Ladies and gentlemen, it's another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Greg. I do communications at Binny's in the room with me today. Is Shannon. I do communications as well. Hi, I'm Bill. I'm one of the wine buyers for Binny's. And special guest today, Michael Eddy, winemaker at Louis Martini. Thanks. Thanks for having me. You got started in Louis Martini in 2005. I was working just on the Sonoma at that point, but that was kind of my introduction. And then really around 2008 is where I got to know the whole portfolio quite a bit better and started working more closely with Mike Martini, who was the third generation of Martini family winemakers. So I consider that my real beginning of the connection with the brand. Okay, cool. And you've been the head winemaker since 2015. Am I getting that right? Yeah, that's when Mike officially retired. It was kind of a transition period there as he started to step away more and I took on more. So your tenure has seen, you have seen a bunch of very highly rated, very affordable wine. Correct. That's pretty cool. I mean, we're talking to the guy and we have sold a ton, probably literally, of your wines over the last decade. So, yeah. Thanks for coming in and sharing your story and your wines. Yeah, should be fun. It seems like it's a pretty exciting time at your winery. I know that Gallo has been buying vineyards like Stagecoach Vineyard, for example. Do you get to put some of that fruit into any of the Martini wines? Absolutely. We actually have been purchasing Stagecoach. So Lot One, we don't have Lot One here today, but that's our flagship Napa Valley Cabernet. And Stagecoach has been a part of the portfolio for that wine since its inception in 2003 vintage. Hasn't made it into every single vintage, but it's actually been one of the more consistent players. So we have a long history there. But usually buying just one block or two blocks at a time. So the exciting thing about that acquisition was that it kind of opened the door to... It's a very large ranch, very diverse. And so it allows us to play around with some different things and get to know the ranch a lot better. So overall, how many total vineyards or ranches do you have that you source from? It depends on the wine. So we have both contracted fruit. Like for Lot One, actually, the majority of it is outside growers that we contract with. A little bit from our own vineyards, but something like the Napa Valley Cab, which we're going to taste today, three quarters plus of that blend is actually from our own ranches. Actually more than that, over 80 percent. And that's primarily from four vineyards in Childs and Pope Valley, then one vineyard down near the town of Napa. Do you ever have to arm wrestle the Vinny for vineyards and lots? No, no, no. It's much more friendly than that. Shoot craps? No. It's all friendly, man. It's collaborative. That's great. Yeah. I read somewhere that you first started off as brewing beer. Is there a reason why you went to wine and not to spirits? Good question. Yeah, I don't know that there, I mean, maybe there is a reason. I've never really thought about that. I worked in a restaurant while I was getting my undergrad degree, and had always been interested in food and intrigued by wine, but my parents drank wine three or four times a year, so I wasn't around it a lot. But when I was working in the restaurant on a student's budget, beer was much more accessible, so I could go buy beers from different parts of the world, bring them in on a slow night, and we'd all taste them and talk about them. I think that was one of the first connections with the intellectual social aspect of beverages, to be able to discuss them with people and build a better understanding of something that you're tasting through conversation. So then I started home brewing beer, and that was a real connection for me because I was in college studying microbiology and organic chemistry, kind of the scientific tools that you use during fermentation. But that was more abstract. I enjoyed it intellectually, but the brewing beer connected it to a consumable that I had interest in. So that was a huge light bulb for me. But I don't know why I never really considered spirits. I don't know a heck of a lot about distillation, and it just never really drew me. I don't know why. Can we get started on your Sonoma? Absolutely. Cool. 2016, Louis Martini, Sonoma County Cabernet. And I hope you take this in the right way, but I've always thought of this wine a little bit like a gateway wine. It's a serious Cabernet, but it's affordable. I know when I was working in the stores, this was a wonderful wine to recommend to people who were just starting to get involved in serious red wines. And yeah, that is a compliment, actually. It's just every year, year in, year out, it's really solid and good wine. I actually take that as a compliment because quite frankly, that's kind of the goal with this wine. We use different techniques. We're tasting several Cabernets today here and we make several others that are sold exclusively through our tasting room. We make seven right now, eight if you count our Rosé of Cabernet. And really the goal here is to make something that is very versatile, meaning it can be used as a cocktail wine, because let's face it, as