Ep. 1626 Keenan O'Hern & Adam Rack | Voices With Cynthia Chaplin

Since two thousand and seventeen, the Italian wine podcast has exploded. Recently hitting six million listens support us by buying a copy of Italian wine unplugged two point o or making a small donation. In return, we'll give you the chance to nominate a guest and even win lunch with Steve Kim and Professor Atilio Shenza. Find out more at Italian One podcast dot com. Welcome to the Italian wine podcast. I'm Cynthia Chaplin, and this is voices. Every Wednesday, I will be sharing conversations with international wine industry professionals discussing issues in diversity, equity, and inclusion through their personal experiences, working in the field of wine. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and rate our show wherever you get your pods. Hello, and welcome to voices. Today, I am so excited to welcome Kenan O'Hiran and Adam Rack to voices. They are the founders of a company called Rivino in Oregon in the USA. And they are working with recycled bottles. Kean was just named one of wine enthusiasts FutURE forty. We don't know why Adam was not included in that. Somehow, I think Kean got all the glory there, and we'll just skip right over that. But we're very, very interested to hear this work about recycled bottles. This is something that's super important to me. We all know in our wine industry that sustainability, is a real problem for us. And that glass and bottles are one of our biggest problems, not only in the making of the glass, but also in the logistics surrounding it. So I'm really excited to talk to both of you. Thank you both for giving me your time. This is such a treat to have two of you here. Absolutely. Thank you so much for hosting as well. We're just thrilled to be included in this conversation and to share a little bit more about what we're doing with Rubino. Yeah. This is Joy. Let me ask you both how you got interested in the wine and Street and looking at the carbon footprint and the sustainability of the sector. Absolutely. Yeah. It's a great question. For me and this really started in two thousand eight when I went to a roots and shoots, conversation or conference for for, middle schoolers. And Jane Goodall was speaking there. And, she was talking about about hope for the future and what we can do each day to kind of make a decision, right, to to either better the planet and better the future or to not. Right? Like, there's really a a cut and dried decision there. And I remember that just kind of planting a seed for just me later on in life and how I thought through just the principles that I wanted to to live with and the things I wanted to implement and leave behind as I, you know, went through this beautiful and wonderful life. And and so looking at this and then living here in in the Atlantic Valley, which is known around the world as one of the best, you know, Peno noir regions. I saw wine as such a beautiful and integral part of the community, and yet it had You know, a downfall, it had this this waste problem, right, where the bottles that we were consuming were going to the landfill, and and it just didn't make any sense to me. I had grown up between here and the Netherlands, my mom's from the Netherlands, and I had seen refillable bottles in use. And that was just a a holistic kind of thing that was habitual for people in the Netherlands, and it wasn't something that was, you know, really difficult to to comprehend. It was kind of just like the simple system that I'd been running for forever. And I thought, well, we could do that here. Like, that is possible. And so that's kind of how the the foray or the interest kind of all coincided and collided together to form, well, eventually Rubino. And, Adam, how did you get on board or did keen enforce you into it? Little bit of the latter. It's actually so I I similar story, you know, I've always been into sustainability and the the concept behind it. I grew up in rural western Kansas. And, you know, conventional agriculture was was king. That was the only thing you could do, in the countryside. And there were small ideas, about ninety miles away from where I grew up. There's a the land institute, ran by started by West Jackson, who was working on perennial grains, regenerative agriculture, all this stuff in the middle of, a plot of acreage of wheat. So I was I was fascinated by that early on. I was that weird kid in high school who wrote about organic agriculture in the newspaper. And I moved out here in twenty fourteen, with my partner. And it's just an absolutely lovely place. Fell in love with it immediately. Fell in love with the wine industry immediately as well. I had drank wine before, but I did not realize how varied and amazing it is, when you actually get into wine country and start tasting all these varietals, that are available here and and to that story that goes directly from the soil all the way to the glass. Like, there's there's such a connection to the earth that we talk about with wine. That's so true. Yeah. It's and it's lovely. It's these this it is artistic. It's beautiful. There's but there's so much practicality to it too as well. Right? So I I joined the wine industry in twenty fifteen, with Cooper's Hall winery, we we have never been normal. We were started as a sustainable wine, brand. So it was a Keg only brand when when I joined the team, we switched to, in twenty eighteen, Oregon started a refillable beer bottle system, and I brought it to the partners. And I said, we should do wine in this. This is, you know, no single use