How Did a Syrian Doctor Spark the Best Sauvignon Blanc in Northern California?

Marcius starts this week's episode by discussing the recent wildfires in Northwestern Ontario, Canada - how & why they happen, how they relate to the USA's new 50% tariff on Canadian trade, and why political nationalism may not be our best tool to fight fires. Then, Chris rejoins the show to tell us about her family's journey from making wine in their home to running an award-winning winery. 

Let us know what you think at podontherise@gmail.com

Chapters:
00: 00 Introduction
01:38 Wildfires in Northwestern Ontario
04:41 Has the US Actually Gotten Hotter in the Last 100 Years?
08:37 The Wind Doesn't Care About Your Political Boundaries
11:58 How Did Chris Hanna Start Making Wine?
17:32 What Does it Mean to Have a POV on Wine?
20:53 Navigating the Wine Business as an Independent Winery
26:42 Is Insurance Hurting the Wine Industry?
32:30 Evolving Farming Practices
36:53 What Would Chris Do Differently if She Was Starting Now?
40:19 Recommendations for Wines & Wineries in Napa Valley
44:06 Outro & Claire Davis

Episode credits:
Tod Elkins, Editing

Keywords: winemaking, family business, Sauvignon Blanc, wine industry, climate change, insurance, direct-to-consumer, Alexander Valley, Sonoma, wine marketing

On the Rise is a production of Extempo Media, copyright 2026.

Show Credits:
Vishrudh Sriramprasad, Producer
Claire Davis, Theme Music (Long Gone, Get It Right) | @clairedavismusic

Kheya Patel, Art | https://kheyapatel.com/

Contact: podontherise@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I would like to say that, you know, our ability to quickly make decisions is surrounded to the reality, but I'm not sure. There's also a human issue that makes decisions, I think, harder at this level. You know, those huge wineries, they can just shutter a winery. Things get tough and they just say, Okay, we're out. And you know, I have multiple generations of people who work for me. Every single one of his children is working at the winery. Winemaker Marty Kwan, her daughter works in the lab. Um Shelby, who runs our DTC, is the daughter of Elon, my longtime controller. So when we talk about sustainability, there's a people component to sustainability too. And so in many ways it makes our decisions much more difficult, right? Like we can't be a soulless corporate operator or private equity group. We're we're we're trying to we're trying to preserve families and all of that.

