#10 WINEMAKER #2 - Cairdeas Winery's Charlie Lybecker

Cairdeas Website: cairdeaswinery.com
Instagrams: @cairdeaswinery
BUNGPOD MERCH: www.bungpod.store

Embark on a scenic journey with Charlie Lybecker of Cairdeas Winery, as we uncork the secrets of Lake Chelan Valley's winemaking evolution. In this intimate conversation, we trace Cairdeas' humble beginnings in West Seattle to its thriving presence in the picturesque wine region. Discover how the valley's growth since 2009 has reshaped the terrain for local vintners and assisted in the flourishing success of Cairdeas, setting the stage for a saga of grape to glass.

Ever wonder what whispers of flavor are unlocked in each bottle of wine? Charlie peels back the curtain on the meticulous artistry behind Cairdeas' Rhône-inspired collection, debunking myths about wine sweetness and revealing how a symphony of flavors can be orchestrated through fermentation - without a hint of residual sugar. This episode is a masterclass in appreciating the nuances that elevate a simple sip to an exquisite experience, as we appreciate the subtleties that define Cairdeas' dry, yet fruit-forward vintages.

In our final pour, we explore the craft of blending at Cairdeas Winery, where every bottle tells its own vineyard tale. Learn why Petit Sirah might tango with other varietals and how whole cluster fermentation, along with a respect for the vine's voice, results in singular wines that speak volumes. Charlie's passion for minimal intervention and innovative aging vessels like terracotta amphorae - affectionately called 'drunk turtles' - will inspire you to see wine through a different lens, and perhaps, make you reach for a glass of their concrete Syrah to toast the journey.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Bung pod, welcome back Wonderboy. And we got Jazzy J. What is a bone? The whole of the barrel is called a bong hole. Inside the bone hole is called a bong wine with mayhem. That's what it's about. My parents don't ever try and use that.

Speaker 2: 0:21

It'll be so funny if they tried to use I want to hear your mom use that yeah, and you've got drip. You've got drip.

Speaker 1: 0:34

Oh right, everybody, welcome back to the bung pod. It's your boy in King, aka. Why, wonderboy Jazzy is not here today? But we got an awesome special guest here. He is a winemaker. He is one of my good friends. He is the co-owner of of Cardis Winery. He's welcome, charlie Libecker. What's up everybody? Sorry, there we go. It's a lot more exciting when we introduce people in. Jazz is here because she goes like no crazy laugh.

Speaker 2: 1:09

I mean, if it was recorded with, like a live studio audience with, like you know, all the cherry in the background, be great. But so it's a closed, closed audience tonight.

Speaker 1: 1:19

Yeah, private, private session Right now so we are here in the Cardis barn in Manson Washington. So this is your production facility, this is your main tasting room, and then you guys also have another tasting room that you opened up Last year.

Speaker 2: 1:42

Yeah, yeah. So a brief history of the winery is my wife Lacey and I started the winery in in West Seattle back in 2009 and we made wine in the city for a couple years and At the time, we were really trying to flush out like what the brand was actually going to be and when we wanted the actual winery to be. Because, as you know, like when you're starting a winery from scratch, the first couple years are really just producing wine and you're three years into it before you actually like have a bottled wine You're ready to sell. So we had our day jobs. We were Doing like the the regular daily hustle, while making wine, like on the weekends and kind of on the side and Trying to figure out where we wanted to land.

Speaker 2: 2:37

And my wife? She had a job in the hospitality industry and Was hired to help open a resort here in Lake Shilan. She came and was doing some marketing stuff for them and came home one day all excited about they're being wine here in the valley and I was like, well, babe, that sounds cool, like I want to tag along next time you go. So we came out with a couple of our friends and we spent the weekend wine tasting here in Shilan and at the end of the day we went and grabbed some food at the market next door and we were grilling on the deck of our condo that we were staying at. We opened a couple bottles of wine that we bought that day and we're staring at this gorgeous lake across the street.

Speaker 2: 3:25

Yeah with the Cascade Mountains in the background, and we're like that's it. And so we knew from that time on that Lake Shilan was going to be our forever home. Yeah, and so we moved the winery here permanently in 2012, and We've been here ever since so you were looking more of like where do we want to live?

Speaker 1: 3:48

because wherever we are in Washington State, I can always get grapes somewhere.

Speaker 2: 3:51

Yeah. So I mean, we were Really new into the wine business, obviously, and we were trying to figure out not only where do we want to live, but where makes the most sense to start our brand.

Speaker 2: 4:04

Yeah and the Lake Shilan AVA was established in 2009, so the same year that we became a winery and at the time, I think there were 14, 15 wineries in the valley and so when we moved here, we were winery like number 18 yeah, now there's over 40. Yeah, in the valley, you know, but at the same time, like if we were to move to Yakima or Walla Walla, we would have been like winery like number 100 or something like that. So like Lake Shilan was such a small region at the time that it felt like maybe an easier entry point and it was so new to it's getting its AVA status that we felt like we could be a part of it kind of from the ground up, and so that was a really big appeal to us, as we love the Lake Shilan Valley and we got to kind of be a part of it from the beginning.

Speaker 1: 5:02

Yeah, oh, that's epic. That's crazy that there's so many wineries that jumped like. The numbers jumped up drastically After you guys got here.

Speaker 2: 5:13

Yeah, you know it's interesting like having paid a lot of attention to what's happening in the wine business.

