I am halfway through Gerard Bertrands new book: "Multidimensional Wine" and realize it is a must read for wine professionals and novices alike..get it here:
https://academieduvinlibrary.com/products/multidimensional-wine
Gerard Bertrand had not been in Los Angeles for a few years. He comes every 4-5 years to put on a Master Class of the wines of the Provence. You see, he has been a major force in bringing the wines from the South of France to the notice of the wine world. He farms biodynamicaly but keeps his ear to the ground as to what the market place is asking for. I was fortunate enough to catch him with a spare 40 minutes before he was on-stage exposing the virtues of his families heritage.
In this episode of "Wine Talks," host Paul K sits down with renowned French winemaker Gerard Bertrand to explore the philosophy, cultural significance, and future of wine. Bertrand shares insightful stories about growing up in the family wine business and the vital lessons he learned from his father, emphasizing wine as a multi-generational pursuit fueled by passion and patience. The conversation delves into the unique relationship between wine, terroir, and vintage—with Bertrand arguing that good winemaking is about capturing the “footprint of the vintage” and channeling the land’s unique character into every bottle.
A significant portion of the discussion centers on biodynamic farming, which has dramatically increased soil vitality at Bertrand’s wineries and, in his view, has the potential to lead agriculture toward greater biodiversity and planetary health. The pair also reflect on wine’s profound connection to spirituality and cultural identity, exploring how wine brings people together in a shared experience like no other beverage can.
Finally, the episode touches on the challenges and opportunities for wine in a changing world, from shifting generational tastes to the power of storytelling and experiential marketing. Bertrand concludes with optimism, viewing wine as an enduring conduit for connection, culture, and even diplomacy.
One particularly memorable anecdote from Bertrand is his explanation of how biodynamic farming changed the life in his vineyards. He shares a study showing that conventional farming fosters about 1,000 links between microorganisms and bacteria in soil, but biodynamic farming boosts this number to an astonishing 47,000. This, combined with observing new life forms like armadillos returning to the vineyard, affirmed for Bertrand that his approach was truly revitalizing nature. He jokes that while he owns sophisticated books on biodynamics—like Rudolf Steiner’s—he still finds them hard to understand completely, but he follows the principles because he sees the results in the harmony and vitality of his soil and vines.
#WineTalks
#GerardBertrand
#BiodynamicWine
#WinePhilosophy
#SustainableWine
#SouthOfFranceWines
#WineCulture
#WinemakingJourney
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Purchasing wine is an emotional experience and
controlling people's emotions is more of the realm that
you're going into, and that's storytelling. So I would say that
I think if you are trying to pull a lever,
pull a heartstring in someone, I think storytelling
is. It sounds almost religious to be preaching
(00:22):
storytelling. I think at the end of the day, that's what you want
to do. At the end of the day is enjoy a great story.
And if your bottle is a story you can look
forward to, that's actually the most beautiful thing. Sit
back and grab a glass. It's Wine Talks with
Paul Kay. Hey, welcome to Wine
(00:44):
Talks with Paul Kay. And we are in studio today in beautiful Southern California
about to have a conversation with the famed co founder of Wine Folly,
Madeline Puckett. Depending on how you say it. Hey, I want to
just introduce something really quick along the road of this wine
tasting and. And wine business. I've stumbled across so many
aspiring stories of immigration to the US that I start
(01:05):
a new podcast. The first release is coming out in a few days and that
is called the Song of America, which is the title of a book by man
named George Mardi in one of the famed restaurant tours of San Francisco
in the 50s. I borrowed his name, of course, with the
permission of his family to start the show and start talking about some of
these inspirational stories of people that have come to America with a
(01:27):
dream and accomplished that dream, whether financial, political, social, or
whatever your measure of success is. So have a listen to that coming out. But
not why we are here. Here to talk to Madeline. How are you this
morning? I'm great. Yeah. You know, I. Here's the
first question I wrote on my, my iPad here. Who are you?
Who. No, and I say that, I said
(01:49):
it's so tongue in cheek because you. Wine Folly, which is
incredible name for a wine education site,
started in 2011, you just kind of burst onto the scene.
Yeah, I kind of did. I. I got. I'd become a certified sommelier
at that point. I was working in restaurants and I felt like there was a
difference between my level of knowledge and the customer's level of knowledge. And I was
(02:13):
like, what? It. There was more information on the Internet
that was fun to look up because wine is fun.
I think more people would like wine and more people would know how to
ask for what they want. And so that's why we started Wine Folly
was as an adventure into wine. You know,
let's dig right into that subject because it's
(02:35):
become, in my opinion, pertinent and Controversial because
I think it's always been that way. In fact, this patch right here,
which is from the 70s, it's called Les Amid Event. As you would know, it
means the Friends of Wine. And it was a wine education
group throughout the country, 150 chapters. And if
you owned a wine shop or a restaurant, you could join it and start your
(02:58):
chapter. This is my father's chapter. And it was
exactly that, but it was, it was an experiential version of that, where
you got the dinner for dinner, you got together and heard Robert Mondavi speak.
So I think that this idea of wine education is critical for the
ongoing support of our industry.
(03:18):
I couldn't agree more. And I think what
happened was when I was starting to create this content
and write about wine and create visual
infographics and maps and that kind of a thing,
we hadn't really wine writing
or wine communication was, was, was a writ. It was the
(03:40):
written word. It was in a book, it was in a magazine. It was.
There were some, there was actually some good wine blogs around at the
time, but they weren't communicating in a way that was
relevant to the everyday person. Like,
what could you find a trader? What. Like what could you find at Trader Joe's
or Safeway that is
(04:02):
palatable and delicious and help me find the wine that I'm looking
for? And so I kind of started writing about
the things that were in everyone's sort of
purview, so they had some kind of a way to get into
wine. And I, as a graphic designer, I have a
degree in fine art and actually music technology,
(04:24):
so time based editing and that kind of a thing. And I
was starting, I wasn't really a great writer,
not at the time. And I was thinking,
well, I know how to draw and I can make visual,
informational, graphical things
(04:44):
and help people get into wine. So I launched a few infographics and
one we posted up on Facebook and by
the second day we had figured out where we would get it printed
and we had a little ebay link to sell it as a poster because I
had made it poster shaped basically. And that was
the start of, from the brand, which had started as
(05:07):
this like simple, fun thing to like, oh my goodness, people are actually
willing to pay for this fun
educational content. And that completely transformed what we
were intending the business to be. So do you think
that that enthusiasm in general
has grown or it's sort of relative to the
(05:29):
generations and we're all talking about millennials and Gen Z's and whatever letter
we're on that, you know, there's a whole different propensity
towards fine wine and there's white claw and also
nice things out there on the marketplace and. But I'm
wondering, you see a relative increase in people
that are, want to learn, they want to
(05:51):
understand that, want at least what, have a better experience when they go to a
restaurant, look at a menu. So I would call, I would classify myself
as a millennial elder. Maybe
I'm a comedian, but that's, that was my
generation. Essentially we're the millennial group. So we were the people who were putting
all the things online. They were starting to do things online, we were
(06:13):
living online. And the group beyond the
group passed me the Z's, the lennials, Gen Z, whatever you want to call
them. These folks have grown up with the Internet
as always in the background. We were sort of this
transitional generation that had phones that you would pick up and call
people. And then we learned how to use the Internet. And the early adopters, I
(06:35):
was part of the early adopter group. I super nerded out about
computers and technology and stuff because my dad was, he was an
engineer. And this, this group sort
of built the foundation of the Internet and the Z's came and they
lived in it. This was their home. There wasn't a world without
it. And so they use the Internet in a very different way
(06:57):
and they use it as a connecting tool, as a
discovery tool. And they, they
don't. Especially now with AI, there's not a need
to think like a computer in order to find what you're looking
for. You can just have a thought and then answers or stuff
will fly your way, options will come your way and it's this wealth
(07:19):
of over information actually. So you kind of try
to find the groups that you love and are interested in
or that speak to you in a way that you can connect to. And so
social media networks were really the rise after the
basic Internet, the social media networks and the.
I had, I had the opportunity to hang out with a group of Gen
(07:41):
Z people speaking at a wine conference, being frustrated
with the amount of, of over
explaining and too much. And it
reminded me of the same kind of feelings that I felt when I was
getting into wine that, oh, we can't talk about sweetness because
it's, it's, it's not something that's determined,
(08:04):
deterministic in the wine. A Malbec isn't dry. It depends
on what the winemaker does, you know. Yeah, right.
So, so now I'm trying to go, well, is it Sweet or is it dry?
I just want to buy a dry Malbec. How do I do that? And that's
the kind of questions we're starting to see, again, the kinds
of sort of basic wine understanding, like how many
(08:25):
calories does a glass of Sauvignon Blanc have
in it? And that's an important question when you're young and
you're concerned about, you know, getting a hot
date and having a good time out there in the world. Don't sell us
old guys short. You know, we're looking for no kidding.
You know, maybe you want a, a Sauvignon Blanc, then
(08:48):
perhaps dried Sauvignon Blanc, you know, with just a
90 calories, you know, a glass, you know, if it's, if it's
dry. So I would say that these onboarding
questions are just as important, if not more important,
and to, to take them seriously and legitimately,
because the one thing these have over the millennials is
(09:10):
they're smart. Well, millennials are smart, too, but they
really know how to seek information, and they have a good sense of what
bad information is. So generally speaking, because they've grown up
with a world of fake news, surrounded by fake news in every, you
know, way, shape, or form. So they really want to get to the bottom
of something, and they want a good summary of, of what that means, and they're
(09:33):
trying to find their way into wine. At least this is
my opinion. And I think brands that are connecting to
the Z's are focusing on
the hero's story. There's maybe an outstanding
winemaker that's able to connect, you know, of any age, right.
That is authentic in who they are, and that is a strong
(09:56):
connection piece for someone who's just getting into wine right
now. You know, that's very interesting
because in my opinion, that really hasn't changed anything.
