kukkula - Kevin Jussila

Welcome to Wine Soundtrack USA. Listen to the passion with which producers narrate their winery and their world. In thirty answers discover their stories, personalities, and passions.

Hello, friends and listeners of Wine Soundtrack. This is Alison Levine and today I am in the Adelaide district Impasseroblis with Kevin Usla. Haha, I said it correctly of Kukola. How am I doing? Perfect? Well? Great? These are finished names, so you know it's a little challenging, but not all of them, not all, but Kevin, welcome to Wine's Soundtrack and tell us a little bit about Kukola and where we are.

Yeah, so we're in the Adelaide district, one of the eleven sub appellations in passer Robolis. We are otherwise kind of we're in the area that's kind of known as the far out wineries. Were the furthest northwest corner and the only winer that goes past us, I believe, if

Cuckola? Just kind of the the bullet points.

The bullet points, give me, give me up quick, like what is the name Kukola?

Cukola is Finish. My family's from Finland.

It's my first language, and cucula and Finishes actually said goulapula.

There you go.

So cucula means the high place. So in Finish, I would say, you know, la luck, my house is on a high place.

And if you when you.

Came in, if you saw the house up high, that's kind of you know, we vastly for about five years, about five months excuse me about what we were going to call as an After going back and forth with a whole bunch of things, one day I asked my mom because I just was wasn't getting anywhere, and so she asked what I was looking for, and I kind of told her, well, you know, I'm you know, I was thinking, mecky, is that as a high as a mountain? And I gave her some other alters. She said, well

You're jumping ahead of me there.

Oh, okay, stopped the bullet points.

But yeah, I'm the other wine maker Cucola, and we're very focused on Rohan.

Centric blendz And how many acres do you have here?

So the property here is eighty acres, and yet I farmed two properties. The other is seventy two acres between the two. We've gone through some huge chases because of red blotch, but we had originally planted fifty acres across of vines across the two properties. We've pretty well torn we've torn everything out and we've replanted, and at this point we're only at forty two. We might stop there.

As well.

Wow, and you said that you're doing Roon varieties, although I know you also do little Cabernet, so there's some Bordeaux varieties in there too. And how many cases do you produce?

Well, that's kind of a moving number. We were pushing close to three thousand cases a year or two ago. We are pulling back. The markets are soft, so I'm not quite sure what that number is. It's going to be in the two thousand plus zone. The vineage you're having today is close to three thousand cases.

It's a little fluctuation. And is your wine exclusively direct consumer? Are you in any markets? I hope you're in Finland.

It is so funny you say that we are in Finland all the Finish market.

If you think the US market is bad right now, the Finish market is not good. Excuse the phone, I'm sorry. I wish I could disconnect that. So we are in Finnish. I'm in Finland. I'm a really proud fin And of course I had to have my wines that Finland had an opportunity five six years ago to have the wines there.

That is our early place for distribution.

We are one hundred percent direct to consumer in the United States heavily club driven.

Wow.

Okay, now I'm going to ask you what was your first memory relevant to wine.

Oh gosh, that's a tough one.

I mean, I'm sixty four years old, so my first memory relative wine would have probably been my in my teens, you know, something like any what is it any Green Springs?

Any bunny? Oh gosh, I don't know.

You know, those those old kind of jug wines that my parents would have had their kitchen. That was my first memory of So there's two others real quickly, I think on the first time I ever was I was probably not carted.

It was illegal.

I had ordered a bottle of Sebastiani Cabernet Sauvignel at a restaurant, trying.

To impress a girl I was dating. I knew nothing about.

Wine before you were twenty one, probably I think it was before I was twenty one.

Somehow I got it, it happened.

But my first seminal experience interually enough was bo Castell and the chapter enough to pop.

So yes, my next question, as you've sort of jumped ahead on, is what is that first you know, aha moment wine? Was it that bo Hostelle? Or is there another memory that kind of I'm sure you've had a few, because obviously you just then buy a winery and start a winery. But what was one of those wines that was kind of an aha moment for you? And what was it in why?

It's hard to say what wine, but clearly so what happened was I started getting really curious about wines, and I got curious about wines really because of other interest hobbies, you know, real quickly. I was a pretty serious cyclist and runner for many years, and when I met.

My wife Paula, I.

Was really seriously into running and biking to the point that it really dominated a lot of my time. And it's always trying to figure out how to wait corporate my wife into this because I didn't.

Want to give that up.

