You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio.
So we had thirsty Thursday, now we have Friay soon wrapping up the week.
To help us do So that's just shake it out me. Thank you.
Sarah Livesey here to help us and stopping via Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio is the founder of Pangaea Estates. Travis Baithwaite Braithwait he is here in our studios like I was drinking already, Sorry about that.
Travis, Welcome, Welcome, Nice to have you here.
Thanks, thanks for having me.
You know, I am thinking you would be a great diplomat because concerning this wine that you guys have created. You brought together wineries right in the US, France, Spain.
South Africa, and Argentina.
Yep, that's it.
Tell us how you did this and why you did it.
So curiosity actually got the best of me. I'd been working in the wine industry for quite some time, and I sort of thought to myself, you know, globalization had hit many industries around the world, and the wine industry had kind of still been a little bit stuck in its traditions. And its original theories and ideas, and it was an industry that I saw could do with a bit of a shakeup. And I thought to myself, what would a wine taste like in a blend, like a
border style blend. If every variety in the world was grown in the location the terra with a grape could ripen its best in essence, giving you the best expression of that variety, what would that wine taste like. No one had ever tried it, no one had ever seen it, no one had even had even contemplated putting it together. And the curiosity kind of sparked in me, and I started looking at the idea. And then one year I just couldn't take it anymore. It was just eating away
at me too much. So jumped in a plane, took two years off, traveled, tasted grapes and different vineyards.
Okay, first of all people just being like, wait a minute, what put it two years off and just jumped in a plane. But that's another story.
You have to dedicate time to these sort of things. If you're going to change something, you got to really put in the effort. I wanted to make sure that I was in the right place, that i'd done the right research. I've seen the right things sitting in my hotel room, playing around with wine and trying ideas and looking at different ways to do that.
So keep going. So like, did you approach wineries and was it like?
So I approached you different grape growers because the intention you can't make good wine without good grapes. So the idea for me was a grape when it has the right opportunity to ripen in full, it expresses itself. The best is that variety. So what I did is I did some research, and I was like, where do each of these varieties because your border blend is Cab Murlow, Covenor Frank Mulberk and Petivodo. I was like, where do the best of each of these varieties come from? Who
makes them the best? So that's where I traveled to have a look and see and try and sort of experiment and play through. So I wanted to try something that made sense because the blend was made everywhere in the world. Everywhere in the world, someone makes a fight by the way.
This is what I So I've always been in love with the idea of Pangaea, which is I don't know how many one hundred million years ago, when all of the land masses on Earth that are now separate were one right, and then they started being pushed. That's why I love the idea of this wine, because you bring together all of these diverse land masses in one bottle, so.
That that was the theory. At one point, every single grape growing region in the world was in the same place technically, you know, obviously it was adjusted slightly differently in more north and south, but it all split apart through a catastrophic, crazy event. You know, the plate shifted and everything moved, and then grapes and the label kind of expresses that grapes were smuggled and vines were smuggled
around the world. So the ocean played a massive role in the breaking up of Pangaea, but also how the grapes then moved back to these locations from a central sort of point. So vines were smuggled, things were moved around the world, things were planted. It was like a wild West of the time basically, you know, And for me it was important to have a look at this concept and say, you know, everyone talks about what terr y is, and this wine is five terr wars in
one bottle. So it's an expression of a of a blend. That every terrah is the location where a grape has grown, So your soil, your climate, your unique climate that a grape has grown. And so in France, who you know, Bordeaux a specific terrooa which grows bored over ietols. Napa Valley is a terro that grows cabinet. So for me, it was important to stick to the tradition of what the blend is because it's the most noble of the blends. But see what it would taste like in a different, different way.
Well, speaking of taste.
Oh, Carol just tried to uncork a five hundred dollars bottle of wine and she broke the cork.
Now, I don't think that should be a problem.
I think I need to get you, guys another opener for the show. You want me to pull it, I don't think.
It should be because Travis, Yes, Travis saves the day.
Oh my god, I was sore here. Okay, but I can't so you keep talking.
And our poor but uh, I'm glad you're pouring because she's not great at getting corks out of the bottles, but she's very good, big glass. I look, I quit drinking last year, and since I started doing this show, I've been drunk every night.
