This episode of “Wine 101” is sponsored by J Vineyards & Winery, makers of small-batch, single-vineyard wines, and acclaimed sparkling wine using the traditional method. Meaning J makes sparkling wine by hand. J makes a portfolio of bubblies ranging from vibrant and crisp to creamy and graceful. If you’re not feeling bubbly, J Vineyards still wine is equally sublime. To fully experience J Wine paired with curated cuisine, visit J Vineyards & Winery Tasting Room in Sonoma County.
On this episode of “Wine 101,” VinePair’s tastings director Keith Beavers is joined by Brenae Royal, vineyard manager for E. & J. Gallo in Sonoma County. She takes us on a tour of the Monte Rosso Vineyard and shares the vineyard’s rich history, its current growth, and plans for the future. Tune in to learn more.
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Keith Beavers: My name is Keith Beavers, and I bought a jar of Jif creamy peanut butter in Manhattan the other day. It was $9. I mean, I bought it.
What’s going on, wine lovers? Welcome to VinePair’s “Wine 101” podcast. Today we have an awesome interview. I’m not gonna do a lot of talking, Brenae is going to do most of the talking. And that’s a good thing, because there’s a lot here. I think you guys can take a lot from it.
Her official title is Monte Rosso winery relations and vineyard ops manager at E. & J. Gallo Winery. It’s a very official term. It’s very cool. But there’s something more about that title and what she does. Adam and I had a chance to hang out with Brenae in the Monte Rosso Vineyard. It’s a legacy vineyard in Sonoma. It’s huge. I don’t want to give you all the details about it, because she will do that in this vineyard tour for us. The reason why I wanted to share this with you guys is in talking to her, like I said in the last episode, we get a sense of where we are in Sonoma and we get a sense of the past, the present and the future. I believe that Brenae is part of the future of Sonoma. What she’s doing at Monte Rosso Vineyard is the energy that Adam and I saw when we were out there. This new energy, this new generation of winemakers. Brenae is not a winemaker. She says she’s the winemaker before the winemaker, meaning she actually makes sure the grapes are ready for the winemakers. Oh, does she do this and do it well. The Monte Rosso Vineyard is one of the cru vineyards in the United States. Yeah, I said it, “cru,” because it’s real. By the end of this vineyard tour/interview, you’re going to get what I’m talking about: the present, the past, and the future and how people like Brenae are bringing wine, especially in Sonoma, into the future. Let me just stop talking here and let’s get into a little bit of background about Brenae, how she got to this place, and the vineyard itself.
Brenae Royal: OK.
K: This vineyard is famous because…
B: Of a lot of things.
K: A lot of things. How long have you been managing this?
B: This is my eighth season as the vineyard manager, and I’m now the longest standing under Gallo’s ownership.
K: You were here before Gallo took the property?
B: No, I came in 2013 straight out of college. I did the internship across the southern Russian River. At the time, there were only six other South Russian River properties and then Monte Rosso. So it made up about 1,800 acres. I did that for seven months and then a month and a half later came back as the viticulturist in the same area. And 11 months into that role I became the vineyard manager. Last summer, I was promoted to winery relations and vineyard ops. It’s been a pretty fast progression. It’ll be nine years for me in total with the company in June. But this is my eighth season as the manager of this property.
K: What is it about this vineyard that is so special? What’s the specialness? Specialness? That’s the weirdest word. It’s not even a word, actually.
B: I was making up some words earlier. I would say, look around.
K: Oh my God, it’s beautiful.
B: There are so many things that make this property special. I have one member of my team who’s been here for 41 years, and then the other members of the core team have been here anywhere from now 26 to 31 years. That’s literally longer than I’ve been alive. My outside crew team has been with the vineyard for five years. There’s a ton of experiences operating on the property. We do everything by hand.
K: Wow.
