What Harvest Is Really Like in Napa Valley | Bruce Devlin | Barrels & Roots

I sat down with Bruce Devlin, winemaker and general manager at Ballentine Vineyards in St. Helena, Napa Valley. 

Bruce has been making wine for over 25 years, and what strikes me most about his story is how deeply rooted it is in curiosity, from home-brewing beer as a teenager, to studying fermentation science at UC Davis, to spending a summer peeling mislabeled bottles in a German winery. He breaks down what winemaking actually looks like from the inside: the 12 touches per vine each season, the gut-wrenching decisions when a heat wave hits at 119 degrees, the harvest days that stretch to 60 tons when rain is coming on Monday. 

He also shares something I think gets lost in the romance of wine culture: none of it happens without a team, without trust, without people willing to show up at 4 a.m. If that's what the fruit needs. 

What's one experience, a place, a person, or a single glass  that changed the way you think about wine?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You know, Napa's been influenced by fires lately, and we've had a couple fires over the past several years. My winery's been right in the middle of the was right in the middle of the 2020 fire. And we showed up to the winery every day to make wine. Like the wine doesn't stop. Even though the fire is going on, like we're still there going past the um police barricades and like getting into the wineries and dealing with what needs to be done because it it it is our life and it matters to us. Um so it it it doesn't it doesn't stop because there's a fire or because you're tired or because you need a break. You just do it. And and once you kind of accept that in your lifestyle, like it's fine. Like we um my wife and I were married 15 years before we had a kid. And the two of us being winemakers, everybody was like, How do you have kids how do you have a kid and be a winemaker? You're working six days a week, twelve hours a day, both of you at the same time. And and uh we had to figure that out, like, because our commitment at that time of year is to the winery. So we had to create some balance of life within that to to be with our kid also. Um, but like that's the mentality. Like, we are dedicated to getting this job done and whatever it takes, and kind of everybody that gets involved in it in the wine industry, you know, I can speak to my team. I have three guys in the wiring. Um, we have a vineyard crew that we work with. And if I said we need to pick at 4 a.m. on Friday night, they would do it. Like they might resist it, but like if they felt it needed to be done, they would all show up. Like, I have no doubt. I have some respect for my team, and I try not to do that, but they know if I asked for them to do that that it was important and they would they would show up and do it.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

All right. Well, welcome everybody back to the Barrels and Roots podcast. I've got a great guest with me today. I would like to tell people who you are and a little bit about what you do.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

Yeah, Sean, I'm um Bruce Devlin. I'm the winemaker general manager at Ballantine Vineyards. Um, we're a small family-run winery in St. Helena in Napa Valley. Um, we go back five generations now. I'm currently working with the fourth generation, kind of operating uh vineyards and winery. Everything we produce, we grow ourselves. Um the owners, um, I started with third generation and helped them transition to fourth generation, which was then really interesting. And now we're kind of slowly transitioning to fifth. Uh but the owners have been dedicated to their property since 1905. Uh, what first attracted me to the property was we get to grow everything that we make. It's awesome. Um and I get to be involved in every aspect of the business from farming, winemaking to sales to promotion. We're a small team of about nine employees, and we kind of all have our hands and everything.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

That's awesome, man. Well, I wanted to ask you this because that sounds like a cool setup, but like what got you started on this path? You've been making wine for over 25 years. What was it about winemaking that first hooked you and made you want to dedicate your life to it, you know?

