Wine Cool Climate Wine Wins | Shawn Phillip | Barrels & Roots

In this episode of Barrels and Roots, I sit down with Shawn Phillip, General Manager and Winemaker at Lykan Estate and Brago Cellars in Anderson Valley to talk about what it really takes to make world-class Pinot Noir in one of California's most underrated wine regions. 

Shawn shares how he walked away from a career in tech and telecom at AT&T to chase something that actually lit him up, trained in Champagne with an eighth-generation wine family, and came back to California with a completely different understanding of legacy, craft, and constraint. We get into why cool climate growing produces wines with such layered complexity, what wine scores actually mean for the everyday consumer, and how the unglamorous side of harvest, think crashed cooling systems and late-night tank cleaning  is just as much a part of the craft as the romance. 

What's a moment in your own life where slowing down actually gave you a better result than rushing ever could have?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

It's it's becomes uh for lack of a better word, uh intoxicating for the customer um or the member or the potential member. You know, when they go up to the the airstream we have, which is at the very top of our vineyard, they're looking throughout a good section of Anderson Valley, um, seeing the vines, seeing the valley, seeing where the sun sets, seeing the clouds, seeing the what they often think are hawks but are the vultures circling in the sky, and having that glass of wine that connects them to the sense of place. It's it's very hard to replicate that experience. For us, from the business side of it, it's a no-brainer. The the conversion rate that we have of guests who stay on the property, who join our wine club and become lifetime members, uh, it's amazing. So that's the stuff that happens after the hour when the tasting room closes, when our staff goes home. Our guests get to just immerse themselves in the experience of our region, in our little microcosm, our section of Boonville, and really get to feel the experience of enjoying that wine and knowing, oh, we actually today sat with the owner, the general manager, the winemaker, all the people who have a lot resting on this business. And it really resolves some of that identity crisis that the winery, uh, the wine industry, I think is going through at the moment. That, you know, how do you tell a story when so often the people you interact with on a daily basis are disconnected from the true operations of the business? So that's, you know, I've heard multiple times the charm of Anderson Valley is oh my God, I just went to the winery and I sat with every major player from this organization. And so the the Airbnb really does help to connect those dots.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Welcome everybody back to the Barrels and Roots Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Trace, and I have an awesome guest with me today, which like to tell people who you are and a little bit about what you do. Right.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

So um, I am Sean Phillip. I am presently the general manager and winemaker for Lycan Estate and Brego Cellars. Awesome. How did you get started down this path of wine and all that? It's a very long story for everybody who works in wine. I've listened to many of your podcasts. So us winemakers are long-winded. Um, for me, it honestly started in the world of tech and telecom. I I had a career in sales and sales management uh for ATT. And in the tech world, everybody has a position that's hyperinflated, both title and uh salary. So at some point I chose to learn about wine. Uh and while using that that background, um, you know, after years and years of growing in that business, I developed a love and an admiration for wine. So uh at some point I had to decide that I was going to change my careers. Um, and I I'd left San Francisco, moved up to Sonoma County, and uh took a position where I was managing all the sales for uh the ultimately the county of Sonoma, and had some mentors who I entrusted to help me uh figure out what the next step in my career was. And you know, one in particular said, hey, you know, it's it's not uncommon for somebody in their 30s to uh quit their job, go back to school, get another degree, uh, travel the world and become a winemaker. So it was really a leap of uh, you know, a leap of faith to exit something that was so comfortable with me. Um ultimately I spent you know a little over a decade in the winemaking end of all of this, and realized that particularly I had a strength um in leadership, management, business. And so was really excited to go back to school, pursue an MBA degree, uh, and then you know, really seek towards hybridizing all the elements of both winemaking and winery management.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

That's awesome, man. And it's interesting too because um, you know, not everyone knows about Anderson Valley. You make wine in Anderson Valley, which most people have never heard of. What makes the place special and why should someone who loves Pinot care about it? And I love Anderson Valley. Like I would come up there and there's a uh uh uh brewery that my brother and I would go play frisbee golf at. It's one of my favorite places to go, man. And so talk to me about how you found yourself up in Anderson Valley and why people should care about it.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

