Meet Cory Assink and Zeke Blattler, the visionary co-founders of Los Cuernos Wine. With a passion for wine and extensive experience in the industry, they’re revolutionizing the market with premium canned wines.

Their brand emphasizes quality, convenience, and accessibility, making great wine approachable for enthusiasts everywhere.

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

• Explore their entrepreneurial journey from sommeliers to founders of Los Cuernos Wine
• Gain insights into their innovative approach to wine packaging, why they chose cans, and the benefits this choice brings to consumers
• Dive into their strategic decision to go non-vintage
• Discover their inclusive marketing strategy, aimed at reaching wine enthusiasts across demographics and settings
• Gain practical advice on navigating the competitive world of wine shelf placement
• Learn about their collaboration with winemaker Gerardo Espinosa, blending traditional craftsmanship with modern innovation in every can

In this episode with Cory Assink and Zeke Blattler

Have you ever wondered how the convenience of canned beverages could revolutionize the wine industry?

In today’s episode of the Legends Behind the Craft podcast, Drew Thomas Hendricks is joined by Cory Assink and Zeke Blattler, co-founders of Los Cuernos Wine. Discover how these industry veterans are disrupting traditional winemaking with their innovative canned wines, bringing premium quality and convenience to wine lovers everywhere. From their serendipitous journey in the wine world to navigating the challenges of launching a brand, Cory and Zeke share their passion and vision for the future of wine. Whether you’re a wine enthusiast or a budding entrepreneur, this episode promises a refreshing take on the world of wine.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Drew Thomas Hendricks on LinkedIn
• Barrels Ahead
• Cory Assink on LinkedIn
• Zeke Blattler on LinkedIn
• Los Cuernos
• Gerardo Espinosa on LinkedIn
• Wine Spectator
• Southern Glazers
• Young’s Market Company
• Summerland Winery
• Lodi Wine
• White Claw
• Plump Jack Winery
• Desparada Wines
• Sutter Home
• Copa di Vino
• Woodbridge
• Tablas Creek Vineyard
• Carboy Winery
• Barefoot Wines
• Maker’s Mark
• Tastry

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

[00:00:00] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Drew Thomas Hendricks here. I’m the host of the Legends Behind the Craft podcast. On this show, I interview leaders in the wine and craft beverage industry. Today’s show is sponsored by Barrels Ahead. At Barrels Ahead, we help the wine industry connect with their audiences through authentic content. Go to barrelsahead.com today to learn more. Today I’ve got a really special guest and I want to, two guests, and I want to give a shout out to Brian Haffeman from Latitude 33 Jets up in Palomar Airport for connecting us today. We’re talking with Cory Assink and Zeke Blattler. They’re co-founders of Los Cuernos Wine. Welcome to the show, Cory and Zeke.

[00:00:34] Cory Assink: Thanks Drew. Appreciate it.

[00:00:37] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So you’ve got a winery or wine brand, Los Cuernos. First, I gotta ask, how did you guys meet?

[00:00:42] Cory Assink: We met in 2001 at a fine dining restaurant in Long Beach, California called L’Opera. I had just moved from Texas, where I grew up. And within, like, two months, within two months in 2001, I started myself, Zeke, and my now current wife all started working at the restaurant at the same time. So yeah, so that’s where.

[00:01:09] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, that’s cool. And Zeke, so you both have backgrounds in wine. And so tell us about your wine background.

[00:01:15] Zeke Blattler: When we met at the L’Opera, I had already worked at the Loews Hotel. Did some other retail jobs, but this one in particular like a 500, 700 bottle list. We had an advanced sommelier and to even get to work the floor, you had to take a test, which studied cheeses, meats, pastas.

And so the wine education that was really, really strong. And then, you know, to make more money, you know, if you sold a better wine, you made more money. So Cory and I, during this time period, we would, we were studying to be somms. We would take wine home every day and we’d pour, we’d blind test and we’d read books.

So we were just like diehards into studying and learning about wine. And I think once you start learning it and then you start selling wine to consumers, that to me is the real education. I want my goal was that someone would have a great experience. I would pick the right wine for them. I wasn’t trying to like stick them with something too expensive to just the right wine where they felt great about it.

So that was the beginning of kind of our wine journey. And then from there I went to another restaurant, jammed a couple of restaurants. Cory was the wine director and then he wrote a Wine Spectator winning, Wine Spectator award winning wine list at that restaurant. And then I ended up going to Southern Glazer’s as a wine manager. Did really well there.

And then I went to Young’s Market Company RNDC. And so that was kind of the big part of my journey, but I’m a wine lover too. I’m a beverage enthusiast, probably like you. I love tequila, whiskey, you know, coffee, but wine in particular, I love wine. And so I think that’s kind of the combination. I drink wine often, I try a lot of wines, and that’s the root of my knowledge, I guess.

[00:03:10] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. What like, so before going career, what drew you to the industry? Was it the food? The beverage?

[00:03:18] Cory Assink: Drew, I wish I had a sexy answer for you. I’ll be honest with mine. I don’t know where Zeke’s gonna go with this, but like to the industry for me, it was like out of necessity. So I grew up in Texas, but you know, as amazing of a childhood and parents as I had and have, I had to work full time since I was like in high school, since I could.

So for me, the service industry, it just provided flexibility and cash. So that’s why I got into it. And then to go back to what Zeke said, he nailed it. We just fell in love with wine and became wine lovers. But then the nuances, we realized very quickly that there was a direct correlation between the amount of wine knowledge we had and the amount of money we made.

Then, you know, like you said, before we were each married, you know, we’re each married and have each have three daughters, which is kind of funny in the best way. But we, you know, before we were married, when we were really into wine, he said we’d bring bottles home. That’s exactly what we would do.

We’d be playing video games, but we would intentionally choose wines that we had no idea what they were like, whether we didn’t, we’re like, wait, what is that? The grape? Is at the country? Is that the region? Like what?

[00:04:35] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I thought for a second that you’re going to say you’re pairing wines with the video games.

[00:04:40] Cory Assink: Hey.

[00:04:41] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I wouldn’t get a real-time shooter. That’s going to be a Petite Sirah.

[00:04:45] Cory Assink: That’s awesome. Yeah. So it was just, it was just one of those things where we just choose ones we had no clue on purpose and then just open them up and then open the book and kind of dig into it and figure out. Or just have a, you know, have a better understanding of why it tasted, how it did good, bad or different.

[00:05:05] Zeke Blattler: How about you, Zeke? Yeah, same. It was really to make money at first working in restaurants and then getting like good at it. And the better you got, like literally wine changed my life. Like going from restaurants Southern and being corporate America and being good there. Like, so I love wine and it changed my life. So I don’t know much more I could say.