Certainly the delivery of the information has changed radically. And this is more
accessible. And I use AI every day to ask questions. So
you're right. The baseline of where we get information from. And you know,
(10:19):
what I had to use now, I had a computer that, that had
a operating system called cpm. Okay? It predates
dos and it still works. But the point is, you
know, the more that baseline grows and that your access to information
grows and generationally, then you can process more
and deal with more. And it's, it's, you know, rather voluminous at this stage.
(10:41):
But it doesn't seem to change the narrative that I'm seeking
some experience, some story. I want to understand wine.
And because there's this consumption drop right now and there's
this, you know, non alk awareness and low alk
and you know, man, we went to the fancy food show at
Vegas last year and one of the prevailing themes for
(11:03):
beverages was non alk. And that like most of it was undrinkable. But it
is a, it is a blip I think in the radar of
consumption. But yet what you said is right on it. But it hasn't
really changed this idea that fine wine, the story of wine is
what we're seeking, it's just the delivery of it. And so I'm
wondering because of this consumption drop if you think that
(11:24):
there's a percentage less of people in the generation,
Gen Z's or whatever generations are coming up in
the appreciation of it or they're going to come around one of these days to
this idea. I, I, to be
where the people are is
maybe the number one thing to do
(11:46):
is to be where those conversations are
happening, whether it's on TikTok or
Instagram, to be present there and
to be part of that community I think is very important
because like you said it's, it's not, nothing's changed
really foundationally nothing's changed. It's just the delivery method
(12:09):
that has changed and, and also the
expectation of availability. I can go
and I think there's this, this model now
where I can't go to the store and find what I'm looking
for. I have to find it online now because
it's so difficult to just, you can't just walk out the door and go find
(12:31):
the thing. So you have this audience that has
a built in expectation that DTC is how they get
what they really want, which is very powerful for brands that
build direct to consumer models. And so that I think
that is maybe the, like you said,
it's the same story always. We need some onboarding
(12:54):
mechanisms. We need to answer these questions. We need to help people find what
they love and we need to love all the things that they love.
I hear a lot of, you know, in the fine wine
market this looking to what's
popular and then everything else is garbage.
Right? And that's not true. There is excellent
(13:15):
examples of sweet wines that are aged in
Solaris for nearly 100 years, right? And
you can buy them DTC for
around $40 a bottle, which is obscene.
Like that is an obscene value when you think of the
work and the time that went into producing this exceptional wine
(13:38):
with this exceptional story. So those stories
are still valuable and valid
and I think we're going to find that potentially future
generations are gonna have a palate shift. Right.
They've grown up accessing
kombucha and absolutely sugar
(14:00):
free, like sparkling flavored sparkling waters.
So they've grown up with different things as
part of their purview than my generation. And
your generation, like a kombucha would be like, oh, this is
bad. I've had biodynamic wine. It tastes like
kombucha. Well, there you go. Who
(14:22):
do you think it's for? Well, I think I, I think that's the,
the again, it's not a novel thing anymore. Every generation's had
that entree into the industry. My dad, you know, stopped at Sutter
home in 1974 and talked to Bob Trincaro and he didn't know what to do
with this, you know, a shiner of, of white, of pink wine. And
so I think every generation's had that. My dad's wine shop had Bartles and James
(14:44):
and all those kinds of coolers. But it's interesting that
you said about the DTC side because I just had an interesting conversation this morning
with the woman in Ireland who's working on European dtc.
And when, when we were running the shop and wasn't only two years
ago, and we had, we had Amazon and we had, I had
put all this time and effort to pump my whole entire inventory, you know,
(15:06):
Grand Cru, Burgundies, Bordeaux Classified Growth. And all
they bought for me on Amazon was Stella Rosa.
And, and that's, and that's kind of interesting because it's. What you're saying, it's
kind of moving away from that because they got, you can't go to the store
these days unless you have a fine wine shop in your neighborhood and find something
interesting. And so now they're looking online finally
(15:28):
to find interesting wines that they can share and tell a story
about. But not that long ago, it was the type of buyer
on Amazon that knew what they wanted.
They were willing to pay me 30% more than what they could get it
at Target for because it was convenient.
And what you're saying now is we're going to, we can find Solaris style, you
(15:50):
know, Maderas and things online and know what they are
and tell that story. Yeah, you can use that as an
opportunity. Suddenly you're suddenly just making the
wine and giving it to your distributor is not enough.
The product has to have this deep story
associated to it in order to be considered great. We're used to
(16:12):
looking at an incredible amount of metadata, like when you
look up a car, you're like, well, what's it, 60, 0 to 60?
Like that's the thing. How Earth powers does it have?
What's the, you know, like all the little details? We are
like meta information people. There's an expectation that that's
there foundationally. And so when your wine
(16:34):
goes to market, it needs to come with it. All this
media, like maybe even a video with the winemaker talking
about what that vintage was like this year and what they
was like making the wine. And then that gets shared
out into the world whether it's on Instagram or on TikTok
or whatever. But that's your story. And you have just like a
(16:56):
winery has to continue to tell their story. Every single
time someone walks in to the wine,
their, their winery. That story is the same story
that needs to get told continually to the, an online,
to a digital first audience. And it's funny
because I think I've been saying this for at least a
(17:19):
decade and it's only now
starting to hit different because of this
downturn in the sales. But the downturn of
sales that we've seen is predominantly high
volume wines. It's not, it's, it's
not the wines that we're thinking about. These independent
(17:41):
producers, independent producers are definitely having a difficult time right now. And I want
to respect that. That's a legitimate issue.
But it's because this like large volume market
of, of of basic grocery
store wine is not getting sold. We have like xx
inventory and that kind of a thing. I think that a
(18:03):
correction, we haven't seen a correction really in
the US marketplace since the wine, since wine
started to become interesting. Not a correction like this. There certainly
have been in changes that we've observed,
but this is a, this is a real correction in the wine marketplace.
And I think it's gotten everybody to like get a
(18:26):
little bit more serious and step up and consider
their marketing strategies a little bit more
seriously, you know, because you can't
just go home and play in your vineyard
anymore and make one and have a great vintage and get it all
sold. It's, it's, it's a real, it's, it's a challenge. It's, it's
(18:48):
looking a lot like other farming and agricultural industries
right now, you know, which suggests a
surplus situation. It's an interesting problem.
You nailed it on the head
for one. If you start a winery and you and I know how difficult that
is and how, you know, how the margins suck and all that,
(19:12):
you want to make money even if it's just a hobby. If you made your
money as a surgeon or government contractor and you went to Napa, you bought
your plateau. Eventually you hope that you can pick the Grace fermented bottle and
sell it and make money at it. And. And you're
subject to the agricultural whims of the world. I mean, there's.
You have to be five years out minimum to think about having a vineyard. And
(19:34):
how do you Predict consumption in 5 years? What
you had just identified would maybe think about this is if we're a
boutique winery, a Bordeaux house, a Burgundy house or Napa house, we're trying to get
our name told. We need to have this
story out there and we need to use
dtc because on the other side of the fence, where the
(19:55):
traditional methods of marketing were, the distributors, they're all
consolidating. And the boutique guys that used to be able to
handle some of these smaller brands and make the sales calls, they're not around
anymore. They've been gobbled up. And now the Southern has a book, you know,
2 inches thick and in RNDC, etc. And so you're
sort of in this. And I think that you're talking about is this metamorphosis of
(20:16):
the industry is changing right now
because of these two sort of opposing forces of what we're
doing. Let's not forget how much regulation
puts a damper on any good ideas. Yeah, that's
true. And it's really
tragic. If you're doing DTC as a
(20:40):
winery just to be able to ship your wine legally
to a state where somebody bought it, you
have to have like thousands and thousands of dollars of permits
that you pay every year just to have the right to maybe sell
six bottles in that district. You know, so it's
untenable for producers, independent producers, to. To try
(21:02):
to actually make a difference. And they need to. And
so therefore, they have to work with
interesting creative retailer models that
maybe solve that problem so they can get their path to market. You
know, I. I'm observing the meteoric rise
of Last Bottle, you know, right
(21:23):
now being like, everyone's scared about the
market right now, but Last Bottle is booming and
they're like buying up everyone and
everything right now. It seems like every other day in the news there's something
about an acquisition. So I'm like, look at who's
being successful right now and learn
(21:45):
something from them. I've seen some really fascinating beverage
companies, and I'll reference Erica Ducey because she did
the research and she's actually interviewed these people and
she Found a wine, a wine
brand that was baked basically in a juice box and it was kind
of a flavored, fun sort of cocktail
(22:08):
beverage, wine type of thing. And it
great success in a juice box because what you can take that
to a music show, you know, no
glass on the beach, that kind of a thing. So
some of these brands are being creative in how they're packaging
and their path to market in terms of their, their
(22:30):
branding, that kind of a thing, or even the product itself.
I think the juice box brand, depending on what state
they're in, they'll either be malt based, wine based or liquor
based because of the regulatory issues. And
that's pretty clever. It's depressing, but it
is pretty clever and it is contributing to their success.
(22:53):
Let's, let's delve into that depressing. What do you say that?
Well, I've looked at, you know, I'm a nerd, so I've looked at all the
regulation sort of around the TTB and there's
definitely a propensity to being a beer brand in
terms of the taxing. I wish that,
I wish that all beverages were created equal in terms of if
(23:16):
your alcohol level was a certain alcohol level, you were
taxed based on the alcohol level and not the type of alcohol
that it is. But because beer is treated separately
to wine, is treated separately to spirits, they're taxed
in totally different models. And I think it's not fair.
