Ep. 1062 Sally Evans | Uncorked

Welcome to the Italian wine podcast. This episode has been brought to you by the wine to wine business forum twenty twenty two. This year, we'll mark the ninth edition of the forum to be held on November seventh and eighth of twenty twenty two. In Verona Italy, this year will be an explosively in person edition. The main theme of the event will be all around wine communication. And tickets are on sale now. The second early bird discount will be available until September eighteenth. For more information, please visit us at wine to wine dot net. Hello, everybody. My name is Holly Hammond, and you are listening to Uncorked, the Italian wine podcast series about all things marketing and communication. Join me each week for candid conversations with experts from within and beyond the wine world as we explore what it takes to build a profitable business in today's constantly shifting environment. In this episode, we're joined by Sally Evans, owner of Chateau Gorsese. Sally's story is inspiring and delightful. At a time when many people are considering slowing down the pace of life, Sally took a decidedly different path. She bought a parcel of thirty five year old vines in Prozac and started a winery. Today, we talk about how her career in business strategy and marketing informs her decisions, how those decisions have helped her build an award winning winery, and the adventure of starting a new business after fifty. Let's get into it. Sally. Welcome. I'm I'm actually so delighted to have you joining me today on the podcast because I have been following your story for I I was thinking about how long. I mean, possibly from your earliest days of communicating about, about Chateau georges set. Because it's a super inspiring story. I'm not gonna give it all away in the intro, but welcome. I'm glad to have you here today. Oh, well, thank you for having me because, I really appreciate what you do for the world of wine, and I've been a fan for a while. So this is great for me. Thank you. Mutual admiration society today, which is much needful in the middle of August in the hot hot sun. Okay. So now I know your story. I know about the chateau, but for everybody out there who doesn't know why I and to be fair, other people, but also other grown women, might find this super interesting. Tell me about Chateau Gorscht. Okay. Well, I have lived in France for about twenty eight years. But I'm I lived in Paris. I lived in the south of France, and I had a corporate career. I actually was a marketing director for a big consulting company. So I had a normal life, two kids, you know, busy job. And I traveled the world a lot with my job, which meant that I didn't see my youngest son when he was a baby or very small. So when he got to the age of about fifteen, I decided I had a bit of mum guilt that kicked in and decided that perhaps I should give up work for a while and spend some time with him before he left home. So I think he would have preferred for me to carry on working, but I actually decided that I wanted to stop work. So I spent a bit of time with him until he was seventeen, eighteen, he went off to university, and then it was like, well, what am I gonna do now? So I did what I'd always wanted to do, which was learn a bit more about wine. So I started studying WS CT courses in the South of France, the White and Spirit Educational Trust. And I did level one and two in the April. And by a time I'd signed up for the level three in October, I had decided to buy some vines. Because I needed to take it. No. I need the project. I was fifty two at the time, and I thought, well, this thing this this seems like a really fun world to be in. I wanna get my fingers in the soil. I want to get my nose in a barrel. And so I thought, where do they make great wine? Well, Bordeaux, of course. I'd never been to Bordeaux, but I got in my car and, drove eight hours across France and discovered France, Bordeaux, and a whole new region that I didn't know. And, by the March, I was the proud owner of a part parcel of vines around three hectares and some dilapidated buildings in Fronsec on the right bank. Damn. So, you know, that that's kind of different from, say, my house where my husband did the WSET, did the one, did the two. By the time he was getting ready to go into the three, what we had, was the world's most expensive wine glasses, which felt like quite an investment, you know, when those Zaltos arrived. So, I I'm hearing your story and a kind of cringing at the thought that my husband might hear your story and be like, I think there's something in here that we should do. So we're just gonna we're gonna keep this off of his playlist. So I I think there's a lot in there. There's a lot in there to unpack, Sally. The the first thing that I wanna touch on is You had a career. As you said, you were in business strategy and marketing when you started the process of, like, really entering the business of line, How did the the business and marketing background inform some of those early decisions that you made with Chateau Jorsese? Well, funnily enough, the first, challenge I had was that because I had bought a parcel of vines and some buildings, I needed to create a shadow and come up with a name. I didn't inherit a name from buying a shadow. I had to come up with a name and a whole positioning without knowing who my was were gonna be. And I had to come up with it without even knowing what the product was really gonna be like. Right. So that was the first challenge as a marketer because obviously, you know, classic first question, who's my audience? Who's my target? And it was like, I don't know anyone who will buy it. So that was really odd. So how'd you do that? How'd you how'd you settle upon that? And I know that you tell on your blog, you tell the backstory of the name. Which you're, you know, absolutely. We can talk about how you got there. But more than anything, I think that what you're saying