Last Updated on April 20, 2023 by

Alie Shaper is the Co-founder and Winemaker at Chronicle Wines, which produces wines of character and purpose from the North Fork of Long Island. As an experienced wine and spirits professional, Alie has established an urban winery brand as an impactful marketing angle for the New York wine industry.

Aside from leading Chronicle Wines, she runs a private label development and wine consulting business, Alie Shaper Fine Wines, and became the winemaker for Croteaux Vineyards in 2015.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

• Alie Shaper talks about how she got into the wine industry
• What drew Alie back to Long Island?
• Alie shares her experience working for a distributor
• What drives Alie’s passion and style of wine?
• Alie gives a glimpse of her urban wine company, Brooklyn Oenology
• When did Alie develop her first wines and tasting room?
• The learnings Alie brought from Brooklyn Oenology to her new ventures
• Why Alie and her business partner decided to launch several brands
• Alie talks about orange wines and how she stays motivated

In this episode with Alie Shaper

How does a winemaker preserve the traditional flavor profiles of wine while going out of their comfort zone through experimentation?

Today’s guest, Alie Shaper, combines an old-world mindset of winemaking with a unique approach to the traditional production methodology. She shares her process, what she’s learned from a vast wine career, and how she’s keeping the industry innovative and exciting.

In today’s episode of the Legends Behind the Craft podcast, Drew Thomas Hendricks and Bianca Harmon sit down with Alie Shaper, Co-founder and Winemaker at Chronicle Wines, as she shares her journey in winemaking and gives a glimpse of her experience developing brands (and flavorful wines). Alie also talks about how working with a distributor helped her understand the buying and selling process of the wine industry. Stay tuned!

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Barrels Ahead
• Drew Thomas Hendricks on LinkedIn
• Bianca Harmon on LinkedIn
• Alie Shaper on LinkedIn
• Alie Shaper on Instagram
• Chronicle Wines
• Chronicle Wines on Instagram
• “Turning a Hobby Into a Winery With Maria Rivero González of RGNY Wine” on Legends Behind the Craft
• Southern Glazer’s
• Brooklyn Brewery
• Brooklyn Oenology
• Pellegrini Vineyards
• Premium Wine Group
• As If Wines
• Alie Shaper Fine Wines on Instagram

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Barrels Ahead.

Barrels Ahead is a wine and craft marketing agency that propels organic growth by using a powerful combination of content development, Search Engine Optimization, and paid search.

At Barrels Ahead, we know that your business is unique. That’s why we work with you to create a one-of-a-kind marketing strategy that highlights your authenticity, tells your story, and makes your business stand out from your competitors.

Our team at Barrels Ahead helps you leverage your knowledge so you can enjoy the results and revenue your business deserves.

So, what are you waiting for? Unlock your results today!

To learn more, visit barrelsahead.com or email us at hello@barrelsahead.com to schedule a strategy call.

Episode Transcript

Intro  0:03  

Welcome to the Legends Behind the Craft podcast where we feature top leaders in the wine and craft beverage industry with your host Drew Hendricks. Now let’s get started with the show.

Drew Thomas Hendricks  0:19  

Drew Thomas Hendricks, the host of the Legends Behind the Craft podcast. On this show, I talked with leaders in the wine and craft beverage industry. Last week I had the opportunity to talk with Maria Gonzalez of RGNY about her journey from launching the family winery in porous Mexico to our newest venture in the north forks region of Long Island. And today I’m excited to continue learning about this amazing region with the legendary winemaker Alie Shaper, but before I formally introduce her and dive in, it’s time for a sponsor message. Today’s episode is sponsored by Barrels Ahead. At Barrels Ahead, we work with you to implement a one of a kind marketing strategy. One that highlights your authenticity, tells your story and connects you with your ideal customers. In short, we’ll wineries and craft beverage producers unlock their story to unleash their revenue. Go to barrelsahead.com today to learn more. Bianca Harmon our DTC strategist is joining us today. How’s it going? Bianca?

Bianca Harmon  1:12  

It’s going really good. You’re really excited to talk to Alie today?

Drew Thomas Hendricks  1:16  

Yes, today we have Alie Shaper on the show. Alie is the co founder and winemaker for Chronicle Wines, which has a few brands and wineries under his name. How’s it going? How’s it going? Alie?

Alie Shaper  1:28  

It’s going really great. Thanks. And glad to be on the show. And yeah, talk shop. Yes, yeah.

Drew Thomas Hendricks  1:33  

So thank you so much for joining us. So just kind of starting off, how did you get into the industry?

Alie Shaper  1:40  

Um, it was rather circuitous. It wasn’t something I had planned, you know, as a as a teenager, like, I want to grow up and make wine. There was very little in the way of really sort of any wine consumption in my family growing up. So it’s just something that Yeah, sort of sprouted out of my, my soul, I guess I had actually gone to school for engineering. And that happened to be in the Finger Lakes. I was at Cornell University. Okay. And Cornell has little since then the hotel school has merged with their business school. But the point being in the hotel program, there’s a beverages concentration. So hotel attendees can learn about coordinating and managing beverage programs. And as part of that they have what’s essentially a wines one on one, you know, wines around the world, of course, and it’s

Drew Thomas Hendricks  2:37  

famous for their hospitality. Yeah, yeah,

Alie Shaper  2:40  

I’ve still got some terrific college friends that went through the the hotel school and, and they’re all amazing, very outgoing. socially adept, folks. But um, you know, having been an engineering student, every course was math and more math, even more math, and I said, I need to do something, not math. And you know, when you’re 21, and you’re like, oh, I can drink in class on a Wednesday afternoon. Sounds cool, great. But you know, what, I didn’t expect getting into it. You know, I thought it’d be fun, but I didn’t expect that I would find something that I loved. And that was just sort of that first seed that got planted. And, you know, it turns out wine is not an easy subject, either. You know, you really have to do some work to to get your mind around all the different Appalachians and the regions and the grape varieties, you know, and this, of course, is like scratching the surface. So,

Drew Thomas Hendricks  3:36  

yeah, as an engineer, I’m sure you dove in just very,

Alie Shaper  3:40  

yeah. Detailed nerd. Yeah. glom on to that pretty well. Yeah. But um, yes, I

Drew Thomas Hendricks  3:47  

didn’t go straight to the wine industry. What did I really make in helmets for fighter jets?

