Welcome to Wine Soundtrack USA. Listen to the passion with which producers narrate their
winery and their world. In thirty answers discover their stories, personalities, and
passions. Hello, friends and listeners of Wine Soundtrack. This is Alson Levine
and today I'm very, very excited to be sitting with Bob Cabral of Bob
Coral Wines. Bob, Welcome to Wine Soundtrack. And I mean, I'm
going to say, tell us a little bit about yourself, but I think
a lot of people know your name, but tell us a little bit about
yourself and Bob Cabral Wines. Okay, Well, thank you for having me,
Alison, I appreciate it. Bob Cabral Wines was started in twenty fifteen
by my wife and I and the idea was to find a way to continue
to be philanthropic. In twenty twenty four, this year I'll do my forty
fifth harvest in California. I had a commercial winery and I've learned over the
years working for several other wineries like William Selliam, Harper Court, Three Sticks,
to name a few. The philanthropic part of the wine business is really
what makes me feel good. About the wine business. I love making wine.
I love the fact that I get to grow grapes and I get to
continue to kind of be a shepherd of the earth of agriculture. But I
think taking care of our communities is really important. And I still sit on
a couple of school boards and boys and Girls club, and again not trying
to tout my own horn, but I believe in making sure that we're taking
care of kids in our community, and you do that through your wine.
Absolutely. So we agreed that my wife and I agreed that after operating expenses,
that we would use the money for places like the Boys and Girls club
or local schools. Unfortunately, in Snowma account in the past five six seven
years, we've had, like around the world, COVID, so we've had
to help people maneuver through that with the loss of businesses, with the loss
of their homes. We've also had some kind of devastating fires here in California
and in Northern California especially, and so we've had several friends that have lost
their businesses and their homes to the fires. So how can we help them
out to get them back on their feet, because in the end, that's
what It's all about what is your total case production. So for Bob Cabral
Wines, it's about fifteen hundred cases right now, and then another thousand to
twelve hundred cases of a private labels I do for restaurants a couple of restaurant
tours. And you don't own any vineyards at this time, I don't,
so where are you sourcing fruit from? Most of my fruit now comes from
primarily Sonoma County, Sonoma Coast, West Sonoma Coast, Russian River Valley.
I've looked into purchasing a vineyard, which is still in the works. I'm
in my sixties, so you know, planting a vineyard is a little bit
daunting at this point. But I've also realized that as I continue to build
this brand, I need to have a little bit more control over at least
some of my fruit. And that's why I'm actually working with more growers than
i am vineyard management companies. So I'm buying grapes from Paul Hobbs Estate.
In fact, I made wines with Paul down at the Kundy Winery. I
made some of his first vintages in the early nineties, and Paul's got some
spectacular vineyards out on the Snowma coast as well as near his winery on Highway
one sixteen in Sebastopool. So Paul grows enough grapes to be able to sell
a little excess, and I only need two to five ten lots, and
he lets me kind of cherry pick the clones and the rootstocks the blocks that
I think would make a good component to my plans. Because I'm not doing
any single vineyards. He has offered to let me put gold Rock Estate or
Shell Estate or Paul Hobbs Estate. Paul doesn't need any more advertising, so
I told him, you'd have to actually drop the price if he wants me
to put the name on, and so we had We actually had a pretty
good laugh about that one. But Paul's a really great winemaker that I look
up to. And his vineyard manager that oversees everything is a kid named Bryson
Hill, and he is a farmer through and through. I go out to
check my blocks, figuring that we're at a stage that something needs to be
done, whether it's leaf pulling or canopy management, and it's already done.
So he's he's to read your mind. No, he's reading Paul's mind.
And you know, again, working with Paul over the years, years past,
you know, you just you know what you need to make these kind
of wines. And so I know that you are a maestro of pino noir
and you do, chardonay, do you make any other varieties? I did
graft and then planted two reestling vineyards on the Sonoma Coast, one actually in
the West Sonoma Coast, out in Occidental. I don't get that vineyard anymore
now, just because the grower wouldn't do what I really needed him to do.
