#18 - 2022 Grenache, Vinya Vella with Dylan Grigg

The following is a conversation with a political journalist, Dylan Gregg. Few people in the world of wine have been able to document their work in the way that Dylan has. For his Instagram posts, hundreds of people have learned about his work with all the vines in Australia, both as a consultant and as a wine maker for his own project, Viennye Vellah. In this episode, we have Dylan about his research on all the vines, particularly the work presented in his paper, an investigation into the effect of grapevine age, on vine performance, grape and wine composition, sensory evaluation and epigenetic characterization. We also discuss the pros and cons of layering vines and how Dylan thinks about social media. Listening to Dylan is not only helpful for learning from his mastery of these subjects, but also for understanding how to communicate in the modern world of wine, which can often feel a little stale. We hope you'll enjoy this episode as much as we enjoyed recording it. This is one bottle of three questions. Thank you for listening. Dylan, simple yes or no question, are old vines making better vines? It depends. On what? It depends on so many factors. Just because they're old doesn't mean they're good, they're good because they're old. Well they're old because they're good. You can have old vines, but if you're cropping them too high, then you're going to be missing that vine balance. That often comes with age, which is why most people say yes. So the answer, the short answer for most people would be yes, old vines make better wine, but perhaps I've spent too long thinking and reading about it to say, I can't say yes, because you can have an old vine that has a spectrum of growth, one that's really weak and is on its way out, and it's going to have not the best balance of fruit, which won't make a good quality wine. You can have one that's sitting under a dripping tap or it's got its roots down into the sewer, and it's just laden with fruit and it's dilute and not making the best wine. But the majority, we can say, we can say that the majority are in a sweet spot of vine balance. They produce high quality wines from high quality fruit. And if you have to say, what are the main factors that defines an old vine? And especially a question that a few people ask, when a vine becomes old? That's a good one. The OIV have just said that it's like 35 years. I think it's too young, because if we look at 35 years, there was a massive boom. When I was living in Spain, a lot of the vineyards there were planted in the mid to late 90s. In Australia as well, there was as many investment schemes. And huge hectares mid to late 90s, I think it's the same in South America, other places. And all of those vineyards are going to hit 35 soon. Does it mean that they're good? Does it mean that they've lasted through tough environmental conditions and economic conditions to prove their worth so that only the best remain? Not quite. So what age, I don't know, 50? They kind of need to have two. They almost need to have two generations with them at least. Because one generation can care for them, but then if the next doesn't care for them as well, who knows? Maybe they head south. It's an open-ended question. Would you say we're just scratching the surface of this? Because in your paper, written that it's barely exposed to critical examination, this topic, it seems like it's entered the sort of zeitgeist relatively recently. Over the last 10 years, it's become something which has really been taken on, probably popularised through marketing. I think it's a lie, it's not mine, but it's a good one. This one education comes through marketing and I think that's the case. So how much have we learnt in the last 10 years, would you say about this subject? I think that's an interesting one. I guess the education comes through marketing because it tries to find the thread of what people are interested in and if it's marketable, well, chase it down more. In the last 10 years, well, there hasn't been that much extra research done into old vines. I mean, each time I speak on the topic, whether it's locally or overseas, I usually do a quick literature review to catch up. And there's a little bit of work in the States. There's a bit of work in, I think, Argentina. But there's not a lot. There's not a lot out there. So in terms of the conversation and the airtime that our vines are getting, I think it's amazing and it's awesome because that way people actually look at these beautiful perennial plants and go, hey, maybe we need to look after them a little bit better. So they can maintain their old vines status or they can go from being young or middle-aged or whatever age they are and live longer and maybe ask for the person working them. But in terms of research, I don't think there's a lot that's gone on because it's a very difficult thing to research. You guys have read some of my work and I had a lot of supervisors and I went down several branches of science just to try and have that foundational thesis that could be a launch pad. So I know there's some people doing work. I think the Catena Institute are doing some on epigenetics. There's also some other genetic work happening in Australia looking at old and young, but comparing age to have ages, the treatment variable is impossible if you've got philoxyra and replanting. So it's a tricky thing. Okay, so it's still as confusing as people expected to be. So probably what's likely is that this is a question that will continue to be people will struggle with or grapple with for some time to come. We're