the Pavle Milić show
Pavle Milic has spent 40+ years in the hospitality business — co-founding FnB restaurant in Scottsdale, building Los Milics Vineyards across three Arizona tasting rooms, and writing about wine for Phoenix Magazine for the past decade. Now he's pulling up a chair with people from well outside his own world and seeing where the conversation goes.
If you have any questions or ideas for an upcoming show, and if you would like to be a guest on the show, email psst@pavlemilic.com
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the Pavle Milić show
015: Jim Duane of Inside Winemaking Podcast and Seavey Vineyards
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Picture this: a bustling restaurant in Scottsdale, Arizona, where a chance encounter sets the stage for a journey into the world of winemaking. From co-owning a restaurant to founding Los Milics Vineyards in Southern Arizona, I share my story of transformation and the serendipitous beginnings that launched a career fueled by passion and dedication. Guided by mentors like Todd Bostock and inspired by Jim Duane's Inside Winemaking Podcast, my path was shaped by both education and experience, leading to profound personal and professional growth.
Jim Duane is a seasoned winemaker with a unique journey that began in the unlikely setting of Salt Lake City, Utah. Despite not growing up in a wine-centric culture, Jim's early curiosity led him to explore the art of winemaking, initially through homebrewing beer and wine kits during his teenage years. His passion for the craft was further fueled by his academic pursuits at UC Davis, where he honed his skills in viticulture and enology.
As we explore Jim's career journey, we'll venture from the vineyards of New Zealand to the storied cellars of Napa Valley. Each chapter of his life offers a unique lesson in the art and science of winemaking. From the technical skills honed at Stag's Leap Wine Cellars to the hands-on challenges embraced at Seavey Vineyard, every phase has been pivotal. Throughout, he's navigated career transitions with perseverance, learning to adapt and thrive in a constantly evolving industry.
In this episode, you will hear:
- Serendipitous encounters and mentorship shaping a winemaking career.
- Experiences in New Zealand's wine industry and learning diverse winemaking skills.
- Career growth through internships and roles at Robert Mondavi Winery and Stag's Leap Wine Cellars.
- Exploration of Seavey Vineyard's history and the transition to head winemaker.
- Emphasis on diverse paths to winemaking and the importance of passion and education.
Resources from this Episode
https://www.insidewinemaking.com/about
https://www.chensuchartstudio.com
https://www.seaveyvineyard.com
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Episode Credits
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know we sent you.
Welcome to Wine World, the podcast that takes you from vineyard to glass. Each episode, your host Pumplin Milllich, winemaker, restaurateur, and columnist explores wine grape growing, winemaking, and wine and food pairings, focusing on Arizona and beyond. Join us as we visit vineyards, chat with restaurateurs, and meet the pioneers behind top wineries. Whether you're a wine enthusiast or curious about starting your own winery, Wineworld offers the perfect blend of education and entertainment. Pour yourself a glass and tune in to discover the stories behind the bottle.
SPEAKER_03Now let me explain. Back in December of 2017, I was waiting tables at FMB in Scottsdale, Arizona. For those of you who may not be familiar, FMB is a restaurant I co-own with my incredible business partner, Charlene Batman. Charlene's the gifted chef who won the 2019 James Beard Award for Best Chef in the Southwest. Honestly, I can dedicate an entire episode to her culinary magic, inexhaustible work ethic, and generosity of spirit. But I'll save that for another day. Our restaurant became a platform to showcase Arizona through the lens of food and wine, and it opened up a world of enriching relationships with the state's farmers, artisans, and wine growers. At that time, I already launched my wine label Los Miliques working with the talents of Todd and Kelly Bastak of Dos Cabezas Wineworks. But truth be told, I wasn't a like a true blue winemaker. I was more of a guy who loved wine and had enough knowledge and tasting experience to sound like I knew what I was doing. One night, while working at FMB, a table of six guests changed everything. Among them was a couple I recognized who ordered a bottle of Los Milix Oliver's Rob Lent. Halfway through dinner, one of their friends asked me a question. What do you want to do when you grow up? I joked about buying five acres in southern Arizona someday, using an old basket press and aging gracefully outdoors. At the end of the meal, the man next to her handed me his card and said, If you'd like to pursue that dream a little sooner, give me a call. I'd like to be your business partner. Fast forward seven years and probably a book's worth of stories, and Los Milix Vineyards is now firmly rooted in the Sonoita Elgin AVA of Southern Arizona. We've got a stunning tasting room designed by Chen Suchar Studio, nine guest suites overlooking the vineyard, and the majestic and iconic Mustang Mountains as the backdrop. Our estate spans 20 acres with 12 acres under vine. We also farm another 50 acres in Elfrida, which I named Jenny's Vineyard after my grandmother Jenny, and by sheer serendipity, is also my business partner Mo's grandmother's name. Los Milix Vineyards wouldn't have been possible without an amazing team, from the Vineyard Quadrilla to the seller team, from marketing to hospitality, and the unshakable support of my business partner Mo Gar Finkel. But here's the thing, when this opportunity landed on my lap, I almost turned it down. Despite rubbing elbows with winemaking friends like the Dale Borchard of Nyer's Vineyards and Mike Salachi at Opus One back in the early 2000s in Napa, and collaborating with Todd and Kelly here in Arizona, I never made wine myself. I knew fermentation basics and could talk the talk, but I didn't have hands-on experience. Thankfully, Todd agreed to mentor me and over the years, many Arizona winemakers and even colleagues from Napa answer my calls. Which brings me to Jim Duane and the Insight Winemaking podcast. Seven years ago, when I first Googled how to make wine, searching for instructional videos, I stumbled across Jim's podcast. Listening to his interviews felt like finding a mentor in my earbuds. He brought winemakers, scientists, and experts to the mic, breaking down everything from lenticular filtering to fermentation science. It was a lifeline for someone like me, hungry to learn the craft. So you can imagine how surreal it was to meet Jim in person during a recent trip to Napa. We walked the stunning hills of CV Vineyard in Cumbe Valley, where he is the winemaker, catching our breath from both the steep climbs and the breathtaking views of Lake Hennessy. Today's episode is a glimpse into that moment, just a slice of that conversation we shared. So grab your headphones, settle in, and let Jim and me take you into our world of wine. Cheers, everybody. So, Jim, first and foremost, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with me today. Let's start at the beginning, my kind sir. How did you uh enter the world of wine? I took a bit of an unusual path.
