Ep. 907 Stacy Slinkard | Get US Market Ready With Italian Wine People

Thanks for tuning in to Get US Market Ready with Italian wine people on the Italian wine podcast. 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 Reddy with Italian wine people. I'm your host Steve Ray. And this week, we have as a guest Stacy Slinkard. I could start off by saying and will start off by saying that that Stacy's a wine writer, and I've known her for years, not real well, but this has turned out to be, a great opportunity to get to know Stacy, tell us a little bit about yourself from a a bio point of view, but also how you got into the whole journalism thing and kinda where you are today. Sure. Sure. Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to be here. Basically, I did an undergrad degree in biology and environmental health Colorado State and then thought I'd go to vet school and realized that that was gonna be a lot more money and time and kinda swerved and did my masters in public health at the University of Northern Colorado. I did a couple internships right after that mostly in the hospital setting and community health setting and realized quickly that those were not fun internships. So I was on a mission to find a fun internship and Well, internship, my point of view on that is its slavery. Well, it was. And it was Somebody work in not paying them. That's Well, that was my other component. I really wanted to be paid, and I wanted it to be fun. So these are two criteria that were hard to fit. And luckily luckily for me, we have Annheiser Bush breweries here locally in Fort Collins, Colorado, and I applied. Well, actually, I just called them and asked them if I could come intern for them because I thought they surely could use a corporate wellness intern. And so I went, did their corporate wellness piece, and then they stuck me in OSHA compliance and that was a a terrible fit. And I but I didn't know that until I tried it. It's like, oh, no. This is another terrible fit, but I kept being drawn over to the fermentation side. And if you've ever been to one of the Anheuser Bush breweries, they do these fantastic tours, of their fermentation. And all the processes, and I just thought this is this is the fun side of the house. So I do all I could to get over there. Fast forward probably two years, and I ended up doing a lot of their communications and writing for that specific brewery And it was back in the, kind of, the old guard where Anheuser Busch was still this all American company doing some really cool things and advertising, really innovative and, and energetic. And so I started writing their communications for, the Burrie specific piece and then working with St. Louis, and I thought, gosh, I really like this writing piece, and I really like fermentation. And along this time, we started having a family, and I thought it would be great if I could just right from home on my own time. And Please say you were a country before country was cool and Exactly. Exactly. I was desperate. I was like, I need to still use this side of my brain. Well, if you're a wine writer, you remain that way. So anyways, I ended up taking, a position with About dot com, about a dot com had just come online, and they had a channel for everything. It was, like, they were the expert of expert of barbecue or how to change your oil, how to buy wine? Mine, it was like Google before Google. It was the place you went to when you went to. Yeah. Exactly. So they were hand in hand with Google. So anything you wrote ended up on the first page of Google no matter what it was. You just had to throw two, you know, search words in there and boom, there you were. So it was it was super easy to just to gain traffic and and footing. So I did that for a few years, and then was a good fit because I was just one step ahead of the audience. Like, they were all beginners, and I was like beginner plus one. And all of a sudden, these wine samples started coming in. Oh, well, this is this is incentive. I I would really like to continue getting free wine. And then trips started coming in. And I thought this is great. So there's opportunities to travel to the different regions and learn from the people that are actually making the wine and taking care of the vineyards. And that's really where the education started was going to the different wine regions and being taken around by wine councils to understand what was going on regionally specific, variety specific. And one of my one of my first trips was in Italy, and I knew the internet was gonna be a little bit shaky in the region I was in. And so I thought I will take my my security blanket, which was wine for Dubbies, you know, Ed McCarthy and Mary Ewing Milligan have done so many versions of it. They're fantastic writers. They hit the beginner, and I'm on this trip, and I know nobody in the industry. I I know nobody. And I'm noticing that one of the riders on this trip, she's super, super engaged. She's got her laptop, she's taking these extensive notes that I've got my, like, cute journal, and I'm writing down a few things that I think might matter, but I don't know. And the other people on the trip were talking about