June 19, 2024 • 60 mins
Sleight of Hand:
https://www.sofhcellars.com/
Instagram: @sleightofhandcellars
Ever wondered how a passion for music and wine can blend to create a unique and engaging tasting experience? Join us as we chat with Trey Busch, Co-Owner and he winemaker extraordinaire behind Sleight of Hand Cellars. Trey takes us on his journey detailing how his love for music permeates every aspect of his wine business. From the lively atmosphere of his tasting rooms, where guests can pick records and explore music-themed merchandise, to his world-class air guitar skills, Trey shares his favorite tunes and discusses the deep connection between his winery and Pearl Jam, including their charitable collaborations.
Get ready to gain exclusive insights into the art of vineyard management and winemaking in Washington. Trey breaks down the importance of maintaining long-term relationships with vineyard owners, emphasizing the benefits of estate vineyards and consistent grape sourcing. We delve into the specifics of vineyard techniques like leaf stripping and crop management, which ensure top-notch wine production. The discussion also touches on the significance of experimenting with harvest times and sugar levels to perfect the winemaking process, offering listeners a deeper understanding of the meticulous efforts behind each bottle.
We then turn our focus to the evolving trends and sustainability efforts in the wine industry. From the rise of wine in bags and cans to local glass recycling initiatives, Trey provides a comprehensive overview of how the industry is adapting to environmental concerns and shifting consumer preferences. Discover the unique characteristics of wines from the Rocks District, where high potassium and nitrogen soils create soft textures and rich flavors. We wrap up with a heartfelt toast to our team and an invitation for listeners to engage with us on social media, rate our podcast, and give feedback. Cheers to an episode filled with wine wisdom and musical magic!
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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, wine Wonderboy.
And we got Jazzy J Jazzy.
What is a bung?
The hole of the barrel iscalled a bung hole.
Inside the bung hole is calleda bung Wine with mayhem.
That's what it's about.
All right, welcome back to thebung pod.
(00:21):
It's your boy, ian King, akaWine Wonderboy, and I got my
co-host with me.
Jazzy J Jazzy.
Say what's up.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hi everybody.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
So we have a really awesome episode for you guys.
Before we get to the episode,give us a five-star rating on
whatever podcast platform thatyou're listening to this on.
That gives more eyes to ourpodcast and more listeners.
So we'd really appreciate that.
But today we have the winemakerfor Slide of Hand Cellars we
(00:53):
have Trey Bush.
What's up, Trey?
How's it going, man?
Speaker 3 (00:57):
What's going on?
Good to be here.
Thanks for having me.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Hey, thanks for coming on.
So right now we have a bottleone of your wines.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
We have the.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Psychedelic Syrah 2020.
Stony Vine Estate Vineyard.
So is this?
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Well, look at you, see, I opened up an old bottle
of Levitation.
Where is it at?
Oh, what year is?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
that.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
It's another Syrah that we make.
It's one of our wine clubsyrahs that we make I just went
down to.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
I'm like I probably should have some wine for this
obviously yeah, yeah so yeah,always have a glass in hand yeah
, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Well, that's a delicious bottle.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
You guys are popping right now, so hopefully you're
you're gonna enjoy it I know Igot this one a couple years ago
and I was going through mycellar the other day and I was
like oh, how convenient.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
How convenient.
Now we got something to drinkwhile we're talking to each
other, that's perfect.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Exactly Well, I fell in love with your wines when I
visited Walla Walla for thefirst time in June.
I spent most of my wine careerin Santa Barbara, california, a
beautiful place.
A beautiful place, reallyexpensive to live there, and so
that's why I moved back up toWashington, because that's where
I'm from.
Originally, I'm from Seattle.
(02:14):
So, yeah, I went to yourtasting room in Walla Walla, got
to meet Keith, got to pick arecord.
I'm a huge music person.
My whole family, they're allmusicians or music influenced.
Oh perfect, yeah.
And I went to actually audioengineering school and did a lot
(02:35):
of music history programs aswell.
So I have an appreciation for alot of music, and so that was a
blast.
The question is, what's thealbum you picked out?
Music, and so that was a blast.
The question is, what's thealbum you picked out?
The album was, um, it was anirvana record.
It was, uh, yeah, yeah, it wasnothing wrong with that hold on
yeah there you go, there you go,yeah, and I loved your merch
(02:57):
too.
Your guys's merch is awesome.
I I bought the um the fleetwoodmac design.
Oh yeah, yeah, I love thatshirt.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Yeah, yeah, that's a good one.
So, yeah, we have fun with allthose.
You know the music is a fun wayto tie in my just love of music
, which I'm not a musician, Ijust, you know, music's been
very important in my life andit's been the wine business.
(03:26):
Incorporating music into thewine business has been a lot of
fun for us and whether it's withthe vinyl in the tasting room
or whether it's with ourt-shirts, it's sort of a full
circle thing for me.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
So so you say you're not a musician, but I hear
you're into air guitar.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
World-class air guitar player.
That is true, that is true.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
I needed to mention that.
I read that and I was like, hmm, I should ask.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
What does it take to be a world-class air guitar?
Speaker 3 (03:54):
player.
It takes three glasses of wine.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Do you?
Have a specific song that youreally like to play air guitar
with.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
You know, yeah, I mean, I mean for sure the entire
acdc back in black album, whichwas yes, yeah you know I was a
freshman in high school.
That came out in 83.
I was a freshman in 84 and umhave very fine memories of
listening to that album um with,uh, my high school friends in
the back of a Monte Carlodriving way too fast and
(04:30):
listening to the music way tooloud.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
But yeah, if I had to go back to any, if I had to go
back to anything, it would bepretty much any cut off of that
album.
So but as a big Pearl Jam fanI'm I'm pretty fluent in most
Pearl Jam too.
So Nice.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
So you guys are, you guys have a relationship with
Pearl Jam, is that right?
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Yeah, a little bit.
I mean, we have done somecharity projects with them.
You know, obviously I I namedthe winery after a Pearl Jam
song and um have, over the years, gotten to know a lot of folks
that worked for the band andthey certainly, you know, met
some of the band members of thisstuff.
But yeah, we did when theyplayed in 2018 back in Seattle,
(05:16):
yeah, the home shows.
At the time we had apartnership with Mark Ryan
winery.
We had this winery called theunderground wine project and we
had a partnership with Mark RyanWinery.
We had this winery called theUnderground Wine Project and we
did a wine for Pearl Jam back in2018.
And then we did another one forthem.
I think it was in 2021.
Just another small, one-offproject to help raise some money
(05:38):
for their Vitology Foundation.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Their charitable arm.
But yeah, and then a lot of thewines that we make are actually
named after pearl jam songs too.
So it's just one of those, oneof those things uh, it's like
you know, honoring the band thatI love so much, so good.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
That's awesome.
That's cool.
You get a chance to to workwith them as well yeah, for sure
, for sure.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Did you ever think that was going to happen?
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Well, no, I mean, if I go back to my early days of
winemaking, when I was at Dunhamback in the early 2000s, I
remember Eric and I went to theKey Arena Pearl Jam show I think
it was the Binaural Tour orsomething like that in 2000.
I just started working for Ericand Eric's like how do you
(06:29):
think we can get some wine backto the band?
I said, well, I'm on anemail-friendly relationship with
the folks who work in theoffice, I'll see if they can,
let us do that.
And that was kind of really ourfirst sort of oh, we got some
Dunham Cabernet back there.
And then a few years later Iwas going down to LA and I was
working for another winery atthat point, at Basil Cellars,
(06:51):
and reached out.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yeah, you helped start that right.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Yeah, I started that winery in 2002.
Okay, 2002 was our first yearand then I left there in the
spring of 07, so right after the06 vintage.
So really vintage is 2003, 2004, and 2005 were my vintages,
sort of grape to bottle.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
I had crushed the 06s , but I left six months after
harvest to start a sleight ofhand, so I have no idea what
happened to any of those sixes?
Um, from a blending standpointand stuff.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
So so before you went to Dunham, you were at
Nordstrom's for quite a while.
Um, what were you doing atNordstrom's and how did it end
up changing your career path towine?
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Yeah, um, I, I did a lot of things at nordstrom.
Uh, I started there in 1992.
Okay, um, I had moved fromathens, georgia, to back to
seattle because I I was in thenavy from 88 to 90.
I was stationed in brimerton oh, okay a ferry ride across from
seattle, right there yeah, yeah,I'm from, yeah, that was my.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Oh, really, yeah, yeah that.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Yeah, that was my oh really.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
That's funny.
Yeah, that was my.
That was my introduction to theNorthwest Um, and it was really
right when the, you know, theSeattle music scene was really
just kind of bubbling up andabout to explode and I I got out
of the Navy in the summer of 90and I moved back to Georgia,
which is where I was originallyfrom.
I grew up in Atlanta and wasenrolled at the university of
(08:27):
Georgia and in that two yearperiod that's when Seattle
really blew up and I was at thepoint where I just did not want
to miss being at an age where Icould afford to fuck off.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Essentially, yes, yes .
Speaker 3 (08:47):
I wanted to be around that music scene and I didn't.
I didn't want to miss it.
You know I, uh, athens, georgia, had a.
They were the center of theuniverse for a short period of
time in the early eighties withREM and the B-52s and a bunch of
other bands.
And then, of course, la in theeighties with all the metal
bands.
Um, you know, the punk scene inthe late 70s in new york.
(09:08):
So all these scenes that werehappening in san francisco in
the 60s, all these scenes werehappening and, um, the writing
was on the wall that seattle wasgoing to be like, that was
going to be it.
Yeah, and um, I, I just didn'twant to miss it.
And so I dropped out of schooland I moved back to Seattle and
took a job at Nordstrom.
I had a really great time there.
(09:30):
I started off just in the stockroom and by the time I left I
was a buyer for the company.
I was buying men's suits, ofall things.
But during that time frame afriend of mine who I used to buy
records from, he owned a recordstore off of Roosevelt and 63rd
called Ruby Records and hisname was Jamie Brown and Jamie
(09:52):
was the winemaker.
You'll know that name becausehe was the winemaker for Waters
Winery.
He started Waters Winery back inthe mid 2000s but Jamie had
moved back to Walla Walla, whichis where he's originally from,
and I went to go visit Jamie andjust sort of fell in love with
the town and Eric Dunhamhappened to be his next door
(10:14):
neighbor and I met Eric on oneof my trips down there and that
turned into a friendship whichturned into a job opportunity,
that's awesome To basicallyleave Seattle and move to Walla
Walla and learn how to make wine, and so I had no prior
winemaking knowledge in any way,shape or form.
(10:35):
I didn't really know the firstthing about the world of wine at
all, but I knew sales andmarketing and I knew I liked his
wine.
A lot of marketing and I knew Iliked his wine a lot.
I remember it was $45 retail.
His Cabernet, the 97 DunhamCabernet, was $45.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
And I'm like God who spent that kind of money.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
I was going to say, especially back then I was a
28-year-old kid, you knowspending 10 bucks on a bottle of
Chateau St Michelle for aspecial night, you know.
And uh, so, um, yeah, and sothat you know, he said look,
I'll teach you how to make wine.
Um, you know you can help us onthe sales or marketing side of
(11:16):
things.
We're growing our brand.
Dunham was in a fairly steepgrowth curve at that point in
the late nine, 99, 2000 and um,and I did it.
So I quit my job at nordstromand moved to walla walla and
eric took me under his wing andand taught me as much as you can
teach somebody.
Uh, he was a very artisticwinemaker.
(11:39):
He was not, um, a veryscientific winemaker and that's
more difficult to teach.
And from the standpoint of, whyare you doing this?
Well, it feels right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
What does that mean?
What does that mean?
It feels right.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
And so eventually, I had to learn.
That too, though I had to learn.
I had to basically trust my owninstincts, and so, after I left
Eric and went to Basel, that'swhat I did I took, you know, I
certainly made as many mistakesas I had, you know, as many wins
as I had.
I certainly had lots of well.
That didn't work out very well,but that's okay.
(12:22):
You know, those were, thosewere my learning years, for sure
, and now that we've settledinto, we're really comfortable
where our winemaking is.
Yeah, I've got a.
You met Keith, who's myproduction winemaker.
So Keith is my guy in thecellar.
Yeah, he Bailey, our assistantwinemaker, and all of our cellar
hands essentially work forKeith.
(12:42):
Keith and I and Jerry reallywork hand in hand, side by side.
