In Part 2 (a continuation from last week's episode), I'm chatting with Ali Smith Story of Smith Story Wines, who shares how her handsome and intelligent doodle inspired a heartwarming initiative called Socks for Sandwich!

You'll also hear about:

• This delightful backstory of their dog, Sandwich, and how his quirky name brings joy to many.
• Her remarkable journey as a breast cancer survivor and how it sparked her passion for helping others through her "Brave" label.
• Some Listener Questions where we get to hear Eric Story's insights into managing a business with a spouse and the need for balance and boundaries.
• The importance of good wine and the journey of learning what makes a wine truly special.
• Ali heartfelt story from a recent Taylor Swift concert that ties beautifully to her Brave label and breast cancer awareness.

Check out their website to purchase their delicious small lot wines and set up your visit to heir awesome tasting room in Healdsburg! Be sure to use the discount code "sip'" at checkout to save 10% on 4+ bottle purchases, online or in person. (Ends 3/1/25). You can also become a STORYTELLER and support this small family business in the best way possible by being a member.

Follow Sandwich the doodle on IG

Follow Smith Story Wines on IG

Other Podcast resources and links:

Podcast website: www.sipwithnikki.com: Sign up there to be part of our SIP Community and receive Nikki's free Wine Tips download.

Nikki's 2021 Sollevato Sangiovese is available to be shipped to most US States. Use the code PODLISTENER for 10% off. It's a delicious, medium bodied, aromatic red wine that is perfect with pizza, pasta and your charcuterie spread!

You NEED some delicious California 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 Nikki and Ali a glass of wine and get a shoutout on a future episode.

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Questions? Comments? nikki@sipwithnikki.com

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So in my head I'm like, you know, that would be a fun name for a dog one day just to teach people about how the name sandwich was created and founded. And I thought, you know, it'd make everybody smile. And I'll be damned. His name makes everybody smile.

Hello, welcome to Sip with Nikki. I'm Nikki Lamberti here in Sonoma County, California, and I'm so happy that you're here. Welcome back.

If you're a regular listener and welcome to the party if you're new.

If you did not listen to last week's episode, press pause and go back and listen to the All American Wine Story with Ali Smith Story, part one last week. Because this is the conclusion, this is part two, and we're going to pick up our conversation right where we left off to refresh you.

Ali and I were sitting in her beautiful tasting room in Heald in Sonoma county.

And we get into Lord Sandwich, world famous Goldendoodle and his new sibling, and some beautiful philanthropy work that Ali and Eric have done, really championed by their dogs. We're also going to tackle a couple of listener questions and we put Eric on the spot.

You'll hear Ali share a really moving story, goosebump worthy story that has to do with her recent Taylor Swift concert going, but has a beautiful tie in to her brave label for breast cancer. I can't wait for you to hear more from Allie.

I am always just so inspired by her even sitting here editing the conversation that I was a part of when it was happening. And I'm like, wow, this is an amazing human being. They both are.

And I hope that you get the chance to meet Ali and Eric and sandwich and soup in person one day. But for the time being, you can listen in. Just a side note, we were recording this on a Sunday morning as their tasting room was about to open.

So at the very last few minutes of our conversation, you'll actually hear some guests arriving and you'll hear some background talk, which is great business as usual. And we just wrapped up our conversation around it. So here we go with part two of the All American Wine Story with Ali Smith Story.

We just started a Smith Story cookbook club and we had our very first gathering here last night and featured a wonderful club member, storyteller and author and actually artist that's on our wall, Rebecca Katz.

Oh, Rebecca's a storyteller, a wine club member for you. Even better.

Even better. And the first cookbook was clean soups and some folks brought some soup. So I made soup and we had Her.

Unfortunately, she was sick, so we had to zoom her in.

Oh, no.

Yeah. But we had a big fun zoom.

Lord knows she had plenty of soup to eat.

