Breaking Traditions: Collaboration, Diversity, and Modern Strategies in the Wine Industry

A lot of people talk about the Gen Z problem or the Neoprohibitionist and they talk about all these different things. The one thing that no one talks about in the wine business is how in five years they've gone from 7,500 wineries to over 11,000. Sit back and grab a glass. It's wine talks with all kids. Hey, we're going to wine talks with Paul Kay and we are in studio today in actually beautiful set in California on a fall day. I'd like to have a conversation with Barbara Gordon. Introductions in just a moment. Just got back from a wine tasting yesterday, Bordeaux tasting in Beverly Hills incredible conversations with some of the leading Bordeaux makers, which included Christian Moex and Fettelneak standards van Biek. You'll hear from that shortly. But now why we're here, I'm going to read this from an AI thing, Barbara. It's good to have you on the show. But there was a lot to say and I couldn't write it down. So I had I had chapped GTT to this. Barbara Gordon is the president of undisclosed location, Unlow, the snowman based brand strategy and creative consultancy specializing in the wine and premium consumer goods sector. She's also a long time strategic leader and moderator of the DTC wine symposium, of course close to my heart, shaping discussions around direct to consumer innovation, growth strategies and consumer engagement. Her background includes agency experience at Leo Burnett and DDB building major consumer brands with a focus on cultural relevance in discipline, creative execution. Well, that's a mouthful. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Paulus, for a gentleman's city. That's a really interesting point here that we peel back, which is coming to the table from a non-wine world. And there's a handful of folks like you that have done that. Tell me about that transition. What prompted that? Luxury goods or luxury goods, but alcohol and wine are a little bit different. So I moved to California in 2009 and I figured that the wine business would be something I was interested in. I always liked wine. I had an affinity for Shetan of Dupap, which was sort of my first aha wine, which as people call it, because I got tested in a 2000 year old cave, which I thought was super impressive when I was 18. But I had been doing wine on expense accounts for large agencies. And so when I went to South Africa, I got to drink South African wines. When I went to Spain and spent a month there working on global product, I got to experience Spanish wine. So it was something I had an affinity for. So the first thing I went to was the DTC wines symposium in January of 2009. It was the friend and it was a very different affair at that time, much smaller. It was older white guys and suits, a handful. And I do mean a handful of women and everybody was the same color. It was not a diverse audience in any way, shape or form. And they were talking about things that the rest of the CPG world or other advertisers had been doing for years. So I was like, OK, so this is obviously a category that's ripe for change and ripe to do different things. So that's how I got involved in the DTC symposium. And it was for years, it was run by Jeremy Benson and also Brian Baker, who's my partner currently. And it was all about raising funds for free the grapes, which basically ensures consumer choice and helps with regulations and legislation across the country. So it was a good cause. And so I decided to become a volunteer. And because I had a very extensive contact list, both globally and in the US in all kinds of different kinds of marketing aspects, I was the logical choice to choose keynote speakers and people who are outside of the business. And as that, as the conference grew and changed and morphed over the years, I learned a lot. You know, I had moved back to California to be closer to family from Chicago. And so that was cool. And then I became involved with a lot of different people and met a lot of different people and started working inside the business and found that there was profound need for change. And so let me give me back all the way up. OK. Because he says something important is generationally important. And we're going to talk about the diversity set of wine. We're going to talk about free the grapes. Remember the organization? Well, we'll talk about Brian Baker, who's an old friend as well. But you said something that I think is really pertinent. And I just read an article this morning about tourism and enotism and wine had a wonderful woman on the show recently from Armenia who's trying to, you know, that whole industry is trying to grow. And that is you said you were 18 and you were in a cellar and you tasted a shattern of the pot. Now first of all, shattern of the pot, probably not the most popular wine in Southern California right now, but the regardless, they're wonderful wines of a pedigree. But one important you said I was impressed being in the cellar. It was 2000 years old. It was built by the Romans. So why would that impress? What? Because it was an earthquake, I didn't go. Oh, I didn't. I didn't. I didn't give a fig for once. I didn't care about ones. I went to go see the cathedral that had been bombed in 1944. I was with my art history professor and he goes, you need to see this cave that was built by the Romans 2000 years ago. And then when I was in the cave, I tasted the wine. So it was a experience as they say today, but it was a very impressive experience to be part of that history. But you're, since you're tied to DTC and for the listeners that are one of the term, it means direct to consumer, which applies to all industries that deal just about anything in the Amazon would be DTC, right? So what I was trying to get to on that is there's an experiential part of that aha moment for you was being in this cave. And this is cool history. And you're being a history major had this affinity just to be there. But and then DTC kind of removes experience from the consumer's side of things. And so what I want to peel back a little bit is how do we get wineries to produce an experience for people to say, ah, I remember this wine. You'll never forget that shat in the pop you tasted, right? Because you're in this cave. Never. And then you get, you get to, you know, as you, as your life and your career go on, much later in, in life, I met the Haas family. I met Jason Haas's father and like my first big wine trip to California when he was establishing Toblis Creek. Then later on, I get to meet Jason and work with him on free the grapes and about his commitment to regenerative farming. And so it's in all