Carson Leno, Fallon. Now it's wine talks with Paul K. Hey, welcome to wine talks with Paul K. And we are in studio today in beautiful southern California about to have a conversation with Taylor Seres up in Sonoma County, 6th generation of Ceres Ranch winery. Introductions to just a moment. Wine talks, of course, available on iHeartRadio, Pandora, Spotify. Wherever you hang out for podcasting, have a listen to a show that I released with Paul Warston, the
winemaker at Moraga vineyards. You're going to ask, well, maybe it's Napa, Sonoma, Central coast, maybe Temecula, but no, it's Beverly Hills, owned by Rupert Murdoch. He makes wine in the heart of Los Angeles, just down the street from the famed restaurant and district, the Rodeo drive. Rodeo Drive, etcetera. But amazing wines and amazing story about how this twelve acre vineyard was planted. Also, have a listen to Julie
Hernandez. She walked into my office about 20 years ago and I told myself, this girl's never going to make it in this crazy industry. Sorry, Paul, you're wrong. She ended up being an executive for one of the largest distributors in southern California. Fabulous conversation. And mostly about being a woman and a mother in this hectic industry. Have a listen to that. But now, while we're here. Here to have a conversation with Taylor Cetis of Cetis Ranch Wines. Welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me. So I was reading and it's sort of, one site said that you were the winemaker and one side said that you're working here, working there. So tell me the role at Ceres. I'm giving my friend my spanish accent there. Ceres winery. There you go. So I am first and foremost a family member. I'm fifth generation. My nieces and nephews and future little one are 6th generation. And so the role that I play is really anything that's needed.
Our family is very involved in all of the winemaking practices, but grape growing first and foremost. We have been farming grapes for about 55 years now, farming our land for actually 100 years. 2024 is our hundredth anniversary and we'll be celebrating that. We have a big party scheduled for June 8 that we're celebrating and celebrating our, you know, everything that we've come through, gone through all of our ancestors and generations previous to us,
and we are very excited for that. And, but as far as, you know, my day to day title, it really just kind of depends. Well, there's a lot going on. I can tell by your resume as I was rifling through Google, but you said something very interesting particularly in the wine industry for California. A lot of people, listeners might know that the wine trade really started in southern
California and grandchildren made its way north. But when you say that the setters ranch is 100 years old and the grapes are 50 years old, that's pretty indicative of what happened in the path of Napa and Sonoma. What was your. I don't know which grandfather it is. Is it your great great great grandfather? So our property.
So California being the birthplace of California winemaking, with Buena Vista winery having the first bond ever, I, as far as my family, it was my great grandfather and great great grandfather who moved onto the property in the late 18 hundreds, early 19 hundreds slowly started acquiring parcels, with the final parcel being acquired in 1924. The property was originally owned by General Feiningra Hooker, who was a military general in the Mexican American War as well as
the civil war. And so the Sarasids acquired the land from the family that purchased the property from Hooker, the Wattress family. And before that, we had. My great grandfather and great great grandfather had hotels and liquor stores in San Francisco and would come up to Sonoma regularly to summer the bathhouses and the mineral springs or the mineral pools. It was very common for the San
Francisco residents to come up to Sonoma. And so from that point on, it kind of evolved, got into the farming side of things, got into the contractor type work. And here we are today. That is amazing, actually, because post gold rush, or during even the gold rush, hotels and liquor stores, you sound like you had a very bright family there to get involved in those industries. And wine, it's interesting. Wine was a very important part of the
gold rush, though. It wasn't american, it was mostly french, which is a really fascinating part of that history in San Francisco. But when you said that the San Franciscans were coming to the Sonoma for maybe health reasons, maybe it's take a break for the sunshine, for the humans. I think so. I mean, if you look at San Francisco today, summertime in San Francisco, it's pretty foggy and cold. And up here in Sonoma,
it's, for the most part, very sunny. Warm weather, doesn't get too, too hot, but one of the main draws was the mineral springs. We actually have geothermal activity running underneath us, which aids in the reason why we only grow red grapes, because that's what grows best in our site with all of our different microclimates that we have on our 200 acre property.
And so with all of that, it makes sense to the point of why, you know, when you turn on the hose in the summertime, even in the wintertime, it's warm water and it takes a very, very, very long time to get cold. Like, warm enough where you could shower in it. Is there a water not shortage? But is the water table low enough or high enough that this is never going to be an issue over the, let's say, 200 years, that there's enough water, given California's erratic weather and rainflow?
