Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Jenna, I work in the Communications Department. Hey, I'm Pat, I work in the Spirits Department. I'm Roger, I work in beer. I'm Chris, I do wine. And today we've got with us a very special guest from Bedrock Wine Company. It's Chris Cottrell. Thanks for having me. Thanks for joining. You guys have a great shop and have been incredible supportive not just of our wines, but our friends wines as well. So it's an honor to be on. Sure. We're really happy to have you. We love projects like yours that seek out excellent vineyards all over California. We think it's really interesting, so we're really glad to have you. So how about you give us just a little bit of background on Bedrock and how you got involved and all of that. Sure. Yeah, I can give a quick two-minute origin story. I guess it goes back with Morgan. I mean, Morgan, my business partner, grew up in wine. His dad founded Ravenswood Winery and literally Morgan grew up doing punchdowns and seeing walking vineyards and he made his first wine when he was five. Very different background than my childhood which I grew up in New York, the city and around the city and happened to get a college job when I was 18. Going to college and broke at a wine store in the Upper East Side. I was just hired as a delivery person and stock person. Knew nothing about wine. Outside of my great-grandmother made some in the Bronx back in the day. Well, it's a great way to get a wine education while being paid. Yeah. Retail is very underrated in learning about wine and getting to taste wine and learn the business of wine. You make a lot of connections and that certainly, it started at this wine store called Pet Wines, which is no longer in business. But anyways, I got a job there at 18 and was stocking shelves. Luckily, they had a very European sense of the drinking age at the time, which is very New York, I feel. Nice. I was able to taste and even take bottles home. There's this other guy working there at the time who grew up in wine business and that was Morgan. He was in grad school. He's five years older than me. We just became friends working at this wine shop. When I met Morgan, he was planning on becoming a history professor. He was studying American Studies at Columbia, and I was planning on becoming a lawyer. Fast forward to 2007, 2008. Morgan decided he didn't want to be a history professor anymore, and started Bedrock as a one-man show in a converted chicken coop, literally. Then I got a job when I was 19 at a wine store called Crush Wine and Spirits, which had just opened up, which is still, I consider those guys family. I basically, along with a guy named Ian McFadden, started the fine and rare wine department there. That set off my path in fine and rare, and then fast forward to 2012, where I was kind of an unofficial advisor, partner, just a good friend to Morgan of helping him sort of think about his business. Crush was the first ever to write an email about Bedrock, a blast email. By 2012, 2013, both Morgan and I were kind of searching for more, and Morgan had already established a pretty darn successful winery by 2012. In 2013, I ran away from New York to make wine with my best friend, and we've been business partners and partners in crime ever since. Yeah, that was a pretty fortuitous meeting at the wine store, I guess, changed your life quite a bit. The legend has it is that Maddie, after she met me at that store when I was 18, said to Morgan, I think the two of you are going to have a long and potentially business relationship going forward, which is just like mother's intuitions are crazy. That's really cool. That's a great story. The retailer's dream, honestly, not working retail and working in wine or spirits production. You know, the grass is always greener. I sometimes miss the days of just hanging out in the store and just having people walk in and not have to talk about only my wines. You're welcome to come here anytime and stand around and tell everybody that we don't have any Blanton's. What wine are we starting with? So tell us a little bit about the old vine. This comes from multiple vineyard sites, all old vine. And I guess it's a good point to talk about our mission statement at Bedrock, which sounds very, I don't know, I hate even though I just said that mission statement, it sounds too formal, but we are truly a mission-driven winery. And our mission is to make delicious, age-worthy wines and on the higher ends, the wines of place that show terroir as well as any wines in the world, in our opinion. But I think if you ask the team and Morgan and I, what's the wine we are most proud of? It's the old wine Zinfandel because it makes up, it's our largest production wine, but it also is a wine that we put the most work into when it comes to sculpting it and crafting it because it's the wine that the most people are going to experience for our winery. I mean, we call it our business card winery, wine because it's the wine that gets poured by the glass. It's the wine that's case stacked. It's the wine that when the neighbors come over on a Tuesday, you're like, I'm just going to open a bottle of old wine. It's not meant to be on this pedestal or pretentious. It's meant to just showcase how special these old vine, historic vineyards that we work with that are mostly based around Zinfandel that we were lucky to have in California. Also, old wine is the first two words on the label, but then Zinfandel is the third. From Morgan and I's perspective over the last, call it 30 plus years, a reputation has been built around Zinfandel in the market from producers making this style of wine of Zinfandel being 16.5 percent alcohol loaded with new oak and just big fruit alcoholic bombs. The truth of the matter is that's not the characteristics of