of the different, you know, varieties of wine that he's producing from Shatown if to pop. So it's kind of a full circle, you know, that's why he was on the show recently. And I kind of freaked them out because Robert Haas and the Ron Rangers used to meet at La Leams in Berkeley, which was owned by a guy in Armenia named Vaikoskarian. It was also a restaurant that Alice Waters went to when she was tired of, you know, shape and ease. So it's kind of an interesting story. But so you brought to the DTC world, I suppose experience and education from previous industries. You'll be at Leo Burnett, one of the great PR agencies of the world. Marketing, right? Which work, huh? Marketing, not PR. Marketing. What was it? How has, how did that come to the table? How did that feel, you know, transitioning from the wine from that business into the wine site? There are two, like moments of when I'm first getting into the wine business. The first, I get a meeting with a very famous and well-known iconic Napa Valley producer. And I say to the guy, I said, because a lot of my experience came from marketing to women and going out whether it was athletics or CPG products or whatever, I said, so what are you doing in your winery to market to women? He goes, oh, we're not really doing anything to women. The man owns the credit card. He's in charge of the wine club. And I'm, wow. Well, this is 2010. When I had that meeting and the other one was an AVA that I pitched was probably one of the first AVA's I pitched. And there were 16 people in the room, myself and the banker. And we were the only two people who were not related by blood or marriage. And that was also a moment where I realized, okay, this is a completely different category and you're going to have to approach it. And a lot of people are not, I dealt with startups and people who didn't have experience in marketing all my life. And then you end up being an educator one way or another. But this was going to be a special category that had particular challenges. You know, this is interesting because we were talking about that diversity side of this and you went to DTC consumer, which is what we've done. The word DTC is relatively new to the world of consumers. And I'll think when the BMG music or whatever that company was that used to said, you see, you know, 12 cities for a dollar and then you had to buy, you know, 12 at a regular price. They didn't call it DTC then when my dad started in 1972, they didn't call it DTC then. But it's something. When, when he handed this company over and I, he will, he would have argued today that I bought it from from a dollar, which isn't true. In 1988, he handed me, and I could find this document somewhere in my archives here, the list of wineries in Napa Valley that had what now is called DTC. And it was basically five. It was like, you know, Engel look, Martini, you know, the four or five known wineries of the time. Why would that take so long in your opinion to come to the surface? No, not 2009. There was a symposium on it. And it still, it still seems to be in its infancy and understanding what, you know, what the proper methodologies are and where to go with it. I think we've come a long way. I mean, the symposium now is this will be in 2020, January 2026, it'll be on 19th year. And so at this time, we actually are living in the best of times from a marketing perspective because we are able to utilize things like AI to do creative. We're able to utilize OTT and CTP from a media standpoint where small enterprises can get in the game. Just as social media did 10 years ago, when people started reaching out that way and then the rise of meta and those kinds of different things. So there are tools out there for people, but how they utilize those tools is often the challenge. And one of the things we're going to talk about and we can talk about this is a throughline for the conference this year is about collaboration. And I think that that's going to be really important because from an amplification standpoint, if you have 3000 case wineries and you have 15,000 case wineries, how are people going to interact in order to sell more wine and bring more people under the tent? And I think that's one of the most important things we want to talk about this year's conference is and that's collaboration is not something that the wine industry is known for. There's been a lot. Gatekeeping, secret keeping, keeping numbers, keeping things behind the wall. And I, I see that the rise of women and now I would say the conference is over 50% women, probably closer to 60, women are collaborative and they're going to come up with those solutions in order to sell more wine. And I think that's super important. You know, that's a really interesting concept because you know, the one of the month club during his heyday and I'm going to say probably 2007 through 2015, we were, we were monthly club, which we're going to talk about a little bit here in a second, which is not typical of most wineries. But I used to have lunch with my main competitors, the California Wine Club, Golden Metal Wine Club, the Vinesse. And we would share stuff that we felt we could share, you know, with, we had a cautious approach to our conversation. However, the closest and the most confident, confident confions, confions is French. Wow, I'm having children by words here. The manager of the company that I most confidence in and trust with having conversations was a woman at, at, at California Wine Club. And she's still a very good friend. And so we, we hit it off when we first sat next to each other and we sort of confided each other along the way with our competitors and what we're doing. But you know, it's an interesting thing because I just read a, a LinkedIn post from a friend of mine, not a post, but he sent me a message and he's a owns a winery and a lawn diploma. Or all these, you know, Frenchmen who has a Bordeaux here, he's got 4,000 bottles of 18 Bordeaux here in America. And like most people that do this don't know, doesn't know what to do with it. And he wrote the other day and I just, just noticed it. All we need is 6,000 members to take 24 bottles a year and I can get this stuff out of here. And I wrote back, I said, all you need is 6,000 members. You have any idea what it's going to take and how much it'll cost. I said, that is a separate business and I'll help you with it. But you know, that didn't just happen. So we're going to sit, no, I mean, that's a huge nut. That's a huge difference. Yeah. So are we talking mostly at the DTC symposium, wineries who are looking for ways to, to embellish their clubs and get the wine in the hands of the consumer or is it a mix