Ep. 2235 Barbara Fitzgerald interviews Rob McMillan | Masterclass US Wine Market

In this episode, we're excited to talk to Rob about first how the changing market dynamics are calling for a reevaluation of marketing strategies, product offerings, sustainability practices to meet evolving consumer preferences. Get Rob's insight on how we can address oversupply and consolidation in the wholesale space with adaptability, strategic planning, and innovative approaches to stay competitive. And then third, a look at some emerging trends in technology integration, advanced analytics, AI and how to best kind of leverage these tools for growth and efficiency and staying ahead in this evolving market. So let's dive right in, Ron. That's a list. A pretty pretty good list. Welcome to master class US wine market with me Barbara Fitzgerald. In this show, we'll break down the complexities of selling wine in the US by discussing the relevant issues of today with experts from around the globe. Each episode serves up three key insights to help elevate your wineries presence in the US market. So grab a pen and paper, and let's pave the way for your success in the US. Welcome to Masterclass US wine market. Today, I'm really excited to welcome Rob McMillan to the show. Rob is a top US wine business analyst and the author of the Silicon Valley Banks prestigious state of the wine industry report. Many decades of experience Rob's insights are coveted by winery owners, journalists, and investors. As a prominent speaker. He's frequently quoted in the press and recognizes one of the top fifty most influential people in the US wine industry. His banking career has been about thirty five years, mostly with Silicon Valley Bank. And in that time, Rob has held various leadership positions. He now fosters new winery relationships and provides strategic consulting to the bank's clients. So welcome to the show, Rob. It's really an honor to have you here. I know you're a very, very busy man. So thank you for making the time. No problem. You caught me at a good spot. Good. Good. This is like that dead week of the year. Yeah. So before we dive into today's discussion, can you tell us a little bit more about your background, Rob, and and how you came to work in the wine business? So back in nineteen ninety two, Silicon Valley Bank decided that they were going to try to figure out how to get into unbanked niches. So we we were already doing technology, which nobody wanted to do back in the eighty six frame time frame when the bank started. And so we said, well, let's go find some more of those. And so I was the one that was tasked with trying to set some business plans up. And so the first one I did was on mortuaries. And, you know, everybody I just figured it was a good thing because everybody was dying to get into that business, but But it's, you know, I had my boss tell me, Rob, it's a good idea. It's not one of your best. Go do something more fun. So that's how wine came to be. Is that right? I thought, well, wine looks interesting. And and back to the time when we opened up the business, nobody wanted to do it. We were coming out of the last demand cycle that, you know, or we we had declining demand. We haven't seen that since eighty six to ninety three. And so this is right. What we're seeing right now is right we entered the business. And and banks didn't wanna do this business, but we stepped in. I thought that the business was gonna take off just because the boomers wealth and because of the size of the of the population, and I I hit it on the head. So we just we took off for twenty five years. Not the same business anymore, but now we have twenty five years of experience on it. Yeah. That's very cool. And so you were definitely, like, one of the first, right, to really be investing in, especially the California wine industry? Yeah. We were the first. Nobody ever thought about that. We had a lot of people telling us, you know, you don't wanna put all your eggs in one basket. You know, think of the, you know, the risk. Everything could fail. And, a, I didn't think that was gonna happen. But, b, my other point of view is in a portfolio if you have a bunch of different verticals, you know, more two areas. As an example, wineries, technology. And and we did go that way for a while. We had TV and radio stations. We had church lending. There's a bunch of things. At one point, I managed all of it. File. And, you know, the the point was if you have all of these different verticals, you might have a tough year in in one or the other, but probably not all. So it was a good way to spread risk, and yet still be really focused and engaged with one one institution. And honestly, the work that I've been able to do in writing a very expensive report for the industry wouldn't happen if I was a generalist because nobody would make on my side that investment in what I was doing. Right. Right. And as you mentioned, like, this report is means so much to the industry. I think those of us, especially, you know, myself, I worked in wine industry marketing for years. I like, wait. So I'm like, is it ready yet? Alright. Well, so we're very excited to have Rob here based on all of that experience and wisdom he has to share. So in this episode, we're excited to talk to Rob about our three key takeaways, which are first how the changing market dynamics are calling for a reevaluation of marketing strategies, product offerings, sustainability practices to meet evolving consumer preferences. Get Rob's insight on how we can address oversupply and consolidation in the wholesale space with adaptability, strategic planning, and innovative approaches to stay competitive. And then third, a look at some emerging trends in technology integration, advanced analytics, AI