Dalmatia & Šibenik Through the Eyes of Winemaker and Technologist Mike Pulley

0:08⧉ Hi everyone, welcome to— to my podcast, "The Other Side of the Metal." This— this episode we're doing something different: I'm here with Mike Pulley from the U.S., who— who was born and raised there, but he went to— he lived in London for, for quite a few— 28 years. For 28 years, and then, of all places, came to Jadrtoac for some reason. So, Mike, welcome to the show. How are you doing? Hey. Thank you for having me on. thank you. Also, one other thing: we're shooting at the— at the Testament Winery. It's, where you can buy wine, and there's also tastings of, I think, prosciutto and stuff like that. Yeah, I want to thank them for making the facility available for us. Yeah, yeah. Thank you very much. Big shout-out for them. And so, yeah, I summed up your life in 2 or 3 sentences. Is there anything more to add? 61 years old! I was born, I lived, and I died. And that's over. Yeah. That's pretty much it. So— so tell me about yourself. How did you— how did you end up in Jadrtoac, but, you know, go from the beginning. Long story. I'm going to tell you bits and pieces of it. Uh— Oh, sure. So, um, I was living in the U.S., I was going to school at San

1:23⧉ Diego State University in California, and I had a real desire to go to Europe. But I was a very poor student. and— You mean poor grades, or— Well, that too, but— Oh, that too. Okay, okay. Monetarily poor. Okay. Um, and this was almost out of reach for me, in reality. Um, that— the summer before I wanted to come, I met an Irish girl who had come out from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, which, incidentally, I was born on the campus. But I didn't know her. A friend of mine who went to school there brought her out to San Diego to enjoy the beach, and we met up and fell in love,right? As you do, which— Why do you have quotes? —which means about a week together. Oh, okay. Back then. And so I told her I wanted to go to Europe. That was my dream. She was just the opposite of a poor student. She was very, very wealthy. Her father— And the grades were good. Yeah. And were the grades good?

2:33⧉ probably. Probably. Okay. She was studying law, and her father was quite wealthy. I think he was an executive at Shell Oil Company or something in Asia. And so we were kind of the poor-boy-rich-girl situation. Back then we didn't have very good means of communication like today. So we wrote letters. I don't even think we had emails at the time. This is going back quite a few years. But we made an agreement, and she said, "I'm going to be— actually, in Europe this summer, studying abroad European law." So one of those summer abroad school exchanges. She said, "I'll be in a country called Yugoslavia." Oh, Yugoslavia. In a city which I didn't even know of at the time.

3:27⧉ So this was the'80s,right? Yes. Yes. This is about— I think this is 1984 or'85. Oh, the year I was born. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Now I'm dating myself. So Kate proceeded on and did her summer abroad. I saved my pennies, and I hitchhiked across to Chicago, where there was a cheap fare over to London. So I got my cheap airline over, got to London, and the exchange rate was so in favor of the British pound at the time that I couldn't even afford a hostel. And I was— I was on a budget of 10 U.S. dollars a day, and that was going to include housing, transportation, and food. Yeah, that's quite tight. Which was almost impossible. Hope you had a budget. Written down and everything. Yeah. Oh, no, I had it for the whole summer because I was going to be there for 3 months.

4:22⧉ So it was kind of funny because every day I had to make a choice: do I eat or do I sleep inside? That was sort of— it was a bit rough. The first day I got— So what did you do with no money? Well, I had— I had my 10 U.S. dollars a day,right? So I had this budget. So I left London without staying overnight. I went to Ostend, Belgium, and made my way up to Bruges.

4:49⧉ And in Bruges I worked pouring pints to have a place to sleep upstairs, and that kind of a hostel with a pub in it, if you will. I stayed there for 3 or 4 days, and then started hitchhiking across Europe. And it was quite interesting in that time because there was no European Union, and every place had their own currency. And unlike today, where— I'm sure there was a European Union. I think there was. There was, yeah. But maybe the currency wasn't— Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. I think it was called the European Common Market or something to that extent. I think so. It was the predecessor to the actual European Union. But I think there were still borders and stuff. There were borders. You had to pass through everywhere. And the interesting thing then was, unlike now, where English is pretty prevalent, particularly among people under 50, then there was very little English. So I had to sort of make my— my way through. And so I started hitchhiking in Belgium, made it all the way to Heidelberg in one day, and my claim to fame was I didn't spend 1 Deutschmark. Very late at night I got picked up by a group of young people that looked

6:02⧉ like hippies, long hair and whatnot, and a very old Citroën. They took me to a hostel. It was about 11 o'clock at night, and I knocked on the door. They were closed, and the guard just said, "Go up and find a place to sleep." So I went up and found a place to sleep in one of the dormitories, got up the next day— massive buffet breakfast, as you see in Germany— stuffed my rucksack full of cheese and ham and made my way all the way over to Austria in one day. So I didn't spend 1 Deutschmark going through. Got over to Innsbruck, and then, long story short, made my way down through Italy, and I got dropped off in Ancona and

6:51⧉ walked into the port, and there was this boat there. It said, "Jadrolinija." Where is this going? And they said, "This is going to— this is going to Dubrovnik." So, of course, I said, "When's it leaving?" As I could kind of communicate a bit in Italian because I spoke Spanish, so I could kind of figure out what was going on. And they said,"15 minutes." And back to— Until the boat leaves. Until the boat leaves. So I bought my student ticket, and at the time these were the old boats that burned the coal, so there was this— Oh, really? —smoke stacks. And as students— now this wouldn't be allowed anymore— but you could sleep on the roof for a reduced rate. Of course you would have all this black smoke. But so all the young people were up there,right? All the cool kids, huh? I don't know if we're cool, we're dirty. Dirty with smoke and cold dust, basically. This was a summer. This was a summer. I think it was June, beginning of June. So we slept there and made my way over to Dubrovnik. Got off quite— quite covered with dust and whatnot.

