Episode 209: Andrea Card - Francis Ford Coppola Winery
Podcast: Inside Winemaking
Host: Jim Duane
Guest: Andrea Card
Recorded: Dec 18, 2025

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

winemaker, Sonoma County, Francis Ford Coppola, winery tour, wine production, bottling, low alcohol wine, vineyard sourcing, wine tiers, sparkling wine, non-alcoholic wine, wine club, wine events, wine marketing, wine regions

SPEAKERS

Andrea Card, Jim Duane

Jim Duane  

Okay? Andrea, thank you so much for doing this. Thank you for the tour. It was great to see the facility and the winery. I was thinking, maybe we could start by this is the first time I've asked the question this way. But do you remember the first moment where you thought, oh, I want to be a winemaker, like as a career, as a profession, yeah, was there a moment for you?

Andrea Card  

I think so, yeah, but it didn't happen until much later in my life than I thought it maybe

Jim Duane  

should have. Did you like have a previous career that late?

Andrea Card  

No, I had worked at a winery. I just never thought I wanted to be a winemaker. So when I went away to school, I ended up graduating with agricultural business. It was not an intention of getting into wine, and I realized I needed a job when I got home, and I grew up here in Sonoma County and in Sevastopol, and all of the apple orchards were turning into grapevines at that time. And I looked around in the newspaper, so that tells you how old I am, and there was two jobs that were of any interest to me, and one of them was a lab intern position at a winery in Glen Ellen, and I said, Well, that sounds pretty fun. I'll do that for the next, you know, three months until I figure it all out. And so I worked there for 16 years, and in that time of those 16 years was when I decided I wanted to be a winemaker, but it was probably, I don't know, 12 years in. So I just, I loved the process so much, and I loved the camaraderie of the people, and I was fascinated by farming and the fermentation, so I didn't want to be removed from that. And I really thought that being the winemaker actually took you out of that role,

Jim Duane  

so you were 12 years in to working in the winery, yeah, then you wanted to pursue that yeah position, yeah.

Andrea Card  

I had been working in the laboratory, and then I had taken on the seller, and I was in charge of bottling, and, you know, wore many hats, and I just loved all of that process. You loved bottling? No, I didn't love bottling that sounds wrong. I love bottling because you're finally done, but it's always the day that everything goes wrong, right the hardest. So it is. It's like you're finally putting your babies like it's like you're sending your children to college or something. It's like the best and worst day of of the year.

Jim Duane  

So when you have that, that realization that you do want to pursue that as a Caribbean winemaker, yeah. Where did you want to be? Were you happy in I was super, yeah.

Andrea Card  

I was super happy being here in Sonoma County. I had lived here my whole life, and I couldn't wait to leave when I was younger. And then I realized I never really wanted to leave after I came back. And so I I stayed at that same winery, and I just explored everything that I could. And I had been taking classes and doing different things, and that was when I kind of committed. And so I took my wine making certificate from UC Davis because I couldn't afford to not work, and I had already taken a bunch of classes at the Santa Rosa Junior College and different places, just trying to kind of get my background, considering I hadn't gone to school for analogy or viticulture,

Jim Duane  

I'm always trying to promote Santa Rosa Junior College and Napa Valley College, because they have fantastic programs and they don't get the attention of like the UC Davis and the Fresno and

Andrea Card  

some of the other correct but yeah, yeah, the junior college, I took pruning classes and composting classes and classes that people were like, this is probably isn't what you need. I was like, Well, yeah, but it's what I'm interested in, and it gives you a good basis for all sorts of different things. So that was fun.

Jim Duane  

So when did you come to I'm gonna say FFC. Is that the in house lingo as well? Francis Ford Coppola, we

Andrea Card  

call it FCW or ffcw, yeah. So you're very close, yeah. Francis Ford Coppola, I started here in 2020, it was my big move during covid, because that's what people want to do, is get a new job and meet all new colleagues. But I decided it was time for me. I had been working at a larger winery, and I decided I wanted to go back to a family owned winery, and my family is from up here in Cloverdale, and so working in Geyserville felt great. You know, there's no stoplights here, so it's pretty good get off the freeway and you're right here.

Jim Duane  

We were talking before about the people that work here, the for the people that weren't a part of that conversation, you kind of describe where people live when they come. To work here, because there's not a lot of there's no housing.

Andrea Card  

There's no housing right here, yeah, so when we have interns, we're like, you're gonna have to have a car. You can ride the bus. We have some people who ride the bus, but it's, it's a trek, and you really have to be committed to want to be here in Geyserville. I mean, it's such a beautiful place, and so it's nice that there aren't houses everywhere, but so lots of people live in Cloverdale, so just north of us, about 10 minutes, and then healsburg, Windsor, Santa Rosa, that whole corridor, and I was telling you it's it's pretty nice because there's no traffic up here. So if it's going to take 20 minutes, it's going to take 20 minutes unless something crazy happens.

Jim Duane  

So did you come into the position you are in now? Or have you changed since being here in the past five years?

Andrea Card  

Well, it's a little strange, because I came here as the director of winemaking, which was awesome. It was a bump up for me. I was really excited about the position and having a team that I got to work with, and I didn't necessarily have to worry about all the minutia, but more of the guidance and the mentoring and the, I don't know, the fun part for me. So I was really excited about that. And then one year in, we were purchased by the delicado Family Wines, which, you know, at first, everyone's like, Uh oh, what's going to happen now? But it's been great. So we have just a larger family now. It's still family owned, and we just have more resources in in many ways than we had before, especially in the wine making side, lots of people to to work with, and so I got a different title at that time just because it didn't I didn't fit into the structure their org chart. Yeah, and you know, which is fine. I'm not one who dwells on titles by any means. My job didn't change at all. So it was great. And this year, I think I got my title back.

