Shift we go again, and we think we've got Scott Becker clean in terms of a feed. He is the owner of Realm Sellers. Scott is joining us along with the winemaker Ben wat Touquette, and they are in zoom and Napa Valley with an incredible shot behind them. Gentlemen, fingers crossed that the technology is working. I think it's easier to make wine than it is sometimes to get technology working. Scott, come on back, tell us a little bit about the approach that you guys are doing at Realm.
Yeah, that sounds great. Thanks for having us, and you can hear me.
Okay, now much better, much better?
Great, okay, great great. Well, yeah, so you got a little hillside view behind us of our vineyard here in the sag Leap district in Napa Valley. And as I was introducing Realm when we started, we didn't own this hillside behind us. We actually didn't known any land.
It was.
We were buying fruit from select vineyards in Napa Valley and producing the wine in someone else's facility. We used to call that sort of the virtual winery model or the asset light model, which was a way to get started in Napa Valley today. But if you want to make wine at the highest level, we believe you had to own the land. And so in twenty fifteen we began this migration from just buying fruits to starting to own land. And today we have four different estates in
three different appellations within Napa Valley. We vinify the wines from each of these places separately, and we bottle them separately. So we think of realm as sort of a portfolio of wines that collectively reflect the diversity of this beautiful place.
How much control more control does that give you over the wines that you guys develop, Ben Walk, come on in on this, you know, versus working with other vineyards, versus actually owning it yourself.
Yeah, I think it's a huge difference to be able to found the way we want to obvious the grapes and to be able to process you know, you know, we're own facilities. Such a tremendous change. Give us all the control from the farming, to the winding, king to the aging and guarantee to the old process up to the buffing that we do every step under our control and specx. So it's a tremendous change for the business.
So talk to me about the wine you guys, That's what I want to get into here. You've got a lot of blends which I love. One of them, the Tempest. People maybe have heard of it. What exactly sets you apart when it comes to your wines and your blends specifically? What is your approach Benoir?
Well, I think we always focus for us on the texture and try to capture the vintage, the best weekend or ether to some single vinia designated because we're also known for that, but also the blend. And here we were testing a bar specifically, which is a cabinet savinion based wine, and we get fruits from all over the valley from Coombsville in the south to Calisto got a warmer climate in the north, from zero ft elevation up
to nineteen foot nineteen hundred feet elevation. So I think the goal for us is ready to capture in every single vintage what's the essense of the vintage, to tail war and find a way to marry all those elements together to create a wine that's complex, complete and really kind of showcase who we are and having that nice flavors we all sort of take.
You to your port and to your question, Madison, you know there's a something like over a thousand wine brands in Napa Valley alone, and so how do you what is? Everyone has their own philosophy, their own style. I think ben Wana over the last decade plus have kind of refined that approach for us, and I would describe the wine. I think we sent you a bottle. Hopefully it made it there. With all the all the news today and banking, you should be drinking his last well tell.
Us actually, and I see you ben Wa drinking it. Tell us about you did you sent a bottle of the Bard? And I'm gonna put this out on Twitter as well, but tell us a little bit about and I'm going to actually pour some as you can hear. Yeah, we like a little bit of sound. Sorry it wasn't so elegant.
It sounds delicious.
I am a fan of red wine and I feel like the variety out there is incredible. I'm going to pass this glass to Maddie and then pour my own. But tell us about the bar. We've got about a minute and then we'll bring you back and talk some more.
Yeah, I think the Bard has done. While was starting to introduces it's cabernet. It's predominantly cabernet, but from vineyards all over Napa, and I think of that house style for us is the tension between richness and freshness. So if you think of it, hopefully, you know the wine will come across as a big wine, a bold wine.
I was just gonna say, I just did a sniff and it's really full. It's really lovely.
Yep, and so and that the counterpoint to that, hopefully is the freshness and the tension that's in the wine, the structure that it brings. And so we think of the wine as obviously showing well today, but ultimately the test for any great wine around the world is how well it ages and evolves over time. And so that's where we come up with this expression of the wines are big but light on their feet, or an offensive lineman who's also a ballerina.
Sometimes it's a great why you've got you've got my producer laughing in the control, but it's a great way to describe it. I think about all the people who describe wines that is really just precious. We want to those get back to our guests as we wind down on this Friday, we're speaking with Scott Becker. He's the owner of Realm Sellers and with us as also realms
winemaker ben Wa Touquette. They are still on zoom in Napa Valley, California, and I have to say, gentlemen, in the break, I use the viv you app and I've downloaded it. So my husband's like, what kind of wines do you want? I have a birthday coming up, and he's like, uh, you know, and this is what I like to do. But anyway, it is a lovely wine
and it really is pretty impressive. And I'm curious, you know, as you guys are now owner of a vineyard, how do you deal with one of the things that is running a business that increasingly all business owners have to deal with is the instability that is brought about by climate change. And the wine industry in particular on the West Coast out in Napa has seen it in a big ways firsthand.