Zinfandel, that's the characteristics of how people choose to farm it and choose to make it. And when you actually pick Zinfandel at saner, what I consider saner sugar levels, more reasonable sugar levels, I guess would be the better way to put it. Zinfandel can have brightness and acidity and freshness. It'll still have the California sunshine in it, which we love because we're making wine in California and it's sunny and 75 degrees outside right now, but also still have balance and be a food wine. That's our goal with the old vines in Vindel is to continue to honor the old vines that we work with, but make a wine that is a little bit brighter and fresher in style. Yeah, absolutely. It's so often the case that people sacrifice freshness for power when it comes to Xan and you get a raisination going on on the vine and some dried fruit flavors, and just almost a port-like experience out of some of them. Whereas Xanfandel can, as you say, produce these beautiful aromatic wines. I see your mission as a continuation of Joel's mission at Ravenswood. These are the heroes who are saving these field-blended old vines from extinction, and that has to be lauded. Anyway, let's get into this wine. I'll add to it just some quick tech details about the wine. We farm the majority of the vineyards that go into this wine, which we're really proud of. I hate the term estate, I just never really like the term, but we farm either directly or indirectly most of the fruit that goes into this wine. Average vine age is 80 years old. When we say old vine, we mean old vine. It's an unregulated term. There is other varieties in this wine. It's only probably 80 to 85 percent Zinfandel because all these old vine vineyards have some Petite Syrah mixed in, have some Alicante Boucher or Carrignon or Matarro or Grenache. Even when you make a varietal Zinfandel wine from truly old vine vineyards, it's probably not all Zinfandel out there. Yeah, for sure. I mean, you just mentioned some of the regular cast of characters. Is there a vine that you are most surprised to find growing somewhere? Like just one that blew your mind, like why is this here? I mean, so Morgan is a founding member and is on the Board of Historic Vineyard Society, which is a non-profit organization. That's whole goal is to find out all these old vine vineyards are and what's in them. I believe we're up to over 60 varieties. Wow. That's interesting. Yeah. There's a couple like Old Hill Ranch, which we work with just up the road from our vineyard. We've run genetics on this vine. There's no DNA match. No DNA match and it has spots on it. Yeah. We've found a whole bunch of cool nerdy stuff out in these old vine vineyards. When you're talking about these older vines, these are still things that were propagated just from the progenitors of the wine industry. I mean, none of this is like native stuff, right? It's just some of the very first wine making in California. Yeah. Real quick, the history of California viticulture. You go back to the 1820s down south, 1850s up north in Napa and Sonoma. Basically, everything was own-rooted, meaning that they brought in cuttings from various places. Europeans brought cuttings from various places in Europe or even South America and then they stuck the vines in the ground. Then they started growing grapes and the most popular grape before 1880, 1890 was a grape called Mission. As the gold rush went up, vines got planted more and more, population grew in California. Then something called Phylloxera hit, which pretty much wiped out all the vines. Then you started grafting the European varieties onto the American rootstocks because the American rootstocks were resistant to Phylloxera. But it was still mostly European varieties being grafted on top of the American rootstock. What we're talking about is vines planted in the 1880s through prohibition, frankly, because grape plantings actually expanded through prohibition. Basically, the oldest vines that we see in California are from those post Phylloxera period of the 1880s, 1890s. There's one vineyard I know of left called Diva Ranch, that actually has legit 1860s vines. You not only are using these ancient vines, but you have vineyards that are un-grafted on their own rootstock. Yeah, we'll have the Evangelos, which is because Phylloxera can't live in sand. They're actually incredibly rare, not just in California, but in the world. They are un-grafted 130-year-old vines. Yeah, that's amazing. Newbie question, how long can a vine realistically survive and produce a usable yield for wine making? Climate and disease pressure around that vine are a big factor as is variety. For example, deer love Petitsera. They love to eat Petitsera for some reason. Those vines get damaged a lot more. Whereas Karen Yonan-Zinn and Morvedre in California clearly thrive for a 100 plus years. Yields do generally go down as vines age, so you naturally get more balanced and concentrated fruit without having to do much of a green harvest anymore. You can totally personify with people that you may get a little bit more curmudgeonly as you get older, but if in the good cases, you're wiser. That's how I look at these old vineyards. We've deviated from the wine once again. Yeah, delightful. It's very elegant, aromatic, and it's very light on the palate for Zinfandel, a very elegant expression. I like it a lot. What do you guys think? It still has density to it. It's not like we're lacking in tannin or fruit or like, there's still weight to that wine, and frankly, for that wine, whatever you guys are charging for it, like 35, 30 bucks for it, you can age that wine for 10 years, no problem. It's kind of incredible even at, not to pat ourselves on the back, but we've opened going back to the first Vintage of 2009, and they're still drinking beautifully and aren't