not on the verge of discovering the answer, so to speak. We're very much going back to it depends, hopefully with a little bit more knowledge than we had before, but not a million, not moved on a million miles. I think it's moved on quite a lot. So we can respect these, well, I think we can respect these old vines, but when it comes down to, you know, is there any fundamental finding that has said, yes, they're old and they're good because of this. This is biology and these are biological things. So there's always going to be so many variables, but what we can agree on is that as a vine passes through the passage of time and multiple seasons, these assess our organisms that can't move and we know that they do have some adaption to their site. So something in that thread sets them aside from younger vines or other vines that might be able to move on, but don't have those same number of seasons under their belt. So old vines are always going to stand out. Will we find the answer? I don't know if there is an answer. Well, I think that may well be the answer. And I think it parallels a change that we've seen in wine where people have moved away from visiting the winery to wanting to go and see the vineyard. And in the winery, there's some quite simple black and white answers. Put wine in a new barrel of taste like this, put wine in an old barrel of taste like this, make this change to leave this number of buds or to do something different with the canopy. You can't possibly then prescribe a flavor that will come from that. It will have a longer and more complex effect, but we don't want to see it like that. We're too impatient and the viticulture is probably, well, in my opinion, is the least understood part of wine because it's the most complex. So I think perhaps there's a parallel with it there. I think so. And also, you've got, you know, once you've got the wine into the winery, it's, you know, it's kind of governed by the rules of organic chemistry and microbiology. I mean, there's a lot of variables, but you've got them in the winery and you've got some control over that. There is every, I mean, even when I'm planting new vineyards for clients, I'm like, they're like, how's it going to go? I'm like, every vineyard is an experiment. Certain places in the old world, they've been experimenting for hundreds of, hundreds of years. So they've got a better idea. But like you say, there's so many variables when it comes to the plant material, the soil, the environments and all of these things are in constant flux. I mean, the environment's changing quicker than we can, than we've seen in the past. So we're having to duck and weave in a depth to that. But the soil isn't static. You can't take one measurement when you plan to be like, hey, this is what it's going to be. It changes every year and it drifts over time. So I think it's, I think it's a challenge. So for what we know now today, when we're saying, yes, old vines are making up better wines. What do we put on the table? So what is something that we can say, certainly, oh, scientifically, an older vine does this. And there are certain things that we know that are, is the classic answer to a wine theory question on the diploma or the master wine exam when you go, the carbide rates, the low yields, but I'm always missing the why. So why does that happen? And how, how can I see that in my wine? Like what when Mike said, and also just just to add one extra thing to make it even more steering, like, is there a way in which you can really take a glass, use a mallet and you're like, "Um, this comes from older vines." I think the last part of the question, it's not always going to be that easy, but I think only if you're making a comparison to younger wines because when you say, "Is there something that we can attribute to it?" Yeah, I go to, if you're leaning on the bar at a tasting room or you're down in the cell and they're like, "Oh, this comes from old vines and they're struggling for life and they have tiny berries so they've concentrated fruit." My PhD didn't find that and even in practical situations, I don't see that. I think it comes back to what I referred to in one of the earlier comments I made is that it's vine balance. So old vines have had more time to come into equilibrium with their site. Now that equilibrium may have been, may have been encouraged by nutrient depletion or it may be the accumulation of pruning wounds and maybe trunk disease, but if I simplify it and say the typical vineyard has less than three trimesters and they're 10 years each. The first 10 years when you plant it, they're really vigorous, juvenile, they're cranking, you know, they need a lot of control to try and bring yields down and balance the vegetative growth and the reproductive growth. Then you've got the middle age when they're competitive in the sweet spot, they're not as a lot of as lanky and leaky and they're settling down a little bit and then you've got the last third. We're often they're losing the the vigor which means they're easier to keep in balance or they've got natural balance and that's when they often produce good quality but as they're declining in yield that's when they become less viable so the bulldozer comes in and pulls them out to replant. If they can get past that first third which would be the 30 to 40 years then they often fall into a natural balance because they're out of balance the wine produces probably not going to keep taking the fruit or it's not going to produce high quality. So if we talk about odd vines you'd say yes the carbohydrates is one to iron out differences in the season not moving