Breaking down the cost of sparkling wine w/ Weston Eidson, Westborn

Hey listeners, in a world with nearly 300,000 wine brands, in over 12,000 wineries in North America alone, standing out from the crowd is key. That's where Offset Brand Studio comes in. They're a wine-focused agency, can capture the essence of your story, bring it to life, and everything from labels to beautiful custom websites. I've seen them suddenly modernize historic brands like Frogsleap and Grace Family Vineyards to building innovative websites that bring out cool, distinct developments like an animated Appalachian map. And because Offset also runs a wine commerce platform, Offset Commerce, you can rest assured that your website will be an effective selling tool. Go to OffsetbrandStudio.com to learn more. That's OFF-S-E-T brandstudio.com to learn more. Welcome to X-Sheto. X-Sheto. 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-Sheto. Today, we're going to be talking about understanding the economics of sparkling wine. And our guest is Weston Itzen, owner and wine maker of Westbourne Wine. Weston, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Glad to be here. Can you please give me and Peter a brief overview of your background? Yeah, yeah. So I've been making wine in Napa Valley for, gosh, a little over a decade now. Primarily in Cabernet and Chardonnay, a little bit of Pinot Noir as well, and a few other ones. But those are my kind of what I've been doing most of the last decade. I got into previous to making Westbourne that is, got into wine a long time ago. My family was always really big into wine, kind of on the consumption side of the business, I always say. And it's the most important part. It's really all the the most. There's no doubt. Yes, yeah, for a number of reasons, right? My dad and my grandfather are always big collectors. It was just a big part of growing up, really always at the dinner table, always at celebrations and things. So I always had a, always loved wine. And I was working as an intern for Jason Moore from Motosoperandi Sellers back in 2012. And I was kind of fortunate when I was in 2012. It was a good vintage. It was also a big vintage. There was a lot of fruit around. And really, the kind of the aha moment with that was, Jason, I was standing around the winery, waiting to get some fruit load in the press and steam with ice and came up to us and said, hey guys, someone just bailed on a couple of tons of Chardonnay. If you know anybody looking for some Chardonnay, I need to find a home for these grapes. And that was from his Linda Vindavista Vineyard. So heck of a vineyard, heck of a grower, amazing wine maker. And I just had been looking at all these other sites around and said, you know, that'd be awesome. I should just take this. So I did. I said, Steve, I'll take those two tons and see what happens. And with Jason's help, made my first vintage of Chardonnay then. And I've been growing different brands ever since then. And years later, started Westborne back in 2018. So yeah, 2018, you launched Westborne, which is a California sparkling wine project. What drove you to start that project? Well, really, I think in California in general, I'll start to the love of that particular wine or wine in general because we don't really have a whole lot of second, third generation wine makers were, most of us are in this just because we absolutely love it. And word might be overused, but have a real passion for what we're doing. And I love sparkling wine. And at the time, I'd been making wine from a few different sites that some had kind of what I thought could be really interesting parts to play in a larger painting of a sparkling wine. I was working with Charles Heintz Vineyard for Chardonnay, Derelle Vineyard in Carneros and Richie Vineyard in Russian River and said, you know what? What if we took this level of fruit and painted a picture of sparkling wine using these different elements, the power that you get from Richie, the elegance from Charles Heintz, things like that. And at that point, went out to find Pinot Noir of similar quality and grand crew status really to compliment those Chardonnays. I think it was an interesting time. You were starting to buy more sparkling wine. It's really been growing for a while now. And I just felt like why have more people not started do this with this level of fruit for their sparkling wine? And we'll definitely get into a lot of those details and the economics of making sparkling wine. But did you develop like a whole business plan around that, given that? Or was it more like, hey, let's just do this opportunistically? Well, yeah, both, I would say. Yeah, I think there was a business plan in my head. And it got to the spreadsheet. And the spreadsheet, I think, has been blown out of the water a number of times or since then. In a sense, yes, it was always, you know, here's where it can get out of market. Here's where the fits in the market. Here's where the niche can be. We're also talking, this is 2017, 2018. And the world is at a paradigm shift since then really in a number of different ways. So a lot of ways the business plan itself, while it was probably solid at the time, has seen a lot of changes. There are a lot of things you don't even know, you don't know, when you start a project like this. A lot of things I didn't know when I started my first still wine businesses. And certainly