Ever wondered how a simple grape transforms into your favorite bottle of Syrah? Prepare to unravel the secrets of the wine world with our spirited connoisseurs, the Wine Wonder Boy and Jazzy J, and our special guest, the ever-insightful Liz Keyser. We're not just sipping on vintages; we're taking a deep, ruby-red look into the art of crafting wine, from the allure of co-fermentation to the balancing act between tradition and innovation. Get ready to chuckle over our past pronunciation mishaps and join us on a sensory journey that promises to leave your palate intrigued and your winemaking wisdom enriched.
This episode isn't just for wine aficionados—it's for the cool nerds, the science lovers, and the passionately curious. Liz Keyser showers us with her chemical expertise as we explore the nerdy nooks of winemaking, and for those who thirst for knowledge, there's an article tucked away in the show notes for a deeper dive. Hear about my own adventures in pitching experimental techniques at work, the newfound glory of the 'cool nerd' in modern industries, and how we, as vintners, blend a minimal intervention approach with a profound respect for the science and soul that goes into each bottle.
But vineyard life isn't all grapes and glamour. We get candid about the thorny vines of wine business operations, particularly in the picturesque yet challenging Lake Chelan region. Understand the true labor of love and the economic realities that shape the nectar in your glass. With Liz's vast expertise, we navigate the terrain of vineyard economics, the evolving landscape of wine tourism, and the necessity of professionalism in our craft. So pour yourself a glass and join our heartfelt conversation; it's an episode full of character, complexity, and a shared passion for the world of wine.
Join our Jabrone Gang! https://www.patreon.com/officialbungpod
Instagram: @officialbungpod
TikTok: @officialbungpod
Ever wondered how a simple grape transforms into your favorite bottle of Syrah? Prepare to unravel the secrets of the wine world with our spirited connoisseurs, the Wine Wonder Boy and Jazzy J, and our special guest, the ever-insightful Liz Keyser. We're not just sipping on vintages; we're taking a deep, ruby-red look into the art of crafting wine, from the allure of co-fermentation to the balancing act between tradition and innovation. Get ready to chuckle over our past pronunciation mishaps and join us on a sensory journey that promises to leave your palate intrigued and your winemaking wisdom enriched.
This episode isn't just for wine aficionados—it's for the cool nerds, the science lovers, and the passionately curious. Liz Keyser showers us with her chemical expertise as we explore the nerdy nooks of winemaking, and for those who thirst for knowledge, there's an article tucked away in the show notes for a deeper dive. Hear about my own adventures in pitching experimental techniques at work, the newfound glory of the 'cool nerd' in modern industries, and how we, as vintners, blend a minimal intervention approach with a profound respect for the science and soul that goes into each bottle.
But vineyard life isn't all grapes and glamour. We get candid about the thorny vines of wine business operations, particularly in the picturesque yet challenging Lake Chelan region. Understand the true labor of love and the economic realities that shape the nectar in your glass. With Liz's vast expertise, we navigate the terrain of vineyard economics, the evolving landscape of wine tourism, and the necessity of professionalism in our craft. So pour yourself a glass and join our heartfelt conversation; it's an episode full of character, complexity, and a shared passion for the world of wine.
Join our Jabrone Gang! https://www.patreon.com/officialbungpod
Instagram: @officialbungpod
TikTok: @officialbungpod
bung pod, welcome back. Wine wonder boy. And we got jazzy jay, jazzy. What is a bum? The hole of the barrel is called a bung hole. Inside the bung hole is called a bum wine with mayhem. That's what it's about. All right, welcome, welcome, jabroni, our wine jabronis out there. Thank you so much for supporting us. The Wine Wonder Boy, jazzy J, and we have Liz Kieser. Nailed it, nailed it.
Speaker 3:I was like what is he going to say?
Speaker 1:If you watched the original or the uh, yeah, the original episode to this. Um, I done fucked it up, so I corrected myself. Well, there was a street in Santa Barbara called uh Kaiser. Uh N it's just like your name, except for an N Kaiser way. And so I was like, oh, just drop the N, it's Kaiser.
Speaker 3:No, it's Kaiser.
Speaker 1:Like a set of keys.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So, All right, so here let's start with what we were drinking. Yeah, because you're empty and let's get tasting notes on this one. We didn't do tasting notes on this one. You have to do the tasting notes on this one.
Speaker 4:I passed the torch pass the torch and the bottle.
Speaker 1:That's your category all right, oh god, in front of liz. Okay, I'm a little a little nervous, a little nervous yeah, no um yeah, I mean, it's a great ruby color, medium intensity. Oh, there's a lot of like a ton of spice, immediately like on the nose. A ton of spice, spice and brambly, like you were saying to the other one.