And so this kind of evolved in over time into bike riding and specifically doing bike tours, which kind of evolved to wine bike tours.

So this is how you got hurt a bike ride.

I got hurt of bike ride with another incentive, you know, kind of a resorting way to bike ride instead of kind of me doing centuries or more, which she had zero interest in.

And so what happened was the Santa Neez Valley.

Was probably kind of my first real serious fory into consuming wines and getting curious about wines. And as you know, although it's very diversified there, there's a lot of ran either varietals. Probably back then it was more broidely driven, not so much blend driven. So that was probably my first foy into wines. But what really I think was the catalyst that got me going was I we are We lived in Topanga Canyon, which is the Santa Monica

And somehow I had fallen into going there.

I guess I was looking for good wine shops and I fell upon this amazing wine shop. Their knowledge there was and probably to this day is really amazing. They got an amazing staff. And so I'm not I'm not a shy guy who's asking all kinds of questions that I got wine spectator, and I would like circle all the wines that was curious about it to go in.

There's a here he goes with his winespecnears definitely, and so somehow, I guess what I was asking questions about kind of moved to rones as a suggestion, and so I started kind of focusing on Roans, and you know, I don't know, you know, there might have been things like Rias or via Telegraph or certainly book Castell or you know, it's it's too long ago to remember anymore.

That's pushing certainly thirty five to forty.

Years ago, but I remember bok Castell maybe over time kind of really resonating with me, and I ultimately had an amazing experience in nineteen ninety five there where I tasted with one of the patriarchs. By chance, I had knocked on their door and you're not supposed to do that, and they.

Like they didn't get you.

Actually had to come back a couple of days later, and we ended up having this amazing tasting experience, and so that really we actually tasted with Rias as well at the same time, View Telegraph and a few others I forget, but that was kind of like, really when I started get I guess I was sucked at the vortex.

Yeah, the vortex happens, so I'm curious. Do you you know you make a lot of blends. In fact, you make almost exclusively blends, Roane blends. Do you think there's a such thing as a perfect variety?

No? No, No, I mean, look at I suppose when I first fell in love with wines. Well, if I told you I loved roans and brons or essentially blended wines, right, unless you're a Northern wine is one hundred percent or damn close to one hundred percent sarraw. So yeah, I mean I've had amazing examples of Surrahs that I've had in the past, and grenache, you know, Spanish got nachas and things like that that I just completely love.

But I am a huge foody. My wife is a huge food ye.

And so for us, I think what makes food so amazing is the ingredients, the components that go into it, and that I think, by extension, the same thing happens with wine. Each varietal brings a certain mouth feel, aromatic way whatever they deliver differently on the palette. And so I think blending is really kind of creating, in my mind, more complex wines.

So if we were to come to your home up the hill from your tasting room. If we were to walk in there, what wines would we find in there? Is it a lot of the cucula wines? Do you drink a lot of local wines? International? Is it all blends all of above?

Yeah, I mean, looking you can certainly have you know, got to have a healthy dose and cucula allocation in my cellar. But yeah, I have a pretty big representation of Central Coast wines, a pretty big representation.

In fact, I have.

One whole wall of California wines, including cukola.

Mostly roane producers or other varieties.

Not necessarily.

I mean, you know, clearly there's you know, I'm getting too many names here, but you know, certainly all of the certainly a lot of the names that we know here in Paso, in the Sanatas area, but you know, up to Oregon and Washington, certainly a bias to the rhones. But you know, a good friend of mine here is a project called Sick Smile Bridge, and they are all about Bordeaux. His name is Jim Moroni, by the way, And you know, so I have a healthy amount of

Is there anything you opened up recently that drank really well?

Oh my gosh.

Well, okay, I had some friends over a fellow wine maker for dinner a few nights ago, and we had a Chateau Quinaut from Bordeaux two thousand and three. It's a San Anio wine, and that was really.

An amazing experience. I'm really big on older vintage wines, and so I really love to buy wines and put them away for a whole number of years. So that was really cool. Gosh, I don't know. I have a bottle of wine every night, so it kind of blurs after a while.