I spend the majority of my timein the vineyards.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
That's my favorite place too.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
If I can grow the best grapes possible in each
vintage, because every vintageis different, if I can grow the
grapes best possible and deliverthose to the winery, they
really don't have to do thatmuch.
You know what I mean.
It's basically at that point,it's babysitting your grapes to
fermentation.
We are, we're all native in thewinery, so we're not using
(13:18):
cultured yeast, we don't addacid, we don't add enzymes, we
don't add tannin.
We're a fairly hands-off winery, and so I think that it does
require you to pay a little moreattention to what's happening
in the vineyard, to make surethat your picking dates and your
picking decisions are the rightones, because we don't want to
(13:41):
have to manipulate what we didon the back end.
Yeah, um, once you bring thegrapes in, and um, and so that's
really where my focus hasturned to, since Keith has been
full time with us.
Um, at least full time as ourwinemaker.
I hired Keith in 2011.
Um, and I think by 2014 or 15,um, I gave him the winemaking,
(14:04):
winemaking title, and probablyby 15, 16,.
The first four or five years,not only was I in the vineyard,
but I was in the cellar with himand we were making all these
decisions together, but nowwe've got a pretty good setup
there.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yeah, I was going to ask you about, on the winemaking
side, your opinion on lowintervention versus manipulation
.
And then why?
Because I know that aftertalking with Keith, I heard
about the hands-off approach,lower intervention style of
winemaking, and so I was justgoing to ask you for the
listeners why would you choose alower intervention versus
(14:44):
manipulation?
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Yeah, I mean, it's not like, if I go back and look
at all my previous years atBasel and our first three, four,
five years at Sight of Hand, wewere doing some of those things
.
We were trying to figure out ifthey made better wines or not.
Like, hey, let's add sometannin to this to really pump up
the mouthfeel.
(15:06):
Or, oh, the acid feels a littlelow, let's bump the TA up with
acid.
And I think what we've learned?
First of all, we have a veryconsistent vineyard portfolio
and that's not super common inWashington.
Washington a lot of smallwineries are working with
(15:29):
vineyards they don't own.
They're on a three-yearcontract.
They may not re-up theircontract at the end of three
years and they'll go somewhereelse.
Or the vineyard owner will say,hey, I'm raising my prices and
I have another buyer, I'm notgoing to sell my.
So there's some inconsistencythere and you know certainly
(15:50):
that was us in our first two orthree years as well.
It's light of hand and even atBasel.
But we've got either they're astate vineyard or we have a long
term contract with them, like20 or 25 year.
We're not interested in two orthree year contract.
(16:14):
Yeah, no need to basicallylocking these in to where?
Now I know where my fruit'scoming from.
I know what those vineyardstaste like.
I know how to treat them.
I know what they do in coolvintages, I know what they do in
hot vintages, I know what thechemistry looks like coming out
of those vineyards, and so themore you get to work with those
things, you learn that you don'thave to do as much stuff on the
back end when you bring thegrapes in, and you know you also
(16:37):
learn things like hey, how isthis Cabernet going to perform
at 23 bricks instead of 25bricks?
Right, and you know, youexperiment with that stuff.
And on the back end afteryou're tasting the wines like,
these wines are awesome in 23bricks.
Why were we picking at 25bricks?
23 and a half or whatever thenumbers are?
(16:57):
And I'm not trying to stick anumber on anything but that,
just you know, that's kind ofhow we made some of the
decisions.
Yeah, that's how I made some ofthe decisions that we made.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Yeah, I mean when those grapes get to 23 and you
want them at 23, you're outthere.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
Yeah, yeah, and you know we are absolutely tasting
grapes.
You know we want to make surethat the seeds are lignified in
our Bordeaux riles, especiallylignified than our bordeaux
riles especially.
Um, uh, our roan program.
I mean, I have no problempicking sarah 22 and a half
bricks.
Um, not everything is like thatand not all of our.
(17:34):
You know, each vineyardperforms um at a higher level,
at a different sugar level,right, so like, for instance,
the funk vineyard we were, wemake a wine out the rocks called
the funkadelic you're drinkingyeah yeah, the funk vineyard, uh
, it wants to be a bigger wine.
That's just yeah.
(17:54):
We've tried it at lower alcohol, potential alcohol and it's
just not as interesting.
So, again, the only way tolearn that is you have to be
able to experiment with it andright, so that's.
We've gotten to the point nowwhere we have, um, uh, we've
worked with these vineyards longenough and we worked these
(18:16):
blocks long enough and we knowhow these things perform for us
at different quote-unquotenumbers that we recognize that
we don't have to manipulatestuff on the back end to make a
great wine.
We can just make really goodpicking decisions and, more
importantly, we can make surethat we were spending time out
in the vineyard making decisionswith our vineyard managers
(18:40):
about leaf stripping or not leafstripping managers, about leaf
stripping or not leaf stripping,about dropping fruit or leaving
a heavy crop.
You know, things like that aregoing to affect the outcome,
obviously, and so that's why Ifeel like the more time that I
can spend out there, the lesswork my team will have to do on
the back end in the winery.
(19:01):
Totally, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
And how many?
So you said you had some estatevineyards.
How many acres and what kind ofgrapes do you have out there?
Speaker 3 (19:09):
Stony vine is our estate vineyard, which you're
drinking right now.
Yeah, and that's a 28,.
That's a 20 acre parcel, 18 anda half acres planted mostly to
Sarah.
We own the vineyard with dustedValley Winery and Dusted Valley
is our vineyard partner, andthey're our winery partner.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Didn't we just have that the other day?
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Yeah, the last episode we had at Dusted Valley.
Oh cool, they're BFM, they'reBordeaux Blender.
Yeah, it's great, they do agreat job.
They do a great job.
Yeah, and they're like oh yeah,I do, I do like the amount of
(19:52):
detail that you put on the backlabel as well.
I mean it says one vineyard,nine punch-ins, 500 cases pure
rocks or I'm not gonna read thething but ancient riverbed,
softball-sized cobbles, footcrush, native fermentation,
50-hole cluster, 50-noop Frenchoak.
It's awesome.
I love reading.
I love tech sheets a lot.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Just because I'm in production, I'm the same way,
and I've been accused of beingvery wordy, and so you have to
either be young with goodeyesight or you have to have
readers.
But I'm the same way.
I like information on the backof a bottle, I think it's.
(20:35):
You know, look, if everybodybought, if everybody bought
every bottle of wine ever madeout of my tasting room, it
probably would not be asnecessary, because they got the
story when they were there.
But the fact is, a lot of thisstuff is going to see a retail
shelf somewhere.
Yeah, and the further you getaway from Washington, the less
they really know aboutWashington wine.
(20:56):
And I'm going to put, I'm goingto let you know what's going on
with this wine.
I'm going to tell you thevineyard sources.
I'm going to let you knowwhat's going on with this wine.
I'm going to tell you thevineyard sources.
I'm going to tell you thebarrel program.
I'm going to tell you theAramac and the flavor profile
that we get.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
And I'm going to give you the drinking window as well
.
Any way to educate from afar.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Yeah, how many retail spaces are you in?
Is it national, international?
Speaker 3 (21:18):
I mean we're in the UK, we are in Denmark.
Oh I mean we're in the UK, weare in Denmark oh fun and we're
in about 20 states.
That's awesome Because we make.
Our portfolio of wines goesfrom $22 up to $125.
Yeah, and then we have a secondlabel called the Renegade Wine
Company, and those are little$12 Cabernet and Rosé and
(21:42):
Chardonnay, and so those reallyare meant for distribution.
What you're drinking we do havein distribution as well, but
that's also one of our wine clubwines.
We have a wine club that'sbuilt around the rocks, and so
it's Funkadelic, psychedelic andcurrently Spiders from Mars,
which is up in North Fork.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
That's awesome oh interesting.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
It's a new growing region.
Next time you guys come to Wawawe'll drive you guys up there.
It's probably the most excitingvineyard project outside of
Weather Eye.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Oh, that's awesome.
Weather Eye is pretty exciting.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Yeah, and we work with Weather Eye too.
We make Grenache from thatvineyard site, so we love those
extreme sites.
Yeah, that vineyard site, so welove those extreme sites.
They make very, very complex,different tasting wines from
anything else in the region.
If you taste weather-riot fruitcompared to just below that.
And we work with Red MountainVineyard, which is one of our
(22:38):
estate blocks.
We have five acres on RedMountain down there all Bordeaux
varietals.
I didn't answer your question.
Yeah, so Stony Vine, redMountain, we have five acres.
We have five acres on the Horse7 Hills and we have eight acres
here in Walla Walla.
That are our estate blocks.
And then the Ziggy Stardustblock which is a little under
(22:59):
two acres of Syrah up atelevation.
Those are our estate blocks.
And then again we work withother long-term contracts like
Lake Killeen Vineyard, lewisVineyard for Syrah, but all of
our Bordeaux stuff isessentially all estate for us.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
That's awesome.
Yeah, what's your case?
Production like.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Well, it depends on the vintage.
Yeah, 21 was a tough vintagefrom the standpoint of.
We were down 35% roughly inyields, so we made about 6,500
cases.
Our normal case productionshould be between 9,000 and
10,000 cases.
The majority of that goes intotwo wines.
(23:46):
We make one wine called theConjurer it's our Bordeaux blend
, a state Bordeaux blend.
We have a red table wine, whichis our little $25 red table
wine called the Spellbinder.
Those two wines combined arebetween 3,000 and 4,000 cases.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
The other 5,000 to 6,000 cases go then the other
five to six thousand cases gointo the other 10 SKUs that we
make okay, yeah, I thought youguys were a lot larger than that
, because my question was gonnabe how can you make uh wine at
such volume with the qualitythat you're making it in?
Um, but that makes that make.
But still, I mean, you guyshave a big influence within the
(24:24):
wine world in general.
Oh, thanks, I would say we'relike a mid-sized winery in Walla
Walla.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Like you know, the small guys are all under 5,000
cases.
Yeah, and most of them, to behonest, are probably under 2,000
cases.
Yeah, and then you get to ourlevel, and then you go.
Next level would be, you know,a LaCole 41.
Yeah, you know, probably inthat 30 to 40,000 case range.
And then of course you haveWaterbrook and Precept and you
(24:54):
know there are a million cases.
So that's a whole differentballgame.
Yeah, completely so.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
And you guys have a lot, you guys do a lot, like you
have a lot of SKUs, I feel like, which is not a bad thing at
all.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
It's just like you guys have to be so organized in
the cellar and a lot ofcommunication, and you have to
go sell those wines.
Yeah, totally.
It's not easy.
When you're offering aportfolio of 10 to 12 wines
every year, yeah, and you're indistribution, it's hard for
distributors to um focus on yourbrand in that way, and so the
(25:31):
reality is things like thefunkadelic.
That's wine club only, spidersfrom mars is tasting room only.
Uh, most of it goes to wineclub, but we do have in the
tasting room so people couldcome in and buy it if they want
to um, but yeah, I have a bottleof funkadelic.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Oh, right on, that's a bottle of wine.
Yeah, yeah, it's a special oneI'm just keeping for a while
yeah, yeah we made, uh, we made70 cases of a russan marsan
blend called rebel.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Rebel from 2021.
That's off the same vineyard asthe spiders from mars is okay,
um and uh.
And then we make a couple othersmall, tiny productions saraz,
uh, make a little bit of weathereye ganache.
That's called a higher ground.
That's 100 cases, maybe, ifeven that.
(26:17):
Yeah, but our core portfolio isreally it's our.
We make a dry Riesling, okay,which is like a 700 or 800 case
production.
Yeah, we make Old VineChardonnay, which is about 400
or 500 cases.
We make a Cap Franc Rosé, whichis about 500 cases.
And then you go into the Redsand you're at Spellbinder
(26:41):
Conjure, archimaggio,illusionist, r2 Reserve Bordeaux
, and again, we have a big wineclub and so they can take a lot
of those reserve wines too.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Yeah, that's awesome, but we still make them
available.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
We still want them to be in the market.
We want you to be able to findthem at a restaurant.
We want you to go into a nicewine shop and find them.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
You shop and find them.
Um, you said you had a secondlabel.
Okay, and for that I meanobviously you like second or
approve of second labels, but itI feel like there's always some
controversy against secondlabels.
Um, either it's yeah, I meanit's really good, or yeah, like
for us.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Ours is completely.
It doesn't know.
