If you’ve ever wondered how to snag top-notch wines at eye-popping prices...This week I'm going Undercover with "Agent Cru" from Wine Spies!

From the thrill of getting your daily deals to learning about innovative shipping solutions that keep your wine cool and safe (and complimentary!), this episode is packed with tips and laughs!

HIghlights:

• Wine Spies offers amazing deals on high-quality wines, often selling for less than half the retail price, which makes it a great option for wine lovers looking to score a bargain. Sign up for their daily deals HERE
• Agent Cru shares his journey from working in a family winery (cellar rat!) to becoming the CEO of Wine Spies, highlighting his passion for curating wines for a diverse audience.

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Me, I'm the man of the people.

I'm the wine proletariat.

I'm like holding it down for my big juicy red blends and my zinfandels and your party wines.

That's important.

And I gotta say, I feel like I've got my finger on the pulse.

Better of what?

The people that want those wines, like when they open the bottle.

And then.

I hate Italian wines.

I just do.

I know.

I just saw your heart.

Hello there.

Welcome to Sip with Nikki.

It's Nikki Lamberti here in Sonoma County, California, and I have an all new, exciting and hysterical interview for you this week.

I'm so thrilled for you to hear this.

So I have been trying to nail down agent crew from the Wine Spies for some time and our schedules finally aligned and I was able to travel to the Wine Spies hq, which is located somewhere in Sonoma County.

County.

I can't tell you exactly where, but the town might rhyme with Schmetaluma.

And I got to learn all about how their flash sale site is able to offer people like you and me, people that love wine, eye popping deals on really highly rated wines for generally less than half the price.

What?

So I had signed up for their emails and started, you know, getting an idea of the daily wines that they were featuring.

And once I saw that, I had so many questions for Agent Krew.

The first one being why did he pick that name and what's that all about?

But the second one is how are they able to offer such awesome deals like this?

So listen, as he explains the business model, how it came to be, how he personally went from being a seller rat in a family that owns their own winery here in Sonoma county to being a wine spy and being part of the team that selects over 365 wines a year to be highlighted to all of their operatives, AKA customers.

I'm gonna put the link in the show notes so you can read more on their website.

But basically you just sign up to get a daily email and.

And then when you start to see wines that interest you, you can build a shipment.

And listen as he talks about this brilliant idea of how to build a wine locker so that you don't ever have to pay shipping on wine.

Because believe me, as a small winery owner and producer, I know the heartache that is the cost of shipping wine.

So anytime we can find a way around that, it's exciting and I can't wait for you to hear this very cool way that they have created a seamless method of you Getting your personally curated case of wine to your door with complimentary shipping.

We had so much fun in this warehouse space where we did the interview.

I have to give a shout out to our original podcast producer, Catherine, who came out of retirement to do a little bit of on site sound mixing for Agent Crew and I during this interview.

And we get silly and you'll hear us have so much fun.

He had one of those buzzers on the table that sort of became a thing in this interview.

We may have gotten carried away with it.

We cover topics like shrinkage and how they manage the inventory for over 140,000 customers that they take beautiful care of.

So enough teasing.

I am so excited for you to hear all about Wine Spies.

And here we go with Agent Crew.

All right, here we are.

What is it?

Monday afternoon.

Woo.

Happy Monday.

Hey, Happy Monday, Nikki.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you for having me.

In this spine spice world that we're in.

This place is pretty cool.

Hq, baby.

Hq.

See, I should know that.

Crew, it is a pleasure to finally meet you.

I know you and I have been going back and forth for quite some time.

We.

We knew this was gonna be a great match for you to be on the podcast.

And we finally made it happen with our busy schedule.

We're here.

I know Sydney and our, like, little half a podcast studio.

It is.

It's very cool.

So I'm happy to be here.

And I know we're gonna taste some wines today and of course, talk about the Wine Spies model and how our listeners can be operatives and get these awesome deals that you guys have.

Yes, ma'.

Am.

We pulled some special ones for you.

Thank you.

I'm so excited.

I see them sitting here.

We'll get there.

But before we do, I would just love to hear a little bit more about you.

How did you get into the business?

And then we'll talk about how wine Spies came to be.

But your family's in the business and you've been doing this for some time, Is that right?

Yes.

Yeah, I think I'm coming up on my 20 year mark, which is crazy to even say, but yeah.

Cut my teeth as a cellar rat at Deerfield, which is my family's place.

It's right in the middle of Sonoma Valley.

Beautiful winery.

Check it out.

23,000 square foot cage, plug, plug away.

That's what we're doing.

So you grew up working there in the family winery.

And for my listeners, if they don't know the term cellar rat, what does that mean?

That means you're at the Bottom of the production totem pole.

So you are scrubbing barrels.

That's like the number one thing is cleaning.

So your best friend is a brush and some SO2 spray.

But, yeah, I did production for a couple of years and quickly moved on to the operation side.

I should say that my dad is actually an architect and my mom is an author.

And so it's really my uncle and aunt who are the proprietors at Deerfield.

So I worked for them for a decade.

Wow.

Finally finished as general manager before going undercover at Wine Spies.

So I've been here now for.

I'm coming up on eight years next month.

Which is super exciting.

It's like, almost rounded a decade out.

And I joined as their coo, and now I've been the CEO for about five or six years.

Congratulations.

You are.

It sounds.

Did you go to school for wine for business or.

I did an entirely too brief stint at Cal Poly in wine and Vit.

My first stint was in 06.

I did, like, a summer internship harvest.

And then I was definitely ready to move from the Central Coast.

So I was sitting at Easter with my uncle, and he's just like, when are you just going to come work for me?

And I did.

And it was actually a real baptism by fire for anyone who's never worked a harvest.

It is no small feat.

And I really.

I thought I was going to be a winemaker.

And I do love winemaking.

I've made my own wine for probably five years.

You do make wine.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But knowing as many winemakers as we do and wine spies, I'm sure we'll get into.

We sell one different wine a day.

So end up meeting a lot of people and a lot of winemakers.

