Stay ConnectedA podcast delivering wine perspectives ex-chateau. Insights, analysis, and perspectives on news and trends in the wine industry beyond winemaking, such as marketing, finance, and consumer trends. From noted wine blogger Robert Vernick (@wineterroir) and leading wine business consultant and author of Luxury Wine Marketing Peter Yeung (@winebizguy), this podcast navigates the business of wine with unique perspectives and insights.
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Copyright: © 2020 - 2021 XChateau
As one of the major players in value wine, owning Charles Shaw (aka “Two Buck Chuck”), Bronco Wine Co.’s new CEO, Dom Engels, believes that the wine industry needs more innovation and focus on creating new entry points for younger consumers. From packaging to labels, Dom discusses how he’s navigating Bronco through the turbulence of a shrinking market for value wine from both the cost and innovation side.
Detailed Show Notes:
Bronco - Top 15 winery, owner of Charles Shaw (aka “Two Buck Chuck”)
Charles Shaw
Believes the industry needs more good entry-level wines to get younger generations a start in wine
Enhancing social interactions is important; e.g., Jack Daniels’ ad that getting together with other people is healthy too
Believes dislocation of restaurant price vs retail is a core driver of wine industry decline, $14 IPA and $25 cocktails make people drink less
Navigating lower volumes requires being more efficient, sees opportunity in winemaking (most capacity utilization at wineries now <50%), distribution (reduce inventory), and retail
Likely too many brands in the US and too much shelf space in retail
Mothballing a lot of vineyards due to oversupply
Competing in value vs international
Tariff impacts
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In an oversupplied market with rising costs, being a winegrape grower is probably the hardest it has ever been. Natalie Collins, President of the California Association of Winegrape Growers, breaks down the cost of winegrape growing in CA, the challenges in the marketplace, and the policy dynamics in the US, CA, and EU that continue to exacerbate the challenges for CA’s winegrape growers.
Detailed Show Notes:
CA Winegrape Growers - based in Sacramento, lobbies at the state and federal level
Key cost drivers of winegrape growing
Grape pricing not rising w/ input costs - Central Valley ~$500-600/ton, Central Coast ~$1-2k/ton
The annual CA Winegrape Crush Report shows pricing for all varieties by district
US wines can have up to 25% foreign wine blended in and be labeled as US wine
2023-2024 - CA left ~300k tons/year on the vines; 2025 ~50% of vineyards don’t have a contract for the 2025 harvest; industry calling for another 50k acres to be removed (60k removed since 2022); all regions pulling out or mothballing/minimally farming vines
Tariff impacts (May 2025)- input costs increase, but can be positive for CA winegrape growers
Deportations - creating fear, people are afraid to leave their homes for fear of their families getting separated
Seasonal labor is not big, 90% vineyards are mechanically harvested; H2A temporary workers (mostly from Mexico, all-in cost ~$30/hr, often more productive, cannot be paid more than domestic workers)
Economic impact of CA wine - 422k CA employees / 1.1M across US, $73B CA economic impact / $175B/year US
All agriculture is struggling in CA, replacement crops for grapes not easy (some almonds, pistachios, cherries); costs ~$30-70k/acre to plant a vineyard
Duty Drawback - a federal tax refund program meant to encourage exports
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Having met at the UC Davis Wine Executive Program, Kia Behnia, CEO, and Mason Earles, CTO, founded Scout to replicate the best sensor in the vineyard, “the farmer’s eye.” Leveraging off-the-shelf hardware, Scout uses AI to process images taken from a tractor to automate vineyard mapping, vine counting, yield forecasting, virus identification, and more. From managing vineyard assets to implementing precision agriculture to improve quality, Scout is harnessing the power of AI to optimize vineyard management.
