Exploring Paso Robles: Rhone Varietals, Innovation, and Community with Jason Haas of Tablas Creek

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Reality is that what, 95% of wines get
consumed within 48 hours of when they're purchased. So that
is something that wine can do, but it isn't something which most people are doing
with wine. Sit back and grab a glass.
It's Wine Talks with Paul K.
Hey, welcome to Wine Talks with Paul Kay. And I am at an away game

(00:23):
today. I'm down here, Mosa beach in our sort of portable studio. But to have
a conversation with Jason Haas of Toddlers Creek Introductions in just a moment. Yes,
I am the guy who sold 17 million
bottles of wine in his career through the direct to consumer model as well as
along the way, tasted 100,000 wines. But not why
we're here. You have a conversation with Jason Haas, the second generation

(00:44):
proprietor of Tablas Creek up in Paso Robles. Hey, welcome to
the show. Thanks, Paul. Nice to be here. We've been talking
about doing this for a long time.
We've been at this for a long time. This is year 36 of Tubliss Creek
and my 24th year out here. So, yeah, let's talk about. Wow.
That, you know, I've got it. Let's start with that. That you're on the Adelaide

(01:07):
side of Paso. For the listeners, there's sort of a cooler side toward the 101
Freeway, and that's where you're at. Then there's sort of the warmer side, which
is above Paso. You know, highway. Was that 37? Is that. No,
43? 46. Yeah, Highway 46. Kind of warmer side.
But two distinctly different parts of Paso Robles. But 24 years
there. That has to be early on.

(01:30):
Yeah. So when we started Tublis Creek, so it was started by my
dad and by the Perrin brothers back in 1989. We
were winery number 17 here in Paso. Wow.
And we were the first winery to focus on roan varieties, which is kind of
amazing now that it is kind of the epicenter of the California RN
movement. But yeah, it was. It was early days for sure. And even when I

(01:52):
moved out here in 2003, I mean,
Paso as a wine region had started to develop. There were probably,
I don't know, 75 wineries by that point. But
it still hadn't really been discovered. And it's been super cool to be here
for that process of discovery. You know, there's
now there's 4,000 or maybe 5,000 wineries in

(02:15):
California. And, you know, which doesn't. It's not a lot really, when you think about
Bordeaux has like 10,000 winemaking chateau, you know, in this
Much smaller area. But you know, it is growing and it's changed a lot. And
I'm thinking about the days when you said the Rhone
varietals. And for the listeners, that's the Syrah, the more veg, the, the,
the Roussanne's, Marsans, things like Viennese.

(02:38):
It wasn't always like that. And I remember there was quite a proliferation
of Italian varietals. The Nebbiolo
brothers, I mean Nebbiola from the Martin brothers was a
very popular wine in the early 80s. How did that sort of change?
Was it of, you know, natural selection that we
found that Syrah and those grapes do really well on this side of Paso?

(03:03):
Honestly, I think it's a super good spot for both, for really any of
the kind of warmer climate, Mediterranean varieties. So I think it is a really good
spot for Italian varieties, I think it's a really good spot for Spanish varieties.
But I think some of it is that
it takes someone to plant a flag and say we

(03:24):
really believe that this is the right spot to do this particular thing. And
because of who we are, because of the, the Perenn
brothers, who of course have, have owned and run Chateau de Beaucastel and the rest
of the things they do in the Rhone Valley for five generations now.
The, the fact that they, and my dad, who was a pretty well known and
respected American importer, the fact that they chose Paso

(03:47):
to be the spot where they were going to, to plant their own project,
I think that gave the region kind of some credibility for this
particular category that other people have
certainly have certainly followed on. And I
mean the proof I think is in the wines that you taste out of here.
And there are, there are so many great Rhone varieties, whites,

(04:07):
reds, blends, varietals, higher acid, lower acid,
different ways of putting it together. And they all do well in Passo. You know,
I did that just struck a chord and I couldn't remember Chateau Bo
Castell and has to be early on.
I look going back a few years and I'm thinking I, when I
was getting ready for this call, I kept thinking, I

(04:30):
think this is Chateau book. I think this is a French influence on this product.
But I couldn't put connect the dots, but I knew that at some
point. Was it one of the early French infusions?
Not infusions, but you know, transplants to California even
because, you know, we're in Oregon and the Burgundians went to Oregon and some of
the Bordelays went into Napa.

(04:52):
Was this one of the Early French
transplants into America, I think it was. Yeah, it really was.
I mean, I. And I know that my dad and the parents were looking at
Opus, and they were looking at Dominus. They were looking at these kind of
French American hybrids in California,
and that was. That was in their minds. And

(05:15):
this. This all grew out of the trips that my dad and
Jean Pierre Francois Perrin took around the United States to
kind of establish Bocast and the rest of the wines in their portfolio.
And every time they would go to California, they would leave, saying, yeah,
California is great terroir, but why is nobody focusing on the grapes that are from
the Mediterranean part of France? Like, it is a Mediterranean climate in California.

(05:37):
Roussanne, Marsan, Mourvedre, Grenache, Syrah. Like, those should do great
if we can find the right soils and the right microclimate. And yet all
of the models that they saw people looking at were. Were more continental
models. They were looking to Bordeaux for their inspiration or maybe
up in Sonoma, they were looking to Burgundy for their inspiration, but they weren't to
the run. And. And they felt like that was a. That was an opportunity.

(06:00):
It's interesting, early on, again,
I got to stop saying that, because that makes me sound really old.
You would go to the Lima Valley, and you would meet
with the winemakers, and they would. They would say, hey, this is very
Burgundian. And you would say, wow, this is very Bordeaux. And.

