← Going Big! with Kevin Gentry
Going Big! with Kevin Gentry
🎙️ Going Big with Jim Law: A Vineyard, a Vision, and the Virtue of Patience
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Your message amplified.
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Ready to share your message with the world? Start your podcast Journey with Podbean. Podbean. Podbean. PodBean.
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Podbean. The AI powered All in one podcast platform.
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Thousands of businesses and enterprises trust Podbean to launch their podcasts.
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Launch your podcast on PodBean today.
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My school uses Podbean.
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My church too. I love it. I really do. You have to know what the goal is. And the goal. If you want to make great wine, you have to taste great wine. You have to taste benchmarks. I mean, how, how can you, how can you make great wine if you don't know what it tastes like? Unfortunately, today the wine prices have gone way up for the high top. I'm talking top tier wines. Unfortunately, when I started they were expensive, but you know, we could do it. That's why we have tasting groups that buy an expensive bottle and, you know, get six people together or more to taste it. But you have to do that and you have to taste the great wines to understand what the goal is. And that's. That's difficult.
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Welcome to the Going Big Podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Gentry and this is the place where we 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 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 life. 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, welcome ladies and gentlemen. A real treat today on the Going Big podcast is a look at Virginia wine. Jim Law is a pioneer in Virginia wine. He has driven tremendous innovation since his start. He is a trailblazer, particularly the way he approaches a more terrard driven sort of anti intervention approach, has been a role model, frankly for a lot of other wineries in Virginia and in the mid Atlantic and maybe the east coast and has gained him a reputation in across the country. And it's such a treat whether you really are interested in wine or would just like to understand some of these going big business practices. He might challenge the going Big notion, but I would say he has. And I think you'll have a lot of fun today in this conversation, Jim. And by the way, we'll talk about how you've influenced so many other winemakers. As well. But let's get started. You saw something in Virginia. I mean, Thomas Jefferson tried wine, and he couldn't make it work. But around 1981, you came out here and you saw something. What did you see that others hadn't seen?
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I'm not sure it's that others hadn't seen it. In fact, I was influenced by Barbersville.
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Okay.
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They were already in business down around Charlottesville. Yep. An Italian operation. And they. They were. They were going big. I mean, for. Even today, they're going big, but that's a different story. That's a different scale. But I saw if the Italians were investing. This was a big wine family, Italian wine family, invested in Virginia and a German operation not too far away from there. And I thought, well, if they're doing some good things, there's some possibility there. And I was especially infatuated by the mountains, the high elevation, and the potential for the soils. So when I decided whether to go east coast or west coast, I decided east coast because it was, to me, much more interesting, and I felt more of a pioneer.
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Well, I love the way that you look for stuff that's interesting. I want to dive into that a bit. But tell us a little bit about. More about the Blue Ridge Mountains. You chose a higher elevation site, a former apple orchard. I happen to have grown up not too far from here. When we tried to garden, I felt like we were just gardening rocks.
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Yep, that's good.
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So tell us about that. Why did you choose this particular site?
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Well, the first, you know, 40 some years ago, what I knew was important is elevation. And the reason is it's cooler. And I cut my teeth on European wines, especially Chardonnay's from Burgundy, which is a cooler climate than Virginia. I wanted to emulate that style. And I found that it was a little hot in Virginia. So I thought, well, how can I make this happen? And that's simply to go up in elevation. So when I started looking for my own site, I came here in 1981. I was hired by an old Italian gentleman to help start the winery and expand the vineyards. And that was in the Shenandoah Valley. So.
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But it being an old apple orchard, you had to clear a lot of land, I guess.
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Well, that. That operation was somewhere else. Okay. Yeah. And so I was working there, and I thought, this is great. I love Virginia. I'm going to stay here. But the high elevation aspect didn't exist in the Shenandoah Valley.
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Right.
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So I know I needed to go up to the Blue Ridge. So I looked for Land for a couple years before I found this place.
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And you're facing east. Is that a big deal too?
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Yeah, it's cooler. A west slope and a slope are a lot hotter.
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Got it.
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East slope is cooler. So even though nobody was talking about climate change at that point, I still knew that to get the style of wine that I wanted to grow, I needed to be cool for Virginia.
