Wonderwerk House Of Fermentation was born in Los Angeles after a long night on a disco dancefloor where lifelong friends, Andrew Lardy and Issamu Kamide, became inspired to create natural wines which express the inclusivity and joy found through music.
Wonderwerk House Of Fermentation was born in Los Angeles after a long night on a disco dancefloor where lifelong friends, Andrew Lardy and Issamu Kamide, became inspired to create natural wines which express the inclusivity and joy found through music.
In a world which has been traditionally exclusive, Wonderwerk seeks to create wines that are approachable, fun, and delicious, delighting everyone from those new to wine to even the most seasoned sommelier.
Andrew and Issamu, with backgrounds in Viticulture and Enology and Creative Marketing respectively, draw inspiration from the diverse food and drink culture of Los Angeles to create low intervention, high innovation natural wines, each with a LA story. Offerings include Free Your Mind, a co-ferment of Carignan and Riesling, Bustin’ Loose, a Carbonic Pet-nat made from California Mission grapes, Free Your Mind Lite, a tangy Piquette crafted with heirloom Oaxacan hibiscus sourced from Los Angeles’ Masienda and Japanese plum, and many more.
Links:
Shout out to Shawn Meyers for the music, Korey Pereira for help with the mix, and Jason Cryer for the art!
[00:00:00] andy: Literally the name of the game is, "I dunno, should we do that? Yeah. Why not? Well, that's weird. Taste this." And that is our job. It's amazing.
[00:00:08] issamu: The best sensation is when someone tastes it, think is going to be bad and then they go like, oh, this is cool. Oh, I didn't realize it was going to be like this. That's the whole point. Everything for us has to . Be, on some level, sessionable. Like, you gotta be able to just enjoy it with people, enjoy with a meal, enjoy it. It's not meant to be esoteric. It's not meant to be [00:00:30] challenging. Can you hang out with your buds and share a bottle of wine? If that's, if that's what you're trying to do, we make wine for you. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I would love to see a room full of somms tastes our wines just for the jokes. You know.
[00:00:43] andy: I'd love to have the room of the average- joe wine drinkers on the other side, like open the doors, and like go at it! And then that said, I have an amazing photograph. I wish I could share it in auditory terms, my dad taking his first sip of natural wine. And the look on his face is like, "my son has [00:01:00] chosen a very weird path."
[00:01:01] Jordan: Welcome to the Pre Fixe Podcast a podcast where the new voices in the food and beverage world share their stories and journeys in their own words. The show is produced and edited by me, Jordan Haro in Los Angeles, California. As John Keats once said, "Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather. [00:01:30] And a little music played out of doors by somebody. I do not know. No disrespect to the English poet, his love of books or French wine, but wine makers Issamu Kamide and Andrew Lardy of Wonderwerk House of Fermentation might update that quote to instead say, "Give me natural wine from fruit ingredients sourced from all across California and Mexico. A lot of disco music and a dance floor to dance to that disco music with a lot of kindred raver spirits. I first met Andrew and Issamu, randomly [00:02:00] on a sidewalk in Hollywood. They kindly gifted me a bottle of their Free Your Mind natural red wine, which I consumed almost entirely by myself the next night while crisis managing a DIY pizza stone disaster inside my backyard Weber grill. But we don't need to go into that. Born out of one long night on a dance floor, the lineup of supernatural wines under the Wonderwerk banner look and feel like an album cover from your all time favorite band. Their bombastic labels are capable of seamlessly code [00:02:30] switching between a Chelsea gallery opening and a 4:00 AM Bushwick warehouse rave. But best of all their wine tastes really good. Every vintage hits that Venn diagram, holy intersection where complexity and drinkability merge together to dance across your palate and invite you to come with. The rising tide of new blood entering the marketplace is bringing egalitarianism to what has been a relatively exclusive wine industry culture. This iconoclastic duo, who call themselves the Pet [00:03:00] Shop Boys of wine, dare us to throw out the old embrace the new and dance yourself clean while doing it. We met up in their home base of east LA to talk a little bit about their story. Let's listen in.
[00:03:20] issamu: We're from the same area in Virginia. And we went to, um, middle school together and then high school, Andy. This was a year below me. His [00:03:30] year was really boring. My year was really fun. I think the people, people, right. We were up to no good. Yeah. And then we absorbed him into our friend group and we were always into food. We would in high school, we would do iron chef battles. Like we would just pick a random ingredient, secret ingredient in the grocery store and then go do that. I think the drink part, uh, came naturally afterwards and we got really in the whiskey for a while and, and beer [00:04:00] and. Then, I guess when you start working, be a little bit of money, you start talking about wine. So at least back then. And then when I moved out here and I would go up to the central coast and visit Andy working at different wineries and, you know, he was so into showing it off and proud of his work and stuff. Cause he pivoted hardcore, uh, after grad school from neuropsychology to winemaking. So.
[00:04:27] andy: I think one of the greatest things about the [00:04:30] making industry is when you first start working in a wine cellar, there's just immediately an immense sense of pride that you can't help, but soak up. And I think it's easy for, for budding cellar rats. You know that the conversation is often, "well, he really makes the wines. Yeah. You know, that guy is the wine maker, but I really make the wines here. I'm the cellar rat and rats make all the wine." Um, and, uh, you know, yes, it's true. You are, you know, physically moving the juice from this container to that container. Of course you learn later in the game, like, look, there's some really. [00:05:00] Uh, higher level thinking going on too. It's not just, it's a, it's a collaboration. Okay. Let's leave it at that. But I mean, when Issamu would come up and visit, I'd be climbing barrels, just like a fanatic, like "Hey! Taste this one, Hey, catch." "What are you throwing? Is that wine coming out of a hose? I can't catch that." And it's a, it's super fun. I mean, there's nothing better than tasting through barrels and concrete eggs and cool tanks with your friends who are like, yeah, I'm interested in wine. Can you tell me more? I'd be like, dude, [00:05:30] just follow me. Yeah, it's awesome. I mean, there's such a plethora of, uh, fruit and styles and wineries that I was working for. I think we really tasted a lot of stuff and figured out exactly what we didn't want to make.