SPEAKER_01As we were talking before, a lot of people, I think more common for people to find wine working in restaurants and first being exposed to it there, especially like someone like me. I grew up in Utah, I didn't grow up in a culture of wine. But I was very sort of very fortunate to find out young, and it was kind of a weird path. But I started out by making wine before I even knew that I liked wine. So I started out uh making beer because being a teenager in high school in Salt Lake City, the only way to get beer is to make your own. So I started that, and well, I didn't necessarily love the beer that I made, too much flavor, and it was not the not the cheap beer that I was used to drinking. I loved the process. I just thought it was magical. You use the word alchemy, and I think that's right on. Like I've gone on to study wine for all of my career. So I understand it a bit more, but still, it's still magical. It still doesn't even make sense that grapes turn into wine. Like there's too much of a chasm in between, but at least learned or accepted that that's a beautiful part of the art. And so to answer your question, I started making beer, and then that kind of led to making little kits of wine. And Jim, how old are you? Uh, this was yeah, me leaving high school, so 16, 17 years old. Still having not tasted wine, like the first wine I tasted was a wine I made, a Riesling back in 1997, which actually came out pretty good. And how did you make the jump from beer to wine? After making the beer, I went back to the homebrew shop and the wine kits were one of the options that they had there. And it was appealing because it was a little bit more simple than beer. There was just less of a process, you know, preparing all the hops and anyway, less steps. And I was like, okay, I'll try this. And I liked the final wine a lot better than I liked the beer. But then at some point along the way, and thinking about what was happening, I was, of course, thinking about where did the grapes come from? What did the vineyard look like? What are the important things in a vineyard? And it led me to actually just go to the library to start learning about vineyards and grape growing. And it just ignited something I think that I had latent within me. And the sort of the back of my brain was like, I always knew that I didn't know it, but like I love plants. I'm a plant nerd. And when you're young and you're a boy, you don't go around telling everyone you're a plant nerd. That's not really a uh great conversation starter. But it was there. And once I realized that, okay, this wine thing is associated with agriculture. And it's not just associated with agriculture, but it is seasonal. You make wine once a year because you have all that year's growth going into this, your fruit that you're working with. I just, it tugged on every sort of interest string within my body and my brain. And I thought, okay, I'm going to at least pursue this a little bit further and learn about it more. Start, I found a little winery in Salt Lake City that I was able to work with. And by day two of being out there with the vines, I was like, if if I can find a way to do this as a job, like this is all I ever wanted to do.
SPEAKER_03And this is sold before college. This is before college, right. So how did that, the proclivity or the interests lead you to what you were going to select pertaining to a college trajectory?
SPEAKER_01So I ended up, so I was working in a restaurant, University Park Hotel. I was in the Porter House Grill, which actually didn't, it was going through this like reconstruction. They didn't have Porter House that summer. It was this funny little awkward place. But there was a guy that came in and ordered a glass of wine once because it was uh it was like a tourist hotel, like people coming through town. So people were more knowledgeable about wine. This guy came in and ordered a glass of some wine. Remember, it was a Fetzer. And I took the bottle home at the end of the night. And I ended up writing, you know, I found an email address. This was probably the first email I ever sent because it's 1997. And I I got a response from some of the winemakers at Fetzer. It was Paul Dolan and there was another guy, Bob Blue. And I said, I'm interested in this as a career. Like, is this something I could do being a kid from Utah? And they both wrote back and they kind of laid out this plan of like, yeah, you can do this. You can either go out to a region, California, Washington, Oregon, and go work, or you can take the more educational route. And you can go to a place like UC Davis or Fresno State, some sort of a university program to learn it. And as I was going into university, that was like, that was already a trajectory that I was on. So I ended up going to school up in Washington, in Gozak University out in Spokane, Washington, in the eastern side of the state, and realized that I could study some, you know, chemistry and biology, some of these things that are ancillary to winemaking, the building blocks for it. But I always knew that I needed to come to California to study. And so I had my sight set on going to UC Davis, uh University of California, Davis, and studying winemaking. So I kind of I remember day one of college, I was signed up to be a business major. And as soon as my parents left, I went in and changed my major from business to biology so that I could study, you know, all the biology, the chemistry, some plant physiology that would then like lead me on a path so I could go to UC Davis one day. It just wasn't logistically feasible to move my whole life to California at that point in time.
SPEAKER_03So during your college career, were you able to work at a winery at the same time, concurrently?
SPEAKER_01Kind of. So there was a winery there, Arborcrest Wine Cellars, which was I could ride my bike from the campus to the winery, so it was close enough. And they had a job once posted for like a like a harvest analogist. You know, it was gonna be like a lab job. And I was so excited that I ran out and applied. I ended up not getting the job. And the worst interview ever, because I was so nervous and it just didn't go well. And I didn't get the job and I was brokenhearted, but I wanted to work there. So I just wrote them back and said, okay, I understand I don't get this job. Can I come out and work for free? You don't have to pay me, but I really want to learn. And uh Winemacer was super cool and said there and just let they actually did pay me. They didn't want to get in trouble with the Department of Labor and all that, but I basically just cleaned, but allowed me to be in the winery. I basically stood at the end of the distemmer and just wiped it down every five minutes. It was like the most useless job you could have in a winery, but I was enthralled because I was at a vantage point where I could see everything that was happening and I could ask questions of the winemaker. So it was kind of like a job, but very little responsibility. Like they didn't need me there. They were they threw me a bone that answered the question for me. Because every time I got further into wine, it was a question of like, is this what I want to do, go forward, or change course? And every time I had that experience, it was this is it. Let's go forward, let's learn more, let's keep pulling on this string.
SPEAKER_03So at every sort of itty-bitty step you were taking, it was actually reiterating the fact that you are truly still interested in this endeavor. So you graduate with your degree in biology. What happens next, Jim?
