Giovanni Manetti

Full Transcript

Doug:
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of "The Taste." We are still in New York doing our New York series and, uh, we have a long-time friend of mine, Giovanni Manetti from Fontodi winery in the heart of Chianti in Tuscany, Italy. Welcome, Giovanni.

Giovanni:
Thank you. Thank you, Doug and hello to everybody and thank you for having me.

Doug:
Ow, it's great to see you. And, uh, as always, uh, with folks I know I have a little story to tell. It was back in 2003, the summer of 2003, which I think was the hottest year in Italy.

Giovanni:
In records.

Doug:
On record. And my dad was turning 80 years old, so he decided to take his adult children to Italy. To Tuscany for a week, and we stayed in the, uh, your guest house at Fontodi. Which is a beautiful villa, if you will. And we had a wonderful time. We traveled around and ate great food and drank great sangiovese, which only cost 15 Euros. I mean, it showed me what real true sangiovese's all about. But, we had a chance to meet, oh, I met, um, Giampaolo Motta at La Massa, whose a long-time friend and a character, your neighbor. But, uh, one afternoon Giovanni hosted my family, myself and, uh, tasted all his wines and toured his winery and it's just beautiful. And ever since then, we've, well we've became great friends and we see each other once or twice a year, usually on the road selling wine. And the thing that's unique and I, I love about Giovanni and my relationship is, it always goes like this: we haven't seen each other maybe eight, or nine, or ten months, or a year and the first comment is, "How's your family?"

Giovanni:
Yeah. (laughs).

Doug:
We exchange that. And then, the next comment is, we both look each other in the eye and says, "How's the harvest this year? (laughs) How are the grapes? And is it a hot year or cold year? How do the wines look?" And, and we just, he just walked in the door here ten minutes ago and, um, it's, we, uh, said, you know, we're still picking. He says, "We're all done." So, um, he's relaxing this trip and I'm still thinking about grapes back home.

Giovanni:
It, it is the least of our priorities.

Doug:
It's family first.

Giovanni:
And then-

Doug:
Then the wine.

Giovanni:
The wine (laughs).

Doug:
Family first, then the wine, then selling the wine.

Giovanni:
Yeah.

Doug:
Right. So, um, great to have you here and I, just kind of curious, you know, we've been friends for a long time, but I'm curious about Fontodi and your family, going back, your parents, siblings. Where were you raised? What was your, what were your parents up to in the beginning?

Giovanni:
Yeah. We, um, celebrating this year the 50th anniversary of, uh, Fontodi in, uh-

Doug:
Fifty years.

Giovanni:
Our hands. So, my father acquired Fontodi in 1968.

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
And uh, he did that just, uh, you know, as a hobby.

Doug:
As a hobby.

Giovanni:
Yeah. Because we are, we are from that region. We are from the Chianti region. And, we have another activity in the family. We produce terra cotta tiles. And now, even uh, for us, the wine.

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
And since 1650s. So, you know, a long time.

Doug:
1650.

Giovanni:
Activity.

Doug:
1650 was the, the terra cotta business?

Giovanni:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It started.

Doug:
That was what your family-

Giovanni:
But, my father Dino, was very passionate about wines.

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
So, his dream was to buy a vineyard to starting to make wine, to share with friends and to, you know, for the family and that is what he did in 1968. And after that, he used to spend a lot of time at the end of the day, because it was quite close to the other, to the main factory, the terra cotta factory, so, he used to spend a lot of time every day in the late afternoon and the every weekend, uh, you know, restoring the cellars or replanting the vineyards and the ... and a few year after, 1979, he, together with my mom, they decided to move the family from, from Florence, from the city where I was born-

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
To, to Fontodi, to Panzano that is in the middle of Chianti area, in the middle of the countryside, in the middle of nowhere at that time. So, it was a shock, you know, because I was 16 years old.

Doug:
16 years old.

Giovanni:
And the, you know, no disco. no disco, no girls, no fun. But, few weeks after, I remain attached-

Doug:
You fell in love with it.

Giovanni:
Yeah. I fell in love, I fell in love with the, with the countryside, with the beauty of the place, with the viticulture, with the, you know, with everything. And, uh, I started to be involved at that time and, uh, year by year, you know, taking more and more responsibility. And since that time, that is all my life.

Doug:
That's amazing. That's great. So, you grew up in Florence.

Giovanni:
Yeah.

Doug:
So, grade school, high school. What you, did sports in high school? And college? Or, extra? Music? Or anything like that? Or?

Giovanni:
In, you know 70s-

Doug:
Yeah, yeah.

Giovanni:
I was, uh, also a motorcyclist.

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
At that time, so, yeah-

Doug:
Do you, did you race them?

Giovanni:
Yeah, also, yes. Yes.

Doug:
You raced motorcycles? Now see-

Giovanni:
Yeah, yeah, off-road motorcycles.

Doug:
Off-road? Good, cause they don't go quite as fast. Off-road.

Giovanni:
(laughs). But, um, that was my sport. And even skiing or, um, playing tennis.

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
Uh, very popular at that time, too. But more and more I, you know, I, um, did the, you know, the activity of wine making activity and vine growing activity took all my time and, uh, so I had to stop-

Doug:
No time-

Giovanni:
With the motorcycles. And the concentrating of my efforts in, uh, making wine and-

Doug:
You're in good shape, but the motorcycle thing, that can be a little dangerous, yeah?

Giovanni:
Yeah. Quite risky.

Doug:
How many, any, any broken bones?

Giovanni:
No, no, no, no. Thanks God, no, no no. And, uh, but now I'm, uh, you know, 55. I'm a cyclist. So, I turned to bicycles.

Doug:
We have that in common. I did, too. Because all of a sudden with the knees, you can't run anymore and it starts-

Giovanni:
One more thing in common.

Doug:
Good. So, we need to get together and go, go for a ride.

Giovanni:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We have beautiful races in Italy-

Doug:
Yeah.

Giovanni:
And the, two of them are that a, really the most beautiful one is on the Dolomites.

Doug:
Yes.

Giovanni:
That is, uh, the Maratone del la Dolomiti. It's beautiful in the first, uh, week of July.

Doug:
Yeah.

Giovanni:
And the other one I just did is Eroica.

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
It's a bike race in the Chianti Classico region with old bikes.

Doug:
Old bikes?

Giovanni:
Yeah. Old clothes. So, very heavy, woolen (laughs) the shirt and the old bikes, very heavy, too. And, uh, all on the dirty road.

Doug:
All on dirt roads.

Giovanni:
It is amazing, amazing, amazing. It's last edition one month ago, there were 8,000 cyclists from all over the world. So it, huge, huge event.

Doug:
Now, do you still ride, do you, will you ride in that, also?

Giovanni:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Doug:
Fantastic.

Giovanni:
The main problem is that every year in the middle of the harvest time.

Doug:
It's harvest time. Yeah.

Giovanni:
So, so no time to do, to do exercise.

Doug:
No train, no time to train.

Giovanni:
Yeah.

Doug:
I understand. Yeah. Um, now I've grown to, um, I just like to go out and ride. I ride by myself. It's nice. And sometimes I ride with Elias, my, our winemaker. We ride together. That's, that's fun. You know, we have, we have enough pressure and stress at work. So, riding the bikes in the country in Napa's just a little relaxing for us.

Giovanni:
I do the same and, um, you know, many times when I have a problem to solve-

Doug:
Yes.

Giovanni:
I take my bike and I do some cycling alone. Just myself. And I find a solution all the time, you know, because it's a, it's a great sport-

Doug:
Yeah.

Giovanni:
To concentrate, uh, you know, your thoughts.

Doug:
It clears your mind.

Giovanni:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Doug:
Good. I'm going to remember that. I'm going to use that one. Because sometimes I have those issues.

Giovanni:
Try it. Try it.

Doug:
Yeah. So, I'll go for a nice long ride. Um, and you mentioned the terra cotta. Is it true that, so from 1650, that's three or four hundred years.

Giovanni:
Yeah.

Doug:
That's a long, long time. And of it, it's a family business.

Giovanni:
Family business. Always in the same place. Uh, the same products. And generation by generation. And now, my brother Marco is running that business.

Doug:
Wow.

Giovanni:
But, we are co-owning in both, uh-

Doug:
Co-owning.

Giovanni:
Companies. Yeah.

Doug:
In both companies. Is it true some of the terra cotta's on, on the top of the Duomo?

Giovanni:
Yeah.

Doug:
In Florence?

Giovanni:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes.

Doug:
I mean, Giovanni, that's that's really neat.

Giovanni:
(laughs).

Doug:
It's a beautiful place and you're-

Giovanni:
Yeah, it's a great product and typical of the area and all the main buildings in Florence, in all the churches and museums, uh, you know, they are made with our terra cotta tiles.

Doug:
With your terra cotta.

Giovanni:
Yeah, yeah. It's a big pleasure.

Doug:
Um, tell me about the terra cotta. If you don't mind. So, it's, it's based, it has to do with the clay and the soil-

Giovanni:
Yeah.

Doug:
It's special soils and clays that you use?

Giovanni:
Yeah. It's the same clay that we have in the vineyards. So, it's a, it's a galestro clay. Galestro is a, is a Tuscan word meaning calcareous clay schist.

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
That is, uh, great to make wine. Especially for sangiovese, but also to make beautiful tiles and since, uh, 10 years, also amphoras. Amphoras for wines. So, now we have the possibility to, you know, to combine the two activity of the family and this, something so exciting.

Doug:
That is neat. So, you're making the amphoras, which are, how large are they?

Giovanni:
The most used is the, the most produced is, uh, 500 liters.

Doug:
500 liter. Okay.

Giovanni:
But we, and the largest is 900. So, they are quite small. But it's something that is, uh, very exciting because the wine can breathe oxygen like in a-

Doug:
Like in a wooden barrel.

Giovanni:
Like in a barrel. Yeah.

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
Like in a wooden barrel. But, without any influence in the taste, or in the flavor, so-

Doug:
You don't get any clay taste? Or, anything like that?

Giovanni:
No, no, no, no, no. Absolutely. So, neutral.

Doug:
Neutral.

Giovanni:
Yeah, yeah. And, uh, we are still experimenting with different varieties, different wines that we make. But it's something very exciting.

Doug:
That's neat. Anybody else doing it?

Giovanni:
Yes, yes, yes. More and more. And, uh-

Doug:
Any wine in Napa Valley doing it?

Giovanni:
Uh, yes.

Doug:
Shoot.

Giovanni:
(laughs).

Doug:
Darn it. I want to be first. That's great. In fact-

Giovanni:
I would like to let you have one of them to try.

Doug:
I'd like to. I'd like to. And I'll, I'll pay good money for it. And, I heard it takes, doesn't it take quite a long time to make one of them?

Giovanni:
Yeah, yeah-

Doug:
So, what's the process?

Giovanni:
It takes, uh, it takes, yeah, it takes more than one month to make one.

Doug:
Wow.

Giovanni:
That, uh, two people, two artisans, that they, they make amphora. So, it's a long process. It's all made by my, by hand. So, it's very artisanal.

Doug:
Fascinating.

Giovanni:
And the, and probably the origin of wine was connected with the amphoras, you know? Eh, in Caucasus, so in Georgia or Armenia. They, they just found recently, amphoras with DNA wine, uh, dated the 8,000 years ago.

Doug:
Oh, my gosh.

Giovanni:
So, much more before the Romans or the Greeks or the Etruscans. It's, uh, something amazing, you know?

Doug:
That's amazing.

Giovanni:
Yeah. And probably the origin of wine was there.

Doug:
I think it has to be.

Giovanni:
That part of the world.

Doug:
Yeah. It has to be.

Giovanni:
Yeah, yeah.

Doug:
I feel like in California, I feel like such a baby-

Giovanni:
(laughs).

Doug:
In the wine world. I'm just a bambina, bambino. Um, hey quickly, just a little background on Chianti. Cause a lot of our folks might not be, be too familiar. So, Tuscany's actually a state.

Giovanni:
It's a region.

Doug:
A region. And then Chianti is a region within Tuscany.

Giovanni:
Yeah. The-

Doug:
Is that correct?

Giovanni:
The Chianti Classico region is, uh, in the center part of Tuscany between Florence on the north and Siena on the south.

Doug:
Right.

Giovanni:
So, it's uh, the wine region in between. And we are located in Panzano. It's a small village halfway between the two cities. And in the middle of the Chianti Classico hills. So, the Chianti Classico is the name of the appellation.

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
The one with the black rooster.

Doug:
The black rooster. Right.

Giovanni:
So, the, every bottle has a black rooster as a symbol of the territory and a symbol of, uh, the appellation.

Doug:
Got it. And the main grape is sangiovese.

Giovanni:
Sangiovese. Yeah.

Doug:
Without a doubt.

Giovanni:
Yeah, yeah.

Doug:
True story. On that trip I mentioned earlier, with dad. At that time, we were making a sangiovese blend. Sangiovese-cabernet blend called Firebreak.

Giovanni:
I remember.

Doug:
And it, the, the origin and genesis of that was my father. Just like your father, traveled to Italy years before. In the late 80s with a couple of our New York importers who were connected with the Italian, importing wines. And he fell in, my father fell in love with Tignanello, and Antinori’s blend of sangiovese and cabernet. So, he came back and said to Elias and me, "Fellas, I want to make sangiovese." And so, he's the boss, so we did it. And we made a wine called Firebreak. Um, the grapes were planted on a hill that was a natural fire break for my folk's home. So we were making fire break, um, sangiovese, a little bit of cab. 10% to 20% cab. And it was a tough grape to grow and it was a tough wine to make And it was, the learning curve was really steep. And so, we'd been making it for eight or nine, ten years and then we took this trip to Panzano and your, your home. And, like I said, we're drinking, for seven days, we're drinking, Euros, sangiovese's that cost 15, 20 Euros that were just fantastic. And I realized, oh, my gosh, this is the place to grow these grapes and make this wine. Not Napa Valley. So, I went back, walked into Elias's office, our winemaker, and I said, "Elias, we're done making sangiovese." And you know what he did? He said, "That's the best news I've heard all day." I said, "Why is that?" He goes, "Because Doug, you know, it's the toughest grape to grow." For us in Napa, it was incredibly difficult to grow that grape and to tame it and also to make the wine. The wine was tough. You know. It's high acid and really tannic and we were having a tough time with it. So, we stopped making sangiovese and we've been happy about that ever since.

Giovanni:
Well you make such beautiful wines, you know-

Doug:
Well, why, I think we realize that each region has, you know, strengths and weaknesses in the wine world. So, we grow and make cabernet, but when we come to sangiovese, I drink Fontodi. That's something-

Giovanni:
Yeah, no, no, no, but we, we, we, too, you know, we have we are thinking almost the same, you know, in the, back in the 80s, uh, we were, uh, experimenting a lot of different varieties. International varieties like you know, pinot and syrah, cabernet and sauvignon and chardonnay. But, uh, I think more and more we have to concentrate our efforts in our main variety and I pulled many of those, uh, vines from international varieties-

Doug:
So, you ex, you did experiment with other-

Giovanni:
Yeah. But, I, um, more and more we are making sangiovese-based wines-

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
And, uh, at the moment, 95% of all the property's planted with sangiovese, so, and all our best wines are made with sangiovese.

Doug:
With sangiovese.

Giovanni:
Yeah.

Doug:
That's what you do.

Giovanni:
Yeah.

Doug:
So, that's where I think we're all heading for worldwide is focusing on the best grapes that do, you know, best varieties that do the best in each one's particular region.

Giovanni:
Yeah.

Doug:
So. It makes sense.

Giovanni:
I think even, even the market is asking more and more that we specialize in a particular variety. In what we are doing better, you know?

Doug:
Right.

Giovanni:
So-

Doug:
Maximize what you do.

Giovanni:
We have to focus on, uh, what is our best product. And I think that is the future.

Doug:
I think, I think you're right. So, getting back to Fontodi and your sangiovese, you are in a gorgeous spot. I saw it, because every morning I woke up and had my espresso looking over the vineyards. I got to know your vineyard guy really well cause I was always up early cause of the time change. So, I'd be out there drinking coffee and your vineyard guy, you know, was out there doing things in June and July that we do in Napa. So we, he didn't speak English. I don't speak Italian. But we got, we kind of, you know, "Oh, yeah. It's that time. We're leafing now. We're suckering. Whatever.” But, the region, I think it's, it's, it's got a name. Help me? It's conca, conca de ora?

Giovanni:
Conca d'Oro. Conca d'Oro. Yeah. 

Doug:
Which means basin of sun? Or, basin of gold?

Giovanni:
Yeah. It's a, it's like a, you know, a golden shell. A golden bowl.

Doug:
A golden shell.

Giovanni:
You know. And, uh, because it's a, it's a slope with a concave shape-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Giovanni:
Uh, so it's a sort of valley with a full southern exposure. So, golden because its, there's a lot of light. And the, also for the quality of the products. So it's a really unique micro-climate there with a, you know, lots of natural light. Quite warm during the day, but because of the elevation, it is quite high. The, the temperature at night dropped and especially in the crucial month, September. You know? Where, where-

Doug:
You're harvesting.

Giovanni:
It is the month of quality, I used to say.

Doug:
That's a good, that's a good line. September's the month of quality. Warm days and cool nights.

Giovanni:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we usually have a big difference in temperature even two weeks ago in the middle of the harvest, uh, one day we had something incredible. We had 29 degree of-

Doug:
Oh, no.

Giovanni:
Of the difference. Was 1 degree at night and 30 at the, during the day as the maximum temperature.

Doug:
It swung 29 degrees in one day.

Giovanni:
Yeah. Something never seen. But-

Doug:
Centigrade.

Giovanni:
20 degree of difference is quite normal. And something that help us to keep the acidity, keep the freshness, and the, allowing us to have a slower ripening. So – 

Doug:
It's a, it's such a special spot and the, I can totally relate to the south and west facing slopes, because that's what we have at our place, as you and I've talked before. And our best cabernet, hillside select, comes from those south and southwest facing slopes. And it's, it's just beautiful.

Giovanni:
It’s a question of terroir, territory.

Doug:
Terroir. And, you know, don't you find that your best wines are the easiest ones. Our best come from our best grapes and they're the easiest wines to make.

Giovanni:
Yeah.

Doug:
Have you found that?

Giovanni:
You're right. You're right. You're right.

Doug:
Yeah.

Giovanni:
You're right. Um-

Doug:
It's just which, nature's taking care of it.

Giovanni:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, uh, you know, we have to assist nature to give birth to the wine. But it's not easy, you know, at the end of the harvest I'm tired. I don't know you, but I'm very tired.

Doug:
Well, I, I used to be totally tired. Physically and mentally.

Giovanni:
Yeah.

Doug:
And, uh, as the years have gone on, a lot of physical jobs I used to do are delegated and we've got a larger team which makes it that easier. But, boy, mentally I'm just stressed out. I'm, you know-

Giovanni:
Stressing.

Doug:
Just, yeah, it's, um, you don't realize until it's kind of done and it's just, whew.

Giovanni:
In our, we have, in both of ours, we have gray hair, and they come from that (laughs).

Doug:
I always wondered where it came from because, you know, just, I, I saw some pictures of me just like seven, eight years ago and there's no gray hair. So. And we've had pretty normal harvests, so I don't know what happened. Um, but talking about your vineyards, which um, it's, it's 70, 70 hectares? Something like that?

Giovanni:
No, no. They're a little bit more. We have 90.

Doug:
90.

Giovanni:
Yeah. We are growing little by little, uh, when it's possible to buy some more land, but only on the borders.

Doug:
I see.

Giovanni:
So, to my neighbors, uh, I do that because it's a, I think it's a, it's a good investment.

Doug:
It's a great investment.

Giovanni:
And uh, I don't, I don't want to have a vineyards in other places, but uh, just there. So-

Doug:
And so, when your dad bought it, I did a little research. It was uh, I think apparently, really run down. 

Giovanni:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was, everything was to be restored and replanted and we still have uh, just one parcel that has been planted before my dad uh, acquired. Uh, but all the rest has been planted, replanted after that.

Doug:
Sure.

Giovanni:
Yeah.

Doug:
Well, 50 years.

Giovanni:
Yeah.

Doug:
Congratulations, by the way.

Giovanni:
Thank you.

Doug:
Well, and I, I found that your father had a name for the place when he found it.

Giovanni:
Yeah.

Doug:
He called it, bay, you're going to make me pronounce it. I'll do it. Bella Addormentata.

Giovanni:
Yes. Yes. Yes.

Doug:
Now you, you need to say that. See it hurts.

Giovanni:
Bella Addormentata.

Doug:
Thank you.

Giovanni:
Bella Addormentata. 

Doug:
Which means?

Giovanni:
So, that could, uh, uh ... beautiful girl. It was uh, sleeping.

Doug:
Sleeping Beauty.

Giovanni:
Yeah. Sleeping Beauty. Like the novel and the, so he had to invest a lot of money and time. Especially time and energies to awake the girl, you know.

Doug:
I love it. And that was his hobby because he was running the terra cotta business full time, which sounds like a big, big business.

Giovanni:
Yes, but, uh, you know, it's a, his passion was wine. So, he did a lot of sacrifices to do that and I have to thank my dad for the rest of my life for, for, because he was able to transfer his passion for wine to me. You know? And uh, that is not easy. Now I have children. I have two children and I try to do the same and this is not easy. It's not easy. But uh I do my best to do that, to do again.

Doug:
Well, you love it. I mean, ever since I've met you, you love grapes. You love wine. I mean, you could never hide that. That's just part of you. And I think, as your kids, I've seen it with my children ... it's cause I've got three kids who are ... by the way, my three adult kids have all visited Fontodi- 

Giovanni:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Doug:
All of them within the last two years. And, you're a sweetheart. I have to thank you, publicly. Uh, you know, I send you an email and say, "Hey, so and so's coming over with her husband can you?" And you are a wonderful host. They come back and they just, they text, they text me, they don't write me, but they call-

Giovanni:
They understand you come again.