Speaker 2: 5:19

You know, the earliest wineries in Washington State popped up in like the late 70s, early 80s, but it wasn't until like the mid 90s where there was a big Like volume boom in the wine business and that's one a ton of like the Woodenville guy started popping up was like the mid to late 90s and like early 2000s was really big for For wine in Washington, and then we went through like this little lull for about 10 years and then 2009, through 2015, I want to say there was another kind of boom and that was the era that we were a part of and then there was another Lull for a little bit and then it kind of like we went through this wave again where there was another big increase, and so it's been really fun to watch Seeing all the wineries that popped up. When we became a winery in 2009 we were winery Washington winery like number like I want to say 450, 8 I'm just gonna pull a number out of the air, but it's like in the mid 400s.

Speaker 1: 6:23

Okay.

Speaker 2: 6:24

There's over a thousand wineries in Washington today. So from when we started in 2009, it has more than doubled. The amount of wineries in Washington has more than doubled so like there was an insane boom from 2009 until now I mean from 1980 until 2009 there were only 400 yeah and from 2009 to now there's over a thousand. So I mean it's like it's an insane growth curve.

Speaker 1: 6:52

Yeah, that's crazy and it was also wild to me when I was going through my programs for wine education that Washington was number one on volume as far as production. It was Washington. And then it was like Think Central Valley, california. That was like just behind Washington on pure, just volume.

Speaker 2: 7:18

Yeah, I mean chef to say Michelle is obviously like the biggest driver of wine in Washington state. They're still in the top 50 Wine brands in the country and we have several Washington wineries that make that top 50 list. But obviously gigantic chunk of the top brands in the country or California based. But we do have, I want to say, three or four different Washington brands that hit that list St Michelle, precept, house of Smith right.

Speaker 2: 7:52

I Believe there's another one that I just I'm not like touching on right now, but yeah, it's we have. We do have some big wineries in Washington, but Washington state is really known for its small and kind of more Boutique style producers, which I super appreciate.

Speaker 2: 8:12

Yeah, they're not wines that you are gonna see like on a grocery store shelf All over the place. You almost have to be like a fan of the winery and be in their wine club to have access to their wines, which means that you're not gonna find them everywhere, which might be a negative, but at the same time, like they're almost those like harder to get, more niche kind of style wines.

Speaker 1: 8:39

There's like an exclusivity kind of factor to that, yeah, and I mean, at the same time, like it's.

Speaker 2: 8:45

It's because they're making wine on a scale where they're able to do more experimentation and create, like, really interesting things that you're not seeing Large-scale wine producers do yeah and so there's a lot of fun things to be had out there.

Speaker 1: 9:07

So where did you get your wine knowledge from, like how to how you made wine? I think I know you went to. Where'd you go for you went somewhere for winemaking.

Speaker 2: 9:17

Yeah, so I went through a winemaking program in Seattle called the Northwest Wine Academy. It's the only winemaking school on the West Side, I believe. At least it was at the time.

Speaker 1: 9:28

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 9:29

There are several great wine programs here in Washington State walla. Walla has a great one, yakama has a great one, wsu has a great one. The one I went through Happened to be like a whole five minutes up the road from my house. It was that solid, mega convenient, and my winemaking school was a hands-on winemaking school too. It wasn't like the online certificate program where you're getting a lot of book smarts like.

Speaker 1: 9:53

I actually was in the trenches like yeah you know, cleaning tanks and loading grapes into a press and I think winemaking is one of the dirty work where you have to be like hands-on to To learn to the best of your ability but you know, to answer your question, where did my winemaking knowledge come from?

Speaker 2: 10:12

It's a really.

Speaker 2: 10:12

It's a collection of being just super interested in wine, going through a winemaking program, doing an insane amount of just my own reading and research.

Speaker 2: 10:24

Before I even got into winemaking school, I just went online and figured out what like textbooks the students at UC Davis were Going through with their program and I ordered them on Amazon and just read through them myself and then, of course, the the best chunk of my wine knowledge is just like experiencing wine and asking a lot of questions. So While we were still in Seattle, my wife's co-workers would organize these like wine tasting tours in Woodinville on the weekends and we would They'd rent like a, a boss or whatever, and they'd take us on a wine tasting tour and, as we would stop at places, we'd be sitting at the bar and I'd be just asking questions about the wines. And when I found out that, like the winemaker was there, I'd love to like introduce myself and just start chatting and they would get bored and move on and I would find myself sitting at the bar like tasting wines and just talking to a winemaker for you know, an hour or two hours and I'd have to like call the group to be like where are you guys, where?

Speaker 2: 11:40

can I meet up because they're like they're like two or three More places on at this point, but it just kind of like that curiosity led me down this rabbit hole of wanting to know more. Yeah, I've always been a really curious person and I want to know how things work and what makes Wine tick yeah and I'm still trying to figure that out.

Speaker 1: 12:02

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 12:03

With wine. It's like the more you learn, the more you learn that you have to learn.

Speaker 2: 12:10

Yeah and so I think, if I stop learning, I haven't figured it, I haven't done it right, you know, because it's like you should always be striving to figure out what the next thing is and that's one of the things we love to do at Cardis is, you know, take the knowledge that we've built over the last 15 years of doing this, but then, like, what can we do? That's wild and crazy. Just to see what happens, yeah, and what can you learn from that experiment, and how do you build upon it? And then Do you turn that into something? And so we've created several wines around Experiments that have just grown into, like, becoming a part of our regular program. That becomes something really unique and interesting that a lot of other folks in Washington aren't doing yeah.

Speaker 2: 13:01

I think that adds something that's kind of special about what we do.

