🚀 From Outward Bound Dreams to Washington Wine Legend Caleb Foster’s 🍷 Inspiring Winemaking Journey!

📢I talk🎙️with Caleb Foster Owner and Winemaker at Gunpowder Creek Winery! 👏🍷 🎇 🎉 ✨ 👏 🥂  😁

Join Caleb Foster 🍇, winemaker at Gunpowder Creek Winery, as he shares his epic journey from Connecticut to Washington wine country 🍷. Innovation, Syrah secrets, & digital pivots await!  @CalebFoster-Winemaker  

Watch now! 🚀✨ @ThirstyThursdaysat3PMEST

https://youtu.be/3edKZS0pK6k

🍷 Caleb Foster, the visionary winemaker behind Gunpowder Creek Winery, shares his incredible story in this Thirsty Thursdays episode! From growing up in Connecticut to becoming a pioneer in Washington’s wine industry, Caleb’s journey is packed with inspiration. 

🌟 Learn about his passion for Syrah, overcoming rejection, the art of mentorship, and his innovative approach to digital marketing 

📱. Dive into the challenges of climate change 🌍 and explore the rich history of Washington wine. Discover how Caleb is shaping the future of winemaking while honoring traditions.

 If you’re a wine lover 🍇, entrepreneur, or fan of resilience, this episode is a must-watch! Stay tuned for insights, laughs, and bold ideas for the industry. Cheers! 🥂 

Don't forget to subscribe to @ThirstyThursdaysat3PMEST for more exciting interviews!

Join host Jessie Ott for an insightful journey into the ever-evolving world of the beverage industry and food and beverage innovation! 🎙️ Discover cutting-edge beverage trends and beverage development strategies as we explore product development with pioneers who are shaping the future of drinks. Tune in for expert insights into consumer trends and subscribe to stay updated on the latest episodes!  @ThirstyThursdaysat3PMEST   🚀

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Chapters

• 0:31 From Connecticut to Yakima
• 1:27 Falling Into Wine
• 3:43 Discovering Passion in the Vineyard
• 7:12 Mentorship & Inspiration 🌟
• 10:09 Building Gunpowder Creek Winery 🚀
• 22:19 Digital Marketing in Wine 🍷📱
• 27:21 Climate Challenges & Wine Sustainability 🌍
• 34:22 The Magic of Syrah in Washington 🍷
• 41:07 Exciting Future Projects 🚀
• 52:30 A Toast to Innovation 🍷
• 1:18:30 Cheers & Closing Thoughts 🥂

Transcript

Caleb Foster (00:01.482)
Hello and welcome everybody to Thursday Thursdays. I'm Jessie and I have exciting guest Caleb Foster owner and winemaker at Gunpowder Creek Winery. Welcome Caleb. Hi everybody. Delighted to be here. Jessie, thanks for the invitation. This is a great story about wine in America. Yeah, no. Love your story here. So where are you calling from? I'm in Yakima, Washington in the very

Jessie Ott (00:01.496)
Hello and welcome everybody to Thursday Thursdays. am Jessy Ott and I have exciting guest, Caleb Foster, owner and winemaker at Gunpowder Creek Winery. Welcome Caleb.

Jessie Ott (00:17.73)
Yeah, of course. no, I can't wait to dig into the, to the story here. where, where are you calling from Caleb?

Caleb Foster (00:31.69)
sort of what I see as the Western tip of the great wine country here in Washington state. Yeah, great wine making. Yeah, know all about it. work for Ste. Michelle Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's been bought and sold. Right. yeah, great wines. Amazing, quality. Yes.

Jessie Ott (00:37.474)
Yeah, great, great wine, great winemaking, and state, for sure.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It was a great company. You know, it's been bought and sold and all that now, but yeah, great wines. Amazing, amazing quality for the price.

Caleb Foster (00:58.08)
Yes, I was always impressed in the early years when I would go to Connecticut where my family was and drink a bottle of Columbia Crest and be like, man, eight dollars. So good. So good. How do they do? Right. Yeah. That's really cool. So are you from Yakima? No, I grew up in the East Coast. I grew up in Connecticut. And I grew up at Chode School. My dad taught there. Grew up my life there and then went out to college out in the West. I ended up in Walla Walla because

Jessie Ott (01:08.352)
So good. How do they do it? Yeah. That's really cool. So are you from Yakima?

So you're from Connecticut, grew up there.

Caleb Foster (01:27.155)
I was encouraged to go to Whitman College. Ended up being a great school. Ended up being just exactly what I wanted. yeah, really everything I wanted. The most thing about it was it was in the West. It had rafting and mountain climbing and rock climbing, and it just had this world. So yeah, fell in love with the West and I was never going home.

Jessie Ott (01:35.075)
Wow.

Jessie Ott (01:52.204)
Yeah, no, I get that. You know, my uncle was like you. He loved it out West. I think he would have preferred, my family's from Iowa, but he and his wife ended up driving to Arizona for quite a few years in retirement and to enjoy the variation of weather in the winter. You know, the warmth compared to Iowa.

Caleb Foster (01:56.98)
He loves her that much. I think he would have preferred it. My family's from Iowa. But he and his wife ended up driving the Arizona.

Caleb Foster (02:09.088)
Yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah, for me, I loved the fact that there were four seasons. They were very similar. The temperatures were the same. You had a big winter and you had a big summer and but so dry, so different. The world was so different. It bigger things. just run, jump and play outside in the wild. I loved it. Got into rafting and everything. So.

Rafting, rock climbing, just did that. I barely stayed in school, barely made grades. I was just having too much fun.

Jessie Ott (02:42.254)
So you have some good college stories is what you're saying.

Caleb Foster (02:46.556)
Yeah, those just some great days I'm so grateful so grateful for all that I did in college wouldn't just relive it, you know inch by inch if I did it again. Yeah Well, so I was in love with the West I wanted to do this rafting this thing and I was really into I was gonna go apply to Outward Bound So I did and I was super excited. I'm go to Outward Bound and it was a big like my first You know, what was my first crush? Well, my first crush was being crushed by it were bound when they said no

Jessie Ott (02:56.654)
So what did you do after you graduated?

Caleb Foster (03:16.393)
You're pretty good. Looks like you have fun out there, but we need you to do more mountain climbing and all these other things. And I was like, what? I just was devastated. So my big life dream of working for Outward Bound and the professional industry of the outer doors was just like rug pulled out from underneath me. And I was living in Walla Walla, staying an extra year with my girlfriend. She was going to graduate later. And I was like lost. I was so bummed.

Jessie Ott (03:16.779)
no!

Caleb Foster (03:43.744)
So I went to work at a restaurant and I'm terrible at that. So bad. I love, it's hard work. And for what I now know at ADHD guy, just like, no, this is not my thing. And it's indoors and I want the outdoors and all that stuff. So I just couldn't keep the mental log of all the chores, all the work, all the food orders and like, you know, and put it in the right structure and time frame. So I went out to do what

Jessie Ott (03:47.054)
It's hard.

Jessie Ott (03:57.464)
Yeah.

Caleb Foster (04:09.487)
My dad and I had toured California to see friends after graduation. It graduation gift. We drove down and back. And we toured a winery. Had a really fun time. I can't remember the winery. Big one in Sonoma. But it had this really big long tour, about four hours. And it was just full of just ridiculousness and long stories. It was just totally made up. was great. It was a lovely tour. So my memory of a winery was interesting when we drove back to Walla Walla.

We drove past Woodward Canyon and Lake Hole 41, which are neighbors in Lowden on the highway, the one and only highway back in from the west, Walla Walla. And I remembered that and I thought, oh, you know, maybe I go out and work at a winery. So I just rode my bike out to Lowden from Walla Walla, which is 13 miles. It's July, so it's 103 out. And so I get up early and I ride out there by the, when they open up at about 10. And I went to Lake Hole 41, cause that's a big one, the good looking one. And I actually didn't really notice Woodward Canyon.

So then I get to Lake Cole and I look out in all these windows and I know I could tell that they're looking at me and I'm like, well, I was going to put a collared shirt on because I rode out in a t-shirt. I'm like, well, I can't put my collared shirt on in the driveway and then like walk in and ask for a job. So I'm going to ride to the neighbor's house and get dressed in their yard and then come back. So I to the neighbor's driveway, which was Woodbury Canyon. And I look up and button up my shirt and I look up and I'm like,

Woodward Canyon Winery. Oh, I should go in here. They don't have any windows. They didn't just seem to get dressed. So I go in there and I apply and I talk and visit with this woman, Sharon Lentz. And I'm fake tasting. Like I don't, I didn't come to taste. Like the winemaker's not there. So I kind of don't want to stick around. She can kind of tell, but she's sort of giving me a pour of wine and there's nobody there. There hasn't been anybody there all day. And she's like, you're not here for the winery.

Jessie Ott (05:40.724)
Hahaha!

Caleb Foster (06:06.591)
no. And she said, well, what are you here for? Well, maybe, but I could look for job. And so she willingly let me write my name down. a week later, the winemaker gave me a call, Rick Small, gave me a call. And he's like, hey, so you went to Whitman College? Yeah. Well, why don't you come on down and we'll see what you can do. And it was a longer conversation than that, but was basically, that's what he said. And I hung up the phone and was like, did I just get invited to work?

So confusing. But those were the days. And by the time I left Woodward Canyon, Lake Hole 41 had closed.

Jessie Ott (06:35.522)
Yeah.

Caleb Foster (06:43.668)
The doors were locked. Yeah, they just locked. I just got there late in the day. So I'd been over at Woodward Canyon and I didn't watch the time. And Lake was closed. I never applied to Lake Hull 41. I only applied to Woodward Canyon. So I ended up getting a job at Woodward, not at Lake Hull. And I spent eight years, eight great years, launched the whole experience. And it was just like, wow, this is... I was like never looking back. It was about the people. It was Rick.

Jessie Ott (06:43.95)
Really?

Jessie Ott (06:50.35)
Jessie Ott (06:55.201)
Interesting.

