Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - January 2nd, 2026

25:53So it's not that we're anti all taxes. It's is government doing what they can to keep costs down to be responsible in what they're spending? And then what is the contribution and how do we make it that makes the most sense, gets the most bang for the buck? Just very briefly, because you spent such a big part of your career working on affordable housing. I'm wondering if the mayor is sticking to freezing rent as his solution for affordability, because not one person that we have spoken to over the last few months thinks that not increasing supply and rather freezing rent is the right way to approach the affordability crisis with housing.

26:31Well, the new mayor is very well aware that those are not mutually exclusive options and that if there's no economic return, nobody's going to build housing. He's figured that out. So he has he has said really since pre-primary that he understood the private sector had an important role in the supply side and he was going to work on that. So I think that, again, his view is much more nuanced. Now when he talks about freezing the rent, he says, and one thing that will enable us to do that is if we reduce property taxes on rent-stabilized regulated buildings. So he gets it. He can add and subtract.

27:11So can you come back? You said we had an hour's worth of questions. Fairly scratched the surface, but we so appreciate it. Kathy, thank you. Good luck. Thanks for having me. Kathy Wild, president and CEO, outgoing president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, part of the transition team of the New York City mayor-elect, and of course, our Bloomberg News senior reporter, Miles Miller. This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting

27:50It was billed as just another meme coin, a Trump-branded token based on hype and a political spectacle. But the rise of the Trump coin tells a much bigger story. A glitzy ballroom, anonymous wallets, lightning-fast trades, and then came the crash that caused hundreds of thousands of people to lose money. except most notably the Trump team that launched it. Writing about it for Bloomberg Businessweek, Zeke Fox and Max Abelson. Zeke is Bloomberg News investigations reporter and author of Number Go Up, Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall. Max Abelson is Bloomberg News finance reporter. We just got to start with some basics here before we get into the shadowy web that spans like cafes in New York City and Singapore, which you guys travel, which you Zeke travel to Singapore.

28:34for. Memecoin, been around for more than a decade, started with the doggy. But what are they? Yeah. So the first one was Dogecoin. It was kind of intended as a joke, like a parody. This guy, he liked crypto and he was like, why are people making these dumb cryptocurrencies? I'll make the dumbest one I can think of. And then it kind of took off. But in the last couple of years, there's been this huge boom in meme coins. It's kind of like this trend where people just pick anything that's in the news, say a little like six, seven, like the joke the kids like, they'll slap it on a coin. The coin transparently doesn't do anything, but people just sort of gamble on the idea of it attracting attention and other people jumping in.

29:19They all sort of follow this pattern of going up and then crashing. And these gamblers are looking for the next one. So, Max, let's go back to January of this year, just a few days before the president is inaugurated for his second term. What happens? Well, you know, there was so much going on that weekend that it's easy to forget. But there was like an actual kind of crypto ball. And that might not have been like a real official title, but it was certainly this big crypto ball. And it cost a lot of money. It was like$2 ,500 to get in. And we spoke to people who are there. Actually, I think maybe one of my favorite interviews this year was with George Santos, the disgraced congressman.

29:55He was honestly a delight to interview, I have to say. He was there. He talked about how he skipped the line because he was like, I'm George Santos. Like, George Santos doesn't wait on lines. And he... Tim kind of says that to you occasionally. You know what? Tim would. Zeke and I wait on lines. They go into the crypto ball. So it's a room full. And this is the Mellon Auditorium in Washington by the Washington Mall. This is a fancy space. And it's a room full of, of course, you know, crypto people, crypto investors, crypto executives, influencers. And phones start going off at one point. I think it's just before Snoop Dogg is about to perform, I believe.

30:30And they find out that Donald Trump has launched a meme coin. And I think one of the first thoughts on people's minds was like, this can't be real. And the thing is, it was real. And one thing that I just loved about working with Zeke is that he explains in our Business Week story sort of the shades of realness. On the one hand, it really was true. Donald Trump really did launch a meme coin right as he was on the edge of becoming the most important person in the entire universe. But on the other hand, it's lacking in a certain kind of realness as we usually think about assets. A meme coin has a certain kind of like existential nothingness.

31:09You know, it's sort of, it's vacant by design. It doesn't give you rights to future profits. It basically represents nothing but itself. And its investigators, excuse me, its investors, as Zeke and I wrote, are basically investing in sort of nothing but speculation. It's speculating and speculation itself, as I believe this man said. And because of that, nobody makes money, right? So it's kind of like... A little sarcasm. I mean, it's kind of like a, it's a zero-sum game, right? Like some people are going to get in early and make money. Other people are going to get in late. They're going to be left holding the bag, except that whoever created the coin, their goal is obviously to get paid.

31:50And they're going to suck out a lot of like the total amount that's been gambled on this coin. You guys write a little bit about pump and dump schemes like Wolf of Wall Street, Boiler Room style in the piece. And you draw a distinction between what's happening with meme coins from a regulatory perspective versus what would happen with a traditional stock, penny stock. Talk about that a little bit, Zeke. Yeah. I mean, if you think about what was happening at Stratton Oakmont, like the boiler room depicted in the Wolf of Wall Street, you've got all these salesmen who are on the phone calling retired dentists and being like, you've got to get in on this hot new goldmine stock.

