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At Marsh, we believe that perspective powers progress. That's why our individual businesses have come together as one company, a new Marsh built to solve the world's most complex challenges and uncover new opportunities for our clients. We're better positioned than ever to help your business navigate obstacles and unlock potential across risk, reinsurance and capital, people and investments, and management consulting. Learn more@visitmarsh.com podcast so what will Rachel Reeves's pivotal new budget mean for you? Has an innovative think tank just come up with a solution for replacing stamp duty? Hello, I'm Steph McGovern. And I'm Robert Peston. And we wanted to recommend you our podcast the Rest is Money, where we answer questions like these to try and make sense of the UK's economy. Look, we get it. You're a discerning sort of person. You're a Bloomberg listener after all, so we're not going to waste your time. Here's why it's worth you searching for the Rest Is Money in your podcast app or watching us on YouTube twice a week. The Rest is Money tells you everything you need to know about the money matters affecting all our lives. Fiscal and monetary policy, housing, immigration, even the high street. Yeah, we do conversations for curious minds nor dry discussions here. That's why we speak to brilliant and fascinating people. Yeah. Recent guests include Dan Needle, Art Laffer, JP Morgan's Karen Ward, and even the Chancellor herself. So why not give us a try? Search for the Rest Is Money Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News this is Bloomberg businessweek Daily reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus global business, finance and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Radio. Hi everyone. Welcome to the Bloomberg businessweek Week Weekend Podcast. Happy New Year. And as we wrapped up one year kicked off another, some of the main themes for 2026 definitely came into focus just in the past week or two. A focus on the Fed, the conundrum of the US consumer, the AI spend and build out and political division, debate and disruption. Yes, sounds a lot like how we began 2025 one year ago. So this hour we explore the health of the consumer and how AI is impacting the retail space and more broadly, where the AI spend may take investors in 2026. On politics, we check out what New York City's political shift could mean for business and the Big Apple. A well known voice to the city's executive suite and member of the transition team of the city's new mayor, Zoran Mamdani, stops by. Plus, we've got the story of the Donald Trump meme coin launch and how the team behind it made an estimated $350 million while many other investors lost money. Then, in our second hour, in honor of New Year celebrations, we kick back and dig into some of our favorite con of the past year with leaders in the wine and spirits businesses. Perfect for a little New Year's celebration. Yes, I feel like we've earned it this past year. I think that's fair to say. All that to come. We begin though, with AI affecting a lot in our world. With much more forecast to come. We may get a peek into that this coming week at ces. It's the annual consumer technology conference and it gets underway in Las Vegas. This coming week, the biggest names in tech, including Nvidia, amd, Samsung and more, will make the case for AI, their target audience, investors, corporate clients, and perhaps just as importantly, ordinary shoppers who've yet to be fully sold on the idea of AI infused gadgets. And speaking of we ordinary shoppers, they we are increasingly using AI agents to perform deep discount hunting, real time product comparisons and personalized gift curation that, according to data from the AI shopping optimization platform. Novi retailers including Macy's, Sephora, Target and Ulta, along with thousands of other consumer packaged goods brands, rely on Novi to optimize their product data for AI driven discovery. Kimberly Schenk is the company's CEO. She joined Carol and Bloomberg's Vonnie Quinn Novi's technology. We're actually helping retailers and brands increase their sales by ensuring their products are found and trusted and then ultimately recommended by AI models. So think ChatGPT, Gemini and Cloud. And so we do this, we work with, you know, leading retailers including Macy's, Sephora, Target, Ulta, thousands of CPG brands, and they rely on us to optimize their product data for AI driven discovery by consumers. So when you say that it's basically a consumer who does something and their data is processed and recorded and they're saying, oh, you bought that pair of pants, maybe you would like this pair of pants. Is that, is it as simple as something like that or is it more sophisticated? It's a little bit different in terms of consumers now flocking to chatbots or Gemini and asking questions to actually do their shopping. So they're outsourcing a lot of their research, discount hunting, you know, personalized gift curation to the AI agent who's then going and finding products and recommending it to them based on just questions and prompts. So who are your competitors and how do you stand out from them? It's interesting. So there's a couple of different up and coming competitors in the tech space who are helping brands and retailers stand out in AI shopping. But we also have a lot of the older, more traditional data companies because we are a data company and we feed data with, through our partnerships with our retailer partners. So think about Syndico or Salsify or even Nielsen iq, some of those older data partnership players. So a lot of what we're doing in these partnerships and we'll be able to announce some of them really soon, is feeding trustworthy personalized information to the models themselves, which is what we have seen at Novi to increase your potential as a brand to show up in AI shopping. So we found that products that have verified trust signals are selected 259% more often than random chance. So think like certifications, reviews, badges, third party testing and we're feeding this directly to the retailers and the models so that they help the brands show up in AI recommendations to consumers. So one of the things I always think about, Kim, is like how much of what is spent on AI to kind of attract consumers, retailers or folks to retailers. So in other words, that AI driven traffic to retail sites, how much of it is productive that results in actually a consumer buying something? Yeah, that's actually a very interesting question. So we're seeing the traffic start to increase. There's actually we saw from Adobe analytics, like we just said, 520% over last year from AI. But what we're not sure about yet is conversion. And this is just because Chat, cbt, Gemini, none of them are publishing the conversion results. But we at Novi, what we did see is that ChatGPT shopping research answers sent consumers directly to the brand's website 86% of the time, which means that the remainder of traffic, you know, only about 14% was sent to the large retailers like Walmart or Target. And so what brands are starting to see is more and more direct consumer traffic to their website, which is driving conversion and sales for them. So would you say based on the data that you see, because you see so much data, that the consumer is doing well, that retail is doing well, how much? You can obviously break it down probably a lot. So give us a little bit of insight as we get ready to wrap up this holiday shopping season. Well, so what we're actually seeing is, you know, consumers are using AI as their category manager. So think of it as we all used to trust the big box retailers for their ability to manage each shopping category, do the curation for us. And that's why you walked into a Target, right? They scoured the earth for the best, most compelling products and we trusted them to do that. But now and what we saw play out this holiday season, the consumer has shifted their trust to AI to do the research and curation for them. So we're seeing strong numbers in users using chatbots and shopping, but it's just not quite played out yet. And we'll see that in 2026 is where that conversion is going to happen, if it's going to happen direct on the brand websites or still in retail. Kimberly, just a word on yourselves. How difficult is it to raise money? What, what are the key words that investors are looking for these days and you know, the key ideas? Yes, AI is definitely the hot topic. If you are not involved in AI doing something future with your company that's progressing AI. So for example, we're in agent at Commerce. That is what is hot for investors these days and that's what is raising money and getting the majority of the capital in Silicon Valley. That was Kimberly Shanks, CEO of Novi Vonnie, sticking around for this next conversation. Yeah, that's right, Tim. And it was a chat where we explored what may be the next AI trade for investors. Chip makers no doubt have been the biggest winners of the artificial intelligence spending frenzy this year and really for a couple of years now. And Wall street will look for that momentum to continue for some of the biggest names in 2026. And yet, as Bloomberg's Ian King wrote in this week's Tech in Depth newsletter, quote, watching the less publicized chip makers may be a better way of assessing the future of artificial intelligence than keeping an eye on market leader Nvidia to talk the AI trade and what we may expect this year. Carol and Vonni spoke to Bloomberg opinion columnist Dave Lee. This will be a year when we start to say, you know, to what degree is AI actually being used in real world applications? How is it changing logistics and health care and medical stuff, kind of the return on investment, right? Well, precisely. Return on investment, the practical uses. And that is something that for all the talk in our current year about this, that's kind of been missing. It's