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Episode Notes:

My good friend, Winemaker Sally Johnson Blum (SJB) is back and she has been busy!

We're getting into her exciting new ventures, including her own small wine brand, Stereograph (launching soon) and her consulting firm, SJB Winemaking, where she's crafting wines for various clients across California and Washington.

We enjoy a double Sip Spotlight with 2 of her wines, including a stunning Sémillon and a unique Chenin Blanc, both of which showcase her knack for making under-appreciated varietals shine.

Plus, we tackle the current trends in the wine world, like the shift towards lighter wines and the challenges faced by small brands today.

You'll hear:

• What inspired Sally to make wine for multiple clients instead of one winery
• Why she's chosen to highlight some lesser known white wine varieties like Sémillion and Chenin Blanc in the Napa Valley
• Our take on current wine trends and the shifting preferences of wine consumers
• If/How tariffs are affecting wine production and small wineries

Links and Resources:

SJB Winemaking- to find all of Sally's projects in one place and learn more about Max's design services and read Sally's blog with thoughts on the future of the wine industry

Stereograph Wines- sign up to know when this exciting new label is available!

Follow Sally on Instagram

Get the Spring Pea Purée recipe- great spring/summer pairing with Sally's Sémillion from Sylvie Estates!

Nikki's Links:

Follow me on Instagram to get the scoop on upcoming episodes and to see all the Food and Drinks you heard about today!

The wine that I make, 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!

Enjoy some of Nikki's favorite products from our Sponsors:

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

Check out Sena Sea's website to get your hands on some beautiful wild-caught Alaskan fish shipped right to your door! Use code sipandsea for 10% off your order and sign up for their email list (great recipes!) and be entered to win a monthly $50 gift card drawing.

If you'd like to be an ANGEL and Support the Podcast, you buy me a glass of wine and get a shout-out on a future episode!

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

So I fermented this in my ceramic globe as well, which.

Say that again because I know you like saying that. I do.

It's basically a Faberge egg for wine. So cool.

Yeah, I gotta come touch your egg.

Yeah, you can.

Hello friend. I am thrilled that you have joined me for another episode of Sip with Nikki. I'm Nikki Lamberti here in Sonoma County, California.

And if you're a first time listener, welcome to the party. And if you're a regular listener, thank you. I see you and I'm grateful for you. If you keep listening, I'll keep talking.

If you listened to last week's episode, you heard me teasing a new very cool membership that I'm putting the finishing touches on. And I'm so excited to be able to invite you to be a part of our sip community.

Soon I'll be rolling it out and sharing with you the different perks that come along with being part of this club. But my favorite one is gonna be a private group that you'll be able to join where we can interact together.

Cause let's face it, podcasting's a little one sided. I can't see you, you can't see me, I can't hear from you. So we'll be able to actually have two way communication.

And I'm thrilled to be inviting previous guests from the podcast to live streams that will happen in that group where you can actually meet them and get your questions an so how do you get an invite to this club? If you're not already on my email list, visit sipwithnikki.com resource.

You can sign up there and then you'll be the first to know when Club Sip is live.

But a couple of years ago she left and she's been busy.

So today we're catching up on everything that she has been doing from getting ready to launch her own small brand called Stereograph, which is a partnership with her husband Max, who I also adore, as well as her new firm called SJB Winemaking, where she is making wine for multiple small clients, both in California and in Washington state. And in over 25 years of making wine, she has certainly racked up the accolades.

In addition to receiving multiple 100 point wine scores from Robert Parker Having multiple wines on wine spectators Top 100 wines of the world list, which is something only I can dream about. She's had over 30 of her wines served at the White House and different state dinners. And here it is, my favorite.

She is one of glamour magazine's top 10 badass female winemakers. I mean, we can just stop there. My favorite thing about Sally is she is just a really kind, warm, down to earth person.

And every time I talk with her, I learn so much and I walk away more inspired than when we started.

So I'm so excited for you to get to know Sally as we have a double Sip spotlight in this episode and she shares with me two brand new wines that are just releasing. We talk about some of her projects that are in the works.

