Dr. Bruce Zoecklein is nothing short of an Icon here in Virginia. When he was recruited by VA Tech in 1985 to head up their Enology Program the Virginia Wine Industry was just beginning to take shape and form. Bruce brought a level of knowledge about winemaking that would prove invaluable to the growth of Modern-Day Virginia winegrowing. His credentials are incredible and include authoring over 100 hundred papers and publications about winemaking and wine growing. Topped off by his book on Winery Planning and Design.
While Bruce is now Professor Emeritus at VA TECH, he is still very active in the Wine Industry, and I don't see him slowing down. Bruce has been a proponent of Norton. He shares some well-timed insights about Norton and what the future could look like.
Thanks for being a listener to the Fine Wine Confidential Podcast. For more information go to www.finewineconfidential.com
Dr. Bruce Zoecklein is nothing short of an Icon here in Virginia. When he was recruited by VA Tech in 1985 to head up their Enology Program the Virginia Wine Industry was just beginning to take shape and form. Bruce brought a level of knowledge about winemaking that would prove invaluable to the growth of Modern-Day Virginia winegrowing. His credentials are incredible and include authoring over 100 hundred papers and publications about winemaking and wine growing. Topped off by his book on Winery Planning and Design.
While Bruce is now Professor Emeritus at VA TECH, he is still very active in the Wine Industry, and I don't see him slowing down. Bruce has been a proponent of Norton. He shares some well-timed insights about Norton and what the future could look like.
Thanks for being a listener to the Fine Wine Confidential Podcast. For more information go to www.finewineconfidential.com
EPISODE # 6 DR. BRUCE ZOECKLEIN/EMERITUS PROFESSOR TECH UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
SPEAKERS
Bruce Zoecklein, Fred Reno
Bruce Zoecklein The evolution of the Virginia wine industry is nothing short of staggering. It really is. I mean, as I've mentioned to you repeatedly, in 1985, I nor anyone else would have ever guessed, the industry would be as developed as it is now and how it started to say embryonic is, as I've mentioned before, an understatement of enormous magnitude.
Fred Reno With that statement let's jump into this interview. That was where I was going to begin this. So, it was in 1985 that you were recruited. You were teaching Enology at Davis Fresno State in California, correct? Yes. And then you came back to Virginia. That's almost 50 years ago, Bruce. So, the question I have as it relates to Norton, had you ever had any experience with Norton before you came to Virginia?
Bruce Zoecklein Yeah, when I was teaching at Fresno State, students of mine, were the sons and daughters, two sons, one daughter of a winery owner in Missouri. And they introduced me to Norton. And indeed, I ended up coming out and staying with them one Christmas, just to check out their operation, which was is quite substantive, that of Stone Hill Winery.
Fred Reno Oh, so you were right at the best to begin with.
Bruce Zoecklein Yeah. And indeed, I got so enamored with what they were doing with Norton and otherwise that I did take a job at the University of Missouri for a while in a development program there. I had some pretty good indoctrination to Norton. And Norton, of course, was, at the time, the primary grape that really had some aging potential for the Missouri wine industry. It was their sort of answer to the vinifera. And so, it got a fair amount of attention, even in those early days. I think it was easily recognized that it was relatively unique.
Fred Reno When you came to Virginia, had Dennis Horton opened his operation yet.
Bruce Zoecklein Oh no, no, Dennis. I came in “85 and Dennis didn’t get rolling until in the ‘90’s.
Fred Reno Yeah. Okay. Had you spoken to him before he went to Missouri to get cuttings and bring Norton back? Did he contact you?
Bruce Zoecklein Yeah. Fred Reno What'd he say?
Bruce Zoecklein Well, his first contact was just to let me know he was here. Okay. And he started coming to the meetings, a very inquisitive guy. He wasn't the type of person you ignored. He asked a lot of questions and was engaged. I mean, I didn't have the impression early on that his focus was exclusively Norton, of course, he was trying to learn about the Virginia wine industry.