and how to best kinda leverage these tools for growth and efficiency and staying ahead in this evolving market. So let's dive right in, Ron. Oh, that's that's a list. Yes. It's a pretty a pretty pretty good list. Let's start with consumer. Yeah. Because as I I mentioned earlier, this is the very first consumer demand decline that we've seen in the United States since period of eighty six to ninety three. That was a interesting time because I started in the business actually in eighty one working for Bank of America at the time, and my first loan was to Jackson Family One, and when it was called Chateau du Lock back then. So it goes back along with but I do remember you know, the the mistakes that Unrene and Vineyard owners are making, and how difficult that period of time is. And and that's, you know, that's kinda where we find ourselves again. And I I have to say that our industry isn't one that appreciates difficult news. We really don't like to hear it very often. Every time I go and and talk to a group of people in a in some sort of a setting, you know, I always ask, you know, can you say something good? And I said, well, I always I'm an optimist, and I want to try to find something good. But, you know, you gotta focus on the things that are issues as well. And if you don't, then you're not gonna be able to fix it. And so we have this kind of, love hate relationship with difficult news. And and, I think at this point, we're probably when I talked to all the analyst friends of mine, I think everybody's finally in alignment that this is happening. You see it in all the numbers. You don't have to guess anymore. You don't have to predict, you know, some of these predictions I've been making for well more than five years. I've made a prediction in nineteen nineteen, Apartment. I not that old. A long time ago. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Twenty nineteen, but, you know, that we were going to slow down in the next five years, and we need to temper our growth expectations. Oh my god. Can't tell you how many people were irritated about that. But, you know, the truth is where we are right now. It's a very simple thing. It's just math. If you look at the generation over sixty, they came to wine because beer and spirit sucked. They weren't good at that time. And so, you know, premium wine just took off, and it was, plus, it was very affordable, at that period of time in the early nineties. You there were very few Napa Cabernet is over twenty five dollars back then. Acura land back then was twenty five thousand dollars. Today, it's like four fifty. Wow. So, you know, it's a very different business. We weren't going through the same things that we see today. You know, eventually we got out of it, but how we got out of it is the problem. The way we got out of it was the French Paradox Arthur's work in the j shaped curve and the French and the immaturity diet but it was the same sort of an influence by the WHO and and anti health groups that were pushing down demand and, you know, more or less unnaturally. And once we had this other news come out, that, well, guess what, there's a health effect of consuming one moderately we took off redline sales just went through the roof. So, you know, today, that's about where we are. And so, you know, in my opinion, we have a choice to make is, are we going to, you know, look at the market and adapt to it just on the math part of it. Most of the boomers now, I think, actually, the boldest boomer is sixty now. Is that I might have said that backwards, but the whole boomer. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. The whole boomer category now is over sixty. And first of all, boomers have more than half the wealth in the United States still. So they're the heavy spenders. They're the one that propped up the whole category and actually in other categories that you see the same thing happening in luxury sales. Mhmm. And so it's it's the same sort of the transition that has to happen when you move away from a dominant group. And it's not that this is a a mistake that a lot of people make. They say, well, we have to bring in new consumers. Well, when you look at at the data, when you look at the the population and the preferences that are out there. You know, when the report comes out, you're gonna see it's it's really age thirty to forty six. That's where the population bulges right now, and most of that is millennia. I just don't like using the term. I'd use it. I'd rather get down to specific, you know, age groups to the extent we can. Right. And it's and right now, it's thirty through forty six. And and the issue is when you look at it, they drink across categories. So they drink wine, they drink spirits, they drink beer, they drink other, they smoke in, of us or take it and ingest it in various forms, mostly flower. And so it's just not the same as my generation. I am over sixty. But, you know, in my generation, we liked mine. We didn't like anything else. And so there is a period of time where that's all we had. And, you know, now today you find my generation drinking across categories two more because the other categories have done better. Right. So today, we we're moving from this period. Let's just say that our index out of a hundred to sixty. And the index for the younger consumer that I just mentioned is thirty to wine. So we're moving from that sixty index to that thirty index. And every single year, we're making one more step toward that. And people feel like it's kind of a violent change and in some regards it is. What we're gonna go through now in the next many years, actually, is about two point five million boomers per your dying, going to the great tasting room in the sky, and a little over four million new LDA can legal drinking