I got my start in a grocery store at a young age, probably too young of an age, and Chalk Hill was one of my first loves of wine, like the discovery of it. Oh, don't take too much credit. Your family didn't own it at that point, right? No, I'm just beaming. Yeah, fine. Take it right away from me. Also, the same label that it's been for 30 years. Is that like a heritage thing? What is that? Yeah, it's a little bit of a legacy thing. We've had slight updates to it. I'm trying to fight for going back to the original 1970s label, which is a little bit lighter in color, but I've been told that this looks more expensive, so we should be going for that. You got to maintain that price perception. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, we have Courtney Foley in the studio today. You're listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Greg, I do communications at Binny's. In the room with me. I'm Roger, I do beer. Pat, spirits. Barb, I work in wine. And once again, we have wine royalty in the room, California wine royalty, Courtney Foley. Super happy to be here. I'm glad I got your name right. You are the winemaker at Chalk Hill. Correct. Winery. Yes. You have been for a couple of vintages now? So my first vintage was actually just last year, and I bumped up from a 4,000 case production facility to a 40,000 case production facility. It was a leap, not just a jump. No big deal. Yeah. It had new challenges for me. I was used to getting out on the crush pad and actually working and doing all the pump overs and punch downs. And this time I was pretty much chained to my desk writing work orders and communicating. But I did get to have nice little time in the vineyards, walking all the blocks and doing that. And at Chalk Hill, that's a real treat. So how did that conversation go? Somebody came to you and they said, hey, you know how we talked about this was going to be your first real vintage. We got something to tell you. Exactly. And how much did you drink that night? A ton. And luckily, I had a lot of wine right there to help me cope. Yeah. Well, congratulations on the growth. That's pretty amazing. Yeah. Thank you. I mean, it was one of the proudest moments in my relatively short wine making career. My dad, this is what he drinks every night. Chalk Hill Chardonnay may as well be his blood type. And so having me be in charge of it was just a huge pat on the back. My dad's not quick with a compliment, but this was a huge thing for me. So it wasn't lost on me that I got to be in charge of this production. Do you want to talk about the rest of the portfolio? Oh, I'd love to. So do you have a chance to influence the rest of the portfolio? I do. So my position has slightly changed to Chalk Hill. So I'm Director of Wine Making. And that was just to kind of free me up a little bit more so that I could start traveling to our other properties and seeing what's going on there. And so I just came back from a week in the Central Coast where everything, of course, got started in 1995 with Lynn Court and Foley. And I got to meet with the wine making team down there, see what's going on. We actually are implementing a sparkling project for the first time. I made sure that that happened. And so it's just getting one on one time with our wine makers and making sure they're supported, which I really love doing. Did you insist on the sparkling wine project because that's what you want to drink? Absolutely. Very selfishly motivated. Is that champagne varietals mostly or are you doing something else? No, we're doing champagne varietals mostly. When I started winemaking at Foley Sonoma, we actually had a really quirky sparkling wine that was 60% Sangiovese and the remainder was Semillon. Why? That's weird. Strange. Yeah. And I was like, well, that's quirky and cool. Maybe I'll really like it. It didn't hold up great. So we've kind of converted back to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. We're focusing this whole production at our, we have luckily many wineries that kind of focus on those two varietals. So it'll be at Chalk Hill, Chalone, Foley, and then anywhere else that's smaller that they could benefit from having a small sparkling program. I was going to ask if Chalk Hill would be your pick or if you would want to go somewhere else, but it sounds like the answer is both. You get to do pretty much what you want. I know. It's actually the best of all worlds. So actually Chalk Hill has started Harvest this past week. It's my first time not being there for the start. I'm a little bit sad about it, but it's really nice to be out here supporting our products in the market. The winemaker who was promoted has actually been at Chalk Hill for 30 years. He only didn't want to be the winemaker because he hates public speaking. I was like, okay, let's work together. I'll do that. We're going to work on blends together, and then this gives me the opportunity to go out and see what else is going on in our portfolio. That makes a lot of sense, right? You think of the greatest chefs out there, most of them aren't celebrities or people persons. They're in the back of the house for a