Carson Leno Fallon. Now it's wine talks with Paul K. Hey, welcome to wine talks with Paul Cain. We are in studio today about to have a conversation with Petri. I'm gonna say it wrong. Fentner, finter Fintner. Introductions in just a moment. Wine talks, of course, available on I heart radio, Pandora, Spotify, wherever you hang out for podcasting. Hey, have a listen to an episode that I did, and I brought this up earlier on a podcast, and I want you to listen to it because it's about Mae
Ellien Lanc song. And she owns a winery in South Africa, which we're going to talk about today in a winery called Glenelly. But the important feature of this young woman at 98 years old is that she was alive and watched the Nazis literally shoot up her parents Chateau Pichon Longueville. So very interesting conversation. And you won't believe how her memory
is rock solid of what happened, happen in those days as well. There's a conversation with my dad, 1972, he started this industry, literally started the direct to consumer wine industry in America. And I got to sit with him about two years ago, and we went through a lot of what happened and how he got here and how he came up with the idea of shipping wine to people. So have a listen to that, but not while we're here. Here to have a conversation with Petri. I'm not going to try it again. And the
winery is. You nearly got it, huh? You nearly got it. I just avoided it. Le Chand is one of them, and the other one is Tadesh Tybush ta bush. Yes. Why is it. You know, it's interesting because the conversation I had one of your comrades was how synergistic the american sort of outlook on life is with the South African. There seems to be a very high comfort level, but I can never pronounce the words. What are the source of the south
african? So, I mean, we more germanic in terms of our background. So that's why, for instance, if we, we understand Dutch or German or Flemish, we'd be very similar to Afrikaans. So that's why. I mean, Le Chan for us is more the french influence, because we french owned as a family, a french family that owns the company. But Thai Bosch would be very specific to. Not necessarily Afrikaans, but more in the, the south african way, because Thai Bosch without the. Because basically the end is
Bosch. And that would be the end of Stellenbosch. And then Thai boss, without the ch is actually a unique fein Bose shrub that grows along the mountain ridges where we have the Thai Bosch property. So that's why we sort of wanted to get the sense of place between Thai Bosch. So it's in Stellenbosch. And the entire boss is Afrikaans for tough bush, because Fein Boss is quite a hardy, large thing that grows along the mountain ridges of the
property. So between the two, Le Chan, which I'm assuming is the song chanceu singer chanteuse. I think it means the song. But it's owned by. The whole entire project is owned by a french family. Yes. So it's the Uru family and they. So that's why for us, for Leshan, we sort of wanted to play a bit on France meets South Africa. The label is totally wrong trying to figure that out. Yeah, well, the label is literally a rooster that's chanting. So le Shan
means the chanting or the song of the rooster. And because the look and feel of it, it looks more earthy and farm like. And I mean, we south african farmers with french investors. So for us, I mean, obviously, if you can get investment in euros in South Africa, it's an easier ride to get the whole thing kick started. So the French. I mean, the french influence came from. They have a property in Provence where they do Rousseaille, obviously, as the art of. Or Provence is the art of Rousseau
production. And they do a white and a red. And then they also have a property in San Ser, where they do 100% Sauvignon blanc. Wow. They also own a property in Sicily where they have a joint venture with the Planeta family. I'm pretty sure you've heard of Planeta, of course. What a diversity. Yeah. And then three properties in South Africa or in Stellenbosch. So the one property that we're not speaking about today is Pink Valley. It's
100% resilient. I mean, the influence from that came from the proven sole property, that town. So for them, the whole wine thing is quite new. The first property was bought in 20. 1718 or 17 in France, 18 in South Africa. The first property. And then the sicilian property came. Blast. So, so this is like really recent stuff. Yeah, I mean, it's like the owners, they actually come from a more banking background. Oh, like the rust shields, sort of. And also have a renewable energy company. So
definitely some old money mixed with new. And then they wanted to invest in wine farms. So now they own, what's it, 3236 wine farms across France, Italy and South Africa. You think that the attraction to South Africa, besides the exchange rate of the rond, it's called the rand. Right? The rand, yeah. And the euro was the reason because there's this love affair with the terroir. They definitely enjoy the terroir, but
they wanted to expand to the southern hemisphere. But you can imagine if they expanded to Australia or to Chile or Argentina. I mean, the time difference is massive. So for them to manage a winery, which is on the opposite side of the world, a complete different time zone, is not the option. And if you look at the south african run and the quality that you can get in South Africa for the price, I think that's the most glaring