32:26and this would drive the stock up. And then eventually whoever had created this promotion would secretly have holdings of it. They'd dump, the stock would go back down. But the people who bought these stocks had to be tricked. You had to convince them like, this was a pretty cool gold mine they should invest in. With meme coins, the people who are gambling on them basically know the drill. And they know that whoever creates the coin is going to want to dump once it gets going and that they are like seeking out this pump and dump game. And the SEC does not look favorably on the equity, the stock side of this.

33:02But what about the meme coin side of this? So the meme coins were in a pretty like gray area. No one really knew what to make of it. There hadn't regulators hadn't really taken any action. It had been weird enough that most of the better celebrities had stayed away. Before Trump, the most famous was probably Caitlyn Jenner. I forgot about that one. Three weeks after Trump's inauguration, after he had created his own meme coin, the Trump administration's Securities and Exchange Commission came out and said, hey, you know what? These meme coins, they're fine. Not securities, not our business. That wouldn't stop maybe someone else from regulating them, but no one has stepped up at this point.

33:42So let's talk about the money. This is an administration. We talk about it being transactional. We talk about some, say, grift going on and so on and so forth. There's a lot that goes back and forth. But this has made, right, the president and his family some real money. It's like hundreds of millions of dollars. So Trump made about 300 million from launching his meme coin, according to estimates from crypto tracing firms. And then that same weekend, Melania launched her own meme coin and likely collected another 40 or 50 million. I mean, this is like the easiest money they've ever made for like a couple of tweets.

34:21And now, as we mentioned, those cryptocurrencies have plummeted more than 90 % from their peak. So, Max, let's get into a little bit of the shadowy global network that helped the president make these meme coins. We look at the blockchain as this entity that kind of allows us to see who does what. But it was kind of a challenge to get to the bottom of who actually helped the president. Who are some of the characters that you and Zeke found? Yeah, honestly, it would be so much cooler if we could sit here and look at you and be like, we honestly did crack this and there's like no mystery left and we can explain it all.

34:56The truth is, I cannot lick you in the eye and say that in good faith. Does not mean you did not meet some people along the way. We did. It's all about the friends you make along the way. That's exactly right. That's why we get into journalism. And, you know, I have to say for viewers who haven't read it yet, you know, my co-writer on this story wrote a book called Number Go Up that, I mean, is certainly the funniest. and probably realistically the best book about the crypto industry that exists. And so I felt a little bit, by comparison, kind of like a babe in the woods as we started this because I was working with someone who really, really understands how this works.

35:31But he was very generous with me and we kind of took it a step at a time. I think the first thing we did is went to meet someone who you'd really want to stop in and talk to you if you're trying to understand meme coins. And that is one of the creators of something called Pumpfunk. And this young man, his name is Elon Cohen. I mean, I'm in my 40s. I believe Elon was like 21 when we met him, maybe 20, 22. He is part of this small group that has launched this marketplace for meme coins, where if you want, like right now, you could go and start the Carol coin. And you could do it with, how long would it take?

36:10A few minutes? Like 10 seconds. And it's this remarkable, slightly gross, certainly immature marketplace. Because the whole idea that I think if he were here, he would say that the grossness is, it's not a bug, it's a feature. That people get to do whatever they want. And that whatever people find funny, whatever grabs people's attention, it can be commodified and it can be sold. Now, to be fair, that is not where the Trump coin launched. So after we sort of understood pump fund, then we had to go sort of make a slight pivot. Yeah. So we got nobody. As you said, nobody took responsibility for helping the Trumps, which is a little weird.

36:51But a clue emerged a few weeks later when another president launched a meme coin. This was Javier Millay, the president of Argentina. Of chainsaw fame. Yeah. And it's kind of weird in meme coins. Everyone's like I said, everyone knows the drill, but still they have their own code of ethics. And the Malay coin really set people off because it crashed. Instead of waiting like a couple of days to crash, it crashed within hours. And Malay, who had promoted it with a tweet, deleted his tweet, which was just not seen as fair play. And after this Malay coin debacle, this previously unknown crypto bro named Hayden Davis came forward.

37:34He's 28 years old. He'd been involved in NFTs. He sort of but was not like a well-known guy. And he said, I am Javier Mille's advisor. We were creating this coin for the people of Argentina. And then he gave a series of increasingly ill-advised interviews in which he talked about how meme coins are rigged, how there's sort of insider trading of a sort within meme coins. And then he said that he had helped Melania Trump with her coin. And, you know, I thought to myself, like, could this be? Is this really true? How did he connect with Melania? And it turned out that luckily for us, he had been quite a boastful guy who loved to text like crazy stuff to his friends.

38:27And we were able to review some messages that he'd sent to associates where he clearly did know that Melania's coin was coming, like suggesting this was true. And where he even hinted that maybe he'd been involved in Trump's coin. We got to leave it there, guys. Zeke, Max, check out the story. It's the Bloomberg Big Take. You can find it at the Bloomberg Terminal. We just scratched the surface. You know you want more. This is Bloomberg.

