August 20, 2025 • 61 mins
Occasio Winery, founded in 2008 by John Kinney, is a boutique winery in Livermore Valley, California, a historic wine region with roots dating back to the 19th century. Named after the Latin word for “opportunity,” Occasio was born from a passion to revive Livermore’s winemaking legacy while showcasing its unique terroir. Starting with small-lot productions, the winery quickly gained recognition for crafting expressive, terroir-driven wines that honor heritage varietals and the region’s gravelly soils and microclimate. Today, Occasio remains a family-run operation, dedicated to quality and sustainability, with a tasting room at 2245B S Vasco Rd, Livermore, welcoming visitors to experience its story firsthand. Occasio specializes in small-lot wines, focusing on Rhone (Mourvèdre, Grenache, Syrah, and Petite Sirah), Bordeaux (Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Sauvignon Blanc), and Burgundy (Pinot Noir and Chardonnay) varietals. Its winemaking emphasizes minimal intervention to let Livermore’s terroir shine, blending traditional techniques with modern precision. For example, the Cabernet Sauvignon showcases intense black fruit and structured tannins, reflecting Livermore’s Bordeaux-like conditions, while Grenache provides vibrant, fruit-forward excitement, broadening the portfolio’s appeal. Occasio’s commitment to heritage grapes sets it apart in a region often dominated by Cabernet, while the sustainable vineyard practices of its growers ensure long-term environmental stewardship. Occasio is exploring ways to deepen its connection to Livermore Valley’s heritage while embracing innovation. One such innovation was a return to crafting aromatized wines like vermouth. Plans include expanding small-lot experiments with lesser-known varietals, especially aromatic white wines, highlight the region’s diversity. The winery aims to grow its tasting room experiences, offering more events like wine-and-food pairings and educational classes to engage visitors.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Wine Soundtrack USA. Listen to the passion with
which producers narrate their winery and their world team. Thirty
answers discover their stories, personalities, and passions.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hello, friends and listeners of Wine Soundtrack. This is Alison
Levine and today I am in the in the Livermore Valley,
and I am with John Kinney, who is the managing member,
or in better words, the owner of Ocasio Winery. John,
Welcome to Wine Soundtrack. Tell us a little bit about Okasio.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Oh. So, Acasio is named actually after the Roman goddess
of opportunity, oh, because it does mean opportunity in Latin.
And it's a case where about fifteen oh, since two
thousand and eight, two thousand and eight, I had the
(00:52):
opportunity to retire and form start something new, and I
thought this would be kind of a fun time to
start a wine.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I've heard that story before. I went into retirement, started
a winery and came out of retirement, right.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
But so, the goddess herself of opportunity is a goddess
that comes in an instant in time, and the Romans
depicted her as having wings on her feet, but she
also had knives and that's because opportunity, when you grab
it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be a gentle ride.
(01:29):
You could get cut up from that. But if you
don't take the opportunity, she was gone forever, and in
her wake would come the Goddess of remorse. And the
goddess of remorse was the remorse not for having taken opportunity,
but for not having take an opportunity.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
Because when you experience something, when you do.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Something, when you take that opportunity, the outcoming be terrible,
but it's a learning experience.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
It could be a great opportunity too.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
They make good stories if they fail or if they
succeed like that, But it's terrible to live your life
always saying what if.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Well, and so you said why not? And you started
a winery in two thousand and eight, And what does
that mean starting a winery? Do you own vineyards? Do
you purchase fruit?
Speaker 3 (02:21):
So that's another thing that I grew up on a farm,
and we farm dry seed for dry beans, pittow bean seed.
And I convinced myself at the age of eighteen that
I never wanted to farm again. So where I thought, well,
the fun would be was in the actual making of
the wine that somebody else work in the field and
(02:43):
grow the grapes. It's at least I can drink the
product and have fun making it, and I didn't have
to worry about that. You know, all the things that
are involved in farming. You're essentially housebound for the growing season,
and you have the weather to worry about. Weather can
wipe your crop out and disease and plus farming has
(03:07):
become like a science. If you listen to agricultural radio
that I grew up with and I still listened to
out of habit, they're talking about things that require a
huge amount of schooling and learning to figure out way
beyond my desire to get into farming. So I decided
(03:30):
I would take the last year and go back to
Davis for a certificate program. It's like a one or
two year program on wine making. And I started making
wine commercially at another winery where we shared facility and
we shared labor and things like that. And then in
(03:53):
the essentially in the depths of the economic crashed to
start bread a lot of vacant buildings, urban buildings came out,
so we were the first one to occupy this space.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Oh and We're in a place called Vasco Row, So
it's kind of a row of tasting rooms in Livermore
where you can kind of do one stop shopping of
wine tasting.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Right, it used to just be us and tile and
granite store, metal fabricator, a few other things like that.
We were isolated out here, but the price was right.
In two thousand and nine, we took over and I
think we opened to the public in August of two
thousand and nine after building the place out.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
And so you're buying fruit, are you buying only Livermore
fruit or do you buy from other regions as well?
Speaker 4 (04:44):
So at first it's always funny how you change.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Right, at first we specialized only made a big deal
about only specializing a little more fruit. And then another
opportunity heroes and it was called fires and COVID, two
big things. Now, you know, you could look at the
fact that everybody was shut down, and Alameda County was
(05:08):
the most, the harshest my voice raised on them, absolutely
harshest of any place in the nation. They had something
called they published a Misery Index that was published by
the US government. And it's not called the Misery Index.
I called it the Misery index. But as far as
(05:28):
closures and restrictions, Alameda County in California was absolutely we
were closed.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
And so that's an.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Opportunity to revisit your business model. And we had a
lot of wineries that had been buying fruit from really
well established vineyards outside the area.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
They weren't buying fruit.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Their wholetel market had collapsed, and so we had an
opportunity to get into one place up in Eminor County,
Shakerie Ranch, that's Ann Kramer's property, and it had been
very hard to get any food from and suddenly we
found ourselves coming with Movedra, Grenache Sarrah in that year.
(06:15):
So of course we made a Movedra a Grenache a
sah on a GSM line, so we could get four
wines out of that. That's great, And that's actually why
one of the wines I chose today was Movedra because
it was our first foray into And you've done some
kind of a blog about.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yes I am.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
I'm a fan of Movedra and it goes against our
grain at the time to take a wine outside of
the Roe Valley. It also goes against my grain to
sell a wine that you can't spell most people, and
I can't pronounce it, and that's why the gertz Semana
will never probably come out of our wine.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
But you can pronounce it, you just might not be
able to spell it. And then from this area, what
are the grapes that you're working with. I'm gonna guess Cabernet, sauvignon,
cabernet fron.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
Yes, so.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
People don't maybe you don't always realize the history of
this area was really established as a Bordeaux growing region.
It was part of Charles Wetmore was with Hill Guard
at Berkeley, which used to be the Agricultural College, and
they were tasked in California with trying to find out
(07:34):
which varieties of wine grew better in different locations, and
Littlemore Valley became one of the experimental stations.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
There's a there's still.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Finding remnants of these long lost places that the UC
had put together. And we were focused primarily on the
Bordeaux varieties because they felt we did well here with that.
But we always have a few outliers. Bullet would plant
other things. So when the weddies actually took charge, So
(08:06):
when the weddies started here back in the eighteen eighty
two or eighty three, there were two other partners, and
one of the partners died, and then the Weddies bought
the other partner out and they replaced grapes like to
not I didn't know tonight ever grew here, but they
replaced all of those and they started planting other varietals.
So there's always been some renegade growers. Cacannon did raquatcatelli
(08:33):
over the years. That was part of a desire for
detente with the Soviet Union at the time. We actually
one of our biggest grape varieties was French combard, which
you don't see any of it here, Gray Reasoning, which
is actually called something else now.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Well, unfortunately, so many of those grapes have disappeared. For you,
do you look for those grapes or do you like
to stay with the more traditional We kind of.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Look around out for the grape. So one of our
favorite grapes here was Malvasia bianca. There's not much grown
coastally in the state of California or anywhere else in California.
It's really an Italian grape, and we like to make
that in a style that's slightly off dry.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
So we harve us.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
It's got brilliant acidity and you could ferment it to
dry us. But there's something that just needs some balance.
And so that's one of our favorite fragrant grapes. And
some will do that every now and then.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
And what's your total case production?
Speaker 3 (09:31):
So we cycle right now, we're in a low case
production ode, so like eight hundred cases and sometimes will
be twelve hundred cases.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
I live in fear of inventory.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
It's a fair thing.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
I don't want people coming into the wine into the
tasting room and seeing four vintages of the same wine
fair enough?
Speaker 2 (09:53):
And are you one hundred percent direct to consumer? Just
out of the tasting room and online?
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Pretty much, because we don't do a lot a hostline
because there's me, my son the wine maker, tasting our people.
And to sell it in a hostel environment for us,
we would have to schlep it around. And I'm over
seventy and I just don't see the need for being that.
Plus who wants to buy wine from a seventy year
(10:18):
old salesman?
Speaker 4 (10:19):
You know, why not?
Speaker 2 (10:20):
You're just going to come in here, younger.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
People out there, because they're too busy here.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Right, come into the taste screen by wine from a
seventy year old salesman the winery owner.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
But I it appeals to the one you haven't set
as a life sile.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Well, I'm curious as a seventy something year old winery
owner when you think back, what is your very first
memory relevant to wine? How old were you that you
first kind of discovered that wine existed.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
Oh, so I grew up.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
I was part of the you know, the baby boom generation,
and so these are parents had just come back from
the Second World War and started families.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
And to be honest with you, in Idaho, that was.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
You know, I would say Canadian club, you know, vodka, whiskey,
soda and cigarettes, sail wine. Well, people don't realize many
people don't realize that actually the area of northern Nevada,
southern Idaho is one of the highest population of Basques
(11:30):
really in the world. I think there are more Basques
living in northern Nevada through Gooding, Idaho into Boise than
there are in San Sebastian and all those places in northern.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
Spain and southern France.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
So the Basque community, and I spent a lot of
time with the Basque community, and no I don't speak
escebec or whatever.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
I can't pronounce it.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
But we would drink more wine under age, probably and
we didn't care what it tasted like. Probably is terrible,
but we would actually drink it out of the original
Bota bags.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
Wow. And so we could drive at fourteen. This is
sounding dangerous. And so we were.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Sixty miles south of Sun Valley, Idaho, a ski resort.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
We would sneak up.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
There on Saturday mornings with our boat bags filled and.
Speaker 4 (12:25):
Some probably you know.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Store bought slammy and some really marginal bread, maybe even
morender bread, and we would go up to ski with
those Boata bags.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
Oh my god, terrible thought. I couldn't that.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
It was so long ago. It's just a fun memory.
You're here to tell the story. So clearly nothing happened
that was bad. But I'm curious as you got older
and started drinking wine that's a little more memorable, more specifically,
is there a particular wine it? Actually there is an
aha moment for you.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
So one of my cousins, he was also from a farm, right,
My aunt and uncle had a farm, and he decided
early on he wanted to be a pe teacher, and
he went down and he was a coach in Napa
and a.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
High school coach in Napa, and he would come up.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Though every fall to help family with the harvest, and
he brought up a wine one time. Now, remember this
is a time when wine's in Twin Falls were Boons.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Farm in Annie.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
Green Springs, and I'm not convinced that those are really
great products. And there was also a thunderbird, yes, and
logan David twenty twenty.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
It's terrible stuff.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
And this is a bottle that was actually looked like
a wine bottle and it had a picture on it
of a property at Chateau.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
Let's say, and it was Inglenook.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
So in nineteen sixty Inglenook was probably my first experience
with the wine. And it wasn't from drinking it, it
was looking at the label.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
But hey, you know it stands out as a memory
for that.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Yeah, So I was and then I went to undergraduate
work in Wala Wala Equipment College, which was mainly known
for as sweet peas in the state prison.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
So big Police.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Country was mainly wheat and so we would drink twenty
five cent pictures of beer. And that was in fact
one time in nineteen seventy four. This dates me coldest
winter well on record, we thought so. And in those
(14:47):
days you'd walk downtown to get something to eat, and
the bank, the local banker Boyer Bank was called, had
an outdoor temperature indicator. The high for the day was
minus six teen degrees And at that moment my friend
turned to me and says, do you think we ought
to be able to grow grapes here for wine? And
(15:08):
I'm thinking to myself, in no way. So that was
the first of many predictions that I had that were wrong.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Well, yes, because now maybe you can. But so if
we were to come to your home today, what kind
of wines would do would we find in your home?
