March 13, 2024 • 47 mins
Purple Cafe - https://www.purplecafe.com/
Instagram: @purplewinebar
Downtown Seattle | Woodinville
BUNG POD MERCH: bungpod.store
From the vibrant floors of Seattle's beloved Purple Cafe, beverage director Chris Horn spills the secrets of his rise through the ranks of the wine world. Imagine starting as a busboy and uncorking a career that leads to shaping the palates of an entire city. That's exactly what we unpack with Chris, whose tale of transformation echoes the very bottles he pours – from an '85 Brunello that kindled his love for wine, to his pivotal role in Wild Ginger's ascent and the birth of Purple Cafe. This episode isn't just about the romantic journey through vineyards; it's an homage to the laid-back spirit of the industry and the colorful characters who pour life into every glass.
Every sip tells a story, and in the world of wine marketing, those narratives have the power to transform a grape into a legend. We raise a glass to the art of connection in this episode, exploring how wineries from the States to New Zealand have crafted tales that resonate deeply with consumers. Chris lends his expertise to the discussion of how authenticity and scarcity can create a vintage as sought after as an elusive Bordeaux. It's a conversation that meanders through the changing tastes of generations, where millennials swap out advertising for experiences, and every bottle uncorks a personal story.
And what of the essence of the earth in your glass? We ponder the elusive concept of terroir with Chris, dissecting how a word meant to convey the soul of a place has become a buzzword on the lips of marketers. Yet, amidst this, we celebrate the genuine expression of land and climate that can still be found in the world's most honest wines. We navigate the challenges of mass production and regional labeling laws, pouring out anecdotes that highlight the struggle for authenticity in an industry brimming with complexity. Join us for a spirited discussion that's as rich and varied as the wines we love.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bung pod, welcome back.
We got Jazzy J.
What is a bone?
The whole of the barrel iscalled a bong hole.
Inside the bong hole is calleda bong wine with mayhem.
That's what it's about.
All right, welcome back to thebung pod.
(00:24):
I'm Ian King, your host.
Aka wine wonder boy Jazzy isnot here today, but we got an
awesome guest.
We made a little trip toSeattle.
We're in South downtown Cartustasting room and we have Chris
Horn with us.
He is the beverage director ofPurple Cafe in Woodenville and
(00:47):
downtown Seattle, among otherthings.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Among other things, yeah my title is director of
liquids the lacker director ofliquids.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Cuz they wouldn't be.
They wouldn't let me be thePrince of Potable's, or yeah.
I had a lot of other ideas, butyeah, we settled on that
because it was a little lessCheeky that's creative, though.
Yeah, I like it I mean, I thinkthat a lot of the beverage
world has a little bit ofsnobbery attached to it.
Yeah, so trying to avoid titlesthat are infused with a little
(01:20):
bit of attitude is fine with me.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
I love that.
That's what we're about at thebung pod here.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
All right.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Absolutely Cool.
So, chris, where are you from?
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Well, I was born in downtown Seattle.
All right about six blocks fromwhere Purple Cafe is local boy,
so I've gone nowhere in my life.
I was.
I was lucky, though my dad wasin shipping, so we we spent some
time in Asia growing up, butcame back here for the formative
(01:51):
years, went to college over inSpokane and then came back to
Seattle and had designs that goteach English in Japan.
But then, wow, buddy of minewas living on alchai and he
needed a roommate for a fewmonths so he could save some
money and yeah another buddy ofmine said hey, I got this job,
but this place called salty's onalchai.
They're hiring and next thing Iknow I'm Waiting tables and
(02:13):
making more money than youshould in your 20s and I was
like I'll go to Japan later.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
So that was got started in the restaurant
industry for you, no when I was15 and a half, I was with my
parents and we were we weresocial members at the local
country club so that I couldplay tennis, my brother could go
To swimming pool, my dad couldgolf every once in a while.
Yeah but when I say countryclub, people get the idea like a
(02:38):
country club it.
You know it wasn't.
It wasn't the fanciest place onthe planet.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Okay, okay, cuz we think a country club.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
You think like yeah, this is yeah.
No, I don't want to disparageanybody, but yeah.
It's, but the the dining roommanager was like losing your
mind cuz she was busy as helland and they made a joke about
well, you can have this kid.
When he turned 16 and she'slike Do you have black pants and
a white shirt?
(03:05):
I'm like, yeah.
And she's like you starttomorrow.
So I at one point was probablythe world's best Country club
bus boy.
Oh yeah, that shit dialed.
Yeah, I could snap a 54 by 90tablecloth.
Just watch it settle as I'mputting down the forks and
knives and I that also where Istarted waiting tables.
(03:25):
And there's no better boot campfor waiting tables and having
four guys walk in the front doorevery eight minutes for hours
on end Right, and you got toknow their names, cuz they're
the members and you gotta knowif it's regular decaf and you
gotta know how they like theireggs and what kind of toast they
have.
Yeah, that was.
That was definitely a greatplace to learn how to Do things
(03:45):
quickly absolutely and thenafter college I I Came back
there for a little bit but alsowas busing tables at a Italian
place in the U district, andthat's kind of when I got the
wine bug, as they say.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Not that I wasn't.
I'd been drinking wine incollege because I'm slapping the
bag or no, carla Rossi, hardyburgundy was my, was my jug of
choice.
All right and that was becauseand I've said this before if you
bring home a half rack ofkeystone light, all roommates
would just Just move through itin minutes.
Yeah but the Carla Rossi nevergot touched, so it meant that I
(04:25):
never went without.
Yeah and I I believe it'sbetter to have than have, not so
yeah that was, that was theGenesis, but no is some.
It's a bottle, 85 Brunello.
That made me say what the fuck?
Speaker 1 (04:36):
is that was your aha wine, yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Yeah, it was definitely changed a lot of
things and I was lucky becauseat the time I was also working
at salty's on al-qai and the thewine guy, tim O'Brien, who's
still there, actually One of thenicest humans on the planet,
consummate professional.
He was doing some wineeducation for the staff and and
I think the thing that I learnedfrom him, the first and
(05:00):
foremost, was to like not takeyourself seriously.
Yeah, but take the subjectseriously, right.
So I think I lucked out in alot of ways by having that first
.
The first person that I that Iobserved in the wine world was a
nice human.
Yeah and and then I was luckyenough to get hired at Wild
(05:22):
Ginger in 2000 and I was therefor six years of my life and
when I left I was this isassistant wine director there
and Learned a whole hell of alot.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Memorize you find out to assistant wine director.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, Memorize a lot of things nobody ever asked me
about.
Yeah, it's really who cares?
Yeah, and then opened up purplecafe downtown in June of June,
of July of 2006 okay, so you'rethere since the inception.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Yeah, yeah, wow.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
I wasn't job hunting, yeah, but a friend of mine
worked for these guys and shebrought me up there and and I
actually said out loud oh,they're putting a wine bar at
4th University.
That's never gonna work.
There's nothing up therebesides hotels and the theater
right.
This is.
This is why I don't ownrestaurants.
I'm not smart enough to do that.
(06:13):
Yeah but yeah, it's, it's.
Yeah, I've been working theresince 2006, but during that time
we opened up, opened up inclosed Bellevue.
We just we've done a lot ofthings over the years, yeah, and
so the job has never been thesame.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
And every year there's some thing that happens.
You can kind of just go backthrough the calendar and go well
, that was 2008,.
2009 was the recession and then, yeah, it's been kind of a wild
ride.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
But it's a lot of adapting.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah, like you know, if you saw me in I don't know
July of 2020, I was batchinggallons of blood orn's
margaritas to sell on thesidewalk Like it has not been.
It hasn't been a nothing's it's.
Restaurant business is nevernormal anyway, but it's not.
It's not.
I've had no chance to get bored.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Right, yeah, well, that's important.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
I mean, I had so many people in their jobs.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Yeah, and I think that also we have been not we've
been allowed to be creative anddo what we want, and as long as
the product's good and engaging.
And if you look at wine listsfrom 2006 versus 2012, versus
(07:37):
today, they're so different.
Yeah, but that's.
What you have to do isconstantly evolve, because yeah
especially if you've been aroundfor almost.
Yeah, I think we're going tohave our 18th anniversary here.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Huge In restaurant years.
That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yeah, that is amazing .
So most of your was it all ofyour training was um
apprenticing.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
I guess you could say or yeah, you know I was lucky
enough.
Yeah, I did.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
I did some quarter master's stuff, but um, what are
your thoughts on, like all thecertifications and whatnot, for?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
wine education.
Some of my favorite humanbeings are master's and LA's.
That is a path that I couldnever do.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Why is that?
I know it's extremely hard,yeah it's.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
I'm not that smart, Like.
I don't think that my brain isthe kind that could really
memorize that much minutiae,especially if I'm not using it,
and I just think that there's somany different ways to make it
in the wine business and that isone way, and I think it is
valuable when people do thingsthat give them structure to
(09:01):
study specific things, becauseyou could there's too much to
learn in the world of wine youcould.
You could memorize the wrongthings, I don't know yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
I've done that If I had to do it all over again.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
I don't know.
