← Going Big! with Kevin Gentry
Going Big! with Kevin Gentry
Crafting Excellence: Billo & Pinto Naravane’s Bold Journey from Tech to World-Class Winemaking
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- [00:00]
Billow Nerone
One is to do what you absolutely love. And I don't care what that is. Find whatever you are passionate about and try to make that your profession. Right? Because I think when you do that, what we found is, is, is that that inherent joy of that. Right. That is, even though, yes, wine making is a lot of work and this and that, but every day we wake up enthusiastic about what we're doing, right? And you know, 16, 17 years into this, like, not a day has gone by, day has gone by where I woke up and said, oh my goodness, I wish I was back in tech. Right. Never happened, right? And so to finding the joy in doing what you love absolutely every day. And you know the money will come, right? That's. That's not the prime goal. But you want to live every day fulfilled with that joy of what you love to do. You know, you can't waste. Waste another day doing things that you do not like to do.
- [00:58]
Kevin Gentry
Welcome to the Going Big Podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Gentry, and this is the place where we celebrate. Celebrate bold moves and big ideas. Each week I sit down with inspiring leaders, entrepreneurs and change makers who are making a significant impact in their careers and in their communities. Whether you're looking to level up your leadership, pursue your passion, or just get inspired to take your next big leap, this is where those stories come to light. Now, if you're listening on iTunes, YouTube or anywhere else you tune into podcasts, be sure to hit that subscribe button so you'll never miss an episode. Now let's dive in to what it means to truly go big. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I am so excited by this conversation today. I've been looking forward to this for a while. As my guest today are Pinto and Bello Nerone from Walla Walla, Washington. And they are extraordinary and how they are changing, in my view, the whole way we look at wine. Now I'm really going big and setting the expectations high. So as you see from this conversation today, I think you're going to learn a lot, I think you're going to enjoy a lot, and I think you're going to be really inspired. Okay, guys, to start off with what is ultra premium terroir specific wine from eastern Washington and northeastern Oregon. I know that's your particular hole in the marketplace for our. But for our listeners, what. What is that?
- [02:31]
Billow Nerone
It really is. I think what excites us most about. About wine are these wines that really showcase the. The terroir of. Of the vineyards. That is. We want that site to speak. We want the the varieties to speak and to be true to type. And we also kind of wanted to push the, the, the boundaries of quality for, for, for Washington state. So we are, you know, even though we do have wines at lower price points, our primary focus is to really focus on these higher quality wines that really showcase the terroir of the vineyards and the variety and the prevailing climate of the season.
- [03:16]
Kevin Gentry
All right, so what you'll produce today is really amazing. So let me just give a little bit of the backstory. Several years ago, our local wine shop proprietor's name is Brian Goier. Brian has been big on rasa wine for a long time. He would serve it, he would talk about it. We were intrigued. I think I may have done a webinar with at least one of you years ago. And so my wife and I said, let's go to Walla Walla. We've never been to Walla Walla, Washington. Let's go. So we did a summer trip to Seattle and drove four hours out to southeastern eastern Washington state, and we experienced this extraordinary discovery of wine in country. All right, so with that said, tell folks, how in the world did you two get involved in wine and tell us a little bit about your story. You're. You're pretty much trained on the science side, and I don't think you plan to become vent nurse. So how did this all happen? I'll let you decide who goes first.
- [04:22]
Pinto Nerone
Yeah, I'll. Well, you know, the interesting thing was I graduated college in 88 and had up my own place and started learning to cook. And I just got tired of drinking beer with whatever I was making, so I was playing around with wine. And then in 90, Billa graduated MIT and moved to Silicon Valley for work. And we would go visit, I would go visit him and we'd go up to the Napa Valley. And at that time, it was you spend about $15 for the whole day, including lunch. So it was just beautiful. And it was a great entry. And one of the times I was there, Billow and I were in a store that was going out of business, and they had the 88 Wu Tong for how much billow? $75 or $65?
- [05:12]
Billow Nerone
66. 66.
- [05:14]
Pinto Nerone
66. 66. But at the time, it was, you know, 12 times more than I ever spent on a bottle of wine. So we hemmed in hard and we bought it, and it was our epiphany Wine. Abilo did have an experience with the ecamm before that, but it was an absolute revelation. And we saved a little bit for the next day, and it was even better. And that started us off on our journey. We had computer science, math, and engineering backgrounds, and this became a passion for us immediately. And as we got more and more involved in wine, the more and more we thought we wanted to start at our winery. And that was, you know, we were very good at what we did, but there wasn't a passion there. And Billow had an opportunity. He applied to the UC Davis master's program in.06 in viticulture and enology. They took 10 people that year with a preference for industry, and Billow got in. And he's a graduate of MIT and Stanford. And I joked that it was harder for him to get into this program than anything. But it's. Yeah, it's. But it is. That and University of Bordeaux are probably the two top, best schools in the world for that. And he got in and he called me up and asked me, you know, how serious I was about starting a winery. And it was the same year I was turning 40 at this was in, oh, six. And I thought, if we don't do it now, we never will and we'll regret it. So Billow quit Hewlett Packard down in Texas, meant to move to UC Davis. I spent 10 months crafting a business plan, and before he was out, we made two wines in 2007. One of them got 94 points from wine Spectator, and one got a perfect rating from a local critic Ran Sealy a review of Washington wines. And that's the way we started.
- [07:10]
Kevin Gentry
Wow. Wow. Okay, okay.
- [07:11]
Pinto Nerone
But.
- [07:11]
Kevin Gentry
Okay, well, that's all incredibly fascinating, and. But you were in Silicon Valley, in San Francisco, in that area, Napa area. How did you end up in Walla Walla? Billow, how did you go from UC Davis to eastern Washington?