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So how did you address some of the skepticism in the early days? You know, it's funny, people get notions about wine in particular.
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You know, it has to be French.
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Or it has to be now Californian.
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Or what have you.
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Virginia is a top five wine state. California, Washington, Oregon, I guess in New York has been around and then Virginia. And how did you kind of address the obstacles that were there or were there?
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Oh, there certainly were. But I guess, you know, when, when you're young and you're naive and you're focused, you just go and do it and figure it's all going to work out somehow. And so that's what I did. I, I, I'm mostly interested in the farming aspect. That's what I love.
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You are a farmer?
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Yeah. I mean, after I've been doing this, this will be my vintage. And the thing I love most is not so much the seller, it's the, the vineyard. That's where I spend my days.
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Just tell us a little bit more about that. What, why do you like it? Is it just the life cycle during.
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The year and yeah, it's hard to explain, but when, when that farming bug gets in anybody, it just, you just can't live without it. You're just uncomfortable doing anything else. And it's, it's just like I'm growing a cover crop grass called Sudan grass right now. I've never grown it before, and it was recommended for this new field that we're going to get ready. So I sewed it down just a few weeks ago. It popped right up. It's growing like crazy. And it's just so exciting to me. I drive into that field every day and just see how the Sudan grass. It sounds weird, but that's funny.
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Yeah.
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So it doesn't matter whether it's grapes or not. It's just, I, I, I started farming seriously in Peace Corps, in Africa, in Congo. And so that's where I learned that I love perennial crops. And at that point it was coffee and cocoa. And for some reason that I gravitated to those crops.
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Why?
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I don't know, but that's what I found fascinating.
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Wow. Okay. Well, before we get more into the wine. Now you've got me intrigued. Tell us a little bit about the journey from the Peace Corps in the Congo to the Blue Ridge Mountains.
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Yeah, well, okay, I'm. And two years I was in this small village in, in Congo and teaching agriculture and doing practical work.
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And were you trained in agriculture?
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I was trained at Michigan State in tropical agriculture by, by the peace.
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Okay, gotcha. Okay.
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So I decided that. Okay, what's next? And I also grew up drinking wine. I lived in Europe for a while and was exposed to that aspect of the, of, of food and wine. So I said, when I go back to the States, I'm going to go back to Ohio, where I'm from, and see what's going on there with the industry. And I got a job with a small family operation to find out if I loved the work. I knew I loved the product of wine and I knew I love farming, but do I love farming grapes and do I love the, the wine making? And it didn't take long to figure that out, that that was my calling. So I, I learned I was what was called a seller rat. And a seller rat is somebody who just cleans barrels and does the grunt work, picks rocks or whatever. And I was happy as a clam.
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Nice, nice. Well, you mentioned a calling, and I gotta say that is a dominant theme that comes out of these going big interviews that I've had. People feel like they've found their gift, they found their calling, they found their contribution. So you had some element of calling. Did you have a vision for wine or, or a vineyard or great wine?
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No, I didn't. At that time in Ohio, I knew I needed to go to one of the coasts though. And the reason was that the wine style that I like was European styled wines. And in Ohio, they weren't interested in that. They wanted sweeter wines. And so the east coast is where there would be a market for what I was doing. Remember, this is a long time ago, right? I mean, people hadn't heard of most of the grapes that we grow now. And, and the wine styles.
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Well, you mentioned how tastes change, and we'll get to that in a minute too, which is. And they're changing in an accelerating pace. But so you have produced about what, 4,000 cases?
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Yeah, it might be a little less than that now.
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That sounds like a lot. But then in the big picture, it's not that much your focus really on a great product. And that's what has always intrigued me. And that's why I think you have gone big so you sort of kept it small, but go big in terms of the quality, the experimentation. Tell us a little bit about that.
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Well, one thing I found is that we use a European model. Again, in the way the company is organized. I say company, there's just a handful of us, so we grow all our own grapes, and everybody does the same work. In other words, during the summer, when we were doing canopy work, we're all out there doing that work, and then we're getting ready for bottling and crush, we're all doing that work. So that's what keeps everybody connected with things. And we found if we got big meaning in scale, I wouldn't be doing that work. I'd be behind a computer screen. And I realized that early on, and I realized that's if I want to do what I want to do, then I have to keep small so that I can do it, not just direct other people.