thing about the south african industry. And for them, they were that previous, or they were they connected with a guy, Bertrand, which was Skulk, who's our CEO. The two of them worked together for Rupert and Rothschild, and he was sort of the link between them investing in South Africa, and then they needed a jockey, and the jockey was skulk, and then the first properties was purchased. So the south african industry is. I mean, it's amazing for many different. There's a lot of
French. I mean, I talked about May Allian Lang Song, who at 70, decided she was going to start a new winery in that glinelli. Is there a lot of French, not only owners, but influence? Yes, definitely. But I mean, for us, as soon as we could hit the international travels again, I mean, a lot of south african winemakers went to France, for instance, to gain some experience, because France is seen as sort of the heart of winemaking, or that's for us in terms of
style. It's very similar towards our style. So it's more elegant, clean, fresh, fruit forward wines. And that's what we try to produce in South Africa, too. But we also have big groups, like at viny, which is also french owned, and they busy buying up a lot of properties in South Africa and then combining it as one big. But there's a lot of foreign investment. I mean, even Americans investing in big properties,
Germans, French. So the south african market, obviously, you want the south african families to maintain or to own the properties for as long as possible. But I mean, obviously times are changing. And it's nice because the investment from abroad means that we have the opportunity to plant more clean, virus free vineyards. So with a virus free vine, you can deliver a better crop and produce a better wine. It's kind of interesting that South Africa's like that. Obviously,
in California, you can buy. There are a lot of french owners, particularly in Oregon, there's a lot of french Burgundy makers, but try and do that in Burgundy, man, you cannot pierce that bale. It's very hard, and I find that fascinating, that in South Africa you can. So is there a difference stylistically between the two brands that you're talking about here, that the. Is the French Lachon, is it bordelaise style? Is it. What are you trying to do? Are you trying to create
a stylistic differentiation between the two? Yes. So basically, our whole idea was. And that's why we split into three different brands, instead of doing a bunch of different labels under the same brand. Is the. The Lachan is two wines. So it's a Shenan blanc, which is. I mean, Shenan is very typical for South Africa. We have a lot of Chenin blanc planted. Yeah. And the reason for that is
mainly because of brandy production. So Chenin is the most planted white grape variety, but most of it goes to distilling and brandy. So in South Africa, I mean, we. Drink in South Africa as well. South Africa, we like. Our drink of choice would be a brandy and coke. We call it sweet lips. I have never had a. Well, you should definitely have a brandy and coke. The Armagnac cognac thing, or is it just a whole different thing? Necessarily, it's
different. Obviously, the entry level brandies would be just enjoy brandies. But if you go for ten year, twelve year, 15 year, I mean, it's more than capable to stand up against the proper cognac. So it's good quality brandy at the end of the day. But the nice thing about it is the schneblanc that we're doing is old vineyard. So because of the fact that it was used for brandy back in the day, there's a
lot of old vineyard Shenin blanc, which is amazing. And when we purchased the property, we inherited the old block that we're producing, the Shenin. But the biggest distinction would be between the thai bush crescendo and the Le Shan. So the whole idea is Leshan is on one side of one ward in Stalinbosch, the pul quadrai. Thibausch is in another ward in Stalinbarsch called the Halderberg. So it's two completely different terroirs, two completely different styles.
Le Shan is sort of. It's a mix between the new world and the old world, because it's old world in style, but it's new world in terms of the variety that we use, because it's a merlot, carbonyl franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz and Sangiovese. Wow. You're really. You're about to say, you know, Bordeaux blend, and all of a sudden, you went off track. It's always like Syrah. It's a
Bordeaux blend, Sangiovese. Together, we add the shiraz and the Sangiovese on the property, and there's a lot of Bordeaux production in South Africa at a very competitive price. So for us, I mean, it's not just another label based on a bottle. It's a new property, it's a new brand. So for us to be distinctively different, we had to do something distinctively different. And I always say the shiraz and the sanguvisi is the.
It's the salt and pepper towards the final blend. And it's not like we stood there with lab coats and sang a gates. 2% of this or 8%. That's a good vision. Yeah. We basically stood in front of the tank and we said, okay, well, this sort of tastes similar towards the thai bush, which it shouldn't. Let's do something different. And we had the shiraz and we had the sangiovese. We took it in, we wanted to play around with it, and it was more, take a glass.
There's a bit of sangiovese. Put the border on top, swirl. It, freshens up the wine. Perfect. This is an enjoyable wine that you want to consume and drink lots of. It's good work if you can get it. Play around with letting things. I mean, how did that happen for you? What. What got you into doing this? Into wine making? Yeah. By the way, listeners, we didn't introduce him as the winemaker for the. Yeah, so, yeah, I'm the winemaker of the two brands. Yeah, yeah.
