E93 Evan Roscoe pt 2 | Joe Wagner

“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. 🍷🔥

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

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_02 0:32

We'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_01 0:46

I like that. I think that's 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_02 0:59

Yeah. 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_03 1:11

Let's pull up that shot of his crotch again real quick.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

That's not even gonna make it into the fucking podcast, duh. So in your comments, though, back to that. So when when you have people talking shit, is it like are

What wineries be trolling? And still staying provocative...

SPEAKER_01 1:35

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_03 1:44

It'll usually be individuals. Brands will send me DMs. Got it. Okay. That'll that'll be the deal. And these are usually pretty sassy. The DMs. When they oh yeah. Yeah, I bet. Yeah. There's it's when I get a text, that's when I know I'm really in trouble. That's what I have to explain myself.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

They like your cell phone lights up? Well, DMs.

SPEAKER_03 2:03

Yeah, I'll get I'll no, like I'll get I'll get some texts from people of like the tasting room, especially when it was like, what the fuck did you mean? Like, we're trying to get more people in our tasting room.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

I can imagine they're like at this time in this industry, what we're going through, for you to be bashing us like this and keeping from future consumers like, no, no, that's not the point at all.

SPEAKER_03 2:22

There's a yeah, there's a the one person who's confronted me in person. Um, I'm not gonna say his name. He has restaurants and wineries here in St. Helena, but he came up to me at a dinner we were both at, and he was like, I really like your Wes Anderson style content. I was like, Oh, yeah, you know, that was good, and I've kind of shifted to this stuff because you know, the need to say these things and it's getting a lot of traction. And he looks at me, he's like, You should probably go back to making that old stuff. Everyone kind of hides behind the phone for the rest of the day.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Yeah, but take it as a compliment. That's what I that's what I do. Like you, you, you cause a reaction.

SPEAKER_03 3:06

The crazy thing is this guy is like doing the kind of experiences that I think are fucking great for wine.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

It's I yeah, I think I think it's any anything that can be provocative too, but like educationally provocative and and kind of you know having people understand that there are different ways to go about it. I mean, yeah, we we really do need we need a lot of people, not just a few, a lot of people in the industry, taking a fresh approach. And like, so and it's so your your handle is uh the Evan It's Evan double underscore Roscoe.

SPEAKER_03 3:39

Okay. Because one underscore was taken, and I did not have it in me to come up with anything more creative. Why did I see it was Napa Roscoe before, which was kind of great. Why did I see the Evan Roscoe? Was that an old one? I I never had that. Maybe someone's trying to Okay. Someone's trying to now you really arrived. You got someone wants to be objectionable to my DC as well. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

So it's Evan double underscore Roscoe. Yeah. So and and if if just as a call out, if people haven't gone to it, like just get on Instagram, take a look at it, scroll through and see some stuff. Like, they are really entertaining. If you have any interest in in wine and kind of some of the inner workings and being able to kind of uh understand what a different perspective might look like, especially if you are listening to this and you are in wine and you still think that you know putting a picture of food on a picnic table with your bottle of wine is is the shot that's going to get you to sell wine, you need to reinvent yourself.

SPEAKER_03 4:33

I think whatever people are doing, if you say this is what I'm comfortable with and you add like 25% more risk on top of it, then you know,

Add 25% more risk to make impact in our wine world

SPEAKER_03 4:45

go for it. Like we we fell into this really bad trap in the wine industry where as things were selling to wholesalers and retail into distribution, we started marketing to our distributors because we're like, oh, that's who's buying our wine, and it completely missed out on the part that, like, okay, you sell to your distributor, but they're not drinking it, like they have to put it on a shelf and a consumer has to drink it. So, like, there's this been this massive like um underserving of the consumer culture rather than completely agree. You know, we've just been focusing the wrong area.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

I will say, in in defense of a lot of wineries, uh the three-tier system has really screwed that up. There is maybe some revamping that could uh that could go with that. Um, and then kind of the the adjustment distributors are going through right now with pulling back and everything. So that's going to be lessening the amount of interaction there is with actual end consumers. So you have a series of gatekeepers, whether that is the distributor sales rep, whether that's a smaller or a wine steward at the the store level, or if it's a wine critic. Um and so so you're hoping that your education is hitting each one of those levels and hitting the end consumer. But at the end of the day, you got to figure out how to talk directly to that consumer because distributors are doing less of it, some and and wine stewards are doing less of it in both restaurants and retail. Um and and a lot of them, a lot of this like institutional knowledge has not been passed down. COVID really screwed that up. So I don't know if like you see a lot of of restaurant people, but when man, throughout the US, it's almost like a start from scratch re-education program, not just in wine for servers, but also service.

SPEAKER_03 6:26

And then and I mean something happened during COVID where service just got terrible. Well, it's because everyone who was really good at it got eight hours of sleep and were like, oh, you mean my life doesn't have to be terrible? And then they got out of it.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

They got out of it. That's what all these people that had all the knowledge that they were gonna pass down. It could be a bartender, something as simple as that, that's teaching a bar back, this is how you make these drinks, and then this is how you interact with your customer. That went away, and then you're left with a manager that's trying to educate. Maybe the manager's not even that good, but trying to educate a whole staff and and I think and people are just people are just overwhelmed too.

SPEAKER_03 7:01

So I used to run overnight diners and and and that kind of bar and restaurant when I lived in Chicago. And you know, it 2 a.m. would come and we would have, you know, 120 covers that all get seated right around the same time. And so like each of my servers have like 10, 12 table sections. And then I come to Napa where like you'll sit in a restaurant and you'll hear servers complain of like, I have not that I got triple stat, but I have three tables. And I just think, you know, I counted it up. We were doing the same amount of touches on tables, you know. The okay, we're not like pouring wine and we don't have that element of the show. But, you know, if you look at time spent at table, yeah, you know, for the diner, we had on par or higher time spent at table and same amount of touches. So why are people complaining about this? Like, I've known people who worked at tasting rooms where they would complain about you know having more than two, three tables, and then you know, the people I knew were like, you realize like the more tables you have, the higher your tips are at the end of the day. Like their business, their job is to like make as many in tips as they can. Like, why wouldn't you try to why wouldn't you try to do that?