the sparkling as well. Time is one of the biggest. You always look at the back of a label and see how much tearage time there is. But you don't think about the time it takes to pick the grapes and then get it to bottle. Or the times after it's discouraged, words actually ready and to be presented to the public. And there's just a number of things you don't realize. And then also as a winemaker, you know, we're really in this for the love of the wine. And when certain amazing vineyards come available to you and David Hirsch says he's got a little bit of peanut war that you can use and make wine from. You just don't turn that stuff down. It blows up your business model, but you know, that's why we're all in it. It's a work with those kind of level fruit. And so you mentioned that you're trying to target a specific niche that you've worked out. What is that? Where do you think Westbourne's like value proposition is? I think one of the coolest things about Westbourne is the idea behind it really isn't done anywhere that I know of. You can't really go to Champagne and say, so let me back up a little bit Westbourne for those who might not know it is really based around the level of this Grand Crew, vineyard designate type of fruit that I work with when we make this wine. So places like Hudson and Hyde and Richie and Charles Hyde's gaps crown, silver eagle, places like that that we're sourcing from. So I always think about it. If I was trying to do something like this in Champagne, you can't really go, hey, you know what? You can't buy a ton or two of clota manille and maybe a ton or two of clota ambine and let's just round it off a little clota goss. Can we get a few of those together and make a Champagne? You can't do that. So what's so unique about Westbourne is drawing all this different interesting pieces of fruit that have different layers and complexities together and making something that you really can't be done. You certainly can't do it in the old world. And it is very difficult and time consuming to try to get these grapes together even in California. And there's a reason Champagne is good for Champagne and sparkling wines and burgundy is more well known for still wines. And so what was your thought process behind taking great still wine vineyards like a herch or Richie or Hines and making sparkling? Because to me, at least in my mind, they're different grapes that need different things. You need more acid for sparkling, et cetera, et cetera. You don't want as much flavor usually. Yeah. I think there are a lot of different ways to think about that question. I think it's a very interesting question. Champagne, let's be honest, really came about to make Champagne because they weren't really able to compete with burgundy and they're still wines. And so that's what got Champagne to be Champagne. I don't know if we actually want to put that in this, but I don't want to try to throw shade or anything like that on this, but that's where they got their niche. They realized they weren't going to be able to compete with burgundy on their stills and they were able to have elegant with the lack of over sugar ripening make more elegant sparkling wines. So what that means for them, I think in a large sense, is that when there is the harvest time, which really is going to be the big differentiator between California and Champagne, when Champagne, the region, as a whole, says, you're allowed, you're now allowed to start picking your grapes. They have some real time, probably a week or two or more, to pick those grapes. In California, the big difference is we just have a couple days. We two or three days in the window of Champagne. The acid numbers and things like that are the same as what we get in Champagne. It's just our window to be able to pick them at that time is different. Then back to your question about these different vineyards and what we're doing. I think for a long time, it was in Champagne and other places, it was crop it a little heavier. You're trying to get some acid water and you're going to layer your flavors and your complexities on top of that with your aging. I wanted to start with something that was more, we're going to look at these sites, we're going to look at the California tarwhide, we're going to make something that starts with the bones of it as being really high quality. Then layer the aging complexity on top of that. I really want the density and the textures that we get from these world-class sites in California. I wanted to show where they from. I want them to be California and all the amazing things that come from our California vineyards and our grape growers. What is the niche you're trying to play into here? It's the top sites in fruit for pino and chardonnay, but where you're trying to position this brand, is it Grand Cruze Champagne or etc. I would say the Grand Cruze Champagne, but more on the growers side of best practices, more grow or more use of barrels, neutral barrels for fermentations and back to the growing. I think you've seen a lot of big grow or movement in Champagne that's really focused on the vineyard again. A lot of these wine makers are doing more burgundy practices in the vineyard for lower yields, more intense fruit and textures and density in their fruit. Also in the winery as well, more hands-on, small, batch-crafted, grower type of protocols, really. Both those things make sense for me as a wine maker from still wines previously and using a lot of those techniques to get that level of complexity that we're looking for in West Born. Because I believe West Borns pricing is 100 plus, is that right? That's right. 