If you didn't know that it wasour second label, you wouldn't
know it was a slight of handwine at all.
It's called the Renegade WineCompany.
Packaging is completelydifferent.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Pricing is you know?
Again, they're $12 wines.
We it's a negotiant project forus.
We make all those wines of theWaluke Wine Company with Kendall
Nix, who's an incrediblewinemaker up there.
And again we work with him handin hand with a style of wine
(27:54):
that we're trying to make.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Gotcha.
So it's completely separate.
It's like off-site.
You're not making it in yourproduction.
Oh wow, okay, all made up inMattawap.
Oh wow, okay, all made up in.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Matawau oh wow, okay, so we do rosé, that's all Rhone
varietals.
We do Cabernet, but it's donein neutral barrel, okay.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
And so it's very, very approachable.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
Yeah, and that's the other idea.
It's a great glass pour cab.
Right, you walk into arestaurant, not the Metropolitan
Grill or El Gaucho they'regoing to pour high-end wine but
just your everyday casualrestaurant that has a wine
program.
It's a great glass pour program.
And then we've got a stainlesssteel Chardonnay as well,
awesome.
(28:36):
The idea is they're just cleanand fruit-forward, balanced, and
, yeah, just like crushable, Iguess.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Are you?
What are your thoughts on thealternative vessels for wine
Like pouches, boxes, cans, evenscrew tops?
Speaker 3 (28:58):
I mean, we use screw cap with a lot of stuff.
I we do some keg business.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Okay, Not a ton, but of stuff we do some keg business
.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
Okay, not a ton, but we do a little bit of keg
business.
We have a couple of restaurantsin Seattle that we service and
we'll just basically bottle abarrel at a time and as they run
through them, we'll keep threeor four, but we'll have an idea
about how much they're going tosell for the year.
We'll keep three or fourbarrels and sort of fill them up
that way.
I am a hundred percent behindall the alternative closures.
(29:29):
The wine in a bag is awesome.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Yeah, very convenient , I love it Great If you're
going camping or whatever it'slike all that is amazing yeah
it's, but the problem is it'snot about us getting behind it.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
Yeah, it's.
How do you get consumers behindit?
Yeah, uh, and we're at a reallyweird.
We're at a really weird time inthe wine world right now.
We are my consumptions fallingoff a cliff.
It feels like like in some ways.
Yeah, younger consumers aren'tnecessarily turning, not to say
(30:09):
the younger consumers.
When I was young, was turningto wine either.
Yeah, but it seems like evenmore extreme now because you've
got cocktails in a can andyou've got hard cider is popular
, and you've got seltzers andyou've got mocktails.
You know some people.
I've got a 25 year old daughterwho I don't think has ever
touched alcohol.
(30:29):
You know, she goes to school inbozeman.
She doesn't drink.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
None of her friends drink yeah, and that's becoming
a thing.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
They'd rather have a kombucha than a yeah, yeah, hey,
no one I say no one's talkingabout it, but it's's not brought
up often.
But if you have disposableincome a little bit of
disposable income, not a lotyou're in your 20s and now,
depending on where you live, youcan go buy a cannabis.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
You can go to Oregon and go buy mushroom chocolates,
right, yeah, totally.
Go buy mushroom chocolates,right, yeah, totally.
And so there are alternativesout there that just weren't
around when we were at leastwhen I was younger it was, you
know, we just drank booze, yeah.
And so all of those things comeinto play when we talk about
(31:17):
where wine sales are.
Now going back to youralternative packaging, I think
younger consumers are the oneswho would be interested in
looking at bag in a box or thecanned wines and all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Almost going back to slapping the bag.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Yeah, back in college .
Speaker 2 (31:37):
They just think it's fancier now.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Yeah, again, it's just trying to get like how do
you go to?
Um, let's say most of thosekids are buying their uh,
alcoholic beverages at a grocerystore, right, yeah.
Let's say they're at Met market.
They're not even at Safeway,they're at the Met market, which
has a nice wine program.
Right, it's.
Now it's what it comes down tois is the Met market but wine
(32:00):
buyer going to get behind thattrend?
Are they going to put wines ina bag on their shelves?
Those are the roadblocks that alot of us run into.
Do you guys know Jeff LindsayThorson from WT Vintners?
Speaker 1 (32:17):
That kind of sounds familiar, not personally.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
I recognize the name.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
He's a Somme.
Might have been an MS, but he'sfor sure a Somme.
Got into winemaking, Got agreat palate he's doing.
I think it's his rosé in a bagthis year.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Nice and it's maybe like 100 cases worth right.
It wasn't like his entireproduction that he did that way,
but he still did a portion ofit and my guess is to see what
kind of traction he can get offof that.
You know what I mean.
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Yeah, I know the walls.
Uh, the walls did a rose theirsummer yeah, summer summer.
Yeah, summer summer, yeah, in abag and that just like flying
off the shelves, yeah, um I meanthey, I'm all for it yeah, I
mean, yeah, I mean I think theyonly do direct consumer um with
that one, but I haven't seen itin stores personally.
(33:12):
But, um, yeah, I mean thatalways sells out every year,
which is awesome.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
I mean it's, it's what, like a four, three liter
bags, like four bottles or wine,yeah, which the beauty of it is
, you can keep it in your fridge.
You got the little pouch thing.
You can push the push, thelittle rubber thing, I don't
know.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
It's great stays fresh for 60 days especially
when it comes to summer, for theboat, for camping, for anything
outdoors.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
How about for?
How about for not having to useglass?
Yes, yeah, and do dishes butthe environmental impact of that
alone is yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I mean look, screw caps took awhile to take off, and so maybe,
maybe, wines in a bag, we'llcatch on you know, no one even
(33:57):
questions screw caps anymoreyeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Well, and even here in chelan this is going to be
kind of shocking, but weactually our recycling program
like is no longer a thing sosame year, same year, walla we
lost we lost glass recycling twoyears ago here.
Yeah yeah, so we no longer doglass, but the I think it was
the high school started it, butthe then rotary got behind it
(34:21):
and now every saturday they do acrush on glass, so at least the
wineries have some place tobring it and then they make it
into sand or whatever they want.
We have.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
We have a similar program that was started here as
well by a local guy, and wehave to pay.
It's a very small amount of,but we pay to drop our bottles
off and they turn it into, theygrind it up and you can spread
it in your gravel.
Yeah.
You know, it's like they're notsharp pieces, they're just worn
down.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
So you can just sort of spread it amongst your gravel
as well to kind of help keepthings compact and whatnot.
It is a great idea.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
I think it's awesome.
At least it's a great idea.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
I think it's awesome at least it's a alternative to
taking away recycling for us andthen I've I've heard in seattle
when they pave roads theyactually throw it in the yeah,
why not?
Speaker 3 (35:12):
why wouldn't you put in there with with asphalt and
all that stuff?
Speaker 1 (35:15):
yeah yeah nobody knows that's longer yeah, it's
gotta go somewhere and so andwe're gonna keep drinking it, so
yeah, yeah, I mean what santabarbara did is because I mean
california in general and also,I think, seattle um very focused
on being eco-friendly andseeing the planet, which I love,
(35:36):
green, very green.
But because of, because of that, I mean they're they're still
recycling, but they have to hiremore people to take the glass
out of the recycling and throwit in.
I think they're.
I don't even know what they dowith it.
They might do a landfill of it,but they didn't tell people to
(35:58):
stop recycling glass, becausethat would have been a huge,
huge uproar in the community andso like, okay, we're just not
going to tell them to not do it,we'll just hire people to pick
it out.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
essentially, I mean the fact is our local
municipalities, or even on astate level.
That's where the funding shouldcome from to have recycling
programs.
I understand it costs moremoney to recycle than it does
for them to get the money backon the back end.
Yeah, but you know, overall itdoes for them to get the money
back on the back end.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
But you know, overall it's for the.
If it's for the health ofeverybody, you know it's for the
good of the people, everybody.
Yeah, then that should be acivic program.
It should be something that thestate pays for.
Yeah, now I say the state paysfor it, that means, we pay for
it.
Exactly we're paying taxesanyways, we're paying taxes
anyways.
Look, build that into our.
We either build it into ourpricing or the glass
(36:46):
manufacturers, or again a tax,or whatever.
Yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Man, I love this psychedelics, I know it's so
good you know the rocks.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
I'm sure you've had plenty of wines from the rocks
by now.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Yeah, yeah, and you know I love the savory qualities
that come out of that area.
It's been said a thousand timesthat the most recognizable AVA
in North America from thestandpoint of sensory.
Yeah, you can smell and tastethat wine blind and you're going
to know where it's from.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
You know, you may not think it, you may not know it's
mine, but you know, could beryan van, could be kai, whatever
, um, but uh, what I'vediscovered in the rocks is there
are differences, depending onwhere in the rocks you are, of
how the lines are.
So that's you know.
We have the funkadelic and thepsychedelic.
We tried the our first vintageof the psychedelic, 2012.
We made identical to how wemade the first three vintages of
the funkadelic, picked it up at24 and a half bricks you know,
(37:52):
25 bricks, yeah, and I ended upwe ended up declassifying our
very first vintage yeahinteresting, and so 2013 came
along.
We made some changes.
We picked it a lot earlier, weused a lot more stems and we
used a lot less oak on it newoak and um, our first.
(38:13):
So that was our first officialvintage that we bottled the
psychedelic and um.
I remember sean sull Northwood,who was a wine enthusiast at
the time.
Oh, yeah yeah, he was a very,very hard like.
He is a tough scorer, right.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Yeah, he's very tough .
He's been out of the game allday long.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
Yeah, and the first vintage, when we bought that,
sent it in to him, I think wegot 95 points for that first
vintage and I thought, okay, see, we made the right decision.
Yeah points for that firstvintage.
And I thought, okay, see, wedid, we made the right decision.
Yeah, I know he would havehated, he wouldn't have hated
the the 2012, but it just itwasn't as good as what the funk
was.
Yeah and well, why would webottle our own estate wine if we
(38:54):
didn't think it was going to beas good, if not better, than
what we were getting frommitch's vineyard?
You know?
yeah, and uh, so that's when westarted recognizing the fact
that different parts of theRocks District, it's not just
one style out of there.
For me, the Stony Vine Vineyardis a more elegant, prettier
(39:16):
style compared to the Funk,which is a little beefier,
bulked up version of the box.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
I guess, yeah, my question is how funky is too
funky?
Speaker 3 (39:28):
Because I mean for me I'm like Biggie Smalls
Horsepower lines are too funkyfor me yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
I mean I'm like Biggie Smalls, I live for the
funk, I die for the funk.
But sometimes it's a little toofunky it can be too funky.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
Uh, yeah, that wasn't a false statement, I just made
it.
Yeah, like I've had a, I've hadtwo different horsepower wines
from christoph and both of themI could get through maybe half a
glass, yeah, and what I think,my my feeling about those wines
(40:04):
are that those wines are goingto require 15 years in the
bottle, yeah, okay, before theyshed a lot of that funk.
And I, I've never askedChristophe that question at all.
I, you know I should, but, um,I'm curious if that's his, if
that was his motivation behindthe horsepower product and he
(40:26):
wanted to make a wine that wasgoing to last.
The same way, some of the greatroans, do you know, for 40, 50
years, right, yeah, but they arejust so reductive and lack any
sense of fruit.
Yeah, and I'm all about savory.
I mean, you know, psychedelicis savory, but it's still pretty
(40:49):
and elegant and there are, youknow, you'll pick out the fruit
components for sure.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Um, but uh, yeah, and the rocks to me reminds me a
lot of santa rita hills,sometimes the rocks district.
It reminds me a lot of santarita hills in santa barbara
sometimes, because in santa ritahills it's mostly all uh
diatomaceous earth.
It's really close to the oceanso you're getting a lot of the
(41:14):
ocean breeze, ocean fog sittingin there, so it's like a micro
cool climate and it's very saltyand olive top and on it's
savory it's still fruit.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
I probably tasted more pinots from that area than
I have Syrahs from the SantaRita Hills.
I can't really speak to Syrahon a broad way out of that area
than I have.
Yeah, yeah, from santa ritahills.
I can't really speak to saranor broadway out of that area.
Certainly, climate-wise they'revery different.
Yeah, yeah, totally.