8:03⧉ And I found the university, which was just outside of the old city in Dubrovnik. Found the dormitory, and I said, "Is Kate here?" The Irish girl. And they said,"Yeah, yeah, she's here. She's studying here." And I said, "That's fantastic." So my heart's beating, and I'm quite excited, and I'm in love. And I said, "Where is she?" And they said, "She's in a party at a pub in the old city." So I got the name, and I rushed there very excitedly, and came into the door, and I saw Kate in the far corner. Blonde hair, green eyes, there she is. She was kissing with someone or something.

8:41⧉ I ran over, and she was sitting on the lap of this absolutely gorgeous-looking Croatian guy, blonde hair, blue eyes. He looks like a movie star. He's about this much taller than me,right? So, "Hi Kate." "Bye Kate." And it was over. But I stayed around and made my way over to Korčula. So she was studying in Dubrovnik? She was studying in the Dubrovnik European law for the summer. Oh, really? That's odd. And I made my way over to the island of Korčula and fell in love with some of the wines there. Now, at the time, the wine business was quite different here, where the government cooperatives made most of the wine. So people would sell their grapes. So the quality was as you would expect from these cooperatives. But some families were still making small amounts of wine, and I discovered the grape Grieg and Poship, of course, and Blavat Mühle. And some of these families were making excellent stuff. And this opened up a whole— opened up a whole new world to me, because I was quite interested in wine even at that age, living in California. But you got these varieties that I never had seen before.

9:56⧉ They weren't French varieties. They weren't anything you saw in the New World. And I was intrigued. So I always say I lost the girl, but I fell in love with the grapes. Oh, cool, cool. And then I went on the rest of the summer around Europe: Greece, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, and so forth. So did you then go back to the U.K. or the U.S., or you stuck around? Back to the U.K. Then I finished my undergraduate degree, joined an organization called the Peace Corps, which is a volunteer association that is sponsored by the government, where you go to lower-income countries and you work on international development, as they call it. I focused— I was placed in Costa Rica at the time, and I worked in what we call squatter settlements, or bidonvilles in French, which are these,

10:56⧉ in effect, illegal squatting settlements. And they lack land title, they lack infrastructure like water and sewage, and even the housing is quite ramshackle. So my job was to help organize the people in one of these squatter settlements outside of the city of Punta Arenas, which is on the Pacific coast, and quite impoverished. There I worked on getting housing financed and building houses and trying to organize the people so they could get infrastructure. Quite an eye-opening experience. Nothing like I had ever seen. So it really changed my worldview, coming from a middle-class family in a suburb in America, and then seeing what some of the rest of the world— the poverty— it was eye-opening. But I was there for 3 years, changed my perspective on things, and it was overall a really good experience. Also got to live on the beach with palm trees and a little shack, but it didn't matter. Why not? Good fun. I have to say it was one of the times of my life.

12:07⧉ It really was fantastic. From there, then I went back to school in the U.S., on the East Coast, and did a couple of master's degrees. One was in urban planning and policy, which is what I was working in in Latin America. And one was an MBA in what we would call data science now. Then it was called management, decision-making, and support, but same basis.

12:37⧉ From there, then I moved to London and got my first job in IT, which was quite a shift for me. I had initially set out, prior to school, I actually went to California to become a filmmaker, and I was interested in creative arts and whatnot. That didn't happen. That didn't happen at all. Oh, they couldn't handle you, huh?

13:06⧉ I didn't make it into the movie business. Nearly starved to death on the streets of Los Angeles. That was the time of my life. Quite interesting. But then, like I said, I got into San Diego State, studied broadcast journalism. So I was attempting to delve into the creative arts to a certain extent,right? Video and whatnot. But when I think about it now, I really wanted to tell a story, or create stories and film stories and be part of that creative process. That didn't happen in that way. It happened in another way. So here I was, years later, with this degree in technology and business, and not quite sure what I was going to do with myself.

14:00⧉ That year was particularly good for getting a job in consulting companies. It was the boom. This is before the dot-com crash. So it was the dot-com boom, huh? Yeah. So it was the dot-com boom, and it was ridiculous. I got— So this was the'90s now. Yeah. It was. Recruiters, the big companies, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Accenture, these kind of companies were coming to campus and giving you bonuses to sign a contract with them. It was ridiculous. And I think I got 14 or 15 job offers. This was just astounding. You know, this was just— and they were coming to you. So you were still without any real experience in IT at the time. My experience was— I had experience. I mean, work experience. I had work experience, but it wasn't relevant to what they were doing. So I was a new hire, as they call it, even though I was probably 8 years older than the rest of the new hires. But I was in that because I hadn't done anything in consulting and technology.

15:04⧉ So I started— I got these offers, and the way I decided was, "Can you get me to Europe?" And most of the companies— so you had the second and third interview and whatnot. And— But why were you so keen on going to Europe? I just found it fascinating from my trip as a student. It just was a completely other world. So I had seen Central America, I had seen South America, and there was something that intrigued me about Europe: the complexity of the cultures, the fact that you could go in one day to an entirely different culture, go to Italy from Austria, and the richness and the fact that there were so many languages and differences in food and whatnot. Even more so back then than today. We have a bit more homogeneous culture. Not so much, but you know what I mean. I know, yeah. There's commonalities among the European countries now. So that was my litmus test for the company,right, when I made my selection, which is a great position to be in. I don't know if this happens anymore as a student, you get 14 different offers.

16:19⧉ I don't think so. Exactly. It was a sign of the times,right? And it was kind of a bit like this situation we had now with AI and the funding, all the venture cap coming in, and it was sort of people just throwing money down. Yeah, yeah. The'90s were crazy. Yeah, it was crazy. You just had to have an idea, and the money was pouring in, so they invited stuff. It was. And it was the beginning of the first phase of the web, where the internet became the World Wide Web,right? So there was a lot of speculation, hence a lot of jobs. If you had anything that was remotely attached to technology, you were going to do well.

