June 5, 2025 • 39 mins
When you hear a New Zealand accent, what do you try and do? I try to figure is it Aussi or English? Maybe South African. Regardless of where you land with this interpretation, you always settle into a nice comfort zone with New Zealanders. There is a certain warmth and instant camaraderie. Tiraki wines are new to the United States and it was an honor to sit with Josh and hear his plans.
On today’s episode of Wine Talks, I sat down with Josh Hammond of Teraki Wines, who’s redefining what it means to build a family wine brand with global reach. We dove into the challenges of launching in the US market, how sustainable and organic farming are at the heart of New Zealand wine, and why authentic storytelling and quality are key to standing out in a crowded industry. If you’re passionate about entrepreneurship and the future of wine, this is a conversation you don’t want to miss.
✅ Ever wondered how a Kiwi winemaker broke into 32 countries—including China and the U.S.—in just 5 years?
✅ Paul Kalemkiarian sits down with Josh Hammond of Taraki Wines on the latest "Wine Talks" for an insider’s look at the hustle behind global wine sales, sustainability, and family legacy.
✅ From farming sheep in New Zealand to launching a premium wine brand during lockdown, discover what it takes to stand out in the world’s toughest markets.
✅ Find out why making truly great wine is only half the battle—and why the human connection is what really matters. Listen now for the full story! 🍷
#WineTalksPodcast
#NewZealandWine
#MarlboroughSauvignonBlanc
#WineIndustry
#SustainableWine
#FamilyWinery
#WineSales
#WinePairing
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
For me, selling wine is the hardest part of the whole wine industry, in
my opinion. So if we were going to take this on and create our own
brand and therefore have to sell our own wines, I only wanted to
be making the best wines that I possibly can and taking those into the
market to represent ourselves and our family. Sit back and grab a
glass. It's Wine Talks with Paul K.
(00:23):
Hey, welcome to Wine Talks with Paul Kay. And we are in studio today in
beautiful Southern California, about to have a conversation with Josh Hammond of
Taraki Wines, all the way from New Zealand. Introductions in just a moment.
Hey, have a listen to Robert Foy. Had him on the show last
week. Incredible conversation about his career at
Accolade in Australia, then to treasury, has
(00:45):
opened offices all over the world for wine sales and now
has become a complete unifile and looking for
more work, actually, as he retired from Treasury. But really interesting conversation
about that side of the business, but not while we're here. Here to have a
conversation with Josh from Teraki Wines. He's the owner and winemaker of
a New Zealand house. Welcome to the show. Thanks, Paul. Great to be here. I
(01:06):
mean, what a schedule you were trying to keep. It's a busy. It's a busy
trip. It's a. It's a big country you've got here, so. Yeah. Yes, it is
pretty big. Yes. Compared to New Zealand, I think it would be. This is interesting
for me, though, because the way the industry's been going
and the way wine sales haven't been that great
worldwide America is even worse. And you
(01:27):
come out and you are doing what, you're having dinners, going
to the wholesalers, pitching. Who are you talking to? Yeah. So meeting here
with our importer, which is
the first time we've. We've launched in. In America. So we've. We're only
new over here and getting out there,
going to restaurants, bars, meeting people, meeting the distributor,
(01:50):
meeting the team that will be on the ground selling our wine. So you've been
like. But you would have sounded like you're doing like one city a day. It's
like. It's like pretty much, yeah. It's a quick trip. That's crazy. And so
you've been in New Zealand selling Taraki wines already in your first
time in America, which is kind of exciting to come because we are a huge
marketplace. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We launched five years ago.
(02:12):
We started into the Asian market first. One of our partners is based in
Shanghai, so our first kind of focus was into China.
And over the last five years, we've put a lot of focus into growth
globally. So we're in 32 countries around the world now. But I
didn't take long. No, we, we work hard. We work hard and we work
fast. So, yeah, when do I start at Shanghai? I mean,
(02:34):
obviously New Zealand, in Marlboro. And for the, for the
listeners, Marlboro is the south of the north island.
The north of the south island, and. Martinboro is south
of the North Island. You're right. But why China?
So I guess tear aqui came about. COVID was closing the
(02:55):
borders around the world. Chris, one of the partners, was
Shanghai. He wanted to get out of there. They were nailing the doors closed behind
people, so it was a good time to leave. My brother and sister
were both overseas. My sister was in Colorado, my brother in
London. So everyone came back to New Zealand. I was already there and
I guess there was a lot of time with not much to do. They were
(03:17):
all out of work. And so over a few bottles of wine and a bit
of brainstorming, we thought we all had pretty good expertise
to. To join together and form a wine brand.
I guess in the few years preceding that, I'd always thought that I wanted to
launch my own brand and make my own wines. So it all kind of came
together from there and we thought, well, you know, it's a competitive space. There's lots
(03:40):
of New Zealand Marlborough producers. The wines are all around the world. Like,
what's going to be our competitive edge? And so with Chris
living in Shanghai for 10 years, being fluent in Mandarin, understanding
the business world there, he worked with his wife in a Chinese business,
we thought, well, that's really a good point of difference for us. A lot of
New Zealand brands have gone to China and I guess had some
(04:01):
initial success. They've sold some wine into China and then it's all kind of
got lost. And they haven't had those repeat orders and continual
sales. So we thought we saw a good chance for us to
make a difference and sell some wine into China. And
from our successes there, we've spread so initially to other
parts of Asia and then into Europe, and now here we are in the
(04:24):
U.S. can I. Hear what a Kiwi accent?
A Mandarin. Kiwi accent sounds like? I
couldn't do it any justice. I mean, that's just. That just sounds
pretty. When he's pretty exotic in Mandarin, like, I mean,
to me, he. He sounds like he could be Chinese. Wow. Yeah, he does
a good job. Yeah. Interesting. Well, it's interesting because on the show recently,
(04:47):
the Robert Foy who I just introduced, opened an office for. I think
it was treasury in China and accolade as well.
And then I just had a woman on the show, Emily Steckenbosch,
and she is the LVMH representative,
Ambassador Streckenborn of
(05:08):
lvmh and fascinating part of the world, because
I've always thought that China was always behind the curve
of other Asian countries when it came to wine.
So, like, when they first got introduced to wine many years ago, it was all
Bordeaux, all first gross, all the best Napa. And they realized
that's not the only place that you need to be. You can drink other things
(05:29):
that are more economical and still be really good. And so that's
maybe part of this. Yeah. 100. I think, you know, you think
Sauvignon Blanc in particular maybe wouldn't work so well
in China. You think of Chinese food, and in parts of China, it's quite
spicy. So you'd think, how does that pair with wines?
But actually, actually, the acidity in Sauvignon Blanc seems to work really well. I
(05:52):
know that our Sauvignon in Shanghai is really popular with hot
pots. So, yeah, I probably
wouldn't have thought that we would have success there, but
it's working, so it's great. The first question I had for Emily when she was
on the show was, is your Chinese food in China really like
the Chinese food we have here in America? She said, no, it has nothing
(06:14):
to do with it. Well, that's interesting, because
there's another movement to Singapore as well.
A lot of bored delays are in Singapore now because these markets are opening up,
and I wonder if that's a balance to some of the issues are going on
in Europe. I don't know about the consumption in New Zealand. I haven't read about
that lately, but certainly America, it's generally down.
(06:36):
Yeah. Have you seen that as well? Yeah. I think there seems to be a
movement globally to. To drink less, whether it's. Whether
it's wine, beer, spirits. My understanding in the
US is that white wines, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc is still in
growth. We're definitely all getting out here and
trying to help that continue to happen. So on my flight out of
(06:58):
Blenheim, there was three winemakers on the plane, two of us coming to the us,
One going to Europe. So it's the time of year that we all get out
here and do our best to sell the wine and keep the trend
in the right direction. Well, I was saying before we got started that,
you know, I taste well I used to taste wine every Tuesday here, as Emily
would remember. And it would be a rather
(07:21):
thermometer of what's going on in the industry. You know, what's coming to America,
what's. What's being sold, what needs to move quickly because we have too much.
And so you would see, particularly Australian wines ebb and flow. And
New Zealand wines are a little more stable. You see them all the time. But
I hadn't seen them lately, so it's interesting to see them again. I just tasted
one two days ago. Yeah. Also, and so. And certainly it's that character of
(07:42):
Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough is. Is well established in the
palates of most Americans. But I think when it comes to the
consumption side of this, I think it ebbs and flows.