[00:05:43] issamu: And when I first moved to LA, I lived down the street from Silver Lake Wine. So when he would come down, this is, that was really my, when my ex-girlfriend and I moved to LA with when she was out of town or busy, I would call up Andy and say, "Come on down to LA let's go [00:06:00] raving, let's go party." And so that always led us to the wine tasting at Silver Lake Wine. And we first saw, I think maybe our first wine tasting that we went to one of those Thursday or Monday night ones, Randy jumped up on the counter and started talking about doing acid and drinking wine.
And Andy was like, well, what is this? Because he's,
[00:06:21] andy: that was mind blowing, you know?
[00:06:23] issamu: And then it was natural wine and we were tasting through the stuff. You know, that was kind of one of the more eye-opening [00:06:30] moments when we start being like, oh, we could do this too, you know?
[00:06:33] andy: Yeah. I had to leave work early to get to that tasting. And I'm leaving the seller environ of people considering, do you think we should play classical music to the barrels at night because it might do this? And then I go down to LA and there's this, uh, Randy's a totally cool guy, but there's this crazed maniac standing on the table, you know? Freestyling about mushrooms and wine and the joys of life. And I'm like, all right, so there are [00:07:00] different, there are different levels to this wine thing. And I think I like the LA side better. It's different. It's interesting. Get me out of here, Issamu!
[00:07:10] issamu: And then, uh, and then we just went full bore into it. And, uh, uh, now, now it's just interesting to see how things have changed so much. We had, we always have a lot ideas. We always are making things or coming up with things. And this one was, he had a [00:07:30] skillset of being an excellent winemaker. Uh, didn't want to really continue working for the people that he was working for. And so we said, let's just do our own thing. Um, the real impetus for Wonderwerk came out of our first wine, which was Discovino Donna Rose. And that was born on the dance floor. A hundred percent. Uh, we, I think it's weird to say Coachella to 2016.[00:08:00]
[00:08:00] andy: Don't say Coachella. It just happened to be at Coachella. We were really not stoked. We were really not stoked on going to Coachella, but we figured, okay. We're actually, uh, pretending to be, uh, chefs and winemakers. I mean, half of it's true. Um, so we stayed at the Spotify mansion with all the Spotify people as their hired chef friend.
[00:08:19] issamu: Yeah.
[00:08:20] andy: And that was reason enough. And we knew that this, uh, disco, disco sound system Despacio by James Murphy from LCD sound system and the soul wax brothers from [00:08:30] Belgium. We knew that this was going to be at Coachella that year, so, okay. Perhaps it's going to be an okay Coachella. Uh, those are rare few and far between, so we agreed to go and that's really where the seed for Discovino, what then became Wonderwerk, uh, was planted. Yeah, we, we had heard about Despacio and it had only debuted in the UK at that point, but we had seen pictures. It was a custom built sound system. [00:09:00] Um, you know, seven stacks of McIntosh amplifiers. And, uh, it was basically the idea for the soul wax brothers. And James Murphy was to remove the DJ from the equation and recreate, you know, the high quality Hi-Fi sound systems of the past, um, and put all the focus on the music. So basically a circular dance floor with the big disco ball in the middle, and everybody's facing each other rather [00:09:30] than looking atthe head in front of you, the back of the head in front of you and watching a DJ, like it's silly. It sounds very simple, but it's a massive, massive paradigm shift of what a dance floor is.
[00:09:42] issamu: Right. And so for us, we were like, we want to go to that. We went and it was incredible. It completely blew our minds probably spent eight or nine hours inside that tent a day, times, three times three. And then when we left, we were like, whoa, how do we put that [00:10:00] into something? How do we take that energy? How do we, uh, capture that sensation? We had already been talking about starting wine or doing something with wine, and I think it was sort of shortly after that, that the phrase "Discovino" came out into our heads and I didn't, I don't even think it was that hard. We just said, "Donna Rose".
[00:10:21] andy: Yeah, no, they, they came straight away and I think we were chuckling at the time. Like, can we really call our first wine "Discovino"? Don't we have to make something like more serious [00:10:30] first? You totally don't have to make something more serious. We went on to make wines called "Bustin' Loose" and "Toot Toot Beep Beep".
[00:10:37] issamu: Yeah.
[00:10:37] andy: You don't have to be serious at all..
[00:10:39] issamu: Yeah. So that was really the birth of it all. And um, yeah. Well we cut our teeth. Raving back in the day. So that really hasn't left, uh, our bloodstream that much.
[00:10:51] andy: It's a similar schedule.
[00:10:53] issamu: But at some point we start out with a third partner. He left. Somewhere in the middle of [00:11:00] that, we were, we had this similar idea of, oh, we need to be taken seriously because we would go around pitching Discovino to a couple accounts in LA and would get laughed out the place.
Pretty much one-
[00:11:15] andy: Laughter would have been kinder.
