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| Jeff Bundschu, CEO, Gundlach Bundschu (aka GunBun), at the opening night dinner of the California Wines Global Buyers Marketplace |
It was rainy and dark but the lights were bright at Gundlach Bundschu in Sonoma Valley as busloads of international buyers and California winery export staffers descended on a rustic barn filled with the spirits of grape growers past. The property here has grown grapes since the 1850's.
After a reception, with mingle time that gave participants time to meet and greet, dinner was served. And GunBun CEO Jeff Virnig welcomed the crowd with a speech that elevated both the vibration and the meaning of the gathering.
Here is his heartwarming speech which is, more or less, about why wine matters.
If I were to do my job, I would be here to welcome you. And I would be simply humble bragging about the fact that you're at a winery that has been producing wine from the same piece of property from the same family since 1858.
That's almost the 165th consecutive harvest of this property in the same family. If I were to humble brag, I would talk about the fact that we just got all 300 acres plus that we farm certified as Regenerative Organic.
And, of course, if I were to do my job, I'd be thinking and wanting to especially thank Honore (Comfort) who knows from the bottom of her heart how excited I am to be here tonight. Thank you Honore.
The worst thing that happened to me today was that I looked at the guest list.
I barely even knew what was happening. And that's the normal state of my existence. I'm the oldest in my family and technically have the title CEO but everyone here really does all the hard work. And I just get to take the credit.
But I looked at that guest list. And I kind of fainted, and I said, oh boy, there's a lot of you here who are very important in the wine world. A lot of people around the world, and a lot of people around our neighborhood. And it's an honor to have you here.
But in the tradition of my upbringing in this business, when there's opportunity to have so many people of influence under a roof, and somebody has something to say, it's a good opportunity for them to say, especially if it's their winery, and they have the microphone.
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I started thinking like, why are we here?
I mean, like, really, why are we in this business, doing what we do?
Why do we love to make wine, growing and making it? Why do we love sharing it and why do you love to buy and share it with your customers?
That's the question. What's the purpose?
I've been asking myself that for my whole life. Before I even knew that I was gonna be into wine. I had an inkling that was a chance I could be born and die within five mile radius like our grandfather, and our great grandfather.
And so I took off and went around the world...And on that trip, I was asking, like what is it that I want to do?
I obviously have this great legacy that I knew about here. But we have a big family with a lot of opportunities. And it was a big role. And I'm curious and who knew. But through that trip, through a lot of exposure to people around the world, I came to really appreciate that what I love is obviously the place we live in. I didn't really know about wine per se– what was in the bottle–but I certainly knew... that the people I grew up around...they were the people that I wanted to be around.
It was..my family but also the other people attracted to the industry that I was lucky enough to be born into. And that was enough for me to come home and say I'm gonna hang my hat here, because I like those people.
Later on, I got to understand about the wine itself and how it is, like, delectable, how it can inspire the senses and continue to keep people like us excited. Whether we're brand new or have been doing it for decades.
I love how intellectual it is because behind every sensory experience is a story that will challenge your knowledge of the world, your knowledge of history, your knowledge of biography, biology, maybe in chemistry...
But that's what essentially brought me back.
And what I didn't know, when I got here, what I didn't appreciate was how wedded to the earth clock our product is.
And what I mean by that is that it's an annual cycle. The vines grow, they ripen. When they're perfectly good to taste, you take them off and bring it into the cellar, let the yeast do their work at their own timeline. Let the barrels impart their flavor, as well as breakdown as soon as the acids in those barrels, and it's all on their time and that time is slow.
In my youth, I was very upset about that, because we're here in Silicon Valley, where Moore's Law says you just keep getting bigger and doubling and going faster and faster. And all my friends that were doing that were moving at high speed.
And here, it was another–another vintage its taken a whole year to get there. And then, whoa, I can't like stream it on Spotify, like the music I love.
I have to sell it, I have to meet nice people.
But things changed as I got older. And I started to see that trait about wine as a superpower.
The superpower is that in a time that hasn't slowed down, since I was younger–it's actually sped up. That the fact that we have a product that we all love, and represent, that slows us down and opens us up.
That sort of says, wow. It's kind of what the world might need right now. A chance to slow down and open up...A chance to slow down and open up.
You know, everybody in this room knows what happens when you open a bottle of wine and table. And how you ask the questions you might have others because you've been too nervous otherwise. That you answer more honestly... And you know what that does. And you know, that what really boil down when that happens is empathy.
And empathy happens beautifully with people that you don't know, or people that you do know, because you're sharing wine and meals with those people all the time.
But a night like this... where you don't know the people, you open up that wine and you let it work its magic and lo and behold, you know more a whole lot more about the world, even without a bunch of people from around the world just by listening when the wine is opened and poured.
So the science, of course, says being together is what makes people happier, even makes us smarter. Who knew when you're eating dinner as a group, you can eat better, that's proven. And we believe I think in this room in our industry, we know that.
So this is where the ask comes in..it's a call to action. You're going to spend the next week or few days here. tasting great wines. Like hopefully we started tonight, learning a lot about soil, a lot about grape stories and a lot about production, a lot of technical things. You're gonna learn a lot about what makes California incredible. And why those of us who are lucky enough to be here, rarely leave to when it's up here is overpopulated and the world doesn't like us. But it's really nice to be here.
But you have a bigger assignment and that's to notice what happens around the edges–at dinners like this, on the bus, in between the meals, before, in between the lectures between the studying.
You're gonna notice how much you grow with people that you didn't know when you got here, from places all over the world, and here in California.
So I want you to think about ways that import or export back–to magically sitting together, learning from one another, exploring and provocative laughing and laughing at the absurdities.
Your real opportunity is not to share the work you do to make a living, but share the living you get to do because of your work.
We take it for granted that we should do this.
Most of the people that aren't in our business, we can't bet that they understand what happens when this happens–how you can break down barriers and walls and misunderstandings, just by opening a bottle and sharing a meal at the table.
And I really think in a world where everybody's looking for giant saviors to come in and sort of make big changes, so we all live happily ever after. What really matters is one on one engagement. Right across the table, we have a saying that one plus one equals three, maybe five, when you're around the table when it comes to understanding and loving one another. And we get to do it.
And in this industry, we grew up in, it's all we know.
But it's occurred to me, as this world's gotten faster and these kids–especially I pay attention to kids–don't know and are going so fast that we have an antidote to that an antidote we have we know what it's like to share and grow.
And when you go home from this, this trip, which is going to be technically your day job you know and love what you're creating. The other opportunity is to make those changes to people that don't know what we know. And one at a time, one table at a time, I think we can make the world a better place.
[WILD APPLAUSE]
