5 Years of XChateau w/ Amanda McCrossin & Charlie Fu

Hey listeners, have you heard of the term "brand differentiated commerce?" Probably not, since I made it up chatting with the folks at Offset about what they do. Offset is a proudly independent wine commerce platform and brand studio rolled into one based in wine country. Their platform Offset Commerce has been shaped by listening to smart wine businesses over the last 16 years. And unlike other platforms on the market, it empowers individual wine business models rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. That's why iconic wineries and merchants, like Larkmead vineyards, kill Cita Creek and Kermit Lynch wine merchant, trust Offset Commerce to handle the unique ways in which they sell. Go to OffsetCommerce.com to learn more. That's OFF-SET-commerce.com to learn more. Welcome to X-Shatto. X-Shatto. The podcast that navigates the business of wine with unique perspectives and insights. With your host Robert Vernick and Peter Young. Welcome to this episode of X-Shatto. Today is a special episode. It's our five-year anniversary and reflecting back on five years of X-Shatto, we decided to bring our most frequent guests back to join us for a little panel session, a little bit different format. Today we have Charlie Foo, wine-berserker's moderator, Clay Foo Wine, Australia Caviar, and a lawyer, all this in one man. Welcome to Show Charlie. Thank you for having me back. Hope everyone's doing well. And then we got Amanda the Crossen, wine personality, zombie vant on TikTok and IG, also the host of the Wine Access Unfiltered Podcast. Welcome back Amanda. Thanks guys and congratulations on five years. It's so exciting. Can't believe a pandemic started five years ago. That's where this podcast started. I guess it's a congratulations to everyone then. We made it. We're all here. So we all met around five years ago. How have your lives changed over this journey? Man, go for it. You've got a lot of life change going on. It was this time last year that I gave notice that my former day job, so I was the wine director at press restaurant in Appavali and I decided to go full-time literally weeks before the pandemic started with being a content grader and we started the podcast shortly thereafter, even though all of these things were sort of scheduled to happen. That first year was sort of trial by fire trying to figure things out and make it work. And then over the last four years as obviously the world has changed and social media has changed. It's been an interesting landscape to navigate both on the social media side and of course on the wine side with so many habits around drinking changing, but I would say the biggest thing is being a full-time content creator now. It really is by day-to-day. I have a manager who oversees everything. I live on the East Coast now for the most part and I didn't expect it to look the way that it does in terms of my day-to-day, but I do love it and I get to create things every day and talk to you guys for a living, which is cool. And Charlie, what about you? What's happened over the last five years? Oh jeez, life is kind of static for me being a lawyer, but Kaviar has gotten really popular in the last five years. So our company, Australia Kaviar has been doing super well. We're in mission start restaurants all over. The country were distributed multiple countries all over the world, so that's been pretty fun, not really wine-related, but it had some tangent because I meet a lot of cool people that drink wine and a lot of restaurants that I can drink wine at because I sell Kaviar to them. But other than that, family is good. My daughter is eight and a half years old now, so she's running around sassy meal day long asking me why I'm going to a wine dinner tonight, telling her friends that daddy's had a wine dinner again. And so that's the only really big negative that's occurred in the last five years. Otherwise, pretty good. I need to hit you up for some Kaviar. Kaviar hasn't impacted your cholesterol at all. I don't eat a lot of Kaviar, so I eat when I have to. You can't get high on your own product too often. We have this New Year's Day show where you would have champagne and Kaviar, my wife, and I try to like, gross the kids. I like, it's fish eggs. You won't like it. They're like, we'll try it. Now they're like, hey, when you're getting that good stuff from your friend, an L.A. The positive with my daughter thinks it looks like poop, so she has no interest in it. But like your kids, a lot of my friends keep asking me when their kids are going to get their refills. And I said, anytime you place an order on our website, you can have to refill. And Peter, will you last change in five years? Yeah, gosh. I've got two kids all within the last five years. And a wife. Yeah. Well, and if you want to say, the birth of my first kid was one of the times Charlie was on the podcast because he had to sub in for me as a host for one of the episodes of it. It goes like a year and wrap or something in 2021 or 2020, something like that. And outside of that, it's been great helping all different sorts of wine related businesses over the last five years as a consultant doing things all across the value chain from producers to importers, brokers, retailers, private equity companies looking to buy things in the space and it's been fun. Awesome. Robert, what about you? My last year or so has been a little crazy, but during the pandemic, it was kind of day job and then working remote allowed me to do this as well as a bunch of stuff on Instagram and things have kind of normalized. I kind of dialed back some of that stuff. You know, I was in the master wine program for a while. I got out of that. Too many things going on that weren't actually like driving towards the center point. I'm actually not working at the moment, which is the first time in my life where I haven't worked for so long. It's been kind of good and bad. The good part is spending a lot of time with the kids. The bad part is you're not making money because of those frozen cons, but things are progressing well and physically and mentally everything's in a lot better state these days. Having some time off is good for you. They don't tell you that when you're the middle of being super busy, that it's so good for you until you experience it. But surely you've worked through some of that great wine that I'm sure you've put away, right? So I've been on like a health kick, so I haven't been drinking as much. It's also my wife is on a super health kick. I look sad compared to her. So I haven't been drinking as much. I haven't been buying as much either. Also, the prices have been kind of going crazy. So we have beautifully, I guess. Yeah, exactly. Without working, I have to be a little physically irresponsible to keep buying all this expensive wine. So I'm slowly working through. That is the goal. Definitely going to be a topic to touch on given the state of the industry today in early 2025. But yeah, our podcast over the last five years has gone through a lot of changes too, especially right at the start. Robert came to me and said, we should do a podcast. And I was like, I don't even know what a podcast is. The time. He's like, well, you got this book coming out. Luxury Wine Marketing. We can just talk about topics in that book. So I was like, sure, okay. Especially then when the pandemic happened shortly thereafter. It was like, okay, now we've got the time we should do this. And I think we interviewed a few people and we're like, wow, this is a lot easier than talking to each other. They're making content. Yeah, it's easy. And we learned a lot more. Like that was one of the most exciting things for me and still continues to be exciting, interesting for me to this day is the amount I learned from all of you guys and everyone else that we have on the show is just an incredible thing. When we did meet, it was the height of the pandemic and lockdowns and the influencer category was taking off. And that's where you guys first were on the show as influencers and wine influencers in the space. And Robert was a wine influencer at the time too. How do you guys think that that has changed that whole influencer world has changed in the last five years? I think for me personally, one thing to mention, I guess I'll start with. In 2020, I did not have a TikTok account. Nor did I think that TikTok was going to be a part of the wine culture at that point. And about a year later, I decided, and I think I talked about this on one of our podcasts. I decided at the suggestion of a friend who was sort of dabbling in it that it was a place to look at. And so I did. And it took about six months to really figure the whole thing out. But I ended up building a pretty big following. I'd already had a modest following on Instagram, but I really built it up on TikTok. And so what I found was that TikTok was really opening the door for creators in the wine space to talk about wine in a more snackable way. Because I think at that point, you had long form content on YouTube. And then you had Instagram, which was like very short form and still very photo based. And then you had TikTok, which sort of opened the door for what we have today, which is a lot of creators who are really focusing on snackable 90 second content or less, where it not only educates, but it also reaches a much wider audience than we've ever had access to before. So I think the space where it is today is one, we're seeing a lot more creators get excited about the wine space in regards to not only TikTok, but now Instagram, which is a very different platform than it was five years ago. But we're also seeing an audience who's much more excited about it, which I find interesting that we're talking so much about how these younger audiences, these younger people aren't drinking. And yet I see demographics that almost support the inverse of that where they're very excited and they're hungry for information. And I think it's a much