This week, Michael (in his official co-hosting debut) and I are sitting down with Mark McWilliams, Co-Owner of Arista Winery in Healdsburg CA (Sonoma County). Listen to our heartfelt and hilarious conversation, as we sip 2 beautiful wines while the sun sets and harvest moon rises in the vineyard around us. (Poor us). 

Mark is an enthusiastic storyteller who shares:

• How his family came from Texarkana, TX to Sonoma County
• The ups and downs of starting and owning a winery 
• How NOT competitive the wine industry is 
• A sad but amazing story about their first harvest and a special human Ulises Valdez (read more about him here)
• What’s an Appellation and why does it matter?
• How there is an “Ocean of shitty Chard” on the planet (his words, I agree) 
• The concept of “Tension” in wine
• His thoughts on the HOT TOPIC of natural wine (not NATURAL wine)

Check out Arista’s website to be a part of their “A List” and get in line for all allocation of their exquisite wines. If you are visiting Napa/Sonoma, I highly recommend you book a visit to Arista (and tell them you heard about it on Sip With Nikki!)

If you need a unique and delicious wine for Thanksgiving try my Sollevato Wines...(yes I'm biased, I make it)! Use code PODLISTENER for 10% off your order. I can ship to most states in the US!

You NEED some Olives and Olive Oil from our awesome sponsor American Olive Farmer. Use code SipWithNikki for $10 off your order!

If you'd like to Support the Podcast, you can buy me a glass of wine and get a shoutout on a future episode.

Please leave a RATING or a REVIEW (on your podcast listening platform), or thumbs up and subscribe (on YouTube!)

Questions? Comments? Guest requests? nikki@sipwithnikki.com

So many of the things that we dreamed of doing 22 years ago, we've never done.

But so much of what we've done in the past 22 years, we never dreamed that we would do.

Hi there.

Welcome to this week's Sip with Nikki.

I'm your host, Nikki Lamberti, and I am so excited that you're here.

Man, this week's episode is really exciting.

I can't wait for you to meet Mark McWilliams.

Mark is the co owner of Arista Winery, which is here in Sonoma County.

And we're going to hear a little bit about his story, how his family came from Texas to California, got into the wine business, how Mark and his brother, Ben were able to take over that family business as co owners today.

And we had a really fun time.

Fascinating and interesting conversation to the point where sometimes I forgot that I was recording and supposed to be hosting this thing because Mark and I actually had a lot in common as far as starting a wine production from the ground up.

You'll hear a third voice on the microphone this evening.

week.

So my partner in life and business, Michael, came along for the ride.

And in all honesty, Michael is a huge Russian River Pinot Noir fan.

So when I told him I was interviewing Mark and that his winery was in the Russian River and they make Pinot, he's like, yeah, maybe I'll come check it out.

So I'm so glad that he did because he had some great questions and you'll hear Mark and Michael hit it off both being Texas natives.

Mark is a really effective storyteller and at one point had us almost in tears recalling a story from their first harvest and it's very honest about the roller coasters

of starting a winery and I think you'll find that there are some very powerful takeaways from this conversation regardless of your interest in owning a winery or not.

Great life lessons about perseverance, obstacles, finding joy, family, and I just am so excited for you to hear Mark McWilliams of Arista Winery.

Here we go.

Thanks for having us.

It is great to have you both here today.

Hi Michael.

Hello Nikki.

Michael, this is the first time that you're like really official with a microphone.

I'm going to contribute.

I feel like

a pro today.

I feel like I can do this.

Let me have a nice mic today.

Yeah.

Now

I have the two of you from Texas and then little old Jersey here on the side of the table.

Did you bring

him here just to be my translator?

I did.

Is that okay?

Yeah.

I understand.

You're doing it.

I love it.

So I'm looking at this gorgeous view of your property here in Arista.

We're literally surrounded by vineyards and hills and.

Late afternoon sun, and it's just stunning, and you get to be here every day.

Yeah, I know.

I pinch myself.

I really do.

You know, I live in the town of Healdsburg.

It's about a 15 minute drive from me in the morning.

And I sincerely mean, I try almost every single morning on my drive in.

to just not be in the typical morning commute and just thinking about the day's work, but just like stop and smell the roses.

The blessing of living on West Side Road and getting to work every day.

It's, it's special and we try not to take that for granted.

That's amazing.

So tell us how you got here.

What is the journey for you and your family from Texas to here?

Most people can make that leap from Texarkana to, uh, Healdsburg.

Texark

what?

I'm sorry, what is

Texarkana, Texas?

A lot of songs written about trying to get out of there.

Michael, do you want to tell our listeners my question that I had yesterday?

Yeah, I was at home preparing a meal.

And I was

preparing research on Mark.

Yeah, and she's like, hey, he's from Texas, just like you.

And he goes, but this weird city, he's like, Tex, where is Texarkana?

Where is that?

I went, well, it's in Texas and Arkansas.

It's right there.

And it's really close to Louisiana.

Smokey and the Bandit.

And she's like, why isn't it called Tex, Texas, Kansas?

No,

Texarkansas.

Texarkansas.

Well, you know, Texarkana

doesn't necessarily roll off the tongue.

Texarkansas.

You went to college in Texas.

I was born and raised in Texas.

When I was in junior high, my parents purchased a piece of property in Sonoma County.

My mother, after college, she was a Texan.

moved to France.

She spent six or seven years around the country of France and spent some time in Lyon.

So kind of right between Burgundy and their own.

At a young and impressionable age and fell in love with Pinot Noir and Chardonnay and French cooking.

So she moves back to the U.

S.

Later meets my father.

They have kids.

It's more difficult for them at that point to go to France and a little bit easier for them to go to California to kind of get their wine country itch scratched, right?

So they started coming to Sonoma County in the 80s.

Fell in love with the town of Healdsburg, really on their very first trip.

Trip out here.

They stayed at a really cute bed and breakfast called Madrona Manor.

Oh, yeah,

we just had dinner there

great place They were this is a long time ago There weren't many tation rooms on West Side Road But they were referred to two wineries that they had never heard of one called William Selyum and one called rocchioli So about a

decade later After many trips, they purchased the 36 acres of land immediately between William Silliam and Rokeola, which was a kind of full circle moment for my parents there.

And so it was really through the nineties with a property in the Alexander Valley.

That we started growing Cabernet Sauvignon, uh, selling that to other people got us in the industry.

I graduated from the University of Texas.