packaging. This is, like, the next ideal. Right? And they agreed immediately. They took yeah. Of course, we should. So I kicked that off and have been reusing bottles ever since. And I tried to get some other wineries on board into this other format. I got one winery, just Pierce, the SSO maker, Walter Scott, has her own private label named Pierce Wines. And it was just the two of us for a few years in these in these refillable beer bottles. And I was thinking there's there's gotta be a better way. Right? We should all be doing this, but it's gotta be wine bottles at that point. And this was coming out of the pandemic. We actually we're recording a podcast about sustainability And I had keen on as a guest. So that is when we met and basically immediately started this discussion of, like, well, let's make this happen. Like, let's let's take this to the next level. Let's let's bring it so they're the rest of the industry. So that's that's when this started. The power of podcasts. I didn't have to get dragged in anywhere. I was totally invested. So Truly, the power of podcasts. I can't say enough good about them. I have met the most amazing people in the wine industry since I started doing this two years ago. So I understand how that works. You come across them and the conversation starts, and you just don't want it to end. So it's really cool that the two of you got together, and I know that was twenty twenty, as you said, sort of pandemic time when you founded Rubino. And your goal was to revive the refillable glass bottle ecosystem for beverage producers and consumers. So let's talk about what exactly does this mean. What does Rubino do? What are you guys doing? Yeah. It's it's a wonderful question. And, yeah, so right around twenty twenty, just to kinda give a little bit of a preface to this. I was working on kind of the the research behind all of this, right, kind of identifying what had been done in the past, right, looking at the milkman, looking at soda companies, Coca Cola Pepsi that had really had refillable systems or ecosystems that had existed at some point and started at, like, pinpoint when that ended. Right? When did that stop? What happened during that time frame? And so there was this research period of looking at that and and trying to identify And and Adam said, like Adam said, he had this sustainability podcast. And so I had kinda compiled over, you know, a year and a half, two years, all of this information. And I was just tickling with anticipation of, like, wanting to do this. Right? I was just so excited And Adam's like, yeah, I've been doing this for a couple years with beer bottles, and it hasn't really caught on. But we I think we could do it with wine if we really created a system for it. And so what we had to do was we had to look at what works in other countries, and And what we saw was that, well, in large part, other countries typically like to standardize the bottle if they can. Right? And that's what the milk man did, and that's what Pepsi and Coca Cola did. They had one single bottle, and that was the bottle they collected. And so is It was easy for consumers to see it, to identify it, to understand it. So he said, okay. Well, that makes a lot of sense. Right? We need to we need to standardize. But then we said, what exists already in our state and in Oregon that we can utilize. And what do we need to add? Right? Looking at kind of like the change management sphere of things where you have a current state and you want a future state and what's kind of the pieces you wanna add to. The system. So we looked at the entire glass supply chain from the manufacturing of the glass with either distribution of it to the producers and then what happened after the producers either sold it to their club members or to the wholesalers And we tried to identify the perfect point that we could enter in and just basically complete the circuit for a circular economy. And that point in Oregon was actually not that hard to fill because the all the components had already really been set up, which is funny because the infrastructure for this was virtually already there. We just needed to add one last piece. And that was the sanitation side. So now when we look at the supply chain, you've got the manufacturer we work with, which is Oens, Illinois. So we manufacture a standardized bottle with Owens, Illinois, and then that bottle goes through a distributor to our wine partners. And then those wine partners sell their bottles to consumers. And now consumers can return through our statewide redemption system, which we partnered with. And all we had to do was set up a sanitation washing facility to collect those bottles back, wash them, and then return them back to the actual wineries. And so for us, it was like looking back at history was kind of this almost twofold experience because we got to see what both were and what didn't work. And actually, like, just take from history what had been done really well and just reapply it to present day in a new supply chain. And so far, it's it's been a really fruitful process. Well, it's so interesting that you sort of looked back at the history of refillables, you know, milkmen and and things like that in England, where I lived for a long time, milkmen still exist. You still get your if you want them, especially in rural communities. But, you know, I grew up in Ohio. And when I was a little kid, we all picked up bottles and cans because we got money back if we took them back to the shop. So what happened in the US? What stopped this process. Because as you said, you