Wine Never Lies | Todd Anderson | Barrels & Roots

I sat down with Todd Anderson, owner and winemaker behind Anderson's Conn Valley Vineyards and the legendary Ghost Horse Vineyards in Napa Valley, for one of the most grounded conversations I've had on this show. 

Todd's been farming his own land for over 44 years, and he still drives the tractor himself, prunes every vine himself, and refuses to hand his farming over to vineyard management companies that he says are quietly killing Napa's old vineyards. 

We got into everything: how his father's love of Bordeaux sparked his obsession, why patience matters more than skill once the wine's in barrel, the almost impossible regulatory weight crushing small wineries right now. 

Todd also opened up about his father-in-law's deep roots in California wine history, his friendships with legends like Robert Mondavi and Joe Heitz. 

This one's about legacy, land, and refusing to fake it.

What's a bottle that made you feel like you knew the person who made it?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Most companies are measuring by the, you know, their success by the quarters. You know, we're measuring it in decades. You know, if if anything, I always I sometimes wonder if I should be taking longer, not taking shortcuts to get there faster. I mean, you know, Ghost Horse is one barrel of each of the wines a year. It's entirely made by hand. You know, I might really release 22 cases. People want more of this wine. It's, I mean, it's one of the most talked-about wines in the world. People are going nuts. And yeah, I could make more of it, and I'm just not going to do it. You know, the main the moment I scale GoSource beyond what I can do with my own hands, uh, because it becomes something else. You know, it just becomes a brand instead of wine. Um, shortcuts are available every year. Every year. And I walk, I walk past those shortcuts every time. The wine knows you can't fool what's in the glass. I mean, you can fool the label, you can fool um marketing, you can you know, fool price point, but you can't fool what's in the glass. I mean, 44 43 years of this has really taught me um the wine always tells the truth.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Well, welcome everyone back to the Barrels and Roots podcast. I'm your host, Sean, and I have an awesome guest with me today. Can you tell people who you are and what you do?

SPEAKER_01 1:35

I am Todd Anderson. I'm the owner and winemaker and farmer of Anderson's Con Valley Vineyards and Ghost Horse Vineyards in the Napa Valley. 44 years of doing it in Napa, 54 years overall.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

That's awesome. First of all, too, I'm gonna ask you a bunch of other stuff, but I saw you having a couple, what are you drinking today? What is your go-to glass for today?

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Well, today I'm drinking a uh Chevrolet Blanc style wine that we make. It's Anderson's Con Valley Vineyards, Gust of uh Cab Franc. It's this vintage is actually 87% Cab Franc and uh 13% Merlot. Uh 2015. And um when I in 2001, I hired the first guy to work under me because I ended up on the road a lot and a lot of educational stuff and dinners. And he made wine at Cheval Blanc. So when he came on board, I said, I'm gonna make a Chevro Blanc style wine in honor of you coming on board. And we started that in 2001. And pretty much uh everything that I do in the early days uh got verified by Robert Parker. And when he liked stuff, we thought, well, we might as well keep making that. He likes it. So but it was more important for the people to like it that came by to visit.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

That's awesome. Well, you know, you talked about doing this for some time. Like um, how did you get started in the industry? What was it that pulled you down this path? My father.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Um, I was born in 57. In 55, he was in the Air Force and he went to some general's house for dinner one night, has his first taste of burgundy in Bordeaux, and went nuts his whole life. Uh, he was from the Upper Peninsula, Michigan. My mom was from Chicago, so when he got out of the Air Force uh in 62, we moved to the Upper Peninsula, Michigan, and he had a little Mooney airplane. He would fly to Zackey's in New York or Pearson's Wine Annex in Washington, D.C., and load up his little Mooney plane and bring it back to the UP because it was even hard to get jug wine there back in those days. But I grew up drinking first through fifth growth, um, all the great Grand Cru Burgundies. And later in life, he thought it'd be fun to have a vineyard. I was in geology doing oil and gas exploration and geophysics, and I eventually ended up in the corporal world behind a desk, and I don't play well with others indoors. So we started talking about this idea of a vineyard, and we said, well, let's go to nap and start a vineyard, and we'll just sell grapes to the old timers, and that's how we got started.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

That's wild, man. It's so interesting, too. But like, you know, as people move into this industry, um, what's the biggest mistake people make when they try to make great wine?