But when you talk about thatsaline and that olive, those are
two of the top five tastingnotes in rocks wines yeah,
(41:52):
that's why I love rocks wines.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
Yeah, yeah, I spent the majority of my wine career
in santa barbara and so havinglike a house palate like that,
coming to washington tastingrocks wines, I'm like, oh, this
tastes like, tastes like home,you know it's like yeah, you
know, I will say, I think thatour I don't know what their
chemistry is like um in thatarea.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
But one thing that I think is unique about the Rocks
District is, you know, thesewines, texturally, are so soft
on entry and fairly rich, andit's not because of the alcohol
level, it's because of the pHs,so like the 2020 vintage.
You're drinking right now.
(42:32):
What's the alcohol in that 13.5, 13.9?
Speaker 2 (42:35):
that 13, 5, 13, 9, 13 , 7, 13 13 9 yeah, yeah um the,
the psychedelic in most vintages.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
The 21 was an anomaly , uh, because it was just so hot
.
By the time I got the grapesoff we were already at like 23
and a half 24 bricks, but um,typically under 14, yeah yeah,
but we're dealing with ph'spicking, picking ph's at four,
4.0.
So we have finished ph's of 4.1, very common uh, in the rocks
(43:05):
and um, there's not a lot ofplaces that make wines like that
.
They're just they're, they'refreakish, freakish numbers.
But that wine has acid in it.
So even though it's 4.0 pH, youwould think that there's zero
acid, but that's got 5.2 or 5.3grams per liter of natural
tartaric acid.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
And if you were to show those numbers to like a UC
Davis professor, they were like,oh, those numbers don't make
sense and you can't do that, butwe have so much potassium in
our soils down in the RocksDistrict and a ton of nitrogen.
I could say that, yeah, thesewere farmed apples and cherries
and tree fruits for 100 years,which just take loads and loads
(43:51):
of nitrogen, just take loads andloads of nitrogen, and so we're
still burning through, ourvines, are still burning through
the nitrogen that's left overfrom all of those from the
orchards.
What we find is that they makefor very fast and hot
fermentation because we're allnative right.
(44:12):
So we will foot crush them, getthem in our cold room, let them
sit there for a couple of days,move it into our normal
fermentation room Once we seesome bubbles kind of start
happening.
And you know, let's say,picking them was like 23 and a
half bricks.
So by like day three whenfermentation kicks off, day
(44:35):
three, when fermentation kicksoff day four, you come in and
it's 23 bricks.
And then day five comes up andyou're at 21 bricks.
Day six you're at 12 or eight.
Like overnight it'll jump 15bricks.
I've seen it happen every year.
Fermentation will get up tolike 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
I mean we don't use any coolingjackets or anything, so we
don't have the ability to likereally manage that ferment.
(44:59):
It's just it does what it doesand, yeah, it'll blow through,
gets hot.
They're the messiestfermentation.
They'll have a cap that comesabove the bin like this, high
above the bin.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
Foaming monster, purple ooze coming out of the
top it beauty, just superhealthy looking.
Speaker 3 (45:18):
It's cool looking.
Yeah, but that's what you knowlike.
Oh okay, yeah, I kicked offlast night yeah, yeah so do you
ferment in tanks or in bins?
we ferment in 1.5 tons.
We ferment in in a bunch ofdifferent things, but our main
fermentation bins are 1.5 tonstainless steel square alfalfa
(45:39):
bins.
Yeah, okay, so here in WallaWalla, because we're wheat and
alfalfa, the coal 41, when theystarted off, and Leonetti and
Woodward canyon, you know, theseguys didn't have any money to
buy tanks back then like big,huge fermentation tanks.
But alfalfa bins were a plentyand, um, they were cheap, so you
(46:06):
could buy these bins for backthen for 500 bucks a piece.
And so, wow, that's whatstarted.
And now you know stilleverybody I said everybody but
we use a lot of those.
So that's our number one vessel.
We have, uh, two concrete tankswhere we can ferment about three
tons each in each tank, uh, ofgrapes.
Those are used for pump overs.
(46:27):
We'll use syrah and cab francin those, uh, and a bit of
Grenache.
We've got two concrete eggswhich will ferment.
Our white sins, like Chardonnay, will see the egg.
And then we've got three oakupright tanks.
Okay, those three oak uprighttanks are used for fermentation
as well as storage vessels.
(46:50):
When harvest is over, we'llfill those back up.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
Nice, nice.
Speaker 1 (46:54):
Oh, oh, that's cool man that's so interesting,
that's crazy.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
Next time you come down, we'll take you through the
winery.
You can see all the toys we'renot a fancy winery by any means.
There's a lot of fancy placeshere now in Walla Walla.
So if you love seeing all themodern equipment and things like
sorting tape, like opticalsorting tables and things of
that nature, those are wild yeah.
(47:22):
Yeah, we don't do any of thatstuff.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
Yeah, we try to do on this podcast, which is kind of
take a lot of thepretentiousness out of wine so
people, so consumers, can havemore access to, yeah, um, and
not feel intimidated by the wineculture, right, yeah, and so
that's what I really love.
I connected with your wineryimmediately just because of that
and also the music side of me,I just love it.
Speaker 2 (47:51):
I gotta go hang out there all day yeah, I went to
the one in what soto?
Speaker 3 (47:57):
yeah, yeah we've got a great tasting room in soto, so
that one's cool too.
I loved that one.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
I walked in and, uh, I came from cardis, uh, and I
walked in and they were just sowelcoming and somehow I walked
out with like two or threebottles, which was not the plan,
but it was the plan.
Apparently it's always the plan.
I don't know who I'm kiddingmyself, um, but it was just, it
(48:25):
was homey and I like thatfeeling.
I don't need to act like I'mall high and mighty, like yes,
I'm in the wine industry, I lovewhat I do, but, yeah, feeling
at home I'll get as geeky aboutwine as anyone wants to get.
Speaker 3 (48:42):
I'll talk about whatever you want to talk about,
but yes we're not gonna I'm notgonna lead off with that at all
like I want people that this isit's not to say that our
marketing plan from the verybeginning.
Like I can't say, we had thatmaybe in mind, and the way that
it's turned out, I think we justsort of naturally grown into
(49:04):
what our brand is today.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
Which is awesome.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
We had an ode to Pearl Jam by naming the winery
sleight of hand.
But we didn't like lean intothe music thing like right away,
yeah.
But it quickly became a part ofour brand and you know our goal
is when you walk into ourtaping room is just to be
(49:30):
comfortable.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
And that's one way, music's one way to do that, and
that's totally how I felt.
Speaker 3 (49:34):
Music's one way to do that, and so if a customer
comes in and has the opportunityto put on an album of somebody
that they like, I don't care ifit's Willie Nelson or Wu-Tang,
it doesn't matter to me.
If they're comfortable now,they're already in a good
headspace.
Speaker 2 (49:53):
Right, they're wine tasting yes, they're in their
element.
Speaker 3 (49:55):
Wine tasting, but now they're listening to their
music.
They're drinking some good wine.
We're going to sit down andwe'll give you some bullet
points.
If you have deeper questionsyou want to know about, my team
is all capable.
Speaker 2 (50:09):
They do a great job.
Speaker 3 (50:12):
Oh, good, well, I'm glad I appreciate that.
So I do.
Speaker 1 (50:15):
yeah, I was at the I was at the cardist tasting room
in soto and then next door heardthis rager going on and I was
like wow I'm just like I gottago check that out.
So, yeah, I had to go hang outand check that out and the next
day I had a podcast with uhepisode chris who is the
beverage director for Purple.
Speaker 3 (50:35):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:36):
And we did it at Cardiff's as well, and so
naturally, right afterwards Ihave some friends that work in
that tasting room, and so wewent next door to Slide of Hand
after that was over and had agood time.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
So yeah, it's always a good time.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
Yeah, it's cool.
Speaker 3 (50:52):
We use that for live music as well.
We do a ton of live music overthere.
Um, you know, I think we've gotfour or five bands coming up in
may and in june I've got, um,we're hosting a concert here
next week for our spring releasewe've got a cure tribute band
(51:12):
oh cool coming to play.
Yeah, um, I've got, you know,built to spill, I don't know
boise yeah all right.
Well, now you have somehomework to do all right, all
right, perfect.
Speaker 2 (51:22):
We're here for it.
Speaker 3 (51:23):
So definitely your goal.
Now you have to go back andlisten to the fort.
The last 14 built to spillalbums.
Speaker 2 (51:30):
Okay, yeah perfect, perfect gotta do it, but we're
bringing them.
Speaker 3 (51:31):
They're from boise and they, but we're bringing
them.
They're from boise and they're,we're bringing them to walla
walla in august uh they'replaying the motor company
downtown oh fine that's gonna bea lot of fun.
So it's a little bit of like.
You know.
It's not like those events helpus sell a ton of wine, no, but
what they do is they attach ourbrand with that funny event yeah
(51:55):
yeah.
So if someone does see sleightof hand like oh, those are the
guys who brought, built a spill,just you know, yeah, or
whatever, so hopefully they'llbe a little endeared to to buy
our wine at that point, so butyeah, yeah, I was actually just
telling my boyfriend yesterday.
Speaker 2 (52:10):
I was like, for our anniversary we should, which is
in September, we should go toWalla Walla and I already know
where I kind of want to go, youbeing one of them and a couple
others around there and I waslike, yeah, we should do that.
And he looks at me, he's like,so, like next month?
And I'm just like all right,come on like.
(52:35):
All right, come on man come on,come on sam so I'm pushing,
pushing for walla, walla for ouranniversary and hopefully we do
.
Speaker 3 (52:44):
I'll give you a call let us know yeah, shoot me yeah,
give us a call.
We'll take care of you.
For sure I'll give you happy toget you guys out in the
vineyards too.
Speaker 2 (52:52):
That'd be so fun, that'd be awesome.
Speaker 3 (52:54):
I don't know how much vineyard exploration you've
done down here.
Speaker 2 (52:57):
So I'm definitely the vineyard side to this duo here
and I am a vineyard nerd.
I would rather be out in thevineyard.
Obviously, I'm in the tastingroom now, but the vineyard is my
home.
Speaker 3 (53:16):
Yeah, yeah, when you tasting room now, but the
vineyard is my home.
Yeah, yeah, when you come.
Speaker 2 (53:18):
When you come down, we'll give you a nice little
tour of the valley.
Speaker 3 (53:20):
So I would love that.
Yeah, well, it'd be awesome,absolutely cool.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
Well, trey, is there anything that you would like to
plug?
Speaker 3 (53:24):
um, oh gosh, I mean we talked about a lot of our
wines and stuff.
So, uh, if, if, if you do haveany other fellow music lovers?
Um, on here we.
I think probably one of themost unique things that we do is
we have a vinyl club.
Oh, so, um, we, we at we sell.
(53:45):
I have a retail shop forrecords in both soto and in
walla wall.
Okay, it's like a little recordstore in there, yeah, but four
times a year we release albumsthat I'm picking out and working
with labels and pressing themlike variant colors and things
(54:06):
like that, so you're gettingsomething truly unique.
Some of them are reissues, someof them are brand new albums
and stuff like that, brand newbands, but it's just kind of a
fun way to.
Yeah, I think it just that's sofun Ties into the to the brand
again, right, so, yeah, yeah,one brand, I guess, is the best
(54:26):
way to put it.
Speaker 1 (54:27):
Are they?
Are they full albums or is itkind of like?
Speaker 3 (54:29):
a curated playlist.
Speaker 1 (54:30):
Each one they're full LPs.
Oh, that's awesome, that'sawesome.
Speaker 3 (54:36):
Yeah, we just released the last Jay Maskis
album.
He's the lead singer forDinosaur Jr.
Okay, so we just released thatalbum on Sub Pop.
Speaker 2 (54:48):
And yeah it's.
Oh, how fun.
That's awesome, that's a greatidea, great marketing.
Speaker 1 (54:56):
Well, trey, I love what you're doing, man, I love
it, uh, infusing music cultureinto wine culture.
Speaker 3 (54:59):
Um, your wines are spectacular and I love them I
appreciate it well, lookingforward to uh, sharing a glass
with you guys in person heresoon.
Yeah, absolutely would love it,and if my wife and I and the
kids get to Shlan anytime giveus a call.
We'll give you the grand tour.
Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1 (55:21):
Everyone check the show notes.
We have links for their vinylclub, their wine club, their
website, all their socials.
Everything is right there.
Go click the links.
Trey, thank you so much forcoming, really appreciate it.
Cheers, cheers, you guys.
Speaker 3 (55:34):
Cheers.
Speaker 2 (55:35):
Wait, there we go.
