On this episode of the “VinePair Podcast,” hosts Adam Teeter, Joanna Sciarrino, and Zach Geballe discuss ongoing adaptations to Napa’s wine tasting experience. Multi-course events and lengthier winery visits are replacing the old, straightforward model of touring facilities and tasting wines. These changes are certainly reflected in the price tag, but is this the experience that consumers are looking for? And will other wine regions across the country — and world — follow suit? Tune in to learn more.
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Adam Teeter: From VinePair’s New York City headquarters. I’m at Adam Teeter.
Joanna Sciarrino: And I’m Joanna Sciarrino.
Zach Geballe: In Seattle, Washington, I’m Zach Geballe.
A: And this is the “VinePair Podcast.” Woo! I don’t even know what’s going on anymore. Is it May? Is it about to be June? I thought about it for a second. I was like, “Where are we?” Holy sh*t, we made it to the middle of May. When we were starting the podcast I was like, “I can’t just be like, ‘Joanna, Zach, how are you guys doing?'” again. It’s how I open up the podcast every time. Wow, we’re here.
J: Just go for it.
A: Just go for it.
Z: Here we are on a tiny blue speck in the midst of an indifferent void. What did you guys drink? No, I’m just kidding.
A: You can start. What have you been up to, Zach? Give us some updates. You were in Napa, so you’re just following in my footsteps.
Z: I was. I’m going to brag. It’s not even a humblebrag. I got to drink wine with future NBA Hall of Famer Carmelo Anthony. He’s pretty cool. I was at an event.
A: What a disappointment for the Knicks. What a disappointment.
J: Do we know that he’s going to be a future Hall of Famer, or are you just guessing?
A: Yeah, I mean, most people think so. He was great. He will be.
Z: A very, very, very high probability. We won’t discuss Carmelo Anthony’s basketball legacy here on this podcast, but you can find other good podcasts out there if you want, folks. I was out there for an event at Robert Mondavi. They were doing a big old party and someone thought it was a good idea to invite me, which was very kind of them.
A: I mean, is he a Knicks fan? No, sorry. Not a Knicks fan. Is he a Mondavi fan? What was he doing there?
Z: Well, Carmelo is a huge wine fan.
A: I know he’s a huge wine fan. Did you ask him? Is he a Napa fan? Did he know Mondavi well?
Z: I wasn’t put in a position where I could grill him on his purpose for being here. Next time, they’ll know not to invite you to avoid that exact situation.
A: Probably. I just got to be a journalist. Always a journalist, you know?
Z: Yeah, exactly. I think they saw him as someone who is obviously a prominent wine lover in the basketball community, a guy who was really instrumental in ushering in the modern era of NBA stars and NBA players as wine influencers.
A: Yeah, the Banana Boat crew.
Z: Yeah, exactly. That was cool. So I obviously had a lot of Mondavi wine when I was at the winery and then I actually went to Cadet after the event, which is a great wine bar right in downtown Napa. It was a block from where I was staying, which is very convenient. And I drank some non-Napa wine with him and some other folks, including a beautiful Cab Franc from the Loire Valley from one of my favorite producers there, Arnaud Lambert. Also, shout-out real quick to Bay Grape, which opened a shop up in Napa relatively recently.
J: Oh, yes.
Z: We’ve obviously talked on the podcast about it and certainly on the site. We talked about the folks behind that, but they put a wine shop in Napa that features almost no Napa wine, which is kind of cool. It’s a little bit off the beaten path. In talking to them, their audience are very much people who work in the wine trade in Napa and not so much people who go to Napa for wine. So it’s kind of an interesting break from what is the rest of Napa, for sure.
A: You’re saying, not people who go to Napa for wine, more people who work in Napa?
Z: Yeah.
J: Like trade versus consumers.
Z: Yeah. A certain kind of wine drinker might find their way there, but they are like not somewhere you would end up by accident. There’s no foot traffic. It’s a little bit outside of the downtown core. It’s very clear when you walk in, OK, this is a very different vibe. Obviously, there are some other wine shops in downtown Napa that focus much more on Napa wine, to say nothing of all the other tasting rooms, restaurants, bars, etc. They’re just doing something a little different.
A: What exactly was the Mondavi thing again?