Jessie Ott (07:12.238)
Yeah.

Caleb Foster (07:12.927)
And it was my friend Rene who I started to work with, Rene Ticarina from Acambaro, Guanajuato. And he'd been up there about eight or 10 years, no, maybe longer, 15. And I just adored and learned so much from his work ethic, which is very different than mine, and Rick's work ethic, which was different than mine. And I just learned so much, but I loved every day.

Like on Sunday nights, was like, yes, Monday morning, can't to go to work. That was amazingly awesome. Yeah, definitely found my people. I didn't know it was my mission. It felt kind of weird, super exotic making wine. It felt really exotic. But it became, yeah, it became a way for me to get what I wanted out of that experience. I wanted that. I fell in love with what I really got here, which is the out of doors. Got to, you know, get in touch with the vineyards.

Jessie Ott (07:45.986)
That is awesome. That's when you know you found your mission in life, right?

Caleb Foster (08:10.303)
And it became everything, became vineyards creating wine from raw fruit. Like you start with fruit, you do not end up with the same product. All the fruit's gone, you have this fluid, and it's not the same. It's totally metamorphosed, right? And then you put it together and you tell a story about it, you package it, you bring it to certain people, it's a relationship game, the whole thing. And then you do it all over again in these loops, and you loop that cycle, and you get into nature, and you learn that the loops are different. the loops go this way, and then that way, and they're like, it just never ends.

The thing just keeps unfolding and unfolding. So one door closes and one door opens. Thank God. Thank God I was rejected by Outward Bound.

Jessie Ott (08:39.864)
Yeah, it's a never ending. Yeah. So one door closes and one door opens.

Jessie Ott (08:49.078)
Yeah. Yeah, it's certainly, I mean, the way to look at it, I was talking to a company about maybe working together and it just didn't work out. I was just so bummed, but you have to go with when one door closes, another one opens, right? You just got to keep forging on and figuring it out.

Caleb Foster (08:50.752)
Yeah, it's certainly, I mean, the way to look at it, was talking to a company about maybe working together and it just didn't work out. I was just so bummed, but you have to know when one door closes, another one opens, right? Yep. Yeah, I was just working, had a really wonderful consultancy with Hyatt Vineyards and they needed to terminate me. It was a little surprising, but for whatever good reasons they had, I understood it was time. I wasn't going to be forever.

And I was like, we're doing so much great work, but it's time to go. And so, yeah, I'm looking to keep that frame of mind like, wow, what amazing adventure have I just been offered today? So I got ready to get married. And when I did that with Needed Beauty, we started Beauty Winery there for that label. We

Jessie Ott (09:33.646)
So what did you do after that?

Caleb Foster (09:48.198)
When I got ready to get married in 98, we decided we sort of move on and do different things. And so I left Woodbury Canyon and I asked if I could get help getting a job because I was going to stay in the business. And Charlie Hoppes, who I'd known, he was at Canoe Ridge at the time for Ste Michelle, right? Maybe you worked with him? Yeah. And he connected me and said, OK, we'll get you a job at Ste Michelle. There's probably a job open in Woodinville. was like, awesome,

Jessie Ott (10:08.878)
Mm-hmm. I didn't.

Caleb Foster (10:17.567)
he did. And I was assistant, uh, you know, logist that vintage 1999. So I worked at Ste. Michelle, the 99 harvest, which was a killer white wine harvest. Erni Loosen first vintage was Ste Michelle Bob Betz's last vintage. Um, and Eric, Eric Leadhome, Eric, um, also Eric Olson was a winemaker. He's now in California. I think it's actually, I can't remember, but, um, very strong winemaker. So great team, uh, work there. And then I went from there to, um,

New Zealand. Nina had finished her teaching work, pre-teaching work, and we went to New Zealand. I went to Cloudy Bay area, worked at Power Vintners with John Belsham the owner, and John Belsham hosted, it was about a 10 or 20 year old winery at the time, and it hosted some of the greats. It hosted Chingle Peak, Wairau River, Babitch, Matua, Nautilus, Jackson Estate, Wairau River from across the street, Phil Rose's property, John's own project, Fox's Island.

A heap of gorgeous wines were made there. They normally did 4,000 tons. The vintage was affected by frost, so they did 2,000 tons. So was extremely high quality vintage. And I remember tasting through the wines of John, I got really lucky. I I looked around me, there were 13 people, new people from around the world there, Germans and Australians all over working there for harvest. And I looked around and I'm like, why did I get the job at your side, man? Because there was some really good Germans there.

really made a lot shit on my wine. But I got to be his right hand man tasting every single wine every day. So his regime was, he had about 200 tanks. He'd taste a wee cup, he'd take the sugar and temperature and get the sample in the wee cup and put the wee cup on the table and he and I would go through and just taste a spit, taste a spit to make sure it tasted okay and wasn't produced. And it was in the progress of good progress. And as we're going through that, I looked up and I'm like, dude, I mean, I love museum wines, but these are smoking amazing. And I was like, it was this good?

And he said, no, this is a particularly good vintage. So, So that was crazy fun. Yeah. And it was so good for me because I thought I knew everything. This hot shit, you know, I'd worked at Woodward Canyon. He was absolutely the top of the heap at the time. He had literally been on the Wine Spectator, Winemaker of the Year in 1994 as, or 1993 as the, you know, the front cover guy. Right. I remember that article, but.

Jessie Ott (12:19.694)
That's cool. Yeah.

Caleb Foster (12:45.478)
was the April Fool's article. Rick was like, perfect. This April Fool's article. And like the cover of it was an April Fool's thing. Three pages of April Fool's jokes with the wine spectator. And then the fourth page was him as the real cover of wine maker of the year. He took it really well. But, but yeah, I mean, I just, remember seeing that magazine holding it. And for me, I just, you know, I went to work at this little winery and everybody said the wines are great. I'm like, cool, that's really cool. But then I looked at that magazine. I was like,

Jessie Ott (12:58.572)
Ha ha ha.

Ugh.

Caleb Foster (13:18.569)
For real, for real? Like this is where I work? Whoa. And what struck me was not that anything that I was awesome saw us, but they're like, my God, I can't make any mistakes here. I gotta be wicked careful. Like this guy's work is that meaningful? Whoa, am I lucky to be a part of that? So I went from that to Ste Michelle with Erni Loosen and all this greatness, right? Ste Michelle's just really cooking.

Jessie Ott (13:32.748)
Right.

Caleb Foster (13:47.972)
in 99 and killer wines and left over New Zealand. I thought I knew everything about making wine and I didn't. I was like, what is this thing going on in the ocean? I'm so confused. You know, why are you picking right now? It doesn't make any sense. The numbers are wrong. And they're like, the numbers are perfect. I'm like, I don't get it. You know, the points are great. So that was really great. Sort of getting me out of my zone and getting me and really understanding what wine growing was. And then coming home, we decided, and I decided to start our own winery.

Jessie Ott (14:05.624)
You

Caleb Foster (14:17.893)
And we went, we were going to do the, the cool city Creek, Andrew will kind of thing. Go up to the, where people live, go up to the, the sound and start a winery up there where all the people are. And then bring the grapes in a truck over. and, went up to Mount Baker vineyards. Ever been there? Yeah, it's on the way up to the mountain to the ski, not bachelor. I mean, I'm not Baker and, sleepy little vineyard in the pine forest, like the worst place in Washington to have a vineyard period.

Jessie Ott (14:35.437)
No.

Caleb Foster (14:47.072)
grew Cigaraba, a little bit of Peter Noir, I think a little Liesling. Very, very light wines, not great wines. But I was like, well, they're gonna host us and we'll make 20 barrels in the corner kind of thing. And I was making their wines. The relationship fell apart not because of the wine quality, but it just fell apart. So I moved over to, down to see my friends in the Columbia Valley where I was getting Chardonnay and some grapes that was about to harvest. Then I went into Connerly Vineyard that Jerry Buchwalter and Tom Thorson ran.

And I said, Tom, don't know what I'm going to do, man. I've got this 10 tons of Chardonnay, or I've got this acre of Chardonnay. And I'm like, I don't know where to put it. He's like, oh, no problem. Let's call Jerry. He called Jerry. Jerry, I'm here in the venue with Caleb. He needs a place to make wine. And Jerry just literally said, send him now. That was it, done. So I moved into Bookwalter in 2000. We made the wines there.

John Bookwalter was taking over Bookwalter and he had just, he and his dad Jerry had just hired Zelma Long. And so I met Zelma Long actually for the second time. I met her one day in 94 when she was talking to Rick Small and Gary Figgins about starting a winery in Walla Walla. Instead they started, she and Phil started a winery in South Africa, Villa Fonte, which I'm sure you've had the wines, great wine in Parle. then when we worked together for Harvest, John,

book clubs with Zelma and I and that sort of trio or quad with Jerry, his dad just working their way in the vineyards. I got to know Zelma and then when I left, sort of, they appreciated my work because I was able to work with John and translate Zelma's style recommendations into actable, executable clarity that John was not as clear about. He's like, well, you understand what she's saying, Caleb, right? I'm like, totally get it. We'll do exactly what she says. And he was like, done.

And Zellma came back after harvest, was like, well, that went well. And, and I went into the meeting and I said, and she just, they, complimented me for the effort that I brought. And I said, thanks. I asked Zellma, was like, you know, so I'd really love to make a great Chardonnay. And I know you make a great one and you're an amazing consultant. I don't know. I can't possibly afford you, but could we maybe just work on a little project about that big called Chardonnay?

Jessie Ott (17:10.615)
You

Caleb Foster (17:11.729)
And she said, yes. And I'm sorry. I was like, I'm sorry. What did you just say? said, yes. How much would that cost? And so we started, she consulted to me that year. I thought would only be a year because I couldn't afford any more. lasted a decade. Wow. Yeah. Extraordinary, extraordinary consultancy. Absolutely launched beauty from an utter startup of 20 barrels to getting on Food and Wine Magazine.

