MasterStroke with Monica Enand & Sejal Pietrzak

Anna Maria Ponzi: Pinot Girl -Elevating a Legacy from the Willamette Valley to the World

• Ana Maria Ponzi • Season 1 • Episode 29

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Join host Monica Enand and guest host Ned Renzi as they welcome Anna Maria Ponzi, second-generation vintner former CEO of Ponzi Vineyards and author of Pinot Girl, for an in-depth conversation about the evolution of Ponzi Vineyards.

Maria shares her family’s inspiring journey, from pioneering Oregon’s Willamette Valley wine industry in 1969 to their landmark sale to the Bollinger Family of Champagne, France.
 She reflects on transforming a modest vineyard into a global powerhouse alongside her sister, Luisa, while preserving tradition and embracing innovation.

Explore the realities of running a family business, the challenges of winemaking in a changing climate, and Maria’s transition to community work and personal growth. With insights into family dynamics, the science of winemaking, and the power of intentional living, this episode is a masterclass in resilience and vision.

If you’d like to support Maria Ponzi’s nonprofit, Anthony’s Circle, which is dedicated to supporting foster youth in the Portland area, please visit
Anthony’s Circle.

For a deeper dive into Maria Ponzi’s incredible journey, check out her memoir,
Pinot Girl: A Family. A Region. An Industry. @amponzi.com a heartfelt book details her experiences growing up in one of Oregon’s pioneering wine families and their legacy of revolutionizing Pinot Noir in the Willamette Valley

Thank you to our sponsor Luminous Sound Studios
State of the art recording studios for music, production, audio-post and all things sound!  -  Book your session today info@luminoussound.com





Georgianna Moreland - Executive Producer | Managing Editor;
Matt Stoker - Editor


Ned Renzi:

Something must have went right with your successful sale to Bollinger.

Maria Ponzi:

The time felt right and the buyer came to us and it was a champagne house that was very new to this region and we thought this could take Oregon to the next level in terms of featuring sparkling wines in our region. So you know, yes, it was a great sale and we benefited financially from it, but we also did it with intention that this would be a great thing for the future of the wine industry.

Georgianna Moreland:

This is Masterstroke with Monica Enid and Sejo Petruzak, and welcome to our special guest host, ned Renzi. Conversations with founders, ceos and visionary leaders in technology and beyond. This episode of Masterstroke is brought to you by Luminous Sound, where audio excellence is amplified. With three state-of-the-art studios, we handle it all, from sound design, recording, mixing, mastering, voiceovers, audiobooks to ADR. For over 25 years, top artists like Lady Gaga and Ed Sheeran and the biggest brands in the world have trusted us to create music for TV, radio and film. Led by four-time Grammy winner, trey Nagella, our award-winning team is here to bring your vision to life. Visit us at LuminousSoundcom to book your session today.

Monica Enand :

We have a really great guest and I want to just introduce this by saying not everybody knows, but I'm from Oregon, that is my home state, and it is a prominent wine producing region. Many people actually know that now, especially for its Pinot Noir, but it wasn't. Back in the I guess, late 60s, early 70s it was not. There was not a big wine producing region like California. There were a few key pioneers that came to Oregon, and those included were Dick and Nancy Ponzi. They were key figures in this movement. They founded Ponzi Vineyards in 1970, and that work helped get Oregon on the map as a notable wine producing region, and we're so excited to welcome my good friend, maria Ponzi, who, until 2021, when she sold the business served as the president of Ponzi Vineyards. So, maria, I am so happy that you are here.

Maria Ponzi:

Thank you, it's my pleasure. Thank you for being a part of your show. I'm really excited about chatting with you, so thanks for having me.

Monica Enand :

Well, thank you. And Maria is a second-generation Vintner. She grew up on the family vineyard and worked every aspect of the family business. She got her degree in journalism from the University of Oregon, she worked in Boston's publishing industry and then she returned to the rural family business, which I can't imagine what that was like in 1991. And she and my other friend, her sister Louisa, joined forces and not only did they continue their parents' legacy and this I find, you know, just fascinating but they blazed the path for growing path for the growing tide of female vintners. And I think Luisa was a rare female winemaker, right, isn't that true, maria? For?

Maria Ponzi:

sure.

Monica Enand :

Definitely from an annual production of 10,000 to over 50,000 cases and increased the vineyard holdings from 20 to 140 acres In 2021,. She and her sister successfully negotiated the sale of the winery to the esteemed French house Jacques Bollinger of Champagne France. I don't know, did I say all that right?

Maria Ponzi:

Yes, well done Bollinger, yes, boll of Champagne France.

Monica Enand :

I don't know, did I say all that right? Yes, well done Bollinger, yes, okay, sorry. So what an amazing career, an amazing run you had.