Fred Reno Oh, yeah. Just in general, as it relates to Norton, is there in your opinion, an ideal climate for Norton to grow?
Bruce Zoecklein Norton has some unique advantages, mainly due to our ever, ever changing climate. So, if you look at say, sustainability, which has many facets, particularly in the case of the common vernacular, that term which is environmental sustainability, Norton is somewhat unparallel because compared to vinifera, Norton is not susceptible to black rot, botrytis, powdery mildew, and is only marginally susceptible to downy mildew. Therefore, of course, that you have to use less spray material, which obviously affects, among other things, your bottom line. The other thing about Norton that I think is particularly germane with regard to climate and sustainability is that it's very winter hardy. And you don't have to have your ear too close to the rail to realize how important that might be. Just look at what's happened to the British Columbia wine industry. Excessive freezes and 30% of those wineries have gone out of business. The other aspect with change is this increase in carbon dioxide level. The carbon dioxide level increase is resulting in a lessening of the diurnal temperature spread, diurnal being of course The difference between day and night temperature that affects the anthocyanins in the pigments of the grape. The lower that diurnal temperature is the less anthocyanins are generally produced. And there is a positive direct correlation between the anthocyanin content in a red wine, anthocyanins of course of the pigment. There's a direct positive correlation between the anthocyanin content in red wine and wine quality. So, in the case of Norton, Norton is very well endowed with anthocyanins, an academic way of suggesting it has no shortage of color, that color is quite important in selling red wine. So, it's a significant factor.
Fred Reno Well, yeah, it has no lack of color, that's for sure. This chemical that you're referring to, it is somehow connected to better heart health. I read somewhere.
Bruce Zoecklein Well, yes, in the case of Nortons its phenolic chemistry in general is different than from vinifera. The anthocyanins, for example. 40% of them are attached to sugar, sugar molecules, which means that they are very soluble. Water matrix, such as juice, that's how it is that as soon as you crush the grape, you get a lot you get a lot of color dissolved. But they do have some botanical and nutraceutical benefits, no question about that. The other aspect I think that's important with regard to this idea of sustainability is economic sustainability. Of course, I mean, it's like that old line about asking a farmer, what he would do if he inherited a million dollars, he continued to farm until he ran out of money. And in this day and age, that's not going to take very long. I think one of the interesting things about Norton is to see how that relates to the other varieties that we have in the mix. You know, many European vintners realize that their sustainability is linked very directly to the ability to express the terroir of their site. And of course, the concept of terroir is the belief that a wine grower can produce a wine that has some sort of unique, inherited expression of character from the vineyard site or the vintage. So, in the age of ever, increasing competition, terroir becomes, I think, important in the marketplace. In the case of Norton, we've got a wine that is traditionally marketed based on its varietal. But I think in the future, we may want to look at the relationship between sight and expression of character from Norton. And that's something that hasn't really been done to any great degree. And I don't think too many people have thought about that. With regard to Norton, at least not in the past. Anyway, now that we are a little bit more attuned to this variety, because of the demonstrated production of fairly high-quality Norton's. Some people are thinking about this, when I was thinking about this idea of Norton and terroir, I was thinking about that, that Dallas expression that suggests a fish can't see water unless it jumps out of the bowl, meaning that we get sort of programmed in a certain kind of thought dimension and don't always take those blinders off to look around. So, if you have a variety, who's primarily expression is simply a function of the cultivar, which is what we have presumed that Norton is, then it should be marketed based on the name of the cultivar. If, however, the combination of soil climate and other terroir features affect the variety, then it probably should be marketed not simply based on the name of the cultivar, but also with regard to the region or maybe w specific site because of vineyard.
