Full Episode HERE.
In today’s talk, Randy pulls back the curtain on the truth about old vines, why perception in the wine world lags decades behind reality, and how a little-known sustainability program from Lodi is reshaping vineyards worldwide. He shares insider stories from decades in the restaurant industry, reveals why terroir is making a comeback, and explains how younger wine drinkers are forcing the industry to evolve.
If you’ve ever wondered what truly makes a wine great, or why some of the best grapes in the world come from regions you’ve never heard of, you’ll want to listen all the way through. This episode will change the way you look at every glass you drink.
For decades, the wine world has been driven by reputation and perception. Napa meant prestige. Burgundy meant excellence. Lodi? Cheap grapes for grocery store wine. But Randy Caparoso has spent over a decade proving that story wrong.
From his early days as a pioneering sommelier to opening restaurants across the U.S., Randy has always chased flavor, balance, and authenticity. In this episode, he explains why old vines often produce better wine, how Lodi’s Mediterranean climate rivals Europe’s finest, and how the Lodi Rules sustainability program became a model for the industry. We also explore the cultural shift in wine: from formulaic “bigger is better” bottles to a renewed respect for place, purpose, and character.
Expect to Learn:
- Why Lodi could be America’s most underrated wine region
- The real reason old vines make better wine (and when they don’t)
- How sustainability standards are changing viticulture worldwide
- The industry’s shift from bold, heavy wines to terroir-driven styles
- Why younger wine drinkers are reshaping the future of wine
- Insider stories from 28 years in top restaurants
Links:
- Lodi book
- Randy’s Photography Substack
- Randy’s Wine Substack (Wine Clarion)
- Randy’s Culinary Approach to Wine Substack
Service starts now.
Follow the show: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube
I talk mostly to people in and around the service industry space. I’m looking to hear from the people I wish I could have talked to when I was coming up in restaurants. Said another way: I am trying to make sense of this wild, beautiful mess of a life, and help others that are feeling similarly confused and/or lost. You can find more of my work at my blog, and all my social links are at the bottom of that page.
Classic Episodes You May Like:
-#10:Nat Harry, cocktail expert!
-#14: Dr. Shalini Bahl, mindful marketing
-#22:Doug Frost MW MS
-#23:Jeffrey Morgenthaler
-#31:ET: Entrepreneur (and creator of Surfer on Acid)
As always, I’m just here taking notes, trying to figure out what it all means.
Cheers
Transcript
Randy Caparoso (00:02.101)
Hello?
Andrew Roy (00:03.054)
Hi Randy, how’s it going?
Randy Caparoso (00:04.898)
Hey, Ange. I’m doing great, Ange. Well, thanks for having me.
Andrew Roy (00:07.171)
Yeah.
Yeah, thanks for coming on short notice. I appreciate it. So yeah, so you’re staying in Lodi, I guess.
Randy Caparoso (00:18.158)
Yes, that’s what I’m going to do. you know, I do a lot of work with the Psalm Journal and so I’ve more than quadrupled that work just over the past two, three weeks. I thought I might as well, you know. And I love New Mexico and a month ago I was thinking I was going to…
Andrew Roy (00:21.828)
Cool.
Andrew Roy (00:29.284)
Yeah.
Randy Caparoso (00:47.042)
be moving there and I actually I love the idea I love New Mexico but but I thought maybe I should stick around where you know in the world where there’s actual wine made why I mean obviously Texas has wine too for God’s sake
Andrew Roy (00:48.334)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Roy (00:58.318)
Where the vines
Sure, I mean, New Mexico has grue, so they’ve got the sparkling wines and they’ve got some stuff. Yeah.
Randy Caparoso (01:12.886)
Well, you know, the thing about New Mexico is they have a long history with winemaking, but if you actually go to one of their vineyards, the average size of a vineyard is like less than an acre. It’s like and that’s like people’s backyard here.
Andrew Roy (01:31.832)
Yeah, yeah. mean, you know, so I was from Santa Fe and most recently I grew up in Texas, but I spent a lot of time in Santa Fe when I was legal drinking age and they don’t grow a lot of wine there. They drink a lot of wine. So yeah.
Randy Caparoso (01:33.742)
So it’s different.
Randy Caparoso (01:42.317)
Hehe.
Randy Caparoso (01:47.566)
Yeah, well they actually make a lot of wine but most of the grapes that they use come from California. Yeah, it’s a big business for California growers to ship grapes across the country and all the states where you know people want to have wineries, they want to have a little estate and in many cases they grow little grapes but to be a business they have to buy grapes from California.
Andrew Roy (01:55.106)
The shipment, yeah, for sure.
Andrew Roy (02:17.228)
Yeah, for sure. Well, before we spend a whole hour talking about New Mexico, I think it might be helpful for people listening. I’m going to hold this up because I just wanted to show you I still have a gift from you. It’s a book, Lodi, The Definitive Guide in History of America’s Largest Wine-Growing Region by Randy Caporoso.
Randy Caparoso (02:25.262)
I
Randy Caparoso (02:37.687)
Okay.
Okay, great.
Andrew Roy (02:46.99)
How did you get to be tied up in the world of Lodi? I think that’s kind of a cool way to sort of understand your history.
Randy Caparoso (02:53.26)
Well, it really is cool, but so you’re in the restaurant business and so and I was in the restaurant business for 28 years. I worked full-time as a sommelier between 78 and 88 and then went into management and then you get into, I was a part owner and I ended up opening restaurants from Hawaii to New York and so I had
Quite a career and expended a lot of energy and got the chance to travel around the world because of that. Just the sheer size of it. so I used to go, for instance, to Germany where I had two wines made for my restaurants every year. I’d go to Italy where Riccardo Cottarella made our house wines. mean, literally wines that we sold for $7 a glass.
and he was a famous winemaker and he made a couple of them, white and red, and I had wines made in southwest France, because I wanted what I call a rustique, and it was a blend of old vine Carrignon with younger grapevines, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and so it was a nice blend, it was a nice in-betweener because
Andrew Roy (04:06.19)
Thank
Randy Caparoso (04:21.038)
there’s a little of that Southwest French rusticity. This is in the St. Cheyenne area, by the way. so I did with a little sleek modern qualities and it went great with our cuisine, which was kind of Mediterranean in a sense, although it was also Asian and French. So I know I’m taking a long time to tell this story, the first time I visited
Andrew Roy (04:24.984)
Hmm.