I don't think I really changedanything Because, you know, I've
just been lucky to work with alot of people that were into it
and wanted to study stuff andwanted to fly to Piedmont or
drive to all the vineyards inWashington or spend some time in
(09:37):
the Vilema Valley.
You know, we we spent a lot ofour personal resources seeing
what we needed to see, tounderstand not just our backyard
but the world.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Right.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
And I continued to travel to learn, because that's
that's it's necessary, yeah,it's.
You can understand.
You can look at maps andunderstand what the Mosul River
is about, but you reallyunderstand it when you're
standing at the bottom of thatvineyard and looking up saying,
(10:07):
Holy shit, they, they farmedthat.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Like yeah, steep, Whose idea was that?
So?
Speaker 2 (10:14):
steep, it seems.
It seems like a bad idea anddangerous, but you know.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
So you actually get to travel with your job.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Yeah or is?
Speaker 1 (10:23):
that more just for, for pleasure and more education.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
I think that it's a little bit of both.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
I've been lucky enough to have some trips with
some importers and some tripsthrough the European Union, and
I say yes to anything,especially like I went to Vino
Verde in 2016.
I was like, really, vino Verde?
And then I went there and I waslike, holy shit, I know nothing
(10:56):
at all about what's going on inthis part of the world and
sadly, I think a lot of thosegreat wines still aren't making
it all the way to America.
But but going to Portugal likethat, I love the the wine scene
there.
It's really.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Fucking cool, but those wines again aren't, aren't
making it to the West Coast ofAmerica.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Yeah, I mean so interesting, because I've heard
that a lot from other countrieslike Argentina, chile, new
Zealand and Australia, like mostof their really high quality
stuff is drink there.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Well, yeah, I mean it makes sense Like, if you think
about Washington, there aregreat wineries whose business
model is to sell within you know15 feet of their front door, or
maybe bother with putting theyou know having some restaurant
presence in Seattle or wherever,but like that, that business
model, I think, makes more sense.
(11:50):
The energy it takes to, like,sell wine to jerks like me is
like it sounds like a heavy lift.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
And again, that's why there's, despite having over a
thousand wineries in the stateof Washington.
There's often I'm asked about awine I've never heard of before
.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Because they don't.
I've not been to there, or yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
I mean yeah.
One thing I've always thoughtabout when it comes to
exportation is, for example,let's just say, new Zealand
Sauvignon Blanc like Oyster Bayright.
That was is a relatively cheapbottle of wine, inexpensive
bottle of wine.
But there's so many otherSauvignon Blancs within New
(12:36):
Zealand that are a lot morecomplex, more nuanced, not so
much a slap in the face.
And why aren't those gettingexported?
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Because the, the, the .
There's two sides to one.
There's the artistic expressionof the individual and then
there's the business, and wineslike Oyster Bay are business
wines.
They're built in volume.
If you think about what NewZealand did with Sauvignon Vogue
(13:04):
, it's pretty fucking amazing.
Before I mean Cloudy Bay, Ithink started in 1994.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
But I'm not trying to knock Oyster Bay for all of us
to go down the road, just anexample.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
So I think it's important to recognize that
there are gateway wines orthere's like the pop music of
wines.
The wine is everywhere and thatgets people into wine.
So I don't talk shit aboutthose kinds of wines, because I
mean Carl Rossi, hardy BurgundyI drank a fuck ton of that stuff
(13:37):
and it's probably what's goingto kill me, because we don't
know what's in there.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
You know what's so funny about that?
I've heard a lot of differentpodcasts with notable sommeliers
or winemakers and a lot ofpeople point to that exact wine
as how they got into wine, howthey started drinking wine.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Yeah, well, think of the marketing of it.
Right, it's not Burgundy, butwe annex French words all the
time.
There's actually a legal termcalled the semi-generic wine
word.
That's how we've gotten over.
That's how we can sayCalifornia Champagne or Mountain
Chablis, or Harley Burgundy.
(14:18):
We created a category called asemi-generic wine word, because
we're assholes.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah, it's so dumb.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
I'm glad that you put that in there, that asshole
thing, oh yeah.
Because it drives me fuckingnuts.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yeah, it is insane.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
All right, let's take a quick break for a second,
because I got something I wantto tell you guys about.
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(14:55):
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Speaker 2 (15:36):
Like fume blanc is a made up fucking word, it's
sauvian blanc.
But they wanted to take thename recognition of Puy Fume and
put it on the label.
And yes, maybe some of thechateaus in America look like
chateaus, but they're notfucking chateaus.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Anyway, it's like Disneyland or Las Vegas.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Yeah, yeah, anyway, what were we talking about?
Oh, I think we were talkingabout sauvian blanc and how
things like that happen, becausebefore New Zealand flooded us
with a lot of the same flavor.
Right, like a lot of like NewZealand sauvian blanc is the
easiest blind tasting thing todo, like it's impossible to not
(16:19):
call.
Oh well, that's definitely NewZealand sauvian blanc.
There's a ubiquity to theflavor.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
And that ubiquity led to a recognition.
And I mean you could go to7-Eleven and see some New
Zealand sauvian blanc.
Yeah, and so they took themantle of sauvian blanc, our
idea of what it was supposed tolook and taste like.
They took that away from theFrench and they own it now.
Because you think about mostevery other category, one is
(16:45):
still owned by the French.
Yeah, anybody that makes pinan' o' oire wants to make
burgundy.
Anybody that makes sparklingwine wants it to be champagne.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Anybody who's?
Speaker 2 (16:53):
playing with.
We even call them Bordeauxstyle blends or Rhone style
blends.
It is maybe it won't be thisway in 250 years or 500 years,
but still the touchstone of thebest examples of wine, generally
speaking, are French exceptionsbeing Nebbiola and Piedmont,
tempranieu and Spain and.
(17:14):
San Givese and Tuscany, but forthe most part, the French model
is definitely what we aspire tobe.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Yeah.
So before I was servingcustomers in a tasting room and
whatnot, I would go on tangentslike all the podcast listeners
know that I do with customersand I would start talking about
wine education and they're like,oh, I don't like Chardonnay.
Like, oh, have you had chablis?
And like I've had chablis and Ifucking hate it.
(17:42):
I'm like, oh, what don't youlike?
Like well, the only chablisI've had was from California.
I was just like God be fuckingkidding me.
Yeah, so it's not the samething.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
I think that I think in the next 10 years I think the
pandemic did accelerate somethings- yeah.
But the way that wine has beenmarketed historically is ruining
wine.
The aspirational aspect of winewas pretty great, like oh yeah,
(18:13):
look, we want to drink thatexpensive Napa Cabernet, we want
to have that Vue Clico on thetable, and so everybody knows
that we're drinking someexpensive wine.
Like there's that signaling.
The reason why we wear the nicewatches and expend too much on
sneakers is we want to signalwhere we are in the world.
And wine really got into thatback in the 90s and 2000s, maybe
(18:39):
even before that in the 80s.
And what's happened now is thatall those people are aging out
of wine, all the boomers arebeing told by the doctors stop
fucking drinking so much.
And the new generations cansniff marketing.
They can smell the stench ofmarketing being disingenuous and
(19:03):
impersonal.
Whereas you sit down at arestaurant and you look at a
cocktail list and you can seethe creation, you're like, oh,
somebody brought theseingredients together to create
this thing.
And you can read thoseingredients and kind of build
the cocktail in your brain.
And then you can watch somebodyshake it and put it into a
(19:26):
martini glass and then you cansort of feel this loop, this
connection with the thing you'redrinking.
But when the connection isfancy ass winery in expensive
Napa Valley, there's no wonderpeople are like nah, that
doesn't resonate.
(19:47):
It's why natural wine resonates?
Because it feels more personal,because it is less about where
it's from.
It's more about the person andtheir intention in the vineyard
and in the winery.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
That makes sense, because every time I go to a
natural wine bar my friend ownsone in Santa Barbara and it's
called Satellite Shout out toyou guys.
Every time he brings insomething new or he thinks
something will be interesting tome, he tells me about the
family that made it.
It's like oh, it's this littletown in France.
That's why it's VDFranceDoesn't have an AOC.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
They don't give a shit about AOC shit.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Yeah, and they're just like it's just the sheet
farmers that decided to growgrapes and then make wine now
and it's actually pretty fuckinggood and it was.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Wine is personal.
We want to buy it from people.
It's something we put into ourbodies and if we go to Lake
Chelan and go to a winery andmeet the winemaker or spend time
in the tasting room and itvibes with us and we're like, oh
, we really like what they'reabout.
That's the connection.
That's why tasting rooms areimportant.
(20:53):
Back in the late 90s, earlyzeros, there were some wineries
that didn't need to have tastingrooms because they could sell
their stuff to retailers andrestaurants and that was fine.
But you'd be hard pressed tocreate a thriving wine business
(21:13):
without having thatdirect-to-consumer connection,
because that's how you buildloyalties.
You actually have arelationship with the person
buying your stuff, which isgreat for some winemakers, some
not so much.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Yeah, and I mean, there's wineries that don't even
have tasting rooms anymore,they just have a mailing list
because it sells out so quickly.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
The scarcity model.
