Speaker 1: Speaking of Chopped and Iron Chef, because not a lot
Speaker 1: of people know that you're very competitive cooking as well.
Speaker 1: I am not like you, but you almost won. Can
Speaker 1: I tell you I one Iron Chef, but I actually
Speaker 1: have never one Chop. I compete there all the time.
Speaker 1: I've gotten to the end twice once with my wife,
Speaker 1: and I lost. I'm so I'm still angry about that.
Speaker 1: It's so funny because I had more nightmares and more
Speaker 1: anxiety going into Chopped than I had before the Olympics
Speaker 1: than I had before Dancing with the Stars than I
Speaker 1: had really before anything, and it was crazy. My name
Speaker 1: is Jeffers Carrion and you're listening to four Courses with
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Carrion from I Heart Radio. In four courses, I'll
Speaker 1: be taking you along for the ride while I talked
Speaker 1: with the top talent of our time. In each conversation,
Speaker 1: I focused on four different areas from my guest life
Speaker 1: and career. And during those four courses, I'm gonna dig,
Speaker 1: deepen and cover new insights and inspirations that we can
Speaker 1: all use to fuel ourselves to push forward. My guest
Speaker 1: for this episode has been a judge on Iron Chef
Speaker 1: and a contestant un chopped, is raising two children while
Speaker 1: building a wine business from the ground up, and she
Speaker 1: happens to be an Olympic athlete. In fact, of the
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of men and women who have competed
Speaker 1: in the Summer Olympics since its inception, she is only
Speaker 1: one of fourteen who have won a dozen medals, Yes,
Speaker 1: a dozen, Without further delay, Please enjoy my informative and
Speaker 1: wide ranging discussion with a warm hearted and hard working
Speaker 1: Natalie Coglin. Hi, Hi, Jeffrey, It's good to see you again.
Speaker 1: It's good to see you again. For my first course,
Speaker 1: we talked about all things swimming. She tells me about
Speaker 1: all the extensive support she received from her family, and
Speaker 1: she outlines the meditative benefits of being under hoarder for
Speaker 1: six hours a day. How in God's name did you
Speaker 1: get to a point where you knew how to do this? How?
Speaker 1: I mean, did you just decide like I'm just going
Speaker 1: to be a swimmer when you're eight. I always said
Speaker 1: that I was competitive from the second I got out
Speaker 1: the womb. You know, I was born competitive, and I
Speaker 1: diaper exactly like. I can't remember a time that I
Speaker 1: wasn't competitive. And it didn't necessary, like I didn't have
Speaker 1: to be good at something. I always wanted to be
Speaker 1: the best, and like if it was dance class, I
Speaker 1: wanted to do three spins for everyone spin that the
Speaker 1: girl next to me did. I was a terrible dancer,
Speaker 1: but mind you, but I just wanted to do more
Speaker 1: in my little brain, you know, I wanted to be better.
Speaker 1: And I was better in the water than I was
Speaker 1: on land as a little kid, and so I joined swimming,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't I wasn't good at first. I was
Speaker 1: just really really competitive, and eventually I got to be
Speaker 1: a decent age group swimmer. And then by about thirteen
Speaker 1: was really when I hit the national stage, going to
Speaker 1: junior Nationals, going to Nationals, and actually finally at Nationals,
Speaker 1: all within one year, Like I will never forget. I
Speaker 1: was in Fort Lauderdale for my very first Nationals and
Speaker 1: I final and I remember the announcer saying in lane one,
Speaker 1: thirteen year old Natalie Coaglin, and that was just I mean,
Speaker 1: I I choked and I had an awful race. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I got really good, very very quickly in those preteen years.
Speaker 1: So how did your dad, who was a police officer
Speaker 1: in your mom who was Filipino. How did they know
Speaker 1: how to enter all this and how did they guide
Speaker 1: you and take you on the road, Like there's a
Speaker 1: conversation between mom and dad, right like we gotta do this.
Speaker 1: She's really good, you think, So, like how did that happen?
Speaker 1: And how do your your siblings sort of fit in
Speaker 1: that narrative because there's a lot of work being on
Speaker 1: the road and all that. It's a lot of work.