16:59⧉ So I made my selection on one company, which was probably my least choice out of the bunch. And the reason was is because they were a very down-earth company, but the executives that came down to interview us— I remember the guy, Marty— he was so sloppily dressed, as opposed to the people from PricewaterhouseCoopers or Accenture, which were all suit-and-tie guys with nice haircuts. Marty was this— he had a suit that looked as from 1970, and this awful tie that was stained and not tied correctly. And I didn't know about these guys just because of the presentation. He was a very intelligent man, and it turns out he's a fantastic manager. But I remember thinking, "I'm not sure if this is on the top of my list." But as I went through the third round interviews and visited their headquarters— and this was a company called American Management Systems, or AMS— they're no longer on the market. They were acquired by another company. But back then, they were quite big in telecommunications and government work and whatnot, and they were based around Washington, D.C.

18:11⧉ And the thing that impressed me about them so much was every interview I had— and I think that day I had 6 or 7 interviews with employees— and I said, "Can this company get me to Europe?" And everyone had said, "Oh, well, I just came back. I was there for 3 years." Or, "Of course, I'm going there next month for a 2-year contract." So it was very encouraging. So I kind of gambled and took a chance and went with AMS, as opposed to all these fancy Ernst & Youngs and everybody else, which I did an internship at the previous summer. So I jumped aboard AMS, and I found myself in the telecommunications industry, which I had no experience in. And they issued me a laptop and said, "Learn this piece of software." Put me in a room with no training, just a manual, a paper manual, and a piece of software. And it was quite a complicated thing, and I had no experience in it. So me and this other bloke sit there for about 2 weeks trying to learn this software.

19:20⧉ And I remember going back to my girlfriend at the time. She had just gotten a job in finance. We were living just inside Washington, D.C., and I was working just outside the Beltway, as they call it, in Virginia. And I came home, and I opened a bottle of wine and walked out into the garden and started crying. I said, "How? I've done these relatively interesting jobs up to this point, and all of a sudden I was a data analyst creating database designs for a telecom's customer care system. And I can't— I don't mean to offend anybody that's in that business— it is complex, it's difficult, and it's absolutely boring if you're from the creative— wanting to be in the creative industries. All of a sudden I find myself designing database tables.

20:17⧉ Yeah, someone has to do it. For a computer system that runs millions and millions of records per day. And I'm like, "Huh?" Yeah, that has to be optimized and has to run smoothly. How did I get here? I remember telling my wife, or my girlfriend at the time, "What mistake did I make to get to this point in my life?" So what kind of database was it? Do you remember? Yeah. Was it DB2 or something like that? It wasn't DB2. It could have been DB2, or maybe it was an Oracle database at the time. I actually don't remember. But I remember the typical drawing ERD diagrams and trying to figure out— But it was SQL, I guess. It was SQL. Yeah. So it was— yeah. But the point is, it bored me to death. It was boring. Okay. Now, the interesting thing is, I wanted to go to Europe, and I was stuck in the States. So I'm stuck in the States, and I'm stuck in a database, basically.

21:17⧉ So I get to a client. They put me on a client, and this is a very different world back then. People— we had what were called Internet Service Providers, ISPs. And the telecom's industry in the U.S. had been deregulated at the point, because it used to be a monopoly. And everybody in this broad area was setting up an ISP where you could connect to the internet with a couple of servers in their— So this was before Comcast and— Oh, wait. This is— yes, exactly. This is Joe Blogs with a couple of servers setting up with a telephone line and used to dial in,right? And you would get charged a subscription. And then the market consolidated. So I worked as a consultant to a company that was buying 9 of these ISPs and crunching them together into one company.

22:13⧉ And so I got put in a senior consultant role, even though I was a junior consultant and had no experience. It was quite nice for them, because they make a good spread on the margin by billing me. And I was supposed to consolidate all these systems from 9 different companies. This naive first-time consultant. And I walked out and met with these people, and nobody would tell me anything, because they knew exactly what was going to happen. They were going to lose their jobs. I would consolidate, and 90% of them would leave,right? And the one lucky guy would have his job left administering these systems or a team.

22:56⧉ So nobody would share anything with me. So I was in the position for the first time in my life. I'm like, "I have to make this up. I have to deliver something." So I created this crazy hypothetical ERD diagram and presented it to the management team. And just by chance, there was a sales guy from London there in the same company, and he had come over with a client that was an American company but based in London called Colt Telecom. That's another story. But they were impressed with my presentation, even though it was fictional. Management decided to execute it, and the sales guy said to me, "If you ever need a job, come on over to London. I'll give you one like that." And I said, "Why?" And he said, "Because you explain something very, very technical in a way that management could understand it." And what I didn't realize at the time, which I did later, was there was my creative storytelling.

24:01⧉ I didn't think of it at the time, but that was this little key talent that I sort of discovered. So then you moved to London. Then I— actually, what happened was, I got a job offer in Spain with the same company, because I spoke Spanish and I knew this piece of god-awful software. And they had a position working with Vodafone Spain. But my boss blocked it, because he was billing me at this very high rate, and he told HR, "No, you can't let this guy go. I'm making too much money off of him," which was awful. So I came back, and I was quite disappointed, because the promise was I'd get to go to Europe, and here was an opportunity staring at me in the face, and I get blocked.

24:55⧉ So I went home, once again cried to my girlfriend at the time, and she says, "Well, I don't know about you, but I'm moving to London because I just got a job offer today." So I said,"Interesting. Interesting." So the next day I went back into HR, and I said— now, she went from the girlfriend to the fiancé in less than 24 hours, at least fictionally. And I said, "My fiancé is moving. I'm moving too. So you can either let me have a post with your company in London, or I'm just leaving." Now, again, this was a time when it was quite easy to get a job, and there was this high demand. Yeah, so we were so worried. So it was not like today. It was probably a little bit more leverage. So off I went, and I contacted this sales guy that had been there, and Eamon Kearns was his name, and he said, "Come abroad." And so we got to London, and I was the data analyst. But what happened there was, there was— the reason he wanted me to come

26:02⧉ was this storytelling. And the problem he had was most of the salespeople could not describe the technical complexity of what we were doing. Now, this is before what we have now, cloud computing solutions and package solutions. We actually built these giant systems from scratch, and very few people could explain to the customer the degree of technical complexity. Why do they need 10 million dollars? Yes. So somehow I fit in there, and I kept getting pulled, even though I was working on a project doing the data analyst role. I get pulled into sales meetings by these sales guys to say, "Okay, ba-ba-ba." And, "Mike, can you explain?" So I sat between the technical team, which nobody could understand, and the sales team, which didn't know how to articulate it. And I found this little role in between— I guess you'd call it pre-sales now.

