And you know what, winemakers, like me, are heavily scrutinized by critics, bloggers, influencers, fellow winemakers, and even customers about our winemaking practices.

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A shortlist of the things that I get questioned on:

• Do I add nutrients, SO2, or yeast to my grape musts?

• Do I fine and filter and with what?

• Do I correct for acid imbalances?

• Have I ever used Mega Purple?

• What do I think about ingredient labeling? On and on.

Here’s what I don’t hear from inside the industry. Who gives the bartenders, chefs, brewmasters and distillers flak for their corrective measures? Sure, I know there are purists in every walk of the trade, but do I feel it more in the winemaking community because I’m a part of it?

Tell me I’m wrong!

Bartenders, chefs, beer community on Substack, when you get shade does it come from within the industry from fellow chefs or bartenders? I’d love to know.

I’m going to offer up three common examples where my colleagues in food and beverage are looked at positively for their additions/corrections and yet for winemakers it’s frowned upon somewhere and often called out as “industrial” or “un-natural”.

The Bartender

I was with a long-time bartender friend of mine, just talking shop one day while he was prepping for the night and I noticed that he added a white granular substance to his pineapple juice.

Immediately I asked, “Did you just make an acid addition?”

The response, “Yeah, we do it all the time. We adjust all of our juices, to get our acid and sweetness in line for the drink. Best to do it in advance than on-the-fly.”

My question back, “Does anyone ever ask if you’ve made an acid addition?”

His response, “Never comes up.”

Acid additions are made pre-service under the watchful eyes of the bartender and staff. There are no disclosures on the menu about acid additions and from his response, guests have never asked if they adjust their juices or anything else for that matter. Guests just want a great cocktail.

The Brewmaster

I’m with a distiller and brewmaster, we started talking agave spirits when the conversation led to beer, because that’s what we were drinking.

Brewmaster, “Yeah, we’ve gotten water samples from a brewery in Washington, just to check what’s in their water, just in case we want to make the same beer they’re making. We’ll just make an adjustment to our water here. You have to have all the equipment and know how to do it, but yeah, we’ve adjusted our water before.”

If a winemaker adds water from a garden hose to a high brix must during primary fermentation, that’s “cheating” to reduce the alcohol. I’m not adjusting for the magnesium or calcium, I’m just adding water to a wine that if I don’t add water, could come out at 16.5% alcohol with 5g/L of RS instead of closer to 15% and bone dry. I probably acid adjusted as well.

And yet again, the brewmaster gets a pass for adjusting the mineral content of water because they are making a homage aka copy of the original beer in a different state.

The Chef

Hanging with a chef buddy of mine recently, he and I were in San Francisco at the same time back in the late 90’s, he cooked at a lot of neighborhood Italian places in Russian Hill. He’s run several restaurants in California. The subject of sous vide and meat glue came up.

“Sous vide has always been in the program. But so has meat glue, agar agar…I’ve got all sorts of tricks I can use, plenty of chefs do. I always use meat glue on my roulade.”

Sous Vide, a temperature controlled water bath that uses a plastic bag for cooking. All good for the chef. Additionally, meat glue aka transglutaminase is an enzyme that binds protein molecules together also doesn’t seem to be an un-natural or interventionist issue and is likely used in a lot of Michelin starred restaurants. It’s part of the molecular gastronomy wing of the culinary arts.

But a Winemaker who uses enzymes to break down skins to get color in their Pinot? Bad, frowned upon. Adds nutrients for the yeast to eat? Horrible. Heresy in some corners of winemaking and the winemaking community.

Remember, new oak on wine…bad. Alder wood on salmon…good.

To Conclude

The next time an influencer, critic or Somm begins their lecture about “industrial” winemaking while you’re dining at a Michelin three-star whose chemical arsenal rivals a pharmaceutical laboratory or you’re headed to the latest craft cocktail bar, remember this, corrections, adjustments and additions are just as additive for the winemaker as they are for the bartender, brewmaster, and chef.

If you want transparency in winemaking, demand it from everything else on your table.

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I figured I would take the time after writing an article nearly every week for the last year on Substack to analyze if I write like a human or a LLM. This is Substack, where the human writers are, right?

But how can we be sure?

Well, I’m happy to run my own experiment on my own writing. I took two different styles of my writing, the “Rant” style which Paul Gregutt pointed out on my “Intention” article and the “Wiki” style of Paso Bro, which is more a taxonomy of a particular wine archetype.

Using some tips from fellow Substacker Anangsha Alammyan (Explore AI with Anangsha) I tested 10 popular AI writing detectors:

1. Quetext

2. Winston

3. Humalingo

4. Originality

5. Quillbot

6. GetSolved

7. GPTZero

8. Copyleaks

9. Undetectable

10. Surfer

I input my last 2 articles, Winemaker Intention and Paso Bro, into each of the AI Detectors. Here are the results1:

Humalingo thinks I write like a LLM, declaring me 11% Human. Winston, Quillbot, Copyleaks assign a high probability (100% perfect score) that I’m a Human.

GPT Zero is an interesting result — article to article with the widest spread 77% between 100% human or only 23% human. The rest of the results fall in between.

Paso Bro has a wide range of probability scores. I’m guessing because I wrote it sort of like a Wikipedia entry, which LLMs sample, but that’s a guess.

Intention is a personal rant with changes in tone and perspective. It’s a little messy, emotional, it’s a rant after all, suggesting these detectors like rougher, personal edges rather than clarity and precision.

Humalingo says that “your text shows several issues, an AI-Like tone, repetitive phrasing, uneven rhythm, potential plagiarism, and low readability…” with a suggestion button below SCREAMING “Fix all issues”.

It seems human writing, in Humalingo’s infinite wisdom, is a problem that needs fixing, for a fee of course.

Well Humalingo, I put another document in your AI detector. It’s called the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America…

Houston…we have a problem.

The Declaration of Independence got a lower score than my personal rant on winemaker ‘Intention’. The Declaration got a 9% Human Score on Humalingo.

What are these AI detectors doing, simply causing doubt among writers? Creating a disease that only a “Humanizer” can fix? Convenient.

Sorry President Jefferson, you write like a bot but we can fix it for a fee.

I don’t think I write like an LLM, except, it seems, when I do, the Paso Bro “wiki” style, which statistically on Substack the “Bro” articles are my most viewed/read. Which makes me wonder, why? Easy to read? Funny? Bullet style? Who knows.

I’m writing in a way that pays attention to the world around me. I don’t make-up any of the Bro’s personality characteristics, I observe them in real-time.

Writing has to be interesting after all and I’m not worried about what these AI detectors think about mine. This was not meant to be some exhaustive research project or thinking deeply about the logic/programming language of a detector, this was a quick common sense check on emerging software.

The detectors and AI writing will improve every second of every day, because the LLM is taking laps on every piece of writing every second of every day improving — while human writers might knock out a 10 hour session on a typewriter cause it “connects” them to their writing.

At some point in the not too distant future, 80%+ of people won’t care. In fact, right now, do you care if an AI wrote the latest article on “What wine to pair with the World Cup?” or some boring list of “13 White Wines to Drink this Summer!”

I certainly don’t.

Nobody seems bothered by Google Maps choosing an alternate route for you mid-trip or the robot sorting your package at the Amazon fulfillment center (they have over 1 million of them!) or the human-driverless Waymo in San Francisco. AI/LLMs are here, they’re not going away and more people will use them to their advantage (sad tuba sound) while you grind it out on a legal pad, typewriter, or HP12c.

I’m happy to keep writing this Substack for fun/enjoyment, to work my human brain, for therapy, to share my experiences (rant a little), connect with people about wine, hopefully make people laugh from time-to-time and keep it under 1000 words.

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Does he pay his taxes? Bathe regularly? Does he gamble? Perhaps other vices and perversions I wouldn’t describe here.

As long as he makes his wine with the utmost “intention,” (and take pictures like this) he can be an absolute stinky degenerate gambler and tax cheat. Besides, how would you verify any of his intentions or techniques anyway? Were you on the crush-pad the day he added nutrients to a fermentation or copper to a stink-bomb of a press-out? You’d have to spend money on lab results, which would far outweigh the cost of the bottle.