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So is that kind of the. The sort of farmer in you. You can just, you know, from the soils to the plantings to the springtime to the rains to, you know, what's going on. And, I mean. And, you know, pretty much every step along the way, is that important? Is that tied to.
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It's absolutely critical. The I. For many years, I've done apprentice programs where I. I select somebody for two years to work here. And they usually know nothing to start with, but they have a passion. So what I do is take them through. They do the same thing, working in the vineyards, working in the cellar. But the first year, everything's coming at you new, and you don't really. You haven't put it together. And then the second year, you start understanding. So this soil, we planted Cabernet there, but we probably shouldn't have. That was a mistake. And why is a mistake? Well, look at. The vines are growing too much, and they're not ripening the grapes, and then you taste the wine, say, ooh, that wine is a little green and not so good. And then. Then it starts clicking. And so the same thing happened with me, that you can't force a wine to be good because if it's not grown on the right soil, and then you have to make the right big decisions of pulling it out if you made a mistake. And we made a lot of mistakes.
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Well, I love the attitude you have about experimentation. And, you know, I interviewed these two guys from Walla Walla Billow and Pinto Naravone, and they. They do a lot of experimentation, and. And I think they've driven up the quality of the wine. In that region. And I think that's why part of your reputation is that's what you've done in Virginia as well. But you sort of see yourself more as a wine grower than a wine maker.
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Yeah.
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Help us understand that distinction.
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Well, wine growers simply focus more on the vineyard and understanding what we call soil vine relationship and understanding how the vintage unfolds. Like, we're having a very different vintage this year, meaning the growing season is very different than it's been the previous two vintages. And so we're having to reshuffle and rethink how we're managing the vineyard. And that's. That. That can be a little trying. But the whole idea with a wine grower is you do everything you can to bring in what we call balanced grape. And balance means that it. It has just the right. Excuse me, Just the right sugar, just the right acidity, the right flavor that you. You're able to do that so that when it hits the crush pad and we're starting to make wine, you don't have to do anything. You don't have to manipulate it, you don't have to change it. You don't have to add anything, because it's all right there. And so that's. That's what a wine grower does. A winemaker might say, well, it's okay. It's not quite right, but I can fix it in the mix.
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Ah, okay.
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And I don't know. I don't even know how to do that. So if. If I went to another wine.
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You're the wine maker here?
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Well, I've been the wine, officially the winemaker until 2017. And then one of my former apprentices, Jonathan Weber, I asked him to on and become winemaker because we really work and think together. Well, and so he understands. And what a wine grower does that is also a winemaker. I mean, somebody makes the wine, is that you have to not have an ego, because you have to understand that it's all about what happens in the vineyard. It's not about what you do. There's a French saying, it's called, which depends on how you translate, means don't mess up. And that's the whole thing with winemaking at this level, is you just don't make a mistake. And you don't. The wine will show what it needs to show because of the vintage or because of the place.
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So maybe that's why farmers have so much humility. They know that it's not them. They're really working.
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When you work with the weather. You have humility because, you know things will happen out of your control, and it's just a given.
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Wow. Well, you mentioned. So I mentioned I grew up near here in Culpepper, and we just had a little bit of lamb, but we had a clay area that was just really not good for anything. I thought felt others were more fertile. Just even within that little couple few acres, you have three different properties that you are growing wine. You have the one here, which is, I guess, because of the rocks.
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Yeah. Well, and also, it's called. This is a region. This little micro place is called Hardscrabble. It was called Hardscrabble 100 years ago.
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By the farmers who were trying to do it.
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Right. Yeah. This land, we're right on the Blue Ridge. And, you know, you go east, and it's Middleburg with really rich soils and very prosperous farms. And you go west, you're in the Shenandoah Valley with good producing farms, and they're doing well. But up here, it was always poor. Yeah, makes sense. Because of the soils and the slopes and the rocks and been draining down for billions of years. Eroded, hard, scrabble soils.
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All right, so you have two other properties that you draw from. Why is that important? Do they produce distinctive things? Do you mix them? How does that work?