is a story that we hear all the time with clients. Well, you know, how do I know who my my customer mers are? How do I know what matters to them? How do I know what names are gonna work or what markets I'm going to be in? How did you practically settle on what the name and branding was and what the product offerings were going to look like? Well, I I I sat down with a piece of paper and I thought, okay. What have I got? So what I had was Great Telwa. I had a really good appylation forzac, which is often under known about or, you know, even someone like Jane Anson talks about it being, you know, a fantastic, fantastic appalachian which should be known more about. So I had potential there with Fronzac and the Great Tail our and the vines had over thirty five years old, so I knew that the potential was good. I had a set of buildings, which would never be a big stone, gorgeous Santa Millian Chateau. So that was never going to be a story of history, and there was me first generation. It was never gonna be a ninth generation family history story. So what have I got? I've got a woman on her own starting a wine adventure. I've got some buildings, which I can knock around and make look pretty decent, and the setting is great and the vines are great. So I start with what I had, and what I, could understand would be the potential of the product. And then I did what any business would do. I looked at the skills I've got and what it's lacking for me to make a viable business, and then I went out to find those skills. And those skills were local knowledge and deep winemaking knowledge. I was by that point, studying the diploma, WST diploma, but I didn't have the the deep knowledge of winemaking that somebody local would have. So I approached it like I would any other business. What can I do? What do I need to buy in? And then I bought the best I could afford of those skills. I I think that that there are a couple things there. I think that notion of buying the best that you can afford is so important. We laugh at five fours. We laugh about the number of times we talk to brands where we're like, oh, well, how did something get done or what were the digital decisions? And like, oh, my nephew did it. Because it's it's so I mean, I think that we live in a world now where with the wealth of knowledge available to us on the internet, there's this perception that we should all be able to do everything. And that's just, like, that's so not the case. This idea of history of the brand, though. What I find really so remarkable about this is this question of how do we build, I'm gonna use the word luxury for the sake of this particular argument. How do we build a luxury brand? How do we how do we build a brand that is so often based on heritage when we don't have, that story to tell. So, you know, you're telling the story of the brand right here with us kind of in a business space because that's what this podcast is about. But when you're talking to visitors, to the winery, how do you share that story and, you know, hearken to all of the tendrils of heritage that, of course, come from having your your thirty five year old vines in Fonsac, but also this is a new business or new as of twenty eighteen. Yeah. And I think that's actually, part of, the differentiation is that I'm a real fan of the new world. Love everything, you know, about the wine winery experience in that in South Africa, New Zealand, Australia. And I felt that such a potential for wine tourism here, which is starting to really grow around Bordeaux, but I knew because I didn't have the history, I could offer more of a new worldwide experience. And with that, very much the whole, presence of when people come, I meet everybody that comes. And so they don't get, you know, presentation penelope, to show them around. They get Sally who shows them the three barrels that in two thousand seventeen, after the big frost, you know, that was what I put a tarpaulin over and a heater under to make my wine. Those are the three barrels. So they kind of go through the journey with me as I show them around. So I think that is one way that I differentiate. And, actually, to be fair, the governing body of the Bordeaux wines, the CIVB, they love sending people to me, because they like to show there is another face of auto that, you know, there it isn't just about ninth generation and heritage. And I think the fact that I've done this, and I've done it on my own, and it's a very modest size, I think people quite like it because they can identify it and think, you know what, I could do that. Whereas, you know, you can't buy into a ninth generation chapter Right. With that family. Yeah. I I can see how it would be a really good story for the region. I so I have I carry the American accent despite the fact that I've not lived in America, you know, for over twenty five years at this point, but having that American accent and that American heritage has often been the excuse that allow other people can accept me for being different. I'm given, a dispensation when I'm in New Zealand that, you know, I'm not just a bitch. I'm not just loud. I'm actually oh, she's just American. Do you think that that you being British and not being French gave you leeway to do something different that maybe your French neighbors couldn't get by with? I absolutely. Absolutely. When I talk to people, I say I have all the advantages of not being a seventh generation French wine maker. We have all the disadvantages and the advantages because it comes with pros and cons. So the fact that I am not from a family, I don't have my father or grandfather standing behind me saying, we always used to do it like this. You know that you shouldn't be doing it like that. So that is good. It means that I've been able to come at it with an approach, which is totally mine, which is based on the other industry. I've just come in from the outside, and it's all about common sense. Where I approach sustainability, the