Alie Shaper  3:52  

Well, that was at one of my, my first jobs out of school. Yeah. So it so happened, you know, at the time in the 90s, a lot of manufacturing was going on in Silicon Valley. And that’s where a lot of the engineering jobs were. And that was sort of another thing I hadn’t planned on in my young adult life that I was going to pick up in, you know, uproot from the East Coast and sheftall. But that’s where the jobs were. And I was first at a company called Trimble navigation. And they produce some of the earlier global positioning devices for like truck fleets and auto fleets and some of the earliest GPS circuitry for handheld devices and whatnot. And my subsequent job was at an aerospace firm, and we developed fighter helmet fighter jet helmets and weapon systems and whatnot. I worked a little bit on the Joint Strike Fighter weapons display system. Yeah, and but I’m very much a pacifist. So it’s, it was interesting is technology. But you know, when I stopped and thought about kind of helping the weapons thing, I’m not sure. I’m not sure that’s really where I want to go into my life. If

Drew Thomas Hendricks  5:01  

you’re like, I didn’t think I was be working. Yeah,

Alie Shaper  5:03  

like, I didn’t expect that, you know, I wanted to work on I did want to work on aircraft, or on spacecraft. But um, you know, when I was four, I knew that I wanted to be an astronaut when I was four. So that’s, that’s why I had started out on the engineering route. But this, you know, this was all in California. And it so happened at this second job, they had arranged the work week such that it was Monday to Friday, the first week, and then Monday to Thursday, the second week, with nine hours a day, instead of eight hours a day so that every other weekend was a three day weekend. Oh, that’s nice. And that afforded just a lot of time to take road trips. And you know, of course, California is pretty much covered in vine. So you know, you could just pop over to Sonoma, you could pop over to Monterey County, you could go down drive down the coast of Big Sur, so this just afforded a lot of time to just kind of feed that hobby. And after about four years in California, the the gentleman I was dating at the time, he happened to be from the Hudson Valley, and we both wanted to return to New York. We ended up in the Hudson Valley. And we I basically dropped everything I was a little bit burnt out from the whole Silicon Valley scene. And, and yeah, we dropped into Hudson Valley. And after a couple of months of sort of doodling around going, what am I going to do with my life now? I just started hunting the classifieds. And one day, a little ad for a tasting room, a local tasting room in the Hudson Valley popped up. And I can’t I could do that. So I went for the interview. They they asked me, you know, what can you do for us? And I said, I could build you a database for your wine club members. And because I thought at the time, there was no third party software to

Drew Thomas Hendricks  6:53  

do I built a couple Silla management things right around that same time. There just wasn’t

Alie Shaper  6:56  

a lot back then. Oh, there. Yeah. wasn’t available, you know. So yeah, I think that’s that’s probably what clinched it, not just because, you know, it’s like, oh, you know, I’m a kid on the point. They never told me, that was the reason they hired pretty good guests, I think. But, you know, it was one of those things. It was one of the happiest jobs I ever had, you know, I was making minimum wage, plus tips. And but I was, like, for the first time in my life jumping out of bed to go to work.

Bianca Harmon  7:27  

Hey, it’s so funny that you say that, because when I worked in a tasting room, for the longest time, it was the opposite switch. But the guy was a big time engineer. Yeah. And worked at the winery and the tasting room, and he was like, This is great. I love getting up and coming here. I love really this this?

Alie Shaper  7:47  

I think, you know, it’s like, it’s partly the novelty of it. Of course, you know, it’s hospitality is a difficult business, you know, and so partly that is the novelty. But the other part was just being able to get that much closer to the process, you know, in was as an engineer, I was a manufacturing engineer, which is all you know, it’s all about building things and creating systems. And this has ended up serving me really well throughout my my second career I can

Drew Thomas Hendricks  8:13  

imagine. Yeah.

Alie Shaper  8:16  

So it’s just it’s been this kind of interesting segue. So you know, once I started in that Hudson Valley tasting room. They were at the time called Rivendale winery, and they had opened up another tasting room in New York City in Manhattan, it was called Vintage New York. Think it open to see if I can remember my history now. 2000 2000, the end of 2000, I think. And they continue there till about 2009. That was kind of the real clincher for me. Because of of winery laws in New York, we have an entity that’s called a farm winery. And that allows you to sell other wines from other New York made wineries. Really, yeah. And that’s, that’s still one of the benefits today. So you can have in New York, you can have an alternate location away from your from your primary licensed location that essentially affords you all of the same allowances as far as production and tasting and so on. So they had started a small scale program offering other wines from around the state in the Hudson Valley tasting room. But then in New York City, they set it up so much more like a retail shop. Okay. And at any given time, there was you know, maybe 100 120 550 Different Cubase from all around New York, and just being having to sell those having to taste them having to, you know, have some clue of what I’m talking about. You know, that was like sort of this crash course in an opportunity. Yeah, it was an amazing opportunity, you know, where it would take years to travel all around New York State and tastes, and here they are all at one central location. And they were offered as everything was open and available to taste for, for customers. So,

Drew Thomas Hendricks  10:05  

yeah, I think a lot of people on the West Coast, they don’t really understand how diverse New York is with Yeah,

Alie Shaper  10:10  

it’s kind of a, you know, sort of. Yeah. And you know, even to this day, I’ve been in the local industry for 22 years. And I still encounter people who have not heard of New York wine.

Drew Thomas Hendricks  10:24  

Yeah, of course. Finger Lakes and yeah,

Alie Shaper  10:28  

you know, Finger Lakes, of course, is the biggest region. And you know, where we are, where I’m doing my production on the North Fork, it’s such a skinny little piece of land is about 30 miles long, and you know, at its widest point, maybe five miles wide, and like, really? Yeah, map,

Drew Thomas Hendricks  10:42  

you wouldn’t guess that would be a great fit just on a map, you wouldn’t guess? Yeah, that would be a great, yeah, it’s

Alie Shaper  10:47  

a spec. It’s a spec on a map, you know, so if you’re, if you think it’s like a kin to sort of village, certain village region, say, and when you get into those micro regions in Bordeaux, or burgundy, or what it’s like, that kind of that amount of landmass is teeny, tiny.

Drew Thomas Hendricks  11:02  

And you grew up on Long Island?

Alie Shaper  11:03  

I did. Yeah, I grew up in Nassau County.