B: So that’s definitely led to the continued legacy of the vineyard and the longevity of the vines. Certainly my success is owed, in a huge part, to my team. There’s been a lot of learning. I mean, this vineyard was established by Emmanuel Goldstein, who was a grocer in San Francisco. He was selling wine and wanted to start producing it. This was the early 1880s. They actually believed there was gold out here too. That was quite a bit of incentive to come on out. He roped in his business partner, Samuel Dreyfus, and they came out to Sonoma Valley. I know you’re familiar with this region. We do have some sister properties that are within a couple of years of Monte Rosso. Bedrock is a vineyard we can look down directly into today when we get out in front of the Sémillon. But there’s also Pagani Ranch, which is a couple of years younger. And then there’s also Old Hill, which is actually three or four years older than Monte Rosso. But they’re all on the valley floor, whereas Emmanuel Goldstein’s belief was that the best vines are usually on more stressed sites. So you pick that up with elevation. He came up here, developed about 75 acres, and started putting first vines in the ground in 1886. We had Zinfandel, Muscat, Burger and Sémillon. Not too long after that, phylloxera comes and wipes out most of California. However, working through a project in 2019, we do have confirmed, 136-year-old Sémillon vines. The other acreage was replanted in 1893, so that’s why I’ll call out our gnarly vines, as in 129-year-old vines, and then our Sémillon at 136. At the same time in 1886, they completed one of the first gravity-fed wineries, the Mount Pisco Winery, and that’s still standing on site. It’s three stories, totally gravity-fed. There’s a building below that we believe is a distillery because who wasn’t making brandy? The vineyard’s known as Goldstein Ranch. Samuel and his son are bought off. So is Goldstein Ranch. Emanuel himself passed away in 1911, just before the start of Prohibition. It’s the second and third generation that’s farming the vineyard, but I’d say “farm the vineyard” because they weren’t really as driven on the farming side as their grandfather was. But they were making a lot of money off the vineyard, because even back then the fruit was highly regarded and sought after. And as you know, through Prohibition, you couldn’t sell finished product, but you could sell all the ingredients. So rumor has it they had everything you’re not supposed to do with the raw materials. Because you could make up to 50 gallons of wine at home, so challenge accepted. The family starts putting it out there that they want to put the vineyard up for sale. At the time, one of the buyers was Louis M. Martini, who established a winery in 1933. He didn’t want to lose the fruit. So he picked up the vineyard in October of 1938 for a whopping $8 an acre and harvested it by the next week. I believe he harvested it on Oct. 7, which is a very common pick date for us. He harvested the fruit, brought it into his winery and renamed the vineyard to Monte Rosso, which means “red earth.” In 1940, he planted the first Cabernet Sauvignon vines out here, which we believe are the oldest in the state, coming in at 82 years old. We can deep dive on that a little bit later. He and his son, Louis P., grow the vineyard up to the present day. They planted 250 acres and the entire vineyard’s 575 acres. They went through about 20 years of a lot of white varieties and then in the ’80’s picked back up replanting Cab. So we still have a lot of dry-farmed Cab out here, especially on this side. That’s some 45-year-old Cab out there. They maintained that and Cab became king. I’m sure Caroline has shown you some of our library stuff. The mountain Cab, those old labels, a lot of that is sourced from Monte Rosso. Although the Martini family did own holdings in both Napa and Carneros, this was their main site.
K: I was wondering, because Martini had a heavy Napa presence. They were apart of the development of the Napa AVA, that whole thing as well.
B: They were one of the first five wineries established.
K: The one that Mondavi was like, “This guy, this guy, this guy, this guy.” And he was part of it.
B: And the Napa Valley Vintners Association was established here as well.
K: Oh, cool.
B: Their first meeting was just in the Arbor area there.
K: Oh, that’s big.
B: Because Ernest and Julio established Gallo just a couple of months after Martini, there were talks of both of them trying to petition to move the Napa County line to include Monte Rosso. Because we’re technically only three miles away.
K: I love this history. That’s amazing.
B: Louis M. passes away by this time and Mike Martini is on and he is really starting to build the legacy of vineyard- designate. Martini was one of the first to do it, especially with the recognition of having Monte Rosso. It was under Mike Martini’s leadership that we started selling fruit. So in 1993, the first person to buy fruit from Martini was Joel Petersen of Ravenswood. Not too long after was Bob Bialy, who to this day still buys fruit. He’s the longest-standing fruit purchaser for 26 years now. I mean, think of all the old guards and producers. You had Kent Rosenblum, Sbragia is back out here for Cab.
K: Did Joel Gott ever come out here?
B: I work with Joel Gott now.
K: OK, cool.