Speaker 1: And by the time I was a teenager, they weren't
Speaker 1: traveling with us. You know, we traveled with our team
Speaker 1: and we had chaperones and stuff. But yeah, the age
Speaker 1: group years, so from like six to probably eleven or twelve,
Speaker 1: my parents had to go to meets that lasted all
Speaker 1: day long and through really really hot California weather and cold,
Speaker 1: rainy California weather. It was tough. And they were the
Speaker 1: perfect athletic parents and that they pushed me to work
Speaker 1: hard and they helped me goal set, but they never
Speaker 1: chose my goals for me. They just they they stupidly
Speaker 1: one year came up with a financial reward for every
Speaker 1: cut that I got, So five dollars if you get
Speaker 1: this PRT. But if you jump from one cut to
Speaker 1: the next higher cut, you got fifteen dollars. And I
Speaker 1: remember in one summer I got like six d dollars,
Speaker 1: which in the late eighties early nineties for my working
Speaker 1: class parents was a ton of money. That was the
Speaker 1: one and only summer they ever bribed me financially, because
Speaker 1: I was very very driven. Oh, I guess, So did
Speaker 1: this leave you any sort of I mean, I know
Speaker 1: your your mom, I thought was very sweet because we're
Speaker 1: both Catholic, that she found a Mass for you. That's
Speaker 1: so sweet. I mean, just a dedication that was just
Speaker 1: so funny. Like, yes, I was very very Catholic um
Speaker 1: growing up, and my parents still are, and I went
Speaker 1: to Catholic school through high school. And even if we
Speaker 1: had a swim meet on the weekend, we found we
Speaker 1: found a Mass, and it could be a Spanish Mass,
Speaker 1: but we still went. It's like, Mom, I don't speak Spanish.
Speaker 1: It's like, but it counts, okay. The communion is communion.
Speaker 1: You're going exactly exactly, we know what the gifts are
Speaker 1: and it's five o'clock in the afternoons, one every hour,
Speaker 1: so there's no excuse, right. It's so funny. Even when
Speaker 1: I had my first World Championships and I think it
Speaker 1: was Fukuoka, Japan. My parents got on a train an
Speaker 1: hour and a half each way to find a Catholic
Speaker 1: mass that fitted into their their schedule, which was in Japanese.
Speaker 1: By the way, Wow, they're very dedicated. I mean obviously
Speaker 1: that the physicality of swimming and running is something that
Speaker 1: you can't you know, if you're a musician, you can,
Speaker 1: like you know, exist on a fifth of whiskey and
Speaker 1: like some sneakers, right, because that's what they do, right.
Speaker 1: But if you're a swimmer or an athlete, what did
Speaker 1: you eat growing up so that you became so like?
Speaker 1: I mean, I was, I was looking at all these
Speaker 1: YouTube and videos of you. You're like in such great
Speaker 1: shape at an early age you were as well. How
Speaker 1: did that all happen? Yeah? My mom was always conscious
Speaker 1: about giving me healthy food, nutritious food. And even though
Speaker 1: my mom worked full time, she came home after work
Speaker 1: every day and cooked us dinner. Filipino culture is such
Speaker 1: a nurturing culture in very many ways. And if you see,
Speaker 1: if you ever go to a holiday at a Filipino
Speaker 1: family's house, you think they're feeding an army because it's
Speaker 1: just so much. And my mom was always that way,
Speaker 1: and she's continues to be that way. Like my sister
Speaker 1: just had her first baby last week, and my mom's
Speaker 1: going down to San Diego to visit her and is
Speaker 1: bringing coolers of food and it's going to cook her
Speaker 1: you know, breakfast, bunch of dinner. Yeah. Yeah, she's being
Speaker 1: a very happy grandma. And that my mom has always
Speaker 1: been that way. And I was very very fortunate. It
Speaker 1: was just your mom's Filipino and you know, we all
Speaker 1: the time like this, and you're just gonna eat ten
Speaker 1: times as much. Exactly exactly did she bring the food
Speaker 1: along and and like in storage containers already prepped for
Speaker 1: like break Both my parents were always prepared. My dad
Speaker 1: was the one who got the pop up at the
Speaker 1: slim Meat and like the tent set up and got
Speaker 1: the location scouted out of. My mom always gave us
Speaker 1: the snacks and the food and it was a family operation.
Speaker 1: And you asked about siblings. I have a younger sister.
Speaker 1: She was at the meats as well, and yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just the two of us and all of our teammates
Speaker 1: and getting fed by our parents and sheltered by them.
Speaker 1: It was. It was really fun. And those meats can
Speaker 1: be brutal because they're you know, three days, all day,
Speaker 1: but my parents get the best of it. They're all day.
Speaker 1: What do you do when you're not in the pool. Well,
Speaker 1: when you're a little kid, you run around and play
Speaker 1: tag and you're in your suit all day making friendship bracelets.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the parents do to to stay busy. Honestly,
Speaker 1: they're not on their cell phone on their texting. There
Speaker 1: was no texting. Yeah, there's none of that then. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we would swim, you know, five races and there'll be
Speaker 1: maybe an hour or two in between races. And I
Speaker 1: have no idea what my parents did, but we were
Speaker 1: always run around with friends and make the most of it.