100 plus, yes. You also have some partners in this. Can you tell us about that? in the role each of them play? Yeah, so working primarily with two other guys, Russell Bevin and Nathan Reeves. I've known Russell for many years. He's been a winemaking mentor of mine. And he's the first person I went to and I had this idea of Westbourne. And he was all for it. Thought it was a winning idea and really fun to do. And one of his assistant winemakers, Nathan, is a winemaker who was originally from Australia. And he had had experience in the Margaret River and making some sparkling wines there. So he was the first one that was a little bit of the sparkling experience that we were able to really start the Westbourne process behind. And using some of his best practices that he had learned on his way. And then again, refining those every single year and every single harvest. Interesting. So in terms of, so all of you guys were kind of jumping into this from a different still wine perspective and kind of jumping into like, we're going to figure out traditional methods, sparkling wine and figure out how to make this. I'm curious on how many vintages you took to kind of refine that process. Oh man. Yeah. Every year is a different challenge though too. I mean, this might be the year where you're really working on your malice and you're trying to get this going. And every year, it always seems like a different type of thing. It's just what Mother Nature throws at you. So I think probably four or five images in is when you really start finding that stride that you're really looking for and you really ponder in. We've been happy with the very first ones. No doubt about it. But I think it's you get more in your in your zone. I guess as it goes. So I mean, wine, but particularly traditional method, sparkling wine, which Westbourne is, is notoriously difficult from a capital perspective because it's very intensive. It takes years to make and you start stacking those years on top of each other as they're sitting in the in the bottles and storage inventory of multiple vintages. And in 2019, your initial risk was seven years ago. How do you think the business model of sparkling wine versus still wine and which might take one to three years versus four to seven years? Yeah, I think that's one of the things that business model didn't quite show is quite that number of years that it actually took. Initially, I thought, I'll be three years and whatever, but as you're tasting the wine, it just needed more time. And anyway, so I digress there, I think, but I'm glad we're not a publicly traded company because they wouldn't really like to see the financials of that kind of thing very, very long. I have some other still brands. I have a Cabernet brand called Silver Ghost and that's one that's the brand that's done the heavy lifting to kind of keep Westbourne going through these years, but it is. It's dramatically different, different expenses and sometimes multiples of the same expense when you're doing sparkling wine versus versus still. Yeah, I was just thinking the the extended duration of sparkling wine plus the learning curve that we talked about just a moment ago. Yeah, when you combine those two, that makes a very long initial journey. It does. Given you just released wine and you started in 2019, being pre-harvest 2025, do you have six vindages of wine in the seller? Well, actually it's seven. My first vintage of Westbourne was 2018, but it has not yet been released. We found that it just being 2018, it was a little more structured, just needed more time before it was ready to go. So it was just discouraged last week. So it'll be released out of order, which of all the hard things about the sparkling biz, there are some neat things like that. Like people don't typically bad an eye too much if you release out of order. That happens in champagne quite often and that's a nice tool for the wine maker to be able to do. So yeah, it's actually seven. And then of course you also have the way them doing Westbourne is having a Sellerimethid Reserve wine program, perpetual reserve going there. So that's more wine that's always being held back really. And then some other things like late-terrage releases. So not always releasing the wine, the vintage wine all at once. Some's going to be saved back for late-discourages and things. So there's a lot of inventory stacking and planning that goes on with that. No question. So 2018 is your first vintage that you just discouraged. How much wine did you make in 2018 and how has that changed through the later vintages? Yeah, about 500 cases were bottled in 2018. More wine was made. It's always a little bit of a misleading thing because not every wine that gets made that year goes to bottle. But it was around 500 cases bottled and a lot of them went to reserve. And in the next few years gradually increased a little bit. You're trying to hit a target way off in the future of what you think things might be. And things that happened in between 2018 and now and but kind of always growing a little bit with really a lot of it's man that'd be an awesome vineyard to work with. I really got it. I really