We actually just tested our water levels earlier this year and our water level is at 2ft below ground level. So we are fully saturated. We are full. We are good to go for the season. Now, that doesn't mean that we're just going to use it whenever we want. We're obviously very diligent in the way and responsible in the way that we use our water for watering, you know, for our own houses, for our own personal use, as well as the vineyards. It's funny, I
do check odd places for information. One of them, there's a. There's a site that has all the reservoir levels in California. And they're like. They're like, full. Everything's full, I think, as far as I know, and don't quote me, but I'm pretty sure that everything is pretty well at, you know, peak level right now. I'm sure with this heat that we've gotten, some levels have gone down just because of evaporation, but not significant by any means. But you're in construction as well, so
we'll talk about that in a second. But wouldn't that, you know, having a high water table is murder for a construction site, you know, when you got. Yeah, we definitely have the two different ends of the spectrum. You know, we want the rain in the fall. Construction wants it to stay dry as long as possible so we can still be operating. So whenever one sibling is rooting for something, the other is rooting for the other. That's very funny.
So let's talk about. Let's go back a little bit, back to your grandfather again. A great, great grandfather. Coming 1872. Again, this is probably the beginning of wine growth, but it wasn't really grape growth at that point. It was just starting. It was mostly vegetables. Fruit trees. Were there fruit trees? Were they pistachios, were they almonds? What. What was growing on there? We had. So we actually had some wine grapes. Hooker had planted wine grapes back in
the early mid 18 hundreds when he had lived here. And so we did have wine grapes. They ended up ripping those out early 19 hundreds. And then it was more of a dairy farm, had row crops. It was kind of like you're all in one stop shop for everything. Definitely fruit trees, but nothing that was major in the commercial agriculture type work. A lot of other family farms around the area back then where prune farmers prune pear apples up in like the Sebastopol gravenstein area with those
gravenstein apples. Excuse me, but for us with the sarris is it was more animal agriculture as well as some of those, you know, basic type of, you know, keeping your family fed. Typing. Has anybody written this down? I mean, like in a real granular form? Understand the lineage progress? Yes, we have. I think I would like to go through it and kind of fine tune it. We have stories, we have old documents from the Watchers family who own the property before us, as well as from Hooker's era of
owning the property. And so we have those old documents. Historian has come in and written a story or kind of our chronological timeline, but nothing passed. Probably the, when my dad was a child, so the mid late 1950s to early 1960s. So we need to go through and kind of update that. In all honesty, it's so important. There's a lot of organizations. In fact, the library system at Berkeley, University of Berkeley, has an amazing audio library and is strictly on wine and the history of wine in
America and California in particular. They come out, they do the interviews, they transcribe it. I was going to use it for my father's story. I end up using an author from the LA Times in the armenian community. But it's a fabulous organization and it's strictly the history of wine in California. So that's very thorough. Very thorough. And the reason I say that is it's pretty popular now to, to sit down. Now we have all the devices and as you can record things
on your phone. The other day, the other week, I visited my uncle Ernest in Massachusetts. He was the head thoracic surgeon at University of Harvard, head of the medical department, and no one had ever sat him down. So I just took my phone out and just started asking him questions. And so we got some of it at 98 years old, so he
forgot some of it. But I think it's so important in our, in our history to capture these moments when we can and move them forward, because leading to this question, the family history, how does that play out in your philosophy toward what you're doing and knowing your stewards of the land? It's this long generations. I mean, in the back of your mind, how does this playing out as to what you're doing every day? I think
it's um, it's part of everything that we do. You know, our family has worked so hard to keep this property in, in our family, keep it operating. We obviously, being in agriculture, you have to be open to change. You know, we are farmers first. Be that cattle ranchers, grape growers, pear farmers, whatever that may be. Just knowing that we're going to be staying in agriculture and that changes and that
evolves. And I think that that's one thing that farming has really taught us through generations previous to us, as well as moving forward, that, you know, sometimes that industry kind of goes in the tank, and so you have to figure out what the next situation may come. Well, there are other ways that you could say that, but I'm trying to be
easy. I would use exactly the same nomenclature today because we seem to be going into the tank and in the wine side of things, but the ebbs and flows of agriculture, if you're growing pears and you're growing blueberries, is it as volatile as wine, or is it more stable, or how's that function for you guys? So we, we grow our blueberries, and it's actually significantly more volatile.