SPEAKER_05 1:12

Find us here on YouTube, listen to us on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, wherever you get podcasts, and sign up for our email newsletter at Substack. Now, off the top, you heard the voice of Chris Hannah, who is our guest in today's episode. Today we're gonna have part two of my conversation with Chris. She's an entrepreneur, a businesswoman, and the head of Hannah Wines, a big winery, independent, family-owned, in Northern California. But before we get into the conversation with Chris, I want to talk about wildfire. If you live in North America or you've been reading the press in Canada, the States, or around the world, you have not been able to escape the story about a huge wildfire burning in northwestern Ontario. And the reason the story's in the news is not just because it's a big, devastating fire, but because the smoke is blowing into Chicago, Detroit, Toronto, New York. Huge population centers and huge media centers. So it's a big deal. Just as a bit of an anecdote, if you have not ever been in a place that has this kind of fire, let me tell you what it feels like. Now, I'm from the city, I'm from Toronto. Spent most of my life here growing up. Never once did I see what I saw last week, sitting at my mother's place. This is 2,000 kilometers away from where the fire is, okay? You wake up in the morning, the light outside the window looks a little bit yellow and orange. You think it's like a beautiful sunset, but it's not. It's 8 a.m. Then you look up in the sky and you think, huh, it's kind of hazy, and I can see the sun and it's not burning my eyes. Why is that? Normally you can't look at the sun, obviously, right? Because there's fine particulates of ash and smoke in the air. It's hazy. You can also smell smoke. It smells vaguely of burning. I've experienced this before in California, near fires, far away from fires, but never here. And I remember a few years ago, the last few summers, this has been a periodic story. So this is not new, but I just want to describe a little bit about what it actually feels like day to day if you find yourself, again, nowhere near the fire in my case, safely out of harm's way, and I feel for the people that are much closer to it that actually have to evacuate, but even far away, we're noticing it. There are gonna be a lot of stories about wildfire this summer, and unfortunately, next summer and the summer after that, and in many fire seasons around the world. Here are just a few basic facts about wildfire and climate change that we can all keep in mind to help us navigate through these stories when they come up. First thing, start at the basics. Globally, on average, temperatures are going up. The data is very clear about this over the last several decades, centuries, it's getting warmer. Second thing, it's also getting drier in the forests. When forests get drier, that means more fire danger. So not only is it getting warmer, but we have more fire danger because the forests are a little warmer and drier. Last thing I want to impart is that climate change itself doesn't start fires. That's not a controversial statement. I think it's pretty obvious. Fires are started by a spark. Lightning, somebody throwing a cigarette butt out of a car window, unfortunately, a campfire that wasn't put out properly, a controlled burn that went out of control, or once in a while, some lunatic intentionally starting a forest fire, which actually does happen from time to time. What climate change does is create those warmer and drier conditions in which fire can spread more rapidly. So once a fire starts by whatever means, it makes it much more dangerous for us because it spreads faster, it's harder to contain, it's more likely to get out of control, it's more likely to become some kind of super fire that's even more difficult to fight. Those are some basic facts about climate change and fire risk, but getting to those basic facts sometimes can seem like such a challenge. If you go a little bit deeper, you start to see some strange anomalies. For instance, even though globally on average temperatures are going up, if you ask, what about the number of extreme hot days in the United States over the last century? It turns out there is not an upward trend over the last century. Confusing, right? Globally, climate change is happening, fires are getting worse, but in the US, the number of extreme hot days has not trended up over the last century. Why? If you dig a little deeper again, you realize, well, it's trending up right now, the last few years, but then there was a period where it was trending down. And then if you go back around 100 years into the 1930s, there was a period of huge temperatures. That was the Dust Bowl, very famous, very devastating ecological and farming event in the US. So very, very hot temperatures of the 1930s, then coming down through the 40s, 50s, 60s, then ticking up 70s, 80s, 90s up to the present. And if you add if you draw a line through all that data of the last century, it looks pretty flat. So it's also true, at the same time that global temperatures on average are going up, extreme hot weather days in the United States are not going up. If you're confused, are you confused? If you're still with me, you dig even deeper, and then you can get into things like, well, the way we measure temperature has changed over that hundred years. The thermometers we use a hundred years ago are not the same thermometers we're using now. You have to correct for those effects, then each thermometer itself can have to so you can get more and more complex as you dig down into it. I find myself doing this yesterday because I was following a debate between two people that had bits of this data, and they were having an argument, both based on their perspective of the data. There was a meteorologist who was looking at those extreme temperature days in the US, saying, wait a minute, it's flat, these hot days aren't going up, this climate change thing is a hoax, it doesn't explain the wildfires. And a climate scientist on the other side of the debate was saying, well, the thing is, you have to look at the global data and the thermometers, and yes, the US is an anomaly, but the US is not the world. The point is, even for me, who is a scientist, I'm used to looking at data, I don't mind manipulating numbers like this, and I think about this stuff for a living, it was still confusing. Reading about wildfire risk and climate change in the news is very difficult. It's just confusing, and sometimes it's hard to find the signal in the noise. And frankly, even if you have two well-meaning people having a disagreement, that's hard to follow, that's what I just described. But then when you add in crazy people just saying random shit, or trying intentionally to confuse, and unfortunately, climate is now a political topic, so we know there are people trying to manipulate our information sometimes, it gets even more difficult. Now, this brings me to the recent conversation about tariffs. The president of the United States announced a few days ago 50% tariffs on certain Canadian goods were very angry with this wildfire smoke blowing into the country. Canada, you've got to do something about it. Apparently, the Prime Minister and the President have discussed this. It's crazy. Two things I want to say about that. First thing is that anything that the president or the prime minister says about either country right now should be interpreted as part of the ongoing and frankly bitter negotiation of a trade deal between these two countries. It used to be called NAFTA, now it's called Canada-US Mexico Agreement or US-Canada-Mexico Agreement, Cuzma, or USMCA. The parties can't even agree on what the agreement is called. But everything that the President says about Canada, everything the Prime Minister says about US, Mexican leadership, etc., should be considered as part of this trade negotiation. It's by far the most important issue facing those countries together. Second thing I want to say about this is this is not new. It's happened before and it's going to happen again. This is not the first time smoke has blown from Canada into the US. It's not the first time pollution from the US has blown up into Canada. If you are familiar with acid rain, which was a huge issue in the 80s and 90s, same exact thing. Pollution occurs in one place, it blows over to some other place by natural forces, it rains, the rain's acidic, people get rained on, don't like it, they yelled at people creating the pollution. Canada and the US yelled at each other constantly in the 80s and 90s about this. Europeans yelled at each other constantly about these kind of trans-border, what seem like political issues but are actually geography issues. Here's another example, totally different part of the world. Iran and Afghanistan have been yelling at each other for several decades about water and a river. There's a major river and water source in the region that originates in one country, but it flows down into the other country. Whenever the downstream country doesn't have enough water, Iran in this case, they blame Afghanistan. They say, you're holding up our water. Afghanistan says, we're not holding up the water, climate's changing. We can't control this river, and they go back and forth. I think the lesson for all of us is that sometimes our political solutions are not enough, and sometimes they're laughably inadequate. The rivers, the winds, the smoke, the forests, the rocks, the trees, they don't care about our politics. They don't care about the lines that we draw on maps. They don't care about the political decisions that we make. They do what they do. The way that these issues are resolved, ultimately, just like the acid rain issue was resolved in North America, is to zoom out and recognize that this is a trans border issue that both sides have to come together and work out. And whacking one another with the nationalist stick might feel comforting, but ultimately achieves nothing. Okay, so summarizing a little bit, globally temperatures are going up. Hotter and drier means more fire risk. Even if climate change doesn't spark the fire, it makes a fire more hard to contain and more likely to be dangerous to you or dangerous to me. And whacking one another with nationalist sticks usually doesn't resolve these issues. I can't think of a single example where it has. And maybe the most important thing for you and for me is to keep an open mind when you're reading these stories in the press or wherever you're getting information from. And remember, it's very easy to draw the wrong conclusion with just partial data. Keep an open mind, be curious, and be willing to adjust assumptions you may have when new information comes in. Now, enough about wildfires. Let's switch gears and let me introduce today's conversation with Chris Hanna. It's part two of a conversation we've had with CEO and business owner of Hannah Wines, Christine Hanna. She's an entrepreneur, she's a businesswoman, and she has taken a small family hobby and grown it into a successful independent winemaker in Northern California. She's located in Healdsburg, which is around two hours north of San Francisco. It's a very famous wine spot, but even if you don't care about wine, just think two hours' drive north of the Bay Area. In part one of my conversation with Chris, we really talked about the operational challenges he faces in her business, resulting from wildfire, from smoke, and from declining wine sales. But in this episode, we talk more about Chris and her personal journey, how she got into wine, how the family business started, how she grew up from a small hobby into a large, successful winery. Here is my conversation with Chris Hanna. Okay. Chris Hanna, thank you for letting me join you here.