Jim Duane  

So all good. So are you director now? Yeah, okay,

Andrea Card  

yes, yeah, Director of winemaking.

Jim Duane  

Well, congratulations, yeah, on the new old title, yes, thank you. Yeah.

Andrea Card  

It was kind of funny. It was like, oh, Andrea, you get your title back. I'm like, thank you. I appreciate that. I worked hard for it. So I

Jim Duane  

want to talk about sort of some of the other the winemakers and the other people that work here, and how you guys function. But first, just because I know everyone's curious, because of the star power of Francis, can you describe what your experience was like? Was the family here and involved?

Andrea Card  

Were they? Yeah, so again, it was a super weird time. It was covid, covid, okay, so during covid, Francis and his wife, Eleanor, and his family, all kind of hunkered down in Napa at their estate in Napa, and so we did not see them. Here he is in his 80s. Yeah, right. And so was really trying to be mindful of his health and his family's health. And so they stayed in Napa, so we did not see them. So then, in the meanwhile, we were right sold or merged ownership, or whatever the correct terminology is. And so he is part of the board of directors for delicato Family Wines, which is great, and so he still has some connection with us, but definitely is a different role than in the past. Okay?

Jim Duane  

And then, before we get into the production stuff like, want to describe a little bit this place, because it really is. It's a fun place to come visit for it's unlike any other winery to go visit, other than inglenook in Rutherford in Napa, but all the movie memorabilia, like it's it's really cool. You got the Tell me again, what's the car? The Tucker. The Tucker car? You got the desk from the Godfather, the two boats, two

Andrea Card  

ships from Marie, Antoinette, right? Like we have Bram stroker, Dracula costumes, memorabilia from Apocalypse Now, and all sorts of other things that sometimes people are like, what's this martini glass from? And I'm like, I don't really remember.

Jim Duane  

Even the elevators have our plaster Yes, photos, it's a lot to see. It's very cool. Yeah.

Andrea Card  

I mean, for me, obviously, it wasn't that that brought me here, but I was even one of the tourists. Basically, on my first day, I have a I have a picture of myself in front of the arch in the entry of the driveway, and because it's kind of an iconic looking entryway, and I don't know It's beautiful, the driveway is lined with olive trees. And if you're lucky enough to be here either early or late, and all the lights are on, it's beautiful. And we have a flock of turkeys that i. A parade through the street every day. And so most days, on my way in and my way out, I have to wait for their parade to finish and the toms then go running off, and then I can drive. So it's a it's a pretty, pretty wonderful place, though. It's we have our swimming pool, we have a restaurant. We actually have two restaurants. We have our pool cafe that is open during the summer and is a great place to have lunch. And I like to have lunch there, and many of us do. And, yeah, bocce ball courts and offense spaces,

Jim Duane  

it is my dream to work somewhere where there's a roof.

Andrea Card  

Food, yeah, food. It's like wineries sometimes are in food islands, I feel like, and here in Geyserville, it's very quiet and small and has some amazing restaurants, but it's really great that we have our own restaurant and you don't have to go searching

Jim Duane  

for food. Okay, thank you for that. So fun place to come visit. Obviously, you came here for the wine, for the wine making. What is your team look like? You said, I know there's other wine makers that work with you on the team. How are you structured?

Andrea Card  

So I'm the director of winemaking. So I have, I don't know, I have to count on my fingers. How many people? I think it's six. And so I have four winemakers and two support, so one assistant winemaker and one analogist, and we've been recently consolidated into this one winery. So we had two wineries at one point, we've been consolidated into this one winery, and it's actually really fabulous, because I don't have to split my time and the winemakers don't have to make trips back and forth the three miles between the wineries, and we're all here in one space. So depending on the winemaker, we they have different programs. So we have lots of different what's the word? Sorry, I've lost it. We have lots of different wine programs, and, yeah, tiers and brands. Thank you. That's the word. I'm not sure why I couldn't come up with brands, but hey, you know, it's late in the year, so we have lots of different brands. And so we have our regular everyday diamond collection, and that's what people would see in the grocery store. And then we have the next tier up, which is director's cut, and we have the wines of Francis Coppola that's only sold here, and we have reserve that's only sold here, and all of these other wines, and they're not split by winemaker, they're split by either type of wine and or this person was interested in this wine, and so they Got that and or, Oh, we have a new program. And this person seems like they might have enough time to deal with this. So it's actually really good. It used to be split by red and white and different structure, which was fun for a while. And now we just keep mixing it up. So I

Jim Duane  

don't know one wants to make just white wine. Right? I don't

Andrea Card  

know, in some ways I do because, because then you're done with harvest, like in September, and I think that would be amazing. I always said, Oh, my dream job would be Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc, and you could be done by mid September, and then you could go and see the fall colors in the East Coast. I'd be into that someday. So for now, we make all the wines. So as I was telling you, we started harvest early, right?

