Ep. 1159 Chris Scott | Get Us Market Ready With Italian Wine People

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I'm Steve Ray, your host, and this podcast features interviews with the people actually making a difference in the Italian wine market in America. Their experiences, challenges, and personal stories. And I'll be adding a practical focus to the conversation based on my thirty years in the business. So if you're interested in not just learning how, but also how else, then this pod is for you. Hello, and welcome to this week's edition of Get US Market Ready with Italian wine people. I'm Steve Ray, your host, and I'd like to introduce you this week to, Chris Scott, who's host of the UK wine show. Chris, welcome to the show. Good, mate. Not too bad. And yourself, Steve? I'm doing great. Bright and early for us, and this afternoon for you. I first met you, when you interviewed me for a podcast, and I knew nothing about podcasts at the time, two years ago, maybe three, I think, at wine to wine, that event that Stevie Kim puts on in verona every year. And in fact, we both are gonna be there this year. We met a couple of years ago, and you interviewed me And I I remembered it was really only the second time I'd ever been interviewed for a podcast. And I felt really nervous. I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know how it would be used. I wouldn't know didn't know how it would be, in impact me two years later, and you're a guest on my show. I think that's pretty interesting. Did you have a comment on that? No. But it just speaks to the volume that it is easy to do a podcast. And, you know, once people start to get into it, they realize that it's it's a great platform, I suppose, so for you to go from a zero to a hero and and listen a year is a pretty good go. Yeah. I don't know if I would call it a hero, but, the listener stats are pretty significant. So and I do get a lot of people coming up to me and saying that they they they listen, which is certainly personally rewarding. Okay. Well, give us a little background on you, and, you in the wine industry, particularly, and the UK wine show, and some of the other things that you're doing. Okay. So I got into wine I like wine. Don't get me wrong. I've always liked wine. Me and my wife when we were before we got to the wine trade, we'd used to go on holiday. We'd choose our holidays based on what wine region we wanna go and visit. So, you know, I've always been enthusiasts temperature, but, it was never really meant to be a job for me. I'm an engineer, electrical engineer. I studied engineering. I quite like it. High voltage power systems, electricity markets, not that in the UK, the electricity markets do too well at the moment. But all that type of thing. I really I really like that. You know, I like, solving problems from a problem solver. But we wanted to start our own business. We looked at everything you could possibly think of. Everything from, I don't know, bikini waxing bars to a subway sandwich franchise. It is everything. And, we were trying to work out a business that we could get into. And there was like, oh, I go down engineering. James's going, I like to go down marketing. And, you know, we just couldn't come up with any there was too many opportunities. You know, when you first start out. The world's your oyster, and you can do what you like. So we needed to narrow it down. And, we're an on holiday in Canada. Quebec, a friend of ours was getting married in Quebec. And after her marriage, we went to Niagara Falls as We do. That's what we would do. We'd go to a wine region. And I was sitting in, in a Skillen's vineyard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're fairly famous on drinking some of their viable ice wine. And I had this moment of clarity you can think about that after a few guys swine. And it was, you know what? I need to get paid to drink wine. So we were, okay, we're gonna join the wine trade. And then we came back we looked at the industry because we said, okay. We've narrowed it down to a sector now. We need to learn about the sector, and we need to identify where we can make a difference. So we went off and did some WSE courses level two and three, and we started looking at the different makeup of the UK wine sector. And at the time, it was actually quite tricky because if you were a, like, wholesale and everybody goes, well, I wanna buy wine, So they they all, yeah, you see a lot of people do this and they'll go, oh, I'm gonna buy some wine. So they'll buy a truck later wine. And then the next step is they're gonna sell this stuff. Then selling, get buying wine is really easy. It's the flogging. That's the hard bit. And we looked at things like becoming a wholesaler or moving into that market segment, but it seemed that you had to fund every restaurant's balance sheet, for quite some period of time before you could even think about getting a return and the cash required was so vast to do it well. We just didn't have the money and and it was our first business. So I always fully expected us to fail. You