We love that.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
It's a great business model.
You can make it work.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
If you can build scarcity around your.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, I mean there's likeBecause we all want stuff that
other people can't get right,yeah, I mean in Santa Barbara.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
for us it was like Cinque-Anne was like a big one
yeah.
And here in Washington, Kuyusis one.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
But I just want to put out Kuyus is not a wash and
wine.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Right.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
It drives me nuts.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
So I stopped putting wall-to-wall Because I don't
bring it right in the free water.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Yeah, I think 43% of the grapes in the Wall-Wall
Valley are in Oregon.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Yes.
That percentage probably goesup and down every vintage, but
the label can still sayWashington State.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
No, it just says Wall-Wall Valley.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
But Rotez says Washington State the right next
to Caillus or the right next toHorsepower.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
So if the wine is made in Washington, it can't say
, okay, if it's in the rocks,but it's made in Washington, you
can't say it's from the rocks.
You can only say it's fromWall-Wall, that's the TTV.
That's the bullshitgovernmental labeling rules.
Same goes for like, if you buyPinot Noir from the Freedom Hill
(22:51):
Vineyard but you make it inWall-Wall, you can only say that
it's from Oregon.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
There's this stupid archaic.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
like what is a state line?
Like what the fuck it's anarbitrary thing?
But Caillus has a tasting roomin Wall-Wall.
It's open one day a year.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Oh, one day a year, right.
It's always closed every time Igo to Wall-Wall.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
But like it might have been a decade ago, but
there was a big magazine thatsaid that Washington winery of
the year was Caillus.
I'm losing my shit.
It was like they're in Oregon,guys, it's okay, but the brand
of Wall-Wall of Washington isimportant and I get it.
But yeah, because I used towrite Wall-Wall of Oregon when
(23:37):
we had Caillus on the list andit was always some fucking guy
who's like hey man, you got atypo.
I've been to Wall-Wall, it'snot in Oregon.
You're like oh, for God's sake,yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Like there's a reason .
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Because you can't, as a hospitality, I can't say
you're an asshole, Shut the fuckup.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Look at a map.
Yeah, well, okay, there's somerules.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Yeah, you have to kind of explain to them.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Kind of explain to them, yeah, but like you, just
want to be like don't come at mewith.
There's enough typos on my winelist that are genuinely typos.
Yeah, so I actually stoppedwriting Wall-Wall of Washington,
even so I don't.
If it's an AVA in the Northwest, I don't say Washington or
Oregon, because I just don'twant to deal with people saying,
oh, I've been to the ColumbiaGorge and it's in Oregon, even
(24:23):
though it's on both sides of theriver, you know.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
So anyway, how'd we get on that Stupid labeling laws
?
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Yeah, labeling laws and whatnot.
Can you pass the cardist bottleover?
Here, I have excellent left itover there.
But one thing I did want totalk to you about was how the
wine industry is going, Becauseit's kind of been a roller
coaster a little bit.
Especially right now we see itkind of trending down.
(24:49):
More People are buying lesswine.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Yeah, and the stat I saw was 9% less wine consumption
.
Is it only?
Speaker 1 (24:57):
9%.
Yeah, it feels like 20.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Yeah, well you know, I think that again, maybe we
were drinking a little moreduring the pandemic than we
should have.
Sure, there was at the verybeginning of the pandemic people
were worried about, like howare we going to sell through our
(25:20):
stuff?
And then it was oh, how do wemake more wine?
Because we are out.
So, having seen wine's nevergoing to go away.
But we are fickle consumers ofalcohol and when there are new
(25:47):
things to drink we will drinkthem.
And sometimes those beveragesstick around.
Sometimes they are flash in thepan, like do they still make
peach California coolers in atwo liter bottle?
I don't know, but I know Idrank a lot of that in college.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Yeah, I hope I don't make it anymore.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
But like coolers, wine coolers were a big thing
and people were worried aboutthat, erasing wine like, oh my
God.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Right, I remember that time I was all off the
drink, but I remember the trend.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
I wasn't either when it started, but, like what
happened to Bartles and James,they're gone and I think that I
think that's seltzers and stuffwill probably be around forever.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Yeah, and there's a lot of like alternative alcohol
which is now like seltzers winecanned cocktails.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Yeah, that feels crazy to me though.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
You think it's going to fizzle out?
Speaker 2 (26:53):
I mean it's a cost to enjoyment ratio, Like you get a
can of gin and tonic and you'relike, wait, this is just gin
with tonic and I'm paying howmuch for it.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
I could just get a gin and some tonic and make it
myself, I think that ready todrinks are a convenience Like oh
.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
I'm going to go on a hike or whatever.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Or in Shalane on a boat.
Everyone loves to drink onboats.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
There's a time and a place for it, and so, again, I
think anything that gets peopleto consume booze is great.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
I don't know, I'm in the drug pushing business,
clearly, but I think that Ithink it's okay for the tie to
come in and recede and come inagain If you think of what
brought wine into the Americanconsumer, because if you go back
(27:48):
to the 1970s, even the 1980swine wasn't a big deal.
When I started working saltieson Al-Qa'i, there were 70
wineries in the state ofWashington, maybe less, actually
I'd have to look it up Like theexplosion of wine in the
Northwest and in Oregon and inCalifornia there's a ton of
(28:11):
wineries and people point backto the French, the, the Did you
guys run to Paris no well,there's that, that sort of put
Napa on the map for sure.
But it was that 60 minutesepisode.
This is back when everybodywatched the same three channels.
(28:33):
Yeah, that red wine hadantioxidants in it.
Oh right, so wine's healthy sowine's healthy and that got it
going.
But then if you think about ourrelationship with food and
restaurants and the food channeland the rise of the celebrity
chef and putting food on apedestal, and then we started
(28:58):
putting sommeliers on pedestalswith movies and shows and all
that stuff and that, if that isthe crescendo and things are
going to settle back down to adull roar, I think I'm okay with
that Only because the bestexperiences, I think, with wine
(29:23):
is when you're with people thatyou love and you're eating food
and that wine makes the foodtaste better.
Yeah, and that wine tastesbetter because of the food, like
the collision of liquid andsolid at the dinner table or at
the restaurant.
(29:43):
That's where wine for me isbest enjoyed.
I don't drink a lot of wine ifI'm not cooking or if I'm not
eating.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Oh really.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Yeah, I think that we really did make wine a cocktail
in America, which is fineBecause, again, people are
drinking wine.
But I think that for me,because food and wine, when
(30:17):
consumed in the right place, theright time and the right wine
with the right food, thatelevated experience for me
pretty much guarantees wine isnever really going to go away.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
But yeah, are we going to slam less barefoot and
14 hands or whatever.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
I think that's okay.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
And I think that if wines in the state of Washington
, oregon, even California, ifAmerican wines change their
approach and make things morepersonal or fuck around more, we
don't want to drink the shitour parents drank.
We don't want to listen to thesame music that they listen to,
(31:07):
why are we going to drink thesame wine that they drink?
And so, whenever there's ashakeup, I think that smart
people or artistic people figureit out.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Yeah, great smart of an evolution.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Yeah, I mean that might.
There's not a lot of secondgeneration winemakers in America
.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
And that's the thing that sometimes people bemoan,
like, oh, we don't have a winetradition like they do in Europe
, which is true, but it'sactually.
I don't think it's bad, becausewhat happens if, say, I was a
successful winemaker and I builda beloved winery, that
(31:54):
Constellation wants to buy, Isell it and then if my kid wants
to make wine, he can make hisown stuff and make it his thing?
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Yeah, because I think it's hard to Is that more of
like from an entrepreneurialstandpoint or more of like a
creative and like find yourselfkind of?
Speaker 2 (32:15):
I think it's more of a find your voice, because I
think that again, there'sbusiness wine, which is the
majority of it.
92% of wine is controlled byfive companies in America,
consumed in America, and so thewines that give us juice, the
wines that excite us, are not in50 states, they might not even
(32:40):
be in more than two counties,and I think that's for those of
us that love wine and that seeknew experiences, that's great,
that churn is great, like ifeverybody had just had legacy.
Wineries, like you know, getkind of boring a bit.
(33:02):
You do worry, though, sometimesfor those older wineries that
don't get, that have been aroundfor 20 years or so, that aren't
getting pressed because winejournalism is always looking for
the new thing too right thatare still making great wines.
You worry a little bit aboutthat.
Like what will happen to thosewineries if Is the life cycle of
(33:27):
a winery a thing?
Or, you know, do you get to thepoint where you sell your
vineyard to somebody that iswell clearly, at this day and
age, well funded, that will takeyour land and do something
special with it?
Also, keep in mind that a lotof wineries in Washington they
don't own their own land, sothere's that too.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Yeah, I mean that's a big conversation within the
Shalane community because I mean, as you know, historically
Shalane hasn't made the bestwine in the world, doesn't have
a great reputation, but it'sstarting to evolve and it's
growing.
A lot has been growing for awhile and I know one winery that
(34:12):
focuses on estate grapes andowning the land, owning the
vineyard, but my buddy, sethKitsky, upside down wines.