Randy Caparoso (04:50.722)
Lodi back in 2002 at the invitation at the then executive director of the Lodi Winegrate Commission, the organization of grape growers. There over 700 of them and this is the largest wine growing region in the United States, not just California obviously.
A lot of the vineyards struck me as being very reminiscent of what I had been seeing in southwest France. so southwest France is interesting because it does have a lot of old vine plantings. And if you’re a Kermit Lynch fan, for instance, you might be buying some of those wines made from vineyards that are over 50 or over 100 years old from France. But it’s also a mix of modern day
plantings, know, which are on trellises, you know, things that have been planted since the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. So it’s that whole mix. But it was not just the physical presence of those type of vineyards, but also the climate is very Mediterranean. And because what a lot of people don’t realize when it comes to old vines, you see more old vines over 50 or 100 years old in places where it’s very
Andrew Roy (05:58.98)
Hmm.
Randy Caparoso (06:09.847)
healthy environment for growing grapes and that’s what’s required for grapevines to last so long and be very productive. know, great soil, deep root penetration, pretty much a Mediterranean climate because, you know, grapevines, Vitis vinifera, originated in the Mediterranean region. So they’re kind of at home in that kind of climate and that was Lodah and it really impressed me. And even though it’s region where
Andrew Roy (06:32.163)
Hmm.
Randy Caparoso (06:40.013)
And still, but back then especially, you know, it was where the gallows and the big corporations went to get the cheap grapes to make the wines that you see plastered all over grocery stores and drugstores and things like that, the inexpensive wines. Even though Lodi was that kind of region, which by the way, which is
what Napa and Sonoma used to serve that purpose back in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Gallow used to take more than half the grapes in Napa Valley up until the 1970s. And a lot of people just don’t realize that. But they did that because, well, times have changed, right? And so it is different. But the idea is you need a healthy environment, really good place to grow grapes. And then so I could see
Andrew Roy (07:22.852)
Napa doesn’t really broadcast that. Yeah.
Yeah.
Randy Caparoso (07:38.35)
right through that persona of, where are the grapes going to, but is this a good region for growing grapes? And so I fell in love with that idea. And eventually when I stopped, I did restaurant consulting in the early 2000s and then the stock market crash and all of a sudden I wasn’t working in 2008. And so,
So I decided to go into journalism and but then I got an offer from the wine grape Commission in Lodi to come and live in Lodi and maybe talk about it and so I moved there in 2010 and I’ve been there ever since for over 15 years now and So it’s been great and then I did it because it’s so exciting to work it with an area that
Andrew Roy (08:23.844)
Mm-hmm.
Randy Caparoso (08:33.293)
even though they’ve been planting grapes here since the 1850s, it’s up and coming. And so the book, which I started writing during COVID because like a lot of people, didn’t have anything to do sitting around the house. Yeah, yeah. And so I finally pushed the book out in 2022. I mean, I hate to say it, but I almost…
Andrew Roy (08:37.89)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Roy (08:45.348)
Stuck at home, yeah.
Randy Caparoso (08:58.719)
almost glad there was a COVID because then you could actually sit down and work on a 450 page book. Yeah, so that’s the story.
Andrew Roy (09:05.316)
Sure, yeah. Now, it’s funny enough, you’re not the first person on this podcast to be grateful for some aspect of COVID. Yeah. But it gave everyone a pause. We had Doug Frost on, and he said he never would have gotten through licensing his winery in all 50 states had it not been for COVID, because it’s a tedious process.
Randy Caparoso (09:15.817)
Well, COVID was a terrible time.
Yeah.
Randy Caparoso (09:31.789)
Yeah, yeah.
Andrew Roy (09:33.848)
You know, you have a couple months at home and yeah, might as well.
Randy Caparoso (09:38.126)
Yeah, isn’t that something? And then, you know, when you think about it, I was in the restaurant business for so many years and never in your imagination could you ever think that a restaurant might have to close for a week or two. Maybe there might be a storm coming through or something, you know, and then you close for a day or two. in COVID, you would never imagine something like COVID.
Andrew Roy (09:55.332)
a burst pipe or yeah, yeah.
Andrew Roy (10:04.708)
Hmm.
Randy Caparoso (10:05.357)
in the business and you know it was hard even in our original restaurants you know my old chef partner Roy Yamaguchi I mean you he’d come to work during COVID and work all by himself you know cook food and then put it out and people would come to the door and get some takeout and so he couldn’t afford any employees but you know what he kept the lights on.
Andrew Roy (10:30.052)
Yeah, no, we all did some crazy things during COVID. I still remember, was, know, because I worked in management for a while and I was in the kitchen and I worked at a steakhouse where we had a bathroom. In the bathroom there was a TV that would have sports on. I was washing my hands after using the restroom. looked up and it said essentially like, sports canceled.
Randy Caparoso (10:34.742)
Yeah.
Randy Caparoso (10:48.448)
Andrew Roy (10:55.756)
Are you like right right when the NBA I think was the first one to kind of cancel all games and that’s when I was like, we’re gonna close like like that was the first time I knew yeah. Yeah, so I mean to go back to Lodi so you saw disparity. I believe the natural potential of the region. Wasn’t matching kind of the general view and consensus of what was happening in Lodi.