Yeah, it's a big topic. It's a topic we talk about practically every day. It's sort of the existential question that looms over Napa Valley or any wine growing region. Just to take you back, you know, the first fires that in this modern era came in twenty seventeen. Thankfully, they came late enough that most producers had most of their crop already in. In twenty twenty, the fires came back to Napa Valley and it started to occur much earlier in the growing season, in mid August, and so
in our case, that affected the entire crop. So we didn't produce a wine from a red wine from the twenty twenty vintage, and so you can imagine that the entire years worth of livelihood goes up quite literally in smoke, and so it's a factor. I think there's a little bit of resiliency here and trying to stay positive. I
think technology is part of a solution. We've gotten much better as a state and as a county and as a wine growing community at understanding how to mitigate the effects of fires or how to prevent them from turning into two massive, ten thousand acre plus fires. I think there's some treatments and experiments that are ongoing in the vineyard and in the cellar to try to improve things
there as well. But whether it's fires, whether it's heat, whether it's drought, earthquake in twenty fourteen, you know, those are. But on the other hand, that's agriculture. There's a little bit of this that that's what you sign up for in this business, and so I think we can continue to try to do our best, but we also have
to stay positive and not overreact here. And so thankfully after the devastation of twenty twenty, we have two good vintages in twenty twenty one and twenty two, so the cellar is full again and we can continue to look forward. But all it's ever present on our minds.
It's a great and really important part of the conversation. I'm sure it has a huge impact on your bottom line when things like that happen. Not to be so bloomberghee, but another thing impacting every business owner right now macroeconomic headwinds the economy. The bottle that Carol and I are happily tasting right now comes in around one sixty five dollars for the bottle. How are you thinking about growth and your customer base given the current economic situation we're in.
Are you changing up who you're marketing to and you know, any of your pricing because of the economy.
No, I think in this business you have to think long term when we planted this hillside behind us. That was a thirty year decision, and so of course we're acutely aware of what's happening. We're seeing it in the wine business, some of those inflationary supply chain pressures. Our shipping costs of members and customers this year is up eight percent over last year. You know, the same thing on quarks, harder to get glass. We're just dealing with
long lead times on paper for labels. So the industry is seeing it just like any other industry. But I think you know the benefit of this business is we have to think long term. You know, the wine that you guys are having today, we hope will continue to age gracefully for twenty or thirty years. And so when you take that long view, we always say, we have to continue to play for the long view, but we
have to survive the short term. And so there's a little bit of understanding what's happening and making sure that we're tracking budgets and trying to be smart about things. But at the same time, you know, we see incredible upside potential for Napa Valley wines. Internationally. That's not something there's historically most California wine has been consumed inside the US. And while we think the US consumer for high end wine anyways is still quite healthy and is still spending.
Maybe they're not on as many marrying lists, so they're not buying as much, but they are still buying. And so you want to be one of those brands that are remembered. But internationally we see incredible growth potential, not just for US but frankly Napa Valley, California as a whole. So I think there's still a lot of upside potential for the wine market as a whole.
It's got and I feel like, you know, we've talked a lot about the luxury space, you know, LVMH and so on and so forth, and whether it's Chinese buyers or so on. And it's interesting when you talk about, you know, selling overseas. I don't know how much you can share with us, but in terms of US, I'm assuming is your biggest market now, But is it the growth rate? Is it overseas that you guys are really looking forward to?
I think so. So we sell eighty percent of our wine what we think of as we call it direct to consumers, So people who sign up on our mailing list on the website and then we offer them wine during these campaigns. The other twenty percent goes to trade partners in the US and around the world. Of the twenty ten percent of that is US and the other
half is overseas and that and that is growing. I think Asia and Europe continue to have more and more interest in Napa Valley wines, and so we're focused on a lot of markets within those two regions, Ben Wall, when.
You think about you know, it is a crowded space. I walk into a wine star and sometimes I'm overwhelmed, but I also kind of revel in it because it's so nice to have so much choice and variety and just new wineries coming out. How do you think about how you want to, you know, kind of tweak the brand or come out with new wines if you will.
Well, I think we try to grant brand awareness. I mean, people get to get to North so we we are able to brate production and hopefully to touch more and more people. The bond that you're tasting right now was originally Favorite Cases. I know it's ten thousand cases. So our hope is to create awareness around the brand and people to enjoy the fruit of our work and hopefully we have the word of mouth will be a best
ambassador for us. It's people that will refer over of wine to others, and we hope that like that we'll be much more known and nationally and internationally. Well.
I have to say it's a pretty incredible wine. I drink a fair amount of red wine. My name is Carolyn. I drink a fair amount of red wine responsibly. It's really incredible and so glad that we could spend some time with you, and we appreciate being able to sample what you guys are doing and really look forward to hearing more and hope you never have a year like twenty twenty where you guys are dealing with really the severe impacts of climate change. Come back, let us know
how things are going. We'd love to kind of continue the conversation. Have a great weekend. Scott Becker, owner Realm Sellers, joining us along with the winemaker ben Wa Touquette. They joined us as you could see for those watching on YouTube and Bloomberg Originals the incredible fields behind them joining us from Napa Valley Carol Master along with Madison Mills and this is Bloomberg Radio. Cheers everybody,