SPEAKER_01 3:40

Yeah, it's kind of a funny story, I guess. Um my sisters were older, they um they started their high school parties and allowed me to partake in them, and they introduced me to alcohol, and I found it fascinating, and all the stuff they were drinking I really didn't like, and so I quickly found myself on a curve to find other things, and while everybody was exploring Cores Light and Bud Light at all their high school parties, I was like, Can I get some anchor steam? Like, I really just want a good beer. Um, and that kind of led me down a path to just explore why are these things different, you know? So I started making beer before I could legally drink it. Um and a lot of bad batches went out on the front lawn. Uh, you know, it wasn't all perfect, but it was the it was the process that really kind of I fell in love with. It was the art of taking something and making something out of it. Um, and that you didn't know everything, like you can't control everything, you can control a lot, but there's a lot of personality in it. So I I really found that fascinating. So I I explored the beer side first, um, wound up at UC Davis after I I actually went to college for a forestry major and realized quickly that I would not get along well working for the government. So I changed majors quickly, and um I had to do some prerequisite science work to get into the fermentation science program at UC Davis. Back then it was there were only a couple schools doing fermentation science, and it was a little hard to get into. So I I went back to JC, did all my prereq work, and then um applied to the brewing program, the fermentation science brewing side, and got got put into the wine side and kind of fell in love with it. While I was studying brewing, I was taking German at junior college, and I wanted to do a language exchange program in Germany um over the summer just to practice my German. And I had they they basically say you can you can pick three uh industries. So I picked brewery, obviously, first, then I picked winery, and then I picked um agriculture, and I got I got put in a winery and um in Deitesheim, which is kind of southern the faults region of Germany, kind of the party region. It was actually really fun. Um and just kind of fell in love with it. We did everything from my very first job in a winery was that winery was 75% owned by the Japanese. They shipped a container of wine over to Japan. The Japanese opened the container, didn't like the label, shipped it back. My very first job, there were five of us just sitting there listening to German pop peeling labels off of wine off of wine bottles so that they could relabel it and ship it back. Oh my goodness. And we did two weeks of peeling labels, and then I got to work in the vineyard, I got to kind of explore all aspects of summer activities of winery in Germany, um, and then kind of experience the culture, which was really fascinating. That or that kind of being the for me, the party area of Germany, like the culture behind wine there was really embedded in that region. And they drew all these great festivals, and every weekend there was like life around wine and the and wine and food and the culture in that area. Um, and it was just a great place to be immersed, like my first experience in the wine industry. And I kind of grew up, my my parents were from San Jose, they would weekend tour up to Napa or Sonoma, and we would we would go with them as kids, you know, go to Miries and experience it, and we would go to the old Paul Mason Winery in San Jose and run around. Um kind of had fond memories, but those were like good times of family getting out, and so like for me culturally, it just it clicked, and it was something I wanted to be a part of. Um and when I told my parents I was gonna go to fermentation science school, they said, Are you ever gonna be able to get a job in that? I don't know. We'll see what happens.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

We'll see what happens, right?

unknown 8:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

When I when I was at UC Davis, I met my my now wife of 25 years. Um, she's the winemaker for K and YI. And so we're kind of we're immersed, we're not going anywhere.

SPEAKER_00 8:25

It's beautiful, man. If a person that knows nothing about wine, like have no clue, were to ask you what a winemaker actually does, how would you explain it to them in simple terms?

SPEAKER_01 8:40

I would I would say 80% of what I do from my perspective is grow really good grapes. Because if I have really good grapes, the rest of it's kind of easy. Uh uh but from grape growing, winemaking to getting it into the bottle, and that's kind of where the winemaker goes, Okay, I'm I'm done. There's no more influence I can have on it. And then there's the whole sales side, which is really difficult and competitive. But from making wine, it's all about growing really good grapes. Yeah. And that that's that's a little bit like where the region is. There's a lot we can do practically in the vineyard to influence how um how the how the grapes are affected by the environment. So where I grow grapes is one of the hottest parts of Napa Valley. And so a lot of what we're doing is trying to prevent like direct sunlight and allow airflow and just different little touches. We probably touch each grape line about 12 times over the season, just trying to kind of perfect that environment for that fruit, and it's all respective to that zone it's grown in, where whether it's hot or cool or you would react differently, and you you kind of have to know what you're working with. So that's been a fun thing for me at Ballantyne, having worked there for 26 years now, is that like some vineyards I put in 25 years ago were now tearing out and putting new vineyards. So I've seen a whole life cycle, which is really rare in the wine industry, um, other than these real big legacy families. But for somebody just working in the industry to go those life cycles through one single property is is fairly unique.

SPEAKER_00 10:30

That's awesome. There's a couple things that to touch on there. Um first of all, like your experience grow like like studying in Germany seems awesome to me. I love going overseas and I love being immersed in and learning these different things. But also how you were talking about the ability to see all these different life cycles, but I I am also fascinated by can you tell me a little bit more about the region uh that you're growing the grapes in, and it's the hottest in the valley. Uh where is that specifically?

