Sleight of Hand:
https://www.sofhcellars.com/
Instagram: @sleightofhandcellars
Ever wondered how a passion for music and wine can blend to create a unique and engaging tasting experience? Join us as we chat with Trey Busch, Co-Owner and he winemaker extraordinaire behind Sleight of Hand Cellars. Trey takes us on his journey detailing how his love for music permeates every aspect of his wine business. From the lively atmosphere of his tasting rooms, where guests can pick records and explore music-themed merchandise, to his world-class air guitar skills, Trey shares his favorite tunes and discusses the deep connection between his winery and Pearl Jam, including their charitable collaborations.
Get ready to gain exclusive insights into the art of vineyard management and winemaking in Washington. Trey breaks down the importance of maintaining long-term relationships with vineyard owners, emphasizing the benefits of estate vineyards and consistent grape sourcing. We delve into the specifics of vineyard techniques like leaf stripping and crop management, which ensure top-notch wine production. The discussion also touches on the significance of experimenting with harvest times and sugar levels to perfect the winemaking process, offering listeners a deeper understanding of the meticulous efforts behind each bottle.
We then turn our focus to the evolving trends and sustainability efforts in the wine industry. From the rise of wine in bags and cans to local glass recycling initiatives, Trey provides a comprehensive overview of how the industry is adapting to environmental concerns and shifting consumer preferences. Discover the unique characteristics of wines from the Rocks District, where high potassium and nitrogen soils create soft textures and rich flavors. We wrap up with a heartfelt toast to our team and an invitation for listeners to engage with us on social media, rate our podcast, and give feedback. Cheers to an episode filled with wine wisdom and musical magic!
Join our Jabrone Gang! https://www.patreon.com/officialbungpod
Instagram: @officialbungpod
TikTok: @officialbungpod
Sleight of Hand:
https://www.sofhcellars.com/
Instagram: @sleightofhandcellars
Ever wondered how a passion for music and wine can blend to create a unique and engaging tasting experience? Join us as we chat with Trey Busch, Co-Owner and he winemaker extraordinaire behind Sleight of Hand Cellars. Trey takes us on his journey detailing how his love for music permeates every aspect of his wine business. From the lively atmosphere of his tasting rooms, where guests can pick records and explore music-themed merchandise, to his world-class air guitar skills, Trey shares his favorite tunes and discusses the deep connection between his winery and Pearl Jam, including their charitable collaborations.
Get ready to gain exclusive insights into the art of vineyard management and winemaking in Washington. Trey breaks down the importance of maintaining long-term relationships with vineyard owners, emphasizing the benefits of estate vineyards and consistent grape sourcing. We delve into the specifics of vineyard techniques like leaf stripping and crop management, which ensure top-notch wine production. The discussion also touches on the significance of experimenting with harvest times and sugar levels to perfect the winemaking process, offering listeners a deeper understanding of the meticulous efforts behind each bottle.
We then turn our focus to the evolving trends and sustainability efforts in the wine industry. From the rise of wine in bags and cans to local glass recycling initiatives, Trey provides a comprehensive overview of how the industry is adapting to environmental concerns and shifting consumer preferences. Discover the unique characteristics of wines from the Rocks District, where high potassium and nitrogen soils create soft textures and rich flavors. We wrap up with a heartfelt toast to our team and an invitation for listeners to engage with us on social media, rate our podcast, and give feedback. Cheers to an episode filled with wine wisdom and musical magic!
Join our Jabrone Gang! https://www.patreon.com/officialbungpod
Instagram: @officialbungpod
TikTok: @officialbungpod
Bung pod. Welcome back, wine Wonderboy. And we got Jazzy J Jazzy. What is a bung? The hole of the barrel is called a bung hole. Inside the bung hole is called a bung Wine with mayhem. That's what it's about. All right, welcome back to the bung pod. It's your boy, ian King, aka Wine Wonderboy, and I got my co-host with me. Jazzy J Jazzy. Say what's up.
Speaker 2:Hi everybody.
Speaker 1:So we have a really awesome episode for you guys. Before we get to the episode, give us a five-star rating on whatever podcast platform that you're listening to this on. That gives more eyes to our podcast and more listeners. So we'd really appreciate that. But today we have the winemaker for Slide of Hand Cellars we have Trey Bush. What's up, Trey? How's it going, man?
Speaker 3:What's going on? Good to be here. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Hey, thanks for coming on. So right now we have a bottle one of your wines.
Speaker 2:We have the.
Speaker 1:Psychedelic Syrah 2020. Stony Vine Estate Vineyard. So is this?
Speaker 3:Well, look at you, see, I opened up an old bottle of Levitation. Where is it at? Oh, what year is?
Speaker 2:that.
Speaker 3:It's another Syrah that we make. It's one of our wine club syrahs that we make I just went down to.
Speaker 2:I'm like I probably should have some wine for this obviously yeah, yeah so yeah, always have a glass in hand yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3:Well, that's a delicious bottle.
Speaker 2:You guys are popping right now, so hopefully you're you're gonna enjoy it I know I got this one a couple years ago and I was going through my cellar the other day and I was like oh, how convenient.
Speaker 3:How convenient. Now we got something to drink while we're talking to each other, that's perfect.
Speaker 1:Exactly Well, I fell in love with your wines when I visited Walla Walla for the first time in June. I spent most of my wine career in Santa Barbara, california, a beautiful place. A beautiful place, really expensive to live there, and so that's why I moved back up to Washington, because that's where I'm from. Originally, I'm from Seattle. So, yeah, I went to your tasting room in Walla Walla, got to meet Keith, got to pick a record. I'm a huge music person. My whole family, they're all musicians or music influenced. Oh perfect, yeah. And I went to actually audio engineering school and did a lot of music history programs as well. So I have an appreciation for a lot of music, and so that was a blast. The question is, what's the album you picked out? Music, and so that was a blast. The question is, what's the album you picked out? The album was, um, it was a nirvana record. It was, uh, yeah, yeah, it was nothing wrong with that hold on yeah there you go, there you go, yeah, and I loved your merch too.