Yeah, I know, I know. Like, that's fine. Nobody wants to get sick. But it was really cool. And we have a fun calendar ahead. Do some private events.

You know, one of my favorite things to do is we have this pretty cool community too. Connected with our dog, Sandwich the doodle. Yes.

Who is not here today. I was hoping I was gonna interview him too, but yes. Let's please talk about sandwich and soup and socks for sandwiches.

That's right. Well, another long story short. I mean, we could talk all that, right?

I know. That could be a whole episode.

I know. It's.

I just want to, like, give people just like a little buffet of who you guys are and then we can dig deeper.

Well, we're. We're big time dog lovers.

That's also why we're friends.

Yes. And our. Even our logo in between Smith's story, H and L stands for Henley and Lakota, our dogs that we had when we first met years ago.

And so sandwich, he's a gigantic goldendoodle.

So handsome, extra tall, extra special. He has his own Instagram. I will put the link in the show notes with your Instagram as well. But I follow him on Instagram and I have for a long time.

Well, you know, he's been writing himself on Instagram.

He's very smart.

Yes. For going on, gosh, 12 years now. So he calls you my ally. Yes, he calls me my ally. But he has been our ultimate connector of good people.

It's been incredible. And when he was a puppy, really, up until about year 10, he was.

A sock thief because how old is he now?

He's 12 and a half.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I was always intrigued and then really inspired.

When I lived in Austin, I saw the beginnings of Tom's Shoes and I really understood what social entrepreneurship was about. I saw that brand grow and his fair trade focus grow into coffees and chocolates and all sorts of things they were doing.

So I did work a lot with Whole Foods when I was selling other people's wines.

And you love coffee.

Yes, I love coffee almost as much as wine. Sometimes more. Takes a lot of good coffee to make a bottle of wine.

Amen. We say the same thing about takes a lot of really good beer to make good wine.

I'm sticking with coffee.

So one day, sandwiches bouncing around our house, just shooting off socks like a slingshot, you know, just having a ball and just Being a complete thief, running out of our hamper. I mean, people that stayed with us, he would literally find socks out of their suitcase. You know, every time Luke Our Pyrenees does that.

And he'll come on the side of the bed if you want.

Show it off.

Yeah, but he'll take it. But then he'll run with it. And I'm like, dude, if you didn't run, we wouldn't know. But you're calling attention to yourself.

So now I need the sock bag.

Yeah, it's a little exercise in the house. Right? So it just hit me. Socks for Sandwich. You know, Eric and I knew that we wanted to have one focus from a charity standpoint.

And we didn't think we were gonna start our own, but we did. So we started Socks for Sale.

Cause you had extra time, right?

Yes.

In the middle of all of this.

And Sandwich put it out there. He's like, hey, put some socks on. You know, he's talking to all of his fellow dog pals. Put some socks on.

So for every post with socks on your long legs, my humans, because doodles have legs for days, my humans are gonna donate a new pair of socks to women and children's shelter here in San Rafael, where we were living at the time. So within a couple of days, we had over 500 posts. A thousand posts. And then next thing we knew, Bombas had sent us a couple of boxes of socks.

I love Bombas already, but I didn't know them, so I love them even more. Shout out Bombas.

And then Old Navy and Gap. Because we had, you know, friends that were executives at those companies listening.

Not even friends, just friends of Sandwich, followers of this crazy Instagram thing back in the day. And long story short, we were able to create a wine that supports that. Lord Sandwich. Lord Sandwich. Red Table Wine, one of my favorites.

Yes, Lord Sandwich Blanc. And we are bottling the sixth release of the Red Table Wine soon. And then I think, I mean, we lost count because again, we're doing this ourselves.

Right. And I know that we have created a global nonprofit of sorts. We could take this internationally.

And we do actually, because we have volunteer sock drawer captains all over the world.

Did you come up with that name?

Yeah, Sandwich did.

Of course he did. Uh huh. He's smart.