38:59I'm June Grosso, inviting you to join me for the Bloomberg Law Podcast. Every weekday, we help you make sense of the legal stories that shape the nation and the world. Listen for complete analysis of the biggest court cases, the latest actions from Congress and regulators, and the legal moves driving the markets. From corporate law to constitutional law, and from state courts to the Supreme Court. At Bloomberg Law, we go beyond the day's headlines. We speak with top attorneys, judges, scholars, and policy experts to break down what the rulings really mean. We do this every weekday, then bring you the best conversations in our daily podcast.

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40:24Talking about the wine and spirits industry. From market trends to the story behind the label. And yeah, sometimes we do a little sampling. This hour, the perfect wine pairing for your next dinner party with the CEO of Duckhorn. Tapping into a mega wine experience in Uruguay. And regenerative farming techniques and winemaking with the CEO of Maison Mirabeau. Plus the business of bourbon with the retired colonel behind Lofted Spirits. First up this hour, it's not been an easy year though for those in the business of selling alcohol. thanks to a consumer pullback, changing tastes and trends, high costs, supply chain disruptions, and of, yes, tariff uncertainty.

41:01What used to sell itself now needs a sharper story and an even sharper strategy. Robert Hansen is CEO of the Duckhorn Portfolio. It's a premium American wine company known for high-end Napa Valley coastal California wines. He discussed his strategy, along with a wine tasting, with a fun trio. Bloomberg's Alexis Christophorus, Christina Kino, and Bailey Lipschultz, who filled in for us while we were out. Just for context, so Duckhorn Portfolio is the 20th largest wine marketer in the U.S. by volume, 2.8 million cases this year. So not a small place. And you know some of their brands, Vineyards, Golden Eye, Paradox, Migration.

41:40Oh, you're pouring wine for us now. What are we about to have here? What are we having here? Bailey's normally an equities reporter, but he's a sommelier. Yeah, so this is the decoy featherweight, Cabsov 2023. Low-cal. We were talking about it in the green room. So low-cal, low-alc, kind of catering to the younger generation. Sure. First, thanks for having me. Excited to be here on your Netflix and chill day, I guess. Yeah, we're going to taste first as we talk. We're going to taste the Decoy Featherweight Cabernet Sauvignon. It's the recent launch, most recent innovation in our Decoy Featherweight offering, which is the largest and fastest growing, lower alcohol, lower calorie offering within the wine category.

42:25The Cabernet is really unique. It's about 9 % alcohol, about 80 calories per serving. That's about a third less alcohol than a typical Cabernet and about 50 % the calories. It's tough to achieve a great tasting Cabernet Sauvignon that's low alc and low cal. So give it a taste and tell us what you think. All right, here we go. It smells delicious. And you know what? I don't need to necessarily have it with food. It's just like good straight up on its own. Yeah, it's addressing, you know, there's a lot that's been reported about the dislocation of the wine market. You know, we're excited about what we've achieved this year.

42:59We're excited about 2026. 2026 is the 50th anniversary of the founding of the company. Dan and Margaret Duckhorn founded the company 50 years ago on Merlot, which we're going to taste as well. At the different end of the market, the one we just tasted about$25 a bottle, the Merlot will taste as one of our high-end luxury estate. Merlots, but we're excited about what's happening. This wine we just tasted is leaning into one of the trends that's impacting especially younger consumers' consumption in the category. Younger consumers are looking for value. Pricing matters a lot. They're very conscious about consuming things that are better for them.

43:35So having a better mint introduction and innovation in the category is important. We're about to celebrate the first year anniversary of taking the company private with Butterfly Equity, our sponsor. They only invest in food and beverage. They understand craftsmanship. If you're going to put it across your lips, it's got to taste yummy. And we've got a strategy of competing in the best neighborhood, the best street in the neighborhood, and the best house on the street. So that was about a year ago that they came in. And this company has been public. It's been taken private a couple of times, a few times.

44:08What changes have happened? I mean, you actually You started with the company earlier this year in February. But what changes have been made now that this private equity company has come in and just this past year? Yeah. Well, look, for the reasons I just explained, we think Butterfly Equity is a great sponsor, a great partner for us. What I would say is one of the superpowers of the company I respected when I first got to know it is the agility, the ability to innovate at the pace of the consumer marketplace. And the market is demanding and consumers expect you to meet them on their playing field, on their terms.

44:39That's how Butterfly thinks. What's changed? I would say the agility is, the pace of the agility of the company has picked up. We've made some significant progress in a very short period of time. If I reflect upon the analogy I just provided, neighborhood, street, house, we compete in the 15 and above price segment. The market's been dislocated a bit. We can talk about that, but that's been driven by below 15 and especially below 10. So we compete in the right neighborhood. One of the best examples of what's changed, We did a portfolio construction exercise over the past nine months where we looked at our whole portfolio, 11 brands.

45:16We've concentrated on seven and four are really high growth core brands because we're winning with fewer things and focusing on the winners that matter. Big, clear lanes of competition, exceptional wines that compete against the best in the category. And we've actually increased our addressable market by almost$2 billion, from$2 billion to$4 billion in that exercise. And then the proof's in the pudding. So best house on the street. The team, I'm really proud of them, have grown our market share from 10.4 % to 11.7 % during our hold period. So it's been a busy, busy year. We've got a lot of air to travel.