She shares with me a surprising 50th birthday present that she bought for herself that I am super jealous of. And then we talk about the different trends that we're seeing.

With both of us owning small wine brands and having worked in the business together, we are definitely seeing trends in the business in the younger generation and what they're consuming as far as wine, how they're consuming it. We swap our thoughts about the current challenges of being small women owned wine brands in today's markets.

And we certainly do talk about the T word tariffs and how that is affecting the world that we live in. I'm so excited for you to get caught up with Sally and everything that she has been doing. It's a lot. So here we go with sjb.

So I cannot believe that I nailed you down. You stopped moving long enough to come over to my house for pizza night tonight.

Yay.

But I was like, we need to record. We need to rerecord. It's been a year and a half since you were one of our very first. First guest on Sip with Nikki. So welcome back, Sally.

Thank you.

I don't know why I'm singing. I don't know why I do that.

I love it.

And girl, you've been busy in the last year and a half. So let's just start there, catch us up. And why are you always moving and never stopping? What is happening?

That's two really great questions to why I'm always moving. Maybe midlife crisis. I don't know. I had a big birthday last year, which you celebrated with me. Yep.

50 right behind you. That's why I have a lot.

I'm not quite 50 yet.

I'm coming.

I guess I feel very inspired. I feel like I have all this energy and creative Ideas and I'm just going for it. And also, starting a brand is very expensive. So if people want to.

Yes, I know this.

If people want to hire me to make wine, I'm like, I'm going to make it work and I'm going to do the best job I can. So, yeah, busy.

So starting a brand is Stereograph, which we're going to talk about. And that's you and your husband Max, a partnership. But then when you talk about other people hiring you.

So you are basically a winemaker for quite a few different brands. And that's very different. That's a departure from working at Pride, where we worked together for 15 years.

You know, now you're based at Tambour Bay, but you have all these different small clients in California and Washington. What led you to want to move away from just making one portfolio for one awesome producer to like touching all of these different small projects?

I guess at this third stage in my career, I wanted to see what I was capable of. I spent the first eight years of my career at St. Francis, the second 15 years, as you mentioned, at Pride.

I've always played this very traditional five year plan, ten year plan. Had a really strong connection to the site and the people that I was working with.

And now that I suddenly wake up and I find myself in the middle of my life and maybe at the apex of my career, I'm empowered to challenge myself. I think that for me it's always been really important to stay excited and engaged and to keep learning new things.

And so I ended up very much outside of my wheelhouse and it's been really inspiring and enlightening and yeah, definitely keeps me coming up with new ideas and busy all day.

So how does that work for our listeners that don't quite understand? You can be a wine maker at one place or you can be a consulting winemaker, which is called how does that work?

How do people find you and how do those partnerships come to be where people say, hey, I have a vineyard in my backyard, but I don't know how to make wine? Can you come in and make this wine for me? How does that come to fruition and how do those connections get made?

So much of wine is word of mouth. It's a very small community, even internationally. But I would say one thing.

I'm not a consultant in the sense of giving people advice and popping in every couple of months with some opinions. I really do prefer to be the hands on winemaker. I'm just working for smaller brands that don't need a Full time person.

And so the workload is a lot less. So it gives me the time to juggle all of these different projects. Yeah, they all evolved very naturally.

And you're badass and people seek you out because you're, like, famous in this neck of the woods. I'm just saying it's hard for me.

To say no to a beautiful vineyard or someone who is passionate about wine the way I am. Yeah, I guess I'm just really into making wine. But one thing about consulting is learning how to run a business.

For me, that's been very much outside of my comfort zone. I know you can relate too, with your own brand and all of the many different projects that you have on your plate.

It's a whole nother learning beyond the wine piece is the business piece. And I think it's exciting to be in this parallel with you as people that have to.

I came at it more from the sales and the business side of my background. You, of course, have more of the formal winemaking experience. And now we're both having to like, flip hats and learn the other side, which is cool.

Oh, gosh, I don't even think I know.

It doesn't have to be specific wines within a brand, but how many labels will Sally have touched?