SPEAKER_01 4:18

Well, probably letting somebody else uh farm their vineyard. Um, you know, there's always the old argument what's more important, you know, the vineyard or the winery. You know, and and grape growers will argue well, the grapes are more important, the vineyard's more important because without my grapes, you can't make great wine. And the winey will argue, yeah, but without us making the wine, your grapes are worth nothing. One actually has to come before the other, and I think they're kind of equally important. But I think the biggest mistake, particularly these days, is um people come in here and they hire vineyard management companies. And um these guys are they're they're vineyard management companies. They're not vineyard farming companies. And they know the basics of farming and taking care of vineyards. But as I drive around the valley these days, there's a lot of vineyards that are literally being killed because they're relying on these other companies to do it. So I think the biggest mistake is letting somebody else do your farming and not being involved directly in the vineyard yourself. And that was the way it was in the old days. The old timers, they did their farming, they did their winemaking, uh, you know, they they did it all. And you don't see that anymore, uh except for a few of the people that are, you know, are still left. But, you know, it's wealthy corporations and wealthy people now that are coming here and they hire vineyard management companies and they vineyard uh you know managers and stuff. And I just I just think it's it's it's a mistake. Um my my vineyards both Con Valley and Ghost Horse were almost killed by three different vineyard management companies, and I finally fired them all and and took back over, and we're back in full production when they said all the vineyards need to be replanted because they said that they're so old.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

That's amazing. I I'm fascinated by that because to me, um it's interesting that you know people can say, oh, there's the growing and then there's the wine-making, but it doesn't seem like there's like they seem to me like they're very much intertwined. Like if you, you know, what you're doing in the vineyards uh very much has an effect on when you're making the wine. Or maybe I'm wrong.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

No, you're you're you're dead on. And I think that's one of the things that gave me a leg up on a lot of the um other people in the Napa Valley is I have a geology background. And I look at things over eons when I when I think of the planet. I don't think of what happened in my lifetime or what happened last week, or you know, you're seeing heat waves around the country right now, and everybody's like, oh, I've never seen that before. I go, well, how old are you? Well, I'm 24. I mean, you've been paying attention like three years, and the planet's how old? So they are very much entwined, but you have to know what's going on in your vineyard. That's why I do all my own farming. I do all the tracking, and when I say it, I'm not hiring people to do it. I drive the tractor. I was out in the ghost, we're in the ghost horse vineyard here right now. And I was out there all that's why I have my little hoodie on, because with this head, you need to keep from getting sunburned. Um, but I'm out there, I know every vine. And when I drive a tractor, I'm looking at everything, and you get a feel for what's going on in your vineyard. Yeah, and and a vineyard management company is not gonna do that. You have to know, and yeah, it starts with the soil before you even start planting. You have to know what kind of soil you have, so you know what kind of rootstock you're gonna plant, what kind of clones of uh varietals you're gonna plant, uh, road direction, you're gonna go north, south, east, west, uh, how far part of your vine is gonna be, how far a part of your row is gonna be, road dire, you know, all these things, you know, make a big difference on what's gonna happen down the road when you start making wine. Your winemaking starts in the my winemaking for 2026 started at bud break this year. That's when I start watching the vineyard. And it actually really started during pruning because I I will prune every individual vine, not myself. I do have to have help with that. But we will look at every individual vine and see what kind of growth was on there. You know, if it's got really big long canes on it, you know, where we we know that vine was was really vigorous, we might leave a few more buds on that. And if you get to a vine that's got some short shoots on it and looks like a little weaker, we'll leave less buds on there. But when you bring a vineyard management company and they come in, they go, uh, we'll put two to uh six two bud spurs in every cordon arm and then they just prune everything the same. And uh you got to be looking for u typa, you gotta be looking for disease, you got to get you know that stuff cut off. All this stuff happens way before you even start making the wine. Then I'll start tasting the fruit uh as soon as we start going to varation, which will be this month, and I'll be tasting the fruit every day in both of the vineyards and all the different vineyard blocks, and I'll start getting a feeling for you know how the development of the fruit's coming. Um most important is you know, is there certain parts of the vineyard that are starting to ripen before other parts? Because you don't want to just wait till harvest and look at acid, sugar, and pH and go, oh wow, the numbers are good. Let's just start picking. Certain parts of the vineyard might ripen sooner than other parts. Some years it all ripens the same.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

That's wild. It's wild. Like that's what I'll one of my big questions was like with harvest, does it all come in and get ripe at the same time, or does it come in waves and you have to sit there and move around and pick here and then pick there? It's you can get any of those.

