This transcript is provided to accompany episode 403 about the Rich Flavors and History of Midwestern Vineyards
Keywords: Tasting room– Marketing feedback– Winery– Missouri– Law– Vines– Buds– Trimming– Sustainability– AI technology– Root sensors– Sweet wine– Dry whites– Concord grapes– Red wines– Vignoles– Sauvignon Blanc– St. Louis– Family business– Quality assurance– Ozarks– American Viticultural Area (AVA)– German immigrants– Italian immigrants– Prohibition– Fall season– Product quality– Vine redevelopment– Grape varieties– Consumer trends.
Janice Person [00:00:00]:
Food is more than just what’s on our plate. It’s the places where it’s grown. It’s the people who grow it and so much more. Join me, Janice Person, your host on grounded by the farm every other week as we talk about the foods we love. Hey, everybody, this is Janice, and today I just drove southwest from St. Louis a little bit until I got to the St. James winery. And, oh, my goodness. Lots of people around the country don’t know that in the great state of Missouri, we do really think a lot about our wines. When I moved here, I remember people saying, well, have you been out to the wineries yet? And there are wineries closer to St. Louis. There are some that are further out. This one is a little more in the rolling hills. We’re getting close to the Ozarks, and this is probably the state’s oldest wine. Is that right, Brandon?
Brandon Hofherr [00:00:53]:
Not the oldest. We are the largest.
Janice Person [00:00:55]:
The largest, okay. I was going to say it’s definitely been notable over the years, and that was Brandon Hofherr, and her family actually owns it. Her grandparents started it, her dad runs it, and she’s working with their marketing team now. So you’re going to get to meet her in the video, too. But, Brandon, tell me, have you been like at the winery and the vineyards your whole life? Almost, yes.
Brandon Hofherr [00:01:21]:
So I have been officially on the payroll for about two and a half years in the marketing department. I have been giving free labor my entire life. So everything from helping pick grapes during harvest to helping people up in the tasting room to sampling grape juice.
Janice Person [00:01:40]:
Well, if it helps, I had to help get out a lot of newsletters and stuff from my mom’s church. She was a secretary. So child labor is something consistent.
Brandon Hofherr [00:01:49]:
It’s invaluable experience. You can’t exactly put it on a resume, but it’s worked out for me.
Janice Person [00:01:55]:
And also with us today, we have Sam Cobb, and Sam actually works the vineyards, so very different perspective. He’s used to being out with the vines, working on different things. This is not your favorite year here, is it, Sam?
Sam Cobb [00:02:10]:
No, it’s been a rough start. We’ll see how it plays out.
Janice Person [00:02:14]:
Yeah, we’ll get into that a lot more as we go on. So when most people think wine, they don’t think Missouri. So let’s talk to them about what kind of wines we do really well here and how kind of that fits.
Brandon Hofherr [00:02:30]:
Absolutely. So Missouri actually has the first ava in the country, way before California, way before really any wine industry. So we have always had grape growing and winemaking in the state of Missouri. It was settled generally by German immigrants and Italian immigrants who also brought the history of growing grapes and making wine with them. So what happened to Missouri is that prohibition hit hard. So most people, most wineries were forced to rip out vines they were forced to destroy equipment and that kind of thing. And then after Prohibition was lifted, missouri had more conservative laws. So we really didn’t see a reemergence of the Missouri wine industry until the 70s with my grandparents when they started St. James Winery.
Janice Person [00:03:21]:
Yeah. So we think, like, the winemaking roots of Missouri go back to the beginning of statehood and territory development, maybe even.
Brandon Hofherr [00:03:31]:
Yeah, absolutely.
Janice Person [00:03:33]:
But the modern day wine industry dates to the 70s with your grandparents and others that were able to get back in the business.
Brandon Hofherr [00:03:41]:
Yes.
Janice Person [00:03:42]:
All right. And Sam, you get to go out and actually work the grapes. So she said it started with Concords. Where are we now?