Right. I think that we go through periods at my dad's
shop in that picture there, you know, we sold bottles and James wine coolers,
we sold Matuse Lancers, Blue Nun leaf, raw milch. It
(08:04):
just. It's just the way our industry is. But the core value
of that proper glass of wine never changes.
No. How can it change? Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right.
So I'm thinking that it'll come back or it'll settle in a different
place. But properly made wines will always
have their human connection. I certainly
(08:27):
hope so. And, yeah, for us at Tearaki, wine is
about, you know, it's more than something to drink. It's about
sharing our sense of place. You know, we want our wines to represent the
vineyard that they come from, and we want them to be about
connections with people and about evoking
emotions and memories of things that you do together. We all
(08:48):
love spending time outdoors in the mountains or the oceans around New Zealand.
And when we're doing those things, whether it's, you know, a day on the beach
with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc or around a fire in a hut at the
top of a mountain with a glass of Pinot. Great
image right there. Exactly. And you don't actually have to have been to
New Zealand and done that, but if you can think about that when you're drinking
(09:10):
our wines and. And go, that's. That's what I want to do, then that's. That's
what we're trying to achieve. I think that's got to be the. The
criteria that makes this part of the human
story, really. I mean, I. I always talk about this. If you were
to pick, let's just say, five things that. That would express a
culture in the world. Yeah. Land. If you have it, New Zealand has it
(09:34):
language. If you have it, New Zealand has it
food. And that's not always the case. Like we were in
Sicily and I didn't find anything. There was no cultural food there. Really. There's
some fried chickpeas about it and not disparaging it, but
not always. There is cuisines as expressive, but wine is
always part of that expression. If they have culture, a wine culture. I
(09:56):
agree. You know, you can take this halfway around the world as you already have
and plop it on the desk. And I know you're. We're from New Zealand. Yeah.
How can that change? Yeah, I don't think it can. I
hope it doesn't. So. Yeah. Plus you started a winery. You hope it
doesn't. So, but you said earlier that you're working
with your sister. How's that working out? Yeah, great. Yeah. So
(10:18):
it's. My brother and sister and I all work together,
perhaps. Fortunately, we're all in different parts of the world, so, you
know, we communicate all the time. We probably talk a lot more than we would
if we weren't in business together. And hey, like
any family, we don't always agree on, on
everything, but we, we all get along well. We always have.
(10:40):
So it's great. I, I love it. That's great. Yeah.
But I don't think I could do it. I don't think everybody can.
But no, I'm fortunate that we all get along. And
that's great. Yeah, well, it is, it
generationally. It's another part of the wine trade
that is fascinating that it has a generational.
(11:02):
I certainly wouldn't have sold Wine of the Month club if it had, you know,
traction. After 35 years, it was starting to get different. The
business was totally different. But I can certainly see in the wine trade as the
manufacturer, you know, there's, there's an opportunity for generational
growth. Yeah, you're right. And I mean, New Zealand's got a very young wine history
when you compare it to Europe and other parts of the world. My family,
(11:24):
we've been farming the land for 150 years, but it's only been
my father, so the previous generation that started planting vineyards, and then
I'm the first generation to start making wine from the land. So
we have that historical connection with the land, but the
journey into the wine world is new. And yeah, who knows, hopefully
one of my children or one of my siblings children might
(11:48):
join the business in the years to come and we can continue. That on and
maybe they'll make some money. Hopefully we can do
that, too. What is the general
gist of in the movement in New Zealand? Sustainability, Organic,
biodynamic. Has it ever strayed from any of
those places? In other words, some parts of the world it always
(12:10):
was organic, like Burgundy. I think sustainability has
always been big in New Zealand, and New Zealand has always held this image of
being clean and green. And, you know, for me,
I think it's important to do what you
preach and. Yeah, so sustainability is
a big part for us. We're the first
(12:32):
B Corp certified wine brand in New Zealand. So for us,
and when we formed the business, we wanted to create a company
that was all about what our personal values were.
And so, you know, we love being outside and in the environment. We want to
be in a clean environment that is going to be there for
generations to come. So looking after our land is a big part of what we
(12:54):
do. Looking after our community, being part of our community, supporting other
producers, other industries in our community is
what we stand for. And so if we can incorporate that in our business
and share that goal with other people, that helps other people do the same thing
as well. I think there's a good movement with other New Zealand
producers doing the same. We were the first to become B Corp certified. Now
(13:17):
there's at least four or five others that have done the same. That's an accolade.
Congratulations. Thank you. Not inexpensive. It costs money to do all those things
and make sure. So it adds to the price of the wines, but
it does. I don't think there's much product in the world that probably isn't a
product in the world as attuned to sustainability
and giving back to the environment that wine would be. If
(13:40):
you think about it right, it's. Like, yeah, I think it comes, you know, if
you're a vineyard owner and you spend
time outside and in your vineyard, then I think naturally you want to look
after that soil so that you can keep producing what you're
growing. And yeah, you have that connection with the land. Because in America, we've
ruined it all. All of our wheat field, all over, that's all
(14:02):
full of crap. And so we have to now go backwards and figure that out.
Which is interesting to me that we're going back to what it was
anyway. Like, we screwed it up. And now, like, oh, hey, we screwed it up.
We have to go back and do it right. I guess at least. At least
there's a learning to be had there. And a lot of things do go full
circle. And, you know, if you go back a generation
or two and the introduction to synthetic fertilizers and
(14:25):
herbicides and pesticides and all of that. And all of a sudden the production of
anything could, could boom. And the ability
to grow food or to grow grapes became easier.
Now, since then, we've seen some, some downsides to farming that
way. And so we've gone, okay, maybe some of the things we were doing before
the invention of these were actually better. Maybe it's good to
(14:48):
keep cover crops in your vineyard that naturally enhance biodiversity,
bring in beneficial insects, help with soil health.
And, and so we, we implement those practices again. And
yeah, we've taken that learning, continue it on. There was an argument at some
point that, that you couldn't produce. Of course,
with wine, the yield of the grape, like any
(15:10):
agricultural product, matters as far as the quality of the product.
But there was a, an argument at some point where
organic, bad, dynamic, sustainable farming couldn't produce enough.
And I don't think that's accurate. Yeah, I think it, it
depends on a number of other factors as well. I think for me, if
you're farming organically, particularly with
(15:31):
viticulture, you need to spend a lot of time in the vineyard and you need
to take care of what you're doing. You can't be hands off.
Some people think, oh, it's organic, so you don't do anything. It's organic, so you
actually do twice. You have to do more. I know, yeah. And I
think if you're willing to work hard, then the yields are sustainable.
They might not be as high as if you're using a whole lot of synthetic
(15:52):
fertilizers. But I think the quality of the wines, the quality of the grapes that
you're growing is going to be so much better that, sure,
if you have to sell your wine for slightly higher, the quality is there. And
there's enough people in the world that want quality wine that we can, we can
cater to them. And I think that's where it's headed. You know, I
don't think in general, when you hear the news of consumption down and there's got
(16:14):
white claw and all this junk that people are drinking and this eventually fades
away, as well as other movements
with food, low elk, non alk. You know, all those
things have their position. What cracks me up is that non
alk. I was selling non alk wines in that shop when
I was a teenager. Really? They're not new. Okay. They've been around for a long
(16:36):
time. Yeah. And they haven't changed that much. They're still undrinkable
yeah, I'm not, anyway, Right. But this,
I think as a winery, since you're younger,
you have to plan out, right? You have to think five, seven years down the
road, maybe even more, and then all of a sudden, consumption changes or there's some
kind of whimsical move in the marketplace, and now you have to adjust.
(16:58):
And, you know, some people get caught with too many grapes and
just more wine on the marketplace, they sell it off
for something else, ends up in a bottle somewhere else. And I was reading Yesterday
in a 1980 magazine on wine about fraud.
You know, they were bringing in wines from France and mislabeling it in America.
(17:20):
You know, so you got that going on, too.
You're only making two wines right now. Two into the U.S. we
make Chardonnay as well. We just can't bring it into the US at the moment.
And that was what you always farmed, those three varietals?
That's correct, yeah. For me, it's important to be making wines from the fruit that
we're growing ourselves. That gives us control over the quality. So it's also
(17:42):
what I think Marlborough can do best. Sauvignon Blanc, for sure.
And everyone knows that Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, we can grow exceptional
grapes as well. So. So you have to choose
what side of this equation you're going to be on. Are you going to be
on the fine wine side, which you obviously have? There's an argument I
make regularly because you. You kind of can't do both.
