Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and
Speaker 1: Tim Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: So we had thirsty Thursday, now we have Friay soon
Speaker 2: wrapping up the week.
Speaker 1: To help us do So that's just shake it out me.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Sarah Livesey here to help us and stopping via Bloomberg
Speaker 2: Interactive Broker Studio is the founder of Pangaea Estates. Travis
Speaker 2: Baithwaite Braithwait he is here in our studios like I
Speaker 2: was drinking already, Sorry about that.
Speaker 1: Travis, Welcome, Welcome, Nice to have you here.
Speaker 3: Thanks, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: You know, I am thinking you would be a great
Speaker 2: diplomat because concerning this wine that you guys have created.
Speaker 2: You brought together wineries right in the US, France, Spain.
Speaker 1: South Africa, and Argentina.
Speaker 3: Yep, that's it.
Speaker 1: Tell us how you did this and why you did it.
Speaker 3: So curiosity actually got the best of me. I'd been
Speaker 3: working in the wine industry for quite some time, and
Speaker 3: I sort of thought to myself, you know, globalization had
Speaker 3: hit many industries around the world, and the wine industry
Speaker 3: had kind of still been a little bit stuck in
Speaker 3: its traditions. And its original theories and ideas, and it
Speaker 3: was an industry that I saw could do with a
Speaker 3: bit of a shakeup. And I thought to myself, what
Speaker 3: would a wine taste like in a blend, like a
Speaker 3: border style blend. If every variety in the world was
Speaker 3: grown in the location the terra with a grape could
Speaker 3: ripen its best in essence, giving you the best expression
Speaker 3: of that variety, what would that wine taste like. No
Speaker 3: one had ever tried it, no one had ever seen it,
Speaker 3: no one had even had even contemplated putting it together.
Speaker 3: And the curiosity kind of sparked in me, and I
Speaker 3: started looking at the idea. And then one year I
Speaker 3: just couldn't take it anymore. It was just eating away
Speaker 3: at me too much. So jumped in a plane, took
Speaker 3: two years off, traveled, tasted grapes and different vineyards.
Speaker 1: Okay, first of all people just being like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: what put it two years off and just jumped in
Speaker 1: a plane. But that's another story.
Speaker 3: You have to dedicate time to these sort of things.
Speaker 3: If you're going to change something, you got to really
Speaker 3: put in the effort. I wanted to make sure that
Speaker 3: I was in the right place, that i'd done the
Speaker 3: right research. I've seen the right things sitting in my
Speaker 3: hotel room, playing around with wine and trying ideas and
Speaker 3: looking at different ways to do that.
Speaker 1: So keep going. So like, did you approach wineries and
Speaker 1: was it like?
Speaker 3: So I approached you different grape growers because the intention
Speaker 3: you can't make good wine without good grapes. So the
Speaker 3: idea for me was a grape when it has the
Speaker 3: right opportunity to ripen in full, it expresses itself. The
Speaker 3: best is that variety. So what I did is I
Speaker 3: did some research, and I was like, where do each
Speaker 3: of these varieties because your border blend is Cab Murlow,
Speaker 3: Covenor Frank Mulberk and Petivodo. I was like, where do
Speaker 3: the best of each of these varieties come from? Who
Speaker 3: makes them the best? So that's where I traveled to
Speaker 3: have a look and see and try and sort of
Speaker 3: experiment and play through. So I wanted to try something
Speaker 3: that made sense because the blend was made everywhere in
Speaker 3: the world. Everywhere in the world, someone makes a fight
Speaker 3: by the way.
Speaker 4: This is what I So I've always been in love
Speaker 4: with the idea of Pangaea, which is I don't know
Speaker 4: how many one hundred million years ago, when all of
Speaker 4: the land masses on Earth that are now separate were
Speaker 4: one right, and then they started being pushed. That's why
Speaker 4: I love the idea of this wine, because you bring
Speaker 4: together all of these diverse land masses in one bottle, so.