27:03⧉ And so that went on, and then we had the dot-com crash, and all the money disappeared,right? And then— Yeah, it was like overnight. Overnight. It was— everybody pulled out of the market. It's very similar to what you saw and were seeing just now with artificial intelligence, and maybe before the previous wave, in that there's a lot of excitement at first, there's a lot of investment and speculation, and then at some point somebody says, "Where do we make money off of this?" Right? Where do we actually— where does a company that spends a million actually get a return? And that was very much like you see today, but even more dramatic. All of a sudden, I remember when the first websites— it was all, "How many eyeballs? How many people were on that website?" We'd measure it. We'd look at IP addresses. It was the early days of all this. And then some wise financiers that put the money behind it said,"Yeah, but what does it matter? How many eyeballs? Where's the money? Show me the money." And all of this stuff collapsed, except you had the emergent Amazons

28:13⧉ and eBays and these companies that actually came up. But there were still ads on the web. Were there? Yes. Yeah. But it wasn't— it just wasn't very developed. The commercial models weren't thought out. And then there was this huge consolidation, and then you had the survivors emerge and actually make money a few years later. Well, Amazon didn't. They kept investing and getting bigger and investing. But their business model worked,right? They had the revenue growth. But yeah, so a kind of funny story was where I got into sales. So I had done this little sort of quasi-pre-sales business development role ad hoc, and they started firing people in waves. And we had a very full office, and within about 3, 4 months, it was a very sparsely populated office. And they would do this in waves, and then they started coming at you one by one. And you get a tap on the shoulder, "Can you come down to the office of HR?" And boof, out the door. HR and their boss wants to see you. It's not good. No, you knew what happened. It was like the angel— you know the death guy with the sickle?

29:24⧉ It was like, "Ding, ding, ding," and boof, you're gone. So eventually, there was very few of us left in the consultant group. They had fired most of the salespeople, and the only people left were really the people that were on customer sites being billed. So I was there with a Dutch girl, Wendy, and— So were you visiting Croatia at the time? Actually, Croatia was the very first place that I came, because I had such a fond memory. The blonde guy, huh? Yeah, yeah. The grapes. I went to Korčula. That was my very first trip when I moved to London.

30:07⧉ And I went there a series of times, actually, because I was so fascinated with the grapes. And I stayed at a house just outside the old city,right by where the nuns have their— I don't know what you call a monastery for nuns, but whatever it is. It's where the nuns have their place. So it was this lovely old couple, and it was sort of the quintessential Dalmatian experience, where you're staying in somebody's house, but it's an apartment, and you have the veranda with the grapes hanging down, and every night they come out and give you a domace, a liter of wine, and you sit there and watch the sunset,right? And of course you— And you get wasted. And of course you sit there and you just fall in love with that,right? As everybody does. And the interesting thing about that family, I kept going back there over and over. So you were a wine aficionado even back then? Partially,right? When I was a student— when I was a student, I— because I was in California, I had the fortune of going up to Napa and Sonoma Valley.

31:19⧉ And at the time, it was very different back then than it is now. It's a bit of a circus. There's very heavily touristed and organized tasting rooms and whatnot. Then it was more about meeting the winemaker. They were basically former winemakers,right? And of course, Mike Grigich was there, which, if you know the story— fascinating story. So a Dalmatian from the south had migrated to the U.S. and got a job in Napa Valley before it was really well known.

32:00⧉ Mike Grigich, who died about a year ago at 99, believe it or not. Oh, wow. Small guy, little— he used to wear a little beret. There's a movie that involves— about his wine, that doesn't actually do it justice— called Bottle Shock, which is kind of a typical Hollywood sort of movie, but it's worth watching. So Mike Grigich moved over there, and he made some pretty good wine out of Zinfandel and Chardonnay. And by chance, an English guy named Stephen Spurier, who was based in Paris, held a contest for the Chardonnays and the red wines as well from California against the top French wines. But the French judges— I think this was— what was it? 1976, I think. Concourse of'76. But they didn't tell them that it was California wine. So all the judges were French sommeliers, winemakers, distributors, whatnot. And out number one was Mike Grigich's Chardonnay from

33:11⧉ California, beating all the top Chardonnays from Burgundy. So how come they didn't know it was— it wasn't? That was blind tasting. Ah, okay. Blind tasting. Okay. And they didn't tell them it's California version. So here, this little Dalmatian guy has now made the most recognized Chardonnay in the world by the experts. And this put Napa on the map. So you had this sort of not-recognized American wine beyond America to, wow, something's really exciting. And that was Grigich. And he did it, along with other people, but he put the footprint in. I read somewhere that above a certain wine quality level, that even the best sommeliers, they kind of fail to distinguish or recognize the— I mean, of course they'll be able to recognize the species of the grapes, but do you think that's true?