much as we talk about food and wine, and I do believe in that and enjoy it, a lot of people just like to have a glass of wine before dinner or as a cocktail. With Cabernet, the watch out there is that if you have a lot of harsh astringency, if the wine is really rough in the mouth, it can be less pleasant kind of on its own. And so we manage the extraction of this wine, so we get all that color and depth and weight, but not some of the more monstrous tannins to make it more drinkable and juicy. So these are aged and then blended, the grape bridles together? Most often. Blending is, I know people usually think of blending is a single activity, but for me, and I think for a lot of people, it's more iterative. So early on in the wine's life, if you have things that obviously go together, they're both going to make it in the blend. There are reasons to bring them together because they do harmonize. They're actually, there's some chemical stability. You guys know that wines will, some wines will throw deposits in the bottle. That is an instability, and we like to get as much of that out as we can. And so if you blend very late, two different wines, those different chemistries can cause instabilities in the wine. So there are kind of practical reasons to put wines together early. But obviously, if you put your entire blend together really early, you're making a huge commitment because you can't unblend. So it typically is more an iterative process where you're putting together things that are, yeah, those definitely go together, letting them age a little bit more. And then you kind of reevaluate, hey, where do I want to tweak the flavor profile? What do I need to add to it? All these wildfires in California, have any of your vineyards experienced any smoke damage or anything? Have you guys been hit by that at all? Not this year, but in 2017 when we had the big fires, it actually burned three-quarters of the way around the Monoroso Vineyard. And so we actually aren't making a 2017 Monoroso Cabernet because we had Cabernet still out. So we had some losses there in terms of Cabernet, we had to blend away those wines. And actually, there's a block of Malbec that we used for a tasting room wine that had fire retardant dropped on it so we couldn't harvest it, but... Vineyards usually don't burn, do they? No, they don't burn well at all. They actually act as great fire breaks. And that was very clear in 2017. That fire moved. It wasn't like the fire this year. It moved really fast, like shockingly fast. And it would come up to vineyards and more or less stop. You'd get some burning through kind of the cover crop in a ways, but it wouldn't just like literally take out the vineyard in most cases. You know, I always remind people that's just grapes and wine. It's not a big deal. People lost homes and stuff. So not making a Monoroso cab for a year, that's not a very big deal. Sell that to the accountants. Yeah. Well, I mean, since we're talking about it, have you noticed over the last decade and a half or so the temperature increases on the effect on the growing season and the effect on the grapes? Haven't. And I haven't really dug into the data necessarily. And I'm no climate change expert. But to me, there's a little bit of a misconception, I think, as I understand it. And I think it's because climate change was misbranded as global warming. People have this conception that it just means everything's getting hotter. Averages are a funny thing for human brains. Exactly. They are. They can be misinterpreted easily. And so people presume, oh, you just move towards cooler climates as things get warmer, it'll all be good. But climate change, actually, one of the major factors is that it causes more volatile weather patterns, which you can't move away from that. And ultimately, I think what it's going to push our industry to do is to get even better. We've developed some pretty good technologies, but it's going to force us to get even better at, one, predicting weather events and preparing for them, and two, responding to them from a viticultural standpoint, using the viticultural growing tools that we have. We're going to have to get better at it because there's not going to be that seasonal consistency that maybe you had 20 years ago. So you're a winemaker, but you're also responsible front to back, right? You do the vineyard management and viticulture and picking and harvesting. For our winery, it's a collaborative thing. So I don't technically own, like they don't report to me in the vineyards, but we work very, very closely, both them understanding the wines that we're producing, so they know how to grow the grapes, and then me out in the vineyards debating and Cool. Kind of wandered away from it, but Sonoma Cab, super plush, easy to drink, absolutely. No guilt in popping one of those open at three in the afternoon on a Tuesday. Not at all. Yeah, we really build that wine to be juicy, accessible. It's actually of all of our cabs, aside from the Rosé, which is a unique beast, is the shortest stage because we're really trying to capture that very primary juicy Cabernet fruit. Maybe less- Used barrels from the other wines? A little bit, but the majority of this wine is actually aged in stainless steel. That's cool. So by aging in stainless steel, you