Maria Ponzi:

Thank you. Yeah, it's been amazing. It's part of my DNA. I cannot even begin to try to get away from it. So, yeah, I'm definitely immersed in it, still today actually. But yeah, it's been an amazing time.

Ned Renzi:

Maria, I spent most of my career in the tech world and I think there's this fantasy of people in the tech world that when they hit it big they're going to buy this vineyard and have this kind of cushy life. And then I've known a couple of people that actually do it and it's a really hard life. It's a really hard business. It's a very rural lifestyle that most people don't have an appreciation for. Love to hear your experience on taking over Ponzi from your parents Like what went as expected, what didn't, what were surprises.

Maria Ponzi:

Yeah, I appreciate that, ned. I meet these folks almost on a daily basis. I feel like you know the romantic dream of living in the countryside and drinking wine all day, you know, upon your vineyard. But yeah, truly it's a tremendous amount of work and, to be honest, it's a very complex business and that's something that I think most people don't even consider right. They do think about living in the country and how lovely that will be, but if you're actually going to play wine for real, you actually do need to know a bit about how to operate it, and it is quite complex and that's something that, as one of the early wineries, we really had to learn on the job, to be honest. So there were no, as Monica said, there was nobody around to ask how do we do this and how do I get my numbers to work? And my P&L just doesn't seem to shape up ever, ever, and the reality is it will never really shape up, my friends. But yeah, I grew up in the country.

Maria Ponzi:

I have to say, as I reflect back, I think one of the, you know, just surprisingly positive things is that my folks didn't plant us too far away from the city of Portland, so we were just about 30 minutes southwest of Portland at that time. This is like 1969. And that was actually pretty intentional because they wanted us to be close to the city so that we could eventually sell the wine to the restaurants and to the retailers and the markets and so forth. And so we weren't, you know, an hour and a half away from the city, and I think that was pretty savvy of them right from the beginning, so right from the get-go, even though they were trailblazers and, as Monica mentioned, there were really there were no wine grapes here in the Willamette Valley when we moved here, in fact, that's the whole story is that we were we were told that this was an absurd idea. You know, we got it all wrong and we should head back down on I-5 south to Los Gatos, which is where I was born, because that's where you're planting wine grapes in the United States. But you know, fortunately, they they were very stubborn and determined to make this happen United States. But you know, fortunately they were very stubborn and determined to make this happen.

Maria Ponzi:

And, yeah, today our wine industry has really just grown tremendously. In, you know, less than 60 years, we've got over 1,200 wineries in our state, we've got like 16 different AVAs and we're still predominantly producing Pinot Noir, the most part. We do make a fair amount of Chardonnay, but the industry has just grown tremendously and it's always, you know, it always makes me feel, yeah, a tremendous amount of pride to have been at the very beginning. Ten acres of vines that we had to plant and, yes, I was four years old and my sister was younger than that, my brother was about six, so that was the strong and mighty crew for many years was pretty much, you know, expected to partake in every aspect, from planting and working in the vineyard to working in the cellar and the bottling line, and then eventually was fortunate to find that there was this end part which was pouring wine in something, I mean, we call it a tasting room today, but you know that again was the garage with two barrels and a little door on the top and we threw linen on the top and that was the bar, but hosting people.

Maria Ponzi:

And so I really developed a love for the connection with people over the years and hospitality and of course then sales and marketing and so forth, and so that kind of started my career path.

Ned Renzi:

Something must have went right with your successful sale to Bollinger. Maybe tell us a little bit about that.

Maria Ponzi:

Yeah, well, you know this has been years and this is a family business. So I, you know I was I became the CEO, president oh, I don't know Probably in that position for about 15 years or so, and at that point it was just really my sister, louisa, and I that were running the operation. My older brother had left the business, my folks had completely backed away and so, you know, for those final whatever it was almost 20 years, louisa and I were really at the helm and, as Monica said, it was a little bit of a lonely ride only because there were no women really in those positions. Louisa was truly a pioneer of being one of the very, very few women, if not the only woman.

Maria Ponzi:

Lynn Penrash was another young woman at the time making wine here in the region, but you know, you just didn't see women in the industry. And so, negotiating a deal with not only men from France during the pandemic because the negotiation literally started in the fall of it and feeling like we really got, uh, uh, yeah, we got a great deal, we were able to hold on to the family vineyards, which was very important, so we could maintain our you know, our, our, you know maintain our kind of our legacy, in a way of of being farmers first and um and yet letting the business part go and see what an international company could do with it.

Monica Enand :

So yeah, it was a ride. What an incredible, amazing journey. So, Maria, we talked to a lot of founders, executives, but you're our first guest that to be on the show. That is part of a multi-generational family business and you know we were wondering. So you're taking over as president and CEO, was it? It's just like HBO's Succession right, yeah exactly.

