Ep. 84 Monty Waldin interviews Adam Teeter (Vine Pair) | Monty Waldin's Let's Talk Wine Biz

Italian wine podcast. Chinching with Italian wine people. Hello. This is the Italian wine forecast. My name is Monte Wallin. My guest today is Adam Teeter. Adam is CEO of Vineperer, a New York based publication on wine. Beer and cocktails, Adam, welcome. Thanks for having me. So how did you, how do you end up in New York first? Were you born and bred? I'm not born and bred. I'm actually from the south, from Alabama, and moved to New York eleven years ago. So how old were you then? I was twenty four. Did you move? Love? Money? Right. Did it work out? It did. Yeah. We're married. Right. Okay. That's great. Well, we can this will turn us into a dating show, maybe. Exactly. So you ended up in New York, and how did you start Vineeper? So I started in New York in the music business. So I worked at a record label. I was doing a job called ANR, and ANR is short for artists and repertoire. It's when you sign bands. And through the music industry, I got really into wine and cocktails and beer. Right? You're you're always entertaining, always meeting bands, going to shows. So I started a music series called Vivo Invino, which took wine producers and paired them with, you know, big rock bands, and we did concerts all over the city. Took on, give us an example of a a wine pairing in a rock band. So we would do, for example, freelance Wales with Mouton noir. So Freelance Wales. Yeah. Freelance Wales is a big indie rock band. We paired them with Mouton noir. So the winemaker came. The band played a acoustic set for, you know, a hundred and fifty, two hundred people. And then there'd be a conversation between the band and the winemaker about creativity, process, etcetera. And we're trying to show this connection between making music and making wine. So give us another one. So now that we did the Antlers, which is another big indie rock band, and we paired them with Clint analogy. So another really cool upstart, you know, indie winemaker, if you will. So those were really fun things to do. We did them at a a restaurant, italian restaurant actually in the East village called in Vino. So on Sunday nights, once a month, we would completely clear the restaurant and we'd turn it into a concert venue. So from that, I Who was coming to these events? There was a hipsters? Well, that hipsters. Yeah. Are you a hipster? Sure. You gotta check, sure. Sure. And and and stubble. I live in these village. I don't live in Williamsburg though, so I guess I'm not officially hipster, but sure. I'm a millennial. And so from that experience, we were approached by a television producer to create a television show about travel and alcohol. It was called drink me, which is a terrible name, but it's fine. It was a working title. We shot a pilot. It got picked up by a food network and never aired. So it was a really great Oh, experience. Such a big build up there. Yeah. You got an audience of seven million on cable. Never. Never aired. But should it should it have aired? Was it good or was it crap? I thought it was great. Yeah. But I think, you know, there's still this this feeling in the United States that drinks programming can't work on TV. So Because of the alcohol thing, they don't think it's exciting enough. The drinks programming that's been tried on TVRs wasn't like this, but the drinks program that's been tried on TV is, you know, someone sitting with a glass of wine tasting with a wine maker, etcetera. That's very boring. We're gonna do that later, by the way. Let's do it. You know, so that's very, that's very boring to most viewers. And so the belief among television executives was it couldn't work. But Gary Vanisha did something similar. So Gary, Gary, and Gary's actually an investor in Vinepere. Didn't know that. He tried, but it's YouTube. So it's different. Right? He he never was on network television, but he was able to take his YouTube personality and become this massive investor in the United States and this massive advertising personality. Right? So now his agency represents some of the biggest brands in the world, and he's sort of bringing that social media be a personality to them, but he was never able to really bring that to television. Then, you know, it's it's unfortunate. I think that that that's not his fault at all. He has a lot of talent. It's the fault of these television executives that just think that food is really easy to bring to TV and that drinks are a lot harder. So we were picked up, actually, there was another show at the same time picked up called Beere Chicks. Beere Chicks bombed when it went on TV. Our show is very different, but so then we just never got a shot. I think it's it's gonna come around though. You're gonna see another show in two or three years. Someone will try to put drinks back on TV. So how would how would you do it in the future? You'd obviously retweet your idea without giving any trade secrets away. I mean, we would do a show that's very similar to the publication vine pair. So we believe in accessing these these products through culture through travel through politics. So through larger stories. So not just seeing one in the sizzle blurring old bubble. The publication, we don't like to just do straight up. This is a profile about a winemaker, and this is what his or her soil is like, and this is their family history. Instead, we try to tell a story of a place a culture talking about how it's being impacted by politics right now. So So Donald Trump's got a