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Extend the intention argument out to something else. The protein on your plate.

Do you care about the intention of the owner of the ranch? Does he feed the pigs sawdust, keep the pen clean? What else? Organic oats? Silage corn? Where’s the line drawn for a rancher between a deep intention for his animals and simply raising pigs or cattle for the dinner plate?

What about the individual who put that pig or cow to death? What’s their intention? Efficiency, right? Quick and painless? What instrument of death did they use? Was it sharp? Was it a small, local slaughter house (which are quickly disappearing) or a large, commercial operation?

And finally, the store you buy it from, unless you have the luxury of buying directly from the butcher. Are you buying it from a big grocery store? What’s their intention? That’s easy, profits.

Within this chain of events and custody of a piece of protein, are you questioning and internalizing the “intention” of all these people who handle your steak and pork chops? Or are you just thinking about the intention of the individual or corporation who raised the animal for slaughter? Then after that, meh? Get it on my barbecue.

Back to Winemaking

Many winemakers, like me, are held to some mythical standard of “intention.” And within that intention, what are the standards that outside evaluators are putting on me to measure up?

Here’s a scenario in winemaking. I have the intention of making a 500 cases zero-zero natural wine from the finest biodynamic farm and farmers that I pay top dollar for. I will not inoculate with yeast, no nutrients, on and on, and certainly no sulphur. The wine gets bottled and someone buys it loving my intention of a zero-zero wine. But doesn’t love the wine because it’s flawed. They loved my intention, however the execution is defective. As a result, they don’t buy a repeat bottle and tell their friends my wine is trash. For all my “intention” I’m out of business.

Is the size of my operation part of my intention? Do I make 10,000 cases or less? Or does it have to be 5,000? Or 500? What if I have outside investors with the intention of building this brand up with the hopes of selling it and how would you ever know? If I don’t own my own land, where do I buy grapes? Do you now have to know the intention of the grape grower? Are they biodynamic, organic, or just “sustainable”? Which one soils my intention now?

Why isn’t the reverse true? Making 1 million gallons of Pinot Grigio takes plenty of intention and attention to process and logistics for a corporate winemaker. I’m good at what I do as a winemaker, but 1,000 gallons and 1,000,000 gallons require a different focus and both are important.

When you buy a steak or a bottle of wine, it’s likely in the moment, often for convenience, and most certainly within your budget. You have the little butcher tag on the rib-eye that says Super Special Small Ranch $49/lb or just “On Sale Grocery Select” at $8.99/lb and only so much time and resources to decide between the two.

Same goes for that bottle of wine, a $79 bottle of Mastro Scheidt Cabernet made with a whole bunch of intention and attention to detail from a guy you know and like or a $12.99 bottle from California processed in Fresno.

Tell me how far your intention goes when you’re also paying rent, buying tires, or restocking diapers. A $79 bottle of boutique wine is a luxury, not a necessity. So spare me the “intention.”

What matters:

Does the wine taste good?

Can you afford it?

Do you enjoy drinking it, even at the price?

Is it convenient to purchase?

As many of my customers know, I don’t write any stories or marketing language on any bottle I produce. You know how I feel about the 93 points I received on one of my wines, as I wrote about it. I only write a tech sheet if it’s requested by someone and I try to keep it to the weather report for that harvest season and basic information about what’s in the bottle.

I want you to buy a bottle, drink it and come back to me to purchase a mixed case when you’re out of wine. And if one of the wines isn’t your thing, tell me, I won’t be offended. If you really love something, tell me that too, I’ll do my best to keep it consistent in value, flavor, and profile but without the marketing language to go with it.

The only intention is to create something you’ll come back for.

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A “man of the people,” the Paso Bro is the ultimate champion of Paso South, but not Santa Barbara, that’s where he draws the line. Why? Santa Barbara is just too close to LA.

Paso Bro is incredibly approachable (if he hasn’t approached you first, which he probably has) and paradoxically the most exhausting member of the wine archetype family to date. (Links to Pinot Bro and Cab Bro)

Behavioral Traits

• The Rhetorical Flex: He asks “questions” of winemakers that are actually stealth resumes. He doesn’t want to know if the winemaker made wine in Italy; he wants everyone within earshot to know HE’S been to Italy (specifically on a tour bus named “The Tuscan Dream”). 14 cities in 14 days…”I saw it all…don’t need to go back.”

• The Caymus Irony: He positions his palate as “uncorrupted” by elitism and label worship, preferring wines that “pack a punch” and destinations that “keep it real.” The irony, Caymus is the gold standard of winery achievement. Luckily, he discovered Austin Hope and has been a club member since it opened.

• Work Truck Woes: He frequently complains about Napa prices while ignoring the fact that his new Dodge 2500 6.7L Turbo Diesel currently costs $233 to fill up every four days. “Yeah, but I can expense it.” Just look at the custom plates MR PASO….

• The Hospitality Hog: He loves a tasting room because it provides a captive audience. He will keep tasting room staff hostage for 45 minutes telling stories, calling the girls “sweetheart”, asking nonsense questions all while greating new guests with a hearty “Welcome to Paso”.

  

The Daytime “Tasting Trail” Look

• The Top: A rotation of high-performance golf polos, Tommy Bahama silk button-downs, and Salty Crew t-shirts.

• The Bottom: Cargo shorts with no fewer than six pockets.

• The “Holster”: A rugged, leather or ballistic nylon cell phone holster clipped firmly to his shorts. It sits directly above his right hip for “quick-draw” access.

• The Footwear: Horse-bit Loafers. He bought these in Florence during “The Tour.” He tells every tasting room attendant, “They told me in Italy, Gary, you gotta wear the horse-bit.”

The Evening “Giuseppe’s” Ensemble

• The Top: A “fresh” golf polo (if the day one got wine on it, because it did) or a Western-style button-down with pearl snaps. The shirt is heavily starched.

• The Denim: Creased Blue Jeans. These are “nice” jeans. They feature a razor-sharp vertical crease down the center of each leg.

• The Belt: A thick, embossed leather belt with a “modest” silver buckle (about the size of a beer coaster).

• The Footwear: He swaps the Italian loafers for polished Square-Toe Cowboy Boots or “dress” sneakers with the white soles.

Musings

“I don’t need a sommelier to tell me what’s good. My tongue works just fine, and it says this tastes like a hundred bucks. Now, where’s the tri-tip?”

“Why would I go back to Italy? The Italian food here’s just as good! Paso is the new Tuscany.”

Recent Revelations

The Wagyu Epiphany. Paso introduced him to Wagyu via a $150 “sandwich” that he references regularly. He frames this as proof that Paso “punches above its weight class,” never acknowledging that he spent the equivalent of three tasting fees on ground American Wagyu between two buns. Because Wagyu is Wagyu.

Advanced Pairing Theory. He recently “learned” that pairing Syrah with “inert cheese” topped with just a pinch of curry creates a “total explosion.” He shares this unprompted with winemakers, fellow tasters, and bartenders who are attempting to figure out in their head, “What the fuck is inert cheese?”

The Sunset Ritual

At 5:47 PM, the tasting day is done. Paso Bro climbs back into his Dodge and sets the GPS for Giuseppe’s (in Pismo, not SLO). He could drive there blindfolded, but the truck came with the nav package, and he’s going to use it.

The windows go down, as Paso Bro begins flipping through No Shoes Radio and Chris Stapleton on SiriusXM. He waves at a passing convertible full of tourists like he’s the mayor or ambassador of something.

In a way, he is.

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Share Case by Case, by David Mastro Scheidt

The winery polish is there. The origin story is tight (the dream of making wine). The social media is cohesive. But the thing itself, the actual experience of visiting, of drinking wine feels provisional, like a rendering of a life rather than the life itself. It looks like an investment, or worse a trophy, but certainly not a winery.

Bean argues that American luxury hotels suffer from a structural flaw: they’re built for the spreadsheet class from day one. “The system around them—debt, investors, and the expectation of a future sale—isn’t designed to protect what makes them special, it’s designed to extract value from it.”

