- Welcome to Big Blend Radio Success Express Show, where we talk about business, leadership, and career development. - Hey everybody, you know we love our success in cider conversations and one of our favorite things in the world, as you know, besides books and music and plants and animals, is wine. Who can live without it? We can't. And so we're gonna have another winemaker conversation today with Dave Spector, Dave and his wife Sarah own and run Bell's Up Winery. They're based up in Oregon near Portland. Their wine is phenomenal. And so we thought, hey, you know what? It's time to do another success in cider because Dave, you kind of threw away one career for another, and that's a big leap because number one wineries are not cheap. It's, you've got big overhead, you moved, and then you're doing a whole new career. Like, this is a little crazy, but it's super cool. So welcome back, how are you? - I'm great, Lisa, thanks so much for having me on. And yeah, you're right, you know, as we always say, you have to be a little more than crazy to do what we do. And I think we just sort of decided we hit a point in our lives where you know what? If you're gonna make some changes, why don't you make all the changes and just kind of deal with them all at once? - Well, I think we deserve to be happy in life and we should be doing what makes us happy. And you know, we may not all become, you know, super millionaires, right? I mean, we can, that's cool. But it's about being happy because that's it. That's what it's about. It's not just the almighty dollar. Though we need to be sustainable and all that good stuff, right? - Sure, absolutely. - And in life, we wanna have a roof over our heads. We need to be able to go for vacation, but do we care about, you know, having our own private jet? No. - No. - You have to pay your bills, like you said. I mean, but at the same time, I think, you know, part of what we learn in life as we kind of move down the road for each of us is learn how we individually are wired. You know, what are the things that are important to us? What are the things that we need? And not things necessarily that society wants to try to convince us that we need. You know, more is not better. You know, I mean, obviously, we live in a country where just historically we're always taught, consume, consume, consume more and more and more. You know, when you're in a job, you know, how high can you rise? Instead of asking the question, what is it that is actually going to make me happy in the short term, in the long term? How can I be the best parent and husband and, you know, and citizen and just how do we strike that balance? That balance will be different for each person. Before I got into wine, I was a tax lawyer for 10 years. I spent-- - Dude, that's nuts, okay. Like, that's crazy and then that's nuts. - Go on saying, borderline insane. But it was the kind of thing where I was, you know, I never asked myself when I started doing it, was this something that I was actually going to enjoy? Or was it something that I was just good at? So I just kind of kept at it. And I'm from a time where, you know, now, as we sit in 2024, we're now kind of more used to having the conversations of, is what we do for a career meeting the balance of what we need just personally individually. Back in those days, we were just beginning to have that conversation. You know, I talk to my father all the time. And one of the things that we talk about is, you know, in his generation, you know, you didn't have those conversations. But at the same time, in his generation, you could leave the office at the end of the day, close your door and not have to take everything home with you. And as time and technology and the demands of our lives kicked in, you know, if your listeners remember when Blackberries were far more used than they are today, I mean, I was almost tethered to one of those things. And in fact, I ended up needing a thumb operation because I use the things sedarn often. And, you know, when I was back, back when I was an attorney, you know, what you see is that there are some people that that is built into their DNA and they love doing it. Whereas for me, I mean, I was good enough at it to where I could, you know, continue to advance in my career, but I was over time, just less and less happy doing what I was doing and really found that what was important to me was to create something that was tangible, something that would really, that would really make a difference in the lives of other people. And there were lots of-- - Oh, yes. And wine surely does. - Oh, absolutely. And there are a lot of ways to do that. And in our case, we took something that we were very passionate about in wine and just found a way to be able to share, you know, our love of it with others. And at the same time, be able to craft great wines and, you know, really make our nice life for us that way. - And it's challenging. I think that's also part of it. It's can't be just be, oh, I love wine. So I'm gonna make wine. It's about you have to be ready for the ultimate challenge, really, because it's challenging to even own a business, right? They always give you, oh, you've got your two years, but it's challenging to also work with nature and then also deal with the people side of it and the business part of it and the distribution of it. So it's a challenge and don't you think that sometimes we swear at challenges, right? We're all gonna have our words at moments. Anybody running a business if you don't have a moment of when you just wanna kick the door or something, then you're not really in it, right? - Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, with the wine industry in particular, there is definitely a romanticized version of what our industry is. Now, just to say at the beginning, I absolutely love what I do or I wouldn't be doing it. Number one, first and foremost. However, I think a lot of people believe that those of us in the wine business are all independently wealthy and sort of sit around with our pinkies extended and just sort of go through, taste through barrels and sip wine all day. And, you know, maybe that happens at the corporate level, but when you're a small producer like we are and we call ourselves micro-BT, 'cause I only make about 600, 700 cases per year, we're too small to even be boutique. We have no employees. I make the wine, I drive the tractor, I do the sales. My lovely wife, Sarah, does marketing and schedules appointments and sort of utility infielder for other things, but that's it. So we work our tails off and it starts in the vineyard with farming. We do have a crew that we contract with that helps us with the hand labor, but I'm responsible for running the crew. I'm responsible for the tractor work. We can't make great wine without busting our tails out in the summer heat or in the rain or just sort of whatever nature throws at us. And then once we get to harvest, now it's kind of the end of job one in the beginning of job two, where now we have to take all of that fruit, go through the processes and do a lot of very fine point detail work. You know, I think a lot of people think wine makes itself, but the reality is, you know, for what we do, even on a very, very small scale, it involves a lot of just physical work. And every year, you know, I'm about to turn 51 and the reality is every year, you can kind