Sam Cobb [00:03:52]:
Right now we have twelve different varieties in full production. A lot of French American hybrids. Some Missouri natives, like Norton, Labrescas, Concord, Niagara. We’re experimenting a little bit with Vinifera, which is like the European grape varieties. We also have the R and D vineyard, where we’re constantly swapping things out. It’s definitely different than it was in the past, I’m sure, but I think we’re going in the right direction.
Janice Person [00:04:23]:
Yeah. So most people that aren’t this deep into wines in the middle of the country are probably more familiar with those varietals that are more popular in California, Oregon, some of that kind of stuff. So we’ve got both white and red grapes. We do both. Tell me what you think, where they fit on the profile, because I’ve had to have people explain it for me before. Because if you suddenly buy a Missouri wine but you’ve never had any before, if you like Pinot.
Brandon Hofherr [00:04:53]:
So I think the general impression is that Missouri makes great sweet wine, which is true. We love sweet wine, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. I love sweet wine. I love dry wine, especially. Whatever you like. Yeah. But we have profiles that we can create out of our vineyards from a big, beautiful red similar to, like, a Cab Sam that you’re familiar with, with the Norton, which is actually Missouri state grape. Fun fact, we’ve got elegant, crisp, dry whites with our vignoles, and then we do have the sweeter Concord that we do. So we’ve really got everything in between. It’s just you’ve learned what a Souven Blanc is, but now you need to be introduced to vignoles, which has some of the same characteristics.
Janice Person [00:05:43]:
So you guys started in the 70s. Do you have any of those vines left?
Sam Cobb [00:05:50]:
Yes. So our estate, Norton Block, is original to Mrs. Hoefer and her husband. I think it’s 50 something years old.
Janice Person [00:06:02]:
Okay.
Sam Cobb [00:06:03]:
It’s still producing today. Actually, it was looking great up until about three days ago. It’s still alive and doing well. But it got hit with the frost, too, like everything else did. It’s one of my favorite blocks. It’s showing its age. It’s 50 years old.
Brandon Hofherr [00:06:23]:
So we have special blocks that we kind of baby and take aside. And the estate Norton that Sam’s talking about is one of those. So we kind of baby it through the year. We make a very small batch, very hands on hand pruned.
Sam Cobb [00:06:37]:
It gets all the whole nine yards.
Brandon Hofherr [00:06:41]:
Very special to us. And it creates a great, beautiful wine that we only sell in our tasting room. So it’s not available unless you come down here.
Sam Cobb [00:06:48]:
Also happens to be my wife’s favorite and probably the most expensive.
Brandon Hofherr [00:06:53]:
It’s funny how that works out sometimes.
Sam Cobb [00:06:55]:
Ironic, isn’t it? Actually, I really like that one, too. It’s my favorite. And I don’t know if it’s because of the time and effort that we put into it or if it’s just I like dried Norton wine, but I think it’s the best.
Brandon Hofherr [00:07:11]:
I think with anything, you put love into it, you get love out of it. So same goes for wine and growing grapes.
Sam Cobb [00:07:18]:
That’s a really cool vineyard. It’s a really cool block. When you look at it, you can just see the age. You can tell it’s been around for a long time. Maybe it doesn’t look the best. It’s not the prettiest, but there’s missing vines. But they’re all original. Even if we’ve had to replant that vineyard, we’re looking for the exact same clone.
Janice Person [00:07:38]:
The Clonal.
Sam Cobb [00:07:39]:
Mrs. Hofherr was putting us in contact with the original nursery where we got the vines to begin with. And it’s a cool vineyard. It’s a cool vineyard.
Janice Person [00:07:49]:
Yeah.
Brandon Hofherr [00:07:49]:
The winemaking community, I think, especially here in the Midwest and somewhat on the East Coast in New York, that’s where we got a lot of the knowledge. We kind of all banded together, so we’re a very close knit community, so we still have those contacts, like finding the original clone and the exact nursery that it came from.