SPEAKER_02 12:03

You're so welcome.

SPEAKER_05 12:04

I want to ask a little bit about you and your story.

SPEAKER_02 12:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 12:08

In our previous chat, you were telling me about the business and the farm and the industry. From what I can tell, you took over a family business and have increased its output by over 50x. What? Tell me everything. Start at the beginning. Did you grow up around wine and in the family wine business? How did you get into it? What made you want to take this over and what's the path been?

SPEAKER_02 12:31

Yeah. We started making homemade wine when I was a kid. And you know, my dad was an immigrant to the US. He came here and um went to medical school, became a heart surgeon, first person in his family to go to college. First person in his family, I think, to even graduate from high school.

SPEAKER_05 12:52

Where did he come here from?

SPEAKER_02 12:54

He came from Syria. And he was a Syrian Christian, um, small minority in Syria, and his um parents had a farm, and he was the youngest of six kids, and uh and he was smart. And there was really no future, you know, for uh for him there, and so uh they encouraged him to come to the US and go to college and med school. So he came, he had some relatives in Texas and um wound up at UT Austin. And back then, you know, if you knew you wanted to go to medical school, you could basically just do all your medical school prereqs, and so um he continues to delight to tell his children that he graduated college in two years, and um and went to med school and uh got drafted to Vietnam and um in a mash unit there and and started this cardiac surgery practice. So long-winded answer to say that he got interested in why he started going to other doctors' houses and they drank wine, you know, he and um he got interested in it. I was the oldest of five kids, and and he said, you know, let's make some wine. And so uh he had bought um a little property in Santa Rosa an hour from San Francisco. Um he wanted, I think he wanted us to have a feeling of growing up on a farm or understanding the seasons and not being city kids, and so we planted some grapevines and and started making homemade wine. And I just I have this memory of myself as a 12-year-old, like reading the winemaking book, you know, and and working on it together and doing the punch downs and and all of that. So it was a fun little family hobby. And then, you know, somehow in an irrational exuberance moment, the idea was, you know, okay, well, maybe this could be a bigger thing. And we hired a you know proper winemaker, um, a very famous woman uh named Mary Edwards, who, you know, went on to just have an incredible career. She's one of the icons in the industry. And she helped us get started. And um and then I, you know, I my plan was not to do this, my plan was to be an academic.

SPEAKER_05 15:21

Okay, so your whole path was not I'm gonna take over the family business. That's not what was on your mind.

SPEAKER_02 15:25

I was gonna be an English professor, I'm a total introvert, you know. I just was happy sort of reading my pre pre-raphielite uh novelists, and um that's what I was gonna do. And then, you know, so this notion of of expanding the winery sort of happened, and you know, well, we need to hire someone to, you know, do sales and marketing, and you know, Chris, will you come and sit in on the interviews? And and so, you know, we interviewed six people, and I've sat and I have this you know thing going on in my head like how in the world can we have a family winery and not have a family member involved? Because my dad's doing six surgeries a day.