even close to being done with their drinking windows. Sure. I love that it's not over the top with the alcohol like you alluded to earlier, so many Zinfanelles are now. This is just a beautifully balanced, I think elegant is a great word for it, Chris Wine. Really gorgeous wine. And I think that's why we have emphasized how light it is because you're correct, this wine has great tannin structure. This is not a pinot by any means in weight, but compared to these overly concentrated and heavy Zinfanelles that we're so used to lately in the market, this is light in comparison and very enjoyable. We only put our blood, sweat, and tears into it, so no big deal. What's the oak treatment like on this? Yeah, because we want it to be a little bit friendlier and open and certainly crackable when it's young, there's probably only 10 to 15 percent new oak on that. The only new oak countries we get from are a little bit from Austria and then France, so we don't use any American oak just because it's just not our style. Yeah. Another thing that is very common in California is Infandel is new American oak, which really is pronounced in a lot of flavor profiles. Yours is so restrained. I mean, the oak is not even a consideration when you're drinking it. It obviously was great for the aging of the wine because this is so open and friendly already. You get that breathing through the barrels, but flavor influences is very minimal. Yeah. Oak is just salt and pepper to us. Certain dishes, you want a little bit more salt. Other dishes, you actually want to hold back on the salt. It's also to taste. We use oak to our taste like we do salt and pepper. Sure. Well, I think you really are doing something smart here by being very restrained. Morgan is the oak guru. That guy, he has a beautiful mind with oak. I just wanted to chime in real quick as again, this is the mainly beer drinker here. Beer drinking and weird fortified wines like sherry and Madeira. But the aroma on this is incredible. As much as I enjoy drinking it, I just keep smelling the glass just to appreciate the complexity. Again, I think it's really interesting when things are so integrated that you can't just immediately pick out blackberry or plum. It's a really nice combination of fruit, maybe with almost an elderberry element that's the most predominant to me. But wow, really nice, very enjoyable. I mean, I love beer too. I can't nerd out on it like I can on wine just because I don't have the bandwidth in my brain to nerd out on that many things. But as a beer drinker, you saying that, you clearly know how to taste because we are definitely very aromatically focused as wine makers. We focus a lot on getting really high-toned or expressive aromatics out of our wines. You may be a beer drinker, but you gave me the best compliment I got all week on my wines. Nice. Thank you. You guys employ some very old school techniques like native fermentation, natural malolactic, and some whole cluster fermentation. I think that plays a role in making these wines a little lifted and more aromatic. What do you think about that? I think also a lot of times wineries don't give enough credit to the farming, because I really do think that a lot of what we're able to do in the cellar starts in the vineyard, which again, another totally overused saying, but you can make really I totally can get behind this approach. I think dogma rarely leads to the best end product, and just knowing where your grapes and your wine are headed, and what you need to do to shepherd them to the perfect completion is a great idea. I mean, sulfur levels can vary whether you want to pitch a yeast in a stuck fermentation. If you didn't have those things in your back pocket, what are you going to do? I think you got it right. Dogma is dangerous, and we really try to exist in the middle. Perfect. Well, I'm ready for another glass, so. Yeah, let's move on. Who's the next wine we're moving on to? Evangelo. My heart and soul. Talk about a crazy old vine vineyard and an oddball location. Yeah, I mean, so we started working with Evangelo Vineyard, which is in Contra Costa County, which is east of Oakland, it's East Bay. This is not romantic wine country. This is mostly, you know, it's in the city of Antioch, which is a city of 100,000 people. And we started working with the vineyard in 2011 from its previous owner, Frank Evangelo, who the vineyard is named after. And then we purchased the vineyard in 2017 from Frank. The vines were planted in the 1890s, like mentioned earlier, Chris mentioned earlier, their own rooted or un-grafted vines, so no America rootstock. It's a field blend of Zinfandel, Morbedra, or as we call it in America, Matarro and Caragnan mostly, but there is a little bit of Palomino out there. There's a little bit of Alicante Boucher, a few other things. And the coolest part about this vineyard is that they're literally planted on 40-foot banks of beach sand. Just everyone Google Evangelo Vineyard, E-V-A-N-G-E-L-H-O, listening, and look at the Google images, and you'll see these pure beach sand soils. Depending on the angle of the image, it'll either look very beautiful at sunrise or you'll see a giant power plant next to this vineyard. Across the street is the Riverview Motel, which has no view of the river. Yeah. We call it postmodern preservation, right? because it's this sort of little buffer to sort of this industrial sprawling home, sort of very economically heavy from a developer's standpoint area, where the land is worth much more to developing than it is to agriculture. And we're one of the last people out there, along with a couple other local families that have been out there for generations, that are kind of holding on to this agricultural past. And this vineyard, when I showed pictures to like, I showed a picture to Roberto