Mary, and they're like, hey, Mary, how's the book coming? You know, and she's like, oh, yeah, I'm working on I don't know if it's second, third, fourth edition. And and later when I at dinner, I was like, what book are you writing about? She's like, oh, you know, my husband and I, we write wine for dummies. I'm like, oh, yes. Yeah. I've heard of that. I actually actually got it in my suitcase, but I won't tell you that. So I thought, oh my gosh, I am so out of my league. What am I doing here? I don't even I don't even know what these grapes are that they're saying. And, so it became quickly quickly apparent that I needed to fill in some significant gaps. At that point, I did some courses down in Denver with international wine guild and, pursued my WSTT and Society of wine educators and started filling in just knowledge gaps and and understanding and And those courses actually became springboards for articles. If I was really interested in a in a piece, maybe it was about wine floss, I would I would write on wine floss or whatever I was learning, I was writing. So in that kind of that mindset of if you really wanna know something you teach. Right. Yeah. And being one step ahead, my wife said was a teacher, and she had said that. Yeah. You only need to be that. Just one step ahead. Just one step ahead. And it made it the writing more approachable was was the feedback that I got. It was like, Oh, I get it. I was like, well, I'm glad you get it because I just got it. So it worked out. So that was my wine for Dummies experience. And I just was like, wow, I'm in I'm in with the big leagues. Ironically, Probably seven or eight years later, I was commissioned to write idiots guide to wine, which is not nearly as prestigious as wine for dummies, but I was given a quick two month turnaround time to write the next edition of idiots guide for wine, and that at that point, I was like, I will never write a book again. Why? I'm into articles. Oh my gosh. I've having written one. I I kinda know the answer, but I'd like to hear you articulate. It was crazy. It was absolutely crazy. And then you have these editors, and they're not just like article editors. They're like full on book editors. And in my mind, she's chopping away, and I'm thinking it's so much easier to edit than create. And all you're doing is editing, editing, editing, and, to add salt to the wound, the opening, the opening line of the book. I was like, I don't like this. I really like how I had it. And she's like, no, no, no, no, it went to print, and there was like, two grammatical errors they couldn't change. And I thought, oh my gosh. This is, you know, you've spent all this time. You really crunched to get it done. And then just teeny tiny grammar errors that just blow it apart. So, That was my first in my last book. And I've just discovered for me that I really prefer the long form writing. I'm not I mean, I'll do some short form, but I I really like the longer form. We have a chance to build out a concept where you have a chance to take a little dip o. So for me, long form is more of the articles, you know, one to two, three pages, anywhere from five hundred to fifteen hundred words typically is where I'm I'm doing the long form. Short form is just shorter blurbs that you'll see a lot of times on social media, just a quick just a quick hit. Like, this is a hit and run. This is what we're talking about real quick, but here's a picture, and this picture is actually worth a thousand words, and I've got a caption below it. So that's kind of that's more where I've gone. So after about dot com, they kind of splintered into several different towers. And alongside that writing, I started to look at other places and pitching stories and learning how how to pitch a story because I hadn't had to. With about you just it it kinda turned into a little bit more of a content mill where you're just writing, writing, and you just, you know, have so many articles that you have to write per month. I don't remember what that was. It kinda it changed over the time I was there. To the point where I was like, I'm just writing so many things that I I don't feel like the quality is here. I'm just having to do quantity, and it was still trying to play to the Google algorithms, which had just changed dramatically. And then about dot com decided, and I think this is a really good choice that, hey, people that are looking for, you know, the latest cocktail recipe or wine are not looking, you know, to change their oil in four steps on the same site. So they they did, of probably four or five different towers. And one was spruce dot com that dealt with more food wine, home kind of stuff, and then they did, like, very well, which is more of health issues. And I think that model has worked out really well. About that time, I was kind of peeling out and doing other things and looking for other opportunities and so started pitching stories to other places. Alright. We'll get back to that. But, but then, jump forward, you, you, are writing for Decantor now, which is a very prestigious magazine carries a hell of a lot more weight even than about dot com did. Certainly in the wine industry. How'd that