Is a lot of the wines? Is it Ocasio wines?
Is it other livermore wines? Are there particular grapes or
regions that you or anything that you everything that you drink?
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Okay, So now it's a little bit odd. At our
house we have mainly other people's wines, okay, because to
be honest with you, you smell it in the back
of the of the winery every single day, and it's
kind of nice to try other things. So, like we
make a delightful rose. Would you like them to try it?
Speaker 2 (15:56):
I can try the rose.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
The we actually make two kinds. One is this kind
and the other one is in barrel. Still it's a
barreled one. But I really like table rosees if I'm
going to try to drink Southern France, and because they're different.
And I have a new theory because I went to
Chapanese one and we had their nicheis salad and I
(16:21):
had the top of wine with it. I thought, this
is the perfect pairing. It tastes really good. If you
go to France, it was awful pairing, and our wine
tasted better.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Therein yours is a rose of what great gasha.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
I know that if I went to France, the reverse
would be true. And I begin to think that maybe
it's because our microbiomes adjust locally to the what we're
going to call it the flora and fauna of your
mouth and what crows on the food, and the chefs
actually adapt to that too, So we make a wine
(16:56):
for our microbiome to match our food with its set
of bacteria. And oh god, so I'm thinking it's all
part of that. And that's why when you go to
Europe and you taste wine and food, it's like a revelation.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Well, you're also on vacation, really happy.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Yeah, I think it's more than that. But you can't
expect that a grenache from their own is going to
taste be as good a pairing as a grenache from
the United States that you're eating California produce.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Well, you're jumping ahead to my food and wine pairing question,
but no, no, no, I mean because this is really interesting.
So I want to pick up on that in a
second more because maybe you didn't jump ahead, you just
started something that made me want to ask a question later.
But I do want to ask first. You were talking
about the wines that you have at home, and you
like to drink other things. Is there anything you drink
recently that you open that drank really well?
Speaker 4 (17:51):
Yes, I like Scarecrow.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Oh and my winemaker went to the same school that Oh,
Chronos comes from, you know, the Chronos vineyard that's come on.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
Her name is Casey because I don't really know her,
but he knows it really well.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
So I've got a ton of the Chronos cabernets from
Napa Valley. I actually think those are more of my
taste they're more structured. So if you taste of our wines,
you're gonna find mainly there's a they're structured. So the
acid is a key component of the wine.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
We don't like flavvy wines. Who does well? I used
to I was seventeen and drinking.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Yes, well, we all evolve our ballettes and grow up.
So do you think, before we get into more detail
about wine, do you think there's a such thing as
a perfect variety?
Speaker 4 (18:56):
No?
Speaker 2 (18:57):
No, And in terms of wines and varieties as a
wine drinker, quick question, red white or rose?
Speaker 4 (19:10):
Okay, So.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
I go through things like in a cyclic manner. So
one year may be big bold reds, another year maybe rosees.
But right now I'm starting to swing towards aromatic whites.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Okay, still are sparkling.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Either, but I tend to actually go to these little,
slightly slightly effervescent off dry wines. They're not really a
sparkling wine. They wouldn't be considered a sparkling wine by
the tax bracket.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Right, They're just sort of effervescent but.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
Have a little over that the sprints sprits.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
So speaking of that, so you're liking a little off
dry let's go back to what you were talking about
with food and wine and go a little more into
I'm curious how you approach food and wine pairing. Do
you follow rules? Do you think there are rules to follow,
or things that you look for. I mean, obviously you
picked a tavel rose, which is a little more structured
boulder rose style to go with the niswat didn't quite work,
(20:09):
but I know where your mind was going with that.
I'm curious do you follow the rules of excuse me,
white wine and fish and red wine and meat, or
do you look for something else?
Speaker 4 (20:20):
The number one driving thing to me is acid and sweetness.
I guess that's two.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
You don't want to wine that is, so if your
food needs a little lemon juice on it, I'd like
something that passes the squeeze of lemon tests, so that
would be a more acidic wine.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
Usually those are the white wines. Okay.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
I think if you're looking at also sweetness, you don't
want a wine. That's why nothing pairs with wedding cakesh
not really well unless you get the wedding kuve iron horse.
You don't really want to wine that's really dry and
(21:03):
parching against something that's sweet. Texture and mouthfeel can also
be important. You know, so fine drained tanin this can
actually be a help because they can bind the fattiness
on the on the on the tongue and kind of
they work harmon harmoniously kind of.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
So so you're looking far more for texture and and
flavor than you are, you know, red white kind of rules.
It's it's all about flavor.
Speaker 4 (21:33):
And to be honest with you, usually this is going
to sound true.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Whoever picks the wine to pick the wine, and I'll
drink anything with it.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
It doesn't you know, we can't.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
We're not at an age now where we can go
through three or four bottles at a dinner. So we
pick it wine and it's going to surface all four courses.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
And has to make it from the oysters to the steak, right.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
And we also like cocktails mm hmm, so it's uh,
it's kind of like we'll do a cocktail and then
maybe a bottle of wine.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
I really like the half bottles. Yes, they're harder to
come by here than in Europe. You can get.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yes, well, that's like I like buy the glass because
it allows me to have two or three wines instead
of three bottles Okay.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
So I have a rule of thumb that at an
airport when you're waiting for a plane, by a beer
or a cocktail because the wine could have been sitting
out for weeks. Right, And I have a real thing
about ACETL dyde. I don't like inappropriately oxidized wines. I'm
(22:43):
oversensitive to it.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
So with all of this, you have your opinion about wines.
You know what you like, and you're a small producer,
so I'm curious what your opinion is on wine critics
and scores. I mean, you know what you like, so
you're going after it. But how does does it work
for other people? And how does it work for a
brand like yours?
Speaker 4 (23:02):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (23:03):
So when I get a good score, I think this
is a great thing. And when we get a marginal score,
which we don't get marginal scores, but let's say you
guess something said in eighty nine or something, then of
course the reviewer doesn't know what they're talking about. When
we first started out, we did the traditional circuit. We
(23:25):
had enter competitions, try to get a gold medal. We
throw our wines into like one enthusiast something like that,
try to get a score. We don't send anything into
the competitions anymore, which is unfortunate in some ways because
(23:45):
that means we can't compete in our local on court
because we don't do that. And when we do release
a line, we want to release. Our wines are made
with the acids and structures in mind. So like our
new release Dosmesis is in twenty twenty one wine, so
it's already four years old, and I think it's still
(24:07):
too young. And that's when we release it. We couldn't
enter it in the uncourt competition anyway because it would.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
Be too old for the unport competition. So we don't
do any of that.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
You know it, Maybe you get a week's worth of
flash from it, but to be honest with you, we don't.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
So for someone who hasn't had the pleasure to come
here to a Casio wines yet, they have not, it's
your wines yet, what do you think they're missing out on?
Speaker 4 (24:38):
Wow?
Speaker 3 (24:38):
What are they missing out on? Yeah, they're missing out
on Dave's palette.
Speaker 5 (24:43):
Actually, David Winemaker, he impresses me. Actually I shouldn't say that.
If he listens to this, this is not a good thing,
because I want to pay raise But what we try
to do with our wines is tell a story. Okay,
(25:04):
And I don't do a very great job on the internet,
on the web, on the essentially our web page, of
necessarily updating it frequently enough to tell all the stories.
But every wine tells a story of our heritage in
our valleys. So you asked actually about music and wine.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
Yes, for the game.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
The one thing you're warned about is the game we
play at the end, just to put you at ease
in here.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
But like those mass it got its name actually from
the one of the early vineyards in wineries. So when
Charles Wetmore started as Christa Blanco winery, he'd gotten some
fame already by eighteen eighties, and he was also a
marketing guy. And a neighbor came in. They wanted to
(25:54):
plant some grapes, and what Moore says, Well, you've planted
Cabernet sauvignon and it's going to be the You know,
if you use this vineyard and plantri Cavanty svignon and
make the wine from it, you will have probably the
best Caverney sevignon in the United States, if not the world.
Now this is his time when he was labeling some
of his wines Chatar Chateau Margo. So if you couldn't
(26:18):
be better than the world, you.
Speaker 4 (26:20):
Just call it right something.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
You know, I've heard of Chateau Margo must because Chateau Kim,
you know that's great.
Speaker 4 (26:29):
Well, what he meant was in the style of right.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
But Dos Mass was named after two little maces that
are where del valleys now. It's now been covered by
the dam of the reservoir, But that was actually a
Cavernet vineyard and we named Dos Maces. Doesn't come from
that vineyards. It's gone now, But Dos Mass is one
of our wines that actually has has to be Cabanet Sognon.
(26:54):
It can come from a blend of different vineyards in
the valley, but it has to be a little more.
It has to be Cavanty's and it honors this old name, right,
got it?
Speaker 2 (27:03):
So you know, I'm curious if space aliens were to,
you know, land out front and come knocking on the
door of all your wines that you produce, which of
your wines would you want to welcome them to a
Casio winery with.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
If the space aliens came and presented themselves to me,
I'd hop over to sidewinder and grabbed myself a bottle
of whiskey and drink the whole bottle.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Well, so tell me anything to drink first, So tell
me what sidewinder is.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
That is so our logo is a pocket watch, which
represents coming the opportunity in a moment of time, and
everything in wine making is all about time timing.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
The interior of it. My youngest son, who was very
adamant about it. You can see it in this label.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
A pocket watch, thought that the goddess initially was a goddess, right,
it was kind of fierce looking.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
So he replaced the mechanism of the watch with all
of the elements on.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
There are wine making tools, so you can find them
in the winery. A little artistic judgment on some like
the wine thief, but it's all in there. And so
it was about the pocket watch, so we found it sidewinder.
Now sidewinder, the first thing that comes to a lot
of people's mind is either snake or a missile, right ah,
(28:26):
But sidewinder is a pocket watch, so we carry the
pocket watch theme. And the pocket watch has the sidewinder mechanism, has.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
The nod with the three yeah, okay.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
And it was a favorite of railway conductors because they
could use their thumb to open the what do you
call that, the lid of it, you know, to check
the time one handed very easily. It's worst well with
the opposable thumb. And so this became the mechanism of
the railway. And what people don't realize is in Livermore
(28:58):
Valley owes every thing of its early fame to the railway.
This was the Transcontinental Railway, and it ends up the
last burt was Niles Canyon. And we could put our
products on the on the railway and get them to Chicago,
get them to.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
New York, get them to Washington.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
They'd be well on their way by the time Napa
Valley could get thirs down. The ferry landed in Port Costa,
take the train, ferry back over and catch it in Martinez,
and then take the.
Speaker 4 (29:32):
Train so we could eat that.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
There's even a bigger advantage that nobody really seems to remember.
I went back and read all of the old papers. Right.
The big thing was ice. We brought in ice from
the Sierra Nevadas, and it was destined for to open
the city. We had the first brewery in this area
and windy and what more, these people took advantage of
(29:59):
ice where they could create the first temperature control fermentations
of white wines.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
And so just to come back to that when you
were talking about Sidewinder, Sidewinder is your distillery that you
have around the corner, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
And I came out of the fact that we, I
guess I have a fetish about this almost. I'd like
to know where everything in my product and everything.