Speaker 1: But it is an all day affair. Did you work
Speaker 1: with anyone for any data collection for your body as
Speaker 1: you were getting better and more exceptional and more exceptional. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so towards the end of my career, so when I
Speaker 1: was in my twenties and early thirties, we definitely did
Speaker 1: a lot more data collection in terms of blood work analysis,
Speaker 1: so you know if your white blood cell account is high,
Speaker 1: or if your cortisol levels are really high. There are
Speaker 1: several different markers of overtraining which swimmers fall into the
Speaker 1: overtraining trap quite a bit because even though my race
Speaker 1: might be a hundred meters long, we have to train
Speaker 1: five six hours a day, six days a week. It's
Speaker 1: really brutal because I mean is full body, it's power,
Speaker 1: but it's also endurance. It's kind of a natural you're
Speaker 1: using like every single muscle in your body, so overtraining
Speaker 1: can happen. And I started focusing on nutrition really really
Speaker 1: heavily in college and then post college, and specifically recovery nutrition.
Speaker 1: So right after a workout, making sure to get a
Speaker 1: proper balance of carbs, fat, and protein. I would always
Speaker 1: pack my smoothies because a lot of times after really
Speaker 1: hard training session, it sounds so stupid you're too tired
Speaker 1: to eat. So if you could drink your calories that
Speaker 1: would That was always the best. So if I was traveling,
Speaker 1: I would actually travel with an ensure like the stuff
Speaker 1: that they give geriatric patients. But it was kind of
Speaker 1: a perfect food in that had plenty of sugar, it
Speaker 1: had fat, and it had protein and it was shelf stable.
Speaker 1: So that's what I used when I was in China
Speaker 1: or in Japan or just a place where I didn't
Speaker 1: have a refrigerator and I could just throw it in
Speaker 1: my bag. But if I was here home, I would
Speaker 1: make a really nutrient dense smoothie that was easy to
Speaker 1: eat in the car ride home. But the recovery part
Speaker 1: is so important because again, as summers, we need so
Speaker 1: much stored energy, so glycogen in our muscles, and so
Speaker 1: keeping keeping the car bload up is actually quite important.
Speaker 1: And I know today you know a lot of people
Speaker 1: are trying to lower their carbs, but summers we really
Speaker 1: need to have a lot of that as well as
Speaker 1: a lot of protein. So the blood count work was
Speaker 1: the person who did that? Internally? Did you have anyone
Speaker 1: giving you supplements like vitamin supplements, like you need x
Speaker 1: X y Z for your joints, you need x y
Speaker 1: Z for your metabolic side. You need this for your brain.
Speaker 1: I mean, the brain seems to be something the muscle
Speaker 1: that you would work. So you have to calm your
Speaker 1: brain and then rev up everything else. But your brain
Speaker 1: is performing at this rapid intensity and timing and thinking,
Speaker 1: how do you take care of here? I mean, did
Speaker 1: you have a sports psychologist with you? We had access
Speaker 1: to a sports psychologist throughout my career, but it just
Speaker 1: never clicked with me. I have actually my degrees in psychology,
Speaker 1: so that's something that has always been very interesting to me.
Speaker 1: But I always would try to see the sports psychologist
Speaker 1: and I never quite understood how it worked. And the
Speaker 1: nature is I mean is that you're you're in your
Speaker 1: own head. And if you're someone who I would consider
Speaker 1: myself an introspective person, So in slimming, you're underwater for
Speaker 1: hours and hours and hours in the day, so you
Speaker 1: are in your own head and working through the demons
Speaker 1: and the angel and devil on your shoulder. You have
Speaker 1: to work through that, and if you do that in
Speaker 1: a healthy way, that could be very very powerful. And
Speaker 1: I feel like the mental side of things I was
Speaker 1: very good at and just from practice, and people you know,
Speaker 1: are often trying to meditate, you know, it's the hardest thing,
Speaker 1: and especially today's society where we have our phones, we
Speaker 1: have you know, I'm constantly listening listening to podcasts when
Speaker 1: I probably as much as I love them, I would
Speaker 1: probably be in my own head a little bit more
Speaker 1: than I than I am. But swimming enforces you to
Speaker 1: be in your own head. It's nice to be in
Speaker 1: someone else's head, you know, come on, it is just
Speaker 1: tell me what to do and I'll be okay, it
Speaker 1: really is. But yeah, swimming enforces you to be in
Speaker 1: your own head and you have to confront that. And
Speaker 1: so I think just through the years, I was able
Speaker 1: to work through that and become really really mentally strong.