- [07:30]
Billow Nerone
Yeah, you know, Pinto and I, we. We started with wine. We've always have loved wines from California, you know, particularly Napa, Sonoma. And we've been to these regions and really, really love them. So we in 2006, in Napa and Sonoma, and as you can imagine, the prices are always, always very, very expensive. Even the land we were looking at back then, you know, 250,000, 300,000 an acre, you know, by today is selling for more than a million an acre. So it's a good deal, but there's no way we could even afford that. That was not possible. So our winemaker friends in California said, go check out Washington. You know, really cool things are happening up there. The weather is fantastic. The terroir is fantastic, and so we came up on a scouting trip in, I believe it was March of 2007.
- [08:22]
Pinto Nerone
February.
- [08:24]
Billow Nerone
February. And then so we spent. We hired a geologist to kind of take us through all the areas that he thought was really interesting for vineyard sites. So we spent a few days out here. We tasted as many wines as we could. It was just in, you know, for, sorry, we're four days, I think, out there. And we tasted, you know, hundreds, hundreds of wines. And what we notice is that the. The fruit quality in Washington is absolutely excellent. But we oftentimes felt that the winemaking didn't do the fruit justice in many instances. So we said, all right, here's a potential opportunity. You know, we could come up to. To Washington, hopefully execute things a precisely on the winemaking front. The terroir is fantastic. The fruit's fantastic. You know, how do you establish your. Yourselves as a front runner in Napa? You have 200 plus wineries making absolutely amazing, amazing things. Prohibitively expensive to enter the market. And just out of serendipity, on that trip, we met a gentleman who specializes in vineyard and winery properties. And he showed Pinto initially the. The parcel in the Rocks district. It's a 28 acre parcel. We drove down there. Pinto's like, you got to come check this out. It's amazing. So we went there and did the soil analysis on the property, and it came back absolutely textbook for Syrah, parts for Grenache, parts for vog. And every bit as good on a qualitative basis as the land we're looking at in Napa Sonoma. And the average price was just about 25,000 an acre. And being math guys, you're like, hey, you know, we can quickly, quickly figure this out. That was the better deal. Yeah. So that's how we wound up here, here in Walla Walla. And our vineyard property is just across the border on the Oregon side in the Rocks district in Walla Walla Valley.
- [10:26]
Pinto Nerone
Adding to what Billa said. And the price was a big factor up for us going to Walla Walla. But as I was developing a business plan, you know, three pillars that really stood out for me of what I wanted. And one of them was meet the best wines in the world. We want to be in that discussion with first growth Bordeaux and Chav and Chapoutier and whoever else you could think of. And we wanted to be in that mix. The second thing is we wanted to be a leader in our niche market. And the third thing, as importantly, was we wanted to change the local economic paradigm and have this be something more meaningful than just a good business model for ourselves. So when we got to walla walla in 07, it was evident that the fruit quality was exceptional. It was evident that there were a few really good players, and there were a lot of, you know, a lot of not so good players. And I think it was. It's such a small community that what was evident was people who are copying each other. Winemaker friends were, you know, if one wine worker, friend, friend had a modicum of success, the other one would copy them. And the way I knew that is because before I can tell the terroir of Walla Walla, I was able to pick the wines out blind because of the faults that were perpetuated in the wines, and they were basically the same fault. So we knew right there that. That the Grape Poly was exceptional. We could in quick time become a leader in our niche market. And Walla walla was in 07, where we felt Napa was in 85, 86, where Sonoma was in 92, 93. So we felt that we could really contribute locally and kind of lift all boats type of ideas. So the cost and everything else just jived, and we left thinking this is the place for us.
- [12:26]
Billow Nerone
Yeah, Pinto. Just add one more thing. I was trade tasting in. In 2008 for. For Walla Walla wines, and there were about 55 wines, and 18 of them had significant faults, either volatile acidity, Brettomyces, oxidation, premature oxidation, et cetera. And I remember calling Pinto, and, yeah, that's a. That's a 33%, basically. Right. Of. Of the wines that are, in my opinion, should not have been bottled. Right. They were flawed. And I told Pinto, I said, well, I just came back from this thing, and I'm not kidding, but, you know, 18 out of these 55 wines were a bit of a train wreck, you know, is how I described it. And Pinto's like, wow, that's really shocking. And then, you know, we did tastings, you know, kind of after that, and. Yeah, and what was happening is that a lot of the winemakers at these places, they weren't formally trained, and they were just copying what their neighbors were doing. Right. And that's how they were. So, you know, so the good methods were being propagated, but also the bad methods were being propagated. Right. So you had this high incidence of rather flawed wines in the beginning. That has drastically changed today, I'm very, very happy to say. Generally, we don't see that level of percentage by any means, but that was the case back in 2008, what Clinch.
- [13:53]
Pinto Nerone
Did for us was I live on the East Coast, I live in New Jersey, and I was doing market research, you know, in the various stores. I'd go around and I'd surreptitiously follow people around and see what they're buying and all that. But I was in this one store and they had Cayuse, which even in 07, Cayuse was this cult winery in Washington where it's sold out on release. So this one place had a bottle of Cayuse on the red dot special. They couldn't sell it. It was like 50% off. And that's when I called Billow. I said, this is ridiculous. If on the east coast people still don't know what Walla Walla is and they haven't heard of Cayuse, this is a great opportunity to hit one of our pillars that we could be a leader in a niche market. And so that helped Clinch for us for sure.