Speaker 1:Your guys's merch is awesome. I I bought the um the fleetwood mac design. Oh yeah, yeah, I love that shirt.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that's a good one. So, yeah, we have fun with all those. You know the music is a fun way to tie in my just love of music, which I'm not a musician, I just, you know, music's been very important in my life and it's been the wine business. Incorporating music into the wine business has been a lot of fun for us and whether it's with the vinyl in the tasting room or whether it's with our t-shirts, it's sort of a full circle thing for me.
Speaker 2:So so you say you're not a musician, but I hear you're into air guitar.
Speaker 3:World-class air guitar player. That is true, that is true.
Speaker 2:I needed to mention that. I read that and I was like, hmm, I should ask.
Speaker 1:What does it take to be a world-class air guitar?
Speaker 3:player. It takes three glasses of wine.
Speaker 2:I love that.
Speaker 1:Do you? Have a specific song that you really like to play air guitar with.
Speaker 3:You know, yeah, I mean, I mean for sure the entire acdc back in black album, which was yes, yeah you know I was a freshman in high school. That came out in 83. I was a freshman in 84 and um have very fine memories of listening to that album um with, uh, my high school friends in the back of a Monte Carlo driving way too fast and listening to the music way too loud.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:But yeah, if I had to go back to any, if I had to go back to anything, it would be pretty much any cut off of that album. So but as a big Pearl Jam fan I'm I'm pretty fluent in most Pearl Jam too. So Nice.
Speaker 1:So you guys are, you guys have a relationship with Pearl Jam, is that right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, a little bit. I mean, we have done some charity projects with them. You know, obviously I I named the winery after a Pearl Jam song and um have, over the years, gotten to know a lot of folks that worked for the band and they certainly, you know, met some of the band members of this stuff. But yeah, we did when they played in 2018 back in Seattle, yeah, the home shows. At the time we had a partnership with Mark Ryan winery. We had this winery called the underground wine project and we had a partnership with Mark Ryan Winery. We had this winery called the Underground Wine Project and we did a wine for Pearl Jam back in 2018. And then we did another one for them. I think it was in 2021. Just another small, one-off project to help raise some money for their Vitology Foundation.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 3:Their charitable arm. But yeah, and then a lot of the wines that we make are actually named after pearl jam songs too. So it's just one of those, one of those things uh, it's like you know, honoring the band that I love so much, so good.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. That's cool. You get a chance to to work with them as well yeah, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 2:Did you ever think that was going to happen? Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, no, I mean, if I go back to my early days of winemaking, when I was at Dunham back in the early 2000s, I remember Eric and I went to the Key Arena Pearl Jam show I think it was the Binaural Tour or something like that in 2000. I just started working for Eric and Eric's like how do you think we can get some wine back to the band? I said, well, I'm on an email-friendly relationship with the folks who work in the office, I'll see if they can, let us do that. And that was kind of really our first sort of oh, we got some Dunham Cabernet back there. And then a few years later I was going down to LA and I was working for another winery at that point, at Basil Cellars, and reached out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you helped start that right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I started that winery in 2002. Okay, 2002 was our first year and then I left there in the spring of 07, so right after the 06 vintage. So really vintage is 2003, 2004, and 2005 were my vintages, sort of grape to bottle.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:I had crushed the 06s, but I left six months after harvest to start a sleight of hand, so I have no idea what happened to any of those sixes? Um, from a blending standpoint and stuff.
Speaker 2:So so before you went to Dunham, you were at Nordstrom's for quite a while. Um, what were you doing at Nordstrom's and how did it end up changing your career path to wine?
Speaker 3:Yeah, um, I, I did a lot of things at nordstrom. Uh, I started there in 1992. Okay, um, I had moved from athens, georgia, to back to seattle because I I was in the navy from 88 to 90. I was stationed in brimerton oh, okay a ferry ride across from seattle, right there yeah, yeah, I'm from, yeah, that was my.
Speaker 2:Oh, really, yeah, yeah that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that was my oh really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:That's funny. Yeah, that was my. That was my introduction to the Northwest Um, and it was really right when the, you know, the Seattle music scene was really just kind of bubbling up and about to explode and I I got out of the Navy in the summer of 90 and I moved back to Georgia, which is where I was originally from. I grew up in Atlanta and was enrolled at the university of Georgia and in that two year period that's when Seattle really blew up and I was at the point where I just did not want to miss being at an age where I could afford to fuck off.
Speaker 2:Essentially, yes, yes.
Speaker 3:I wanted to be around that music scene and I didn't. I didn't want to miss it. You know I, uh, athens, georgia, had a. They were the center of the universe for a short period of time in the early eighties with REM and the B-52s and a bunch of other bands. And then, of course, la in the eighties with all the metal bands. Um, you know, the punk scene in the late 70s in new york. So all these scenes that were happening in san francisco in the 60s, all these scenes were happening and, um, the writing was on the wall that seattle was going to be like, that was going to be it. Yeah, and um, I, I just didn't want to miss it.
Speaker 3:And so I dropped out of school and I moved back to Seattle and took a job at Nordstrom. I had a really great time there. I started off just in the stock room and by the time I left I was a buyer for the company. I was buying men's suits, of all things. But during that time frame a friend of mine who I used to buy records from, he owned a record store off of Roosevelt and 63rd called Ruby Records and his name was Jamie Brown and Jamie was the winemaker. You'll know that name because he was the winemaker for Waters Winery.
Speaker 3:He started Waters Winery back in the mid 2000s but Jamie had moved back to Walla Walla, which is where he's originally from, and I went to go visit Jamie and just sort of fell in love with the town and Eric Dunham happened to be his next door neighbor and I met Eric on one of my trips down there and that turned into a friendship which turned into a job opportunity, that's awesome To basically leave Seattle and move to Walla Walla and learn how to make wine, and so I had no prior winemaking knowledge in any way, shape or form.