One of the more interesting things about Anderson Valley, and and as soon as you go up there, you'll realize it is the orientation of this region is entirely different from most of the other wine-growing regions, um, physically and metaphysically. It's Anderson Valley. Um but it's it's you know, similar to what we see down in Santa Barbara, it's an east-west oriented valley, um, which has a magnificent impact on daily impact uh from the Pacific, the ocean, uh, what the wind looks like. Uh, you know, I had the pleasure of really digging deep into the entire world of Pinot as a younger man, both exploratory and professionally now. And what I always found is that, you know, the the grapes that grow in this region really tell the story of where they are, just like any other place, Russian River, Sonoma Coast, um, and ultimately Anderson Valley. Uh, you know, the most amount of Anderson Valley fruit I ever made was when working with Shramsburg. Um, and so that was really wonderful to pursue it, perceive it both from a still wine and also a sparkling wine perspective. Um and yeah, so so the first thing that everybody needs to know about the region is that uh just like everything else, uh the the Pinot Noir grape really expresses itself best um in that in that area. It showcases you when you taste an Anderson Valley wine, you know what it is. Ultimately, the the high winds we get from a east-west oriented slope lead to these really thick skins, um, you know, a tandem that's both intense but also balanced, a lot of ripe red fruit. Um, yeah, it's it's just another another region uh in world-class California Pinot Noir that shows the best of what it can do.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

I love that. I um it's interesting too because everyone knows the bigger wine regions, but yet like some of the best wines I've had have been coming from Anderson Valley. And you know, you manage two brands and four custom crush clients under one roof. Can you explain what like a what a custom crush actually means and why a main winemaker would do it? Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

So uh a custom crush facility, which is a large component of what we're doing at Lycan Estate, many wineries have a license that allows them to produce uh you know a certain gallonage, certain tonnage of fruit annually. Uh, however, rarely do any wineries exceed meet that limit. So, with the custom crush component, what that allows is for other wineries that don't have the traditional brick and mortar uh building to use another facility to carry out their winemaking vision. And the range of the clients that you'll see are everything from extremely professional, hyper-organized winery that has a winemaker and they're delivering fruit with instructions and it's under their guidance to smaller vanity labels where it's you know, someone has a vision for having a wine brand and they need complete hand holding from grape to bottle to to carry out what it is that they seek in their wine brand. And we see the entire range of that at Lyken Embrego. So for me as a winemaker, the the challenge that I face is to sit and consult with these brands and really understand what their vision and goal is and together come, you know, come together as a team to be able to exact that. It's similar, like how we operate uh for the Brego side of the equation that I work on with our vineyard partners, is you know, everything starts with a conversation so that we can come together and and work as a team to um achieve that shared vision.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

I love that. Yeah, I love the idea of like everyone coming together to work on a shared vision, you know, because at the end of the day, um whatever you're creating, if you guys, if you can have a team working toward the same thing, it's it's such a beautiful thing. And I mean, and you can create something excellent. And and like I want to ask about excellence because you've scored 92 to 95 points consistently with with decanter and wine enthusiast. Like, what does a score like that actually mean for the person standing in a wine shop trying to decide what to buy? Because I I love wine, but I don't know all the ins and outs. And I I I want to help other people understand that too. Can you help me like get a little grasp of that?

SPEAKER_01 9:24

All right. So the the scores are really just a starting point for understanding wine. Ultimately, what the scores mean is that some professional at a given point decided to taste your wines, evaluate them across a matrix that he or she uses to judge wine, and determined that in the same matrix by which we go through the schooling system, uh, evaluated the wine. Now that only goes so far because when I, you know, as somebody who's new coming into wine, what does a score mean? It kind of helps them out and says, okay, there's there's a pro out there who evaluated this. Um but it doesn't tell you who made the wine, how they made the wine, what the region is, what the vintage was like, stylistically the approach. All of those things are the greater variable in what wine making is. So while a score seeks to be a launching point from which to tell a story about a wine, there's always a bigger piece. Uh something I've found, you know, I hear a lot of criticism in the professional side of wines about, oh, these scores, they're they're irrelevant, it's a it's a dated metric. Um, you know, it doesn't it doesn't tell the full story of a wine. But we also have to understand, which is going back to the sales element of wine, not everybody is a professional who's living in the North Bay who drinks wine daily and weekly. Uh the biggest consumer are the people who do not live in wine-growing regions. And you know, the the reason that there's so much uh gatekeeping and all these other things that the the wine lingo, the jargon that we use to protect this lovely industry in which we work also seeks to alienate at times the the people that we're trying to draw into what we do as a business. So while I can at least agree on some terms that the the scoring system is imperfect, um until somebody can propose a better method to showcase what we do as winemakers and wineries, um, I think we have to actually lean into the scoring system.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