I was talking with him one timeand he was like man, Shalane
would be a great place to growsome grapes for early ripening,
but shit, is it so expensive?
(34:33):
to land itself.
I mean, it makes sense, winesin Red Mountain, also at Candy
Mountain area is also secondgeneration wine grape grower, I
think.
Second generation, yeah, secondgeneration grape grower, I
think like fourth generationfarmer and his family within
(34:54):
that area, so he's from thatarea so it makes sense, but also
the land is dirt cheap overthere compared to places like
Shalane.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
If you think about the vastness of the Columbia
Valley and how there's probablysome really amazing places to
grow grapes if you can get somewater there.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Yeah, or there are some places that you can take a
stab at dry farming right, buton the eastern side of the state
that would be so very hard,difficult, I know people dry
farm.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Like topless creek and Paso they dry farm.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
There's some people in the blue in the in wall wall
in the.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Okay, cool.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Yeah, the north side of the valley Really, I think on
a shape for her, her estate.
Been here at.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Maurice's, she dry farmed that okay, because that
would be an interesting topic totalk about in the podcast,
because I saw a lot of dryfarming in California which is
kind of funny, because they justdon't get that much rain.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
What's happening is having a lot in the Columbia
Gorge too, because especially onthe far west side they're
getting More than 30 inches ofrainy air.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Yeah, that makes more sense over there, but like over
in Walla Walla, yeah, much likevery hard.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Yeah, I forget, like on the Oregon side it's eight
inches or any year, but on thenorth side I think they can get
upwards of 24 plus.
But I'm really okay.
I might be fucking wrong.
Yeah, people tell you here'sthe thing about wine.
Everything that you've learnedabout wine was probably
marketing, like unless you werejust knows deep into the, the
(36:29):
sort of Scientific side ofthings.
Most of what you hear about wineis Marketing yeah and a lot of
it might not be entirely true,because we also dumb shit down
Thoroughly because there's a lot, it's a lot more, it's a lot
more.
What's the word I'm looking for?
It's not easier to say, oh, ithas that kind of soil, so it's
(36:50):
gonna taste like that rightwhich is horseshit, like there's
yes, soil is one thing, butlike that, that soil that's not.
That soil is not Uniformthroughout your vineyard right.
Yeah, anyway, we, we dumb itdown because it's easy to say oh
, the chalky soil gives you that, that steely, I'm not gonna use
(37:13):
the m word.
Yeah style should please,because the chalk.
But actually, how much ofshabby is that chalky soil?
Speaker 1 (37:22):
Yeah, anyway, all right, let's take a quick break
for a second because I gotsomething I want to tell you
guys about.
If you want an extra episodeper week, if you want exclusive
Discounts on some dope ass merchthat we got, also, if you want
to add your, to sense youropinions, your hot takes or your
(37:43):
topic ideas, we want to hearabout it, go to patreoncom slash
official Bung pod and talk tous.
Now let's get back to the show.
All right, guys, we got somenews.
We have an official OfficialBung pod store.
We got some merch going Bungpod dot store.
(38:04):
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You need some new clothes, youneed to look fresh.
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So if you like the show and youwant to cop yourself some merch
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(38:26):
Now let's get back to the show.
So do you believe, like in, interroir?
And there's some people thatdon't, and they think it.
Terroir is bullshit.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Okay, I think that it's a word that is misused.
I agree thoroughly.
Yeah and it makes.
It has become Bullshit becausebut have I stuck my nose in a
Glass of burgundy, being like,oh fuck, I know where this is
(38:56):
from right like that.
That connection to how a placecan come through in a liquid is
real to me.
Yes, but that but it's.
It's the sum total of not justthe dirt, the aspect, the, the,
the clone, the, the, thevinification, the, the elevage,
(39:19):
the, all that shit, the, thewinemakers, expertise, the
minute or the how, how and whenthey picked it like.
All that stuff is terroir.
Yes, so it's a word I don'treally use Because it's on the
back of a bunch of fuckingbottles which are bullshit right
and I'd rather not, I'd rathernot join in that.
(39:44):
Yeah that confusion.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Yeah, well, I mean when I did my viticulture
certification at wazoo, onequestion with one of the
professors Well, it wasn't aquestion, was a statement she
was like well, terroir is amarketing term.
Mm-hmm created by the French.
To elevate French wines overother people's wines.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
The French are so good at marketing, how the fuck
that they convinced all of usthat it's not celebrating if
it's not champagne?
Yeah, did you have New Year's?
Eve without a fucking ball ofchampagne.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
I know that I could not launch my next jot without a
bottle of champagne breaking onthe bow of it.
Yeah like they.
And that's the world, that'snot just America.
Yeah, everywhere on the fuckingplanet.
It's your birthday, havechampagne.
Yeah like they are so good atit but I mean, champagne is my
blood type.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
I said yeah, but like I fucking love it.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
It's, but it works because it's also good.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Yeah, like absolutely that's that same time it's like
, yeah, like terroir is like amarketing term but, like what
you said, I've I've tastedplaces, I've smelled places in a
glass, like they're so uniformto that specific area yeah and
that's why blind tasting works,and, and it's I mean yes,
(41:01):
there's like a wine makingcomponent to it and it has to go
through the hands of humans inorder to get into the glass.
Get to get to you.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
I think that the thing that it sort of bumps up
against is that idea of Topicity, where yeah thing tastes like
what it is, which is actually,if you think about it, as a
fucking stupid thing.
Oh, what's topicity?
It means it is what it is Likeyeah, it's what it's supposed to
be.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
Yeah, but it's important to know ours aren't
supposed to have like 15%alcohol.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Have you had any California peanut oil?
Speaker 1 (41:37):
I made wine in Santa Barbara.
Okay it's a very cool climatemost of them are 13, five ish,
yeah, so.
Give or take a one-and-a-halfpercent legally.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
There's so many customers that come in the
restaurant and say I like peanutand wine Cabernet, because the
peanut waters they're drinkingare bought at the fucking Bevmo
and it's like 25% Cabernet.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Right.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
So I did this a number of years ago.
I went to the Bevmo and all themultiple proprietary winery
bottles they had there, becausethey're all dummy labels they're
.
You know, you could call up afacility in oh God, what's the
name of that town in CentralValley, it doesn't matter anyway
(42:23):
and say I want a wine that'smade with low-dive fruit, I want
it to be.
It tastes like this and theycan engineer that stuff for you.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
So all those dummy labels at these big it's kind of
like naked wines kind of dothat too.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
It's a lot of bulk wine.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Yeah, a lot of bulk wine.
But we did a blind tasting withour staffs in both wine bars
and I wasn't trying to fuck withthem.
I was like, oh, here's fivewines.
Tell me which ones are peanutand wine, which ones are
Cabernet.
And it was hard.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Because the Pinot Noir's were like dark and tannic
and Cabernet's were dark andtannic.
So like the thing aboutTopicity is that it's ruined by
mass produced wines.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
Right.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
Because they are engineered.
There's no way that the numberone Chardonnay in America for
the last 30 years still tasteslike it did 30 years ago.
It is not.
There is no vintage variationin those wines.
They can't have it because it'sa business.
Can you imagine if your grandmawas like oh my Vintners Reserve
(43:32):
, does that taste like the lastbottle of Vintners Reserve?
What's wrong?
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
Yeah, how do we get on this again?
Speaker 1 (43:38):
I mean we're just talking about Terroir, oh yeah
yeah.
But at the same time I mean somany of those volume labels.
They really toe the line oflegality to make it that way.
Like you know, in Californiasay, they were in Oregon and
(43:58):
they made the same percentages.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Oregon has different percentages.
90% in Oregon, yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
Right, and if you did that in Oregon, that would be
classified as a non-vintage.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
Totally, but in California.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
But in California.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
And in Washington, yes, they only has to be 75% of
the grape on the front.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
But that also is like we are so grape focused in this
country, and it's maddening itis.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
yes, it's really why.
Maybe because it's a lot aboutWest and like the old world has
like, are restricted to regions.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
I think it's because of marketing and it's also
because of the fact that thereis a lot of intimidation in the
world of wine.
And so if you are new to wineand you have a mall back and you
like it, you're like, oh, thisis my wine.
Now I will just always ask forthat grape, right.
Because, I like this oneBecause nobody wants to look
like an asshole, nobody likes toknow, nobody wants to look like
they don't know what they'retalking about.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
Right.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
And so the best way to sound like you know what
you're talking about is to benegative about a thing.
Oh, I hate California, or Ihate, I hate, sure.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
I'm having a really strong opinion on something.
Oh my God, but like that'swrong.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
It's limiting, it's not embracing what's possible.
Yeah, and like there have beensome wines that I've had that I
did not love, yeah, but thenagain I did not love gin until I
was in my 30s.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
Right.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
And so I think there are some challenging flavors.
Sometimes when you talk aboutnatural wines that if you aren't
used to that, you'll be like,oh, this is what the fuck is
this?
Well, that's, that'sBritannomyces, or whatever, it's
cool with me.
Yeah, so I don't know whatwe're on.
I keep jumping around.