Speaker 1: But I would always try and work with the sports psychologist,
Speaker 1: but it just never worked out for me. You did
Speaker 1: so well in Athens and in London and Japan. How
Speaker 1: in God's name do you travel with the hours and
Speaker 1: how do you get your body? I mean, I know
Speaker 1: myself when I travel, I'm I'm I'm even when I'm
Speaker 1: doing everything right, going to bed, eating perfect, you know,
Speaker 1: getting extrasly, I'm never a hundred. How do you take that?
Speaker 1: That performance and that science and practice and hard work
Speaker 1: and like make the time zone and that being oddly
Speaker 1: out of your own you know, environment work. It's hard.
Speaker 1: We would always give ourselves at least one day per
Speaker 1: time zone crossed. So if you're going, you know, eight
Speaker 1: hours ahead, give yourself at least eight days, if not ten.
Speaker 1: But the biggest thing is just suffering through that first
Speaker 1: day and going to bed when it's nighttime. So I
Speaker 1: was really good at that. Yeah, because so many of
Speaker 1: my teammates, you know, we would go to Australia and
Speaker 1: get there in the morning, and then they take a
Speaker 1: big nap that day and then they couldn't sleep that night.
Speaker 1: I would just suffer through the first day, go to
Speaker 1: bed at nine or eight thirty, and then I was
Speaker 1: fine the next day. I was actually a very very
Speaker 1: good traveler because I was kind of able to sleep anywhere.
Speaker 1: I'm one of those blessed people who if you give
Speaker 1: me the time to sleep, I'll put on my imask
Speaker 1: and earplugs and I'll pass out like I could do
Speaker 1: it anywhere. So that was fortunate because there there were
Speaker 1: times when it wasn't the Olympics, when it was just
Speaker 1: a World Cup or you know, lesser meat where there
Speaker 1: are times I I fu in the night before in
Speaker 1: France or in Monaco, and then the next day and
Speaker 1: you just you don't feel great, but you stuck it up.
Speaker 1: For my second course, Natalie explains some of the beautiful
Speaker 1: stories behind your cookbook Cook to Thrive. Your cookbook, I
Speaker 1: was reading Cook to Thrive, and I was looking at
Speaker 1: some of the things you, and you know a lot
Speaker 1: of people have these cookbooks. They're unnecessarily healthy when which
Speaker 1: means everything is devoid of anything that's bad for you.
Speaker 1: And I love your dishes because it's they're healthy, they're
Speaker 1: they're wholesome. There's real food you have like actually peaches
Speaker 1: and cream, you have breakfast, fried rice, you have like
Speaker 1: real food. But it's done with purity and sensitivity and
Speaker 1: portion control. And it really is a very good cookbook.
Speaker 1: It reminded me of something that Martha Steward makes. You
Speaker 1: make real ingredients the right proportion, Like it's not about
Speaker 1: being on a diet is but lifestyle choice. You're eating correctly,
Speaker 1: Like it's okay to have cream once in a while,
Speaker 1: it's okay to have things that we continue to call
Speaker 1: a problem or naughty, and you know, you know, there's
Speaker 1: no there's no mention of like what's your cheat meal
Speaker 1: and all that, because everything has a bit of cheat
Speaker 1: in it. So it was kind of refreshing. Can you
Speaker 1: tell me about how that, how it came about and
Speaker 1: what expired you to make a cookbook like this? I
Speaker 1: appreciate that so much. I remember in shopping the book
Speaker 1: around to various publishers, awful process, by the way, a
Speaker 1: very like unhappy process. It really truly is. And I
Speaker 1: remember shopping it around and so many publishers are like, hey,
Speaker 1: this one book worked, and we want you to have
Speaker 1: all healthy ingredients, and that's just not me. And it's
Speaker 1: so I'm not someone who just flogs myself every day
Speaker 1: and you know, eats chicken breast and broccoli and brown
Speaker 1: rice at every single meal. That is so boring. I mean,
Speaker 1: more power to if you're someone like that. That's not
Speaker 1: my psychology. If you tell me I can't have something,
Speaker 1: all I do is obsess on it. So if I
Speaker 1: say I'm not going to have wine, I will obsess
Speaker 1: about a glass of wine. And having already two kids
Speaker 1: for those two pregnancies, I was like, all I want
Speaker 1: is a class of wine. Yeah, it's a lifestyle. You
Speaker 1: have to fit the things that you love into into
Speaker 1: your lifestyle, and it's more satisfying that way. You do
Speaker 1: end up controlling your portions that way when you have
Speaker 1: real fat. You know, I'm drinking my coffee right now
Speaker 1: and I have heavy cream in it because it's delicious,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I mean, I'm not going to do skim
Speaker 1: milk in my coffee, Like that's disgusting, Like why why worry?