reason. Whereas genius winemakers might fit under the same category. Yeah, I would tend to agree definitely with Darryl. He really does not want any attention. He's the most humble person, but his lifeblood is Chalk Hill. I mean, he loves it. He gets there earlier than everyone. He just wants to be there. Speaking of humble people, you... Sounds like a setup. In the portfolio is Wayne Gretzky Estate. Do you get to hang out with him? No. Have you ever gotten an email from him? No. I've seen an email from him because we deal with his whiskeys, and he signs, he doesn't use a name, he uses number 99. The email literally says, thanks, 99. Can we submit a couple of suggestions? Yes, please. Wayne Gretzky, The Grape One. That's all we got. I'm out. Good work, Jim. Those came from Jim. Way to keep that short. I love that. The rest of us appreciate it. Yeah. Next time you have lunch with The Grape One, bring those up. Yeah. His name's 99? Yeah. Can we try your wine? Yes, please, let's. So we're sending around Chalk Hill Estate Bottled, Sauvignon Blanc, Vintage 2017. If I can ask a question before we really dig into the wine, Courtney, when we say Estate Bottled on your label, what does that mean? And how does that separate you from any other projects you're doing? Estate Bottled means that we are in full control over vineyard management. So at Chalk Hill, we have 1,400 acres total. That's the sum of our property, but only 450 are planted acres. We had the same vineyard manager for 40 years, and he broke everything down multiple times, block by block, clone by clone. That also means whether the vineyard management team likes it or not, the winemaker is right there, and can kind of help walk through the blocks and target what we want to do in the future when the grapes finally come in. And actually at Foley, I'm really pleased to say that about 95 percent of our wines are estate. So we have a lot of vineyard holdings, and so even if it's an offshoot brand from somewhere, we're usually supporting that with our own fruit, which means we are always chasing quality, and we always want to make sure that we have enough product in You do have to maintain. I mean, it's a big brand with a lot of placements. So you do have to maintain that reputation, that level of quality, and still supply like a lot of restaurants and a lot of chain stores. Yeah, you don't want to kind of give up all that hard work of going out in the market and helping people to hopefully fall in love with your wine and then just get it brought out from underneath them. And this Sauvignon Blanc is vibrant. Can we talk about how awesome this wine is? Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. No, I also love this wine. So I was always more drawn to aromatic white wines. I always enjoyed Sauvignon Blanc, but Chalk Hill I think has some of the most dynamite Sauvignon Blanc clones to work with. We work with pretty much 100 percent French clones. Let it hang forever. 26, 27 bricks. That's nothing we've got an eye at. That's how we get all that complexity. Because we're in such a cool growing region, we can do that without sacrificing any of the vine health. Nothing's falling apart by the time we're bringing it in. It's primo. It's alive, man. Yeah. Super fresh. It's so aromatic. The other thing that's really cool about this is Chalk Hill was one of the first wineries in California to plant Sauvignon Gris. Our vineyard manager, who I mentioned before, had been there for 40 years, actually smuggled the root stock over from Oregon. What the hell is that? Are we outside of the statute of limitations on- Yes. 40 years ago, I think so. Yeah. I think we're safe. The fuzz aren't going to show up at his door. Well, now there's so much support for it in California. I would say that almost, I want to say all the wineries that currently have Sauvignon Gris, probably got it from Chalk Hill at some point, or at least that bud would, but I'm really proud to say that this is something we've invested in very early, That's really neat. Is there a percentage breakdown you know of off the top ear? I think it's usually around 5% Sauvignon Gris. It really overwhelms, especially aromatically. I don't think it lends that much to the palate. It's a little bit lighter, but on the nose, it's crazy vibrant. The peach, I get a lot of pineapple too, and the citrus freshness is there. This is really delicious. It's on the tropical side. For sure. Yeah. Any oak treatment on this at all? We do have some. Actually, our standard protocol is to press it, cold settle, and then barrel it down to about 65 percent stainless steel drums, and then 10 percent new French oak. The remainder is neutral, and we do that so that we can continuously stir the lees. We want to make sure we get that weight. That's the Chalk Hill quality is to make sure that we have hefty, really vibrant, full-bodied wines. We needed to approach Sauvignon Blanc, which is generally a little bit leaner, the same way. From a beer drinker's perspective, I have to say that people that are into a lot of the more like tropical IPAs right now, a lot of those hops are modeled after the Southern