Maria Ponzi:

Yeah.

Monica Enand :

And, and you know, was it like you know you identified with Shiv or Roman? I don't know. No, I mean, but I am curious, like we hear lots of stories about families and it's a messy thing.

Georgianna Moreland:

Yes.

Monica Enand :

I know you work amazingly well together. Did you always know I want to take this over, or did you? Was there a?

Maria Ponzi:

time when you thought, gosh, I want to run away and go do something completely different. Oh, absolutely, I wanted to run away. Almost every day, you know, I was. I was the kid who was like, please, I just want to be a cheerleader, I just want to be on my dance team, I want to be a Girl Scout, I want to do anything that be, you know, be on this farm.

Maria Ponzi:

But I had to. You know, I had to help, and these were early days and there weren't, there weren't people that you could hire to step in. I mean, it just simply wasn't that way. And so, yeah, I, I, I, you know graduated from high school, immediately went down to University of Oregon and graduated there in three years, because I, just I was restless. And then I moved. I literally, you know, looked at a paper map and I was like, where can I go? That's the farthest point from this place of Oregon. And it was Boston, massachusetts. And there I was with my little you know suit and my little briefcase, depending, you know, thinking all I want is an office job. I just don't want to be in the vineyard anymore, I don't want to be in a dark, cold cellar anymore.

Maria Ponzi:

That was kind of the turning point for me because, you know, I was like, okay, either I go back home and pretty much get locked up to this family business or I, you know, continue to spread my wings. But I wasn't really loving the work and I knew how how much my parents needed support. You know, at this time this is the early 90s and so if you look back to Oregon wine history this is sort of like post, when Domaine Duran moved in and Domain Serene had kind of just showed up and so there was a lot of money, you know, finally, really, and commitment coming into the Valley. That was really starting to give us, all you know, credibility, because prior to that, you know, we were just, we were just, you know, small businesses trying to get it going, and so there was a lot of that going on. We were getting incredible scores. Ponzi in particular, was getting written up across the world, frankly, for having some of the best wines, best Pinot Noirs in the world that would vibe with some of the best Burgundy. So I knew things were happening and they needed probably the extra hand.

Maria Ponzi:

So I came back and, yeah, I did, I kind of got locked up, but I have to say that my folks were incredibly gracious and generous about sort of passing the baton on to both me and my sister. You know, louisa was winemaking and production. She took the helm of that away from my father and then I really took over the marketing and sales component for my mother and then eventually, you know, moved into the leadership positions. But it was a moment of like OK, I'm back and now it needs to be ours.

Maria Ponzi:

Family businesses can be very, very difficult and I have to say that I think that we in particular were fortunate to have parents who were willing to pass, you know, and didn't want to get in the way, and in the end I just find that, you know, as I age, just an incredibly generous and selfless act. And I'm sure it was very difficult, but we never saw that. It was quite the opposite, we were being very encouraged and supported by them, and so we kind of, you know, and then we did, we, we made it our own and and and it was a blast.

Monica Enand :

Well, I first of all, yes, hats off to your parents, cause we, ned and I, talked about the fact that when people have to pass things on and leave it's, it's so incredibly hard to detach your identity and your self-esteem and everything that gets wrapped up in in in that.

Monica Enand :

So, like hats off to them, but hats off to you and Louisa, because you know, I don't know if it's like Andrew Carnegie who said, like shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in a few generations or whatever, but your children, who I know, and they're amazing people, I know both of your children and they saw you not just steward, you weren't just stewards of this asset that your parents created. Right, you could have. Then you could have said, oh, they were the value creators, and now we are the stewards and we have to work on preservation. Or, you know, steward this along. You could have, but you didn't. You said, hey, like there's an opportunity here, we can grow this thing and make it amazing. And the combination of your two talents really enabled you to soar like that, and that is also unusual in family businesses yeah.

Maria Ponzi:

And I think that is something that was just another kind of grace of luck, but that Louisa, my sister, had absolutely no interest in marketing or sales, hated it, hated getting up in front of a crowd and talking, and I loved it and I hated. I was terrible in science and biology and the lab I mean oh my, anything but and so we naturally found paths, and so I think it was never competitiveness you know, you go back to Succession, that show and we never had that kind of rivalry like one of us wanting the other person's jobs. We were very much like you're in your lane and I'm in my lane, and then when we had to, you know, make big decisions together. Fortunately, that's where we were very in alignment in terms of growth and not just growth, but I think it was also to continue sort of this innovation and this kind of pioneering spirit that our folks had set up, and we were able to do really remarkable things. Like you know, we started a new AVA, which is an American viticulture area for folks who may not know what that is, but it defines a region within a region, and it's very difficult to do that.