around the vines can't go anywhere so they've got to adapt to their environment that's the epigenetic part and then vine balance is the big thing. I think if you've got balanced vines you're going to produce high quality fruit. I wondered if that was part of the part of the story about like survivorship bias with old vines is that it's a good sight, it performs well and that's why it's old whereas if it was mediocre it wouldn't get to that age would it so it's sort of if it with vineyard it had gets to 50 years old it's usually for a good reason. It's old because it's good yeah and it doesn't mean that it was a good vine it was planted the right combination of variety and sites so when I did my PhD we had vineyards I mean they'd be older now but they were 170 years old and out of the five key sites that I studied which had an average age of almost 100 years between the old and the young so they're all really old every one of them was within you know walking distance with a full bucket of water from a creek so all of these vines were planted in a situation that gave them enough vigor and momentum to get through seasons that were perhaps too hard for other vineyards that would see them decline not recover and then get pulled out whereas these ones perhaps we don't know maybe they were over yielding like hell in their early years and the grow a kept them there I will just keep pumping the grapes off of these vines and then as the yield started decline they found a better home or people now have realized hey these old vines are actually really good and the quality and the quantity is somewhat in balance. There's a quote in in skeletons book about vitic culture but when I read it I thought of you because at a certain point he argues on 1961 Bordeaux and he said like okay so my counter point on older vines making better wines is that if you think about it one of the most long lived ventures of all times of Bordeaux was made by vines that were basically nearly planted because most of those vines are coming after the frost at the end of the 50s so my question there is if I am an ninja but what I'm doing is there a way in which I can have the same result of an older vine just by pruning and canopy management? Yes and no so in Australia you know the Jimmy Watson trophies come off of very young vines there have been three-year-old vines that have been classified and gone into range. There's a sweet spot when vines are very young when they're in balance so I talk about there's vegetative vigorous so every year if we just take a quick sidestep every year the vine grows it grows two crops one we get our money for which is the grapes and the other one is the vegetative the vegetative crop which is the shoots the leaves that's what goes on for the next year. Now the balance that the vine puts into the reproductive crop which is the grapes and the vegetative crop which is the shoots the balance of growth between those two things is what is the most important thing. Now if you are an ninja and you can get the perfect balance with young vines between reproductive and vegetative growth then it is highly likely you can make a very high quality wine. The probability of being able to do that consistently and reliably isn't great because young vines have got feeder roots closer to the surface they haven't exploited all of the soil they're often got higher nutrient status is all of these things that are stacked up against you but in theory and also in practice in rare cases it is possible. If you were given the choice between a older vineyard with mediocre planting material or a new vineyard with amazing planting material which would you go for I asked it in a sort of annoying binary way but you know there's a history in Europe of just sort of a cliche but this is true. The plantings after the second world war where people planted for yield and got rid of maybe older genetics that were not for yield but would be produced in sort of very interesting grapes and wine. How has that shaped things because that's part of the old vines story that you know not all of the old planting material we have is very good some of it is very interesting some of it's not but with the improvements and the changes of newer better planting material how do you think that fits into the story of old vines? Oh that's a good one I think I mean I was talking with with a one maker today and we were talking about pinonois and this vineyard is 40 plus years old and I said oh we were commenting on the clones and I said you know once they get to a certain age age almost trumped clone because they're always we pick this we pick these grapes at a certain ripeness level and they always have the same flavour profile which is really good but they don't look like the clone that you think they would so when it comes to age I think if the vineyard has been there for a long time I choose I don't know maybe I'm a romantic I choose the older vineyard because it's probably got character and probably got interest but it would also depend if you're planting with younger vine material are we talking about something that's grafted are we dealing with fluxera are the rootstocks going to be imparting something if I'm speaking in the Australian context and saying can I have an old vine vineyard on own roots versus a young vine vineyard that's that's grafted I'll keep the old vineyard which would be a risk but I just think that character and those cycles of time and seasons you can't accelerate that and I love what that does to the vine structure and the way that vines grow and the way that the vines interact with this soil is that