Cheers.
Hey you, now that I have yourattention and you've listened to
this wonderful podcast that wehad to offer, We'd like you to
(55:56):
scroll down.
And what are they going to dowhen they scroll down?
Ian, Scroll down and give ussome feedback.
Speaker 1 (56:01):
Rate us on your podcast platform Ideally five
stars, and if you would give ussome critical feedback, you can
DM us on Instagram atOfficialBungPod.
Let's hear it, let's go.
It is only two of us writingthe show, two of us producing
(56:23):
the show.
It's me, ian King, jasmineShattuck and the lovely Becca
Hines as our producers.
Speaker 2 (56:29):
The lovely Becca Hines.
Speaker 1 (56:32):
As our producers and our writers are me, ian King and
Jasmine.
Speaker 2 (56:39):
Chaddick, let's go.
No-transcript.
Bung pod.
Welcome back, wine Wonderboy.
And we got Jazzy J Jazzy.
What is a bung?
The hole of the barrel iscalled a bung hole.
Inside the bung hole is calleda bung Wine with mayhem.
That's what it's about.
All right, welcome back to thebung pod.
(00:21):
It's your boy, ian King, akaWine Wonderboy, and I got my
co-host with me.
Jazzy J Jazzy.
Say what's up.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hi everybody.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
So we have a really awesome episode for you guys.
Before we get to the episode,give us a five-star rating on
whatever podcast platform thatyou're listening to this on.
That gives more eyes to ourpodcast and more listeners.
So we'd really appreciate that.
But today we have the winemakerfor Slide of Hand Cellars we
(00:53):
have Trey Bush.
What's up, Trey?
How's it going, man?
Speaker 3 (00:57):
What's going on?
Good to be here.
Thanks for having me.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Hey, thanks for coming on.
So right now we have a bottleone of your wines.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
We have the.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Psychedelic Syrah 2020.
Stony Vine Estate Vineyard.
So is this?
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Well, look at you, see, I opened up an old bottle
of Levitation.
Where is it at?
Oh, what year is?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
that.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
It's another Syrah that we make.
It's one of our wine clubsyrahs that we make I just went
down to.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
I'm like I probably should have some wine for this
obviously yeah, yeah so yeah,always have a glass in hand yeah
, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Well, that's a delicious bottle.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
You guys are popping right now, so hopefully you're
you're gonna enjoy it I know Igot this one a couple years ago
and I was going through mycellar the other day and I was
like oh, how convenient.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
How convenient.
Now we got something to drinkwhile we're talking to each
other, that's perfect.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Exactly Well, I fell in love with your wines when I
visited Walla Walla for thefirst time in June.
I spent most of my wine careerin Santa Barbara, california, a
beautiful place.
A beautiful place, reallyexpensive to live there, and so
that's why I moved back up toWashington, because that's where
I'm from.
Originally, I'm from Seattle.
(02:14):
So, yeah, I went to yourtasting room in Walla Walla, got
to meet Keith, got to pick arecord.
I'm a huge music person.
My whole family, they're allmusicians or music influenced.
Oh perfect, yeah.
And I went to actually audioengineering school and did a lot
(02:35):
of music history programs aswell.
So I have an appreciation for alot of music, and so that was a
blast.
The question is, what's thealbum you picked out?
Music, and so that was a blast.
The question is, what's thealbum you picked out?
The album was, um, it was anirvana record.
It was, uh, yeah, yeah, it wasnothing wrong with that hold on
yeah there you go, there you go,yeah, and I loved your merch
(02:57):
too.
Your guys's merch is awesome.
I I bought the um the fleetwoodmac design.
Oh yeah, yeah, I love thatshirt.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Yeah, yeah, that's a good one.
So, yeah, we have fun with allthose.
You know the music is a fun wayto tie in my just love of music
, which I'm not a musician, Ijust, you know, music's been
very important in my life andit's been the wine business.
(03:26):
Incorporating music into thewine business has been a lot of
fun for us and whether it's withthe vinyl in the tasting room
or whether it's with ourt-shirts, it's sort of a full
circle thing for me.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
So so you say you're not a musician, but I hear
you're into air guitar.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
World-class air guitar player.
That is true, that is true.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
I needed to mention that.
I read that and I was like, hmm, I should ask.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
What does it take to be a world-class air guitar?
Speaker 3 (03:54):
player.
It takes three glasses of wine.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Do you?
Have a specific song that youreally like to play air guitar
with.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
You know, yeah, I mean, I mean for sure the entire
acdc back in black album, whichwas yes, yeah you know I was a
freshman in high school.
That came out in 83.
I was a freshman in 84 and umhave very fine memories of
listening to that album um with,uh, my high school friends in
the back of a Monte Carlodriving way too fast and
(04:30):
listening to the music way tooloud.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
But yeah, if I had to go back to any, if I had to go
back to anything, it would bepretty much any cut off of that
album.
So but as a big Pearl Jam fanI'm I'm pretty fluent in most
Pearl Jam too.
So Nice.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
So you guys are, you guys have a relationship with
Pearl Jam, is that right?
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Yeah, a little bit.
I mean, we have done somecharity projects with them.
You know, obviously I I namedthe winery after a Pearl Jam
song and um have, over the years, gotten to know a lot of folks
that worked for the band andthey certainly, you know, met
some of the band members of thisstuff.
But yeah, we did when theyplayed in 2018 back in Seattle,
(05:16):
yeah, the home shows.
At the time we had apartnership with Mark Ryan
winery.
We had this winery called theunderground wine project and we
had a partnership with Mark RyanWinery.
We had this winery called theUnderground Wine Project and we
did a wine for Pearl Jam back in2018.
And then we did another one forthem.
I think it was in 2021.
Just another small, one-offproject to help raise some money
(05:38):
for their Vitology Foundation.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Their charitable arm.
But yeah, and then a lot of thewines that we make are actually
named after pearl jam songs too.
So it's just one of those, oneof those things uh, it's like
you know, honoring the band thatI love so much, so good.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
That's awesome.
That's cool.
You get a chance to to workwith them as well yeah, for sure
, for sure.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Did you ever think that was going to happen?
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Well, no, I mean, if I go back to my early days of
winemaking, when I was at Dunhamback in the early 2000s, I
remember Eric and I went to theKey Arena Pearl Jam show I think
it was the Binaural Tour orsomething like that in 2000.
I just started working for Ericand Eric's like how do you
(06:29):
think we can get some wine backto the band?
I said, well, I'm on anemail-friendly relationship with
the folks who work in theoffice, I'll see if they can,
let us do that.
And that was kind of really ourfirst sort of oh, we got some
Dunham Cabernet back there.
And then a few years later Iwas going down to LA and I was
working for another winery atthat point, at Basil Cellars,
(06:51):
and reached out.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yeah, you helped start that right.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Yeah, I started that winery in 2002.
Okay, 2002 was our first yearand then I left there in the
spring of 07, so right after the06 vintage.
So really vintage is 2003, 2004, and 2005 were my vintages,
sort of grape to bottle.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
I had crushed the 06s , but I left six months after
harvest to start a sleight ofhand, so I have no idea what
happened to any of those sixes?
Um, from a blending standpointand stuff.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
So so before you went to Dunham, you were at
Nordstrom's for quite a while.
Um, what were you doing atNordstrom's and how did it end
up changing your career path towine?
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Yeah, um, I, I did a lot of things at nordstrom.
Uh, I started there in 1992.
Okay, um, I had moved fromathens, georgia, to back to
seattle because I I was in thenavy from 88 to 90.
I was stationed in brimerton oh, okay a ferry ride across from
seattle, right there yeah, yeah,I'm from, yeah, that was my.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Oh, really, yeah, yeah that.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Yeah, that was my oh really.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
That's funny.
Yeah, that was my.
That was my introduction to theNorthwest Um, and it was really
right when the, you know, theSeattle music scene was really
just kind of bubbling up andabout to explode and I I got out
of the Navy in the summer of 90and I moved back to Georgia,
which is where I was originallyfrom.
I grew up in Atlanta and wasenrolled at the university of
(08:27):
Georgia and in that two yearperiod that's when Seattle
really blew up and I was at thepoint where I just did not want
to miss being at an age where Icould afford to fuck off.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Essentially, yes, yes .
Speaker 3 (08:47):
I wanted to be around that music scene and I didn't.
I didn't want to miss it.
You know I, uh, athens, georgia, had a.
They were the center of theuniverse for a short period of
time in the early eighties withREM and the B-52s and a bunch of
other bands.
And then, of course, la in theeighties with all the metal
bands.
Um, you know, the punk scene inthe late 70s in new york.
(09:08):
So all these scenes that werehappening in san francisco in
the 60s, all these scenes werehappening and, um, the writing
was on the wall that seattle wasgoing to be like, that was
going to be it.
Yeah, and um, I, I just didn'twant to miss it.
And so I dropped out of schooland I moved back to Seattle and
took a job at Nordstrom.
I had a really great time there.
(09:30):
I started off just in the stockroom and by the time I left I
was a buyer for the company.
I was buying men's suits, ofall things.
But during that time frame afriend of mine who I used to buy
records from, he owned a recordstore off of Roosevelt and 63rd
called Ruby Records and hisname was Jamie Brown and Jamie
(09:52):
was the winemaker.
You'll know that name becausehe was the winemaker for Waters
Winery.
He started Waters Winery back inthe mid 2000s but Jamie had
moved back to Walla Walla, whichis where he's originally from,
and I went to go visit Jamie andjust sort of fell in love with
the town and Eric Dunhamhappened to be his next door
(10:14):
neighbor and I met Eric on oneof my trips down there and that
turned into a friendship whichturned into a job opportunity,
that's awesome To basicallyleave Seattle and move to Walla
Walla and learn how to make wine, and so I had no prior
winemaking knowledge in any way,shape or form.
(10:35):
I didn't really know the firstthing about the world of wine at
all, but I knew sales andmarketing and I knew I liked his
wine.
A lot of marketing and I knew Iliked his wine a lot.
I remember it was $45 retail.
His Cabernet, the 97 DunhamCabernet, was $45.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
And I'm like God who spent that kind of money.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
I was going to say, especially back then I was a
28-year-old kid, you knowspending 10 bucks on a bottle of
Chateau St Michelle for aspecial night, you know.
And uh, so, um, yeah, and sothat you know, he said look,
I'll teach you how to make wine.
Um, you know you can help us onthe sales or marketing side of
(11:16):
things.
We're growing our brand.
Dunham was in a fairly steepgrowth curve at that point in
the late nine, 99, 2000 and um,and I did it.
So I quit my job at nordstromand moved to walla walla and
eric took me under his wing andand taught me as much as you can
teach somebody.
Uh, he was a very artisticwinemaker.
(11:39):
He was not, um, a veryscientific winemaker and that's
more difficult to teach.
And from the standpoint of, whyare you doing this?
Well, it feels right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
What does that mean?
What does that mean?
It feels right.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
And so eventually, I had to learn.
That too, though I had to learn.
I had to basically trust my owninstincts, and so, after I left
Eric and went to Basel, that'swhat I did I took, you know, I
certainly made as many mistakesas I had, you know, as many wins
as I had.
I certainly had lots of well.
That didn't work out very well,but that's okay.
(12:22):
You know, those were, thosewere my learning years, for sure
, and now that we've settledinto, we're really comfortable
where our winemaking is.
Yeah, I've got a.
You met Keith, who's myproduction winemaker.
So Keith is my guy in thecellar.
Yeah, he Bailey, our assistantwinemaker, and all of our cellar
hands essentially work forKeith.
(12:42):
Keith and I and Jerry reallywork hand in hand, side by side.
I spend the majority of my timein the vineyards.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
That's my favorite place too.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
If I can grow the best grapes possible in each
vintage, because every vintageis different, if I can grow the
grapes best possible and deliverthose to the winery, they
really don't have to do thatmuch.
You know what I mean.
It's basically at that point,it's babysitting your grapes to
fermentation.
We are, we're all native in thewinery, so we're not using
(13:18):
cultured yeast, we don't addacid, we don't add enzymes, we
don't add tannin.
We're a fairly hands-off winery, and so I think that it does
require you to pay a little moreattention to what's happening
in the vineyard, to make surethat your picking dates and your
picking decisions are the rightones, because we don't want to
(13:41):
have to manipulate what we didon the back end.
Yeah, um, once you bring thegrapes in, and um, and so that's
really where my focus hasturned to, since Keith has been
full time with us.