Quintero when he was tasting the wine with me, to totally name drop there. And he was just like, look at the sand. These vines are not just own-rooted vines on sandy soils that are 130 years old, aren't just rare in California, they're rare in the world. I mean, you see them in Spain and parts of France. But in general, this is like... Yeah, Armagnac. The Armagnac, yeah, exactly. Which obviously, not known for its wine, but known for its booze. But it's just an incredibly special vineyard that has this incredible wind that sweeps through there. So the wines always stay very pretty and elegant, which is a term I'm going to use 30 more times today. But it has a very low pH because of the sandy soil. So if you think of chateaureas and chateauneuf-du-pape, which is always the more elegant chateauneuf-du-pape, sandy soils. Here we have those sandy soils along with these strong winds that just produce such fine tannins on the wine. We treat this wine like old school chateauneuf-du-pape, so it's mostly done in large format, neutral foudres or barrels. It's just one of the most incredible places in the world. I'm just so lucky that we were able to keep it in the ground, and continue Frank's legacy. What are the grapes in this blend here? So it's by vine. So whenever we talk about a heritage wine, it means that it's a non-varietal, labelable wine. So everything's going to be below 75 percent threshold. But we pick it together block by block. So by vine, it's about 60 percent Zin, about 35 percent Morved, and then about 5 percent Karen Yon slash other stuff. I was stalking your website earlier, and you have just a plethora, like a mountain of information on that thing. So I just felt the need to plug it because if anyone's looking for more information on any of these wines or vineyards, you guys have just books of information on there, which is incredible. I call Morgan the Hamilton of wine because he writes about vineyards like he's running out of time. Well, what about this wine? What do you guys think? It's delicious. It's awesome. If all wine podcasts had wine this delicious, I'd be more excited to participate. I'll put it that way. He's blushing. I don't know what to say about it really. I mean, it's just such a different approach to wine than we normally talk to people. I mean, we talk to a lot of wine makers and producers and marketing slags and everybody talks about just whatever, oh, this is the grape and this is the vineyard and it's the same stuff over and over and they have this. These are kind of like history in a bottle here with these wines and it's a refreshing change of pace to a lot of wine we always talk about. Agreed. Thank you. This wine again is beautifully structured. I mean, there's plenty of very fine tannins in this. It will age beautifully and it has great concentration but also it's live and lively and dances across the palate. Again, not heavy, just beautiful, gorgeous wine. Very bright with a nice silky finish. Indeed. But to Pat's point, I watch a lot of top chef and a lot of the chefs talk about how you can taste in the food when someone's having a bad day and when someone puts love into their cooking. I feel like in these wines, you can taste the care that went into this and the enthusiasm and the love for what you guys are doing and the craft that goes into it, which is really special. How does this one age versus the Zinfandel, that older vines, Zinfandel that we tried first? Yeah. Evangel will be a longer age than the old vine for my taste. I really think that Evangel, old vine off the delivery truck, pull a cork and it's going to be good. Evangel is a single vineyard wine, so we're not building it to be also really drinkable when it's young. We're building it to make the best wine that we think we can make to express this vineyard. I honestly think that Evangel really benefits for at least three to four years of cellar aging. If you're going to drink it before then, make your morning coffee and open the bottle and then have it at dinner. because air really helps really all of our wines across the board. But particularly, aromatically on Evangel, the aromatics open up after a really long decan or a really long slow-o. What are we selling this for? Do we have this one? Yeah, $39.99. 40 bucks for this? 40? That's it? That's ridiculous. These wines represent serious value. For $40, the elegance and structure and just thoughtful wine making and agriculture that goes into these wines is purely amazing at $40 a bottle. Both wines so far from 2020, very young, and it was not the easiest vintage. Of course, in Contra Costa County, I don't think there are any fires going on, but you had fires that affected it. It was hot, dry. Can you tell us something about how that conditions affected these wines because they taste beautiful? Well, going back to talking about a bad chef, like you know when a chef is in a bad mood by eating his food, like that's part of the reason why I think I've never been prouder of a vintage that the team and us have gotten through, because there also Oh, that. Yeah. That I think all did a number on us. Some people thrived, I heard, but it was pretty tough just not being able to have the lunches that we normally would have with the interns, and that sort of stuff. So it was the hardest vintage, I think, of all of our lives. And it's going to be a vintage that, you know, in 30, 40 years, we're going to tell the grandkids about and be able to open the wines that we made from that vintage and have a lot of sense of pride in what not just Morgan and I got through, but everyone that was in the Bedrock Village got through. And yeah, so you had pandemic, you had, and then you had wildfires, which, you know, causes this thing called smoke taint. And there was a lot of uncertainty about, and there still is a lot