Speaker 4 (30:28):
That I try to eat. And it's impossible, I am,
but where does.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
It come from?
Speaker 3 (30:33):
And so that it became a crisis with the port
wines because you have to fortify them with brandy.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
And so.
Speaker 4 (30:41):
It's like ten to twenty percent of the volume is
this brand. That's hardly a small amount.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
And so we would buy our brandy the first year
we bought it from Saint George Sperits. Well, that's got
to be a local brandy well for industrial reduction, which
is what we are. They get their wine from southern California.
Some place down in Fresno is a big distiller. I
don't know which one it is. They are, but it's
(31:10):
not local. It's not getting from local graves. It could
be very great brandy, but I just wanted so we
got a distiller license to do brandy rectification.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Because you can't find it locally, do it yourself.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
And we took a one dollar spirit and turned it
into a twenty dollars spirit. The advantage of that is
that we've made barrels of it and the agent barrels
and they get better every year. And Okay, that's not
really the bis. It's not a price advantage, but I
think we make great port wines and we use it
(31:45):
for our remooths. We did a vermooth and then the
state came out with a craft distiller license that allowed
you to do things other than brandy, and so we
had a ski still put into the winery and the
state of California had some issues with that, and so
(32:07):
we had to put a big fence around it so
that it was separate. It was totally separate. We had
this gate around it, and we had a strict plan
because we housed the stuff over our other distillery, the
sidewinder part of the distillery.
Speaker 4 (32:22):
We house all the barrels over there.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
We had to actually draw a map that showed our
group from taking it wheeling it from essentially back to
our winery to its final storage place. And then the
fire department got involved in that. We couldn't have a
gate that could trap people in a flammable area. So
(32:46):
after a few years of back and forth, this TT
being not the TDB but the ABC, this California decided
the gates were madatory. We could have virtual fence, which
was just you put it on paper.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
So you know that.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
But your distillery is like around the corner now.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
One of our stills is still in the winery. So
well they made dropa. We could actually say that we
we could take the must. One of the problems making
drapa so grap is made after you've spent everything.
Speaker 4 (33:17):
In the fermentation of the wine and you pressed it out,
you're left with justin grape skin.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
But there's still someone trained alcohol that's still left behind
and you pump that into your your still. One of
the big problems and making it nicely is it tends
to oxidize, So transportation is a problem, and so they
you know, they keep refining that. And we didn't have
a problem with transportation. We dumped the pressing right into
(33:47):
the still add water because otherwise it would skulled.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Wow, so you're like a full on distillery producing everything
on top of wine. That's it's amazing.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
We keep our tradition so all of our drain is
harvested sustainably locally, not locally lim like in the Yellow County.
Speaker 4 (34:09):
Up your second in the Delta area.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
Then we take that to Admiral Malting, which is in
Adamalmeat Island and it's the only floor malting facility on
the West Coast. Most people they use continuous malting facilities.
This is where they throw it out on a floor
and they germinate.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
It on the floor. They rake it by hand.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
It's uh and they open up these big bay doors
and that breeze comes in from the golden gate, and
I swear I can tell the microbiome differences between something
that is actually floor malted. And but you know, once
again we go back to this. We had to know
(34:52):
the whole chain. And one of the problems is the
corn because the corn is usually flight corn, it's not malted,
and so that's added into the mash, and then the
enzymes in the barley and the other malted grains will
essentially break the sugars down. And so we got whet
(35:13):
durst up and yellowk out. He makes a yellow dent
corn and the people that haven't over sided they would
malt the corn.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
So then we had a malted triple malt. Now it
has a little bit of rye, a little bit of corn,
a little wheat barley. We don't go.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
We did on that, and then we heard a year
ago that we'll had some this original red corn. It's
a Native American red corn, and so we malted.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
That as well. So now we have a yellow corn
and a red corn and those are going into the bourbons. Wow.
It's the same thing with the grapes. We define out
where they're from.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
So you have a story behind everything. You have lots
of different grapes because you explore, and now you've got
a whole distillery and you just keep adding on. So
I'd hate to ask what's next, but I'm curious.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
Okay, so what's next? We're actually going to have harvest
a reasoning not from here. They used to grow raasing here.
They called it Johannesburg reason Yeah, yeah, yeah, And there's
some vineyards here that actually I think they do still
good reasonings up there in Della Terra, which is up
in the Sinola Islands up there.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
Still in our Ava, we're going down to center of
Sea Highlands.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
And we.
Speaker 4 (36:37):
Are going to harvest on there. And what's excited about that?
Speaker 3 (36:40):
So my winemaker he interned in Navarro and then later
at pay but in Navarro they were doing reaslings and
diverse two years is cold weather grapes. And I'm really
interested in TDN, which is a compound that gives you
that petrol mode. And so yeah, are going to have
fun with That's an aromatic white that hopefully we'll have
(37:04):
a little bit of that petrol nose to it.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
It sounds sounds fun. So are there any sort of
rituals that you and your team, you and Dave or
you in your tasty room, you and your sons have
done that you do at the start of harvest to
kick off each year. I know distillation is year round,
so that's a little different.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
But at the old Palm Song wind Ring many many
decades ago, sparkling wine was they called it champagne, but
that was their thing with Chartonay and they would always
start off the year by the first harvest by toasting
with sparkling wine. And so I every year are the
(37:46):
first time that grapes come in. You know, they're harvested
at night, but sometimes they don't come in till like
six seven in the morning, and we will.
Speaker 4 (37:56):
Essentially have a champagne toast with that. That's kind of
a tradition. I play.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
Music, So the music depends on that. When we essentially
put the east into the line, the east have to
be happy and so like, if it's a tariga, we'll
play a little do Segovia, that's a guitar longs. Instead
(38:26):
with the rose, it's Lamaire, which is that's a song
that I actually paired with this rose, and that came
out in about nineteen forty five at the end of
the war as a story about somewhere beyond the sea.
And don't ask me to sing it in French, but
(38:47):
we know the Bobby Darren version in English. Yeah, A
lover waits for me or something. So imagine how you
feel when you're in.
Speaker 4 (38:56):
The post war here.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
So I usually enjoy you have you're seeing Yeah, I
met a training and you're coming home. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
So I usually ask like, because I know you don't
own your own vineyards, and I'm sure you obviously you
go down to the vineyards that you're getting the grapes from.
But you probably don't have the same you know, intimate
relationship with the vines as the as the vineyard manager does.
But I was going to ask you if you talk
to your wines when they're in Baryl sounds to me
that you play music to them, so you know that
they react to music.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Usually the music when they're barrel that's the day's staff
is not taking over. It can be anything from heavy
metal to I don't we're amusing the psyche and some
but they start happy.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
They start happy with the appropriate music. I love that.
So you're pretty pretty pretty busy guy in your retirement
here having a winery and a distillery and a brand
that you continue to add to. So you're not set
in your ways with what you do when you're not working.
(39:58):
How do you spend your free time? Do you even
have free time?
Speaker 4 (40:03):
I try to spend it.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
I got a grandson now, congratulations.
Speaker 4 (40:07):
When they let me see him, which is like like
a couple of times a week.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
He lives here in town, so it's not far away,
but I try to corrupt him and influence him in
ways that will eventually distract his parents.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
I want to have him payback time.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
Yes, So he's only two years old now, so I'm
waiting as he gets older to do more more, you know, appropriate.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Things, you know, like things like making him help you
work in the winery.
Speaker 4 (40:41):
Yeah, I am teaching him.
Speaker 3 (40:43):
So we do a lot of weird things at weird
things at home. We cook a lot at home, and
we make a lot of things. So he actually helps
with things like if I make an olio saccron, which
is essentially an ancient technique taking sugar and extracting the
oils from citrus piels.
Speaker 4 (41:03):
So if we wanted to make State Farm lemonade, that's.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
I put it in a bag and sip block with
the sugar. Then he'll pound on.
Speaker 4 (41:13):
That and everything. He'll have macerate that. So he's slowly
getting he's useful for that.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
That's great. You know, kids are good for banging on things.
And when you're planning a romantic evening for you and
your wife, what sort of wine set the mood? What
sets the mood for a romantic evening in general? Wine wise?
Are you going to tell me we start with a cocktail?
Speaker 3 (41:39):
No? Actually, we both work, and so romantic evening will
be like ah, so I do. We're going to go
down to Moterey. My nephew is going to be doing
his reunion down in Monterey from he's now forty years old,
if you can do that. But they're having a reunion
and I haven't seen it a long type. So we're
(42:00):
going to spend the night down in Monterey. And so yeah,
that'll be some kind of a light dinner because we
don't we can't eat the big dinners anymore, so we're
more tapas type, you know, like appetizer type, and so
that would probably be a cocktail.
Speaker 4 (42:18):
And maybe wine by the glass. Okay, so seventies. Uh,
it's just uh, it changes a little bit.
Speaker 3 (42:28):
It's just like going to the grocery store with her
is Actually that's like a date, just waking up in
the morning and being alive and saying, wow, you know
that's a date.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
Well, if you're both still working, that means you're busy,
not that you're retired and slowing down, but that you
just haven't stopped yet.
Speaker 4 (42:49):
Yeah. But my mother used to have an expression this
ghastly and it was that we die in harness. I
would hate to think about that.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
But the essentially that we work until we're dead, and
I think there's something to that.
Speaker 4 (43:05):
Accuse you purpose in life.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
I know, when you're just starting out, you don't think
about these things. But purpose and companionship, you know, interactions,
social interactions are important. You see too many people wiling
away their golden years in a nursing home, you know, and.
Speaker 4 (43:28):
That's not good.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Well, so you just mentioned something that your mom had
always said that stuck with you. I'm curious if there's
a piece of advice, maybe something a little more optimistic.
It might have been her, might have been someone else.
But is there a piece of advice someone gave you
along the way that you have tried to live or
work by.
Speaker 4 (43:45):
Yeah? Probably too.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
One is to be careful what you wish for because
you might get it. We don't think about the consequences
of things. And the other one is no good deed
goes unpunished. That sounds terrible to say that, but it
seems to be the case.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Absolutely absolutely. When you look back at your career, what
would you say, is one of your proudest achievements.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
So I was a scientist, right, so I think the
proudest achievements or that some of the students I.
Speaker 4 (44:20):
Raised and raised is not a good word. The Germans
have worked for it. You call the doctor father, you know,
so I guess raised raised train.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
We do that with the Wes mentor, right, raise up, yeah, mentor.
And so some of them have done very well for themselves,
so that's always good.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
What kind of sciences were you in?
Speaker 4 (44:43):
So I started as a physicist, and the I was
an experimental physicist, and so.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
I looked at doing I got it. My first job
was at Lawrence Livermore Lab. I was hired to do
something that, but you have to get a clearance, right.
It took me like a year to get a clearance,
and by the time that came around, if I was
suddenly without that job, I had to find some other job.
I was still working the lab, and they knew about
(45:13):
my experience with essentially my particle background, right, So that
has nothing to do with what they thought.
Speaker 4 (45:21):
They thought, Well, you work with high energy physics facilities,
so you must be able to do X ray scattering
things like this.
Speaker 3 (45:30):
A physicist is different than any other field because most
people have expressions like out of my wheelhouse or out
of my lane, outside my lane, right, So a physicist
never sees that they don't have a lane, and so
they yeah, well shoot, yeah, it's just physics summary.
Speaker 4 (45:51):
And so we're quick to take on projects which we
have no talent or ability to do, and then we
get lucky once in a while.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Well, I mean, I guess that bodes well for you
because you will una winery and you didn't have training
for that. So that mentality has worked.
Speaker 4 (46:11):
Yeah, I mean I went.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
So I had to give a speech once because there
was a time when the University of California, which is
part of the lab Right, they wanted to split it
because they didn't want to weapons facility associated, you see.