Do you think that's changing? Do you think that ever a chance error in the
(23:39):
world, Free the Grapes and all the other organizations that have come through this
on, changing on this. And by the way, you've touched on so many subjects
that I can't even decide which one to go with. But you
know the, everybody's got this, even Amazon, you know, there was this
whole idea that they were going to throw millions and millions of dollars to getting
the feds to change their mind. I just don't see that bureaucracy
(24:00):
changing relatively any soon. It's not even a word
really. If you wanted to do something in the next four years might actually
be the time. I've seen a lot of things go down in the last couple
of days. It's kind of, it's kind of
nutty. You know, it's funny, you're talking about the story and
innovation for one. So my romantic
(24:20):
view of wine and this didn't come around until
later in my career in this industry. For me it was business. I bought it
from my dad. You know, we taste on Tuesdays, let's sell some
Wine. But this, you know, visiting the, the
world's regions of wine and having these conversations with amazing people,
you know, has sort of led me down this path of the, the romantic side
(24:42):
of wine and the, the ethereal value of a glass of wine and the human
value of a glass of wine. And so I'm sort of, when you said
depressing, depressed at these ideas of
fruit flavors and tetra packs and can linings
and that just takes away from the romantic side of wine. But
certainly, you know, kudos to the people that can sell millions
(25:03):
of bottles or millions of tetra packs of, of. Wine,
Millions of tetra packs. But you know, there was a, somebody on Facebook the other
day posted that they were at Wine Paris and they were talking to this guy
and he had sold 24 million cans of some peach flavored
fermented grape juice. And I go, wow, that's, you
know, congratulations on the number. But oh my goodness, I guess
(25:25):
that's the entry level stuff, right? That's what we need.
I think you hit it on the head. We need some entry level stuff for
the kids and we need to, and, and then they can get to the
fine bottled wines with corks in them. But they, but
we all, I should say we all. There's 1 in
5, 4 in 5 of us still romanticize
(25:49):
bottles and this experience of wine
and we want to get into it and we're very intimidated. It's a long
path to learning. So it, and where do we
start? So where do we start investing
in that? That right now is very exciting
to me and it's, and I have to say I was worried
(26:12):
that wine folly was going to become
irrelevant. You know, everyone's already
learned everything and you know, around the time 2020,
2021 rolled around, I was like, there's so much
information out there. Am I valid? Does it even matter if I keep
doing this anymore? And I think it was like the beginning of
(26:34):
this year, towards the end of last year, I saw
a change that inspired me to be like,
no, don't stop.
Congratulations. This is, this is, this is
a necessary thing. We have an entire generation
of half of the Z's. Gen Z
(26:54):
have some percentage of the Gen Z. I think it's less than
half, is not even 21 yet in the United
States and that means they can't even legally drink.
So we got a little bit of time.
And I think this transition, you know, landing on the other side of
this transition is, is going to require staying the
(27:18):
course because I, I don't think that the, the Romanticism or the
value of that glass of wine will ever change. It hasn't changed in thousands and
thousands of years. And that every generation comes around,
some later than others, to understand that, you know, when you're. I don't know about
you, but I think about what I'm gonna have when I get home.
Not what I'm gonna eat, but what I want to drink.
(27:40):
And it's not because of the 14 alcohol. It's because I want
to feel something. And that's just from years and
years of experience. And I think everybody has that. You know, I had
this interesting conversation yesterday. A guy named Chad Ludington.
I don't know if you know who he is. Complete academic. Complete
academic on wine, incredible historian on wine. But
(28:03):
he talked about a professor, and I forgot the university
that can. That can articulate
why our palette will
grow. After you start drinking
Apothec red or Josh, whatever you're drinking, and you
get bored of that simple style, and you
(28:24):
start to seek complexity, acid, balance, structure, all the things that
we. We appreciate. And I wait for him to tell. Send me the
article, because it's quantifiable
change in your palate to. To lean towards that. I think
that's part of what the. The value of a glass of wine is.
So leading to the. Go ahead. But why did I start loving
(28:46):
Riesling? And now I love Riesling again. Was it always?
I'll have to read the article. I don't know.
I feel like. I feel like. You're right. It did. Your palate does
change. Absolutely. Oh, my wife is my biggest
critic, and when we got married, she drank, you know, Gallo
rind wine, and. And now I can't get, you know,
(29:09):
Syrah past her because she knows immediately what I'm trying to fool her into,
because I wanted to appreciate those things. But no, it's. It's Bordeaux
Ridle, man. That's what. That's what I have to serve. Oh, no, you're
stuck. So let's go back to the marketing side of this, because you.
I'm gonna say something tongue in cheek, and it's. It's kind of funny, actually. I
was looking for an email I sent you in 2013.
(29:32):
So you're only into this for two years at this point, and
not sure where you were at in the cycle, but probably, obviously the very
beginning of learning to educate customers. And I
said, you know, maybe we can work together. And. And you wrote back, like,
what?
Oh, my goodness. And I. I don't remember what I. If I responded.
(29:55):
I. You Know, was slammed at the time, and we were just, we were growing,
you know, 2,000 at that time. That's hilarious. We were about to hit our biggest
year a couple years later, and. Oh, my gosh. And yeah, I'm,
I'm. I'm not very good at email. I try to stay.
It wasn't a criticism. Funny
like this. This part of. Of the
(30:17):
industry now is what I think plagues a lot of people, and that's
the content generation and the, the marketing of. And they're not
marketeers. We're farmers, right? I mean, I'm not. I'm not. I'm a horrible farmer. But
in general, I start the wine business because I want to. I think I want
to be a farmer, and I think I want to be in that lifestyle. And
then now I have to go sell something, and this becomes more difficult.
(30:38):
And I think that one of the differences between market.
Even back in 2011, when you started, though, it was just
emerging. Certainly When I started
1989, there were very quantifiable,
definable campaigns. It wasn't a commitment to marketing. It was
a campaign. I would mail 300,000 pieces of mail, wait for the results,
(30:59):
refine that result, and then send out it again. Three times a year,
I run an ad in the newspaper and I'd put a promo code and then
they'd call and I'd know how. How that new ad did. That was a.
But it's not that way anymore. It's a commitment to the
strategy. There's. And the benefit of social networks marketing
and content marketing is you can start and stop anytime you want, but the moment
(31:21):
you stop is the moment that people stop paying attention and you can
start up again without any penalty.
And. But it's a commitment, not right. It's not a. You
don't campaign things anymore. You can still have
campaigns, but you do need that baseline. It's
kind of like going to the gym. You know, you got to stay
(31:43):
fit, so you're going to the gym and you're keeping that baseline
health taken care of. That's your baseline
content marketing. And so you got to be
consistent. That's the secret. Whatever you're doing, you're
consistent. But you can. Then you need to add campaigns on top
of that. So it is hard. It is hard. It is a huge
(32:05):
ask. I think that. I think it is a big
ask for sure. I think for small companies, you know,
the reason the YMF club, you know, I was fortunate enough to sell it.
And speaking of last bottle, you know, Alex was part of that conversation. Didn't
land in his plate though. But
with an on staff digital designer, et cetera, like
(32:28):
I told you, and the campaigns required and the commitments
to have content all the time. And then one of the
reasons my wife and I decided to sell after 35
years was. You said it already.
She goes, I don't want to process 38 tax returns next
quarter. So this is first quarter 2023. You know, March
(32:50):
31st was the end of it. And we're like, yeah, you're right. You know, the
overhead to carry everybody in this company for another three
months and then have to process 38 tax returns to get
through the regulations. Because we did our own compliance
and the overhead of these three marketeers,
we didn't see the light at the end of the tunnel at that point. It
(33:12):
had been a long good run, so we just decided to, to move on.
But this is hard. You know, those are
just those two subjects alone for a small winery
is ominous. That is extremely ominous.
Yeah, yeah. You need a partner. You need a partner
who can help you. Yeah. Which is interesting because
(33:35):
when I, when we merged the company with Global Wine Database, I
really wanted that technology, this database technology where
you can be a, like it's producer
controlled wine information. It's a product information management system. So
a winery can add their winery in and then they can add their
individual bottles of wine. And my hope was or is
(33:58):
still is, because we're building it, we already have multiple region guides,
is that if you learn about Bordeaux and you go to
Pomerol, the Pomerol section to learn about Pomerol, you
can see wineries and wines from Pomerol
and if that producer continues to add their wines in every vintage. Right.
That's part of your vin, your work. They'll continue to show
(34:20):
the, their current vintage of
the wine as a discovery model, as a learning discovery
model. And so that's what, that's the entire reason we, that's the
entire reason we, we have Wine Folly database now. It's the entire
reason we started Wine Folly plus is that
maybe a marketer needs to be the best at
(34:42):
communicating wine and then you have an opportunity
to get in front of that audience. And that was my hope for the future
was something where I could get the details,
the meta information about an area and see
all the wineries on a map. Like that was my dream. Just show me
all the wineries I just want to see and I don't want to be distracted
(35:03):
by other things. I actually want to focus on what's there because
maybe I'm having a glass of Pommel right now and I want to see where
that winery is and I want to see what other wineries around it because
maybe I want to buy more. That's really interesting. You
know, I had a, I did a video,
I went to a tasting with, you know, Don Schliff from Wine
(35:26):
Warehouse, used to be the one where he's probably one of the great port collections
in the world. Top five. Anyway, he does a tasting annually
here in Los Angeles and you know, the sucklings come and the Darrell Cordy comes
and all the famous people come. And I took a video of him
opening a bottle of vintage port with his custom
made red hot tongs. You know,
(35:48):
an old guy standing in front of a noisy bar
with no voiceover and no music. And I have over 4 and
a half million views on Tick Tock and like million and a half on Instagram.
That's awesome. And of course zero sales volume came from that.
None of the, you know, just an awareness. And I think this is part of
the, the conversation which was this, this overhead to producing this
(36:10):
stuff. And then virality really doesn't mean anything except that
people learn who you are and hopefully one day they buy something from you.