SPEAKER_01 9:41

I've always said when people ask me, well, what's this harvest, what's this vintage like? I said, like every other vintage, completely different. How do you capitalize on the parameters Mother Nature is going to give you this year? People worry about rain, they worry about heat spikes. Me, I'm in the same boat as everybody else. All I got to do is make better wine than everybody. So if you understand the farming and mother nature and what's going on, you don't have to worry about those things. But there are years where everything does ripen at one time. And boy, it's I mean, you remember the old cartoons when you open the boat doors and plates and spoons are flying around down below? That's what it's like here in Napa Valley, just going crazy. Then you have some years. My harvest for Cabernet at Conn Valley is gone over the course of almost two months to bring in just Cabernet. Um then you have the, you know, the vinages that the wine riders and the pundits who never make wine, uh, they make their assessments on a vintage uh based on the majority of wine that's produced every year, which is by big guys that normally don't make the great wines. They make price point-driven wines. But um you might have a year where uh it's cold and rainy and wet, uh, 88, 89, 98, 2000. They tried to pan 06, 06, they finally backed off on that. More recently, uh 2011. But for small wineries, you all you have to do is wait till the fruit's got the physiological ripeness that everybody talks about. I mean, you can have perfect acid, sugar, and pH, but tasting the fruit is how you really decide. Well, if your harvest isn't really going to be till end of October, beginning of November, that's okay. I can pick Con Valley in three and a half days. I can pick the ghost horse vineyard in 20 minutes. So I can truly wait until I get the fruit to where I want it. The big guys, they can't wait till the end of October, beginning of November, because it takes them 20 or 30 days to bring their fruit in. So they have to back up 20 days. That's where they start, and they bring in underripe fruit, and they'll make good wine, not great wine, but all their tanks are fermenting. Now you got fruit out in the vineyard that's getting ripe. So you press off the stuff in the tank sooner than you want to to get it to the barrels to make room for the ripe stuff to come in. Well, now you can have at least some great wine. Except now you're gonna have fruit on the vineyard that's gonna get overripe. It's gonna turn to raisins if you don't get it in right away. You can't pick it. So they press the really great stuff off the skin sooner than they want to for great winemaking to make room for the overripe stuff to come in. And they they're just not gonna make a great wine that year.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

It's so interesting, too, because people don't realize all that goes into everything. You know, there's a lot of stuff that makes a difference on all these little things, you know. And to me, I'm just fascinated because I've tried my first, you know, uh wine from Chateau Neuf-du-Pop. My brother-in-law brought me back some French wine. And I grew up in Napa and I'm growing up with California wine, and so I tried some stuff that tasted it tasted completely different, same varietals. And I was just like sitting there going, it's fascinating to me to see the differences between place, but you know, year to year. And I wanted to ask you this because have you ever wondered if all the hard work in the vineyard just wasn't gonna pay off?