Jim Duane  

Yeah. So am I talking a little bit about that? And, oh yeah, that new program, yeah? So I don't know how new it is, perhaps you can,

Andrea Card  

yeah, it's just a couple years old. For our diamond collection, we have a low calorie, low alcohol wine. We have a Pinot Grigio and a Sauvignon Blanc. They are called vibrance, and they are a portion of the wine is actually picked early, at 15 or 16 bricks, so much earlier than we would normally pick the wine or pick the grapes. And so we started this year. I think it was July 29 which is really early if you're not picking sparkling wine really, and it makes the harvest very long. But it's also really interesting to see the results of the wine, and we just tasted actually the Pinot Grigio vibrance, the 25 just now, because it'll be bottling in just a few weeks. So it's a fun process. It's very vibrant because it's picked so early, so lots of natural acidity and just lots of natural citrus flavors and aromatics. So it makes it a fun kind of racy wine.

Jim Duane  

So okay, I know low alcohol, that's easy, low calorie, when I think of low calorie, obviously, having lower alcohol means you can have lower calories. It's directly related, okay, is that? I mean,

Andrea Card  

that's really where you're getting your like, your calories and your carbs are coming from alcohol. So the lower you go with alcohol, the more you can do with anything else.

Jim Duane  

Is it a wine that needs any res? Individual sugar to support it.

Andrea Card  

Okay? I think I just nodded. That's not helpful

Andrea Card  

to you. I It does need a little okay, because it helps round out the palette. Sure, if you're we're talking about an 8% alcohol wine, and if you're someone who likes to drink wine regularly, you're going to feel a difference in the palette. And that's the part that, as a winemaker, we're missing the most, right? It's like the finish all of a sudden feels very watery, and so by adding a little bit of residual sugar, we're adding that mouth feel back and makes it feel more normal, quote, unquote, normal.

Jim Duane  

So I've never made wines like this, but I understand that from having worked in the past with de alkalized wines, where you used to send it to cone tech, it would come back at 4% alcohol, and then we would make all the interns taste it, because they weren't ready for how sour it was with the low alcohol. Yeah, it's a, it's not an easy wine to make, at least for my thought of,

Andrea Card  

yeah, it's it's similar to making a sparkling base, where the sparkling base, like rips the enamel off your teeth. And if it doesn't do that, then it's not good, right? It's not what you need it to be. And so that's kind of what we're using

Jim Duane  

this as as well. How long has this been in the market?

Andrea Card  

We're just on our second year. Okay, so it has gotten a little bit of traction. You know, it's either people want very little or no alcohol, or so much alcohol that we don't know how to make wine that way. So, so it's interesting the trends and and what we're what we're going after.

Jim Duane  

So you're the second person I've had on the podcast that's making these wines in this, this style, fashion I'm very curious to see over the long term, if it's something that catches fire. Because I think the no alcohol wine, especially for reds, is just too hard, which doesn't work.

Andrea Card  

Yeah, it's been our experience that it's very, very difficult to find no alcohol wine that tastes good. So we've been doing some experimentation. One of our favorite things is R and D and doing just projects, just because it's fun for us, and seeing if anything could come to fruition from it. And so we've we've played around with some no alcohol things, and it's not great, not great. But there's also a way of looking at it that you don't necessarily have to just deal wine. Why don't you use just juice, or use water and build on that, or whatever else. So that part's fun for us, or at least for me and my nerdy

Jim Duane  

team, sure, sure. So one of my favorite parts about going to see everything before we sat down here today was to see the machine that puts the we call it, the gold fish net on the bottle Diamond Series. Yeah. I mean, everyone would recognize that from the grocery

Andrea Card  

store, yeah. So our claret from the diamond collection has that iconic gold net on it, and Francis was able to convince a company to make that, and we believe that we're the only ones in North America that have them. And so it basically just takes the job and takes it up a notch so it doesn't have to be hand done. And, yeah, they're pretty great little machines. They have a mold that pulls, pulls apart the gold netting, and that comes out of a bail, and a mold puts in the place of the bottle, and then it puts it on the bottle, twists it up, and pushes it along the way.

Jim Duane  

So cool that someone figured that out. Yeah,

Jim Duane  

is, is the diamond collection. Is that kind of the workhorse for for

Andrea Card  

Coppola, yes, yeah. For Francis Ford Coppola, we definitely the diamond is our most distributed, most well known wine. So we want it to be the everyday wine if you're an everyday drinking kind of person, and if you're not an everyday drinking person, we still want it to be the wine that you go to for an easy celebration, and something that is, you know, is going to be consistent and just really easy to drink, and balanced. And you know what you're getting when you're picking up that varietal from, from

Jim Duane  

that are all the wines varietal? Are they? Are there some blends?

Andrea Card  

We have one red wine, so that is a Petite Verdot Alicante Boucher, some Cabernet. You know, it depends on the vintage, but we have some real core base wines that we put in that wine. And that's Petite Verdot and the Alicante. Everyone always is like, Oh, I don't know. Are you sure about the Alicante? I'm like, Just get the Alicante, because it's part of the story. And why change the story? If you can. I mean, I and I think it's a fun learning thing for everyone in the winery. They're like, Whoa, those grapes are cool. They're red on the inside. It's like, yeah, it's. Not many that are so it's fun.

Jim Duane  

Okay, so how many different varietals in the diamond collection?

Andrea Card  

Oh, geez, I don't know. Or approximately, let's say 10. Okay, I don't know, okay, to be honest. Because then we have all these little extensions, because we have the vibrance, right? So we have, we have Pinot Grigio in the normal diamond collection, and then we have the vibrance, so the low alcohol. And then we also have another series, the Appalachian series, and that kind of focuses on the wine from more specific Appalachian so we have our normal Sauvignon blancan Diamond, which is a California but then we also have our Sonoma County Sauvignon Blanc. And so the price point is very similar, very affordable, but the profile of the wine is a little more specific to this place.