winery. So you could do him. Oh, we've done him. Oh, okay. Okay. We've had it we had a bunch of saw I mean, it's still every time he talks about the winery, we see hundreds of thousands of people hit the story, but we we brought a bunch of psalms into a room and had them blind taste trump winery wine. Did I like it? That's disgusting. Oh, yeah. I like a man who who who who, sits on the fence. It's disgusting. Right. Okay. Well, and he doesn't drink. So that's probably why it is disgusting. He gets a sense to know it's a terrible product. But, yeah, so I caught the bug. I really felt like there was this population, this growing population of millennials who were really interested in wine beer and cock cocktails, but there wasn't any publications that appealed to me. But the stories behind it. Yeah. And and and I was basing that on myself. Right? There were no publications that appealed to me. So Well, was there not one? I mean, why did why don't you like the one without being too rude? Why don't you like the wine spectator? Why don't you like the wine spectator? What about, I think, American enthusiasts, I think. One enthusiasts. You know, it talks to an older generation. It's not in touch, I think, with with current trends. I think when it tries to do it, it doesn't do it as effectively. What about wine blogs that, a hip and training, any, any that you like? I mean, there I think there are some interesting wine vlogs. I think wine volume is interesting. But I think it's for a geekier audience. We we were trying to talk to more no more person. It's a lifestyle publication. Right? So we talk about travel. We talk about dining out. We talk about bars, hotels, and we weave all that into into drinks culture. Too. Do lots of infographics, we do lots of humor posts, and then we do, you know, big long form trend pieces. So for example, tomorrow, one of our monthly columnists is Jamie Good. So tomorrow, his column comes out, and it's all about the trend of natural wine and how it needs to die. And basically, it's a warning shot where he's making the case. I think is really interesting that, you know, the industry, especially the younger industry, so now now my generation has become very obsessed with natural wine. So you have a lot of producers doing the exact same thing that they did in the eighties and nineties with Parker. They're chasing these flavors that this consumer is saying right now they like. And his argument is in a few years, those flavors are going to be dead. No one's going to be chasing those flavors anymore. And a lot of producers who made drastic changes in order to adapt their wines for that flavor profile are going to then wonder where they went wrong. One of the reason one of the problems is because for me having written about organic combined over twenty odd years is the the people that you're talking about have got into that aspect of of wine have have really done it, really just via winemaking, buying some amphora, doing some skin contact without any real knowledge. Exactly. About how these wines should be made or have been traditionally made. So it's all about the Viticulture. Exactly. And it's not about the winery. It's not about which toys you buy, for your little, game show in the in the winery. It's about hard flipping work out in the vineyard. Exactly. Our statement is a natural wine wine, you shouldn't know that it's natural. That it should be so well made that you should know it's natural. That's quite a good one. And I think a lot of these wines right now, you clearly know because there's lots of faults. And because people don't really know what they're doing. It's just trendy. Yeah. And it's standardization by the way, I mean, for me, I was just living in board and making wine and the mid nineties when the parker thing took off, and you couldn't tell a Santa Steph from a Santa Million because they were just absolutely identical and also from conventional Viticulture clearly. And now if you give me three natural wines, the extreme example is not all. I'm just so we don't get millions of letters, but then you say one one of them is from say Chile, one of them is from France, and one of them is from I don't know Austria. And I literally can't tell the difference between them. Where where are they from when someone has a gun to my head against the hemisphere? I don't know. Pull the trigger. I really could not tell you. That surely should not be the point. You're completely agree with you. I think it's masking terroir. It's taking away from some of the art that a lot of lawmakers have of showing what their style is. But how do you how do you say that to your audience without talking about masking terroir and art and things like that? I mean, so so we explain to them what that means. We explain to them what terroir is, but we say, you know, when when you're trying these different wines, terroir means it tastes like it's actually from Tuscany. And here's what it means. It means when you drink lots of Tuscany wine, you can say, here are these characteristics that I pick up. Instead, if all you get is bread. Then you're not gonna be able to to say this this reminds me of a wine from the region of Tuscany when I was there, etcetera. So we we try to explain terroir too in a way of saying, you know, you know, this is from the point of a New Yorker. Right? You know what a New Jersey tomato tastes like in the summer. It's like everyone wants to have New Jersey tomatoes because they're the ripest, juiciest, etcetera. So you that is terroir through the tomato. So