SPEAKER_01 13:02

You know, I um I really never doubted the hard work. Um what I doubted was people telling me um that, you know, there was a there was gonna be a problem. Um we talked about the vineyard management companies. They um they don't really know what's going on, but I do. Um I built this from bare ground with my own hands, I pounded every post, I strung every wire. Um I also grew up on a farm in the upper peninsula, Michigan, where you're out in the middle of nowhere. And you and I learned from my father, my grandfather, something needed to be built, you had to build it. If you had to fix something, you had to fix it. There's nobody to call. If you built something and it fell over, you had rebuilt it and you learn learned to do things on your own. Um so you don't really doubt that kind of hard work. Um, my father-in-law, un unbeknownst to me, when I first started dating my wife Sarah, I didn't know he used to be one of the biggest grape farmers in the history of California. He used to farm 8,000 acres of grapes. Wow. He's responsible for helping open up Edna Valley, Pasar Robo's, the Central Coast. He knew all the old timers I knew here before I knew him. I, you know, because I hung out with Robert Mandavi, Louis Martini, Justin Meyer, Joe Heights, Charlie Wagner Sr., Al Bronson, Goose, you name the guys. And so I when we start, when I started taking back over my vineyard when these vineyard management companies were screwing up, George came up here and he he had the same idea as I did. You know, we just need more nutritional work, watering at the right time, pruning properly. But he came up with a secret solution. He calls it a root fix, and he won't tell me what's in it, but I'm gonna have it analyze. And um, we've been putting that on our vines, and um it's unbelievable the amount of vigor and how these vines. I mean, we had vines that were all but dead, even with u typa, and it's growing through that. And so I asked one of the scientists that's behind this stuff, I said, Is it possible we're growing through u typa? He says, Yeah, we think so. And we didn't even think it'll grow through um phylloxera. So you gotta be kidding me. But you know, the vines came back because we never accepted somebody else's verdict and uh on you know, on something that we built ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

That makes sense. It it does. You know, and it to me, I mean the idea of like let me put it this way, the idea of of outsourcing something that is so important is crazy to me. It's like um, you know, with my daughter, I get help, I get tutors and such, I get expert opinions, but I'm not having someone else come in and parent my kid, you know? And you know, when I see people, you know, when you describe the way people are having other companies come in, I mean it might be convenient, it might be convenient for a parent to slap a um uh a device in their kid's hand, but it doesn't mean that it's gonna parent them, right? You know? Right. Uh I wanted to ask this question.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

There is one thing that does keep me up at night. It isn't the weather. It's not um the market, it's just the layers of city, county, state, federal regulations that just make it hard to run a business. You just I mean, Napa County here has been anti-vineyard, anti-winery, anti-tourism ever since I got here. Even the locals back in the early 80s, they all had bumper stickers on their cars that said, Hey, welcome to the Napa Valley, now go home. Um it just makes it impossible for a small family winery to survive these days. You know, we're not a corporation. Um you gotta have all this compliance now. And it's just Sarah and I. Sarah and I are doing all of this. Now I got two guys that helped me in the vineyard, one one guy more in the cave, one guy more in the vineyard. So there's four of us total for evolve of Con Valley, and for Ghost Horse, it's me. Um it's I mean, the the regulations have gotten so ridiculous. You know, when we finally got the okay to ship direct, you know, to other states, well, they all of a sudden decide, hey, we can make money by imposing licenses, fees, and taxes and permits. Um Net Valley Register did an article a few years ago. And if you just count all the just from Napa County, licensing, taxes, fees, and permits, it's almost $100 per bottle just to produce a bottle of wine on fees. That's wow. I mean, it's crazy. And they don't care.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

Yeah. It's interesting too because there's uh, you know, people doing things that um you know, you as winemakers have a lot to process. You know, you have Mother Nature, uh, and she doesn't always cooperate, you know, and she does fun things, but then you have all of these other layers on top. But how do you keep going when, you know, Mother Nature doesn't cooperate and when things just get tough?