Jim Duane  

So are you would it be correct to say that you're mainly focused on Sonoma fruit?

Andrea Card  

We love Sonoma because that's where we are. And me, being a Sonoma grown girl, I definitely like that focus. And so yes, I think as a winery, that is what we are trying to work with. But obviously we have these big California programs, so we do use Sonoma County fruit, and then North Coast fruit, Central Coast fruit, and then interior Valley. Those are kind of our focus is, do you

Jim Duane  

have some fruit truck north, or does that go to some of the other facilities more proximate? Yeah.

Andrea Card  

So we have different facilities within our company, and so we try not to truck fruit too far. And so if it comes from Central Coast, it'll be processed in the Central Coast, and then we will blend at a later time. Okay? And we collaborate with those winemakers at that winery make sure that they're making it in the style that we're looking for. And works out pretty great.

Jim Duane  

How would you describe that style? Hmm.

Andrea Card  

I mean, for the diamond collection, we want it to be that very easy to drink, very well balanced, and just a wine that, you know, I think I might have said this. It's just, you know what to expect. So you are going to drink our California Chardonnay from the diamond collection. It's going to taste like what you think California Chardonnay tastes like. And so it's going to have a little more oak than probably somewhere else, and it's going to taste like California sunshine, right? Whereas, if you get maybe one of our other Chardonnays, it maybe will be very reserved on the oak, and that won't have gone through ml and those kinds of things. But this wine, these wines are definitely designed for somebody who may be living in Michigan, and they're like, Hey, I love California Chardonnay. They buy our California Chardonnay, and they will not be disappointed because it tastes like California Chardonnay. So it's really a wine for our consumer. And then as you get into the different brands and different tiers, then it's like the winemaker style starts coming out.

Jim Duane  

Okay, is that where you have a little bit more room to play with some of those smaller Yeah? Yeah.

Andrea Card  

So we have, you know, our reserve wines here, that you can only get at the winery.

Jim Duane  

And so does that mean that kind of feeds a wine club and visitation?

Andrea Card  

Yeah. So we have a great wine club, and great wine club members and people who have been with us from the beginning. I just met a few of them, actually a couple weeks ago, we had a great dinner here. But when was it beginning? In 2006 was when this winery was purchased, and so when those started, and people said, Oh yeah, we were coming and we were tasting out the back. They had this weird bar set up in the back while they were doing construction on this place. But people were so enamored, I guess by it, that they became members even back then. So like, 20 year members, yeah. So like other series of wines like the reserve, they're coming from one specific vineyard, one specific varietal, and we can make it really reflect more of the vintage, as opposed to reflecting just the varietal from that place, if that makes sense. So we definitely it's it's hand sold. We talk about it. And so someone who gets the reserve Cabernet this year and the reserve Cabernet last year, there may be differences, but that's because the vintages were different, but they're going to be beautiful Cabernet that comes from a specific place.

Jim Duane  

I just did my great pressure report yesterday, and I picked my Chardonnay on average at a higher brix than my Cabernet this year, which is just kind of the funny season, but had a little bit of a struggle to get Cabernet. The best lots got fully ripe, but some of the some of the blocks that struggle. But with virus and some of the older blocks, 23 five was all I was going to get this year.

Andrea Card  

In some ways, that's fun, I sure. I mean, there's not many. Well, it's

Jim Duane  

nice to be in a place where you can make that wine, and that's okay. Yes, it's a little bit harder. If you're, you know, you're kind of in a rigid program where you're always going to have to be a certain final alcohol, correct, tight tolerance.

Andrea Card  

Yeah, I mean, and in some ways that might be more like our diamond collection, right? We want to make sure that no one even notices when we transition vintage to vintage, because we want them to not have to worry about that at the price point that those wines are at. No one should worry about what the vintage is and if it's going to be the same, whereas all these other wines, it's like, oh, well, we can, yeah, this is obviously a different, different vintage, yeah, so, but with the diamond, like, we want it to be so consistent, but we're able to do that through our broad sourcing throughout California, and then also, just by using different blenders, we can change that style.

Jim Duane  

What are some of your favorite minor grapes to blend with? You mentioned Alicante already?

Andrea Card  

Yeah, it's just fun, right? But that one's a hard one. It always has virus no matter where it's grown, and it has a hard time getting ripe sometimes. So this year we it's probably a real low risk. Was one of the last ones to come in, and we were like, Well, are we gonna get it the Alicante? I'm like, we are getting the Alicante. We will stay open until it's ready. You know, in the past for claret, there was a blender. Sa, gallon. Nobody's ever heard of it. No, I had never heard of it until I started working here. Spell that, I think, S, E, G, E, L, I n, I think, but don't quote me, I don't know. And it just added to the darkness of the Cabernet was

Jim Duane  

it also tincture. I don't know.

Andrea Card  

Okay, I really don't know much about it, because the very first year I was here, I think, was the last year we got that fruit. But we'll use things like Tempranillo or, you know, to not and just all sorts of different things just to try and see for that consistency. So by being inconsistent with our blends, we're consistent with the flavor, if that makes sense, yeah, for sure, so, but yeah, we use a lot of Petite Syrah here as a blender. We like the structure that it brings Petite Verdot. We like that from, from Sonoma County, gives like this, like, I like to think of it as, like a bass note, or like a bass drum, just kind of like a, I don't know, a hearty base to the wine.