Sound familiar?

The wine industry has become expert at this extraction. Gallo’s recent acquisitions—Rombauer, Massican, Whiny Baby—represent three different endgames: independent brands folded into larger systems built around distribution and loyalty. What made them distinct becomes something to standardize, replicate, and scale. Smart calls, unique brands, completely different time periods for acquisition.

I’ve made this point before. The acquisition of Whiny Baby by Gallo is akin to Google buying a 5-year-old AI company for the IP. They recognize value, a shift in the marketplace, and innovative talent. They make smart acquisitions.

A less complimentary tone could be said about Treasury Wine Estates and their recent acquisitions and write-downs. The write-down wiped out $676.1 million in goodwill from the Treasury Americas division. Because goodwill is tracked at the overall regional division level, which includes DAOU, Frank Family Vineyards, and Beringer, this represents a broad devaluation of what they previously paid for these US acquisitions.

Bean notes that the best hotels “feel authored because they are, shaped by a continuous point of view, not a set of standards.” But authorship requires patience. And patience is a luxury the current market doesn’t afford. “There is no grace period, no apprenticeship, no room for the hotel to learn itself.”

I feel this acutely in restaurants and wineries. You have to be perfect from day one—Michelin-starred, 98 points, viral—or you’re just another average business with no recognition and no star power. Boring. Pedestrian.

Where’s the slow burn? The story over time?

There is none, because no one is covering the story, no one cares. That long-term story isn’t for social media, a YouTube series, or reality show. “Top Winemaker” is not ever going to be a thing. There is no quick-fire challenge. Instead there’s a 12 month waiting period before our next harvest…stay tuned.

Here in Sonoma County, California, less than 100 miles from Silicon Valley, patience feels to many like inefficiency. And a long story without an obvious exit reads like poor planning on my part. So it makes sense that I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been asked, “What’s your exit strategy?”

It’s a reasonable question in a reasonable world. But it assumes I built an asset. I didn’t. I built a second career.

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Could someone offer me a number tomorrow? Sure. Is it “F’You Money?” If not, then what do I do? Go build another one, optimized from the start for the exit I just took? The premise of my winery didn’t begin with an end. It started simply and has grown incrementally. Constant tactical adjustments to current markets and strategic pivots for long-term viability.

Brands built to be sold are shaped by the exit from inception. And it shows. The polish, the gloss, the socials. Look at celebrity wine brands: branded from Day 1. The underlying product, bulk juice from across California, will fix itself over time, more precise and driven by protocol.

That’s the difference between wine as a memoir and wine as market positioning. One assumes I’ll be there to turn the page. The other assumes the founder will be gone before the story gets interesting.

To re-quote Bean, the best hotels “feel authored because they are.” Authorship implies a controlling intelligence that persists across time. A voice that revises itself, that contradicts earlier chapters, that matures. You can’t author something in a single vintage any more than you can write a memoir in one sitting.

The authored winery accumulates. It keeps barrels for 10 years, not disposing of them because they are ‘used’. The owner changes the label design not because a brand consultant suggested “fresh energy” but because the owner’s taste evolved. These are the edits, the struck-through passages, the margin notes that make a text feel lived-in rather than focus-grouped.

An exit strategy requires a clean manuscript: tight margins, no typos, a clear table of contents, suits at the table. Authorship requires only that you keep showing up to the crush-pad, no suits visible, vintage after vintage, even when the critics aren’t watching and the case sales are flat.

Especially then. Especially now.

Dolcetto has proven to be a most troublesome grape. I’ve been making it since 2019 from a spot in Lake County, on the Kelsey Bench around 1,500ft in elevation. Suffice it to say, it’s a well cared for vineyard run by Nick and Pietro Buttitta.

In fact, I buy all my Italian grapes from Nick; it’s been a good relationship. Sangiovese, Barbera, Negroamaro, Primitivo, and the pesky Dolcetto all from this one source.

Why did I start buying Dolcetto?

One of my friends from Mammoth, Mitch, was looking for something that wasn’t Zinfandel or Pinot for his own label, Wine Spread Panic. 2019 Dolcetto was his first wine and my first Dolcetto. Give his website and wines a look.

Dolcetto seems to grow heartily in this Kelsey Bench site and I’ve been told the Buttitta’s have to manage both the fruit set and the foliage each season. Understanding the Buttitta’s vineyard management, the fruit is generally ready to harvest sometime within the month of September, most typically mid-September.

There’s a bit of a ritual, once we get near harvest. I call Nick to make sure his old Chevy truck is working, the one he uses to deliver the grapes to me, and he tells me that it’s getting checked out and he hopes the Chevy will make it one more harvest, which it always seems to do.

The trick has been to manage the acid level, as measured by pH, and the sugar level as measured by brix. The acid on Dolcetto remains under 3.3pH until it doesn’t (meaning it can spike to 3.6pH in a couple days). All the while, the brix continues its steady climb higher and higher even while the acid remains under 3.3pH.

For comparison, the Sangiovese they grow is much more orderly when it comes to harvest brix and acidity. Easy to work with, consistent fermentation and results year after year. I love working with Sangiovese.

Yes, I know a little technical. Basically, pH numbers below 3.3 for red wine are usually too low to pick (which means it has a lot of acid) unless we were making Rosé or carbonic. I want the grapes to be at 3.4 at the lowest for a red wine. Natty winemakers can argue with me here, but this is where the site comes into play.

Kelsey Bench in Lake County can be hot. Streaks of 100+F weather during harvest. Brix will go up and up while Dolcetto holds its acid (somewhat like Barbera). Until it doesn’t and then you have to move.

Even if all goes well in the vineyard and Nick brings in pristine fruit, there comes the trouble of making it.

Look back to Italy for Guidance

I always try Dolcetto from Italy. I’ve had some rough ones and absolutely lovely ones over the years. What I define as “lovely” are lighter-bodied, red fruited smoother tannin wines with an easy finish. To describe it another way, pizza and BBQ wine like an old-school Dry Creek Valley Zinfandel should be. Fun, easy drinking, not too ripe, decent acid, red to black fruit.

I can manage the chemistry if needed, just like we do with Zinfandel. That’s not what I’m talking about. People in the industry talk about Pinot Noir as “the most difficult grape.” They’ve never worked with Dolcetto.

Gentleness is the top priority with Dolcetto. During fermentation, never punch it down, always pump-overs. As a standard for many wines, 2 pump-overs per day is a standard protocol until the end of fermentation. If you want more extraction, you do more pump-overs. With Dolcetto, I can get away with 1 pump-over per day by Day 3 of fermentation. (video is of the 2024 Dolcetto fermentation with my voiceover for Mitch)

The length of fermentation for most of the grapes I work with can go from 9 to 14 days. I’ve had Cabernet on for near 21 days sometimes and it makes a balanced wine. Dolcetto, the quicker the fermentation the better and the less time on the skins the better. But let’s remember, quicker fermentation means a warmer fermentation.

Generally, I wait for dryness as measured by brix of 0 in the wine before I put the skins in the press. With Dolcetto, I’ve pressed off at 3-5 brix.

Now with pressing, I work with a pneumatic bladder press. Let’s say most grapes I work with I can press out to 1 bar, still fairly light pressure. With Dolcetto, between 0.65 and 0.85. Anything over and the juice becomes bitter and astringent. And here’s the press-out of the Dolcetto.

Then it’s time to barrel down. I really only have 2 options, 59-gallon stainless steel and neutral oak. This is where Italians have the advantage. They have all manner of vessels, from ultra-large oak casks to concrete. The Italians also like to move wine from oak to stainless mid-way through aging. This is something I can do and will likely do this season.

Why? To keep flavors fresher, less reductive, and less imparted by oak, even the effects of neutral oak. Yes, there are some effects to the wine even in a 10 year old oak vessel, from micro-oxidation and whatever alchemy is going on in wood.

One way to mitigate this astringent quality is to age the Dolcetto longer in oak, then let it rest in bottle far longer than most American winemakers would—meaning longer than a day after bottling. Once again, taking cues from the Italians: patience.

