SoCal with Val 8 29 25 Guest Kyle Meyer Episode #17

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:21):
It's the hottest, laziest stretch of the year. At least
that's what most people think. But in the wine country,
the dog days of summer are anything but lazy. They're
the most nerve racking, make or break weeks of the
entire season. Every grape is in a race against time,

(00:43):
sugar's rising, acids, falling, flavors locking in, and the decision
on when to pick could define a wine for years
to come. It's crazy. Today we're pulling back the curtain
with someone who has lived this moment more times then
he can count. Kyle Meyer from the Wine Exchange is

(01:03):
a man who could give AI a run for its
money when it comes to wine. He's seen harvest in California, France,
Spain and beyond and knows exactly what happens in these
final nail biting days before the grapes first hit the press,
the grapes press, that is. We're going to talk about

(01:24):
how winemakers decide when to harvest when, how do they
decide that day they're going to start picking, and those
first frantic hours afterwards, Why some grapes do demand handpicking
and others get the machine treatment, and even the quirky
traditions and celebrations that make this season so unforgettable. So,

(01:46):
whether you're a wine collector or a casual zipper, or
you're just curious about the art and the drama behind them,
model and what's all this all about, you're about to
hear why harvest is the heartbeat of the wine world.
Welcome Kyle Meyer to so Cal with Belt.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Happy to be back.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Thank you. We are glad to have you. It is
always a delight to have you with us. Let's start,
and I have to tell you. When I first started
learning a little bit more about wine, which happened to
be about the same time that I met you guys,
someone said, oh, we can't do something in September because
it's harvest season and no fighting. Because I'm from the
Midwest and my friends were all farmers' daughters, and it was,

(02:30):
you know, harvest season when they harvested the soybeans, you know,
in corn, you know whatever. It was really a big thing.
So I just think there's something about harvest season, about
the fall, all of that. But let's tell tell our
listeners and our viewers today, what is the big deal
with harvest season and wines.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
Well, you know, the thing with wine is it's not
like table grapes or apples or peaches or something where
you have some flexibility, right, you got some room to maneuver,
you have some options. With wine, mother nature dictates all
the terms of engagement, and you have one shot, and

(03:12):
you have one shot at producing something not just edible,
not just drinkable, but something at another level.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
You know.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
The thing with fine wine is it's it's next level.
So when you do the harvest, it's it's micro discussions,
it's smaller questions, it's little nuances in the vineyard that
determine as opposed to you know, if you're picking table
grapes out in Coachella and you got twenty seven hundred
tons per acre, you know, and they're just looking to
get stuff in a plastic boxes and the costco This

(03:41):
is different. It's so different. It's it's it's manicured. These
vines are manicured, they're they're tweezered, they're everything. The selection
is is super intense, and at the same time Mother
Nature is still in charge. Yes, right, so you can
sit there and do everything right and in twenty minutes,

(04:06):
boom done. It can happen that fast. You get a
freak haale storm third week of August. And this has
happened to me by the way, I've been at wineries
when these hailstorms come through, and I've watched the wine
maker just watch their crop disintegrade, just disappear in twenty minutes. Right, Yeah,

(04:29):
And this is you know, vineyard work is it's not
like a whole year. You know, there's a dormancy period,
so you get you know, you get eight weeks off,
six weeks off if you're a being.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
Your own right, if you're a wine grower.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
But even come January February, you're already back in it again.
You're pruning, you're getting the soil set, you're doing all
of these things in anticipation of what might come. And
then after that it's a severe there's so much work.
I don't know how intense you want to talk about

(05:04):
the work that takes place in the vineyards or the
non stop.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
I think people would like to know, because we don't
really get to see that to the certainly to the
level that you have.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah. Yeah, So it's just how nerdy you want to get,
you know, And you know what we all.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
Have seen is the Lucy Arnez you know where she
and Ethel are out stomping their feet in the buckets.
So you know, I'm sure there's there's another level to
it than that.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
And by the way, that's coming into vogue again, is it.

Speaker 3 (05:32):
Yeah, foot stomping is becoming a thing again, you know,
So we can get to that part of the process.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
You know, yeah, I would say.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
And you know, for example, it starts in January, February
maybe where they do pruning. Right, So the harvest, you know,
you got all these canes, you got the all the
the sticks everywhere. You know, the vine is it wants
to go everywhere, right, So at harvest time, after the
grapes are picked, you got all these canes everywhere. So
what you have to do is you have to prune
the vineyard. You have to cut all the old canes

(06:01):
off and put the vineyard in a position for success
next year.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
How do you want your vineyard to grow?

Speaker 3 (06:06):
Which canes you want to use to create new shoots,
to create new potential for grapes.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
So the pruning is a.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
Very important part of the job, and it takes place
in the dead of winter when the vines are dormant,
they're sleeping, because what happens.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
Vines go to sleep.

Speaker 3 (06:19):
They push, push, push, push, you harvest and then come
November December, the vines kind of go, that was nice
and they go to sleep.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
I gave I gave it the office. Now I'm gonna
take a rest.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
Exactly.

Speaker 3 (06:32):
They put all this work in and now they're like
done over, so they nap. So what happens is the
wine the vineyard own, the wine grower will go out
into the vineyard in January or maybe February. Nowadays they
do it later because the climate change. And they get
into the vineyard and they prune, they take all the
old wood off and they burn it. You know, maybe
see those pictures you see those pictures maybe in French

(06:54):
vineyards of like the vine cuttings burning in the middle
of the vineyard. Looks very nice, romantic. That's all real.
That all happens, right, So yeah, so come what happened?
They do that, right, and then they wait, they wait
for what March April, and then then you might have
bud break, you know when the when the first little

(07:15):
buds come out, and that's when you know you might
have a season. But before they get well, not before
during bud break is a very important time, all right,
because this is when the vine is at its most exposed.
And if you get a frost, then what's going to

(07:36):
happen is the little buds that are popping out freeze,
and you don't get grapes because you have the bud break,
then you have the flowering and then so it's this
whole process. Frost early on can be extremely damaging. It
can destroy a harvest before the harvest even as a
chance to get started.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
And does that ever happen where literally a whole harvest
is destroyed.

Speaker 3 (08:02):
Yeah, Well, the frost what they hope for is if
it's late enough in the game they can work on
maybe towards getting a second crop, essentially starting over and
picking the starting over part, but much later and at
not the quality level you would have had of an
original harvest, all right, So they.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
Hope for that.

Speaker 3 (08:20):
But what happens is, you know a lot of times
the frost is very specific where it hits certain vineyards,
you know, so you can have like frost likes to settle,
like cold air settles, right, you know, we know about this.