SPEAKER_01So I was still thinking and on track to go to UC Davis for like a two-year master's degree. At that age, at 22 years old, I couldn't stomach the thought of two more years of school, of sitting in a chair, of lectures, of homework. And, you know, now I was at Gonzaga University. I got a degree in biology, but it's a liberal arts school. So I was having to take philosophy and religion and all these things that I'm sure they were good to learn, but I was frustrated about not learning the specific things that I wanted to learn. I wanted to learn plant physiology, I wanted to learn chemistry and microbiology. You know, I wanted to learn about wine. And so even with this idea of like, okay, I'm going to go to California and go to school, I couldn't sit. When I was 22, it was an opportunity. So I went to New Zealand for a year and I just worked. And it was about not being on my butt. It was about being on my feet, working. I knew that I could have adventure being in New Zealand. And that's what it was. I went and had a great time. I worked for a year in New Zealand in the vineyards and the winery.
SPEAKER_03For those people that, let's say, wanted to replicate your adventure in New Zealand, Jim, when you were 22, how were you able to find out about number one, job openings? And number two, what does it look like for an American to go to New Zealand in relation to, you know, getting employment or being there legally?
SPEAKER_01It was a slog. I had no connections, right? I don't know anyone in the industry. And I was just sending out cold emails to wineries all over New Zealand. And it was just one. There was a couple that wrote me back and said, good luck, but Montana Wines, which okay, so it's Montana Wines in New Zealand. In the US, that brand is Brancotta State because they can't have Montana's estate, so they can't have that overlap. And Brancotta State was this big vineyard and big uh winery, one of the biggest players in New Zealand at the time. They literally had a sandwich board outside of the winery on the run up to harvest. We'll hire anyone, hiring for all shifts. I didn't know that at the time, but like they would have hired anyone. So they were like, as long as you can get a work visa, which I finally figured out how to do, you can come and work. And so I And as an American, is that a hard lift? Or is it just a lot of paperwork? It was a hard lift then because I had to find a company to do a visa. I had to find a winery. Now, with I mean, there's on Facebook, there are groups like traveling winemakers of the world where these it's really easy to find these internships. That didn't exist back then. So it was a lot of just trying to figure it out on my own. It was very frustrating. Or even figuring out where to live, Jim. Right. Just think of back to being 22 and you don't know how dumb you are, and you're just overconfident. And but that was enough to I was like, I know if I go to a place, stay in a hostel, try and find a place, and that all worked out. But it was just it's kind of like it's solved one problem at a time. Get a job, get a visa, get there, find the place. And I just that's how I saw it. It's just like one problem at a time. You can do it if you have the the desire. Did you work at Brancott only? So I worked in the vineyard, Brancot Estate for about nine months. Okay. So I was just a vineyard laborer. Oh wow. And they, you know, I was kind of a novelty. They never had a guy from from America come out that just wanted to work in vineyards. They had Australians that were passing through that just needed work and things like that. So they kind of took me, the vineyard manager, John Argyll, kind of took me under his wing because he, when he was young, he had gone to England. You know, he was a young Kiwi that went to England. And so he kind of had this experience. So he took me under his wing and he could see that I had this this desire to learn. And they used to make fun of me because a lot of my work was uh putting the irrigation brakes back together.
SPEAKER_02Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_01But I had this habit of wrapping the irrigation lines around the lifting wires. So when they went to lift the wires for the canopy, they were stuck under the irrigation wire. So I probably did as much like negative work as they did like actual helpful work, but they were super great. I love being out there. I mean, and again, like I'm not on my butt. Okay, I'll tell you a story. So the first week, my first day I get there, and they're like, okay, well, you're on this crew. We are developing this new block. Right now, we're just picking rocks. Like we had the tractor go through, the rocks are at the surface. We just need to move the rocks out of the way. And so for one week, all I did was lift and carry boulders from the vineyard to the perimeter. And I remember thinking, like, three months ago, I was in biochemistry. I was doing, you know, high-level biology and chemistry. And like, I was kind of at the top of my game. I thought I was at the top of my game. I was very in my head and learning, and now I'm moving rocks. I wouldn't need to go to preschool to be able to do this job. So I was not like, am I doing this right? Is this like this is not a like well-thought-out career plan, but I loved it. And I was on my feet and it felt good and it felt right. And I knew that, like, okay, I can go back to school and do a couple more years because like this is me getting to use my bed body kinetically, which I needed to do at that age.
SPEAKER_03Nine months on the vineyard making life's work difficult. Were you able to get some work in the cellar?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So then I rolled into the winery for the harvest of 2002 and worked at the the Brancot Estate winery there, which was a big production facility. I mean, New Zealand is still doesn't have a whole lot of domestic markets, not a big domestic market. So it's a big export market. So they do a lot of Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay. And the facility where I was actually did a lot of sparkling wines for a brand called Lindauer. So it was a lot of whites. And I kind of had this job, they called it my Homer Simpson job, where I was at this console and the trucks would back up because it was machine-picked fruit, and they would dump, you know, the whole truckload 20 tons at a time, and it would fall into this giant hopper. You would duck because a wave of juice would like hit the bottom of the hopper and flow over you. And then I was, you know, I just pushed buttons to run the crusher and the pumps to send, you know, must to all different tanks. Wow. But it literally was just at the console pushing buttons. So it was cool. I love being all around it all. But I think, and I advise for anyone trying to learn winemaking, trying to have a good first experience. It's a lot better to go to a small winery. You're just gonna learn a lot more. Where you're able to do many different things.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. When did you figure out, Jim, that it was time to come back home? Was that all based on your visa, or yeah, or did you get hungry for some really good burgers?
SPEAKER_01What I missed most being in New Zealand for a year was Mexican food. I there is no Mexican food at all in New Zealand.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01I had a lot of great Indian food and you know, some other things that were sort of like more a part of their culture, like uh fried abalone, pot callpaua, but Mexican food and my visa running out is what brought me back to the States. And back to Utah? So went back to Washington State, picked up my then girlfriend, now wife, and we drove down to California in July. And our I had to drive down, it was 105 degrees when we got to California. I had to have the heater on full on my little Nissan Sentra so the radiator wouldn't overheat. And that was my introduction to California. We got to UC Davis, and the town of Davis was 110 degrees that day. And I thought my girlfriend was gonna like, she told me she's like, I just want to go back to Washington. I don't think this is gonna work. But thankfully she stayed. And then, yeah, then two years of of studying winemaking at UC Davis, which was then great because then I was studying what I wanted to study, and it felt practical, it felt real, it felt like I was going down a path, like actually making progress.