Speaker 1: 13:04

Yeah, all right, let's take a quick break for a second, because I got something I want to tell you guys about. If you want an extra episode per week, if you want exclusive Discounts on some dope ass merch that we got, also, if you want to add your, to sense your opinions, your hot takes or your topic Ideas, we want to hear about it, go to patreoncom slash official Bung pod and talk to us. Now let's get back to the show. All right, guys, we got some news. We have an official Bung pod store. We got some merch going Bung pod dot store. Update your life, update your wardrobe. You need some new clothes. You need to look fresh. Update your life, update your style. We got hoodies, we got handbags, we got stickers, we got beanies. We got more coming on the way. So if you like the show and you want to cop yourself some merch, go to Bung pod dot store. Now let's get back to the show. Which wines are you pouring right now For?

Speaker 2: 14:12

what do you bring us? The wines I have for you today, ian, are kind of like what I would consider like our core wines Kurslanan, pappal, which is my favorite wine that we make, modeled after my absolute favorite wine in the whole world Chattanoogh to Papp. And then we have Tri, which is kind of like the flagship red wine that we make. It's the house favorite, it's our GSM, and then Consonance, which is our petit-sur-ah and surah blend. Beautiful, yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:43

Beautiful. Let's taste a little bit, shall we? You bet man. So you guys, I guess we didn't do this on an intro, but you are all rhone correct, so everything, all the grapes that you work with, are all rhone varieties.

Speaker 2: 14:58

Yeah. So we would say that we're rhone-inspired and it is like 96% of the wine we make 6% rhone. We fudge it a little bit. So for instance, petit-sur-ah that's in the Consonance it's not technically a rhone variety but it is from a direct neighboring ABA or region in France. A lot of the grapes that we use are also grown in Languedoc, so petit-sur-ah is kind of like really well known in that Languedoc region. So we cross the border a little bit in that one, but it's close enough to count in our eyes.

Speaker 1: 15:44

Very big, inky, big in body, small in stature, Petit, very petite in stature, but very inky, big, full-bodied red wine.

Speaker 2: 16:00

Yeah, so petit-sur-ah can be a super aggressive grape, obviously. What I would say, though, about the Cardis house style is that we make wine that is more delicate, more elegant, more nuanced, and so, even though petit-sur-ah can be a really aggressive grape, through our wine making practices picking, processing, aging, et cetera it's still going to be a really elegant, balanced wine Instead of a super aggressive tannic. Rip your face off wine. Yeah, I've had it very.

Speaker 1: 16:51

I've had it a lot of ways. I've had it super aggressive before and then obviously, like you said, I've had it where it's very silky, still full-bodied, but very silky and smooth. And I think that's what you kind of go for.

Speaker 2: 17:07

One of the things that I don't think people realize is that a lot of the elements that go into making a wine the way that it is, they're all wine making decisions. One of the things that we get a lot is oh, you guys make a viognier, Is it viognier sweet? I'm like, well, that's a wine making decision. Because, yes, grape juice is sweet, but then you ferment it and do you ferment all of the sugar out of it. That's a wine making decision. At Cardis, yes, we do. Every single wine we make is dry, perfectly dry, In fact. There's no residual sugar in any of the wines that we make. And so if you have a perception of sweetness, even in a grape like Riesling, that was a wine making decision, and over time I think people build up this perception. Oh well, Riesling's are sweet because most producers leave some residual sugar. That's a choice. You don't have to do it that way. And so at Cardis, as a fundamental, like we are not sweet wine people, the joke I tell people is we're sweet enough.

Speaker 1: 18:25

Personally, we don't need to have sugar in the wine.

Speaker 2: 18:29

So, yeah, we make dry wines here at Cardis winery, and sometimes people will taste pineapple or tropical flavors in a wine and your brain tells you, ok, well, I'm tasting pineapple, so that's sweet. Well, that's just a flavor that was created during fermentation, and those esters that are created aren't necessarily tied to sweetness. And so, even though you're smelling and you're tasting these tropical flavors, there may not actually be any residual sweetness in your wine. And so that's again, it's a wine making technique. And how do you ferment the wine and how do you coax those flavors out? And it's done through fermentation vessels, fermentation temperatures, and all in an attempt to achieve stylistically what our goals are for each wine as we're making them.

Speaker 1: 19:30

Yeah, I've had so many people throughout the years of just my wine career, from when I was in a tasting room, like so many customers coming in specifically for a rosé that we had, and they're like, oh, I don't like sweet wine, so I don't really want the rosé.

Speaker 1: 19:48

Like, no, our rosé is bone dry but it's high in acid and natural acidity and it has flavors like strawberry, watermelon, white peach. That's like perceived sweetness, like so when acid and big fruit flavors come in in alignment together, your brain thinks, oh, this is sweet, but it's not like syrupy sweet. I think that's one of the biggest hurdles or one of the biggest knowledge gaps from consumer to seller at any point is just the language of wine, because it is really scientific when it comes down to it, but how the consumer perceives it as, oh, this is sweet where it's not actually chemically sweet, it's just like breaking down the brass tacks the evidence tells you it's not, but your brain thinks it is, which is such like a weird thing. Or like sometimes, vanilla off like an oak barrel for red wines. People are like, ok, this is a sweet wine. Like, eh, right, yeah, but not really.