all down the road. Right. And so Ian in his piece, he highlights companies like Texas Instruments and Analog Devices. And these are companies that specialize in kind of the sort of lesser hailed parts of chip making, things that go into cars, things that go into less sophisticated devices than say smartphones and so on. They. And when it comes to AI, what we're talking about there is what we call edge computing. So not AI that happens in a big cloud somewhere, but something that happens on a device or inside a robot or, or does something that needs an immediate response from AI that could be incredibly transformative. And so when investors are looking at chip makers that are, you know that on the markets and want to say, well, who might be an unsung hero, those, those companies may, may, may be a clue, Dave, how much of to maybe in 2026 will also be about more productive chips? Like, I do feel like with the energy crunch that folks who are looking to build out AI data centers or do AI or a models that they're looking for chips that are much more energy efficient. Like, how much will that be driving kind of the chip trade come 2026 and who stands out in that? Or is it, is it kind of a moving target? Well, it's a moving target in the sense that with every new iteration, particularly within video, they say chips get vastly more energy efficient. You can do more with fewer of them. The problem is that for the companies that want to use these chips is that the prices are going down, right? The price, these chips is still sky high. I think what was an interesting story this year was Google announced it was going to be working with Meta. Now, their chips aren't quite as versatile as Nvidia's GPUs, but Google's TPU is. They call them Tensor Processing Units. They are specialized at doing what the companies want right now, which is training AI models, running AI models. And Google is saying, well, we can do that more cheaply. And so for Google, which has Google cloud, as it's obviously its cloud business, that's a very attractive thing to companies that think, well, we can't quite get hold of Nvidia chips, let alone afford them. So I think the efficiency question is an important one. Availability is kind of also the side quest. Now I am like always shocked when I hear like Google and their chips or Apple and the chips. And I know this is something that's been happening over the years. Are we going to see more of that? Where companies are doing more of this in house and why are they. Because it's cheaper or what is it? It's cheaper. I mean, Apple is an incredible case here because when you use an Apple product, if you're using your iPhone, you can throw something from your iPhone to your MacBook. You don't even. You have to have to send. It just happens. Right. A lot of this is because of them having this sort of vertical integration. They design the chips, they design the hardware and the computers, they design the software, computers. It all just works wonderfully. I sound like Steve Jobs on stage trying to explain it, but he was right and that is, that is what they achieved. Now if you're an AI company open. OpenAI is perhaps the interesting case study here. OpenAI doesn't design its own chips. It desperately wants to. It's entered into a deal with Broadcast to do just that. But it's quite a way down the line. And when you look at other companies like, like Google just as I mentioned and Amazon as well, they're much further along in that process. And what it means is they can specialize those chips to do exactly what they want. And in Google's case they decided to specialize in AI training and AI inference. Help them do that quickly and do that more efficiently. I think as time goes on with the AI industry having the same virtual integration that Apple has enjoyed for consumer devices is going to be just as valuable for Dave. I have to ask you. We were talking about bitcoin for literally 15 years before it took off. We've been talking about self driving cars for 10 years and when we actually get full self driving it's going to be probably another five or more years. Is it going to be that long before AI is really that useful to us? You know it's funny and one of the things that's because we'll need another narrative if so I can't talk about it I think. I mean isn't it just because the people and this one of those stories that's broken containment. I was on a flight a few days ago and the people next to me were talking about the AI bubble and I was hearing it everywhere. People, you know and one of the things they say is will it be like the dot com crash? Right. In many respects it might be. And I think this year we're going to see maybe some IPOs from OpenAI Anthropic. They're going to kind of almost kickstart that talk in a more intense way. But then when you. When I think about the. The dot com crash the Internet was still revolutionary. Yeah. So even though there was some reason it a lot. Precisely. We're on it right this moment. Are we so know both things can be true. We can kind of have the need the new narrative. But I also think I has this promise now. What I. What when I think of the dot com bust in particular is it took Amazon years to recover from its crash price. It took Cisco up until about a month ago. That's right from its crash price. And I think we may see some of the same patterns, but in terms of how that shapes throughout this year, I mean, your guess is as good as mine. That was Bloomberg opinion columnist Dave Lee. Our thanks to Vonnie Quinn for joining there as well. Coming up, the New York Times has called her the connector of New York's powerful well, now she's part of New York City Mayor Zoran Mandani's transition team. Kathy Wilde, outgoing president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, stops by. You're listening to Bloomberg businessweek. This is Bloomberg. Business Challenges and opportunities are Never one Dimensional At Marsh, we believe that to thrive, you need perspective. That's why our individual businesses have come together as one company, a newmarsh where each layer of our organization works even more closely together to provide you with a stronger, more panoramic perspective. We're now one firm solving the world's most complex challenges and unlocking opportunities for you across risk, reinsurance and capital, people and investments, and management consulting. As business continues to evolve, Marsh will always be here to help you overcome new challenges, answer new questions, and take advantage of new opportunities. We're better positioned than ever to provide the perspective you need to fuel progress forward. See how@visitmarsh.com podcast I'm June Grosso, inviting you to join me for the Bloomberg Law Podcast. Every weekday we help you make sense of the legal stories that shape the nation and the world. Listen for complete analysis of the biggest court cases, the latest actions from Congress and regulators, and the legal moves driving the markets from corporate law to constitutional law and from state courts to the Supreme Court. At Bloomberg Law, we go beyond the day's headlines. We speak with top attorneys, judges, scholars and politics policy experts to break down what the rulings really mean. We do this every weekday, then bring you the best conversations in our daily podcast. Search for Bloomberg Law on YouTube, Apple, Spotify or anywhere else you listen. On the east coast, listen as you start your day and on the west coast, catch up in the evening. That's the Bloomberg Law Podcast with me, June Grosso. Subscribe today wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5pm Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app or watch us live on YouTube. This past Thursday New Year's day marked a new political chapter in New York City as Iran Mamdani was officially inaugurated mayor, marking a significant political shift and the start of a new governing era for the city. This was an election the whole country was watching. Yeah. And I think it's fair to say the country is going to be watching the first few months of this mayor in office. Bloomberg's reported about how some, particularly the wealthy, are concerned about some of the priorities for Mayor Mohamdani. On that, we caught up with someone dubbed NYC's Billionaire Whisperer. Yeah, not so sure she loves the nickname, but people have put it out there. She chuckled. She chuckled when you said it on air. She did. Hey, we are talking about Kathy Wilde. It wasn't the first time she's heard. No, totally not. You knew she, she's heard it before. Kathy Wilde, she is former president CEO of the Partnership for New York City. That group represents much of the city's corporate leadership. It's a consortium of more than 300 big companies, including banks, law firms, private equity firms and real estate developers. Bloomberg lp, by the way, is a member of the Partnership for New York City. Cathy Wilde just left the Partnership and is now part of New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani's transition team. She spoke with us in mid December. Bloomberg News senior reporter Miles Miller. Why did you want to be a part of the transition team for the mayor elect of New York City? Well, I think to the point that Ken Griffin of Citadel just made and he's one of our members as well and is a great corporate citizen of New York and Miami. He made the point about the concerns about the high expectations that Mayor elect Mamdani gave to his voters. And he, to his credit, brought out 170,000 new voters, mostly young people in the primary. The cutoff age for his, his voter, his voter support was 45. So many of us are beyond that point and looking around and saying, oh dear, does he have the seasoning to be able to do this? And I think that he's got the energy and the intelligence and it's up to all of us who have a little more seasoning and to be helpful. And so that's why I joined the transition team and was happy to do that. And I'm working on