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Yeah, so Napa Valley is this long, narrow valley, it's 33 miles long. Um it's kind of a couple valleys in from the ocean, and it has this great maritime influence. It's what makes it a great growing region. As it gets fog in the morning, we get kind of nice warm temps during the day, and then it cools back off at night, and that really helps the grapes hold their acid and mature slowly, kind of ripen in that window that we need. They kind of perfectly like what we're looking for is they start growing right after the frost stop and they ripen right before the rains come in. Like that's the ideal situation, right? Um so then within Napa Valley, because it's it goes from south to north, the south end being close to the bay where that fog influence starts to come in, and the north being um Calistoga, which you get a little bit of Russian river fog actually coming up from over from the ocean, and they meet right around Calistoga. And those two fogs every morning break in the Calistoga Appalachian. So that's the the northernmost part of the Napa Valley, the valley floor. Um, and where those fog influences break, that tends to be the warmest area that heats up the fastest during the day, uh, you know, gets the solar radiation on the on the soil, and just it it it's just the warmest. And on any given day during the summer, in St. Alena and Calistoga, where I am, I'll be 10 degrees warmer than the southern parts of the Napa Valley.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

Yeah. People don't understand who who haven't lived in the Napa Valley how hot it can get in the summertime. Like, it it gets really hot. Like, I remember there was a summer in St. Elena where I was walking up and down the streets, and it's 104 degrees easy. And I'm just like, oh man. And they're like, oh, Napa, you're near the ocean. Like, no, Napa might be closer to the ocean, but St. Alina and up into Calistoga, it gets downright hot. Like, really hot. I remember Fourth of July once we were watching the Fourth of July parade in in Calistoga, and I was like certain that if you had a cracked an egg, it would have boiled right on the street, man. It was that hot.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

Yeah. I um the the 104s are kind of normal. Like we get a couple of those a year. Uh 2022, we had a year of 105 plus for about seven, eight days, right as the grapes were getting ripe. That's wild. And so that was a that was a super challenging vintage for us. We actually hit 119 on one day in our vineyard. That's wild. Um and luckily we know like heat's our problem, right? Because we're we're in the warm area. There's there's two things that kind of push us into picking. It's it's a heat event that's gonna cause things to go over the top, or it's a it's a ringing event that's gonna cause things to go the other way. Like that you see those things coming and you need to react. And so we saw the heat event coming, and we actually started picking about a week ahead of what we normally would, just so we could get ahead of the heat, get the grapes off, and preserve what was there. Um, because after that heat wave, it didn't get better.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

Hmm. That's wild, man. Well, see, I you just start me thinking so many questions, but I I want to let's take this some more simple ones. I a lot of people think wine is fancy or intimidating. Like, what do you wish regular people understood more about wine and the people who make it?

SPEAKER_01 14:50

I think wine is it's a food, right? So you think of it like a food. Like you go to the grocery store, you buy you, you buy a I kind of relate it to buying a steak. Like, and I'm actually pescatarian, but I cook meat for some of my friends. But like, if I want to impress my friends, I'd buy a a nice steak and it always tastes better. Like, I don't I don't want to just go buy the cheapest ingredient out there because it's not it's not appealing to my palate. So I think there there's some education in that, and for me, being a vegetarian, learning about cooking steaks, like I had to educate myself to buy the right thing to fit the profile I wanted to make. But like life is so much better when you have like good things, and exploring that I think is great. And wine for me is just a part of the table, right? It's just um it's a social libation, it's fun because it gets people relaxed. Um it's a conversation piece when you get a bunch of people that enjoy wine, like it's really easy to have a fun conversation about it. Um it's just a part of life for me. And I don't I don't see a difference, and it's not like we're drinking wine every night, but we're um we enjoy it, and we enjoy the exploration of like what it is. Just like we talk about how you cook a steak, it's like, oh, this wine is from this area, and this is the person that made it, and you know, you don't need to know all that, but you need like it's pretty easy, so it's probably from a warm area, this, it's that. There's a whole world you can learn and have a conversation about it, um, and then kind of explore your profile and what you like. Like, not everybody likes the same food, so there's a whole world of wine and a gamut that you can find that fits your um interest and taste profile. There was there was a thing part to your qu there was a second part to that question I missed though. It was uh it was how how wine relates to food, and then I forget what the other part was. You remember, Sean?