But you, I, I tell you, I've only been worried
a couple of times in my career of doing this when I saw
a new club, one of them was in the Wall Street Journal Club started and
I knew they had backing and it was, it was limestone and you know, that
(36:32):
was going to be big and they had the ability, they had a relationship with
their, with their, theoretically with their financial
clients. But the other one I thought was gonna, that, that, that
I was a little concerned about starting when, when it started was the Wine
Folly Club because we already had enough clubs in the
world. And I thought, wow, she's got a, you know, she's got a database and
(36:55):
she's got, people are following her. And what did you see when
you started a DTC company for
wine that you didn't expect or you know, and
I know you didn't you relaunch it or didn't you send it over? We had
a, we were, we've always been doing it with a joint, as a
joint venture with a retail partner. So we didn't have to
(37:16):
deal with the 38 fulfillment tax
returns because that isn't for our business
as untenable. So we had always structured it where we would pick
the wines and do all the wine education
associated to each club. And
was that that essentially is the model. And the club is
(37:38):
still really popular. It's.
It's interesting because why you
join a club is it. It really needs to
fit your price point. Like your
price point. And then wines. The wines that you want every month.
I don't know. I felt like it was
(38:01):
gonna really take off in a way
that I was super excited for. And
when it's still very popular, but it's not in the way that I was
hoping. I was hoping for problems of wine. Finding
enough wines. Right. And finding enough good
quality, small producer wines to actually fulfill the club.
(38:23):
Yeah. And when that didn't happen, I was like, this is not
the model right now. That's. This isn't what someone wants right
now. They don't want to be carried along in the club. And maybe that's the
change that's happened between
my generation, which is a club generation. Right. I
started a wine club. My dad bought me a wine club when I was 21.
(38:45):
Two bottles would come in every month. And when I was going to college
and. And those were the fanciest wines that I ever put in.
The fanciest anythings that I would put in my body in a month because I
was eating basically like brown rice and beans. And
then I would have these. Yeah. Top ramen and. And
coterone. And so, like, it was really. It was an
(39:07):
incredible experience. It helped pave the way and get me into wine.
Right. And so I thought that might be the
same with the younger generation, but I'm not sure.
I'm not sure. Maybe they have enough information that they want to go and discover
on their own and buy the things on their own and pick out what they
want. And then you see the rise of the
(39:28):
last bottle thing. And it's this idea, this storytelling they do
for every wine is so incredible. It's so much
detail. And you really become enamored with the wine even
before you even think about, like, you're just.
It's just casual. And then you be. You fall in love. And so
there's something there with that. Hey, it's a.
(39:51):
It's gonna sell out. There's only this many. It's a. It's on a super
sale. It's. When it's gone, it's gone. There's this
tension that gets built with this, like, I have to buy, otherwise
I miss out. It's fomo. Yeah. Generation. Those
things have come and gone a lot of times. I'm glad they're doing well. I
mean, Trader Joe's was founded on that same principle. You Know,
(40:13):
Trader Joe's success was not only their foodstuffs, but their, their wine. A guy
named Bob Bernie used to buy for them. And it was, they would tell you
in the, in the Fearless Flyer, we only have 2,000 bottles and we got 20
stores. So you figure you do the numbers and it's going to be gone. You
know, the Wine of the Month club, we peaked,
we peaked around 2,014 or 15
(40:35):
or something. And I had close to 18, 000 members.
Wow. And, you know, that's unheard of really these days
on a month, this is monthly, not just wines.
So. But we had that problem. And since you're talking about
segmentation of the people that are buying, we had that problem. You know, I'd have
to buy 1500 cases of one red and about 8,
(40:58):
7, 900 cases of white in a price point that
I could afford to sell for 12 or 13 a bottle. That became a problem.
But it's also founded on the idea that there was always something
around. And the other reason I got out was
that idea was, was starting to thin out because there were the last
(41:19):
bottles of the world and wine Access and I forgot the other
guy, guy on the east coast, you know, they were buying up some of these
allocations too, and some of these, these odd lots and so they're
hard to find. And I was finding myself going into Europe for, you
know, $2 a liter stuff and $1 liter stuff and just, you
know, not producing the wines that I really wanted to show the clients. So the
(41:40):
premise had changed considerably on what we were doing. But
yeah, at that point, going by, you're saying it's
completely price point driven. Yeah. And I, I think that was the problem is
like, I wanted to have, I wanted to, I want to, you know that our
club is a, you know, $120 a month. It's, yeah,
it' big, you know, expense and you do get
(42:03):
high quality wines. But if we wanted it to scale, like the
potential of going into this danger, period,
right now, it's the right size where we can, we can find really
incredible stuff from small producers and put it in the club and
be really stoked about it. But then it's, it, it's not
designed to scale, so it's not going to work. And so I, you
(42:26):
know, I. What do you do? Like, you want to, you want to help people
get into wines and you want to give them examples of great wines to try
that are in a price point that they can afford. And that's essentially what we
had. We were trying to do. I'm the club.
I think I'm not as excited about now. Since we've launched Wine
Folly plus, we've gotten so much more signal with
(42:47):
that. It's an online
platform. You log in, you access all of. You
know, we started selling posters, you access all of our infographics, you access all
of our maps in great detail, super
zoom level detail so you can learn and
discover these parts of the world. So right now, it's already an
(43:09):
incredible value at $100 a year. But we're continuing
to grow that product. You know, we have a product roadmap to continue
to offer and
additive features for Wine Folly plus members. And,
you know, I thought that our, I thought that
our wine club was going to grow at the rate that Wine Folly plus is
(43:32):
currently growing. I was expecting that, that people wanted
at the end of the day because they would always ask, why don't you just
include wine? Right? Why don't you just include wine? And so we're
like, all right, we'll do it. But I, I don't know that I need
to touch wine. I don't know that that's what I'm supposed to do. I think
my job is to touch everything but wine
(43:53):
and get you right to the front door and you can decide to go through
that door and find what you actually want to buy through the education,
through the like agnostic education, you
know, that we offer. So I think you're right on. I
can't tell you how many people, how many saw, particularly in
the retail side. Now you're talking about earlier part of our career and part of
(44:16):
wine. I mean, you know, Jim, Jim Barry used to come into my dad's wine
shop all the time. So that's how, how long ago we've been doing
this. But along the way,
watching retailers see our success.
And I tried retail. I've had probably four wine shops. None of them have
done really anything of any consequence. I think one year I made some
(44:38):
money, but
we were good at DTC. We are good at marketing. We. I sent
33 million emails my last full year. I, I produced 300
promo codes and 300, you know, graphics and
300 text for those graphics. And
that's what we did. And sometimes, particularly in our industry, because of
(44:59):
the rules and the regulations and the lousy margins, you know, and I
think that's one of the last bottles success. Their margins are good.
You know, I know how he buys. They're really good because there's so much distress.
Good quality distressed merchandise, not Distress and quality, distressed
and availability. We kind of have a distressed
period in the
(45:19):
2004-2007, maybe
2008 period where wine was really affordable. There was
lots of. From Australia that was like, wow, for the price,
it was really good. That's how I got into wine. That was the
era that I got into wine. And you're like, oh, God, that dates me. But
like. It'S true, though. It was
(45:41):
affordable. It's true. Yeah. So having affordable good
product is like the best onboarding
mechanism. It's such an emotional buy. You
know, I was in the market the other day with one of my social networkers.
Not the other day, a little while ago, but a woman I know, you
know, not by first name, but she knows who I am in the neighborhood. I
(46:03):
think I coached her kids in little league kind of thing. And she was looking.
She actually said, why? We're doing some social network videos in
the wine aisle at the supermarket. And I. I go, what? What are you
looking for? She goes, something other than what I usually drink. I go, what do
you usually drink? She said, rodney Strong. I said, well, but here's some
stuff that's kind of like that, that's different that you may want to try. And
(46:24):
it's such an. She knows who I am. She knows I've been in this business
for a long time. I sell wine. And whatever. She didn't.
She left. And I think she came back later when I wasn't there, because
it's such an emotional purchase. Despite the fact
that. That, you know, you're recommending the wines, they. To
make that decision. It's so emotional. And all my best friends
(46:45):
that know what I do will still sometimes, like,
kind of want to do what they want to do on their own, which is
perfectly fine with me. But I think that's part of the headwinds to. To
any subscription model, particularly in wine, is, you know, that
acquisition cost gets so high because you're trying to find the person that's going to
say, oh, I really respect what Madeline's opinion is of these
(47:06):
wines. I'm going to try this. And, you know, 120 bucks is
inexpensive. Last subject, because we're almost done here.
We're. We're 47 minutes.
There's a lot of lip service on the web right now from
generations of people that haven't done this,
haven't cut their teeth on the mistakes we've
(47:28):
made. And so some of the stuff I read about, really basic sales
skills, I learned, you know, at Xerox, and I'm like, you know, this isn't
new stuff you guys are talking about, but one of the conversations is innovation.
And I. I had. I had the professor of
innovation on the show and still got no further along with. With the
definition in our trade than I did
(47:51):
on my own. But what does that mean to you? What.
What would innovation of the wine trade mean to you? Innovation
is where you take something that's over here in
some other market or industry
or technology, and then you apply it
to another industry, market, technology, community,
(48:13):
whatever. That's innovation.
And in our industry, easy.
Well, the great thing about wine industry is that
it is a little bit of a Luddite. So
there's so many things you could
borrow from other industries,
(48:35):
technologies. In theory, yes. In theory,
will it work? I think you kind of hit it on his head. Is
purchasing wine is an emotional experience,
and controlling people's
emotions is more of the realm that you're going into, and that's
storytelling. So I would say that I think
(48:58):
if you are trying to pull a lever,
pull a heartstring in someone,
I think storytelling is the. Is
the. It's. It sounds almost religious to be preaching
storytelling, but I think at the end of the
day, that's what you want to do. At the end of the day is enjoy
(49:20):
a great story. And if your bottle is a
story that can, just like you said,
you can look forward to, that's actually the most
beautiful thing. So I used to put
a lot of stock in information because we could
make really cool things with information, and we certainly
(49:42):
still need all of that information in order to direct people
down the right avenue. So they're walking down the road
they want to be on, so to speak, in terms of wine style.