And the sockdoor captains are our front lines. So basically our sock door captains let us know if there's a need in their region locally, catastrophes, anything.

But also, which there are so many at late.

Yes. But also it really hit us when Houston a few years ago had a Terrible flood. And we couldn't ups socks anywhere.

But we had some sock drawer captains that were married to police officers and we were able to send socks. And we had a sock drawer captain trained to get socks to all the helpers who had soggy socks helping people out of the floods.

So it's a real community and that's the pleasure of it. And we get to meet people that have followed Sandwich for years almost daily. And it's just a bright light in our life right now.

You must be so proud. Proud of that. It's amazing. And it was just sort of a.

It's so ridiculous, you know.

Why is his name Sandwich?

Well, we love sandwiches and seed. Yeah. Now, it really goes back to before some story when I was running texicale Wine Company. I was managing a big wine dinner.

Texicali, Texas, California Alley.

Yes, Texicale Ally, that was the nickname. But I was driving back from Houston late one night after managing somebody else's wine dinner. I think it was an Italian producer I had in town.

And my Henley, a big black light. He was in his last year and had had some health issues. And so driving back late, it was a dark road.

Nothing was open, I don't think, like, the McDonald's on the road was open. And I surely didn't want to stop there, but I was starving because when you manage somebody else's wine dinner, you're not eating.

And I thought, oh, I should have packed a sandwich ahead. And then my brain took me to how did the name Sandwich?

Oh, yeah, it was because, you know, John Montague was playing cards and asked for bread so he wouldn't leave fingerprints. And so I go into this whole history in my head of like, how.

A sandwich is, like, while you're driving, like a windshield. Conversation with yourself.

Yeah. At midnight. Right. And then I'm thinking, I didn't know that story as a kid. That's a cool history lesson. I didn't know there was a region of Sandwich.

And now there's Lord's Earl of Sandwich.

Yeah, the Earl of Sandwich was an actual person.

Yes. And Sandwich Islands, which is the island that we got married on, by the way.

Anyway, so my head, I'm like, you know, that would be a fun name for a dog one day just to teach people about how the name Sandwich was created and founded. And I thought, you know, it'd make everybody smile. And I'll be damned. His name makes everybody smile.

Well, and yes. And now he has a little brother whose name is Sir Royal Soup, AKA Soup Soup.

So we have Soup and Sandwich. Soup just turned 2. And those rascals are at home probably right now napping in some sunshine.

They've gotten in a fun habit of when we get home from work, they just doodle box for a good hour straight and zoomies all over the house. Zoomies, yes. And on a nice day, in and out of the house. So.

Well, depending on the day, if your visitors get lucky, they may get to meet one or both here.

No, absolutely. And we do have special requests. We live about 10 minutes away, and because of Sandwich's age, he doesn't really like being here all day.

He gives us the look like, hey, I put my time in. I shouldn't have to go to work anymore. Yeah, not that that's.

Get that, Sandwich. I get it.

Yeah, we get it. But special requests for sure. I didn't know. There's incredible doodle romps all over the world.

So when we have traveled for business, sometimes we'll just drive and take them with us and meet up with other fans and Sandwich calls his friends. Sandwich pals. There's a hashtag Sandwich pals.

You're pretty good at naming things.

Oh, sandwiches. He's a smart guy.

He's like the whole Santa. There's also one Santa, but he has a lot of helpers. Okay, that's right.

It is, it is. But the fun and all of that, we did not do this for our business. This is just our family.

It was a fun creative outlet, but I have to tell you that it has allowed us to expose what good wine is to a lot of people that probably didn't take wine very seriously.

Not that you have to, but a lot of his fans and a lot of our newest club members and people that buy our wines online probably had just bought wine at a grocery store or just ordered a house wine. And it's been really amazing to hear their feedback of like, oh, this is what good wine tastes like.