Maria Ponzi:

We released wines that had never been released, like Arnese and Dolcetto, which were Italian varietals. People thought again, what are we doing with those varieties? But actually they turned out to be successful. And then you know just the winery we did one of the first Gravity Flow winery facilities here, which allowed the wines to be even made in a more gentle way and in a larger volume. So we weren't just making two barrels or four barrels, but we could make as you mentioned, we could make tens of thousands of cases of wine, but they all tasted as if they were in very small batches. So those were innovations.

Maria Ponzi:

And then, of course, the one that I'm personally most proud of is that we were able to design and build out a beautiful tasting room. That was the first of its kind in 2012. I think my husband and I designed our tasting room and it was the first to like introduce folks to sitting down in the Willamette Valley somewhere in wine country and actually, you know, having service come to the table and telling the story, and it was more like it wasn't to replicate what was happening in California, but it was really to have an opportunity to showcase and present the Willamette Valley as a wine region and really just continuing that sort of you know, what more can we do? What more can we do and how much more can we elevate the region?

Maria Ponzi:

And I think it kind of goes back to the decision to sell and to who we sold to, because we weren't in any way desperate, you know, it wasn't that. It was the time felt right. And the buyer came to us and it was a champagne house. You know that was very new to this region and we thought, you know, this could take Oregon to the next level in terms of featuring sparkling wines in our region. So you know, yes, it was a great sale and we benefited financially from it, but we also did it with intention that this would be a great thing for the future of the wine industry.

Ned Renzi:

Maria, in our industry we kind of joke. You know who the pioneers are because they're the ones with arrows in their backs. And I sort of look at this you know, being this ambassador for Oregon nationally, internationally, and just sort of making it into this destination, which it never was previously, you really were pioneering. What was that like and what did you learn?

Maria Ponzi:

were pioneering. What was that like and what did you learn? Yeah, I mean, it was just really difficult, you know. And I often think now about how I used to present the wines. You know, if I was, wherever I was Tokyo or New York, chicago, whatever it was that I was always, you know, the first was an introduction of Oregon or even like the United States and like the West Coast, you know. So I was like I had to teach that part first.

Maria Ponzi:

I had to educate folks first on that and like why the Willamette Valley and what about the Willamette Valley? And then we had to talk about Pinot Noir because really in the very early days nobody knew this varietal Most folks were drinking. If they were drinking fine wines in the 70s it was for the most part it was, you know, cabernet. Cabernet blends out of California or Bordeaux's from France, but this grape varietal was unknown. So I'd have to spend a bunch of time talking about that varietal and why it works where we are, and I always say you know, and then I might get a minute in about Ponzi. You know, I might get a minute in to talk about my brand, but it was really just talking about, as you said, and really being the ambassador for the state and the region, and so I feel a tremendous kind of still today this like ownership, in a strange kind of awkward way, that I talk more about that than I do about brand.

Maria Ponzi:

And you know, there was, yeah, hey, I had a lot of fun. You know you talk about the arrows, but I kind of enjoyed that. I liked kind of taking the hits because the hits made me work harder, right, you know, when I was in Santa Barbara and people would tell me again, this is late, like this is in the 90s or 2000s, what are you doing in Santa Barbara? We make beautiful Pinot Noir. You have no place here, and they would literally throw my wine bottle, you know, down the drain while I'm there and I thought, well, that was rude.

Maria Ponzi:

But then it was like, okay, we got more work to do, you know so then you just go in harder. And you know so, then you just you just go in harder and you know French restaurants that would not even begin to allow you to open your wines and um, and then going back with brown bags and I'd be like, okay, let's just blind taste, you know, and just not having that. I, it was not. I was not able to be um shy. I had to have courage and be fearless, and fortunately I kind of thrive in that arena, so it worked out for me. But man, yeah, there was a lot of arrows and my folks took a ton of them, a ton of them, for sure there was always an added layer of all of these fearless uh things that you have to do.

Monica Enand :

But there's always an added layer of being a woman, and we've talked about you being a woman trailblazer. Has it gotten better in the wine industry? I assume there's more now.

Maria Ponzi:

And I mean, yes, it's death. Oh my goodness, yes, it's gotten so much better. There's, there's actually a women in wine organization now, and you know there must be I don't know a thousand members, and it blows my mind, um, but I do often think that, um, you know, not that it's been said a lot, but I think by Louisa and I, being in the industry for so long, you know we were very intentional about bringing women in, you know, for positions in my area, and Louisa was very specific about always trying to find women to bring into the cellar over harvest time, women to bring into the cellar over harvest time. And, and you know, and to be honest, you know, some of them didn't make it. Because it is really hard, physical work, I mean, it is really exhausting work and even at a larger facility like ours, was it's moving pallets around, it's using, you know, it's just, it's, it's a lot of work. Punch down is not easy. I mean, as, as you said, Nat the early part.

