Carson Leno, Fallon. Now it's wine talks with Paul K. Hey, welcome to Wine Talks with Paul Kay. And we are in studio today in beautiful Southern California about to have a conversation with Monica Elling, the fractional CMO and the CEO of FMG Corporation. Introductions in just a moment. Wine talks, of course, available on iHeartRadio, Pandora, Spotify, wherever you hang out for podcasting. Hey, have a listen to an incredible conversation I had with Julie Hernandez. Now
we're going to talk about women in wine today. But Julie came to me about 20 years ago working for RN DC, one of the great suppliers of wine in America, and she. I thought, there's no way she's going to make this industry. It's too tough, it's too hard. She ended up becoming a local executive here in Southern California and one of the great allies of the original wine of the month club. So it's a great conversation about her headwinds and being a mother at the same time. And also a
conversation with Paul Warson. Anybody that doesn't know this is probably not alone because there's a winery in Beverly Hills. It's about nine acres of planted vineyards. It's called Moraga. It's owned now by the great Rupert Murdoch. Incredible. You walk into the gates of this place and all of a sudden you're in a whole different world. You're not off the four or five freeway, you're not off the ten freeway. You are in the middle of what would be wine country, surrounded by vineyards, winery,
tasting room, residence. The whole thing is there and the wines are very good. A great conversation with Paul Worsten. Have a listen to that. Hey, I'm going to start working on the show a little more in the sense of I am. We're not going to pull any punches. We are going to go after this industry. There's so many, I don't know, so many prongs of it that are bothering me. And having done this for 50 years, I've just got issues I want to peel
back. And so we're going to take those two to the head right now with a conversation with Monica Elling. She's the CEO of FMG. Welcome to the show. Thanks so much, Paul. Lovely to be here. We had a great conversation off camera before we got started, but I'm looking at your profile on LinkedIn, nutritional psychologist, digital marketeer. The conversation we had last week about the projects you're working on, it's amazing. How much time do you have in a day to do all these things?
I'm a mother of three, so I can do anything. As any mom would know, you managed to juggle everything all at once. You know, it's kind of interesting you say that, because the woman I was just talking about, Julie Hernandez, she has triplets. And so. Boy, you talk about compounding the amount of work you have to do because they're all on the same schedule. Not the same schedule, because none of them are on the same schedule. Right. That's almost impossible.
It would be nice. Yes. Are you, you're out in New York? I am in Manhattan, yes. You know, we didn't talk about this last time, but what, what does your day look like when you start? You're up. You probably, I don't know. Many of us don't sleep because we're worried about what's happening the next day. But what is it? What does your regular day look like? At FMG, I do have a fairly serious morning routine. I tend to follow the same protocol,
and it's been something that's been drilled into me as an athlete. When I was in my early teens, I was a tennis player, nationally ranked, and then d one. So the discipline of all of that has stayed with me, and it's been very helpful in my life. I tend to go for run over workouts. I do have meditation breath work in the, in the mix. And I really then structure my day based on what I've already planned for the week and what goals I want to accomplish. And I just
revisit all of that. And nice cup of coffee to get me started. It's funny, this morning I responded to something. I can't remember what it was on LinkedIn. I go, yeah, after my cup of coffee, then I can get started on your, your idea here. But interesting thought, we didn't discuss this either. As an athlete ranked tennis player, how much of those lessons did you carry forward? And I'll tell you a story in a second, but do you teach that to your kids, too?
To use athleticism and the discipline of that to move, to move the needle entirely? I think it doesn't matter what level of athletics you participate in. Some of that mindset and structure and training is helpful for life. In my case, it was pretty rigorous. And as a d one player, we had a full year season, so I hardly had any time off during those years. When I finished playing for the university, I made a decision not to go pro. I wanted a real life. I was ready for that.
But then I couldn't find anybody to play with. So then I had this brilliant idea that I would have some children and train them to beat me. And two out of three worked. I raised two nationally ranked athletes out of the three, and one in tennis, one in swimming, and all four of us play, and there's intense in house competition. That's great. It's such an important lesson, and I glossed over that last time we spoke about your
career in athleticism. But it's such an important part of. I have a daughter who, her first year in college, decided she wanted to be in the band. And I said, well, you should probably play an instrument. And because of her discipline through her career in softball, she got herself on the band because she practiced what she needed to practice and was able to march on the field. So such important lessons to learn through athleticism
in our youth. And I wonder if that's glossed over. You think that's missed by a lot. Of parents or 100%, 100% misunderstood. And so it doesn't matter what road you travel, you carry that with you. That mindset, the resilience. Tennis, particularly, is harsh. And it was interesting. My son was a nationally ranked swimmer from the time he was six, and that's a grueling discipline. But when he turned to playing tennis after
swimming, he walked off his first match. And essentially, and I'm paraphrasing here, but basically he said, mom, you never told me. It's torture all the way, and I'm aware of it with all the ups and downs in the match. You're up, you're down. He said, I'm swimming. I just jump in. I come out the end of the pool and I look up my time. And so there is a rigor in that mindset. There is a focus that you learn and you develop grit. You have to come back. It's never over.