I stopped bottling my own Dolcetto in 2022. I’ve found that in the Central Valley of California, the locals don’t care much for Dolcetto. It could be simply marketing, Dolcetto means “little sweet one” even though it’s a dry wine and the Central Valley has history with sweet reds. I have found that the 2022 Dolcetto is doing better at BBQs here in Fresno, but the wine is now in its 4th year, good for the wine, not great for winery cash flow. It really is a better wine after 4 years and it has a lot more life in bottle to live.

What do I do with the Dolcetto I continue to stubbornly make?

Mitch just bottled the Wine Spread Panic 2024 Dolcetto back in March of 2026. We are taking a page out of the Italian book: patience. A little longer in barrel than we’ve done before, 7 months longer than our normal 11 months for a total of 18 months. And a little more bottle conditioning. I like the result. The fruit is still fresh, the tannins are more fine grained, good core of red fruit in mid-palate. It’s the best one so far. The 2025 is promising as well, but it needs more time in barrel. I may rack one barrel off to stainless steel just to get a result on how it ages.

For my own winemaking, I have found that Dolcetto blends rather well with Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc. It adds mid to back-palate structure to Cabernet Franc for sure and adds some background and tannin to softer Cabernet Sauvignon from Alexander Valley, somewhere around a 10% add is beneficial. The reverse is not true, you can’t add either Bordeaux to the Dolcetto to improve it.

We are rather quickly approaching the 2026 harvest, warm weather pushing things along. It won’t be long before I have that call with Nick about his Chevy truck and this loop of absurd stubbornness attempting to tame Dolcetto for another season.

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We were at a very popular wine bar, Café Paradiso, in the Porta Romana district of Milan. It’s talked about heavily in wine circles, among locals, and is a cool neighborhood spot.

We got a 2-top inside, not too long after they opened. Plenty of ‘Reserved’ signs on empty tables as well as explicit instructions from our host that we needed to vacate the seats by 7:30. All good. Plenty of time to try some wines and have some salumi.

There is no printed wine list, only a printed food menu. There were no fewer than 5 staff members working the floor, of which, and I’m speculating here, 1 or 2 of them were owners or had a financial interest in the business.

The first person to interact with us took our order — white and sparkling to start, plus a plate of salumi and olives. Clean pours, nothing funky or natty. No flaws.

Round two of the wines were served and selected by a different server — Rosé and orange wine. The Rosé had a bit more skin contact, thus a bit more tannin, and while clean, I’d argue the color was more Rosé like but it drank like a chillable red.

The various orange wines that were brought over were higher in volatile acidity and we did not care for them. We went back to the white.

We were thinking this was going to be our dinner for the night, with another 90 minutes before 7:30, so we ordered more food and decided to go all in on a bottle of red.

The same person who brought over the orange wines presented 3 different selections of red wine bottles, describing each as having high farming standards and all natural.

We picked selection Number 3, a Sangiovese from Emilia Romagna. The cork was pulled, the server smelled the cork and poured each of us a taste. I put my nose in and got the immediate, albeit, very faint smell of cork taint. It was a really small pour, really small. I covered the glass with my hand and swirled, trying to concentrate the aroma. It’s there. I asked the server to give me a little more and covered it again with my hand.

The server smelled the cork again and said, “No, no, it’s fine.” There was a bit of an insistence, verbally, that this was a “natural producer, I’ve had this many times, it’s fine.” The server smelling the cork again isn’t going to detect cork taint.

I disagreed. It’s there, cork taint is there. I offered my glass without sipping it for the server to smell it. The offer was declined.

Our server returned to the bar and kindly brought back Wine Number 2, a Dolcetto, pulled the cork and poured a taste into two fresh glasses. The wine was completely fine.

The wine in question was then brought up to the bar and poured for at least one of the gentlemen who seemed to have an interest in the establishment. Very brief low-toned conversational Italian was spoken and body language was observed by me. He was certainly tasting the wine in question, looking at me and his server. He did not address me or his server directly, merely tasted the wine, and walked back outside.

The moral of the story? I wish I spoke Italian.

When you treat your business like a GoFundMe page, you don’t just reveal cash-flow panic; you torch the mystique that lets you charge $45 for fermented grape juice. Luxury Doesn’t Beg…wine is a luxury you drink, not a charity you fund. No one ‘needs’ wine, it’s a discretionary grocery item.

Recent grovels I’ve either heard or seen:

1. “We need to move inventory to keep paying staff.” Translation: we’re broke and our backend is now your problem.

2. “No celebrity chef, but bring your own sandwiches.” Translation: we’ve given up on experience and are offering up our picnic tables.

3. “Stock up now — our wine has never been cheaper.” Translation: our juice is about to turn and debts are due.

4. “Keep our dream alive!” Translation: Seriously? Our dream? Customers have nothing to do with “your” dream.

5. “We’re just starting out and barely making it, it’s a tough time.” Translation: You had no plan to begin with.

6. “We’re moving toward a ‘Sustainable, Low-Impact’ distribution model.” Translation: Free shipping is killing us, so if you want a bottle, you’ll have to drive out here and get it yourself.

7. “Join our ‘Founder’s Circle’ for an exclusive chance to help shape our future.” Translation: We’re basically Crowdfunding now. We need an interest-free loan disguised as a “membership” to pay for harvest.

And then there’s this one:

“We have the best wine boxes in the business!” I have no translation. I’ve never sold a bottle based on the cardboard box its packaged in. Some desperation defies interpretation.

Each quote above mistakes vulnerability for virtue. Buyers don’t swoon for hardship; they want confidence in a glass. Give them reason to believe, not reason to worry.

Wineries. Stop the GoFundMe approach. It’s bad for business. It’s bad for the industry.

Front of the house: Same Wednesday, 6:32pm. Peak summer in a California red-sauce joint. The room hits 82 °F. A server grabs a Chianti from the dining-room rack, pops the cork. Guest accepts but asks for an ice bucket: “Sorry, we’re out.” Next visit, that guest brings their own chilled bottle from home and the restaurant forfeits the 2.5x markup.

Two Stories, Same Neglect.

Ask for a Paper Plane and watch a bartender measure, shake, strain, taste, adjust, taste again. Watch the servers huddle around for a straw-full of the new cocktail on the menu for de-facto server training.

Ask for a Chianti and watch the cork yanked by its neck, the warm liquid dumped into a glass that still smells of last night’s bleach. No taste test, no temperature check, no apology. New Cabernet on the menu, it’s $25 BTG and tastes horrible after the straw-full of the Paper Plane. Servers don’t push it.

Same religion, different rituals.

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Snobbery isn’t the problem; neglect is. You don’t need a floor-to-ceiling cellar or a pin lapel to treat wine like it matters. You need one ritual: taste what you pour, every shift, every open bottle; with the same care as your cocktail program. If the wine is tired, dump it or discount it. That’s it. No beard oil, custom leather apron, or Somm pin required.

Why demand a dedicated Somm, two Michelin stars, a 500-bottle list and $25 a glass before wine gets basic care, only for guests to label it snobby or too expensive?

Meanwhile, your gentrified dive bar packs in bearded, leather apron wearing mixologists and nobody blinks at a 10-minute wait for a 12-ingredient cocktail that costs $25.

Close the service gap or lose the markup on wine. Store reds near 60 °F, not 90; at minimum, stash them in the coolest spot. Get a couple extra ice buckets. Taste before service, not after complaints. Grant the $12 glass the reverence of the $16 cocktail. Make damn sure the $25 Cabernet is every bit as good as it’s marked-up to be.

Do the basics and wine begins to shed its snob tag, becoming the approachable everyday star it deserves to be.

Incentive Model:

Napa/Sonoma winery with long history, under the same owner for 40+ years. Wholesale case one price for Zinfandel $360 for a 12 pack. Any new POD (Point of Distribution) at the $360 price earns the salesperson $125 incentive bonus on top of the commission, which is 7% or $25.20. If it’s an existing placement or upgrade, no incentive.

