Bung Pod!
Based in Washington State, Bung Pod is a wine podcast fusing comedic and unfiltered, unapologetic conversation with the passion of wine and unruly hot takes. Hosted by Ian King and Jas Shattuck with interviews by special guests within the wine community. Whether you are ready to learn something new about wine and grow your knowledge, or you are just here to have a good time, this podcast is for you!
Bung Pod!
#23 Beer League Golf's Brady Douglas: Wine Tasting and Hilarious Reviews
BEER LEAGUE GOLF
Website: https://www.beerleague.golf/
Instagram: @beerleague.golf
Sign Up For Beer League Golf! https://www.beerleague.golf/sign-up
Ever wondered why Gamay might just be the next big thing in Washington's wine scene? Join us on this hilariously insightful episode of the Bung Pod as we welcome the ever-entertaining Brady Douglas, wine reviewer extraordinare and president of Beer League Golf. Brady shares his comedic take on wine reviewing and opens up about his involvement in Seattle's burgeoning beer golfing community. Plus, your host spills the beans on a recent move from Chelan to Seattle and drops hints about future episodes featuring Tyler Armour from Armour Wines. The episode climaxes with a tasting of Rotie Cellars' Northern Blend, a Syrah co-fermented with Viognier from the Rocks District in Walla Walla.
Next, we pull back the curtain on the mysterious world of bulk wine and the wine advent calendar industry. Ever thought about what's really in those festive calendars? We reveal how advent calendars often feature bulk wine from various wineries, sometimes without proper credit. The episode also unpacks the regulations and challenges of wine labeling laws, shedding light on the ingredients that might actually be in your bottle. Prepare for an eye-opening exploration of some of the wine industry's lesser-known practices, which could change how you look at your next glass of vino.
Finally, we get into the nitty-gritty of wine tasting and how to keep your palate in top shape. From techniques to combat palate fatigue to preferences for young, acidic wines, this segment has it all. We also touch on the nuances of alcohol content labeling laws in the U.S. and share some personal wine favorites, including a budget-friendly Sauvignon Blanc from Chateau Saint-Michelle. The conversation wraps up with a nostalgic look back at pandemic golf gatherings and the rise of Beer League Instagram, setting the stage for future collaborations with exciting guests. Don't miss this entertaining and informative episode that blends humor, insight, and a love for both wine and golf!
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Bung pod Welcome back Wine Wonderboy.
Speaker 1: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. Alright, guys, welcome back to the bung pod. It's your boy, Ian King, aka Wine Wonderboy In the building. If you love this podcast, or if you just even like it a little bit, go review us Five Stars, Ideally on whatever podcast platform you're listening to this on. If you're on YouTube, please like, subscribe and hit that notification bell. This next episode is very fun because I got my buddy here, Brady Douglas in the building.
Speaker 2:What's up?
Speaker 1:happy to be here. Thanks for coming on. The pod man he is a wine review extraordinaire, oh yeah that's what they call me no, your wine reviews are hilarious, dude. I love them Um and uh, president. Beer league golf.
Speaker 2:I'll go with president to president. Slave to beer league, golf is more like here in Seattle.
Speaker 1:Um yeah, just to give people a little update. Uh, I moved to Seattle from Chelan just very recently.
Speaker 2:We brought them over to the West side. Yeah, this is going to make a lot of your followers pissed off or happy, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I've got a lot of Seattle followers over here, um, but yeah, sorry, chelan, I'll be over. I'll be back visiting a lot in Chelan, don't worry about it. Jazzy J is still in Chelan, but we're still doing the pods, so we're doing a lot of remote stuff. Um, I'm gonna try and bring her over here a few times.
Speaker 2:She's a homebody, so that might be a little difficult so she's just gonna like voice over our episode and just interject interject the whole time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, perfect. Um. No, she won't be on this episode, but I am going over there soon to do another episode with her, so it should be fun. I'm happy to be in Seattle. It's a really awesome spot and you know good for wine. I want to be where the wine's at, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I got to do what I got to do.
Speaker 2:Do you know who you have on the next episode? Am I blowing it already? You're not allowed to tell.
Speaker 1:I have a few things. Nothing's for sure, nothing is on the books at the moment, so I got a few people I'm trying to schedule, but we do have Tyler Armour from Armour Wines in Wenatchee. So we're doing that one pretty soon and Jazzy's going to be part of that one too, so that should be a lot of fun. Have you heard about him?
Speaker 2:I've heard about Armour Wines. I don't know anything about him though, dude, he's awesome.
Speaker 1:He was the winemaker at Fielding Hills for a while.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and he transitioned what, like two years, last year, last summer I think transitioned into starting his own brand, armour Wines. So it's fun. He does lot of like native ferments, a lot of, um, just kind of low intervention style winemaking. He has a killer gamay. Have you had gamay?
Speaker 2:before no, I've not.
Speaker 1:Oh, dude you gotta, you gotta. I'll bring you a bottle of armor gamay at some point they don't sell that at the local safeway, so no they really don't. Um, yeah, no, it's awesome. He does a really good job. It's very like light refreshing. It's kind of like a pinot noir. Yeah, um, I've been on this gamay campaign for a very long time. Those of you that listen to this know this. I think gamay is the next best grape in washington state.
Speaker 2:I just just what I believe. Okay, I've definitely heard you say this and it just goes right out of one in one ear out the other. I've never seen it. I don't know what this is.
Speaker 1:Well, the gametes I've had in Washington state have been so much better than the Pinot Noirs I've had in Washington state. Um cause, you know, when you drink a Pinot Noir, you're automatically putting, putting it up again if you're like a really wine, like a wine nerd especially, you're putting it up against, like oregon if you're from the northwest and if you're from california you're putting against santa barbara and sonoma and burgundy you know, my first question was gonna be what about western oregon?
Speaker 2:like are you saying?
Speaker 1:this is all regional.
Speaker 2:Compared to other areas, it's terrible. But yeah, I don't. I don't drink much washington pinot noir yeah, I don't either.
Speaker 1:There's only a few that I've really thought were really good. They're like, okay, this is a good representation of washington pinot, and that was like the amos rome vineyards. They have like a reserve pinot that they only make like four barrels of and so it's hard to get and they don't sell it that often, but when they do, it's I think the best Pinot Noir in Washington state period, and that's not me being biased at all for the Lake Chelan area or them. Then there's also Lagrioth Chelan Valley Farms. They do a really good job for Pinot Noir. I think they kill it. But yeah, anywho, we got a wine that I'm excited to try with you. This is from Roti Cellars, the Northern Blend. This is 95% Syrah, 5% Viognier from the Rocks District, walla Walla, washington, and also Milton Freewater technically Oregon, if we're being honest.
Speaker 2:Well, thanks for not making me guess what percentage of what this is. Yeah, that would not have gone well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it when Syrah is co-fermented with Viognier. You know that Viognier is a white grape.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Okay, cool.
Speaker 2:Come on, I do wine. Come on, man, I know the color of the wine I'm drinking. At a minimum.