That's right. That's a very good point. You can't walk away. So I'm done. I'm going to give up and you just can't do it. So you guys playing pickleball now over there at the LA household? Yeah. You know, that's an interesting question. I am not there. Tennis is. It's a very serious sport, and I'm not ready to dumb it down. I love the fact that people are playing a racket sport. That's great. But when you put in as much time as I have into the sport, I'm
not really ready to give that part of it up. Okay, that's funny. We did. I did put a pickleball court in our home because we had this giant slab and we never knew what to do with it. It worked perfectly. I haven't used it very much in the last year. However, we did have a Sunday afternoon burger bash and brought some friends over who are, you know, tied to it. It's almost a religion now. People get in their car and they drive miles to go, just jump in and play. And I will say it's a lot of fun.
Anybody can jump in and just play. You know, you don't. You may not compete very, you know, rigorously, but at least you can feel like you're participating in something. And tennis is, you know, much harder. But there are certain, certainly there's skills. That cross over 100%, and it's great that people are moving and enjoying that part of the process. So I'm all for anything that makes people move and get out of their chairs and away from their computers. So. Oh, thank you for that.
So you said something, too. I wanted to peel back a little bit. You said, d one athlete. And I sent many, many kids from my coaching sets years to college, and I coached girls softball for years, high school. And many, many girls went through, and it was very important for a handful of them to survive the whole four years to finish their career. Softball at that time, or athleticism created their foundation for their college studies
and for their experience in college. And others at the same time realized that there was more to it and they wanted to, and they maybe played a year or two and they moved on, saying, basically, I'd like more arrows in my quiver other than just the game. So did you see that through your career and with your children that there's. Yes, we want to maximize the value of the relationship with the sport, but there are times where we just say, look, it's time for other things. Absolutely.
And in my case, I made that exact decision. I played three out of the four years. I had a double major. Everybody on my team was going five years to school. I didn't want that. I made that decision not to go pro at that point. I realized, okay, then I'm going to finish out with my third year. I happened to be undefeated at that point, and so I felt I might
as well just go out on top. And unfortunately, my coach was not happy because we had to win five out of nine matches, and I brought home two wins in every match, singles and bowls. So that was a detriment to the team. But I was ready to begin my life and I just wanted to complete school. So. So you made that decision. It's a tough decision. Very tough. Very, very tough. It's been such a part of my life up to that point. So I'm looking at your
LinkedIn profile here. The CEO, founder of Fractional, I'm sorry, FMG, but you also. You talk about wine and spirits, talk about brand strategy, talk about strategic digital marketing, nutritional psychology. I mean, you cover quite a plethora of subjects here for your career. And it's very fascinating that we landed in wines and spirits. And it's, as you know, there's this camaraderie, there's this, there's this. I don't know, maybe it's the
lifestyle. You know, we're going to Europe next month and we've been greeted all over the world by Bordeaux houses and Piemonte, et cetera, et cetera. What landed you there? And was it something you aspired to do, or you just found yourself there? I was just a long answer. I had no idea about the wine and spirits business as such. I started out in marketing, Madison Avenue advertising, publishing, and I had the good fortune of working in my early days with Michelle Ru of Absaltwake.