- [14:44]
Kevin Gentry
Okay, well, this is great. I love the fact that you're science and math guys and the way that you've approached this. I love your attitude about just lifting all boats and that you're helping everybody else do better by pushing the limits. A couple things, you know, for our listeners. Some of our listeners may think, you know, I know exactly where Walla Walla is. I've been there. I know what you're talking about. I agree it's one of the definite up and coming, rising top spots in the world today. Others are saying, what are you talking about? When my wife and I drove out there, it was during the heat dome of 2021 when we went to the Yakima Valley. On the way there, the car thermometer was 118. And when we went got checked into our hotel in Walla Walla, the bank thermometer, you probably know exactly which one I'm talking about. On one of those street corners was 113. I took a picture of it. So. So it's, it's different out there. Tell us just a little bit about the climate as well. And for people who don't understand, what is the rocks district and what was the Missoula flood and what is all of that about?
- [15:56]
Pinto Nerone
Well, why don't I start and you could jump in below anytime you want. Well, yeah, the climate in eastern Washington was hugely informed by the Missoula floods and also by the Cascade Mountain range. Everyone you mentioned Washington, we have so many people asking us, isn't it really wet over there? The Cascade Mountain range causes a Rain shadow effect. So basically what happens is this cool air coming from the Pacific Ocean and going eastward will go over Seattle and it will precipitate, and you'll get about 36 inches of precipitation in Seattle. And then as it hits the foothills of the Cascades and it travels up it goes, the precipitation per year increases. And at the top of the cascades, it's about 100 inches of precipitation here. But when you go to the other side, as you go down towards Yakima, you're dropping down to about 8 inches of rainfall. You get the Red mountain, it's about 4 inches in Walla Walla, depending on where, it's anywhere from 8 to 12. So without that rain shadow effect, eastern Washington couldn't have been, in my opinion, a. A great area.
- [17:15]
Kevin Gentry
So. And that's another thing that took me a while to understand, and I'm still learning so much about wine. But you want those grapes to kind of fight, really struggle to find water and go deep. And those, you know, the whole metaphor about deep roots is, is. Is an important part of this, right?
- [17:31]
Billow Nerone
Yeah. So, so what. What's really important is, is, you know, you don't want the. The grapevines to have access to infinite amounts of water, right? They. They become fat, dumb, and lazy. Right. And grapes of any. Any complexity. So, you know, we have the situation where we have roughly, you know, 11 to 12 inches of water of rainfall here in Walla Walla. Most of it happens in November and, and February, March timeframe. And grapes need about 18 inches of water to make it through the growing season. Right. That's kind of the bare minimum. So we actually prefer to be in this scenario where we're slightly below what the grapes need. So virtually every vineyard here in is irrigated, drip irrigated. And we actually prefer that greatly because we can 100% dial in how much water the grapevine sees. And what we like to do is, and numerous scientific studies have shown this, that grapevines that are under medium to medium plus levels of water stress generally produce more flavorful berries and higher phenolic content in the berries. And that directly translates to more interesting, better wines. So we like this scenario where we're below what the grapes need, and we can dial in. Exactly. Now, that takes a fair amount of monitoring in the vineyard to make sure you do it correctly and not impose too much stress on the vines. But so we do kind of manage that to the utmost effect to help maximize the quality of the grapes.
- [19:12]
Kevin Gentry
All right, one other question this. And then I'm going to go to some other things about your vision and your. And you're going big. You mentioned the Missoula floods. This is not like, you know, one of the hurricanes in the past 10 years. This is a long, long, long time ago. But the rocks district, the grapes are growing in rocks. You're kind of stacking these. These stones up around. Can you explain that briefly, too? Because it's. It's really crazy.
- [19:38]
Billow Nerone
Yeah. So all of these basalt cobblestones, they're up in the hills in the blues. And all of the water kind of carries down through Milton Freewater and kind of hit this fan, if you will, in Milton Freewater, where all of these rocks, basalt cobblestones, are getting deposited. So it is roughly a three square mile area. It is, you know, the size of a postage stamp as far as avas go. But it literally is a rock bed that is, you know, in average depth is about 80ft. Right. Of this basalt cobblestones that are roughly the size of softballs. Right. So you can imagine trying to plant vineyards in this medium because of all the rocks there, the water holding capacity or the soil is very low. It's easy draining on water. So we got to add even more water to make sure that the plants are happy in that medium stress zone. And also because of that, we get root penetration deep into the soil. You know, as the vines are getting stressed for water, they start pushing their roots out into the salt profile to access more water and nutrients. So, you know, we found roots all the way, you know, 20ft deep, 30ft deep. We can see some root vines from. From the grapevines down there. And that's quite unusual. And I think that really helps to contribute to this beautiful, beautiful expression of terroir and minerality that we get in the rocks district that is absolute, absolutely profound and unique. There is no other place like it in the world.
- [21:16]
Pinto Nerone
There's a wonderful savoriness that you get out of these wines and a wonderful tight structure. And we believe it's due to that soil. You know, to put it in perspective, there's really nothing like it in the world of wine that the soil, if you think of Chateauneuf du Pape and you think of the big stones, big rocks there, the difference there is they go down about 5, roughly 5ft, maybe 6ft. And then there's a clay subsolum, and clay has some nutrient or water retention properties. So they hit that clay and they can get some of the water that they need. Ours, there is not. There is no subsolum. You're going, you're going 80 to 100ft deep. So there's nothing for the vines to do but go deeper and deeper. And the interesting thing about most vines is that they only want to go so far deeper. They don't necessarily want to go 20ft deep. They want to anchor properly. They want to go about roughly 6ft or so. And to get nutrients, they have feeder roots that grow more horizontal. But since our place, since there is nothing there, the roots have no choice but to go deep and go down 20, 30ft. And we believe that translates to this unique wine.