different landscape than we initially saw. But we're also getting so much more feedback from people. I mean, think about the three-tier system and how it dictates how wine is sold in the United States. It's the first time that we're really getting real time feedback in a very consistent way. So I think the landscape right now for social media is educational reaching wider audiences and hopefully getting people to be more excited about wine. I think the one place that we haven't really gotten good at is weaving it into pop culture and the way that other categories have. The Psalm thing took off for a while and I think that sort of reached peak with the Psalm movies. Yeah, we reached peak Psalm. You mentioned the demographics are more favorable or younger. What kind of demographics are you seeing? Is it mostly Gen Z or millennials that express a lot of interest? It's so wide. And I think that my specific demographic is definitely the late 20s, early 30s, mostly female. category all the way through Boomer, right? So 60s. But then you have a lot of younger creators in the space, Warner, Bowen, from Covenant, Suncorked, Koki's World of Wine, who are really capturing that truly Gen Z audience because I'm a millennial, I'm not going to connect to Gen Z the way that a Gen Z would. So I think you're just seeing a wider spread now that there's more content creators in the wine space, capturing different audiences. And then we obviously have some crossover in that Venn diagram, but it's pretty widespread. Not a ton of like male creators, interestingly, in our space. Obviously, Charlie, I'd love to hear your perspective, but outside of like attorney's omnihanful of others, like it does feel very female dominated right now. Yeah, Charlie, what are you seeing out there? Are you on TikTok yet? I'm terrible on TikTok. If you fall in my account, I think I have like a hundred hosts, and I may reply to no one, if someone comments, because I just log in to upload something I just leave, which is the worst way to do it. This is why it fails. But I think Amanda's really spot on. She has a much better pulse than I do in regards to current trends on social media. But I do notice there are probably more female content creators than male for wine, especially on the education side. I honestly can't think of very many guys that are doing educational videos per say, at least to a general audience. I guess it's hurting some, but I'm not quite sure. He's not quite as broad and generally captivating, I think, as a lot of the female content creators are doing right now. Doing such a better job of producing content that's approachable and consumable and looks good. I think for most of us with our male gaze, we have honestly terrible, visual, not just appearance, how we look, but how we edit things. It just doesn't look as good. We don't put as much foresight into how we're going to prepare lighting, how we're going to have our video or angles, how to design, graphics, pop-ups. There's a lot of amazing male content editors in other spaces that just make the most visually incredible stuff. It just hasn't translated a lot. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's just because most of the wine creators for men might be a little bit older. I think that's what I'm really seeing. They're either older or they're a lot younger and then a lot younger. They just don't have that same passion as our female counterparts do. I should mention Constantin Bome, Master of Wine. He's got a fantastic YouTube channel, but I do think it speaks to how men typically consume content. I know we've mentioned in the podcast before, the demographics of YouTube as a standalone platform definitely skew more male-heavy and there have been studies that support that men generally consume longer form content over short form content and females. It's the inverse of that. I think it does stand to reason in some ways. I will say like Constantin's videos are very well produced and edited and has rate-lighting, but I think he also, to some degree, has a team around him not to discredit him anyway, but I would love to see more short form creators in this space from all-genders, but it was just for that observation. Age is an interesting thing too because I do think that the male creators long form are also older. I would think they take a more. serious isn't the right word. They take a more. It's academic, I think. Academic is the word. Yeah, yeah. It's more academic and I think it's hard to make academic fun and interesting and engaging. It's really that snackable part of like, get this down to 90 seconds and make it snappy and hook them in the first five seconds. I don't think I've seen anyone who was a young man or young male do that, especially in that format with that 90-second kind of. I mean, we had Gary Vee originally. That was long form. Super long form. That's like 15 minutes of just him talking about one or two lines. I would love to do that. That would be so fun, but the amount of people that will consume that is like, nil. Have you seen Tom Gilby's stuff? He's a British content creator and I don't know how all of these may be in 30s, 40s. He's creating mixed-nackable content as well, but it's very like high-paced, high-energy. He's got a big following, but I suspect he's probably not for everyone. I don't know if he caught his stuff. He's the one that did the marathon wine thing, right? Yes. And when Superviral, I know he does like a lot of like Supermarket stuff, so I think not leaning so much into the academics up. I think he's captured that side of things really well, but it would be nice to see in the next five years. What was the marathon wine thing? Every mile someone would be waiting for him with a glass of wine and he'd drink a glass of wine or he'd do like a quick blind wine taste or something. I don't want to run a marathon or do a blind tasting on camera. That sounds awful. The men can keep that one. That's for you guys. No, no, he can be the only one. That's so endeavor right there. Well, we talked about TikTok and Instagram. How have you guys seen the platforms change over the last five years? Amanda, you probably have a good perspective on this. Yeah. I mean, Instagram finally caught up. I think the last time that we guys talked, Instagram was still three to four weeks behind the TikTok trends, which I'm sure does some degrees, like still the case, but Instagram really took a hard look at their own algorithm and how they were pumping out content and really put a lot of effort into mirroring what was going on with TikTok. I mean, you could say stealing to some degree, I guess, but I think they looked very similar for a while. And now I think if you look at TikTok versus Instagram, you can put higher production quality content on Instagram that's still short. Whereas like TikTok, they still want the raw. They want the like face to camera. The less produced the better really is what works on TikTok. Or authentic. Yeah, they want the authenticity on TikTok. And I think they wanted to some degree on Instagram, but it does feel like the things that are like getting pumped out to me. They're not using like 4K full on rigs, but they're using better quality cameras. I think some people are using laugh mics. I use laugh mics and a lot of my videos now. So I think they're doing a lot of the same things, but they're capturing different audiences. It's a lot of the same stories being told in different ways. Instagram also just upped their video content length amount to three minutes a few weeks ago. So I'll be interested to see how that gets prioritized. I've fiddled around with them in that two to three minute mark. And because sometimes early adopters get pushed a little bit faster, but I haven't really seen the ROI on that quite yet. And what about threads? I did it. Charlie, did you? No, I like browse threads all the time just because it keeps popping up on my Instagram. So I'll like click it and look at it. And it feels very like early stage Twitter where it was just tweets to catch engagement. There's very little information to learn. It's mostly like, oh, hey, do you guys like pizza? Well, I think you should really put pickles on pizza. Everyone else does like it sucks. And then just to see what the reaction is. There's no actual knowledge to be learned from what I can see. That most of what I've seen is it seems like a precursor that the threads post is like draft of the real post before it comes out. And a lot of times you'll see something on threads and then like, don't be a post 12 hours later, that is almost exact same content. That's an interesting point, Robert. I'd never really considered that would be a method. But I think that's maybe a great way for people who are listening that are trying to figure out what concept my work. That's a great way to test it out. And we talked about Instagram and TikTok and you just mentioned Twitter or X. Are any of the other platforms relevant at all for wine with X YouTube? Yeah, YouTube for sure is still relevant, but snap or anything new because one of the things that we had thought about five years ago was that these platforms are constantly changing and we expect them to keep changing and new ones to pop up. But it seems like it's kind of settled down, right? Well, Red Book for food and beverage, Red Book is becoming a thing. So, so home show out of China again, my wife's Chinese, but there's an English app and for local like restaurant and food recommendations, it's really, really popular and talking to a few restaurant tours in San Francisco. They frequently get clients who have heard about their restaurant because of that app and maybe it's because there's a very large Asian population in San Francisco, but it's interesting how that is very geo-located for the content you're browsing. So you only get served up content that is in the region you're in. And there's a lot of food and beverage kind of like activities. So when we travel, we use it a lot to like figure out we were