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Um I have lots of questions. Uh how like wine is fancy intimidating, but like what do you wish people understood more about wine and and the people who make it, like the people side. Oh, the people side, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

I mean, like you're talking to me, I'm the winemaker general manager, like I'm one person. We have a winery of people that work to make this product. Yeah. Um, and it's it's a collaboration, it's not one person. Um It's hard to say because there's so many conversations that go on and so much influence, all these little touch points along the way, that like it's I'm not working the mag I can't work the magic without a team of people behind me helping get this job done. Right. Um and it it wouldn't be the same product without those people, right? Because you there's no way you can get all that work done. Somebody has to kind of direct that influence and have a a longer vision as to like what the start point and what the end point is, and kind of guide it along the way, but like nothing is set in stone, and we we often have to react to our environment, right? The hot years, the cool years, the wet years. Um and the way we react to a lot of just like discussing in the winery um winery in the vineyard, like, okay, this is coming. How do we react to this? What's the best way? And we'll take everybody's opinion and kind of work out, you know, a a path forward, what we think is the best path, best path. And it's one thing that's really attracted me to Ballantyne is um we've always been willing to take risks and not have to play the safe path. And so that's been fun because we can say, like, okay, this is what some people would do, but I think doing this is really gonna make a uh better decision down the road. So let's let's at least take a section of vineyard and take it down this path and see what happens. And sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. You know, we make mistakes, we're we probably admit that like we're not perfect. Um it's fun to see that journey of like you know, everybody everybody has a different input, different influence. Um it's fun to have that collaboration of what it takes to make that that bottle of wine. Um and it's it's amazing to see how much how much work goes into it. I um I had been in the wine industry for about 10 years at Ballantyne, and I remember the days my dad used to take me to his work. My dad was a United mechanic, and he would take me up to the shop on bring your kid to work day. And so I'm like, okay, I'm gonna repeat that, and I'm gonna bring my dad to the winery for a couple days, and he's gonna work harvest. Oh, that's awesome. It it I think this is the the easiest way to change somebody's input. Not everybody gets to do it, but my dad thought a bottle of wine was a bottle of wine. You buy it at the store, you drink it, and like, why should it be so expensive? And he never understood. And then once I started bringing him to work, and he didn't even really see the vineyard touch points like that that whole growing season, he just saw that aspect of harvest, and all the guys working um 12, 14-hour days, six, seven days a week, doing physical hard labor, um punch downs and processing fruit, and just a really small team working their ass off to make a bottle of wine. And then he understood a little bit more about like what went into that bottle of wine. It wasn't just like you squeeze grapes, goes in a tank, goes in a bottle, and then it's out. It's like there's all these little touch points along the way. And for for a red bottle of wine, you plant a vineyard, three years later you get fruit, two years later it goes in the bottle, and a year later it's sold. You know, you're you're six years down the road to get that get to that bottle of wine.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

It's wild, man. At least my question, though, because like first of all, I I I completely agree. I am planning on this harvest coming back and filming a documentary, and then we go to a bunch of wineries, each winery gets one day where I follow them for harvest throughout the day, and I just want to film what it's like because I think so many. People don't know the amount of work that goes into that beautiful bottle you're drinking. You know, living in the Happa Valley when harvest rolls around, people are tired. You know, it is non-stop. And the only other industry that I know that's worked that hard and people don't understand as well is probably the film industry, where you're doing like my friends in the film industry, you know, doing 15-hour days. But it's standing. It's not always like, you know, with harvest, you are you are in it. You are moving, you are lifting, you are hauling things. It's wild. But I want to ask you about this because you've worked both on your own label and with Ballantine Vineyards for decades. How do you balance the art side of winemaking with the business side?