So where, as far as the, the growing aspect of it, where the grape market, you generally, you have a contract, you know what your price is per ton, you know, you know, obviously, mother nature is, has the end all, be all when it comes to what happens with her choices that she makes with weather patterns. But as far as blueberries go, we are fortunate enough, we actually ripen right after southern and central California and before
the Pacific Northwest in Oregon and Washington. So we're able to call our price to a certain extent. But you also are competing with Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, with imported blueberries. And so for that point is, the market is extremely volatile. One day it could be dollar four a pound, and the next day it could be fifty cents a pound. And so you, you really, you can't say one way or the other if that makes sense. You know, it's.
We wouldn't change it for anything. We're very happy to be involved in the blueberry industry. And like I said, we're, we come in kind of at a perfect niche time, but when we get to the end of our market, you definitely tell with pricing, because the Pacific Northwest comes in and there's just thousands of acres of blueberries, and we are not that large
when it comes to blueberry production. And so we have to really be cautious, um, with, because we're so quality driven, uh, with our berries, we call our fruit really hard so our seconds fruit. There's nothing wrong with it. It's just a little bit smaller, um, than we like to put out in the market. I mean, after all, you can drive down the road in Oregon and just pull over. Exactly. Exactly. Well, that tells you a lot, because we, we've, like I said earlier, we're a brown thumbs. My wife and
I are horrible at it. Our, one of our housekeepers from El Salvador, she was incredible at it. But we tried to grow some blueberry bushes, and I'm telling you, that was the most anemic looking things you'd ever seen. And so we just gave up on it. And so it's. But I've seen your brand in the stores, and it also explains a lot about the price fluctuation, you know, retail, because it seems to. It seems to ebb and flow rather radically. Like day to day, almost. Yes, it absolutely
does. Wow. So this is an important part of this conversation. Wines, grapes. Wine grapes, blueberries doesn't matter because we're adding layers of bureaucracy, we're adding layers of philosophy. We're adding all kinds of things every day to the cultivation of wine grapes. And you're talking about sustainability, which I think is a very important part of our industry. I think of all industries that are out there, that wine grape growing is probably one of the most natural, sustainable
crops. Is your family looking towards sustainability? Is it adopted sustainability? And how has that affected the bottom line and or the way we go about our daily business? Absolutely. So our family has implemented sustainability for a very long time now. We just have that third party certification,
which does aid in the marketing aspect. All of our wine grapes are certified sustainable as well as climate adaptation certified, which means that we actually sequester more carbon with our farming practices than we do emit nitrogen when it comes to the ozone layer. And helping farm for the future and climate friendly farming, we are practicing those cultural practices in our vineyards. And we do have third party certification for both of those sustainability as well as climate
adaptation certified. And then as well as our blueberries, I have actually implemented and created a sustainability plan that now other growers can use throughout California to get their farms certified sustainable. And the beauty of sustainability is it's not just farming. You obviously have to have a financially economical business to continue
for generation to generation. You need to have sustainable farming practices as well as have that people component, be it your employees, your neighbors, the total community aspect for sustainability to really showcase the true definition of sustainability, not only in the fields, but also how you interact with your community and your employees. Are there different levels of certification? I had on the show. I can't remember her name now. It was sort of a
russian slavic name. And she was at the San Luis Obispo group of the certification group. The SIP. Certified, yes. Sip. Is that the certification you're talking about? So our wine grapes are certified through fish friendly farming, as well as the California Wine Institute. Excuse me, the California Sustainable Wine Institute. And then our blueberries. The program that I used was fish friendly farming to create that certified or that certification process.
So you sort of created understanding the grape certification for sustainability. And I'm push up a little bit. Push on that a little bit right now. But you sort of adopted some of those techniques and created or pioneered the idea for blueberry farming. Yes. Yeah. So our blueberries are 100% certified sustainable.
We. And so I. I feel that sustainability is really one of the most important certifications that you can get, because if you're sustainable, then you are looking at everything under the umbrella as opposed to just one pillar. It's very interesting to me because I've read a few books on the subject, organic farming as well. Biodynamic, I think I have Steiner's book. It's right here, actually, but the binding is still intact, so I haven't really read much of it.
And that is, if you look at farming in America, and it's purported that we've ruined so many farms and that it takes generations for them to come back. If you look at farming in America, let's talk about the industrial age, the forties and the fifties. If there's no holds barred, do whatever you want. Take whatever, add whatever you want to the soil, dust it with whatever you need to do. We need to increase production. We need to feed the world. So we're just going
to have at it. And there's no boundaries, right. And now we're pulling those in, and we're still getting the volume, we're still getting that. We're still getting the amount of food we need. And I even read a book once where they said you could never feed the world organically. And I don't think that's true necessarily anymore.