Hemisphere, like Nelson Sauvignon hops, Holler Sauvignon Blanc, German hops. It's their wine correlations here. So I really like some of these tropical Sauvignon Blanc wines, I think. I can't believe the body on this wine. I don't drink a lot of wine and I've certainly never had a Sauvignon Blanc that has this, like you said, heft or weight to it. Really interesting. It's a chewy wine. It definitely is, yeah. That's that least contact, right? Probably. Absolutely. We stir it probably once or twice a week, and then we're constantly tasting to make sure we hit that exact right cut-off point. We have two guys who are singularly devoted to our barrel cellar, and that's all they do, all harvest. Once the Chardonnay comes in, they switch from Sauvignon Blanc to Chard and- Master Sturman, huh? They're amazing. We always are like, do you want to do something else? I'm like, no, I'm happy. Let's do this. Probably paddle a mean canoe. Yeah. It's a very honorable job, Pat. They're like sixth generation Lees stirrers. Oh, it's like the grape stompers? Exactly. Okay. They take it very seriously. What's next? Do we want to taste the Sonoma Coast or the Estate Chard next? Sonoma Coast, I think, yeah. Chalk Hill Chardonnay Sonoma Coast, 2017. So speaking of the pedigree of the label, we're passing this around and it's a dynamic difference, basically an inverse, right? Yeah, that's absolutely right. We had a lot of conversations about this. A lot of people thought that it showed a little bit better than our traditional label, it's just a little bit cleaner and brighter. That still is an argument, but I think that people who know the brand, really it resonates with them, the original label and then it's fun to see this brighter, fresher bottle around too. You have art director on your resume somewhere? Our marketing department really wishes that I was not as involved with the labels as I am. Yeah, for sure. That's funny, the marketing department here wishes I was not involved so much. Oh, you keep getting invited back. So this is originally introduced because at Chalk Hill, we could actually produce 25,000 cases of Chardonnay. That would be our full production. For our estate, we only do 12,000. We really want to maintain that quality. We know exactly what we got when we purchased the brand. So we were trying to figure out a place, a home for what we weren't putting into the estate bottle. Some of that got put into more approachable, affordable products that maybe didn't capture what Chalk Hill is. I think that this is a really nice introductory version of the wine. So kind of declassified. Makes for some other stuff. Yeah. We have Carneros Fruit in there as well, which is all family operated and managed. Does Wayne Gretzky get some of the other left? Yeah. I want to see about Wayne's allotments because I have a feeling he probably gets more than me for free. I just have a feeling, a sneaking suspicion. This smells pretty good, so I'm really looking forward to trying the next one. But I get a little bit of asparagus and then a lot of that toasted pineapple with a little bit of baking spice on it and some cream, I'm assuming. Yeah. This is all stainless steel fermented, which will set it apart from the Chalk Hill Estate, which is 100 percent barrel fermented. You're really picking up on the difference between Carneros and where we're making our wine up at Chalk Hill and Russian River. That asparagus note, I think, is brought in from Carneros and all that minerality, bright citrus, Russian River. I think this is great. Pat, do you like the Chardonnay? Yeah, I like it. I am not exactly the barometer for Chardonnay quality. Now, the way you went crazy for that Sauvignon Blanc, do you know what damning with faint praise is? Well, no, I like it. I don't really know what to expect out of it though. I like that it's not particularly oaky because it's not oaked. I do like it. It's an enjoyable wine. I like the Sauvignon Blanc better. Like for me, wine is pretty strictly just white or red. And if I'm going to have a white wine, I preferred the first white wine. I'd say this is a pretty textbook for a Sonoma Chard, especially something that's not oak. Yeah. It has good breath. Yeah. What I really like about this and I think showcases the quality of our fruit is this actually goes through full malactic fermentation and it's still really bright and youthful. I mean, it's very easy to pair with food. We do have a little bit of new oak on there, but nothing near what we have at the estate. So the fruit is the name of the game here and we want that to shine through. That's Sonoma Coast kind of acidity and freshness is there, especially on the finish. Your bio online says you do karaoke. Yes. Thank you for asking. So what do you got for us? Well, my go-to karaoke song is Lit, My Own Worst Enemy. That's usually what I go for because yeah. Please tell me why. Yeah, the Cars on the Lawn song. Yeah. I remember that. Pat, what's your go-to karaoke song? Why Can't This Be Love by Van Hagar. Raj, karaoke Raj. Oh, geez. I don't know. ACDC stuff probably. ACDC sucks. We established that last podcast. Greg, what are you