Total Payout from winery in incentives and commission: $125+25.20 = $150.20 (the test comes at the end…so keep reading)

By-the-Glass (BTG) Model:

This same winery has a BTG (By the Glass) discount for a 3 case solid of $260 per case on the same wine. Cool. That’s $100 off the case one price. Restaurants take advantage of that deal all the time and salespeople love it. Better to get 3 cases per order at $260 every couple weeks because your client is moving wine in their bar than a single case at $360 with incentives that sits on a shelf for 6 months with low velocity. No incentives for the salesperson on this BTG deal.

Discount Model:

But what happens if a restaurant wants to buy 14 cases, aka “a layer”? Not a bad purchase. Often times that level of purchase warrants some negotiation on the part of the restaurant back to the winery.

Let’s say the restaurant asks for that “layer” at $20 a bottle or $240 a case.

Winery gives a hard NO.

That $20 a bottle is $1.67 a bottle less than the standard BTG rate of $21.67 per bottle. Doesn’t sound like much, but if you’re buying 14 cases and you’ve got an aggressive BTG and storage, why not buy in bulk, right? There’s a shipping discount for the winery, one case at a time costs $16 but fourteen cases costs $12 per box. Net net with shipping, better deal for the winery to go the route of bulk discounting.

Old-timey Napa/Sonoma winery says no way, either buy it at $260 (normal BTG price) a case or pound sand. (the BTG price still costs more to ship per box than a layer).

Why? Pride. “We don’t discount that deeply” is the brand identity. Except they do—they just call it an “incentive program.”

The Math:

At $240 a case for a layer, commissions are $16.80 and there are zero incentives. Thus:

$240 - $16.80 = $223.20 this math is a hard “NO” from the winery.

WAIT A SECOND…This winery was giving out $150.20 in incentives and commissions to push the same $360 case, one case at a time.

$360 - $150.20 = $209.80 WTF?

The winery just lost $13.40 for not wanting to negotiate and offering a fundamentally flawed incentive program. Add to that, moving 14 cases of inventory at a slightly cheaper shipping rate than a single box. Every dollar counts!

The wine business wonders why it’s struggling. Here’s one answer: prestige that loses you money isn’t prestige—it’s just expensive pride. The second answer — well — a 3rd grader with a great math teacher understands.

Not from one hard push, but from the cumulative weight of playing several roles, reliably, week after week. The pace was measured. And that’s the problem—there’s no finish line, just the next version of yourself you have to become.

One day I’m a winemaker on a schedule that doesn’t bend: Two bottlings over two months, multiple SKUs completed under Mastro Scheidt, not just for me, but for private clients with June and August already being planned. Everything from a straight to press Grenache + Mourvèdre Rosé to single vineyard Dolcetto.

Another day I’m a cook: Two ‘Sunday Dinner’ events at a local deli in Fresno, Moto. A few long tables, 40 guests maximum, both shared and individually plated courses. I put the apron back on once per month to cook up something with the crew at Moto. I generally handle the main course, with the regular staff handling charcuterie, salads, and desserts. Wines are line priced at $25/$35/$45 a bottle.

Most days I’m a salesman: Sticking to the discipline of Central San Joaquin Valley sales trips, with overnights in Bakersfield to make that Valley run. In fact, the overnight trip takes a lot of pressure off me. I can collect my thoughts, stop into a few more accounts, have a sensible dinner, and even get a workout in at the hotel. It can’t just be all drive time and podcasts in between meetings. The wine business functions on pop-ins at restaurants, not scheduled appointments—room for improvisation inside the discipline.

Then there’s the broker: Brokered portfolios are humming. I don’t see the doom and gloom others write about. Boxes of wine are moving in my part of the world. Anecdotal? Perhaps. The Central San Joaquin doesn’t do trends, we do consistency. We hit for average, get on base however we can. Home runs are rare, but possible. I broker wines between $120 and $1000 per 12 pack case. From inexpensive DOC imported Pinot Grigio to grower Champagne, restaurants and retail are buying. Nothing crazy, but consistent.

I’m also ‘the taster’, pulling corks: Portfolio tastings are helpful. I’m still a fan of tasting wines and getting wines in front of potential customers. I understand many wines are simply purchased on reputation alone; but if the wine has no reputation or is a 5,000 case brand no one has heard of, you gotta pull corks for potential buyers.

I’ve pulled or popped corks on things like Torrontés Sparkling from Mendoza, Argentina, Assyrtiko from Rutherford, CA, Sancerre with an amphora addition, Gin aged in American oak, and Sparkling Riesling from Saar in Germany. It may be the first time I’ve tasted the wine, so there’s truly an on-the-spot discovery and evaluation. Not all the reveals are good ones either (the list above were all delicious wines of quality…a no sulfur IGT Italian was a disappointment).

And once a week, I sit down to write about all of it.

That’s the thing about Q1. Nothing broke. Nothing failed. The roles just kept asking to be filled, and I kept filling them. The fatigue isn’t a warning sign—it’s the price of consistency across a fragmented industry. Q2 will ask the same. I’ll answer.

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I’ve been on business the last several days in San Francisco and Santa Rosa, dining out and taking part in some professional wine tastings.

It was my first time at Nari SF, located in the Kabuki Hotel, Japantown. It’s rated 1-Star by the Michelin Guide (I had no idea).

The wine list at Nari was top notch, with a fantastic selection of Riesling and Champagne, worthy of the ‘Guide’. I selected a Ameztoi, Txakoli Rosé Extra Brut “Hijo de Rubentis”, Getariako Txakolina, Pays Basque, Spain 2017 of 50% Hondaribbi Zuri, 50% Hondaribbi Beltza that sailed through the meal.

Service: Efficient, but casual. Not formal in the sense one thinks historically of the Michelin Guide. There is a difference dining in Italy at a 1-Star establishment than dining in San Francisco 1-Star. There just is. Perhaps The Guide grades on a curve for Americans.

The meal…all executed in a style where flavors were bold, in-your-face without much subtlety. We started with pork croquettes seasoned in a northern curry paste. Well-prepared, crisp, not a hint of rancid oil or greasy in texture or flavor. A good start, but one note.

Next, a Nari classic, squid and pork jowl. The jowl was blackened with nigh infinite umami. Squid was tender as butter….but so was the jowl. The sticky rice that accompanied…also…soft…mouth-filling. All well executed, but similar textures.

The main attraction, the slab of short-rib in massaman curry was dense, thick and powerful. Rich chunks of beef, fork tender — with no effort — I loaded the fork with beef, sauce and rice. The wonderfully cooked jasmine rice soaked up every ounce of the elixir. There was no escape from the richness, the decadence. Did I mentioned there are duck fat potatoes in this dish? There are. The blood orange slices were the only contrast, the acid, in a dish rich with fat, texture, and spice. The ‘green’ are just green onion tops.

I’m happy about my selection of sparkling Txakoli at Nari to combat contrast the truckload of salt, fat, umami, and spice.

Using my normal parlance, Cab Bro would love Nari. It has a Michelin rating and the food is big, bold, with zero excuses.

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Now for some contrast…

It was probably my 12th+ visit to Lily on Clement, with no rating that I could find (which I did know).

Chef Rob Lam greeted us when we checked in and welcomed us back. We sat at the bar, which has been our custom on our numerous visits here since it opened. The atmosphere is lively, casual, neighborhood vibe. I lived in the Outer Richmond back in the late 90s, Lily on Clement is technically the Inner Richmond. I miss my old neighborhood…I love it here.

The wine list is smaller but draws on similar themes to Nari, it has a well-curated selection of sparkling and Riesling. I opted for both dry and off-dry Rieslings at Lily from various producers.

We worked through a shaking beef salad, light on its feet greens and dressing where the beef is sautéed separately and placed on the side from the cold salad. Contrasts of hot and cold, crunchy lettuce, textured beef, acid and spice from the dressing — with the guest in control of how you arrange and eat your salad.

Next were duck confit egg rolls, deep fried crispy with a tangy honey mustard dipping sauce. Alongside the egg rolls, we ordered the beef carpaccio — cold lean beef topped with fresh cilantro, citrus and beet pickled shallots next to hot beef bone marrow with coconut sesame cracker. Contrasts in textures, acids, temperatures, and flavors.