SPEAKER_03So at UC Davis, are you still encouraged to have a job concurring in the wine industry while you're learning? Or is there a practical practical element to it or old theory?
SPEAKER_01They really want you to focus, especially with the master's degree, it's just two years, so you need to focus. But I did work that harvest because I had to have money. I didn't have, you know, didn't I made some money in New Zealand, but I also spent a lot of money on beer New Zealand. And so I needed a job. So I worked at RH Phillips in the harvest of 2002. Doing what? I was a grape sampler. It was this huge 1300-acre ranch. And so I just drove around ATVs doing grape sampling and then some lab work. And again, it was like I was frustrated because I was at this big winery, so I wasn't able to talk to winemakers, and but I was I was at a winery, so it felt right.
SPEAKER_03So it was just as long as you were in the in the environment, you felt as though you were making some progress.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. And and you know, and it was wake up at five in the morning, go out to the grape sampling, be back by 9 a.m., 10 a.m. so I could do classes.
SPEAKER_03What does it look like once you you are getting close to obviously graduating? Safe to assume that if you have a degree, a master's from UC Davis, that doors open easier for you in terms of looking for employment. What was your first foray real gig, if you will, where you're not just doing the uni task?
SPEAKER_01I think Paul, maybe you're a good one to understand this because I'm sure you've worked with people coming out of culinary school and people that just start working at the kitchen. You kind of start in the same place. Just because you have a degree doesn't mean you're, you know, in higher in the hierarchy, at least in most restaurants, you still have to prove your metal. You still have to be reliable and you have to do the work. I had a little bit of a leg up coming out of UC Davis. Maybe there were a few more opportunities, but all the opportunities were harvest internships. No one was hiring a full-time worker out of school. And so I just know that whatever internship that I was going to take, I had to do really well and try and prove my own because some people like the idea of having the degree, the course of study, and some people, especially people who didn't do themselves, you know, some people actually look down on it, like they prefer people who just work their way through. So I ended up working with at Robert Mundavi Winery in Oakville in Napa in 2004 for that person. It's an interesting year to work in Mundavi. Yeah. Did the Constellation I was there as this intern just totally under the radar, watching this kind of hostile takeover from, you know, Robert Mundavi was a publicly held company then, but it was run by the family. And then Constellation is obviously this gigantic corporation, very bureaucratic. And uh they came in and you know, I just got to watch this. Like, I loved the winery. Mondavi was this funny place where I've never worked at a place since then where people loved working so much. Like I when they started doing layoffs, which they did right away, like I wondered if some people were just gonna keep coming in because people loved that place. Like Robert Mandavi, I think, is the architect, but he built this culture that like it was a wonderful place to work. Why? I think people felt now in retrospect. Mondavi, Robert Mandavi is obviously a leader in the industry in California, in Napa. And so I think people liked being close to that important person, that important winery, which is really critical to you know Napa becoming recognized on a world stage for wine quality. And that's something that Robert Mandabi should, you know, deserves. A lot of credit for. And he wasn't necessarily a winemaker. He was a salesman, but he was someone that pounded the pavement relentlessly, telling the story of the quality of Napa, being, you know, he we used to say, like, our wines in Napa deserve a place on the same table as the great estates from Bordeaux. And I think he just repeated that over and over, going all through the country and really just one by one educating people on Napa wine such that then he's kind of this patriarch of this place. And so people were excited to be close to that this, you know, at this important historical winery. And we had Toklone. People don't talk about Toklone, didn't talk about Tokelone as much within the Mondavi family as like Tokone is famous now. But he just happened to pick a vineyard that's one of the most spectacular vineyards in all of the United States. How long were you there? A few months. Okay. I was just a harvest intern, and then by February, I had taken a job at Stagsleep Wine Cellar as an immunologist. How did that happen? I was looking for a job. I was getting real nervous because harvest ends and I still needed to pay rent. So I was out just trying to meet people. And, you know, 24 years old, so not good at networking, like I blumbering my way through it. But I met Nikki Proce, who was the winemaker at Stagsleap Wine Cellars, and she told me she was happened to be looking for to fill an analogist position. So I did the interviews, ended up getting the job. And that's Stag's Leap is really where I learned to make wine. So I was there for seven years. And to me, that was like the perfect complement to the education from college, you know, both the prerequisites, sort of the early education at Gonzaga, but then at UC Davis studying vitical germinalogy, but then being in the winery every day. And you know, it's a it was about a hundred thousand case winery at the time. So we're working with a lot of different vineyards, making, you know, a good portfolio of wine. So it was just the perfect way to have all this experience. It was fantastic. So it was really what you were or had been looking for all along. Yeah, absolutely. In retrospect, if I could go back, I would really try harder to find experiences at small wineries. But that just, you know, it is what it is.
SPEAKER_03And after your tenure as Stax Leap, what happened next, Jim?
SPEAKER_01I had the opportunity to come to CB in 2011. And it was a big shift. And I wasn't sure I wanted to make this shift because while it was an opportunity to be the winemaker, to be in charge. And at that point, I felt competent about my technical skills. But I I was I had a desk job as Stax Leap. Like I managed all the work orders and I, you know, worked with the cellar master who ran the crew. But I wasn't working any equipment. I never ran a pump. I never drove a forklift. I was really just sort of doing logistics of winemaking, which I loved. It was fun and there was plenty of work to do. But coming to CV, I was scared because CV is this this small winery. It's just one estate, it's just one vineyard, and I was going to be the only guy. There's no other people working in the winery, so I was going to be alone, not just alone, but having to do all the work, which I faked my way through during the interview. But I I didn't know how to do anything. I didn't know how to run a pump. I didn't know how to top.
SPEAKER_03Wait, hold on a second. So we we have to talk a little more about that. Yeah. You had a pretty good technical understanding of winemaking. You as Tax Leap were more of a managerial logistics role. But while you were a Stax Leap, you never stepped foot into like you didn't have to wash bins, you didn't have to move any the okay. So when you came to interview here, some questions are you have experience obviously in winemaking, you've been a stax lead for seven years. Where did you start trying to saying, yes, I know? And the back of your head, you're saying, and I have to figure this out.