Drew Thomas Hendricks  11:06  

And did that. Is that what drew you back to that region? Or was it the kind of what you were tasting in New York? No, it’s

Alie Shaper  11:11  

my intention to leave Long Island and never return. It’s just like, you’re close to New York City, but it’s also an island. And it’s like, impossible to get off of it, you know, the kind of graphic that we have, you know, yeah. And I just had, you know, I had ideas when I was a young adult that I wanted to, you know, live in Europe, and I wanted to go here, and I wanted, you know, and I just wanted to go experience other things. And yes, I have had that opportunity to do that. And yeah, as my sister says, To me, she’s funny, she’s like, Ali, it’s like, Long Island is a black hole free to keep sucking you back. Because I’ve left and returned a couple of times, you know, but, but it was the wine industry that that brought me back. So, but anyway, you know, the brief history of time, you know, once I got involved with vintage New York, then I started taking more wine classes through the wine and spirits, Education Trust to London, and then started working for a restaurant group on Long Island when I had moved back to Long Island. And then, during this time to my father had a manufacturing business. So I was working for him on weekdays during the day, and then evenings and weekends, I was doing my other my other job. You know, I looked at it as sort of getting an education, but getting paid for it, you know, because it’s doing nights and weekends and restaurants or what have you. And then came the opportunity when southern wines and spirits opened up their distribution operation in New York. They had an opening in a marketing department for organizing tastings and product demonstrations across New York. And that was a full time gig. And you know, there was always in my mind, because my father had always been running the business throughout my life. And you know, I went to engineering school, it was sort of follow that maybe I’d take over his business someday. And, you know, it took me about a week to work up the nerve to tell him that I was going to leave and I’m gonna go do this thing. So

Drew Thomas Hendricks  13:19  

I take that he

Alie Shaper  13:21  

actually took it really, really well, you know, and he’s like, I just want you to be happy. I understand. And I know you’ve been working in the industry for several years. And, and I know that you love it. So

Drew Thomas Hendricks  13:32  

follow your passion. That’s

Alie Shaper  13:33  

yeah, yeah, I wish you well. So, yeah, and so I went to Southern Wine and Spirits, and I wasn’t there terribly long. For two reasons. One, because I ended up moving to Brooklyn during this time. And, two, it was such an intense environment and and I was ping ponging all over between Staten Island and Westchester and the east end of Long Island. Like it was just for me, it was just too much coming and going trying to cover all that such a big region and manage all of these promotions and

Bianca Harmon  14:06  

learning experience, though, to be Southern Wine and Spirits. I mean, they’re the biggest distributors and, and I don’t know, many Wine Owners, or people in general, that are heads of wine that have worked for a distributor as well. Yeah. I mean, I worked for an importer, but then, you know, just like so sold it to southern Wine Spirits. And it’s a beast of itself.

Alie Shaper  14:33  

It is. Oh, yeah. You know, and I look at you know, a lot of people ask me, oh, did you go to school for winemaking? And I did not, you know, and I never took any formal courses in winemaking, but having this kind of experience, like you say like, it was certainly a crash course and understanding how distribution works and what are the dynamics inside of it and the literal pounding the pavement that it takes to sell one I, that is all of that experience your restaurant distribution, retail was such an incredible background, you know, if I would recommend to any winery owner, if anyone who’s thinking about starting a winery that you first do something like that, so you have a good understanding the beast you’re jumping into and, and how buyers buy what they think about when they think about it. What, what are your end consumers thinking about? You know, so all this background in the buying and selling of wines really informed? How I make my one and balancing how I make what I want to make with what people are going to give me dollars for Yeah, you know, it doesn’t always match but you know,

Drew Thomas Hendricks  15:47  

what is a winemaker and we’re just kind of jumping ahead, but what is your style? What’s what’s what drives your passion and style of wine?

Alie Shaper  15:56  

I definitely have sort of, I’ll call it sort of an old world mindset as far as flavor profile, but not necessarily, you know, super duper traditional in the production methodology. On the Northwest, you know, because we have your we’re considered a cool climate, cool ish climate, you know, it’s definitely more cool climate as you go up into the Finger Lakes, where we are in the North Fork with Long Island jetting out into the Atlantic, we have influence from the Gulf Stream, we’ve got temperance of our temperatures from the Atlantic itself. And so we have a lot of growing conditions that enable us to grow a lot of the Bordeaux varieties and some dramatic varieties, some northern Italian things, even some southern French grapes as well. So there’s, you know, I think of winemaking as you can’t, you can’t force grapes to become something they’re not. And in the very early days on the North Fork, a lot of what was planted was Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, and mirlo. Turns out Chardonnay Merlot do really, really, really well here. Cabernet Sauvignon likes very specific locations. Pinot Noir has a really hard time, because it’s so humid here and its ins are so thin. But people were planting what they what they wanted to sell and what they liked, as opposed to what works. And what I learned early on in at Vintage New York working there and people would come in and ask for a Cabernet Sauvignon in the style of something coming out of Napa or Sonoma, or not Napa or Sonoma. And so you know, there’s I personally feel that Cabernet Sauvignon. Yes, it’s very much possible to grow out here. But it’s very, very rare that you’re going to make the big beast. Yeah, you’re gonna get you know, I

Drew Thomas Hendricks  17:56  

would think you get like a European expression of Exactly. Excellent, high areas of Italy.

Alie Shaper  18:02  

Right, right. So, you know, it’s you have to have realistic expectations. And it’s all about matching the right grade to the right place, and then using the tools to get the best out of the expression of that grape that Mother Nature given you that year. So that was, you know, it’s not just a stylistic thing that I enjoyed, but it’s also a practical thing is for me playing in a region, you know, can but then I like to play an experiment and you know, is one of the first winemakers on the North Fork to start dabbling in orange wine and skin. Yes.

Drew Thomas Hendricks  18:35  

I want to talk about that. Talk about North Fork. I want to hear about this Brooklyn analogy. You were the urban wineries. That was the first place you made wine, or

Bianca Harmon  18:45  

Yeah. Where did you go from Southern wine and spirits?

Alie Shaper  18:48  

I mean, yeah. So yeah, I while I was employed by Southern I ended up moving into into Brooklyn, which I was, you know, I was already eyeballing moving in there. And that was in 2005. And, you know, at this moment, the whole, you know, local food movement and local beverage scene, the local food movement in particular was really sort of nascent, but it was percolating and percolating hard, right. And but, you know, the scene that it is now it was just starting to switch on. And, you know, it was still like, a lot of warehouse parties and artists lofts. And, you know, it was like all those, you know, kind of cool, you feel like you’re kind of underground kind of stuff. That’s fine. And but what I was literally, you know, out just out for a walk on a Sunday afternoon, one day just be bopping around. And I happen to live close to Red Hook and so I was like, I’m just gonna be bop around Red Hook. Beautiful warehouses, because Red Hook used to be before the Brooklyn Queens expressway was built. Red Hook was like the Center for shipping. In Brooklyn. It sits all since moved to New Jersey. But there’s these beautiful brick wall or houses. And there’s these, what I, what I call in my head sort of these creative businesses between glassblowing and, but also artists, studios, furniture makers, there was a parachute designer, and they’re of all things, you know. And it just sort of occurred to me like, thing, why couldn’t you put a winery into one of the terms? And, you know, then I was all like, electric, my skin was on fire. I’m like, Oh, my God, this is the coolest thing to have. Yeah, we got to do this, you know, okay. But, you know. So, at the time, the only the only kind of, I’ll call it modern day beverage thing going on in Brooklyn was Brooklyn Brewery. And I think at that moment, maybe six point brewery was just starting up. You know, back in the 40s, and 50s. They’re just past prohibition, there had been a lot of breweries in Brooklyn, but with the consolidation of the market, they all sort of they just disappeared. So and really the first regeneration of that was with Brooklyn Brewery in the late 90s. But, you know, it occurred to me like if somebody’s making beer in Brooklyn, there’s no reason somebody could not make wine. There. There’s plenty of space for it. So I spent the next year defining what that brand would be what it would look like, and that ultimately became the brand resident & Winemaker

 at Brooklyn Oenology. And that’s how that’s the name under which I started the company. 