of third parties like the wine of the month club was in wineries? It's a, you know, the thing that's been interesting about the conferences, we've, we've always had a very diverse audience in terms of like enterprise. So we have people who are coming there. I had a lady who wrote me from Lustelivos who literally makes 150 cases of one a year. And then I have people from the Galloway organization, from the Jackson family organization. So obviously, you know, so we have every and everything in between. And so it's a huge business diversity because people understand that, you know, DTC marketing has become a 4.2 billion dollar channel, right? So depending on how that works for you and your business, it's an importance to, for some people, it's their only channel or it's their major channel in the case of the larger enterprise people. It's, it's a minor channel, but important to them. And they saw how important it was during the pandemic and enabling customers to buy that one online. Can they learn, can those two organizations learn the same thing from one of the, let's just go, let's say I tend to run the seminars and I'm going to sub, let's say AI Stephen mock is teaching AI to, to a, such a, that diverse, diverse, a client tell me the woman who makes 150 cases in the Jackson family direct consumer club manager, obviously completely different requirements and needs. Like, can they learn the same lessons from what you guys teach? I think overarching, I think the first thing that everybody can learn from is it's the best networking on in wine. I mean, that's number one. Because when people meet and they talk to each other, the conversations are invaluable. So start with that. And then I think what we try and do with the programming and I think we've done a really good job this year in, you know, building a media plan on OTT, which people who are probably more sophisticated and want to do that, can do that. Or if they want to talk about how automation is going to serve their wine club, they can do that. So we try and provide content and programming that is going to go to both of those things. Our keynote speakers, obviously Steve Gross gives us a state of the state, which is one of our best. And then we also bring in, we have a DTC marketer from outside the wine business. He's going to talk, he's worked with Calvin Klein and pet food and art and snacks. So he's going to talk about his experiences. And then Elaine Brown is going to come in and she's going to talk about the feature, which I think is an important thing that we all need to talk about right now. And then dusky estes. We have, we have, so it's sort of like those keynotes are kind of up here, blue ocean. And then the sessions are more about education. The breakouts. Yeah. And then we have, we have, we have a group of people who are going to talk about it. And then we have, we have a group of people who are going to talk about it, and then we have, we have a group of people who are going to talk about it. And we have a group of people who are going to talk about it, and we have a group of people, who are going to talk about it, and we have a group of people who are going to talk about it. And then we have a group of people who are going to talk about it, and we have a group of people, because of that, the wine of the month club, when we founded it was in a store. And so people walked into the store. And then we, my dad invented the newsletter for the wines. And he, you know, all those things that come along with today's DTC world. But then we decided to, he started to do shows. So that first change in my dad's career for marketing, the wine club was to stand at a booth. And it was very interesting because he would go to the legal, the legal shows and the Dennis shows and the doctor shows and the, you know, the gun shows. And was, you know, it was some return. There was an acquisition cost issue. It was fine. It was survivable. But the loyalty was very high then. And then somebody said, you ought to go to the LA County Fair. So 1984, he set up a booth, the LA County Fair, which was free at the time. And doubled his membership like in 20 days. And that was realized that, you know, that was a huge venue. Well, those, those things don't really work anymore. I can tell you that my acquisition cost in 19, 2007 was $9. Can you imagine that? And then the year I stopped, I'm sorry, that was 1996. The year I stopped doing shows was 2007. And that acquisition cost of the same exact show was $150. Unsurvivable, you know, at $30, wine package. So what I'm getting to is then we moved into cataloging and direct mail. We were selling, moving a million pieces of mail a year. And then that all evolved into group on, you know, coupon marketing. And then I moved into affiliate market and moved into influencer. All that stuff comes around. How do you, how do you position the symposium around the radically advanced changes in marketing and you came from Leo Burnett, which is a marketing firm, as you mentioned, man, Kevin O'Leary said it on the show, what works today won't work tomorrow and work, yes, it's not going to work today. How do we keep dynamic? How do we teach the dynamic part of this? Well, I think that we all have to get invested in the idea of selling wine at the 50,000-foot level, and there's been a lot of conversation about this recently. A lot of people are trying to understand it. I think the wood and bid situation in California, we're going to have a program about that. There's been a lot of controversy, as I'm sure you're well aware of Sonoma County. We're going to do it as a very journalistic panel and have people from five different areas of California who are at different phases of adoption, to molecular leading the bunch. And so we're blessed to have team members on the steering committee who come from all of these areas and who we want to keep it pro-con difficulties and reporting out because these things have been very controversial because it's attacks that people don't particularly want to pay, but that said, it requires them to market their product and market their area. And I think that we can do one better if we were to create a wine campaign and Rodman Millen called for this several years ago, it was called Wine Round. And people have to get in the business of familiarizing themselves with beverages. And if you look at what wine spans versus beer or spirits, it's negligible. So we have number one, selling wine and number two, what kind of wine and what do you want? And I think that another through line will be different ways of looking at targeting consumers that is outside of demographics, which I think is completely antiquated. And the