Purple Cafe - https://www.purplecafe.com/
Instagram: @purplewinebar
Downtown Seattle | Woodinville
BUNG POD MERCH: bungpod.store
From the vibrant floors of Seattle's beloved Purple Cafe, beverage director Chris Horn spills the secrets of his rise through the ranks of the wine world. Imagine starting as a busboy and uncorking a career that leads to shaping the palates of an entire city. That's exactly what we unpack with Chris, whose tale of transformation echoes the very bottles he pours – from an '85 Brunello that kindled his love for wine, to his pivotal role in Wild Ginger's ascent and the birth of Purple Cafe. This episode isn't just about the romantic journey through vineyards; it's an homage to the laid-back spirit of the industry and the colorful characters who pour life into every glass.
Every sip tells a story, and in the world of wine marketing, those narratives have the power to transform a grape into a legend. We raise a glass to the art of connection in this episode, exploring how wineries from the States to New Zealand have crafted tales that resonate deeply with consumers. Chris lends his expertise to the discussion of how authenticity and scarcity can create a vintage as sought after as an elusive Bordeaux. It's a conversation that meanders through the changing tastes of generations, where millennials swap out advertising for experiences, and every bottle uncorks a personal story.
And what of the essence of the earth in your glass? We ponder the elusive concept of terroir with Chris, dissecting how a word meant to convey the soul of a place has become a buzzword on the lips of marketers. Yet, amidst this, we celebrate the genuine expression of land and climate that can still be found in the world's most honest wines. We navigate the challenges of mass production and regional labeling laws, pouring out anecdotes that highlight the struggle for authenticity in an industry brimming with complexity. Join us for a spirited discussion that's as rich and varied as the wines we love.
Join our Jabrone Gang! https://www.patreon.com/officialbungpod
Instagram: @officialbungpod
TikTok: @officialbungpod
Purple Cafe - https://www.purplecafe.com/
Instagram: @purplewinebar
Downtown Seattle | Woodinville
BUNG POD MERCH: bungpod.store
From the vibrant floors of Seattle's beloved Purple Cafe, beverage director Chris Horn spills the secrets of his rise through the ranks of the wine world. Imagine starting as a busboy and uncorking a career that leads to shaping the palates of an entire city. That's exactly what we unpack with Chris, whose tale of transformation echoes the very bottles he pours – from an '85 Brunello that kindled his love for wine, to his pivotal role in Wild Ginger's ascent and the birth of Purple Cafe. This episode isn't just about the romantic journey through vineyards; it's an homage to the laid-back spirit of the industry and the colorful characters who pour life into every glass.
Every sip tells a story, and in the world of wine marketing, those narratives have the power to transform a grape into a legend. We raise a glass to the art of connection in this episode, exploring how wineries from the States to New Zealand have crafted tales that resonate deeply with consumers. Chris lends his expertise to the discussion of how authenticity and scarcity can create a vintage as sought after as an elusive Bordeaux. It's a conversation that meanders through the changing tastes of generations, where millennials swap out advertising for experiences, and every bottle uncorks a personal story.
And what of the essence of the earth in your glass? We ponder the elusive concept of terroir with Chris, dissecting how a word meant to convey the soul of a place has become a buzzword on the lips of marketers. Yet, amidst this, we celebrate the genuine expression of land and climate that can still be found in the world's most honest wines. We navigate the challenges of mass production and regional labeling laws, pouring out anecdotes that highlight the struggle for authenticity in an industry brimming with complexity. Join us for a spirited discussion that's as rich and varied as the wines we love.
Join our Jabrone Gang! https://www.patreon.com/officialbungpod
Instagram: @officialbungpod
TikTok: @officialbungpod
Bung pod, welcome back. We got Jazzy J. What is a bone? The whole of the barrel is called a bong hole. Inside the bong hole is called a bong wine with mayhem. That's what it's about. All right, welcome back to the bung pod. I'm Ian King, your host. Aka wine wonder boy Jazzy is not here today, but we got an awesome guest. We made a little trip to Seattle. We're in South downtown Cartus tasting room and we have Chris Horn with us. He is the beverage director of Purple Cafe in Woodenville and downtown Seattle, among other things.
Speaker 2:Among other things, yeah my title is director of liquids the lacker director of liquids.
Speaker 1:I love that.