B: As Mike and Carolyn want to take a step back from the business, they’re selling off a lot of their vineyards out in Carneros and Napa and in July of 2002, for what I assume was a lot more than $8 an acre, they sell to the Gallo family who had built a big relationship with them. We are present-day owners. We’ve maintained the planted acreage. However, we’ve consolidated the number of varieties out here. In our affidavit, we have that there are 23. However, if you walk through any of these old vine blocks, you’ll find a lot of stuff that isn’t recorded. About half the vineyard is planted to Cabernet Sauvignon. A distant second now is Zinfandel. But then we have our lone block of Sangiovese up there. That’s the furthest along with all that green.
K: Oh, interesting.
B: Then I’ve got a little bit of Malbec here, a little bit of Grenache behind us. I’ve got some Petite Sirah, Cab Franc, Petite Verdot, Syrah, and Sémillon. So that makes up 10 of my kids. When I started, we had 64 blocks and I’ve since consolidated down to 54 blocks. However, there are a number of sub-blocks in there that I have officially lost count of because getting up to 34 buyers last year had us farming in 105 different ways out here.
K: That’s a lot.
B: I’m up to 45 this year, so it’s like I hate having any kind of organization. But it works out because everything is pretty tedious and we run a pretty tight operation out here and it’s really fun to see all of the different wine styles. A week ago, we actually had a chance to taste 55 new wines from Monte Rosso and I can’t wait to announce those. But I’m already starting to let some of them go on my Instagram. I’ll just kind of run through and start announcing all of them as we get closer to release.
K: I don’t interrupt too much, but you see how it’s moving here from the past, the present, and we’re going into the future? It’s kind of where we’re heading in this vineyard tour interview anyway. Before we get to all that, let’s talk a little bit about harvesting and climate in that San Pablo Bay we talked about a lot in the Sonoma and Napa episode.
B: All these things just make Monte Rosso just awesome. We got a huge influence from the San Pablo Bay. So the acidity that we’ll taste in the wines that are rounded off by that coastal influence. This place gets pretty freaking hot, but you’ll see that there’s always this circulation of air. And then just our management of the vines and how we’ve gotten smarter with setting up our trellis systems and our irrigation sets, we really do manage what the vineyard can do. We have ranges in soil depths of 13 to 15 inches down to 30 feet. As we’ve replanted blocks, doing it all by hand makes it pretty fun.
K: You do everything by hand?
B: We’ll utilize a helicopter when we can’t get into some of the blocks with tractors anymore because the spacing gets too tight. We harvest 100 percent at night because it can still be about 85 degrees at midnight. And we have a ginormous rattlesnake population, among other things. But about 65 percent of the fruit goes to Napa. So logistically, starting anywhere from 10 p.m. to midnight and ending around 6 a.m. makes the fruit get over to the Napa side without running into too much traffic. It gets the fruit there cooler, too. Right now, we’re preparing to start our fungicide passes.
K: We didn’t see any rattlesnakes, which is really, really awesome. Oh, and by the way, Brenae’s dog, who we talk to sometimes in this little vineyard tour, her name’s Violet Mae. She’s 7 years old. She’s an amazing black lab, and her and Adam are just straight-up buddies. Now we’re going to go into what it is like to be a client of Monte Rosso and what does she look for when she’s choosing people to be part of this awesome vineyard? How do you decide who gets to buy fruit? Do they fight it out?
B: We’re getting to the point, that’s kind of funny. It’s really about who’s who. You know, 80 percent of our buyers have the Monte Rosso trademark on it. I keep it pretty tight because I do believe in scarcity, but it really is the who’s who. Who’s going to amplify Martini? Because it really is a club. But whatever you’re doing, I want it to reflect back on us because we have the largest lineup of vineyard-designates. If they like yours, I want you to be able to point out to our other three producers with Monte Rosso on the label so that eventually a consumer, regardless of producer, will be in a wine shop and see Monte Rosso Vineyard and pick it up just because. So in an effort for brand equity, who’s going to really be a beneficial partner where it’s mutual, but also who’s going to bring those people back to home base? I’m not looking for identical wines, but I am looking for wines that are super unique and cool and made by either up-and-coming winemakers or established winemakers. Who’s making super-cool wine? Because I know I’m limiting everybody to 50 to 200 cases per variety that they’re making. I know you’re going to sell out. I’m also pushing price on everybody because we should be matching or exceeding what we’re charging at Martini. I’m building a club of who’s who and eventually I’ll turn it into a lottery. Even in the market today with Napa, I can’t wait to talk about who’s coming over with Napa because they’re not just back blending. They want to put the name on it because they’ve seen what’s been happening.
