Original subtitles

There was this allure about

sort of putting a vine in the ground

and having it be something that

many, many, many, many years down the line would be so much bigger

than just sticking a vine in the ground.

So you put a vine in the ground, you raise it up for three years,

you harvest it, you make the wine, you bottle the wine.

Maybe the wine gets put away in someone's cellar for

two, five, ten, 15, 20 years, who knows?

There's a moment of consumption at that point, many, many years later

and there's almost a linear connection between that moment of consumption,

going all the way back to putting a plant in the ground.

Just very few things that we consume

that A, brings people that much joy,

and B, have such a linear connection

between those two processes.

Look at this! This is real.

This is a real cluster I just found in my bin.

Eat it.

The most wonderful thing is to be able

to pour your wine for your friends

and/or an appreciative audience,

who go, "Wow, this is great stuff."

There's nothing that gives me more joy than that.

As far as the actual making it,

it can be a pain in the arse,

it can be a complete bitch,

things can go wrong, you're going to be tired,

you're going to be miserable, and there's just that period

that you go through. Then,

you're going to be financially extended,

you're going to be invested in grapes and bins, and all manner of things,

and then when it comes to bottling, glass and corks and all the rest of it.

Which is necessarily not coming back to you,

until you sell wine.

And that sometimes can be

a more painful part of the process.

You know, making the wine,

I love it, I love the aromas,

I love the energy around harvest, all of that.

But of course, the wine has to be sold.

I mean, that's the...

That's where this place comes in really.

It's our own little section of Paso.

I joke we're the city,

the city that is tin.

Many people don't know exactly where

Paso Robles is located.

Some people still wonder

what part of Napa it's in,

which is ridiculous.

We're halfway in between Los Angeles and San Francisco,

on highway 101, and it's about a three and a half hour drive north

to San Francisco, or south to Los Angeles.

Tin City's an industrial development,

that caters to the alcohol connoisseur,

with wineries, a brewery, distillery, cider house.

It's basically all of the up and coming brands in Paso

and you know, from outside the area,

have all gravitated towards this one development.

When Tin City evolved,

there were a few of us and word kind of spread

this could be a really cool place.

So, we kind of recruited colleagues,

I think that are like-minded, that...

you know, have a lot of passion for what they're doing,

and are doing unique, interesting stuff.

But I think the idea is a collection of artists in wine,

that are all following different paths.

It's a pretty eclectic bunch.

I hate to use the words up and coming because it seems so trendy,

but it's definitely, it's a new neighborhood

within the Paso and central coast wine region,

that is showcasing wines

that are super edgy and different and unique,

and there's a lot to offer in this neighborhood

and it's only going to grow and get better.

You don't have a lot of the beautiful views

that you do on the west side of Paso,

or, you know, whatever the case is,

but, you know, my husband always likes to say the wines,

"The barrels don't know that they're not in a fancy cave in Napa."

And they don't, they don't care where they are.

When we first moved in, you know, no one knew where Tin City,

no one knew what Tin City was, where it was,

who was down here.

It took some convincing to get people to

come out of the enchanted forest, you know, of the Westside

and come down to Tin City.

When we started here,

I think when I would tell people where we were,

even the exact roads that we were off of,

they had no idea what we were talking about.

And we're pretty sure that Paso started up there,

the road of firestone, and Templeton started

half a mile down the road that way.

So, in a matter of a year,

I stopped having to tell people exactly where it was

and I could say Tin city, and they knew exactly where it was

because it's become such a cool destination.

Tin city's basically made up of a patchwork of cul-de-sacs.

What you'll see is people park their cars,

you can hear live music coming from a couple different venues,

and you'll see people wandering back and forth,

bouncing from one winery to the next.

Saturdays are huge.

If we ever have an event, um

you'll see a couple different food trucks parked out

on the street, they're serving people.

So yeah, there's a real sort of party atmosphere down here.

It's not wild and crazy but it's definitely very similar to like a fair.

It's like four times a day, five times a day.

The train, I love the train.

We specifically left a hole in the fence

so that we could smash stuff on the train tracks.

The coolest train is the union pacific,

because it's covered in graffiti.

And so it's like a free, like, three minute art show every day.

So, we're going to do a series of labels for the fifteens

that'll be all train related, you know.

Tin city has just become this microcosm

of Paso Robles, of this wine region

and where everybody wants to go, I mean...

You don't have to go that far to enjoy

some of the best Paso Robles has to offer.

It's a different concept

than what's been the standard in Paso.

You know, it took a little bit to get people to understand

what was cool about this area.

And now it's just, you know, taken off

and, you know, now our biggest problem is parking.

The majority of the people in the mix here,

are all people that are lifers in the wine business.

I mean almost everybody down here started out

as like, "I've got enough money to buy a ton of grapes,

I'm going to make a couple of barrels on the side,

and it's going to sit wherever I'm working at,

and I'm going to do my own wine."

And like pretty much everybody down here is all

you know self-started and been through the whole grind.

A lot of people down here in Tin City,

they do this because they love it.

These people started at the bottom.

They didn't come here with a ton of money

and trying to make something by paying for it.

A lot of these people started with hard work.

And I think that that that really creates a wine

that shows, that shows in the glass.

You talk to these winemakers, a lot of these places you can go down

and you're going to meet the winemaker, you're going to talk to him, shake his hand,

and you're going to see right there in the glass, that this person loves what they're doing.

They're not doing it for the money.

It's everybody's passion. That's why we're here.

And it allows kind of the small guys

an opportunity to have their own little space,

and to craft their skills.

We're able to show what we do in a world class way,

without having the ten million dollars

to build the facility.

And without it, probably half of us wouldn't be here.

We all have a very different wineries down here too.

That the other thing that's interesting too. For the amount of people that are down here

there's not a lot that are, like, marketing themselves

the same way, or touting themselves

as doing something the same way.

We all have this really individualistic wine-making style.

You know, we're not trying to create a Tin City wine making style.

But what you do have is this

sort of like I said, flow of information, this sort of constant inspiration,

that's sort of flowing through the whole community, which is really cool.

One really interesting aspect about Tin City,

is seeing the personalities

of the different winemakers and proprietors,

come through their wines.

So, you might have, like, a really boisterous wine,

or you could have some wines are a little bit more reserved a little bit more serious,

who are light and fun and sassy, spicy.

So you get a whole different mix of styles,

not just in the personality of the wines,

but also in the origin of the cépageof the grapes.

You know we have a lot of Rhone varieties here,

obviously Bordeauxs, your Cabs, Merlots, Cab Francs,

particularly those Malbecs.

And then there's some eclectic wines too,

which is kind of fun. Not just that,

yes, there's winemakers here, but, you know,

there's a distillery just up the way,

there's a brewery and a cidery house just came in.