Drew Thomas Hendricks  21:24  

That was such a cool name.

Alie Shaper  21:28  

Unfortunately, Oneology is hard for the Layperson to when they see the word they’re like, what is that? Yeah. The working title was Berlin Wineworks. And I should have just kept it Brooklyn. Wineworks. But I like the nerdy here. Let’s

Drew Thomas Hendricks  21:43  

check is this is this a lab?

Alie Shaper  21:45  

Yeah, yeah, I would get calls, you know, like calls from a medical supply companies looking for oncology. And what if I’d done too late. But anyway, but the whole, the whole premise of the brand, though, was to work with exclusively New York grown fruit and then next to bottlings with artworks from contemporary artists based in Brooklyn, and it’d be like this story of Brooklyn as a place of makers. Yeah. And, you know, so bringing together the agriculture, the and the social culture of the area and celebrating that, you know, and it becomes the, you know, on the bottle, sort of a little traveling gallery, if you will, and those labels are, they were designed to peel what you could peel off the front label, so you could keep the artwork. Yeah, that was really gonna show Bianca that she was like,

Drew Thomas Hendricks  22:37  

That is a great idea.

Alie Shaper  22:38  

It’s costly, but it’s worth it. Yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s just fun, you know, and used to find the the labels, you know, stuck in random places on like, street signs and things like that, or just the label turned into a sticker. Yeah, yeah. So it’s, it’s this double layered thing, you know, it’s got the right adhesive to keep it attached to the bottle, but then when you peel it off, you can slap it on to somewhere else. Perfect. So you know. Yeah. And, yeah, so we, I had, I had started producing those wines in 2006. And I was getting the licensing together and all of that. But before I started actually making the wines I went, Well, you know, I don’t really have any production experience. I know, from my sales backgrounds, that I that I have a certain style in mind, you know, I decided where I wanted to start. So I started hunting around for basically, you know, harvest position for the season. And I knew about premium Wang group, which is where I still do my production to this day. Okay. But you know, I’ve sent sent out resumes to West Coast East Coast that a customer press facility or Yeah, it’s custom fresh winery. That was opened in 1998, I believe. And it’s very purpose was meant to host smaller producers or, or startups or what have you. And it’s since grown into quite a tremendous operation. But it was run it’s still like not was is run by a gentleman, Russell P. From He’s a longtime winemaker. He’s originally from Australia, but he’s done winemaking on the east coast of the US for many, many years. And it was a longtime winemaker at Pellegrini Vineyards also on the North Fork, and I always loved Pellegrini wines, and I thought, Oh, if there’s ever anybody that I want to learn from, I’d love to learn from him. So I was really you know, I was really hoping to get that position at premium wine group and I did. And so that’s where I met my now business partner. Who we joined forces in 2014. Robin Epperson-McCarthy so she was running the lab at Premium I became her lab assistants, but I also got thrown into the cellar. But again, it was like one of those very immersive experiences because at at a custom contract facility, it’s not just one winery with one set of fruit coming from a single vineyard. It’s, it’s really a hub of the North Fork. And so you know, with multiple winemakers, running through there and different grapes, you know, this one goes beyond yay, but that one grows so many and Blanc, you know, and working in the lab and every day smelling the effects of what we were doing, you know, what we were doing with the wines and measuring the bricks every day and measuring or going around sniffing all the tanks to make sure nothing’s going awry. You know, was like, boom, boom, boom, this really fast learning. And

Bianca Harmon  25:47  

you think that if you that, if you know that you came into it at the right time to? I mean, definitely, definitely. Yeah, yeah. To do what you’ve done now without, you know, the six beer like, yeah,

Alie Shaper  25:59  

it would be so different. Yeah. That’s, that’s an amazing question. Bianca. Yeah, yeah. It was one of those things like my father has always said, you know, business is part ideas, part luck, you know? And certainly, that timing was incredible, you know, to be able to jump in at that moment.

Drew Thomas Hendricks  26:14  

Oh, yeah. In such good opportunity, with all all the everything coming to you and see all the diversity and all the different expressions of the wine around there.

Alie Shaper  26:22  

Yeah, yeah, you know, and get to talk to you. And then that was that very same year, I started assembling my first wines and my the first vintages I just did custom blends, because I knew it wasn’t, I didn’t have the skill yet to really manage my own fermentations. Yeah. But then, between what I the idea of what I wanted to produce to begin with, plus, now this newfound experience at the winery, plus, you know, finding my non shy voice to, you know, ask someone so winemaker, hey, what do you think, you know, you know, and getting some some guidance with that. I have to say, I’m I was I was, I was really happy with them, I was really proud of myself for the first two lines that I put together. And then, you know, by the time all the licensing got put together, and all of the legal stuff was in place, I was able to start selling in 2007, you know, so it was like, me, and a wheelie bag and a cell phone and you know, it now

Drew Thomas Hendricks  27:21  

I gotta sell it. Yeah. Yeah. And that sort of, so the sea opened the tasting room, that was you have the tasting room for your first release? So then you then you opened up the tasting room?

Alie Shaper  27:37  

Yes, I waited a couple years before opening the tasting room. You know, I didn’t I didn’t come into the business with millions of dollars or anything, you know, like, I basically I funded it on a small inheritance from my grandmother’s passing. And it was, you know, I wanted to do a little proof of concept, as well, because, you know, because there was not really much of a beverage scene at the time, you know, was this going to work where people are going to be an even interested in this. And so I sort of had this three phase plan in my head, where Phase One was to start out with wholesale and gain a little foothold in the market. And really, you know, gauge the, the interest, if you will, and the response, and especially because, you know, it still that even more so then, of course, there was less awareness about New York wines in particular. So

Drew Thomas Hendricks  28:32  

start with just just pounding the pavement in Manhattan.