(18:05):
You kind of. Unless you're this huge corporation and you have
many diverse branches, you have
to decide that you're going to make fine wine, you're not going to mess around
with cans, funny bottles,
low alk, non alk, all these different variations. But you
guys have chosen to take on this side of the fence.
(18:27):
I think there's been. I think there's been plenty of examples of businesses
that have tried to cover it all in the past out of Marlboro and across
the world, and we've seen that not really work out. In my experience,
it's very hard to do the high end and do the entry level and
everything in between, because all of a sudden, people know you for that entry level,
and then they don't care about your high end. For me, you
(18:50):
know, selling wine is the hardest part of the whole wine industry, in my opinion.
And so if we were going to take this on and create our own
brand and therefore have to sell our own wines, I
only wanted to be making the best wines. That I possibly can, and taking
those into the market to represent ourselves and our family. So,
yeah, there was no question in my mind at all, ever that this is the
(19:13):
direction we were going to take. And I'm sure there's a place for
Noelk wines and everything in between, but,
yeah, that's just not the field we want to play in, I think. And I
hope there's enough people in the world that want to continue drinking fine wine. So.
Somebody said it's thousands of years old already.
(19:33):
Kind of hard to upset that apple cart at this point in the game to
change it that much. Exactly. And I think, you know,
sometimes you get asked, marlborough Sauvignon, is it just a fad? You know,
what are you going to do? There's. There's lots of Sauvignon Blanc planted in Marlboro.
What are you going to do when people stop drinking Sauvignon Blanche? And you go,
but in Burgundy, they've been making Chardonnay and Pinot for
(19:55):
hundreds of years. And, you know, everyone still drinks. Well, not
everyone anymore because they're so expensive. But those wines are still being
produced. So I hope. And as long as the quality stays there,
then there's no reason why Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc shouldn't stay as
a wine. Yeah. I mean, certainly the flagship of
(20:15):
the area when it comes to America. You know what comes to America? I've never
heard that comment made before, and I would think the
opposite. Sancerre has become extraordinarily popular when you couldn't sell
to save your life 10 years ago. Yeah. Okay. So. And that's just sort of
part of the consumerism of it all. I did have the
chance the first time, and it's never happened before or since, to
(20:36):
taste a wine. The other day that was a Pinot Noir from the
central coast here in California. Same
vineyard, and then that same wine made
non elk. Okay. Side by side.
Absolutely no relationship. You cannot tell
that this came from. Had anything to do with the terroir or the
(20:58):
source of the grapes or anything. Nothing. It was terrible. Yeah. How has
the reception been with Taraki? Amazing.
It's been, you know, when you get out into the market with
the. Your own ones, and
it's great to get feedback from people. You're with
consumers, you're with the people that actually drink your wines. And so it's always
(21:21):
exciting to get that feedback. And,
yeah, since we've been over here in the US the reception has been
awesome. So gives us a lot of confidence to keep doing what we're doing.
You do need that positive feedback, don't you? It's important. Yeah.
You're doing dinners, pairings, meeting with
salesforces. Emily's driving around all over la. She
(21:44):
is? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, my bad. It's good work if you can get it
right. I think so. It's a. It's a lot of fun. You know, we
get to eat in a lot of great places. The wine industry is
full of people that enjoy drinking wine, enjoy talking,
enjoy having a good time. So it's a great community of people to
be around, and I think you find that all around the world.
(22:06):
So how do we teach? This might be a difficult question and
unanswerable. How do we teach someone who's not come to the table yet
how that feels, how that lifestyle is? Yeah, it's a
good question. What we're doing today, like you're being here. Yeah.
Yeah. I think podcasts like a great
way of getting a message across. If you go
(22:29):
back five, 10 years, podcasts, at least in
my experience, weren't people didn't listen to them. That wasn't a big thing. But now
everybody listens to podcasts and it's a great source of information.
So. Yeah. Being on. On your show,
educate a new consumer. Well, it was, you know, I
(22:50):
didn't. You didn't have to go that direction. That's fine. The reason I brought up
is this. This patch here is from 1975. My dad would. Could have been
wearing it in that picture. There's a group called Les Ami Devant. If you
had a wine shop in America, you could have a chapter 150
chapters eventually in America. Wow. In fact, the
me. The magazine I was reading last night was from this chat from this
(23:12):
group, and that was a wine enthusiast group of
consumers. Yeah. And so my dad would call up, you know, a local
winemaker or a local wine critic. They'd have dinner.
The women, you know, would get dressed up. The men were sometimes they were tuxedos
and made a whole deal out of this.
But that's. That kind of thing is being accused of being the
(23:35):
aristocracy and the snobbery of wine. And so
the contemporary conversation or chatter is we need to change the
language of wine, which makes no sense to me, because
if you change the language, then the other person's not going to understand what the
language is. Right. The language my dad used to describe wine, to talk about
wine, is different than what I. And he wouldn't understand part of
(23:57):
it. So if we change this, it's going to be the same Evolution.
But is there a way to break down the
aristocracy of it, if there still is aristocracy to
it? Yeah. I mean, why can't we speak two languages?
We can appeal to a broader audience and. Yeah, I think that's a good point.
I mean, we definitely want our ones to be approachable. We don't want to
(24:20):
seem like we are up here and that
unless you're up here with us, then you can't be touching our wines.
And so I think some of the language that you use and how you. You
speak about wine, how you share wines with your friends,
is important on breaking those barriers down and making it
more approachable to a broader audience, for sure. So I wonder if
(24:43):
that's, you know, the supermarket wines here, they're sugared up. I
mean, it's a very necessary part of our industry. When my dad was
around, it was white zinfandel from Sutter Home, which started at that point in
1974. And that brought people to the table that were maybe drinking
scotch or beer before that. The point I'm making
is that was 50 years ago, right? Yeah. It's still
(25:05):
the same conversation. Okay. It's a very slow
dynamic, but I. I believe every generation
eventually has that glass of wine
that brings them into the fold. You don't have to be, you know
this, a critic. You don't have to have the language. You don't have to find
chocolate or cocoa or. Or green apples in your wine. Yeah.
(25:28):
You just have to be inspired by it
either by the story, by what's in the. What's in your glass. And I don't
know if that's. I know that changes. Yeah. I don't. I don't know either, to
be honest. Maybe it's something that. That comes with a certain level of
maturity or that' or. Yeah,
I'd like to think that at a younger age
(25:51):
you can discover that. And. Yeah, maybe some of that comes
around. Education with alcohol, there
seems to be a push away from consuming any alcohol at all at the moment.
It's bad for you. Maybe that education needs to be more.
It's okay to have a glass of wine with dinner. It's not about going out
and getting smashed. Isn't that funny? Because that book right there, the French
(26:13):
Paradox, would argue the opposite. Right. That a
glass of wine is. It's got benefits to you, health wise. Yeah.
Yeah. I had a woman on the show and she put it
the best I've ever heard. I said,
you are attracting a generation of drinkers. Subordinate.
She's a Bordeaux house and a Napa house.
(26:36):
I said, do you think that. That people are coming around to
the expression of what's in this bottle? And she said, yes, because
it's welcome to civilization.
Isn't that great? I like it. Yeah. Isn't that great? Yeah, it's a. And then
there's a movie out, a French movie out now where the story is, I think,
about one of the first female chefs in France, you know, goes
(26:59):
back to the 1800s. And the gentleman of the house says,
wine is the intellectual part of the meal, because
doesn't it create interesting conversation? 100%.
I mean, when you're with friends that don't generally are necessarily wine people,
does the conversation come about. I don't have any friends that don't drink
(27:19):
wine. That's a good point.
So when you're with your friends who drink wine, do they.
I mean, isn't the conversation about that.
I mean, when I'm with friends that particularly work in the wine industry, there's a
lot of conversation around wine. But I guess, yeah, friends that aren't in the
wine industry that enjoy drinking wine. There's. There's often
(27:42):
conversations about the wine, or at least with the wine and the food together and
how that that pairs. And yeah, I think after a
couple of glasses of wine, that's when you find the best conversation start. Yeah, that's
right. There used to be a wine brand called First
Bottle, Second Bottle, Third Bottle. And the first bottle was a little better
than the second bottle, the second bottle a little better than Third Bottle, because it
(28:03):
didn't matter at that point. Y.