age consumers coming into the category. And the youngest consumers today are drinking less period. They're they're abstaining. You know, dry January is is, dry, March, dry April, dry. Yeah. And, you know, we still have think work to do to figure out exactly what that means. But the fact that that category that used to be the experimental category, we saw them over indexing on alcohol consumption, you know, overall, that's changed. And so there's gonna have to be some work done in that. But there's no question. The the preference of those consumers that are thirty to forty six, they they like wine. They actually like wine. Now the question is, are we going to market to their values instead of the values of the older generation? Well, I think that, you know, anyone that's been kind of regularly following the Silicon Valley Bank report and your analysis of it is you've been talking for a long time about the need to kind of change the marketing to meet the values of these younger will say young younger than boomer could do. Everybody younger than six you know. Yeah. So do you have maybe some strategies? Like, what a winery can do best to adapt their strategies to appeal to this kind of younger and also more diverse consumer base that is also maybe less brand loyal than the boomers were? Well, there's, yeah, probably two things. I mean, one thing is we're in oversupply now. And when you're in oversupply mode and you're still having declining consumption, which we do now, it's really hard to catch up with that bubble. You know, what you'd rather see is less volume coming into the chain and more consumption of what's coming in to reduce that bubble. So that endlies that's a part of the the issue, and and So the, you know, the Salb, if you will, for oversupply, is always discounting. And that's already happening. We're already seeing. So that's one of the ways. And you you'll see it. And you can see it right now in, if you go to Costco or you go to Trader Joe's or any one of those kind of discounting stores, you'll, you'll see wines that are appylated like Oakville that are selling for twenty dollars a bottle. You can't. That doesn't make any math sense to do that. So the only reason you would do that as a producer is to move that away, just to kinda clear the decks. So we have some deck clearing to go, and we'll we'll see those kind of things happen. We also though are seeing this is a difficult piece of information to get, but white label products You know, those, products that go through like albie, legal, those specific kind of brands, we think the best of our knowledge that are growing at double digits. So that speaks to the pricing dilemma that the industry faces. So part of this is naturally, is the market's gonna take over. And we will see price reductions. It doesn't mean across the board. You know, don't expect to see, you know, your favorite burgundy going for a hundred bucks. It's it's not it's not gonna happen. And and and, you know, you won't see a collapse in prices at the high end. We will always have the wealthy. And so that's not really what's gonna happen. Well, the rest of us, though, the rest of the industry, has gotta start focusing on the difference between, you know, my generation and the younger generation, and and their substantial, I'll go back just a a number of years now. But just before COVID hit, I was standing on a stage in Walla Wall or Redmond, I somewhere around me. It's Eastern Washington. Let's just say that. And my final line was lying. It's what the young consumer wants. They just don't know it. And by that, what I mean is, as one of my friends said, you know, for god's sake, wine is plant based. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, that gets back down to the values. What does the young consumer want? Well, they want natural. They want good for you. They want plant based. They choose to drink. Right now, they're drinking spirits or beer before wine. Their preferences are more toward that. And so, you know, how do we change that notion? Well, it's marketing. And it's marketing one zero one. It's not just about pricing. That's a part of it, but they're looking for values and to the extent that we're seeing the, private label, head up so strongly. That's another message. And here's one other one that you see, is that the very first time that I can remember is that the volume of white wine sold exceeds the volume of red wine. Yeah. And and why is that? Well, I'm making this up, so this is just a guess, but, but it makes sense, is that white wine is less expensive generally. It may have lower alcohol, and it's a little bit easier to drink as an entry level product. You know, and if you if you want to go buy a bottle for twenty five dollars or fifteen dollars, you know, you can get kinda get a start on the product without having to go buy know, a fifty dollar bottle and where when you'd rather have a pair of shoes, you know, that's the kind of stuff that we have to rationalize for that younger consumer. We have to give them on ramps. That's part of it so that they can explore the category. It's a very, very big category. We gotta find simple ways. Like we did, you know, back in the late eighties, early nineties, when we came out with fighting varietals, as Benziger that did that. A lot of debate whether it was Benziger or Modavy, but it was Benziger. They did they did that. And, you know, that's when we had chardonnay Cabernay and, you know, other varietals added to the place where wine was made. Prior to that, we kind of stuck with the place where wine was made, like Europe. Right. And it was so confusing that took it down to kinda like, you know, scotch, gin, bourbon. It was, you know, it was like that. So there's enough small categories that you could