I had a really big cup of coldbrew before I sat down.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
Nice, it's really, it's really hitting me, yeah,
yikes.
Well, that's the.
We're about time right now.
Anyways, for this episode,we'll go on to the Patreon one
next, which is a little bitshorter.
So, if you have time for it,sure, yeah, cool, awesome.
Thank you guys for listening,appreciate it.
I'm going to put a littlesomething in my glass so Chris
(46:06):
and I can cheers to the end ofthe episode real quick.
Thanks for taking time out ofyour day and coming here to Soto
and thanks for appreciate it.
Listen to me.
Gap on yeah, cheers guys.
Yeah, cheers guys, cheers guys,cheers guys, cheers guys,
cheers guys, cheers guys, cheersguys, cheers guys, cheers guys.
Thanks for listening,appreciate it you.
Bung pod, welcome back.
We got Jazzy J.
What is a bone?
The whole of the barrel iscalled a bong hole.
Inside the bong hole is calleda bong wine with mayhem.
That's what it's about.
All right, welcome back to thebung pod.
(00:24):
I'm Ian King, your host.
Aka wine wonder boy Jazzy isnot here today, but we got an
awesome guest.
We made a little trip toSeattle.
We're in South downtown Cartustasting room and we have Chris
Horn with us.
He is the beverage director ofPurple Cafe in Woodenville and
(00:47):
downtown Seattle, among otherthings.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Among other things, yeah my title is director of
liquids the lacker director ofliquids.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Cuz they wouldn't be.
They wouldn't let me be thePrince of Potable's, or yeah.
I had a lot of other ideas, butyeah, we settled on that
because it was a little lessCheeky that's creative, though.
Yeah, I like it I mean, I thinkthat a lot of the beverage
world has a little bit ofsnobbery attached to it.
Yeah, so trying to avoid titlesthat are infused with a little
(01:20):
bit of attitude is fine with me.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
I love that.
That's what we're about at thebung pod here.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
All right.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Absolutely Cool.
So, chris, where are you from?
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Well, I was born in downtown Seattle.
All right about six blocks fromwhere Purple Cafe is local boy,
so I've gone nowhere in my life.
I was.
I was lucky, though my dad wasin shipping, so we we spent some
time in Asia growing up, butcame back here for the formative
(01:51):
years, went to college over inSpokane and then came back to
Seattle and had designs that goteach English in Japan.
But then, wow, buddy of minewas living on alchai and he
needed a roommate for a fewmonths so he could save some
money and yeah another buddy ofmine said hey, I got this job,
but this place called salty's onalchai.
They're hiring and next thing Iknow I'm Waiting tables and
(02:13):
making more money than youshould in your 20s and I was
like I'll go to Japan later.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
So that was got started in the restaurant
industry for you, no when I was15 and a half, I was with my
parents and we were we weresocial members at the local
country club so that I couldplay tennis, my brother could go
To swimming pool, my dad couldgolf every once in a while.
Yeah but when I say countryclub, people get the idea like a
(02:38):
country club it.
You know it wasn't.
It wasn't the fanciest place onthe planet.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Okay, okay, cuz we think a country club.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
You think like yeah, this is yeah.
No, I don't want to disparageanybody, but yeah.
It's, but the the dining roommanager was like losing your
mind cuz she was busy as helland and they made a joke about
well, you can have this kid.
When he turned 16 and she'slike Do you have black pants and
a white shirt?
(03:05):
I'm like, yeah.
And she's like you starttomorrow.
So I at one point was probablythe world's best Country club
bus boy.
Oh yeah, that shit dialed.
Yeah, I could snap a 54 by 90tablecloth.
Just watch it settle as I'mputting down the forks and
knives and I that also where Istarted waiting tables.
(03:25):
And there's no better boot campfor waiting tables and having
four guys walk in the front doorevery eight minutes for hours
on end Right, and you got toknow their names, cuz they're
the members and you gotta knowif it's regular decaf and you
gotta know how they like theireggs and what kind of toast they
have.
Yeah, that was.
That was definitely a greatplace to learn how to Do things
(03:45):
quickly absolutely and thenafter college I I Came back
there for a little bit but alsowas busing tables at a Italian
place in the U district, andthat's kind of when I got the
wine bug, as they say.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Not that I wasn't.
I'd been drinking wine incollege because I'm slapping the
bag or no, carla Rossi, hardyburgundy was my, was my jug of
choice.
All right and that was becauseand I've said this before if you
bring home a half rack ofkeystone light, all roommates
would just Just move through itin minutes.
Yeah but the Carla Rossi nevergot touched, so it meant that I
(04:25):
never went without.
Yeah and I I believe it'sbetter to have than have, not so
yeah that was, that was theGenesis, but no is some.
It's a bottle, 85 Brunello.
That made me say what the fuck?
Speaker 1 (04:36):
is that was your aha wine, yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Yeah, it was definitely changed a lot of
things and I was lucky becauseat the time I was also working
at salty's on al-qai and the thewine guy, tim O'Brien, who's
still there, actually One of thenicest humans on the planet,
consummate professional.
He was doing some wineeducation for the staff and and
I think the thing that I learnedfrom him, the first and
(05:00):
foremost, was to like not takeyourself seriously.
Yeah, but take the subjectseriously, right.
So I think I lucked out in alot of ways by having that first
.
The first person that I that Iobserved in the wine world was a
nice human.
Yeah and and then I was luckyenough to get hired at Wild
(05:22):
Ginger in 2000 and I was therefor six years of my life and
when I left I was this isassistant wine director there
and Learned a whole hell of alot.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Memorize you find out to assistant wine director.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, Memorize a lot of things nobody ever asked me
about.
Yeah, it's really who cares?
Yeah, and then opened up purplecafe downtown in June of June,
of July of 2006 okay, so you'rethere since the inception.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Yeah, yeah, wow.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
I wasn't job hunting, yeah, but a friend of mine
worked for these guys and shebrought me up there and and I
actually said out loud oh,they're putting a wine bar at
4th University.
That's never gonna work.
There's nothing up therebesides hotels and the theater
right.
This is.
This is why I don't ownrestaurants.
I'm not smart enough to do that.
(06:13):
Yeah but yeah, it's, it's.
Yeah, I've been working theresince 2006, but during that time
we opened up, opened up inclosed Bellevue.
We just we've done a lot ofthings over the years, yeah, and
so the job has never been thesame.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
And every year there's some thing that happens.
You can kind of just go backthrough the calendar and go well
, that was 2008,.
2009 was the recession and then, yeah, it's been kind of a wild
ride.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
But it's a lot of adapting.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah, like you know, if you saw me in I don't know
July of 2020, I was batchinggallons of blood orn's
margaritas to sell on thesidewalk Like it has not been.
It hasn't been a nothing's it's.
Restaurant business is nevernormal anyway, but it's not.
It's not.
I've had no chance to get bored.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Right, yeah, well, that's important.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
I mean, I had so many people in their jobs.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Yeah, and I think that also we have been not we've
been allowed to be creative anddo what we want, and as long as
the product's good and engaging.
And if you look at wine listsfrom 2006 versus 2012, versus
(07:37):
today, they're so different.
Yeah, but that's.
What you have to do isconstantly evolve, because yeah
especially if you've been aroundfor almost.
Yeah, I think we're going tohave our 18th anniversary here.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Huge In restaurant years.
That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yeah, that is amazing .
So most of your was it all ofyour training was um
apprenticing.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
I guess you could say or yeah, you know I was lucky
enough.
Yeah, I did.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
I did some quarter master's stuff, but um, what are
your thoughts on, like all thecertifications and whatnot, for?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
wine education.
Some of my favorite humanbeings are master's and LA's.
That is a path that I couldnever do.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Why is that?
I know it's extremely hard,yeah it's.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
I'm not that smart, Like.
I don't think that my brain isthe kind that could really
memorize that much minutiae,especially if I'm not using it,
and I just think that there's somany different ways to make it
in the wine business and that isone way, and I think it is
valuable when people do thingsthat give them structure to
(09:01):
study specific things, becauseyou could there's too much to
learn in the world of wine youcould.
You could memorize the wrongthings, I don't know yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
I've done that If I had to do it all over again.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
I don't know.
I don't think I really changedanything Because, you know, I've
just been lucky to work with alot of people that were into it
and wanted to study stuff andwanted to fly to Piedmont or
drive to all the vineyards inWashington or spend some time in
(09:37):
the Vilema Valley.
You know, we we spent a lot ofour personal resources seeing
what we needed to see, tounderstand not just our backyard
but the world.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Right.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
And I continued to travel to learn, because that's
that's it's necessary, yeah,it's.
You can understand.
You can look at maps andunderstand what the Mosul River
is about, but you reallyunderstand it when you're
standing at the bottom of thatvineyard and looking up saying,
(10:07):
Holy shit, they, they farmedthat.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Like yeah, steep, Whose idea was that?
So?
Speaker 2 (10:14):
steep, it seems.
It seems like a bad idea anddangerous, but you know.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
So you actually get to travel with your job.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Yeah or is?