[00:05:28] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I think that’s it. Yeah, I think that’s a common story. Like you’re introduced to it for just in there’s many different avenues. I was a stock person in college for the Sheraton restaurant where I stocked the bars every Friday, Saturday morning. And then after I graduated with a degree in philosophy and ancient Greek, I got a job stuck in the shelves at a local wine store.

And then that’s when I caught the bug and I just started reading everything and then became a wine buyer. And then it’s just kind of the passion just flowed from there, but it’s that it’s that passion. I think that sparks it.

[00:05:57] Cory Assink: Yeah. And you’re right. I’ll add one more thing, Drew, like, you know, Zeke and I met in the service industry, right?

Which, you know, is amazing in a lot of ways. And it allows for flexibility, you know, we see at least here. Kind of where we are in SoCal in the States. That’s kind of, you know, that’s kind of one of the big benefits of it, right? You have the flexibility, you can make money without kind of the corporate tie-downs.

But then once we got into wine, it was like, whether it was conscious or not, we just realized, okay, there’s more to this. And I think to go to the, you know, to take the next step for us, that next step, and we did it at different times and different years. But, you know, kind of piggybacking on kind of what, you know, Zeke’s intro.

I also, at different times than Zeke. Worked for Southern Glazer’s and Young’s RNDC as well. So we both inevitably went from kind of the, kind of the service industry side of it to the wholesale supplier side. Yeah, to do it for real.

[00:06:58] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, that’s the comment, but so many people just stay in that wholesale side or they’ll stay on the service side.

How did you guys make that entrepreneurial leap? Cause not a lot of people successfully do that.

[00:07:10] Cory Assink: Well, I just want to be clear where on your question, like to the wholesale side or actually launching our brand?

[00:07:17] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Launching your brand, like becoming, you know, launching a brand. I mean, a full ready to drink. I mean, that’s a huge, huge accomplishment.

[00:07:26] Cory Assink: I’ll let Zeke start that one.

[00:07:28] Zeke Blattler: Yeah. Well, I think the first time we wanted to like do our own wine was we were working in a restaurant. I was general manager. He was the wine director and we actually went to this guy who made wine. I was like, wait a minute. He took us to Tara Vaughn in Belton and I looked at it.

I looked how he made it. And I think Summerland was doing some wine there too. And so I talked to the winemaker and I was like, wow, I thought this was going to be the most hardest thing ever. And he kind of explained it a little bit. So that was kinda the first time.

[00:07:59] Cory Assink: Yeah. It became tangible.

[00:08:00] Zeke Blattler: That was like 2007.

[00:08:02] Cory Assink: We’re like, “Oh we can, oh, okay.”

[00:08:05] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah.

[00:08:06] Cory Assink: It’s not all, you know.

[00:08:08] Zeke Blattler: And then going into Southern at 2010 in distribution, I started, I was good at selling wine, so I was thinking more and more. Okay. You know, and then the one thing we wanted to do was to like make a good wine. And so if you know the industry, it’s very hard to get wine on the shelf.

With the three-tier system, big incubants, like how do you get in? So we were tinkering, this is like in 2010, I’m talking about white blends and red blends. Right? And then, so I think the first time I told someone we’d really, really do this, it would be like 2012 or 13. So it’s 2024 now it’s taken 12 years. For me personally, it was gaining the confidence through my career arc.

One that I could do it. And then learning enough about the industry to decide to do it. And then yeah, you eventually have to like quit your job and raise money.

[00:09:01] Cory Assink: Do it. To actually do it.

[00:09:03] Zeke Blattler: To actually do it which was so much harder than I had anticipated even though I was very good at corporate America.

So yeah, really a passion for wine combined with seeing others do it. And it’s like, “Okay, well, let’s try to do this.” And one unique part about this is the Petite Sirah blends is that in 2014, we talked about doing that. So now they’re very popular, right? It’s a full body grape. It makes good red blends. But we, in 2010 said, “Hey, we want to make a Petite Sirah red blend.” And then if I’m jumping ahead here.

[00:09:43] Cory Assink: I have a feeling you’re about to.

[00:09:45] Zeke Blattler: What I did is I know from sales that if I just had an even, if we had an even product, you’re not going to win. Like, when you’re a wine rep and you have a wine that costs like say 10 dollars wholesale, but drinks like 14, it’s so easy.

I’m not easy, but you’re like, “Hey, I got this one. You try it out. You’re so proud of it.” The converse in distribution is when you have a 10 wine that tastes like a six and you get a giant quota and you’re like, “Oh my God, I gotta sell it.” And a lot of times I’d say, “Hey man, this is a dog, you know, pour this off of your sink or your house wine.”

But so that part about it is I think I tried like 300 red blends when I was living in LA. I moved to Chicago and I’m San Diego. So did a lot, a lot of trial. And then we talked to a lot of people about the different varietals and kind of stuff they like to drink.

[00:10:43] Cory Assink: I, yeah, so I’m gonna piggyback on what Zeke said and I’m gonna transition us.

I think to it, to something that’s super important.

[00:10:50] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah.

[00:10:50] Cory Assink: Specifically for our brand too. You mentioned it before Drew, and it’s the actual can, which I thought it was absolutely ludicrous and asinine when he first brought it to the table. So like Zeke said, you know, talking about the wine is from, you know, over 10 years ago, almost 15.

Now we were obsessing over making, this is going to happen for so long ago. Everybody in our whole network is, is known. We’ve spoke this thing into existence for a long time. So, but specifically, we had always wanted to make Petite Syrah-driven blends from Lodi before it was cool. And you know, kind of, maybe for another time.

And that’s where our winemaker Gerardo Espinosa is from and where he lives is out of Lodi. We can get into that maybe later if you want. But you know, I’ll say this. It was about four years ago that Zeke brought up the idea of putting it into a can and really a little bit about Zeke and I.

I mean, if you can’t tell already, I mean, he was the best man of my wedding 20 years ago. We’re best friends, but we are opposite. We are opposite. I won’t get into the nuances of how we’re opposite because I, we would probably offend each other. No, but we’re opposite and I lost my train of thought.

[00:12:14] Zeke Blattler: I’ll tell you how I remember it.

[00:12:16] Cory Assink: Oh, yeah. I was like, no.

[00:12:18] Zeke Blattler: I came back, I started seeing White Claw in Chicago in 15 and 16, 17. Like all the Southern guys, their wives were drinking it and they’re like, oh, this thing, they were kind of annoyed because they didn’t sell it. And then I came to San Diego and then I, then also I’m like, wait, liquid death.

You’re seeing high noon, you’re seeing all this candidate option. And I was like, you know what? I was like, “We need to do those in a can.” And he can’t tell him he’s like, “Absolutely not.”

[00:12:48] Cory Assink: Well, Drew, I mean, you can probably understand like a lot of what we’re dealing with now, which, you know, we may or may not get into in a bit is, it’s just the perception, right?