Speaker 1:Of course. But yeah, when you co-ferment it with Syrah, it actually uplifts, it gives a lot of aromatics. It actually gives it kind of like a deeper purple color, which is crazy. Yeah, on the UC Davis website they actually have a really short article about the chemical compound, on how this actually happens. So a lot of people think it's a myth, but it's not.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:Well, that's good to know, they've been doing it in France and Northern Rome for centuries.
Speaker 2:I'm going to start spreading it around as a rumor.
Speaker 1:It's definitely not true. Ian's full of shit, ian's full of shit.
Speaker 2:Don't listen to this motherfucker Cheers, sir. All right, so first fun fact I can't swirl.
Speaker 1:You can't swirl. I can only do it on the table, even if it's kind of sketchy. Well, charlie Leibacker from Cardiff, he uses his whole. Oops, sorry Mike, he uses his whole arm.
Speaker 2:Okay, only found out about this that I couldn't do it because lexi saw me doing it at a winery lexi, garvin, tipsy and she's like why is your whole body moving to?
Speaker 1:try to swirl the wine. There you go. Yeah, she had to stop my elbow and she's like if you just go risk and it's so, it's very shaky for me yeah, I mean I haven't seen charlie, and charlie like he he's a wine drinking expert, like he drinks so much wine throughout, like harvest, like making wine and also with people all the time and he, I haven't seen him use the wrist once. Okay, he's never done the wrist.
Speaker 2:As a wine expert, as the wine wonder boy, where do you start your judgment of other people when you see them drinking wine? Because from how they first hold the glass, the first swirl, or you know where's your first mark, where you're like this guy doesn't know shit.
Speaker 1:Positive or negative judgments.
Speaker 2:Um, let's start with negative.
Speaker 1:That's more fun, yeah, well, first of all, when I see people drinking wine, I instantly think dope. I just like it when people drink wine. So this is not how we start with negative Drink wine. This is not how we start with negative Drink wine. This is not Okay. So how do I judge someone? Like the moment? It's usually all right, the wine's poured, it's in your glass, they just take it and just drink it Like no sniff. They don't even pretend to swirl anything. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So if they give a bad swirl, you're like, at least they're attempting.
Speaker 1:They're swirling, yeah, that's great.
Speaker 2:And if they go, do the swirl yeah, like just full body, full upper, body, swirl yeah.
Speaker 1:I love this wine Roti Cellars. They do a really good job.
Speaker 2:Love Roti roti sellers. They do a really good job love roti. This is good. This is much better than anything I've ever reviewed.
Speaker 1:So yeah, very low standard so what are the wines you typically review? What do they look like? What do they smell like?
Speaker 2:they're all I mean okay. So they smell like christmas typically, because the wine reviews are from december 1st to december 24th. It's wine advent season, let's go by. I mean, this started like three years ago, four years ago, I don't know whenever, right in covid, when we're all home a lot and drinking way too much, and I was at fred meyer and found this 24-day wine advent calendar box and I was like, oh, this looks cool. It's like 150 bucks. So I thought it'd be decent because it's just the mini bottles and it was like the 24 worst wines ever introduced to humanity.
Speaker 2:And I actually have a lot of questions for you about how this whole thing works. We'll get there, but basically I filmed myself on Instagram because they're all using social media a lot more than and just did once a day me tasting this wine as somebody who doesn't know anything about wines and just describing like how miserable it was for me and everybody loved it and they I mean, and honestly they were cheering for it to be like worse and worse for me. They didn't want to hear me say like, oh, this is good, I think this like has hints of citrus, they're. We want him to say it just tastes like complete shit and we want to see like tears forming in his eyes, and so that just kind of became my niche of going through miserable stuff.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. I love it. So is it like like are there name brands in there? Like do you recognize any of the wines that are in the advent?
Speaker 2:No, so that's what I thought it was going to be, because, like on the box it said you know 24 different. I think it said 12 different varietals from eight different countries or something. And so I was like cool, there could be some good stuff in here, and like some of it was local. Maybe I'd recognize a few of them. But every bottle in this first box just like said the type of wine, like it was like just chardonnay and that was it.
Speaker 2:There was no name on it and it would give like a little description generally of like what chardonnay is like white wine, oak, that's it. Yeah, and I'm like great. So this is. I have no idea where this stuff's coming from. In the first year I never even I was just I mean, I was so pissed by day five I never like looked at what any of this stuff said, yeah, and I would basically just blind taste it and the only thing I could do to keep myself entertained was like not look at what I was going to drink before I did it, because if I knew it was going to be a chardonnay or a Red Blint, I'm like I just would have this immediate judgment of like how bad one was going to burn or like how oaky another would be.
Speaker 2:So I had to like keep that out of my head after a few days of doing this, but then so last year I went and spent more money and I think that's from world market.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, that makes sense. Well, yeah, and I'd have higher expectations.
Speaker 2:And there's, we're actually like you know. It's like, oh, seaside Saran has a much more. You know a better description, like a lot more thought put into it, but they all still were just terrible. And so this is. I mean, I was hoping you'd have some knowledge on, like, how the wine advent calendar industry works, because they're all from the same, so it's the same distributor bottler that makes these, so it's not a winery, it's just like, oh, this company distributing in California.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And I have no idea where they're acquiring the wine to put in these bottles, and they're not putting any winery's name on it. So I think the wineries are ashamed to be putting their name on whatever's doing the ad make sense bottle?
Speaker 1:I can see that. Um, so my first thought was bulk wine. Yeah, essentially so. It's like I mean there are so many wineries in california that sell bulk wine and what bulk wine is is basically a winery will sell like a whole barrel or multiple barrels or even uh, bottles that are not labeled or have any labeling of the winery on it whatsoever, and they'll sell it to a distributor or another winery sometimes and they'll slap their label on it. And the original winery wants no credit because they're just trying to get rid of this wine that's in their inventory and they're trying to sell it at the best possible price, but the best possible price is going to be dirt cheap honestly.
Speaker 2:Two questions here. First, so bulk wine is like the dark, dirty secret of the wine industry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of bulk wine being thrown around and bottled that people don't know about.
Speaker 2:And, as another winery, there's a certain percentage of somebody else's like runoff bulk wine you can use without having to attribute anything to them and without it saying changing, like what you say is in your bottle, correct, okay, yeah, there's two things I understand from this which I'm like. So it's usually pretty shitty wine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like. It's usually wine like oh, this was a mistake. Um, or we fucked up on whatever on this wine and we don't want to sell it with our label on it, or this wine has been sitting in inventory, usually in a barrel format, and we need room for the next vintage to go through for the quality wine. So I'm just going to sell this off dirt cheap. So it gets out of my barrel room so I have more room for other things. I mean wineries. Number one issues are usually storage.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, for for barrels and also for case goods, so everything that's bottled so if you're selling the bulk wine and you're basically gonna like get your cost back on what sometimes not, even you get a fraction of your cost back, but at least you get something back yeah, you're not throwing it down the drain, and it costs money to throw it down the drain.
Speaker 1:You have to literally have an inspector come in and watch you dump it down the drain and then the state pays him, which you pay the state. Okay, and so there's that, and there's all other ways you can get rid of wine, like you can sell it to a distilleryillery. They'll turn it into brandy or something like that.