Yeah, it's sort of a liquid amalgamation

of products here. It's a lot of fun.

You know this is a really good place for people our size.

That we can afford to be living the dream

and doing all the things that we want to do and it's attainable.

So, it's pretty awesome.

It's a great opportunity.

It's a big sheet.

- Ooh! - Oh.

Oh no.

I worked in finance for about six years

and worked for dotcom for a little bit

and sat in a cubicle

and kind of hated every day of my existence.

So this is Italian too, this barrel.

I was very interested in wine,

I had a kind of a background in wine.

And I met a winemaker at a party.

It was a couple of weeks before harvest.

He said, "Well, come work harvest."

And I just jumped and did it.

And from day one, I didn't know what I was doing,

this was about 16 years ago. Um...

First day I said this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life.

There's no doubt in my mind.

I think there's kind of two different ways

people end up in this industry.

Folks either tend to be born into it,

have some connection early on

and kind of find out they can make wine from an early age

or in my case, I'm part of the other half of the industry,

which is what I would call

sort of your second career winemaker.

I started out in the engineering field on the East Coast,

um, took a couple trips out to Napa

and just really got into the idea,

learned a little bit more about the science,

and realized it was pretty similar

to the types of fermentations I was doing

as an engineer out there.

And basically applied to UC Davis

after filling out a couple of different prerequisites

for their degree program,

I got an acceptance letter

with an offer of a scholarship

that covered out of state tuition

and pretty much had no recourse but to quit my job

and move out to California.

I grew up in Hawaii, so there wasn't any wine being produced

or grapes grown there,

but when I finally after college moved to California,

and I ended up living in the San Francisco Bay area

where I met wife, Pam.

And we would spend our weekends wine tasting

and enjoying that lifestyle.

And one of the trips we were going to the Tuscan region of Italy,

we actually ended up having to postpone our trip because of 9/11,

but we ultimately went about 10 or 12 or 15 days later.

The whole trip was about being introduced to Italian wines

and taste the wines of the Chiantis and the like

that they're making of the Sangiovese grapes there in Tuscany.

And we had one-on-one access with all of the winemakers.

Because there were not a lot Americans traveling at the time,

they were just thrilled that we were there.

So, we were invited into their homes,

we actually had wine with them,

they took us down to their cellars.

I think stuff they don't do

with a lot of people

and I really was drawn in by the passion

that they had for making wine.

It was during that trip that

I really started thinking that

I'd really like to do this

at some point in time in my life.

When I was 15, I realized I could grow a beard.

So I was always the guy who had to buy beer for us at the liquor store,

but it was still a bit of a hassle.

And we realized we could make it ourselves.

And I was kind of the science guy

and it was just so much fun for me, so I guess

probably around that age, 15 or 16,

I decided I'm going to brew beer for a living.

I went to college and started getting an economics degree

and it was a huge waste of time.

And I realized, you know, I was wasting my time

and I needed to do something real with it. And I remembered my dream.

And I realized I'd go to UC Davis

and do a six month master brewers course,

so I could take the Institute of Brewing and Distilling's master brewers exam.

So I got all of my science prereqs

while I was doing my econ degree.

Went to Davis, did the master brewers program there

and then I went down to Texas

and worked for Spoetzl Brewery

who make Shiner Bock.

So that's where I really kind of started my career. And I was 21 years old,

working at this crazy brewery where people were pulling, like, water moccasins,

they're these, like, poisonous snakes out of the hoses that were hanging up

because it was so swampy round there, it was nuts. People were, like, smoking in the warehouse

because it's Texas and nobody cares. It was just, it was wild.

That was my first introduction to the brewing industry and I was, like,

I think I'm going to like this.

I began in a very weird place,

I was in Eagle, Idaho, actually,

in a snake river AVA,

which is not, Idaho's not well known for anything

but potatoes really.

We had a family friend

who offered me the job.

He owned the winery and I was just like yeah,

I mean, I got to make my ten bucks an hour

so I can buy my case of beer this weekend.

And so I went in and, yeah, stared working in the vineyards

and it was very weird but, yeah, 18 years old

and I was like, I want to be a winemaker.

I worked in Santa Barbara at a winery called Carr Winery

where I continued to work in vineyards for three years

so I was out kind of pruning vines with the crew.

We worked nine hours a day and I got a really good feel

for all the different regions of Santa Barbara county

and the flavor profiles and what varieties do good where,

and the whole time I was out there, I was just like

low key planning my project.

Making wines a very big, big passion I have

since I basically grew up in south of France, in Bordeaux.

I started like four or five years old, driving tractors,

and finding about wine.

And growing that, helping my dad every weekend,

which really lucky farming a lot.

And then only 23 years old,

I was kind of feeling out a little bit

to see if I was going to stay,

you know, take over and all of that,

and I was thinking I didn't speak English at the time

and I see kind of wine evolving with new world wine.

I said you know, maybe it will be awesome

to do something in outside of France.

So, I actually found an internship in Paso Robles

with a very fine, Stephan at L'Aventure winery.

And didn't want to take an intern at the beginning.

Really, really pushed him and said I want to come.

And he basically hired me for ten months

and at the end he offered me a full time position.

My grandparents planted a vineyard up here

in the late '80s.

My dad started making wine a few years after that

and it was my job to come home after school,

uncover the ferment, punch it down,

you know, make sure not to, you know, drip any wine

onto the sides of the bin,

clean the punch down tool,

you know, recover it back.

Subconsciously or not consciously, you know,

I was learning about, you know,

making wine from, you know, second grade on.

The winery, the wine thing

became a really big part of our lives.

When I was 13, I took 100 pounds of cab

from, it was Cougar Ridge cab,

fermented it in a teeny tiny little fermentor

and aged it in a five gallon barrel.

Fast forward, like, 7 or 8 years later,

I was helping in the tasting room,

and a wine club member wanted to buy,

my parents were doing a library release,

and they wanted to buy this particular wine

and I went to go grab it and my bottle was right next to it.

And so I was like, you know, I'm going to pour this wine to this guy.

And so I blind tasted them,

I didn't tell them what it was

and you know, there's bunch of people in here

in the tasting room, and he kind of, you know, calls me over

and I go and he goes, "Hey man,

don't tell your old man," he goes,

"but your wine's better."

And that was like for whatever reason,

made me think that I could make wine,

like, I could make good wine.

That next harvest, I was 19,

and by the time the wine was fermented and barrel aged

and bottled and bottle aged, I would have turned 21.

So, I made 147 cases and released it

the weekend after I turned 21.

Had I not poured that wine to that guy,

um, and he's actually still in my wine club,

You know, I don't know that I would have

kind of ventured out on my own.