[00:11:16] issamu: K&L Wines told us that, um, our, uh, description of our wines sounded like we were on an ayahuasca trip.
[00:11:23] andy: Which is exactly what I was going for. So that adds a hundred points.
[00:11:26] issamu: And they refused to taste the wine. So we were, then we were like, [00:11:30] okay-
[00:11:30] andy: I forgot. They refused to taste it, how lovely.
[00:11:32] issamu: Then we were like, okay, we have to be more serious. And, um, at the time, this is like 2018 now everything's disco. Now, disco is cool.
[00:11:42] andy: There's three other people using the word 'disco' in their wine right now.
[00:11:46] issamu: And you can see a lot of disco wine themed wines and stuff. So, uh, we transitioned from Discovino into Wonderwerk, which is now somewhat more of like an umbrella company, but Wonderwerk is the name of a cave in [00:12:00] South Africa that has, uh, the earliest signs of, of human cooking, like in a million year old hearth uh, which for us was cool because it's, you know, manipulating nature for consumption, uh, for enjoyment, you know, not just for, for consumption. So that's what we do. That's what fermentation is, uh, for us. Uh, so that really fit into it. And, you know, it became a little bit more of a Wonderwerk House of Fermentation, this sort of fantasy Willy Wonka-esque idea in our [00:12:30] mind for how we'll go about creating, not just wine, but in the future. Other fermented beverages. Big thing in natural wine is low intervention. And I'd say we go from like low intervention to like high innovation or high interception. I dunno. We, yeah, inception. Um, we just, we like to play with stuff. We don't like to say that we're a hundred percent hands-off you know,
[00:12:55] andy: Yeah, we're totally not, again, it doesn't mean that we're putting nasty stuff in the wine. We're [00:13:00] certainly not doing that. That's not where we choose to intervene. We choose to intervene when we come up with a weird idea, that just makes sense. Like, "Hey, piquette kinda sucks, kinda needs acidity." What do we know and love that has acidity? Well, you can't put ume and jamaica in a wine can you? I don't know, we could probably do that. Cool. Go with it. I mean, that's, that's our formula, basically. It's very, very, hands-on, it's a massive intervention, but it's still natural, [00:13:30] still wholesome. And it's delicious. I mean, that's the most important part.
All right. So, uh, yeah. So for your mind, light is what we call our piquette. And it's not like other piquettes. It has other stuff in it. It's got ume, which is a Japanese plum. It's actually an apricot. And then it has jamaica, which is hibiscus tea. So we're not sure how carbonated this is. Let's give it a go. You can get a little closer.[00:14:00]
One shot of vodka...So we were really scared about this wine, uh, because it's not a wine, uh, it's not made, um, from whole grapes it's made from grape pomace. So after you press a wine and you have the grape seeds, stems and skins left over, right, they're mostly dehydrated, but there is a little sugar. That'd been the case of white grapes or a little alcohol in them in the case of orange or red grapes. And I'm talking about [00:14:30] orange and red wine or white wine. Um, so you rehydrate it, meaning yes. You add a whole bunch of water, which is uh, pretty risque' in wine-making. Um, that is diluting the acidity. Acidity is like the most important thing in terms of making a beverage stable on the shelf, both in terms of the flavor and the microbial situation. Is it like fermenting septically? That's not good for you. Um, so first order of business is we got to address that acidity. So we use hibiscus, jamaica. [00:15:00] Uh, number two is let's address that acidity again. And let's also add a little bit of sugar. So we use ume. We preserve the ume when it comes in. Cause it comes in in March and then sit on that all year long and then add it to the fermentation. So we sold this right away because I thought that was a pretty good game plan. All of those things together. Okay. Our chemistry is pretty, pretty good to be stable, but let's sell it real fast. Cause I'm not certain. And I don't know how long it is going to hold. It turns out like everything that you doubt. Oh, it's actually fine. [00:15:30] And it's better now. And to anybody that still has a bottle, cheers, enjoy it now; it's like 10 times as good as it was upon release. Yeah. But I guess that's sparkling wine for you or sparkling, not wine in this case. Yeah, this is so, so nice. I mean, this is a lot more mature now, more complex than it was. I think the jamaica comes out more and actually taste the ume for the first time. Whereas immediately upon release, the jamaica is more of an acid experience, less of a flavor one, and the ume was just sort of this background [00:16:00] sort of pseudo tropical tone. Uh, whereas now it's very much, I think redolent of that tart little apricotwe call "ume."
[00:16:09] issamu: Yeah. Uh, this is a good time to say that one of the excellent, um, I would I would, I would say it's an advantage that we have over others. Is that Andy has the best palate in the world and-
[00:16:28] andy: Also not true.
[00:16:29] issamu: But [00:16:30] also an insanely good memory at remembering tastes and sensations and flavors. Well beyond anything I'm personally capable of doing. He'll often be like, remember when we had that wine three years ago on this day. And it tasted like, I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't remember what I drank last night, to be honest. Um, but he can be because of this ability to recall the, and I have memories associated with certain flavors it makes it so much easier for [00:17:00] us to play around with things, come up with new ideas, uh, remember certain things and how they might relate to what we're doing now. It's really makes the whole process, uh, really enjoyable and makes, um, you know, playing around and manipulating things. Um, that much more sort of, uh, easier I guess, or something like that. It's just, I've just never seen anybody really do that before.
