Ep. 2321 Barbara Fitzgerald interviews Jason Haas of Tablas Creek Vineyard | Masterclass US Wine Market

Jason's really been a key player in the development of the modern California wine industry, and more than a producer, he's really an innovator who has always been incredibly generous in sharing his trials and his research. So for today, I'm at work excited to really dive into with Jason our first The market uncertainty that is really stalling investment. So, you know, distributors and importers are pausing decisions because things are so unclear. This creates widespread hesitation across the value chain. Second, an already strained distribution system facing even greater risks. So the tariffs compounding, existing pressures on the US wine distribution network, and then third retaliatory tariffs that really threaten US mind export, and the US wine trade and the global wine trade Welcome to Masterclass 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. Hi, everyone, and welcome back. To Masterclass US wine market. Today, we are very lucky to have Jason Haz here with us. So welcome to the show, Jason. It's really exciting to have you here. You are a producer in California, a pretty important producer from Hubeless Creek vineyards. You have an incredible history here in the state, but also really a thought leader for our industry. Definitely, you have this incredible blog that I follow, but we'll maybe hear directly from you before we dive into the discussion a little bit more about you and your background and how you came to work in wine. Sure. And and thank you. So, yeah, I'm I'm a second generation proprietor here at Douglas Creek, but I grew up around wine. My dad was a wine importer. He founded the import company Vineyard brands, and in fact, my grandfather was on the ball enough to get the first retail liquor license granted by the state of New York after their appeal of prohibition. So He was in the retail side of things. That was where my dad got his start in the nineteen fifties. He was tasked by my grandfather to find a new wine buyer to select the portfolio of wines that they were bringing in from France. And ended up deciding he didn't want to find a new wine buyer. He wanted to be that new wine buyer and eventually parlayed that into into the import company. So I grew up around wine people. I grew up getting sent to vineyards mostly in France to work for the summer. If I didn't get myself another summer job, and then have been out at Douglas Creek for the last twenty three years. So I didn't actually go straight from school out here. I worked in tech for a while, managed a a tech company. Kind of through the height of the tech bubble. Teaching internet programming languages. I have an economics degree, as well as a an architecture degree, but I always kind of knew that wine was where I was gonna end up. And I've been, yeah, I've been doing this now for almost a quarter of a century. My husband is also a winemaker and also started in architecture. So there must be some kind of symmetry between building buildings and building this beautiful, you know, grape to glass experience. I don't know if there's a similarity in that as much as there is this kind of shared love of history and culture and kind of wanting to know how the past influences the present. That was sort of what intrigued me about architecture. So, yeah. I love that take. Yeah. Absolutely. And that is what wine is after all. I think a discovery into all of those things in a really beautiful natural way. I couldn't agree more. Well, Unfortunately, we don't get to talk about the beautiful things about Wang. Today, we have a little bit more pressing things to talk about. I also just wanna note that today is April fourth. So we are gonna talk about tariffs today. And because the conversation is evolving so rapidly. I just wanted to note that date. But as I mentioned earlier, you know, Jason's really been a key player in the development of the modern California wine industry and more than a producer, he's really an innovator who has always been incredibly generous and sharing his trials and his research. So we're gonna talk to Jason specifically today about these tariffs that were just announced a day and a half ago, twenty percent on all products from the EU, but this also includes other production countries In South America, you know, South Africa has been hit harder with higher tariffs. Talk about how this is really gonna be catastrophic, you know, the potential to be catastrophic to the US line industry at all levels of the value thing. Alright. Our three key takeaways for today, and what we're excited to really dive into with Jason are first. The market uncertainty that is really stalling investment. So, you know, distributors and importers are pausing decisions because things are so unclear. This creates widespread hesitation across the value chain. Second, an already strained distribution system facing even greater risks, so the tariffs compounding existing pressures on the US wine distribution network, And then third retaliatory tariffs that really threaten US mine exports and the work that you've all put into growing that branch of the US line trade and the global line trade over over the last decade or so. So I guess let's start with the basics. This is the Italian wine