So I always knew that I was never gonna, like, obviously, from sitting down and working constantly in front of a computer. Wouldn't have worked for me. I mean, my parents always told me in Afrikaans, I have Mira in my hat, which means I have ants in my bum. So I'm a very energetic boy, and I love farm life for what it is, because it's. I mean, you're working outside and you're working with a plant, which is amazing. And I actually played a game
on Facebook called Farm Bill. And when you get to a certain level, you can plant a certain crop. And then I got to a certain level where the only way I could plant vineyards to produce grapes of, and it made my property look the prettiest. I just kept on planting vines and sort of getting the whole idea. And then we moved. Moved to Stellenbosch for high school. And then you're in the vineyards. I mean, you're constantly working around it because the vineyards are
planted all around the town. And then it just triggered more keenness to actually find out what's the deeper vision around wine making. Then I studied at Stellenbosch University and then I started working immediately after my studies. Have you seen the movie Gran Turismo? I've seen it on Netflix at the moment, but I haven't watched it yet. I mean, it's a guy who played video games and he ends up being a race car driver. Yeah. And it's a true story. I saw that there's a guy playing Facebook, you
know, planting vineyards, and it's. A true story now. No, I'm like, Thai was Lashon in Pink Valley. Is that a career? Now, your comrades were talking about how the industry in South Africa is relatively new, which, you know, we had this. You said old world. New World is the interesting dichotomy there because it's old world has been around for a long time, but it's new world because much like the armenian wine market, there's new technologies and it's becoming of age.
So what do you call it? But is that a popular career to look into in South Africa for a young man, a young woman? You see, I think if you just do it because you want to, it's not necessarily the most popular in terms of to go out and study, to answer the question firstly, but because there's a lot of different agricultural sort of degrees that you can go and study or paths that you can go into. I mean, you can do horticulture, viticulture, you can do winemaking, you
can do a bit of everything. So it's not as popular. But I mean, we still about 30 to 50 people per year per class, which is quite a lot. If you think about the amount of wineries. It's not like there's thousands of wineries in South Africa. I mean, we only about 150 in Stellenbosch. I mean, 50 people per year. So obviously jobs aren't as plentiful as it should be because, I mean, there's one winemaker and maybe an
assistant, depending on the size. But yet again, I mean, if you sort of slot in at the right spot, then it's a very enjoyable business. And you always tend to think that it's the. You over romanticize the fact that it's winemaking and you're constantly in the sale and you're in the vineyards. But I mean, it's. We always say it's not bad, we don't. It's easy to produce a wine. It's difficult to farm. It's not difficult to farm it, but you
manage here in your art. It's easy to produce it, but it's difficult to sell it. And I mean myself as a winemaker, we also be the best tools to utilize for selling because you can tell the story, you understand the different vintages, you understand what you're speaking about, and you can present the wine in a proper manner. So that's why we go out and sell a lot. So
for me, you do a bit of everything. I mean, you're marketing the wine, you're selling the wine, you producing the wine, you're farming the grapes, you're planting everything yourself. So it's nice to be able to tick off all of the boxes and not just focus on being a cellar at the seller constantly. Obviously, harvest time, you need to be there every single day. But that's why after harvest, we can come and do this and chat some ball. It's an irony of the
industry. I mean, everybody has to deal with it, right? You're here in America with your bag full of wines to talk to people and to basically hand sell them the idea of south african wines, not that popular here. I sat in that room that you came from every Tuesday for 35 years, tasted wine. I can tell you, I can bring it up on the computer. How many I tasted from South Africa. Not a lot. It's even much, much less than I actually put into the club at the time.