Some of my projects have multiple brands and labels. I would say about 10 projects that I'm involved in, ranging from very small.

For one client, I make three barrels of Oakville Cabernet from his home vineyard. Yeah. Up to what I would call medium sized. Tambour Bay is my largest project, and they do about 8,000 cases of wine.

And you have been commuting by jet plane?

Yeah, I work in Washington state too. I have two projects up there. So one is this amazing winery called the Walls. It's owned by Michael Martin, the former legal counsel for Microsoft.

He fell in love with Washington wine. He developed a winery there and now has three separate brands that are being produced out of that winery.

So it's the Walls, which is making eclectic and classic wines from all over Washington state. Pasha, which is a drill down on the rocks district. Just really distinctive, beautiful Rhone varieties. And then the third is called Stanley Groovy.

So this is a really fun.

It's a fun name.

It's like Groovy.

Like Groovy.

Groovy, yeah. The character Stanley Groovy was created by a cartoonist who works with the New Yorker. He does all of the branding all the labels, it's really fun.

And Stanley is just this kind of cool character who's unpretentious, but smart and cool and loves wine. And so the Stanley groovy wines are really accessible and showcase that lighter personality of wine.

Oh, I love it when you say eclectic wines. The first one you talked about with the walls. Eclectic wines. What are some examples of what you'd call eclectic?

We make a tempranillo called Wonderful Nightmare.

What?

Yeah.

Did they name that or did you?

They did. No, no. Michael comes up with all amazing names.

So that name comes from an Ernest Hemingway story about the running of the bulls and so making tempranillo, It's a Spanish grape, so Pamplona, that's the inspiration. But it's also a wonderful nightmare because in certain years, the crop just does not set at all. So you get no fruit.

In other years in your sleep when that happens.

Hence the nightmare. Yeah.

In other years, it's a dream come true. So it's really a challenging grape, but when it turns out perfectly right, it is beautiful.

I feel like a lot of our listeners, even though they're big wine drinkers, there's probably not a lot of tempranillo knowledge awareness, purchasing happening. And I feel like if I can turn people onto it, that's one that they're like, oh, my gosh, I didn't even know. Like, it's fantastic Spanish grape.

So that's fun. And then there is a new project perhaps blooming this spring. Tell me about your pink one.

Yeah. I get to be. What is it, like the Traveling Wilburys? It was like the super group with all the big rock stars. So this is a parallel.

Prior to that, she was a chef with Charlie Trotter. Molly Hill was with Sequoia Grove for 18 years. She's currently getting an MBA at UC Berkeley. And then there's me. Yeah.

Between the three of us, we've known each other for many years.

Did you all go to school together at UC Davis?

No. Molly and I both went to Davis, but we didn't really overlap. And Ashley comes from a culinary background, so.

And so the three of you have partnered up?

Yes.

And what's happening?

And the vision is to demonstrate that Napa Valley can Do more than just great Cabernet. So the three of us say it.

Again for the back row one more time.

Napa Valley can do more than great Cabernet. So we all are Cabernet winemakers. That's really what we have made our reputations on.

And Molly had this great idea to make an old vine rose of Grenache using all of that attention to detail, all of the winemaking bells and whistles that we could throw at it. Every single thing about this project has been done with white gloves. We fermented it in a ceramic globe and a new Dami French oak barrel.

The name is a bloom. Okay.

And I don't want to give too much away because hopefully we're going to have you and Molly and Ashley together and we can let our listeners know all the details about this project. But when is this releasing?

Unofficial release party is next Thursday. And then the official release will be as soon as our website is finished. So probably within three weeks.

Girl, just one more project.

I know.

Seriously, I'm like, just inspired and tired at the same time listening to you.

Yeah, me too.

I want to talk about this very cool project that you've been working on for a bit, which is Silbee.

Yeah.

So while you're telling us about that, I'm gonna get this Sylvie Napa Valley Semillon in our glass for our first sip Spotlight.

Sip Spotlight. And now I don't even need to.

Put the jingle in. Okay. Do you wanna sing it together?

Okay.

Okay. One, two, three, Sip Spotlight.