Fred Reno You know, Bruce, let me stop you there because that ties into something that has my memory bank going around. I think I told you before, the last glass of red wine I have every night without fail is a glass of Norton. I'll open a bottle of some producers Norton, have a glass, put the cork back in, put in a refrigerator and go back and forth to it over three, four or five nights and I've been doing this for over a year and a half now so that there's been a broad spectrum. And I've started to notice what you're referring to where I'm going. Okay, this one is much higher quality than that producer. Why is it? Is it the site? Is it their technique? Is it a combination of both and then also what I'm picking up from some of the growers who are planting it now sort of as an example like the advice Dennis Horton gave Scott Elliff when he started his vineyard, he said, you can just put it down in that flat part of the vineyard it is going to do just fine. But it seems to me now people are starting to take a look at what spots within their vineyard might be better suited for Norton and starting to plant there. What's your thoughts on that?
Bruce Zoecklein My thoughts are somewhat broad brush, from what I've said, I think that if we're going to get the maximum benefit from this cultivar, then we need to look at it in the context of terroir expression. And that is to say, what is the relationship between the sight and what we get in the glass, the sensory features that we get in a glass, and we could presume that there would be some differences. And there's libraries full of literature about vinifera that suggest, you know, high calcium soils is that you know, there are differences, but we have nothing of that regard to Norton. And I think that as we look at the evolution of Norton in the future, which is kind of my point, I think looking at this terroir feature in Norton will be important.
Fred Reno As I understand it, speak to this piece of Norton. Unlike a lot of different other grapes, it's a real seed pocket. And so, the amount of juice you get out of a ton of Norton is fairly reduced compared to other grapes, is that accurate?
Bruce Zoecklein Entirely accurate, and the benefits that Norton has viticulturally, the relative non susceptibility to the fungal diseases I mentioned, and the winter hardiness is in in some people's minds offset by, 1 low yield and to the fact that it's hard to be terribly minimalistic in winemaking with Norton because frequently, you have to do some more zigging and zagging. It's not like that expression that God makes the wine, you have to be God, you have to be the intervener here.
Fred Reno Oh, very interesting.
Bruce Zoecklein And yeah, that that actually does circle back to economic sustainability. That's one of the reasons why I think not everybody has been a full adapter to Norton because it's difficult to produce. And its juice yield is not what you would get in a vinifera.
Fred Reno Well, that's what I understood. What is your experience from a trellising standpoint and growing Norton in the vineyard, is there an ideal trellis, or is that also just sort of dependent on the site,
Bruce Zoecklein The overall important variable is the site. But having said that, because Norton is fairly vigorous, you generally want to minimize too much of leaf shading. Norton has a tendency to produce a high level of malic acid, and if you have too many leaves, say more than three leaves deep, you get a phenomenon known as phloem loading, which essentially means that in this case that you have a higher malic acid content. So, you have a grape that has intrinsically a high malic acid content and too many leaves shading leaves is going to exacerbate that problem. Therefore, you want either some sort of split canopy or some mechanism whereby to minimize excessively shading.
Fred Reno Well, that's interesting because Julien Durantie the winemaker at DuCard was talking about that in my interview with them, and he referred to this term that I had never heard before until Chris Hill mentioned to me in an interview early on, Methoxypyrazine?
Bruce Zoecklein
Methoxypyrazine is that character that we used to produce a lot in our Cabernet Francs. It's this green pepper kind of kind of thing. It's not a particularly dominant feature in Norton. Not nearly like it is in Cabernet Franc and some Cabernet Sauvignon wines. Fred Reno
Do you think that that compound itself is what some people may mistake for when they call Norton, Foxy?
Bruce Zoecklein I think that term has been, it's almost like minerality It's whatever you want to believe it to be, the term Foxy. And I noticed that Todd Kliman made a reference to this not infrequently in his book. It doesn't really apply to Norton, in my opinion, because the term foxy was originally applied to hybrid wines primarily as a moniker for Methyl anthranilate which is this sort of Concord grape kind of kind of smell. And that's not, I think particularly apropos for Norton. Norton has some of its own characteristics, but it depends on one, how it was made, and two, particularly its age.