Doug:
Yeah. Then it's time for me again. But, they text me and say, "Oh, my gosh, dad, Giovanni, what a great guy!" Ba, ba, ba. On and on. So thank you for that. But, um, no, I mean if you're kids are raised around you and you've got passion, no matter what it is, that they'll at least appreciate, I think, wine might not be their passion, but it might be, whatever they do, I think they'll, they'll want to-

Giovanni:
Yeah.

Doug:
Emulate that type of passion.

Giovanni:
I think that you, you are right. Completely right. And if I remember, what my father used to say, he used to say, I don't have to tell you something, try to see what I'm doing, I believe in the culture of example. He used to say.

Doug:
The culture of example.

Giovanni:
Cultura de examplio. You know.

Doug:
I like that. Cultura de examplio.

Giovanni:
And it works. I think it works, you know, so more than words and, talking and talking, you know, I think it's much better to do things.

Doug:
To do things.

Giovanni:
And uh, let your children see what you're doing.

Doug:
Like, I've, I've, it reminds me of my eldest daughter. Cause I'm a, I'm a list guy. And now the list is on the phone, but it used to be on a piece of paper in my pocket. And, I realized my father, who is 94, he's still a list guy. He's still got his list in his shirt pocket. And, Katy, who's my oldest, you know, a few years ago, she's in her mid-twenties and she, she called me, we were somewhere, she started to laugh, she goes, " Oh my gosh." I said, "What?" She goes, "I've become a list person." I said, "What do you mean?" She goes, "Look dad, I've got lists just like you always had." (laughs). I thought that was pretty funny. Um, so, your dad's got the terra cotta business. He's got this winery that's becoming bigger and serious. How did he handle both? I mean he was working nights. He was working weekends.

Giovanni:
Yeah. Yeah.

Doug:
But then, you and your brother, as you got older ... what happened? Cause your brother runs the terra cotta business.

Giovanni:
Yeah, but at that time, we used to work together.

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
When we are students, you know, at the university. So, quite busy with university. He is three years older than me. And we were at the University of Florence of Economy and Business, you know, those things.

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
So we were both studying and working the same time. And it was, you know, quite hard. But, I would do the same if I had the possibility to go back. I would do precisely the same.

Doug:
You'd do it again.

Giovanni:
Because it was so, so exciting. And we started from zero. I, uh, I remember that we used to, to drive to, to the university with our van full of wine and uh ... at the end of the classes in the afternoon, we used to do deliveries.

Doug:
You'd be doing deliveries.

Giovanni:
Yes. The same day. So, it was a, it was very hard. Very tough. And when uh, when I tell this story to my children, they don't believe me.

Doug:
They don't believe? (laughs).

Giovanni:
They say, no, you're joking. You're joking. But it was true.

Doug:
Really.

Giovanni:
It was true. And I-

Doug:
So, you'd get up in the morning and load the van.

Giovanni:
And I'm very proud of that.

Doug:
Load the van. Load the van with wine.

Giovanni:
Yeah. Yeah.

Doug:
Drive to school, go to class and after class you'd make deliveries.

Giovanni:
Yeah. Why not?

Doug:
Why not?

Giovanni:
(laughs). So, we started from zero, you know, now-

Doug:
Right.

Giovanni:
That's a wines, like a wine, I'm so successful and it's very, exciting, you know, to travel all around the world receiving a lot of success, and a lot of people are, you know, they want to shake our hands and see us and talk us, but at the, at the beginning it was, was very different.

Doug:
For all of us, and-

Giovanni:
For all of us.

Doug:
For all of us, and, you know, I was talking to Danny Meyer, who's a common friend of both of ours-

Giovanni:
Yeah.

Doug:
And uh, he, same stories. Here's a, here's a real successful guy, but his early days, just like you, just like me, it's a lot of hard work and-

Giovanni:
Yeah.

Doug:
And you, and you don't know if you're going to succeed. You don't know if you're going to make it.

Giovanni:
Absolutely. Yeah. You have to take a lot of risk and, uh, do sacrifices, you know?

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Giovanni:
Without sacrifice, there is no success, I think. And uh, and I think that is a good example also for, for the new generations, you know, so.

Doug:
Why don't, why don't I come take your kids out for dinner and I'll have a chat with them. And you can take my kids out for dinner and have a chat with them. Because like, they'll, they'll listen to you more than they're going to listen to me.

Giovanni:
That's a good idea.

Doug:
So um your first wine maker was Franco?

Giovanni:
Franco been amazing. He's still with me. Yeah.

Doug:
He's still with you?

Giovanni:
Yes, yes, yes. We started together in 1979 and I consider him my mentor. 

Doug:
Wow.

Giovanni:
Because uh, you know, my knowledge about wine at that time was close to zero.

Doug:
Right.

Giovanni:
But I, he's still my consultant because since the beginning, he used to say, you know, I’m here in Fontodi, working with you-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Giovanni:
To let you make your wine. And so he didn't want to impose his, you know, his idea-

Doug:
Right. His way.

Giovanni:
With wine culture to me, but just to teach me. And I really, I really appreciated that. And uh, we are close friends and he's, he's still is my consultant and I don't want to have any other people, any other person than him.

Doug:
That's great. That's great. And I, I skipped ahead because you and your brother delivering wine. So, after school, coming back to that. You both were working in both businesses? Or, how did that work?

Giovanni:
At the beginning, uh, you know, for 10 years, 79-89, we were together.

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
And then, after, you know, graduation I remember that night my father, after a beautiful dinner, you know, he asked that okay, sit on, in the chair and I have to tell you something. Okay. What's, you know?

Doug:
What's, what's, what's he going to say?

Giovanni:
Say, yeah. I need one of you joining me in the, the terra cotta business and but both of us we are very passionate about wine. We wanted to make wine, both Marco and I.

Doug:
Wow.

Giovanni:
So we, we made a deal.

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
And the deal was Marco was saying me, "Okay. I'm the older. So, I sacrifice myself and I will join ..."

Doug:
I sacrifice myself.

Giovanni:
"I will join my, my, our dad to do the terra cotta business, but, but promise me every three years, we're going to switch." We never did. (laughs).

Doug:
You never switched.

Giovanni:
No, we never-

Doug:
But, you promised.

Giovanni:
Yeah.

Doug:
You promised. And so, how's that worked out? Is he? Is there any resentment on Marco's part?

Giovanni:
No. After three years, you go deeper and deeper in a, in a specific business and a specific activity. So, it couldn't work. But we are co-owner. So, he's, he's, he's so happy and proud of the success of Fontodi wines. And one of his children is, uh, works with me in the company, so we are so close.

Doug:
Oh, that's neat.

Giovanni:
We, we live in two different houses that are, you know, 500 meters far each other. So, we are, we are, it's like a large family, you know.

Doug:
That's great. Well, you know your father, did a really, really great job raising you two guys. 

Giovanni:
Thank you.

Doug:
Because, um, you know that doesn't happen too often. That's pretty cool. Okay, so, you make a wine that I just adore and I love and I want to hear the story about it and it's called Flaccianello. Could you tell me about that one? And the history and the origin?

Giovanni:
Yeah, yeah. The first vintage was in 1981.

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
And the, at that time, you know, end of the ‘70s, there was a huge crisis in the Chianti Classico appellation.

Doug:
Right.

Giovanni:
Because there was a too much production.

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
And the demand was poor. And the main reason why was the rules. The wrong rules for production.

Doug:
And help me. What were the rules before? Was? It was?

Giovanni:
Yeah. Before. At that time, uh, we, we had to, to make Chianti Classico wine blending sangiovese. It was the majority.

Doug:
Right.

Giovanni:
75% with 20% of white grapes. And the heading white grapes, white must, the sangiovese was being, uh, diluting.

Doug:
Well that was and, but that was the rule. You had to do 75 sangiovese, 25 percent white grapes.

Giovanni:
Yeah. 15-20 white grapes and the rest is canaiolo, another poor red variety.

Doug:
And if you didn't do that, you couldn't call it Chianti.

Giovanni:
No, no, no, no, no.

Doug:
Oh, boy.

Giovanni:
Yeah. And with that recipe, it was really impossible to make outstanding wines. Only one year in a decade, you know.

Doug:
Well, of course, because you're diluting this beautiful red sangiovese with 15-20% white wine.

Giovanni:
Yeah. Yeah.

Doug:
You're just, you just diluted it. It's like adding water almost. 

Giovanni:
That was a recipe made in, you know, in the former century, but just for early consumption wine. 

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
And so, but the wines at the time were not capable to compete with the best red wines from all over the world, you know?

Doug:
Over the world. Right.

Giovanni:
Aging potential was quite bad and uh, so we had to do something different. To, to react. And the super Tuscan wines, you know, the, this says category of, uh-

Doug:
This was the birth of the super Tuscans.

Giovanni:
Yeah, Flaccianello belongs to that movement.

Doug:
Right.

Giovanni:
And uh, it was a sort of revolution. You know? Because uh, Antinori with Tignanello, and Paolo de Marchi with Cepparello, and Flaccianello, they were all wines born in the Chianti Classico region.

Doug:
Did you? I'm going to interrupt. Did you guys talk to each other? 

Giovanni:
No, no, no, no.

Doug:
You were doing it separately?

Giovanni:
Separately.

Doug:
But it, and knowing that you couldn't call it Chianti Classico.

Giovanni:
Yeah. So, we had to-

Doug:
Risky. Risky.

Giovanni:
Get. Yeah. And getting out from the appellation, labeling our best wine as a vino la tavola, so the lowest category of the pyramid.

Doug:
Table wine.

Giovanni:
Table wine. But, immediately-

Doug:
That's your best wine.

Giovanni:
We were so successful. Yeah, yeah. So, creating a sort of paradox. And the paradox was the best wines of the region under the, the lowest, in the lowest category of the region.

Doug:
Are the lowest category. The best wines. That, how did you? Well, I totally get this. Because if you're into quality, you're going to make the best wine you can, but because of these restrictions, it's to be labeled table wine. But, how did you get the word out to people? Did you? You probably traveled and told the story? Marketed?

Giovanni:
Yeah, yeah. But you know, we were opening the bottles and letting people taste the wines and immediately they realized that the wine was great. So, no problem. And that was also very useful for the rest of the wines of the region, for the appellation wines. For the Chianti Classico wines. In fact-

Doug:
Because how the? Oh, tell me? How? Why was?

Giovanni:
They demonstrated. They showed the real potential of the region for quality wines.

Doug:
Oh, okay, okay.

Giovanni:
For high quality wines. And the, a few years after, in fact, in 1984, the production rules changed and the, they reduced the amount of white grapes to 2% that was meaning almost zero.

Doug:
Almost zero. Got it.

Giovanni:
And the, so they realized that that was the way. That was the direction to follow. And so they played a very important role for, for the success.

Doug:
For the success, well the success with quality of. And now it's a world-class region, where when you started out, it wasn't.

Giovanni:
Yeah, but, believe me, it was a sort of revolution. So, reacting, a reaction against the stupid rules.

Doug:
Did you have people, whoever where the rulemakers, were they calling you up and saying how can you do this? You can't do this?

Giovanni:
Yeah. At that time, you know, the consortium that is the association of producers, you know, is a, that is a, it was very strong at that time, uh, so they, they, you know, they reacted against our-

Doug:
And you're young, you’re a young guy, and so your like, who are these young guys come up and doing this-

Giovanni:
And the funny story that uh, I've been just appointed as president of the consortio.

Doug:
I read that last week. Yes, your now, hang on, it's in my notes somewhere.

Giovanni:
Only a few weeks ago.

Doug:
A few weeks ago, you're the chairman of the Consortio Vino Chianti Classico. Now you're the leader of, the head dog.

Giovanni:
Yeah. So, we, we, you know, we did a sort of revolution against the consortio at that time and now we are leading the consortio. So, it's about uh-

Doug:
I think that's really good news. I'm really happy about that because, it's all about good wine and the best wines we can make. Oh,

Giovanni:
It is a-

Doug:
But look what you've seen in your life. I mean, when you started at 16 and 17, and that regions was not known for really anything except just kind of-

Giovanni:
Very different. Yeah.

Doug:
I remember growing up and at Davis Chianti was, we all thought Chianti was the straw basket and all that.

Giovanni:
Yeah. With a candle on top.

Doug:
Yeah. With a candle on top. So, look what you've seen in 30 or 40 years. That's cool.

Giovanni:
Yeah, yeah. No, no. We grew a lot. The reputation of Chianti Classico wine's a, you know, do a lot and uh, but we have to do more and more, you know. So my goal is to, for the next three years, is to, to work as much as possible to improve-

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
The positioning, the image of all the Chianti Classico wines. So, I will do my best as a-

Doug:
You'll do great. Darn it if, now I've got more competition from you. Now that you're in charge, Chianti's going to be, you know, we'll be fighting shelf space with Napa and Chianti.

Giovanni:
(laughs).

Doug:
That's okay. It's a friendly, friendly rivalry.

Giovanni:
Yeah.

Doug:
And you've got another great wine which I'm not that familiar with, but I'm curious about it. Vigna del Sorbo.

Giovanni:
Yes. 

Doug:
Can you tell me about that one?

Giovanni:
Vigna del Sorbo it is a, you're always being a Chianti Classico.

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
So, because it was born in 1985. So, one year after the change of the rules. And Vigna del Sorbo is the name of the vineyards. So, it is a single vineyard wine. And the, the Vigna del Sorbo is really one of my best, you know, site.

Doug:
Got it.

Giovanni:
Vigna that I have in my property with beautiful full southern exposure. Very, very rocky soil. A combination between conca clay schist and limestone. Together they are like layers. And so, there is a, and also the age of the vines makes a difference.

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
So, that vineyard is the oldest that I have. 50, 55 years old.

Doug:
Wow.

Giovanni:
And so it's a special land uh, great complexity and at the beginning it used to have a little bit of cabernet sauvignon in the blend. (laughs). Similar to Firebreak.

Doug:
Right. Right.

Giovanni:
So, 90 sangiovese, plus 10 cabernet sauvignon.

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
But, in 2012, I decided to, to pull the cabernet vines. 

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
And uh, so after 2012, is a 100% sangiovese.

Doug:
That's like me pulling my sangiovese vines.

Giovanni:
I did the opposite. I pulled the cabernet vine. Same story.

Doug:
Well, you know when we pulled our sangiovese, everybody said, "Well, what did you replace it with?" I said, "Well, it was this wonderful hillside where we were growing it. I put cabernet in it."

Giovanni:
Of course.

Doug:
And guess what? It goes in the Hillside Select. Which is like, that's our best wine. So, it was a smart move. Sometimes I think in the interest of trying new things, we can kind of get, outthink ourselves a little bit. Where sometimes maybe we should just kind of stick to what we do and do it really well. Um, so tell me, so you've got those two wines and uh, then you have a Chianti Classico.

Giovanni:
Yeah. The Fontodi Chianti Classico, it is like uh, the business card of uh, of Fontodi.

Doug:
Beautiful wine.

Giovanni:
The main wine that I produce uh, 100% sangiovese as well. And it represents 60% of the total production-

Doug:
Right. Right.

Giovanni:
So, it's the most uh, you know-

Doug:
The most widespread. I see that.

Giovanni:
Sold. Yeah. Yeah.

Doug:
See that around. It's those three and is there more?

Giovanni:
Yeah. I make a white wine. Very small production. Made with sauvignon blanc, 100%.

Doug:
Okay. Good.

Giovanni:
That is the one where I already use some amphoras to, to ferment the white must.

Doug:
Fermenting sauvignon blanc in the amphoras. Okay.

Giovanni:
Yeah. 20-30% every year is fermented in amphora.

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
And it's giving to the finer blend a very nice minerality-

Doug:
Minerality. Yeah, I can see that.

Giovanni:
Yeah, a good, like a chalky finish.

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Giovanni:
I like that. I like it. I think it works a lot. And uh, I'm trying to increase that percentage every year. And this I still make a very small production of pinot, pinot noir.

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
Only a few, you know, 3,000, 4,000 bottles. And the, also syrah.

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
Yeah, yeah. The same. Very small.

Doug:
But what about your Vin Santo?

Giovanni:
Yes. Vin Santo. Vin Santo.

Doug:
You've got to tell me again how you make that, because Vin Santo. Everybody? Does everybody make a Vin Santo in Italy? Just about?

Giovanni:
Yeah. It's Tuscany.

Doug:
Tuscany.

Giovanni:
Especially in the Chianti region. Uh, almost every family. They make. Even they don't own any vineyards, they buy some grapes-

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
And they put on somewhere to let them dry.

Doug:
They dry and they shrivel.

Giovanni:
Yeah. Even a, even a small, uh, small quantity.

Doug:
Like, it's almost, almost like raisins. Not quite.

Giovanni:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Doug:
And then-

Giovanni:
After a few months, they press and then, we press.

Doug:
Right.

Giovanni:
And we put the must in a very small barrel. We call caratelli.

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
And we seal the barrel and we open only after seven, eight years, depending on your, your style. So it is, it is a sweet wine with a nice you know, oxidized bouquet.

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Giovanni:
With a lot of dried fruit flavors. And so, dried apricots, dates, almonds, uh-

Doug:
It's delicious. We had it at your winery. You pulled that out and said, you know, we really don't make much of this and we don't serve it here at the winery and we're all like, oh no. We just fell in love with it. It's delicious.

Giovanni:
It's a, it's a wine that belongs to our deep, you know, traditions.

Doug:
Right.

Giovanni:
And it belongs to our culture. So, we have to make it. It's a moral duty, you know, to make that wine.

Doug:
It's a, it's a moral ... do you do olive oil, too?

Giovanni:
Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Doug:
Yeah.

Giovanni:
We're going to start in a few day. With the picking-

Doug:
Oh that ... so get right after picking grapes, you go to, you're going to olives.

Giovanni:
Yeah. The, the end of October we, we start to, to pick the olives all by hand. So, it takes a month.

Doug:
Wow.

Giovanni:
To pick all of them. It's, it's a great product. You know, we use olive oil on everything.

Doug:
Everything.

Giovanni:
You know. So, in, uh, in Tuscany, we have a specific food culture. So, we don't use any butter or cream or milk, because we have the olive oil.

Doug:
Got it.

Giovanni:
So, also, also we make cakes with olive oil.

Doug:
I'm assuming all your wines are exported. Is the olive oil exported also?

Giovanni:
Yes, yes, yes.

Doug:
That's great.

Giovanni:
Yeah.

Doug:
Wow.

Giovanni:
And the more and more restaurants, you know, buying that olive oil because it's a great product to, to do, you know, to finish.

Doug:
Sure.

Giovanni:
To finish, or to grill meat, or in a vegetable soup, or just a salad. It's a great product. Yeah. A few drops. It's very spicy and green, peppery flavors-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Giovanni:
It's a great, great product of our territory.

Doug:
Yes. You've got terra cotta, you've got fantastic wines, you've got olive oil. Is there anything else I'm missing?

Giovanni:
Meat.

Doug:
Oh, that's, oh gosh, that's right.

Giovanni:
Yeah. We have chianina cows.

Doug:
The chia, pronounce that again for me? Chia?

Giovanni:
Chianina.

Doug:
Chianina. Which are the, the big, I saw-

Giovanni:
The big white cows.

Doug:
Big white cows.

Giovanni:
Yeah.

Doug:
And you, so you have a herd of them. Or a bunch.

Giovanni:
55.

Doug:
55. That's a lot. I'd call that a herd.

Giovanni:
Yeah. And, uh-

Doug:
And they're part of your organic and bio-dynamic vineyard practices.

Giovanni:
Yeah, Yes. Because one of the main principle that I apply is the, is the, of the bio-dynamic uh, agriculture, is the self-sufficiency.

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
So, trying to maximize internal resources, avoiding external inputs and so, and uh, the cows, they play a very important role because they, they produce the steaks and the meat for the family and for the crazy butcher that lives in my, my village. Dario. (laughs).

Doug:
Does Dario? Does Dario get some of your meat?

Giovanni:
All, all of it.

Doug:
There's a crazy. I'm sorry. We have to take a moment. There's a crazy butcher. He's not crazy. He's a fun-loving man. Um, Dario? Dario?

Giovanni:
Chiccini.

Doug:
Chiccini. In Panzano, which is a small little village right next to Fontodi and, uh, he's known for his voice. Singing. He's known as the singing butcher. So, he-

Giovanni:
Yeah. He's a poet. He's a singer. He's a great character.

Doug:
And a great butcher. He's a character and if you go to Panzano, you've got to go see Dario. So, Dario gets some of your meat.

Giovanni:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And uh, but they produce also the manure, you know, that is-

Doug:
The manure.

Giovanni:
What I need to, to make the compost and that is my fertilizer, you know, so I try to underline more and more the, they terroir flavors. 

Doug:
I see.

Giovanni:
So, the, the sense of place of the wines avoiding external input. So, using the compost made in the vineyard, in the, in the farm and uh-

Doug:
So, you're, you're farm slash farms are, it's all self-sufficient.

Giovanni:
Yeah. It's like a system, you know-

Doug:
It's a system.

Giovanni:
Every part of the farm, of the system, has a double relationship with the rest. You know? So, I feed the cows with the hay and grass and barley that I grow in the middle of the rows in the vineyards.

Doug:
Right.

Giovanni:
And they give us back the manure, you know, so it's like a circle.

Doug:
Yeah.

Giovanni:
And it works. I haven't invented anything. I just refresh, refresh and renew, uh, old tradition. And-

Doug:
Well, yeah. You paid attention to it and took a step back in time.

Giovanni:
When, when I was a child, there, there were, you know, thousands of cows in the Chianti region. And then in the 70s, because the goal at the time was production.

Doug:
Production.

Giovanni:
Increase of production. Reduction of the costs. They disappeared in a, in a very, very, in a short time. And I reintroduced them, you know 18 years ago. And I'm so proud of that.

Doug:
That's neat. You know, I'm overdue. Because I haven't seen you since uh, it's been over 10 years since I was there.

Giovanni:
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. They're beautiful. They're so nice.

Doug:
Be come back. I want, I want the full tour this time. So, how many kids do you have? You've got?

Giovanni:
Three.