Oh, my God, Sally, you're doing it.

You guys, we did not talk about practicing that. She just spontaneously did that on her own. Thank you for being a nerd with me. Sips by light.

So tell me about Sylvie and how this project came to be part of your portfolio.

Our good mutual friend Allison Mulligan is the director of experiences and allocations. Always been a fan of their wines. They produce these gorgeous Oakville Cabernets.

So delicious.

Have grapes again after replanting.

Yeah.

And so Sylvie is named after the owner's mother, who was this amazing, inspirational woman who emigrated from Finland with no money, very plucky, made her own way. And in her later years, she lived with her daughter and her son in law at their home in Oakville.

And when she was ready to unwind at the end of the day, she would tap the seat next to her and tell her son in law, Henry, get me a glass of white wine. I want to get my glow. Aww. Yeah. And then come sit by me. I'm going to tell you a story.

And so we always had this intention of creating a wine to really acknowledge that spark, that beautiful person who inspired the name of the brand. This was the perfect opportunity to do it. Alison told me that they were fans of Pride Viognier, which made me listener.

Go back three episodes to Viognier to listen all about it.

Yeah. But I didn't want to do a Viognier for Sylvie because I felt that Pride is doing such a beautiful job with that I don't want to create.

You did a beautiful job with it for 15 years.

Yeah.

And Matt, your successor, is doing a bang up job as well.

But Matt's great.

You all just make killer Viognier Pride, all of you.

Yeah. So I wanted to do something in that richer style instead of a Sauvignon Blanc, which would be more crisp and lean. I didn't want to do Chardonnay.

I thought it wasn't enough of an exciting spark for what Sylvie is. And so I was scratching my brain for a while, and then I thought, oh, let's do a semillon. It's something that you don't see all the time.

There's not a lot of it planted.

Yeah, there's not a lot of it planted. It is undeniably one of the world's great wine varieties. It's part of those great Bordeaux blends, the white blends.

And so I thought it would be really fun. And I wanted to do neutral barrel fermentation to build up that texture. I did some Malolactic, but it's still very floral and aromatic.

I really love how it came out.

I have it in the glass, so I'll be the judge of your floral and aromatic notes. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. And for people that don't know this grape, when you stick your nose in the glass, it's almost like process of elimination.

You could be like, it doesn't smell like Chardonnay doesn't smell Like Viognier. It doesn't smell like Sauvignon Blanc. It smells like its own thing. And I haven't even tasted it yet, but it's so unique.

And that's Sylvie on the label, right? This beautiful label.

Yeah.

Can you tell me a little bit about someone, you know, that maybe participated in the design of this label?

Yeah, my husband did this label design, Max Blum. So he is actually working with me and a number of my small projects. He did our labels for our own brand. He did Sylvie.

He did our client Bansol, which is the three barrels of Oakville Cabernet. He's super creative. He actually has.

He is super creative. Amazed by his visual graphic design artistry. It's like a different type of creativity than making wine.

Very much. It's like making wine is all about the details and being extremely organized, whereas what he does is all about every day is a new day.

You guys are a great team.

We are. Opposites attract, right?

Yeah. The label is beautiful. And it comes from an old photograph of Sylvie, correct?

Yeah. It comes from a black and white photograph of her dancing on the beach in Finland as a girl. And Max turned it into this beautiful watercolor.

The paper is very textural. It's just. It's so calm and soothing and just joyful.

When it was on the bottling line, I took a little video and I sent it to Allison, and I told her, oh, Sylvie's dancing. Because as the bottles were spinning around.

She was, oh, she's in a pose that's, like, reaching up very gracefully. Is this the first white wine for Sylvie? It is. Okay.

Yeah.

So what do you think listeners need to know so they can find this and order this? What should they be excited, expecting Mignon.

For me, it is a textural but aromatic wine. So it's not Chardonnay that is really more defined by sometimes the barrel flavors. This is really very fruit driven. I get a lot of melon. Nectarine.

I get melon for sure. Lily. Narcissus type of flavors.

Narcissist. Who's a narcissist in the glass. What? He knows a flower name, right? Yeah.