He was my client. I was determined to bring him into our publication. And I saw up close and personal how a brand can be brought to life. In that case, a spirit's brand. And that was not something that was done previously, not to such level. So absolute, really made waves at that time. And I learned a lot, but I sort of checked it in the back of my mind. I did about ten years of nonprofit international trade and investment development with central and eastern Europe,
primarily. And it was during that time that I was working with some of the greatest brands that were coming into the region for investment. There was Antonori. So my first vineyard walk was with Tigor Gall of Ornalaya. He was the first 100 point wine maker in the history of wine, which was a wonderful way to get into the business. And then Jean Michel kest vax, Melissa May, and many of that ilk. So I looked up a year later and I wound up in the wine business. Well,
because for me, I really. I was around all my life, but until my father said, look, I'm going to sell, I'm going to get out. You should come back and check this out. But even then, after ten years of selling wine, it was still, like I say, it was work. I'm going to say it was a task to make sure that we were on track, doing the things, checking the boxes that we were supposed to do in order to market wine. But at some point, it crossed over into this passion and this love
affair with the industry and the brand. And so you mentioned something interesting that you worked with Michel Roux of absolute. I mean, branding, is that a formula? I mean, people, and I want to kind of define this a little bit because everybody talks about branding and, you know, brand managers, and I'm going to create a brand, and that's not a rock solid thing. This is sort of an open field to understanding how an absolute becomes a brand or how you create a couple
of brands on your surface. There. There's no formula for this. Or is this something that if you do the right things, you will have a brand? If there were an exact formula, everyone would be doing it and everybody would do it right. Creativity and everybody could win all the time. That is not the case. The consistency from my career path and my vision for my career had to do with psychology. And this is what brings it all together. So on the psychology side, it's
about behavior. It's about consumer behavior in my mind. And that was at the root of many things I did thereafter. So my initial background is in psychology. And as I went to the business side of things, I started to apply consumer behavior in reaction to products, in reaction to how we sell the sales process. All of those things combined together are what fascinates me, and it keeps me excited about brand creation, brand strategy, brand
development, voice of the brand. And yes, over 20 some odd years, I've honed into the process that I believe is ensuring maximum success. And when you talk about digital and all these other aspects of it, I saw that technology was going to have a massive impact on that brand building and that consumer communication that is all very consistent with what is the
end game. The end game is to create a brand that consumers will love and create the communication and that relationship between the brand and the consumer. In the wine and spirits industry, we have all this noise, this infrastructure in between that everyone is derailed by. And unfortunately for specifically the wine industry, there's so much talk about the trade side of things I don't know that any producer in Europe actually
understands. The 44 year old woman who has three kids, two dogs, drives an Audi, and is going to shop for dinner at her store in Rochester, Minnesota. So how are we supposed to create consumer products in this industry when we don't know anything about the consumer journey and how they are perceiving whatever products are being sold to them in this space? That's an interesting concept because you said a mouthful of issues that we have in our industry, one of them
being the noise that's out there. So it seems like some brands, either because their psychology isn't properly managed or understood, are just doomed to failure from the beginning. I've seen it many times and I'm wondering if you think that's because this path and their client was not properly understood or there was just a dumb idea from the beginning that nobody really would have taken to it in the first place. So I'll give you an example of a fail. I was not using any names, but go ahead.
No, there's no name. And this is speaking to the industry. They will recognize themselves. And I'm not talking about a specific brand. There's way too much of this going on. Two guys walk into a bar, slap each other in the back, hey, we should have a vodka brand or whatever brand. Great. Wonderful. That's the beginning of a joke, right? Two guys walk into a bar, but. That'S happening all the time. And then there's some funding mechanism behind them. Two girls walk into a bar
and they go, oh, it's a whole different conversation. And they don't get funded, but we'll get there. The ideation occurs. They think they have a brilliant idea about a brand. They think it's wonderful and they start to create the product they're going to market. Now they're even convincing distributors to take on a product. What they don't understand very often is they miss the core aspect of the brand creation journey, which is an incredibly
serious process. It's artistic, it's scientific, it's a lot of different aspects. So what happens is now they finally get their product into a bar, they're all excited. Consumer comes in and somebody that is friendly to that brand, so they want to support them. But now they have a call name, they're trying to get the attention of a bartender with, and it's unpronounceable or it's a lie long or it's, can I have a red herring, blue, whatever, on the rocks, please? And it's like, what were you
thinking when you created the brand? How do you think your consumer is going to address that brand in a bar or in such an environment? So there are a lot of things missed in the wine arena. There are examples of bigger problems because the idea that something has to have the proper name and connectivity to a consumer, that's not what they're thinking about. They're thinking about, well, we want to have a line extension. Let's put this name on it. That
sounds good. They might get a relative to create the label, they might have their niece or nephew give it the brand name or the grandmother. And I'm being to some degree facetious here, but I have seen all those examples live. And then people wonder why the sales strategy is not working. It's because nobody wants that particular product and you're not communicating appropriately. And that's from the starting point of the brand name and the brand
ethos. He says, you made me think of something, and I just had this experience a few years ago. I've seen it a thousand times. And you
and I are not new to this story, I'm going to tell you. But maybe because the wine industry is so sophisticated, it's so complex, and it's so congested that the idea of this launching a brand without some of this psychology understood and some of the path of the consumer understood that it's almost, it's a zero chance crapshoot unless there's something absolutely unique about it that
you make it happen. The reason I brought that up is I had a vendor come in years ago, and he was from a local Appalachian here in southern California, so one that doesn't have a lot of pedigree like Napa or Sonoma. And he shows me this brand and he wanted pretty good money for it. It was called sleeping Indian, you know, so not the brightest thing in the world as far as, you know, today's environment of, you know, wokeness.