But I'm fascinated with reasling. I've known Ernie Loewson from doctor Ernstlowssen in
Germany for thirty five years. We've been trading wines. He has taught me
so much about that grapefry, and his mission on this earth is to get
everybody to at least try restling once in their lifetime. I think they should
agree. And I probably drink more reestling than I dry restlings than I do
chardonays. You jumped ahead to my next question, which is well, first,
before I ask you what you drink, what is your first memory relevant
to wine? I mean, I know you've done forty five vintages, so
I don't know if you can think back even further, but I can't.
Actually, I grew up in the Central Valley near Stockton Modesto area. My
dad farmed with his father, who is a Portuguese immigrant. His parents were
immigrants from Portugal, and we grew grapes, mainly red wine grapes, and
almonds and alfalfa some other row crops. By the time I had left for
college in the late seventies, dad was farm I had a vineyard management company,
was farming a little over a thousand acres of grapes, about four hundred
acres of ammons, and we made wine in my grandfather's barn. Every year
a barrel of usually grenache rose and then like a dry zifidel or a barbera
mix, so he always had two barrels of wine and then was shared amongst
the cousins and the siblings. My grandfather was one of eleven children and my
grandmother was one of nine children, so we had a big family, and
of course culturally wine is part of that. Yeah, I mean, we
had wine on the table all the time. And my mom had a story
at one point where she said that I was literally kindergarten's first grade, and
my dad had a little half barrel up on his work bench of some grenache
rose and it actually had a spigot in it, so you didn't have to
siphon it everything else. All the other barrels we used siphons to fill like
gallon jugs and then put twist tops on them, and that's what they would
serve him at the at the dinner table or take over to one of our
other relatives. And I guess that the height of this barrel was just good
enough so my friend and I could go underneath the barrel while one guy turned
the spigott open, and of course it was left sweet. So it was
this fruity grenache rose that was sweet, and you got a little drunk in
kindergarten. We my friend went home and I guess he pretty much passed out
in his room, and my mother got a call from his mother, you
know what was going on, and my mom realized that, you know,
we hadn't closed it, so there was a lot of wine underneath by my
dad's workbench, and yeah, so that was kind of I guess, hide
the barrel from the kids, Hide the barrel, the grenach rose, right,
no more ganache rose. Oh you started off with something good, So
I'm curious today. You know, do you have a favorite grape wriety.
Is pino noir the ultimate grape or is reasoning your ultimate grape or you know,
I enjoy making wine from all of them. I think they're all just
very unique and different. I think pina noir is one of the most versatile
reds, especially if you're going out to dinner with a group of people,
and especially if I can go out with a group of people that don't know
what I do for a living, and you know, there's a suggestion,
what do we have with if there's three or four couples, what do we
have with dinner? And somebody says a white wine, And sometimes I'll just
say dry reasling if I can one on the list, or a sauvignon blanc
chardonnay, if I know the producer and it's not a lot of oak,
or you know, I understand what they're doing with pina noir. You know,
it's just it's this lighter, fruitier, nice acidity, kind of a
balanced wine that will go well with fish, it will go well with beef,
pork, chicken, and everybody's kind of happy. Right. Does that
make Peano noir sort of a perfect grape? Is there such thing? I
don't know that it's a perfect grape. I think it's a great bridal to
have to have access to at a restaurant. Yeah, at your home.
If we came into your home, what would we find in your home?
Is it wines you've made over the years, friends, wines, wines from
around the world, certain grapes. So yeah, I finally built we live
out and dry Creek, and I bought five acres about twelve or thirteen years
ago so my daughter could raise some animals in four eh and we we've done
remodels for almost nine years. And I finally took a room and turned it
into a little over a four thousand bottle cellar. And the one thing I
learned early on as a young wine maker is and I was never worried about
getting paid a lot of money, but I always liked drinking my own wines.
So in almost all of my employment contracts, as part of my compensation,
I always asked for a case of everything I make, and I still
do that as a consultant. So you know by the time I had left
William Salium in two at the end of twenty fourteen, we must have had
thirty six thirty eight different wines labeled wines. So I've got cases and cases.
I've got the wall of william Sallium and same thing at three Sticks,
so you know, as we grew that brand a couple of other wineries.
So I do have some of the older wines that I've made, and a
pretty special treat it is at William Salim. I actually started taking a lot
of them in magnums and even threes, fives and nines, and I donate
a lot of those two charity auctions. At this point, I'll sign an
old William Selliam mag and at the Alexander Valley Sage School Grammar schools spaghetti feed.