(06:20):
And we don't hear that anymore. And I'm wondering if back in those days, you
said, this is Ronesque Rhone style, when we all
now have learned that California produces its own style, no matter what you plant,
it takes on its own character. But I always thought it was interesting in those
days, you would always say that this is very Burgundian, and you don't hear it
much anymore. You don't hear it as much. And I think it does

(06:43):
differ a little bit. Like, I know I go out and I show these
wines around the country, and when I'm in California, I spend a lot more time
talking about the grapes themselves, about Paso Robles,
about the weather, about the climate. When I'm on the east coast, which is a
little. Still a little more European focused, I do talk more about the
Rhone and talk about Chateauneuf dupont and talk about that

(07:04):
kind of stylistic inheritance that we have. But I. I just think it's a sign
of the maturation of California that everybody doesn't need to
cast themselves as a descendant
of a. A European region. It's. I think it's established
enough now that we can talk about the place and the grapes and the. And
the practices. You know, it's kind of interesting, actually. I find that

(07:27):
the sub Appalachian differences in Paso actually
seem to be, to me anyway, a little more expressive than the sub
Appalachian differences in Napa. In other words, yes, mountain fruit and that
obviously distinctly different. But valley fruit in Napa, it's hard for
me to find the differences, but clearly west side, east side
Adelaide versus other parts of Paso, you do get a

(07:49):
terroir difference that it's expressive. And I think that just comes from,
you know, you know, obviously the soil and the. In the actual
terroir, but it comes from, I think, a want of the winemakers
in that area to. To have Paso be expressive to,
you know, bring the world to Paso Robles, not just another wine
district. Tongue in cheek, I'll say something like Temecula.

(08:12):
You know, there's. There's like 13 or 20 wineries for sale in Temecula, but
you're not buy a winery there. You're buying a destination for
entertainment. Right. You're not buying this appellation of Temecula
grapes. It's never really performed that. That way, which is fine. But
Paso seems to want to do that.
Yeah. And I think there's two pieces to that comment that,

(08:35):
that I think are both right. But I've talked to and.
And read enough conversations with Napa
producers who have all basically said that if they had to go back
and redo the Appalachians of Napa, they would differently. Because
right now it's basically done in slices as you go from south
to north, which includes both valley fruit and

(08:57):
mountain fruit in each of those Appalachians. And that's probably not the best
way to do it. The valley is going to have more in common with other
valley locations, even if it's a little further up the valley or closer to the.
To the bay than it is to the mountains that are on either side. And
so when we got together as a community
and drew the sub avas in Paso Robles in the late

(09:18):
2000s, we had that as an example of
kind of really maybe a description
that was convenient at the time because it associated everything
with towns that people knew but was perhaps not
viticulturally as significant. So
we made the decision early on that we were going to bring

(09:40):
in scientists from UC Davis and from Cal Poly, and we were
going to let them tell us where the lines were. The. The. The
geographers and the geologists and the viticulturists from those
Research universities, like they were going to tell us where the boundaries were between
one growing region and another. And I think it was. It's
fairly unusual to have a region get together and all

(10:03):
agree to abide by what the scientists say and to
draw all of the lines at once instead of having it
come together piecemeal as there was a group of vintners who wanted
to make a name for themselves and then they would get a single ava.
Does is sort of a different process. But I, I do
think that Paso. I mean, it. It really needed

(10:25):
subdivision there. It was an enormous AVA with a lot of internal
variation. It was 40 miles east to west. It's
30 miles north to south. It ranges from 600ft
elevation to 2400ft. It was 10 miles from the
ocean all the way to 40 miles from the ocean. And there's five or six
different major soil types there. There is enough

(10:47):
climate variants that there are Winkler Scale 2, 3 and
4, all inside Paso. So it's like there are. There are
real reasons to subdivide it. So I think there's. It's possible to divide it in
a way that. That, that separates meaningfully
different areas from each other. But there was also the desire to do it in
a way that was, was, was real. And

(11:09):
I think that's important too. Do you think that there's been
a settling of what somebody would expect a
Paso, for instance, Cabernet would taste like? In other words, you have Austin Hope,
you've got the Dow, and you've got all these major supermarket
brands. And the reason I said this is we were just in New York,

(11:31):
you know, where the edge of the world is. My daughter lives across the street
in a town called Potsdam, New York. And
it's quite troublesome to get to. You have to go through Montreal. Anyway,
I went into the wine shop there. You know, there's not a lot of wine
shops, but it was a more glorified liquor store that actually had a selection.
And all of the Napa wines there, all of them were that

(11:53):
now effusive, opulent fruit forward,
you know, slightly sugared style. And so I, and I even I, you know,
I had to choose something. My wife likes the Cabernet, so,
you know, I thought, okay, I'll try a variety. And they were all the same
in this certain sense. Is that, is that. Is there a style in passel that's
landed at least on the Cabernet side? Or are we still sort of experimenting

(12:14):
with finding, you know, appellated
sub, sub, sub Appalachian character?
I, I'M not, we're not a CAB producer. So I'm, I'm a little
skeptical to wade too deep into this particular water. That was a very safe thing
to say. I, I would say though, that Napa
cast such a huge shadow over Cabernet from California.

(12:37):
Yeah. That anybody who is doing a mass
brand Cabernet is kind of going after that same Napa style because that's what
people expect. So I don't know that I
would particularly look to CAB for
the clearest expression of the different Avas in Paso.
I think that's much more likely to come through from smaller

(12:59):
producers and from people who are focusing on Rhone
varieties or on, on whites than it is for those who
focus on Cabernet. It's, I mean, it's clear to me, at least stylistically,
there's, that has not happened in the, the, the Rome varietals. You
know, you don't, there's. I can't think of an overriding character that
comes from that side of Paso that you would describe

(13:22):
your, your Syrah versus the, your neighbor Syrah. They're,
they're stylishly different. I do think there's a little bit on the
Cabernet side where this. Well, let's face it,
Austin Hope is. And I had Austin on the show. It was a great wine.
I sold tons of it. Tons of.
And so I have. You know, that's. Marketing is a very important part of our

(13:43):
business. But I, I still, I think there is a stylistic
position that they've taken and people look for that
and that's good. The consumer has to drive this for us. Maybe we're wine
geeks and we're trying to, you know, find the most expressive thing we can,
but that doesn't necessarily sell. So. Right. And that you're.