know, nine out of ten businesses failed in the first few years. So we were like, okay, this is gonna be our learning business so to speak. So we'll we'll start it and hopefully we'll learn some good skills and we won't lose too much money when it goes wrong. Because we didn't really have much, but I I certainly didn't have much business now at that point anyway. So we in the end, we looked at it and we went, okay. We need a low in low cost entry business. That'll get us underway. That we can generate some cash reasonably quickly. And so we looked at it. We went, okay, we're gonna do wine tasting. At the time, there was no one doing home wine tasting, going to people's houses or anything like that. So we said, okay. Let's target that market segment, and we'll, we'll start there. So that's when we started. Thirty fifty became a a home wine tasting. After a while, we expanded corporate events and then we expanded to WST events. Now we do every type of wine tasting you could possibly imagine, you know, if it involves booze, I'm into it. At at homes this is, or do you do, like, corporate events where there's, like, you know, sixty, eighty people in an event or something? Yeah. On Friday, I was doing a a big corporate event in a very flash hotel for a hundred people. You know, we'd still do things at people's homes. There's a different market segment for that. So we probably do more. The value for us is in the corporate market. Rather than the home market, and we also do a fair bit of WCT material stuff as well. So that's all all very good. So that's how you make money. That's that. Yeah. Mainly. Mainly. That's the way. So now let let let's turn the the the question to now, the podcast. Which is not a moneymaker. Talk about that. Well, yes and no. Yes and no. So we started podcasting in two thousand six, which makes me the world's first wine podcaster. There was, Greg Radio, but I bet them to the punch by about six months. And I don't think they're still broadcasting now, but they were the first in America, and I was the first in the world. So, yeah, that was quite early days. And I remember talking to my guests at the time going, podcast. It's a bit like radio. And, you know, you'd spend the first twenty minutes just explaining what podcast is. Yeah. It's weird. Well, there is that whole theater of the mind thing that differentiated radio to originates radio from television that it's only sound, and you kind of deduce the personality the of who you're listening to based on, you know, the volume, resonance, all that kind of stuff, the tonality, and all that kind of stuff. So it is it leaves a lot for engagement of the listener without having being part of the conversation. Don't you think? Yeah. You definitely listen to the person. I like I was at a testing off Friday as I was saying, and, one of the guys I was talking to, they had a absolutely gorgeous voice. You know, it was and and you become acutely aware of it possibly more, through podcasting than I normally would have, maybe twenty years ago before I started this role. So, you know, you know, you you can definitely enjoy other people's voices now a lot more perhaps. So but what we were talking about was, you had laughed and I said the non money making side of it. So, jump back to that. Okay. So, because I've been going for so long, over the years, we've picked up all sorts of work through podcasting, not directly, mind you. But, you know, people listen to the show or whatever, and you'll do a load of consultancy work here and there just because you've got a higher profile than a lot of people. People come to you for stuff, which is quite nice. But we were at that wide one conference a couple of years ago. I think it was my puppy. But before COVID, it was I think it was the year before COVID, so two thousand and nine, it could be my notes. Yeah. I've been to one to one a few times, and it might have been before I met you actually. But I was on a panel talking about it and how to monetize podcasting. And I was like, do you know what, guys? I don't bother. You know, and they go, I had my audience traction. They go, no, I don't care. You know, I mean, I'm here. I I always did podcasting because I wanted to do podcasting. I'm a technical guy, and this was a technological problem, and it gave me a a voice that not many people at the time could do. And so I was quite keen on it. And also for me, I like to learn, you know, we've all got our buzzers and minors I like to learn. And I found after I'd finished a two year diploma. Well, it took me a little bit longer than two years, but we'll call it two year diploma. I stopped learning. And I was like, well, how can I learn? Well, I need to be able to talk to the really smart people, track them in a room for an hour, and I asked them anything I want. How can I do that? Oh. Italian wine podcast, part of the Mamojumbo shrimp family. How cool is that? Right? Yeah. Absolutely. I I absolutely, align with that. That's really great. I've never articulated that way, but that's really the joy of it. Yeah. I love I love that type of