But the fact that you now have sort of harnessed some of this stuff and you are still producing quality products, we're still producing the amount that we need, isn't that fascinating to sort of with a little effort? And I don't think it's the bureaucracy it does. There's only people like you with the passion to do it. Have you seen a big change? I definitely have seen a
change. I think one of the main things is that even with our implementation of new practices and bringing in new technology and mechanization, which is kind of just the wave of the future, in all honesty, with labor being so difficult, it is something that generations before us have done. Now, there's always a bad egg, there's always a bad apple. But I would say for the most part, farmers in general, they, at least for us, I can speak 100% to that, is we live on the property
that we farm. And so we're never going to put anything out there or in the ground or anything like that that's harmful to us. Call us selfish if you want, because why would I want to add anything that's toxic to our groundwater that we're drinking? Because we all drink well water. So I think it's really important to look at the bigger picture. And even with larger corporate farms, I don't know the exact percentage, but I believe it's like 90 or 95% are family run farms
in California. And that's a huge number. Now, some of these family operations could be larger operations, but they're still run by a family. And I think that we need. There's been so much separation from taking, like, the human out of farming. And they, and the average
consumer just thinks it's some big corporate conglomerate. And I think that that's one thing that with the work that our industry has done as well as the Sonoma county weing commission, is really putting a person back into the picture. And it's not just a machine or a robot out there. It's actually people out there doing the work, making sure that we're implementing the best possible way that we can. And by all means. Is that hard work? Absolutely.
But it's something that we wouldn't change for the world. You just gave me a funny thought. Not that this is a funny subject, but you gave me a funny thought. And that is, I wish in the bureaucracies of not only the local, but state and then federal bureaucracies, that there'd be a requirement, at least from my standpoint, that everybody owned a business and tried to make a profit so they would understand the headwinds to this. And I'm thinking, gee, I wonder if that wouldn't be same
in rural farming communities. And that we wish the bureaucrats that are up there had an inkling of what we go through every day and how we try to protect the soil and how we do have our kids playing in the vineyard. We don't want toxic chemicals on their fingers when they come home or play with the dog. Is that a thought process? Is that something you. I think that's a great
idea. I mean, I have always said, and something that I've talked to my dad a lot about is the importance of, if you're going to run a government, run a country, whatever it may be, that you should know how to run a business and make a payroll, because you actually have people's lives dependent
on you. And I would say the same thing when we have people voting for different regulations that come down onto these farmers, that there's a disconnect and having that personal connection, that personal interaction is so important because that really, it really does matter how you vote, how you interact with your community, all of these different things. I think it's a really, really important subject that can be extremely detrimental to a livelihood of a generational family farm.
I mean, just going back to a few years when they diverted the water away from the Kern Valley, I mean, that's one major thing. So let's shift gears a little bit. This is an important part of California agriculture. What you're doing in your way, the 200 acres, you've got grapes, you've got blueberries. It's so often that I have a conversation with a european farmer who started, who was going to be in the industry. I mean, they're born of these amazing chateaux
and grape growing. And six generations in California is long. I mean, it's maybe average in Europe when it comes to these properties, but for California, that's very long. Commendable. But did you have, were you compelled to go off and do something else first to understand a little bit more of the world to, before we started on the farm? Like, you're part of these commissions, you're part of these organizations. You said you're on a lot of boards to get a rounded viewpoint of what's
going on out there. So we actually have a little unspoken role with our family that you have to go work for somebody else for five years before you come back to the family business. Oh, wow. And for me, it was extremely important because at the end of the day, you know, your parents are your boss, but they're still your parents. So there's that, there's that little leeway that that happens, especially when you're fresh out of college. I won't act like I was
some godsend or anything like that. You know, there needs to be a little humbling that takes place, and I think it's always best when humbling takes place. With somebody that's not your parents. And at least for me, that's what worked best. So I actually worked for an organization that represented the Sonoma Valley Vintners and growers. So it was a membership based organization, so I was still involved, but on a different level. And through that, made a lot of connections. Put on
the Sonoma harvest wine auction. At that time, it was the number three charitable wine auction in the nation. Wow. So kind of got into the philanthropic side of things, represented the industry, made connections outside of my family business and my family connections, and then went and worked for a private hunting club in Sonoma and decided at that point, around 2016, it was time to come back and work for the family
business. And so through that time, during busy times of year, be it grape harvest, blueberry harvest, I would help as best I could, but I did have my normal, you know, my regular nine to five and then some job, so it wasn't my main focus. And so to your question of, you know, did you have to go do something else? Yes. Were we required to come back to work for the family business? Absolutely not. It was our choice whether we wanted to or
not. And it's something that I have always been called for. I've just had that. That internal calling. I knew that I would always be in agriculture in one form or another, and so it was just a matter of how that would happen. So when I came back, I'm the youngest. I have two older brothers. And so when I came back, I was the final child to come back and work for the family business. And that's when we started our wine label. 2018 was our first vintage, and so