SPEAKER_01 22:52

I've always been of the philosophy that you have to make the wine speak to the vineyard it comes from. So I am not trying to commercialize the wines that I make. I'm trying to make the best wine I can from what I'm given from the earth. And so if I try to alter that, I don't think I'm making as good a product. So really I'm just trying to get the best fruit, guide it along a path, and then and then hand it off to um the market. I mean, I'm it's not really handing it off because that's a whole other side of the industry and labor and what we work on. Um but for me working on my own label and with Valentine, like Valentine I'm restricted because, right, we have our own our vineyards and they are in a specific place, and they're gonna grow a certain kind of fruit. Um, and I can't I can't move that vineyard somewhere else to to get a different style of fruit. Like I that I am confined to this product. With my label, I was able to go source fruit from different vineyards around the um around Napa and Sonoma, really, is where I was focused. Now I'm just making line from Napa, a small tiny amount. Um that you can kind of you can go, I want this style of fruit from this area, um, because this is the style of wine I want to make, you know. You're you're a little more freed up to influence what those that fruit's gonna taste like. You still want really good fruit, but you can kind of specify like for me, I'm into I'm into those like hyper fruit wines, so I like the warm areas, like I like the super expressive, very California new world um in your face fruit floral wines. Um if I were to want something a little more earthy spicy, I would probably not source fruit from North Napa, I would go south. That's never been kind of my world. So I even even for my own sourcing, I was always kind of in the warmer area for for three clicks. Um and it it's it's fun to play, right? Like we're we like to experiment. Obviously, you can sense that from what I've been talking about. So for me, having my own label was a lot about that experimentation. I wasn't doing cab, I was doing petitzera, so blanc. We had Grenache Blanc planted for us in rock file appellation, hillside Grenache Blanc. Now I'm just doing a dry farmed Grenache from um Calistoga. And like the the dry farm grenache is like a unicorn, right? It it there's not there's hardly any of it out there. When you find it, you never want to let it go. So for me, my label was about this exploration of all these things that I couldn't do in my day job. That um I got to express myself in a different way.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

That's awesome. Being able to express yourself in a different way is a beautiful thing because there's so many ways to I think about it this way. I don't know much about winemaking, but I do know that when I my wife, we released a new music video tonight. It was a beautiful song, and when you get the raw footage that we filmed, there's a thousand different ways to make that video. The footage is there, the art is there, the what I'm getting is is what I've been given. But then how I can evolve it and and and give respect to the song, give respect to what was created, give respect to all of the people who contributed is a beautiful thing. But like I can't turn a ballad into a hip-hop video. Like, there is a certain nature of what I'm getting that I then have to work on how to express that in a beautiful way. And so I think that's where the art comes in, the sciences is I'm still using the tools that I've got and you know, the different technology I have, you know. But it's still so interesting. I want to come back to Harvest too, because uh Harvest sounds like absolutely intense. And for people outside the wine industry, what is Harvest really like emotionally and physically behind the scenes? Because, you know, to me, I'm fascinated by it. And I'm trying to prep myself for this documentary I'm shooting, you know, I'm a little intimidated.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