Speaker 1 (10:23):
that more just for, for pleasure and more education.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
I think that it's a little bit of both.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
I've been lucky enough to have some trips with
some importers and some tripsthrough the European Union, and
I say yes to anything,especially like I went to Vino
Verde in 2016.
I was like, really, vino Verde?
And then I went there and I waslike, holy shit, I know nothing
(10:56):
at all about what's going on inthis part of the world and
sadly, I think a lot of thosegreat wines still aren't making
it all the way to America.
But but going to Portugal likethat, I love the the wine scene
there.
It's really.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Fucking cool, but those wines again aren't, aren't
making it to the West Coast ofAmerica.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Yeah, I mean so interesting, because I've heard
that a lot from other countrieslike Argentina, chile, new
Zealand and Australia, like mostof their really high quality
stuff is drink there.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Well, yeah, I mean it makes sense Like, if you think
about Washington, there aregreat wineries whose business
model is to sell within you know15 feet of their front door, or
maybe bother with putting theyou know having some restaurant
presence in Seattle or wherever,but like that, that business
model, I think, makes more sense.
(11:50):
The energy it takes to, like,sell wine to jerks like me is
like it sounds like a heavy lift.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
And again, that's why there's, despite having over a
thousand wineries in the stateof Washington.
There's often I'm asked about awine I've never heard of before
.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Because they don't.
I've not been to there, or yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
I mean yeah.
One thing I've always thoughtabout when it comes to
exportation is, for example,let's just say, new Zealand
Sauvignon Blanc like Oyster Bayright.
That was is a relatively cheapbottle of wine, inexpensive
bottle of wine.
But there's so many otherSauvignon Blancs within New
(12:36):
Zealand that are a lot morecomplex, more nuanced, not so
much a slap in the face.
And why aren't those gettingexported?
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Because the, the, the .
There's two sides to one.
There's the artistic expressionof the individual and then
there's the business, and wineslike Oyster Bay are business
wines.
They're built in volume.
If you think about what NewZealand did with Sauvignon Vogue
(13:04):
, it's pretty fucking amazing.
Before I mean Cloudy Bay, Ithink started in 1994.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
But I'm not trying to knock Oyster Bay for all of us
to go down the road, just anexample.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
So I think it's important to recognize that
there are gateway wines orthere's like the pop music of
wines.
The wine is everywhere and thatgets people into wine.
So I don't talk shit aboutthose kinds of wines, because I
mean Carl Rossi, hardy BurgundyI drank a fuck ton of that stuff
(13:37):
and it's probably what's goingto kill me, because we don't
know what's in there.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
You know what's so funny about that?
I've heard a lot of differentpodcasts with notable sommeliers
or winemakers and a lot ofpeople point to that exact wine
as how they got into wine, howthey started drinking wine.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Yeah, well, think of the marketing of it.
Right, it's not Burgundy, butwe annex French words all the
time.
There's actually a legal termcalled the semi-generic wine
word.
That's how we've gotten over.
That's how we can sayCalifornia Champagne or Mountain
Chablis, or Harley Burgundy.
(14:18):
We created a category called asemi-generic wine word, because
we're assholes.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah, it's so dumb.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
I'm glad that you put that in there, that asshole
thing, oh yeah.
Because it drives me fuckingnuts.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yeah, it is insane.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
All right, let's take a quick break for a second,
because I got something I wantto tell you guys about.
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(14:55):
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Now let's get back to the show.
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(15:16):
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Speaker 2 (15:36):
Like fume blanc is a made up fucking word, it's
sauvian blanc.
But they wanted to take thename recognition of Puy Fume and
put it on the label.
And yes, maybe some of thechateaus in America look like
chateaus, but they're notfucking chateaus.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Anyway, it's like Disneyland or Las Vegas.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Yeah, yeah, anyway, what were we talking about?
Oh, I think we were talkingabout sauvian blanc and how
things like that happen, becausebefore New Zealand flooded us
with a lot of the same flavor.
Right, like a lot of like NewZealand sauvian blanc is the
easiest blind tasting thing todo, like it's impossible to not
(16:19):
call.
Oh well, that's definitely NewZealand sauvian blanc.
There's a ubiquity to theflavor.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
And that ubiquity led to a recognition.
And I mean you could go to7-Eleven and see some New
Zealand sauvian blanc.
Yeah, and so they took themantle of sauvian blanc, our
idea of what it was supposed tolook and taste like.
They took that away from theFrench and they own it now.
Because you think about mostevery other category, one is
(16:45):
still owned by the French.
Yeah, anybody that makes pinan' o' oire wants to make
burgundy.
Anybody that makes sparklingwine wants it to be champagne.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Anybody who's?
Speaker 2 (16:53):
playing with.
We even call them Bordeauxstyle blends or Rhone style
blends.
It is maybe it won't be thisway in 250 years or 500 years,
but still the touchstone of thebest examples of wine, generally
speaking, are French exceptionsbeing Nebbiola and Piedmont,
tempranieu and Spain and.
(17:14):
San Givese and Tuscany, but forthe most part, the French model
is definitely what we aspire tobe.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Yeah.
So before I was servingcustomers in a tasting room and
whatnot, I would go on tangentslike all the podcast listeners
know that I do with customersand I would start talking about
wine education and they're like,oh, I don't like Chardonnay.
Like, oh, have you had chablis?
And like I've had chablis and Ifucking hate it.
(17:42):
I'm like, oh, what don't youlike?
Like well, the only chablisI've had was from California.
I was just like God be fuckingkidding me.
Yeah, so it's not the samething.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
I think that I think in the next 10 years I think the
pandemic did accelerate somethings- yeah.
But the way that wine has beenmarketed historically is ruining
wine.
The aspirational aspect of winewas pretty great, like oh yeah,
(18:13):
look, we want to drink thatexpensive Napa Cabernet, we want
to have that Vue Clico on thetable, and so everybody knows
that we're drinking someexpensive wine.
Like there's that signaling.
The reason why we wear the nicewatches and expend too much on
sneakers is we want to signalwhere we are in the world.
And wine really got into thatback in the 90s and 2000s, maybe
(18:39):
even before that in the 80s.
And what's happened now is thatall those people are aging out
of wine, all the boomers arebeing told by the doctors stop
fucking drinking so much.
And the new generations cansniff marketing.
They can smell the stench ofmarketing being disingenuous and
(19:03):
impersonal.
Whereas you sit down at arestaurant and you look at a
cocktail list and you can seethe creation, you're like, oh,
somebody brought theseingredients together to create
this thing.
And you can read thoseingredients and kind of build
the cocktail in your brain.
And then you can watch somebodyshake it and put it into a
(19:26):
martini glass and then you cansort of feel this loop, this
connection with the thing you'redrinking.
But when the connection isfancy ass winery in expensive
Napa Valley, there's no wonderpeople are like nah, that
doesn't resonate.
(19:47):
It's why natural wine resonates?
Because it feels more personal,because it is less about where
it's from.
It's more about the person andtheir intention in the vineyard
and in the winery.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
That makes sense, because every time I go to a
natural wine bar my friend ownsone in Santa Barbara and it's
called Satellite Shout out toyou guys.
Every time he brings insomething new or he thinks
something will be interesting tome, he tells me about the
family that made it.
It's like oh, it's this littletown in France.
That's why it's VDFranceDoesn't have an AOC.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
They don't give a shit about AOC shit.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Yeah, and they're just like it's just the sheet
farmers that decided to growgrapes and then make wine now
and it's actually pretty fuckinggood and it was.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Wine is personal.
We want to buy it from people.
It's something we put into ourbodies and if we go to Lake
Chelan and go to a winery andmeet the winemaker or spend time
in the tasting room and itvibes with us and we're like, oh
, we really like what they'reabout.
That's the connection.
That's why tasting rooms areimportant.
(20:53):
Back in the late 90s, earlyzeros, there were some wineries
that didn't need to have tastingrooms because they could sell
their stuff to retailers andrestaurants and that was fine.
But you'd be hard pressed tocreate a thriving wine business
(21:13):
without having thatdirect-to-consumer connection,
because that's how you buildloyalties.
You actually have arelationship with the person
buying your stuff, which isgreat for some winemakers, some
not so much.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Yeah, and I mean, there's wineries that don't even
have tasting rooms anymore,they just have a mailing list
because it sells out so quickly.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
The scarcity model.
We love that.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
It's a great business model.
You can make it work.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
If you can build scarcity around your.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, I mean there's likeBecause we all want stuff that
other people can't get right,yeah, I mean in Santa Barbara.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
for us it was like Cinque-Anne was like a big one
yeah.
And here in Washington, Kuyusis one.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
But I just want to put out Kuyus is not a wash and
wine.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Right.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
It drives me nuts.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
So I stopped putting wall-to-wall Because I don't
bring it right in the free water.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Yeah, I think 43% of the grapes in the Wall-Wall
Valley are in Oregon.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Yes.
That percentage probably goesup and down every vintage, but
the label can still sayWashington State.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
No, it just says Wall-Wall Valley.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
But Rotez says Washington State the right next
to Caillus or the right next toHorsepower.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
So if the wine is made in Washington, it can't say
, okay, if it's in the rocks,but it's made in Washington, you
can't say it's from the rocks.