SPEAKER_01 8:19

I would try to go for six tables, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think that is that is something we need to uh adjust with, at least you know, service industry and and and wine, but education-wise, I mean anybody talking about it online, that's I mean, that's the place you're connecting with your customer now. There's not really any great wine events anymore.

SPEAKER_03 8:38

You know, we used to have like Pinot Days, uh, you know, but you also you also have big things like the wine spectator deal in um New York that they're like they hammer for wineries to send their winemakers out for it, but like it's in the middle of harvest. There's like it's strange that there's like a complete disconnect there. You know, and I think it's it's too the experience and culture, especially post sideways, has been heavily focused on like you know, what can what of the subjective can we make objective, you know, of the of the finest appreciation of the thing. And we've missed out on the fact that like this is an alcohol industry and this is a beverage industry, and people should be able to have fun and do it, and it, you know, they shouldn't have to fight the event that you're doing in order to make it fun for them. You should make an event that like is naturally experiential, like a good time, like the the the Venom hip

Wine events are boring? They need to evolve...

SPEAKER_03 9:40

hop deal that happens in France. Have you I have not heard of this? So they um it's this guy I just saw him talk at the California Unified Wine Symposium. But so at the end of Harvest, he like there's this estate in France that he like they they rented out and or they probably do it in partnership with the winery, but they throw like a big hip-hop concert, and like it's all like 20 somethings and young 30 somethings, like people from France like come out and party like it got written up in Wall Street Journal, got written up in New York Times, like there's nobody that says like this is a terrible event until you come to a spot like Napa where you say, like, hey, this is you know, we've got a proven track record here, and then people say, like, oh no, that would hurt our brand. I'm sorry that customers would hurt your brand.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

That's yeah, I I that's that's the wrong way to think about it. So I gotta bring this up, like um, I don't really want to mention the publication, but it's one you would know, right? And so had just had a conversation with them, I think it was like last week, uh in the last two weeks, about events and and how to get, you know, their aging consumers that go to their events uh to you know, how how do you make your event evolve rather than saying like, oh, the next generation consumer will come come around. No, you have to evolve your event to actually make it a a destination, right? Just like you're talking about with that. Um and and there are a few events, like you know, one one that I bring up is like the Charleston food and wine, if you've ever been to that. I'm not no. It's um that's why I don't make any videos about Charleston. It's so it's like it was on like an old, it's on on like a naval base, and and so I think there's benefits having like on federal ground as well, right? So like as far as like liquor licenses, and you've got local, like popular celebrity chefs, and Charleston's a great food town. Um, you've got live music, you've got silent discos, you've got lawn games, you've got maybe a couple mixed drinks, and then you got local vendors selling like their wares, whether it's you know somebody that's making like Damascus knives and and stuff like that. So you you get to walk around, it's kind of like farmers market music event, um, and and and just grabbing little bites all here and there. And it draws a young crowd. We'll now magnify that by you know 50 throughout the nation, and and all of a sudden you've got something that people want to enjoy. And it's not just one sense, right? It's not just like we all have going to a concert of our favorite musicians. It's now we've got you know great A through, you know, Z, and it's it's a draw.

SPEAKER_03 12:14

Um I mean, I think that's maybe the biggest thing that wine can do to help grow it is you have all of these, you know, similar interests or like things that people who are into wine are also into, and hosting events around that, you know, making that the primary focus and having wine there, you know, will do more than saying, like, we're throwing a wine event with something. It's like so I I don't know if your members with I know your brother is at the Napa Valley Car Club.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:44

With Andrew, like, you know, you go there, like it draws a very like car centric crowd. Yeah. But and like, and wine is there.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

You know, there's there's a lot of stuff like that where you can make you saying wine, wine needs to be just the thing hanging around that's on that that that is the spark in the back of your mind, but it's a primary draw from something else?

SPEAKER_03 13:06

Yeah, yeah. I mean it's it's instead of being like hammering for share of mind marketing we with in regards to events, like we need to be focused on placement. Yeah. You know, because it's it's not something everyone is so sensitive to advertising now that if you feel you're being advertised something, the immediate turn on your bra is like like they're trying to trick me. Yep. So you have the option of like make it like expressly uh advertising, like you know, I'm making an ad for you, you can enjoy it on a different um plane or a different psychological frame than you know, you say I'm watching an ad and there's this content in it that's funny, but like it knows that it's an ad. Yeah. And kind of disarms that or you can do the thing where you know, you've got placement, you know, you have exposure to it, and then it becomes part of your life that way. You know, if you're going to a bunch of events where wine is the cultural thing of what you would drink there, you know, it kind of gets cemented in. Like we had this with house parties, you know, you had Falcon Crest and everything, and it became like you have to take wine to every dinner.

Entertainment Industry vs Wine Culture (Sideways, Falcon Crest, etc)

SPEAKER_03 14:20

So you think Falcon Crest had uh the soap opera? Falconcrest had a huge effect on wine and nobody likes to talk about it.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

I've actually I don't think I've ever heard anybody talk about this.

SPEAKER_03 14:31

Like if you if if you ask people, like especially the Spring Mountain, I think that they hated especially because people kept trying to come up and see see the set. Yeah, see the set. And this was like in an anti-tourism time in Napa. But like if you talk to Kirk Vengi, who grew up at the base of Mount St. Helena, and like he said, Oh yeah, while this thing was running, you know, people would stop them like six, seven times a day to ask, like, oh well, how do we get to the Falcon Crest winery? You know, and that and that made its way into you know culture and you had just American society.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

People, yeah. I mean, that's that was that's that's very cool. I I I never hear people talk about Falcon Crest anymore.

SPEAKER_03 15:14

Uh well, I think it's also because nobody under the age of 40 even knows that Falcon Crest exists.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

Yeah. I I only found it because I was looking another uh we need another soap opera.

SPEAKER_03 15:25

I'm not I think I'm not sure that we do.