- [22:33]
Kevin Gentry
Fascinating. Okay, so when you decided to build a winery in Walla Walla, what exactly you touched on it. But tell us a little bit more about your vision and did you have some initial goals? And then my next follow up question is going to be, tell me about some of those first wines, those first harvests, and then bring us up to where you are today.
- [22:59]
Pinto Nerone
Yeah, well, our first harvest, the first three harvests, we made it at an alternate proprietorship. So that's a facility where they have all the equipment that you can use. You bring in your own barrels and your grapes and you make wine. And it's a cost effective way to start. So that's how we started. And then in 2010, we moved into our own facility in Walla Walla. The initially, I think, you know, we, we, we made some mistakes. You know, we, the, the wines were stellar. The wines were stellar, but we really didn't have a place to sell. So I think initially we grew too quickly. You know, I mean, not, not. We're not talking a lot of wine. We're talking first year was 700 cases, but the next year was 1200. And then the third year was 1800. But we really didn't have a good avenue to sell. And so it took us a bit to get through that. And it was a. And we were, you know, when I, when we started getting into wine in the, in the 90s, you know, if a wine got a 94 or a perfect rating or something, the wine gets sold out in it. Within the day, the wine's all sold out. And I guess we were still thinking that that would be the case. And we got tremendous. You know, we had a, we had a perfect from Ran Silly Reveal Washington wines. He gave us a perfect rating in each wine in 07, 08 and 09. And it still took some hand selling to sell out of those. So I think that was a big learning. The biggest takeaway I take from that early is that we weren't prepared to. How much selling, hand selling, you have to do, regardless if you make beautiful wines that get highly rated.
- [24:45]
Kevin Gentry
And by the way, I'm going to, let me just say I, I'm a big fan. I got your 2010 in order to form a More Perfect Union. I love the title of it and the label, and it's perfect for our time and stuff. But I had, I served it for my birthday last year and it was phenomenal. And so that was really awesome. 2010, going to your first years. But then you have all these science ideas and your labels are, you know, qed, Occam's Razor, Principia. It's your, your personalities are coming out. But what are you most excited about? What are you most proud of?
- [25:21]
Billow Nerone
You know, certainly I think I'm proud of all, all of our wines, but there's a few that are, that are very, very special to me. I think our 2008 creative impulse, which is a Bordeaux blend from a vineyard in Yakima, to me, it absolutely hits every note of nuance and balance. Beautifully poised wine that is just aging so gracefully. You know, had a bottle not too, not too long ago and, you know, we are, what, 16 years in into that wine and it's still developing and improving. Right. So it's still on the upswing. So it probably has another three to four years to hit full maturity and then we'll probably hang out for, for 10, 15 years at that level and then start declining a bit. But that wine is, is, you know, when me and Pinto, we love, we love Bordeaux, we love Ruin Valley, we love Burgundy as well. So, so, you know, we're huge Francophiles and, and we're not, you know, unabashed to, to, to say that, but, you know, the, to make a great, great Bordeaux style wine. Of course, the terroir in Washington is different, you know, where there's no way we're going to be able to make a Mouton rush shield and have that beautiful terroir expression that Mouton has. But we kind of are able to look to those for inspiration and have studied the techniques of all of these amazing, amazing wineries. And we do bring that into house to kind of craft our own Bordeaux style. And with that 2008 creative impulse, I really firmly believe that we got everything that we wanted. And so here we have this wine that we made that we're having and have served in numerous times to our friends and collector friends and our customers side by side, along with the great first gross of Bordeaux and That wine deserves to be alongside with them. Right. So that's an extremely proud moment for me for pouring that 2008 creative impulse. And I would also. The other wines I'm proud of, I would say is wines from the 2010 and 11 vintage. And the reason I say that is because those were very stressful years in the vineyard as we had. It was cooler growing seasons than what Washington is typically used to. We had a lot of powdery mildew issues. We had botrytis set in in red wines, which is quite, quite unusual. So those years it was possible to make great wines and, and I think we certainly did. But it took a great deal of effort to do that and knowledge to do that. Right. A vintage like you recently, 2023 was a textbook vintage. Right. Honestly, you know, you'd have to try to mess it up. Right? So if in 2023 you did you as a winery make, you know, good to very good wines, at the very least, you might want to find a different profession. Right. Because that's about as easy as it gets. Now 2010 and 11 were quite the opposite right there. You had every, you know, I was just waiting for the locust plague to set into to see what the heck is happening. Like we had every, every thing negative have happen in those years and, and yet we were able to craft like that. 2010 Perfect Union you had, I think is one of, one of our stellar, stellar wines that's aging gracefully and beaut beautifully. But that year, me and Pinto, we really had to work to make that happen. Right? That's where the, the knowledge and the, not only scientific knowledge, but it is, you certainly have to have that. But it is really the, the amount of time and effort that we spent into honing our craft from a sensory perspective and on the winemaking side to really be able to make those wines that are that outstanding in those difficult vintages. So of course I am, I am very, very proud of those, those vintages as well.
- [29:23]
Pinto Nerone
And you know, I agree with you because I even said to Billow, because Billow was our winemaker at the time. I'm the winemaker now and I rely on Billow's expertise. So I have that going for me. But Billow made three perfectly rated wines in 0, 7, 8 and 9. And then 2000 comes along and I said, okay, this vintage is going to, you know, I believe that you are a great winemaker, but this, this vintage is going to tell me if you are or not because it was a hard vintage. And, and he, you, you, You've had the 2010 Perfect Union all across the board. Those wines were stellar. As so, so proud of Billow. He really. It's not just knowledge, but it is an understanding of because there's all. There's so much non linear connections that go on with the compounds in wine and you really have to have a deep understanding of it. And you have to also at the same time have a artistic sensibility to let the grapes speak in a healthy way and get the best wine out. And Billow has that. And to me, that 2000 vintage really solidified Billow as one of the best.