Hard to keep up, but it's nice when you have a selection, and if you're keeping older wines, you know, you just go down there and see what you think might be ready to drink. Now, So I'm curious you were saying that when you went into Woodland Hills Wine Company to buy wines, you walked in with your wine spectator circling them. I'm going to guess that you have anymore. No, no, now you have a palette. I get that, But I'm curious because at that time, I'm sure what you were

At I submit to most of the wine critics, and I think that anybody who's in the business, the end of the business that I'm in, which is direct consumer uh really kind of wines and distinction, we do submit and and rely on, you know, critics treating us favorably, and to a large degree, I get a lot of pretty good recognition from them. I will say that you know, this is this is this is where it gets ripe with danger certain wine critics and especially historically, and it's

Yeah, and obviously, like you said, you're not really you're not driven by scores anymore in your buying. So you know, you find your place and now you have the confidence and you know what you like and you know how to find it. So talking about what you like as a consumer, you have a vast selection of wines in your cellar. As you've described, you make red wines exclusively. I know you said you had a white wine, but currently are only making red wine as a wine drinker, red whieter rose.

All of the above.

Yeah again, Look, if you're really into food and wine with food, it has to be all of the above. And it isn't that I don't have Volley, my only white that I haven't made in a few years in my cellar.

I do have other whites in the cellar.

And you know that runs the gamuts from you know, kind of German reeslings to.

You know.

Whatever, you know, chardenay typically French chardonnaise or so when your.

Bonks or you know, it's all over the map.

A nice equel opportunist. What about if you had to choose still or sparkling.

I'm a big still guy.

I have I have a fair amount of sparkling in the cellar, you know, I just I don't know, I just we just don't pull out as much sparkling as we used to.

I don't know why, it just has happened that way.

I'm really curious to go into your cellar, and that sounds like a very vast, exciting place to wander through.

It's not too bad. It's a pretty good place. I like hanging out there.

So you said that you like to you know, you and your wife like to cook. That you you know, like to pair wine with food. So how do you approach pairing wine and food? Do you follow rules? Are there rules you can share, guidelines that you use, or do you just sort of I got that two thousand and three CENTI milion, and I'm ready to drink it, so let's just open it with whatever.

I definitely don't do that, although it's it's funny that saandamon I did.

In fact, it was a bit of.

A violation of what I would have typically paired with the meal.

Although that's aren't really fair.

So our guests are vegetarians, and my wife and I have been leading vegetarian for a while now, We're not one hundred percent.

I love meat. I'm a carnivore, but so.

So she's got a nice repertoire of dinners that she prepares that are vegetarians. So she did it for our guests, and it was a nook. I can't remember what's with the nook.

It's funny.

All of a sudden, I'm zoning, But she did this new thing that's a portobello mushroom with spinach and feta cheese and some other things in there, and it was just it's really beautiful, really savory. So you know, the mushroom component to me works with a Bordeaux certainly, but probably more a Senteniome because it's softer. So I wouldn't, you know, do something that would be left bank. I'd probably typically do something that's more right bank with something like that.

So if I was going to back up a little because first, tell me what are the rules you fought, because it sounds like you played a little bit with that. So maybe you don't always follow rules because surprises can happen.

Well, that's right, you know.

Yeah.

I mean, look, there's always kind of standard rules, especially when you're in the taste and where you have you know, club members that are asking you, got I'm doing this tonight, Kevin, what would you do with it?

And so there's kind of the standard rules. You know, our lighter wines.

Will typically be I'll tell people poor chicken, excuse me, fish chicken, the pork if we're kind of talking kind of a meat driven meal. And as we go up the ladder, with our wines, you know, you'll typically kind of go you know, we got our pott to do, which is.

A grenache space with serraw wine.

It'll tend to be maybe more red sauce, maybe eggplant parmesan to maybe even chicken with like a like a preshudo wrap or up to pork pork tenderlines. By the way, I just had some left up with pork tend to wins that my wife made last night for lunch. That would be awesome with.

That, And so you might kind of go into the beef.

But then as you kind of move up, you know, Serrah based will tend to want to be maybe more game. It'll be one to be a little bit more beef because it's Syrah with granachi more men, but typically have Surrah and as we kind of go up, you know, I have a cap based blend as you mentioned, actually two of them, one heavy and the other I have a petite serrab blend. So we'll kind of get more into the kind of the game the beef, the fattier beef or you know, maybe you know, mushroom based kinds of meal.

Something, right, So you're kind of going from lighter style wines to lighter style of foods and it's more in weight that you're.

Matching, yes, but it could also be lighter wise, but it's really a function of what's the sauces or what is that it's accompanying that, But it's I you know, we all have this kind of vocabulary in our brain about what you pair.

With what, and a lot of it is forty years of consumption of wine. It's just kind of instinctive practice practice. Yeah, people ask me how do you learn all this? As well? I drink a lot.