You can only say it's fromWall-Wall, that's the TTV.
That's the bullshitgovernmental labeling rules.
Same goes for like, if you buyPinot Noir from the Freedom Hill
(22:51):
Vineyard but you make it inWall-Wall, you can only say that
it's from Oregon.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
There's this stupid archaic.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
like what is a state line?
Like what the fuck it's anarbitrary thing?
But Caillus has a tasting roomin Wall-Wall.
It's open one day a year.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Oh, one day a year, right.
It's always closed every time Igo to Wall-Wall.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
But like it might have been a decade ago, but
there was a big magazine thatsaid that Washington winery of
the year was Caillus.
I'm losing my shit.
It was like they're in Oregon,guys, it's okay, but the brand
of Wall-Wall of Washington isimportant and I get it.
But yeah, because I used towrite Wall-Wall of Oregon when
(23:37):
we had Caillus on the list andit was always some fucking guy
who's like hey man, you got atypo.
I've been to Wall-Wall, it'snot in Oregon.
You're like oh, for God's sake,yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Like there's a reason .
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Because you can't, as a hospitality, I can't say
you're an asshole, Shut the fuckup.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Look at a map.
Yeah, well, okay, there's somerules.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Yeah, you have to kind of explain to them.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Kind of explain to them, yeah, but like you, just
want to be like don't come at mewith.
There's enough typos on my winelist that are genuinely typos.
Yeah, so I actually stoppedwriting Wall-Wall of Washington,
even so I don't.
If it's an AVA in the Northwest, I don't say Washington or
Oregon, because I just don'twant to deal with people saying,
oh, I've been to the ColumbiaGorge and it's in Oregon, even
(24:23):
though it's on both sides of theriver, you know.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
So anyway, how'd we get on that Stupid labeling laws
?
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Yeah, labeling laws and whatnot.
Can you pass the cardist bottleover?
Here, I have excellent left itover there.
But one thing I did want totalk to you about was how the
wine industry is going, Becauseit's kind of been a roller
coaster a little bit.
Especially right now we see itkind of trending down.
(24:49):
More People are buying lesswine.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Yeah, and the stat I saw was 9% less wine consumption
.
Is it only?
Speaker 1 (24:57):
9%.
Yeah, it feels like 20.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Yeah, well you know, I think that again, maybe we
were drinking a little moreduring the pandemic than we
should have.
Sure, there was at the verybeginning of the pandemic people
were worried about, like howare we going to sell through our
(25:20):
stuff?
And then it was oh, how do wemake more wine?
Because we are out.
So, having seen wine's nevergoing to go away.
But we are fickle consumers ofalcohol and when there are new
(25:47):
things to drink we will drinkthem.
And sometimes those beveragesstick around.
Sometimes they are flash in thepan, like do they still make
peach California coolers in atwo liter bottle?
I don't know, but I know Idrank a lot of that in college.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Yeah, I hope I don't make it anymore.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
But like coolers, wine coolers were a big thing
and people were worried aboutthat, erasing wine like, oh my
God.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Right, I remember that time I was all off the
drink, but I remember the trend.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
I wasn't either when it started, but, like what
happened to Bartles and James,they're gone and I think that I
think that's seltzers and stuffwill probably be around forever.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Yeah, and there's a lot of like alternative alcohol
which is now like seltzers winecanned cocktails.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Yeah, that feels crazy to me though.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
You think it's going to fizzle out?
Speaker 2 (26:53):
I mean it's a cost to enjoyment ratio, Like you get a
can of gin and tonic and you'relike, wait, this is just gin
with tonic and I'm paying howmuch for it.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
I could just get a gin and some tonic and make it
myself, I think that ready todrinks are a convenience Like oh
.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
I'm going to go on a hike or whatever.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Or in Shalane on a boat.
Everyone loves to drink onboats.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
There's a time and a place for it, and so, again, I
think anything that gets peopleto consume booze is great.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
I don't know, I'm in the drug pushing business,
clearly, but I think that Ithink it's okay for the tie to
come in and recede and come inagain If you think of what
brought wine into the Americanconsumer, because if you go back
(27:48):
to the 1970s, even the 1980swine wasn't a big deal.
When I started working saltieson Al-Qa'i, there were 70
wineries in the state ofWashington, maybe less, actually
I'd have to look it up Like theexplosion of wine in the
Northwest and in Oregon and inCalifornia there's a ton of
(28:11):
wineries and people point backto the French, the, the Did you
guys run to Paris no well,there's that, that sort of put
Napa on the map for sure.
But it was that 60 minutesepisode.
This is back when everybodywatched the same three channels.
(28:33):
Yeah, that red wine hadantioxidants in it.
Oh right, so wine's healthy sowine's healthy and that got it
going.
But then if you think about ourrelationship with food and
restaurants and the food channeland the rise of the celebrity
chef and putting food on apedestal, and then we started
(28:58):
putting sommeliers on pedestalswith movies and shows and all
that stuff and that, if that isthe crescendo and things are
going to settle back down to adull roar, I think I'm okay with
that Only because the bestexperiences, I think, with wine
(29:23):
is when you're with people thatyou love and you're eating food
and that wine makes the foodtaste better.
Yeah, and that wine tastesbetter because of the food, like
the collision of liquid andsolid at the dinner table or at
the restaurant.
(29:43):
That's where wine for me isbest enjoyed.
I don't drink a lot of wine ifI'm not cooking or if I'm not
eating.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Oh really.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Yeah, I think that we really did make wine a cocktail
in America, which is fineBecause, again, people are
drinking wine.
But I think that for me,because food and wine, when
(30:17):
consumed in the right place, theright time and the right wine
with the right food, thatelevated experience for me
pretty much guarantees wine isnever really going to go away.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
But yeah, are we going to slam less barefoot and
14 hands or whatever.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
I think that's okay.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
And I think that if wines in the state of Washington
, oregon, even California, ifAmerican wines change their
approach and make things morepersonal or fuck around more, we
don't want to drink the shitour parents drank.
We don't want to listen to thesame music that they listen to,
(31:07):
why are we going to drink thesame wine that they drink?
And so, whenever there's ashakeup, I think that smart
people or artistic people figureit out.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Yeah, great smart of an evolution.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Yeah, I mean that might.
There's not a lot of secondgeneration winemakers in America
.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
And that's the thing that sometimes people bemoan,
like, oh, we don't have a winetradition like they do in Europe
, which is true, but it'sactually.
I don't think it's bad, becausewhat happens if, say, I was a
successful winemaker and I builda beloved winery, that
(31:54):
Constellation wants to buy, Isell it and then if my kid wants
to make wine, he can make hisown stuff and make it his thing?
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Yeah, because I think it's hard to Is that more of
like from an entrepreneurialstandpoint or more of like a
creative and like find yourselfkind of?
Speaker 2 (32:15):
I think it's more of a find your voice, because I
think that again, there'sbusiness wine, which is the
majority of it.
92% of wine is controlled byfive companies in America,
consumed in America, and so thewines that give us juice, the
wines that excite us, are not in50 states, they might not even
(32:40):
be in more than two counties,and I think that's for those of
us that love wine and that seeknew experiences, that's great,
that churn is great, like ifeverybody had just had legacy.
Wineries, like you know, getkind of boring a bit.
(33:02):
You do worry, though, sometimesfor those older wineries that
don't get, that have been aroundfor 20 years or so, that aren't
getting pressed because winejournalism is always looking for
the new thing too right thatare still making great wines.
You worry a little bit aboutthat.
Like what will happen to thosewineries if Is the life cycle of
(33:27):
a winery a thing?
Or, you know, do you get to thepoint where you sell your
vineyard to somebody that iswell clearly, at this day and
age, well funded, that will takeyour land and do something
special with it?
Also, keep in mind that a lotof wineries in Washington they
don't own their own land, sothere's that too.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Yeah, I mean that's a big conversation within the
Shalane community because I mean, as you know, historically
Shalane hasn't made the bestwine in the world, doesn't have
a great reputation, but it'sstarting to evolve and it's
growing.
A lot has been growing for awhile and I know one winery that
(34:12):
focuses on estate grapes andowning the land, owning the
vineyard, but my buddy, sethKitsky, upside down wines.
I was talking with him one timeand he was like man, Shalane
would be a great place to growsome grapes for early ripening,
but shit, is it so expensive?
(34:33):
to land itself.
I mean, it makes sense, winesin Red Mountain, also at Candy
Mountain area is also secondgeneration wine grape grower, I
think.
Second generation, yeah, secondgeneration grape grower, I
think like fourth generationfarmer and his family within
(34:54):
that area, so he's from thatarea so it makes sense, but also
the land is dirt cheap overthere compared to places like
Shalane.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
If you think about the vastness of the Columbia
Valley and how there's probablysome really amazing places to
grow grapes if you can get somewater there.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Yeah, or there are some places that you can take a
stab at dry farming right, buton the eastern side of the state
that would be so very hard,difficult, I know people dry
farm.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Like topless creek and Paso they dry farm.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
There's some people in the blue in the in wall wall
in the.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Okay, cool.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Yeah, the north side of the valley Really, I think on
a shape for her, her estate.