get less oxygen exposure, which keeps more of that youthful fresh fruit, right? So with aging, especially with oxygen and aging, what you get is you'll get some softening of mouthfeel, a little bit of a reduction in intensity, but you'll also develop more layers and secondary characters. You keep that oxygen in a way and keep the wine young, you get a lot of that juicy primary fruit, and that's what we're really trying to capture here. Cool. Can we try the Alex? Yeah. 2016, Louis Martini, Alexander Valley, Cabernet. So, along the lines of what Bill was saying, when I first moved to Chicago, here's my personal anecdote. Thank you, sir. Yeah. Moved to Chicago 2006, looking for a job. No, I want to sell wine. I'm into wine. I was selling wine before in the grocery store, right? I'm applying at the two premier Chicago retailers, one is Binny's Beverage Depot and the other is Sam's Wine and Spirits. Which is gone now. I got to my third or fourth interview at Sam's Wine and Spirits, their hiring manager and then another test level, and then the store manager. He's like, I want you to talk to my wine manager. So I call up the wine manager of that location of Sam's at the time. He's like, so what are you into lately? I'm like, you know what? I'm like 22, right? 24. I'm getting into Cabernet, trying a lot of Napa, have been enjoying Alexander Valley. I've had this Martini, then he never called me back. So thanks, your wine. Your wine landed me a job at Binny's Beverage Depot, couldn't be happier. Good. And the guy said, Well, duh. Yeah, so we have the Alexander Valley in our glass, but I really like to talk about it and the Napa together because the winemaking on those two wines is very, very similar. So unlike the Sonoma County, we're aging in barrels here. We're also extracting more and building more structure into this wine, so it's going to have more backbone, more tannin, and that aging in barrel helps round that out, but it also develops more layers and nuance. These wines, as opposed to the Sonoma, which is aged for about a year-ish, the Alexander Valley and Napa both age in barrel for about a year and a half. So it gives you a very different dynamic. But because the two wines, the winemaking is pretty darn similar. What you taste and the difference between the two is very much driven by the growing area. There's still a ton of ripe fruit, but then a little bit more structure, a little more spice, a little more vanilla, or a little vanilla, I guess. A little bit longer finish. Liquorish olive. Blackcurrant. The ripe fruit is really right at the center of the whole thing. Yeah. Oftentimes in Alexander Valley, you can see some of that sage leaf herbal character as an undertone. What do you think, Beau? I like it a lot. This is ready to drink, but this also is probably, now you're getting wine that you could keep three or four years, it would show a little more complexity, right? Correct. I would say more than that. Typically, this one is compared to the Napa, it tends to be a little bit more rustic, a little less refined, and it's more brambles and almost even some of the bramble leaf, that herbal berry character. Yeah. Sometimes I say autumnal and paddle roll his eyes at me. That probably doesn't come through on an audio podcast very well. Right. I mean, that would be quite an eye roll if you could hear it, but- He knows how to verbally roll his eyes. Okay, got it. Like this. Yeah, autumnal. Yeah, right. Alexander Valley is in Sonoma County? I always confuse it with- Anderson. Russian River. Well, no, both of those are in Sonoma County. Okay. So this wine is made actually from a subset of some of the vineyards that go into the Sonoma County, but very specific blocks and actually sections of blocks in the Alexander Valley. The Sonoma County is from Alexander Valley and Dry Creek Valley mostly, but the Alexander Valley obviously is all from Alexander Valley. And you are prized for the Monte Rosso Vineyard. That's in Sonoma too. It is. That's up above Sonoma Valley, which is much further south. Yeah. And when we get to that line, we'll talk about that, because that does have an effect on that vineyard and the style of wine that it produces. Western exposure? Southwestern, yeah. Cool. So how many different Zinfandels do you make? How many bottlings? One. You're just the one? Okay. And it's all from Monte Rosso? Correct. And actually it's entirely from 125 plus year old vines. So all the vines, we have younger vines on the ranch, but that gnarly vines that we make is 100% from vines planted before 1900. Did it ever used to be called Dancing Bull? It did not. That was a different thing? Yeah. No, it did used to be called the Goldstein Ranch because those were the former owners. But then the Martini family bought it in 38, just five years after Louis M built his winery in St. Helena, he bought Monoroso, which is two, at least looking back, pretty brilliant moves. I think he probably had some vision, but he's also a little bit lucky. But during prohibition? Just after prohibition. This is ancient history, it's me, but I'm young. You're going to just let that one go? Oh, man. When you've been beat down as much as I have. You've learned your lesson. It doesn't really matter. Fair enough. So I'm trying to remember, I know Gallo made a Borrelli Valley