wine business is very lazy about. And because they have everyone's birthday, they think that okay, Gen Z consumers are here and boomers are over here and ascribing particular behaviors to these particular age groups, which nobody in CPG marketing has been doing for 20 years. I mean, it's not how you know, as I had this conversation with Rodman Millen and I said, hey, I'm a boomer. I like tacos. I like to hang out and drink run variety with my dog. And you know, and I see people Gen Z's there. And so it's like we're enjoying the same experience. So help me understand how exactly we're different. It's really interesting. Talk is when I would buy lists back in the day for the for the direct mail. And you know, the demographics was all you had. And so you would say, oh, gee, I wonder if the, you know, these, if the Victoria Secret catalog, you know, buyers and you'll learn a lot. It wasn't about the demographics would end up being the most driving force for direct mail at the time was. And it probably still is that that the person had responded to a direct mail piece almost didn't matter what the product was that they had responded to. But if they were used to opening their mail and checking off the box like my father and I would buy anything you got in the mail, that was the most important driving factor. But today, you know, the variables in the targeting and the ability to get, you know, your message in front of the person that most likely would buy has to be infinitely more granular. Well, especially at a wine audience, right? I mean, if you, I had somebody run the numbers from you one time and it's like the wine audience of people who drink wine on a regular basis in the United States, which would be once a week or more, is somewhere around 10 million people. Given the country, it's not that big. So what you have to do is you have to number one, increase the size of the market. And number two, figure out how you're going to target those people. I mean, Tom Mark had an excellent article out this week talking about you know, how people should be targeting customers. And then there's been the entire conversation about, you know, whether it's grocery store wine or whether it's things that are better. That's a mean podcast. It's like so it's so disappointing. And I'm listening to these people spill on and on and on about it. And I'm sorry, they might know about wine. They don't know anything about marketing to people. I keep doing that's, well, that's a very hilarious. That's an important feature. And I want to go back to the statistic for a second because I was way off all these years, though I got my numbers from the wine institute back in the day. But the comment used to be, if you asked 100,000 people in America, do you drink wine? 25,000 would say yes, which would be 25%. However, that includes the the other person that goes to Olive Garden and gets the house key on to you, they would raise their hand. I drink wine, but they're certainly not a candidate for a DTC program. So your numbers are even more specific and more constraining. But so you just nailed, you just hit it on the head, though. People come to this industry, at least for instance, the woman who was making 150 cases or Teravaz Winery in Kansas City because of the romance, the idea, the challenge, whatever it is it takes for you to bite off this industry. Aren't they reluctant to try and understand marketing and testing and realize, oh man, I don't think I really care about acquisition costs and row-ass and all the rest of the metrics. Is that hard? Do you know why I love the wine industry? Does this set up? No, I love the wine industry. It's the same group of eccentric, weirdos, oddballs with diverse education. They might have an engineering degree. They might have a poetry degree, but they all are passionate and they love it. Do they love marketing? In fact, they do not, which means that it'll have a job until it won't retire apparently. But the point is that what we're seeing is we're starting to see the shift. It started during COVID and you're starting to see it where I think people, and especially the younger generation coming up, understands that they are going to have to bring their products to market. They're going to have to pay for marketing and they're going to have to do something about it. And so whether that's newsletters, social, OGT, whatever that is, they're going to have to do it. Whereas I think there is a generation of guys that basically said, "My wine sells itself." I mean, I'm sure you've been in this business a long time. You know a lot of people who would say that, right? They've been saying since who knows when. Right. But be that as it may. I mean, go back to go back to Bartles and James, which was a very undistinguished product, but they sold a lot of it. And how did they sell that? They sold it with a great advertising campaign that was humorous. Something no one in the wine industry is doing. And I've talked about this a couple of different times. But it's like. They had a catch phrase at the end of two brothers down there that was very funny. And remember, it was Hal Reine, I think it was in the late 70s or 80s. Some time down there. But I mean, it was brilliant work. But I mean, it wasn't very good product. And I think that there is a generation that looks at marketing as being in some way, shape, or form, not worthy of their product. And people are getting over that. Look at what Loa's show is doing with widening Kennedy. She's a bright young woman. She was just in wine business monthly called out. And that's cool. She's coming to the conference to give a talk. But it mean the point is is that now it's like now people are starting to get, Hey, I'm in I'm selling wine in Oregon. Why don't I go get some of the best people in the business from widening Kennedy and have them work with me? And they'll get something out of it. And I'll get something out of it. That's smart. There's a book I was reading. I do like reading wine books that are written years and years ago. Because it's sort of a different perspective on what was happening at the time the book was written. Plus it goes back. What's that broad? Yes. Well, actually, I have a dozens of Les Amide magazines, which are great magazines. The precursor to the sort of aspect. It has been worked in the restaurant business in France for 25 years. So I'm really looking. What's interesting there is in 1930 something when there was a burgundy appellation meeting one of the vendors said, Hey, you know what? My wine sells itself. We shouldn't allow advertising in marketing in this new appellation that they created. And everybody thought it was nuts because we all