[music] Welcome to Strait Talk with Wine Spectator, the podcasts from the world's most widely red wine magazine. Here on Strait Talk, we interview the most intriguing and accomplished stars of the wine and hospitality industries, plus we get you caught up on the wine world's biggest news stories, trends, and upcoming events. In California, we're always self-conscious of being young compared to the old world, and to have the opportunity to work with 25-year-old vines now. I'm absolutely excited about it. We isolate all these little individual blocks of that vineyard, so that we can track that over time to the patterns repeat themselves. Are we seeing changes as the vineyard matures? And of course the answer is yes. I'm James Moulsford, senior editor and special projects director for Wine Spectator. And that was the voice of Catherine Kisler, daughter of Sonoma Winemaker, Steve Kisler. While Steve Kisler became famous for his shardness, since 2017, Catherine and her father have been making nothing but Pinot Noir at their family's Occidental Estate on the Sonoma Coast. Catherine joined me for a chat about growing up wine country, working with her father, Pinot Noir clones, old vines, extreme terroirs, and more. That's coming up in just a minute. Following that, Wine Spectator, senior editor for NewsMitch Frank will be catching us up on the wine and health news and the potential impact of tariffs on European wines. But first, it's time to check in with podcast director Rob Taylor. Good to be back, James, and it's good to be in the studio with you again after our off-season hiatus. I feel rested and refreshed. We needed a little break, and we're back now with our debut of season three. It's good to be back. Before we get to the rest of our very exciting season three premiere, we also have a lot of excitement happening at Wine Spectator beyond the podcast. First and foremost is some real-life tasting action in the form of Wine Spectator's annual grand tour of super tastings. Featuring more than 200 outstanding wines from around the world, each rated 90 points or more, this year the tour is landing in Chicago April 26th, Washington, D.C. on May 2nd, and then Las Vegas May 10th. You can see all the wineries that will be there and snap up your tickets at grandtour.wine spectator dot com. These tastings are a great opportunity to taste a diverse range of wines from top producers and you can even meet some of the wine spectator senior editors at each event as well. Meanwhile, over at our website and in the magazine, Wine Spectator editor and publisher Marvin R. Shankin's latest edition of his epic long form interview series stars Tinian Nello creator and Stagg's leap wine seller's owner, Marchezy Piro Antonori. It was our April 30 issue cover story, and we've also published a video of the full interview at winespectator dot com. I've been calling this series Marvin Shankin's Mount Rushmore eventners. It started with Chuck Wagner of Caymus, then Pete Montz Angelo Gaia, followed by the Bordeaux Napa icon Christian Moex. And there will be one more following the Antonorian installment. We'll let you all play the guessing game until that one comes out later this summer. And you can watch them all for free at winespectator dot com slash the interviews. In the meantime, we have our own interview series here on Street Talk. Not only was this Catherine Kisler's first time in our studio, she said it was her first time being on a podcast ever. Here's some excerpts from our chat. Founded in 2011 by Steve Kisler, Occidental is the Kisler family's project aimed at making Pinot Noir from their vineyards located near the town of the same name. The project has quickly become one of the leading estates for coastal influence to Pinot Noir. Recently, the next generation of Kisler, Steve's daughter, Catherine, has joined him as Wine Maker and she's here with us today. Catherine Kisler, welcome to Stray Talk with WineSpecTator. Thank you, James. I'm happy to be here. So your father's road to Occidental started 50 some odd years ago. And I remember him saying the seeds of his wine bug were planted by memories of his grandfather's seller. Your road is a little more recent. Where did your road truly begin? What are some of your early wine related memories and what planted the seeds for you? I've known that I've wanted to be in the wine business since I was a kid and I think part of that is always being really close with my father and the energy of harvest really. He'd come home at two in the morning, his arms stained red from being down in the tanks or he'd smell like the seller, that humid sort of mossy smell and that always became a very nostalgic part of the year for me because that's what he smelled like. And I think running around the vineyard with my younger sister Elizabeth and you're eating tons of grapes and the whole vineyard is your backyard. So I think as a kid growing up in this area, you're spoiled being outside and getting to be out in the vineyard all the time. So some dad smelled like old spice but your dad smelled like fermenting grapes. But my dad smelled like