Doug:
Three. Boys? Girls?

Giovanni:
Marguerita, my daughter, she's 25. And then, Bernardo, 23. And Alessandro, 17.

Doug:
Great. Now, are they? Are they? They're living out in the country like you did. Do they want to get to the city and university? And?

Giovanni:
No, no, no. My wife, she's a very, you know, quite disappointed because they, they don't want to leave our house. You know? (laughs).

Doug:
(laughs). You're wife is Leticia?

Giovanni:
Leticia. Yes.

Doug:
Yes.

Giovanni:
Yeah. They live-

Doug:
They don't want to leave the house.

Giovanni:
They live with us, and uh-

Doug:
You're making it too easy for them. Gotta make them work harder.

Giovanni:
And Bernardo just started to work with me-

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
At the, at the winery, and uh, Marguerita, she's, she's doing the same. With a different position.

Doug:
Okay.

Giovanni:
And Alessandro is too young, you know, he's 17. 

Doug:
Well, he probably wants to go ride motorcycles. He's probably-

Giovanni:
No, he loves arts, he loves uh, museums, art collection, exposition, he's dream is to become an art critic. So, something very different. But why not, you know? (laughs).

Doug:
Well that's great. That's great.

Giovanni:
That's great.

Doug:
Then Bernardo. I know Bernardo. Because he's been helping you for a few years. So -

Giovanni:
Yeah, Yeah.

Doug:
That's fantastic. How's that feel? It neat?

Giovanni:
Yeah, you know, I'm, I'm happy. Very happy.

Doug:
That's great. That's great. And also, so we've got, you're the chairman of the consortio for three, it's a three year term.

Giovanni:
Yeah.

Doug:
Okay. So, quality will be getting even better.

Giovanni:
I hope so.

Doug:
It's pretty good right now. Um, curious about your sales. How much percentage-wise do you sell in Italy? Of your wines?

Giovanni:
20%.

Doug:
20%. So 80%'s exported.

Giovanni:
Yes. And uh, and the USA, of course, is number one.

Doug:
USA number one.

Giovanni:
Market. And uh, Canada is growing very fast.

Doug:
Good. That's good to hear.

Giovanni:
For us, too. And uh, all the European countries, from Scandinavia to, to the rest. And uh, Asia is quite good. Great potential there, you know-

Doug:
Yes.

Giovanni:
In China. But, you know, even if I'm, you know, growing with the surface of the vineyards and trying to make a little bit more and more every year, but it's never enough. So-

Doug:
That's a good problem to have, my friend. Congratulations.

Giovanni:
It's a good problem.

Doug:
Are you? Are you traveling? How much do you travel?

Giovanni:
I travel only uh, you know, the wintertime. So, from now, after the harvest. From November to April. And then, with the start of growing season, I stop.

Doug:
And stay home.

Giovanni:
And I, yeah, I stay home. I stay in the vineyards.

Doug:
Good.

Giovanni:
There's not, there's not- I'm an artisan. So, I love, I like to stay hands on all the time uh, you know, working every day in the vineyards and seeing and trying to interpretate what, what they need. And uh, and trying to, to make my best to, to, to-

Doug:
Well, you, you have to because every year is different.

Giovanni:
Every year is different. We have to change-

Doug:
Every year is different.

Giovanni:
Especially with the climate change.

Doug:
Yeah, yeah.

Giovanni:
We, there is a, I, I used to say, you know, that is Mother Nature.

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Giovanni:
That it's like playing with us. So, it's just to test if we are awake or not. And, so, sending us something new every year.

Doug:
Every year.

Giovanni:
Every year. So, just to check if we are waking, we are, we are sleeping or awake.

Doug:
That's good. I'm going to use that with Elias. Um, it's so true. And, you know, even after 30 or 35 years of making wine and growing grapes, you know, sometimes I, I almost, I start to say we've seen it all. And it's like I correct myself and say, um, we haven't seen it all. We've seen a lot. But, not everything because ... and it changes and, you'll, we've, I've noticed all of a sudden something with happen in May or June. It's like, uh-oh this is going on. This is going to affect it in September and August. We better start, we better get more water on. We better leaf. We better, you know, something. 

Giovanni:
Yeah.

Doug:
I mean, if you don't do it right then, in June, you're going to have a problem in September.

Giovanni:
Absolutely.

Doug:
Big problem. So, I'm glad you're not sleeping. No sleeping on the job. (laughs). Alright. Well, Giovanni, thank you so much for taking the time. You're a busy man.

Giovanni:
Thank you. Thank you very much.

Doug:
It's so great to see you. And uh, I appreciate you sharing your story with us.

Giovanni:
Thank you. Thank you very much and I hope to see you in Fontodi very soon. (laughs).

Doug:
I promise. Soon, soon. Thanks.

Giovanni:
Thanks.

Full Transcript

Doug:
Welcome back everybody, Doug Shafer here with another episode of The Taste. We have taken The Taste on the road, we are in New York City, we are in the office oftoday's contestant. And I was trying to figure out how to introduce this guy, and the only thing I could come up with that kinda sums it all up is he's just been a really good friend for over 25 years, we're here with Danny Meyer today, Danny, welcome. 

Danny:
Yeah, we're ... Doug, I gotta say it's great to have you in my-

Danny:
... New York Office, and we're gonna prove I'm sure during-

Doug:
Hmm.

Danny:
... the course of this podcast that we're in New York City with some of the natural sounds of, of-

Doug:
Hmm.

Danny:
... this island. Um, I also think you and I have known each other for more than 25 years because Union Square Café opened in 1985, which is 33 years ago-

Doug:
Okay, well I was-

Danny:
... and we hosted a, a Stags Leap District, uh, lunch I think.

Doug:
Danny you don't know this, but there's been two things I've done with each of my five children, that's as, as I raised them through the years, they had to do two things with me. The first was go to an afternoon baseball game in May at Wrigley Field to see the Cubs and the second was to have a meal at Union Square Café, and I have achieved that with all five of my kids, and they know how important that is, so you need to know that. 

Danny:
I'm deeply, deeply-

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
... honored, especially for the, the later-

Doug:
(laughs) 

Danny:
... because St.-

Doug:
Well, being-

Danny:
... Louis Cardinals-

Doug:
... being a-

Danny:
... fan-

Doug:
... Cardinal fan-

Danny:
(laughs)

Doug:
Yeah, we talked about that. Um, but anyway, let's start with you, born in the Midwest, growing up with your family was the table the big thing? 'Cause I'm, I'm trying to get to what, how it started out with you. Was it the family meals, was ... I know your d- your dad was ... I know, I know you traveled with your dad a lot, I wanna hear about that, but, um, and where do you think this came from for you-

Danny:
Well we-

Doug:
... 'cause it's-

Danny:
... traveled as a family a lot. My parents were married for 25 years before they were divorced, and-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Danny:
... probably the happiest two years of (laughs) their marriage were the first two years-

Doug:
Hmm.

Danny:
... and which is kind of an odd thing to say 'cause they didn't have any of the three kids those first two years.

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
But they spent those first two years in Alsace 'cause my dad was a counter-intelligent agent, uh, for the Army-

Doug:
Huh.

Danny:
... and he was on the boarder of France and Germany, and there were no altercations during those two years. So they spent, uh, all of their time traveling by car, meeting inn keepers and restaurateurs, and going to wineries, and, um, and eating, and, and learning, uh, deeply about the French culture. My dad was a language expert after he graduated from Princeton he got a scholarship to some language school in Monterey, I guess the Army was sponsoring it-

Doug:
Huh.

Danny:
... Monterey, California-

Doug:
I never-

Danny:
... and-

Doug:
... knew that.

Danny:
... and he took those language skills, and turned them into a career.

Doug:
Wow.

Danny:
And, so they got back after those two years, and all of his friends would ask him where should we eat, and where should we go, where should we travel- ... and he had, he and my mom had created this network of friends who it turned out had a loosely connected group of countryside inns in France that all had nice little restaurants, and the, the group was called Relata Compania.

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
He became a travel agent, became the first American agent for that group, Relata Compania, which then became Relais & Chateaux.

Doug:
Oh.

Danny:
And-

Doug:
... wow.

Danny:
... in those early days of his travel agency, and this now is, you know, move ahead into the, um, the 1960's, we always had at least one French person living in our home who would invariably this, be the son or daughter of one of these inn keepers-

Doug:
And they were there-

Danny:
... and they were there-

Doug:
... visiting?

Danny:
... to do two things. Translate, they worked in my dad's office, and they would translate for-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... all of his clients who, who needed help- ... and then they would serve as babysitters for us-

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
... at night. And what was kind of amazing is we were getting, all three of us, all three kids, were getting this incredible education in food, and wine, and French culture. There was French spoken at the table all night, um, especially when my parents didn't want us to know what they were talking about-

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
... and that was a good reason to learn French. Uh, we had a little dog named Ratatouille.

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
There was always a bottle of Beaujolais or something like that on the-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... table at night-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... and it just became a normal thing to cook with my parents, um-

Doug:
Well-

Danny:
... and to eat, and to travel-

Doug:
This is fascinating, because-

Danny:
... and that-

Doug:
... you know-

Danny:
I just have to say-

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
... that was, that wasn't a typical thing in the 1960s or '70's, you know? Keep in mind-

Doug:
Hmm.

Danny:
... Julia Child was just coming on-

Doug:
Just coming-

Danny:
... TV about-

Doug:
... onboard.

Danny:
... that time, but that was a ... big deal.

Doug:
... for you guys at such a young age to be exposed to, you know, people from, you know, someone from anywhere, I never was. You know, you and I are the same era, same vintage more or less, and, I mean totally different. In the Shafer household, you know, we didn't have wine, it was bourbon, and beer, and cocktails, and if we, dad ever had wine it was a bottle of Lancers or something.

Danny:
That's so funny-

Doug:
Oh, yeah.

Danny:
... given, given what he's now done.

Doug:
Oh, yeah, well, I run into people, and they're, you know, customers that go, "Oh, your dad, what a wonderful dream he had to go out and make wine." and I said, "He didn't do it to make wine, he did it because it was a, this was gonna be a good investment 'cause the wine boom was gonna happen." So he learned it, he learned to like wine after buying (laughs) a vineyard, so-

Danny:
Well, he's-

Doug:
... it was pretty interesting.

Danny:
... taught a whole lot, you and he have taught a whole lot of other people to love wine, that's for sure.

Doug:
So great mind expanding experiences at home, so, uh, you're in St. Louis high school, then to col- What was high school like, sports, extracurriculars, where ya at ... Was there a cooking club, what, you know?

Danny:
Yeah, it was. So-

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
... I went to five different schools growing up in St. Louis, which is ... which is an interesting thing. I haven't talked-

Doug:
Five?

Danny:
... about this a lot.

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
Um, I went to, well, I'm-

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
... including nursery school, but-

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
... I went to nursery school, and then I went to a public school that was reasonably close to our home, rom kindergarten through third grade, and then we moved, and, so I had to go to another public school for fourth grade. And then I was dying to go to this all-boys school, which started in fifth grade ... because my first house was at the bottom of a big hill, and every Saturday I would run up the hill to go watch the varsity football game, and I wanted to go to that school.

Doug:
Got it.

Danny:
I had become a big fan of the, the Kadasco Rams, the Country Day School of Rams. So I went to the all-boys school for, uh, fifth through ninth grade, and then, uh, I transferred to a coed private school f-

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
... uh, for 10th, 11th, and 12 grade, so there was five schools. I did play junior varsity football-

Doug:
For-

Danny:
... at the-

Doug:
For-

Danny:
... rivals of the coed school, it was arch rivals with Country Day School, and it was John Burroughs, and I played varsity tennis and I just gotta say that it made a big, big impression on who I became. If you can imagine changing schools during those formative years of your life where, you know, learning who you are, or trying to learn who you are, and, then not even going to school with, with girls until 10th grade-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
I think that the social Danny Meyer was developed out of necessity because of always having to put myself in a very different social situation where invariably I didn't know anyone at the beginning, or maybe I only knew one or two people, and then trying to find my place within that group. 

Doug:
And you're right in those formative years?

Danny:
Yeah.

Doug:
Okay, so I gotta ask you something because what you're talking about is something I've felt a long time. Um, I don't talk to too many people about it, but I can remember the years between seventh grade and senior year in high school vividly; I can remember everything that happened. If you asked me what happened in college, or my first job, or in my first wine job, I can't tell ya, it's like, it's a blur, but boy, you know, seventh, eighth grade, ninth grade, 10th, 11th, 12th-

Danny:
Absolutely.

Doug:
... it's just like ... Are you the s- are you-

Danny:
I- I'm-

Doug:
... the same way?

Danny:
... completely like that.

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
As a matter of fact, Doug, I ... To this day you know, I'll be, I'll be driving my car-

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
... and tuned into Sirius, and I'll flip the-

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
... the radio stations, and if I get something from the '70s ... there can be a song that will come on, and take me exactly to where I was, and sometimes it wasn't a good place. You know, sometimes-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... there were songs that take me to a time when I go and I'll say to Audrey, “I wasn't happy when that song came out."-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... or, "That was a great period of my life." And it's just kind of amazing how, how, how those memories stick.

Doug:
Well, fast forward, m- just for fun m- on the same theme. I've been at Shafer for 35 years, and I can remember the first six or seven years again vividly, and those were the toughest years. I walked into a mess, had to clean it up, I made another mess, had to clean it up, there was a fire drill every two weeks, I can remember everything. And then after that from s- year six or seven on to now again, it's a blur. Was that ... Do you have the same type of thing with when you opened Union Square.

Danny:
I, I think that my memory has a slight advantage over yours when it comes to work because we've done so many different projects-

Doug:
Good point.

Danny:
Meaning that I can, I can absolutely relate to the ... The first 10 years of my career there was one restaurant, Union-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... Square Café. That's like having one baby for 10 years before you have a second kid, which was Gramercy Tavern, but those Gramercy Tavern years are deeply etched-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Danny:
... um, lots of scar tissues, (laughs) fro- you know-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... from those early days. And then Eleven Madison Park and Tabla, which opened within four weeks of each other, and then after that, um, uh, you know-

Doug:
That just-

Danny:
... a profusion of new restaurants, whether it was Blue Smoke, The Modern-

Doug:
The Modern.

Danny:
... that, uh, Shake Shack-

Doug:
Shake Sha- (laughs) or, yeah, oh.

Danny:
... um, and then a bunch of places after that, Maialino, North End Grill-

Doug:
Right, on and on.

Danny:
... on and on. I won't name 'em all right now, but-

Doug:
M- ye- ye- well-

Danny:
... but the-

Doug:
... we don't have-

Danny:
... the deal is that-

Doug:
... enough time, (laughs) you know-

Danny:
... I have, I actually-

Doug:
You're right.

Danny:
... have ... all these different-

Doug:
Uh, du- You had-

Danny:
... opportunities.

Doug:
... triggers ... Well, right-

Danny:
Exactly-

Doug:
... because they're-

Danny:
... they were triggers-

Doug:
... were the startups-

Danny:
... of my-

Doug:
... right.

Danny:
... memory, and I-

Doug:
Got it.

Danny:
... can remember. And something that I've said many, many is that creating restaurants ... There, there was a moment when we had four kids in four restaurants, and people were joking now you have a restaurant for-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... every kid-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... and Audrey said, "Why did you have to go compete with me, and have more restaurants than-"

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
"... than I have kids?" But, uh, restaurants like kids are really, really fun to conceive.

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
Um-

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
... they're not-

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
... all that much fun to manufacture-

Doug:
(laughs) 

Danny:
... and, you know, in the first six to 12 months you don't get a lot of sleep.

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
But then they start to become rewarding after a while when you learn who they are, and who they become, and one, one of the things I love about all these different restaurants ... I mean by the way, you've done that with different wines, so-

Doug:
Right, and there's an-

Danny:
... even though there's one-

Doug:
Well, there-

Danny:
... Shafer Vineyards-

Doug:
Well, there's an, there's an evolution.

Danny:
... every single wine you guys have created has its own story, and back-

Doug:
Oh, yes-

Danny:
... story.

Doug:
... that's true, and then-

Danny:
And I'm sure-

Doug:
... there's an evolution-

Danny:
... that that helps you-

Doug:
... of style, and you tweak it as you go on, and, and, uh, sometimes it becomes a little different thing you envisioned. 

Danny:
Right, but you for-

Doug:
Yeah-

Danny:
... example c-

Doug:
... good point.

Danny:
... probably have stories about Relentless that-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... you may not remember the year, you probably do 'cause you have vintages too.

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
So-

Doug:
Yeah we've ... And-

Danny:
... you're giving-

Doug:
... that's evolved-

Danny:
... yourself short-

Doug:
... that's evolved.

Danny:
... shrift, you have a great memory.

Doug:
Okay, (laughs) thank you, sir. All right, well, sl- uh, slipping back after high school, co- Where did you go to college? I don't even know that.

Danny:
Well, college-

Doug:
Of whe-

Danny:
... um I was lucky to, to get in because I applied to only three schools, Princeton where my dad and his father had gone ... and I was rejected. Brown which just seemed like the, the hotshot school that year, I was rejected there. And Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut-

Doug:
Oh, that's right.

Danny:
... where I was wait listed. So I was heading nowhere-

Doug:
Oh-

Danny:
... and- 

Doug:
... ge-

Danny:
... it was not a good day, um, and my grandfather in Chicago was actually a trustee at the University of Chicago at that time ... and my mom called and said-

Doug:
(laughs) Okay.

Danny:
... "Danny didn't get in in anywhere."

Doug:
(laughs) 

Danny:
My grandfather said, "Well, that's easy then, he's coming to University of Chicago." ... and I said, "I'm not doing that. I'm not ... It's, it's, it's a great school, but I, I don't wanna spend the rest of my life feeling like-"

Doug:
Granddad had-

Danny:
"... it was just-"

Doug:
... helped-

Danny:
"... handed-"

Doug:
... yeah.

Danny:
"... to me."

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
And, so I wrote probably the best (laughs) letter I've ever written in my life, got off the wait list at Trinity, and, uh, d- in my freshman year there I'm pretty sure I got straight A's. I was pretty distracted at, uh, having just joined this coed school in high school 10, 11, and 12, I wasn't really thinking about school work too much. 

Doug:
Understood. (laughs) 

Danny:
Who am I, how do I fit in with-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... with a whole new group of people, with girls for the-

Doug:
Girls, and-

Danny:
... first time-

Doug:
... all that.

Danny:
... and ever, and, uh, I didn't deserve to get into all these schools. Um, but I d- In a weird way that moment of not getting in anywhere, has actually followed me around my whole life because I seem to do my best work in anything when someone says you're you're not measuring up. And some ... In- Interestingly almost every single time we've opened a restaurant-

Doug:
Huh.

Danny:
... with only one exception, which was Tabla, which got three stars from the New York Times right out of the-

Doug:
Right, uh-

Danny:
... gate.

Doug:
... right out of the gate, I remember that.

Danny:
Every other restaurant has been sort of spanked by the critics right when it opens-

Doug:
Wow.

Danny:
... and, and it almost takes that in a, in a odd way. I don't ... I, I wish I could skip this step, but it almost takes someone saying you're not measuring up for us to kick into a higher gear, and to say oh, yeah, wait 'til you see what we do, just, just give us some time, and that's been the case with my life almost all the time. I'm not a fast starter, but you tell me I can't do it, and I'll, I'll pull our team together, and-

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
... and we'll show you we-

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
... that we can. 

Doug:
I can relate, I can relate, I can-

Danny:
Do you ever ha-

Doug:
... I can, yeah-

Danny:
I'm, I'm-

Doug:
... I can remember-

Danny:
... I'm sorry to-

Doug:
... the early days.

Danny:
... interrupt you, but-

Doug:
No, no.

Danny:
... do you ever have wines that-

Doug:
Uh, yeah.

Danny:
... you taste them out of the barrel, and they're not that great, and then they take years, but they stitch together, and they're some of the best wines you've-

Doug:
U- Um-

Danny:
... ever made?

Doug:
... m- m- doesn't-

Danny:
Or is, is that a bad-

Doug:
M- No, it doesn't work with wine that way 'cause once it's made you're there. I mean that's why ... You know, we're in harvest right now, Elias is, you know, get, not getting any sleep because it's all right then. That first, um, when you pick the grapes if, uh, how you ferment 'em, what yeast, how you treat it early on, getting it to barrels, um, and mostly, you know, the ripeness of picking is what we've learned about. And if you don't nail that you're just against the, you're against the eight ball the whole way, and, uh, so wines don't change that much from when you make 'em. What, what we learned, our challenge was trying to figure out how to do that first step, that first three, or four, or five weeks, when you first pick the grapes and make the wine. And here's, (laughs) You know, all that, all these chefs get all these accolades, you know, the starship. You know, you know, easy peasy. You know, they get ... They miss ... The mess up the sauce one night, hey, the next night they get another shot m- m- unbelievable. Wine making one shot a year, baby, one shot, and it's like if you don't hit it you're toast, and if ... And, and, and then you, you pay for it 'cause that wine's not as good as it could have been, and you have to wait a whole year to do it again. So the learning curve on wine making is one-

Doug:
... year at a time. 

Danny:
And expensive-

Doug:
Expensive-

Danny:
... if you don't-

Doug:
... and that's-

Danny:
... get it right.

Doug:
Yeah, and that's, that's tough, and I can, I can kinda relate. It's like, you know, we didn't do it, we gotta do this better, you know, and, so that's why the harvest it's fun, it's joyous, and all that, but man, the pressure's on. And we know it, and it's like, uh, when we start making good wine I remember Elias came to me one time and said, "Man, you know, the pressures are really on every year." 'cause we gotta nail, and we only have-

Danny:
Well, you've had-

Doug:
... one shot.

Danny:
... the pressure on ever since that famous-

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
... wine you guys took to, to Europe in 1974 was it?

Doug:
Well, it was '78. My dad-

Danny:
'78.

Doug:
... it was dad's first wine, the '78 Cab-

Danny:
Yeah.

Doug:
... which won everything. And he's, you know, for years he would come (laughs) into Elias and me during harvest saying, "When you guys gonna make a '78?" 