Randy Caparoso (10:56.183)
Yes.
Randy Caparoso (10:59.593)
Bye. Yeah.
Unimaginable. Unimaginable.
Andrew Roy (11:23.48)
So it’s like you had an opportunity to be the champion of a region. Yeah.
Randy Caparoso (11:26.925)
Well, like I said, one of the advantages of having been in the business a long time, in my case since the mid-70s, I had seen regions like Anapa Valley or Sonoma that formerly produced what you would call everyday wine. And now these are very prestigious regions. So you can see. And a lot of you guys in the business know that.
you know, not too long ago regions like southern France, the Languedoc, Roussillon or even the Loire River, even go back to the 60s in the Rhone Valley, which is now super prestigious, used to be considered, those wines in the 60s and 70s were considered kind of, you know, below everyone’s sort of standards, you know? And so, you know, in many parts of the wine world and even in the classic regions,
especially Spain and Italy and Australia. know, perception is one thing, but reality is another. And in reality, there are a lot of great wine regions around the world, especially when you adjust your perception of them. So a lot of people think Pinot Noir, well, only Burgundy makes great Pinot Noir, but now we know, obviously that’s not true.
There are many regions that produce Pinot Noir and they produce great ones. They’re not the same as Burgundy. So it’s all a matter of perception. so one of the things we’ve been doing with the Somme Journal, which we founded in 2008, which is now the Somme Journal after 2015, is
Andrew Roy (12:54.1)
Yeah.
Andrew Roy (13:01.092)
Only burgundy makes great burgundy.
Randy Caparoso (13:23.05)
we’ve we’ve been taking some ways you know from across the country to different regions everywhere from santa barbara to british columbia and western macos possible is center cruise mountains and every place but nappa and so and because we want them to spend three whole days in places that do make great wine in their different from napa valley or even cinema and
And the only way you discover that is you actually walk through the vineyards and you smell the air and you touch the earth and then you taste the wines and you meet the people. then so you can understand that whole concept. You know, it’s the same way as appreciating Languedoc Roussillon, as, you know, instead of thinking that great wines only come from Burgundy and Bordeaux, which is really stupid and silly.
Andrew Roy (14:17.668)
Only great expensive ones come from those. And that’s not even true anymore.
Randy Caparoso (14:20.14)
Same thing.
Randy Caparoso (14:26.304)
Well,
Yeah, so that’s a story, especially in the restaurant business. It is our duty to celebrate different wines and to get people to expand their horizons and understand that wonderful wines can be made in a lot of different places and they’re not the same as what you think is a wonderful wine or what you originally thought.
constitutes wonderfulness in the wine. And so it’s our duty because I just happen to think that people deserve to know this. They deserve to have their tastes expanded. I think it’s really stupid when people say, no, have to, in restaurants, you should stick to the wines that people know.
Andrew Roy (15:16.046)
Yeah.
Randy Caparoso (15:29.596)
I don’t think so. I think we owe it to our guests to turn them on to other things. It’s exact same thing the chefs have been doing now for a good going on now 20, 30, 40 years. It used to be there was Chinese food and there’s French food and Italian food and everything kind of stuck in its own places.
Andrew Roy (15:32.142)
Yeah.
Randy Caparoso (15:58.061)
But now chefs are very creative. It is their duty to share that creativity that’s intrinsic in the culinary arts. And people deserve to be able to taste all kinds of different foods. Sure, steakhouses will always exist because people like steaks, but cuisine is a vibrant…
always alive sort of medium that appeals to people. so, know, sommeliers and wine buyers in restaurants are obligated to do the same thing the chefs had been doing for a long time, which is turn people on to creativity and different tastes. you know, just yesterday I posted an old article I wrote on Charlie Trotter.
You know, Todd just talked about, you know, Trotter and, you know, the audacity of what he used to do. Really, freed up a lot of people in terms of the culinary arts. And really, it actually freed up a lot of sommiers because all of a sudden, you can think outside of the box. And it’s okay to, you know, to go here and to go there. And the restaurant industry and the…
the basic gastronomic tastes of Americans in general, people around the world, are so much better for them.
Andrew Roy (17:31.358)
Mmm, yeah, yeah. Now, and now as I’m listening to you kind of talk through that too, I’m thinking we can push the envelope without, you know, going out of left field. We’re not recommending skin fermented, like, indigenous varieties from Canary Islands. No, it’s the guest likes cap, saav, and yeah.
Randy Caparoso (17:48.556)
Honestly, don’t think anything wrong with even those type of bold and brazen and unusual wines. If it’s good, if it’s good, of course. If it’s good and interesting, and if it serves, in my mind, it has to serve a culinary purpose. It has to serve, you know, I always had a rule for my own wine managers is go ahead and put a wine on the list, but
Andrew Roy (17:57.026)
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Andrew Roy (18:07.172)
Hmm.
Randy Caparoso (18:17.135)
only if it has a service of purpose and that purpose being it goes really good with this dish or that you know and and so it doesn’t matter how crazy or wild or different it is if it really goes well so a lot of these wines that you mentioned canary islands or maybe it’s orange or maybe whatever then you try it with this dish or that dish and they’re amazing you know so to me it’s okay
Andrew Roy (18:35.794)
sure.
Randy Caparoso (18:45.649)
Now, if you’re in a restaurant that doesn’t have that type of cuisine or that type of chef at work, no, you stick to the wines that go good with your chef’s dishes and your menu. And that’s the important thing. So it’s the circumstances that are important.
Andrew Roy (18:58.5)
Hmm.
Andrew Roy (19:13.55)
Yeah, well, I could definitely see that. It’s got to have a purpose. You you touched on something when you were saying that too, that I actually want to dig into and I think we can kind of tie it back to Lodi. You said it has to be good. And earlier you said something that I think was so important. And I think, you know, the listener at home, even if they work in a restaurant, even if they like maybe the Psalms out there, I’ve always loved investigating
Randy Caparoso (19:26.069)
Mm-hmm.