So but there are you know, I do break the rules, like god, you know, this could work, you know, like a good example is this isn't really breaking a rule, but a lot of people are surprised, for example with saran turkey is an amazing combo and or saran reestling is a great combat well a lot of wine wine and pistionados will probably know this, or maybe they don't, but sometimes it's good to experiment, kind of go outside of the box and say, hey, well this work or

Little bit more kind of fruit forward.

Wine to kind of offset that which is maybe a rule, but you know you can kind of tweak those sometimes and kind of come up with some nice surprises.

Great, you've got to try different things and test it out and see what we're and after forty years of experience, you too will be like Kevin. So for somebody who hasn't had the pleasure of tasting cucola wines yet, what do you think they're missing out on?

Oh gosh, is this the cucola plug?

The whole thing is a cucola plug.

Yeah, you know, look at our kind of our tagline clearly is we're organic, dry farmers, ron centric make blends.

That's what turns me on. We are low interventionist.

We are very kind of tear wire driven, acid driven, food driven and what we do and if that's kind of your hot button, you got to come and see what we do. We make typically eight reds in a year. Eight red wine is not all necessarily that in that year, six seven, eight, depending on the vintage, and a lot of our wines are allocated. So if you're curious about cucola, you know you have to come to us direct.

So if space aliens were to land on your property right now after they wind through the roads and find their way all the way up here, and they're up here on your hill. Which of your wines would you want to welcome them with? To say, this is kukola?

You you walked into one that I won't give you an answer on.

So that the question is the question I get in the tasting room often is which is your favorite one?

Now this is not what your favorite wine is, okay, because I'm not saying what's your best wine your favorite wine? But which is which is the wine you would say to someone if they will if the Space aliens walk in and they're handed the first wine they're gonna try, maybe they're going to try more after. Maybe they only have time for one.

Variation on the question?

Is it?

I mean?

So I'll push back a little. So all of my wines are my babies. Sure, I love them all. And so if I were to choose for myself or for you as a guest or a space alien as a guest, it's maybe what's my mood?

And baby, what's the food?

So what's your mood right now?

My mood is it's early in the day, so probably off though, which is or kudwas based.

Blend Okay, yes, okay, see got an answer. There's a time and a place for every wine, of course, but sometimes you know, you might want to start out with the wine that's your lighter style because or maybe you want to give them the biggest wine you got. You know, there's don't have to pick favorites. They can all be your babies. So you know we're sitting here, Your tasting room is in the middle of one of your vineyards. Vineyards are on the back hill right behind me. And

I should know this.

We bought this property at least twenty years ago. We moved up here December two thousand and four, so that would be twenty years ago.

So yeah, twenty years ago, twenty years ago.

And did you was this as an existing vineyard already or did you plant it?

No? I'm sorry, putting my phone off so you don't hear all these beings. I apologize.

This eighty acre parcel again. And well we closed closed Escro first of December two thousand and four. It was seventy five acres of walnuts walnut trees. It was a one acre slipper of cabernet sevignant, which is why I experimented with cab even though I'm focused on runs. And I joked that it was three acres of rusted tractor truck parkes, pipes and lumber and.

It took me a year plus. You know what do we call those?

You know, the trucks on the trailers, this massive trailer and it was insanity, but kind of the farming vernacular on the property. So I just roll quick summary. Two thousand and six January started planting our first vines. Ultimately planted fifty acres of vines across two properties just this, thirty acres of which were on this property. Eight acres

Wow, So you planted the vines. You've been organic since the start. This was this was untouched land in that way, so it's never been touched by chemicals or anything like that. So that's a really beautiful thing. And I'm curious as you've watched your vineyard grow up. We know every vintage tells a different story. We know there's variation, maybe less in a region like this, But what have you noticed over the years as you've watched your babies grow up?

Oh gosh, I could tell you all day about that.

This is this is sigd answer.

Well, I guess just the one thing I've realized already many years ago and I still see is And some of this might have to do with just kind of the natural propensies of this soil is property to do what it does. But what I think I've noticed is, especially as it relates to what type of vegetative growth we get in the winter, the abundance of the very the variety of it seems like it gets more and more intense over time, which I think maybe speaks hopefully to being a good steward of the land. And we

A result of organic dry farming practices.

And age and also age.

Well, yeah, unfortunately, the age because of the whole red blotch we've dealt with, We've torn everything out and we restarted and so it so the age is really part of the equation. Are the last of our oldest vines we just tore out to three months ago?