kinda make sense of them in your mind. Yeah. We've got we've gotta find that again so that any consumer younger than sixty can now start to make more sense out of it again, and and then start to pursue a path down a channel, and then, you know, find that next separation point. So you mentioned, you know, about that these consumers really like the idea that the wine is a natural beverage, just like farm to table, farm to farm to bottle type idea. So especially for US consumers, how important is sustainability for the future of anyone selling wine in the US and what practices should wineries a adopt and b really be communicating with consumers? Social responsibility and sustainability. They're overused terms, but they're both important. My experience is that they both have a cost. And I don't think generally speaking, the consumers that want to see a healthier than everything else, they may pay a little bit more for it. But, you know, when it comes to their budget, that's a place where they might make a second decision and say that, well, the most important thing is you know, probably first color red or white, and then second, probably price. And so that second part of it probably won't make as much a difference. But I don't think we have to change as an industry as my point is you already know where the grapes are grown. You know how simple the process is. I mean, the grapes left alone will have a native yeast on them, and if they squish in a bowl somewhere, it'll turn to one. I don't know how good it'll be, but it'll turn to one by itself. So if there is a natural product, it is natural. You know, wine is it far more than beers, spirits. And so it's all of these marketing thing. It's not just sustainability. It's not, you know, these buzz words that we like to toss around. There's a lot of basic blocking and tackling that we have to evolve. Yeah. Interesting. And how does that show up in how wine is marketed? Is it something that's on the label? Is it more general marketing campaigns? Like, what would you recommend? Well, it's all the above. So I don't think that we have to change who we are. You know, if you wanna have a chateau on the front of your label, that's okay. I think there's basic marketing you can do and and see if your label actually, you know, hit your target group, you know, do some consumer trials. We don't like to do that. We would kinda make decisions in a vacuum maybe too often, but, you know, there are a lot of aspiring, wealthy, younger consumers, you know, in in the boomer generation. That whole thing ended up you know, just driving mass luxury. That's what happened in the end of that period. And we still have those same consumers that are out there. They see what good life is, and they want to experience that. And so, you know, we don't have to necessarily change that. So in such a binary way. But you may have to actually think about how you're producing your labels or if you're doing one label, that's maybe different. But let's just say, for example, you make, you know, fifty thousand cases and your top skew is maybe a hundred dollars. Okay. Do you need to change that? Do you need to take the shuttle off? No. You might have to shift the volume down. You might have to squeeze the volume down a little bit, and then you might have to take the extra juice that you have contracted or growing and shove that down to another label. And that other label might have things that are on it that would appeal to that other consumer that does understand why, but they're looking for that entry point. They're looking for that thing so that mine could be more of an everyday thing They're looking for those reasons. It could be sustainability. It could be a social equity. There's a lot of things that can be, but that's where we have to get down to, test marketing with, with the consumer group that you're looking to hit instead of guessing. I I can kinda make some guesses, but I'm not thirty. I think you're so right. The test marketing, and then also really listening to your consumers too. Because, you know, if a consumer starts telling you, you know, through their purchasing habits, what they want, but you're not adapting to that, then, you know, that's creating the same issue as not testing and, yeah, not landing with that. Yeah. I mean, we ring our hands because sales are down. You know, what are we gonna do with that? And just this is a a frustrating point for me, but starting in two thousand nineteen, me and three other analysts just donated our copious free time to get a a USDA marketing order up so that we could actually get ahead of this. And we had four million dollar partners with a four or two. Well, we had millions raised. Let's just say that. And we had consensus from a steering group of some of the smartest people around, and and once we announced it, you know, a single winery that had a strong voice got in the middle of it, and I don't know how they did it, but they they canceled it. And I think that winery probably today might regret that. Or at a minimum, they're they'll try to do something different at this point because now they see what we were doing probably a little prescient and ahead of times, but that's also one of the issues that an analyst might face. Mhmm. Is you wanna be ahead of things, but you're always gonna be wrong. And by by the people at that at that period of time, you know, you can be too fast to market, and that might have been a time where we just work. Yeah. In an episode I just did with Paul Mebray. He talked about, you know, how just inherently we are so risk averse in the wine industry, and and you understand why because, you know, we there's a lot at stake here. We only have one chance to make it right, but that does make, you know, the things that you're