Winery Confidential
The Call That Changed Our Cellar
How 500 bottles of Oregon Chardonnay landed at Bruno It was a Saturday night. I was half-distracted, glass in hand, when my phone lit up. LJ was calling. Now, LJ isn’t just any winemaker. He’s part craftsman, part connector —...
The Wine Club Scam Hiding in Plain Sight
What “12 Bottles for $79.99” really gets you. Trust us, it’s not much. You’ve seen the ads. “70% OFF your first case.” “12 wines for $79.99 — delivered to your door.” It sounds too good to be true. That’s because...
For The People Who Actually Make the Damn Wine
Labor Day isn’t about press releases. It’s not about shelf talkers. And it sure as hell isn’t about the people who just sell wine for a profit and a Linkedin profile. About six months ago, I was scrolling through Instagram...
An Open Letter to the Ones Who Still Care About What’s in the Bottle You won’t find these wines at your local Costco. Not because they’re rare (though they are). Not because they cost $500.But because they weren’t made for...
Before the Label and the Bottle
And why we’re going back there—just for a moment. Wine’s been around for over 8,000 years. The first records of it come from Georgia (the country, not the state), where people stored fermented grape juice in clay vessels called qvevri....
A note from the founder You don’t need another wine brand.You’ve got grocery shelves full of “award-winning” bottles and restaurant lists priced like rent. But here’s what no one really says out loud:The wine industry is basically a cartel. A...
The Traditional Wine Club Is Ruined
And that's exactly why we're doing it differently. Let’s be honest: wine clubs used to feel kind of fancy. You’d sign up, get some mysterious bottles, and suddenly feel like you were in on something. The idea was charming. A...
The Wine Mafia (And How It Makes You Pay More For The Bottle)
How your $100 bottle got made—and who took a cut along the way It started in the hills of Oregon. A winemaker with dirt beneath his nails and a hoodie crusted in dust walked his rows of Pinot Noir at...
The Sweetest Scam in the Wine Industry
When Austrian winemakers added antifreeze to their vintages—and no one noticed until it was too late. Let’s talk about something that sounds fake but isn’t: in the mid-80s, a handful of Austrian wineries decided their wines weren’t sweet enough. So...