Wine With Friends

Episode 7 - Anthony Guerra (Part 2)

• Marcus Ginyard and Pablo Vega • Season 1 • Episode 7

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0:00 | 41:48

In Part 2 of this special conversation on Wine With Friends, host Marcus Ginyard continues his discussion with restaurateur and wine expert Anthony Guerra, owner of Tutti Pizza, Oakwood Pizza Box, Capital Pizza Box, and Saint Pierre Wine Shop.

In this episode, Marcus and Anthony dive deeper into the work ethic required to build and sustain a successful business. Anthony shares the realities of running restaurants and wine programs, and the daily discipline needed to maintain excellence in hospitality.

Marcus and Anthony also draw parallels between the dedication required in the restaurant world and the preparation it takes to build a successful basketball team. From long hours to constant attention to detail, both fields demand commitment, leadership, and trust in the people around you.

This episode is about passion, preparation, and the drive to pursue excellence—whether on the court or in the restaurant.

Pour a glass and join the conversation. 🍷

SPEAKER_00

All right, my man. It's not too often um that we go through two bottles on the show. I am not worried about it at all. It's uh it's a Friday night tonight, so I don't have anything to do tomorrow. I'm I'm glad that I inspired uh of course inspires. But you know, I I thought about it earlier. I was like, I think we're gonna let's just get to. Let's just get to, just in case. Um, speaking of Friday night, it um and not having anything else to do, the only thing I have to do is get ready for tomorrow night.

SPEAKER_01

What are we doing?

SPEAKER_00

Well, we're gonna have a nice little party at your place tomorrow night. Um, getting a bunch of friends together, which is actually interesting. No, it's perfect, actually. It's it's perfect to talk about that because we're gonna get some friends together and we're gonna drink some wine. And I'm very thankful that we get to do it at your lovely new establishment. Thank you. But anything, that was the that was the genesis of this podcast. Wine with friends. It it started. Um, shout out to our producer, by the way, Pablo. Um, it was his idea, another friend of ours, um, Eric. It was their idea to get some people together to drink wine and just connect. And that's what we did. We did it in a really small, intimate setting, and then it just kind of grew, got a little bit more momentum, and now we're gonna have probably 25 people at your shop tomorrow. We'll buy a ton of wine, and we're just gonna spend the whole evening getting to know each other, connecting over wine, and just building that community. When was the first one? The first one, probably this is the end of 2025. I would imagine the end of 2022. Can I look to my producer here? End of 2022-ish, fall, winter of 2022. Um, I think it started with six to eight people. I think the next one was like 12 people, and then it got to the point where we were like, man, we need we need some more space. So then we started going out and I guess renting space, so to speak, you know, um, you know, making sure that we picked up a certain minimum at different establishments around town so that you know we could have a reserved space for more and more people to come together. But um, but yeah, man, like that's why we're here tonight is because of that.

SPEAKER_01

That's awesome. When you're picking wine for a group, what are you thinking? What do you what do you like? What is your like give walk me through your pro we we talk about my process and I'm gonna give you just a little rinse there? Um you're a professional. You're looking at a wall of wine, you got a group of people, like what you have regions you're like, oh I gotta yes.

SPEAKER_00

So there's a couple of regions that I think that I don't ever want to miss. Um, I will likely always have a Bordeaux in there. Um I love left bank Bordeaux, but I don't mind if it's from somewhere else, you know. But I I do want to have a Bordeaux in there. Um I'm gonna have it's it's gonna be heavy old world, but I am gonna throw some new world in there.

SPEAKER_02

Like that?

SPEAKER_00

My idea is much like the groups that we pull together, the actual people that we pull together, my idea is how do we get the most variants in the bottles, in the actual humans there, so that we can build this connection between things that are seemingly very different, but at the end of the day, we we we come to understand how we're more alike than we are different, right? Um, and I think right now sounds super cliche, right? But like right now, more than ever, I think it's so important for us to be focusing on the things that bring us together. And so, you know, we talked about stories earlier, right? Like, we're not talking about scores. I don't necessarily need to get the big labels that everybody's gonna recognize, you know, but but what are the stories? And one of the things that I love about your shop and about the people that that work at your shop is that they all know those stories, right? You're carrying wines with stories. And so, oh, here's a wine from from Georgia. Like, how many people are drinking wines from Georgia? How many people are drinking wines from Slovakia? You know, so grab a couple of those in there, and then to your point about this grape in Piedmont, that's right next to all the other grapes that everybody knows, but like nobody knows this one, yep. That Femi was talking about, like, okay, let's throw that on the table, you know. So just trying to give everybody a different flavor of some things and get their minds, you know, moving in a different direction and say, oh man, that's interesting. I would have never bought that had I not tasted it tonight.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's cool. Those kind of things. I remember looking at when we did it, when we were there with you uh however many months ago that was. I remember looking at well, Moreau Nade was there. Oh, yeah. That's the you know, Shabli with the little it looks like a hand. I don't even know what yeah, yeah, yeah. So real quick story.