Speaker 1:I mean, the tans are like perfect, I feel like yeah, mean you really do hit that palette, thank you. Like it goes all the way through because bright the acid is like kind of pushing the wine throughout the whole experience with the length and then it has, like some of those almost like I, yeah, brambly I don't know what else because it's like cranberry, but not so. It's like yeah it's more kind of bramble berry and um. I was very complex. There's some earth in there, some mushroom.
Speaker 3:I like this one yeah, I the more I drink it, the more I like it, yeah, um yeah, so it's a 2022 Studio Syrah. It's what? 75?
Speaker 4:75% Syrah, 25% whole cluster Viognier. Yes, it's delicious.
Speaker 3:When I first saw it. I've never personally have seen those two blended.
Speaker 1:But you were saying yeah, it's a practice in Coetit, Northern Rhone, France. They do Viognier co for men.
Speaker 4:they usually do like anywhere from like one, to like 10 would be pretty audacious yeah I think 10 yeah I forget, like the legal, because there's like a legal limit.
Speaker 1:I think it's like 15 legal oh really, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:It's like one to ten percent. What made you go with 25? Just because you had the one ton to the four?
Speaker 1:yeah, kind of it was like more just, pure, pure harvest chaos, math it is interesting, though, because, like uc, davis has an article that they posted um on their website about the chemical breakdown of when you co-ferment viognier with syrah and it actually like lifts the aromatics.
Speaker 4:It creates a little bit more body sometimes yeah, so there's these like sacrificial phenolic chains that are in the grape skin of the viognier and it binds to the like sixth carbon on the anthocyanin chain.
Speaker 4:That gives you pigmentation for um, syrah, and so what happens is those basically bind and it forms a super stable color compound that's really hard to oxidize, but you also get the phenolic chains, so phenols are going to be associated with like flavor, but also tannin and aromatics of your wine and it kind of just like imparts it on the Syrah as well and creates a super, super stable wine. And so, like it was a happy accident when this was first like arrived upon, arrived upon um, and it was the way for northern rhone, where cote ruti is located, to in a very cool vintage, kind of like 2022 for us. Yeah, get these wines that have stable, deep pigmented color but also increase a little bit more of that ripeness and kind of like fake it a little bit. I love that um, instead of having this like, I hope they see more of these, I mean I love, uh, co-ferment viognier and syrah.
Speaker 1:Like I'm a huge fan of that, like I was at a place called jaffers in santa barbara uh for a while and we did a lot of that and, honestly, with like the ripeness that we got in santa barbara with some of those locations um, this one vineyard called larner, which is basically a beach yeah, we were talking about that behind the scenes before this um, that was just like, it was just like an insane color and, uh, experience is just is nuts. Like one thing that we would do at jaffers during harvest is we would have harvest lunches or like in the middle of the day. I don't know how they did this, how they they their time management is great. Like they scheduled things. Everything was by the dot.
Speaker 1:I've never been anywhere where I left before 6 pm during harvest, like it's no it never happens but jaffers it happened, also because they're really really small and super boutique, but like, and also the time management skills are great, and so lunch it would be the wines that we are looking up to, essentially like our, their, the winemaker steven, what he was influenced by, and so we would have anything from corti to cornos. Um, they didn't do bubbles, but they had. We had fair share of champagne, which was fun, yeah, um, so it so it was it was all my makers do.
Speaker 3:And, um, champagne, as I say, champagne is my blood type, so it's just like correct. Yeah, it's amazing, so got to keep me going one way or another.
Speaker 1:So a lot of like of my tasting experience um broader.
Speaker 1:I guess high-end tasting experience came from working there because they would treat us to so many things yeah um, I just remember having like, uh, co-routine corn off like on a regular basis because we're so, we were so so raw heavy yeah you know, um, and so I mean that was so much fun for me, and that's when I learned about the UC Davis cause our, the assistant winemaker, she, uh, is going to still possibly probably in the tail end of her time at UC Davis right now online, but, um, yeah, and she's absolutely amazing.
Speaker 3:Uh, marissa, yeah, uh, good for her.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I learned so much from there.
Speaker 3:and, um, yeah, I just love the the I'd love to read that article about the whole connection to that. I love how nerdy you got it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can send you the article love the nerdness.