Ned Renzi:

You know it sounds romantic until day two.

Maria Ponzi:

But reality sets in, reality sets in. It's not quite as so. I think we were very yeah, we were very intentional about always looking for women to introduce this industry to, and now it's gotten a little bit more open and I think there are more women winemakers in our state than anywhere else. So that's really been fun. Yeah, I mean it's still small, you know, we're still talking little amounts of folks, but I think that it's changing.

Ned Renzi:

So that's good to see. Maria, tell us about your keynote talk, the Four Ounce Four.

Maria Ponzi:

Yeah, well, thank you. So after the sale, you know again, you start to feel as Monica expressed, you know, that you have this kind of loss of identity when you've been doing something for so long, for decades. And I was sort of, you know, sitting there wondering, well, what have I gotten out of my whatever 40 years of wine? What about it, you know? And I really started reflecting on this idea of wine appreciation and how our wine community lives in a certain way, and I think it's because of wine.

Maria Ponzi:

I've used already on this interview here the word intentional several times and I think that that's ingrained in the wine industry. When you're producing really beautiful wines, you are required to be intentional and thoughtful and to treat what you're producing with a tremendous amount of respect. And I realized that when I pour wine I only pour myself about four ounces. I don't fill my glass to eight ounces or even six ounces. I really enjoy a small amount of wine in my glass so that I can really appreciate it and I can enjoy the flavors and the aromatics.

Maria Ponzi:

And that is a wine. That's because of a wine life and then I took it into life in general and how in our culture we tend to be. So? I don't know, we're just tend to be over consumptive and excessive in a lot of our, in a lot of what we do in our daily habits, you know, and I wanted to kind of bring us back to this idea of balance and, you know, just taking things a little bit slower and being more thoughtful and more intentional. So the four ounce pour is really about that. It's about how to live a more meaningful life with greater intention. I know growing up it was so important to us to have that table, the table time, which always had a bottle of wine in the center of it, and it's something I want to share with other people because I think we're losing connection.

Ned Renzi:

That's a great message. You know, on this identity that you touched on and Monica also touched on, you know, right now I'm actively working with two of my CEOs who are exiting their companies and they're trying to decide what they do for their next act. Right, one's a more successful exit, one's kind of not so great exit, but it's kind of freeing the founder up to move potentially to another continent and really lay down new roots, pick their next stack and decide what to do. Like, maybe tell us a little bit about what your process was like for, how you thought about your next stack. And then also, I know you know you have a book coming up and some other things going on. Maybe tell us about that as well.

Maria Ponzi:

As business owners or just executives, we are sort of in a bubble of always thinking ahead. We're very driven, we tend to be very driven people. We tend to be somewhat impatient sometimes. Right, it's all about the next, the next, and I think, when that has disappeared, it's incredibly shocking. You don't get the phone call the next and I think, when that is when that has disappeared, it's incredibly shocking to this, right, you don't get the phone call the next morning. There's no text, there's no emails. It's alarming and you feel like you kind of fell off a cliff. And yet, and it felt like that for me. And then there was a moment when I went wait a minute, let's let's kind of embrace this and take a second to like bring it all back inside and really reflect on who you are. And that is tricky too.

Maria Ponzi:

But I think, if you give yourself the grace of time, of which I did, I was also very I found myself to be very vulnerable with my tight friendship circles, not to everyone, but to a lot of the girlfriends, in particular that who know me well and sharing, you know, kind of my vulnerability and and that was, you know, that wasn't my, my deal. I was, I was the one I always know what's going on. So being, I think, patient with yourself and being slightly vulnerable and and being okay with that helps to unlock this other side. And I think you know, trust me, man, I had a lot of tears. I was feeling pretty low. You know, I felt like not unless my business, but I lost my family connection, my sister. It was my business partner, I mean it was. It was sort of a major moment, right. But you hit bottom and everyone says that you sort of hit this moment of bottom and then you kind of re rebirth and you find yourself again.

Maria Ponzi:

I had just finished a book, so it's called Pinot Girl, and so I released that book, um, which was I've been some, I've been working on it for 10 years. It's a, a memoir, so it wasn't like it just happened. And then I really started digging myself into the community more. And you know it's amazing, right, you sit on boards as you're working your careers and you're doing everything, and you sit on those boards and you try to give them as much time as possible. But, like, what can happen when you don't have a full-time job and all that stress on you, how you can give to nonprofits and all these other trade organizations.