And the label was horrible and the wines were average. And I said, it looks like your daughter drew this on a computer. And he goes, she did? And I thought, based on what you just said, I'm thinking the guy had no chance. And I told him this and he was offended by it. But I wanted to be honest with him. I said, look, you might as well just stick to your local market, sell it to the restaurants and the local stores and
be on your way. But if you want to go corporate and you want to go national, you ain't going to do it with sleeping indian and a label that looks like this, besides the distribution complications. So the point being, man, it's an absolute 0% crapshoot if you don't have some kind of legs behind you. Psychology, branding, I mean, you know, demographic understanding. I mean, you made a great point. A 44 year old
woman with three kids going shopping, you know, what's. What are the, what are the decision criteria from that woman to buy something? And it gets, it gets a little bit trickier because you have now 50 states producing wine. The distributors won't take on those wines that are not from California, Washington, Oregon, basically, no other state will work with distribution and that's their philosophy.
And now some of those wineries are fighting the state regulations so that they can distribute themselves appropriately to get to market, because even their own state distributors won't. The missing link for, for those wineries within those states is that they do make decisions such as what you and I just described about their branding or, oh, we love this, this looks great. And there's absolutely no professional knowledge behind it. And why should the consumer care?
So they're fighting an uphill battle even in their own states, if they really don't produce the caliber of production that competes on a national basis. Because the consumer doesn't care about these arkeme regulations and barriers. All they know is there is this really nice looking wine from California, perhaps, and there's a great one from Spain, and then there's this really ugly label from our local
market. Now, why should we pay for that? So if the wineries within the other 47 states want to start competing for consumer interest, they have to up the game of how they come to market with their brand lineups. And it's not enough to say that, you know, the buses of tourists that are coming into the tasting room are satisfied that they love our product. No. Go do a blind tasting and then go do a packaging comparison with global market brands and frankly, take those results
home and then do something about it. You know, you're just like hitting these points that have the back of my mind. I just got done with a tasting. The label was horrible. The wines were decent. And he took the wine to a local distributor and the guy says, look, I know it was another tasting room. The guy says, look, I'm selling all I can sell because people, the busloads of people are coming here and they're buying it. And that kind of leads to this experiential part of wine today.
I know you're a digital marketer, we're going to talk about that now. But a couple of things that you mentioned that really important before we get to that one is the label design. Like I said, this guy's label was drawn by his daughter on a computer. I bought wine from Sebastiani probably 20 years ago. Beautiful Cabernet franchise, already bottled. They didn't market it because they actually had the three year old daughter playing on a Mac and she designed a label and it never took off. So
they just stored at the back of the warehouse. Wine was great, by the way. But Mike Houlihan, who founded the brand barefoot Sellers, had learned a lesson from the thrifty which back then, Rexall drugs, thrifty drugs before the cvs is in the writings of the world. One of the biggest pharmacy change was called thrifty. They're known for their ice cream. You go to Rite Aid now they have thrifty ice cream
still. And he says, the buyer said, look, I want to be, if I'm a mother and I'm walking down the aisle, I want to be able to see that label from four stalls away. I want to be directed to your brett. So when you bring me a wine that looks that I will recognize four steps away, then I'll take a look at it and I go, wow, that's a really interesting thing. That is probably true today to a certain
percent, 100%. So when we design, so we design great brands, beautiful packaging, and we design it with the mindset of the digital shelf. It has to have instant impact when people see it online, has to be memorable there, and the physical shelf, so it has to work in both ways. And that is something that I can't stress enough. There's no way of getting around it. The failure of that had never ceased to amaze me. On Tuesdays, when I
tasted you look at them, it's like, what do you think? And I already know I have a label designer, Pasar Robles. She was charging, I don't know, twelve or fifteen hundred dollars a label, depending on the amount of work. And that that would include whether you wanted an embossed or a foil overlay or whatever. You have certain paper type, ink type. It wasn't an expensive proposition
other than having your three year old daughter on a Mac. And every time I see a label that's just got no criteria at all, I just cringe. Now, I know in Napa you can spend five, 7810 thousand dollars designing a label. Six figures, yeah, six figures. Six figures. And it's not just designing a bottle, you're creating the brand and designing a label that you could, you could do that, anybody could do that. With today's day and age of technology, you could do that.