SPEAKER_02 15:27

I think it's interesting how much entertainment has affected the wine industry. I think it's a great thing that you brought up Falcon Crest. I think also when Walk in the Clouds like came out, and then we've also mentioned like sideways, like these movies, these shows, they come out and they either take draw or they they send uh audiences in a different direction, you know. So it's either if they're drawing them here in the Napa Valley with Falcon Crest or it's sideways sending people to Pinot Noir and saying, you know, fuck Merlot, you know, which we now I'm glad that we finally come around and we can have people saying that actually we love Merlot.

SPEAKER_03 15:59

It's crazy. The whole point of the movie is that the guy really fucking likes Merlot. Yeah. Like at the end shot, like he's not drinking a Pinot Noir in the in the burger shop. Like he's drinking a Merlot. That's the whole thing of like he has been pushing this away. You know, it's it's his own emotional deal, but like the people just latched on to that. But you I looked at this, I looked at this um chart where you it went through like historical sales and visitation data versus like when these kind of media things have happened. And Falcon Crest had like a really big push, and then when Falcon Crest goes off the air, wine goes down, and then Sideways comes on and like it it like just shoots up, and then which I also I blame Sideways for a lot of the cultural impacts of it because people wanted to be like Paul Giamatti's character in that, which I don't understand because that guy's fucking insufferable.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

And then one of the most depressing movies I've ever seen. Oh, come on, dude.

SPEAKER_02 17:01

He chugs the bucket, dude. He jug he chugs the spit bucket. That's a great thing. Let's see.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

So was the French paradox on 60 Minutes? Was that prior to Falcon Crest's popularity? If you were to put that in as part of uh the entertainment, infotainment, cultural wine shift? You know, I don't have that logged again again. I just wasn't sure if it was off the top of your head, but but that I I know that that was a huge shift as well.

SPEAKER_03 17:23

Um Yeah, I mean, also right around the time of Sideways, you also had all the messaging of like the antioxidants and like wine is good for you, and like and that helped that helped push it as well. Um and but like it kind of gets hard to measure because you had like the Amy Polar, Tina Faye movie, the wine country, I forget the name of it, but the wine country thing on Netflix. I don't know how that came out. It was it was it was a great movie. It ends with them lighting paper lanterns and setting them into the air, which is kind of a crazy thing to do like a year after the the valley burns down. But maybe that's how this started. Yeah, but you know, but it's like I don't know whether that one necessarily had as big of a cultural boost, um, because it also happened during the COVID boom. So it's hard to it's hard to kind of at least make a correlation there.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

I mean I I will like dig into Sideways a little bit where I I saw Sideways as not really the movie that that changed Merlot and Pinot Noir, but it was more of all of the articles written after it. And and this weird like dynamics. I've seen the movie multiple times and and always trying to like understand something about it. We'll watch it every couple years. But I took it as like and people recognize that that one character was Pinot Noir being more elegant and and kind of ethereal and and you know very sensitive, and then the the other character being kind of the brute force of Merlot. So they kind of like had these two wines that they stood for, and and and then there were some there was like great commentary, if I recall right, about you know, why Pinot Noir is so seductive because it's elusive and people fall in love. So I think it really pulled at the passion, like pulled the heartstrings, and then all the writing about it afterwards just kind of like turned it into like, oh, this is this is the holy grail, which I know. I mean, and none of that was tasting notes.

SPEAKER_03 19:20

Yeah, you're right. It's all like very esoteric, like very philosophical, like painting a larger picture. It was no like stone fruit notes,

Evolving your wine palate

SPEAKER_03 19:30

yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

And nobody wants to hear that shit anymore. I think. I mean, it's people people would like like I'm I'm trying to teach my kids how to taste, and so like the power of suggestion is real. But once they get on that track, then they're they're like, okay, I got this, and now now it's like look at uh one of these sheets that tells you all of the common flavors and aromatics of these wines, um, or these specific varietals, and then that is like a visual power of suggestion. They want to know what the vibe is. Yeah, but then they but at the end of the day, it's what does the brand stand for? What do they you know, what is the story behind it? It's you know, it's cool that it tastes good and they can pick those notes up, but I I want to know the ethos.

SPEAKER_03 20:08

I I think you can describe wine in a way that's like outside of those very specific tasting notes because you don't want to create a situation for your consumer where they can be wrong about their enjoyment of your product. You know, it's just why would you why would you create a situation and then actively promote it where someone can drink your thing, enjoy it, and be wrong about that?

SPEAKER_01 20:33

So would you would you uh opt for just getting rid of tasting notes?

SPEAKER_03 20:38

I would I would kind of change the tasting notes thing. I think you still need to talk about the wine and describe the wine, but you need to kind of use a little bit more abstraction there, you know, because people people have like a sense have like sense smell memory and taste memory associated with certain settings and experiences. And if you can describe it as that, it's a way of kind of tapping into a larger, you know, data set of like, oh, this makes me feel like this, and this, you know, reminds me of this day or this feeling um without getting like very granular of granular of cherry blossom. Yes. I mean, I I love I love horse sweat wine when it's got like the horse sweat smell in it. Oh, right, I that's one of my favorite things. There's there's this one this is a good thing about the experiment experiential wine. There's a wine which I know you know this lady on Rama, Miriam Miriam Puentes and and her husband won. So they have a wine label and they also do charteria. And the first time I had their wine, I this is another Mexican Mexican winery, but the first time I had their wine, I was thoroughly underwhelmed. I was like, this it's kind of a medium. And then I spent a day with them filming them doing the charia and working the horses. And you know, you get that like that dust in your nose, the horse sweat in your nose, the cow shit in your nose. And like at the end, you know, you're you're tired, you've, you know, you've been running around, you still have all this in your in your nose, on your skin, and they're like cooking, you know, Mexican food. And I had the wine, and it's a completely different experience. And it's not necessarily because of the food, but of like the totality of that experience. And like, and then from then on, like that wine made a hundred percent sense.

unknown 22:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

So it's it's kind of you have to bring so there's the experiential piece that is I agree completely that that's a that is such an emotional uh um tie, right? Like you, if you get to have that experience, I think that's what we would hope everybody coming to wine country would be able to receive is just at least one experience like that, where it just everything clicks and it all makes sense, and it's not just the fact that you're emotionally involved in the story and the place, but and the wine is tasting better because of it. All of those things are a factor, but more importantly, you have a memory that you're never going to to to leave um because of that that experience. So that's I would like to think we can have we can have more of that. I think we do need more people to be able to do that without feeling like the government's gonna come down on them.