I grew up overseas,

and was exposed to wine at the dinner table

pretty early on in life.

I grew up in

a wine growing region as well,

and my grandfather's a brewer,

and my family before him were farmers.

So I was kind of sitting at home when I was 16, 17,

trying to decide what I wanted to go to school for in college.

Just sort of popped in my head.

So, I pursue it and I've been sort of singularly focused

on being a winemaker since then.

My family moved here in 1983.

My uncle was good friends with the Smith family

down in Ensonies, California,

and the Smiths came up and bought James Berry Vineyard.

And my uncle followed them up and bought the property right next door.

My mom very quickly after that

moved us up here as a family,

realized it was a great place to raise kids,

and so my first job in the world

was working on James Berry Vineyard, you know, chasing birds.

They would give us, fill up our three wheelers or four wheelers

with gasoline and give us bullets to shoot

and I thought it was the greatest thing ever

and pay us minimally but who needs to get paid

when you're doing that for a living.

Later on, I found out, it wasn't that we were actually good at shooting,

it was just that if you were actually driving up and down on the rows,

the birds never actually settled.

And so it kept them from eating the grapes.

I went to Cal Poly for ag business.

There was no viticulture school back then.

And really had no idea that I wanted to make wine

in those days, you know, I just

wanted to go to a good school, wanted to stay here locally,

really loved the area, fell in love with it.

And then kind of wanted to go see the world

and see what was out there, so

I got on a boat and sailed it,

and I had the opportunity to captain a boat,

from Newport Beach to Palm Beach, Florida.

So, I was actually able to captain a boat through the Panama Canal.

So I got to actually steer.

The locks there are amazing, they're 150 feet,

they raise with the water in about a minute and a half.

So, you actually have to tie up

a small sail boat like ourselves,

we were 41 feet, to a 900 foot tanker,

to make sure you don't bounce around like a ping pong ball. It fills up so fast with water

that you actually have to be tied to something else

to make sure you don't get crushed against the walls.

When we got to the east side of the canal,

we went as fast as we could to Palm Beach

because we were completely out of money

and so started working for Ruth's Chris Steakhouse.

And they were kind enough to put me through some education.

Really kind of just solidified my love for wine

and the variations of wine, the different aspects of wine.

And then just one day realized I really missed Paso.

And I really wanted to get back into making wine,

not just selling wine.

I came down to Cal Poly, um

to study landscape architecture.

Um, I liked to garden as a kid

and I liked my drafting courses,

back when you used a pencil instead of a computer.

And so came down here and

about halfway through my education

I took a viticulture class,

which is basically vineyard management

and I was hooked.

I've been making wine ever since.

I was 18 and I worked in a restaurant.

A fine dining restaurant in Arizona, Scottsdale.

And we had a really amazing Somm that worked there

and he was really dedicated to making sure

that his employees knew a lot about everything

and so they would do

pourings and tastings and that was it, I caught the bug.

First vintage for me was 2007.

Which was a good year in Paso to make wine.

It was pretty awesome. I worked a couple years

as a cellar rat at a big co-op facility here in town,

and then I did my own

few barrels in '09, 2009.

I don't remember much. I drank a lot

and worked really long days

and I just remember it being a whirlwind,

honestly like it was just awesome.

I'd been in the sales and marketing and importing

and school side of wine for, you know, 20 years

and it was really cool to see the production side.

I love it a lot more, obviously, that's why I'm doing this.

But it was, um, frenetic.

I met a winemaker and it was during grape harvest

and he tricked me into coming to the winery.

He said, "Oh, it's easy, it's beautiful, we're making wine,

we're driving the forklifts, we're drinking beer."

I show up and he hands me a pitchfork and he says,

"We don't have a forklift so shovel these grapes

into the destemmer and I'll give you a job,

and if you do a good job you can show up again tomorrow

and we can do it again tomorrow."

And my second year was in 2006

and I decided if I was going to work in a winery,

I was going to work somewhere that had

a little bit more equipment

and I didn't have to shovel grapes.

And that's when my first real experience of harvest began.

I was worked for about 90 days without a day off.

And you know, you're showing up at four, five in the morning,

to make sure that things are set up and ready to go.

And you're not going home until midnight.

Just because we're not leaving until the floor is clean

and everything is done.

You're driving home at midnight

and you're soaking wet and you're tired

and you're getting paid minimum wage

and for some reason you're buzzing and you're excited

that you get to come back tomorrow

and do it all over again.

That when I fell in love with making wine.

It was something that was a passion.

I couldn't believe I loved my job.

It was something that was unbelievable.

It gives me chills to know that I get to do something

that I love to do.

It completely blows me away

when you taste all of the complexity

and different flavors and aromas

and you're able to make this amazing thing from grapes.

I've been doing this since I was a kid

and that never ceases to amaze me.

You know, I've had wines that have changed my life.

Creating that product is what gets me up

at four o'clock in the morning or five o'clock in the morning,

or keeps me here till five o' clock in the morning during harvest.

I just love making wine.

It' s a tangible product that

lives and evolves

and it's challenging, it's a discipline and a craft

that you have to pull from a lot of different areas from.

So, yes there's the chemistry and the biochemistry and the microbiology,

but also the soil science, irrigation science

and plant science, of, you know, the vineyard.

And so it's a really- it's an evolution.

And it's a long term thing.

You have to really think about where you're going,

you know, seven years from now, today.

Everyone become different artists

and you will like all of them. It will have just different aspects.

For me, making wine is just try to push myself every year,

you know, to try to do even better.

I hate sitting on one thing I know.

And sometimes we are because you are tired, you do work a lot.

You say, okay I do that, I already do like this.

But you have to always, you know

think about change a little bit. Do something else.

To that 16-year pinot noir, it was like

huge color, huge tangy already,

so I was like, so you have to taste always,

and never believe that you know what to do

and you have to really question yourself.

Wine evolves with the person as they're growing.

I look at the wines that I first made,

and taste, I mean, they're way different

than what I thought they would be when I made them.

And they kind of change with you as a person I think too.

Except my wines don't taste old now.

And I feel old.

Wine is actually, people totally care about, you know,

everything about the soil, about the winemaker, someone like me,

someone who has their hands in the process, actually physically makes the wine.

What we did in the vineyard, what the practices were, what's the aspect,

the slope, the soil, you know, all those different things.

And that's one of the things that makes wine stand apart

from almost everything else that we consume.

And that's what makes someone like me be able to do my job

for the rest of my life. 'Cause you can't really get bored because

you know you get sort of intrinsically obsessed

with all those different little processes.

And so your brain is always ticking, always moving,

always thinking about all these little different things.

When you walk into a vineyard, why this soil's different from that soil,

why this vintage are different from that vintage.