podcast, so we'll focus a little bit more on the EU here. We've learned twenty percent tariffs on all goods from the EU. What do you think this means in practical terms for the US wine industry? Well, I think your you were right to highlight uncertainty as the first first impact, and this is an evolving issue. We're talking about this, whatever, thirty six hours after everything was announced. So I don't think we know for sure what the impacts are. And before these announcements came out, there were the threats of two hundred percent tariffs on wines from the EU. And I think there are lots of reasons why that would have been absolutely catastrophic for wine in America I think it's maybe not totally intuitive for people. Like, why if you eliminate some of the competition? Like, why wouldn't that be good for American wineries? Well, the the biggest reasons are, first of all, that there's not enough capacity in America to make up the difference of what's imported. And are the federal laws that govern the sales of alcohol are that they have to go through state licensed wholesalers who all sell a mix of imported and domestic wines, and those wholesalers are already struggling. And if you evaporate thirty percent or more of their business, a lot of them end up going under. And if they go under, it's just a mess for everybody. So the impact of twenty percent tariffs are, I think, not quite as clear, but we also don't know for sure that this is where things are going to end. I mean, this is there are twenty percent tariffs that have been imposed now. We will see what the EU does in response, and there is, I think, of a fairly high likelihood that the EU is going to retaliate because that's the way that trade wars work. And then we'll see what the response of the US government is. So we have had twenty percent tariffs on wine before. That's not something that would be unprecedented. There were there were tariffs like this in the last Trump administration. And It had a had a minor chilling effect on sales of wine in the United States, but it it didn't end up being transformative nor did it end up being particularly great for American wineries. It everybody just ended up paying a little bit more for the wines that they were used to buying. It was not a big enough jump to essentially price people out of the categories that they were used to. It just caused upward pressure on prices. But I do wanna emphasize that we just don't know where this is going to end. And assuming that where we are now at twenty percent tariffs is going to be the long term situation is is, I I think, a big leap. Yeah. And given Trump's kind of track record of policy reversals and unpredictability. You know, who knows where these are going to stick really for better or for worse though. Right? So it goes back to that idea of how do businesses make decisions at the moment knowing that, you know, maybe it'll be less than twenty percent in a few weeks or maybe it'll be a lot more. Yeah. I I think it's very unlikely that it will be less than twenty percent in a few weeks. It seems pretty clear that these tariffs are not a, like, short term negotiating play. This is, an attempt to transform the way the economy works. A very high stakes, high risk way of trying to change this. But just listening to what other importers in particular are doing, I mean, they're still in many cases advising their colleagues to hold off on purchases because we don't yet know what the European Union's response is going to be nor what the Trump administration's response is going to be to that. So, yeah, I mean, that sort of chilling effect that you talked about where nobody wants to buy product I think that's likely to last until there's until there's clarity. Yeah. And why should American producers who aren't directly importing EU wines still be concerned about these tariffs? You did talk a little bit about, you know, the distribution system in our country, but any other reasons that they really should have concern for these tariffs? I mean, the distribution system, I mean, I'm not sure how well your audience understands this. We exist to help them understand it. So hopefully, we've done our. Okay. Okay. We'll do we'll do our part. Yeah, so basically the way that wine is required by federal law to be sold is to go through a series of state licensed wholesaler. And those wholesalers range. They run the gamut. Some of them are mostly focused on domestic wines. Some of them are mostly focused on imported wines. All of them have some exposure to both. So that system is already under a lot of string because for the first time in a generation, we've seen a multi year decline in wine consumption in the United States over the last couple of years. So you have distributors that are already facing kind of five to ten percent declines in their business and who have responded by restructuring, laying people off, taking on additional debt as they try to try to grow to buy additional distributors, And now that additional debt is more expensive because of higher interest rates. So there's already a lot of strain in that distribution system. If those distributors are faced with further revenue reductions or further costs in terms of tariffs that they have to pay because a lot of distributors are actually importer and distributors. So