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Well, what we're trying to do is understand our place. The French term is terroir, which loosely translated means the taste of the place, the taste of the farm, not just the soil, but the microclimate. So in the wine, because that's what drew me to Virginia, is that it was what I call virgin terroir. Nobody knew. And when you think about it, in most wine growing regions, they've been growing grapes for not just hundreds, but thousands of years. They know they've dialed it in, which is really cool. And you're making great wines that way. But there's very few places in the world where you can start from scratch and be the first one to sort of. It's like going to the moon. I mean, there's. There's no way that anybody else can do that. But when you can do that in a virgin sight, you're going to learn some things and you're going to explore and you're going to go where nobody's gone before. Fascinating.
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All right, so now I'm really beginning to appreciate this. Okay. Because you're experimenting, you're a farmer, and you're trying to have the wine express the place. The place. All right. I don't know why it's Taking me so long to understand.
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Well, I mean, you think about it. You talk about Virginia wine or Washington state wine. That's a big place, but it's a place. The wine is categorized by the place. We're trying to get really small and understand our specific little corner of Virginia and what the wine can do, what it tastes like.
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What's been your most interesting discovery about the Virginia terroir here on the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains?
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The thing that I wish I would have understood much earlier, but that's part of the journey, is that it's a little technical. It's called soil vine relationship, and it's called water holding capacity in the soil. Okay.
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Because clay does not hold water, right?
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It does hold water. It does hold well, but then it depends on what kind of clay. So it gets. So basically, let's take two grapes that most people know, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Your message amplified. Ready to share your message with the world?
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Launch your podcast on PodBean today. They grow both of those in Bordeaux, but on one side of the river, Merlot makes exceptional wines and is grown in large quantities. And the other side of the river, they don't grow as much Merlot. They grow mostly Cabernet Sauvignon. The climate's the same. The difference is the soil and the difference is the soil water holding capacity. Merlot holds more water. I'm sorry, the soils, they're more clay based soils that have more water. And Merlot needs to have water all the time, just a little bit to do, well, Cabernet, if it has a lot of water, it grows too much and makes lousy wine. Whereas on the other side of the river, it's Cabernet Sauvignon, which is a very droughty soil. It's on the gravel and it, it, it's the vine can't go too vigorous and it's in good balance. So what we found here is we planted Cabernet Sauvignon on all the wrong soils on more clay, until we found out it does much better on granite, which is more rocky soil without a lot of. Of clay or water holding capacity. And that made A huge difference. So now the Cabernets are beautiful, but when we started, they weren't. Weren't so beautiful.
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Okay. So we have, with these expressions, you know, you and I were talking earlier about a Pinot Noir is very thin skinned. And we have that expression that somebody can be very thin skinned, very sensitive. Deep roots. Deep roots are good. Do you want the vines going down looking for water?
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Like everything, it sort of depends if the soil allows it. But if they get too deep and too happy, then the vines are too big and they. It doesn't give you the best wine. It really depends on the grape variety, the wine style, the intention. But we find that some of our best Cabernet is on actually thinner soil and the roots can't go that deep.
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Interesting. So we have a crazy climate, especially in Virginia. The summer we've had these really hot nights. A lot of rain this year. And some of these other places, they can control some of the irrigation more. Like in. Like in the Walla Walla area, they don't get any rain, so they just. They irrigate.
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Yeah.
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How do you deal with.
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Well, B.C. that's, that's. That gets back to. In this case, with water, it gets back to the soil that we. When we look at when in Washington state, they will irrigate and it's easy. They just vines in a little water, turn it on, no problem. That's not the way it works here. We don't irrigate. We don't need to irrigate, but what we have to do is evacuate the water. In other words, we have to have good drainage in ways that the water from the rain will evacuate either roll off the hill or roll through the percolate, through the ground and out. So that's why the gravelly soils in Bordeaux are better for Cabernet. That doesn't like a lot of water. And the clays are better for Merlot. And that's what we've learned over. Over time.
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The.
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With. It's a hard concept to understand, but we do get a lot of rain here, and that's why we have to learn from other places that get a lot of rain. So that's why I continuously visit Burgundy and Bordeaux and Alsace and places that are more cloudy, more humid, rainier climates, because they have understood these kind of relationships. I first started going out to the west coast in my early days, but I realized there's nothing to learn here because we're different. And as soon as I went to Europe, it was like, oh, man, now I get it now I get it.