SPEAKER_00

I moved recently, had um, oh, we're definitely gonna throw this video in here. So moved, had to hire a crane to get my wine fridge out of my house because Ryan Holmes, they're dumb. They build these relatively nice houses, and I got a stairwell that's like this wide. So I have to crane my wine fridge in and out of the house.

SPEAKER_01

Whoa.

SPEAKER_00

Crane some other big furniture out of the house, too.

SPEAKER_01

But anyway, like off a balcony? Walk me through?

SPEAKER_00

Yep. Okay, so you roll the balcony out of out of the kitchen onto the deck, and then craned up over the deck and and out.

SPEAKER_02

Whoa.

SPEAKER_00

Because it wouldn't make it up or down the um down the stairwell. Tried it the hard way on the way in and uh had to get it craned in. And anyway, I'll show you the video on that. Yeah, please. Moved the wine fridge, moved all my wine, which is not a ton of wine, probably 150, 160 bottles. The only bottle that I lost was that um Chablis. How did I pick that? And it and I lost it when I was taking it out of the box and putting it back into the fridge. You fumble? Fumbled, fumble, dropped it, boop, beep, just sitting there on the ground. Not great. Not great. Anyway, sorry to interrupt too bad. That's like a very particular noise. I hated it. I've broken the bottle. I lost in the move, but unfortunately.

SPEAKER_01

I'm glad that somehow that was a memorable bottle for me, and the universe just took that away from you.

SPEAKER_00

It's a it's beautiful. I mean, and Cash, can we just say real quickly about white burgundy? I can't stand when people tell me they don't like Chardonnay.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, I get it.

SPEAKER_00

Actually, you do, but you love Chardonnay. You you actually love Chardonnay.

SPEAKER_01

You love Chardonnay. Humans are wired to enjoy it. Yeah, not every bottle of Chardonnay, you're wired to enjoy Chablis, high energy Chablis. It should be at every party. High energy Chablis. You want, like, listen, if you got a party, you want to keep it going, if you're here's advice. You don't want to go big red right away if you're looking to stay going. Yep. This guy's maybe the closer. Well, you want to have Chablis, go to Jura, go to Champagne, Loire Valley, um snappy high-acid wines keep you up, keep you going, you're good. You're not gonna slow down. I'm with it. So the problem is start with that. Start there. Big fan of Shablis. Big fan, huge. We um, yeah, it's definitely something we we love. Yeah. We keep it around. It's it's in there right now. There might be a bottle in the shop right now. What it would there's there's a lot of shibou in the shop. It's a lot of things.

SPEAKER_00

Are you carrying that one too? I thought I might have seen it. It's in there, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, uh important to where we are right now. Uh sorted, I found the wines for the first time over um Cafe Griotti. Oh, yeah. Cafe Griotti. Toma. Toma. That's a Toma wine. So I knew the wood shuck at Griotti before I know Tuma, and that always did this coffee place that oddly had good bottles of wine. Oh, yeah. I didn't understand what's happening, and there was a little wood chuck that'd always be there. But I would sit there on the balcony and you know, drink a cappuccino, stare at those wines, whatever, study whatever thing I was studying. Uh, and then Tomai imports that wine. So I always try to have at least a few things from Tamon. That producer's great. It's awesome.

SPEAKER_00

All right, so tell us about this one, man. I know that you know this producer or are at least familiar with this producer.

SPEAKER_01

I don't want to say no to this producer, but Clapp is uh Clapp's a benchmark producer. I mean, if we were looking at the at the Rhone, I mean Clapp is definitely someone you're you're gonna study Clapp. There's no doubt about it. Um if Clapp makes a wine in a vintage and you want to have a thought about a vintage, you need to open one of his and then you need to see what's going on. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00

Syrah Dominate, I mean, these so the handful of times that have been at your house, I feel like we've always had a Syrah.