come about? Well, I was I was going on a media trip to Monterey, and I was looking for an option to write it more of a travel type of story. Here are the wineries, here are the places to hit. Here's what's good. Here's what you must do. And I just thought, I you know, I'm gonna pitch it to decanter. I just why not? I I've been pitching to kind of I don't know, like second tier outlets that have been really fun, but what if what if they can't take it? Reach a little higher. Yeah. No. I get it. I got a couple of editors' names. I saw the one that was the editor over, the Americas, and I sent her kind of my idea for the story and what we could do. And, of course, said, I'll do it all of this. And or anything else that you think might be a good fit. So here's my idea, but I'm totally flexible if you'll take the writing and And she responded back and said, we'd love this story. Here's what we'd like. We'd like, you know, so many words, so many pictures, and this is what we'll feature. And here's an example of what I'm hoping for. And I thought, okay. Great. I can work with an example. I can I have a template? I have kind of a style guide. I understand the audience, which was very different than anything I'd written for. Mostly, I was writing for beginner to intermediate consumer. Right. Now you're talking to wine geeks or knowledgeable wine people. Yes. So there was I mean, pressure was on. Oh, gosh. I gotta really double check myself. I'll I'll whip out my wine for dummies and and make sure I'm writing everything right. And we went, went from there. So you still reference wine for dummies even though you wrote wine for idiots? Oh, gosh. I haven't I haven't lately. Really what I reference all the time. Is I love what to drink with what you eat. Have you ever seen that book? It's Fantastic. By the Dornbergs. Oh, no. I know them. Yeah. Okay. So I love that book, and I still reference regularly my society of wine educators CSW, but it's a fantastic layout. It's I try to get their new one every year. It's just really, really good to know what's going on right now in which regions. Let me jump in on that. So in in olden days, like what you're talking about, and you wanted to know something you had to look it up in a book. And libraries had things like card catalogs. Nobody's seen those in a long time, but that's kind of what we used to do. Now everything that you need to know is, literally at your fingertips on the cell phone, you don't need to memorize and know all this stuff anymore. You just need to know how to look for it. And in fact, even how how to look forward has changed dramatically now with label recognition, like facial recognition tools and line searcher and the Vino are two examples of that. You don't even need to figure out how to write down chateau chateau blanc. You you can just take a picture of it and it'll generally, you know, take you where you wanna go or the the least to the kind of information that that you want. So the way people are looking at for information is changing, the way people are looking at information is changing. And there's also a generational shift, and I'd say that's two generations. You know, it's it's fifty years worth of, there's the baby boomers, and then there's the ones that followed. And now there's the millennials, and everybody has a a different way of doing that. Here you are writing for a print publication, the the canter that's known as a print publication. Granted, it's UK based and it does have a European focus, but still in all very much print. And were you doing print or were you doing, electronic and and or were the things you're doing segregated by those terms? With decancer right now currently or before decancer, because before decancer, everything was online. I mean, ninety percent of what I was doing was an online outlet. And in DeGantor, most of what I'm doing is online, but there have been some features where I've contributed that are in their print publication, which has been super fun. So that's It's kind of been a mix there, but mostly online. Okay. So the the difference being in a print publication is literally limitation on space with online. It's, you know, you just keep scrolling down. Well, my editor there, she's pretty firm. She's she's she wants what she wants and she she keeps she holds you to it on her word count, online, which I think is really good because you it it forces you to be a concise, clear writer. And you can go on and on and on, but if if you've got someone that's watching your tail and telling you, nope, trim it up here. Be be more focused here. This isn't this isn't relevant. That's helpful. Yeah. I and I think well, I was getting towards that, but that's really kind of a point I wanted to make is that writing without an editor is like, you know, flying without instruments. You're you're getting no feedback of where you are or what's going on or what's good or what people like or don't like or fit the environment in in what you're at. And I suppose it could be good, but that's the model. And so things that were totally unacceptable even ten years ago, like typos and grammatical errors, stuff not only is ignored, it's expected. Yeah. I think