they have exposure on the import side of things that that much less money that they have to invest in sales and marketing. So you can't just assume that distributors will pivot over to selling domestic wines because that's not really the way that the market works. There are there are certainly a few categories where it's pretty interchangeable, like, is it ten dollar Peto Grigio. Like, is that something that the buyer likely cares a huge amount, whether it comes from Italy or it comes from Chile or it comes from California? Maybe not. But there is also limited capacity in a place like California to place that imported production because in many cases, California doesn't grow enough of the right grapes. So you're gonna end up with basically people kind of biting the bullet and just paying more for the things that they're already bringing in. Which raises prices to retailers and restaurants probably depresses sales from the retailers and restaurants and then further chills the overall wine market. Yeah. And I think it's important to acknowledge too that, you know, kind of the capacity that we have to produce mine you know, eighty percent of the wine in the US comes from California. So I might just say California instead of the US, but I do recognize there's wine being made elsewhere. But we don't have the capacity to keep up with the demand that's being met. By these imports from, you know, predominantly France and Italy, but also other countries around the world. And as we know, in wine, we can't make that capacity up in a day, a month, a year. Yeah. For sure. The capacity of production in the United States is about three hundred million cases of wine a year. Of that, about two sixty million are sold domestically and about forty million are exported. And then the consumption in the United States is about three seventy five million cases a year. So the consumption is seventy five million cases more than the domestic production and over a hundred million cases more than the domestic production that is being sold domestically. Yeah. I mean, we can't just, like, wave a magic wand and create those grapes out of nowhere. Because it takes probably five years for grapevines to be planted, come into production, and then the wine to be fermented and bottled and make it to the marketplace. So five years is a long time for any sort of market correction. You're gonna end up seeing a ton of bankruptcies and other negative impacts before that could ever happen. Yeah. Well, let's talk a little bit about kind of industry responses at the moment. What kind of conversations are you hearing or reading, or etcetera, among other producers and stakeholders, especially in the US. At this point, I think everybody is just waiting for the other shoe to drop. I don't know that we really know what the long term impact was. I I heard a lot of people talking about out against this idea that two hundred percent tariffs would be good for American wine. I think that was a very clear case where the unintended consequences would be severe and negative. At this point, we are only thirty six hours in to the twenty percent tariffs on European wine, thirty seven percent tariffs on South African wine, different numbers for different countries. And I think people are reluctant to put too much energy into figuring out what this is gonna do to their business until they know whether this is a long term, a long term picture or not. But, I mean, everybody is worried about the larger trends of American consumers moving away from wine, and this certainly isn't going to help. I mean, if you make wine more expensive, you reduce the capacity of restaurants, in particular, to focus on wine, you probably lose market share as a wine community to things like beer and cocktails. So that has a a negative long term effect. And then I think one of the things that's important to also acknowledge is that in general, most of the people who make wine in the United States They are wine lovers. They're people who love the vibrant community that we're a part of, and this is an international community. So the fact that we might be seeing the end of, this golden era that we've had in the United States where we've had the best wines of the world available to us at the same time as we have a vibrant domestic production economy with wineries in all fifty states. I mean, that's a it's an incredible position to be in. There is no other country in the world that has had access to the amazing wines that are made everywhere as well as a domestic economy with essentially no tariffs on anything. So this is the most open economy in the world for wine. I mean, we're looking at, in one way or another, we're looking at the degradation for the end of that. When you say the degradation, I would like to think that, you know, the maybe the next person that comes into the presidency would remove these tariffs. But what kind of long term ramifications would that have? On our overall wine market and its diversity and, you know, the rate of exceptional choices that you just explained. I mean, it would have a negative impact. Four years is a really long time. It's enough time that you'll see shakeouts among companies. It's enough time that you'll have to build essentially replacements for things that have disappeared. I mean, again, if it