Cabernet back in the day. Borrelli Creek Vineyard, yeah. And I think that was, was that under the old Gallo Sonoma label? It was, yeah. It was a vineyard designate, but it was under the Gallo Sonoma. So same vineyard, much of it now has been replanted since those days. But same site, very, very large vineyard just south of Cloverdale. So almost the most northern, most part of Sonoma County. So not to be a kiss-ass, but you consider yourself a steward of such a historically important brand? Yeah. Actually, so when I got out of UC Davis, I got my master's at UC Davis in food science with a specialization in enology. I was a young guy and all I wanted to do is make cool wines and work with good vineyards and I really didn't have any sense that being attached to history would mean anything to me. In fact, I don't think I thought it would if you had asked me. But the first place I landed a job after my internship was Bull U Vineyard, which was also founded in the 30s. And I was really shocked at how cool it felt to like hear these stories about Andrei Chelychev, who's a very famous, one of the first really technically knowledgeable vintners in Napa Valley, and the people that he mentored and all that history actually gave some meaning to me. Not that being a part of something historic means you're replicating what they've done, but it still means you're a part of this long story. And it adds something to what you do on a day-to-day basis, and that's certainly true for me at Martini. Are you the first winemaker who doesn't have the last name Martini? Yes. Well, I am, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty impressive. Yeah, or burdensome, depending on your personality. All right, so we have the Napa now. Yes. 2016, Louis Martini, Napa Valley, Cabernet. So again, pretty similar in the winery to the Alexander Valley, but obviously different growing area. And a huge chunk of this coming from Childs Valley and Pope Valley, so up above Napa Valley proper in the hills. But typically for me, this is the more refined, elegant example, whereas the Alexander Valley is a little bit more rustic and unrefined and kind of- Yeah, it shows. Yeah. And a very classic cassis, less of the blackberry bramble type stuff and more of that blackcurrant. This is a really easy exercise to recommend somebody who's getting into wine, because relatively affordably, they can pick up these three bottles probably for like 80 bucks total, and you can try the stylistic differences from the same producer, from three unique geographies. And then, of course, the inflections that you, the choices that you would make as a wine maker imposed on that too, but like a really cool opportunity to try three unique things created very similarly. Yeah. Yeah. I have another cool thing to try at home for wine drinkers, but we'll talk about that when we get to the last wine. We're going to funnel it. You're going to... Wine bong? No. Not all of the bottom of the bottle. Slightly more technical than that. Not a lot more, but slightly more technical than that. So, this is a really sleek wine, and it's almost like the Alexander Valley is like your outdoor wine. I could totally see drinking that out on the deck in the evening on a fall day, maybe an autumnal day, and this is more of a... You're not going to roll your eyes at that? Just read a book. This is maybe more of a real serious dinner party kind of cabernet. Yeah, it's a pretty classy wine, I think. And frankly, for Napa Valley cab, pretty damn affordable too. Really affordable. Glad you said it, because I don't want to say it every single time, but yeah, it is, it really is. How much of the stuff do we sell? Loads, huh? Oh gosh. The Sonoma is one of the stop warts, you know? Do you ever think that the Sonoma is a threat to the higher labels because it's so affordable and gets such great reviews year after year? No. If you're talking about like cannibalization, like, oh, I'm just going to get this for Martini because it's cheaper instead of that. Yeah, if the Sonoma gets like a 90 or a 92 and the Napa is right in the same range, and it's roughly twice the price or whatever it is. It's a huge advantage to have a popular, affordable label, I would think, in your wine stable because people coming up start drinking that wine and they get familiar with the brand and there's some loyalty there. Trust. And so it's natural just human curiosity. At some point, they're going to want to start trying the stuff that's a little more expensive. The more wine you drink, the more you want to keep looking for new experiences. Yeah, you called it a gateway, and it absolutely is to both the brand and to the variety, I think. And that wine is two-thirds, three-quarters of the volume of the entire brand, just that one wine. So that means we're doing something right there. Is the Sonoma juice produced in Napa? No, it's actually made at a larger winery over in Sonoma. Fray Roads? Closer to the grapes. Yeah. Cool. I mean, that's- Yeah, it would be impossible for us to make it at Martini proper. Is the winery on the Highway 29, like the production facility for the Napa too? And these guys? No, because that's- Yeah. So on Highway 29, just south of St. Helena, is where the winery is that Louis M built in 1933. Right. We actually this year just finished