Too Small to Fail: Passion, Humility, and Purpose at Saarloos and Sons Winery

It's here. It's now. It's wine dogs with Paul K. Welcome to Wine Talks with Paul K. And we are in studio today in beautiful Southern California. We have a conversation with Keith Sarluse. Sarluse Sarluse. How everyone is saying Wine Talks to Gertz available. An I Heart Radio Pandora Spotify wherever you hang out for your podcasting. And always sponsored by the original Wine to the Month Club. Now supporting the sweet and rosace series of wines. But not why we're here. We're here to talk to Keith about all things. Wine already had a stimulating conversation off camera. Welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. This is truly a pleasure. This is amazing. I love it. I love it. I walked in, so graffiti. I saw, you know, what is it saying? This time, the DOM DOM was a tagger right there. You had me and I'm like, Oh, I'm home. You know, this is comfortable. It feels great. You are the only person that's that's accolades. Yeah, the only person that's noticed that really at the end cap there. That's the best part. I know. That was the one when you walk in. The artist is going to put their most important piece. Yeah. Punches you right in the face. And I saw that and I went, I took a picture of it. And I'm like, I'm home. We don't know that we don't know that DOM pair. No, it was not a tagger. Well, you have to tag the bottle. Something that I've signed a lot of balls. But thank you for having me. This is this is a red treat. Well, you drove down from San and Ed's come out drive to come back on the show. I appreciate it. The most beautiful drive in the world. And you heard, you heard your buddy Matt Caner on the show and I did. He was, you are the second guest in this new study. I feel very, it's unbelievable. I feel very welcome. Yeah, I appreciate that. This set up. So amazing. Appreciate that. Thanks for coming. Thanks for having me. So you, but you came from San Ed's because you're good wine up there. Yes, we are. So that's not how you started this group. You were, you're from here. Yeah. So born raised, yeah, born raised Southern California, Balfour, California, the friendly city. There you go. That's a plug for Dan Coop. That's true. There it is. And by, by parents grew up there, it was known as Derry Valley, went to high school there. Basically, my entire world was as far as I could ride my BMX bike. Right. So those days was a long way. Long way. So you could make it to Seal Beach. We could make it, you know, maybe to way to your up the riverbed, which was really the freeway of bikes. And then, you know, then when I was 16, we had a, the original business supported the Derry supply side of it. And then as the Derry's moved out and homes moved in, we turned to Lawnigarne supply. And like I was 16, somebody threw me a clipboard and a list of deliveries to make. And I was, you know, I passed my tested 8 AM by 9 AM. I was in a truck and just basically I got paid to explore and make deliveries all over Southern California. So just even coming here, it's like, I knew where to eat. I knew where to get off. Thomas Brothers, you know, sitting in the back. But I'm a Southern California kid that got pulled to the Sennheen Esbali Los Levos. I'm gonna stop right there. Yeah. Isn't that the greatest job? Cause I was a delivery guy too. The greatest and you learn the back roads, you learn the restaurants. I put 50,000 miles on my car when I, my first sales job. And I, you know, I never forget what I learned and who I met and the places I went. The fact that you, and for me being, being 16 years old, being trusted with deliveries for a family business, enough money in my pocket to go eat wherever I wanted. I had, I knew where to get off. I learned how to judge cars. You know, I ride motorcycles now and you, you like, if I see a type of car, I can almost tell the proclivity of what's going to happen. Um, and then basically got, you know, just got to know every nook and cranny. You learn how to handle yourself because you learn customer service. You are the backdoor salesperson. That's right. You are prideful in what you do. And then after you make a delivery and you go on to the next one, you're, you're happy again. And it's freedom. It was great. I mean, it made me totally unemployable. I learned great respect for, for semi tractors. Oh, yeah. And those guys, those, that work they do and I worked Vernon and I worked, uh, South Central. I worked all the area. And you go, wow, these guys, you know, just let them have the, they're the right away in the space. And if you, if you know how to drive with them, they'll take you anywhere. You'll never get a ticket and you'll get about 80 miles. Right. Because if you tuck in between two and just roll your great cross country, cross country. It's funny. You know, it's interesting. You're talking about that because you are salesman. You are the face of the company, regardless of whether you sold the goods or not. And here you are, uh, running your own winery. Yeah. What's the name of the winery? Sarlo and sons, which is really the name of, uh, a trucking company. And that was, it's really that Sarlo said, Feast, um, wow. Yeah. This is sending this. Uh, yeah, specifically low sleeves. Um, you know, Sarlo and sons was is really a, you know, to know, to know about what we do, um, my grandfather lost his father when he was young and he was kind of on his own grapes or a th style, no pun intended, uh, for my I would of California and my, uh, I dad and my uncle work with my grandpa when it was dairy supply business. Um, as that transformed, uh, they all work together in a room, pretty much like this that had no walls, but three deaths in it. And one was sales. One was, you know, president one was this and you would come in and yell at whoever you needed to yell at, but everybody else in the room heard it. Yeah. Well, and then, you know, I worked with my dad, my uncle, my grandpa, uh, you know, me and my brother are two different people, but very similar. And Sarlo and sons was kind of an homage to that. And, you know, I really started this winery probably in the, you know, lowest point of my life, it sounds very weird to say, but it was providence. It was, this was, if I, if everything else didn't happen to me, I wouldn't have no number one been there and then been forced into doing this. So Sarlo and sons is kind of the, you know, we're very family centric. I put all pictures of people I love on the bottle. Um, people who are part of it, my cousins are a part of it. They have their own brand, Whalen, two doors down. Um, this is downtown, literally, yeah, where the, that's your, that's our case. That's my office and Tasey. And then, uh, we farmed two vineyards and two different AVAs and, uh, one of them's in the ballot, Canyon, AVA, which is, we have, you know, great neighbors with, uh, you know, honata's in their installment in Beckman and Larner and a bunch of other great people. And so that's, and we were part of the map signing like, you know, we have established an AVA, which was really cool. And then other than that's the establishment. That's, yeah, that's what's Hagen wrote in. All they do. Yeah, West Hagen wrote it from formerly from Klopepe and now at, uh, Antivero sellers. Um, West is, uh, he, he's the next person that should sit here because he's a, he's the Google of wine where you ask him one little question and you get 30 pages of answers, but you only need one. Um, I love West, but the other ones, uh, El Camino Rial, which is on the corner of Zaka Station Road, one on one, one, 54, you know, just down the road from Firestone, you know, the Godfather really of the Valley, um, that's Parker, uh, Demetria, um, basically covering, you know, as a region has ballot, you know, ballot kin is, uh, uh, we're going to talk about this. Certainly a buzz word of people in the, in the trade that ballot has with like, it's like saying, Anderson Valley, this, this area that's becoming so known for its own thing. Not as long as, how long was the AVA was a years ago? I think, man, it's scary. That's probably a decade now because you have to, you have to tell the fed you got prove to the feds or something different about it. That makes you have to prove I learned so much through that process and, um, you know, soil composition history, the reasons where and why what makes you different than just over the hill? Why can you draw this little map line using no words, but only directions and reach this point and then go do south here for the right. We physically walked the whole perimeter to really draw it on the map. And, you know, an AVA, I think, is important because you could say, where do you live? And you could say California and California means a lot of different things. But you can say, oh, I live in LA County means a lot of different things. Um, when you get down to, I live in this town, this city, this neighborhood, this block, this house. Right. And what makes you special? Because really, you know, we're good. My, my, not my philosophy, but my thought of, you know, I, I love both of our properties very much. Ballard Canyon and El Camino are night and day different. And even our vineyard on, on Ballard Canyon, it's probably the most photographed vineyard. Yeah. It's, we're on the cover of the phone book. When I go pay my taxes, they cover the phone book. I just know whenever. Yeah. But that was a big deal to my own man, right? And then the, you know, the, the Rose book about the, the, the region you put us on the cover, which was really unbelievable because it used to be a, a Apple orchard. Um, but telling the story of a place is, you know, when you read books and, and, and you're, you're seeing the person go through trials and tribulations. If it's taken out of time, it doesn't really mean anything. But if you read Huck Finn and know what's happening, when that's happening, all of a sudden, the region, the, what's happening around it, the actual person, you can see how they're shaped by all of those things. Like we, we release one wine, we release our Sarae every year, which is the same clone, grown on three different hills within, you know, from here, that wall separate from each other. But one's a big terrace, one's kind of a rolling hill. And we make, farm the same way, we make them the same way, and they all taste differently. So explaining terawattis someone becomes very easy, you know, sense of play. place because I would say so ter was real and they go, okay, what's that mean? Well, you have three kids, same DNA, same house, same food, same family. That's a really good explanation. Right. And do you expect them to be the same personality and the answer is no. And it said, well, then how can you expect any of this to be the same? We're