I mean that magnum will go for eight nine hundred dollars and that'll buy
like all the art supplies for the third grade teacher for a year. You
find another way to give back exactly. It's awesome. Is there anything from
your cellar you open recently that drink really well? Well? And then I'm
also on a couple of wine list. I'm on Steve Kissler sold Kissler back
in two thousand and eight, I believe, and it had started occidental with
his daughters, and he makes primarily pina. Now I'm not even sure that
he's making chardonnay out there, but I had known Steve and gotten a known
Steve even better over the years, and I'm on the occidental list. I
find his wines fascinating and I enjoy drinking them. And actually we just opened
an s WK, which is Stephen W. Kissler Vineyard, so there's one
block that they call s WK. And my wife loves him, but I
kind of hide him. Michael Brown is like a little brother to me,
and I buy the Cirque and the chev wines just because I find them interesting,
and you know, we remember the good old days when we lived in
tracked homes and drove mini vans, and our wives are good friends and it's
just it's special. And then I go to France once a year to make
the barrels and I became good friends. I first met him in nineteen eighty
he was the wine maker at Comte de Bogue Francois me Lot and so over
the years I bought a lot of those wines. The Mussini, Chemo Mussini.
You know, I've got a little bit of clothed to tar. I
do like to spend a little bit of money on some of the nice Burgundy.
I really like the wines up in Shabbili as far as Chardonay's go,
and then actually also down in Puifuse where they're a little bit lighter. They
remind me of certain areas of the Sonoma Coast, kind of down towards Carneros.
I find them very similar in textures and wine. So and then being
Portuguese, I have a huge port collection. But I also inherited some of
those when my dad passed and in twenty two thousand. In two thousand,
wow, that sounds like a wine cellar I'd like to get locked into.
I'm still also drink being old, I have to say during Christmas I drank
a two thousand and seven Low's and dry Rastling and it was spectacular. Yeah.
So You've worked for a lot of illustrious brands that have been critic darlings,
and I'm curious now, as a smaller producer making fifteen hundred cases,
what's your opinion on critic wine critics and scores. You know, I think
that what I recommend to the consumers is to find a wine critic that they
actually connect with. So everybody has a different palette and they're going to have
different impressions. I had this conversation last night with somebody where someone had gotten
literally one hundred points from one critic and a ninety one from another critic.
Yeah, and what exactly does that mean? Yeah? Exactly what does that
mean? And both two very credible that they're one of the big three or
four kind of nationally known magazines. For me, you know, I get
up just trying to do my best every day and I let the cards fall
where they may. The wine scores, I think definitely help guide the consumer
towards sometimes a brand. You know, I would I would rather consistently get
ninety four, ninety five, ninety six from six different people or ten different
people than that one perfect score. Right. And also, as we were
talking before, what does that mean when you get a hundred, there's only
one way to go, right, You're at the top. Yeah, and
it's is it achievable? And you're going to be disappointed? And along those
lines, So I actually did make a hundred point wine from one of the
first hundred point wines from North America Pena noir from the William Silliam Vineyard,
a state vineyard, And the next year I got a ninety eight from the
exact same critic, and I had a consumer asked me what happened, and
I just started laughing at it. I was stunned, and I was like,
I would have been happy with a ninety three, you know, I
mean, and what happened? I said, Well, a different vintage,
different growing season, different you know, did I The barrels were different that
they went in. Not every barrel from Francois Perreer tastes exactly like the previous
one. So you know, what do you say to that other than sorry
those two points? So as a wine drinker, one answer question, red
whiter rose, my preference, uh, reds. Yeah, I tend to
lean more towards the reds. So to me, there's just a lot of
different complexities to them. And I've made a lot of red wine, and
yeah there's a lot still are sparkling water still Still. I'm not a I
could never really drink a lot of soda as a kid or anything, so
it was never like a Coca Cola drink or anything like that because a carbonation.
I don't do carbonation well. But I love champagnes and sparkling wine.