Much of my parents chagrin.

I didn't really know what I wanted to do post college.

And so they said, well, go to California, work a harvest.

If you like.

What did you

study?

I studied communications.

Okay.

So I thought, yeah, cool.

I'll go work a harvest and then go sink my teeth into the real world, figure something out.

And I can vividly to this day, I could take you to the vineyard in Sebastopol.

Uh, it was Labor Day weekend of 2000.

I'm wearing white t shirt, Wrangler jeans, red wing boots.

I have my Texas gear on.

I've been in California for about two weeks, a newly minted college grad.

I'm pissed that I'm having to work Labor Day weekend, totally unaware that grapes ripen right about now.

That's like

the start of the Superbowl here for us in wine country.

And I'm like, geez, Labor Day

weekend, why aren't we working?

And so I'm walking this Chardonnay vineyard with these two winemakers.

I was working for Kendall Jackson, kind of the parent company, but Hartford Court and La Crema and we're walking this vineyard and nibbling on some Chardonnay grapes.

I'm listening to these winemakers who don't know me.

I don't know them, but I'm hearing what they're saying and I'm like, ah, like I'm having this moment in the vineyard where.

You pick the grapes, you make the wine, the flavors.

I go, holy cow.

I'm connecting some dots in the moment.

It's awesome.

Isn't it?

When you

get that moment, when you're in the vineyard.

And for me, it was a total epiphany.

And I said in that moment, I don't even know what it means to make wine, but this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.

And so my personality type is once I find something that I love and I'm passionate about, I'm I'm all in, all in.

So started taking classes at the JC, Sonoma State, uh, taking extension classes from UC Davis.

I started listening to my bosses at work and just, Was that

a new practice for you?

Yeah, that was new.

Big adult moment here.

Um, but, so I fell in love.

I mean, in that moment, that's when I knew this is what I wanted to do.

I didn't quite know what that meant yet, but I knew I wanted to be in this industry.

So that was in 2000.

I spent a couple years working for them.

Convinced my parents in 2002.

to let us start Arista as a brand.

And so that's a, there's kind of a big leap there too, because we were growing cab.

I was living on that vineyard.

Had I gone to business school, I might've been aware of something called vertical integration.

We should have probably started making Cabernet Sauvignon.

We had a beautiful vineyard, but my day job was in the Rush River Valley and the people that I was getting to know, the relationships I was beginning to form were Chard and Pinot Noir.

And your mom's favorites.

And my mother.

Who, who Mama Good Texas Boy.

Listen to Your mama.

Makes.

She's a shot caller in the family, . And so it all, that's kind of how this came together.

Um, my parents knew they wanted to be in Sonoma County.

Once my father retired, they could see a true passion in me.

I'm the oldest of four.

Number two in the batting order.

Ben was also.

beginning to spend some time out here.

And it was pretty obvious that he had some interest.

And so as a family, we could begin to see like, okay, we could make a business out of this.

But we also understood financially for us, we weren't going to be able to scale land.

That just wasn't our reality.

So instead of thinking about, okay, we're going to be a farming family and grow grapes, we started having the conversation about, could we make some wine?

And we figured, well, it'd be, Easier to buy a ton of grapes than it would be an acre of land and that's honestly how we started.

Michael and I

are locking eyes over the table here.

Yeah, I know a bit of your story.

Let's own a vineyard, let's buy land.

He's like, how about we just make, uh, Pump the brakes on that girl.

Why don't we just make some wine first with some grapes and then see how that goes.

But see, it's important to

have like the pie in the sky and the practical.

And that is definitely us.

You

are me.

So who's your practical?

My

brother.

Ben.

He has reigned on every great idea that I've ever had.

You're like

Walt Disney and Elias Disney, the dreamer and then the money person and the grounder.

It's like, okay big guy, how are we going to pay for that?

We'll figure that out.

Let's just do

it.

But you did.

You figured it out, which by the way, is one of my favorite things to do.

Sayings is just figure it out.

Yeah.

Everything is figureoutable.

Just effing figure it out.

Yep.

Like that's what we do.

So you figured it out.

Well, I don't know if we figured it out yet.

It's 22 years in . I've figured out a few ways to not do things.

Okay.

I'm not certain if we figured out the right way to do much of this yet, but you know, one of the things that I have, 'cause I've told the story a few times in my life, one of the ways that I kind of phrase it is so many of the things that we dreamed of doing 22 years ago we've never done.

Mm-Hmm.

. But so much of what we've done in the past 22 years, we never dreamed that we would do.

And so Can we just drop

the mic with that statement?

Well, it's so true.

You have all

these big ideas and you need to have them.

But you, I mean, you just don't know, there are so many things you don't

even know to dream about, because you don't even know what they are, until you know what they are.

Yeah, yes, yes, we can talk, we can talk all day about this, and I'd love to, I'm, I get passionate about this stuff, I love this stuff, 22 years in, this is the coolest summer job I've ever had.

I want to go back to something you said about learning what you're doing.

Things not to do, right?

So what are one or two of those things that looking back, you're like, we definitely would not have done or should not have done it that way.

I think what 22 years of perspective kind of gives you is like these strong convictions, loosely held is the way to approach all this stuff.

You need to come in with these firm ideas, but.

I've learned that most of the time when I, when I had it figured out and this is the way we were going to do it, that's typically not the way to do it.

So have some flexibility.

I've learned too, it's a, it's a super small industry and just be yourself.

Genuinely kind to everybody because you never know when that Jackass might be the guy selling you glass now

Like it's very small yeah out here for sure

about this small wine communities like From year to year, like you, when there's something comes up, you have someone that just steps in and helps you out with maybe some extra barrels or equipment or, you know, just information or just knowledge.

It's so

relationship based.

It

is one of the coolest things.

And you guys are in the industry.

You understand this.

It's one of the most amazing things about this business that outsiders, customers just can't wrap their mind around.

I understand why they would think there's this level of competition that you have with all these other wineries and when they find out I spend most of my day sending my best customers to other wineries, they're just kind of stumped by that.

But there's, it is, it's an agricultural community.

It's a farming community.

There's a level of artistry and shared appreciation in our industry.

It's also everyone's drinking everyone else's wine.

You just told me how much Pride wine you drink.

Yeah.

As a co owner of Arista.

A bottle

every other week.

Yay, love it.

Shout out to Pride.

I gave you my wine.

You give me your wine.