in Turkey, we were like trying to figure out what restaurants to go to over the summer or in London. And it's like every place it'll dial it in and kind of tell you when the production guys are quite high and the content there's a content in multiple languages. I think it's a platform for food and beverage, but I don't know how much wine is actually on there, but you definitely see it for the hospitality side. You heard it your first. I've never heard of it. Me neither. Red Book is huge for food, restaurants, at least Asian dominant communities that we're living and fine dining is driven so much by little Red Book in LA because so much of the clientele is Chinese and that's where they're getting their information from and it's very stylized. Little Red Book is more like Instagram than it is like TikTok to me. It's very video heavy. It's not post heavy. It's very video though. Everything's meant to be stylized and polished. Yeah. It's very polished so it looks like what you would think the Chinese version of Instagram would be. It's like video yelp reviews almost is how I see it, but the way their algorithms are really cool because it serves it up based on you where they're at. So every time we go to a new place, my wife is like, I'll find the restaurants. And it's kind of a cool thing to do. Hey, we went in this restaurant and it's like really polished voice over videos that they've clipped together. But remember when we had that one day ban of TikTok? There was a whole article of how people were migrating off of TikTok into some of the other apps and there were other Chinese apps and Red Book was one of them. It was very interesting to see the commentary that day. They're like, oh wow, we went and checked out this app and there's a lot of cool stuff on there. I'm not sure how many people stuck to it, but it's definitely an app to watch out for. I'll take a peek. That's really interesting. A great way to learn about new restaurants in different cities too, especially if they're geolocating. Oh yeah, but it's mostly in Chinese by the way. There's some titles and stuff. Okay, so obviously there's English speaking one. So like I could start a Red Book account and obviously this is self-serving. So I could start a Red Book account and like put up videos from restaurants or even like wineries. Yeah, you can do whatever you want. There's wineries stuff on there when you go up to Napa. They're very geolocate. So as soon as you go to a new area, you will see what pops up when you're there. So when we don't have to Tahoe a couple of minutes. weeks ago, it was like, I haven't been in the trucky in years. Okay, let's go. And then all of a sudden, they're like, which ramen place to go to? There's only three or four. They get some reviews on it. Wow, thanks for the tip guys. It's so cool. Very interesting. I think over the last five years, we've also seen a lot of people who are influencers on social media change. I think some accounts have become less active and new ones have popped up. Do you think there's a cause for that? Or is there like a normal lifespan for influencers, or does it just kind of the cream rises to the top? What do you guys think is happening here? I mean, I've been in the game 10 years now and I get tired on mute at first, doom it. It's draining in every capacity. I create everything that I do. And then on top of that, you know, I have like the business side of things, which is the monetization side. So dealing with partnerships. So I mentioned beginning a podcast and working with a manager now who has stepped in and really oversees all of my inbound communications, all contract negotiations, anything legal. She's a whole team that oversees making sure that I get deliverables and times. Without that, I'm not sure that I'd be in this space that I'm in today, which is really just being able to focus on content creation. But even that side of things, one, there's only so much creative juice a person has in a day. And two, there's so much social energy that has to be expected when you are putting out content on social platforms. You could do the thing where you put content out and you walk away and you never respond and you don't do it with people. That's probably a healthier approach. But managing comments, managing DMs, managing whether the algorithm is even liking the content, like there's so much that goes into it that is mentally taxing on top of the fact that you're having to actually physically create the content and script. So I can definitely see a world and when somebody gets into it and it's really fun. And then after a few months or a few years, this is not fun for me anymore or this is not economically viable. It becomes untenable. And I do get that because I've definitely been there and I've needed to take a step back and say like we need to regroup. This isn't working for me anymore. Robert, you've dialed down a lot. What was the cause of that? I mean, it's just priorities, right? I kind of went over the top. I was like, hey, the MW program, the podcast, Instagram plus a job plus two kids and a life. It became hard to do all of that stuff. And I think I'd burn out, like deep burnout. I'll just be honest, I did burn out. And something I had to give and I came to the realization. It's like, I think I could do the MW, but I was just like, it's going to be a five year journey plus and I was just like, it doesn't make sense to me what I'll get out of it for what I have to put into it because that time and cost was huge. And I think that was the big one. I just had to take a break from that. And then I actually took a break as the influencer stuff because I was focusing on the MW. And I think the MW tanked the influencer side. And it was just hard to pick it back up because I've tried a couple times to get back into it. You have to be honest. And I got tons of DMs for people and I still respond to it if people like tag me or things like that. But it was just over simulation. Like I went hard at it for a big period of time. I think I did too much in the space and it burnt me out. And so now I do want to get back into the personal side because I'm missing some of the personal enjoyment of it. But it became a grind a little bit like you have to stay on top of everything. And then also the number of expanding platforms and wanting to dabble on YouTube, wanting to dabble on TikTok and Instagram. And just keeping tabs on that, it's more than a part-time job. And so you either focus it on one or you make some calls on what you're going to prioritize. I do hope to get back into it, but it's something that I've taken a little bit of time off from. I'm trying to figure out what's my contribution in the space because I don't just want to be posting the wines I drink. If I do that, I'll do that on my personal account. There was a reason that I quit press when I did. When you're juggling that much and then having to be vulnerable to a degree or version of yourself, what that takes out of you is the real thing. And I applaud you, Robert, for walking away before it's too late. Yeah. Carefully you've been able to maintain some activity, what's kept you going. That's not a job for me. So I think that's the first thing once it becomes work, then it doesn't become fun. But also I think my personal thing is I skewed a lot more into not giving a shit because my general vibe now. That's kind of always been you. Oh yeah, but now I can do in a video with my favorite content to give me the less of a shit about what's going on. So I don't feel that I have to capture anything, any particular content. I don't feel like I need to be in depth to anyone or in bolted to any one particular thing because of that, it's made a lot more fun for me. But also what's happened is that I have no rhyme or reason whatsoever on my Instagram account, which I think has neutered the ability for to really grow. It's because I see a lot of wonderful people doing series and like planning on how they produce their content. There was zero production for thought. This morning I've decided what I'm going to do in the next hour. Or yesterday, my brother sends me a joke and I'm like, you know what? This will be a funny post. But it has no rhyme or reason behind anything. And that's what kind of keeps it fun. I don't feel obligated to do anything. I don't feel obligated to have to try and make money off of it. It'd be fun, but it would be really stressful for me too because then it becomes a job and you have to worry about these kind of things. And I don't want to worry about these kind of things. I want to keep it fun and light. I want to think, hey, Robert, I was going to Instagram in a while and I'm at La Palais right now. Where are you? That was my first slide actually. Robert is, I was at La Palais and I was like, where the hell was Robert been? I didn't say for Cisco. Where's Robert? I would have gone if I knew you were coming up for it. You see, that's why you got to go on Instagram. I posted a roll call saying, I'm going to be there, hit me up. But other than that, I think there's so much video now that everyone's getting to put out really cool stuff that they normally weren't doing before. Like five years ago, I think it was mostly static educational photos. And I was a lot more boring than like you said, I didn't give a shit, but it's different. You can't convey the same thing with words as you can, hyped as you can speaking it. And the tools have gotten so much better too, right? Like the ability for people to be able to green screen yourself on top of someone else's video and respond to it or mash them together. It's really changed how people can do something that is maybe not super polished, but definitely like much better than a static photo that was just, hey, I'm a good photographer and I'm going to write some text. I think the green screen scene has been huge for me at least, because I can just post a picture of a line that I just drank and then I can review it, up post to having to keep the bottle with me