Speaker 1:If you guys want, actually I'll just link the article in the show notes for the patreon people too. Um. I don't know if you'll read that, but I'll post it. It's a good read it's a really interesting read. It's very nerdy. Um, liz did a great job of breaking down the chemical uh breakdown of it. She a really interesting read. It's very nerdy. Liz did a great job of breaking down the chemical breakdown of it. She's really fucking smart. If you didn't know that already yeah, if you didn't listen
Speaker 3:to the first one. Trust me, if you didn't catch the vibe, she's really fucking smart, which is awesome really nerdy.
Speaker 1:You're like a cool nerd, you like me oh yeah, for sure I'm not saying you're a nerd, come on now this is high school.
Speaker 3:No, we love nerds. Does that even?
Speaker 1:exist anymore.
Speaker 3:I don't know After the age of like 18?
Speaker 1:I don't know, I don't think so I don't know.
Speaker 3:Nerds are like cool. Yeah, cool nerds are the only way after 18.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they own like Tesla and Facebook and shit yeah. And. Google and you know, and making wine. Yeah. Space X. They're great people, yeah, yeah, all the nerds. So I was so excited because I have proposed that to the place I work. I get my work very anonymous on the podcast. Sorry, I didn't say that before, but I do.
Speaker 1:Just in case anything I say they don't like or whatever, it doesn't influence. Yeah, fair enough, yeah, um and I was like, dude, it'd be so sick to do a co-firm and a Vionier. And one thing I love about them is that, like, well, here's the thing we are, we are all a state and so we're only doing a state grapes and we just don't have Vionier. That's one.
Speaker 1:And the other one was like I don't know, because he's still pretty green and to the winemaking um, to the wine industry in general, but also just winemaking and he's, he is growing so, so much, um, which is amazing. Every single year it's like another thing.
Speaker 1:He's getting nerdy about another thing, which is awesome to see yeah at some point I would love for him to do some whole cluster syrah, at least like a certain percentage. That was yeah. When I first came on board I was like, oh, you want to do like a, like a 25 whole cluster or 15 or whatever.
Speaker 2:Keep it low and just like play with it and play with it, and he's like uh, no, I don't want to.
Speaker 3:I was like, all right, that's cool, that's cool yeah, sick, but like it'd be fun, you know yeah, super fun just because I I came from that kind of community of, and that community, that's a stupid word um god, that was so dumb um this wine making you don't even realize when you like get in, like get nerdy about wine, it's like slowly just brings you in to this little cult and you don't even realize it then, you just like look at your wine cellar and you're like I need more.
Speaker 1:And you're like I haven't even drank any of this, but I need more yeah I mean I I yeah, I was raised winemaking wise um on like low intervention, a lot of whole cluster stuff going on, um, native ferments, a lot of those and um, and then coming to washington it was just like kind of a culture shock for me a little bit because, like so many people were so reluctant to do any of that and I was like oh, that's, that's weird. Yeah, like everyone here is like did you see that as well?
Speaker 4:no, I mean, it's um, I haven't honestly done that much exploration in terms of, like, what other people in our area are doing their cellar. It's been more of just. I haven't honestly done that much exploration in terms of, like, what other people in our area are doing in their cellar. It's been more of just kind of like focusing on what we're doing here and totally shame on me. I need to get back out there and do that too.
Speaker 3:I know you came to our place to work and haven't seen you since.
Speaker 4:I know I will get back out there. We live in.
Speaker 1:Wenatchee, and so it's like an hour drive.
Speaker 3:We live in Wenatchee and so it's it's like an hour drive. I really only go to Wenatchee to go to the weed shop, so it's like yeah.
Speaker 4:But I think, um, for me at least when I was, when I was starting off in kind of like my early days, um, I was coached by um the winemaker that I was working for at the time, to be like, look, it's really cool that you want to do 100 whole cluster and you want to like, do all these crazy things. But before you break the rules you have to know what they are.
Speaker 1:And that's kind of like what?
Speaker 4:what kind of rules of?
Speaker 1:music yeah, you have to know you have to stay in this little box for a certain amount of time, until you understand how to break the rules.
Speaker 4:Exactly, and so I think like that was really important for me to kind of like wait to explain that. Yeah, build, build. That philosophy and you know where I've arrived at this point in time is pretty hands off, but still like, super respecting the foundation of like biology and chemistry and so, um, yeah, like we, we always go with the mission of being unfined and unfiltered and, like I obviously still use sulfur.
Speaker 4:I'm not like 100% au natural on things You're like zero zero, yeah, no, because, like I also know, like the wine pH that we're working you need some type of like antimicrobial agent to be scrubbing your wine and, um, yeah, so it's like you.