Speaker 2:You know, um, or in the admin calendars or admin calendars, man, yeah, yeah, I've thought bulk wine was possibly the answer, but I also was like but it seems like you could probably get I don't know a lot of people use bulk wine right a lot of wineries um, I wouldn't know the percentage, I have no idea, but if you're buying a volume winery, then they're using bulk wine, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I would say there's a good percentage of a chance they're.
Speaker 2:They're like 90 chance they're making with bulk wine okay, so in a bottle like this and obviously don't want to like associate roadie with doing that or something but so, out of the 95% Syrah, 5%, what was the other one? Viognier, viognier yeah, how much bulk wine could they use to still label it this way?
Speaker 1:Bulk wine could they still use?
Speaker 2:How much like could they still use? How much they have? 50% bulk Syrah.
Speaker 1:And that's a great question. Um, usually on a label you won't see percentages on uh if they're using bulk wine, um, but if you're in Oregon you have to use 95% of whatever grape is labeled on on the bottle.
Speaker 2:For Washington State it's 85% and for California I think it's also 85% if I remember correctly, so you could use 95% bulk Syrah from another winery and 5% of your own Viognier estate grown and still label the bottle under your own winery name and everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so if this, this says rocks district of Milton free water on it, so all of these grapes are coming from there.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Um, you couldn't have a vineyard specific or a regional specific title on there for the for labeling laws title on there for the for labeling laws.
Speaker 1:Like if you see a wine in the grocery store that says you know what cabs off from Columbia Valley. Columbia Valley is a huge, huge AVA. It encapsulates pretty much the whole Eastern side of Washington state, so you can be either sourcing from a bunch of different vineyards you could be sourcing from just two vineyards that cross AVA boundaries or you can also have a certain percentage of bulk wine in there as well. Okay, so it's like yeah, it's very iffy. And there's this whole thing about ingredients that is coming on soon, like I asked. Uh, so I did a social media post and asked everyone to chime in of what their thoughts of the ingredient list on a back of a bottle would be, and most of them have been positive. They're like oh, we would love that as consumers, we would love that, we'd love to see what's inside the wine.
Speaker 2:But a lot of producers— Just grapes right, Nothing else.
Speaker 1:Well, there's other shit in there, right? Nothing else? Well, there's other shit in there, like a lot of these, a lot of the grocery store. Uh, uh, labels are not happy with this because they have to, you know, give their ingredient list on what actually goes into their wine. Like this wine is a high quality, um roti sellers, known for high quality boutique, you know, um wines that they is handcrafted, handmade for a winery. That is about volume, um kind of like kendall jackson or gallo whatever, um, they'll add more into the wines.
Speaker 1:Like this is made, as it would probably say on the ingredient list Um, you know, 95% Syrah, 5% Viognier yeast, so2, and that's it. You know, if they're using commercial yeast, they could just doing a native ferment. In that sense You'd say native yeast, whatever, because you're not really adding it in, it just naturally happens. But you could, you still have to put on the label. But of big, big like justin and pastor robles, yeah, they would have to put. Like you know, I don't know if they're doing this, by the way, so if you're part of justin and you're like he says, we put this in our wine. Uh, that that is. I'm just guessing on a very large volume, uh, so it sounds like an accusation, but it's not.
Speaker 1:I'm just guessing. Uh, for a bulk label, if they're going to put like, okay, there's X amount of Cabernet Sauvignon here, x amount of Cab Franc, there also could be mega purple that they throw in there to add coloring?
Speaker 1:Um, there's a lot of things you can add, like cell stab, for um, I don't like cell stab. Personally, after making wine for seven years, I've never I've only, I've only seen it happen done. Uh, I've only seen it done once before and I didn't like the product and I thought it was sketchy. It looks like you're putting a bunch of engine coolant like lime, neon green liquid in your wine and it's weird. It's like how they make fireball.
Speaker 1:Basically cell stab basically stabilizes the cells. Cell stab so like stabilizes the wine in order to be shipped off, et cetera. So it's not shocked or anything like that. So it's kept protected. But at the same time it is an additive that can give some people negative effects. Also, tannin powder. I Also tannin powder. I've seen tannin powder be thrown in. There's a bunch of wineries that do that. So many do, especially with volume, that they're not actually putting wine in the barrel, they're actually just doing powder or they're steeping it with basically a teabag of that to give you the Oki flavor that people like. But they're not actually in barrel, they're actually just in a huge tank and then they just bottle it from there. Um, so they would have to put tannin powder in on their label as well. So you know, yeah, there's high volume wines are not going to like the ingredient list. But if you're making high quality, handcrafted, even shitty wine, uh, and you're not putting bullshit in your wines, you're not gonna be um, too concerned, too concerned about the ingredient list.
Speaker 2:It's like people that yeah well, that's like a battle with all foods now, like oh your ragu jar of sauce has a lot more ingredients and there's some great brands coming up that are like our sauce is just sauce. Like yeah, you don't need a ton more.
Speaker 1:Oh, totally but you know people still buy that shit. Yeah, so there's a price point, yeah, for people that can, that are concerned about ingredient lists. Like people are still gonna buy stuff you know from you, people still go to mcdonald's, people still buy chef boyardee, you know stuff that they just add a lot of shit and people are still buying it. So it's like Wait.
Speaker 2:So who's the Chef Boyardee of wineries? I'd rather not say I know I'm not going to put you on the spot like that in a wine podcast the Chef Boyardee.
Speaker 1:Josh. Oh, yeah, yeah, I mean how to get how to gallo audience. Most gallo products Okay, that's fair, not all gallo products, they actually. They do some like really interesting boutique stuff, but they just to get, just to get their financial backing. You have to do volume at some point and so they just do. They acquire a shit ton and they yeah. Yeah, I'm not a fan of gallo personally, but it's.
Speaker 2:It sounds that way. Yeah, how do you rank them against barefoot lines?
Speaker 1:oh, barefoot's way worse but also uh, all right, gallo, you're doing just fine don't worry, sure gallo owns barefoot Take that back. Yeah, it's like. Well, hey, they know their market.
Speaker 2:They crank out a lot of volume of really cheap wine.
Speaker 1:They do they do. They know their market, that's for damn sure. So what are your thoughts of this Roti Northern Blend Syrah?
Speaker 2:This is really good. I really like Syrahs. I think and this seems like pretty easy drinkable could go with a lot of things. Yeah, like you know, well-balanced. I'm going to run out of wine words right now. I would say I'd give it probably like a 9 out of 10 on my experience with this. I do really enjoy it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good, I'm glad you like it. I love Roti. They do a really good job down in the Rocks District, milton Freewater. They're technically Oregon, but we love them in Washington State Absolutely. I think they have vineyards in Washington too. I don't think it's just all the Rocks District, but that's where their tasting room is, that's where their production facility is. If you haven't gone there, go there. It's an amazing experience. They're really amazing. They do a really good job.
Speaker 2:I think I've had them before at a tasting room in Walla Walla that was it might be a foundation or something. They had a bunch of different wines and that was what they did. We were on a bachelor party.
