Stay Humble Stack Sats is intuitive to winemakers. Nothing makes you think longer term than planting a vineyard meant to last 40+ years. The first real harvest isn't until year 4 after planting. then quality red wine isn't ready to sell for at least 2 years after that. We DCA into vintages once per year, with a minimum HODL of 2 years before a bottle sells. We get one shot per year. In Bitcoin, what matters long term is your HODL stack. In wine, it's your brand perception. One shortcut with leverage at the top of a bull market destroys your stack. One shortcut to rush a wine damages your reputation. Either way it takes years to recover. This is my dad in our vineyard after a late frost decimated our entire 2021 vintage. What else can you do but keep building.

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

Saying GFY to Big Wine one smile at a time.

A gift for the Peony Lane fan in your life 🍷👀

I get a lot of questions about aging wine and specifically about aging Low Intervention wine. Here's my take: We've aged wine that my dad made in the same way I make it for 18 years and it was still getting better. Obvs every wine is different, but I think that higher acid of high elevation wines makes them incredible aging candidates. What I'm learning about aging low intervention wine is just that it requires more delicate care, but the aging potential is absolutely there. At 55-60 in a wine fridge you should be good to go for a while with these wines. The oldest wine I've personally made is 6 years old now and is still improving. If you don't have a dedicated wine fridge/cellar, DO NOT try to age my wines. You don't need to rush to drink them, but if you don't store them correctly they are not improving with age and risk going bad. If you want to HODL Bitcoin, you need cold storage and the same is true for wine.

Most wines taste the same. I've commonly opened bottles and thought "I've had this wine before" even if its from a producer I've never heard of. Most wine is made as a commodity. It is made to be an alcoholic beverage and there's nothing wrong if your main goal is to get drunk. Wine can be far more than that. Winemaking sits between art and science, but when focusing on the bottom line, the art is usually the first thing removed. Price isn't everything, but as you start going up, the commodity wine begins to disappear. Anyone with a winemaking degree from UC Davis can make technically correct wine, but it takes an artist to make interesting wine. Drink whatever tastes good, but if you have never understood why people get fall down the wine rabbithole it's probably because you've mostly been exposed to commodity wine

Some of y'all really need to go enjoy a nice bottle of wine with a beautiful woman. It shows.

Wine sulfite removal drops are everywhere, They promise to eliminate headaches and hangovers with a few drops. But do they actually work? These products contain food-grade hydrogen peroxide that chemically converts sulfites into sulfates through oxidation. UC Davis research shows a quarter teaspoon of 3% hydrogen peroxide can neutralize free sulfites in a typical wine bottle. So yes, they do legitimately reduce sulfites by 30-50% through legitimate. Only about 1% of people have genuine sulfite sensitivity, mostly those with asthma. For everyone else, hangovers come from alcohol dehydration, acetaldehyde buildup, histamines, tannins, or one of the 72 other additives allowed in American wine. Outside of the Placebo Effect, the "hangover be gone" claim is misleading marketing for 99% of wine drinkers. I don't think you need to be paying premium prices for stabilized hydrogen peroxide to solve a problem you probably don't have. Better hangover prevention: drink water, eat food, moderate alcohol intake and drink Low Intervention Wine.

Peony Lane: A New Classic

I agree that, technically, alcohol is poison and circadian rhythm is vital. However, I think that occasionally staying up until 2am drinking red wine with people you love is medicinal.

At 5,680 feet the sun hits harder. More UV gets through the thinner atmosphere and grapes respond by growing thicker skins to protect themselves. Thicker skins means more of everything that makes red wine interesting. More color. More tannin. More of the compounds that give wine depth and texture. You can't substitute for altitude.

I'm not saying that Peony Lane is going to fix the depopulation crisis... But Bitcoiners don't seem to be having a problem with it.

Is my career safe from AI? We're all thinking it. A winemaker's future isn't as simple as "a robot will take my job." I'll benefit from the first wave of automation through better software tools for marketing and production. When I zoom out, I see robots working my vineyard, trained more precisely than any human. A robot can't make good wine though, right? Most wine, especially in the USA, is ready for robotic production. Massive wine operations focus on reproducible, consistent, and formulaic results. This doesn't create interesting wine, but it's big business. Winemaking is a balance between art and science. A robot will definitely be able to complete the science based tasks, but the question remains: Can AI do art? There's this concept of "wu" from The Man in the High Castle - this soul-connection between maker and creation. You notice it when AI images lack that certain something that gives it soul or makes it feel real. AI will get better and better at replicating soul. The masses won't care, they already don't, and will appreciate cheaper wine. My career future rests on whether people care enough to spend the extra money for wine with soul produced by a human.

The difference between Pinot Noir vines and Thompson's seedless. Both planted in CO in 2004. Farming Pinot Noir at elevation isn't easy 🍇