But take us out of it, because the majority of our listeners right now are not in the industry.

They're all around the country and around the world now.

As wine drinkers and wine lovers, what wine drinker do you know?

That says, Oh, I only drink one brand of wine.

It would be the worst, most boring.

Like I always use the example of a restaurant.

Everybody has their favorite restaurant, but if you ate at that favorite restaurant four nights a week, it would not be your favorite restaurant pretty quickly.

And so I think wine's the same way.

Look, there's so many great wines out there.

Why would you ever just drink one?

Uh, I hope you always have a bottle of Arisa in your cellar.

Of Pride or Solvato.

Um, but, I mean, I think, and then people begin to realize that.

Yeah.

That's the truth.

Well, and it really is such a dad ism, like a rising tide lifts all ships.

You're doing well, we're doing well, right?

If one winery is doing well, then the business is doing well.

And I think your customers too, they appreciate a great referral.

It ends up looking good on you.

If you've sent them to this amazing place where they have great experience, the staff is great, the wines are great.

They come back, man, that was amazing.

You don't lose them.

You gain a stronger relationship with that customer.

I, I believe.

I totally agree.

So the first vintage that came off this property was when?

First vintage in, in bottle would have been 2009.

Vines went in the ground in 2005.

Five.

So very small.

I got a great story about that one too.

If you, if you was this about

you stealing vine cuttings from your neighbors?

Not that you weren't supposed to mention that part.

Well, someone told me about was stealing so much.

It was liberating.

We just talked about how neighbors help neighbors.

This

was just cuttings on the ground that were about to get mulched or burned.

We just saved a few cuttings.

Look how resourceful you are.

Uh, can't tell you where they came from, but no, A sad, but amazing story about the very first harvest off of this property.

So incredible part of our story was this man named Ulysses Valdez.

Nikki (2): No, this name.

I have no, I knew Ulysses 2000.

Ulysses was an icon in our industry.

He very tragically passed away at the age of 49 a few years ago, but man, he was, he was a one of a kind.

So Ulysses planted this estate starting in 2004, 2005, we were really close friends.

And He was good friends with all of his clients, but he was really close to my family.

First harvest 2009 off this estate.

You guys can imagine anybody listening at home can imagine the amount of pride you have after the time and money spent in buying the land.

Prepping the land, putting the vines in the ground, waiting for four or five years for that first fruit off.

We're so excited.

Ulysses knows we're excited.

It's the Harper's Rest Vineyard.

It's the first block you come to on our property.

We pick the fruit.

It's only about three picking bins that we got off of that.

Is it Chardonnay?

Uh, Pinot So my parents are down there.

Ulysses is there.

We're there as a family.

We're taking pictures at the time we were making wine at motion winery, which is on West side road.

So you come out of our driveway, turn right just a few miles down the road.

And I don't know, it's probably seven o'clock in the morning.

The fruits picked and Ulysses is like, okay, we're loaded up.

I'm like, I'll meet you guys at the winery.

I'm going to run ahead.

I got my phone.

We're going to take some pictures of our first fruit arriving and I get to motion and I'm waiting and I'm waiting.

The truck's not there and like a half an hour passes, what in the world?

And as you well know, cell service isn't great around here.

About that time I see Ulysses pull up in his pickup truck, not the grape truck that his pickup truck and he's got tears coming down his face.

And I'm like, what has happened?

He just walks up to me.

He's like, Amigo, I am so sorry, but we've had a major accident.

I'm like, what?

He said in all the excitement, my guy forgot to strap down the fruit on the back of the truck.

And when he came out of your driveway and turned right, All three picking bins fell off the truck and spilled onto the West side road.

And we can't, we can't salvage it.

It's we, we tried and it's just, there's too much debris in it.

And I mean my heart sinks.

I mean, I'm like, I'm And he's crying and upset.

But what do you do?

I mean, what do you do?

He was, it was an accident.

And so he goes, amigo, I'm going to make this up to you.

I'm going to let you have some of my Chardonnay from this vineyard, famous vineyard called El Diablo, which we make to this day.

He goes, amigo, I'm going to give you my El Diablo Chardonnay to make up for this.

And next year we're going to get this right.

And he did.

And then not only did he give me that to make up for it, he let us stay in it to this day.

I feel like I need some wine after that story cause my heart is pounding a little bit.

Can we, or bourbon?

I know, wait, hold on.

You said you're a brown water guy.

I am a

brown water guy.

But I would like some pale yellow, not water.

Can we maybe have a little Chardonnay just to toast?

Let's do it.

Ulysses sharing Chardonnay with you.

To Ulysses, absolutely.

So we're a Russian River house.

We make Pinot Noir and Chardonnay from the Russian River Valley.

That's why Michael's here today.

Yes, I am.

His favorites.

So, the 21 vintage is our Appalachian wine, and I'm super proud of our Appalachian Chard and Appalachian Pinot Noir, for a lot of reasons.

For our listeners who are not nerds like us, when you say Appalachian, not Appalachian Mountains, Appalachian, can you just tell our listeners what you're referring to?

And cheers, by the way.

Here's our sip spotlight.

Appalachian, fancy French word that basically means a neighborhood.

It's a geographically defined, it's a federally defined region that tends to have characteristics of something.

Uh, proximity to water, elevation, soil type, slope.

They're real, they're important, and any, you know, Lover of wine needs to come to understand the system and they have similar systems all around the world.

It's a very basic thing that you should kind of begin to understand.

And so Sonoma County is an Appalachian Napa Valley is an Appalachian concentric circles, a little bit smaller.

The Russian river is inside of Sonoma County.

So generally speaking, the smaller the circle, All the way down to like a vineyard designate where all of the fruit comes from one site.

Generally speaking, the smaller that circle, you're getting more and more precise.

And a lot of times you're actually seeing the price go up too.

I always tell people the more specific you can label does two things.

It shows typicity, meaning.

Someone like Michael, who knows he loves Russian River Pinot Noir can now search that out on a label and it should have some consistency for him as a drinker.

But as a producer, the more specific we can label down to the vineyard, the more we can charge for that bottle.

Exactly right.

But a lot of producers would look at an Appalachian wine as kind of a starting point, an entry level, because it's not actually that small of a circle.

There are a lot of vineyards inside of the Russian River Valley that you can and blend together to make an Appalachian designated chardonnay or pinot noir, or any variety for that matter.

So a lot of wineries would look at their Appalachian as the starting point and then they have these precious single vineyards that they save for their designate kind of reserve program.