Maria Ponzi:

Man, I think I was on like five at one point and I went okay, I got to back down on that and be more intentional, but I started a nonprofit over that first year. That had nothing to do with wine, it had to do with supporting foster youth and educating them in high school so we could increase the graduation rate. Because I was so tired of seeing homeless issues and addiction issues on the streets of Portland and I was like we got to get in front of this problem. And so that has happened and it's tremendous. So just like giving yourself back to community, not just your industry, but maybe even your community, the other community that you live in and how to support others, because I think we all have great talents beyond running our businesses and we just need to unlock them.

Ned Renzi:

Maria, what's the name of your nonprofit?

Maria Ponzi:

Anthony's Circle and Anthony's Circle. I founded it with a couple girlfriends and the intention is to bring a full-time coach or navigator into the state high schools so that there is someone with foster youth on a 20, you know, basically 24-7. They're available on the weekends as well, if needed to really support foster youth, who many people don't really know much about. But their trauma is very, very intense. Mental health issues are extreme. Most of them will. If they even do graduate and in Oregon there's it's a horrible, it's like a 30% rate of graduation. If they do graduate, they usually find themselves incarcerated, addicted and without homes, without jobs and without a further higher education. So I was doing the research with my girlfriends. We just like we need to. We need to do something. This is our city, this is our community and foster youth in particular. Learn more about that. Where can they go online? Anthonycirclecom.

Maria Ponzi:

And we would love your support.

Ned Renzi:

Yeah maybe Georgiana. If you could put that in the show notes, that'd be awesome.

Maria Ponzi:

Yep.

Monica Enand :

Absolutely. You've also left out that you are now the director of the Center for Wine Education at Linfield University and the endowed chair of wine studies, so taking leadership and supporting the next generation and doing that as well.

Maria Ponzi:

Yeah, that kind of came up last year. I was doing all this work and having a lot of fun with my keynote and then Linfield called and said, hey, would you like to come be our interim director of the Wine Center? And I thought, well, ok, well, you know why not, you know, so you're like OK. So I jumped into that and then realized that this was a whole new world and a whole new way that I could get involved and again kind of give back to my community and back to the industry and and really support young people who are interested in getting into this industry. And so, yeah, I've been in the position now as permanent director of the Center for Wine Education at Winfield for the last six months and it's just been.

Maria Ponzi:

It's a whole new world. It is not living on a vineyard, trust me. It's going to a campus with young people. It's very interesting, but I'm able to build out curriculums and the classes and recruit instructors. We're just opening up a master's, the first master's in wine business leadership, because, again, as I mentioned, I'm very passionate about bringing in wine business into this arena, because for too long we've been talking about how to make wine and how to grow wine grapes, but we don't really talk about how to keep them going, and I really feel we need to to, you know, talk about how to sustain the industry that we started. So it's a it's a shift, but it, it, it definitely seems to be making a lot of sense to me, even though it's a very different. Uh, yeah, arena.

Monica Enand :

Wow, um. Well, it doesn't sound like you're slowing down too much, but I guess you're probably not as busy as you. Well, I have to say, if you have not been to the Wine Willamette Valley wine region, I highly recommend it I. It is so beautiful and nice. The Ponzi that Sanjay had is. I had my husband's 50th birthday party at your at the Ponzi vineyards and the tasting room, and it was just amazing and lovely and what a gorgeous day and a gorgeous place to come visit. So I highly recommend that. And, of course, ponzi wines are fabulous. We drink them regularly and I love memoirs, so I cannot wait to get a hold of yours, because your memoir starts kind of at the beginning of your parents journey. Right, they weren't farmers, winemakers, business people, um, they were just passionate human beings right, yeah, and just very determined, yeah determined with three children.

Monica Enand :

Yeah, little kids little kids, little kids, little kids. And making this all happen Like what an incredible story. And I think, telling that story through your eyes of a little girl, kind of growing up in that and watching and what you learned from watching your parents, it's good for all of us parents to think about how our kids see us and the work we do, and I just think it's it's an. I'm so glad you took the time to write the book. I know you said you've been working on for 10 years. I can imagine, um, but I'm going to go grab a copy. Um, it's called Pinot Girl, written by and I should say it's written by Anna Maria Ponzi. I usually call you Maria, but, um, I usually call you Maria, but your name is Anna Maria Ponzi and I just checked it's. Amponzicom is where you can get the book.

Maria Ponzi:

Yeah, you can go just direct to my website, amponzicom. You can buy it also at your local bookstores, but I really, again, I'm very community-minded, so I like to either support my local bookstore or the author direct, and that goes for all books. I think it's interesting to maybe mention that my father was a mechanical engineer. He worked for Disney and he gave that job up to start something that he knew really nothing about, and so it is very inspiring and I think as you age and as you become a parent, like you said, you know you really do reflect back more on your beginnings and how you know how they shape you. And yeah, that's why I wrote the book, because I felt like that story needs to be told, and it's not just really about me and my family, but it's really about the original, all of the original wine growers, because I have a deep respect for all of those folks that tried something completely unknown.