that's almost a a feature of texting. Yeah. It's like, you know, we don't we're like, well, you know what I mean. I don't need to put my apostrophe as. I even do that with my kids. I'm like, I am gonna make a point of putting apostrophe s's and periods here. Just so you see what it should look like. Our English language should look like this even in a text. They're like emoji back, you know. So How's that working out for you? Not not so good. Right? Yeah. Yeah. This is not we're we're still but I do have good writers in my house. So that's maybe it's maybe something's rubbing off. We'll see. Back to my point about, you know, magazines and the readership of magazines, being such a a small percentage of online reach. And access and so forth. But the payment for writers, it's it's pretty lousy. Never was great. Now it's worse and there's fewer outlets for it. There's a lot more people contending for it. We went through a period when I first met you was where bloggers were the thing. And, I I would now say something along the lines, let influencers have displaced or replaced bloggers. Although, I think we all still I still blog. You do too, I think. Right? That's not as much I, Okay. Well, there you go. So what it's changed? It has changed. Well, and I I kinda even see it even farther back from bloggers. I mean, you started off with the wine critics. It used to be mainly Robert Parker and wine spectator, but then they all had folks that kinda splintered off from them, he had James Suckling go his own way from wine spectator, and he kinda brought his group of tasters and his tasting team was built. And then you had Antonio kinda splinter off from Parker's wine advocate, and he had his group of tasters And then you ended up getting people that were just running through thousands of wines a year, and their their writing and scoring wines, but their actual editing and education in terms of the writing about the wines became less and less. So and and some now some of these old school publications are even charging producers to use their publication ratings, as an added income stream. They're holding these these events that, you know, they're requiring, you know, their producers to come and pay to be part of their events, and then they've got huge advertising, which has always been that. But even before that, I mean, the newspaper, you know, everybody used to have, like, a newspaper and a wine columnist, not everybody, but the bigger cities. And so you had this newspaper columnist that was paid a full time salary to write and that was a very limited gig because how many newspapers could afford a a single columnist to write about food and wine. And those those advertising dollars have gone and and really funded a lot of the social media advertising I mean, even before that, the internet has opened up so much opportunity. Web sites have popped up with beginner's guides and easy opportunities for consumers to engage and and chat, and have actual discussions with brands that they're interested in used to be more of a top down conversations where you had the experts, and then you had the consumers and and the people who are, you know, reading from the experts. And now it's more linear. A linear conversation and it's a back and forth about wine, whether it's the bloggers and the experts, the industry folks, and the consumers, there's just this real horizontal linear conversation going on, which I think is good. So I was just in Italy last weekend. I was having a conversation with somebody, and we were exploring the issue of separating church versus state editorial versus advertising in, you know, the old millennium in the nineteen hundreds. It's it's still a valid concern. And I think one of the complicating issues that I deal with all the time is that, you know, I'm I'm mostly dealing in in in the world of trade people, not in consumers, and commercial news is news. Right? The fact that it's commercial is what makes it news, not isn't makes it not good news. So it's a very different environment in which to write. I'm trying to do less of original content there and and let my colleagues like you who do it for a living, make money at it and try not to take bread out of out of their mouths. But by the same token, there's this whole issue of church and state and the commercial value of what you're doing. At the end of the day, you know, the the the the simple version of it, if you got an article, we gotta mention in our in one spectator. Well, Parker, take it back there. If you got over a ninety in Parker, you couldn't buy it. And if you got below ninety in Parker, you couldn't sell it. Is that simple. Right? It's no longer maybe it never was that simple. But still in all, the commercial impact of those publications has changed and I the way I phrase it is, okay, millennial. They don't care what the pundits say. They care what their peers say. So there's no longer this level of people between us and and wine in terms of, you know, engaging and relating to it. You don't need someone to explain it and then bless it and tell you this is good and this is not. It's what your friends say. Can you talk about? Sure. Sure. And I and I think that's