SPEAKER_01 18:20

Well, in reality, um Mother Nature uh pretty much always cooperates in Napa. Now we talked about some of those years where it's harvest is really late. Um, but we don't really have bad vintages. We'll have bad farming and bad winemaking decisions in those kind of years. You know, I spent years as a geologist understanding deep time. And um I understand what the the land will give you and what's workable every year. And if you know what you're doing, it's gonna work out. Uh so-called bad years, like I said, those are the cooler vintages, the big producers. They just can't logistically bring the wine, the grapes in when they need to be bought in, brought in. Um it's yeah, Mother Nature is Mother Nature's Mother Nature. Remember the old commercial, you can't you can't, what is it? What uh it's not nice to fool Mother Nature, but you're you're not gonna fool her. She'll fool you. But I remember 1989, you know, that was the worst vintage of the 80s. 88 was the first worst vintage of the 80s, and we had one of the top wines of the world. And in 89, we had one of the top wines of the world. Um and I remember, you know, people just started picking because there was so much rain coming in 89, everybody just said, well, let's just let's just bring the fruit in, it's better than nothing. And I said, No, we're gonna leave the fruit out. And my dad even questioned me, he says, Well, how long are you gonna wait? I said, until the fruit's ready. And I tell people, like, look, if you're gonna pick early because of what Mother Nature's doing, you're you're giving up your opportunity to make a great wine. If you leave that fruit out there and get it to where you want to, you can make a great wine that year. And everybody says, Yeah, but wonder if you don't get there. Well, I can still pick the fruit, make a mediocre wine like everybody that picked early. So you give up your opportunity to make a great wine by making those kinds of bad decisions. In the end, like I said, I'm in the same boat as everybody else. We've got a really rough year and rain, and '89, there was a lot of mold in vineyards. I'm in the same boat as everybody else. All I got to do is do better than everybody else. And when you're the farmer and the owner and the winemaker, and you're doing it all yourself, you have a lot better chance than the people that are hiring people to do it.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

Right. Well, I want to ask you another question because um what's harder? Growing the grapes or staying patient long enough to make great wine, you know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

I suppose growing the grapes and making great wine isn't even all that hard. You know, after after doing this for so many years, um, you've got you've got a pretty good handle on it. I think patience is the hard part, but only because of what I've eventually got in barrels. I start getting really excited with what I have in the barrels. I mean, we got some new wines coming out for Con Valley. We got our Maratis Est, which is Latin for delayed. These are wines that are going to be in three to four years in barrels. Uh, we got our new XS, the letters XS, it sounds like excess wines that are coming out. And I'm tasting every barrel, every two to four weeks for the life that the wines are in barrels. And so I start getting excited about some of this stuff. And plus, I'm always barrel tasting with people that come to the winery, and you start getting a feel for what people are thinking about these wines. And that's where the patience gets tough, is like, oh my God, you know, I can't wait. I can't wait. I can't wait. Um I I'm not worried about it. I'm just excited about what's coming out. There's a difference between waiting um because you're uncertain versus waiting because you already know. Yeah. You just have to let the you have to let the the vineyard and the wines tell the story.

SPEAKER_00 22:23

Right. Well, that leads to my other question. Like, you know, and maybe you've seen other people do this. Have you ever been tempted to take shortcuts instead of doing things the right way? Or have you seen other people taking shortcuts?

SPEAKER_01 22:37

People take shortcuts all the time, especially right now. You know, the you know, we all know the wine economy is probably the worst it's ever been in certainly the 44 years I've been here. And so everybody's looking for ways to stay in business, really. Um but I've never once been tempted. Um I mean, how many, how many products are made in the world where you know you you start making that product and it's not out for three to four years? I mean, yeah. It's it's not like you're making making car parts and or widgets and it's the same thing. I mean, most most companies are measuring by the you know, their success by the quarters. You know, we're measuring it in decades. Yeah. I mean, that's that's you know, if if anything, I always I sometimes wonder if I should be taking longer, not taking shortcuts to get there faster. I mean, you know, Ghost Horse is one barrel of each of the wines a year. It's entirely made by hand. You know, I might really release 22 cases. People want more of this wine. It's I mean, it's one of the most talked-about wines in the world. People are going nuts. And yeah, I could make more of it, and I'm just not gonna do it. You know? Yeah. The moment I scale GoSource beyond what I can do with my own hands, uh, because it becomes something else. Yeah. You know, it just it becomes a brand instead of wine. Um, shortcuts are available every year. Every year. And I walk, I walk past those shortcuts every time. The wine knows you can't fool what's in the glass. I mean, you can fool the label, you can fool um marketing, you can you know, fool price point, but you can't fool what's in the glass. I mean, 44, 43 years of this has really taught me um the wine always tells the truth.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

Yeah, I love that. Um, you know, the wine always tells the truth. Um one question for you here. Uh you know, there's a lot of changes right now in the industry, but what's the biggest threat for family wineries like yours today?