And just the industry’s dodged with tradition, which in itself is not bad. It’s amazing, but just that kind of mental, you know, thing of like, you can’t do that. In a little context, I’ve always been the more like, I don’t know. What’s the best word? No, like fancy. I’m always like, he’ll make fun of me. Cause I at least try or think I’m more bougie.

[00:13:24] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So the ritual of opening up a bottle and the cork.

[00:13:27] Cory Assink: All that stuff. And I was, I was way

[00:13:29] Drew Thomas Hendricks: As a sommelier, that’s what you’re used to.

[00:13:31] Cory Assink: Yeah. And I was, you know, a couple of the roles I had in the industry. I was like, you know, the luxury wine specialist for one of the biggest, Antinori Saint Michelle books in the world, right? So, you know, I’m in not that this really matters, but it’s just kind of where my head was at, it’s like, how fancy of a real wine guy and somm I thought I was, which is kind of sad and kind of humbling to admit because it’s, it’s a lot of the kind of the resistance and the friction that we go against today getting consumers to try our wine. So does that make sense to you?

[00:14:06] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, absolutely. The whole perception, like I was a wine buyer from like 93 through 2002. And right then Plump Jack came out with one of the premium screw caps and trying to, trying to sell PlumpJack with the screw cap and convince them that it was, I think, 55 that it’s actually better.

And just even the perception around the, around screw caps was a huge deal for selling wine and then moving towards that alternative. I don’t want to call it alternative packaging. Cans, like now people prefer beer in cans. It’s really the bottle sales are way down. It’s, but then it’s there’s that shift between, “Okay, I’m used to beer. I’m used to salsa. I’m used to all these ready to drink categories in cans, but wine, well, that’s gotta be bad.”

[00:14:54] Cory Assink: Yeah. Yeah. There’s so much there.

[00:14:57] Zeke Blattler: Yeah. You think about it from an operator, like, so Cory and I have really worked on all sides of the three-tier system. And we’re also lovers of wine.

So the real moment for us and for me is like going to like restaurants that have terrible wine-by-the-glass programs or bad wine or old wine. And so thinking that what the can would solve is that the wine would be fresh and would be consistent. And then it helps with inventory.

[00:15:23] Cory Assink: Or cost.

[00:15:24] Zeke Blattler: And look, if you get a bad wine in a restaurant, not a, like a horribly corked one, you get one that’s slightly off. It’s not a good experience. And it’s like 12 bucks, but then you’re like, “Oh, you know, this isn’t like, are you sure?”

[00:15:37] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. Oh yeah.

[00:15:38] Cory Assink: I get like shamed even if it’s, you know, even if it’s cork sometimes, I like feel guilty when I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, the wine is faulty, right?

[00:15:46] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. “My wife’s like, shut the hell up. Just drink it.” I mean, I can’t, I gotta, I gotta tell him.

[00:15:51] Zeke Blattler: And for the wine lover, like the first thing I will do is look at the beverage. But yeah, I’m sure you do, Drew, because you’re a beverage guy. The first thing you do, I’m like, okay, this and I’m going to tell you a story from yesterday. My wife’s birthday. We ate at a pub place.

I won’t out them in North County, San Diego. And they have modern times. That – said like seven or eight beers, grand craft beer, and they had two wines and they’re both girls. And so at that point, I’m going to drink a beer, like literally on my wife’s birthday, I want to have one, my food. And I can’t get a glass of wine because I know those two wines are terrible.

And I know they cost three, four dollars a bottle. So that is kind of the essence of what the can can do is that you couldn’t get better liquid to those accounts. And that’s kind of like one of the things that we’re doing in those clients.

[00:16:41] Cory Assink: And I’ll add, I’ll add to that because it’s, he’s exactly right about getting to those accounts.

But let’s, let’s think bigger picture. Let’s just take a little step back for a second. And what it allowed, what the can allows you to do is just bring, well, in Los Cuernos is kind of situation. It allows us to bring better wine to more people in more occasions. Like, think about it. You can have like, our two reds are so gnarly.

If you like wine, you’ll trip. It’s like, because we went non vintage, we’ll get into that a little later too. But like, our wines are, especially the reds, think of them as properly aged. And finished wines that were specifically made for the can. And when I say traditionally aged, I mean, in small barrels, not the can. And

[00:17:27] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Will wine age in a can with zero oxidation?

[00:17:32] Cory Assink: So wine is a living organism, so it’s going to age regardless. It is not meant to age in the can.

[00:17:39] Drew Thomas Hendricks: No, I was wondering if anybody’s done any studies on that. And I’ve asked this before on the show to some other producers that do some canned wines.

I’m kind of wondering what the, like, somebody, you know, like a wine that’s designed to age and you age it in the bottle, you age it in the can and see what the difference is.

[00:17:55] Cory Assink: I think we’ll just have to see. I’m sure there’s wine laying down in cans somewhere in a cellar right now.

[00:18:02] Drew Thomas Hendricks: You don’t have to lay it down, it can be straight up.

[00:18:06] Cory Assink: Just waiting to produce the white paper.

[00:18:08] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I’m kind of rambling, but you brought up a great point about the size of the can, especially with that pub place that may only sell a glass of wine every two or three days. They open that bottle. There’s no way that that wine’s fresh or they’re going to go through it.

So it’s a loss for them. But if you sell them a can, everybody’s going to get a fresh product.

[00:18:26] Zeke Blattler: It’s actually a bad customer experience. Like if I get the cool craft beers and they have my food, I feel good about it. And their food is excellent. Like food is really good. But if I drink that wine, It’s like a punishment for the winery, like, because you like wine and we know and what they’ll say as well with it opens, it’ll go bad.

So we got to market out for X. So that is one of the bid. That is the reason why I did the cans. It allows us to bring fresh one. Then secondly, being in the industry, all wine, 95 percent of wine is sold current vintage. And they try to get it on, you’re a buyer. They get it out every year. You’re out. If you get like, once it turns the vintage, they’re discounting it. They’re pushing it. They’re pushing it out. Right? So it’s like to me that that didn’t matter. And that’s why we thought about when we did this going into the vintage piece. And we were scared, like, it’s gonna sound like I was so sure, we were sure. I was like, I don’t know. What do we do? And our goal was to make great wine.

And so at the end, I’ll tell the story and maybe get the winemaker one day. He was doing our Chards and he said, “Hey, I got this. I got current vintage Chard at this price, but I have last year’s half the price twice as good.”

[00:19:44] Cory Assink: And it was literally an organic conversation as we were already developing our wine and we were really close to kind of final kind of the final iteration. And it was a phone call and he literally said that and we were like, “Wait.” So we’re like, “Time out. So what you’re saying is you can make a better wine for less.” He said, “Yes and if we go non vintage.” So that is how it happened we looked at each other and we were like, “Hmmm.” And, you know, even though we like to shoot from the hip, we sometimes like to be wise and smart and at least wait 24 hours to make a decision.