know as out of any global basically puts out there is that wine is about consumerism. And that's why I've always wondered. And this that was the pretense of the question. I'm going to take a one more step further. My niece started a direct to consumer salad dressing. And it's very good. It's individual servings. She's done an incredible job. And she's at this juncture where her organic marketing has been very successful, but it's starting to now peter out. And so she's going to have to invest in and learn how to spend a marketing. So I brought out the whiteboard. And she was an intern here, actually, one of the month before she started this. And I said, Okay, let's go over return on ad spend. Let's go over acquisition costs. Let's go over the various prongs of marketing that you can do and how you're going to decide which ones work which ones don't And her attitude was I don't want anything to do with it uh You know this this is my brainchild then the market here and I really don't have time to understand those things And I said well then we're gonna have that conversation in the future Because and she's at a point now where this organic side and the influencer side of things is just sort of And she made a very interesting comment. Let me ask you this if you've heard this in the wine side I think one of the great influencers that she had bugged to review her salad dressing did it and it got I don't know 500,000 views or something. I don't know some huge number But only sold six thousand dollars with the product And she said I was very disappointed in this. I said well you'll learn a huge lesson, you know there That kind of marketing It's not going to produce you know the revenue that you expect it to do it seems like the numbers are big when you have a half a million people viewing the thing But that's just views they don't mean a thing Really when it comes down it's a reminder it's why people with why people in the wine business think that social is Is it be all an end all it is it is absolutely not is a reminder It is not I always say it's a You're damned if you and damned if you don't like if you don't do it then you look like a square You don't have any presence, but if you do do it don't expect This he's revenue stream just from that oh No, I and I just another word on acquisition cost last year when I was doing my budget workshop about Marketing I asked a room full 70 people if they understood customer acquisition cost And I had one person raised their hand Wow Not only that but I asked a very well-known person from a very well-known winery and I said so you know what you're Acquisition cost is don't you person and and they were like we do all our work in house, so I'm like This is nothing that starts in the class Oh, I see you okay makes it with any relation no no no no no no no no no no you need to understand what you're putting out How is that how is that aligning with what your strategy is and what you're gonna do and Yeah, no there's that's phenomenal, but You all know I have put my dad in this You can you see this painting here you probably can't no There's a picture of my father and I since 75 sitting in front of the wine shop I remember when he started the one of the month club He had gone to Nathan Krollman the famed critic here in Los Angeles and writer for the LA Times and Lawrence Bowser I mean he may have even bounced it off. I know he bounced off more than when he asked me and a couple other locals Jim Barrett was a regular store Not to drop names, but I remember going to Hawaii as a kid and he had every maybe five different books on direct to consumer marketing or direct marketing at the time And he was doing those metrics. He had you know, it was on paper In a pencil and saying if and if I could get You know five dollars a bottle and it cost me a dollar for the wine and a copy whatever the numbers were And I have a dollar left over for profitability and dollar left over for my pocket He had all these numbers down and what it would take to do it And it's an old old concept and I'm wondering if that's not what I'm talking about here Which is you take a farmer and you put them into the farms and they start making wine and they go realize We got to sell some and now they end up at the DTC consumer Symposium going you know their heads are spinning when they see these numbers. Yeah, there's a lot of that It's a great service. Tell me about unload. What what do you do with undisclosed location? Which is a great name Um, I started about 20 years ago when I left for net and you know, I was a I was a you know, it was senior vice president And I had run new business for them for several years and I had done a lot of different things because I was a I was a pitch specialist so I made them two of the most profitable years they ever had where they made 600 million dollars But the problem was is that I was in the creative department But they didn't you know brunette wanted to pay they wanted you to stay in your lane at that time So you got to go into certain aspects of it strategy or business development, but they didn't That was different and I was a woman and I was an art director So there's another two strikes against me and I was like okay So I want to be in business and I want to learn because I I'm a lifelong learner That's what I love I love learning businesses and So then I started working for companies and in the 20 years I've been doing it I've only worked for one advertising agency when I was Basically advising a CEO about She was pitching wine business and I was I basically was sort of Behind her saying these are the things they'll want to hear But the one thing I wanted to go back to before we leave that is a lot of people talk about The Gen Z problem or the neo-prohibitionists and they talk about all these different things The one thing that no one talks about in the wine business is how in five years They've gone from 7,500 wineries to over 11,000 Now I went to art school You're talking about the TTB licenses But I did but I did take a few economics classes and what people do not want to discuss In these particular challenging times Is this that what you have is more than anything else Enhanced competition and we see it we've been lucky at the DTC show to bring people and we've had some people from Iowa from Illinois We've got a super strong contingent from Michigan whose dues You know been coming in New York state so people have been growing the wine business In regions outside of California This is creating competition and what happens when you have competition We need to market your products I say that It's like I'm so tired of reading Why Gen Z isn't like you know drinking