Fred Reno I don't get it out of Norton, but I hear some people who don't have a lot of experience tasting Norton say it's Foxy. I keep thinking to myself, “Well, I don't get that.
Bruce Zoecklein It’s just a term that people had used to describe the fact that it doesn't smell or taste like vinifera.
Fred Reno Well, another thing that ties to that, is a number of people mistake in my opinion that high Malic content in the wine as tannin, and we both know that Norton is a relatively low tannin wine by its sheer makeup Correct?
Bruce Zoecklein Well, there's a little bit of a fallacy there because the term tannin is a broad-brush term. What they're referring to are astringent tannins. Now when we measure tannins in a wine, we measure two types. Protein pricipatateable tannins, which are the astringent type tannins to which Norton generally doesn't have a whole lot versus iron reactive tannins, which are much higher. Norton doesn't have a lot of astringent tannins, but as you alluded to, the berry is a small, essentially seed pack. Those seeds have a high level of Gallic tannins, low molecular weight tannins that collectively are both bitter and astringent and can be astringent. So, it depends on how the wine is made. There can be plenty of Norton's that are astringent, either in part because of the extraction of seed tannins, or because people add enological tannins to the wine. And that's not uncommon. Those are natural products. It's not like these folks are adding something that is totally out of line.
Fred Reno I follow what you say. I think people have a misnomer about wine, as you said earlier making itself this is winemaking, its alchemy. There's certain techniques, you know, traditional and not so traditional that people use.
Bruce Zoecklein One of the real problems with Norton is palette balance. And when I speak the palette balance you have to have a relative harmony between the sense of sweetness and the sum of the perception and sense of acidity and a sense of bitterness and astringency. They also don't realize that the acids in the wine will magnify the sense of astringency and bitterness. So, in the case of Norton, where you might have a high level of malic acid, and you might have some background bitterness and or stringency, both of those features can be amplified, thereby making the wine disbalanced.
Fred Reno Hey, I want to lighten this up a little bit. And have you tell that story that you told me some time ago, about when you came to Virginia, and you put together a tasting for a number of winemakers and there's a blind tasting and they went into the whole guessing game? Can you revisit that and tell me how that came together and the story behind it?
Bruce Zoecklein Well, it was my indoctrination meeting that is to say the first extension meeting that I had in Virginia, and it happened to be down here on the campus of Virginia Tech, it was a two-day meeting. I don't even remember the specific nature of the meeting. But we had 31 or so producers who were all represented. Usually at that time, the owners and the winemakers were one in the same not in all cases, but pretty much. And because it was a small group, relatively speaking of 31 or so folks, I decided to have them over to my house for a social after the first day. And so, we’re at my place, its late afternoon, and we're having a barbecue. And before that, I decided to play the bag game. I decided to do for them what people have done to me that I used to hate and that is to bag up some wines and ask them to taste those wines blindly. And tell me all the nuances, the cultivar, or the region, the vintage, you know, the winemaker, and whether the winemaker had a three foot stride or four foot stride is. I have Norton's from Missouri, from Stone Hill Winery in Missouri, that I had brought, and it was a vertical tasting. ’72, ’74,’ 76.
Fred Reno So, they had a fair amount of bottle age at that point, too.
Bruce Zoecklein Yeah, this was 1986. I did tell them that it was a vertical. I told them it was the same cultivar in the whole lineup, but I let them taste and let them talk among themselves to see if they could get a consensus after the first round of guessing. And I remember the guesses because they were really kind of interesting to me, as were the wines. Because the older wines, the ’72 & ‘74 had this sort of bordelaise cigar box character, which is very alluring, very appealing. That was I guess the primary reason why they had presumed that these were bordelaise wines. I did get a smattering of Left Bank versus Right bank guesses. And I joked with them at the time that their imagination might have been greater than their knowledge. There was only one producer there that I recall, who had ever tasted Norton before. So, it's not that surprising that they would not have guessed correctly. But it was rather flattering. And I related this to John Held at Stone Hill, rather flattering that they thought that they were drinking a Bordeaux wine, and they were quite astounded.