way I approach the customer experience. It's all about my common sense, and it's not flavored by any anything else. So, yes, I think it has got advantages. Obviously, in a on the other hand, it would have been nice if had a shadow that already had a client base and that already had an order book. Well, that having been said, something I I do wanna talk about is in twenty twenty two, April of this year, You won the Great Wine Capital's best of wine tourism award for architecture and landscape. That's right. Yep. Wow. Okay. So we've just sat here and we're like, well, I don't have the seventh generation. Beautiful stone. I'm Chateau. I don't have all of you know, I don't have the norm. Do you feel like you want it? Because you don't look like everybody else. There Eddie Azard has this great, sketch where he's talking about castles. And and he's like, yes. There are dime a dozen in Europe. There's a castle on every corner. Would you like a castle? We have many castles for you. You know? Do you stand out specifically because you've gone in, like, right down to visually in this different direction for your premises? Well, I think, I think, yes, I think, obviously, the difference, the difference makes a visitor coming to Bordeaux, gives them, you know, more variety and more choice, but I I like to think that it's also because of the way I, receive people, I think it's also about the the experience. When people come for a visit, I show them around. Often they've got a coffee in their hands, if they've just arrived or if it's cold or they have a glass of water, and we just have a chat. And then when they sit down to to to their tasting, it's very much, as I say, like the new world, and people who haven't been, you know, you sit at your table. You the the I go from table to table. I give them marketing material, we chat, they I pour the wines one by one. We talk through them rather than standing in a group. I also do food, I do platters using local products. I make a lot of it myself as well. And I'm always on hand to talk to people. I can do it in French and English. And I just think that's a slightly different welcome, and it's very informal and it's very laid back. And I just happen to have a really lovely terrace overlooking the vines as well. Combination. So have you noticed I realized that that is only a few months back, but what has been the impact of that award on business, on tourism, and specifically on the kind of person who walks in the door Have have their expectations? Does it feel like their expectations have changed since you won that award? I'm not sure. You see, it the the interesting thing is that I opened this tasting room in twenty twenty. Of course, that was a great year to open a tasting room. But I didn't know that when I started the work on the first of January. And so this is my this is my first full season being open. So it's quite hard to compare because it's the first year, certainly, that we've had Americans coming freely and Brits, that that, you know, last summer, twenty one was a very stop start summer. People were, you know, trying to figure out, you know, can we travel, can't we? What do we need to do? So it's kind of an unusual year, and then it's my first year. But all I can say is, I don't maybe they just say nice things to my face, but people just seem pretty wowed by it just because it is kinda low key. Well, it's what I'm wondering about this. Right? We're having this big discussion in wine, but also in luxury and in consumer goods about What does, you know, what are our what are our real luxuries right now? And we see this a lot in tourism. And there's a big move away from the glitzy and the glam and the bling where it's actually that, you know, something that for many people is, and one of life's luxuries is being able to put down your phone, you know, going to place where you know you're only gonna be for a handful of hours, but there's no wifi reception. So we may not have an answer for this, but I I can't help but wonder if what you're offering in this low key, very relaxed space, is a respite from the more blingy experiences that we're used to seeing in Bordeaux Chateau. I think you're probably right, especially when it comes to, the food offering, for example, people on holiday don't necessarily want a restaurant meal at, you know, lunchtime and evening. So the fact that I offer platters and do, I I cater for vegetarians and vegans, which is in itself quite unusual. It's all very informal, but but homemade, you know, homemade chutneys and hummus and pate's and things. And, and it's all in a set. So it's very sort of local on on on big platters, and it's all in a setting which is know, just very much at your own pace. You don't have to be in and out before two. You can have it at three o'clock if you want. You know, or come for sunset, apero. Right. So it's just not that that formal experience that maybe many people have equated to wine tourism in France for a very long time. Yeah. And I like to think wines are quite good as well. So, hopefully, that kinda seals the deal. Well, it's funny. We haven't talked about that, and I I have to tell you we often don't talk about wine on this podcast, which maybe that's something that I should consider changing. I do so there's no way to have this discussion and not talk about the fact that you started this business at fifty two years of age. I founded by Forest when I was forty. And at the time, you know, this is, like, part of the public story of by Forest, For me, I had expected that it was going to be a retirement project. I I never thought that I would be as busy as I am now. Had your goal at fifty two been to start, you know, an award winning, super busy. You're going to be doing all of these different tendrils of of of building an experience kind of wine brand. Well, no. I think that's the naivety of going into an industry that you have very little knowledge about, is that it's just as well that you don't