fermenting grapes, yes, and the moldy seller. You were born in Sonoma but then your college years you were actually on the East Coast, you were in Boston and Vermont. You said you always wanted to be a wine maker but was that the plan or was that the dream? It was always the plan for me to come back to the family business and I think I was really lucky that we were able to explore these other interests of ours like athletics and like being able to study whatever we wanted in school without the pressure of having to come back and it made it a much more organic decision to join the family business and follow through with that plan. There's a lot of parallels with you in your father. He was a creative writing major at Stanford, you were a classics in history major at Harvard, neither one of those screams, wine maker in terms of major. I mean, so what do you think it is that brought you back, that kind of classic liberal arts education? There's a lot of people in the wine industry who come to it without having any wine background. Would it have been easier to just go to UC Davis and get a degree and do that? Maybe or more practical but as you say there are so many people in this business that with philosophy degrees, English degrees, literature degrees and I think anything where you learn to read, write, think, interact with people is going to serve you well whether you're in the wine business or any field. So it again was just the ability to explore our other interests. Wine was what we talked about as a family breakfast lunch dinner, everything. So freedom to come back to it especially as a younger person was, I was really grateful for that. Set the scene for us. You come back in 2017 after you graduate college and you're the assistant wine maker working alongside your father. Set the scene for us in Occidental. I know we're at elevation, I know we're close to the coast. What do you see? What do you feel? Well, I think that's the best part. Looking out from our vineyards, you see the water, you see the Pacific Ocean from my parents house. You actually see the boats when the tankers are coming up and down the coast. So the air feels humid. It's this foggy wet damp redwood misty mornings in the summertime and that cool breeze that comes in off the coast in the afternoon. It's a perfect mix of like land and sea smells that are in the air every day. That ocean breeze fed minerality is what I've coined the term. I'm not taking full credit for it. I'm sure someone else has said that along the way, but is that accurate in terms of the wines? Absolutely. How would you. How do you explain that to someone who would be tasting coastal peanut water for the first time? For me, that salty minerality is in the tanin structure. You know, they're like crystal and just like perfect neat little tight crystals. Not rough tanins or vegetable tanins or oak derived tanins. It's this sort of more. it's a prettier version, I think. And then in flavor, you can get wines that are sort of briny with that organic material to them or you can have wines that feel very clean, like cold seawater. What about the light out there? I know every time I go out there, I feel like the light is different from any other wine region I've been in, both in terms of altitude and everything else. There's a purity to that light. And you have a great way of explaining it on one side of your face versus the other. You know, we're at around 500 to 700 feet, so our elevations aren't crazy, crazy high. But the intensity of the sunlight, I think a group of growers out there thinks that it's derived from the reflection off the ocean, that we're actually that close to the water that we get this magnification effect. So that helps and influences the way that our fruit ripens despite being in this naturally cooler growing region. In wine terms, oxidant is still pretty young, debuted in the 2011 vintage. Your dad was doing double duty at his namesake, place, Kisler, and then oxidant up until 2017 when you join him. So the project is new, but he actually got some vines into the ground back in 2001. So right now you've got 20 plus year old vines, which for a lot of wine makers is when things start to get interesting. Are you in that camp where you're kind of like really getting interested now in the old vines or older vines that you have on the estate? And are you looking to take those vines into the next generation? Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that's one of the things that in California we're always self conscious of being young compared to the old world and to have the opportunity to work with 25 year old vines now. We isolate all these little individual blocks of that vineyard so that we can track that over time to the patterns repeat themselves. I think compared to our younger vineyard site that's right next door, which we started to plant in 2012, I think there are differences in the way the vines respond, especially to some of the more extreme weather conditions that we've had in the last few ventages. Those older vines having benefits? Absolutely. Absolutely. just you know we dry it.