Jim Duane  

Is it fruity?

Andrea Card  

Sometimes, not, not real fruity, yeah, not real fruity. Just for me, it's more of like the dark, dark fruit. And just gives us, like, really, I don't know, muscular kind of base,

Jim Duane  

okay, all right, I don't know

Jim Duane  

I had some Petite Verdot on the ranch at CV, where I was and, yeah, it was, it was great, but it was just too powerful. Okay? Every year I was, like, using less and less and less. Like, you're too much. Yeah, it was, it was, and then at one point I'm like, guys, I don't think this is, I don't think this is the variety for us,

Andrea Card  

okay, and not on its own, because it was too much. I wouldn't be

Jim Duane  

able to ever finish a second class. I did use some like pressure people that wanted to bottle on its own. I'm like, it's unique. It's interesting. I think you'll sell a bottle, but I don't think you'll ever sell someone a second bottle.

Andrea Card  

Okay, yeah. I like, I, when I think about it, sometimes I think it's more of, like a has, like a violets, like moral,

Jim Duane  

graphite, components,

Andrea Card  

yeah, I like and I like that. Okay, Violet. And there's not a lot of petite photo grown here, so we can't get lots of it anyway, so we use it sparingly. But I think it's a nice component.

Jim Duane  

Does the Do you own much of your vineyard sourcing?

Andrea Card  

Yeah, so we own some of the vineyard here at our estate. And then we have some more vineyard about three miles up the road that has cab petite Syron Syrah, which we use a lot for one of our wines called Eleanor, which is Francis's wife in honor of her. And then we also have an estate at the top of Pine Mountain called Archimedes, and that's planted to Cabernet and Malbec Where is Pine Mountain. So it is at the very north end of Sonoma County, in Alexander Valley, and partly not in Alexander Valley, if that makes sense. And then it actually bleeds over into Mendocino County. So it straddles Sonoma and Mendo and it's in the county and in Alexander Valley, it's very confusing. And our vineyard is split in half, between half of it being in Alexander Valley and by mountain, the other half being. Just Pine Mountain Sonoma County.

Jim Duane  

Are you having to be careful as a winemaker with your appellations and your sub Appalachians?

Andrea Card  

Yes, because especially for our own estate fruit and the higher end fruit that we're purchasing from all of our grower neighbors, and we're trying to make sure that we're making the right decisions at the right time. And we're always looking at, you know, how many cases do we really need of this wine for this vintage? And you're trying to predict the future with that. And so we try to keep things kind of segregated as much as possible until it's time to marry, because at some point you got to make a decision, and you have to make the wine, and you have to have it settle for a bit before you just stick it into a bottle. So we want to give it that time. So yeah, but we do our due diligence to keep everything as segregated as possible.

Jim Duane  

Sure, if you ever have a lot or some wine go rogue or it doesn't fit within programs, can that just move to delicato because they have all sorts of tiers.

Andrea Card  

I mean, don't tell them, but yeah,

Jim Duane  

I mean, that's nice, because I have to

Andrea Card  

sell wine, right, correct, correct. Yeah, we have, we're, it's like we live in the lap of luxury here, because we have, you know, $125 bottles of wine that we're making, or so, I don't actually know the retail values of anything anymore, all the way down to things that we're selling for 699, and so if there is that lot that didn't do well this vintage because of the season, which happens, we Have some varietals actually, that we grow that seasonality is really a big deal. So in the cool seasons, it's like, Ooh, okay, well, that's gonna go into something different than it normally would. And so we have that capability of kind of downgrading the wine, and then if we have to, we can ship it off into kind of the larger, yeah, family, I

Jim Duane  

was always jealous. So I used to work at stag sleep wine sauce, which is part of st Michel wine for part of when I worked there and in Washington, they had two vine which was this brand. I don't they were trying to compete with, like, two bucks chocolate. It was really a low price brand, and it could catch anything and everything. Yes, even if it was the wrong color, they could make it go in, right? But in California, the California properties never had a two vine because the fruit was too expensive, yeah, and so we were kind of forced to keep everything, even some of those, those unfortunate lots. And I was always jealous, because to have that pressure relief in larger set of brands is it really helps you keep your quality high for it does premium.

Andrea Card  

But mind you, no one's pleased with us if you do that, because we're making decisions on things that, you know, the cost has been already paid, right? But the cost has already been paid, I say. And so why would we want to degrade quality if we don't have to? And so it's a it's a blessing for us, for sure.

Jim Duane  

I mean, it's the eternal struggle between winemakers, accountants and marketing people, yes, yeah. How much are you out on the road?

Andrea Card  

I say that I go four times a year, but I think this year I was a lot more than that. So I'm already looking at some trips early next year, so it's good. I like it. Though I was gonna ask, Do you like it? Yeah, I my daughter is older. She's almost 16, and so she says she doesn't care, but then she's really excited when I come home, so that feels good. And I'm only normally gone for four or five days, which is great. But this coming year I get to go to Europe, so I'm cool with that. Yeah.

Jim Duane  

And when you go out, is it mainly meeting with your distribution partners and retail accounts? What do you do to sell wine on the road?