because I don't drink wine at home. So it's hard for me to do these kind of videos. So be able to take a picture and then superimpose it behind me and then talk about it as made a world difference too. I think a lot of people have actually made jobs out of being an influencer, Amanda being very early on, but I've seen people blow up these days like there's a private chef Olivia Teediman went from zero to like two million followers on Instagram in a year, then she's like 4.4 million now. What do you guys think makes influencers blow up in the stage? She's raw. She's doing something unique. Raw and skilled. She seems like a very accurate version of herself. I don't know if that's how she is every day, but I do think it's one side of her that we don't normally get to see on social media, which tends to be a little bit more polished. She was a private chef or is a private chef in the Hamptons, and I think any time you give someone backstage access to something like that, being a private chef in the Hamptons for the summer, like there was a whole bunch of them for a while that were private chefs in the Hamptons, and I think she was part of that whole culture, but I think what made her stand out to your point, Robert, is she's doing something different. She's not afraid to use language. She's not afraid to be a little tense. Yeah, and it resonates with people. What's the Italian American guy too? She does a lot of collabs with him as well. The guy that makes all the pasta, he's like really fit. I've even seen him. Just has an apron and they do collabs together, but she's done collabs with a lot of people. I think when she got to the point where people noticed her, she was very smart to take good collabs and basically blow up. I remember she was doing something in Vegas with some Michelin star restaurant where she was behind a camera who it was, but it was someone super famous a chef that she was in the kitchen with him. I was like, "Oh, the crap, she's getting recognition of these chefs are bringing her into their kitchen and they're talking about stuff, but it was against snackable content with high profile people that is shared." She's kind of gleaming on from all these other people too. I think it's also the juxtaposition of a very traditional industry and a very traditional setting being the Hamptons. And then this alter ego that just seems so out of place. I think that's a really interesting space. Have you seen Only Pans? Yes. Only Pans is a great example of this where she uses suggestive puns all throughout her videos and they're very funny and they're very good. But I think this like this juxtaposition and I think the wine world could probably benefit. It's not going to be me, but the wine world could probably benefit from someone doing a similar thing where it's a very traditional space and tends to be slightly conservative people in this space at least outwardly on camera. And I think if you had someone like an alleviated or Only Pans or something, do something like that in the wine world. I think this is also why Joey Wagner was so successful in TikTok. He was just so out there and Max Riedel also over the top personality that you don't expect in the wine world. I don't know if that's a fad or if that's a trend, but I think that's been interesting to watch. And I think that plays a lot into why Olivier did so well. Everything that's exaggerated or overly extravagant is going to be more popular. Like there's this guy in LA called Point of View Dad, POV Dad and his stuff, the video quality is like maybe an iPhone 10 is taking the video, but everything is super extravagant, right? He'll will at like six wagyu Tomahawks and be like, I'm cooking a steak knife for my wife and it started really small and he explained, I think like 1.5 million followers in like six months. We did a collab with him. He's like a super down-earth dude and he is just monstrous now. And it's because he's doing the most extravagant. Every time I see them like, whoa, I can't believe you're doing this. You're spending all this money on it because initially he was spending his own money really. That's what catches eyes. Like people want extravagance. They want hit me in the face. I don't know why I did a hand and Signal on the audio podcast, but it hits you. in the face and makes you want to click and share. It's algorithm hacking, right? Anytime you do something extravagant or a little off, it's like going to have someone either get angry in the comments or start fighting with other people in the comments or it's going to make them do something other than just watch it. That's what's going to send a video viral. And I think all of those accounts that you just mentioned have done exactly that. I've seen it with mixologists as well. There's definitely some people who are like, they get a cocktail on a video, but they're just like talking about the ingredients or the history of it. Or they're just being like funny, like this one was like a gin cocktail and she's like, oh, this is from Islay and they're like, I think that's an Ireland that could be, but maybe if I look at a map, it's something different and she's just like, natural, I'm not going to get all these facts correct, but I'm just going to tell you and be funny about it. And it just works. >> My most viral videos generally are either because I'm doing something really outlandish or because I've said something incorrectly or have dirty glassware and people just lived to comment and should like that. >> Dirty glassware. >> Yes, who's laughing now? >> So the wide market is in a major up-heaval at the moment. There's a big boost during the pandemic where people are ordering wine and getting it set home, but volumes have been flat and the value has continued to climb with the permeation. You've seen the decline in both metrics in the US. There's many reasons for this. Obviously, I think the wine is really to talk about younger generations of drinking glass or not drinking wine or drinking alternative things. Health organizations calling out the amount of alcohol is bad for you. Obviously, the GLP ones and the whole is a big face. And then obviously people switching into other substitutes like a lot of the states have legalized marijuana. What are your views on the current wine market? How do you think it's changed over the last five years? Maybe we can start with you, Peter, to get your tech as you've been asking a lot of questions so put you on the spot. >> Yeah, I look at the two components of that. You have the volume and the value, right? So the permeation and just how much people drink. And everyone in my group of people including, I think, maybe all four of us here have probably drank less today than five years ago. To me, a large part of that is driven for wine in particular. Total beverage alcohol is down and volume consumption overall, but wine in particular is much further down. Total alcohol is down like 2% in volume. Wines down like 7 or 8% per year. I think that's driven largely by this anti-health message related to wine because there was always the thought that, oh, two glasses of wine a day for a man or one for a woman was positive for your health and good for the heart and all that sort of thing. And as public entities start to reverse that. And I think the people who are most likely to internalize that message are probably more wine drinkers, which tend to be higher socioeconomic and people who are more white collar in a way, but who are thinking about their health maybe more so and drinking for their health more so than people who are drinking beer or spirits overall in general. I think that's going to continue to decline as long as that keeps being the message that the public health people are putting out. Just work there. You're saying the general message that alcohol is bad for you. You think that there's a larger hit to the wine drinking community over beer and spirits because they're more likely to listen to people like the World Health Organization or the Surgeon General. Got it. I just want to make sure that that's what you're saying. And the reason why they drank wine in the first place was often because they thought it was healthy. So we saw this huge boom in the US over the last 30 years of wine drinking, particularly red wine because of the French paradox, which happened in the early 90s, right? That scientific discovery or research that happened that said the Mediterranean diet, which included wine and particularly red wine was good for your heart. And it was on 60 minutes and like 92 or something like that. And since then it's been an uptrend. And that actually stopped the last major downtrend. So in the 80s, we had a big push for mothers against strong driving and all the push for moderation of alcohol. And now it's a push for abstinence of alcohol. And I think that it doesn't necessarily directly change people's decision making immediately. But I think it embeds in people's mind and is just a background thing where people are like, oh, I'm sleeping better if I drink less. Or I feel healthier and whatnot. And it's just a thing in the background. On the value side, we had been increasing more. And I think we're getting to a point where at least in the US economy, the richer getting richer and the poor are not the poor getting poorer with inflation. That is causing the high end to be maintained itself. I hear from high end retailers that it's the top.1% of people that are carrying the market. So there's these amazing wines, unicorn wines coming out of the UK sellers, right? Like 55 Muton or whatever. And billionaires are dropping $100,000 at a time to buy it because it's relatively cheap versus the last five or 10 years. And it's available. It wasn't available before. But most people are cutting back consumption and then also purchasing and the people who aren't doing as well financially are trading now. Yeah. I think you bring up a good point, Peter, because it is this world-health organization. All of these, there's also tons of