So they came up with something called the Genderson Committee,
and they were desperately looking for people.
Speaker 4 (46:31):
But they could give a talk to that committee and oh,
I'm so sorry, that's okay, it happens. Okay, I'm gonna
turn that out.
Speaker 3 (46:44):
And they were desperately looking around for somebody who did
something that wasn't secret.
Speaker 4 (46:50):
And I had to give a talk to.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
This committee, and at the end of the talk, they
hired me at UCSF Medical School Aunty Medicine, and so
I spent many, many, many years. Actually, I had all
these joint appointments, so because it's all you see.
Speaker 4 (47:11):
And it was actually good for my golf game, because
you know, I could be.
Speaker 3 (47:15):
Playing golf and they said, well, he's not here today
because he must be at Berkeley, or he must be
a little more, or he must be a U see su.
Speaker 4 (47:22):
And I joke a little bit about that.
Speaker 3 (47:26):
But it was an opportunity to once again get into
an area for which you didn't know anything about.
Speaker 4 (47:34):
But it was fun.
Speaker 3 (47:35):
I had to travel all over the world, you know,
you had to put together experiments in Berlin, in Hamburg,
cern at Chicago, New York, Cornell, Stanford.
Speaker 1 (47:50):
You know.
Speaker 4 (47:50):
It was actually good and I.
Speaker 3 (47:55):
Yeah, But now in retirement, I still look at physics.
I'm doing the career ending physics.
Speaker 4 (48:00):
Right.
Speaker 3 (48:01):
These are the projects you only want to work on
if you don't care about ten you're ever having to
produce anything, because these are things that have bothered me.
I had a good friend at Berkeley, John Klausser, who
had worked on the quantum entanglement, which is essentially this
spooky action.
Speaker 4 (48:18):
At a distance, so you can you can do something.
Speaker 3 (48:21):
Here and then a billion miles away there's a response
instantaneously somewhere into it. And that's always bothered me a
great deal. And so it's kind of fun to sit
back and I go back and look at some of these.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
Wow, that's way way, way above my knowledge base. But
I'm not a physicist.
Speaker 3 (48:44):
Fortunately, when you're one food of the great, nobody expects
anything from it. I'm working on this now, you know,
working on general relativity. Trying to do this or that
sounds impressive. It sounds impressive, and have anything you don't
have to show anything for it.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
I'm going to bring this back down to like a
really simple level, complete the sentence. For me, a table
without wine is like.
Speaker 4 (49:11):
Table well is two parts here, table without wine is
like it.
Speaker 3 (49:17):
It's ungrounded, but it also has the food has to
tell a story as well.
Speaker 4 (49:23):
Sure, and so as part of our grounding of our tradition.
We live such a nomadic lifestyle.
Speaker 3 (49:29):
Now when you talk to somebody at work, you don't
know if they're where they actually are. They could be
anywhere because of the Internet, and so going back to
these traditions of wine especially and the food, it can
give you the sense of grounding. I know that from
the immigrant communities that my wife is part of it,
(49:50):
they bring they try to bring things that remind them
of their homeland or of something grounding, something that places
them in a family or context and a village someplace
like that. And I think that's what it's missing. A
meal without wine is missing that.
Speaker 4 (50:07):
One element that can help around you a little bit
tradition of it.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
Even so, imagine we're at a table and we've got
that grounding on the table. Your wine is right here
with us, but there's an empty chair sitting next to you. Who,
from any walk of life, living or deceased, do you
wish you could share a bottle of Okazio lines with.
Speaker 4 (50:27):
I'm so close to that myself that I don't give
it a lot of thought.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
Well, they can be alive too. Just who would you
want to share your wine with that you haven't?
Speaker 3 (50:39):
I think this is how I wish I'd known this
in advance. I kept him up with somebody. It wouldn't
be somebody that you would have thought. Probably, this can
be really odd.
Speaker 4 (50:51):
Alfred Hitchcock, Oh that, why not? Through my Hitchcock face
right now?
Speaker 1 (51:02):
And you know he?
Speaker 3 (51:05):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (51:06):
He was.
Speaker 3 (51:07):
He had a charming personality I did not know him,
but a very dry humor. So if you want to
get into Hitchcock you can find on I think Amazon
Prime they're running these streaming these old Alfred Hitchcock hours.
Speaker 4 (51:23):
Yeah, it's it's it's fun.
Speaker 2 (51:25):
And if only he could share it, taste this wine
and share his ideas with you.
Speaker 3 (51:30):
He really thinks that shed But George Washington or Albert
Einstein or Robert.
Speaker 4 (51:38):
I had friends who not.
Speaker 3 (51:41):
Too many of them are still alive, but they had
him as a teacher. He was here in the Stays,
and they said he was a horrible teacher.
Speaker 2 (51:47):
So I think that just broke a lot of people's
hearts that have always wanted to share a bottle of
wine with him.
Speaker 4 (51:54):
Maybe fine, maybe fine them.
Speaker 3 (51:56):
I never met Fireman, but he I did see a
lot of the lectures at Cornell, and he sounded like
he was an entertaining kind of person. But I'd really
not like to be too close to that because they
would destroy my view of my retirement project.
Speaker 2 (52:16):
Well, John, it has been such a joy to talk
with you, and it's it's time to play our little game.
Just to talk about a couple of your wines and
pair them with music, and then I promise we're almost finished.
Even though I could listen to you talk about your retirement.
And I won't understand a word of what you're doing,
but it's interesting. So you have your moveed sitting here
(52:39):
that you told me that you've learned how to say it.
I don't know if you learned how to spell it.
But what would you what kind of music would you
put with it?
Speaker 4 (52:46):
So we.
Speaker 3 (52:48):
So with the hell of my son, we actually put
that with take five. Okay, okay, so that's a five
fourth time And now I'm getting out of my lane
as they say here.
Speaker 4 (53:05):
But he grew up in the I own area and
he had a horse farm.
Speaker 3 (53:14):
He was on a horse farm, and so you get
this kind of This is our wine from Amador County.
I own is in Amador County, and it just seemed
like an appropriate.
Speaker 4 (53:28):
I like it.
Speaker 2 (53:30):
What about your well, you mentioned your rose already because
you play it when it's in the barrel, So what
about your sauvignon blanc?
Speaker 4 (53:38):
Yeah, so that's so, what is the care of it? Yeah?
My son? Actually let's because that's a four four time?
And what did my son? Says? A peri rationale?
Speaker 3 (53:56):
And I go back to him on this because he
is a jazz guy, even though he's only thirty years old.
He loves his jazz, and so Miles Davis. The next
couple actually or that way too. So Miles Davis had
a kind of a way of a break from the past.
Speaker 4 (54:22):
Okay, so he was.
Speaker 3 (54:24):
More of a kind of a cross between the more
structured early jazz and a swing that comes a little
bit later.
Speaker 4 (54:33):
And the swine is.
Speaker 3 (54:37):
Just absolutely kind of like the structure of the dose
Masis in a way. So it's it's got, it's elegant.
Speaker 4 (54:47):
It's pure, it's a I think it's a marvelous wine.
I love it.
Speaker 2 (54:53):
And the last wine is let's do your dose Masis.
Speaker 3 (54:56):
Yeah, that's Bill Evans, and it's Waltz nand for Betsy
Betty what is it Debbie?
Speaker 4 (55:03):
Yeah, Debbie. Debbie was his niece.
Speaker 3 (55:05):
Now what people don't realize is that Bill Evans was
actually on the Miles Davis album. And uh, he was
a pianist. He's a jazz pianist. And that's a wallsteime
and the pan and wars our first.
Speaker 4 (55:24):
Another war.
Speaker 3 (55:25):
It's a Russian river pian war from a little place
Green Valleys.
Speaker 2 (55:30):
Subba, you're throwing another wine into me, aren't you. You're
throwing you're adding the pino. Now we're going from dos mess.
We're going to throw another wine.
Speaker 3 (55:38):
In, so Pein and war is another one to Dave
did a lot of pay So that's West Coast, you know,
west of west they called it.
Speaker 2 (55:51):
Yeah, the West Coast Sonoma.
Speaker 4 (55:54):
And so it's a it's it's very.
Speaker 3 (56:00):
I think it's a very almost as it's a very
spiritual kind of wine. It just puts you in a
good moods A So yeah, I was listening to that,
and I was listening to the album and Chris was
making up his line. So his line is their delicate
(56:22):
profile with the wine pairs of lyrical gem piano notes
in number three fourth time, reflecting our opportunistic expansion to
a new terrible Wow, I should hire.
Speaker 2 (56:37):
Him, You should hire him?
Speaker 4 (56:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (56:39):
With me, Well, you could keep reading your son's lyrical pairings.
But we have been talking a long time, and I
have been keeping you. But I do want to ask
you a final question. It's a two parter, and the
first part is I know you're busy in your retirement
(57:00):
trying to solve the quandary, the queries of the physics world.
And you have a distillery and a winery. But is
there anywhere on your bucket list, a wine region on
your bucket list that you would love to go travel to?
Speaker 3 (57:16):
On my so everybody thinks of the big famous ones
everything that I've got my eyes set on San Sebastian
area and these great names I can't possibly pronounce.
Speaker 4 (57:28):
They've got a lot of teas and exes.
Speaker 2 (57:30):
Yes, and like chuck Alina, is that you pronounce it?
Speaker 3 (57:36):
Yeah, I've heard the X actually with a slur on it, shure,
you know, but I I'm sorry, I just just drink it.
That kind of is interesting because it also is a
young it's always as a young type style of wine.
It's got bright acidity, and you've got this shellfish coming
in from from the bay of this gay there. So yeah,
(58:00):
I think that's an odd place to go. But basically
I don't think it's odd.
Speaker 2 (58:05):
I think it sounds wonderful. I love a good chuckle,
you know, general, and I think with some oysters that
sounds perfect and fresh fish.
Speaker 4 (58:12):
You remind me of buy Bodha bag daste.
Speaker 2 (58:15):
Well, everything has to come full circle.
Speaker 4 (58:20):
That's right. That's very rovers or whatever they or Morris, Yeah,
they call it.
Speaker 2 (58:26):
Well, my last part of That question is if somebody
wants to come here, they come to the Livermore Valley,
where can they find you? When are you open? I mean,
you've got this charming little tasting room right on Vasco Row.
Speaker 3 (58:38):
So we're open Thursday through Sunday. That's always noon too,
about five, and then Sidewinder Spirits is the evening crowd.
It starts at about three in the afternoon, goes till
eleven the party place and that's only a couple hundred
feet away, So.
Speaker 2 (58:53):
Come wine tasting and then just kind of stroll over
by foot, right what you do after drinks the spirits.
I don't know if you can stroll by foot anywhere,
but you know, it's actually.
Speaker 4 (59:07):
Safer to stroll by foot.
Speaker 2 (59:09):
I don't know if your strolling is what I'm saying.
Speaker 4 (59:11):
This is an interesting area.
Speaker 3 (59:12):
We have a brewery next to us too, which is
helpful because we don't have to One of the things
of having with a distillery is you have to mash right,
so you have to grind your grains, and so that
requires the mill and the brewery. We go right over
the brewery. We borrow there, so the grain actually is
(59:34):
delivered to them. We go over and we essentially use
their mash tone. We make every thing and we can
transport we call cereal water to the distillery because without
the TTB being involved, because it's not alcoholic, it's just
sugar water.
Speaker 2 (59:51):
It's really a one stop shop here in Basco row brewery, distillery,
winery and everything else you want.
Speaker 3 (59:58):
Co Operations is o great among it's we're small enough
and that's the big distinguishing factor between here and just
about everywhere else. Is it like.
Speaker 4 (01:00:08):
Rosie's Rosie, I would be Stephen is next door to us.
He's Stephen. Frank is next door to is. He's Frank.
Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
Everything here in this valley, with maybe one exception of
the wine group is family owned. And now can Canada
is splitting off, it's going to be family owned to
David Kent.
Speaker 2 (01:00:26):
So it's a family owned place.
Speaker 4 (01:00:29):
Name of a place like that in.
Speaker 3 (01:00:31):
Nato, it's all purchased up. My some of my favorite
places are now part of a bigger treasury wine estates
or everything has changed around, not recently because has soul
a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
Well, we can keep talking and we'll keep talking, but
I am going to say that Livermore is a great
place for family owned wineries, and Oka Okazio is one
of those great family owned wineries. So come on out
to Livermore Valley and come find John and drink his
cocktails after you drink his wine.
Speaker 4 (01:01:02):
Two cheers.
Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
Thanks for listening to a new episode of Wine Soundtrack USA.
For details and updates, visit our website windsoundtrack dot com.
Welcome to Wine Soundtrack USA. Listen to the passion with
which producers narrate their winery and their world team. Thirty
answers discover their stories, personalities, and passions.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hello, friends and listeners of Wine Soundtrack. This is Alison
Levine and today I am in the in the Livermore Valley,
and I am with John Kinney, who is the managing member,
or in better words, the owner of Ocasio Winery. John,
Welcome to Wine Soundtrack. Tell us a little bit about Okasio.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Oh. So, Acasio is named actually after the Roman goddess
of opportunity, oh, because it does mean opportunity in Latin.
And it's a case where about fifteen oh, since two
thousand and eight, two thousand and eight, I had the
(00:52):
opportunity to retire and form start something new, and I
thought this would be kind of a fun time to
start a wine.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I've heard that story before. I went into retirement, started
a winery and came out of retirement, right.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
But so, the goddess herself of opportunity is a goddess
that comes in an instant in time, and the Romans
depicted her as having wings on her feet, but she
also had knives and that's because opportunity, when you grab
it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be a gentle ride.
(01:29):
You could get cut up from that. But if you
don't take the opportunity, she was gone forever, and in
her wake would come the Goddess of remorse. And the
goddess of remorse was the remorse not for having taken opportunity,
but for not having take an opportunity.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
Because when you experience something, when you do.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Something, when you take that opportunity, the outcoming be terrible,
but it's a learning experience.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
It could be a great opportunity too.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
They make good stories if they fail or if they
succeed like that, But it's terrible to live your life
always saying what if.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Well, and so you said why not? And you started
a winery in two thousand and eight, And what does
that mean starting a winery? Do you own vineyards? Do
you purchase fruit?
Speaker 3 (02:21):
So that's another thing that I grew up on a farm,
and we farm dry seed for dry beans, pittow bean seed.
And I convinced myself at the age of eighteen that
I never wanted to farm again. So where I thought, well,
the fun would be was in the actual making of
the wine that somebody else work in the field and
(02:43):
grow the grapes. It's at least I can drink the
product and have fun making it, and I didn't have
to worry about that. You know, all the things that
are involved in farming. You're essentially housebound for the growing season,
and you have the weather to worry about. Weather can
wipe your crop out and disease and plus farming has
(03:07):
become like a science. If you listen to agricultural radio
that I grew up with and I still listened to
out of habit, they're talking about things that require a
huge amount of schooling and learning to figure out way
beyond my desire to get into farming. So I decided
(03:30):
I would take the last year and go back to
Davis for a certificate program. It's like a one or
two year program on wine making. And I started making
wine commercially at another winery where we shared facility and
we shared labor and things like that. And then in
(03:53):
the essentially in the depths of the economic crashed to
start bread a lot of vacant buildings, urban buildings came out,
so we were the first one to occupy this space.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Oh and We're in a place called Vasco Row, So
it's kind of a row of tasting rooms in Livermore
where you can kind of do one stop shopping of
wine tasting.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Right, it used to just be us and tile and
granite store, metal fabricator, a few other things like that.
We were isolated out here, but the price was right.
In two thousand and nine, we took over and I
think we opened to the public in August of two
thousand and nine after building the place out.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
And so you're buying fruit, are you buying only Livermore
fruit or do you buy from other regions as well?
Speaker 4 (04:44):
So at first it's always funny how you change.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Right, at first we specialized only made a big deal
about only specializing a little more fruit. And then another
opportunity heroes and it was called fires and COVID, two
big things. Now, you know, you could look at the
fact that everybody was shut down, and Alameda County was
(05:08):
the most, the harshest my voice raised on them, absolutely
harshest of any place in the nation. They had something
called they published a Misery Index that was published by
the US government. And it's not called the Misery Index.
I called it the Misery index. But as far as
(05:28):
closures and restrictions, Alameda County in California was absolutely we
were closed.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
And so that's an.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Opportunity to revisit your business model. And we had a
lot of wineries that had been buying fruit from really
well established vineyards outside the area.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
They weren't buying fruit.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Their wholetel market had collapsed, and so we had an
opportunity to get into one place up in Eminor County,
Shakerie Ranch, that's Ann Kramer's property, and it had been
very hard to get any food from and suddenly we
found ourselves coming with Movedra, Grenache Sarrah in that year.
(06:15):
So of course we made a Movedra a Grenache a
sah on a GSM line, so we could get four
wines out of that. That's great, And that's actually why
one of the wines I chose today was Movedra because
it was our first foray into And you've done some
kind of a blog about.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yes I am.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
I'm a fan of Movedra and it goes against our
grain at the time to take a wine outside of
the Roe Valley. It also goes against my grain to
sell a wine that you can't spell most people, and
I can't pronounce it, and that's why the gertz Semana
will never probably come out of our wine.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
But you can pronounce it, you just might not be
able to spell it. And then from this area, what
are the grapes that you're working with. I'm gonna guess Cabernet, sauvignon,
cabernet fron.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
Yes, so.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
People don't maybe you don't always realize the history of
this area was really established as a Bordeaux growing region.
It was part of Charles Wetmore was with Hill Guard
at Berkeley, which used to be the Agricultural College, and
they were tasked in California with trying to find out
(07:34):
which varieties of wine grew better in different locations, and
Littlemore Valley became one of the experimental stations.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
There's a there's still.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Finding remnants of these long lost places that the UC
had put together. And we were focused primarily on the
Bordeaux varieties because they felt we did well here with that.
But we always have a few outliers. Bullet would plant
other things. So when the weddies actually took charge, So
(08:06):
when the weddies started here back in the eighteen eighty
two or eighty three, there were two other partners, and
one of the partners died, and then the Weddies bought
the other partner out and they replaced grapes like to
not I didn't know tonight ever grew here, but they
replaced all of those and they started planting other varietals.
So there's always been some renegade growers. Cacannon did raquatcatelli
(08:33):
over the years. That was part of a desire for
detente with the Soviet Union at the time. We actually
one of our biggest grape varieties was French combard, which
you don't see any of it here, Gray Reasoning, which
is actually called something else now.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Well, unfortunately, so many of those grapes have disappeared. For you,
do you look for those grapes or do you like
to stay with the more traditional We kind of.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Look around out for the grape. So one of our
favorite grapes here was Malvasia bianca. There's not much grown
coastally in the state of California or anywhere else in California.
It's really an Italian grape, and we like to make
that in a style that's slightly off dry.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
So we harve us.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
It's got brilliant acidity and you could ferment it to
dry us. But there's something that just needs some balance.
And so that's one of our favorite fragrant grapes. And
some will do that every now and then.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
And what's your total case production?
Speaker 3 (09:31):
So we cycle right now, we're in a low case
production ode, so like eight hundred cases and sometimes will
be twelve hundred cases.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
I live in fear of inventory.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
It's a fair thing.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
I don't want people coming into the wine into the
tasting room and seeing four vintages of the same wine
fair enough?
Speaker 2 (09:53):
And are you one hundred percent direct to consumer? Just
out of the tasting room and online?
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Pretty much, because we don't do a lot a hostline
because there's me, my son the wine maker, tasting our people.
And to sell it in a hostel environment for us,
we would have to schlep it around. And I'm over
seventy and I just don't see the need for being that.
Plus who wants to buy wine from a seventy year
(10:18):
old salesman?
Speaker 4 (10:19):
You know, why not?
Speaker 2 (10:20):
You're just going to come in here, younger.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
People out there, because they're too busy here.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Right, come into the taste screen by wine from a
seventy year old salesman the winery owner.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
But I it appeals to the one you haven't set
as a life sile.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Well, I'm curious as a seventy something year old winery
owner when you think back, what is your very first
memory relevant to wine? How old were you that you
first kind of discovered that wine existed.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
Oh, so I grew up.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
I was part of the you know, the baby boom generation,
and so these are parents had just come back from
the Second World War and started families.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
And to be honest with you, in Idaho, that was.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
You know, I would say Canadian club, you know, vodka, whiskey,
soda and cigarettes, sail wine. Well, people don't realize many
people don't realize that actually the area of northern Nevada,
southern Idaho is one of the highest population of Basques
(11:30):
really in the world. I think there are more Basques
living in northern Nevada through Gooding, Idaho into Boise than
there are in San Sebastian and all those places in northern.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
Spain and southern France.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
So the Basque community, and I spent a lot of
time with the Basque community, and no I don't speak
escebec or whatever.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
I can't pronounce it.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
But we would drink more wine under age, probably and
we didn't care what it tasted like. Probably is terrible,
but we would actually drink it out of the original
Bota bags.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
Wow. And so we could drive at fourteen. This is
sounding dangerous. And so we were.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Sixty miles south of Sun Valley, Idaho, a ski resort.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
We would sneak up.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
There on Saturday mornings with our boat bags filled and.
Speaker 4 (12:25):
Some probably you know.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Store bought slammy and some really marginal bread, maybe even
morender bread, and we would go up to ski with
those Boata bags.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
Oh my god, terrible thought. I couldn't that.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
It was so long ago. It's just a fun memory.
You're here to tell the story. So clearly nothing happened
that was bad. But I'm curious as you got older
and started drinking wine that's a little more memorable, more specifically,
is there a particular wine it? Actually there is an
aha moment for you.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
So one of my cousins, he was also from a farm, right,
My aunt and uncle had a farm, and he decided
early on he wanted to be a pe teacher, and
he went down and he was a coach in Napa
and a.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
High school coach in Napa, and he would come up.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Though every fall to help family with the harvest, and
he brought up a wine one time. Now, remember this
is a time when wine's in Twin Falls were Boons.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Farm in Annie.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
Green Springs, and I'm not convinced that those are really
great products. And there was also a thunderbird, yes, and
logan David twenty twenty.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
It's terrible stuff.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
And this is a bottle that was actually looked like
a wine bottle and it had a picture on it
of a property at Chateau.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
Let's say, and it was Inglenook.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
So in nineteen sixty Inglenook was probably my first experience
with the wine. And it wasn't from drinking it, it
was looking at the label.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
But hey, you know it stands out as a memory
for that.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Yeah, So I was and then I went to undergraduate
work in Wala Wala Equipment College, which was mainly known
for as sweet peas in the state prison.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
So big Police.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Country was mainly wheat and so we would drink twenty
five cent pictures of beer. And that was in fact
one time in nineteen seventy four. This dates me coldest
winter well on record, we thought so. And in those
(14:47):
days you'd walk downtown to get something to eat, and
the bank, the local banker Boyer Bank was called, had
an outdoor temperature indicator. The high for the day was
minus six teen degrees And at that moment my friend
turned to me and says, do you think we ought
to be able to grow grapes here for wine? And
(15:08):
I'm thinking to myself, in no way. So that was
the first of many predictions that I had that were wrong.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Well, yes, because now maybe you can. But so if
we were to come to your home today, what kind
of wines would do would we find in your home?
Is a lot of the wines? Is it Ocasio wines?
Is it other livermore wines? Are there particular grapes or
regions that you or anything that you everything that you drink?