Wow? So it's that was really hard breaking to do that. But you know you have to. I mean, you've got to make amazing wines. You have to do what you need to.

Absolutely, so, do you have any good luck rituals that you do at the beginning of harvest? Have you established any with your vineyard?

No?

No hard work work, no time for rich So you're like, so one of the wines that and we may may not talk about the wines, but one of the wines that are in front of you today is called sea siou.

And see Sue is the word in the Finnish.

Culture that defines fins. It's a word of pride in the Finnish culture, means patience, perseverance, and stamina. There's actually a whole bunch of things that means. It's it's a powerful word. Basically stick to itiveness, never quit. My wife loves to say it means stubborn, and so I guess my attitude the way I grew up the culture of fins is keep your head down, work hard, and good things happen.

So that's my good luck.

That's good luck. Are there any sort of signs or omens that you look for that you capture that are going to tell you what harvest is going to be, what kind of vintage you're going to get?

Oh?

No, you know, I can reflect on twenty twelve as an example. It was actually the first year of kind of that when we really kind of started geting this series of drought years year after year. I think we had like five years in a row right there, four anyway, And it turns out that if you had asked me to kind of foretell what the vintage was like, never could I would have thought, given the drought year, that.

We would have had a lighter yield.

We would have had, you know, maybe a little more tear wire driven wines, less kind of fruit driven wines.

It turned out to be almost the exact opposite.

It was one of the most bountiful yields I've ever had, you know, on a per Ton basis, on a paracre basis, and the fruits were the fruit was really kind of the wines were very fruit forward, big wines, so you never know. The eleven vintage was one of the most horrendous growing vintages we've ever experienced.

And I mean to the point that we had hail, we had snow.

I lost seven percent of my branches of my grenache because of extreme winds because it brains so late. I justified it through the towel. I said, screw it on trying to get the weeds under control. So we were probably waiting through two feet thick of weeds during harvest it. I just thought, Okay, we're screwed. And although critics sort of panned the vintage, I think in retrospect eleven was

So this is going to be a little kind of you're a winemaker, now you're a vineyard owner. You planted these vines. You come from a financial background, having worked in finance for many years, so this may seem a little silly to you, but I guess you know you survive the space alien question sort of, but you know you planted these vines. You've watched them grow up, You've had to pull them out and replant, And I'm curious when you walk through the vines, do you talk to

Of So I don't know that I ever really have a conversation with the vines, but I do actually have an audible conversation with myself. I do talk to myself, and everyone's well, I think people don't think I'm crazy. I do find myself, certainly because I'm either evaluating or working in the.

Vineyard a lot.

But I think this is more of the context of maybe when the day is done and if I want to kind of, you know, unwind, I'll either walk.

Into the year or I'll sit, you know, on one of our stone walls.

Overlooking the vineyard and kind of maybe assess things and maybe appreciate thing.

So I don't know that I really talked to my plants.

Do you talk to your wines when they go into Beryl?

Oh?

Again, I talked to myself a lot of talking to my wives. I do talk a lot to myself. You know, if you ever walk in on me and I'm talking, there's not necessarily somebody to the room.

So obviously wine was not something that you had planned to do as an adult. And I'm curious when you were a little boy, what did you want to do?

What?

Oh gosh, there was lots of things I wanted to be. So, first of I'm a super visual guy. I've always been over the top interested in photography, to the point that when I was a young guy, would actually take a lot of photographs, develop all my negatives, make prints, mostly black and white, did a little bit of bo it's called ciba chrome slight kind of processing stuff.

I took some or photography class, so you know, I wanted.

To be a an art photographer. I wanted to be a I wanted to be a cinematographer. I wanted to be an architect, because you see, all these things are kind of.

Very visually driven things.

But I will say that I don't think I ever thought I would be a farmer. But I had an innate interest in farming. And when I was a kid, my parents, my father from Finland to Canada and the family from Canada, United States, and we lived in the San Fernando Valley had a little tract house in North Hollywood, and my.

Parents had a typical kind of fifty five hundred and fifty foot deep.

Yard, and they had plum trees and orange trees and apricot trees and lemon trees in there that they were actually.

Were there when they were planted those.

But I was innately so interested in this stuff that I planted this huge, maybe the size of this room easily vegetable garden when I was probably nine or ten, and I maintained it pretty well till I left the house.

I was really into gardening in general. I had these amazing.