we were able to kind of take everything to the next level with all. All hands on deck. I want to talk about that first vintage right now, but however, there's something very funny. You said that there's a humbling experience. Well, humbling from college to your careers is called real life, right? 100%. My architect is a close friend and a relative by marriage. His son just went off to Cornell to be an architect, architecture. And he keeps calling him
saying, dad, you're not doing it right. Yeah, you finish the classroom. Exactly. Come out and sit in my seat and earn a living at this, and then we'll decide what. My dad says that all the time. And it's true. There's a true component to real life as opposed to what's taught in a classroom. Correct. And I think that that's really important. And you always have. You work with family. There's always going to be a rub, but at the end of the day, you're with your family, so you
wouldn't want for anything else. You know, it's interesting, too. I. My career, it took me about ten years to come back to this, but, you know, I left. I remember in college saying, I do not want to work for. I'm not going to be a little guy. I'm not going to. So I went to corporate America, and I thought, well, that that was very unrewarding and unsatisfying. And then started a company with some other guys and software. And I was one of five people. We had nothing. We had a Commodore
64 computer and. And a fishbowl of business cards from a show. I wasn't even sure what the software did, but those experiences were invaluable on both sides of that offense to do what I came to do with my father. And when he said, I've got an offer from the south african wine of the month club, and if you're interested in pursuing this, we should come and
check it out. So I did that in three months. Packed the wine, I built the credit cards, did all the work, and thought, yeah, you know, I could do that, but I couldn't have done it, having not understood both the entrepreneurial side of business and the corporate America side to make it work, which I just sold last year after 35 years. So 2018, I didn't realize this is a rather new venture when it comes to commercial
wine. 2018 was probably a pretty good year to get started. It was pre COVID Internet wine sales were good. Do you have a tasting room there? Well, 2018 was our first vintage, but like I said, we only grow red grapes, so we have red wine. And so we didn't release it until 2022. So timing was really new. Was a little difficult, in all honesty. But we. To your question of a tasting room, we don't have an actual tasting room. We do ranch tours, so
it's private by appointment only. We encourage you to come to our website, reach out to us, book a tour, and we take you around the vineyard. We taste through five to six different wines. We have multiple stops throughout the vineyard, talk about the farming practices, talk about our family heritage, our history, as well as we have a resident herd of, uh, Texas longhorns on our place, and they're always a wonderful showpiece. Very cool. So
interesting then. All right, so your first vintage, uh, your first picked vintage was 2018. Um, you know, you process it, you put it in the barrel, and you release it in 2022. And you've made a vintage ever since. So you've got the 20 2019 in barrel or it's in tank, et cetera, et cetera, right? Yes. So every year other than 2020, uh, the fires up in this area were a little too difficult, and so we had
a little too much smoke exposure early on in the growing season. So we have a 20, 18, 20, 19, 20, 21 22 is still in barrel and will be bottled, actually, January of 2025. Well, thank goodness that you have another. You have other foundation businesses. Absolutely. Since 2020, with so many people were devastated by those fires, and a lot of businesses are struggling still because of that. So what was the impetus to say,
look, we've got these vineyards, we're making wine? I don't know if you maybe were making wine for yourself up until that point, but decided to get commercial about that. Was it because you wanted to augment this sort of tourist facility or that you were really going back to your roots and wanted to create wine with the family name to represent what. Who you are? What was the sort of discussion around the family around here? I think our main thing was going back to our roots.
Create and establish that world class wine is grown all over the nation, all over the world, and we're very proud of the wine and the grapes that we grow here in Sonoma Valley. And so trying to multiple levels, in the sense of putting that stake in the ground to really showcase that we are able to grow grapes that compete with some of the best areas of the world, putting our name on it, obviously ensuring
that we are focusing on quality first. And so that's why, to that point, there are some wineries that chose to move forward with a 2020 vintage. But we just decided that the quality wasn't there that year with that smoke exposure. So we decided not to. With our family mission statement. In our winery, what we really focus on is the importance of quality. The wine doesn't get released because a sales team, which is a very small team, it's basically myself
and one other person. But the people don't dictate the wine. The wine is what dictates the wine. So everything revolves around the wine and when it's ready, and then we evolve from there. So you must have been carried over from the farming practices, let's say, blueberries, to the wine philosophies. And the philosophy of your wine is we're going to
produce the best product that we can. Given the. What the mother nature has given us, I'm sure you probably have given your sustainability movement, minimal intervention. What does that mean to you? It's really important. It's something that with everything that we do, be it our construction company, be it our blueberries, be it our wine grapes, our wines that we make, if our name is on it, we are really focused on quality. We want to make sure that
we're proud of the product that goes out there. I would say that with the sustainability efforts that we have, ensuring that that quality is wholesome and sustainable, first and foremost, and then that that quality level is, you know, above par and then some, to really encourage knowing that from a consumer level, if you see saris on the label, be it on the side of a truck, on, you know, a wine bottle, on a blueberry carton, that you don't have to question that level of integrity.