want to work with that when you just can't pass it up and you start making a little bit more and more that way. So right now on a given year it's around a thousand cases worth of wine. Again, not all of it goes to bottle, but that's about where it is. And really probably I guess in my head I'm shooting for maybe up to 2000 something like that seems like a number that could make sense. I want to make sure I have my hands on every lot that we're doing. I don't want to sacrifice quality at all for volume. So that's a big driver of that. And also the kind of vineyards that I work with, it's not it's kind of self limiting in a way. You don't really typically you can't go when these growers and say, "Hey, hey, can't rich." You know, I know I've been getting two tons for you. I'd really like to go ahead and get 20. It just doesn't quite work that way. You know, the most these vineyards are basically allocated for years to come. So. And just a side question, are you actually two side questions real quick? One is of the thousand potential bottles of wine that you could do. You're going to put some into the the the white and the rosé and then the rest into the perpetual. And is there a target of how much you're going to put into the perpetual reserve every year? There is a bit more of a target on that one. Yes, and we also have a block to block. That's forthcoming as well. So on any given perfect harvest year and again, not every year has produced every all four. We could have a vintage, which is a typical shardonnay peanut or blend, kind of a typical champagne blend, a blunt to block, a rosé and a non-vintage. We know for the non-vindages so that the consumer can see exactly which one they're getting because they're not necessarily supposed to taste like the one before it's supposed to be the best one we could have gotten that year. So it's that's a little bit of a different thing from some of the bigger houses in champagne. Definitely want to be transparent about what's in that wine. But yeah, in a way, there is a bit of a target for the non-vindage just because of our particular reserve wine and perpetual reserve wine process. How much wine comes out of each tank? How much you want to blend a reserve wine into the second wine? And so of course, you're taking certain wines out of each tank and then topping those those reserve tanks with fresh wine from that previous year. So that kind of gets to a number given how many tanks we have at the moment. But it can of course change in the future. So that one does have more of a target and each other wine is smaller than that one. The non-vindages has a little bit more of a distribution presence than the vintage wines. And my other follow-up question would be in terms of the sources for the vineyards are they relatively consistent from the 2018 through to today or have you expanded that greatly? They have been expanded quite a bit. Most all the core ones from 2018 are still there every year. But again, every year is about which one is the performing the best and which one you want to keep going for longer and you're dialing that in. So there was a lot to learn in 18 and to now. But yeah, most of the greatest hits you're still around for sure. So you've got seven years of wine in bottle of some form in the cellar. You have a perpetual reserve. That sounds like a lot of capital that you've invested in this company today without, you know, or just release your first wine. So revenue just starting to come in. How does that capital? What's the size of that capital look like versus if you just did a still one project? Yeah, you're looking at, well, depending on the difference step along the way, you're looking at various multiples really. Because with still wine outside of just the age that you're looking at, you really are literally making the wine twice. So there's a double right there. You're making it as a still wine with the call of inclair. And then you blend that, put it in bottle, and then it gets made again. You add a little yeast, a little sugar, you get to see capping, it's bottled, and it's made again. The bottles themselves are quite a bit more just given that they're heavier duty weight, you know, more heavy duty to withstand the pressures inside them. What's the difference in price of a bottle still versus sparkling? Well, I mean, you can get still bottles very expensive as well. But typically, if you're looking at your normal weighted cabernet, so when you're on bottle, you're probably 15, 20 cents of bottle, and you're going up to about a dollar, dollar plus on sparkling bottles. It's a big difference. It is a big difference. Yeah. Doesn't sound like a necessarily when you say 90 cents of bottle, but when you're looking at the actual math of it, it does. It adds up. And then so, you know, you're starting to get revenue in with your first release. How is that impacting your growth plans and your, you know, working capital requirements given the long production time of your wines? Well, it helps. You can start paying back some of where you, your financing costs can give a little bit better for a while. I mean, there's still a lot. I obviously thought a capital that's been invested, but it does allow you to breathe a little bit, I think, and see that glad to see in the tunnel, which you look for, and financially, and this type of thing. So yeah, you know, you got a little bit more for barrels