This is why I should spend more than $20 on a bottle and the reward I will receive when I do that. And also supporting family farmers and first generation small family businesses.

I mean, our little winery, that was.

A plug there, people.

Yes, yes. But you know, our little winery, I did call it the wine math. You know, I did wine math many times.

But, you know, from the little wine that we make our wine and the support that goes into the pricing supports almost 200 people. That's how many humans, whether it's a compliance team, a warehouse, from one bottle. Yeah.

A warehouse driver counted like the footprint of impact that it takes to bring that to fruition.

There's so many humans along the way.

And that's why we hate bottling day, actually, because we gotta coordinate with a lot of people, a lot of details from the label, details, you know, making sure that the alcohol percentage has been updated, the cork, the logos have been printed the correct way, the right color glass has been ordered, the right number of bottles and cases, and what color the cardboard of the case.

Stop, you're making me anxious.

I know, right?

Because I have to do all that.

I mean, it's a day of mistakes, typically, but every once in a while, we all get it right and it's a good thing. So for all small businesses, you know, it's so important to support your makers first.

And you know, we are, because of this thing called the Internet, we are competing with the biggest makers in the world. And everybody now has access to buy things on the cheap through their Amazon prime account and other things.

And for us, it's really hard to compete on a worldwide standpoint. From an inexpensive standpoint, we'd love to be able to sell sauvignon blanc for 14 bucks, but it costs you more.

Than that to get that in the bottle.

Yeah, I know this. It does.

But especially where we live in California, just the cost of a ton of grapes because of where we are and the real estate and the labor and all of that exactly costs money to make these wines.

But I also, I also know that gone are the days where anyone should think that if they open a bottle of wine, it's going to go bad in a day. Our wines, most well made wines, they hold up for many days.

So if you open a bottle of our Sauvignon Blanc on a Friday night, there's a great chance that's still going to be tasting really good the next five days. You just put the cork back in, put it back in the refrigerator. Same with red wine.

So we always have several different bottles of wine open at all times. But I think that's something I love to continue to make sure everybody understands it's not going to go bad.

It's going to go bad if it's sitting in heat, it's going to go bad if it's, you know, not preserved correctly. But wines are not a one time shot. And listen, you don't really need to save the bottle. Just drink it.

Well, there is that. And it goes way too quickly.

Yeah. Fast drink.

Can we do a listener question?

Oh, yes, listener questions.

So I shared with some regular listeners that we were gonna be doing this today. These listeners may or may not have recently visited your tasting room.

Okay. Okay.

So this one is from Dana from Atlanta.

Oh, cool.

Georgia.

Georgia peach. Right?

Georgia Peach. Dana.

Yeah.

She says your business partner is also your husband. How does that work?

Yeah.

And he's sitting here laughing. You can put a mic on for this if you want.

Well, we're still married.

Okay.

You know, actually today on Instagram, we posted that much like years that weren't so stressful when he was still working for K and L, we just started the business. I think he had a wonderful habit of bringing flowers home on Mondays. And we would take time to have a date a week.

So this year we're having a day to week again.

Love it.

Yes. And that for us is the chance to not always go to an account that's pouring our wine or account that should.

Getting away together and really just turning off talk and shop, it's hard to.

Do when you do. It's hard. Guys do everything that you do.

And you know, time's a ticking to beat the clock every single day. So I'm gonna get him to weigh.

In on this topic.

Oh, yes. Yes, sir.

Not to put you on the spot, but let me just bring a microphone closer in case there's anything that you want to share. Maybe tips for people who are thinking of or are in business with their spouse.

I could joke around and say, don't do it.

That's cool.

We like joking around. That's cool.

But, you know, it's not easy. It's what you kind of expect.

And you definitely have to, like Ali was saying, create your boundaries and make sure you have your date nights and you separate yourself and allow yourself to separate and just not always talk shop.