Speaker 1:Oh fun, let's go. I mean, that's the first stop of every bachelor party. Wine tasting right, yeah, I mean that's that would be for me. Yeah, uh, but I know my homies that would go on the bachelor party wouldn't really enjoy that that much honestly, the other 50 bachelor parties have been on.
Speaker 2:The first stop was not wine tasting tasting.
Speaker 1:so this is like a little back to back action. So we have a Syrah from Roti uh from Oregon slash Washington state, and then this one here is is called shingle back block reserve from McLarenville, shiraz 2001. Vintage Um and McLarenville. We're going back in time two decades, two decades Um, shiraz 2001 vintage and McLarenville. We're going back in time two decades, two decades. Mclarenville is in Australia and on Aussie they call Sarah Shiraz. Okay, Shiraz might.
Speaker 2:Okay, you know. So, on the going, the 2001 verse 2021,. How do you know how long you can age a bottle? Is it guesswork, or do you know by the style of grapes or the?
Speaker 1:um, smell this cork real quick. Um, that's a great question, because there is a way that you can tell if a wine is ageable or not, and that is with three main things. There is acid, tannin and alcohol percentage. Okay, so alcohol preserves wine, acid also preserves wine, and also tannins. So if it has a decent amount of tannins on it or decent amount of acid, it's ageable.
Speaker 1:Like you can age a German Riesling no tannins, but tons and tons of acid and really low alcohol. It'll age beautifully, depending on what your style is like. Like, I keep bringing him up because he's one of my friends and he's a mentor to me, charlie Lybacker. He likes to drink young wines. He doesn't like to age wines. Um, he likes, uh, more fruit forward, uh wines, typically, I think, or just more interesting wines, I don't know. I wouldn't say I wouldn't boil his palate down to fruit forward, cause I think that's an insult, but, um, he has a very complex palate and he likes the things that he likes. It could be earthy, you know, it could be, you know, whatever, um, but he likes to drink young wines in general. Um, I think he likes a lot of acid in his wines. I do too, but I also really enjoy a good old wine he's a big acid guy big acid guy.
Speaker 1:Me too, I'm an. I'm an acid head, for sure for sure there is an ongoing joke that a sommelier's favorite favorite wine is a german riesling, because that's so much acid isn't also like a palate cleanser, or it is? Yeah, that's why I remember hearing you talk about something.
Speaker 2:We're tasting a ton of wines in a day.
Speaker 1:That's like the go-to to, as the sommeliers do a lot, they taste so many with like distributors and wine reps and sales consultants that like, after drinking a certain amount of or tasting like you taste you spit like a certain amount of bold red tasting like you taste you spit like a certain amount of bold red wines. It's just going to fatigue your palate Like the whole time. I was recently at a tasting in Portland where I tasted like a whole portfolio from a distributor and the wines were great, but I couldn't after like the first 10, it was mostly italian, so the first like 10 um, like, uh, nebbiolo, because nebbiolo has a lot of tannin and just like fatigues your palate like crazy. I just couldn't tell the difference between any wines after like tasting a few, yeah, nebbiolo. So I was like, okay, well, I guess I gotta go back to that's when you like you don't necessarily want to start doing all whites yeah you want to start doing whites to get your palate ready for the upcoming wines.
Speaker 1:You know, I usually do the first line I have. I take zero thought of it and just spit it out and he's like okay, I'm getting my palate ready to taste shit and so, and then I start tasting stuff, if I'm actually trying to be analytical about it, and then I go to the medium-body reds, go back to the acid-driven whites, do some full-body reds, go back to some whites and then finish off with reds or dessert wines usually.
Speaker 1:That's kind of what I do. I ping pong, because you can't just go from white to medium body red to full body reds the whole time, because it's going to blend in so much together in your brain that you're not going to tell a difference.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you're just going through a progression. That's natural that everything will blend yeah.
Speaker 1:Or have a palate cleanser in between, like some crackers or some bread or yeah, you know. But so if you're jumping from.
Speaker 2:If you're jumping back and forth like that is the first one you go to, can it like have an, like a shock factor that you wouldn't expect, because you were just on like a really bold red and you just jump to a white?
Speaker 1:absolutely yeah, that's why, like that's why, when I cleanse my palate that way that I don't take any thought in that first wine, that I had after those and I'm just like okay this is like give me your bulk white.
Speaker 2:Let me throw that around, look white, or?
Speaker 1:some sparkling white or something like that to like alive in your palate again and kind of cleanse it through, spit it out and then go to, uh, some other whites and then go back to the reds so yeah it's like, yeah, it's kind of wild, like I used to think like sparkling water it was a good palette cleanser, but it's kind of not, honestly, just still water is probably the best.
Speaker 2:Um sparkling's got a little too, much action to it. It's got a lot of action.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. So the shingle back D block reserve 2001 McLaren Vell Sherez. Oh yeah, baby, oh yeah, mm, mm, mm, mm.
Speaker 2:Oh, that is good, that is. That's different than the roadie, for sure.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, so this has a lot of age on it. When I think of age, I think of raisined fruit, I think of tobacco leaf like cigar, tobacco leaf cigar box of tobacco leaf like cigar. Tobacco leaf cigar box um, crushed like dry leaves in general. So that's still a lot of alcohol in it. Wow, back of my throat is like hot. What is this? A 14.5? It's probably like 15.5, to be honest. Also a labeling law, uh, alcohol percentage. You in the united states, you can be a point and a half uh above or below how often you have to test it uh, you test it once for bottling, I guess, for wine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're just yeah doing it that time and some people just kind of like they taste it and they're like, well, I think it's about this. Okay, so like I've seen some winemakers do that, like well, I think it's like 14, whatever, yeah, so let's put 14.5 on there, just to be safe well, how often are you actually at risk of somebody checking this? Um, I have no idea, but it's a ttb thing. Um, just like. Yeah, it's just an american.
Speaker 2:That's the only. The only other reference I have to this is I know I had a buddy that was working at mac and jack's back when they were oh yeah pretty young yeah but growing with their, the mac and jack's amber was you know the big one that, oh yeah, took off.
Speaker 2:oh yeah, he said it was like once every six months you had to have it at like whatever the label was, the 6.5. And there were days where it would vary up to like 13. And they're still like throwing it because they were like just getting into volume and so they didn't really know, but you're only.
Speaker 2:You have to, like report the numbers every so often. So, like every time you would have one at a bar, like if you were going four one night, maybe you're totally fine, you have four another night. You could just be fucked out of your mind like I don't know how much truth there is to this story, but you were working for the, for the brewer, so I assume you're not lying to me. Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 1:I remember my uh, my ex. She would, whenever we'd like, blind taste wines and stuff. Her game was guessing the alcohol percentage. Okay, and so she would like. I gave her little hints to do. You can rotate your glass so the wine is touching every part of the glass right, and then you can look up to a lit background and look and see how runny the legs are of the wine. And so this is one of the only things about legs I will say for wine is that it can tell you what a ballpark alcohol percentage would be. So the more syrupy the legs are, the more alcohol it's going to be, the more watery the less alcohol it's going to be.