Jessie Ott (17:29.774)
Wow.

Caleb Foster (17:40.99)
Wine of the Year to being in the Food and Wine Pocket Guide three times to being in all of the top 100 lists once, at least once, if not twice. Wine & Spirits Magazine, top 100 Wineries twice. Just, the ride was like a rocket ship. It was amazing. because she showed us, knew what to focus on.

Caleb Foster (18:09.587)
And we did it. We did what she said. It was incredible relationship, you know. And I remember a guy, he was writing an article about us. He was the reporter for wine at the Union Bulletin in Walla Walla. And he was writing stories about all the evolving wineries in Walla Walla. And he called me up and Tom was like, Caleb, so I don't get it. Like it was our fourth or fifth year in beauty and in Walla Walla. And he's like, I don't get it.

Jessie Ott (18:10.114)
Yeah, that's amazing. That's a great relationship, yeah.

Caleb Foster (18:34.528)
It's like, why you have a consultant? Like, you may want to follow around the world. Like, you don't need a consultant. All these other guys need a consultant. And I didn't have the answer at the moment. The next day, I thought about that question. I was like, what is eating at me? I'm like, oh, this is what I needed to say to him. I was like, Tom, you're in print, OK? What if Walter Cronkite took a personal interest in your work? Would you spend time with him?

Jessie Ott (19:03.392)
All right.

Caleb Foster (19:03.551)
I mean, I had one of the greats. Yeah, you take that consulting.

Jessie Ott (19:09.762)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, well, I'm sure she enjoyed it just as much as you did. don't know how, like, I don't know much about her and like, you know, her background, but 10 years is a great, it's a long-term relationship. That's a good relationship.

Caleb Foster (19:21.993)
Ten years is a great, it's a long term relationship. That's a good relationship. It was, it really was. And in fact, I said, know, wow, we had a great first year. This is amazing. Thank you so much. We've learned so much. I just, I guess it's over. And she looked at us and she was like, no, no, I'd love to continue. And I was like, really?

So yeah, it just kept rolling and rolling. And once after five years, we're like, wow, this has been amazing. Thank you so much. I think this is really expensive. And she's like, no, I really want to keep this going. I'm like, wow. But we went from really focusing on making a great Chardonnay, which by all rights we did, and to making great white wine, to evolving that process into the vineyards, how to approach the vineyard not owning it with growers.

Jessie Ott (19:45.568)
You

Caleb Foster (20:14.463)
to take your style, put it into the vineyard, change that style in the foliage, in the fruit, in the development plan of the vineyard, bring it back in as fruit and make the wine and then go and loop that again, improve and improve it in the cycle, because it's a two-part game. And that's a three-part game, sales, right? One, two, three. And then, yeah, and hear from sales. Oh, sales loves this? Okay, so I'm put that in the vineyard and I'm gonna put that in the cellar and then we're gonna get it back to this market. Okay, let's do that loop again. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.

Jessie Ott (20:31.118)
All right.

Caleb Foster (20:45.216)
to being successful at that while simultaneously she turned around and she said, well, let's look at everything. And I was like, do you mean red wines too? And she's like, everything. I'm like, wow. And then to, she said, well, I'd like to look at your finances. And I said, would you please? And I opened up all the books and all the money and all the ways we did things. And she showed us how to not, not so much how to run the money, because to both of our amazement, we were doing really well.

but how to not do that crazy thing over there that you shouldn't be doing. And don't do that thing that looks like it's making a lot of money across the street because it's not. And here's where people waste a lot of money regularly in the wine business. So don't do that too. What to invest in first and then what do you invest in next and what do you put on top of that and wait, don't do that first, do it fourth and then on fifth thing you're gonna do that, And she put things in order.

Jessie Ott (21:40.204)
nice so she it's a superpower

Caleb Foster (21:40.604)
It's extraordinary. It's a superpower at enormous depth. You know, she was building Villa Fonte in South Africa with Phil told us everything about building that they had to go back. First, they were going to plant the vineyard. had they couldn't get any clean plant material. So they had to start a nursery, clean up from shoot tip growth all of the plant material in South Africa so that they had virus free stock, then plant that virus free stock in Villa Fonte.

then make the wine and then sell the wine. Five to seven years after starting their program, they had their first harvest.

Jessie Ott (22:19.406)
That's crazy.

Caleb Foster (22:20.561)
It's an amazing story.

Jessie Ott (22:22.646)
Yeah, that's the thing that people don't understand when they're like, yeah, I'm going to start a wine brand. Well, or whatever brand. It's expensive and it's a long time to build.

Caleb Foster (22:27.806)
Yeah, I'm

Caleb Foster (22:33.331)
Right, yeah, yeah. But this has got that.

Yeah, this has got that annual loop built in, which is just, you know, you can't software speed this up. There's no AI. No, no, the sun's gonna go around this. We're gonna go around the sun just the same way. Yeah, it's not gonna speed up. Yeah. So then what did you do after that? So I got divorced and in 2012, Nina and I divorced and I...

Jessie Ott (22:42.317)
Yeah.

Jessie Ott (22:47.916)
Yeah, there's no AI in that.

Jessie Ott (22:56.768)
Yeah. So then what did you do after that? What was your next move?

Caleb Foster (23:04.287)
pretty much handed the wine to her. I was like, it's got your name on it. You want to run it? I had it. That's appropriate splitting. And so I went on to work, I connected to Delicato Vineyards and was going to do some work here in the Northwest. They just turned the idea down after a couple of months. And then went to work for Double Canyon, my friend.

Will Dectal called me up. had planted, he had developed Double Canyon and had restarted the brand with Crimson Wine Group. And he said, he basically called me up. He's like, hey, look, I want you to go down and interview and accept the job. He sort of pre-primed the pump for me. So, and then we'll get started. And so I said, yes. And we made a really lovely 2013 vintage, made that wine, the red wine for Double Canyon and relaunched that brand that they'd started 10 years ago. And it sort of mothballed in the 08, 09 financial debacle.

that so many suffered. And then, did that for a year. They let me go, hired someone out of California to replace me. And then I went to work for John Bookwalter that summer in 2014. Went back to Bookwalter, scene of the crime. And it is a tiny little world we live in, in the wine business. It's really, really small. So yeah, so, and in Washington, know,

Jessie Ott (24:18.018)
Yeah.

Jessie Ott (24:25.174)
Yeah, it really is.

Caleb Foster (24:30.72)
And I knew John's portfolio, he knew my work, we knew we'd be successful together. It wasn't a question of the wine quality we were going to execute, it was just a question of like, you know, do we see the world the same way? And we didn't. I mean, he was a huge like, loved this California idea of super late long hang times, which Zama had worked with him on for a decade, and trying to get the wines riper and riper and pushing into the vineyards of smaller, smaller crop ripen and riper wines. I simultaneously, while John and Zama would go visit with John and then days later come work with me.

And I would hold this other theory like, nope, nope, harvest is mid-rightness. Harvest is right around 20, 23, five to 20. It's just, I picked almost three weeks before John. And he would watch me like get on these screaming high lists and he'd be like, grr, you know. And so he hired me knowing that I could execute and we had a great time. We really had a good time. He was reluctant to let go of his style and let me just do what I knew intuitively.

was the right thing, it was almost my style. But in 2019, I was working with Tom Thorson and we just had a breakthrough moment over lunch and we were saying certain things about the vineyard and he like literally said, okay, enough, you guys got it, I'm up. And he just literally got it marked away from the conversation as a gesture that like, why making zeros, Caleb, go do the thing. And you know.

Jessie Ott (25:52.29)
Wow, okay.

Caleb Foster (25:53.472)
And he was a very good businessman. So he was very focused on sales. was a great salesman and a great business developer. And he had just realized, like, I really do need to let this park out. I need to not micromanage my winemaker. If he's going to do great work, let him do great work. And then we put wines on the top 100. Like we built, we put the Reader's Cabernet in the top 100 wines of the year next year. Yeah. Plus other top 100 lists, you know? So, and that was the first vintage I did. And we just do my thing. It was 2015, the hottest year ever. And we picked...

Jessie Ott (26:12.814)
Wow, that's awesome.

Caleb Foster (26:23.049)
The earliest I'd ever picked in my life, but it was ripe, it was ready. We had an early flowering in May and like never before. And picking was done. We were done by October 1st. We picked a third of our fruit in August. Never did that before, never. Wilbur Canyon used to say, we don't pick before the county fair, you know, which is like Labor Day. And we didn't pick chardonnay before then, but we picked everything in September and put it on top 100s.

all around the country. It was fun, a lot of fun. was really fun. Yeah, no, it totally fun. so went from there, so spent really good years there, seven years there. And then in 2020, my parents died together in a short period of time, at the full age of their life, they had a wonderful, life into their eighties. But both died together and that really impacted me and shifted my mind frame of where my life had

Jessie Ott (26:54.958)
Yeah, that is really fun.

Caleb Foster (27:21.119)
where my life was, where I was, what the stage was and all those things. And I felt the need to leave the work and then started the journey that you and I talked about when we met was this sort of, I stepped out of the Walter at that hour and I looked myself in the mirror having seen what he had, John had to do to rescue his own company in COVID. And he did a fabulous job of doing so. He perhaps had a year that was almost double the year before that he'd ever had in terms of revenue, top line. And I watched him do it. He did it.

Jessie Ott (27:25.315)
Yeah.

Caleb Foster (27:49.856)
He had a normal winter and then COVID hit. He had a great March because he sold a lot to Costco. And then it went silent. And April went to no orders first week of April. Wait a minute, no orders second week of April. And that kept going. And John said in early May, he said, it's been donut holes all month. And I am like, he's literally sweating bullets. He's like, I can't take enough heart medicine. Like it was just really rough on him, right? We're all in rough spot in May of 2000.

Jessie Ott (28:16.291)
Yeah.