SPEAKER_05 16:07

Okay, so he's still a heart surgeon and he's doing his thing.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

Totally. So at the end of that, I just said, you know what? I I I I think if we're really gonna do this, then I need to do it and figure and try to figure it out.

SPEAKER_05 16:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

And so quick pivot, and it was just literally a crash course. I mean, it's one thing to make homemade wine, but you know, so I went to Davis, and thankfully, you know, that this was the era where This is University of California, Davis? Yes, where all of these people who came from different, you know, areas and careers were rediscovering themselves as winemakers or wanted to learn more about winemaking or whatever. So I took every, you know, course, class, whatever I could, and and then just hit the road to try to sell, you know, wine. And uh I'm I'm sure I was just an embarrassing idiot, you know, so much of the time. But I I was a sponge, and so I would anybody who could teach me anything, I you know, prevailed upon them and and learned from the Italian families who had been doing this forever. And uh, and and and fairly quick, because I'm not a total idiot, pretty quickly figured out that we needed a point of view, like we needed a we needed something to uh to coalesce behind, and that we needed to be, you know, market driven instead of production driven. I mean, we were just making wine and putting it in a warehouse and saying, oh, we'll figure out how to sell it. Um so there was an opportunity for Sauvignon Blanc, like everybody was making Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc was kind of seen as well there weren't as many people making Sauvignon Blanc, and they certainly weren't making it in a, in my opinion, pleasing style. Um they were making it like Chardonnay.

SPEAKER_05 18:00

Is that the example of a point of view, or are you talking about a conviction about a variety and a region? What does it mean to have a point of view as a winemaker?

SPEAKER_02 18:08

Um a conviction about a variety and a region. Like you cannot be all things to all people. You have to see if you're especially if you're gonna scale, you know, and and and play in the wholesale, national wholesale game, you have to, you know, you have to have a clear, a clear point of view. So we really rallied behind Sauvignon Blanc and tried to make the best, most interesting uh Sauvignon Blanc uh in the Russian River Valley. We liked cool climate Sauvignon Blanc. We got really excited about New Zealand um Sauvignon Blancs, which were, you know, there was cloudy day, there was like one brand that had just started getting imported here. Um and then that just, you know, over time exponentially you know, turned out consumers really like that. And um and we made it consistently and it was delicious, and we won awards and you know, and continue to do that, and then and then but concurrently, you know, expanded our direct-to-consumer offerings. So um, because we had all these vineyards, so yes, we make Chardonnay, yes, we make Cabernet, we make Malbec, we make lots of other things that um that our customers love, you know, we're not just a one-trick pony. We've got lots of variety for them to to experience.

SPEAKER_05 19:29

Would you say Sauvignon Blanc continues to be I mean, thank you for sharing that story by the way. Um I always appreciate hearing my parents are both immigrants to Canada, and so I really and I guess I am an immigrant now, right? And so I really, really appreciate hearing those stories. And you know, I don't know much about your family background aside from what you're telling me, but I feel like I have I can relate to the idea of, you know, a young man who is thinking maybe I need to relocate. I mean, that was my father, right? Something happened in his life, and he decided my life is not in this place, it has to be another place. I don't know what that means. And yeah, this is these crazy decisions people make.

SPEAKER_02 20:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 20:05

But I wanted to ask you about Sauvignon Blanc. Is that still your leading variety? Would you say that's what you're most known for?

SPEAKER_02 20:13

I would say it's what we're most known for, certainly nationally. You know, I think our interestingly, our customers would probably say that. Our c our wine club members would say that they love the Sauvignon Blanc, but they come here for the big red blends that we make. Okay. That's what they really love. So akin to sort of your preference. You know, they just love those big, rich red wines. Um and and we make them well. And uh and so it's nice to be able to do to do both of those things. But you can't be all things to all people in the national marketplace. It's just too hard. You gotta decide.

SPEAKER_05 20:53

On direct consumer versus um what's the other phrase I should use? Selling through a wholesale. Wholesale, yeah. What rough approximately about fraction of your business are revenue-wise or volume-wise, are those two pieces?

SPEAKER_02 21:05

80% is uh wholesale and 20% is uh direct to consumer, and direct to consumer has a higher margin.

SPEAKER_05 21:13

So that's where I was going next. Is that should I expect the direct consumer is higher margin, maybe more prestigious wines, maybe more um wine club members?

SPEAKER_02 21:22

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_05 21:22

Okay. Whereas wholesale might be me wandering through a grocery store.

SPEAKER_02 21:26

Exactly. Whether you're at the Kroger's or Publix or Central Market in Texas, or Whole Foods, or you know, whatever.

SPEAKER_05 21:33

In our previous conversation, uh the previous episode of this same chat, you were telling me about some of the pressures winemakers are feeling here, winemakers are feeling elsewhere, not just because of changing environmental conditions, but changing tastes, changing marketing and business conditions. How does it feel to be an independent producer versus, or wh how do you think the pressures are different on you versus maybe some of the large, maybe private equity owned, or I'm not sure what the large conglomerates are.