thing. And just I ask people all sorts of strange questions because I mean, I I don't really have an agenda other than I'm trying to learn something for myself. And if people wanna come along on the journey, I'm more than happy to share that journey, but, you know, we've got patrons who pay us and things like that. So we get money from the the podcast itself. And I'll listen to what they say, you know, they they've got some things they want and I'll definitely cover it for those listeners. There's not a problem, but I'm always thinking about what do I want to learn or what can I do, for me? And then everything else falls out from that. So I don't care too much about numbers. You know, people going about numbers. I'm not worried about it. We've got pretty good numbers, but I'm not. I I to be honest, I haven't looked at them for a year. I really don't care. It's not gonna make not gonna make a difference. Right? It's not gonna change what you're doing. Yeah. No. We're not trying to sell advertising. We have people who ask us if we wanna advertise, we'll go, yeah, yeah, if you want to, but we're not chasing anybody. We're not trying to, and we've never really bothered with it too much. What we do though is because we've got that platform, it's tied really nicely, with our WSTT because our normal punter and our home tastings or our corporate events aren't necessarily the fully engaged type of person. My shows are a little bit geeky at times. You know, I'm quite happy hampering something quite hard. And, we do kick out. So it's not always perfect for the casual wind drinker. It's more for the engaged enthusiast or someone in the trade. To be honest, you know, you listen to my show because you wanna learn stuff about wine. You don't listen to it because you're trying to fill in half an hour of light entertainment. And so it doesn't really tie up without key thirty, fifty product range. But what we found was students doing WCT. It was right on their button. So after, I think it was the first time I was at wines wine. And they said, you know, how do you make money out of it? And I said, well, I don't really. I thought about it. I thought, you know what, I need to do something about this. We've got a platform. We've got a good situation. So let's do it. So that was about the same time as we started creating a lot of WSCT products. So these are things like flashcards, exams, tasting guides, all sorts of materials that we create. We sell internationally like you, but we have a lot of American buyers, for our product. It's one of our big markets. And we started pushing our products through the show, and we sell you know, we we we sell good margin on those products. And WCT and at higher end education side of things dovetails quite nicely with the show. And now we we ask, you know, people who do our courses at level two and at level three, how they heard about us. And there's a it's probably only about ten or fifteen percent of people, but they listen to the show and that's why they chose us. And, that's that's a nice bit of revenue because you make good money out of WSC course. So, well, you can't we do monetize it quite well now, but still not directly. We'd never sell advertising or anything like that. Well, I can go down that rabbit hole coming from an ad agency. Owning one myself, but I won't. I think, where are your listeners? Obviously, the title of the show is UK wine show. Are they predominantly UK or what percentage are they in and what other countries you'd referenced with? Okay. So roughly, I think it's about fifty percent US, maybe maybe fifty five. I haven't looked at it for a while, but it's it's predominantly US, and that's partly because, a, there's a lot of engaged people in the US, Also it's a much bigger country in terms of population. So, the US is number one. UK is number two. We're probably about thirty five percent of listeners, maybe slightly higher. Come from the UK. We've got listeners in Australia, Japan strangely enough. We were the number one wine show in China at one point. Not gonna do you much good these days, but especially if you're Australian wines, but yeah. So, but that was still on small bits and shit. I don't think they had many English wine shows that at what running. Well, actually, this one is the Italian wine podcast that's broadcast on Shimalaya. I don't know how to pronounce it, but also on, what other ones are are you carrying on? I presume South Cloud Stitcher. Yeah. I know it's a a sound club Probably. I can't remember if we are now or not. Definitely stick to Spotify, all the normal sort of streaming services. I don't think we're on prime, Amazon Prime. Well, I'm not sure about that. I haven't looked for a lot. Well, what what I'm I'm listening to you talk and and thinking about the the compare and contrast to what we're doing. And the interesting thing is, at least on mine, it's about sixty five percent US, probably another twenty percent UK, then, like, ten percent Italy, and then, you know, resolves to some other things. So I I think we're probably talking to similar