365 a year.

Yeah.

And anyone who's in the industry knows that winemakers are cut from a very specific cloth.

Yes.

And that is not my cloth.

I'm more of a kimono guy.

Oh, my God.

I'm gonna use that.

I like that.

So you stopped working at the winery.

I just knew that I wanted to explore the world beyond just one wine.

As someone who's worked.

I've heard you worked for Pride for 13 years now.

It's wonderful.

And being able to see each vintage and the differences between them, it's always fascinating.

Yet you are dealing with the same wines, the same skus.

And there's a whole world of wine out there.

So it was a great opportunity to spread my wings.

And at the time, there was only three people including myself working at Wine Spies and now we're about 20 plus strong.

Wine Spies had been around for 10 years at that point, but they were definitely going through a little bit of a rebirth.

Wine Spice 2.0.

Okay.

So it was a great opportunity.

I saw how wonderful the potential was for Wine Spies.

There was so much there.

And it was actually the first flash sale company really out there besides Wine Woot, which was later purchased by Amazon and then shuttered when they bought Whole Foods.

Okay.

So today Wine Spies is the longest running wine winning flash sale wine company in the world.

Which is crazy because now there's quite a few more.

And so there's this long history that was there so much potential, a lot of know how and connections.

It really just hadn't taken off the way that it should.

Going through the grind of building a family winery was something that I enjoyed.

I learned a tremendous amount about it and I'm very grateful that I had that opportunity and also learned the production side really thoroughly.

Sure.

Which you don't always get on the retail side.

Sure.

But it's been a very fun part of the journey.

The wide spice part.

What a great foundation too.

And we always hear so often in this business like, how do you make a small fortune in wine?

Start with a large fortune.

That is very true though.

Is that maybe part of the reason why you were also like, yeah, I'm going to take this in another direction.

Yeah, that's fair, it's.

And part of the reason that that's the case is that it takes so much time and investment to build a brand.

I know spe from the experience.

God, it's so hard to 7 no profit.

Yeah.

And that's the norm.

Right.

Because you plant the grapes and then two years minimum, if you're trying to get some tiny little not great grapes off them and then make the wine and then cellar it and then bring it to market.

So.

Yeah.

And the reality is that I think there's something like 300 licensees in Sonoma county in the 90s and now there's 10,000 licensees.

A big part of that, that growth is the allure of the supposedly glamorous wine lifestyle.

And so I think a lot of people have come into the industry from successful careers elsewhere.

The large fortunes.

The large fortunes.

That's where the large fortunes come from.

And unlike other industries where you would never ever be like, wait, how is this going to pencil?

I'm going to be in the black in 30 years.

You would never do that.

But if you've made your bones somewhere else.

And this is going to be your generational project to leave to your kids, then it makes sense.

But if you're already in the business and trying to make a living, that makes it quite challenging as a competitive landscape.

So, yeah, talk about it.

Competitive landscape.

Yeah.

I think the tumultuous nature of the past couple of years is in large part due to that.

And I really do think that this represents a much needed correction, frankly, where.

We are in the industry right now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think too.

And maybe you can speak to this and I can speak to this.

Cause I moved here after vacationing in wine country and got the bug and was like, I'm gonna move there.

I'm gonna own a winery and I'm gonna make wine.

And I think people think the life of a winery owner or a family that owns a winery is much more glamorous than it really is.

Yeah.

Lot of hard work and elbow grease.

And emails.

Yeah, the emails, they don't stop.

And just so much risk.

And I always say, there are so many businesses, someone could go into a hell of a lot more money than wine in a lot less time with a lot less risk.

So most people that do it, there's heart and there's passion.

Do you think that's fair?

I do.

There's a lot of passion.

This industry runs on passion.

That's the one part that is not a lie.

And I think it's funny because everyone wants to have their own name on the label.

You just gave me your beautiful bottle.

We can't help ourselves, people.

I did.

You have Solevato on the table.

And it's not my last name.

Only because my last name, Lamberti, is already wine from northern Italy.

And it's gonna be an issue.

I couldn't put my name on there.

One of the wines I brought today, we learned all about cease and desist letters the hard way.

So I think you went the right direction looking at it first.

But, yeah, I mean, there's.

You just can't help yourself.

Everyone wants to do that.

Everyone wants to be the proprietor for some reason.

Even though the truth is that magic moment that everyone chases where, you know, it's a misty morning and you're in the vineyard, like, got your warm coffee and your little puffer jacket on.

You're like.

I was gonna say, like your Patagonia vest.

Yeah, your Patagonia vest.

And you're like, ah, this isn't this the life.

There are ways to achieve that in this industry, and it is not really being the Proprietor, you know, vineyard manager, doing the winemaker thing.

And it's so funny because I gravitated away from that.

But there's still a reason that I went this direction.

I like building a business, so I'm where I'm supposed to be.

At least I can tell.

Just in the short time that spending time with you, showing us around your beautiful space here today, I see that operational mind and all the different pieces of the kimono.

Yeah.

But back to what you were saying about, like, chasing being a proprietor, I will say, as someone who makes a teeny, tiny, tiny little bit of wide, like, 200 case production, hey, that's enough.

Where you have to worry about selling.

It, which I do.

Which we do on our website.

But it has not become old for me yet.

When I am able to hold a bottle of my wine and say, I freaking made this.

Totally.

And then when people who have bought it across the country send me pictures or tag me.

It was on our Thanksgiving table.

We had it at my sister's graduation, whatever it is, I'm like, that's why I do it.

Because there's nothing better than that.

That's so right.

And you know, you really a part of that moment.

And like you say, it's not just that you feel that, but other people feel that too.

You're making that occasion special, and it really is that meaningful.

Thank you.

Yeah.

That makes it all worth it.

I'll put it that way.

Yes, it does again.

Even when you do it on a small scale.

And don't quit your day job, as I have not.

Don't quit your day job, people.

Yeah.

And as a podcast and all these things.

So talking about making wines, can we talk about Jurassic wines?