really it's word-of-mouth, but it's also a word of picture. So people are posting on Instagram, Hey, having a great time here, and here's my bottle of Rose. Rose all day, you know. And, oh, I wonder if they they're drinking that. I might as well drink that. Yeah, so that that peer to peer connection, I think, is significant, but also I think blogs kind of paved the way for that. So now everyone is an expert or at least willing to be one and engage new wine lovers and and share real time what they're drinking and why. And I think that's had a huge impact on on sales, at more the consumer level. Yeah. I think I think that's huge. So let me kinda jump in on the on the, influencer thing. I I guess I knew of them or certainly conceptually, but I was on, Once again, make people jealous here on another trip yet another trip deadline. Which is the real payment for writing about wine. For me, yeah, but, for me, the difference is I'm retired. So I not only have the time, but I no longer need the money. That's that's perfect. But so I met this young lady, who is an influencer, and I learned just an incredible amount about social media that I didn't know and how to do visuals and all that kind of stuff, not that I wanna become an expert in it at all. But at least that I can understand it better. And when she was sharing me the kind of money that she was making, it was more like the difference between advertising and PR. You know, in PR, you're trying to generate copy that doesn't get paid for, but has great value in the case of advertising. It does get paid for, and you has some value, but it's really hard to to pinpoint it. But all of a sudden, it was a legitimate thing other than, you know, blogging for, and and hoping that money would tinkle down, you know, into your offer. So it's a real deal now. What's next is is something gonna displace influencers. I know. That's that's a really good question. I've I think social media has made us more nimble and will continue to do so, but it also has to be kept in check. Are you risk missing the entire experience, you're trying to share? And this this kinda plays to the point of of influencers as well, which I feel like can be a mixed bag. For example, there's a couple quick stories. I I traveled on a trip to France, media trip to France. I hadn't ever heard the word influencer before. It was a couple years back. And, you know, it's like, I know. I have four teams. They're like influencers. I am I'm just the mom. You know, I was on this trip this influencer, and I was, oh gosh, what's an influencer? And I was quickly educated. And my take on it with with this one very one example. I mean, there's there's MWs that are are using social media in such a way that they're educating, they're inspiring. They are really teaching and and communicating the stories behind these really wonderful brands. I think there's some that are doing really really great work. My at the other side of it is a little bit darker side. This gal was taking fantastic pictures in the vineyard holding the I mean, just beautiful pictures. It's she's very photogenic. She was delightful as a person. Her wine knowledge was not there, but even worse, she was paying to have thousands of bots follow her. So how do you know as, you know, somebody that's a producer that's paying for advertising that this is a legitimate influorcial, like, that she her reach is as wide and as deep as she says she is. I I don't know because on the backside, you're gonna have to do a lot of work on analytics to see are these legitimate people? Are you gonna have to pay to find that out and research your influencer. Have the interest or ability to to suss that out and just take it. Well, I mean, ages ago and, you know, a thousand years ago where we used to measure followers as though that were a number, that had any value to anybody. Yeah. It was a number which just didn't happen. Right. Well, and and to plan to that point too, and sometimes and I it may be generational. It may not, but there was a time I was on a trip with Simmington wine estates. And we were in Duro with the Duro Valley having this they opened up this beautiful bottle from like nineteen sixty four, and it was I love it when that happens. I I love it too. And they didn't they were they were talking about this wine. This was a piece of history because He was he was sharing this, the winemaker's sharing, hey, this is a bottle that was here before we had electricity in this building or in this valley. I'm like, oh my gosh. We are getting to taste this piece of history. What a gift that he would share it with eight of us. I mean, they're what a gift, but On the one hand, you have so many you've got this group that's so busy clicking pictures of themself with the bottle that they have completely missed the experience. They've completely missed the gift and the bottle because they're so worried about how it's gonna look and how they're gonna share instead of just enjoying this incredible gift. This moment with this winemaker, his generosity, his spirit I mean, they they don't have a ton of those bottle bottles just sitting around. They you know, they're limited, and he chose to share that