the economic development workforce activities there. But in general, I think working with him to capture the enthusiasm and the energy. We came out of the pandemic very negative and we lost a million jobs. And then concerns about the cuts from the federal government on entitlement programs, whether it's Medicaid and health insurance there's the fight going on now. This casts a real pall over New York City, which is very dependent on those funds. So I think that what he's brought is a positive energy and we ought to capitalize on that. And hopefully he'll be the best marketer this city has ever had. Your role on the transition team, does it turn into a full time job in the Mamdani administration? I am definitely not, at my age, looking for a full time job. I'm trying to get away from a full time job. Right now you have more than a full time job because you're outgoing. The partnership. I am outgoing and I do not plan to take another job, but I do plan to help the new mayor if he wants it. So beyond the transition period, you would stay on as an advisor? Well, I don't know. I don't know in what capacity. As I say, I'm. I'm there. I'm certainly going to help Governor Hochul deal with her challenges. Where I've worked closely with her. She's done a great job. And I think we're counting on her to continue to manage New York's relationship with Washington and the relationship between the state and the city, which is very important. Our affordability problems will not get solved by the city alone. This is going to take federal, state, city cooperation. And so I think all of us who are committed to New York City in the future, we have to be thinking of all three levels of government and how we work with the leadership at all levels. You brought Mamdani to meet with business leaders on several occasions. I wonder if you can talk about what his demeanor is in these meetings. Right. I've talked to Bill de Blasio about, you know, how he works a room, how Mamdani works a room, and really gets the business community to be comfortable around him, but also talk about some of these policy proposals that business leaders wanted answers to. What are the things that business leaders said to him? Well, that sounds like a lofty thing that won't get done or. Or, hey, that sounds like something that is much more than we're willing to back. Well, there's been quite an evolution since he won the primary. So in terms of his having a more nuanced position on a lot of the policies, you know, during the primary campaign, there were a whole slew of candidates and everything was one liners and the social media stuff was one liners or, you know, show and tell. When you get into conversation with CEOs, they want to hear data, they want to hear Facts. And I have watched him evolve and grow over the last eight months. Where we had conversations last week, one on housing, one on child care, where he was there with a pen and a notebook, taking notes, asking questions and coming back with very substantive responses. So he has absorbed a lot and is now digging deep on these issues that, you know, Ken Griffin expressed concern about the fact that he made a lot, you know, raised a lot of expectations, created a lot of idealistic notions about housing and childcare and how we can do all this for free. I think he's very quickly figuring out none of this is free. Raising taxes creates real issues. You may raise the rates of taxes, but that may not result in more revenues if you scare people away or if you scare companies away or as we've seen lately, we've seen a real threat to jobs in New York. We, for the first time, our first time, in my experience, over 50 years, are seeing a decline in the number of jobs in our financial services industry. Scary thing, that's 40% of our state income tax revenues. We don't, I mean, these are, you know, we've got to pay attention and I think he gets that. But we've got to be at the table discussing these issues and helping figure out how do employers help solve the child care problem. Kathy, you know, one of the things I think about, and I remember, you know, being at Milken years ago and talking with, with very wealthy investors who said, yeah, it's about time we pay more taxes. So what is the balance? And I am curious among those folks that you talk to who are very wealthy and a lot of times their wealth is not in income. It's assets and it's investment gains. What do they think, though? Should be maybe more of their contribution. And I know they often contribute in philanthropy and so on. I know that. But I'm just curious, what is the balance of willing to pay more when again, I've had side conversations with folks are surprised that they aren't paying more in taxes. So what I found, and for somebody whose upper income earned income in New York, which is our biggest taxpayers, we're paying 55% of our income to the federal, state and city government. If you're all in. So we're paying more than half my paycheck goes to the federal government. So it's not like we're getting away with something. For the very wealthy who are capital gains, etc. The big problem there is if they move their legal residence out of New York City. We don't get, we don't share or get taxes, they aren't taxed here on the basis of their global income. And so we may get a piece of their paycheck, but not their wealth. Right, and that's a, that's a big question. It is, but what I found is over many years when, when business leaders and the big taxpayers are at the table and they see that number one, government is doing what they can to figure out how do we offer the most efficient, the most effective services at the lowest cost possible, how do we make government more efficient on the one hand then. So then you begin to narrow. So what's the delta in terms of what, what do we need to raise revenues for? So for example, when Dick Ravitch in 2007 for Governor Patterson led the effort to figure out how are we going to pay to upgrade our subways which were falling apart, we supported, and the business community supported that creating a payroll mobility tax where a portion of payrolls of corporations, employers who were in the metropolitan region would go to that 82% of the employees who work for our companies based in Manhattan take the public transit to get here. That was something everybody signed off on. We supported, we supported an increase in that tax twice. Same thing with congestion pricing. We supported congestion pricing. Obviously a user fee where you get something reduced congestion, more time in your day is easier to sell. So it is not. And actually when Mike Bloomberg was elected mayor right after 911 the city had to raise real estate taxes in order to rebuild and recover from the 911 shock. We supported that 18% tax increase in real estate taxes. So it's not that we're anti all taxes, it's is government doing what they can to keep costs down, to be responsible in what they're spending and then what is the contribution and how do we make it that makes the most sense, gets the most bang for the buck. Just very briefly, because you spent such a big part of your career working on affordable housing, I'm wondering if the mayor is sticking to freezing rent as his solution for affordability. Because not one person that we have spoken, spoken to over the last few months thinks that not increasing supply and rather freezing rent is the right way to approach the affordability crisis with housing. Well, the new mayor is very well aware that those are not mutually exclusive options and that if there's no economic return, nobody's going to build housing. He's figured that out. So he has. He has said really since pre primary that he understood the private sector had an important role in the supply side and he was going to work on that. So I think that again, his view is much more nuanced when he says now, when he talks about freezing the rent, he says, and one thing that will enable us to do that is if we reduce property taxes on rent stabilized regulated buildings. So he gets it. He can add and subtract. So can you come back? You said we had an hour, we had an hour, hour. Hour's worth of questions barely scratched the surface. But we so appreciate it. Kathy, thank you. Good luck. Thank you. Kathy Wild, president and CEO, Outgoing president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, part of the transition team of the New York City mayor elect, and of course, our Bloomberg News senior reporter, Miles Miller. This is the Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at 2pm Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the blue Bloomberg business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station. Just say Alexa, play Bloomberg 1130. It was billed as just another meme coin, a Trump branded token based on hype and a political spectacle. But the rise of the Trump coin tells a much bigger story. A glitzy ballroom, anonymous wallets, lightning fast trades. And then came the crash that caused hundreds of thousands of people to lose money, except most notably the Trump team that launched it. Writing about it for Bloomberg Businessweek, Zeke Fox and Max Abelson. Zeke is Bloomberg News investigations reporter and author of Number Go Up Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall. Max Abelson is Bloomberg News finance reporter. We just got to start with some basics here before we get into the shadowy web that spans like cafes in New York City and Singapore, which you guys travel, which you, Zeke, travel to Singapore. Meme coin been around for more than a decade. Started with the doggy, but what are they? Yeah, so the first one was Dogecoin. It was kind of intended as a joke, like a parody. This guy, he liked crypto and he was like, why are people making these dumb cryptocurrencies? I'll make the dumbest one I can think of. And then it kind of took off. But in the last couple years, there's been this huge boom in meme coins. It's kind of like this trend where