Speaker 4:For me it's. It's finding that balance between, like the things that you can do as a winemaker that are going to be additive and supportive, versus taking away from the wine and so like. For me, because finding agents aren't selective filtration media is close, but still not selective in what it's removing. I don't want to be chemically ripping apart and changing this wine that we have literally from the vine made like the pruning decisions all the way through the bottle or just before bottle, to then be like, okay, I'm going to rip you apart on a molecular level, slap you back together and so, like what it does. It sets us up with this like list of cultural practices that keeps my team really like diligent about making sure that the ambient microflora and our winery can like support that mission, but also, like I don't know, if you have a goal, then you know what you work needs to be done to get there.
Speaker 4:Um, it'd be, super easy to just kind of like pick things super overripe and oak the hell out of them and oh like everybody. I mean like everybody's had a rocket fuel wine before where you're just like this thing is doctored, this could be coca-cola with alcohol in it. You know, like that's, like that's, that's soulless, that's not fun for me. Yeah, patreon. We're good, we're good. Lock that shit behind a paywall. There's a paywall. So Just my personal preference yeah.
Speaker 1:Um, but yeah, that's um. No, it's, it's just really interesting. No, it's, it's just really interesting. Um, when you get into like different communities, I mean like wazoo doesn't teach like they I went through the process wazoo process and yeah, they are against a lot of things, like in their viticulture they don't teach sustainable or organic or anything like that.
Speaker 3:Are you guys working towards sustainability or any of that?
Speaker 4:so we were actually part of the pilot program for sustainable wa certification. Okay, so our three estate vineyards are farmed to spec for sustainable washington. Um, prior to that, we were farming under live and salmon safe co certification.
Speaker 3:So the winery that I'm currently working for is organic, sustainable salmon, safe and live.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah. So I feel like I wasn't part of the decision making when Sustainable Washington was being built up as a program, but what I love about it is it is uniquely tailored to the environmental conditions here in Washington, where CCOF and live those are built for California and the unique like features of California and same thing for for live, and so having that kind of tailored fit program for Washington is phenomenal. Um and then, in terms of, like, the practices that we do in the vineyard, it's really just giving name to what we already did. I mean, we're a hundred percent estate driven, already had a mission of not using you know that heavy hitter herbicides and pesticides.
Speaker 4:We are not organic, but because it gives us like, the leverage that let's say it is a shit year and we have to get out there and spray, we will, because we also need to be financially responsible to ourselves Like this whole thing doesn't continue to go forward if we're like, well, we're gonna crop this to half a ton per acre and maybe right, like at some point in time you're gonna like shoot yourself in the foot and you can't get back out of it and so um we're not pursuing that, but like for conventional farming, we're pretty damn near squeaky clean.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so even damn when we so we did a behind the scenes walkthrough of the production facility and I like jerked off to how clean that was Like it's beautiful in here. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful facility.
Speaker 1:Well, you guys do a lot of native ferments, right?
Speaker 4:We do a lot of native ferments, that the chemistry supports it. So obviously, if we have, like you know, disease pressure or it's like 30 bricks, if we could even eke that out here, that's not going to finish. So we're not going to like, set ourselves up for um failure and we'll inoculate, um and then, quite frankly, some of like the tank fermented white wines. It's kind of like so I didn't forget it like let's get this just like blended away type of thing, and that will pitch east, because I don't want to be babysitting pinot gris for 45 days.
Speaker 4:I want to know that it's like finished, it's dry, it's sulfur and it's good to go. Yeah, it's good to go it'll taste delicious, as kind of like a blender extender for you know our white wine program.
Speaker 1:But I'm not going to be there like babysitting a barrel ferment of peanut, agree, like I mean, one of my friends has still has a native ferment going right now of grenache I mean I think that's just called stuck from it it's not stuck, it's like so slow it's crazy but um, is it off skins? Uh, I don't know.
Speaker 4:I didn't ask that question I really hope so yeah, so yeah, yeah, I really hope so um you have other microbes than just yeast that are like working on that sugar too. So yeah, I mean I'm sure it's gonna be crazy volatile, but probably they do make outstanding wine and so I'm like you know, like I trust, they've been doing it for years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is not the their first rodeo with a wine like that yeah I'm like okay most winemakers I know would just be shitting their pants um for real or have been or do something like restart, yeah um, but yeah, he's fine. And one thing I one of my friends, she um julia. She works with uh, sashi, mormon and raj par for their wine label, uh, both sandy and domain de la cote, and they do all native everything and they're making their own yeast culture in the vineyard. Yeah.
Speaker 1:They also do a pied-Ă -couve. Do you guys do a pied-Ă -couve at all?