Alie Shaper  28:35  

Yeah, yeah. Manhattan and Brooklyn, and, you know, knocking on doors and saying, and bringing bottles with me, hey, look at my pretty bottles of the gorgeous skirt on it. And you know, and it was also that kind of, to your point, Bianca, it being like, good timing, because it was before everything was named, like Brooklyn, soap and Brooklyn toothbrushes. And, you know, we’re putting the Brooklyn behind, right. Yeah, right. Right. Yes, it’s still very much a novelty hat to have Brooklyn referenced in, in the name of a of a product. Yeah, so at least I had the element of novelty behind me at the time. You know, but then, of course, that that was the marketing bit, but then you have to have good juice in the bottle, of course, to back it up. Otherwise, it’s fun one time, but it has to be fun, a lot more than one time, in order for it to be a successful product. So but by 2009, I started realizing that I had gotten enough traction, but people wanted to connect further with the brand. And in a couple of conversations with my colleagues, they said, you know, really having a tasting room is a way for people to really get a sense of, of tangibility around around your brand and your product. And I went, Okay, and 2009 ct, you know, that was the after the housing crash and recession. So there happened to be a lot of really good deals on on rent, so Oh, again, good timing, you know, it was like, I haven’t been in the right place at the right time over I’m like, what the universe is just delivering, wow. Okay. And, and I found a terrific spot again in one of these beautiful brick warehouses. And this was my sort of phase two idea to get the tasting room going and late 2009 I got a lease by November 2010. I had it all outfitted and designed and,

Drew Thomas Hendricks  30:28  

and we had other businesses, there was a place that would draw the crowds were really the

Alie Shaper  30:34  

worst, they were just started having to be one of these, one of these streets, it was on Weiss Avenue in Williamsburg. And of course, you know, the big street in Williamsburg was Bedford. That’s, that’s the main drag if you will. And this was a couple of blocks over but when I was started looking around for a space, you know, I saw people kind of walking their dogs and riding their bikes through I just went, I can smell it, it’s kind of pop this section of the neighborhood is going to pop and sure enough, it’s just there’s a timer for me market that had opened up across the street. And then we opened and you know, there’s a couple other small restaurants and then before you knew it was like boom, boom, boom. And older buildings being knocked down and you know, luxury condo buildings going up and the whole thing so yeah, I got myself in there for for for a really good price. And then, and then all this other stuff just started appearing and falling into place. And a couple of times New York Times wrote about, you know, wife Avenue and how it’s how it’s popped open. And you know, this, this tasting room on the on the edge between North and South Williamsburg did it kind of thing. You know, I was like, oh, that’s me. Cool.

Drew Thomas Hendricks  31:46  

Yeah. During your time at the Brooklyn Oneology, what was the biggest learning thing that you took away from there into your new ventures?

Alie Shaper  31:55  

Oh, that’s a really good question. I think. Yeah. So there’s, there’s always shifts in demographics and what people want and what they’re looking for. And that’s not just in what people want to eat and drink. I think what we had to offer to eat and drink was, had always been suitable. But what I learned this was a huge, almost more like a philosophical lesson is that there are so many forces at work around you in the context of doing business that you just cannot control. And they buffet you around. And so as as the neighborhood got more and more popular, it shifted from sort of like a den of artists to a little bit more well heeled, but creative professionals, okay to drop a little bit more money. And so that was like the meat of our customer base, okay, and they live around the corner. And you know, they would be the people that come in for a few glasses in the evening and hang out and something eat and drink, come to our events and then go home with six bottles. And then as, as Brooklyn became, you know, Brooklyn, it became much more of a tourist destination, as well as a family destination and they just spend their money differently, and they weren’t spending their money in a way that aligned with what we were doing. And, and then big box retailers were coming. You know, Levi’s jeans came in and J. Crew came in, you know, and a lot of my co small business owners were, you know, we’re kind of talking amongst yourselves, like, how are they? How are they surviving here until we realized that it wasn’t about making money on those locations. It was just like a billboard, in the shape of a cube and you could happen to go inside the billboard and buy some stuff.

Drew Thomas Hendricks  33:51  

Aid and Ashbury.

Alie Shaper  33:53  

Yeah, yeah. All right. So, you know, and as and as other establishments open, like, our operation was plucky, you know, and it was resourceful and we didn’t spend a ton of money on design, like I sourced all of the furniture myself, I designed it myself. You know, whereas, so it wasn’t like this sort of Danish modern, polished looking place it you know, had sort of it had an industrial vibe and had a nod to the history of the building. And I had all my my barstools and chairs were all mismatched kind of thing. You know, we made tables out of fire doors, sort of. And it was cool. It was really fun. You know, it’s definitely different than than everything else. And it was also under 1000 square feet. So it wasn’t it wasn’t a type of place where you could have big events. So as I saw in sort of these shiny places appearing around the neighborhood, I realized, okay, this is this is what the neighborhood demographic wants. And it took me it took me a while to realize Why is it that, you know, I was trying to figure out for a long time, you know, because of course, you know, as a small business owner, of course, your ego gets wrapped up in it, you know, it becomes part of your identity, and what should I do, and you know, just sort of like, Oh, got stuck, because I could see, like, what I was doing was not going to survive. And also, rents were increasing rapidly in the area, too. So I thought to myself, alright, sometimes what you need to do in order to expand is to contract. And what I came to realize is that if I was going to continue in Brooklyn, you know, the original idea was then to eventually open a production winery. Because of the phenomenon of Brooklyn, real estate prices were crazy. And it just didn’t make sense to kind of reinvent the wheel when I was already working out of a winery on the North Fork that had everything I needed. And, you know, just for some people, if they wanted to come in and pour those millions of dollars into it great, you know, but that was not my situation. And it’s not what I wanted to necessarily take a risk on. And

Drew Thomas Hendricks  36:03  

just quickly, from Brooklyn to North Fork, how long does it take to drive commute or get there?

Alie Shaper  36:08  

Depends on what time of day?

Drew Thomas Hendricks  36:11  

On a Saturday? Yeah,

Alie Shaper  36:13  

I mean, these days, it can take two and a half, three, three and a half hours, you know, if you hit it at the wrong time. Yeah. So that back and forth is is nutty, you know, so I had realized, you know, at least with the Brooklyn location that I was going to have to turn into some kind of event space, or make it a shiny, sort of almost restaurant space. And I realized that’s actually not who I am. And that’s not why I got into the winemaking business in the first place. I wanted to make wine. Yeah, and I really enjoy the tasting room aspect of it, but you know, doing a restaurant type of thing is is is not my raison d’etre, so to speak. So that prompted the shift out to the North Fork, the Exodus. Yeah, I had moved out there to live in 2014. Okay. And that’s the point at which I now partner Robin, became involved with me, she wanted to start her brand, which is called Salford cellars, which is one now one of the five brands that we have as Chronicle. And I started production on a sort of a more eponymous label called as if wines were

Drew Thomas Hendricks  37:19  

as another cool name for wine. X.