What oak might work with this wine versus that wine.

How long am I going to age it, what bottle

am I going to put it in, which cork should I use.

All those little things

and it's just it's impossible to be bored.

There is so much to making wine

that people and consumers don't understand.

And for the most part that's probably good.

It is easy to enjoy a glass of wine,

without really understanding

what went into the glass of wine.

We hand harvest,

we hand sort every single cluster.

And before that, throughout the whole growing season,

we literally are in the vineyard every single day,

managing the crop.

It really matters to me that people are getting a sense

of where our fruit's coming from

and that myself and my small team,

have everything to do with what you're tasting in the bottle,

because we grew the fruit and we fermented the fruit

and we aged the fruit and we bottled the wine

and it is our production from beginning to end.

The best thing about California,

is where we are in Paso Robles is the soil.

I mean it's so interesting, the high clays,

the high PH, all the different rocks.

I mean there's so many volcanic rocks in the soil here.

It just really gives this amazing,

I guess, soul, is almost the word I'd use.

To the flavor of the grapes here.

The climate is quite a bit hotter than most parts of Italy,

especially the northern part.

But what's fun about our wines, we think, is that

when you smell them,

they smell like the Italian wines.

They're kind of, they're counterparts

to what's grown in Italy. But when you taste it,

it's always just a little bit more ripe. Um,

We always like to think we have one foot in Italy,

and one foot in California.

So for me, I believe everything happens in the vineyard.

There's no hocus pocus that I can do within the winery

to improve the quality.

It's always site selection first,

and then farm it accordingly.

So everybody that I work with,

usually has their own winery

that they're farming at their own vineyard

and I'm lucky enough to get a few rows

within their vineyard.

Normally in Paso, when you have a vine growing up like this,

probably the average number of clusters

on that vine is about 30.

We're doing eight.

So that's the difference.

Hard to farm, lots of passes,

but I believe if you pick the right spot,

meaning site selection,

farming's a lot easier.

So what we look for,

is we want hillsides

with lots of rock on it,

um, so that the vine struggles.

A lot of people say that you want to stress the vine,

but that's not true because if you stress the vine,

then the vine takes all the goodies from the clusters

and keeps it for itself so it stays alive.

We want to grow it in an area

where there's not a lot of water

and there's lots of rock,

small plants, small clusters, small berries,

more concentration.

And that's what we're looking for.

So this is going to be our lightest body red on the list

and then from here, they'll get bigger and bigger.

One of the biggest things with this project when I started it,

is I knew it was going to be a really small project

and I knew that if I tried to make it

like the winery you imagine in your head,

they all have a barrel in the tasting room,

they all have like, you know, fake grapes,

and it's just always, then you have the knick-knacks and stuff,

and that's fine, but what I wanted to do with our tasting room,

was I wanted, and with our wines

and with the labels and everything,

is I wanted to try to do everything myself

which makes me kind of crazy but I figure that

if I had my hand in like what couch we get,

what art we put in the tasting room,

I wanted it to kind of like, I figured that it would just be

more of a personal experience and it kind of speaks to the wines

and everything that everyone's making in Tin City, I mean.

It goes back to that idea of every little thing you do

kind of makes the wine what it is.

And when you bottle, it's almost like a

extension of yourself so with the taste room I wanted

it to feel the same way, like-

I spray painted the walls

and pretty much everything in there, I slowly did and

I just want, when someone walk in there, I want them to know that

they're not going to, like, a corporate winery,

it's like you're coming in to like hang out with me

and it's personal, so.

Hey.

But yeah, I got the blankets and

and went to West Elm and stuff, so.

We're pretty unpretentious around here.

Pretty much across the board in Tin City.

So, when we're not trying to be anything

but who we really are and that's something I think pretty much

goes for the whole community here.

And so, there's a little bit less fluff

and so for me, I want people to know that as a winery,

we are people that physically make the wine with our own hands,

you know, I don't show up in a polo short every day,

or a collared shirt for that matter, and

you know, swirl wine and taste barrels.

You know, it's- I mean we do that but,

in our boots.

So, um it's not this

it's not all about the tasting room front here.

You know, it's about, "hey look here's a taste room

and here's the back room and there it is."

I mean literally my taste room's right there

and the winery's right here.

So, people get a tour

and the tour generally lasts you know,

it takes about two minutes to walk around the whole winery

and see it all. And this is it.

This is where it all happens.

The farmers market approach is what people look for

in the products that they consume.

So, they like knowing where their lettuce came from,

they like knowing where their beef came from,

they like knowing where their wine came from.

We make a wine that you can know where it came from

and it was made by a real person

and it's a wine that's got a soul,

it's not a mass marketed product,

but at the same time, it's still affordable that you can

buy about a case, or buy, you know, have it Tuesday, have it Wednesday,

and then have your last bottle on Saturday.

They want to be able to have that experience

and know where your stuff came from.

Doesn't have to be expensive.

These particular barrels, while they're lovely and beautiful,

have had, um, there's a bit of sugar in them

so they actually haven't finished primary fermentation.

Um, and the best way to get that moving along

is to give them heat or air or any number of things.

So we bring them outside on beautiful days like this and get them warmed up

and they finish... They finish fermentation.

So, you can hear that activity in there

is primary fermentation.

Yeah, so you just want to stick your ear to it

as close as you can, and try to really listen to

the barrel and make sure that there is activity.

You want to hear that snap, crackle and pop.

And when you hear that and something's happening,

everything's fine.

If you don't hear it, then...

That's bad, that's it.

You know wine makes itself. It's fermentation and it's a really simple process.

And I think as a winemaker,

we're all trying to do something different.

And you incorporate your business acumen into that

and your marketing acumen into that

and then you've got your wine making part of it, um,

and at the end of the day you want to make a successful business

that's making a good wine that you can sell and market to customers.

But you know, you also have to set yourself apart somehow

and I think it's a really hard thing to do

because fermentation and wine making

really is a very simple process.

So one of the things I love about the amphora

is that A, they're really pretty,

really pretty, and B,

um, it's a way to kind of go back to the roots of wine

and try something, it's not new by any means,

but it's not being done a lot round here.

I do a little bit of Sauv Blanc

and then I've got a couple of red amphora,

um, every year I try to add one or two into my repertoire.

Might need another night, cool.

This is what it looks like getting...

That's how far that's off.

Figuring out how to set up a still

that doesn't come with instructions.

We live in Paso Robles.

So, whatever's locally abundant to us

is what we have to distill

and we have grapes everywhere.

You know, we have some of the world's best Grenache,

Syrah, mourvèdre, some beautiful varietals

that are begging to be distilled down

into world class brandies.

So, right now what we're doing is we're just

hooking the still together.