And so maybe they're going to source cheaper, younger, lesser sites to go into the entry level, and then they're going to save the good stuff for the single vineyards.

For us, we look at it.

We look at this as the tête à cuvée or like the blend of our reserves as opposed to maybe kind of younger fruit that you can get for less money.

We really only make these single vineyard wines.

We love site.

We get super nerdy about that.

We love telling the story of these famous old vineyards.

But then the idea was if I can blow your doors off at the entry level, you'll go climb the ladder with me all day long.

So why don't I use the quote unquote entry level and

Michael, what do you call some winery's entry level wines?

Come on.

You're allowed to say it.

We can,

we got the finger on the delete button.

It's a basic bitch wine.

He's like, is it the reserve or the basic bitch?

And I'm like, we don't, we don't call it that.

But it's funny and it makes me laugh.

But there's some reason that he says that.

And there's a lot of truth to that, right?

So we wanted to kind of turn that idea on its head.

So for us, the Appalachian wine, is a blending tool or like a declassification tool.

Meaning we only use our single vineyard wines.

There's no filler fruit, unnamed vineyards that go into this wine.

We have an idea of how we want to make those single vineyard wines stylistically.

And by that, I probably mainly mean the percentage of new Oak.

We like about 30 percent new French Oak.

In the single vineyard wines, which is not a lot of new oak, by the way, but that's kind of for us about where we like to be.

But we don't know exactly which barrels from every single vineyard are going to go into that when we barrel down right after harvest.

So as we begin to blend, now we have these great barrels that we can blend down to create this Appalachian wine, which is just the single vineyard wines, less new oak.

So we want this Appalachian to be something you can pull a cork on, you know, give this maybe two years.

From the time of release, this thing is ready to go.

A lot of like high end kind of by the glass restaurant friendly wine here.

And then we save those single vineyard wines for like the cellar.

Give them some rest.

If you can patiently wait,

it's hard to wait.

It seems very subtle and stunning and beautiful and so many things.

Before we nerd out about what we're smelling and tasting in the glass, I'm sure you've spent most of your professional life, especially as a Chardonnay producer, hearing all of people's, you know, stereotypes and misconceptions, anything but Chardonnay.

Okay.

So I deal with it every day as well.

I know how I handle it.

How do you handle it?

And what do you want people to know?

I

really sincerely love, because to me, what the people are telling me is something that I already know.

There is an ocean of shitty chardonnay in the world.

Hashtag ocean of shitty chard.

Let's remember that.

It is

one of the most produced wines on the planet, but one of those things where like, just because you can doesn't mean you should.

And so, it thrives in the world.

When I taste a Chardonnay that has like pineapple, guava, mango, Del Monte fruit cup flavors, we are not in the right.

The fruit cup

of the cafeteria of us, the kids of the 70s and the 80s?

Is that what you mean?

We're in the wrong neighborhood for

Chardonnay.

We don't

want that!

And I hope I'm not.

Well, I kind of do hope I'm offending somebody out there because that's just not what Chardonnay is.

Chardonnay needs to be in this citrus, stone fruit world.

And if you think about ripening, if it's warm and sunny, you're going to move into those tropical flavors real quick.

But if you're in these like cold, chilly, close to the ocean, the rest of the valley, this is where this grape will be.

Thrives.

And so I love that because when, when somebody tells me I hate Chardonnay, I'm not a shard drinker.

I'm like, game on.

Just try this.

You're like, let me get my hands on you.

You're

going to love this wine.

And most of the time people, wow, I've never had a Chardonnay like that before.

I've had people say, and you've probably heard this, they'd be like, this doesn't even taste like Chardonnay.

And you're like, no, this is actually what Chardonnay tastes like.

You've just never actually tasted good Chardonnay.

So I think, and you guys know this, um, There is, this is a wonderful time to be making white wine chardonnay for sure.

There's a renaissance, there's a renewed interest, I think, by the consumer in really well made whites, a bunch of dudes sitting around like 20 years ago, four dudes sitting around drinking a bottle of chardonnay, probably not going to happen now.

I don't know how often, I mean, I'm more frequently pulling white wine to just drink by myself or with my family than I am a bottle of red.

I just love super well made.

Shard, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc.

I just love it.

Why do you think that this is a trend of late?

You know, we're still a relatively new industry and I think you're, you try things out and styles kind of shift in the pendulum swings.

And we were over in this ripe, rich, heavy oak full mouth feel style and it's just hard to drink, you know?

So we kind of move back to this like more classic.

Style and I just think there's a more educated consumer now I think people have been exposed to wines from around the world and I feel like there will always be a place

for like the Classic like quote unquote California style shard, but I just think that consumers love energy and tension and freshness All things that chardonnay should be.

You

just use one of my favorite wine words and I don't use it enough.

And every time people say it, Karen McNeil is a lover of this word.

She talks about tension in wine.

And I'm like, why don't I talk about that more?

It's such a brilliant concept.

So let's talk about that.

Tension to me, it's a.

textural thing.

It can be a flavor thing.

You kind of want these like, especially in red wine, you'll taste these fruit flavors, but there's this acid that really keeps it tense or taut.

There's a verve to the wine.

So for us, how we make these wines, and I think what really you got to do with Chardonnay, people talk how hard it is to make Pinot Noir and all this, and it's difficult, but probably not as difficult as making great Chardonnay.

And I think why people react more to great Chard noir.

Then they even do great Pinot Noir, is I think there's a lot of pretty darn good Pinot out there.

So to really stand out, I mean it's hard to do, and that's a compliment, there's a lot of good Pinot.

But when you have a great Chardonnay, people lose their mind, and I think it speaks to their use of drinking shit.

So, with all of our wines, there is not a commercial product added.

At any point in the process.

Nothing.

There's nothing.

Yeast is all

native.

Indigenous fermentations.

So no inoculation of, of yeast.

We believe very firmly, especially with whites, in a very cold cellar.

So we will barrel down.

Um, it might be a week to 10 days before we see any slow bubbling.

We keep our cellar cold, barrel for everything is barrel from it.

We keep our cellar probably around 54, 55 degrees.

It is cold and slow and we, we embrace, and this is probably a little more nerdy than we want to get, but

Oh, I'll go there with you kind of think about like people

cooking.

I use this analogy all the time.

Okay.

Michael's ears just perked up.

Take your pork shoulder.

Okay.