Alie Shaper  37:24  

And I wanted to tell a bit more of a personal story with those. So now all of a sudden, okay, here we are with with three brands. But it wasn’t until 2017 that we had so close the Berlin tasting room at the end of 2016. We had there was wasn’t any design on another location yet, you know, but a colleague of ours had some space in this very crooked, but very Northfork old building. Nothing is square anymore, because it’s probably 175 years old. But it’s charming and was like just the right size, you know, small, manageable, intimate, you could really talk one on one with people. And you know, they they had originally had in the second half. There’s two storefronts in this building. And the other storefront, they’d had a small sort of high end sandwich and coffee shop that they had stopped. It stopped operation on that, but they were using it as overflow space for their tasting room. And they got in touch with us. And we’re like, you guys want the other half and kind of Yeah, again, something fell on our lap, you know. So we got everything together. We organized and within three months were open in June 2017. And we had a new taste.

Drew Thomas Hendricks  38:39  

Oh, that’s awesome. Did you open that under the Brooklyn Oneology label or?

Alie Shaper  38:43  

Yeah, so the company was still a Brooklyn Oneology, but we’re like, that doesn’t quite relate on the North Fork because we are 100 miles away from Brooklyn. Yeah, so we called it to begin with Peconic cellar door, because it’s in the town of Peconic. Okay. And cellar door, my husband happens to be Australian. So I’ve spent a lot of time in Australia. And Robin has also spent a lot of time doing wine work in Australia. So it was sort of a nod to our roots into our background with that. So we had these, these three brands, and we’re selling these three brands start kind of started out as sort of a cooperative tasting room between us, but we were doing all of the production under the one Brooklyn Oneology license. And then in 2000, later that year, I put out a label called Hey, water Cove, which was sort of a tip of the hat to the North Fork. Yeah. It’s a tiny little waterway that you’d never spotted on a map unless you were really looking for

Drew Thomas Hendricks  39:38  

now what I got to why so many brands, so that’s interesting.

Alie Shaper  39:45  

I didn’t even realize there were all your brands. I thought, yeah, it’s others. It’s kind of you know, because we’re, we’re two winemakers and we both have our individual stories and histories and I’m These are part of the part of a brand is of course telling the story and getting and sending a message. So, you know, the Brooklyn brand, of course is about Brooklyn and Queens or something a little bit more personal to me, Hey, water Cove is like, Oh, this is my new home and I love it here. It’s beautiful. You know, and Salford was meant to encompass Robins travels to the other side of the world and back, you know, and a lot of the names of those wines reference, you know, leaving and coming back, you know, sort of rejuvenated or changed or something. And sulfur just kind of a sort of made up word for birds defined by the ocean, you know. And, but this is what prompted us to, to adopt the umbrella name of Chronicle Wines you know, we’re Chronicles our stories you know, in our in our tagline is every bottle, just story

Drew Thomas Hendricks  40:50  

by your title is chapter builder.

Bianca Harmon  40:51  

Yeah. That’s the meaning behind Chronicle Wines. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like this is have to do with Brooklyn Chronicles. And then I live in, you know, the Bay Area. Francisco Chronicle.

Alie Shaper  41:04  

Yes, yes. Yes. You mentioned we first chat. Yep. Yeah. So yeah, so you know, we definitely have a lot of a lot of names. But that’s meant to be able to tell the stories that we tell you.

Drew Thomas Hendricks  41:19  

Like, the different stories between the two. So as if one’s what’s what’s that story?

Alie Shaper  41:23  

I’m glad you asked. You know, I, it really started out of this feeling of, of, sort of gratitude that I sort of discovered this career discovered this, this life, and I started thinking a lot, I’m very, very much a thinker, and, and a philosopher, and, you know, start thinking like, you know, how did I get this lucky, you know, because to find what you love to do in life is hard enough, as it is sure to be able to access, not just resources, but to find the thing inside yourself, to get the gumption to go ahead with it, like, where does that come from? You know, I started thinking about the confluence of, you know, this terrific family, I have, you know, not just my nuclear family, but you know, the, the, my extended family, my in laws, and it’s in being taught by my parents that to believe in myself and, you know, being born in the early 70s, where still a lot of girls were not taught that you can pursue business and you can pursue mathematics and science. And, you know, learning a sense of courage, my mother struggled a lot with mental illness, but she still had the courage everyday to keep trying to forge forward. You know, and, and to have have that, so a lot of these names of the wines under the as if label are meant to celebrate sort of this confluence of, you know, opportunities that come your way, but also having having some wherewithal inside yourself to begin an understanding of what to do with these opportunities when they come with you, come to you. And so, the if part of the name, you know, it’s such it’s such a tiny but such a powerful word, because it’s inside of every question you ask yourself about, you know, what if I turn left, what if I turn right? What if I, you know, what, if I choose to do this thing, or that thing, you know, this, this is what creates your path for momentum. And, you know, so the names of the of the wines that there’s a white wine called serendipity. And serendipity is so much more than chance, you know, it’s an opportunity coming to you, but you have to be ready to use that opportunity. You have to be looking for it. And sometimes the opportunity, you don’t realize that it’s there, because you’re not ready to see it. Or courage, you know, is realizing that, oh, man, this thing scares the crap out of me. But what if I, what if I do it? What if I succeed, you know, and sort of seeing your fear, recognize it saying, I see you and I’m not daunted by you know, I’m gonna, I’m gonna give it a try, you know, persistence when you because, like, every small business owner, you know, every two weeks, you look at the ceiling and go, What have I done, you know, you know, but you, you persist through that you ride the waves, you know, and you, you tackle the obstacles. Gratitude is another one, that’s a big one, that’s a huge one, you know, being thankful for just even be able to attempt this. Gratitude really is, is a form of success, you know, if you just have gratitude to be able to even just try that is in and of itself, success beyond financial success. Yeah. Yeah, there was sort of, you know, thinking about, like, how lucky I get like, how do I how do I send that message out to the universe and you know, forward that positivity? That’s what that’s about.

Drew Thomas Hendricks  44:49  

Absolutely. So I’ve no segue but where do orange lines fit in?

Alie Shaper  44:55  

Yeah, I think can fit in anywhere, but

Drew Thomas Hendricks  44:58  

I really love orange Wednesday. Love the movement. Yeah. But like, three, four years ago, you didn’t see him anywhere. Yeah. And now every everyone list that I look at has red wine and orange on the menu.

Alie Shaper  45:10  

Yeah, yeah. It’s so funny. And you know, even though they sort of came back into the wine making scene, you know, maybe a decade or so ago, but like you said, it’s only been in the last three, four or five years, they’ve actually seen them on by the glass lists in restaurants and everything else, you know, you have you have that kind of get started, and then all of a sudden, it just goes, takes off.