About your farming practices, what you're doing here that you're trying to
pull out of this. Yeah, we really want our wines to evoke a
sense of place, as I mentioned before. So it's all about
growing good quality grapes and then allowing that to speak through
our farming practices. So we are as sustainable
(28:27):
as we can be. We use cover cropping in the vineyards
throughout the year, so using different plant species to help with that
soil health and bring in beneficial insects. We keep sheep in the
vineyard through the winter months, which helps graze the grass
and is good for biodiversity as well. The Pinot
Noir is organically farmed, so no use of
(28:49):
herbicides or pesticides. And the
Sauvignon Blanc, we're heading in that direction as well. It's just a staged approach
at the moment, but I think all of those practices really
help your site speak through in the wine and.
Yeah. Move away from producing a wine that year on year. It looks exactly the
same, because no two years are the same. That's what makes winemaking
(29:12):
fun. Every year you've got a new challenge, and you work with that challenge
to ensure that you're making the best quality wines. But that doesn't mean the wine's
going to be exactly the same every year. So that's an interesting problem.
Right. Big brands.
I mean, we drink Jack Daniels because it tastes like Jack Daniels, and we drink.
But I think they drink Apothec Red or Josh because it tastes like that. And
(29:33):
they're going to do what they have to do to make it. Yeah. Similar each
year. And here you are trying to express that vintage.
And I have this thought, which is, if that's
the case, there are no. There are no bad vintages. If, if the
wine's job is to express the terroir,
the winemaking philosophy at that year, at that time,
(29:56):
it'll be different than the year before, the year after. But there can't be
a bad vintage because it's true to its definition.
I hope you're correct. In our short history
to date, we've been fortunate to have a number of very
good vintages. I mean, a challenge
with, you know, the timing around picking your fruit is always.
(30:18):
Is there rain in the forecast? As we get
closer and closer to harvest, you're looking at like, three different weather forecasts
every day. I love this time of year because I don't care what the weather's
doing. So, yeah, it's a challenge to
avoid the rain. Make sure you're pressure right now. No pressure. Exactly.
Make sure you're picking the best quality fruit and that it's at
(30:41):
the ripeness level you want, but that it's clean and it's going
to make good wine. So sometimes you have to pick earlier to avoid that rain.
Sometimes you can leave it out for longer, I think.
Yeah, I'd like to think there's. There's no bad vintage, but there. There will be
some years where the wines stand out more than other years. But you've
been farming, your family's been farming for, you said 150 years? Yes. Yeah.
(31:05):
Do you think that that history rolled
for you? I don't know how many grandfathers that would be for you, but.
Three. Three. I'm the fifth generation, so
my father and then three generations. So sitting at the dinner
table now, you weren't making wine, but still you were farming. You were
producing the best grapes you can produce, so that the wines that came from
(31:28):
those grapes were the best. Yeah, I guess. I guess my father was the first
to plant grapes. So 30 years of vines. Before that, sheep. Oh, sheep.
So you think, I mean, obviously, at least in my opinion, the,
those histories your father's 30 years has rolled forward to you.
Maybe it's just conversation at dinner time. Maybe it's walking the vineyard, maybe
(31:49):
it's, you know, looking over a barrel. Who knows? But there are
stories to be told between you and your father just to get where
you're at today, which I think is part of the terroir, which I think no
one would argue with that. How long do you think it takes
for you to really understand not a
vintage, but what's out there in your vineyard? I think you never stop
(32:11):
learning. You never stop learning. Yeah, there's, there's
obviously big learnings to be had in your first few years.
And, and for sure we're walking the vines with my father
talking around the dinner table. You know, I might be
experiencing something for the first time, but he's like, Ah, 10 years ago we had
a really similar vintage. And I tried this. It didn't work. I
(32:33):
tried that. It did work. So, yeah, those, those learnings around the dinner table are
super important in terms of carrying it through into the
winemaking. It's. Yeah, that's what I love about it.
Every year you're learning, everything is always slightly different. And
hopefully I will be able to take my learnings and pass those on to the
next generation as well. I can't think of any other product
(32:55):
I've tried this many times. It's certainly not a widget or a microphone or
couch or anything like that that happens to. But
even in regular agriculture, somebody brought up the other day
in a, in a conversation, which is, wine is almost a
value add product to the world of agriculture. In other words, you, you can't take
a tomato and elevate it to a bottle of wine
(33:17):
or anything else. Right. Pasta sauce,
which doesn't really command much more money. Right. But you can take a
grape and buy the ton and elevate the value
of that grape based on the quality of the wine that comes out of it.
And what you get for that bottle of wine, that's a really phenomenal thing
when I think about that. That's the only agriculture product that can
(33:39):
do that. Yeah, I agree. I think that's what makes wine
amazing. And that's, I hope, why we'll continue to see wine
consumed for hundreds of years as long as civilization,
because exactly as you say it is. What else can you take
as a grape and turn it into something that can be so many other
things that can evoke emotion and do all the things that
(34:01):
wine can do. You know, I could give you a
tomato from New Zealand and a tomato from Italy, and
you can tell me that the tomato from Italy is a million times better. But
as you say, you might not pay a lot more for it. You might make
a better pasta dish, but it's not the same, is it? You say
tomato, I say tomato.
(34:23):
So what's the end goal here? Maybe there's no end goal. Maybe it's just.
Yeah, at this stage, there's no end goal. We
want to share our wine with the world. We're very early on in that
journey. I want to make sure that we're always producing the best wines that we
can and that they can be enjoyed by people everywhere.
Are you a big food pairing guy?
(34:45):
It's not a loaded question. I love cooking, and I think
that's natural. If you enjoy flavors and tastes,
then working with food and working with wine, they definitely go hand in hand.
So I enjoy matching wine and food together.
It's like that old joke. I. I'm. I cook with wine. Sometimes I put it
in the food. That's it. I mean, we're big at our
(35:08):
house. We do the same. I pour a glass of wine, we start to cook.
I have mixed emotions about why foods
pair together and what doesn't. And really, if it's a science or just an art
or it's just a crapshoot. Yeah, right. I mean, certainly we
know all the Sauvignon Blanc from Marlboro goes well with certain shellfish
and seafoods and oysters and stuff like that. And it would be hard to drink
(35:30):
with something else, you know, with a giant steak.
People do it because they like it,
right? I mean, yeah, I think there's some science to it for sure. And
say the natural acidity in Sauvignon Blanc is always going to pair
nicely with. With seafoods and things like that. But
then once you move past the science, you go to personal. Personal
(35:53):
preference. And if your personal preference is Sauvignon Blanc and steak,
I'm not going to stop you. Yeah, exactly. Should have had a last night.
Tell me about the next experiment in the vineyard. Are you working
on trellising? Are you working with varietals?
We've started making a small amount of traditional method sparkling wine,
so working with our Chardonnay and Pinot to produce some sparkling wine.
(36:17):
There's some great examples out of Marlborough of. Of sparkling wine.
So. Yeah, and I love drinking champagne. So
That's a great goal to kind of work towards and something
that I enjoy to make as well. We grow a little bit
of Syrah, so that's another variety that's fun to work with.
It's, I would say marginal in Marlborough in terms of.
(36:40):
Yeah, so there's a few producers. It's not huge. The climate
is only marginally warm enough to ripen Syrah. So in a warm
summer we can get it there. So it's fun to work with something
challenging like that, that has great structure. Because,
because of that reason, you're not getting that blueberry and all that
gaminess. You're getting probably a nice structured, acidic backbone.
(37:02):
Syrah. Yes. Yeah, you're right. And yeah, it's a very
elegant style, at least in my experience. It's not,
you know, that, that black pepper, white pepper is not overpowering. It's, it's
the present but balanced. Yeah. A nice,
elegant style of Syrah. Wow, that's great. Sparkling
wine. You know, it's, there's a champagne issue. You know, of
(37:25):
course it's very expensive. I just had an Armenian champagne
two nights ago. But there is a, there is a movement towards
not just celebration, like it's part of
the regimen. Like put in your cellar, feel like glass
champagne. You pour champagne at the house doesn't have to be as
anniversary or birthday. You just drink it. And so
(37:48):
how's that project going? It's, it's early stages. There's nothing in bottle
yet, so the wines are still aging and barrel and tank and we'll put a
blend together later this year. So I mean, that's the challenge
with making that traditional style of sparkling wine, is it? It takes such a
long time before you actually have something that you can taste. And,
and then you're like, ah, four years ago I should have done something a little
(38:10):
bit different. Right. And now I've got to make that change and then wait that
time for it to follow through. So, yeah, that's a, it's a
completely new challenge compared to making still wines where
you're seeing the end result a lot sooner. But
I think that's, that's, that's fun. The challenges. Are you making
Method Chapel? Yes. Yeah. Traditional.