But have a great affinity for them and enjoy them when I, when I see them. But I don't see them on the list very often. And that, that comes back to your point. This is that parts. Yes, it's not easy to make wine, but once you've planted the grapes and you pick them and harvest them, there's not a lot of pressure except not to screw it up. Yeah, but now you have all this inventory in the warehouse that you've bottled. You need to sell. That's the. And you got to
pay for the next harvest. Exactly. So. So in your group, how many do you have? You have yourself. So it's in the seller. It would be myself, but I mean, it's myself and then skulk. He would obviously assist me. So it's basically who does the marketing? Well, we have a specific guy for sales. We have distributors in and around Cape Town, Joburg, Durban. And then we have reps in each bot. So basically you would go out
with the reps and you would go and sell the one. What we like to do most, and we can do it in Cape Town and Joburg because it's accessible for us. But we really do a lot of cult calling where you basically walk up with a bag and you say, okay, today I'm tackling this road. And you have your four bottles of wine, which is the three brands, and you just knock on every single restaurant's door. And if they don't want to taste, then at least we just want to show them the labels so that
they can see it. So it's a lot of storytelling and grafting because, I mean, you need to tell the story. And there's many, many, many brands. So you sort of need to be different to get people's attention. And being a new brand is tough because it's a constant hand sell. And, I mean, that's why in America, for instance, we have our importers, and they specifically focus on south african wine. So they would go out and present and chat to people and get
the wine in at certain spots. So in each country, you have an importer that focuses on south african wine. And, I mean, they would come around and taste. And the nice thing about our industry is everyone wants to help each other out. So we've had it many times where even rights that you also had, where some of their reps would be in town and they would phone us and tell us, listen, okay, well, we have a rep here that you're obviously not
exporting here yet. Maybe pop, we're going to send him over for tasting, see if you can get the listing and get it to another piece of the country. So that's a great, you know, I've been helping there, trying to help. Well, I should back even that. I haven't done anything, actually, until now with the armenian industry, the armenian wine industry, because I'm armenian. But, you know, they don't have that camaraderie to support each other. You know, there's different vendors
association in California. You know, Walla Walla, Washington has this amazing group of guys that's a commission owned by the cut by the government, and they raise taxes just to promote Walla Walla wines throughout the country. And here you guys have it sounds like to me, your headwinds in a smaller scale to the american wine market. Obviously, there's only
150 wineries, et cetera is the same. You have to take that bag and take those wines, walk into a restaurant tour, he's probably, or she's probably a paying the rear end and they don't have time for you and, you know, come back tomorrow or come back the next day or I already got enough wines or whatever. All the excuses. There's always all the objections. Always. Yeah. I mean, we always say sometimes you walk in and you walk out feeling like a king. Yeah.
But there's also many times where you walk out like a scared dog with your tail between your legs. But, you know, that's a very interesting point. You're a winemaker. You know, let's just. Let's just sort of pigeonhole the idea that you're a farmer and you're into biology and chemistry and all the things that go along with having to make wine. And then there's a sales mentality, which is where I. I could never be a winemaker. I don't have the patience, but I'm out there.
I love to hear somebody tell me, no, that's, like, my favorite thing. Because that means that's time to start working. Exactly. You know, because if he said yes. All the time, excited to get them to actually bless that. Yeah, I win. I get to win. So that's the two different animals. It's hard to cross both paths. It is. But, I mean, we always say, and that's our quote, myself and Neil, as he's our sales. He works in sales for us, and we always say, listen, persistence beats resistance. That's
true. Oh, I like that. So there's even. I mean, there's many restaurants. There's many restaurants where we would literally, like. They said no the first time, and we would go back every single week once. And the one guy literally said, he's like, listen, you guys are so persistent. Please just come in and show me your bloody wine
so I can just get you off of our tail. And then we actually got the listing because, I mean, we went constantly and we asked for him every single time that we were in Cape Town, and it took a few weeks, but then we got the listing finally. So you proved that. Well, president Coolidge, persistence is omnipotent in America is on everything. Are there a lot of american wines on the wine list in Cape Town, in Stellenbosch, Joburg? Not a lot, really. American wines. We don't see a lot
australian wines. We don't see a lot french wines. We see a lot of spanish, italian, more the european wines. But definitely, if you go to wine shops, you'll definitely see american wines at the proper wine shops and the high eye in wine restaurants. So if you said that the graph of the industry in South Africa was at some point in its infancy, and it's childlike adolescence, whatever it is,