Speaker 1: Like why waste your time? Well? I love the book
Speaker 1: and I did this, I mean your mom's cooking obviously,
Speaker 1: did it? Really? I saw a few little things in
Speaker 1: there there where can you was there? How much influence
Speaker 1: was there? Yeah? So the cookbook, there are several family recipes,
Speaker 1: and I was very fortunate in that my grandma is
Speaker 1: still alive, my mom is still alive, and my great
Speaker 1: grandma was alive until I was in college, so I
Speaker 1: had had access to all of the recipes. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: was very very fortunate. And so I was calling my
Speaker 1: grandma quite a bit in the process, asking her because
Speaker 1: you know, she doesn't write any of her recipes down,
Speaker 1: so I kind of tortured her and that, Hey, Grandma,
Speaker 1: I really need you to write this slom Via recipe down.
Speaker 1: I really need you to write this Ponset recipe down
Speaker 1: and recipe testing with that, and then combining the way
Speaker 1: that my great grandma, my grandma, and my mom all
Speaker 1: made adobo into the way that I like it. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a mix of all three. And so my
Speaker 1: adobo I use coconut cream, which is something that my
Speaker 1: great grandma did, but my grandma and my mom never did.
Speaker 1: It's kind of homage to the women in my family
Speaker 1: that have always cooked for me, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: share those recipes that make me so happy. And testing
Speaker 1: those out for the cookbook just brought me back to
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving and Christmas and Mother's Day and Eastern all of
Speaker 1: our holidays where the kitchen was filled with those aromas.
Speaker 1: And for my third course, we got to talk about
Speaker 1: a favorite topic of mine. Wine Now explains how she
Speaker 1: spontaneously agreed to partner on producing a wine label and
Speaker 1: how she's needed to summon her Olympic spirit to overcome
Speaker 1: the surprising challenges of the wine business. Gratulations. You just
Speaker 1: had a baby recently, right now, I did. I just
Speaker 1: had my second, so I have a five month old
Speaker 1: and to almost two and a half year old, So
Speaker 1: obviously you must do this stressful pandemic period. You must
Speaker 1: have drank plenty of Gooderian wines, which is your winery
Speaker 1: and NAPA. Right. Yeah, well not as much as I
Speaker 1: would like, because I was pregnant up until October, but
Speaker 1: I made up for it since. But not good timing,
Speaker 1: A lot, a lot of tasting and spitting, but yeah,
Speaker 1: we I started Gadarian Wines with my winemaker back in
Speaker 1: and yeah, we've we've been slowly growing. Our two flagship
Speaker 1: wines are Shannon Blanc and Peino Noir. We have a
Speaker 1: very lovely, lovely shan In Blanc. It's old wine Shannon.
Speaker 1: It's one of seven acres left in Napa Valley of
Speaker 1: Shannon Blanc. And this is any It's at least fifty
Speaker 1: years old, but there aren't any records prior to fifty years,
Speaker 1: so it's a unique, very unique vineyard. Last year we
Speaker 1: won gold at the Somalia's Choice Awards with that Shannon
Speaker 1: and then also our Rose of Peino Noir and it
Speaker 1: was great. And then you know, we had we had
Speaker 1: to suffer through the wildfires that a lot of people
Speaker 1: did last year, but fortunately our vineyards were intact. We
Speaker 1: just had a lot of smoke damage, so we lost
Speaker 1: all of our red wine last year, but we were
Speaker 1: able to produce a good Shannon Blanc and a Rose
Speaker 1: of Peino Noir. So how did you come about owning
Speaker 1: co owning a winery? That mean it to me? It's
Speaker 1: it's I mean, the restaurant business is hard. The wine
Speaker 1: businesses like relentless and you know you're at you know,
Speaker 1: at the mercy of God. Basically, how did that come about? Yes,
Speaker 1: and I've I've learned that I've learned in the past
Speaker 1: four years, we've had a wildfire every year. It's It's
Speaker 1: something that I've always been really interested in. My parents
Speaker 1: were always into wine, and I've and once I became
Speaker 1: of age to drink wine, I would go out to
Speaker 1: Napa Valley. It's only an hour from where I live,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to learn more about it. I wanted
Speaker 1: to explore. And as I was learning, one of my
Speaker 1: husband's old teammates from college, he got married and his
Speaker 1: wife is now my business partner. But they moved out here,
Speaker 1: out to California, and she worked her way up in
Speaker 1: the wine industry. And I was always very vocal with
Speaker 1: her on how much I admired how talented she was
Speaker 1: and how quickly she rose from you know, sell a
Speaker 1: rat to analogists to winemaker. And one day she texted
Speaker 1: me and was like, do you want a partner on
Speaker 1: a on a on a label? And I was like
Speaker 1: yes immediately, And I had no idea what I was
Speaker 1: agreeing to the best way to go into a business plan,
Speaker 1: it really is. It kind of this and that's so
Speaker 1: my personality. I mean, this goes back to the confidence
Speaker 1: that I have gotten because of sport. I've always been
Speaker 1: very successful in sport, and that's just kind of my mentality.