Creating a brand is a whole different proposition. I'll tell you that. In 2017, we created a spirits brand that had a multi hundred million dollar exit five years later. And it wasn't just a brand, because it begins with the strategy, what are you creating a brand for? Who are you creating it for? That's the starting point. So you better understand and be able to create the strategy. And that's a business acumen and marketing skill which is not the same as design. That's true. So those are
two different sides. And then, and then you take the strategy. Now, what's going to get us to win with that direction? And so it begins with the analysis, what's the opportunity? What's the market opportunity? What's the strategy? And then what's the brand that we are going to create to drill that home? And so the investment is actually fairly significant in that regard. And I'm not saying that wineries should do that for
every single item that they're put out. However, I also can point to a real solid example that I've had over the years, and that is focus is key. I know a lot of wineries that are constantly pulling out. Yet a new wine, yet a new wine, yet a new wine. And I can tell you, during my time at Southern Glazers in New York, New York metro, I was with the
Labward division. Just as we were taken over by Southern, the most successful wine buy value was Jordan Chardonnay, Cabernet, two wines in sync, focus. And I'm not saying that that's the guideline for everybody, but when there's too much of an ad hoc approach to what it is that we are selling, then again, you don't have the level of success with Empress. When we created Empress, 1908, Jen, we had one skew, or actually, technically two. We had a 50, same thing. One
product. One product. You know, it's interesting thought, because we created a lot of. I'm going to reverse my thought process here. We created a lot of labels here at wine of the month club. I have a license to make wine here, versus what you're saying, which is a brand. So I needed, let's say I found some juice in Napa that was distressed. Volume wise, I just had too much. I was able to buy it inexpensively, put it in
a bottle. And so I wasn't, you know, it's very interesting because I didn't think I was trying to create a brand. I was thinking, I need to put a label on this wine so I can sell it through my regular channel, but not giving it the thought that, what if this is a brand? What if I do want to put it on the shelf? What if I do want to take it to a tasting room and have somebody taste it? And two different thought processes. Thought processes completely.
That's really fascinating. You want to have an understanding of what is the business outcome you're looking for for this. What is the purpose? Because frankly, wine should not, or any brand should not exist unless it has a purpose. What is that purpose? And what makes sense to achieve that purpose in the fastest amount of time? You know, I had a conversation with Jessica Kogan.
She. She's actually has a similar career to yours. She was with Donna Corinne, I think, one of the fashion companies early on, and she's become quite the guru in spirits and wine customer CX, customer experience. And we were sort of lamenting and sort of deciding together that the social network side of marketing, particularly in the spirits world, is sort of going to
implode here. And that the experiential part of our industry is going to come back to the days like when I'm wearing this patch from Les Amis Devin, which was a wine enthusiast group in the seventies and eighties that had 150 chapters throughout the US. People would gather, exchange conversation, maybe have dinner, not unlike a tasting room that has a quality experience. But how do you feel about the future of digital marketing when it comes to spirits and wine? I think they serve
a different purpose. You have multiple channels of communication in person, online and so on. So I'm not saying one is meant to replace the other, because they serve different purposes and people are processing information, communication about brands, in instance, and they do it ad hoc, they do it in between other things. It is not a focused process. They're not sitting there immersing themselves into a brand or a branded page, but they are taking snippets of
information away. You just want to make sure that the snippets that you're offering are going to hit the right tone. That's one side, on the personal side of coming together for events. I think that's always. And that's part of humanity. We're social creatures. We want to be together, we want to have reasons to be together. I do believe that that part will come back. But if somebody thinks that that's going to help the brand building process, that's sort of a small part of the journey.
It's. I think that's accurate. Yeah. I don't think it can compete with the amount of information processing that we are engaged in on a daily basis. Cause when I started doing Facebook back in the day was the day that everybody got your message, that was part of your network. You actually didn't wanna leave Facebook, or it wasn't even Instagram at that time, but you didn't wanna. It's so interesting to me because social networking
was meant originally to be social networking. And so when you're on Facebook at those days, you didn't leave to go buy something. Even if you were delivered a message to buy something. You're like, no, I'm hanging out with my friends. We're talking and we're chatting, whatever we're doing. And now it's primarily a methodology for advertising and sales and obviously why Facebook has done so well the stock market side of things financially. So it's migrated completely. And
I don't think the consumers understand. And I have a niece who's starting a salad dressing company and she's a prolific social network. She's done a lot of work with content. But when it gets down to the metrics of making money on social networking, it's very difficult on its own. I think there have been a few success stories that people have hung their hat on. Like, look, I did. I did
all this on Facebook. I think that's far and few and far between backwards and probably pretty specific to the product. The need, the consumer that is reaching and who's doing that. But you wrote something today. This is why I'm trying to get to that kind of upset some people about non alk wines. Tell me about this article that you published. I read most of it, but I want you to tell me what you were thinking. Yes. So I. Looking at the conversations bubbling, just need
the surface. And non alcoholic wines is now a formed category with a lot of research and all that. I have to say I take exception to some of the elements of those conversations because at the end of the day, we're drinking something that's non alcoholic. There have been non alcoholic products forever, starting with water, starting with tea, going into sodas, juices and the like. So I have no issue with that. I drink many of those other types of liquids, non alcoholic liquids,
myself. That's. That's not the point. And in fact, when I was first pregnant with my first child, I did a lot of research about this. And that was back 20 plus years ago. And I drank Klaus Thaler, a german non alcoholic beer. It was one of two in the market. There was O'Toole's, which had no flavor, tastes like water, and there was a german non alcoholic beer. So obviously I went that direction and I never heard of
anybody else really talking about that. So that was early days of this non alcoholic category journey, which has now imploded into this whole big thing. I have issues with the pricing, I have issues with the positioning. And frankly, most of it is just
juice. And then there is the other element that I found, because I purchased just about every product that's been available online and teased it through, and I've done most of them because most don't even hit the flavor profile of something drinkable for me. And there have been some exceptions that I've liked, but then I can't rationalize the price. So there are two things happening. The pricing is out of control.