it's not well, along compared to the rest. But there's so many movements throughout the country, throughout the world, that are not only biodynamic, organic, sustainability, all those things. There's packaging movements which drive me nuts. There's no alcohol movements. Where does South Africa land? In a sort of. I'm not going to call it wokeness of wine because that's not the right word in these contemporary
trends. Which in my opinion are just blips on the radar of the 6000 year career or 12,000 year career of wine. Where's South Africa with some of these sort of contemporary things? Yeah, so it's actually a good question. Because I mean, there's always a movement, then it's a natural wine, then it's organic, then it's biodynamic. And I mean, we farm, for instance, we farm 100% organic. All
of our wines produce our wine 100% organic. But I think where we standing at the moment in terms of our market is because it was very known for bulk export back in the day. So it sort of got labeled as bulk wine at a cheap price. Where now the movement is shifting more to produce quality, but quality for price. So that's why South Africa at the moment is by far one of the sexiest or sexier wine countries in the world. Because the wines that are coming out of it is an
excellent value for money. And that's we. I mean, obviously you get the people that want the organic or the biodynamic, but I mean, we always say, listen, we can't be everything to anyone or to everyone. This is our story, this is our product and this is what we're sticking with. So the movement is shifting just to get the bulk. Well, obviously bulk will always say a big market, but to shift to bottled wine that's better priced
at better quality. I think that's an important. There's a couple things you said that really important. I don't remember having the opinion that South Africa was a bulk market. And that doesn't mean it wasn't. I'm just saying the perception here. Starting in 1988, I've never had that feeling. Provence sometimes Lodi in California had that feeling. Puglia in Italy had that sort of moniker, but I never sensed that. But what's interesting is all the regions I just mentioned have grown out
of that. Puglia now is making amazing near D'Avala and Aglianico. And then you've got Lodi, which was famous for a credence Clearwater song and now is very popular and has very old vines to work with the Provence is the same. I mean, they're making everything in Provence now. I mean, that's just rose. It's all kinds of stuff. If the south african industry is trying to climb out of that, they certainly have a really good shot at doing that. I never sensed that from
vendors again. We didn't see a ton. Yeah. And the thing too is a lot of the big cooperative sellers aren't cooperative sellers anymore. They basically fell down. So back in the day, it was just a bunch of co ops producing the biggest bulk of thal industry. And you had Gauvio Fuer, which was sort of the monopoly, the style, and those were the biggest buyers of the bulk. They sort of just added up and sold it as cheap wine.
Where now all of the farms that were farmed or delivered or that delivered wine for the cooperatives, I mean, it's good site. So it's being bought up by potential winemakers for smaller brands that are replanting, investing some money in proper quality grapes. And what you're seeing now is more movement towards quality and hectares being planted, which is fantastic, but virus free. Yeah, that's huge, too. No phylloxera.
Yeah. So here's what happened here and worldwide, but I'm wondering if there's an influence and negative influence as it was in America, and that is 50 cent a liter wines coming out of the centership. Spain, whites and reds, you know, just horrible stuff. But, you know, and they bring it in those 20,000 liter tetra things, and they bottle it here, they make it under, who knows? Maybe it's a hundred different labels. They bottle the same, you know, Valencia White.
Right. They spend money on packaging, they send it out to all the online wine clubs and all the organizations, and it's terrible. And a consumer goes online, I'm going to join this club, it's interesting. And then they get this wine, they go, this isn't very good. It's dollar 15. I'm not going to buy from now on. I'm not going to trust anybody online and I'm going to go back to it. So have you ever, have you seen anything like that in South Africa where there's just branded crap?
Yeah. Yes. I mean, obviously you see branded crap, but I mean branded crap. The nice thing, I mean, for us, the. The cheaper labels in South Africa, there's obviously very, very entry level, which is undrinkable. Sorry, I'm saying undrinkable, not as enjoyable. But if you go to South Africa, you can buy excellent quality Chenin Blanc, Sauvignon blanc. Red blends for anything between 60 and 80 rand. And, I mean, that's anything split between three to $5, really, a
bottle, and it's more than drinkable. Wow. So that's the nice thing. I mean, for us. I always say, if I want to go out and drink, even though I'm a winemaker, I'm not a fussy wine drinker. If you can give me a cheap, fresh, and fruity chenin blanche, 70 rand a bottle, I'll finish the whole bottle. Yeah. Sit next to the pool, next to the ocean, and drink some wine and have some. Because almost invariably, if at $5 here, six, you know, maybe six is the threshold, it's gonna be sugared up junk.