Speaker 3:I didn't really know the first thing about the world of wine at all, but I knew sales and marketing and I knew I liked his wine. A lot of marketing and I knew I liked his wine a lot. I remember it was $45 retail. His Cabernet, the 97 Dunham Cabernet, was $45.
Speaker 2:And I'm like God who spent that kind of money.
Speaker 3:I was going to say, especially back then I was a 28-year-old kid, you know spending 10 bucks on a bottle of Chateau St Michelle for a special night, you know.
Speaker 3:And uh, so, um, yeah, and so that you know, he said look, I'll teach you how to make wine. Um, you know you can help us on the sales or marketing side of things. We're growing our brand. Dunham was in a fairly steep growth curve at that point in the late nine, 99, 2000 and um, and I did it. So I quit my job at nordstrom and moved to walla walla and eric took me under his wing and and taught me as much as you can teach somebody. Uh, he was a very artistic winemaker. He was not, um, a very scientific winemaker and that's more difficult to teach. And from the standpoint of, why are you doing this? Well, it feels right, yeah.
Speaker 2:What does that mean? What does that mean? It feels right.
Speaker 3:And so eventually, I had to learn. That too, though I had to learn. I had to basically trust my own instincts, and so, after I left Eric and went to Basel, that's what I did I took, you know, I certainly made as many mistakes as I had, you know, as many wins as I had. I certainly had lots of well. That didn't work out very well, but that's okay. You know, those were, those were my learning years, for sure, and now that we've settled into, we're really comfortable where our winemaking is. Yeah, I've got a. You met Keith, who's my production winemaker. So Keith is my guy in the cellar. Yeah, he Bailey, our assistant winemaker, and all of our cellar hands essentially work for Keith. Keith and I and Jerry really work hand in hand, side by side. I spend the majority of my time in the vineyards.
Speaker 2:That's my favorite place too.
Speaker 3:If I can grow the best grapes possible in each vintage, because every vintage is different, if I can grow the grapes best possible and deliver those to the winery, they really don't have to do that much. You know what I mean. It's basically at that point, it's babysitting your grapes to fermentation. We are, we're all native in the winery, so we're not using cultured yeast, we don't add acid, we don't add enzymes, we don't add tannin. We're a fairly hands-off winery, and so I think that it does require you to pay a little more attention to what's happening in the vineyard, to make sure that your picking dates and your picking decisions are the right ones, because we don't want to have to manipulate what we did on the back end.
Speaker 3:Yeah, um, once you bring the grapes in, and um, and so that's really where my focus has turned to, since Keith has been full time with us. Um, at least full time as our winemaker. I hired Keith in 2011. Um, and I think by 2014 or 15, um, I gave him the winemaking, winemaking title, and probably by 15, 16,. The first four or five years, not only was I in the vineyard, but I was in the cellar with him and we were making all these decisions together, but now we've got a pretty good setup there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to ask you about, on the winemaking side, your opinion on low intervention versus manipulation. And then why? Because I know that after talking with Keith, I heard about the hands-off approach, lower intervention style of winemaking, and so I was just going to ask you for the listeners why would you choose a lower intervention versus manipulation?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, it's not like, if I go back and look at all my previous years at Basel and our first three, four, five years at Sight of Hand, we were doing some of those things. We were trying to figure out if they made better wines or not. Like, hey, let's add some tannin to this to really pump up the mouthfeel. Or, oh, the acid feels a little low, let's bump the TA up with acid. And I think what we've learned? First of all, we have a very consistent vineyard portfolio and that's not super common in Washington. Washington a lot of small wineries are working with vineyards they don't own. They're on a three-year contract. They may not re-up their contract at the end of three years and they'll go somewhere else. Or the vineyard owner will say, hey, I'm raising my prices and I have another buyer, I'm not going to sell my. So there's some inconsistency there and you know certainly that was us in our first two or three years as well.
Speaker 3:It's light of hand and even at Basel. But we've got either they're a state vineyard or we have a long term contract with them, like 20 or 25 year. We're not interested in two or three year contract. Yeah, no need to basically locking these in to where? Now I know where my fruit's coming from. I know what those vineyards taste like. I know how to treat them. I know what they do in cool vintages, I know what they do in hot vintages, I know what the chemistry looks like coming out of those vineyards, and so the more you get to work with those things, you learn that you don't have to do as much stuff on the back end when you bring the grapes in, and you know you also learn things like hey, how is this Cabernet going to perform at 23 bricks instead of 25 bricks?
Speaker 3:Right, and you know, you experiment with that stuff. And on the back end after you're tasting the wines like, these wines are awesome in 23 bricks. Why were we picking at 25 bricks? 23 and a half or whatever the numbers are? And I'm not trying to stick a number on anything but that, just you know, that's kind of how we made some of the decisions. Yeah, that's how I made some of the decisions that we made.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean when those grapes get to 23 and you want them at 23, you're out there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and you know we are absolutely tasting grapes. You know we want to make sure that the seeds are lignified in our Bordeaux riles, especially lignified than our bordeaux riles especially. Um, uh, our roan program. I mean, I have no problem picking sarah 22 and a half bricks. Um, not everything is like that and not all of our. You know, each vineyard performs um at a higher level, at a different sugar level, right, so like, for instance, the funk vineyard we were, we make a wine out the rocks called the funkadelic you're drinking yeah yeah, the funk vineyard, uh, it wants to be a bigger wine.
Speaker 3:That's just yeah. We've tried it at lower alcohol, potential alcohol and it's just not as interesting. So, again, the only way to learn that is you have to be able to experiment with it and right, so that's. We've gotten to the point now where we have, um, uh, we've worked with these vineyards long enough and we worked these blocks long enough and we know how these things perform for us at different quote-unquote numbers that we recognize that we don't have to manipulate stuff on the back end to make a great wine. We can just make really good picking decisions and, more importantly, we can make sure that we were spending time out in the vineyard making decisions with our vineyard managers about leaf stripping or not leaf stripping managers, about leaf stripping or not leaf stripping, about dropping fruit or leaving a heavy crop. You know, things like that are going to affect the outcome, obviously, and so that's why I feel like the more time that I can spend out there, the less work my team will have to do on the back end in the winery. Totally, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And how many? So you said you had some estate vineyards. How many acres and what kind of grapes do you have out there?