It makes sense. You have to have something, you know, and I mean I think it helps people. Greatest basketball player debate. Is it Michael Jordan? Is it LeBron James? Is it, you know, everyone's gonna have an opinion. But we have to try to find some way to judge who's better or not, you know, how who's great? And it might come down to total points. Well, that's gonna be LeBron. It's gonna become down to championships, or that's this, you know. You know, it's like, you know, you have to think of these things, but if we have no metric, how do we even, you know, look at things objectively? And I think that that's thing, and like no objective is no metric is perfect, but if we don't have one, we're gonna be sitting there, you know, trying to figure things out all the time, you know.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Every parent is gonna have a hand turkey that their kid painted at school, put on the refrigerator, and it's the most beautiful piece of art you've ever seen. It's not the Mona Lisa. And so, you know, that that's kind of how I view the system. It's like, yes, we need to take into account all the hard work that you know the winemakers and the seller team and everybody involved in production puts forth, and yet we still operate in a competitive world. And so those are the moments where we have to acknowledge that there must be a grading criteria to evaluate the final product.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

I love that. And I think it's a very straightforward way to look at something. I wanted to ask you this other question, too. Now, you trained in Champagne, France, but what did making sparkling wine the traditional way in France teach you that you could not have learned anywhere else?

SPEAKER_01 13:26

First and foremost, I was really lucky to get that internship. Uh, a quick anecdote when they posted that on the UC Davis website, I immediately transcribed my resume via Google Translate, sent it over, knew that if I wanted to impress the French, I had to speak in their language. Uh, I received an immediate letter back saying, that was very cute. Clearly, we understand you speak English. Send it in English next time. You butchered our language. Uh so part of that goes into understanding the legacy and the history. The family for which I worked was an eighth-generation wine grower. This is out of anything that we can conceive in American winemaking. So, one of the things I learned is that it is so important to build heritage, legacy, um, understanding that what you do today has an impact on what we do tomorrow. Um, you know, we're as Americans culturally, you know, we are the progeny of those who walked away from Europe to come here and start something new. And so when we look at winemaking, and I hear this all the time, it's like, we're gonna disrupt, we're gonna change this. We're not doing the old way anymore. It's it's something new. It's very um, you know, renegade as us as Americans can be. What I loved about Champaign is going back and understanding that they are the most heavily regulated, the most restricted wine-growing region in the entire world. And yet the challenge they face every year is how do we do better than last year? How do we innovate? And how do we operate within the constraints of what we're allowed to do? And so that's something I've been able to take back with me in making wine and you know, operating in the wine business here in the States is I've chosen to work with these great brands that all have a legacy in one way or another. Um, and so how do you preserve that? And that's something that I really took back. When you're sitting with the eighth generation winemaker, he knows that it's it's his name actually means something in the world of wine, and and what can he bring to carry forth to the next generation?

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Right? It's interesting that when you meet people that have that that sway, you know, that pull, that that lineage. I got to meet this person one time that was, you know, uh I was studying Chinese medicine, and the person's family had been doing it for like 15 generations, and you're like, man, I I I don't even know what my ancestors, where they were 15 generations ago. Like you the fact that your family knows l exactly what they were doing is wild to me, you know? And so I want to ask too, because a lot of people are from what I've heard are intimidated by cool climate wines. How would you explain what cool climate actually does to a wine, you know, in plain language, none of the fanciness? I don't understand any of that.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

It really slows down the entire ripening process. It's as simple as that. Um, one of the fundamental, simplest ways to understand anything is heat makes things go faster. You know, that's if you can summarize chemistry into a statement, it's yeah, heat makes it go faster. And we see the same thing in uh grape growing. So in in warmer climates, you accelerate not only just your sugar accumulation, but all of the other parts of the grape that lead to the aroma and the flavor, once you um vinify that, it's all accelerated. In cool climate growing, everything is slowed down. And so that's why when you look to grapes, you know, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Riesling, Gewertzchaminer, they're looking for a climate in which uh the acid balance is aligned with the sugar accumulation. So it's why when you taste something from a cooler region, Anderson Valley, Sonoma Coast, uh, there's you know a purity of the fruit. All the the fruit components are layered, they're not muddled, they're not macerated or jammy, I think would be an easier way to say that. Um and it adds to that complexity that you get in the glass. So um it's just it's it's a it's a type of growing region that allows the the fruit to to really shine and showcase without the the rush to pull it in before it's really mature.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