telling one story from our property, you know, once a year and I get to live in a valley that's full of, you know, punks and miscreants. Like there's no corporatization of where we are. It's pretty hard for it. It's kind of interesting. Sorry about a log answer. No, no, no. You're the guest. If I talk too much, you know, my test is when I decided with the show, I'm connecting show property is I'll pick random spots after I release and go, you're talking too much because it's not about me. It's about you guys. We want to tell you. Well, I just want to come talk to you. So I appreciate that. But but something as interesting as you just said about this appellation that ter was why, back in the history of time, and you, this is Big Burgundy, it's probably the most, you know, prominent example where the monks were trying to find these little pieces of mine. And they got, you know, you said you walked the perimeter of ballot can and here these monks are like, you know, three steps. They got up. The soil's different over here. The thing that I feel like I get to be a part of and the timelessness of it, you know, I can launch into a valid canyon. It's very easy where I could say, you know, with all of our neighbors, okay, at 230 today, the wind's going to blow from here to there. There's this different soil composition. It starts from here, it goes all the way down to here. There's, there's the lowest point. This is where the fog goes. This is where the sun rises. This is the warmest part of the vineyard. This is, and you only get that from time because a lot of, you know, a lot of this industry is someone who who did well at something else and now they're going to impose that same level of success upon the wine world at all costs. And okay, but you're right. Fine, but you know, I'm not really interested in that. The part that gets interesting is, you know, they have enough money. They buy a piece of property. They're going to plant the varietals they want on that. And right there, it's like your kids, you know, your kid could have been a world class hockey player and you're making them, you know, be a gymnast. And all of a sudden, you're like, it's not going to go away. But for us, you know, we came into this because we wanted to grow something from the, you know, my dad passed away three years ago. I'm sorry. Yeah, it was a big tree that fell in my forest, you know. And my grandfather who grew up on a farm in Iowa left it to the older brothers because, you know, there was a bunch of like, getting grapes wrapped and was on his own. And, but he always viewed farming as a noble profession. And around the dairy industry and a lot of the families that we were, I grew up around same thing. And because, you know, 1.5% of this population is feeding the rest of us three times a day. Right. And growing something from the ground raising cattle was just a dream. My grandfather's, and I always say, be careful with what you fall in love with because that's the best version of you while you're doing it. And your kids will pick up on that real quick. And so my dad loved baseball and he loved working. And I as an idiot picked work and my brother picked baseball. Well, that's it. You just suspend that for a second, but you said something important, particularly the part of by. Yeah, stop me. Because the success of, you know, people in the successful world, they want to buy this lifestyle. We'll do that conversation. But when you said that, this is not an easy job. It's farming is not easy. How? Farming is historical. Farming takes experience to for it to get better and better. And that there's a story of fouls winery in Australia. And Matt fouls is wonderfully masculine guy, like literally hunts his own lunch, you know. And his winery was a Coke executive who thought he could apply Coke beverage, marketing, gorilla marketing to wine business. And it probably went out of business because that's not what it is. It's a passion for doing this job and presenting to the product that you best represent where and where it's from. That's a win. That only makes it worth it. Yeah. It's good point. So that leads this whole idea. We go to Napa Valley with it, loads to leave, lots wherever we go. And we go, oh, what a lifestyle. Or we watch sideways. We go, oh, there's, you know, Santa's Valley and the Hitching Post, whatever. And we want that. And so we think we can buy that. No, no, no. The question is, why? Why do we want that? Yeah. Right. Why do you want it? You can buy it though. You can buy it physically, but you can't. Don't you have to earn this lifestyle, the idea of the passion for it? I think so. I come from. I've never went wine tasting really before open a winery. That's pretty interesting. Ever. Right? And it wasn't part of the thing. It wasn't. I've come into this in a very different way. I think that most people have. And, you know, most people when they. When they see someone on stage singing to a billion people, I was thinking about this actually two days ago where what percentage of the people in the audience wish they were the person on stage? Probably, I don't know, 10%. Maybe it's more of a. I don't know. Right. I. When you get into any form of like real art, the part that's drawn draws you to it is rarely the thing that is the reason that person's on stage. And you know, if you locked yourself in a room when you're 13 years old with a pawn shop guitar and just beat on it like it owed you money, right? And you just never stopped. And eventually one day maybe you'll make it to that stage, but when you do it, it'll probably be the least interesting part of your journey. And. It's a good point. I understand why people like this lifestyle because it looks really neat from the outside. But usually the people that are doing that, you know, they're paying someone to come up with their labels, they're paying someone to make their wine, they're paying someone to farm it for them, they're paying. And it's like, well, if you didn't write the songs, why do you get your name on the album? And I come from a bit of a different area where, you know, my. Up until my dad passed away, he was the guy on the tractor. Just always. You didn't get into this because you wanted anybody to know who he was or, you know, my dad never made a bottle of wine in his life. I wanted to do the work. He wanted to grow something from the ground, which, you know, is a transformative thing. Yeah. You have to be optimistic. You have to get up and earn it. You have to be there when things go wrong. You know, the. So God made a farmer is probably one of the greatest poems ever written because you have to be tough as an anvil and soft as shit all the time. And rumble as hell. And. Well, if you're not humble, if you're not humble, you sure will be soon. And what I like about that is taking something from, like right now, where we're pruning and we're making, you know, 23 different decisions per vine times, you know, 2000 vines in acre times 50 acres. We're making all of these farming decisions. And we're trying to get that fruit from a bud and get to watch it, right? To a grape we pick and then take that off and not screw it up. Like every. I always think like coming here, you know, you're sharing so much information and stories and things with so many people about something they can't taste until they come and taste it. Right. And it's like saying, "Oh, this song is like this, but you can't hear it yet." And the beauty that I think is associated with that is mostly. It's kind of what we're. It's describing more what we're doing out in the vineyard than what we did in the winery. Right? For sure. You're always talking about the place. You're always talking about who's around it, what was happening, context. Rarely did, you know, sometimes you get, "Is this name a steal or, you know, and that?" And then you're like, "It doesn't matter." You know? But what you're really. What we're always describing is the work part of it, the beauty part of it. And that's the thing I think I've fallen. My dad fell in love with and I love doing it alongside him. You know, we're still my wife, my mother, my daughter, my son. We're still at the 3 a.m. picks and we're still doing it because the hard work, the stuff everybody pays other people to do is the stuff we love. You know that you think about that lifestyle idea, this. By the lifestyle, obviously. And I love it when friends go to Napa, let's just pick Napa because that's everybody's destination. And they see Dave Deltado's giant monstrosia, that Persian, whatever that thing is, that guy built. And I kind of go, "That's not what it is." And it's not like how great the stuff is. And it's not that. And the humility, that's not humility there. Tuberis, right? Well, Tuberis, to me, it's the overcompensation of knowing how much you actually were involved in it to do it. Right. Like going back to the music analogy. If I go, you know, Jackson Pollock's one of my favorite artists and I don't see him really in joy to go to a art show. Right. Because what he wants to do is back in a barn. Right. And I think those are the true artists, right? people that are almost in entirely impossible to love and they're doing it for a great reason. I mean, you brought up Wink, right? I mean, my cousin, we're talking about that last week and I said, I outlasted him. You know, it's, it's true. It being big and being whatever doesn't mean it's better. It just means there's a Ponzi scheme anyway. Well, yeah. You listen to the rats. I can't wait. Listen, anybody like going hard on stuff, I will listen to every line of it. But there's something about it and I learned this from the clad strips and that Nazi thing and I kind of hit me in the middle of the conversation. What you're doing and the history, what you're doing. Now we don't have all the history that the French do and even other parts of the world haven't won. But we're creating that now and it's coming from people like you who are farming the land who can tell the stories of the things they've learned from the land. It's not the things you've learned from, you know, the fermentation to, you know, usually stainless steel or oak. It's what you've learned from the land that makes a difference. So I thought, wow. The steak doesn't come from a herd. It comes from a cow. And there's a lot, you know, within anything. I always say, you know, exalt the farmer because whatever restaurant is, you know, three stars or whatever, what they'd probably either are raising their own cattle or they have a relationship with someone. And the farm, the farmer is doing 90, 90% of that work so they can sear it on two sides and serve because, you know, food is now about, let's, let's hide it. It's about authenticity, right? The best meal of your life is someone who that you