So this wine is pretty interesting in a sense as well that it's. The idea behind the style of the wine was something with elegance, finesse, structure, power, age ability. I really wanted to make a wine that was not as a lot of people would think with this wine. They thought it would just be an over extracted fruit bomb, you know, something very much perfect, that crowd pleasing. But I wanted to create something that was true to the
tradition of the border blend. Border blends age better than any other wine in the world, and I wanted to create something that was going to outlive me by years and the age.
Where are you actually from, by the way, So I.
Grew up in South Africa, So live I grew up in Stuttambas and live between Cape Town, London and the States. At the moment, how tough was.
It there figuring out the blend, Like how much playing did you do?
It was not easy at all. And hence my business partner who is in on the project now is the world's greatest wine blender, Michelle Roulon. Yeah, Michelle has been responsible for pretty much every great wine on the planet for the last you know, forty years. He works with some great names, He does a lot of blending, and he's the only person who I could think of who knew every region of this world and had made wine there and knew it.
Well, did you know that you're gonna have to lean heavy, cab No.
So the original concept was make the varieties in each country, and the blend dictates how it works. So the first vintage is Cabinet dominance, the second vintage is Merlow dominant. Interesting, then we go back to cabinet, and then in eighteen it's Mulbeck dominance.
So you play around with it. Yep.
The idea is the same as any greater state in the world. We make the best wine that we can. The only difference is we have five different terewas and climate issues to deal with every year. We harvest all year.
That's what I've when I was reading about you, I was thinking, Okay, this is climate change and you guys are adapting to it.
Is that fair well to some extent? Or is that an influence?
Not really so much for this project? Okay, because this is very traditional, So If you look at the regions we're in three of the oldest in the world and two of the newer. So it's regions that have been growing these grapes for a very long time. It's not like a new thing in this region so for us.
But the ability to kind of adapt depending on maybe how things.
Well, that's for the future of this concept of this trend of wine is people who love wine. Why would you not want to try this? Why would you not want to be able to add a variety to your blend that will be stronger than the country you actually live in and have your cellar in.
I'm going to get yelled at by Matt's wife because it's like.
As someone who doesn't drink wine, I totally agree with you to drink wine. I mean, I love wine and I like to drink copious amounts of it, but I don't really know anything about it.
This is lovely. First of all, the legs are gorgeous, Like.
As you look at this is a massive I mean I would recommend to consumers who buy it if they're going to drink it now, you need to decant this for about eight hours five to eight hours.
Wow.
If you have double decanting ability.
So we're not even getting the full field of it.
If you drink this now over the next hour, you'll see how it develops, how the tannins kind of drop off, the fruit comes into play, the acidity rounds off. It's a wine that that really evolves in the glass. And that's been the thing that has really shocked a lot of people because they expected it to sort of be not as complicated as it is, but it truly is a It's a complicated monster.
This one your director consumer.
Yes, we may need the direct to consumer.
You're only available by invite, Is that true? Yes?
Yeah, so we So how do we get an invitation? So you go go into our go into our website Plangia States dot com, and you sign up there and we then allocate you to the allocation list. As our volumes increase.
How many battles have you done?
Like in the first vintage, I needed twenty six hundred for the consuming market, so very small production. We have the ability to grow. But my theory behind it was, you know, this is a new project, it's something interesting. Wanted to see what the wine tasted like first, so jumped in the deep end, made it and realized it actually surpassed the expectation.
Taste pretty good. Yeah, it's so good. I mean, it's interesting.
Yeah, and I also I just want to leave my nose in the glass, you know, and just continue work like this.
And this is the guy, this is the just got about twenty seconds.
So if you think about it, this wine is truly unique in a sense that very few people on the planets have actually tasted, so you guys are some of the first, and that every variety is in a competition for hierarchy and to be better. So it's so complicated, it's so nuanced, it's so interesting. So for a wine lever, this is a truly unique product.
Let's know how it's going because we'd love to talk more about it in the future. Travis breithwait he is the founder of Pangaea Estates, joining us here in studio making our frye