Oh, God.

Do you want to talk about Jurassic wines?

No.

Very happy to.

Let's plug.

Let's plug.

No, it's funny.

I still have a few cases here and there, just in case someone's, hey, I really want some Jurassic wines.

My favorite thing in the industry is label design.

I'm seeing that very quickly from what's in front of me.

But also on your Jurassic Wines website.

Torn.

Torn.

Yeah.

How freaking cool is that?

So to me, the bottle, it's like this canvas, and it's just the same as a painting canvas in that you've got this rectangular space.

And that constraint is like what are you gonna put in here?

And I think it's what makes painting interesting as opposed to sculpture, where it's.

Yeah, you could just.

It could be anything.

And I really find the challenge in those kind of four corners.

But when you've got a wine bottle, it's not just that it's this cylinder that you have to wrap it around, but also you've got this limited set of processes that you can use to achieve whatever you want because of what printing capabilities there are, which also.

They're always changing and innovating and super fun.

But on top of that, you've got a cost constraint or you can make really bad decisions, which is what I typically choose to do.

Yes, I know.

I may have learned a little bit about them myself.

Yeah.

So when Nikki gave me this awesome bottle earlier, instantly checking out.

Okay, how is this done?

Okay, it's spot gloss here, a little foil here.

Is that metallic ink or is that foil?

Oh, she's the laid paper.

And you can tell just by looking at a bottle all of the processes that went into it.

And there's just, like a problem solving aspect to it, plus art.

And then it has to be so many decisions.

So many decisions.

You'd made some good decisions here.

The paper that you used soaks up black ink the correct way, and so it doesn't get washed out.

And sometimes if you cheap out on the paper or it's the wrong thickness of paper, it'll absorb all the black ink, and it'll end up looking like, matte and fuzzy and essentially like a inkjet printer.

You know, it's just like all these practical things and the interactions technologies.

Oh, if you do an embossing and then you subsequently do this, it's gonna squish your embossment.

So all that kind of stuff, nobody wants.

Squished embossment.

You can't have a squished embossment.

That's what I always tell my kids.

You can't even have any kids.

You can't have a squished embossment.

So at Deerfield, we had a custom crush operation, and we even did a buy a barrel program so you could get as little as 24 cases.

And we do the label designed for you too.

So I did hundreds of labels there.

Wow.

Really loved that.

And I really wanted to do, like, a negotiat project, especially because I've got a lot of good hookups on really high quality bulk juice.

But the reality is, just as wine spice has really taken off and my job has gotten a lot more intense over the past couple of years.

I have just not had time to put my own stuff in the bottle.

And on the one hand, I'm glad that I made at least one decision, which is to focus where I needed to focus.

Yeah, I feel like you and I might have that in common where we like a lot of interest, but you gotta let things go, right?

Yeah.

The inbox of big ideas is bottomless, for sure.

So.

Yeah.

But having wine spies take the kind of care and focus that it's taken has forced me, personally, who's not usually of that mindset, to just be like, okay, what's the thing we can do to have the maximum impact?

Make our operatives happy?

And do that first.

Ooh.

Okay, so I want to unpack everything you just said, especially about operatives.

But I feel like before we segue into wine spies, we need to do a very special sip.

Spotlight.

Ooh.

Yeah.

I was waiting for this thing.

Sips by light.

Okay, let's do it.

So I even saved the cork for your audience.

Real sound.

Gotta have that.

Not an effect.

Not an effect.

Thank you.

All real sound effects here.

So when we were planning our time together today, I said, you know, might be fun to taste some wines that are just interesting and to give an idea to our listeners of the types of things that wine spies can help uncover and connect them with.

Not an effect.

Not.

Oh, my God, this smell of this is jumping out of the glass.

So tell me, why did you pick this?

So 365 wines a year minimum.

Actually, today we're probably doing closer to a thousand wines a year on the site.

Wow.

It's always, what's your favorite?

I don't know.

What was my recent favorite?

Seriously?

Yeah.

So Post and Vine really was a standout for us.

Rebecca Weinberg is the winemaker.

I know the name.

And, yeah, she's the winemaker for Quintessa.

That's why I know the name.

And she is phenomenal.

We actually.

She came out and had little lunch with us a couple weeks ago.

She's a doll.

She's absolutely delightful.

Oh, sound producer Katherine just got a glass as well.

Cheers, Katie.

Cheers.

Cheers.

Thank you for.

Thanks for coming by.

Thanks for having me on.

Let's sip together.

That smells good already.

Juicy.

So she's known for her top flight Hundred Point Contessa bombshells.

And this is one of those fun projects where it's like, what would a winemaker do if they could do whatever they wanted?

They want to make big, bold.

Hundred Point Cab.

They want to make everything but.

Exactly.

And so she's.

This is like a mendo field blend.

It's petite Syrah, Grenache, Mendo, meaning Mendocino.

For our non California listeners.

Exactly.

Some of that Mendo kush and it.

You know, that's drugs.

Was that a drug reference?

That was.

It was in fact a weed reference.

Okay, cool.

Okay, cool.

Yeah, the Emerald triangle, known for not just weed, but now grapes.

That's right.

Yeah, that's right.

So she's.

This is like one of those projects where the winemaker's like looking for that truly special place.

And so it's a field blend, which basically means that instead of the varietals being individually made into their own constituent wines and then later, after fermentation, blended together, a field blend is all of the grapes are co fermented, so they're all picked together.

Let's plant this and this all in the same vicinity and pick them all together and throw them in the pot.

And I'm sure you know all this.

It's like that's the traditional way that wine was made for a very long time.

And actually they didn't give a whole bunch of thought to the individual clones.

It was more like when you're planting a garden.

Oh, I got some Berkeley tie dyes and some Cherokee purples.

This looks good here.

This looks good there.

Those are tomatoes, not weed.

And yeah, you just throw em in the garden wherever you want.

And then you just, if you're making sauce, you just pick everything.

Same exact kind of idea.