Harvest is the time of year we have to get the work done, right? So it's grapes are ready, they have to come in, the winery has so much capacity, and you just have to keep keep processing and moving things down the line. Um where it gets crazy is some of these weather events we um where we have to move really fast. Right? So there was a harvest, I want to say it was like 2005. It was mid-late harvest, everything was just about ready, and on the horizon we got this prediction that on in a in a week, on Monday it was gonna rain four inches, which is a little bit devastating to the crop and the harvest. And so me as a winery, like I I've learned to have a little bit of balance of of life to wine, and I don't want to drive my crew crazy. So five years ago or so, we had we I've implemented a philosophy of like, we don't pick on the weekends, like we are so dead tired on Saturday and Sunday, and we run short crews because we split the crew Saturday and Sunday, so everybody gets a day off. Um, which not everybody does, not every winery has the same philosophy. And and the history of the wine industry when I got into it is you work Monday to Saturday, somebody works Sunday, um, but you're processing fruit, you're doing everything you can to kind of traditional farm. Um, we try and load up, like if you if you want to pick on Saturday, you can pick on Friday and we'll fit it in, or even pick on Monday. Like, it's not gonna influence it that much, but that year that it was gonna rain four inches on Monday, we processed 60 tons on Sunday. And my winery can process about 40 tons in a normal day. And so you just you just get it done when it needs to be done. And you you stay late and you do the work. Um, because it's not because it matters to the world, it's just it matters to us, right? We want to make the best thing we can. The other the other side of it too is my my wife and I, and I gotta get back to your um having a project together because I have a a comment on that. But my wife and I, you know, Napa's been influenced by fires lately, and yeah, we've had a couple fires over the past several years. My winery's been right in the middle of the was right in the middle of the 2020 fire. Wow. And we showed up to the winery every day to make wine. Like the wine doesn't stop, even though the fire is going on, like we're still there going past the um police barricades and like getting into the wineries and dealing with what needs to be done because it it it is our life and it matters to us. Um it it it doesn't it doesn't stop because there's a fire or because you're tired or because you need a break. You just do it. And and once you kind of accept that in your lifestyle, like it's fine. Like we um my wife and I were married 15 years before we had a kid, and the two of us being winemakers, everybody was like, How do you have kids how do you have a kid and be a winemaker? You're working six days a week, 12 hours a day, both of you at the same time, and and uh we had to figure that out, like, because our commitment at that time of year is to the winery, so we had to create some balance of life within that to to be with our kid also. Um, but like that's the mentality, like we are dedicated to getting this job done and whatever it takes, and kind of everybody that gets involved in it in the wine industry, you know, I can speak to my team. I have three guys in the wiring. Um, we have a vineyard crew that we work with. And if I said we need to pick at 4 a.m. on Friday night, they would do it. Like they might resist it, but like if they felt it needed to be done, they would all show up. Like I have no doubt. I I I have some respect for my team, and I try not to do that, but they know if I asked for them to do that that it was important and they would they would show up and do it.

SPEAKER_00 32:31

I think that's the powerful thing is you just have to get people to to show up. Um you need them to be there. Like I think showing up is the thing, but you know, showing up, there has to be a reason. There has to be a core purpose of why you're showing up, whether that be to share that beauty, to share that that love of you have for something. You know, I I will stay up late editing a music video for my wife because I believe in the music, I love her voice, and there's something that I want to share with people, you know, and I think that that's a powerful thing, you know, to have that art and that beauty that you want to share. But I want to ask you another question because, you know, you've worked with varietals that are really interesting, like Petite Syrah, Sauvignon Blanc, and even Grenache Blanc. What excites you about experimenting with different grapes and styles over time?

SPEAKER_01 33:28

It's funny because my wife and I um she's always been of the like she's very cab-driven winemaker. Cabs right now she makes cab and sodium blanc. And they make other varieties in there as blenders, but really she focused on cab and sodium blanc. And I've always been in this world of uh I kind of want to touch and play with everything. And um, I couldn't imagine like being like I couldn't just make one line. Like that was bread nuts. And it's it's a little bit of like how I cook in the kitchen too, right? Like I will read the recipe just to get uh influence, and then I will set it aside and I'll go start cooking, and I will never look at that recipe again. I'll just like some stuff will wind up in there that shouldn't have, and um I I like uh I like the creative side of it. So for me, having lots of things going on is what's fun. A little bit of that chaos is fun for me. Um and some of that is is figuring out all these different varieties, and not that I figure them out, but at least I get to play with them, right? Yeah. And not none of it's perfect, it's just um they're they're different expressions of of what they are, and for me, Sobium Blanc is uh citrus and bright and crisp, and I get to make chin blanc, which is like pear apple and floral, and um a little more body, I think. Grenache Blanc was very acid-driven. Um tangerine skin. Um, we do malvasia at the wine, it's got a different expression, super floral, uh tropical. So they're all these little different influences, and it's it's fun to see how they express themselves. You know, it's all just coming from a grape.

SPEAKER_00 35:41

Yeah, right. That's the beautiful thing. It is all just coming from a grape. It's this beautiful little thing that can be expressed in so many ways, you know, depending on weather, uh, place, and even the people making it. Do you feel like every vintage tells a story about that specific year or the people behind it?