Speaker 2:Cuz they wouldn't be. They wouldn't let me be the Prince of Potable's, or yeah. I had a lot of other ideas, but yeah, we settled on that because it was a little less Cheeky that's creative, though. Yeah, I like it I mean, I think that a lot of the beverage world has a little bit of snobbery attached to it. Yeah, so trying to avoid titles that are infused with a little bit of attitude is fine with me.
Speaker 1:I love that. That's what we're about at the bung pod here.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Cool. So, chris, where are you from?
Speaker 2:Well, I was born in downtown Seattle. All right about six blocks from where Purple Cafe is local boy, so I've gone nowhere in my life.
Speaker 2:I was. I was lucky, though my dad was in shipping, so we we spent some time in Asia growing up, but came back here for the formative years, went to college over in Spokane and then came back to Seattle and had designs that go teach English in Japan. But then, wow, buddy of mine was living on alchai and he needed a roommate for a few months so he could save some money and yeah another buddy of mine said hey, I got this job, but this place called salty's on alchai.
Speaker 2:They're hiring and next thing I know I'm Waiting tables and making more money than you should in your 20s and I was like I'll go to Japan later.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:So that was got started in the restaurant industry for you, no when I was 15 and a half, I was with my parents and we were we were social members at the local country club so that I could play tennis, my brother could go To swimming pool, my dad could golf every once in a while. Yeah but when I say country club, people get the idea like a country club it. You know it wasn't. It wasn't the fanciest place on the planet.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, cuz we think a country club.
Speaker 2:You think like yeah, this is yeah. No, I don't want to disparage anybody, but yeah. It's, but the the dining room manager was like losing your mind cuz she was busy as hell and and they made a joke about well, you can have this kid. When he turned 16 and she's like Do you have black pants and a white shirt? I'm like, yeah. And she's like you start tomorrow. So I at one point was probably the world's best Country club bus boy.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, that shit dialed. Yeah, I could snap a 54 by 90 tablecloth. Just watch it settle as I'm putting down the forks and knives and I that also where I started waiting tables. And there's no better boot camp for waiting tables and having four guys walk in the front door every eight minutes for hours on end Right, and you got to know their names, cuz they're the members and you gotta know if it's regular decaf and you gotta know how they like their eggs and what kind of toast they have. Yeah, that was.
Speaker 2:That was definitely a great place to learn how to Do things quickly absolutely and then after college I I Came back there for a little bit but also was busing tables at a Italian place in the U district, and that's kind of when I got the wine bug, as they say.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Not that I wasn't. I'd been drinking wine in college because I'm slapping the bag or no, carla Rossi, hardy burgundy was my, was my jug of choice. All right and that was because and I've said this before if you bring home a half rack of keystone light, all roommates would just Just move through it in minutes. Yeah but the Carla Rossi never got touched, so it meant that I never went without. Yeah and I I believe it's better to have than have, not so yeah that was, that was the Genesis, but no is some.
Speaker 2:It's a bottle, 85 Brunello. That made me say what the fuck?
Speaker 1:is that was your aha wine, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was definitely changed a lot of things and I was lucky because at the time I was also working at salty's on al-qai and the the wine guy, tim O'Brien, who's still there, actually One of the nicest humans on the planet, consummate professional. He was doing some wine education for the staff and and I think the thing that I learned from him, the first and foremost, was to like not take yourself seriously.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but take the subject seriously, right. So I think I lucked out in a lot of ways by having that first. The first person that I that I observed in the wine world was a nice human. Yeah and and then I was lucky enough to get hired at Wild Ginger in 2000 and I was there for six years of my life and when I left I was this is assistant wine director there and Learned a whole hell of a lot.
Speaker 1:Memorize you find out to assistant wine director.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Memorize a lot of things nobody ever asked me about. Yeah, it's really who cares? Yeah, and then opened up purple cafe downtown in June of June, of July of 2006 okay, so you're there since the inception.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, wow.
Speaker 2:I wasn't job hunting, yeah, but a friend of mine worked for these guys and she brought me up there and and I actually said out loud oh, they're putting a wine bar at 4th University. That's never gonna work. There's nothing up there besides hotels and the theater right. This is. This is why I don't own restaurants. I'm not smart enough to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah but yeah, it's, it's. Yeah, I've been working there since 2006, but during that time we opened up, opened up in closed Bellevue. We just we've done a lot of things over the years, yeah, and so the job has never been the same.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I.
Speaker 2:And every year there's some thing that happens. You can kind of just go back through the calendar and go well, that was 2008,. 2009 was the recession and then, yeah, it's been kind of a wild ride.