And you know, but it's hard, like she was saying, because, you know, it's constantly floating through our head, all these random thoughts, what if we do this? What if we don't do that kind of thing? So, yeah, it's hard. But you definitely have to set your.

Boundary about your last one that you planned.

We went to is a one of the new things that's out and about. It's a candlelight concert.

Oh, yeah.

And she's a big fan of Taylor.

Swift, as we know.

So there was a candlelight quartet here in Sonoma county. And so they played all Taylor Swift songs. So we did that and then we planned it.

You found it.

Yeah, yeah.

And then we went to a Little Willy's wine bar dinner after that.

One of my favorites.

That was that.

All right, I approve. Okay, continue on Your laptop. I just wanted to get you to weigh in.

It also helps to bring your wife coffee in bed in the morning, too.

Oh, yeah.

Every morning. Not every morning, but just about.

Thanks for weighing in.

You know, I think at this point, we would absolutely love and enjoy working with a bigger team.

Yeah.

You know, like, we have done our 247 for a decade. And for us to have a general manager, a cfo, a national salesperson, you know, to have some other executives.

Are you taking applications? Cause people will send them in after hearing you talk.

Well, we'll see how many people go to our website after this and buy some wine.

Buy the wine, people. Buy the wine.

But just, you know, as you mentioned, Taylor Swift. You know, I say this a lot. She's. For me, she's. She's a poet. She's a genius. She's an amazing business person. But she is where she is today.

Cause she's had a really great team around. And I tell you, I'm ready for a team.

I'm ready for a team better than us that will let us go where we really want to go, and that is to continue making consistent wine with consistent vineyards that we're in.

So the way that business looks today before that team comes, because it will look different. This is a great segue to our second listener question.

Oh, cool.

This is from another Alison, but this Alison is from Hingham, Massachusetts, and she wants to know, what does a day in the life of Allie look like?

Yeah, well, I have a new day in the life. I started working out again recently. So typically, my day revolves around one. My hair.

You and I have that in common, by the way. Can we take a tangent on this real quickly?

And you paid for it.

That's right.

You reached out to me and said, when you have a minute to catch your breath, go and get your hair done.

Yeah.

I could cry talking about that right now. That was so thoughtful.

Well, that's what we do for each other.

And I know you and I both have a lot of hair, and it's like a thing, like the blowout and sweating and all that. So back to working out.

Well, my pleasure. You know, but it is. I typically like to get online in the morning and check a little bit of news.

But I also like to make sure Sandwich is posting in the morning.

Really good with the keyboard.

Yeah, he really has no thumbs. He dictates, you know, he actually dictates to me. But I do a little bit of social media in the morning and I have a few people that are my.

My phone calls in the morning. Mostly friends, a lot of friends in the industry. We check in with each other.

You know, there are so many helpers out there right now and have been in our life.

When I have a full day ahead, you know, whether it's in the tasting room, usually with Eric, we handle all of our local deliveries and sales to restaurants and a little bit of retail.

Some nice restaurant placement in Sonoma County. Yeah, we've really been Willie's and the Matheson. And anytime we go to one of these restaurants, we see your wine, we get it.

Thank you. Thank you.

And then we make a big deal about it. So everyone around us knows.

Well, I know we even went New Year's Eve. We had an early dinner at the Glenelan Star that has been pouring our wine for a few years. Our Chardonnay, I think right now.

And just to know the staff. And we make our deliveries typically before lunch before service starts. So we actually get to know the back of the house. And we have relationships.

You know, when we have ball caps and T shirts and stuff, that's the first group of people that we wanna make sure we say thank you to.

Give em the swag. The Smith story. Swag.

Yeah. Yeah. But we become friends with so many people in the industry that way too. So day in the life we figure out, all right, divide and conquer.

Who needs to make deliveries? You know, this year I am in charge of actually growing our sales business. So I'm focusing on all Bay Area cells ourself.

And then, you know, our taste room is usually open 11, 12, stays open till 4 or 5. How many days a week or five days a week right now.