We're drinking juice. The consumer is about to wise up that they are drinking juice and they're being told to pay 30 plus dollars for some of this elixir, craft elixir. So there's that. The other part for viscosity, mouth feel. And I blend wines for clients around the world.
I find that there are other ingredients, including different variations on sugar, whether it's agave or pure cane or some sort of syrup that are added to the product for viscosity, for mouth feel and so on, which is not unusual, because when the food industry took out fats from everything, they added in sugar into all foods. It's essentially what's happening here. And I have a nutrition background and I just look at this,
I'm like, what are you doing? You're just trading one for the other. I'd rather have the single ingredient grape and have wine than pretend I'm doing anything healthy for my body with the. Whatever the concoction is. So if I want something non alcoholic, I'll have seltzer with lime, or I blend my own teas. And I created a nothing added blend of hibiscus, pomegranates, orange, whatever combination of teas. Added some fresh fruit, some ice, put in a nice glass, topped up
with club soda. Looks beautiful, tastes delicious. Zero added ingredients, zero carbohydrates, zero calories. Oh, and it costs less than a dollar to make, so I'm bottling it. Aha. I read that section. Yeah, this is amazing because you're probably too young to remember the Scarsdale diet, but there was a diet put out by the guy that was in the biosphere in Arizona. And he talks about, look, if you're gonna go to a party and you're on my diet,
you can't have alcohol. So just have a glass of soda water, you know, so it looks like you're having a Tom Collins and squeeze a lime in. It looks like you're having a vodka. Vodka soda, and you'll be fine. And I. I kind of rely on this. But the fancy food show in Vegas a couple years ago, so much of it was about the non
alk business, and so much of it was undrinkable. And I wanna tell the listeners for a second, because I just got done yesterday, I went to the biodynamic organic tasting, tasted some fabulous wines from that ilk. And I started thinking, if you make a non alcoholic wine, the dollar makes sense that there's a problem with the dollars for one, because you remove the alcohol. But it doesn't just remove the alcohol, it removes about 30% of the
volume of what you made. So if you have 1000 gallons in the tank, um, and when you're done removing the alcohol, you're gonna have 700 gallons. So you've just wasted 30% of, of your volume. Then you have to add back as you're talking about whether it's agave, or sugar or cane sugar, or flavoring agents. Water for sure. So you've now added it back into, to flavor it up so you can drink it. Cause it's undrinkable as a
dealcoolyzed drink. And then you have to put it in the bottle within seven days or it fails completely. And I thought that was really interesting. So from an industry standpoint, you can have wine sit in the tank for as long as you feel like the wine is going to survive. It could be years in the tank and it doesn't, you know, changes, but it's fine. But as soon as you take the alcohol out, you need to put it in a bottle. And so that changes the logistical part of this whole business as well.
And one of the major brands anyway. So the point I was going to make was like, here is a movement for biological, biological, bio dynamic and organic wines. Do something healthier for yourself. If you're going to drink wine, why don't you drink these versus non alcoholic? But it's full of who knows what's in there. Is that accurate? It sure is. You nailed it. And the other thing is, most of us in the industry, but consumers won't
know this. The qualification for organic biodynamic, all sustainable, all these buzzwords, they've been around for a long time. And everybody has different systems. The EU has a different system. So you could be organic, and we can't bring it in as organic, we can't label it. So we have to call it natural wine. Now, natural wine has different connotations. So there's mass confusion and it's not being resolved anytime soon. So all those buzzwords are what they are.