of feel a little few more aches and pains than you can the year before. So it is always, you know, but having said all of that, we wouldn't want to have it any other way because the benefits of what we get from it are being a small place, we get to establish wonderful relationships with our customer base. You know, I think in the wine business, you're only going to succeed if you're either really, really big and you go through distribution and you sort of show up in every supermarket and every restaurant or you're really, really small. And that's the path that we wanted to take. And when we talk to our customers, you know, it's the sort of relationship that we get to build and the joy that you get to see in their eyes when they come to visit and they try the new wines or they take our wines home and then they send us pictures of sharing the wines with family and friends, you know, whether it's sitting at dinner or, you know, just out by the campfire or whatever, just those little everyday moments. And the payoff for us becomes, you know, that knowing that your efforts, everything you worked were a small little part of that moment of joy for the people that you've connected with. So, you know, you have to be in this business for the right reasons. It's, as you said, it's not the pain, excuse me, not the way the fame and fortune. But that's not why we did it. We did it because we're passionate about the product. It's just one of the very few things I know of that just when you put something like that in front of a group of people, it just brings them together. You know, you just, it's just hard to be mad when you're drinking a good bottle of wine. - Well, and it's that conversation about it. And, you know, it's like, I had a friend once and him and his girlfriend at the time, we were having dinner and we were getting to this point of like, let's just sit down. She had made something, I remember it was, I actually remember the whole meal. It's like a whole new recipe she had made with couscous and artichoke hearts. And I'm like, actually, I haven't had artichoke hearts done this way and all this. I didn't know, you know, I came from the Bush and Africa. We didn't do that. But we didn't, we could grow them. But we were having this conversation about understanding where your food comes from, understanding thinking about while we're eating, we're like, I wonder where this came from? Who made the couscous? Who grew the artichokes and who had the wine? And so it was like, let's read the label, let's find out who they are. And you've got to think this was also pre-Google. So now we're able to have all these apps and everything that tells us everything, but back then we didn't. And it was kind of this reflective time and we were like, let's all make this concerted effort. I think we were all in our 20s at this time. And also completely naughty 20s, but we were growing up at this point and going, let's make this concerted effort amongst us all to think about who is making all of this, who's behind it, you know? And you shouldn't learn and learn about the agricultural movements in our world and the people who grow who you're out there like you're saying, no matter what the weather is at, they've got to go out there and deal with it, right? And it's like the history of agriculture is fascinating because it's the history of humans, right? - Oh, absolutely. And that all plays into its own stories. We're now at a point with our winery that we now almost everything that we make comes with fruit that we grow on our state vineyard. That was not always the case because when we bought our place back in 2012, there were no vines there. So back in the very early days, we had to buy all of the fruit that we used to produce our wines. And, you know, that people understood that, you know, they were looking forward to the estate vineyard coming online down the road. But in those days, we really focused on working with vineyards that were very much like us. Small vineyards, people that lived on the property and at a minimum drove their own tractors. And I wanted to do that for two reasons. One was I wanted to know that the people that were doing the farming actually had a personal interest in the quality of the grapes coming off their property. And when you have large corporate managed vineyards, it's really hit or miss. And frankly, you know, you don't really get a chance to establish partnerships with growers that are very, very large. But when you're small and you're taking, you know, and I may be buying, you know, in those days, let's say, you know, maybe half of the yields coming off of that vineyard, you really had an opportunity to work directly with that grower, to strategize, to talk about, you know, what should we be doing out here that's going to do nothing but increase the quality of the fruit that comes off of the vines so that we can ultimately share with our customers. The other thing that reason I wanted to do it was because I wanted to share those individual growers stories with the customers when they were here. You know, so much about wine is the stories, you know? And it's, and practically every step of the process is a story in and amongst itself, you know, whether it's the weather that's involved, whether it's, you know, what we went through, you know, the broken down tractors and all the things, you know, all the things we had to overcome, you know, but it's as with any farming, it's just how do you overcome the obstacles put in front of you to get something that is going to make a lot of people very, very happy in the end. So, you know, I've heard it's always relationships in the wine world and agriculture is you cannot run a farm and be successful on your own. You need to be friends with your so-called competition to help each other out and to even make a region become known. I know you're in Oregon, everybody knows Pino Noire but you do more than Pino, right? - We do, we do. - Yeah, you had a diverse if I do something different but those relationships that you're talking about, hey, oh my gosh, it's harvest time and suddenly the tractors in. I'm not working anymore. Who's got a tractor? Everybody gets on the phone, right? And starts helping each other and isn't that, like you're talking about those relationships, you want relationships with your customers who are drinking the wine but it goes further and beyond. I don't think the wine industry in this country would have made it to what it is today, nationally, if it wasn't for relationships and people helping each other. - I agree with that. From my understanding, I know our region, of course, very, very well but from what I hear, there are some areas that are far more commercialized than what we have here in Oregon. There it tends to be not quite as, not quite as mutually beneficial. And I guess that's just kind of the nature of corporate anything these days. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - But for us, there are stories when you come into this area and you go around to different winers, especially the smaller ones, you will hear stories upon stories of situations where it was, let's say it was a husband and wife team that came in and a couple of months before harvest, one of the spouse passed away unexpectedly. And now you're staring down harvest and it's coming whether you're ready or not. How many other wineries stepped up to say, hey, we'll make your wine this year. We'll provide barrels, we'll provide space, whatever it is you need. It's really been the way that the Oregon wine industry has developed as a region. We have nowadays, we have 800 wineries in the valley and that is a heck of a lot. But it also means that there's a great support network out there for people that, hey, we all at some point are going to run into situations where we need the graces of others to help us along. And knowing that you can count on that somewhere here in the valley is so, so important. - So the corporate side of things, when we look at this, if small businesses unite in their field, yes, there's competitiveness and that's important, it's healthy, right? When it's done in a healthy form. But it's those relationships that actually build an actual industry correctly have better standards and things like that. And by the way, I love for those watching, don't you think I'm a chameleon with this color blue popping in and out? I don't know what's going on, but see, just did it. But you're doing it on two sides, which I think is really fantastic. You're doing it with the relationship with your customers and the relationship with those that you work with, your vendors, your growers, everyone. But I mean, just now we just stopped the recording real quick because you had someone show up and wanna have the experience. And so you're building the experience and it's not just the wine, it's the experience of being there, the conversation, learning from each other. So that's, are you seeing people actually, I think I saw a post on one of your social media posts seeing people as they learn by sitting down with you as a wine maker, are they finding different likes in wine? Are they changing their palate by this kind of informative yet fun adventure? - I'm not sure so much that it's changing their palettes. I think it's discovering that a lot of the assumptions that they have been making about their palettes aren't necessarily true. I do see this all the time where, because a lot of people, you may come to a winery, but maybe you bought a whole bunch of wine just in a retail setting. So you come in with expectations about, let's say, what a white wine should or is supposed to be, right? And we have our own style and it's very distinctive and very, it's one of the things that sets us apart. And just to kind of give you an example, a lot of people think that white wine is either oaky buttery California chardonnay or sharp, acidic, just ripping, just very, very crisp, or something that is sweet, sugary sweet. And what I show is that you don't really need to be any of those things. You can create a fruity wine that has acidity, but it is still gentle and soft on the palate. So challenging those assumptions really opens the door. What I tend to find is that people that are red wine drinkers end up really liking my whites. - I love your whites. - Yes, this is-- - Not picky about white wine. - Yeah, it's like this is way different than what I was expecting. And I see the reverse too. My reds tend to be softer, more elegant. So when I get white wine drinkers that say, oh, you know, reds are too big for me. They just make me feel overly dry. Well, if you've been buying big heavy cabernets or big red blends, yeah, you would probably would feel that way. But then you see that when you're doing things small and crafted, you know, you start to realize that the world of wine is just much bigger than I think folks expect it to be. And so you do get all those pleasant surprises. I can't tell you how many people that I've gotten in here, we make a saara, we make a very soft saara. It's very pinoish in its feel. And how many people before I pour that wine for and say, oh, I don't like saara, I don't like saara. And it's like, trust me, trust me. And then they taste it and they look at me and their eyes are really big. And it's just that moment of discovery that they have to say, wow, I didn't think that a wine like this could be produced in that way. And so those are the moments I think that we really get to show folks that, you know, you don't need to be some ultra sophisticated wine person to enjoy wine experiences. You know, we see this all the time. How many folks will come in and say, yeah, I don't know all the sophisticated terms. And I say, you not only do you not need to know that sophisticated terms, it's probably better that you don't because you're going to be able to actually enjoy the wine the way it was intended to be enjoyed much better that way. - Right, you know, that's something I talked about with a distillery recently. Casey Jones, distillery out of Tennessee. And their history is like crazy, fascinating, right? And I talked to him about the distillery started doing, it's interesting breweries have taken off, right? And distilleries, you didn't see that many people go distillery hopping, right? Now that's starting to happen like in Kentucky, obviously in Tennessee. But I was talking to him, I said, you know, I think the brewery industry disrupted the wine industry because the wine industry at a certain era, I felt like you had to wear high heel shoes and get dressed up to the, it's like going to the play. Like you're going to go to the Met or something or you're not going just to your local theater. You are going, it was so almost high fluently, it was unapproachable would be the word. And I think now we've got a different era of winemakers and you're definitely in there where it's like, let's go have some fun. I don't know about that wine, but let's go taste it. Let's go learn and let's have an experience and that's what travelers want. Travelers, no matter what age group they're from, want to have an authentic experience that makes some kind of positive change in their life, period that I don't care who it is. And so I think you fit that, you know, perfectly. - Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it's so funny because you're right, wine for many years and here's the important thing, in this country got this reputation that it needed to be, you needed to be highbrow in order to enjoy it. Yet when you go to the birthplaces of fine wines over in France and Italy and Spain, what you see is wine is not a production. It is an everyday part of their lives. And the experiences that we always enjoyed the most were going into the little villages, you know, get out of the cities, go into the villages where these wines are produced. And what you're getting is just the local village table wine. Yeah, you get a carafe, there's no label, you get a few euros and your hardest decision is white or red, right? And the wines are without pomp and circumstance or fanfare and they are some of the best wines you will ever have because they're made in small quantities, they're never intended, I shouldn't say never, but they're rarely intended to leave the village that they're produced in. And you just, you just got a couple of glasses and you don't get the fancy wine glasses, you're getting little juice glasses and you're just sharing all of this and you're not psychoanalyzing the wines that we in this country are taught to do all the time. Oh, just say right. And it's everybody that gets involved in it, right? And that's the sort of feeling that we want folks to have and it just all gets back to this idea of connections and connectability. You know, I want