SPEAKER_01

Syrah's always around. Syrah's always is something I collect a lot. Um I drink a lot, I play around with it a lot. Okay. Um I've uh there's verticals of clap that are sitting that we keep and we save. Um I think Syrah's a really good grape too. That uh different countries do a really good job of it. It's not that you have to go to the Northern Road for Syrah. There's other countries that make Australia, even California. California, exactly. Even California. Uh really good examples of Syrah that are really delicious and really fun. And I mean, you could obviously they they could go next to right now if we had some grilled meat. I don't think you'd be mad at all. I would not. I definitely wouldn't. Give me a charcoal fire and put some sort of something on that charcoal. We're fine.

SPEAKER_00

Man, easy. I'm fasting right now, actually. Wait, really? Kind of sucks. But um, I would, yeah, I would absolutely love it.

SPEAKER_01

I don't want to rub it in, but you know, I get it. No, I mean it's alright.

SPEAKER_00

I'm not fasting from wine, though, but um just food right now. But it you know, I feel like this just like gets me in the mindset of a barbecue, you know?

SPEAKER_01

Like yeah, there's something. Maybe it's an exotic meat on the bar. Is there a lamb on the barbecue with some sort of rosemary herb situation?

SPEAKER_00

Like certainly very herbaceous.

SPEAKER_01

Are you throwing like you're you're doing some stuff, but these wines are are very food friendly. Um certainly they have punch, they have power, they have force. Usually speaking, uh, we're not looking at a ton of like new oak or a ton of barrique. So, like, you're not, it's not overly woody. We could drink it right now, no food. Yeah, we're okay. Yeah. Um, I got into Syrah, uh Clapp's a favorite, Gonan's a favorite, Darden Rebo's a favorite. All these producers are great. And then I meet uh California winemaker Pax, who's obsessed with Syrah and Pax Mahale of Pax Sellers. Uh Syrah experts. Yeah, we had some PAX together. We've had some PAX. And that was Pax was with you. Pax was there. We so drinking Syrah from other places with PAX and having Pax talk about the winemaking process. Interesting. Um, talking about what's happening, how it might age, how it might not age, and then seeing it and checking for myself has been selfishly just like a beautiful journey. Um, just having access to him as a reference point and then like seeing it like, is he right or is he wrong? Let's find out. Is he wrong? I think he's wrong. He's gonna be wrong. But that bottle we drank was a PAX Magic Vineyard. Magic, uh Magic is a stunning, stunning bottle. Uh it's a vineyard, it's the latest ripening vineyard that he has. He'll pick that last of everything he does.

SPEAKER_00

And so we're currently, as we stand right now, recording in the first week of October. Is this the first week of October? So we're just on the tail end of harvest. Or are there some people that are still would some people pick this late?

SPEAKER_01

I know I'm not positive anybody still has anything hanging. I imagine everything has been pulled, everything is in. But I mean, harvest might start in California in the second week of August, third week of August. And then obviously September wide open, and here we are, first second week of October. You have a shot. Um vineyard site matters a lot. How high is it? What's the wind like? What's your average temperature? Incoming rain, no rain, yeah, all that kind of stuff matters. Um, and the style you're trying to do. If you're trying to push more alcohol, you're gonna let them hang longer, get more sugar, turn that up. Your potential for alcohol in the wine goes way up. Some people want the opposite. Um it's all you it's all the choices, but there's so many decisions you could make that affects what we drink, which I find so much fun. They could have messed this up in a thousand different places.

SPEAKER_00

But that is the beauty of wine, right? Like the endless possibilities of what could be done, what you could do next year, and then all the things that you can't control, like you mentioned, right? You can't control how much it's gonna rain. No, you can't control the frost. Nope. So it's like there's just so many things out there that you can't control. There's uh a lot of things that you can, and like how do you pull all those together? What combination of all those things are gonna come together in that vintage to give us what we're having today?

SPEAKER_01

Oh man, that's why great producers are great producers, right? You you you you have some of that Rolodex of what happened a couple years ago or 20 years ago, or you have the resources to sort of guide it in the in the winery, guide that wine into what it needs. Does it need more time? Does it need uh more oak, less oak? You know, a really fun thing that's happening in wine now is that uh glass aging. So they're aging in glass tanks now.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. And so why glass versus stainless steel? Super neutral. Um even more so than stainless steel?

SPEAKER_01

Stainless steel, there's some sort of oxygenation. I am not positive of what is happening. I just know now that wineries are talking about it.

unknown

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01

Lahereit Frere. Oh.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, yeah, we're gonna have some of that champagne tomorrow.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, Aurelian is at staying. Is he there now? He's there right now.

SPEAKER_00

Is he staying tomorrow?