Janice Person [00:08:07]:
That’s crazy.
Brandon Hofherr [00:08:08]:
We’ve all kind of grown up together as we’ve restarted the industry.
Sam Cobb [00:08:11]:
It’s funny. I’ve been on the phone with them, and they even like, oh, yeah, I remember. Or like, my grandpa sold it to them, or something like that. And it’s amazing that they could even remember that.
Janice Person [00:08:23]:
I love it. So tell me a little bit about how the process you guys started in the 70s. What did you start with versus what did you have to build out? Because people will see. Today we’re sitting in the garden doing this interview, and it’s a gorgeous space. There’s a big building next door where they’re making wines. And I’m sure it wasn’t all of this in the probably didn’t have nearly this many grapes.
Janice Person [00:08:54]:
No.
Brandon Hofherr [00:08:55]:
So originally my grandfather worked in St. Louis for a brewery doing quality assurance, and he wanted to make wine, so he drove down 44 and was like, oh, my gosh, there are all these grapes in this town called St. James. So he bought an old Concord vineyard from an old farmer, and then he bought the land that the winery is now on. And he actually the first thing he built was the tasting room. So he lived in the realtor’s garage while he built the tasting room from hand, and then he brought down the rest of his family. So my grandmother, my dad, my two uncles, and my aunt.
Janice Person [00:09:30]:
I’m so intrigued by this, because not until you were explaining this did I remember the mushroom farmer we interviewed years ago. His father also had worked in a food related industry in St. Louis and similarly got the excitement about doing something different and went down 44 until he found the conditions that he needed to grow mushrooms. So it seems like a lot of great things happen in St. Louis, but some of them also leave St. Louis and create great things elsewhere.
Brandon Hofherr [00:10:02]:
Absolutely. I mean, this area is just gorgeous. So our technical grape growing region is the Ozark Highlands. So we are getting close to the Ozarks, but, I mean, it’s just beautiful hills, lots of rivers, great water quality.
Janice Person [00:10:17]:
Why Germans and Italians would feel really comfortable settling in an area like this. So then after the tasting room, how did he start building it? Because now when I mentioned it to Molly, she’s like, I know that bottle. I know that label. She immediately knew exactly what I was talking about. The St. James name and logo and stuff come to mind for people in this part of the world.
Brandon Hofherr [00:10:43]:
Yeah, so, I mean, it’s a process just like anything. Originally, there was a law in Missouri. I couldn’t remember the exact cap, but you could only make X amount of wine per year. So one of the first hurdles was getting, okay, let’s get together with our friends in Herman, our other wine families that we know, and get that law changed so that we can make as much wine as we want to or can. So there were various laws in place like that that we worked really hard to get overturned. And then it just kind of built out. So we have the seller, and then the seller needed more tanks. So we brought that in, and as soon as we start adding more tanks, well, we need more space to store.
Janice Person [00:11:24]:
We need more buildings, we need more space, more equipment. We also need more vines.
Brandon Hofherr [00:11:29]:
Yeah, so it’s just kind of built out from there. Right now, we’ve got about 160 acres planted of grapes.
Janice Person [00:11:37]:
We’ve got a lot of grapes.
Sam Cobb [00:11:39]:
There’s a lot. We have 160 acres, but plans for another 35.
Janice Person [00:11:45]:
Okay.
Sam Cobb [00:11:46]:
But right now, we’re kind of in a redevelopment phase where you kind of like, they’re showing their age. They need some TLC, some replanting, some upkeep. The previous ten years, it was kind of modernizing. The trellis type, which is the trellis is what you train the vines onto the wire. So it was a different trellis type. We had actually two different types of trellis. So we spent the last ten years redeveloping all that to make it all consistent, to make it so that it’s easier to mechanize, it’s easier to take care of and still produce the same quality fruit. So we just, like, a couple of years ago, just got done doing that. Now we started in a new phase of, okay, well, now we’re looking around, going, well, maybe we could use this variety instead, or this is where the consumer is going. Maybe this is where we should be going, too. That type of stuff. And that comes down to Brandon and Andrew and Peter.