Speaker 1:But it's a lot of adapting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like you know, if you saw me in I don't know July of 2020, I was batching gallons of blood orn's margaritas to sell on the sidewalk Like it has not been. It hasn't been a nothing's it's. Restaurant business is never normal anyway, but it's not. It's not. I've had no chance to get bored.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, well, that's important.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, I had so many people in their jobs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that also we have been not we've been allowed to be creative and do what we want, and as long as the product's good and engaging. And if you look at wine lists from 2006 versus 2012, versus today, they're so different. Yeah, but that's. What you have to do is constantly evolve, because yeah especially if you've been around for almost. Yeah, I think we're going to have our 18th anniversary here.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Huge In restaurant years. That's amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is amazing. So most of your was it all of your training was um apprenticing.
Speaker 2:I guess you could say or yeah, you know I was lucky enough. Yeah, I did.
Speaker 1:I did some quarter master's stuff, but um, what are your thoughts on, like all the certifications and whatnot, for?
Speaker 2:wine education. Some of my favorite human beings are master's and LA's. That is a path that I could never do.
Speaker 1:Why is that? I know it's extremely hard, yeah it's.
Speaker 2:I'm not that smart, Like. I don't think that my brain is the kind that could really memorize that much minutiae, especially if I'm not using it, and I just think that there's so many different ways to make it in the wine business and that is one way, and I think it is valuable when people do things that give them structure to study specific things, because you could there's too much to learn in the world of wine you could. You could memorize the wrong things, I don't know yeah.
Speaker 1:I've done that If I had to do it all over again.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I don't think I really changed anything Because, you know, I've just been lucky to work with a lot of people that were into it and wanted to study stuff and wanted to fly to Piedmont or drive to all the vineyards in Washington or spend some time in the Vilema Valley. You know, we we spent a lot of our personal resources seeing what we needed to see, to understand not just our backyard but the world.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And I continued to travel to learn, because that's that's it's necessary, yeah, it's. You can understand. You can look at maps and understand what the Mosul River is about, but you really understand it when you're standing at the bottom of that vineyard and looking up saying, Holy shit, they, they farmed that.
Speaker 1:Like yeah, steep, Whose idea was that? So?
Speaker 2:steep, it seems. It seems like a bad idea and dangerous, but you know.
Speaker 1:So you actually get to travel with your job.
Speaker 2:Yeah or is?
Speaker 1:that more just for, for pleasure and more education.
Speaker 2:I think that it's a little bit of both.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I've been lucky enough to have some trips with some importers and some trips through the European Union, and I say yes to anything, especially like I went to Vino Verde in 2016. I was like, really, vino Verde? And then I went there and I was like, holy shit, I know nothing at all about what's going on in this part of the world and sadly, I think a lot of those great wines still aren't making it all the way to America. But but going to Portugal like that, I love the the wine scene there. It's really.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Fucking cool, but those wines again aren't, aren't making it to the West Coast of America.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean so interesting, because I've heard that a lot from other countries like Argentina, chile, new Zealand and Australia, like most of their really high quality stuff is drink there.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I mean it makes sense Like, if you think about Washington, there are great wineries whose business model is to sell within you know 15 feet of their front door, or maybe bother with putting the you know having some restaurant presence in Seattle or wherever, but like that, that business model, I think, makes more sense. The energy it takes to, like, sell wine to jerks like me is like it sounds like a heavy lift.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And again, that's why there's, despite having over a thousand wineries in the state of Washington. There's often I'm asked about a wine I've never heard of before.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because they don't. I've not been to there, or yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean yeah. One thing I've always thought about when it comes to exportation is, for example, let's just say, new Zealand Sauvignon Blanc like Oyster Bay right. That was is a relatively cheap bottle of wine, inexpensive bottle of wine. But there's so many other Sauvignon Blancs within New Zealand that are a lot more complex, more nuanced, not so much a slap in the face. And why aren't those getting exported?
Speaker 2:Because the, the, the. There's two sides to one. There's the artistic expression of the individual and then there's the business, and wines like Oyster Bay are business wines. They're built in volume. If you think about what New Zealand did with Sauvignon Vogue, it's pretty fucking amazing. Before I mean Cloudy Bay, I think started in 1994.
Speaker 1:But I'm not trying to knock Oyster Bay for all of us to go down the road, just an example.
Speaker 2:So I think it's important to recognize that there are gateway wines or there's like the pop music of wines. The wine is everywhere and that gets people into wine. So I don't talk shit about those kinds of wines, because I mean Carl Rossi, hardy Burgundy I drank a fuck ton of that stuff and it's probably what's going to kill me, because we don't know what's in there.