Um, at least full time as ourwinemaker.
I hired Keith in 2011.
Um, and I think by 2014 or 15,um, I gave him the winemaking,
(14:04):
winemaking title, and probablyby 15, 16,.
The first four or five years,not only was I in the vineyard,
but I was in the cellar with himand we were making all these
decisions together, but nowwe've got a pretty good setup
there.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yeah, I was going to ask you about, on the winemaking
side, your opinion on lowintervention versus manipulation
.
And then why?
Because I know that aftertalking with Keith, I heard
about the hands-off approach,lower intervention style of
winemaking, and so I was justgoing to ask you for the
listeners why would you choose alower intervention versus
(14:44):
manipulation?
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Yeah, I mean, it's not like, if I go back and look
at all my previous years atBasel and our first three, four,
five years at Sight of Hand, wewere doing some of those things
.
We were trying to figure out ifthey made better wines or not.
Like, hey, let's add sometannin to this to really pump up
the mouthfeel.
(15:06):
Or, oh, the acid feels a littlelow, let's bump the TA up with
acid.
And I think what we've learned?
First of all, we have a veryconsistent vineyard portfolio
and that's not super common inWashington.
Washington a lot of smallwineries are working with
(15:29):
vineyards they don't own.
They're on a three-yearcontract.
They may not re-up theircontract at the end of three
years and they'll go somewhereelse.
Or the vineyard owner will say,hey, I'm raising my prices and
I have another buyer, I'm notgoing to sell my.
So there's some inconsistencythere and you know certainly
(15:50):
that was us in our first two orthree years as well.
It's light of hand and even atBasel.
But we've got either they're astate vineyard or we have a long
term contract with them, like20 or 25 year.
We're not interested in two orthree year contract.
(16:14):
Yeah, no need to basicallylocking these in to where?
Now I know where my fruit'scoming from.
I know what those vineyardstaste like.
I know how to treat them.
I know what they do in coolvintages, I know what they do in
hot vintages, I know what thechemistry looks like coming out
of those vineyards, and so themore you get to work with those
things, you learn that you don'thave to do as much stuff on the
back end when you bring thegrapes in, and you know you also
(16:37):
learn things like hey, how isthis Cabernet going to perform
at 23 bricks instead of 25bricks?
Right, and you know, youexperiment with that stuff.
And on the back end afteryou're tasting the wines like,
these wines are awesome in 23bricks.
Why were we picking at 25bricks?
23 and a half or whatever thenumbers are?
(16:57):
And I'm not trying to stick anumber on anything but that,
just you know, that's kind ofhow we made some of the
decisions.
Yeah, that's how I made some ofthe decisions that we made.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Yeah, I mean when those grapes get to 23 and you
want them at 23, you're outthere.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
Yeah, yeah, and you know we are absolutely tasting
grapes.
You know we want to make surethat the seeds are lignified in
our Bordeaux riles, especiallylignified than our bordeaux
riles especially.
Um, uh, our roan program.
I mean, I have no problempicking sarah 22 and a half
bricks.
Um, not everything is like thatand not all of our.
(17:34):
You know, each vineyardperforms um at a higher level,
at a different sugar level,right, so like, for instance,
the funk vineyard we were, wemake a wine out the rocks called
the funkadelic you're drinkingyeah yeah, the funk vineyard, uh
, it wants to be a bigger wine.
That's just yeah.
(17:54):
We've tried it at lower alcohol, potential alcohol and it's
just not as interesting.
So, again, the only way tolearn that is you have to be
able to experiment with it andright, so that's.
We've gotten to the point nowwhere we have, um, uh, we've
worked with these vineyards longenough and we worked these
(18:16):
blocks long enough and we knowhow these things perform for us
at different quote-unquotenumbers that we recognize that
we don't have to manipulatestuff on the back end to make a
great wine.
We can just make really goodpicking decisions and, more
importantly, we can make surethat we were spending time out
in the vineyard making decisionswith our vineyard managers
(18:40):
about leaf stripping or not leafstripping managers, about leaf
stripping or not leaf stripping,about dropping fruit or leaving
a heavy crop.
You know, things like that aregoing to affect the outcome,
obviously, and so that's why Ifeel like the more time that I
can spend out there, the lesswork my team will have to do on
the back end in the winery.
(19:01):
Totally, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
And how many?
So you said you had some estatevineyards.
How many acres and what kind ofgrapes do you have out there?
Speaker 3 (19:09):
Stony vine is our estate vineyard, which you're
drinking right now.
Yeah, and that's a 28,.
That's a 20 acre parcel, 18 anda half acres planted mostly to
Sarah.
We own the vineyard with dustedValley Winery and Dusted Valley
is our vineyard partner, andthey're our winery partner.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Didn't we just have that the other day?
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Yeah, the last episode we had at Dusted Valley.
Oh cool, they're BFM, they'reBordeaux Blender.
Yeah, it's great, they do agreat job.
They do a great job.
Yeah, and they're like oh yeah,I do, I do like the amount of
(19:52):
detail that you put on the backlabel as well.
I mean it says one vineyard,nine punch-ins, 500 cases pure
rocks or I'm not gonna read thething but ancient riverbed,
softball-sized cobbles, footcrush, native fermentation,
50-hole cluster, 50-noop Frenchoak.
It's awesome.
I love reading.
I love tech sheets a lot.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Just because I'm in production, I'm the same way,
and I've been accused of beingvery wordy, and so you have to
either be young with goodeyesight or you have to have
readers.
But I'm the same way.
I like information on the backof a bottle, I think it's.
(20:35):
You know, look, if everybodybought, if everybody bought
every bottle of wine ever madeout of my tasting room, it
probably would not be asnecessary, because they got the
story when they were there.
But the fact is, a lot of thisstuff is going to see a retail
shelf somewhere.
Yeah, and the further you getaway from Washington, the less
they really know aboutWashington wine.
(20:56):
And I'm going to put, I'm goingto let you know what's going on
with this wine.
I'm going to tell you thevineyard sources.
I'm going to let you knowwhat's going on with this wine.
I'm going to tell you thevineyard sources.
I'm going to tell you thebarrel program.
I'm going to tell you theAramac and the flavor profile
that we get.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
And I'm going to give you the drinking window as well
.
Any way to educate from afar.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Yeah, how many retail spaces are you in?
Is it national, international?
Speaker 3 (21:18):
I mean we're in the UK, we are in Denmark.
Oh I mean we're in the UK, weare in Denmark oh fun and we're
in about 20 states.
That's awesome Because we make.
Our portfolio of wines goesfrom $22 up to $125.
Yeah, and then we have a secondlabel called the Renegade Wine
Company, and those are little$12 Cabernet and Rosé and
(21:42):
Chardonnay, and so those reallyare meant for distribution.
What you're drinking we do havein distribution as well, but
that's also one of our wine clubwines.
We have a wine club that'sbuilt around the rocks, and so
it's Funkadelic, psychedelic andcurrently Spiders from Mars,
which is up in North Fork.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
That's awesome oh interesting.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
It's a new growing region.
Next time you guys come to Wawawe'll drive you guys up there.
It's probably the most excitingvineyard project outside of
Weather Eye.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Oh, that's awesome.
Weather Eye is pretty exciting.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Yeah, and we work with Weather Eye too.
We make Grenache from thatvineyard site, so we love those
extreme sites.
Yeah, that vineyard site, so welove those extreme sites.
They make very, very complex,different tasting wines from
anything else in the region.
If you taste weather-riot fruitcompared to just below that.
And we work with Red MountainVineyard, which is one of our
(22:38):
estate blocks.
We have five acres on RedMountain down there all Bordeaux
varietals.
I didn't answer your question.
Yeah, so Stony Vine, redMountain, we have five acres.
We have five acres on the Horse7 Hills and we have eight acres
here in Walla Walla.
That are our estate blocks.
And then the Ziggy Stardustblock which is a little under
(22:59):
two acres of Syrah up atelevation.
Those are our estate blocks.
And then again we work withother long-term contracts like
Lake Killeen Vineyard, lewisVineyard for Syrah, but all of
our Bordeaux stuff isessentially all estate for us.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
That's awesome.
Yeah, what's your case?
Production like.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Well, it depends on the vintage.
Yeah, 21 was a tough vintagefrom the standpoint of.
We were down 35% roughly inyields, so we made about 6,500
cases.
Our normal case productionshould be between 9,000 and
10,000 cases.
The majority of that goes intotwo wines.
(23:46):
We make one wine called theConjurer it's our Bordeaux blend
, a state Bordeaux blend.
We have a red table wine, whichis our little $25 red table
wine called the Spellbinder.
Those two wines combined arebetween 3,000 and 4,000 cases.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
The other 5,000 to 6,000 cases go then the other
five to six thousand cases gointo the other 10 SKUs that we
make okay, yeah, I thought youguys were a lot larger than that
, because my question was gonnabe how can you make uh wine at
such volume with the qualitythat you're making it in?
Um, but that makes that make.
But still, I mean, you guyshave a big influence within the
(24:24):
wine world in general.
Oh, thanks, I would say we'relike a mid-sized winery in Walla
Walla.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Like you know, the small guys are all under 5,000
cases.
Yeah, and most of them, to behonest, are probably under 2,000
cases.
Yeah, and then you get to ourlevel, and then you go.
Next level would be, you know,a LaCole 41.
Yeah, you know, probably inthat 30 to 40,000 case range.
And then of course you haveWaterbrook and Precept and you
(24:54):
know there are a million cases.
So that's a whole differentballgame.
Yeah, completely so.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
And you guys have a lot, you guys do a lot, like you
have a lot of SKUs, I feel like, which is not a bad thing at
all.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
It's just like you guys have to be so organized in
the cellar and a lot ofcommunication, and you have to
go sell those wines.
Yeah, totally.
It's not easy.
When you're offering aportfolio of 10 to 12 wines
every year, yeah, and you're indistribution, it's hard for
distributors to um focus on yourbrand in that way, and so the
(25:31):
reality is things like thefunkadelic.
That's wine club only, spidersfrom mars is tasting room only.
Uh, most of it goes to wineclub, but we do have in the
tasting room so people couldcome in and buy it if they want
to um, but yeah, I have a bottleof funkadelic.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Oh, right on, that's a bottle of wine.
Yeah, yeah, it's a special oneI'm just keeping for a while
yeah, yeah we made, uh, we made70 cases of a russan marsan
blend called rebel.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Rebel from 2021.
That's off the same vineyard asthe spiders from mars is okay,
um and uh.
And then we make a couple othersmall, tiny productions saraz,
uh, make a little bit of weathereye ganache.
That's called a higher ground.
That's 100 cases, maybe, ifeven that.
(26:17):
Yeah, but our core portfolio isreally it's our.
We make a dry Riesling, okay,which is like a 700 or 800 case
production.
Yeah, we make Old VineChardonnay, which is about 400
or 500 cases.
We make a Cap Franc Rosé, whichis about 500 cases.
And then you go into the Redsand you're at Spellbinder
(26:41):
Conjure, archimaggio,illusionist, r2 Reserve Bordeaux
, and again, we have a big wineclub and so they can take a lot
of those reserve wines too.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Yeah, that's awesome, but we still make them
available.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
We still want them to be in the market.
We want you to be able to findthem at a restaurant.
We want you to go into a nicewine shop and find them.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
You shop and find them.
Um, you said you had a secondlabel.
Okay, and for that I meanobviously you like second or
approve of second labels, but itI feel like there's always some
controversy against secondlabels.
Um, either it's yeah, I meanit's really good, or yeah, like
for us.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Ours is completely.
It doesn't know.
If you didn't know that it wasour second label, you wouldn't
know it was a slight of handwine at all.
It's called the Renegade WineCompany.
Packaging is completelydifferent.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Pricing is you know?
Again, they're $12 wines.
We it's a negotiant project forus.
We make all those wines of theWaluke Wine Company with Kendall
Nix, who's an incrediblewinemaker up there.
And again we work with him handin hand with a style of wine
(27:54):
that we're trying to make.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Gotcha.
So it's completely separate.
It's like off-site.
You're not making it in yourproduction.
Oh wow, okay, all made up inMattawap.
Oh wow, okay, all made up in.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Matawau oh wow, okay, so we do rosé, that's all Rhone
varietals.
We do Cabernet, but it's donein neutral barrel, okay.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
And so it's very, very approachable.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
Yeah, and that's the other idea.
It's a great glass pour cab.