know everything. Otherwise, you probably never do it. However, I, I definitely wanted an all encompassing project. And therefore, the opportunity to create a wine shadow, start from zero. The wine's part of it. And now I've got the hospitality side, which obviously is a lot of work, but I had had a hospitality experience in my twenties, running a cotswold pub, a pub in the cotswolds in England. So I'd had, you know, I brought all those strands together. And so very often, you find as you get on in life, you bring all the strands that have come together through your life. But, you know, I my first wine was bottled two years ago, because I was fifty two when I started the wine studies, but actually eighteen was my first vintage, and then it was bottled two years ago, and I was sixty three weeks ago. So, I'm I have more energy than I've ever had. I have such a varied lifestyle and anybody who knows me, you know, around, you know, it just says I'm just, you know, I'm just buzzing because it's it's This is what I've heard of you as well. We have we have so many mutual friends, and that is exactly what I have heard about you. So I had the opportunity to interview Cindy Galllett earlier in the year who is incredibly outspoken around the need for marketing, advertising, media, and just the world in general to stop or rather to start seeing, right, women at a certain point in our life because we're so often invisible. But I also know how powerful, like, how much more confident and more ballsy and how much more I know myself You just wrote a newsletter about this where you were talking about, you know, living well and making the decision to do this after the age of fifty. What are the unique attributes of being what we describe in my office as a grown ass woman? When you're when you're leading the brand, when you're, you know, you're out in Franceac. You're you're starting a whiner. You're a British woman in Franceac starting a chateau. I just can't even imagine what those challenges would have looked like. Yes. There there are, you know, yes, there were tap challenges in terms of, creating a a network. I had no friends here. I had no network. I had to build that. But that I think, there's a couple of things. As you're older, you you have some patience. So whereas thirty years ago, I'd have said, right, I've gotta make wine the first year. I've gotta get in there. I've gotta see what I can do. I thought, no. Just take a couple of years. While you renovate the house, while you enjoy the area to just keep quiet and just listen and look and get to know people and take a good look around you. And so I think patients with a bit of age, that was good because even though you know, two years seemed a long time. I let the previous owner continue to work the vines and I started to get to know, what was going on in the area and get to know people. So that was I think that's one thing with age as patients there. We're a lot more confident in what we like and what we don't like. We're a lot better at expressing it in a in a nice way. We know when to keep quiet. I certainly felt that as a woman, I was not gonna come in here, and I'm not saying all men would do this, but I didn't have the confidence to speak out. I want to do this. I want to do that. I didn't have the knowledge, but I certainly didn't have the confidence to use the little knowledge I had to start starting off. And that was a good thing because I think people then underestimated me, which was which is fine. And I was not as threat to anyone. I thought that, you know, they're they're not particularly nice building. We got great terroir, but the buildings weren't great. So no one saw me as a threat. So people well, I think probably people felt sorry for me. I don't know, but certainly, I think that the confidence you have of your own mind, what you will and won't put up with, had a bit of sexism, sexist jokes, but I can give as good as I get in French, which was quite funny, dressed down. That's not a problem. And I think that also without the financial pressure of children, you know, kids are gone without the pressure of actually guiding them and worrying about homework and bedtimes. And, you know, have they got what they need? I didn't have any of that. It's just me to look after, and I can eat when I want. So all of those things are an advantage. And, I do speak really good French. I think that really helped me. And I also reached out because I reached out to the France encapsulation and said, I've done a little bit of marketing in the past. Is there anything I can help with? Now we have a website in English for the from side winds. And so by me reaching out, you know, I was seen as giving, and I wasn't a threat. And then, you know, I don't know what they say about me behind my back, but I don't actually care. You know, I'm I'm being a good person and doing my thing, and I'm hope I'm a good neighbor too. And the rest of it, well, that's their problem. We spend so many years of our lives here taking. What are you okay? Are you okay? What do you need? What do you need? And we reach this point, and it is a very blissful point where we are allowed to embrace almost like a selfish independence and say, you know what? This is my thing. And I get to do my thing the way that I want to with out consideration, and I don't mean being rude, but without considering, you know, what does everybody else in the room want. And one thing about it, there's a fascinating statistic that actually grown women. So when I say grown women, I mean mature women, but I just find that language, a little, you know, a little off putting, grown ass women are are starting businesses at a faster rate than any other demographic right now. I just think I think that that is amazing. Some of it has to do with the economics, economics of life have changed. We have independent grown women who have independent finances and are able to make major spending choices on their own in a way