Speaker 1:You know what's so funny about that? I've heard a lot of different podcasts with notable sommeliers or winemakers and a lot of people point to that exact wine as how they got into wine, how they started drinking wine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, think of the marketing of it. Right, it's not Burgundy, but we annex French words all the time. There's actually a legal term called the semi-generic wine word. That's how we've gotten over. That's how we can say California Champagne or Mountain Chablis, or Harley Burgundy. We created a category called a semi-generic wine word, because we're assholes.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's so dumb.
Speaker 1:I'm glad that you put that in there, that asshole thing, oh yeah. Because it drives me fucking nuts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is insane.
Speaker 1: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 BungPod and talk to us. Now let's get back to the show. All right, guys, we got some news. We have an official BungPod store. We got some merch going BungPodstore. 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.
Speaker 2:Like fume blanc is a made up fucking word, it's sauvian blanc. But they wanted to take the name recognition of Puy Fume and put it on the label. And yes, maybe some of the chateaus in America look like chateaus, but they're not fucking chateaus.
Speaker 1:Anyway, it's like Disneyland or Las Vegas.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, anyway, what were we talking about? Oh, I think we were talking about sauvian blanc and how things like that happen, because before New Zealand flooded us with a lot of the same flavor. Right, like a lot of like New Zealand sauvian blanc is the easiest blind tasting thing to do, like it's impossible to not call. Oh well, that's definitely New Zealand sauvian blanc. There's a ubiquity to the flavor.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that ubiquity led to a recognition. And I mean you could go to 7-Eleven and see some New Zealand sauvian blanc. Yeah, and so they took the mantle of sauvian blanc, our idea of what it was supposed to look and taste like. They took that away from the French and they own it now. Because you think about most every other category, one is still owned by the French. Yeah, anybody that makes pina n' o' oire wants to make burgundy. Anybody that makes sparkling wine wants it to be champagne.
Speaker 1:Anybody who's?
Speaker 2:playing with. We even call them Bordeaux style blends or Rhone style blends. It is maybe it won't be this way in 250 years or 500 years, but still the touchstone of the best examples of wine, generally speaking, are French exceptions being Nebbiola and Piedmont, tempranieu and Spain and. San Givese and Tuscany, but for the most part, the French model is definitely what we aspire to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So before I was serving customers in a tasting room and whatnot, I would go on tangents like all the podcast listeners know that I do with customers and I would start talking about wine education and they're like, oh, I don't like Chardonnay. Like, oh, have you had chablis? And like I've had chablis and I fucking hate it. I'm like, oh, what don't you like? Like well, the only chablis I've had was from California. I was just like God be fucking kidding me. Yeah, so it's not the same thing.
Speaker 2:I think that I think in the next 10 years I think the pandemic did accelerate some things- yeah.
Speaker 2:But the way that wine has been marketed historically is ruining wine. The aspirational aspect of wine was pretty great, like oh yeah, look, we want to drink that expensive Napa Cabernet, we want to have that Vue Clico on the table, and so everybody knows that we're drinking some expensive wine. Like there's that signaling. The reason why we wear the nice watches and expend too much on sneakers is we want to signal where we are in the world. And wine really got into that back in the 90s and 2000s, maybe even before that in the 80s. And what's happened now is that all those people are aging out of wine, all the boomers are being told by the doctors stop fucking drinking so much.
Speaker 2:And the new generations can sniff marketing. They can smell the stench of marketing being disingenuous and impersonal. Whereas you sit down at a restaurant and you look at a cocktail list and you can see the creation, you're like, oh, somebody brought these ingredients together to create this thing. And you can read those ingredients and kind of build the cocktail in your brain. And then you can watch somebody shake it and put it into a martini glass and then you can sort of feel this loop, this connection with the thing you're drinking. But when the connection is fancy ass winery in expensive Napa Valley, there's no wonder people are like nah, that doesn't resonate.
Speaker 2:It's why natural wine resonates? Because it feels more personal, because it is less about where it's from. It's more about the person and their intention in the vineyard and in the winery.
Speaker 1:That makes sense, because every time I go to a natural wine bar my friend owns one in Santa Barbara and it's called Satellite Shout out to you guys. Every time he brings in something new or he thinks something will be interesting to me, he tells me about the family that made it. It's like oh, it's this little town in France. That's why it's VDFrance Doesn't have an AOC.