Caleb Foster (28:19.945)
But he rescued his company. He made decisions around digital marketing and how to relate to people, how to relate to the marketplace, everything. said, anything you, we were a team and I had an interesting COVID because I went to work every day. I went to the same building with the same team. It was half the team, right? He shrunk it down to the essential core team. His restaurant was just doing pizza and takeaway. But.

He said, everything and anything, whatever you thought might work, it's all front burner now and put that burner on high, we're gonna cook it all these things. And he just did and they did and they executed and they made millions and millions of dollars doing that. And then when I left Bookwalter, I was gonna go back and do my thing with Gunpowder Creek, right? With these wines I'd been making there, I'd making these wines, my own brand. And I realized the world had changed so much. And I said to myself, you're going to...

die an old dog in a corner using the same old tricks if you don't change to a digital world where you literally live out of your cell phone. You have to get on the other side of the cell phone and sell your wine through it instead of buying stuff because I was buying, we all were. Now we're all like living and buying on our cell phone from Amazon on down. And I needed to get on the other side of that button and sell my wines out to you that way. So I did all the courses and I knew I didn't know how.

But I the future of success in any business, and particularly ours, was to do what I saw John do, which was to get a sale proposition on the cell phone one way the other.

and sell a ton of wine. I'm like, that's what you got to do, Caleb. So I all the courses, did all the work, or a lot of courses, a lot of work, a lot of rabbit holes, a of, lot of ADD excitement. Woohoo, let's like do everything. Do it all, all the time. And it was fun because it was new, it was exciting. And then after about a year of that, I was like living this laptop life inside and I had a delayed COVID. I was having my COVID that year and

Caleb Foster (30:22.885)
not going out in the market, which was still clumsy, semi-mass restaurants were kind of not really open, sort of they were. It was like that weird year of 2021. So that deep dive into Google and Facebook and all of the course creations and Tony Robbins worlds and Dean Graciosi and KBB and like Billie Jean is marketing in Ste Diego and I just keep going on and on. All that stuff, right? It's like...

It just made me wake up and click phones and people are making millions of dollars a year selling soap from Wisconsin.

Jessie Ott (31:00.91)
You

Caleb Foster (31:01.181)
right? How do we, I need to follow this. I need to do this. This is real. But as a wine business, I was looking around and I was like, hey, what are you guys doing? And then I can understand what you're talking about.

And I started to realize I gotta do this on my own. Or I gotta get weirdos who do this thing over at Clickmoms. I gotta go to Boise, Idaho and get one of these weirdos, these freaks to help me figure this out. But I was also realizing at the end of that year that I actually don't like this work. I don't really like sitting down in my room in front of a laptop. That doesn't bring me joy. What brought me joy was going into the vineyards. In 2021, I didn't have a harvest. I made a little bit of Pinot Noir and a little bit, well, just really just a little Pinot Noir that year.

I didn't make any whites. And I was like, I miss the life, the wine making life. And I just decided, okay, you now know what the digital world is. know what you need to measure. You need to measure your row as your CPC and your click through rate and all your funnel metrics. You know how to hire for the job. So hire, go get the work, go get someone else to do that. I don't have to do it all.

Jessie Ott (31:53.646)
Hey.

Caleb Foster (32:14.879)
and then go out and do what I love, which is what I'm really capable of doing. Go work in vineyards, work with people, have great relationships, build really great wines and do that. And so I shifted over to consulting and I did that. So that's what took me up to Hyatt Vineyards at the time. Opportunity came where Hyatt needed some serious restructuring and I joined Hyatt in the spring of 2022 when Leland Hyatt was running it still in his last year. He died a year later.

Full life again, beautiful life. One of the hardest working men I've ever met. Built that up 35, 40 years before I met him. I knew of how great the property was. It was a famous property in 92 when I was working at Wawa and I was like, wow, things are cool things happening up there. I never ended up going and visiting, but because I remembered his fame and success at the time, I was very interested in this property in 2022. Met him, liked him.

really wanted to help, was very curious. Because in the big picture for me, I'm really, really interested in the long story of Washington wine. I've been so lucky to start when Walla Walla had seven wineries.

and seven. Seven. mean, Walla Walla when I was at Whitman College, I walked home, we would go down to this one cafe called Merchants Deli on Street and then walk back to Whitman College six or seven blocks apart. one day, was sundown in the winter, I literally walked back from having coffee there and to school and a tumbleweed blew down the Main Street where no cars were parked.

Jessie Ott (33:27.736)
Seven. Wow.

Caleb Foster (33:55.712)
I was like, for real? That's how sleepy Walla Walla was. It was like Luke Skywalker said about Tatooine. He's like, well, if there's a bright center to the universe, this is the planet it's farthest from. Like it it felt like the end of the line. And now it feels like the Axis Mundi. I mean, it just feels like you have arrived in wine country when you get there. Right? What a change.

Jessie Ott (34:12.3)
Ha ha.

Caleb Foster (34:22.397)
And that's the huge part of Washington Wine story. It's like, Wawa used to have seven. I got in the car once with Rick Small on a suburban. We're driving to Wawa to go grab some stuff for some reason and come back. He was in Loudon, 13 miles west. The only road, Highway 12, goes in. He lived his entire life there at that shop, where this dad shop, which he took over. He's there and I'm here and he looks across me to the west. And he just looks across me and he just says, you never even had to look.

Jessie Ott (34:22.67)
What a change.

Caleb Foster (34:52.224)
and one car goes past us and he pulls out onto the highway, which was his front yard road. And it just totally struck me what that meant. He lived his whole life growing up at that shop, his dad's wheat shop, just pulling out of the driveway right onto highway 12. There's never been anybody there. Ever. And I was like, my God. And then I thought, but wait, you started your winery?

Jessie Ott (34:59.852)
Right.

Jessie Ott (35:13.58)
There's no one there.

Caleb Foster (35:22.207)
at an address where there's no traffic? Right? I mean, so one of my YouTube desires was in that long story, Washington Wine is like, I gotta capture those stories. I gotta get them to tell those in their live stories. I did that a little bit with Jerry Bookwalter. He told me some cool stories about the past. I think the backstory, right? The origin story of Washington Wine is still there to be told. Some people, some marvelous people have just passed away. Leland Haya passed away. I wish I'd caught a story from him. I missed that. I'm so sorry.

Jessie Ott (35:25.676)
Yeah.

Caleb Foster (35:52.288)
We were about to do that down the month. We talked about it in December before he passed away in January. The fellow from Columbia, the great winemaker from Columbia, he's passed away, remind me his name. He was the MW.

In any case, he made great wines. So there's some people who've passed away and I just want, it's great to tell this story live in person in their energetic state, in their style, their origin story of why they do it. Like I want to ask Rob Griffin, like Rob, like you're total success in California. Why, and what is like Deborah saying to you in the car? Is you're driving a thousand miles north out of California. Like why are you going to Pasco, Washington to make wine?

Jessie Ott (36:11.694)
I don't know.

Caleb Foster (36:40.818)
what are you doing? And I want to hear his answer because only he can say it. You could tell the story, I came here, I did this and this happened and that happened. That's fine. Anyone can tell those facts. No, only Rob can tell you the feelings he had in his skin when he was like, yeah, good Lord, I showed up in Pasco for the first time and there's no, they're there. Right? There's just tumbleweeds in a shack.

Jessie Ott (36:42.766)
Yeah.

Jessie Ott (36:59.444)
There are no cars. They're just tumbleweeds.

Caleb Foster (37:08.607)
Tin Shack Boxes, and that's apparently the winery I'm supposed to go to. You know?

Jessie Ott (37:14.454)
Yeah, it's certainly evolved. Yeah. And you thought you were going to be an outdoorsman.

Caleb Foster (37:14.865)
That was the Washington wine that I arrived at. Yeah. Well, I did as much rafting rock climbing. did all the while, of course. Yeah. Still found adventure things to do. yeah. yeah. Yeah. So you've mentioned quite a few people. Do you want to talk about any mentors or anybody that

Jessie Ott (37:28.546)
Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah. I'm sure you still found adventure things to do. So you've mentioned quite a few people. Do you want to talk about any mentors or anybody that kind of helped you along the way? mean, you kind of went through quite a few people. Yeah.

Caleb Foster (37:46.911)
So many so many and everybody's a mentor along the way, I mean, I just remember I remember a moment when I was planting rock garden vineyard in the rocks in the stones district of of Milton Freewater I bought an orchard. I looked at this really seriously Nina and I and Zelma and Phil and I had really worked for a long time in consultancy about buying a vineyard next and We came we had a bunch of money we could do this with and I remember I was talking to somebody Oh the guy across the way Cecil Zerba. He ended up being my neighbor

And Cecil came from another industry, but I was asking him all these questions and I was asking somebody else, was asking Tom Walliser all these questions too. And Tom Walliser was with Pepperbridge, right?

I just remember this moment, like I'd asked all these questions of my neighbors and I already knew the answer, but I wanted to hear it from them too. I've always had that kind of curiosity like, well, what would you do? I know what to do, but what would you do? Well, what did you do?

And I kind of walked away from that. I was with Tom Walliser and Tom was like, why do you, why do you need to ask that question, Caleb? I'm like, well, I'm just curious what other people do. To me, everybody's a mentor if I approach it the right way, you know, and sometimes people have an answer that doesn't make any sense, but it helps me to be like, that doesn't make any sense. But then I look at their life and I'm like, that's why they're having a hard time.

Jessie Ott (38:56.93)
Yeah.

Caleb Foster (39:08.905)
For instance, or that's why that is their loop. They're doing that thing over there because of that decision. And they're a little bit in that loop. Call it stock, call it what it is. And so all around everywhere I went, I was like, I kind of want to do this thing. What do you think? Is that interesting? But especially I would get, I found the value of paying cash, like with Zambalong, paying money for, please come spend time with me.