- [30:44]
Billow Nerone
2010. You said 2000.
- [30:47]
Pinto Nerone
Yeah, that 20002010 vintage really solidified Billow as in my mind, as one of the best winemakers in the world. The wines are fantastic. From a business side, it ended up being our most expensive vintage because we dropped about 65% of our fruit in the vineyard and then some more at the sorting table. And you know, you, you put it on paper on a business plan. So no matter what, we're going to make the best wines. So if we have to drop fruit, we have to drop fruit. But then you look at the, but the potential revenue loss and you still stick to your guns. I think that was, that was something Bill and I were staring at it like, are we insane? But we did the right thing because our, our wines are absolutely stellar. And, and I think it proved that Rasa deserves to be on the map when it comes to great wines.
- [31:41]
Kevin Gentry
Well, this is, this is great. I mean I'm learning a lot in this conversation and I hope our listeners are too. And I've got some now related questions.
- [31:49]
Pinto Nerone
So can I, Kevin, can I just jump in?
- [31:52]
Kevin Gentry
Go right ahead.
- [31:53]
Pinto Nerone
Just to put a final point, I agree with bill that the 2008 creative is probably my favorite wine. There's. There's a couple of other ones. Our philosoph is that there's good wine, there's bad wine, good wine, great wine. But what we're trying to hit, and I believe we make great wine consistently. But what we're trying to hit is transformational wine. And what that means is like it's an art form. When you listen to a great piece of music or you look at a great painting or you read a great poem and, and you're transformed into something, right? You're in a different state. And that's our holy grail of winemaking. We want to make a wine that is a transformative wine. And I think that 08 creative. And then there's a couple others that I think it's as close as we've come, and so I'm very proud of those wines.
- [32:51]
Kevin Gentry
Well, you anticipated where I was going, because transformation is the name of the game here. This is, after all, the Going Big podcast. I so appreciate this. Years ago, a boss of mine really suggested that I needed to learn wine because of the nature of my work and working with customers, and he was right. And it just so happened. As I mentioned, I met Brian Goethier at the Oakton Wine Shop, who told me about you. And he also told me about Jim Law in Virginia at Linden. And Jim is very much similar to you all, and he's just testing and experimenting and just trying to lift all boats and get people better. And I've learned so much from both of you all in your approach, and I really commend you for that. There's just so many other lessons, not just about wine in this conversation. Now, though, I'm going to bring this to the same point. You shared with me a couple days ago, a bottle that you're debuting very soon. It's your family name, Nerone, and beautiful label. What you're doing with the labels too, that's in and of itself, that could be another podcast, but I opened it up last night. My wife and I had some and then I invited Brian Goethier over because he introduced me to you all and helped me learn so much about wine and let him have some. I saved a little bit because I'm going to have some for this conversation. But he told me as he drank it that it was clearly some of the best wine that he had ever drank and was on par with Harlan and also some of the best Bordeaux. It was a bit of an epiphany too. You know, I don't feel like have a trained and mature palate, but I felt like the complexity of this and all the stuff going on, it's, it is amazing. And so for those of you who are listening and not as accustomed to wine, there's so much more ahead of you to learn and enjoy. But, but tell me about this wine as I enjoy it.
- [34:49]
Billow Nerone
Yeah, so this, the, you know, this, this certainly is one of, one of my favorites as well. Our, our 2021 Nerone. You know, we, you also kind of, I would say, push the boundaries, but I, I, I, I think that's a, that's, that's, that's close enough. It is. We, you know, there are all these amazing wines at the very, very high end of the price spectrum from, from Napa Valley, Screaming Eagle, Schrader, Harlan. And, and they are, they are fabulous wines, don't get me wrong. But they're, you know, pushing $2,000, 2,500 a bottle. It's Screaming Eagle, Harley, I believe is like seventeen hundred dollars a bottle now.
- [35:31]
Kevin Gentry
Now.
- [35:32]
Billow Nerone
And, and we've always have, I think out of all of the wines, we always, me and Pinto have loved Harlot. Right. It, it is, it is a wine that, that transcends price, quite honestly. Right. It is just, this is magical thing of beauty and just this, the experience it delivers on the palette, on the aromatics and the finish of that of, of those wines are, are simply breathtaking. So we wanted to set out to kind of have a wine at that level with that type of experience. And you know, Washington today doesn't have anything that is at that super, super luxury category at that $800 thousand dollar price point. And we're like, well, why doesn't it. We firmly believe in the quality that Washington can deliver, right. So we wanted to make this super, super luxury product that was no holds barred, going for the moon in terms of quality and everything that we can do to drive that. And you wine will be releasing in a couple months and it will be have a $800 price tag. You know, that certainly is going to raise some eyebrows here because most people in Washington don't know about this, that this is coming. Right? But they will now. Right, but, but it's gonna, I don't know. I, I told Pinto, I said, you know, this is, we're going to get some arrows on our backs from people like, what are you doing? Are you crazy? Or this, this or that. And, and you know, I, I said to Pinto, I said, well, none of them have tasted the wine yet, right? The wine speaks for itself. They can get that in front of them and taste that. The wine is undeniably gorgeous. It deserves a 100 point rating. It is a work of art at this point. It has transcended beverage to art. Right. And this is the way we view the winemaking at our reserve tier. This is not about, there is no formula for this. Right? We are not, not. And the reason I love wine making so much is that every year the grapes come into to the winery and me and Pinto were at the crush pad, literally tasting the grapes, tasting the stalks, and we are adjusting the winemaking protocol to best suit that lot of grapes that year. And we're so in a very real sense, we haven't made wine the same way twice. I think this is why we haven't gotten bored of it either.