K: That’s awesome.
B: It’s been a really cool trajectory and I’ve opened this really special vineyard up to people and I’ve been able to present it as a huge value-add to Gallo. They’re like, “Yeah, run with it.” And so I ran and now it’s like, “Oh, snap.” Monte Rosso is shared with so many people and now it’s on those wineries to really express what this vineyard can do and sell it to stay in the club. Style differentiation is what we’re looking for. That’s not what’s going to kick you out. Is this wine following the trajectory of what the vineyard was doing in that vintage? How far of an outlier are you to where maybe this isn’t likable? And honestly, are you releasing a wine people are going to clamor for? Because the price is elevated and I was able to free up so much fruit because I’m in meetings I really shouldn’t be in. But I was able to learn if Monte Rosso fruit’s not going into a $50 bottle or higher, we’re losing money. So I built this plan, and they were like, “All right, go sell it.” Now we have the likes of some very, very cool winemakers that are now going to be making fruit from Rosso. We brought on a number of people in 2021, 34 buyers and ’21 is more than double than we’ve ever had before. Now that I’m at 45, it’s kind of pushing the ante. So eventually I want to get to 50 and then it’ll just be a lottery.
K: When you were first starting out here, was it like that?
B: No.
K: OK. So you basically said, I’m going to bring this back to its original glory. And then I’m going to show people that this dog is adorable. And I’m going to show people the potential here and then they’re going to start clamoring for it. And then I’m going to manage it and make sure it goes into the right hands and the right people.
B: I wish I was cool enough to say that, but that’s not the case. In 2014, we started Mount Peak Winery. That had the original goal of 5,000 cases and three different SKUs, paying homage to the winery and the vineyard. That was when we finally had a second brand next to Martini that wanted to be elevated. The price point was elevated and the quality was elevated, and who it was set up to compete against was elevated. It was like, “Oh, cool, now we need to fine tune even more farming across the ranch.” So we still had a lot going to the bigger white label Martini. But then we picked up Orin Swift in 2016. If you know Dave’s original story, he was using Monte Rosso fruit in his original Prisoner. We halted all sales because he wanted to come back out here and draw some lines in the sand with our other winemaking teams utilizing the fruit because he loved it even though he had a non-compete in Zinfandel. So he was able to pick up a lot of Cab for Mercury Head and Palermo and Papillon, and then Eight Years in the Desert comes out two years later. That’s when structurally and internally, we were able to be like, “All right, this is what we need for our internal Gallo programs.” Because if it wasn’t going to Orange Swift, Martini and Mount Peak, then we only had a little bit of tonnage left still getting shipped up to Dry Creek where our Sonoma Ranch winery is. In 2019, that’s when my own notoriety started picking up. The Chronicle article came out and my family flew out here. We do have a landing zone for helicopters. They were like, “All right, do you want to become a winemaker? What do we want to do?” And I was like, “No, because I’m already the winemaker before the winemaker.” Crap, I know they’re not going to move me now. So professionally, all of our vineyard managers used to do rotations so that you’d grow professionally. At that point, I knew they weren’t going to move me. I was like, OK, how do I start really expanding on my responsibilities? So I started slowly but surely taking over all of the growth relations aspects. That’s when I realized if it wasn’t hitting that price point, we were losing money. So in 2019 I think we brought on six people, 2020 got 17, and doubled that in 2021.
K: Oh, that’s quick.
B: Yeah, it’s been a fast and furious ride because this has now become my domain. If a winemaker isn’t approaching me about making the fruit and I have my own wish list of who I want to work with, I’ll go taste their portfolio and see if it makes sense. And then we’ll have the conversation out here and find some things they like. Then we’ll be at the current place that I’m in right now where I’ll present back to our general manager to say, “Hey, these partnerships make more sense. Here’s the price point, here’s the contract duration, here’s why I think they make sense.” And then I’ll get approval from him and I’ll start rolling out contracts.
K: You do that 45 times?
B: Yeah.
K: Wow. OK, now here I might riff a little bit. But I was so enamored with what was going on there that I kind of had a throw down a little bit of an American legacy vibe. So bear with me here.