In fact, my wife and I are treat when we first got married was
like a half bottle of Kruge. And that was like that would be like
the whole evening for Valentine's Day. There were no chocolates, there was no
food. It was like we could afford the half bottle of Kruge. But
I really do enjoy those, you know. Nowadays though, I also really
enjoy the white wines. A lot of times, Heather and I go out
to dinner and she'll have a glass of red or she'll say, hey,
you know, what do you think of this? Or do you know this
guy? And it's like, yeah, I've made wine with him before,
and you're going to like that, and I'll have a glass of white.
Sometimes I just I don't I want something just a little more refreshing. And
I think restaurants, this is my opinion, only, in my humble opinion,
serve red wines too warm. You know, they all do. They
all think that seventy five eighty degrees and I don't care if it's a twelve
percent alcohol wine because when I keep our cellar at home at fifty four degrees
fahrenheit, and the and the reds, yeah, and so do even big
barrel fermented Chardonnay's not with a lot of oak, but just that big barrel
ferment. I don't want them ice cold either, because then it mutes too
much of it. You know, most refres durators are in that forty to
forty two degrees fahrenheit, So you know, I wish that restaurants would serve
reds cooler. Well, speaking of restaurants, I know you were saying earlier
that when you're with a group of friends, the easiest wine that you pick
to pair with a meal this pino noir because it's so food friendly. Do
you have any other kind of rules? Do you think there are rules people
should follow when it comes to pairing food and wine or is it really more
just pino noar will be pretty equal opportunist. I think that it's it's whatever.
You know, people want to you have to people want to drink.
You have to kind of gauge the crowd. And if you're with a group
of eight and five of them, you know, go, oh yeah,
I love the silver Oak Cabernet, or I like the Jordan Cabernet, or
I like opus one. Okay, then they're gonna probably buy food that can
handle those kind of tannins and and that kind of structured wine. So then
you look for something maybe something different. It could be a rone blend,
it could be almost anything, or a nice Cabernet franc or Merleoau. You
know. So if space aliens were to land on your property, walk up
to your door and knock on it, and you were to welcome them with
one of your wines, which of your wines would you want to welcome them
with? Probably like even over the years, or just like today today,
Today, I would give them my current, my twenty fifteen Troubadour Russian River
Valley Pino. It's just drinking really well right now. And that vision I
had for the first vintage is starting to come to fruition in the glass as
I've tasted it over the years, and especially the first couple of years,
I questioned whether I was gonna that I'd made right decisions along the way,
But now I would I would hand them a glass of my tubad or Pinot.
Yeah, so you said you've done forty five vintages, now forty three,
coming up on forty five vintages, and you're the wines you're making today.
You're not doing vineyard doesn't it's as you said, you're doing sort of
geographical in all the time that you've spent in vineyards over the years and working
with different regions across Sonoma. We know that every vintage tells a different story.
But how much variation do you see from year to year or is it
different within different regions? Again, it just depends on the weather pattern and
the cycle. Like we came out of kind of a severe drought if you
will, twenty nineteen, twenty twenty twenty, even into twenty twenty one,
to where we're definitely in an El Nino cycle where the winters of twenty two
into twenty three and now twenty three into twenty four, we're seeing above average
rainfalls. These vines, well, the earth likes water, that's what sustains
us all. So you see big growth on redwood trees, on oak trees
and grape vines, so they're like replenished, they're happier. So I am
anticipating better vintages as long as the heat or we don't have any fire events
or smoke events. I would anticipate some pretty good vintages. The twenty twenty
three vintage was relatively cool, and I picked a lot of grapes in October,
which is what when I used to pick these vineyards when I started in
Sonoma County. So in the eighties, the nineties, and even into the
early two thousands at william Siam we would pick Coastland's October fifteenth. We would
pick hersh October twelfth, October eighth, you know, and everybody that's kind
of new to it was like, oh, it's such a late year,
and I'm going, well, twenty years ago, this is when it was
normal. We'd start in the Russian River Valley. The sparkling guys would pick
in August, early August. We wouldn't start till after Labor Day in the
Russian River Valley, and then we would we would finish up with Sonoma coastwines
in October. I haven't picked Coastlands in nineteen ninety nine November three, and
it was barely twenty three breaks. My alcohol was thirteen eight or something like
that, thirteen seven, and so it's yeah, so you see evolution over
time, the creeping, and now it's kind of starting to come back a
little bit. So we used to see bloom, or we used to see
bud break in February and it kind of pushed into March and then late March.