Oh, his ears really perked up.

I'm pretty sure he likes to smoke meats too.

I can put that in the oven at 300 degrees for, you know, 3 hours.

Or I can put it in a smoker at 200 degrees and it might be 12, could be 14 hours.

You don't know.

Talk to me.

But what comes out of there is going to be so much more flavorful and complex.

So wine's no different.

If, when you have these hot, fast, violent ferments, you are literally blowing off.

All of these delicate esters compounds that make aroma and texture.

When you hot, fast ferment, you blow all that away.

So it's not uncommon at all for our primary fermentation to be about nine months on our Chardonnay.

It's a long time.

Nine months.

You guys

should see my face right now.

It is

a long, Long.

I

would say a month or two is long.

Yeah.

No, six to nine

is pretty standard for us.

Primary.

Wow.

Primary fermentation.

So really slow patience is something you'll hear me talk a lot about with our winemaking.

Our Chardonnays will spend their first year in barrel.

Very little stirring or anything.

We just want to keep it very still and allow it to go through fermentation.

We rack it from barrel to stainless.

We're We stay in stainless for a few more months, about six months, and then we bottle this wine with no fawning or no filtering.

So it's, there's no adultery and there's nothing done.

It is just grapes fermented by indigenous yeast, little new oak, not much, a little bit, and then bottled 18 months later.

So that being the case, can you, would you, do you want to use the term natural wine?

Let's go there.

Here we go.

Buzz word.

Let's go.

Half a glass in.

Natural wine.

Let's go.

We'll talk religion here in a moment.

The way we look at natural is when Matt, our winemaker, talks about this all the time.

Natural with a little N, not natural with a big N.

So we don't think about these wines as the natural wine movement.

It is a little political, a little controversial, and we are the opposite of looking for controversy.

Ironically, we make our wines about as naturally as wine can be made, down to, we've reached a point where even sulfites added sometimes is zero or minimal one addition of sulfur just before.

Bottling, not because we're trying to be cool and hip, but we have this overarching belief, less, but better.

It drives every decision that we make.

Do fewer things, but do them right or best.

Don't do anything just to say you do it.

Don't whole cluster ferment just to be cool and say you whole cluster ferment.

Don't add or not add something because you think it, know why you're doing it.

measure twice, cut once, know exactly why you're doing something.

So for us, it's like eliminate every single variable that we do not need and just do the most essential and that's it.

And it sounds easy.

It is way harder to do that than it is to just wing it and then do a lot of stuff in post production.

Like that's just not the way we make our wines.

And so natural for us, these wines are as natural as wine could be made.

But we, you will never see us mention natural wine.

I respect that.

The way our wine is made and how we make wine and how I see people make wine, to me it's complete opposite.

I think the way you're doing it is so much harder.

It is.

I mean, not easier.

It's, to me, it's blowing my mind because the time and the care that needs to be done.

And you guys, I know,

have a science background that you have to keep your cellar almost like an OR.

Like, maniacally clean, which in and of itself is not easy to do.

I'm like, so blown away.

Michael, are you so happy that you came today?

Right, yeah, I

am.

We haven't even talked Pinot yet, and

we're a Pinot house.

We're going there next.

This is beautiful.

Thank you so much.

I love the tension, I love the acidity.

I love how I've been smelling it since you poured it 10 minutes ago and not even every taste, every smell, every time I smell it's, I'm like, Ooh, I just got this.

Ooh, I just got that.

We're really, really proud of these wines.

Um, you know, people don't think about what we'll eventually talked about Pinot, but I love giving Chardonnay the love right now.

We are in the process of doing some retrospective tasting.

We're tasting Chardonnays now that are 13, 14 years old that are dynamite.

Wow!

Absolutely dynamite.

Amazing wines.

How's the color?

Maybe slightly, but hardly a shift in color.

Still this like straw.

I mean this is

very pale in the glass.

This is 2021.

Very pale straw.

You almost get a green hue sometimes to the Chardonnays when they're really, really young.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But yeah, 10 12 years in, they are not like golden yellow yet at all.

They have a lot of futures to look for.

Like TV Chardonnay when people are drinking, looks like pee.

Like yellow, like,

Nikki (2): man, drinking.

Why do you think yours have that ageability which not all whites and certainly not all California Chardonnays do?

That's something else I've learned in this business.

Don't profess to know anything.

And it's never one thing.

It's not, it's a combination of, it's exceptional fruit, it's an extremely talented winemaking team, it's a very clean cellar.

We are blessed to work with some really great old vineyards.

Okay.

Well, you keep nodding to it and teasing it, so we should move on to some Pinot Noir.

Let's do it.

Sip spotlight number two.

Michael, you've been so good over

there.

I know you have your own bottle that's on the side that you've been drinking, but now we'll do the official bottle.

One of the beauties of wine, and we're all wired this way, the story behind the wine makes it just as good as whatever's in the glass, right?

So, this comes from a vineyard called the U.

V.

Vineyard.

Ulysses Valdez.

So, the original vineyard that Ulysses planted, was the UV Vineyard.

Every subsequent vineyard he had was UV something.

UV Luckywell, UV Silver Eagle, UV El Diablo, UV Lancel Creek.

But the OG site was UV.

So it was in 2005, I tasted Paul Hobbs UV Vineyard Pinot Noir and it rocked my world.

I'm like, holy cow.

I called him up, Hey amigo, I need some of that UV fruit.

He says, sorry Amigo, there's no fruit for you.

It all goes to Paul Hobbs and Mark O'Bear.

This is in 05.

I'm like, okay, game on.

Big name producers, your neighbors here, yep.

Next year, Ulysses, can I get some of that UV fruit?

Sorry Amigo, no fruit for you.

No joke.

Every year post harvest, I would take him to lunch and we would talk about the whole year, but one of the last things I would say is any UV fruit this year from 2005 until 2018.

So 13, 14 years, he said, no fruit for you every year.

I asked him at the end of the 18 harvest, he goes, amigo.

I'll get you some fruit next year.

So in 2019 after many years of asking persistence, I got into this vineyard and I love it.

It's everything I'd ever hoped it to be.

So the Ulysses Valdez vineyard is off of Laguna road in a part of the Russian river that we'd called.

The Laguna de Santa Rosa.

But it's a very historic part of the Russian Appalachian.

What I love about this wine are the dark elements.

It's this like dark, brooding, sexy Pinot Noir.