Speaker 1: I say yes to things and then I figure it
Speaker 1: out as I go, and so far, so good, you know,
Speaker 1: knock on wood. What part of the process of wine is? Like,
Speaker 1: you know, I obviously drinking it's great, but I love
Speaker 1: all the sides of like how they determine how many
Speaker 1: days it stays in that barrel and then it goes
Speaker 1: to stainless steel and then it might be fined and
Speaker 1: it might be unfine. I love that how that person
Speaker 1: makes a decision based upon the breed, the sugar, the
Speaker 1: you know, the weather. I mean, it's fascinating to me.
Speaker 1: That part. It's almost overly scientific, but at the end
Speaker 1: you realize it, well, how did this wine come about?
Speaker 1: What's your favorite part of that process? I love? So
Speaker 1: I am not technical. Retired from swimming, but I'm not
Speaker 1: competing anymore as far as I know. But what I
Speaker 1: miss about swimming is the physicality of it. And there's
Speaker 1: a physicality to making the wine. And I love that
Speaker 1: part of it, especially with our Pinot noir. We're about
Speaker 1: a hundred fifty cases a year of our of our
Speaker 1: red pinot, and so we're able to ferment in small,
Speaker 1: small batches, and so we do the punchdowns by by hands.
Speaker 1: So the punchdowns meaning you know, you have the must,
Speaker 1: you have the grapes and the juice all together in
Speaker 1: a bin, and a cat at the very top forms
Speaker 1: and you want to keep that cat moist. You don't
Speaker 1: want it to get to dry out because you want
Speaker 1: the ferment to be even. And so what we do
Speaker 1: is we sanitize. You know, you have a tank top,
Speaker 1: our shirt on. You sanitize your arms up to your
Speaker 1: shoulders and you just bend over the bins and you
Speaker 1: just stir the wine with your arms and it's like
Speaker 1: you're swimming through the wine. It's the coolest thing. We
Speaker 1: didn't drill. We did a drill in swimming called sculling,
Speaker 1: where you just go back and forth. If you think
Speaker 1: about like a rower with the paddle, you just use
Speaker 1: your arms as a paddle and you kind of do
Speaker 1: that motion to store the ferment when you're doing this
Speaker 1: hands on punch down like that and so Pinot noir
Speaker 1: is a very delicate wine and so you have to
Speaker 1: be delicate with it through the fermentation, and so we
Speaker 1: do that by hand. And that's my favorite part. I
Speaker 1: love it so much. It's like I love Lucy when
Speaker 1: they're in the wine barrels and in that episode, you
Speaker 1: remember that, I do, actually I do remember that there
Speaker 1: was stomping on it with your feet, but I think
Speaker 1: that you know, you get the picture. Yeah, exactly. That's
Speaker 1: my favorite part. The physicality of it, and then the
Speaker 1: whole process. Like I love going and tasting the ferments
Speaker 1: when it's still bubbling and you could like put your
Speaker 1: ear to the barrel and you could hear that. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a living product. It's yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1: I love the entire process. And you know who doesn't
Speaker 1: love drinking the final product? Are you selling that director consumer? Mostly? Yes,
Speaker 1: we are probably direct a consumer. We had some good
Speaker 1: restaurants partners, but with the pandemic and California, I mean
Speaker 1: it is shut down. I mean we're opening up soon,
Speaker 1: but it's been, as you know, really really tough for restaurants.
Speaker 1: So yeah, direct to consumer. We have a great wine club,
Speaker 1: very loyal in that and then some wine shops and
Speaker 1: grocery stores and we just got a distributor in southern California,
Speaker 1: which is really exciting because it's it's mostly word word
Speaker 1: of mouth and social and things like that. Do you
Speaker 1: I mean, it seems like it's really a passion for you.
Speaker 1: And I love this story about the the swimming in
Speaker 1: the wine, which could be an Olympic event if we
Speaker 1: you know, if we suggest that it's your name on
Speaker 1: the event now. And one of the things is a
Speaker 1: fifty wine swim not a bad idea. That sounds so great,
Speaker 1: very expensive, but it sounds lovely right, very expensive, but
Speaker 1: you know, come on, do you want to expand this business?