SPEAKER_02 21:58

Yeah, I mean, you know, bullet. I envy those balance sheets for sure. There's just not the same capital.

SPEAKER_05 22:05

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 22:06

So we really have to run as an independent entity. We're not part of a huge cum conglomerate that has spirits margins that you know help shore up the wine business. So so it's harder. We have to be scrappy and we've we've got to, you know, we've got to be leaner. So we're competing against marketing budgets that, you know, dwarf ours. So, you know, we've got to be nimble, we've got to do more with less. And, you know, it just is what it is.

SPEAKER_05 22:42

Because you're nimble, because I mean, you know, you have a very successful practice here, but you're an independent producer, because you're nimble, because you're maybe more interested in innovation and the cutting edge, do you think that your business is better positioned to weather some of the changes that are coming to your operations, whether it's heat, smoke, taint, wildfire risk, water scarcity? Do you think your nimbleness will help you there? Or do you think the value of that balance sheet, that you know, being owned by some huge conglomerate with the ability to take risks and with that balance sheet capital, how do you value those two factors?

SPEAKER_02 23:19

Yeah, that's tough. I would like to say that, you know, our ability to quickly make decisions um surmounts the you know the the balance sheet, but I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_04 23:30

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 23:31

You know, I think uh there's also a human, you know, a human issue that makes decisions, I think, harder at this level. You know, those huge wineries, they can just shutter a winery. You know, things get tough and they just say, okay, we're out. Right. And, you know, I have multiple generations of people who work for me. Uh uh Jeff Hinchliffe, our longtime winemaker, every single one of his children has worked at the winery, and two of them are currently, you know, on the payroll. Uh assistant winemaker Marty Kwan, her daughter, you know, works in the lab. Um Shelby, who runs RDTC, is the daughter of you know, Yvonne, my longtime controller. So, you know, it's when we talk about sustainability, right? You know, there's a people component to sustainability too. And so, in many ways, it makes, you know, our decisions much more difficult, right? I mean, you know, we can't be a soulless corporate operator or private equity, you know, group. We're we're we're trying to we're trying to preserve, you know, families and you know all of that.

SPEAKER_05 24:47

Uh I get as a consumer, and I really I could appreciate that because it's just as a casual consumer of wine, the story and the place and the brand seem like a very important, you know, uh part. And uh if I look at the way that prestige wines are marketed, that's a huge part of the story. It's not you know, we're some company, ABC 123 Inc., and we happen to run a thousand wineries, it's tradition, um sometimes family, but more like tradition and trust and long-term thinking.

SPEAKER_02 25:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 25:25

Um am I being a little too nostalgic and romantic with that, or do you think that's a really big part of the business?

SPEAKER_02 25:29

I think that's been the way we've, you know, that's been an advantage that we've used for a long time. Like people, that's the romance of the wine business. They want to know the people behind the brand. It's why I still go on the road and stand behind a tasting table and um and you know, go to wine events. But, you know, our our challenge now is like where are the people? Like we've seen declining visitation. The best thing that can possibly happen is for people to come here and experience it, right? And look around and listen to the birds and look at the vineyards and taste the wine that come from the vineyards and hear. But you know, Sonoma and Napa have seen, you know, declining visitor accounts, so it's hard, you know, how do we connect with people?

SPEAKER_04 26:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:24

Um, you know, that becomes, you know, that becomes the challenge. Uh but the positive is to your point, people want to hear a story and they want to know the people behind behind a brand. They feel more connected.

SPEAKER_05 26:40

That makes a lot of sense to me. I want to switch gears and ask you a little bit about sort of the farming side of stuff. We talked a little bit about that in a previous conversation, but you're a winemaker, but you're also running a farm. And as somebody that thinks about operations and risk, I look around and I don't see risk, but I think about insurance. Taking wildfire out of the picture for a second, and then we'll bring it back in. How big of a factor is insurance in your business, just generically as a winemaker in Alexander Valley, and then we'll add wildfire and heat into that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:16

So insurance is huge, and think about all the things that we have to insure, right? We have bulk wine, so wine and barrel that we've got to insure. We have case goods that we have to insure that travels all kinds of places, right? It's in a warehouse that may not be our warehouse, so that's another location that needs to get insured. It moves around on trucks, you've got to insure it in transit. Then you've got um then you've got all of your properties and buildings that you have to insure. And then you've got people who drive tractors and all of that, you've got to insure all those people. Um there are a lot of layers of you know of insurance. There's liability insurance, there's liquor liability insurance, so that you know, if somebody drinks too much and gets in a car and all of that, you're, you know, protected, etc., etc. etc.