Cheers, cheerleader.

Thank you for bringing this over to my house.

And we had this. Actually, this is your second time tasting it because we had it a couple weeks ago with the most amazing pea puree.

Oh, my gosh. I feel so guilty that I didn't make that appetizer today because you and our other friend Dana are still talking about it.

I'll put the recipe in the show notes. Listeners because it is a delicious, very springy appetizer. And it is a. Yeah, it's a puree, almost like a pesto.

But you make it with spring peas and then you spread it over on a little crostini and then you drizzle it with honey and salt and lemon and Parmesan and it's just like a one bite wonder. And shame on me. I should have made that for today, but I made other things like grilled artichokes and things like that.

Have been busy. I think that was like a classic pairing. I will definitely serve that with this wine.

It's got a little weight to it.

Yeah, it is a little bit of a phenolic. It's got some texture. It's not. I wouldn't say it's bitter or astringent, but it definitely has some presence. That mauve finish.

Can you tell our listeners when you use that word phenolic, what does that mean to them?

Grapes, as they're ripening in the sun and they're being inundated with that bright sunlight, they are synthesizing these chemicals in their skins that act as a form of sunscreen. And this is what we use as antioxidants.

So these chemicals, not only do they protect from the sun, but they also have supposed health benefits in people. And so again, say it louder for the back row. I don't want to get sued, but.

I feel we are not doctors. But she does know the chemistry of wine.

All of that sunshine stimulates the production of these chemicals. They're phenolic compounds, so that means they have a phenol ring which is six carbons and a little.

Getting into organic chemistry. Fast forward.

Anyway, it's super bioactive. It helps to scavenge free radicals like ozone or other chemicals that might be in our environment.

And helps to bind them up and remove them so that we're not feeling the effects of those oxidizing compounds.

That's just the magic of wine chemistry. Right. And some of the benefits. Do you think this wine tastes like it smells?

That's a good question. I feel like it is richer than I would expect from the nose. Yeah, it definitely has more weight.

It's soft and viscous and just kind of hugs the side of my mouth. And then we have some little bites here. We've got some Beemster aged Gouda. We've got some Marcona almonds.

We've got some spicy salami, some flatbread, some ghost pepper cheese, which can be tricky with wine. Cause there's spice. And then this is a beautiful Syrah cheese right where the rind is soaked in Syrah. So fun.

I've just been sipping and having some bites and seeing how it plays. And I love it with the Gouda. Yeah, That's a beautiful wine. Thank you for sharing that.

Oh, thank you.

And as we both know, it takes some time to get there. So first of all, let's start with the name Stereograph.

Yeah. Stereograph means two perspectives, one vision.

So my husband Max, the creative guy, in addition to designing wine labels, playing heavy metal guitar, and raising our kids, he shreds. He also sells Victorian photography. He has an ebay site. He is really into it.

And so a stereograph is a form of Victorian photography where you have two photos that are almost identical, and when you look at them through a very kind of wonky looking viewer that we.

Used to have as kids.

Yeah, exactly. You see it in three dimensions. And so for us, it sort of represents how he's bringing the style, the look, the touch. It's very textural.

And I'm bringing everything that's inside of the bottle. So I love it.

I love drinking Chenin Blanc from South Africa, and that was my first introduction into it. But there is a little bit of acreage here in Napa Valley. So what led you to want to do Chenin?

I didn't think I would do a white wine at all, actually, because my husband doesn't really like to drink white wine.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah. But he was the one who felt we need a white wine. He wanted to have a wine for everyone. So we're able to host tastings at Tambour Bay.

And he said, you know, not everyone wants to drink Cabernet, so let's too.

Like, more people are drinking white, don't you think? Just something lighter and fresher and lower. Alcohol tends to be the trend. Absolutely smart to launch the portfolio with that.

Yeah. So I was also scratching my head on this one. What am I going to do? It's really important to me to do unique wines for each of my clients.

I don't want to make everyone a Semillon or make everyone a Chenin Blanc. I want to do things that are unique and special for each project.

What? That's crazy.

I know, right?