And you are the tasting room.

We are the tasting right now.

There's more change right now.

There's been a change, but when people.

Come to visit you, it's you or Eric that are pouring the wines and telling the story.

Yeah, you got us.

It's amazing.

So, you know, again, do you sleep? Not very well.

I know on your website bio it says like how much you love sleep and a good night's sleep and you don't like the hours between 4 and 8am but how is this all happening?

I don't know, I think the older I've become and I think I've always been an idea factory and I think with my recent kicking breast cancer, you know, we have one life to live. Let's get it all in, right? So listen, I had a great night of sleep three nights ago and I can't stop thinking about it.

You're still celebrating that from three nights ago? The last two nights were crap. Yeah.

I mean, it's so crazy. No, I think it might have to do with two 83 pound dogs running in and out of the room all night too.

Yes.

Click, click, click, click, click, click. But yeah, day in the life is, you know, it's 100% Smith story and sandwich and socks for sandwich. We have many years of us writing the chapters.

It's a blog on our website and moving that to substack and gonna be restarting that.

Substack is catching on. Yeah.

I have a few personal books I've been working on. The first one's the memoir. It's called the Life and Times of a Retired Southern Baptist. Or maybe Recovered Southern Baptist to be very.

Ooh, I like that too. Yeah.

And then a lot of the times when I'm making deliveries, typically when I'm going out to the coast. Cause that's a pretty long drive and you're not on your phone. You know, you're really. It's, you know, white knuckle drive most of the time.

I have been working on a screenplay and I thought you were going to.

Say you're listening to Sip with Nikki.

Yeah, well, you can't even actually, you know, it's got some wonky wi fi out there too. In fact, the Sauvignon blanc, our very first Sauvignon Blanc pick. I was in Dallas the day before. Eric calls me.

All right, we're going to go ahead and pick tomorrow, get on a flight. I ended up sitting next to at the time, a staff writer for Time magazine.

And I usually don't talk in the morning and I usually don't talk on an airplane. But this time, for some reason we both were very engaged with each other in talking. And I think that has meaning in this screenplay.

So the screenplay starts with that moment on that flight telling him about who we are and what I'm flying back to wine country to do. And I've been writing the screenplay very much in an almost famous kind kind of dialogue with Cameron Crowe's narrative. And I don't know.

So that goes on a lot during the day in my head.

Carl, no wonder you don't sleep. That's amazing. But again, I feel like a broken record.

But we have so much in common and the fact that we just have a lot of interest and things from our business that we then want to branch out to do philanthropy. So that leads me to the last thing I want to talk about.

So you've mentioned a couple times now about being a breast cancer survivor, and I know that you have Brave, which is your. Your label and your solo project. So I also know that you're very open about your journey.

And one of the things that says right on your website is that you really love helping families and people that are going through it. So tell us a little bit more about that.

Yeah. So let's go back to Taylor Swift. So I'm still on a high from seeing the Friday night show of her last weekend in Vancouver.

And a good friend who's also a wine club member, dog lover, we met through sandwich years ago, treated me to a ticket and to join her in Vancouver.

And so Sandy was celebrating her really retirement, celebrating us being able to have a friendship, and me kicking breast cancer when I was going through some pretty heavy chemotherapy. I ended up Thanksgiving of harvest of 21. And at that time, Covid was still a very real thing in the world. Better.

But I was always dressed like Darth Vader. Right. So I had.

Eric really is the one that nudged me because you should make a solo wine, you know, to really focus on getting through this treatment during harvest. Put something around it that's yours.

And here I was dressed head to toe like Darth Vader, you know, because my doctors didn't want any background bacteria that may have been.

You were going through chemo, so you were kind of just protecting.

Protecting my immunity. So I have on big galoshes, yoga pants, gloves, mask, a hoodie, and I'm stomping grapes in the winery. And I thought, what a fool.