Z: I don’t get too deep into this because it’s a whole long conversation. But basically, when Constellation bought Mondavi, more recently over the last few years, they’ve really been kind of interested in restoring the prominence of that brand. And especially with To Kalon, this iconic vineyard that’s at the heart of the brand. It’s in the same way that we’ve seen with a few other companies. The way that Gallo has done with Louis M. Martini and Monte Rosso and that we’ve seen with Inglenook and Ravenswood and some of those other brands that were at one point really turned into grocery store brands. And now a recognition has come that, wait, we have these great historic properties, we have these iconic vineyards, etc. We want to get the focus back on the really high end. It dovetails interestingly with our conversation about, can you find luxury brands from these wineries that have the grocery store association? We won’t pass judgment here on that, but you can listen to that podcast if you’re curious. But it was essentially an attempt to reset the narrative, I guess that would be one way to put it. It’s part of their effort to do that.
A: Cool. So basically you drank those wines and some delicious wines at Cadet. Anything else besides your Napa weekend?
Z: Oh, I can’t even remember. That was a big weekend for me. It was just me, no kids, and no wife. That’s all I can remember.
J: Just you and ‘Melo.
Z: What about you, Joanna?
J: I think the best thing that I drank this past week, we mixed up some Last Words last weekend, which I had never made before.
A: I love that cocktail.
J: Yes.
A: Were you hanging out with Tim McKirdy?
J: No, I wasn’t.
A: He loves the Last Word.
J: I was making them at home. Speaking of gin, I didn’t use the right gin and juice. It was Red Door Gin.
A: Never heard of it.
J: I got it at the office.
A: Took it from here.
J: I took it from here. The whole thing was a little too peppery, I think, with the chartreuse. But I would make it again.
A: I like that cocktail.
J: Yeah, I like the drink itself. I also had a lovely Assyrtiko this weekend, too. I don’t drink a lot of them but this seemed really good. It was from Atma, I think is the name of the producer. It was just really easy drinking. Really delicious. I want to drink more Assyrtiko.
A: That is cool.
Z: It’s a great summertime wine for sure.
A: So over the weekend, last weekend, there was a birthday party, and I was actually in charge of supplying the cocktail recipes.
J: There was a theme to this birthday party, though, right?
A: Yes. The woman whose birthday party it was, she is a cookbook author and she has a book coming out soon called “Modern Jewish Comfort Food” or something. And prior to that, she had a cookbook that came out that was called “Modern Jewish Baker.” Naomi has been good friends with her for a while, and Shannon and I became good friends. Anyways, her husband emailed me and said she wants to have Manischewitz in one of the cocktails.
J: Oh, my goodness.
A: And I was like, “Ooh, interesting.” So we basically landed on a New York sour, with the float.
J: I love that.
A: Which was going to be awesome, until their bartender bailed at 7 p.m. and the party was supposed to be at 7:30 pm. This is what happens when you’re in the Oranges, people are flakes. Sorry, the Orange is New Jersey. I don’t know, they can’t get on a train. They have issues. He had double booked their party and someone else’s. Maybe there’s just no bartenders in the Oranges. I don’t know. So anyways, the bartender wound up being her father-in-law, who is the nicest guy. I was trying to teach him at the last minute how to do the float with the spoon. And he seemed to get it until I came back 30 minutes later and he was just dumping red wine into the cup. He was like, “Oh, whatever, it all mixes together anyways. No one cares.” It was funny. The cocktail was still good, but it was just a hilarious exercise. So that was my weekend.
J: It was a bat mitzvah, though?
A: It was bat mitzvah-themed. She wanted to have a bat mitzvah-themed party.
J: Gotcha.
A: It was pretty ridiculous.
J: I think it’s an important detail.
A: It’s a bat mitzvah-themed party. All the flowers arranged were in empty Manischewitz bottles. There was a photo booth, and there was a theme. She got picked up on a chair. I mean, it was so ridiculous. But lots of fun. And then recently this week, I got to have a really delicious older wine.
J: You’ve been drinking a lot of old wine lately.
A: It was cool. I hadn’t been to Keens in a really long time. It’s so awesome.
J: The best.
A: I kind of think it’s the best.
J: Keens Steakhouse in NYC.
A: I decided last night, I think it’s the best, Joanna.
J: It’s the best place.
A: It’s better than Luger’s for sure. Way better than Luger’s. I kind of think it’s better than all of the steak houses in New York.
J: The bar there is great.
A: It’s amazing. I think the last time I went to Keens was pre-VinePair. I wasn’t really that aware of wine lists and things like that in the same way. They really don’t mark the wines up that much.
J: Really?