For me, it really started with Rick Small because the direct experience was just the joy of working with this guy. What a fascinating guy he was. Totally different than I was. Taught me to wake up early, taught me to love the morning. I hated morning. I loved staying up late, getting up as as possible. Didn't want to do my homework, all these sort of things, but Renee taught me how to start a job and finish it and clean up and have it look great and not quit until it was there. And Rick taught me the artistry of

which he just taught me so much. He just taught me so much, know, with massive enthusiasm, just like go at it every day. So yeah, he was a huge mentor to me. My parents were in Connecticut. I was in the West. I didn't see them very much. And he became a father figure to me at the time and a very different father figure than my father, who I love. I love my father, but very different man. Rick just attacked challenges. Very, very type A, very lean into the problem.

He wasn't mean-spirited, but he was aggressive, right? In a creative, supportive way. He was that guy who, if he needs some help, oh, call Rick. And he was on the board of the Wine Commission and leader of all kinds of different groups. And then he created it. He wrote the AVA Appalachian to the TTB in 1994? 1984? 84.

Jessie Ott (40:48.878)
Nice.

Caleb Foster (41:07.391)
He was that kind of guy. was just a leader. Right. Oh, we need an appellation here. Okay. I'll write it. That's just, and I just did, I was like, you can just do that. He showed me like, yeah, you want to do something? Do it. Someone's going to do it. I'll do it. And I didn't grow up that way.

Jessie Ott (41:27.828)
You didn't what? you didn't grow up that way. Yeah.

Caleb Foster (41:28.732)
I didn't grow up that way. Like, if want if something needs to be done like Like my dad wasn't the kind of guy that step up and like I'll do it It just he was a different kind of guy. It's just that's fine. Yeah, but Rick was like All right. Well, we'll do it tomorrow or we'll get started this afternoon Wow This is different way to see the world

Jessie Ott (41:48.974)
He knew how to get things done. He's an executor.

Caleb Foster (41:53.92)
He did. you know, coming from Connecticut, I felt like the old the depth of American history, this four or five hundred years of American history, like the ruts in the road and the old American stories that were in New England. And then coming out west and there's all this light and airy and you can do anything, any time with anybody, can do anything and just change their life. And it was like, wow, what freedom. So there was that feeling, too. And he just embodied that he embodied that sense of like adventure and freedom. And if you want to do something, do it. It's your life.

Jessie Ott (42:15.98)
That's interesting.

Caleb Foster (42:23.231)
There's nothing stopping you. It's brilliant. yeah, it really is, you know? And I feel that today. Like, well, you want to go and open a YouTube channel? Do it. Like, I looked around and I looked at stories for Washington Wine and I was like, Oregon has done this great job of this archive service with the university down there. I forget what university it is. Maybe you know, but I want to say we'll land it. That's not it. It's another one. But they're archiving literally the papers, the books.

Jessie Ott (42:26.232)
True. Very, very true. Yeah.

Caleb Foster (42:51.136)
the notes, the writing journals from the original winemakers, from the original Adelsheim and Eyrie and all these like literally the paperwork that they wrote their own paw in and they've got it in the cabinets and then they're securing away the history of Oregon wine. And Wazoo has picked this up too. But when I heard about that archive, which is now a 10 year project already, 10 years old, I felt Washington doesn't have this. then I heard a Wazoo is taking the charge. Okay, that's exactly where it's supposed to be.

Jessie Ott (43:08.334)
That's cool.

Caleb Foster (43:21.119)
It wasn't a personal project, but I was like, the story of Washington, why it needs to be told? We need to record it, we need to have it in multiple formats. We need a written format, need audio format, we need the visual format. And so that's been my desire on my YouTube channel, which I'm really working. I did this interview with Rick Small, it was on a cell phone, it was clumsy, but we're gonna do better sound and use the right tools. But I really wanna do that story, that backstory, so that they can tell their story, you know, in their own life, about their life.

Jessie Ott (43:46.393)
Yeah. You know what I do, so you know I love it. I think that's fantastic. I think there's a lot of great people within the wine industry that you can interview. I mean, what about even like a Ted Baseler? I don't know what he's up to anymore, but wouldn't it be cool to...

Caleb Foster (43:51.567)
I that's fantastic. I think there's a lot of great people at the conference. I mean, what about even Ted Baseler Yeah, absolutely. He sick for a while. I think he's still alive. I hope so. I'd love to. And I'm sorry to miss.

The fellow who started Long Shadows who was at Ste Michel when I was there, he was CEO for two more years, but Alan Shute recently passed away. He would have had great stories. Bob Betz, right? He's been doing this since 78. Erni Lo- yeah, Erni Loosen Even, God, there's a great guy. Murl Ricky. man, he was at Ste Michelle in 99. He was all silver haired at the time, but energetic.

Jessie Ott (44:27.607)
Betts, yeah. Erni.

Caleb Foster (44:43.936)
outdoorsman, like he would just go for a hike. He's always for a hike. We went up Shuksan yesterday. I'm like, he went up in Shuksan in May. How do you call that a hike? Dude, you're 64? Like, wow. But he was that kind of guy. And he was the cellar master. And he had an archive just in his brain. He's like, okay, look, we've made everything under the sun. We've made malt made out of Loganberry wine. We've made it all. Like we made Riesling in barrels. Like, don't do that. That idea. He's like,

Jessie Ott (44:53.038)
Hahaha!

Jessie Ott (45:12.857)
Hahaha!

Caleb Foster (45:13.567)
But he showed me the cage, they had this wine cage in the basement at Ste. Michelle in Woodinville. Just like almost a football field, not quite that big, it was big room. All the experiments, all these bottles of all the experiments labeled and identified going back decades. And he made most of them.

Jessie Ott (45:32.216)
That is really cool.

Caleb Foster (45:32.989)
the stories he could tell, right? But even Doug Gore, be great, Doug Gore came up here early. I just interviewed Tom Campbell, owner of Tanjuli Winery, and Tom's been in the business 40 years, 40 years. He came up here and started some very early projects. started...

Quail Run, which then had to become Covey Run because of a brand conflict, and a lot of other work. We came up here right around the same time as Mike Janik.

Jessie Ott (46:01.741)
that's really cool.

Caleb Foster (46:05.033)
Yeah. So yeah, those are all great people. right. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (46:07.266)
Nice. Yeah. What about any resources that you recommend people to check out for, you know, maybe probably like for a winemaker, since that's kind of what you do or digital, you know, if you have some digital courses that you recommend that were helpful.

Caleb Foster (46:11.209)
sources that you

Caleb Foster (46:15.571)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's really a big thing that's needed in the industry and I'm really working to put that together. mean, we chatted a little bit like, how we should put together like, know, PDF and like really great materials. Like you've got a really beautiful email signature that's really clean and clear that links to these other great, you know, a great description of your business in those links. And those kinds of things I think are, they're essential, right?

20 years ago, you had to have a website. And nowadays, your links have to work and they have to go to all environments, right? They have to to auditory, visual, and video environments. And then they link to your website and your sales page. I mean, these are essentials. These aren't like good ideas. They're like, no, this is the structure of business today, period. And so many wineries don't have that. I mean, they just don't. And they're wineries who don't even know that you can link your Instagram channel directly to your cash register with, you know, with a few pushes of the thumb.

They just don't even are unaware. And so, and if they are slightly aware, they're too confused and scared to even do it. So I guess, you know, can I point to that? I want to, I'm building that. And I want to build it with really smart people. It takes time, but I want to build it with really smart people so that they're valid. You know, I was looking at, I know it a little bit of a rabbit hole. Sorry, follow me here for a second. But on LinkedIn, Paul Mayberry posted,

Jessie Ott (47:36.696)
Takes time.

Caleb Foster (47:50.17)
after the Silicon Valley report just last week about he got this angry rant and he went on this angry rant naming names about the bullshit websites that really mislead wine business and steal their money and are abusive. he's like, enough of this. This 20 years ago, this stuff should have aged out. People are still pushing these websites that are clumsy, cause high cost to the wineries, ineffective, don't link to their social media. And he's just like pounding and pounding. It's like, stop hurting the wine business.

Jessie Ott (48:18.976)
business yeah

Caleb Foster (48:19.591)
And it's true that so much of wine business is owned by people like me who just didn't want to go through that learning curve. the problem with not... The thing that I see is that not having gone through the digital learning curve is you don't know how to hire for it. You get scared to hire for it because somebody's starting to do stuff and they're speaking Greek. And you're like, wow, I need a Greek translator.

I don't know if they're doing the right work because they're speaking Greek. If I even watch their work, I don't know if it's the right thing to be doing, but I have to pay them to do it anyway. Does that make sense? So Greek equals digital marketing. I can't interpret if what the chore they've done this week or month or year is on target. They tell me it is. And honestly, would say one thing to the wine business, one of the key metrics is how much money did you bring in newly from those chores?

This is a chief and core basic metric. And the days are over when building a great Facebook business page is great enough, even though you don't take money on it. You need to monetize it. And not because, you know, for a lot of reasons. Number one, because it's just the way things work. More than ever, we're working on our cell phones. I guess all I have is this message of like, we must do that. The answer is, do we have those links? They'll be coming, I guess, is the deal. You know, I'm going to build in the Linktree tree and the Instagram and...

Jessie Ott (49:36.493)
Yeah.

Caleb Foster (49:46.344)
and do all those things and offer those deals. And I want to have a course. really looking for, following Paul Mabry's caution of beware of snake oil, of which there's unfortunately too much in the wine business. I really want to lead people to say, stop paying attention to this and do pay attention to this instead. Go to these places. These are sound, true businesses that will help you. Click funnels and...

You know place I just heard of another place. I want to get it right. want to say prime Did is an hour zoom call with his fellow from prime and he has something called Media milk or something, but it's basically his company does social media metric linked sales to your cash register They have a proprietary program that measures the actual cash in your sales tools whether it's you

whatever those sales tools are, your cash registers, your digital cash registers. And linking that and he's in there running the real core metrics to say, okay, you ran this advertisement on 10 % promo, this is exactly how much cash that brought you back. Not a Facebook grow as link, no, real cash, because that's went to your cash register. And it doesn't matter what your cash register looks and feels like, what brand it is, it doesn't matter. They can put this together. That, now that's valuable.