Finishing up with a braised oxtail in what Chef Rob calls his shrimp paste ‘bolognese’, where he substitutes shrimp paste for tomato. Oxtail is rich, but it’s also work to get at, which slows the pace, you’re eating small pieces of oxtail over time. The sauce wasn’t heavy — it didn’t overload the palate with fat. And while rich on umami flavors — the spice component was high-toned leaving room for my palate to appreciate the next bite. Contrasts, tempo, balance.

Nari earned its star. The food is technically sound, the wine list serious, and the flavors undeniable. But Lily on Clement, starless and unranked, is where I’ve returned a dozen times.

One restaurant has the star. The other has my reservation.

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No, I don’t make Pinot Grigio. I make Chardonnay and Rosé.

I’m more fascinated with the ease and drinkability of Pinot Grigio, as made in Italy and the dominant style in California, not Pinot Gris made in Oregon and France, which can be more serious winemaking.

Here’s a snapshot of my dad’s refrigerator and a box of Pinot Grigio along with a bottle of my rosé.

My dad is 80 and a devoted wine drinker; Bota Box Pinot Grigio is his house white —he’s a Bota Box Pinot Grigio loyalist. When Fresno turns up the heat, think 90-110 F, which is generally from late May through September, boxed Pinot Grigio, Mastro Scheidt Rosé and Michelob Ultra are the cold beverages of choice.

I know, my Dad drinks out of a box. Likely, you are having thoughts:

1. What a horrible (winemaker) son I am allowing my father to drink wine out of a box.

2. My dad has a pedestrian palate.

Neither are true.

Naturally, number one can’t be true, my father can drink whatever wine of mine he’d like, he chooses to drink Bota Box Pinot Grigio as his preferred white wine. I get it, Chardonnay can just be a little too heavy, same as an IPA (hence the Ultra).

Delicato makes Bota Box. Yes, Dad is quite specific choosing Bota Box when it comes to box wine. He’s tried others and he doesn’t like them. Hats off to the team at Delicato.

As for number two — pedestrian palate — also not true. Dad doesn’t nuance much, in life or what he drinks. If he doesn’t like the wine he’s drinking, he’ll say it, regardless of winemaker or price. It’s a straightforward “Up” or “Down” system. Keeps things simple.

Bota Box Pinot Grigio and my Rosé have received an ‘Up’ vote, therefore, we are in the rotation.

I suppose follow-up questions would be, “Have I tasted the Bota Box Pinot Grigio? And as a winemaker, what do I think?”

Yes, I have had it over the years and it’s a consistent drinking California Pinot Grigio that doesn’t taste like an acid or a sugar bomb, so it’s balanced and without noticeable flaws. Delicato didn’t infuse it with peaches or mango or some other nonsense, it’s true to the spirit of an Italian Pinot Grigio. I realize that’s more of a clinical assessment than my Father’s ‘Up’ vote, but it’s basically an ‘Up’ vote.

Wine doesn’t need to be complicated. It needs to be cold when it’s 105 in Fresno, it needs to taste good, and it needs to keep tasting good glass after glass. Dad figured that out a long time ago. The “Up/Down” system works.

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Pinot Bro (noun)

Pinot Bro /piːnoʊ broʊ/ The “Pinot Bro” is a specific archetype of the wine enthusiast who prizes nuance, acidity, and “terroir” above all else. Driven by a desire for authenticity and insider knowledge, the Pinot Bro views Cabernet as “clumsy” and “obvious.” He’s never heard of TRB or even Bo Barrett.

1. Uniform

The Pinot Bro eschews the “Power Vest” for a more artisanal, curated aesthetic.

• The Fabric: Hemp, Japanese selvedge denim, a flannel shirt from a brand that only uses organic and naturally dyed cotton.

• The Headwear: A beanie (even in 90°F weather) or a trucker cap from a defunct winery in the Willamette Valley.

• The Footwear: Blundstones, signaling he’s ready to walk a vineyard or use the pressure washer at a moment’s notice.

2. Behavioral Traits

• The “Somm” Network: The Pinot Bro’s social currency is his proximity to “floor talent.” He mentions his “buddy who low-key runs a program at a Michelin-starred restaurant” every fifteen minutes. But also bashes Michelin for not going to Seattle or Portland and instead going to Sacramento.

• Stem Obsession: He can be found debating the merits of “whole-cluster fermentation” vs. “destemming” with the intensity of a Jesuit scholar. If there isn’t at least 30% “stem inclusion,” he worries the wine lacks “texture” and “tomato leaf” is a myth.

• Clonal Fluency: He doesn’t just like Pinot Noir; he rattles off wines and wineries with Pommard, Wädenswil, and Dijon 777 clones pondering the possibilities. Just like a little boy with Pokémon cards.

• The European Pivot: When not drinking Oregon or Sonoma Coast, he is deep in the trenches of “The Continent.” He drinks things no one has ever heard of.

“My buddy who’s the Somm at ‘Le Douche’ tipped me off to this producer. They only make 40 cases, all fermented in concrete eggs. It’s his side-hustle.”

3. Distinctive Philosophy

Unlike the Cab Bro, who wants to own the biggest bottle in the room, the Pinot Bro wants to own the rarest, most misunderstood bottle. To him, wine is a “living thing” that should be “transparent.” If a wine has more than 13.1% alcohol, he views it as a personal failure of the winemaker…although he has never met the winemaker, he will talk about him like they went to high school together.

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4. Other Bro-isms

Oregon Pinot Camp: The ultimate pilgrimage where he takes his electric bike and camps out (or totally thrashes the AirBnB with his Somm buddies). He treats it like a combination of Burning Man and a PhD seminar. Back in 2004 he lost all of his front teeth from going over his handlebars into a ditch at 2 am on his way back to the KOA. Still talks about it.

Cool Climates: Standing on a foggy ridge in Bodega Bay with a 1000 yard stare into the Pacific Ocean, shivering — saying, “This is the perfect temperature for ripening.”

The Willamette Valley Hideout: Specifically a “tasting room” that is actually just a muddy garage with a $10,000 sound system playing lo-fi beats.

Shares ETS Lab Reports on Insta: Cause it’s “fucking cool” to show a pH of 3.1 on pick date with a 19.9 brix and the caption “NAILED THE PINOT PICK” to all your other Bros.

…So next time you spot a lone figure in a beanie and selvedge denim, nursing a 3.3-pH post native malo Pinot in a garage that smells like cold concrete and mold, raise your glass…you just met Pinot Bro.

MacNeil writes “First, because I’ve come to see discussions about vintage as inherently exclusionary. I was at an event recently and I swear to god the person said: “The 2006s remind me of the 2012s and neither are as good as the 2016s.” Really? A discussion like that is not a discussion. It’s wine narcissism—a way of showing off.”

Now imagine someone at a bar saying: “The 2017 Dodgers remind me of the 2018 squad, both lost in the World Series, and neither was as complete as the 2020 championship team. But nothing compares to these last two seasons 2024 and 2025.” No one would call that narcissism. They’d call it being a fan.

Have you ever been in a room with someone who loves sports? And really loves a particular team or player?

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It really doesn’t matter what sport, but for the sake of argument, I’m picking baseball since it’s the one sport I played the longest, umpired, kept score, and watch today on a limited basis. I understand the game, I don’t find it boring, and I’ve been to several games, even Spring Training. That said, I really don’t have a team I love and follow, but I do have friends who do.

Let’s take the 2025 World Series winning Los Angeles Dodgers.2 Think about what a rich history they have in baseball. They’ve won several World Series (duh), they have multiple MVPs (who remembers Kirk Gibson and the arm-pump?), sure Ohtani is awesome, but Gibson did it with flair; legendary managers (I’m thinking Lasorda, nothing like him running on the field challenging the ump) and a host of players that have defined the game, like Jackie Robinson (under the Brooklyn franchise).