and for other type of packaging and things like that, you can think about your discouraging, discourage dates a little bit differently, and what might make sense for you and how that can kind of progress. And given the long duration here, you said six or seven years wasn't exactly intentional. But how long then was your financial model that you built out for this business? Was it over 10 years, 20, 100, like, you know, Bill Harlan might say. Yeah, you got to go into it with a long term. You have to be patient. I don't think you're necessarily ever prepared for how much patience it'll be, but once you get into it and you start realizing you're onto something and the wine, you taste the wine in the glass and it's something that you can, you're excited, excited for, you're excited to share and something you can be proud of. You just start with the horizon, it just gets longer. It's, you know, given the reserve program where that is, that's really exciting and it's got so many more years that it can take for just more layers of complexity. But really it's yeah, it's just trying to make sure everything's dialed in in right size for the long term, for the 20 years. years, you always dream about your kids taking it over and being able to make this wine down the road. It's just us being the ones that can get it there for them is really the big deal. You mentioned financing costs. There's some sort of bank or debt that you have or something like that. Do they have? Yeah. I wish there was a bank for a sparkling wine when they didn't charge you for quite a while until you make them. Do they have a certain requirement though for how long your financial forecast is that you provide for them? No, it's more just all based on my banking with my current bank with all my other wine brands altogether. So it's just a lot more, the inventory part of that adds up quite a bit too. As far as you're taxes and you're into years type of stuff, your inventory keeps going up every year, of course, and that's fun. So how different of a story do you think this would be if you didn't have those other wine brands that you were doing things? I mean, would you be able to do it responsibly, do you think? You can get financing and all that kind of stuff. Oh, I think that would be tough. Yeah, I think that would be pretty tough to try to do that without the other things going in there. That track record of success and your other brands and selling wine. I think you're right. That would be a pretty tall order. At least to do it at that volume. I think you could always probably do it with a ton or two. But then again, that runs into a lot of difficult production things at that scale as well. So you need to have some sort of scale that can be that could be profitable also. So there's a time element with traditional methods, sparkling that is very expensive. And you mentioned having to make the wine twice. What are the other drivers of cost increases for sparkling versus still and how big is the impact or the difference? Yeah, there are a few other interesting things that you don't didn't really think about until you start doing. So the fruit cost for me is the same. So I paid the same that say maybe Albeir or Kong's card. Somebody else pays for Hudson or Hyde fruit or something like that. Shouldn't it be cheaper though? Because are you picking earlier and so there's less dehydrate grapes or fuller? That's right. That is very true. You are picking earlier when the grapes are typically a bit. Well, I guess it depends on when you were to pick them later. But yeah, they certainly can be fuller. And that is something that growers do enjoy about this project. I mean, that was when I started going to these growers talking about it. I asked them what they thought about me picking earlier than everybody. I was going to make sparkling wine out of it. I didn't really know what they would think. Nine large, they love it because there isn't that there's no shrivel. There's nothing. You're not having any sort of loss. You're getting the fruit off earlier before birds or anything else can contribute to any sort of loss that that happens. Also they get to have. They get to take a few tons off their vineyard when nobody else is asking to take tons off the vineyard. So there's not the congestion of getting everyone to pick and organizing those picks and who's going to get what, what day. It's actually been pretty nice. So they actually were all for it. But once you get the fruit to the seller and you're going through your press, so your press cuts are really important. Maybe one of the most important things besides your pick day for sparkling wine is how you manage your press cuts. Generally speaking, you're going to end up with probably 25% less gallons per ton than you would on a still wine. So right there, your fruit costs have gone up dramatically just for what you're getting in return for the tonnage. So that's a big deal that, again, the business model might not have shown me initially, actually. And that's just because you're not pressing as hard. Yes, right. You don't take the entire press. Yeah, you don't take the entire press. You don't take what they call the tire, the tails. The pH starts to rise. Then you're losing acidity. It just doesn't quite work for traditional methods, sparkling wine. But those elements can be perfectly fine and most still wine and that's what you