Speaker 2: 20:56

And one of the things that I always like to tell people is so important to understand the chemistry of a wine From the wine making standpoint I'm not saying from a consumer standpoint, from a wine making standpoint, as a wine maker. It is so important to understand the chemistry of wine because wine is a living thing. I mean there are living organisms in this wine yeast, certain bacteria, whatever and all of those things help make this wine what it is. But at the same time, you cannot base your wine making solely on the chemistry, because those numbers tell you nothing about what that wine smells or tastes like.

Speaker 1: 21:51

Right, yeah.

Speaker 2: 21:52

Yeah, your own personal sensory evaluation of the vineyard, the grapes, the juice in the winery, the wine as it's aging, tells you what you need to know, and so numbers are part of the story. But then the most important tools that we have in our entire production facility is our nose and our mouth.

Speaker 1: 22:22

So are you in the trenches when picking dates are going to come up soon? Are you out there in the trenches in the vineyard just like eating the grapes and seeing their flavor profile before you make a picking decision?

Speaker 2: 22:34

Yeah, we try to make as a team. We try to make a pass through all of our vineyard blocks early in the season and a lot of that's just to get a visual on how kind of the late season of the growing part of it is going.

Speaker 2: 22:53

What do canopies look like, especially after a hot August kind of heat spell? How are the canopies holding up? And it gives my team a good sense of OK. This is kind of where we're at now. But then once harvest starts, I'm the one that is making the laps and I'm in every single one of our vineyard blocks at least once a week, sometimes twice or three times a week depending on where I'm at. Because for us we try to do as little intervention in the winery as possible. Meaning if we nail our picking decision and we can bring the fruit into the winery and process it minimally and get a really good, clean fermentation and get it into an aging vessel, there's really nothing else we have to do. And so if we're treating those blocks and those grapes and once they come into the winery, processing and aging wise, if we're treating that fruit, those grapes from that vineyard with respect, then we don't really. You know, there's a lot of things you can put into a wine.

Speaker 1: 24:17

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:18

There's a lot of things that are perfectly legal to do to a wine and to add to a wine, and our goal is to not use any of them.

Speaker 1: 24:25

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:26

Yeah, because if we have a vision for that wine and we're trying to achieve a stylistic goal and your first big decision as a winemaker is when to pick that fruit, if you make that decision correctly and you treat that fruit with respect and you just kind of gently guide it along its path, you can create some gorgeous wines without having to do a whole lot.

Speaker 1: 24:57

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:57

So that's kind of our goal with everything that we do.

Speaker 1: 25:00

That's what I love about you as well. I mean, I love how nerdy you get and detailed and how curious you are all the time and, like it goes down, even like to your the aging vessels that you have here too, because you don't just use barrels, you have concrete.

Speaker 2: 25:17

Barrels are boring Barrels are boring.

Speaker 1: 25:21

Boring ass barrels with their bung holes. Yeah, bung pod, the bung pod. So you have concrete eggs you have. Can you explain what a drunken turtle is, because you have that as well.

Speaker 2: 25:34

Yeah, so we have. We have six kind of what I would say non traditional winery tanks that we use here on the regular. We have two Italian M4s that came from Piedmante, so we imported them over from Italy and they are a blend that the Italians call cocia pesto and it's a tank that is made out of terracotta and Italian marble and opus, which is the company that makes them, opus calls them drunk turtles and I don't know why they call it a drunken turtle, but it's almost like a, an upside down egg, where the skinny end is on the bottom and the kind of the wider end is on the top, and I think maybe they thought it maybe looks like a turtle, like upside down, like struggling, like you know like on a tap shell or whatever.

Speaker 2: 26:26

Actually there's a cool plaque on the on the front of the tanks that shows like a tipsy turtle. That's upside down.

Speaker 1: 26:32

That's cool. Just like that, the structure of it, like what's made out of it, sounds like a fucking wine cathedral like walking into, like Italian marble and you know they are very, they're very pretty tanks.

Speaker 2: 26:46

They're kind of a pinkish color because of the terracotta, but when the vessels are empty and you open the door to the vessel you can actually see the chunks of aggregate and you see the Italian marble in there. And a lot of times folks ask if the tanks are lined with anything and they're not. In fact it's. One of the cool aspects of the tank is that the wine is actually touching the minerals of what the tank is made out of. So we make granache blanc in those Cochia, pesto, amphora, the drunk turtles, and having that granache blanc touching the terracotta and the Italian marble really enhances the minerality of the wine, because the wine is touching those minerals the entire time.

Speaker 2: 27:31

It's in that tank and it just it accentuates the way you perceive the acidity of the wine. So granache blanc is a very acidic wine and can be really you know, really acid focused. But because of the way the wine ferments in these tanks and the minerals that it's touching and just the convection and fermentation kinetics that are happening inside of this tank, it creates this softness. So even though there's this acid driven white wine, you get this round texture to it where if you were to make that same wine and stainless steel, you would experience that wine in a completely different way. And so when we were first using these vessels, we were actually experimenting and we were making that granache blanc in the Amphora, in a concrete egg and in stainless steel so we could compare that same wine, picked from the same vineyard on the same day, across three different vessels, and it was just like mind boggling how different the wine was perceived based on what tank it was fermented in you know, same yeast strain, like I mean, they weren't.

Speaker 2: 28:49

It wasn't like early pick, late pick, whatever, like they were all. They all came into the wine on the same day. It was processed through the same press load. You know, we just diverted the juice to three different tanks.

Speaker 1: 29:01

So did you do that as an experiment, or is that something that is a regular basis, that you split them up like that?