of uncertainty about how smoke taint affects wines. And we spent a lot of money and a lot of time and research into literally doing what I consider groundbreaking research on smoke taint. And we learned a lot of things. One of them was that proximity to fire matters, that the closer you are to fire, the quicker you get smoke tainted. And if you're far enough away from the fire, the smoke that's in the air doesn't taint the grapes. And we've gone through this in a very scientific method. I don't want to compare it to 1945 or 1984, 45 in bordeaux or 84 in Lebanon, which is the Rato-Moussar, because they were literally going through a war. But just one step below that, going through a global pandemic, plus the world burning around you, it's going to be a vintage that we feel a lot of pride about for many years. Justifiably so, in my opinion, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. The vintage turned out to make a lot of great wines. Yes, it's a warmer vintage. It's actually got some pretty serious structure though in the vintage, so it's a warmer high structure vintage. I think that the wines are actually going to age really well, but they also have some generosity to fruit that if you give them a decant, you can drink them on the earlier side too. Yeah, for sure. Maybe an effect of this is also the acidities are not screaming high, but they're certainly in good balance. This might be a very massive topic, so if it is, that's fine. But for the layman in a very succinct way, can you talk about the significance of doing non-irrigative farming versus alternative? Totally. Dry farming is a beautiful thing when you could pull it off. In California, it's tougher to pull off than in France because we just get less water here throughout the year, and we've been going through a lot of droughts, which makes dry farming harder. But if you're going to talk about sustainability in farming, water has to be part of that conversation. When it comes to biodynamics and organics, you can water as much as you want. And we also find that not only is there an environmental sort of play to it and doing better for the communities that we farm in, but also there's something you get with, and you could say lightly irrigated vines too, right? Like if you're only watering two or three or four times a year, that's very different than watering every seven to 10 days, which a lot of vineyards do. But when you are lightly irrigated or dry farmed, we find we get better intensity, better denseness of fruit and character in the grapes at lower sugar. So we don't have to wait for the grapes to get as ripe to get as much intensity of flavor. And so therefore we can pick earlier, which means that's part of the reason we're able to get these brighter, more elegant wines while still having good center palate density of fruit, is we find that generally speaking, lightly to dry farmed What's our next wine? We're moving into the Schmeidt Road. So I can tell a little quick story, because Morgan and I own the vineyard that makes up the majority of this wine. It was the first vineyard that we bought together. And so we were out in Lodi, so farm country. This is, you know, real farm country, Central Valley stuff and San Joaquin Valley. And we were working with, we still work with Tegan Pasalacua, who's the winemaker at Turley and Sandlands, his own personal vineyard called Kershaman. And we were checking on that vineyard in 2014. And the vineyard that's literally across Schmid Road, which is really just like a dirt path, was for sale. And we're like, oh, old vineyard for sale, planted same era. This was planted around 1915. And we're walking that vineyard and a pickup truck pulls up and yells at us. And, you know, again, this is, this is a gun rack country. So we put our hands up and go, hey, no, not trespassing. Just two, two nerdy wine makers from, from Sonoma. Turns out the guy said he put an offer on the property and he was planning on ripping it up to plant it to Walnuts. Well, that's going backwards, isn't it? Walnuts is a good cash crop though. Right. So we ended up outbidding him and bought it like four days later. And we thought we would have a bounty on our heads out there with this guy. But turns out, luckily, he just owned the house next door and didn't want someone to build a house on it. So he was like, if you're not building a house on it, like, good for you guys, farm the vineyard. And so we, that vineyard was a mess and we literally had to restore it. Like, you know, you'd restore a Lina and Arnold da Vinci. You know, we put all of our effort and money and expertise into bringing this vineyard from very conventionally farmed, chemically farmed to now, you know, getting it to organics and really revitalizing the soil. And again, it's one of those things with even after two years of farming that vineyard in a more thoughtful, organic focused way. The vines have started producing beautiful wine. So basically, this wine is about 80% our vineyard cattouches with a little bit of Teegans Vineyard Kirschman Vineyard into it, which if it was in like bordeaux, this would all be considered one vineyard. But there is a road that divides them. And this is in the Macalmy River section of Lodi. So a very cool section of Lodi. It's basically in the Oxbow of the Macalmy River. So that gives it really cool breezes. So even though people think Lodi is really hot in this section of Lodi, it's actually cooler than a lot of Napa County. So I think the fruit is definitely more phlegm. It's mostly Zinfandel. It's about 97% Zinfandel. There's a few Carronone vines and other vines mixed out there. But I think you get more of the exuberant Zinfandel fruit on this wine compared to the Avangelo. And I think this is, if you're talking about aging potential, I think Schmid is definitely