know, Coke and Pepsi, you know, all all of those things, you know, when I was a little kid, even just cans, you know, Mountain Dewcan, you got five cents back if you did get back. So what happened in the US that stopped it? Is it did it just become a culture of waste and throw aways, or was there a a specific reason that that the US stopped doing that returning bottles and cans? Right. I think it's really a combination of a few things. And I think you nailed it on the nose. I think the the main thing is that we started developing a culture focused on just single use. Right? It was a little bit, I think, devised in that way because at around the nineteen seventies, Oregon was the first one to kind of initiate these bottle bills, right, to start focusing on deposits. But at the same time, around that same time frame, aluminum cans started kind of like shooting off. Right? I mean, a lot of breweries were moving to aluminum cans, and it became this like, new container format that was really intriguing. But it was all focused on, well, if we can set up a recycling process, then we can produce these in in a little bit more mass production, and we can sell these. And even if it's a single use stream, it's still getting recycled at the end. Right? And so it was kind of this combination of, alright. Well, we're gonna we're gonna set up some infrastructure here, but at the same time, we're gonna start focusing on some of these other containers specifically aluminum cans. And then people stopped the practice of actually returning and, like, understanding what was happening to those containers. And and now it's it's just kind of progressed even further to where there's a lot of what we call wish cycling, right, where now you put that container into either, you know, a receptacle for recycling or even if it is the deposit system, but you don't know what happens afterwards. Right? You place it there and you feel good. You get that kind of endorphin of like, yay. I return something. And then afterwards, what happens? Right? Where's the question mark there? That's just tragic. And it's just kind of continued. And I think the interesting thing is, like, early seventies, And I can't speak to this. I wasn't alive, but Not me. I feel old. It was my birthday. Yes. Oh, happy birthday. Oh, happy birthday. Well, so there's this there's this interesting period in history where, like, there was so much trash on the side of the road. There was so much waste And these bottle bills were passed in part due to that. Right? This the the added cost to society of picking up litter of managing solid waste of of landfills that are overflowing, then the aesthetics of just living in that society. And I think we take for for granted how clean things often are, unless you walk along the side of a highway of that slow speed. But there was this period in the nineteen seventies where in Ohio, specifically, I I did a deep dive into this last night. There are quite a few laws that are still on the books from the early seventies for reusable containers. That incentivizes that gives guidelines for what reusable containers mean. And then there were two different times. They tried to pass a bottle bill and ban the pull tab cans, in the late seventies. But the, you know, it's it's that pushback against change, one, and then two, that convenience factor. Right? This this idea that you need to do something with this afterwards when you could just set it in your trash can. And there's a cost to that. Right? There's this is a number from the seventies. The the cost of non returnable containers, the convenience factor was about five hundred ninety eight million dollars. And this is in the Akron law review. This is a real number that just blew my mind. And it's that cost that that is no longer built into the system. We we built that into the the consumer's decision. They get to recycle it. We don't have to deal with it, but a a stable reuse system actually does cost less in many occasions. Like, think about a wine glass. We don't chuck a wine glass every time we finish with our glass of wine. We wash it. We reuse it. It's the same with a glass bottle that'll exist for thousands of years. There's still value. In reusing that. And it's some of those glass bottles are very expensive. So And we still find them in Roman ruins, you know, three thousand year old glass bottles. So, you know, they can definitely sustain the the test of time. Right? Yeah. Exactly. We should be raising. We should be celebrating this this glass, this this long lived, you know, beautiful thing that we've created that is is really the only option for aging wine. Right. We we can't age wine in plastic for a very long week. No. Definitely not. And certainly not in in cans. So, well, as you said, you were looking up statistics, and I went through the statistics on your website, which are pretty depressing. I have to say, sixteen point two billion glass bottles in containers used annually. I'm guessing that's the whole US, not just Oregon. And of that, only nine to thirty percent are recycled. Which is a a pretty big spread, nine to thirty percent. So I'm thinking probably the real number is somewhere closer to nine. Yes. And virtually none of that is reused commercially, but Rubino bottles can be reused fifty times if they're cared for properly. And after three uses, the carbon emission is zero. So tell me about Rubino bottles. What makes Rubino bottles special? What are you guys doing to differentiate them? You know, how many people have you got working for you? Somebody's gotta be washing all