Speaker 2 (08:31):
Cold air settle.

Speaker 3 (08:32):
So if the vines at the bottom of your hill
are much more in danger of being frosted than the
vines up on the hillside. So frost can be very
selective and just pick certain parts of your vineyard to
freeze and destroy. So sometimes you know, most vineyards don't lose,
don't lose all their harvests in a frost, very seldom
does that happen. But they can lose seventy percent, they

(08:53):
can lose eighty percent, they can lose twenty percent.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
It's all random.

Speaker 3 (08:57):
And this happens right at the start of the season,
especially these late frosts. You know, when you have this
bud break and the vines are just starting to push out,
you know, you see in the little flowers, the little
leaves started unfold and then zouie, you know, five days
of sub zero temperatures and boom, you're out of business.
So you have to survive that, right, Frost at the

(09:19):
start is already rough right in.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
The spring, right, yes, exactly.

Speaker 3 (09:24):
Yeah, winter, you don't have to worry about it because the
vines are dormant, so frost is only an issue until
after the vines until they have bud break, and usually
bud break happens when they get that first real blast
of heat during the season. And the vine feels the
heat and goes, oh it's time and starts weeping. And
then the vine starts poking out if it gets too

(09:45):
hot too early. And that's a big part with climate change.
What's happening now is you get in these very warm
patches of weather, like in February, and you kind of
it fools the vine. Essentially, the vine goes, oh it's
time and pops.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
So it's not.

Speaker 3 (10:02):
If you are ever in wine country in Europe or
anywhere in February and you're like, oh, the weather's beautiful,
the French wine growers will look at you like, no,
this is bad.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
The weather's horrible right now, and you're like, oh, but
it's like seventy and sunny, it's gorgeous. No no, no, no, yeah,
we don't want that. We don't want that.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
We want nice cold weather up until the spring, till
May bud break, the shoots start popping out, things start
to happen. You know, you're gonna have a harvest and
you have to survive the frost. Now, so that's the
first thing. Frost is a real trouble, you know. But
then and then the rest of the season can sometimes
be not so dramatic depends on the weather. If you

(10:43):
have a lot of rain, and you have to have
the tractors in their spring for mildew and you know,
fungus and all these things to make sure your vines
are happy and healthy. But then you know, a lot
of the wine business, especially in France, and here's well
kind of takes off like late July into middle of August.
That's vacation time. That's when there's not too much to
be done. You spray, the tractors have been out, the

(11:03):
vines are growing, the grapes are ripening, and then a
lot of folks tend to come back, like second week
of August and start taking a hard look at their
vineyards and then they're prepping. You know, they're calling their
harvest crew. You know you need people to harvest, yes, right,
and out the size of your winery.

Speaker 2 (11:20):
You need a lot of people to harvest.

Speaker 3 (11:22):
So the strategy, you know, the scheduling of getting harvesters in.
Then you got to get them in at the right
time based on what you think is going to happen
with the weather. So then it's a guessing game, guessing
when the grapes are going to be perfectly right, right,
So now you're going like, I think it's going to
be September tenth. I'm going to call these guys two
weeks before and tell them to be here. Then oh,

(11:44):
then it rains. Then it rains, right, and you're like, oh,
everything's been moved ten days, everything's been pushed back ten days.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
So now you're calling everybody again.

Speaker 3 (11:54):
Now you got all the harvesters that are placed, you're
feeding them, you're probably you know, giving a place to stay,
and all of a sudden you're like, okay, you guys
hang out for a week.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
And is there really a day when they say today?

Speaker 3 (12:08):
Well, you know, technically, in the old days there was
in Europe, particularly in Burgundy, they would have what they
call the bondevandange, which Burgundy would set a harvest start
date because they didn't want you harvesting before so that
you would make a leaner, less quality wine.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
Right.

Speaker 3 (12:28):
So, and they still kind of have the bond of vandange,
I think, but most of the vign your owns in
Burgundy for example, look at that and go kind of
go eh, and they kind of go out and do
what they need to do. So technically there used to
be a set harvest date. But nowadays it's tied into
the weather. It's tied into perfect physiological ripeness. It's tied
into different parcels ripening in at different times. So you
have a harvest team and you're like, okay, guys, you're

(12:50):
gonna go over here today and pick this sector, this quadrant,
and then over here you're gonna go tomorrow and pick that,
and then in two days, I'm gonna need you in
this area to pick this quadrant, et cetera, et cetera,
et cetera. And harvest can be a process of of
sometimes two weeks or a month, even depending on your
vineyard and the location of the grapes and the vines. Sometimes, though,

(13:12):
it can be really fast. If the weather is not cooperating.
You may need to call these guys and say I
need all this pick in three days. You guys are
not sleeping, and they don't. They live at the winery.
They sleep on the couches, they sleep on the floors,
and it's just an all out rush, a madhouse rush.
I've seen both things. I've seen both.

Speaker 1 (13:33):
Is it likely that right now someone knows the day
their target day for September? And is it September.

Speaker 3 (13:40):
Well, they have an approximate target day. You know, things
can change based on the wiles of weather. But they
have an idea because usually it's like a it's one
hundred days like from flowering, like the clock starts usual
to say, but that's all random. That could be ninety,
could be eighty, could be one ten, one twenty. And
the thing is, the real conscience is great grape growers.

(14:02):
They want to extend the harvest. They want to extend
the growing season. They want these grapes to hang out
as long as they can, to develop more complexity, more flavor.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
More nuance.

Speaker 3 (14:14):
And if you have nice, cool sunny days, cool nights,
you can do that. The vine will just slowly, slowly,
slowly push ripening and it develops more flavor and complexity.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
They don't want to be rushed.

Speaker 3 (14:28):
They don't want to be in a situation where like
in twenty twenty two in California, we had a huge
heat dome event right at the start of September, and
basically half the people made the call, we need to
get the fruit in now, and then half the people
made the call, we're gonna wait. Some people picked right
at the start of the heat event. I think it
was like seven days of one hundred and fifteen plus

(14:49):
in Napa at that juncture in September. The grapes are like,
come on, come on, what are you doing to me?
And these vines will give up the go most, the
lose acid, the lose flavor, the lose intensity, and your
harvest will be ruined because of too much sun, as
opposed to most people think a harvest is ruined because

(15:10):
of rain, which that can ruin a harvest as well, right,
But too much stun is as big a problem now,
you know.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
So who are the ones who made the right decision?
The ones who called it earlier or late or weighted.