love that cooks you something that they thought of you and made it. It's real. And, you know, for us, that's like I, I don't sell the stores, I don't sell restaurants. Every one of our bottles goes directly to someone that's either come in and tasted it or has been there before and has joined our family, you know, and, and because of that, I know who I work for. I work for them and them alone. And there's something really beautiful about that and there's something real freeing about it. And when you know the people you work for like that, it's like, you know, I don't, I don't mind working 380 hour weeks this week because the guy from the friendly city, you know, end up in a, and the work in philosophy, you know, how do we end up in, in, in San Inezza, Los Alivos, um, Barma, you said that it was almost serendipitous. You, yeah. So my old man, um, yeah, my mom, the saint, the real saint of this story. Um, it's like, you know, all, every star Los man is an idiot and every woman he's married to is deserves way better than him. We can define that. Well, that's easy. Our house. Yeah. Just maniacs going to work every day and then coming home and their wife's, you know, pulling the, pulling us back. Yeah, that discussion last night actually. Yes, that's a good one. But, you know, when you're full of passion and you're doing things like that, then, you know, my, my old man bought a piece property on top of a balcony and that was just a hunk of shit. And it had an app, had a Fuji Apple orchard on it. And he was pumped and ready to rock. And, and we've found those apples all year and had a neighbor that said, I'll buy them all. And he was, we're the big huge, you know, uh, uh, now a, a very big grocery store. I didn't tell you my final who fought in World War II won't buy Fuji apples because you think, yeah, Japanese, but go, they're good. But went to deliver them, got them turned, turned away like at the dock, you know, and yep, came back and shoved them on the ground and watched cattle eat them. And there's, you know, a lot of crying and throwing up and what are we going to do now and all the terrible stuff. And I was still living down here in Southern California and kind of commuting back and forth. Uh, my mom, again, the hero of the story says, you know, why don't you tear up? I don't know what we're going to do. All that, you know, normal psychothos. Uh, once you tear down, putting grapes seems like people want those, you know, and went down the street and asked, "Rusac, uh, if we plan for it, will you buy it from us?" Yeah, sure. You know, that and that launched the ship. Wow. And we planted that simple. I mean, I don't know if you do that today in today's environment. We walked some, hey, we buy it for the. No, we were that dumb. That's the truth. You know, naive and planted them, you know, planted all our vines and, and, uh, She's in cheap. No, it's cheaper then. Um, but planted all of our vines and started farming them. And it's kind of like, you know, people weren't you scared and all that. And number one, it's, that was a burn the ship's moment. When you tear all the apples, trees out and they're in a pile and they burn for a month, I mean, it's like when you land on the new world, you go like this, well, which way are we going? How are we getting home? We're firing. We're like, well, not that way. So we're going to go through. Wow. And, you know, no, we're just too dumb to quit. That's another great, Sarlo's term. Um, but we farmed them and, uh, my wife and I, I said, as soon as you're pregnant, we're out of here, you know, because we're in Southern California. But we knew we wanted to raise kids up in a, you know, this is pre-internet. This is pre, uh, you know, Amazon delivering there. We had electricity. That was about it. That's pretty good. We had a hard floor. And we did have pot belly stove in the barn. We lived in. And, uh, pregnant and had the kid baby grew up, you know, laying right between us in a, in a bedroom and I was out up picking and, uh, you know, working side by side with my dad and paid you on a faunceau and, and another little, a group, small crew. And then we'd deliver our fruit to wineries who purchased it from us and that's the way they, the one thing, it's like no one gave me an instruction manual and I brought a kid home and it was like, how do you raise a kid? The answer is no one knows. And, and so we do a lot of scientific walled ass guesses and we do things that seem right and never taking a class. I've read a few books, but mostly it's, hey, what do you think in consensus of like, well, let's try this out and see what it works. And, um, I know, uh, what are the careers industries? Cause, you know, there's that there's always a competing philosophy about being, let's say, a seller rat, you just earning your way through and there's a totally different job, you know, we're kind of the farming side of it. Same with the farm side like, yeah, I have to go to school. I mean, somebody sent me an email today with a, with a video of some advanced bio, sure, invasion and non-avasion, but a product that you put in the soil and I don't know what I could, I didn't understand them myself, but, but really, I mean, it's such an organic and I hate to use the word like that, but such an organic job and it's so much about history and, and trial and error and trying to make a work. I always describe it as being like a, like a great fisherman, right? Art, a goal of a, of a great fisherman or what makes a great fisherman? A great fisherman is someone who goes out and keeps doing it and then has a proclivity for the wind blows like this and I've had pretty good luck doing this and you should probably use this about this time of day and where should I cast? You know, underneath that dock or whatever, right? And it doesn't mean you're going to catch fish every cast, but it means that you have a better chance of doing well. And I think with farming, you know, the crop grows best in the farmer's shadow. It's always going to be like that. Always. If you're going to pay someone to clean your car, they're going to pay, they're going to, they're not going to exceed the, the dollar amount you pay them to do it. They're going to probably do a little less than that's profit. But when it's for you and when it's for customers and it's, and you've already been humbled, by, you know, being a failed apple farmer, right? There's nothing you wouldn't do. That's huge. And it, it happened that way because it had to. Huge lesson. And yeah, so long story short, was farming, selling to other people. I was up there, you know, we had a couple coffee shops and, and, and trying to make it and live there in 2008 rolled around and, you know, staring at it, staring at my wife in a kitchen, telling her she deserves better than this. And, and she's like, in the same way my mom said, "Why don't you plant grapes?" You know, it seems like people want those. My wife goes, and that's what you should do, the wine thing. And it's like, I don't, I mean, I'm like, I can't do that because to me, you know, you have the clandennins and the linguists and, you know, firestone. It's like these people, I don't know anything. These are the, here we are. You know, and she goes, "Well, you know, like people like it." And, you know, we were talking about Matt Caner and, and Silver Lake wine and, and meeting them adjust the right time and, and there is, hey, this is good. They're, they were the inspiration. This was inspiration for you. It was, I think the right answer is, I'm, I'm, I wouldn't say I'm, my wife says it's self deprecating, but no one hates me more than me, and all honesty, anywhere in the world. And I say that with humility because I know what kind, I know who I am and every day I try to get up and, and bury that person. And if I can do it, I'm not really impressed by it in general. I don't, I don't say, "Oh, look at your seeing introspection." Yeah. I mean, I go into a whole other layer of that. But the beauty of it is when you come in humble and not knowing what you're doing and thinking everybody else, this is how I viewed it anyway. Everybody else knows 10 times more than me. But what they can't do is outwork me. And so if I work, you know, 10, 8 to 12 hours, you know, if my day is half day, 12 hours, or, and I did that for years, I said, "I'm gaining, I'm gaining four hours every day on everybody." And I, for four years, did everything I needed to do before 11 a.m. then I would poor tell five and then start up again and keep going because this is how I was going to feed my daughter and feed my son. Somebody says, "Why did you do this?" The answer is to feed two people, to give my wife the life I promised her and everything else doesn't really matter. And the farmer's wife, life? Yeah, but my wife is her own absolute force in nature, same as my mom and my sister-in-law because we're not easy people to be married to. My brother played baseball, my wife still tells me the same thing. Well, yeah. Usually passionate people aren't. They're very difficult to love. My wife has never told me I'm right when she thought I was wrong. She will be the first person that if I have a question, I'll go talk to. Even more so now, she has always has my best interest in mine. Because if you appreciate what I'm doing, I'll keep you given. Non-stop. So, growing when we were farming and making that transition to, I don't want to sell fruit to other people because I was in charge of selling all the fruit as well. And I said, "Well, if I just keep this, I can make this much wine and start figuring that out." And then now I'm really pleased to say, "Win Mill Ranch, I promised my dad, I didn't know he's going to pass away, but I promised him one day, you know, I'm going to sell one piece of fruit out of this vineyard somewhere." And I have the photo when I took it and he goes, "Win that, be me." And going from zero to, I don't sell fruit out of that vineyard. It all goes into the Sarlison Suns bottle. And then our other vineyard between myself and Brad and Greg, I think we sold seven tons. And all the rest goes into primarily Sarlison Suns, but our wine. And so now I'm from, I took the hard road, took the pro route that I didn't know we needed to take. So we're still out there farming it, we're still growing it, we're still making it. The only place you can buy is our tasting room and online. And and that's a tough model. But it's the only business now. It's a tough model. It was tough because I came from a distribution background. I saw little guys get eaten. And I never want and and one of the famous stories around our family is my dad, my dad thought he was going to get an award from a customer being like distributor of the year or something to him. And they and he lost, they lost half their business