Nah!
Andrew Roy (19:43.49)
what it is about old vines that make them so special. Would you mind talking to us about that a little bit? I know that’s one of areas Lodi really shines in, so.
Randy Caparoso (19:52.396)
Well, here’s the thing. It’s a basic thought process. So just look at your classic. Look at a Bordeaux, know, a Chateau. And then the Chateaus, you know, the great ones or the average ones, it doesn’t matter. They all do the same thing. They, you know, they’re usually on a planting schedule where…
every 30 or 40 or maybe even 50 years now, they’ll replant parts of their vineyard. And because after a while, yield and quality goes down in certain types of vineyards, especially with Cabernet Sauvignon. It’s not known as a grape longevity, although there are vineyards in the world that are over 100 years old, but…
you know, generally speaking, you want to replace it after 40 or so years. But in the new plantings of the younger vines anywhere from three years when it first get become productive to about five, 10 or 15 years, those wines never make as good a wine as the grape vines that are over 15 or 20 years old. So that’s just a fact.
Andrew Roy (21:09.441)
Okay.
Randy Caparoso (21:16.135)
I mean, you you can try all you want, but an 18-year-old vine is not going to make as good a wine as a 20- or 30-year-old wine, a grapevine. And they know that just from working within that one chateau. So what is it about old vines? Well, old vines are more established, and they have, you know, deeper root systems. And that’s probably the main thing, and they’re healthier.
Andrew Roy (21:38.094)
Mm-hmm.
Randy Caparoso (21:46.956)
and they’re more productive and they reach a sense of balance, you know, because in the world of viticulture, you know, it’s understood that when they’re wine, it has a sense of balance in terms of canopy, the fruit ratios and the length of their and the width of their trunks and their spurs and all these type of things, you know, you have a healthier vine, you’re going to make better wine, you’re going to get better grapes. So it’s a really fundamental process.
Andrew Roy (22:11.886)
Thanks.
Randy Caparoso (22:16.867)
Certain types of grape varieties, such as a Tempranillo, even a Surral, or Carignan, or Zipfidil, and in lot of cases Mediterranean type varieties, they can be better after 50 years. And so an old vine around the world is usually at least 35, 40 years, and over 50 years in California, and even over 100 years in places like California and Australia.
Andrew Roy (22:35.949)
Hmm.
Randy Caparoso (22:47.154)
You know in Australia they have grape vines over 150 years old. If you go to Germany and you go to some of the great vineyards, especially the ones that are planted on very steep hillsides in the Rhine and the Mosel, in many cases many of those vines are over 50 or over 100 years old. then because why would you pull them out? First of all it’s hard as hell to get them planted because they’re on a steep hill. But second of all,
Andrew Roy (23:11.342)
Yeah.
Randy Caparoso (23:13.173)
They’re making the better wine so you don’t pull them out and put a young vine in it and it’s not going to make as good a wine. So this is all the nature of grape vines. So odor can be better, but depends on the circumstances, it depends on the place, and it depends on the grape variety and in many cases the specific root stocks. In California what we see because
California is like Australia and South Africa is these are major wine regions that are always undergoing transitions and so a lot of the changes that you see like let’s pull out this vineyard and replant or because maybe 30 or 40 years ago they didn’t do as good a job they selected the wrong rootstock they planted in the wrong road direction they weren’t they weren’t they weren’t planted to follow sustainable practices
Andrew Roy (23:48.908)
Thanks.
Andrew Roy (24:05.975)
you
Randy Caparoso (24:08.657)
And nowadays, you know, it’s been identified that if you do certain things in terms of cultivation, you can make a better wine, you know, from higher quality grapes. And so sometimes you just have to pull everything out and start all over. So a lot of the transition in these major New World countries are because maybe they didn’t do it right the first or second time around, and so now they got to do it again, which is…
Andrew Roy (24:08.74)
Mm.
Randy Caparoso (24:38.324)
perfectly good reason to do it. I was just at Jordan Vineyards just yesterday and the discussion, I was there just so they can tell me what they were doing. And so they’ve been doing replantings. They did it in the 70s for their first planting and they did it in the 90s and now they’re doing it all over again for the same reason. Wrong rootstock went into here.
Andrew Roy (24:40.548)
Thank
Andrew Roy (24:45.379)
Mm-hmm.
Randy Caparoso (25:08.146)
wrong way of planting, different viticultural practices, you have to change. And so even though theoretically old vines do well, in many cases you have to pull it out and start anew. So it all depends on the circumstances. Okay, I know that’s a long answer.
Andrew Roy (25:28.772)
Mmm.
Andrew Roy (25:33.06)
Yeah, I’m kind of in my… That is a lot, but no, that’s good. In my head, I’m thinking of it kind of like a career where you’re working in a job that would be analogous to the root growing. so ideally, you leave the career and you let it progress. You’re going to progress. You’re going to get more money. You’re going to get more responsibility. But if you start off and you’re in the wrong job for the get go…
Randy Caparoso (25:48.842)
Right.
Andrew Roy (26:01.22)
than 10 years in, you may have to switch it up or, you and then.
Randy Caparoso (26:01.501)
Right, you gotta…
Yeah, you have to switch it. So
Andrew Roy (26:07.128)
Yeah, you might be a newspaper editor and the newspaper is going online, so you may not have a choice and have to switch things up.
Randy Caparoso (26:11.327)
Mm.
Randy Caparoso (26:15.89)
Now, folks, keep in mind that in most cases, old vineyards, and not all, but in most cases, it’s circumstances where grapevines are head trained, so they’re basically grown like little bushes. so you have spurs growing up from the top of a grapevine. It’s usually just two or three feet high.