Fred Reno That’s been my experience Bruce when I had the good pleasure to be able to taste older Norton wines, 10, 15-year-old wines. They do take on a character at least ones I've had, that's like a classified growth Bordeaux for the most part.
Bruce Zoecklein You know, if we'd ever gotten any funding for it, I would have loved to have done some aging studies. Because we did some artificial aging with some wines. But we never did it for Norton, to the degree that I think it should be viewed because again, circling back to this economic sustainability. If we all agree that aged Norton is much better than young Norton. And we further agree that aging wine in your cellar for a couple of years before you release it is probably not economically viable for many than developing some practice whereby you could ramp up the speed by which the wine evolves would certainly be advantageous.
Fred Reno Well, that's an interesting thought and concept. That's for sure. By the way, thank you again for helping me put on the Norton Cup Challenge at Homestead two years running now. Did you perceive a little different approach from the judges this past year than the very first year.
Bruce Zoecklein Maybe a greater appreciation for the wines? I wouldn't say a different approach because the methodology was the same, right? Maybe given the relativity of perceptions maybe that's incorrect on my part, but it seemed to me that their appreciation for the wine quality might have been a little better this time?
Fred Reno I felt that as well. And talking to them, I felt they had taken it a little bit more seriously, which leads me to a moniker I've heard a lot when I first came here during the first couple of years. When I talked to people about Norton. And they would say, Well, you know, as Michael Heny said to me in an interview, he said Norton parts, the ways here in Virginia, you either love it or you hate it. Where did that come from? How did that develop? That kind of you either love it, or you hate it?
Bruce Zoecklein I think from several dimensions, first young Norton, certainly is not like a vinifera. And it's not what most people are used to drinking. I don't know if that reflects how open-minded people are, or their own personal preferences, probably a little bit of both. But the other hated part may come from some producers, who, while having a fairly easy time in the vineyard realize it's a struggle in the cellar.
Fred Reno I think you broke the code for me with that comment, because I've gotten that from other winemakers. Well, it's just so much work in the cellar.
Bruce Zoecklein Yeah, not only the direct work, but again, you have to age this stuff, to really have a wine that has have broad breadth of appeal, in my opinion.
Fred Reno Well, that makes me think anecdotally back to when I really got on this Norton journey a few years ago. I pulled out a bottle of 2008 Chrysalis Locksley Reserve Norton, for Mother's Day dinner at our house for my wife who didn't like Norton at all. And she asked what are we having tonight? I said, Well, we're going to have this Chrysalis Norton. She says, you know, I don't really care for Norton. I said, “Trust me on this. I decanted the wine and served it. And halfway through the decanter, she looks at me Bruce and goes, Man, this is really good. Do we have any more of this? Yeah. The wine reminded me of an old Bordeaux classified wine, almost a dead ringer for Well, Chateau Latour, and then the next week, I wanted to try something else. So, I had a 2009. Horton, Norton and decanted it. And halfway through the bottle, I looked at my wife and I said, this is really perplexing. This wine tastes like a really high-quality Villages Pommard. Can this grape really do that? One time taste like a burgundy and another one like Bordeaux, have you had any kind of experience like that? I mean, that's amazing to me, that it has that versatility and flavor profile once it gets bottle age.
Bruce Zoecklein It is remarkable. We've looked at the phenols but not studied the volatiles from Norton, a lot of those esters diminish. And that's why it goes from that sort of almost burnt cinnamon kind of character to something with a lot more complexity with bottle aging. And that's really, I think, the name of the game in order to get around that time lag between production and having it have a broader breadth of appeal. Several to many have ended up blending vinifera with it. That certainly there right, I don't think that you can understand the expression of a site or a cultivar by doing that, because what you end up with in the bottle is not really easy to separate out the variables that way.
Fred Reno Well, that's interesting. Well, there's just more research, obviously, practical research needs to go on and experimentation.