with us. And I just I feel like there's a balance here. We've gotta be able to communicate while not missing the experience ourselves, or it's gonna be really tough to write about and be able to share some pictures, you know, here and there, but, and I'm I'm probably more old school now. And I I can't believe I'm on the old school one now, where it's like, no. No. Use the words and add the use the pictures as spice. Instead of making the picture everything. And, you know, the words are just a Wow. That's the really interesting perspective on it. You know, one, on on a a commercial way of looking at that, one of the things I like to say is you know, if we can't bring people to wherever Duro Valley or, you know, Verona, how can we bring that place to them? And the internet gives us all the tools to do that but I think the the ability to tell stories that storytelling through that medium is still a critical and professional thing. And when you do it well, you can make it resonate. And if it resonates, they'll talk to each other about it. And, you know, very simply, what we're trying to do is to get people to tell your story through, in their words, to other people. Exactly. Exactly. And pictures are short cut to that, but I think the words really fill in the blank and fill in the experience. So it's more of a holistic communication. Speaking of which, we we talked about a number of examples. And you had a couple you thought might be right. And one of them was terlado and old wines and Blocked left. Please tell me that story. Oh, yes. Yes. With it's actually it's Cantina Turlano in Elto Adagetje. And on one of the trips, they had this Really, this great glass of wine that they poured for all of us, but, they had the wines poured before we came in. The glasses were completely black. I visited that booth at Ven Italy last week. Did you? Do they have the black glass? No. Oh gosh. You should have requested that black glass. I'm gonna have to call him back. I was thinking it was Turlado. Oh, I'm sorry. Much small much smaller than Turlado. It's Turlano. So well, they're they're Gram Delacreme, white wine. Is called Nova domus. So new dome, it's kinda just referring to this nearby castle tower that overlooks. I think it's one of the one of the vineyards where they source the grapes from for this particular cuvee. It's a it's a beautiful blend of Pino Bianco, Chardonay, Sabian Blanca's super full bodied, mineral driven. Anyway, it was forty years. They had aged it forty years in the cellar unbeknownst to us. We had no idea what we were getting in the glass. So we're all, you know, sitting there ready to to smell, taste, swirl, rate, review this wine. And and they're just they're loving it because they're like, yeah. They know they've got us before we even get in there. And, you know, people are kind of throwing out, oh, nutty, nutty aromas, or floral, or, well, it was it was completely I mean, forty years old tertiary. You couldn't tell what it was. It was so remarkable, and it was such an impactful experience because it really it really taught the the idea of not judging a book by the cover. I don't know. I literally didn't know if it was a red wine, a white wine. If it was fortified, you know, I I did not know anything about it, and to hear them unfold what was in our glass. And again, another gift, a forty year old wine that they've decided to share with us to make a point And, it was just beautiful. And this this wine is still I mean, that you can still buy it every vintage. Still, I think they have the twenty nineteen out right now. And it's, yeah, the Nova domus Cuve, and and they recommend aging it for a decade. But clearly, you can go four decades if you would like, and it was it was outstanding. It was unforgettable. Yeah. I wish I was on that trip. Oh, fantastic trip. Yeah. So in and on on that same trip was, we went to Elena Walk in Alta Adagetje, and her story is just remarkable and inspiring. She's this very accomplished architect who married well, basically, she ended up having this, a contract assignment to help update an seventeenth century Austrian Castle in Alta Adaget. And attached to this castle, there's this winery and some vineyards and attached to the winery and vineyards was this man, Warner Walk who lived there, and they got to each other and fell in love and got married. So she completely rerouted her course. Instead of going down the architectural line of of career, she went into winemaking, and she learned it, and she's been doing it almost forty years. And now her daughters are taking over, but you've probably had her wines there beyond the clouds as her kind of her most famous chardonnay blend. And then I think her single vineyard gewvert streamer is probably one of her other most well known. It's just an unforgettable aromatic intense wine. But to me, these two these two wines from these two regions, I mean, from this one region, it just really spoke to what white wines can do in Italy and to what also Adaget brings to the table, and it was it was so much fun to write about. I I didn't even know where to start. I came back just kinda like humming. I'm like, this is so neat. There's so many things that