Now we're starting to see bud break a little bit earlier February into March.
So we're getting these long hang times, especially in the Russian River Valley.
You know, I have vineyards that go into Truba d Or. There's
six vineyards and it's kind of southwest of Sebastopool what they call the Sebastopool Hills,
and three of those vineyards I pick after I picked my West Sonoma Coast
vineyards, and West Sonoma Coast is cold. Yeah, these are even colder.
They're at a lower elevation, but they're right in that fog that comes
up off of the marine headlands and it's just cold there. And sometimes the
fog in twenty twenty three never broke all day long, whereas out on the
coast, on the West Sonoma Coast, it actually broke. And so I
picked one vineyard two weeks after Old Rock, after the Snoma Coast. So
in all the years you've been doing this, have you established any sort of
good luck tools that you do at the beginning of harmist I like to sit
the crew down if I can, and taste them through all the Bob Cabral
wines or if I meant three sticks. We didn't do this at Brickler.
I wish we'd have done that this year. But sit them down and taste
them through the wines and walk them through kind of what we're trying to accomplish,
and I think it gives the crew a better idea of what they're in
for. You know why. We want them punched down every six hours and
not every twelve hours. And we're trying to get this type of extraction,
and we want things kept clean, you know, we want the barrels clean
on the I don't want to go into dirty barrels. So I've always kind
of done that. I've done it where we popped a bottle of champagne on
the first day, but then we got to go back and work at a
winery. I know that's not as fun, yeah, and you got to
clean and equipment. Wineries are dangerous, and I'm not a big believer of
drinking on the job. Kind of thing, and I think you have to.
You're not at your best when you're a little tipsy and people get hurt,
and I don't want to see that happen. So, you know,
I share wines with people, but they're like, well, we've done them
at lunch, even at three sticks. But you get literally like an ounce
taste of one wine and you know they're eating and we sit down for we
take thirty to sixty minutes to just converse, take a rest, walk away
from the harvest for just a few minutes during the day. I love it.
So now, you said you grew up in the Stockton area, your
dad grew grapes. You've been making wine for forty five years. But I'm
curious, did you always know you wanted to be a wine maker? What
did you want to be when you when you were a little boy, What
did you want to be when you grew up? Bull rider? A bull?
Yeah, I'm obsessed with rodeos and now horses and yeah, uh actually
road bulls in high school with friends and got tossed a couple of times,
and yeah, when you get hurt, it's like, this isn't a career.
After that, I decided to apply to veterinary school, and a buddy
and I and we were I was heavily into the sciences. We got into
UC Davis and I was eighteen years old, graduating in the twelfth grade,
and they handed me a course catalog that said I was going to have to
go to school for eight more years, and I, like, I like
freaked out and said, I don't want to do that. So I ended
up then at present I'd been accepted at cal Poly, Fresno State, and
UC Davis, and so I ended up down at Fresno State to study winemaking
and viticulture and ended up really getting into the biochemistry, went back to grad
school for biochem down at Fresno State, and just start working at wineries and
it just, yeah, felt good to be doing something like that. So
when you look back at your career, what would you say as one of
your proudest achievements to date? I mean, I'm sure it's hard to pick
a lot of things. There's been a lot of successes, But what would
you say stands out as one of your product achievements? The best? I
think the crowning achievement or achievements would be the assistant winemakers and the seller masters
that have worked for me that are now wine makers or they own their own
brands. And to see these kids come up, you know, in their
early twenties, early thirties, and now like on a panel that I just
sat on for Passion for Pino down in the Palm Desert. You know,
Ross Cobb as his own wines now and there's really some brilliance to his winemaking.
I appreciate his thought process and to see him mature from this kid racking
barrels and cleaning equipment to you know, making world class wines. Same thing
with Ryan Pritchard at Three Sticks, Jeff Mangehaus over at William Sellium. William
Sellium, I used to go through assistant winemakers. If I could keep a
guy maybe three or four vintages, I was lucky because they always wanted my
job. They wanted to be winemaker, which is a good position to be
in because they were always pushing me. So not only did I get to
show them don't these are the mistakes I made avoid those, they also taught
me new things. They were coming fresh out of school, fresh out of
micro classes, chemistry classes, so they kept me learning. And I think
it's important that to keep learning about your craft. And that's why it's so
late in my life. I actually, like I said, making barrels.