opinion or story sort of like MV6 in Australia that was I mean it's known as a workhorse variety but has actually become something which people have started to make if some kind of really interesting wines more and I might not on the mark mark with that one now you're pretty close to it you're actually off the mark because it's we were talking about declone which is actually like a highly productive it's a highly productive clone that usually makes thin and in sip it wines and grows very it grows very upright with big bunches but once it's had you know 35 40 years and when they were planted they planted them as spurt pruned vines to try and save money so they'd accumulate a lot of pruning wounds and we know the basal buds so buds 0 to 3 in pin anoyer aren't very productive you get a 40 year old vine that's loaded with pruning wounds in a site that hasn't been pumped with a manure and fertiliser the whole it's whole life life and prune it back to those base notes year on year. It's pretty consistent and it's yield is really, really suppressed compared to what it was when it was juvenile. It looks nothing like it's some young, clonal counterparts and it looks good. And just before moving on to the next thing, I wanted just to delve into the managing divine. Is it harder? Is it easier? Like, what specifically do you do in your vines? Like, surely there has to be a major difference between working with other vines, medium-age vines and older vines, I guess. Vines are very forgiving. I mean, we've learnt this and that's one thing that this whole kind of renaissance into pruning the vines, architecture and respecting the wood and the perennial growing nature of these climbing lianas, they evolve to grow up. So they put their growth up. We try and keep them down for our own convenience along a cord on or in a bootstuff. When find a young, they've got an incredible capacity for rejuvenation because every one bud that is laid down during the growing season is actually a compound bud that has three potential growing points in it. So for every one that shoots, there's two that's left behind. So you imagine how much that compounds over years, when the vine is vigorous, you can cut it back and you can still retain some growth. So anyone can do that, but the vine won't live to see middle-age. So if a vine has survived to get through middle-age and let's just say it's old age and it's 50, 60, 70 or 80 years old, whatever, it will have a lot of pruning wounds and there'll be wounds from tractors passing. Think of how many thousands of times a heavy-wide tractor has driven past a grapevine that can't move out of the way. When you work with young vines, you can kind of assume that they're going to, or you can infer where they're going to burst from. So we look at the buds, we try and choose the buds on the outside of the vine. So they've got those sap channels and they, you know where they're going to grow into and you can guide them easily. Once they get old and they've got necrotic or dead tissue, you really need to have a careful eye to go right. This passage up the side of the vine around the trunk and over onto this side is going towards this bud. This is one I can rely on for growth. So when you're pruning, you've got to be really careful and intentional on how you prune an older vine because if you make a big cut or you go, "Oh, I'm going to take this whole structure or this whole arm off and it'll grow out the left side." You can't change direction that quick. Visually, the vine will shoot out the lift, but we know that a vine, it's just a big bundle of drinking straws. They start really fine down in the roots and they pull water from the soil matrix through the roots. They go up through the trunk, out through the stems, the pdls and as the leaves is gas through the stomata. Now that suction of water is what drives everything through photosynthesis and that's the building of the carbon or pulling the carbon from the air like CO2 carbohydrate. If you cut those drinking straws and say, "Hey, here's a big bundle of straws, I'm going to cut it off and you're going to grab this little bud to the left." The vine can't change direction that quick once it's old. So those drinking straws lead in pathogens and they die back down towards the roots and you never recover. So working with middle-aged and older vines, you've got to be really careful and the things that we observe with older vines should, you should avoid them with young vines so they have a chance. That was very visual with me riding my hand around but hopefully it made sense. Dylan, we can ask you all sorts of things really and one thing we wanted to ask you was like as a change attack towards about layering so it's something which is quite a specific bit of vineyard work, I guess something that in history had more application. We've seen a video on Instagram of you commenting on a vine that had been cut off too soon from its mother vine but yeah, I wanted to ask you about the differences between layering versus planting with cuttings. What is the differences that you could do there? Because it ties into old vines given that people are trying to save old vignards or save genetic material. So either they might do cuttings in a cell selection or in the case where people are replanting vignards they could use layering so why would you go for one over the other? I guess the big thing here if we talk about taking the large overview would be the fact that the layer, if you're in an area that has flocksera and your vines growing on a rootstock, the layer is susceptible to flocksera or if your rootstock is chosen because