Bruce Zoecklein I think that'll only occur by in house work by the few people that are committed to Norton. I don't see any other way of answering these questions. There's not like you can get from a big funding or even a small funding agency, a grant to work on Norton. I don't think that'll happen anytime soon. Unless, of course, we were to get a couple of clipper freezes in Virginia and really clobber the vinifera then Norton’s status would increase dramatically, I suspect.
Fred Reno Well, the one what I'm going to call live laboratory for experimentation, you know well is Chrysalis. Look at all have many different styles of Norton that Jenni has been producing over the years.
Bruce Zoecklein Well, in the past what we've done to try and share information was I hosted a number of Norton roundtables. And we got the Norton producers together frequently at Jenni’s. We tasted wines blindly and had open discussions about the production practices and philosophies of Norton. That was in the early days. I think that actually helped to propel the interest on the part of some, to many dating that are in this to pursue.
Fred Reno To your point here. I don't know whether you're aware of or not, and you're probably going to be in Florida. But when I was talking to Shep Rouse recently he mentioned that the Virginia Vinyard Association Annual Conference was doing a Norton thing.
Bruce Zoecklein Yeah, Shep's going to be there, and Phil Pontin is going moderate it, but it's a grower’s thing. But yeah, no, I was pleased to see that. That’s probably when I'm going to be out of town, out of state.
Fred Reno And then the other thing is, Frank Morgan, who's now taken over running the Governor's Cup, as you know, he told me they got a handful of entries for Norton this year, for the first time in a number of years.
Bruce Zoecklein Well, you can take some credit for that for sure.
Fred Reno You know, there just seems to be a movement going on here, where people are starting to pay much more attention.
Bruce Zoecklein As soon as someone steps out and starts consistently making highly palatable wines, people look around and now you've got more than just one or two people making a highly palatable Norton. So, we've got a little bit of a mini groundswell so to speak. It used to be just Jenni and Dennis and maybe you know, Keswick once in a while or a few others. Now, there's others and the quality standards have gone up. I have to say, you know, in some of the early days, some of the Norton's had a high VA or volatile acidity and had some other less than spectacular illogical nuances. Not true now.
Fred Reno Well, yeah, I haven't really encountered that myself. So that's a really good point. Could you weigh in a little bit about this ongoing controversy as we both know, an individual who's trying to bring some sort of clarity to this thing between Cynthiana the grape and Norton grape, and how they're related or unrelated?
Bruce Zoecklein Well, they’re certainly related. Morphologically, they're different. That is to say physically they are different. So, you would presume that there would be some difference, cluster size, peduncle length, cluster compactness. In the early days, people caledl their variety, either Norton or Cynthiana, not based on what necessarily the nursery had to say when they delivered the vines. But what they thought was a more appealing marketing term, Norton versus Cynthiana. And so, you had a lot of mix up there, which clouded the issue. Bruce Reisch, and some others in Geneva, did some early work, looking to try and see if there were some differences. At that time, the only way that was easy to categorize or determine rather than if there were differences was looking at the protein mix, what they called ISO banding. It didn't suggest any big differences, but that was relatively crude. And so, the literature has kind of bounced back and forth. And because until recently, nobody really cared. I think this sort of obscure little cocktail party tidbit was not an issue. Now that people are more serious about this. It would be nice to get this resolved. I don't doubt that there is a difference.
Fred Reno It seems to me, based on what I've tasted. I'll give you a good example, it’s a Lucie Morton client Casanel vineyard, when I had their Norton, it just seemed a lot more elegant in its youth than some of the others. Lucie says that a very large majority of that vineyard from her observation is planted to what she would call the Cynthiana grape. Alright, that makes some sense the wines a little lighter, a bit more elegant in their youth, but still brawny wise, we both know and it showed well at the Homestead the past two years. It's finished and in top four wines two years in a row at the homestead Norton Cup Challenge. And by the way that 53rd winery and vineyard, Norton 2021 which topped field this year, that was my last glass of red wine all last week. And that wine is good. That was a good choice. Rock Solid wine, it really developed every night.