(14:03):
If you think of the really big CAD producers in Paso, the, the
Austin Hopes and the Dows and the Justins and the J Lors, I mean, they
are making something in a quantity that is distributed
around the country and it needs to follow a style. It needs to be consistent
from year to year. They're, they're, they're of a scale where that's,
that's really important. There are no room

(14:25):
producers who are 1:10 the size of those
wineries. So like, in some ways we are
liberated from having to follow
a, follow a national style because none of us are big enough
to have national distribution in chain retail
anyway. Like, we tend to like even Tublas Creek. We're one of the larger

(14:46):
grown producers or one, in fact, One of the largest grown producers in
California and we only make about 30,000 cases of wine and we sell half
of that direct to consumer. So it's, it's sort of a
different business model and a different winemaking model because,
because it can be, because it's just a, just a question of scale. You know,
that's an interesting thought. When he said business model, I never used the term, but

(15:07):
that's certainly what it is. And you know, there's
this movement on, on LinkedIn and other parts of social
and we have to be more innovative. And I'm this purist and I'm a traditionalist
and maybe traditionalists are steeped in tradition. And so, you know,
we're never going to break out of that. And I think wine has a position
in the human, in human society and human soul

(15:29):
in that it's, it connects people and it's in a different way than any,
any other beverage can. And so I don't necessarily believe in this
innovation stuff. However, I, I
suppose it's innovative. If there's a style that's been landed on
and we can get people to come to the store and buy those
wines so that the industry, you know, flourishes. I suppose,

(15:52):
you know, that definition is, is a valid one. I, I, I
wrestle with that every day, trying to understand the people that are saying,
well, we need to look at like for instance, I've had people on the show
that think putting their wines in a voss bottle shaped
375is innovation. And I, I, you know,
that's not what we're selling. We're not selling packaging, we're selling what's inside the

(16:13):
package. I don't tell that to the Provence rose producers. They're
certainly selling a package. Yeah, that's true too. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. He
said something really interesting. And I'm going to go back to the Armenian wine industry
just because I know it well and it's, but not because it's Armenia. But I
want to focus on a little bit because it is new.
And so they're, they're going through the growing pains that maybe PASO did

(16:35):
years and years ago. And one of them, when you said
that you, you hired that there's, that you got together that
it was rare for vintners to get together and do this. Now there's always
been a culture of camaraderie, at least in the
California side. Napa had its vendors association many, many years ago.
But when I look at the Armenian market, maybe it's just because it's young.

(16:59):
They would never do that. They could not get together,
you know, and play as a team. You said that was unusual.
Why do you. You know, what. What led you to that comment? Why would that
be unusual? How do you know that's unusual? So, I mean, we hear
that from lots of other regions that the. The kind of
unity that there is within Paso, where if there's a.

(17:22):
If there's a. An initiative that the Paso Robles Wine
country alliance is putting on or an event that's happening,
that they get almost 100 participation from Paso wineries,
it's very different from Santa Barbara, very different from Monterey, very different from
Sonoma, which is sort of fractured into its own sub EVAs.
NAPA. NAPA has maybe a little more

(17:44):
cohesion. They certainly do support the Napa Valley vintners well, and
that's a very effective organization. But still, I think
there are lots of producers there who are well enough
established and have a waiting list for their waiting list and
don't need to pour at things that promote the Napa brand.
And Paso is a little different. Paso, I think. I think even the cult

(18:07):
producers here, you think of the Saxons and the
Lenny Colotos and the Denners and the bookers and the people who are
almost entirely DTC and get very high scores and have waiting lists,
they will still have a table at the Paso Robles Wine Festival. And they
do it because they feel like it's a part
of giving back to the region. And I do think that

(18:30):
that's relatively unusual to have everybody on board
behind this kind of shared push to
get the region recognized better. They not essentially thought. I didn't think of that. But
maybe it's that ruralness of Paso, that young. It's
young still, you know, by means of wine districts. But
there's a. Is there a word called rurality?

(18:53):
If not, there should be. I mean, and I think that's a part of it.
And I'm not sure that it's the rural character as much as it is
the fact that there is very little in the way of absentee ownership here. So
you. I mean, if you go up to Napa, lots of those wineries are owned
by people who live elsewhere or they're owned by corporations. Santa
Barbara, there's lots of wineries that are owned by people who live in la.

(19:15):
If you go to Paso, almost all of the wineries are owned and
run by families that live in Paso.
And you. I think that changes the character. You see the other owners
out at dinner. You go to the little League games and all of the Little
league teams are sponsored by vineyards or wineries. Like it's great. It's a community,
it's a residential community because of its

(19:37):
geographic isolation in a way
that most other California wine regions aren't.
I would love, I love to see the little. I'm a
grandfather of seven now, soon to be eight
and my daughter was displaced by the Altadena fire.
She was, they didn't lose their home, but it's being cleaned up as we speak

(19:58):
and they're living with us. So I have a 7 year old grandson with us
and I showed up to Lilyfield to just
watch the thing. I coached Lily for years, I was president for years too
and ended up coaching the team, you know, with, with the two
managers. And I just thought what a great
image. You know, it's Archeron. Say

(20:20):
it's Tablet's Creek versus it is. There's, we, we
have great photographs of like Tablets Creek versus Torin and
Ducey, Vineyard versus Eberle. Like it's, I mean it's,
it's, it's. Super cool because when I was in a little League, you know, a
long time ago, we were the sponsored team that, you know, we were
Woody's, a smorgasbord burger joint. Yeah, that's, that's how you represent