in one day. I mean, if they were doing a court, $100,000, they just, my, my family's company became a $50,000 business one day. And those were always stories that were told, you know, around the table, just like, what happened at work today? Well, probably not going to get new shirts around here for a while, stuff like that. And and because of that, it was like, I wanted to be like, we were talking about like growing up, you know, in Southern California, one of the things that truly misses, you know, your injured spot. I love to skateboard surf, you know, snowboard ride motor, whatever. But you earned your place and you looked up to people and they kind of decided if you made it to the next level or not, you know, it's, it's almost, it's like, it's like street jujitsu, right? At that point. That's true. And and I still skateboard. Do you really? That's amazing. We got to talk about that. But the part of it, like I respect my elders. I want to. You miss your dad? Huh? I can't talk about it. I understood this. You know, you know, the, no, like my dad passed in June and every day to go by that, I don't want to call him and say, I won't believe. But I spoke with today or who, you know, what I learned today from the wine side. You know, you just lost him. Yeah, June. I can give you the bet. Here's the only advice I can give you is if you were close to your father, um, my dad was, my dad was pretty tough on us, being a good dad. But my brother and I were, you know, were vicious competitors to each other. Really? Right. Oh, we'd punch in the face. You know, we were, we throw each other through walls, break TVs and then you go, just fix it and then walk out back. You know, go outside. That was it. Mom, my mom's the youngest of six kids, so she was kind of used to it. But as my dad became the person he was supposed to be, my dad was a, you know, president of our business. But then when my dad found the valley and lived out his father's dream by doing it, I saw my dad become the person he was always meant to be, um, changed him, not changed him, but he became generous. Not with altruistic. He would, he was the guy that would stop flat tire. It didn't know the person. How's it going? In fact, people, but given wine out of the tasting here, just take this, you know, that became everybody's dad in the valley. Yeah. And what I miss is, is having someone I trust implicitly, someone that maybe my relationship with it was just like talking to myself that was 22 years older than me. Same guy, same personality, same everything. And there he was. There I got to talk to, I got to pick up a magic phone and talk to myself and get the best possible advice from 22 years. Not, not how I'm feeling today. Not what I need to do tomorrow, but the long, that long, I know exactly what you're talking about. And one day the phone, you know, didn't pick up. No. And, uh, but I would all, you know, we have a family creed. We put it on a wine, which is honor and prepare, which is we live to honor those that have come before us and we prepare the way for those yet to come. That is, that is what our business is. So I have people I love on there. Great outlook. Thank you. I have kids on it and kids I'm, and my brother's kids, kids I'm preparing for. So I'm about me, right? Where most people want to come in. Hey, this is my name on this bottle. Right. Sarlos is not me. I'm a son. And it's about everybody else. And, and that's how we feed people. That's how we take care of people, blah, blah, blah. But the advice part of it is the person I want to become is the person that my dad always thought I could be the highest level of myself, the highest level, the person who take my, I am, I like to fight. I do. I love it. You know, if there's a controversial subject, I'm ready to pull the pin, roll the hand grenade down the middle of a party and then see who wants to get into it. You know, I love it. And, but that, take the high road. Hey, man, views better. Right. I'm going to go down there, take the high road, let it go. This will pay off somewhere down the road. That was your dad. Yeah. And, and he instilled that into me. And my kids know him and, and since losing him, my brother and I, you know, were taking care of mom, the mom doesn't need it. Our conversation was post traumatic ascension. We're going to do, let's go. Now, no one's, no one's out there holding the shield for us anymore. That's true. I could tell you, this is the true thing. I don't know if I wanted on this, you know, even if, even if, even if he didn't feel like that was the case. Oh, is that alive? You realize it later. Oh, I, this was, you know, that, that they were the shield that now you don't have a shield. I lead blocker. Yeah. You know what I mean? And now it's up to me. Yeah. And up to us. And he prepared you for that though. So, you know, it sounds, you don't really become a man until the day you lose your dad. So we're, we're, it's a great way to hear it. And when you said that, was I prepared, was I ready? No, but I was prepared. And all of a sudden with him being gone, you know, I knew I had to be in the tractor. See, I knew I had to be out. So my, my life shifted from just selling wine, making wine, doing this, doing this to now, I need to sit in the King's chair and be out there getting this ready, preparing making sure this happens took on all that farming aspect of it. And it was hard, real hard because now it was, you know, being out there thinking, you know, 10 steps ahead, have learning that I need to be able to depend on people, giving people an opportunity for them to be dependent upon. And listening to that, that maybe at the end, like with my father, he was still telling stories. And on my phone, every time I start up his mouth, that's like gold. And I had, I had the huge honor to be put them on the podcast once, just in his house and telling stories, business stories mostly. But yeah. But you don't realize that when is that the shield has gone completely. Yeah. Maybe it was only five or 10% effectual because he was older as 93 when he tried to. Just a way we couldn't articulate all the thoughts he wanted to, but he was good health and everything. But when, like the other day, my parents were huge antique collectors. They were, they taught me to go to the auctions. They went to Europe. They bought half a container. up the auctioned off, they made some little money, whatever, but they're just the chase. Yeah, they're hustling. And the chase, the leverage base to know. And I brought home this piece of silver, which on the three kids, I'm the only one I really appreciated those things, because I was the kid. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe like you said, you're the most like your father, you know, there's the picture of him hanging a bottle of clothe of alcohol, actually, which is what that is. I mean, if you just full stop, if you look what that picture is, it's huge. It's your father handing you a bottle of wine. What are you doing today? Yeah, exactly. I know it's all those ones there too. The ones that he chose. So so the other day, I was Paul, my wife's like, what are you doing? I go, I'm polishing the silver. Says no one ever, right? One of the last time my mom would have freaked that she saw me like break out of silver polish. And the thing that disappointed me the most is this one piece I was polishing. I never got the story. It's a crazy piece of silver. It looks like it's from Thailand or somewhere else. It's a beautiful piece, but I never asked him the story of this one. I got most of the stories, but not this story. And I feel like I got cheated out of this story amongst others. So it's a huge loss. And you have to, but you're right, you become, you become the in the King's chair. It's a great way to put it. It's really King's chair. We were talking about the self-camera a little bit. Yeah. And he had a great definition for what is in the glass. Oh, yeah. Because what were you and I are trying to tell and the math, it can't, it can't be the world. And many other people have been on the show lately that are anti-cali red Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart-Shardney. Well, hold on. Well, I would, here's the thing though, those are great gateways. They are. I agree with that. And you know what? I agree with that. If Snoop brought, if Snoop Dogg brought you to wine, because I've seen it myself, I mean, we're not sure to roll the pin in. It'll see if it goes off. Yeah. Well, I mean, it sounds funny, but I've been pouring wine for so long that the kids who were eating cupcakes that are tasting room are now in our wine club. Right? Right. And I've saw a couple who grew up where I grew up. I saw their first date. And now they have kids, right? But now they went from, well, what's this about to, they're hunting. They're hunters. They love this thing. It has made their life better. We had someone that came in that just needed to use the, the bathroom stayed, got locked into wine and all of a sudden we got to give them what you've done, probably a million times. Hopefully what this podcast does is you hand somebody the light bulb and they go, oh my gosh. And they just put it above their head and they're like, holy cow, what are we talking about here? There's all of this. Holy cow. It's like turning someone onto a genre of music they've never heard. And if Cali Red does that, fine. Well, we've always had what Camp Leopha is going. I don't know anywhere to go. We've always had entry level ones. I mean, sure. My father stopped in 1974 in Appalachia. Sadly, the Cali Reds probably better than the early 70s. Boy, he stopped the true caro at his other home and had a glass of pink wine with Bob Trinkero. These like, Bob's like, what do I, what should I do with this stuff? And that was the entry level one of the 70s, right? To the extent that, you know, it caused Rosé was pizza wine. Yeah. So, so I agree. There's maybe might just not just stay with me. I hate the fact that it's called wine though. And that's the hard part. Maybe that's the best definition. Like, why they call it wine? Just called beverage. So, bringing up Matt Caner. I don't know if he came up with this or I did, but it's if you're drinking wine is a beverage, you've missed 90% of the point. Right. That's a good point. That's a good point. Sorry. You were on the subject. But there is this. So, let's just fast forward that we've got this people. You've educated somebody. You've the people are eating cupcakes and twinkies and they're they're now like going well there's something about this and I that's all we tried to do right we want people to experience what we think we experience. They knock we open the door. And so defining that is what I thought you did a great job when you're sitting in a conference room