Flower gardens, and almost at the point of embarrassment when I was in my late teens, my mom would brag about my flower gardens.

You can't do that. That's not cool for a sixteen year old boy.

So I guess, you know, even though I didn't necessarily articulate or really think about this in a serious way, I've always been innately drawn to farming, So I guess I became a farmer.

And when you're not working, not in the vineyard anymore, it's never, never, never, How do you spend your free time? Do you still cycle.

Oh okay, so no, I do not cycle. I have an amazing bike. Well it's a thirty forty year old bike that I is a handbuilt bike, and every once while I do get on and a ride. Unfortunately I don't, and that's probably because of my work schedule. I'm usually four o'clock in the morning up and I'm working, and I pretty well worked till sunset. So I'm a workaholic. Somebody once said to be that there's workaholics and then there's Kevin, so that's kind of me. But that said,

I'm Canadian born.

I just leand up in a Finnish enclaved northern Ontario, Canada, and I have a house on a lake three hundred miles north of Toronto.

So it's in northern Canada.

You can't drive to it, you take a boat to it. It's completely isolated. I'm a big fisherman, so I did a lot of fishing there. In fact, I was just there for two weeks doing work on my house there. I got back two weeks ago, but in two weeks we're going back for six weeks and there's.

No internet, there's no email.

The only way to talk to me is to come by boat to the house and I shut it down.

That's my time to shut down.

So in your free time, you just have to turn it off.

I have to turn it off. Yeah, I don't know how to do it otherwise.

Well, you know, I think it's funny that you were a big bike rider and you don't do that anymore. But you know, and it was the wine part that stuck.

Well, it's funny because I tell people that I'm a big skier, cyclist, and runner.

I do none of them anymore because there's no time.

So living in the vineyard, you said you don't you have a lot of sparkling lines. You don't open those very often. And I'm curious if you were planning a romantic evening for you and your wife, what sort of wines do get open to set the mood of romanticism.

Well, I would say it's kind of food driven. Again, I mean, hopefully that creates.

The mood for something romantic once in a while, if you're not too exhausted.

It is so food food driven.

My wife is an amazing cook, and if you're a guest at our house for dinner, I think you'd be going away.

People.

People tell me all the time, you are the luckiest guy on earth, Kevin, and I am.

It's amazing.

So my wife has an amazing repertoire of food that she makes, and she's super creative. Is our kids are adults, and they're gone now. The Armies has been gone now for over two years, and so she's got and I think probably somewhat driven even by COVID, but COVID, post COVID and post kids, she's gotten even more creative. And almost every night there is a different entre that's she's presenting. And so we always have a bottle. There's a rare

Going to be decided based on what the food is. But it runs the gap, you know.

Again, California wines certainly googole of wines, Central Coast wines, Northern California wines not so much. Napa maybe more Sonoma, heavily focused in areas like the Willamette.

I love pinos. To me, Willammite is more kind of like.

The Bargone region, and so I'm more driven by that than I buy, you know, wonderful Why has it come out like center readabilace like that.

But they're not to me, kind of more in the vain of what I think the pinos.

But I love Borgone, I love Rone in France, I love Bordeaux Spain.

So you are these two empty nesters with a wife that cooks really well, opening wine. It must be a very romantic house.

No, maybe I should just leave it that say, yes, you're right, it's an amazing experience. The reality problem that is, I'm so damn exhausted. We dinner at drink wine and she puts on a movie and I fall asleep.

I'm sorry.

Guys. So I'm curious when you look back at your career, and this can include also working in the financial sector, But what would you say is one of the best pieces of advice you ever received?

That's easy, my dad always told me. My father was, you know, a working class Finish guy.

Grew up during World War Two, during the period that the Soviets had invaded Finland, and he, when he was in his twenties, jumped on a ship with his brother one of his four siblings and moved to Canada, and his ultimate mission was coming in the United States, the land of opportunity, and so my dad was driven by money, by wealth.

He never that wealth, but.

It was always about the level of your happiness is directly correlated to how much money you make.

And you know, I can't argue with that.

I've been pretty successful in my life, and clearly money has imported me the ability to do things that other people wouldn't. But I started to, you know, like I said, fall in love with wines in my twenties, and by the time I was in my thirties, I was actually making I didn't tell you this. I actually planted a vineyard into Penga Canyon. I actually got legally bonded as

If only your wife knew what the future hell at that moment, she my wife.

My wife will tell people that Kevin doesn't understand the meaning of a small hobby.