Everything I wrote in that paragraph above is basic knowledge and from memory. Everything. Does this make me a snob? Or a simple historian with some opinions? And the knowledge I just dropped was simple stuff, a 5th-grader would know this if they followed the Dodgers. That same 5th-grader would dispute my claim about Gibson versus Ohtani. He’d tell me pitchers don’t hit the way Ohtani hits—that doing both at an elite level isn’t just rare, it’s structurally different from anything Gibson did. And the kid is right.

No one would call me or a 10-year-old a snob for our baseball knowledge or love of the game. They’d call us fans. Not as hard-core as others, not by a long shot.

If someone were to constantly interject detailed explanations of obscure baseball statistics, rare historical plays, or highly technical pitching mechanics into every casual conversation about a game, and did so in a way that seemed to belittle others’ less detailed knowledge, then that could certainly be perceived as “snobby” or “gatekeepy” or derogatorily a baseball geek. It’s less about the knowledge itself and more about the delivery and intent. This brings back MacNeil’s “narcissism” comment. If a wine enthusiast is just ranting on and on about vintages without debate or comment from others, sure narcissist snob sounds good to me.

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I acknowledge that Ohtani is a great player. Statistically it’s true. He may not be my favorite player of all-time, but that’s a matter of opinion. Those opinions within sports circles come up constantly. There are cable networks and YouTube channels devoted to baseball. Radio shows and podcasts cover sports every day, all day. The baseball debate is endless, has global fans some more hardcore than others. There are leading voices in baseball, statisticians, books, computer programs, former players, and each season has new players and player haters, the game evolves.

Wine enthusiasts need to be more like baseball fans and I mean hardcore fans. Go Dodger Blue! Down with the Giants kinda talk. Paso Cab is over-ripe and tastes that way, Sonoma County Cab is 10x better and without all the sugar. Napa makes auto parts, Sonoma makes wine! Back your team.

The wine influencers and writers who want to “demystify and democratize” wine will say that talking about appellations or winemaking techniques is “too confusing” or “too much gatekeeping” or “doesn’t appeal to a younger generation” or whatever. Then of course there is the “drink what you like with what you like” crowd.

I say they are wrong.

That kid isn’t reciting just a simple batting average on Ohtani, he’s making a structural argument about what makes one player more valuable over another. If a 10-year-old can handle that, why does the wine industry, writers and influencers assume adults can’t handle appellations, TA, the differences between Minnesota and Missouri oak and malolactic fermentation?

Wine could have this level of fan engagement if the industry stopped treating consumers like they can’t handle complexity. Wine collapsed into “93 points = buy it because a single critic told me to.” The conversation ended before it started.

There is no “why” — no curiosity; just blind obedience to a single score and blurb by a single critic who may have, after 40 years of tasting “thousands of wines”, a tired palate at worst — and at best — a palate that has evolved over time.

Baseball has plenty of reductive stats, but the fan culture demands you look at the whole picture. No serious fan would evaluate a player on batting average alone, you’d get laughed out of the conversation. The ecosystem of debate exists because no single number settles everything.

The industry put scores on shelf talkers and called it education.

Quit treating oenophiles as snobs. Start treating them as highly engaged fans and advocates. We need them. As for Cab Bro chasing 95-pointers? He’s not the villain, he’s what we trained him to be.

Cab Bro /kæb broʊ/ The “Cab Bro” is a modern archetype of the wine world, characterized by an obsessive, often competitive devotion to high-end Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. A contrast in form and function to the traditional sommelier, the Cab Bro views wine as a high-performance asset, a status symbol, and a primary personality trait.

Behavioral Traits

• Label Chasing: He doesn’t just drink wine; he drinks “cult” labels. If the winery doesn’t have a 5-year waiting list or an iron-gated driveway in Oakville, he’s likely not interested.

• The “Oak” Obsession: He equates quality with “structure,” “extraction,” and “new French oak.” If a wine is described as “approachable”, “acid-forward,” or “mineral driven” he will dismiss it as “natty juice.” Cab Bro may also use air quotes while speaking.

• Points Culture: He memorizes Antonio Galloni and Jeb Dunnuck scores like they are batting averages. A 94-point wine is “fine for a Tuesday,” but anything 98+ is “game time.”

• Aggressive Swirling: Even when drinking water, the Cab Bro has a subconscious tendency to swirl his glass with enough centrifugal force to create a localized weather system.

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In an era of declining human expertise and rising trust in algorithmic curation, Cab Bro serves as the perfect opening definition. He’s not a cautionary tale but an early indicator: the human sommelier he dismisses for liking “mineral-driven wines” will soon be replaced by AI that never forgets a vintage of Napa Cab and never needs a taste to confirm.

The AI that validates Cab Bro also gate-keeps winery discovery. It fails to parse “winespeak.” When shopping agents stumble on notes like “mineral-driven and petrichor,” fewer recommendations reach consumers. This hurts in a market already slumping.

Cab Bro isn’t particularly tech-savvy, but he’s psychologically primed for algorithmic curation. The AI doesn’t need to outsmart the sommelier; it just needs to affirm Cab Bro’s tastes, making him feel validated.

A sommelier’s value lies in friction — discovery, challenge, the “trust me on this” nudge. For some, that Somm interaction is a feature; for Cab Bro, it’s a bug. He doesn’t seek education, only confirmation, which algorithms provide endlessly under the guise of “personalization.”

Cab Bro believes he evaluates wine objectively via scores, prices, and familiar tasting notes. But they’re inherently algorithmic metrics. He’s already pre-trained; AI simply meets him there.

What makes sommeliers irreplaceable to some — pushing back, introducing friction, and trusting their palate over customer biases is exactly what renders them obsolete to most buyers.

The tragedy?

A sommelier’s finest qualities are their commercial and algorithmic weaknesses. Cab Bro rejects challenge; he craves affirmation and algorithms deliver it flawlessly, every time.

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Here’s how the cycle works.

A restaurant manager sets a ceiling on by-the-glass wine cost: $10, maybe $12 at wholesale, which translates to anywhere on the list from $8-$14 BTG and $25-$48 by the bottle. At that price point, your options are the deepest deals or the plonkiest plonk. Name-brand grocery store wine dominates. The stuff that moves because it’s familiar, not because it’s good, and it’s pushed by distributors.

Customers see that list. They order from it. The safe brands sell. No staff training. The manager looks at the sales data and thinks: see, this is what people want, it sells itself and I don’t have to train staff.

A regular—just one—comes in weekly, orders the same dish, the same bottle. “Don’t get rid of Grocery Store Brand X or I’ll stop coming.” The manager listens. One squeaky wheel shapes the list for everyone. Restaurants prioritize the demands of one stagnant palate over the potential experience and satisfaction of every other guest.

Many wonder why wine consumption is flat or declining or moving to cocktails. I don’t have to wonder. The offerings that many a restaurant serve are cringe. I’ve even been called out for refusing to drink a wine that the rest of the table likes. In my defense, the wine did have over 20 g/L of residual sugar — about the same as Gatorade G2. Happily, I’m a snob.

The price ceiling is locked in place. Many restaurants won’t buy anything interesting because “customers won’t pay for it.” Customers never see anything interesting, so they never buy it. The restaurant enjoys a 4x markup on plonk. The data confirms the assumption. The cycle repeats.

I didn’t just describe some greasy spoon that serves wine. I’ve described many a restaurant in California, in major towns with a well-established dining scene. A burger costs $22. Seafood pasta, $29. Halibut, $40. Rack of lamb, $50. NY Steak $65. But a $16 or $20 glass of Pinot Noir from a quality producer? Too risky. Customers won’t go for it.

You’ll spend $50 on lamb but they won’t offer you a $16 wine to go with it. And even if they did, it might be open for 3 days.

Everyone is trapped in a system that rewards the path of least resistance and regular, wholesale availability of the largest wine brands. The result is calculated mediocrity—a deliberate bet on the lowest common denominator that offends the least amount of people. Nothing is horrible, nothing is great. No one is in charge and it’s all just fine.

Is “fine” good enough at your favorite restaurant? It seems to be for the wine program.