I look like Darth Vade.

Like dun dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun dun.

Pretty much. So I obviously made this wine a few years since, and Brave, it sells out. It's a very, you know, it's a small run.

It sells out pretty quickly every year. So here I'm at this concert.

I'M walking out of the stadium with 64,000 people, and I reached in my pocket and realized I had two small bracelets that had not traded. I traded a few, I don't know, about 20 or 30 bracelets.

For listeners who don't know, the Swifties are big with the bracelets, and they have the little cubes with the letters on them. They have different words, and they trade at the concert. Steve Matthews fans kind of do the same thing, too.

On my left side is all the bracelets I didn't want to trade. And then on my right side had all the bracelets for training. So right on the left side of my eye, I said, oh, there's this cute little girl.

I said, oh, I've got two bracelets left to trade. Would you like to trade with me? And she looked at her mom, these big doughy eyes, and her mom gave her the okay.

And so she pushed her little velvet coat up and she put a bracelet on me. And the first one said reputation. And I thought that was cool. It's kind of more of a risque dance that Taylor does on stage, too.

But reputation is very important to me. And I put another one on her.

And then right about that time, I got bumped because, you know, we're on this tunnel, the stadium, leaving the stadium, and I didn't see the bracelet that she put on my arm. I kind of looked behind me and said, thank you so much, and went on my way.

And we're standing in the train from the stadium on the way back to the hotel. I'm holding a rail inside this little subway train.

And all of a sudden, my big lavender haze fluffy arm jacket slides down, and the bracelet she put on me is the word brave with pink gems and colors around it. And I could not. I almost fainted right there. You know, I showed my friend sand and she almost fainted, too.

So I didn't sleep for, I don't know, two, three nights after that one. And I think the reason I was there is to do what I'm doing now.

So Brave will always be available when we have it on the Smith Story website, But I'm creating a. It's bravewinery.com and it's really more of an Ask Ally website. So of course we'll be talking about wine, but I want it to be a safe place.

Brave Winery will be a safe place for people going through breast cancer, family members going through breast cancer, to get in there and ask me questions or just see some resources that I have listed, some things that have Helped me. I mean, everybody's diagnosis, everybody's journey is very different.

But I feel like I have definitely found some things that helped me the most and some best practices of. Gosh, what do you do when you're preparing for a double mastectomy?

Because, you know, the fact that I'm alive today and able to tell my story and help others, like, why not? You know, gotta do it.

It's amazing that you chosen to do that and that you have that special label with Brave, which is sold out right now. It's sold out, but when's the next one?

In March. So in a few weeks it'll be in our spring release. It's a carbonic maceration Grenache. Yes.

I love Grenache. You know, I make Grenache too. My first still in barrel, but I'll be releasing my first Grenache this year.

Yeah, maybe there's a collaboration with that.

I thought that might be cool. Carbonic wines for me, if they're red, are chilled, light red wines. And this is going to be a great summertime red wine.

Stick it in the refrigerator, treat it like a. Almost like a. But very complex and a little sparkly.

A little frizzante.

A little frizzante.

For our listeners who are not familiar with carbonic that she's referencing, carbonic maceration is a type of fermentation that you do where instead of de stemming the grapes and crushing them, you kind of have some whole clusters of grapes. It's away from oxygen, the weight of the top goes down on the bottom and the fermentation, long story short, starts inside of the grape.

It's like a pressure cooker. And then the great burst. And there's just very specific aromatics and characters. Freshness, little bit of frizzante or a little tickle on the tongue.

A little fruity tutti sometimes comes from carbonic. So I've not made carbonic wines yet, but I love drinking them.

You spoke about this in your last podcast about non alcoholic wines and low alk wines, which in my world they're just decaf wines. So I am definitely exploring what that might look like with a Brave. I think that's an exciting thing to have as an offering because for a.