talking about all the harder because Yeah. Yeah. We have to be okay with getting it wrong sometimes. Yep. So you mentioned, you know, that when boomers really came into wine, it was because also the option the other options they had, beer and spirits were not that good. But now that in this day and age, things are kind of different in that regard, what lessons can wine learn from maybe spirits or beer that had, you know, the experience similar shifts years that I'm I'm sure we can go back and look at, you know, some of the things that, both did. I, you know, I remember back from the it's gonna really date me now back from the seventies. And the eighties, I remember the light beer commercials that were, you know, incredibly entertaining that were being aired on Monday night football and and other, you know, such venues. And they used a lot of athletes. Many of them retired, and they made a lot of jokes. John Madney is still everybody knows John Madney if you're a football fan still because there's a video game now that people play. They they they don't even remember who he was, but he was, you know, as a coach, and and they used him a lot. And so that kind of face marketing, if you will, attaching a brand to somebody There are a lot of NBA players today that e either have wineries or outspoken about wine. LeBron James for one is probably one of the most, if not the most famous basketball player now in the world. And so, you know, being able to leverage those guys, I'm sure that they would like to share with, you know, the love that they have for it. And, you know, finding a way to use those guys would be good. Yeah. Yeah. You know, again, going back, I would say the biggest mistake that we've made is that Once we came out late eighties or early nineties with the, you know, the French Paradox and and these other things that drove wine sales, but we thought the science was settled. And that was the mistake we made, I believe. It's because by two thousand ten, we could already see the influence of this anti Out Group is just very stubborn, and they're very well funded, and they're not going away. And somehow we just ignored them for that previous side. That would be a thing that I think we should learn. We should always be more aware of as an a veb producer that there is another side to the story, and they're well funded. And it's tricky because a producer in the United States can't claim health benefits for wine. So it's tricky you have to walk around that. For me, personally, you know, I'd I'd say if you wanna drink wine is the healthiest choice. That's the way I would frame it up. But how you actually put that out in the marketplace is a detail, but it's a little more complex. Yeah. I think leaning in yeah. We definitely can't say that wine is good for you, but also, you know, it we don't need to say wine is, you know, there's many things that people do very regularly that assume some level of risk Like, you got the front door. Yeah. If you so it's just talking about, you know, how this fits into the enjoyment of life, like the lifestyle piece. And we have that's a really great point because, years ago, I had a one of my now close friends, Dale Stratton, they used to work for, constellation. You told me, you know, the thing that we're missing is occasions. We're starting to become a more diverse culture and, you know, we're not just European and Caucasian anymore. And and we have to be careful about losing occasions. And I thought, man, that just sounds like, you know, but he's right. It's it's and it's not just necessarily culturally either. And I believe this for a long time too is that wine will always be okay You gotta be careful with those sweeping generalizations, like always, but wine will always be okay because it goes with food. Well, guess what? You know, people are drinking cocktails and beer with food now. And I walked into a restaurant last night my wife. And on the left side of the menu is, you know, fold out book style menu, the left side, the top part of it was craft cocktails. And then there was after craft cocktails, there were traditional cocktails. After traditional cocktails, there were beer, and this is an Italian restaurant. There was no wine on that front list. Wow. You you can get the wine list. And the wine list was pretty good. This is Napa, but there was no, like, by the class. Program even. And that's another problem that we face just because of price. Right. Because a lot of by the glass programs are putting in inferior juice just to hit a price point, and that's not helping the situation either. So it it's pretty complex. Yeah. Definitely. Well, I wanna ask you one more question before we start to wrap up again given all of your experience, but as Italian winery specifically are really embracing and increasing levels, e commerce, and direct to consumer sales, which here in California has been really a lifeblood for some time. What advice would you give them? Like, strategies they can employ to create better online experiences or just fostering customer loyalty and driving growth, but what do you recommend for them? Well, to start, we have to recognize that about a third of wine consumed in the US now is foreign. So, really, the US market hasn't had to worry so much about that because we had so many consumers that wanted to consume. We were actually short. So we have we've allowed that to happen. But I think when you look at the import, the, you know, the importers at this point, especially European and probably to Zealand as well, you know, they both hit a spot for the consumer. And when I look at the, especially the Europeans, if you I mean, you go to Europe and you sit on a and a piazza somewhere and have a margarita pizza, and you get a burrito with it. You know, your