Siduri Winemaker on Harvest Outlook

he's joining Paula myself here in our studios. How are you cheers? Great, it's a beautiful day here in New York. The market was actually up. We have wine in the studio. Nothing really beautiful day. So pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. Well, tell us a little bit about your business and how you came to be with them.

Of course, So Sidury Wines named after the Babylonian goddess of wine, which in the Epic of Gilgamesh had an ale house at the edge of the world, which I've just exhausted all of my Epic of Gildermesh stories with that sentence. But what we do is we source Peano wir from up and down the West coast, as far south as Santa Barbara County and as far north as the Lamott Valley in Oregon. So it's about a thousand

miles stretch. So I came to find Saiduri Gosh. I got into winemaking being from Kentucky actually working on a vineyard during the summers as a summer job, basically driving and posting it is Bourbon countries. Yes, I got distracted, but I eventually fell in love with winemaking through those avenues. Of course, I graduated in o A during the recession with a philosophy degree, which presented another unique set of challenge. Yes it did, it did, And one of those thoughts

was why not take a chance. It's a good timing for it. I found an internship at a winery in Cinema County, California, and it just took off from there and eventually found Saiduri. When I found the founder, Adam Lee, was looking for somebody to take the reins and thought that'd be a lot of fun, and it certainly is all right. What's it talked to us? I like the s business owners, people that really have feet on the ground. What's what's your business been like over the last two

and a half three Things have been good. Of course, COVID presented a unique set of challenges to us all but but things have been good. Things are steady. Um. You know, of course there's some restaurant accounts, retail accounts and switching back and forth with who's open, who's closed. But things have been really good and we've had we've had some nice harvest on the heels of that well and like good well, No, I spent a lot of time in northern California, and I know the wildfire issue

affects everybody. It's almost no one is immune. And I know you're part of the world and that region of the state has really been impacted. Given some kind of some your experiences, it does. It's it's challenging, and you know, it's it's difficult because there's also human elements. I mean, we don't want to expose people to danger smoked from wildfires, things of that nature. And of course it's very difficult to make wine when you're under evacuation orders from the winery. Um,

there are challenges. Climate change is definitely a real thing. We're seeing it more every year, but it makes us more and more grateful for when we don't have those challenges and wildfires is absolutely fantastic. It was a good deal. What if there's one thing that climate change has caused you to change in terms of either strategy or how

you um developed cultivate wine? What is it? Sure? So um, we're looking into farming methods called regenerative agriculture, basically hearing more and more of the long term trials to eventually make vineyards carbon sinks. Um. So fewer disking passes um perfect a disking What is that? Basically um, taking a tractor through and plowing the soil, so eventually you might lose lots of top soil erosion, things of that nature. So we want to have less inputs in the vineyard

and actually eventually have them be carbon sinks. All right, So is that something that the industry embraces or is it something that maybe you have some old fashioned winemakers and now I'm doing the way we've done it forever. There's there's some of both, but it takes you know, a few brave folks to really lead the way on that. And you know, we're happy to be you know, part of leading the charge on that. So we're very very happy.

So when you look at um and we've got about forty seconds, then we're going to take a break and come back some and drink some wine and actually talk some more. But when you think about your customer base, who is it that you guys are going after? There's so much wine and wineries. Absolutely so, we'd like to think that we can make um Peano noirs an affordable price to where you don't have to be an expert

and you do have a nice price point of course. Yeah, so standard retail price, you know, thirty to forty dollars on most of our products, and we do offer a slew of Vineyard Designate series wines which we retail for seventy dollars, a lot smaller production on those, and a lot more geeky wines. I guess you could say, Matt, there we go. So absolutely so. The first wine we have at one of our ah, that looks good. That's that's one of my favorite sounds. Of course, thank you,

thank you, thank you. Um So, the first one I brought is a vineyard desgnit Pean noir from Gary's Vineyard and the St Lucia Highlands, so Monterey County, very cold, very windy, place to grow. Peter Noir Um Gary's is a farming team of two friends, both named Gary, that have been farming in the St. Lucia Highlands. I'm serious, childhood best friends as well. So great stories, So lucky to be Um sourcing grapes from this vineyard tends to

be a pretty robust Peter Noir. The fruit holds its acid really well in our studio all of a sudden, Yeah, So if you like a full bodied, kind of rich ripe style, this is right up your alley. Who is it's It looks beautiful. I mean, explain to me that designate business like versus your grapes versus somebody else's grapes. Is that sure? It's basically just a closer look of doing one vineyard only what does this one vineyard do

in bottle? So we do vineyard designated wines, but we also do larger what we call Appalachian blends that encompassed several vineyards. So this is just kind of a micro look at what one vineyard can do in one vintage. Well, and I was freaking like on the website, you guys talk about minimal intervention in the wine making process. Talk to us about what that means and maybe how that distinguishes you from some other Babsolutely, so Peanot noir is what we call a wine growers grape. Um. It doesn't

really liked high touch in the winery. If you get the farming right, if you get a good vintage, if you pick on the right date, it's pretty minimal intervention. So a couple of punch downs to keep the cap wet, then you go to barrel and that's pretty much it. So it doesn't like having a lot of fingerprints on it, and the vineyards really shine with minimal intervention in the winery. We kind of make them all the same and keep our hands off. Carol opened a twist cap versus a cork.