Speaker 4:We don't. I have before I actually. So when I was in Australia I had a yeast propagation program and so I would basically plate and grow the ambient yeast culture for kind of the internal program that we call the basket program. So smaller lot fermentations and much more quality focus and kind of making those larger like bulk style blends that they would do, and so that was really fun to be able to do. That. We don't do it here because I haven't seen the need for it. Um, we only do like two turns in the winery right now, so we'll basically have everything full with just our own varietals.
Speaker 4:Get things drained Um, we don't. I mean we will press the wine, but we don't do any press inclusion into the barrels. And then once we have things going with Malik in barrels for our own side, that tends to be when we need to start picking for the Bordeaux program and that fills the tank or fills the room back up, and at that point in time there's so much like ambient microflora that's getting things going. Yeah, ambient microflora that's getting things going. Yeah, um, that your ferment's gonna start, unless you are really have it handed with your sulfur regimen, or?
Speaker 4:Um, what we did actually do in this past vintage was we started playing around with um mechnikova pokerama, which is like a non-fermentative yeast strain that can help you extend your um cold soak and so interesting playing around with kind of like where we're getting our, our extraction and I found for cabernet here because the tannin profile is um, it's just, it's slightly different than what we're dealing with in in napa. I want to be as extractive as possible at the front end of the fermentation where it's an aqueous solution, not an alcoholic, and so, like traditional winemaking, you're probably going to have your cab two to three days in in cold soak, then, um, you know, warmer temperature fermentations and then you say can you explain what cold soaking really means?
Speaker 1:yeah, and also I was gonna ask what aqueous. Oh yeah, I don't know that water, water solution right. So so juice, so juice, right.
Speaker 4:So, uh yeah yeah, cold soak is going to be the period of time before you actually start fermentation on your wine and at that point in time, depending on, like, how, what you're doing, you can have grapes just sitting in a tank and just chilling their butts off um, and that could be considered a cold soak.
Speaker 4:But what we do is we actually start the cap management process. So pumping over the take and watching that juice get deeper and deeper in pigmentation but also more concentrated in its color and its flavor and um, playing around with it at a water base is going to be less extractive than alcohol, right. And so if you're going to follow the standard practice of, you know, having your wine in tank for two to three days and then fermenting at a higher temperature, so you get that enzymatic action where it's going to really richen and deepen the color of your wine, you lose some of the nuance and some of the volatile aromatics that are part of that. But it also sets you up to have alcohol in your extraction process earlier and alcohol is going to extract much faster and it's going to get down deeper into, kind of like the seed tannin and so, like, think of like. Have you like watched any of those like trad wives videos on Instagram where they're like making their own vanilla extract at home.
Speaker 4:It's basically taking like you know, vanilla beans and alcohol right Like it's the same process that's going to like pull out a bunch of flavor tannin, all the things faster and earlier, and you lose control over that, um, that process. And so if you are working with kind of on the greener side or more herbaceous side of Cabernet, where those tannins and anthocyanins aren't fully mature in some instances, I want to get all that extraction done in a more gentle environment like water or a juice space.
Speaker 4:And then turn on the fermenter, get things going really fast.
Speaker 4:And so playing around with a non-fermentative yeast kind of extends that period of time where it's suppressing all the spoilage microbes that could be active in your fermenter without having to get you up to like 50 parts of free sulfur, because I also don't want to start off at that high of a sulfur level, like start off at that high of a sulfur level, because that's antagonistic to the yeast that are going to then kind of come in and do the actual fermentation.
Speaker 4:And so playing around with kind of like a suite of non-fermentative yeast like that we found last year was really awesome in extending that window for us but also then gave us the opportunity to get things off of skins faster because we've already done all the hard work upfront and we don't need 40 days of tannin resolution doing like extended maceration where things just sit and then they start to lose color and, yeah, the tannins resolving, but you're also having to blast it with oxygen and like play around with your, your heat and so um, a little bit of its efficiency. But the the end goal is to also have better polymerization and smoother, richer tannin structures um from the, from the jump, so kind of rambly.
Speaker 4:Sorry, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I don't have a lot of technical knowledge because I didn't go to uh, I didn't do analogy school yeah, so I never went to winemaking school at all. I was just all kind of trade-based and kind of apprenticeships for me, and so I know how to do certain things, but I don't know why I'm doing them and so like that, yeah, that breakdown was really interesting to me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was like well, I'll be re-watching this one we can chat more about it too. Yeah, that's awesome, it's kind of boring to like just listen to somebody talk about that. No, and actually, I love that you went more in depth in it because, like you said, sometimes it's just handed down and you just do what you do because that's what you were taught, right.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah.