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Okay, So now it's a little bit odd. At our
house we have mainly other people's wines, okay, because to
be honest with you, you smell it in the back
of the of the winery every single day, and it's
kind of nice to try other things. So, like we
make a delightful rose. Would you like them to try it?
Speaker 2 (15:56):
I can try the rose.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
The we actually make two kinds. One is this kind
and the other one is in barrel. Still it's a
barreled one. But I really like table rosees if I'm
going to try to drink Southern France, and because they're different.
And I have a new theory because I went to
Chapanese one and we had their nicheis salad and I
(16:21):
had the top of wine with it. I thought, this
is the perfect pairing. It tastes really good. If you
go to France, it was awful pairing, and our wine
tasted better.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Therein yours is a rose of what great gasha.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
I know that if I went to France, the reverse
would be true. And I begin to think that maybe
it's because our microbiomes adjust locally to the what we're
going to call it the flora and fauna of your
mouth and what crows on the food, and the chefs
actually adapt to that too, So we make a wine
(16:56):
for our microbiome to match our food with its set
of bacteria. And oh god, so I'm thinking it's all
part of that. And that's why when you go to
Europe and you taste wine and food, it's like a revelation.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Well, you're also on vacation, really happy.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Yeah, I think it's more than that. But you can't
expect that a grenache from their own is going to
taste be as good a pairing as a grenache from
the United States that you're eating California produce.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Well, you're jumping ahead to my food and wine pairing question,
but no, no, no, I mean because this is really interesting.
So I want to pick up on that in a
second more because maybe you didn't jump ahead, you just
started something that made me want to ask a question later.
But I do want to ask first. You were talking
about the wines that you have at home, and you
like to drink other things. Is there anything you drink
recently that you open that drank really well?
Speaker 4 (17:51):
Yes, I like Scarecrow.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Oh and my winemaker went to the same school that Oh,
Chronos comes from, you know, the Chronos vineyard that's come on.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
Her name is Casey because I don't really know her,
but he knows it really well.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
So I've got a ton of the Chronos cabernets from
Napa Valley. I actually think those are more of my
taste they're more structured. So if you taste of our wines,
you're gonna find mainly there's a they're structured. So the
acid is a key component of the wine.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
We don't like flavvy wines. Who does well? I used
to I was seventeen and drinking.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Yes, well, we all evolve our ballettes and grow up.
So do you think, before we get into more detail
about wine, do you think there's a such thing as
a perfect variety?
Speaker 4 (18:56):
No?
Speaker 2 (18:57):
No, And in terms of wines and varieties as a
wine drinker, quick question, red white or rose?
Speaker 4 (19:10):
Okay, So.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
I go through things like in a cyclic manner. So
one year may be big bold reds, another year maybe rosees.
But right now I'm starting to swing towards aromatic whites.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Okay, still are sparkling.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Either, but I tend to actually go to these little,
slightly slightly effervescent off dry wines. They're not really a
sparkling wine. They wouldn't be considered a sparkling wine by
the tax bracket.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Right, They're just sort of effervescent but.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
Have a little over that the sprints sprits.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
So speaking of that, so you're liking a little off
dry let's go back to what you were talking about
with food and wine and go a little more into
I'm curious how you approach food and wine pairing. Do
you follow rules? Do you think there are rules to follow,
or things that you look for. I mean, obviously you
picked a tavel rose, which is a little more structured
boulder rose style to go with the niswat didn't quite work,
(20:09):
but I know where your mind was going with that.
I'm curious do you follow the rules of excuse me,
white wine and fish and red wine and meat, or
do you look for something else?
Speaker 4 (20:20):
The number one driving thing to me is acid and sweetness.
I guess that's two.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
You don't want to wine that is, so if your
food needs a little lemon juice on it, I'd like
something that passes the squeeze of lemon tests, so that
would be a more acidic wine.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
Usually those are the white wines. Okay.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
I think if you're looking at also sweetness, you don't
want a wine. That's why nothing pairs with wedding cakesh
not really well unless you get the wedding kuve iron horse.
You don't really want to wine that's really dry and
(21:03):
parching against something that's sweet. Texture and mouthfeel can also
be important. You know, so fine drained tanin this can
actually be a help because they can bind the fattiness
on the on the on the tongue and kind of
they work harmon harmoniously kind of.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
So so you're looking far more for texture and and
flavor than you are, you know, red white kind of rules.
It's it's all about flavor.
Speaker 4 (21:33):
And to be honest with you, usually this is going
to sound true.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Whoever picks the wine to pick the wine, and I'll
drink anything with it.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
It doesn't you know, we can't.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
We're not at an age now where we can go
through three or four bottles at a dinner. So we
pick it wine and it's going to surface all four courses.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
And has to make it from the oysters to the steak, right.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
And we also like cocktails mm hmm, so it's uh,
it's kind of like we'll do a cocktail and then
maybe a bottle of wine.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
I really like the half bottles. Yes, they're harder to
come by here than in Europe. You can get.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yes, well, that's like I like buy the glass because
it allows me to have two or three wines instead
of three bottles Okay.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
So I have a rule of thumb that at an
airport when you're waiting for a plane, by a beer
or a cocktail because the wine could have been sitting
out for weeks. Right, And I have a real thing
about ACETL dyde. I don't like inappropriately oxidized wines. I'm
(22:43):
oversensitive to it.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
So with all of this, you have your opinion about wines.
You know what you like, and you're a small producer,
so I'm curious what your opinion is on wine critics
and scores. I mean, you know what you like, so
you're going after it. But how does does it work
for other people? And how does it work for a
brand like yours?
Speaker 4 (23:02):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (23:03):
So when I get a good score, I think this
is a great thing. And when we get a marginal score,
which we don't get marginal scores, but let's say you
guess something said in eighty nine or something, then of
course the reviewer doesn't know what they're talking about. When
we first started out, we did the traditional circuit. We
(23:25):
had enter competitions, try to get a gold medal. We
throw our wines into like one enthusiast something like that,
try to get a score. We don't send anything into
the competitions anymore, which is unfortunate in some ways because
(23:45):
that means we can't compete in our local on court
because we don't do that. And when we do release
a line, we want to release. Our wines are made
with the acids and structures in mind. So like our
new release Dosmesis is in twenty twenty one wine, so
it's already four years old, and I think it's still
(24:07):
too young. And that's when we release it. We couldn't
enter it in the uncourt competition anyway because it would.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
Be too old for the unport competition. So we don't
do any of that.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
You know it, Maybe you get a week's worth of
flash from it, but to be honest with you, we don't.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
So for someone who hasn't had the pleasure to come
here to a Casio wines yet, they have not, it's
your wines yet, what do you think they're missing out on?
Speaker 4 (24:38):
Wow?
Speaker 3 (24:38):
What are they missing out on? Yeah, they're missing out
on Dave's palette.
Speaker 5 (24:43):
Actually, David Winemaker, he impresses me. Actually I shouldn't say that.
If he listens to this, this is not a good thing,
because I want to pay raise But what we try
to do with our wines is tell a story. Okay,
(25:04):
And I don't do a very great job on the internet,
on the web, on the essentially our web page, of
necessarily updating it frequently enough to tell all the stories.
But every wine tells a story of our heritage in
our valleys. So you asked actually about music and wine.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
Yes, for the game.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
The one thing you're warned about is the game we
play at the end, just to put you at ease
in here.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
But like those mass it got its name actually from
the one of the early vineyards in wineries. So when
Charles Wetmore started as Christa Blanco winery, he'd gotten some
fame already by eighteen eighties, and he was also a
marketing guy. And a neighbor came in. They wanted to
(25:54):
plant some grapes, and what Moore says, Well, you've planted
Cabernet sauvignon and it's going to be the You know,
if you use this vineyard and plantri Cavanty svignon and
make the wine from it, you will have probably the
best Caverney sevignon in the United States, if not the world.
Now this is his time when he was labeling some
of his wines Chatar Chateau Margo. So if you couldn't
(26:18):
be better than the world, you.
Speaker 4 (26:20):
Just call it right something.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
You know, I've heard of Chateau Margo must because Chateau Kim,
you know that's great.
Speaker 4 (26:29):
Well, what he meant was in the style of right.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
But Dos Mass was named after two little maces that
are where del valleys now. It's now been covered by
the dam of the reservoir, But that was actually a
Cavernet vineyard and we named Dos Maces. Doesn't come from
that vineyards. It's gone now, But Dos Mass is one
of our wines that actually has has to be Cabanet Sognon.
(26:54):
It can come from a blend of different vineyards in
the valley, but it has to be a little more.
It has to be Cavanty's and it honors this old name, right,
got it?
Speaker 2 (27:03):
So you know, I'm curious if space aliens were to,
you know, land out front and come knocking on the
door of all your wines that you produce, which of
your wines would you want to welcome them to a
Casio winery with.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
If the space aliens came and presented themselves to me,
I'd hop over to sidewinder and grabbed myself a bottle
of whiskey and drink the whole bottle.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Well, so tell me anything to drink first, So tell
me what sidewinder is.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
That is so our logo is a pocket watch, which
represents coming the opportunity in a moment of time, and
everything in wine making is all about time timing.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
The interior of it. My youngest son, who was very
adamant about it. You can see it in this label.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
A pocket watch, thought that the goddess initially was a goddess, right,
it was kind of fierce looking.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
So he replaced the mechanism of the watch with all
of the elements on.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
There are wine making tools, so you can find them
in the winery. A little artistic judgment on some like
the wine thief, but it's all in there. And so
it was about the pocket watch, so we found it sidewinder.
Now sidewinder, the first thing that comes to a lot
of people's mind is either snake or a missile, right ah,
(28:26):
But sidewinder is a pocket watch, so we carry the
pocket watch theme. And the pocket watch has the sidewinder mechanism, has.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
The nod with the three yeah, okay.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
And it was a favorite of railway conductors because they
could use their thumb to open the what do you
call that, the lid of it, you know, to check
the time one handed very easily. It's worst well with
the opposable thumb. And so this became the mechanism of
the railway. And what people don't realize is in Livermore
(28:58):
Valley owes every thing of its early fame to the railway.
This was the Transcontinental Railway, and it ends up the
last burt was Niles Canyon. And we could put our
products on the on the railway and get them to Chicago,
get them to.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
New York, get them to Washington.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
They'd be well on their way by the time Napa
Valley could get thirs down. The ferry landed in Port Costa,
take the train, ferry back over and catch it in Martinez,
and then take the.
Speaker 4 (29:32):
Train so we could eat that.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
There's even a bigger advantage that nobody really seems to remember.
I went back and read all of the old papers. Right.
The big thing was ice. We brought in ice from
the Sierra Nevadas, and it was destined for to open
the city. We had the first brewery in this area
and windy and what more, these people took advantage of
(29:59):
ice where they could create the first temperature control fermentations
of white wines.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
And so just to come back to that when you
were talking about Sidewinder, Sidewinder is your distillery that you
have around the corner, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
And I came out of the fact that we, I
guess I have a fetish about this almost. I'd like
to know where everything in my product and everything.
Speaker 4 (30:28):
That I try to eat. And it's impossible, I am,
but where does.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
It come from?
Speaker 3 (30:33):
And so that it became a crisis with the port
wines because you have to fortify them with brandy.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
And so.
Speaker 4 (30:41):
It's like ten to twenty percent of the volume is
this brand. That's hardly a small amount.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
And so we would buy our brandy the first year
we bought it from Saint George Sperits. Well, that's got
to be a local brandy well for industrial reduction, which
is what we are. They get their wine from southern California.