videos on Instagram and all of the internet about whether they're true or not. There's additives in your wine and they're farming with glyphos. All of these, this terrible, we'll call it propaganda for lack of a better term, being spewed about wine. And I think between that and also some of these headlines that are coming out, it's creating all of these questions in an industry that really doesn't offer a lot of answers. Like the wine world has not come forward and said, "Hey, I mean mostly because I can't write. There is no lobbying committee outside of the wine institute and they're not going to do that. They can't come forward and say these things are categorically false and here is why it's good for you." It really hasn't been a way for consumers to dispel any of these myths other than to just say, "Well, I guess maybe we'll chance it." So I do think that it has exaggerated the problem to some degree. But I also think one of the biggest problems that I see is that wine isn't cool. It's not cool to drink. It's not in pop culture. I touched on this earlier. We had this little blip in the 2010s when Olivia Pope on scandal was drinking wine. And there was a whole cohort of women who wanted to be like Olivia Pope and wanted to have a glass of wine and that was cool. I don't necessarily see that right now. And I think, what do people drink anything? They drink water because they're thirsty. But we drink it out of a Stanley because it's cool to drink it out of a Stanley. The reason that we're drinking wine isn't necessarily to get drunk. It's because we're motivated in some way whether it's because we think it's cool or whether it's because we are trying to emulate someone else or there's a motivation behind drinking wine that I don't think is being popularized and getting people to drink it in the way that we used to have. The French paradox is a great example of that. The Olivia Pope thing. Like, if you got a bottle of moutain in Kim Kardashian's hands and you had her drinking it before the Met Gala, I suspect we'd have an uptick and wine to some degree. Maybe it's not Kim Kardashian. Maybe it's someone else. But I think the lack of wine being present in popular culture and in the hands of influencer is people talking about wine and drinking it in regular everyday life would help dramatically in the consumption of wine with any generation. Charlie, what do you think about the wine market in terms of where it's transitioned over the last five years into what's kind of related to these major changes we're seeing? I mean, we can't avoid the fact that there's so many people on a health care unit. You yourself, Robert, have mentioned reducing alcohol consumption. Amanda talked about the lack of social cool for wine. I think there's a lot of NBA players that drink wine and make it very public. They drink wine, but I don't think it's moved and needle for anything. So do you think I give a shit about it and NBA player? Exactly. I'm a 30-year-old female. Nobody cares. Yeah, that's why it's like, has to be the right person doing it because the people that are consuming wine are not generally going to be the vast demographic of basketball viewers. It might need to be someone else. It could be multiple of someone else's right because we need something cool, young and hip, and then also maybe something to draw in more female injugers. It doesn't have to only be reserved for millennials and older crowd to drink wine. But I do feel like I see less and less people at restaurants now having a glass of wine, even the younger crowd. I think I has a lot to do with the health kick thing. I've talked to a lot of, you know, restaurantiers about this specific topic and a lot of it has to do with it. It just seems like people really are pushing non-alcoholic. They do a lot of non-alcoholic parrions, opposed to wine. And there's a huge trickle down effect when restaurant sales are impacted. If they're not selling by the glass, that probably means something else is happening in the larger macro sense. And they're seeing all the now alcoholic and it's totally true before trying to be on a little health kick, even though non-alcoholic stuff is. You're in LA though, right? Yes. I would consider a semi-bubble, right? LA is, I think, in some ways it, you know, it directs a lot of what happens. And there's a trickle down effect in some ways. It's, you know, sort of isolated from what the rest of the country is doing. The testing ground. Yeah. It could be, but I mean, LA, LA dining scene is different from like a New York dining scene or the San Francisco dining, like a major- Right. But I would also, I would also identify those two other cities as not necessarily representative of the whole country and drinking. This is also part of the reason I wanted to be in a region like outside of Philadelphia where drinking cultures are very different than like I lived in Appa Valley. And I was in the Bay, I was in New York, I was in London. And they're very different from how people are actually consuming and buying wine in these general, like rural parts. And I think it's a little bit more representative of the country versus like some, like the Bay or LA or New York. I will say that for the non-alcoholic alternatives, I think that the beer and spirits are a lot more widely distributed compared to wine non-alcoholic. There's, beer has always had a couple of non-alcoholic beer have really leveled up their game, go to beer bars and they'll have five or six non-alcoholic beers that actually taste good and different, and taste like different types of beers. And spirits like, there's so many good at non-alcoholic beer. coctails that are showing up on restaurants and menus. But I don't think there's great non-alcoholic vinyl terms that have really hit center mass yet, like the spirits and beer have. And I think that's actually hurting the wine industry as well. - Who actually likes drinking non-alcoholic beer and cocktails? I don't drink beer because I like the taste of beer. I think beer tastes generally not amazing, but I still drink it. And also cocktails, they have to be a certain level of really well-made cocktail to be a great cocktail. So I don't want non-alcoholic wine either because I just feel like none of this stuff like, you know, it's totally nuts and buzz. - I'm like dying. Like if I want to drink something that I think is really good, I like a diet coke, right? I like a diet coke. I like a sparkling water with matcha, you know, but I'm like, damn, you know what I'm craving right now? The taste of a sweet crisp IPA. And it's 100, 100 IQ hops, but without alcohol, please. I don't know. Maybe I'm the raw person. - I'll try men here because I, I had, well, first of all, athletic brewing is the number one selling beer at Whole Foods. So people spoken. Number two, I actually tried it recently. And I do like the taste of beer, like every now, like, I'll give you a perfect example. I was in the American Airlines lounge at LAX. It was late, and I knew that I was going to take a sleep assist not long after. And I was like, I don't really want to combo that with any sort of alcohol, but they had chips and walk there. And I was like, God, you know, be so good with this is a beer. So I got the athletic brewing beer and I have my chips and walk. And I was like, this is actually pretty good. Like I'm into this. I thought it was delicious. And the same goes for NACOctails. Like I have found myself in positions at restaurants, like with my family or if I'm like, if I'm going to be driving or if I'm not feeling great, where I don't really want to die coke. Like so does not really my thing. It never has been. But, you know, a good NACOctail, like I'm kind of into, I'm with you, Robert. I have not seen a wine due for me, what an NACOctail or an NABIR has done. There's like handful of examples that I can kind of get behind, but I think you have to separate this idea of like, it's not wine. By the time it hits NABIR, it's like, it's like, Lee resembles wine because it's in a wine glass, but beyond that. Like, yeah, because it's not a one for one replacement. But again, I've had a couple of non-agglomerate beers and I think my main thing is like, hey, it's I'm having some kind of like guilty pleasure food, like burgers or, or, and I don't know, I'm with my family. I don't want to like drink lots of alcohol. Also, I don't drink as much. So a couple, an IPR2 is going to get me going, right? Like it's like, those things are like, yeah, you sub in. You sub in. It's more of like, diluting it down by having one, not alcohol, like, and one alcohol. So I'll have a glass of wine with dinner, but in order to not get, you know, because my wife's not drinking, you know, get a glass of something, but in order to start the meal, maybe I'll have a NACOctail. Not the poo poo, the die coke, die coke, and sushi is like one of my favorite pairings. That acid sugar level is like chef's kiss. That is a new, I will tell you, die coke. Die coke is like champagne. It's like, there's like a viscosity and the bubliness to it, that matches with a lot of stuff. And die coke is not even regular coke. Yeah, because regular coke is too sweet. Okay. Out of a straw, so you got to drink it up. It hits the palate, hits the center of the palate, opposed to a wider bit of the palate. So no ice or ice. Ice, ice, ice, of course. You only drink warm die coke if you're like, you're in first a massive. On the real house sides of something. Yeah. Going back a bit to the pop culture thing, what about like Taylor Swift? She's to me, and I think the biggest pop culture person out there today, and she drinks wine, especially white wine like sense errands. I think that's why Sauvignon Blanc has been doing so well the last few years. But she's not like out there drinking it. You know what I mean? The things that we're hearing about Taylor Swift are like, oh rumor has it Taylor Swift's had it or she's like or people are taking a video of her like walking out of the concert event with a