And those types of situations where you’re not training the vine to be on a trellis, it’s a more natural way of growing. It replicates more of the natural growth of a grapevine if it was growing wild. Now, if it’s growing wild, it would just go crazy and spurs and canes would just climb all over the place because it’s a vine. That’s why they call it vine, grapevines.
Andrew Roy (27:08.857)
Yeah.
Randy Caparoso (27:12.522)
The head train or the gobelet style as the French always say or goblet, that’s more conducive to the natural growth of grapevine. And so you have a healthier vascular system. And so in most cases, it’s those type of grapevines that are kept long, 50 or 100 years as opposed to those that are trained on trellises because it’s
It’s more of a challenge. It’s not impossible to do a old vine on a trellis, but it requires more discipline. In fact, there’s a lot of changes in the industry these days on just the basic pruning of trellis grapevines, which is done to replicate the natural ability of the grapevine to grow more as a head trade vine, not just on a single spur.
So, the name of the game is how healthy can you keep the grapevine. Because if it’s not healthy, of course it’s going to be prone to diseases. And so it will die or it will start to fail in terms of yield and quality of the grape. So those are the circumstances of old vine viticulture.
Andrew Roy (28:11.129)
Mm-hmm.
Randy Caparoso (28:39.37)
So I think many of us in the business are so much more fascinated in that because those wines ultimately to us what matters is what you get in the bottle, right? And to have a really good wine you wanted to taste like the Tuar or the region You you want a burgundy to taste like a burgundy You want a moussignine to taste like a moussignine. You want charbeton to taste like charbeton. know same as the feet, my go. It doesn’t matter. Steinberger
Andrew Roy (28:52.546)
Mm-hmm.
Randy Caparoso (29:09.182)
You want it to taste like that vineyard. You have a higher percentage chance of producing a wine that is a of its toire with an older vine. In a sense, makes a higher quality wine. It goes back to the old Bordeaux idea. The better grapes come from the older vines within the Chateau. You have a higher percentage chance of making a better wine.
Andrew Roy (29:24.386)
Got it.
Randy Caparoso (29:39.242)
when it’s older and so that’s important to us in the business because we want our wine to be as good as possible and so many of the great estates from around the world that we’re familiar with are in fact heavily planted with older grapevines within the estate.
Andrew Roy (29:46.508)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Roy (30:04.173)
Yeah.
Randy Caparoso (30:07.242)
And that’s all part of our business, right? You know, our business is a matter of choosing and offering the best wine possible. It really is that simple.
Andrew Roy (30:16.908)
Yeah, and it’s also, it’s a mark that’s unfalsifiable, the attention to a region. Me and you can’t start a winery tomorrow and have 50 year old vines. We can plant the vine since we have to wait for 50 years of care and attention to get there.
Randy Caparoso (30:29.833)
Well, don’t get me wrong, sight is important. There are many instances, too many to count. We’re a brand new estate in a brand new region from young vines, they’re making great wines because it’s a great place to grow grapes. So, Tawar and the sight is important too.
Andrew Roy (30:35.588)
Yeah.
Andrew Roy (30:59.14)
But there’s that excitement, you know, at the beginning it’s like, let’s just wait and see what this is going to be like. Because if it’s good now, give it 30 years, I’m sure it’ll be even better.
Randy Caparoso (31:10.449)
Exactly. So then you get all the circumstances, all the circumstances having to do with how the vineyards were actually planted. Because in Napa Valley, no question, the best wines are coming from vineyards that are pretty new. mean, half each age of a grapevine in Napa Valley is 18, 19 years old. They’re not old. There are old vines in Napa.
There’s some old vines if you know, and there are some cabernets that are over 40 blocks of cabernet over 40 or 50 years old. But by and large, the average age of a grapevine in Napa is 15, 17, 18 years old. obviously Napa Valley makes perfectly great wine. yeah.
Andrew Roy (31:58.7)
sure, sure. Yeah, I guess in their case, is that an economic consideration? Just the higher productivity of younger vines?
Randy Caparoso (32:06.954)
Exactly. That has a lot to do with it. And when you’re in a high-cost place, know, yeah, mean, grapevines are known for low yield, like one, two, or three tons an acre. Yeah, if you got that in the Napa Valley and it costs 10 times more than plant anywhere else in the country, well, yeah, I mean, it’s pretty stupid. you better, you know, you’re better working with the younger vines with modern-day tech.
Andrew Roy (32:28.686)
Yeah
Randy Caparoso (32:37.001)
in terms of the viticulture and so yeah, you’re better off because then you have to meet your costs. It’s bad.
Andrew Roy (32:45.252)
If you want to continue making wine next year too, yeah.
Randy Caparoso (32:49.277)
Yeah, yeah. so, but, you know, Napa is interesting because, like I said, a lot of the thoughts, lot of the old vine viticultural thoughts are now being implemented in Napa Valley too. You know, they’re thinking, okay, how can we prolong the life of our vineyards? And so, let’s, how can we adjust, you know, what we have out there in the field so we don’t have to pull it out? So,
There’s a lot of work going on there, but at the same time, there’s a lot of work where they’re saying that, these are grapevines that we planted in the 1980s or 1990s. You know, it’s pretty shitty. And now, you know, we want to go to more sustainability or maybe we want to go into regenerative practices. And so we need a new vineyard to do that. And so, yeah. So you have the whole thing.
Andrew Roy (33:42.788)
sure.
Yeah, you know taking kind of a turn just because you mentioned sustainability Lodi rules I think this is such a big area and it’s somewhere that Lodi has had so much influence on the rest of live world Can you tell us a little bit about Lodi rules and which is what what are what they’re doing over there?
Randy Caparoso (33:59.571)
Right.
Well, sustainable practices, know, major grape growers and wineries started implementing those type of practices. Now probably I think, you know, back in the 1980s, that’s when they started thinking, you know, because in the 70s everything was still new. I mean, you know, you’re just happy to have a grape, you know, and so, but in 1980s they started thinking.