SPEAKER_01

Maybe. Okay. Oh, there's a lot of champagne from him, though. We have a lot. Um, but he was talking a lot about glass. Uh I heard about glass. He's looking at bringing in glass now, and he's very excited about it and its potential. He was nervous to talk about it because he's like, ah, if it's terrible, I don't want anybody to know that I even used it. I'm just gonna throw it out and act like I never saw it. And I was like, oh, okay. Well, I'm gonna talk to Marcus about this immediately. So somebody's gonna know. We're about to talk about this. Uh but these like the the move towards uh neutral and what neutral could be and and what um what could express the the best uh terroir or site specific things is so fun.

SPEAKER_00

So you love Syrah.

SPEAKER_01

Love Syrah.

SPEAKER_00

If you had to think, and you're very familiar with this producer. So if you had to think about someone you'd like to share this bottle with, this vintage, this bottle, this class right now, pastor present, someone you want to share this bottle with, who would it be? Oh wow and why? Wow. Man, this smells so good.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's killer. Uh I mean listen, pastor present for me, uh it's a very personal answer, but my grandfather is is definitely the one. Uh he's he he passed away some years ago. A lot of what I saw as a child was stuff that he did. He started a company, he had five kids, he started a company from there, and he became an absolute monster. Monster. He built an unbelievable business, he loved his family dearly, he did a lot. So, I mean, I every a lot of what I do now is is what I saw him do. Uh so it'd be interesting to share a bottle of wine like this with him. You know, hey, how am I doing? What's the score like? Yeah. Am I doing all right? Am I winning? Am I losing? Like where can I fix this? Uh, I think for him uh and me, that's that's always uh that's always something uh I wish I could do, I wish I could have done, I wish I could uh bring into reality in some way. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Cheers to your grandpa, man. Cheers, man. He's a legend, dude. He'd be proud of you, man. You're doing great, you're doing a lot of great things, man, and um he'd definitely be happy to see where you are. How did being exposed to different things, traveling, how did that shape your worldview? Oh, that's easy.

SPEAKER_01

That's so easy. So that's I think why. Okay, like how did how do you go from there's more talented people than me that will never try to open a restaurant, a bar, a wine shop, a thing. They will never try because they never saw it or never thought it was possible. And to me, that's the greatest tragedy because they can do it, and if you do it, yes, you can fail. Sure, there's a thousand ways to die, it's a thousand ways to lose. But if you win one time, you win. Like you can win, and you build on that, and you it's not just an absolute one day, all right. I there's a game that you lost, and I I'm not gonna talk about the first time I saw Duke Carolina. Oh boy. I'm not gonna bring that up. I'm not gonna bring that up right now. But you know, but for me, uh in my industry, um, I wish that more people understood that you could, if you're gonna do this thing and we're gonna work in hospitality and we're gonna work all these hours, you're gonna work all these weekends, you're gonna do all this stuff. Your goal is not to become the chef of someone else's place. The goal is not to become a general manager, the goal is to own your own thing. This point, I don't want to have a hospitality group. I want to have 10, 15 guys that came out of my group, men, women, all things. You know, I I want you to go and open your own thing. I don't want to own it. Yeah, I don't want it to be Anthony Hospitality. Hell no, I want you to have your own thing. So what that's it changed my life. I saw that for my grandfather. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. I worked for after opening the restaurant, and it had some successes and some failures right out of college. Some things were good, some things were not good. Some things were the best I've ever seen, and some things were not. Okay. So I went and worked for the best or the hardest or the most prestigious chefs I could find. I did a tour. Every single stop, what I realized was like, damn, this ain't for me. Like, I know what the real thing is. Like, I'm not running. Each of them were in their own way. Each time I made a stop, oh, you know what, you can be the food and beverage director, you can be the general manager. You can, it's like, uh, but there's something like this is not. No, we're going. We're gonna go past it. I never thought about it like that. I'm gonna learn what I can learn, but we're going past this. Like, this is not. I wish that uh if I could, if I could, when I retire, if more people or some people or anybody could hear that and go, yeah, I did it because I saw Anthony do it. Well, that guy's not that talented. He was a B minus student at Chapel Hill. He barely got through. I remember my mom, like, um, C's get degrees. C's get degrees. C's get degrees. Um, he barely made it through, and look what he did. He created a life. It's his family's okay. It's a beautiful industry. Um knowing that, seeing that, it's like, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So you'd say that regardless of industry, and I don't want to put words in your mouth here, but most important is to do it. Do the thing, right? Like stop thinking about it, stop trying to calculate it. Just do it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, don't. You I think that the key to anything is well critical is that humans are very bad at forecasting. And that is in a business sense and a meteorological meteorological sense. The meteorologist is the he's always wrong. Always. He's never right. At least half the time. He's never right. Swear to God, it's like Larry David had this right. You know, the man- you ever see that Kirby Enthusiasm episode with the the the weather guy's like, uh, it's raining uh tomorrow. Yeah, sorry, canceled your golf reservations. He's the first guy on the tee, he's just wide open, just whacking. Well, Larry got to the bottom of that. But um, no, I I think that you can't forecast. And I think when you give up the, like, oh my god, I'm gonna forecast this business opportunity, you're not gonna guess this right. You're gonna get something's right and something's wrong. Great. You see the need, you do the thing, and you iterate very fast. Move fast. Take the critical feedback and fix it. I think we, I mean, I'll say openly that um there's been critical feedback about the new restaurants. Uh we take it brutally. I and I read that stuff and I'll tell you that sometimes I want to cry and it makes me feel awful because I am a people pleaser and I. The idea that I failed somebody, they got a bad pizza, kills me. So we do everything we can, and we would love to honestly, no matter how bad that hurts, I'd rather you just tell me let's fix it, let's do this thing. And then what systems, how do we tighten our process so that less incorrect pizzas go out? How do we pro how do we change the wine selection so that it's more to what people want? Move. Uh or whatever your business is, like you're gonna learn. Just learn. Learn fast. Just learn really, really fast and change it. Just get better. Most people, oh, I'm not sure. This yeah, you hear that a lot. In restaurants, you hear a lot. The chef's like, I'm about to open a place, not yet. I don't know. Looking for the right opportunity. Perfect opportunity is never gonna come.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