a very long, like more than decade long project to renovate that tasting room and just opened it in March. So pretty damn exciting. And then we held in the summertime, we held the Napa Valley Wine Auction, Barrel Auction there. So it's been a really exciting year. It's kind of seeing Martini really officially come back to its glory days. Bill, have you been? I've not been to the new winery. I have, however, been to the Napa Valley Wine Auction before. That's a pretty cool event. That must have been fun. Well, it was particularly cool because Louis M was one of the founding members of the Napa Valley Vintners Association, and they are the organization that do the Barrel Auction. So to have his winery kind of refreshed and reopened and then host that, it was just some kind of cool connections, you know, in terms of people and story and history. It was a lot of fun. I was supposed to go to your winery one time, but the bus broke down. Oh, yeah, bummer, right? Well, what's the building that? Never made it, drove past a couple of times. Next that you should have grabbed an Uber, I guess. Yeah. What's the building that is by the Monte Rosso vineyard, like right there? That's the old Mount Pisgah or Mount Peak winery. So that was the winery that the Goldsteins built. Okay. The original owners in the 1800s. That's a pretty interesting place. It is super cool. Yeah. Yeah. You want to try this in? Yes, please. 2014, Louis Martini, Monte Rosso vineyard, Cabernet. So these next two lines, we were talking about wineries, right? The Alexander Valley and the Napa are made in the winery at Martini. But in 2002, when Gallo acquired Martini, Joe Gallo, our CEO, went to Mike Martini and he said, what do you need to make the best Napa Valley Cabernet you can? And one of the great things about the marriage of the Martini and Gallo family was that Martini family had this great history and knew a lot about making wine and had some great vineyards. But Gallo had capital and at that time, the Martini family was struggling a little bit on the business side. When was that? That was 2002 was the acquisition. And literally, almost immediately, they built what we now call the micro winery or Cellar 254. It's where we make our small lots, our tasting room and wine club exclusive, as well as some small lots that get a little bit of distribution. So this Monoroso cab is made in our micro winery. So it's hand sorting. It's a romantic squeak. Don't worry about it. That is not a romantic clunk. Oh, wait, that's fine. So in the micro winery, we hand sort. We ferment in very small fermenters. All the must or the fruit is transferred via gravity. So it just gives us a tremendous amount of control so that we can precisely extract and build these wines. But I also want to talk about Monoroso for a moment because it truly is a very special place. Monoroso means Red Mountain and the soils up there are in spots so red, they look like the infield of a baseball diamond. I mean, they're like brick red. And there's something about the chemistry of that very iron rich, that's iron oxide or rust. And it gives the wines a very distinct character. And in the cab, that typically comes across to me as this iron-like minerality. But you also get tremendous layers in this wine. You get these interesting herbal layers, you get some earth, you know, some loam, and then you get fruit. Interestingly enough, it is, I don't think, the darkest cab we make. It tends to veer more towards almost a dried cherry, if you will. But Monoroso also sits in the Mayacamas Mountains between Sonoma Valley and Napa Valley, but down near the southern end. So it's close to the bay area where we get that cooling influence. So it would be considered a region two, which is a relatively cool growing site. And that gives you this really bright backbone acidity, which makes them a little bit more classically structured. And in addition, this southwest aspect gives you very intense sun exposure in the afternoon during the ripening season. And you're sitting above the fog that, because you're at a thousand feet elevation, roughly, you're sitting above the fog that tends to collect in the valley floor. So you've got this very cool air. You've got this great, intense sunlight. You've got this really unique soil. And this minerally character seems to come out with age. So this is actually the cabernet we age longer than any of our others, including our flagship Napa Valley cab, our Lot 1. And it's because this character seems to develop with time. So this is aged 27-ish months in barrel. What vintage is this? I think it was 14? 14. Yeah, this is really good. It's very classic. It's not overly modern, but lots of fruit. Really, really, really delicious. Great amount of spice. That's another classic Monoroso character. I think you'll see that even more in the Zen. It tends to have this spicy quality. I don't know if I've smelled a cab this peppery. Me either. I see what you mean with the iron minerality. It's steely. So they say that the vines aren't literally pulling mineral molecules up and putting them in. So how do you explain that minerality in the wine itself? I don't know. I'm a pretty skeptical scientific guy. So when I first started making wine, you know, I'd hear stuff. He's saying magic. No. I'd hear a lot of things and I go, oh, that's bulls**t. And then get a few more years' experience and go, oh, actually, maybe there's something to that. So I certainly wouldn't suggest that there's iron going from the soil into the berries. It's an interesting coincidence and super cool, but I do believe it has something to do with the soil and or the climate of that site. Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's where it comes from, right? Yeah. And this wine is extraordinarily age-worthy, particularly with that low pH, that higher acidity. It's really built, and yet it's a hillside, so it's got enough tannin to really hold it, and just gets more interesting and nuanced and layered as the years go by. It's like a Ferrari, but with really shaggy seat covers. It's sleek, but it's still really plush too. Yeah. I guess I'll take that as a compliment. At least they weren't autumnal seat covers. Right. Like Chewbacca costume seat covers, like big fluffy fuzzy dice in this Ferrari. It's a compliment. That's better than the pine-scented tree, so I'll take the fuzzy dice over there. One time I said to a winemaker that the wine tasted bloody, and she was like, that's not cool. I was like sanguine, and she was like, thank you. Oh, nice recovery. That sometimes, I try not to say too often because it's not super sexy, but to me that iron character in the Monoroso can be a little bit like a rare steak. Sure. There's a wine critic who called it cast iron pan. I think that maybe is a little more palatable. My cast iron pan tastes like coconut oil. Has it been seasoned? Yeah, with flaxseed oil, right? On the inside though? Yeah. Have you tasted the outside? I mean, I seasoned it outside. I don't rub it every time. I also, I should. No, I was just asking if you taste it, not if you rubbed it. No, I haven't tasted it. I didn't want to get personal. I'm going to go home and lick my pan. For real, I want to know its experience. I'd like to hear how the outside of the pan tastes. Sweet. On next week's podcast. All right. Zin or Cypress? Let's do the Cypress Cabin. Cypress. 2016 Cypress Ranch Vineyard Cabernet by Louis Martini. We have a new collection of Cabernets coming out that we're calling our Crown Collection, and it will actually include the Monoroso. But the Cypress is the first new addition to this lineup, and we have two more cabs. We'll release one a year, so one in 2020 and one in 2021, to fill out this line, and there's some really exciting wines coming for that. I can't talk about yet. And we can't have them anyway. Correct. Well, unless they're really do well, and we have the ability to scale it a little bit, that's possible, but that would be a ways down the road. But yeah, at first, they'll be tasting room only. So after Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast explodes in popularity in the future timeline of 2022, and then people can go out and get these things. Thanks for downloading three years from now. And enjoy these wines when they're available. So Cypress Ranch is a ranch that I actually worked with at Bowie Vineyard when I was there in the late 90s, the first winery out of school. So I had known of it and known some of its pedigree, and then we acquired it, let's see, three years ago roughly. And there is one block in particular that's really special. It's actually the block that has the Cypress, the eponymous Cypress tree in it. But this ranch is just on the back side of Howell Mountain in Pope Valley. So you're getting slightly more continental weather, meaning colder in the early season and then hotter in the late season. It's a different kind of development profile. And we put, I think we had like, this is the 16, right? Because that would be all you'd get. We would put like 4% petit-fer-deux in here as well, just to give a little bit of more backbone and kind of shift it just a little more purple-fruited. It smells pretty amazing. It's in purple. Like, very tannic, in a sleek structure. Yeah. And then, like, what do you think for the fruit, like pomegranate going into, like, baked raspberry? Kind of like a tartness, almost. It's definitely not, like, super dark. I usually say, like, boysenberry is kind of an intermediate for me. You know, it's not red. It's not dark, but it's kind of in the middle. And that's usually kind of what I use. But I can see, like, a riper raspberry. Yeah. Bill, what do you think? I'm just trying to get my head around it. It's definitely tannic. It definitely needs to open up a little bit, I think. Do you have a lot of experience drinking wines from this vineyard that have some age on it? Not a ton, a little bit, but I wouldn't say extensive. Right. That was the seller. But this... So this was owned by Floral Springs. I don't know if you guys know Floral Springs. So that what you guys might have more experience with wines, aged wines from there than I. They made a wine called Trilogy, which was a big thing back in 15, 20 years ago. Also had one of the curviest wineries in Napa. I mean, this is robust, man, and this is an infant. Yes. Oh, it's a baby. A baby of a wine. Yep. But interestingly enough, the feedback I've gotten from the folks in the Tasty Room is that people love this wine. They've even had people who like it better than the Monoroso. I mean, it stands out in the line up. Yeah. Like