of lime tolerance or some other nematode resistance any layer you put down will potentially have a negative effect on the mother vine. So layering isn't for all occasions. The other thing with layering is if you have a vineyard that's really struggling like in some places the soil is so weak and the vines are just getting by and you increase the load on the overfer to the mother as the main vine and the daughter as the layered young vine going forward. If you have a vine that's growing you know eight shoots and handful of bunches each year and then you grow one long massive shoot and put it into the ground sometimes that can draw too much and it can kill the mother vine but if you've got the right situation which is commonly the case as the daughter goes into the ground that vine has young roots and feeder roots which are near the surface and they're feeding from a different zone that the old vine or the mother vine long left behind now they're searching deep and far and wide if you've got good irrigation practices and fertiliser practices. So the daughter can actually feed back through that connecting cord to the mother. So usually my point is to if you are going to separate the two vines is to cut them when the daughter is clearly fatter or has a larger diameter than the tissue connecting the mother and daughter if you have to cut them. But I don't think you even I don't think you should because you can create a larger organism and one that has more capacities to survive if you can relay it next door. So in terms of propagation in a vineyard it's great but in terms of planting a new vineyard you're only planting another vine within two meters of the one that we're doing. So the question is I mean in my studies I had one vineyard that had so I did a PhD on old vines I looked at the old vine and there was a young vine that was planted in the same soil and the same site managed in the same way which is tricky to do outside of the brossa valley. And every vineyard was so there were five sites and they were all genetically identical in terms of the the daughter was the daughter or the cutting was taken from the mother. So when I did genetic analysis the mothers and the daughters were all identical they all clustered together. When I did epigenetic analysis which was looking at the epigenome all of the sites the the old vines and the young vines all separated except for one site and I thought this is driving me crazy I'm like what am I missing here with the statistics if I look at it this way if I look at it that way the bioinformatics was not going my way and then until I thought about and I'm like hang on site five this one site they were actually the young vines were propagated by layers and it stuffed up my bioinformatics because the lay advines even that even though they were disconnected from the mother they had the same epigenetic profile as the mother. So the genetic profiles clustered the epigenetic profiles are diverged between the mothers and the daughters on four sites but they're exactly the same on this one site. So from that we can assume or we can infer that when you are layering from the mother the vines doesn't go through a phase of rejuvenation it doesn't become juvenile because effectively you steal an old vine when it goes under the ground and pops out of the ground and starts regrowing whereas when you take a cutting even though you're getting the benefits of that natural selection from your old vineyard that cutting is alone and that stick needs to go in the ground and go which ways up which ways down which ways warmer which ways cooler where do I where do I send my hormones to create callus to grow roots because one thing that's that I've observed in my own vineyard is if you put a layer down that will fruit year one because it still thinks it's connected to the the mother. Whereas how many vineyards do you see where they're all nursery? do you have where you take thousands of cuttings, million cuttings, plan them in the ground, they don't fruit. So there's this rejuvenation process that must happen where the epigenetic markers or the fingerprints or the experience, if you will, that that's shoot or that vine had once it's removed from the mother, they're lost. This is research that I think we'll learn more about because it's kind of interesting and exciting and I think there's a chance that people will with that, so I think that I do. Just trying to cool. So in a shorter way, when you layer your retain also the soul of the plant. Yes, exactly. But you can't do it because of, well, in a lot of European wine regions, you wouldn't be able to do it because of phyloxera or maybe, as you said, lontaurants for, yeah, those kind of things, pH related, whatever. The main thing is phyloxera. You can't do it phyloxera because of, you know, there's only a couple of root stocks that are truly resistant to phyloxera. Most root stocks are actually tolerance. So they're supporting a population of phyloxera on their roots, just their response to the last feeding isn't to kill the vine. They don't either produce the starch and run themselves out of energy and die. And if you put that layer down, it will have that effect. So the phyloxera is still there, it'll feed on it and it will be a potential draw on the mother. We were wondering about that with regards to you. I mean, like, you know, the replanting 3% of an old vineyard in Shabli or Bordeaux. Like, why do you need to stick a young vine in the ground, but yeah, makes sense. Is something that I saw through one of your presentations and never thought of that? But there are like, technically two types