So we, we slept on it, true story, slept on it. And the next day made the formal decision that Los Cuernos was going to be non vintage and it was probably one of the best decisions we’ve made. Because and the reason why is you’ll, if you haven’t tasted our wine, can’t wait till you do. But I think going non vintage is best.The best exampleours our, our Reserva wine, because I mean, the wine in there is like, it’s like 30 months, small French oak barriques, like nothing like it exists in a single serve format. Yeah. Fantastic.

[00:21:03] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, I know that I, I’m a big fan of these like Solaris systems and some of these wineries have the idea where they’ve got it

[00:21:09] Cory Assink: Like champagne.

[00:21:09] Drew Thomas Hendricks: They just, champagne’s got it. Desparada got a Solaris high-end wine. But there’s two reasons. You either go for a consistent product or you just go for something unique where suddenly the, that sort, that combined blend just takes on a life of its own.

[00:21:25] Zeke Blattler: Yep. Yeah. You’re, you’re nailing it. And people have their opinions to -, but they make that wine overture.

And that’s that is a non vintage from several vintage. And it just comes out ready to drink. And so, you know, the initial mock ups for our cans, these are right here.

[00:21:42] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, yeah.

[00:21:43] Zeke Blattler: Had the vintage on it. So the first run of like the mock ups, it said 2021, cause we were planning on doing vintage. And now we just like, oh, it’s so obvious cause the wine came out great. But in the moment, I was like, we’re going to, we’re gonna buckle all this tradition. People aren’t gonna like it. Do we put an NV on the can? Do they think it’s Nevada ?

[00:22:03] Cory Assink: You know what’s funny, Drew? When we went, after we made the decision for non vintage, when we were submitting our colas, you know, doing the final stuff with the TTB, we, our initial submission had NV on it because I just assumed.

If we’re not going to have a vintage, we have to, you know, put something. And we actually got word back saying, “Take that off.” And we were like, “Oh, sweet.” Cause I mean, even though we know what it is, general, you know, consumer doesn’t. And I think it would just, you know, potentially add to kind of more confusion.

But Zeke said something that I would like to kind of touch on. And he was, he was talking about non vintage and I want to connect it to something. So we, when we made that decision, it was the only reason we had the vintage on there originally is because that’s how we thought it always, that’s just how it is.

That’s what you do. It wasn’t even a conscious thought. And so what we’re doing here at Los Cuernos too, which is very different. And we scream it from the mountaintops. You’ll see it on our packaging. You’ll see it on the cans or wherever it’s everywhere is it’s just “Great Wine, No Rules.” Right? So, you know, we’ve talked about, we’re all kind of fancy, kind of wine guys, as far as our experience and our background goes, but what good is that?

It’s really, it doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t matter. Why? Just to intimidate others so they can do, you know, just ultimately say, “You know what, this is too fussy. I’ll just take a beer.” No, no, no, no. So our whole thing is “Great Wine, No Rules,” talking about bucking the system, thinking differently, thinking about wine differently. And still appreciating, you know, the history and the tradition of wine itself, but just thinking about it in a new way. I mean, you mentioned the plump Jack screw top kind of thing. And then we’ve been talking about beer. Think about beer. Innovation wise, you know, 15 years ago, it was hard to find a craft beer in a can.

Yeah, now you can’t really find one not in a can. So yeah, so that felt right to us to just be like, “Great Wine, No Rules.” Just don’t overthink it. Drink what you like. Right? Yeah. I mean, so that’s the essence of our brand.

[00:24:26] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I mean, the fact that it’s just so convenient, like I camp a lot, I go hiking, go surfing, go to the beach. River rafting, that was one of the first times I had brought us a whole slew of canned wines on, we were rafting down the rogue river and you’re not going to bring a bottle of wine, you’re going to fill the bottle of wine into your water bottle. And then that then leaked into my whole bag.

So after that, I wouldn’t be a big advocate for canned wine if you’re hiking a river rafting.

[00:24:56] Zeke Blattler: Love it. And can wine is getting better. The cans are getting better. And I think the producers are getting better. I, you know, some of the initial can wines were bad. I think that hurts us as well, that a lot of them were just subpar bottle wine poured into cans.

And so let’s talk more about the cans and the can wines. This is like kind of behind the craft. Couple things that we did different, we put, we knew we were going to do calorie count right away. So we put calories on there. We put that it’s low carb, low sugar, naturally.

[00:25:27] Cory Assink: People don’t know that.

[00:25:28] Zeke Blattler: Many people don’t know that.

[00:25:29] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I am shocked and it’s, I think less people know that every year. There’s like, I don’t get what happened and I think Seltzer’s had a change, was a big, I mean, the whole Seltzer industry, I think, waged all out war with the wine industry, and the wine industry didn’t know it at the time. I was going to these seminars, and everybody’s worried that wine’s no longer considered healthy, and the Gen Z’s just think, oh, Seltzer’s clear, White Claw, let’s just, it’s got to be better for me, because the wineries didn’t put what, as Zeke and you’re saying, they don’t put any of the ingredients on the bottle. They don’t put any of the calorie count. So what people think is like, “Oh, this is just sweet juice.”

[00:26:10] Zeke Blattler: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, yeah, so much to say here and like, like a lot of, so some of the can cocktails are spirit based, some of them are malt beverage based. So literally you’re taking Colt 45, Eight Ball, you’re taking malt liquor and you’re putting it in a can with chemicals and like, there’s this push against processed foods and like, it is quintessentially chemicals and malt liquor.

[00:26:36] Cory Assink: And then on the, and then you, on the flip side, wine’s been around 6, 000 years, a gift from God. It’s the most iconic beverage in the world, right?

[00:26:48] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Just happened. And here’s a weird, other weird perception. Kombucha. Kombucha does not ferment. They ferment Kombucha and then they add alcohol to it. I mean, that’s, I love Kombucha, but I’m there. That’s the dirty secret that whenever I get a Kombucha producer on the show, they’re asking, so where’s this alcohol coming from?

[00:27:09] Cory Assink: See, I wasn’t aware. I had no idea. I mean, I don’t drink kombucha. Neither here nor there, but that’s Interesting.

[00:27:16] Zeke Blattler: You know, I think the, now we are segmented with the part of the wine industry that was poured, like when history, it reminded me of baseball and cable TV. Like if you looked at the demographics, when we were starting this, it’s like 60, 65 plus. The average age of both sports and both and a cable television, they just didn’t innovate. And so what happened? YouTube just came in and like clean the clock and baseball. Has known about this shot clock for like pitch clock for years, for decades. They finally did it when the game’s got five hours long. Right? And so I think the stakeholder alignment of the bottle pieces of it, you know, the three tier system doesn’t include the customer and includes distributors, suppliers, and retailers.