You got to give things time. And I think that everyone wants to do everything fast in life, you know? And we'll at least in our world right now, fast is kind of the default, you know, whether that's good or bad. Fast is kind of uh the way people do things. But it's not always, you know, it's not the only way, you know, and it's interesting to see cooler climates where I was fascinated by the um the Greenland shark, the shark that lives in cooler climates that lives to be like 200 years old, man. It just sits down there and it's so cold and like everything's cold and slow. But I want to ask you this too, because you run the business side too, all types of uh parts of the business. Like most people think winemaking is all romance and barrels. What does the unglamorous side of it actually look like? And I've heard there's a lot of cleaning that goes on.

SPEAKER_01 19:11

Sure. Well, the the the cliche end of it is the the light nights, the the cleaning, the sanitizing, the scrubbing, um, the peak moment of harvest when everything breaks and you're thrown into that situation of having to make a split-second decision of how to still move on forward with the wine harvest, and yet also um know that things aren't going your way. Um, you know, for example, last year in our harvest cycle, um, actually 24, not 25, uh, our cooling system crashed the second day of sparkling wine harvest. And so one option would be for us to move onward and to barrel ferment everything, but that would change our style. So we at Lycan Estate had two cooling systems. What we were ultimately able to do was create a patchwork to uh daisy chain all the tanks that we had to keep the cooling and and change the thermostats back and forth between tanks so that everything stayed even keeled. Um, and then also rapidly the next day plumb the entire wall, build out another cooling system and get back and set. So it's one of those things where, you know, uh that's the the non-glamorous harvest operational side of it. But another non-glamorous side is that everything in winemaking uh has a financial element to it. So it's not just the the unpleasant side of digging out and cleaning a tank and um you know getting dirty. It's more, okay, well, how do we plan for the type of press we want to bring in? What's the style of wine we make and how do we achieve there? Because every instrument, every tool that we have in the winery will deliver the results of something when used correctly. So, for example, you know, I remember as a younger man working a harvest at a winery. They destemmed all their Pinot Noir. Uh, it did not get crushed. And I remember asking the winemaker, why do you distem and not crush? He said, Oh, it's it's simple. We we don't have a crusher. So there's all this, always this like logical and pragmatic component to uh the winemakering. And that is an output of, you know, how does the company want to operate? What are the tools and resources it has available? Uh, you know, so oftentimes there's the classic debate between finance operations and winemaking, and they're not always aligned. And so you have the the artistry of the winemaker uh butting heads with the CFO who said, Well, here's the brass tax. Here he here is what we can afford to do. So, so seeking that balance is is something that is one of the more challenging parts. Uh, more often than not, you have the business side of wine uh of winery operations, which is independent from the winemaker. So, in my position, it's really balancing, seeing the numbers, understanding our financial ability, and then going back to we want to put the grapes in the winemaking first. How do we do that with what we have available?

SPEAKER_00 22:24

There's always that balance between art and money that any creative enterprise has. I deal with it when I make videos. You know, I go and make a video for a company or someone and they're like, I want all this stuff. And I was like, Yes, yes, you do. As do I, as do I. But what can we do with that? You know, how how much can we afford? I want the super drone shot. I want a helicopter flying in. I was like, Oh, yeah, me too, man. I would love that as well, you know, but can't always get that. And like when you find out, like what you can actually do for, but there's a lot you can do, you know, and I think that that's one of the things too, is like as you balance those two sides, you find that that beautiful, messy middle where most of the creative, you know, stuff is really coming from, you know. And I wanted to ask you this because I love asking winemakers about grapes that they love and grapes they love to hate. But, you know, I've heard Pinot has a reputation for being one of the most difficult grapes to grow and make. Why is it so hard? And why do winemakers keep chasing it anyway?