that we didn't have that, especially in, you know, the western world fifty years ago. Yeah. That's right. So this leads me to to question. How does you being a woman change who your fan base is. Do you have other women coming in and being like, you know, I I think about the couples, right, who go on wine tourism, excursions. And Normally, there's this, you know, there's this vision that the way it goes, is that the men walk in and the men are the ones talking all the wine stuff and the men are the ones walking out with the cases, which actually we know from our data is no longer true. The number of women who are going in and walking out with cases of expensive wine is going up and up and up. What are you seeing in the tasting room for people who present? Who's dominating the Q and A? Who in a good way? Who's you know, really relating to you and your experience? Well, I think it's pretty even men and women. Certainly, I don't see it as male dominated. I don't see it has swung the other way. Although, I do get lots of side questions from women, about, you know, how did you dare do this on your own? Because I was on my I still am on my own. And and but what I find, you know, is fine. It's really fascinating. And I have, there's a couple of stories about this has happened in the last ten days is young women. Young women, I find it's fascinating because I can get across Look Girls. You know, dice doesn't stop at fifty. You think you're in a career now. So I had a a hen party a couple of weeks ago, and they were like, oh my gosh, you know? And I had a group two weeks ago, there were a group of eighteen year olds with three adults with parents who bought a group of post a level, girls who had just finished school and going off to university. And so, you know, they're younger than my children. So, you know, there's quite an age gap there. And I just told them the story, and one of the parents came in and said, I just need to tell you that all the girls out there, they are so inspired, and they are saying, I want to be her. And I'm like, Renee, I was so flattered that an eighteen eighteen year old wanted to be like me, and I thought, you know what? This this is a vocation. In fact, some people who came last Thursday The daughter has just finished at school, and I said to her that she had a had a wine society there that she that she was part of. She was very into the tasting and looking at all the tasting sheets, and I was talking to her about, you know, her preferences and so forth. And I said to her, if you, you know, if you wanna ask your school, if you want me to go and get a talk to the wine society, I'd be happy to. So that's been a surprise to me. It's the younger women who actually I feel I'm having more of an impact on and are finding so are so interested about the this possibility of doing whatever you want. And I would just like to say that in this industry, in wine, I have met the most amazing, supportive, intelligent, smart women that I've ever met all through my career. And I am so grateful for that. So there could be, wine tours, operators. They could be making wine, but involved in the business of wine, and they are the most amazing women I've met all through my, at any point in my career. And that has been thanks to wine, so I'm gonna be ever grateful for that. What an awesome shout out. And what a great second career experience. Right? Yeah. I love that. So I I mean, I have to ask, do you still have people walk in the door and want to talk to insert the manual, you know, like, talk to the husband, the owner, the whatever it might be? No. I haven't had that, but that could be either because people have come because they are expecting a certain experience or I if if they've booked to visit and I go out onto the terrace, you know, when they come into the car park and I help, you know, go out and say, hi. I'm Sally. Welcome to Chateau Jeanette, and by they don't even fit in. I guess they know. I just went well, then I tell the story. They know that I'm the owner. So no, I don't actually get that. So I'm very happy with that. So that that leads me to ask, how have you built the business given that you opened your doors three months before the world shut down? Have you advertised? Is it word-of-mouth? Is, you know, have you just like this, relied on podcast and interviews, what mechanisms have worked for you? I I did quite a few things. So, for example, I mean, We were meant to open in the April when Prima was supposed to be happening in two thousand and twenty. Well, neither Prima nor the opening house were open in July, which gave me a little bit of time. So I built up a database of local sheet owners, invited them in for a drink, give them leaflets, encourage them to, you know, give them the links to put on their emails when they're sending out to people. So, you know, that to me was an obvious one because they're all gonna be landing in in the sheets. I, used, you know, local, tourist office. I've been accredited. I know, Vineyard, which is the local, you know, accreditation, worked with the local tourist office again, invited them in, shown them around, talked to them about the experience. So really kind of reaching out to the people who would be talking and suggest sting me to their people. The same with tour operators, people who organize, you know, tour guides who will organize visits, same with the gentleman who rents out the electric bikes, So I reached out to all those people who would be in touch with my target audience, as well as, obviously, putting up a profile on TripAdvisor and so on and so forth, to get people coming to me, and I made it clear that I was gonna be open. I think that was another thing. Is I'm open. You can come by. And you don't have to reserve. Now, funnily enough most people do reserve, but I do have, you know, the option that lots of people can just just pop in. And at the beginning, it was a lot of drop ins. And now? Yeah. I've actually people reserve