I farm everything out at the coast. I think the wet foggy mornings help us with that, even in the younger site. But you just see these big, beautiful tall canopies in these 25-year-old vines. And you just gives you confidence that you know they're going to make it through, no matter what. - When your dad planted, he had a kind of a proprietary mix of cholera, mountaineiden, and swan, clone, punon wars, which are very popular heirloom clones out there. There's another theory that folks often throw at me that is when their vines are 25, 30 years of age, the site starts to trump the clonal material. Have you seen that between your old vines and your young vines? - Total. Well, and I would just say the site out where we are, even in our young vines now, like, each parcel is so different from the next. And I think the beauty of working with this moulange of clones rather than clonal blocks for us has been that you have to evaluate each block at face value. You say block one is my more savory block, block two is pretty influral block three versus relying on, oh, block one's cholera, so it's going to be like this or block two is this way. So we're seeing site, trump, clone, even in the younger sites, I guess, is the short answer to that question. - Probably because of the site itself is so extreme. - Totally. - Have you ever thought about trying other vines elections, including some of the newer selections coming over from France? - No, I think that was one thing that he was really confident about in the mid 90s when the Dijon and Pomer clones became more popular was, they set these big fat juicy clusters, which helps hedge against mother nature. You can increase your yields with those clones, but he was never convinced that they made more compelling vines. And maybe he's a little bit of a glutton for punishment. And we like our shy bearing 55 gram little clusters, but that's what we stuck with. And I continued to just want to work with our own cuttings. - Yeah, I remember when I visited you and you told me there were 85 acres of vineyards there, that caught me off guard because your production is still small. - Absolutely. - And that is a function of, I didn't realize it was that dramatic though. - Yeah, 1.3 tons to the acre and 1.6 tons to the acre at the two properties out there, so. - And anything below two for our listeners is considered low, the enormous three to three and a half. And obviously that changes by variety and location. But you are in a very extreme site. - And the new ranch will be even more extreme. So we're, we've rolled the diast on another 40 acres of vineyard that will be half the distance closer to the ocean. And it's a big well see. I mean, no one's out that far west in our part of Sonoma County. So we'll see how that goes. - When your father was at Kisler, he kind of made his name on Shardney. He was making puna nor at the time, but he worked with vineyards like Dutton, Hudson, D'Areal, McCray. Do you ever wish you get to work with outside vineyards or are you totally happy with everything in house? I mean, you're planning more. So in essence, you're getting new vineyards. But have you ever thought, ooh, Sonoma might be nice or Hirsch might be nice? Or do you just really live in the accidental world? - I live in the accidental world. (laughing) And I'm lucky enough to be friends with the folks that make wines from those beautiful sites. So I feel like I get the best of both. But I think that's something that I'm really proud of the way that he's on his business where we've always had a full-time vineyard in Celler Crew. There are 35 or so men and women that work with us year round. Our vineyard manager, Ruben, has been with us for, you know, 40 years now at this point, just about. And to be able to have that level of control over your sites is incredible. I mean, there's no detail that escapes us. And I like that level of control in the vineyard as much as Mother Nature tries to keep us on our toes. - You say that you know them. And so you have the goal in mind, which I fully understand. But you also come back to a winery run by your father and your name is already on one of the wines. Not your family name, but your name, the Coovie Catherine. How does that feel? I mean, do you follow the goal that has been set? - It's the best wine, obviously. - You have a friend, of course. - I'm obsessed with my wine because it comes from a block of the vineyard, unique, distinct in and of itself. And I love trying to push the envelope 'cause it's very briny and very savory. And my dad is always like, do you really want it to be like, is that too much? You know, he wants to make sure that we stay in this classic range. And I appreciate that very much. Because I think sometimes like 17, the first vintage of the Coovie Catherine that I helped produce, that wine is like a beast. It's pretty cool. It's no other wine like it. - You do a very good imitation of your father by the way. - We spend a lot of time together. - I know you do. Let's talk about that. So would you agree that knowing what you don't know is critical to moving forward? - 100%. - So I figured as much. So that's the softball. So maybe here's the more difficult part. When you go to college, your professors are showing you what you don't know. And so I feel like that always gave me kind of a humble energy, right? 