stays at twenty percent from Europe and similar levels from other imported companies, Like, will that have a catastrophic effect on this bigger picture? No, it probably won't. I mean, it'll be this kind of minor drag on an industry that's already facing more headwinds than than we have in a while. But I don't think it's going to transform the bigger picture. But again, we don't know that this is where this is going to end. Right. The other the other thing that we haven't talked about yet that I think is important is that, I mean, we are not a huge one here. We make like thirty thousand cases in one year. We sell ninety five percent of that domestically, but we have seen a lot of growth in our export markets over the last year or two. And we made a lot of investments last year seeing the market in the US starting to slow. We made a lot of investments. I I visited our five top export markets. So I visited the UK and Japan and South Korea and then Canada and Germany. And we saw significant growth in those export markets that was planning to see planning to make more visits and see more growth in those markets this year. And even the rhetoric that's been being bandied back and forth has already served to chill that. We've had several of our our export agents say, yeah, our customers are just not in the, not in the mood to buy American wines at the moment, so we're gonna hold off with our orders for this year, or we've actually had orders from the Canadian provincial monopolies get canceled because they've pulled all American products off the shelves in response to the perceived bullying that they're getting from their their neighbor to the south. So I think that those relationships, those export markets are likely to be hit in a way that will last longer than just the tariffs because if you create the perception that American products are not something that customers are going to want to support that'll last beyond the resolution of any particular tariff war. Yeah. Absolutely. And it kinda puts you back at square one. Right? Like we said, even if when the tariff situation changes, you have to do all of the work that you've already put into building these markets all over again. Yeah. I I think that's an accurate accurate summation. I mean, there'll be a drag for a while. We'll need to rebuild relationships. And again, I mean, it's not like the sales people who are in place now are necessarily the same ones we're gonna be in place in five years. So we do have to start over again, you are starting from a a much degraded position from compared to where we were. Yeah. I'd like to ask you just moments ago, our California governor Gavin Newsom reaffirmed, you know, California's global economic power prowess, and he said California won't sit idly by during what he called Trump's reckless tariff war. So from your perspective, Does this have any impact on wine imports into California and or our own wine production industry? And do you think other states might take similar positions or protests in a similar way to access these imported goods? I'm not an export in international tariff law, but I'm pretty sure that that power is reserved for the federal government. So I appreciate the messaging from Governor Newsom. Certainly, if we can if we can emphasize to potential export partners that California is not a supporter of this particular tariff regimen, Like, maybe that will help with the perception of California products, but I don't see that his ability to do that is anything close to the ability of the federal government to push in the opposite direction. Right. Yeah. So I am in Italy currently. And yesterday, I overheard somebody from Italy say, you know, the American people voted for Trump, so this must be what they want. So may I ask you very directly as a US wine producer? Is this the future that you want for the global wine industry right? Oh, I think that's a pretty easy, pretty easy answer. And and whatever, you can point out as much as you want that California definitely did not vote for Trump. And in general, the wine producing country wine producing states by and large did not vote for trump. But Do you know what the individual political leanings are of provinces in France or in Italy or in Spain? Like Right. I'm not sure how much this really matters from an international perspective. That said, it seems like the polling suggests that by and large, the American public, even though they did vote for Trump, are not supportive of these sorts of tariffs. Like, maybe that will get through to people. I don't know. I mean, we've got a long way to go before the next presidential election, and these are federal prerogatives. So we will see how it plays out. I mean, maybe a recession and, a correction in the stock market is enough for the administration to reverse course. Obviously, that would have a a lot of negative impacts on the wine economy as well. And that's something that we haven't talked about. I mean, if if the country is pushed into recession, which is seeming, More likely based on the prognosticators, I think Goldman Sachs just raised their percent likelihood of a recession. Like, that will have a negative impact on consumption and dining out and dining in and wine spending as well. So that's another potential negative impact. Yeah. Definitely. And if