You know, there was a day when we would all be like, what exactly put to rest? Or give us your opinion on that. So, yes, I do have opinions. So Sidary was one of the early adopters of the screw cap. Oh my god, this is very nice, nice legs. Well, I you enjoy it. Um. So with the screw cap we transition in oh seven oh eight, after years and years of trials. We found the wines age better, they

age more consistently. Uh. There's really no bottle to bottle variation and you don't ever end up with cork taint or t c A. So it ensures that our customers get the product in the form that we intended it to get to them. That's interesting, and it doesn't you see it as a plus obviously, right, absolutely it is. There still a hard sell in the marketplace, and so we're starting to see a lot of that change. There are the die hards. There's a lot of great uh

wine traditions. I don't think all of them are completely necessary at least in our eyes, and Corps is one of those. So it just helps our customers get the wine in the best possible form. Want to ask you about labor, because I when I think about again, I spend a lot of time in the center, out of the rain, around cornmell money a lot, you know, I see, you know for various types of agriculture, just armies and armies and our so people talked to us about in

your business labor Yeah sure, so, so labor is tight. Um. I think a lot of regions that have are heavily tourism based Napos and m and North Bay. Housing is certainly an issue. You know, the housing costs are are very expensive, so it's something we're cognizant of. We're lucky to have really talented teams out in the field for us, really good leadership as well. And but yeah, it's you know, it seems to be a pinch point in a lot of ways. And it's it's been going on for quite

some time. So does that mean, like, just following on what Paul said is it doesn't mean that sometimes you can't get the workers you need or want, because we we don't really have an issue keeping our teams together. Um, there are some you know, horror stories about you know, people getting paid a dollar more and then leaving that day when they're supposed to go pick grapes or something like that. Fortunately, we have not found ourselves in those situations.

What's the you know, Karl's mentioned that it just seems like there's so many wine labels out there. What is the competitive landscape? Like you do you just try to find a little niche and then excel or do you try to take on some of the bigger you know, it's it's really just about UM, connecting with people over our wines, sharing the stories, um, you know, relating to them, and being accessible to the last thing I would want to do is for have Siduri Wines to be inaccessible.

So that's why you make are kind of our lower priced entry level lines. If you're curious about Peano Noir or chardon ay uh. We source from so many different areas Oregon down through the central coast of California down to Santa Barbara that we think we might find something you like. You know, it's interesting that you say that. I feel like we're talking with Matt revelet why, maker

of Saduri Wines here in our studio. I do feel like over the last couple of years, I feel like there is a theme of people saying, listen, you don't have to spend a ton of money for a great bottle of wine. And I find it too that I, you know, I've got those that I love and a little bit priced here, but I'll go in and I

can find some great wines at great price points. And there's something that's happened in the industry where that's a good thing and an acceptable thing that you don't have to shell out at Yeah, so I think, you know, something to be said about that is that we're we're getting better at it. We're figuring out our places more, We're figuring about where to plant in certain grapes a

little bit better. It takes a long time to really figure out if something is going to work vineyard wise, goes into the ground, then it really takes ten years to figure out what's going on through vine health, vine age and vintage variation. So I think we're all getting better at it. So that helps with the price point, right, absolutely, that's different. How's that? How's the wine industry doing relative to other spirits or beer and that type of thing.

Are people drinking more wine less wine? People are still drinking a lot of wine. Definitely. We drink peanut no wars almost all the time. Yeah, absolutely, So you're a target market, So thank you exactly. You're welcome. UM. And during the pandemic, I heard from you know, word of mouth that people may have been drinking a little bit more there. Yes, yes, yours truly might have been included

in that, UM. But yeah, there was a lot of you know, stalking up from retail outlets, so we saw some of the channel shift of course, of with restaurants being closed, there is a lot more of what we call off premise accounts uh, and a lot of activity there. So things shifted but still stayed really steady. Have you been hurt by restaurants that didn't come back and still

haven't come back? Are you okay? We're okay. It's just it's it's tough seeing our friends in the restaurant business in the situation that they are in and Slash have been in for quite some time. Um. So yeah, that's that's painful for us too, because there there are partners. All right, we are bloomberg. I mean I have to ask this. I don't don't don't everybody roll your eyes. Um, recession, no recession. Are you worried a little bit about the outlook?

I am cautiously optimistic. It's because you have as yeah, and it's Friday afternoon, and it's it's a beautiful day in New York, So cautiously cautiously optimistic. I gotta say, does feel like things are moving forward? I mean, we've had more guests in studio than in a long long time. I'm really just in the last couple of weeks. So, Matt, what a treat, What a pleasure. Um, you've got the chardonney, you've got the peenot noir, and the chardony is kind

of new right. Oh yes, so sidury has traditionally been all peino noir, but if you think about Burgundia and grape varieties, peano chardonnet. So my predecessor Mr Adam Lee was really good at feigning ignorance about a lot of things, and charinet was one of them. All right, good stuff for gonave it on that Max Revelent. He's one maker. Saduri wines. What a great way to end up. Thank you for coming, Pat, Pat. It doesn't take much wine for me to be gone. I'm such a cheap date.

False Sweeney, thank you so much. It was fun as have a good and safe evening, everybody. This is Brudberg.