34:11⧉ That's— the thing is, wine is subjective. Okay? We all have our personal preferences, and there's sort of a— I mean, but some bottles cost like 2,000 bucks. I mean, is that really— I personally— Or is it just like a symbol? Is that a symbol and nothing else? I think there's a lot of that in there. Some of it's marketing. So I think you can get a good quality wine— I kind of put wine into two categories,right? One type of beverage wine. So what is it like a bottle of wine? Beverage wine, which you'd go to Coughlin, and you'd go to a supermarket, and you'd say,"95% of what we drink is going to be beverage wine,"right? Which is manufactured on a really large scale,right? By huge conglomerates. And you get it for your 6, 7, 8— or it's a big cooperative in Spain or Italy that's been doing this for years, and this fits a certain part of the market, which is most of it. And then you have quality wine,right? And in quality wine, you have the little guy that's making the handmade stuff in Burgundy, and his family's been doing it for 3, 4, 5 generations. And then you have the recognized châteaux. Now, when you start to get into the recognized châteaux, they've built up a long history,

35:23⧉ like what you'd see in Saint-Émilion,right? And the Cheval Blanc, white horse, that sells for hundreds,right? Alongs with other wines like that. Now, is that worth it? I don't know,right? Is a marginal difference in quality worth a lot of money between a wine that maybe costs 30 euro? You get diminishing returns and— Yeah, yeah. You have diminishing returns. Some of it's probably perception. Some of it's the heritage. Some of it's prestige. Somebody wants to show off that they can afford a bottle of Cheval Blanc in front of their friends. So there's probably a number of variables in there. But it's like any other luxury good. How much better can you make a perfume,right? Right,right. Is a 60-euro perfume any worse than a 180-euro perfume? So there may be marginal differences, but a lot of it's perception, marketing, and whatnot. So what do you say— what would you say how much should a bottle of wine cost? Like, if you don't want to spend too much money about it, it's like a quality wine. Is it like 20 euros per bottle or less? Or what would you say? If you go to like Coughland, there's— you can buy it for 2 euros. That's obviously not good, but so what would be a fair price?

36:34⧉ I think it's going to depend on the type— the variety of the grape, because different grapes produce different quantities, and that's going to affect the price and the size of the winery,right? If you get a very small winery like I have, the cost per bottle is quite high, because the fixed costs are spread over a very small amount. Where if you go to a good producer that puts out— like what we have here at Testament— they're going to put out a couple hundred thousand bottles. So the staff costs and the equipment costs and accounting costs— Maintenance. It's going to be a fraction per bottle of what I would— When I was driving, I was never even really here. I was driving here. Wow, the vineyards are huge. Yeah. So— I wasn't expecting it. You get economy of scale, don't you? Even though, I'd have to say here, it's very labor-intensive. Everything's done by hand here. So you don't have mechanical harvest, which adds to the cost. So they're not— the economy of scale that they're getting is nowhere near what you're going to have in the big farms in Australia and South Africa and Spain and whatnot. So back to your question, how much should a good bottle of wine cost? It's going to be on the type,right?

37:45⧉ So the amount of produce that comes off that particular vine,right? And it's also going to be the scale that you're doing it at. Now, as a small winemaker, one of the advantages that we have— and there's not many— Not many is— I remember— I'll sum it up this way. I have a good friend, Mark, from the Netherlands, and he tried my very first wine in 2015 and said, "This is great. How are you going to make sure that it's the same next year?" And I said, "Well, Mark, I'm not. It's going to be different next year." Yeah. It's going to be different weather conditions. I may try to do it differently. I may make it— and that's the one advantage of a small winemaker, is when you go to a big winery or a supermarket, you tend to know that brand, and you have a certain level of expectations that it's the same next year,right? Conchu y Toro from Chile. Cabernet, it's going to taste the same 2 years from now, more or less, as it did when you had it the first time 2 years ago,right? And that's what you want. You want a certain quality control. When you go to a small winery, you want to discover, and you want to find something different. What is your 2015 like versus the one I'm drinking now, which is your 2019?

39:00⧉ Do you have any— I have people coming now asking me for my 2016 cuvée, which is long gone, because it's quite a bit different than the one I just sold,right? And that they have another glass. So that's your one competitive advantage, and that does affect price. So then you start saying, "Okay, if somebody values that experience, they're going to be willing to pay more." Then saying, "It's Tuesday night. I'm on the way home from work. I want to have a glass of wine with my wife. It's going to be 7 euro. And that's what my budget is for tonight." So there's a real diversity. And that's one of the things I really love about the wine industry, or wine in general, is that diversity. And you may have a very different taste than I have, and neither is better,right? You just— it's your preference. And that's what's beautiful about the diversity. If I was to say one thing about Croatia wine, and Croatia wine is not recognized very well around the world yet, little by little it's becoming— what really attracted me here was the diversity of the grapes. And in particular, Dalmatia. We have over 100-plus different varieties of grapes just in Dalmatia.

40:11⧉ Wow, really? And more are being discovered when you go out to islands, have their own little almost forgotten varieties. And I've never seen like that anywhere else in the world that you have such the number of grapes, and they've survived. Even through the whole socialist period with the cooperative winemaking, you have this diversity that I've seen nowhere else in the world. And it's great. It's discovery. You can go to the Vis, and all of a sudden you get introduced to Vugovar, which nobody grows anywhere else. Havar has a bunch of different varietals that you will find nowhere else. And then you have the big ones like Plavac Mali and lesser so Babič. But it's fascinating to me, the diversity. So back to London. So you're in IT in London. So how did you end up in Yadotovac of all places? I need to know this. I mean, can you even pronounce the village name? So— yeah, exactly. This is quite funny, because Yadotovac takes you about 3 years just to— not to mention the Croatian language. It's horrible.

41:19⧉ So how did I get to this lovely village? So I was concentrating mostly on the south and kept coming back to Korčula and that region, and wanted to buy a piece of property. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with it. I was highly interested in wine, but I wasn't thinking yet. And then I started turning and say, "I really would like to have a bit of land and grow a few vines." And at this point, it wasn't supposed to be a commercial venture, which we can talk about. I'm not really a big commercial venture. But at the time, it was, "When I retire, what do I want to do?" Right?

42:02⧉ And at the time in the UK— and I won't get into the details— but we had what were called annuities for pension, which means you saved your money. Your company might have put some money in, and at the end of it, you would get an annuity, which means an insurance or pension company would pay you, in effect, an allowance for your savings. Then if you died, they kept the rest of it. Is it like an investment, or? They chose the investment. And they would tell you, "We'll pay you X amount. If you give us your pile of money that's locked away, we'll give you this amount per month." But I guess it wasn't taxed or something, so there has to be a carrot in there somewhere. Well, it was very much not a monopoly, but there was 5 or 6 big pension providers, and it was almost like collusion. But they changed the law. But at the time, I was quite— I'm like, "Well, I'm not going to give this pension fund my money, because what do I want to do in the end anyways? I want to go to a beautiful place like Croatia, by the sea, have a few vines, a few olive trees, a little boat, and fish. So why should I get an allowance from these guys? Why don't I just put my money into the land directly?" And then when I retire— It's also an investment,right?