Speaker 3:And that's how it was for me, like I I mean I did some background with the viticulture program, yeah, and then being more hands-on and being explained on why you're doing it and like certain varieties and how you pick these ones at this time, and all that good stuff. But I love that you went more in depth and kind of explained the chemistry and the whole compounding and all that good stuff. Thanks, yeah, yeah, no, I mean, it's very intriguing and like to have someone on this podcast that can explain that Totally.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think for me too. I mean, like I live in both worlds, right, where I have to be able to give like a conversational snippet to our tasting room team, cause like everybody wants that like factoid, that they can say that's going to be slightly different than somebody else, right? And so also like I, for me, wine is one of those things where it was like the first intellectual curiosity that I ever had in my life and so, like the more I learned, the less I felt like I knew and like drove me to like really study things like chemistry and biology.
Speaker 4:But it's right sized just for wine. Like, yeah, I could not tell you, like you know outside of why, like you know, there's yeast cultures in your yogurt, right? Yeah, I don't fucking know what's going on in there.
Speaker 3:No, but that's seriously how I am. I love nerding out on wine and just talking about it. We've done a couple segments on just the viticulture side and explaining certain varieties and all this stuff, but to go more in-depth on the actual wine is just cool, I love it. To nerd out on the wine is just it's awesome. Thanks. And I mean wine is just so. There's so many varieties out there in the different um. There's just so many different things out there.
Speaker 4:And. But don't you feel like in your exploration, like the more you find out, the less you feel like you actually know, cause you're like holy fuck, you can do that. Like yeah, the less you feel like you actually know because you're like holy fuck, you can do that. Like what? Yeah, what are you doing? Why are you doing that? There's like how many?
Speaker 3:clones of T'Ral but they're like they're the same but they're not. But they're wait, but that clone does well here but that clone does not do well over here. And it's like Wait and like for the black and white people. They're like wait, isn't there just a Roth? Yeah, and it's like no, depends on how nerdy you want to get, you know, yeah, one thing that's cool about wine is that so many people say all the time.
Speaker 1:But I also love this thing is that you can never master it because there's so many unknown things about wine. So you can never know everything about wine which is super cool there, about wine which is super cool there's always something to learn.
Speaker 3:So for I want to. I, how do I ask this question? So in your lab, so, do you like have things that will break down the grapes, that will really tell you what you're? Do you have that? Technology here that goes beyond what most wineries do.
Speaker 4:We do have a um, have a benchtop spec so I could bring in the SA kits to do anthocyanin concentration and tanning concentration. I do not, because for me that kind of decision making is done visually and by palette, because I mean there's so many different interconnecting pieces that are going to make up the mouthfeel of your, your wine. Right, you have like the basics like alcohol, sugar, acid, but then you also start to layer in different types of anthocyanins and, well, anthocyanins color, but, like you know, different, um, uh, different. You literally just watched me go brain dead for a second.
Speaker 3:Welcome to my life. This happens to us all the time. Yeah, We'll look at each other and we're like what are? We saying what's the word I'm looking for, especially like after a day of work, and I'm like what the fuck are we talking about now?
Speaker 4:yeah, so, um, so there's, there's all this whole, like it's literally called a matrix. What is going to be like driving the structural components of your wine, but also the flavor, and I don't want a computer or a set of numbers telling me what to do. I want to be tasting the wine on a daily basis while it's going through its fermentation process and, um, it's kind of lazy and drive by winemaking to just kind of look at the numbers, yeah, and be like, okay, this is good, like get it off its hands right, yeah, and so like we don't do that here, you're definitely looking at quality here as one thing that charlie brought up on the
Speaker 1:podcast too is like if you just look at the numbers, it's not gonna tell you the full story. You have to.
Speaker 3:That's why he does like from from viticulture to winemaking like all through the process, you have to taste.
Speaker 4:You're a winemaker, you have to know both sides well and that's the beauty of being in a state vineyard source winery like we are right, it's like I literally how many visits? No, yeah, it's like stupid and I'm fortunate that my vineyards are like right there and like you know, 10 minutes drive from from my production facility, um, but like when I was at hall and wall and baka, you know, we covered a thousand miles of coastline from shay vineyard in willamette all the way down, to quote Pepe, and you know like I was on the road for that right, it's in Santa Barbara so you might be familiar
Speaker 1:the owner of the current owner of Jaffers. He created Quo Pepe with Wes, so that was one of his projects, and so I was like, yeah, is there a vineyard in fucking Oregon that's also Quo Pepe, no, but that was a whole shtick right.