SPEAKER_01I knew how to run a pump just because I hadn't done it. I was around it every day. As I'm interviewing, I'm of course, then going to the cellar and like asking, like, you know, the nitty-gritty questions, like, show me this, show me that. In retrospect, it wasn't that big of a leap. It wasn't that big of a jump. Yeah, I had to learn to drive a forklift, but that just takes some practice. Um, but I knew the important things of protecting wine from oxygen, being gentle on wine, when a wine is vulnerable, like, and I understood the integration of chemistry and doing all the analysis with winemaking, and I understood the cycles. So it was really just learning the equipment, which I just kind of faked my way through and then had this big hope that I would learn it. But also, one of the reasons I was really interested to come out to CB is kind of a hybrid vineyard and winemaking role. In coming out here, those were the questions that the CB family was asking me. What is your experience running a vineyard? They had a vineyard manager. It's the position entails a lot of viticulture, technical, you know, planning and vineyard development and understanding how to respond in the season. And so I had a fair bit of that because Stagsleep was working with so many different vineyards, and that role did get me out to vineyards all over the uh the valley. And my boss was really great about teaching me everything she knew about vineyards and how to assess grapes in different vineyards. And so I had a bit more kind of a leg up on viticulture. And I think that's probably what enticed me. And I assume the CVs were just like, well, he's worked in wineries for all these years. I'm sure he can do winemaking stuff, which anyone can do with a little bit of practice, to be honest.
SPEAKER_03So this is the first time that I've been to CV. And he goes without saying it's it's bucolic, it's an amazing property. Uh, so for those folks that are not familiar with the CV brand and what all you all still hear, tell us more about the property and where it's located and what you guys focus on. So bucolic is a great word.
SPEAKER_01We also talk about this place as being rustic. I think that's kind of the main. If one word were to embody the brand and what this this winery is, this winery and vineyard estate, it's rustic. This is driving out here from the main arteries of Napa Valley, coming out 10 minutes east into the hills. We're in in Conn Valley, which is kind of equivalent with St. Helena and Napa Valley, but then we're 10 minutes out into the eastern hills. It's oak forest. And so it's almost like traveling back to a previous century. Yes, we have electricity, but barely. It's going on all the time. And it's quiet. There's not a lot of people out here. There's um, you know, the vineyards are all hillside, which informs the wines that we make. So the CV family purchased this property in 1979, and there hadn't been any grapes since Prohibition. But previously, this property had been the Franco-Swiss wine cellars from 1880 up until Prohibition, early 1920s. Like so many brands, Prohibition killed the brand. And so this ranch had been horse and cattle from the 1920s until the Seaves started planting some grapes in the 80s. So Bill Seavie had he had a relationship with Christian Wex. So Bill Seavie was a lawyer and he helped Christian when he was buying the property that is now Dominus in Knappe Valley. He helped him with some legal work. And so he was always picking Christian's brain. And I think that kind of ignited this interest. So when he had this opportunity to buy this ranch, which is 200 acres out in Conn Valley, he was excited to grow grapes. He didn't, you know, his background was nothing agricultural. It was Bill and Mary Seavy. Bill was finishing his career as a lawyer. They had five children who were high school and college at that point in time, so going off to do their own thing. But they started like so many brands doing Napa, started growing grapes in the 80s, started with Chardonnay, which is kind of an odd variety given the where we are in St. Helena. It's more a Cabernet and big red territory because of the heat that we get. But in experimenting with Cabernet, we realized that like that's the ideal grape. That's what's best suited here. And then little by little planting the hillsides with Cabernet Sauvignon, such that by 1990, Bill felt it was time to start the CB brand. And so CB Vineyard as a wine brand was begun in 1990. And so we have these old barns from the previous century had been restored to house winery.
SPEAKER_03And thank you so much, by the way, for sharing the wines. Uh freaking delicious. And I'll go into more detail on that when I do a little bit of intro. Do you guys have a tasting room here on site? Are you open to the public? How does one come to visit?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so we are open to the public and we love hosting people. I mean, it's this beautiful site where one of the things that's nice about visiting CB Vineyard is yes, we have great wines, and that's because we have just this fantastic vineyard site that allows us to make great Cabernet. We try to get people to come out here because you're under these giant oak trees. It's very different from some of the more opulent places, wineries you might visit in uh the main part of Napa Valley. This is really a throwback. Like I said, it feels like you're going back to a previous century. And so it has this kind of rustic charm. And that's, you know, comes through in our tasting room. Because of where we are, where we can only host so many people per year. So we do have to have people make appointments, but we encourage people to come out. We hear the same thing when people come onto the property. It's the same thing every time. They get out of the car and they say, Wow, I had no idea this was out here. And then so it's a great start for us because they're kind of sort of charmed by the natural beauty. And then we have great hospitality and the wines kind of speak for themselves. So they're we're big, making big structured Cabernets. That's what we're known for, especially long-lived, long-aged Cabernets. So they're a bit tough, especially when they're young. And for that reason, we tend to pour older vintages. Like today, when we were tasting, we had the 119, then a couple 18s, and a 16 Cabernet. Whereas the 2021 is the current release, we tend not to pour the younger wines because it's just you get a better experience by having the wines with at least uh five years of age.
SPEAKER_03So I would definitely encourage anyone that's visiting wine country, if you want a non-Highway 29 or Silver Adatrol experience, and they want to be in a place that really it's not only unique, it's it's beautiful. And the wines are amazing for sure. Come this way. Jim, I wanna I want to change gears a little bit, if you don't mind. I came to know of CV, not because of CV, but because of your podcast. And as a newbie winemaker, your podcast was like a gift from the heavens. I started listening to it, I want to say now, Jesus, seven years. I've been listening to Inside Winemaking. So I want to unpack that a little bit and pull on that thread. Podcast anymore, I think they're pervasive in the side guys. People know what they are. I know I started one 12 years ago where people still had no idea what they were. What led you to start podcasting, Jim?