43:13⧉ It's an investment,right? So I wanted the control rather than give the control to an investment house. So how did you end up in the Šibenik area? So here's the thing. So like I said, I was focusing on southern Dalmatia, and I was working at another IT job, not the AMS. It was a Dutch— Anglo-Dutch company. And they had a reduction of workforce. And I got an opportunity, which was,"You can go into our utilities practice and become an SAP consultant." SAP is a big inventory management finance system for a large company, German company.

43:57⧉ In the utilities practice— and I was doing the digital media practice at the time— or you can take this money and leave. And I said, "How quickly can you get it into my account?" This was on a Friday Monday. It was there. I hopped in my— I have an old VW van from the'60s, the old things. The hippie ones. The hippie ones. I was gone by Friday, and I was comingright here. And I went down, of course, to Korčula, and then I worked my way up the coast. There wasn't the motorway at the time.

44:29⧉ And just by chance, I stopped in Jasenova, which is a campsite just here, just south of Žabarić. And I got to be good buddies with the campsite owner, who had worked for an American company on a ship. And he was a ship engineer, as many Dalmatians do. So I stayed there for about 5 weeks, campedright on the beach with the Splitti. And I then tried Babič for the first time, which was a wine from Leo Graassen from Primosten. And I just fell in love. Of all the different vines I tried in the world, all of a sudden, "What is this? What is this grape?" And I became obsessed with it. So I met Leo, a fascinating guy, professor. Now he's in Split, but he was in Zagreb at the time. Wonderful guy. Shares his knowledge and his passion about Babič. Babič at the time almost was gone. It was— there were a few families growing it in the Primosten area. Really? But it's so well-known now.

45:40⧉ Well, it's had a whole renaissance. So this is going back 19 years. And Babič was really scarce at the time. Leo was quite instrumental in bringing it back, both by the reputation of his wine, but also his father was trying to renovate the area just south of Primosten, where the historic vineyards were,right? Right on the water. So they made quite an effort. But so fast forward, I'm in the camp. I'm talking to my new friend, Milan, the director. And I said, "I'm interested." And I had looked around the area, and I'd come here around the village in the inlet, saw so many people making small-scale wines. So you have the old family vineyards, which are dying out now, but everybody had a vineyard, everybody had an olive grove, which a lot still do.

46:43⧉ And then I was kind of confused, because there was kind of this table wine, family wine, going on. It's usually terrible. I'm sorry. Depends on the— you know what? This is a funny story. In Croatia, in Dalmatia, when you come to someone's house, there's always like a family home wine. "Oh, you have to, Vladimir. You have to try it. It's the best." "Okay, so I try it." So it's like terrible. Mostly they are. So what do you say to the person? "Oh, yeah, it's wonderful. It's wonderful." And then they pour you another glass. "Oh, no, please. I've had enough. It's so good. I don't want any more." But yeah, sometimes they— they cut corners, and then they do a lot of stupid stuff, and then it kind of goes sour, and then it's not good. It's more like a vinegar or something. I like it. I like it. I don't like the wine. I like the fact that there's that tradition and the family tradition. But sometimes the wine is awesome. They get lucky or something. They get lucky. Exactly. So it's either terrible or it's great. There's no in between. But what's interesting— and this is a character of a Dalmatian—

48:00⧉ and in particular, I'm going to say the males, which is probably not fair, but say a Dalmatian male ego. And I think it's changing over time, like in your generation, because you're much more worldly, and you've interacted. But I'll tell you a story. I went in a very similar situation to what you were just describing. Somebody invited me for Easter lunch,right? And they were making a pig on the Spit. And so I thought, "Oh, I'll bring something along,right, as a gift." And I bought Leo Graassen's wine, which at the time was about 25 euros, which was the highest, with a few exceptions. That was quite a lot of money. This is going back about 15, 16 years ago. So you wouldn't have seen that on the market. But Leo had the reputation and the quality. So I thought, "Well, let's do a nice treat and buy this wine and bring it to my neighbor." And we sat down, and I said, "Here's the present." And he refused to drink it.

48:59⧉ Why did you bring wine? He refused to look at it. And I'm like, "Well, this is crazy. He only drinks my wine at my table." And it was exactly what you were talking about, pure vinegar,right? And I was just like, "This guy's crazy. What is it about?" He wouldn't even look at the bottle. It's like, he was offended that I brought it. And I thought, "What is it about this character that he insists on serving vinegar?" It was so bad, whilst he's got one of the best wines in Croatia on his table. But he would not touch that wine. He would not touch that wine. Right,right. Now, like I said, I think this has changed. This guy's about my age, actually. So you see, there is a difference. But there is a thing about the Dalmatian spirit that I love, which is both good and bad. Like every culture has their pluses and minuses. But this tenacity that you have that does something as silly as doing that, or something as silly as trying to grow vines on pure karst rock, where there's no soil. That tenacity is what's given Dalmatia its character. And you look at Dalmatia in particular, but Croatia in general, has had the

50:12⧉ highest amount of migration around the world, second to Ireland. And a lot of those people have been very successful. So why is that? There were some tough times here, several points in history, and people went abroad,right? They didn't speak the language, but they made a success of themselves. Just like Mike Grgić that I told you about. The New Zealand wine industry was formed by Dalmatians,right? A lot of the big winemakers in Australia. Life was really hard here. It was very hard. But you can see the tenacity. I think that's what's part of the spirit.