(20:42):
yourself. So that's really cool,
you know, and that's one of the reasons we talked briefly before we got on
camera about why my wife and I ended up that we thought we'd retire there.
And so I was up in 2002 or three or four and I
bought 60 acres off of Martingale off Australia River Road. On the hot side
is beautiful two tiered property. A

(21:05):
functioning, beautiful 600 gallon per minute. Well on it, you know, so
excuse me. And I had all the ambition
in the world to, to go there and build a house up on the
ridge and possibly accept one thing that happened
and what had didn't happen, we ended up selling it was that
the covenants on the property since it had gone bankrupt, this development had

(21:28):
gone bankrupt were intact. And one of them was you could not plant
vineyards until you had a functioning,
you couldn't build a house, they had a functioning vineyard, irrigated vineyard, or
you were studying horses, which is not something I'm
familiar with. So, so we didn't do that. And
then, you know, back then it was about 15,000 an acre to plant.

(21:51):
And I'm like, wow, this is way more than I paid for the land.
And it was also 2004 when that huge glut hit I think when
Charles Shaw started actually because of all that extra juice and extra
grapes, the guy behind me didn't even pick 60 acres
as well. But the attraction, the point of this is the
attraction was that rural cowboy. You know, you had a

(22:13):
rodeo there still. You had a bowling alley, you know, a
tin sided bowling alley. And that was just really cool. And it
hasn't changed that much. I mean the restaurants have seemed to have improved a little
bit. And there's less thrift shops and you know, less cowboy stores.
But still carries that really cool vibe that I think
is attractive. Yeah, it's still, I mean it's still a

(22:35):
place where the cowboy hats that you see being worn out at restaurants and bars,
they're not being worn ironically like these are, those are probably on actual cowboys.
Like. So it, it, it's.
I, I do think that there is this helpful
overlay of. Of kind of
investment and youth

(22:58):
that the wine community has brought in. So
there's definitely a lot of people who've moved here. Paso has grown
in the 22 years I've been out here. 23 years I've been out here
from about 25000 people to about 40000 people. Oh
wow. And a lot of that has been brought in either directly by
wine or indirectly by the businesses that, that

(23:20):
are supported by wine. So the restaurants and the hotels and the
shops and all of that because I mean I remember the first time I spent
much time out here was, was in
1995 and there was like
30% vacancy in the storefronts downtown. It wasn't really
a destination to dine or to shop. If you

(23:41):
wanted a good meal, you went down to San Luis Obispo or you went over
to the coast. And that's really changed. And that's because of wine.
But it is still a rural area. Ranching is still a big deal.
And a lot of the, a lot of the, the grape growers are
former ranchers or, or current ranchers who have just dedicated
like 100 acres to grow grapes in addition to the cattle ranching

(24:05):
or the, the horse raising that they were already doing. So there's, there is
sort of a real western vibe to the place that's authentic.
The guy, the gentleman that owns Ancient Peaks was, he was a
well digger. Like that's what he does, right? That's his. Forgot his name now.
But interesting. It's an
interesting progression of things that have happened. Let's talk about business a little bit. You

(24:28):
said that half your. Well, I'M going to start with this, the Roan
Ranger side of this, and we'll get into the DTC and all that, but the
Roan Ranger side of this. I had a conversation going back to Armenia
with Vahe Kushgari. Have you ever heard this name, huh? And
so he said in my podcast, and I was out in Armenia, I shot this,
I had five, three days of a crew. It came out really cool. I was

(24:50):
really happy with the five interviews I did. But with him, he's
talking about before we got on camera, how
the group, I'm supposing your father would meet at his
restaurant in Berkeley. Code, the
code Divino. He goes, this, this is where it,
where the ideas were blossomed from. Are you familiar with that story? So I

(25:13):
had thought that the restaurant in Berkeley was called Laleem's.
That I know was where the original Rhone Rangers group got together. And that
was actually before Tablis Creek. That was, I think this was 86
or 87. That was headed up by Steve
Edmonds of Edmonds St. John, who was
based in Berkeley there. But it had Randall Graham and it had Bob

(25:35):
Lindquist and it had Fred Klein and it had. Those are the guys, Bill
Easton and like that original, that original group. And there were about a
dozen Roan kind of
enthusiasts who were making somehow Rhone
connected wines around California. So that was really the first
generation. And all of them were iconoclasts

(25:56):
and all of them were, they, they followed that like classic maxim
of they don't want to be a part of any club that would accept them.
So the, they like, they never really organized themselves very well.
And then there was sort of a, a period where everyone just went and did
their own thing. And then in the late 90s, there was a
push led by John McCready of Sierra Vista Winery up

(26:18):
in the Sierra foothills to actually like put
together an incorporated organization which was called the Rhone
Rangers. And those originals did end up
joining and there's a lot of them are still, of course, around and making great
wines, which is, which is super cool. But that second
wave included us and we've been

(26:40):
pretty active in it ever since then. I've served on the board of that organization
for almost 20 years. So I'm looking, I'm not looking
at the camera at this moment because I am looking at Vaja's. You're right, it's
La Liems and that was his restaurant. So cool. And
he is, he's a winemaker in Armenia now and he makes, actually had
made wine, Tuscany in Puglia and then he got the calling to go to his

(27:01):
roots and he makes a great sparkling wine. That's very reasonable. She met a
champagne called Kush. It's very popular in America actually.
So yeah, that was really. He told me that. I go, that's really.
Do you think there's value in this? And I mean this story.
We're going to talk about business. The industry's in a sort
of not, I'm not going to say it's a tailspin. I think that the naysayers

(27:23):
and all that doom and gloom is a little over exaggerated.
But you know, there is a consumption issue, there is a
generational issue that we're trying to figure out. And I'm wondering
this story, like no one would know this story. It's a cool story.
Is, is that where we're headed? Because if you're 50
DTC, that means 50 of yours, then is also