Speaker 3 (15:25):
Usually the ones who called it early kind of came
out ahead. Because if you're a conscientious grape grower and
we haven't talked about yield yet, but in the vineyard,
you know, the amount of grapes you have per vine
also makes a huge difference to the potential quality. If
you hang too many clusters of grapes on a vine,
the vine will take longer and struggle more to ripen

(15:45):
those grapes fully. Right, So you're extending your growing season
by going to get more grapes and or limiting the
quality of your wine. If you pick at the same
time as everybody else, that's hanging less fruit on the vine,
so that vine ripens that fruit faster. Right, So the
guys that keep a low yield in their vineyards, the
heat dome was less a problem for them because they

(16:06):
were closer to harvesting what they consider their top quality fruit. Anyway,
they might have picked a few days early and left
a little bit out there qualitatively, right.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
The guys that hung more fruit and.

Speaker 3 (16:16):
Or waited those those vines baked for seven eight days,
and a lot of times the quality of the fruit
after was not pickable, you know what I mean, Like
they ended up having to sell off fruit, or bulking fruit,
or or trying to make phone calls to sell something
at two hundred dollars a ton instead of five thousand,
you know, this sort of deal. So yeah, and generally

(16:38):
the guys that picked early were the ones that came
out ahead. But sometimes they guess wrong, you know what
I mean. Sometimes the heat event or the rain is
not too much.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
These guys picked.

Speaker 3 (16:46):
The quality of the grape their grapes and wine isn't
as good because they picked too early, and the guys
that waited all of a sudden, say, maybe it rained
for three days, right, and those guys they waited, and
then after that it was two weeks of an Indian
summer and they were able to go out and pick
their fruit two weeks later, and the fruit was amazing
and beautiful.

Speaker 1 (17:05):
And how do they know it they should just leave
some grapes on the vine or do they pick it
all and then decide when in the.

Speaker 2 (17:13):
Know, they'll generally go through and pick it all. Right.
The only thing you don't pick is like the second crop.

Speaker 3 (17:19):
Sometimes the second crop will form during the regular harvest season,
and it's usually that's up top, right, that's on top,
and you leave the stuff on top alone, and you
pick only the fruit in the growing zone what they
call the growing zone where they've done the leaf poling.
You see the grapes fully exposed in the lower part
of the vine. That's where you go and get it.
I was doing harvest one year in Bordeaux and I
got my hand slapped by the vine grower because I

(17:41):
went and grabbed it looked right and perfect, so I
was grabbing it and he's like they'll touch It's like, yes, sir, sorry,
you know, and because because it wasn't right, because grapes
can look ripe, but they're not wine ripe. They're not
fully ripe. They'll be red and look beautiful. And I,
you know, like snapped him off. I was gonna put

(18:01):
in the bin. The guy looked at me like bah,
and and I learned, just the fruit in the in
the growing zone is what you want. But when they
do pick that fruit, they pick all of it because
the top guys have already been through. And then what
they call a green harvest. Some of these guys will
pre cut grapes off the vines to ripen the other
fruit further. Remember I was talking about yield. You know,

(18:23):
some guys leave all the fruit on. Some guys will
take some fruit off prior to the harvest so that
the vine looks at the rest of the fruit that's
on the on the vine and goes, I can ripen
this fully right now for you.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
Give me a week.

Speaker 3 (18:35):
But if you leave all the fruit on that vinyl
go like, oh, you're killing me. This is going to
be two three weeks at least.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
Right.

Speaker 3 (18:42):
So a lot of the conscientious great growers will will
do a green harvest. They'll pull fruit off so the
other fruit ripens fully at harvest time.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
Then they go get it all.

Speaker 1 (18:52):
This is pretty amazing. This is it's almost well, and
it is scientific.

Speaker 3 (18:56):
It is it's it's chemistry, it's science, it's weather, it's nature,
it's all of it wrapped in the one.

Speaker 1 (19:04):
And being able to handle the emotions. I think being
a farmer is pretty emotional, but I think being a
grape grower must be even harder.

Speaker 3 (19:12):
I have no idea what these grape growers grow through
every year, especially again with climate change. The last twenty
years has seen a sizable impact on the variance of weather.
So the new group of being your owns and grape
growers are adapting the climate change based on these situations
that they're now being presented almost on a yearly basis,
especially in Europe. California actually pretty good as long as

(19:35):
we have water to do some irrigation here, California is
very consistent with their harvest. We're blessed with gorgeous weather here,
as we all know. It's why we live here.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
Huh.

Speaker 3 (19:44):
So that's what you talk about, is the greatest weather
on the planet. How great has our summer been this year?
Eighty degrees every day seven. It's ridiculous. In France, they
have issues.

Speaker 1 (19:55):
Yeah, and we're so lucky. Let's just take a minute
to explain to people. So I grew up, you know,
will you go and you can still do that? Here?
I went apple picking. I picked raspberries and blueberries and
cherries and we go. There was a season, right, we'd
pick up a bucket and we'd go back the next day,

(20:17):
the next day or the next week or whatever. What's
the big deal about the exact dates on grapes? What
is it about? And you've talked about this, but for
people who don't really understand it, as I don't. What
is the thing about why a grape has to come
off of the vine at a certain time. You talk

(20:37):
about the sugar and all of those things and how
it's affected, But what is the science of the grape itself?

Speaker 2 (20:45):
It's the nuance of flavor? Right.

Speaker 3 (20:48):
Why do you pay three hundred dollars for a wine
instead of thirty? Why do you pay thirty instead of thirteen?
The vineyard dictates a lot of this, and the man
and the techniques that you use for picking and growing
to get the grapes to a certain precision point because
you know, the grape growers and the winemakers, they'll do

(21:10):
analysis of the grapes in the vineyard constantly leading up
to harvest.

Speaker 2 (21:14):
Right.

Speaker 3 (21:14):
They'll measure acidity, they'll measure sugar, they'll measure pH they'll
measure the thickness of the skin. They'll measure all of
this criteria because these guys know the exact numbers they
need from these grapes to produce the style of wine
they need to produce for their house style and or
for the price they're charging. So there's a lot of science.

(21:37):
Like you said, there's a lot of science going into
this in the lead up. A lot of the grape
growers in California, they'll be very very on top of it,
especially when you're making WINEUS three hundred dollars a bottle.
You cannot afford to miss a number. You cannot afford
to get the grapes into the winery, and there may
be a percent less alcohol than you wanted, or the
acidity is zero point two off from a pH standard,

(21:59):
which is going toe of your wine. This texture instead
of this texture, or you let it sit in the
sun too long, so the grapes developed thicker skins, so
the wine became more tannic, more drying on the palette.
This is all criteria that goes into producing these wines.
Now that being said, there are also guys in the vineyard.