Monica Enand :

Okay, Maria, if you're willing to stick with us. We've got a couple questions from the audience and in fact, there are two questions from the other side of the country, both, coincidentally, from South Florida. Juan Estefan, the owner of Seven Mishi Wines, a boutique wine distributed throughout Miami, would like to know how has the rise of private label wines affected competition amongst established wine brands?

Maria Ponzi:

Interesting question. I I think the first time that I was approached to do a private label I can't remember who it was and I was astonished. I was like wait, costco wants to put their label on my wine. Like wait, I don't get that, that's like you're going to put. So, like you know, I always went the other way. I was like, if I was Prada, would you ask me to put, you know, kirkland on my Prada? You know handbag? I think not. So it was always like, again, it was an arrow, ned, it was like a. You know, I got to deal with this. I got to deal with this. How am I dealing with this? Because if I say no, I'm not going to get into Costco. So those were very, these were very big decisions for me. I took them all very seriously.

Maria Ponzi:

And how has it impacted us? I mean, I just, I don't know. I don't like it. I still don't like it. I don't appreciate it. I don't think that it respects the producers. We are out here working very hard for what we do. We do it in our way, in our own specific way.

Maria Ponzi:

Every house makes wines differently, grows their grapes differently in different areas, and they're very specialized. And so when you're asked to make something in a mass without any kind of recognition, I guess, just in general, I feel like it's sort of disrespectful. I think I still feel that way. How has it changed it? I guess I just said it. You know, you feel that you either have to sell out and do it in a way I'm being really frank or you just don't, and then you have to kind of deal with that, or you just don't and then you have to kind of deal with that. I never did private labels when I worked at the winery. I only made or I should say we only made wines for restaurants, for private label restaurants. At that time we were doing a lot of what we call on-premise, and those would be restaurants that had followed us and supported us for many years and then we would, you know, do a couple barrels or whatever for them.

Monica Enand :

And the second part of his question thank you was besides Pinot, what other grapes thrive in the Willamette Valley in Oregon?

Maria Ponzi:

Yeah, well, pinot Noir is still our number one, despite the warming trend that we are definitely experiencing. Chardonnay is right there, although our Chardonnays are going to be very different in style than what I think a lot of folks consider domestic Chardonnays. These are not heavy, heavily oaked and full-bodied necessarily, but rather assimilate with French Burgundy Chardonnays, which have just a nicer balance of acid and minerality, which lend themselves really, I think, well to food, to dishes. And then we're seeing, you know, with a lot of the new folks, new winemakers, just these new, kind of funny because they're new varietals. But they're old varietals to me because we tried them in the early days, things like Sauvignon Blanc and Gamay Gewürztraminer Riesling. These are varietals that we planted as a little family in 1969 and then switched it over because they weren't thriving. But now again, with the warming trends, we're starting to see new varieties here. So things are shifting around a bit, but I think predominantly Pinot Chardonnay are still the king and the queen.

Ned Renzi:

Before I hit another audience question, I did have one follow-up on that. So, with the planet warming, I was reading articles just about how the grapes sweeten in terms of concentrating. So if you let them on the vine longer they could have more alcohol. But if you harvest them early to reduce the alcohol they may not have the flavor. And I see, like some California growers that I know, have put out a stake, you know where. They are okay with a little bit extra alcohol to maintain the flavor. Some of the French are taking a different view, Like how were you thinking about that like? Or your sister from a winemaking standpoint?

Maria Ponzi:

Yeah, well, I mean, it goes back to fermentation. So it's all about sugar, right. So sugar converts to alcohol. So again I can go back to history to share with you. In the early days of winemaking, we would have an alcohol content, alcohol by volume, of like a 12%, in some years 11.5% alcohol. Today we will see wines that are closer to 14% alcohol, and so what that's telling us is that the sugar is higher, right, which means it's warming. We're getting more sugar.

Maria Ponzi:

Acid comes from cool, from cool evenings, cool mornings, and that's been really this sweet thing about Oregon, about the Willamette Valley, is you would have nice warm days but you'd have cool evenings, so you had a lovely balance of acid and sugar.

Maria Ponzi:

You would have nice warm days but you'd have cool evenings, so you had a lovely balance of acid and sugar.

Maria Ponzi:

So I think that as we are moving forward, we're going to see higher alcohol wines and trying to manage acid, which, by the way, for me, acid allows for greater flavor profile as opposed to just heavy overweighted kind of high alcohol wines, profile as opposed to just heavy overweighted kind of high alcohol wines. So I think that's the trick of the winemaker these days, is how to balance the acid. It's also maybe interesting to note that, you know, with sparkling wines, known as Champagne in Champagne France, these wines, these grapes, are picked early in the season, so they're higher acid, so you're not looking for high alcohol with those wines. So that's actually what's happening right now as we early in the season, so they're higher acid, so you're not looking for high alcohol with those wines. So that's actually what's happening right now. As we speak, in the Willamette Valleys we're starting to slowly start to pick those. It's the initial pick of the season for sparkling and then we move into the deeper reds later in the season.