Speaker 2:They don't give a shit about AOC shit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they're just like it's just the sheet farmers that decided to grow grapes and then make wine now and it's actually pretty fucking good and it was.
Speaker 2:Wine is personal. We want to buy it from people. It's something we put into our bodies and if we go to Lake Chelan and go to a winery and meet the winemaker or spend time in the tasting room and it vibes with us and we're like, oh, we really like what they're about. That's the connection. That's why tasting rooms are important. Back in the late 90s, early zeros, there were some wineries that didn't need to have tasting rooms because they could sell their stuff to retailers and restaurants and that was fine. But you'd be hard pressed to create a thriving wine business without having that direct-to-consumer connection, because that's how you build loyalties. You actually have a relationship with the person buying your stuff, which is great for some winemakers, some not so much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean, there's wineries that don't even have tasting rooms anymore, they just have a mailing list because it sells out so quickly. Yeah.
Speaker 2:The scarcity model. We love that.
Speaker 1:It's a great business model. You can make it work.
Speaker 2:If you can build scarcity around your. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean there's like Because we all want stuff that other people can't get right, yeah, I mean in Santa Barbara.
Speaker 1:for us it was like Cinque-Anne was like a big one yeah. And here in Washington, Kuyus is one.
Speaker 2:But I just want to put out Kuyus is not a wash and wine.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:It drives me nuts.
Speaker 1:So I stopped putting wall-to-wall Because I don't bring it right in the free water.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think 43% of the grapes in the Wall-Wall Valley are in Oregon.
Speaker 1:Yes. That percentage probably goes up and down every vintage, but the label can still say Washington State.
Speaker 2:No, it just says Wall-Wall Valley.
Speaker 1:But Rotez says Washington State the right next to Caillus or the right next to Horsepower.
Speaker 2:So if the wine is made in Washington, it can't say, okay, if it's in the rocks, but it's made in Washington, you can't say it's from the rocks. You can only say it's from Wall-Wall, that's the TTV. That's the bullshit governmental labeling rules. Same goes for like, if you buy Pinot Noir from the Freedom Hill Vineyard but you make it in Wall-Wall, you can only say that it's from Oregon.
Speaker 1:There's this stupid archaic.
Speaker 2:like what is a state line? Like what the fuck it's an arbitrary thing? But Caillus has a tasting room in Wall-Wall. It's open one day a year.
Speaker 1:Oh, one day a year, right. It's always closed every time I go to Wall-Wall.
Speaker 2:But like it might have been a decade ago, but there was a big magazine that said that Washington winery of the year was Caillus. I'm losing my shit. It was like they're in Oregon, guys, it's okay, but the brand of Wall-Wall of Washington is important and I get it. But yeah, because I used to write Wall-Wall of Oregon when we had Caillus on the list and it was always some fucking guy who's like hey man, you got a typo. I've been to Wall-Wall, it's not in Oregon. You're like oh, for God's sake, yeah.
Speaker 1:Like there's a reason.
Speaker 2:Because you can't, as a hospitality, I can't say you're an asshole, Shut the fuck up.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Look at a map. Yeah, well, okay, there's some rules.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you have to kind of explain to them.
Speaker 2:Kind of explain to them, yeah, but like you, just want to be like don't come at me with. There's enough typos on my wine list that are genuinely typos. Yeah, so I actually stopped writing Wall-Wall of Washington, even so I don't. If it's an AVA in the Northwest, I don't say Washington or Oregon, because I just don't want to deal with people saying, oh, I've been to the Columbia Gorge and it's in Oregon, even though it's on both sides of the river, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So anyway, how'd we get on that Stupid labeling laws?
Speaker 1:Yeah, labeling laws and whatnot. Can you pass the cardist bottle over? Here, I have excellent left it over there. But one thing I did want to talk to you about was how the wine industry is going, Because it's kind of been a roller coaster a little bit. Especially right now we see it kind of trending down. More People are buying less wine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the stat I saw was 9% less wine consumption. Is it only?
Speaker 1:9%. Yeah, it feels like 20.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well you know, I think that again, maybe we were drinking a little more during the pandemic than we should have. Sure, there was at the very beginning of the pandemic people were worried about, like how are we going to sell through our stuff? And then it was oh, how do we make more wine? Because we are out. So, having seen wine's never going to go away. But we are fickle consumers of alcohol and when there are new things to drink we will drink them. And sometimes those beverages stick around. Sometimes they are flash in the pan, like do they still make peach California coolers in a two liter bottle? I don't know, but I know I drank a lot of that in college.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I hope I don't make it anymore.