here's how you understand what terroir is grapes. And then I think it's something that becomes easily accessible for people. And that's what we've tried to do when we created Vinepear in the first place was creating a publication that spoke to this next generation. They gave them the stories they wanted to read, the content they wanted to share, and it was also accessible and understood that most people don't come in with knowledge. They want to gain the knowledge through publication. Actually, that would be my largest criticism of of some of the older publications is I think they're only written for a person who has taken some classes, who's who's worked with wine experts, etcetera. They don't explained things. And so Or it's already in the industry. Right. So the publication's inaccessible. So you're not gaining any new readers that way. You know, we have we have articles that, yes, are for the more advanced person who's an obsessive who has a collection, who travels all the time and every time they travel goes to a winery or a distillery, etcetera. But we have a whole beginner's one zero one section on the site as well that's really there to guide you along and not make you feel stupid. You know, millennials especially really don't like feeling dumb. I think there's this idea of the schooling that we've been put under for our entire lives and the testing and and wanting to always be a high achiever. So if you go to a publication that makes you feel stupid, you're not sure. But isn't there a little bit of one upmanship in Natural at the moment? I'm not getting back to natural, but but, you know, my I made a wine and it contained, fifty grams of self isolation. Well, I made one that had thirteen grams of self isolation. Yeah. In the super geeky section of the of the wine world. And those are our readers as well, but they probably don't interact with the the large majority of my reader. Wouldn't wouldn't be, I mean, I've always thought the easiest thing would be to get people to come on trips to actually get them to make wine for a month or two because it's just the easiest way to learn. You know, I mean, when I was learning about wine, I worked in wineries, and I just so I knew all the cheats and all the tricks and all the dishonor stuff that would go on. And it basically boiled down to bad wine growing. You think you've got a a vineyard out there with lovely soil, but you've turned it into a car park. It's it's like cement. It's like an airport runway. You are gonna have to break the law on the wine, or it's pretty simple. You can't make a wine from that kind of terroir, from that guy from how you've treated your wine yard. So maybe you could do some, virtual wine growing online with your thing? We don't do there wouldn't be for us, but I think that there are some businesses now that have done a really great job of of bringing winemaking closer to consumers. So, I mean, City winery in the United States, you know, is a is an amazing business and his his places are doing a lot of what we were doing with Vivo and Vino where he's he's pairing these big bands with wine drinkers, but then you can go and experience what it's like to make wine. Brooklyn winery is another one that's doing a lot of these urban wineries and Portland and Berkeley and things like that where is that gonna come out of the kind of craft bim movement as well? Yeah. I mean, I think if wine is smart, they will copy exactly what craft beer has done. So what what couple of aspects do you think they would copy? So first of all, marketing, craft beer, our content is very evenly split, a third, a third, and a third, beer, wine, and cocktails, or spirits. I would say that I'm out of the the teams or a team of fifteen. I'm probably the larger wine obsessive, but I really do enjoy craft beer. And they're just god. They're the smartest marketers. I mean, about everything. They understand social. Every time an article's published about craft beer brand on our site, we hear from them within five minutes of the publishing. I mean, they're on top of it. They know they interact they're active on Facebook. They understand how to use Instagram. They understand how to talk to these different groups of people. So I think that's the one thing why I should should try to understand. They are always innovating. They're not tied to certain things. They spend money, which I think is really important to me. Well, on marketing, you're talking about. One of the productions on marketing. So they spend money on advertising. They spend money on PR. They they really invest in bringing people in on design. Right? So creating labels that feel accessible that aren't old, that aren't stale. But it's in one advantage to be there is they can make a consistent product all year round mode. So that is the advantage. Right? Whereas in wine, you can really only do it once a year. Right? But they tell that story, and I think wine should tell the story. Right? So explain, look, we get one shop. I think there's a lot of wine that don't do that. I also think there's a lot of wineries that try to mask why they do certain things. I was having a conversation last night with two people who are also gonna be at wine to wine, and we we talked about how, especially the larger wine producers, they never talk openly about how they actually created the wine. Right? Like, just be honest and say, we did a focus group. We tested these five flavors, and these five flavors tested well. And so therefore, we went back into the vineyard and we grew the grapes