SPEAKER_01For me, it was kind of out of necessity. So I came from Stag Sleep Wine Cellars, uh, about a hundred different employees from the vineyard to production to hospitality and administration to CV, which was I see one or two people a day and I spend most of my day alone, which may tell you all you need to know about me, because I'm comfortable with that. But I I missed a lot of the not just talking to people, but the technical interaction. Stagzleep wine cellars was by the time I had left, was a part of St. Michelle Wine Estates. It was part of the partly owned by the Antonori family from Italy. And so it was kind of this nexus point of winemakers coming in from all over Italy, all over Washington, Oregon, California. And so it was this great technical repository. And I loved that. And then coming out here to Seavie, all of a sudden, door was slammed shut. I'm on my own. I'm either in the cave six months of the year by myself or out in the vineyard. I was really trying to find a way to have a continued, like professional conversation about winemaking. And you know, you can call up people and ask for a coffee and pick their brains. And you know, most people are great and they'll give you 15 minutes, and that's nice. But I started listening to podcasts just while I was in the cellar, and it was a medium that I loved. And like as soon as I heard podcasts, this just seemed like this is like reading books, but you don't have to sit down and read. You can work in the cellar, you can be driving, you can ride a tractor, all these like I loved just the idea of podcast. It was this thing I wish that I had when I was trying to learn about wines back in 1997 and had to go to the library and look at whatever limited selection of books that they had there. And so I had this idea of starting this kind of like you're doing, like an interview style podcast where I can go out and ask a winemaker or a viticulturist or someone who is working in wine to sit down for an hour and talk about wine. So instead of getting that 15 minutes and sort of hitting in the highlights, it allowed for that long-form conversation, really getting into a subject. And it also allowed me to build my network, to be go going to talk to people as opposed to being stuck in the literally stuck in a cave. So when did it start? What year, Jim? First episode was in August of 2014. I knew I wanted to start a podcast. I wasn't sure if it was going to be about wine or something else. And my daughter was born in March of that year. And I was in this, in the hospital. She'd just been born, and I was in this like weird, sleep-deprived state. And I had this idea of like, oh, well, maybe I can because at first I was thinking, I'm just going to talk about wine. But I didn't want to do that because that's like giving yourself a research report you've got to write every couple of weeks. And I wasn't interested in that. But I was reading Gary Vaynerchuk's book, Crush It, which just had this idea of like show the process, show your work. And I'm like, okay, well, I don't have to come up with the material. I can go talk to other people. And so I took my wife and the new baby daughter were asleep. So I couldn't move and wake him up. So I took my daughter's um, it was like a hearing test they had done, you know, on each year they for 500 bucks. I don't tell you until after you get the bill. But it was this little sheet that told us that, you know, it had the her hearing test. It was a piece of paper that was in within arm's reach, so I could grab it. And I just mapped out inside winemaking on that sheet in half an hour. And that's exactly what the podcast has become. I mapped out who I wanted to talk to, what I want my topics to be. The I know, you know, I have a lot of experience in Cabernet Sauvignon in Napa, but that means I don't have experience with Pinot Noir or a lot of these other varieties or other regions. So I thought, okay, I can gain experience without actually having to work if I can sort of just answer all the or scratch all the itches that I had about different topics of winemaking, hoping that there would be at least some audience such that I could leverage the podcast to get people to come on and be guests, which was hard at first. Now it's pretty easy. 2024, people understand what podcasts are. Most winemakers that I talk to now have been on a couple podcasts. But back in 2014, a lot of people said no. They didn't understand what it was, they didn't get what I was doing. Even were these cold colds? No, I started with friends and they were saying no. Yeah. Uh-huh. I had some of my best friends tell me no. Okay. And I was upset, but I just kept going. And then some people said yes. And then there was kind of this shift where all of a sudden I was reaching out to people that I didn't know and getting to meet people, and then kind of getting to meet some of my heroes, some of them, my mentors, some people I really looked up to and uh kind of had its own gravity. And then there was just always the question of like, will there be an audience? Or who is the audience? And like you know, having done a podcast, there's no audience at the beginning. But if you go and you keep going, some subset of people are going to be interested in whatever niche subject you're you're talking about. And there was enough people searching for the word wine podcast. And having put winemaking in the title of my podcast, I kind of got this natural SEO. And so little by little, people started listening and started, uh, I you know, I had a website so people could contact me, and then slowly I could tell that people were listening. And you know, it it's very niche, so it's never going to be a big podcast, but now it's it's enough that like I have a very loyal set of listeners.
SPEAKER_03I remember when I lived here in Napa, I used to listen to Grape Radio. That was one of those podcasts back in the day, and it was almost like the NPR clackity-clack guys that you know, you call in and give them the sound of your car and they can tell you what's wrong. That's what those guys reminded me of. I'm curious, Jim. At the beginning, when you started recording in 2014, how did you know what equipment to get?
SPEAKER_01And oh, that was the hardest part. This was very frustrating because, you know, I told you my background, none of it includes anything technical, audiovisual stuff. I bought a course. Podcasters Paradise was like an $800 course. It was run through Facebook, okay, and it was a step-by-step guide on how to start a podcast, and it was great. And so I just went through all the modules and told me what equipment to use. But the first I got a little mixer at first, and I didn't realize for the first two years that the thing never worked. I got it broken, and so the audio recording was so terrible for those first couple of years, and I figured I just wasn't doing the dials right, but the damn thing never even worked. But it was just like one problem at a time.
SPEAKER_03But the amazing thing though, Jim, is that at the end of the day, it is all about the content. Right. So, I mean, you you have that going. When is the 10-year anniversary? Or when was it?
SPEAKER_01This past August, a couple months ago.
SPEAKER_03Okay. I think was there a celebration?
SPEAKER_01Well, I did a 10-year episode kind of talking about what the podcast was and what it's become, but no, I haven't had the party yet. But I have this idea that I do want to throw a party at least locally, because I think there's enough people that would come. And I need to hit it when when people are in town for harvest, though, which means August or November. So I'll probably kick that to 2025.
SPEAKER_03Well, I speak for myself, and I would almost say that for a lot of people, that this idea about, you know, when you surround yourself with people that are in your industry, in your profession, and you're able to exchange ideas and/or pick their brains, there is this weird parasocial relationship where you have been kind of my friend for many years, although we never really met in person, in terms of um having a space where you're you're hearing what winemakers went through in terms of their you know origin story, the mistakes that they made. I mentioned to you that the chemistry pod that you did with Scott Laps was pretty amazing, illuminating. Ten years under the belt now, looking back, what has been the sort of the best lessons and or gifts that you've taken away from that endeavor?