- [37:54]
Kevin Gentry
Right.
- [37:54]
Billow Nerone
It's just this fabulous process. The grapes come in with these intrinsic characters. How are you going to best change the winemaking protocols that you're using to showcase those to the fullest? And there has to be this artistic stamp on. On. On the greatest wines. Right. You know, you're not making wines by the numbers, adding in this much titratable acidity and this and that and matching. Matching those profiles. It has to have that artistic stamp on it to make it compelling. And I really, really think with that 21 nerone, we knocked it out of the park. Unquestionably. Right. In Arabic. And. And we will only make the. The Nerone in. In a year that both me and Pinto feel we have 100 point wine. Right. We're never going to compromise on that. And I think I said to Pinto when I was tasting this up, I said, I thought we did it in 2021 for sure. Right. Here it is. And then p. Yeah, everything.
- [38:51]
Pinto Nerone
I agree with everything Billow said. And, you know, this. This wine kind of speaks to that third pillar of our business plan. Changing the local economic paradigm, lifting all boats. What we're saying with our $800 bottles, we're making a statement that Eastern Washington terroir is on par with the best terroirs in the world, and it needs to be respected as such. So we have a wine of a caliber that can compete with the Hollands and the Schraders and the Moutons or whatever. And so it needs to be priced appropriately. Now, pricing at 800 for Washington. I don't think there's any wine above 250 or 300, not that I know of. But this is a big statement. But it's a statement saying that we are not the bastard cousin of Napa Valley. We are on equal footing. We can make wines as compelling, if not more so, and we want to be respected. So the price represents that as well as the actual what's in the bottle, the beauty of the bottle.
- [39:58]
Billow Nerone
That's.
- [39:59]
Kevin Gentry
That's fantastic. You know, I've always been intrigued by value wines because wines from Chile and South Africa and even Portugal and even other parts of the United States are not at the same price point as Napa or Bordeaux, which produce great wines, granted. But, you know, the perceived value there is much greater than perhaps even the true subjective value. And so I'm glad to see that you all are rising up to where the subjective value is. And let me just say, this wine is spectacular. It was a real struggle for me to Keep a little bit to enjoy during our podcast today.
- [40:34]
Pinto Nerone
Thank you.
- [40:35]
Kevin Gentry
But it's really spectacular and I didn't know that I was going to be given the exclusivity to announcing this news through the podcast when it comes out out. So all the, all the better. Ladies and gentlemen, Rasa Rasa Winery. Check it out online. By the way, your website is great too and I love that you have an aging chart to help anytime. Remind me when the wine is right at its perfection. All right, I got a couple of wrap up questions. We had a conversation a few months ago about principled entrepreneurship a little bit. I'd had Andreas Widmer on from the Catholic University of America talking about Art Sioka who developed box wine, really brought wine to the masses. But his whole idea of principled entrepreneurship where everybody is a, is a winner. You all look to ways to raise money for different causes. You have your the Humane label. Tell us a little bit about that, why you do it, what your thoughts are there.
- [41:34]
Pinto Nerone
You know, there's a saying, a philosophy that gets played out. You'll see it a lot in politics, which is, you know, we don't want to give money to other countries until we have so many problems in our own country. So a saying is, you know, let's take care of our house first before you take care of something else. In other words, keep your U.S. dollars in the U.S. now, I could respect that viewpoint, but my feeling, my personal feeling is that the way I take care of my house is in part to take care of someone else. That is part of what I do as a human. So we decided that we don't want to wait billow and I, you know, Rasa Vineyards is still carrying a lot of debt and we struggle like any small business does. And we could say, whoa, whoa, let's just use all this money to lower our debt first and get out of our own pain and then give. And we could do that, but we could keep doing that and keep putting it off. But that doesn't fulfill us. You know, what fulfills us is saying, yeah, we may be struggling this and that, but we're going to do what's right. We're going to give to causes that we believe in. So we created our 2018 humane. It was the first year that our vintage had fruit. So the first year we, to celebrate the fact that this is our, our, our estate fruit, we created a bottle called humane and, and 70% of the gross sales go to charities. And in three years, the three vintages that we've done it we raised a little over a hundred thousand dollars to, to give away and you know, we give away to Alzheimer's foundation, cancer, teen suicide prevention, you know, domestic abuse situation. So you, and we wanted a global feel to this. So what we do is we get an artist from a different country every year. So the first year was this woman from Durban, South Africa and she created this beautiful label. So most of the money we keep in the United States and give away, but we gave to, we gave money she wanted. Domestic abuse was a big issue in South Africa, especially with Postco. So we gave money to lawyers against domestic abuse in South Africa at which I still continue to give on a personal level. And then next year it was a, a South Korean artist and, and you know, like she had a thing where there's a, there's still a stigma against single mothers in South Korea where so the, so the kids, the, the kids don't get the education or they don't get the nutrition. So we donate to a charity that helps out single mothers. So then we have one in Taiwan and the latest one that'll come out this year, I mean, I'm sorry, that just came out in December is from an Israeli, Jewish, Israeli artist. And the ones we're getting ready to bottle now for next year is a Peruvian artist. And the idea is that every year we'll continue to give a little money to these, these countries while most of the money stays here. And it's just to say that the world is a community and yes, take care of yourselves. No question, make money, take care of yourselves, enjoy life. I'm not against any of that. But all along you should be giving.