[00:17:28] andy: Thanks buddy. I really [00:17:30] cherish this one memory from enology school from Fresno State where, uh, we were. Uh, that the task was to count the taste buds on your tongue. And you had one of those little paper hole punch reinforcer sticker rings, and you were to put that on your tongue and use food coloring and go to the bathroom, look in the mirror and dye that, that, uh, inner circle of your tongue blue. And then the taste buds will take up a little bit more pigment. I think they're a little darker. You can actually count them and then you can extrapolate how many taste buds on your tongue. And you can [00:18:00] actually categorize yourself. You can quantify this and you can categorize yourself as a super taster. And of course, everybody was wondering, who's going to be the supertaster, but it's a self administered test. So who's going to lie about it in the bathroom with the blue paint on your tongue, like a loser, right? Uh, it turns out a lot of people had a lot of pride and they thought they were super tasters. And it was the greatest thing because next slide in the lecture was supertasters make terrible winemakers. You'll never enjoy wine. Anything [00:18:30] above six, eight percent alcohol is going to taste like fire to you cause you have so many taste buds that, that alcohol, alcohol is perceived, that flavor of alcohol in your mouth is perceived as an irritant. So is capsaicin, so is spice. Those are not flavors they're irritants. So for a supertaster it's incredibly irritating and you should probably leave the program and never make wine again. It was so great because all of these people stood up and they were like, "I am a supertaster, I'm going to be better than all of you," and they just got it handed to em. So I'm not one, I'm not a super [00:19:00] taster. I'm not even a fantastic wine taster, but I I'm, I think, uh, a sort of working man's uh wine palate. And then the memory thing. I wish my memory was this good for normal aspects of life, but yes, I can remember every darn thing I've ever consumed. Uh, you know, I'm not going to remember the date. I might remember the year and literally the other day I picked one out. My family was asking me, Andrew, what was that, that wine where you said your brother-in-law had really good taste. And I was. Uh, did we [00:19:30] serve it in Georgia or Maryland? And they're like, oh, Maryland. And then I was like, oh, well, that's the Zotovich Family Vineyard Chardonnay from Deovlet Winery. Uh, and I didn't say the vintage because that would just be lame, but I'm pretty certain that I could, uh, so I, I can do the cool wine trick in a different fashion.
[00:19:46] issamu: Yeah. I don't, I don't do that. I just know what tastes good.
[00:19:50] andy: Well, we need, we need that part of the process.
[00:19:53] issamu: I am the every-person side of it, you know, when we make something, if I tasted it and I go, this tastes good. Other people [00:20:00] are gonna think it tastes good. You know.
[00:20:01] andy: It's important. It's so important to have those informal sensory panels. Um, formal ones really suck, but those are sort of important too. Um, but the informal ones, like we have this whole rolodex of people that we taste wine on for different reasons. You know, we think like they're a very, um, centered pallet for a certain demographic or they're, you know, perfect intermediate wine enthusiast palette. And that is so important because we can get really, um, stuck in our [00:20:30] own heads. You can get cellar pallet, and if you're just pouring wine for other wine makers and wine industry people, that's not necessarily the most, uh, you know, relevant feedback.
[00:20:40] issamu: Yeah, I would love to see a room full of somms tastes our wines just for the jokes, you know.
[00:20:44] andy: And I'd love to have the room of the average Joe wine drinkers on the other side, like open the doors and keep it like, "go at it!"
You enroll in Viticulture and Enology program in school, and you just assume that [00:21:00] you're going to be a wine maker in Napa one day. I mean, that's sort of the default and it's a very, uh traditional path, and they're sort of stuffy up there and it's a certain style of wine. Has anybody ever heard of Cabernet before? Uh, yep. That's Napa. Uh, and, um, you know, there, there are small producers up there doing weird stuff. There are natural wine producers up there, a lot more in Sonoma, too. Um, so Napa and Sonoma are sort of one culture. I think, um, in [00:21:30] my opinion, a sort of cultural divide between NorCal and SoCal winemaking, um, with, with like bits of similarity, Mendo, and Humboldt, those are obviously more unbridled. Um, but when I think of those regions, I don't, I don't know them very well myself. That's a frontier that we're super interested in exploring in the next few years, along with the Sierra foothills, um, I know about those regions more in terms of small producers driving there, getting fruit and then driving it back. [00:22:00] And that's how we do it. Um, you know, we drive long distances. I mean, we're pulling fruit in Monterey county in, uh, the south bay. We're pulling fruit in Lodi increasingly more. Um, and then, uh, Paso Robles, Templeton. So we're really all over the place. And, uh, you know, that's a different culture. We don't exist in an estate winery, regional culture. It's very rare where we are. Um, everybody is sourcing fruit, [00:22:30] perhaps you're farming it, but you're driving to different sites. You don't have a vineyard at the winery. Um, and, and we're currently producing at of Gilroy. We have been producing out of Watsonville. So the M.O. there is, um, a lot of people are participating in farming or farming the whole thing themselves. They're doing tiny little backyard sites throughout the Santa Cruz mountains. Um, in Paso, it's more large vineyard management companies. Obviously there are other things going on, but in our relationship to Paso, it's [00:23:00] more large vineyard management companies that were dealing with,
[00:23:03] issamu: you know, you, when we do tastings or you talked to the average person, you say, oh, you know, when you make wine, they automatically assume you own a vineyard. And you own your own facility, but there's a huge amount of winemakers in California who are doing custom crush, or what's called AP alternating proprietorship. Um, they neither own the facility nor the land. They're just passionate about making wine and they travel across the state. Like we do to all these great [00:23:30] locations to find the types of grapes they want to work with. Um, and that's probably, if you were to go to the, Tilda or Silver Lake Wine and drink California wine, vast majority of bottles you'll be picking up are made this way.