I learned and I saw and I tasted. And, that that piece would end up being three or four different pitches for different angles, and, you know, so you can cover it. You can't just cover it in one outlet. So that was really fun. It could be a producer profile or wine reviews and ratings or, hey, go visit it yourself. You won't you won't regret it. It's Fantastic. So let's, get on a plane and go from Alto Adaje to Texas. My home state. Bring things bring things bring things home, and you were talking about, you know, the impact of COVID and so forth, and you brought up Texas. Sure. Sure. So I'm I'm from Texas originally. So I was excited to go back, but I wasn't I wasn't necessarily thinking I'd be going back for wine, but once COVID hit, obviously, travel. Yeah. I would have bet against that. You know, I would have taken that bet. Well, as you know, everything's shut down. We were all grounded for two years. And my, editor at Decancer was like, so what's around you? I'm like, well, I live in Colorado. I'm from Texas. I've got a I've got a pitch from Idaho wines. She's like, let's do Idaho. I'm like, oh, okay. Well, let's do Idaho. I started getting wines into rate and review for Idaho and and write a story, and that was fun and educational and and unexpected. And then I moved to the Colorado Western slope and covered my home state and found so much variety that it was really it was great. A lot of really fantastic white wines coming out of the higher elevations in Colorado. And then went to Texas and and did hill country tours. Actually, I went twice. I was there for a media trip, and then I went back, few weeks later on a personal trip, it hit a couple more wineries that I wanted to see when I was there. And just saw the breadth and depth of what they're doing, and I will say, Tempreneo was probably their stand out great for me. And I I really enjoyed just seeing that But Texas hospitality, it's I mean, it's it's remarkable, and they've taken it and and turned it up a notch with with their wine scene. And it's it's fantastic. Awesome. Alright. Great food. Great food. Well, we've we've we've outrun our time here. I always end my, sessions with a question of what's the big takeaway for for people and recognizing that most of them are in the trade who are listening to this conversation. What's the one thing they can take from what we just discussed and, put to work in a commercial way, in their business. Sure. I think that with the advent of e commerce, and it's just going, I mean, gangbusters right now, everybody's getting on the DTC wagon or the e commerce wagon, and they should. If if it's really gone up at least twenty five percent last two years, e commerce is gonna is here to stay and is gonna play a huge piece, in in wine sales and in getting the story to the consumers. And I think words matter and having good content behind that e commerce, whether it's in the newsletters, the wine club literature, or on on your site to tell your story authentically. Everybody has a story, and some people have to dig a little deeper for for what theirs is, but there's always a story that needs to be communicated to the consumer that will make your wine set apart from the next wine on the shelf. So I think words matter and words are gonna matter even more with e commerce. Pictures are still great. But words fill in all the blanks. Wow. You know, I it's just really relevant to the conversation I had, act in Italy with a supplier who who couldn't understand the idea of of a story and they they kept going back to, well, you know, we age the wine in smaller barrels. You know, there are there's all these production things that, you know, you're trying to get to the soul, the heart, what what is the thing that's gonna make me, you know, have a big fat grin on my face? When you tell me that story. And and most of them are they're farmers. Okay? They're that's not their strength. That's our strength. We got trained in that, but I did. Yeah. And that's kind of what you need. It's not a matter of, asking your child. It's And and maybe it's called here's a job for a journalist is interviewing me. Help me figure out what my story is. Gotta pull it out of them. Mhmm. Well, because of operation, right? We had some conversations before. That's when we discussed what we were gonna talk about. Okay. Well, this has been fantastic. I've really enjoyed it. So this is Steve Ray signing off for this week, and please join us again next Monday for another edition of get US market ready with Italian wine people. Thanks again for listening. This is Steve Ray with Get US Market Ready with Italian wine people on the Italian wine podcast. Hi, guys. I'm Joy Livingston, and I am the producer of the Italian wine podcast. Thank you for listening. We are the only wine podcast that has been doing a daily show since the pandemic began. This is a labor of love and we are committed to bringing you free content every day. Of course, this takes time and effort not to mention the cost of equipment, production, and editing. We would be grateful for your donations, suggestions, requests, and ideas. For more information on how to get in touch, go to Italianwine podcast dot com.