audiences, although, obviously, the subject matter is is a little bit different. So if people did wanna find your show, how would they, go and listen to it? You can probably the easiest way is just type in UK wine show into Google and it'll come up pretty well. If you go into any of the the podcasting apps or anything like that, it'll come up Yeah. Yeah. No. It's it's pretty easy to find. And if you get desperate, I had a person, contact me. I don't believe people like this existed anymore, but, he said he wanted to, subscribe to the show. So I see some sort of the RSS speeds. And, a guide to how to, to do it. And, he wrote back saying, oh, I can't. I I said, yeah, just do it on your phone. It'll be fine. Because I know I do everything on my Mac. Ninety nine percent on my Mac. I need it. I can't do I can't listen to show because I can't go to Mac. And I'm like, for goodness sake. Two thousand and six, there was no such thing as this phone. You had to do it on your computer. So it's like, oh, god. So yeah. But you can you can get it anywhere. Give tell us a little bit about thirty, fifty. What's the origin of the name of the company? Well, in the old tanks, I used to do a little joke saying it's because I looked thirty. My wife looks fifty. However she got Really? How many times did you say that? And and when she was around as well, I get and the next something chronic. It was hilarious. But now sadly, both of us are over fifty. So, when we first started the business, it was twenty years ago, and I was we were both in our thirties, but, it's a joke that's gone a little bit long, I think. So originally it's to do with latitudes where grapes grow. So most grapes grow between latitudes, thirty, and fifty degrees latitude. And I'm a big believer in the influence of climate on both the grape variety and the style of wines, and even the price points of those wines can achieve. So if you understand latitude, you've got a fairly good understanding of climate. Once you've got climate, you know what's going to be produced where and the sort of, issues associated with those vineyard areas and you're sort of on nine tenths on the way to understanding what's going on. So I think it's a it's a nice cool name and, a lot of people in the wine trade don't know even though it's one of the first things you get taught when you're, if do a WST course, but it's it's a cool name and it's very much my philosophy in terms of just saying like something very simple, but if you dig into it, there's a lot of content. There's a lot of content. That you could do. You brought up an interesting subject. A friend of mine just published a book. His name is Brian Friedman, the name of the book is crushed. Scott some really great reviews, and I just finished it. And and the focus is on wonderful stories about how climate change is influencing the production of wines and challenging, not just in things getting hotter or more unpredictable, but you know, the, length of the growing season and all that kind of stuff in terms of great brightness and all that. What's have you guy have you dug into that at all? Is that something you alluded to? Is that, obviously, a subject of interest? Oh, yeah. I think global warming's massive. Important, to us. I think people are overstating it a little bit in terms of, the implications. I mean, if you're a wine region, you just do what Bordeaux does, you know, all of a sudden, the grapes are getting a little bit too ripe. So what they do, they introduce, Dhrugginacional is one of their grape varieties in AOS in Porto. So you're gonna deal with it lots of ways. You know, you can deal with it by just changing your grape mix, you know, and and these will take for those that are blends, that doesn't necessarily work so well in, county. Yeah. But county is a pretty big blend these days. It sent you a basic dominated when you chuck in all sorts of stuff into that blend. Yeah. I mean, in regions where they've, like, in Europe, where they've said, you must be this great variety and it's this, then obviously, they'll have to change the rules. I mean, it's it's not like everybody goes on about their applications, you know, their set and stand, but they're not. They're as flexible as the next business, the next pound you can make out of it. Do you know what I mean? These appletons are always changing their rules, their right and center, and they will. They'll continue just like AOC Bordeaux introduced a load of grape varieties. Yeah. But that was very slow in coming, and I think that was one of Brian's points is that the old European regulatory entities or a lot in contrast to what you said, slower to adapt than the climate is actually changing. And that's a challenge. They're slow to adapt until they see the money on the wall, and then they'll adapt very quickly. They will change. You know, you can do all sorts of stuff. You know, you can just check. Instead of going in north, south alignment on your grape varieties, you can just put yourself at a slight angle and all of a sudden, in the mountains, UV, grapes get radically changes by replanting. You