Been here at.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Maurice's, she dry farmed that okay, because that
would be an interesting topic totalk about in the podcast,
because I saw a lot of dryfarming in California which is
kind of funny, because they justdon't get that much rain.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
What's happening is having a lot in the Columbia
Gorge too, because especially onthe far west side they're
getting More than 30 inches ofrainy air.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Yeah, that makes more sense over there, but like over
in Walla Walla, yeah, much likevery hard.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Yeah, I forget, like on the Oregon side it's eight
inches or any year, but on thenorth side I think they can get
upwards of 24 plus.
But I'm really okay.
I might be fucking wrong.
Yeah, people tell you here'sthe thing about wine.
Everything that you've learnedabout wine was probably
marketing, like unless you werejust knows deep into the, the
(36:29):
sort of Scientific side ofthings.
Most of what you hear about wineis Marketing yeah and a lot of
it might not be entirely true,because we also dumb shit down
Thoroughly because there's a lot, it's a lot more, it's a lot
more.
What's the word I'm looking for?
It's not easier to say, oh, ithas that kind of soil, so it's
(36:50):
gonna taste like that rightwhich is horseshit, like there's
yes, soil is one thing, butlike that, that soil that's not.
That soil is not Uniformthroughout your vineyard right.
Yeah, anyway, we, we dumb itdown because it's easy to say oh
, the chalky soil gives you that, that steely, I'm not gonna use
(37:13):
the m word.
Yeah style should please,because the chalk.
But actually, how much ofshabby is that chalky soil?
Speaker 1 (37:22):
Yeah, anyway, all right, let's take a quick break
for a second because I gotsomething I want to tell you
guys about.
If you want an extra episodeper week, if you want exclusive
Discounts on some dope ass merchthat we got, also, if you want
to add your, to sense youropinions, your hot takes or your
(37:43):
topic ideas, we want to hearabout it, go to patreoncom slash
official Bung pod and talk tous.
Now let's get back to the show.
All right, guys, we got somenews.
We have an official OfficialBung pod store.
We got some merch going Bungpod dot store.
(38:04):
Update your life, update yourwardrobe.
You need some new clothes, youneed to look fresh.
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So if you like the show and youwant to cop yourself some merch
, go to bung pod dot store.
(38:26):
Now let's get back to the show.
So do you believe, like in, interroir?
And there's some people thatdon't, and they think it.
Terroir is bullshit.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Okay, I think that it's a word that is misused.
I agree thoroughly.
Yeah and it makes.
It has become Bullshit becausebut have I stuck my nose in a
Glass of burgundy, being like,oh fuck, I know where this is
(38:56):
from right like that.
That connection to how a placecan come through in a liquid is
real to me.
Yes, but that but it's.
It's the sum total of not justthe dirt, the aspect, the, the,
the clone, the, the, thevinification, the, the elevage,
(39:19):
the, all that shit, the, thewinemakers, expertise, the
minute or the how, how and whenthey picked it like.
All that stuff is terroir.
Yes, so it's a word I don'treally use Because it's on the
back of a bunch of fuckingbottles which are bullshit right
and I'd rather not, I'd rathernot join in that.
(39:44):
Yeah that confusion.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Yeah, well, I mean when I did my viticulture
certification at wazoo, onequestion with one of the
professors Well, it wasn't aquestion, was a statement she
was like well, terroir is amarketing term.
Mm-hmm created by the French.
To elevate French wines overother people's wines.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
The French are so good at marketing, how the fuck
that they convinced all of usthat it's not celebrating if
it's not champagne?
Yeah, did you have New Year's?
Eve without a fucking ball ofchampagne.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
I know that I could not launch my next jot without a
bottle of champagne breaking onthe bow of it.
Yeah like they.
And that's the world, that'snot just America.
Yeah, everywhere on the fuckingplanet.
It's your birthday, havechampagne.
Yeah like they are so good atit but I mean, champagne is my
blood type.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
I said yeah, but like I fucking love it.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
It's, but it works because it's also good.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Yeah, like absolutely that's that same time it's like
, yeah, like terroir is like amarketing term but, like what
you said, I've I've tastedplaces, I've smelled places in a
glass, like they're so uniformto that specific area yeah and
that's why blind tasting works,and, and it's I mean yes,
(41:01):
there's like a wine makingcomponent to it and it has to go
through the hands of humans inorder to get into the glass.
Get to get to you.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
I think that the thing that it sort of bumps up
against is that idea of Topicity, where yeah thing tastes like
what it is, which is actually,if you think about it, as a
fucking stupid thing.
Oh, what's topicity?
It means it is what it is Likeyeah, it's what it's supposed to
be.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
Yeah, but it's important to know ours aren't
supposed to have like 15%alcohol.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Have you had any California peanut oil?
Speaker 1 (41:37):
I made wine in Santa Barbara.
Okay it's a very cool climatemost of them are 13, five ish,
yeah, so.
Give or take a one-and-a-halfpercent legally.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
There's so many customers that come in the
restaurant and say I like peanutand wine Cabernet, because the
peanut waters they're drinkingare bought at the fucking Bevmo
and it's like 25% Cabernet.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Right.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
So I did this a number of years ago.
I went to the Bevmo and all themultiple proprietary winery
bottles they had there, becausethey're all dummy labels they're
.
You know, you could call up afacility in oh God, what's the
name of that town in CentralValley, it doesn't matter anyway
(42:23):
and say I want a wine that'smade with low-dive fruit, I want
it to be.
It tastes like this and theycan engineer that stuff for you.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
So all those dummy labels at these big it's kind of
like naked wines kind of dothat too.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
It's a lot of bulk wine.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Yeah, a lot of bulk wine.
But we did a blind tasting withour staffs in both wine bars
and I wasn't trying to fuck withthem.
I was like, oh, here's fivewines.
Tell me which ones are peanutand wine, which ones are
Cabernet.
And it was hard.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Because the Pinot Noir's were like dark and tannic
and Cabernet's were dark andtannic.
So like the thing aboutTopicity is that it's ruined by
mass produced wines.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
Right.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
Because they are engineered.
There's no way that the numberone Chardonnay in America for
the last 30 years still tasteslike it did 30 years ago.
It is not.
There is no vintage variationin those wines.
They can't have it because it'sa business.
Can you imagine if your grandmawas like oh my Vintners Reserve
(43:32):
, does that taste like the lastbottle of Vintners Reserve?
What's wrong?
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
Yeah, how do we get on this again?
Speaker 1 (43:38):
I mean we're just talking about Terroir, oh yeah
yeah.
But at the same time I mean somany of those volume labels.
They really toe the line oflegality to make it that way.
Like you know, in Californiasay, they were in Oregon and
(43:58):
they made the same percentages.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Oregon has different percentages.
90% in Oregon, yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
Right, and if you did that in Oregon, that would be
classified as a non-vintage.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
Totally, but in California.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
But in California.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
And in Washington, yes, they only has to be 75% of
the grape on the front.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
But that also is like we are so grape focused in this
country, and it's maddening itis.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
yes, it's really why.
Maybe because it's a lot aboutWest and like the old world has
like, are restricted to regions.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
I think it's because of marketing and it's also
because of the fact that thereis a lot of intimidation in the
world of wine.
And so if you are new to wineand you have a mall back and you
like it, you're like, oh, thisis my wine.
Now I will just always ask forthat grape, right.
Because, I like this oneBecause nobody wants to look
like an asshole, nobody likes toknow, nobody wants to look like
they don't know what they'retalking about.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
Right.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
And so the best way to sound like you know what
you're talking about is to benegative about a thing.
Oh, I hate California, or Ihate, I hate, sure.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
I'm having a really strong opinion on something.
Oh my God, but like that'swrong.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
It's limiting, it's not embracing what's possible.
Yeah, and like there have beensome wines that I've had that I
did not love, yeah, but thenagain I did not love gin until I
was in my 30s.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
Right.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
And so I think there are some challenging flavors.
Sometimes when you talk aboutnatural wines that if you aren't
used to that, you'll be like,oh, this is what the fuck is
this?
Well, that's, that'sBritannomyces, or whatever, it's
cool with me.
Yeah, so I don't know whatwe're on.
I keep jumping around.
I had a really big cup of coldbrew before I sat down.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
Nice, it's really, it's really hitting me, yeah,
yikes.
Well, that's the.
We're about time right now.
Anyways, for this episode,we'll go on to the Patreon one
next, which is a little bitshorter.
So, if you have time for it,sure, yeah, cool, awesome.
Thank you guys for listening,appreciate it.
I'm going to put a littlesomething in my glass so Chris
(46:06):
and I can cheers to the end ofthe episode real quick.
Thanks for taking time out ofyour day and coming here to Soto
and thanks for appreciate it.
Listen to me.
Gap on yeah, cheers guys.
Yeah, cheers guys, cheers guys,cheers guys, cheers guys,
cheers guys, cheers guys, cheersguys, cheers guys, cheers guys.
Thanks for listening,appreciate it you.
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