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I stepped in on a conversation with a couple of the guys:

Cab Bro, “Have you ever had M.Étain? You know, Scarecrow? Well, I couldn’t believe the Somm didn’t know what I was talking about. This was a Michelin restaurant. Before we ordered dinner, I actually went back up to my hotel to get a bottle to have at dinner.”

Cab Bro, “Well after all that, I gave the Somm a taste of the M.Étain, I mean it’s Scarecrow! Anyway after all that I get the bill and this guy, this “Somm,” charged me for corkage. Can you believe that? He’s never heard of this wine, I give him a taste, and he still charges me corkage. Never going back.”

M.Étain runs $299 a bottle at K&L. Not hard to find, if you have the money it can be obtained this week from a retailer in the Bay Area or LA.

Additionally, I looked up the wine list at the restaurant he dined at, no M.Étain or Scarecrow. The wine list has 2+pages of Napa Cabernet, including verticals of Opus, Dominus, Matthiasson, Heitz, and Shafer. Big Cab from CA is well represented. I’m willing to bet the Somm most certainly has heard of M.Étain and Scarecrow considering the breadth and depth of the list.

After the M.Étain story wraps up, I ask Cab Bro, “What did you bring tonight?”

Cab Bro, “You shop at Costco right? Well, basically, I have Costco do all my wine buying for me. I mean their pricing is always the best because they get deals no one else gets. No sales people bugging you. All the wines are rated, if it’s 92 points or better and more than $30, Costco picks winners, as long as it isn’t foreign. Both the Cabs I brought tonight are from Napa, they’re like $50-60.”

To be completely fair, both wines Cab Bro brought that night were flawless examples of solid winemaking by 2 different Napa wineries who produce a second label in the more modern style, a little more extracted, good slug of oak, and a touch of residual sugar, not much, just enough for a little back palate oomph.

Here’s the thing…Cab Bro’s Costco logic is mostly sound. Ratings work, the pricing beats nearly every bottle shop, and they know what moves with their customers. Repeatable, easy, makes him happy. Yet this is the same guy who keeps M.Étain in his hotel room and lectures sommeliers about Scarecrow.

The wines he brought were good, though.

There are tactical, practical, and executable items for wineries on a smaller scale. Like 10,000 cases or less small. My perspective is from a winery owner and consulting winemaker in Sonoma County operating for 18 seasons.

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Reader warning…there is behind the curtain wine talk in this article:

1. “Relying on people coming to the tasting room no longer works”

Are tasting rooms going away? No, but wineries can no longer take for granted that visitors will continue to show up and buy wine when they have to spend $250-$2500/night on a hotel in Napa or Sonoma plus all the associated costs of getting to wine country.

I’ve never had a tasting room and likely never will. I’ve been ahead of this trend for years. There are plenty of non-vineyard owning wineries like mine that have never had a tasting room. The report refers to the “passive demand” problem of legacy wineries in wine country simply waiting for guests to show up again. That’s not happening. Which segues wonderfully into the next relevant point:

2. “…boots on the ground in key markets” or “take the brand on the road”

Wine country tourism “has matured” according to the report and the economics of the tasting room have only gotten worse, with tasting fees in Napa over $150/person. If fewer people are coming to the winery, the math is simple: you go to them. But too many wineries are stuck in the Healdsburg, Napa, or Paso bubble, never leaving town, hoping people beat a path to their door. The truth is, not many wineries can thrive on their local market alone.

My entire strategy is about seeing people where they go, local restaurants, bottle shops, delis, and small, local festivals. Pop-ups, once a month dinners or events featuring me and my wine, not a legacy “wine dinner” per se, but rather a dinner at a local spot that features my wine.

I’ve been telling people recently at a bar that does a Prime Rib night in Fresno, “there are no rules on wine tonight, if you want to have Chardonnay from start to finish, please do. If Cabernet is your jam, drink it all night, I have plenty.” There are some people that don’t want any white wine and vice versa, not a drop of red, even with a prime rib.

3. “Wineries should move from broad, high-volume events to small, curated, or co-branded events”

Hosting large events is identified as a behavior of lower-performing wineries. I’d argue this has been true for many years and why I tend to avoid them. We can quibble over what “high-volume” means (100 - 1000 people), but I take it as any event with multiple winery/wholesalers that turns into a “drinking” rather than a tasting. I’d add that whether you’re the host or a participant at a 3rd party high-volume hosted event, the effect is the same: no connection, no sales, low information.

4. Boomers are “sunsetting” and there is a demographic shift in buying habits.

For small wineries, relying on their oldest, most loyal customers is coming to an end. Gen X’ers, like me, are a small demographic group when compared to those behind us — Millennials and Gen Z — “demographic maturation” in the report. But are they taking up alcohol at a rate that is replacing Boomers? This is the biggest assumption and the one with the longest time to proof out. It’s also the biggest hole in the SVB report and other beverage alcohol analysis reports. It’s a blind spot for all of us, to say otherwise is disingenuous.

What am I doing to prepare for this shift? I’m taking the on-the-ground research I’m doing in Points 2 and 3 above and playing with new wines. My bet is that younger drinkers who do show up for wine aren’t chasing prestige, they want discovery. Curiosity and experimentation are the hooks, not Napa pedigree. For instance, a lighter style red that you can refrigerate and comes in clear glass is a new style for me, what I call Sprezzatura.

Additionally, three of the brands I’m the consulting winemaker for are crafting wines that are from lesser-known grape varieties, such as Negroamaro, Carignan and Picpoul Blanc. All drive curiosity and hyper-local marketing; things a small producer can actually deliver better than the big players.

5. DTC or Direct-to-Consumer and owning your brand

Having a high connection to and understanding who and where your direct customer base is has the greatest relevance to the small winery. It’s unlikely that a small winery has much meaningful wholesale distribution or uses an external wholesaler. Preparing for adjusting the internal SKU count lower, using select outside brokers/flash sites/distributors for key transactions while maintaining brand and price integrity over the next several years will likely see us through this demand crisis.

I’m continuing to stay focused geographically in California, primarily in the Central Valley (it’s big), the Mammoth to Bishop corridor, and selected strategic relationships in key California markets…basically anywhere I can have a lot of impact with a 1 or 2 night stay. I’ve addressed these tactics/strategies in previous posts, we’re not out of the woods in this downturn and this isn’t cyclical, it’s a secular shift.

Thanks as always to you and your team for producing the report .

Full report is: SVB Wine Report for your own analysis and conclusions.

But here’s what no one’s talking about: the real disruptors aren’t outsiders storming the gates. They’re already inside—owners, GMs, and buyers who don’t drink at all.

Share Case by Case, by David Mastro Scheidt

When I run a wine dinner, the glass in my hand is more prop than beverage. But I’m not alone. Many experienced restaurant professionals are stone-cold sober, not a drink in years, with no intention of having one. They control wine lists. They control entire operations. And they make buying decisions without ever tasting the product.

This reality shapes how I approach sales. If my job is to get wine in front of people that don’t drink and try to make a comparison between their existing product and the product I’m offering, what are my selling points? Taste is off the table.

How does one buy a wine without tasting it? How do they buy for the guests that dine at their restaurant?

Hate to break it to you, but much of it has to do with brand awareness, aka Name Brands. It’s the easiest way to build the list and requires a minimal amount of training for staff. Fill up the basic categories, Cabernet, Pinot, Chard — with brands that everyone recognizes and the work is done.

Who controls most of those major name brands? Distributors.

The more difficult way is through curation and specialization. This could involve collaboration between the sales person and the wine buyer. For instance, if you’re the wine buyer for an Italian restaurant, listing Italian imported wines could be a natural fit. There aren’t many “name brands” outside of a few Supertuscans that come to mind, it requires training the staff on a curated selection of Italian wines.

As a last resort, find the employee who does drink alcohol. Hopefully they have some input on the list and might get behind something cool.

In the end, these sober insiders remind us that the zero-alcohol shift isn’t some external revolution, it’s been brewing from within for years. Wine sales isn’t just about flavor; it’s about strategy, relationships, and understanding a buyer’s world where taste takes a backseat. Whether leaning on brands or curating specialties, the goal remains: wines that sell to the guests who do drink, even if the gatekeepers don’t.