can still do that. You can plant in areas that are not south facing, but are north facing or vice versa. You know, there's lots of things that people can do if they want to hold on to those grape varieties. They don't have to just leave them there and do what they've always done and just pick a few months weeks earlier and a few weeks earlier and a few weeks earlier until you're getting green flavors and terrible wines. Well, then you get them out of balance. I I was talking to somebody the other day about Kile, and one of the areas that I had visited, and I was very impressed by is the Casablanca Valley. I don't know if you've ever been there, no, no much about it. It was basically just past your land very close to, the ocean. Global warming has impacted them significantly, but the thing that impacted them more than anything else is wrap Norabets ravaged the vineyards. And so they basically left them or or ripped them up, and many of those producers are moving to other parts, more extreme parts of Chile, further south towards Patagonia, further north of the Atacama desert. Which I find really intriguing. And if there was any one country that is gonna be impacted by global warming because of its north south orientation, it's it's chilly. But here's this region that fifteen years ago didn't even exist. They built it up into something significant and had a global, reputation for Savignon blog approaching, not directionally where, New Zealand is, and now it's being completely abandoned. I don't see that kind of thing happening in Europe. I really, weaving about Casa Black, and I thought it wasn't just the rabbits, but it was also water issues. They had some water issues, not just rabbit issues. So I'm not sure that, you know, I only superficially know about that, about them moving out of the area. Right. And I'm sure I'm not capturing it completely, but the idea is a radical decision was made. And I I I don't see that happening because you you don't have the history in South America. Casablanca, they just discovered is a good place. And, yeah, they can choose the old sites that they're on. But if you're in Bordeaux, you can't say, okay, I'm gonna move over to another or burgundy. Turn over to a south facing club. There's about eight thousand people that own that vineyard. Be pretty hard to buy it or trade it or change it. Yeah. But you got places like, burgundy. They've got quite a while. They've got a few degrees in temperature, not before they have to get too desperate about, you know, so what you lose a little bit of tapisty and it's a little bit riper and the wines taste a little bit better. Okay. So let's get let's talk a little bit about target audience and not necessarily so much in behavior, meaning whether they're geeky or not, but it seems very popular these days to talk about, gen z, especially in the US, gen z and millennials, and with very different sets of values, different ways, you know, they're digitally nativists, Paul Mabrain likes to say. And they look at the world differently, and they consume information about wine differently. Are you adapting your podcast to address these audiences at all? Not really. No. So to say, we are not as I say, I do what I want to do and I do it. That's it. Podcasting is the trendy thing at the moment. The the fact that I'm sort of been going for eighteen years and the rest of the world's caught up. Means that I'm nicely positioned for gen z in millennials, but they're they're just coming on board now more than anything else. Well, okay. Speculate if you will then about gen z and millennials and how they find out about wine. You talk to a lot of people. You see all that kind of stuff. And and in in respect to podcasting is what I'm really talking about here. Okay. So from all the conferences I go to, and they sort of say where did they get the information from? It's usually associated. They get the information from friends or family or social media. So then they're not necessarily getting information from authority voices. Or historically from where a lot of people used to get their information was from some sort of authoritative voice. And that's why you've seen the rise of some of those, ratings apps and all that sort of thing where you get a lot of people saying, well, I like this wine or I don't like this wine. The problem that you get with that is that the thing with wine is that some people love a certain wine. Some people hate exactly the same wine. And if you go for a a crowd effect, which is where gen z are getting a lot of their information from, what you land up with is some mushed up middle ground. Yeah, I was talking to the guy who and did Vavino and they're talking about their ratings a few years ago. And I was like, you know, I bet your average score is something like four point three and it was not it was four point three something around. Do you know what I mean? Because whenever we've done analysis on ratings, Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because especially those polar wines where some people hate it and some people love it, it