45:56You'll hear duck analogies. We don't talk ground, we talk air. You'll hear duck analogies when we talk a lot. I would expect no less. We have a lot of air to cover, but we're excited about what we've accomplished so far. I just want to ask before I get ready to pour the Merlot, when you think about kind of the recovery, we have so much. Bailey likes this part. He likes pouring. This is the best. But when you think about kind of the state of the economy, it does seem like the upper 5, 10 percent of the U.S. consumer is better off than really the bottom 90 percent. Thinking about higher price wine, better wine, as you mentioned, best house on the best block, how do you think about attacking that consumer and whether you're seeing growth from them?

46:33Yeah, great question, Bailey. We're very conscious of it. Our intention is to remain a premium, fine, and luxury still wine competitor. However, and I'll give you two examples specifically on price. We've talked about the betterment example, and then I want to talk to you about consumer experiences. with the focus, especially for younger consumers, on purchasing power. There's a little nervousness around the socio-political and kind of economic environment. We're conscious of that. So two ways we've reacted. One, we introduced an amazing new brand called Green Wing, which is a$15 to$20 a bottle winery brand with amazing Cabernet from Washington and a Pinot Noir and Pinot Grigio from Willamette Valley in Oregon.

47:20That$15 to$20 bottle of wine can translate into a$12 by the glass program if you're at a restaurant. A lot of younger consumers say they get more value out of spirits or other categories. This is providing them an entry point into the wine category, kind of not telling them what to drink, but inviting them into our portfolio and into the wine category based on value. And on the higher end of the market, we made a price adjustment on our Duckhorn Vineyards Napa Valley Cabernet. It was priced at$72. We took the price down to$60 because it's a larger addressable market. And frankly, even for a fine wine consumer that can buy wine at that level, recognizing we could produce the same or better quality, maintain a really, we've got a structurally advantaged operating model with great margins.

48:09We could maintain our margins and put out a more sharp price point for them. We're just meeting people on their terms in this economic environment and growing as a result. If you heard the pouring behind us and the popcorn popping, it's because we are having some duckhorn portfolio wine, right? This is what we're about to taste is the 22 Merlot. And remind me, why is this a particularly nice Merlot? This is an exceptional Merlot. I'm going to tell you I've got a personal bias. I'm a Merlot fan. Not everyone can remember, but I remember sideways. I was going to make the joke. A film from 20 years ago that said you shouldn't drink Merlot.

48:47Completely wrong. Merlot, in my opinion, is the best varietal. Loved that movie. Loved the movie. Didn't love what it did for Merlot. Merlot is the easiest drinking wine. Super great to pair with lots of different food choices. It's an easy drinking varietal. This wine is my favorite in our entire portfolio for two reasons. One, Dan and Margaret Duckhorn, who respected nature, the craft of winemaking and hospitality, introduced this wine as their first introduction 50 years ago. And we're celebrating our 50th anniversary next year and feel really good about the momentum of the company. It's an estate wine.

49:25It's a blend of 92 % Merlot, 7 % Cab, and 1 % Cabernet Franc. It is a luxury wine, so it trades for between$120 and$150 a bottle. But it's a beautiful wine. And I encourage all of your audience to drink. Ryan is nodding profusely. Yes, it is. It is a great wine, right? Cheers. Well, all right. For our audience who are just joining us right now, we are here in the studio talking wine and drinking wine with our guests here. Robert Hanson, CEO of the Duckhorn Portfolio, as well as Bloomer News Equities reporter Bailey Lipschel. So, Robert, you know, I want to touch on what you said earlier, right, about the process of kind of going public, then private, and then back again.

50:08And so, you know, you mentioned agility was one thing that really kind of was sustained in a company throughout those changes. And, you know, talk to us about how that's serving you now that the market is changing so rapidly. We have, on the one hand, Gen Z drinkers who just consume less alcohol overall. And it seems like that's something that is maybe permeating throughout the broader American public, right? I think Gallup was saying that just 54 % of Americans in general say they drink alcohol. That's a record low. How is the company thinking about these kind of structural changes among consumers?

50:42Yeah. Well, I mean, great question. And as I mentioned earlier, it's true, as reported, that the market's been dislocated. That being said, we compete in the segment of the market that has tailwinds, 15 and above. And we're segmented from$15 a bottle up to$300 a bottle. So in Still Wine, we are the best house on the street, and we're growing because we're competing from 15 to 300. We've got a segmentation of our portfolio that meets most consumers' needs. More specifically, though, a lot's been written about the betterment trend, about drinking less but better quality. That is the focus of this portfolio.

51:22So you ask the question, what's different? We've got our eye on the horizon. we're very much focused on meeting the consumer on their playing field on their terms. They want to buy great value. They want to buy great quality. They want lower alcohol content in some cases. They want to drink less but better quality. Our whole portfolio is about that. We encourage our consumers to drink less but better quality, drink responsibly. We're meeting the consumer on their playing field. There's kind of three trends that we've addressed. Value, betterment, and then the consumer experience of consuming wine.