SPEAKER_05 28:14

Is it a controllable cost if you look at your PL profit and loss, or is it something that's a little bit uncertain and variable?

SPEAKER_02 28:24

It used to be controllable and um, you know, and not anymore. And I should also say health insurance because one of our values um here is that you know we pay 100% of the employees' health premium. That's just, you know, I think I feel like that's like a legacy thing for me because my father came from that world and built his career there, and so we want to take care of our, you know, our people, and those costs have just been astronomic.

SPEAKER_05 28:57

Yes. Uh I mean, not to take us down a rabbit hole, but uh controlling the cost of health care. I mean, you can't have any cost conversation with anybody in pop public sector, in government, big company, small company, no matter the industry, this country, Canada, increasingly the UK, increasingly Europe, but not entirely, many other places. Health costs. Um, but you said that they are becoming a little less controllable. Health insurance is one of them. One of my working hypotheses, well, look, I'm just a resident of Santa Rosa, fire insurance for your home or property is either ungettable or the costs have dramatically increased, and people talk about it openly all the time.

SPEAKER_04 29:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 29:36

Talk to me about how that has impacted your business. Is it a big deal or is it, you know, just kind of an annoying thing on the side?

SPEAKER_02 29:43

It's a huge deal, Marcus. It's we're paying 7x what we paid three years ago.

SPEAKER_05 29:51

You're talking wildfire-related insurance premiums?

SPEAKER_02 29:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 29:55

7x.

SPEAKER_02 29:56

7x for for less coverage. So basically, the insurance companies have deemed certain area codes or zip codes rather uninsurable.

SPEAKER_05 30:11

And so is it the thing where they just won't even offer a premium? They don't even offer it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:13

They won't even offer it.

SPEAKER_05 30:14

People in housing on residential level flooding in Florida, California, you know, the word globally is that all major insurers, underwriters are desperately trying to get out of California because it is becoming so risky and unpredictable.

SPEAKER_02 30:28

And so we're left with the California Fair Plan, which is, you know, very low level of coverage, and then you layer on some some liability, and those premiums are just breathtaking.

SPEAKER_05 30:40

So just for the audience, the California Fair Plan, I think, is sort of a state-provided, let's say, insurer of last resort type of thing. Yes. If this were healthcare, we'd be talking about um, what's it called, the public option? Or the I forget the insurance marketplace.

SPEAKER_02 30:53

And they're essentially catastrophic plans, right? You pay a huge premium to really only be covered if you have a complete loss. And even then you won't be ever be whole because their limits are much lower than the cost to replant or to uh rebuild rather than so how do you deal with this?

SPEAKER_05 31:10

Do you just eat these costs and deal with it? Like are there other ways that you can actually reduce your liability? Do the insurers want to hear about practices you may be doing that can reduce your you know, like in housing you can sometimes do this. Look, if I promise to cut down all the trees, then maybe I can reduce my risk profile?

SPEAKER_02 31:25

The difference there is they they require that to even carry you.

SPEAKER_05 31:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 31:32

Not, you know, there there isn't any opportunity to lower the premium.

SPEAKER_05 31:36

So it's just can you be insured or not? Never mind gradations of risk, okay.

SPEAKER_02 31:40

So it it's it's a huge issue. Um and it makes it difficult to operate. It really does. We keep hearing that, you know, some of these other carriers are gonna get back into um into the marketplace, but so far no.

SPEAKER_05 31:56

Any creative ideas? I mean, I'm grasping here because I'm I I don't know what to suggest, but are there any creative ideas in the industry in this region, maybe people pooling together and self-insuring? I mean, that comes up.

SPEAKER_02 32:07

There's been, yeah, there's been talk of that. I wish that the regional associations, wine associations would be more um uh would be more active around it. And um so far they haven't. I don't have any good answers for you. And every every situation is different. Every winery is different and their requirements are different.

SPEAKER_05 32:30

All right, so we were just talking about insurance, you were talking about operating costs, uh, some of the changing farming practices. Um, two things I'm interested in from you. One is uh any changes in farming practices that you we haven't touched on tilling of soil, crop rotation, anything like that. Let's get into sort of like the dirt of it. I'm just curious whether they're driven by responses to a climate risk or not, how have things evolved in the time you've been managing this business?

SPEAKER_02 32:57

No-till has become the you know, the standard for us. No-till every time. No-till farming. So we used to go through and uh through all the rows and you know, and till, and the thought was that you know it was good to aerate the soil and um and also have the benefit of keeping things tidy, you know, all the grass that grows in between the the vineyard rows. And what we have learned you know over time is that that's just a great way to disturb the natural ecosystem, and that that you know, the better practices that we plant a cover crop and you know that fixes nitrogen in the soil, and we do a light mow and we don't till so that we're not disturbing all those lovely soil organisms that that uh create fertility.