SPEAKER_01 24:56

Uh there's two that are probably pretty much existential. Um first, we talked about already the government. City, county, state, federal, the layers of compliance that small wineries face today. You've probably seen some of the lawsuits going on with um Smith Badron, um uh hoops, uh just you know trying to run your business. You know, um Michigan, you know, up there in uh Traverse City, they they won a big lawsuit because, you know, the government was trying to tell them what they can do with their properties. But you know, it's just completely out of control. I mean, we're not a lar a corporation with a large legal department. Um it's I mean, it's nobody in these agencies has ever farmed anything. Uh they have no idea what they're doing to these small producers. And the second is probably the consolidation of the industry. When a family winery gets absorbed, I mean, look what happened to Mandavi, you know. Um, you know, it's constellation. And constellation, I just saw their reports for the first quarter, they're off by 50%, I think it said. Um you know, the soul just leaves these wineries when when they get bought out by this guy, these guys. And it it the decisions are being made by people who never walk the rows at 6 a.m. in October, waiting for the right minute to pick.

SPEAKER_00 26:30

If you have someone making decisions that's thousands of miles away and doesn't understand the things on the ground, you know, I I've seen I grew up in the Napa Valley and it's changed. There's a lot of change happening. And it's change from outside, not within as much, you know? And that's just in the the vibe and living there. And I can only imagine that what's going on in the in the uh the wine industry.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Oh it's it's it's it's great. When did you live here?

SPEAKER_00 27:05

Um I've my family's still there, but we I we moved there in '94 and lived there all the way through through now. You know, we I still split my time there. And it's interesting to see how things have changed. So I spent a lot of time overseas. Um, it's still home, but it feels different, you know.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

Well, it's it's feeling a lot different for me too, because around the world, I tend to buy wine from the the the people I know, my friends. I want to know the owners, the winemakers, I want to know the winemaking. Because when you pull a bottle out for a friend and and they say, hey, tell me about this wine, you got this full story. Yeah. You got a friend in Ohio and he buys everything that's 95 points and higher and all. He'll pull something out that he knows I I've never had, and he'll I'll say, Hey, tell me about this wine. He says, Well, my spectator gave me 95 points. I go, Well, great. Tell me about the wine. Uh Spectre gave me 95 points. I go, Really? That's all that's all you got? Yeah. And, you know, with all the old timers disappearing and selling, it's getting harder and harder for me to find places I want to buy wine from. I was, well, I was at a restaurant down in uh Pasadena a number of years ago when I was dating Sarah, and I saw this old 73 Andrus reserve on there. And Gary Anders was one of my best friends. And I looked at the price and it didn't look right. And I asked the survey, I said, is this price right? Because it looked way too low. She said, Yeah, I think so. I said, Well, okay, we'll have that. Well, 20 minutes goes by and there's no wine. And all of a sudden, the owner, who I knew from years ago, because I used to do a lot of winemaker dinners, he goes, he goes, I knew you were here. I go, how would you know I was here? He says, Because that wine has been on that list for years. And when I server said somebody ordered it, he says, There's only one guy that would know what that wine is, Todd Anderson. And he came up and he goes, I knew you were here. That's awesome. But you know, that that was that was Pine Ridge. You know, it was Gary and Nancy, you know, when they started it, you know, I knew them forever. Unfortunately, Gary died prematurely. Nancy still lives right here by me. Of course, she married Dan Duckhorn, who just died, you know, fairly recently. And so that's the hard part for me. The valley's changing and it's getting harder and harder to find places where you can have that emotional attachment to.

SPEAKER_00 29:19

How do you think the the industry comes back from this? Is it other regions that kind of take the mantle from Napa as Napa goes a different direction? What do you see happening?