because I asked that question all the time. What is it? Why don't we get so excited about Maui Blanc, the pineapple wine? Why don't we get so excited about fermented, you know, apple cider? Why don't we get so excited about other fruits? There's something about the grape that you said, what it what is no longer a grape. Yeah. So, you know, I would definitely say, you know, I'm an introspective. I want to learn as much as I possibly can. But I'm also farming and I'm also a pretty spiritual person. There's a lot of wars going on inside me. But I always think that there's an interesting correlation between growing something from the ground and seeing something come forth. You know, right now we're pruning, we're making all those decisions, but we're leaving, you know, a bud right here. And I know that everything that my every light house payment, every tank of gas, tuition, food, everything in my mind is right inside that bud. So when we have frost, when we have bud break, I'm sleeping in a car out there because that's what's standing between me and total failure. I got to get the frost protection and I got right time, everything. I got humility. Well, it's, yeah, it's true, but it made it worth it, right? And so when you finally get to that point of harvest where you took something from nothing, but help bring it forth gave order to chaos because I think that's probably, I'm only good at two things. One is create a problem solving and two, trying having chaos go like this and when it comes through me comes out like like, you know, being the infinite variables of the farm, the vineyard hates you. The thing that you, everything hates you to do, do everything. Binds don't grow like this. They grow like this every which way. That's the point of it and you're training, training, training. I'm going to have a belief this oil. Oh, you're going on in there everywhere. And you're just kind of in the middle of it and you're trying to tack based upon wind waves and weather and everything, helping and all your moving sales, you're trying to push this way, trying new things. Let's try this over here. And it's just chaos at all times. But when you get to that point of harvest, it's kind of like missing out on, you know, being pregnant and then all of a sudden, boom, it's there. There's such a beauty to the process from here to there. And then when you go through the wind making process, you know, your, your picket, you deliver it, you're, I think respectful because you spend all your doing something. You don't want to cloud it up, but you want to give the best chance to success. You know, all of that. I just said, I've never heard of that way. But it's like, if you're not doing what you're doing, not the discredited, but it buys grapes, not discredited, but it's like, it's like, it's like birthing a child, but never having it by the sea. It's like having a two year old show up at your door like this because really maybe the your first intimacy with that wine is with the, when you pop it and you put a label on it, maybe I think there's a lot of that. Especially if your name's on the sign. And that's one of the things I'm very proud about with like Santa Barbara County in general. If the name's on the sign, the person is probably in the building. And that doesn't exist really anywhere else in the world. So, you know, that's my huge pump for our, you know, band of psychos that is up in the Santa Barbara County. It's great. But when you get to that point, you know, there's a point in the wine making process when you're pressing, you know, you've gone through where the, when it's a red and you've gone through all the, the master Asian punch downs and everything else and pump overs and tada, but then, you know, the voodoo of, of yeast has worked its magic and turned sugar into alcohol and acids are in line and this and that and the other. And you go to the press and then all of a sudden it's just wine. And it's, it's as different as, as a physical form and then now we're going to release the soul. We're going to put that soul in a bottle and, you know, it sounds weird to say this, but like whiskey is always how long did it sit in the barrel? And wine is always how long has it been in the bottle? And to me, that metamorphosis, it's, it's, it's beautiful because the whole point of it is you can drink it today. You know, we don't sell a wine that you can't drink today. Rip, rip the cork. You know, it's a bad day to be a cork. It's a X-Anacruz, I love it because we're ripping corks today. We're pouring glasses. We're drinking it. I'm like, do you like it? Yes. It's like, well, you drink it today then. But if you want it to, if you want to see all of those tannic acids form those beautiful long chains and you want, you want the thread count to go from burlap to silk, that'll take time. And you can jump and jump the line, but it's going to cost you money because what you're doing is taking care of that bottle, making sure it's preserved, putting in the best possible light so that when you, they open it, they're going to get that, that's why, you know, older wines are expensive. You raise it from a puff. You're, you're taking care, you're like, I will take this into my charge and I'll keep it here. But to me, always that, that day when you're pressing and you go, there's, the soul has been released. Yeah. You know, and what are we going to do with it now? That's interesting because I, and I always talk about this. And by the way, I'm excited. I'm saying stuff to you who's been in wine for much longer than I have new ways or a new perspective. Well, it's a perspective. It's pretty exciting. It's not everybody can articulate like your articulation. I think it's an important thing. But I've always said this about the wine industry, not always because when I got into this business for me, I was a business team. I sold copiers for a big company and I sold software to bigger companies. And then obviously I'm selling $20 with a wine, not even like that, it's $5 with a wine. Different properties. And you learn to appreciate it. learn to appreciate a customer differently. - That's totally. - Well, I've always been a customer service kind of guy. But the point of making this, all the things we do today, you're talking about whether it's staying the steel or okay, is just periphery to which the process of it changing from one form to another. - Does it matter with the sole of it? - Does it matter what type of guitar and what type of amp this song is being played on? - No. - See? - No. - I know you have this and we were talking about the soft camera a little bit. The sole of what wine is. - Yeah. - I believe that the definition, I always come up with this, it's an ethereal product that connects you to the soil. If it's a sense of time and place, it should be anyway. And you should taste that place. You should take you somewhere else when you taste it. - Yep. - And now that's where the Cali reds and the, those things can't do that by their nature. But the weeks of the world can't do that by their nature, but you can. - Mm-hmm. - And we're gonna go back biblical a little bit because, - But that's also, before you go in the biblical part, which I'm excited to talk about, that also makes us too small to fail. Because when you have invested all of that into it, when I sit here and we're talking about our dads, and my voice clover is every time I bring them up, right? Then pleasure is a form of payment. My buddy, Heath Pinter said it, I'll never forget it. Because you know what, working alongside your old man for as long as you did or as long as I did, or being out there and having great stories when we're picking grapes at three in the morning and our hands are frozen, or when we go to the winery and we're eating a great lunch, or we're doing that to, that has to be, that has to be a massive form of payment. - Mm-hmm. - And doing it. So when if you come in with money and say, "I want that life," that's tough. - You don't know the payment's gonna be 'cause you don't really like it. - There you go. - You didn't earn it. - So that was a little bit of a circle around it, but. - It's a good point though. It's a very valid point. - Yeah. - The hardest parts of this are the parts that are worth doing, but because they're hard, people tend to pay people to do them for them. And I have found so much pleasure and love and I've learned so much by being an attractor, mowing or seeding or driving and knowing that everybody behind me is in danger. And if my foot comes off this thing, we've got two tons of grapes and it's raining and the hills going down, all of that stuff. We're all of a sudden, if I was still in bed, I would never know anything about that. - That's right. - And I think the wine now embodies that. There is, like this place has a great vibe, but it's a building, right? - Sticks. - Sticks. - But the vibe of here and the people who are a part of it fill the room, fill the room the rest of the way. And I think with wine, you get so much of that where it was this, we turned it into that, but along that line, all of that's just getting soaked into it. And for me, it's why I'll put my dad's face on a label when my mom, my brother's, and it's like, this is the story of our family right here, and you get to bring it home. And hopefully you share it with someone you love around your table. And then that is complete, that handoff is complete. So go to the biblical stuff. - I tell people all the time, like, wow, my dad, like we sold my dad's house. That's why we got a list, we left a list that people came clamoring to buy it. But, oh, the memories, it's like the memories of the memories. - Yeah, the house is a stick. Somebody's gonna tear it down one day. Does it really matter? - Yep. - It's irrelevant. It's the history and the value you got living there, or your parents living there, that matters. And those, you'll never be able to change that. Even with the clagstrups, it hit me after they're telling you stories, and they're talking about a tillah, the hun, you know, shedding blood in the vineyards of champagne, even in World War I, some of the phosphorus, tank shells still contaminated the ground. - Yeah. - And I thought, wow, that has to have an influence whether it's the family that suffered through the wars or whether it's the family has to have an influence of what they're making. - We went, a 75th anniversary, my, you have a wine called Courage, named for my great uncle, John, died D-Day plus 16 in town culture board. - Wow. - So a couple years ago, we went to France as a whole family. It was a great trip. We went to Normandy, Lutcherham. - Wow, that's incredible though. - But the thing that blows me away, was there people still making wine that year? Think of that. - Yeah, no, it's amazing. - Think