Speaker 2 (22:18):
They're they're they're classic old guys.

Speaker 3 (22:19):
I've been growing grapes for forty years and they'll just
walk out in the vineyard, pick a couple of grapes,
eat them.

Speaker 2 (22:25):
It is time.

Speaker 1 (22:28):
That's fascinating. You must absolutely love being with those people.
Just like, look at this guy, how smart he is,
how good he is at this.

Speaker 2 (22:39):
I've been with both.

Speaker 3 (22:40):
Man, I've been in the vineyards with with the young
wine maker with it's called a refractometer, the measure of sugar,
and they're like squishing here. You know, they got a
ziploc bag, right, and they take grapes from here, grapes
from here, grapes from your grips, and they got ten
different parcels and they're squishing them and dipping the refractometer
and god, and I've been with those guys and they
make great wine.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
Also been with the guys are like, let's go.

Speaker 1 (23:04):
Fastening. So to answer my question, and when you say
if the skin is thicker and so forth, there literally
is a measuring tool.

Speaker 3 (23:14):
Yeah, well a lot of it's just eating it and
you just know, yeah, and you spit. Yeah, the skins
are really tantic and you can feel it.

Speaker 1 (23:24):
So let's go back. So we know about harvest, so
we know kind of work and decisions that have been
made already happened in the vineyard. Is they do their
tooling and they're trimming and all of those things. And
you talk about timing and the science of timing, and
also that there's an art to it, right, definitely an art,

(23:47):
do you Is it different? I have to ask is
it different based on the grape?

Speaker 2 (23:56):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (23:57):
Yeah, different grapes need different love and care in the vineyard, right,
you have to. In the end, you're looking for full,
beautiful ripeness. You're looking for balance, precision, You're looking for
richness of fruit and all that the fruit will tell you.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
But each fruit is handled differently. I'll give you one example.

Speaker 3 (24:16):
They come Salvignon blanc, right, our wine of the summer,
you know, Savignon blanc. It's the grape ariety in censer,
you know, which is the hottest white wine out there
right now? It's on every table at lunch. Savignon blanc
is very interesting because when you produce, when you make
it in the vineyard. That's one of those ones that
when we talked about, oh do you pick it all

(24:36):
at the same time, Savino blanc is one of those
grape parieties that you maybe not pick all at the
same time because they'll do a striated pick. They'll pick
early on in the harvest so it has acidity. They'll
pick more grapes in the middle, which to them are
the meat and potatoes of that savignon blancuve that's the core,
the heart.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
Then they'll pick some fruit late if.

Speaker 3 (24:57):
They want to give the wine more richness, because those
grapes are richer, they're higher and sugar, they're lower in acid,
and they'll and they'll broaden, they'll give the wine a
little broader shoulders. So in the vineyard you can do that.
You have the ability to pick some stuff early, pick
some stuff late, and blend it out. A lot of
vineyards you pick it all at the same time.

Speaker 2 (25:16):
It's go time.

Speaker 3 (25:17):
It's all cabernet, it's all going into your cabinet. Don't
get funny with it. But there are some varieties like
savignon blanc where you picking in stages, because that's going
to build the complexity, because maybe picking all the salvignon
blanc at once will make a less complex wine than
having these grapes picked at different times, which can partner
a different character to the finished wine.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
And we talked in the introduction a little bit about
how some grapes need to be hand picked and some
grapes can handle the mechanical process. How do you know
and what are what are those differences?

Speaker 3 (25:53):
You know, that's a great question because I spent a
lot of time in Australia, and in Australia they love
mechanical harvesting. The Ausies have been mechanical harvesting some really
really top notched grapes for decades.

Speaker 2 (26:06):
And they like that.

Speaker 3 (26:07):
They like the They say mechanical harvesting done properly does
not damage the fruit.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
Because I've had the I don't.

Speaker 3 (26:15):
Know if call it the pleasure, maybe a late night
drunken run on a machine harvester, and it is one
of the loudest, most violent things I've ever been on.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
In my life.

Speaker 3 (26:25):
Really, it shakes the vines. It's it's it's ferocious, shaking, violent, violent, violent,
and all the grapes just pop right off. It's the
craziest thing. And I look at that, I'm like, how
can that be good for the vine?

Speaker 2 (26:37):
You know? Part of me is like, but the vine's
like whatever, doesn't care.

Speaker 1 (26:41):
And how can it be good for the grape? It
seems like if you shake it off, it's going to
damage it.

Speaker 3 (26:47):
You think that, but according to a lot of the
Australian vennors, they're like, no, it doesn't damage. The fruit
is absolutely perfect and allows us to pick faster in
those tight windows. So they say, it gives us the
luxury of going out of facilitating harvest at the absolute
proper time. We don't have to wait for the pickers
you know, oh they're still you know here and there's

(27:08):
going to be three days before they show up. Or
they don't have to wait for the picking crew to
finish somewhere else and then come to their vineyard. It
gives them the opportunity to pick their fruit at the
pinpoint time that they want to right now. Some vineyards
you can't use machine harvesters for example. You I don't know,
if you're seeing those pictures with the old vines, it

(27:29):
looks like a base you like, the old head trained
like a goblet. Those old vines where they're like their
own individual trees, cannot be machine harvested. Those vines always
have to be handpicked. So even if you're making five
dollars wine, you still need hand harvesters and they're picking
the fruit from those head trained, goblet style vines. A

(27:50):
lot of the charlisene stuff can be machine harvested, but
most high quality operations tend to want to hand pick
because they can be more selective in the vineyard before
the grapes get to say, the sorting table and the winery,
and then they have to be sorted again because all
these grapes are sorted two or three times during the
process to get the optimal fruit, because there's bad there's

(28:11):
stinker clusters, there's stinker grapes, there's the clusters aren't fully ripened,
there's art, and this multi tier process gets gets the
right fruit to the right place at the right time.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
So some people dig machine harvesting.

Speaker 3 (28:23):
Again, some people, most people, most of the quality people
in California will hand pick.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
And does it vary by region. You've got the North
American mines, you know, especially the California mines. You've got
the French wines and the Oregon and Washington, any of
those that are they all pretty standard as long as
they're in like the United States, or like in France
or in Spain, they consistent.

Speaker 2 (28:52):
Harvest times can vary greatly.