going to sing karaoke? I have a playlist because when I'm drunk, I can never remember. Also, you're digging through that book and they often don't have all the songs. That's true. But I'm going to go with White Wedding by Billy Idol. Oh, yes. Rebel Yells might go too. Yes, you can have my answer. That's fine. No, it's been videotaped. Barb. Minus J by Lisa Loeb and Nine Stories. Solid. Yes, it's pretty 90s. I'm very old. Jim, that gives you five songs to choose from for the transition here. Definitely, it should be Courtney singing, though, followed by. I'm not so sure. That was a little pitchy. Next up on the podcast, American Idol Round. All right, what are we trying next? So I've got Chalk Hill Estate Bottled Chardonnay from the Chalk Hill Appalachian. This is 2016. This is the one that I fell in love with back in dark ages when I was working in the grocery store. You and my dad, yeah. Not the grocery store part, but the falling in love, yeah. So how did that happen, just bringing that up about your dad and purchasing the winery? Was it just that he fell in love with the wines and said, I'm gonna buy them all now? Yeah. Basically. Right now, I would like all the wine. Yeah, that's how it went. That's all mine now. Essentially, my dad started in title insurance and as a part of that wining and dining culture, he really fell in love with Burgundy. By the time we moved to Santa Barbara when I was in fifth grade, he started with Foley and Lincourt there, was wholly dedicated to producing world-class wines, specifically there and thought it would start and end there. My grandparents came down from Washington State where they were berry farmers and they actually became our vineyard managers along with my aunt and uncle. It was really a family passion to begin with. But then as the recession hit, more and more families I found were approaching him saying, hey, I don't think that I can do this winery thing anymore. I need to transition out. I would like it to stay under family hands. The Sebastiani's did that, Coletto, Fred Firth at Chalk Hill did that, and my dad had been following Chalk Hill since the days he had been entertaining people with wines and it was an easy one for him. It became my family's home. I lived on property with both of my brothers at different points in time, so it's kind of the gem of our portfolio. I hope none of our other winemakers listen to this. This is awesome. It's so good, right? I can't believe how peachy it is. It's so good. Peachy, creamy, spicy. Yeah, this is great. There's a little bit of a cedar plank spice in there, too. I take back everything nice I said about the Sauvignon Blanc. Well, I want to know what you think about the oak on this one because you mentioned you didn't. I don't, it's balanced, most importantly, so it's good. I get a big whiff of what we know is malolactic on this, too, but not in an intrusive, aggressive way, which is sometimes what people don't care for in California shard. Everything here is really an impeccable balance. What I like the most, I think, is the texture. It's rich without being unctuous or cloying and the weight is nearly flawless. I love this. Thank you. This still wasn't me though. I mean, I'll thank you on behalf of Steve Nelson and Daryl. We've had 11 different wine makers at Chalk Hill. Probably where we developed our style was with Dave Ramey in the 90s. It's a very Burgundian way of making wine. It's all barrel fermented, 40 percent new French oak every year on the estate, and it's 100 percent native fermentation too. Making upwards of 25,000 cases of natively fermented Chardonnay can be a little bit nerve-racking for a winemaker, but it's also extremely gratifying because it's about the most pure expression of this terroir that you could have, because aside from all that, this is also completely unfined and unfiltered. So it's something that I'm very proud of. I know our winemaking team is very proud of and something that I'm pleased to share with you guys. Here's the other thing about it is that it's shoulder to shoulder with some of the $60 and $70 collector's chardonnays and it's only $40, which is stunning. Yeah, the goal was to model this after great white burgundy. I think it hits the nail on the head for sure. The finesse is there, the balance. Speaking of the native yeast, where do you stand on the natural wine movement and uprising that's happening? I am in for anything. I just like tasting anything that's different and new. Natural wine is definitely a part of that. Is it something that I would take over to just anyone to kind of showcase and like really put my flag down in and be like, this is it? No, not really. I think it's super fun. We try to do things as non-interventionist as possible when I talk to most of our winemakers, that seems to be the protocol, but going so far as being natural, biodynamic, organic, we're moving that way, but I don't know that we'll ever be 100% that Because science. Precisely. Thank you. Yeah. I think it's always good and a little bit humbling to come into a process where people have been making whatever product for a long time and balancing not only your