'Cause now I want to read more. I want to see more. I want to do more to get to the thing that I'm trying to learn about. You come home essentially to the wine where your father has built it up. Is it too easy to rely on your father? Or do you, where do you get that energy to keep going? - That is a great question. I think there's a drive to fill those shoes. I mean, Occidental is my dream. Occidental will be my project one day. So I think he's done a really fantastic job of stepping back and letting me take on more and more responsibility every year. You know, whether that's I'm the only one in the winery for the first seven hours of the day or whatever it is. I mean, tasting together is always quite collaborative. But I want to do, as good a job as he's done in his career and be able to have employees that want to stay with me for 40 years. And that legacy component of wine has always resonated deeply with me. So I just, I want to do a good job for him and for myself. - Well, your father and your team must be doing something, right? You guys were on the cover recently as among the best of the best wines that we can find in categories out there. You've been highlighting the Pinot Noir coverage that I've been putting together. You're at the top of the game. You are definitely planning the flag for Coastal Pinot Noir. It's really ground zero, the Occidental area and the way you describe it is very accurate. I think there's a crystalline kind of pinpoint field to the light and the air and your wines capture that. And so we're looking forward to seeing what you do in the coming years. - Thanks. - Catherine Kisser, thanks for joining us today. - Thanks James. I appreciate it. (upbeat music) - Thank you for that James. That was a great interview. No pressure when your dad Steve Kissler, right? - Yeah, but she's handled it with a plum. It's been a very smooth transition there at Occidental with the Kissler family. And we're looking forward to some great wines coming in the coming years. But now it's time to shift gears and check in with our senior editor for news, Mitch Frank, in New Orleans. Welcome back, Mitch. - Hey, gentlemen. I'm glad that Catherine was able to make some time and come on the show with you. Those ones are really beautiful. - I agree, but as much fun as it would be to talk Pinot Noir, you're here to talk about news topics, Mitch. And one of the top questions I'm being asked by our readers is tariffs. Can we tell them what's going to happen next on the tariff front? - I wish I could give them a quick, easy answer, but so far the only thing that is predictable about 2025 is its unpredictability. Let's give a quick summation of where we stand as we're recording this. So far the White House has implemented tariffs on China and on some products from Mexico and Canada. The Canadians have retaliated by slapping tariffs on American wines and the governments in nine out of 10 provinces in Canada have pulled US wines from stores and wholesalers. Canada is California wines biggest export market. Then there's the bigger concern. There's the European Union. After the Trump administration imposed tariffs on all imported steel and aluminum, the EU proposed 50% tariffs on American whiskey. The President and Trump threatened to retaliate with 200% tariffs on all European wine. Not surprisingly, this set off a panic in the US wine industry where importers, distributors, restaurants and retailers all warning that this would drastically hurt their businesses. They basically would have to stop importing European wines because a 200% markup would kill sales. So as of this date, there are signs that EU officials are backing away from the tariffs on bourbon, but the issue is not settled. And several wine importers have put on all orders of European wine on a hold for now. As we record this, the Trump administration is preparing to announce another round of tariffs. These would be much more wide-ranging and could be on 15 or more nations, including more for China, Japan, Mexico, Canada, Vietnam and the European Union. Well, that's a good recap, Mitch, and that's a lot. So do you think the wine industry will avoid 200% tariffs? - I mean, I would be surprised if we see 200% tariffs, but I've been surprised a lot routinely. And the fact is, there are so many trade battles going on right now that wine, which is often attractive as a symbolic target, is going to get burned sooner or later. And then there's all the uncertainty that this is creating. Even if these tariffs never come to pass, It's making it.