in a in a specific way in order to achieve those flavors. But aren't they caught between two two stores on the one hand? They want to, quote, express their turmoil. On the other hand, they got, got a business to run it. On the other hand, they got, they read in magazines, some of which I kinda write for. I think all the critics like this particular style, so we're gonna follow that trend. Yeah. I mean, I think there's so many, at this point, though, there's so many different critics. I mean, yes, you have the older school critics that are still like the thing that they like, right? You have the witnesses of the world and the spectators, etcetera. They're all going through a certain flavor profile. You have us, you know, we have a whole review section where definitely the the styles that my critics tend to like are much less intervention, much less oh, purity of fruit, all that kind of stuff that you just sort of pick it, you can pick and choose. So be honest, if we're going after the audience that reads the critics that we, you know, you can even say it that way. So we're a Napa, California producer, and we're creating heavily oak wines. Because our readers read these publications, and they have been taught to like these kinds of wines. So we create these kinds of wines. Or we just like making these kinds of wines or we like drinking these kinds of wines. Yeah. Often quite difficult to drink. I think. And I think, you know, in beer, they do a really good job of saying, we make this because we like to to drink it. Even if or they say, like, look, Right now, the biggest trend in beer is New England IPAs. So it's a really cloudy, very fruity style of IPA. And I feel like we're making it because it's selling. And they're I mean, but they said we saw her making a very good New England IPA. We're making it because it's selling. But that's what's happened though with with, orange wines, isn't it? It's, you know, whether they whether they taste like shit or whether they taste vaguely drinkable, and some of them do. The the ones are drink a while delicious, but the majority really are not their standardized product because they all suffer from the same microbial faults effectively. Yeah. It's another for a standardization by the back door, but you still get people buying them and and eulogizing about them. So if if customers, members of the public, for better or for worse, like drinking the hundred point over oats, parkerized, quotes, wine, or the natural wine made by somebody that has no experience working with a terrible vineyard, it makes a horrible wine, and somebody likes it. How are you gonna make yourself relevant when you've got those sort of extremes if you like where people have put their spade in the ground as a right? This is what I drink, and you're not gonna change me. So I think you have to, you have to find your audience, and then you have to be good at communicating to that audience. So I think that is one thing that Craftbury does as well, well as well. They're really good at saying, okay. So I'm this brewer and I'm obsessed with Stautz. So they find the other people who are obsessed with Stautz, and they become known for that. And they they communicate back to them, and they advertise in the publications that that reader reads. And they and they really just own their area. And, you know, there are certain brewers wanna be large, right, the Sam Adams of the world, etcetera. They wanna be huge brewers and there are certain craft brewers that are also okay with making a lot, you know, a life for themselves and having the market share they have, etcetera. And I think that that's also important for wine is saying, okay, I don't have to be as big as some of these huge conglomerates, but they're also really open in in the crappier world too that the conglomerates control everything, and they push back. They push back really loudly against it. I think I don't know. I mean, just in the tasting, we're, you know, I was overhearing the discussions about the conglomerates in these large producers that control the regulations and the rules and things like that. And you don't hear that as much as an American consumer. You don't know that that's what's happening here because the smaller producers aren't talking about that. They're not saying, look, my hands are being tied with the kinds of wines I wanna make because the large you know, companies with the money are are preventing me from doing that. In American craft beer, they let you know it over and over and over again. We can't do certain things. We can't buy certain hops because the large companies are restricting our access to these things. And so you have, especially a millennial consumer rallying around the little guys and saying, okay. Well, we're gonna support you because you wanna do something creative that you're not being allowed to do. Yeah. Although in in Europe, I mean, it's not like the the bigger companies are controlling the actual side, but they're certainly control they're controlling the message in some in some ways. And and I guess they're controlling the docs in certain ways as or certain, you know, rules and regulations. But then producers can opt out and become the kind of Right. I'm mister or missus alternative, and I'm I got kicked out of the domination because even though my wine is typical, it's not oaked enough for for them. Therefore, I'm gonna plow my own furrow. Right. But then you have to be willing as that producer to to really push that message. Yeah. And that's where that's where the