Lot of people going through any type of health issue, treatment, surgery, chemo, they will have to pause from alcohol.

Well, they won't want to drink it. Taste buds get a little wonky.

Great idea.

Yeah. So I'm not a true believer. Non alcoholic wine is an either or. It's an addition it's just an extension.

That was the conclusion we came to in our podcast tasting. It's a different beverage.

Yeah.

Well, thank you for doing what you do with that Brave label and tell me about what happens with the proceeds from that wine.

Yeah. So hopefully this is our desire. By probably the end of the year, maybe next year, we are going to give a percentage.

We don't know exactly what, and I don't know how we're going to call it grant, scholarship, something, but we want to be able to donate a small portion of our proceeds to wine professionals that have been diagnosed or going through it. I was truly inspired by a local entrepreneur here in Sonoma county that runs her own business.

She was going through treatment herself, a different kind of cancer, and she showed up to work every day. I almost showed up to work every day. Didn't. Didn't do so every day, but gave it a really good effort. And financially, it's really hard.

Even if you have insurance, you incur a lot of extra things.

And if we can give a little bit, five, $10,000 to somebody just to get a better mattress to sleep on, you know, have food provided, hire a dog walker during their treatment, we want to be able to do that. And I think Brave will be a great vehicle to create that opportunity.

Thank you for doing that and for doing everything that you do. Is there anything we haven't talked about.

Before we wrap up from what we have releasing?

We have our spring Sauvignon Blanc coming out, our new Brave, and then we are going to release our 21 Smith story, the Boonies Pinot Noir from Anderson Valley. We did a light release of that, like, I guess two Mays ago during our anniversary, and we realized we didn't do very good release of it.

It was right after my radiation, and I wasn't out officially on doing all the things I do. So that will be in this. And that's going to be a really.

Special, like a re release.

Yeah.

Okay.

Noir from Anderson Valley and just received 94 points from Decanter magazine.

Congrats.

Yeah. So it's a good time for that.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well, of course I'm going to put all the links in the show notes so people can purchase your wine. Look at becoming Storyteller Club members with you. Look at SAT and Brave and all the things.

But you have been so generous with the amount of time you've spent with me today, so thank you.

I just love what you're doing. And I woke up this morning thinking about our podcast time together, and that's awesome. So, yeah, cool.

Let's just toast with our beautiful Sauvignon Blanca. I almost drank mine. And here's to a great rest of your Sunday. Just. Wow. Right? Wow. If you are not inspired, I don't know what else to give you.

I'm so grateful for Ally, for her time and for Eric putting up with us while he was trying to get work done.

And I am going to put the link in the show notes for multiple of their social media accounts, of course, including Lord Sandwich, if you're not following him. You must. And check out Socks for Sandwich and how you can contribute to that. But bottom line is, get yourself some of these wines.

They are gorgeous, small production, and now you know the people behind them. Smithstorywines.com and Ali was kind enough to create a discount code for our listeners. And if you use the code sip, just sip in checkout.

This could be either on the website or in person in the tasting room. They are giving you 10% off purchase of four bottles or more. And that's good until March 1st. So thank you so much, Ali, for that.

You guys, check out these wines, the Sauvignon Blanc, the multiple Pinot Noirs, the Cab, the Cab Franc Brave when it comes out. How amazing and how brave is she and everything that she is doing for people who are affected by breast cancer. So thank you, Allie, as always.

If you'd like to be an angel and support the podcast, there is a link in the show notes to do that. It's essentially a tip or a donation and it goes towards the operating expense of me creating this podcast.

Or it can go towards buying me or Ellie a glass of wine, however you want to think about it. But either way, we're super grateful. And we'd also be grateful if you would share this episode.

If you know someone who would be interested in hearing this all American wine story and being inspired by our guests this week and any week, make sure that you're sharing and leave us a rating or a review. I hope that you have a wonderful week ahead and whatever you do, I hope that you sip well. Wait little.