SPEAKER_01It's a great question. I often get asked, like, in the winery, what do you do different now from the podcast? And there's a couple things I could point to, like co-inoculation with malactic bacteria during primary fermentation was an idea that came through the podcast. And there's a couple other examples like that. But I think the bigger picture lessons is that there are many paths into winemaking. And I took one, and even at the time I knew because you know, those early mentors laid it out for me. Like you can go to a cellar and learn winemaking and work your way up, or you can go to university and study winemaking, and that's another route. But I've also seen from meeting other people like um Russell Bevan, uh or a guy named Dusty Neighbor, who's got a little winery down in Ventura, California. Like, some people just start winemaking. They have enough gumption and enough overconfidence, and they they they know wines. Like these are people that always like, you know, have experience in tasting wines and drinking wines. They're not coming in young and dumb like like I was. You can become a winemaker, but there's no set path. You can make your own path into learning winemaking. And there's a couple of key things that I um I get a lot of questions like, oh, this is my situation, you know, what would you recommend I do? And it's got to be different for different people. Kind of, you know, the stage of life plays in or your location where you're, you know, living, that sort of thing. But the the one key is you have to learn the analogy. And whether that's from a book, whether that's from podcasts, and I hope to help in that regard with the podcast, or whether that's a mentorship you're learning while you're working with someone, you have to learn some of the fundamentals of analogy. And that's actually, it's not a huge lift. People get nervous when you say the word chemistry. A lot of people, last time they had chemistry was high school and it was stressful and anxiety-ridden then. And so they don't want to go back and do something that involves chemistry. But the reality of winemaking is it's it's so much more microbiology than it is chemistry. Most of the critical things that you do to make wine happen during that harvest period. You know, this August, September, October, depending on where you're living and growing grapes and the grapes ripen, but like that intensity where you're making 90% of the important decisions, that's where you need to have some competency. And whether you learn that from whatever your media is or whatever your mix of media, most people aren't learning from just one place, you have to do the work to understand how to make wine, simply because it's expensive. You know, especially when you start moving into some of the more premier regions, especially within in California, grapes are very expensive and oat barrels are expensive. And winemaking equipment, I don't need to tell you this. As someone who's just, you know, built a winery and equipped it. It's a tremendous capital outlay. So you kind of need to know what you're doing because there's too much money on the line. But, you know, your route to get there can be very personal. And I encourage people to like find their own route. They don't need to do take the route that I did, especially, you know, a lot of people that kind of my core demographic of my audience now, the listenership, is what I call the quitters. It's the people in their 30s, in their 40s. They're mostly men, probably like 70% male, 30% female, and they're in a professional career and they want out. They're tired of it. And they, along the way, they've found wine, they've gone down that rabbit hole, they're passionate about wine, and they want to make wine, but they kind of stuck, kind of have these handcuffs of their career, their current paycheck. By the time you're in your 40s, you're in a, you know, the higher, you know, earning years of your life, you're established. And so the quitters are the people that are that are bold enough, courageous enough to pull a chute, to pull a cord, and quit their job and jump fully into winemaking. Because it's really hard to like dabble your toe in. I think it's good for people to, when they're starting to dabble, buy the kits, you know, buy a hundred pounds of grapes, like spend some money, just small amounts of money, and learn and make your own mistakes. But at some point, if you want into it, you've got to fully get into it. And it's hard for people that are established in their career to go all the way back to square one. Most people aren't going to go, you know, work in a cellar for $16 an hour. Some people like they really have enough passion that they're going to do it. These people give me a lot of inspiration.
SPEAKER_03Jim, I think this is a good segue to talk about the fact that you actually do provide guidance. You do take on clients to assist them in their winemaking journey endeavor.
SPEAKER_01Maybe I could back up a little bit and sort of talk about how that started. So started the podcast in 2014, and by 2017, had this idea. So I offered a class, a three-day winemaking class. You come to Napa and you know it's class with kind of like soft quotes because it's a lot of going to other vineyards and wineries. And so I offer this experience where you, you know, we get to go to other wineries, meet with winemakers, vineyards, meet with viticulturists, sort of like kind of hands-on technical stuff, but it's in Napa. So we eat really well. We taste great wines, we do blind tastings. And so I've run those classes since 2017 and kind of added other one-day, more just technical classes where we talk about technical stuff. And those have been fun, but really not scalable. You know, it's just eight or 10 people at a time because I can only divide my attention so much. And so I've always been thinking like, how do I help the most number of people? Like I think that's my goal at this point of time is like I want to be the guy that helped the most winemakers learn to make wine. And the primary way to do that is just the podcast because it's free. So that's the way you're going to reach the most people. There's no barriers. You know, for 300 bucks, you can come to a day class. For one order up, like 2,500 bucks, you can come to a three-day class. Last year, earlier in June, I started doing classes in Europe. So kind of do the same thing, less class, more kind of tourism, but wine tourism. And so I've been excited about sort of growing the podcast breadth through those educational things. And then I started doing a little bit of consulting because honestly, I've just been doing it for free for years. People emailing, I mean, I think that's probably how we met years ago. You emailing with some just a couple of like very specific questions. And I'm happy to answer those. But you know, the volume's higher now. And some people were like asking a lot of questions. At some point, like, okay, we need to formalize this a little bit. So it's a very small sort of group, but I do a little bit of consulting. Working here at CB, I'm physically stuck here, especially during harvest. So it's all done over phone or email. But I really enjoy helping people make good decisions, especially early in that journey of learning winemaking.
SPEAKER_03Two years ago, you were extremely helpful in coming to terms with SO2 editions and how to approach them. You were very helpful in that. Jim, the classes every year you have a Rosé winemaking class?