I mean, I don't think on a regular basis they can produce anything other than that. Yeah, that's. But that's the nice thing about South Africa, is for that price, you're already going into the 100 rand tier. Wow. And for 100 rand a bottle, you're going to start drinking excellent quality wine for the price. For 150 rand a bottle, that's sort of the striking range. That's where you want to be. Because any 150 rand
bottle you'll buy will most probably be good quality. And then as soon as you start going up, I mean, obviously, there's many different price categories stretching all the way to 3000 rand a bottle, which would be the most expensive? I mean, that would be about $300. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, that's $1,500. Sorry, that's. And that's. That's expensive. $150. So my math's right. If you can get the public enjoying. When you say quality, I'm expecting you to say, or mean, properly made,
honest expression. We're not putting flavoring agents or defoaming agents, or all the different things you can put in a wine to. To pump up the acid or pump up the sugar. I just got a nice representation. Yeah. Is that what you're talking about? Definite. Well, for sure. It's not juiced up with sugars or any additives. It's just fresh, fruity, bone dry wines, which is amazing. And the nice thing about that price bracket is the wines are such a
good example of the specific variety. So it's always nice to taste the 60 rand bottles and to compare to something that's 150 rand. And I always say that's where the crux comes in, because, I mean, you need to be able, if you can pick up the difference. Many people always ask me, how can I
become better at tasting wine? And I tell them, buy a 60 rand bottle compared to 150 rand bottle, and then sort of get to the point where you can say, okay, this is what quality should taste like and this is what it shouldn't. But for us, that lower price bracket is a. It's obviously a very competitive market at the price, but the quality for that price is incredible. It's not like to come to just come just to experience that, because we don't get to do that here. Exactly. Well,
you have to come and visit us in South Africa. Well, no, I had plans after I had my conversation with May Elian and I like it too hard this quarter. We're coming to Europe. Actually, I was telling one of your friends that we're going to be in Paris in June, early June, and I thought, maybe I'll just book a flight to Stellenbosch, not tell my wife. She thinks we're coming home. And then from there, you go in a small little wine tour in South Africa. Divorced by the time I got done with that.
But that was an interesting comment you just said, which is people ask. This is a very important thing about our industry now, particularly in sort of the way social networking is working and the way some of the current pundits, and I'm going to point to millennials as well, in this part of thing, there's wine. The aristocracy of wine. The old school snobbery of wine is being combated against, which is fine. I have no problem with that.
I get it. I don't know how you do that. So if somebody says, how do I get better at tasting wine? That's a true interest in trying to understand what wine is, because once you ask that question, you're going to start sort of experiencing your palate and testing your palate on what you taste. And guess what? You've just fallen into the aristocracy of wine. I don't know how you separate them. Yeah. And as soon as you're there, I mean, people get. As soon as they start tasting
and as soon as they become better at their craft. I mean, a palate is definitely something that you can work on. When we studied at university, I mean, I was still. I was drinking box wine. Sweet Rizai. Because you're a student and you fill it up with ice and it's swimming pool wine. Off you go, one litre. Thanks for coming. But, I mean, now I produce a high end, ultra premium rousseau. So the best is just to get out there, taste it.
If you walk past the fruit basket, pick it up and smell it, because all the different scents and tastes that you want to start figuring out at the end. And I mean, anyone can start, can start tasting wine. And the nice thing about wine is it's. It's always something that you can speak about with. You can speak online with anyone. So it's always a nice point of entry in a conversation, especially in terms of business or your next girlfriend's father. Yeah. You can always speak about why everyone
loves it. You just turn a thought, which is interesting. Why is it that, in fact, somebody sent me a picture. They were in, they were in Singapore and they had dinner with Rudy, the guy that got busted for faking all the wine. And he apparently has an incredible palate. They had five blind Bordeaux. They gave him the list of what five they were and what vintages they were, and he nailed every one of them. That's very
hard to do, even for somebody who's tasted lots of wine. But the point I'm making is the guy was there in Singapore to raise money for a project here in Los Angeles. Big, big money apartment building. And the lineup of the wines they tasted that night was like DRc Lafitte, you know, all the greatest stuff. And I thought, based on what you just said, why is that? Why is that level of quality or level of perceived aristocracy or value so important to a business dinner or a
wedding or a celebration? Maybe it's even the premium champagne. But you don't do that. You don't celebrate that way with other beverages. And that's an interesting thought. Yeah, that's. Yeah, let's find that, you know, how do you do that? I mean, it's not like you, I wouldn't necessarily buy myself a bottle of proper whiskey if for celebration. I would rather open up a few nice bottles of wine, enjoy it.
Yeah. It's actually something nice to think about because I think in the people have just come to tend to think that wine is associated with a celebration. Yeah, right. And that, which is nice because you elevate it. You elevate it. So the consumer in South Africa, is there a wine culture? Like, I had a party at our house Friday night. A bunch of guys, mostly well off guys, guys that have, you know, a career that have done well.