Detailed Show Notes:
Mason’s background - UC Davis Professor, Apple, AI & agriculture
Kia’s background for Scout - owns the Neotempo wine brand, worked at Splunk, the “data for everything” company
The official company name is Agricultural Scout, dba Scout, the website is agscout.ai, so it can be called any of those names
Founded in 2022, initially more hardware-based, but pivoted to an intelligence company using off-the-shelf hardware
The goal is to “replicate the farmer’s eye” with an AI-based solution using cameras, tractors, and Scout cloud and mobile app (which can be used offline); the brain is centered around a phone
US only today (~50-100 clients, 300 blocks, 2M vines, processed 56M photos), going international in 2026
4 main use cases currently:
3 types of clients
Benefits include:
Bench Vineyards discovered 1 acre of missing vines out of 24 acres and filled them in
Pricing is a subscription model, $150-180/acre per scan
New product in beta in July 2025 - ChatGPT Scout for vineyards
Marketing mostly through word of mouth, industry trade shows, and webinars have been effective, as has partnership with Monarch (already tech enthusiasts)
Barriers to purchase are often due to farming budgets built around labor
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From 200 mph electric cars to 20 mph electric tractors, Praveen Penmetsa, CEO of Monarch Tractor, leveraged his passion and expertise in vehicles, robotics, and batteries to develop the first smart, electric tractor. Making farmers more profitable and efficient first, and then sustainable, are the core tenets that drive Monarch’s business. Praveen discusses the core benefits of using an electric tractor and how it works with farmers to take advantage of government incentives, making farming more efficient and cost-effective.
Detailed Show Notes:
Praveen’s background: mechanical engineering, loves fast cars, worked on electric vehicles, robots, and battery systems
Founded Monarch in 2018, the company is currently the only company selling smart, electric tractors
Now on four continents, with most sales in the US, pilots internationally
Solution is a smart electric tractor with an app and piloting autonomous driving
Core markets - vineyards #1, dairy #2, orchards, horse ranches
Core benefits
Autonomous driving has guidelines by CA OSHA (need signs that the autonomous tractor is running and no people in the block), but there are no legal guidelines in other places
Pricing
ROI driven by tractor usage, payback ~2 years; has an ROI calculator on the website; needs to be cheaper and more efficient before sustainability elements come into play
Most farmers want autonomy to reduce labor costs
Sells through a direct sales team and dealers
Marketing driven by non-electric tractors today, podcasts are helpful, social media, and demos have been very effective
Partnering with other companies to use their technology inside, also partnered with AgScout to leverage AI for vineyards
Barriers to purchase primarily worry about service and support, and wanting more autonomy for labor savings
Continuously update both HW and SW on machines, some tractors now close to 4,000 hours of operation (vs. standard tractors need to be replaced after 4-6k hours)
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Drawing on her background in winemaking and Silicon Valley, Ashley Leonard, Founder and CEO of InnoVint, has developed a modern platform that tracks everything from the vineyard to the bottle. From getting granular with COGS to automating TTB compliance, InnoVint gets the winery out of spreadsheets and into a modern, cloud-based, mobile-centric system. This system is designed to accomplish InnoVint’s mission: Helping wineries run better businesses.
Detailed Show Notes:
InnoVint overview - mobile-driven winemaking platform, tracks and manages all winemaking options, and automates compliance
TTB requires reporting for producers >500 cases
4 products
Has open APIs; integrates with TankNet and VinWizard for winery automation, receives data back for actions taken; integrates with quality control labs (e.g., ETS) and can take action more quickly
Core benefits
Compliance reporting (e.g., TTB 5120, export reports) - Gloria Ferrer went from 3 people over 2 days to 15 minutes for 1 person
Larger wineries tend to have more tangible benefits
Onboarding
Pricing - SaaS model
Marketing - “has tried it all”, tries to add value to the end user
Barrier to purchase - resistance to change, case studies help overcome (e.g., Domaine Carneros saw what Chandon was doing and bought the product)
The product roadmap includes Supply module, AI applications, and embedded tools
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Making wine in California, France, and even Serbia, consulting winemaker Julien Fayard has a broad view of the winemaking world. His constant monitoring, evaluation, and investment in winemaking technology benefit both his own and his clients’ wineries. Julien offers insight into winemaking technology on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as some of the specific technologies he utilizes.