SPEAKER_01 29:30

Well, you know, I've always been fascinated by the southeast corner of Washington State, Walla Walla, Yakima, the Red Hills. Years ago, when they were getting going up there, I said, Hey, you, you know, you guys got some ability to make some of the greatest wines of the world here. And, you know, I remember a number of years ago, I was up there with a friend and we were staying up there for a few days in Seattle. I said, I'm gonna go to the grocery store, I'm gonna buy a case of mixed wines, and everything's gonna be under 30 bucks a bottle, and you're gonna love them all. And son of a gun, if he didn't go nuts over them all. Now they know they're making some great wines up there. Unfortunately, I have a prod them getting, hey, you need to raise your prices. God bless America. Sorry about that. Um But I I I think the areas where you keep owner winemakers kind of going, you know, Temecula's somewhat like that, although they're getting kind of blown out of the out of the out of the water now with their growing. And, you know, and they don't have that perfect Mediterranean climate like we do. Only 2% of the planet has that. Um But as things consolidate and people sell and it goes corporate, ugh. You know, I I applaud Texas. You know, I I lived all over Texas, and a lot of the oil fields I used to work in are in vineyards now. And I've often thought I should go there and help them and, you know, really, you know, help them out with what's going on. I was just over in Japan. Uh, had huge ghost horse events going over there. I was over there for two weeks. I ended up down in Nagano consulting for some guys that are starting a vineyard winery up in the uh what they call the Japanese Alps. That's fantastic. But I also went to one winery and the wines were horrible. And I and I started quizzing them about what's going on. I said, well, you need to do this, you need to do that. And because they can make some way better wines and what they're doing. So I think that the in Napa, what's going on though, are people like my son, he's got his own brand. Now he can't afford land in Napa. He can't afford to own vineyards, but these young kids are finding their own fruit source and they're doing the work. They're making their own wine. There's no consultants. And these are the new young kids to follow in Napa. And Michael, uh, he's got a brand called MTGA, and he's the kid's on fire. And and that's what you want to fire, you know, or follow. You want to follow Screaming Eagle with Stan Cronkey, who doesn't even want to see you. You know, he's more interested in just, you know, having a winery for the fun of it. And uh, you know, I I can talk about them because Gene Phillips I know and Heidi Barrett made the wine, you know, our kids grew up together, and you know, those were some pretty good wines back then, but uh they lost their soul.

SPEAKER_00 32:13

It's interesting too, because one of the things that um, you know, as people are as things are changing, what do you hope people feel when they keep coming back to one of your bottles? Oh, geez.

SPEAKER_01 32:29

Um passion, nostalgia, um a sense of being part of something. When somebody opens a bottle of my wine, I want them to feel that a real person farmed that fruit. I want them to feel that a real person made that wine, that somewhere in Conn Valley, someone was thinking about the moment that that bottle would eventually be opened. Um and cared deeply about what would be inside it. Um, you know, my dad, like I say, he um he started buying first growth back, you know, in 55. Um back then, it was 88 bucks a case for first growth. I've got a Wall Street Journal article on my wall with a airmail letter from plain old Pearsons in Washington, D.C. to my dad, notes of his in the margin, what he was going to be buying for the 62 and 64 futures. And that was in 65 when the paper, and that's how long they used to hang on to that stuff. But you know, he was a dentist in a small town of the upper peninsula, Michigan, and he'd fly that Mooney airplane back and forth and bring, you know, wines back. He gave me bottles over the years a few months ago. We drank um our last bottle. Sarah and I drank our last bottle, 1945, Pichon Lalan. Um he gave me that bottle in the early 80s. He usually gave me wine for my birthday and Christmas. Um Sarah and I just drank that on our own, the two of us. You know, 1945. I mean, that's that's just crazy. I mean, if you think about what that bottle carried, right? And if you know the history and think about everything it did to survive, to get to our table. Um, that's what I want people to feel when they open one of ours. Not just it's just a wine, but it's a life, it's a person who cared. Um, because someday they're going to open, like, say, a 21 Go Source um Phantom and feel the way that I did about that 1945 Pichon Lalan.

SPEAKER_00 34:45

I I think that one of the things I um I get a lot of international wine here in uh where I split my time in Vietnam. But I I had a Napa cab that I brought back with me from uh St. Helena and on my last trip, and I I opened it the other day and it was wild because I could smell home. I could smell home and I knew the people who made that wine. And, you know, those are the things that are just like I don't think people can understand. Like when you open a bottle, there is life in there. There is substance in there, there is this this this thing, this life force that has gone from the field, from the farmers, from all the people, all the things into that bottle, you know?