So they’re not intentionally trying to do it, but if you go to small place now, all right, let me be clear about this one. The problem with wine. Why do I see it declining because it’s happened to me 15 years ago, 12 years ago. I would go to sports bars. I would point out a Thai restaurant, they say, “Zeke, don’t go there. You go to the hotels, you go to white tablecloth, you go to this.” So we never made something that was easier for broad distribution. If you go on Google Maps right now and you look up restaurants in the area, there’ll be 50 restaurants, 49 or 50 will have good beers, the ones that sell liquor will have good cocktails, and the ones that have crap.

But wine, it’ll be like 10. So that’s the big part of the industry that we want to like change, is that the baseline shouldn’t be, and no offense to these brands, but these are the most widely distributed single serve brands, Sutter Home, Copa di Vino, and Woodbridge. The wines that really, really sell Sonoma-Cutrer, DAOU, Prisoner, La Crema.

So we made wines in that style and put it in a can, like, but that’s what’s killing the industry. If I’m young today and I go to a place, I can get a great beer, but you’re going to give me Copa de Vino or you’re going to give me Sutter Home, like, well, of course I don’t think wine’s good.

[00:29:15] Cory Assink: Of course you’re going to sell hardly any wine in your place. It’s shitty.

[00:29:22] Zeke Blattler: And those are not like bad brands. Those are good, very entry level brands. But today’s consumer, like when I was in Chicago and I saw a 23, 24 year old females drinking Jameson and Makers Mark Manhattan’s are on the rocks. I was drinking like rum and cokes and like sweet things. The consumer has evolved and wine has not evolved.

Anyways, rant over on that.

[00:29:47] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Preaching to the choir there. So let’s move to the, how do you target the like your ideal client? I mean, you’re looking for someone in their mid-twenties. You’re trying to make wine, no rules really take that stigma and make it for lack of a better word, cool again.

How are you going about that?

[00:30:04] Zeke Blattler: I think our ideal customer is in three bucks. I wouldn’t even put an age on it. Definitely, you know, people that are like 16 up generally don’t change beverage preferences.

[00:30:13] Cory Assink: So I’ll put an age on it. 21 legal

[00:30:17] Zeke Blattler: People that love wine, when they get our wine or they get a good wine in front of them, they’re so happy and relieved if they get it in non-traditional places or place they wouldn’t expect. So you love wine. You made a great wine. Second, I call beverage enthusiasts and that’s the whiskey, tequila, wine, coffee, tea.

They appreciate the craft of, the craft of beverage. And then foodies because people that are going to take pictures of food and like good food, they’re going to, they’re going to know a lot about beverage too. So that is our, our demographic that we’re going towards, and then bringing wine to places where it’s not generally been before is kind of our strategy. So, you know, on social, I think to me, it’s a couple of buckets is one, just getting the message out about wine. So wine’s been, as Cory mentioned, been around for 6, 000 years. It’s low carb, low sugar naturally, like the reds are one gram sugar, four grams of carbs, a rose is two grams sugar, and the Chardonnay is just one.

And then if you look at research, like on gut biome, like wine is the best on that versus spirits and beer. Spirits are far and away the worst. Beers, like a little negative wise, a little better. So it’s the product that probably Gen Z millennials want, they just don’t know about it because it’s never been marketed to them except like really bad wine.

And then, you know, fluent people get to drink the good stuff and that’s a, it’s a weird world to live in. So, and then from a. Social media perspective, marketing perspective. We believe in like celebrating our partners. So I think you’ve seen the San Diego Wave. Look, I’m wearing a Wahoo’s shirt. So, Wahoo’s is going to bring us in.

So we celebrate our partners. We help our retailers and our partners make money. And we’d be easy to work with. And then we work with the communities that we’re in. And now is the first time in the world that a small company like ours can talk directly to their consumers, right? 15 years ago when I was in wine, I had, we’d have to get over the top marketing on ESPN, ABC, Food Network.

Well, now we can tell our story, which is a true story of people loving wine and just build it out organically. So it’s hard, but that’s kind of what we’re trying to do.

[00:32:32] Drew Thomas Hendricks: You brought up a really good point that I want to make sure everyone kind of thinks about. I wish more wineries would listen to this. I was speaking at a conference on lo fi marketing, but Polly from 5forests gave a talk on the fact that we got to stop worrying about Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, the age does not matter.

What matters is the psychographic profile, because I’m in my mid-fifties and I have, I identify more with what’s happening in the 20, the 20-year-olds, like with surfing still and hiking. And, you know, the music I listened to is probably more along those lines. And right now it’s, it’s a mistake to go, “Oh, we’re targeting the 45 to 50 year old crowd.”

Really it’s, it’s that psychographic profile that will resonate with the brand. And I think a lot of wineries are missing that boat.

[00:33:19] Zeke Blattler: Yeah, I know. We’re 100 percent agree on that. They, like everyone you see on LinkedIn, like the wine industry freak out right now because the bottles are just eating each other and tip, but they won’t. I just, there’s just bad options. They haven’t addressed it. Beers have a keg and draft system and then RTDs have single serve. Spirits have small sizes, cocktails, shelf-stable, and wine is like, no. Four servings that expires once you open. And deal with it and we’re not moving. And so that is what has to change. And it’s a behemoth. So I moved the rock.

[00:33:57] Drew Thomas Hendricks: One thing I’d like to see, and I don’t know if you’re considering this is the three-liter bladder bags. Like, I mean, for people to actually drink wine. To actually have a, the packaging, it’s sustainable, it’s easy to transport, and you’re gonna drink a few bottles a week, have premium wine in a bladder bag.

I know Tablas Creek, I’m a big fan of their hotline. They did that in the red and they’re kind of they’re not, you know, I mean, they’re one of the few that are doing it. And I know Carboy over in Colorado is doing something like that. But I think it’s just thinking about all that different packaging, have the single serving and have the, I mean, for restaurants, for everything, have that bladder bag, or have Carboy.

[00:34:40] Cory Assink: Thanks for the suggestion. Yeah.

[00:34:43] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. Have you guys tried that new high end box wine? It’s like 99. It’s like 99 for, I haven’t tried it yet, but I know the Tablas. Fantastic. It’s like one 17, but I would say that’s like a logical extension to,

[00:35:01] Zeke Blattler: We have discussed that. I think for now, we’re really working on kind of the can footprint and where we do well, but is like the QSRs and you know, I’ll tell you some mistakes that we made, like.

[00:35:14] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh yeah, I was gonna ask.

[00:35:15] Zeke Blattler: I was outta the industry for five years. And I talked to all these people, but like Sauvignon Blanc is like on fire right now.

So that’s what we’re coming out with next, Sauvignon Blanc. I think that’s going to do really well. We had a pizzeria tell us, “As soon as it’s ready, just send it to me.” I don’t even want to try it. So that was a good feeling.