It just

looks that before you even taste it, it looks all those things as you were pouring it in the glass.

I got a little

excited.

It's just an incredible wine.

Gets me excited about Pinot Noir are these heritage selections, the clones of Pinot Noir.

I love the Swan selection.

I love the Calera selection and that's what these things are planted to, Swan and Calera.

I just think they make exceptional Pinot Noir in the Rochelle Valley and I'm super stoked that we have this wine and I wish nobody else liked it because I would drink it all myself.

Should we delete this part so no one hears about how fabulous it is?

Are you secured in this vineyard?

Depending on how the vineyard is facing, right?

Especially with Pinot, you know, it's very.

Finicky, fragile, sensitive.

Yeah.

Correct.

Very reflective of all of its elements.

So in

Russia, I'm always like.

Is that south facing?

Yeah, you want to be careful with that.

I'm gonna need you to

calm down with the dude.

That's what I always

say.

I always say that it was the funniest thing.

West facing, don't know if we need west facing.

Was this west

facing?

Um, you know what?

Give me south facing Pinot please.

You take this guy around?

Oh my

god.

This is, I have molded this for 10 years.

This was not this when I met Mr.

Beer Drinker.

So you, you're

responsible for this.

I mean I like to take a

little credit for.

For guiding him into the nerdiness of wine, right?

I mean, but brain grabs on to it because he has that but there's no

I don't think there's any other beverage that has Wine has such a story.

I mean there's from each like you said Appalachian Yeah, you said every slope

is it facing east is it facing the top of that?

Story, and I don't think any other drink has that.

Yeah,

it's a very unique thing

And I think to the story that you just told about So how long it took you to finally get through from that UV vineyard, 13 years, according to my calculations.

Right.

There you go.

You were a little better than that.

We got it a little quicker than we did.

Yeah.

But we totally had the same

thing.

We knew we wanted that.

Every year we would go to please.

Every year we'd go.

What

a life lesson.

What a metaphor there for patience.

Like you could have been like, screw it.

I'm going to move on and find something else, but you stuck with it.

I mean, this industry, especially wine from, you know, putting a vine in the ground to nine months of fermentation alone.

And all of these things is such a study in patients.

And I feel like for people like you and me, especially where it's our nature to do, figure it out and make it happen.

It's hard.

So we've not talked much about Matt Courtney, who is our winemaker.

He has taught me that so much.

And he's kind of the yin to my yang as well.

I'm not a patient person.

I'm a go, go, go high energy.

Like let's do it right now.

And he's taught me.

Slow down, man.

And that's maybe one of your early questions is like, what have I learned?

I would not say that I have learned patience yet, but I am learning patience and there's something that is, especially in a world that we live in today, there's something actually.

To me, sexy and interesting about patience because we're, everything is instant and it's now and you want it and it's, it's almost like foreplay in a sense.

It's like this like anticipation.

Katie, turn his mic

up, please turn his mic up.

No, but

seriously, it builds, like you don't rush the process of how we grow our grapes.

You don't.

We don't rush the process of how we make our wines.

We don't rush.

wines.

You have to be patient in this game.

There's so much more satisfaction and I think pleasure that you derive from the patients.

I just want to ask a question because I thought about Michael, are you going to ask him

about foreplay?

I'm starting

to blush talking about patients.

And I know, uh, starting off, Our custom crush and you know, we're like, get the grapes, get into a barrel, then get into a bottle and then sell it.

You talked about your chardonnay, how long your fermentation process is and how long in the barrel and, and how did that become like, 'cause at first I'm pretty sure that wasn't your idea, that's not how we started.

You were, when you were custom crushing, it didn't have your cellar at the right temperature that you wanted.

Right.

You have to work one ever goes into that with the conditions that you have.

You know, this is, this is not unique to wine.

Like the first thought that just raced through my mind when you asked that, is like, a minor league baseball player, having to put in their time, earning their time to make it to the majors, right?

When we started out, this isn't like a, uh, cue of the violin, humble story, but we started off making, uh, a couple hundred cases in a friend's cellar in the corner.

It's the classic story of just like we're in the corner of a cellar.

We had no idea what we're doing.

We had been fermenters, but man, we loved it.

Right.

But so here's the trade off.

There's all this joy and this passion and this newness when you're starting off and you don't have economies of scale, you have zero benefit of anything.

You don't get to Call the pick.

You get a half a ton of fruit.

It has to go into a plastic bin fermenter.

You've got to take it outside to warm it up.

I understand.

I live this.

I lived this for about 12 years.

We were in a custom crush environment and there's nothing wrong with it.

So many people are custom crush brands.

There's nothing wrong.

But there are constraints.

There's trade offs to both sides of this.

When you are a custom crush client, you are really beheld into your host and their employees and their schedule.

And you just kind of have to do what gets done when it gets done.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

When you have your own facility and your own team and your own winemaking team and your own equipment that is custom made to what you're doing, suddenly it would not have been safe for us.

To try to make Chardonnay.

the way we make Chardonnay today in a shared facility.

It just wouldn't.

To answer your question, we did not start off making our wines 22 years ago, the way you make them today.

It's been an evolution.

It's been a dream.

It's been a one day you're sleeping on your buddy's couch.

And you hope to get your own apartment and then one day you want to buy your own house, right?

We started off in the corner Then we grew up to where we had some say we moved into a new custom crushed place and we were big enough to kind Of get the attention, but we

dreamed of having our own winery and that's what we did You know 10 years ago It was me and a consulting winemaker that did all of our winemaking from 02 until You've

got some winemaking chops there, sir.

It was me and a gal

and she was a huge influence in my life.

But my brother and I, we would taste our wines against our neighbors.

And I just knew that we could do better.

And that was mainly me.

I understood there was more talented winemakers out there than, than moi.

And so my brother and I bought the business from my parents.

At the end of 2012 and the first thing we did was to fire me, his winemaker.

And we brought in a guy named Matt Courtney.

Matt had been the winemaker at a brand called Markison.

Very famous winery out on the Sonoma Coast owned by a woman named Helen Turley.

Really, really famous

wine.

I've heard of Miss Helen Turley.

So, but we hired him and he brought with him Extreme talent.

He brought his assistant winemaker, a guy named Gordon.

He brought his cellar master, a guy named Corey.

He brought him over.

And the purpose of that though was we wanted to make wine at the highest level.

And I knew that it took that level of talent and it was going to take a level of commitment on my part to build this facility, to be able to make those wines.