those wines that people generally turn to in recession, you know, maybe those, like, ten dollar wines are now even twelve or fifteen dollars. Like you mentioned, you know, people are just gonna opt for something else, and we're gonna lose that market share, that kind of entrance into our category. Yeah. And that that's something that I know that those of us in the wine community are already concerned about. I mean, if you think of what the cost is for a a beer or a cocktail or a shot of a shot of some hard liquor, like it is almost always less than the cost for a glass of wine. And so if you raise the cost of a glass of wine, do you run the risk of losing is too strong a word, but discouraging the next generation of potential wine drinkers? Yeah. I think that's a I think that's a long term risk as well. Yeah. Well, I think you have this background also in economics, you know, and also you're more than just a producer. You're running a business. So if you were an Italian producer or a French producer or any international producer. What would you be doing right now, given that most likely for these your paying countries, the the US, is their largest export market? What advisement you give to someone in that position? I would be trying to diversify my sales channels. I mean, I'm trying to do that anyway as a domestic producer. I'm trying to make sure that we are not only sold in a single channel. I mean, we we have been working hard to develop our direct to consumer sales over the course of two decades. I was looking to make sure that we have good export distribution as part of my part of my work over the last couple of years was to reduce our reliance on the wholesale channel domestically, which I I thought was going to struggle. So I think that would be part of my response. The other part of my response is is just everybody is gonna be struggling. There's going to be a shakeout. I thought that was true even before the tariffs came in because of the just kind of generational decline in the US wine market. And I would redouble my efforts to try to make sure that I stay visible and minimize the price increases as much as I possibly could. I would be working on leaner margins in order to maybe keep what would otherwise been a twenty percent price increase to maybe a ten percent price increase and use this as an opportunity to try to get a little more market share if I could, but it's it's hard. I mean, you're you're fighting against already, saturated market with lots of people struggling and trying to figure out how to deal with declining consumption. Yeah. My my response in almost always is more marketing. Like, you try to get out there and and be as visible as you can, but I recognize that that's not something which is within everybody's capabilities. It's gonna be a tough couple of years, I think. Yeah. And, you know, one thing that we didn't talk about so much, especially in in the impact on the US, is we're talking about getting, you know, finished bottled wine here. But are you concerned with what this does to packaging materials and what that means for the cost of our production here domestically? I think it's definitely gonna have a have an increased cost to things like quarks that are not made domestically. They have to come in from outside. There is a domestic bottle industry, but it's not enough. The capacity is not enough to handle the demand domestically. I mean, we have tried we try because of our sustainability goals to source as many things locally as we possibly can. But there are things like corks that we just can't. So it'll have a, an upwards pressure on cost of production, but that's not honestly my biggest worry. I mean, the cost of barrels, the cost of corks, the cost of bottles, mean, that, that's maybe a bigger piece of the overall cost of production for a wine that's selling at ten dollars than it is for our wines, which we're selling at thirty, forty, fifty dollars. But you're right. It'll, it'll, for sure, have some upward pressure on on costs. Yeah. Well, Jason, you have been so generous here to give us so many insights. Again, it's kind of hard to have, like, a a truly factual conversation here because of that's, like, the word of this episode unpredictability But I think it's nice to just lay out some scenarios for people so that they can start to figure out once the whirling dervish stops spinning what direction they're walking in. Yeah. I realized there was one thing that I didn't touch on that I think we probably should. One of the things that I know a lot of the the kind of more commodity producers of American wine, the kind of that central valley eight to ten dollar bottle producers. One of the things that they are really worried about is the import of bulk wine from mostly South American countries, some Spanish also, but mostly South American countries then gets blended in with American wine and sold again at that kind of grocery store baseline bottom shelf kind of price. And it seems like in talking to some of them, their biggest worry is that there's a there's a provision in the US tax code that allows producers who import products for export to get the tariffs, the duties that they pay on their imports refunded to them. So unless that loophole gets closed, raising tariffs on imported things is not particularly gonna