Speaker 4:And so I was like, yeah, is there a vineyard in fucking Oregon that's also called Pepe? No, no, but that was the whole shtick right. It's like you have this like complete suite of Pinot expressions, all from coastal USA.
Speaker 1:Right, which is awesome. That's really cool. It was amazing.
Speaker 4:But logistically but so much time spent on the road and having to. I mean like I love walking the vines, but like if you aren't actually there and if you can't. I mean like having the flexibility that if I see a problem tomorrow out there, I can pick up the phone. I call Javier and I'm like hey, come walk, walk 13 Merlot, with me. Let's talk about this pruning.
Speaker 4:We got to fix up this architecture and, like you know, being able to like do those things and not have to wait two weeks because how much how many people are on your vineyard crew? So we have a full-time crew of 12 that covers our roughly 120 acres under vine, um, and so you know simple math 10 acres per dude type of thing, um, and then during the harvest season, when it's time to like actually start picking, we will bring in additional labor crews if the the weather is really pushing us and we need to get stuff in yeah, so no one thing I thought how many people do you bring in?
Speaker 3:sorry, you go ahead.
Speaker 4:Um, it really just depends, and it also depends on, like, who's available right, so we're all borrowing from the same labor pool at the end of the day. Um, but, but Rocky pond will be a little greedy and like as soon as. Like pear and apple crops are like picked out on this side. We basically just go and get them and we we have work to do always and so like we'll bring them on board. But there's people year-round and they're full-time employees benefits housing whole nine yards here for them.
Speaker 3:Oh, good for them. Yeah, that's one thing I love about Rocky Pond is they really take care.
Speaker 4:I think for us it fits into that sustainability model where it's not just talking about the bottom line for Rocky Pond and then, like you, know what we're spraying out there. There's a holistic approach to like enriching the lives of the people who work here, but also the community, and so, yeah, I don't know it's important.
Speaker 3:I love that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I love that too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel like there's such a, I mean within this community. I mean this also goes for every community that's out there, but you have people with the mindset of scarcity versus the mindset of abundance right, totally, and so the people that are like the scarcity mindset are going to be more jealous and talk shit for no reason or whatever. Or there's a reasons, because they're scared or whatever taking business away, whatever it is.
Speaker 1:But if you have a mindset of abundance and then you're going to support those people because it's also in turn going to support you Also. It's kind of like the idea of karma a little bit. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, and that's kind of like what I explained earlier, of just like yeah and so some people see like each other money bags coming into a small community and then they immediately have a certain idea or perspective of it. But when, um, you get down to the brass tacks and then you find out everything that they're doing, then it's a lot. You're uncovering a lot more information than you were if you were just like looking and um, assuming certain things.
Speaker 4:Right, there's two stories that we could tell here, right it's like another rich seattle person moved on to like this agricultural land and is trying to like drive up the property values. But you could also say, hey, we're, we're part of building community. We're giving jobs year-round to people who would building houses not not have. We're farming the land in a responsible way yeah, and.
Speaker 4:I mean for me very selfishly too. That gives me generational knowledge that I can then step into this role, like I did two years ago. But the crew has been farming this land since 2013. And I can learn from them in the same way that, like as I'm telling them what my expectations are for inputs, they're telling me like hey, we tried this in 2015 and this is what we saw, and you know, like having those conversations instead of having like a blank slate, yeah.
Speaker 1:So they can easily have a person that would come in. That's not you, um, that would have been like changing. You know we're doing this, and this is what I say so do what I say versus you actually listen to them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know so that's good, it's, that's your best knowledge.
Speaker 4:Right there is absolutely seen it they, they see it because they're the people out there doing the work and I don't know it's. It's also important to me to feel like you know the wine that we produce. It's not just like a trait, saying that like it's made out there Right, like it really is, like it gives them the chance to feel like they're bought into the process too and like are also making this wine that's then ultimately paying them in the end of the day, right, like if we're not making good shit, then we're not selling wine and nobody gets paid, exactly.
Speaker 3:Even for the standard customer that comes in and they go into, say, chelan, they go into this tasting room and they go, oh, this wine's really expensive, but that's all they know. They see the menu, they taste the wines and they go, wow, these prices are higher than the normal. Or like the Valley, or whatever it is. Yeah, and it's like, first off, they really aren't compared, especially compared to like Napa and those places not at Napa Walla, walla, all those places they're not even close, all those places they're not even close. But at the same time, like talking to you make me, makes me have such a more open mindset to why the prices are where they're at. And again, you have all this land and all these people to take care of as well. And some people don't think about it. They think, oh, you crush them grapes and put it in a bottle, and yeah, and that's not the case.
