Reflections on Wine, Family, and Finding Passion in Life's Unlikely Journeys

Carson, Leno, Valet, now its wine talks with Paul K. K. K. So I was trying to set the other camera up so that I wouldn't have such a big nose, but I guess it's inevitable. Of course I've been dealing with this all my career in life, having many nicknames that dealt with the size of my proviscus, meaning like a two can because of the beak on the bird, the schnauz from Jimmy Duranty, a big bird, you name it, I've had the nickname if it dealt with a large nose. And they call it a Roman nose because it roams all over my face, which I use that joke endlessly while we are in Rome actually. Anyway, I'm in the office today, happy Thanksgiving because I came to get some wines for our Thanksgiving event, my brother-in-laws. And one of the young ladies that's going to be there is my niece, Lisa, and she was the intern at Chateau Bay. So naturally I am taking some Chateau Bay. And so this kind of reflects on Thanksgiving. We should reflect on what we're grateful for and what we're blessed to have. And I have said this many times on the show, but I just, you know, you can see in the background here, my father, his wine shop, and I had no intention of being in the wine business when I graduated from USC. I went to corporate America, which thank goodness it deformed a sort of opinion of how to run a business, at least at that level. And then I went on to a very small software company that only had a fish bowl full of business cards and a two-line phone in my apartment. And we started to sell software. And so those two extremes set me up for the moment my father called and said, "Listen, I've got an offer here at Wine of the Month Club." And I just thought maybe you'd take a look at it before I sell it. And I thank him every day for that. And I talked to my brother and sister this morning with a little joint call here. And it was just kind of refreshing to reiterate that to both my siblings that this was truly a blessing for me. And to be in this industry. And because of people like Vetternik Sanders van Beek, Alexander van Beek, or husband who runs Shetelgi score, who just got 100 points in a wine, by the way. And Vetternik, who I saw recently in LA, and it's like family. This is a person whose native language is French. She's across the pond, so to speak. She has a different life completely than what we have here in South California. But man, when we get together, it's like a family. Because we understand each other. We understand the stripes of this business. We understand the love of this business, the passion it takes to be in the wine trade. It's a slugfest. And then they took on Lisa as an intern. And what's really fun about that story, and I can't wait to talk to her more about it today, is she said, "They want to put me in the vineyard." Now this is when Vetternik had sent her offer to Lisa to come intern in June of 2025 to work at the winery. And as you know, not much goes on in a winery during June. It's all planning for harvest, and of course marketing and event planning. But she said, "Uncle Paul, they want to put me in the vineyard." And I'm like, "Honey, girlfriend, if you want to be a vine maker, you're going to be in the vineyard." And that's where it starts. That's where wine is. That's where it's made. We can just kind of get out of the way as a winemaker. And so of course, when she got to France, they put her in the vineyard, and she now loves being in the vineyard. And I think that's really cool that she came around to that way. And so going back to this sort of fraternity sorority of the winery trade, it is interesting. I've had some really great phone calls podcast coming up. I did two yesterday, which both got interrupted from internet problems. One of them was Nick Carvedis. He's been in the business 45 years. He's done all of it. And wow, it was becoming really interesting. So I can't wait to finish that one. And the next one was even cooler in the sense of its arrival to me. Good friend of mine, I grew up with Pals Verdes, who was one of my surfing buddies, and we played ball together. He was googling early in the morning, like two or three in the morning, could sleep. He googled the Endless Summer, a movie that came out in 1968, which was a great anthology of the surf culture. The worldwide surf culture, not just to the California. And he determined that the writer of the music, which is an iconic song, owns a winery in Carmel Valley, Walter Gioris. And I reached out to the winery via their information email address, and was able to procure this podcast that went off yesterday. We got about 25 minutes in before his internet failed. And man, what a crazy serendipitous route to the wine trade. And I guess that's kind of what the point is. It attracts everybody and anybody. You can be from any walk of life in land on the appreciation and the passion for a proper glass of wine. And in this guy's case, he was from France. He was from Belgium. And if you know the Belgium, they're native language in Belgium is French. And he ended up in the California San Clemente, heavily accented as he puts it. And here he is writing one of the most iconic theme songs, one of the most