[00:23:43] andy: Yeah, it's a good point. We really should consider ourselves sort of an alternating proprietor member. That's very much a subculture of, of California wine makers.
[00:23:53] issamu: And, um, but being in LA, I don't know if we'd be like, if we were in SLO or Paso or [00:24:00] something like this, Santa Barbara county, we probably wouldn't be making the same wines we're making today. So much of the influence comes from being in LA. And, uh, just the, you know, the amazing food scene, all of our friends who run pop-ups or run restaurants or doing something new, doing something creative. They, we draw so much inspiration from that because if we weren't exposed to that and we had, you know, a tiny amount of ideas around us, [00:24:30] our universe would be tiny, but our universe is so big that we can pull all these ideas and stuff from, from all over the place. So the ume in Free Your Mind Lite, uh, the piquette came from Tsubaki. Courtney at Tsubaki uh, hooks us up with it. And, uh, that's how we were able to secure it. This insane amount of Japanese plums and the hibiscus comes from Masienda out on Pico Boulevard who do heirloom varietals, mostly of corn and masa. [00:25:00] But we were able to pull from that too. And a lot of other ideas we have for the upcoming vintage, are all drawn from people we hang out with and places we go, places we eat, places we drink, you know, just like that story of that first tasting at Silver Lake Wine. Had we not really done that, you know, who knows if we'd been exposed to all these possibilities.
[00:25:21] andy: Yeah, totally. I mean, in the case of using jamaica in piquette, we weren't even buying jamaica from Masienda. We were buying [00:25:30] masa to make tortillas and the tortillas are so good. And we've learned so much by doing that. It's really, it's sort of akin to like pasta making. It's a simple process, but it's hard, but it's not hard, but then it's very difficult to become an expert. It's rather easy to become a beginner, intermediate. And we just love Masienda and kept browsing the website, looking for more Masa and eventually, oh, whoa, look, they have heirloom Oaxacan jamaica. Uh, yeah, that sounds better than I heard there might be some dye or [00:26:00] something and like jamaica if you buy it at the wrong place or whatever. Yeah. Let's look into that. And lo and behold, it's like, oh, this was a completely different plant. I mean, this is incredible. Like I was, I was eating them straight out of the bag and uh, actually up in the winery in Watsonville eating them straight out of the bag. I was like, wow. It's like, you guys got to try this. It's like crispy. It's kind of like a chip I'm chewing on it. And I'm like, oh, it's brutally sour. You can't keep this in your mouth. Like it's dissolving acid into your saliva directly. It's, it's strong, it's strong. And it was, uh, it it's again, such a [00:26:30] different product than, um, than commodity hibiscus. And we owe that to our LA experience. We wouldn't have come across that particular sourcing of that particular product. Had it not been for Masienda had it not been for us being in LA period. And that's a very common theme across all of our wines. Not always in such a, a, um, concrete, like element of that wine. It's not like, you know, oh, these, this LA experience represents [00:27:00] 33% of this wine like that one does. Uh, but every wine has some LA story, some LA personality, some LA element to it.
[00:27:08] issamu: We spend time in a lot of other places, but there's an energy in LA of really sort of people who are self-starters, uh, that either got burned by institutional, uh, Uh, you know, institutional, whatever, like the, the, higher ups, the [00:27:30] structures, whatever, and set out on their own, or there's just like a very creative energy in which collaboration comes very naturally. Some perhaps less competitive, at least in our experience. Yeah. Everybody we've come in contact with is wanting to collaborate. Nobody's looked at us as competition, really, um, uh, from Carla at Chainsaw, all the way to Kristin at Nomadica. Like these peoplelive [00:28:00] five minutes from us. And we all sort of play in the same space. And, uh, there are all at once a source of inspiration and also just great friends and just people who want to do cool things. And, um, a lot of times that cool thing exists outside of institution. Um, You know, uh, to try something new, to go for it, obviously, I feel like that's just maybe California in general or LA in general, [00:28:30] like the I'm kind of go out there and make it, you know, this sort of westward emotion-
[00:28:34] andy: that showbiz baby!
[00:28:35] issamu: Exactly.
[00:28:36] andy: That's our favorite phrase.
[00:28:37] issamu: It's a real thing though. You know, like that the east coast is where we're from is very mired in tradition and very mired in history. And the west has always been, you know, this go westward and make a, make something of yourself sort of idea. Obviously we didn't, we didn't really begin with that in mind, but, um, versus the hustle and bustle you might find in New York and the [00:29:00] sort of, or even the bay area, the, the competition, the, the levels of hierarchy that exist. It's not so big here because, um, you know, we've been to like N/Naka and that's great. Two, three Michelin star restaurant. Amazing. But you go to Boyle Heights and you go to like the Al Pastor stand or whatever. And that thing is bomb too! Completely different worlds, but drawing from the same energy, which is you're going to enjoy it. You're going to like it. It's, uh, [00:29:30] the tastes and flavors are there. Um, so I think for us, that's exactly where we exist.
[00:29:36] andy: For sure. Backing up a little bit, LA is really inclusive and that's what we aim to be too. And that backs up to our origin story at Despacio a discotheque sound system. That's a very inclusive space. It's very high-end, it's very disco. It's obvious if you're not reading a newspaper article about it. If you're not talking to somebody about it, you know, they might actually articulate it. But in the back of your mind, you're thinking, wow, [00:30:00] this is what studio 54 probably was like except studio 54 is very exclusive. The door policy was ridiculous.