SPEAKER_01 35:26

Yep. You know, one of the things I miss in Napa in the early days when we'd pick grapes, you know, they the grapes were picked in five-ton gondolas. Yeah. And they had drain plugs on them so you could rinse them out. And Highway 29 and Silverado Trail during harvest would be sticky from Napa to Calistoga. Sticky. Because juice was dripping and leaking out of those drain plugs all the time. And I used to think about that when I was delivering grapes to Joe Heights, that I was dripping some of Convalley's grapes on the road, blending with all these other great wines in the Napa Valley. And that emotion is just amazing. Now, side story, when I got up with my first load to Joe, Raleigh and David are out there running the crusher. And Joe came out of the house and I stuck my hand out to shake hands. He walked right past me. I'm like, hi, Joe. And uh he went over and looked in the hopper and he found one leaf. And he came up to me and put the leaf in my face. He said, There's one leaf in the next load. I'm rejecting a load. And he goes back from the house. And my best friend Larry Johnson was with me helping me out that day. And we got back to the vineyard and we rode on the gondol in the vineyard. No leaves, no leaves. And we got up with the next load. Same thing. Joe came out, didn't shake my hand, walked right past me, didn't find the leaf, went back in the house. Well, a few minutes later, he comes out with a bottle and shoves it in my gut. And I grabbed this bottle and I look down at it. It's an old vineyard vintage of Heights Martha's Vineyard. He goes, Here, maybe someday you'll be able to be able to make a bottle of wine like this. I mean, you can't, I mean, it's unbelievable those stories, you know, having grown up with these guys. You know, I was 25 when I started here. And then it turns out my father-in-law was at Fresno State when Joe was teaching there. And he said he was an old cantankerous guy then. And my father-in-law beat him in a pruning contest, and Joe got all mad and stuff. So that stuff goes into the bottle too, and you can tell the story.

SPEAKER_00 37:37

Yeah. And I think that's where, you know, when everything changes, when everything goes corporate, where do the stories go? You know, they get, you know, filtered through. When I when I do marketing for videos for people, I've been working with some wineries and they're like, what should we do? And I was like, stop the drone shots, stop the photos of someone in there dipping, you know, into the bar. You know, I said, if you've got an interesting crew, if you have an interesting staff, start telling their stories. Tell the people, the stories of the people making this wine. Get out there and say, who is Tom? Who is Tom? Tom is this guy. Who is Bob? Bob is this guy. Let people know who the hell they are because it's way more important than you getting an aerial drone shot of your vineyard. You know, I love drones. It's like, it's not storytelling.

SPEAKER_01 38:30

It's an emotional product. It's once you get into it, it is truly an emotional product. When I walk into my cellar, I'm not thinking about what Sarah's doing and herbs and spices for dinner. I'm just looking around myself, oh, I feel like drinking you tonight. Or the ones where are really fun is, oh, I forgot I had you, and I'm drinking you tonight. And you have a story behind the bottom.

SPEAKER_00 38:50

Yeah. Where can people go to find out more about you and what you do and what you make?

SPEAKER_01 38:57

Uh the website gives a little bit of information, although they're a little bit messed up right now because they're both getting redone because we're changing all these systems and stuff that we use for managing everything. Um if you have a GoSource bottle, my cell phone's on the back of every bottle, you just call me. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. I get calls from all over the world. Sometimes they forget about the time difference, and I'll be sound asleep. I'm like, uh-huh. Um, I do a little bit of uh distribution in Vegas with both wineries, because most everything's 100% direct to consumer. But I still have a lot of friends because I did a lot of stuff for the knee racing and Formula One and NASCAR and NFL and PGA did TV a little bit. So you get high-profile people that you know want to want to bend your ear and find out more about what I do. But um Google and you can see all some of the funny stories. But call me in and visiting the wineries is is the best way because we'll sit in the cave and spend a lot of time um learning about what I do, how it fits into Napa, how it fits into California, into the United States, old world versus new world. Because I not only knew a lot of the old timers here, but I knew some of the old timers in Europe, like in Burgundy, Henre Jae. I I got to know Henri Jae. Um, Jean-Nicol Mio, Mio Kamise, you know, he's still alive and I still know him. Claude Gas. I mean, these are the guys that made wine what it is. It's just fascinating.