But then when it comes time to picking
the story wins. At the end of the day, if we're looking at the
(50:03):
same price, same quality level about. If we've got all those things,
it's gonna get zero to 60 in four seconds,
you know, whatever it is. Well, here's my quip.
We know this much, at least on the furthest end of the spectrum of
storytelling, which is the story is not.
I got this for five bucks on the Internet. That's not a story.
(50:25):
And so I. I'm just. I was so anticipating this conversation
because I've watched you grow, and
it's amazing. And I think. I think staying the course for wine
folly is probably the best medicine things you. The ship will
write itself eventually. And if you're there to. To catch
the. The growth of wine knowledge and the people that are interested in
(50:47):
seeking that knowledge, you'll be in the right place. It's. I
know you have a lot to do today, a lot of content creation, and
I do as well. Once I finished the studio kind of got
upended recently, but we're working on it. Such a
pleasure to meet you virtually and have this conversation. It is, it is.
And we'll do it again, I hope, as things evolve. And
(51:10):
wine Folly plus, which I'm going to check out, continues to
evolve as well. Yeah. Thank you so much.
Purchasing wine is an emotional experience and
controlling people's emotions is more of the realm that
you're going into, and that's storytelling. So I would say that
I think if you are trying to pull a lever,
pull a heartstring in someone, I think storytelling
is. It sounds almost religious to be preaching
(00:22):
storytelling. I think at the end of the day, that's what you want
to do. At the end of the day is enjoy a great story.
And if your bottle is a story you can look
forward to, that's actually the most beautiful thing. Sit
back and grab a glass. It's Wine Talks with
Paul Kay. Hey, welcome to Wine
(00:44):
Talks with Paul Kay. And we are in studio today in beautiful Southern California
about to have a conversation with the famed co founder of Wine Folly,
Madeline Puckett. Depending on how you say it. Hey, I want to
just introduce something really quick along the road of this wine
tasting and. And wine business. I've stumbled across so many
aspiring stories of immigration to the US that I start
(01:05):
a new podcast. The first release is coming out in a few days and that
is called the Song of America, which is the title of a book by man
named George Mardi in one of the famed restaurant tours of San Francisco
in the 50s. I borrowed his name, of course, with the
permission of his family to start the show and start talking about some of
these inspirational stories of people that have come to America with a
(01:27):
dream and accomplished that dream, whether financial, political, social, or
whatever your measure of success is. So have a listen to that coming out. But
not why we are here. Here to talk to Madeline. How are you this
morning? I'm great. Yeah. You know, I. Here's the
first question I wrote on my, my iPad here. Who are you?
Who. No, and I say that, I said
(01:49):
it's so tongue in cheek because you. Wine Folly, which is
incredible name for a wine education site,
started in 2011, you just kind of burst onto the scene.
Yeah, I kind of did. I. I got. I'd become a certified sommelier
at that point. I was working in restaurants and I felt like there was a
difference between my level of knowledge and the customer's level of knowledge. And I was
(02:13):
like, what? It. There was more information on the Internet
that was fun to look up because wine is fun.
I think more people would like wine and more people would know how to
ask for what they want. And so that's why we started Wine Folly
was as an adventure into wine. You know,
let's dig right into that subject because it's
(02:35):
become, in my opinion, pertinent and Controversial because
I think it's always been that way. In fact, this patch right here,
which is from the 70s, it's called Les Amid Event. As you would know, it
means the Friends of Wine. And it was a wine education
group throughout the country, 150 chapters. And if
you owned a wine shop or a restaurant, you could join it and start your
(02:58):
chapter. This is my father's chapter. And it was
exactly that, but it was, it was an experiential version of that, where
you got the dinner for dinner, you got together and heard Robert Mondavi speak.
So I think that this idea of wine education is critical for the
ongoing support of our industry.
(03:18):
I couldn't agree more. And I think what
happened was when I was starting to create this content
and write about wine and create visual
infographics and maps and that kind of a thing,
we hadn't really wine writing
or wine communication was, was, was a writ. It was the
(03:40):
written word. It was in a book, it was in a magazine. It was.
There were some, there was actually some good wine blogs around at the
time, but they weren't communicating in a way that was
relevant to the everyday person. Like,
what could you find a trader? What. Like what could you find at Trader Joe's
or Safeway that is
(04:02):
palatable and delicious and help me find the wine that I'm looking
for? And so I kind of started writing about
the things that were in everyone's sort of
purview, so they had some kind of a way to get into
wine. And I, as a graphic designer, I have a
degree in fine art and actually music technology,
(04:24):
so time based editing and that kind of a thing. And I
was starting, I wasn't really a great writer,
not at the time. And I was thinking,
well, I know how to draw and I can make visual,
informational, graphical things
(04:44):
and help people get into wine. So I launched a few infographics and
one we posted up on Facebook and by
the second day we had figured out where we would get it printed
and we had a little ebay link to sell it as a poster because I
had made it poster shaped basically. And that was
the start of, from the brand, which had started as
(05:07):
this like simple, fun thing to like, oh my goodness, people are actually
willing to pay for this fun
educational content. And that completely transformed what we
were intending the business to be. So do you think
that that enthusiasm in general
has grown or it's sort of relative to the
(05:29):
generations and we're all talking about millennials and Gen Z's and whatever letter
we're on that, you know, there's a whole different propensity
towards fine wine and there's white claw and also
nice things out there on the marketplace and. But I'm
wondering, you see a relative increase in people
that are, want to learn, they want to
(05:51):
understand that, want at least what, have a better experience when they go to a
restaurant, look at a menu. So I would call, I would classify myself
as a millennial elder. Maybe
I'm a comedian, but that's, that was my
generation. Essentially we're the millennial group. So we were the people who were putting
all the things online. They were starting to do things online, we were
(06:13):
living online. And the group beyond the
group passed me the Z's, the lennials, Gen Z, whatever you want to call
them. These folks have grown up with the Internet
as always in the background. We were sort of this
transitional generation that had phones that you would pick up and call
people. And then we learned how to use the Internet. And the early adopters, I
(06:35):
was part of the early adopter group. I super nerded out about
computers and technology and stuff because my dad was, he was an
engineer. And this, this group sort
of built the foundation of the Internet and the Z's came and they
lived in it. This was their home. There wasn't a world without
it. And so they use the Internet in a very different way
(06:57):
and they use it as a connecting tool, as a
discovery tool. And they, they
don't. Especially now with AI, there's not a need
to think like a computer in order to find what you're looking
for. You can just have a thought and then answers or stuff
will fly your way, options will come your way and it's this wealth
(07:19):
of over information actually. So you kind of try
to find the groups that you love and are interested in
or that speak to you in a way that you can connect to. And so
social media networks were really the rise after the
basic Internet, the social media networks and the.
I had, I had the opportunity to hang out with a group of Gen
(07:41):
Z people speaking at a wine conference, being frustrated
with the amount of, of over
explaining and too much. And it
reminded me of the same kind of feelings that I felt when I was
getting into wine that, oh, we can't talk about sweetness because
it's, it's, it's not something that's determined,
(08:04):
deterministic in the wine. A Malbec isn't dry. It depends
on what the winemaker does, you know. Yeah, right.
So, so now I'm trying to go, well, is it Sweet or is it dry?
I just want to buy a dry Malbec. How do I do that? And that's
the kind of questions we're starting to see, again, the kinds
of sort of basic wine understanding, like how many
(08:25):
calories does a glass of Sauvignon Blanc have
in it? And that's an important question when you're young and
you're concerned about, you know, getting a hot
date and having a good time out there in the world. Don't sell us
old guys short. You know, we're looking for no kidding.
You know, maybe you want a, a Sauvignon Blanc, then
(08:48):
perhaps dried Sauvignon Blanc, you know, with just a
90 calories, you know, a glass, you know, if it's, if it's
dry. So I would say that these onboarding
questions are just as important, if not more important,
and to, to take them seriously and legitimately,
because the one thing these have over the millennials is
(09:10):
they're smart. Well, millennials are smart, too, but they
really know how to seek information, and they have a good sense of what
bad information is. So generally speaking, because they've grown up
with a world of fake news, surrounded by fake news in every, you
know, way, shape, or form. So they really want to get to the bottom
of something, and they want a good summary of, of what that means, and they're
(09:33):
trying to find their way into wine. At least this is
my opinion. And I think brands that are connecting to
the Z's are focusing on
the hero's story. There's maybe an outstanding
winemaker that's able to connect, you know, of any age, right.
That is authentic in who they are, and that is a strong
(09:56):
connection piece for someone who's just getting into wine right
now. You know, that's very interesting
because in my opinion, that really hasn't changed anything.
Certainly the delivery of the information has changed radically. And this is more
accessible. And I use AI every day to ask questions. So
you're right. The baseline of where we get information from. And you know,
(10:19):
what I had to use now, I had a computer that, that had
a operating system called cpm. Okay? It predates
dos and it still works. But the point is, you
know, the more that baseline grows and that your access to information
grows and generationally, then you can process more
and deal with more. And it's, it's, you know, rather voluminous at this stage.
(10:41):
But it doesn't seem to change the narrative that I'm seeking
some experience, some story. I want to understand wine.