like, drink it on the more early side, meaning like in five to seven to maybe ten years, whereas Avangelo with the Mataro and Carronone in it, I think is a This is such an awesome wine and I think it's very obviously, like you had mentioned, like brighter in style, but it's also got this like caramelized fruit note to it. Like when I first sipped it, I know I'm being the noob here, but like when I first sipped it, it was almost like it had a sweetness to it that the others were lacking, or maybe it was just perceived that way on my palate because of the more delicate hand with the tannin, I guess. But this is just a delightful, friendly wine. Even a non-serious, an infinite ordinary girl picked this up and find a lot to like. There's such a nice juicy mouthwatering acidity at the end that just makes you want more of it as well. It draws you back into the glass for another sip. I totally agree. I mentioned moderate acidities earlier, but this one has the, I would guess, the lowest pH so far. It's much brighter and focused. It has almost a tangerine or citrus-like element to it, and then bright red fruits, cranberry, cherry, and then some herbaceous things too, and a real sense of floral sense in the mouth. It's quite nice. So much for me is always the aromatics of everything, especially I feel like beer now is all about aromatics since everything is IPAs and everything is dry hopping. So I'm always really trying to evaluate aromatics. Again, I think what's always exciting to me, maybe because in the beer world right now, it's very easily identifiable like I'm playing mad libs with tropical fruits, that this is so integrated that I can't just immediately pinpoint like, oh, it's a name off a bunch of things. The aroma here has almost like an old, it's almost like a old wood antique shop. It's just a fascinating aroma to me, besides that obviously, there's fruit there. But again, just a joy to smell the complexity to this aroma is just really contemplative, I guess. Yeah, I think there are some real savory notes like that, like leather and things like that in here too, that's just adding to the complexity. Leather, pipe tobacco, very interesting. I love the way old antique shop smells, so I'm vibing on that. Thankfully. I just wanted to go back and touch on the restoration of the vineyard because this isn't the first one you guys have done. This is something you guys do kind of do regularly or somewhat regularly, correct? Yeah. Whenever we see an old line vineyard that, particularly whenever Morgan sees an old line vineyard that needs help farming, he has a hard time saying no. So we've obviously purchased a couple of vineyards and his family owns Bedrock Vineyard together. That's, I would say, our first real restoration project that started with Joel in 2004, then he passed the baton to Morgan in 2007, 2008 when Bedrock was officially formed. But yeah, we also do long-term leases. We will lease a vineyard from an owner of the vineyard for 10, 20, even 30 years, which basically allows us to invest in that vineyard in its farming, but be guaranteed the fruit for enough time where we can recoup all this, which can be quite expensive upfront cost of restoring that vineyard. So yeah, when it comes to restoring or rehabbing vineyards, each vineyard is a little different, right? Some vineyards have one problem, another vineyard has another problem. But now at this point, having done it for so long, and the expertise that we have from Morgan, and Jake, and Sarah who are on our VIT team, we really, every vineyard is a little different, but we have the basic game plan of like, okay, this is how we bring this vineyard not only to economic sustainability but environmental sustainability, because that's the same size, two sides of the same coin. You have to have economic sustainability for it to make environmental sustainability sense. That's always the challenge with these old vineyards because the amount of money you can put into farming when you're selling a $350 Napa cab, is a lot more than you can on a $40 to $60 or $100 bottle of old vine wine. So luckily, we have enough direct to consumer sales where we're able to make up our margin and then also be able to sell a lot of wine through independent retail like y'all. But it's still, farming is expensive. That's always a challenge on one side, but the reward when you see a vineyard turn around and go from the verge of being ripped out or even the verge of death, and then all of a sudden you start making wine at a environmentally and economically sustainably better way, some of the most satisfying work you can do in the wine business. It's pretty crazy to see a vine that's 130 years old respond and improve, is just like the coolest thing ever. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you're working with a piece of history. So cool. Yeah. Your enthusiasm and your love for what you guys do really show through. I mean, I know our listeners won't be able to see, but you've been smiling like this whole time and you've just been very excited. Well, I'm talking to good people. I think what we're getting at is why don't you have a reality TV show? I mean, this is what everyone watches is rescue and rehab. Old vine rescue and rehab. You'll get plenty of money for- Morgan is the celebrity wine maker. He can have his reality TV show. I'm the conseliere. I'm behind the scenes most of the time. You're the one who figures out what to do with Fredo. Yeah. In the world of social media, I think next time you guys go out there and heal some of these vines, you really should and maybe you have already, but it is fascinating and I think people would love to see that. Not just, it sounds like you're telling a great story, but everything now is visual. So it would be cool to see that. We have a YouTube channel and then