Danny:
Wh- Wh-

Doug:
It's like- (laughs) 

Danny:
Yeah, what did you-

Doug:
... oh, God.

Danny:
... guys do?

Doug:
Still brings it up. Um-

Danny:
And that's a guy who didn't-

Doug:
Uh, uh-

Danny:
... drink wine-

Doug:
Oh.

Danny:
... growing up. 

Doug:
Pretty funny. Um, so Trinity College, so after college right into the food business?

Danny:
Not at all, not at all.

Doug:
Not at all, what happened?

Danny:
No, I mean I was, I was absolutely in love with restaurants, and as a matter of fact at Trinity I spent a semester in Rome. I was a poli-sci major-

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
... and Trinity has a campus in Rome where we were studying international politics, um, and of course I made international politics my minor that semester, and spent all of my time as a major going to trattorias. Um, so I always loved food, but in those days nobody thought about ... No one my age in that era with a liberal arts education was saying oh, I'm gonna go be a restaurateur. 

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
And, so, um, what we ended up doing was, I, I was starting to think about should I, should I do the expected thing and get a law degree, which is what you're supposed to do after-

Doug:
Poli-sci, right.

Danny:
... poli-sci.

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
I thought for a little ... I loved politics, um, a matter of fact I've lived in Chicago right after graduating, uh, Trinity, and-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... I worked for an independent presidential candidate in 1980 named John Anderson-

Doug:
I remember that-

Danny:
... and John-

Doug:
... I remember him.

Danny:
... Anderson had lost the Republican primaries to Ronald Reagan-

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
... and decided okay, but I'm still gonna run 'cause I'm a different kinda candidate. And I loved his politics, he was-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Danny:
... fiscally conservative, socially progressive. And I got a job in Chicago that nobody with my lack of experience would have gotten with a Democrat or a Republican-

Doug:
Ah.

Danny:
... 'cause there was no organization.

Doug:
'Cause there was no, and it-

Danny:
So I was-

Doug:
Got it.

Danny:
... Cook, Cook County field coordinator, which was a big deal. Keep in mind Cook County-

Doug:
I-

Danny:
... is what-

Doug:
Hmm.

Danny:
... delivered John Kennedy the, the presidency in-

Doug:
Hu- you know-

Danny:
... 1960.

Doug:
U- U-

Danny:
Uh, and, uh, we got 7.5% of the vote, which was enough for me to get my matching, um, funds, so I got my last paycheck of $214.00 a week. 

Doug:
(laughs) I know. 

Danny:
But with that campaign I actually learned one of the most important leadership and management skills of my life, which I still use. Everyone who worked for me, was a volunteer.

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
I was 22 years old, most of the people working for me were older than I was. I didn't have the opportunity to reward someone with a paycheck or a raise, I didn't have the opportunity to punish (laughs) someone for not having done their job.

Doug:
Right, right.

Danny:
And what it taught me more than anything was that even when I became a business person, and I was paying people, that I still wanted to treat people as if they were volunteering to work here, and I still wanted to give people a higher purpose for their job other than the task itself. And I think that, we wanna hire people at the Union Square Hospitality Group, and at all of our restaurants, who are good enough that they probably could have got another 10 or 15 job offers somewhere else. And, so the fact that they chose to work here is in its own way a form of volunteering-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... so volunteering to bring their gifts to us. And, so I think that lesson, which was the first time I was ever anyone's boss, minus being able to pay them, is something that has carried through how I, I lead today.

Doug:
Okay, this is so great, I love, I love doing these, these shows.

Danny:
(laughs)

Doug:
I mean I'm finding out ... You know, I've known you 30 years, and I m- didn't know about that. We need to have more meals together, and-

Danny:
Well, we need to have more-

Doug:
... ah-

Danny:
... wine together.

Doug:
... way more wine (laughs) together. 

Danny:
I'll provide the food, you just keep bringing that-

Doug:
Oh-

Danny:
... great Shafer.

Doug:
Ah. (laughs) So John, after John Anderson, um, and somehow you got into the food business. 

Danny:
So after John Anderson, I was pretty burned out because when you work in politics you realize that, uh, you know, once that first Tuesday in November hits every single day leading up to that first Tuesday in November is a day that you didn't raise quite enough money, you didn't-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... reach quite enough voters, and you're just burned out. And, and it's kinda sad, it, and it's a great team effort, but that was the moment when I said all right, you gotta get your life together, you gotta do something-

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
... here that's, uh, you know, either, either get your law degree, I was also fascinated with journalism, um-

Doug:
Okay. 

Danny:
... and I thought maybe I'd go get journalism degree, and I started looking at schools. I went to Berkeley School of Journalism, and-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Danny:
... um, Northwestern School of Journalism and I wasn't quite ready. So, but I d- but I did spend a lot of time in New York City when I was up at Trinity in Hartford. Loved jazz here, loved the restaurants, I actually loved going to horse races at Belmont Park, going to, loved going to theater-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Danny:
... and I said to myself just, just do a year in New York and see what happens. So I got a job, a bizarre job, the same grandfather who was trying to hook me up with the University of-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... Chicago, this time I, I took him up on something, and he helped me get a 16,000, $16,500.00 a year job working as a special assistant at a new company that he had invested in, a public, a newly public company-

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
... called Checkpoint Systems. This is a bizarre tail in my story, but Checkpoint Systems, um, is one of the leading companies that makes the electronic tags that, that stop shoplifters-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... in, in retail stores.

Doug:
Got it.

Danny:
And they had come up with this product that I found kinda neat, which was that instead of only having those white tags with pins in them-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... that, you know-

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
... adhere to people's clothing, they had a printed circuit on a pressure sensitive label that could look like a price tag, which meant that you could now protect supermarkets, and libraries-

Doug:
Oh, cool.

Danny:
... and, uh, drugstores, where, where you obviously can't stick a pin in a book-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... but you could put one of these pressure sensitive labels in a book. And about six or eight months into my time at Checkpoint Systems I got an apartment in New York City-

Doug:
Hmm.

Danny:
... I was commuting down to Thorofare, New Jersey (laughs) of all-

Doug:
Hmm.

Danny:
... places-

Doug:
Living the there.

Danny:
... every now and then.

Doug:
Got it.

Danny:
The New York City, um, sales person left to go to the competition, and Checkpoint handed me the entire New York-

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
... territory, which included New Jersey.

Doug:
Oh.

Danny:
... Westchester County, Putnam County, Orange-

Doug:
Oh, many.

Danny:
... County, Long Island, all five boroughs, and I just crushed it. I, I became-

Doug:
Yo-

Danny:
... the company's top salesman for three years in a row, and ev-

Doug:
I never knew this.

Danny:
Yeah, and it was a great experience, um, i- in two ways. Number one is I was, I was a kid who actually, and I say a kid, I was still pretty young-

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
... back then, I was in my early 20s. Still lacked a little bit of the kind of self-confidence I would need in-

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
... putting yourself out there in a sales job, cold calling, mostly hanging out in some of New York City's worst neighborhoods where shoplifting was, was the highest. Learning to, to m- negotiate with retailers who are some of the toughest negotiators in all of New York, opening up some big national accounts, um, like Duane Reade, and Burlington-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... Coat Factory, and ShopRite. Um, and then ultimately doing a lot of traveling because they wanted me to share whatever sales gifts I had with, with other folks around the country, and, uh, I gotta say making a lot of money. Um, I was really, really driven by commission-

Doug:
Got it.

Danny:
... and, um, by the time I was 23 I was taking home, I think $125,000.00 a year-

Doug:
Wow.

Danny:
... with no one to support, and I just would spend almost all of my time, keep in mind this was obviously-

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
... before the internet, but I would plot out my sales calls throughout New York based on where I wanted to eat lunch that day. 

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
And I was learning about all the different neighborhoods, sometimes I would eat ethnic food, sometimes I'd go, just go to a Greek diner, uh, Popeyes fried chicken-

Doug:
S-

Danny:
... had just-

Doug:
U-

Danny:
... come to New York.

Doug:
M- So the food, so the food thing is, that's still-

Danny:
Couldn't get-

Doug:
That's-

Danny:
... it out of-

Doug:
You couldn't-

Danny:
... my mind, and-

Doug:
... get enough.

Danny:
... and I was always cooking at home, and-

Doug:
Got it.

Danny:
... entertaining friends. And finally just what this leads up to is after three years of selling anti-shoplifting tags and, you know, dealing with some pretty unsavory characters. I gotta tell ya one story.

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
I was in a, I was in a supermarket in, uh, in Detroit, uh, I think it was Giant supermarket, and, I'd been training the entire staff there not only how to use these things, but what do you do when you catch someone-

Doug:
M-

Danny:
... shoplifting-

Doug:
Yeah-

Danny:
... you gotta-

Doug:
... how do you-

Danny:
... train the whole thing.

Doug:
Oh, boy.

Danny:
And I'm in, I'm in line in the, uh, in the supermarket, and I'm about to be working with the cashier, 'cause how does she ... You have to actually deactivate the tag when someone actually buys the thing-

Doug:
Got it.

Danny:
... so they don't beep on the way out-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... that wasn't so easy. So all of a sudden the guy in front of me is bleeding in his head-

Doug:
Oh.

Danny:
... and, and I'm going like oh-oh, this is not good, he's bleeding, and, and finally he gets up, he goes out the door, and he had been stuffing steaks underneath his hat. 

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
And he gets caught right there-

Doug:
Under his hat?

Danny:
Under his hat-

Doug:
I've seen in-

Danny:
... and a-

Doug:
... the coat, and down-

Danny:
There, there-

Doug:
... the pants-

Danny:
And I saw-

Doug:
... but under his hat.

Danny:
... enough stories like that. As well-

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
... you, you may or may not it, but almost every department store in New York has a jail in the basement-

Doug:
No.

Danny:
... and, you know, hanging out with unsavory people in the clinker in the basement. I just finally said, "Okay, I, I did it, that's enough, and n- now-"

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
"... now it's time to get my law degree. It's time to go get real at this point." And I-

Doug:
I'm with ya. I gotta ask you though 'cause I'm not a restaurant ... I've been in back doors of restaurants, do restaurants have jails in the basement?

Danny:
We've never-

Doug:
I ... Or-

Danny:
... put one into-

Doug:
... okay. (laughs) 

Danny:
... our-

Doug:
Good, I just wanted to check.

Danny:
We do have wine cellars, but that's a whole lot-

Doug:
Okay. (laughs) 

Danny:
... more fun than a jail.

Doug:
Okay. 

Danny:
But anyway, um, it was literally-

Doug:
Hmm.

Danny:
... having taken the Stanley Kaplan, um, LSAT class-

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
... it was on the eve of taking my LSAT's, I was out to dinner with my-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... aunt and uncle and my grandmother, and I was in a shitty mood (laughs) because-

Doug:
Yeah, yeah.

Danny:
... they're all drinking Chianti and having really good pasta, and, and I was in a foul mood 'cause A, I couldn't drink, and B, I had to take my LSAT's the next-

Doug:
The next-

Danny:
... Saturday morning-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... the next morning. And it was my uncle, uh, Richard Polsky, whose art, uh, adorns-

Doug:
That's right-

Danny:
... Union Square-

Doug:
... that's right.

Danny:
... Café, um, to this day who turned to me and he said, "I don't know what's bothering you, but, (laughs) but what's going on here?"-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... and I said, "Well, I gotta take my LSAT's-"

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Danny:
"... tomorrow." and he said, "Well, of course you do, you wanna be a lawyer?" and I said, "Actually I don't." and he got furious with me-

Doug:
Oh, wow.

Danny:
... and he said, "Do you not realize that you're gonna be dead forever, and you're gonna be alive for a moment relative to how long. Why in the world would you do something you don't wanna do?" And I said, "'Cause I don't know what else I would do or could do." And he was like I at that meal, this was in 1983 who said, "You gotta be crazy. Uh, all I've ever heard you talk about your whole life is restaurants and food, why don't you just go open a restaurant?" and it had never ever, ever dawned on me that that was a-

Doug:
A possibility of-

Danny:
... a valid-

Doug:
... something you could do.

Danny:
... career choice.

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
So I took the LAST the next morning, never applied anywhere, I probably did poorly on the test, my heart wasn't in it. 

Doug:
Of course not.

Danny:
But that next Monday-

Doug:
Which-

Danny:
... I applied to take a class at the New York Restaurant School, which is probably not even in business-

Doug:
(laughs) I-

Danny:
... anymore-

Doug:
... know.

Danny:
... and I hooked up with a pal from, from Trinity, and I said, "You be the money guy, I'll be the food guy, let's do this." And he was working in a bank at the time, he didn't tell his parents 'cause he knew they wouldn't approve.

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
They caught wind of it after three classes, and said, "No son of ours is going into that nasty business." and he felt so bad that he introduced me to the only client his bank had, a restaurant called Pesce-

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
... on 22nd Street.

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
I got a job there-

Doug:
I remember Pesce, okay.

Danny:
... I was the assistant lunch manager-

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
... and earning 250 bucks a week-

Doug:
Uh-huh (affirmative).

Danny:
... a big, (laughs) a bi- big decrease from what I had been doing at Checkpoint, and it turned out that I ... And I said to myself, "Just do it, just get it out of your system. You're either gonna hate it or you're gonna love it."

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
And I did it, and I loved it, and that was where I met Michael Romano who became our chef-

Doug:
Your chef at-

Danny:
... for many, many years. That's where I met a young actress who was waiting tables named Audrey Heffernan, and who became my wife-

Doug:
Ah.

Danny:
... and the mother of our four kids, and that's where I met my career. And, and I-

Doug:
At Pesce.

Danny:
... can actually see it out the window right now as we're talking, it's just, it's kinda neat-

Doug:
Hmm.

Danny:
... how that all worked out.

Doug:
Wow. So-

Danny:
And you just ... Can I just say something?

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
You kinda think about how life presents so many doors that you didn't expect to be there, and I, and I think back to w- what, what if I had never gotten off the wait list at Trinity? What if I ... What if on the very first day of Trinity when there was a pick up softball game outside the dorm-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... and we ran out of baseball gloves, and, so I had to lend my glove to this guy, and this guy lost my glove, and this guy was the same one who introduced me to Pesce many years later, um, who became one of my best friends. I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have met my career, I wouldn't have met my wife, and it just ... The different ways that life can go, and, and, and all, and all of that came out of the adversity of, of almost not even getting into any college whatsoever. So I, I think about that a lot because we are all, you know, we're dealt some good cards and some tough cards, but sometimes some of the best things come out of the tough cards you're dealt-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Danny:
... unexpectedly.

Doug:
Yeah, I, I've, I've got a bunch (laughs) a things flooding back right now. It's like yeah, at the time-

Danny:
Can I hear-

Doug:
... i-

Danny:
... one of yours?

Doug:
(Laughs) one of mine. One of the toughest was, uh, uh, being early on at Shafer, I walked into a mess that, um, that my predecessor had left, and, so clean that up over a couple of years, and hired Elias, um, but that was easy because that was a mess someone else made. But then within about a year or two after cleaning it up I made my own mess. I had a couple of wines that I made, I was the winemaker, I made 'em, aged 'em, bottled 'em, and before we released 'em, there were two wines, uh, realized they were really flawed, I mean really flawed like, like it smelled so bad 'cause a hydrogen sulfide thing, you know about that, but in the bottle it got really worse. The only good thing is we caught it before we released it, these two wines, but we had to rebottle 'em, and rebottling means you're pulling corks on 7,000 cases of wine, and we did it by hand. And, dumped 'em back into a tank, and did some blending, and fixed the sulfide problem, rebottled 'em, and, um, a funny, funny ending to this story, a year later it was the, um, what years? It was the '85 Merlot and the '84 Cab, rebottled 'em, they were fine, but had to filter 'em, bottle 'em again, the whole thing, which, you know, we really beat 'em up. And, uh, released 'em-

Danny:
I like the timing of the siren's coming-

Doug:
Yeah-

Danny:
... to the-

Doug:
... the sirens- (laughs) 

Danny:
... to this particular-

Doug:
... 'cause it was a-

Danny:
... you know, story.

Doug:
... it was a fire drill-

Danny:
(laughs) Yeah.

Doug:
... we got a fire drill. And, uh, a year later in the December 15th issue of the Wine Spectator, which was my birthday, December 15th, I remember this well, both wines were reviewed, one got 92 points, and one got 93 points, and it was like, I looked at Elias and said, "This is a (laughs) really crazy business, man."

Danny:
Wow. That's-

Doug:
But the point-

Danny:
... uh-

Doug:
... is, uh, you know, I've never been so low in my life. These are ... You know I, I failed, and, um, but basically it made me a better winemaker because it's like I'm never gonna let that happen again, and what else could possibly happen 'cause I'm never ... So I mean I became the master of check it once, check it twice, check it three times, you know, and Elias as he took over I said, "Check it once, check it twice." you know, whatever that process is, and-

Danny:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Doug:
... additions, and all that, because it's like that's never gonna ... And that I think has helped, helped us get to the quality level we got to, and it's-

Danny:
That's a-

Doug:
... a beautiful-

Danny:
That's remarkable.

Doug:
... thing.

Danny:
And speaking of quality my favorite way to describe Shafer m- uh-

Doug:
(laughs) 

Danny:
... is one of basically three wineries in the world I know that do not know how to make a bad wine. 

Doug:
Hmm.

Danny:
I don't know, so thank goodness that you had that experience. 

Doug:
So I've a gotta ask you a question. So dad met you ... My recollection is dad met you at Union Square early on, right, you had started, and I remember he came home 'cause he was traveling, I was dealing with wines. And he comes into the, uh, cellar, uh, after his trip, he goes, "I met this kid, I met this kid, he just opened a restaurant, his name is Danny Meyer. He's really neat, he's really cool, you gotta meet him, you gotta meet him." And then I think within a year or two you came out, and that's when we started off. But-

Danny:
Yeah-

Doug:
... I wanna ask you-

Danny:
... that makes sense.

Doug:
... I wanna ask you a question, jus- a personal question. M- Wh- Do you remember meeting my dad, and wh- what was your impression of ... I'm just ... A selfish question here, what was your impression-

Danny:
Oh, I-

Doug:
... or what, what-

Danny:
... totally remember it. Yeah.

Doug:
What was he like?

Danny:
So m- we were trying to, um ... You know, back in those days the, the, um, mid '80s-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... when Union Square Café opened believe it or not, I know this sounds crazy, but-

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
... California wines were still not a huge, huge thing-

Doug:
Oh, we-

Danny:
... in-

Doug:
... couldn't sell wine-

Danny:
... New York. 

Doug:
... in New York.

Danny:
We couldn't sell wine-

Doug:
I know-

Danny:
... here.

Doug:
... that sounds-

Danny:
Yeah.

Doug:
... crazy, but-

Danny:
No, no, it's true, it was all European wines here-

Doug:
And, so-

Danny:
... I remember it.

Doug:
... we decided at Union Square Café that the power of storytelling, whether it's where did this recipe come from, or where did this ingredient come from, and certainly where did the, the wine come from, that I wanted to share stories with people-

Danny:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Doug:
... and, and educate people, and hope that they would spend more time enjoying wine and food in the restaurant. So we came up with this idea, first on Saturday lunches-

Danny:
Okay.

Doug:
... 'cause we weren't open back then for Saturday lunch, and then Sunday dinners because back then we were not open on Sunday nights, of having either a wine lunch or a wine dinner-

Danny:
Okay.

Doug:
... and we would bring in winemakers. The one that I remember just almost like it was yesterday was the Stags Leap, uh-

Danny:
Well, uh-

Doug:
... District-

Danny:
... the group-

Doug:
... lunch-

Danny:
... okay.

Doug:
... and we brought in your dad, and Warren Winairski-

Danny:
Okay.

Doug:
... and, um, Bernard-

Danny:
Bernard-

Doug:
... Portet-

Danny:
... Portet from-

Doug:
... from Clos Du Val.

Danny:
... Clos Du Val, and Dick Steltzner.

Doug:
Dick Steltzner, those were the, those were the four horsemen-

Danny:
Those were the-

Doug:
... yeah-

Danny:
... four-

Doug:
... they were the guys. (laughs) 

Danny:
I remember it, and-

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
... and, so it was a Saturday lunch that's completely sold out-

Doug:
Hmm.

Danny:
... and what I, I ... Look, it was all the wines were good, but Shafer was the best. All the winemakers were nice, your dad was the nicest. 

Doug:
Hmm.

Danny:
And it could have been that we connected because we're both Midwesterners, it could be that, that I stood out as being a nicer than usual New Yorker-

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
... because I actually was not a New Yorker. I have to say I think New York's become a much nicer place-

Doug:
It has.

Danny:
... than it was in-

Doug:
I-

Danny:
... 1980-

Doug:
... I do remember-

Danny:
... so it was-

Doug:
... that.

Danny:
... kinda scary back-

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
... then. And, um, we just hit it off, and, and it was a combination of-

Doug:
Hmm.

Danny:
... um ... Look I love your dad, I loved him the first time I met him, genuine, generous, and I've always ... You know, when I tell stories about wine, when I tell stories about any chef, I've always believed that there is a complete straight line between who someone is and the product that they make-

Doug:
Hmm.

Danny:
... and when you have someone who is authentic and generous you're gonna get an authentic and generous wine in the glass, you just are. Um-

Doug:
Or, hmm, or-

Danny:
... you're-

Doug:
... or a meal in a restaurant-

Danny:
I think s-

Doug:
... from the chef.

Danny:
I, I, I do think so-

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
... I think when, when you understand the motive for why someone's in business for the first way, I, look, you're dad's a, a very, very smart and insightful business person. But just because he picked your place, your premiere place in the Napa Valley-

Doug:
Hmm.

Danny:
... and said, "This is industry at this time, and in fact this specific place, is where it's at." there's a genius there, that's-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Danny:
... one thing. 