Speaker 1: Is this something that you like, You're actively like, this
Speaker 1: is what you want to do for the next you know,
Speaker 1: legacy of of this is one of your legacy pinnacles
Speaker 1: of your life. Yes. So currently it's a two business
Speaker 1: or two person business. So it's myself and our winemaker
Speaker 1: and that's it. And we're growing, like we want to
Speaker 1: get to about five thousand case a year, so that's
Speaker 1: kind of the goal right now. And we've been growing
Speaker 1: thoughtfully every year, adding some varietals. So from the Shannon
Speaker 1: Blanc in the Peanot noir. Throughout the years we've added
Speaker 1: rose of peinot noir, which typically we sagnier, meaning we
Speaker 1: just siphon off the peano. Last year we did a
Speaker 1: whole cluster press because we weren't making any red peano
Speaker 1: last year because of the wildfires. But we also have
Speaker 1: a chardonnay to piece like the chardonnay lovers are people
Speaker 1: who just have to have a chardonnay, And we have
Speaker 1: a Cabernet Saumignon and a Petite Sara and then this
Speaker 1: year we're going to add m or Low So after
Speaker 1: this year we'll have a full panel of wines. Wow,
Speaker 1: so people, what what did you? I mean, it's like
Speaker 1: when you jump in with your eyes clothes you realize
Speaker 1: like I didn't know this? Yeah, what didn't you know?
Speaker 1: What was the biggest shock other than the temperature of
Speaker 1: the water when you jumped in. Well, I didn't think
Speaker 1: we'd have to deal with wildfires every year. That's been
Speaker 1: tough and scary. Last year our production facility UM we
Speaker 1: produced a Honeycut and my winemaker, Shana Harding, is the
Speaker 1: winemaker at Honeycut as well and Honeycut. It's deep in St. Helena,
Speaker 1: right on the Calistoga border, and it suffered a lot
Speaker 1: of damage. The press pad was demolished, one of the
Speaker 1: houses burned down. There was a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of damage. And this is right as harvest was starting
Speaker 1: this past season, So that was particularly challenging and endangerous
Speaker 1: and scary. That has been been really hard. And then
Speaker 1: just kind of the flakiness of it all, Like you could,
Speaker 1: you know, meet someone who has a restaurant and loves
Speaker 1: you know, supposedly loves your wine and wants to get
Speaker 1: it in there, and you have this handshake deal and
Speaker 1: you might be on the way to delivering the wine,
Speaker 1: and then they claim bureaucratic tape. But it's it's it's
Speaker 1: the flakiness is frustrating for someone who I am not
Speaker 1: a flaky person. So I just do not understand when
Speaker 1: people make a handshake deal and then don't follow through.
Speaker 1: So that part is something that I learned early, and
Speaker 1: it's it's still frustrating, but it doesn't it doesn't kill
Speaker 1: me like it did in the first couple of years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I'm the same way as you. I'm in
Speaker 1: the business. I'm like you want to do this, Yes
Speaker 1: it's a yes or no. It's not you know, to me,
Speaker 1: yes it is a yes and no is a no.
Speaker 1: But now I've learned that maybe is also a no,
Speaker 1: right exactly, And don't jerk me around. I'm busy, Like
Speaker 1: you're not going to hurt my feelings exactly, Just say no.
Speaker 1: It's so frustrating and it must be. You know, you're
Speaker 1: a you're an elite athlete, but you think like everything
Speaker 1: is supposed to be correct and done correctly all the time.
Speaker 1: That comes from right, your mom and dad particularly, but
Speaker 1: also the way you've lived your life is somewhat of
Speaker 1: an example of how to live your life. And so
Speaker 1: just give it to me straight, right exactly. Like we
Speaker 1: had this major hotel in San Francisco that said they
Speaker 1: wanted a lot of cases, and literally we had the
Speaker 1: car packed on the way and then they just flaked
Speaker 1: on us, like I was, like, I was furious, But
Speaker 1: it happens, and fortunately we we've learned from from those lessons.
Speaker 1: And yeah, but it's it's just that's that's the hard
Speaker 1: part of this this business. I couldn't end my discussion
Speaker 1: with Nalie without discussing your appearance as a contestant on Chopped.
Speaker 1: For our fourth and final course, we hear are all
Speaker 1: about her mindset during the contest and her clever use
Speaker 1: of gatorade to make a salad dressing. I watched the
Speaker 1: tape of your cooking on Chopped. Was I was interested
Speaker 1: in seeing the What was remarkable is I think everyone
Speaker 1: there had such speed in the jili. They're all real athletes,
Speaker 1: like they weren't. I mean, I'm sorry to say some
Speaker 1: athletes aren't like so physically fat, but you had you
Speaker 1: would like so graceful. And I was interested to see
Speaker 1: your basket. And as I recall, I think it was salmon.