Jessie Ott (50:46.957)
Mm-hmm.

Caleb Foster (51:10.943)
They say they a starter program for $3,000 a month plus $1,000, they recommend $1,000 advertising on Meta. For $4,000, that's a $50,000 a year job, any employee is going to cost more than that. That to me, that'd be a smart one thing to do if you actually truly measure your cash return on social media advertising. I'd do that instead.

Jessie Ott (51:34.572)
Yeah. Yeah, there's, there's tools out there too, that automate talking to people like on, like on Instagram, there's mini chat where based on like whatever responses it'll respond to them and then link it will just link the, the cart right there in the chat.

Caleb Foster (51:36.768)
I know I literally take those invitations just to watch the thing I'm like I'm gonna say yes yeah yeah DM me and I'll DM the word and then I'll be like okay and then they send this and it looks like that

I'll screen capture that. I'm like, okay. And then I hit the button. Oh, cool. And then they send me this. Oh, and then I get an email. Oh, then they asked for my email. Now I'm on their list. That's it. I'm on their list. Right. Smart. Okay. Oh, and then they want my cell phone. Oh, now I got my cell phone. Right. Okay. And then, you know, I'm like, oh, there's the funnel and I'm funnel hacking, you know, the process. I'm like, aha. And it is automated. Set it up once. Boom. And you just build a list.

Jessie Ott (52:14.548)
Email us. Yep.

Jessie Ott (52:28.162)
Yeah, it's true.

Caleb Foster (52:30.495)
So all that and you're on your way. I mean, you're what I want to grow up and become. Like you're doing it with your program. This is it. We're watching the real thing. Folks, if you want to learn a lesson, she's asked the question, do what Jessie Ott does. Well, I appreciate that. That's very nice of you to say. There's a lot more growth to go. But I was thinking like for you, since you're so focused on wine makers and wine industry in Washington, you're focused on the Washington wine industry.

Jessie Ott (52:44.662)
Well, I appreciate that. That's very nice of you to say. There's a lot more growth to go. But I was thinking like for you, since you're so focused on winemakers and the wine industry in Washington, you could work with the Washington Wine Commission and connect with some of the media partners and help you spread the word out. It's a powerful voice for...

Caleb Foster (53:00.413)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have. I have and I actually got up last year at the WAG conference, which is called something else now, but they at the February conference here in Kennewick in the Washington Growers Association conference and I and there was a great media deal six people up there really good talk. At the end I was like how many people have a Facebook account? Awesome. How many people have a Facebook ads account? Everybody sat down.

And I was like, ladies and gentlemen, everything they said at this hour was amazing. They gave you enormous amounts of value. You need to do everything these six brilliant people are doing. Every one of them, every one of them is a basic necessity. It's not a good idea. You know, I just like lit up and I was like, dude, Caleb chill out. What's happened to this dude? You know, I was just flipping out about how important this was. And I, and I feel that we have these great growers who tell great lessons about how to grow.

Jessie Ott (53:52.814)
Mm-hmm.

Caleb Foster (53:58.24)
way better grapes and we're always improving that we're working so hard. We're really good on the wine making. We spent three days and 17 seminar hours doing all that and one seminar on sales and marketing. And I'm like, ladies and gentlemen, you need to go 50-50. Like this needs to be 50 % sales and marketing Washington wine. Because we're really good growers and we're really good winemakers. We got to get way better at digital marketing.

Jessie Ott (54:26.38)
Yeah. No, I think it's the whole wine industry in itself, but I agree with you.

Caleb Foster (54:27.455)
think it's the whole wine industry. It is the whole industry. is. Paul Maybray warned that year after year, last five years he's warned that in the Silicon Valley Bank Report.

Jessie Ott (54:33.686)
You... Yeah.

Jessie Ott (54:41.088)
Yeah, no, I do think that there's certain amount of value in direct-to-consumer. mean, even wineries should be good at texting.

Caleb Foster (54:41.725)
No, I do think that there's certain values that are considered. mean, even wineries should be good at texting. the texting. It's so essential. mean, endless texts. Yeah. We're at the end of the month. We've got two whites and two reds.

Jessie Ott (54:51.918)
Yeah, hey, we're at the end of the month. We've got two whites and two reds for X amount of blah, blah. You know, just little things like that that can just, that's how people buy.

Caleb Foster (54:58.847)
Yeah. Just little things like that. Yeah. That's how people buy. It is. It's how I buy. I look at Gary Vaynerchuk's his text club, right? You join the text club once you give your name, address, your shipping stuff, your credit card once. And then from now on, he sends you a text. One question, one question in that text. Here's the offer. Buy this amazing wine. How many bottles put the number in and you only put one number. Sale made.

Jessie Ott (55:30.286)
That's amazing.

Caleb Foster (55:31.555)
Jerry, that's so brilliant. It's like a one number tax. It's like boom, four, boom, done. They're shipping you for box.

I'm so brilliant. And Wine Access used to have, right? Wine Access used to have this deal, like deal of the day, like here's this amazing wine. They'd be, you know, a text would be like, do you want to take your allocation? And you just hit the red button, yes. And then they would go to their webpage and be like, confirm, yes, done. And I'd buy six bottles, like with two thumbs, like push thumb. I literally timed myself once. I was a book wallter. I'm like, time yourself. How many seconds is it going to take? Start counting. Do I want this offer? I'm going to read it. Okay. Yeah, that's a good one. I'll take six.

Jessie Ott (55:40.686)
That's pretty cool.

Yeah, that is

Caleb Foster (56:10.227)
Boom. Confirm. Confirm page. Boom. Six. That was nine seconds. I just bought $200 worth of wine. Yeah. It might take two days for a winery to set that system up, right, on your website. It just takes your customer nine seconds of enthusiasm.

Jessie Ott (56:15.084)
Yep. It's all it takes.

Jessie Ott (56:21.922)
right?

Jessie Ott (56:28.216)
Right.

Jessie Ott (56:33.282)
Nine seconds.

Caleb Foster (56:34.343)
Nine seconds of enthusiasm. That's where wines are sold. They're sold in that enthusiastic moment. You slow that moment down. I've seen it at the tasting too many times across the bar. I slowed them down. I talked too long. I asked a different question and their enthusiasm faded.

Jessie Ott (56:49.46)
Mm. I can see that. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, you're right.

Caleb Foster (56:50.987)
Right, yeah get them when they're ready if they want to say yes if they want those three bottles be like absolutely

Jessie Ott (56:58.71)
All right, I'll sell them to you right now. As a winemaker for over the years, what do you see as the biggest pain points? Is it climate change? it weather patterns? Is it the sales cycle? What do you feel it is?

Caleb Foster (57:19.837)
Well, we're blessed with the digital age and it's taken people like me who've gone through with a lot of reluctance. didn't want Facebook page. It's the sales cycle, right? It's because it is a people game. If we're going to start to, if we spend less time face to face, we start to a cell phone between ourselves all the time. Then you have to use this to communicate. And so that, that whole cycle is really, really, really.

It literally keeps your business alive, right? You can do everything else really well and it all fails if you can't sell it. And so you must do that on one hand. On the other, I'm shocked how much climate change is impacting us all, be it the fires in LA today, be it the fires in California that swept across my country and devastated and killed people. It's just, it's, you know, the frosts and damage and...

in Europe, the high heat. I remember this one wine, old winery, old vineyard in the south of France in this interview in De Cantre magazine. And they were trying to interview this guy about the drought in south of France four or five years ago when it was 110 down there. And they didn't have any water. And his entire vines dried up to a crisp and died. And he says he was utterly speechless. I mean, they're trying to interview him and he just was just

blocked his voice up as crying. No, he couldn't talk. His five, ten generations of wine growing were dead. That's new. So they're extremes that we're facing that we've never faced before. It's not that harvest is early or hot. It's like wicked extreme. And as I said, I did a video and I just recently I'm about to post it on YouTube. It's like

Jessie Ott (58:59.95)
Wow.

Caleb Foster (59:13.599)
We are finding in Washington state the upper edge of what vines can tolerate. Vines are, seen in some vineyards, vines just you would go down a row and this little vine that doesn't have enough water is dead. It's not, it's not dried. It's dead. It died. yeah. Yeah. has to figure it's water problem. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (59:31.574)
Yeah, they may have to change some of those rules to not water at some point because you can't lose it. Yeah, you got it. mean, yeah, it's unless we change our ways, the climate's not going back.

Caleb Foster (59:42.784)
Unless we change our ways, the climate's not going back. No, no. So it's a really big one. And so I never felt before that feeling in the wine business of like, you know, I felt like, this endless prayer, this endless space of play and fun. Now it's like, we get to have a lot of fun and create meaningful lives. But there's actually a cliff.

Jessie Ott (59:51.171)
Yeah.

Caleb Foster (01:00:12.605)
Don't play over there because you will go over a cliff and die. So we put a fence up. You know what mean? And now there's a danger zones where you can come to an end over here. So watch out.

Jessie Ott (01:00:20.216)
Yeah.

Jessie Ott (01:00:29.112)
Wow, that's really interesting. Yeah, it's certainly a turning point.

Caleb Foster (01:00:31.027)
you it's a different feeling. Yeah, it's certainly a turning point. Yeah, and I feel like a personal feeling, but I think I think other people are awake to that too.

Jessie Ott (01:00:44.15)
And what do you think is the outlook for wine and Washington wine?

Caleb Foster (01:00:44.637)
you think is the

Caleb Foster (01:00:49.303)
I always say it's up and to the right, or maybe I should use the other arm. To me, it's a chart that's just up and to the right. I think it's really powerful and strong. We've got some of the best ones on planet Earth. We've got really great intelligence. We've got beautiful dirt. We've got demographics. People are moving here. It's a lovely place to live and work. We've got good finance of our good financial structure for businesses here. And we've got water.