Speaker 3:Stony vine is our estate vineyard, which you're drinking right now. Yeah, and that's a 28,. That's a 20 acre parcel, 18 and a half acres planted mostly to Sarah. We own the vineyard with dusted Valley Winery and Dusted Valley is our vineyard partner, and they're our winery partner.
Speaker 2:Didn't we just have that the other day?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the last episode we had at Dusted Valley. Oh cool, they're BFM, they're Bordeaux Blender. Yeah, it's great, they do a great job. They do a great job. Yeah, and they're like oh yeah, I do, I do like the amount of detail that you put on the back label as well. I mean it says one vineyard, nine punch-ins, 500 cases pure rocks or I'm not gonna read the thing but ancient riverbed, softball-sized cobbles, foot crush, native fermentation, 50-hole cluster, 50-noop French oak. It's awesome. I love reading. I love tech sheets a lot.
Speaker 3:Just because I'm in production, I'm the same way, and I've been accused of being very wordy, and so you have to either be young with good eyesight or you have to have readers. But I'm the same way. I like information on the back of a bottle, I think it's. You know, look, if everybody bought, if everybody bought every bottle of wine ever made out of my tasting room, it probably would not be as necessary, because they got the story when they were there. But the fact is, a lot of this stuff is going to see a retail shelf somewhere. Yeah, and the further you get away from Washington, the less they really know about Washington wine. And I'm going to put, I'm going to let you know what's going on with this wine. I'm going to tell you the vineyard sources. I'm going to let you know what's going on with this wine. I'm going to tell you the vineyard sources. I'm going to tell you the barrel program. I'm going to tell you the Aramac and the flavor profile that we get.
Speaker 2:And I'm going to give you the drinking window as well. Any way to educate from afar.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how many retail spaces are you in? Is it national, international?
Speaker 3:I mean we're in the UK, we are in Denmark.
Speaker 3:Oh I mean we're in the UK, we are in Denmark oh fun and we're in about 20 states. That's awesome Because we make. Our portfolio of wines goes from $22 up to $125. Yeah, and then we have a second label called the Renegade Wine Company, and those are little $12 Cabernet and Rosé and Chardonnay, and so those really are meant for distribution. What you're drinking we do have in distribution as well, but that's also one of our wine club wines. We have a wine club that's built around the rocks, and so it's Funkadelic, psychedelic and currently Spiders from Mars, which is up in North Fork.
Speaker 1:That's awesome oh interesting.
Speaker 3:It's a new growing region. Next time you guys come to Wawa we'll drive you guys up there. It's probably the most exciting vineyard project outside of Weather Eye.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's awesome. Weather Eye is pretty exciting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and we work with Weather Eye too. We make Grenache from that vineyard site, so we love those extreme sites. Yeah, that vineyard site, so we love those extreme sites. They make very, very complex, different tasting wines from anything else in the region. If you taste weather-riot fruit compared to just below that. And we work with Red Mountain Vineyard, which is one of our estate blocks. We have five acres on Red Mountain down there all Bordeaux varietals. I didn't answer your question. Yeah, so Stony Vine, red Mountain, we have five acres. We have five acres on the Horse 7 Hills and we have eight acres here in Walla Walla. That are our estate blocks. And then the Ziggy Stardust block which is a little under two acres of Syrah up at elevation. Those are our estate blocks. And then again we work with other long-term contracts like Lake Killeen Vineyard, lewis Vineyard for Syrah, but all of our Bordeaux stuff is essentially all estate for us.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Yeah, what's your case? Production like.
Speaker 3:Well, it depends on the vintage. Yeah, 21 was a tough vintage from the standpoint of. We were down 35% roughly in yields, so we made about 6,500 cases. Our normal case production should be between 9,000 and 10,000 cases. The majority of that goes into two wines. We make one wine called the Conjurer it's our Bordeaux blend, a state Bordeaux blend. We have a red table wine, which is our little $25 red table wine called the Spellbinder. Those two wines combined are between 3,000 and 4,000 cases.
Speaker 1:The other 5,000 to 6,000 cases go then the other five to six thousand cases go into the other 10 SKUs that we make okay, yeah, I thought you guys were a lot larger than that, because my question was gonna be how can you make uh wine at such volume with the quality that you're making it in? Um, but that makes that make. But still, I mean, you guys have a big influence within the wine world in general. Oh, thanks, I would say we're like a mid-sized winery in Walla Walla.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Like you know, the small guys are all under 5,000 cases. Yeah, and most of them, to be honest, are probably under 2,000 cases. Yeah, and then you get to our level, and then you go. Next level would be, you know, a LaCole 41. Yeah, you know, probably in that 30 to 40,000 case range. And then of course you have Waterbrook and Precept and you know there are a million cases. So that's a whole different ballgame. Yeah, completely so.
Speaker 1:And you guys have a lot, you guys do a lot, like you have a lot of SKUs, I feel like, which is not a bad thing at all.
Speaker 3:It's just like you guys have to be so organized in the cellar and a lot of communication, and you have to go sell those wines. Yeah, totally. It's not easy. When you're offering a portfolio of 10 to 12 wines every year, yeah, and you're in distribution, it's hard for distributors to um focus on your brand in that way, and so the reality is things like the funkadelic. That's wine club only, spiders from mars is tasting room only. Uh, most of it goes to wine club, but we do have in the tasting room so people could come in and buy it if they want to um, but yeah, I have a bottle of funkadelic.
Speaker 1:Oh, right on, that's a bottle of wine. Yeah, yeah, it's a special one I'm just keeping for a while yeah, yeah we made, uh, we made 70 cases of a russan marsan blend called rebel.