Speaker 2: 29:06

Well, so that was the grand experiment was okay. This is the first time we're using this new vessel. We need to have some baselines to compare it against so we know what this tank does to the wine. And that was our way of experiencing the wine in stainless, which is kind of the way we'd always done it. The wine in concrete, which we had used before, and we tried other versions of granache Blanc and concrete.

Speaker 2: 29:37

And then what is the terracotta do to it and how does that make the wine express itself differently? And so, and then having all three of those to taste against, side by side was just awesome, because then, as a winemaking team, we were able to sit down and trial all three against each other and decide, you know, for the vision of what we have for our winery, and considering that wine and the lineup against all of the other offerings that we have like, which one is the most unique expression of that variety and how does it fit in with everything else that we do? And ultimately, that experiment that you're using that new amphora. We actually liked the amphora version the best, and so we bought another one, and now we're exclusively using that Italian amphora in that program.

Speaker 1: 30:29

I love it. I love it. It's amazing. And what did you do? So right now we have the Cushion and Papa yeah, so Cushion and Papa is our take on a French Chateau de Pau.

Speaker 2: 30:43

It's a big GSM, so it's Grenache, morved, sirass and so and Kounois. So we got five of the allowed 13 in one bottle. We use a couple of different vineyard sources on this wine. It's about half from Boucher Vineyard, which is down in the Yakima Valley, grandview, washington. One of the pioneers of the Washington Wine Industry, dick Boucher, planted this vineyard. He started growing grapes in Washington state in the early 80s. They have several hundred acres of wine and juice grapes on their property and Just do an amazing job. Dick and Luanne are awesome folks. Luanne is one of the sweetest people. Dick's wife, luanne, is one of the sweetest people you ever meet. She's like my mom. She's like my vineyard mom.

Speaker 2: 31:35

Love her to death vineyard, mom yeah and they are Nerdy about Rhone varieties, just like we are, so they grow some of the more unique varieties in the state, which is really cool. And then another block that we work with is the the meek vineyard, which is Benton City. It's just outside of the Red Mountain, ava, and it that we get all same five varieties from there Grenache, morved, seroths and so on, kunwas and, and it's a great site planted on old cherry orchard. It's called the meek property because it was planted by a guy named Michael meek who I believe still lives in Excelsior, minnesota, which is a suburb of, like Minneapolis, okay, but this Minneapolis guy Just loved wine and wanted to plant a premium vineyard in Washington state and I got to meet him early on and it was an amazing block to get into and we absolutely love it.

Speaker 2: 32:38

And we used to keep the two vineyards separate, but the more we got into Blending wines, the more we found we were able to kind of build complexity by taking these two different, distinct sites and working with the blend ratio to just kind of build different layers of Earthiness and spiciness and fruitiness and, like make a more interesting wine. And so in 2021, which is the wine we're trying right now, was the first year we did the multi vineyard blend.

Speaker 2: 33:19

Okay and I think it's one of the best expressions of Papa that we've made so far.

Speaker 1: 33:26

Yeah, it's beautifully balanced as earth, as spice, as fruit components, like it's. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, one of the things.

Speaker 2: 33:34

Kill it with that one one of the things we like at Cardis is, you know, being a Rhone inspired winery, you know, pulling our inspiration from the south of France. French wines, like we were talking about earlier, a lot of times have this really Earthy, yeah, spicy, component to them.

Speaker 1: 33:54

Yeah, I'm glad that you're talking about this, because I was like, oh, you should go there with this, and so Washington wine in a lot of cases is like just super fruit driven yeah and Well, that's all fine and good.

Speaker 2: 34:08

We're trying to make a Washington wine. It's really Authentic to where we're pulling our inspiration from and so we want a real savory component to everything that we do. Yeah and so, again, through Growing decisions, through picking decisions, through processing and aging decisions, we're able to create these wines that, yes, have the fruit the Washington is known for, but also are true and have that savory component to where we're pulling our inspiration from. Yeah, and Making wines that have that earthy component, that spicy component that we're looking for.

Speaker 1: 34:46

Yeah, and you do an amazing job. But also, by the way your cune wans, I don't I was gonna call it a sleeper because it's one of my fucking favorite ones, but I feel like it sells out every single time you release it, so it's not a sleeper. I feel like it wasn't your sleeper for like the longest time. But I mean, through your collection of wines that you make, that one is kind of, the more I For with my palette I'm more kind of like I don't know people say friendship, burgundy, whatever.

Speaker 1: 35:19

I love Pinot Noir. I love lighter style wines, especially reds, which I do have respect for medium and full body as well. But that cune wans is like very Pinot Noir esque and it's also got spicy to it, almost has a salinity Salinity thing going for it and also kind of some earthiness, and it's such a balance of like a light style wine which adds a good amount of diversity to your lineup but also brings in that complexity, something that I know that you cherish a lot within wines too, and that one is one of my all-time favorites.

Speaker 2: 35:55

Yeah, so one of the cool things that we get to do making rhone inspired wines is we get to introduce Some varieties to folks that they're not familiar with. Yeah, because there's not a lot of since. So Cune wans Carignon Grown in. Washington state.

Speaker 2: 36:11

Yeah, and so a lot of times folks will come here and they're like Cune wans I've never heard of that before like rad Let me tell you a story about a place on the planet that we pulled this you know inspiration for this wine from, and let me tell you a story about, like, why we do this and introduce them to something they've never tried before, and I get so excited about that.

Speaker 1: 36:35

Oh, that's amazing. I love that.