[00:30:07] issamu: Right.
[00:30:07] andy: And that is not disco as we understand it. And the inclusive character of Despacio is the stark opposite of it. And that's what we look for in everything that we do. And I think that's why we really find a home in LA is it's not that all of Los Angeles just, you know, open arms welcoming, but you know, the friends that we found are, and the establishments that we frequent are. And that's just, you know, [00:30:30] natural attraction. That's why we're here.
[00:30:32] issamu: Yeah. Despacio was a hundred percent high quality, no hierarchy, you know, and that's what we always feel like. We, we don't turn, close the door on anybody. We don't look down on anybody. We don't say this is for you and not for you. We're not exclusionary in production. Um, we're not exclusionary in who should, who should consume what we're going after, you [00:31:00] know, like. Uh, that, that was always for us the main point, no hierarchy, no, no elevation to god-status, none of this rever-, you know, you know, this sort of stuff. It was always about the product, the music, um, and delivering it in a playful and well executed manner.
[00:31:19] andy: It's a, it's a cannon that fires in all directions. That's what's coming next. We're, we're starting a lot of new stuff. It really feels like a garden. Like we're planting all these seeds. Some of these plants are going to grow [00:31:30] slow. Some of them are going to be fast. We're toying with extremely low alcohol wines.
[00:31:36] issamu: I think for us, what's next is trying to get a little bit more cohesion going with what we put out, this, this vintage, we made something like eight wines. Um, and we see what happens when you make too many wines. We think so now, how do we. Uh, really make that House of Fermentation. How do we create the house? We've sort of laid the foundation, but now it's time [00:32:00] to, um, build the walls and put the windows in the door and, uh, hang the disco ball and figure it out.
[00:32:07] andy: I would hang the ball first and build the house.
[00:32:09] issamu: To build the house around it,
[00:32:10] andy: I don't know if that's possible, but can we, but we will.
[00:32:14] issamu: Yeah. We're always looking for a way to, uh, you know, we, we love disco. We've done. We do funk. Um, we're always looking for a way to inject techno in the, in the wine somehow and probably even, you know, [00:32:30] figuring out how to do some country music too in there.
[00:32:32] andy: Well, country musicis practically written in wine.
[00:32:35] issamu: Yeah, so these are all ideas and concepts that come to mind, rave wine, this kind of stuff.
You know, I don't come from the wine world and, and Andy has an aversion to lots of aspects of it. So at some point when we were just like, screw it, let's just do what we [00:33:00] do and find the people, uh, who vibe with it or who dig it and, um, or who picking up what we're putting down and then everything will flow from that. Um, and so our biggest champions to date have not been wine lists on nice restaurants. It has not been the old guard establishment. It has been the shops that have opened up in the last three years because they all sort of, uh, you know, approach it from the similar way, [00:33:30] Michael, at Hi Lo; the whole crew at Tilda in Echo Park.
[00:33:34] andy: Hi Lo and Tilda are our foundation, I mean, we, we would not be here without those two accounts.
[00:33:41] issamu: Yeah. They took, uh, a shot on us. It just cracked open the door and I think. They created a- they helped push that along. You know, it's sort of getting rid of the tastemakers and getting rid of this somm world. I think sometimes those somms documentaries help people to be like, ugh, I don't want [00:34:00] to participate in that.
[00:34:01] andy: Goes both ways. You know, the wine world has changed so much around us since we started. And before we started, when I was in wine school, just starting to think about being a wine program. You know it, when I was a kid, it was the Robert Parker points era at high extraction wines. Um, and then once I started working in a wine cellar, there was the "in pursuit of balance", which is so such a name for a philosophy of trying to [00:34:30] pick the grapes as early as possible and making the leanest wine. It's obviously an oxymoron. Um, and then we started actually transitioning out of that. I thought that was, you know, this is the new world order, low alcohol wines, high acid wines, you know, very, very high end pinot noir and Chardonnay. This is what it's going to be. It's just changing into this. So it's going to be like this forever. No. Wrong. You know, we started a wine company, all of a sudden that's fading. That's not cool. What's cool now? Natural wine.
[00:34:55] issamu: Right. Yeah, we weren't, we didn't set out being like, oh, we're going to make natural wine.
[00:34:59] andy: The [00:35:00] year, the year before we started, I went up to, uh, work with my buddy Ryan Stirm during harvest. And he was making natural wine. I'd never seen white wine fermenting without yeast inoculation before in my life. And I was like, Ryan dude, I'm here for you, bud. I'm here for you. As long as you need me. Are you doing okay? I thought he was losing his mind. He was losing some of his ferments that's for sure. That's the way the natural wine cookie crumbles, you know, it's, it's strange. So this is, um, the norm now, at least [00:35:30] where we are is natural wine. And even that set, we're not necessarily until recently, you know, it's, that's hard to crack into as well. We felt like outsiders for so, so long. And I think that our approach now is, you know, we don't want to be a part of any pack. We always want to be doing our own thing. We get very bored. As soon as somebody else starts doing the same thing as us. So I think our strategy is to be out in front of the pack. Now, when you first get started and you're out in front of the pack, it can feel like you're behind them. Like they've [00:36:00] actually lapped you, but once you, you know, get your foundation, get some inertia. Your confidence comes and then you realize you're actually out ahead of everybody else doing different stuff.
[00:36:10] issamu: Even with natural wine, you know, you go back maybe a decade, there was a handful of people doing it. You go back six to eight years. That's how you start getting the Dirty and Rowdy's and the, yeah.