I used to order barrels like I would order off of a menu in an
outburger. You know, give me a double double with cheese and fries.
Well, give me a friends off ferrara medium plus toasted heads, you know,
great, one hundred of them would show up. Now it's a little
bit more thoughtful process on. And why is it giving my wines these flavors?
So, you know, mentoring people for me has been probably the best
part the wines. You know, if you go out and just try every
day give it your best, one of the results will be great wines.
And that's what I try to tell the harvest crews. I try to tell
the it's not about perfection. Because we're making wine in one big gray area.
It's different shades of gray. Mother nature throws more curves balls at you
than you could ever imagine. So just try your best, and some days
you'll make a eighty five point wine and other days of it'll be a ninety
five point wine. But you know what, both of them are okay because
you tried, right, You can't control it all. And one person's eighty
five as someone else's ninety five exactly a man's floor. So I'm curious.
You know, that's a lot of really good advice, and you have mentored
so many people. Is there someone a mentor of yours or maybe it was
your father or mother or another family member. Is there a piece of advice
someone gave you at some point in your life that you try to really live
by or has really been a foundation for how you look at life? Or
work? Yeah, work, you know, growing up on a farm my
dad, we had animals and everything, and it didn't matter if you were
sick. Those animals had to be taken care of twice a day, fed
and water. Just like any animal, they rely on you. So we
always had this saying that the animals have got to be fed, and I
use that to this day. I have a couple of good friends that I
see sometimes young people not being quite as motivated that sometimes you have to work
when your hand's hurt or you've got a headache or a bit of a cough.
You know, sometimes you just got to take some day quills and you
got to go in and get it done. Those grapes aren't going to wait
for you. So you know you were taught a good work ethics. Good
work ethic. The other thing is just follow your passions too, don't be
afraid to do something out of the norm. And you know, with Bob
carral wines, it's not formulaic, whereas and I don't like to use the
word cookbook. But at william Sallim, I've always been paid to make a
style for that brand. So three Sticks needs to taste like three Sticks.
We did kind of developed Ryan and I developed that together, but it was
a lot of input from Ryan. Ryan, what barrels do you like?
Because the goal here is you to be the winemaker. I was hired on
as the winemaker. He was the assistant, and after about two years I
was like, okay, he needs to be the winemaker and let's put his
hand on it. At Williams Sallium it needed to taste like Williams Sallium.
Now I'd make wine different than Bert did and different than Jeff Mengehaus, the
current winemaker, which is okay, But when the consumer buys that bottle,
it always tastes like william Sallium, and that's that's the important thing. So
with Bob cabral wines, I have a little bit more creative ability that I
make a lot of decisions on the fly. You need to make your wines.
Yeah, and maybe I didn't like as much whole cluster that I did
last year, and so I'll decrease it down to twenty five percent, or
like Ross was saying today, let's put seventy five percent in there. Try
something a little different, a little bit far out of my comfort zone.
But you know what, I've had great successes when I do those things.
You know, I was always taught that the sweeter fruit was at the end
of the branch and you have to reach out just a little bit further.
You don't want to fall off the ladder, but reach for it. I
love that. Yeah. So when you're not making wine and working in wine,
what are your other passions? What do you like to do for fun?
I like to go to live music concerts. That's I can go and
appreciate what those artists are doing. And I don't think about wine making.
I don't think about grape growing. I just kind of lose myself in the
instruments. I like to focus on the bass player or the drummer at times
for certain songs, and it's a it's where I find that regenerative kind of
peacefulness that I think we all need. Some people say some people would work.
I have a cousin that has a very high power. He's very high
up in an organization down in the Silicon Valley, and I'm sure it's it's
pressure. He woodworks. You know. I deconstructed a barrel. I took
it apart for him, and he made me two little end tables and they're
beautiful. I've had people go, I'd pay it like five hundred bucks for
these, and I go, I don't think he he. I don't think
he needs that much time day job. Yet he's not quitting it. So
I like to do that, you know, just kind of even hanging out
in my own house. I like where I live. I like our daughters
in college now. And it's my wife and I and just reconnecting and finding
those moments because we're busy all the time and having your own brand. My
poor wife answers your phone on the weekends. Hello, Bob cabral Wines,
you know. And and then sometimes we're jumping in the car and we're taking
six bottles down to a restaurant in Healsburg because they're out of the chardonnay or
they're out of the pino. Yeah, it's a never ending it's never ending.