Andrea Card  

I do that. How do they use you? Yeah. So I I get a lot of distributor meetings and info and lunches and those kinds of things with our distributor, because that's where we really feel like we have the most power and where we make the most change, potentially, with people who are really, truly selling the wines. But I'm doing some guest and consumer facing events too. I always say it makes me laugh. I'm like, Who would have ever thought that me signing my name on a bottle that I would get paid for it? I'm cool with it. I mean, it's just weird, but it's great people are excited about it, and as long as people are excited, I always tell, you know, marketing, I'm like, I'll do whatever you guys need me to do, as long as people are going to be excited about it and that it's something that's helpful for our brand. And you know, I'll have winemaker dinners sometimes they're super fancy, and I'm like, wow, I don't ever treat myself like this. So it's kind of nice. It's a nice, nice change. But I've gotten to go to states in the US that I've never been to, and. Next year I'm going to Denmark.

Jim Duane  

So, oh, super cool. Yeah, are there certain markets in the US where the your brands are more popular than others?

Andrea Card  

Florida is killing it. Okay? Yeah? I mean, it's hot there. I don't know. I'm not sure why. You know, claret is doing well there, but it does okay. So Florida is a really great market for us, and then we have some other good hot spots. But yeah, I go to Florida every year. That's where they send me every year, because it feels like there's a good, good market for me to be in, and people get excited.

Jim Duane  

So how much can the winery run without you?

Andrea Card  

Oh, they're great without me. I mean, that's should be the way it is, right? Hopefully. I hope so. I mean, there's times that I'm like, Well, I'm going to be gone. Good luck. But I yeah, I mean, I hope to empower everyone that I work with and that they feel confident in making good decisions, and if they don't, they can call me, right? I mean, I'm always just available.

Jim Duane  

So when you're out on the road, what are the kind of calls that you do get?

Andrea Card  

I don't get a lot anymore. Yeah, it used to. I used to get more than I do now. I think people, you know, most of it is everyday things. If there's a major problem, that's when I get the calls. It's not the calls from my staff that I worry about or or the people I work with. It's more like the person who's in charge of bottling, if he calls, oh, what's going on, or something like that, then there's like, a major problem with, I don't know, the balling line going down, or the label is crazy or something. I have no idea. I can't even think of a good example, but I've gotten those calls, and sometimes it's a little stressful, but there's lots of boots on the ground here that can fix things.

Jim Duane  

One of the most stressful parts about my job is, is bottling, because we do it all in one day. Oh, and so, you know, got to get all the packaging elements in there. Do you have to get involved with that? Or is there? Do you have sort of departments and other people that can? Yeah? I mean, we manage those, because that's, it's a lot of work.

Andrea Card  

Yeah, logistics, we have a procurement team, and then we have a warehouse team, right? And they work together to make sure that they're getting the glass in a timely manner. We only have so much space to store anything, so it's in and out. And, you know, as wine gets bottled, it gets put on the truck to go to the warehouse, to be stored, and so lots of logistical things like that we don't get involved with, which is a blessing for the most part.

Jim Duane  

Do you have good software?

Andrea Card  

Sure it works. We have an internal, oh, you got your internally grown system that tracks our wines and our blends, does

Jim Duane  

that come from delicata? Yeah, okay, I guess they're big enough they could develop their own. Yeah?

Andrea Card  

And it has gotten better each year, okay, which has been good, yes, yeah.

Jim Duane  

How much do you exist on software versus whiteboards in your own, whatever system you have? And I'm thinking of, like, more of harvest, yeah, downstream stuff. But like, yeah, for you to communicate to your team. Like, what does that look like at harvest?

Andrea Card  

That's funny that you ask, because today we were just talking about virtual tank boards, basically, and having it come directly from the software, because right now we have a physical whiteboard that someone updates with a dry erase pen, okay, but it gives us the flexibility of knowing when that tank is going to be emptied. If there's wine or juice or grapes that need to go in behind it. We have little dots. It's color coded. We can write notes on it. We can say that, you know, this got an extra 300 gallons of something, because, you know, whatever, whatever the note is, it's helpful information, whereas when you go into the software, you're like, well, it says that there's 12,000 gallons. That's it, you know. So someday we're gonna go digital. But that whiteboard has been something that I've lived with for a very long time, and so I was very pleased when I came here and there was a whiteboard, I mean, and it's multiple whiteboards, actually it's three whiteboards, huge ones that fit all of the tanks on them.

Jim Duane  

Is that kind of Central Intelligence for harvest? Then, yes,

Andrea Card  

so I do a lot of the logistical of when grapes come in and potentially where they're gonna go. Sometimes I leave it up to the winemakers, but most of the time, I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna figure it out, only because I like that. It's like a chess game. Oh, you know, my favorite parts of the job. It's super fun. I don't know what it is. It's like, so nerdy.

Jim Duane  

But it's great. I was freaking out this harvest when I knew that we had a lot of grapes coming. Yeah, it's a late season. So I'm like, Okay, we're gonna have to turn tanks. This is gonna be a real logistics game. But like that, that lights up my brain a little bit.

Andrea Card  

Yeah, I feel like alive. I'm like, Okay, where can we move this, to put this here? And then, of course day of then the the truck comes, and they're like, Well, I know we said we were gonna have 23 tons, but we actually ended up with 30 or something. And you're like, Excuse me, what? That's not even it doesn't even fit on one truck. So it makes it fun.

Jim Duane  

What's the furthest out? You will call a pick like, number of days out?