Outside we have an 800,000 BTU an hour boiler,

that's going to generate steam,

that will pump into the steam jacket of the still

to heat the wine, the beer, whatever we're distilling down

and then we also have two inline, seven ton chillers

to chill water to condense all the alcohol vapor

generated by the still, into a liquid.

And then it just comes flowing out as pure love out the other side.

Pure Brandy love.

The goal is here to take this beautiful, botanical, sexy wine

and distill it into fruit forward, botanical brandies.

So, guys would either make roséout of these wines,

but some wineries like Saxom just don't make roséat all.

So, we take all of that juice

and ferment and distill it down

into this beautiful, sexy, botanical, rich brandy

that's boasting all of the floral components

that were originally in the Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre,

the cabernet sauvignon,

whatever we're distilling down.

So no longer is the cognac region of France

the only place to get brandy.

Paso Roble is fantastic for it.

We're all trying to make a living making wine, you know.

This is our dream to be successful at making wine.

It's not easy to do that.

You know, we're bouncing ideas of each other

and we're learning from each other,

it's basically, like, a 20 acre AP facility.

Believe it or not, I actually like all these people.

They're pretty fun, so.

Yeah, you know, in Tin City,

we have this beautiful sense of community.

One of the best things are the people that are here.

Almost everyone that's back here

are the owners and the winemakers

and the accountants and the delivery guy

and everything. They wear a lot of hats.

But everybody's got dirty shoes and dirty hands.

It's not all glitz and glamor, you know,

this is an industrial park, you know.

There's nothing that's meant

to overly glorify the process.

You know, here it is what it's about, it's about

great people making great wines, getting their hands dirty.

A lot of the people that make wine in Tin City,

I was making wine either in the their winery before

or we were at dinner together,

so yeah, Brian Benson and I,

we've been making wine together

for many, many years,

Torrin who's next door,

he was out at dinner.

Nicora, next door neighbor, also out at dinner,

so yeah, a lot of these guys,

I buy fruit from Onx,

which is just right across the road,

so I have an attachment

to pretty much everybody

that's in Tin City.

By nature, um

whether it was intentional or unintentional

in the design, Tin City really

just forces and encourages us all

to interact with each other.

Just the nature of having all sorts of people

with lots of different wine making experiences

who will pick each other's brains

when issues come up.

If someone ever needs help,

we're all able to just lend a hand,

and help someone process through some tough times.

It's interesting in a way, that everybody's coming

to talk to you all the time,

sometimes like oh my gosh, I got to work

and then you know, our neighbor will bring in some awesome brandy,

so who can refuse? A lot of these people in here, they're not, like, competitors,

we're all in this together and it feels really cool

to know that we're like not competing.

It's like, if one of us does good, we all do good.

If you need help or you have a question,

there's not really any secrets.

We send each other business.

If a neighbor needs some help hauling some grapes,

I'm not against putting some grapes

on the back of my pickup and hauling them down for them.

I just try to help people out,

just trying to pay it forward.

A ton of people helped me out

to get to where I'm at today.

To an open-minded person, there is an incredible amount to learn

from all of our neighbors here and from ourselves.

And, you know, sometimes you don't even realize

why you're doing something until maybe one of your neighbors

asks you why you do it that particular way.

Whether you're having a beer with your neighbor or you're talking about wine making

or you're talking about whatever, you know.

Um, it's just there's that creative energy that just flows

through every little avenue of Tin City and that's what makes it really, really special.

I would say once a week, Andrew from Field Recordings,

since we're kind of the two lone guys over here,

I mean, he walked in the door one day into the tasting room

and he goes, "Can I go get some paper plates?"

I said we don't have any paper plates here,

I'm sorry, we don't have any.

He said "Yeah you do." I said no we don't.

He said "Yeah you do." He's like,

And he goes, "I'll go get 'em."

So, he went upstairs and he comes down

with this huge thing of paper plates.

I said, "Wha... How did you know those were here?"

and he goes, "Oh, I borrow them all the time."

Then he goes "Hold on, I'll be right back."

So he ran over,

grabbed a four pack

of the Tin City cider,

and came in and just plunked it down on the bar

and said, "Here's rent for my plates upstairs."

So everybody's very willing to help each other out.

One of our neighbors here was getting some barrels delivered

he wasn't around, he had something else to do. The barrels showed up.

Well they could have just dumped them there in the heat.

And we said no, we'll take them into our place

because we know he'll come, and he's done us favors

and vice versa.

Not everybody owns everything, like, you know there's...

Some of the people right here on the cul-de-sac, don't have a pressure washer,

there's a lot of cleaning and washing in the wine business,

so folks will borrow our pressure washer.

The other day we had to change something on our fork lift

and we just didn't have the right size ratchet

So, you know, one of the other wineries had the right...

had the right piece of equipment for that.

There's some winery equipment that we don't like to share

because we want to make sure where sanitation is properly maintained,

but all in all, I think it's pretty cool

when we can help each other out.

It's just like borrowing sugar from your neighbor.

Like if, you know, we happen to need something that day

we know we can go across the way

and somebody's got our back and vice versa.

So, we happen to have forklift extensions

and everybody seems to use those.

This is Rainbow Dash,

we named her after My Little Pony.

Not because I know anything about My Little Ponies

but it just worked, so.

It's got like My Little Pony key chain,

My Little Pony on the back,

and she's been a good girl.

She's a work horse.

We take care of her, we keep her full of water

and well-oiled and we just give her lots of love

and we try not to let the boys play with her too much

'cause they're boys.

She's good.

No offense, I love you, Guillaume, but they bought this old junky forklift

and the thing died all the time in the beginning.

He's since upgraded his forklift.

But I think yeah, everyone has a forklift story for sure.

I purchased a grape press for myself,

hum and they're pretty big.

And my forklift wouldn't lift it off of the trailer.

So we were out here in the middle of the street

trying to figure out how I'm going to get this grape press

off of the trailer, hum.

And while one of my neighbors was kind of watching,

and waiting to see what was going to happen,

and so I tried to pick up the press

and it wouldn't come off of the trailer.

The back of the forklift started to lift of the ground.

Um, and so my neighbor came over

with his forklift,

a great guy here, Brian Benson,

and he pulled up next to the trailer

and we kind of straddled the trailer,

lifted the press up off,

and then somebody drove the trailer out underneath the press

and we just kind of inched it down onto the ground.

So you have this big $30,000 press

hanging up in the air about eight feet,

so that's a little nerve wracking. Um...

But we came together and we lowered the press down

and we pushed it into the cellar here.

And it's just kind of little things like that,

you know, that help each other out.

I knew that I wanted to start a brewery.

Um, we had been planning for quite some time,

my business partner and I, with our construction business,

where it's at, we knew we wanted to jump into something else.