50:48⧉ But yeah, the wines are. This is part of the Dalmatian culture where I think there's a word for it. It's a certain level of tenacity that you have. And I think you probably had to be in the genes,right? Because if you came here hundreds of years ago, what was the migration from Northern Europe? 850 years ago for the Bjeloharats to come into this area, it was rock. It's rocks.

51:19⧉ So you go from this fertile area in what's now Ukraine and Poland, and you come down here, you have a pile of rocks. Have you ever seen the walls they built from the rocks on small islands just to get a little bit of soil to grow potatoes or whatever? That tenacity is amazing. And there's whole islands that are just riddled with these walls. No one's using them now, of course. But you had to imagine what kind of hard times it was. You can even look behind you, behind the Testament vineyard here, on the other side of the hill, those walls still exist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's plenty of walls everywhere. It's amazing. And when you get an aerial view, it's like a web of these walls. It's fascinating to see. Yeah, it is incredible. So I think that's the real good plus side, is that the people had such resiliency and tenacity to make it work. So that's the great part about it. There's some funny bits. And when I first moved to the village, let's say, take up residency, because I was still working in London and coming here every other weekend for almost 12 years,

52:32⧉ there was a big resistance to my presence. People were used to tourists at the time, particularly Germans and Austrians. But for somebody to come in January and February, that was a foreigner, and just pop into the village and stay there, there was a resistance. Especially the older people, like, "What is this guy doing? And is he going to change something?" Yeah, don't change anything, please. Yes. And there was, I wouldn't say hostility, but a discomfort with me being present there amongst most people. And that's changed. Now I walk down the street and everybody says hello, and I get gifts. Somebody will come with a bottle of rakija or whatever, invite me to lunch. So it's very different over the course of 18 years. Maybe because I look older and I look more like them.

53:24⧉ You're blended in. Yeah, I'm blended in now. Yeah. I've become a Dalmatian old person. But yeah, no, fascinating. But why Jadrtavat? So why Jadrtavat? So here I am in Jasenova, just a few minutes away. And I've got to know Milan, the campsite owner, and told him I was interested in making wine. I was keen to make wine, and I got interested in Babič, and let's go. So he said, "Look, Mike, you have two options,right?" He said,"You can—" He said,"You live in London. You're a businessman. You have your little house. But option A would be just come here and buy the local grapes, Plavina, Debit, whatnot, from the people that are working here. It's not worth your time to take care of a vineyard, really.

54:19⧉ And come here in September for the harvest, make your wine, and have fun with it." He said, "Or B, go up into the hills above the village and grow Babič." And I said, "Why in those hills?" And he goes, "Because before Philoxera, which is in the late 1800s, before all the vines got wiped out, this was the epicenter of Babič. There were over a million vines here and sheep and all this. So Šibenik has this long history of producing excellent wine, which you don't know until you sort of dig into the history. This all disappeared,right?" And he said, "Go up there." So I walked up, and I came to the top of the hill overlooking Morinje, the bay here. And it was just pure karst limestone. I'm like, "Nothing.

55:08⧉ Nothing will grow here other than these crappy little bushes. Nothing will—no way a vine would survive here." So I explored the area for a couple of days, and I found three wild grapevines. And I thought, "Oh my God, it's possible." And then one day I went over the hill to where this vineyard is here, Testament, and Plenković, and what is now Galič. And there were bulldozers and road working equipment smashing the rocks. And I said, "What's going on here?" And they're like, "Oh, they're planting vines." It was this big, huge project that was a concession from the government. This used to be a military training base.

55:51⧉ And then after the war, it was closed, and it sat here. And then the government, stimulated with some funding, decided to make a concession for people to invest in vineyards. And you had some of the big players come and put the vines in. So it was the same year, and I saw this project. And I said, "Well, I knew who Plenković was, from Hvar, the big—" Not the prime minister. I'm not talking about the prime minister. I don't know if they're related. Great guy. Great guy. Zlatan Plenković, who's deceased now. He was a great winemaker, a great visionary businessman.

56:28⧉ He had invested. And I thought, "Well, if this guy who knows so much about wine is investing here on this soil, that's got to be good." So I said, "Okay, what do I want to do here?" So I went to buy a piece of land. And my idea was, "Put in 1,000 vines. Buy your little bit of land for the olive groves, and have a nice retirement." And this was wine for me,right? So you know the property situation here that you have with the historic cadastral

57:03⧉ difficulties, shall we say, because of the inheritance law. I bought a small bit, but the papers were not perfect. And they always say—and I learned something very interesting also about Dalmatia is, when somebody says, "Nema problema," there is a problem. Because I was told, "The papers aren't ready, but nema problema, six months." It took three years to get those papers clean, incidentally. But I planted the vines anyways. I took a bit of a risk, put my 10% down, and proceeded.

57:39⧉ And when I went to the advocates the next time, he said, "There's a bit of a problem here. Because the bit of land you're trying to buy is actually two and a half times larger than what you thought." So I called a friend. And I was not trying to go into the wine business. I was just keenly interested in Dalmatian wines and really just wanted to share the experience with other people that didn't know about Dalmatian wines, which is still today what my purpose is. So I called a friend, and we bought the extra piece. Now I've had, now I'm up to about 3,000 vines, which I don't want, because now you're forced to—I actually had to set up a business, because at the time, and up until recently, a foreigner couldn't buy agricultural land. So this law has just changed, I think, a year ago, for EU citizens can now buy agricultural land, but then impossible. So I had set up this business in order to acquire the land. But my real goal was not to make a wine business. It was to share experience,right, and have a nice retirement and relaxation.