all still lands up with about the same number. So the problem you get is you get people gravitating to the same stars wine and you get the people who like, might really like high ass and shabbly that and some people really can't stand high ass and wines, and they're gonna miss out in that opportunity. So I do think, The problem you get with a lot of crowd sourced information is you land up with averages. And you do get the opportunity for people say I really like this, but then it's really hard to know whether you will like that just because someone else really likes it. Winds one of those things where there's so many different styles out there and some people really don't like certain styles and some people really like certain styles. And if you take your information from friends, they might like a particular style And if you'd listen to them enough, eventually, you will start liking that song because we are plastic, you know, and our taste preferences. But You know, we we see that in the US. A friend of mine once said, you know, the only thing that happens when you're in the middle of the road is you get run over by a truck. That is kind of a nice metaphor. And a lot of the people that you talk to, and certainly the wine that I personally like and drink and experience when I travel around the world, are the not the outliers, but not in the middle, not the mainstream napa cabernets, and I don't know much about the US market, but, things like, you know, Italy, everything from, Rio to Sanrentino de Montefalco to Vermentino. Yeah, I drink a lot of, sangiovese, but a lot of variants on sangiovese, like Montepulciano, Avino, and so forth. So there's a lot to discover within even the traditional areas and people doing things differently Do you think that can be a commercial success for marketers in the US to be doing thing to do things differently? Well, it comes down to how they're gonna reach their product to market. And the one of the problems you get with Italy is that There's a lot of small producers and quite often you need to have some sort of volume to do. I I did a really interesting podcast actually a couple of weeks ago, about why some wines are popular and some wines are not so popular. And the first thing that that that came up was you've got to have volume. If you want to be a popular wine, you need to be able to quench the thirst of a lot of people. And if you can't quench that thirst, you're not gonna be popular Right. And the problem with Italy is there's a lot of really small regions where they're gonna, you know, pinot grisio can, but that's about it in terms of a lot of the the sort of regions. It's really hard to get that volume there. To be able to quench that first if it does become popular. And so and the problem with that is that you also, to get a large population of what people like in your wine, you normally go for that that middle road as Right. Yeah. There's a bit disappointing. And the great thing about Italian wines is, you know, the Italians love tannins. They're into that sort of thing. And if you like tannins, Italy is a fabulous place to go visiting for red wines. But not everybody does, you know, about third population can't stand them. They've got an almost negative to them. And if you take all your advice from someone else who doesn't like tenants, then you'll never gonna be able to engage with the lieutenants of those. Yeah. And I I think you hit on a really important point. In the US, scores are counted, because it's a language that everybody understands even though it's not a very accurate language. And it's just a score of someone's However, that evaluation entity is structured scoring. It's it may be measuring quality, but people interpret it as, oh, I would like that because it had a ninety two, but it's very possible that if it's a highly Tannic wine and you don't like Tannic wines, or it's a it's a low acid wine and you prefer high acid wines with your food, you're not gonna agree with that. I I don't wanna go off on the tangent of of, scores. But coming back to marketers, how can brands use mark podcasting as marketing or communications tools? And and if you could distinguish between the two marketing and communications tools. Okay. So marketing's pretty straightforward. You can just take an ad. You know, you can reach an audience. And the nice thing about podcasting is they do have quite specific markets that they're targeting. Getting information out of them a bit from the podcast about who their demographic is might be a bit tricky, but, there's certain markets for it. So you can approach it, from a advertising point of view. Most podcasts will rip your hand off to to take advertising. In terms of except you and me, I can't. I just so care. But the other thing is, getting getting your message across on a podcast isn't that hard because you know, podcasts need to produce content. They're all done on a shoestring. So they're always looking for content, especially content that that is easy for them. Because, you know, I I have to do my entire show in one day from start scratch