Speaker 3:Rebel from 2021. That's off the same vineyard as the spiders from mars is okay, um and uh. And then we make a couple other small, tiny productions saraz, uh, make a little bit of weather eye ganache. That's called a higher ground. That's 100 cases, maybe, if even that. Yeah, but our core portfolio is really it's our. We make a dry Riesling, okay, which is like a 700 or 800 case production. Yeah, we make Old Vine Chardonnay, which is about 400 or 500 cases. We make a Cap Franc Rosé, which is about 500 cases. And then you go into the Reds and you're at Spellbinder Conjure, archimaggio, illusionist, r2 Reserve Bordeaux, and again, we have a big wine club and so they can take a lot of those reserve wines too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's awesome, but we still make them available.
Speaker 3:We still want them to be in the market. We want you to be able to find them at a restaurant. We want you to go into a nice wine shop and find them.
Speaker 2:You shop and find them. Um, you said you had a second label. Okay, and for that I mean obviously you like second or approve of second labels, but it I feel like there's always some controversy against second labels. Um, either it's yeah, I mean it's really good, or yeah, like for us.
Speaker 3:Ours is completely. It doesn't know. If you didn't know that it was our second label, you wouldn't know it was a slight of hand wine at all. It's called the Renegade Wine Company. Packaging is completely different.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Pricing is you know? Again, they're $12 wines. We it's a negotiant project for us. We make all those wines of the Waluke Wine Company with Kendall Nix, who's an incredible winemaker up there. And again we work with him hand in hand with a style of wine that we're trying to make.
Speaker 1:Gotcha. So it's completely separate. It's like off-site. You're not making it in your production. Oh wow, okay, all made up in Mattawap. Oh wow, okay, all made up in.
Speaker 3:Matawau oh wow, okay, so we do rosé, that's all Rhone varietals. We do Cabernet, but it's done in neutral barrel, okay.
Speaker 1:And so it's very, very approachable.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's the other idea. It's a great glass pour cab. Right, you walk into a restaurant, not the Metropolitan Grill or El Gaucho they're going to pour high-end wine but just your everyday casual restaurant that has a wine program. It's a great glass pour program. And then we've got a stainless steel Chardonnay as well, awesome. The idea is they're just clean and fruit-forward, balanced, and, yeah, just like crushable, I guess.
Speaker 1:Are you? What are your thoughts on the alternative vessels for wine Like pouches, boxes, cans, even screw tops?
Speaker 3:I mean, we use screw cap with a lot of stuff. I we do some keg business.
Speaker 1:Okay, Not a ton, but of stuff we do some keg business.
Speaker 3:Okay, not a ton, but we do a little bit of keg business. We have a couple of restaurants in Seattle that we service and we'll just basically bottle a barrel at a time and as they run through them, we'll keep three or four, but we'll have an idea about how much they're going to sell for the year. We'll keep three or four barrels and sort of fill them up that way. I am a hundred percent behind all the alternative closures. The wine in a bag is awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very convenient, I love it Great If you're going camping or whatever it's like all that is amazing yeah it's, but the problem is it's not about us getting behind it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's. How do you get consumers behind it? Yeah, uh, and we're at a really weird. We're at a really weird time in the wine world right now. We are my consumptions falling off a cliff. It feels like like in some ways. Yeah, younger consumers aren't necessarily turning, not to say the younger consumers. When I was young, was turning to wine either.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but it seems like even more extreme now because you've got cocktails in a can and you've got hard cider is popular, and you've got seltzers and you've got mocktails. You know some people. I've got a 25 year old daughter who I don't think has ever touched alcohol. You know, she goes to school in bozeman. She doesn't drink.
Speaker 2:None of her friends drink yeah, and that's becoming a thing.
Speaker 3:They'd rather have a kombucha than a yeah, yeah, hey, no one I say no one's talking about it, but it's's not brought up often. But if you have disposable income a little bit of disposable income, not a lot you're in your 20s and now, depending on where you live, you can go buy a cannabis.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You can go to Oregon and go buy mushroom chocolates, right, yeah, totally. Go buy mushroom chocolates, right, yeah, totally. And so there are alternatives out there that just weren't around when we were at least when I was younger it was, you know, we just drank booze, yeah. And so all of those things come into play when we talk about where wine sales are. Now going back to your alternative packaging, I think younger consumers are the ones who would be interested in looking at bag in a box or the canned wines and all that stuff.
Speaker 2:Almost going back to slapping the bag.
Speaker 1:Yeah, back in college.
Speaker 2:They just think it's fancier now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, again, it's just trying to get like how do you go to? Um, let's say most of those kids are buying their uh, alcoholic beverages at a grocery store, right, yeah. Let's say they're at Met market. They're not even at Safeway, they're at the Met market, which has a nice wine program. Right, it's. Now it's what it comes down to is is the Met market but wine buyer going to get behind that trend? Are they going to put wines in a bag on their shelves? Those are the roadblocks that a lot of us run into. Do you guys know Jeff Lindsay Thorson from WT Vintners?
Speaker 1:That kind of sounds familiar, not personally.
Speaker 2:I recognize the name.
Speaker 3:He's a Somme. Might have been an MS, but he's for sure a Somme. Got into winemaking, Got a great palate he's doing. I think it's his rosé in a bag this year.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Nice and it's maybe like 100 cases worth right. It wasn't like his entire production that he did that way, but he still did a portion of it and my guess is to see what kind of traction he can get off of that. You know what I mean. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know the walls. Uh, the walls did a rose their summer yeah, summer summer. Yeah, summer summer, yeah, in a bag and that just like flying off the shelves, yeah, um I mean they, I'm all for it yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean I think they only do direct consumer um with that one, but I haven't seen it in stores personally. But, um, yeah, I mean that always sells out every year, which is awesome.
Speaker 3:I mean it's, it's what, like a four, three liter bags, like four bottles or wine, yeah, which the beauty of it is, you can keep it in your fridge. You got the little pouch thing. You can push the push, the little rubber thing, I don't know.
Speaker 2:It's great stays fresh for 60 days especially when it comes to summer, for the boat, for camping, for anything outdoors.