people just pick anything that's in the news. Say a little like six, seven. Like the joke the kids, like, they'll slap it on a coin. The coin transparently doesn't do anything, but people just sort of gamble on the idea of it attracting attention and other people jumping in. They all sort of follow this pattern of going up and then crashing and you're. These gamblers are looking for the next one. So, Max, let's go back to January of this year, just a few days before the president is inaugurated for his second term. What happens? Well, you know, there was so much going on that weekend that it's easy to forget, but there was, like, an actual kind of crypto ball. And that might not have been, like, a real official title, but it was certainly this big crypto ball, and it cost a lot of money, and it was like. It was like 2,500 bucks to get in. And we spoke to people who are there. Actually, I think maybe one of my favorite interviews this year was with George Santos, the disgraced congressman. He was honestly a delight to interview, I have to say. He was there. He talked about how he skipped the line because he was like, I'm George Santos. Like, George Santos doesn't wait on lines. And he. Tim kind of says that, too, occasionally. You know what Tim would. Yeah. Zeke and I wait online. So they go into the crypto ball. So it's a room full. And this is the Melon Auditorium in Washington by the Washington Mall. This is a fancy space, and it's a room full of, of course, you know, crypto people, crypto investors, crypto executives, influencers, and phones start going off at one point, I think it's just before Snoop Dogg is about to perform, I believe, and. And they find out that Donald Trump has launched a meme coin. And I think one of the first thoughts on people's minds was like, this can't be real. And the thing is, it was real. And one thing that I just loved about working with Zeke is that he explains in our Business Week story, sort of the shades of realness. On the one hand, it really was true. Donald Trump really did launch a meme coin, right as he was on the edge of becoming the most important person in the entire universe. But on the other hand, it's lacking in a certain kind of realness, as we usually think about assets. A meme coin has a certain kind of, like, existential nothingness. You know, it's sort of. It's vacant by design. It doesn't give you rights to future profits. It basically represents nothing but itself and its investigators, excuse me, its investors, as Zeke and I wrote, are basically investing in sort of nothing but speculation. It's speculating in speculation itself, as I believe, believe this man said. And because of that, nobody makes money. Right? So it's kind of like sarcasm. I mean, it's kind of like a. It's a Zero sum game, right? Like, some people are going to get in early and make money. Other people are going to get in late. They're going to be left holding the bag. Except that whoever created the coin, their goal is obviously to get paid and they're going to suck out a lot of, like, the total amount that's been gambled on this coin. You guys write a little bit about pump and dump schemes, like Wolf of Wall street, boiler room style in the piece, and you draw a distinction between what's happening with meme coins from a regulatory perspective versus what would happen with a traditional stock penny stock. Talk about that a little bit, Zeke. Yeah, I mean, if you think about what was happening at Stratton Oakmont, like the boiler room depicted in the Wolf of Wall street, you've got all these salesmen who are on the phone calling retired dentists and being like, you got to get on this hot new gold mine stock. And this would drive the stock up. And then eventually whoever had created this promotion would secretly have holdings of it. They'd dump the stock, would go back down. But the people who bought these stocks had to be tricked. You had to convince them, like, this was a pretty cool gold mine they should invest in with meme coins. The people who are gambling on them basically know the drill, and they know that whoever creates the coin is going to want to dump once it gets going, and that they are, like, seeking out this pump and dump game. Then the SEC does not look favorably on the equity, the stock side of this. But what about the meme coin side of this? So the meme coins were in a pretty, like, gray area. No one really knew what to make of it. There hadn't. Regulators hadn't really taken any action. It had been weird enough that most of the better celebrities had stayed away before Trump. The most famous was probably Caitlyn Jenner. But I forgot about that one. Three weeks after Trump's inauguration, after he had created his own meme coin, the Trump administration's Securities and Exchange Commission came out and said, hey, you know what? These meme coins, they're fine. Not securities, not our business. That wouldn't stop maybe someone else from regulating them. But no one has stepped up at this point. So let's talk about the money. This is an administration. We talk about it being transactional. We talk about, some say, grift going on and so on and so forth. There's a lot that goes back and forth. But this is. Has made, right, the president and his family, some real money. Hundreds of millions of dollars. I think. Right, yeah. So Trump made about 300 million from launching his meme coin, according to estimates from crypto tracing firms. And then that same weekend, Melania launched her own meme coin and likely collected another 40 or 50 million. I mean, this is, like, the easiest money they've ever made for, like, a couple tweets. And now those of the. As we mentioned, those cryptocurrencies have plummeted more than 90% from their peak. So, Max, let's get into a little bit of the shadowy global network that helped the president make these meme coins. We look at the blockchain as this entity that kind of allows us to see who does what. But it was kind of a challenge to get to the bottom of who actually helped the president. Who are some of the characters that you and Zeke found? Yeah. Honestly, it would be so much cooler if we could sit here and look at you and be like, we honestly did crack and there's, like, no mystery left, and we can explain it all. The truth is, I cannot look you in the eye and say that in good faith. Does not mean you did not meet some people along the way. But we did. It's all about the friends you make along the way. That's exactly right. That's why we get to journalism. And I have to say, for viewers who haven't read it yet, my co writer on this story wrote a book called Number Go up that, I mean, is certainly the funniest and probably realistically, the best book about the crypto industry that exists. And so I felt a little bit by comparison of like, a babe in the woods as. As we started this, because I was working with someone who. Who really, really understands how this works. But he was very generous with me, and we kind of took it a step. By the time. A step at a time. I think the first thing we did is went to meet someone who you'd really want to stop in and talk to if you're trying to understand meme coins. And that is one of the creators of something called Pump Fun. And this. This young man, and his name is Elon Cohen. I mean, I'm. I'm in my 40s. I believe Alon was like, like, 21 when he. When we met him, maybe 20, 22. He is part of this small group that has launched this marketplace for meme coins where if you want, like, right now, you could go and start the Carol Coin and you could do it with. How. How long would it take? A few minutes, like, 10 seconds. And it's this remarkable Slightly gross, certainly immature marketplace, because the whole idea that I think if he were here, he would say that the grossness is it's not a bug, it's a feature that people get to do whatever they want and that whatever people find funny, whatever grabs people attention, it can be commodified and it can be sold. Now, to be fair, that is not where the Trump coin launched. So after we sort of understood Pump fund, then we had to go sort of make a slight point. Yeah. So we got nobody, as you said, nobody took responsibility for helping the Trumps, which was a little weird. But a clue emerged a few weeks later when another president launched a meme coin. This was Javier Millet, president of Argentina, of chainsaw fame. Yeah, and it's kind of weird in meme coins, like I said, everyone knows the drill, but still they have their own code of ethics. And the Malay coin really set people off because it crashed. Instead of waiting like a couple days to crash, it crashed within hours. And Milei, who had promoted it with a tweet, deleted his tweet, which was just not seen as fair play. And after this Malay coin debacle, this previously unknown crypto bro named Hayden Davis came forward. He's 28 years old. He'd been involved in NFTs, but was not like a well known guy. And he said, I am Javier Milei's advisor. We were creating this coin for the people of Argentina. And then he gave a series of increasingly ill advised interviews in which he talked about how meme coins are rigged, how there's sort of insider trading of a sort within meme coins. And then he said that he had helped Melania Trump with her coin. And I thought to myself, could this be? Is this really true? And how did he connect with Melania? And it turned out that luckily for us, he had been quite a boastful guy who loved to text crazy stuff to his friends. And we were able to review some messages that he'd sent to associates where he clearly did know that Melania's coin was coming, like, suggesting this was true, and where he even hinted that maybe he'd been involved in Trump's coin. We got to leave it there, guys. Zeke, Max, check out the story. It's the Bloomberg big take. You can find it at the Bloomberg terminal. We just scratched the surface. You know you want more. This is Bloomberg. You can get the news whenever you want it with Bloomberg News now. I'm Amy Morris. And I'm Karen Moscow here to tell you about our new on demand news report delivered right to your podcast feed. Bloomberg News now is a short 5 minute audio report on the day's top stories. Episodes are published throughout the day with the latest information and data to keep you informed. Yes, there are other products like this from a variety of news organizations, but they usually rerun their radio newscasts throughout the day. That's not what we do. We create customized episodes that can only be heard on Bloomberg News now. And we don't wait an hour to publish breaking news. When news breaks, we'll have an episode up in your podcast feed within minutes so you're always getting the latest stories and developments. Get the reporting and the context from Bloomberg's 3,000 journalists and analysts. We're all over the world. Listen to the latest from Bloomberg News now on Apple, Spotify or anywhere you listen. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5pm Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app or watch us live on YouTube. Plenty hitting our second hour of our first weekend edition of Bloomberg business week of 2026. It's an hour dedicated to something we like to feature from time to time here on Bloomberg businessweek and we are talking about the wine and spirits industry, from market trends to the story behind the label. And yeah, sometimes we do a little sampling. This hour, the perfect wine pairing for your next dinner party with the CEO of Duckhorn tapping into a mega wine experience in Uruguay and regenerative farming techniques in winemaking with the CEO of Maison Mirabeau. Plus the business of bourbon with the retired colonel behind lofted spirits. First up this hour. It's not been an easy year though for those in the business of selling alcohol, thanks to a consumer pullback, changing tastes and trends, high costs, supply chain disruptions and of, yes, tariff uncertainty. What used to sell itself now needs a sharper story and an even sharper strategy. Robert Hanson is CEO of the duckhorn Portfolio. It's a premium American wine company known for high end Napa Valley coastal California wines. He discussed his strategy along with a wine tasting with a fun trio, Bloomberg's Alexis Christophorus, Christina Kino and Bailey Lipschultz, who filled in for us while we were out just for context. So Duckhorn Portfolio is the 20th largest wine marketer in the US by volume 2.88 million cases this year. So not a small place. And you know, you know some of their brands, Vineyards, Golden Eye, Paradox, Migration. Oh, you're pouring wine for us now. What are we, Bailey's or Sommelier? What are we Having Bailey's normally an equities reporter, but these are sommelier filling in. Yeah. So this is the Decoy featherweight cabs off 2023 locale. We were talking about it in the green room. So locale, low alk, kind of catering to the younger generation. Sure. First, thanks for having me. You know, excited to be here on your flicks and chill day, I guess. Yeah, we're, we're going to taste first as we talk, we're going to taste the Decoy Featherweight Cabernet Sauvignon. It's the recent launch, most recent innovation in our Decoy Featherweight offering, which is the largest and fastest growing low, lower alcohol, lower calorie offering within the wine category. The Cabernet is really unique. It's about 9% alcohol, about 80 calories per serving. That's about a third less alcohol than a typical cabernet and about 50% the calories. It's tough to achieve a great tasting Cabernet Sauvignon that's low alk and low cal. So give it a taste and tell us what you think. But it's got a beautiful mace. It smells delicious and you know what, I don't need to necessarily have it with food. It's just like good straight up on its own. Yeah, it's addressing, you know, there's a lot that's been reported about the dislocation of the wine market. You know, we're excited about what we've achieved this year. We're excited about 2026. 2026 is the 50th anniversary of the founding of the company. Dan and Margaret Duckhorn founded the company 50 years ago on Merlot, which we're going to taste as well at the different, different end of the market. The one we just tasted, about $25 a bottle. The Merlot will taste is one of our high end luxury estate Merlot's. But we're excited about what's happening. This wine we just tasted is leaning into one of the trends that's impacting especially younger consumers. Consumers consumption in the category. Younger consumers are looking for value. Pricing matters a lot they're looking for. They're very conscious about consuming things that are better for them. So having a better mint introduction. Innovation in the category is important. We're about to celebrate the first year anniversary of taking the company private with Duckhorn with Butterfly Equity, our sponsor. They only invest in food and beverage. They understand craftsmanship. You know, if you're going to put it across your lips, it's got to taste yummy. And we've got a strategy of competing in the best neighborhood, the best street in the neighborhood, in the best house on the street. That was about a year ago that, that they came in. So. And this company has been, has been public, it's been taken private a couple of times, a few times. What changes have happened? I mean, you actually started with the company earlier this year, February. So. But what changes have been made now that this private equity company has come in and just sees this past year? Yeah, well, look, we, for the reasons I just explained, we think Butterfly Equity is a great sponsor, a great partner for us. What I would say is one of the superpowers of the company I respected when I first got to know it, is the agility, the ability to innovate at the pace of the consumer marketplace. And the market is demanding and consumers expect you to meet them on their playing field, on their terms. That's how Butterfly thinks. What's changed? I would say the agility is the pace of the agility of the company has picked up. We've made some significant progress in a very short period of time. If I, you know, reflect upon the analogy I just provided. Neighborhood, street, house. We compete in the 15 and above price segment. The market's been dislocated a bit, we can talk about that, but that's been driven by below 15 and especially below 10. So we compete in the right neighborhood. One of the best examples of what's changed. We did a portfolio construction exercise over the past nine months. Months where we looked at our whole portfolio. 11 brands we've concentrated on seven and four are really high growth core brands because we're winning with fewer things and focusing on the winners that matter. Big, clear lanes of competition, exceptional wines that compete against the best in the category. And we've actually increased our addressable market by almost $2 billion from 2 billion to 4 billion in that exercise. And then the proofs in the pudding. So best house on the street. The team, I'm really proud of them have grown our market share from 10.4% to 11.7% during our hold period. So it's been a busy, busy year. We've got a lot of air to travel. You'll hear duck analogies. We don't talk ground, we talk air. You'll hear duck analogies when we talk a lot, but we have a lot of air to cover. But we're excited about what we've accomplished so far. I just want to ask before I get ready to pour the Merlot, when you think about, of the recovery we have so much daily likes this part. He likes boring. This is the best. But when you think about kind of the state of the economy, it does seem like the upper 5, 10% of the US consumer is better off than really the bottom 90%. Thinking about higher priced wine, better wine, as you mentioned, best house on the best block. How do you think about attacking that consumer and whether you're seeing growth from them? Yeah, great question. We're very conscious of it. Our intention is to remain a premium fine and luxury still wine competitor. However, and I'll give you two examples specifically on price. We've talked about the better example. And then I want to talk to you about consumer experiences with, with the focus, especially for younger consumers, on purchasing power. There's a little nervousness around the socio, socio political and kind of economic environment. We're conscious of that. So two ways we've reacted. One, we introduced a, an amazing new brand called Green Wing, which is a 15 to $20 a bottle winery brand with amazing Cabernet from Washington and a Pinot Noir and Pinot Grigio from Willamette Valley in Oregon. That 15 to $20 bottle of wine can translate into a $12 by the glass program. If you're at a restaurant. A lot of younger consumers say they get more value out of spirits or other categories. This is providing them an entry point into the wine category. Kind of not telling them what to drink, but inviting them into our portfolio. And under the wine category based on value and on the higher end of the market, we had, you know, our, we made a price adjustment on our Duckhorn Vineyards Napa Valley Cabernet. It was, it was priced at $72. We took the price down to 60 because it's a larger addressable market and frankly, even for a fine wine consumer that can buy wine at that level, recognizing we could produce the same, same or better quality, maintain or really we've got a structurally advantaged operating model with great margins, we could maintain our margins and put out a more sharp price point for them. We're just meeting people on their terms in this economic environment and growing as a result. If you heard the pouring behind us and the popcorn, the cork popping is because we are having some duckhorn portfolio wine. Right? This is what we're about to taste is the 22 Merlot. And remind me, why is this a particularly nice Merlot? This is an exceptional Merlot. Now I'm gonna tell you, I've got a personal bias. I'm a Merlot fan. Not everyone can remember, but I remember