of layering. Whereas the one in which you intentionally layer and the one in which the plant is a low training and it just goes down. Is there any difference? Is there something that is maybe like, prefered out of the two or any differences that you notice? Because I guess when the plant does it itself, well, I guess it is pretty rare because you're checking it every day. But is there any advantage or disadvantage to that? I don't think so because you can have a vine, well, the layering process uses one-year-old wood to grow the roots. So a vine can touch the ground and it can be lying on the ground for years. It will never grow roots unless it grows a shoot in that position. So having that volunteer layering or self layering is a, it's a pretty random occurrence. Whereas when I'm layering in a vineyard, I'll prune one year to a downward facing bud from a spur that's got a good position so that I'll encourage it to grow down. So it's easier to bury. So I think doing it intentionally really, I think, works more with the vine to support it. Whereas if it just happens by a random because the vine's fallen over, I mean, it's a good thing, but it's really a survival mechanism. So the vine's going, oh god, here's some soil, here's a wound. Perhaps I'll throw some roots down here and I can survive. It's a last-ditch effort, so it might not be as well planned. Same as if you, I'm not into medical science, but if you have a cut, you know, you cut your thumb off, well, I've got a bad cut on my finger at the moment, you cut your finger and you go, ah, I should be right, I don't need to go to the doctor, that'll heal up fine. Yeah, it heals up fine. But if I went to the doctor, they might have gone, but that's not quite right. Let's encourage it to heal in the right way. That's me saying, let's encourage the vine to root in a way that we know will give it specific advantages long term instead of it going, oh, I think I'm going to die, I'm going to put down roots here. And what about the sturdiness of the plant? Because I guess the older the plant gets and the harder it is to layer if you have like a cordon or some like that, but like, is there something that is linked to two varietals as well? Are there like many varietals that have worked with or are these other two layers? I think the-- I mean, obviously, if you're working with a cordon, your distance from the ground makes it difficult. And what else will make it difficult is the propensity or the number of water shoots or trunk shoots. So those latent buds inside the trunk, how many of those actually shoot to give you something that's going to grow out? For example, Shiraz is terrible. Or it doesn't really throw trunk shoots. It'll always throw shoots from one year oldwood. So that's difficult sometimes to get shoots lower down. And the one and one of the other things that makes it really difficult is certain varieties grow either erect or pendulous. If they're pendulous, then their shoots will hang down. And you can guide them down. If they're erect, you can't bend a shoot down. So micro-nash vineyard, it's an erect variety. I can't bend a shoot down. And especially when my shoots are 60 to 80 centimeters long. So that's why if I'm intentionally putting out a layer or prune to a downward facing bud off of a horizontal or a downward facing spur to try and get it to go in the ground. Whereas Shiraz or even Pino and Shadonay, you can lay a shoot on the wire. And when it's horizontal, it'll just run. You just keep putting pink tape on it. And the next year you come and you bury that four meter cane underground and send it straight back up. [MUSIC PLAYING] I think I never saw anyone using social media like you do. We know you because of social media. I guess it helped your career quite a lot. And compared to what many people are doing, because many people are trying to nail what a branding means. You are actually doing what we saw. Mike is a big follower of GaryVee and Crush It when he arrived in 2009. I used to read when I was a musician, Austin Clean, when Show Your Work arrived. But we still feel that many way makers think of marketing, like if he's the 80s or the 90s. And not many are showing their work. They don't-- I rarely see people showing what they're doing. And we wanted to ask you, what do you do? Do you have a social media strategy? I really don't know. I love to share. I've got this philosophy of abundance. So I don't-- I figure there's always so much to learn out there. And the more that I can share it and pay it forward, it'll come back. I mean, we're here talking because of those things. There's nothing much to hide. I don't know. I mean, I watch some of that GaryVee stuff. I remember him saying, just turn the phone around and talk into it. I don't think that I do it that often. But I just-- I really like sharing the knowledge because I hear those cringy videos of people. And this is how we're pruning a vine. It's just like a bit like Yorn. There's people that are into wine, really into wine, really thrive on the detail. And there's so much detail that's just glossed over and overlooked. And especially the smoke and mirrors and all the bullshit and crap that comes with bit of culture or every season's perfect because of this reason or these vines are perfect and this side is perfect. Well, what about the nuts and bolts of how it all works? I find that really interesting. And if I find it interesting, maybe people don't. I don't know. Sometimes I post and people write lots of comments and sometimes I just hit crickets. But you guys would probably know. I meet people all the time. And they're like, oh, I