We got water. We got the Columbia River. There was a study done on the Columbia River four or five years ago, the Raven Holt Lecture. Really, really interesting study. Department of Ecology and Department of the Interior asked basically a 20 year skip question of farmers. They asked two interesting questions. They said, we wanted to know how much water we had allocated in the Columbia River to farming. And so we asked two questions. A, how much water do you want, dear farmers? Dear farmers, how much water do you want? And how much water do you need?

And they took those two responses and she said, the director of DOE, said, we took what they needed. We understood what that was, because that's what they're using. Then we took what they wanted and we just doubled it. So you want more? Okay, we'll take that number, what you want. And we just doubled it. And then we looked at the natural historic flows out of the Columbia River. And there is actually two times the double of what they want for the next 50 years.

That's the Columbia River water basin program. So that's how much water farming, including alfalfa potatoes, has in the Columbia River every year for next 50 years, four times our needs. So we're good in farming in Northwest. We're good. And that was where sustainable on the water side. Now that doesn't include the Walla Walla Valley watershed. It doesn't include the Yakima Valley watershed.

Jessie Ott (01:02:26.626)
yay.

We're good. We're sustainable.

Caleb Foster (01:02:39.667)
but they're managing their water concerns with other methods too. So the Northwest has our capacity to grow food for a long time, another two generations without a doubt, maybe even longer. yeah, Northwest Food Farm and Food is definitely a great place to live and work and play. And I think it's a great place for out of towners to invest. And there's room to grow, there really is. There's beautiful old estates like Hyatt, which have great history that

Jessie Ott (01:02:54.41)
That's great.

Jessie Ott (01:03:06.603)
I agree.

Caleb Foster (01:03:09.321)
can be revived and all around the Northwest. All around the Northwest there's some beautiful wood vaneyards that could use a massive influx of fabulous investment.

Jessie Ott (01:03:21.39)
You know, when we were, when I was at St. Michelle, gosh, I can't even remember when that was. 2005 to 12 maybe, timeframe-ish. Anyway.

Caleb Foster (01:03:24.671)
When I was at St. Michelle, gosh, can't remember when it was. 2005 to 12, maybe. Yeah. Anyway.

Caleb Foster (01:03:38.366)
We all were excited about Syrah and we Sideways had come out about pinot merlot. Remember that? We're like, need a Sideways movie for Washington because it's like the secret. Most of it's like one of the biggest secrets in Washington. It was so good. I remember those emerging days. I remember I was.

Jessie Ott (01:03:38.424)
We all were excited about Syrah and we, know, sideways had come out about Pinot and Merlot, right? Wasn't it Pino and Merlot? And we're like, we need a Sideways movie for Washington, Syrah, because it's like the secret, most of them, it's like one of the biggest secrets in Washington. And so is that, is it still a thing?

Caleb Foster (01:04:04.223)
Yeah, I look at the crazy surrounds coming out of Walla Walla. mean, back in 99, 98, 99, was, Kristoff was over at Waterbrook. I was over at Woodward Canyon and he had his first harvest from Caillou Vineyard. And I remember punching down the first three tanks of his Syrah and like punching down the Caillou Vineyard Syrah. I was like, dude, dude. This is killer stuff, man. It's like, you really, you think so? I'm like, it's fucking the best ever. I can't believe it. It's like our Charbonneau. He's like, really?

I like, yeah, man. So I was so excited. And yeah, I worked with them in those first years. I remember seeing those original rock wines. And that's why I pursued the one place I wanted to own land first, and we talked about this a lot, was in rocks. And I bought an orchard and planted Rock Garden Vineyard, which is now owned by the Walls. And yeah, mean, super special flavor. And you look at...

Jessie Ott (01:04:42.862)
That's so cool.

Caleb Foster (01:05:03.935)
Columbia Winery made the Red Willow, really great Syrah going way back and it was delicious from the beginning. I want to remember Doug, I want to see Doug, who's the winery in Olympia, south in Olympia and he made Syrah. Do remember him, small little winery? outside of Olympia Washington, east of Olympia Washington.

Jessie Ott (01:05:22.168)
Northstar?

Caleb Foster (01:05:30.463)
Anyway, make great Syrah and worked with the Yakima Valley Vineyard, not to rule, but when you're to rule that. Anyway, there were some cool Syrah's in the beginning. That's what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to use their names. Yes, you were right.

Jessie Ott (01:05:45.859)
Sorry, I don't know. I've been out of the... Yeah. We should do a reality video and go out and smash some Syrah. That sounds really fun. Let's go crush them. Let's do it. Let's make some good wine.

Caleb Foster (01:05:57.844)
Let's do it. Totally amazing. I love doing Syrah. I I made I made amazing Syrah's. It was such a great adventure, know, and Kaepernick just does this thing. It just is just terrifying. You know, things just charges through the environment. I'm going number one. No, get everybody get out of my way, you know, but no Syrah's are crazy, crazy good Washington.

Jessie Ott (01:06:23.308)
Yeah, a hundred percent. I've got to get my hands on doing something about it at some point.

Caleb Foster (01:06:24.767)
Yeah. I've got to get my hands to do something about it. All right, let's figure that out. We'll grab a 12 pack of Syrah and just plow through it in a video. Yeah. Let's do it. That'd be total fun. You know, we could do...

Jessie Ott (01:06:35.66)
Yeah, yeah, I think that'd be fun. You know, we could do, I've done live happy hours before. So maybe what we do is we get a bunch of winemakers on and everybody picks one and we all buy it and then we taste it together.

Caleb Foster (01:06:41.567)
Oh cool. Yeah, let's get a bunch of winemakers on. We get a bunch of winemakers on and everybody picks one and we all buy it and then we taste it together. Love it. Or everybody brings their own or we all have all six bottles or whatever, you know. Yeah. That'd be fun. Yeah. Let's do six. All right. I'll round up. We'll round up in some names and we'll get them all to say yes. Only idiots would say no. Yeah, good. Who? Yeah.

Jessie Ott (01:06:59.244)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's do six. six.

Jessie Ott (01:07:07.341)
Yeah, I got one for you too. Yeah, I knew you were going to ask that. I can't remember his name. I had him on the podcast. He worked with you in the, it's St. Michelle and the white wine. He was part of that 99 team. Isn't that when you got the hundred points?

Caleb Foster (01:07:12.063)
Cool.

I think so for for the Erni Lowson recently. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (01:07:24.78)
on the Riesling?

I can't remember. Gosh. I interviewed him almost years ago, I think, or a year and a half ago. It's been a minute. David, it's David Rosenberg.

Caleb Foster (01:07:35.231)
I interviewed him almost years ago, think, for a year and a half ago. It's a minute. No, no. It's David Rosenberg. Oh, David Rosenberg.

Jessie Ott (01:07:43.906)
David Rosenberg. He's a, he, he's a winemaker consultant now out in Washington. He's not with, he's not with St. Michelle anymore.

Caleb Foster (01:07:45.266)
Okay. Awesome. How do I not know how do not know this guy? Was he in Woodinville or was he somewhere else?

Jessie Ott (01:07:58.4)
No, he was in Woodinville. They offered to move him to the East, East Washington, but that just wasn't right for him. Yeah. His life is kind of out where he is, but so he's doing consulting. He posts really fun stuff about what you winemakers do, you know, and teaches us. It's pretty cool.

Caleb Foster (01:08:13.823)
about what you winemakers do. Awesome. Right on, I'm look them up right away. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah, good, good. So I get one. Awesome. And you can pick three more. All right, cool. Sounds fun. Well, we'll chat it up in email before we invite him. We'll promote it well in advance. Awesome. And offer people to buy the wines if they want to taste the wine.

Jessie Ott (01:08:22.082)
Yeah, you'll really like him. He's a really good dude. Yeah. So I get one and you can pick three more. And what we'll do is we'll promote it while in advance and offer people to buy the wines if they want to taste with us.

Caleb Foster (01:08:44.115)
There it is. Brilliant. Well, I'll round up some people who are smart digital marketers like, Trey Bush, perhaps. Start there. So, But yeah, that's that would be great. That'd be really fun. It'd be really fun. Like I used to. But yeah, once in a while, I mean, if I have a idea and cause for it, you know.

Jessie Ott (01:08:52.494)
That's yeah, I was gonna say Washington Wine Commission, maybe. No, I'm just kidding. But yeah, that's that that would be great. That'd be really fun. I can't do them all the time like I used to, but once in a while there, I mean, if I have a good idea and a good cause for it, you know, this is something that me and you can do pretty easily. We can make this happen.

Caleb Foster (01:09:13.225)
This is something that we can do pretty easily. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that'd be really fun, actually. Really fun. And then after six different types of Syrah's we'll have great ideas on how to make movies. Indeed. Indeed.

Jessie Ott (01:09:21.004)
Yeah. And then after the six, you know, different types of Syrah's we'll have great ideas on how to make a movie. Yeah. Yeah. So, so what's your outlook? Are you, mean, I guess we already asked that, I? You said, right. Yeah.

Caleb Foster (01:09:35.232)
So fun. I mean, my outlook is really positive. I showed you the Gunpowder Creek wines that I've made before. I've made white and red, beautiful, Cab Franc and Semillon Those are two of my... Oh, I'm going to send it to you. Of course I do. And Semillon, I make beautiful single vineyard Semillon. Oh, you're going to get all of these. And I make a super bizarre rare wine out of Walla Walla. This is super weird. Walla Walla Valley.

Jessie Ott (01:09:48.278)
You have a Cab Franc?

A Semillon?

Jessie Ott (01:10:02.666)
Wow. No way.

Caleb Foster (01:10:04.543)
Pinot Noir. And that's an interesting story on that, which we can tell later. Well, let's do it. But my outlook is really high. I mean, I'm coming out with some brand new wines, wines called Baragán Binos, which we just made this last year. Super fun. This is a low alc wine. I've got a white and red. So beautiful wines. This is a all natural ferment.

Jessie Ott (01:10:09.004)
We didn't even, I didn't even think to taste the wine so we can do another segment and taste through them.