You say that's like your mom's birth year or something.

My mom's birth year, yeah. So I said, josh, oh, my God, I need fruit from that vineyard. You have to sell me a ton of your grapes.

Come on, Josh.

I know. Yeah. I really had to work him down. I had to grind them down. They were already allocated to other people.

People.

And those people are probably not super happy to.

This is where the relationships come into play, like you said, with this business. Right?

Yeah.

All right, let's move on to Shannon for our second Sip Spotlight.

Yes.

Sip Spotlight. You're so cute. You've listened to a few of these podcasts, right?

Regular. First time, long time, right?

Yes. First guest, longtime listener. Happy to have revisiting as a guest.

Would you agree?

Yeah, absolutely.

Smells totally different on the nose.

Different, right?

No narcissist in there. It's more citrusy for me.

Yeah. Almost like a verbena. Like, there's like a floral, but it's like an herbaceous floral. I definitely get the citrus.

Immediately the texture in the mouth is totally different. And not that I'm needing to compare them, but that's just what we do when we have one to another. Right. Same winemaker, white to white.

But the texture of this is a little bit lighter for me.

Definitely.

And different acidity on the finish. Tell me more about that.

Yeah, when we harvested it, the ph, I can get a little nerdy with you because you're a winemaker too.

But let's talk about ph.

It was 3.01, which.

Okay.

Yeah, we're like 34-35-36. Somewhere like that. Yeah, Yeah. I think the semiana is more like 3, 4.

This is a logarithmic scale, so it's 10 times more acidic for every 0.1 of pH that you change. So this is a very high acid grape variety.

For that reason, I Did want to build in some nuance and texture because I knew there was going to be a lot of zing in there. So I fermented this.

Zing?

Was that word zing? Yeah, that's the technical term people can relate to.

Zing.

Right. So I fermented this in my ceramic globe as well, which.

Say that again, because I know you like saying that. I do.

It's basically a Faberge egg for wine. So. Cool. Yeah.

I gotta come touch your egg.

Yeah, you can. I think I might let my kids, like, paint it. They have this special glaze that you can use, which I think would be really cool.

So, yeah, this was my 50th birthday present for myself.

It's a great present.

It is a really cool present. It has this gorgeous blown glass fermentation lock that goes on top to let the CO2 bubble out.

And the texture that you get in that globe is really distinctive. It's like in between stainless, which is very fresh and bright and really retains all the aromatics and the acid.

And then concrete, which is really textural, almost like neutral oak in terms of the texture that you get. And so this is like in the middle. It's got some body, got some texture, but still very fruit driven and expressive.

And then after fermentation, I needed that globe for my. So I moved this out into 2 year old Gautier French oak barrels. Really beautiful barrels from Burgundy.

What a fun, fresh wine. Both of these are beautiful, springy wines. But, yeah, I'm. I love chenin.

I'll always order it when I see it on a menu because, again, I have fond association with it from South Africa, but really enjoying tasting it from other parts of the world, which is cool of our little bites on the plate. What do you think might be fun with the zing of the chenin?

I think maybe the Sriracha is. What do you think?

Yeah, I just love that cheese. That's from Trader Joe's people.

Wow, that is so.

Cheers.

Cheers.

Oh, yeah, that was nice with the cheese. That is nice because there's some zing in the cheese too, and they play well together. So I want to talk about white wine for just a moment.

It's funny because you talked about how Max does not love white wine, but very smart to put it in the portfolio.

Because I think, and keep me honest here, what I'm hearing and why I'm like, maybe we need to make a white or a for sale is people are drinking more whites and maybe backing off a little bit on the big Napa Cabs.

Whether it's people in our generation who were drinking those things and are changing or the next generation that we know is drinking a little bit differently. So what do you think about that and just the rise of white wine right now?

Yeah, I think that is so true.

Just in starting to get out and share my wine with people, the reaction that I've gotten to the Chenin Blanc has been it's just like a light bulb goes off. People are thrilled. They're excited. They can't wait to try it. So we're actually adding a second white wine this year.

We're gonna make some fiano, wonderful white Italian wine.