Speaker 3: That that was the theory. At one point, every single
Speaker 3: grape growing region in the world was in the same
Speaker 3: place technically, you know, obviously it was adjusted slightly differently
Speaker 3: in more north and south, but it all split apart
Speaker 3: through a catastrophic, crazy event. You know, the plate shifted
Speaker 3: and everything moved, and then grapes and the label kind
Speaker 3: of expresses that grapes were smuggled and vines were smuggled
Speaker 3: around the world. So the ocean played a massive role
Speaker 3: in the breaking up of Pangaea, but also how the
Speaker 3: grapes then moved back to these locations from a central
Speaker 3: sort of point. So vines were smuggled, things were moved
Speaker 3: around the world, things were planted. It was like a
Speaker 3: wild West of the time basically, you know, And for
Speaker 3: me it was important to have a look at this
Speaker 3: concept and say, you know, everyone talks about what terr
Speaker 3: y is, and this wine is five terr wars in
Speaker 3: one bottle. So it's an expression of a of a blend.
Speaker 3: That every terrah is the location where a grape has grown,
Speaker 3: So your soil, your climate, your unique climate that a
Speaker 3: grape has grown. And so in France, who you know,
Speaker 3: Bordeaux a specific terrooa which grows bored over ietols. Napa
Speaker 3: Valley is a terro that grows cabinet. So for me,
Speaker 3: it was important to stick to the tradition of what
Speaker 3: the blend is because it's the most noble of the blends.
Speaker 3: But see what it would taste like in a different,
Speaker 3: different way.
Speaker 1: Well, speaking of taste.
Speaker 5: Oh, Carol just tried to uncork a five hundred dollars
Speaker 5: bottle of wine and she broke the cork.
Speaker 4: Now, I don't think that should be a problem.
Speaker 3: I think I need to get you, guys another opener
Speaker 3: for the show. You want me to pull it, I
Speaker 3: don't think.
Speaker 4: It should be because Travis, Yes, Travis saves the day.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I was sore here. Okay, but I
Speaker 1: can't so you keep talking.
Speaker 4: And our poor but uh, I'm glad you're pouring because
Speaker 4: she's not great at getting corks out of the bottles,
Speaker 4: but she's very good, big glass. I look, I quit
Speaker 4: drinking last year, and since I started doing this show,
Speaker 4: I've been drunk every night.
Speaker 3: So this wine is pretty interesting in a sense as
Speaker 3: well that it's. The idea behind the style of the
Speaker 3: wine was something with elegance, finesse, structure, power, age ability.
Speaker 3: I really wanted to make a wine that was not
Speaker 3: as a lot of people would think with this wine.
Speaker 3: They thought it would just be an over extracted fruit bomb,
Speaker 3: you know, something very much perfect, that crowd pleasing. But
Speaker 3: I wanted to create something that was true to the
Speaker 3: tradition of the border blend. Border blends age better than
Speaker 3: any other wine in the world, and I wanted to
Speaker 3: create something that was going to outlive me by years
Speaker 3: and the age.
Speaker 4: Where are you actually from, by the way, So I.
Speaker 3: Grew up in South Africa, So live I grew up
Speaker 3: in Stuttambas and live between Cape Town, London and the States.
Speaker 3: At the moment, how tough was.
Speaker 1: It there figuring out the blend, Like how much playing
Speaker 1: did you do?
Speaker 3: It was not easy at all. And hence my business
Speaker 3: partner who is in on the project now is the
Speaker 3: world's greatest wine blender, Michelle Roulon. Yeah, Michelle has been
Speaker 3: responsible for pretty much every great wine on the planet
Speaker 3: for the last you know, forty years. He works with
Speaker 3: some great names, He does a lot of blending, and
Speaker 3: he's the only person who I could think of who
Speaker 3: knew every region of this world and had made wine
Speaker 3: there and knew it.
Speaker 1: Well, did you know that you're gonna have to lean heavy,
Speaker 1: cab No.
Speaker 3: So the original concept was make the varieties in each country,
Speaker 3: and the blend dictates how it works. So the first
Speaker 3: vintage is Cabinet dominance, the second vintage is Merlow dominant. Interesting,
Speaker 3: then we go back to cabinet, and then in eighteen
Speaker 3: it's Mulbeck dominance.
Speaker 1: So you play around with it. Yep.