And I had to build the seller. Oddly, when I sold my company, the buyer wanted nothing to do with my good stuff. I mean, nothing. Ground crude fees, classified growth, whatever I had here, because I was selling it, didn't want any of it. So I had 2500 bottles. I had to find a place for it. And I don't have a cellar at home. I always had one here at the office. Right? Yeah. And so here now this beautiful rack. And they're walking by. They all knew
when they looked at the rack, what was there. They could, you know, they just. They knew. Is there. Is there. Because the industry's not new, but it's younger. Is there a wine culture in South Africa? People definitely. I mean, South Africa people consume wine on the regular. Some are more per capita than Americans. Yeah, probably. And I mean, the one thing about South Africa is it's anything like proper wine list. I mean, the only reason why people
look at a bottle of Lafitte and immediately know it's. It's a very expensive wine is because, I mean, the story has been built up for so many years, and the whole hype around all these first growths and grand Cru has been there for as long as or much more years than South Africa. And that's the thing with the south african market, is it's still slowly but surely getting to the point where it's standing up as the quality and the big brands. And people are aware of the brands in South Africa, and
then the wine drinking community is big. I mean, it's very fashionable at the moment, and there's a lot of wine bars opening up. And so people want to go out, they want to sit, they want to taste a few different glasses, and they'll even play. They'll pay a higher price for a better quality glass than just to drink your normal table wine. And especially eating out, people will always order a bottle of wine instead of a few beers. So the wine and the gastronomical thing about around wine
in South Africa is big being understood. And, I mean, it's. In South Africa, we, especially in Cape Town, we spoil it for choice, because when you have all of the good restaurants and you have all of the wine farms in Jo Berg, which is high up and north in the middle of the country, they don't have the wine farms, but they have more bargaining power in terms of spending money. And then there they consume four or five times the amount of wine as the Capetonians. So the wine drinking
community is checking that. I gotta look that up because the wine consumption per capita, America is like 54th in the world. And you know, the number one consumption per capita country in the. Yes, you're the only. Oh, my God. You're the only person who's never know. That's my favorite trivia question of all time. You're the only person who's ever answered that a lot. Really. That's really funny. That's it there. That's really funny. Full marks for me for today.
What is the directive, then, from the french family to you, as the winemaker? Produce the best I can. We want to make money. What, what's. Well, for now, I mean, obviously there was a massive capital investment. It's not going to. We're not going to win that back immediately. But for them, it's. I mean, it's still a business and obviously the business needs to tick over. So the. We need. The honeymoon phase of spending money is gone now.
Yeah. Now it's the time for us to get out there and to get the product sold. So the property, it's definitely firstly an investment. But, I mean, for them, the owner once said it's. For him, it almost feels like in South Africa, he said he thinks that France is more third world than South Africa. Because South Africa, we actually get stuff done, which is true, because we go getters, we want to go out and we want to get the product out and. Are you trying to
say French is socialism? I'm not saying they're slow, saying maybe it takes a bit longer for something to be fixed, especially. I mean, when I was working in Provence, pipe breaks, it takes two, three weeks for someone to come. And South Africa, it's done on the same day or the next day.
So the vision for the French is obviously to expand their portfolio, which was the southern hemisphere, but to produce wines of distinction, and I mean, Thai bush, we want to grow to one of the most best known Bordeaux style blends in South Africa. And Lachon, that's the wine. We own a big property. It's the biggest property of the three. It's 140 acres, which. 75 acres. So it's big for south african properties and we want Lachon to grow
and to be seen as one of the strongest brands in South Africa. So is that correct? Because they have wineries in Sicily, Italy. I mean, the Sicily and the provence and other parts of the world. Has that created an instant logistical chain to follow that you can take out of South Africa into these other parts of the world? Yes. Is that part of it? So that's what we do. I mean, we use the properties to distribute
our wine and to sell our wine from. But for them, the idea was pretty much to get all of the properties and to combine everything and to get it out to market as competitors in international trade. So we obviously use the urus, or the distribution of our wine, into France, through them into Sicily and from France, they distribute throughout Europe. So it's an easier way to get the wine to the other side of the world and to distribute it from there. Sounds like
a brilliant plan, actually. I've never heard wine. It's like sitting around a campfire, and this is the next big thing. This is how we're going to do it. This is how we're going to structure it. I mean, he picked a tough racket, but a brilliant scheme because logistics are so difficult in this trade right now. What happened during COVID in South Africa with wine? Well, first of all, what happened? Was there a complete shutdown? Lockdown. COVID was. I mean, it was a