(27:46):
either three tier or, you know, tasting room
traffic. And I have this firm belief that
wine is going back to earlier days, sometimes the 70s, where it's
experiential, where you visited a winery and you remember that visit
forever and you join the club if there was one. And then
you, every time you get that box you think, oh, I remember that day we

(28:07):
went to Toss Creek is a.
Is Paso sensed some of this
downturn. And two, how about TLAs Creek and what are you doing about it?
Oh, lots of, lots of pieces to that question. So yes,
Paso is not immune to the broader trends.
I mean, Paso has seen, and I think

(28:31):
this is true in general of wine in California saw
whatever two generations of almost uninterrupted growth
which then got a further infusion of
energy in the aftermath of COVID when everybody was able
to finally get back out. We saw we had the best years we've ever had
in 21 and 22. And then if you look at

(28:52):
the trend, it sort of is gradually sloping up and then it was flattening. And
then you saw this huge spike right after Covid. Covid. And what you've seen is
basically that spike correcting. So
yeah, we saw traffic to Pasa Robles down a little bit in
23 and 24. It seems like it stabilized in 25.
I think we have, I recognize that

(29:16):
that was likely to be the case. And so we have
shifted some of our energy and our focus on
our marketing towards the half that we sell
in wholesale and export over the last couple of years. So we've been able to,
to make up the declines in traffic to the tasting room,
which haven't been. Hasn't been precipitous, but it's been off, like 4% each

(29:38):
of the last two years. We've been able to
make that up by working harder on the wholesale side of things. So that's one
of the reasons why I really like the model that
we have. So we don't have all of our eggs in a single basket. So
if there's a. If there's a channel that is struggling,
we don't have to feel like we're banging our head against a brick wall. We

(30:00):
can shift the. The focus that we have towards one of the other
channels that's. That's working a little better, offers a little more opportunity. But
no, Paso is not immune to it. There's certainly plenty of. Plenty of
wineries here who are seriously alarmed by
the fact that they sell everything out of their tasting room, and their tasting room
Traffic is off 15% compared to two years ago, and

(30:22):
costs are up. It's. It is. It's a period of correction, for sure, in.
In wine, but it's not. It's not a time where there aren't opportunities.
Also, you know, part of it. I hate to say it this way, but part
of it seems to be political as well. Now I'm
talking from my dtc, which we were the oldest wine club service in
America. You know, gone through all of the marketing methods and

(30:43):
changes through the 35 years I did it, plus this 15 years my
dad did, always started as a handshake in the early days, even
through 2007, I was doing trade shows where I shook the hand of that
customer, and that was a loyal customer that had a real conversation with me,
which would be sort of the equivalent to a tasting room conversation to join a
club, as long as they're enamored by the thought process.

(31:07):
But I started seeing our changes, and I
had to do marketing, increase the marketing costs, and I had to
change the cost basis of my cost of goods sold to stay,
to stay profitable and continue to try and grow
early, like 2015, I started to see a change. That's because I'm a
different world. I'm in a completely saturated

(31:30):
industry with every Internet company in the world trying to sell
wine. So I had a different set of pressures. But
2019 is where I. I thought 2019 was gonna be a miserable year.
And, you know, 2020 caught. You know,
caught up pretty quickly. And then, of course, I could do no wrong for 12
months. Yeah, there were a couple years where you didn't have to be. You didn't

(31:51):
have to be great to be successful. And if you were great, like you were
really successful. Yeah, well, the best part about it was during those years
I, whatever I bought, they would sell. I mean, whatever I sold, whatever I bought
would sell. And I could sell. I sold 140 balls 1 liter
Caymus when I couldn't. I would not sell a bottle. Literally,
if I did the same email post Covid, I would sell

(32:12):
five bottles instead of 50. You know, at $140 now it's
$90 even less. But I was, I was left
when the guy bought the company. I had almost 3,000 bottles of some pretty
premium stuff. So I got to keep it.
So we're drinking silver lining right there. Yeah, we're drinking pretty well right now. But
I'm just wondering if that, that because Napa's

(32:35):
worst. This is the part of the political I was talking about because of the
way California structures, labor laws and stuff I was
had. Was told and corroborated by other people
that the reason, part of the reason their taste room traffic is down like
40% in some cases. I'm talking about serious wineries that have serious
followings have seen a 40% drop in their

(32:57):
traffic in the taste rooms because the hotels, like
our regular hotel we stay at when we go to Napa is a thousand dollars,
right? No, I'm not going to spend a thousand bucks. And, and, but they're
running with like 30% occupancy and apparently it's because
they can get a skeleton crew much cheaper than a full time
crew and, and live with 30 occupancy and not have to pay

(33:20):
all the extra costs to, to a full time crew. And I thought, well, that's
really an interesting result of some of the movement that have
been made here politically. And it's not a political show, but I'm just,
you know, a winery that's. That survives like you said in Paso
on his taste room traffic and they're off 40%. That's pretty hard to overcome in
our industry. Yeah, it is for sure. And I, I think I'm

(33:43):
my, my feeling and I studied economics as an undergrad that if that is, if
there are hotels that are actually doing that, there are going to be other hotels
who are looking at that and be like, well, there's very little that's more fungible
than an unused hotel room night. Like, I mean
that is you, you never have a chance to get that money back. So I
would think that that will at least in the long run, push prices

(34:04):
down. But Napa is a lot more dependent upon international
travel, which is, which is definitely down than Paso Robles is. Most
visitors to Paso are domestic.
And it's a, it's a, it's a region which has seen the most,
the, the most, the highest run up in prices, the most premium. Premiumization.
Like there's sort of been a race to see who can have the, the most

(34:27):
expensive wine. And I mean that, that, that limits and limits
and limits your potential audience. And one of the things I love about Paso is
that there are lots of great wines made in PASO in the whatever 20 to
30 range. That's hard to find in Napa. It's
hard to find in Sonoma. It's hard to find even in Santa Barbara. But it's
one of the advantages I think that we have here in Paso is a little