And then the nice part about the field blend, the pros is that the grapes have the opportunity to co mingle during fermentation and you get a little bit of different chemistry magic than you otherwise would in the way that the actual wine.

Blending them as wines already.

Yes, I agree.

Yep.

And then the pro to blending the wines after, which is how like most wines are made nowadays, is that you get to be a lot more thoughtful and deliberate about what that particular wine needs.

So it's, oh, this is a little flat mid palate.

I'll add more Merlot.

You have a toolbox to work with at that point.

Exactly.

Different components to bright Merlot or this year's particularly heavy.

Like maybe in past years I included some Cab franc or Petit Verdot, but I don't eat it this year.

I'll get rid of it entirely with the field blend.

It's all in there.

You can't unmake that soup.

Can't take it apart.

No.

So this is just a Great.

Kind of counterpoint to that heavy Napa Cab.

And then it's just super light, fruity, juicy, Incredible blend of.

It's Zinfandel, petite, Syrah and Carignan.

Ooh, that's a fun lineup.

Yeah.

And I think it's basically.

I think it's like 40, 30, 30.

Okay.

Yeah.

And I think she did a bang up job and we sold it for 19 bucks, which is absolutely insane.

Yeah.

At the time when you were selling it through wine spies at 19, what would the retail have been?

I think it's like 42.

I don't want to miss.

Less than half price.

Yeah, a little bit less than half price.

That's impressive.

And I just want to stress in this case, it's like we're working directly with Rebecca buying it from her.

And she loved working with us, getting the name out there.

We've got an amazing audience of operatives.

Like 140,000 plus audience now.

So your customers, aka operatives.

Yeah, we speak to Lego here at Wine Spies.

Sign up.

Yeah, you gotta live the brand.

I love it.

I love the branding agent crew.

So that's another thing.

It's, you know, it's a 24 hour window where the sale is and from the producer side there's a very understandable need.

And I've been on that side of the industry where you want to protect.

Your brand position and your price integrity.

And your price integrity.

And that's completely real and well founded.

But for us, 24 hours, this is.

You're only going to get access to.

Prices, not like on shelves and shelves at this price.

Exactly.

And that means a lot.

It works.

I think it really is one of those win win things, which is pretty rare out there because we have an audience of genuine wine lovers that would be delighted to know that posted wine exists.

That previously didn't.

Yeah.

Did you pick it because it's a woman winemaker and you were.

No, I didn't.

You're doing that for me.

I didn't.

The way I really feel about that now is that women are killing it in the industry.

There's so many amazing winemakers.

Can you see that?

Can we say it again for the back row?

Women are killing it in this industry.

No, truly, Deerfield's winemaker is a woman.

Cecilia Valdivia, Master of enology from University of Mendoza.

Yeah, I feel like most of the brands, or if at least half of the brands we work with are of women winemakers these days, it's crazy.

And they're getting their due it's definitely not the old boys club anymore.

Yeah.

And we know just biologically it's proven that women have a better sense of smell.

And smell.

Yeah.

As my girlfriend can tell you, that's.

Why we say women smell better.

Because we smell better.

I believe that.

I believe that.

I didn't make that up.

I borrowed that from someone.

Lulu, you always smell good.

Good.

See?

Plug, plug, plug.

Michael, not so much.

So we've talked around it, but let's now really make it clear for our listeners what wine spies does.

And I love how you call it a flash sale site.

The other terminology that I saw was wine E tailer.

You're an E tailer.

Is that still an effective way to think about it?

It's funny that you ask that because I naturally wanna call it a flash sale site, but it cheapens it somehow.

And I feel like people that have flash sale sites don't like to talk about it that way.

Like to make ourselves fancier.

It's world.

But I think people get that.

They get what that is.

Yeah.

It's like a limited time deal and that is what it is.

So I don't really see why we should have to be apologetic about it.

So I wouldn't be.

I'm gonna.

I know.

I think you guys are doing okay.

So don't apologize.

Yeah, we're.

Wear it proudly.

Wear it.

Flash sales.

Yes.

Awesome.

Okay, so someone can just go to your website and they say, oh, I wanna sign up to be an operative or a customer.

Yes, ma'.

Am.

There's no obligation.

They're not putting in a credit card at that time.

They're just signing up to get your daily email.

Is that right?

That's right.

And that's one of the nice things about it is worlds of wine clubs and stuff and subscriptions for everything.

Socks.

I know.

There's not like it's a weird day if something's not on my doorstep.

Yeah, exactly.

So that's what's nice is wine spice.

Keeps it pure and simple.

You just buy what you want.

And there's.

We send out an email every day.

Here's the deal.

You don't want it and we keep the write ups.

Really fun.

They are fun.

Who's doing that?

Is that you?

Someone on your team?

No.

In fact, before we hired our now CMO agent Roan.

Shout out Agent Roan.

I did do a bunch of the write ups and for 10 years, Agent Red, the founder of the company, did it, which is a lot of write ups.

That's a lot of writing for Every day.

And I honestly got a copy and I ran out of funny things to say, let me tell you.

And somehow every single day I wake up at the same time as you guys and read it.

And I am like shocked that he keeps it fresh and as fun as he does.

So seven days a week and we're.

Not taking off on the weekends.

And very often we'll sell two wines a day.

Okay.

That makes it Even more than 365 write ups a year.

Wow.

And we taste all the wines, we only sell the wines we love.

And then the write ups themselves about those wines are super detailed.

There's a bunch of real factual content.

But then it's also got the spy.

Schtick, which I love.

We keep it fun.

But your score chasers and your people that want to see what the James Suckling say and what did wine spectators say?

You're sharing any ratings that the wines have received from those types of publications.

Any relevant fact that we can find out there.

So we do a pretty good wine journalism, including all of the stats on the wine, the varietal composition, how many months it's been aged and new in French oak.

Yeah.

Cause there's nerds like us that like that.

Yeah, no, totally.

And actually that is what's great is it's in different sections.

So if you want to see that, you can.

If you like the wine, here's the price.

Great.