complete, complete shutdown. We weren't allowed to sell any alcohol, really, or any cigarettes. So basically everything closed down for about four or five months. Completely? Well, at least four or five months. You can imagine. Well, it was probably more. I can't even remember. So COVID was. I mean, our first vintage of the pink Valley, which is our rosai. We basically couldn't get half of it or 10th of it sold because everything was shut down. I think we were the biggest consumers of our
own product because we were staying on the property. We had the whole cellar full of wine, so we could drink a lot of it, but, I mean, we couldn't sell it at all. And if you could have sold it, bootlegged it, whatever. But, I mean, if they caught you, you'd have lost your liquor license, and then you're in bigger, bigger shit when you actually have to start reselling again. So COVID times were tough. Luckily, our reds wasn't launched yet, so it
was launched after COVID. But COVID killed a lot of properties in Stellenbosch or in South Africa as a whole. Well, that's the problem you guys have there. In South Africa, particularly Stellenbosch, your governor doesn't own a winery. Yeah. And so when COVID. When lockdown came to LA in March of 2019, I think, right. Or 2020, the. I was calling on the phone my other vendors, because a lot of my vendors that sold wine sold food, and I had one in particular, brings in really fine italian
foods. I was turning my wine shop into a deli, you know, so it'd be a market, so I would stay open. Yeah. And an hour after that announcement, Gavin Newsom, our governor, announced that wineries were exempt from this problem. Why? He owns two wineries or his partners in two big wineries in Napa. Well, I have a winery license here, so I'm like, cool, I'm open. Right? And then we did 30 or 40% more volume in those twelve months than we did the previous twelve months. But oddly,
it plummeted. Literally to the day that confinement was over, my sales plummeted to below 2019, considerably below. And so it was a good thing for a while. It was a really bad thing. And it. It really forced. Well, I'm 35 years into it. I'm tired anyway. But it did sort of force our hand, my wife and I, to decide to sell the company, because the year after that, it had not rebounded. It was very tough. Yeah, COVID was tough times. And luckily it's. It's passed by
now. But, I mean, imagine not being able to sell. I mean, you saw. I can't imagine that we were basically. There was some time where we weren't even allowed to drive on the roads. It was like a complete shutdown. Wow. We weren't allowed to do anything, so it would have helped. And even exporting, we couldn't export. We couldn't do nothing. You couldn't put one. Basically just sitting there waiting for the bowl lockdown to sort of. To fees off. How
would anybody survive that? You still got to pay the bills. Yeah, well, luckily for us, we had the french owners, which were quite not relaxed about the whole thing. But when they said, it's fine, let's just get through this, and then we sort of restructure and kickstart with the new bang. But, I mean, if we had all of our other wines on the market, we would have also been in a very difficult position. Basically not making any revenue for a few months, period. Which is crazy.
That's nuts. I mean, if we had to shut down now, it will probably be the end of us because I think the patients would be over there. They'd be done with it. Exactly. So we're almost out of time already. What is on the horizon? Are we far enough along to be thinking about the future? Not other than what we're making and how we're farming, but ideas for varietals, blends, new brands. Are we having those conversations yet?
For now. Because we. I mean, because we knew in all three of our brands, we just want to focus on what we're doing at the moment and to get each brand to the point where we can say, this is Pink Valley, this is Le Shawn, this is Thai Bush, and it's a very dominant wine or brand in each category. So not any new brands necessarily.
Obviously, as the Lashan grow, we'll have to start thinking of maybe doing a new seller on a Lashan property in the pulkidrai, because we have a seller at Pink Valley and a seller at Tybush. And. Yeah, so it's not. The chances of a new brand in the next five years is very little. But, I mean, there's been some talk on maybe doing another funky piece of land close to the ocean
and still by and doing something fun there. But, I mean, for now, we just want to kick start what we have and get it out there and get it into or force it into the faces of as many people as possible. Including Californians? Including the Californias. So if you see the brands, buy it, taste it, enjoy it. Well, I hope the rest of this trip is successful. I hope tonight you guys are doing a barbecue, sort of south african style, I think, and you're pouring some wines.
It's kind of what needs to happen, I think, without going deep into that conversation, I think the industry is going back to those moments where those relationships are built, where that handshake matters, where that taste together matters more than the price on the Internet. And we can only hope that's the case because you never win that battle and you cannot compete with Kim Kardashian when they're sending out instagrams every 15 seconds. It's just
impossible. I think that's going to break eventually for the consumer anyway. And so I think you're doing the right thing. It's hard work. You show up, shake the hands, tell the story, and share. And share. It's the interaction. We always say we're more storytellers than winemakers, because when you're telling your story to a bunch of different people constantly, the best way to interact with people is through in house dinner or braai, and it's liquid ellipse, my friend. That's the most
important thing. And get the product tasted, and then you move from there. Well, thank you for sharing the story today. Thank you. It was very fun. I know you have some jet lag, probably. Yeah. We've only been in for two days. First and out. It's good to see you. Thank you very much. Cheers. Bye, Donkey. 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.