we have a podcast as well. So if you do want to go down the rabbit hole of the Bedrock world, you can go to the website. So I just wanted to point one thing out for the people at home, is that the Schmeidt Road was 2019 rather than 2020. Everything else is 2020. And that might, I don't know, what do you think, Chris? Does that account for any difference in the acidity, the structure that we noticed? Yeah. I mean, 2019, a little bit of a friendlier vintage than 2020, softer tannin year, but still a warm, generous vintage. And I think nine times out of 10, a year in bottle helps should make the wine show. Absolutely. You know, I mean, occasionally a wine will be better out of bottling and then shut down quickly. But I would say even like 95 out of 100, a year helps the wines come together. Excellent. So now we're going to move on to Monte Rosso Vineyard, a vineyard that is legendary and didn't need you to rescue it. What can you tell us about it? I think this is maybe one of the most underrated vineyards in California. Brene Royall, who's been farming it, gosh, for years now, I think it's been eight years maybe. She is just, Brene Royall is just a rock star, an amazing human being, and one of the best farmers that we know. This is a mountain vineyard, so this is planted between 1,000 and 2,000 feet on the Sonoma side of Mount Vedar. So if you put this vineyard a mile on the other side of a mountain, this wine would be three, four X the price. The place is just as special. The Sonoma side of Mount Vedar, I think, is as special as the Napa side. But what makes this unique is that I don't think there's any 1886 plantings on the Napa side of Mount Vedar. So this block that we get from is about 1,200 feet. On pure red soils, hence Monte Rosso. So pure Tuscan Red Series clay loam soils that are volcanic-based and clay-based. High iron content, right? Yeah. And just these Medusa head vines that are just absolutely insane. And Morgan's dad actually worked with the same block because Monte Rosso is a big vineyard. It's like 250 acres. Yeah, it's huge. Yeah. But our little three-acre block is the same block that Joel worked with when he was making Monte Rosso from Ravenswood. So we call it the Peterson block now. Yeah, that's cool. You know, credit to Gallo because this vineyard is a lot to farm. And I mean, the investment to farm this vineyard is insane because farming on a mountain is hard. And you know, the guy who planted this vineyard, Emmanuel Goldstein, back in 1886 was truly a crazy person because he did it before the combustion engine was a thing. Can you imagine the amount of work that was involved? It's impossible to fathom. A lot of dynamite and a lot of underappreciated labor went into planting these vines, you know, and it's truly one of the great historic Grand Cru vineyards of California. And it produces a wine that, I mean, you want to talk about a wine that will last for decades. I mean, I think this wine, you know, I've having had the old martini wines and I've had them going back to the fifties and they're still drinking well. That's super cool. Yeah. So, I mean, there's a wildness to this wine. There's a structure to this wine. There's acidity to this wine. This is like, if out of all the wines we're talking about today, if you were going to forget about a bottle in the darkest part of your cellar, you know, this would be the wine I would do that. No doubt. On first sip, you immediately noticed the power of the tannins. It's really well put together. This is definitely an example of when the grapes show up at the door, the work order says, Bernay farmed these perfectly, do not screw it up. Wow. It's a true powerhouse of a wine, but in such an elegant, balanced way, it's still, again, on theme, in your style, it's not overly concentrated, it's not too big, but, God, this would be such a great nice dinner wine. Obviously, like you said, keep it in the cellar, but if you're going to open up now, this is a special occasion style wine. I mean, it's great. It's a beautiful wine. Like really long, like 60-day dry aged beef, date night, open to can it for six hours. It feels regal, you know, and- Yes. And, yeah, I've drunk young Montarrosos that we've made on special nights. So I haven't saved as much for the cellar as I probably should have given how long I think these wines are going to go. I can't blame- It is so good, I can't blame you for opening it. Yeah, this is truly a special wine. Well, Chris, you're a food guy, so what are your thoughts on pairings with your wines in general, and Montarrosso in particular, you say dry aged beef, which I think is a great idea. But it's so amazing how these sites are so different, but you can see the family resemblance at the same time. You're hands-off in your wine making, you do it in the vineyard, but you can still see your hand here subtly because everything tastes like Bedrock, but it also tastes like the vineyard site. It's really amazing. Well, and I would say it's not just like Morgan or my hands either. It says on our corks, it takes a village to raise a wine, and that sounds cheesy, but there's a whole team of people, not just in our winery, our team that we have, which is pretty small. We're only nine people, but even all the other people that are farming these vineyards too. It's the hands of many people, but I appreciate that because I do feel like we have a style, and I think we've talked about a lot of here, but then also the transparency of the vineyards come through. Absolutely. You've got a real point of view that shines through here and it's really cool. Your original question of food pairing, I am not like this crazy like this wine has to go with this, but there are some cool ones. If you serve a dry-aged steak with any of our wines, you're going to have a good night. If you