What I do, and what I can attest to is that so many european producers, and I can't say the same for the US, but so many european producers have been farming biodynamic organic without certification for ages. Some have gone the process, the expensive and time consuming process of getting that certification. But not everybody is doing it. And so that becomes an issue. Nevertheless, there are great products
out there. So one of the conversations I was having, it was very interesting because, you know, we know that Burgundians for years, for hundreds of years, were making wines organically. They had no other way to make wines organic. Was the. Was the standard of winemaking because we didn't have the opportunity to add stuff. And for the listeners, there's like 79 or 76 things in California you can add to wine that will influence a wine's character.
But what was interesting to me at this tasting was that the small producer who's making 1500 cases, 2000 cases, who's. This is their third or fifth vintage, they had this very altruistic opinion of the industry that all the history and all the work behind all the hundreds of years of making wine are irrelevant today. Or that they think that this idea of biodynamic organic is a new thing and they're first to the market or they're 10th to the mark, whatever. That conversation was
very unique. I probably had it four times on Monday. Then there were the biodynamic organic makers that already are logistically in the system with one of the big houses like Southern Glazer or with RDC. And they have a completely different opinion of the direction of it all and the marketing of it all. And I thought, this is fascinating because, you know, the wanna do it, which is fine, a great industry to get involved with. The wanna be part of the program didn't understand really, what
the program is about. And unfortunately, it's. The marketing of wine is a different animal than everything else. Go ahead. Sorry. So one of the challenges that I've seen, seen with the industry, and I go back to what I said initially about the noise in the middle in. Let's take handbags, for instance. Let's take an Hermes handbag or Prada or something of luxury stature. They do have production. They're very mindful of their production.
They do a bang up job on the level and quality of the products, use the raw materials as part of their story. But their focus, incessant focus, is on the consumer that they're trying to reach, how they reach that consumer, how they communicate and embrace that consumer. Whereas the wine industry doesn't have a clue in so many cases who is actually buying or
who are you looking to have buy your product. I was no joke in a meeting yesterday with a brand and I asked the question, who is your target consumer? And I quote, 22 to 74. Oh, okay. Well, let's just so. Wow, that conversation, where did that come. From, do you think? Had to be. How do they even narrow it down, huh? Well, not everybody's. Most
people are not marketing people that go in the wine business. No, that's business people or whatever their background is, or agricultural background, or, you know, some sort of a business background. But I can't even fathom an answer like that. Again, who is your target customer and why does your wine even exist? You know, I'm going to interrupt you for a second, because I just thought of this, but that is one year past the legal drinking age and one year short of the average lifespan.
Correct. So who's our customer? Everybody. Well, if you're doing everything for everybody, you do have to have 1000 different wines with crappy labels because you have no idea who you're trying to reach and you're just throwing things against the wall and maybe something sticks. That's the crapshoot, the strategy. First of all, winemakers are not marketers, they're not salespeople. They do a bang up job with who and what they are in the vineyard, in the winery. And that's
great. There is another element, blending. That's not the forte of every winemaker either, which is why I wind up doing some of that for clients. Because I blend to price palette position, because I do know the consumer that we're trying to reach and I know what's going to work for them. I'm also fortunate that in my household I have three adult children, so two millennials and all their friends, and one Gen Z and all her friends.
And I could see the trends coming from a mile away, just because of some of the things that occur in house. So you do know who's buying. That's an interesting point, because I vowed on a previous podcast never to beat up the millennials again, because I have three myself, three girls as well, and so I will not bash the generation. But you said something earlier, and I want to peel that back a little bit, and we're almost out of time. Unbelievably. But that is, people
come to the industry with a background in something else. I've seen how many beverage soda manufacturers or soda executives come to the wine industry fail. And so it sounds like, or it feels like you're saying alternate businesses that you bring thinking you're going to bring to the table of the wine industry, and you're going to set the wine industry on fire because you've experienced success in another industry using certain tactics. They generally don't work. Is that accurate?