would want. So, so you get less of that. Then like I said, you do, you make it twice for your vine clairs and then you make those into bubbles. Then let's see what's that additional cost in terms of like twice the amount of yeast or anything. Well, that's right. That is in there too. It's all the above in your pain for your glass earlier. So you got to do that stuff earlier in your caps, which you bottle. When you bottle your tearage, you put a crown cap on there. So yeah, more yeast, more everything with that. Another interesting one. And then with the time, of course, comes financing costs. Like we talked about earlier, that is a real cost that comes. And then the storage of all this wine is a real cost. And another interesting one is the tax that you pay on sparkling wine. The traditional method, sparkling wine, you're paying around $2.40 a gallon on your tax. For reference, Cabernet Sauvignon, under 16% alcohol, it taxed at $0.7 a gallon. So it's like a 34 times markup if you're doing sparkling wine. I think historically it goes to the TTV calling sparkling wine a luxury product and not a food product, as it were. And so it still taxed quite a bit higher. Is the like cost of wine making more expensive because you have different equipment? Also for like, discouraging or bottling or things like that, you're doing it at a custom crush place like Rackenrattle or something. Right. Yeah. So exactly. So it is a little bit more expensive. That second fermentation is more because of all that equipment involved. And yeah, more than your first one. So you have those together. Does some place like a Rackenrattle or whatever, like a sparkling custom crush place, do they charge more than a still custom crush place? I mean, I think you could say it depends on where you go and that type of thing. I think it's fairly comparable, but too a little bit more. Yeah, just given that there are so many fewer options if you're going to go custom crush on your sparkling wine and given it is the different volumes you might bring in. So when you're doing smaller volumes like I do, it is a bit more expensive than your initial crush. Yeah. Clearly, you believe in the market opportunity for California's sparkling wine, but even at the high end luxury California's sparkling wine, what trends or forecast helped you establish that belief? Well, I think a lot of us in this space owe a lot to Michael Cruz and what he's been able to do, premiumizing sparkling wine in California. I kind of feel like he's a bit of the godfather of California, grower style champagne. There's sparkling wine rather and that's been really neat. And there are a handful of others that are coming out right now and it's exciting space because I always think that we don't look at each other as competition more just making the whole pie bigger. And there's place in people's sellers for domestic sparkling of all sorts alongside their champagne. So you have that, which was starting, it's going pretty well in the mid teens. And since then, you've seen more premiumization of a lot of wines too. So people might be buying a little less wine, but they're buying higher end wine. And so that's something that fits with Westbourne quite a bit as well. And lastly, sparkling in general is kind of a bright spot in a bit of the doom and gloom surrounding the wine biz at the moment. So it's nice. There's some growth going on, the sparkling wine. And sparkling wine is getting out of the realm of just being for celebrations now. It's kind of becoming something that people can drink throughout the week and with their food and not just for celebrations or just an appertive for something. So that's cool. And again, I think that is just going to allow people to be more curious about regions outside of champagne. And a lot of times I kind of looked at what we're doing right now and thinking about what the Napa cab people were thinking in the 70s. People probably say, well, why would I get in the app of cab when I get a board out? Well, I mean, you can, but it won't be Napa cab, right? I mean, I think that's kind of where we are with this one. There is a lot of great champagne out there, but there's also a lot of opportunities to try interesting sparkling wines and purposeful sparkling wines from other places in the world and in California in particular. So it's interesting because we interviewed Michael Cruz. He was very much at that premium. He's not trying to make champagne, single vineyard, single variety, single vintage. And you have a slightly different perspective on your approach. And many domestic sparkling wines tend to be priced lower than champagne equivalents, particularly when owned by a champagne house. How do you view that dynamic versus like relative quality and branding? >> Yeah. Well, I mean, champagne has so many years of equity in their brand built up and of course, the quality is great. So I think they have, they've earned that right to charge. They charge in a lot of ways. And they obviously have a lot of California brands as well. And they do have their higher end, Ted Tukubez in California. They just seem to be more sold out of the tasting rooms and they are in the market. I don't know. I've always wondered how much is this pricing purposeful? Is it purposeful to be a different wrong than their champagne bottling? Is it meant to be? >> I'm curious because it's like, if you're charging $100 plus