SPEAKER_01What's kind of morphed now? I was teaching a specific Rosé winemaking class in February in Rose, because it's probably the most technically difficult wine to make. It's a lot more work than a red wine and a little bit more work than a white wine. I don't get into sparkling wines because that's its own thing, and that's really not my background. That's the the most technical of any winemaking. But so I recorded a podcast once, and this is one of the few podcasts where it's just me talking, where I really just I took everyone through the whole process, every like every step from grape to bottle of making a rose wine. And the different ways. Yes, like the Seigneur method, direct press, like all the different ways you can make rose. Talked about heat and cold stabilization. Like I really got technical. And I'd been thinking about this for weeks. And every time I sat down to record it, I couldn't do it. I just got so anxious and felt so uncomfortable. So I ended up recording that on a drive home from work. So I brought my little setup because I was like, I'm fixed in the car. I can't go anywhere. I can't get out of the situation. I can't go try and clean a toilet or all these things. Like I was just dying at home. So I recorded this on a drive home uh one day from work, and it's like 45 minutes long. You can hear cars passing in the background, but it forced me to sit down and talk. And this is the goofiest thing I've ever done. I don't think this is gonna land. And it ended up being one of my most popular episodes. And so then I decided, okay, well, I'll teach a one-day class about rose winemaking. It's more now until I teach a class in February, just a one-day class where I talk about technical aspects of winemaking.
SPEAKER_03Does Sidline up, Jim, with actual tasks that are going to be happening at the cellar? So you can actually do some modicum of show and tell.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. So I teach the bulk of my classes in August before harvest, and that's focused on grapes and fermentation management and all the things you need to know going into harvest. And then the February classes, we talk about fining and filtration and cold and heat stabilization. And, you know, and I have those wines in the cellar. I get to teach these classes at CV Vineyard. So we actually get to taste the wines, I get to see the equipment. And so I try and keep it, yeah, seasonally appropriate. So that class is kind of like rose winemaking, but kind of it's just more broad about this latter half winemaking, like outside of harvest sort of winemaking.
SPEAKER_03And this class is only $300. Yeah. And who comes to these classes, Jim? Same demographic that you spoke about before? It is.
SPEAKER_01It is. It's a lot of people that are testing the waters of do I really want to get further into winemaking? They've made some wines at home. A lot of these people, mostly, mostly men, uh, have been doing it for years. You know, they don't know what equipment to use. They have questions about how to read and interpret a chemistry panel. What are some of the steps? People come not just because they're interested, they come because they've made mistakes. They've made really expensive mistakes. Because, you know, even at $300, I get a lot of people that balk at that price. But when you've ruined $3,000 worth of wine, all of a sudden, like these are the people that I see. They they're frustrated by their mistakes. They don't want to waste money any longer. And so, yeah, I'm trying to build up sort of a suite of classes, and I'm just trying to understand what people want, like how I can be most helpful, and then like how can I build classes to address people's questions? But I've always encouraged people to email me through the podcast. And in doing so, I understand people's pain points. I understand where people are getting frustrated in different aspects of production.
SPEAKER_03Well, I think it's an amazing way, Jim, to have access to experience, someone who's done it. It sort of shortens the pathway, like you said, if you don't have time to go back to school or or it also depends also what type of learner you are. If you just want to see the thing and have access to somebody that's doing it. Jim, I'm gonna start getting ready to land this plane, but then the the following questions are just more of a curiosity, uh fun thing for me. If you were not at CV and you could for a season work anywhere in the world with a specific grape, either region or grape, is there something that you still feel very curious about that you wish you could try?
SPEAKER_01I'd love to go to Italy, to Tuscany, and work with Sangiovese. It is one of those, like it's a bit of a sore subject, but because I'm working harvest in the northern hemisphere every year, I'm stuck. I never get to travel to Bordeaux or to anywhere European during the harvest season. Maybe there's an opportunity when I retire from full-time winemaking. But Sangiovese is one of those grapes that the Americans haven't figured out how to do on a level of quality, I think anywhere resembling what they're they're doing in Tuscany. And Tuscany is obviously a beautiful place to be. I love the Mediterranean climate, so yeah, that's that's the first place I'd go. But then I'd be upset that I wasn't in Bordeaux or, you know, Gigondas or the Southern Rhone. Like the list keeps going.
SPEAKER_03Okay. I've never visited Napa and I came to CV and I'm getting ready to go on a tasting. I'm gonna ask you, hey Jim, I want to hit one more tasting room. What's one whose wines you love? And I'm really, really hungry. Where do I go?
SPEAKER_01Okay. Can I I'm gonna answer the food one first because that's an easy one. I would say I recommend GOTTS, the hamburger shop. It's in St. Alina. There's one in Napa, there's one in St. Alina. Is it Gotts or Taylor's Refreshers? It's Gotz now. It used to be Taylor's. Okay, so so maybe I'm dating myself. Yep.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So Gotts Roadside Refresher. It's a burger shop, but it's Napa, so it's fancy burgers. I mean, you can get an Ahi Tuna burger. It's it's great food, but it's centrally located. It's easy to get to. There's a ton of fine dining restaurants all throughout Napa. I'm hesitant to throw out names of one because all the others would be pissed. So Gots is an easy one. For another winery to visit, this is a tough question because I get this a lot, but Napa has such a diversity from sparkling winehouses to big reds to the whole style and profile of red wines. And so I really try and pro people to like, what do you like to drink? The main question is what do you drink at home? And that helps inform me for what people like. And so when it's a group of people, I always recommend go to Domain Carneros or go to Shandon because they have these like fantastic flights of sparkling wines. And it's not just one wine, you get like four or five different sparkling wines. They're beautiful places to visit and they're fun and they're easy. The wines are all fantastic. So that's my go-to. If someone tells me like their very specific wine they're into, I might suggest a place that has a similar wine that they haven't been to before. But there's a lot of wineries in Napa now.
SPEAKER_03There's a lot of options. Jim, I can't thank you enough, sir. I'm pretty sure hopefully I'll see you if I come back to Napa. I'm definitely going to come back and say hello. This property is amazing. And I can't thank you enough for your time.
SPEAKER_01Well, I'm so excited to come visit you down at uh Los Milix and see what you've built. I've only seen the photos and I'm really impressed with what you've built and the wines you make. So it's an honor to uh have you here and get to talk in person. Thanks for coming out. Thanks a lot, Duderson.
SPEAKER_03Bye bye, Jim. Bye. And that brings us to the end of the show. But before we say ciao ciao, I wanted to let you know that if there are any questions about winemaking you'd like me to tackle on the pod, don't hesitate to email me at psst at povlomilic.com. That's ps at povlomilic.com. Also, if you dug the content and you know someone who would get value from it, please share it. And lastly, if you have been enjoying the show, head on over to wherever you listen, leave us a review, and subscribe. Until next time, this is your host, Pavlamilik.