interests, but their interests and what they know that works. So that's kind of what winemaking is. I'm very proud to be a team member talking to Daryl about it and understanding kind of why they do things the way they do and whatever interventionist practices we have, why we have them. And we always are taking that stuff into account, along with trying to make a beautifully balanced wine. So you brought a red too. That's right. I have never had a Chalk Hill Red from Chalk Hill Winery. There is a good reason for that. Why is that? As I mentioned, it's so cool there. So we started a Pinot Noir program and we purchased a vineyard in Russian River. That started in 2012, but my dad and Fred Firth both love Bordeaux Reds. And it's always kind of an uphill battle for the winemaking team, because it is so cool there. And fighting those pyrazines is very difficult. We're hanging that fruit for as long as we possibly can. We used to have a single-varietal Cabernet Sauvignon Amarillo that we made out of Chalk Hill. And because we just kept getting cornered into it, we weren't making the best quality wine. So we shifted to the Estate Red program, which seemed to help us kind of show the best qualities of what we're able to grow at Chalk Hill and still produce a beautiful red wine. This is one of the most expensive feline bottles of wine I've ever built. This bottle's got to weigh like 12 pounds. Yeah, it's got some big shoulders there for sure. My dad would say he doesn't like anything wimpy. So because this is his home, he's got to have a big bottle, right? So we've been pouring the 2015. I think that this is one of the first times we're showing the 2016 in market. And to me, what it brings out most is four years of drought. As I mentioned, it's so cool at Chalk Hill that sometimes it's hard to get everything to ripen up completely, but 2016, we obviously didn't have that problem. So it's really approachable right off the bat. Usually, we have these huge tannins that we're trying to tame. Not an issue here. Big. It's ripe. Yeah, very voluptuous. I really like that intensely, but not overpowering sort of cassis note that's coming through, that really ripe like currant or berry. But it's still like serious too. It still has like an olive streak, you know? Little bit woody too. Yeah. And yeah, definitely none of that vegetal green peppery under ripeness. That's not easy to do there, I'm sure. Yeah, not at all. It was really fun opening this up and trying it next to the 2015, because I would say don't drink the 2015 before exactly today. Like it still needs some time, but this one I feel very confident taking to almost anybody who's selling wine and saying, yeah, put this on your shelf, people are ready for it. What do you guys think? I think it's really good. I like the balance. Barb mentioned cassis. I think that cassis and blueberry balance with this oak and I guess you said olive. I guess there's this, not a brine, but there's a slight vaginal note that really kind of tempers that fruit. I really like it. It's a well-balanced wine. Keeps it serious. The tart fruit note on the very end, blackberry kind of to me, I really like it. What's this wine retail for? $60. Oh, that's not bad. Yeah, absolutely. This is easily worth that. Right? A little bit of meaty blood quality in there too. Ooh. That's fine. It's a compliment. I mean, it's a vegetarian. I'm not sure. Yeah. Just say umami. If you're not really in the wine, that doesn't sound appealing, Greg. Never bloody. Really? Not as a compliment. Okay. It's sanguine and coppery. An umami. Yeah. Umami. That's such a cop-out word. You know what? That is a cop-out word. There's certain words that just piss me off. Umami is one of them because there's five senses, five tastes, right? Yeah. It's a lazy word. It's such a big category. It's like saying fruity. I can narrow it down within that. It's like saying fruity or herbal or mineral. What does that mean? There's so many different subcategories. Get specific. Sometimes people say umami to be polite when they mean soy sauce. Well, sometimes you say caddy when you mean it tastes like piss, but that's not honest. I'm saying it's rubber, it's softening the blow. Yeah. I say mesquite for rubbery. Mesquite? I say mesquite. I think it's smoky. Yeah. Well, sometimes rubbery and smoke are like this far apart. Exactly. Yeah. I usually say something like chicory, which is not that far from mesquite, I guess. As silly as they are, you should know the guys in this room have some of the best palettes in the company, that's for sure. Roger does. It was three of you, I mean, and due respect, Jim. No. It's interesting because in this room, I'm finding more and more, we all have different specialties. I mean, you came from the wine side, but we all taste really similarly and evaluate things really similarly, but it's just different language. Do you have a system for categorizing descriptors while you're tasting? What do you mean by system? Am I running through a checklist in my head? I guess. You know that there's certain components you expect. I kind of like categories and subcategories. I don't know if anybody