(34:49):
broader range and it's still affordable.
And a bunch of new hotels too, which is nice. 3 hours from
LA. You can jump in and I have a trip planned.
Planning a trip to get back up there and do some podcasting, etc.
I will say I almost bought that bowling alley. I
don't think it's open right now, but. No, I wish you had bought the bowling

(35:10):
alley. I miss it. I'm a, I'm a bowling game
junkie. I don't bowl much. I don't, you know, the sport's fine,
but I'm a bowling game junkie. Video games, the old ball bowlers that we
as kids we would use at the bowling alleys. I have a video game, two
video games in my home. I just love the, the
fiberglass chairs and the long neck buds. I just think this

(35:32):
is so American. And I wish, I wish you would.
It's. I've talked to lots of people who, who miss it.
Building still there. I think it's still intact. You're just waiting for somebody to, who
wants to operate it so randomly. I was at an event a couple of years
ago, ran to a guy I hadn't talked to for 20 years probably,
and we were just talking real estate. He goes, yeah, I almost bought a bowling

(35:53):
alley in Paso. Go. Hey, you're probably against
me. Son of a gun. So
pretty interesting. So tell me, you know, I use the word
innovation in this and we are in Bordeaux not too
long ago and we went to a couple Chateau, obviously Chateau Bayou.
And what she's done there, her name is Veronique Sanders Van Beek. She's done

(36:15):
an incredible job of producing
an end user experience in a winery that is just really
cool to come To. And so that's, and I. You can call that
experiential innovation. So innovation for the experience
of the visitor. And Bordeaux is not known for that anyway. They've just barely coming
around to having open tasting rooms. But what would that mean to you

(36:37):
in your case? Would that be varietal experimentation,
innovation? Would that be blend innovation? That be just, just stay
on the course, I mean, as an innovation itself to staying the course and, and
bringing the industry back to this sort of not mysterious
but, you know, intellectual business.

(36:58):
So I don't think it would just be staying the course. That's, that's,
I don't, I don't think that's enough suicide.
I mean, we, there are a few areas in which we feel like we
have a lot of opportunities to innovate. One of them is the
varietal piece of things. We've introduced
nine different grape varieties to America.

(37:22):
We just bottled the last of those and we now have the full collection of
Chateauneuf du Pape grapes. So the last of those is Muscardin,
which is a super rare grape in, even in Chateauneuf.
But we've just put it into bottle on its own for the first time. We
now have the whole collection bottled as individual varietal bottlings. And
that's something that's really cool, we think is really cool. And some of the grapes,

(37:45):
like I can, after tasting them and getting to know them, I can understand why
they're rare grapes. Like, they're probably not a flavor profile that
is going to have super wide appeal. But there are others that seem
to have become rare through no fault of their.
The, the wine quality. Instead it was say, a susceptibility
to powdery mildew that led to getting pulled out in

(38:07):
France in a period where they couldn't deal with that and it never recovered, but
which makes amazing wines. And so we have
some grape varieties that, that really nowhere in the
world has the same diversity that we do. So I think
that's one area where we innovate. The other is,
or a second is on the farming side of things. We've been,

(38:29):
we, we've been organic since we started. We've been biodynamic increasingly over the
last 15 years and in 2020 became the first
regenerative, organic, certified vineyard in the world. And
so that is essentially an effort to create an
ecosystem within our farm unit that doesn't require
us to bring in inputs from the outside and produces fertility

(38:52):
naturally, produces weed control naturally, produces pest control naturally. It
includes a flock of 150 sheep that we use to graze the
vineyard. It has insectaries, it has beehives, it
has a couple hundred fruit trees interplanted. We're doing a lot of
experiments with COVID cropping, permanent cover, so
I think works. We're, we're doing a lot of innovation in that way, which first

(39:13):
of all provides a very, a great growing
environment to make really healthy and resilient and long lived and
characterful grapevines. But there's also a lot to see
if somebody comes to visit. People kind of understand the
idea of this, of this integrated ecology
and it's a, it's a fascinating thing to take people to see. And then

(39:36):
finally, the third area where I feel like we try to do a lot of
innovation is on the packaging side
where we did an internal audit and then we followed it up with an actual
greenhouse gas audit. And a lot of people are surprised to learn that
the glass bottle accounts for half the carbon footprint of the average
winery around the world. And so we've moved to

(39:58):
lightweight glass, which we're using in different ways.
We've moved to pouring most of our tasting room wines and
some of the wines we sell out in wholes into reusable stainless steel kegs.
We've started selling wine premium
wine in boxes. We've done the three liter
boxes of wine of our patenta

(40:20):
tables tier and we're expanding into a few estate wines in the last few years
and that's been a big success. So I feel like there's, there's sort
of three different ways that we think of, of our own, like what
frontiers can we push? And we've been, I feel like, rewarded
by pretty good attention and good response from consumers on all three.
That reminded me of a cartoon I just saw which was a guy with

(40:43):
his glass and he was putting it under the spigot of a box of wine.
And the woman says, no, that's not the refrigerator, that's, that's the box wine.
I saw that too. Well,
you know that. And I look those issues, I think, I personally think
some of those are just fringe issues. I had one winemaker tell me, you know
what glass is recycled sand. I'm like,

(41:05):
it's a pretty good point. Because what you're
explaining is innovation.
Because the idea for me, and I'm working on
a show for this and why I went to Armenia, which is
not what's in the bottle, which is the part that
is intimidating for people, at least the way the industry talks about

(41:28):
it. And Assam might talk about it and sometimes I find tasting room people
are a little overboard with that stuff to, to deliberately intimidate a
guest that you don't know what you're talking about. I know what I'm talking about.
I've seen it happen many times. Yeah, it's. That's super unhelpful. Yes,
it's. It's why it's in the bottle. The. The
story behind why it's in the bottle. Well, for you, for instance, you brought up

(41:49):
these rare. We wanted to show the world these rare
roan varietals that you don't see in America ever. I mean, it's probably like, you
know, 0.00% planted of this particular varietal in
America only. I mean, and even in many cases around the world. I mean,
we plant grapes that we're excited about, is called Picardon, and
that's a. That's a white grape, a high acid kind of lemony

(42:12):
white grape that is super delicious
but was susceptible to powdery mildew and so almost went extinct in France, we planted
half an acre at Tabless Creek and increased the world's total Picardin footprint by
40%. So. So it's not just that we're breaking new
ground for California. In some cases, we're putting things into bottle that haven't gone into
bottle on their own anywhere in the world in 100 years. Yeah.