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Wow. Okay. So what would Virginia lose if growers focus more on just growing a lot of grapes and not touching into the terroir as much?
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There's a place for that. I mean, when you do what we do with the. The labor and the intensity and the lower yields, the wine's going to be expensive. So not everybody can afford on a daily basis, the drink, that kind of wine. I. I get that. It's more a special occasion, a special wine. So there's not a problem. I don't have a problem with large, larger production to make the wine more affordable. The wines usually aren't as expressive, but that's true with. With anything you spend money on. There's different levels. So in Virginia, terroir expression will diminish if you have a high production site. You know, some. Some soils will give you large yields, and some will give you meager yields, but the ones that give you meager yields are the ones that will make the most concentrated, intense wines.
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All right, so looking back over 40 years of doing this, what would you advise to other emerging wine spots in the country? It just seems like everybody, they're growing wine everywhere. I've heard Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Idaho, and Michigan has been going on for a while. Yeah, maybe every state I know, the Eastern shore of Virginia has wine.
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I'm sure.
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So what would you recommend to those who are starting or emerging based on what you've learned about this?
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Well, first of all, you can build all these emerging regions now have a fledgling industry, so you can learn from others initially what shows promise and what doesn't. But the other. The thing I always tell people is develop a palate. In other words, you taste wines constantly and taste them seriously. You don't just open a bottle and have it with dinner, which is great, but we have tasting groups. We taste. Technically, we taste, taste, taste in order to develop our palette to understand balance and acidity and what it takes to make a great wine. And if you don't have that, then you're kind of winging it.
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Well, I just love that you have this intellectual curiosity, this desire for continuous improvement, the experimentation. Love that. Love that you are really values based. You're. You're trying to just get this. This right. What do you advise these who've apprenticed with you? What are. What are you teaching them? Are you teaching them beyond just how the soil works and how to grow the grapes? What else are you doing?
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It's a lifestyle. And one of the questions I ask is, what do you envision your Typical day in for the rest of your life. Working life. So in. In your work, what would be a typical day? And usually it's about, oh, yeah, I'm spending time out in the vineyard and doing pruning and all and checking on the wines and everything. I say, okay, that's me too. But you've got to be small to do that. You got to be focused, because if you get big, you're not going to do that. And I have seen a lot of them go and get big and not do that and then regret it later. So.
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Well, I still maintain you've gone big by keeping it small and keeping it.
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Yeah. I mean, for us, our. The driving force for everybody that works here is to make better wine. And we taste, taste, taste, taste. That's. It's not to make more wine. It's make better wine because we know we can make better wine. And that comes from our experience when there's vintages that are weird, meaning the weather is that we. We have confidence now because. Well, yeah, that kind of reminds me of 2016 or remember in 1991? Yeah, it was kind of like that. And what we did. And we have a library going back to 1987, our first vintage. And what I mean by library is we have bottlings from each vintage. So if this.
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Try to keep wine like some forever.
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Oh, Yeah, I got 87, 88, 89. And the one of the reasons is, is that, yeah, this kind of reminds me of 1991. Go. Okay, let's pull in 1991. Pop the cork. See what happened.
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Research library.
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And to be honest with you, most of those wines are well over the hill now.
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Gotcha.
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But you can still learn from it. You can learn the. You can still taste the balance, and you can taste the intention. So in, like, more recently, we had some Sauvignon. We're kind of focused on Sauvignon Blanc. That's the first to harvest. Within six weeks, we'll be harvesting Sauvignon Blanc. So we're. We need to open past vintages that are similar to this vintage to see how they've evolved and what conversation in.
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The end of July. So you're talking about generally, what Labor Day is when it starts? Yeah.
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Well, with climate change, we never know anymore. It's gotten a lot earlier, which I'm not thrilled about. We used to be mid September. I'd love to go back to mid September with the start. And the sweet spot for us is around equinox, which is the 20th of September. The nights get Cool. The days are sunny, the humidity drops. I always say if you're.
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B
It's time to be in Virginia.
