ITS GRAPE SEASON soon™

It has come to my attention that you guys think I'm drinking all the bottles of HIGHER myself.

Natural Means More in Wine Than in Food Chick'N Nuggets tricked me once. So I do appreciate that the “natural chicken” label means I’m not accidentally buying soybean slop, but that bird could’ve been raised a hundred different ways. “Natural flavors.” “All-natural.” “Naturally sweetened.” None of these mean anything on food packaging. Natural Wine still carries weight. France drew a legal line. To use the label vin méthode nature, winemakers have to use organic grapes, native yeast, no additives, no filtration, and no added sulfites. They also get audited. In Italy and Spain, there’s no legal standard, but strong winemaking communities set the rules. The pressure comes from peers and tradition, not the government. In the US, “natural wine” is not regulated, and the tradition is not nearly as strong, but before you assume systemic abuse, let's look at the incentives. Most wine in the US is mass produced. It is non-organic, high in sulfites, and heavily filtered. It sits so far from the specific definition of natural wine that labeling it that way would be a joke. Then, if you’re making higher-end wine, you’re not just competing locally. Your bottle sits next to wines from Burgundy, Piedmont, and Jura. The best wine regions set standards, so your wine is competing in a world where “natural” actually means something. Reputation is everything, and using the label carelessly would destroy your credibility. There is also a reputation problem in the US. Some people associate it with cloudy bottles that smell like a barn and taste worse. While those bottles won't make it to the liquor store, the perception exists. That reputation acts like a filter. If you’re selling to collectors or high-end restaurants, you don’t want your wine mistaken for something unrefined. Many producers following the same methods—native yeast, no filtration, no additives—choose to call their wines “low intervention” instead. So if you see “natural” on a wine label, you’re probably not being misled. The word still means something in the regions that matter, and Big Wine can’t even get close.

A small group of people can reshape an entire system. Nassim Taleb coined the term Intransigent Minority to describe the phenomenon. When the cost of acquiring that group is low, the rest of the population is indifferent, and that group is stubborn enough to stand on what they believe, the system bends. His go-to example is kosher food. Fewer than 0.5% of Americans follow kosher rules, yet a huge portion of the grocery store is certified. Observant Jews won’t touch non-kosher food, but most people don’t think twice about it. So if you run a factory, it’s easier to make everything kosher than split your product line. One group has strict requirements. The other is flexible. That’s enough to tip the entire system. I’m seeing something similar with bitcoin businesses. The pressure here isn’t negative or rooted in avoidance. It’s completely positive. What I do see is a sharp rise in demand for products and services from companies that accept bitcoin alongside the dollar. Whether bitcoiners use it as a medium of exchange or not, it’s clear that having that option is good for business. This pattern has been clear to me ever since bitcoiners started buying my wine, but my scale is small. Since then, I’ve watched everything from cottage producers to large ranching operations benefit from the same magnetic pull. Steak n’ Shake, with over 450 locations, is just the next evolution. If a bitcoiner is getting a burger, Steak n’ Shake just jumped to the top of their list. They’ve already gained the attention of a group that punches above its weight. Time will tell how much we impact their business. Bitcoiners’ impact doesn’t come from protest. It shows up as positive reinforcement. The Magnetic Minority rewards alignment and that reward is scaling. Taleb gave us the template. We’re writing our own story.

I thought wine was supposed to get more valuable with age. Everything in my cellar is losing value fast. Even as the bottles improve with age and each vintage gets more scarce, they lose value. Bitcoin is eating my lunch. Just in the last month, my wine is down 26% and I don't see this stopping any time soon. Once I understood this dynamic, that my wine is going to be devalued in bitcoin terms forever, I had two choices: 1) Reinvest back into my business to grow faster than bitcoin. 2) Sell wine for bitcoin and let that grow for me In some ways I'm lucky that scaling up a winery is so hard. I age red wine for 2 years before I sell it and there's no real way to speed that process up. How could I possibly justify an attempt to outgrow bitcoin? My choice was easy. For CPG businesses that cycle inventory faster, the decision isn’t as clear. How do you make the case for bitcoin to someone beating its historical CAGR by reinvesting into their business? They're killing it, but long term, do they really expect to outpace bitcoin? The pressure to scale constantly disappeared when I realized I didn’t have to grow just to survive. Just putting some of your sales in bitcoin lets it do a lot of the growing for you. Growth is a fine goal, but chasing it just to stay afloat wears entrepreneurs down. They trade sleep, family-time, and sanity in the hopes that they can keep up. Bitcoin can carry the growth pressure so you don't have to. Build the business you actually want, and let bitcoin carry the rest.

Zooming Out: How Winemaking Prepared Me for Bitcoin Starting Peony Lane meant leaning into something most people see as a downside. Waiting. Making red wine is slow. You invest into grapes, barrels, and labor, then wait two years before selling a single bottle. Most people hate that part. For me, it was the opportunity. The waiting gave me time to focus on what actually matters: making good wine. Since I didn’t have a product to sell yet, all I could do was learn. People act like it’s wild I learned so quickly while working full-time, but nothing motivates you like dumping your life savings into something and having to figure it out. One year in, I had a big test. You only get to make wine once a year. When that second fall came, I'd never sold a single bottle, but I had to decide how much wine to make. So I guessed. I figured I’d make a little more than the year before. Worst case, the wine would sit and get better with time. No harm in that. That became the rhythm. Not scaling up felt like more of a risk than scaling up too much. I never wanted to run out of wine to sell. And if I ever made too much, I’d just make less the next year. Simple. What I couldn’t do was go back and make more if I ran out. Eventually, that thinking becomes second nature. You stop looking at each vintage in isolation. Your baseline shifts to thinking two or three years ahead. When I found Bitcoin, the low time preference mindset clicked immediately. You can’t chase every short-term move. You have to zoom out. You trust that time and patience will reward conviction because you know the underlying product is sound. (Which, to be honest, is more than I could say about my wine back then.) So I went all in on Bitcoin at both tops of the 2021 cycle. It felt more risky to not buy bitcoin in the moment than the downside potential of being able to buy cheaper bitcoin in the future. If you can wait long enough, time heals all.

Where were you at the bottom of the bear market? I was making this. Things are good now And so is the wine 🍷🫡