of that. - Yeah. - The fact that Allied invasion, the Nazis coming over the hill, you know, France, giving up in 24 hours, but this was, other than, you know, Churchill, you get the Russians on the other side, you get us actually getting into this thing, without those things happening. You know, man in the high castle is an amazing book and show, but people were still farming grapes, making wine, hiding their wine. Because they were, the fact that people built caves and then hid those caves, because that was, that was who they are as a family, trapped inside that bottle. That is our work, that is our ethos, that is where our family is located differently than anywhere else. This is our combination of grapes in which we planted them. We are going to harvest them. We make one wine, even if you're a neighbor, and on all four sides, what we do is unique and special and different, doesn't exist anywhere else in the world, and this is something we need to keep, is something we need to protect, and we need to hide from these horrible people. And it's hard in this day and age to explain that to anybody where you and I are sitting here, you know. - We don't protect a walkman in the future. - No. - We don't protect the DVD player. - What is worth protecting? - It's nothing to say. - There's art, you know, even music, the fact that most music is digital, if that goes, we're losing all of this. Right, that's a scary, like, next level scenario to this, but it remains so tactile. It remains so ancient. It remains so familial, because great wines, and I don't know any of this, and you could probably speak with ours, but the generational lineage of what they have learned over time in specific places that said, okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, something special is happening here. Something special is happening, actually, up there and over there, not so much here, but there and there, and then how they have handed down that information, what to do, what to grow, where to grow it. If this happens to do this, when you should pick, what you should look like, you know, the farmer's almanac that they have, I'm only 25 years into this. And the fact that I've learned all that in 25, I can make different decisions today than over there. And if the next generation's coming up, and if they're interested in that, I have a whole bunch of information to give them, that we've been doing three generations. That's your motto. Yeah, it's your motto. I mean, I mean, just face it, the new world is the early cycle of all this, but you are doing the exact same thing, that these farmers did in the, who knows, in the turn of the century. But they weren't wrong. No, they weren't wrong. And we keep things keep happening faster, and like Cali Red comes out or whatever, you know, but I think the beauty of what we get to do is, well, that's the question I ask, man. It's the hard kind of heat to took in a minute. Well, it's here. I asked this question. Oh, if you're stumping mad, I'm in. It will, it takes a minute because, and it sort of divides the Cali Reds and the Martha Stewart-Shardonnay from the thing you're doing. Well, what you're talking about is solace commerce. Right, so now, what if, profit had nothing to do with wine? Profit has to be in line. Well, no, it does now. But let's just say, take a theory out of the approach. If it didn't, would wine be different? Would the approach be different? Would, in fact, I said this to Matt, it's like, oh, yeah, I believe wine would be worse. If there is no profit involved. So you think, do you think that the capitalism of wine or the profitability of wine would, would, I guess, the competition, the pressure? We don't care. Pressure. Because there's a comment from the Burgundian, just after World War I, when they were creating some of the Appalachians, and he said in the meeting, and the Appalachian, he's saying, look, we shouldn't even advertise. People should bang a door to our, we should make the best wine we can, and people will come. Yeah. So that would suggest to me that way. I don't advertise. We're still gonna make good wine then. Well, I aback to, why did I get into this? Feed kids and take care of my wife. Buy all of our fruit from our own property. Make sure everybody's taken care of. So that when I sell a bottle out the front door, I know the chain of people that that is taken care of from plow to porch. That's it. So when you say, like, why am I here today? I love talking to you. It was an awesome thing, but I'm also, I want 10 more people, minimum, you know, to find out about us, and get in their car and drive 150 miles. Sure. So when you say, if we took out profit, I hunger and I need to succeed. I needed to succeed in this business, like I was being held underwater, like I needed to breathe. Like that's the level of commitment I had to this has to work. I told my wife flat out in the kitchen, I mean, they're gonna be a success at this or I'm gonna die trying. And when you have profit, when you have the ability, when the carrot is there that you go, if I get up and I out work, if I work at 12 hours and everybody else is working eight or four, I'm gonna gain on 'em. And I'm gonna get, my goal is not to be the biggest. I'd never said that, but my goal is to be as efficient as possible to be able to put as many wines and people's hands as possible that they buy from us for like 13 years. I mean, our taste has been open 13, 14 years. We have, we have a heap, I won't give you the percentage, but a massive percentage of people who signed up, your one are still in. And is that because I make the best wine in the world? No, I'm not the best, far from it. But I wanna be the people's champ, right? I want them to know, like when I post pictures of us, far, you know, picking and my daughter's there and my family's there, people say, why do you post pictures of all that? I said because no other winery can. 'Cause I'm out here doing it. That's right. And I think that that is worth something. I think being out there, it's the reason you do it, you know? If you wanna hit a home run in the nightthinning or whatever, you have to be the person that is addicted to the cage. You wanna go in there and hit and hit and hit and hit and hit so that when you go and step into a box, you look at someone and you go, I am about to devour your lunch and you'll tell 'em, this is what I'm gonna do and this is how I'm gonna do it. And because at that point, you have to succeed. You want, not only do you wanna succeed, you have to. So with a profit in wine, our wines aren't exorbitant, all of my wine, and I probably shouldn't say it on the show, but it's all supply and demand driven. The less I have, if I'm selling out too quickly, the price is too low. If I'm selling out too slowly, I should lower the price. That's it. That's how I price every single one of our wines. That's it. I know what's coming down the pipe and then the numbers slide up and down. So I suppose then. By the way, I wanna go back to your Biblical thing 'cause I never really even talked about that. But, well, so I'm getting long answers, the short questions I have on them. No, no, no, no, okay. I think it's the, we need, first of all, it's harder to run a podcast when I look at one word answers. So I'm gonna say that right now. (laughing) Keep it rolling, man. I literally have nothing to do today. I'm here to do this. We'll go to another 15 minutes or so. We can break this into two actually. I'm here to answer every question we want. They found a winery in Armenia, 8,000 years old. Seven, 6,000 years old. Shoes, amphora, the whole thing. And so there's a whole bunch of places. You could take that direction of that conversation, of that finding because wine was a part of part of life then. You could probably predict what the best vineses were. I think they've determined King Tut's tomb. You know, he had certain vines, five BCs, and that was a good vines. I'll see the keys in the drink, the good stuff, right? So, but the Bible says that Noah landed the ark and Mount Ararat, and that's the first thing you did. You know, of course he became drunk. We don't know what that part. We should talk about that part. We don't know what, if it's been a benefit in all the class phases, all before that. It's been part of our life forever. Yeah. And is in the Bible in many, many cases. But we were laughing a little bit off camera when I had a sermon, my son-il-ah's, the Anglican priest, and his father was our pastor. And he was talking about when Jesus turned water to wine. And I caught quick, he caught my wife's like, what are you doing? I'm in the pew with the calculator. What's the size of this thing? I googled like this. I forgot the vessel that they had back then. How many Cubots? Yeah, yeah. And I determined that there were 3,500 people at the wedding. First then. For seven days. For seven days. Yeah. And based on today's consumption, now I don't know if they drank more or less back then. But-- Probably. Oh, yeah. And so-- But then it goes, OK, but that means the whole village came, right? Isn't that what they did? Yeah, it was a party. When you were cracking out the wine, you were saving this for years and years. And when you're going to throw this thing, you don't throw a party for one night now. It was a festival, basically. Right. It's a great festival. Yep. So actually, we've had two weddings at my home, both for $100. And the wine guys having the wedding-- And these were big affairs. Oh, yeah. I made sure that this was not wedding wine, so to speak. This was going to be-- Yes. --like, people have to go, wow, I'm going to the house for the wine. I'm trying to show off. But it wasn't because-- I'm well aware of that pressure. OK, so the head of the comm are going to get into what you said earlier about Mary. But on that dovetail, that conversation, I tell people that are putting on weddings, why? And in any remote sense, would you skimp on the wine ticket away from the valet guy or take away from the band? Yeah. But why would you want people to come away from your wedding, your celebration of your daughter or son's wedding, and go, man, the wine sucked? Why would you do that? And so we went to a wedding in Temecula, and they were pouring out these blind out, it was absolutely impalatable. Yep. Just get rid of the valet person, let them park themselves, and they'll come back and say, wow, this is a great wedding. Yeah. So we're talking about the wedding, but Jesus turned the water to wine. And you had a story about that. So I was interesting. Well, my whole theory behind this one is number one, that Mary should probably preface by saying, I'm trying to look at the Bible through 2023 eyes. And when people usually picture God, they picture Renaissance painting, floating and long beard. And