Some place down in Fresno is a big distiller. I
don't know which one it is. They are, but it's
(31:10):
not local. It's not getting from local graves. It could
be very great brandy, but I just wanted so we
got a distiller license to do brandy rectification.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Because you can't find it locally, do it yourself.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
And we took a one dollar spirit and turned it
into a twenty dollars spirit. The advantage of that is
that we've made barrels of it and the agent barrels
and they get better every year. And Okay, that's not
really the bis. It's not a price advantage, but I
think we make great port wines and we use it
(31:45):
for our remooths. We did a vermooth and then the
state came out with a craft distiller license that allowed
you to do things other than brandy, and so we
had a ski still put into the winery and the
state of California had some issues with that, and so
(32:07):
we had to put a big fence around it so
that it was separate. It was totally separate. We had
this gate around it, and we had a strict plan
because we housed the stuff over our other distillery, the
sidewinder part of the distillery.
Speaker 4 (32:22):
We house all the barrels over there.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
We had to actually draw a map that showed our
group from taking it wheeling it from essentially back to
our winery to its final storage place. And then the
fire department got involved in that. We couldn't have a
gate that could trap people in a flammable area. So
(32:46):
after a few years of back and forth, this TT
being not the TDB but the ABC, this California decided
the gates were madatory. We could have virtual fence, which
was just you put it on paper.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
So you know that.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
But your distillery is like around the corner now.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
One of our stills is still in the winery. So
well they made dropa. We could actually say that we
we could take the must. One of the problems making
drapa so grap is made after you've spent everything.
Speaker 4 (33:17):
In the fermentation of the wine and you pressed it out,
you're left with justin grape skin.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
But there's still someone trained alcohol that's still left behind
and you pump that into your your still. One of
the big problems and making it nicely is it tends
to oxidize, So transportation is a problem, and so they
you know, they keep refining that. And we didn't have
a problem with transportation. We dumped the pressing right into
(33:47):
the still add water because otherwise it would skulled.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Wow, so you're like a full on distillery producing everything
on top of wine. That's it's amazing.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
We keep our tradition so all of our drain is
harvested sustainably locally, not locally lim like in the Yellow County.
Speaker 4 (34:09):
Up your second in the Delta area.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
Then we take that to Admiral Malting, which is in
Adamalmeat Island and it's the only floor malting facility on
the West Coast. Most people they use continuous malting facilities.
This is where they throw it out on a floor
and they germinate.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
It on the floor. They rake it by hand.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
It's uh and they open up these big bay doors
and that breeze comes in from the golden gate, and
I swear I can tell the microbiome differences between something
that is actually floor malted. And but you know, once
again we go back to this. We had to know
(34:52):
the whole chain. And one of the problems is the
corn because the corn is usually flight corn, it's not malted,
and so that's added into the mash, and then the
enzymes in the barley and the other malted grains will
essentially break the sugars down. And so we got whet
(35:13):
durst up and yellowk out. He makes a yellow dent
corn and the people that haven't over sided they would
malt the corn.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
So then we had a malted triple malt. Now it
has a little bit of rye, a little bit of corn,
a little wheat barley. We don't go.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
We did on that, and then we heard a year
ago that we'll had some this original red corn. It's
a Native American red corn, and so we malted.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
That as well. So now we have a yellow corn
and a red corn and those are going into the bourbons. Wow.
It's the same thing with the grapes. We define out
where they're from.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
So you have a story behind everything. You have lots
of different grapes because you explore, and now you've got
a whole distillery and you just keep adding on. So
I'd hate to ask what's next, but I'm curious.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
Okay, so what's next? We're actually going to have harvest
a reasoning not from here. They used to grow raasing here.
They called it Johannesburg reason Yeah, yeah, yeah, And there's
some vineyards here that actually I think they do still
good reasonings up there in Della Terra, which is up
in the Sinola Islands up there.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
Still in our Ava, we're going down to center of
Sea Highlands.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
And we.
Speaker 4 (36:37):
Are going to harvest on there. And what's excited about that?
Speaker 3 (36:40):
So my winemaker he interned in Navarro and then later
at pay but in Navarro they were doing reaslings and
diverse two years is cold weather grapes. And I'm really
interested in TDN, which is a compound that gives you
that petrol mode. And so yeah, are going to have
fun with That's an aromatic white that hopefully we'll have
(37:04):
a little bit of that petrol nose to it.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
It sounds sounds fun. So are there any sort of
rituals that you and your team, you and Dave or
you in your tasty room, you and your sons have
done that you do at the start of harvest to
kick off each year. I know distillation is year round,
so that's a little different.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
But at the old Palm Song wind Ring many many
decades ago, sparkling wine was they called it champagne, but
that was their thing with Chartonay and they would always
start off the year by the first harvest by toasting
with sparkling wine. And so I every year are the
(37:46):
first time that grapes come in. You know, they're harvested
at night, but sometimes they don't come in till like
six seven in the morning, and we will.
Speaker 4 (37:56):
Essentially have a champagne toast with that. That's kind of
a tradition. I play.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
Music, So the music depends on that. When we essentially
put the east into the line, the east have to
be happy and so like, if it's a tariga, we'll
play a little do Segovia, that's a guitar longs. Instead
(38:26):
with the rose, it's Lamaire, which is that's a song
that I actually paired with this rose, and that came
out in about nineteen forty five at the end of
the war as a story about somewhere beyond the sea.
And don't ask me to sing it in French, but
(38:47):
we know the Bobby Darren version in English. Yeah, A
lover waits for me or something. So imagine how you
feel when you're in.
Speaker 4 (38:56):
The post war here.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
So I usually enjoy you have you're seeing Yeah, I
met a training and you're coming home. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
So I usually ask like, because I know you don't
own your own vineyards, and I'm sure you obviously you
go down to the vineyards that you're getting the grapes from.
But you probably don't have the same you know, intimate
relationship with the vines as the as the vineyard manager does.
But I was going to ask you if you talk
to your wines when they're in Baryl sounds to me
that you play music to them, so you know that
they react to music.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Usually the music when they're barrel that's the day's staff
is not taking over. It can be anything from heavy
metal to I don't we're amusing the psyche and some
but they start happy.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
They start happy with the appropriate music. I love that.
So you're pretty pretty pretty busy guy in your retirement
here having a winery and a distillery and a brand
that you continue to add to. So you're not set
in your ways with what you do when you're not working.
(39:58):
How do you spend your free time? Do you even
have free time?
Speaker 4 (40:03):
I try to spend it.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
I got a grandson now, congratulations.
Speaker 4 (40:07):
When they let me see him, which is like like
a couple of times a week.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
He lives here in town, so it's not far away,
but I try to corrupt him and influence him in
ways that will eventually distract his parents.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
I want to have him payback time.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
Yes, So he's only two years old now, so I'm
waiting as he gets older to do more more, you know, appropriate.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Things, you know, like things like making him help you
work in the winery.
Speaker 4 (40:41):
Yeah, I am teaching him.
Speaker 3 (40:43):
So we do a lot of weird things at weird
things at home. We cook a lot at home, and
we make a lot of things. So he actually helps
with things like if I make an olio saccron, which
is essentially an ancient technique taking sugar and extracting the
oils from citrus piels.
Speaker 4 (41:03):
So if we wanted to make State Farm lemonade, that's.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
I put it in a bag and sip block with
the sugar. Then he'll pound on.
Speaker 4 (41:13):
That and everything. He'll have macerate that. So he's slowly
getting he's useful for that.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
That's great. You know, kids are good for banging on things.
And when you're planning a romantic evening for you and
your wife, what sort of wine set the mood? What
sets the mood for a romantic evening in general? Wine wise?
Are you going to tell me we start with a cocktail?
Speaker 3 (41:39):
No? Actually, we both work, and so romantic evening will
be like ah, so I do. We're going to go
down to Moterey. My nephew is going to be doing
his reunion down in Monterey from he's now forty years old,
if you can do that. But they're having a reunion
and I haven't seen it a long type. So we're
(42:00):
going to spend the night down in Monterey. And so yeah,
that'll be some kind of a light dinner because we
don't we can't eat the big dinners anymore, so we're
more tapas type, you know, like appetizer type, and so
that would probably be a cocktail.
Speaker 4 (42:18):
And maybe wine by the glass. Okay, so seventies. Uh,
it's just uh, it changes a little bit.
Speaker 3 (42:28):
It's just like going to the grocery store with her
is Actually that's like a date, just waking up in
the morning and being alive and saying, wow, you know
that's a date.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
Well, if you're both still working, that means you're busy,
not that you're retired and slowing down, but that you
just haven't stopped yet.
Speaker 4 (42:49):
Yeah. But my mother used to have an expression this
ghastly and it was that we die in harness. I
would hate to think about that.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
But the essentially that we work until we're dead, and
I think there's something to that.
Speaker 4 (43:05):
Accuse you purpose in life.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
I know, when you're just starting out, you don't think
about these things. But purpose and companionship, you know, interactions,
social interactions are important. You see too many people wiling
away their golden years in a nursing home, you know, and.
Speaker 4 (43:28):
That's not good.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Well, so you just mentioned something that your mom had
always said that stuck with you. I'm curious if there's
a piece of advice, maybe something a little more optimistic.
It might have been her, might have been someone else.
But is there a piece of advice someone gave you
along the way that you have tried to live or
work by.
Speaker 4 (43:45):
Yeah? Probably too.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
One is to be careful what you wish for because
you might get it. We don't think about the consequences
of things. And the other one is no good deed
goes unpunished. That sounds terrible to say that, but it
seems to be the case.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Absolutely absolutely. When you look back at your career, what
would you say, is one of your proudest achievements.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
So I was a scientist, right, so I think the
proudest achievements or that some of the students I.
Speaker 4 (44:20):
Raised and raised is not a good word. The Germans
have worked for it. You call the doctor father, you know,
so I guess raised raised train.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
We do that with the Wes mentor, right, raise up, yeah, mentor.
And so some of them have done very well for themselves,
so that's always good.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
What kind of sciences were you in?
Speaker 4 (44:43):
So I started as a physicist, and the I was
an experimental physicist, and so.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
I looked at doing I got it. My first job
was at Lawrence Livermore Lab. I was hired to do
something that, but you have to get a clearance, right.
It took me like a year to get a clearance,
and by the time that came around, if I was
suddenly without that job, I had to find some other job.
I was still working the lab, and they knew about
(45:13):
my experience with essentially my particle background, right, So that
has nothing to do with what they thought.
Speaker 4 (45:21):
They thought, Well, you work with high energy physics facilities,
so you must be able to do X ray scattering
things like this.
Speaker 3 (45:30):
A physicist is different than any other field because most
people have expressions like out of my wheelhouse or out
of my lane, outside my lane, right, So a physicist
never sees that they don't have a lane, and so
they yeah, well shoot, yeah, it's just physics summary.
Speaker 4 (45:51):
And so we're quick to take on projects which we
have no talent or ability to do, and then we
get lucky once in a while.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Well, I mean, I guess that bodes well for you
because you will una winery and you didn't have training
for that. So that mentality has worked.
Speaker 4 (46:11):
Yeah, I mean I went.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
So I had to give a speech once because there
was a time when the University of California, which is
part of the lab Right, they wanted to split it
because they didn't want to weapons facility associated, you see.
So they came up with something called the Genderson Committee,
and they were desperately looking for people.
Speaker 4 (46:31):
But they could give a talk to that committee and oh,
I'm so sorry, that's okay, it happens. Okay, I'm gonna
turn that out.
Speaker 3 (46:44):
And they were desperately looking around for somebody who did
something that wasn't secret.
Speaker 4 (46:50):
And I had to give a talk to.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
This committee, and at the end of the talk, they
hired me at UCSF Medical School Aunty Medicine, and so
I spent many, many, many years. Actually, I had all
these joint appointments, so because it's all you see.
Speaker 4 (47:11):
And it was actually good for my golf game, because
you know, I could be.
Speaker 3 (47:15):
Playing golf and they said, well, he's not here today
because he must be at Berkeley, or he must be
a little more, or he must be a U see su.
Speaker 4 (47:22):
And I joke a little bit about that.