for a blended wine or a perpetual reserve wine, that's a very different value proposition than some of the champagne houses who kind of go up and as they get up higher, they start to get the single vineyard or start to get the vintage. And so it's a slightly different positioning. And I'm just curious on how you see, how you identify that and how do you kind of break into that space. Well, like that gave you that belief that that was there's a spot in the market that needed this. >> Yeah, well, I think it was duly just, there is a spot in the market for quality. And people are always going to be, if you have a good story to tell and purposeful reason for doing it and the quality is there, then there's going to be people who are interested in those type of things. And as far as a perpetual reserve, the non-vintage goes, I think a lot of that goes back to kind of the crude mentality of our non-vintage is absolutely as good as our vintages. We just happen to make more of it and that's why they price it like that. And it's very purposeful how they're making it and why they're what they're doing and you get so much complexity and layers. So this is really trying to say our non-vintage is priced a little bit lower than the vintages, but it's not supposed to be, but we do make more of it. It's not supposed to be lesser than absolutely putting the same amount of time precision in that one. And in some ways, it can have more because you do have to manage those reserve takes throughout the entire year and make sure that everything is good with them and then you're doing those kind of blends in a way. And what you're putting into that is just as high as anything else. I guess the question is, some people think that the champagne house is purposely priced California less because they want the champagne viewed as higher quality. So it's a clothing, but it could also be a market thing in that they would love to raise their prices, but no one is willing to pay for California and sparkling wine at that equivalent pricing as their champagne products. And so we didn't know if you had a view on the market for California and sparkling wine, and if it can bear the same thing. I mean, maybe a matter of production size as well, right? A lot of the champagne houses are making much bigger volumes than what you're doing. Yeah, I think the production size matters a lot. If it were me, I don't know that I'd overly want to compete with my own brands too much in-house, so I could see that that could make sense. And I think it's also difficult when you're dealing with that large production as well. Your picks are so, like I was saying earlier, can be quite difficult to manage on a large scale when you have a couple days where you're kind of your picks are in the where you really want them versus what that versus trying to get them off in that amount of time. So I think it probably is a bit of a harder proposition in some ways in California to get that right. So one quick tangent. So in terms of like, obviously you're not trying to compete with the champagne houses, but are there any grower producers and champagne that you kind of look towards it or for inspiration? Because I notice a lot more of the perpetual reserve happening in the grower section and that premiumization is allowed there in terms of speaking to what the vineyards are doing and things like that. Have you drawn inspiration from any of the smaller grower in champagne? Yeah, I mean, I really love what Barathe is doing, especially with their non-vintage stuff and their perpetual reserves. That's probably one of the bigger ones to look at. Dessousa was, I was in champagne a few years ago and visited a lot of different places and Dessousa was one of them. We don't see it too often over here, but they have some really neat ideas with what they're doing on almost some leaves stirring. They're doing within the bottle, which is pretty cool. So they're really trying to go for, they have a label called Umami and they're really looking to amp up that Umami type of textures that you're getting from their champagne. So really cool stuff there on a V's. And of course, you look at solos and those kind of things. I think a lot of the things that he does is really cool just from a philosophical standpoint and really focusing on that vineyard and the intensity and the textural density that he's able to get from his wines. So you've priced Westbourne at the high end of the market 100 plus. How big do you see the market for that category of wine? Well, let's say it's definitely niche. It's not a huge category right now, but I think that given the trends that we're seeing, sparkling wine, gaining momentum and continuing to do so and more premiumization of all wines really, sparkling in particular. I think it's a cool place to be, particularly when you have wine now getting into production. Like I said, it takes so long to get into production now that you actually have it there. It's a good place to be considering where the market seems to be going. So does the $100 sparkling wine category need to grow and take share from champagne for Westbourne to be successful long term? I don't think it needs to take share from champagne. Like I was saying, I think there's room in people's sellers for a lot of different kinds of wines. And I really kind of, that's one thing that I've noticed in the world of wine in general, from