glass of wine. Like I think you're right. I do think that helps and it does like gently move the needle. But I what I think is like you need an Alex Earl or some equivalent to just like have a glass of wine with the bottle in a get ready with me video talking about how like at least mentioning the wine, at least acknowledging its existence and talking about what she's drinking. I think it's I almost think that maybe Alex and Taylor are too big to some degree. Like I think if we had more like of these more you know 200 to 500,000 following sized influencers out there promoting wine or drinking wine in the way that they're like popularizing different makeups. I think that would actually move the needle even more so than a Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift's almost too big. Yeah it do think it's important to mention that the the ozemic GLP one situation. I mean the the reality is we have these medicines that are becoming more and more common that people are easier to get. There's off market, compiling pharmacies for this stuff. It's genuinely having a health impact to people. But I think it just takes away the urge to drink and it's something that is just the way the medicine works. Like you see it if you watch the earnings reports from any of the big snack companies. They're taking a toll because of the center, inner sighting GLP ones as a reason for this and it's only going to become more and more as more of these hit the market and become more and more approved. I guess ozemic is also approved for sleep apnea as well. Like yeah they just keep finding more uses for us to prescribe this stuff. And so I think that if we get a large percentage of our very overweight population in the US on these pills, sure they'll get healthier but they just may have less desires and just takes away those cravings. And let's be real like there's a there's a just like sugar has alcohol has that craving for people because that makes you feel certain way and if all of a sudden you don't seek that it is something that'll be dealt with but I don't know how the industry can come back that I don't know that any wine is the answer there either. No I do think it speaks to a trend that I see a lot which is like people are not interested in this unless I'm talking about Costco like Kirkland brand wine. I would say most people are not interested in this like $10 under category. Like they're definitely drinking quality over quantity. They're not necessarily interested in getting drunk. They would rather spend $30 to $50 on a bottle but they want to make sure that they're not being had. Like they want to be sold that bottle. And I think one of the biggest issues is like we're just not selling people the wine. Like we're telling the same stories we've told over and over and over and over and the market so saturated that we have this like paradox of choice right you walk into any store right now. Somebody's gonna look at the shop and be like I don't know like the one with the kangaroo looks good to me like seriously like if you didn't know anything about wine and you walked into the store where would you start? What would you do? It is so incredibly daunting and there's literally no other retail setup like how wine is set up. Like you don't go into a grocery store and have it organized by region and bridal. It's organized by how you're going to consume it. It's organized by breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It's organized by proteins. Like why needs a whole revamp in the merchandising category on top of the marketing side of things? How do you see things changing from collectors to the average consumer? We were going to talk a little bit about the high end being kind of like stable. Like people are still buying the really expensive wines. How do you guys? Breater markets see that changing? Do you see the average consumer versus the that kind of pro-sumer collector Charlie? What do you think about that? I would do a little pushback on regards to high end wine selling. Well I think there's a lot of stuff that was selling at like multiples of thousands that are now a good chunk less and they can't sell through. There's a very popular set of to pop a producer that was very expensive for a moment and now is definitely dropping in price significantly but everything everyone's impacted. It's not just average consumer, high end consumer. Everyone wants to buy the cheapest wine even you get afford it. You can afford more expensive wine. It doesn't mean you want to pay the price necessarily. The average consumer wants to save money just as much as the high end consumer does and I think everyone just wants to make sure Amanda put it perfectly that we want to make sure our money is being put somewhere where there's good value. How do we pick what's good value? Everyone wants that. Everyone just wants to feel like they're not getting play and they're getting the best deal possible. For while their prices were going up and people were just riding those prices going up because they're like, "Oh, it's just going to go more even the next year." Do you find that at some point these prices got to a point where people are like, "Okay, I'm just either going to just not buy it at all or people are looking for cheaper alternatives or similar quality but more cost-effective alternatives." We're talking at the high end. The analogy I always use is that someone wants to buy a domain wall off of $5,000. They go all the way up to $5,000 and then domain wall off changes to $6,000. They say, "We can't spend $6,000. Let's find what's the closest alternative that we will be willing to pay for." They say, "Hey, we're going to find Domain Bizzo $4,000." They tell their friends, "Hey, guys, domain Bizzo's almost like the wall but it's $1,000. That's $6,000." So their friends start to buy it and then it starts to go a little bit higher, a little bit higher until they reach $4,000. They're like, "You know what? It's not quite worth $4,000. What's the alternative to that that's close to Domain Bizzo? That's cheaper than that and then keeps going up." But then it's 20 hit a cap and then people see that the top one starting to go in price and all those start to crash too. We've seen that. There's been an absolute trickle-down effect of the wall replica lines at auction that have just really gone down in the market. Bizzo is a perfect example of one that's fallen in value significantly. You bring up this idea of the dupe culture, which exists in every sort of capacity outside of wine, right? Everything from cashmere to even pots and pans and food. And I think And you're right, Charlie. And the other thing is, the one thing that the wine world has not realized is that people have access to information in a way that they didn't have 20 years ago. And so not only is Gen Z not interested in this rinse and repeat story, the older generations, everything from boomer up and down are like, we're tired of this same rinse and repeat story. And we can go and wine berserkers and talk to our friends and find out that one, these wines are not as allocated as people are saying they are. And too, we can find replicas that are serving its purpose just as well. And I think the wine industry is really just kind of stuck their head in the sand and been like, we're just going to hope that people just continue buying our wine and we're going to keep raising the prices and do nothing else. It's like, I don't know what we expected to happen. And that's not categorically true. There are certainly people who are doing great marketing in the wine world. But I think your point, Charlie, is so spot on that, some of these NDA wines that I talk about with wine access or even like the Kirkland brand wines. Like, people are willing to do a little bit of research because the information is out there to find something that's maybe a little bit more cost effective that's going to stretch their dollar a little further. It's not that they don't want to spend the money. It goes back to what we were saying before. They just want to make sure that it's going the furthest that they're getting some good value for their money. So like, maybe they're comfortable spending $50, maybe they're comfortable spending $100, but it's not necessarily, there's really no such thing as brand loyalty anymore. Interesting. So, what about in terms of wineries or wine retailers? What do you think? What are some examples of things that have worked and really resonated with customers or consumers? NDA wines have been ridiculously huge for wine access. Like, it's been a pleased release. So for listeners who may not know about NDA wines, can you give a little help with those off? No, I don't think that's a good example of wine. So, it's wine access buys either barrels or shiners or some sort of juice from a winery that is trying to offload for lack of better term. Because they have a surplus. The number of reasons, right? Surplus, inability to sell. Yes, surplus would be the most general version of that, but there's a lot of different reasons why it would happen. And then they relabeled under a different label, sign a contract, sign an NDA, hence the term NDA wine, and then it gets sold for fraction of the price. So a lot of times, they're saying these wines are coming from wineries that would sell their wines for $300, $400, and then they're selling them to you at $30, $40. And so that has been really big to not only get people in the door and comfortable buying wine, but it's also great for collectors who are like, "We don't want to open 10 bottles of $500 bottle wine tonight. Maybe we want to open five and three of those are NDA wines." Or maybe we want an extra bottle. So it gives people a lot of ways to drink wine beyond just what their normal repertoire is. And they get defense against the late night bottle pool because you never know that they're like that bottle pool. You know that they're like that bottle pool. You could get tricky. That's what John Jackson, attorney's song