And because there's this consumption drop right now and there's
this, you know, non alk awareness and low alk
and you know, man, we went to the fancy food show at
Vegas last year and one of the prevailing themes for
(11:03):
beverages was non alk. And that like most of it was undrinkable. But it
is a, it is a blip I think in the radar of
consumption. But yet what you said is right on it. But it hasn't
really changed this idea that fine wine, the story of wine is
what we're seeking, it's just the delivery of it. And so I'm
wondering because of this consumption drop if you think that
(11:24):
there's a percentage less of people in the generation,
Gen Z's or whatever generations are coming up in
the appreciation of it or they're going to come around one of these days to
this idea. I, I, to be
where the people are is
maybe the number one thing to do
(11:46):
is to be where those conversations are
happening, whether it's on TikTok or
Instagram, to be present there and
to be part of that community I think is very important
because like you said it's, it's not, nothing's changed
really foundationally nothing's changed. It's just the delivery method
(12:09):
that has changed and, and also the
expectation of availability. I can go
and I think there's this, this model now
where I can't go to the store and find what I'm looking
for. I have to find it online now because
it's so difficult to just, you can't just walk out the door and go find
(12:31):
the thing. So you have this audience that has
a built in expectation that DTC is how they get
what they really want, which is very powerful for brands that
build direct to consumer models. And so that I think
that is maybe the, like you said,
it's the same story always. We need some onboarding
(12:54):
mechanisms. We need to answer these questions. We need to help people find what
they love and we need to love all the things that they love.
I hear a lot of, you know, in the fine wine
market this looking to what's
popular and then everything else is garbage.
Right? And that's not true. There is excellent
(13:15):
examples of sweet wines that are aged in
Solaris for nearly 100 years, right? And
you can buy them DTC for
around $40 a bottle, which is obscene.
Like that is an obscene value when you think of the
work and the time that went into producing this exceptional wine
(13:38):
with this exceptional story. So those stories
are still valuable and valid
and I think we're going to find that potentially future
generations are gonna have a palate shift. Right.
They've grown up accessing
kombucha and absolutely sugar
(14:00):
free, like sparkling flavored sparkling waters.
So they've grown up with different things as
part of their purview than my generation. And
your generation, like a kombucha would be like, oh, this is
bad. I've had biodynamic wine. It tastes like
kombucha. Well, there you go. Who
(14:22):
do you think it's for? Well, I think I, I think that's the,
the again, it's not a novel thing anymore. Every generation's had
that entree into the industry. My dad, you know, stopped at Sutter
home in 1974 and talked to Bob Trincaro and he didn't know what to do
with this, you know, a shiner of, of white, of pink wine. And
so I think every generation's had that. My dad's wine shop had Bartles and James
(14:44):
and all those kinds of coolers. But it's interesting that
you said about the DTC side because I just had an interesting conversation this morning
with the woman in Ireland who's working on European dtc.
And when, when we were running the shop and wasn't only two years
ago, and we had, we had Amazon and we had, I had
put all this time and effort to pump my whole entire inventory, you know,
(15:06):
Grand Cru, Burgundies, Bordeaux Classified Growth. And all
they bought for me on Amazon was Stella Rosa.
And, and that's, and that's kind of interesting because it's. What you're saying, it's
kind of moving away from that because they got, you can't go to the store
these days unless you have a fine wine shop in your neighborhood and find something
interesting. And so now they're looking online finally
(15:28):
to find interesting wines that they can share and tell a story
about. But not that long ago, it was the type of buyer
on Amazon that knew what they wanted.
They were willing to pay me 30% more than what they could get it
at Target for because it was convenient.
And what you're saying now is we're going to, we can find Solaris style, you
(15:50):
know, Maderas and things online and know what they are
and tell that story. Yeah, you can use that as an
opportunity. Suddenly you're suddenly just making the
wine and giving it to your distributor is not enough.
The product has to have this deep story
associated to it in order to be considered great. We're used to
(16:12):
looking at an incredible amount of metadata, like when you
look up a car, you're like, well, what's it, 60, 0 to 60?
Like that's the thing. How Earth powers does it have?
What's the, you know, like all the little details? We are
like meta information people. There's an expectation that that's
there foundationally. And so when your wine
(16:34):
goes to market, it needs to come with it. All this
media, like maybe even a video with the winemaker talking
about what that vintage was like this year and what they
was like making the wine. And then that gets shared
out into the world whether it's on Instagram or on TikTok
or whatever. But that's your story. And you have just like a
(16:56):
winery has to continue to tell their story. Every single
time someone walks in to the wine,
their, their winery. That story is the same story
that needs to get told continually to the, an online,
to a digital first audience. And it's funny
because I think I've been saying this for at least a
(17:19):
decade and it's only now
starting to hit different because of this
downturn in the sales. But the downturn of
sales that we've seen is predominantly high
volume wines. It's not, it's, it's
not the wines that we're thinking about. These independent
(17:41):
producers, independent producers are definitely having a difficult time right now. And I want
to respect that. That's a legitimate issue.
But it's because this like large volume market
of, of of basic grocery
store wine is not getting sold. We have like xx
inventory and that kind of a thing. I think that a
(18:03):
correction, we haven't seen a correction really in
the US marketplace since the wine, since wine
started to become interesting. Not a correction like this. There certainly
have been in changes that we've observed,
but this is a, this is a real correction in the wine marketplace.
And I think it's gotten everybody to like get a
(18:26):
little bit more serious and step up and consider
their marketing strategies a little bit more
seriously, you know, because you can't
just go home and play in your vineyard
anymore and make one and have a great vintage and get it all
sold. It's, it's, it's a real, it's, it's a challenge. It's, it's
(18:48):
looking a lot like other farming and agricultural industries
right now, you know, which suggests a
surplus situation. It's an interesting problem.
You nailed it on the head
for one. If you start a winery and you and I know how difficult that
is and how, you know, how the margins suck and all that,
(19:12):
you want to make money even if it's just a hobby. If you made your
money as a surgeon or government contractor and you went to Napa, you bought
your plateau. Eventually you hope that you can pick the Grace fermented bottle and
sell it and make money at it. And. And you're
subject to the agricultural whims of the world. I mean, there's.
You have to be five years out minimum to think about having a vineyard. And
(19:34):
how do you Predict consumption in 5 years? What
you had just identified would maybe think about this is if we're a
boutique winery, a Bordeaux house, a Burgundy house or Napa house, we're trying to get
our name told. We need to have this
story out there and we need to use
dtc because on the other side of the fence, where the
(19:55):
traditional methods of marketing were, the distributors, they're all
consolidating. And the boutique guys that used to be able to
handle some of these smaller brands and make the sales calls, they're not around
anymore. They've been gobbled up. And now the Southern has a book, you know,
2 inches thick and in RNDC, etc. And so you're
sort of in this. And I think that you're talking about is this metamorphosis of
(20:16):
the industry is changing right now
because of these two sort of opposing forces of what we're
doing. Let's not forget how much regulation
puts a damper on any good ideas. Yeah, that's
true. And it's really
tragic. If you're doing DTC as a
(20:40):
winery just to be able to ship your wine legally
to a state where somebody bought it, you
have to have like thousands and thousands of dollars of permits
that you pay every year just to have the right to maybe sell
six bottles in that district. You know, so it's
untenable for producers, independent producers, to. To try
(21:02):
to actually make a difference. And they need to. And
so therefore, they have to work with
interesting creative retailer models that
maybe solve that problem so they can get their path to market. You
know, I. I'm observing the meteoric rise
of Last Bottle, you know, right
(21:23):
now being like, everyone's scared about the
market right now, but Last Bottle is booming and
they're like buying up everyone and
everything right now. It seems like every other day in the news there's something
about an acquisition. So I'm like, look at who's
being successful right now and learn
(21:45):
something from them. I've seen some really fascinating beverage
companies, and I'll reference Erica Ducey because she did
the research and she's actually interviewed these people and
she Found a wine, a wine
brand that was baked basically in a juice box and it was kind
of a flavored, fun sort of cocktail
(22:08):
beverage, wine type of thing. And it
great success in a juice box because what you can take that
to a music show, you know, no
glass on the beach, that kind of a thing. So
some of these brands are being creative in how they're packaging
and their path to market in terms of their, their
(22:30):
branding, that kind of a thing, or even the product itself.
I think the juice box brand, depending on what state
they're in, they'll either be malt based, wine based or liquor
based because of the regulatory issues. And
that's pretty clever. It's depressing, but it
is pretty clever and it is contributing to their success.
(22:53):
Let's, let's delve into that depressing. What do you say that?
Well, I've looked at, you know, I'm a nerd, so I've looked at all the
regulation sort of around the TTB and there's
definitely a propensity to being a beer brand in
terms of the taxing. I wish that,
I wish that all beverages were created equal in terms of if
(23:16):
your alcohol level was a certain alcohol level, you were
taxed based on the alcohol level and not the type of alcohol
that it is. But because beer is treated separately
to wine, is treated separately to spirits, they're taxed
in totally different models. And I think it's not fair.
Do you think that's changing? Do you think that ever a chance error in the
(23:39):
world, Free the Grapes and all the other organizations that have come through this
on, changing on this. And by the way, you've touched on so many subjects
that I can't even decide which one to go with. But you
know the, everybody's got this, even Amazon, you know, there was this
whole idea that they were going to throw millions and millions of dollars to getting
the feds to change their mind. I just don't see that bureaucracy
(24:00):
changing relatively any soon. It's not even a word
really. If you wanted to do something in the next four years might actually
be the time. I've seen a lot of things go down in the last couple
of days. It's kind of, it's kind of
nutty. You know, it's funny, you're talking about the story and
innovation for one. So my romantic
(24:20):
view of wine and this didn't come around until
later in my career in this industry. For me it was business. I bought it
from my dad. You know, we taste on Tuesdays, let's sell some
Wine. But this, you know, visiting the, the
world's regions of wine and having these conversations with amazing people,
you know, has sort of led me down this path of the, the romantic side
(24:42):
of wine and the, the ethereal value of a glass of wine and the human
value of a glass of wine. And so I'm sort of, when you said
depressing, depressed at these ideas of
fruit flavors and tetra packs and can linings
and that just takes away from the romantic side of wine. But
certainly, you know, kudos to the people that can sell millions
(25:03):
of bottles or millions of tetra packs of, of. Wine,
Millions of tetra packs. But you know, there was a, somebody on Facebook the other
day posted that they were at Wine Paris and they were talking to this guy
and he had sold 24 million cans of some peach flavored
fermented grape juice. And I go, wow, that's, you
know, congratulations on the number. But oh my goodness, I guess
(25:25):
that's the entry level stuff, right? That's what we need.