[00:36:22] andy: Speaking domestically, obviouslythere's a much longer history abroad.
[00:36:25] issamu: Right. But, you know, within the California scene. And those have become established [00:36:30] names. And then now I would say even today there's a huge proliferation of new labels coming online. And so it's kind of all right, what's the next one, what's coming next. Like who's, who's really going to shake things up. And part of that was goes hand in hand with natural wine is, um, obviously much younger people, younger people moving into cities, younger people, changing tastes, um, uh, the inacessibility of so much wine, [00:37:00] either from a price point or from like a nobody you know, nobody likes Santa Rita Hills Pinot. I'm sorry. You know, this kind of stuff. Buttery chards this sort of thing, like you look at how waves come and go like that. And that's, you know, natural wine sort of rode that. And in, so doing, I was able to break a lot of the rules. You know, labels could get weird and crazy and brand, you know, brands and graphic design and style could be, uh, really different than what was in the past. All these sort of estate vineyards and [00:37:30] very hoity-toity looking stuff. So, you know, how you know is when the old houses from Sonoma and stuff start a sub-label of natural wine. You know, you are, you start a sub-label of natural wine because you know that your, you know, $350 a year wine club members are dropping like flies or something like this. And, you know, you're, you're losing traction in grocery stores and whole foods and stuff like this, and they got to do something new. That's how you know.
[00:37:59] andy: Remember [00:38:00] when we were looking at craft beer, like when will wine, could wine be like craft beer? Could you make a label like that? And put it on a wine bottle. Now you go to a wine store. It's like, all right, you really have to focus to tell if you're in the wine or beer section. It's all so similar. It's all very out there.
[00:38:14] issamu: I think a good thing with craft beer is you saw how far that dove off the cliff, too.
[00:38:19] andy: Oh yeah. What label were we looking at today? It was straight out of an animated horror movie. Come on guys; too real. Trippy? Yes. Scary. Very much.
[00:38:27] issamu: Craft beer has gotten so confusing. It's proliferated [00:38:30] so much. Every week they're pumping out new beers, this that and the other, and you're like, oh, you can't keep track anymore. Yeah.
[00:38:37] andy: Gosh, keeping track of all of that. I don't know if we have that many ideas. What if we were brewers, we might run out.
[00:38:42] issamu: Oh my god. I feel sorry for brewers today, man. Like, why do you think people are reaching for lagers and pilsners again? Because they're just like, I don't know if I want to eat like or drink, like-
[00:38:51] andy: Well even that could be a full frontal assault on the-
[00:38:54] issamu: [00:39:00] Guava-micro-sour-creek-Belgian-two-yeast-double-hop-thing, you know, like what is that, you know?
[00:39:01] andy: Oh, that sounds great. Got any?
[00:39:06] issamu: Get confused
From the art perspective. Shout out Anton Godard and Lana Shahmoradian our two designers who make the Wonderwerk visual world come to life.
[00:39:22] andy: They make the Wonderwerk work.
[00:39:24] issamu: Yeah. And, uh, we wouldn't be anywhere without them. That's a hundred percent. Um, but as for [00:39:30] making things that taste good, I mean, It's not that we wanted to make a disco wine with like, you know, Saturday night fever, disco ball stuff. It was a sensation of being in the space, the music, what you get from that. Same way we approach country music. We do want to make a wine called "Willie Nelson's harmonica player in 1973 to the present". And we haven't figured out what it's going to be yet. But it's a sensation. It's an idea. It's a feeling, you know, like, um-
[00:39:59] andy: [00:40:00] We'll know it as soon as we taste it.
[00:40:01] issamu: Yeah. So, but it's less about being, you know, "This is a funk wine. This is a disco wine." It's about, "okay. What is the, what is the vibe here? What does it, what, how does it make us feel? So how do we want you to feel."
[00:40:14] andy: Yeah, again, without it being on the nose, we're not trying to like, you know, make wine in, you know, a time signature or something awfully obtuse like that. I mean, I think that's the phrase that, uh, that garners the most shame whenever, you know, we're in the creative process and [00:40:30] one of us or our collaborators goes, "Yeah. But that's a little on the nose." It's like, "Ugh, yeah you're right, let's get rid of that. Why did I . Ever think that?! It's on the nose! Issamu, that's on the nose. I shouldn't have said it-
[00:40:40] issamu: You can't make it too obvious. Cause then it's not up for interpretation. The more you leave it up for interpretation, the more they can figure it out and you don't have to prescribe anything. But, you know, I'll just go on the record and say, we are the Pet Shop Boys of wine.
[00:40:58] andy: Now that's extremely on the nose, but that [00:41:00] works.
I don't, I don't see, I see natural wine just starting to reach some regions and it flushes out in different ways in different areas. And that's awesome. I mean, we see even just in really simple minded terms, we see different wines in our portfolio really resonating in certain regions, more so than others, even within the same city, obviously east LA, west LA big difference between, uh, you know, what, what works on each side, [00:41:30] but we see natural wine sort of just becoming more of a standard, less of a trend, less of a category and more of just like a, "yeah, well obviously it's natural wine. Uh, yes. Well, I mean, yeah, of course. What else would we be serving?" And I hear that sort of conversation starting to happen outside of the traditional methods of natural wine being LA San Francisco, New York.
[00:41:55] issamu: You know, make it back to the east coast was always a dream of ours, just so our [00:42:00] parents can walk into the store and see our wine, you know, and then it becomes really real
[00:42:05] andy: Because they've been asking since, you know, the first day that we decided to start a wine company.