love that thing you said about this and that. And I asked you a question and you answered it. And I'm like, oh, sorry. What was your handle? Because I answered pretty much everyone. So I don't have a strategy at all, no. How's it helped you, though? I mean, in a sense, because I guess it's not really about that specifically, but I think people who bear in mind, people listen to this, be wine professional or whatever, they kind of-- people are unsure about where to go and what to do. But why really like about you is that you're just honest about it. Because the knowledge of what you have is good. Then you just talk about the things that you know. And it's not pretending or trying to make it entertaining. It's just this is what's going on if you're interested. Have a watch. But does it help you get sort of new work? I mean, you mentioned you're busy enough anyway with things. So is it yours or is it just for interest? No, it started out as just for interest. And it started out just as sharing. Because I was on Twitter years ago when it was a positive thing. And then it was just-- It was like a community of people. And it was just an appeared to be this Facebook of the past where instead of the people you went to school with or from your hometown, it was people in vineyards and wineries. And we were talking about the weather and growing and things like that. Then I got introduced to Instagram and it was like, oh, OK. Now I'm very visual. And I learn very visually. I got images all around on my desk. So it became a good way that I could explain things to clients and people that I work with. But then I'm like, hang on. If these guys are finding value, if they don't mind it, I'll just share my mind and explain things to people on my phone. and it's fair and so. an audience all over the place. So I've had amazing conversations and I've also got a lot of work. So you're right, I don't advertise, I don't even have any business cards printed. I don't even have a waiting list because it's too long. I just keep doing what I do on the Instagram and I've used me the luxury of working with really great people and great wine makers from not only here but abroad. I mean last week I was, well it's like every day. I'm messaging in California, in Spain, crossing over to the UK, you know my phone rings from South Africa every afternoon. That's the echo if he's listening and then I've got my 10 growing regions in Australia. So my heads everywhere at once, I'm Northern Hemisphere. So the one thing with my Instagram strategy is I, I don't know if I'm succeeding at it but I like the seasonality. So I try not to go backwards. So if you get my camera roll, I've got 40,000 photos on it at the moment and you do that thing where you pinch and zoom right out, it goes green for the growing season. Then it goes brown. Then it goes green and it goes brown because the seasonality of what I'm seeing and what I'm observing and I post 10% less than 10% of what I see and the things that really like make me enthusiastic and I want to share but sometimes you just don't have the energy or the time because you've got other work to do but there's lots out there to share especially in viticulture to wine-oriented people. What were the most receptive piece of content you put out there? What was the thing that many people commented on or give us a few examples maybe just so that we have an idea? I would say I've had so many that have just kind of that have been really popular but when I do those pruning sequences or those explainers that I pin up in my highlights I get a lot of feedback from those, sometimes too much to get back to but I try to get back to everyone. I think it's some of those pruning things. Yeah but I don't know maybe I should go back and have a look. Well no it's that one. I tell you it's the one when I walk through remember when I had that bunch of that big bunch of grand ash from my vineyard and I'll walk through this peanut vineyard and we're having these two terrible years and we had these 35 grand bunches and I was just like hanging on I've got a bunch on the floor of my youth that I was going to take home for some reason and that maybe if I did more of those lighthearted things that kind of got a lot of attention. And did you see a change from your social media about how people started thinking about the projects that you do like with Vinavela? Did anything happen? Did you see like maybe a rise in loyalty towards your own product rather than your work? I don't know it's it's it's hard to say I think the work at Vinavela and the fact that that is kind of my little my little experiments, my little proving ground it lets me talk and post it straight away whereas when I post all of my other things I usually leave a decent gap from the site visit so I don't walk out of a client's vineyard and post about how crappy pruning might be. I try to have enough space. I try to have enough space to try and share knowledge without you know anyone feeling like I'm pointing the finger whereas if I go out to Vinavela I can just be like yeah this is what we're doing so without having any way to measure it I would like to think that it's helped with my credibility that I have always been even though I have a PhD and I am a consultant I've got dirt under my nails and I started pruning that was my first ever job I did technical certificates and worked my way up to management for quitting to go to university to do an undergraduate and open a book on Gidaculture so I think that I think it's good to show people that you know I know my way around in the dirt and soil and you know talking about nerdy stuff.