So from a boutique, it's fascinating conversation, because I dealt with a lot of huge volume makers. I dealt with a lot of bulk juice. I dealt with, I tasted all the wines you see at the supermarket that represent more formula related wines than actual boutique vineyard driven wines. And we know this is a very difficult part of our industry. I mean, just selling wine is hard. Making money is even harder. So we have two different worlds
of wine here. We have this commercial volume driven, got to get in the hands of the consumer to your philosophy, which is create the best you can create, represent the value of the moon best you can. Try not to influence the wine, just get out of the way of what, what we've been given, that delivering to the consumer as little intervention as possible, but creating a product that people want to drink. And here's the reason I brought that up so many
times. The industry, at least in the last few years, have used the excuse organic farming, bar dynamic, less intervention to represent wines that actually aren't that good to drink. They're not that flavorful. And they say, well, it's a biodynamic, you know, but there's no excuse to make a wine that you can't drink. I mean, wines were organic long before pesticides were introduced into the world. So your position on this is represent the Sarah's family and valley of the moon in its unadulterated
way. Absolutely. We really let so much so that in our bottles of wine, when we do our tastings, we have our 2018 vintage, our Bordeaux style blend, which we named Wattress after the family that owned the property before us. And our 2019, we pour those two wines side by side. And the reason for that is because they are both the same skew. They are both a Bordeaux style blend, but they're completely different. And that's because the growing season of 2018 and 2019 were
completely different. And so we really like to showcase what's happening in the vineyard every year. And we like to take a minimalistic approach to a certain extent for our cultural practices in the vineyard because we really like to showcase the sense of place. As we take you around the vineyard, we show you our different blocks that we have, especially that one block that we source all of our grapes from for our own wine production, and talk about the regenerative approach
to farming. And then in other different blocks, we talk about every other disc or disc, the row every other year. So every other row every other year, and the impacts of that, as well as just kind of everything in a holistic approach. And that's really how we like to live our lives, not intervene until it's necessary. And also be aware of what you're doing. So not be proactive as opposed to reactive and everything, but not just putting chemicals or anything out there as
needed. We don't put it out there unless it is needed. Right? Yeah. So you got into this knowing what the headwinds of marketing wine is. What, what currently is your marketing strategy? In the sense of we're just going to keep experiential, come to the, come to the ranch, we're going to take out a tour, we're going to taste some wine, we have a wine club or we have an online presence. What's the current methodologies of getting the word out? And then what's your anticipated strategy? Our main
focus right now is we do have a wine club. Direct to consumer, obviously is the greatest return on investment for us. So that's where we try to focus most of our efforts on premise experiences, really staying private by appointment only, because we really like to showcase the entirety of our property with our wines and everything that we have to offer in one. And as far as realizing that we do need to get our name out there, we do need
to brand and market. So really kind of starting to dabble a little bit in the wholesale markets and distribution throughout California and then a couple of key markets throughout the United States. But with that main emphasis focusing on direct to consumer wine club and then thinking outside the box, we have family members who are very, some
of their major strengths are in marketing. So kind of using those to our advantage to try to really see something that may be used in a different industry, but trying to implement it into the wine world. That's an interesting strategy. I've seen it work a lot of times and I've seen it really fall in his face. So it's an interesting to do that. Well, there's a whole movement and maybe, you know, I don't know if you follow the social side of wine and Instagram, LinkedIn,
all that stuff. And I decided I'm not going to bash millennials, even though I have three, so. But, you know, wine is such a traditional old beverage. I mean, we know it's at least 6000 years old from the armenian winery we found, but probably older than that. And so it's really, and it's really, it's the same as it was then. It's fermented grape juice. Hopefully it's more palatable today than it is back then. But when it comes down to it, it's the same product and it evokes the