Bruce Zoecklein Yeah, that's another advantage of Norton. We did look at the antioxidant capacity, which is a function of both the cultivar and how it's made. To your point, you can open up a bottle and Norton and it will not fade on you very quickly. That’s to say you can open it up and drink it for a week. And it's still vibrant. I has what the Chinese would call chi and all that lifeforce.
Fred Reno It's my Passion as you know, and that's what these Podcast Episodes are all about is to bring awareness to a larger audience, to at a minimum, get them to have some intellectual curiosity, and seek it out and decide for themselves. You know, that's the one thing just in general terms that I've seen now, after 45 years in the wine business looking at the consumer side of this, but also the trade side, there just seems to me to be a big lack of intellectual curiosity, about wine, unlike when I got in the business in the 70s, and 80s. And even into the 90s, there was just a deeper intellectual curiosity about wine from different regions, what wines were like, and I just don't see that passion that much anymore.
Bruce Zoecklein I think that that has diminished. Perhaps it correlates with diminished, concerned about alcohol? I'm not sure. The real diminution seems to be in wine sales and on-site sales, which might correlate with this lack of intellectual curiosity.
Fred Reno I hadn't thought about it from that standpoint. As long as you brought the social piece of this up, I don't know It's wine businesses is fully awake, the industry. There's a sort of backdoor what I'm going to call Neo prohibition thing happening and nobody's paying much attention.
Bruce Zoecklein WeIl, I think people are paying attention, there just kind of the whiny about it but they are a little bit unfocused as what could possibly be done.
Fred Reno That's true, too. But I think, this is my opinion again, wine needs to get out there and separate itself in the consumers mind from beer, alcohol and liquor.
Bruce Zoecklein Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think that the wine industry needs to highlight the food complement and the agricultural nature of this. I think there is a great deal of interest in agriculture, I think that there is an increased awareness of the importance of agriculture and the role of the farming community in our society. Our industry has, I think, some unique things to say about that. And I have to think that could be promoted more strongly to buffer up the interest, that is to say, highlighting the food compliment nature and the agricultural nature and stepping away from the alcoholic beverage part of it. Well, obviously, there's the big trend for lower alcohol, I don't think that we're going to be in a position of making a big dent in totally nonalcoholic wines, like the beer industry has. That can be off set because I think that the beer industry doesn't have the agricultural component that we do. the Brewers, they're not out there growing the grain. It's not the same sort of personal lifestyle commitment that you get from the wine business.
Fred Reno Well, yea you don’t have this vintage variance. You know, one other components about this, I think is the biggest challenge from my perspective. I got introduced to wine 45 plus years ago because of a dining experience. And today's societally, especially the younger people, they just don't dine anymore. They eat a lot of different foods they're eating on the run, on the go. Wine is part of that whole dining, social interaction and an absent of that culture, which is more European in nature and family structure, we've got a challenge here that's even bigger in some regards. To introduce people to wine in the proper setting.
Bruce Zoecklein I agree. A lot of this, I think can be addressed with more education. I'm not sure. But certainly not having some of these influencers peddling in correct knowledge or facts wouldn't be helpful.
Fred Reno Speaking of which, I think I mentioned this to you before, but there's so much misinformation about Norton. A good example is if you go on the Wine Searcher website, which is a good website, I mean, it's a very useful one for people who want to see where they can buy certain wines in different stores and places all over the country. But they also have a good reasonably put together educational component. And even to this day, unless they are listening to my podcasts where I'm calling them out. They say on their site that Norton was discovered in Missouri, which is 100% inaccurate. I suspect they'll change that at some point.
Bruce Zoecklein Well, relative to the degree of misinformation out there with regard to wine, that's kind of a minor feature.
Fred Reno I know. But for me, it's major. Well, hey, Bruce. I'm going to stop the recording of this and then we can just catch up here.