B: That’s what’s been really nice. We’ve been able to elevate the farming, and I’ve been able to raise the price every single time we do it. I’ve had the luxury of people finding a young Black female vineyard manager on Monte Rosso and really amplifying that. So it’s just giving me all this leverage to be like, “You need to come out here.” Regardless of whoever I am, my team is delivering on the fruit and there are some super-cool wines coming out.
K: That’s awesome.
B: I’m happy to share one of the Sangiovese. It’s super delicious.
K: Sangiovese in California is such a legacy of the history of this place, the Italian community out here bringing in Sangiovese and all the grapes that would just come out here and are planted. It’s just so cool.
B: It’s the second standalone Sangiovese from Monte Rosso since 2008. Muscardini made one and this’ll be the second one.
K: That’s awesome.
B: Shall we go to the top?
K: Yeah.
B: Monte Rosso does sit in the bench of the Mayacamas Mountain Range and the sub-AVA Moon Mountain District. Internally we still utilize Sonoma Valley. However, we’re starting to really weigh the pros and cons of utilizing Moon Mountain District, Sonoma, because having that subset AVA really does draw your eye to mountaintop vineyards. You don’t hear Sonoma Valley and go no, “Huh?” It’s such a unique AVA. There’s only about 1,500 acres here. We stand along the likes of Lasseter, Caymus, Hamel. Those are some bigger names and we’re working towards; how do you make it distinct? And now that Monte Rosso is in the fold, which is the largest vineyard in the fold and probably the most well known, we’re trying to really figure out how do you put this on the map? Like a Howell Mountain or Atlas Peak or things like that. I think the way we’re going to try and do it is push every vineyard to go organic. We’re currently certified sustainable and I’m currently trying to work towards organic certification. But that’s how we’re really going to stand out because we already have the volcanic soils, we already have the super-unique wines that come from this region. But how do you elevated outside of Sonoma Valley? That’s what we’re currently working on. But you’ll see a lot of the buyers are starting to put Moon Mountain District on it.
K: Very cool. It’s also a very cool name.
B: Yeah, Moon Mountain.
K: Mountain fruit and it’s a cool name.
B: Out here in space.
K: I can dig it. You know me, wine lovers. I geek out on this American wine history stuff and the whole Sangiovese thing with Italian immigrants coming in was awesome. Also, Moon Mountain, keep that in your mind. There’s a lot more of this interview that I could not put into this episode. I’m giving you the greatest hits. When we were wrapping it up, the conversation that we had was interesting. Again, I riffed a little bit because I was so into the moment, because I still am as I’m speaking to you now. This vineyard and what Brenae is doing is just great. She says to me, “I do better with questions.” And then at that point, I realized, oh, man, I haven’t been asking a lot of questions because I was just listening to her talk. Listen to this.
B: I do better with questions. I can keep going.
K: No this is great, I’m getting to know everything. I had an Italian restaurant for 10 years. So I was a European guy for a long time. I had a wine shop as well, and I had wines from all over the world in my wine shop. But having an Italian restaurant for 10 years, you’re really stuck in the Sangiovese mindset. It was in 2019 that I went to Paso Robles for the first time and I fell in love with what was happening there. I was like, “Wait a second, American wine is awesome.” And there’s a history here and we should probably be talking about it. I did an episode on Sonoma and Napa just to break it all down, like here’s the sub-AVAs of Napa and here are the 18 AVAs of Sonoma. Just so the listener understands it. But because of my obsession now with the history of American wine, everything you’ve been saying is basically what I wanted to hear. The new chapter of the history of this area is maintaining a large, revered, celebrated vineyard to be taken care of, to be brought to the next level. What’s really awesome about it as well is the fact that we still are a young country and an even younger wine industry. What you’re doing here is something that some people may think that people have been doing for generations. But no, you came here and you brought this back to a certain level and now you have 34 to 45 people that want to be part of this. I feel like it’s creating something that the Old World once knew. We now have this place, this revered, beautiful place. And the soil has been realized. The climate has been realized, and people want to be a part of this. Then it’s going to go off into labels and into distribution. It’s an American legacy that’s happening here. What you’re doing is bringing into a new chapter of history. I think it’s just very cool. That’s why I just wanted you to talk. I don’t even know what questions I have because I just wanted to hear about the place and hear about everything and it’s awesome.
B: I appreciate that. Monte Rosso has been way well known prior to me being here. But I think that’s what you kind of harness. We’ve joined the Sonoma Valley Vintners and Growers Alliance. Now we’re part of Moon Mountain District. But when you think of vineyards like Monte Rosso and when you think of Sonoma County, there are many grand crus that people know about. But you don’t really know them.