that's-- I've radically changed that notion in my mind. And just like you and I are having this great conversation here, if we go back years and years and years, people are having conversations similarly. Connection is never going to go out of style. So my theory behind this one is number one, this party's been going on for seven days. Number one, Mary's been there for seven days. So I'm not trying to do anything. I kind of not offend Catholics. But Mary was having a good time out of wedding. And the things she comes to her son about, someone that she was told by an angel is the son of God, Virgin birth, the whole deal, says, you have to do something we're out of wine. So that is-- Perspective is amazing, really. Perspective, right? So that means Mary goes like this, this party's awesome. I want to keep it going. We're out of wine. I bet my son can do something about this, right? So runs over. And they even have a little debate about it, where it's like, this is not my time. What are you doing? Kind of a thing. And she's like, come on, do the thing, do the thing. Which tells me that at some point, that was the first public miracle. But Jesus was turning water into wine for his mother, probably counted. Right, which is great. I mean, it's just a great story. Who else? But really seriously, what do you think about it? And your interpretation of the story would be, who else would have convinced him to do it? Nobody. His mom. But like, I always think about that situation. My like, we had a wedding. My brother's wedding was, or a reception was up there. And the booze was gone within literally an hour of this party. And my mom comes running down, she goes, you need to go to the store. Here's a, what the, she handed a roll of money. Ain't she got just buy everything again. And we literally did. We drove down there. This is a great story because Adam Firestone was there. And we were just throwing wine into a cardinal rancho. My two buddies, Matt, Matt Pegg, Cliff Chasen, thrown it in there. And he goes, what are you buying, boys? Like that. And this is a great sales story because he goes, oh, we're just grabbing this. And they ran it around wine. And he goes, hey, put that back. He put it all back and started grabbing Firestone wine and throwing it into the thing and he goes, you buy that. That's better. What a salesman. So was Brooks still around at that point? Brooks is still around. Yeah. Oh, I like that. If you wanted me to go into like a two minute diatribe about the guy, I mean, Brooks is a friend. The entire Firestone family is amazing. But, you know, Brooks Firestone 1973 leaves Firestone tires because he was in your, you know, this I'm a brutalized story, but was in in Europe selling tires for Firestone. This is, you know, Grandpa's company, kind of a thing. And he saw Steel Vulture Radials coming in. And he comes back to Ohio and says, hey, we need to do this or we're going to get our lunch eaten by these other tire companies. And that was hubris of at War Firestone. We know what we're doing, as well. And he left, left company. My grandma worked here on Firestone Boulevard during the World War II. That's now the Citadel. Yeah, right. That's a beautiful, beautiful. And, you know, Brooks left there, came up to the San Indian As Valley in early 70s and planted the first vineyards, established the Santa Barbara County AVA, basically, you know, between there and Zaka, Zaka Mesa, and he buck shot it, you know, Pino next to cab. And really was the moon landing of wine in Santa Barbara County. And because of that passion, crazy, you know, Brooks is an amazing guy, passionate. Now he sings and choirs around the world. He probably was in France, saw the Michelin people who's not promoting food, you know, they're, Michelin guy in 1929, whatever they started that. He's going, wait a minute. Oh, this, but it's funny because this is the honest part of this business that we don't have anymore. We don't see it. And my early days of doing this, but I went to a big trade tasting, Brooks was pouring. Yeah. And why was he there? Why was he there? Why? - I didn't answer the question. - No, I wanna know why, because he was passionate about the thing he was doing. - Of course, yeah, right. I mean, there, look, that tasting, I think was Wine Warehouse in the time. - Yeah, let's go. - That was Dick Sanford Port. - Okay. - Yeah. - Fist Parker. - Fist Parker. - Was it Eli or Fist? - Fist. - Okay. - He would hand out pictures of a non-standard boom. - Yeah. - Sanford, I still have it somewhere in here. Chris Parker, by the way, nice plug, has third window brewing in the best burger in the world. - It passes. - The grandson. - The grandson. - Okay, grandson, okay. - Unbelievable. - Dick's mother's poor. - Yeah. - Which is Foxen. Dick's mother's brothers. - Oh, oh, oh, oh, okay. Sorry, but I would think Foxen would probably be there around that. - I don't remember, but I just, you know, Dick and Tommy's mother's room. - Yeah. - He was celebrity. - Right. - And Pat Paulson, who were in for president 1968. He was pouring. And I walked up to him. And he said, "Hey, Adrian, listen to it "because he was not get smart as this character." He goes, "Yeah, I was a really good murderer." And I'm like, you know, and there was so, here's the difference. And it goes back to what you asked me, which is, they weren't celebrities behind the tasting table. - Yeah. - They were farmers and wind makers. - Yeah. - And they were so approachable. - Yep. - They didn't care. You know, Pat Paulson had a wine called refrigerator white. And when I brought up with Monty Montgomery's son, you know, we laughed and laughed because, no one, who remembers this stuff, right? But there was an honesty about it. - But the one thing that while you were telling that, that that unbelievable capture and time, there's also something that's very similar about all those people. Like, Fest Parker, a beautiful singer, you know. - Really? - Oh, he would have, when the Fest Parker Inn was in Los Alibos on Wednesday night, when Fest was around, his wife was around, they would have, they would play around a piano. And all their friends would go in and do that. It was never, no, I went with my dad a few times, he goes, "Hey, let's go here, let's go here, "the golden era of movies." Okay, and then you go in there. And the guy playing piano, I'm totally powers, Powell. He was a superintendent at the Rancho Sysquac School, which is in the middle of nowhere, up Fox and Canyon. He was a superintendent, but he would play the piano for Fest, and for their thing, and all that, all the Fest's buddies that golden era would come in and sing around the piano. And they're, okay, like chilling, right? The only person I ever saw in my father-in-law get toned tied around was Fest Parker, right? But then you take that, you take the Smothers Brothers, you take, now you, I'll throw, I'll throw Brooks in there because those are all artists, those are artists souls. Those are people that want to conjure something into existence that did not exist before. - Good point. - That is, to me, now, if you wanna find the heart and soul of wine, the thing that's not a beverage, the thing that isn't, you know, Cali-Red or what, a cash grab, it's people like that, that find something worth doing, that they love it all the way through. And I think, in a world of curation, not creation, right, right now it's easy to be an Instagram influencer and then give your opinion on everything else, Yelp has done that, you know, all the stuff, all the things where it's like, what, you're not the one in the arena, but you are going to comment on it, right? - So they has to break. - Well, every time I get these freaking Instagram and tick the, and I'm there, I mean, there are companies there anyway. Something has to break. - But I think the break point is authenticity, it's harder to find, it truly is, but like to date, I'm here because I wanna tell people what we do. And I've told you, I just threw out like 80 other names of other people that are in our wine region, that are awesome and you should probably go see them too. But it's still the great part about it is this. Within, it took me less than two hours to get here in Monday morning traffic. And there's 13 million people. - Lucky. - I know. - There's 13, however many people in Southern California and what they don't know is the probably the best and most, we were in 2021, wide range of the year. You, within two hours, you have the most hardcore, street level, people that are just like me, passionate out of their minds about what they're doing and the greatest punk rock wine region in the world is less than two hours away from your doorstep. - And Los Alievos is really quaint, fun, place, go to Buzz Baker, all that stuff. Really, really, we were there nothing longer than I had been for years and years. - Best food in California is in our valley. It's unbelievable. - But that's something which just says very important to the extent of what this is. I was thinking about these people that we were just talking about, the best parkers of the world. - Yep. - Sorry, we're bouncing all over the place. - Well, it was a different time for wine. And you've, I'm gonna tie this together, but it was a different time for wine. It was a more honest time. It was certainly the ice of tasty, the giant tasting, they're all trying to market their wines. - Sure. - But there was a certain authenticity and humility about it that without the Sarlous, Sarlous, Sarlous. - Carlos with the Sarlous makes it easier. - Sarlous is the sun's wines and others like that from Los Alievos will lose that humility because the post pre-judgment of Paris wine was very honest. There was nothing else for it to be. Post-judgment of Paris is still took 10 years. I mean, Jim Barrett didn't retire from his legal process to like 1986, like 10 years later. So in here, then we entered the realm of commercialism if I was to put a moniker on what the timeline is Sutterhomes White's Inferndale, and then the idea of formula wines, and then new, you know, Pathic Rage are now and all those things. To put Sarlous and Sarlous and Sons, and people like you in Los Alievos and other parts of the country, we're gonna lose that humility. We're gonna lose that honesty about the wine. If it falls on the hands of the Winks, the naked Ways, you know, we're destined for that. - Maybe I have this theory, let me finish. - Okay. - This one thing, I have this theory. And this is the irony between the millennials who drink white claw, but at the same time say they want sustainable, organic things in their life, right? It makes no sense. Sometime, at some point in someone's life, because of what you're doing, and hopefully what I'm doing, that aha moment happens with a glass of wine, and it'll never go away. I think it's so embedded in the human soul, - Absolutely. - Based on what we talked about, that it can't go away, it will never go away. - The, I think that whenever there are people that are doing it the right way for the right reasons, that will always be envious to people with, that see an opportunity, with money, with whatever. You know, without a true honest thing, there would be nothing to replicate. Like anybody who copies me is at least a year behind, right? So I'm gonna keep plowing ahead doing what I do. Like I see people rip off my labels, you know, try to do what I do, but I go, you're behind. 