Speaker 2:But like coolers, wine coolers were a big thing and people were worried about that, erasing wine like, oh my God.
Speaker 1:Right, I remember that time I was all off the drink, but I remember the trend.
Speaker 2:I wasn't either when it started, but, like what happened to Bartles and James, they're gone and I think that I think that's seltzers and stuff will probably be around forever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's a lot of like alternative alcohol which is now like seltzers wine canned cocktails.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that feels crazy to me though.
Speaker 1:You think it's going to fizzle out?
Speaker 2:I mean it's a cost to enjoyment ratio, Like you get a can of gin and tonic and you're like, wait, this is just gin with tonic and I'm paying how much for it.
Speaker 1:I could just get a gin and some tonic and make it myself, I think that ready to drinks are a convenience Like oh.
Speaker 2:I'm going to go on a hike or whatever.
Speaker 1:Or in Shalane on a boat. Everyone loves to drink on boats.
Speaker 2:There's a time and a place for it, and so, again, I think anything that gets people to consume booze is great.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't know, I'm in the drug pushing business, clearly, but I think that I think it's okay for the tie to come in and recede and come in again If you think of what brought wine into the American consumer, because if you go back to the 1970s, even the 1980s wine wasn't a big deal.
Speaker 2:When I started working salties on Al-Qa'i, there were 70 wineries in the state of Washington, maybe less, actually I'd have to look it up Like the explosion of wine in the Northwest and in Oregon and in California there's a ton of wineries and people point back to the French, the, the Did you guys run to Paris no well, there's that, that sort of put Napa on the map for sure. But it was that 60 minutes episode. This is back when everybody watched the same three channels. Yeah, that red wine had antioxidants in it.
Speaker 2:Oh right, so wine's healthy so wine's healthy and that got it going. But then if you think about our relationship with food and restaurants and the food channel and the rise of the celebrity chef and putting food on a pedestal, and then we started putting sommeliers on pedestals with movies and shows and all that stuff and that, if that is the crescendo and things are going to settle back down to a dull roar, I think I'm okay with that Only because the best experiences, I think, with wine is when you're with people that you love and you're eating food and that wine makes the food taste better. Yeah, and that wine tastes better because of the food, like the collision of liquid and solid at the dinner table or at the restaurant. That's where wine for me is best enjoyed. I don't drink a lot of wine if I'm not cooking or if I'm not eating.
Speaker 1:Oh really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that we really did make wine a cocktail in America, which is fine Because, again, people are drinking wine. But I think that for me, because food and wine, when consumed in the right place, the right time and the right wine with the right food, that elevated experience for me pretty much guarantees wine is never really going to go away.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But yeah, are we going to slam less barefoot and 14 hands or whatever.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:I think that's okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2:And I think that if wines in the state of Washington, oregon, even California, if American wines change their approach and make things more personal or fuck around more, we don't want to drink the shit our parents drank. We don't want to listen to the same music that they listen to, why are we going to drink the same wine that they drink? And so, whenever there's a shakeup, I think that smart people or artistic people figure it out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great smart of an evolution.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean that might. There's not a lot of second generation winemakers in America.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's the thing that sometimes people bemoan, like, oh, we don't have a wine tradition like they do in Europe, which is true, but it's actually. I don't think it's bad, because what happens if, say, I was a successful winemaker and I build a beloved winery, that Constellation wants to buy, I sell it and then if my kid wants to make wine, he can make his own stuff and make it his thing?
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I think it's hard to Is that more of like from an entrepreneurial standpoint or more of like a creative and like find yourself kind of?
Speaker 2:I think it's more of a find your voice, because I think that again, there's business wine, which is the majority of it.
Speaker 2:92% of wine is controlled by five companies in America, consumed in America, and so the wines that give us juice, the wines that excite us, are not in 50 states, they might not even be in more than two counties, and I think that's for those of us that love wine and that seek new experiences, that's great, that churn is great, like if everybody had just had legacy.