roast up the perfect Keller roast chicken and have it with any of our wines, you're going to have a good night. I think, but there are some surprising ones like the Evangelos Vineyard. I got lucky enough during that miracle post-vaccine time of May, June 21, I got to go to Le Bernardin on my first trip. Le Bernardin, one of the most, if not the most famous seafood restaurant in the world and they were pairing on the tasting menu, their pairing choice was the Evangelos Vineyard with an Amberjack Bordelais course, so a seafood course. I could totally see that. I'm as biased as they come. I took my mom and fiance and my stepdad out to go to Le Bernardin to drink our wine there and none of them had ever been. With a fattier fish, with a fattier sauce, the Evangelos, mind-blowing. It was a beautiful, beautiful pairing. I think most of our reds, the old wine was paired at the bar with the salmon course. I think most of our reds, even Monoroso, if you have that with like salmon or tuna, that will be good too. You can go to the traditional barbecue steak. Lamb with our Syrahs is always great. But I think when wine has acid to balance out the fruit and tannin, it goes with a lot more food than I think people will traditionally think of like old vines and Fidel based wines. Totally agree. My immediate thought when I tasted the old vine was a roast chicken. That just jumped to mind. It's perfect for that. I can easily see richer seafoods matching these wines because they just have a suave elegance that will fit seamlessly with them. Then you build a bridge with, you say that amberjack had a Bordele's sauce. I mean, that just ties everything together and there you are. Yeah, that's a night I'll never forget, that's for sure. I don't know what else to say about this wine. When this wine was last available at Binny's, it was like $75. That seems ludicrous for this quality of wine. This is a small production wine we're talking about with Monoroso, right? Basically, because I love our distributor there so much, shout out to Cream. They are excellent. They get things that most of the country and you guys get things that most of the country don't see. I think maybe for the whole country, there was three cases of Monoroso available for retail. Avangelo, we own the vineyard. We make a little bit more of that. Old Vine, we try and do our best to keep it in stock places, but sometimes we run out. Schmid is another tiny, tiny production wine that doesn't really see the light of the day in the country. But we make a lot of different wines with very small productions. I always am trickling stuff out to retailers that I love to help spread the old vine gospel. Well, we couldn't be more appreciative here in Illinois because these wines are fantastic. Yeah, it's a treat. I think it's also important to emphasize that you kept emphasizing the longevity of these, but especially with the last pour. I mean, it's phenomenal right now. Yeah, there's no harm in opening one of these right now and drinking it. Wow. I mean, really a stunning wine. No, I'm a big believer in buying threes. You buy one to drink young, you buy one to check in whenever you're ready to check in on that, and then you have an extra bottle to do what you want with it. Like threes are a great number to buy wine in general. So you could sell her a couple, but if you open one too late or too early, it doesn't hurt you that much. But you have one young, so you remember that the next time you open it. Definitely. Yeah. I mean, I can't wait to see what this wine does in 10 years. I would be really interested in trying it then. But it is already beautiful, but it's full of coiled potential, in my opinion. Well, come out to California, guys. I promise I'll pull a 2010 or a 2011 from the cellar, and we'll drink that. For all you other people out there, we usually have a library wine open at the tasting room. If you come visit us, tell them Chris said that I approved the library open, and you can taste some with age on it. Even when that offer comes from a cunselieri, it's one we really can't refuse, I'm guessing. This is awesome. This has been great. Where can people find your podcast? What's the name of that? We do want to give that a plug while we're here. Our podcast is called Bedrock Wine Conversations, iTunes, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast. YouTube channel is Bedrock Wine Co. Just Google it or YouTube it. I'm underthewirewines on Instagram. You can also follow Bedrock Wines or Bedrock Morgan. Yeah, and come visit us in Sonoma. We're appointment only, but we have a historic house that you can come taste wine in, and yeah, have good times. You can eat caviar too. We have caviar service with our sparkling wine brand, Under the Wire, which is our tiny little side project, the Single Vineyard Sparkling Wines. We want to eat caviar. Well, we also give you a full selection. We give you a full selection of chips, so you can put your caviar on Cool Ranch Doritos if you want to. Oh, man. Amazing. Czar Nicholas is rolling over in his grave. I gotta get to Chicago soon, so, and Illinois soon, so I'll be seeing you when I've come out there. Please do. We'll make sure we have a wide selection of chips for your caviar when you show up. You bring the caviar, I'll get the Cool Ranch. Deal, deal. Love it. Thanks, guys. And a little under the wire wouldn't hurt either. Yeah, perfect. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for your time, Chris. This was truly a treat for us to taste these wines. And to talk to you and share your enthusiasm. It's been a pleasure. It was a lot of fun this afternoon with you. Thank you so much. Oh, no. Awesome. Thanks for having me, guys. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Jenna. I'm Pat. I'm Roger. And I'm Chris. And I'm Chris too. Keep tasting.