Speaker 3:How about for? How about for not having to use glass? Yes, yeah, and do dishes but the environmental impact of that alone is yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean look, screw caps took a while to take off, and so maybe, maybe, wines in a bag, we'll catch on you know, no one even questions screw caps anymore yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, and even here in chelan this is going to be kind of shocking, but we actually our recycling program like is no longer a thing so same year, same year, walla we lost we lost glass recycling two years ago here.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, so we no longer do glass, but the I think it was the high school started it, but the then rotary got behind it and now every saturday they do a crush on glass, so at least the wineries have some place to bring it and then they make it into sand or whatever they want. We have.
Speaker 3:We have a similar program that was started here as well by a local guy, and we have to pay. It's a very small amount of, but we pay to drop our bottles off and they turn it into, they grind it up and you can spread it in your gravel. Yeah. You know, it's like they're not sharp pieces, they're just worn down.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So you can just sort of spread it amongst your gravel as well to kind of help keep things compact and whatnot. It is a great idea.
Speaker 2:I think it's awesome. At least it's a great idea.
Speaker 1:I think it's awesome at least it's a alternative to taking away recycling for us and then I've I've heard in seattle when they pave roads they actually throw it in the yeah, why not?
Speaker 3:why wouldn't you put in there with with asphalt and all that stuff?
Speaker 1:yeah yeah nobody knows that's longer yeah, it's gotta go somewhere and so and we're gonna keep drinking it, so yeah, yeah, I mean what santa barbara did is because I mean california in general and also, I think, seattle um very focused on being eco-friendly and seeing the planet, which I love, green, very green. But because of, because of that, I mean they're they're still recycling, but they have to hire more people to take the glass out of the recycling and throw it in. I think they're. I don't even know what they do with it. They might do a landfill of it, but they didn't tell people to stop recycling glass, because that would have been a huge, huge uproar in the community and so like, okay, we're just not going to tell them to not do it, we'll just hire people to pick it out.
Speaker 3:essentially, I mean the fact is our local municipalities, or even on a state level. That's where the funding should come from to have recycling programs. I understand it costs more money to recycle than it does for them to get the money back on the back end. Yeah, but you know, overall it does for them to get the money back on the back end.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But you know, overall it's for the. If it's for the health of everybody, you know it's for the good of the people, everybody. Yeah, then that should be a civic program. It should be something that the state pays for. Yeah, now I say the state pays for it, that means, we pay for it. Exactly we're paying taxes anyways, we're paying taxes anyways. Look, build that into our. We either build it into our pricing or the glass manufacturers, or again a tax, or whatever. Yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Man, I love this psychedelics, I know it's so good you know the rocks.
Speaker 3:I'm sure you've had plenty of wines from the rocks by now.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and you know I love the savory qualities that come out of that area. It's been said a thousand times that the most recognizable AVA in North America from the standpoint of sensory. Yeah, you can smell and taste that wine blind and you're going to know where it's from.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, you may not think it, you may not know it's mine, but you know, could be ryan van, could be kai, whatever, um, but uh, what I've discovered in the rocks is there are differences, depending on where in the rocks you are, of how the lines are. So that's you know. We have the funkadelic and the psychedelic. We tried the our first vintage of the psychedelic, 2012. We made identical to how we made the first three vintages of the funkadelic, picked it up at 24 and a half bricks you know, 25 bricks, yeah, and I ended up we ended up declassifying our very first vintage yeah interesting, and so 2013 came along.
Speaker 3:We made some changes. We picked it a lot earlier, we used a lot more stems and we used a lot less oak on it new oak and um, our first. So that was our first official vintage that we bottled the psychedelic and um. I remember sean sull Northwood, who was a wine enthusiast at the time. Oh, yeah yeah, he was a very, very hard like. He is a tough scorer, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's very tough. He's been out of the game all day long.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the first vintage, when we bought that, sent it in to him, I think we got 95 points for that first vintage and I thought, okay, see, we made the right decision. Yeah points for that first vintage. And I thought, okay, see, we did, we made the right decision. Yeah, I know he would have hated, he wouldn't have hated the the 2012, but it just it wasn't as good as what the funk was. Yeah and well, why would we bottle our own estate wine if we didn't think it was going to be as good, if not better, than what we were getting from mitch's vineyard? You know?
Speaker 3:yeah, and uh, so that's when we started recognizing the fact that different parts of the Rocks District, it's not just one style out of there. For me, the Stony Vine Vineyard is a more elegant, prettier style compared to the Funk, which is a little beefier, bulked up version of the box.
Speaker 1:I guess, yeah, my question is how funky is too funky?
Speaker 3:Because I mean for me I'm like Biggie Smalls Horsepower lines are too funky for me yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean I'm like Biggie Smalls, I live for the funk, I die for the funk. But sometimes it's a little too funky it can be too funky.
Speaker 3:Uh, yeah, that wasn't a false statement, I just made it. Yeah, like I've had a, I've had two different horsepower wines from christoph and both of them I could get through maybe half a glass, yeah, and what I think, my my feeling about those wines are that those wines are going to require 15 years in the bottle, yeah, okay, before they shed a lot of that funk. And I, I've never asked Christophe that question at all. I, you know I should, but, um, I'm curious if that's his, if that was his motivation behind the horsepower product and he wanted to make a wine that was going to last. The same way, some of the great roans, do you know, for 40, 50 years, right, yeah, but they are just so reductive and lack any sense of fruit. Yeah, and I'm all about savory. I mean, you know, psychedelic is savory, but it's still pretty and elegant and there are, you know, you'll pick out the fruit components for sure.
Speaker 1:Um, but uh, yeah, and the rocks to me reminds me a lot of santa rita hills, sometimes the rocks district. It reminds me a lot of santa rita hills in santa barbara sometimes, because in santa rita hills it's mostly all uh diatomaceous earth. It's really close to the ocean so you're getting a lot of the ocean breeze, ocean fog sitting in there, so it's like a micro cool climate and it's very salty and olive top and on it's savory it's still fruit.