Speaker 3 (28:54):
And remember Australia, New Zealand and the Southern Hemisphere they
picked six months before we do. The seasons are backwards,
so in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa they're picking
in March, and we pick in September, you know, sometimes
August nowadays with climate change, but a lot of times

(29:15):
in September. And then those those picking windows will vary greatly.
The hotter places pick first, of course, right so areas
where there's more sun the grapes ripen sooner. Those areas
get picked first, the cooler areas. So basically it works
like South and North, like a lot of Spain. You know,
Southern Spain's gonna pick before they pick in Champagne or
you know what I mean, Like this sort of deal.

(29:35):
You'll and the harvesters, these guys that that harvest grapes,
they do it for a living, and they do it
for like three months straight and they'll work their way
from the south of Spain or the south of France,
you know, all the way up through France, all the
way up, you know what I mean, because the crops
will ripen at these stages within you know, a few,
you know, a few days of each other.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
But you do see that, you do see that happening.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
Are there any regions there especially tricky or difficult called
to harvest in?

Speaker 2 (30:02):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (30:03):
Yes, And we got a word for that. We call
it marginal climate viticulture. And that is that is the
thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. These areas
that are right on the edge of being too cold,
right on the edge of being too hot the precipice
from a weather standpoint, and you know, there's a little

(30:24):
less of that now, frankly again because things have warmed
up a little bit. Some of these areas that to take,
for example, an area like well, like Germany, right, they
grow grapes in Germany.

Speaker 2 (30:35):
Doesn't Germany sound cold to you?

Speaker 1 (30:37):
It does sounds cold.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
To me, you know.

Speaker 3 (30:40):
But they grow them along these rivers, you know, along
the Mosel River, and the river imparts a little sunshine
and reflection of sun and they get the angles and
in the old days, they made all the wines fruity
style with a little residual sugar because they knew the
grapes wouldn't ripen enough to make dry tablewine of inequality.
You know, nowadays they make some great rieslings in Germany

(31:01):
because things have warmed up, and now they do it.
But every year these guys are on a razor's edge.
Is the fruit going to ripen even enough to make
the fruit of your style? Of recently, in some years
they didn't have a harvest. You know, even in northern France,
back in the days they were allowed to chaptalize. There's
a term called chapitalization, where you're adding sugar. You're adding

(31:21):
sugar to the ferment and increasing alcohol just with that
sugar fermenting out during the fermentation. They used to have
back in the seventies and sixties, they'd have problems with
fully ripening grapes. Even like in the northern Rhon, the
grapes would come in at ten and a half percent
alcohol and they would capitalize two percent to get the
twelve and a half percent, so I the wine could
technically be called wine, you know, it could technically carry

(31:45):
the appellation of the zone so all that's changed. But yes,
there's still you can still be in those northerly climates
and some of the southerly climates. It could be too
hot and the viny will shut down, you know, because
a vinyl sit down. If it's too hot, it'll stop
ripening fruit. It'll just go to sleep again, because it's
about self preservation. So too hot a vinyl shut down.

(32:08):
Too cold, the grapes will never ripen the fullness. So, yes,
there are some issues. On the dots way south way north,
you can have some issues.

Speaker 1 (32:16):
Jeez, so interesting. So tell me our little bit of trivia.
What's the strangest harvest tool you've ever seen or used?

Speaker 2 (32:25):
Oh, my gosh, strangest.

Speaker 3 (32:28):
It's kind of clipper. I got one for you. The
clippers are always the clippers. Those don't change.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
Now.

Speaker 3 (32:37):
In some vineyards, like in Germany or in the an
area in northwestern Spain called Rebeasakra, where the vineyards are
so steep, these guys have these little trolleys, and the
trolleys work their way up and these guys have to

(32:57):
kind of like work.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
They're slowly eating their way over.

Speaker 3 (33:00):
To the trolley and dump their buckets in the trolley
because it's so steep they would never actually be able
to get the buckets and grapes down themselves. It's dangerous
what we call heroic bit of culture. I've seen this
if you in a few places where it's it. Look,
it's scary, it's terrifying.

Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yeah, I'm sure that's a really good question, because we
were in Italy maybe once, our friends. And as they go,
as the vineyards are on the mountain side, you know,
they've got these little tiny walkways so to speak, right
where you've got the it's cut into the hill side
or whatever, and then the grapes are there, and then
it goes up a little there's another little sidewalk, not

(33:39):
a sidewalk at all, but you know what I mean,
a walkway. So how do they get in there and
do the harvest thing? Do they keep literally like we
see in the movies where they keep the backpack on
their back and they put the grapes in there? Is
that literally what happens.

Speaker 3 (33:51):
One guy's picking, one guy's carrying, and they're working teams
and then they you know, wake their way over to
the side, you know, they'll and then it's up to
the next one. I think what they do is they
take it easy. I think they start at the top
and work down.

Speaker 1 (34:04):
Huh yeah, what a job.

Speaker 3 (34:05):
You know, what do you imagine you're going up and
picking the whole way like you started at the bottom.
The things just got steeper and heavier and hardier. But
I have seen, oh speaking of the same area in Rebeyasakra,
where they have these trolleys. The trolleys will go down
to the river and then they'll load the grapes on
boats and then boat the grapes to.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
The winery for pressing. Like literally, they load.

Speaker 3 (34:31):
The trolleys, the trolley goes down, they're dumped on a boat,
the boat goes down the river, and then they drop
off with the winery along the river.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
Incredible.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
So let's talk about what happens once it's off the vine.
So they put them in their bucket or in their
backpack or whatever they do. Then what is the next
thing that happens And what's the critical part of that.

Speaker 3 (34:52):
What you need to do is you need to press
the grapes right, and you need to fermentum. And there
there's multiple types of pressing, multiple types of you know, fermentation.
There's pre ferment, fermentation maceration, or if you're making red wine.
What they'll do is they they'll put the grapes in
big tanks or big vats or or a big open

(35:15):
top vat like outside. So all the fruit will go
into this big open top vat outside. And that's the
point in time where they jump in and they start
squishing with their feet.

Speaker 2 (35:24):
Huh like that.

Speaker 3 (35:25):
That's that's the I love lucy part of it. The
grapes come into the winery and they'll put them in
vats and maybe sulfur maybe yes or no, sold ad
a little sulfur in there for preservation, and then they'll
start squishing.

Speaker 1 (35:37):
Right literally, do they pull them off of the off
of the stems or they just put the whole thing
in there?

Speaker 2 (35:43):
Yes and no.

Speaker 3 (35:44):
That's a that's up to the winemaker to determine. Some vineyards,
some winemakers will uh de stem their grapes, which what
they'll do. The easy way to do okay, easy, the
classic easy techie way to do it is the grapes
come in, they go down a little conveyor belt and
they go into what they call a crusher de stemmer,
and the crusher the stemmer does both things. It crushes

(36:05):
the fruit and destems it all. And from there all
they have to do is open the gate, put it
into the vat and it'll begin the fermentation process because
it's already crushed and distemed. And then it's about how
long do you keep the juice on the skins?