I think you hit it on the head. We need some entry level stuff for
the kids and we need to, and, and then they can get to the
fine bottled wines with corks in them. But they, but
we all, I should say we all. There's 1 in
5, 4 in 5 of us still romanticize
(25:49):
bottles and this experience of wine
and we want to get into it and we're very intimidated. It's a long
path to learning. So it, and where do we
start? So where do we start investing
in that? That right now is very exciting
to me and it's, and I have to say I was worried
(26:12):
that wine folly was going to become
irrelevant. You know, everyone's already
learned everything and you know, around the time 2020,
2021 rolled around, I was like, there's so much
information out there. Am I valid? Does it even matter if I keep
doing this anymore? And I think it was like the beginning of
(26:34):
this year, towards the end of last year, I saw
a change that inspired me to be like,
no, don't stop.
Congratulations. This is, this is, this is
a necessary thing. We have an entire generation
of half of the Z's. Gen Z
(26:54):
have some percentage of the Gen Z. I think it's less than
half, is not even 21 yet in the United
States and that means they can't even legally drink.
So we got a little bit of time.
And I think this transition, you know, landing on the other side of
this transition is, is going to require staying the
(27:18):
course because I, I don't think that the, the Romanticism or the
value of that glass of wine will ever change. It hasn't changed in thousands and
thousands of years. And that every generation comes around,
some later than others, to understand that, you know, when you're. I don't know about
you, but I think about what I'm gonna have when I get home.
Not what I'm gonna eat, but what I want to drink.
(27:40):
And it's not because of the 14 alcohol. It's because I want
to feel something. And that's just from years and
years of experience. And I think everybody has that. You know, I had
this interesting conversation yesterday. A guy named Chad Ludington.
I don't know if you know who he is. Complete academic. Complete
academic on wine, incredible historian on wine. But
(28:03):
he talked about a professor, and I forgot the university
that can. That can articulate
why our palette will
grow. After you start drinking
Apothec red or Josh, whatever you're drinking, and you
get bored of that simple style, and you
(28:24):
start to seek complexity, acid, balance, structure, all the things that
we. We appreciate. And I wait for him to tell. Send me the
article, because it's quantifiable
change in your palate to. To lean towards that. I think
that's part of what the. The value of a glass of wine is.
So leading to the. Go ahead. But why did I start loving
(28:46):
Riesling? And now I love Riesling again. Was it always?
I'll have to read the article. I don't know.
I feel like. I feel like. You're right. It did. Your palate does
change. Absolutely. Oh, my wife is my biggest
critic, and when we got married, she drank, you know, Gallo
rind wine, and. And now I can't get, you know,
(29:09):
Syrah past her because she knows immediately what I'm trying to fool her into,
because I wanted to appreciate those things. But no, it's. It's Bordeaux
Ridle, man. That's what. That's what I have to serve. Oh, no, you're
stuck. So let's go back to the marketing side of this, because you.
I'm gonna say something tongue in cheek, and it's. It's kind of funny, actually. I
was looking for an email I sent you in 2013.
(29:32):
So you're only into this for two years at this point, and
not sure where you were at in the cycle, but probably, obviously the very
beginning of learning to educate customers. And I
said, you know, maybe we can work together. And. And you wrote back, like,
what?
Oh, my goodness. And I. I don't remember what I. If I responded.
(29:55):
I. You Know, was slammed at the time, and we were just, we were growing,
you know, 2,000 at that time. That's hilarious. We were about to hit our biggest
year a couple years later, and. Oh, my gosh. And yeah, I'm,
I'm. I'm not very good at email. I try to stay.
It wasn't a criticism. Funny
like this. This part of. Of the
(30:17):
industry now is what I think plagues a lot of people, and that's
the content generation and the, the marketing of. And they're not
marketeers. We're farmers, right? I mean, I'm not. I'm not. I'm a horrible farmer. But
in general, I start the wine business because I want to. I think I want
to be a farmer, and I think I want to be in that lifestyle. And
then now I have to go sell something, and this becomes more difficult.
(30:38):
And I think that one of the differences between market.
Even back in 2011, when you started, though, it was just
emerging. Certainly When I started
1989, there were very quantifiable,
definable campaigns. It wasn't a commitment to marketing. It was
a campaign. I would mail 300,000 pieces of mail, wait for the results,
(30:59):
refine that result, and then send out it again. Three times a year,
I run an ad in the newspaper and I'd put a promo code and then
they'd call and I'd know how. How that new ad did. That was a.
But it's not that way anymore. It's a commitment to the
strategy. There's. And the benefit of social networks marketing
and content marketing is you can start and stop anytime you want, but the moment
(31:21):
you stop is the moment that people stop paying attention and you can
start up again without any penalty.
And. But it's a commitment, not right. It's not a. You
don't campaign things anymore. You can still have
campaigns, but you do need that baseline. It's
kind of like going to the gym. You know, you got to stay
(31:43):
fit, so you're going to the gym and you're keeping that baseline
health taken care of. That's your baseline
content marketing. And so you got to be
consistent. That's the secret. Whatever you're doing, you're
consistent. But you can. Then you need to add campaigns on top
of that. So it is hard. It is hard. It is a huge
(32:05):
ask. I think that. I think it is a big
ask for sure. I think for small companies, you know,
the reason the YMF club, you know, I was fortunate enough to sell it.
And speaking of last bottle, you know, Alex was part of that conversation. Didn't
land in his plate though. But
with an on staff digital designer, et cetera, like
(32:28):
I told you, and the campaigns required and the commitments
to have content all the time. And then one of the
reasons my wife and I decided to sell after 35
years was. You said it already.
She goes, I don't want to process 38 tax returns next
quarter. So this is first quarter 2023. You know, March
(32:50):
31st was the end of it. And we're like, yeah, you're right. You know, the
overhead to carry everybody in this company for another three
months and then have to process 38 tax returns to get
through the regulations. Because we did our own compliance
and the overhead of these three marketeers,
we didn't see the light at the end of the tunnel at that point. It
(33:12):
had been a long good run, so we just decided to, to move on.
But this is hard. You know, those are
just those two subjects alone for a small winery
is ominous. That is extremely ominous.
Yeah, yeah. You need a partner. You need a partner
who can help you. Yeah. Which is interesting because
(33:35):
when I, when we merged the company with Global Wine Database, I
really wanted that technology, this database technology where
you can be a, like it's producer
controlled wine information. It's a product information management system. So
a winery can add their winery in and then they can add their
individual bottles of wine. And my hope was or is
(33:58):
still is, because we're building it, we already have multiple region guides,
is that if you learn about Bordeaux and you go to
Pomerol, the Pomerol section to learn about Pomerol, you
can see wineries and wines from Pomerol
and if that producer continues to add their wines in every vintage. Right.
That's part of your vin, your work. They'll continue to show
(34:20):
the, their current vintage of
the wine as a discovery model, as a learning discovery
model. And so that's what, that's the entire reason we, that's the
entire reason we, we have Wine Folly database now. It's the entire
reason we started Wine Folly plus is that
maybe a marketer needs to be the best at
(34:42):
communicating wine and then you have an opportunity
to get in front of that audience. And that was my hope for the future
was something where I could get the details,
the meta information about an area and see
all the wineries on a map. Like that was my dream. Just show me
all the wineries I just want to see and I don't want to be distracted
(35:03):
by other things. I actually want to focus on what's there because
maybe I'm having a glass of Pommel right now and I want to see where
that winery is and I want to see what other wineries around it because
maybe I want to buy more. That's really interesting. You
know, I had a, I did a video,
I went to a tasting with, you know, Don Schliff from Wine
(35:26):
Warehouse, used to be the one where he's probably one of the great port collections
in the world. Top five. Anyway, he does a tasting annually
here in Los Angeles and you know, the sucklings come and the Darrell Cordy comes
and all the famous people come. And I took a video of him
opening a bottle of vintage port with his custom
made red hot tongs. You know,
(35:48):
an old guy standing in front of a noisy bar
with no voiceover and no music. And I have over 4 and
a half million views on Tick Tock and like million and a half on Instagram.
That's awesome. And of course zero sales volume came from that.
None of the, you know, just an awareness. And I think this is part of
the, the conversation which was this, this overhead to producing this
(36:10):
stuff. And then virality really doesn't mean anything except that
people learn who you are and hopefully one day they buy something from you.
But you, I, I tell you, I've only been worried
a couple of times in my career of doing this when I saw
a new club, one of them was in the Wall Street Journal Club started and
I knew they had backing and it was, it was limestone and you know, that
(36:32):
was going to be big and they had the ability, they had a relationship with
their, with their, theoretically with their financial
clients. But the other one I thought was gonna, that, that, that
I was a little concerned about starting when, when it started was the Wine
Folly Club because we already had enough clubs in the
world. And I thought, wow, she's got a, you know, she's got a database and
(36:55):
she's got, people are following her. And what did you see when
you started a DTC company for
wine that you didn't expect or you know, and
I know you didn't you relaunch it or didn't you send it over? We had
a, we were, we've always been doing it with a joint, as a
joint venture with a retail partner. So we didn't have to
(37:16):
deal with the 38 fulfillment tax
returns because that isn't for our business
as untenable. So we had always structured it where we would pick
the wines and do all the wine education
associated to each club. And
was that that essentially is the model. And the club is
(37:38):
still really popular. It's.
It's interesting because why you
join a club is it. It really needs to
fit your price point. Like your
price point. And then wines. The wines that you want every month.
I don't know. I felt like it was
(38:01):
gonna really take off in a way
that I was super excited for. And
when it's still very popular, but it's not in the way that I was
hoping. I was hoping for problems of wine. Finding
enough wines. Right. And finding enough good
quality, small producer wines to actually fulfill the club.