help even those kind of bulk commodity producers who I think are hurting hurting the most and maybe hoping for relief the most. Yeah. Do you think I do know also in a similar vein, there are some of those Central Valley producers, growers who are concerned that they're unable to sell their grapes in favor of, you know, larger companies buying the bulk wine overseas and then selling it here? Do you think this offers them any kind of relief or not really? I have not seen that this changes that duty drawdown provision. In which case, I don't see that it offers them a ton of relief, except maybe that if this also devastates US exports, of wine. Maybe people won't be able to claim that. And instead, that production will have to shift towards going to domestic sales. So I think we're way we're way early to know how that's gonna play out, but If it does play out positively for those producers, it's going to be because the wineries who are making wine for export are no longer going to be going to be able to sell their wine in export, which I mean, that's like, there is there a positive come out of that that big negative? Maybe, but hard for me to imagine that it's going to be a net positive for the for the wine community at large. Yeah. And as you mentioned previously, you know, we will always be well, not always, but at the moment, we're a net import country. We don't have enough even vineyards here to support the consumption that we have. Yeah. And we haven't even talked about one of the one of the big, I think, elephants in the room, which is that Why is so inextricably tied to the place in which it's made that it's not like Right. You can ask California Nebulaulo producer to step in and replace that great barolo. Or a Santa Barbara County pinot noir producer to to replace a Grandkruiter burgundy. Like wines are not just commodities made from particular grapes. They are a combination of grape and place and tradition that is not easily transferable. So I don't think you can either, in practical terms, replace the production that you would get. I mean, look at, like, nebbiolo, which represents what, one half of one percent of grape acreage in California. Like, you cannot replace the production of that grape from Italy in the short term. But nor is that really the idea behind wine? It's not like one pinot noir is the same as any other pinot noir. The the place is is really inextricable from the product. So what we saw last time was not people changing from, say, whatever. I'll use our own example. We're a grown producer. So people did not change from, like, chef and if you pop on their wine list, to a California Roan blend. Yeah. They instead may be changed from a Southern If you pop to a gigondas or a gigondas to a group you roam. They traded down within that category to maintain the broader region and the price point that they were looking for rather than switch to a domestic alternative. Yeah. And that was whatever. That was under a similar tariff regime than what we're seeing to what we're seeing now. Would the same thing happen if this basic level is maintained? My guess is that it probably would. You'd see some scavenging from inventory that's already in the US. You saw a little bit of, preemptive buying both at the importer level and at the account level. And then you'd see people trade down in the categories that already existed. But if there is a a full trade war and these tariffs escalate, all bets are off. There's all sorts of negative and I think unpredictable consequences that we're likely to see. Yeah. Well, as I mentioned at the start, this is April fourth. So we're gonna we're gonna turn this around and get it aired as quickly as possible, but there's kind of still a lot to come. So we'll see in the coming days. I'm sure we already have seen a response from China. And so we'll see in the coming days the way, you know, whether it's the EU as one that responds or individual countries most likely they'll band together because they'll be more powerful that way. But, yeah, I guess TVD. Yeah. Stay stay tuned. Yeah. Well, we do like to wrap up every episode, a Masterclass US mind market with a rapid fire quiz where we ask our expert to answer three questions that help our listeners better understand the US wine market, and specifically this episode. And it's not often that we have the expertise of an American producer who really understands the US wine distribution trade system. So exciting here. If you can answer in just a couple sentences, if you can. K. First, what is your number one tip for mastering the US wine market? Explore its diversity. I think it's easy to think that American wine is five grape varieties, cabernet chardonnay, Merlo pinot noir, sauvignon blanc. It is so much more than that. There are four hundred grapes that are used to make wine just in California. And there is so much diversity, both of old vines and new producers that's worth exploring. That's a fantastic answer. I'll plug you for everyone. Try Tabless Creek because you guys are responsible for some of that grape diversity in California, and it's pretty special that we are. There's nine nine of the states that, nine of the states that we brought in that hadn't been used here before. Yeah. That's pretty special. So thank you for bringing bringing all of that to us. Our