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
But then the, the way you do business thereafter, and the commitment to quality, and the commitment to building relationships as you guys have done brilliantly throughout the world that when someone sees the label that says Shafer it means a lot. And, uh, le- let me just say one more thing. When somebody buys a bottle of wine in a restaurant, and that bottle of wine is sitting on their table-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Danny:
... for all to see, it becomes a billboard that says as much about you and your taste as-

Doug:
Interesting-

Danny:
... the car-

Doug:
... yeah.

Danny:
... you drive, or the watch you wear-

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
... or the shoes you wear, or the purse you carry. And I, and I think that what the Shafer label says when I see that on someone's table is I want the best. There, there is not a better quality wine at this price, and they're not inexpensive, but they are way better at their price point than many, many other wines that cost a lot more, and that tells me that I'm smart when I buy that wine.

Doug:
(laughs) Oh, your-

Danny:
And I think-

Doug:
... a sweet-

Danny:
... it's an-

Doug:
No.

Danny:
... amazing, and-

Doug:
Well-

Danny:
... and I-

Doug:
... thank you.

Danny:
... think that all, uh, starts with who your dad is, I really do. 

Doug:
Thank you, I was just ... I appreciate that, that was a personal question there I needed to hear. So jumping ahead, '91, '92, I'm on a bit of a boondoggle cruise in the Baltic. It's the only time I've ever done a Winemaker Cruise, so it's 10 days on a boat, well, they call them ships, m- it's m- it was a small one, but very exclusive, 200 people, and I was the vintner, and then there was a chef for the week. And, um, and this, the chef was Tom Colicchio, and who I did not know, but I had to do a couple of wine seminars and the dinner, and he had to do a cooking presentation. And he had one day in Finland where they went to the market, when, and go, go with Tom to the market to look at the fresh vegetables, which there weren't any at that time of the year, or whatever it was, it was kinda funny. But of the 2- Instead of having 200 people on this ship there was only 28, so it was empty. So I got-

Danny:
You guys-

Doug:
... to know-

Danny:
You guys spent-

Doug:
Well, well-

Danny:
... a lot of-

Doug:
... actually-

Danny:
... time.

Doug:
... 28 people, you know, by the time, you know, my wine seminar came around everybody just laughed 'cause we, I knew everybody, it was a lotta fun, but I got to know Colicchio really well. And they had just closed Modrian, but we had a great time, and, uh, we stayed in touch, when I come back I'd see him once in a while, and one time I came back within about a year or so and he says, "Hey, I got this new thing." and we, we're having dinner and he goes, "Let me show, let me, oh, show you this spot." So we drove down to where Gramercy is now and it was dark, it was a dark night in the glass windows, I said, "Yeah, I'm, I'm working with Danny, and I think this is gonna happen." A year later I came back, and, "How's it going?" he goes, "Well, let's go look at this spot." it was still dark, mm-hmm (affirmative). I said, " Yeah, is it gonna happen?" and he goes, "Well, I think it's gonna happen, I don't know what's (laughs) gonna happen." 

Danny:
That wasn't a year later, come on, uh-

Doug:
Oh, okay, it wasn't, all right-

Danny:
(laughs)

Doug:
... whatever, but it, it took a while, but it was cute, but it, but this was your second child, and it was nine years after Union Square-

Danny:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Doug:
... and I remember taking to you at the time, and it was nerve-racking for you. Tt was m- a big deal 'cause I ... Uh, yo- you're, you want things to be m- m- perfect-

Danny:
Yeah, well Gramercy-

Doug:
... like we all do-

Danny:
... Tavern were-

Doug:
... and, and, uh, has it to-

Danny:
Yeah, it-

Doug:
... pro-

Danny:
... absolutely, and, you know, I was a huge, huge fan of Tom's cooking at Mondrian-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... and we had actually gotten to know each other because I was heading up the Share Our Strength Taste in the Nation back in 1990 and-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Danny:
... 1991, and he was my favorite chef-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... by far, and, and he also cared a lot about the topic of childhood hunger, it wasn't just food. Although I remember exactly what he cooked at the first one, which was a, uh, s- it as a parfait with sea urchin, and, um, curry, and mashed potatoes, which is kind of odd, but it was really, really delicious. 

Doug:
Man, how can pull that back? That just blows me away.

Danny:
So, no-

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
... that was, that was amazing. But Gramercy Tavern was nerve-racking because I was trying to prove to myself that I was not an imposture. I thought-

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
... Union Square Cafe's success had been a fluke, that somehow it had been handed to me, I have no idea why I felt that way.

Doug:
Handed to you? You built it, you se- you-

Danny:
... but I felt-

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
... I just felt-

Doug:
Ah.

Danny:
... a need to go prove that it had not been fluke-

Doug:
I-

Danny:
... and, and, so-

Doug:
Okay, all right.

Danny:
And, uh, to this day, Doug, I, I think that some of the most successful restaurants, and probably this is true of other businesses, are when the core team of people responsible for running it -

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Danny:
... each have something to prove. So I think part of the reason Gramercy Tavern became such a success, and it was not overnight, we were busy overnight, but we got slammed by the press-

Doug:
Ah.

Danny:
... uh, at the beginning, just slammed. Tom had something to prove, he had to prove that-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... Mondrian going out of business was not his fault.

Doug:
Was not his deal-

Danny:
I had to-

Doug:
... yeah.

Danny:
... prove that-

Doug:
You could-

Danny:
... Union Square Café was not a fluke. Claudia Fleming, who is our opening pastry chef, who is remarkable-

Doug:
Right-

Danny:
... to this day-

Doug:
... right.

Danny:
... had to prove that the restaurant she had cooked at, which had closed, wasn't her fault.

Doug:
Wasn't her fault.

Danny:
And it's kinda neat, you know, we had an, we had an opening service and wine director named Steve Olson-

Doug:
I remember-

Danny:
... who-

Doug:
... Olson-

Danny:
... who-

Doug:
... he was-

Danny:
... had a lot-

Doug:
... great.

Danny:
... to prove.

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
He had-

Doug:
Yeah, yeah.

Danny:
... to prove that, you know, even though he had come from Arizona at that point, that he-

Doug:
Hmm.

Danny:
... could-

Doug:
Make it in the-

Danny:
... he could-

Doug:
... big city.

Danny:
... make it in the big-

Doug:
Hmm, mm-hmm (affirmative).

Danny:
... city. And everybody seemed to look at Gramercy Tavern as being their platform for doing their best work, and I think that's what I try do when building a team with a new restaurant is to not only seek people who've got a lotta talent, but who at this point in their career actually has something to prove, and it doesn't have to be an unhealthy thing to-

Doug:
N-

Danny:
... have a little chip on your shoulder.

Doug:
I don't know, I'm with ya. Ta-

Danny:
I bet you had-

Doug:
Eh, yo-

Danny:
... to do that-

Doug:
Uh-

Danny:
... you know, when your dad showed you the 1978, you had to prove you could do it-

Doug:
Oh, yeah.

Danny:
... too.

Doug:
Well, and a-

Danny:
And then after that-

Doug:
Uh, o-

Danny:
... wine you were just describing-

Doug:
Well, and also, um, well, I talked to Cathy Corisin a while back, and she was cute, she was ... We were talking about her era, and she was right ahead of me. She said, "You know, things were booming in Napa." and she said, "The, the ladder was a ... It was a short ladder to become a winemaker." I mean you're one or two years in the cellar, and all of a sudden you're a winemaker. Where today that's changed, you know, it might take you seven, or eight, or nine years to be a winemaker because there was all these new place. So she s- So the, the learning curve was short and steep for her, and for all of us, it was for me, and especially ... I've ... I think I've always had something, but, you know, I'm like, I'm like the son, did I get it on my merit, or I did 'cause it's a family thing. That's a, you know, it's I probably won't admit that readily, but that's probably in the back of mind, sure.

Danny:
And if-

Doug:
Um-

Danny:
... if that motivates you to do even better-

Doug:
Sure.

Danny:
... the world wins. 

Doug:
Dude, did you know ... Did you do that on purpose hiring these people, or is this the bus- just turning and looking back at it now it's-

Danny:
I think it's looking back on-

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
... it now, um, because, yeah, I, I just ... I think that there's, there's magic in that bottle called Gramercy Tavern-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Danny:
... to this day, and, and I think that, uh ... I do to thi- Uh, you know, we just had a leadership retreat for Union Square Hospitality Group earlier this week. We took all of our chefs, and GMs, and b- you know, a bunch of the people who run USHG down to Asbury Park, New Jersey for two days, and we covered a lot of territory. But I really try to encourage people to look at this job as being their platform to do their best work, professionally and personally, and it's hard, it's hard. We ask a lot of you, we ask you not only to be constantly looking at every day as an opportunity to improve what you do, but to look at every day as an opportunity to improve who you are while you're-

Doug:
Who-

Danny:
... doing it, and that's a lot-

Doug:
That's a-

Danny:
... a lot-

Doug:
... big ask.

Danny:
... to ask.

Doug:
Yeah. So Gramercy hits and runs, and then a few years later ... I've never asked you this question, I've always wanted to ask you, because Eleven Madison and Tabla opened at, with, on the-

Danny:
Within four weeks of each other-

Doug:
But, so I-

Danny:
... which is crazy.

Doug:
... gotta ask ya, yeah, as a m- good friend, and I love when I say this, but what were you thinking? (laughs)

Danny:
Yeah. Well, what the hell was I thinking? You know, those were, um ... here- here's what I was thinking. I, I was thinking about how much work we had done with Union Square Café to help revitalize Union Square Park, supporting the green-

Doug:
Right-

Danny:
... market.

Doug:
... right.

Danny:
And when I saw this opportunity to have an op- or re- or really the, the, the chance to invest in a park that had been ignored forever, Madison Square Park-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Danny:
... which nobody even knew in New York-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... and you would just pass by it. It was, it, it was sort of dangerous, but it was definitely forgettable. 

Doug:
Right, I agree.

Danny:
As a matter of fact Madison Square Garden, uh, the original Madison Square Garden was on Madison Square Park, that's where the original of Madison Square Garden got its name-

Doug:
I didn't know that.

Danny:
... but no one knew that-

Doug:
I didn't know that.

Danny:
... no one knew that.

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
And, I loved the opportunity to actually have windows on a park, which Union Square Café never did-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... and to really get into that park early. And, so the very first conversation we had with our landlord, which was Met Life at the time, was even before we talked about the terms of our lease we said, "Would you join us in revitalizing Madison Square Park?"- 

Doug:
Huh.

Danny:
... and they said, "We will, but it won't work because we've tried for many years, and the city never supports us." and I said, "You just wait. If you can support financially I'll support through some leadership." And together we raised eleven million dollars to restore Madison Square Park. We passed the hat to, you know, lots of businesses that overlook the park-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Danny:
... and New York Life, Credit Suisse, First Boston at the time, and, and we did it. And, and now we had two restaurants overlooking the park.

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Danny:
For the third straight time I named a restaurant after a park, we had Union Square, Gramercy-

Doug:
And Gramercy.

Danny:
... and now Madison-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... Square, oh Eleven Madison Park. And the only reason we did two restaurants, which I never would have done as that it's, it was a historic building-

Doug:
Ah.

Danny:
... and there was a dividing wall that could not come down, and, so there was a necessity to do two restaurants at once.

Doug:
That's right, I'd forgotten-

Danny:
And at that time-

Doug:
... that. I had-

Danny:
... Michael Romano-

Doug:
... forg- I had, I had forgotten that.

Danny:
... was completely in love with everything Indian, spices-

Doug:
That's right, and he's-

Danny:
... women, food, everything-

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
... and I said, "Michael, get those Indian spices out of Union Square Café, they do not go with our-"

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
"... wine cellar, and let's create a restaurant that-"

Doug:
That can-

Danny:
"... that shows that-"

Doug:
The showcase.

Danny:
"... Indian flavors-"

Doug:
Showcase that.

Danny:
"... can-"

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
"... can be modernized.", and-

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
... that became Tabla. So if I had really thought it out I never would have done two restaurants at the same time, but-

Doug:
But it-

Danny:
... it was-

Doug:
... it-

Danny:
... irresistible-

Doug:
But it-

Danny:
... to do it-

Doug:
But it-

Danny:
... on this-

Doug:
... works.

Danny:
... park-

Doug:
I remember it was-

Danny:
... and then-

Doug:
It-

Danny:
... that lead to Shake Shack.

Doug:
Uh, wow, those two worked. Well, okay, so e- I'm pausing here because I have a, we're ... Collect my thoughts. So I have-

Danny:
(laughs)

Doug:
There's a wonderful woman that sells Shafer wine here in Manhattan, you know her, Coral Fernandez, and she's m- m- m- you know, pr- probably sells more Shafer than anyone in the-

Danny:
She's-

Doug:
... whole world-

Danny:
... got the easiest-

Doug:
... every year.

Danny:
... job in the city.

Doug:
Well, yeah, yeah, she's got some great accounts, but she always has had, you know, you, all your restaurants, the all your, uh, Union Square restaurants has, has been hers. And, um, whenever I come to town I try to come up with new ideas to meet trade, you know, the typical trade luncheon with five or six people in a restaurant with f- five or six sommeliers, beverage managers, which is great, we do it all the time. And, and then one time she said, m- "Hey, we should do this in the park at Shake Shack." and I said, "What Shake Shack?" she goes, "Oh, Danny's got this place over in the park, it's, you know, burgers- and French fries, and we'll, you know?"

Danny:
And half bottles of-

Doug:
And half bottles-

Danny:
... Shafer when-

Doug:
... of Shafer. 

Danny:
... we open S-

Doug:
We can-

Danny:
Yep.

Doug:
... we can bring in some more stuff if we can figure out how to do it. We never did do it, but, but I'll never forget we talked about it for two or three years, it's like Shake Shack, we should go do a, you know, trade lunch at Shake Shack in the park. And then all of a sudden a few years later the thing just blows up, so I gotta hear this story because I don't think m- m- It was just gonna be a one spot deal wasn't it?

Danny:
Oh, absolutely. 

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
In fact it was never even gonna be a one spot deal. What, what happened was-

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
... when we were planning-

Doug:
Or, or-

Danny:
... the-

Doug:
... seasonal even, yeah.

Danny:
When we were planning the restoration of the park we had always hoped that there would one day be some type of food there but the city reneged on its promise, and the promise was that if there were food in the park-

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
... that a, that a percentage of every sale would go back into Madison Square Park 'cause my vision was to have a self-sustaining park.

Doug:
Right, right. 

Danny:
And the-

Doug:
Smart.

Danny:
... city reneged saying, "If you have food there that money will go to the New York City Parks Department at large, which actually goes to New York City's budget at large.

Doug:
Oh, no.

Danny:
And, so we just said-

Doug:
S-

Danny:
... "If you don't get back to your deal we're, there just won't be any food." So we parked it for a while, the idea for food-

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
... however we then came up with the idea of having modern art in the park to join their ... Um, uh, Madison Square Park actually has the city's best collection of, of 19th century sculptures, all these old, dead people that-

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
... you'd never even heard of half of 'em, it does. And unlike Union Square Park there's no plaza for a green market-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... so how do you get people to use this newly beautiful park? And we said, "Maybe art would do it." 

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
To this day Madison Square Park has extraordinary art shows-

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
... in fact it'll be in the Venice Biennale, which in next May, which is incredible. Anyway the ver- One of the very first artists that we brought in was a sculptor from Thailand. We were working with the Public Art Fund of New York City, and this guy had this crazy idea to have two New York City taxicabs on stilts-

Doug:
Yeah, uh-huh (affirmative). 

Danny:
... and he dressed up a hot dog cart to look like a taxicab, and they needed somebody to operate the hot dog cart. And, so I said, "Well, we'll do it, and we'll, we'll cook stuff out of the private dining room kitchen at Eleven Madison Park." and my team looked at me like I was crazy, and I said, "No, let's actually test this theory of hospitality 'cause I'm sick of people saying hospitality is only for fancy restaurants."

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
"I wanna see if we can actually show that it works even with something like a hot dog cart." So they came along with the deal, and we took four out of season-

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
... coat checkers, it's the summer of 2001-

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
... which was the summer of Gary Condit, uh, if you remember that-

Doug:
Yes.

Danny:
... leading, leading-

Doug:
Yes.

Danny:
... up to the-

Doug:
Yes.

Danny:
... awful things that happened here, um, in September of, of 2001. But we, we opened this hot dog cart, we cooked Chicago-style hot dogs, and the reason we picked that as an idea is A, I love 'em-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... and B, they've got eight toppings, and I wanted to prove that we could remember ... Everybody's, everybody's got a way they like it different, like I like everything except pickle relish-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... and you like everything except sport peppers, or whatever.

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
And, so we did it, and we got Vienna Beef hot dogs in from Chicago, that's all it was, we, yeah, we did a couple other things-

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
... like homemade beet stained potato chips, and-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... lemon verbena ice tea-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... and Rice Kris- homemade Rice Krispie Treats-

Doug:
(laughs) 

Danny:
... and that was it though, and, you know, 100 people would be in line literally every single day for this hot dog cart.

Doug:
What did ... What was that? That must have blown you ... Did that blow you away totally? I mean-

Danny:
It did, and we were-

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
... ha- It were ... We took something that-

Doug:
(laughs) I-

Danny:
... was really-

Doug:
... know.

Danny:
... just meant to be fun. Um, I think there's a, uh, there's a little hot dog cart sitting in my window-

Doug:
I see it.

Danny:
... right over-

Doug:
I see it.

Danny:
... there, which is-

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
... that's kinda where it all started.

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
And, so anyway, eh, we did this the, the next year, or th- there was a new artist, but the community said, "Can you please bring back that hot dog cart, it made us happy?" and everyone was pretty depressed in 2002-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... economically-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... and emotionally. And then 2003 they said, "Can you bring it back again?" and we did. And, um-

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
... and then finally in 2004 we went to the city, actually we did this in late 2003, and we said, "How about if we make this thing permanent, and we will philanthropically gift a kiosk to the park? Eh, the park will then become our landlord-"

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
"... if all of the proceeds of the rent can go into the park. We will own the business, but the park will now own the building, and therefore collect the rent."

Doug:
Collect the rent.

Danny:
"And wouldn't it be a neat thing if we could draw people to the park from 11:00 in the morning until 11:00 at night keeping the park safe? And wouldn't it be a neat thing if we could come up with an idea that, you know, it was broadly accessible-"

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Danny:
"... to people price-wise, and-"

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
"... concept-wise? And wouldn't it be a neat thing if that actually raised money for the park?" Now, we had no idea ... And we called it Shake Shack, and we had absolutely no idea that it would work. In fact the other thing we, you know, we basically said let's take our hot dogs, and we're just gonna ... I just sketched out a menu on the back-

Doug:
Uh-huh (affirmative).

Danny:
... of a, of, um, of scrap paper, which-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... we now have framed, and that menu is 90% of what's on Shake Shack's menu today. All we basically did was add burgers, and frozen custard, and-

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
... fries, to what we were already doing with, you know, the hot dogs, and, the same drink menu, et cetera-

Doug:
Huh.

Danny:
... and Shake Shack took off. And we still didn't think about it as being a scalable business although the, the, the back story here, Doug, is that, we were using Eleven Madison Park's wine cellar as the office-

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
... for Shake Shack, and a lo- We developed the Shack Burger, and developed all our recipes in the private dining room of Eleven Madison Park. Shake Shack was actually subsidizing Eleven Madison Park for a full four years without which I'm gonna, I'm gonna pretty much come out and say Eleven Madison Park may have gone out of business, um, as Tabla did. Tabla did go out of business in 2011. But Shake Shack was-

Doug:
Because of Shake-

Danny:
... funding-

Doug:
... Shack, yeah.

Danny:
... was funding Eleven Madison Park-

Doug:
Interesting. 

Danny:
... and then finally we bought Shake Shack from Eleven, from us-

Doug:
From u- (laughs) 

Danny:
... but we gave the proceeds to Eleven Madison Park-

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
... and Shake Shack became its own independent-

Doug:
Ye-

Danny:
... company after that.

Doug:
It's all ... It's its own company now.

Danny:
Yeah, so it's, it's a great story-

Doug:
It's, it's fantastic, and there's-

Danny:
... and we got-

Doug:
Uh, my count-

Danny:
... a nice-

Doug:
... there's-

Danny:
... business-

Doug:
... a hu-

Danny:
... out of it.

Doug:
... there's 168 Shake Shacks around the world.

Danny:
There are, but we didn't open a second one for five years-

Doug:
For five years.

Danny:
... and the only reason we opened the second one, I shouldn't the only reason, but a primary was if there was one recurring complaint about Shake Shack in those early years it was the line is too-

Doug:
Hmm.

Danny:
... damn long.

Doug:
(laughs) 

Danny:
And, so we decided wouldn't it be great if-

Doug:
I heard that-

Danny:
... if-

Doug:
... I heard that all the time.

Danny:
... if we could-

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
... cannibalize ourselves by opening a second one-

Doug:
Oh.

Danny:
... and mitigate the like line?

Doug:
Where was the second one?

Danny:
Second one is, uh, 77th and Columbus.

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
The line only got longer at number one when we opened number two-

Doug:
Oh, Danny.

Danny:
... 'cause more people knew about it, and now-

Doug:
Oh.

Danny:
... we had a tiger by the tail.

Doug:
What di- Oh.

Danny:
And, (laughs) and, so I s- I still thing the second Shake Shack m- deserves a lion share of the credit because if that had not worked there wouldn't be a company.

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
It's, you know, it's kind of like Gramercy Tavern for me, the second-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... one proved that the first-

Doug:
Proved you-

Danny:
... one was not-

Doug:
... could do it-

Danny:
... a fluke.

Doug:
... and then off ya go.

Danny:
Yeah.

Doug:
168 all over the world, Seoul, Tokyo, London, Hong Kong, Moscow, Beirut, Dubai, and recently Southern California-

Danny:
Yep.

Doug:
... and soon, Northern California soon? We were talking about that, or-

Danny:
Any minute-

Doug:
Any minute.

Danny:
... and we just opened in Seattle-

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
... uh, very, very recently, and we just announced that we'll be opening in Mexico, um-

Doug:
Great.