You gotta make it right. Oh god. That's good, man. I'm glad you mentioned that. It you know, it makes me think about Coach Williams. It makes me think about uh, you know, Dean Smith. And here we are, just a couple days after the 28th anniversary of Dean Smith retiring. But it makes me think about getting better every day, right? You talked about it a little earlier, just uh getting a little bit better, right? Like every day there's something that's gonna happen to your point, some feedback you're gonna have. Like, how do you just like inch a little bit closer to that goal, right? Um, and it's just one thing that I love about sports that has always shaped my mentality of, you know, you talked about being dissatisfied, right? Like there's there's always something else out there for you to get a little bit better, um, which I think is you know made us such a great athletic university and you know, obviously all the great teams that have come through here.

SPEAKER_01

Um what was Coach like? Like, what was like give me a practice with coach? I didn't, I was never good enough to be there. Like day one, is coach like, hey guys, welcome to the team. We'd love to have you. Welcome on campus, Marcus. This is here's David Noel.

SPEAKER_00

No, no. Like by the time you got on campus, I mean, I'll never forget like some of those first practices. We've got like 14 different drills that were running during practice, and we had to practice those drills before practice so that when we got to practice, we were ready to go. It wasn't like, to your point, it wasn't, hey guys, welcome in. This is how this is what we're gonna do. This is how it's like day one, we're doing it already.

SPEAKER_01

Is that something is that player-led or is that assistant coach led? Like who's leading that organization?

SPEAKER_00

It's organization-wide, right? It's top-down. Everybody understands that you have people that are coming in that don't know exactly what they're supposed to do. So that's like even a strength coach. Like, we had the workouts that we were going to start doing on campus months before we got to campus. Crazy. We're gonna age ourselves here a little bit. I got a VHS from our strength coach the summer before we got to school, showing us some of the, you know, some of the things that we're gonna be doing in the weight room.

SPEAKER_01

Here's a car, Tyler. This is you pushing said car.

SPEAKER_00

We did push cars, man.

SPEAKER_01

Because I will say that I was I was grams head. I'd look out the window and I'd see Tyler and an SUV, and I was like, what the fuck's going on? Do we not have a gym? We don't have a gym.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, we were uh What were you pushing like a Miata? We were just trying to make it work. I can't remember what we were. No, we were no, we were pushing our strength coach's SUV at the time. I can't remember what it was. It might have been like a Ford Escape or something like that. We were, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01

What let's say it was like an excursion. Can we get like let's put some weight on that?

SPEAKER_00

It wasn't an excursion. It was a heavy shout out to Jonas, though. I mean, he he made some monsters out of us in that weight room. He really did. Um, you know, but back to your point about Coach Williams, it was day one, we're going. We got no time to waste. Every single day is an opportunity for us to get better, right? Every single day. Every moment of every day is an opportunity for us to get better. And clearly, clearly, you're doing that at your restaurants, which is in your other, you know, in the wine bar as well. Um, but seeing that that brings us back to Carolina here, I'd love to hear a little bit about your experience at Carolina. What are some of the highlights of your time here in Chapel Hill?

unknown

Oh, good.