K: I was going to go there.
B: I’m going there because we definitely are. I’m going to go there because when you hear Monte Rosso, everybody’s head picks up and goes, “Oh, what? OK.” If you can really leverage Monte Rosso, then all boats on the tide are going to rise. Because my thought is, Sonoma County has so much diversity. It works for us and it works against us. But when a consumer is coming to Sonoma County, you’re not geared towards one area. All right, I can’t have Alexander Valley and Sonoma Valley on the same street. I can’t go to the Russian River and Petaluma Gap, so where the hell am I going? Whereas in Napa, you’re getting a Cab. You’re going to try some really oddball stuff, but you’re getting Cab. We’re farming on such a level that we need to elevate that. How do you make somebody go into the Sonoma County beeline to an area? I know that we’re doing that with Moon Mountain District, but across the board, how do you do that for Sonoma County? And Monte Rosso is one of the most well known. You start to really elevate Monte Rosso. So that was another goal with having the who’s who making Monte Rosso wines, because we have bigger companies making Monte Rosso wine. But then we especially have a lot of smaller, unique, nice wineries making it. So if Monte Rosso is in your portfolio now, there’s visibility to everybody. My really big grower day is actually on the 24th where I have all the buyers in the room and they’re all bringing library wines and it’s going to be a fest. But I want them to try all these new wines that are coming off the property. I’m going to be having a presentation making sure everybody’s got the language around Monte Rosso right. I’ve seen a lot of numbers out there and I’m like, “Let’s all get put together.” But we have so many new people and so many old people. I want to know what price points are working and what method of distribution is working. What story are you telling people? Are you able to do futures on the wine? What are you doing that’s going to make these other people successful? And then who two or three people in here will you point your consumer to when you’re sold out? What are you doing that’s making a difference to the consumer? Because people buying Monte Rosso wine, regardless of the producer, have a disposable income that’s only grown through the pandemic. So the people that we’re marketing to are not people that are going to shy away from drinking a $100-plus bottle of wine on Tuesday with some pizza. So the people buying this wine know the stories and feel, not just related to the vineyard, but to the producer as well. We really need to amplify that. But being able to have Monte Rosso on 80 percent of my buyers means anybody looking for Monte Rosso is going to be introduced to many more people across Sonoma and Napa County. And I need to make sure that the best people are representing the vineyard in its best life. And now there are so many different profiles and aspects of Monte Rosso, you don’t have to expect this very huge jammy fruit.
K: The thing.
B: Or 16 percent alcohol. There’s a lot of 14 percents coming out. Scribe actually made a super-cool one that’s going to be bottled on March 28. I can’t wait for that one to be released. Brown Estates Zinfandel had a lot of people crying, myself included. There are just a lot of really cool wines. Even last Tuesday, there’s just some cool things coming. If I can utilize Monte Rosso to be a vehicle for people to understand why they need to be coming here, then I’m going to do that. And it works for everybody, myself included. That’s a very cool place and I’m super fortunate that Gallo will give me ears when I’m thinking of my crazy plans, because I’m sitting here like a mouthpiece. I’m on Monte Rosso, let’s leverage that. The value added back to us has been huge. I’m glad that they’ve given me the leeway to run. Monte Rosso is a very special place. We’ve gotten into a very meticulous point and we keep pushing it because it would be really easy to get comfortable on a vineyard you know is going to do well. So how do we keep pushing it? How do we keep elevating it?
K: That’s awesome. So there you have it, guys. A nice inside look at one of the most famous vineyards in Sonoma, which is actually one of the most famous vineyards in America. It’s kind of our cru vineyard. There’s a lot going on there. Go to Sonoma, guys. It’s awesome.
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And now, for some totally awesome credits. “Wine 101” was produced, recorded, and edited by yours truly, Keith Beavers, at the VinePair headquarters in New York City. I want to give a big ol’ shout-out to co-founders Adam Teeter and Josh Malin for creating VinePair. Big shout-out to Danielle Grinberg, the art director of VinePair, for creating the most awesome logo for this podcast. Also, Darbi Cicci for the theme song. Listen to this. And I want to thank the entire VinePair staff for helping me learn something new every day. See you next week.
Ed. note: This episode has been edited for length and clarity.