Andrea Card  

Oh, well, depending on what it is, we'll pick, I mean, we'll, we'll call it like two weeks ahead of time, depending, depending on where we are, but that is with the caveat that we can make a change. Yeah, so normally it's a week, and then we still double check. But there's certain vineyards that we know really well. And you know, maybe it's a very steady ripening season, and we're like, yeah, that can come in in two weeks.

Jim Duane  

Are you driving around to vineyards a lot, or do you have people coming and bringing samples in?

Andrea Card  

We have both. So we have a grower relations team that is amazing, and they are out and about and looking at vineyards and meeting with growers and all of that all the time. And we have samplers, and so they bring in samples for us to taste every day as the sample season goes. But it's a requirement of mine, for me and my team to go to every vineyard. So you got to go. You got to look at it. You got to make sure that the decision is correct.

Jim Duane  

So where did you learn that skill? I do believe it is a skill of evaluation of how vineyards doing and how it's tracking how it's evolving when

Jim Duane  

it's going to get to your desired endpoint.

Andrea Card  

Yeah, I mean, I think I use I lean on other people for some of that, because I don't think that I hold all of that knowledge by any means. So I work with grow relations in the fact that they know the vineyard really well, because they're there 12 times more than I am, right? And they know the seasonality even more of each place. And so I'll say, you know, this looks pretty good. I'm thinking, next week we might be close, and they'll be like, Well, yeah, do you remember in 2023, and I'm like, maybe

Andrea Card  

because I don't have a great memory.

Andrea Card  

But they're like, remember how it raisined So quickly when we had 90 degree weather and it looks like we're gonna have 90 degree weather, and it's like, oh, yeah, okay, why don't we schedule it for four days from now then and maybe prevent that from happening? And it's always perfect. Whenever girl relations tells me that this is the way it should be, I'm like, Okay, I'll listen to you. Okay. Very few times I'm like, no, no, we're gonna do it my way. But, you know, and if I do it my way, then I just live with it. So, yeah, what?

Jim Duane  

As you're, you're in harvest, and you're, you're bringing lots in, and you're in fermentation, how much of where that wine is going to end up? Do you know at that point we

Andrea Card  

have a very good rough idea, if that makes sense, we we buy grapes based on the tier and basically on the brand level. So even if they're within the same, what we would call the same tier, we still have an idea of the style within that tier. Like, Oh, this wine, the style is more black fruit, really rich and dark, and this one is more fruity, red fruit, brighter, acid. And so we know the different vineyards of what kind of produces which, and so we'll go with that.

Jim Duane  

So for the most part, things come in within their tier. Yeah, okay, yeah,

Andrea Card  

I mean, and sometimes we're like, Oops, this one didn't make it sure, or this one just jumped two tiers, and this one we should evaluate as a single vineyard or as the main blending component to a higher end wine.

Jim Duane  

Do you have many single vineyard wines? We do our

Andrea Card  

whole reserve

Andrea Card  

tier is is single vineyard, and then most of the rest of them are blends. Okay.

Jim Duane  

Yeah, tell me some of the white varieties that you have. You mentioned Chardonnay. I assume there's Sauvignon Blanc, yeah. Where else does it go when you get sort of longer tail? Yeah.

Andrea Card  

So we have a Vermentino, we have Vianney, we have a Pinot Grigio that we're making kind of more high.

Andrea Card  

End with a little color, because that's what I wanted to do.

Jim Duane  

Color from Pinot Grigio, yeah. So just some skin contact, yeah.

Andrea Card  

I always thought it was so weird that Pinot Grigio was clear in a bottle when it's not a white grape, really. I mean, it is, but it's so coppery and so pretty. So it is one of the prettiest grapes. Yeah, it's really pretty. And then all of a sudden you come across a cluster that looks like Pinot Noir, and you're like, Oh, well, that one was dark. Okay. What other whites are we doing? Chardonnay? Saw Blanc. Yeah, okay, I probably left some poor little guy out we have some gevert jemeer that's for sale in the tasting room that I think is beautiful, but people don't understand that Governor jiminer can be a dry wine, and we make it in a dry style. So it's a beautiful wine, in my very humble opinion, but it's hard to get people to understand the style of it.

Jim Duane  

Do you do any of this? Sophia sparkling?

Andrea Card  

Okay, yeah, we make Sophia sparkling. Make a Blanc de Blanc and a brute rose a. What do we call it? Now, I can't even think of what we call it. And so we do those. And then a still rose. And then we also make cans, so sparkling little mini cans. So that was actually Francis was the first one to put sparkling wine in a can. So it's a very cute little can. I see one up there. Actually, there's

Jim Duane  

some other packaging I've had Sophia and years ago, maybe,

Andrea Card  

I mean, if it has to do with us and Francis, yes, the packaging changes, because Francis wants to experiment with how things look. And so, yeah, so the Sophia in the bottle right there, used to have the cellophane on it, and that was for Sofia's wedding. He wanted it to look like a peony flower. That's her favorite flower, apparently. So the pink cellophane, and then you're supposed to move the cellophane to make it look like a peony. Recently, we have redone the packaging. Sophia actually redid the label, and so we've taken the cellophane off because we don't want the extra for non sustainability things, and kind of revamped the label to be a little more modern, a little less floral looking.

Jim Duane  

And do you have the ability to do secondary fermentation and bottle sparkling here?

Andrea Card  

So when we had the second winery we did, but now we've consolidated, and so now we do not so now we we use a

Jim Duane  

we have a contract. Does that

Jim Duane  

make your job? May rephrase this, I've never wanted to make sparkling wine because I feel like you had to work twice as hard. You have to do harvest, then you got to do another fermentation again. And I was like, Well, why not just make red wine and do it once? Yeah?