these bottles and picking them all up. What's going on? Yeah. We're well, we're we're a scrappy start up. Right? We are It's the two of us. We've got a whole team of just amazing advisors and supporters in the industry and voices that have been, I think, asking for this solution for a long time or even celebrating or or considering starting their own solutions. Right? These these only their their own wash systems, but it doesn't pencil out for someone of five thousand cases. And most most of the people in the industry are busy running their wineries. You know, we barely have time to to do, to do that correctly, much less, to to start a whole new infrastructure. So Oh, and especially with all the climate, you know, sort of challenges that have been facing all the vineyards all over the world this year. Yes. And that's that's that tipping point. Right? That's what we feel like we are at. We feel that urgency behind it. A lot of wineries are feeling the same urgency. They're coming to the table. They're reaching out to us and saying, okay. We know there is maybe taking some of this the bottle that that pure label that we designed, and we selected this bottle a decade ago. And then it's it's part of our brand, but we're willing to make that small small sacrifice for this huge carbon savings, for this huge opportunity to reuse a glass bottle versus just the yes, but I have my bottle. There's a lot of wineries ready to let go of that. But part of what we did with the bottle is bring the wineries to the table and designing that. Right? So the wineries got the input. We went to the to the drawing board four times from scratch. We thought we got it right the first time, but we wanted some input. And then everybody said, no. This is ugly. It's gotta be beautiful. We're selling forty five dollar bottles of Oregon Pino noir. We can't. Yeah. Wine people. Wine people. They don't want ugly. And and part of the problem is we have to have a bottle that is identifiable throughout the system. Right? So you you can reuse any glass bottle that's out there. Even very lightweight thin bottles are washable. Have to be a little bit more careful with them, but they're all, you know, they can establish and do this process. But what we looked at was that whole supply chain, going back to our partners at OBRC, going to our partners at OI, having them bring in the German engineering team that understands refillable systems and how bottles stand up over time and where damage can be acceptable, where where patterns are. So we we took that whole reuse system education, the the knowledge around it had brought that knowledge base over to our bottles. And we brought it to the wineries, and we said, okay. This has to be identifiable three hundred sixty degrees around. So we have to have some sort of design feature. Right? And it's got this elegant swoop on top of the bottle. You can look at it on our website. And it's this elegant swoop. I did, and people should go and look at it, and people who need to invest in you should go and look at it. Yeah. It's and and it's it's inspired by leaf shape. Right? And it's got this organic feeling, this this beautiful aesthetic that that so far, very few wineries have said, like, this is this is an ugly bottle. It's hard to turned down. And there's also some information behind it. There's consumer preferences. Like, they they actually like this bottle. They they would choose this when they're thinking, what do I pick on the shelf? Right? So we we came to the table with a lot before we got to where we are. And we we went through many revisions to get to this point where this bottle can be tracked and sorted through automated systems in the future, with our partners at the Oregon Beverage Recycling Commission. So it's it's got the opportunity to collect again. And then it's also got the opportunity that consumers can identify. So if they wanna buy, if they wanna speak with their voice and what they care about, they can just immediately set their eyes on this and say, oh, this is a refillable bottle. I can grab that. I can take it back and make sure it goes back into the system. So the people that care can can just go get it. And the people that don't care can say, that's a pretty bottle. I'll go buy that. And that's the incentive to get, you know, more wineries on board because it's it's this unique shape that can actually, you know, increase sales over time. Most other bottles just look like bottles. You know, you can say some are more elegant, but some people might say ours is ugly as well. So we're we're not alone there. But Well, and and I would add to because you mentioned some of those statistics. Right? And and I think when we speak about our bottle and we speak about just what we're trying to do with it, it really comes down to the fact that They were dismal. Right? When you look at nine to thirty percent recycled, that's a very sad number. And it and even for us, it it kind of, like, gets us a little pessimistic about the future. We're like, oh, man. Is this, like, really gonna happen? Is this really gonna, like, can we make a dent in this problem? And that's kind of those times when we kinda have to dig in our heels and even go further, even when we, you know, we're already refilling the glass and we're collecting this back and sorting it with AI and doing all of these things. And then when it hits our facility, we have to say, No. You know, even if we can't refill this bottle because it doesn't pass inspection or doesn't meet the criteria, that's when we get to even then go, well, that's we're gonna