more now, funnily enough. People to, you know, reserve. But I always get, you know, last week, I had a group. I haven't had maybe fourteen for lunch. There was a group of six and a group of four and and and and so on. And I had, two lots of two. Well, in fact, there were two people who'd come on a tour that hadn't booked lunch, and they got chatting to everyone else who was having who were having lunch. She said, can we send lunch to and then two others that dropped in as well. Okay. So, yeah. So I get I I get that a lot. And I I suppose it's a great thing because it's you and you're running the show every day. You can adapt as need be, which sometimes can be harder if we've got staffing and policies and, you know, just ways as standard operating procedures. I noticed that you do have a direct to consumer component on the website. Yeah. Do you sell a lot through DTC? Would you mind answering that question? Well, one of the things that I knew as I set up the business and discovered the way the wine world works. I knew that with the small quantity that I had, I was never gonna be a to work with the wine merchants, the negotiating, which is a very traditional way of working selling your wine in Bordeaux, because clearly that is another layer of, commission and selling. And I also knew that if I'm going to differentiate a little bit, like, through the tasting room, it's by having a relationship with the consumer and by having that relationship directly. So I, I sell quite a lot online clearly with Brexit that I don't sell online to the UK as easily because of the shipping costs, but I sell online, within Europe. I I sell an awful lot through the tasting room, both to people in Bordeaux, who, I have got to know. I, you know, I've got to know various groups such as the Bordeaux Business Network, the Bordeaux Women's group. And so forth, we've had events at my place, and they come out and buy wine after that and have a lunch. It's a nice trip out. And then, you know, just people who are on holiday who come by car and then fill up the car and could take it home. I've had We love those people. Absolutely. As soon as I see a duck or a Belgian number plate coming up? I'm out there. A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's that's great because, and a gentleman from Switzerland came just that, you know, earlier this week, because that and that's the third time they've been, and they fill the car up with wine. Wow. So, yes, I sell a lot direct. I have a distributor in the UK, and I have an importer in the US too now. Right. But All those people have just been and tasted the wine and said, Sally, can we sell your wine? Because I only bottled my first wine in twenty twenty, which was not a great year for getting out and selling it. I've, you know, it's been against all odds. But, hey, you know what? I think people come, a Samelier came from Toulouse. He tastes the wine. He's in Michelin starred restaurant in Toulouse, just a couple of hours drive in the southwest of France. And, they now put in their restaurant. So, yeah, people come by and then they ask if they can stop it or buy it, and off they go. I I do kind of feel like for everyone, bless All of us who've managed to get through the past two years. I look at it and I'm like, well, we have just had the best stress tests to business practices, to selling practices, to communication, to crisis management that we will ever have god willing. And if we can just, you know, if we can get through those past two years, we're probably okay. But with that having been said, you were in Bordeaux. We are just constantly dealing with climate change issues. I noticed that one of the experiences that you offer that I've never seen anywhere else is that you have a tasting a tour that is specifically about sustainability. Yes. Yep. I'm passionate about sustainability. And not not from the I'm going to save the world angle of sustainability because I know that I can't do that all by myself. But from a this is the reality of sustainability of for a small producer, and this is these are the decisions I have to make, and this is how I approach it. That kind of workshop. So I love this because there's a lot of talk about how do we, as producers or service providers, actually, enfold our consumer base into how important these decisions are, that it's not just about slapping an organic label on something that, you know, there are day to day balancing, acts that we do all the time in decision making in business. So when you run through this, I'm not gonna ask you it at all to, like, give you a whole presentation on the podcast, but What is the what are the questions that consumers are asking and what are the themes that they're latching on to most? That they're like, damn, I didn't know that. I never would have thought about that. That's a big takeaway. Well, one one of them, and, obviously, people who are in the the wine industry talk about it quite often now, but the consumer doesn't think about, what are the the greatest impact on the carbon footprint? In terms of glass production, followed by diesel, use of diesel. So I talk to them a lot about, you know, why I use bottles, how I use bottles, and so forth. And about the the, you know, the differences between a heavy glass bottle to a lighter glass bottle. So glass glass consumption, also just little things about even around, the number of times you do treatments and you go up and down the vines. If you've gotten one of those lovely romantic old chugging tractors compared to a brand new machine that perhaps could do, can treat six rows of vines at once with one pass in the vines. And how that can be so different on the soil. You know, just little things like that as we stand in the vines when we talk about that, people are just amazed. Most people have never heard of bio control products, which are products, which we can use to reduce the amount of copper that we use in the vines, which are not allowed in