Speaker 3:I probably tasted more pinots from that area than I have Syrahs from the Santa Rita Hills. I can't really speak to Syrah on a broad way out of that area than I have. Yeah, yeah, from santa rita hills. I can't really speak to saran or broadway out of that area. Certainly, climate-wise they're very different. Yeah, yeah, totally. But when you talk about that saline and that olive, those are two of the top five tasting notes in rocks wines yeah, that's why I love rocks wines.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I spent the majority of my wine career in santa barbara and so having like a house palate like that, coming to washington tasting rocks wines, I'm like, oh, this tastes like, tastes like home, you know it's like yeah, you know, I will say, I think that our I don't know what their chemistry is like um in that area.
Speaker 3:But one thing that I think is unique about the Rocks District is, you know, these wines, texturally, are so soft on entry and fairly rich, and it's not because of the alcohol level, it's because of the pHs, so like the 2020 vintage. You're drinking right now. What's the alcohol in that 13.5, 13.9?
Speaker 2:that 13, 5, 13, 9, 13, 7, 13 13 9 yeah, yeah um the, the psychedelic in most vintages.
Speaker 3:The 21 was an anomaly, uh, because it was just so hot. By the time I got the grapes off we were already at like 23 and a half 24 bricks, but um, typically under 14, yeah yeah, but we're dealing with ph's picking, picking ph's at four, 4.0. So we have finished ph's of 4.1, very common uh, in the rocks and um, there's not a lot of places that make wines like that.
Speaker 3:They're just they're, they're freakish, freakish numbers. But that wine has acid in it. So even though it's 4.0 pH, you would think that there's zero acid, but that's got 5.2 or 5.3 grams per liter of natural tartaric acid.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And if you were to show those numbers to like a UC Davis professor, they were like, oh, those numbers don't make sense and you can't do that, but we have so much potassium in our soils down in the Rocks District and a ton of nitrogen.
Speaker 3:I could say that, yeah, these were farmed apples and cherries and tree fruits for 100 years, which just take loads and loads of nitrogen, just take loads and loads of nitrogen, and so we're still burning through, our vines, are still burning through the nitrogen that's left over from all of those from the orchards. What we find is that they make for very fast and hot fermentation because we're all native right. So we will foot crush them, get them in our cold room, let them sit there for a couple of days, move it into our normal fermentation room Once we see some bubbles kind of start happening. And you know, let's say, picking them was like 23 and a half bricks. So by like day three when fermentation kicks off, day three, when fermentation kicks off day four, you come in and it's 23 bricks. And then day five comes up and you're at 21 bricks. Day six you're at 12 or eight. Like overnight it'll jump 15 bricks.
Speaker 3:I've seen it happen every year. Fermentation will get up to like 100 degrees Fahrenheit. I mean we don't use any cooling jackets or anything, so we don't have the ability to like really manage that ferment. It's just it does what it does and, yeah, it'll blow through, gets hot. They're the messiest fermentation. They'll have a cap that comes above the bin like this, high above the bin.
Speaker 2:Foaming monster, purple ooze coming out of the top it beauty, just super healthy looking.
Speaker 3:It's cool looking. Yeah, but that's what you know like. Oh okay, yeah, I kicked off last night yeah, yeah so do you ferment in tanks or in bins?
Speaker 3:we ferment in 1.5 tons. We ferment in in a bunch of different things, but our main fermentation bins are 1.5 ton stainless steel square alfalfa bins. Yeah, okay, so here in Walla Walla, because we're wheat and alfalfa, the coal 41, when they started off, and Leonetti and Woodward canyon, you know, these guys didn't have any money to buy tanks back then like big, huge fermentation tanks. But alfalfa bins were a plenty and, um, they were cheap, so you could buy these bins for back then for 500 bucks a piece. And so, wow, that's what started. And now you know still everybody I said everybody but we use a lot of those. So that's our number one vessel.
Speaker 3:We have, uh, two concrete tanks where we can ferment about three tons each in each tank, uh, of grapes. Those are used for pump overs. We'll use syrah and cab franc in those, uh, and a bit of Grenache. We've got two concrete eggs which will ferment. Our white sins, like Chardonnay, will see the egg. And then we've got three oak upright tanks. Okay, those three oak upright tanks are used for fermentation as well as storage vessels. When harvest is over, we'll fill those back up.
Speaker 2:Nice, nice.
Speaker 1:Oh, oh, that's cool man that's so interesting, that's crazy.
Speaker 3:Next time you come down, we'll take you through the winery. You can see all the toys we're not a fancy winery by any means. There's a lot of fancy places here now in Walla Walla. So if you love seeing all the modern equipment and things like sorting tape, like optical sorting tables and things of that nature, those are wild yeah. Yeah, we don't do any of that stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we try to do on this podcast, which is kind of take a lot of the pretentiousness out of wine so people, so consumers, can have more access to, yeah, um, and not feel intimidated by the wine culture, right, yeah, and so that's what I really love. I connected with your winery immediately just because of that and also the music side of me, I just love it.
Speaker 2:I gotta go hang out there all day yeah, I went to the one in what soto?
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah we've got a great tasting room in soto, so that one's cool too. I loved that one.
Speaker 2:I walked in and, uh, I came from cardis, uh, and I walked in and they were just so welcoming and somehow I walked out with like two or three bottles, which was not the plan, but it was the plan. Apparently it's always the plan. I don't know who I'm kidding myself, um, but it was just, it was homey and I like that feeling. I don't need to act like I'm all high and mighty, like yes, I'm in the wine industry, I love what I do, but, yeah, feeling at home I'll get as geeky about wine as anyone wants to get.
Speaker 3:I'll talk about whatever you want to talk about, but yes we're not gonna I'm not gonna lead off with that at all like I want people that this is it's not to say that our marketing plan from the very beginning. Like I can't say, we had that maybe in mind, and the way that it's turned out, I think we just sort of naturally grown into what our brand is today.
Speaker 2:Which is awesome.
Speaker 3:We had an ode to Pearl Jam by naming the winery sleight of hand. But we didn't like lean into the music thing like right away, yeah. But it quickly became a part of our brand and you know our goal is when you walk into our taping room is just to be comfortable.