Andrew Roy (34:24.196)
You
Randy Caparoso (34:30.313)
Okay, we should do things in a way that have less environmental impact, that’s kind of important, but also impact on the people who actually work in the vineyards, et cetera. so this type of back and forth has been going on in agriculture for a long time, especially from the late 1800s, early…
early 1900s when chemicals started to be introduced into agriculture. so these discussions have been going back a long time. So that’s how biodynamics started, as a direct response to huge usage of chemicals to control pests as well as fertile.
as for fertilizers and people were perceiving that this was doing harm to vineyards or to any farmland. so they started. No, exactly. It’s a very specific one based in lot of ways on some very old ways of doing things. But in spiritual ways, by the way. I forgot to that.
Andrew Roy (35:37.124)
Sure, biodynamic is a pretty intense response, but yeah.
Randy Caparoso (35:57.193)
So what happened was when the Lodi Winegrade Commission started up in 1991, was the first project really, just about the first project was integrated pest management as they called it. And a lot of it was being studied in terms of sustainability. How can we control pests and minimize usage of chemicals and
all that kind of stuff and and and so that grew and just it just started growing and growing and becoming this gigantic thing where it developed into you know what became Lodi rules you know which is like like over a hundred standards put down on paper that everyone follows and if you follow it you can get credit for this and that
and then you can get certified. And so that helped for a wine region like Lodi, which is basically a grape growing region. the idea is for farmers to be able to produce high quality fruit in a way that they feel is safe for them and for the environment and also for their children because it’s a very multi-generation region. But it also appeals to the wineries because they want higher quality grapes and they want
Andrew Roy (37:02.922)
Mm.
Randy Caparoso (37:23.513)
and they want guarantees and so all that that Lodi rules stuff started to guarantee it and so that was what’s what was different about Lodi rules compared to other sustainable movements they they formalized it and they put it together in a book and and you know the size of a telephone book and now it’s all on computers so no one has to walk around with a telephone book but it’s yeah
Andrew Roy (37:40.196)
Hmm.
Andrew Roy (37:48.772)
I get to see one of those when you have me on a bulldozer. So yeah.
Randy Caparoso (37:54.223)
Yeah, and so, and you know, the government supported it, you know, because it’s a, you know, it has to do with people and business and not just the product that you’re selling, in this case grapes or grape vines. And so that became the huge influence on the industry. And so most of the industry now follows sustainable practices.
The thing to remember about sustainability is this ever-changing evolving sort of thing too. So a lot of people say, I’d rather see an organic certification on there. Well, that’s good too, but it doesn’t entail as many things as sustainable practices. And a lot of the organic practices or requirements are also in the sustainable practices.
Andrew Roy (38:43.278)
Sure.
Randy Caparoso (38:51.048)
Now the whole thing is about regenerative, so a lot of people are going towards that. And a lot of the things people are doing today, you know, weren’t being done 10, 15, 20 years ago because all these things are constantly evolving and it’s becoming more important to the consumer, especially younger consumers because, you you’re very conscious of the environment and, you and, you know, the world is going…
you know, towards a bad end if it’s allowed to go towards that end. so younger people, know, lot of them, you know, are requiring, you know, sustainability in everything, you know, they consume as a product, you know, whether it’s makeup or clothes or what they drink or what, especially what they eat. They want this, they want things to be at least certified this or that.
Andrew Roy (39:21.572)
See ya.
Randy Caparoso (39:48.873)
Whereas people in their now in their 40s 50s and 60s or 70s Honestly, you know, didn’t give a damn so much but All they care about is what’s in you know, what you’re getting, know, they don’t get how the dress is made, you know They just want a nice dress. They’re in the same thing for a warning but but things are are changing a lot
Andrew Roy (39:57.668)
Yeah.
Randy Caparoso (40:18.344)
because like I said, know, I mean, you look at Texas, I mean, Jesus Christ. But everywhere, you know, everywhere you go, I’m from Hawaii. Yeah. So yeah, yeah, I mean, these things are important, you know. So there you go. So it should lap up into the wine world and it has been, slowly but surely, you know.
Andrew Roy (40:24.494)
You
Andrew Roy (40:28.119)
yeah. I mean, fires in California, yeah, no.
Randy Caparoso (40:46.856)
it become more important. And so Lodi played a big role to summarize only because it formalized a lot of those practices. You know, they put it in a book, you know. So just like my book about Lodi, yeah. You know, a lot of people have known about Lodi for a long time, but now it’s in a book. yeah. I don’t know.
Andrew Roy (41:09.056)
It exists for real, yeah. Now, just to double-click a little on that difference between organic and sustainable, if I remember correctly, organic won’t encompass things like water usage or like labor practices, but I feel like Lodi rules did have some nods least to those directions. Yeah.
Randy Caparoso (41:29.704)
Exactly, it tried to be more encompassing because if you go look up sustainability in any place, sustainability, the word is very broad, but it basically does mean you want to sustain something, whether it’s people or a place. And so it has to entail more things than just…
Andrew Roy (41:43.566)
Mm.
Randy Caparoso (41:58.951)
the agricultural practice. so, because, you know, it’s a wide thing. Like, biodynamic, obviously, they’re concerned with, you know, existence of a farm within the universe. So that’s why. They follow stars and tides and things like that. Yeah, and spiritual sort of…
Andrew Roy (42:20.329)
horn manure and all the weird things. Yes.
Randy Caparoso (42:27.154)
concerns, know, because it’s bio-dynamic, you know, it’s different, you know. So regenerative in a sense, that’s the new word that’s coming out and it sort of kind of crosses a lot of areas and that’s kind of similar in thought process to sustainability, but you know, the whole idea is you want to generate a new, so and so a lot of the practices are focused on that.
Andrew Roy (42:30.434)
Yeah.