organic farming in France. But I think potentially will be in the future, but that's my, you know, but talking to them about how we, manage the health of the vine and how, in fact, my approach is totally common sense. So biocontrol product means I cannot be certified organic because it is a It is a treatment that is produced using technology. It is artificially produced, even though it's based on a naturally occurring molecule from the plant. Yeah. I cannot be organic. But the fact that I can reduce the amount of times I go up and down the vines by fifty percent, and the copper I can reduce by fifty percent makes total sense to me. So I'm not worried about being organic and worried about the fact that that is more sustainable in my eyes. So So I I wanna jump in on that. I interviewed, a gentleman by the name of Sean Spratt. He runs a New Zealand winery called Destiny Bay, and he is, he is very science driven. And he actually talked about it in the podcast. I I would encourage anyone who finds this topic, which is marvelously nerdy, to get in and listen to that because what he was saying was, look, his goal one hundred percent is sustainability, just like what you're talking about. It's not it's not about organic. It's about making certain that e and the land can continue to produce these incredibly high quality wines year on year on year and that he's leaving the land and, you know, this is me paraphrasing him, but that every year you're leaving it in as good or a better place. And I do think that in common consumer messaging, the that sustainability and organic are conflated. So I I I think, you know, questions about that as you present it, do you think that they take that information away or do they convey to you that they've taken away that information and they're rethinking how they look at their own consumer decisions beyond just this board of wine at this moment? I do. Because the sadly, when we do, a workshop, a longer workshop on it, we really get into some you know, quite deep and detailed discussions. I've been absolutely amazed at how much detail certain people want to get into, what they're coming to it because they really want to get down and dirty. And I and I try and convey to them that I am faced with a whole host of decisions to make just as the consumer is today with, you know, with sustainability. And I think that they can identify with that because people are getting so many messages use a plastic bottle. Don't use a plastic bottle. Use that bag, don't use that one. That one sounds like it's been made with the right thing, but actually they use so much energy to reproduce and recycle. You know, we're so meant so complicated and they're understanding the in everyday life. And I say that's what it's like for a producer too. We haven't got all the answers. We are working through it, but all we can do is, do is make the fines as healthy as possible, like you were saying Sean was talking about and improve the soil and have as little impact and look at the little things that we can do, we'll just add on and add on. I mean, I did an audit of my carbon footprint. I'm still waiting for the results, but certainly, some of the things that we discussed in that in terms of carbon in the in the, grass, you know, on in between the rows and so forth, the storage of the carbon and so forth is fascinating. And I feel that more winemakers, once they have time to do it, should really get into that to really understand the big picture of what they're doing on their policy. Well, I wanna come and do this this sustainability workshop. I did that. Like I said, when I was doing the research and I saw that, I was like, wow. Every wine brand I know is like, how do we get our consumers to understand the impact of sustainability and good choices on how we work. But also, of course, like, you know, our decisions impact or the world around us, you know, acts of god impact our scarcity. They impact our pricing. You know, they they impact our business model. And if consumers can't understand why something exists or costs, then they can't make a decision that really supports that business model for us or just takes them out of our our cache of our customers. So, That would be a great one to to get online. I'm gonna go hunting for that and see where you talk about that because I I dig that. Okay. So kind of going forward, obviously, we've just had some hellacious weather here in Europe. What's what's coming down the pike in the next twelve months for you guys? Well, I'm at a bit of a crossroads, actually, in the sense that the business now has grown. In a great way, I make white wine as well as, as well as red wine. So I have, I don't know, three wines that I'm that I'm working on, but I do like to keep innovating and keep doing something fresh. But the business itself is now big, you know, big in terms of I do pretty much everything. I don't do a lot of work in the vines, but I do work on the business. In terms of the admin bureaucracy that was involved. Yeah. And also all visitors packing up all the orders, all the all the, labeling. Until this year in March, I didn't even have a labeling machine, so everything was labeled by hand. So I was doing the labeling. But I'm now at the point I'm sixty. This business could really fly, in terms of taking up the next level. And I have to decide, do I want to do that? How am I gonna do that, or shall I just try and maintain it as it is? So, that's in you know, that's from a business perspective. I think if you don't keep moving, you don't you I don't you can stagnate. So I don't want to stagnate. I wanna keep it fresh. I have an absolute love of wine and food. I do a lot of recipes to go with my wines. So this winter, I'm gonna be working on a, recipe book, especially with the vegetarian vegan vegan side. Because so many red wines say on the back label, you know, pair with red meat or chicken. And I'm not, you know, that doesn't really fly for me. So that, I'm I