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Oh, yeah. No, if you're harvesting, if you're starting harvest and we start right at sunup with. And you're wearing a T shirt, that's probably not a good thing. You need to have a sweatshirt on. It needs to be chilly because you get, you get better aromas, better flavors, better colors. If your grapes are ripening, chili rather than warm.
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And then you're. What thickest skin reds you harvest last.
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In October, hopefully October. Still October. Yeah.
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And you're hoping there's not a late season hurricane that dumps a lot of water and, oh, my gosh, the farmer's life.
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Yeah, well, there's always a potential for hurricanes, of course, but they can happen in August, September, October, even November.
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Yeah, amazing. And then sometimes now we get these early springs and then another late freeze, and that can zap your buds. And.
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Yeah, that's. And that's the biggest in this region. The biggest concern with climate change is fluctuations, huge variabilities, and that's. Farmers don't like surprises. Right? We don't like to. We want to. You know, April should be like this and May should be like this, and everything's good, but makes sense. Too hot, too cold, too dry, too wet. That's. That's never good.
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B
Well, given your whole track record, your experience, what do you hope for the future of Virginia winemakers?
- [30:20]
A
Well, the, the one thing that I'm, I'm really seeing more and more is people really going out and finding a great site to plant. And we understand what that is now, whereas we didn't. When I started, I, I, in a way, I got lucky, but I was looking for certain things that I knew were important, certain in choosing this site. But now there's much more focus on, on soils, on elevation, on aspect, you know, north, south, east, west. And that's. That's the most encouraging thing. And that's why I see the, the quality will. Will keep improving.
- [30:57]
B
Well, I met your daughter Samantha earlier, actually met her a couple years ago at one of the dinners that you all had in Great Falls, I think at La Berge Chez Francois, and which is great that you do these dinners and things, and I'll comment on some of that as we wrap up. But what do you hope for her and even maybe her young children in terms of the.
- [31:18]
A
Yeah, there's.
- [31:18]
B
They.
- [31:19]
A
She and her husband joined the business a year and a half ago now, and they're building a house here. On the farm. And the hope is that they'll take this, this same idea and go with it further. Make better wine. I mean, that's, that's the whole motto. Make better wine. With climate change we're having, it's my. My love is Chardonnay. And that's what one of our best wines. And I'm just worried that in the future we'll start getting too warm for Chardonnay. So we, we've been. We have an experimental vineyard where we have 20 some different varieties, a lot of them from warmer climates to see how they'll do in our new climate.
- [32:02]
B
You train some like Italian grapes. Yeah.
- [32:04]
A
The one that's showed really well is called Fiano. It's a white grape from the southern Italy.
- [32:11]
B
Okay.
- [32:12]
A
And it's done really well. And we just placed an order for a thousand vines. We have, we have now a dozen vines and that's all we need to plant just to see how they do. But the next level will be a thousand vines. That's enough to make a couple barrels down the road, and then we'll see how. I'm hopeful for that. That maintains good acidity and it's resistant to any rains that come late season. So love this.
- [32:38]
B
You know, when you're a vegetable grower, you can plant in the spring and harvest in the fall, but you've really got to wait a while to really see the product of your.
- [32:46]
A
Oh, yeah. I mean, we, we planted this experimental vineyard about, I'm not sure, six, eight years ago. Piano shown really well. Jonathan Weber and I went to Abellino in the little villages in. In Italy where it was grown to talk to the growers there to get a better insight. We decided, yes, we're ready to pull the plug, but we have to get a field ready. That's where I have that grass. And it took two years to get that ready. Plus, we have to order the vines now for planting. We're in 2025 now. This is for spring of 2027. And then it'll take three years plus to start getting production. So you can do the math. Then we have to make the wine and age the wine so well, farmers.
- [33:33]
B
Have to have humility and patience. That's for.
- [33:35]
A
Yeah, but you have to, you have to love the process. Yeah. To us, the process is much more interesting.
- [33:41]
B
That's. You know, my dad was that way. I know he was disappointed I didn't have that same interest. But now I'm appreciating it all the more because he clearly had that love for it that you do. So wrapping up, looking back, what you've now learned over these years, looking at a younger version of yourself, considering a younger version of yourself, what would you tell that younger self to do any differently? Start growing sooner, Experiment more?