SPEAKER_00

What do you think about when you come back here to Chapel Hill?

SPEAKER_01

Oh man. Um, well, first of all, I picked Carolina because I I was looking at schools. I was gonna go to Johns Hopkins.

SPEAKER_00

Who? Uh shout out to Baltimore. My dad's from Baltimore.

SPEAKER_01

I want to tell you something. Just going through Baltimore. Nah, it's it's like February. Ooh. Going through Baltimore. No thanks. We went through the um, it felt like I was in the wire, and then you end up at Johns Hopkins. Uh, you know, shout out to Baltimore. It's it's a real place. Uh on the same trip, we did Villanova, Philly, Love Philadelphia, Hopkins, and then we came down here. Three great schools. Dreary, three great schools. Cold in the Northeast. We got here really late at night. We got lost, state of the Carolina Inn. Okay. Lost, like belligerently lost. Don't know. We've got MapQuest days. So you're like reading MapQuest.

SPEAKER_00

Did you print it out before you go? Yeah, we had to print it out.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, print it out on MapQuest. Uh pitch black, and you know, like for us on Long Island, like we're in the country. Yeah, out of the state. What is North Carolina? Like, I don't know. I've never been, yeah, we went from New York to Florida, but like George Ray Through. Nothing. Nothing between. Like nothing. Um, but that day, the next day, I remember waking up and going in, absolutely stone called, stunned that the Dean Dome was unlocked. Open the door, fully expecting someone to stop us at some point, walk in, walk down, walk on the court, fuck up. This is cool as shit. And I was about I I always dreamed I wish I could have played. I wish I could have played on Carolina. I wish I had tried out, no, you didn't even try out. I didn't try out. I would have, I would have loved I I would not good enough. I I developed a fire later in my life. The fire that I have in restaurants, maybe it's partially out of like you have to have something taken away. Basketball was always vaguely easy. I was always vaguely bigger than others, and I could shoot vaguely better than others, and I was you know, like it was sort of a more natural thing. I never really had to like push that hard. I never had that like gear turn. I got taken away. So like restaurants to me are the closest thing to having a team sport. So I think I approach it far more ferociously than I ever approached basketball. Um but you know, just being in the Dino looking up at that.

SPEAKER_02

I was like, wow.

SPEAKER_01

I stayed in Erringhouse. Shout out E House.

SPEAKER_02

E House, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

E House, and I know basketball two basketball guys. I was an I was an okay basketball player. I was a terrible baseball player. Okay. But let's talk about being in center field of baseball. Oh, yeah. Baseball at that time, Andrew Miller and Daniel Board were on the team. And I would go down and watch them play. And Andrew Miller was six foot seven, lefty, threw about a hundred. And at that point, you could sit right behind home plate. I mean, you're me to you to the catcher. Yeah. Bad baseball player, mediocre eyesight at best, and you're watching Andrew Miller throw from the left side. It's like, holy crap. How does anyone even like I couldn't even step bats? Like, I couldn't, I wasn't gonna connect on that. Um I remember going to a lot of those games. It was great.

SPEAKER_00

It's just such a beautiful place, man. Um obviously I've had very lovely memories here in Chapel Hill. Um, but I appreciate you mentioning the baseball team, man, because I had a phenomenal experience going to Omaha because the baseball team. Um, and and a lot of our teams here on campus um are just constantly striving for excellence, always at the top.

SPEAKER_01

Yo, how about that freshman year, Georgia Tech?

SPEAKER_00

Tyler goes off for 40. For 40. So he I was, you know where I was? In the nosebleed?

SPEAKER_01

Hell no. On the court. No, you weren't. I was front row student section on the baseline. Let's go. I was right there. When Tyler steals the ball and dunks it, I'm literally right of the hoop. Ooh, we gotta go get this. We gotta get the other team. I'm right of the hoop because I'm watching listen, Tyler, you know, like, you know, that team was the was, I know we we go on to achieve greatness. Yeah. However, that team was the team that I think I had the most fun watching.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Because I think, well, A, tickets were way easier to get. It was right there on the court. Um, B, there were no expectation. You guys didn't, like they didn't know yet.

SPEAKER_00

No, we had just one that just won the national championship. Yep. Everybody leaves. Yep. And nobody at the beginning of that year and in in the fall of 2004, nobody thinks that this team is going to be a national championship contender. They go on to win the championship spring 2005. Everybody leaves. And now you got these little freshmen in here, little spring chickens, yep, that have to play. Yep. I can't remember where we got picked preseason that year. It was not high, definitely towards the bottom, and we ended up second in the ACC that year.