Sideways. I was gonna make the Joke a film from 20 years ago that said you shouldn't drink Merlot. Completely wrong. Merlot, in my opinion, is the best varietal. Loved that movie. Love the movie. Didn't love what it did for Merlot. Merlot is the easiest drinking wine. Super great to pair with lots of different food choices. It's an easy drinking varietal. This wine is my favorite in our entire portfolio for two reasons. One, Dan and Margaret Duckhorn, who respected nature, the craft of winemaking and hospitality, introduced this wine as their first introduction 50 years ago. And we're celebrating our 50th anniversary next year and feel really good about the momentum of the company. It's an estate wine. It's a blend of 92% Merlot, 7% Cab, and 1% Cabernet Franc. It is a luxury wine, so it trades for between 120 and $150 a bottle. But it's a beautiful wine, and I encourage all of your audience to drink nodding profusely. Yes, it is. It is a great wine. Right. Cheers. Well, all right. For our audience who just joining us right now, we are here in the studio talking wine and drinking wine with our guests here, Robert, he and CEO of the Duck Horn Portfolio, as well as Bloomberg News equities reporter Bailey Lipschultz. So, Robert, you know, I want to touch on what you said earlier, right, about the process of kind of going public, then private and back again. And so, you know, you mentioned agility was one thing that really kind of was sustained in the company throughout those changes. And, you know, talk to us about how that's serving you now that the market is changing so rapidly. We have, on the one hand, Gen Z drinkers who just consume less alcohol overall. And it seems like that's something that is maybe permeating throughout the broader American public. Right. I think a Gallup was saying that just 54% of Americans in general say they drink alcohol. That's a record low. How is the company thinking about these kind of structural changes among consumers? Yeah, well, I mean, great, great question. And as I mentioned earlier, it's true, as reported, that the market's been dislocated. That being said, we compete in the segment of the market that has tailwinds, 15 and above. And we're segmented from $15 a bottle up to $300 a bottle. So in still wine, we are the, like, best house on the street. And we're growing because we're competing from 15 to 300. We've got a segmentation of our portfolio that meets most consumers needs. More specifically though, you know, a lot's been written about the betterment trend about drinking less but better quality. That is the focus of this portfolio. So you ask the question, what's different? We've got our eye on the horizon. We're very much focused on meeting the consumer on their playing field, on their terms. They want to buy great value. They want to buy great quality. They want lower alcohol content. In some cases, they want to drink less but better quality. Our whole portfolio is about that. We encourage our consumers to drink, drink, you know, less but better quality, drink responsibly. We're meeting the consumer on their playing field. There's kind of three trends that we've addressed. Value, betterment, and then the consumer experience of consuming wine. Here's one point I'll make though. Wine's been around for six millennia. It's a community based product. All right, Bloomberg's Robert Hanson of Duckhorn Portfolio. This is the Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at 2:00pm Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station. Just say Alexa, play Bloomberg 1130. I know you are always ready. We're ready. Always ready. So our Bloomberg Pursuits came out with a last minute gift guide for whiskey, wine and spirits lovers. And it states something I think we can all agree with. Carol, an unexpected bottle of booze is always welcome around the holidays. Yes, indeed. Retire. Expect it or expect it. I didn't expect that from you. Retired Colonel Mark Irwin is the CEO of Lofted Spirits. It's the parent company of Bardstown Bourbon and Green River Distilling Company. It's one of the largest distillers in the United States. And he joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio along with David Westin, who is of course the host of Wall Street Week and maybe partakes in bourbon every once in a while. Whiskey. Great to have you both here with us. Mark, tell us about kind of your journey. I want to just start there because you served in the U.S. army over 25 years. You were ultimately Chief of Staff of the U.S. army Special Operations Command. How do you go from there? And there's a lot of stuff in between as well. But how do you then get to here? Yeah. So luck and relationships, bottom line. I've had great luck throughout my life. I've been a sports enthusiast all my life and grew up playing sports. The army is really a sport in itself. A competition and a team building exercise every day. I spent 26 years, loved it, got out of the military and wanted to do something different than government contracting, which is what most people do with my skill set. Ran into some great people and a good friend that David knows well, became a mentor and a good friend of me, John Mack, who you all will have heard, heard of, obviously former head of Morgan Stanley. John became a great friend and mentored me. And John was actually asked to be on the board of Bardstown Bourbon Company. He had loaned our founder, Peter Lofton money throughout the years. And John thought I knew something about whiskey. I drank whiskey, but didn't know anything about the spirits business. But John asked me to check out the company. I went and checked it out, became on the board and then ultimately about six and a half years ago, was asked to come and run the company. Really a team. I've built a team. And that's what it's been about for me. Just that kind of, you know, creating something where people are proud to come to work every day is probably the most important thing for me. Well, you spent the first part of your career leading a lot of people. You led a 3,500 man task force in Operation Iraqi Freedom. You teamed with coalition partners and Iraqis conducting stability operations throughout Iraq. That's just like 1% of what you did over your career in the military. How do you, how does leading a company differ from actually leading in the U.S. armed forces? Look, or how is it? There's a thing out here in this, in the commercial world that I've run into called the what's in it for me factor. And that's a big issue. And not saying it's wrong, it's, it's real. People have to worry about their families, worry about what they're getting paid. That's a, that's something that I didn't deal with for 26 years because everybody knew what they were getting paid. Everybody was on a team, everybody had a goal and a mission. So fighting through those things to try to create a company where literally people place the importance of their job as something that's a priority to them. Build an organization that folks are proud to be a part of and actually want to see that company succeed, that's the kind of thing that I came from in the military. And we've I think done a pretty good job of doing that. If you come visit us at Bardstown or Green river, you'll see that in our people. We get comments all the time about our people and our team, and that's what makes this place special for me. Mark, typically, is being a little modest here because from my vantage point, because I saw John Mack persuade you a fair amount at his house, and what I understood is they had a great product, and John Mack believed it was a great product. But the company had, let's say, upside in what it could do with that product. And Mark came in, as far as I can tell. I won't say turned it around, but really built it into something really powerful which had the potential all along. I think Mark, the company was in a great spot, had an awesome growth path. Unfortunately, our founder passed away three months after he plugged me in. So we needed to go look for a partner who could help us grow. We brought in a private equity firm out of Chicago that's been a fabulous partner to us and truly enabled the growth to where we are now the largest custom distiller for spirits in Kentucky. We've grown two great brands, and that business model allows us to do the do things that most brands cannot do. Young brands can't afford right now to invest the way we're investing behind these two brands. And both Bardstown and Green river are two of the fastest growing brands in the US Right now. And it's because of this, this making whiskey for others, co packing on bottling all these different assets that we bring to our clients that enable us to go and invest in these two brands. That's what I thought was interesting. And I'm going to start doing a little bit of a pour here so that you can tell us about some of what we've got here. But it is. You work with others who want to start a brand. I mean, it's a crowded space. So I'm just curious how you think about who you want to partner with and how do you do something that stands out in the shape shell. So we really have two different entities. And what am I pouring here? Okay, so you are pouring. You're actually pouring the world's best bourbon according to New York Spirits, Wine and Spirits competition as of this year. So that is the top, top bourbon in the world. It's our Green River Weeded bourbon. And that's a $35 bourbon competing against all these other bourbons in a blind spot. So they do a bigger pour. You should do it. You should do a perfect pour. But that's a really low price point. That is a low price point. It is a low price point. You know, we're in the super premium and ultra premium price points, and those are the two price points in American whiskey that are growing. American whiskey is down over the last year. Yeah, down 2 to 3%. You know, with all the different things that are going on around spirits and international trade and everything