the very beginning was how little people look at each other as competition and much more as partners. And if you want to look at competition, we could look at wine coolers or direct those spritzy drinks and all those kinds of things, the alcoholic ones. I think wine as a whole is much better as shared with your family and with your friends. And I think the growers and the producers certainly see it that way. So you probably had a projection when you first put the business model for Westbourne together. And as you said, it's changed a lot since then. What was the difference in terms of how long you're projecting it'll take for Westbourne to actually be a cash flow positive business? Yeah. So hopefully we're going to get cash flow positive in about one or two years. So looking at 2027, just given where the production is and where the sales are growing and things like that from direct to consumer. So we're doing a lot of focus on direct to consumer right now with a little bit slower of a rollout for some more traditional distribution. So that's the goal right now. So given the macro trends around wine consumption being down and the wine market struggling, what changes have you made if any to the strategy for Westbourne? Well really it's, I think it just really refocuses you and makes, because on the other hand, you do have that, the people are still looking for something really good. So I do think that really just kind of hones you and makes you say you just got to really double down on every little bit of quality and go into everything with really clear mind and be realistic about it. And if you have to, there's really no room for something that's not the best, whether it's the vineyard or your prediction techniques that you've been working on. And so given the state of the wine industry now and your projects both still and sparkling, what are the two to three sort of like macro industry trends or macro trends in general that impact the wine industry that you're watching most closely? I think that the customers are getting more sophisticated, DTC customers are really looking for a new and unique experience. So with that in mind, we've started working with the art collective. It's called a rising tide. They call art collective in Napa Valley. It's a place where you can go and taste Westbourne along with a handful of other wines. So it's a way for us small producers to have somebody and to give a really unique and cool experience to a customer coming to California and wanting to taste wines and taste a few different ones at the same time. So having that really cool experience in California is a big deal. The premiumization like I was talking about is also where people are kind of trading up in their quality for less volume. And then I think on the production side you've got to look at on any sort of climate change type of things with particular sparkling wine and making it in a warmer place and people always ask that how do you do that kind of wine in California? How does that work when it's so much warmer than champagne? And it is and it's like I was saying about the, it's really about the picking. You just, it really just requires boots on the ground all the time. We're always walking the vineyard. It goes from the press straight to a vineyard calling picks all the time, which keeps the quality high, but limits how much can really realistically done at the same quality level. Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing so much about what it takes to make sparkling wine in California compared to still wine. It's a good recap of the different cost structure because it's I think on from a consumer perspective, it's not always totally understood. We like to wrap up each episode on a personal note and we are curious. What is the most cherished wine in your personal cellar and when do you plan on drinking it? As you said, your parents and grandparents were collectors. So I'm assuming that's been ingrained in you to collect wine over the years. That's right. A lot of birth year wines for the kids and things. I guess I'd say kind of reminded me recently I took the kids and we got went to Costco and I showed them how to make wine out of their cotton candy grapes. If you've ever had their cotton candy grapes, they're the craziest thing. And I always thought what would be like to make wine out of those? So we got a little five gallon basket press and I taught them how we actually make wine. I mean, so small we had one or two bottles of it. So that's a really fun one I think just from a family thing. Other than that, probably a 2008 clod of mineral I've got, I don't know. I don't know when I'll drink it. But I think some of the things I'll know when it happens, right? I think it'll be something to deal with Westbourne and we'll know when it happens. But really eager to have that one. Just an amazing wine from an amazing vintage. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing everything about Westbourne wines and what it takes to make a premium luxury California sparkling wine and how it's different from still. Thank you very much for having me. It was a pleasure. 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 xchatto.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 xchatto, we'd love for you. For you to subscribe, rate and give a review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. Until next time, cheers.