Ned Renzi:

So Maria Esteban, a wine enthusiast and avalute traveler from Miami, would like to know.

Maria Ponzi:

It's like you choose what you love and what you want the outcome to be. So when it comes to, I'll talk about Pinot Noir. Pinot Noir traditionally traditionally meaning in Burgundy, france, where it all began traditionally is aged in oak. Those oak barrels typically are made out of oak from French forests and that oak barrel allows the wine flavor to still stay intact and only really gives it a bit of a backbone to it. So we're not trying to influence the flavor of the grape itself, we're just trying to give it a little bit of structure from the barrel, and so that would be the winemaker's decision to use a barrel. These days a lot of folks want even less oak flavor to their wines and so they're using concrete casks which tend to be similar to a stainless steel barrel, which will not bring any flavor profile at all. So it really reduces that kind of structure piece. But typically Pinot Noir is in your French barrels.

Maria Ponzi:

Cabernet heavy reds are typically in oak. Heavy reds are typically in oak, but we are starting to see a movement towards some of the concrete for that, just because they don't want so much of the oak influence. And then whites are typically in stainless steel just because they want to retain the fruit flavor and kind of the minerality, that kind of freshness of the fruit, and stainless steel allows that to happen. But Chardonnay I mean I'm getting too complicated here, but Chardonnay can go into barrel as well. If you like an oaky Chardonnay, that would be one that has probably been in oak for a while. So really, I mean, this is the beautiful thing about wine is that there's thousands and thousands and thousands of different types of wine and regions around the world and then you get to play with different winemakers in different houses that choose to make it in different ways. So you can just have so much fun your entire life drinking all kinds of wines and never get bored.

Ned Renzi:

Yeah, that's awesome. I don't mind if you geek out, I get into that and understanding all the stuff, so I'm learning at a time. In the conversation, maria also had a follow-on question Are screw top bottles an inferior wine in quality?

Maria Ponzi:

Absolutely not. In fact, I would say it's actually the opposite.

Ned Renzi:

That's what I had read too. Okay, so that's good, not fake news.

Maria Ponzi:

Yeah, no, this is actually really important to note. The twist-off closure actually seals wine very, very well. This came to the industry gosh, maybe I don't even know now 20-some years ago when the cork we were seeing a lot of cork taint in our wines which was causing spoiling in a lot of the most expensive wines. To be honest, it was very hard to control that because cork is coming from the cork forests in Portugal and so forth, and this was just something that happened and they had to and they did a lot of research in trying to fix that problem. But over the interim of while they were trying to repair the problem there with their cork forest, people came up with alternatives and so the Stelvan closure came out in particular and was a really lovely closure, especially for white wines, because it would allow the wines to be preserved as the winemaker wanted them to be. So those wines are actually more fresh and fruity and vibrant in a twist off than they would be in a cork.

Maria Ponzi:

Now, I'll say that and then just kind of note that if you like to age wines and not everybody even understands why you would age wines and there's becoming, you know, less of a trend for that but if you're aging wines, you typically would want to age with a cork, just because it will, it'll, it'll do. It'll kind of help to release some of the air which you sort of want over time from the bottle so it can age well. So that's great for aging. But for anything that you're going to drink within you know, months, six months or so is wonderful with a twist off. And I you should see my cellar, my cellar is predominantly twist offs, except for my, really, you know, nice red wines. They're still in corks. Closure.

Monica Enand :

Not a box. You don't drink out of a box, do you? I really can't, I really can't. Thank you so much, maria, for being with us on the Masterstroke podcast today. Thank you, ned, for co-hosting with me.

Ned Renzi:

My close with this was a good one. I liked it.

Monica Enand :

Absolutely Added some interest to our lives. So thank you for being here.

Ned Renzi:

I think I'm going to sign off early and pop a cork and start happy hours after this conversation.

Monica Enand :

At least you didn't start while we were taping, so I appreciate that.

Maria Ponzi:

I was tempted though I was tempted, I love it. That's great.

Monica Enand :

Well, thank you for having me, of course, and thank you to our executive producer, georgiana Moreland. That wraps it up for another episode of Masterstroke.

Georgianna Moreland:

Thank you for listening today. We would love for you to follow and subscribe. Monica and Sejo would love to hear from you. You can text us directly from the link in the show notes of this episode. You can also find us on the LinkedIn page at Masterstroke Podcast with Monica Enid and Sejo Petrzak. Until next time.