burrow is ten dollars and your pizzas is twelve. And, you know, and you get out of there, you know, really cheap with a really nice bottle of wine, You know, they're given more support by their government as well. And so to the extent that they can export, they can get better values, than a lot of, American wines that are just like being mass produced. And and, you know, those are the wines that aren't doing well by volume. And that's why we're pulling up some vines in the central valley right now. So that's that's the spot where they're, I think, gonna be most competitive and where you're gonna be able to take over volume. Great. Great answer. Thank you. Well, as we start to wrap up our episode, we like to end with a rapid fire quiz where we ask our guests three questions to help our listeners just better understand the US market and kind of cement the lessons of this episode. So just answer in a couple sentences if you can, please. For on question, number one, what is your number one tip for mastering the US wine market? From which view? For the view of an Italian producer? I'd probably say, you know, getting through the barriers of distribution. And the places I see here that are most effective is that they figure out how to get on the street sales for their brand. It's they don't just trust a super big distributor to put it in all the grocery stores. Now I'm not sure that really helps a lot of the European brands anyway. Some, for sure, it does. You know, you gotta distribute by volume, but a lot of them, I think, probably not. Okay. And then number two, what is something you would have told your younger professional self about selling wine in the US? Well, my younger professional self started when wine sold itself. As a matter of fact, when we started the business, a business person, you gotta have a forecast. You gotta understand what's happening. You gotta understand which investment you got. You you know, you gotta get more people. You gotta get ahead, you know, ahead of things. And so forecasts were always very difficult in most other businesses. But with line, when I started the wine sold itself. I mean, it sold itself so much that I remember having a conversation with customers, said, look, I got these people coming up to my wine, reach a taste of my wine. But if I don't like it, I'm not gonna sell it to them. I don't like them. I'm not gonna sell it to them. And I thought, wow. Yeah. So I probably is a younger self. I would be more in front of before the industry's benefit of saying, look, this is a very unique time. And I think I've gotten better at that as as time has gone, and I've gotten more experience and been able to be more pressing to help the industry move. But I I wished I would have known more back. But, you know, they say his youth is wasted on the young, some such boat. You had to get all this insight and experience from somewhere. So Yeah. Okay. And number three, what is your favorite travel hack when doing market work? For me, personally, I go in to, you know, visit regions if I can kind of incognito. I don't show myself to be anything because I wanna understand how wine is being sold. And it's not so good for me because, you know, I'm the, like, typical person walking in. I try not to dress too much. It's too much. You know, I don't I don't wear sports going in. Kinda come in sloppy, but I like sloppy anyways. But but the other thing is bring your adult kids, and that's where you're gonna learn. Yeah. Get a multigenerational viewpoint of what's going on. You, you know, you'll help them understand wine. The same way they'll help you understand wine. So I think that's the hack. Little risky to look at your children as being a place to understand the whole industry. That's a little bit of a risk, but there is color that you can add. You know, for instance, I remember a decade ago, they call it because money mattered. They were saying, you know, we're gonna pre charge And I said, was that like you could get your credit card? And, you know, and no. We, you know, we take a few shots, then we go out. Right? Yeah. Oh, okay. Well, and, you know, we had Uber by then and everything else. So, you know, those are Yeah. Those are kind of things that you know, as a as an outsider as an older person, you're looking into a different world and understanding that world is really important. And those are the consumers that we need to attract or sell sell to. That's such good advice. Yeah. Well, Rob, thank you again so much for all your time today for joining us here on Masterclass US wine market on the Italian wine podcast. How can our listeners connect with you or maybe even more importantly find the Silicon Valley Bank report? Well, if you go on Google and you put SVB wine report, it'll be the top searched item. We get about twenty thousand downloads a year on the report now. So it's and then I don't know how many of those are just sent around. And if you're if you're interested in listening me Blab more or a panel blab, we we do two reports a year. One is the other one's a direct consumer report. And then when I bring panelists in, we're gonna have a great set of panelists on the twenty third that are coming in. And so, you know, look for that. If you wanna sign up for the panels, that would be a great thing to do. Yeah. Definitely. I'm a regular listener to the panel. It's always fantastic. Alright. Well, I have my grandson pounding on my door right? Alright. I guess we better wrap it up. Yes. Thank you again so much for your time. And, I hope to see you in the new year. Okay, Barbara. Nice to talk to you. Take care. Take care. Bye. And that's a wrap for this episode of Master Class US wine market. Thank you so much for joining us. 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