Not exactly. I also come from outside of the industry. And in fact, to some degree, it was exactly that outsider perspective that has allowed me to succeed, because I question everything. And I literally believe that I can apply foundational marketing principles to things that this industry is not accustomed to. I still maintain that outsider's view. What I'm pointing to is running an agricultural production is one side of the
business, obviously critical side. But if you're just producing without understanding who you are producing for, and what is it that you're trying to create for that particular target? You can produce all you want. I had one italian winemaker at one point tell me, well, we make wine like we always made wine, and people like it, they're going to buy it. I said, really? That's so exciting. That's so interesting. So you must sell everything you make. Oh, no, we have too much inventory. So you
know that mindset. You're in agriculture, you're running a production facility, you're in that space. It takes equal amount of expertise to go to market with any product, and it's a different skill set. Do you think that's some of the disillusion that you see with people that come to the table? Monica, we need your help. And
you don't see much thought behind it. When they started, they realize they've gotten into an industry that's very difficult to market and lack of understanding, or let's not diminish it more like bright eyed and bushy tailed, going into the industry because it's so romantic and we want to do this. And we went to the wine country and we had so much fun there, and we just love the lifestyle. And then they get into it and realize it's exactly what you're
saying. It's without a doubt a challenging business because you do have to straddle the agricultural side. Unless, of course, you're just creating a brand and sourcing fruit and going from there. But if you're running a winery and a production facility, whether it's distillery or winery for that matter, there are production operational related challenges that have to be addressed. But you can't do that in some sort of a vacuum, which is what are I see occurring more often
than not. It's the vacuum of that. Without the understanding that the only thing you need to produce and you should be producing has to have a rationale for why it's being produced. Why should anyone care who's going to buy it and who's going to buy it time and again? That's a good point. We're at 50 minutes, which is about the limit we didn't touch. Well, we already spoke before, and so I knew that topics were not going to be short here, but I wrote some down anyway. We're not even
halfway through them, so I hope we can do this again. I would love that. And I would like to hear the flip side of some of the projects you're working on today. And there's a lot of subjects to talk about in this industry that we need to get to. One of them is, I'm going to a launch party on Saturday. My 19 year old niece is launching a self serve and not self serve, single serve salad dressing, and I would love to hear your thoughts on that once she launches it. It's a brand. It's
so branding. It's kind of interesting. Branding. Salad dressing, after I've done a little research with her and helped her a little bit, is not unlike wine. It's not unlike toothpaste. Shelf space, recognition, where you're going to sell it, who's going to buy it, is all part of that conversation. 100%, but less regulatory with a little less regulation. Right. So good luck the rest of the day, and I hope that we get a chance
to reconnect in the future. And certainly when we're out in Manhattan. You're in Manhattan, right? That's right. That we would get together. We usually hang out the baccarat, take you upstairs, and we'll have a martini or something, or a glass of wine and one of their famed glasses. And as long as it's not non alcoholic.
Yeah. You know, before you get off, I didn't bring it up, but when we were walking down the aisles at the fancy food show in San Francisco, well, this year was in Vegas when I said it was a preeminent theme for the show of non alcoholic spirits and wine, and a guy stuck a glass of prosecco in my face, and it actually was palatable. I had him on the show. It was a very interesting guy. So I'm
going to extend this five minutes so I can hear your thoughts. But the other thing that was on the show, a lot of was non alcoholic spirits, which were almost unpalatable. I don't know why they needed to use indian spices to make these things work. And it goes back to your point. I saw a non alcoholic bourbon at whole Foods the other day, and it was $35 a bottle. Now, you can buy, you know, some pretty decent bourbon for that $40, 50 a bottle. But why would I buy this for $35
when it does nothing except taste. Like, I just don't get it. Price is what people will be willing to pay. So there has been this narrative about this whole category, and I'm just saying consumers are wise. They wake up. You can only fool certainly the american consumer for so long. We always see the backlash when production, for instance, there was the whole thing with rose and rose boomed and then the quality went down, price went up and consumers started to pull back.
It is a cycle. Consumers aren't stupid. They may not react instantly, but they will react. And right now, there's no rationale, in my view, in my analysis, for those types of priced non alcoholic products. I think it's a mess. Well, I've had, it's an interesting thought and I have just two pieces of sort of ad hoc evidence. One is Boisson, the famed retailer and just wholesaler of non alcoholic brands apparently has filed bankruptcy. I haven't seen that yet, but it
was brought up on a post. And second, I have here as a consultant for the direct consumer marketing, I have gotten less requirement arrest requests from people to help them with that. I've had more requests across the globe for people to bring brands of wine to Los Angeles. And so I have in my quiver a really good armenian wine. I have in my quiver a Bordeaux from a boutique house in Lalonde de Pomerol. And I have a
non alcoholic prosecco. And I, you know, with all my connections and all 50 years of doing this, I'm having a hard time getting in the door with any brand because the marketplace is so flooded. And it seems to me maybe that bubble is bursting a little bit in non al world. Everybody rushed to it. And, you know, like I said, boss, I'm going out of business and I'm getting resistance to put it in the book because not every wholesaler, for sure, maybe,
maybe less than half of them in Los Angeles have a non alk. In their book, have tea by juice. What's that? Have tea or buy juice. Yeah, right. My recommendation. So I, you know, we'll leave it at that. Have tea or buy juice. And such a pleasure to see you again. And I look forward to doing it. We'll talk soon. Thank you for listening to wine talks with Paul Callum Cary. And 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.