iconic surf movies in the history of surfing. And it's still, it's, I haven't even gotten to the wine business yet. We were 25 minutes on how this happened for him as a musician. So I'm looking forward to finishing that one too, which is coming up as well. So look for those two podcasts regarding just two serendipitous ways to get to this place. And the passion though, and that's the kind of the beauty of this. You sense the passion through all of it. And one of the points I was making with Mr. Kauravides, and I had to be on my toes to articulate what I'm trying to say here. Having spent so much time with the iconic brands like Chetobaii and tasting with Mutongra Shield the other day, I had a tasting with Christian Moex, one of the great wine families of the world. You tend to feel like there's just two parts of the wine tray, two things going on. Of course, we always want wine to be sold. It's a consumer product. If you make it home for yourself, that's different. But if you're going to be in the public eye, you need to sell it. That's how you stay alive. But given that, there seems to be the premium sector, which is, of course, in all products, there's a premium sector, and then there's this fighting sector where you're out in the street, slugging it out on their supermarket shelves. And I don't think they're mutually exclusive in their marketing in their demographic, I have collectors that buy from me still, only these premium ventages. But they also are separated by this honesty of what wine is. And if you want to slug it out in the wine world and create a wine that's for Gen X, like a whiny baby is and get bought by Gala, that's great. From a business standpoint, that's great. But certainly, it doesn't speak to this terroir driven, leaving my senses and moving to Bordeaux as I sit in Southern California having a glass of Chetol by E or whatever I'm drinking. Two different things. And I think it's okay to separate them. I think it's okay to define them differently, because you can't put them all in the same bucket and then say, this is how we're going to approach the business. And so there's this whole idea of rethinking the wine trade, whatever that means, because it's hampered by the fact that it's only once a year. It's hampered by the fact that you really don't know what's going on. And years and years ago, somebody had written an article about the fact that wine needs to come around to the consumer. We need to produce what the consumer wants. And I think that's what you see in the supermarket shelf and the whiny babies of the world in cans and all the different format changes that have occurred because of contemporary marketing. So I don't, but I don't agree with the concept of we need to come to the consumer. Wine is probably the only product in the world if not a handful that can, that in its true form is exactly what you get from the vineyard. It's what you get from the soil. And if you're making an honest wine, then that's what you're making. And you're representing yourself as this is what it is. This is what I'm trying to reflect. Any good wine maker will tell you I'm trying to reflect what was given to me. And that then does not become a consumer driven or at least a consumer demographic driven product. It no longer is. Well, if they like sweet, we better get them sweet. If they like dry, we'll get them dry. If they want muskets, let's get a muskets. It's not driven by that. It's driven by this sincere need to produce what's been given from the ground, from the earth. And therein lies what I think the essence of honest wine is. The essence of honest wine is the essence of honest wine. essence of representation of a place and a time. And the first time I ever heard that line was from Mike Salachi at Opus I. Wine is to represent a sense of place, of course, terwara, in a sense of time, that vintage. And I think that has to be remembered. And I'm so proud of one of my nephews who is in corporate America, which I remember well when I was at Xerox, one of the largest sales organizations in the world at the time. And I kept telling him, you know, you need to understand wine, so that when you go to the corporate dinner table, that you are, can take that menu, and you have a pretty good guess of what you're going to get, because you understand label reading, you understand the Appalachians of Friendsport Doe, or Burgundy, or California Napa, and you understand the makers. And that takes a little bit of time, but man, don't you think from a career standpoint, if you're with an international organization and you're with who knows, maybe some French business people, or a Korean or Chinese, and you're able to decipher a wine list that one of the great steak houses in less than in America? I'm thinking, wow, that's a pretty cool thing. And so I gave him his first test yesterday. I sent them some inter-level Bordeaux, I think, are really good, and just started asking questions about them. And so I'm excited for that to happen. Anyway, that's today's little short podcast for this afternoon. Cheers, and happy Thanksgiving, and I look forward to bringing more wine stories and human stories to the table for you to be enjoying, be entertained, and learn. Cheers.