Speaker 2:The more watery, the less alcohol it is so that's got a pretty slow drip going this has a very, very slow drip. The fact that it's 14.5 I think it might be actually 15.5 okay, honest yeah, this is a pretty boozy, boozy baby yeah, I mean I'm just gonna help myself to that with that review. What is what's the uh? So for the alcohol percentage for different varietals? I assume there's kind of a different target, or is it all just up to the winemaker and what they're going for?
Speaker 1:some of the winemaker and what they're going for. But I mean, there's some ballpark where, like pinot Noirs probably shouldn't be 14.5. 13.5 plus under 14, probably.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Or if you go to 14, fine, like usually the best Pinot Noirs I've had have been around 13.5. Okay, five, um, if you see a wine, especially Pinot Noir, that is like it says like 14% or like 13, five on the label and it's very dark and inky, um, they're probably doing some adding some stuff into the wine. There's like a few clues that like like why I'm making stuff. You're like how did they get this extraction of the grape you know, especially for Pinot Noir to have this dark color? Some people like their Pinots to be bolder, some people like them to be how Pinot should be. Yeah, that's my opinion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean that's always kind of the gamble as a drinker, Like do I want this to taste good or am I trying to get drunk? Am I going for the? Highest maybe possible or are we trying to enjoy this right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:Um, I mean what? What do you look for when you're I mean you buy from the grocery store? What do you usually look for when you are buying wine?
Speaker 2:yeah, well, I mean I buy from the grocery store typically, you know, just for our casual drinking stuff. I have numerous wine memberships too, so yeah, that's true, yeah, you do nice stuff, but I mean grocery store.
Speaker 2:It depends if we're just drinking like on a weeknight and making a stir fry kind of thing. Sam, my wife doesn't really like reds all that much and she's gotten more into them since we've been together and she's given them a better chance now, yeah. But so you typically just going with like a Sauvblanc is our go-to move, actually one we really like, which you know we typically buy for a Wednesday night like under a $15 bottle of Sauvblanc and Chateau Saint-Michel has a liquid light Sauvblanc that for some reason has caught on in our household and maybe I'm being convinced by sam or not, but it's, it's good and it's you know, it's just it's super light, like very, very fruity. Not a lot to this thing, yeah, and it's kind of nice for like casual, easy sipping, uh, and drinking it with dinner and like watching a movie or whatever.
Speaker 2:Outside of that. You know, man, whites I just like don't look for too much. I I'm not a Chardonnay guy. I think I probably have a bad taste in my mouth from Chardonnay because these Chardonnays that I was introduced to the wine world with were very outdated, old, oaky, buttery like every bad thing about the reputation?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean, 20 years later, like still holding onto these thoughts about Chardonnay that probably aren't true at all anymore. Sure, yeah, but you know, just like I watched sideways a few times, so I don't ever drink Merlot you know that same thing that wine drinkers do, right, dude.
Speaker 1:Okay, I've said it once on this podcast, I'll do a little shortened thing of it. So thing about sideways, the movie is there was a deleted scene that didn't make. You can't see deleted scenes anymore, like, yeah, they were old, like if you. So I rented it from blockbuster one day and I remember seeing a deleted scene that says that explains why he didn't like merlot. It was his. Why his character didn't like merlot, yeah, why his character didn't like merlot is because it was his ex-wife that he was trying to get over, because he was still in love with her. But he's trying to forget about her. And merlot was their wedding wine and that was her favorite grape variety and so that's why, when there'd be, when they're outside the wine merchant cafe and Los Olivos, he was like, if anyone's drinking fucking Merlot, I'm leaving, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he's like I'm not drinking. He's not drinking a couple of times yeah drinking fucking merlot.
Speaker 1:It's like that's because he was trying to get over his ex and that was their wedding wine, wedding great variety. And he had a bottle of chateau cheval blanc. That was the main wine in the episode. He's like, oh, I'm saving it for the peak, like you know, being really nerdy about it with, I mean, with that price point of that bottle you should be. I think it's like a $300 what plus bottle of wine when it's current release. And so this one was, as you know, it was an aged bottle that he was trying to figure out where the peak was, so we can drink at the right moment.
Speaker 2:So it could be the best, um, but also the best is kind of, whatever situation you're in, that will be the best one yeah, you know, like if you're drinking the wine from your wedding with your ex-wife, it's not going to be the best wine you've ever had, exactly. It doesn't matter what the wine from your wedding with your ex-wife it's not going to be the best wine you've ever had. Exactly, it doesn't matter what the wine is or what year it is, or whatever.
Speaker 1:You're like this sucks. So he was trying to forget his ex and he was like, okay, this Chateau Cheval Blanc. He was drinking it with this new girl that he met that she's super into wine, she's super into him, and so he's feeling stoked and she, the wine, she's super into him. And so he's feeling stoked and she's like, oh, let's pop it right now. And they're sipping it from solo cups and he was like this is the best wine ever. Chateau cheval blanc is minimum 65 merlot, like that was the biggest thing. If you're a wine person, you're like, yeah, that is a right bank bordeaux. Yeah, like one of the most famous right bank Bordeaux is you can have and which you know. Uh, usually I mean famously they have Merlot forward blends. Yeah, and that's their main grape varieties, merlot. And so the fact that that was the wine of the movie you know.
Speaker 2:So that should have like rounded out the Merlot hatred and like made it even.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if they kept the deleted scene in there.
Speaker 2:It makes sense.
Speaker 1:It would make sense and I think that this Merlot crisis wouldn't have happened.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I've read a few things since then. My buddy that introduced me to the movie, he's read all the books that the movie's based on. Oh yeah, and apparently I think there's three of them. The next two books, he said, are like super depressing. I guess, not that the first, not that the movie itself isn't depressing in its own way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's depressing.
Speaker 2:He with. The other thing he told me was that I don't know if this is because it had an impact on Merlot wine sales or not, but it came out later that Paul Giamatti is like not a wine guy at all. Yeah, and so when he's doing all this wine tasting stuff, he's just like pulling it out of his ass. Yeah, with no basis for anything he's saying, and they threw it in the movie and the movie was way bigger than they expected it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that makes sense, uh, so funny though. Yeah, I, I really don't think they gave that much thought into the movie with, like I, they didn't know the like what you just said, they didn't know the impact it would have on the wine community at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah I mean, if you make a movie now and somebody's like man, hazy ipas are just complete shit, I'm not fucking drinking. It's not gonna impact hazy ipa sales yeah, so you're el presidente.
Speaker 1:beer league how many beer leagues are there? 25 now. 25 now, yeah. Where are they based usually?
Speaker 2:So a large majority of them are in Washington. We have like five in Eastern Washington, eight or nine or 10 in Western Washington, and then we have one in Reno, one in Sacramento, one in Escondido, one in Flowood Mississippi, another in Dallas. Yeah kind of spread out pretty wide Boise, yeah, pretty wide. The heart of Beer League is here, and then Chelan is our very first club ever.
Speaker 1:Oh okay, Really no way yeah.
Speaker 2:I feel like.