wine? Well, you know if you're selling $50 peanut probably not that price-wise let's start there But more than anything else There's also beverage There's wine there's beer there's there's can butch others There are things that didn't exist. I mean I grew up drinking Galloway Hardy Burgundy in like Loha, California In the squatting bottle Which still makes the best angry there is in my opinion but They still make that I think so yeah Yeah, they do So the point that I'm trying to make is is that people jump to all of these This this terrible doom loop about our society and these are the conditions and hell and With absolutely no structure or or resonance behind all this when they're not when they're like leaping over The most baseline problem problem which is increased competition So you know it's interesting there's always angles. I agree with you completely. I I'm so I get angry really when I read some of these articles that are posted about these problems They're all doom and gloom not only not a doom and gloom, but they they offer no solutions, right? They just say we should and we need to and I one of the important business lessons that I've taught myself When I've talked to anybody who's doing anything is is is Staying away from you should because no one wants to hear you should Because as the fame movie The one about the king. It's it's easy to give advice from the veil of cover That is to use it at the point of attack and so it's it's fruitless to say We have neo-provisionist we have all this competition Without providing an angle for instance. I went to a restaurant recently and the guy was complaining that his bottle sales were off 30 percent Mm-hmm. I'm like, wow, that's a lot, you know, and I said, but how about your servers that are the educated? Oh, they don't know shit He said Like well, hello, maybe that's when you're procl You know if you can find anybody on the floor you can find yeah You know and you you know, this is what I'm looking for You know and and then they want to have they want to have fun too Right What do you think what do you think of this really always magazines you? Me really Michael brought Ben stuff. Obviously. It's very Educated things and it's you know changing the language of why I think it's a stupid thing I've ever heard because If you change the language to Gary vineyard jokes language and talk about you know captain crunch and for loops You know, you're gonna confuse half the people again and the next time they change the language It's gonna confuse the next half so it's not that doesn't really do anything I don't agree with that you know, so like When you when somebody says change the language line what does that mean to you? And do you think it's We're seeing example that people people in the wine business absolutely hate this example They really do But when Cameron Diaz and Catherine power came out with Avaline and they started about clean wine People lost their freaking minds. Okay Those ladies went out and sold like 5,000 cases and sold out and here's what I think clean line comes from clean beauty. It's consumer language that consumers like it or not and all in the whole white community was, oh my god. And it's like, you know what? It's like we should be welcoming those ladies into the tent. We should be welcoming all of those consumers who buy her wine. And it's like, I have heard things from people. I have been with highly educated people, even guys like David Lynch and who have taught me a lot about the business and lead pencil and baby diaper and like crunchy gravel. I've put up with it. Come on now. It's like couldn't you put up with clean wine? I mean, it's like I went in tasting at Walla Walla with Simpcatery and he was like, he said, he goes taste this wine. He goes, look for the Graham cracker notes. And you know what, damn, if they weren't there. And so it was like, but that was cool. That was interesting. So do I think that we all need to be using the same language 100% no. And I think, and I think and just the last point I'll make about that is like we've got Elaine Schuch and Brown who's who's giving a speech, you know, to talk about it. And then Elaine is on, she's a wonderful speaker. She's a highly educated person. She's a PhD. We also have Isis Daniel who has 140,000 TikTok followers. And she's a young African-American woman from the DC area. So I think both of those women have an audience and something to say and they both say it different ways. But I'm not some challenging that. Certainly the idea, the idea of clean wine, which is sort of a style more than it is language. What I was driving, they made my wrong in this and maybe I misunderstood the idea of changing the language of wine, which is if my dad would just describe a wine, he would have a fit when I would use fruit impressions when I would tell him about a wine. Because back in his day, they didn't use fruit impressions. They used other types of impressions. And so my point was if I'm going to change the language of how I describe a wine, no one's going to understand me a generation ahead of me is not going to understand what I'm saying. And the generation behind me already don't understand what I'm saying. But I think your idea of change the language of wine could be the presentation of the wine, the language of wine. In other words, a clean wine, I think makes perfect sense. It's less of a, so let's put it this way. There's only, wine is the only category. And I've worked across, you name a category. I've worked in selling it. It is the only category where the words that are meant to sell the product come from the producer, not the consumer. When Nike does a great ad, they're lifting things out of cultural consciousness or Apple or any other, you know, advertiser used to work with. Why in wants you to use its language? They do. And they feel comfortable there. They're like, yes, this is something we all understand. Guess what? You know, people that we want to bring in under the tent, they have the biggest idea of what you're talking about. I mean, and they don't really care. And they answer, that's right on. And it's, I just got back from a very, very fancy tasting last week. And I was talking to the Psalm who was in charge of it. I won't mention names, I won't mention restaurants. And I left the, with the impression, a knowledgeable guy, but I left with the impression that this is the exact reason that their aristocracy of wine is propagated. It's a protection, it seemed to me, for, in this guy's case, a protection of his knowledge base. He spent all this time studying and doing the stuff and getting a job. And you don't want to have that deluded or lost in translation. So