Speaker 2:And that's one way, music's one way to do that, and that's totally how I felt.
Speaker 3:Music's one way to do that, and so if a customer comes in and has the opportunity to put on an album of somebody that they like, I don't care if it's Willie Nelson or Wu-Tang, it doesn't matter to me. If they're comfortable now, they're already in a good headspace.
Speaker 2:Right, they're wine tasting yes, they're in their element.
Speaker 3:Wine tasting, but now they're listening to their music. They're drinking some good wine. We're going to sit down and we'll give you some bullet points. If you have deeper questions you want to know about, my team is all capable.
Speaker 2:They do a great job.
Speaker 3:Oh, good, well, I'm glad I appreciate that. So I do.
Speaker 1:yeah, I was at the I was at the cardist tasting room in soto and then next door heard this rager going on and I was like wow I'm just like I gotta go check that out. So, yeah, I had to go hang out and check that out and the next day I had a podcast with uh episode chris who is the beverage director for Purple.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And we did it at Cardiff's as well, and so naturally, right afterwards I have some friends that work in that tasting room, and so we went next door to Slide of Hand after that was over and had a good time.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it's always a good time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's cool.
Speaker 3:We use that for live music as well. We do a ton of live music over there. Um, you know, I think we've got four or five bands coming up in may and in june I've got, um, we're hosting a concert here next week for our spring release we've got a cure tribute band oh cool coming to play. Yeah, um, I've got, you know, built to spill, I don't know boise yeah all right. Well, now you have some homework to do all right, all right, perfect.
Speaker 2:We're here for it.
Speaker 3:So definitely your goal. Now you have to go back and listen to the fort. The last 14 built to spill albums.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah perfect, perfect gotta do it, but we're bringing them.
Speaker 3:They're from boise and they, but we're bringing them. They're from boise and they're, we're bringing them to walla walla in august uh they're playing the motor company downtown oh fine that's gonna be a lot of fun. So it's a little bit of like. You know. It's not like those events help us sell a ton of wine, no, but what they do is they attach our brand with that funny event yeah yeah.
Speaker 3:So if someone does see sleight of hand like oh, those are the guys who brought, built a spill, just you know, yeah, or whatever, so hopefully they'll be a little endeared to to buy our wine at that point, so but yeah, yeah, I was actually just telling my boyfriend yesterday.
Speaker 2:I was like, for our anniversary we should, which is in September, we should go to Walla Walla and I already know where I kind of want to go, you being one of them and a couple others around there and I was like, yeah, we should do that. And he looks at me, he's like, so, like next month? And I'm just like all right, come on like. All right, come on man come on, come on sam so I'm pushing, pushing for walla, walla for our anniversary and hopefully we do.
Speaker 3:I'll give you a call let us know yeah, shoot me yeah, give us a call. We'll take care of you. For sure I'll give you happy to get you guys out in the vineyards too.
Speaker 2:That'd be so fun, that'd be awesome.
Speaker 3:I don't know how much vineyard exploration you've done down here.
Speaker 2:So I'm definitely the vineyard side to this duo here and I am a vineyard nerd. I would rather be out in the vineyard. Obviously, I'm in the tasting room now, but the vineyard is my home.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, when you tasting room now, but the vineyard is my home. Yeah, yeah, when you come.
Speaker 2:When you come down, we'll give you a nice little tour of the valley.
Speaker 3:So I would love that. Yeah, well, it'd be awesome, absolutely cool.
Speaker 1:Well, trey, is there anything that you would like to plug?
Speaker 3:um, oh gosh, I mean we talked about a lot of our wines and stuff. So, uh, if, if, if you do have any other fellow music lovers? Um, on here we. I think probably one of the most unique things that we do is we have a vinyl club. Oh, so, um, we, we at we sell. I have a retail shop for records in both soto and in walla wall. Okay, it's like a little record store in there, yeah, but four times a year we release albums that I'm picking out and working with labels and pressing them like variant colors and things like that, so you're getting something truly unique. Some of them are reissues, some of them are brand new albums and stuff like that, brand new bands, but it's just kind of a fun way to. Yeah, I think it just that's so fun Ties into the to the brand again, right, so, yeah, yeah, one brand, I guess, is the best way to put it.
Speaker 1:Are they? Are they full albums or is it kind of like?
Speaker 3:a curated playlist.
Speaker 1:Each one they're full LPs. Oh, that's awesome, that's awesome.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we just released the last Jay Maskis album. He's the lead singer for Dinosaur Jr. Okay, so we just released that album on Sub Pop.
Speaker 2:And yeah it's. Oh, how fun. That's awesome, that's a great idea, great marketing.
Speaker 1:Well, trey, I love what you're doing, man, I love it, uh, infusing music culture into wine culture.
Speaker 3:Um, your wines are spectacular and I love them I appreciate it well, looking forward to uh, sharing a glass with you guys in person here soon. Yeah, absolutely would love it, and if my wife and I and the kids get to Shlan anytime give us a call. We'll give you the grand tour. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1:Everyone check the show notes. We have links for their vinyl club, their wine club, their website, all their socials. Everything is right there. Go click the links. Trey, thank you so much for coming, really appreciate it. Cheers, cheers, you guys.
Speaker 3:Cheers.
Speaker 2:Wait, there we go. Cheers. Hey you, now that I have your attention and you've listened to this wonderful podcast that we had to offer, We'd like you to scroll down. And what are they going to do when they scroll down? Ian, Scroll down and give us some feedback.
Speaker 1:Rate us on your podcast platform Ideally five stars, and if you would give us some critical feedback, you can DM us on Instagram at OfficialBungPod. Let's hear it, let's go. It is only two of us writing the show, two of us producing the show. It's me, ian King, jasmine Shattuck and the lovely Becca Hines as our producers.
Speaker 2:The lovely Becca Hines.
Speaker 1:As our producers and our writers are me, ian King and Jasmine.
Speaker 2:Chaddick, let's go. No-transcript.