same soul. You know, movement of the soul is a reason why King Tut was buried with amphora is because that beverage probably had the same impact on the human soul as it does today. But then they're all talking about innovation in the industry, innovation, innovation. And I'm having trouble understanding what that means. Have you guys, have you sensed any of this yet or. We're still sort of beginning to do our marketing. We're going to find out soon what these headwinds are. But have you seen
this by chance? I would say that. Definitely have seen it. I would. You know, the canned wine world, you could say, is somewhat innovative. We actually have a co fermented blueberry sparkling rose that's a co ferment of blueberries and allianca
wine grapes, both grown, estate grown. And so one way that you can say that we're kind of tapping into that millennial and younger market, obviously over 21, because it is a wine, but is with this introductory wine, and I think where everyone ends up is buying that nice bottle of wine at the end of the day for that dinner party,
wherever that may be. But I think with these millennials and younger, I mean, I am a millennial and so kind of tapping into something that's a little bit more user friendly when you have a 65 $8500 bottle of red wine, that's sometimes intimidating. And I think that's the biggest thing is there's an intimidating factor that takes place with red wine. So whenever I have tours, I've hosted people of all ages, again, over 21, of course, but
everyone will ask what's your favorite or what's the best? Or whatever that may be? And I said, well, it really depends because your taste buds are completely different than my taste buds. And, you know, the mood that I'm in today or what I'm eating for dinner is going to be different for you than it is for me. And it's, it's not one way or the other. There's no wrong answer with wine. Um, and so that's what I try to portray, is that it's not a one size fits
all. And there are so many different styles of Cabernet and Merlot and Cabernet franc and blends out there that a blanket statement of, I don't like Cabernet, or I don't like Merlot. That's our common one is, oh, Merlot's not for me. And I was like, well, just take a sip. If you don't like it, spit it out. No problem. And most people geared towards, wow, I really like that. And so, you know, as my sister in law says to my nieces and nephews, the no, thank you
bite. And so it's kind of that, that no, thank you sip, because you never know, you may really end up enjoying it. Well, so, first of all, that no Merlot thing has to be rollover from sideways. It is just around. And, you know, I was taught by my father when we were tasting together, you must taste everything. I don't care if you smell something that makes no sense to you or it smells bad. You must taste it to understand what your palate is willing to put up with and what you can detect.
And I meant when I said the millennial thing tongue in cheek, is because the stuff I've seen on the Internet with no experience, like, none. I think innovation is an interesting word. The idea that you're making a blueberry sparkler with aglionico and blueberries, but you're making fresh blueberry sparkle with real ingredients from real stuff, not white cloth that's flavored with a bunch of crap and that we think is
fun to drink. I don't call it innovation. I think what they're talking about is something using AI and addressing consumers differently and trying to find the consumer. One of the articles I read was, we need to dig into the demographic of our customer and find out who's drinking our wine. I thought to myself at the end of this article, maybe 1% of the wineries can afford to spend the money to research that this quote, unquote, innovation was going to provide
us. And even then, once you know that data, it's very difficult to react to. It's very difficult to find these people either socially or in the mail or however you're going to find them. And so that, and I don't believe personally, innovation is packaging. Yes. I can see the value of a canned wine or a tetra pack or the things they're trying to do in the world of wine, reduce the carbon footprint, thinner glass.
Where they got those now, those, those squished pet bottles that, you know, you put them in a bookcase kind of thing. I get that, but I don't. It's called innovation. That's just packaging blips. Because eventually, like you said, that glass of wine that somebody drinks, no matter what generation and where they're from and how they got there, the value of that glass, an honest glass, which is what you're making, has an impact on you, innovation notwithstanding. I mean, I agree with that.