Speaker 2 (36:20):
Right?

Speaker 3 (36:21):
Because think think of wine, it's like a tea. Think
you know you got to you have a tea bag
and you're steeping right right. You leave your tea bag
in too long, what happens that the tea almost gets tannic, right,
it gets drying bitter. So you have to steep just
the right amount so you extract a full amount of
flavor from the grapes, but you don't extract too much

(36:42):
and create a scenario while your wine is out of
balance or drying or tannic or over extracted.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
Right, And they'll do extraction.

Speaker 3 (36:48):
They'll do that a number of ways, either with you know,
stepping on it themselves, or they got paddles where they
with the French just call it pijags or punching down.
They have submerged cap where they'll take the whole because
what happens you got the juice underneath. After you crush,
the juice goes underneath, and the cap rises, and the
cap is all the schmunts, all the grape skins and
everything bevelve machines that push that cap down to submerge

(37:11):
the cap into the juice, and then they'll let it
sit there for thirty days, forty days, et cetera, drying
more flavor and intensity from the skins, and then drain
the juice off, and then that juice will run into barrels,
either it's already fermented already or it'll finish fermentation in
barrels or stainless steel tanks.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
When it comes then from the vines, it automatically it
always goes into tanks stainless are they stainless steel tanks?
It never goes into oak at.

Speaker 3 (37:37):
That time, right, some people, not very often, But there
are people that experiment with individual barrel fermentation where they
have these little you know, like the classic sixty gallon barrels,
you know, two hundred and twenty eight liters. They'll take
the grapes and put them directly into the barrel. They
take the head of the barrel off and fill the

(37:57):
barrel with grapes with dry ice, and they'll do individual
barrel fermentation in the barrels, and they got these special
machines that rotate the barrels so it's always moving, it's
in contact with the skins.

Speaker 2 (38:11):
And then they'll uh.

Speaker 3 (38:13):
Then then then after the fermentation is done, are almost done,
they'll take that individual barrel, dump it into a tank
and then press it out and then reput the juice
back into barrels. Again, crazy, very labor intensive. It's for
a lot of expensive lines to it.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
And all of this seems a little cruel. You take
spend all this time and energy and emotion creating this
little grape, this little piece of this little jewel, and
then you put it into a tank and you just
beat it up.

Speaker 2 (38:45):
Yeah, and then you hope you don't screw it up. Right.

Speaker 3 (38:47):
The key is you made all this beautiful fruit. And
in a lot of times in the winery, the less
technocrat winemakers will be like simple as possible, don't screw
it up. Like with white wine takes Savino blanc for example.
You know these islands, these zealands, no blong. The grapes
come in cold. They harvest them at night or they'll
keep them cold boxes. And then those grapes go what
they call direct depress. So you got the pressor you

(39:09):
got the crusher. December of the presser, it'll de stem
into the press, the juice comes out, the juice goes
into stainless steel.

Speaker 2 (39:16):
That's it. That's your wine making done.

Speaker 1 (39:19):
And by the way, they make some nice ones.

Speaker 2 (39:21):
They do, and it gets back to them.

Speaker 3 (39:24):
Yeah, it gets back to the character and quality of
the grapes. When you're making naked wines like that, you
have to grow really good fruit.

Speaker 2 (39:29):
They can't hide, no, no.

Speaker 1 (39:31):
They can't. So just basically for the people who may
not be and some of us who are not as
sophisticated as you are with one, let's just talk about
fermentation basics. What does it mean, How does it work?

Speaker 3 (39:45):
Well, basically, you're taking sugar converting into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

Speaker 2 (39:49):
That's it. So fermentation it starts.

Speaker 3 (39:53):
It starts on a cellular little like it started the
cellulartle level within the grapes. And by the way, I'm
not a wine maker, so don't don't hold me too much.
I didn't go to UC Davis, but with my knowledge,
you know that fermentation starts at at interracellular the level
and and with yeast right, you have to add yeast
and or there's native yeast already in the vineyard or
the winery.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
Right.

Speaker 3 (40:14):
So sometimes what the what a winery will do is
they'll start what they call a pied the couve, which
is a small fermentation on the side, so the yeast
get kickstarted. And then what they'll do is they'll toss
that native yeast piad the cove into the different bats
and then the grapes will grab onto that yeast and
they'll start the process.

Speaker 1 (40:32):
And the thing they literally sprinkle it in or pour
it into the put in and then you put the yeast.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
Yep, yep okay.

Speaker 3 (40:40):
And but sometimes it does ororganically if you have great
native yeast in your in your winery. Uh, sometimes that
process will start just on its own. They'll kickstart once
you do the squishing and everything. The grapes go oh
look at here, right, and they'll start they'll grab the
yeast that are on the skins that are in the
winery that are out of the.

Speaker 2 (40:57):
Air and begin the fermentation process. Right. So you need
a good temperature for fermentation.

Speaker 3 (41:03):
It has be warm but not too hot, right, because
the yeast has to work in an environment that makes
them feel good about themselves. And you have that, you
know preliminary that that fermentation can be happened very quickly
or it can take a while, depending on the grapes,
depending on the winery, depend upon the quality of the yeast.
You know, a lot of native yeast does its own
thing at its own time. But you can buy cultured yeast.

(41:24):
You say, I want my fermentation done in seven days,
and the yeast there's yeast tailored for flavor, for fermentation time,
for fermentation temperature. There's a whole group of cultured yeasts
that you can buy on the market. The winemakers use
to facilitate their needs with regards to what they need
and the winery for the fermentation. Other winemakers will go
strictly native yeast front soup the nuts. It's a little trickier, right,

(41:48):
because they're a little fussier the native yeasts. Other wineries
will start with a native YaST fermentation, then halfway through
the process introduce cultured yeast to finish it off the
proper way to make sure there are no surprises during
the fermentation process.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
So then they leave it in the in their initial
tank right for about how long until they put it
in because generally speaking, is it correct that it doesn't
age in those tanks right, another container before it gets bottled?

Speaker 2 (42:15):
Is that correct for the most part.

Speaker 3 (42:18):
Yeah, But sometimes they'll do a transfer, you know what
I mean. Like, once the fermentation is done, they'll it's
called racking, where they pull the juice off the leaves
and all the leftover stuff in the barrel or tank
and put it into another tank and then that wine
will sit there and just age quietly and cold, cold
tanks until it's ready for bottling.