SPEAKER_03 23:30

Yeah, I mean that's the permanent the permitting conversation. Let's let's go ahead and grab the third rail with both hands here.

SPEAKER_02 23:38

Um now is that what we think that because I love this conversation here, but I we think we've already like noted that there is a decline in the younger generations coming into wine. So it's always kind of like what are what's what's the wine industry missing that they are wanting? And I think they're expensive. Too

Why the decline in the young drinker generation?

SPEAKER_02 23:55

expensive. It's I mean Is it is it is it also the story?

SPEAKER_03 23:59

You know, it's the this is authenticity. It's the story and authenticity, you know, I think is definitely a part of it. I think the biggest element of it though is price. You know, if price there's so many wineries today that are selling off their wine, you know, bulk to um, you know, spots like uh last bottle or or other like similar flash sale sites. And you know, these are people that have had difficulty moving that inventory that you know it's just kind of stuck in their warehouse, you know, they need to make loan payments or they need to keep cash flow going. So let's offload this stuff, you know. Maybe you turn a profit on it, maybe you just reduce your warehousing bill. But then those flash sailors are able to sell 100% of those wines in 24 hours. Yeah, you know, and it's this is just the thing of you know, if you move down on that price, like you would find a spot where it would fit in the market. It's really uncomfortable to say because you know, you're you have this sense of this is my this is my wine, this is what it's worth. And if I charge less for it, then I'm weakening my position. But like your wine club just views it as like, oh, I'm getting a screaming fucking deal.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

Yeah, yeah. Well, and and depending on which way you go about your business, if you're purely tasting room DTC, it's gonna be a very different sort of I think method to your pricing than if you're doing stuff in the three-tier system.

SPEAKER_03 25:35

Yeah, that that's that's yeah, that's that's that's kind of a different, but you see a lot of like DTC people that are are doing it and jumping in because they they're gonna be able to cut into their margins more.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Whereas I mean, I know people that are paying as little as like less than 20% margin to their distributor. I've seen people paying over 30%. And I don't know what the right number is, but I gotta tell you, like that, that's that's a lot of money to be paying if they're not gonna be out there selling your product.

SPEAKER_03 26:00

100%. It's it's it's a crazy system that we've just kind of been stuck with and needs to get disassembled somehow. Um like I don't understand why I mean legal reasons and and you know how hard it's been lobbied against, but why wineries don't set up some sort of um collective, dis distributor collective, because you could have warehouses in every state that are you know handling last mile delivery and such, and you could also probably work it out to where you could ship bottles um directly to consumers, which would probably make single bottle shipping more reasonable.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

It's all tighthouse rules. So like we as a producer can't be a distributor, and I also can't be a retailer, so I can't be involved in any of those any of those other tiers. I could have a restaurant at some point and sell wine there, but I could not sell or have more than 15% of the listings on that wine list because they they don't want to fall back into the the the era of so I think I think that the Sapram at a vow. We well we did. I mean it wasn't so much a problem, it was just simply that like we hit we had to make sure that if we had 15 of our wines on the menu, that we had to have at least 85 others. We never catered to just our wines, we never put you know like one whole side of the menu of just

Is the 3-tier-system in the wine industry broken?

SPEAKER_01 27:30

our stuff. Um but uh but we we knew we knew the rules, wanted to make sure we'd never get in trouble, right? But that's how they do it, and it's it's this all stems from that like prohibition era where a producer who's also distributing, who's also retailing a restaurant or has a restaurant, and they're able to make every bit of the margin all the way through the system and be able to become a very strong player. I I don't think that you know, and every state now has their own, right? So it's that that's another issue. You're never gonna get it all consolidated. Like you try to sell wine in European countries, you're selling to one European country. Like one one there's not like here in America, we have 50 plus different countries from a sales standpoint. Like if you're a French producer and you're trying to sell them to America, I'd be like, that's way too fucking involved. It's it's it makes it very complicated. It's a barrier to entry. I think that maybe there's some positive to that, but there's also you know the added cost to the customer at the end of the day. Yeah, I think I mean it keeps to make money in the in the chain.

SPEAKER_03 28:35

It keeps there, it keeps the customer price high, and it also keeps the winery margin down. So it kind of squeezes on both ends of the of the spectrum there. And you know, in it's a t it's a tough industry. I mean, I went to college with a girl who is the granddaughter of one of the like the big Chicago dis distributors. Okay. And it's like I met the guy. That's not a guy I would ever fuck with. You know, I'm not I'm not getting into an argument with with that dude. Like he said something, you know.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

Yeah, no, I I would agree with that. Yeah, you I got a guy. I got a guy. I got a guy.

SPEAKER_03 29:24

This is a guy who's got a lot of guys.

SPEAKER_01 29:27

Well, a lot of it, a lot of those, a lot of the distributors, uh, you know, the people have traced their their roots back to organized crime. I'm not pointing any fingers. I think everybody's got their nose clean now, but let's preserve your wholesale business while we're on this podcast. Well, that see, that's the thing, is like they I think that they all have I do wish that those those stories would be told because however they got into it, it's like I'm not gonna blame the people who are running it now for for however whatever backdoor dealings needed to have happen so that they were able to distribute products.

SPEAKER_03 29:59

It's just how the it's just how that business works.

SPEAKER_01 30:03

Yeah, it's how it and how it how it evolved through prohibition. And it was most likely people that knew that they were gonna make a lot of money by selling alcohol, and they're like, well, I'm already doing this shit prohibition during illegally, right? I'm bootlegging or whatever, distributing bootlegged product. I might as well get at the front of the line and become a distributor in this shit and just keep doing I'm I'm just running trucks anyways. And so, you know, they then they became legit. And now they're, you know, the three-tier system. I mean, one thing I will say about the three-tier system, we couldn't manage the distribution. Like, as as a you know, if there was a bunch of other organizations together and then you get volume, but we ourselves couldn't manage the the abil the the way that that our distributors distribute for us.