And so, I mean, this was an awesome.

All in move for me and my brother.

Funny story there is, you know, my dad cut us a deal, but he still sold this to us and it was the biggest number I'd ever seen.

And my brother and I had to go to a bank and take out the money to buy this.

We hire Matt.

And the first thing, Matt's like, I want to build a winery.

And I'm like, bro, you are talking to the wrong guy.

I got that kind of money.

So what we could afford to do was with the remaining line of credit that we had was to go because we'd always been custom crushed.

We were in somebody else's home.

We didn't have a tank.

So with that line of credit, we went out and purchased tanks, hoses, press, sorting table, de stemmer, kind of the guts of the winery.

And we moved into a corrugated metal building.

In Cloverdale, California, which was, here's his name again, Ulysses Valdez.

He had a warehouse that had never been used before.

And he goes, amigo, you can put some drains in there, put some coolant in there, and you can have that as your winery.

And we, and we did, it was.

2013 and we made our wines in that facility 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 with Matt at the helm and it revolutionized our style of wine.

We went from absolutely unknown, unheralded, rightly so I should add, to I would say We've earned a spot at the table at least among some of the great producers of Pinot and Chardon California, um, in the past 10 or 12 years.

And that's because of their talent and that's because of our commitment to building this winery.

Working with, if like California had Grand Cru sites, we're working with Grand Cru, Premier Cru, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.

You really have to have great startings.

material and put it in the hands of an extremely talented winemaking team and then be patient.

Back to your work.

Be patient.

There's so many takeaways from just that one story that you shared.

But would you say the moral of that story is to fire yourself?

And have like a lot of money.

The moral of that story actually to answer one of your first questions too, is to sincerely check any ego at the door.

Know your strengths and weaknesses.

It was very clear.

I was not going to be the best winemaker that has ever lived in Sonoma County, California, but I wanted to be a part of making from

Texas

beer and margaritas.

But I wanted to be a part of making some of the best charts and PNYs in California.

And so I knew my role was going to be.

Putting a team together and orchestrating that.

And so it is only about Matt, Gordon, Corey, Ray.

And our growers, they're the talent.

It's me and my brother who kind of helped put this

thing together.

What that reminds me of is Jim pride at pride mountain vineyards where I work.

And he was always a big proponent coming from dentistry as his father was an

orthodontist.

I saw that they

kind of were in concentric circles, but Jim knew he wasn't going to be the best winemaker and soil consultant and vineyard hire the right people, put the right team in place.

Don't try to do everything.

Put the team together that can do it.

Well,

to bring this all full circle here, Michael and I, uh, were commiserating that we're Dallas Cowboy fans.

And I love to bash on the owner of the Dallas Cowboys.

Andrew.

He

is horrible.

No, let me just say Go ahead.

No, it's fine, you guys.

I Do the

sports.

Do the sports.

Jerry likes to see himself on the sideline.

In front of the press.

He likes it to be all about him and the Cowboys suck, where you have a different owner, maybe a Mr.

Kraft from the Patriots who sits up in the box, puts a team together and they just win championship after championship.

I would rather be that and have the success than be out on the field, acting like it's all about me and losing every freaking game and rant is over.

And just so you know, I was going to say, he's like a general manager that he fired himself and he stepped back.

Put the team together, but I left it alone because I didn't want to start talking sports on your podcast.

I just want you to know I was considerate of it.

It's fine.

But,

but I totally, it's something to be said.

You know, you have to check your ego at the door and listen to the people that know how to do the, do the work.

Any winemaker would tell you the longer they make wine, the less they know, or the, or the more open they become to things that they used to think were the wrong way to do things and they would never do it.

That's just a foolish approach.

You just have to remain curious.

Um, open to possibilities, willing to listen and try back to my strong convictions loosely held.

You can't fake experience.

I mean, there's people in this business, 70, 80 years, right?

You have to listen to them.

You have to take their knowledge.

Something comes with

time.

I think that that's one thing that Michael and I have been really good at is asking for help.

surveying.

I mean, I'm lucky to be surrounded by many winemakers and owners and now adding one more to my pocket.

So be ready for the question.

But I'm not afraid to ask.

I started this winemaking and this career like in my late thirties, almost 40 and we're open to embrace that.

Why would you know?

You've just started every day, right?

Yeah.

And we've only been doing it five minutes.

Who cares?

Amen.

Amen.

Do you have four children at home between the ages of?

We have this, don't make me do this.

We have a 17, almost a 15, an 11 and a 10.

God bless.

Cheers to them.

Yeah.

Glasses empty.

I hope mom was home drinking right now.

That's amazing.

And they are too.

So I don't want to keep you from your family because you were kind enough to join us at the end of the day here.

Meanwhile, we have this beautiful dusk surrounding us in this beautiful It's three, almost three 60 to 70 view.

I'm looking at, I think the, my commas mountain range over here, I'm looking at mountain Halina.

I'm almost looking at pride where there is very cool.

Here's my question.

Yep.

I want our listeners to enjoy your wines, try your wines, come see you.

So I know that you guys host tastings here.

You have all these beautiful little spaces on your property.

I know that you also do events here.

So can you just talk a little bit about your hospitality, your philosophy, and now you've got someone leading the charge here by the name of.

Sally, when it comes to that, and she was a previous guest on the podcast and she may have facilitated our meeting here today.

But with Sally at the helm, especially on that side, what do people need to know about coming to see you?

So thank you.

Um, we are a family winery that is grateful for anyone that wants to come by and try our wines and hear our story.

So we are open to the public.

We appreciate it.

Appointments.

It just helps us

with a capital a

yeah, little in on natural capital a appreciate on appointments.

No, the appointments help only because it allows us to give the best experience.

You are welcome to walk in.

That's great.

We can accommodate you.

Uh, we're open seven days a week.

Um, we are, We are fortunate enough to be small enough that the wines do sell out quite quickly.

Uh, oftentimes in a matter of days when they're released.

But we always try to hold back, like any tasting room does, something to have.

In a month, that might be a different wine.

If it doesn't sell to our mailing list, it shows up in the tasting room.

And that's what makes it fun in the tasting room, is honestly, it is a constantly rotating, you don't know what you might find when you come in there.

How

many different wines?

We make 6 Chardonnays and 11 Pinot Noirs.

So, a bunch of different SKUs or products.

At some point, you know, you gotta make an economically viable amount of this stuff.