Speaker 3 (47:26):
But it was an opportunity to once again get into
an area for which you didn't know anything about.
Speaker 4 (47:34):
But it was fun.
Speaker 3 (47:35):
I had to travel all over the world, you know,
you had to put together experiments in Berlin, in Hamburg,
cern at Chicago, New York, Cornell, Stanford.
Speaker 1 (47:50):
You know.
Speaker 4 (47:50):
It was actually good and I.
Speaker 3 (47:55):
Yeah, But now in retirement, I still look at physics.
I'm doing the career ending physics.
Speaker 4 (48:00):
Right.
Speaker 3 (48:01):
These are the projects you only want to work on
if you don't care about ten you're ever having to
produce anything, because these are things that have bothered me.
I had a good friend at Berkeley, John Klausser, who
had worked on the quantum entanglement, which is essentially this
spooky action.
Speaker 4 (48:18):
At a distance, so you can you can do something.
Speaker 3 (48:21):
Here and then a billion miles away there's a response
instantaneously somewhere into it. And that's always bothered me a
great deal. And so it's kind of fun to sit
back and I go back and look at some of these.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
Wow, that's way way, way above my knowledge base. But
I'm not a physicist.
Speaker 3 (48:44):
Fortunately, when you're one food of the great, nobody expects
anything from it. I'm working on this now, you know,
working on general relativity. Trying to do this or that
sounds impressive. It sounds impressive, and have anything you don't
have to show anything for it.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
I'm going to bring this back down to like a
really simple level, complete the sentence. For me, a table
without wine is like.
Speaker 4 (49:11):
Table well is two parts here, table without wine is
like it.
Speaker 3 (49:17):
It's ungrounded, but it also has the food has to
tell a story as well.
Speaker 4 (49:23):
Sure, and so as part of our grounding of our tradition.
We live such a nomadic lifestyle.
Speaker 3 (49:29):
Now when you talk to somebody at work, you don't
know if they're where they actually are. They could be
anywhere because of the Internet, and so going back to
these traditions of wine especially and the food, it can
give you the sense of grounding. I know that from
the immigrant communities that my wife is part of it,
(49:50):
they bring they try to bring things that remind them
of their homeland or of something grounding, something that places
them in a family or context and a village someplace
like that. And I think that's what it's missing. A
meal without wine is missing that.
Speaker 4 (50:07):
One element that can help around you a little bit
tradition of it.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
Even so, imagine we're at a table and we've got
that grounding on the table. Your wine is right here
with us, but there's an empty chair sitting next to you. Who,
from any walk of life, living or deceased, do you
wish you could share a bottle of Okazio lines with.
Speaker 4 (50:27):
I'm so close to that myself that I don't give
it a lot of thought.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
Well, they can be alive too. Just who would you
want to share your wine with that you haven't?
Speaker 3 (50:39):
I think this is how I wish I'd known this
in advance. I kept him up with somebody. It wouldn't
be somebody that you would have thought. Probably, this can
be really odd.
Speaker 4 (50:51):
Alfred Hitchcock, Oh that, why not? Through my Hitchcock face
right now?
Speaker 1 (51:02):
And you know he?
Speaker 3 (51:05):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (51:06):
He was.
Speaker 3 (51:07):
He had a charming personality I did not know him,
but a very dry humor. So if you want to
get into Hitchcock you can find on I think Amazon
Prime they're running these streaming these old Alfred Hitchcock hours.
Speaker 4 (51:23):
Yeah, it's it's it's fun.
Speaker 2 (51:25):
And if only he could share it, taste this wine
and share his ideas with you.
Speaker 3 (51:30):
He really thinks that shed But George Washington or Albert
Einstein or Robert.
Speaker 4 (51:38):
I had friends who not.
Speaker 3 (51:41):
Too many of them are still alive, but they had
him as a teacher. He was here in the Stays,
and they said he was a horrible teacher.
Speaker 2 (51:47):
So I think that just broke a lot of people's
hearts that have always wanted to share a bottle of
wine with him.
Speaker 4 (51:54):
Maybe fine, maybe fine them.
Speaker 3 (51:56):
I never met Fireman, but he I did see a
lot of the lectures at Cornell, and he sounded like
he was an entertaining kind of person. But I'd really
not like to be too close to that because they
would destroy my view of my retirement project.
Speaker 2 (52:16):
Well, John, it has been such a joy to talk
with you, and it's it's time to play our little game.
Just to talk about a couple of your wines and
pair them with music, and then I promise we're almost finished.
Even though I could listen to you talk about your retirement.
And I won't understand a word of what you're doing,
but it's interesting. So you have your moveed sitting here
(52:39):
that you told me that you've learned how to say it.
I don't know if you learned how to spell it.
But what would you what kind of music would you
put with it?
Speaker 4 (52:46):
So we.
Speaker 3 (52:48):
So with the hell of my son, we actually put
that with take five. Okay, okay, so that's a five
fourth time And now I'm getting out of my lane
as they say here.
Speaker 4 (53:05):
But he grew up in the I own area and
he had a horse farm.
Speaker 3 (53:14):
He was on a horse farm, and so you get
this kind of This is our wine from Amador County.
I own is in Amador County, and it just seemed
like an appropriate.
Speaker 4 (53:28):
I like it.
Speaker 2 (53:30):
What about your well, you mentioned your rose already because
you play it when it's in the barrel, So what
about your sauvignon blanc?
Speaker 4 (53:38):
Yeah, so that's so, what is the care of it? Yeah?
My son? Actually let's because that's a four four time?
And what did my son? Says? A peri rationale?
Speaker 3 (53:56):
And I go back to him on this because he
is a jazz guy, even though he's only thirty years old.
He loves his jazz, and so Miles Davis. The next
couple actually or that way too. So Miles Davis had
a kind of a way of a break from the past.
Speaker 4 (54:22):
Okay, so he was.
Speaker 3 (54:24):
More of a kind of a cross between the more
structured early jazz and a swing that comes a little
bit later.
Speaker 4 (54:33):
And the swine is.
Speaker 3 (54:37):
Just absolutely kind of like the structure of the dose
Masis in a way. So it's it's got, it's elegant.
Speaker 4 (54:47):
It's pure, it's a I think it's a marvelous wine.
I love it.
Speaker 2 (54:53):
And the last wine is let's do your dose Masis.
Speaker 3 (54:56):
Yeah, that's Bill Evans, and it's Waltz nand for Betsy
Betty what is it Debbie?
Speaker 4 (55:03):
Yeah, Debbie. Debbie was his niece.
Speaker 3 (55:05):
Now what people don't realize is that Bill Evans was
actually on the Miles Davis album. And uh, he was
a pianist. He's a jazz pianist. And that's a wallsteime
and the pan and wars our first.
Speaker 4 (55:24):
Another war.
Speaker 3 (55:25):
It's a Russian river pian war from a little place
Green Valleys.
Speaker 2 (55:30):
Subba, you're throwing another wine into me, aren't you. You're
throwing you're adding the pino. Now we're going from dos mess.
We're going to throw another wine.
Speaker 3 (55:38):
In, so Pein and war is another one to Dave
did a lot of pay So that's West Coast, you know,
west of west they called it.
Speaker 2 (55:51):
Yeah, the West Coast Sonoma.
Speaker 4 (55:54):
And so it's a it's it's very.
Speaker 3 (56:00):
I think it's a very almost as it's a very
spiritual kind of wine. It just puts you in a
good moods A So yeah, I was listening to that,
and I was listening to the album and Chris was
making up his line. So his line is their delicate
(56:22):
profile with the wine pairs of lyrical gem piano notes
in number three fourth time, reflecting our opportunistic expansion to
a new terrible Wow, I should hire.
Speaker 2 (56:37):
Him, You should hire him?
Speaker 4 (56:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (56:39):
With me, Well, you could keep reading your son's lyrical pairings.
But we have been talking a long time, and I
have been keeping you. But I do want to ask
you a final question. It's a two parter, and the
first part is I know you're busy in your retirement
(57:00):
trying to solve the quandary, the queries of the physics world.
And you have a distillery and a winery. But is
there anywhere on your bucket list, a wine region on
your bucket list that you would love to go travel to?
Speaker 3 (57:16):
On my so everybody thinks of the big famous ones
everything that I've got my eyes set on San Sebastian
area and these great names I can't possibly pronounce.
Speaker 4 (57:28):
They've got a lot of teas and exes.
Speaker 2 (57:30):
Yes, and like chuck Alina, is that you pronounce it?
Speaker 3 (57:36):
Yeah, I've heard the X actually with a slur on it, shure,
you know, but I I'm sorry, I just just drink it.
That kind of is interesting because it also is a
young it's always as a young type style of wine.
It's got bright acidity, and you've got this shellfish coming
in from from the bay of this gay there. So yeah,
(58:00):
I think that's an odd place to go. But basically
I don't think it's odd.
Speaker 2 (58:05):
I think it sounds wonderful. I love a good chuckle,
you know, general, and I think with some oysters that
sounds perfect and fresh fish.
Speaker 4 (58:12):
You remind me of buy Bodha bag daste.
Speaker 2 (58:15):
Well, everything has to come full circle.
Speaker 4 (58:20):
That's right. That's very rovers or whatever they or Morris, Yeah,
they call it.
Speaker 2 (58:26):
Well, my last part of That question is if somebody
wants to come here, they come to the Livermore Valley,
where can they find you? When are you open? I mean,
you've got this charming little tasting room right on Vasco Row.
Speaker 3 (58:38):
So we're open Thursday through Sunday. That's always noon too,
about five, and then Sidewinder Spirits is the evening crowd.
It starts at about three in the afternoon, goes till
eleven the party place and that's only a couple hundred
feet away, So.
Speaker 2 (58:53):
Come wine tasting and then just kind of stroll over
by foot, right what you do after drinks the spirits.
I don't know if you can stroll by foot anywhere,
but you know, it's actually.
Speaker 4 (59:07):
Safer to stroll by foot.
Speaker 2 (59:09):
I don't know if your strolling is what I'm saying.
Speaker 4 (59:11):
This is an interesting area.
Speaker 3 (59:12):
We have a brewery next to us too, which is
helpful because we don't have to One of the things
of having with a distillery is you have to mash right,
so you have to grind your grains, and so that
requires the mill and the brewery. We go right over
the brewery. We borrow there, so the grain actually is
(59:34):
delivered to them. We go over and we essentially use
their mash tone. We make every thing and we can
transport we call cereal water to the distillery because without
the TTB being involved, because it's not alcoholic, it's just
sugar water.
Speaker 2 (59:51):
It's really a one stop shop here in Basco row brewery, distillery,
winery and everything else you want.
Speaker 3 (59:58):
Co Operations is o great among it's we're small enough
and that's the big distinguishing factor between here and just
about everywhere else. Is it like.
Speaker 4 (01:00:08):
Rosie's Rosie, I would be Stephen is next door to us.
He's Stephen. Frank is next door to is. He's Frank.
Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
Everything here in this valley, with maybe one exception of
the wine group is family owned. And now can Canada
is splitting off, it's going to be family owned to
David Kent.
Speaker 2 (01:00:26):
So it's a family owned place.
Speaker 4 (01:00:29):
Name of a place like that in.
Speaker 3 (01:00:31):
Nato, it's all purchased up. My some of my favorite
places are now part of a bigger treasury wine estates
or everything has changed around, not recently because has soul
a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
Well, we can keep talking and we'll keep talking, but
I am going to say that Livermore is a great
place for family owned wineries, and Oka Okazio is one
of those great family owned wineries. So come on out
to Livermore Valley and come find John and drink his
cocktails after you drink his wine.
Speaker 4 (01:01:02):
Two cheers.
Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
Thanks for listening to a new episode of Wine Soundtrack USA.
For details and updates, visit our website windsoundtrack dot com.
Popular Podcasts
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.