you use the words and you use the approach and you use the lofty service level, which I think is important in wine. But to basically like forcibly intimidate people. And I don't, it's not like intimidation in the way I intimidate my grandkids, but intimidation. And you know, people are intimidated. I was in Italy with with a whole bunch of people and they were all, they were lawyers and judges and a friend of mine who had gone to UCLA business school and she was hosting. And these people like, you know, it was, it was a Michelin star restaurant and they gave me like the book. And I make a lot less money and I have probably, you know, X amount of wine education. And they, they're like, you, you deal with the guy. These are people who have multiple degrees and they were super intimidated. And I'm thinking if we're intimidating those people, that's the wrong to be doing. I mean, we, that's what I think. And we did, we did. And Evan Goldsmith, who's the, who's the sommelier for the, for the giants and Ed Foytchik did this a few years ago. We talked a lot about the language of wine. And I think it is changing. I think with the inclusion of a lot more people in wine, both, you know, bring in Filipino influences and different kinds of food and, you know, all this kind of stuff. So we need different words to talk about it. And that's okay. It's funny because when that gentleman told me that his bottle sales were off and that his wine is a service had no idea what they were talking about. I said, you got it. I didn't say you should. I said, he was bringing a new song as if that was the problem. And I thought, and I went to a restaurant recently in Hermos Abiche and they had reorganized their list. Now, and I was confused, frankly, but their list was instead of regions and grape varietals, it was styles. So light and airy reds and heavy and heavy and deep reds and with that. And you know, for me, I'm an old guy. I had a hard time because I was looking for, I know my wife will only drink bored overietals. And if I ever time I try to stumper with something from the run, she goes, what is this? So I had a hard time finding the calves though, obviously, big and rich, but it was organized differently than what your expectation was. Exactly. So then I told the restaurant to listen, why don't you create two lists, one like that and one traditional, and give half your servers one list and half your servers the other. And see if the consumer responds, it's not going to cost you anything. And it's not going to certainly decrease sales because your benchmarks going to be what you've already done. But maybe you'll find out that the consumers is responding to that change of language, which is describing wines by their style rather than their region, you know, of course, you thought I was nuts. But at least I thought I was a solution to that. You're asking me, right? I mean, it's like, it's going to, you're not going to get 100% of the customers that are going to be 100% and happy all the time. But I think it's actually a great idea. Karen McNeil told this great story last year when she gave her piece, which was cool. She was talking, and this was like back in the 90s in New York. And, you know, they had a list and it was fairly comprehensive. And on the last page of the list, they had chef's favorites. She goes like 70% of their wine sales were from that list. And so if you're at a very nice restaurant in New York, it makes sense. And you're going there because you think chef is doing really interesting things. Hey, you must know something. So that, so now you're making it easier for me. If I don't know anything and I'm the consumer and I go, oh, gee, there's a shard nay. He recommends, I like shard nay and he recommends it. Boom. Okay. Let's go. You know, I think it's very important to be earnest in that. In other words, really make it the chef's favorites, really make, really have him taste or her taste and say, yeah, this goes with this because part of the DTC world and we're we're done here with time wise, but I want to get to this quick point. The original one in Mythical was found on the fact that there was always something around. And I told you stories before of the great vingages we found throughout the years in this club. But it got started to change toward the end here where we were being not forced to, but being forced to taste anyway, you know, 20,000 liter tetra packs from Europe with 50 cent a liter wine in it being packaged under a variety of labels. And it's that was not an earnest approach to the wine trade. And so this was junk and it tasted like junk and almost all of my competitors were using this junk. And I know I can name them off still today that still use this stuff. And you know, educated consumers thinking I get it for five bucks, you know, so not so bad, which is a bad for the wine industry. But it also put a lot of bad taste in the mouths of the consumer for clubs, subscriptions and wine. Because like you said, you're not going to please all the pilots all the time. But if you need to please them sometimes, you need to sort of strike a chord. And then maybe that chord is, you know, for the wine of the month club all these years was the story of the club. And why you're getting this wine and what the story behind the wine was and what the story behind the purveyor was and what the story behind my father was or myself. That was an important story to tell somebody at a dinner table. But if I highlight this by the woman from punch strength came out to watch me taste one Tuesday. And in between tasteers, in between vendors, I opened some stuff that had been sent to me and one of them was a Saturday in that live Vosually. Current vintage, I think it was 2019 and we're in 2020 at the time. And it was, she goes, this is awful. I said, yeah. Can you imagine somebody bought that because they're devotees of Saturday and live or they wanted to have their friends over and have a glass of wine with the show was on and they open the stuff and they don't know how to react. Then I should, if this is better, good, they bought it because of some branding and I think that put a bad taste in the mouth of the general consumer for general wine clubs. You agree with that? Yeah, I think, you know, I had a friend bring the game of Throne's wine to my house one time. I know the wine. You came to me. I'm like, come with me, my friend, we're going to go and taste some really good wine. But I mean, what I will say is what people want us to do is they want to give us reasons to buy their wine. So I look at the organic market, which is like something that has shifted enormously in the last 10 years, right? So we always