Speaker 2 (42:35):
Right.

Speaker 3 (42:36):
Other times they'll the fermentation will be maybe two thirds done,
and then they'll transfer the juice. They'll do they'll transfer
the juice to barrel and let the fermentation finish in barrel.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
Right, that's tricky.

Speaker 3 (42:48):
Some guys will do that and they'll be half and
half or they'll be they'll let they'll do the full
fermentation of tank and then transfer the fermented juice into
barrel for aging. So it's really open to the interpretation
of the winemaker, the grape variety, all of that comes
into play. There's no right answer. And the fermentation can
take a few days, the fermentation can take a few months.

Speaker 1 (43:10):
And that's all based on the type of grape or
the region or whatever. You already know that when you're
producing your fruit, correct.

Speaker 3 (43:18):
Yeah, yeah, it's the grape variety, it's the fermentation temperature,
it's the it's the alcohol level in the wine. If
a wine has really the grapes are full of sugar.
If you're using native yeast, once in a while, the
native yeast will gram onto most of the sugar and
ferment it.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
But sometimes those.

Speaker 3 (43:36):
Native yeasts will have a h they'll get too full,
you know what I mean, Like, imagine just eating donuts
all day, every day.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
That's what the yeast is doing.

Speaker 3 (43:44):
It's just eating donuts, eating donuts, and yeast they love donuts, right,
I'm not on Homer Simpson, but at some point you'll
eat so many donuts that you literally die. And that's
what yeast do.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
They die.

Speaker 3 (43:56):
They eat eat, they eat sugar, eat sugar converted the
carbon dioxide alcohol, and then at some point they give
up the ghost They're like, I'm out right, some of
the native yeast might give out before all the sugar
and your grapes is fully fermented. Because what's a dry wine.
A dry wine is when all the sugar and the
grapes has been fermented to dryness, all the sugar disappears,

(44:18):
it's all been converted into alcohol and co two. So
sometimes those native easts will be like, oh, I'm done
and there's like two percent left. So you kind of
have to coax them, maybe heat up the barrels, maybe
introduce a culture yeast right at the end the ferment
that lasts two percent.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
You know, yeah, it's it's it's all out there.

Speaker 3 (44:35):
But with cultured yeast, industrial yeast and culture yeast, the
vendor knows what they're getting, so a lot of them
will use that because they want they don't want any surprises.

Speaker 1 (44:44):
And so when do you know when it's time to
put it in the barrel. That's all part of the process.
The winemaker knows.

Speaker 2 (44:51):
And yeah, that's all in the winemaker.

Speaker 3 (44:54):
The winemaker determines, looks at it goes, Okay, it's time boom,
it goes in the barrel at ale agent barrel. When
it's in barrel, there's not too much to be done.
Some of it evaporates, you know, the angel share. So
you have to top the barrels so you have extra
wine on the side and tank. They go over and
you top the barrels every I don't know, a couple
of weeks or whatever, and you're going to sulfur. Maybe
some people don't use sulfur, which is bad, and some

(45:16):
people use a little bit of sulfur.

Speaker 2 (45:17):
But you know, you might sulfur it.

Speaker 3 (45:20):
You might rack the wine, transferring it from barrel to
barrel off of all that leaves and Schmuntz. The more
racking you do, the less clarification you have to do
with bottling, you know.

Speaker 2 (45:27):
That kind of deal.

Speaker 3 (45:28):
So, but that's all in the hands of the wine maker.
That's all handled by them at that juncture.

Speaker 1 (45:33):
And I know there is I could say as a
general rule, how long does wine stain in the barrels?
But I don't think there is a general rule. So
how is that determined? And how are those variations? What
makes one different than the other.

Speaker 3 (45:48):
I would say finer wines spend a little more time
developing a barrel. There's less expensive wines that are in
barrel for maybe three months, four months, you know, the
Spanish do that very well. A level of aging that's
just like four months in barrel and then they'll take
it out and bottle it up and we'll go into
the market. A lot of producers that usually do a

(46:08):
year around a year. It could be ten months, could
be fourteen months, could be fifteen months. Some producers out
of need won't do more than a year because they
don't have the space and the next harvest is coming in,
so everything has to be bottled prior to the next harvest.
So the general rule has always been about a year, right,
because traditionally these guys would have to get this out
of the way and get.

Speaker 2 (46:28):
The next batch in. Right.

Speaker 3 (46:30):
Some of the guys with more space have the luxury
of aging their wine longer in barrel, so they can
go fifteen months, sixteen months. Sometimes you don't want to
go too long because some wines will have a tendency
to maybe dry out in barrel. When I say dry out,
they become a bit more tannic of drying on the palette.
They essentially they feel like they're dried out. It's liquid,
so it doesn't dry out technically, but they feel drier
and more dried out in the palate when you taste them.

Speaker 1 (46:51):
So let's talk about the harvest season now. Now we're
all excited. We all know this a little bit about
this process, a little more than I think we didn't
normally started. So are there any special wines that are
better to drink in harvest season? Because does it really matter, Kyle,
because those have already been.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
Produced, right right?

Speaker 1 (47:09):
I would you drink one or the other drink harvest season?
That seems a little curious.

Speaker 2 (47:13):
I mean, there is the new Vaux tradition, right.

Speaker 3 (47:16):
You know, in the seventies and the eighties into the nineties,
Bogelet neu vaux was a big deal. You know, George
to Book created the Bojelet Neuvaux, the first new wine
of the season, released the third Thursday of November every year,
and that trend's kind of.

Speaker 2 (47:30):
Fallen by the wayside.

Speaker 3 (47:31):
But some people will make very young wines, you know,
that will hit the market before the end of the year.
It's actually really tricky. You got to harvest the fruit,
you have to ferment it. It has to be ready, stable, clean,
ready to go and in stores literally you know, within
sixty days of picking.

Speaker 2 (47:47):
That can be tricky.

Speaker 3 (47:48):
You know, that's fast, that's not easy. You know a
lot of things have to go the right way. That
wine is kind of manipulated and steered, so getting quality
wine in that process is not going to happen. It'll
be fun and great be and you put a chill
on it by happy harvest. But most if you're drinking
anything of quality, you're not going to see that wine

(48:09):
until at the earliest spring of the following season.

Speaker 1 (48:12):
So where it seems in listening to you, then that
wine really when you think of wine aging, really is
it correct? Then that the aging and how the wine
gets better with time, so to speak, is when it's
in the bottle.

Speaker 3 (48:26):
Mostly in the bottle, it doesn't prove in barrel, right,
So the winemaker has to sit there and taste it
all the time and figure out, all right, let's go time.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
This feels right, you know.