We knew it had to be on the central coast,

and so I started looking up and down the coast

and trying to find out you know,

unit prices for warehouses.

I saw so many other breweries

that were constantly outgrowing their space

and redoing footings or moving equipment

from this location to that location.

And so we planned for success out of the gate.

And our realtor at the time was like, "You know what?

There's this other building. It's not quite as visible

as the building we were looking at,

but it's more square footage

and it's been vacant for almost a year."

I'm like, "Alright, I'll check it out."

We drove around the corner and I saw the place

and I'm like oh, you know I saw that on LoopNet,

it's way out of our price range.

She's like "Well, it has been vacant for a year,

and I know the owner's very motivated

because he needs something in this area

to kind of pull the people in

and kind of, you know, spark a fire here."

So I went ahead and I contacted the owner direct,

and I says, "Hey, I'm really interested in your space.

This is my plan, I think it would be really cool

for the area and I think it's going to bring people in."

And he's like, "I think so too,

we've been looking for, he called it, 'an anchor'."

Jason had a very interesting story

as how they were pursuing the craft beer industry,

'cause they were modeling their business plan after a little,

at the time, little known brewery up in Petaluma.

And he goes, "Well, you've probably never heard of it."

He goes, "It's a little place called Lagunitas."

And my family's tied to Lagunitas.

So it's kind of an easy fit right there.

So I gambled a win with those guys,

knowing that if they were going to follow those guys they'll do well.

And he wanted to bring some energy in here,

some tourism in here which is what we we're all about.

So he said, "Tell you what, what can you afford?"

So I told him what I could afford, he's like, "That's not going to work,

"But what if we meet somewhere in the middle?"

So, we negotiated back and forth

and we came up with something that worked for everybody

and since then, I mean it's just been full speed ahead.

The owner, Mike, of this whole area,

he's very particular on who he lets in.

Um, He's building hum,

He's building a community here,

it's not just a business for him

so personalities, quality's really important to him.

Now this is a guy that controls a huge aspect of my life.

So I have to be, you know

pretty political on how I describe Mike,

but Mike is like the fun uncle that you had.

He's just a really classy guy.

The guy just wants to do cool stuff

and build cool stuff and he's been very successful in the pool business.

All the fake,

like the rock climbing walls in gyms, that's all him.

And so he moves down here and buys this piece of land

because that's where, you know, his business is based out of

and then has the vision to do this.

He was going to put a winery in himself,

like a co-op facility and that didn't really work out

and he had, I mean down here,

there was like... There was nothing down here.

I'd say two thirds of the buildings were empty down here. Or not built.

I've always had the pioneer spirit

you know, build it they will come.

So, I decided to kind of subdivide this

into all these neat little lots

that we could have some individual businesses

be successful and, you know.

Build this little community.

All these folks have no idea about building at all

and have never really dealt with the agencies

that you have to go through.

And just fortunately,

I've been building in San Luis County for many years

and I know how the processes work.

And so, it's a lot easier for me to deal with the agencies

and get things to move along.

And we kind of simplify that process.

He did all the leg work for me to get my winery started.

Like, I literally walked down to the county office

with a check for $73 and I walked out with my winery permit.

And I was good to go. Um, so that was really great for me.

I mean Mike did all the work so that this could get started.

There's been some amazing wineries

that, you know, trickled in over that first year.

And they started gaining traction,

and they would play off of our draw

and then we would play off their draw. And then before you knew it

it seemed like almost once a month,

a new winery was coming in

or a distillery or a cidery or something really cool.

I worked with Guillaume out at another French winery

on the west side of Paso, called L'Aventure.

And he had a step down and started his own label

here in Tin City.

And probably every other month

I would get a text from him saying,

"You got to move in here! I love this place! You got to come!"

And so it was funny,

my wife and I, we got engaged

and right after we got engaged, he said,

"There's one unit left,

if you want to come and be in the neighborhood."

So we rushed down here and we got home from Big Sur

and we signed the lease.

It was neat when Jacob and Kelly were coming in,

they were so excited, it was a big, big step for them

to take on this whole project

and be into, you know, being a wine proprietor on his own.

He's an excellent winemaker, but going into business is scary.

But they were so excited

that their excitement actually overcame

all of their other anxieties

and they were here all the time,

watching how things... everything was going together.

And really day by day 'cause we build them pretty quick.

Every little step they were just more excited, more excited.

Couldn't wait to get their artwork

and Kelly's father built a lot of their furniture in there

and friends who painted all their paintings in there.

They couldn't wait to get that stuff up

to show everyone.

He's done a really good job

getting like-minded people down here

and regardless if you're making ice-cream

or you're a chef or you're making wine

or you're making cider or you're distilling

or whatever you're doing,

that... that passion, you know, is linear

and you know, is found throughout all that.

A lot of times he would come around and say, "Hey, these people want to come down,

are they a good fit for what we're trying to do?"

So he would build the building and he wouldn't lease it to anybody.

He would sit back and wait for people to come

and approach him and say "Hey, we want to rent."

And then so he'd go around to some of the few wineries that were established here

and say "Hey, are these people good fits for us? "Is this what we're wanting to do?"

And bring in these people.

And so, he was very selective with who he chose

and that was important in the beginning.

He really cares about everyone that's in here

and he's really worked hard to pay attention

to the different personalities and everything else

that goes into making this neighborhood a complete package.

And like he's got a lot of vision.

He had, you know, these grand visions of what Tin City is now

and I... you know,

I thought he wasn't going to pull it off

and by the time I moved down here

it had already, you know, 80% of what he had hoped

was going to happen had already happened.

I'm encouraged and excited to think about

you know, what the next few years bring.

And I think Tin City's going to be the spot.

Everyone's going to be bummed they didn't move into Tin City.

In the '90s, Paso was a teeny tiny town.

There wasn't anything, there wasn't an Albertsons

there wasn't a Target, there wasn't restaurants

there wasn't anything.

Downtown Paso did not look like Downtown Paso.

There wasn't Downtown Paso.

There was a park and there were buildings around it

but it wasn't Downtown Paso.

Now it's Downtown Paso, you know, there's all the energy,

there's the restaurants, none of that existed.

I mean, I remember my grandparents' vineyard was out on the Eastside

and I remember just to go and get something from the store,

you know, to the closest thing you could buy anything

was a 45 minute drive.

I've seen the evolution of Paso change you know

over my lifetime, over the last 30 years.

Paso started as

you know, this really aesthetically beautiful area

that, you know, a handful of people were making wine in

and were very passionate about what they were doing.

And now it's just exploded

into, you know,

one of the best grape growing regions in California,

if not the best.