- [45:06]
Kevin Gentry
That's very nice. That's awesome. Well, one challenge question for you and then two wrap up questions. Artificial intelligence, what. How is that going to affect your business, the industry? I will say ahead of this podcast I asked Claude, I said for the next going big podcast episode, I'm going to be interviewing Pinto and Bellow, Nerone from Arasa and Walla Walla. What question should I ask? And it was amazing. Said, you know, they are known for their scientific approach. You know, you should ask them about this, this and again helped influence some of the questions. Oh, that did get something wrong. It said because you were working on the central coast, so I don't know where that came from. But, but what effect does artificial intelligence have in terms of your industry do you think going forward?
- [46:03]
Billow Nerone
You know, I think, I think the, and the, the innovations that are, are going to come and we see some of the, on the Technology side is. Is. Has to do with grape harvesters, you know, so we're able to. Labor is going to be a big issue, right? With the migrant labor force in vineyards. We see this already being a challenge, starting to be a challenge here in Washington. The move towards mechanization in the, in the vineyards is. Is going to happen, right? This is, you know, already happened in Australia, New Zealand, all these other places, right? So it's inevitable that it happens here. Now the technology is improving so much that with of AI, you can, you know, selectively harvest the grapes and then eject the ones that have any disease on them or mildew pressure or things like that or that are, you know, are less than perfect. You can sort on. The harvester has a sorting bin and optical scanners that you can put on there and have at the end of the harvest, as you pick them, you have very, very clean grapes coming in. So we already are seeing some of that technology there. I think AI, there's been some talk about the tank monitorings during fermentation and stuff like that. There is some software that's available now already. I think that's only going to get better with the use of AI technology. That is, you can, as a winemaker, say, okay, I want this temperature profile curve on the fermentations, and here's what I want to follow. And then the software can essentially track that for you and make sure it's cooling and warming up things at the right time to achieve that fermentation curve. So I think that's going to be a pretty interesting use of that. One other aspect of technology which I don't think will be quite as successful is they're also looking at, well, what, what constitutes a great wine, right? And using this electronic nose, so to speak, to try to identify what are the characteristics in a great, great wine and try to use that to. To maybe assist in the blending process to achieve that. Now, that's an interesting goal, but the. I don't think it will be successful, at least not. Not in the near term, is that to date we've only have identified 10% of the chemical compounds in. In wine. Wine is an extremely complex media in terms of all of these little chemicals that are running around. They're morphing into other chemicals and combining and splitting and things like that. It is. It is literally. I mean, the way I explain to people is it is literally, you know, an order of magnitude more complex human blood, right? So if you think of what your body does and transferring all the stuff all over, shuttling things all over your body and what it has to do. Wine as a medium is, is 10 times more complex than that. And we've only identified, you know, like I said, less than 10% of the compounds that we know of in wine. 90% of it is still unknown. So, you know, maybe AI helps us to map that out. I'm not sure. But that task of using AI to craft these perfect wines, while this has been proposed, I think is still a bit it out in the future. I don't think that's an impact in the next 10 years or so. But those are the three key areas that I see.
- [49:26]
Kevin Gentry
Well, well, you know, my wife and I mostly. My wife prepares usually two or three nights a week, a Blue Apron meal, one of the food delivery meals. It just works well for our lifestyle. And I would try to figure out the wine pairing, and a year or so ago, it would be like, you know, Sauvignon Blanc. That's would be the answer. I. We prepared, let's see, salmon with everything. Bagel, spices, and a cream sauce with dill. And I said, what kind of wine would it go well with? And it said was more specific. I asked Claude, and it said, you know, a Chablis style Chardonnay, A couple other different things. And I said, well, what specifically. What about the Linden, the one I mentioned in Virginia? Linden, 2017 Village Chardonnay, which I thought might fit the category. And it says, excellent choice. The minerality there will fit perfectly. And it does is more of a. An unoaked Chablis, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It was amazing, Just amazing. I mean, and we felt like the pairing was perfect. The salmon was better and the wine was better for the pairing. It's crazy, just crazy. All right, let's close out. I have two final questions. One is, you started Raza when you were 40. Looking back at your younger self, what would you advise that younger self to have done differently?
- [50:50]
Pinto Nerone
To start sooner.
- [50:53]
Kevin Gentry
Amen. That's a great answer.
- [50:55]
Pinto Nerone
Yeah. And certainly I would advise myself start sooner, but also go slower. Like I said, we grew a little too quick and we took on a little too much debt. I would certainly, from a business perspective, would not have taken on that much, much debt. And it, it did help us propel to grow a little bit, but at the same time, now it's holding us back. So, you know, so. And we're dealing with clearing that, that plate. So. So I would, I would say a little more. You know, I've always been a dreamer, always been an Entrepreneur. I started my first company in 93 focusing on wide area connectivity. And I, I wish, I wish for me, my younger self, I wish that I would tell him, have the confidence, have the confidence that you will have in the upcoming years, but have the confidence earlier. For me, confidence was a hard fought thing that I ended up getting in my late 20s and just to be the opposite. Billow was always a confident kid as far as I could tell. And that's something I've always admired about him for me was something I had to strive to get. And I would have told my younger self to say, you have everything, you, you have everything to be a great person and just believe in yourself and go, yeah.