(38:32):
I think it's great. Unfortunately, I taught my son in law about
Champagne and now my depletion is much quicker than,
than I expected it. In fact, we were just in
champagne a few weeks ago and when it's not Tangier, it was really
quite spectacular. Well, this has been a fabulous conversation. I'm
so glad you had a chance to stop by. And. Yeah, thank you, Paul. Your
(38:54):
travels throughout America, I hope they're successful and they continue
to be. It sounds like they are. Thank you. And. And we need to
keep pouring for people to
strike that nerve that one time. You may never know
in the rest of your career whether how you got to that person, but that
person, you change that person's perspective. I agree. And that's a noble
(39:16):
pursuit. Cheers. Thank you. Cheers, Paul. Thanks.
Take care.
For me, selling wine is the hardest part of the whole wine industry, in
my opinion. So if we were going to take this on and create our own
brand and therefore have to sell our own wines, I only wanted to
be making the best wines that I possibly can and taking those into the
market to represent ourselves and our family. Sit back and grab a
glass. It's Wine Talks with Paul K.
(00:23):
Hey, welcome to Wine Talks with Paul Kay. And we are in studio today in
beautiful Southern California, about to have a conversation with Josh Hammond of
Taraki Wines, all the way from New Zealand. Introductions in just a moment.
Hey, have a listen to Robert Foy. Had him on the show last
week. Incredible conversation about his career at
Accolade in Australia, then to treasury, has
(00:45):
opened offices all over the world for wine sales and now
has become a complete unifile and looking for
more work, actually, as he retired from Treasury. But really interesting conversation
about that side of the business, but not while we're here. Here to have a
conversation with Josh from Teraki Wines. He's the owner and winemaker of
a New Zealand house. Welcome to the show. Thanks, Paul. Great to be here. I
(01:06):
mean, what a schedule you were trying to keep. It's a busy. It's a busy
trip. It's a. It's a big country you've got here, so. Yeah. Yes, it is
pretty big. Yes. Compared to New Zealand, I think it would be. This is interesting
for me, though, because the way the industry's been going
and the way wine sales haven't been that great
worldwide America is even worse. And you
(01:27):
come out and you are doing what, you're having dinners, going
to the wholesalers, pitching. Who are you talking to? Yeah. So meeting here
with our importer, which is
the first time we've. We've launched in. In America. So we've. We're only
new over here and getting out there,
going to restaurants, bars, meeting people, meeting the distributor,
(01:50):
meeting the team that will be on the ground selling our wine. So you've been
like. But you would have sounded like you're doing like one city a day. It's
like. It's like pretty much, yeah. It's a quick trip. That's crazy. And so
you've been in New Zealand selling Taraki wines already in your first
time in America, which is kind of exciting to come because we are a huge
marketplace. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We launched five years ago.
(02:12):
We started into the Asian market first. One of our partners is based in
Shanghai, so our first kind of focus was into China.
And over the last five years, we've put a lot of focus into growth
globally. So we're in 32 countries around the world now. But I
didn't take long. No, we, we work hard. We work hard and we work
fast. So, yeah, when do I start at Shanghai? I mean,
(02:34):
obviously New Zealand, in Marlboro. And for the, for the
listeners, Marlboro is the south of the north island.
The north of the south island, and. Martinboro is south
of the North Island. You're right. But why China?
So I guess tear aqui came about. COVID was closing the
(02:55):
borders around the world. Chris, one of the partners, was
Shanghai. He wanted to get out of there. They were nailing the doors closed behind
people, so it was a good time to leave. My brother and sister
were both overseas. My sister was in Colorado, my brother in
London. So everyone came back to New Zealand. I was already there and
I guess there was a lot of time with not much to do. They were
(03:17):
all out of work. And so over a few bottles of wine and a bit
of brainstorming, we thought we all had pretty good expertise
to. To join together and form a wine brand.
I guess in the few years preceding that, I'd always thought that I wanted to
launch my own brand and make my own wines. So it all kind of came
together from there and we thought, well, you know, it's a competitive space. There's lots
(03:40):
of New Zealand Marlborough producers. The wines are all around the world. Like,
what's going to be our competitive edge? And so with Chris
living in Shanghai for 10 years, being fluent in Mandarin, understanding
the business world there, he worked with his wife in a Chinese business,
we thought, well, that's really a good point of difference for us. A lot of
New Zealand brands have gone to China and I guess had some
(04:01):
initial success. They've sold some wine into China and then it's all kind of
got lost. And they haven't had those repeat orders and continual
sales. So we thought we saw a good chance for us to
make a difference and sell some wine into China. And
from our successes there, we've spread so initially to other
parts of Asia and then into Europe, and now here we are in the
(04:24):
U.S. can I. Hear what a Kiwi accent?
A Mandarin. Kiwi accent sounds like? I
couldn't do it any justice. I mean, that's just. That just sounds
pretty. When he's pretty exotic in Mandarin, like, I mean,
to me, he. He sounds like he could be Chinese. Wow. Yeah, he does
a good job. Yeah. Interesting. Well, it's interesting because on the show recently,
(04:47):
the Robert Foy who I just introduced, opened an office for. I think
it was treasury in China and accolade as well.
And then I just had a woman on the show, Emily Steckenbosch,
and she is the LVMH representative,
Ambassador Streckenborn of
(05:08):
lvmh and fascinating part of the world, because
I've always thought that China was always behind the curve
of other Asian countries when it came to wine.
So, like, when they first got introduced to wine many years ago, it was all
Bordeaux, all first gross, all the best Napa. And they realized
that's not the only place that you need to be. You can drink other things
(05:29):
that are more economical and still be really good. And so that's
maybe part of this. Yeah. 100. I think, you know, you think
Sauvignon Blanc in particular maybe wouldn't work so well
in China. You think of Chinese food, and in parts of China, it's quite
spicy. So you'd think, how does that pair with wines?
But actually, actually, the acidity in Sauvignon Blanc seems to work really well. I
(05:52):
know that our Sauvignon in Shanghai is really popular with hot
pots. So, yeah, I probably
wouldn't have thought that we would have success there, but
it's working, so it's great. The first question I had for Emily when she was
on the show was, is your Chinese food in China really like
the Chinese food we have here in America? She said, no, it has nothing
(06:14):
to do with it. Well, that's interesting, because
there's another movement to Singapore as well.
A lot of bored delays are in Singapore now because these markets are opening up,
and I wonder if that's a balance to some of the issues are going on
in Europe. I don't know about the consumption in New Zealand. I haven't read about
that lately, but certainly America, it's generally down.
(06:36):
Yeah. Have you seen that as well? Yeah. I think there seems to be a
movement globally to. To drink less, whether it's. Whether
it's wine, beer, spirits. My understanding in the
US is that white wines, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc is still in
growth. We're definitely all getting out here and
trying to help that continue to happen. So on my flight out of
(06:58):
Blenheim, there was three winemakers on the plane, two of us coming to the us,
One going to Europe. So it's the time of year that we all get out
here and do our best to sell the wine and keep the trend
in the right direction. Well, I was saying before we got started that,
you know, I taste well I used to taste wine every Tuesday here, as Emily
would remember. And it would be a rather
(07:21):
thermometer of what's going on in the industry. You know, what's coming to America,
what's. What's being sold, what needs to move quickly because we have too much.
And so you would see, particularly Australian wines ebb and flow. And
New Zealand wines are a little more stable. You see them all the time. But
I hadn't seen them lately, so it's interesting to see them again. I just tasted
one two days ago. Yeah. Also, and so. And certainly it's that character of
(07:42):
Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough is. Is well established in the
palates of most Americans. But I think when it comes to the
consumption side of this, I think it ebbs and flows.
Right. I think that we go through periods at my dad's
shop in that picture there, you know, we sold bottles and James wine coolers,
we sold Matuse Lancers, Blue Nun leaf, raw milch. It
(08:04):
just. It's just the way our industry is. But the core value
of that proper glass of wine never changes.
No. How can it change? Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right.
So I'm thinking that it'll come back or it'll settle in a different
place. But properly made wines will always
have their human connection. I certainly
(08:27):
hope so. And, yeah, for us at Tearaki, wine is
about, you know, it's more than something to drink. It's about
sharing our sense of place. You know, we want our wines to represent the
vineyard that they come from, and we want them to be about
connections with people and about evoking
emotions and memories of things that you do together. We all
(08:48):
love spending time outdoors in the mountains or the oceans around New Zealand.