Brandon Hofherr [00:12:46]:
Yeah. So our executive winemaker, Andrew Meggett, works a lot with my department, the marketing department, to kind of gauge, like, okay, consumers are really interested in these fruit moscados. So how much moscado do we have? What could we do with it that’s kind of fun and fresh? So we have a lot of input that goes into our R and D process and the what was it?
Janice Person [00:13:09]:
Pineapple mango that I need to try. Yes.
Brandon Hofherr [00:13:13]:
So it’s 100% fruit. It’s pineapple wine and mango wine that’s blended, and it’s coming out May 1.
Janice Person [00:13:19]:
Yeah. You all grow your own grapes, but not all the other fruit cracks.
Brandon Hofherr [00:13:24]:
We trust fruit farmers to farm their own type of fruit, so we know that we’re not necessarily going to be able to put in pineapple plants in Missouri. So we go out and look for the best quality pineapple juice and concentrate that we can, and then we bring that in.
Janice Person [00:13:40]:
Yeah. And I saw Cranberry back there because there is a Christmas seasonal wine that I’ve had. Yes.
Brandon Hofherr [00:13:46]:
So our Cranberry wine is actually number one in the country, and it’s 100% Cranberry, which I think it’s not overly sweet. The Cranberry makes it really tart, which makes it so popular with holiday meals.
Janice Person [00:13:58]:
Yeah. And I have shared a Cranberry sangria type recipe because it was so good that I got that wine. I had to go back and get more of it.
Brandon Hofherr [00:14:07]:
But it’s definitely a process. So as you plant grapes, you don’t plant a vine and then get fruit off of it. It’s a three year process before you even see fruit.
Sam Cobb [00:14:18]:
Yeah. Three years, if you’re lucky. If everything goes well.
Brandon Hofherr [00:14:20]:
Yeah. So you’re really trying to think ahead and work in the future as well as in the now, maintaining, making sure everything’s healthy and taken care of on the farm side.
Janice Person [00:14:31]:
You really have to go out into the future to get vines ready and stuff. But even to get the right things that consumers want, you have to go far enough to schedule out what you might want to you really have to.
Sam Cobb [00:14:42]:
Be careful because whatever you plan in the ground, you have to count on being there for, like, 15 years. It’s not like you can go, oh, never mind. They changed their mind, and we don’t want this anymore. So whatever you put in the ground, that investment, you want at least 15 years out of a vineyard before you kind of start thinking about maybe doing something different with it.
Janice Person [00:15:04]:
Yeah, the long game with a vineyard.
Brandon Hofherr [00:15:07]:
I think we’re really lucky, too, because Andrew, our winemaker, is very creative. So he often looks at something and it’s like, okay, what can we do with our existing varietals that we have? And he is a genius, I think, at doing that and looking at what we have available and kind of what direction we kind of want to make something new.
Janice Person [00:15:29]:
And you were basically, when we were coming through, you were talking about some of the things that have happened since you were a kid. You remember them way back then and then now you’ve got some Brandon new tools. So you’re kind of bridging traditional winemaking with some of the newer capacity and potential, is that right?
Brandon Hofherr [00:15:47]:
Absolutely. So we’ve always been very invested in sustainability just because as a family, multigenerational family business, we want to make sure that as we go down the generations, it still remains fertile and viable business for them as well. So sustainability goes hand in hand with that. So things like we use AI technology in our winemaking process that learns not only from us, but other winemakers across the country that helps us with blending and filtering and all of that. Things like we have root sensors in our vineyard that measure the exact amount of moisture that reaches the roots of the grapes, so then we don’t have to use excess water. So we really try to balance the cost of this technology with also the practicality and what’s right for the planet.