SPEAKER_05 33:48

So I can imagine better soil health, better fertility, happier plants. Is it cheaper to no-till? Or is it just a different it is.

SPEAKER_02 33:56

I mean that that's sort of the interesting thing about a lot of um the sustainability practices in farming is that um you know if you're on top of your viticultural practices and you you you give a light touch, you don't have to spend money on on chemical fertilizers. Um you don't have to spend money on fungicides and you know and and things like that because you've you've uh created some airflow in the canopy and you've you've done what you needed to do practically during the growing season. Um and then, you know, and and you know, some of it just makes good sense. Like we have all this grape pumice. Pomice is the leftover skins and the seeds after you um uh after you've gone through the winemaking process. Well, you know, what are you gonna do with all of that? Well, of course we're gonna put it in the vineyard grows as natural compost. Why wouldn't we do that? And now Sonoma County has this wonderful program where they will take that, they'll take the pom your pumice and they'll mix it with other material, and you get a really rich compost now.

SPEAKER_05 35:07

They do the composting?

SPEAKER_02 35:08

They do the composting.

SPEAKER_05 35:09

And do you have access to that? Yes. Do you have to pay for it?

SPEAKER_02 35:11

Um or is it like it's a minimal, it's a minimal amount.

SPEAKER_05 35:14

Great. Yeah. Worth it.

SPEAKER_02 35:16

It's totally worth it. Okay. Um, I mean, yes, it's nice to spread the pumice in the you know, in the vineyard, but you know, like with your backyard compost, you know that you need a certain percentage of green inputs, a certain percentage of yeah, right. And so they they get all that mix, right? And uh uh and so we have all this natural compost and reducing the need for chemical fertilizer. It's awesome.

SPEAKER_05 35:41

Of all the services the government might provide, I never thought compost right would be water done. I grew up as just like a backyard gardener, but uh there was a couple days of the year, usually in the spring, that in this case the city of Toronto would say, Hey, we're dumping city compost just in a pile at this park, and all the you know, gardening dorks would show up with their wheelbarrows to be like, we're taking this free compost home. So it reminds me of this.

SPEAKER_02 36:04

Yeah, go Sonoma County.

SPEAKER_05 36:06

Okay, um zooming out a little bit, big picture. We talked a lot about some of the economic challenges in wine, demographics, changing market, changing tastes. We've talked about fire, smoke, heat. Um, if you were you, uh just starting out, just contemplating taking over a winery, I'm thinking about people that are maybe entering the industry, thinking about this region in particular, you know so well, Alexander Valley, Sonoma County. Tell us about um how you might start the business and in ways that are different than the way you got started.

SPEAKER_04 36:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 36:41

And after that, I'll ask you to recommend some um varieties or wines from the region that people might want to consider for summer because we are in summer season, you're having visitors come through. But first, if I were gonna follow in your footsteps and I wanted to get into the winemaking business around here, how what's the playbook now versus when you got started?

SPEAKER_02 37:04

Yeah, we did it the absolute opposite way that I would recommend, which is we bought a whole bunch of property, we planted a whole bunch of vineyard. Okay, and then we made a whole bunch of wine and then figured out how to sell it.

SPEAKER_05 37:19

Okay. So production first.

SPEAKER_02 37:21

Yes, exactly. So so the answer to that is no. And don't build buildings at you know at first. So now we have these, there are these custom crush facilities where you don't have to own your own winery. You can you can go to one of these spaces and and they have a winemaking crew and they will make the wine according to your you know specs and hold it and bottle it for you and and all of that, and you don't have to build a multi-million dollar facility.

SPEAKER_05 37:51

What do you bring? Do you bring grapes?

SPEAKER_02 37:53

You bring grapes.

SPEAKER_05 37:53

Okay, so you show up at the fruit, winemaking happens for lease, presumably, and then you've got your wine product. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 38:02

So if I were starting if starting out tomorrow, I wouldn't own an acre of vineyard initially, and I wouldn't own my own winery initially. I would go buy grapes, I'd figure out what my point of view is, right? I can't be all things to all people, but I have a passion for this variety and I think it grows well in this place. Okay, then my next job is to demonstrate it. So, you know, I'm gonna go lease base in a custom crush facility and make that wine in very small quantities, and then I'm gonna, you know, figure out how to go sell it. Um and then if I was then successful, then you start to say, well, gee, okay, proof of concept, now I'm gonna go buy, you know, now I'm gonna go buy some vineyard or buy some land and plant some vineyard. I do think that with the contraction in the industry, there are gonna be opportunities to buy land at really fantastic prices and buy wineries at at reduced prices. So, you know, it could be an excellent time for somebody to get in the industry.

SPEAKER_05 39:15

Very interesting. People listening.

SPEAKER_02 39:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 39:18

Um if you're shopping for uh land or begin to be in the biz, do you think there will be a lot of new entrants or do you think this will be a consolidation event?