Andrea Card  

And you have to be super stressed out when it's doing its secondary fermentation,

Jim Duane  

yeah, and I'm not that technical of a wine maker.

Jim Duane  

Is that work that you get pulled

Jim Duane  

into? You

Andrea Card  

know, it's not too bad, because we were able to have a whole system set up for us that we were able to use, and it basically would dose everything for us and do all of these things. So we're using Charmat method, and so that was great. So not, not too bad, but it is stressful once you get through that secondary fermentation and you're like, Okay, now we got a bottle. Now we have to go to bottle, and everyone's like, well, maybe we can bottle it this week or next week. Or next week, and you're like, No, we got a bottle just because, you know, holding it in that pressurized tank gets a little stressful.

Jim Duane  

Yeah. Is it stressful? Because it could lose pressure?

Andrea Card  

Yes. And then you'll your alcohol will be too high to re ferment again, so you have to re blend. It becomes kind of a headache, okay? And you have sucrose in the wine, because that's what you use for the secondary fermentation, and you cannot have sucrose in a still wine, so you cannot leave legally, you cannot blend it back into anything else. Okay, so it can be a nightmare, okay, if you don't get it into

Andrea Card  

the bottle. So the fun of sparkling.

Jim Duane  

I mean, I'm just gonna stay away. Yeah, it's probably best

Andrea Card  

I try to stay at arm's length. So

Jim Duane  

what other projects or new things do you have, sort of in the works that you're excited about going forward?

Andrea Card  

You know, I think I said we're always looking at R and D projects and working on different things, and one of them was non elk. Our company is not necessarily super excited and on the bandwagon with me yet, but we might get there. I don't know. We'll see, even if it's just like an offering for the people who come. The tasting room, and they have a designated driver, and we're like, hey, we have this really cool, non alcoholic, let's say wine in quotations, that we made as just a special offering for people who aren't drinking. So that's exciting to a few of us on the winemaking team, just because it's something so different.

Jim Duane  

And and then be like, you know, it's technical work.

Andrea Card  

It's technical and interesting, I think, and something so different from what we're doing on a day to day basis that that makes it exciting. Other than that, you know, they're doing all sorts of experimentation where, I think I can say we're going to have a little Italian spritz. So right now we have a Prosecco in the diamond collection, and that came out just a couple years ago. It's great. It's a wonderful Prosecco, and it's very fun. But spritzes are all the rage and so

Jim Duane  

And technically, what is the definition of a spritz?

Andrea Card  

I don't know some sort of bubbly, bubbly wine with some fruits.

Jim Duane  

I do know that Napa has a spritz bar. Now I passed, oh that the other day. I bet that place is booming, and my wife asked me what that was, and I was like, you know, oh, she wants

Andrea Card  

to go. Yeah, for sure. I want to go now that I know

Jim Duane  

it sounds light, yeah. So

Andrea Card  

ours, I think will be like a

Jim Duane  

lemon spritz, okay, style. So, not a Seltzer,

Andrea Card  

not a seltzer. So it's a sparkling wine with additional flavors, okay, yeah, okay, so like an Aperol Spritz, but this one will not be that bitter component. It'll be more sweet, sweet and citrusy. Okay, that sounds nice, yeah, refreshing in the summertime, they'll come in little, you know, small 180 sevens, okay, whatever the size might be awesome.

Andrea Card  

So, yeah, it's fun.

Jim Duane  

Anything else you think we should talk about before we wrap it up?

Andrea Card  

No, I mean, I just think the fact that you've never been here, and you live here, I think people need to go out on adventures. And we always say that this place is for wine, food and adventure. And so this could be part of someone's adventure, coming to Francis Ford Coppola in Geyserville, and experiencing, I don't know, the beauty of the place, and just then, kind of some of the magic that comes along with the theatrical part too.

Jim Duane  

Do you know any websites or anything that people should go to?

Andrea Card  

I can look it up. I believe it is, Francis Ford, Coppola winery.com, okay, and it just got redone. It's quite lovely. But yeah, you can find out all sorts of information on the website, or we have a guest services phone number. You can call them and they'll tell you everything you need to know about the pool and the restaurant rustic and everything

Jim Duane  

else you should go to the website, because perhaps not open on Tuesday and Wednesday

Jim Duane  

so correct.

Andrea Card  

We are not open on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, but you can stop in if you're just driving by, you know, Thursday through Monday, you don't have to have a reservation, although there are some days that are busier than others, but it being winter time, bring it on. Okay.

Jim Duane  

Everyone should visit. Andrea, last question you said you grew up in Sonoma, yep, what did your childhood smell like?

Andrea Card  

I grew up on an apple orchard, and so it smelled like rotten apples. And to me, that's a wonderful smile. And so we used to play rotten apple wars, and you just didn't want to be the kid that got hit by the only semi rotten apple, so kind of like a fermented apple. And so I think that's why I like fermentation and the process so much.

Jim Duane  

So if you come across a barrel of Chardonnay that hasn't been taught for too long, and it's aldehydic, are you okay with I

Andrea Card  

kind of like it, yeah. I mean, I know it's wrong, right? It's okay. It's okay, yeah,

Jim Duane  

okay. This has been great. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. Bye.

End of Episode

Jim Duane:
If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe to Inside Winemaking and visit insidewinemaking.com for courses, consulting, and past episodes.