Janice Person [00:16:41]:
Yeah. And it’s cool that you guys are doing it all the way from the vineyards to the bottle. So let’s talk about where you guys sell primarily. I know you do some retail and stuff here. You’ve got a tasting room, and you’ve got a microbrewery now on campus, but so do you sell mainly through grocery stores, liquor stores?
Brandon Hofherr [00:17:04]:
All of the above. So we are distributed in 18 states, mainly in the Midwest. So if you think everything that touches Missouri, we’re probably in that state. But we go through independent stores, liquor stores. We’re in Walmart, every grocery store that you can probably think of, restaurants, all that kind of restaurants. Yeah.
Janice Person [00:17:26]:
Very cool. The Missouri wine scene is actually a pretty active world for folks that don’t know. There are a group like Missouri Wines that actually pulls all the different wineries together, so that kind of market the state.
Brandon Hofherr [00:17:42]:
Yeah. So my dad and I both also serve on the Missouri Grapes and Wine Board. So when the tide rises, all boats float. And what is good for Missouri wine is good for everybody in the wine industry.
Janice Person [00:17:59]:
Exactly.
Brandon Hofherr [00:17:59]:
So we all work together to kind of not make Missouri wines more competitive, because they are competitive. We consistently win awards all over the world, but just bring more awareness that, hey, we’ve got a wine industry, and it’s awesome. And you should come visit and taste. And we’re just as good as, if not better than California or Oregon or wherever.
Janice Person [00:18:22]:
Right. One of the things about Missouri wines, though, is they’re going to have to roll with punches. I think it’s going to happen across the Midwest. California has got some real challenges with the amount of rainfall they’ve had. This may not be the best wine grape year ever. That’s definitely the case here, right, Sam?
Sam Cobb [00:18:41]:
Yeah. We had a pretty rough winter. The tail end of this winter, we’ve seen a lot of fluctuation where it would get 60 degrees for maybe a week.
Janice Person [00:18:53]:
Those were the days I was happy in the winter.
Sam Cobb [00:18:55]:
Yeah. And then we were not. Then it would significantly drop off, like, overnight to like 20 degrees. And with that, we seen a lot of bud mortality. So coming into spring, we knew that maybe the crop load would be a little bit less. But then we followed that up with just this last weekend, we had a pretty significant frost event where two days in a row we were below 30 degrees and also heavy frost. It was pretty significant losses. Pretty significant.
Janice Person [00:19:26]:
If you don’t mind, I’m going to dial us back a little bit, because over the winter when you’re tending the vignoles, you’re really trimming things back some and all that kind of stuff, just in good care of the vines. Right. And so those buds are those initial growing points. And you may not have as much, say, as I have on, like, the dogwood tree in my front yard. Right. I don’t go and trim that every year. I trim it on occasion. But you need to do that trimming in order to keep the grapes really highly productive and producing the quality, is that right?
Sam Cobb [00:20:00]:
Right. The process of pruning and that’s what it’s called, pruning, is removing any undesired growth.
Janice Person [00:20:06]:
Yeah.
Sam Cobb [00:20:06]:
So what we do is we go I sit down with Andrew and I go, okay, I think this vineyard can reliably produce eight tons of the year, or eight tons per acre per year at a good quality. And then so with the historical data that we have, we can go we need, let’s say, 100 buds per vine.
Janice Person [00:20:24]:
Okay.
Sam Cobb [00:20:25]:
So then we go to the vineyard and we go, okay, well, 100 buds per vine looks like this. And so we set that pretty early on in the winter because we have to start pruning as soon as we can. So the problem with the winter that we had was that the pruning was mostly complete when the winter started, really giving us a hard time. So coming out of winter, we knew that there was going to be some bud loss, and we figured that in we usually leave between 30 and 50% extra, just in case. But we’ve already surpassed that with the damages from this last winter.
Janice Person [00:20:58]:
I mean, I would notice, like, leaves that aren’t forming out perfectly on the dogwood tree or something. And I will say lots of people get worried about losing their flowers and things like that at home, but it’s really different on a farm. So we went out and saw one of the vineyards that was hit really hard by Frost. And you see a lot of damage.