Right, you walk into arestaurant, not the Metropolitan
Grill or El Gaucho they'regoing to pour high-end wine but
just your everyday casualrestaurant that has a wine
program.
It's a great glass pour program.
And then we've got a stainlesssteel Chardonnay as well,
awesome.
(28:36):
The idea is they're just cleanand fruit-forward, balanced, and
, yeah, just like crushable, Iguess.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Are you?
What are your thoughts on thealternative vessels for wine
Like pouches, boxes, cans, evenscrew tops?
Speaker 3 (28:58):
I mean, we use screw cap with a lot of stuff.
I we do some keg business.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Okay, Not a ton, but of stuff we do some keg business
.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
Okay, not a ton, but we do a little bit of keg
business.
We have a couple of restaurantsin Seattle that we service and
we'll just basically bottle abarrel at a time and as they run
through them, we'll keep threeor four, but we'll have an idea
about how much they're going tosell for the year.
We'll keep three or fourbarrels and sort of fill them up
that way.
I am a hundred percent behindall the alternative closures.
(29:29):
The wine in a bag is awesome.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Yeah, very convenient , I love it Great If you're
going camping or whatever it'slike all that is amazing yeah
it's, but the problem is it'snot about us getting behind it.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
Yeah, it's.
How do you get consumers behindit?
Yeah, uh, and we're at a reallyweird.
We're at a really weird time inthe wine world right now.
We are my consumptions fallingoff a cliff.
It feels like like in some ways.
Yeah, younger consumers aren'tnecessarily turning, not to say
(30:09):
the younger consumers.
When I was young, was turningto wine either.
Yeah, but it seems like evenmore extreme now because you've
got cocktails in a can andyou've got hard cider is popular
, and you've got seltzers andyou've got mocktails.
You know some people.
I've got a 25 year old daughterwho I don't think has ever
touched alcohol.
(30:29):
You know, she goes to school inbozeman.
She doesn't drink.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
None of her friends drink yeah, and that's becoming
a thing.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
They'd rather have a kombucha than a yeah, yeah, hey,
no one I say no one's talkingabout it, but it's's not brought
up often.
But if you have disposableincome a little bit of
disposable income, not a lotyou're in your 20s and now,
depending on where you live, youcan go buy a cannabis.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
You can go to Oregon and go buy mushroom chocolates,
right, yeah, totally.
Go buy mushroom chocolates,right, yeah, totally.
And so there are alternativesout there that just weren't
around when we were at leastwhen I was younger it was, you
know, we just drank booze, yeah.
And so all of those things comeinto play when we talk about
(31:17):
where wine sales are.
Now going back to youralternative packaging, I think
younger consumers are the oneswho would be interested in
looking at bag in a box or thecanned wines and all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Almost going back to slapping the bag.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Yeah, back in college .
Speaker 2 (31:37):
They just think it's fancier now.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Yeah, again, it's just trying to get like how do
you go to?
Um, let's say most of thosekids are buying their uh,
alcoholic beverages at a grocerystore, right, yeah.
Let's say they're at Met market.
They're not even at Safeway,they're at the Met market, which
has a nice wine program.
Right, it's.
Now it's what it comes down tois is the Met market but wine
(32:00):
buyer going to get behind thattrend?
Are they going to put wines ina bag on their shelves?
Those are the roadblocks that alot of us run into.
Do you guys know Jeff LindsayThorson from WT Vintners?
Speaker 1 (32:17):
That kind of sounds familiar, not personally.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
I recognize the name.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
He's a Somme.
Might have been an MS, but he'sfor sure a Somme.
Got into winemaking, Got agreat palate he's doing.
I think it's his rosé in a bagthis year.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Nice and it's maybe like 100 cases worth right.
It wasn't like his entireproduction that he did that way,
but he still did a portion ofit and my guess is to see what
kind of traction he can get offof that.
You know what I mean.
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Yeah, I know the walls.
Uh, the walls did a rose theirsummer yeah, summer summer.
Yeah, summer summer, yeah, in abag and that just like flying
off the shelves, yeah, um I meanthey, I'm all for it yeah, I
mean, yeah, I mean I think theyonly do direct consumer um with
that one, but I haven't seen itin stores personally.
(33:12):
But, um, yeah, I mean thatalways sells out every year,
which is awesome.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
I mean it's, it's what, like a four, three liter
bags, like four bottles or wine,yeah, which the beauty of it is
, you can keep it in your fridge.
You got the little pouch thing.
You can push the push, thelittle rubber thing, I don't
know.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
It's great stays fresh for 60 days especially
when it comes to summer, for theboat, for camping, for anything
outdoors.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
How about for?
How about for not having to useglass?
Yes, yeah, and do dishes butthe environmental impact of that
alone is yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I mean look, screw caps took awhile to take off, and so maybe,
maybe, wines in a bag, we'llcatch on you know, no one even
(33:57):
questions screw caps anymoreyeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Well, and even here in chelan this is going to be
kind of shocking, but weactually our recycling program
like is no longer a thing sosame year, same year, walla we
lost we lost glass recycling twoyears ago here.
Yeah yeah, so we no longer doglass, but the I think it was
the high school started it, butthe then rotary got behind it
(34:21):
and now every saturday they do acrush on glass, so at least the
wineries have some place tobring it and then they make it
into sand or whatever they want.
We have.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
We have a similar program that was started here as
well by a local guy, and wehave to pay.
It's a very small amount of,but we pay to drop our bottles
off and they turn it into, theygrind it up and you can spread
it in your gravel.
Yeah.
You know, it's like they're notsharp pieces, they're just worn
down.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
So you can just sort of spread it amongst your gravel
as well to kind of help keepthings compact and whatnot.
It is a great idea.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
I think it's awesome.
At least it's a great idea.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
I think it's awesome at least it's a alternative to
taking away recycling for us andthen I've I've heard in seattle
when they pave roads theyactually throw it in the yeah,
why not?
Speaker 3 (35:12):
why wouldn't you put in there with with asphalt and
all that stuff?
Speaker 1 (35:15):
yeah yeah nobody knows that's longer yeah, it's
gotta go somewhere and so andwe're gonna keep drinking it, so
yeah, yeah, I mean what santabarbara did is because I mean
california in general and also,I think, seattle um very focused
on being eco-friendly andseeing the planet, which I love,
(35:36):
green, very green.
But because of, because of that, I mean they're they're still
recycling, but they have to hiremore people to take the glass
out of the recycling and throwit in.
I think they're.
I don't even know what they dowith it.
They might do a landfill of it,but they didn't tell people to
(35:58):
stop recycling glass, becausethat would have been a huge,
huge uproar in the community andso like, okay, we're just not
going to tell them to not do it,we'll just hire people to pick
it out.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
essentially, I mean the fact is our local
municipalities, or even on astate level.
That's where the funding shouldcome from to have recycling
programs.
I understand it costs moremoney to recycle than it does
for them to get the money backon the back end.
Yeah, but you know, overall itdoes for them to get the money
back on the back end.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
But you know, overall it's for the.
If it's for the health ofeverybody, you know it's for the
good of the people, everybody.
Yeah, then that should be acivic program.
It should be something that thestate pays for.
Yeah, now I say the state paysfor it, that means, we pay for
it.
Exactly we're paying taxesanyways, we're paying taxes
anyways.
Look, build that into our.
We either build it into ourpricing or the glass
(36:46):
manufacturers, or again a tax,or whatever.
Yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Man, I love this psychedelics, I know it's so
good you know the rocks.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
I'm sure you've had plenty of wines from the rocks
by now.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Yeah, yeah, and you know I love the savory qualities
that come out of that area.
It's been said a thousand timesthat the most recognizable AVA
in North America from thestandpoint of sensory.
Yeah, you can smell and tastethat wine blind and you're going
to know where it's from.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
You know, you may not think it, you may not know it's
mine, but you know, could beryan van, could be kai, whatever
, um, but uh, what I'vediscovered in the rocks is there
are differences, depending onwhere in the rocks you are, of
how the lines are.
So that's you know.
We have the funkadelic and thepsychedelic.
We tried the our first vintageof the psychedelic, 2012.
We made identical to how wemade the first three vintages of
the funkadelic, picked it up at24 and a half bricks you know,
(37:52):
25 bricks, yeah, and I ended upwe ended up declassifying our
very first vintage yeahinteresting, and so 2013 came
along.
We made some changes.
We picked it a lot earlier, weused a lot more stems and we
used a lot less oak on it newoak and um, our first.
(38:13):
So that was our first officialvintage that we bottled the
psychedelic and um.
I remember sean sull Northwood,who was a wine enthusiast at
the time.
Oh, yeah yeah, he was a very,very hard like.
He is a tough scorer, right.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Yeah, he's very tough .
He's been out of the game allday long.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
Yeah, and the first vintage, when we bought that,
sent it in to him, I think wegot 95 points for that first
vintage and I thought, okay, see, we made the right decision.
Yeah points for that firstvintage.
And I thought, okay, see, wedid, we made the right decision.
Yeah, I know he would havehated, he wouldn't have hated
the the 2012, but it just itwasn't as good as what the funk
was.
Yeah and well, why would webottle our own estate wine if we
(38:54):
didn't think it was going to beas good, if not better, than
what we were getting frommitch's vineyard?
You know?
yeah, and uh, so that's when westarted recognizing the fact
that different parts of theRocks District, it's not just
one style out of there.
For me, the Stony Vine Vineyardis a more elegant, prettier
(39:16):
style compared to the Funk,which is a little beefier,
bulked up version of the box.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
I guess, yeah, my question is how funky is too
funky?
Speaker 3 (39:28):
Because I mean for me I'm like Biggie Smalls
Horsepower lines are too funkyfor me yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
I mean I'm like Biggie Smalls, I live for the
funk, I die for the funk.
But sometimes it's a little toofunky it can be too funky.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
Uh, yeah, that wasn't a false statement, I just made
it.
Yeah, like I've had a, I've hadtwo different horsepower wines
from christoph and both of themI could get through maybe half a
glass, yeah, and what I think,my my feeling about those wines
(40:04):
are that those wines are goingto require 15 years in the
bottle, yeah, okay, before theyshed a lot of that funk.
And I, I've never askedChristophe that question at all.
I, you know I should, but, um,I'm curious if that's his, if
that was his motivation behindthe horsepower product and he
(40:26):
wanted to make a wine that wasgoing to last.
The same way, some of the greatroans, do you know, for 40, 50
years, right, yeah, but they arejust so reductive and lack any
sense of fruit.
Yeah, and I'm all about savory.
I mean, you know, psychedelicis savory, but it's still pretty
(40:49):
and elegant and there are, youknow, you'll pick out the fruit
components for sure.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Um, but uh, yeah, and the rocks to me reminds me a
lot of santa rita hills,sometimes the rocks district.
It reminds me a lot of santarita hills in santa barbara
sometimes, because in santa ritahills it's mostly all uh
diatomaceous earth.
It's really close to the oceanso you're getting a lot of the
(41:14):
ocean breeze, ocean fog sittingin there, so it's like a micro
cool climate and it's very saltyand olive top and on it's
savory it's still fruit.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
I probably tasted more pinots from that area than
I have Syrahs from the SantaRita Hills.
I can't really speak to Syrahon a broad way out of that area
than I have.
Yeah, yeah, from santa ritahills.
I can't really speak to saranor broadway out of that area.
Certainly, climate-wise they'revery different.
Yeah, yeah, totally.
But when you talk about thatsaline and that olive, those are
two of the top five tastingnotes in rocks wines yeah,
(41:52):
that's why I love rocks wines.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
Yeah, yeah, I spent the majority of my wine career
in santa barbara and so havinglike a house palate like that,
coming to washington tastingrocks wines, I'm like, oh, this
tastes like, tastes like home,you know it's like yeah, you
know, I will say, I think thatour I don't know what their
chemistry is like um in thatarea.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
But one thing that I think is unique about the Rocks
District is, you know, thesewines, texturally, are so soft
on entry and fairly rich, andit's not because of the alcohol
level, it's because of the pHs,so like the 2020 vintage.
You're drinking right now.
(42:32):
What's the alcohol in that 13.5, 13.9?
Speaker 2 (42:35):
that 13, 5, 13, 9, 13 , 7, 13 13 9 yeah, yeah um the,
the psychedelic in most vintages.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
The 21 was an anomaly , uh, because it was just so hot
.