This was probably about five years ago,

I started researching and I started seeing

the influx of tourism,

the culture that was being developed here

for, you know, artisan foods and the wine

and just the music festivals

and it just seemed like a really good fit

for what our plan was.

My dream has always been to do very authentic

Italian variety wines

and you know, in doing so,

it was important to me to find a place

that looks and feels like Italy.

And that's really, I remember the first time

driving into Paso and I just really said

this is so much like Italy.

I mean it looks so much like Italy, so much more

than Napa and Sonoma,

my folks live up in Sonoma,

and it just felt right.

We looked for a place that we could grow Rhone varieties

and Paso Robles turned out to be the ideal place

and a place where we could get in on a ground floor

of a movement of wine production,

not just the Rhone varieties,

but now Paso Robles has become just oh...

One of the fastest growing, if not the fastest growing

wine region in the country.

Certainly and very well-respected

for the wines that we're producing.

So this is the wine that started it all for me, named after my mom.

This is the Mary Jane's Cuvee.

It's a watercolor of my grandmother's 130 year old

Victorian house on the west side of Paso,

where I spent summers as a kid.

All my wines are named after either my mom,

my three sisters or my three nieces.

And now we also have a wine in barrel

named after my mother-in-law as well as my wife Kelly.

We're definitely a matriarch family.

My grandma's the head of it.

I grew up with three sisters

and so growing up with three strong females

definitely helped me and spurred me on

to follow my dreams.

And so, when we had an opportunity

back in 1999, 2000,

to get some grapes, I decided to take the next step

and not just help people make wine,

but actually start my own label as well.

More wineries here have grower producers

than anywhere in the world.

So that means the owner

is the same person that's growing the fruit,

is the same person that's making the wine,

so any given day you can walk in

and you can meet me,

and I grow the fruit and yeah, I make the wine

and that's the same for a lot of the places around here.

Whereas other areas, Napa, Sonoma, fantastic wines,

but you're never going to meet the winemaker, hardly,

or the owner or the vintner.

And they're probably three different people.

Here, it's all the same person,

I think which makes it special, you know.

A lot of us still drive a tractor. We don't just...

Fly around the world and taste our wines with people,

we're here farming every day.

I'm so happy that I chose Paso Robles as the place

to grow grapes and produce wine

because I've been able to be

a part of the growth of this area

and my brand and I couldn't ask for more.

It's like the wild west, you know.

There's no rules, do whatever you want,

you can write your own history,

there is no right or wrong.

You know, it's really easy to get caught up, and...

And do things because that's the way everyone does it.

But if you don't ever take any risks, you're never going to have any fun.

It's not really very rewarding. And I think people here are really game to do that

and I think that's not just Tin City

but I think that's the Central Coast in general,

and that's why it's so attractive,

I think for so many people, for me for sure.

When we first got here, it was a sleepy little industrial sector.

Most people would call the brewery and be like, "I think I'm lost."

And we're like, "Drive two more blocks you're almost there, I promise you."

They're like "I don't know, I don't feel safe."

So, there really wasn't anything here.

And I would have to say Barrel House

has been the keystone that has made Tin City what it is.

I consider them to be like a,

you know, you have your big store in the mall.

You know, barrel house came here and set up.

They were kind of an anchor.

And now, various other people have come in

so the energy, you know, around here now

is far greater than it was.

I was one of the first five wineries that moved in

and it's been amazing to see what's happened

in the last, you know, year or two years.

Lot of new stuff though in general in Tin City,

like, from the quiet warehouse space that it once was

to what we have now.

I mean, by the end of 2018,

we're going to have two restaurants,

you know we have unbelievable ice-cream creamery

that just specializes in sheep's milk ice-cream

and Negrantis.

So many more non-alcohol

options in Tin City. We're really close to having

the complete package. Even for the dining options.

We're going to have two restaurants here, one of them being more

of your, like, classic tavern bar food, pizzas,

small plates, full bar,

to having a full blown fine dining experience

with Six Test Kitchen moving in later in 2018.

I think with the addition of the restaurants

and then the new tasting menu restaurant coming in.

That's going to add a whole another level of intricacy and complexity to the area

and it's going to be really a place where you can just

come and stay for the day.

Excited to see where it goes but I don't...

Right now, I don't know if it has a ceiling.

Right from the get go we had a great reputation.

Everybody was excited about what we were doing

but the better the beer got,

the bigger the buzz got.

It looks like it's cracked!

It was locals kind of trickling in

and then all of a sudden it was locals trickling in

from San Luis Obispo,

And then before you know it,

you know three quarters of our patrons

on a busy, busy weekend, are from Los Angeles and the Bay area.

We've seen some articles in magazines and newspapers that have hit,

Tin City was mentioned in the New York Times once.

As a result, we're just getting more and more

random travelers coming through,

and beer, just like wine, is becoming kind of a destination.

So people will know they're going through an area

and they'll say, "Oh, I want to make sure I hit this, this

and this when I got through." And so it's fun to be on people's list now.

The people that are coming here

definitely are people that are intrigued and are interested

and wanting a new exciting place to come.

But they're yet, they're in tune with the wines and they already have their palettes,

they're looking for something new. A lot of the people are coming down here,

have been to Paso before, they've done Vineyard Drive,

they've been up in Adelaida, they've probably even gone out on the Eastside

out on 46 East, so they've already done

all the little secret wineries and vineyards

that are out in the country,

So, they're happy to come here and try out something new.

We get so many different people,

I've had people come in from New York,

I've had people come in from down the street in Atascadero.

I've had people come in who are, like,

literally 90 years old and, like, were sauced,

and, like, some fall asleep in their car

in the front of my driveway.

And then I've had like people who I ID'd

and they were 18, trying to drink,

So, I mean it's super fun because we have this wide demographic of people

and I think that the real common threat

is that they're young in the mind and they're looking for, like,

something that's really fun and that doesn't say, like,

doesn't make you sweat down your back when you walk into a tasting room

and you're, like, "Oh faux pas." Like, "I don't want to say the wrong thing."

Like there's no rules in Tin City, it's all about like fun,

and I think that's attractive to a wide demographic

so it's been pretty cool.

Any time you are not trying to improve

and change and do something different,

you're getting worse by default

'cause everyone else in the industry

is always trying to improve and change and tweak.

So, for our part, we're always trying some new yeasts,

trying some new to us or maybe just different,

very old techniques. We've been playing around

with the amount of whole cluster we do

or saving a little bit more of viognier

to co-ferment with different reds

that we might be bringing in.

As many things we do in life, we just get better with practice,

we get better with time,

we get better understanding our vineyard,

we get better understanding the practices

we use in the winery, the barrels we use,

whether we use indigenous yeast

or whether we use cultured yeast

and what works best for what varieties.