pleasure. Alright. Number two, what is something you would have told your younger professional self about selling wine in the US? Get out there. I mean, I I think I did understand that reasonably well at the beginning. We were making blends that didn't have a category in the marketplace from a part of California that people didn't know from grapes that they also didn't know and couldn't pronounce with French names that didn't mean anything to them. So we had to really make converts one by one, and we did that in every way that we could think of. But I think if I were to go back and and do it again, there's nothing that replaces being one on one in front of people. So get up on panels, get up, be be behind the table at festivals, double down on the environments in which you talk to people personally. So, like, tasting rooms, things like that, and tell your story. It's it's so important. Yeah. I love that. I love the face to face nature of this industry and why I think, you know, so many of us feel, so much anxiety, of course, from the business standpoint of something like this. But because, you know, trade, free trade has been thousands of years what wine has been about, allowing cultures to experience one another. So Yeah. We're lucky to have that and hopefully it continues. Indeed. Alright. Last? Because you do have to get out there so much. We move around a lot in this industry. So what is your favorite travel hack when doing market work? That's a really interesting question. So what I have tried to do more and more over the years is figure out ways in which our wholesale business and our direct to consumer business can reinforce each other. I don't at all think of those as being competitive. I think if we are better able to create fans through our direct to consumer business, we've seen that that has supported sales off of restaurant lists and off of wine shelves because there's just more more knowledge and more buzz. So what I try to do whenever I go out on the market is spend the days working with our distributors hosting trade lunches, and then do consumer events every evening. So whether that's an in store tasting, whether that's a wine dinner, something that's open to the public, and then use the the power of our mailing list. We've got forty five thousand people on our mailing list at tubeless Creek to to to drive people out to get people out to these events and help support the accounts that are hosting them. So I think that's that's what we've come to believe. It really is really the most effective way of being out in the market is, yes, touch those trade accounts, but then also try to get in front of consumers and then use our power with consumers to let those consumers know the trade accounts that we're doing events at and the trade accounts that support Tableers Creek year round. So send emails out about the places that are pouring Public Creek by the glass. Like, that's a really fun thing for our fans to know when they'll support the restaurants, the restaurants are appreciative and Yeah. So are the fans. So I guess that's it. It's the leveraging the the the direct to consumer success to help our wholesale business and vice versa. I love that answer so much because my main job is I helped specifically Italian wineries develop direct to consumer channels, which is a new area for them, and there is a lot of anxiety about disrupting distributor relations. And I say the same thing all the time. Like, these two are not mutually exclusive. They support one another. So Thank you for reinforcing that so eloquently. My pleasure. Well, Jason, thank you so much for giving us your time today in the middle of everything going on, you know, in the winery and in the business side. How can our listeners connect with you? So we are at Tublish Creek at just about every social media channel, and we try to be active in all of them. We try to be where our customers are. I do encourage people you've mentioned our blog a couple of times. If people would like a little deeper dive, we've published basically a blog. A week for something like seventeen years now. So we dive into everything from what's going on in the vineyard and winery to what's going on in the market, to deep dives even into other regions, other producers. So if that seems like that's something of interest that's linked off of the Tableos Creek dot com homepage, and we'll give people the like, the real insiders of you. So that's it. And we'd also obviously love people to come and see us. We're we're in Paso Robles, our tasting room is right at the winery, and we're open every day. Amazing. Well, thank you again so much, Jason. I really hope we get to talk about the warm and fuzzy side of wine soon and that we get some good news. We're we're due for it. Fingers crossed. Yeah. Alright. Take care. Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure. Thanks for having me on. And that's a wrap for this episode of Masterclass US wine market. Thank you so much for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode and want to stay up to date with the latest industry trends, remember to like, follow and share our podcast. And if you value in our conversations, please leave us a review to help others discover the show and grow our community. Stay tuned for new episodes every Monday. Until then.