problem lies, isn't it? Because they either don't know how to do it or they don't have time to do it. Exactly. Well, they don't know who their audience is. Particularly if they don't speak, say, you know, the English language Exactly. In North America market. Exactly. I I think, you know, I the the the challenge with wine that we see all the time as a national publication is there's three things. One, the product has to be awesome, and it's sometimes not. Two, you have to be able to be willing to put some sort of marketing muscle behind the product and three, distribution. And I think it's it's really understanding that you have to own all three because we'll come to we'll have producers come to us who've a lot of money on PR, and they try to pitch us a story. And we'll say, well, look, you know, where are you distributed? And they say, oh, we're in New York in LA. Okay. Like, our readers is pretty big in New York in LA. So fine. Maybe there's a story there. But really a smart decision for you would be to go to the local newspapers in New York in LA, and pitch a story there because we're And so if my reader in New Orleans or Atlanta can't get your wine, they're really frustrated by reading an amazing article about your product, and then they don't really have any way to get it. And I think that's definitely the challenge at least in the American market. I think it's different in other markets our three tier system is the worst. But, you know, if everyone who wants to be in America also wants to have all this press in America and things like that, you do have to think about all three of those things in order to achieve those goals. Yeah. The distribution side is is quite tricky, and also in Canada as well, isn't it? Boy. Yeah. It's not easy. Is there anything we've missed? I mean, you know, as as a publication, we really try to write stories that touch on larger themes. So, like a big story around last week was all about how Los Angeles is in a sort of a drinks renaissance. And the reason for that is because of uber, you know, looking at at tech and how it's influencing the drinks world too, it's really fascinating. Well, you mean people couldn't get driven home having to go. People didn't really drink that much in Los Angeles. You drink in homes. It was a it was a big drinking culture in homes because you didn't feel comfortable having one more than one or two and then driving. But now that Uber's so ubiquitous in Los Angeles and Lyft, these amazing bars are opening. Amazing wine bars, amazing cocktail bars, awesome craft beer bars, and they're changing the dynamic of LA. So So really well known Psalms are now moving to LA and setting up shop. Great mixologists are opening up places in LA. And it's all because of the accessibility of cars. But if people want wine by the glass generally they want to, I mean, it isn't too heavy. Do you think that's gonna have an impact further north in the in the California wine industry in terms of Oiling. Yes. I think Napa, but what Napa will always have going for it though is tourism. It still is consent is going to continue to be seen as this amazing tourist destination for even my generation. Right? You just napa's supposed to be amazing. It's beautiful. Sonoma. I mean, Sonoma's doing a really good job actually of differentiating. Itself and saying they're like the cool kid Brooklyn version of Napa. So, actually, Sonoma's getting a lot of buzz of where people wanna travel. But I do think that that that's also important to remember from an Italian perspective, right? Like American consumers, millennials are never gonna not think that Tuscany is a place they wanna travel to. Never gonna not think that Piedmont is a place that they wanna be. So if you're in those regions, take advantage of that. If you're in regions that people don't know as well, then you you have to do some education as to what makes you special, what makes you cool, you know, the tasting right now, Trentino, like, I guarantee you that if I ask most of my readers, they have no clue where that is. So it's not even the understanding of of all these different grapes. It's also simply just explaining this is our region. This is our place. This is what we're known for. This is the kind of food. You know, I would guarantee you the average American thanks to the majority of Italian food coming to America being, you know, from the south. Think that's the cuisine across the entire country. So it's it's just doing, you know, good PRa and marketing on your own to sort of educate what your what your food style is, what your place is, and then I think people get this attachment to the wine too. Wanna drink and, and continue to enjoy it. Right. For Christmas, I, I, I give you a choice of two presents that you can. Okay. Okay. Either I give you a craft brewery Uh-huh. Or I give you a vineyard. What are you gonna take? So I get to buy one. No. No. No. You get to go get to give you one. I take a vineyard. But drink beer in the evening. Oh, yeah. Isn't that what everyone does? Maybe not so much in Italy. When I worked in California, we did drink a lot of beer, but, alright. I just wanna say thanks to our guest today, Adam Teeter, who is the CEO of Vinepeire, based in New York. Wish you every success with that. Thank you. And with your beer and your cocktails and your wine. And also, if you ever get back into the kind of music side of things, let us know. I will. I will. Thanks so much for having me. No worries. Thanks for coming. Follow Italian wine podcast on Facebook and Instagram.