Speaker 2: 36:36

I get, because it's like I get to. I get to tell an interesting story to somebody and I get to help educate somebody about a place that, like, has been instrumental in who we have become as Cardis winery, and I get to introduce them to something brand new, which is so fun. You know, I don't know if I'll ever meet somebody in. Washington that doesn't know what Merlot is, but I Meet people every day that are like Karen, what, karen, yeah, karen, karen, yeah, karen, yeah, and it makes a.

Speaker 2: 37:08

It makes a crazy good, delicious wine, and I love Pino, I love Burgundy, I love will amit and I love Sonoma coast Pino. And it's one of those things where you get to know a certain variety and then you get to know where that variety is from, yeah, and you kind of start to pick up on. Well, these are the characteristics of how this grape Tastes when it's grown in these conditions. And so, yes, you can have Pino noir, but if it's from the Willamette Valley in a cool vintage, it's gonna taste like this. If it's from Burgundy, it's gonna taste like this. If it's from Burgundy in a warm vintage, it's gonna taste like this.

Speaker 1: 37:56

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 37:58

And that's gonna be drastically different than if it's grown on the Sonoma coast. Yeah, and so it's a really cool thing to learn about wine as well as like, yes, we have one grape variety, but then we get into like a whole conversation of terroir.

Speaker 2: 38:12

Yeah and what is the climate and what's the micro climate of that vineyard and how does that influence the grapes and the way that that turns out. So a lot of times when I'm talking to people about Wine, I tell them there's about three million decisions that we have to make With each wine that we do, and I mean that starts with the sites that you pick, the varieties that you pick, the clone of the variety that you pick, how you ferment it, how you age it, I mean. I mean there's so many things that influence the way the wine turns out, and so One of the most important things is winemakers. That we have to do is we have to. We have to have a vision for the wine.

Speaker 2: 38:53

Yeah because each one of these wines has a personality and we want the personality of that wine to show through, whether it's a cool vintage or a warm vintage, year over year. I don't want it to taste the same, but I want you to recognize, try as try.

Speaker 1: 39:12

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 39:14

If it's a cold year, I want you to taste it and be like, yeah, let's try. If it's a warm year and you taste it, I want you to say let's try. Yes, one year has some characteristics, another year might be a little bit different, but that one needs to maintain its personality, and so you can't do that unless you have stylistic goals and a vision for each one.

Speaker 1: 39:32

And consistency with it too. I mean, consistency is so hard with vintage of vintage stuff. All right, let's take a quick break for a second because I got something I want to tell you guys about. If you want an extra episode per week, if you want exclusive discounts on some dope-ass merch that we got, also, if you want to add your two cents, your opinions, your hot takes or your topic ideas, we want to hear about it. Go to patreoncom slash official bung pod and talk to us. Now let's get back to the show. All right, guys, we got some news. We have an official bung pod store. We got some merch going Bung pod dot store. Update your life, update your wardrobe. You need some new clothes. You need to look fresh. Update your life, update your style. We got hoodies, we got handbags, we got stickers, we got beanies. We got more coming on the way. So if you like the show and you want to cop yourself some merch, go to bungpodstore. Now let's get back to the show. I'm on the try right now.

Speaker 2: 40:45

So try is our kind of our house favorite. I would call it a flagship red wine. It's our GSM, so it's like the, it's the fan, it's the fan favorite wine.

Speaker 1: 40:57

Yeah, it's beautiful. Um, when I first smelled it, it was a little reductive, which is something for me I just love. I just love a little reduction like in the lines.

Speaker 2: 41:14

For some reason, for me it's like when there's a slight bit of reduction in there, I, my brain, is like this is attention to detail and winemaking Well, and I don't know why I think that, but I think a lot of part of our part, of our minimalist approach with our winemaking and our desire to less is more, to do less is more, um, is that we, we try to be as hands-off as possible and so we do very reductive winemaking where, you know, after the wine goes into barrel, it is moved once after the ML conversion is complete and then it is basically left alone until we blend the wine, which is a year later, which is when it is moved again and blended into a tank, and then is moved one more time when it's bottled. So that's literally two movements, or three if you count the bottling day where big wineries are racking four times a year. So eight times total, we're doing two. But again, if you refine your processes and that fits your stylistic goal, I mean we can get away with it. So we literally like we will press off a wine into barrel and then not touch it again. It's kind of like what we like to do.

Speaker 2: 42:55

Again, less is more as far as we're concerned. So, um, reductive winemaking is something that is not for everybody, but that's at Cartis, that's the way we like to do things and, um, I am not afraid by that and I absolutely love the way that this wine turns out. This wine has everything that I want. You know, you get the fruitiness from the Sera, but you get the that really savory earthy component from the more VED and from the Grenache and also the Boucher vineyard, which is one of the main vineyard sources for this wine.

Speaker 2: 43:35

It that vineyard is very um, it's very pronounced, and I don't care what variety it is.

Speaker 1: 43:44

Like, pronounced in what way?

Speaker 2: 43:46

Well, it just that vineyard is very expressive and so, like you can smell a wine and just know that it's from Boucher I mean Cabernet Franc from Boucher, Sera from Boucher, Temper Neo from Boucher, Like they all have a distinct like aromatic quality to them.

Speaker 1: 44:07

How would you describe it that is specific to that vineyard?

Speaker 2: 44:10

It has a really savory aromatic quality to it, like I mean, um, there's fruit there, but they also have this like really savory kind of aromatic quality to them, which is very unique to this site, which is one of the things that I absolutely love about it. And so you know by smelling it that it's Cabernet Franc or Temper Neo or Sera in this case, but it's Sera from Boucher versus Sera from somewhere else in the state.