SPEAKER_01 23:34

In simple answer, I think Pinot is the most transparent grape there is. So I look back to my time at Davis doing the academic point of that part of my career. And I remember having a lot of classes that would teach you, there's all these myths in winemaking, terroir isn't real. Um, I still love the professor, by the way. Uh, but these ideas that there's no way to evaluate and taste and really have the sense of place built into it. To date, you know, 20 years later, after drinking wine and working with wine every day of my life, there is a fundamental difference between Anderson Valley, Sonoma Coast, Russian River, Burgundy, uh, Codenwee, uh, all these areas really showcase in the grape. I think what happens is that there is such rigid conditions under which you have to grow, how you treat the grape, how you pamper it along. And like some other more structured grapes out there, you can't simply doctor it up and make a wine that is easy to drink. Uh, you know, Pinot Noir has that true natural beauty. It will tell its own story. The goal is to allow it to speak rather than put some lipstick on it, put some earrings on it. Uh the grape really does want to show who it is and where it's from better than anything else. Uh it's funny, like I've also heard many times in winemaking, oh, what's your favorite clones? What's your favorite, you know, uh, soil type? And the answer, it varies at every vineyard, every clone, every soil type. Uh, Pinot Noir really shows what it does under those conditions. So it's it's I think the hardest one to wrap your brain around only because there's no straight answer. It it exists in this place of of mystery and mysterious. Um, and I think that's why we all as winemakers keep coming back to that that love of Pinot Noir.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

What's your favorite wine? You're gonna pour yourself a glass. What are you gonna pour for yourself?

SPEAKER_01 25:43

Right. So the the the grape I know the most about is is Pinot Noir. Um, the style of winemaking I've really leaned into is sparkling wine, and I I professionally know a ton about that, but my wife and I are are keeping Chardonnay in business. Um so uh single-handedly, if there was any any kind of uh wine, it it's either both you know, Russian River Chardonnay or Chassagna Montrochet.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

That's awesome. If you were gonna have someone come to to meet you and you wanted to get them into wine by pouring them three glasses, what three glasses are you pouring? Right.

SPEAKER_01 26:27

Um I think one of the easiest places to start, and this is gonna be entirely contradictory to my career, is you know, three different cabernets from Napa going from the south end to the middle district to the north end. What I, you know, despite me working in cool climate, uh grapes, the it requires having an ability to see the difference um in winemaking. And I think that there's no better place in in the entire world of winemaking to showcase than this microcosm of Napa Valley. And Cabernet wears that as well. Um, you know, if we go back to Pinot Noir for a moment, it's such a nuanced grape that by the time you get to start evaluating different soil types, uh temperatures, degree days across all of that, it's it's nerd stuff that the average uh introductory wine drinker can't wrap their heads around. But you can show Cabernet on uh one single region where you know it's two to three degrees different every day throughout the growing season, north to south, valley floor, and here they are. There, there's you know, it's it's easy to pick about those components. And so what I love about the the Napa Cabs in that regard is that it can really lead people who are feeling um uncertain about their technical winemaking jargon, how you describe it, they have that aha moment. It's very easy to pick that apart and and see what those differences are. So um, you know, I love American wine. I think I think we do a bang up job here in the States. Um, and while my career is on the coastal side of things, if I had to introduce anybody um at the introductory level, we'd be going through some nabacabs.

SPEAKER_00 28:17

I want to ask you, uh if someone wants to start understanding wine better but doesn't know where to begin, what is one thing that you would tell them to do first? Uh taste all the time.

SPEAKER_01 28:32

Uh the the very first thing. You know, I'm lucky how I got into this. I had a buddy who was the buyer for the chalet restaurant group in San Francisco. So while I enjoyed wine, he was at the time receiving over a case of wine samples a day of different wineries that wanted to get into his restaurant groups. So we were able to sit down and evaluate 12 wines a day. And, you know, going back to what I said a moment ago, I was really uncertain. It's that whole thing where people start using words that you don't know what they mean, you're not sure if they're being honest. You're, you know, it's it's really intimidating getting into wine. Um, but to be able to sit and taste every day and flex that component of your brain and actually think about what am I tasting? How do I describe this? Um, you know, go wine tasting. It's it's the place to be. It's it's very hard to learn about wine unless you're tasting things consecutively. Um, I love the flights at wineries because you get to see uh what we'll call a vertical or uh start to finish of you know lighter to full-bodied wines. But after you've gone wine tasting a few times, go to go to your local wine bar, ask them to pour three of the same varieties in front of you where you can taste the difference and see what that looks like. Um, it's it's always worth it for us to uh go back to that same debate: old world, new world. Like have have the wine bar pour a couple wines from you that are from different regions globally, not just the same region. And so you can see how that grape expresses itself. Um, but at the the the the most important thing is just have fun with it. We're still making wine at the end of the day. It's uh we're we're in a luxury business and you know it's it's it while it's a very serious industry, um, I think at that initial stage, you have to have fun with it.