51:55Here's one point I'll make, though. Wine's been around for six millennia. It's a community-based product. We've got to put it right there. All right. Bloomberg's Robert Hansen of Duckhorn Portfolio. This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at 2 p.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station. Just say, Alexa, play Bloomberg 1130. But I know you are always ready. We're ready. Always ready. So our Bloomberg Pursuits came out with a last-minute gift guide for whiskey, wine, and spirits lovers.

52:33And it states something I think we can all agree with, Carol. An unexpected bottle of booze is always welcome around the holidays. Yes, indeed. Retired. Or expected. Or expected. Or expected. That's welcome. I didn't expect that from you. Retired Colonel Mark Irwin is the CEO of Lofted Spirits. It's the parent company of Bardstown Bourbon and Green River Distilling Company. It's one of the largest distillers in the United States. And he joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio, along with David Weston, who is, of course, the host of Wall Street Week and maybe partakes in bourbon every once in a while.

53:02Every once in a while. A little whiskey. Great to have you both here with us. Mark, tell us about kind of your journey. I want to just start there because you served in the U.S. Army over 25 years. You were ultimately chief of staff of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command. How do you go from there? And there's a lot of stuff in between as well. But how do you then get to here? Yeah. So luck and relationships, bottom line. I've had great luck throughout my life. I've been a sports enthusiast all my life and grew up playing sports. The Army is really a sport in itself, a competition and a team building exercise every day.

53:40And I spent 26 years, loved it. Got out of the military and wanted to do something different than government contracting, which is what most people do with my skill set. ran into some great people and a good friend that David knows well, became a mentor and a good friend to me, John Mack, who you all will have heard of, obviously. Former head of Morgan Stanley. John became a great friend and mentored me. And John was actually asked to be on the board of Bardstown Berman Company. He had loaned our founder, Peter Rofton, money throughout the years. And John thought I knew something about whiskey.

54:14I drank whiskey, but didn't know anything about the spirits business. business, but John asked me to check out the company. I went and checked it out, became on the board. And then ultimately about six and a half years ago, was asked to come and run the company. Really a team, I've built a team. And that's what it's been about for me. Just that kind of, you know, creating something where people are proud to come to work every day is probably the most important thing for me. Well, you spent the first part of your career leading a lot of people. You led a 3 ,500-man task force in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

54:48You teamed with coalition partners and Iraqis conducting stability operations throughout Iraq. That's just like 1 % of what you did over your career in the military. How does leading a company differ from actually leading in the U.S. Armed Forces? Or how is it the same? There's a thing out here in the commercial world that I've run into called the what's in it for me factor and that's a big issue and not saying it's wrong it's it's real people have to worry about their families worry about what they're getting paid that's a that's something that i didn't deal with for 26 years because everybody knew what they were getting paid everybody was on a team everybody had a goal and a mission so fighting through those things to try to create a company where literally uh people place the importance of their job as something that's a priority to them, build an organization that folks are proud to be a part of and actually want to see that company succeed.

55:42That's the kind of thing that I came from in the military, and we've, I think, done a pretty good job of doing that. If you come visit us at Bardstown or Green River, you'll see that in our people. We get comments all the time about our people and our team, and that's what makes this place special for me. Mark typically is being a little modest here, because from my vantage point, because I saw John Mack persuade you a fair amount at his house. And what I understood is they had a great product, and John Mack believed it was a great product. But the company had, let's say, upside in what it could do with that product.

56:16And Mark came in, as far as I can tell, I won't say turned it around, but really built it into something really powerful, which had the potential all along, I think, Mark. The company was in a great spot, had an awesome growth path. Unfortunately, our founder passed away three months after he plugged me in. So we needed to go look for a partner who could help us grow. We brought in a private equity firm out of Chicago that's been a fabulous partner to us and truly enabled the growth to where we are now, the largest custom distiller for spirits in Kentucky. We've grown two great brands, and that business model allows us to do things that most brands cannot do.

56:53Young brands can't afford right now to invest the way we're investing behind these two brands, and both Bardstown and Green River are two of the fastest growing brands in the U.S. right now, and it's because of this making whiskey for others, co-packing on bottling, all these different assets that we bring to our clients that enable us to go and invest in these two brands. That's what I thought was interesting and I'm going to start doing a little bit of a pour here so that you can tell us about some of what we've got here. But it is, you work with others who want to start a brand. I mean, it's a crowded space so I'm just curious how you think about who you want to partner with and how do you do something that stands out in the shell?

57:28So we really have two different entities. And what am I pouring here? Okay, so you are pouring. You're actually pouring the world's best bourbon, according to New York Spirits Wine and Spirits Competition, as of this year. So that is the top bourbon in the world. It's our Green River Weeded Bourbon, and that's a$35 bourbon. Compete against all these other bourbons in a blind taste. So should I do a bigger pour? You should do a perfect pour. But that's a really low-priced point. That is a low price point. It is a low price point. We're in the super premium and ultra premium price points, and those are the two price points in American whiskey that are growing.

58:11American whiskey is down over the last year, down 2 % to 3%, with all the different things that are going on around spirits and international trade and everything else. So luckily what we're doing behind these two brands is making them grow the way we need them to. And before we all take a step, take us back to so that when you work with someone, How do you figure out who you want to work with, right? Because there's a lot out there. Yeah. Look, I'll tell you, three years ago, we didn't have much competition, and people saw the business model, and now there's a lot of competition. We used to kind of get just to choose who we wanted to work with.