And when we're doing those things, whether it's, you know, a day on the beach
with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc or around a fire in a hut at the
top of a mountain with a glass of Pinot. Great
image right there. Exactly. And you don't actually have to have been to
New Zealand and done that, but if you can think about that when you're drinking
(09:10):
our wines and. And go, that's. That's what I want to do, then that's. That's
what we're trying to achieve. I think that's got to be the. The
criteria that makes this part of the human
story, really. I mean, I. I always talk about this. If you were
to pick, let's just say, five things that. That would express a
culture in the world. Yeah. Land. If you have it, New Zealand has it
(09:34):
language. If you have it, New Zealand has it
food. And that's not always the case. Like we were in
Sicily and I didn't find anything. There was no cultural food there. Really. There's
some fried chickpeas about it and not disparaging it, but
not always. There is cuisines as expressive, but wine is
always part of that expression. If they have culture, a wine culture. I
(09:56):
agree. You know, you can take this halfway around the world as you already have
and plop it on the desk. And I know you're. We're from New Zealand. Yeah.
How can that change? Yeah, I don't think it can. I
hope it doesn't. So. Yeah. Plus you started a winery. You hope it
doesn't. So, but you said earlier that you're working
with your sister. How's that working out? Yeah, great. Yeah. So
(10:18):
it's. My brother and sister and I all work together,
perhaps. Fortunately, we're all in different parts of the world, so, you
know, we communicate all the time. We probably talk a lot more than we would
if we weren't in business together. And hey, like
any family, we don't always agree on, on
everything, but we, we all get along well. We always have.
(10:40):
So it's great. I, I love it. That's great. Yeah.
But I don't think I could do it. I don't think everybody can.
But no, I'm fortunate that we all get along. And
that's great. Yeah, well, it is, it
generationally. It's another part of the wine trade
that is fascinating that it has a generational.
(11:02):
I certainly wouldn't have sold Wine of the Month club if it had, you know,
traction. After 35 years, it was starting to get different. The
business was totally different. But I can certainly see in the wine trade as the
manufacturer, you know, there's, there's an opportunity for generational
growth. Yeah, you're right. And I mean, New Zealand's got a very young wine history
when you compare it to Europe and other parts of the world. My family,
(11:24):
we've been farming the land for 150 years, but it's only been
my father, so the previous generation that started planting vineyards, and then
I'm the first generation to start making wine from the land. So
we have that historical connection with the land, but the
journey into the wine world is new. And yeah, who knows, hopefully
one of my children or one of my siblings children might
(11:48):
join the business in the years to come and we can continue. That on and
maybe they'll make some money. Hopefully we can do
that, too. What is the general
gist of in the movement in New Zealand? Sustainability, Organic,
biodynamic. Has it ever strayed from any of
those places? In other words, some parts of the world it always
(12:10):
was organic, like Burgundy. I think sustainability has
always been big in New Zealand, and New Zealand has always held this image of
being clean and green. And, you know, for me,
I think it's important to do what you
preach and. Yeah, so sustainability is
a big part for us. We're the first
(12:32):
B Corp certified wine brand in New Zealand. So for us,
and when we formed the business, we wanted to create a company
that was all about what our personal values were.
And so, you know, we love being outside and in the environment. We want to
be in a clean environment that is going to be there for
generations to come. So looking after our land is a big part of what we
(12:54):
do. Looking after our community, being part of our community, supporting other
producers, other industries in our community is
what we stand for. And so if we can incorporate that in our business
and share that goal with other people, that helps other people do the same thing
as well. I think there's a good movement with other New Zealand
producers doing the same. We were the first to become B Corp certified. Now
(13:17):
there's at least four or five others that have done the same. That's an accolade.
Congratulations. Thank you. Not inexpensive. It costs money to do all those things
and make sure. So it adds to the price of the wines, but
it does. I don't think there's much product in the world that probably isn't a
product in the world as attuned to sustainability
and giving back to the environment that wine would be. If
(13:40):
you think about it right, it's. Like, yeah, I think it comes, you know, if
you're a vineyard owner and you spend
time outside and in your vineyard, then I think naturally you want to look
after that soil so that you can keep producing what you're
growing. And yeah, you have that connection with the land. Because in America, we've
ruined it all. All of our wheat field, all over, that's all
(14:02):
full of crap. And so we have to now go backwards and figure that out.
Which is interesting to me that we're going back to what it was
anyway. Like, we screwed it up. And now, like, oh, hey, we screwed it up.
We have to go back and do it right. I guess at least. At least
there's a learning to be had there. And a lot of things do go full
circle. And, you know, if you go back a generation
or two and the introduction to synthetic fertilizers and
(14:25):
herbicides and pesticides and all of that. And all of a sudden the production of
anything could, could boom. And the ability
to grow food or to grow grapes became easier.
Now, since then, we've seen some, some downsides to farming that
way. And so we've gone, okay, maybe some of the things we were doing before
the invention of these were actually better. Maybe it's good to
(14:48):
keep cover crops in your vineyard that naturally enhance biodiversity,
bring in beneficial insects, help with soil health.
And, and so we, we implement those practices again. And
yeah, we've taken that learning, continue it on. There was an argument at some
point that, that you couldn't produce. Of course,
with wine, the yield of the grape, like any
(15:10):
agricultural product, matters as far as the quality of the product.
But there was a, an argument at some point where
organic, bad, dynamic, sustainable farming couldn't produce enough.
And I don't think that's accurate. Yeah, I think it, it
depends on a number of other factors as well. I think for me, if
you're farming organically, particularly with
(15:31):
viticulture, you need to spend a lot of time in the vineyard and you need
to take care of what you're doing. You can't be hands off.
Some people think, oh, it's organic, so you don't do anything. It's organic, so you
actually do twice. You have to do more. I know, yeah. And I
think if you're willing to work hard, then the yields are sustainable.
They might not be as high as if you're using a whole lot of synthetic
(15:52):
fertilizers. But I think the quality of the wines, the quality of the grapes that
you're growing is going to be so much better that, sure,
if you have to sell your wine for slightly higher, the quality is there. And
there's enough people in the world that want quality wine that we can, we can
cater to them. And I think that's where it's headed. You know, I
don't think in general, when you hear the news of consumption down and there's got
(16:14):
white claw and all this junk that people are drinking and this eventually fades
away, as well as other movements
with food, low elk, non alk. You know, all those
things have their position. What cracks me up is that non
alk. I was selling non alk wines in that shop when
I was a teenager. Really? They're not new. Okay. They've been around for a long
(16:36):
time. Yeah. And they haven't changed that much. They're still undrinkable
yeah, I'm not, anyway, Right. But this,
I think as a winery, since you're younger,
you have to plan out, right? You have to think five, seven years down the
road, maybe even more, and then all of a sudden, consumption changes or there's some
kind of whimsical move in the marketplace, and now you have to adjust.
(16:58):
And, you know, some people get caught with too many grapes and
just more wine on the marketplace, they sell it off
for something else, ends up in a bottle somewhere else. And I was reading Yesterday
in a 1980 magazine on wine about fraud.
You know, they were bringing in wines from France and mislabeling it in America.
(17:20):
You know, so you got that going on, too.
You're only making two wines right now. Two into the U.S. we
make Chardonnay as well. We just can't bring it into the US at the moment.
And that was what you always farmed, those three varietals?
That's correct, yeah. For me, it's important to be making wines from the fruit that
we're growing ourselves. That gives us control over the quality. So it's also
(17:42):
what I think Marlborough can do best. Sauvignon Blanc, for sure.
And everyone knows that Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, we can grow exceptional
grapes as well. So. So you have to choose
what side of this equation you're going to be on. Are you going to be
on the fine wine side, which you obviously have? There's an argument I
make regularly because you. You kind of can't do both.
(18:05):
You kind of. Unless you're this huge corporation and you have
many diverse branches, you have
to decide that you're going to make fine wine, you're not going to mess around
with cans, funny bottles,
low alk, non alk, all these different variations. But you
guys have chosen to take on this side of the fence.
(18:27):
I think there's been. I think there's been plenty of examples of businesses
that have tried to cover it all in the past out of Marlboro and across
the world, and we've seen that not really work out. In my experience,
it's very hard to do the high end and do the entry level and
everything in between, because all of a sudden, people know you for that entry level,
and then they don't care about your high end. For me, you
(18:50):
know, selling wine is the hardest part of the whole wine industry, in my opinion.