SPEAKER_03 30:46

No, and especially for temperature and climate control and shipping and all that, like that that's a huge logistical problem that you know you need a dedicated party to do if you could figure out a way that we do this system like because if you look at distribution in other industries, distributors do not take anywhere near the margin percentage that they that they take in in wine.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

I think maybe the way to look at this is more how do you make it more appetizing for the actual consumer? I think that's that's it. Because right

Making wine distribution more appetizing to the consumer

SPEAKER_01 31:20

now, I mean there are some states that you know you're it's state controlled, and I'll pick on those guys all day long. Like so you got you know, Pennsylvania as an example, right? So everything has to come through that the the the government takes ownership of every product that goes in. Utah as well does that, right? Utah as well, New Mexico or uh I think New Mexico, I think Wyoming. Uh there's like I think almost 10 states that are that are still government controlled, and then you've got most of Canada. Um and so that that's a huge barrier to entry. Um not just because of the fact that it's all, you know, like typically it's all going to be purchased at a government store in most cases, uh, but they really limit the selection. So you don't have the opportunity to even try other things. It's like we're allowing these two of your products to be in our stores, and you're like, what about, you know, we've got leaders in these other categories. And like, no, we have too many of those.

SPEAKER_03 32:19

Yeah. It's it's the the way that states handle that is I always think that's so interesting. Like in tobacco. Yeah. Like for the state of Arizona, their solution to it of is if you're going to ship any tobacco into the state, you need to pay the excise tax on it as if like the finished pack of cigarettes has been sold, which just puts like an incredible tax burden on the producer. Up at the top. But you know and that and it limits it limits selection. Um, you have a lot more, but you do have a lot more native brands in in Arizona, just because they can ship to the to the reservations and then and then export from there. So it it doesn't the tax doesn't hit on the distribution level, it hits on a retail level where they would have had to pay it anyway. But the but for like for wine and and you know, outside of outside of price making it uh attractive, you know, it's it's it's a culture thing. You you have to make wine not be like so heavily tied to um tasting and so heavily tied to um you know nice fancy dinners. And not saying don't have it at nice fancy dinners, but there's kind of this thing of like, oh, this is when you would drink it. Yeah, and in wine marketing, it needs to, it needs to kind of reflect that and kind of take a stance of of you know, you can just enjoy this thing. The worst line that I hear in emails is like, you can enjoy this $90 bottle of Sauvignon Blanc on your porch or seller it for years. Like, and these are two different statements. You kind of need to pick one lane there, and I would lean towards the enjoy it on your porch.

SPEAKER_01 34:12

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, definitely enjoy it, enjoy it now. That's uh I mean most wines are are you know they should be age-worthy if they're made well, but they're also they should also be, you know, approachable.

SPEAKER_03 34:22

Well and sellers, sellers are a huge problem.

Wine Cellars Are A Huge Problem

SPEAKER_03 34:26

I mean because people don't have them anymore. No, no, no, that's not the problem at all. It's the opposite problem. If you talk to um collectors that you know, like middle class to to lower upper upper class collectors, they have more bottles of wine than they could drink throughout the rest of their life if they're drinking a bottle a night. Yeah. And, you know, their kids are gonna get that seller. And by the time the kids get around to drinking it, those bottles will probably be corked or, you know, weren't made to age, you know, but like so they've they've kind of overbought here, but aren't drinking it. And you know, this is kind of viewed as like, oh, this is the way to do it. Like this is also a completely different market than like the collector's collectors, like high tier. Yeah, yeah. Like people who've got Rudy Curian one wines. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I I have a question for you because you make wine, you blend wine. Have you ever had one of Rudy's wines?

SPEAKER_01 35:30

No, you mean the one like one of his counterfeited? Yeah, no, not that I know of.

SPEAKER_03 35:35

Well, so that's that's so I've heard from people who have had their his wines, you know, and he's doing an incredibly hard thing. He picked maybe the hardest con to do. God, you're right. I think if all of these Psalms have this true objective taste where they can tell all the individual notes, and he was selling these wines for years, you know, he's opening a bottle of a really nice older deal and then blending it with off vintages, different appellations in order to get it to taste like that. And like what I've heard from a very well-respected winemaker was like, he had it and the wine was flawless. And he thought, well, there's no way that this wine of this year should be flawless. So that was what flagged it for him. But just the fact that you could do that, like I think this guy is probably one of the best wine blenders, assemblage guys to ever exist. And he just kind of fucked it up by doing a con instead of he could be the most celebrated winemaker.

SPEAKER_01 36:42

Yeah, he could have been a great winemaker, great blender, just you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:45

But do you think it's also partly like a placebo effect? I think people were given this wine, it looked real, and they're drinking it almost like if people are feeling effects of being intoxicated when they're drinking non-alcoholic beer and don't know.

SPEAKER_03 36:59

I think there's a little bit of we're selling a product here. So, you know, it's in it's everything you can do to maintain the value of that wine and that collection, and you know, like the auction house guy clearly in on it, knows they're fake. He's trying to push through sales volume. But you have like the at the very end of the movie, uh, sour grapes, they're driving around with like the bottle of Rudy's wine, and they're like, We fucking like it, it tastes great. And they go to Assam who in the movie is shown like sampling some of Rudy's wines earlier and not and not knowing that it's you know a counterfeited wine. He doesn't say anything, and then he tastes it at the end and he's like, Oh, like I can tell this is completely wrong.

SPEAKER_02 37:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:48

But he doesn't know that until they say like so hindsight. This is Rudy. This is Rudy's wine. It's it's I think there's a little bit of like, okay, we are kind of doing like an art scam deal, you know. You want even if it's not worth that value, you still want it to be worth a value so you can, you know, sell it off, or you know, you've got loans out against the inventory. But you know, I think at the end of the day, like wine is there for you to fucking drink.