Danny:
... the Philippines. Yeah, it's, it's really cool-

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
... to see how this culture works everywhere. 

Doug:
That's incredible. Well, good on Seattle 'cause I just took, uh, number four to school, just dropped him off three-

Danny:
Quart-

Doug:
... weeks ago.

Danny:
Quarto in Seattle-

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
... University of Washington?

Doug:
Yeah, he's a-

Danny:
Oh-

Doug:
... Husky.

Danny:
... that's a beautiful school.

Doug:
He's ... He ha- We have launched him successfully. And, um, you know, we got the meal plan, right, and, and they've got great options compared to when you and I went to school, I mean there's, they've got all sorts of things. And all of a sudden, you know, we, he's, "Ah, I need more money in my other account, other account."-

Danny:
Yeah.

Doug:
... and we looked at the thing, and he's going out, (laughing) and he's, you know, he's, he's, he's going into Seattle, and eating at great restaurants. It's like Tate -

Danny:
Who-

Doug:
... you know-

Danny:
... who, who-

Doug:
... you gotta-

Danny:
... did you-

Doug:
... yo- yo- 

Danny:
... think you were bringing up?

Doug:
Well, yeah, I'm still hope, you know, we, we're trying to reign that in, but, uh, that's been fun. Um, hospitality ... I gotta ask you because, what was the moment ... I mean you have great restaurants, great food, great service, but, you know, early on, and your main theme has been hospitality and service. Was there a moment that triggered that, or is-

Danny:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Doug:
... it just all the moments put together? 

Danny:
Well, it's all the moments put together. I think growing up in St. Louis made me realize that, the restaurants I fell in love with in retrospect were actually nicer than they were yummy in, in many cases. Uh-

Doug:
Hmm.

Danny:
... the, the food revolution now has hit St. Louis, but it really hadn't when I was growing up, but thank goodness 'cause that's where all the ideas for things like Blue Smoke and Shake Shack came from.

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
But nonetheless I think working for my dad as a tour guide in Rome one summer, and realizing that, I'd be with these, I'd pick up these cranky jet lagged tourists at the airport in the morning and I had this innate desire and ability to turn the crankiest into the happiest five days later. And I wasn't f- still thinking about it all that consciously 'til another thing happened, which was I think in the 1980s, it was really when we started hearing about chefs as celebrities, and a lot of the journali- food journalists were writing about these chefs as personalities. Um-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... and you would go these restaurants helmed by these famous chefs, and they weren't very nice to you at the restaurant, and it started this dichotomy of the kinda restaurant, I just started asking why can't you get great food at a place that's also nice?

Doug:
(laughs) Yeah.

Danny:
And, and-

Doug:
A simple question.

Danny:
And I think it was 1995 when, soon after opening Gramercy Tavern-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Danny:
... that I actually named it for the first time because that was when we had two restaurants for the first time, so Danny couldn't be at the front door a hundred, wherever I was-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... I was not at the other. And every time I went to Gramercy Tavern in those early days something different happened there that I would not have done. We were not being generous with, with guests, uh, we were not, we weren't trusting people, a- and it occurred, and I ... And my stomach was just completely upset. Uh, as a matter of fact our bookkeeper who is now bookkeeping for both restaurants-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Danny:
... I went in early one morning, and he had two sets of keys on his desk, and one had a smiley face, a yellow smiley face, and one had a yellow frowning face, and I said, "What the hell's that?"-

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
... and he said, "Well, you know, the frowning face is Gramercy Tavern 'cause that's how we're treating people here. And the smiley face-"

Doug:
Huh, oh.

Danny:
"... is Union Square Café." 

Doug:
(laughs) You're kidding. 

Danny:
And that was-

Doug:
I've never heard that-

Danny:
I called an all-

Doug:
... wow.

Danny:
... staff meeting, and, and that was the first time I named hospitality as something that we were going to really be differentiating from service because service ... Um, and this had been burning in mind-

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
... when we, Union Square Café won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Service in America in 1992.

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
I once again felt like an imposture 'cause I knew there were way better, more refined service techniques in other restaurants across the country, and I knew that service as a word was not capturing what we were actually being rewarded for. And yeah, the service is good at Union-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... Square Café, but it was how we were making people feel, not the technical service, but the emotional hospitality.

Doug:
The emotional, how you feel-

Danny:
And-

Doug:
... when you leave-

Danny:
... that was-

Doug:
... right.

Danny:
... when I basically said, "Look, performance, how good the food is-"

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
"... how beautiful the choreography of the decanting of the wine is, all that gets ... If you do that all perfectly the performance, including service, you get 49 points maximum, which leaves 51 points if you wanna get 100 on your test-"

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
"... for how did you make someone feel while you're doing all this." And all this was coming together every year because back then the only feedback we got on an annual basis was this Zagat, or s- there was the Zagat survey. And I kept seeing Union Square Café rising, and rising, and rising-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Danny:
... in the category called New York's Favorite Restaurants, but it would always hover around 10 or 11 for food and service-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... and I didn't understand how we could be New York's favorite restaurant when so many restaurants below us actually had, on that list, actually had higher scores for food and service-

Doug:
Food and service.

Danny:
... and certainly décor. And that's the year that I said, "Guess what?" said, "Zagat forgot to ask about hospitality, it's a very, very different thing, and that's the X factor." 

Doug:
So that's when it happened?

Danny:
And that's when we named it, our-

Doug:
Who-

Danny:
... group, The Union Square Hospitality Group, and I said, "Yeah, we constantly wanna make our food, and wine, and décor, better, and service, but we gotta just triple down on our core competence, which is how do you make people feel."

Doug:
It's the two keys, the smiley face and the frowny face.

Danny:
Yep. (laughs) 

Doug:
Wow, never heard that one. (laughs) Um, as usual you're not standing still, tell me about Tacocina.

Danny:
Tacocina.

Doug:
Tacocina, I'm sorry, lo siento.

Danny:
Oh, that was good. So d-

Doug:
Thank you.

Danny:
... yeah, Tacocina wa- is just a really, really fun opportunity to, um, once again land in a brand new public park, which is called Domino Park, which was created, um, by a, a visionary company in Brooklyn. They bought the old Domino Sugar factory, which has been an eyesore for many, many years-

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
... on the, um, East River in Williamsburg. Completely restoring it, and that's gonna be offices, they're building residential towers behind it, and as part of it they created a brand new beautiful park right on the river. And they invited us to conceive something to put there that would give people a reason to wanna use it.

Doug:
M- Don't you love getting invitations, look at you-

Danny:
I love those kind-

Doug:
... look at you. (laughs) 

Danny:
... of invitations, and clearly, um, we wanted to do something new. We, we said, you know, "Let's not do Shake Shack, that's kind of-"

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
"... obvious, but let's once again ask ourselves what would be a kind of food that anybody could eat-"

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
"... m- um, where the price points not an object." And, you know, it, it took me back to, uh, an experience I had many, many, many years ago in Santa Barbara at a place called La Super-Rica, I bet you've been there before.

Doug:
No, I have not.

Danny:
It's a little taco shack, Julia Child used to love going there-

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
... when she lived in Santa Barbara, and we'll see, it's, it's had a great first season.

Doug:
Cool.

Danny:
Um, cold weather is not its friend so far. It's open, but, um-

Doug:
(laughs)

Danny:
... on warm days and warm nights the place was just jumping-

Doug:
Good.

Danny:
... all summer. 

Doug:
And the other one, uh, Manhatta.

Danny:
Yep. So Manhatta opened, about three months ago-

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
... on the 60th floor of a building that many, many New Yorkers have never gone to called 28 Liberty.

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
It used to be, uh, Chase Plaza, it was the headquarters, um, and in fact David Rockefeller's office was in the building, and, and we're on the 60th floor, which has some of the most commanding views you will ever see of this city-

Doug:
Wow.

Danny:
... and i- We m- developed an amazing bar, um, and, and a really, really fun restaurant. 

Doug:
Yeah, I've heard the bar is great, I gotta get up there.

Danny:
Yeah-

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
... you s- you should just go because-

Doug:
Go for a drink.

Danny:
... you know, for that kind of view in New York you mostly have to pay to get up the elevator-

Doug:
Right. (laughs) 

Danny:
... seriously. And just go take in the view, and, and-

Doug:
Okay.

Danny:
... it's great.

Doug:
All right, it's on the list. So I've gotta ask ya one last thing. Personally Union Square Café, I've got memories, my daughter Katie, seven years old, her first oysters. She's ... The, the server came over, and m- Katie, she at seven said, "I'll have, I'll have the oysters." and I was like, "That's a new one." and they, they came out, and I, she, first one went down the hatch no problem, I said, "Wow, that was impressive." Second one, (laughs) the second one was great, you know, I'm watching her, she takes it, she's gives, she looks at me, she gives me the look, it's like well, there's an issue, so I had a napkin boom, right back out. And the server was just like so good, just came over, and just-

Danny:
(laughs)

Doug:
... gracefully, it was like totally cool. Um, m- the college boy, "Tate his first birthday, um, birthday lunch. My dad's 85th birthday-

Danny:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Doug:
... where my whole family was there, and somehow you found a bottle of vintage 1924, his birth year of wine, I forget what wine it was too, but you found it. 

Danny:
It probably-

Doug:
Uh-

Danny:
... went ... It probably Madera.

Doug:
Yeah, it was actually, so thank you for that. So m- when you started out did you ever think you woulda become a maker of memories because that's what you've done?

Danny:
I will say thank you to that. No, but, uh, but I, I think that that's ... The, the role of restaurants I think are twofold. Number one is to be a placemaker. If you can create a place that changes the way people look at where they are, that's something, and then if you can create a place that people enjoy enough that they wanna go back and create memories then you've really got something. And I feel like my favorite restaurants in the world do both of those things.

Doug:
Yeah.

Danny:
Um, you know, i- What ... The greatest compliment in the world-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Danny:
... is when I'm traveling, or someone else is traveling, and the very first place you go off the airplane in a new city is that restaurant, you're going there because that restaurant actually has terroir in the city-

Doug:
Hmm.

Danny:
... I, and I have restaurants like that where I know I'm where I am-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... while I'm there, and-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... it could also be the last restaurant-

Doug:
Right.

Danny:
... before getting on the airplane. So whenever we see suit cases we go, "That's a place that means-"

Doug:
That's cool.

Danny:
"... something even more than I'm hungry." It means I, I, I, I wanna know where I am, and I wanna remember what happened.

Doug:
Wow. Danny Meyer-

Danny:
(laughs)

Doug:
... thanks man, it was great. Thanks for taking the time.

Danny:
Love you, Doug-

Doug:
It's so-

Danny:
... thank you.

Doug:
... seeing you, be good. 

Full Transcript

Doug:
Everybody welcome back. Another episode of The Taste, this is Doug Shafer, we've got a special guest today, Cleo Pahlmeyer. Welcome Cleo.

Cleo:
Thank you.

Doug:
And, um, I've got to tell you, I got to tell you a couple of stories.

Cleo:
Okay.

Doug:
So, you and I first met, it was about a year ago, six, eig- eight months ago. It was a vintner dinner. If I get this wrong, correct me.

Cleo:
Okay.

Doug:
And we were, ah, it was five or six vintners hosting the Danny Meyer team of somms, the

Cleo:
That's right.

Doug:
... U- U-, ah, Union Square Hospitality Group, they're five or six different somms from his restaurants. And we had dinner down at, ah, Andy Erickson's house, in-

Cleo:
That's right.

Doug:
... Coombsville, and that's the first time I met you. And it was like, Cleo Pahlmeyer, it's like, "Wait," you know, "Where's Jayson?" And she goes, "No, this, I'm Cleo-

Cleo:
(laughs).

Doug:
... and I've been around, I'm gonna run this thing." So, that was fun, and, um, it, you know, I knew you were coming in here today so I was thinking about first time I met your dad.

Cleo:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Doug:
Because it probably had to be '84, '85, I'd just started at Shafer, and I was down in San Francisco selling wine, and I walked in to, you know, liquor wine store,-

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
... and he was working the floor.

Cleo:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Doug:
I started talking to him. Nice guy. He tells me he's a lawyer. I say, "You're a lawyer? What are you doing in a wine shop?" He goes, "I want to make wine." I said, "What do you mean?" 'Cause ... And this guy, you know, I was selling him Shafer wines, and he was ah, ... he's the buyer, but he-

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
... was like, "I want to do this. I want to-

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
... grow grapes and make wine." I said, "Well, go get 'em tiger, good luck to you."

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
And I didn't see him again until about three years later, I ran into him up here in Napa, and said, "Hey." He goes, "Hey." He goes ... I said, "You did it." He goes, "Yeah, I'm making wine, here's my first one."

Cleo:
(laughs).

Doug:
So it, it happened, this guy, obviously a lawyer, and-

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
... got the wine bug, and, and did it.

Cleo:
Yeah. It's interesting because he is someone that, I mean that is something that I admire about him the most, is that here's someone who says, "I'm passionate about this, I'm gonna do it." And he did it.

Doug:
So neat.

Cleo:
And, you know, you've ... have a lot of people that got into the business through family or some, some other path, and then of course there's also other people that are just totally inspired by wine.

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
Ah, which h- happens to all of us, right, ah, all of us in the industry. And so I think that's one of the things I admire most about my dad, is that he just ... his passion, just lets that ... lets that drive him.

Doug:
Great. And I know it's great. So, I kinda got, I think we've got like two stories here today, 'cause what ... so I'd like to do, if it's okay with you,-

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
... is start off, and maybe give us, everyone out here a- a background on, you know, Pahlmeyer Winery, Pahlmeyer wines, you know, where it's been, you know, kind of before Cleo.

Cleo:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Doug:
And then we can get in when you joined, you know,-

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
... joined up, and what's been going on since. So tell ... talk to me about Pahlmeyer.

Cleo:
Yeah. So like I said, my ... so when you met my dad, ah, you said that was like '84.

Doug:
'84,-

Cleo:
Yeah. 

Doug:
... '85-ish, in there I think.

Cleo:
So, so I was born in '83, um,-

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
... which I understand is the year you started making wine. (laughs).

Doug:
You've done your ... ah, man, you've done ... I hope you haven't done all your homework.

Cleo:
No, not all my homework.

Doug:
I'll be in trouble. Okay.

Cleo:
Um, but I picked up that one. And so, when I was born, my dad and mom, um, or after my brother was born, he was born about a year and a half later.

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cleo:
They decided that they were gonna go to Spain, and just spend a couple of years-

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
... just traveling around Spain. So they did that, And then came back to, um, to California and f- from what I've pieced together, that's about the time that we moved to Napa, and, ah, he started, started making wines. He had been kind of doing some négociant labels and bringing ... importing those from Europe and then so while he was selling the stuff on the floor, he was also selling people (laughs) his, ah, his, ah, ah, imports too.

Doug:
There you go.

Cleo:
That he was, ah, on, on the side.

Doug:
(laughs).

Cleo:
So he was ... he was a lawyer and in law school he, um, well he had ... he had gotten the bug, the wine bug from his dad, from my-

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
... grandfather, ah, Ralph Pahlmeyer, and my grandfather, took my, my dad and my, ah, uncle to Europe and they traveled in, um, Bordeaux mostly, and some of the great wine regions there, Champagne, and, ah, and that's where my dad really, really fell in love with wine.

Doug:
So do you think that's why they wanted to go, go live in Spain, your folks? Early on?

Cleo:
Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Doug:
Yeah. Okay. Neat.

Cleo:
They, ah, you know they, they just ... they loved wine, they loved traveling, loved Europe, um, loved food, and, um, yeah, I don't know. I don't, they didn't, they-

Doug:
Were you born? Were you b- ... were you b- ... were you ... were you-

Cleo:
... don't seem very responsible parents, do they?

Doug:
I know, I was gonna say. But well actually no. Yeah. They're-

Cleo:
(laughs). I mean, what about the job and the 401(k), and I mean, goodness gracious (laughs).

Doug:
Yeah, but I'm, I'm really jealous 'cause it's like they did what we all want to do.

Cleo:
Totally, why aren't I doing that right now?

Doug:
Yeah.

Cleo:
So I was, ah, I was like one or two years old.

Doug:
Okay

Cleo:
And, ah, in fact I learned Spanish before English. My mother speaks Spanish and French, um, and Portuguese, she's an interpreter and translator.

Doug:
Oh, neat.

Cleo:
Um, and, ah, but, and so then when I started ... when we moved back to Napa and I started going to school here, um, Sunrise Montessori, ah, where my kids go now (laughs).

Doug:
Got it, got it.

Cleo:
They ... I, ah, I, although I could only speak Spanish, and, um, there was a teacher there, ah, Cheryl, who just retired a couple of years ago, and she, ah, could speak French and I think a little bit of Spanish, so I mostly latched onto her, but then I quickly realized that when I speak, nobody understands what I'm saying.

Doug:
No one understands, yeah. 

Cleo:
And I ... and then I just ended up refusing to speak, ah, speak Spanish anymore, and, um, and I've been taking Spanish classes ever since.

Doug:
(laughs).

Cleo:
(laughs).

Doug:
So back ... so back to Pahlmeyer. So he was ... he was-

Cleo:
Yeah. So back to Pahlmeyer. So, so my dad in, in law school, he had gotten the wine bug-

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
... for traveling in Europe and started a wine tasting group. Um, and through that group he, um, met John Caldwell. Um,-

Doug:
Okay, John Caldwell, who's Coombsville, s-

Cleo:
Coombsville. 

Doug:
... southeast Napa.

Cleo:
Yes, and Caldwell Vineyard -

Doug:
The pioneer actually of that area.

Cleo:
Of that area, exactly. And so they had ... so John, John's family had a property in, in Coombsville.

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
And so my dad, ah, the first he was like, "Hey, well you should build some starter mansions on, on that property." So, so-

Doug:
(laughs).

Cleo:
... they looked into that. Well the county wouldn't let them, let them-

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
... sub-divide the, the land. So, ah, so it was like, "Well how about a vineyard?" But that wasn't a ... that wasn't the first, you know, idea that they came up with, 'cause nobody was planting vineyards in Coombsville back then.

Doug:
Ah, there ... back, ah, yeah, Coombsville was not planted, it was thought to be too cold.

Cleo:
Too cold.

Doug:
Too cold a region.

Cleo:
Exactly.

Doug:
This is-

Cleo:
And the ... where, where John's, ah, vineyard is, it's very steep, ah, hillside.

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
And that's also, people weren't really planting on the hillsides quite yet.

Doug:
Exa- Uh-huh (affirmative), that's true.

Cleo:
Um, back, back then, or if, if they were, it was ... it was new. And so they got this crazy idea, "Well let's plant a vineyard out here," and ... so they partnered together and, and end up planting the vineyard.

Doug:
So he was working with Caldwell. I didn't ... I'd wondered about that. That's who-

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
Yeah. And so then, um, ah, Randy Dunn, ah, was interested in what they were doing down there. They had, John Caldwell had smuggled in Bordeaux clones.

Doug:
(laughs).

Cleo:
Um, they, they imported ... together they went to, my dad and John, went to Europe, ah, they went to Bordeaux, they, ah, they figured out which clones they wanted to bring back. And then, ah, imported them to, ah, to Canada, which was no problem. Then they had to get them from Canada into the U.S.

Doug:
And I'm gonna guess, this is a gue- ... I'm gonna, I'm ... you ... I might be totally wrong, I bet you they got 'em in- into Napa Valley in shoe boxes, 'cause John Caldwell sold shoes at the Vintage 1870 in Yountville, because this was-

Cleo:
Exactly.

Doug:
... when I was in high school, in college. I remember he ran the shoe store.

Cleo:
Yup.

Doug:
I didn't know he was doing grapes. Tell me, is, is that-

Cleo:
So John was-

Doug:
Is that how he got them in?

Cleo:
... taking tri- ... That's ex- ... You, just totally guessed it.

Doug:
Oh, my gosh.

Cleo:
You, you just totally guessed that.

Doug:
(laughs).

Cleo:
Yeah, so, and you're totally right. Yeah, so John's family has a shoe store.

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
And, ah, so John was, ah, carrying the truckloads over the border, um, on the east coast, and then shipping them back here in shoe boxes.

Doug:
(laughs).

Cleo:
And, um-

Doug:
I can't believe I guessed it.

Cleo:
I can't believe-

Doug:
I did (laughs).

Cleo:
... you guessed it either. I think you're, you're stealing my thunder here, but you totally just guessed it. (laughs).

Doug:
No, no, no. I just ... because, well you know I used to buy shoes from John Caldwell.

Cleo:
Yeah. Yeah. 

Doug:
You know, this was years before he started growing grapes.

Cleo:
Shoe boxes. That's exactly right.

Doug:
Oh, how funny.

Cleo:
And, um, but on one of the final truckloads John got caught by the authorities.

Doug:
(laughs).

Cleo:
And, ah, and so they ended up, um, cooperating with the authorities.

Doug:
Okay, of course.

Cleo:
And deciding, okay, we'll turn over all of our illegal contraband, meanwhile all the dormant budwood was tucked away on the property, um, in an old barn.

Doug:
Great.

Cleo:
But on the day before the authorities were to arrive to pick up all of this ... all of this, ah-

Doug:
Contraband.

Cleo:
... foreign, all this contraband, um, they went and purchased the same number of vine cuttings from U.C. Davis.

Doug:
(laughs).

Cleo:
And when they ... authorities came to pick up the, ah, the budwood, they turned over the purchased-

Doug:
The, the purchased.

Cleo:
... budwood from U.C. Davis instead.

Doug:
Oh my gosh.

Cleo:
And so then, um, so then, I don't know, months later maybe they followed up with, with my dad and John, they said, "Oh, well you know, we're so glad that you, um, cooperated with us, because-

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
... look at this whole printout of all the diseases that we found (laughs) in this budwood."

Doug:
Diseases from the budwood that, that, th-

Cleo:
Little did they know they were testing their own stuff.

Doug:
They're testing their own stuff that was growing up at Davis.

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
That's funny. Well that's the way it was. It was ... it was, took-

Cleo:
Yup.

Doug:
... a long time to figure out how to get clean budwood. Um, to this-

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
... day it's still a challenge.