(42:34):
So that's okay. But that's really cool. And it's really cool. Innovation.
Is that innovation for the broad market? I don't think so. And it doesn't have
to be. I'm not saying, I'm not being critical of that. I'm just saying that's
innovation in our trade that is going to bring a
lot of people to the table that understand what you're saying. Like, wow, I got
to taste this. Like, me versus

(42:56):
putting it in a can. And like, for instance, I noticed at this local market
here in, in Southern California, Hermosa beach, that the can section
has gone from like four gondolas down like a half a gondol.
And it's telling me that, yeah, I mean, can't wine in a can. Okay.
For certain occasions, I would never take it in my golf bag. I don't drink
wine on the golf course. But. But it didn't sound like

(43:18):
that. That's really, you know, the primary focus of
innovation that we need to be taking. We need to be looking at what
you're doing in order to stimulate the curiosity. Because
I don't think wine will ever, ever be out of that realm.
As the intellectual part of a meal and the curiosity as
to why it's in the bottle. I mean, I, I don't

(43:40):
disagree with that, but I don't think they're mutually exclusive either. I think
that there is room to innovate with
what's in the bottle, but I also think that there is room to innovate
in how it is packaged and how it's presented to people.
And, and the idea that like, you can only do one or you do one,
that means you can't do another is for me, that I don't think that's, of

(44:01):
course, I don't think that's accurate. It. Well, I did have one woman who's,
that's another. You know, sometimes I see these things, I go, dude,
you're, you're crazy. But who knows? You know, I've been
wrong on many occasions, so I don't take a position anymore. But she says,
oh, for sure, Chateau Lafite's going to be in a can one day.

(44:21):
I'm like, that's probably not going to happen. No, I mean, you have to understand
the limits of your package. I mean, same thing. We're not going to put our
esprita tablets in a box. Like the, the,
the, the thing about glass bo and, and
corks or different sorts of closures are that
they are really good at protecting a wine long term from

(44:42):
incursion of oxygen. And one of the great things about great wines is that they
age and they change and they evolve and they, they sort of are this
time capsule that you can share with other people and
enjoy and it brings you back to a, a, a, a different year and a
different place. And that's not, not something which you're going
to get in a can. It's not something that you're going to get in a

(45:04):
box. It's the root part of wine, though. I
think that that expression, that one woman put it to me, I've said this a
thousand times in the show. What other product can you take halfway around the world,
plop it on the table and just say who we are and when we were.
And how does that ever change the personality of a wine and the
cultural value of a glass of wine? How can that ever change? Yep.

(45:24):
No, I think that is one of the amazing things about wine. But the reality
is that what 95% of wines get
consumed within 48 hours of when they're purchased. So
that is, that is something that wine can do, but it isn't something which most
people are doing with wine or which most wines will do. So I
think there are, people have to understand the right,

(45:47):
the right sorts of wines that they're, they're looking at innovating with
in packaging. And it's not going to be the, the great wines
of the world, the collectible things that people are going to want to use as
those time capsules. But there's, again, there's room for, there's room for both in my
opinion. So I don't know if there's, there's certainly no
answer to the question. And I, and you've been around long enough to see the,

(46:08):
the cycles. My dad's shop, we had Bartles and James and
Lancers and Matuse and Boone's Farm and all the rest of it. And those things
are all gone. Then we had Barbels and James Spritzers and then those are gone.
And, and so there's going to be certain market driven
dynamics to the industry. But I don't, I just have this, I
guess this romantic belief that the

(46:29):
core value and the core reason for that
glass of wine will never change. And
you know, it's kind of interesting for me because that took me a long time
to figure that out. I mean, I did this, you know, I was a businessman.
I came from corporate America. Then I went into the smallest company I'd ever want
to try and work for. And then my dad was going to, to sell the
Wine of the Month Club to the South African Wine of the Month Club, which

(46:52):
is still around, and I went to work for him. And so for me it
was business. I was a direct marketer. I knew how to mail a million pieces
of mail a year. And I did that for probably 15 years before I
realized what I was selling to, who
I was selling it and why I was selling it and that, that,
that ethereal value of a glass of wine. Did you, did, did

(47:13):
that happen to you? Did you, you come into the business as a second
generation? Were you always going to be in the business or were you thinking, ah,
I want to be a, an economist. An economist.
So I did think in the long run I would end up in, in
wine. But I also didn't see myself
on the import side of things, which is what my dad was doing when I

(47:36):
was, when I was growing up. I didn't see myself buying and selling other people's
wines. Name of that company, sorry,
Vineyard Brands. Oh, oh, yes,
that hoss. Yeah. My dad was Robert Haas, who
Bear. Is one of my favorite guys, the first I ever met in my life
in the wine business. My dad took me to Hubert's table. He was pouring ports

(47:58):
at the time, Hubert Favre. And now
I remember. Wow. So, yeah, that was my dad, that
vineyard brands. Yeah. So I didn't see my brother had followed my
dad into that, that side of his career, and I didn't see myself
doing that. But I loved wine people and I got really
excited. I got to spend a summer living with the parents

(48:21):
when I was in high school, and I thought I was being sent there to
work on my French. I, I think my dad might have had some deeper
ambitions there. But, like,
seeing the way, like that their family interacted around the
table, like everybody involved in the family business,
arguing about wines, talking about their excitement with

(48:43):
the discoveries that they had made. Some people focusing on
vineyard, some people focusing on winemaking, some people focusing on business, some people focusing
on marketing. Like, I felt like that was a world
that I could sink my teeth into.
But I didn't want to go straight into a family business. Right out of school,
I, I, I got a master's degree in archeology.