(38:23):
Yeah. And when that didn't happen, I was like, this is not
the model right now. That's. This isn't what someone wants right
now. They don't want to be carried along in the club. And maybe that's the
change that's happened between
my generation, which is a club generation. Right. I
started a wine club. My dad bought me a wine club when I was 21.
(38:45):
Two bottles would come in every month. And when I was going to college
and. And those were the fanciest wines that I ever put in.
The fanciest anythings that I would put in my body in a month because I
was eating basically like brown rice and beans. And
then I would have these. Yeah. Top ramen and. And
coterone. And so, like, it was really. It was an
(39:07):
incredible experience. It helped pave the way and get me into wine.
Right. And so I thought that might be the
same with the younger generation, but I'm not sure.
I'm not sure. Maybe they have enough information that they want to go and discover
on their own and buy the things on their own and pick out what they
want. And then you see the rise of the
(39:28):
last bottle thing. And it's this idea, this storytelling they do
for every wine is so incredible. It's so much
detail. And you really become enamored with the wine even
before you even think about, like, you're just.
It's just casual. And then you be. You fall in love. And so
there's something there with that. Hey, it's a.
(39:51):
It's gonna sell out. There's only this many. It's a. It's on a super
sale. It's. When it's gone, it's gone. There's this
tension that gets built with this, like, I have to buy, otherwise
I miss out. It's fomo. Yeah. Generation. Those
things have come and gone a lot of times. I'm glad they're doing well. I
mean, Trader Joe's was founded on that same principle. You Know,
(40:13):
Trader Joe's success was not only their foodstuffs, but their, their wine. A guy
named Bob Bernie used to buy for them. And it was, they would tell you
in the, in the Fearless Flyer, we only have 2,000 bottles and we got 20
stores. So you figure you do the numbers and it's going to be gone. You
know, the Wine of the Month club, we peaked,
we peaked around 2,014 or 15
(40:35):
or something. And I had close to 18, 000 members.
Wow. And, you know, that's unheard of really these days
on a month, this is monthly, not just wines.
So. But we had that problem. And since you're talking about
segmentation of the people that are buying, we had that problem. You know, I'd have
to buy 1500 cases of one red and about 8,
(40:58):
7, 900 cases of white in a price point that
I could afford to sell for 12 or 13 a bottle. That became a problem.
But it's also founded on the idea that there was always something
around. And the other reason I got out was
that idea was, was starting to thin out because there were the last
(41:19):
bottles of the world and wine Access and I forgot the other
guy, guy on the east coast, you know, they were buying up some of these
allocations too, and some of these, these odd lots and so they're
hard to find. And I was finding myself going into Europe for, you
know, $2 a liter stuff and $1 liter stuff and just, you
know, not producing the wines that I really wanted to show the clients. So the
(41:40):
premise had changed considerably on what we were doing. But
yeah, at that point, going by, you're saying it's
completely price point driven. Yeah. And I, I think that was the problem is
like, I wanted to have, I wanted to, I want to, you know that our
club is a, you know, $120 a month. It's, yeah,
it' big, you know, expense and you do get
(42:03):
high quality wines. But if we wanted it to scale, like the
potential of going into this danger, period,
right now, it's the right size where we can, we can find really
incredible stuff from small producers and put it in the club and
be really stoked about it. But then it's, it, it's not
designed to scale, so it's not going to work. And so I, you
(42:26):
know, I. What do you do? Like, you want to, you want to help people
get into wines and you want to give them examples of great wines to try
that are in a price point that they can afford. And that's essentially what we
had. We were trying to do. I'm the club.
I think I'm not as excited about now. Since we've launched Wine
Folly plus, we've gotten so much more signal with
(42:47):
that. It's an online
platform. You log in, you access all of. You
know, we started selling posters, you access all of our infographics, you access all
of our maps in great detail, super
zoom level detail so you can learn and
discover these parts of the world. So right now, it's already an
(43:09):
incredible value at $100 a year. But we're continuing
to grow that product. You know, we have a product roadmap to continue
to offer and
additive features for Wine Folly plus members. And,
you know, I thought that our, I thought that
our wine club was going to grow at the rate that Wine Folly plus is
(43:32):
currently growing. I was expecting that, that people wanted
at the end of the day because they would always ask, why don't you just
include wine? Right? Why don't you just include wine? And so we're
like, all right, we'll do it. But I, I don't know that I need
to touch wine. I don't know that that's what I'm supposed to do. I think
my job is to touch everything but wine
(43:53):
and get you right to the front door and you can decide to go through
that door and find what you actually want to buy through the education,
through the like agnostic education, you
know, that we offer. So I think you're right on. I
can't tell you how many people, how many saw, particularly in
the retail side. Now you're talking about earlier part of our career and part of
(44:16):
wine. I mean, you know, Jim, Jim Barry used to come into my dad's wine
shop all the time. So that's how, how long ago we've been doing
this. But along the way,
watching retailers see our success.
And I tried retail. I've had probably four wine shops. None of them have
done really anything of any consequence. I think one year I made some
(44:38):
money, but
we were good at DTC. We are good at marketing. We. I sent
33 million emails my last full year. I, I produced 300
promo codes and 300, you know, graphics and
300 text for those graphics. And
that's what we did. And sometimes, particularly in our industry, because of
(44:59):
the rules and the regulations and the lousy margins, you know, and I
think that's one of the last bottles success. Their margins are good.
You know, I know how he buys. They're really good because there's so much distress.
Good quality distressed merchandise, not Distress and quality, distressed
and availability. We kind of have a distressed
period in the
(45:19):
2004-2007, maybe
2008 period where wine was really affordable. There was
lots of. From Australia that was like, wow, for the price,
it was really good. That's how I got into wine. That was the
era that I got into wine. And you're like, oh, God, that dates me. But
like. It'S true, though. It was
(45:41):
affordable. It's true. Yeah. So having affordable good
product is like the best onboarding
mechanism. It's such an emotional buy. You
know, I was in the market the other day with one of my social networkers.
Not the other day, a little while ago, but a woman I know, you
know, not by first name, but she knows who I am in the neighborhood. I
(46:03):
think I coached her kids in little league kind of thing. And she was looking.
She actually said, why? We're doing some social network videos in
the wine aisle at the supermarket. And I. I go, what? What are you
looking for? She goes, something other than what I usually drink. I go, what do
you usually drink? She said, rodney Strong. I said, well, but here's some
stuff that's kind of like that, that's different that you may want to try. And
(46:24):
it's such an. She knows who I am. She knows I've been in this business
for a long time. I sell wine. And whatever. She didn't.
She left. And I think she came back later when I wasn't there, because
it's such an emotional purchase. Despite the fact
that. That, you know, you're recommending the wines, they. To
make that decision. It's so emotional. And all my best friends
(46:45):
that know what I do will still sometimes, like,
kind of want to do what they want to do on their own, which is
perfectly fine with me. But I think that's part of the headwinds to. To
any subscription model, particularly in wine, is, you know, that
acquisition cost gets so high because you're trying to find the person that's going to
say, oh, I really respect what Madeline's opinion is of these
(47:06):
wines. I'm going to try this. And, you know, 120 bucks is
inexpensive. Last subject, because we're almost done here.
We're. We're 47 minutes.
There's a lot of lip service on the web right now from
generations of people that haven't done this,
haven't cut their teeth on the mistakes we've
(47:28):
made. And so some of the stuff I read about, really basic sales
skills, I learned, you know, at Xerox, and I'm like, you know, this isn't
new stuff you guys are talking about, but one of the conversations is innovation.
And I. I had. I had the professor of
innovation on the show and still got no further along with. With the
definition in our trade than I did
(47:51):
on my own. But what does that mean to you? What.
What would innovation of the wine trade mean to you? Innovation
is where you take something that's over here in
some other market or industry
or technology, and then you apply it
to another industry, market, technology, community,
(48:13):
whatever. That's innovation.
And in our industry, easy.
Well, the great thing about wine industry is that
it is a little bit of a Luddite. So
there's so many things you could
borrow from other industries,
(48:35):
technologies. In theory, yes. In theory,
will it work? I think you kind of hit it on his head. Is
purchasing wine is an emotional experience,
and controlling people's
emotions is more of the realm that you're going into, and that's
storytelling. So I would say that I think
(48:58):
if you are trying to pull a lever,
pull a heartstring in someone,
I think storytelling is the. Is
the. It's. It sounds almost religious to be preaching
storytelling, but I think at the end of the
day, that's what you want to do. At the end of the day is enjoy
(49:20):
a great story. And if your bottle is a
story that can, just like you said,
you can look forward to, that's actually the most
beautiful thing. So I used to put
a lot of stock in information because we could
make really cool things with information, and we certainly
(49:42):
still need all of that information in order to direct people
down the right avenue. So they're walking down the road
they want to be on, so to speak, in terms of wine style.
But then when it comes time to picking
the story wins. At the end of the day, if we're looking at the
(50:03):
same price, same quality level about. If we've got all those things,
it's gonna get zero to 60 in four seconds,
you know, whatever it is. Well, here's my quip.
We know this much, at least on the furthest end of the spectrum of
storytelling, which is the story is not.
I got this for five bucks on the Internet. That's not a story.
(50:25):
And so I. I'm just. I was so anticipating this conversation
because I've watched you grow, and
it's amazing. And I think. I think staying the course for wine
folly is probably the best medicine things you. The ship will
write itself eventually. And if you're there to. To catch
the. The growth of wine knowledge and the people that are interested in
(50:47):
seeking that knowledge, you'll be in the right place. It's. I
know you have a lot to do today, a lot of content creation, and
I do as well. Once I finished the studio kind of got
upended recently, but we're working on it. Such a
pleasure to meet you virtually and have this conversation. It is, it is.
And we'll do it again, I hope, as things evolve. And
(51:10):
wine Folly plus, which I'm going to check out, continues to
evolve as well. Yeah. Thank you so much.
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