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
Those guys, a couple of outlaws. You know, those two, you put ... I'm thinking about putting Cald- ... John Caldwell and your father, Jayson Pahlmeyer, in-

Cleo:
Yup.

Doug:
... the same room together.

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
They're a couple of outlaws.

Cleo:
Yeah. Well I don't know.

Doug:
In a good way. In a good way.

Cleo:
A couple of outlaws. You know how it is with-

Doug:
Well-

Cleo:
... with, ah, with men getting up in the years, the, the stories take on a life of their own.

Doug:
(laughs).

Cleo:
So, maybe-

Doug:
No, no they don't. No they don't.

Cleo:
... you should put them in separate rooms and, ah, and, and, and, and, and then, then compare stories (laughs).

Doug:
Well, you know, it's ... look, Cleo, you know, you sell wine, you know lil- little embellishment's okay now and again. But that's-

Cleo:
Yeah, yeah, of course. As, yeah, as my husband always says, ah, "Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story." (laughs).

Doug:
Amen to th- ... Amen to that. Well how cool. So they got together, out in Coombsville, where no grapes were growing, 'cause it was too cold.

Cleo:
Yup.

Doug:
And they started growing grapes.

Cleo:
Yup, so, um, so clearly, I mean, it took the, you know it takes several years f-

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
... in, in, in ... under the best conditions for um, for your vines to get established. And so, ah, but they, they were, you know, they were struggling a little bit. Every- everything was new back then in terms-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cleo:
... of viticulture. Everyone was still figuring things out. I mean we still are-

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
... here in Napa Valley today. We don't have 100s and 100s of years like they do in, um, in the old world-

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
... of knowledge. Um, ah, but Randy Dunn, um, I think I me- ... started talking about this earlier, but he, um, was interested in this vineyard, he obviously ... for his, ah, for his Napa Valley bottling.

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
Ah, cle- clearly he's, um, you know, he was interested in Bordeaux clones, and so, ah, so he came to check out their vineyard, and the first, ah, meeting, my dad's practically tripping over himself because, oh my God, here's Randy Dunn already, um,-

Doug:
Interested.

Cleo:
... one of the great winemakers in Napa Valley.

Doug:
'Cause he was ... he had been at Caymus, and might have still been there, but then he, within a few years after Caymus, he started his own brand, Dunn Vineyards, right.

Cleo:
Exactly, yeah. And so ... and all he had to, to say at the time was, ah, was, ah, "Don't screw it up." I think he might have used another word, I don't know-

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
... if we're allowed to swear today (laughs).

Doug:
You can do anything ... you can do anything ... so anything you want, this is our show.

Cleo:
And, ah, anyways, he came back another time and, and, and said he wanted to purchase some fruit, and my dad said, "Well, you know I do-, I don't want to just," um, you know, "We're not just selling grapes, I want to make my own wine, it's my dream to make, um, my own, um Bordeaux style wine in Napa Valley." Um, his, "My own Mouton," as my dad said.

Doug:
Right, okay.

Cleo:
And so handshake, a deal on the vineyard, and Randy Dunn became our first winemaker.

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
Um, so our first vintage was 1986.

Doug:
'86, okay.

Cleo:
With, ah, the Pahlmeyer, the time we called it the red table wine, um, now it's Pahlmeyer Proprietary Red, um. Yeah. 

Doug:
Right, and it's always been a blend, right? It's a-

Cleo:
It's always been a blend.

Doug:
Right. Bordeaux blend.

Cleo:
Yeah. The five major Bordeaux varieties. Yeah. 

Doug:
Great, and so, ah, made the wine, ah, did he have ... do you guys have a facility? Or did he at the time have a actual winery?

Cleo:
No, no, we, um, yeah, we did custom crush all the way until, um, through 2011.

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
Um, and now we, we have our own facility and team, um, that we operate.

Doug:
And where is it exactly? Where's?

Cleo:
So we, ah, we make our wine at, um, a facility in Calistoga.

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
So we don't own the facility, but we operate it.

Doug:
You operate it.

Cleo:
Yeah. 

Doug:
And, and through the years you've got ... but s- starting with Randy Dunn, you've had some great winemakers.

Cleo:
Yup.

Doug:
And they-

Cleo:
That's right. So, um, following, ah, Randy Dunn, um, Helen Turley took over in 1992.

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
Um, and she, ah, she was a ... I mean clearly really establishing her own name then, ah, consulting for-

Doug:
Yes.

Cleo:
... ah, some of the, ah, you know, first cult wines in, ah, in Napa ... in Napa Valley.

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
And she and my dad worked together, ah, through 1999.

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
That's a good step.

Cleo:
Yeah. Yeah. Ah, my dad has many, many fond memories of, of working with, with Helen. Um, they, they had quite a bond.

Doug:
Oh, she was ... mm.

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
Yeah. I think I remember ... I remember hearing about that.

Cleo:
Yeah. Yeah. 

Doug:
And then Erin Green, Kale Anderson, Bibiana Conzález.

Cleo:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). And, ah,-

Doug:
And now-

Cleo:
... and now Jennifer Williams.

Doug:
Who was at Spottswoode for a long time.

Cleo:
That's right.

Doug:
Great.

Cleo:
That's right, yeah, so that was-

Doug:
She's a super winemaker.

Cleo:
That's right, yeah, that was exciting for me, because, um, I took over as president of Pahlmeyer, um, about a year and a half ago, and-

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
... so, um, Jennifer was, was the first winemaker I've ever hired, and, um, and it was a, a daunt- ... it's, I mean, it's a lot of pressure in that process.

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cleo:
And, ah-

Doug:
Yeah.

Cleo:
But I am just, ah, so thrilled to be working-

Doug:
Good.

Cleo:
To be working with such a lovely, um, person, and with such a talented person, so, yeah.

Doug:
Good, I'm glad, I mean I'm with you, I know about that hiring and firing, it's, ah-

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
It's, it's like-

Cleo:
And, and being-

Doug:
... comes right down to-

Cleo:
... no disrespect to anyone else on my team, but the winemaker is, is, is the, is key, very key person (laughs).

Doug:
That's, that's ... Very key person.

Cleo:
Yes.

Doug:
And I've got to through in something, because I was aware of it, 'cause I'm a little bit old- ... a little bit older than you, but, ah, you probably weren't too aware of it at the time, back in the day, because people need to see this movie-

Cleo:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Doug:
... you know, and, um, so apparently th- there was a movie being shot and starred, ah, Demi Moore and, um, oh Michael Douglas.

Cleo:
Oh yeah.

Doug:
It's called Disclosure.

Cleo:
Yup.

Doug:
And, ah, there was a, a very critical scene where there was a bottle of Chardonnay, it was a Pahlmeyer Chardonnay, and my recollection is that just, the exposure for you guys was fantastic. Was like-

Cleo:
Well, you ... it definitely was. Um, so that was, I mean that was just dumb luck I guess, honestly.

Doug:
Hey-

Cleo:
It's a ... it's a great story though, of course, so, um, so my dad gets a phone call one day from a ... some, ah, producer in, in Hollywood and-

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
... saying, "Oh, we want to put your wine in a movie." "Oh, okay, well you know it's, um," maybe it was $30 a bottle at the time, "it's $30 a bottle, you know, okay. Goodbye." 

Doug:
(laughs). I love it, he's gonna ... he's gonna make 'em pay for it. Yeah.

Cleo:
Yeah. And, um, you know, my dad's assuming, like, his, his very safe assumption that, "Oh, it's just gonna be a bottle sitting on a table in the background-

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
... of some scene."

Doug:
Yeah.

Cleo:
And, um, anyways, and so then the next day an executive producer calls him back, he says, "Um, Mr. Pahlmeyer, I don't think you understand."

Doug:
(laughs).

Cleo:
You know, "We want to have your wine in this movie, do you know how much money Budweiser paid to have their can of beer in Tom Cruise's hand in, in, in-

Doug:
Right, product, product placement thing, yeah.

Cleo:
... Tom Cruise's last movie?" So my dad starts back-pedaling 90 miles an hour.

Doug:
(laughs).

Cleo:
So, "Okay, okay, how many cases do you need?" And, um, sends them the wine, then doesn't think much of it after that, um, he and my stepmother were actually invited to the premier of the movie.

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
They had something else that they'd already committed to, couldn't go. So there they are sitting at the Cinedome in, ah-

Doug:
In, in Napa.

Cleo:
... in Napa.

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
The, ah, the c-

Doug:
The local, local theater.

Cleo:
... the, the one that would flood every couple of years and-

Doug:
Right, that's the one.

Cleo:
... it smelled kinda funny, and ... (laughs). And, ah, watching this movie, and they practically fell off their chairs when they saw how the wine figured in the movie. So, it was, first of all, it was Demi Moore and Michael Douglas-

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
... at the peak of their careers.

Doug:
They were the stars, yeah.

Cleo:
So this was a ... this was a, a blockbuster movie for, I think it was released in '93, '92, something-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cleo:
... like that. And, um, and the wine was actually p- ... integral to the plot of the movie.

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
So, um, Michael Douglas character, Demi Moore character, had been ... had a relationship in the past, um, and then since, since moved on. Michael Douglas was married with kids, working for a tech firm in Seattle and he's gunning for this promotion, but instead of getting the promotion, they bring in his ex-girlfriend, ah, Demi Moore character.

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
And so she takes over as his boss at the company. And then she, um, plans this, ah, late night, ah, meeting, um,-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cleo:
... and, ah, Michael Douglas walks into the room and, ah, she gets off the phone and she has a bottle of Pahlmeyer Chardonnay, ah, chilling. And he goes, "Oh the '91 Pahlmeyer, I've been looking all over for this."

Doug:
(laughs).

Cleo:
And then she says,-

Doug:
So he got to ... got all ... the got all ... Michael Douglas, you know, deal.

Cleo:
Oh, yeah. And then she says in a very seductive way, "I like all the boys under me to be happy." (laughs).

Doug:
Aye, aye, aye, aye, aye. So there you go.

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
So ladies and gentlemen you need to like, you know, get on Netflix and, um-

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
... and get a bottle of Pahlmeyer Chardonnay and done, and, um-

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
.. watch, watch the movie, Disclosure. Yeah, you can.

Cleo:
So I won't ... I won't ruin the plot of the movie, but it ... then the wine is mentioned a couple of other times-

Doug:
Yeah.

Cleo:
... um, in, in the-

Doug:
In the court case, and all that stuff.

Cleo:
Towards ... in the course of the movie. Yeah.

Doug:
That's so cool.

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
So there's Pahlmeyer today. So, let's go to chapter two here.

Cleo:
Okay.

Doug:
Let's talk about Cleo. So, born and raised in Napa.

Cleo:
That's right.

Doug:
Um-

Cleo:
Born in San Francisco.

Doug:
... born in ... okay.

Cleo:
Ah, raised in Napa, after my parents came back from gallivanting through Europe. (laughs).

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
Yeah, so that was, ah, would have been '86 when we came back here.

Doug:
Got it. And high school was-

Cleo:
So actually, um, went to boarding school in-

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
... in Delaware, ah, St. Andrew's School, which was, ah, I must have been a pretty precocious, um, 13 year old, I guess, because I, um ... One of my good friends growing up, um, Claire Hudson actually.

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
And her family, um, ah, got Hudson Vineyards, they-

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
... just, that's what they did, they go to boarding school. And so that put the idea in my head, and, ah, I was like, "Hey dad, can I go to boarding school too?" And, um-

Doug:
That's pretty wild, 'cause you were like-

Cleo:
And so-

Doug:
... 13, 14 years old right?

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
Yeah.

Cleo:
(laughs). Yeah, and so I ended up, um, essentially going to college four years early. Um, but it was ... it was awesome! I loved it.

Doug:
How were ... he, he, he was good? You loved ... I'm ... In Delaware. A long way away.

Cleo:
In Delaware, a long way away. Yeah. Yeah, so, um, but it was great and then I ended up going to, um, college at University of Virginia.

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
So stuck around on the east coast. And honestly didn't think that I would be back in California ever, but of course you never know where your life's gonna end up when you're in your teens and early 20s.

Doug:
Well, we all keep ... Right, we ... none of us do. Um, and so I, I did some research on you. It was Art History, and then Masters. Masters in-

Cleo:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). After college, um, I was sort of looking around at all my other friends, or as ... as senior year was coming to a close, going, "Oh, geez, like there's these job fairs and people are getting these position at banks in New York, and at these other, you know, retail ... large retailers." I'm like, "My gosh, what do ... what am I going to do?"

Doug:
What do I do? What do I do?

Cleo:
So like, "Ah, Dad, can I stay in school for a little bit longer?" (laughs).

Doug:
(laughs).

Cleo:
So, um, I heard about this great program in London, um, that's a Master's Degree in, um, The Connoisseurship of Fine and Decorative Art. So I decided to continue to pursue my, ah, love for Art History.

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
And do that for, ah, about a year and a half.

Doug:
In London?

Cleo:
In London. Yeah.

Doug:
How was that?

Cleo:
That was great. That was great.

Doug:
I was gonna say, "How could it not be great?"

Cleo:
Yeah. Yeah, I mean it is one of those cities where it's definitely kind of like New York, it's, it's more fun if you have more money in the bank, but ... (laughs).

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cleo:
Um, but it was, it was a great experience. Yeah.

Doug:
I like that.

Cleo:
It was fun being in London, 'cause it also was a nice jumping-off point for really, ah, inexpensive and short flights to all sorts of places in Europe too, so.

Doug:
You got to travel.

Cleo:
Yeah, I got to travel a good amount, so-

Doug:
Oh, that's great. That's good.

Cleo:
... you know it was a great experience. Um, and then ... and then following London, um, I ... well while I was ... while I was living there I was working at, um, Bonham's Auctioneers.

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
Um, helping out, um, in one of the entry level positions, as you know, as a ... to run auctions.

Doug:
W- ... So, and what, what types of ... would they auction? Everything, or just ... or was it wine, or art? Was it mostly art?

Cleo:
Um, you know, I was ... it was mostly artwork and furniture and things like that. Um, but then of course, they also had wine auctions and somebody pointed out to me, "Oh, look at your ... here's Pahlmeyer wine in this wine auction." I was kinda like, "What, really? In this international wine auction?"

Doug:
Well were you kind of ... were you kind of tuned into the wine thing? I mean well at that-

Cleo:
No.

Doug:
... point ... at that point Pahlmeyer was rocking pretty, pretty well, right?

Cleo:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean my dad, um-

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
Yeah. That would have been the, um, the early 2000's and, um, and at that, ah, point my, ah ... yeah, I guess it was around that time, maybe a couple of years later, that my dad started expressing interest in sort of stepping back from the business. Um, so it sort of all happened around this time, that-

Doug:
But were you d- ... It's, ah, I'm interrupting-

Cleo:
I started to kind of actually-

Doug:
... you, but were you drinking wine? Were you kind of-

Cleo:
Ah, I ... No, I, I wasn't the wine ... it wasn't some experience with a bottle of wine that-

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
... set me on this course. It was the realization that, "Wow, look at what my dad has done."

Doug:
Oh.

Cleo:
Like maybe all these ... all these ... him, telling me how great he is ... maybe it's actually (laughs) so-

Doug:
(laughs).

Cleo:
... true, and not, not just, "Oh, okay, Dad." Um, but, ah, so seeing, seeing what he had accomplished and how the wine is received all over the country, all over the world, um, and-

Doug:
Mm.

Cleo:
... then also seeing him start to say, "Okay look, I'm, I, I need to retire. I need to step back from the business." Um, I thought, "Well, gosh, I mean, then you lose ... you lose the secret sauce, if it's not a family owned-

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
... business, and not a family driven business, then what is it?" And, um, I mean it certainly ... it would ... it's certainly not what it is now. And so at that point, I started seriously considering, ah, getting involved in the family business. For that reason, to continue what my dad had built.

Doug:
You know something, you know h- ... thanks for sharing that, I mean how neat that you recognize that, and-

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
And it's like, you know, because you know we all have parents and we have chil- ... we all have children now too, and, and, um, you know the parents sit there and crank it out and do what they can do, and you know, to, to be a young adult child, and recognize that, that's pretty neat.

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
And I'm sure you told 'em, and that ... it probably made 'em feel really good.

Cleo:
And you know, and it was never ... it was never any pressure to get involved, I mean-

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
... ah, you know you talk about family businesses that, um, have successfully gone from one-

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
... generation to the next, and one, one key element is you don't pressure the next generation.

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cleo:
And so, you know, so that was ... I never felt any pressure like this is what I had to do. Um, and then also that the, you know, the generation interested in becoming part of the business should also have kind of their own path for a while. At least, as an outside experience.

Doug:
Sure.

Cleo:
Um, so I ... so I started thinking about it, but, um, at that time, the early 2000's, but then for a couple more years-

Doug:
And were you still ... were you still in London, or were you ... were you still in London or were you back-

Cleo:
At that point I, I'd, I'd moved back to, um, to the U.S. and so-

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
... it was maybe, ah, oh gosh ... maybe it was 2006, 2007, something like that.

Doug:
And living in S- ... living in San Francisco?

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
Yeah, and then, um, and then it was a couple of years, um, working in San Francisco. Um, I worked for Williams-Sonoma Incorporate, um, and-

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
... then, ah, and then in 2008 ... so it's just been ... so it's been 10 years, ah, ah, this August. Ten years now, working for the winery. So, um-

Doug:
Wow!

Cleo:
... my stepmother emailed me, yeah, and she said, "Oh, there's an entry level position opened up at the office, and do you have any friends that are ... wanna get into the wine business?" And at that point-

Doug:
This is ... this is in 2008?

Cleo:
Yeah, so in 2008.

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
So, um, and I said, at that point it's like, "You know what," I said, "Can I interview for this job?" (laughs).

Doug:
That's, that's cute.

Cleo:
And so I did. And they hired me, and, ah, I started out as a sales assistant and I was answering phones and-

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
... entering orders, and, ah, entering PO's and things like that, so.

Doug:
Learn the business. Yeah.

Cleo:
Yeah. So I, um ... so everything I know about the wine industry, and about wine, is all, ah, just by working in the ... through, through, through work experience. 

Doug:
Well yeah, I mean you've got to ... How do you invoice? How do you Orders? You know how to allocating wines and shipping wine distributors, all that stuff.

Cleo:
Absolutely, working-

Doug:
All the-

Cleo:
... working with a lot of really great, um, colleagues and consultants over the years.

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cleo:
Ah, learning DTC business, ecommerce, um, marketing, public relations, ah, all those sort of ... all those things. My path has been much more on the sales and marketing side.

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cleo:
But in ... at least in the last few years, um, also starting to work a lot more, just meeting regularly with our vineyard manager, winemakers, um, and, ah-

Doug:
Good.

Cleo:
... and getting more involved in ... and learning from the people that I work with.

Doug:
Yeah. It's, it's, um ... I'm in a lucky position at this point here, because, um, I get to interact with everybody.

Cleo:
Yeah. 

Doug:
And I'm ... instead of sales and marketing, I came up through the production end.

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
So I've actually had to, over the years, work with our sales director and who's, who's ever in that position, they've taught me things.

Cleo:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Doug:
It, you know, 'cause I didn't know-

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
... whereas the production, you know, I've, I've, I've kind of got that down, but-

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
... but where you're finding it now, it's fun to interact with everybody. And what's great is, sometimes the, the vineyard guy will have a great solution to some sales issue going on.

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
And vice versa.

Cleo:
Yeah. Absolutely.

Doug:
And that's ... that happens a lot, and it's fun to see.

Cleo:
It does. You know, it's, um, the, the wine ... you know the wine business is so interesting in that way, it's ... I mean especially for family businesses, there's something for everybody (laughs) in the ... there's-

Doug:
That's true.

Cleo:
... so many different, um, positions, and, ah, and departments that, that are s- so different, um, and so it's ... I mean to know it all is, is impossible.

Doug:
You are, you're always learning.

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
Curious about the whole, you know, art education experience and working with the art business and, um, do you miss that? Or is that ... is there some, any connection with that and, and running a winery? Is there s-

Cleo:
You know I, I love ... I love art, I love, um, I, I love it as a more of an academic pursuit,-

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
... but, um ... I mean my husband and I were just in, um, where the heck were we? We were in, um, oh, in Amsterdam, um, and-

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
... and going, and I had to drag him to the, um, Rijksmuseum.

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
Any, you know, he ... we went to the Van Gogh Museum, he loved that, and I had to drag him to this, and I'm just like dying, I'm loving all these old masters' paintings, and he's sort of like, "Okay, come on, quickly, let's go, let's go." (laughs).

Doug:
(laughs).

Cleo:
And sort of like ... I just, um-

Doug:
He wants to go to dinner.

Cleo:
And so, um, my, my passion was really in the old masters and, um, and I just ... in that, and I love that as an academic, um, ah, sort of, ah, pursuit, but in terms of my career, I've always envisioned myself being in a more business career. To be in business in the art world, it's really all about contemporary art.

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
Um, and, ah-

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
... and that wasn't, ah, the area of art that I was interested in, so-

Doug:
I didn't know ... I didn't know that. Okay.

Cleo:
Yeah, well I mean I learned very quickly at working at Bonham's that, um, you know, there were people that I was working alongside, that had the same degrees that I had, and they'd been there for years, and they were still assistants at auctions. And really not even, even having high touch with the actual artwork.

Doug:
Interesting, so that-

Cleo:
And, um, and I mean that's just ... that's just the art world. It's ah, it's a very, ah, s-, ah, long ladder-

Doug:
Right right.

Cleo:
... to get to where you're close to the art, ah, especially in the old, in the old masters and things like that.

Doug:
Interesting.

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
Didn't know it. You see because I've also ... I've also ... I want to go back to school and take some Art History classes, because I was all viticulture enology, it's all just-

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
... science and biochem and-

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
... botany and biology, and I never got some of that just basic lib- liberal arts stuff, I really ... I really kind of-

Cleo:
You know, just like Art History 101.

Doug:
Yeah.