crush it and we're gonna make it into a new bottle or we're going to, you know, sell it to construction site so they can use it in concrete. You know, it's like this is when you can start to see the life of the material go from just glass to then being utilized in so many different ways. We're even talking about, like, the foil caps we take off the bottles. We can recycle those and be made into new foil caps. And so it's it's not just thinking about the life cycle of this one material, but it's everything that this bottle touches, right, even down to the adhesives and the labels that wineries are putting on, what does it mean to be fully circular in our process? And and I think that's how when we talk about the change we wanna make, It's that leading by example and trying to implement those similar leave no trace principles that you might find out on a trail. Right? But in our actual company and what we choose to do each day with our product and service that we're, you know, giving to people. Absolutely. And I think that's definitely something you need to include in your literature because it's fascinating that not only are you rewashing, reusing, refilling the bottles, but the ones, as you said, that don't pass inspection, I didn't know this are getting crushed and used for other things. That's I think that is super important. We know that, you know, particularly the hospitality industry is notoriously bad, you know, for you know, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of bottles that get thrown into the recycling bin, but but don't get recycled. You know, they just they but they could be used for these alternative purposes crushed in using concrete. I never heard of That's that's amazing. I I think that you're doing a lot more than just your amazing bottle with the leaf scoop on it. And I think this is probably the the leading edge of going forward with this kind of technology, you know, I'm in total agreement with you that, you know, sustainable packaging has to include labels, adhesive, all those things, not just the bottles. So you guys are certainly on the right track. But, you know, again, back to sort of the sad statistics, and and I hate to push you guys on this because you're at the beginning, and I see a great future here. But at the moment, you've only got around thirty wineries in Oregon. Who are using your bottles. So, that's not enough. And what's your strategy to drive that number up? Cause I'm sure you have one. Do you see moving on to other states? Like, California would be an obvious choice? Are you you know, looking at taking your technology and your philosophy, which I think is just as important as technology into other places. How are you gonna get, you know, thirty thousand wineries using your bottles? Wine to wine business forum. Everything you need to get ahead in the world of wine, supersize your business network. Share business ideas with the biggest voices in the industry. Join us in Verona on November thirteen to fourteen twenty twenty three. Tickets available now at point wine dot net. I'm so mean. You guys have been in the business for three years. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great question. And I think starting out, it was really we're operating under the assumption that we knew this was not something that would be maybe quick to adoption, and that was because we're, like, really assessing and trying to implement this into culture that has largely been driven purely by consumption. Right? It's like, alright, I need to sell as much as I possibly can and consume that. And then the disposal part, that's kind of like a last ditch effort or or, like, the kind of end of the process thought. Right? And so Whereas you said in some in some states, it's somebody else's problem. Exactly. Exactly. And so we knew that. We knew that that was gonna be a really difficult hurdle for us. And so the first, like, thirty wineries that we've been able to work with this on, those are our early adopters. Those are the ones that are really changemakers. They're kind of, you know, bold. They're willing to kind of bring this to their consumer and educate them. And that's not to say that we don't have, you know, eighty plus wineries that are interested and have reached out and said, you know, this is something that we're really thinking about. And I think that's, like, really the the nitty gritty about it is that this is kind of one of those processes that takes multiple, you know, touch points of education around saying, oh, remember when you thought about that. Remember when your syllables was kinda like this opportunity or think back to history, and you start creating some kind of identity around it, and people start to understand it a little bit more. And so for the winery side, we're seeing more adoption, but we understand that it's gonna take more time But that's why we also see this as kind of this two sided double edged sword where we're not just focusing on educating the producer or the winery. It's really the consumer as well. Right? It's how do we share with the consumer about the opportunity that they have to then, you know, purchase from this producer over potentially another one because of the benefit to one the planet and to this circular economy that this now winery is is promoting because they're using our bottle. Right? And there's this opportunity there that people get really excited about. And so we do kind of have to focus and split split our brains a little bit and focus on two different things because it's imperative that we educate not only the