Sam Cobb [00:21:21]:
To leaves, a lot of damage. And it’s not just leaves, it’s the whole shoot itself. So when you see that type of damage, let’s say the grow tip gets killed, well, then you more than likely are losing that cluster. And if that’s your primary so let’s say that’s the best fruit possible that you’re Going to get off of that bud.
Janice Person [00:21:44]:
Yeah.
Sam Cobb [00:21:45]:
Plants are amazing. They have built in survival mechanisms, and there will be secondary or tertiary shoots, but they may not be fruitful.
Janice Person [00:21:57]:
It’s going to make your year hard. And it’s going to make Andrew’s year hard.
Sam Cobb [00:22:00]:
Yeah. Even more difficult. So it’s like they May not Be fruitful. So you can’t count on how much fruit that You’re Going To have until you see it. So it’s a waiting game right now. But also, vines are A woody perennial. You can’t just not Take care of it. You Have To Make sure that Your program Is In place, that you’re taking care of this vine, whether It’s fruitful or not, because You Need it to produce next year.
Janice Person [00:22:23]:
I think most People, when they Go to a winery or a vineyard, it’s usually like a fall kind of thing that most People really enjoy going. And at that point, you’re Going to see a lot of leaves on the it’s pretty whether the vines are really producing the right Kind of grapes or not. You’ll still see a lot of leaves this Fall, right. So people May Not notice it if they haven’t taken time to hear from somebody like you. That really gets into the early season, mid season kind of growth to really Know What they have. And that’s why you and Andrew have to work like sidestep.
Sam Cobb [00:23:02]:
We Have To work Pretty closely, especially right now, is because Andrew and the seller team is Going to have to kind of plan out their year, what’s available for them to use for the coming year. Yeah, but If I tell them we’ve lost X amount of fruit, well, then they Have To adjust Their schedules to accommodate for that. Or maybe they have to think. Okay, what can we do instead? Which, fortunately for me, that’s out of my wheelhouse. And that’s an Andrew problem which trickles.
Brandon Hofherr [00:23:30]:
Down to the rest of the company. If we can’t make a product we can’t make a product. Or We Can Look At Other strategies, like bringing in fruit from Other Wineries that maybe Didn’t Get as hit as hard, or it’s always a dance at the End of the day. Making wine Is fun and great, but we are farmers. We are growing this, and we’re at the mercy of Mother Nature.
Janice Person [00:23:52]:
You’re planning years, sometimes decades in advance, and you don’t always know what each season will bring you.
Brandon Hofherr [00:23:58]:
Exactly.
Sam Cobb [00:23:59]:
And it’s even because the way that a grapevine works is we’re producing the buds that are going to provide fruit for next year. We’re producing them right now.
Janice Person [00:24:09]:
Yeah.
Sam Cobb [00:24:09]:
So a severe winter injury now can also impact next year.
Janice Person [00:24:14]:
I love it.
Sam Cobb [00:24:15]:
Yeah, and I love it, too. But it’s also like the blanc of my existence.
Janice Person [00:24:20]:
It’s so much like complicated science and stuff. And usually when I’m enjoying wine, I’m not thinking about the deep science of it. Right. I know if we were talking to your winemaker, they would explain the difference of a really dry year versus a really wet year and all that kind of stuff on different kinds of varieties are going to react different ways and stuff. So it’s hard for me to think about the science involved in winemaking and growing grapes. But then when you get a chance to do it, it’s like mind blowing.
Sam Cobb [00:24:53]:
And it really is. I admittedly am not a huge winey. Like, I’m not a big wino, more.
Janice Person [00:25:03]:
Of a beer guy.
Sam Cobb [00:25:04]:
I’m just not a drinker, really, at all.
Janice Person [00:25:05]:
There you go.