'Cause I'm already working on two years from it. And that opportunity of commercialism, of soulless capitalism, of, well, if we jump on this right now, and it's happening in a boardroom, there's the people in the boardroom making the decisions and finding the money, they're finding money from other people, they're giving it to other people, they're, okay, we're gonna make 10% on this, and if it fails, no one cares. Without that authenticity, right? Without the great things like the old, like the Main Street, like Old Towns, right? Now they build malls that look like Old Towns. - That's right. - You know, it's, it's true. But the part that I will always love, and you know, going back to it is, you know when you step into like an old bar, and it has a good vibe, and people are nice, bartender kind of remembers you, and you're like, I wanna come back here. You know, there could be a chill, there's a chillies right next door. Still so, same bar, same all this corporate bullshit, and everything else. The beauty part about wine is it is unemployable. The people who work in wine that truly love it are absolutely unemployable people. They will show up late, and they will leave this, they will give you their heart and soul, but it is, they're not the most reliable. It's like surfers, right? If the waves are good, they're gone. The part that I love is, it's impossible to be, you have to be a pirate, to do what we do. You can't be in the Navy. Because why does this place, why is it awesome? Because this is its own pirate ship, right? You're selling the wines you wanna sell, you're putting the things on the wall that you wanna do. Why are you here talking to me in the morning? Because you have something to say. You wanted to create something that didn't exist yesterday, and it, and here it is, here it is right in front of us today. The graffiti on the wall says so much about it, because it means like it is anti-everybody else. It's pretty cool. you, you made it say what you wanted to say, but you didn't do it by printing something off at Kinkos, you added an artist come in, throw it up on the wall, create it, but it said the thing you want to say when you walk in, you go, "Isn't that awesome? It's great." That could be ripped off instantly tomorrow, but the place, it's like saying, "I want to buy your house because I want your life." That's-- - It doesn't work that way. - It doesn't work that way. And I think with wine, especially too small to fail. - It reminds me of-- at least said that. And I appreciate your observation of what this place is. - Yeah. Oh, I hope I got it right. - Because you know, when I thought through of my wife's, like, what she walks, what she-- what I'm trying to do in the lobby when you walked on the red and the gold, I'm sort of trying to rip off John Charles Boise and what he's done. Because I love-- - Sure. - I'm a Franco file and I love this opulent French stuff. And she's like, "What are you talking about? Like, what do you--?" But she did shut me down on part of it. Because you were talking about how wise our wives are. And they-- we use them. But I thought to myself, "You know, am I going to put the wood panels in the wood racks?" And I'm like, "No, I'm not doing that." - No. - So forget it. - But as a fellow at one pirate to another, I recognized it immediately. - Right away. It was amazing. It's kind of like Applebee's where they-- They take some cracker-- - Little barrel. - Pictures. And they put them on the-- - This is really what they did. - I know. - But when you walk into the restaurant, if it's in Menorobi, there's some old pictures of Menorobi. But once you get past that sloppy-- - And that is corporate America, I guess. - It's totally it. It's like 12 microwaves. We're going to have to wrap this up. We're going to do it again for sure. But I'm going to ask you this funny-- this is a piece. - This is a fun book. This is called Wine is the Best Medicine. It's a book by French doctor. The answers are French-- the answers to the questions we're going to give you are French wines. Okay? So I don't do this for everybody because particularly Italian wine makers. But this is-- he was a homeopathic doctor as well as an MD. And he's come up with a whole bunch of maladies, human maladies like allergies, anemia, bronchitis, etc. And the proper French wine cure. - Sure. - Now this is kind of like the master of wine tests or the master's somme test, which is-- - I'm ready. - The answer yes or no. I mean, the answer-- - How many of the answers report? - No. - Number one. None because-- - None. - It's not French. - Oh, sorry. So the key is justifying the answer. - Okay. - I can do that. - Okay. It's not about-- - Remember, it's not lying if you believe it. - Nobody gets it right. The number of people get this question right is exactly the percentage chance, which is 33%. So let's just say-- let's say you have hypertension. - Oh, I do have hypertension. - Okay. So you can have a young bogeylae, and there's also a dosage to this, a young bogeylae. A sans-sare is grenage in there? - Or a sanctumineone. - Oh. - So no, grenage in there. - What? Those are my three choices? Bogeylae. A bosylae, a sans-sare, or a sanctumineone would help your hypertension. - Yep. - Which one? - Bogeylae. - Why? - Bogeylae, you think that's-- - Well, when I think about a bosylae, what I usually think of is spring afternoon, relaxing, soft. - Beautiful. - Well, okay. So it's a, you're talking about emotional relationship. - Oh, yeah. I think-- - I think-- - I would say as a medicinal-- like when I ask of like, Grenache, right? It's like, Grenache to me is always that, that when you are really stressed out, the only thing you want to be is feel that freedom of being 18 and not have any pressure, right? And I always think of Grenache as being that a beautiful catch-all. It's a farmer's grape. It's a wine maker's grape. It's a drinker's grape. It's in pretty much everything. And when you drink it, it's youthful and soft, and it's not dragging it. You know, it's not a kind of-- - That's funny. You see that concert table. - I'm using the cheat sheet because the books have a lot more. But none of the answers are roamed varials and any of these things. I just realized that after you brought that up. - Well, now I'm gonna, that's my insert. My insert with hypertension. - So this is a medical doctor. - How did I do? - So now I would have said bosylae because I would have said maybe coat to pee, volcanic soil, whatever minerals. - I'm gonna tell you right now, totally out of my depth on that. - Okay. - So I know Valor can pretty well. - Right here. So it's the same difference. - Yeah. - The answer was, Sanser. - Okay. - And the reason was, these wines are diuretic. And because, at least if you read their chlorides, they get sick. - Okay. So more importantly, what do you think the dosage is? Like how much-- - Well, here's the real question. Are we talking about glasses of wine? Are we talking about-- - Or is there French? I mean, some-- there's substantial. I probably say bottle. - Yeah, it's a bottle. - Hey! - A day. - Perfect. Hey, as we like to say to every one of our customers, a bottle a day is all we ask. - Yeah, that's what the old almond commercial is. - That's right. Keith has been a fabulous-- - I've had it. - Have you here? By the way, thank you for having me. - We can do it again. Anytime. Anytime. - We'll come up and see a baller can. I have this-- I take this whole setup. I bring it to this winery. We'd love to set you up. - How many people on a weekend do you get up there? - Well, we just have the worst rain in January. - Yeah, I'm regular weekend. - Like how many people are coming through? Like our tasting room? I don't know. - On a spring, good spring Saturday. - A lot, but not too many. - Yeah. I mean, it sounds like a weird way to put it where we-- the thing that we have overcome now, I know this is off top, but we offer a lot of reservations. And reservations are mostly, "Hey, we'll make sure we have a seat for you." And like, through going through the pandemic and everything else, I trashed my backyard, rebuilt it, put places so people can sit. I won't say-- - Well, here's a thought. - Yeah, because I just got the phone with Rex Pickett, they got it, Roach sideways. - Yeah. - A great guy. He was on my show way back when and told us some great stories. But what he's been doing is to lead to what I'm trying to do. Because Napa's so expensive to taste wise now, $85, I mean, I'm trying to be afford to do it. That now they're offering experiences with these tasting. And John Charles, I haven't brought him. I've been a good friend and I respect the guy's business human, Tensely and his wine. His father was responsible for some of the best burgundies in the world, has added him as part of the experience. So you can go to the same point of VISTA. - Yeah. - Yeah. - And hang out with Rex Pickett, the guy who rode sideways and hear all the stories. And so they've added an experience to this tasting. So here's the experience. They come up one weekend on a baller cannon to walk in the hotel room and there's Keith and Paul with their microphones and my conversation. - Oh yeah, we can talk. - Totally. - And my wife has always said, "Why don't you put little seats here and let your customer come in?" - I have a perfect backyard. I'd be happy to promote it to our wine club and everybody else and have a little get together and say, "Hey, this is a lot of fun." - Oh, I love it. - Be great. - Okay. - And quite honestly, if you line up a couple more people from the area, they'd probably love it too. - Yeah. - Yeah. - All right. Thank you. Thank you for the honor. - That's the longest podcast you've ever had. - I like it to talk to you for five hours of a week and we'll do it again. - Anytime. - Cheers. Cheers. Thank you for listening to Wine Talks with Paul, Karen. Don't forget to subscribe because there's more great interviews on their way. And of course all these podcasts are sponsored by the original Wine to the Monthly 48 Years in Business. Don't forget to visit our website, wineofthemonthlyph.com. Folks, have a great time out there in the Wine World. Cheers.