And you know it's gonna be good because we handpicked it.

And that's actually a really important part of it.

And then what's nice is that we've got a feature called Lockers.

Yes.

This is awesome.

Please tell our listeners about this.

Cause this is brilliant.

That's the secret sauce for sure.

Yeah.

When I joined Wine Spies, I asked Red.

Cause like I said, he'd been doing it for 10 years already.

I'm like, what is the best idea you've ever had that you've never done?

And at a time he's that's a.

Great question to ask someone.

Yeah.

And he knew right away it was right away he said it's called cut.

And cubbies was what is now lockers.

And basically it's the ability to aggregate different purchases together over time.

And then when you will hold onto the wine for you.

And when you get a full case, it ships for free.

Said differently.

Yeah.

Buy what you want when you want it.

We'll hang onto it.

You can ship it whenever.

But if you have a full case, ship for free.

Now I see why you have so much space.

In this warehouse, as you're holding people's.

Wine, that's actually a funny part.

Part of the story.

So we're.

Tell me it's not here.

No, we got it.

We got this crazy ass warehouse because our.

The point was to put the wine here.

Right?

And it's.

We're sitting in a 17,000 square foot warehouse called HQ and surrounded by a sofa tower, which is a double decker sofa tower.

And I've seen so many things that I'm not gonna not allowed to talk about.

Listeners, Sorry.

You can let them know about the Nerf gun armory.

There's a Nerf gun armory.

There's motorcycles on pallet racks for no reason.

We've got the gym.

Got eight bumper cars in here.

I don't know, it's crazy.

It's like a cool classic Buick.

Yeah.

But the whole point was initially when we bought the building to use this to store the wine.

So the building, 17,000 square feet, right?

Now, all of our wine spies wine at our fulfillment partners warehouse takes up 75,000 square feet of storage space.

Wow.

Okay, so even if we had wanted to do that, we've grown too much.

But what had happened was we'd pitched it to our fulfillment partner, which is actually wine shipping.

Oh, yeah.

What's up, wine shipping guys?

We love wine shipping.

Yeah, you guys are awesome.

And truly, they've been an amazing fulfillment partner.

And one of the, I think, interesting parts of the way the industry functions that no one really thinks about is the fulfillment logistics.

Whole back end of it, I'm already like, oh, okay.

So at wine shipping, Jenny in New Jersey makes a purchase for Post and Vine and she's building it in her locker.

Does someone physically put the bottle there in her pile so that it doesn't go away when it's time to send her shipment?

That's where my brain is going.

And actually that's how we first tried.

And then it ended up being that the best way to handle it is all programmatic and to.

I don't even know what that means.

Is just to have this basically happen on the software side.

Oh, okay, so it's like digitally happening, not physically.

Yeah.

Because we actually physically moved the bottle at first.

And what we found is every time a human touched the bottle, that's when shrinkage happens.

And so.

Yes.

Interesting how that works.

Yeah.

I'm a child.

Go ahead, tell.

Explain that to our cat to our listeners.

Yes, George, Cassandra, explain to our listeners what you're actually referencing with shrinkage.

I'm a child.

Yeah, no, wouldn't that be what grows.

It's growage.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Faster on the hype, but I am.

No, you mean breakage.

No, the bottle disappears for any number of reasons.

So it's not where it's supposed to be when you go to hide it.

Okay.

Which is.

That's shrinkage, baby.

So it's.

There's a wine shipping actually to their credit, they've had some huge improvements on their end triple barcode scanning thing where every single time a bottle so much inventory moving around.

It's crazy.

And they're really good at it.

They've got the whole fleet of refrigerated trucks.

They have the space.

They have the space.

They got the hub, the warehouse management systems and the know how when we started lockers because it's so far outside the wheelhouse of what other businesses are doing.

We didn't know.

Was anyone doing anything like that when you started?

No, I was doing anything like that.

And then we've had quite a few copycats.

But one of the things that Winespies really does well is that we've built our app from the beginning ourselves in house.

And that was a decision that was made even before I got here.

And not just the front end website, but the entire back end.

So from literally saying, hey winemaker, do you maybe want to sell wine to us?

From all the way from that point through us reaching a deal, sending a contract, getting a PO, getting the wine back here, all the inventory management, the orders, all the fulfillment, we built all of that out proprietarily on our back end ourselves.

And then the front end of the website is two sides of the same app.

So what that means is that the hard part of the wine industry has often been the technology.

It's like way, way behind.

Definitely.

And then so if you're trying to be a high tech company, you have to use off the shelf stuff like Shopify and things like that.

And then those companies really just aren't made for the unique challenges of alcohol.

Basically highly regulated compliance, taxation, all of that, shipping laws, all the boring stuff that people only care about when they're like why did I get charged?

But owning a wineries be so romantic.

Exactly.

All that stuff is highly specialized.

And so we were able to basically build a software ourselves that does exactly what we wanted to do.

Brilliant.

So we were able to solve the lockers problem ourselves in the virtual world.

Long story short, they said they greenlit test pilot.

It ended up being wildly successful and now we're not, I'm not gonna say their biggest client, but We're a significant client.

Okay.

So now they really, like work hand in glove with us.

And it's been amazing.

And then the end result of that is that we have this giant warehouse that we didn't need to put any wine in.

So we turned it into really cool spaces in here.

Okay.

So the operative customer, Jenny in New Jersey, now she's over time, she has selected 12 different wines.

Whether she bought one bottle of 12 or two of six, or however you want to mix and match, she hits a case and then complimentary shipping to New Jersey.

Yep.

At her convenience.

So if she wants to ship it right away, cool.

If she wants to hang on to it, we've got free temperature controlled shipping.

But if you're like, it's amazing in and of itself.

It is.

And trust me, it's expensive and we operate off very low margins.

And much of that is basically returned to the customer in the form of that covering that shipping cost, including the TC shipping.

But if.

Does that temperature control shipping mean that you can ship most of the year to most states?

Okay.

So the refrigerated trucks.