Bianca Harmon  45:32  

Yeah, I worked for a winery, and the winemaker was from South Africa. Oh, yeah. So that was the first time that I had experienced orange wines. Because it was it’s a bigger thing out there. Yeah,

Alie Shaper  45:43  

yeah. They’re really, they’re really fascinating. It’s like so much else, you know, out in the world, everything old is new again. But what I find fascinating about orange wines is, is why we’re, we’re making them why they’re, why they’re revived. If it’s, you know, since the the biggest collection of orange wines were produced in northern Italy, and Eastern Europe, it’s surmised that they started to pure, you know, maybe 800 600 years ago, something to that effect. And what’s thought to be the reason for producing wine in this manner is with the lack of mechanical refrigeration, the color compounds in the tannins that are extracted from the skins basically act as oxygen absorbers. So protect the wine you from from spoilage for, you know, for at least a certain amount of time. And that’s very much why more often red wine can age longer than, than white wines, because it has the tan and in the color to do a lot of absorption. But that also that that combining with oxygen is also part of the flavor development and the aging of wines. What I think of now is why we’re making orange wines is because there are so many interesting flavors that you just don’t get otherwise. You know, that’s what I’m loving about it. Yeah, you know, like, especially in certain grape varieties. Like there’s some magic in those skins that you just don’t really, where’s

Drew Thomas Hendricks  47:10  

the complexity? Like I was looking at some of your tech sheets before the show and one would lay it on the commercial computer skins. Yeah. That’s gotta be just fantastic.

Alie Shaper  47:22  

I love working with commercial media for Orange wine. I was I was just we’re about to start harvesting grapes for vintage like any minute now so I was just in the vineyard this afternoon with one of the growers that I’m buying from and oh, no, sorry, yesterday afternoon anyway, it was converted Remainer and you know, we’re talking about how we’re both obsessed with it, you know? Because it’s a great that’s got so much character. It can be one that’s hard to learn to love at least for me it was hard to learn to love because it is so

Bianca Harmon  47:56  

but it’s yeah, for me are five times faster. Yeah. Never seen word that’s hilarious. Yeah. eventually get converts demeanor.

Alie Shaper  48:07  

There you go. Yep. You just got to repeat it. You just got to break it up into good words. And then you know, get your get your, your little German corner of yourself on and convert strong enough, you know what I’m saying? Yeah, when I started playing with it as a skin from it in 2012. And it was it was like a revelation. It was really you know, it’s not as colorful as Pinot green. But it does have this beautiful like shining, luminescent orange color. But then, when you when you have the fruit that’s ripe enough to also mass rate further on the seeds. And this beaut, it’s like eating a charcuterie plate. It’s amazing. You know, it’s, it’s like eating a piece of prosciutto with a piece of Manchego with a piece of fig on top. And an almond slice. You know, it’s

Drew Thomas Hendricks  48:54  

a perfect visual.

Bianca Harmon  48:58  

In my new yorkers thing with the diverse demeanor, I had a co worker who was a chef too, but yeah, New York. Yeah. Man, he would bring in some of the best craziest coverage trainers I had ever had in my life. And hate was his favorite. I mean, you know, from sweet to both dry and food pairings for us to try and awesome. And he was a big New Yorker. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Must be a popular New York grape varietals it’s quite

Alie Shaper  49:29  

well, it’s you know, we we grow it and amount of it here. So it’s accessible. It’s, it’s not necessarily an easy sell to the consumer. Because a lot of people have the idea that overshooting or is categorically sweet. Same way as reasoning is often is often thought of by the consumer and it just That’s a misunderstanding because so much of so much of say Riesling introduced to the general public, you know, was was sweet or Demi sweet.

Drew Thomas Hendricks  49:56  

They introduced Riesling through Blue none Yeah.

Alie Shaper  49:59  

Exactly you know, so but then once you know sort of the the demographic or not the demographic, what is the, you know, sort of the mass. The masses, I’ll call it you know, once they kind of get an idea of what a certain group is, then it’s very hard to unstick it. Oh, yeah. And but commercial media is like a chameleon like Riesling where it makes incredible wines from Desert style to semi sweet to bone frickin dry. And, you know, when I do the, do it as an orange wine style and do it dry, it’s, you know, it looks like a Sherry You know, when people see it in the bottle, and they haven’t, or even really any orange wine in the bottle and they look at you know, they’re given if they haven’t had experience with orange wines before. aside, I like what it looks like Sherry has a diverse community. And it’s kind of smells like it’s deserted. But then it’s this really dry sort of citrusy palette that then blooms into nuts and oranges and spices and honey. And like what is happening in my mouth right now? I don’t know. But that’s so much fun to me to introduce it to someone who hasn’t had orange wine, or even people who have had orange wines, because orange wines themselves can be so ranging in style and have so much diversity depending on what grade you’re using, where it’s from so on. They’re really fun to chat with people about.

Drew Thomas Hendricks  51:16  

Sure. No, I say do you do orange once for all your different brands or just as the I do

Alie Shaper  51:23  

on Orange wine for the Brooklyn Oneology label called Broken land? Which, sidenote is a extremely literal translation of the Dutch Breukelen.

Drew Thomas Hendricks  51:34  

Oh, kind of sound like,

Alie Shaper  51:37  

yeah, you know, it’s just what the Dutch called Brooklyn, Brooklyn. So that’s where that goes from. And then I do a, an orange patching on natural four as if that’s the gratitude wine. So do a skin ferment and then nab a bunch of that volume of press it off, chill it down really quickly. It’ll help the ferment and then follow that up and then let it warm up again and finish ferment in the bottle.

Drew Thomas Hendricks  52:05  

Sounds fantastic. And you’re doing so much fun stuff. I tried to talk about it like you get these spritzers that look delicious.

Alie Shaper  52:13  

They are so good. They’re soda.

Drew Thomas Hendricks  52:15  

That brand the canner Pinette Yeah camless But it’s canned So

Alie Shaper  52:23  

yeah, those those are those are really fun I’ve we’ve we’ve created a monster with that you know even though I make all these really fun wines to be honest, my refrigerator at home is stuffed with cabinets and what’s fun about those you know, it’s basically like an answer to to the CANS cocktail movement and the seltzer movement it’s like you know, it’s not your bottles and James You know, but instead of making a wine spritzer at home, you know have a glass of wine and pour some seltzer in it, you know, these are pre canned pre made, it’s all made of wine that Robin and I ferment and we’ve come up with all of the the the flavor combos for it.