Speaker 1:I heard about Beer League. I was in Santa Barbara. I heard about beer league Like I knew it was a thing that's funny there. I think part of it is, and I'm not a golfer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think part of it is like beer league is like such a broad term and there's, you know, there's beer league hockey, which is probably like the most famous beer league thing, and it's just like nobody owns that. It's just like if you play in beer league hockey, you're like in your thirties to fifties and the guys go out and you have a few beers afterwards kind of thing, and I think that kind of popularized the term. We did not. I learned about this years after we started beer league, Um, but when I've brought it up to other people they're like oh yeah, like beer league hockey or beer league softball is the other one.
Speaker 1:Oh right, yeah, I've heard about beer league softball yeah, and those are my dad was involved with that?
Speaker 2:I think, yeah, and it's my understanding beer league softball is. It's like, not a like company that does anything with these, but just like, basically everybody has agreed on hey, let's just like go play beer league softball and we're going to get fucked up and go try to drop balls. So the golf one's different than that. That started in Chelan in 2020, when Sam and I were living over there for a year and a half. The first thing out of, as we all remember, during the pandemic, everything was closed, even golf courses and fishing lakes. The first two things they opened were fishing and golfing.
Speaker 2:Oh, no way, yeah, cause they're outdoors, yeah, and so you couldn't like go into the clubhouse, yeah, but you could go like you basically like kind of one person going at a time and pay, and then they're like all these signs up of you know social distance, whatever, but you're outdoors. So what was the real risk of COVID on a golf course? Yeah, not high, Um, and so there were like eight of us and it was like Elijah, jake, houston, nate, me, sam, tito, um, I don't remember who was there the first day, but I think Elijah or Nate invited me and Sam and like hey, we're going to go play golf on this like this first Thursday afternoon. It's open after work. We're thinking of doing this like every week for the summer. We're like, yeah, sign us up, like anything, to go see people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sounds great.
Speaker 2:And so we went out and by I mean six weeks later I think there were probably 35 guys out on the course, guys and girls, and it was, I mean cause it's the only thing to go do to go see friends or go make friends. Yeah, and Shalanna had a huge influx of people move in, either like right before COVID and you couldn't really leave, or during COVID. So it kind of it worked out great. And that first year we did a year in tournament out at Alta Lake, which is like 45 minutes north of Chelan, and they have a little like old motel on site and you can rent it out, and so we everybody stayed there Friday night.
Speaker 2:We played nine holes Friday night, got like way too drunk around the campfire Friday and teed off at like seven, 30 or eight in the morning Saturday morning and all played just like the worst rounds of golf in our life. And from there it was, uh, yeah, just kind of growing from there. It's fun though, yeah, I mean I know you golf occasionally here and there. Now, right, no, no no, don't.
Speaker 1:I don't have any clubs or anything. All right, we're going to take a quick break for like 30 seconds. Sounds great, because the lighting is getting low, so I'm going to turn the ring light.
Speaker 2:Perfect Got to do that. We're going to come back to this conversation.
Speaker 1:Okay, and we're back. Um, yeah, dude, I so thing with me with golf. I have a story. Okay, all right, I'm gonna need a glass of wine for this.
Speaker 2:Um it sounds like I'm gonna need a glass of wine for this. Yeah, which?
Speaker 1:one. Do you want? Do you want the shingle back or the roti?
Speaker 2:uh, I'm gonna go to the shingle back while it's still in the mouth, and I'll let you pour it all right yeah, absolutely. I don't want to make any mistakes your resident sommelier?
Speaker 1:yeah, at the moment, here you are, yeah our other resident sommelier.
Speaker 2:He's out of town. Yeah, oh yeah, you know so you know I gotta substitute in, for Usually I would decant this so to get rid of sediment and stuff, but I don't have a decanter with me, so I was going to ask a question about the sediment, which, like, doesn't bother me at all, but let's go to the golf story first and then, if you want to give me information about sediment, we'll get there. Let's do it.
Speaker 1:So my golf story is I grew up so my dad and my brother were big golfers. To give a little backstory, my parents and my brother are very outdoorsy people. I am not really, and I grew up in Seattle. So every weekend like, oh, let's go hiking or let's go to this or that, I just wanted to hang out with my friends and play basketball usually, or do do something like that, or sometimes play video games, a lot of times too. Um, so my dad's like, oh, let's go golfing. And I was like, okay, I like the driving range and that's fun. Um, and I was pretty decent at it, and so like, cool, let's go, let's go to the golf course, let's go to the golf course.
Speaker 1:Um, so we didn't grow up with like a lot of money, so not saying sorry, dad, but like not saying he was poor, like he was like, oh, he's a poor guy. No, um, not like that at all. They just really watched their money and stuff like that. And so we never had like we would play like nine holes and not have a cart or anything and we just would be walking in Seattle. And so it's like you know, and usually I would be the caddy. Yeah, so I would carry the bags for like nine holes. And so for me not being a not very outdoorsy guy and for me carrying a bunch of bags for nine holes, I was like this is a really shit experience in your teens, when you're a teenager. Right, I was like this is a really shit experience in your teens, when you're a teenager right.
Speaker 1:You're just like, well, fuck this. Like this is stupid. I'm never going to do this again. I hate golf, and so I grew up just hating golf.
Speaker 2:I think that's fair. I think, as a teenager, getting into golf with your parents is not ideal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's. You know some people have different, like Jasmine, jazzy J, shout out Jazzy J, jazzy J, she was actually a. She has a different story about golf. She loves golf. She still does it all the time. Um, she was. She got a scholarship for golf, uh, Washington state university, like she was really good.
Speaker 1:Um and, like she was, at one point she was trying to go pro. Um, she is a really good golfer. We've had a lot of these conversations. I've been trying to I can see myself picking it up, honestly I can. It's just like there's so much money involved in getting your first clubs and going to the golf course is expensive. At this point, I'm just like, unless I get a good amount of like money that is, I could just, you know, do whatever with yeah, that's when I'll start golf.
Speaker 2:At this point, I think that I think that's fair golf is very. It can be very expensive I'm gonna go.
Speaker 2:The dogs are gonna sorry, the neighborhood cat loves to come um, but basically where I was going with that is so I grew up the same way. I grew up golfing my dad and my grandpa and my dad's brother and we would walk like we were. My dad did well for our family we had they had four kids and my mom was a stay-at-home mom. So, like same exact thing. We'd go walk the course and play here and there, like we weren't buying new clubs doing this kind of thing, and golf was way cheaper than it is now. These rounds now get expensive, but that's part of why we do beer league is. It's like nine whole rounds, 530 after work. Even if you're not very good at golf, you're picking it up yeah, super, like social group, and you're paying the twilight rates, which usually are, like you know, 20 to 30 bucks.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's not bad, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's not bad at all, and there's no, it's not like a five hour event, it's two and a half. You know it's like two, two and a half hours.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's fine, you're doing as much drinking as you're doing golfing and so it's, you know, it's fun to do it that way and, like a lot of the, a lot of the guys' wives come out who are like picking the game up, and it's like a good first time to go out and do it, cause you know, first off your husband's trying to teach you how to golf.