I know.

Maybe that's something you wanna consider.

Elizabeth makes that at Chimney Rock. Elizabeth and Laura, who are overdue to be on the podcast. Ladies, they make fiano. Right. They do a lot of it in the area as well. That's fun.

Maybe you wanna get a little.

Yes, for myself. All right. See, this is how these things happen. You heard it. Seed planted here. Yeah.

And I think, too, what people appreciate about white is just the price point is generally always lower because the time that it takes to make a white wine and put it in the bottle is always shorter than a red. And so that contributes a lot to just the cost of making it in there for the cost of the bottle. I think people appreciate that.

Yeah. I think also just not having to wait. I just bottled this wine. It's already tasting so great.

I bottled my reds, and I need to give them six months before I'll even share.

They need to calm the f down those big cabs in the bottle.

And that's.

Yeah, that's just part of the process and part of the difference.

So, yeah, probably that instant gratification of I can buy it, it's fresh, it was just made, and I can drink it, is probably appealing to a lot of people as well, don't you think?

I think so, yeah. Yeah. I think people are wanting to be excited about wine.

I think the days of being excited about high school scores might be transitioning to a new paradigm of being excited about something really unique that not everybody has tried.

This is a woman with multiple 100 point scores from Robert Parker under her belt. But, yes, it is changing.

And I feel like not that scores and ratings are not important anymore, but again, this younger generation, I feel like that weighs less for them, and they are more about the story, the cause, the farming, the sustainability, and the philanthropy. Things are definitely changing.

There's a lot of talk about the younger generation not liking wine. I don't think that's true. I did an event at the Ferry Building in February. It was packed.

There were probably 500 young people there super excited about wine. Yeah. And they were eager to chat about how the wine was made and what was the story. I think it is true that prices of wine need to come down a bit.

There's only so much room for $300 cabernet in the market. And a lot of the collectors who have focused on those really prestigious high end wines have full cellars.

They might not need to buy so much wine beyond. Yeah.

Who I meet every day at Pride and they say my wine cellar is going to outlive me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is another reason why I want to make wines that are accessible. Even my reds. I'm making wines that I really love. I think they do represent me. But I want them to taste great. Within a year or two of purchase.

They'll still age. I hope that people will want to age them, but I think most people will probably.

It's not necessary.

Yeah. Necessary.

Yeah. So interesting. We could do a whole episode just on the trends and what we're seeing.

Especially as we go back to what you mentioned earlier with both of us launching small brands and having to put on our business hat and our marketing hat. And you can't just make the wine and it sells itself. The market is very saturated with wine brands.

And so it's all about how do we make ourselves different on top of making fantastic wine. That's the non negotiable. But then the story and the marketing is just as important.

And I think you and I both have the same love hate with social media.

Yeah.

We know the importance of it.

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. And I also, I do think that wine tasters, people who come to Napa or Sonoma or any wine region, they really want experiential.

They want food. We're definitely going to be offering bites with our experiences just to create and cement a real memory and relationship.

I think that's really part of it because people can buy any number of products, you know, just based on shelves.

And shelves in the store.

Totally.

And the way our alcohol system is regulated, it's pretty hard for someone to seek out a small brand and Order it and have it delivered to a different state. So I made it easy.

Yeah.

So I think in order to entice people to take that extra step and go to the trouble of buying your wine, you really do need to have a genuine interest in your consumer too. And who are they?

What are they about having that interest in the consumer.

And then finally, the other thing that has complicated all of that in current day, because a lot of the supplies that we get, like barrels come from France and my bottles come from Italy. So talk to me about Taurus and how have you seen that affecting you already or have you?

Oh, yes, 100%. Yeah. My glass has gone up 28% overnight. My barrels.

I've had to sign a waiver saying I don't know what the tariff will be when they're delivered, but I agree that I will pay X amount of it. It is definitely the challenge for sure.

And packaging and barrels, specifically importing corks.

Are this amazing sustainable closure. These forests have been around for hundreds of years.

If they're ripped out and not producing quarks anymore, they'll be developed or used for some other type of product. And so in order to get quarks, you need to plant a forest and then wait.