Jessie Ott (01:10:19.576)
That looks awesome.

Caleb Foster (01:10:32.703)
low alcohol, 7 % wine, naturally sweet, made from premium Cabernet grapes. It's just absolutely dropped at amazing. I had my nose way up in the air about sweet red wines. I was like, that's a bunch of trash for losers. And then the guys I was working with showed me this wine. They called it Christmas wine. They called it sweetie. And I was like, dude, that's like delicious. And we would drink that all year. And I was like,

Jessie Ott (01:10:41.324)
Wow.

Caleb Foster (01:11:03.711)
Wee is a long story, I was like, we gotta make that like as a thing. And then I was listening to your podcast, because they told me their own story about how they drink Stella Rosa all year. I'm like, what's this Stella Rosa? Oh, that thing in the grocery store, ew. And I tried the Moscato, which is 100 % Moscato straight from Italy. And it's good. It's a good white wine. It's a really good white wine. Like to me, they're they're red and they're flavored stuff. It's like, But the Moscato's a really solid, delicious wine.

Jessie Ott (01:11:08.312)
Hahaha.

Caleb Foster (01:11:34.368)
But they told me that's what they their friends drink because it goes great with Mexican food. I'm like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. You're telling me that you make a better version of that? And you and all your friends, that's the one you drink? yeah, we're making this. So we made this. So we made barrigun pinos. And it's like, that's the answer to Sella Rosa. and then I'm listening to your podcast.

Jessie Ott (01:11:57.858)
That's cool.

Caleb Foster (01:12:02.015)
And all of your people are talking about like, what's the leading wine in the category in 2024? It's sweet white wines and sweet reds and Stella Rosa is leading and growing by 10%. I was just like, am I barking up the right tree? I was like, we're so barking up the right tree. So my outlook's really high. You know, but it's being.

Jessie Ott (01:12:13.922)
Yeah, they've been on fire.

Jessie Ott (01:12:20.29)
Yep. Yeah. No, it's true. Cause the younger, yeah. The younger generation. Yeah.

Caleb Foster (01:12:27.039)
Yeah, it's be inventive. Like I love, I love single vineyard, special dry wines. This is my career. But I'm also like, Hey, keep it, keep it real. Keep, keep dreaming. Keep thinking, you know, I'll always remember that somebody told me, I don't know if it's true, not apocryphal, but somebody told me that Robert Mondavi started Mondavi Wine Raid when was 60 years old.

Jessie Ott (01:12:38.605)
Yeah.

Caleb Foster (01:12:49.541)
I might just be beginning the best part of my career. That's cool. That is exciting. The wine business is special, right? It's a business that treats you well for your intelligence and the depth of experience. And if I do what Zellma taught me, which is do the first things first, do the second thing second, then the third thing third, and build on success and do it in the right order. And don't do those crazy stuff over here. Don't get ADD distracted, which I love to do.

Jessie Ott (01:12:53.442)
That's cool. That is exciting. Hey.

Jessie Ott (01:13:02.37)
Right. If you do things right, you got to move with the market.

Jessie Ott (01:13:19.532)
Me too.

Caleb Foster (01:13:19.697)
You know, and I'm grateful for that distraction because in 2021 it taught me. like, went, poof, in all directions all at once, whoopee. And I did learn a lot. And now I get to say, I've been down that rabbit hole and all y'all haven't been it. And I know it's a waste of time, but if you follow this rabbit hole, that's when you need to do that. And don't do this, but do this. And now I know the four things to do and forget the rest. And then I see people like you doing it. I'm like, you're doing the work. Like I did the homework, but I didn't do the work.

Jessie Ott (01:13:43.256)
Nice.

Caleb Foster (01:13:49.12)
I've got to just do the work. Ain't it though. Ain't it though. But you said you're using AI and I'm like, I'm scared of AI, but you're already crushing it with that. it changed my life within a few hours.

Jessie Ott (01:13:50.55)
Yeah, it's a college degree, just learning one social platform. Yeah. I feel like I'm...

Jessie Ott (01:14:05.152)
Yeah, it changed my life within a few hours. Once I understood how much, yeah. I don't know why I was trying to do it without it. It's just crazy.

Caleb Foster (01:14:19.071)
It's just crazy. Send me the 10 step course on Wilder. Show me the link on your website. Well, when I get my five thousand followers, I'll be sure to find it. You know. Forget it. Is there anything else that we haven't talked about? Ten million things, right? Well, yeah, so I'm rebuilding my website as smart as I can. So gunpowdercreekwinery.com

Jessie Ott (01:14:23.486)
Okay?

Yeah. Well, when I get my 5,000 followers, I'll be sure to write a book. But yeah. Yeah. Is there anything else that we haven't talked about, Caleb, that you want to mention? Maybe your website?

Caleb Foster (01:14:48.927)
That's my sort of holistic funnel hub and I'm rebuilding it so it should be live by the time you post this. I'll make that my job. And Compata Creek dot wine is my sales site. So got the two and we'll be launching Baragambinos here very soon. So yeah, really exciting. Can't wait to share with you.

Jessie Ott (01:15:11.054)
That's exciting.

Yeah, I don't think I've ever had anything like that.

Caleb Foster (01:15:18.963)
Yeah. Yeah. That'll be fun. We definitely do need to do a tasting. Cool. We will. Yeah. Sweet. Well, this has been really fun adventure. Awesome. Delight. I fell into the winemaking business and how you're able to experience. mean, that is one thing that I find so interesting about winemaking.

Jessie Ott (01:15:19.094)
Yeah, that'll be fun. We definitely do need to do a tasting. Okay. Sweet. Well, this has been really fun adventure learning about how you fell into the wine making business and how you've been able to experience. mean, that is one thing that I...

I find so interesting about winemakers is for them to pick up and move to different countries just to learn. It's so common for you guys to do that. know, yeah.

Caleb Foster (01:15:48.71)
is for them to pick up and move to different countries just to learn. It's so common for you guys to do that. We're so lucky that way. mean, so lucky to go overseas and Zelma got me work in South Africa in 2002. Really mind expanding, mind expanding experiences and yeah, very, very lucky framework that we get to work in. Yeah. Yeah. In marketing and data and...

Jessie Ott (01:16:07.181)
Yeah.

Jessie Ott (01:16:14.614)
Yeah. Yeah. In marketing and data and analytics and you don't really get that. Right? It's kind of a language problem, but with winemaking, you guys figure it out. It's pretty cool. That is one thing I think is really, really cool about winemakers is really the way you communicate around the world with each other and invest in

Caleb Foster (01:16:18.495)
And you don't really do that. Right? It's kind of a language problem. But with winemaking, you guys figure it out. It's pretty cool. That is one thing I think is really, really cool about winemakers. Really, the way you communicate around the world with each other and investing. I was talking to a Somali aid down in Exeter.

Jessie Ott (01:16:43.606)
I was talking to a sommelier down in Mexico at Xcaret one of the high-end resorts down there. And he was telling me that a lot of big name wineries have been really invested into the Mexican wine production. And that is really exciting.

Caleb Foster (01:16:57.502)
Yeah Production That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited to see I'm gonna pay attention to that. Yeah Very cool. I'm pay attention to that

Jessie Ott (01:17:02.624)
Yeah, I'm excited to see what kind of wines come out of there.

Caleb Foster (01:17:10.943)
Yeah, I'm interested in Mexico for a whole host of reasons. mean, I'm sort of daydreaming in 20 years to retire down there. So I'm like, want to more attention, you know? but yeah. Yeah, well maybe you could work at a vineyard. Just for funsies. Just for funsies. Sounds like fun. Yeah, build up your winery and sell it and go to Mexico. Go to Mexico. Doesn't suck.

Jessie Ott (01:17:21.87)
Yeah, well, maybe you could work at a vineyard and retirement just for funsies. Yeah, build up your winery and sell it and go to Mexico. That's whole conversation, isn't it, about where to retire.

Caleb Foster (01:17:43.261)
Yeah, yeah. So, but it doesn't feel like I'm anywhere near that. It really doesn't feel like it, you know. It's a fascinating, very interesting business that does play well to your strengths as you get more.

Jessie Ott (01:17:46.07)
Yep.

Jessie Ott (01:17:51.714)
Yeah.

Jessie Ott (01:18:01.58)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And with all the accolades and awards that you've received over the years. So yeah, that's, that's really exciting. So I'm, I'm super pumped for you and all your success and I can't wait to try the wines. We'll get back on camera and we'll do it. And then let's do this Syrah, this Washington Syrah tasting. I think this is going to be so fun.

Caleb Foster (01:18:05.759)
Yeah, that's really exciting. So I'm super pumped for you. And I can't wait to try the wine. Get back on camera and do it. Yeah. Let's do this Syrah. That's Washington Syrah. Absolutely. Good, good. And I'll post it on my YouTube channel. I didn't mention my YouTube channel. Mine, it's Caleb Foster hyphen winemaker. So it's at Caleb Foster - winemaker. That's my YouTube channel. Yeah. Good. Yeah. You want to learn more about winemakers?

Jessie Ott (01:18:30.422)
Okay. Good. Yeah. If you want to learn more about wine makers out of the state of Washington, which I think is a really cool initiative, Caleb.

Caleb Foster (01:18:35.647)
other than the state of Michigan. I mean, it was really cool and interesting. Yeah, cool. Thanks. I'm going to keep on that track. Yeah, good. Well, thanks for showing me how it's done, Jessie. This is great. Thank you. Yeah, I'll let you go. Get back to it. Awesome. Take care. Thanks. We'll see you next round. See you soon. OK, cheers.

Jessie Ott (01:18:41.42)
Love it. Yeah, good. Okay. Well, I'm going to let you go. Yeah, I'll let you go. Get back to it. Alrighty. Thanks, Caleb. See you soon. Okay. Bye. All right. Cool. That was fun.

Caleb Foster (01:18:59.464)
Wow, super blast. Thanks, that was really fun. Just nice.