SPEAKER_02 39:27

I think it'll be a consolidation event for sure. Um and I think we've got another year or maybe, and I think I think there'll be people coming shopping for deals.

SPEAKER_05 39:41

You don't have to answer this, but are you personally, is Hannah Wines shopping? Are you considering acquiring and expanding in light of market changes or are you taking a different strategy as things change? And that's not your focus now.

SPEAKER_02 39:52

You know, it it's hard to we have five vineyards as our estate vineyards. It's hard for me to imagine that we would need more vineyards than 250 planted acres.

SPEAKER_05 40:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 40:04

Um in this moment.

SPEAKER_05 40:06

250 planted acres, wow.

SPEAKER_02 40:08

But um if I didn't have that, you know, if I had 50 acres and I really needed another Sauvignon Blanc vineyard, I'd be shopping.

SPEAKER_05 40:18

Okay. For sure. Well, everyone listening, not everyone listening is probably shopping for a winery, but many people listening are taking a trip or driving or shopping for a wine. Many may be coming to Sonoma County, Fieldsburg, Napa, regions around here. Tell us some maybe off-the-beaten path spots, wines from your winery, or other things people should think about if they enter summer and consider visiting this region or others.

SPEAKER_02 40:43

Yeah, yeah. Um you know, for the for the red wine lovers out there, we grow, and other some other folks in Alexander Valley grow a variety called Malbec. And it's one of the Bordeaux uh varieties grown in grown in Bordeaux, also widely grown in Argentina.

SPEAKER_05 41:03

When I hear Malbec, I think of Argentina, just because that's how I think the first part of it.

SPEAKER_02 41:07

I think what's interesting about you know, a lot of Argentinian Malbec is grown on the flats and is not very interesting. You know, if you go to Argentina and try Malbec from, you know, higher-end producers that grow it with some elevation, those wines are entirely different than you know, than than the flatland Malbec, all of which is to say there's a huge variety in terms of quality. And I think in California, planted at a little bit of elevation, it it's a wonderful wine. Um very concentrated, very silky tannins, great color. Um the those those are worth Malbecs are worth looking at in California. Terrific. Yeah. Um let's see what else. Uh in terms of white wines, there's a lot of sparkling wine in Sonoma County. A lot of people are making interesting sparkling wines, you know, not just, we can't call them champagne because they aren't grown in champagne, but um that would be morally wrong. Yeah, it would be morally wrong. And and legally wrong. Uh so sparkling wine is sort of fun to uh fun to think about from the from this region too, and and most wineries have. Um not most wineries, many wineries are are making sparkling, um, sparkling wines. And and then Italian varieties are having a a real moment. Um people are excited about, you know, I mean Pinot Grigio, people have been kind of excited about that forever, but um, but you know, we have some we have some interesting, you know, phalangina, fiano, you know, uh more unusual Italian varieties that Sonoma um and Napa winemakers are experimenting with. So worth worth looking out for those too.

SPEAKER_05 43:02

Do you have a favorite among the Hannah wines?

SPEAKER_02 43:06

So many favorites.

SPEAKER_05 43:07

Maybe you get asked this question all the time.

SPEAKER_02 43:09

We make a Sangiovese from um the vineyard where my husband and I live in Dry Creek Valley. And I would say that that's my house wine. It's a lighter red, it's got the weight, that lighter weight like a Pinot Noir. Um it's got great acidity, it's a terrific food wine. Somehow the Italians just everything that they make is delicious with food. Um and this one's no exception. So I love that, San Giovanni.

SPEAKER_05 43:37

Amazing. Thank you so much. This has been great.

SPEAKER_02 43:39

You're so welcome. It was really fun to talk about it. And and we went a lot of places, right?

SPEAKER_05 43:45

We did.

SPEAKER_02 43:45

We talked about, you know, farming and marketing and the business, and you know, I think that's what I love about this business is it's all of those things, right? It's it's sophisticated, it's not sophisticated, it's um uh and everything in between. No two days are the same for me, which I love. So thanks for letting me share.

SPEAKER_05 44:06

That does it for the second half of my conversation with Chris Hanna. If you love this one, remember there's a part one. We get into a little bit more about the operational challenges and the business aspect of running the farm and running the winery in the midst of these challenges. Thanks so much to Chris for letting us film at her location. It was a beautiful spot. And thanks everybody for tuning in and checking us out. We love your feedback, and we'd love to hear from you at podontherize at gmail.com. You can always email us at podontherise at gmail.com about wildfire, about risk, about winery business. We'd love to hear your feedback. Thanks again to Chris. Thanks to our producer Vish for putting this together. Thanks to Todd Elkins for special help editing this episode. And as usual, here's the music of the great Claire Davis. Take us home. More soon, y'all.