Speaker 2:Wineries, like you know, get kind of boring a bit. You do worry, though, sometimes for those older wineries that don't get, that have been around for 20 years or so, that aren't getting pressed because wine journalism is always looking for the new thing too right that are still making great wines. You worry a little bit about that. Like what will happen to those wineries if Is the life cycle of a winery a thing? Or, you know, do you get to the point where you sell your vineyard to somebody that is well clearly, at this day and age, well funded, that will take your land and do something special with it? Also, keep in mind that a lot of wineries in Washington they don't own their own land, so there's that too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean that's a big conversation within the Shalane community because I mean, as you know, historically Shalane hasn't made the best wine in the world, doesn't have a great reputation, but it's starting to evolve and it's growing. A lot has been growing for a while and I know one winery that focuses on estate grapes and owning the land, owning the vineyard, but my buddy, seth Kitsky, upside down wines. I was talking with him one time and he was like man, Shalane would be a great place to grow some grapes for early ripening, but shit, is it so expensive?
Speaker 1:to land itself. I mean, it makes sense, wines in Red Mountain, also at Candy Mountain area is also second generation wine grape grower, I think. Second generation, yeah, second generation grape grower, I think like fourth generation farmer and his family within that area, so he's from that area so it makes sense, but also the land is dirt cheap over there compared to places like Shalane.
Speaker 2:If you think about the vastness of the Columbia Valley and how there's probably some really amazing places to grow grapes if you can get some water there.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or there are some places that you can take a stab at dry farming right, but on the eastern side of the state that would be so very hard, difficult, I know people dry farm.
Speaker 1:Like topless creek and Paso they dry farm.
Speaker 2:There's some people in the blue in the in wall wall in the.
Speaker 1:Okay, cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the north side of the valley Really, I think on a shape for her, her estate. Been here at.
Speaker 1:Maurice's, she dry farmed that okay, because that would be an interesting topic to talk about in the podcast, because I saw a lot of dry farming in California which is kind of funny, because they just don't get that much rain.
Speaker 2:What's happening is having a lot in the Columbia Gorge too, because especially on the far west side they're getting More than 30 inches of rainy air.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes more sense over there, but like over in Walla Walla, yeah, much like very hard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I forget, like on the Oregon side it's eight inches or any year, but on the north side I think they can get upwards of 24 plus. But I'm really okay. I might be fucking wrong. Yeah, people tell you here's the thing about wine. Everything that you've learned about wine was probably marketing, like unless you were just knows deep into the, the sort of Scientific side of things.
Speaker 2:Most of what you hear about wine is Marketing yeah and a lot of it might not be entirely true, because we also dumb shit down Thoroughly because there's a lot, it's a lot more, it's a lot more. What's the word I'm looking for? It's not easier to say, oh, it has that kind of soil, so it's gonna taste like that right which is horseshit, like there's yes, soil is one thing, but like that, that soil that's not. That soil is not Uniform throughout your vineyard right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, anyway, we, we dumb it down because it's easy to say oh, the chalky soil gives you that, that steely, I'm not gonna use the m word. Yeah style should please, because the chalk. But actually, how much of shabby is that chalky soil?
Speaker 1:Yeah, anyway, 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 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. So do you believe, like in, in terroir? And there's some people that don't, and they think it. Terroir is bullshit.
Speaker 2:Okay, I think that it's a word that is misused. I agree thoroughly. Yeah and it makes. It has become Bullshit because but have I stuck my nose in a Glass of burgundy, being like, oh fuck, I know where this is from right like that.
Speaker 2:That connection to how a place can come through in a liquid is real to me. Yes, but that but it's. It's the sum total of not just the dirt, the aspect, the, the, the clone, the, the, the vinification, the, the elevage, the, all that shit, the, the winemakers, expertise, the minute or the how, how and when they picked it like. All that stuff is terroir. Yes, so it's a word I don't really use Because it's on the back of a bunch of fucking bottles which are bullshit right and I'd rather not, I'd rather not join in that.
Speaker 2:Yeah that confusion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I mean when I did my viticulture certification at wazoo, one question with one of the professors Well, it wasn't a question, was a statement she was like well, terroir is a marketing term. Mm-hmm created by the French. To elevate French wines over other people's wines.
Speaker 2:The French are so good at marketing, how the fuck that they convinced all of us that it's not celebrating if it's not champagne? Yeah, did you have New Year's? Eve without a fucking ball of champagne.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I know that I could not launch my next jot without a bottle of champagne breaking on the bow of it. Yeah like they. And that's the world, that's not just America. Yeah, everywhere on the fucking planet. It's your birthday, have champagne. Yeah like they are so good at it but I mean, champagne is my blood type.
Speaker 1:I said yeah, but like I fucking love it.
Speaker 2:It's, but it works because it's also good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like absolutely that's that same time it's like, yeah, like terroir is like a marketing term but, like what you said, I've I've tasted places, I've smelled places in a glass, like they're so uniform to that specific area yeah and that's why blind tasting works, and, and it's I mean yes, there's like a wine making component to it and it has to go through the hands of humans in order to get into the glass. Get to get to you.