So for most temperature control, the way it works is that it gets on a refrigerated truck to a regional hub and then from there it's handed off.

To UPS, FedEx, which are not refrigerated.

Which are not refrigerated.

But the ice pack is inserted there.

So I would say you can ship year round.

Unless it's like 110 degrees, like death Valley, where you're at.

Brilliant.

So typical deals like we talked about this beautiful post and Vine.

Well done, Rebecca.

Delicious.

Especially as it's sitting here opening up.

And the first thing that you said when you poured it, you said juicy.

And I was like, I can smell that before I taste it.

It's really beautiful.

You said that it tastes like almost Old World, which is.

It's not.

It does.

It's not at all like jammy crazy.

It's not like Napa in your face.

It's like very pretty floral.

It's got all the fruit, but it tastes like way more like lower Brixler sugar.

Old World.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I would say for someone that has an old world palette, like my sister Amanda loves Old World wine.

She would love this.

Plus there's just a lovely little bluebird on the label, which I'm sure has a great story to it.

Yeah.

I'll just say that we really are a technology forward company and we have tried all manner of crazy predictions and.

How many people are gonna want this.

Deal to try to figure it out.

And still the humans that sit there at our weekly tasting panel are better right now at least than the computer at predicting it.

That's a big part of the game.

So that answered my next question.

Weekly tasting panel.

So how are you guys?

And who is deciding the wines that are gonna be featured?

That's what keeps this game fun.

So every Friday, the entire company's inventor.

What time should I be here?

Actually, you guys are more than welcome.

Please do come.

Nikki, you'd have a blast.

I promise I would.

It's about 2:30.

Okay.

So we got all of the week samples open.

And so these are wines that people have submitted to us.

Haven't necessarily decided to sell them yet.

Okay.

Usually they'll be anywhere from 25 to 50 different wines.

Open, open.

And we invite the whole company.

So it doesn't matter what you do.

Everyone's welcome.

And basically we just.

Which is cool because now it's not just people like you who have a wine background who are tasting.

You have a great sort of sample set of just the average wine drinker or two, which is who your audience is.

I would say even that we've got a really genuinely diverse audience.

Awesome.

With wildly different palates from.

Because we sell Obrion.

We sell the top shelf stuff.

Yep.

Saw Beautiful Barolo on there two days ago.

I was too slow and I missed it.

Yeah, we sell a ton of Italian wines.

And that's actually the point.

It's like we've got real audience for a wide variety of different things.

And so I think what works so well about the panel is that we've got a pretty good representation of different types of palates.

Cause our wine buyers are incredibly knowledgeable and skilled.

Agent Noir, who you're familiar with our most recent addition, Agent Rotique, and then Agent Vine.

These people have decades plus in the industry.

Do they get to pick their name when they come to the company or do you bestow it upon them?

Agent Red must approve every name.

And it's actually funny because that's the first decision you have to make.

Because I gotta figure that out.

Oh, my God.

I would be like obsessing over what is my name gonna be?

People don't take it nearly serious enough.

I'm like, you gotta figure this out.

Because it's what's gonna happen on Day one.

Moment one.

Cause I set up your email.

It's like the first step of the process.

And I'm like, you better like it because everyone is gonna call you this.

And no one leaves wine spots.

Does it have to be a wine reference.

Could I just be Agent Jersey?

Because I wanted to be Agent Rex.

Cause I always, I'm like, I'm not gonna be the FBI or the CIA.

This is my one chance.

And Agent Red was like, nah, man, you can't choose your name.

It has to be a code name.

It's gotta be a wine.

It has to be somewhat wine adjacent.

But it's such a fun part of the theming and the branding.

So all the agents now gather around every Friday.

Mickey, you are so good at keeping me on track.

This is what I do.

That you're a pro.

I would be off and lift up.

So, yeah.

So the wine buyers tend to be extraordinarily geeky and esoteric in their preferences, and they appreciate that kind of more interesting wine might not be a crowd pleaser.

Me, I'm the man of the people.

I'm the wine proletariat.

I'm like holding it down for my big juicy red blends and my zinfandels and your party wines.

That's important.

And I gotta say, I feel like I've got my finger on the pulse.

Better of what?

The people that want those wines, like when they open the bottle and then.

I hate Italian wines.

I just do.

I know.

I just saw your heart.

We did the sad trombone, but you the womp womp, womp, womp.

She was having such a good time.

How can you make such a general statement?

You hate Italian wines.

And not only that, but I'm like.

My ancestors are turning over in their Italian wine.

I'm Italian by heritage too.

And trust me, this has been the long standing mission of Agent Noir to get me to love Italian wine.

And I went to Vinitali last year.

I tasted probably 300 wines from the best producers in the world.

I'm going, but you like juicy.

And those wines are not.

They're not juicy.

You know what it is?

I'll tell you.

I'm like, I put in the work and it's still.

Now I have found a couple where I'm like, okay, yeah, that's good.

That's a well made wine.

But for the most part, it's just that a lot of times they have the fruit, but then the body feels thin compared to what the tannin is.

And it's a.

Especially compared to California.

Especially compared to California.

I would call it that the California wines are more integrated.

And I'm just saying it feels like a light mid palate.

But then this hits you in the mouth.

Level of mouth drying tannin and then what I usually.

My response I typically hear to that is, yeah, that's how it is.

And also like you have to eat it with food and you have to.

Lay it down for 15 years.

Yeah, like, okay, that's a lot of caveats and asterisks to be throwing on it.

So would you say your ideal wine would be an Italian variety that that's grown in California?

It's funny you say that because Sangiovese really is one of my favorite varieties.

Oh, yay.

And Deerfield Sangiovese.

That's where I first fell in love with it.

We made a killer Sangiovese from Alpicella.

Shout out Dan Sanchez.

But point is that I do not represent our Italian wine lovers.

And you'll notice on wine spies, maybe 30% of the wines now we sell are in port Italians specifically.

It's good that you're not doing the sole selecting.

And that is where the magic happens.

It really is a meeting of the minds.