A: Which is kind of amazing. They had this bottle of Mastroberardino Radici 1998 on the list, and it was insanely well priced. Yeah, we’ll do that. And then of course, they had to find the bottle. They didn’t know where it was. And that took 20 minutes.
J: Do they have an extensive list? I can’t remember.
A: It’s not that big. I think that no one orders this wine. Because if you look, their list is huge with Bordeaux and Napa. And then they had, I would say, six or seven Rhône wines, two or three Northern and mostly Southern Rhône. And then they had some Barolo, like two or three. And then there’s just Campania, and it was just this.
Z: Yeah, just a random bottle in case you somehow stumbled across it.
A: Yeah. When I first ordered it, the guy was like, “Wait, can you please tell me the number next to the wine?” So I told him, and it literally took 20 minutes for someone to come up and be like, “We’re really sorry that your food’s already come. We’re literally searching for the wine.” Then they came back, and I was like, “I wonder if they even knew this was on the list anymore?” But it was awesome. I mean, that wine ages beautifully. We had one other really cool wine experience that you and I had together, Joanna. It was that Mr. Billecart came in.
J: Oh, my goodness, yes.
A: He came into the office. That’s actually his handle on Instagram. I’m not making it up. But yeah, Billecart-Salmon came into the office and we got to try the new release of their 2008 Blanc de Blancs. We had to taste it against the 1999.
J: 1999.
A: Which was pretty awesome.
J: And the 2008.
A: Yes, we had the 2008 and then the ’99.
J: Oh, sorry. And then what was the third bottle?
A: Just the non-vintage, which was great. And again, that’s another one of these brands. Zach, you probably know this as well from selling those wines. They’re very well priced. It’s kind of mind blowing how well priced those wines are, especially compared to other Champagnes. I was blown away by it when he told us the vintage was $140 or something
J: Yeah, $140 or $160 or something.
A: And I was like, “Wait, what? That’s stupid.” It was just stupid, and very cool.
J: Yeah.
Z: Awesome.
A: I just want everyone to know that the shade about the Oranges was mostly directed to Keith. He’s sitting here and listening, and he lives in the Oranges. I don’t actually have beef with the Oranges — especially not West Orange, the best orange. Anyways, Zach, this topic this week comes from you, which is based on your most recent experience in Napa. So why don’t you set it up?
Z: Adam, you’ve had the opportunity to be in Napa a couple of times recently and obviously, I’ve been there before as well. There’s so much of American wine culture in certain ways that, even if it isn’t directly tied into Napa, it still kind of reflects what’s going on in Napa. The thing that I was struck by in my time down there, even though I only went to a couple of wineries outside of the event I was there for, is the way that the experience in tasting rooms has really evolved. And I think we were seeing this pre-pandemic, but it’s really accelerated through reopenings during and after the pandemic or wherever we are now. It’s this kind of refocusing of the tasting room experience from what it was previously. Which I think even in Napa was much that you make an appointment, but often in some places you don’t. You show up, you kind of are standing at a bar or maybe there are some chairs, maybe there’s a couple of nice tables, etc. But you’re walking through a flight of wines. You’re paying whatever the price is, and then you finish and you kind of go, “OK, well, I’m going to buy some wine and I’m going to enjoy the wine club.” You move on. And your time in the tasting room is 30 minutes or an hour, maybe, if you’re kind of stretching it out. So many of the tasting rooms in Napa now, and you’re starting to see the spread outside of Napa to not just other California regions, but I’m seeing it up here in Washington and in Oregon with some of the higher-end producers here as well, which is much more like a restaurant reservation. So you have time, you have a table, you have a server, you have courses, potentially. You have a whole process in which you walk through the wines. And along with it, you have a price tag that now readily exceeds $100. Often what you are getting, truly, is maybe a few bites of food. You’re maybe walking back into a barrel room. It’s very interesting to me. I am the wrong person to answer this question, which is part of the reason why I want to ask you guys and also, of course, listeners, if you have thoughts. It is unclear to me if this is actually what the general wine tourism public wants or if it’s merely the path we are being shepherded down. Because to me, the added value of a few bites of food and staring at a bunch of barrels is not really worth the extra $75 you’re paying for it. But I’m not the one who they’re aiming for, quite obviously. This is kind of where I wanted to start this conversation. Do you see this trend as being responsive to what people are saying they want out of these visits? Or is it much more the wineries calculating, “Hey, wait a second. How do we capture even more revenue from the person who’s setting foot inside our door?” Because, quite honestly, that person is a hugely valuable customer to us. And the second they walk inside, we have them captive in a sense. Why settle for $60 or $70 for a tasting? Well, we can get $150 for a slightly more elaborate presentation.