And then wait.

Yeah. About nine to 40 years before you can.

It's a big range.

It's a big range to 40. Yeah. So, yeah, we are committed to using natural cork.

Yeah.

Screw caps. Have their own screw caps.

Oh, screw caps.

Get it.

Okay. Yeah, I feel the same way.

Yeah.

Just the tradition of it, the sustainability of it and the way that the wine ages under a cork we know is different.

My last question around tariffs and the world that we're in right now, how do you think that these tariffs on imported wines and people like me that love to drink Italian wines and French wines and Spanish wines, how do you think that's going to affect the US and specifically the California and Washington wine market?

I don't think it will benefit anyone who loves wine. I think that I've already heard that distributors are at risk of closing down because they can't get their European wines that are in high demand.

Every winemaker that I know loves European and Australian and New Zealand and South African wines. Wine is all about place. And when you suddenly have no access to most of those places, I think that's bad for the entire industry as a whole.

It makes me like, sigh. We'll have to see with small producers, big producers, domestic.

Like just everything in our world right now is a little bit upside down and a little bit and wait and see. But how wonderful that one of the things we don't have to wait for and we know that you are doing right now is producing gorgeous, small lot wines.

Your own production, your clients that you work with. Interesting, underappreciated, fun, zingy, exciting wines.

And I'm just so happy that you got to catch us up on all of the things that you've been doing in the last year and a half. So thank you.

Yeah, this was so fun. As always, I want to say congratulations to Hailey Bowman, who just had a baby. She's my director of production at Tambour Bay. She's amazing.

Keep drinking, people.

Keep drinking. Go visit tambour bay. Visit stereografwines.com you can't buy these wines yet that Sally and Max have created because they're just about to launch.

It's coming. But you can sign up for their mailing list and that way you'll be the first to know when they're available.

You can purchase Sylvie Semillon on Sylvie Wines. What's the website?

Sylvieestate.com. okay.

And I also want to encourage people to follow you on Instagram. You are way better on Instagram than me. Your content is really exciting. So what's your Instagram?

Winemakersally.

Okay, so now that we've done this very difficult work of tasting these beautiful wines and nibbling cheese, it's time for pizza night. Woo.

We're gonna have our share in Paris sundaes and the rest of our friends are about to come join and got some pizza dough that I started two days ago.

Oh my God.

Michael's firing up the pizza oven as we talk and we're just gonna do what we do on Sundays, which is eat and drink and be merry and enjoy company with beautiful wine. Well, I think my favorite part of our conversation was her singing the Sip Spotlight jingle that came out of nowhere.

Thanks for being a good sport, Sally. I hope you are inspired. It's so exciting to have a front row seat to everything that she is doing.

And the best way to follow and get these updates is on her website, SJB for Sally Johnson Blum sjbwine making dot com. And then on that site she actually links to all of her different clients.

So if you wanted to get the Sylvie estate Semillon that we tasted in the first Sip Spotlight that is a beautiful wine.

For $42 you can go directly to sylvie-estate.com but again on SJB Winemaking she links to all of these other sites where she makes wine from, so it's a one stop shop. On sjbwinemaking.com, you can also see her husband Max's design portfolio and learn more about the creative and design services that he does.

He can be hired for logos, labels, branding. He's really brilliant and together they are just a power couple.

So check out sjbwinemaking.com also go to their website stereographwines.com just like it sounds and sign up to be on their mailing list because once they officially launch and their wines are available, like the Chenin Blanc that she and I tasted, you'll be in the know and you'll know how to get your hands on those. Be sure to follow her on Instagram.

It's winemakersally and while you're there, give me a follow too at Nikki Lamberti One of the wines that Sally doesn't make is Sangiovese. So shameless plug for my own Solavato wines. Sangiovese. She's a fan.

Visit Sollevato wines.com and make sure you use the discount code podlistener for 10% off your order. And I can ship to most states in the US so between Sally and I we've got all of your drinking needs covered.

Looking forward to our time together next week and whatever you do between now and then, I hope that you sip well.