SPEAKER_01 38:16

Yeah, yeah. As it should be. I mean, that that's and and it's it's I mean, the the way that I try to describe it to people is if you have like the fanciest bottle in your cellar, regardless of what the value is, like pick a night when you're gonna be able to share it with friends and and drink it. Or like the same thing. If you, you know, if you're holding on to some bottle of like, you know, uh Van Winkle or something, like yeah, whatever. Just you know, one night open it up and kill that whole bottle with like a group of friends.

SPEAKER_03 38:47

Yeah, it doesn't have to be a special occasion.

SPEAKER_01 38:49

The bottle makes it special, otherwise you're gonna you're gonna end up possibly dying with it and and somebody else is going to enjoy it and not appreciate it. Make that memory. Yeah, be selfish about this. Be selfish about it. That's it. Yeah. I think that that's a b that's a big part of it. And uh and and to your point, these people that have these deep cellars, like I got rid of my cellar. I don't have a cellar. I just have I have a wine fridge. That's it. Um and uh just because I I figure if I want an old wine, I mean I do have some old wines and like I keep them at the winery, but it's I also don't generally want to be like revisiting all those. There's so many other wines to be enjoying right now. It's like I want to I want to continue to evolve and and try new things. So it's you know it's a matter of um trying to convey that to people where it's like, yeah, maybe that inventory needs to be digested. Maybe that inventory will be auctioned off in an estate sale to a nice restaurant, um, which oftentimes happens.

SPEAKER_03 39:43

I I think it's it's too, it's about picking the bottles that you're going to collect carefully and for reasons other than I'm going to open this down the road. All of the bottles in my collection, I never plan on opening until, you know, maybe I'm in my 60s or 70s or something like that. Because it's stuff that like, you know, it's tied from you know, a specific shoot that we did that was meaningful, or like I have a bottle um from Salvador Rentaria of like the it's the first um block that he planted in Wooden Valley of like the year before they ripped it off. And it's like it's a magnum, it was yielding like 0.3 tons per acre, which means I've got maybe a quarter of an acre in that bottle there. And like, and there's there's stuff like that, like where there's something special about it though, like you maybe not necessarily wanted to like dive into that, but like it's kind of like it's a monument to something, and I think like that sort of a collection is great, but everything else, like you know, just fucking drink it. Yeah, you know, yeah. We're this is alcohol, this is a beverage.

SPEAKER_01 40:54

Yeah, the other thing that I've done is like uh that I I did enjoy when I was sellering stuff was that if I found a wine that I really liked, there was this there was this one that always like brings me back. It was uh uh it was Shervington,

Wine Nostalgia

SPEAKER_01 41:10

I don't even know if they're still in business. It's from Australia, and it was uh I think it was Barossa Valley Um Shiraz. And I had a bottle of it. I was like, holy shit, this is like one of the I mean it could contend with any of the best red wines in the world, in my opinion. So I go and I buy a case of it. And this stuff was it wasn't like wildly expensive, it was maybe like 45 bucks a bottle. So I bought a case, and um, and like every six months or 12 months, I'd open a bottle. And then a couple years in, I was like, man, this is tasting like on point right now. Like, and so we just ended up drinking the rest of that case, and not like in one night, but like just knew like hey, this these remaining whatever six or seven bottles, it's time to enjoy these over the next few months. And so that became like our pull for like nice dinners, and then it was gone, and it's still a memory in my mind. Like, and that was the first time I had done that, and now it's like I try to tell people like buy that buy the case. You like it, buy the case, and and you know, just taste a bottle every now and then, and then yeah, like Christy.

SPEAKER_03 42:08

Christy Melton at Free Mark Abbey, like she has the same thing. If she's like, you know, we have these wines, like buy a case of it, and then you know, maybe the first year you don't drink one or you drink one, and then you know, five years, then you drink another one, and then 10 years you drink another, you know, and you can kind of like kind of have like this spaced out thing. So, like if you really care about seeing the wine and how it develops and how it ages, you get to do that. But like also like you're still drinking through the wine, and you don't save them all until 50 years down the road, and you're like, oh well, fuck, this was 20 years ago, this was when it hit its peak.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

So I I'm I'm curious because I do like that idea. I think that's another that's a fun, that's a really fun way to do it. If you've got some space, so like if you buy a case, would she be putting it like categorizing it as like I'm gonna drink these in 2032? And then she does she would just continue to add to that.

SPEAKER_03 42:58

I think it's more of a I think it's more of a loose system. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 43:01

I mean a lot of things.

SPEAKER_03 43:05

She gives the spiel at at wine dinners. Um there's some there's some I have probably really fucked up how how she describes it, but you know, it's it's a great system of just just spacing it out. You know, if you want to see how it develops, that's great. And then you know, there's a point where it's really gonna hit and like go for it. Like they just had the like one of the top wines there 2022. Um, I think it was Pochet, or yeah, or Boche or something. Um and she was like drinking, she's like, You should all buy this and drink this in the next five years. Like this is you know, a five year one, this is yeah, you know, whatever time frame that she gave for it, you know, it's just like this is going to hit its peak right now, like it'll probably still be fine later, but like you know, yeah, go for it. You know it's it's like Kurt Cobain had this thing about like it's not cool to break a guitar. That you can afford. If it's an expensive bottle, you know, just drink the thing, get into it, you know, and that's the cool thing. It's having it on your shelf is just kind of defeating the purpose of it.

SPEAKER_01 44:15

Yeah. I love it related to Gurkobain.

SPEAKER_03 44:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:19

We need a little flex. Yeah. That's great. Well, anything else you wanted to get into before we uh sign off?

SPEAKER_02 44:25

Well, I thought do we want to get into some rapid fire here and have some fun with that? I think that's always fun. I feel like we could just be going on for hours. It's like such like what's going on? Your back? Yeah, I just popped it.

SPEAKER_01 44:38

It was good. Just wait till the Pilates kicks in. And we'll probably see we'll just like we'll just cut this bullshit out because I don't want people knowing I'm getting old, my back's going bad, you know? Oh, really? Are we gonna get it?