Randy Caparoso (42:57.234)
So a lot of practices, but you know, they’re all good if you really want to know. And here in Lodi, we have farmers because you’re selling grapes commercially. So we have farmers that will do biodynamic, they’ll do certified organic, they’ll do certified sustainable and also introduce a lot of the new regenerative ideas because, you know, their clients, which are the wineries, you know,
One might be interested more in organic, one might be interested more in sustainable, or one might require biodynamic. And so we have all that going on in a place like this, and really you’re seeing that up and down the entire coast, west coast, of that.
Andrew Roy (43:42.148)
No, that was one of the cooler things in Lodi. You can actually see different vineyard, different plots that are marked, you know, no pesticides, this is organic. You like you see that in certain vineyards, making sure that the workers don’t accidentally mess up and spray things. So it’s definitely spreading and yeah.
Randy Caparoso (44:02.074)
Yeah, well, generally speaking, in agriculture, people have been moving away from pesticides or chemicals for quite some time now. if anything, there’s a lot of approved artificial ways of controlling pests.
disease pressures that are approved by the National Organic Association, which comes out of Washington. you know, you can go to the store and you can buy a spray and it says it’s organic. It’s obviously, it’s a chemical type of spray, but it’s a chemical made from natural products, guess, so therefore it’s organic.
Andrew Roy (45:00.142)
Yeah.
Randy Caparoso (45:00.807)
And so that’s where you see a lot of divisions in different practices. It’s because a lot of people, you know, they draw the line and…
Randy Caparoso (45:17.593)
applications that are approved in organic practices and so that’s why they’ve gone on to either sustainability or maybe even biodynamic or regenerative. They kind of come up with their own ideas, you know, and how they want to do it. But it’s all good in the end.
Andrew Roy (45:39.268)
It’s all a conversation, yeah. Sustainability, the push for organic, this has been a big change, I think, from the start of your career. Are there other major milestones or things that have changed that you’ve noticed, good or bad? Start to end.
Randy Caparoso (45:41.425)
Yeah.
Randy Caparoso (45:56.328)
Well, yeah, wine, people are very spoiled these days. from all around the world is so much better than it was before. Quality is higher. Wine making technology is so much more superior and it gets better every year. And so in terms of viticulture practice.
And so not just in the United States, but also all around the world, which is great. It’s great for the consumer. However, I think there are still lot of backwards things that we’re kind of stuck with. And a lot of it is the way wine is sold or marketed or understood or appreciated. We still live with a lot of backwards ideas, which is like…
Andrew Roy (46:53.528)
Yeah, the hangover probation, yeah.
Randy Caparoso (46:54.087)
You could take something very fundamental like what makes a good wine. I can understand the 60s and 70s, it became like, the more intense and fruitier the wine, the better. And then it became more, the oakier the wine, the better. And you would see that. You would see that in the way wines were.
Reviewed and rated you would see it in wine competitions and who got the gold medals and everything you would see it and You walk into a store and you would you know see the wines that are pushed up on you It would be the more intense fruity wines because a lot of people you know say New world wines were in many ways Rated on the basis of how much it tastes like the grape, know a variety character
Andrew Roy (47:49.06)
Hmm.
Randy Caparoso (47:49.207)
And so, to me that’s all pretty backwards. It’s very primitive. It’s a primitive way of looking at wine. It’s a primitive way of appreciating wine because you’re not really appreciating wine for where it comes from. You’re appreciating it for how it ends up in the bottle. in a sense, it could really come from anywhere. It didn’t matter.
it’s a good Cabernet Sauvignon and who cares what region or place it came from. As long as it’s big, dark, oaky. So, this is what we’re moving away from. But it takes a long time. It takes a long time because the media is very slow. mean, a lot of writers, they just copy one another and again, they’re very primitive in the way they look at wine.
The more intense the better. And they’re not looking at appreciating places so much. And so we always have, at least we have the old European ways of looking at things and we can always look at say France or Italy or Germany and in lot of ways even the…
the old wine regions have had to change to be able to appeal to consumers who judge everything by how intense it is. And so there was a lot of negative. Yeah, so there was a lot of negative impact on European wines, but still by and large, European wines are still looked upon in terms of their appellations and where they come from. so there’s still appreciation for an Abarola.
Andrew Roy (49:23.172)
How darkly colored it is, yeah.
Randy Caparoso (49:43.527)
you know, for being a Barola or, you know, or a Bordeaux being a Bordeaux or a Sansteyer Pouille-Famé for being a Sansteyer Pouille-Famé. There’s still appreciation of that and thank God. And so, you know, a lot of world, the wines, especially in the United States, come out of California. So California is very important. Over 60 % of all wine consumed in the United States and that includes all imports.
are from California. you know, this state is kind of important on the impact. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. So, on the, you know, the impact is huge. so, California is evolving as we speak, you know, where people are starting to, you they started to appreciate, you know, Santa Barbara Pinot Noir, for instance, you know, after that movie came out, you know.
Andrew Roy (50:14.244)
You forget how big that number is,
Randy Caparoso (50:40.774)
sideways and they started appreciating Russian River Pinot Noir ten years before that and you know Willamette Valley Pinot Noir now even though it’s completely different from anything in California now people actually think of Willamette Valley as being a really good place for Pinot Noir and so all these things are changing it doesn’t happen overnight you know so standards have to change and how people perceive what what is a good one
They have to appreciate more where it comes from and the uniqueness of that. But they also have to appreciate things on a sensory level. Now, bigger and heavier and darker is not always better. Sometimes it’s more interesting to be lighter colored and lighter and less oak. And you get more transparency and you can taste more delineation and you can taste more of a place and all these kind of nice things. All these things take a long time to evolve.
consumers, know, it’s like food in a way, know, consumers, know, maybe you like spaghetti and cheeseburgers all your life, but you know, after a while people start to, you know, have more delineated tastes and it’s slow in the wine industry, but it’s coming along, which is all good. And so that to me,
Andrew Roy (51:52.036)
You
Randy Caparoso (52:04.839)
Your original question is what are the changes? So to me that is the biggest and most important change. In a way we’re still living with lot of the ways of thinking from just 20, 30, or 40 years ago, but the changes are happening under as we speak. And I think for instance the younger taste for more natural style wines, even dirtier wines, or orange wines, or Pat Nats and all those kind of things, these are all positives.