(49:05):
I taught for a couple of years. Then I got recruited
to join a tech company. So I worked in tech for four years during
the kind of height of the tech bubble, late 90s, early 2000s.
And that was sort of where I got a chance to learn a lot about
business because I joined this little tech startup where I was the seventh
employee. And by the time I left four years later, we had 80 employees and

(49:29):
offices in six cities. And I'd gotten a chance to manage people and manage
projects and write and teach and market and, and make mistakes
and learn from those mistakes. So when I
did rejoin, whatever, when I did join Tublas Greek, rejoined the
family family business, I was 29. And I'd had a
little bit of life experience and some business experience, which I think was really

(49:51):
important because I used the
lessons from that, that, the experience of
seeing that tech company grow and eventually go bankrupt. Like,
I use those lessons maybe not every
day, but definitely every week. Sure. And I'm grateful to have
had that kind of outside experience. I can't tell you when

(50:13):
I, I had a small software company as well, the five of us. I
left, I tell a story frequently, and then we're going to be, we're out of
time here. But I left that office probably four times
in the four years we were together looking for some check,
either deposit or a payment on an installed piece of software
to make payroll. And I would never trade that experience

(50:35):
for anything, nor would I trade my corporate America sales Training for anything.
And it all has its merit. And
then you land in the wine business and you realize none of it applies to
anything. It applies to this little
slice of what we do. Anyway, it's been a
huge pleasure. Just your last comment triggered a bunch of questions. We don't

(50:57):
have time for them. But. But I will be up one day soon and love
to visit Tablis Creek and sit down and do it again. I
would love to. And if I can give a little plug. One of the things
we were talking about earlier was
the ways in which wine can be marketed together.
One of the initiatives that we've just started is something

(51:19):
which is called the Wine Atlas Collective, where
we've gotten together with seven other wineries,
each from different regions, wine regions around California and around the United States
to do this kind of shared wine club experience
where people are a member of one, they're a member of all of
them. And I think this is something which

(51:42):
when it was originally pitched to me by Janie Hook of
Brooks Winery up in Oregon,
that seemed to me to be like a real leap
forward, something that I had not heard about people doing before.
A way of, I mean you think of like the airlines that
have the alliances that allow, that encourage people to, to stay

(52:04):
within that network to get benefits. And I think it's
something which we're going to be, we're going to be building
on and I think you're also going to be seeing more of it to
help kind of bring people from a related.
Like we know that they have interest, they're interested in wine clubs, they're interested in
wine, they're just from other parts of the country to share

(52:26):
benefits and share members around. So that's something
I think that's brilliant. And I don't know if I just heard this, I'll
dovetail off of something real fast here. But certainly
it sort of that idea supports the. Let me back
up. The idea that a winery had its own wine club was a very specific
and important reason and that is I get to experience Tablis

(52:49):
Creek every time I get my box, which is, is, which is I think the
foundation of wine clubs. When my Wine of the month club in 1988,
there were only five winery based wine clubs and they were the main brands like,
like Sebastiani and Engelook and those are the only guys that had
clubs. So the idea of direct the consumer wasn't even really. My dad kind of
invented it. But now I think that's a really valid and

(53:10):
really smart because not that the reason
you joined Tablets Creek Wine Club doesn't exist still.
But. But there is also a movement of. I'm
not sure this. Well, I'll reserve my thoughts for some other
time but you're able to get on a website
with the. And hand off the shopping cart to a friend

(53:33):
and let them load it up as well and put a ship different shipping
address and however you check out with those versions there's two or
three of these pieces of software out there that are bolt ons to Shopify right
now that I wasn't sure the
incremental value of that. But I can see with their. Your idea that
if it's across platforms and across wineries and I can put a half a

(53:55):
box of Tablas Creek and a half a box of something else from a different
part of California. I think that's got a lot of teeth.
Yeah. So it's, it's just getting off the ground at the moment. It's.
It's really just if you are in an area you get
treated as a member when you go to visit one of the other wineries in
the collective. And then we're going to be rolling out the E commerce side of

(54:17):
things this, this fall. So that's coming. But for now
it's. It's a sort of a built in referral network with. With
perks. No, I like it. And there's a huge eotourism movement
right now. Like we. I took my big
mouth. You know, we've been to Monaco Grand Prix for three times.
It's just one of the greatest experiences you could ever have. And it is not

(54:39):
as expensive as it sounds because the entertainment value is off the charts.
So it was a once in a lifetime thing. I've done three times already. So
the last time, the last time we went out, which was May 2024,
I told a bunch of friends because they'd all said no. They're like no, we're
not going to go, it's too expensive. I'm like okay, great. So I'll ask you
anyway and you won't go. Well, I'm sorry. Five other couples

(55:00):
said yes. So all of a sudden I was. And I wanted to go touring.
I wanted to go to Piemonte, I wanted to go to Bordeaux, I want to
go to Paris, I wanted to do my wine thing. So I was
towing around 10 other people besides my wife and I and
I realized when we were done this was a pure, you know, tourist thing
that. And they were flabbergasted and had so

(55:22):
much fun doing it. And so I can see now this. That the value of
this idea, like, it's like a reciprocal country club,
right? If I play. If I go on the lakeside, I can go play whatever
in Florida if I want. Exactly. Really Cool. All right. We'll leave it
at that and we'll get together next time.

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