SPEAKER_02 44:47

You realize now you're cutting this out?

SPEAKER_01 44:48

I don't he's not in his head now. Everybody knows. Yeah. I don't know if did you hear that? Because it was like, yeah, that was a good one.

SPEAKER_03 44:57

Uh I think you just popped your arm too, just moving back.

SPEAKER_01 45:01

I just started to crack like a little bit. Oh, it's not your arm's popping. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:06

This is this is the part of the podcast where Joe disassembles. Like because he's not using enough peptides and not eating enough elk meat. He he he does have a PMF movie. What do you think about that?

SPEAKER_01 45:19

I need to get some more elk meat. Uh okay, we will jump into some rapid fire here. So uh I'm not gonna go in any particular order on this.

SPEAKER_03 45:30

This is the exact uh I'm gonna look right into this camera. This is the exact type of quiz that I was saying is the bad part of wine. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 45:38

Oh, really? Okay,

Rapid Fire

SPEAKER_00 45:40

okay.

SPEAKER_01 45:42

No, I think it's gonna be good because I think your responses are gonna be uh, you know, maybe criticized by a few of the uh the wine illuminati, you know. We need to come up with a better term for that that you know more ridicules them. I agree. I still like Kami Sami, but that only correlates to Kami or to Somaliers. So I'm trying to think of like what you know, if you got any ideas, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:08

There's the first question. I'm gonna I'm gonna sit back with this, and then probably tomorrow morning you're gonna see something really objectionable on my feed.

SPEAKER_01 46:16

All right, I'm down. Okay. Can't wait. Okay, uh globally, the most underrated region.

SPEAKER_03 46:24

I think probably uh Red Mountain in Washington.

SPEAKER_01 46:30

They do have some good wines. Okay. Uh one wine rule to delete forever.

SPEAKER_03 46:37

All of the fucking wine rolls. Name up a couple of them.

SPEAKER_00 46:40

No, that's a that's one of the best reserves.

SPEAKER_03 46:42

Yeah, I like it. No ice in wine, proper stemware. I would say glassware. The you know, there's if you're really finely tasting, sure, get the glassware that emphasizes that. But you know, 95% of people are not gonna tell the fucking difference between that and drinking it out of a what was the Johnny Depp a megapint? The mega pint, yeah, dude.

SPEAKER_01 47:04

So hey, I gotta I'll tell you a little side story on this. So uh we used to do these like um this this group of like young people in the industry we'd get together. It's like through my 20s and uh different facets of the industry, whatever else. And so we'd like ever we'd one person would host it and we'd do it once a month. And we'd talk about our respective parts of the industry and get an idea as to what was going on and and uh and try to navigate through you know being young in this industry, which at one time we were. So, anyways, whenever we I would host, I would just bring styrofoam cups. And the first time people were like, fucking styrofoam? Like what do you and I know that's like styrofoam is a bad word in California now, uh, from an environmental standpoint, but like it is a like it's so neutral. Like instead of like your you know, whatever paper cups or stuff like that, where like there might be a little bit of a a taste or something, like styrofoam. I was like, no, these keep it insulated, keep it the temperature you might want, and like whatever, like just it's very basic and they worked. But I agree with you.

SPEAKER_03 48:03

It's like bagged wines, like you don't introduce any oxygen to the thing.

SPEAKER_01 48:07

Like theoretically, this is one of the best ways to store the like I've I've heard that it is, you know, it is one of the best vessels from a uh let's get some Chateau Neuf de pop in a bag.

SPEAKER_03 48:20

In a bag that's what I want. Let's let's play some slap the bag with that.

SPEAKER_01 48:23

I'm I'm about to have my kids do some like wine in a bag to like see. I just because they're younger and I want to see like what they think about it, and they're like they're blending some wines right now, and I want to see what they uh what they come up with and like toss it in a bag, send it out to some college towns and see see what the hell goes on.

SPEAKER_03 48:38

I mean, I think that college students, you know, are maybe the best avenue for introducing you know college students over 21.

SPEAKER_01 48:47

Let me yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:48

Let me say that.

SPEAKER_01 48:49

Grad students, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:50

Grad students, people who really need alcohol. But like what I learned from doing the freedom juice stuff is there's college students are so heavily focused on like the alcohol per dollar. And when you like compare it to beer, um, or like even the seltzers and stuff like that, like your alcohol per dollar or like alcohol content per like unit of of of liquid is higher. And if we can get that dollar amount down or somehow like that, like they will make that jump immediately. Yeah. You know, they set I it's so weird. We're sitting at uh we're sitting in the um liquor store next to the ASU campus, and like I'm watching college hung up very hungover college students doing math on their phones to like calculate like their dollars per drunkness.

SPEAKER_01 49:50

Like my assumed BAC will be at X if I am yeah, wow, okay. I mean, I these we never got that far, we just broke.

SPEAKER_03 49:58

I mean, this is ASU, you know, you're gonna do a lot of drinking, you need to make it economically viable.

SPEAKER_01 50:03

Yeah. I I will say, so I've I've uh one of my kids is in college, and so going to like the the fraternity and and like seeing what they're doing and during like parents' weekend or whatever else. And every time we do it, it's like I'd bring wine. And the amount of like the drive straight to wine, even for the the students that were there, like they would just they were they were like beer, like no, yeah, somebody brought wine, like yeah. Like, good, there's hope, but to your point, I was spending on it, not them, right? So they were down for wine as long as it was as long as it was either cheap or free.

SPEAKER_03 50:38

The equation really made sense for them.

SPEAKER_01 50:39

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_03 50:40

No, but like you have sweet stuff, you know, you have dry stuff, like they can you can kind of match whatever flavor profile they really, you know, or category they want to sit in, too.

SPEAKER_01 50:50

Yeah, do they like a lemon lime seltzer, or do they want yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:53

The sh strawberry. The strawberry one. College students love that one. The strawberry seltzer? Yeah, the strawberry one. Okay. The the lime one, turns out that was really hard to get people to huh? With the agave you're talking about. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:07

I mean, the thing is all sugar too.

SPEAKER_00 51:09

It's it's oh it is we can't.