Drew Thomas Hendricks  52:58  

It’s natural. The wild ones like the cardamom read them. So yeah, that’s,

Alie Shaper  53:02  

that’s a sleeper hit. That’s one of my favorites. It reads like a sangria in the summer, but has enough warm spice that is really appealing in winter also. And we’ve made them dry. And we’d like to call them winemakers mind spritzers you know, so that they don’t have that. They don’t have that Jolly Rancher sickly sweet profile to them. It tastes like you made a wine spritzer in your house. Yeah,

Drew Thomas Hendricks  53:27  

yeah. I love it. I’m doing it all the time. My wife can never kind of see why I’m seeing a face. Pellegrino in my life.

Alie Shaper  53:36  

Oh, yeah. Well, then I should send you some of these. So you guys can try these out. Because

Bianca Harmon  53:41  

I’ve been eyeballing this since we talked the I think sooner. Would love to try them. All right. We’ll set

Alie Shaper  53:50  

it up. We’ll set it up because it gets you a little surprised. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. You gotta try. Um, yeah, we’re so excited about them. And you know, we just we launched those just before the pandemic.

Drew Thomas Hendricks  54:01  

I wouldn’t say perfect timing for that. Yeah. Awesome. Timing.

Alie Shaper  54:03  

Yeah, that was the one thing we did not time properly. So yeah, now that the wholesale markets coming back, that’s it’s switching on again. Yes.

Drew Thomas Hendricks  54:13  

But in the whole can cocktail categories just exploded over the last two years.

Alie Shaper  54:17  

Bananas. Yeah, it’s gone bananas.

Drew Thomas Hendricks  54:19  

So I’m loving what I’m seeing just across the whole category. Yeah, yeah. There’s everything I taste that I’m loving the fact that

Alie Shaper  54:27  

Yeah, well, you know, it’s funny, different

Drew Thomas Hendricks  54:29  

curiosities.

Alie Shaper  54:30  

So many of my customers have heard me say, you know, you can’t like everything. You know, every once in a while somebody comes in with like, that’s not my favorite. Like, that’s okay. You know, you can’t like all the paintings in the world. You really

Drew Thomas Hendricks  54:43  

love anything. Someone’s gonna

Alie Shaper  54:44  

love anything. But if you love it, if you liked all the beverages, imagine how flat out drunk on the floor. You’d be every week to do that to yourself. So, yeah. Feel free to be picky.

Drew Thomas Hendricks  54:58  

That’s so great. Yeah, I could tell I call David, there’s one question I ask everyone is how, what keeps you motivated?

Alie Shaper  55:08  

I think, at this stage in my life, and having, having been running this company for 16 years now,

Drew Thomas Hendricks  55:18  

yeah, for 16 years, motivated by something.

Alie Shaper  55:21  

Yeah, exactly. You gotta be motivated by something, I think, I love the most I love, I love the creation of things. And, and I love the other good feelings that come out of that. And it’s not just good feelings for me, but we have, we have an amazing team at our winery, you know, and it’s not just my, my business partner, Robin, you know, we’ve, we’ve, like, grown up together in this industry. And you know, we’re also really good friends. And it’s not just the joy of working with a good business partner, but working with our team members to bring so much to the table, you know, we worked hard to kind of rebrand the company, and we feel really proud of it, about doing that, you know, and moving things into a new chapter. It’s really, it’s, it’s about that building and creating, that gets me up every day. And you know, hopefully, you can make a few dollars at it while you’re doing it too, you know. And one thing I feel really proud about as well over the course of running this business is also kind of being a I’ll call it like, a generation point for a number of other people to advance in their careers as well. Just before we started this, today, I was talking with my old tasting room manager from Brooklyn, my tasting room manager. And he’s got this burgeoning set of restaurants that are doing really, really well. He’s gotten all kinds of reviews in the New Yorker magazine, and he’s about to open a couple other locations. And he’s just, he’s killing it, you know, at the tasting room, it was the, the crappiest thing I ever had to do was to have to let him go when I close the tasting room. But also at the same time, I always knew he was going to be up to something amazing and to see him doing it. Okay, you know, if he was going to, if he were still working for me at this point, I’d be like, get the hell out of here because you’re too good for this and go do something of your own right. Or another young woman who worked for us in our North work tasting room for a couple of years and then she got taken on by another winery as assistant winemaker and now has become production winemaker and, and vineyard manager. So her career is, is taking off. So having that opportunity to like to pass things down the ladder, so to speak, yeah. And to help bring other people into into an industry that they love and to thrive in it. Another person who worked for me in Brooklyn, he worked in the tasting room. He’s now a winemaker out in Sonoma, Boise. He was also doing orange wines, too. It’s called glassmaker wines. Really small production. He’s doing some some really interesting things, Jonathan.

Drew Thomas Hendricks  58:06  

Yes, your reach just kind of grow. Yeah,

Alie Shaper  58:09  

yeah. You know, it’s just that gives me so much joy. Is that kind of, you know, being able to pass something on like that.

Bianca Harmon  58:16  

You want to give people the opportunity that you? Yeah,

Alie Shaper  58:20  

yeah. Yeah, not, you know, it’s very much part of my pathos that I tried to express in that in as if, you know, it’s just even without that brand, that’s a way of being that I’ve that I’ve just discovered, and I think it’s important to embrace and, and pass on.

Drew Thomas Hendricks  58:41  

Well, we’ve got to continue this conversation. Another episode. This is fascinating, Alie. So where can people find out more about you Chronicle Wines?

Alie Shaper  58:52  

So are the Chronicle website is chroniclewines.co Because of course dotcom was already taken. So just to make it interesting. And we have just a couple of months ago, we launched a brand new shiny, new e commerce Store, we did a serious upgrade, and that’s shop.chroniclewines.co. We’re on Instagram as Drink Chronicle. And if you’re curious about the wine spritzers also Drink Connect on Instagram. And my personal Instagram handles are at As If Wines and also at Alie Shaper. And I broadcast on there to a little bit about our Australian wine makings with. Well, we’re vineyard growing right now. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we got that. That’s a whole other can of worms we’ll talk about all the time. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Taking over the world. From the tip of Long Island Yeah, and then you know we we of course have our tasting room in Peconic on the North Fork on Peconic lane, and it’s a beautiful intimate little space. It’s, it’s we’ve got a little one half of it is set up sort of as lounge and the other half is set up, you know, cars come in and shop. Yeah. And we’ve got everything that we make there, including some of our very small batch sort of house label, wines that we only sell in the patient room to. Yeah,

Drew Thomas Hendricks  1:00:30  

pretty good. Oh, that’s awesome. Well, Ali, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you. Yeah. Appreciate a really special conversation. Thank you, you

Alie Shaper  1:00:39  

know, thanks very much. I appreciate the opportunity. And yeah, let’s do this again sometime.

Drew Thomas Hendricks  1:00:43  

Absolutely. You have a great day.

Alie Shaper  1:00:45  

You too. Cheers.

Outro  1:00:54  

Thanks for listening to the Legends Behind the Craft podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.