else. So luckily, what we're doing behind these two brands is making them grow the way we need them to. And before we all take a step, take good. Take us back to. So that when you work with someone, how do you figure out who you want to work with? Right. And because it is a. There's a lot out there. Yeah. You know, look, I'll tell you, three years ago we didn't have much competition and people saw the business model and now there's a lot of competition. We used to kind of get just to get choose who we wanted to work with. Now there's competition out there. So we, we are truly the only ones who are providing grain to glass service. Meaning we're going to help you design your whiskey. We'll make it for you, we'll store it for you, and then we'll get it ready to go to market with our world class bottom facility. We're helping our clients in so many different ways. You know, whether it be unique financing modes, you know, that's been probably the biggest issue for our industry over the last few years. People talk about tariffs, we have financing issues. Before we had tariffs, there was a lot of negative chatter about alcohol and spirits in general. You know, young people aren't drinking, supposedly the GOP drugs and the impact that those are having, all these different issues creating some negative chatter. But what we're seeing today is an opportunity where I think savvy investors are starting to get in. We're getting, we're getting a lot of inbound from family offices and private equity who want to create funds to specifically invest in whiskey because they see the low end of a market and an opportunity for reasonable rate of return. Where four years ago I would have told you it was kind of a crazy rate of return, now it's reasonable and I think people are seeing that and coming back in. Well, not exactly the same. I grew up though. My dad made a mean whiskey sour and we would say Nozdrovia because, I'm sorry, Slovak. So anyway, Nazrovia, but tell us. Cheers. So this is again the number one, the number one bourbon in the world according to New York spirits competition. Blind tasting. Amazing. This is a weeded bourbon. So bourbon is 1964. It is our nation's spirit. It's America's native spirit and has to be made in the United States. And it has to be predominantly corn to be bourbon. And then typically you have a flavor grain. The flavor grain in this is wheat. People say wheat is sweet and smooth. The wheat is really kind of passive compared to rye and allows the sweetness of the corn to come through. So that's kind of what you sense from this as you sniff it and as you taste it smells carefully. It's a. It's a good. I don't. I know David used to do the morning show and I don't know his drinking hours, but this is my first bourbon of the day. So you gotta do this for work. Anyway, Cheers. Cheers. So while they're drinking, you've grown it a fair amount. Where's the sky? How far can you take this? And what do you need? So two different things, really. We have two separate business lines. Our core business is making whiskey for others. Again, that's our core. That's what pays all the bills and allows us to invest in these two brands the way we need to to. We're innovating on our core business. We're adding small bottling lines as people want to downsize to different package sizes. We're helping people. We're making rum for the first time for a client who's doing the ready to drink in a can. We're bottling vodka and gin for folks. So we're innovating on that side to make sure we give our clients everything we can so that we can continue to invest behind these two brands. Both of these brands are going to be in the top 10 of their price point by middle of next year. So we've got to set a new goal. That's been our goal for quite a while. And then we'll get into the international market. We're selling in London, we're selling in Sydney, and we're selling in Western Canada right now. And you said Green river was about 35 Bardstown, same thing. $45 price point on that. Bardstown Bottled and Bond. That's our, you know, the Bottled and Bond act was the first really start of fda, the Food and Drug Administration, where you had. You were trying to get people to say what's actually in the product. So they set the rules behind what it had to be. And it had to be 100 proof aged four years at one distiller in one season. So, you know, preventing people from putting tobacco juice for coloring and other things in it. So that's a great product. And again, Bardstown bottle and bond. What do you think, David? Well, I'm actually curious on the growing part. Again, just quick, is it capital intensive? Just 20 seconds. Is capital intensive work? We're committing. That's again, why we've got this unique business model that allows us to invest in these brands where most brands can't. That was Mark Irwin, CEO of Lofted Spirits. David Westin, host of Bloomberg Wall Street Week, joining us there as well. You know, David has always said, wait, wait, wait. Is this like, are you guys having an alcohol. Hey, we finally got, we finally got him to join. It was really a lot of fun. All right. Still ahead on Bloomberg Business Week, how one family left the London suburbs for a small village in France, all for the love of wine. And then a wine experience by way of little Tuscany in Uruguay. This is Bloomberg. I'm Barry Ritholtz inviting you to join me for the Masters in Business podcast. Every week we bring you fascinating conversations with the people who shape markets, invest, investing and business. CEOs, fund managers, billionaires, Nobel laureates, traders, analysts, economists, everybody that affects what's going on in the market, whether you own stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities, crypto. You really need to hear these conversations. Sometimes it's behaviorists like Dick Thaler or Bob Shiller. Sometimes it's fund managers like Peter Lynch, Bill Miller, Ray Dalio, sometimes its authors, Michael Lewis, author of the Big Short and Moneyball. Regardless of the conversation, these are the folks that move markets each week. That's the Masters in Business podcast with me, Barry Ritholtz. Listen on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week daily podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5pm Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app or watch us live on YouTube. It's the stuff of fantasies. Carol, we've talked about this. Yeah. You quit your corporate job in London. Okay. You move to the south of France with your three kids, your wife. You make it sounds magical. It does. Well, it wasn't a fantasy for Steven Kronk, the founder and CEO of Maison Mirabeau. He and his wife did exactly that. It was 16, 16 years ago. It was. Yeah. Wow. At the height of the global financial crisis. Talk about timing. Steven's with us right now here in the Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio. And he brought Rose. First of all, it's been a little while since we last spoke. Is it like two years? Yeah. Yes. Yes. How's business been since then? It's, well, this interesting question. It's been up and down, I would say. I mean, I think Provence Rose is still. Still the benchmark for rose around the world. So we're very lucky we've got that. But there've been a lot of headwinds, as I'm sure you're aware. Yeah, look, there's the climate change headwind, but there's also the changing consumer tastes headwinds as well as tariffs. Exactly. Which is the. Which is the thing that is the biggest headwind. They all combine together. This is the perfect storm. So there's the health kick. There's the cannabis movement. There's the no and low alcohol movement. Movement. There's the Ozempic movement because that suppresses people's desire to have a drink. So it's like everything. And then you load on top of that, the tariffs, it's like, yeah, what just happened? So what does that mean for you guys? Like, how do you pivot? How do you adjust around that? Well, there's a lot of things we can't change, but what we try and do is with the tariffs, for example, we've tried to swallow as much as we can. We don't want Mirabeau to be much more expensive in the store. So we've tried to swallow that. That's hard. Which is. It's hard. But we're keeping our fingers crossed that maybe, maybe this is going to change. Remind everybody the price range in the United States. So you don't want the price to go up in the US so we have generally between 20 and 30 dollars. Okay. I mean, you want to try and keep below $30 because that's the price point. So then how does that hit your margins? Yeah, it's not great, but, you know, I'd rather build a brand and, you know, I'd rather people carry on drinking Mirabeau, especially now we're coming out of Thanksgiving, and Provence rose is just so good with the turkey. So, you know, I'm just trying to hope this goes away and just carry on pushing my wines here. Yeah, well, you know, and I've said I wasn't a big rose drinker, but I've got to say, yours is pretty. Pretty magical. And I've really enjoyed it. And we're going to taste it. I know Tim is sniffing it out. You're in the United States. Talk to us about the US Market specifically. So I've started farming regeneratively for some of my wines. Right. And the regenerative movement seems to be centered mainly around California now. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm selling my wines in 40 countries, but California is the epicenter of the regenerative movement. The California Department of Food and Agriculture has been the first state to define the words regenerative agriculture. And meanwhile, we've got the wine regions there. So Paso Robles, Napa, Sonoma, they are the most regenerative wine areas in the world. So what does that mean for one of San Luis Obispo County? I know where Tim is from. I know. I know Paso Robles, but what does that mean? That. Would you do more here in the United States? I'm just trying to sell more wine here. You're just. And so the retailers, so Awan and Sprouts and Bristol Farms and Hagens, they're really getting behind the regenerative movement. They're looking to seek out regenerative farm because there's an awareness of it, right? Because they know what it means for farmers. They know what it means for people, too. Not everybody knows what regenerative farming means and especially how that is applied to farming the grapes that go into wine that go into. So for people who don't know what it is, explain regenerative farming in the context of viniculture. So regenerative, as the name suggests, is about regenerating soil fertility and regenerating nature in simple terms. So, you know, it's the opposite if you think about it. What was organic farming called before the First World War? Farming. Right. But then there was a huge amount of pressure. Everyone was worried about industrial farming. Right. So. So the heavy tillage and in particular, heavy. Heavy use of chemicals. So there's been a move certainly since the First World War and the Second World War as well. We've seen a lot of nitrogen being used in farms, a lot of heavy tillage, a lot of chemicals, pesticides and so on. And that's just been killing our soils. And this is a catastrophe. You know, we were worried about famine at the end of the Second World War, so rightfully we were worried about feeding our population. But we haven't been measuring food in the right values. We've been measuring by calories rather than nutrient density. So I didn't mean to interrupt, but it was just interesting. We just came off a discussion of talking about. About the cost of meat and just what's going on in that world. But I do think about, like, is our soil globally? How tortured is it or how bad is it because of the industrial farming? A lot of it. Most of it, I would say, is on life support. It's really. It's catastrophic. So when I was going to say, when I drive up from. From l A to to Paso Robles, which is one of the most regenerative regions in wine. Yeah. Up the i5 and you see thousands of acres of fruit trees and nut trees that are on life support. It's like the moon's surface. And so it's kept. They're kept alive by these external inputs and what you end up with a product. But they're not very tasty and they're not very nutritionally dense. Right. So we need to actually start restoring soil health globally. And regenerative is a way of doing that. So you can do that in terms of all that soil. How long does it take, the process of getting it back? It can happen quite quickly. And that's one reason why we. So I run a nonprofit as well, Viticulture Foundation. So viticulture is agriculture for vines. And we're launching these initiatives called One Block Challenges. So we did one in Paso, we're doing one in Napa. Opus 1, in fact, great winery, also a nice wine and winery. So we're doing one there on the 18th of November and we're challenging the growers in Napa and as we did in Paso, to just transition one block of their vineyard to regen for a year and then come back back and see the difference. It's incredible how generous Mother Nature is coming back. That's Stephen Kronk, the owner of Maison Mirabeau. Hey, before we go, how about another story of a family owned winery, this time in the luscious region of South America? Since 1999, Bodega Garzon has been making wine and developing a mega wine experience in Uruguay. Christian Wiley is Bodega Garzon's managing director. He stopped by to tell us all about it. You know, when we think about so called New world wines, I think a lot of people often think of in South America, maybe Argentina or Chile. Uruguay not really on the map as a wine destination as much as other areas. Why is? Well, I mean, it's not on the map because they've been drinking all their wine they've been making for the last three, three centuries. But then Garcon comes into play and this is an incredible investment of Don Alejandro Bulgaroni. It's $250 million apex. It is the largest investor invest investment ever in the industry of winter wine. And this is right next in the region or in the world? In the world. Wow. So this is right next to the beach, to the Uruguayan Riviera. So you have Jose Ignacio, which is like the central pair. Yeah, if you're watching us on YouTube or Bloomberg Originals, you can see the stunning photos right now. And that was showing kind of the investment that you guys have been making. So it's, and it's, it's done in a, in a very, if you like, forward thinking way of the most committed to sustainability. We were the first winery in the world to be 100% LEED certified. And we work, you know, to express the place. It's a new terroir that is, you know, the vision is for Alberto Antonini who's like the top winemaker from Tuscany. And then one of our pillars is the experiences. So we have, Francis Malnan is our chef. So you experience these beautiful wines with an incredible view right next to the ocean in a place that it's like the San Trope of South America. You don't spend $250 million on CapEx unless there's growth going on. Tell us about the business and in terms of top line growth. But it also sounds like it's also experiential that you guys have incorporated. So give us, you know, we're Bloomberg, we love all the numbers. So give us an idea in terms of the growth that you guys have seen. Well, we've basically gone from a place that didn't grow vines to a vineyard that has more than a thousand little parcels, little blocks. We've gone from zero to 60 markets. We're selling all over the world. It's become the main brand in Uruguay, but it's also the leader in the States and to Brazil, to Japan, to China, UK and it's, it's growing very fast normally. And what's fast? Is it high, high teens, Is it above that? No. 100% spent many years double doubling the business many years in a row. Wow. Including Covid and as you said, all the different cycles. Right now we've. Yesterday we toasted to our first year with our new partners in the US with Wine bowl. And again we did really well in a very tough year. But you have, you have a level of investment that it's really projected. Very, very long term term. We, we have projects for hotels, we have real estate on the beach. Mr. Bulgaroni has an incredible golf course designed by Phil Mickelson and that it's a PGA tour preferred golf course. We make our own extra virgin olive oil. So we talk about the Garzon universe. What is the biggest revenue driver? Is it the wine or is it the real estate? Dare I ask if it's even the olive oil? Yeah, the first one was the olive Oil, the extra virgin olive oil. And it's one like the best extra virgin olive oil in the world a couple of times. The wineries, the wines are what's driving the revenue. And it's not just selling wine as a product. It's also the experiences. So we have 50,000 visitors a year, and this is in the middle of nowhere, as you just mentioned. Uruguay. Yeah. And it's all very high income and network worth people. It goes from 20,000 people living there in Punta del Este and Garzon to 2 million tourists around New Year. Wow. It's a lot. And a lot of them are celebrities like Clooney or Gwyneth Paltrow or Messi or it's. Or Stan. I was just going to say that's kind of our crew, Carol. Well, I'm here to invite you. You have to corroborate the story. Right. We only have, unfortunately, about a minute and a half or so left. You did bring in some bottles of wine and. And tell us about what you brought. I don't want to mispronounce. Ballasto, Tannat, Albarino. It will start with a white wine. Yeah. This is Alvarino. We are the main grower of Alvarino in the Americas. It's the white grape variety, like the Queen of Spain. We have the same kind of granite and Atlantic Ocean influence, similar to Galicia. And this is our. Actually our best selling wine in the U.S. yes. Perfect for summer or the end of the spring, if you like. Top 100 Wine Spectator. So an awesome value. This is like a $22 retail. That's great. So there's a beautiful opportunity there. Tell us about the other, the reds, which I am a red kind of gal. Okay, so this is for you. Uruguay is the country of Tana. Like Malbec would be Argentina. Oh, yeah. This is a great varietal from southwest France. It's known to be rustic and really tannic. We have kind of tamed that. So it's very fresh and vibrant. And it's also been top 100 Wine Spectator. So we have insane accolades. Actually, Bodega Garzone won the New World Winery of the Year. That's among another like 10,000 producers. I mean, those things matter because it really gets people, whether it comes up in a search or people, you know, gets noticed. Just got about 20, 30 seconds for Basto. Tell us about this one. So this is our. This is our grand vine, our icon. Ballasto is actually the soil is the meteorized granite. It gives minerality, so the wines are quite ethereal. We have a lot of rainfall, so we have very nice natural acidity. Makes your mouth water. That was Christian Wiley, Bodega Garzon's managing director. And be sure to check out Ellen McCoy's story on the Bloomberg and at bloomberg.com on how wine will change in 2026 due to everything from climate impacts to Gen Z's interest in wine bars. And that wraps up the weekend edition of Bloomberg businessweek from Bloomberg Radio. Thank you for joining us today and always as you have throughout 2025, we're looking forward to more this year. I'm Tim Stanweck. Happy New Year, everyone. And I'm Carol Massar. Have a good and safe weekend. Peace and prosperity, health and happiness in 2026. We so look forward to sharing the new Year with you. This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast, available on Apple, Spotify and anywhere else you get. Your podcasts listen live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5pm Eastern on Bloomberg.com, the iHeartRadio app, TuneIn, and the Bloomberg Business App. You can also watch us live Every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal. 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