Cleo:
It's a great class, and-

Doug:
Just-

Cleo:
... I lament how, um, just sort of the, the liberal arts education is, I feel ver- becoming very undervalued, ah, today.

Doug:
Yeah. 

Cleo:
And even w- ... even when I was in college, sort of like, "Oh, what you going to do with, with Art History?" There's a lot of pressure to major in marketing-

Doug:
Right, right.

Cleo:
... or something like that. 

Doug:
I just dropped, ah, one of my kids off to school, and I was looking at his classes, and he's taking an Econ class, which is great, but he's also taking an Introduction to Architecture, 'cause he loves that, and also an Intro Design class, and you know I call him at-

Cleo:
Yeah, those intro classes are so good.

Doug:
Call him at the ... Yeah, call him up the first week, he goes, "Oh, dad, this design class is so cool, and architecture is ..." You know is his-

Cleo:
Yeah. 'Cause often times those intro classes are taught by some of the best professors at the university, or at least that was the case at UVA. 

Doug:
Mm. 

Cleo:
Um, they were huge classes, they-

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
... they were general, but they were taught by great professors.

Doug:
Great teachers.

Cleo:
And m- most often times the, the professor makes all the difference in the world.

Doug:
Well it's true. That's true.

Cleo:
Yeah. 

Doug:
Alright, so back to you working at Pahlmeyer, you're in the office, you're sales associate, you're learning everything, you're working your way up, that was 2008, that's 10 years ago. How did ... So how'd, how'd that proceed after working in the office?

Cleo:
Sure. Well, you know, I think with, ah, with family businesses, you, ah, you tend to have, um, you know the, the family members working in the business tend to be given more responsibility than they probably should have at the time, right?

Doug:
(laughs).

Cleo:
So, so over the years there's been a few deer in the headlights moments like, "You want me to take over what?" (laughs).

Doug:
(laughs).

Cleo:
And so I've had to just kind of figure it out, and-

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
... seek out the right people and advice and, um, and so maybe a year or two, maybe, after I started at the winery, I started managing direct-to-consumer sales. Maybe it was even less time than that, um, and-

Doug:
Wow!

Cleo:
... then managing, um, marketing and then around 2000, 2012, ah, we hired a president, ah, for the company.

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
Um, Brian Hilliard, who, ah, was a great mentor to me. And so at that time a couple things were set in motion. I started, um, I also started managing Public Relations at that point. Um, someone else took over direct-to-consumer sales.

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
And, um, we decided to launch, ah, the Wayfarer brand, so my dad-

Doug:
Yeah, tell me ... well, well, before you get into Wayfarer, c- curious, 'cause-

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
... I'm curious 'cause you know J- ... you know I tracked with Jayson a little bit, now is he still there working at those ... these years? Or has he kind of stepped back? When, when-

Cleo:
No, my dad stepped back around 2008 I would say.

Doug:
Okay, right, r-

Cleo:
Around the same time that I started working for the company.

Doug:
Okay. So you-

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
Did you ever have a chance to work kind of day-to-day with him? A little bit?

Cleo:
No. No.

Doug:
Wow, okay.

Cleo:
Um, no he'll, he'll call me up with one of his pet projects-

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
... he wants me to take care of.

Doug:
(laughs).

Cleo:
Um, but, (laughs) and of course now, you know, we discuss how the business is doing, ah-

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
... from time to time, but, ah, never, have not really had that experience of working side by side with my dad. Um, yeah.

Doug:
No, not, but, yeah, but even though it's not side-by-side, you guys are still ... it seems like you're still talking and you're communicating in that ... What's-

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
... that like? Is that ... is that neat? Is it?

Cleo:
It's great, I mean, I think, um, I know my dad, ah, my dad's really stoked about it. He is, he-

Doug:
Oh, good.

Cleo:
... is, he is really thrilled. Um, and 'cause again this is nothing that he ever pushed me into doing, but, um, but he just, he's so, I mean, he is very ... He always tell me he's very proud and just like so happy that is-

Doug:
I- is he, um, does he-

Cleo:
This is what we're doing.

Doug:
Is he doing the dad thing, where it's like, you know, he, he doesn't want to give you too much advice, but just can't help himself, sort of?

Cleo:
No, no, he, he, ah-

Doug:
Really, wow. Good for him.

Cleo:
He just ... I, I, I ask him for advice from time to time, um, but no, no he's, ah, he's very happy on the beach in Hawaii. (laughs).

Doug:
Okay. (laughs). Wow, good for him. How neat. What a cool experience.

Cleo:
Yeah. Yeah. And I have a great network, um, a lot of people who, ah, my dad has known for-

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
... decades. Um, and, ah, just a network of people that I've also built, um, because, ah, you know, ah-

Doug:
That's nice.

Cleo:
... you don't get there alone, you know, so.

Doug:
No, no, none of us do.

Cleo:
But my dad planted Wayfarer in, um, we finished planting in 2002, so-

Doug:
And where is ... where is Wayfarer?

Cleo:
So we are out in the Fort Ross-Seaview AVA.

Doug:
That's right on-

Cleo:
On the Sonoma Coast.

Doug:
Sonoma Coast where it's cold and-

Cleo:
Cold and rainy.

Doug:
Cold and foggy.

Cleo:
It's one of the wettest spots in California.

Doug:
Yeah.

Cleo:
Yeah. So, um, so-

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
... actually that's ... so it's interesting, my dad, um, it's a ... it's another fun story, back in the 90's, when Helen was our winemaker.

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
Um, she was one of the pioneers out in Fort Ross-Seaview AVA with her Marcassin Vineyard.

Doug:
That's right, she and her husband were at the ... right I remember that.

Cleo:
Exactly. And, um, and my dad, um, is ... he's likes to say, you know, "Um, every enophile eventually gravitates to the wines of Burgundy." Right, so he, you know, he started out drinking-

Doug:
Well said.

Cleo:
... when he is in his, um, you know, progression of, of, of falling in love with wines. He started out you know with Italian Shiraz ... I'm sorry, I'm not ... Australian Shiraz.

Doug:
Wh- Right.

Cleo:
You know, and, um, and, ah, and then drinking big ... you know, the Bordeaux's of France, and then, um, you know then over the years really gravitated to the wines of Burgundy.

Doug:
I'm, I'm, I'm with him on that one.

Cleo:
Yeah, they were-

Doug:
Yeah.

Cleo:
... a little less expensive back then too, so yeah.

Doug:
(laughs). Yeah.

Cleo:
And so, um ... and so he and Helen, of course,-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cleo:
... um, had, had, ah, was making, starting to make Pinot Noir and things like that. Or, it was, he'd been doing it for a while.

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
And, um, and so said, you know, help me, you know, he at first had this crazy idea that he was going to buy vineyards in, ah, Burgundy, and Helen, his American and female, by the way, winemaker was-

Doug:
Yes.

Cleo:
... going to go over to France and make these wines.

Doug:
Oh, wow.

Cleo:
And so he actually bought two, um, ah, ah, Grand Cru, classified vineyards, um, that I'm not gonna remember the names of right now.

Doug:
Sure, sure. That's okay.

Cleo:
And, um, but, ah, one white, and one red, so. And then in the last minute turn of events, the local French people appealed to an obscure real estate law that gave them the right of refusal on this sale. And so-

Doug:
Oh, you're kidding me, they shut him-

Cleo:
... it ended up being purchased by the local people. And they-

Doug:
They shut him down.

Cleo:
... shut him down, sent him his money back.

Doug:
They shut him down. Oh.

Cleo:
Yeah, so he couldn't ... of course now you've got Chinese and all sort of, you know, foreign-

Doug:
Sure.

Cleo:
... investment in, ah, in France, but-

Doug:
That must have been frustrating.

Cleo:
In French Vineyards.

Doug:
I bet you that ... I bet you that ... I bet you that really rocked him a little bit.

Cleo:
You know, um, you know my dad doesn't get th- that, um, ruffled by adversity. I don't know, like I'm just thinking right now about when his, his house burnt down in 2011,-

Doug:
Yeah, I want to talk about that later.

Cleo:
... two days before my wedding.

Doug:
(laughs).

Cleo:
Sorry, just to di- ... ah, and, and he was just ... he's so philosophical about things like that. When something like that happens, just like, "Oh, well, you know. It's just stuff." Or, "You know, it's just a vineyard, let's ... we'll move on." So,-

Doug:
I need, ah-

Cleo:
... that's something that's very, ah, I admire a lot about my dad, he doesn't let these kinds of things rock him.

Doug:
I need to go ... I need to go visit him and hang out.

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
I need to hang out with him for a couple of days.

Cleo:
Um, so, so he and Helen turned their sights to Sonoma.

Doug:
Back to ... Okay.

Cleo:
Um, and, ah, and Helen found this property, um, that was a org- ... It was called Wayfarer Farm, owned by a couple of Hippies, that had moved out there as part of-

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
... the back-to-the-land movement. And they, ah, were growing organic fruits and vegetables. Um, they were running a school for wayward children. And, um, and they, ah, and they had their ... put their property for sale. And so my dad, ah, went out there with Helen and John, ah, she brought, ah, she was ... Helen's a great cook, so she roasted a couple chickens, packed a picnic, brought, um, a magnum of her Marcassin Chardonnay.

Doug:
Right, right.

Cleo:
And they sat out there and had this great picnic and my dad just fell in love with, with the land.

Doug:
(laughs).

Cleo:
And I have to say, I've f- equally in love with it, I've also fallen in love with the land, it's just such a inc- ... it's just such a magical place. You know, you just really get a feeling for a place, you're just there, feeling the sun, breathing the air, just-

Doug:
Oh, you're in, in ... And the ocean's how far away? Just?

Cleo:
It's, ah, from there, it's just less than five miles.

Doug:
Yeah, so you smell the ... you smell the air.

Cleo:
So you're up in the coastal range, in the California sun, yet it's still, um, coastal cool region. So they planted, um ... So we planted the vineyard there, ah, finished-

Doug:
That's-

Cleo:
... planting it in 2002. Um-

Doug:
So that's then Chardonnay and Pinot?

Cleo:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Doug:
How many acres? I'm curious.

Cleo:
So we have 30 acres planted.

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
Um, we T-budded over a couple blocks to Chardonnay.

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
'Cause Chardonnay is doing so well out there.

Doug:
Great.

Cleo:
So now we have, um, 8 acres of Chardonnay, and 22 acres of Pinot Noir.

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
Um, and, ah, so for, for several years we were, ah, blending the fruit with, um, couple of Russian River Vineyard to make Pahlmeyer's Sonoma Coast Chardonnay, and a Pahlmeyer's Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir.

Doug:
Got it.

Cleo:
And, ah, but over the, um, you know in, in recent years my, my husband and I, especially, have been talking about how this site is so incredible, and what is ... what are the great Pinot Noirs of the world all about. They're about-

Doug:
But I'd say ... yeah.

Cleo:
... not just one vineyard, but about, you know, blocks within that vineyard, or sections of that vineyard.

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
And, and Pinot Noir more than any other varietal is all about a place, and it's-

Doug:
Place.

Cleo:
... a place.

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cleo:
And so, um, and so we really felt like we had to have an estate label, ah, for this, to really showcase this incredible vineyard.

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cleo:
So in 2012 we, um, bottle- ... or we didn't bottle, but we harvested, ah, the first vintage that would become the Wayfarer label.

Doug:
Wow!

Cleo:
So that was really exciting for me, because I got to ... while I, um ... I have a huge passion for carrying on what my dad started-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cleo:
... with Pahlmeyer. This is something, um, while I am forever indebted to him for having the vision to plant this vineyard way out there, which is pretty crazy in that itself.

Doug:
Yeah, it is.

Cleo:
It was really cool for me to be able to bring this brand to life.

Doug:
Yeah.

Cleo:
Um, bring this ... put this wine in bottle, and, ah-

Doug:
It's your baby. So it's Pinot or Pinot and Chard?

Cleo:
Both.

Doug:
Both.

Cleo:
So Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.

Doug:
That's Wayfarer. So is that connected with Pahlmeyer, or is it a separate brand?

Cleo:
It's a separate brand, but it's part of the-

Doug:
Part of the whole thing.

Cleo:
It's under the Pahlmeyer umbrella.

Doug:
Got it.

Cleo:
Yeah, yeah.

Doug:
Well congratulations.

Cleo:
Thank you.

Doug:
That's cool.

Cleo:
Thanks. Yeah, so that's ... so that's, that's been really, um, you know, exciting and painful and all, all the above as, you know, as anybody who started a wine brand in recent years knows. (laughs).

Doug:
Yeah.

Cleo:
So.

Doug:
And yeah, a new brand it's tough.

Cleo:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Doug:
You know, the consu- ... it's, it's, it's tough out there. It's crowded, it's a lot of labels.

Cleo:
There sure are.

Doug:
There're a lot of labels. Um, yeah, Elias and I started a little side project called Eighty Four, which was ... it has been fun, it's making non-Shafer varietals.

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
And it's ... we haven't, we haven't really hit it hard on the marketing end, that's, that's my challenge, um, but, ah, just because it's connected with Shafer doesn't mean it's a slam dunk, you know.

Cleo:
Yep.

Doug:
People are like, you know.

Cleo:
It helps though, right? 'Cause I couldn't imagine-

Doug:
It helps, it helps, yeah, it helps-

Cleo:
... doing this without have Pahlmeyer behind it.

Doug:
The Pahlmeyer connection.

Cleo:
Absolutely. (laughs).

Doug:
Yeah. It helps. It helps, but it's ... but it's a lot of work. 

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
Um, and very cool. So, I've ... a little homework here.

Cleo:
(laughs).

Doug:
So, ah, at the 2018 Pebble Beach Food & Wine Festival, you were a speaker on the, ah, the future is female, the next generation of American wine. You said that you were inspired by your mother, Helen Turley and Ann Colgin.

Cleo:
(laughs).

Doug:
I was curious about that. Can you tell me about each of those women and-

Cleo:
Okay.

Doug:
... why ... how they've inspired you.

Cleo:
Oh, wow. Oh, you, you really are putting me on the spot.

Doug:
It's a reg ... it's a regular question, I don't want to put you on the spot.

Cleo:
Um, well I, I mean my mother, um, my mother inspires me because, um, well I'm a mother now of, um, of two, ah, kids. My daughter's five and my son is three, and I'm having another baby in January.

Doug:
Congratulations.

Cleo:
Thank you.

Doug:
Very exciting.

Cleo:
Um, and so, but my ... it's never been a question for me, would ... whether or not I would have children. Of course, I always wanted to have children, and-

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
... it's never been a question for me whether or not I would have a career. I've always just known that, that's something I wanted.

Doug:
Got it.

Cleo:
Um, but then you ... but then there I am, pregnant with my first child and thinking, "Oh my God, oh my ... what? How does this work?"

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
And, "How do I ... how do I keep doing my job, but then also have a ... have a child?"

Doug:
Yeah, have a baby.

Cleo:
And then another one, and then another one. And, um, and I think that, ah, you know, it just works, like it's just you figure it out, ah, as with most things in life. And, ah, but having that example of my mother, who has always had a career, and who has, ah, been an incredible ... is a incredible role model to me right now for, um, for the, the type of mother that she was, um, or that she is. And so, um, so, so she's really inspired me in that-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cleo:
... because, um, it's not easy to, to have that balance, but to, to know other people, um, that, that have done it and make it work is, um-

Doug:
And she's a ... she's a-

Cleo:
It gives you confidence.

Doug:
She's, she's an interpreter, you said, she spoke numer- numerous languages.

Cleo:
Yeah, she's an interpreter and translator, so she, um, she moved ... so she works mostly when she does the, um, simultaneous, um, interpreting.

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
She would work in, in New York at the UN a lot, and-

Doug:
Wow!

Cleo:
... but mostly in D.C. she worked for the IMF for a long time, and now she mostly works for the OAS, the Organization of American States, um, but when-

Doug:
That's some ... that's some-

Cleo:
... I was growing up-

Doug:
That's some big time stuff.

Cleo:
Yeah. Yeah.

Doug:
That's cool.

Cleo:
So when I was growing up she would, um, ah, or m- my parents divorced when I was three or so, and so-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cleo:
... when I would be with me ... I, I would go with my dad for like a week or so at a time, and my mother during that time, would go to the east coast and work.

Doug:
Got it.

Cleo:
Um, and then come back, and so it kind of divided the, that divided the time between my two parents like that.

Doug:
Sure.

Cleo:
And then when I started going to boarding school for high school, she moved out to the east coast permanently at that point.

Doug:
Oh, so you saw her out there.

Cleo:
Yeah. 

Doug:
Did you ever get to go like to the UN and just hang out and all that stuff? I mean, or somewhere?

Cleo:
Never to the UN, but I definitely got ... she's taking me a few times, or several times, um, to go sit in the booth with her and, and see all the delegates and, and to see what she does, and-

Doug:
Oh, well that's gotta ... that's gotta be cool.

Cleo:
It's super cool.

Doug:
I know (laughs).

Cleo:
It's great. It's very, very cool. I wish I would've, ah ... that would have been cool, if I'd go ... have gone to the UN, um, when she was working at the UN.

Doug:
When she was working there.

Cleo:
But, yeah, she hasn't worked there for a while, like.

Doug:
Yeah.

Cleo:
Um-

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
... and then ... and then when I talk about, um, when I s- ... when I mentioned Helen Turley and, ah, Ann Colgin. Um, I think of them as, um, you know, they, they're trailblazers in the industry for women. Um, I was actually, I was listening to your podcast with Cathy Corison, and-

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
... she mentioned how, um, well first she, she didn't get an internship one summer because, um, the winemaker hired her, but then the owners said, "Oh, no, we can't have a woman in the cellar."

Doug:
Can't have a woman in the cellar.

Cleo:
But then she ended up working there the following summer, but still I mean that's-

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
... that's, ah, that's difficult, and then when she ... I think the ... I think it was the same place, when she was working there, um, someone would tighten all of the, ah-

Doug:
Yeah, yeah.

Cleo:
All of the-

Doug:
All of the, ah, the gate valves on a tank so tightly, she couldn't, yeah.

Cleo:
All of the valves really, really tight.

Doug:
Not very-

Cleo:
And, ah, and so she was like, "Okay." So she always carried around a, a big wrench.

Doug:
Big wrench.

Cleo:
And so-

Doug:
You did listen to that think (laughs).

Cleo:
And, ah, and I, you know, it's kind of, um, to they talk about, um, ah, like a, like lawnmower parenting, so where parents will you know like mow this bea- nice easy path for their kids.

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
Right. And how well th- that's not a good thing though, you should let your kids struggle, right. But I feel like, um, I could use the same analogy for this. These other women have sort of mown a nice path for me, and some of ... all of my contemporaries to, um, to be able to do what we do without, without all that, um, all that difficulties. So, um, and I ... and I try not to take that for granted.

Doug:
Yeah.

Cleo:
So that's why, that's kind of what I meant by, by, ah, by-

Doug:
Yeah.

Cleo:
... mentioning people like, um, Ann Colgin or Helen Turley.

Doug:
Like Helen and Ann. 

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
Well they were good. I remember in ... you know I do remember Cathy, 'cause I knew her early on, and she was, you know, she was like there weren't any gals, any women in the cellar.

Cleo:
Yeah, especially in the production side. Yeah.

Doug:
In the production side, and, ah, Helen I never knew well, but I knew of her. And, and, she was in that same era and she was one ... She and Cathy, and that was about it.

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
And, um, it was a kind of a, you know, it was also that era in time and things have-

Cleo:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Doug:
... changed a lot, thank goodness.

Cleo:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Doug:
And then Ann, I remember meeting Ann Colgin in Florida, she was a ... by the way, she was an art dealer, or-

Cleo:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Doug:
... art broker.

Cleo:
Yeah, exactly.

Doug:
And, ah, and she and her husband Fred, at the time, sh- ... um, big wine lovers and they ended up moving out here and-

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
... you know she was the one that really drove that, drove that production and drove that Colgin label, and-

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
... succeeded famously, so.

Cleo:
Absolutely, I, I remember she used to, instead of signing a bottle, she would-

Doug:
She did-

Cleo:
... ah, put her lipstick marks on the bottle.

Doug:
Yeah, she did. She did.

Cleo:
I think that's so cool, like you're ... like she ... really like, like-

Doug:
She put it right out there. What and-

Cleo:
She put it right out there, she, like, um, like using her womanhood to her-

Doug:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cleo:
I mean, which is beautiful, you know, um, women, like just using that to ... using her full power, I guess, as a woman.

Doug:
Exactly, that saying, this is what I am, right.

Cleo:
And I think that's something to be applauded, yeah.

Doug:
Yeah.

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
Okay, thanks. I was curious about that.

Cleo:
Yeah.

Doug:
Um, So getting back to Pahlmeyer, you, the first line was the proprietary red, the Bordeaux blend, which was your dads dream.

Cleo:
That's right.

Doug:
But, um, uh, I know you've got other wines, tell me what's the rest of the lineups like?

Cleo:
Okay so, um, so of course there's the Chardonnay.

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
Which was, um, made famous, or actually made Pahlmeyer famous, really, uh, with the Disclosure movie.

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
First vintage was '89 I believe. And then um, we added on a Merlot in the early 90's 

Doug:
Okay.

Cleo:
And so these, in the, it wasn't until the late 90's though that my dad, um, on Helen Turly's urging decided to establish his own Napa Valley Vineyard, so

Doug:
Okay

Cleo:
Helen said to my dad, you know if you, if you really want to make world class wine, if you want to continue to make world class wine, you have to have 100% control, um, over the farming as well.

Doug:
Right.

Cleo:
And so, um, so you need to have your own vineyard, and so she helped my dad find a property, uh, and it's uh, up on Atlas Peak.

Doug:
Okay

Cleo:
And so we have, we planted it in 2000-2001 we finished planting

Doug:
Okay

Cleo:
And so we have 72 acres there

Doug:
Oh great 

Cleo:
Of Cabernet Sauvignon, uh, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, Malbec, um, and Chardonnay

Doug:
Oh you've got your own grapes

Cleo:
Yeah

Doug:
Isn't it the best?