to have real everyday human beings as my customers, you know? I mean, we talk about it all the time. You're not going to care if I wear high heels shoes because I can't do that anymore. I'm too much of a hiker in the woods. So like I'll fall down at the winery and you don't want that because you can't wait for that. It's whatever floats your boat as far as I'm concerned, but certainly for us, it is come as you are and it's better that way, you know, because when do we normally drink wine in this country? Just when do we consume it? You know, we're at work, we come home, we're tired. You know, we don't want to have some, you know, deep, you know, thought experiment. We want to be able to put the wine glass in the dishwasher. Yep. And I want to be able to pop the pork on something and just be able to X. And be barefoot. Well, exactly. So, you know, that's when people are here, it really shouldn't be any different, right? I mean, this should, well, okay, maybe you need to wear shoes, but whatever shoes you do, whatever shoes you wear are going to be perfectly fine. I promise to wear shoes. I mean, you know, this is about as nice as I dress, right? You know, I get my button down and my polo. And, you know, that's all we really need. Oh, but Dave, you aren't having a shirt that changes colors as we talk, so. I know. I need to get me one of those. We need to step up and, well, listen, this is important because, you know, there's this relationship you're building with your customers. They're sitting down drinking wine, changing their minds, discovering, not changing, but discovering like you're saying, ooh, something new. The discovery aspect to me is very crucial in life because that's what we're supposed to be doing. We're supposed to be learning new things, having epiphanies and discoveries. And ooh, look at this, how exciting. We're supposed to enjoy life. So that's why being in the right career of that suit to you is, and you can have multiple careers and enjoy all of them just as equal, right? Because we're allowed to, that's why we're the blend, you know, but because we like all these different things and we can't say, oh, we only talk about wine. Oh, we only talk about youth. You like music and wine together, right? We'll talk about that. But it is an art form. The culinary arts, winemaking, you keep saying the word crafting. You're crafting, it's small batch, it's caring. So it's a piece of art. Each bottle is a piece of art and it's temporary art, which makes it even more special. And to me, that's, it's heartbreaking too, because like you like a certain wine, you better savor that taste. It's about slowing down to enjoy that art. And you're allowed to go, I don't like this art. It doesn't work for me, it, you know, but it gave you a reaction. And art is supposed to give you a reaction. You think about it, you can create an opinion, we're allowed to be opinionated. This whole thing of no judgment and no opinions, nah, that's not true. We're allowed to create an, and have an opinion about what our tastes are, and then we can change it all up the next day or the next sip. We can. - Completely agree. I think the key always is, you know, when you, and this is true, I think of any art form, you know, when you, you know, when you taste a wine that doesn't hit your palate the right way, or when you go to a museum and you see a piece of art there, and it's just not jiving with you. - I've always said that the key is, can you still respect what was done to put into it? You know, I make 10 different wines for people that come in. And, you know, not every one of those wines is gonna hit everybody the same way, that's life. But what I, my intention is, can people walk out and say that whatever their favorites were, that they could tell that every one of the individual wines was really well made and that they respected and appreciated and admired the process and all that that went into it. As a producer, this is really the best we can do because then it's up to every individual's preferences and you just sort of see how that translates across the wines that you produce. But if you've done your job and just kind of left it up to, hey, we're just gonna put this out into the world and we're gonna get a lot of people that it's gonna be their jam and we're gonna get some people that's not gonna be their jam and that's okay. - Yeah, I mean, I know people click me off there. Like you've said, that worked too many times I'm clicking you off and that's okay too. You know, but here's the thing, it is about when the more experiences we have, it's a different layer to our lives. And I think wine and the experience you guys have created is a way that more people should look at doing just as part of, it's like, it's a holistic approach to creating wine and sharing it and that builds relationships with, which changes everything. That's like a secret ingredient is the relationship part, I think with what you're doing. So what's it feel like with these award things? Like, you know, it's award-winning wine and award-winning book, award-winning song. Like I have a love-hate relationship with the rock and roll Hall of Fame, a love-hate relationship with the Grammys. You know, why can't blues be televised at the same time as pop? I'm sorry, I think it's just as important, if not more, oopsie. So that's just my opinion. But with what you're doing with awards, wine makers go in, submit their wines. And then if you win the award, it's really amazing, right? Whether it's bronze, silver, gold, all those different point systems and all of that. But it's like you're competing against another grower, maybe their grapes did this that year. Like, what does it feel like to do that? And do you even want to? You know, so I'm in somewhat of a unique position on this, being as small as I am, because what I find is that those, the competitions that you're talking about, where they matter the most is ultimately providing marketing opportunities for wineries that sell through distribution. So sell in stores and supermarkets and restaurants and those kinds of things. You know, for your viewers that have, you know, that we all know what it's like. You walk into a wine shop or a grocery store and we look at a wall and there are thousands of bottles sitting up there that look exactly alike. And oh my Lord, how am I supposed to pick the wine that is gonna be the best for me? And one of the little ways that producers do that is you'll see what we call shelf tags, that little piece of paper that's taped right underneath the one bottle that has either the award information or a score in the 90s or something like that. Just some way to make that bottle stand out from the thousands that are around it. And there are a lot of people who make buying decisions based on, you know, hey, did this wine, you know, was this wine well rated? I've always kind of found those to be unhelpful because, you know, who is the one that is doing the judging on the wines to provide the rating? And are their standards similar to what you enjoy? You know, there are publications that have inherent biases. And I'm not saying that those are either good or bad, but the biases exist. And if your preference in your wines don't match those biases, then their scores are gonna be completely meaningless for you. Now I am lucky because I don't sell through distribution. The only thing that