producer on the benefits, but then the consumer on what it means to purchase that bottle. For sure. And we wanna get the consumers to demand this kind of bottle. Right. Exactly. That's what's gonna convince the producers to do it. Exactly. Exactly. And then when we think about expansion, William Valley was this perfect kind of area where we had a large portion of wineries right next to a big populous area. So we knew that a lot of consumption was gonna happen really within, you know, a thirty to fifty mile radius of where some of this wine was being produced. And that meant you know, light bulb, we could collect a lot. Right? We could go to that populous area, Portland, Oregon, and work with OBRC to to run collection throughout the state. And that was this kind of, like, really beautiful closed loop system that we could tap into. But Then we started thinking, well, Washington and California are two large producers in the United States, California being the largest, and those are markets, you know, right at our doorstep, right, to, you know, the north and the south of us. And so How do we start implementing in those states? Well, California already has a bottle bill. So there's opportunity to kind of key into some of that infrastructure while building some of our own. And then Washington as well. And that partnership with OBRC has been fruitful because they're also working with some of these other states to to help with the implementation of their own infrastructure because it's become this really prized and awarded system, this green bag system that they've developed here in Oregon, where people can just put their bottles in a a green trash bag and bring it back to this, you know, redemption center, and they get a deposit for it. And and it's just this this process that's worked really well. So when we think about expansion, there's this great opportunity to expand into those states. But Adam will say this too. This is something that is gonna require a larger, you know, conversation and community that comes together and starts working on this in tandem. Right? And we've started to see this on a global scale where we've had the chance to meet with washing facilities all over the world and talk about what it means to set standards for this process and what it means to, you know, implement and start building infrastructure for not just the next ten years, but we're talking, you know, a hundred to two hundred years. What does this mean to really create something that's stewarding this process for, you know, the long run? And what we've seen is that there are companies that are focusing on this. Right? And what we've started to do is come together as a community of companies and individuals trying to implement this really good work and focus on it together because we can amplify and advocate for each other and really start to see our efforts multiplied through that kind of codependency and and working in in collaboration. And that's been probably the most exciting and and fruitful thing that we've found in terms of our work is is bringing that community together to start working on this as a a joint effort. Right? I have to say, I don't I don't know what's in the wine in Oregon, but every time I talk to somebody from Oregon and specifically, Willow Valley, All of you are very positive. You're very forward thinking. I mean, you know, it's it's you're you're very lucky because you're in a haven of of supportive community builders, very inclusive, open to new ideas, I I'm one of these days, I think we have to move to Oregon for six months just to experience this amazing, accepting open door mindset, which definitely doesn't exist in Italy. I can tell you. It's it's you know, this kind of discussion on sustainability and looking forward, you know, as as you threw into conversation a hundred years, two hundred years. That doesn't come into conversation here, but it it really needs to. So you know, this idea of a circular economy and wine, you know, it really Italy, it's only in what we call Vino spouso, which is essentially an inexpensive kind of bulk wine that people buy at their local wineries and cooperatives doesn't have to be bad quality. It's never, you know, fantastically high quality, but perfectly quaffable. And everyone brings back their own glass jug, you know, not just a bottle, but actually like a little old two gallon jug with a little ring handle on it. And that's pretty much the only time you see that in Italy. So, you know, I'm it's kind of considered the lowbrow end of wine. And, you know, there's been a lot of backlash in, in Italy and in France, a little less in Spain, but France and Italy, for sure, about lowering bottle weight and and changing label paper and adhesive and things like that. So how are you guys going to, you know, sort of deal with all this pushback? I'm sure some of the more, traditional successful long standing vineyards in California are the same. So you have your work cut out for you, but I suspect you're already thinking about this. What's your strategy to push back against this resistance to change and and resistance to what the plan it needs moving away from. We've always had it in a heavyweight bottle, so that's how it goes kind of mentality. Yeah. Well, this is this is interesting. So it or that going back to that concept of, like, community building. Right? This is what we want to start with. We wanna start with those people at the table. We want it to bring everybody. This can't just be for the premium end or the the low brow end. Although, let's let's be honest, that's