Speaker 1: 44:39

Yeah, I remember when um, by the way, you and your wife Lacey are one of the main reasons, if not the main reason, um me moving to Washington state, from California, moving back to Washington state from California, especially up here in the Shalane area Um, and then one of the times when I was visiting you guys because every time I'd come up here I'd come over here and visit you guys, taste some wine, hang out, nerd out about wine. And um, when you I think it was your first wine that you made from Boucher and you're just like your face was just lighting up and you're just like dude, I fucking, I fucking love this vineyard. Dude, like you're so excited to get it. And now I can see why. And you've been working with them for how many years now.

Speaker 2: 45:34

Um, I think the first year we harvested from Boucher was 2013. 2013. So it's been 10 years Wow.

Speaker 1: 45:40

Yeah, so it probably wasn't the first time that you got the vineyard. It was no-transcript. Well, I guess it was the bottling, probably.

Speaker 2: 45:49

Yeah, it could be. Yeah, yeah it's. We started making I think it was white wines. For the first couple of years we got some Marsan and some Grenoche Blanc from Boucher and then, another year or two into it, we started getting some Grenoche and some more Vette and then some Sera and it turned into. You know, now we get, I think, eight different varieties from Boucher and they're one of our bigger vineyard sources. We have probably three main sources for fruit and then you know a handful of other vineyards that we get smaller quantities from.

Speaker 2: 46:34

But Boucher, which is in the Yakima Valley, ava, is just like a Washington classic, like they have their growing just super dialed in for where they are, and Dick has this really amazing ability to adapt what he is doing in the vineyard to the conditions for that season. So, like, for instance, we had a vintage a couple years ago where we saw the warmest temperatures during a growing season that we've ever had in Washington state and the people that were kind of following their standard this is what we do they suffered and canopies were like collapsing early in the season because they weren't watering enough when, like traditionally, it's like you wouldn't put water on a vineyard in June but if you weren't watering your vineyard in June, in this particular season, you were screwed.

Speaker 1: 47:41

You're just absolutely fucked.

Speaker 2: 47:43

And so you have to have growers that know their site, and you have to have growers that are willing to adapt, based on what's happening in the climate, to achieve what your goals are for that season. And just by driving around, you can see the people that get it and the people that don't, because when it's August your canopy shouldn't be brown, and in that year there were a lot of brown canopies For those that don't know.

Speaker 1: 48:18

Canopy is the leaves, the shoots and the leaves, and if it's brown during the growing season, it's not a good thing, yeah.

Speaker 2: 48:30

Well, I mean, there's a lot of other things that will help you identify if you have a healthy canopy or not, but you don't really know that unless you're walking through the vineyard. And so it's so important, as winemakers, to be out in your vineyards and be walking through your rows and to be visually inspecting things like what do the leaves look like, what do the canes look like, what do the tendrils look like? I mean, all of those things tell you about vine health and if they're getting the nutrients that they need or they're getting the water that they need. And then visually inspecting clusters like what do cluster size look like? What do berry size look like? Is the cluster loose or is the cluster like super compact, like? I mean, there are varieties, yes, that are supposed to have loose clusters and there are varieties that are supposed to have compact clusters.

Speaker 2: 49:20

But you don't know if something is off unless you're looking at it. And if you're only visiting the vineyard late season and something is off, it's too late to change it at that point. And so one of our responsibilities is good stewards of making the wine that we want to make is to constantly be checking in and making adjustments well, throughout the season, and that starts from as soon as the vine start to grow and all the way through, and so I don't know how some people can only start making vineyard visits, like in August, because it's like you're missing the mark at that point.

Speaker 1: 50:05

Yeah, yeah, absolutely All right, let's go on to the constant. So we just so we had the papa, we had the tri. This is a consonants, and so this is petit-serrat, petit-serrat and serrat. And serrat. So why do you add the serrat in there with the petit?

Speaker 2: 50:25

Well, petit-serrat by itself is maybe a little more aggressive than we want that, and at Cardis we focus on blended wines.

Speaker 2: 50:38

We don't make a lot of varietal wines Not that we're opposed to varietal wines, but we feel like a chef in the kitchen where you can make a more interesting and unique dish by building flavors through different techniques, different barrel types, different fermentation types, blending different varieties together, you know, or if you're a chef, blending different spices together to just build a wine that has more character and is more complex and more unique. And it's distinctly Cardis. Yeah, I mean, petit-serrat can largely be petit-serrat. It might be expressive of its vineyard, but if it's petit-serrat from this vineyard, it tastes like petit-serrat from that vineyard, where we can pick petit-serrat from that vineyard and ferment it in a couple of different vessels and age it a couple of different ways and blend it with a couple of different things. And now, all of a sudden, we've taken petit-serrat from that vineyard and we've made it something that's ours. Yeah, you know, it's representative of who we are as a winery and it's representative of what our vision is for the wines that we're trying to make.

Speaker 1: 51:51

So this is inky standing in the glass, the petit-serrat almost like. It's very purple, can't see through, it looks black when you try to see through it. But there's a lot of people listening, so try and describe what I see as much as I can. How much whole cluster do you guys?

Speaker 2: 52:13

do so. On this wine, we don't do any. There are a few wines that we make that we do upwards of 50% whole cluster is kind of our highest percentage. We in 2023, just started doing some footstomp whole cluster wines. We did some koon-was and some sarah and those are really fun experiments that I'm anxious to kind of see how they evolve and what they become. Our concrete sarah that we make is the one wine that we do. That's in our regular lineup where it's 50% whole cluster, and when I say whole cluster, I mean unadulterated whole cluster.