matters is when people are here, are they enjoying the wines? Are they to their tech, to each individual's tastes? While awards are, I'm sure, would be nice for stroking your ego, they don't really benefit me on the sales side. I mean, I suppose they might provide a lid with social media marketing, but it's unlikely that, look, if I, and I say this all the time, if I won every competition I ever entered and my customers didn't like the wines, they wouldn't buy the wines. I mean, it is far more important what their opinions are than the opinions of just a random channel. - That's a life lesson though, isn't that the truth? Because it's like, oh, they bought their way into that award, or, you know what I mean? That's where, you know, they used to say about women, oh, she slept her way up to the top. You know, that whole kind of, it's not authentic, right? - Right, exactly. - And that authenticity comes from what your customer is gonna tell the truth, or you're not gonna see the money come in, right? And it's like, they're either gonna say something, and we do have some loud mouths on social media, unfortunately, can we do it on the positive? You know, but listen, can we tell the Grammys to put the blues up front? I know you want classical up there more, right? And that's not that, come on. - I get it, and, you know, the other thing too, I realize is that, and I think bluegrass is more mainstream than classical is these days, but we understand that what we do is niche. You know, we are not everybody that is out there will value the experience we provide. We completely understand that. The benefit, though, of being our size is, I don't need to make everybody happy. I just need to know the right people over and over. - Well, I wanna go back to this point system, 'cause, you know, I know I'm terrible, I look at labels, I do. I like your labels, I mean, it's got music attached, I like the word bells up, it's already like telling me, it's cool, but I read the profile, right? And we had to go, it was earlier this year we were going somewhere, you know, we travel and pet sit and do all kinds of that kind of thing, and where we were going, they were like, "Oh, come over for dinner, we're gonna have this, this, this." And she told me what we were gonna eat, 'cause we have shellfish, allergies, and all kinds of stuff. So she told me, "Is this gonna be fine?" I'm like, "Oh yeah, so I knew what we were gonna have." And on the way I stopped at the store, I said, "Do you mind if I bring wine?" 'Cause I hate to bring wine and find out, like, you can't do that, you know? So I read the wine, I read the profile, read where it came from, where it was, you know, sourced Russian River, I think, as I recall, it was red wines, and I didn't go like, here's a more Vadre because that might be too heavy, did this middle-of-the-road kind of thing, right? But read the profile, would it go with the meal? It did, got two bottles of wine we get there, her and Nancy are finishing up a bottle of wine that she had purchased. So I brought the wines out, you know what she did, and I can say this 'cause I didn't enjoy the dinner as much. She had the audacity, or number one, I said, "Well, do you wanna taste them?" And she, she's like, "No, no, before we taste, we do this." She read the wine on an app, and went, and I looked at her like, "This is rude." Number one, to me, someone's bringing something to your table, you open it up and you taste it, and if you don't like it, you just go spit it in your bathroom or whatever. But she looked this up, and I remember going, and Nancy and I are looking at each other going, "Well, this is odd, like, you know, "I know that we're in a new era now, "and people are appified." And I thought, and she turned to me, and she goes, "Oh my gosh, your wine's higher, "rated, and the night, it was like whatever." And I got it on sale, so what? And she goes, "It's rated higher than ours." I said, "Well, have you tasted it? "Why don't we do the taste?" Then she tastes it, she goes, "Oh, it's so much better." And I'm like, "Why did you have to look it up "to see how you would appreciate it, "instead of just tasting it?" I don't understand, like, I read the profile, does it match the food, is it, whereas I'm not trying to be rude or take this negative, but I do feel that we're rating things according to apps and stuff, instead of just try it, have fun. Take that dirt road to the left, if you don't know where it is. You don't have to always look at the map. Come on, let's have some fun. I want that fun back, so I think you're doing that. - And the thing about the reviews is, I think kind of like any review system that we have these days, you really have to dig into the individual reviews and just kind of get a sense of the profile of the person doing the reviews. And again, it gets back to the question of, okay, well, that person may not have liked the wine, but does that person's tastes match up with yours? And it's nearly impossible to sort of figure that out. Then you talk about the bottle itself. Well, okay, with the labels, it's very difficult because you're only gonna get told the story on the label that the winery wants to tell you, right? So you're trying to make this decision based on their marketing department. And they may write it in such a way that it's not quite clear what's going on. One of the things that pieces of advice that I always give folks that are sort of breaking into enjoying wine is don't go to the large big box places, go to a small independently owned wine store because the people that own that store curated all the bottles that they sell. They know the characteristics of every wine in that shop. And if you can develop a relationship with those people to say, hey, here's taking your example. Hey, here's what we're having for dinner. What would be a good match with this? Kind of give it the general thoughts of the wines that I'm thinking about. What would be a good match for that? And inevitably, you will find that going down that road is going to make you so much happier in the long term because you're going to be talking and learning from a position of strength from people that have actually tasted the wine, right? And so you can make decisions based on people that have actual experience with the product. Are we back to relationships again? Yeah, because when folks are here, it's the same idea, right? I mean, it doesn't matter what other people think. You know, it may matter as to whether, you know, you make a decision to go to a certain winery in the first place. I suppose if you see enough negative reviews, that could be something. But at the same time, if it's just a matter of personal preference, you know, try it, enjoy it. You know, see what is out there. And as we always see, people are surprised inevitably by what they discover about, you know, themselves and about the world of wine. It's just much broader than a lot of people suspect it is. Now, for you just going in, all right, I'm going to make this life change of a career and purchase property. And I mean, this is a whole big deal. Then having the brainstormer come up with, okay, this is how we're going to work with our clientele. We're going to have them make appointments, come in, have this experience. You make these choices and then you have to run with it. Sometimes we all know it's in anything in life and not everything goes as smooth as we want, but most times it will, if you dedicate to it. How has it been for you making that decision, even with your family? 