By the time I got the grapesoff we were already at like 23
and a half 24 bricks, but um,typically under 14, yeah yeah,
but we're dealing with ph'spicking, picking ph's at four,
4.0.
So we have finished ph's of 4.1, very common uh, in the rocks
(43:05):
and um, there's not a lot ofplaces that make wines like that
.
They're just they're, they'refreakish, freakish numbers.
But that wine has acid in it.
So even though it's 4.0 pH, youwould think that there's zero
acid, but that's got 5.2 or 5.3grams per liter of natural
tartaric acid.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
And if you were to show those numbers to like a UC
Davis professor, they were like,oh, those numbers don't make
sense and you can't do that, butwe have so much potassium in
our soils down in the RocksDistrict and a ton of nitrogen.
I could say that, yeah, thesewere farmed apples and cherries
and tree fruits for 100 years,which just take loads and loads
(43:51):
of nitrogen, just take loads andloads of nitrogen, and so we're
still burning through, ourvines, are still burning through
the nitrogen that's left overfrom all of those from the
orchards.
What we find is that they makefor very fast and hot
fermentation because we're allnative right.
(44:12):
So we will foot crush them, getthem in our cold room, let them
sit there for a couple of days,move it into our normal
fermentation room Once we seesome bubbles kind of start
happening.
And you know, let's say,picking them was like 23 and a
half bricks.
So by like day three whenfermentation kicks off, day
(44:35):
three, when fermentation kicksoff day four, you come in and
it's 23 bricks.
And then day five comes up andyou're at 21 bricks.
Day six you're at 12 or eight.
Like overnight it'll jump 15bricks.
I've seen it happen every year.
Fermentation will get up tolike 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
I mean we don't use any coolingjackets or anything, so we
don't have the ability to likereally manage that ferment.
(44:59):
It's just it does what it doesand, yeah, it'll blow through,
gets hot.
They're the messiestfermentation.
They'll have a cap that comesabove the bin like this, high
above the bin.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
Foaming monster, purple ooze coming out of the
top it beauty, just superhealthy looking.
Speaker 3 (45:18):
It's cool looking.
Yeah, but that's what you knowlike.
Oh okay, yeah, I kicked offlast night yeah, yeah so do you
ferment in tanks or in bins?
we ferment in 1.5 tons.
We ferment in in a bunch ofdifferent things, but our main
fermentation bins are 1.5 tonstainless steel square alfalfa
(45:39):
bins.
Yeah, okay, so here in WallaWalla, because we're wheat and
alfalfa, the coal 41, when theystarted off, and Leonetti and
Woodward canyon, you know, theseguys didn't have any money to
buy tanks back then like big,huge fermentation tanks.
But alfalfa bins were a plentyand, um, they were cheap, so you
(46:06):
could buy these bins for backthen for 500 bucks a piece.
And so, wow, that's whatstarted.
And now you know stilleverybody I said everybody but
we use a lot of those.
So that's our number one vessel.
We have, uh, two concrete tankswhere we can ferment about three
tons each in each tank, uh, ofgrapes.
Those are used for pump overs.
(46:27):
We'll use syrah and cab francin those, uh, and a bit of
Grenache.
We've got two concrete eggswhich will ferment.
Our white sins, like Chardonnay, will see the egg.
And then we've got three oakupright tanks.
Okay, those three oak uprighttanks are used for fermentation
as well as storage vessels.
(46:50):
When harvest is over, we'llfill those back up.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
Nice, nice.
Speaker 1 (46:54):
Oh, oh, that's cool man that's so interesting,
that's crazy.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
Next time you come down, we'll take you through the
winery.
You can see all the toys we'renot a fancy winery by any means.
There's a lot of fancy placeshere now in Walla Walla.
So if you love seeing all themodern equipment and things like
sorting tape, like opticalsorting tables and things of
that nature, those are wild yeah.
(47:22):
Yeah, we don't do any of thatstuff.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
Yeah, we try to do on this podcast, which is kind of
take a lot of thepretentiousness out of wine so
people, so consumers, can havemore access to, yeah, um, and
not feel intimidated by the wineculture, right, yeah, and so
that's what I really love.
I connected with your wineryimmediately just because of that
and also the music side of me,I just love it.
Speaker 2 (47:51):
I gotta go hang out there all day yeah, I went to
the one in what soto?
Speaker 3 (47:57):
yeah, yeah we've got a great tasting room in soto, so
that one's cool too.
I loved that one.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
I walked in and, uh, I came from cardis, uh, and I
walked in and they were just sowelcoming and somehow I walked
out with like two or threebottles, which was not the plan,
but it was the plan.
Apparently it's always the plan.
I don't know who I'm kiddingmyself, um, but it was just, it
(48:25):
was homey and I like thatfeeling.
I don't need to act like I'mall high and mighty, like yes,
I'm in the wine industry, I lovewhat I do, but, yeah, feeling
at home I'll get as geeky aboutwine as anyone wants to get.
Speaker 3 (48:42):
I'll talk about whatever you want to talk about,
but yes we're not gonna I'm notgonna lead off with that at all
like I want people that this isit's not to say that our
marketing plan from the verybeginning.
Like I can't say, we had thatmaybe in mind, and the way that
it's turned out, I think we justsort of naturally grown into
(49:04):
what our brand is today.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
Which is awesome.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
We had an ode to Pearl Jam by naming the winery
sleight of hand.
But we didn't like lean intothe music thing like right away,
yeah.
But it quickly became a part ofour brand and you know our goal
is when you walk into ourtaping room is just to be
(49:30):
comfortable.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
And that's one way, music's one way to do that, and
that's totally how I felt.
Speaker 3 (49:34):
Music's one way to do that, and so if a customer
comes in and has the opportunityto put on an album of somebody
that they like, I don't care ifit's Willie Nelson or Wu-Tang,
it doesn't matter to me.
If they're comfortable now,they're already in a good
headspace.
Speaker 2 (49:53):
Right, they're wine tasting yes, they're in their
element.
Speaker 3 (49:55):
Wine tasting, but now they're listening to their
music.
They're drinking some good wine.
We're going to sit down andwe'll give you some bullet
points.
If you have deeper questionsyou want to know about, my team
is all capable.
Speaker 2 (50:09):
They do a great job.
Speaker 3 (50:12):
Oh, good, well, I'm glad I appreciate that.
So I do.
Speaker 1 (50:15):
yeah, I was at the I was at the cardist tasting room
in soto and then next door heardthis rager going on and I was
like wow I'm just like I gottago check that out.
So, yeah, I had to go hang outand check that out and the next
day I had a podcast with uhepisode chris who is the
beverage director for Purple.
Speaker 3 (50:35):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:36):
And we did it at Cardiff's as well, and so
naturally, right afterwards Ihave some friends that work in
that tasting room, and so wewent next door to Slide of Hand
after that was over and had agood time.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
So yeah, it's always a good time.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
Yeah, it's cool.
Speaker 3 (50:52):
We use that for live music as well.
We do a ton of live music overthere.
Um, you know, I think we've gotfour or five bands coming up in
may and in june I've got, um,we're hosting a concert here
next week for our spring releasewe've got a cure tribute band
(51:12):
oh cool coming to play.
Yeah, um, I've got, you know,built to spill, I don't know
boise yeah all right.
Well, now you have somehomework to do all right, all
right, perfect.
Speaker 2 (51:22):
We're here for it.
Speaker 3 (51:23):
So definitely your goal.
Now you have to go back andlisten to the fort.
The last 14 built to spillalbums.
Speaker 2 (51:30):
Okay, yeah perfect, perfect gotta do it, but we're
bringing them.
Speaker 3 (51:31):
They're from boise and they, but we're bringing
them.
They're from boise and they're,we're bringing them to walla
walla in august uh they'replaying the motor company
downtown oh fine that's gonna bea lot of fun.
So it's a little bit of like.
You know.
It's not like those events helpus sell a ton of wine, no, but
what they do is they attach ourbrand with that funny event yeah
(51:55):
yeah.
So if someone does see sleightof hand like oh, those are the
guys who brought, built a spill,just you know, yeah, or
whatever, so hopefully they'llbe a little endeared to to buy
our wine at that point, so butyeah, yeah, I was actually just
telling my boyfriend yesterday.
Speaker 2 (52:10):
I was like, for our anniversary we should, which is
in September, we should go toWalla Walla and I already know
where I kind of want to go, youbeing one of them and a couple
others around there and I waslike, yeah, we should do that.
And he looks at me, he's like,so, like next month?
And I'm just like all right,come on like.
(52:35):
All right, come on man come on,come on sam so I'm pushing,
pushing for walla, walla for ouranniversary and hopefully we do
.
Speaker 3 (52:44):
I'll give you a call let us know yeah, shoot me yeah,
give us a call.
We'll take care of you.
For sure I'll give you happy toget you guys out in the
vineyards too.
Speaker 2 (52:52):
That'd be so fun, that'd be awesome.
Speaker 3 (52:54):
I don't know how much vineyard exploration you've
done down here.
Speaker 2 (52:57):
So I'm definitely the vineyard side to this duo here
and I am a vineyard nerd.
I would rather be out in thevineyard.
Obviously, I'm in the tastingroom now, but the vineyard is my
home.
Speaker 3 (53:16):
Yeah, yeah, when you tasting room now, but the
vineyard is my home.
Yeah, yeah, when you come.
Speaker 2 (53:18):
When you come down, we'll give you a nice little
tour of the valley.
Speaker 3 (53:20):
So I would love that.
Yeah, well, it'd be awesome,absolutely cool.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
Well, trey, is there anything that you would like to
plug?
Speaker 3 (53:24):
um, oh gosh, I mean we talked about a lot of our
wines and stuff.
So, uh, if, if, if you do haveany other fellow music lovers?
Um, on here we.
I think probably one of themost unique things that we do is
we have a vinyl club.
Oh, so, um, we, we at we sell.
(53:45):
I have a retail shop forrecords in both soto and in
walla wall.
Okay, it's like a little recordstore in there, yeah, but four
times a year we release albumsthat I'm picking out and working
with labels and pressing themlike variant colors and things
(54:06):
like that, so you're gettingsomething truly unique.
Some of them are reissues, someof them are brand new albums
and stuff like that, brand newbands, but it's just kind of a
fun way to.
Yeah, I think it just that's sofun Ties into the to the brand
again, right, so, yeah, yeah,one brand, I guess, is the best
(54:26):
way to put it.
Speaker 1 (54:27):
Are they?
Are they full albums or is itkind of like?
Speaker 3 (54:29):
a curated playlist.
Speaker 1 (54:30):
Each one they're full LPs.
Oh, that's awesome, that'sawesome.
Speaker 3 (54:36):
Yeah, we just released the last Jay Maskis
album.
He's the lead singer forDinosaur Jr.
Okay, so we just released thatalbum on Sub Pop.
Speaker 2 (54:48):
And yeah it's.
Oh, how fun.
That's awesome, that's a greatidea, great marketing.
Speaker 1 (54:56):
Well, trey, I love what you're doing, man, I love
it, uh, infusing music cultureinto wine culture.
Speaker 3 (54:59):
Um, your wines are spectacular and I love them I
appreciate it well, lookingforward to uh, sharing a glass
with you guys in person heresoon.
Yeah, absolutely would love it,and if my wife and I and the
kids get to Shlan anytime giveus a call.
We'll give you the grand tour.
Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1 (55:21):
Everyone check the show notes.
We have links for their vinylclub, their wine club, their
website, all their socials.
Everything is right there.
Go click the links.
Trey, thank you so much forcoming, really appreciate it.
Cheers, cheers, you guys.
Speaker 3 (55:34):
Cheers.
Speaker 2 (55:35):
Wait, there we go.
Cheers.
Hey you, now that I have yourattention and you've listened to
this wonderful podcast that wehad to offer, We'd like you to
(55:56):
scroll down.
And what are they going to dowhen they scroll down?
Ian, Scroll down and give ussome feedback.
Speaker 1 (56:01):
Rate us on your podcast platform Ideally five
stars, and if you would give ussome critical feedback, you can
DM us on Instagram atOfficialBungPod.
Let's hear it, let's go.
It is only two of us writingthe show, two of us producing
(56:23):
the show.
It's me, ian King, jasmineShattuck and the lovely Becca
Hines as our producers.
Speaker 2 (56:29):
The lovely Becca Hines.
Speaker 1 (56:32):
As our producers and our writers are me, ian King and
Jasmine.
Speaker 2 (56:39):
Chaddick, let's go.
No-transcript.
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