[00:42:10] issamu: Yeah.
[00:42:10] andy: It's been a long, long time coming
[00:42:13] issamu: But- we like going to places where people feel underserved or ignored. You know, we get the big cities. Obviously we live in LA, but you know, we're coming for Tulsa. We're coming for Nashville. Somebody wants to sell us in Arkansas. So Texarkana. [00:42:30] Yeah, we'll come out there. We'll throw up a disco ball. We'll pour wine. We'll talk to people
[00:42:34] andy: We really do have like a mobile disco ball set. We can hang a disco ball from anything we're practically engineers. At this point, we have an engineering degree from the disco university.
[00:42:43] issamu: This is dancefloor-ready wine.. This is, this is meant for this atmosphere because it was born out of this atmosphere. So, um, we didn't hit the trade show circuit. We didn't hit the wine fairs. We hit the warehouse parties, cause that made the most sense to us.
[00:42:59] andy: [00:43:00] Absolutely. We love, you know, sharing the gospel. I mean, it's, it's totally about sharing and enjoying things together. It's not at all about like, "look at what we're doing," you know, it's totally about, "Hey, try this. Isn't this weird?" I mean, I think that's why we do it. This is why I'm in, you know, a fermentation industry. It's because literally the name of the game is, "I don't know, should we do that? Well, that's weird." That is our job. It's amazing.
[00:43:29] issamu: The [00:43:30] best sensation is when someone tastes it, thinking it's going to be bad. And then they go like, oh wow, this is cool. Oh, I didn't realize it was going to be like this and go, yeah, that's the whole point.
[00:43:40] andy: And then that said, I have an amazing photograph. I wish I could share it in, uh, auditory terms. My dad taking his first sip of natural wine. And the look on his face is like, "My son has chosen a very weird path." I dunno, that's what it says to me; to other people it might say, "Ew, this is disgusting, but, um, [00:44:00] you know, to each their own.
[00:44:02] issamu: We like experimentation, but we. Everything for us has to be on some level sessionable. Like, you gotta be able to just enjoy it with people, enjoy it with a meal, enjoy it. It's not meant to be esoteric. It's not meant to be challenging. Um, it's not meant to, you know, this sort of stuff. It's always meant to can you hang out with your buds and share a bottle of wine? If that's, if that's what you're trying to do, we make wine for you, you know [00:44:30] what I'm saying? Yeah. I mean, we still drink the European classics and stuff, but it's like, we're not going to make those wines. You know, why try? It's not, it's not in the cards. So chart our own path, come with our own thing. We just got, we just had a, uh, a woman today on Instagram, drove from Boston to New York just to buy our wine. And when we saw that, we were just like, wow, that's super dope, man. Like, that's cool. [00:45:00] Um, you know, we chatted a little bit. We're just like, thank you so much, blah-blah-blah.. But like, if you can do that, if, if people can be that inspired, you know, it's sure that's, that's what we're out here trying to do, you know?
[00:45:13] andy: Yeah 'that's awesome. That's, that's really special. I mean, that, that's totally why we do it.
[00:45:18] issamu: The other, the other day we calculated, I think we've tried to calculate it. We've probably made on the order of like 11,000 bottles of wine or something like this. And if, even if you did 70% of it was one [00:45:30] time, 30% repeat, that's like, you know, we're talking to like 7,000, 8,000 people consumed what we put out there and not complained as far as we know.
[00:45:39] andy: Yeah. I don't think we've received a complaint other than the, this writing tastes like ayahuasca. Which some take as a compliment.
[00:45:49] issamu: That's pretty cool.
[00:45:51] andy: Yeah, it's really awesome. Um, you know, when it was amazing just to make our first wine and to share that, and it was, you know, like here, [00:46:00] try this and now it's really, uh, uh, more complex, more thorough experience when we have so many wines singing together, it's like, you really get to taste more of our story rather than just this one juice that we made. And, uh, I think that's resonating with people. They're, they're feeling a part of the world of Wonderwerk.
Just one more time for the record. We are the pet shop boys of wine. Yeah, the pet shop boys of wine.
[00:46:28] issamu: I try to slip that in to every [00:46:30] conversation, see if anybody like registers.
[00:46:32] andy: See if it tracks with anybody in the hopes that it makes it back to them. So, you know, when you get the sideways head tilt, like, "did he just say they're the pet shop boys of wine? Okay. Go on, weirdo."
[00:46:43] issamu: Well, it's cooler than saying you're the Daft Punk of wine.
[00:46:46] andy: It's true. It's true. You can't pull that off.
[00:46:48] issamu: It's a bit cheese..
[00:46:49] andy: You can't pull that off. Yeah.
[00:46:55] Jordan: Thank you for listening everyone. For links and resources about everything [00:47:00] discussed today, please visit the show notes in the episode. If you want to support the podcast, the most effective way to do so would be to hit the subscribe button on apple podcasts, Spotify, or any other platform that you're listening in from.
Sharing the show with your friends on social media is always appreciated. Shout out to Sean Myers for creating the original music and to Jason Cryer for creating the graphics. Korey Periera with help on the mix. The [00:47:30] show is produced by me, Jordan Haro with help from Homecourt Pictures. You can always reach out to me at Jordan H-A-R-zero on Instagram and Twitter
Follow the show @ prefixpod on Instagram, or email at prexfixpodcast@gmail.com. I appreciate every second of your attention and support and don't take it for granted. See you on the next one.[00:48:00]