want to work on that. And also, just work a little bit more, maybe with some other women who are looking to get into wine. I've had two messages in the last two days from women who liked that latest blog and got in touch with me. And I know her phone calls with them about, you know, you know, mentoring or helping them. So, yeah, so watch the space. It's gonna be interesting. I need to do a little thinking around how which direction I wanna take the business. And so looking back on it, you know, with these with with the questions of what are we doing? How are we moving forward? What's the plan of action? Is there anything that you would do differently? And I know that's a hard question because we had a pandemic. So it's just not You know, nothing was could be planned to accommodate for that. But, giving a little bit of grace for that, is there any takeaway that for someone who's listening, you would say, you know what, there's this one thing I did that that was just a dumb decision or I could have put more money here. I should have done something better there. I think that, I didn't think enough about the great variety, and the fact that it was all red wine. I have found that now I'm making white wine with vines from my neighbors because I only own merlot. I would have thought if I'd had my business head on me better, I would have probably tried to buy some white wine vines, white wine grapes, because you get your money back so much quicker if you're making white wine. There's a lot of money. I mean, I know this sounds crazy, okay, and I was, you know, wine studies, but I never really thought about it because I had to pay for the eighteen vintage, the nineteen vintage, all the fine work, all the barrel leasing, and the barrels come, you know, some of the I actually vinify in big five hundred liter barrel. I had to buy those. Nineteen, I didn't bottle till twenty twenty. So by then, you've paid for almost three vintages with no money coming in. Apart from, actually, to be fair, my distribution in the UK did sell a little bit on premer. I let them have a little bit, but I didn't wanna get into the premer system and it'd be tied in with cash flow. So, if I had bought white wine grapes, then I would have been able to harvest in the autumn and bottle it in the spring and have some money coming in the following summer. I know it sounds silly. Why didn't I think of that? No. But it but it doesn't because we have this ongoing thing about, you know, we have to respect the tarahum. We have to do this. I so I I think that actually that decision of this is what I have. And so this is what I'm going to produce is supremely logical. I think that also and I'm so glad that you brought, you know, just the capital, the sieve, of money that goes out the door because I don't know that people who don't work in wine, ever stop and think about, you know, what the cash flow of the cycles of harvest to the day that they actually take that off the shelf somewhere looks like. Right. And and it is one of those things. I I realize it's mostly trade who listens to this, but I would love if more consumers actually understood the financial model that existed wine and distribution and tiers and compliance. It's just like, all of the hurdles that get thrown up so that they can sit there and tweet about their want. So the blog post that you're referring to, I just wanna wanna let everybody to know everyone know It is on the Chateau Shoresche set dot com site, and it is an article entitled diving to wine and change your life. And is it seven? I wanna say it's seven, reasons to actually make this change and make this change as a grown ass woman as it were in all the things that we bring to the table, in wine and in business and in how we think. So I would recommend that everyone check that out. Where are you most active if people wanna find you online? On Instagram. I I really don't do much on the other platforms. I really don't have a lot of time, to be honest, to focus on too many. So Instagram, is the best. And, yeah, check out sign up. I do do emails or little blogs from time to time in sending out my thoughts. So if you wanna sign up on the website for that, and, but the best thing to come by and visit. I do I have a distributor in the UK, and I do do, client events with them, wine dinners, in the UK, you find after this. Yep. Yep. Through Davies, and I also do, various things with them. So, they can catch up with me there. So So newsletter and Instagram, and that is Chateau George Set, and the set is the numeral. It is the number seven, not s e p t. Dot com. Alright. In this case, at Chateau's your set. That's it. Sally, thank you so much. I know that you've got a busy, busy, winery and vineyard that you need to get back to. You shoehorned this interview in for me today, and I'm grateful for that. I can't wait to come see you in Bordeaux. Yeah. Please do. Next time. And anyone who's listening do pop in or just drop me a line and organize to come by. It'd be great to meet you. Wonderful. Thank you, Sally. I appreciate your time. Take care. And That's a wrap. Thank you for listening, and a great big thank you to Sally for joining me today. The Italian wine podcast is among the leading wine podcast in the world, and the only one with daily episodes. Tune in each day and discover all our different shows. Be sure to join us next Sunday for another look at the world of wine marketing. We hope you enjoy today's episode brought to you by the wine to wine business forum twenty twenty two. This year, we'll mark the ninth edition of the forum to be held November seventh and eighth twenty twenty two in verona, Italy. Remember, the second early bird discount on tickets will be available until September eighteenth. For more information, please visit us at wine to wine dot net. Hi guys. I'm Joy Livingston, and I am the producer of the Italian wine podcast. Thank you for listening. 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