Speaker 1:He's probably not going to like yell at you in front of all his friends. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But that's kind of what's inspired the way we've done. It is like we want it to be. There's a competitive side of it where you can put money on the line, and there's a national pot and you know all of these ways that people can get paid out for doing it. But if you don't want to be a part of any of that, you don't have to pay into any of it. Oh, and so it's just kind of like casual. Try to like break the cycle of you know golf being too serious and you know too many dickheads out there yelling at you for taking too long, kind of thing. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Definitely. Oh, that's cool. Oh, I can definitely get down with that. And my dad does have an extra set of gloves or gloves clubs, clubs, maybe gloves too. Um, that you know he's offered to me like, oh, if you want to start golfing, like we can start together, I have an extra set. You know, I've been keeping here just randomly.
Speaker 2:Dude, you should do it. My clubs are like 13 years old.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I can't get. I can't get on board with buying new clubs, Cause my golf game is not getting like it's not improving enough that.
Speaker 1:I feel like I deserve new clubs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know, new clubs aren't going to make me that much better.
Speaker 1:So I mean my um, my girlfriend's family really big in the golf, like especially her dad, her brother, brother-in-law is into golf Um, not as much as her dad or her brother, but like her dad is just like golf fanatic. And then, like when I hear about like what their strokes are for, like the course I I put it up against like my brother or my dad's you know scores growing up, you know, and I was just like, wow, that's like really good.
Speaker 2:Like.
Speaker 1:I never saw. I never like when my dad was like below a hundred, he was stoked or below 90. Like he was. So stoked.
Speaker 2:I do. That's something like it's like 75% of golfers don't break. I want to say a hundred, maybe it's 90, but it's something like 50% donor break a hundred. That it's. That's. Most golfers are in the exact range you're describing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd struck like 200 for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Which I did try a little bit last summer. I was with Jasmine and Sam and Sam is Jasmine's boyfriend, basically husband at this point, but um, so they're both really big in the golf. I went with them. They're like, hey, you want to come to the golf course? Like we're just they're there with a few other friends that I knew and I was like, yeah, sure, let's go. Like I'll just have a, I'll drive the cart and have some course lights, like that's what I'm gonna do. Um, if I can swing the club, just to see how I am, yeah, from like no practice since way back when, I'll try and just like slice the ball like good just slice it so hard.
Speaker 1:I was like, yeah, I could do this. And so I was like, okay, trying to remember my technique. And like, my grandpa was a like I think he's a golf instructor uh, one of the golf courses in santa barbara, for like, and he worked at that course. He's a golf manager at one of the golf courses in Santa Barbara and he worked at that course. He was a golf manager there for years and years and years. And so he taught me growing up how to putt and how to drive. And so I was like, okay, so remember what you taught me. And so I did my stuff and just sliced it directly to the left in the trees.
Speaker 2:That's technically called a hook A hook. The slice is to the right in in the trees. That's technically a hook a hook. The slices to the right to the right.
Speaker 1:Well you're you're right-handed right I am right-handed, yeah, so I sliced it twice and I hooked it once.
Speaker 2:Yes, I got to drop one bit of knowledge on you in the podcast, it's all. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1:See, not a golf guy but like I do love driving driving ranges, like I love top golf, that's a blast, it's expensive, but it's I.
Speaker 2:That's why it's like the most popular golf business in the world right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's fun for everyone. I love driving ranges in general. I think Just because you can just like hit it, get the next one hit it, you know there's no counting.
Speaker 2:There's no like measuring up to how you did on that hole, it's just Totally.
Speaker 1:It's fun. Do you follow Bob Does Sports or?
Speaker 2:those guys. Yeah, if you have an Instagram account that follows a single golf page you will have. Bob Does Sports. Rammed down your throat for eternity, he will. Yeah, they're great, they're funny. I'm in their peak market 35, and I golf. That's who they advertise to.
Speaker 1:So that's you. So you definitely have seen their stuff yeah.
Speaker 2:My friends. Actually, last or a week and a half ago we were over in Chelan, did a four day golf trip with like 12 guys that we've known forever. It's the first time we've started this annual golf trip thing. And of course, by night two, they made me sit down in the living room and watch a full YouTube episode. Bob does sports. I don't watch YouTube episodes of anything. Yeah, like I go on YouTube maybe twice a year and apparently this is a whole world that I'm just not familiar with and they love it and I'm like, so we're literally just watching four other dudes play nine holes of golf and they ever at the tee box or a hole they would spin a wheel and it would land on a food or a drink. Yeah, and it was like, oh, by the end of this hole, the four of you have to have eaten a whole bag of Cheerios, yeah, how is?
Speaker 2:this I don't. Sometimes I don't understand the world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's one where it's like okay, the second that you drive you have to run down, slam this white claw, go to your ball, hit it a second time and go to the side and you have to muscle down like a Taco, Bell taco or something like that, and go back and you have to have a certain amount of time. It's just seeing what the peak human athlete body can do right.
Speaker 2:Guys like these, I mean Bob does sports crew, they're basically Olympians, they're basically Olympians, but they've done a lot with their platform too. They're killing it. They have done it so well. And that's the one thing with the Beer League Instagram, because every week when you go play, there's suggested drinking games. Obviously, we don't like forest drinking down people's.
Speaker 2:So but you know it's like boozy bunkers, thirsty trees, and so we'll put out these videos where it's. You know, me and a handful of guys out there and you hit in the bunker. You have to drink, and so I might the easiest thing to get on a golf course to throw out people with shots of fireball. And so it's just like me pulling up to a bunker and being like boozy bunkers, bitch and throwing a fireball at them. They have to chug it in the bunker before they hit the shot.
Speaker 1:Those are awesome. I love those.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'm like, I mean Bob Does Sports, like opened the door for this to be popular in, Instagram worthy. And then every time one of these videos starts like doing really well, just all these dudes tagging bob does sports and like do 30 guys need to tag bob does sports?
Speaker 1:and do you really think they're looking when you tag them? Yeah, probably not.
Speaker 2:Yeah they're not gonna be your friend, guys. Bob has plenty of opportunities to be friends yeah, dude his um.
Speaker 1:Have you seen his like videos of like food? Yeah, reviewing food his.
Speaker 2:His personal account is bigger than the bob does sports account.
Speaker 1:It is just because his personality is yeah, and you could listen to the guy talk for hours yeah, and now he's sponsored by wendy's. Yeah, that was. I saw that one.
Speaker 2:I'm like that's good that's a good sponsorship and his, his sponsorship stuff like, even though you know it's paid for content, yeah, with like the draft kings and and Windies and stuff. It appeals to such a bigger market than golf itself. Yeah it does. It's kind of fun to see him do well with this, because he seems like a pretty solid guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's awesome. I would love to hang out with him at some point, at any point.
Speaker 2:I think that's why he does so well because everybody watches him and I, I'd like to hang out. Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah at some point.
Speaker 1:Who knows? Maybe we'll have him the pod drinking some wine with us at some point.