Speaker 3: The idea is the same as any greater state in
Speaker 3: the world. We make the best wine that we can.
Speaker 3: The only difference is we have five different terewas and
Speaker 3: climate issues to deal with every year. We harvest all year.
Speaker 2: That's what I've when I was reading about you, I
Speaker 2: was thinking, Okay, this is climate change and you guys
Speaker 2: are adapting to it.
Speaker 1: Is that fair well to some extent? Or is that
Speaker 1: an influence?
Speaker 3: Not really so much for this project? Okay, because this
Speaker 3: is very traditional, So If you look at the regions
Speaker 3: we're in three of the oldest in the world and
Speaker 3: two of the newer. So it's regions that have been
Speaker 3: growing these grapes for a very long time. It's not
Speaker 3: like a new thing in this region so for us.
Speaker 2: But the ability to kind of adapt depending on maybe
Speaker 2: how things.
Speaker 3: Well, that's for the future of this concept of this
Speaker 3: trend of wine is people who love wine. Why would
Speaker 3: you not want to try this? Why would you not
Speaker 3: want to be able to add a variety to your
Speaker 3: blend that will be stronger than the country you actually
Speaker 3: live in and have your cellar in.
Speaker 1: I'm going to get yelled at by Matt's wife because
Speaker 1: it's like.
Speaker 4: As someone who doesn't drink wine, I totally agree with
Speaker 4: you to drink wine. I mean, I love wine and
Speaker 4: I like to drink copious amounts of it, but I
Speaker 4: don't really know anything about it.
Speaker 1: This is lovely. First of all, the legs are gorgeous, Like.
Speaker 3: As you look at this is a massive I mean
Speaker 3: I would recommend to consumers who buy it if they're
Speaker 3: going to drink it now, you need to decant this
Speaker 3: for about eight hours five to eight hours.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: If you have double decanting ability.
Speaker 1: So we're not even getting the full field of it.
Speaker 3: If you drink this now over the next hour, you'll
Speaker 3: see how it develops, how the tannins kind of drop off,
Speaker 3: the fruit comes into play, the acidity rounds off. It's
Speaker 3: a wine that that really evolves in the glass. And
Speaker 3: that's been the thing that has really shocked a lot
Speaker 3: of people because they expected it to sort of be
Speaker 3: not as complicated as it is, but it truly is
Speaker 3: a It's a complicated monster.
Speaker 1: This one your director consumer.
Speaker 3: Yes, we may need the direct to consumer.
Speaker 1: You're only available by invite, Is that true? Yes?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we So how do we get an invitation?
Speaker 3: So you go go into our go into our website
Speaker 3: Plangia States dot com, and you sign up there and
Speaker 3: we then allocate you to the allocation list. As our
Speaker 3: volumes increase.
Speaker 1: How many battles have you done?
Speaker 3: Like in the first vintage, I needed twenty six hundred
Speaker 3: for the consuming market, so very small production. We have
Speaker 3: the ability to grow. But my theory behind it was,
Speaker 3: you know, this is a new project, it's something interesting.
Speaker 3: Wanted to see what the wine tasted like first, so
Speaker 3: jumped in the deep end, made it and realized it
Speaker 3: actually surpassed the expectation.
Speaker 1: Taste pretty good. Yeah, it's so good. I mean, it's interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I also I just want to leave my
Speaker 4: nose in the glass, you know, and just continue work
Speaker 4: like this.
Speaker 1: And this is the guy, this is the just got
Speaker 1: about twenty seconds.
Speaker 3: So if you think about it, this wine is truly
Speaker 3: unique in a sense that very few people on the
Speaker 3: planets have actually tasted, so you guys are some of
Speaker 3: the first, and that every variety is in a competition
Speaker 3: for hierarchy and to be better. So it's so complicated,
Speaker 3: it's so nuanced, it's so interesting. So for a wine lever,
Speaker 3: this is a truly unique product.
Speaker 2: Let's know how it's going because we'd love to talk
Speaker 2: more about it in the future. Travis breithwait he is
Speaker 2: the founder of Pangaea Estates, joining us here in studio
Speaker 2: making our frye