Detailed Show Notes:
Julien’s background: French, came to the US in 2006 and worked for Phillipe Melka, started his consulting practice in 2013, built two wineries and manages three others; mostly Napa (~85%), but also makes wine from Sonoma, Sierra Foothills, Provence, Bordeaux, and Serbia
Uses trial & error to evaluate new winemaking technology
Usually, a trigger that causes each tech adoption
Hears about new tech from travel and conversations with other wineries and tech companies
French tech is mostly involved with wine contact (e.g., yeast, oak treatment), the US is mostly logistics, mechanization, automation of labor, and CA is slow to mechanize vineyard work
Monitors the slowly evolving knowledge base in winemaking - most tech innovations are slight derivatives of existing knowledge (e.g., sulfur automation)
To buy into a new tech: other people using it, company viability (and ability to scale), practicality of solution (e.g., barrel door for fermentation did not take into consideration time and the challenge to move between barrels)
ROI calculation includes cost savings, risk assessments, and quantity or quality improvements
Generally does not implement things that could move costs more than 10-20%
The most significant variable cost driver is when volume drops (e.g., waste, accidents, filtering, bulking out wine) - each tank is ~$100k of wine
Fruition Sciences did a lot of sap flow analysis, but never got mass adoption
Well monitoring technology is happening, and may be required soon
Communications modules for sensors are getting much cheaper, enabling more tech
Vinwizard (NZ) - wall winery automation
Innovint - winery SW management system
Sentia - hand wine analyzer (VA, malic, alcohol, SO2)
Oenofrance - a system for faster oak extraction
Excited about new destemmers, probes for monitoring wines (for “modern natural wine,” in-ground amphora aging)
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Exactly five years ago, Robert and Peter published the first episode of XChateau! To help us reflect on how the wine market has changed in the last five years, XChateau’s most frequent guests, Amanda McCrossin and Charlie Fu, return to discuss the changes in wine influencing and social media, the wine market upheaval occurring now, wine marketing done right, and wine drinking trends.
Detailed Show Notes:
Changes to being an influencer
Social media evolution
Wine market upheaval
Wine marketing done well
Wine drinking trends
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Spraying for powdery mildew can be ~25% of the cost of farming a vineyard and be one of the key elements of a grower’s carbon footprint. Sarah Placella, Founder and CEO of Root Applied Sciences, has taken her deep research in microbes and created a data-driven solution to monitor the air for mildew and spray only when needed. Root can cut ~5 sprays per season, and growers have an average 5x ROI using the system.
Detailed Show Notes:
Root Applied Sciences (“Root”) - airborne pathogen monitoring for farmers, like an “early warning system”
HW enabled SaaS model - Root owns and maintains devices
Has an automated prototype in process
~25% of operational costs are spent managing PM
Other benefits of Root
Pricing
~5x ROI
Barriers to adoption
Other PM solutions
Product roadmap - more power efficiency, integrating a solar panel
Has done work with/ downy mildew, botrytis, vine mealybug, and can detect them, but does not add a lot of value
Excited about growth in microbial mildewcides (biologicals)
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With over 1,000 kosher wines from across all major winegrowing regions, Royal Wine is the largest importer (and producer and distributor) of kosher wine in the world. Gabe Geller, Director of PR & Wine Education, discusses the market for kosher wine, how and where it is made, and how Orthodox Jews hear about them.
Detailed Show Notes:
Gabe’s background, at Royal Wine >9 years, wine industry for 16 years (retail, consulting, marketing)
Royal Wine - world’s leading importer, producer, distributor of kosher wine
Can’t taste kosher wine, similar to other wines
Israel #1 producer of kosher wine (~5M cases), USA (~350k cases; mostly Herzog), France (~350k cases across many wineries)
Kosher wine market
In top kosher markets, large retailers (e.g. - Total Wine) will have a kosher selection, some kosher wine stores, and online retailers (e.g. - Wine.com) also carry kosher
Of the 15.7M Jewish people (2023), only a small portion keep kosher
Some kosher wines sold to the general market (e.g. - Bartenura Moscato #1 imported Moscato the past 15 years, most don’t know it’s kosher; Jeunesse semi-dry wines have a distinct consumer appeal)
Israeli politics / Gaza war have lead to people buying more to support Israel
Marketing to the Orthodox community
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Though one of the oldest wine-growing regions in the world, Israel is still exploring its potential after Muslim rule after World War I. Victor Schoenfeld, Head Winemaker, and Walter Whyte, VP of Sales for Yarden Imports, explain how Golan Heights Winery has set the bar for the quality of Israeli wine and spreads its wines globally, both within the Jewish community and beyond.
Detailed Show Notes:
Victor Schoenfeld - CA native, went to UC Davis, recruited to Golan Heights Winery in 1991
Walter Whyte - managed officers’ clubs in the military and learned about wine
Golan Heights Winery (“GH”) background
Israeli wine history
Israeli war impacts
Israeli wine market
Differentiating GH
Marketing
All GH wines are kosher
Food and wine pairing is not typical. Traditional Middle Eastern cuisine, “mezze,” has a lot of different flavors at once
Passover dinner is coursed, and every adult must drink four glasses of wine (or grape juice)
Yarden Cru Elite - $2,000 per pair
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