where the volume is. Right? That's where you make a really big impact just with one ten million case winery, which is, of course, all of Oregon production. So it's it it there's the options there. But I think we've We've had those con conversations early on. We've had those early adopters, and they've typically ended up at the premium side of the market here, which is a great opportunity to really sell these this this concept of reuse as the premium. It's the best option. It's the the the bottle that was designed for the wineries by the wineries. They were the ones that chose the shape. They were the ones that that came to the table and all these meetings that we had and said, I don't like that. I want this. I want that. And we somehow piecemealed those together into into something that can be accepted by not the lowbrow. Right? This is this is, the elevated option currently on the market. You know, we we have a bunch of these amazing legacy producers that you mentioned having this long long standing pushback against the lighter weight bottles, but we've actually seen the opposite here, which is a beautiful story to tell, and I hope that can spread. But, you know, I think I think we're we're just beginning to see that paradigm shift in the wider industry. There was a a study recently that came out that said consumers are even starting to identify lightweight glass bottles because they think it's the best option. The consumers will drag us along too. Right? The the ones who are early adopters were great. We're in with, we're bringing them to the table. They're super excited about this and celebrating what they're doing. And that's what they do in the vineyards. They talk about how they dry farm. They they talk about the the regenerative agriculture practices they're they're moving into. So why can't they be the same with glass? Right? Absolutely. I think and and again, as you said, community building doesn't have to be small. We can build a global community around this. And in fact, we we really have to. It's incumbent upon us to do that. I have six kids. And I would like my grandchildren to have a world they can live in. So it really is important for us to to do this sort of a thing and to move it beyond what seems simple. You were saying, you're also looking at taking the foil capsules and doing all sorts of other things. So it does it is a concept that is is bigger than all of us. And I I like how you're gonna reach out and do that. So You know, just before I let you both go, you know, you just said you your aim is to be a steward of organizations that will take on this sustainable change. So what strategies have you got in mind? How are you going to innovate in the future? How are you gonna create this community? Don't talk about Oregon because those people love community. I I wanna talk about the people who who are sort of, a little put off by this community idea and and they're not convinced yet. What's your strategy? How are we getting them on board? We've had to think about this quite a bit and and rethink about it each time because we get really excited about all the possibilities, obviously. There's there's so much that we can we can try and do and take on. And it actually takes a lot of energy to be intentional in choosing a few things, right, to be innovative for because we can make a bigger impact that way. And so one of the things that we get, you know, just really excited about is, okay, instead of making this just about the bottles and making this about, you know, our process and our system, What if we created an educational platform that allows people to key in and start learning about these things more in real time. Right? Like, more like if they were to just watch a bunch of different little micro documentaries on what's actually going on in their back door. Right? And so we've been trying to think through, you know, there's Con Academy, and there's all these different other, you know, educational systems and platforms that you can go on online and and learn through It's like, okay. Well, there's nothing that really just brings together a little bit more information around how the consumer can actually start to make a simple, you know, one single step change. One, like, one thing they can do on a daily basis. And maybe it's that habit building, you know, kind of piece that we get really excited about. So I think what that has, like, kind of started to look like and for us in the future is bringing the consumer into the conversation, educating them and letting them, like, kinda key into maybe it's, you know, a portfolio of different videos or, or just an assortment of different kind of things that they can learn through. But then we've thought about this as kind of this intriguing thing in the future, and and some people are working on this, which is an actual, you know, app to track the bottles, to see how many life cycles this bottle has gone through, to see how many times it's been used and utilized. And and then you can see who with the last wine that was in it was and and how many times, you know, that bottle has been used. And Now we're looking at NFTs on your bottles. Right. Yeah. You know, it's like there's all these cool things that, you know, the world is producing right now and and innovating towards. And AI is obviously one of them. And and in some ways, we do need to we still need to be attractive to the consumer. Right? And so we need to We need to meet them in at some point where they're at, but then be able to educate and share with them the opportunities that they have and the