Joe Nielson of Ram's Gate Winery in Carneros

I had a chance to speak with Joe Nielsen, who is, well, he's the winemaker, but also, like, he's the overall producer I think he's got like the title now of president or something like this.

It happened just after we met.

But he's a really smart guy.

So he gets the business, he gets the winemaking, he gets the viticulture, he gets all of it.

Um, and so it just made sense.

He's really helped kind of put this brand together from the beginning.

Um, and it's called Ramsgate winery, which I don't know.

I know a lot of people study wine who listened to this, but I just wanted to put the little tidbit in there that, cause I was, I was trying to, I even asked him, I foolishly, I was like, remind me why you named it Ramsgate.

And he's like, well, do you know what Carneros

means?

Do you know what Carneros means?

I mean, having something to do with meat, I think, or no? Well, oh, good.

That's good, because carne,

yeah.

In Spanish, carneros literally means rams.

Huh.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, and I didn't actually...

I won't go into like the, we don't need to go into the etymology, blah, blah, blah.

But, uh, you know, that region was an agricultural region for, for a long time,

uh,

prior to it just being a wine region.

Um, and so, yeah, you had a lot of sheep herding, et cetera, et cetera, out there.

Wow.