People recuse themselves from that.

I'm not going to weigh in on the Italian selection.

And I think if it was any one person or even maybe two or three people, we would get a different and worse result.

And actually I'll say, as our team has grown over time, I think that our selections have gotten better and better.

And yeah, that's definitely a function of our new buyers.

More time for our buyers to spend time hunting.

More doors open up for us because we have a bigger buying power.

Those are all, all totally legit factors that are important.

But I also think it's that we have just have a more open mind as a group as we have more voices in the room.

That's true of everything in the world, is it not?

Yes.

A great call for inclusion and diversity.

It works really well, I think up to maybe for us like 10 people.

Yeah.

It gets to the point where there's too much noise and frankly it's just drinking.

Literally noise.

And literally noise in a Friday afternoon.

Yeah.

So based on the wines that I've been looking at in the daily emails, the majority of what I have seen has been like less than half price.

When you say the retail and then your price, is that a fair statement first and foremost?

Yeah, we definitely shoot for eye popping discount.

Yeah, my eyes were popping.

So my question is, how are you able to do that and be profitable?

Yeah, the short version is volume.

The second part is genuinely cutting out the middlemen.

We do purchase from distributors and brokers, but even typically then there's, there's a special arrangement worked out.

That's probably too.

If it's like library, like old stuff that's been out for a while, that's sitting in a broker's warehouse or.

Yeah, yeah.

And one of the, I think the big kind of misunderstandings about what we do is that people just assume it's oh, there's some problem here, there's some bad thing had happened or it wasn't stored well.

And like none of that could be farther from the truth.

There's so many different reasons why wineries and producers want to work with us.

Used to be most common that it's mostly end of vintage stuff.

There's just a lot of machinery that has to be in place for a winery to sell a particular vintage.

And it's super easy to understand if you're not a wine person.

Okay.

Okay.

You gotta go sell that new thing.

People don't think about.

That changes every year.

Yeah.

It's a huge amount of sales apparatus in place to push wine through a distributor.

And so when you're getting down to the last little bit of the wine, you can't afford to just run out.

And so you switch over to the next vintage while you still have some end to vintage stuff.

And then there's usually a last little lame duck, undetermined amount, maybe a couple pallets of wine.

So that used to be one of the main reasons is just end of vintage.

And it's easy to just sell all of that at one time and call it a day.

Yep.

Nowadays, honestly, what's been so amazing is that people in the industry, distributors, producers, genuinely see wine spice as an awesome marketing opportunity and a way to get their brand in front of a huge audience.

So that has made the conversations dramatically easier.

And now we're at the scale where we're buying a lot of wine.

And the truth is that by the time you get through distributor, wholesaler and finally a retailer markup, there's a reason why the frontline price is what the.

Frontline price is, which is what most wine drinkers are used to seeing on a restaurant and.

Or a store shelf.

Well, in a restaurant and no shade on restaurants at all.

It is what it is for very good reasons.

But you're not usually paying above what you would be paying at the cellar door.

So it's 150% is very common for a bottle list.

And then for by the glass, you're basically covering whatever that restaurant's cost of the wine the bottle was when you're drinking that glass.

This question may be selfish, but I think that I'm gonna ask it because beyond myself, there are producers out there who might be listening to this and be like, oh, maybe I wanna look at working with them.

What's a typical amount of inventory that you would need from a producer to include it as a line of the day?

So it starts at a pallet now.

And interestingly now that's listeners.

A pallet is.

A pallet is 56 cases.

And so interestingly, that is now a new challenge because it used to be we could easily work with 20 cases and sometimes the winery might just have 20 cases.

But now you have so many customers.

Now we have so many customers.

And so operatives.

Operatives.

And yeah, you're better at the branding thing than that.

I'm trying.

I'm trying.

One of the big challenges has been the write ups themselves because they're so time intensive.

That is very often the bottleneck for us.

Now that the team's slightly bigger.

Pun intended.

Zing.

Dude.

I should have brought my.

I should have brought my freaking snare drum.

I got the rim shot one.

I was like, next time.

So the writeups really, we, we refuse to compromise.

And if we only have 20 cases of wine or something, we know we'll sell out, like, whatever.

It's a lot of work for just 20 cases.

I get that.

But now that we've got more buyers who also do quite a bit of the riding, we've got more riders now, so more and more what we're starting to do is we'll do a selection of different wines on one day.

We've actually got Igigal coming up on Monday.

Okay.

And so we're doing a bunch of Grand Cru on Friday and five different wines.

And some of those, there's only five cases, 10 cases.

We're making a whole day out of it.

Right.

So the featured wine we'll have quite a bit of, but then we'll have a couple different other.

We call them fun things like store takeovers and seller stockers and stuff like that.

It's so cool.

I'm seeing all these different emails that are coming and they're fantastic.

So, yeah, we're gonna do the second sip Spotlight, which I feel like maybe this is near and dear to your heart.

So what are we sipping on for number two?

All right, number two, we got Winespa's very own Enigma.

So this was our true to form top secret project where we got some.

Some leads on genuinely really amazing bulk juice.

And it's not even a shtick.

We literally had to sign NDAs to produce this wine because of where the.

Because of the winemakers coming from or the vineyard.

And in this case, both.

Yeah.

So you're talking like, would absolutely be a $250 bottle.

And we were selling for $40.

And the only reason we didn't continue this one is because we got a cease to see for the words Enigma.

Ah.

Which really sucked because it was like he's a nice guy and he didn't even use it as his actual brand name.

It was like a blend name.

It wasn't the CD I listened to in college that was like.

It was make out music, different guy.

Although I'm sure that guy did listen back in the day.

So this was a really fun project.

Coombsville.

Which my regular listeners, their ears should perk up because I just did a whole episode featuring the team at Ackerman and their Coombesville wines and really talked about what makes that Ava so special.

So I love that you're pouring Coombsville for me.

I listened to the episode.

You did?

Yeah.

And I was just talking to Bob, Theo and Joe.