called it, right? So they're the seller defenders. Yeah, so well, that was for a different thing. But yeah, like having something that you can go to and pull out after you've already had a couple of nice wines like you, you may not be in the, sometimes you don't always need the flashy thing late at night. Charlie, what are your thoughts on? What have some wineries or retailers done well that have resonated with people? I am not the best person to answer this question because I don't deal with retail as much or wineries directly. But I do think from the European side, especially Bergen D.A., I think a lot of the Y-makers putting their faces out there has done a really big thing for them. I mean Jeremy from Doohdock is all over the place now, right? Doohdock is, if we're going to talk about pop culture and wine, Doohdock is as pop culture as Bergen D.A. gets in the coolest way that Bergen D.A. can possibly be, right? Like street wear collaborations with rude. I mean, we got Jay-Z and Beyonce, loving Doohdock. This is, he makes amazing, they make amazing wine. They're truly amazing wine and he's a great human being. And then he gets along with people and then he's out there, he's popularizing the whole region because of it. And the whole region grows because of what he's doing and what a lot of other wine makers are doing too. But I think that's pretty cool. What's your Peter? Anything that you've seen that has really worked? I think the wineries are doing more on the experience side, both to Charlie's point, getting their face out there. But both add the winery and on the road, the in-person events, I think are resonating more with people and building that connection with the brand. So I think hitting the road and putting in the legwork is really, I think, making some wineries more successful than others. Yeah. Hand-to-hand combat's always going to be a valuable tool for any winery in any era. Like, the people that we're doing it in 2020 during COVID, or we're still doing it today, or maybe you just start, I don't think you can ever do too much of that, like getting in front of people staying. And that's also the beauty of social media, it's a way to do that. It's a way to stay in touch with people. It's not just a way to sell your wine, it's a way to make sure that you're still connecting with people and staying in top of mind. So that when those allocation letters do come out or when they see it in the store, it's like, all right, well, there's some familiarity there. I also think I don't know how to say this without being backhanded about it. But I had a real issue when some of the clean wine movement happened. And the more I think about it today, the more I'm like, you know, I almost feel like I have to take a step back and look at the objective side of it, like Avalline, for example. People have made it very clear that they want transparency and wine. And as much as I think that there was a lot of negative things that happened, out of that clean wine movement, I also think that maybe Avalline had it right. Maybe that is what people need to be doing. Maybe we do need more transparency on the labels because people, to your point earlier, Peter, people have so many questions and they're not being answered. And so why not just put it out there? Why not make that part of your marketing agenda? And now I'm seeing like, she's gone, is partnered with Avalline and she's talking about it. And I'm like, again, the people have spoken like, this is clearly what they want. And if the wine industry wants to shift and continue adapt to the times, you know, maybe that's something we have to all look at with a very serious lens and not let the TTV do the talking here. Like, don't wait for them to decide whether or not this is a legal mandate or not. Like, Massacan, I just found out they have like a whole other whole website on there. It breaks down everything that's in the wine that's not in the wine, like everything and it's super consumer friendly. And the more I see that, the more I'm like, yeah, I think this is what people want. The key is getting that right on the bottle or right in the marketing because I think like Avalline leaves it to that where Massacan doesn't. But if Massacan has it, it'd be up to go seek it. There's a big difference in terms of how much that's in your face and presented. Like, there are things that marketing with that where Massacan is just a good wine that has all that content and, you know, is kind of real about what their problems are. But I don't think they lead with that. Or I don't think they lead with that as they scale. I could see that being part of their marketing plan though. You know, it was acquired by Gowell last year. That is a new addition to the website since that acquisition as far as I can tell. And yeah, I think you're right. Like, I think Avalline, they're doing something that a lot of people aren't. And as much as I was like not in favor before. Now I'm kind of like, maybe that's the way. I don't know why Avallines don't have that because you see things that wine has that beer spirits don't have like potassium or other things that are like positive. And we can't say that it's healthy for you. But there are elements that differentiate itself from other drinks or other alcohol in general. There's some complexity to about like, what is an ingredient with wine, right? Yeah, there's processing aids versus ingredients. Exactly. I can't believe that other products don't also have things like that, right? I think you're right. Like people, the wine industry think this is going to be a deterrent in some ways. And it's like, we all pick up a Oreo and eat it with no issue. Like you look at those ingredients. You'd be, yeah, nobody would eat it in an Oreo. Yeah, like nobody would be in an Oreo. If you look at it, it's on the Oreo. Yeah, I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm not sure. Like that's great. Right? The fact that our 100 calories targeting for that and like that's basically a glass of wine is usually around 100 calories. Whether we like it or not, people are more health conscious and they're just more aware. Not maybe not everyone and maybe not all the time. But in the moments that we want to be aware, I think the wine industry has to be there for the consumer. And I think if we are going to be the more health conscious in quotes, so to speak product, like, you know, wine is truly like it's one of the only alcoholic products up there that's like, it's one of the more natural leaning ones like it's, you know, it's from Greeks, it's from the land. It should speak to the place that it comes from like it should have all of these things that coincide with what people who are interested in health have. So the fact that we're not given, we're not meeting them where they are, I think it's problematic. And we're diving a bit into the consumer here and the wine consumer. Have you guys seen any differences in how people have consumed or bought wine in different, maybe demographics or genders as we've talked about? How they consume content on social and whatnot, but have you guys seen anything in terms of how they maybe buy differently than they used to? Maybe, I don't know, Amanda, if you have thoughts on that? I don't. I think because I see the demographics of like, you know, what's being there. purchase, but I'm not so specific on who. I don't know what the demographic breakdown of like an NDA wine versus a massacan is. Like I can anecdotally tell you from what I see in the comments, but beyond that, no, I don't, I don't see any like other than I will say, soving a block is America's great right now. Like on the white wine side of things. Like white wine is huge, and I think a lot of that has to do with females are more interested in buying more wine. So I, if you want to assign some sort of demographic, I would say like so like, and I also have a theory around soving a block, which is this is a fun one. Maybe the three of you can refute me. I have a theory that soving a block is as popular as it is with women because women think it's a healthier option. And they think it's a healthier option because soving a block, if you think about any soving a block out there, it always skews in like the citrus family. Like there's no soving a block cut cupcake or maybe there is, but mostly like we associate the cupcakes and the the sweet with shardinay, right? Soving a block, we associate with crisp dry refreshing, all things we associate with healthy, healthier styles. And so that's my that's my theory around why women have a recipe. It has this grassy note, so it's like a vegetable. Well, seriously, like, you know, it like all of these things that skew health, right? They like they they trigger green and yellows and all these things that are like you would find in like a green juice. Like I really do think there's something there and this lack of transparency, you know, how many people do you think if we survey them that are maybe not podcast listeners like how many people are like, if you ask them tomorrow, if you have them taste a wine to go like, do you think there's actual grapefruit in here? Or do you think there's actual lemon? I would I would bet it is a significant amount of people who actually think there is like the the products that we're talking about the the the notes and the flavors that we're talking about. I think people think they're in there. Well, for beer and spirits, they are put in there, right? So I think people realize that wine. That's not the case. I think it stands to reason like why they would think that like why wouldn't you think that is someone's like notes of grasshopper? Like why wouldn't you think that's in there? Have you seen any styles of wine changing in your circles, Charlie? No, I feel like stuff has become more and more hyper focused in regards to what people are drinking now. I don't think people are drinking as broadly as they used to. It could be, you know, Amanda mentioned again that there's so much