'Cause it changes everything for a family when one person goes, hey, I'm going to do this instead. So you kind of all have to be on board and understand like there's sacrifices and commitments, right, that go hand in hand. - There are. And those sacrifices have happened in a couple of ways. My lovely wife, as she always likes to say, she still has a full-time job. She is a freelance marketer and her business is very successful to the point where, particularly in the earliest years of the winery, could really help support the family while the winery was getting to the point where it could at the very least pay its own way. We're at a point with the winery where it can't cover all of the household expenses, but it can absolutely pitch in where needed. But to get to that point, Sarah needed to be able to step up and help and God love her for doing that. It also is a lifestyle issue. When we tend to take appointments, and they do happen, of course, during the week, but most of them are going to be on weekends. The times when I think folks normally think, oh, hey, this is our time to rest and chill. Well, for us, that's when we're going to be, and more so, me here, but doing tasting points. So you're going to give that up and make that. The trade-off that you make is that you get to live in an amazing place. You get to do something you're really passionate about. You get to meet a lot of people that really share that passion that we have. I mean, being our size and being by appointment, it does self-select in a lot of ways. Our ideal customers are people that love wine, but are not snobby about it, and it's not a matter of life and death. People that, as we've been talking about, want to have the new experiences that want to broaden their horizons, and want to just sit down and have a glass or two with a friend. And so we get to do that in a lot of ways, too. The winery becomes our social life in that way, because a lot of times, the customers that we get, because we get to be directly with them the whole time, they become friends. - That's awesome. See, I love that. That's like for us, too, the way our world works. And it's like, you know, half of our friends are bed and breakfast owners. It's the same thing. They're working their butts off. Everyone's checking in at three o'clock or midnight or something, but it's this relationship you build. And I think this is the biggest lesson that you've shared today, is it all comes down to relationships, whether it's your customers coming in, relationship dynamic within your family, relationship with your vendors. So it's all about cultivating that. Did you think that's how it was going to be when you first said, I'm going to go into wine because I like wine. Like even making that decision and then going, I'm really going to do it. And then it starts to happen. That's going to be wild. - I think that a lot of times, a lot of the decisions that you make lead to some natural consequences. If you decide as we did, that you're going to be a small winery, there are going to be some realities about how you're going to have to operate as a result of that. Because we knew that we were entering an area that is known for really high quality wines, almost across the board. So, the idea that you're going to come in and set up shop and say, "Well, my wines are great." Well, yeah, but your neighbors' wines are probably great too. And their neighbors' wines are great too. So, what are going to be the things that you will do to set your business apart? Well, if you're going to be a tiny micro producer the way we are, well, okay, what are the things that we can do to maximize our size and leverage that? Well, we're not going to throw the biggest, most lavish parties. We're not going to have a building that looks like the Taj Mahal. You know, we're not going to give you a song and dance and all that stuff. But what we're going to give you is great company, a great explanation of what went into the craft of each individual wine. And it really starts there, but it doesn't end there because, you know, once you sort of done that, I always say that when I meet a group for the first time, it's like going on a first date, right? Like, you're telling your background stories and you're telling a lot of stories. But once you've established that relationship and people come back, we tend to find that we spend almost no time talking about the wines. Because at some point, one, the wines have to speak for themselves. And then two, the relationship that you built then leads to, hey, what are your kids up to, you know? I mean, you talk about, oh my God, our lives and our craziness and all these little things that happen. The stuff that we talk to, you know, our friends about. And that is sort of how that develops. So no, I mean, I don't think it's possible to kind of see every little detail that's going to come from that. But I think it was certainly possible at the beginning to see that, you know, yes, I was not going to be spending my time driving around with wine distributors in other states. You know, we knew this was going to be all about, you know, us leading people through, you know, our world and kind of showing them what it is that we do. So, you know, from that perspective, you know, a lot of the things, the little details we were going to figure out as we went along. But I think the kind of main focus we had down very, very early on. - Well, let's talk about going into this new chapter that you guys did, going into the wine making and running the winery and going into a small business. You've got a background in music, you've got a background and a tax attorney, you know, you've lived in different places in the country we talked about before. We recorded in your background. So you've had different experiences. Do you think having all these experiences, every time you do something new in your life, you draw from the past and bring it to the future, what you want to bring in. So have those qualities from travel, from, and even traveling to taste wine in different countries, have all of that helped you today. Are you seeing your past help you now? - Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And the key is the experiences that you, the lessons that you draw from the experiences that you've had. You know, when we started to get into the wine business, you know, I was a lawyer for 10 years and you stopped being a lawyer and people look at you and say, oh, you know, don't you feel like you, you know, you threw away, you know, that your previous career? No, I mean, those lessons that I learned in that business, I apply every single day. You know, the fact is a winery is a business and it needs to be run like a business. Now, I mean, I know that for some winery owners, this is a pet fun vanity project for them and they don't necessarily care whether they make a living off of it. For us, this pays bills. So this has to be done in a sustainable way, in an intelligent way without it looking like that. You know what I mean? I mean, we've got to be able to provide the experiences that are such that people don't even really think about that as much as other than just kind of being in that moment. So there definitely are challenges there and, you know, we