J: I’m happy to jump in here because I have never been to Napa, and I want to share my thoughts.
A: You were me until two years ago.
J: I’ve been to Sonoma, but I’ve never done the Napa thing.
A: Sonoma is great.
Z: Sonoma is going that way too, though…
A: It is.
Z: It’s not just Napa, like I said.
A: No, no, no. It all is. It’s happening in Virginia, too.
J: I guess my thought is, if I’m going to Napa and I’m making a vacation out of it and I want to go to these places and have these experiences, then I want it to be a little bit more elaborate than just sitting there and having some wine. I do think that for a lot of people who are going to Napa, they know they’re going to drop a lot of money. $150 is really probably not much if you get to see the barrel room and you get to have a little bit more of an experience than you would than going to a wine bar or something.
A: It’s really interesting. Zach, when you proposed this topic, I wasn’t sure where you were going with it. And this is an exact conversation that was had between myself and some of the other people when I was in Napa the weekend before you at the Chateau Montelena anniversary. I really think the reason that people in the trade, especially, seem to have issues with this is because these experiences are not for us. We are used to going and trying to bang out as many visits as possible, especially if you’ve ever been on a press trip or things like that, where they put like three or four visits in a day. It’s really intense and not always that fun. I think trade, especially people like yourself who’ve also worked on the floor, get really good at tasting and assessing wine very quickly. You don’t need the pomp and circumstance. For consumers, what Joanna is saying is really true. And it seems to me, from people I was talking to, they recognize that demand because of what was happening in Napa pre-Covid. Basically, you had a bunch of people who were saying, “I don’t like being rushed to the tasting bar for $70 to $100 a tasting.” So you actually had less people who were doing that because they were starting to complain that it felt like you’re not getting that one-on-one treatment. I get why they want to charge me that for the wines. But they’re dumping the wines in my glass, they’re turning and they’re talking to someone else, dumping the wines in their glass, then maybe they come back to us. And even though that probably is still somewhat the treatment that you get at a lot of these tastings — the server comes, they pour the wine, they walk away — it feels more high touch and hands on. For 40 to 50 more bucks, sometimes even $100, people seem to enjoy it more. They have a more pleasurable experience. And what a lot of wineries were telling me they’ve learned over the past few years, is people really want to hang out. I don’t know what it was like when you were there and how you got around, but especially over the last year where we came out of Covid and then Omicron, I noticed in Napa, it is almost impossible to get an Uber. So most of the time, you’re driving. I think a lot of people sort of realize, “OK, well, if I’m here, this is my vacation. I would like to drink. Then I’d like to be in a place where I can hang out, have some drinks, have some food, maybe sober up a little bit, have some water, hang out with my friends, and then we’ll drive back to the hotel and then we’ll go to dinner.” I think that that seems to be more than, “I have a 10 a.m. appointment, then I have a 1 p.m. appointment, then I have a 3 p.m. appointment, and then we go home.” What I would say here is, I think that they shouldn’t totally get rid of that because there are always more people that do want that, especially trade. They are like, “I don’t need to sit in the cabana for five hours.”
J: Or in the barrel room.
A: Right. But there are people that want that. It’s going to be a delicate balance. I definitely felt that when we went to Ashes & Diamonds, where the entire experience is that you sit and you have lunch and blah, blah, blah and it was nice. But I thought to myself, if I wasn’t with friends and I was with trade, I would just want to pop in and try the wines and leave.
J: Right. I’m actually reminded of a time that I did go to Napa a long time ago. But I had a very, very nice experience and it was a long afternoon type of thing. We hung out on the patio and that was really nice. But I could see not wanting to do that for every place.