So, we're always striving for the very best

that we possible can produce at Caliza.

We're looking at future acquisitions of vineyards

and if we can grow into another one of the buildings here

that'd be fantastic, so

you know, it would be hard for me to predict a case count,

but, you know, if we doubled in size or tripled in size

in the near future, I wouldn't be surprised.

I think what's the goal for the 10 years coming

is continue to build the winery,

and finally we just purchased a vineyard,

just working on that, planting the way I want,

and doing all the things, you know, I started to learn

from my dad and doing it in my own vineyard.

Because you always say to other vineyards,

"Oh, can you do this, can you do this," sometimes is annoying for them,

because, you know, it's more money to spend. It's things like that.

So, what I think will be my end goal is to re-track every vine

like I always dreamt on my own, you know, home,

because I will have my home too.

I think eventually, our ultimate goal

is to buy a property, plant our own vineyard,

get back out to where I grew up,

back on Willow Creek Road hopefully,

and own a facility out there. But I think this...

may even stay our tasting room at that point you know,

maybe just do a production facility

and a vineyard out there.

Our future has no end in sight.

We just want to keep rolling.

And our new still is going to allow us to do that.

We're upping our production

from say 10 gallons of high proof spirits a day

to 80 because we can't keep it on the shelf.

You know, we have our brandies

in about 60 different small craft bars and restaurants throughout California now.

And the reality is we can't make enough brandy to be everywhere.

We can only make enough to be in the places we want to be.

But not over the top. We always want to be that craft distillery.

We always want to be the guys making quality over quantity

and, you know, I don't want people to go thirsty,

we have to make more.

Wine is everything.

It's food, it's the weather outside,

it's where the vineyards planted,

it's science, although I don't like the science

or the chemistry part, it is part of it.

It's definitely artistic,

it's a way that I can, like,

grab something

and, like, express myself through it

which is a huge, huge deal.

Most importantly, it brings people together

and it just pumps me up to make something

that I can, like put in a bottle, hand someone

and when they walk away I'm like, they're walking out with a piece of me.

When you're outside of your local town

and you see somebody with a shirt on or a hat, or...

They say, "Hey, I notice you have a Barrel House shirt on,

how often do you go to the place?"

Or, "Do you work there?", or you know.

It always sparks a conversation.

And usually somebody has a fond memory

of a time they visited the place.

And it's cool when people have that emotional connection,

like, "Oh, I met my brother-in-law,

we always go down there every Christmas eve."

Or, "We always do this or that." Or it's just a place

that's kind of near and dear to their heart, um.

That's when you know that it's actually working,

so that's what, you know, makes me tick

and makes it fun for me.

It's a lot more than just making wine, and...

I mean it's... There's a lot of thought.

It's a very difficult business,

I mean, you have to know stuff about agriculture,

and production and science and marketing

and selling and bookkeeping.

Between my wife and I,

and our assistant winemaker,

I mean, we literally do everything here,

but we were responsible for our own success.

Caliza, take one, mark.

- It's here now. - Okay. Well, I'm Aaron Jackson,

I'm the winemaker here at Aaron Wines and Acoria Vineyards,

two brands that I make wine for. Actually, that didn't sound right.

Cause I don't make wine for them, I own them.

He's just good people. So, yeah I got, he's awesome, yeah.

Definitely not going to say he's a douche on camera.

No just kidding. No, he's not, he's like the nicest guy ever.

So, the whole Tin City project started probably back in...

- Over here. -Oh yeah, that's right. You can cut that out, right?

- It's easy to have your eyes wander but I'll -Right.

- Remind you. Come back here. - Right.

Any stories about tasters?

People looking in to like that you can...

I mean we've had a lot of girls show their boobs at Wine Shine,

but I don't think that's appropriate for, you know.

And that wasn't really my thing, 'cause I'm married.

But you know, Patrick.

Okay, can I Snapchat you guys please?

- Yeah. - Yes please.

All right, Snapchat take one.

Snappy chatty.

Everybody, Snapchat, Tin City.

Drinking rosé.

So nothing gets wasted at Wine Shine, besides us.

I love the sound of that.

Okay. Stu!

- Stu. - Okay.

It's actually Stew.

But Americans can't say Stew.

- Stew? - Yeah.

- Stewart right? - Stewart.

But that "ch", it's not there.

- Americans just... - We turn it into a dang ooh.

"St, st", so it's not Stu, it's Stew.

- Stew, yeah? - And... Anyway.

It's like being called Cara and if your name's fucking Karen,

- is all I could say. Live with that. Anyway.

About the diversity of the purchase of wines.

- It's Mike English. - Oh is it really?

- Yeah. - -Oh cool, we heard all about him today.

- He's just... - I've never met him actually.

He's just rolling up into our interview.

- Dude, what's up, Mike? Get the hell out of here.

- Alright. - Don't want to be in my shoes, you know.

Living the nightmare, we're selling the dream.

You know, that's how it is.

Everyone's like, "Oh man, I'd love your job."

You want to work 70 hours a week,

you want to go muscle round all that, go for it.

And then I'm like what do you do? Brain surgeon, great!

Give me a scalpel, man, I'll go in there

and we'll switch jobs for a little bit.

What's Mike English like?

I've never met him.

He's a very good guy. He's bitchin', I would say that.

- He's a bitchin' guy. - Do you have any tricks

to how you pick your names?

Wait till the last minute.

No, I don't have any tricks.

I'm going to say I'm really bad at just trailing on

so, I'm assuming you can make it sound

like there's an actual conclusive remark in anything I say.

I get calls every week from somebody that's, you know,

got some brilliant idea and they live in Manhattan

and they want to release their first canned wine.

- Hey, quit it. - Oh shit.

- That's okay. - Did I just help with...

Shit.

- Yeah, you can. - Maybe something.

And I ended up living in the San Francisco Bay area

that's where I met my wife.

Oh, what was that?

What was that little noise?

- Sounds like our equipment. - -It sounds like a frog.

Sounds like a frog, it literally sounds like a frog.

I have no idea, I've never seen a frog in here.

I could tell a really gruesome story,

that door fell on my assistant winemaker

- three harvests ago and snapped his leg in half. - -Oh, my God!

And it came through his pants

and ambulance took him away.

Planning three acres of pinot noir, that was...

Uh oh, hang on.

Hey!

We're trying to make a video here!

I don't come to Tin City on my days off.

I don't, I'm sorry. I love Tin City but I... mm mm.

Mm mm. I'm not coming here on my day off. You kidding me!

Well, sometimes I wonder how he gets anything done

when he talks so much. But he's great at what he does.

Do you know you're in the frame right now?

Oh I'm sorry.

You see all these cameras pointing at you?

I'm just kidding.