certainly recognize that. But, you know, also, you know, having been a musician, right? I mean, I was a French-born player for 20 years and that's the reason why the theme of our winery is centered around music. The French horn is our logo. All of our 10 wines are named for specific pieces of music or a composer, something that captures what that wine feels like. I'm big and when I'm talking about wine, I'm always talking about texture. I'm always talking about what you feel. I can't tell you what you taste. I can't tell you what you may smell and I don't want to. I mean, those are connections. - Yeah, that's your discovery. - Yeah, exactly. And that's going to be every individual's palette is different. Their experiences are going to be different. They bring all those things in with them. So I don't want to get in the way of those particular connections. But what I will do is talk about, you know, my winemaking always comes down to making wines that work with your palette, not fighting your palette. - Right. - And that can be in a lot of different ways, you know, but those are things that we share with everybody that comes in. But it's that feeling that the music ties into so well. You know, for lack of a better way to describe it, when I am tasting a wine, I am my brain hears it as much as it tastes it, right? So it's that same idea of feeling is dynamic. - Exactly, you hear a melody. Does the melody make sense? You know, you don't need to have, you don't need to be a professional musician. You don't need to be a performer to when you hear a passage. Yeah, that makes sense. There's balance there. It's telling a story. And that's where the tie in with the wine comes in so well, because we're essentially doing the same thing. Every wine is going to tell a story. And we can describe those in kind of musical ways. I mean, obviously we're not going to, you know, break down technical things. But that idea that, you know, it's just something that just will hit you, right? - It's an atmosphere. Yeah, it's a feeling it is. So do you have a playlist for the winery? - We do, we do. We have on our website, we have a Spotify playlist. And every one of the pieces that we have, or composers that we have named a wine in honor of is featured there. And then that's very helpful for when people take the wines home where, you know, you can actually do a, at home, you could do a wine and music pairing. - You never thought. - Yeah, totally. I mean, we're all taught to think of like wine and food, wine and food, and those things are nice. But of course, everybody will have their own idea of what fits the best there. If you really want to get behind and into the head of the person who's doing the crafting, I just think music is a much more direct way to accomplish that. - Do you listen to music when you're doing like tests and taste tests and all the, behind the scenes, like even driving things around and, you know, getting on the vineyard, do you listen to music all the time? - Oh, all the time. I mean, it's what makes my day go by. It's what helps me to absorb, you know, what is going on around me. You know, it sets a mood. It allows me to relax. You know, I have anxiety issues, as I think a lot of people do. And this is just kind of one of the ways that just helps me to provide some balance, some zen. And just kind of more than anything, just kind of allows me to be receptive to what the grapes or the wines are trying to tell me. - See, to me, you should be blasting music out into the vineyard. Not blasting in a negative way, but just like the music to me, the growth of a vine looks like music to me. If you, you know, did it like a time lapse and you put it with music, you can see what I'm talking about, right? - Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's a, there's a cycle. I mean, and that cycle, it is so, you know, when you're doing this and you start to see the agricultural side of it, that cycle just replays every single year, although it is always different every year. And that's the one thing, you know, especially where we are in the Willamette Valley, no two growing seasons are the same. And they tell different stories every time, which is, you know, helpful in a lot of ways when folks come in because it allows us to tell, you know, not just the how I crafted it part from, you know, taking 10% from barrel one, 5% from barrel two, so on and so forth. It's, well, a lot of those decisions I had to make because here were the weather patterns of that particular year. Sometimes we get years that are really hot. Sometimes we get years that are cooler, wetter dry, you know, all those factors that just go into what you get when you harvest. And that because of that, it will always be a slightly different story. But what I want folks to be able to notice is that the consistency of the storytelling, right? I mean, you always see what the intention is behind what we're trying to do. - It's the same as in music, right? You can learn from different musicians and emulate and even cover their music, but you still have to have your own signature sound, you know? So somebody knows, even if it's the same song, oh, that's so-and-so playing because of that specific sound. - And it's not, and it's not a, you know, especially for us, it's not just a cookie cutter sort of thing. I mean, one of the trends that we've seen in Oregon is that we've got sort of these, I guess, warehouses for lack of a better word where you've got one winemaker that makes wines for a lot of different people. You know, a lot of smaller producers do not physically make their own wine. So you've got, you know, somebody making wines, like I say, for 50, 60 people. And when you go to those wineries and you start to say, boy, these wines taste very, very similar to the last place I was at and then you turn around. Now, they may all be really good, but is it really telling a story that is distinctive to that particular winery? Or is it just telling, you know, the same story that you're getting in a place down the road? You know, what I, for better or worse, what you're getting in the glass is me and I don't make wine for anybody else. So, you know, what we are able to do is tell, you know, through my lenses, a very unique story that is gonna be interpreted different by everybody and that's okay. - Now in closing, if you could have a tasting with three people from the past or the present or the future or fictional, I don't care. Do you wanna hang out with them and maybe learn from them, you know, or see what they think about your wine? Who do you want? - Oh, goodness. You know, one of the things that I think about is just sort of when I grew up in the '80s and what our society was like then, I mean, it's never perfect, never perfect, versus what our society is now. - We had fun. - We had fun and things life did not feel, I mean, people had differences, of course, but it did not feel anywhere near as tooth and nail as it feels today. So, from my perspective, you know, the people that I would love to talk to are people that are unitors, people that can talk to a wide variety of folks and kind of how do you establish those connections? So, Martin Luther King, would it be on my list for that? Gandhi would be on my list for that. And the other person, and this might surprise folks, is Walt Disney. - Yeah. - Because the thing about Walt Disney, and you know, and