Z: That’s the interesting thing to me. My perception from the first time I went to Napa in my early, mid-20s through my last visit pre-pandemic, was that maybe I was just seeing it from the wrong way. Not just from my own perspective as someone in the trade, but also just the setting I was going tasting in. I got the sense that a lot of people came down there and they were like, “OK, we have a weekend in Napa and I have 15 wineries I want to visit or I have 10 wineries I want to visit. And the only way to do that is to just kind of bang them out.” Maybe what’s true is that that segment of the population is still there. They’re just not as big as they seemed and/or people’s preferences and realities have changed. Maybe, as you said, the lack of rideshare options in Napa in particular has given people impetus to stay put. But I do think it’s also possible that it’s been driven in a different way by the wineries. In particular in a place like Napa. I wonder if wineries were seeing a problem in a combination of palate fatigue and not really putting the wines in the right context. You think about the value of something where you can encourage people to take their time with what are expensive wines, which are generally pretty intense wines, complicated wines. And wines that in many cases, you’re really only going to fully enjoy with food. I’ve had this experience in many places, including doing tastings with people not in a restaurant setting. It’s very hard for for people, even some professionals, to say nothing of enthusiastic wine drinkers, to taste a wine out of that context and say, “OK, but yes, maybe there are things about this one that you don’t like in this moment, but when you have it with the right dish, it will work.” That kind of leap is tricky for a lot of people, including me sometimes. It’s not always apparent to me when I taste a wine that I am going to like it with the right food or something, or that it’s going to be more balanced with the right food or things like that. It could be that some of what we’re seeing is that. I also think the last piece of it is what you both have kind of gotten at. It’s this continued desire of Napa in particular to just so entwine itself with a kind of luxury and a kind of high-end experience. And in the end, jostling elbows with people at a tasting bar is just not a luxe experience, right? And you’re right, people are like, “OK, if I’m paying $20, sure, fine. I will find room for myself at this tasting bar.” But if I’m paying $50, $70, or $100 to taste your wines, I want a nice, comfortable chair. I want to take my time. I want somebody to come serve me. I want all the accouterment of a luxury experience that I feel like I’m paying for and that I’ve flown to Napa or I’ve driven to Napa for. The other piece of this I want your guys thoughts on, and Adam, you mentioned you’re seeing this in Virginia. I’ve seen it in Washington and in Oregon. Do we think that this is going to become a more accepted way that wine tastings are held in wineries all over the country? Or do you still think it’s going to be a small handful of them that really aspire to that luxury image, if not reality?
A: So I want to take your question, but I want to turn it on its head a little bit on what you had said earlier, which is that Napa is influencing the rest of the country. I’ve been thinking about this, I actually wonder if some of it’s the reverse. Think about what’s happened in the past 10 years, we’ve gotten really used to breweries as third places and lots of places in the country now have also had wineries open near them. But not the massive amount that you have in Napa. So in Napa, there’s such a large amount of wineries that have opened that you can do what we’ve talked about, this bouncing from place to place to place. Even in Virginia, which is growing up in terms of wineries, it’s not the closest drive from Early Mountain to Barboursville and then Barboursville to Blenheim or something like that. They’re not close together, so it’s harder to jump. And people have taken to being like, “My day is going to be going to Early Mountain and sitting all day and having some food and drinking with friends and maybe doing the tasting to start.” But then I got a bottle. And that happens a lot on the North Fork and in the Finger Lakes and you see a lot less people who are doing the tours because they just don’t have the large amount of wineries side by side like you have in Napa. I wonder if now, when people have come back to Napa, that’s what they expect because that’s what they’re getting in the wine region that’s closest to them. That’s what’s happening in their local wine region. Napa is like, “OK, cool, you want this. But we’ll do it luxe.” There’s a bunch in the Hudson Valley I know people like to go to now. They have a pizza oven and people are sitting and eating pizzas and it’s very chill and there’s picnic benches. We’ll do you one better — here it is with Restoration Hardware furniture and caviar and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, it’s still that same kind of experience that I think people have now gotten used to. So I wonder if this is finally other places influencing Napa, as opposed to Napa influencing them.
J: Yeah. I think that’s a really interesting point. I wanted to ask, Zach, about one of your earlier points about the wineries saying that people aren’t having a good experience and so we need to add this experience and pair with food because the wines won’t show a certain way if you don’t have it. Do you actually think that the experience before, without food, was leading to unhappy customers or not converting to sales and that’s why?