And that's okay if you can find those other moments when it's like okay.
The other day, she's like, my eyeglasses are ready to be picked
up, and it was pouring rain and she goes, you know, I
don't want to drive. Let's jump in the call drive you you know,
let's just go to She's like, really you want to drive in? This
is like what a good husband. It's like it's like a monsoon out there.
And I was like, hey, I've worn eyeglasses since the third grade.
So she had a new prescription and you just see better, you feel
better. Yeah, you know. So when you're when you're not driving your
wife around and doing nice things, nice husband things, more like I'm driving
crazy, So I do. But if you were going to plan a romantic
evening, what sort of wines do you open to set a romantic mood?
What's what's romantic for you guys? Wine wise? Wine wise, it can
vary, you know. Sometimes it's like, let's start with some bubbles.
Or you know, we were talking about it today at lunch, Savignon Blanc,
you know Rocchioli, Savignon Blanca. I said, you still got She
has gotten a couple of cases. She talked Tom's daughter, Rachel, who
runs the winery, now into like two cases. I mean, you gotta
be on you got to be on a list to get this stuff. And
she runs into her at the grocery store and Rachel's like can And He's like,
can I get you know, six bottles? And Rachel's like, whatever
you want, and she goes, really, whatever I want. So she
buys two cases of it. So you know, it just kind of depends
the mood we're in. But we do drink a lot of of pinos and
she'll be she's good friends, like I said with Sarah. So it's like,
let's drink a cirp tonight. You know, it's a little bit of
a special occasion. And they're just really pretty wines or like I said,
an occidental candler. I buy a little bit of grapes from the Candler estate.
And we love Alex and Brie and Heather's on the mailing list, so
it's like, let's have a bottle of candler tonight. So I love it.
Well. With the four thousand bottles you have at home, I'm sure
you have a lot of good things to pull out. Question for you,
complete the sentence for me, A table without wine is like a day without
sunshine. Very good. Well, my mom had a plate like from the
seventies, the hanging in her kitchen that literally said a day without wine is
like a day without sunshine. And I remember that in grammar school, you
know, because it was right there by the kitchen table. So that one
was easy. That was too easy. Too easy. So I have another
scenario for you. We're sitting at a table, your wines are on the
table, and you have an empty seat at the table. Who, from
any walk of life would you like to be sharing a bottle of Bobkerbol wines
with living or deceased, right, personal or famous or infamous? Yeah?
My dad, Yeah, my dad, who passed away before I started the
brand. So I'll never forget because I'd been on the William Sellium list since
college. And how I told my dad we were sitting on their back patio,
this is in nineteen ninety eight, and we were drinking a bottle of
William Sellium, and I was kind of dying to tell him that I had
just gotten a winemaker job there. And we got through about three quarters of
the bottle and he had an empty glass, so I pushed it over so
he could fill it up, and he poured some in and I said,
so that's my new employer. First words out of his mouth. Can you
get me on the list? Not congratulations, I'm so proud of you.
That nothing. I was looking for that kind of praise, but I started
laughing so hard. I'm like, dad, I can get you on the
list. Okay, to the top. I wanted him to because he was
drinking all of mine, so I was happy to get him on the list
so that I could save a little bit of money. At that point,
well, he'd be number one on the Bob cabral Wins list. So yeah,
so I'm curious. I've got one more question, and then we play
a little game and we're done. And that is well, no, you
know what, I'm gonna take that back. We're gonna play a game first
and then I'll ask my last question. You mentioned that you are a huge
music fan and we always love to play a game. At the end of
the podcast, because we tie in wine in music, because wine conjures up
emotions in US music does, and I want you to equate your wines to
music. Okay. So I was dreaming thinking earlier today you're Chardonnay, and
I'd like you to tell me what that makes you think of? That shardonay
it makes me think of and that was it was the Annie An Rose Anne
Rose Chardonnay. So and my wife's middle name in Rose, my daughter's middle
name. It reminds me of actually the music that they like, uh and
so Adele, it reminds me of Heather. And I went to Opening Night
in Las Vegas to see Adele. It was one of the most phenomenal shows
I've ever been to, and I thought I'd seen everything in Vegas. My
daughter is big into kind of blue bluegrass, and there's you know, bands
like Camp and Mountjoy, Bruno Mars. You know. The joy that that
music brings to them is what that Shardonay brings to me. I love it.