Speaker 2:I think that the thing that it sort of bumps up against is that idea of Topicity, where yeah thing tastes like what it is, which is actually, if you think about it, as a fucking stupid thing. Oh, what's topicity? It means it is what it is Like yeah, it's what it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's important to know ours aren't supposed to have like 15% alcohol.
Speaker 2:Have you had any California peanut oil?
Speaker 1:I made wine in Santa Barbara. Okay it's a very cool climate most of them are 13, five ish, yeah, so. Give or take a one-and-a-half percent legally.
Speaker 2:There's so many customers that come in the restaurant and say I like peanut and wine Cabernet, because the peanut waters they're drinking are bought at the fucking Bevmo and it's like 25% Cabernet.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So I did this a number of years ago. I went to the Bevmo and all the multiple proprietary winery bottles they had there, because they're all dummy labels they're. You know, you could call up a facility in oh God, what's the name of that town in Central Valley, it doesn't matter anyway and say I want a wine that's made with low-dive fruit, I want it to be. It tastes like this and they can engineer that stuff for you.
Speaker 1:So all those dummy labels at these big it's kind of like naked wines kind of do that too.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's a lot of bulk wine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a lot of bulk wine. But we did a blind tasting with our staffs in both wine bars and I wasn't trying to fuck with them. I was like, oh, here's five wines. Tell me which ones are peanut and wine, which ones are Cabernet. And it was hard.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because the Pinot Noir's were like dark and tannic and Cabernet's were dark and tannic. So like the thing about Topicity is that it's ruined by mass produced wines.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Because they are engineered. There's no way that the number one Chardonnay in America for the last 30 years still tastes like it did 30 years ago. It is not. There is no vintage variation in those wines. They can't have it because it's a business. Can you imagine if your grandma was like oh my Vintners Reserve, does that taste like the last bottle of Vintners Reserve? What's wrong?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how do we get on this again?
Speaker 1:I mean we're just talking about Terroir, oh yeah yeah. But at the same time I mean so many of those volume labels. They really toe the line of legality to make it that way. Like you know, in California say, they were in Oregon and they made the same percentages.
Speaker 2:Oregon has different percentages. 90% in Oregon, yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, and if you did that in Oregon, that would be classified as a non-vintage.
Speaker 2:Totally, but in California.
Speaker 1:But in California.
Speaker 2:And in Washington, yes, they only has to be 75% of the grape on the front.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But that also is like we are so grape focused in this country, and it's maddening it is.
Speaker 1:yes, it's really why. Maybe because it's a lot about West and like the old world has like, are restricted to regions.
Speaker 2:I think it's because of marketing and it's also because of the fact that there is a lot of intimidation in the world of wine. And so if you are new to wine and you have a mall back and you like it, you're like, oh, this is my wine. Now I will just always ask for that grape, right. Because, I like this one Because nobody wants to look like an asshole, nobody likes to know, nobody wants to look like they don't know what they're talking about.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And so the best way to sound like you know what you're talking about is to be negative about a thing. Oh, I hate California, or I hate, I hate, sure.
Speaker 1:I'm having a really strong opinion on something. Oh my God, but like that's wrong.
Speaker 2:It's limiting, it's not embracing what's possible. Yeah, and like there have been some wines that I've had that I did not love, yeah, but then again I did not love gin until I was in my 30s.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And so I think there are some challenging flavors. Sometimes when you talk about natural wines that if you aren't used to that, you'll be like, oh, this is what the fuck is this? Well, that's, that's Britannomyces, or whatever, it's cool with me. Yeah, so I don't know what we're on. I keep jumping around. I had a really big cup of cold brew before I sat down.
Speaker 1:Nice, it's really, it's really hitting me, yeah, yikes. Well, that's the. We're about time right now. Anyways, for this episode, we'll go on to the Patreon one next, which is a little bit shorter. So, if you have time for it, sure, yeah, cool, awesome. Thank you guys for listening, appreciate it. I'm going to put a little something in my glass so Chris and I can cheers to the end of the episode real quick. Thanks for taking time out of your day and coming here to Soto and thanks for appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Listen to me. Gap on yeah, cheers guys. Yeah, cheers guys, cheers guys, cheers guys, cheers guys, cheers guys, cheers guys, cheers guys, cheers guys, cheers guys. Thanks for listening, appreciate it you.