58:46Now there's competition out there. So we are truly the only ones who are providing grain-to-glass service, meaning we're going to help you design your whiskey. We'll make it for you. We'll store it for you, and then we'll get it ready to go to market with our world-class bottom facility. We're helping our clients in so many different ways, whether it be unique financing modes. That's been probably the biggest issue for our industry over the last few years. People talk about tariffs. We had financing issues before we had tariffs. There was a lot of negative chatter about alcohol and spirits in general.

59:22Young people aren't drinking, supposedly. see the GOP drugs and the impact that those are having. All these different issues creating some negative chatter. But what we're seeing today is an opportunity where I think savvy investors are starting to get in. We're getting a lot of inbound from family offices and private equity who want to create funds to specifically invest in whiskey because they see the low end of a market and an opportunity for reasonable rate of return, where four years ago, I would have told you it was kind of a crazy rate of return. Now it's reasonable. And I think people are seeing that and coming back in.

1:00:01Well, not exactly the same. I grew up there. My dad made a mean whiskey sour, and we would say, nozdrovia, because I'm Slovak. So anyway, nozdrovia, but tell us. Cheers. So this is, again, the number one bourbon in the world, according to New York spirits competition, blind tasting, amazing. This is a weeded bourbon. So bourbon is 1964. It is a, it is our nation's spirit. It's, it's America's native spirit and has to be made in the United States. And it has to be predominantly corn to be bourbon. And then typically you have a flavor grain. The flavor grain in this is wheat. People say wheat is sweet and smooth.

1:00:41The wheat is really kind of passive compared to rye and allows the sweetness of the corn to come through so that's kind of what you sense from this as you sniff it and as you taste it smells carefully it's a it's a good i don't i know david used to do the morning show and i don't know his drinking hours but this is my first bourbon of the day so i'll drink it carefully do this for work anyway cheers cheers so while they're drinking you've grown it a fair amount where's the sky how far can you take this and what do you need? So two different things really we have two two separate business lines our our core business is making whiskey for others again that's that's our core that's what pays all the bills and allows us to invest in these two brands the way we need to we're innovating on our core business we're adding small bottling lines as people want to downsize to different package sizes we're helping people we're making rum for the first time for a client who's doing the ready to drink in a can.

1:01:43We're bottling vodka and gin for folks. So we're innovating on that side to make sure we give our clients everything we can so that we can continue to invest behind these two brands. Both of these brands are going to be in the top 10 of their price point by middle of next year. So we've got to set a new goal. That's been our goal for quite a while. And then we'll get into the international market. We're selling in London, we're selling in Sydney, and we're selling in Western Canada right now. And you said Green River was about 35, Bardstown, same thing? $45 price point on that Bardstown bottled and bond.

1:02:15That's our, you know, the bottled and bond act was the first really start of FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, where you had, you were trying to get people to say what's actually in the product. So they set the rules behind what it had It had to be 100 proof, aged four years at one distiller in one season. So, you know, preventing people from putting tobacco juice for coloring and other things in it. So that's a great product. And again, Bartstown Bottling Bond. What do you think, David? Well, I'm actually curious on the growing part again. Is it capital intensive? Just 20 seconds or so. It's capital intensive.

1:02:56We're committing. And that's, again, why we've got this unique business model that allows us to invest in these brands where most brands can't. That was Mark Irwin, CEO of Lofted Spirits. David Weston, host of Bloomberg Wall Street Week, joining us there as well. You know, David has always said, wait, wait, wait. Is this like, are you guys having an alcohol segment? Hey, we were happy to have him. We finally got him to join. It was really a lot of fun. All right, still ahead on Bloomberg Business Week, how one family left the London suburbs for a small village in France all through the love of wine.

1:03:24And then a wine experience by way of Little Tuscany in Uruguay. This is Bloomberg.

1:03:33On Masters of Scale, iconic leaders reveal how they've beaten the odds. Asking really strong questions is a superpower. You want to show up with something radically different and how they've grown companies to incredible heights. The greatest rewards always come from the greatest risks. That's hit the gas. Airbnb, Zillow, Microsoft, Liquid Death, and more. Hear from the founders who've changed the game. It's anything but business as usual. Find Masters of Scale on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever else you get podcasts.

1:04:12You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Or watch us live on YouTube. It's the stuff of fantasies, Carol. We've talked about this. Yeah, you quit your corporate job in London. Okay. You move to the south of France with your three kids, your wife. You make rosé. It sounds magical. It does. Well, it wasn't a fantasy for Stephen Cronk, the founder and CEO of Maison Mirabeau. He and his wife did exactly that. It was 16 years ago? It was, yep. Wow.

1:04:49At the height of the global financial crisis. Talk about timing. Stephen's with us right now here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio, and he brought Rosé. First of all, it's been a little while since we last spoke to you. Is it like two years? Yeah. How's business been since then? Well, it's an interesting question. It's been up and down, I would say. I mean, I think Provence Rosé is still the benchmark for Rosé around the world, so we're very lucky we've got that. but there have been a lot of headwinds, as I'm sure you're aware. Yeah. Look, there's the climate change headwind, but there's also the changing consumer tastes headwinds as well as tariffs.