Sam Cobb [00:25:06]:
Andrew used to tell me all the time, hey, I really like this shaded fruit, or hey, I don’t like this shaded fruit, or, hey, I think we should take clusters off, or shoulders off. And I was like, does it really make a difference?
Janice Person [00:25:19]:
Yeah.
Sam Cobb [00:25:20]:
And one year I was complaining about it because it was a lot of extra work to remove clusters out of a certain variety.
Janice Person [00:25:25]:
I love it.
Sam Cobb [00:25:26]:
And he goes, well, we’ll do a side by side. And we did. And I just couldn’t believe that side by side, it was almost two different wines, just from something so simple as removing extra clusters that were not needed.
Brandon Hofherr [00:25:40]:
There’s so much science that goes into taste of things, especially wine. And it’s all in how he everything from the fruit to the soil to aging it, to how they process it, how they let it ferment, which, I mean, a lot of people don’t think about. And you don’t have to. You absolutely don’t have to. And it’s still just as enjoyable. But if you are a nerd, like maybe Sam and I are I’m a bit nerdy.
Janice Person [00:26:06]:
Well, I’m a bit nerdy.
Brandon Hofherr [00:26:08]:
Yeah. It’s exciting to learn about all the science behind it.
Janice Person [00:26:13]:
So I’m just going to tell people, if you’re ever on the highway between Tulsa and St. Louis, this is a great place to stop. I mean, you could come in the tasting room. Somebody in there is going to have some of that kind of information. You can taste different things, buy a bunch of things. It’s a neat place to stop along the road. Probably a good distance between those two cities.
Brandon Hofherr [00:26:37]:
Yeah, we get a lot of people from Tulsa is Texas, too. I mean, we get people from all over.
Janice Person [00:26:42]:
When you’re traveling on the roads, it’s just so easy. And I’d encourage you to check out their website. It’s Stjameswinery.com.
Brandon Hofherr [00:26:52]:
Yes.
Janice Person [00:26:53]:
And they have some more of this history from the family and stuff on there. You guys, thank you so much for having us out, agreeing to visit with us. Is there anything I missed asking you?
Brandon Hofherr [00:27:04]:
I don’t think so. I think we got a good coverage of the basics. I mean, we could talk for hours and hours and hours, but I know.
Janice Person [00:27:13]:
Sam said he couldn’t. He didn’t want to do this. Did it work out okay for you?
Sam Cobb [00:27:17]:
Yeah, it’s been pretty good. I do need to Sam, that I’ve complained about the weather a little bit. Yeah, it’s been a rough winter, but it’s nothing that we can’t handle. It’s rough now, but it’ll get better.
Janice Person [00:27:32]:
You will find a way. Right? That’s great. Thanks so much, guys.
Brandon Hofherr [00:27:38]:
Thank you.
Janice Person [00:27:39]:
Well, as you may have guessed, after we recorded this interview, molly and I headed over first to have lunch. They have an incredible public house, like a brewing company right there on the same property where you can smell that fresh brew beer. And we had oh, man, I had a burger that was killer. So I’m just telling you, definitely take time to stop. In St. James, we also went over to the tasting room and tasted so many different things. They have a tasting flight where you could just go through and choose the ones that you wanted to taste for a set fee for a large number of small tasters. So we did that. We also were able to do something that we’re working with some of their rose and offer up some sort of marketing feedback, so some new things they were looking at. And of course, we had to buy quite a bit. I want to point out the video that we have is the first time Molly, who is on my team at Grounded Communications, that’s the first time she’s done video. I think she did a great job. I did the editing and stuff, but.
Brandon Hofherr [00:28:56]:
I think it will really help you.
Janice Person [00:28:59]:
Understand what that early season was looking like. We’ve now gotten to a month later, and things are looking a little bit bright. You’re over there because now they know what they’re dealing with a little bit more. So wanted to point you to that either on YouTube or on the [email protected]. Thanks, and we’ll see you again in a couple of weeks. Got some great shows coming up. I’m really loving the season.