SPEAKER_03 51:11

When you go to make agave wine, you can only get so much sugar to turn into alcohol. That's gotta be. So it's no, so there's just a shit ton of residual sugar left in the thing.

SPEAKER_01 51:22

Okay. I'm gonna have to go try some of that stuff. Okay. Uh in general, old world or new world? New world. America, baby. America, baby.

SPEAKER_02 51:32

America.

SPEAKER_01 51:32

Uh, let's see. If you're tasting blind, would you choose a $20 or a $200 bottle? I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 51:39

I'm not tasting. I got this is I think it I think it's super you tell you you have to taste the wine that's in front of you. I also don't think that I would necessarily go to either one of those and be like, oh well, fuck this one. I'd be like, oh, I got two glasses of wine. Hell yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:57

I like that. Yeah. Uh natural perspective on natural wine, overrated or misunderstood?

SPEAKER_03 52:03

I think there are great natural wines and great natural winemakers. I think the people that really kind of put a bad name to it are the we don't use any sulfur in our winemaking production. And then you kind of be like, okay, so how did you how did you sanitize this?

SPEAKER_01 52:21

You know, yeah, you yeah, you still you're like, okay, so you're giving me a a pre-flawed wine. I'm so excited.

SPEAKER_03 52:27

Yeah, you know, it's it shouldn't be a risk to go out to a wine bar and potentially have the shits later that night. Like it completely will throw off your date. Yeah, that's uh good point.

SPEAKER_02 52:37

Can I piggyback off this question and just get a little perspective on non-intervention winemaking?

SPEAKER_03 52:43

I mean, well, I I do more on the marketing side, so any winemaking thing I say you have to take with a grain of salt. Because I I I know relative I I act like I know a lot, but I know relatively little. But you know, I think generally high intervention in the vineyard leads you to be able to make good low intervention wines. The low intervention in the vineyard and low intervention in the winemaking, it just doesn't it doesn't make logical sense to me.

SPEAKER_01 53:12

It's kind of you know, we're gonna let this thing run wild and free and then you know assume it's gonna be good and we'll rely upon the story of how we didn't do anything.

SPEAKER_03 53:21

I mean, if you're gonna do if you're gonna do like a screaming eagle where you're like making enough juice for like like 40,000 cases worth of stuff and then filtering it down to 765 of like this is the best shit. Yeah, like then I think that's a hundred percent a reasonable thing. But uh everyone's trying to sell all of the wine they can make.

SPEAKER_01 53:40

Yeah. Good point. All right, last question. Uh what is more broken, a three-tier system or wine marketing? You put the hardest one.

SPEAKER_00 53:49

I know, I thought that was I thought that was the best one. I wanted to make sure that was last.

SPEAKER_03 53:52

This is like you know, I I'll this is the hardest question that anybody's asking. I I would say three-tier system. Okay. Just because wine marketing has shown that we can at least pivot. Maybe not a huge amount, but we can pivot a little bit. Yeah. And we can't for some reason three-tiered system, you know, is just stuck. Well, I we know.

SPEAKER_01 54:25

You're asking somebody else to give up their margin of money, man. It's like they're not they're gonna be like, nope, nope, I got I got ten lobbyists lined up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:33

Yeah, you know, and we're the the real thing, you can't walk into a negotiation willing to walk away. And we're kind of negotiating against something where we don't want to just pick up our pick up our cards and and move on. Yeah. You know, you need to have a little bit of ability to just say, you know, fuck you.

SPEAKER_01 54:54

Yeah, yeah. And there's not really that with the three-tier system. Yeah. Uh well, you know.

SPEAKER_03 54:59

You could be the guy, Joe.

SPEAKER_01 55:01

No.

SPEAKER_03 55:02

I'm gonna love you. I want you to walk into your next meeting and just take a giant shit on that table and say, you're taking five percent margin, or I'm doing this again. Yeah, I'm gonna wear the butt scrunch leggings to our next meeting.

SPEAKER_02 55:16

Usually the phrase was lay your dick on the table than her, but take a shit on the table. Take a shit on the table. That's the statement.

SPEAKER_03 55:22

So I have I have heard of people like you. It's easier to clean the first one off. The the shit will the smell will linger in the room for a bit. They'll be thinking about that for their next couple meetings.

SPEAKER_01 55:31

I have heard that the uh I've I've heard of suppliers just you know, just trying to run down the margins that their distributors are getting. And um I mean, then it's like uh, you know, if the if it was a little more transparency, I think it'd be good where it's like, hey, let's all kind of share in this as we're getting through this, and and we could put more money into this side of it, you could put more money into that side of it. So, you know, what are we holding ourselves accountable for and what should we each be compensated for? Um, but again, I don't think everyone's waiting for someone else to blink. That's yeah, I think so. Nobody should have blank.

SPEAKER_03 56:05

Belma Louise, we're gonna drive right off this fucking cliff together.

unknown 56:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:10

Sitting at the bottle of the bottom of the canyon with 20 million bottles of wine smashed around us.

SPEAKER_01 56:16

Smashed around and still on fire. Great. No, I think we'll get through this. Uh, but I I do think it is people that are going outside of the norms of marketing. And and again, I just want to say we appreciate what you're doing in the industry, uh, what you're doing for Napa, and hopefully we see more people doing that in in in the, you know, um uh throughout the wine world. I mean, regardless of where it's at in the world, as long as it's pertaining to bringing people back to wine and understanding some of the nuances of it and and just getting kind of engaged. I think that's what what it's all about. So you've done a great job. We appreciate it. There's wine in 50 states. Everyone yeah, there's a producer in every 50.

SPEAKER_03 56:51

Every state has wine that has a wine industry that people can go visit, you know. Yeah, it's all it's all interesting.

SPEAKER_01 56:59

Yep, yeah. Maybe not all good, but it's interesting. But usually when you travel to these places, you got good food, beautiful, good people, good wines. Yeah, I always recommend wine travel is good travel. Yeah. Well, Evan, thank you very much. It was a pleasure having you on.

SPEAKER_03 57:15

Thank you for having me. All right, peace.