Speaker 1: 53:01

So you're not like de-stemming and throwing stems back in.

Speaker 2: 53:03

The fruit literally comes into the winery and we dump it into a tank. There's no foot stomping, there's no adding stems back, it's literally pick bins go right into the tank. So a lot of times when people say whole cluster, they bring in whole cluster and then they footstomp it to release juice or they de-stem it and they add stems back to have some stem inclusion. Ours is whole fruit berries attached to the rachis, and that creates a couple of different things. Right, you get some carbonic masherations happening, where the berry is still attached to the stem but yeast is able to make it through the cell wall of the grape and fermentation starts inside of the fruit. So the berry is literally fermenting inside of itself, which accentuates the fruit to like a massive extent. And then you have the stem inclusion and so you're getting this tannic extraction from a source that isn't there.

Speaker 2: 54:08

if you de-stem the fruit, altogether right, and so you're getting that enhanced fruitiness but a different type of tannin inclusion in the wine and just creates a really unique wine. And then for that particular wine, our concretes are all. We fermented and aged it solely in non-blow concrete tanks, and so it has never seen an oak barrel and you're creating this really interesting saurat that has stems, that has whole cluster that has never been an oak barrels and it's just a really cool expression of what Washington's saurat can be. And if you taste this wine it doesn't need a barrel. Yeah, you know, a lot of times people use barrels for aromatics or they use barrels for texture, or they use barrels for body, and this wine has all of those things without well.

Speaker 2: 55:04

so I mean, like early on, like I don't even remember who told me this, but I was talking to a winemaker that I really respected and he was like, dude, using new barrels is like putting ketchup on things. It's like, you know, you don't go to a restaurant and order an, order this crazy expensive, delicious filet mignon and then put ketchup on top of it. Yeah, that like f's up like everything that the grower did to grow a great piece of beef and everything that the chef did to cook a great piece of meat.

Speaker 2: 55:38

Yeah, you know, if you were to put ketchup on it, you're like introducing flavors that shouldn't be there.

Speaker 1: 55:44

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 55:44

And so using new oak is very much using ketchup in a lot of ways and so I don't like a lot most Napa cabs right.

Speaker 1: 55:52

Because it's just like oh cool, like you're using expensive oak.

Speaker 2: 55:56

We would literally go to wineries and taste their Merlot, and taste their Cabernet Franck, and taste their Malbec, and taste their Cabernet Selvignon and I'm like I can't tell you which one is which because they all taste like brand new barrels.

Speaker 1: 56:12

Yep, yep, I hate that.

Speaker 2: 56:14

And so it's like you lose. In a way you lose varietal like tipicity, because the vessel you age that wine in has dominated the aromatic and the flavor profile.

Speaker 1: 56:28

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 56:29

And so at Cardis we are very anti new barrel because we want the vineyard sources to shine through in the wines, we want the wine making techniques to shine through in the wines, we want the varietal to be the forefront of what you smell and you taste. And so you know the caramel and the vanilla and the smokiness or the spiciness that you get from all these barrel tannins Like those are things that we might use to accent the wine in small amounts. But again, like, if we go back to like, the fundamentals of what we've been talking about and what we are, who we are, less is more.

Speaker 1: 57:15

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 57:15

And so it's like you might add a pinch of salt to a dish to bring out a flavor, but if you're just tasting salt, you have over done it. Yeah, and to me, it's like that dishes ruined at that point.

Speaker 1: 57:31

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 57:32

It's like we've all had the salty dish at the restaurant. It's like that chef had way too heavy of a hand.

Speaker 1: 57:37

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 57:38

It's not what we're trying to do here.

Speaker 1: 57:39

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 57:40

We're trying to respect the ingredients that we're using and have those be what you smell and taste. That's what we want.

Speaker 1: 57:48

Yeah, I think you've represented your brand really well. This is a longer episode it's like almost an hour, which is double what we usually do. But hey, the conversation and what you're saying is like you know more of that is not a bad thing. You know, it's not like salt or French oak In this case, more is more instead of less is more.

Speaker 2: 58:11

Yeah, yeah, more is more in this case. Sorry, I've dominated your time, ian, but hey hey, don't apologize for giving me something good. I love, I love talking wine nerd with wine nerd Dude I love it too, so tell people where they can find you guys. Well, they can find us in the small town of Manson, washington, on the North Shore of Lake Shilan. We have this gorgeous brown barn with a copper roof Can't miss it In one of the most beautiful settings on the whole earth.

Speaker 2: 58:46

Lake Shilan is gorgeous. That's why we decided to live here. It's the biggest lake in Washington state, the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. It's absolutely gorgeous. We have 300 days of sunshine, which is why I want to live here. It's awesome. Cardis is a crazy Irish word and so it's ridiculous to try to spell, but it's C-A-I-R-D-E-A-S Cardis winery. Google will help you with the spelling if you fuck it up. Yeah you gotta love it, but you can Google us. Google, yeah, cardis winerycom. We're on the Facebook, we're on the Instagram.

Speaker 1: 59:23

The Instagram Cardis winery on Insta as well.

Speaker 2: 59:26

Yep, and yeah, you can find us in all the places.

Speaker 1: 59:32

Also click the link. Click the link in the description because they'll have their website and their Instagram handle and everything in the description of this video as well. So go there, buy some wine, join the wine club. Thank you, charlie. Appreciate your time, man Cheers.