- [52:24]
Billow Nerone
And I think, yeah, kind of the same thing that, that, that Pinto said. I think, I think I wish we had started it a little bit earlier as well. You know, we're Indian descent, right? Or we're born in India. We have a very, very conservative. And I joke with my customer, I says, you know, as far as any good Indian parent, you know, there's only, only two or three acceptable career paths in life, right? Winemaking is not one of them, right? You can be a doctor, you can be a lawyer, you still could be a scientist, engineer, that's perfectly fine. But a winemaker, hell no. Right? So, but you know, so, you know, so we were strongly guided down this technical path, you know, as kids. You know, dad was always like, go study your math, go study your math. You know, me and Pinto, we wound up in math and computer science, electro engineering. It just happened, that happened to be really good at that stuff, right? So it was fine in one sense, the jobs that we got, you know, Pinto start his own business. I worked for some companies, Oracle and Netscape and things like that in Silicon Valley. And it was fine, it paid the bills, you know, made a good living, all of that stuff. But we quickly found out, you know, I remember having a discussion with Pinto in mid-20s, 24. So I was 24, he was 26. As a, you know, I said we are, you know, such, such science geek, right? I said we have no creative outlets in our life. It's like, what the heck you, we, we do this and we're working and we're learning all this and no creative outlets. And as a kid I love to draw and really want to play piano. And, and, and my dad was always like, quit dinking around with this art stuff. You can't make a liv living at it. Go study your math, right? That was always, always kind of the answer. So at 24, you know, I was my roommate at that time. I came home from work one day and there's a upright piano in the living room. I'm like, his name's Peter. I said, peter, what the hell is this doing here? All of a sudden we had this piano in our apartment. And so I started learning piano at 24 or so and largely self taught. I was traveling a lot as a consultant, so I would stay at hotels that had pianos and go play in the lobby and all that stuff. So I love piano so much, I still play it. Mostly classical stuff. And Pinto, you know, he doesn't talk about it, but he, you know, he's a writer, so he writes fiction and all that stuff. And I think after a few years of doing this art stuff, you know, we're joking, like, hey, we're pretty good at art stuff too. There's no reason to pigeonhole us as science geeks, right? We can do this stuff. And this winery is very much born out of that need to create, Right. Like I alluded to earlier, yes, there is this science component in grape growing and wine making, all that, you know, absolutely true that you need that foundation, but you also need to have that artistic sensibilities and that artistic stamp on things to really make the wines be compelling. And this is what, what I absolutely love, love about wine. And I just wish we had found it sooner. That's what I would tell my younger self that.
- [55:29]
Pinto Nerone
Right?
- [55:30]
Kevin Gentry
Great advice, Great advice. All right, well, this is the final question to close us out. This is the Going Big podcast. What would you say to folks listening at any age about how they think of continuing to live a life full of purpose and meaning, as you all have? How would you encourage them, inspire them to think big and go big? I'll let you choose who gets to go first.
- [55:56]
Billow Nerone
Okay. Yeah. What I would say is, is, you know, we found our way to wine and the winery and all this stuff. And so it's one is to do what you absolutely love. And I don't care what that is. Find whatever, whatever you are passionate about and try to make that your profession, right? Because I think when you do that, what we found is that inherent joy of that. That is, even though, yes, wine making is a lot of work and this and that, but every day we wake up enthusiastic about what we're doing, right? And 16, 17 years into this, not a day has gone by, not one day day has gone by where I've woken up and said, oh, my goodness, I wish I was back in tech. Right? Never Happened. Right. And so to finding the joy in doing what you love absolutely every day. And you know, the money will come.
- [56:52]
Pinto Nerone
Right.
- [56:52]
Billow Nerone
That's. That's not the prime goal. But you want to live every day fulfilled with that joy of what you love to do. Right. And I think that that's what I would leave people with. And it doesn't matter what your age. You know, we found our way to the. The winery, you know, at 40ish years old. Could have been sooner. Yeah. You know, but if somebody's, you know, wanting to do something like that, if they're 50 or my age, 56 now. Right. You know, please get to it. The time is. Time is ticking. Right. So, you know, you can't waste. Waste another day doing things that you do not like to do. Right. So.
- [57:25]
Pinto Nerone
Yeah.
- [57:25]
Kevin Gentry
That's awesome, Bill. All right, Pinto, you get the final word.
- [57:29]
Pinto Nerone
Yeah. You know, my answer is that there's a couple of things. One is failure. Failure is not a bad thing. You shouldn't be afraid of failure, and you should not be held back because of failure. Failure is how you grow. When Mike, I have three children, when they were growing up, every day when I pick them up from school, one of my questions was, what did you get wrong today? And they would proudly say, I didn't get anything wrong. I said, so did you not learn? If you got everything right, there's just verification that you know your stuff, but you haven't grown, you haven't learned something. So there's nothing wrong. You embrace failure, but the other thing is fight your inertia. You know, part of the failure is you may have a fear of failure, you may have a fear of success, you may have a fear of, I'm not perfect. You know this. You know, if you want to write, oh, I can't write like Dostoevsky, so what's the point? No, get out there there and do it. You know, baby steps is better than just getting mired in inertia. Billow's right. Time is precious and it's ticking, so figure out what you want to do and do it well.
- [58:41]
Kevin Gentry
Billow and Pinto, this has been a delightful conversation and enjoyable. Thank you for giving your time. Thank you for producing great wine. Thank you for having us to just think bigger and go bigger, too. It's a great inspiration. Looking forward to hearing how the wine debuts in April. Ladies and gentlemen, Rosso Vineyards. Check it out. You'll love it. Guys, thank you so much. Really appreciate what you do.
- [59:05]
Pinto Nerone
Kevin, thank you. Thank you very much for having us.
- [59:07]
Billow Nerone
Thank you.
- [59:08]
Kevin Gentry
Thanks for tuning in to the Going Big Podcast. I hope today's conversation left you feeling energized and ready to tackle your biggest goals. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps spread the word and it gets these inspiring stories out to more people. You can also find more content, resources and updates at our website, goingbigpodcast.com Remember, the only limits are the ones you don't challenge, the limits that you impose on yourself. Keep pushing, keep growing, and above all, keep Going big. See you next time on the Going Big Podcast.