SPEAKER_00 30:27

I love that. I I think it wine is supposed to be fun. It, you know, it it needs to be fun. But you know, and that's one of the things like I like that you have this experience there. You also run an Airbnb at the winery. What happens when someone stays there? What does that kind of experience do for the way people connect with the wine?

SPEAKER_01 30:46

It's it becomes uh, for lack of a better word, uh intoxicating for the customer um or the member or the potential member. You know, when they go up to the airstream we have, which is at the very top of our vineyard, they're looking throughout a good section of Anderson Valley, um, seeing the vines, seeing the valley, seeing where the sun sets, seeing the clouds, seeing the what they often think are hawks but are the vultures circling in the sky, and having that glass of wine that connects them to the sense of place. It's it's very hard to replicate that experience. For us, from the business side of it, it's a no-brainer. The the conversion rate that we have of guests who stay on the property, who join our wine club and become lifetime members, uh, it's amazing. So that's the stuff that happens after the hour when the tasting room closes, when our staff goes home. Our guests get to just immerse themselves in the experience of our region, in our little microcosm, our section of Boonville, and really get to feel the experience of enjoying that wine and knowing, oh, we actually today sat with the owner, the general manager, the winemaker, all the people who have a lot resting on this business. And it really resolves some of that identity crisis that the winery, uh, the wine industry, I think is going through at the moment. That, you know, how do you tell a story when so often the people you interact with on a daily basis are disconnected from the true operations of the business? So that's, you know, I've heard multiple times the charm of Anderson Valley is oh my God, I just went to the winery and I sat with every major player from this organization. And so the the Airbnb really does help to connect those dots.

SPEAKER_00 32:40

My sister ran a small, was uh the tasting room manager, manager for a tiny winery up in the uh Anderson Valley a long time ago. And she had a house that came with that job. And we would go up there and I would stay, and I would just sit on the porch. And from sunrise, I just watch the sunrise, and it is such a magical, beautiful place. And you sit there and you just it was one of the places like California can be a you know, go, go, go bustling place, even like Napa, Calistoga, like it gets busy, it's very slow compared to you know big cities, but it's still busy, you know. But when I was up in, you know, uh in Anderson Valley, it was the so peaceful. And I I don't I can't say that I've ever experienced that in in I haven't experienced that in many other places. And and the cool climate, it's just a very magical place up there. So uh it's it's always been special for me.

SPEAKER_01 33:45

It's unique to say the least. Um I really did love that after post-lockdown, the the amount of folks who because Mendocino County did open up a little more uh rapidly and easily than some of the other regions, say Sonoma, Napa, uh in proximity to San Francisco. Um, people would come up and they'd be mesmerized, like, oh my God, there's this this part of wine country that's still relatively untouched as compared to the areas with which they're more familiar. Um, and yet it truly is that peaceful. There's two mountain ridges that come together that really block off the convenience factor of coming up. You know, when you've come to Anderson Valley, you made a trip to Anderson Valley. Yeah. Um, I do always like the first question I ask everybody that comes in our tasting room is like, oh, what were your plans for dinner? How what did you book? Because we do have no shortage of guests who are used to uh all the accommodations of Napa and Sonoma. And I just want to make sure that they have somewhere to eat for dinner because uh we we don't always have that same infrastructure. Uh so as long as I think you're willing to let go of all the conveniences that are abundant elsewhere and immerse yourself in the simplicity and the beauty and the rusticity of what Anderson Valley is, it can be an eye-opening experience for you.

SPEAKER_00 35:08

It's awesome. Where can people go to learn more about you and what you do?

SPEAKER_01 35:13

Right. Well, I would love to direct you to come visit me at Lycan Estate and Brago Cellars. You're you're almost guaranteed to meet me. Um, but other than that, the the only the profile I have is is LinkedIn Sean Phillip, general manager and winemaker at Lycan Estate.