[00:35:34] Cory Assink: Going back to your kind of the bladder thing, Drew, I mean, it’s a great suggestion.

We’ve actually had some mock-ups and we were going to fire up from the beginning with, with that as well. But we just wanted to focus and ultimately for us as a new, new-ish emerging brand, it’s the awareness and the trial. So important and in the lower barrier to entry. So even, so right now, you know, 20, you know, kind of standard 60 to 24 unit, you know, cases, but then we have, you know, four packs, but even at retail we don’t, you know, it’s often, you know, because, you know, a lot of folks think our packaging is beautiful, specifically our, our four pack boxes. And a lot of the retailers, you know, we’ll just assume or want to merchandise those and we prefer not to, because, you know, not only is it more expensive, we’re premium product, but we’re new, we want people to try it.

[00:36:28] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So what advice, and I don’t know if you really want to give this, what advice do you have of get actually getting on the shelf at these stores placement? I know placement is so tough.

[00:36:39] Cory Assink: Zeke’s amazing at being data-driven just because he is data-driven and he’s a smart fella. But some other things, you know, to answer your question is, you know, let’s face it. It starts with, you know, I’m generalizing now, right?

Because, you know, there’s always exceptions, but you have to have a great product, right? You start there. You have to have a great product. A lot of people think that that’s it, you just like great product, and then everyone’s going to know.

[00:37:08] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And they will come.

[00:37:09] Cory Assink: Want it. Yeah, it’s so not true. So, although although a great product is a critical element, it’s probably the most fundamental element.

That’s just to get in, you know, just to have a, just a play or just to try to play. So I would say great product. You know, just strategic, you want to prioritize. Another thing is just being very persistent and knowing things take a lot of time. I mean, I could give you story, I mean, we’re up to a hundred accounts now in San Diego.

I could give you story after story, after story, after story, after story about accounts that initially I, I might’ve known the people organically from my normal life as a customer or from Southern, you know, these people could love me, they could love our product. They could be all about it. And then still, I have numerous stories that even within those situations.

You know, I end up going in there before even getting a first order, you know, 10 to 15 times over, you know, two to three months. Right? So it’s like, it’s, you definitely can’t lose heart. You can’t take things personal. You have to remain poised, not be frustrated. And my biggest thing is I always love to provide value because you’re a buyer, I was a buyer. I know what’s in, I know what I hated when, I know what I hated. Like the Southern and Young’s reps would do when they would come in. So I definitely don’t do that, right? You know, everybody has their different approach, but it’s to be very organic, provide value, and then ultimately just be persistent and just be a good partner and of course have a good product.

[00:38:48] Zeke Blattler: Make them money and be easy to work with. Now that we have some pretty good accounts, so we have like the Legoland Hotels, we have the OB Noodle House, we have Sandbox. So now we have some anchors where we can point to that, we’re making the money, but yeah, we work with them on merchandising it right on the shelf.

We have the San Diego Wave partnership. But yeah, it’s it’s an up and down the street knife fight.

[00:39:14] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It’s a boots on the ground.

[00:39:17] Cory Assink: You have to make their job easy. So in addition, once you do get to sell in, because we know the game and we want to make their job easy, we always merchandise, right? And, you know, we come prepared with like, you know, branded, even with our San Diego Wave here in San Diego, co-branded kind of POS, whether it’s shelf talkers, shelf strips, you know, window clings. Like, you know, when you, when you’re talking off prem retail, they see that that’s value to them, that is going to help promote and market your product.

That, you know, a lot of times it’s hard to come by or, or when it is, when it’s there, it’s usually comes from the big brand. So a lot of times it’s the details and just the more you can make their job easy, have all the nice stuff, have it look nice, have a good products, do all the work. I mean, basically just do everything.

[00:40:05] Zeke Blattler: Yeah. Have the margin profile, understand how much margin they make right away. Because if you don’t, I always say, if you don’t know where it’s going to go on the shelf, and you don’t know how much they’re going to sell it before you talk to them, go back and figure that out. Because certain, certain locations are going to do a higher markup, some lower some will not have shelf space.

I mean, I have callback space. So that would be my big recognition is look where you think you’re going to go, what you’re going to ask for, and then for how much, and then justify to them, like, how much. I guess I am data driven.

[00:40:38] Cory Assink: Yeah.

[00:40:39] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, I definitely want, so I want to talk about your winemaker and your wines, but I also want to give just to put a cap on this boots on the ground.

[00:40:47] Cory Assink: Yeah.

[00:40:48] Drew Thomas Hendricks: The wines different now than it was then. But one of the better interviews that I’ve had on the show is Michael Houlihan, the founder of Barefoot Wines. And his story, he wrote a book on how they founded it. But the audio book is actually narrated like a play. And it’s all about his, like, starting from the first wine, trying to get into the first store, and then trying to get into the chains.

But it is a master class in, like, launching a wine brand.

[00:41:17] Cory Assink: It’s a good one. What’s his last name?

[00:41:20] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Michael Houlihan. I was hoping I’m just going to turn around and see it, but I don’t know. So yeah, check it out. It’s an interesting book. Let’s talk about your winemaker and your wines.

[00:41:37] Cory Assink: Yeah.

[00:41:37] Zeke Blattler: Yeah. All right. I want to say the moment of all for me was, we talked about that before about, Cory and I had tried, I don’t think we’ve tried thousands of wines and maybe 10, 000.

So whenever I was a distributor and they would bring in wines, you get all these suppliers, I would be trying and I would know how much it costs and I would be like, “Oh no, this is going to be hard. This is going to be easy. This is going to be great.” And when the wine’s really good, it’s going to be easy.

So we knew in doing this. That if we just made the same level of wine that it was going to be really hard to go against big wines, big distributors. So we actually had to be better. And so that would be the first part about it. So the non vintage piece, lowered costs and improved wines. In can, no cap, no, no closure, no cork, going on vintage means we don’t have to reprint labels every year as well.

So, we’ve saved some costs. We reinvested that to the wine. So now I was like, “Okay, can we make better wine?” So the funny part is we wanted to do Petite Sirah wines. We knew that we want, we decided we were going to do a sparkling Rosé, Chardonnay, a red blend. Then we’re going to do just the best can wine ever.

So our reserve wine is 15 dollars per ounce can. And then, and to go back before I go to the wine, we had to pick the size. And so my opinion there were some good can wines in the 187 cans, but it’s too small for a person to hold. It’s kind of weird. And so we picked the 8.4 slim because it was a glass and a half and it just fit right better in the hand. And then in counter service restaurants, they gave you a glass now. So to the wine. So if we knew what kind of wines we wanted to make, we knew what it was going to look like, but we needed someone to make the wine.

[00:43:27] Cory Assink: Not winemakers.