SPEAKER_01

Yep.

SPEAKER_00

Your boy from Long Island, Dan Green. D. Um, old DG, uh, who I just got to saw last C last weekend, um, which was awesome. But like, to your point, no, nobody thought we were gonna do anything. Also, funny story.

SPEAKER_01

Uh, I realized there was not gonna be a basketball player, and I probably didn't try out for that team because I was at five-star that summer with JR.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, J.R.

SPEAKER_01

Smith. J.R. Smith could have been, would have been, should have been. Should have been. Oh, he should have been, he should have been Atari.

unknown

Dang.

SPEAKER_01

Wow. I was on the court with him. And I looked, and I remember calling my dad. I'm like, Dad, I don't think this is me, man. He's like, why? What's going on? I was like, I was talking to Peter Vesey on the sideline. He's like, why are we talking on the sideline to Peter Vesey or a five-star NBA reporter? He's like, Why aren't you playing? I was like, Dad, I'm not on the court. Uh there was a kid on the court. I saw him hit a three-pointer from half court in a standing J, just perfect J, bang. He's like, okay, well, that was a cute trick. And I was like, then he dunked from the foul line. And then he did a 360 in a game on defense. On a defense, like defending him. He just like jumped up on a outdoor court. Yeah, I mean, listen, it is I couldn't move. Like, I wasn't a jumper, I was a leaper. You're much more athletic than me. But you know, like for me as a barely leaper, like a hopper, a hopper. I was like a like I couldn't hop on an outdoor court and just like dunk with ease. And my man just went up there and just like I mean, he was an incredible athlete.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely incredible athlete. Great shooter, great player, but also just an incredible athlete.

SPEAKER_01

I was I'm done. I looked at I looked at the job. I was like, you know, I don't know, I don't know where you're going after this, but like, thank you. I'm gonna end my career. I'm gonna go study. I gotta get out of here. I don't need to be in the barracks anymore. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. It worked out, it worked out for everybody. It did. It worked out for everybody. Uh he did all right. He did all right. But no, that that was that dunk. That I still remember that dunk. Tyler's coming down, barreling down, Georgia Tech, steal at 40 points.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, we were down, I can't remember exactly how much we were down. We were down big at halftime, though, it feels like I remember. Huge second half. I think we we might have been down 20, 18, something like that. I remember Coach Williams coming in the locker room and tossing the trash can in the locker room. And at this time, this is like 2005. The cool thing is to like have wood everywhere. And we had this normal plastic trash can that was like had this huge, heavy wooden kind of like overlay to like make it look real nice. And I remember him trying to, because he wanted to come in and make a statement, you know, throw the trash can over. And you know, little old Roy, he was struggling to throw the trash can down, and like I wanted to laugh at him, but he was pissed, obviously. Um, but man, I don't know what he said to us, but he certainly lit a fire under Tyler. And uh yeah, the rest is history.

SPEAKER_01

Yo, he was frothing in the mouth. All right, you're the guy, you're my defensive stopper. When you approached the assignment, you knew that week who you got. You knew who you had. Yeah, of course. You were watching tape on him? Of course. Studying him, of course. Were you mad when you got off the court? Because like if that guy was like, all right, I got a guy locked up, you get off the court and he could warm up on someone else.

SPEAKER_00

Man, we took all that personal. We really did. We took all of it personal. Um, and and more and more as we got older and older, you know. As we got more experienced and had to face people multiple times, and you know, we're trying to get closer and closer to our goals and had multiple people stop us from getting there, you know, we we got more and more of an edge. And so as we got older, we took it more and more personal. But um I think that that's part of why we were so successful, is that it meant so much to us. I mean, it's no different than what you're doing in your role right now, right? Like if it doesn't mean anything to you, if you're just going through the motions, you're never gonna be that successful, right? And so it was definitely something that that we took personal. We I mean we said.

SPEAKER_01

Did you always hand the guy off to you? You always like, you're out, or you knew who was coming in for you.

SPEAKER_00

I'm taking the guy. I'm taking the guy. Okay, you get a couple fouls, maybe you got to shift around, but like at the end of the day, like I wanted the challenge to make that guy's night tough.

SPEAKER_01

You you got that one, you do you have a your Tony Kuko's moment, right? The the MJ step, you know, Scotty, you get mad at Tony. I got him. Do you have that moment? Do you have that like, oh, I I locked that guy back?