SPEAKER_01 36:01

Oh, for sure. Uh the year, the environment, the way people react. Um it every vintage is different. To the extent that that like my wife and I can order wine and we'll talk about the vintage, or we'll if we open up with a bottle of wine, we'll remember like that vintage was was this, and this wine tastes like it because of these influences. Um, and then there are a few rare vintages where we're like, I don't, I don't really want a wine from that vintage, it's not my style, right? So like it was too influenced the other way from what I like. So I'm gonna skip over that one and get the one that's more my style. Um, it definitely has a huge influence.

SPEAKER_00 36:52

That's awesome. I want to ask you this one too, because if you were to pour someone that didn't know a ton about wine, three glasses, what what three glasses would you pour then?

SPEAKER_01 37:07

You know, I'd probably I'd probably find a really nice living block. I'd probably find a cheap, innocuous red, and then I'd probably find a high quality red of similar pedigree, like two cads. And it was something when when two buck chuck came out, and everybody was all about two buck chuck. I I don't know if you know two buck chuck, Sean.

SPEAKER_00 37:32

I I'm assuming you I don't know much about two buck chuck.

SPEAKER_01 37:35

I miss that one. It was a Franzia wine, it was two dollars a bottle at Trader Joe's, and it was all the rage for 10 years. And people would go on to Trader Joe's and buy cases for 24, 25 bucks. And when it first came out, it was all over the news, all over the press, everywhere. And this was this was part of my dad's story, is my dad would go buy it and say, I don't understand why this wine's so expensive. You gotta um try this two bucks, it's not bad, and it's only two bucks. And so I finally sat them down. I'm like, Dad, here's your wine, here's my wine. You try these side by side and you tell me, you tell me that you like two buck chuck better, and you don't understand why this wine is better. And like he just he after that it was done. Like, once those two bottles were next to each other, there was never another conversation about it. And so it was clear, kind of black and white. Like, once you taste those side by side, like you understand that there is a difference in quality across those products. I think that's something to express to somebody, you know, finding those wines in their wheelhouse, I think would be kind of important. So I wouldn't want to show calves to a Pinot guy. I'd pick a cheap Pinot and a really nice Pinot. I'd pick a a nice calve, you know. Um two zins would be interesting for somebody from that world. But I think if I were to try to talk to somebody about I would I would go that perspective, show them what's out there, the range, more than just like, here's the best.

SPEAKER_00 39:18

I love that. You know, I have another question for you too, because this one was kind of popping into my head. Like, um, if somebody listening wanted to start learning seriously about wine without feeling overwhelmed, what's the best way to begin? Should they just drink more, visit vineyards, study, ask questions? How do you think people get into this world?

SPEAKER_01 39:40

You know, a book, even when my wife and I were studying wine, a book that we really enjoyed was Wine for Dummies. Oh yeah. Like just break it down basic. Super simple. But like if you want to if you want a starting point, it's a really good starting point because it you can if you're just interested in the vineyard side, you can read about that. If you're just interested in I I don't I don't remember how it's been 30 years since I read that book, right? So it I don't remember how it's broken down, but I'm sure there's a production side and uh like different parts of the world. Um and find your interest in that and then explore out from there because w wine is a never-ending subject. Like my we're we're still learning. My wife last week went on an educational trip with her other winemakers to to learn about different regions. Um, it it never ends. It's a huge subject matter, and it's always changing, especially with climate change, it's like changing faster than ever.

SPEAKER_00 40:42

Yeah. So true. Well, where can people go to find out more about you and what you do?

SPEAKER_01 40:50

The easiest spot would be to go to Balantinevineyards.com. I mean, that's my day job, that's my heart and soul, that's uh where ninety-five percent of my energy goes. We still make wine under three clicks, but when we had our son juggling two full-time jobs of winemaking and doing our own wine on every weekend uh became a burden, and so we kind of scaled way back on our own label. Um, and DeFedd'd put more influence into our son, and now I get to be a soper coach rather than a accounting person for a small wine label. And we only make the the Grenache for fun, mostly for us. We love to drink it. Um yeah, uh most of most of my world revolves around Valentine Vinions. I do consult for uh several other small labels in Napa, but um they can all be found at Valentine because we custom crush and we make other people's line all in one house mentally.