[00:43:30] Zeke Blattler: So we’re like Googling custom process because I had went to that terrible custom crush in 07. We were looking and so we Googled this one and this guy had worked with Petite Sirah. It was called Lodi Crush. And you’ll let, you’ll hand it over to you.

[00:43:44] Cory Assink: Yeah. So we, I’ll try to keep this short. We were, we had just formed a company. I think Zeke’s wife and kids were in Columbia. We were working out of his house at this day. And I literally called, we called Lodi Crush, talked to a guy on the other line.

We hit it off, asked him a lot of questions. One thing led to another and we’re just, you know, hour later, he’s kind of fascinated. We’re engaged. At the end of the call, I find out that the gentleman I was talking to was Gerardo Espinosa, who is the owner of Lodi Crush, and he’s an award, you know, award winning winemaker.

And then once we looked at, you know, once we kind of dug a little deeper, kind of to Zeke’s point, we realized that, you know, he’s, you know, third generation Mexican American winemaker whose great grandfather came over in the forties on the Bracero program from Mexico to Lodi specifically. So, but that, you know, he has such an amazing story.

Now he, you know, his family, you know, owns vineyards there, you know, their business owners. They, you know, Gerardo has his own brand in addition to owning and operating Lodi Crush and making wine for other people as well. So he just has a fascinating story and his family, his lineage was actually one of the first to put Petite Sirah in the ground in Lodi.

And so, I mean, this is just stuff we just nerd out on because it’s so, I mean, like, amazing things like this. Call them miracles, like, it’s just, they keep happening and happening. But it’s special to us because like we said, we’ve obsessed over making Petite Sirah-driven blends out of Lodi for almost 15 years.

And then here we are to the point where we’re already doing this thing. We’ve already burned the bridges. We’ve already quit our corporate jobs and we see the line of sight and we’re like, okay, winemaker, and then Gerardo happened.

[00:45:37] Zeke Blattler: Yeah. It was funnier because he doesn’t know this, but like, yeah, we quit our job, we didn’t raise a lot of money.

Like we, this thing has been bootstrapped since day one. I’m like, we’ve had like 90, 120 days of burn consistently. So it’s been really hard. But we’re like, “Okay, when can we come over?” He’s like, “Tuesday.” So we called him like on a Wednesday, Thursday, and we flew to Lodi, to Sacramento on the following Tuesday.

And then part of a core mentioned that he’s a grower first. So he really understands the soils, the composition, the light. So I’m like, he really understands about the grapes and then he became a winemaker. To me, there’s a difference between just a winemaker and a grower, but we got both.

[00:46:23] Cory Assink: Yeah. His a farmer by trade. And then it also just the, you know, how his net, his organic network is. All winemakers and farmers.

[00:46:31] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Interesting fact, the term winemaking didn’t come around until 1968. Before that it was wine growing. And it happened right in Napa when they had to actually kind of, half the grapes planted there are not even suitable to there.

So you actually needed to kind of do some interventionist winemaking. And then people became winemakers from wine growers.

[00:46:53] Zeke Blattler: Oh, thank you. No, I’m going to share that later. So it’s still, we had the, we had the label done. We had all this stuff. We wrote him all these notes and we, we picked five wines that were similar to the kinds of we want for each rod, except for the reserve that he made wines.

And he came down to San Diego. We met in a hotel and that was the moment of truth. And I was super nervous and I tried the first one and I was like, “Oh, okay, this is really good.” They’re still out of these plastic containers. And the second one, he did a tweak to it. He’s like, you know, I wanted to do one this way.

And I was like, “Well, that’s not what we said.” I didn’t say it out loud, but it turned out great. And now, you know, a year and a half has passed and we fully understand his capability and he has full range, just kind of do it. Cause he understands the style. So I just think it was luck, man. Like we really got lucky with him.

[00:47:50] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And that’s so different than a lot of the wines in the, in the lower category, you’re taking a grapes first approach and a wine growing first approach. Versus the other route that many people could take that is just going to surplus wine and just buying tasting through bulk barrels and we’ll take this one and push it all together.

[00:48:12] Cory Assink: Love that, Drew. I’ll even take a step further and say we started with the customer first and then reverse engineer it. And then you get to the grapes and the fruit, right? Winemaking.

[00:48:22] Zeke Blattler: Yeah. And I do want to get this good point about why we’re different here. Cause you brought it up. So we’re building like those other wines like champagne.

Like Ouverture, like advocates that were, or I would say like Maker’s Mark, one of my favorite brands, we’re building to a style. So every year, Los Cuernos should taste like a 24 bottle of taste. This fruit tastes this style. And then Gerardo with his relationships, his ability and non vintage can build towards that style year in, year out.

So we want it to be consistent. We don’t want to depend on scores, on vintages. We want a consumer who grabs this wine for outdoors or small restaurants say, “Oh, I know what this is going to taste like every time.”

[00:49:05] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Customer first.

[00:49:06] Cory Assink: Yeah. That’s it.

[00:49:07] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Who does the final blend? Is it Gerardo?

[00:49:10] Zeke Blattler: Gerardo. Yeah. We tried them all with him of course. Any wine, it’s us two. And then we have like three or four more industry people that work as advisors on our team that also will try all the wines.

[00:49:24] Cory Assink: Gerardo is full. He has full autonomy. He completely oversees our winemaking operation, but you know, he’ll tell you too. I don’t want to speak on his behalf, but it’s a cool, unique relationship.

Because normally the people that he makes wine for, they’re just different. They have different backgrounds. And so it’s kind of been fun at first, you know, he said he was kind of, he thought it was going to be strange or intimidating, but like, it’s just awesome being able to work with him. Cause we understand him. He understands us, even though we kind of do different things, right? He thinks selling, he thinks we’re crazy. He thinks it’s impossible. He’s like, “What, how many, how many cans are we going to look? What’s the second run going to be?” And we’re like, “Ah, Yeah, nothing.” And he’s like, but you know, we don’t know how to make wine. And to him, that’s easy.

[00:50:12] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah.

[00:50:13] Zeke Blattler: And one last one, canned wine is different. You have to lower the acidity, has different acidity levels, different compounds go into it. Because of the seal, you don’t want the wine to like evolve in the can at all. You want it to be a finished wine as Cory would say. So that was different for him that he did a lot of research on the cans.

And even with our co-manufacturer, there’s a lot of work done to make a wine designed for the can. If you put a bottle of wine into the can, which I know a big producer that did, you’ll get reductive and it’ll have that kegg taste or it’ll taste like sulfur.

[00:50:47] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, I was interviewing the owner of Brooks Winery and they’re coming up with a, they have a canned wine. It’s in the shape, theirs is in the shape of a wine bottle. It’s like a,

[00:50:57] Cory Assink: Okay. Yeah.

[00:50:58] Zeke Blattler: Yeah.

