using slides and all that kind of fun stuff.
SPEAKER_00Anyways, I'm thinking thankful you could not find a picture of me in pouch uh scrunch butt pants. Thank you. Yeah, but when's the event?
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, it's in a couple weeks, so they will exist. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, okay, before I before I ask this next question, that I have to clarify this started off by he's Fat Mario, right? That's his nickname. And and so we're gonna be like, hey, let's go to this thing, and and then it came out like he'll dress like Super Mario and I'll dress like Luigi. And then it turned into dressing like Super Mario and Luigi wearing like jokingly wearing scrunch butt workout pants like that guy on Instagram does that he makes fun of. He like mocks, makes fun of girls doing their workouts in gyms.
SPEAKER_04Have you seen the we're getting like way down a rabble hole right now?
SPEAKER_00Have you seen the Pilates?
SPEAKER_05The matching heavens Pilates guy on TikTok. No, it's I'm not looking at his butt. Well, no, he's sometimes you can't miss it. Sometimes it's just there on vibes. They take control. No, but he it's like everyone in this Pilates class is recording themselves, but it's it's like to be a matching set girly in a Pilates class, like matching set girlies don't quit or stuff like that. But it's like it's spawned in like this whole world of everyone in the Pilates class filming themselves with like some text of of like the competition between all of them.
SPEAKER_00So it started off as him like making a joke about all these girls having the matching sets, and then he started doing it.
SPEAKER_05Oh, and he got a matching set, yeah, and then he got the grippy socks, and then you know, it's just he's just adding to it. He's adding like they got now, he's got like the eye patches on and everything, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And I think it's all about like the angling, you know, that famous thing, it just gets kind of hilarious. It's always that downward angle, like right under like the butt. It's not good for the guys, dude.
SPEAKER_04You don't need to see that. No, I'm I'm saying that we're gonna do it.
SPEAKER_05But the Plotties people, the Plotties guys are ripped. Like, there's no sport, there's no other sport or workout thing where people like talk so much shit about it, but everyone doing it is like so much fitter and stronger than anyone talking shit about it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. I mean, if you can do handstand push-ups, I'd rather see that than you benching 315. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like that to me is like more strength than like crazy to see in a gym. Like, I used to have that. I mean, I had I've like actually seen that before where some guy just walks up with like two 50-pound dumbbells, and you're like, all right, what you gonna do? You're gonna curl them, you're gonna just do like a standing like shoulder press, and then just sets them down and puts both hands on them, and then just goes into like a like a fucking shoot your legs in front of you, and then come up and do like a handstand, and then I'm like, okay.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, yeah, I was like, actually, that's better than doing anything lifting with those dumbbells.
SPEAKER_05I mean, if you go, if you go to like parks and stuff, like if you go to NYC in the summer and like go to a park, there's like a bunch of guys doing the calisthetics workouts and like in the body weight stuff, and you're like, this is what you would think superheroes would look like. Yeah, like they're just they're doing flips-off stuff, like like doing the one-arm muscle-ups, which is the craziest fucking thing to see.
SPEAKER_02Do you think that could help the wine industry if just more like winemakers are getting just more like ripped and yoked out and we're kind of doing more fitness? Yeah, let's go into this.
SPEAKER_05This is now going to turn into the Joe Rogan of wine. Like now, let me tell you how elk meat is going to change your winemaking process.
SPEAKER_04Only eat bison with my cabernet. Hey, I mean, we got now that we got into biohacking. I mean, yeah, we have more winemakers cool plunging, doing sauna, red light masks.
SPEAKER_05You know, not to take it to the most boring element of wine, but bison does pair well with wine. I agree. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Totally agree. Brought us back. Have you ever had emu or uh ostrich? No. Dude, fuck that. We need more of that in this country. It is, it's it's like similar. I think it's actually leaner than bison, but it's like can the grill make those for a while? They used to have it at the grill, but I think you can actually like order it or buy it online.
SPEAKER_05I feel like emus are one of those emus and ostriches are one of those animals where you're like, I I can't imagine like you killing that like that majestic creature and then eating it until you meet it and they're a dick, and you're like, fuck yeah, let's chop this thing up and serve it.
SPEAKER_00Like, give me a samurai sword. Um, but no, if you get a chance, give it a shot. Because I if you like bison and as as as a great meat for wine, I think emu or ostrich is also uh just phenomenal. But it's like a very common thing in like South Africa. We just don't see it here, but I know there's some farms in the US.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um anyways, I gotta ask before we go down the Joe Rogan. So in your comments, so back to that. So when when you have people talking shit, is it like are you getting wineries that are actually like criticizing you, or is it more like individuals that they're not they're not exposing the brand that they might work for?
SPEAKER_04Is this really the end? Unbelievable. Find out next week.