information out there now that it's easy to get all the info we need. And you can really drill down into what you love. I've had I have a couple new friends who just kind of got into Birmingham the last year or two. And they drink super broadly over the course of a year. And they said, this is why I like drinking and then boom zoomed in. I don't feel like that was as applicable five, six years ago. Now it's just there's so much information now. Like William Kelly is pumping out so much great information and a really good, consumable, educated manner that people that want to learn about Birmingham, you can really learn about Birmingham quickly. And if you have the money, you can buy it. So I think that's what I've been seeing. And I also think I've been seeing less people drinking natural wine, which has been interesting to me. I didn't know if it's just a bubble issue where I'm not seeing it as much inside the bubble, but it's definitely seems to be that people are expanding their tolerance outside of the zero, zero movement a little bit. Yeah, the alcoholic canbucha is stealing that natural wine consumer. I know the superveno bros are blowing up on Instagram and TikTok. Those guys are all about the the national wine. But you're just finding yeah, maybe there, that's true. That's true. They drink all kind of stuff and they're two hands and white men. So it's a lot easier to do a lot of things when they are. They're sweet points from New Jersey. Yeah. If you look nice as always a little easier to not bitter, Charlie, not better. I'm not better. I don't get I literally do not give a shit about what people think. I just think forward other people look like I just think that I think they put out good content too. I don't follow them, but I think they have good content when it pops up and they're doing cool stuff. I just don't it's this cool. Yeah, but it helps when you're good looking too. It does. Good looks never hurt. Okay. So this is where we're going to pump you for some information. Over the last five years, we've talked about lots, lots of themes in the wine industry, from influencers, import or sustainability, wine education, future, the wine critic, all that stuff. Do you guys have thoughts on themes and topics that you think we should be covering in the future? Without having a full categorical encyclopedia of everything that you guys have covered, I think maybe one thing would be just the logistics of like, and this is hyper-specific, but if you're going to create content, what do you need? What's the starter kit? I think people would love a 101 crash course. I want to start making social media content. Do I need this microphone in front of me? Do I need my iPhone? I think a crash course on that could be really interesting. And then it would also be interesting to do a case study with someone. Can you take someone from zero to a thousand followers by doing this crash course over the course of three months or something? That could be really interesting to see in real time. Charlie, you're going to thought some themes or topics that would be good to cover for the industry? Yeah, I think you should talk about legal stuff a little bit more. Honestly, it's not joking. I think there's so much. It's hard to get the law firms to speak on the. because the laws are complex. There's so much interesting stuff going on. We're not even just talking like tariffs or importing stuff, but California has a lot of water use issues in regards to vineyards and wineries, and that'd be something really interesting to talk about too. Let me just recall you in as a special guest if we get some legal people who focus on these areas for wineries. I think it's an interesting topic. There's tons of stuff from importing. We mentioned tariffs. Today they announced potentially retaliatory 200% tariffs on European wine and champagne. But yeah, there's a lot of stuff on terms of how what a winery or has to go through in order to get the wine to consumers in terms of what are the legal hurdles that have to go over. Have you guys broken down the three-tier system? Yes. That would be the one. That one's something that would probably reissue on a regular basis or maybe update. Yeah, I think even just doing a series that's specific to. I know trade has been a very big part of your demographic, but even just doing a series that's very geared towards consumers. How this applies to them and how they would see it as a consumer versus how the trade sees it. That's interesting. I like that. That's a cool idea. In terms of pivoting the marketers and the internal. How does it feel being a consumer in the marketplace right now as it pertains to buying wine and how the three-tier system. What are the inputs and outputs that make that allow some wines to be on the shelves and some wines not to be on the shelves? I think consumers would. I think an educated consumer. Again, going back to a lack of. Even though there's so much information out there, a lack of specific wine information, consumers are always interested in. So we want to wrap up our episode. Thank you guys for all the time you've spent as a long episode for us, but like to wrap up every episode on a personal note. And our this season or this year's question has been, what is the most cherished wine in your cellar and when do you plan on drinking it? Oh, I'm going to shock you. It is a 2003 Chateau Giscours from Bordeaux. And I will never drink it. It is the first bottle of wine that I ever bought online. Really? Okay. Do you think that's you? Oh, three. I can know anything. I just like, I want to buy a bottle of wine online. And I say, there's like a wine score on it. And so I bought it. I was like, 50 bucks, I think I was in law school and I'm never going to open it. It's the only bottle of order I own in. I think I have like 4,000 bottles of wine now. And it is the only bottle of order. I own. I'm going to do a whole video on this at some point as a joke, but it's the only thing I'm never going to open it. It's going to. My daughter's children are going to inherit this a bottle of other others and grandfather have had for decades. Awesome. What about you, Amanda? My manager gifted me a bottle of vintage crew. I'm forgetting if it's 2002 or 2004, but it's upstairs and I'm drinking at my wedding this year. Awesome. Yes, among many other things. Well, hopefully you're not sharing it with too many people. No, this will be like specifically under the table for my fiance and I. What about you, Peter? I bought an auction a 35-year-old gay for Rio, huh? It has like a little leather pouch that I came in and everything and it's who knows if it's any good or no, but I think when I turn 50 in a few years, I'll probably break that open. I. So one of the first wines that was like mind-blowing for me, like true. I already got it into wine and someone had served me blind. One of my first loves was Old Bordeaux. Serve me blind this wine and I was just enamored with it. I finally was able to get two bottles on an auction a couple of years ago and so it's 53 Lafitte and so in great condition, 750s, I don't know who I'm going to drink it with, but obviously probably not my wife. Probably going to look for other wine people, but that was one of those wines that was really kind of like, oh, oh, I need to like. I need to like, I need to like, I need to like, put other glasses away and focus in on this one. glass. And it was totally blind. And I was just in love. And then next thing you know, I looked over and it's just like ridiculous wine. And so I won came up a couple years, or a small lot came up a couple years ago on auction and I picked it up. And I just something that I'm waiting to drink at least one of those two bottles with with some other wine nerds. I also have a 75 jamello for the wine nerds out there who know what that is. Super rare California wine that I'm not going to get into. And I have no idea what I'm going to drink it. But they're really, really hard to find. And I snagged one a few years ago. That's like probably even more prize than the crew. Well, we want to thank you both for being our most valued guests in terms of most frequent guests as well. And VG's. Go Charlie. We're the best. We're the best. Thanks for joining and sharing all your thoughts on the industry and participating in this five year recap. Well, thank you guys for doing this for five years. This is like no small feat to keep anything going for five years, let alone a podcast that requires tons of prep and energy and all the thing, all the resources. So as a fan and a person in the in any industry, I'm certainly grateful to you guys. Yeah. Thank you guys so much. It was the first time the first time I did your podcast was for something like voice out there. So it was really interesting to do. And then now my face is everywhere. And you know, as I was going through La Palais, I would have branded people be like, are you Clayfoot blah blah blah? And I'm like, huh, you know, it's three years ago, no one would come up to me. Random strangers would never come up to me. But now it's kind of fun. And you know, it's it's time has flown. I can't believe it's been five years. I was I remember exactly where I was after we finished recording it. And I was relistening to the podcast. So it's fun fun fun. Fun times, fun times are had. Hopefully we don't have to go through another COVID for it to happen again. Yeah. Fingers crossed. Hey listeners, if you love the show, support it by buying a show notes book. They not only compile two years of episodes, but also organizes them into themes for better learning. They can be an inspiration to listen to or relist into an episode or provide a quick reference of the key learnings from a show. Go to xchatow.com and click on the store page for easy links to buy. Thanks for listening. Thanks for joining us. If you loved this episode of Xchatow, we'd love for you to subscribe. Great. And give a review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. Until next time, cheers.