as a day. That includes writing news articles and recording the interview and everything. Otherwise, if it goes over a day, I've lost too much time to be able to invest in it. So people who are competent who can speak well on a topic and they have a hook, you know, they can get on shows, and they can then use that as an opportunity to spread their their wood. And it's much more powerful than you ever get with an ad. Anyway, I switch off as soon as I hear it. I go out of my way not to listen to ads. I probably you know, I if there's a service that doesn't have an ad or a service that's ad supported, I'll always give it to the one that doesn't have an ad. I don't like ads. I know American is you get them thrown down your throat, but I I I avoid them like the plague. So content is a great way of reaching the audience, and it's much more natural, and it's more likely to be lasting as well. I think so too. It's and it's the case of the the the hundreds or the true audience. It's a very small audience of a very small number of the true audience that you wanna reach or influential to others. And I'm not talking about orchestrating a whole viral marketing thing. I've I've said many times, viral is an outcome, not a strategy. But if you talk to the true believers, they become the evangelist to carry a word. Perhaps even more so now than there are publications out there, whether that's we're talking about print, electronic, broadcast, or, things like like podcasts. So let's move a little further down the road. And where do you see you've been in it since two thousand six, one of the founders of it, where do you see podcasting going in the next, say, two, calling them kinda sort of post COVID years? I mean, we're gonna live with this forever, but with the growth of TikTok Reels and other video based social tools, why is podcasting so vibrant today when it's only theater of the mind? And where is it going? Okay. So it's got something over video that you can't have. And that is you can listen to a podcast when you're driving, you're running, you're walking, you can do content or entertainment, anytime you want, doing another activity. So anytime you're got a mental downtime, that's an opportunity for a podcast whereas TikTok, you have to be a lot more active, involved, and engaged in searching for the content than, than if you're on a podcast. So it's a different market and also if you like for me, I go for runs, I can just switch off from the run and into the podcast, and I'm absorbed by it while I'm doing something, and I and it's fabulous. It's great. So it's definitely got its own place I think the future of podcasting is it's I think when things like, Spotify came in, they were quite important because all of a sudden, they started creating a gatekeeper approach remember when Spotify first came in, they wouldn't let anybody. It wasn't just anybody that would let on their platform. They were they were doing, I mean, for us, we spent ages getting on the Spotify platform was an absolute pain in the neck. Because they were like, no, you must go through a media partner to contact us and all this of and we we do everything ourselves. You know, I've wrote the RSS, builder and everything, you know. So we never had a media partner does. So we couldn't get on it for a long, long time. But what what you're gonna see is, you're gonna see more networks of podcasts appearing. So Twitch is a a great technological network on, for podcasting. But there are other TWIT? Yeah. TWIT. Twitt. Yeah. Liolette port. He's a a as a computer geek. But he's got a massive network of pop. He makes brilliant living out of being running, huge numbers of podcasts. I mean, they they're producing two or three podcasts a day sort of thing. And it's a fabulous network. So you're gonna get these this consolidation into networks. You're gonna see, a lot of more marketing advertisement becoming available and and and funnel through it. So when I first started, I remember trying to get advertising on the show probably ten, fifteen years ago. There just wasn't infrastructure in place for it. Now there's a lot of infrastructure And I think that infrastructure will get more sophisticated and the ability to target the audience will become better. That's the key partners. Podcast is maybe lacking is the ability to actually communicate the numbers and explain what the demographics are. That will get slicker. And also the shows are getting much slicker. You know, probably me and Jane. We're still, you know, we're still me and Chang during our podcast. Little bit of jingles and that, but, you know, some of these podcasts are very, very slick. And you're seeing people who've gone through media training now producing podcasts. So the quality of the shows is becoming much, much better. You know, I'm gonna rely on content for my audience rather than pack court jingles, but there's a lot of really good content being developed and the quality that content is improving. Good. So there's a future there. That's nice to know. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's it's brilliant. And radio's dead. I would wanna be in radio. Radio's dying. Podcast is killing radio. They say TV killed the radio. No. Podcast is gonna kill radio. I don't even know if radio is relevant to, kids these days and whether they even listen to it. That's what I mean. Exactly. So we're coming to the end of our time. One of the things that I like to do at the end of my podcast is, ask the guest for what's the big takeaway, you know, kinda think about what we've been talking about here. But remember that people are only gonna take away one maybe two or three, but I like to focus on just one thought. What can people listening, assuming that they're a most in the trade take away from this and put to work immediately? Is there a practical thing that we talked about that somebody can say, oh, I've heard this on a podcast today, and I'm gonna do that. What aspect of that we chatted a lot about all sorts of things. Well, yeah. Really, what I'm asking is for you to just kinda pick one that, particularly resonated with you. Okay. So when we're talking about climate change, and I said, look, don't get as stressed as, as, as, most people are about it. Don't get me wrong. I'm a big believer at home change. I'm not a climate tonight in any way shape or form. You know, I've just been a fortune on insulating my home or office and do, you know, I'm absolutely one hundred percent trying to do my bit in this thing. Agriculture as a sector is always under pressure. Wine is an agricultural product. However, the bans, as climate change happens, where things happen will change, but places like UK become will become more profitable for wide production, but places that are hot, and on the marginally into hot light parts of the central parts of Australia, which are getting drier perhaps, there may become less profitable. And all you're gonna see is things will move. And as they move, you'll still have the same range of styles. The styles will just come from different places because as we said burgundy, you know, their wines will start becoming riper. They might move from a stone. The whites might move from stone fruit to a pineapple flavor profile, but they'll still wines be excellent. So you'll see things change, but the wine's still gonna be there. People will adapt to it. So I don't I'm I'm I'm not worried about the wine industry globally. I'm worried about certain parts of the wine regions, certain wine regions that have got particular issues that might make them less profitable. But I think overall, the wine industry is not necessarily gonna be a bad bad place for global warming. And people get really worried about it. It's like the UK is doing everything they can to try and mitigate where they were until we've owned your government anyway, but us, we was doing quite a bit to try and mitigate global warming within Sierra Carbon. UK agriculture is gonna be one of the big winners out of Global War. You know, it it it it the numbers say it's agriculture sector especially Scotland will become more productive. So things are gonna change. And there's gonna be losers for sure. Let's not park around, and there's gonna be some big losers. It's also gonna be some big winners as well. That's not to say we might we shouldn't try and do it, but, and manager, and I do as much as I can to do that. But sometimes people, they get a little bit hysterical about it and they, they get over excited about it. There's gonna be losers. There's gonna be winners. It's a disaster. We need to manage it, but the wine industry as a whole will still produce wine in fifty years time. There you go. Great. Okay. So we're talking this week with, Chris Scott of the UK wine show. Chris, if people wanted to get in touch with you or listen to the show or contact you or find more about you, what are what what's your email, phone, website. How can they reach you? Yeah. I have to say that. That's why I'm calling you. I'm not sure. I wanna get it out. No crazies. No crazies need response. Yeah. So it's, Chris dot Scott at thirty fifty, t h I r t y f I f t y thirty fifty, like in those, wine regions, dot co dot u k. The podcast is UK wine show. It is definitely a good show if you wanna engage and learn lots. If you're looking for light entertainment, it's probably not the show for you. And if you're studying WCT, we have the best range of products, flashcards, mock exams, levels one, two, and three, and now diploma as well. So, You can get your get all the study material you need from us as well. Well, great. Well, now there's a perfect example of how to embed marketing content into it, but, of course, we didn't make any money on it. So there's that. Anyway, this is Steve Ray. How to get US market ready with Italian morning people on the Italian morning podcast channel saying thank for listening, Chris. Thank you. It's delightful conversation. I look forward to seeing you, in a couple of weeks, next month at wine to wine, and thank you for joining us. Thanks again for listening. This is Steve Ray with Get US Market Ready with a town and wine people on the Italian wine podcast.