Just talking to Bob the other day.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

We've sold Ackerman quite a few times.

Awesome.

They're wonderful family, super nice people.

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So this guy.

We're talking about the label design and we were commiserating on the fact that both of us made design over cost choices.

Well, yours has three pieces to the front label that are individually have to go on there, which is amazing.

I literally made every instruction choice.

My brain hurt.

So for the listening audience, basically, it's three different.

Two small labels up top and bottom, and then a big central label.

And then there's little tiny holes punched out of it and then weird little shapes punched out of the bottom.

It's also got foil and it's also got.

It's got embossing and debossing.

It's sexy inside and out.

It is a pretty label.

And then the.

The special thing on this, so there's a code on the front of the label.

It's the secret decoder ring.

Secret.

Literally secret decoder ring.

Your oval teen children of the 80s.

You get that reference because this QR.

Code on it launched a virtual Enigma machine.

Like an actual replica of the cryptography Enigma machine from World War II.

And the Enigma machine requires configuration.

You have to preset it up.

You have to know how it's preconfigured in order to decode the message.

And so the instructions.

Getting super nerdy.

It is super nerdy.

So the instructions to set up the Enigma machine were printed on the cork, so you had to pop the bottle.

Is that your brainchild right there?

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

I'm learning so much about your brain.

Do you sleep?

I did not sleep very much, shockingly.

Now.

Did you make this wine?

No.

I really wish I could tell you it is.

I promise you, for anyone that's, like, even remotely familiar with the wine world, there's.

There's a top five list of super bougie winemakers.

It is one of those.

But yeah.

So we've been out of space and.

Then you just private labeled it with your wine spice.

And we.

Private label.

Okay.

Exactly.

I'm gonna take pictures of these labels and put them on a little highlight bubble on Instagram for my Wine Spies episode so people can see what you're talking about.

Thank you.

So we offer this as a featured wine.

And was it less than half priced?

It was.

We sold it for 40 bucks.

I think legitimately this would have been over $250.

Wow.

Are we teasing people because these two wines, they'll never be able to get again, or do you think things come back around?

Things come back around.

We've actually got some new exciting projects in the work.

But also, every day is a good day to check out wine spies and find a great deal.

Because it's not just about the featured wine of the day.

There's ongoing deals that operatives.

Today.

We've got splits on Paju, 25 bucks today, normally $55.

I gotta go.

I'm sorry.

I gotta go buy something.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

Okay.

So people really just need to check it out, sign up, see what the deals look like, start to build the locker, take advantage of the complimentary shipping.

Yeah, it's brilliant.

I'm overusing that word.

But I'm just like, this is amazing for people.

Thank you for all that.

I'm super proud of what we built, mainly because I think the actual experience itself is just genuinely good.

Yeah.

You know, and we have top tier customer service.

We call it Operative Experience.

Operative Experience.

Love it.

Really.

We have got an awesome team of real humans.

We respond within an hour.

I've seen all of their offices here today.

Yep.

Yeah.

Happy people make happy operatives.

Happy agents make happy operatives.

I think that's our mission.

Statement.

I feel like it should be, yes.

Yeah, we just take care of people and 100% satisfaction guarantee, which we actually live by.

So if you, like, didn't like the bottle because it's Tuesday and you had a bad day at work, I'll be like, okay, no problem.

Just, like, full credit refund.

Do they have to send it back to you?

Nope.

Nope.

And you know what the reality is?

We just stand by our wines because they really actually are good.

And so every single day that a wine is on the site, it's a wine that we stand behind.

And if it gets to you and something went wrong, the shipping process and UPS was supposed to ring the bell, but they didn't.

It got cooked.

We'll make it right.

And like I said, it doesn't matter.

If you just don't like the wine, then we'll make that right too.

So that's fantastic.

That's not always the case.

And we don't give you a hard time about it either.

It's just like, okay, no problem.

I appreciate that.

I gotta take care of you, buddy.

No problem.

Well, I can see why you have.

What was the number again?

Of operatives.

Yeah, I said 140.

40,000 plus.

Yeah, I can see why.

And hopefully growing.

And I'm gonna put the link in the show notes for our listeners to check it out and sign up.

Congratulations on what you've got going on here, guys.

Go to the site.

Wine spies.

Sign up, Become an operative.

Thank you, crew.

Cheers.

All right, thanks, Nikki.

See you next time.

I mean, talk about customer service.

If you don't like the wine, they will make it right.

That's unheard of.

I mean, it's one thing if the wine is damaged or flawed in some way, but if it's just not your jam, then they'll replace it.

And that is amazing.

I had so much fun.

If you couldn't tell.

We laughed a lot.

The wines that we tasted were fantastic.

And you heard the prices that those wines that had been featured were.

So I was just trying to give you an idea of what to expect.

You'd be silly not to sign up.

Just go to winespies.com.

you don't need to purchase anything or subscribe to anything.

Just take a look at the emails.

And then once you start seeing things that make your eyes pop, go ahead and start your locker and take advantage of their complimentary shipping.

And right now, when you sign up for their emails on their website, they are offering $50 off a purchase of 200 or more.

That's like one or two more bottles of wine.

Hurry up.

Go do it.

Thank you so much to Agent Cru for taking the time to let me in on this top secret operation they've got going on there.

One day I would love to partner with them with my Solevato wines.

But when he said they typically request a palate, I was like, oh, I don't even make a full pallet of my wines most years.

So.

So we're a little too small right now for the time being.

And I just sounded like Oprah when I said that.

But this is extra special with a pink accented label to commemorate the fact that I just kicked breast cancer's ass.

And it's a highly limited wine and each bottle purchased, we will be making a donation to the V Foundation for Cancer Research.

If you're not already signed up for our mailing list, make sure you do that@solavato wines.com so you can be the first to know when it's available.

And you can also grab some of my other wines that we have right now.

Be sure to use the discount code pod listener for 10% off your order.

And remember, I do offer complimentary shipping on a case.

Whatever you do between now and next week, I hope that you sip well.

Don't.

Don'T.