The Pino Nomir you would give the space aliens. Jeff Beck. I
actually met Jeff. He signed a guitar for me, and I gave him
some wine because his manager had said that he was a Pinot fan, and
yeah, it was one of my guitar heroes, you know, one of
my top three, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and David Gilmour. Jeff was
then doing a show about three years later in Belgium. We get a call
from a promoter in Belgium looking for some two thousand and nine william sallium and
he couldn't find it online, and so he went to the source and the
girls in the office said, hey, I got this guy on the phone.
Jeff had put in the writers six bottles of william Sallium nice backstage.
That's what they is on it. Well, how many different pinots do you
make today? Just well, I have a second one that's coming out.
I just bottled it on Tuesday, and it's a new West Sonoma Coast and
it's not Fillmore. What I realized with Fillmore is that I didn't want to
infringe on any trademarks, so I dropped that le. Plus they pulled two
of the three vineyards, so I knew I was going to make a new
blend. But the new one is actually called Electric Hippie, and that name
conjures up a little bit more of that it's that acidity or that electricity.
But you know what, it's kind of a mellow wine too. It's got
some really nice mellow flavors. You know what does that bring to mind?
You know, Warren Haynes, Government Mule, Joe Bonamasa. I saw both
of them at Red Rocks this last summer. I'd never been to Red Rocks
Amphitheater in Colorado. Great venue and was able to watch back to back shows.
Yeah, that kind of inspired that that wine a little bit. You
know that I had the right name. And you also make a reasling,
right. I do from the Sonoma coast through twenty nineteen, and then I
started sourcing from outside of McMinnville. An old vineyard plan in nineteen seventy three
called the Highland Vineyard and it's done in a concrete amphora. I do one
three hundred and twenty gallon am fora It's dry, and I call that wildflowers
and music. Music for that to me is more like acoustic David Gilmore,
you know, Pink Floyd. It's just a lot more mellow, kind of
like. Yeah, well, you have been amazing. It's been such a
pleasure listening to talking with you. And I have one final question. That's
a two part question, and the first is what wine region in the world
is at the top of your bucket list to explore, to visit it well,
to make wine in if I could do it before, I'd love to
make wine in Burgundy in the coach and Nui, And there's a lot of
different menus i'd work with. I'd probably work with Village Fruit if they just
let me make wine up there a place that I haven't explored. I've been
to the country, but I haven't explored the wine region. Really. A
lot is Germany and Ernie's invited me. Oh, He's like, I've got
houses for you to stay in, and as a reasoning fan, you should
go. Yes, I need to. I need to make that track soon.
And the flip side to that is if people want to taste your wines,
can they find you? How can they find you? Where are your
wines available? Can they taste with you? What are the options? Sure,
we do tastings by appointment. Sometimes that location is mobile. It just
depends. We had a tasting room before COVID and then that all kind of
closed down. We were kind of a tasting room inside a tasting room.
But if you just go to www. Bob Cabral Wines cab rl plural wies
dot com, you can buy our wines or you can call my wife,
Heather, and that's on the website. Fantastic and your wines are direct to
consumer or are they in any markets? We're in a few restaurants in California
right now, but trying to expand out into some more restaurants. I've got
some psalms in Las Vegas that want the wines. In Austin, Texas,
Chicago, So I just don't make a lot the plan over the next four
or five years. I'll be honest with you. We're at fifteen hundred cases.
Is to get up to that five six thousand case mark. Well.
In the meantime, if you want to check out Bob Cabral Wines and you
want to have the honor of sitting with him and taste the wines, reach
out check him out. Beautiful Pano Shard. Haven't tasted the Reasoning yet,
but I look forward to that. I need to try. But Bob,
thank you so much for joining us on wine Soundtrack, and I hope you
had a good time. I did. Thank you for having me Thanks for
listening to a new episode of Wine Soundtrack USA. For details and updates,
visit our website windsoundtrack dot com.