Speaker 4:And I would, I would hope to that the the quality of the wine is commiserate with, kind of like the effort that we're putting into it and the price that we're asking.
Speaker 3:Blood, sweat and tears.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and more tears, tears but I also think too right, like I mean, what would chelan look like if, in the 70s, you know, oh my gosh, dr bob and tom pettigrew were like let's build some condos, man, you know?
Speaker 4:we're also running up against the, the reality that, like it is just fundamentally more expensive to farm here than really anywhere else in the state because that could be another you know five million dollar property, or it could be an acre of vines, you know like I mean, I talked to my friend seth kitsky down um, that's upside down wine.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah um, and we were just chatting, he was at norwood, uh, in wenatchee, yeah, and so we're just hanging out. Um, the first time I actually met him in person, because we've been, like you know, social media friends for a while. Yeah, um, and I never actually met him in person, so it was really cool that he was doing a tasting pop up there, so I got to see him. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I was like dude, like from a viticulture standpoint, like what, what's your like opinion of Chelan? I just want, I just want to know from someone that's a little bit more experienced in the wine industry, that has come to the area. And he was like, oh dude, it's such a prime area to grow grapes, but it's so fucking expensive, yeah.
Speaker 1:So he was just like he was like I, I thought about oh, I thought about it a lot like purchasing land up in chelan and growing grapes, but like end of the day, just doesn't pencil out for me, it wouldn't make sense. Yeah, versus like the desert where he is, you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, very cheap land, also great area to grow grapes so it's like well, and even just like the expensive land not only is going up, but then I feel like the employees are not being paid to. I mean, I'm going through that struggle right now of like trying to buy a house and we don't need to go down that rabbit hole, but like it's a you gotta, I mean we're obviously I just visited san barbara recently and I feel a lot better being I miss it down there so much.
Speaker 3:But, like also, um, but I feel like there's that, especially for the younger generations like us, it's we're. I have this argument with my grandpa all the time. He's like, well, when I was your age, I had four kids and bought a house and was doing all these things and I'm like, yeah, you paid a wanted and a handshake for it and I'm like uh-huh, I'm just like waiting to find, because he sends me emails or like forwards me all the emails and I want to like, send him, like a YouTube link and be like let's break down what's the hell is actually happening in this environment, right?
Speaker 4:now and why all your inheritance shouldn't just go to a charity well, I think, like I you know, having worked in other wine growing regions, there is this unique culture for me, specifically in the Lake Chelan area of the tasting rooms are staffed by people who are recently retired but still looking for a social activity and maybe a little bit of like pocket money, but basically like cool place to hang out, get some free wine and like chat all day and so like. If you have this culture of this being an optional or like a side hustle, there isn't that level of professionalism that's in a place like Napa or Sonoma, where it's like people our age, I don't, I mean like I assume we're all within like a couple of years of each other. Being like, okay, well, we're all within like a couple years of each other, yeah, totally. Being like okay, well, like I need to be saving for a mortgage.
Speaker 3:And like you can't pay me minimum wage.
Speaker 4:And then like ask me to just kind of like live off of the commission that I earn. I mean, it's also easier to earn a fat commission check when you're selling you know know a hundred dollar bottles of wine. So, um, I think like there's like a cultural shift that I hope is in the works here, but I haven't experienced that type of like dynamic outside of Lake Chelan.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I've also worked in some like kind of poor Z's places like the Finger Lakes, right like it was yeah, it was a lot of people still our age who were like interested in being part of this, like artistic creative community and like growing this thing together.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, interesting, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, that's our time, but um so fun. Thank you, liz, so much Um you are so well-spoken and so smart and I'm jealous because I wish I could be you just a little bit. I'm working on it, trust me, it's a goal. Even though I host a podcast. I am terrible.
Speaker 3:So I'm working on it.
Speaker 1:I'm always working on it, though. Thank you so much. You're a wealth of knowledge.
Speaker 3:Neither of us have wine for our last cheers.
Speaker 4:I'm really gravitating towards the uh stratastone right now but I'm also just a really I'm just a fucking sucker for a good rum blend I think the studio is still like really tightly wound that needs some time to like kind of like flesh up a little bit, yeah, yeah but yeah, awesome. Well, thank you liz, we really do Well, thank you Liz.
Speaker 3:We really do appreciate it Thank you guys. And thank you, rocky Pond, obviously for letting us do this. We had a great time.
Speaker 1:Hell yeah.
Speaker 3:Awesome. Thanks guys.
Speaker 1:Thank you, liz, thanks for your time. Well cheers, appreciate it. Cheers, cheers, cheers you, thank you.