- [34:06]
A
No, I would say the one thing I lived and studied in Europe, but it wasn't farming when I was younger. It was actually economics. So when I came, the one thing I would tell myself is, before you start setting too many roots here, go to Europe, start working for wineries and vineyards, and understand that. Because I would have been. I would have shaved maybe 20 years of learning curve off if I would have known then when I started. But that's the one thing that I wish I would have understood so much of that.
- [34:48]
B
Well, I have two last questions, and this is in the going big category. You're a modest guy, and I know you said you didn't have that big vision, but I still argue you've gone big by your approach, and there's a lot to learn from that. What advice would you give to. We'll say wine growers, but really anybody who wants to focus on an uncompromising view of quality, because that's, that's the key you have, as you say, you're trying to make better wine.
- [35:18]
A
Yeah.
- [35:19]
B
What words of wisdom, what encouragement would you offer?
- [35:24]
A
You have to know what the goal is. And the goal. If you want to make great wine, you have to taste great wine. You have to taste benchmarks. I mean, how, how can you, how can you make great wine if you don't know what it tastes like? Unfortunately, today, the wine prices have gone way up for the high. Top, Top. I'm talking top tier wines. Unfortunately, when I started, they were expensive, but, you know, we could do it. We. That's why we have tasting groups that buy an expensive bottle and, you know, get six people together or more to taste it. But you have to do that and you have to taste the great wines to understand what the goal is. And that's. That's difficult because of the. The money, but it has to be done.
- [36:08]
B
Wow. All right, so final question for anybody listening, wherever they might have interest in wine and whether they want to be a wine grower or even a farmer, what advice would you give personally about following your gift and thinking about living a life where you're really trying to pursue the same kind of objectives you have?
- [36:30]
A
I think that too many times people get sort of involved in the material end, in the money end, and that's the advantage I have. Having been a Peace Corps volunteer, I Understood. You can live a great life and you don't need material goods. So if you can keep away from that profit motive, I mean, you have to make money because we are a for profit organization, but you don't have to make a lot of money. And so you don't have to. You don't have that. That thing to push you as much, and you can be comfortable with it.
- [37:09]
B
Well, then you're getting a lot of personal value out of the sense that you are creating great value. That's how I'm reading it.
- [37:18]
A
Yeah. No, the. The thing that makes me happiest is when I taste my wines alongside the great wines and realize that I'm in the ballpark.
- [37:27]
B
Yep. Yep.
- [37:28]
A
Yeah.
- [37:29]
B
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I strongly recommend Lyndon. Years ago, a friend of mine who's in the wine business, I said I'd like to learn about Virginia wine, is to go to Linden. And we did. And my wife and I have been here many times, and we haven't been in many other places, although there are now hundreds of winery in Virginia. No offense to all the others, but it's. This is good. You need to make a reservation. They're not always open. I'm not always convinced. You want to sell a whole lot of wine. You want to make great wine. And it's. It's just awesome. It's always. I've learned so much from you and been inspired by you. Thank you, Jim. Thanks for the time to speak today.
- [38:00]
A
Thank you, Kevin. Thanks for. For coming. Obviously, we're here at Linden. You can see the barrels.
- [38:05]
B
Well, looking forward to many, many more years of great wine and great product and enjoying the stuff that you've made 10 or 20 years ago.
- [38:12]
A
Yeah, we do. We hold a library with older vintages that we share every once in a while with with people who come in. I just like to open them up and see how they're doing. So, yeah, especially somebody has a birthday or an anniversary, I say, what year were you born?
- [38:28]
B
Exactly.
- [38:29]
A
And we have that much wine now where that older wine where you can say, well, what year were you born? Well, let me see if I got that vintage.
- [38:36]
B
Well, I've got a couple bottles of 2007, 2009 hardscrabble. And it's a great wine. It's a really great wine.
- [38:43]
A
Really good finishes.
- [38:44]
B
Yeah. Yeah. I hate to. I hate to part with any of them.
- [38:47]
A
What do you do? That's wine is meant to be consumed.
- [38:50]
B
Exactly. All right. Thank you again. This is terrific.
- [38:53]
A
Thank you.
- [38:53]
B
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.