things that they can do right to to start making better, like, choices in terms of purchasing, or we're just more aware of what's going on around them. And so that's, you know, if we can do anything and if we can impart anything, we hope that we can continue to just provide some more information around it all because It's the consumer that's gonna drive this in the future. I completely agree that that it will definitely be the consumer that's gonna drive it. And I am also an educator. So anytime somebody says they're going to make change through education, I I'm a big cheerleader for that, and I also really agree with that. We can't expect people to change if we don't give them a reason why they should be doing it, so and make them feel invested in the process. And look at look at who the next consumer is to. Right? Kids are Kids are starting to think about wine. The the next generation of winemakers is more and more excited every year about what people like us are doing. You know, this this concept of reuse and, pushing let's be honest, pushing their parents to to choose something better or shaming. It's I've seen that a whole lot, and I've got that comment a whole lot. Oh, tell me about it. I have I have six kids who range in the age from twenty three to thirty one, and they shame me all the time. Well, and they're the ones. But that's why I do this podcast because they're this is this is my target audience. This is in the future, as you said, you know, us old wine drinkers, and I'm a lot older than you guys. We're not gonna be around forever. So we have to educate and create and nurture a whole new generation of winemakers and wine drinkers, and they have to get better at it than we were and do it in a more sustainable way. Yeah. There's this the stodginess that comes with wine in in a from the educational perspective, you know? And I've always been working at wineries that have tried to push back on that. We played hip hop in the in the tasting room, you know. And that's that's the next step. Right? We're trying to we're trying to meet the college kids where they're at. We're trying to be there and and help all the wine education programs locally and be a part of that and welcome them into our space and talk about what's working and not working and get their ideas because, you know, I think Keith and I are both realistic that the best ideas are probably gonna come from someone else that just we met randomly on a Tuesday? Well, and I think having, you know, eager, open young students around, it is always, you know, for me anyway, a touch point for creativity. You know, I teach primarily American students who are on their semester abroad in Italy. They're a blank canvas for wine in general and Italian wine in particular. And I love having those conversations. They have no points of reference It's a great moment to, you know, I could either, you know, completely put them off by using exclusive WSET old white English man language, or I can be aware of their culture and aware of their background and why they don't know what a gooseberry is. So I need to think about a way to describe something. And I think having those young, inquisitive blank canvases around makes you be more creative because you feel responsible for for what they're gonna do. Yeah. Completely. You hit it on the nose, and and it gives life too. I mean, we just this is a process that takes a lot of energy, and it takes a lot of focus and diligence and and, like, kind of day after day grind, to be honest. There's a lot of grit involved, and we like being surrounded by some energy too. And And we find so much that consumers are so just desperate to do something that makes an impact or actually has a benefit on the planet. And that's why Patagonia has been named, you know, year after year the the company of the year. Right? It's like they're doing something that consumers are obviously responding to. And and that's what just excites us. We'll have moments where we go days and we're just like, will this never work. Right? Will we be able to actually do this? And then we'll get somebody that goes, I had this idea, you know, five years ago, and I'd never thought it would happen. And it just gives me so much joy to see you doing this because this is something that needs to happen or we'll have, you know, another younger person come up and say, this is what, like, I wanna do. Can can I work for you? Right? It's like this is the excitement that they have for it and that just that makes it makes it all worth it. Well, I'm very excited about what you guys are doing. I'm so glad I had the chance to speak to both of you today. So thank you both, Kean, and and Adam for coming on today. It was just fantastic to talk to you and to hear what's happening with Rubino. We will get this out over the airwaves, and I hope that, everybody sits up and listens. I hope you get some investors. And I hope that educational program gets going because I think you're really on the right track with everything that you're doing. Thank you so much for coming on today. Thank you so so much for hosting. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for thank you for your time. This is lovely. Thank you for listening, and remember to tune in next Wednesday when I'll be chatting with another fascinating guest. Italian wine podcast is among the leading wine podcast in the world and the only one with a daily show. Tune in every day and discover all our different shows. You can find us at Italian wine podcast dot com, SoundCloud, Spotify, Himalaya, or wherever you get your pods.