And so if we were going to take this on and create our own
brand and therefore have to sell our own wines, I
only wanted to be making the best wines. That I possibly can, and taking
those into the market to represent ourselves and our family. So,
yeah, there was no question in my mind at all, ever that this is the
(19:13):
direction we were going to take. And I'm sure there's a place for
Noelk wines and everything in between, but,
yeah, that's just not the field we want to play in, I think. And I
hope there's enough people in the world that want to continue drinking fine wine. So.
Somebody said it's thousands of years old already.
(19:33):
Kind of hard to upset that apple cart at this point in the game to
change it that much. Exactly. And I think, you know,
sometimes you get asked, marlborough Sauvignon, is it just a fad? You know,
what are you going to do? There's. There's lots of Sauvignon Blanc planted in Marlboro.
What are you going to do when people stop drinking Sauvignon Blanche? And you go,
but in Burgundy, they've been making Chardonnay and Pinot for
(19:55):
hundreds of years. And, you know, everyone still drinks. Well, not
everyone anymore because they're so expensive. But those wines are still being
produced. So I hope. And as long as the quality stays there,
then there's no reason why Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc shouldn't stay as
a wine. Yeah. I mean, certainly the flagship of
(20:15):
the area when it comes to America. You know what comes to America? I've never
heard that comment made before, and I would think the
opposite. Sancerre has become extraordinarily popular when you couldn't sell
to save your life 10 years ago. Yeah. Okay. So. And that's just sort of
part of the consumerism of it all. I did have the
chance the first time, and it's never happened before or since, to
(20:36):
taste a wine. The other day that was a Pinot Noir from the
central coast here in California. Same
vineyard, and then that same wine made
non elk. Okay. Side by side.
Absolutely no relationship. You cannot tell
that this came from. Had anything to do with the terroir or the
(20:58):
source of the grapes or anything. Nothing. It was terrible. Yeah. How has
the reception been with Taraki? Amazing.
It's been, you know, when you get out into the market with
the. Your own ones, and
it's great to get feedback from people. You're with
consumers, you're with the people that actually drink your wines. And so it's always
(21:21):
exciting to get that feedback. And,
yeah, since we've been over here in the US the reception has been
awesome. So gives us a lot of confidence to keep doing what we're doing.
You do need that positive feedback, don't you? It's important. Yeah.
You're doing dinners, pairings, meeting with
salesforces. Emily's driving around all over la. She
(21:44):
is? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, my bad. It's good work if you can get it
right. I think so. It's a. It's a lot of fun. You know, we
get to eat in a lot of great places. The wine industry is
full of people that enjoy drinking wine, enjoy talking,
enjoy having a good time. So it's a great community of people to
be around, and I think you find that all around the world.
(22:06):
So how do we teach? This might be a difficult question and
unanswerable. How do we teach someone who's not come to the table yet
how that feels, how that lifestyle is? Yeah, it's a
good question. What we're doing today, like you're being here. Yeah.
Yeah. I think podcasts like a great
way of getting a message across. If you go
(22:29):
back five, 10 years, podcasts, at least in
my experience, weren't people didn't listen to them. That wasn't a big thing. But now
everybody listens to podcasts and it's a great source of information.
So. Yeah. Being on. On your show,
educate a new consumer. Well, it was, you know, I
(22:50):
didn't. You didn't have to go that direction. That's fine. The reason I brought up
is this. This patch here is from 1975. My dad would. Could have been
wearing it in that picture. There's a group called Les Ami Devant. If you
had a wine shop in America, you could have a chapter 150
chapters eventually in America. Wow. In fact, the
me. The magazine I was reading last night was from this chat from this
(23:12):
group, and that was a wine enthusiast group of
consumers. Yeah. And so my dad would call up, you know, a local
winemaker or a local wine critic. They'd have dinner.
The women, you know, would get dressed up. The men were sometimes they were tuxedos
and made a whole deal out of this.
But that's. That kind of thing is being accused of being the
(23:35):
aristocracy and the snobbery of wine. And so
the contemporary conversation or chatter is we need to change the
language of wine, which makes no sense to me, because
if you change the language, then the other person's not going to understand what the
language is. Right. The language my dad used to describe wine, to talk about
wine, is different than what I. And he wouldn't understand part of
(23:57):
it. So if we change this, it's going to be the same Evolution.
But is there a way to break down the
aristocracy of it, if there still is aristocracy to
it? Yeah. I mean, why can't we speak two languages?
We can appeal to a broader audience and. Yeah, I think that's a good point.
I mean, we definitely want our ones to be approachable. We don't want to
(24:20):
seem like we are up here and that
unless you're up here with us, then you can't be touching our wines.
And so I think some of the language that you use and how you. You
speak about wine, how you share wines with your friends,
is important on breaking those barriers down and making it
more approachable to a broader audience, for sure. So I wonder if
(24:43):
that's, you know, the supermarket wines here, they're sugared up. I
mean, it's a very necessary part of our industry. When my dad was
around, it was white zinfandel from Sutter Home, which started at that point in
1974. And that brought people to the table that were maybe drinking
scotch or beer before that. The point I'm making
is that was 50 years ago, right? Yeah. It's still
(25:05):
the same conversation. Okay. It's a very slow
dynamic, but I. I believe every generation
eventually has that glass of wine
that brings them into the fold. You don't have to be, you know
this, a critic. You don't have to have the language. You don't have to find
chocolate or cocoa or. Or green apples in your wine. Yeah.
(25:28):
You just have to be inspired by it
either by the story, by what's in the. What's in your glass. And I don't
know if that's. I know that changes. Yeah. I don't. I don't know either, to
be honest. Maybe it's something that. That comes with a certain level of
maturity or that' or. Yeah,
I'd like to think that at a younger age
(25:51):
you can discover that. And. Yeah, maybe some of that comes
around. Education with alcohol, there
seems to be a push away from consuming any alcohol at all at the moment.
It's bad for you. Maybe that education needs to be more.
It's okay to have a glass of wine with dinner. It's not about going out
and getting smashed. Isn't that funny? Because that book right there, the French
(26:13):
Paradox, would argue the opposite. Right. That a
glass of wine is. It's got benefits to you, health wise. Yeah.
Yeah. I had a woman on the show and she put it
the best I've ever heard. I said,
you are attracting a generation of drinkers. Subordinate.
She's a Bordeaux house and a Napa house.
(26:36):
I said, do you think that. That people are coming around to
the expression of what's in this bottle? And she said, yes, because
it's welcome to civilization.
Isn't that great? I like it. Yeah. Isn't that great? Yeah, it's a. And then
there's a movie out, a French movie out now where the story is, I think,
about one of the first female chefs in France, you know, goes
(26:59):
back to the 1800s. And the gentleman of the house says,
wine is the intellectual part of the meal, because
doesn't it create interesting conversation? 100%.
I mean, when you're with friends that don't generally are necessarily wine people,
does the conversation come about. I don't have any friends that don't drink
(27:19):
wine. That's a good point.
So when you're with your friends who drink wine, do they.
I mean, isn't the conversation about that.
I mean, when I'm with friends that particularly work in the wine industry, there's a
lot of conversation around wine. But I guess, yeah, friends that aren't in the
wine industry that enjoy drinking wine. There's. There's often
(27:42):
conversations about the wine, or at least with the wine and the food together and
how that that pairs. And yeah, I think after a
couple of glasses of wine, that's when you find the best conversation start. Yeah, that's
right. There used to be a wine brand called First
Bottle, Second Bottle, Third Bottle. And the first bottle was a little better
than the second bottle, the second bottle a little better than Third Bottle, because it
(28:03):
didn't matter at that point. Y.
About your farming practices, what you're doing here that you're trying to
pull out of this. Yeah, we really want our wines to evoke a
sense of place, as I mentioned before. So it's all about
growing good quality grapes and then allowing that to speak through
our farming practices. So we are as sustainable
(28:27):
as we can be. We use cover cropping in the vineyards
throughout the year, so using different plant species to help with that
soil health and bring in beneficial insects. We keep sheep in the
vineyard through the winter months, which helps graze the grass
and is good for biodiversity as well. The Pinot
Noir is organically farmed, so no use of
(28:49):
herbicides or pesticides. And the
Sauvignon Blanc, we're heading in that direction as well. It's just a staged approach
at the moment, but I think all of those practices really
help your site speak through in the wine and.
Yeah. Move away from producing a wine that year on year. It looks exactly the
same, because no two years are the same. That's what makes winemaking
(29:12):
fun. Every year you've got a new challenge, and you work with that challenge
to ensure that you're making the best quality wines. But that doesn't mean the wine's
going to be exactly the same every year. So that's an interesting problem.