this just grabs you. Yep. So it's got some good intensity, that firmness. Not to knock on the Monoroso, that's delicious too. I'm like, plush drinking now, sort of way. Yeah. See, and I like the Monoroso better, so that's why they're different wines. You do. Exactly. That's why we make so many different caps. You want to try this in? Now? That's next. 2015, Gnarly Vine, Zinfandel. Why is it so gnarly? Why does this seem like it's so close to infringing on a copyright? Because a lot of people use it. Yeah, gnarly vine is a pretty generic term. It is. Yeah, technically, when you see old vine, gnarly vine, any of that, there's no legal restriction on that. So people can put old vine on the label and there really is no definition. So like meritage or something like that. Yeah. At least with meritage, there is a meritage association that tries to control that term. And I believe you're supposed to be a member to use the term meritage on the label. And they have definitions like around the varieties and the percentages. So it's somewhat managed. But yeah, old vine means zilch. But this is legit from very old vines. Like I said earlier, 125 plus years. So this vineyard, in addition to being just a cool place and viticulturally interesting, we have the oldest block of Sémillon, Bering Sémillon in the state of California. We have what we believe is the oldest Bering block of Cabernet planted in the 40s. And actually it was very likely in that wine we just tasted. The Monorosso Cab that we tasted is usually pulled from four or five different blocks. And that would be one potential one. And then there are five plus blocks usually that this Gnarly vine is made from, but all those 125 plus year old vines. You make a lot of Cabernet. Yes. Is this like recess for you? Recess? No. This wine is my, for me personally, I differentiate my wine maker palette from my wine drinker palette. I have, like as a wine maker, I will tear a wine to shreds for certain faults. Whereas when I'm at home, I'm much more forgiving and open. But as both a wine maker and a wine drinker, this is my favorite wine that we make. I feel like we should put some of it in perfume bottles and sell it that way because this is just one of those wines that I can just smell for 20 minutes straight. It's just so intoxicating. The difference in varietal is stark. Yes. It's like orange liqueur and blueberry syrup. Yeah. I usually get some like some Cure, some cherry brandy, and you get that spice. We actually typically see more of that spice in cooler vintages, but it usually has some green peppercorn, black peppercorn. So with Zinfandel, except for some of the really good bottlings like this, maybe a couple of the Ridge Zins, stuff like that, Zinfandels tend to be, can be very one-dimensional. So what makes it a Zin like this, which is not one-dimensional, which has a lot of complexity, what is it that causes that? Is it the terroir? Is it the age of the vines? It's a good question. I would say in this wine, the terroir has a lot to do with it. The whole vine age thing is a very interesting discussion. There is certainly when you get vine or blocks, vineyard blocks that are 20 years old, they start to settle down and come into more of a natural balance that are easier to manage. But when you're talking over a hundred years old, I think you could get a lot of debates. I had somebody in the last few years who shared a notion they got from somebody else with me around the question of why are old vineyard blocks so good? And this person posited that when a block is really, really good, you really don't want to pull it out. So maybe they're old because they're good, not good because they're old. And I think there may be some validity to that. There of course is also the happenstance of not getting extreme disease, right? If you get disease. They're old because they're lucky. They're old also, kind of like people. Yeah. They were good to begin with, and then they got lucky. And so they've just stayed around. So who's going to make Palmeyer? Well, that's still all in the works. That's literally like been frenzied. It's been a crazy week for me, but they will be reporting to me. I will manage that team. Cool. Oh, that's great. Congratulations. Thanks. That's exciting, right? Oh, yeah. Yes. So you get to make some Chardonnay too? Yeah. After a decade and a half of making Cabernet. Well, so in 2017 at Martini, we made the first white table wine in a decade that we'd made. So we've been making a Napa Valley Sauv Blanc for a few vintages right now. Again, it's not distributed, but that was pretty exciting for me and my team to have a white wine. And then when you go out and do events, it gives you a good starter wine. So, but yeah, doing the Chardonnay thing will be fine. So you have to fly. Thank you for sharing the past, present, and future of the Louis Martini Winery, sharing six different Louis Martini wines, more than I ever imagined I would taste. I always thought it was three. Cool. So that's pretty neat. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Thanks for listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. We'll be back next week. We'll be talking about, like, I don't know, AZIPA or something. Until next time, I'm Greg. I'm Shannon. I'm Bill. And I'm Michael Eddy. Keep tasting.