SPEAKER_00

I don't, I don't remember. I mean, listen, I I was fortunate to make life hard for a lot of players. Yes. Um, there's no doubt about that. Um, it's probably my I mean my my junior year, fortunate to be voted on you know, the all-defensive team in the ACC. Again, made life tough on a bunch of people, but I I think to counter your terrible experience in the Dean Dome, watching Duke beat us, um, to then go a couple weeks later to Cameron or JJ Sr. night. One of the great wins of all time. Um, and for him to have such a uh a tough night shooting.

SPEAKER_01

Um if not for Coach Gay's last game, that's probably one of the greatest memories.

SPEAKER_00

Given that I was playing in the game, that's my favorite, but I I'm with you. I mean Coach Gay's last game. That's a come on. That's great. That's an all-timer. That was great. That was great. Were you in New Orleans? No. Were you there? You were there? That was I mean, those three games. His last game in Cameron, New Orleans, and then my first game in Cameron, JJ Sr. night, I mean, that those three games are absolutely epic. That's incredible.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. How much do you think Kay thought about coming out of retirement with that team last year at Duke?

SPEAKER_00

I hope he thought about it every single day. He had to, right?

SPEAKER_01

You know, he like goes to the games and stuff. You gotta imagine him sitting there being like I hope it haunts him. If I could coach this team, if I could play Carolina one more time with Cooper Flag and all this.

SPEAKER_00

I hope it absolutely haunts him.

SPEAKER_01

That if we can comment on that being an all-time talented team to not achieve much of anything, Conker Nipple low-key is a monster. He's great, yeah. Mauletch was a monster. Cooper Flag's Cooper Flag. Good lord. Science, like, what a team.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, they, you know, they got their ACC championship. They go to the Final Four.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, come on. That team's gotta be.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, I agree. I mean, I think you you could have done more.

SPEAKER_01

But to be fair, Con Kipple could shoot like JJ could. He he could have shot like that. I watch that guy in warm-ups. That's that's that's an interesting thing. Does he get the opportunity on the court to shoot it? If I'm the coach, if I'm if I'm John Shire, you have to think about that year has to haunt you.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it has to haunt you coming into this year. It definitely does, which also makes me a little nervous. You know, a little chip on his shoulder.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, but I I I think it's gonna be the ghost whispering behind him. You do you couldn't win with them. Like, whoa. Yeah, that's that's fair. A little pressure. That's fair. I think it's pressure. That's fair. That's all that was all-time.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, I mean, I loved every second of them losing.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, me too. Oh, god, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I think we're extremely lucky to be in this beautiful place, the rabbit hole. Mythical, um, amazing venue here in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Um, so shout out to the rabbit hole. Um, thanks for allowing us to use this beautiful space um to create this meaningful moment um here as we share this lovely wine. Got one more question for you. What wine do you think best describes you?

SPEAKER_01

I'd like to think you could drop me into any situation that I think I'd do okay, right? You could pair me with a lot. Yeah. Um, I think I'm champagne. I think um this is not a simple Blanc de Blanc. I'm not this is this is something a little bit edgy or maybe you love it, maybe you maybe you don't. I don't know, but it's it's a moment. I would like to think, and I mean, shoot, I think we all aspire for uh something like Silos, who changed all of Champagne, right? Like maybe I oh could I do that in some way? Can I change some things? Could I be? He brought a more oxidative style to champagne, it changed a lot. Could I do that? I don't think so. Maybe I'm one of his understudies. So I'm going to Charton Taillie.

SPEAKER_00

Ooh.

SPEAKER_01

Alexander uh ate pizza with us, so why not? Cheers to him. Wines are great. He makes um he makes you three stay, makes some shards, some Pinot, some Mounier. There's a hundred percent Mounier from him that's singular. It is a very, very singular bottling. Uh La Barre, B-A-R-R-E-S. If I could be something, if I could be that, I feel like that'd be a really cool place.

SPEAKER_00

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I love that, man. I had a yeah, give me a champagne, give me, give me a one of those up-and-comers of the young bucks who learn from the ones before them. Maybe it's, yeah, that'd be sick. I like that.

SPEAKER_00

I like that. Well, Anthony, um, you know, as you mentioned, someone changing the game, um, you have definitely changed the game for me. I am very appreciative of um our friendship and the ability um or the moment, the opportunity for us to come together, which as we all know at this point, um, in large part due to wine. Um, so I appreciate you. Thanks for joining us tonight, man. And uh, I got a splash left. Cheers to you. Thanks for this moment, man.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00

Cheers. Cheers.