In fact, I tasted at the association of African American Vendors tasting the other week in Napa at CIA, a woman had created method champaign cans. Now that's going to stimulate your brain for a second. Wow. Because how do you discourage a can? Yeah. She goes, I don't. I'm like, wow, what, what marketing innovation or whatever you want to call it. What hole were you plugging? How is that even possible
then? Yeah, well, you just have yeast cells and, you know, whatever's the spent yeast cells are in the, in the can. So I was thinking, okay, you know, you do those when you're in college marketing, you get the graph and you think, okay, we have a beer that's heavy and we have a beer that's low in alcohol, and we've, you know, oh, we don't have any light beer. Let's, let's make a light beer. What, what part of that thing were you feeling when you said, how about an undiscorched
canned method champagne sparkler? I don't know. Yeah. Well, hopefully she's successful with it. Actually. Maybe it's because she told me that upfront, because if I just tasted it, it was actually very, very nice wine. Wonderful. I was wondering if there's room for. Canned sparklers are probably the most popular of all the canned wines. And, you know, they're mostly prosecco's and cavas and things like that, or just offhanded California juice. But, you know, here's a, you know, a traditionally
made canned sparkler. So that was really fascinating. So my point of, as a podcaster and the host of this is trying to peel back people's thought processes on this idea of what innovation means. Because so far, all I've read is we have to do things different. Yeah. But nobody necessarily. And I think it's because there is such a. I wouldn't say. I mean, it's pretty drastic, in all honesty, reduction of wine consumption. I think that
people are afraid. And so the easiest way to combat that fear is, well, we need to do something different. But nobody has the answer. Just the fear of the lack of wine consumption that's out there with the different. Whatever it may be. If a doctor is telling you that alcohol consumption is bad for you, or wine is not good, or just the competitive markets with the microbreweries, cocktail spirits, I think that the overall consensus is there's fear, but nobody knows how
to combat that. And so they say that we need to change, but nobody has an answer for that. And by no means am I saying that I have the answer for it. But what I had mentioned is that. That my dad, who is an old farmer, he's worn the same style of clothing his entire 70 plus years of life, and he has gone in and out of fashion multiple times
with his style. So kind of staying true to who you are and really ensuring that you are making something that you're proud of, hopefully, at the end of the day, well, you know, that's not enough by itself, but use that as the foreground and as the foundation of ensuring that you will be here for generations to come. I think that's a solid strategy. I think it's where people are headed.
The reason I brought up the experiential part of this, I think I've had incredible conversations with, particularly two women who are in the digital marketing side of things and has spent a lot of time in the wine industry. And we were discussing about the implosion of what social networking is and marketing on the Internet's gonna be. And I came from, we were heavy, heavy into Google's SEO. I mean, I sent 33 million emails my last year, full year in business. You know, we did it. We did
it all. And it's getting to the point where the cost of doing those things, you cannot get your return, or the roas, they call it return on ad spend, because the conversion rates are dying. There's less drinkers, as you just mentioned, and all of a sudden now it's just too expensive to even try and find a customer. So we think that it's going back to this experiential part of wine, which has always been what we were about, right?
Like going to Europe and having a glass of house sangiovese in front of the coliseum is an incredible experience. The wine will always taste great because the rest of your world is in a good place. Yep. And then you come back and you taste that wine again. You go, see? I went, that just happened to me. I mean, 35 years in the business, a hundred thousand wines, huh? That's 100% accurate. Yeah. We were in Cortona, which is the, you know, the birthplace for under the tuscan
suns. We went to this winery, and I'm a wine guy. I was on a bus, and we stopped at the winery, and I tasted this merlot, and I. I go, you know what? I'm going to bring this home. It cost me a lot of money to get this stuff into my cellar at home. I couldn't drink it. Oh, it's sitting. I couldn't drink it. And I thought to myself, what did I taste while I was on this trip? Walking through the vineyard with the winemaker that I thought was representative of what I wanted to drink at home, and
it wasn't. So I think you're doing the right thing and keeping the course of producing wine. So we're going to wrap this up. What are you making now and what quantities and how can we get it? So we are total case production is under 500 cases across the board with all of our skus. We have a Bordeaux blend, a Merlot cabernet, and we just actually released our Aliatico rose, which is 100% still wine. And then we have our blueberry sparkling rose as well this June at our hundred year anniversary
party. It's actually June 8 is the date of the party, and that's my grandmother's birthday. She's no longer with us, but all of our wines have a familial connection, and so we will be pre releasing our 2021 Malbec, named Catherine after our dad's mom. And so that will be the next, next style. But all bigger reds, other than the rose, of course. But everything based off of red grapes. Are they online? Yeah, they are. Our website, saraswanchwine.com, you
can purchase everything online. We do ship, and we'd also. We have them for sale at our location as well at the conclusion of our ranch tours. Well, sounds very fun. I can't wait to get there. Yes, we're up all the time, obviously. I bring my portable studio, and we do a lot of podcasting and just hanging around. We almost actually bought a house during COVID in Yonville. Very nice. But thank goodness it didn't go through because prices have plummeted since then.
They'll come back. So appreciate the time today. Taylor, really interesting conversation. So happy we got ahold of Nicole online, and she was able to arrange this. And good luck out there. We're going to. We're going to come see you. Perfect. Well, thank you so much for having me. It was a wonderful time. And, yeah, let us know when you're in Sonoma next. We'd love to host you. Cheers. Thank you. Thank you for listening to wine talks with Paul Callum. Karen, don't forget to subscribe
because there's more great interviews on their way. Folks, have a great time out there in the wine world. Cheers.