1:05:26Exactly. Which is the thing that is the biggest headwind? They all combine together. This is the perfect storm. So there's the health kick, there's the cannabis movement, there's the no and low alcohol movement, there's the Zimpik movement, because that suppresses people's desire to have a drink. So it's like everything. And then you load on top of that the tariffs. It's like, yeah, what has happened? So what does that mean for you guys? How do you pivot? How do you adjust around that? Well, there's a lot of things we can't change. But what we try and do is, with the tariffs, for example, we've tried to swallow as much as we can.

1:05:58We don't want Mirabeau to be much more expensive in the store. So we've tried to swallow that. That's hard. It's hard, but we're keeping our fingers crossed that maybe this is going to change. Remind everybody the price range? It's in the United States. So you don't want the price to go up in the U.S. So we have generally between$20 and$30. Okay. And we want to try and keep below$30 because that's the price point. So then how does that hit your margins? Yeah, it's not great. But, you know, I'd rather build a brand. And, you know, I'd rather people carry on drinking Mirabeau, especially, you know, we come out of Thanksgiving and Provence Rosé is just so good with turkey.

1:06:31So, you know, I'm just trying to hope this goes away and just carry on pushing my wines here. Yeah. Well, you know, and I've said I wasn't a big rosé drinker, but I've got to say yours is pretty magical and I've really enjoyed it. And we're going to taste it. I know Tim is sniffing it out. You're in the United States. Talk to us about the U.S. market specifically. So I've started farming regeneratively for some of my wines. Right. And the regenerative movement seems to be centered mainly around California now. Yeah. So I'm selling my wines in 40 countries, but California is the epicenter of the regenerative movement.

1:07:05The California Department of Food and Agriculture has been the first state to define the words regenerative agriculture. and meanwhile we've got the wine regions there, so Pazerobos, Napa, Sonoma, they are the most regenerative wine areas in the world. So what does that mean? I'm saying it's Bispo County. I know, where Tim is from. Pazerobos. But what does that mean? Would you do more here in the United States? I'm just trying to sell more wine here. And so the retailers like A1 and Sprouts and Bristol Farms and Hagen's they're really getting behind the regenerative movement. They're looking to seek out regenerative farming.

1:07:44Because there's an awareness of it, right? Because they know what it means for farmers. They know what it means for people too. Not everybody knows what regenerative farming means, and especially how that is applied to farming the grapes that go into wine, that go into rosé. So for people who don't know what it is, explain regenerative farming in the context of viniculture. So regenerative, as the name suggests, is about regenerating soil fertility and regenerating nature, in simple terms. So, you know, if you think about it what was organic farming called before the first world war farming right but then there was a huge amount of pressure here everyone was worried about industrial farming right so so the heavy tillage and in particular heavy use of chemicals so there's been a move i mean certainly since the the first world war and the second world war as well we've seen a lot of nitrogen being used in farms a lot of heavy tillage a lot of chemicals pesticides and so on and that's just been killing our soils.

1:08:35And this is a catastrophe. You know, we were worried about famine at the end of the Second World War. So rightfully, we were worried about feeding our population. But we haven't been measuring food in the right values. We've been measuring by calories rather than nutrient density. So I didn't mean to interrupt, but it was just interesting. We just came off a discussion of talking about the cost of meat and just what's going on in that world. But I do think about, like, is our soil globally, how tortured is it or how bad is it because of the industrial farming? A lot of it, most of it, I would say, is on life support.

1:09:08It's really, it's catastrophic. I was going to say, when I drive up from L.A. to Pazerobos, which is one of the most regenerative regions in wine, up the I-5, and you see thousands of acres of fruit trees and nut trees that are on life support. It's like the moon's surface. And so they're kept alive by these external inputs. And what you end up with is a product, but they're not very tasty and they're not very nutritionally dense. So we need to actually start restoring soil health globally. and regenerative is a way of doing that. So you can do that in terms of all that soil. How long does it take the process of getting it back?

1:09:39It can happen quite quickly. And that's one reason why we, so I run a nonprofit as well called the Regenerative Viticulture Foundation. So viticulture is agriculture for vines. And we're launching these initiatives called One Block Challenges. So we did one in Pazzo. We're doing one in Napa, Opus One, in fact, a great winery. Also a nice wine. Also a very nice wine. And winery. So we're doing one there on the 18th of November And we're challenging the growers in Napa, as we did in Pazzo, to just transition one block of their vineyard to regen for a year. Yeah. And then come back and see the difference.

1:10:13It's incredible how generous Mother Nature is coming back. That's Stephen Cronk, the owner of Maison Mirabeau. Hey, before we go, how about another story of a family-owned winery, this time in the luscious region of South America? Since 1999, Bodega Garzon has been making wine and developing a mega wine experience in Uruguay. Christian Wiley is Bodega Garcon's managing director. He stopped by to tell us all about it. You know, when we think about so-called new world wines, I think a lot of people often think of in South America, maybe Argentina or Chile. Uruguay, not really on the map as a wine destination as much as other areas.