literally thinks in a flavor wheel, but sometimes people use it as a metaphor. Kristen used to teach specific categories and subcategories. Pat has a system where he breaks the whiskey tasting into three parts, and then each of those parts has three parts. So he's talking about the experience. You have a system like that or all or you just like? I guess when I'm first starting to taste a wine, I try to figure out if it's variety specific, if it fits that varietal, and then I break it down from there, but I try to be as open minded as possible. Of course, when I'm trying something from Northern California versus something that's an export or import, I have different qualifiers for each. But like I said, I like drinking just anything that's strange. I think the more open minded that you can be about the whole process is better. Yeah. It's fair. I have a couple of background questions for you. The first one is what jumped out at me right away about your bio is your Bachelor of Arts degree in history. Yeah. What led you there and then what the shift to what the shift? What the shift? Oh, geology major too. So thank you for that. Yeah. What made you go from history to environmental law to wine making? How did that process happen for you? I guess you could say I'm not a long-term strategist. I just went to school thinking that I was excited about history. It's what I read in my off time and I was balancing between geology and history. So I like history just generally, I guess. Even though my dad was trying to get me to do something more practical, I was like, these are my four years. I'm going to do what I want. You made the same bad decisions as us. Yeah. Why making is a great industry for that. I found that as I was going through school and what I was focusing on in history, a lot of it was environmentally minded. I wrote my thesis on national parks and how they were created around the world. I knew I like to read and write and I was like, well, I don't have any other practical skills, so I may as well go to law school. They read and write a lot there. I went to University of Oregon and by the time I was done with my three years there, I got a job with a corporate outfit and that was not me. It was just wearing a suit every day going into the city, and I didn't pass the bar by a point. My dad looked at me and he was like, do you want to do this? I just said, no, I don't know what I want to do, but I don't want to do this. I actually went back to Southern California and worked for Young's Market Company and started stocking wines and doing all that stuff and being a merchandiser. So I learned a lot about wine and spirits through that. And I did my first harvest just thinking I wanted to supplement my knowledge of wine, and that would be it. But I love production. I love the personality types. I love the team mentality. And of course, I loved walking the vineyard blocks and doing all that and having a really hands on job. So I would have never guessed I would work for my family. If you had asked me when I was 18, I would have said, absolutely not. I want my personal life and my work life to be different just because my family is, they're the closest people to me and I wanted to make sure that was preserved. And so far, so good. Work-life balance isn't really something any of us here have. Yeah, understand, understand. So yeah, it's been a really great way to interact with my dad who we are, maybe don't just as two people have a ton in common, but now we have this in common, so we have plenty to talk about, which is wonderful. Living the dream. For sure. Can I say on behalf of our, speaking of your dad, can I say on behalf of our listening audience, go Blackhawks. Oh, come on. I knew this was coming at some point anyway. Yeah, yeah. A ceremonial wearing of the Blackhawks sweater for every podcast guest. The Vegas Golden Knights. Did you just look that up on your phone? Oh my God. What is this team? Yeah, right? They almost won the Stanley Cup. What's wrong with you? I'm not the sports guy in the room, obviously. They're great, but what kind of name is that for a team? Did you have any say in that, Courtney? Obviously. Well, no, I can say obviously I did not, but my dad was a graduate of West Point and they're the Knights, so he was pretty intent on carrying that through. Didn't they sue him for that? They did not sue him. It was maybe a little bit controversial. Saber rattling? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But it all worked out and we continue to hold that name through our first and second and now third season. Do you want more snack talk about the Knights? I'm confused. All right. That's it for Sports Talk Radio. Thanks for listening to Barrel the Gold Tender. I don't know. Whatever. That brings us to the Q&A segment of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast, where we answer your questions for $20 Binny's gift card. email your questions to us at comments at binnys.com or hit us up on social media at Binny's Bev on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Right? Right. Yeah, that's it. Our question this week comes from Teresa. Teresa writes, I recently went to a festival where there was a grape stomping. It seems really unhygienic. How do they keep gross things and wild yeast out of the wine? Well, sometimes you want wild yeast in the wine, right? I know that when I was working at a much smaller production facility, I would regularly get in the tea bins and stomp around, but I made sure that I had soaked my feet up to my knees in alcohol. So everything that I was transferring into the wine was completely cleaned off. At this festival, I can't really speak to that. I think that's probably not the purpose of this whole thing. But generally people, I say that wine makers are almost glorified janitors with how sanitary they have to keep everything. So we take that very seriously. Yeah, just try to be as careful as possible. Yeah, that's a fact. Every winery seller, wine making facility I've ever visited has been pristine in terms of cleanliness. I think we talked about this on our Portugal episode. I think that I agree with Courtney. This was just for fun and that wine will probably not be bottled and put on our shelves. That's not that common here. Yeah. How many people are still doing this? It's very old world, old school thing for sure. I think it's more likely that somebody in like, it's like Michigan strawberry wine. Yeah. I guess that. We had a really small lot of Sangiovese when I was working at Foley-Sonoma, and that was regularly something that I got to stomp and break up myself, which was really fun. Is this somebody like, no, we're not using the bladder for that? Pretty much, yeah. Get in there. Get in there. Clear it up. Thanks, Theresa. Sorry. All right, we good? Well, all right. So answer is, they wash their feet first. With alcohol. Yeah, with alcohol. It's sanitary. It's not in a festival atmosphere. With today's technical winemaking, that many apparatus are used that are not feet, right? Yeah. Generally, feet don't touch it. Yeah, touch the grapes. That's right. Teresa, thanks for the question. $20 Binny's gift card coming to you. Everybody else can email your questions to comments at binnys.com or hit us up on social media, at Binny's Web on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. You should say that a little faster. Can you speed me? Everybody else can email your questions to comments at binnys.com or hit us up on social media at binny's web on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Cool. Sweet. Courtney, thanks for coming. Super happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Pretty good, right? Did we miss any parts of the PowerPoint? No, but I really appreciate you letting me play that throughout this whole thing. It was really nice of you guys. I know that wasn't customary, so yeah. The only thing we didn't ask is about her dogs and why they're not with you today. Right. I actually have a third dog to add to my resume. Yeah. If that could be on a resume. As usual, the corporate suits are the answer. That's why we had to play the PowerPoint the whole time, and that's why we can't have fun dogs. Thanks, suits. All right, cool. Yeah. Thanks for coming. I am in love with your Chardonnay still. When it's the 2018, is your first one that we get to try? That is my first one. And so we were pouring the 2016. Generally, at Chalk Hill, we make our wines so that they are able to be laid down for a little while. And so probably in two years. See you again. Sweet. Yeah, that'd be great. I screwed up this whole episode. I meant to be mean. Who do we have? David Finney. No, the Dave Goffey one is the one I got flack. We were too nice to him. Dave Goffey, Dave Finney, Michael Mondavi, Saunat Beerniker. I think the phrase I heard was Suckuppee. We kissed too much ass. We did it again. We kissed your ass too much. We're so sorry for kissing your ass so much, Courtney. Your wines are sh**. Thanks for coming on the podcast, a*****. Can you yelp this podcast and kind of inform other people before they come on? Courtney, thanks for coming on. Really great to have you. We'll be back in your feed with another Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Until next time, I'm Greg. I'm Roger. I'm Pat. I'm Barb. I'm Courtney. Keep tasting. I want to cold open on this one. I'm gonna cut my it kind of hot too. You want me to pour something so we can do that? Didn't know it was that kind of podcast. What I'm gonna do is I got a question for you that I've always wanted to ask somebody with the last name Foley. I've... Oh, I know where this is going. You do? This is predictable. It is? Yes. Say it anyway. Honestly, what the f*** is Charbono? Charbono? Yeah. If I ever met Helen Turley, I'd ask her the same question, because I've seen two bottlings of Charbono. I've had a Foley Charbono. What? No? No. Oh. Robert Foley Charbono. We're talking about a different Foley family. Robert Foley? Yeah. So coincidentally, I have an older brother named Robert. Robert Foley, not that Robert Foley. That's not him. Nope. Different guy. Scratch that, Jim. Sorry about that. Just going to cross off this page. Maybe next time. I just want to talk about Charbono. Sauvignon Blanc? What the hell?