Speaker 3 (48:37):
So maybe it's twelve months in barrel, maybe it's fourteen
months in barrel. Maybe it's it's it's up to the
winemaker to determine that and figure that out. Some wines
might need more time, some wines might need less, based
on how they're showing and how they're manifesting in barrel.
And I think some wines will get to a happy
place in barrel where the winemaker will taste them go yes.
And then other times the winemaker will take the wine

(48:58):
out of barrel maybe at twelve once into the process
and combine the wines, blend them, make the blend for
the for the wine they're going to sell, and then
put that maybe into a stainless steel tank or a
big wooden vat and let the wine harmonize and marry
and develop flavor and kind of come together there.

Speaker 2 (49:15):
Before they bottle it. That's also becoming more common.

Speaker 1 (49:19):
And isn't it true that that at the at the
vineyards that people have parties, like they celebrate their harvest
season when they're finished, when everything's in the in the
tank so to speak. Is that it or when it's
in the barrel. When it's in the tank, then everybody
has a celebration. They kind of have a party.

Speaker 3 (49:34):
Yeah, once you get everything in barrel, you're pretty much done.
So a lot of people have their harvest parties when
everything's in baryl or at the very least all the
grapes are in and in tank fermenting prior to going
into barrel.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
So yeah, that's when you know, you have the harvest
inners and.

Speaker 3 (49:49):
Everyone's hanging out and having a good time and everything's
in and you.

Speaker 2 (49:54):
Know, the harvest inner is always scheduled every year.

Speaker 3 (49:55):
But sometimes mother Nature might say, oh, they're still a
little bit left to go get and they'll still.

Speaker 2 (49:59):
Pick fruit after the harvest dinner.

Speaker 3 (50:02):
But these are know, these big harvest parties they tend
to happen because during harvest it's it's mayhem, you know
what I mean, It's just craziness.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
So they really can't have a lot of parties while it's.

Speaker 3 (50:11):
All coming down, but they do celebrate after I've been
to some really good harvest parties.

Speaker 1 (50:16):
They I'll bet you I'll bet you have, I'll bet
you have. We'll save those for another discussion we have
just a few minutes, but they do want to talk
about the dog days of summer. We had a lot
planned for that, we didn't quite make it. So the
dog days of summer tell us what that is. We
see that some vineyards, some wineries like Nickel and Nichol
I noticed as a separate dog Days of Summer party.

(50:36):
Even some of them have celebrations. So what's the big
thing about the dog days in summer? And what wine
should we be drinking right now?

Speaker 3 (50:43):
Well, summer's that quiet time. It's quiet, it's hot, it's
not a lot going on in the vineyards. Like I said,
August is a pretty chill time. So this is the
time when a lot of cats. This is when you're
drinking your white wine. You're sitting outside, you're on the veranda.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
You know.

Speaker 2 (50:57):
The winemakers do it too. They drink a lot, a
lot of white wine. Uh.

Speaker 3 (51:02):
So we're drinking samno blanc sen there, Alberino, dry reeseling
these wines that you serve super cold, you know what
I mean? And uh, and just have that moment. And
winemakers love those wines as well. And then, uh, you know,
if you're inside, you got the air conditioner on, whatever. Yeah,
I think you can pull out your Cabernet or your
pin no noir once you're you know, inside, you got

(51:23):
dinner in front of you. But you know, the dog
days of the summer, we usually drink I know, I
drink substantially more white wine during this time of year.
It's just natural, feels good, it feels right, Yes, it.

Speaker 1 (51:33):
Does, it does. So what are some of the white
wines we should be finding at wine Exchange?

Speaker 3 (51:40):
Well, a lot of, I said, A lot of the
popular ones right now. For example, the grape variety Alberino,
which is a Spanish grape variety, but it's really catching
on in America now and the top Spanish Alberinos are
really terrific, beautiful wines. They're they're bright, they're floral, they're
a little minerally, they're a little salty.

Speaker 2 (51:59):
They have flavor, but they're really crisp and bright. And
you know, I don't.

Speaker 3 (52:05):
Want to endorse it, but you can drink a lot
of it. It's very dangerous and easy to drink.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
We'll set them aside. I'll be there in a few hours.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
You got it. We'll put one of the icebox for you.

Speaker 1 (52:17):
Pick some up for dinner tonight. Absolutely. So what other
tip should we have before we start the harvest season?
You have about thirty seconds.

Speaker 2 (52:26):
One recommendation I would say is always call.

Speaker 3 (52:29):
If you're going to go visit wine country during harvest,
call the winery first. Some of these guys may be
so busy they want to have the opportunity to greet
you properly, especially if they're real hands on, because this
is their go time. It's the most important time of
year for them. It's make or break. So I say
one of the things, as a.

Speaker 2 (52:44):
General rule, everybody, don't harvest, but respect the wineries.

Speaker 3 (52:48):
Call them and say, hey, is it cool to be
there during harvest and they're like, yeah, come on in.

Speaker 2 (52:51):
Then go for it and enjoy the moment.

Speaker 3 (52:53):
Other ones might be like, bro, we're a little busy
right now, and then be like, okay, we'll see in
a couple weeks.

Speaker 1 (52:58):
A little busy, a little busy. Kyle Meyer, it is
always a pleasure to have you back our sponsor with
Wine Exchange. We appreciate you so much, but to hear
the stories and the details that make wine so much
more interesting than just what's in the glass, although that
what's in the glass is pretty good too. And to
our listeners, I hope you've enjoyed this peaks into the

(53:18):
harvest season of wines and dog days of summer. So
many of us don't really know what happens during harvest season.
We kind of have an idea, but not nearly to
what Kyle has shares with us. So we'll be back
next week for another great guests and another reason to
fall in love with so Cal all over again. In
the meantime, you can catch this episode on YouTube. We're
going to leave the information below also for Wine Exchange.

(53:40):
How you can reach them and their link is also
on our page with the radio station with our wine lovers,
be sure to visit Wine Exchange for online specials. Every
day they have online specials and Kyle will be there
and he'll say, and you really should have this, and
so I always say, Okay, we will, and I've done
that too many times. So thank you so much for

(54:00):
our listeners, are viewers for spending part of your time
with us as also with Kyle. Until next time, savor
every moment, save her a little bit of wine, one
sip out a time, and please tell us who you
are who you would like to have featured on our show. Also,
we will see you next Friday at four o'clock. Thank
you for joining us at SoCal with Val, and thank

(54:21):
you Kyle.

Speaker 2 (54:22):
Thanks