used to ask people, you know, would you be willing to pay more for organic wine? And Boomer traditionally said, I'll drink it, but no, now you have, it's one of the few categories that's up, you know, it's up around 8% in the market, right? So if you're telling an organic story or a regenerative story as part of who you are as a brand, that's happening. And people and younger people care about that. So it's worth the money to them because there is money to be spent. But you know, the grocery store and the distribution is something that we could do an entire podcast about and why people buy what they buy. But I would say that if they have interest, wine is like great jazz music, you can like Miles Davis when you hear it on, you know, on a podcast or whatever. But you learn about it over time. It's the one's the same way, you know, you learn about it over time. I'll always be learning. I have a son. We just got back from Paris, Texas. I heard of it. The movie, yeah. The recent movie about the reality TV show and the girls go out, they're going to go to Paris and the old movies. I'm thinking the foreign film that was from the news. Well, my son-in-law got moved there and my daughter went and obviously, and we got to spend four days when it was great. But it's a dry county. Well, it's- I went to school and it was dry too. Yeah, we don't know exact rules. You can get a drink at a restaurant or a glass of wine. And I think you can buy wine at the market, but you can't. I could not find a bottle of gin. Anyway, so we stopped the whole foods on the way in and I'm going to toot my horn here just a second. I sold 17 million bottles of wine DTC and I tasted 100,000 documented wines. So I feel like I might have a grasp on at least the consumer side of this. And I walked into Whole Foods and I was desperate to find something that I thought would speak to its appellation in his varietal. About two-bordos, about a Russian River, a Pino, and I bought a domestic cap. Brands I understood, not mainstream brands, but in my son-in-law, who's a very peculiar loves Bojole loves to not stuff like that. He's very specific in his non-mainstream wine consumption. All four of my selections, two of them were undrinkable, not because they were bad, but because they were so sugared up and so mainstream in their palette. Then a guy like me who's done all this in my son-in-law who's only interested in unusual varietals and locations, we couldn't drink it. I was very, you know, I personally believe not in this administration, perhaps, further on down the road that content will matter more to these people. And sugar is a problem. Adam Lee did that with dial tone where he has showed one bottle of Naomi and then like 18 bottles of dial tone and then the people at Naomi wanted to sue him. I mean sugar is out there and it makes things taste good and people talk dry and they drink sweet and all those things. So it's a problem and the people at Ridge came up with a beautiful label in the 80s and that's incredibly transparent and I think it's great. I was so bummed. I was embarrassed because you know I, it gave me a certain pause, a pause because I thought how does a consumer choose? Now maybe the consumer palette is sweeter than my palette. It is. It absolutely is. But nondescript, there was nothing different about these wines and I thought I've really bummed. Anyway, that's between you and me as Wang Yi. When's the symposium? It's January 20 through the 22nd and you can go and register now. The full program is published. It's dtcyncentposium.com. And you have it's mostly vendors or consumers. Is there is there a trade show sort of speak as part of that? Oh, there's absolutely. We have an awesome trade show. We have a lot of new people this year in the trade show, which is super exciting. And we're almost actually sold out of sponsorships. It's been really successful. Brian's been running the whole sales part of it. That's been amazing. He and Vicki Thomas are and it's not a consumer show. It's really it's a business to business show. So it's very show. Yeah. You know, I mean, about 40% of our audience is either VP to owner. So it's decision makers and people who want to understand the future of the business. And I think I think that's where we have to get together. And I think the entire wine business absolutely, you know, I used to work in fashion. I used to work in cosmetics. Do you ever see like fashion and cosmetics like people going, oh no, people aren't using mascara anymore? You know, no one would ever talk about mascara sales were down. I'm just saying. Wow, that's interesting. It's a really good thought. Well, I look forward to that and say, how do my friend Brian and see him for a little while? Come on up. Well, I think I'm going to come up and I think I'm going to spend books and appointments to make some pie. I owe a lot of people podcasts that I met recently as some tastings. Yeah, we're going to have a podcast or run. And we're going to have a content creator room. So come on up. We're going to we're going to have more content creators at this show than we've ever had before. The wine makers are there. I don't do you know the catargees and all those people peeps. Those are main media partners, but we're going to have ice there. We're going to have a bunch of different people who are coming up and doing podcasting. I think MJ is coming. So what we want is for people to meet and understand content creators of all types. If you're on YouTube, if you're on podcasts, we want we want the word out about why we want to make a big tent. Whether you're doing non-alcoholic wine. I know there's I have a lot of friends who just don't like it. I get it, but I also have a lot of people who can't drink and they're very happy about it. So let's bring everybody in under the tent. Let's come. Let's meet in Monterey in January and free the grapes is the beneficiary. And that's a really good cost for everybody because everybody should be drinking better wine. Well, we're going to have to do a podcast just on free the grapes since the very important movement and it's been around for a long time. I mean, it's been a great conversation and I really enjoyed talking to you and I'd you know, I'd love to bring Brian in and we could have a chat at the show. So register now. Great. Excellent. Thanks for being on the show and good luck out there. We'll come see in Monterey. It's up. I mean, come on, worst cases. Go to Monterey, right? Yes. Fantastic. Which actually is a source of one of my favorite stories of wine during the Concord, Elegonson. I'll tell you that later. But cheers. Thank you. All right. Very nice. Thank you very much, Paul. Appreciate it.