1:10:49Why is that? Well, I mean, it's not on the map because they've been drinking all their wine. They've been making for the last three centuries. But then Garcon comes into play. and this is an incredible investment of Don Alejandro Bulgaroni. It's a$250 million CAPEX. It is the largest investment ever in the industry of wine. And this is right next to - In the region or in the world? In the world. Wow. So this is right next to the beach, to the Uruguayan Riviera. So you have Jose Ignacio, which is like the San Tropea. Yeah, if you're watching us on YouTube or Bloomberg Originals, you can see the stunning photos right now.

1:11:25And that was showing kind of the investment that you guys have been making. So it's done in a very, if you like, forward-thinking way of the most committed to sustainability. We were the first winery in the world to be 100 % LEED certified. And we work, you know, to express the place. It's a new terroir that is, you know, the vision is for Alberto Antonini, who's like the top winemaker from Tuscany. And then we, one of our pillars is the experiences. So we have Francis Malman is our chef. So you experience these beautiful wines with an incredible view right next to the ocean in a place that it's like the San Trope of South America.

1:12:07You don't spend$250 million on CapEx unless there's growth going on. Tell us about the business and in terms of top line growth. But it also sounds like it's also experiential that you guys have incorporated. So give us, you know, we're Bloomberg. We love all the numbers. So give us an idea in terms of the growth that you guys have seen. Well, we've basically gone from a place that didn't grow vines to a vineyard that has more than a thousand little parcels, little blocks. We've gone from zero to 60 markets. We're selling all over the world. It's become the main brand in Uruguay, but it's also the leader in the States and to Brazil, to Japan, to China, UK.

1:12:47And it's growing very fast. What's fast? Is it high teens? Is it above that? No, no, no. I mean, 100 % many years. Wow. Doubling the business many years in a row. Wow. Including COVID and, as you said, all the different cycles. Right now, yesterday we toasted to our first year with our new partners in the U.S. with Winebow. And, again, we did really well in a very tough year. but you have you have a level of investment that it's really projected very very long term we we have projects for hotels we have real estate on the beach mr bulgaroni has an incredible golf course designed by phil mickelson and angel cabrera that it's a pga tour preferred golf course we make our own extra virgin olive oil so we talk about the garcon universe what is the biggest revenue driver is it the wine or is it the real estate?

1:13:48Dare I ask if it's even the olive oil? Yeah, right. The first one was the olive oil, the extra virgin olive oil and it's one like the best extra virgin olive oil in the world a couple of times. The wineries, the wines are what's driving the revenue and it's not just selling wine as a product, it's also the experiences. So we have 50 ,000 visitors a year and this is in the middle of nowhere as you just mentioned, Uruguay. Yeah. And it's all very high income and net worth people. It goes from 20 ,000 people living there in Punta del Este and Garzón to 2 million tourists around New Year. It's a lot.

1:14:26And a lot of them are celebrities like Clooney or Gwyneth Paltrow or Messi or... Or Stenevec or Master. I was just going to say, that's kind of our crew, Carol. Well, I'm here to invite you. You have to corroborate the story, right? We only have, unfortunately, about a minute and a half or so left. You did bring in some bottles of wine. And tell us about what you brought. I don't want to mispronounce. Balasto, Tanat, Albarino. Albarino. We'll start with the white wine. Yeah. This is Albarino. We are the main grower of Albarino in the Americas. It's the white grape variety, like the queen of Spain.

1:15:02Yeah. We have the same kind of granite and Atlantic Ocean influence, similar to Galicia. And this is actually our best-selling wine in the U.S. Perfect for summer or the end of the spring, if you like. Top 100 wine spectator. So an awesome value. This is like a$22 retail. That's great. So there's a beautiful opportunity there. Tell us about the reds, which I am a red kind of gal. Okay. So this is for you. Uruguay is the country of Tanat, like Malbec would be Argentina. Oh, yeah. This is a great varietal from southwest France. It's known to be rustic and really tannic. We have kind of tamed that, so it's very fresh and vibrant.

1:15:49And it's also been top 100 wine spectator. So we have insane accolades. Actually, Bodeo Garzón has won the New World Winery of the Year. That's among another like 10 ,000 producers. I mean, those things matter because it really gets people, whether it comes up in a search or people, you know, gets noticed. Just got about 20, 30 seconds for Balasto. Tell us about this one. So this is our grand van, our icon. Balasto is actually the soil, is the meteorized granite. It gives minerality, so the wines are quite ethereal. We have a lot of rainfall, so we have very nice natural acidity, makes your mouth water.

1:16:28That was Christian Wiley, Bodega Garzon's managing director. And be sure to check out Ellen McCoy's story on the Bloomberg and at Bloomberg.com on how wine will change in 2026 due to everything from climate impacts to Gen Z's interest in wine bars. And that wraps up the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thank you for joining us today and always as you have throughout 2025. We're looking forward to more this year. I'm Tim Stenevek. Happy New Year, everyone. And I'm Carol Master. Have a good and safe weekend, peace and prosperity, health and happiness in 2026. We so look forward to sharing the new year with you.

1:17:01This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast, available on Apple, Spotify and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern on Bloomberg.com, the iHeartRadio app, TuneIn and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.

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