So but the point I was going to make was every year we would have.

A release part in juneish of our wines, and we our house sat up high in the Santamuni of Mouths and actually looked out of the canyon and you could see Catalina in the distance if you have a perspective of Los Angeles, the west side. And it was this one night in particular, which maybe kind of illustrates kind of my attitude about maybe what makes happy, what drives people in life, or what maybe the messages, especially with the younger people, how they should let.

Their lives is.

You know, we were all kind of buzz. It was the end of a wonderful evening. The sun was setting, and one of my guests said something, we got this such a beautiful evening, and you know, it was probably a little bit buzz I'm sure at that point. And I said, you know, I've made a whole lot of money in the wine, in the money measurement world that I never thought it would make. And on some level

That's nothing compared to, by the way, what I do here. So in retrospector should have stuck it.

But the point was, yet I completely dig it, and so the question is what's wrong with me? And so I guess the short answer to your question is when young people ask me about coming into this business, it is so much this business. Your question is a broader question, but I think it relates to the question, which is you know they're wanting to get in the wine business, and my answer is you damn well better love it because.

It's a lot. There's a lot of work. It's a very hard business, especially in this kind of an environment.

But the broader thing is what I told my kids, figure out what turns you on and then figure out how to make money doing what turns you on. Don't now I did it. The reverse, which maybe is in retrospect is good. I did quite well in my career, and I use that wealth that I acquired to pursue that which is always things that have always turned me on.

I've always had extracurricular activities.

I'm not one of those guys who, well, I just retired from my financial world a little over a month ago, and this is my retirement game. I'm I'm working eighty to one hundred hour weeks, so I've retired to eighty to one hundred hour weeks. But the point is, I think you'll love the career, your.

Path in life if you're turned on with what you're doing.

So when you look back at your career, what would you say is one of your proudest achievements to date?

God? Easy kids?

No?

No, I said your career, because I know everyone always answers their kids.

So the proudest achievement in my career to date, And it could be from any part of your career, and I'm sure there will be lots of those moments. But you know, when you say career, you know maybe you're asking about the money.

Measure world, and that's about anything but not your kids, work life. It could be whine, it could be.

I think my proudest achievement is that I pursued my dream.

See, not the money world yet.

Well, it's consistent with what I just said earlier, exactly.

Absolutely So you said to me that every in your house you have a bottle of wine. It's very rare, not to have wine on the table. So I'm curious if you can complete this sentence for me, A table without wine is like.

Oh my god, A table without wine is like a day without food.

I guess.

It's non existent in your world.

Wine is a legitimate component of your meal.

I fully agree with that, fully agree. So we're sitting at a long table. You do dinners all the time, your wife cooks a great meal. You pull out cucoloa wines, you have them on the table, and there's an empty seat next to you. Who from any walk of life, living or deceased, would you like to be sitting in that seat sharing a bottle of cucola wines?

Oh my god, there's so many people that would love to sit you know, this is kind of the political world.

I would have always loved to have met Jimmy Carr.

That has nothing to do with with you know. Maybe you expected me to save you know, uh, highly regarded wine maker.

I I there's there.

There's such a high list of people, and you know now that you put me on the spot, I can't mean.

Jimmy Carter comes up first and foremost, maybe.

Because he's been in the news lately and it's as the end of his his life cycle here.

Hmmm.

I'm always fascinated just this is a generic answer, but I'm always fascinated by people who have.

Lived with life intensely.

So there's a litany of people in the political world, and the historical world, and certainly.

In the wine world.

And I you know, you got me on the spot, and I can't think of it as soon as as soon as you walk out the door, Alison under I should have said, Blake, Well, you.

Said Jimmy Carter. You got a name out there, and that makes sense, and we'll save a few extra seats at the table. So when you when you fill it in, you can do that. Ye be pretty Hang up, it's so we're getting to the end. I got, I got, I got. We're gonna play our little game. But I do have a question for you. First, you're we're here in a hot area, you've got nice diurnal shifts, you're dry farming, you're doing everything as as you know, with

Years, growing mines making wine. Oh, of course they will will adapt.

I mean, that's the thing about certainly the vineyard world and this is shore I'm sure with other plants. Is how science has evolved to make plants, in this case, plants producing an edible component adaptable.

But you know, there's also the other side of the coin, which is.

We people have to get their heads in the game on on what we're doing to destroy this planet.