Andrew Roy (52:19.492)
Thank
Randy Caparoso (52:34.73)
because it means people have a little bit more open mind about how they perceive quality. So it’s very, very important. Younger people have always changed things. They have different tastes in clothes, they different tastes in how you look, they have different tastes in what you drive, and all these kind of things.
Andrew Roy (52:40.758)
Faking out of the box, yeah.
Randy Caparoso (53:00.486)
And so thank God for younger people always, because they kind of force industries to change up. And to me, it’s always for the better. Always for the better. in restaurants, yeah. Changes a lot in restaurants.
Andrew Roy (53:04.132)
Thank
Andrew Roy (53:15.79)
Sure.
Andrew Roy (53:26.402)
Well, I’m wondering, you you end with young people. I’m wondering how much of that, you know, this is a cab, bold, came as a young person, rejection of the European model of wines have to come from a place. And then we have this counter movement now where we’re going back to that. We need the terroir. We need the location. Now we’re going to have these pet knots. Yeah.
Randy Caparoso (53:44.774)
Right. It’s all connected to everything is connected to these concepts of authenticity and being real, being sustainable and being, you know, connected to people and places. Everything is sort of, you know, coming together here. So.
Andrew Roy (54:06.801)
Every generation is going to mess it up and then put it back together.
Randy Caparoso (54:10.727)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would say older generations, like, they were okay with wine as just a product, as a commercial product. They didn’t care where it came from and how it’s made, you know. So consequently, you know, things became standardized, you know. Exactly Coca-Cola answers to Chardonnay or Cabernet and know, Zinfandel, all these wines made by formula, not made by, you know.
Andrew Roy (54:28.132)
call out answ.ly.
Randy Caparoso (54:39.94)
you know, what makes it better. so older people were perfectly happy with that. And I’m not criticizing older people. I’m 69 years old. And by the way, today’s my birthday. so, yeah. So I’m an older person. And so, you know, I’m not going to criticize myself because we had, you know, different ways of looking at things. But like I said, in many cases, in terms of the products that we consume,
Andrew Roy (54:50.084)
Bye, happy birthday!
Randy Caparoso (55:09.382)
not just wine, everything. We have young people to thank for pulling us, kicking and screaming in different directions. so, yeah, so I appreciate that. It doesn’t matter if you’re 21 years old or 35 or 45, if you’re talking about wine, I’m listening because I want to know what it is that’s interesting you.
Randy Caparoso (55:39.27)
everyone’s taste is valid of course everyone’s taste you know and and so yeah i understand people who like fake wines you know how can i what can i say uh you know god bless you you know it’s not interesting to me but yeah
Andrew Roy (55:49.732)
Andrew Roy (55:57.198)
Someone else drink them on. Well, Randy Caparosa, thank you so much for joining us today. It was a pleasure to see you again. It’s been a couple of years. Where should the listener who wants to find out more about you and your work, where should they find you?
Randy Caparoso (56:06.714)
Yeah, well, yeah, I’m sorry.
Randy Caparoso (56:14.422)
I think I wrote to you yesterday. If you just Google Randy Caparoso, there’s far more stuff there than you possibly possibly want. So yeah.
Andrew Roy (56:21.217)
Sure.
You were right, there was more than I could go through in a lifetime. But we absolutely, will link to the book. We’ll make sure to link your sub stack too. You have a lot of great stuff on there.
Randy Caparoso (56:35.949)
Yeah, yeah, and then I’m trying to get into photography now, know, and.
Andrew Roy (56:40.708)
Yeah, some of the most beautiful photos I’ve seen in a long time. was, yeah.
Randy Caparoso (56:45.093)
Yeah, well, I feel like it’s a big part of me that, you know, it took me years to actually realize it. know, people had to point it out to you, you know, your photos are really good. was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, because I would just take photos to go with the articles, you know. And so but now I’m starting to pay attention to that. So so Randy Copper also photography now. Now you even have a page where you can look at it. You can even envision some of my.
pieces on the wall like it was artwork, you know, which is fine. To me it’s like art because this feeling, know, my favorite photos are ones with a lot of feeling and, you know, a lot of meaning. In a way that’s like art, you know, and so you want to live with it. I mean, I myself, you know, have a lot of these photos on my own walls because I want to relive that moment when that picture was taken all the time. So that’s like art.
you know, so there you go and I appreciate your interest and I hope your listeners find this of interest or stimulating or anything like that.
Andrew Roy (58:00.239)
I mean the conversation is so large so this is just the tip of the iceberg and you know for those of you listening I will have links to everything that Randy just mentioned and I mentioned in the show notes so that you don’t have to write it down it would be right there
Randy Caparoso (58:15.405)
Yeah, by the way, don’t forget I have three, three, three sub-stacked pages, know, one on photography, one that is kind of like op-eds, you know, just a lot of these philosophical ideas and a lot of it and then I have one just on culinary approach to wine, you know, particularly from a restaurateur’s point of view. So I have three sub-stacked pages, you know.
Andrew Roy (58:21.316)
three
Andrew Roy (58:43.544)
It’s a lot to go through, but we’ll go through it one at a time.
Randy Caparoso (58:48.218)
Yeah, yeah, well, you know, if you want information, there it is, you know. Yeah.
Andrew Roy (58:52.588)
It’s out there. Awesome.
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