a lot has been written about Disney and what he was like in personal, and yes, I mean, I get that, you know, there are definite downsides to Walt Disney on a personal level. But what that man accomplished was to be able to connect in a way that was so unique to billions of people in this world on a level that has not been seen before and I doubt will be seen since. And I want to get, I would love to get a sense of his thought creativity and thought process behind that. I think that would just be absolutely fascinating. - Is the creativity, I mean, he'd really dream, he's like, go for your dreams, you know? - He did, and then the other thing about Disney that I admire so much is he hired amazing people. You know, when you look at how that enterprise developed, and I'm talking about before the days when it was a publicly traded company, you know, way back when the Imagineers had so much of the power in the design and the implementation of things in the parks and the movies, he knew how to find and retain great people, which is an amazing skill. It's a skill that I wish more people had, because so often I think, you know, you have a business or you own something and you think you've got to make, do everything, you've got to have your hands in everything, rather than just say, hey, I recognize talent, I can hire that talent, and then I can let that talent do what I hired the talent to do and go do something else that's a better use of my time and my skill set. - It's huge. I know people in business where they stepped aside because they were just, it was time for them, they hadn't grown like they own the company and they weren't growing as they should, because in this is an interesting world. I mean, people can be in their 80s and open a business, which I think is great, right? - Absolutely. - But there's people who didn't progress with the times. Our industry sucked in regards to people not jumping on the bandwagon. I mean, we come from print and back in the day of old school typewriting. I mean, like type setting. I mean, we've gone from that to developing our own film to being digital, to podcasting, to all these things that changed and how many newspapers didn't change. - Right. - How many newspapers refused to even have a website back in the day? I mean, we were doing a lot of this pre-Google and it's like people look at us like, like, yeah, we are that old. But it's about that progression and it's so important as companies, and no matter what, if you can hire or work with people that can help you progress as things change and then even be ahead of the progression, which sometimes is really painful 'cause you're doing the dirty work. You know what I mean? There's a weird balance in that. In being the pioneer, pioneering is hard. You take the battles and then somebody could come up and just take everything you've done and skate off of your back, right? But there's a thing in your soul that's important. But I love that because I just think hire who's gonna be better and don't let yourself get in your own way. If you don't wanna progress in something and you're progressing in a different area, that's okay. Get on, I have a friend who, her company, she said, you know what, my staff are better than me. I'm gonna go do this over here. It's still my company. I still listen and all that, but she went and did something else. - That's the way to be. - And her company rocks and they're all happy. - And guarantee you it's a place people like to work because they're empowered and they recognize their skills and they're allowed to do what they were hired to do. I mean, whenever you hear about bad environments, it's always because people are being micromanaged and it doesn't become about, you know, what is best for the development of our company. It is what is best for my personal ego or my pocketbook or whatever it is. I've always kind of found that if you do the right things, those issues will inevitably take care of themselves. I mean, there's a reason why Disney is now the empire that it is, right? And I don't think it's whatever Walt intended, but in Walt's lifetime, he was plenty successful by following those strategies. - I agree, I agree. Well, it's been real fun chatting with you Dave. Anytime, I know we'll be doing more shows and you gotta come on our happy hour parties 'cause, you know, we like a good happy hour, don't you? - Anytime, happy hours, happy hours. Everybody, remember bellsupwinery.com, go check them out online and make that appointment when you go to Oregon and to Willamette Valley, but you also ship online. People can order online. - We do ship, yep. We ship all over the country. There are only two states I can't ship directly to. That's Utah and Kentucky, but any other state we can ship to, yeah, check us out. We have our list of our wines on the website, which you'll see, but also just reach out to us directly by email or by phone. One thing I'll say about our website is where it's a little bit different. It is specifically designed not to do point and click ordering. For the exact same reason that we've talked about on the rest of it, we want this to be more personal. So email us, call us if you'd like to place an order 'cause we wanna have a conversation with you. We wanna get to know you and figure out, you know, hey, what are gonna be the best wines that we make that are gonna be a match for what you like? And we don't wanna sell you things that you're not gonna want. - Because it's different too. Isn't it a lot of people that have come to you and then maybe they live outside the country and outside the state or region? It's not like you just start buying wine online and hoping, right? - That's certainly most of our business is what you've described. But you know, we will get situations where, you know, in particular, one of the things that's happened is we've gotten, because we have the theme, the music theme, we've gotten a lot of symphony musicians that may not have come to visit us, but because they love the theme so much, they've bought wine and tried it for the first time just by shipping it. - And gifts, because it's a good theme. Yeah, it's like, hey, you know, and Oregon Wine Month has got to be, isn't that May, Oregon Wine Month is in May. So everybody start planning now, start planning. But you know, every day is an Oregon Wine Day. You guys have awesome wine and it's been a pleasure even being in Willamette Valley. We'll be back in your neck of the woods next year. - Excellent. - But not during your snow season when we're leaving at that point. - So we'll see you. We will actually get to see you both. - Well, we will look forward to hosting you. - We can't wait, we can't wait. Well, everyone, again, bellsuplinery.com. They're up in the Willamette Valley, very close to Portland if you're flying into Portland, close to Seattle even in, you know, it's not that huge of a state. Well, it's big, but it's not, you know, it's doable. You can, if you go to Oregon, you must go there and report back. Thanks so much, Dave, and say hi to Sarah for us. - We'll do, Lisa. Thanks so much for having me. - Thank you for listening to Big Blend Radio Success Express Show. This show is brought to you by Big Blend Magazines. You can keep up with us at www.figblendradio.com and check out our magazines at www.blendradiontv.com. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (gentle music)