So if if, unfortunately you were being sent off to a deserted island at this point, temperature not being an issue, refrigeration not being an issue, which three wines would you want to take with you?

Ola or anything? Oh? Christ, that's a hard one. Okay, I don't know. I would do something like one of my favorite wines is Lachappel from the Rwin region. Uh, there's so many. I don't know even where to begin. Oh, l Lawn from Bordeaux. Should I throw a cuckola in there?

Sure?

Well, well which one?

You know?

That's the hard one, that's my mood, So I'll pick something else, gosh own, Uh, gosh, try, Oh my gosh, it would have to be.

One of the Rones, Southern Roones, and what the hell all throw in books. Guys.

I like how you're consistent, though, and you still will not pick a wine. So that's gonna bring me to our fun question of pairing wine with music, because now I'm gonna make you, you know, single out a few of your wines and tell me what sort of genre music musicians song you know, kind of reminds you of the wine. So we're gonna start with your blue label wine, which is the coun Wah, the the coun Wa based wine that is named after your dad.

Right, Yeah, you told me you were going to do this.

And this is the only thing I've warned you about.

Oh the heck am I going to answer this?

You know, it's funny because I got some really colectic taste in music. I love music, but when you put me on the spot with that kind of stuff, it is because I don't really listen to music as much as I used to.

My audio system isn't isn't up to dach.

I'll say, we got us say.

Mood wise, you know, certainly you know Kunwhas is very fruit driven, big volume, spicy. I suggested earlier, salsa, a fun, a fun Latin tune would be wonderful with that wine.

Perfect Okay. Next up we have si zoo, which is the very pactful finish word you were talking about. And this is tell me a little bit about the grapes in this.

Serra granach morvat.

Actually, this vintage that you have in front of you is a forty six percent Sarah, thirty percent moved and twenty percent gach. Is always Serra dominant and could be typically more likely a quarter each granachean warvan in that zone. Oh gosh, this is where it gets tough.

It's a pretty serious wine.

It would have to be something more classical music, you know, generically baroque music, maybe like a Vivaldi's four Season or something like that.

I don't see that.

I'm sipping the wine. I get that it's got a little floral, little fruit, a little spice. It's kind of it's got the seasons and the flavors. There you go, Okay, one more, you're almost there. One more. We're gonna do the Cuckola noir.

And this is Cookland noir.

This vintage is eighty five SRaw fifteen petite, so it's dark.

It's a pretty intense wine, even though it's got petit in it. To me is kind of a nod to the Northern Rhone has this.

More kind of tear war driven kind of sense that you get from kind of the Northern Rhnes.

Oh gosh, that's hard. I'm trying to think of something a little bit more kind of modern, you know. Gosh, I don't know. I mean maybe it's cerebral.

Pink Floyd comes to my King Floyd is one of my favorite all time bands.

It's a very cerebral band and a very cerebral wine.

There you go. I won't put any more pressure on, but you are good at describing your wine. So you know you did well. You did well, Kevin, You're off the spot. You have one more question to answer, and that is it's a two parter. First is what wine region in the world is at the top of your bucket list to visit?

Oh that's easy, I'm not so let's just do country first.

Believe it or not.

I love Spanish wines. I have a lot of Spanish wines in my cellar. I have never been to Spain. It just hasn't hit my It's hit my list, but it's just it never has been high enough and whatever circumstances have kept me from going there. It's going to happen in the next year, for sure. I'm sent it to my wife Rioja. Certainly, Front and Center is a place that in prior Rod. Certainly, those two are my favorite zones.

So in Spain.

Okay. And for our listeners, if they want to come visit you at Cucula, how can they find you? Where can they find you? Tell us?

Yeah, so again we're Although we do have some exposure in some stores and restaurants in the central coast in South California, we are not distributed. Therefore, the easiest way is either come and visit us here on Chimney Rock on the west side of Passo, or go to Cucolawine dot com. It's k U k k U LA wine dot com. Plug get myself here. Those are the two best ways to see our wines.

That's great.

And the tasting room is in the vineyard. It is enclosed in air conditioned, so on a hot day you can stay nice and cool. But yes, it's got windows all around. You can look down at the cellar, you can look out at the vineyard and taste the wines of Cucula. So, Kevin, thank you so much for joining us on Wine soundtrack and let's go take a walk in the vineyard.

Do it it the finds would say, cheers.

Cheers, Thanks for listening to a newsisode of Wind Soundtrack USA. For details and updates, visit our website windsoundtrack dot com.