impossible for importers and restaurants and store owners to plan. And these are businesses that are already grappling with declining sales. I spoke with several importers of Provence Hall, Rosé. This is usually when they start bringing those wines in so that they're ready when summer comes and they've put all the shipments on hold. So this is already creating a lot, a lot of problems. All right, let's shift to another worry of the wine trade. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory calling for cancer warning labels on all alcoholic products just before he left office. Tell us about that. Yeah, it was a surprising choice, but it reflects a growing neo-provisionist movement around the world. It certainly seemed like a questionable positioning to it, Mitch. Has the science regarding wine and health changed? Not especially. Yes, there continue to be studies that show that low to moderate consumption of wine can lower your risk of cardiovascular disease, heart attack, strokes. There are also studies that show that alcohol consumption has been linked to a higher risk of certain cancers. Now, a federal panel of scientists issued a comprehensive report just a few days before the Surgeon General's advisory reiterating that the data shows low to moderate alcohol consumption is linked with lower overall mortality rates. So why does it seem like there is so much noise about alcohol being unhealthy? Come with me deep into the weeds of temperance organizations and public health groups. So about a decade ago, a group of public health advocates changed their focus from highlighting the dangers of heavy drinking and binge drinking, which we know are harmful, instead spreading a doctrine that no level of alcohol consumption is safe. Now think about this. The science on alcohol is complicated. Low to moderate amounts, especially when consumed with food, can provide health benefits depending on your individual circumstances. That does not fit on a bumper sticker. These public health advocates who have spent their lives seeing the harms that heavy drinking can do have a much simpler message. Alcohol is unsafe from the very first drop. It's not true, but it's simple, and they have convinced the World Health Organization and the Surgeon General to repeat that message. So what are their goals with all this? Well, in the short term, they want more restrictions on alcohol sales. They want higher excise taxes on alcohol, which we've seen in the United Kingdom. They want warning labels on the back of every bottle, which is something the Surgeon General called for, and they want heavy restrictions on advertisements for alcohol. Long term, they want to make alcohol the next tobacco, and they speak quite openly about that. Social media today is filled with influencers spreading this message that alcohol at any level is not safe. The idea is to make it socially unacceptable to have your glass of wine with dinner. Well, I find that a little terrifying. Should wine drinkers really be worried about this? First, know that the science is not on the neo-prohibitionist side. It will not stand up over time. The data showing the health benefits of low to moderate drinking are very solid. Second, continue to support the ideas of moderation, and that wine is the perfect pairing with food and with friends. Humans have been consuming wine for at least 8,000 years. It has enhanced our lives, not shortened them. So don't be afraid to spread that message. All right, well, thanks for catching us up on that subject. Obviously, very important for our industry. There have also been some notable passings in 2025. So far, Mitch, first, Martin Sonnier, the longtime importer for such prominent estates as Bernie Niz Lois and the Rone Valley's Chateau Rios. She passed at age 91. Yeah, and we also recently lost Peter Schell, who lived a very full life, including escaping from occupied France and the Nazis during World War II, and then working for the CIA for several decades. He was the importer for Blu-Nan in the 1970s and 1980s brand that had a huge impact. He was also a wine author and educator. He passed away at age 104. And a loss for our M. Shankin communications family, as our colleague, senior editor James Lauby, has passed. He started working for Wine Spectator in 1980. He reviewed every category of wine made in California during his 30 plus year tenure. He wrote four books and penned over 40,000 wine reviews as he charted the rise of California wine in general and Napa Valley Cabernet in particular through the 1990s and early 2000s. I was humbled to be assigned the California Cabernet beat when Jim retired in 2019. His breath of knowledge on the subject and his contributions to the magazine during his tenure cannot be overstated. He was 73. Yeah, Jim will be missed. That's it for this episode of Wine Spectators Straight Talk Podcast. Thanks, Mitch Frank, for joining us. Don't forget to check out Wine Spectator's grand tour stops in Chicago, Washington, DC, and Vegas coming up in April and May. Tickets on sale now at grandtour.winespectaiter.com. Check out the show notes below for more on today's episode. We'd appreciate it if you would share the podcast with your friends or give us a rating on whatever platform you're listening to. You can also email us your questions and comments at
[email protected]. And don't forget to follow Wine Spectator on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Thanks Rob. Until next time, this is James Molesworth reminding you to always share when you drink the good stuff. [Music]
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