Speaker 2:Maybe people will see you guys like us and think I'd like to hang out with them too.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, for now it's just us hanging out, so it's barely started by you, or who is the cause you were talking about it was really starting in Chelan. Yeah, it's gotten really big over the past, well, I guess since COVID.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it was started by a collective group of us, basically the first group that came out and did it. So me, Sam Nate Spangler, Elijah Larson, Jake Taves, Houston, Stodge Hill. That was the kind of original ownership group. Tito was out, Tito Nunez was also out there the first time and then after that first year when we turned it into a business A lot of local. Chelan people.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, it was just in Chelan. Yeah, it was fun.
Speaker 2:Well, and it was a good, it was a solid group to kind of start the idea with, because nate is a software developer so he built the whole website platform that we use. Yeah, jake was being our coo. Um, he, or elijah houston, was our golf guy. I mean, houston played in college, played some professional golf. He knows golf better than it, dude, houston is so much. Yeah, it's crazy, dude, that guy's got a swing the guy is talented yeah, he's, and now they're running the cove the out in chilan.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the like game and wine yeah, wine, yeah the uh, the wine bar with wine and games yeah, which is awesome?
Speaker 2:which? And brooke and ashton, both and sagio or manor sagio and did all their wine stuff for a while bars, I recall yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:No, they have a really dope wine bar now yeah, I haven't gotten sick. I've been there a few times okay, cool.
Speaker 2:I imagine they have a pretty good selection of wine, pretty well curated they have a solid.
Speaker 1:Uh, yeah, they definitely have a solid selection right now, like they're not staying. I mean, they they have a decent amount of chelan. It looks like they're just going for quality wines, um, that are washington and also international, which is nice, because the town of chelan if you are listening to this and you know of this town in chelan, um, no knock to the town, because I love it.
Speaker 2:If you don't know what Chelan is, it's basically like Tahoe but better. Basically Tahoe but better yeah.
Speaker 1:And not as many people as Tahoe has, which is nice, but it is a very small selection anywhere you go in Chelan of just Chelan wines, which is fine. But any great wine country always has its wine bar or its place of uh gathering that has a selection of international, um, international wines or beer or you know good culinary aspect, um, and so it's really cool for them to open that up and also have local Schlen wines and international stuff too, and not only just local Schlen but like Washington state good Washington state wines, like they have my buddy, seth Kitsky there, upside down wines, which him and I've been going back and forth a lot about doing a pod together. We need to do one. It's, it's definitely do, but, um, our schedules just haven't matched up yet. So, with him and he's an awesome guy, he makes insane wines Um, that's my next wine club. Nice, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:He's, he's awesome. How many are you at right now?
Speaker 1:I don't want to say, uh, under 10, I'm definitely under 10. I do keep it very low because I like a lot of variety and I like curating things. So I I buy through a lot of, I buy through other people. So a lot of times, but I do have a solid amount of wine clubs. I mean, it's part of your job, it is part of my job.
Speaker 1:So you to keep it, you got to keep it. But yeah, most of them are in Washington, but I have a few wine clubs in California too, from Santa Barbara, santa Barbara.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what are your favorite West Coast wine cities to go visit?
Speaker 1:and drink at. I would say Los Olivos slash. Santa Ynez Valley is my favorite by far. Um, and there's also sonoma, which is like healdsburg, so it was an area, but healdsburg is a town. Uh, sebastopol is cool. It's not as pretty as healdsburg is, but sebastopol has like packs, and they have a bunch of breweries around there too and other wineries. Um, but my, for the whole west coast, I would probably say los levos, san janez, but that's because I worked there and yeah that's where my wine knowledge started and I just absolutely I think it is a very underrated area.
Speaker 1:I kind of want it to stay that way. Yeah, they're doing great Numbers wise, numbers, wise are fine. Like this is basically LA's wine country. Um, if you don't go to Temecula, yeah, and they have better wine than Temecula. Good, sorry, guys.
Speaker 2:But I do. I don't think that's true.
Speaker 1:Temecula is going to be too mad at you for saying that. I know some people will be upset, but yeah, they just have a better—I mean, it depends on what you're looking for, right? So it's like I like light-bodied wines that are very food-friendly, drinkable. I like the culinary aspect. There's a lot of restaurants around San Ynez that I just love, love and they do an amazing job every time, like sy kitchen, uh, bells and los alamos pico um, they all are, they do an amazing job.
Speaker 1:There's a few that I'm forgetting right now, but, um, it's just like, if you're looking for a great experience with wine, food, olive oil like local grown olive oil, you know, like that, that kind of stuff. And Los Levos is a is a old horse town, like it's old railroad and horses a lot of horse ranches out there, a lot of beautiful landscapes to look at. So I just love it. The vibe is amazing. It's definitely right up my. So I just love it. Uh, the vibe is amazing, it's definitely right up my alley. Um, I love it. But yeah, that's for the whole west coast as far as I know, so far, like I honestly haven't spent a lot of time in oregon so I can't say for oregon, um, but I heard mcmahon bill's pretty dope yeah, I, that's the only one that even really comes to mind.
Speaker 2:We're gonna, it seems, more spread out than california and washington. I mean washington west coast, obviously, it's pretty much woodenville, yeah, and then you have the like red mountain. Columbia valley is huge, but yeah and yeah walla walla definitely does have the culinary aspect.
Speaker 1:I'm very sad that Kinglet is not a restaurant anymore. Oh, it breaks my damn heart.
Speaker 2:I went there last year.
Speaker 1:I went there last year for my birthday tasting menu. Like a shout out to Chauncey Smollett he's over in New York, probably at a Michelin star restaurant by now. Like he's just like the best Psalm. Yeah, at some point, like I'll get a chef on this podcast and we'll talk about Michelin star restaurant by now. Like he's just like the best Psalm. Um, yeah, at some point, like I'll get a chef on this podcast and we'll talk about Michelin stuff and why they're not in the Northwest. I don't know why.
Speaker 2:I've heard you've had some connections to chefs. You might know a few here and there's a few, there's a few I know about, and so yeah, we'll see.
Speaker 1:You know it's. It's in the works. You know, um, I'm a big foodie. My girlfriend was a private chef for a certain amount of time and she works in restaurants currently as a director, so I'll definitely have some chefs on the spot at some point. I'm excited about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that'd be fun. I mean the knowledge of that style of chef. That level would fit well with your knowledge base and the level you can talk about wine yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:There's the one chef I really want on the pod, so I'm trying to get him on, so we'll see yeah, it's just hard booking with gordon ramsey, like he's pretty, pretty hard.
Speaker 1:His schedule is wild, your schedule is wild yeah, I know it's crazy, dude, you're looking at like 2027, but we'll see, yeah how's gordon ramsey feel about wine, like you know um well, thanks for coming on. The pod man, I think that's our time. But cool, you know, cheers uh, beer league. All the links, uh, everything uh for beer league is in the description there. Do you guys have website?
Speaker 2:yeah, beer leaguegolf and beer league at beer leaguegolf on socials. And yeah, play golf, drink beer, win money let's go, maybe throw some wine in there for sure, hey um thank you guys.
Speaker 1:Everything will be in the description for beer league golf go, go check it out If you enjoy golf, if you enjoy beer or wine or drinking, check that out, enjoy it.
Speaker 2:Awesome. I appreciate it. Thank you, love you, brother. Love you too, you.
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