But sometimes We're still trying to

Nikki (2): figure out what that looks like.

It's somewhere between half a ton and a hundred tons.

Okay, cool.

Thank you.

So that's our problem is, we still might only get 3 tons from this vineyard, 5 tons from that vineyard.

So you kind of have to Uh, cobble together these great sites to make in total a number that keeps the lights on and allows you to do it.

One of my

favorite terms, cobble together.

It's like story of my life.

Yeah, cobble together.

So you can come see us.

We occasionally will have a wine on our website, but generally speaking it is sold to our mailing list.

Called the A List.

See how creative we are, that's because you have an advanced marketing degree right there.

A for Appreciate Appointments, or?

Arista.

Oh,

where's Arista come from?

Great question.

It's a Greek word, which

means excellence.

It's

Greek.

Best.

If we were Greek, it would be a super tight story.

You're not Greek.

We're not Greek.

But it means the best.

That's the top, kind of what we hope to be.

Who

picked it?

That would have been my parents, and at the time my aunt and my uncle were also involved in the starting of all this, yeah.

So they can not necessarily purchase on the website, but they can sign up to be on the waiting list.

Exactly right.

To be approved to be on the A list, and in the meantime, when you're out here in Napa and Sonoma, Sonoma

mostly.

Come over to Hildsburg.

Come over here.

Check us out.

And like I said, give us a call, email us.

This site is stunning.

Beautiful.

West Side Road is a beautiful

place.

Architecture is unique to the place.

And for the people listening that might not know, Healdsburg is an incredible town, but West Side Road, you can spend three days visiting the wineries on this road.

And that's what drew my family to this long before we were a winery.

I told that story.

We were coming here to drink the wine to these other exceptional producers.

So there's a level of Responsibility, I think, when you own a property like this, that is amongst giants of the industry, that you got to bring your A game.

You owe it to the site to bring your A game.

And we try to.

Well, if I'm tasting your game in the glass, it is an A plus.

This Pinot, especially sexy brooding.

It's interesting though, because the color is so rich and extracted, which we love about Russian River Pinot, but it's not a fruit bomb.

No,

no, no.

There is fruitiness there, but there's so many other layers.

When people see Russian River Pinot Noir, they have this preconception.

It's going to be this like almost caricature.

It's

the cab drinker's Pinot.

And that drives me bananas because that's not what it is, right?

I mean, yes, there can be some rich, big Pinots in the Russian River Valley, but that's not what Pinot should be.

The old school, I cut my teeth back when I was young.

Drinking the wines of Joseph Swann.

Can

Nikki (2): we hear it again?

Back when I was young.

Joseph Swann, Dalinger, Fred Scherer, Alex Davis at Porter Creek.

He's literally

people, he's pointing around us, he's saying these names.

These are like, these are these literally surrounding properties.

Old

school wines.

When Burt Williams and Ed Silliam were making William Silliam.

Beautiful wines.

And head back to our tension word.

Crunchy.

Red fruit.

Opposed to like stewed.

Yeah, you get into this like plummy, prune.

Crunchy's like a cranberry.

Like high

toned.

Yes.

Current pomegranate raspberry, you know, you know that when you bite into it It kind of makes you pucker a little bit like not underripe just that red fruit is where we kind of want to be.

And that gives tension, it gives acidity.

So it's not just this like fruity thing.

There's savory elements to the wine.

It's

definitely savory, earthy, spicy.

Oh my gosh, it's so nuanced.

It's beautiful.

Thank you for sharing this with us.

Of course.

Anything else you want our listeners to know about your wine, your winery and visiting?

I'm going to put the links in the show notes to the website to set an appointment people, but anything else?

If you want to come by and check us out, we'd be grateful for it.

I think you would really dig and be surprised.

Any small family business, we are grateful for the support.

Not that the big guys don't need it too, but the little guys that really pour their hearts into this, we appreciate the support.

So

absolutely.

Zooming out for a final thought on the big picture.

If there are people that are listening to this.

that have a dream that's sort of bubbling up and it's something that they're passionate about, but so almost paralyzed at taking action because of the time or the money or the knowledge or whatever.

What, what do you say to that?

Just start, do it, just do it.

Even if it not, you're not going to start at the full version of what you're going to become.

I mean, if you're Nikki

Lamberti and you want to just buy a vineyard and a winery.

So I guess I should sit back, marry somebody with a lot of money.

Then you can do it right.

So you got to start.

That's the first thing is just start.

You won't know, but just start.

Just do it.

I mean, honestly, just start.

That's the scariest, hardest part, is just starting.

Once you start, then you're in it, and then you gotta start now fighting for your life.

But like, just start.

Just do it.

Figure it out.

We know that now.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for your time.

I feel like there are going to be repeat episodes here.

I would love to come back here.

If you're open to it.

Anytime.

You're, I

mean, you're very shy, but you did come out of your shell with four sips of wine.

Three glasses of wine and, uh,

I'm ready to go.

But Michael, Nikki, thank you so much.

Really appreciate it.

Mark, thank you so much.

Oh my goodness, we literally could have continued that conversation for another two hours, especially with those beautiful wines, that Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.

Oh my goodness.

And as we were wrapping up our conversation, the beer, Big full harvest moon was rising over the mountain range as we were looking across the valley from their property.

It was just stunning.

I'm going to put the link in the show notes for you to check out Arista Winery.

You can sign up to be on the waiting list to be part of their A list or their mailing list and eventually get an allocation of their wine.

And if you are coming to Napa Valley or Sonoma, and this is true.

Anytime, please reach out to me, Nikki at SipWithNikki.

com, because I'll give you all kinds of recommendations of places that you should visit, but Arista in Healdsburg in Sonoma County better be on the top of that list.

Absolutely beautiful place and fantastic wines.

And the people there were not so bad either.

And seriously, a huge thank you to Mark.

I look forward to spending more time with you and your family and your wonderful team in the future.

While you're waiting to get your potential allocation of Arista wine, if you need the perfect Thanksgiving wine or Christmas or Hanukkah wine on your table, don't forget, I've got my 2021 Solovato Sangiovese.

And at the time of this recording, we're not quite sold out yet.

Check the link in the show notes for solovatowines.

com and use the discount code PODLISTENER for 10 percent off your order, and I'll ship it right to you in time for the holidays.

If you're enjoying Sip With Nikki, don't forget, leave us a rating, a review, and share the podcast with someone you love.

And until next week, sip well.