Z: I will completely plead ignorance in a macro sense here. And again listeners, if you have some more firsthand experience, if you work for a winery or you have some of this information, it would be super interesting to us to have it at [email protected]. But I would say that it’s not necessarily that I think you have hordes of angry customers or that you had necessarily these real struggles to convert sales. Tie this conversation back into one we had a few months ago about the challenges that Napa in particular and premium wine regions are facing as some of their customer base is aging, perhaps, out of drinking and they’re not necessarily replacing those consumers with younger consumers or maybe struggling to do so a little bit. Sometimes, you have to make a different argument for yourself and/or just present things differently. If someone is visiting Napa and they decide, “OK, we’re at this winery and we really like the wine and we want to get it and we’re going to buy six bottles or something,” you have a lot of ways as a winery in Napa to close the deal right there. You can offer them shipping deals. You can offer them a bulk discount or a quantity discount — OK bulk sounds a little bit wrong. But part of it is also just putting the wine in a context that is going to feel replicable to those people. It’s like, “Hey, here’s this wine, here’s this dish or this bite of food. Here’s the context ready made for you. So buy this wine.” And now you know, when you get home and a month from now, three months from now, a year from now, a decade from now, you want to revisit that bottle of wine, maybe you make a note of what you had with it. You’re just kind of simplifying it. It’s a more in-your-face version of setting a menu card with the wines or having that stuff on your website. You’re just giving people the ideal in your eyes and context for when to enjoy the wine.
J: Making it easy for them.
Z: And that is something that, at times, they’ve struggled with. When you taste especially at some of these wineries and you have a flight of five different Cabernet Sauvignons, it’s a little hard to distinguish them. You might, in the end, make a purchase decision based on the pairing, and you liked the pairing the best and you thought that was the thing you enjoyed most. And that’s going to sway your purchase. Without some of those context clues, you may convert sales because you’re waiving their tasting fee or something with an offer of a purchase or a membership. You’re signing up for a club or something like that. But it’s anything that leaves people with a more complete experience, a sense of, “I have enjoyed this wine immensely” in a wine-drinking context with food and relaxed with my friends, my family, whatever. You’re just going to leave people more satisfied than simply, “Yeah, this was the wine I liked best at the tasting bar, and I bought three bottles because I got three bottles and we have the tasting fee or I’m paying the tasting fee and leaving empty handed.” That’s a lot of what you saw prior to this. That’s what the experience was, for a lot of people, “I guess I should buy stuff because I’ve already committed the $75 for the tasting fee. That’s almost one bottle of wine. I might as well get two more.” I think it left, not a sour taste, but maybe people didn’t leave those experiences feeling super satisfied. And it may be that this new model is just more satisfactory to people. That goes a long way to not just driving sales, but driving word of mouth and all those things.
A: That makes sense. There’s a lot we don’t know because we don’t have the data. But are they selling more? Are they selling less?
J: Yeah, I’d like to know that.
A: I’d be super curious to know if people who work at wineries and are able to listen to the podcast are able to share that with me. I think that’d be very interesting to hear. I feel like if you have a really great experience at a place, you’re more likely to be a long-term member of the club. Or you remember the experience and it’s something that you continue to reflect back on. I think you probably also have time to more slowly reflect on each wine. So there’s time with that white. You’re not slugging it down before you’re moving on to their five different Cabernets. Which again, I think is what then causes people to want to stay members. One of the places that does this so well is Scribe.
J: Great experience at Scribe.
A: You can hang out there all day. You can only go once you’re a member. But people enjoy the experience so much, they want to go. And again, it’s that idea of the third place. I think Napa’s starting to figure that out. Especially for the larger brands that can do it, it means a lot to consumers. I get that if you’re a small winemaker and you have a tiny tasting room and you’re really just trying to get your wines known by people, you’re going to still do hour-long tastings, 30 minutes, whatever it is, without the food and things like that. But if you have the ability, I do think it is what a lot of consumers are craving now. They want this experience that feels more high-end, that feels high-touch.
J: And leisurely.
A: Leisurely, right. You’re just not getting that with the person behind the tasting bar.
Z: Exactly.
A: Very interesting. Well, we love to hear what you guys think out there in the audio realm. So hit us up at [email protected], and let us know what you think about what is happening in the world of tastings when it comes to wineries. And if you work at a tasting room and have dirt, let us know. All right, I’ll talk to you both on Friday.
J: Talk to you Friday.
Z: Sounds great.
Thanks so much for listening to the “VinePair Podcast.” If you love this show as much as we love making it, please leave us a rating or review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever it is you get your podcasts. It really helps everyone else discover the show.
Now for the credits. VinePair is produced and recorded in New York City and Seattle, Washington, by myself and Zach Geballe, who does all the editing and loves to get the credit. Also, I would love to give a special shout-out to my VinePair co-founder, Josh Malin, for helping make all of this possible, and also to Keith Beavers, VinePair’s tastings director, who is additionally a producer on the show. I also want to, of course, thank every other member of the VinePair team, who are instrumental in all of the ideas that go into making the show every week. Thanks so much for listening, and we’ll see you again.
Ed. note: This episode has been edited for length and clarity.