Right. Big brands.
I mean, we drink Jack Daniels because it tastes like Jack Daniels, and we drink.
But I think they drink Apothec Red or Josh because it tastes like that. And
(29:33):
they're going to do what they have to do to make it. Yeah. Similar each
year. And here you are trying to express that vintage.
And I have this thought, which is, if that's
the case, there are no. There are no bad vintages. If, if the
wine's job is to express the terroir,
the winemaking philosophy at that year, at that time,
(29:56):
it'll be different than the year before, the year after. But there can't be
a bad vintage because it's true to its definition.
I hope you're correct. In our short history
to date, we've been fortunate to have a number of very
good vintages. I mean, a challenge
with, you know, the timing around picking your fruit is always.
(30:18):
Is there rain in the forecast? As we get
closer and closer to harvest, you're looking at like, three different weather forecasts
every day. I love this time of year because I don't care what the weather's
doing. So, yeah, it's a challenge to
avoid the rain. Make sure you're pressure right now. No pressure. Exactly.
Make sure you're picking the best quality fruit and that it's at
(30:41):
the ripeness level you want, but that it's clean and it's going
to make good wine. So sometimes you have to pick earlier to avoid that rain.
Sometimes you can leave it out for longer, I think.
Yeah, I'd like to think there's. There's no bad vintage, but there. There will be
some years where the wines stand out more than other years. But you've
been farming, your family's been farming for, you said 150 years? Yes. Yeah.
(31:05):
Do you think that that history rolled
for you? I don't know how many grandfathers that would be for you, but.
Three. Three. I'm the fifth generation, so
my father and then three generations. So sitting at the dinner
table now, you weren't making wine, but still you were farming. You were
producing the best grapes you can produce, so that the wines that came from
(31:28):
those grapes were the best. Yeah, I guess. I guess my father was the first
to plant grapes. So 30 years of vines. Before that, sheep. Oh, sheep.
So you think, I mean, obviously, at least in my opinion, the,
those histories your father's 30 years has rolled forward to you.
Maybe it's just conversation at dinner time. Maybe it's walking the vineyard, maybe
(31:49):
it's, you know, looking over a barrel. Who knows? But there are
stories to be told between you and your father just to get where
you're at today, which I think is part of the terroir, which I think no
one would argue with that. How long do you think it takes
for you to really understand not a
vintage, but what's out there in your vineyard? I think you never stop
(32:11):
learning. You never stop learning. Yeah, there's, there's
obviously big learnings to be had in your first few years.
And, and for sure we're walking the vines with my father
talking around the dinner table. You know, I might be
experiencing something for the first time, but he's like, Ah, 10 years ago we had
a really similar vintage. And I tried this. It didn't work. I
(32:33):
tried that. It did work. So, yeah, those, those learnings around the dinner table are
super important in terms of carrying it through into the
winemaking. It's. Yeah, that's what I love about it.
Every year you're learning, everything is always slightly different. And
hopefully I will be able to take my learnings and pass those on to the
next generation as well. I can't think of any other product
(32:55):
I've tried this many times. It's certainly not a widget or a microphone or
couch or anything like that that happens to. But
even in regular agriculture, somebody brought up the other day
in a, in a conversation, which is, wine is almost a
value add product to the world of agriculture. In other words, you, you can't take
a tomato and elevate it to a bottle of wine
(33:17):
or anything else. Right. Pasta sauce,
which doesn't really command much more money. Right. But you can take a
grape and buy the ton and elevate the value
of that grape based on the quality of the wine that comes out of it.
And what you get for that bottle of wine, that's a really phenomenal thing
when I think about that. That's the only agriculture product that can
(33:39):
do that. Yeah, I agree. I think that's what makes wine
amazing. And that's, I hope, why we'll continue to see wine
consumed for hundreds of years as long as civilization,
because exactly as you say it is. What else can you take
as a grape and turn it into something that can be so many other
things that can evoke emotion and do all the things that
(34:01):
wine can do. You know, I could give you a
tomato from New Zealand and a tomato from Italy, and
you can tell me that the tomato from Italy is a million times better. But
as you say, you might not pay a lot more for it. You might make
a better pasta dish, but it's not the same, is it? You say
tomato, I say tomato.
(34:23):
So what's the end goal here? Maybe there's no end goal. Maybe it's just.
Yeah, at this stage, there's no end goal. We
want to share our wine with the world. We're very early on in that
journey. I want to make sure that we're always producing the best wines that we
can and that they can be enjoyed by people everywhere.
Are you a big food pairing guy?
(34:45):
It's not a loaded question. I love cooking, and I think
that's natural. If you enjoy flavors and tastes,
then working with food and working with wine, they definitely go hand in hand.
So I enjoy matching wine and food together.
It's like that old joke. I. I'm. I cook with wine. Sometimes I put it
in the food. That's it. I mean, we're big at our
(35:08):
house. We do the same. I pour a glass of wine, we start to cook.
I have mixed emotions about why foods
pair together and what doesn't. And really, if it's a science or just an art
or it's just a crapshoot. Yeah, right. I mean, certainly we
know all the Sauvignon Blanc from Marlboro goes well with certain shellfish
and seafoods and oysters and stuff like that. And it would be hard to drink
(35:30):
with something else, you know, with a giant steak.
People do it because they like it,
right? I mean, yeah, I think there's some science to it for sure. And
say the natural acidity in Sauvignon Blanc is always going to pair
nicely with. With seafoods and things like that. But
then once you move past the science, you go to personal. Personal
(35:53):
preference. And if your personal preference is Sauvignon Blanc and steak,
I'm not going to stop you. Yeah, exactly. Should have had a last night.
Tell me about the next experiment in the vineyard. Are you working
on trellising? Are you working with varietals?
We've started making a small amount of traditional method sparkling wine,
so working with our Chardonnay and Pinot to produce some sparkling wine.
(36:17):
There's some great examples out of Marlborough of. Of sparkling wine.
So. Yeah, and I love drinking champagne. So
That's a great goal to kind of work towards and something
that I enjoy to make as well. We grow a little bit
of Syrah, so that's another variety that's fun to work with.
It's, I would say marginal in Marlborough in terms of.
(36:40):
Yeah, so there's a few producers. It's not huge. The climate
is only marginally warm enough to ripen Syrah. So in a warm
summer we can get it there. So it's fun to work with something
challenging like that, that has great structure. Because,
because of that reason, you're not getting that blueberry and all that
gaminess. You're getting probably a nice structured, acidic backbone.
(37:02):
Syrah. Yes. Yeah, you're right. And yeah, it's a very
elegant style, at least in my experience. It's not,
you know, that, that black pepper, white pepper is not overpowering. It's, it's
the present but balanced. Yeah. A nice,
elegant style of Syrah. Wow, that's great. Sparkling
wine. You know, it's, there's a champagne issue. You know, of
(37:25):
course it's very expensive. I just had an Armenian champagne
two nights ago. But there is a, there is a movement towards
not just celebration, like it's part of
the regimen. Like put in your cellar, feel like glass
champagne. You pour champagne at the house doesn't have to be as
anniversary or birthday. You just drink it. And so
(37:48):
how's that project going? It's, it's early stages. There's nothing in bottle
yet, so the wines are still aging and barrel and tank and we'll put a
blend together later this year. So I mean, that's the challenge
with making that traditional style of sparkling wine, is it? It takes such a
long time before you actually have something that you can taste. And,
and then you're like, ah, four years ago I should have done something a little
(38:10):
bit different. Right. And now I've got to make that change and then wait that
time for it to follow through. So, yeah, that's a, it's a
completely new challenge compared to making still wines where
you're seeing the end result a lot sooner. But
I think that's, that's, that's fun. The challenges. Are you making
Method Chapel? Yes. Yeah. Traditional.
(38:32):
I think it's great. Unfortunately, I taught my son in law about
Champagne and now my depletion is much quicker than,
than I expected it. In fact, we were just in
champagne a few weeks ago and when it's not Tangier, it was really
quite spectacular. Well, this has been a fabulous conversation. I'm
so glad you had a chance to stop by. And. Yeah, thank you, Paul. Your
(38:54):
travels throughout America, I hope they're successful and they continue
to be. It sounds like they are. Thank you. And. And we need to
keep pouring for people to
strike that nerve that one time. You may never know
in the rest of your career whether how you got to that person, but that
person, you change that person's perspective. I agree. And that's a noble
(39:16):
pursuit. Cheers. Thank you. Cheers, Paul. Thanks.
Take care.
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