[00:50:58] Drew Thomas Hendricks: But they’re bringing up the same sort of, same sort of issues, how there is a little bit of a different kind of packaging necessities.

[00:51:06] Cory Assink: Yeah. I mean you think about it. I mean, the cork is porous, right? So that alone, it’s going to be, it’s gonna be different.

[00:51:14] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I wanna talk, just bring it up and it may not even be a conversation, but I was at this, the conference I was talking to with the people at Tastry. It’s a AI-driven company that will analyze your wine and give you winemaking exam. Well, they’ll tell you what the consumer wants and they’ll tell you what you need to do when you’re making the wine to more resonate with the consumer using their AI models.

I was a little skeptical. I was a little skeptical. What are your thoughts on that? Is there a role of AI in the winemaking process?

[00:51:48] Cory Assink: Love this. This is a curveball. He’s gonna get fired up right now. In a good way.

[00:51:53] Zeke Blattler: Okay, yeah, so to me, AI is used to take current data sets and optimize them because it’s faster than human beings, the amount of data they can process.

AI is not good currently at taking brand new innovation or brand new data and making this. So I think there would be things there with enough data points to help people out. I do believe, though, like, like, the evolution in taste profiles or classically works does make sense. So I think it can help, but you’re going to have to have human beings greatly involved in the process of, of making the wine out because you’ll miss, you’ll miss things because it’s just working off a current data set.

[00:52:36] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, I thought it was interesting. I’m worried about the homogenization of it where all the wine is just going to start to taste the same because that’s what the consumer wants. And sometimes the consumer doesn’t get know what they want.

Yes. You know what they’re going to want next. And that’s where the, that’s where the magic is.

I thought it was a good idea for like, you know, removing smoke, taint and whatnot. You analyze the wine, the AI is going to tell you exactly the things you got to do to pull it out. But yeah, it was an interesting conversation.

[00:53:05] Zeke Blattler: Yeah. I don’t think AI is for every single thing. People just want to slap it on everything to get more funding or more sales.

[00:53:12] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, yeah. Being in the marketing side of the industry, that’s all I hear now. So I had to bring it up. So let’s see, no rules. So we’ve talked about no rules. We’ve got the cans. Moving forward, where do you see your brand growing in the next like four to eight years?

[00:53:28] Zeke Blattler: That’s a great question. So where we do best is where the traditional wine footprint has kind of don’t let the customer down, right?

Like the fact that we can get tons of great beers and we get all the craft cocktails, but we get, we get mediocre wine in most places. So we do well in small format restaurants. So we call them counter service restaurants. And I think that’s the way the world is heading with, with basically population.

The rate of population is declining. And we see labor costs as, as the most hard to manage cost variable in the restaurant industry. And now we see kiosks and people ordering. So bottle of wine is not going to work in an automated and robotics world. Cans already do, and they will. And so the unique thing that we have done is we’ve actually made wine cheaper for everybody.

So if you go to Archer’s Arrow, you’re going to get a glass and a half of 24 wine in the 10 bucks. If you go to a restaurant across the street and that’s eight ounces, you’re going to get one glass of wine of an eight to nine dollar bottle. Right? So it’s like, to me, that incentive structure that we’ve created with these small restaurants, eventually it’s like, do I want to go pay more at this restaurant?

Like you’re paying basically like what’s the term here? Like amusement park prices or airport prices, wine, and restaurants. And then you’re going to have cool pizzerias, cool taco shops, cool everywhere, being able to pour better wines. And then as the world continues to evolve, I think the waiters are going to start fading away.

So I think restaurants, California would be like 70 percent counter service, 30 percent waiters, just because the minimum wage is going to keep going up. And then for us you know, we’re going to launch the Sauv Blanc. I want to do, we’re going to do a brew. I think that’s another like huge gap in market and a Pinot noir.

So that would be eight wines. And then we want to expand out to really outdoor driven states are great for us of Hawaii, California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Florida, definitely Illinois, New York, you get those states, you have like 85 to 90 percent of the wine universe. We have discussed doing some stuff internationally, in fact we’re going to the Xolos game tonight in Tijuana to meet the director. And, you know, hopefully, we just make a lot of great wine, more available to more people and change the can evolution too, because that’s the thing that we have to carry too. So like, my cans, I like a Canoe Ridge at a Washington.

It’s a good can winemaker. Has done some good canned wines as well. Michael David has done some good. And so I think we have to support the can innovation as well.

[00:56:19] Cory Assink: Yeah. And we’re in final, final talks right now with the large strategic distributors. So it’s even, it’s even crazy to think kind of where we are with even still doing that.

But with that being said, Zeke talked about the expansion strategy, but to be clear right now, we are very, very intentional about just focusing on San Diego and Silicon Valley. And then we have two, our two sports partnerships that anchor those two markets. So mentioned Wave, but then we’re an official can wine of the Quakes, the MLS team up, up in San Jose, and at an official can wine at PayPal park too.

[00:56:58] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, awesome. This has been a fantastic conversation. Is there any last words you want to leave with it? And where can people find your wines online?

[00:57:05] Cory Assink: I would just go to our store, like our store locator on our website, and then go to our Instagram. We got these young, unbelievably talented media guys that are now part of our family.

And they’re special, and we’re trying to build this out loud. So the last thing, and I know we’re at time, but we didn’t talk about it much, but it’s very important to us, the culture piece of our business. Right? So that’s huge. Like kind of like a modern company, you know, a lot of the frustrations from corporate America which we won’t go into now, but we want people to love to work at Los Cuernos.

That’s very, very important to us, aside from everything else, aside from the wine, aside from everything. So, yeah. So there’s that. And so yeah, I would encourage you guys to we’re, and we’re building this thing out loud. Yeah. On Instagram. That’s Instagram and there’s a link to our kind of our store locator.

It’s, and we would just, I just activated two more accounts yesterday. The queue of new accounts to be put on the store locator is like seven from like the past few days. So we do it our, our gal updates it every week, so that’s the best place.

[00:58:15] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s awesome. Loscuernos.com.

[00:58:17] Cory Assink: Yes. Thanks, Drew.

[00:58:18] Zeke Blattler: Also LinkedIn. So yeah, we’re going to be kind of telling our story. We’re real wine lovers bringing more wine to more people and would love for people to follow our journey. And then if they know any really cool small food restaurants, hit me up like we love to go there. If you see those really bad plastic bottles or terrible wine options, just let us know.

[00:58:41] Cory Assink: We’re saving the wine industry from itself, Drew.

[00:58:45] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, one can at a time.

[00:58:47] Zeke Blattler: Let’s do it.

[00:58:48] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, thanks guys. This has been great.

[00:58:50] Cory Assink: Appreciate you. All right. Thanks, Drew. We absolutely love this conversation.

[00:58:55] Zeke Blattler: Really great having us on. Appreciate it.

[00:58:58] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Thank you.