Speaker 1: I mean you get four baskets and chopped four items.
Speaker 1: I think it was. I think you had gatorade, right,
Speaker 1: and kale and salmon and some one other thing. Maybe
Speaker 1: it was peanuts or something I forgotten, like candy coated
Speaker 1: peanuts or something candy coated peanuts. So can you just
Speaker 1: could you describe when you open the basket your first
Speaker 1: thoughts and like how that translates from an athlete's standpoint
Speaker 1: to like, Okay, now I'm doing something. It's an outer
Speaker 1: body experience, so described for the listeners, like what like
Speaker 1: to open that basket. And by the way, just those
Speaker 1: of you know, I'm I'm a judge unchopped, and there's
Speaker 1: no way you know what's in their basket. There is
Speaker 1: there's it's complete secret. Everybody said, oh they know, they
Speaker 1: don't know. We don't even know sometimes because they want
Speaker 1: the judge's surprise as well. What was your stomach reaction
Speaker 1: and what did you make? I remember like the blood
Speaker 1: pressure is just like so high as um, you're getting ready,
Speaker 1: you're getting set. You have your hands on the basket,
Speaker 1: and then you know whoever tells you to open it up,
Speaker 1: and you see that red light of the timer go
Speaker 1: and you just have to make a decision. You have
Speaker 1: to do it quickly. You have no time. And I
Speaker 1: will complain right now. I remember that the entree, when
Speaker 1: you open up the basket, everything's labeled. So everything's in
Speaker 1: brown packaging and twine and everything's labeled. And I remember
Speaker 1: seeing full let mignon and I was like, oh easy,
Speaker 1: put that to the side, and then I started working
Speaker 1: on everything else. And so I think that basket, this
Speaker 1: was the second one, is like fule mignon chocolate covered
Speaker 1: marshmallow was maybe a spinach, and I can't remember the
Speaker 1: fourth ingredient, but regardless, I saved the full at Minyon
Speaker 1: because it's like that takes no time. And then I
Speaker 1: opened it up and as beef tenderloin, and I like,
Speaker 1: I just remember being like, oh my god, like that's
Speaker 1: not even properly labeled. But and I tried to do
Speaker 1: a whole tender loin in like ten minutes, which didn't
Speaker 1: obviously work. I just remember being so frustrated and I
Speaker 1: was like, that's not full avignon. There's I mean, I
Speaker 1: could have broke it down obviously, but you don't think
Speaker 1: straight when there's a timer going and you have like
Speaker 1: you're seeing the time just be whittled away. Did you
Speaker 1: make something like Filipino out of one of your main
Speaker 1: courses as every call? I did like a sweet and
Speaker 1: sour kale, So that first dish was the salmon and
Speaker 1: the kale and the gatorade, and I reduced the gatorade
Speaker 1: so gatorade like sugar and salt. So I did like
Speaker 1: a sweet and sour kale. Yeah, So that that that
Speaker 1: was that was very good, Like that one out of
Speaker 1: all of them was probably turned out the best, I
Speaker 1: think with the chocolate covered marshmallows. In the next dish,
Speaker 1: I try to make some sort of reduction with red
Speaker 1: wine and it was too sweet. Your style points are
Speaker 1: really high, but you're also just awesome and to talk
Speaker 1: to in such an exceptional, exceptional human being, and I
Speaker 1: wish we had more time, but I'm just fascinated by
Speaker 1: what you do and how how you do it. And
Speaker 1: congratulations on Aussie and you're I think it's any may
Speaker 1: your rather your rather try to thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Don't worry. You'll be hiking up those mountains soon enough,
Speaker 1: and you'll be you'll be wishing you had some some
Speaker 1: time back because and have a glass of wine. And
Speaker 1: I'd love to join you one day with a glass
Speaker 1: of wine in the kitchen. Please, anytime you're in St. Julena,
Speaker 1: let us know and and I'll show you around. Thanks
Speaker 1: very much for listening to Four Courses with Jefferyszcarrian, a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio and Corner Table Entertainment. Four
Speaker 1: Courses is created by Jeffrey Zcarrion, Margaret Secarian, Jared Kello,
Speaker 1: and Tara Helper. Our executive producer is Christopher Hasiotis. Four
Speaker 1: Courses is produced by Jonathan Haws Dressler. Our research is
Speaker 1: conducted by Jesselyn Shields. This episode was engineered by Molly
Speaker 1: Swanson and Natalie Coglan and edited and mixed by Joe Tisdall.
Speaker 1: Our talent booking is by Pamela Bauer at Dogtown Talent.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.