58:54⧉ So that kind of went on, and the vines got larger. And then I went to the advocate the next time, and they said, "Ah, there's another problem." There's another problem, of course. Nema problema. So what happened? So here's the thing. It's one cadastral record, and his cousin has inherited half of it. And he will not sign off unless you buy his too. Okay? So now I'm in a position—four and a half times the amount of land, which is not huge. Now it's a hectare. We're not talking about a massive thing here. But that was not my intent. My intent was to have my vines for my own personal wine and be done with it,right? So now all of a sudden, I've got 7,300 vines, and I'm like,

59:39⧉ "What am I doing? How did I get stuck?" It's almost like that, "How did I get stuck in the place?" story when I got into data analysis. But it's like, "Wait, wait, wait, wait a second." I wanted to— It seems to be a recurring theme in your life. It's a recurring thing. What kind of bad decisions have I made to get to this place? And then I started with it and said, "Okay, well, this has to be something. What is it?" And you know what it is for me? I'm not trying to compete with any of these big winemakers. I just got intensely interested in the indigenous grapes. And I wanted to share my experience with other people. So now in the position I'm at, it's great, because I have people come from America, or they come from even France, or England, or Netherlands, or wherever, and I get to show them what the local grapes are like. And there's a lot of surprise. This is now the tourist destination, top, top, top on everybody's list. But very few people understand that there's really good wines here. Maybe they went to a supermarket and bought a box of Kraševina.

1:00:48⧉ It's okay. But I'm not dissing the Kraševina at all, because there's some excellent producers,right, as you know. But the point is, there's still a perception in the market that there are not high-quality wines here. So my interest is really to introduce people to that, that are from abroad, and say, "Look, we're making some very special things." Now, Šibenik in particular is very interesting to me, because you have this group of younger people. The director here at Testament, you have guys like Prigen. You have Rok here. You have Baraka. And they're all sort of either under 40 or early 40s, and what they're doing is phenomenal. They have brought in— Do you think they're using modern technology? They're using modern technology. One, they're being clean.

1:01:46⧉ Okay. So now they're good. So all of a sudden, you have modern techniques and modern equipment done with indigenous grapes. And this is very exciting to me. These people have also, most of them, with a few exceptions, have been to school. A lot of them studied on Leo Grass and Crewe. And they're really putting world-class stuff out there. Coupled with the fact that now, because maybe they've lived abroad or have friends from abroad, they now understand that marketing, modern marketing, is a real part of it,right? So, for example, when I first came here, most winemakers, even today, put the last, the surname on the bottle, Plenković, as mentioned,right? This is typical Dalmatian, which is great. The problem is, from an international consumer perspective, this doesn't mean anything to you. You can't even say the word. And then there's a grape variety that you don't even know, Babič. Babič. What the hell is that? What the hell is that? And what will you do? You'll go to the next bottle on the shelf because it's unapproachable,right?

1:02:59⧉ Now, the generation now seems to get it. When you look at the designs of the label—and we do have really good artists and graphic designers now in Croatia, both in Zagreb and even locally—and the labels now can communicate,right? They have— To a foreign audience. To a foreign audience for the first time. And you look at, even like Baraka, he has his very high-quality labels. They're names of things that have a story behind them. Testament here, Testament,right? You see on the entry-level wine a dog. It doesn't throw somebody's surname at you. If you're a foreigner, you're coming in here, "Dalmatian dog." Oh, well, we know what that is,right? We don't even have to know it's from Croatia. If you bought this in an export market, you're attracted to the dog,right? Then you try the wine, and you probably like it, and you say, "Where is it from?" So it's completely reversing the marketing angle. It's like— So are Croatian wines now, or Dalmatian wines per se, are they gaining traction in the foreign market? They are in certain markets. And it's interesting to watch it, because I've been— And I suppose there's not—it's not such huge quantities of

1:04:12⧉ bottles being exported. I mean, is it a modest amount, or is it— It's a modest amount, but it's growing. And I think it has to be in select markets where somebody knowledgeable can tell the story. Luckily, there's a lot of Croatian descent people around the globe. So if you do hook up with them, some of them have an interest in their heritage, and they've created a little gift shop, or a restaurant, or a wine shop, and they're proud to share their knowledge of where they came from and the products from that area. So olive oil, or wine, or whatever. You find this in London. You find this in America. You find it in various countries. So I think that, if you call them expats, because most of them, they've been there for two or three generations, that's a community to tap into, to spread the word on the good stuff that's coming out here. But also, tourism. I mean, people come here. And they come here for an experience,right? And I have people coming. Testament has people coming that are looking for something to do when they're not on the beach

1:05:24⧉ or in a boat,right? And they find out that there's great wine here, and then it becomes experience. My vision is what we're selling here is an experience, not just wine,right? There's a lot of choices out there in the market for wine, and great wines from all over the world. But do you get this experience,right? Do you get to sit in the sun over a barrel, having a glass of wine with your friends after you've had a great week in Dalmatia, maybe seeing different cities, maybe being on a boat, whatever the case is? And there's nothing like it.

1:06:01⧉ Yeah, so just being around a vineyard. You don't have to have a fancy winery like you have in Napa Valley, although we have some of those here in Dalmatia. But it's really about the experience and that whole tourist thing and discovering new things. It's discovery. And that's what I really want to do. So when we were talking a couple of weeks ago, we went for coffee, you were mentioning that you're actually active in promoting Croatian wines and Dalmatian wines. You mentioned like a London Expo or something. To a small scale.

1:06:35⧉ Every now and again, I go to London Wine Fair and other ones, ProWine and whatnot, in Germany. But it's quite interesting to see—I didn't go this year, but I went the year before—and see the perception of people about Croatian wines. It's changed. And for the first time two years ago, I saw some recognition. But if I go back over the years, the perception was, "Cheap wine,"right? It's Eastern and Central Europe. It produces cheap wine. It's not recognized. If I'm going to buy it, it's going to be some plonk.

1:07:14⧉ And that perception has been retained. I remember years ago, the Chamber of Commerce used to sponsor a big booth at the London Wine Fair. And I got to know some of the people. And there used to be four sides of Slavonia, and Eastern, and Dalmatian, and whatnot. And I used to hang out with the Dalmatian guys. So they got to know me. This is just when I had started here. So I got to know some of the guys on the booth. And one day I was there, and Leo Grassen calls me over and says, "Mike, Mike, Mike, can you talk to this guy?" And I was an English distributor, kind of a Portley guy, maybe early'60s. And I said, "Explain to him what he's asking and how it's wrong." And I said, "What is it that can I help you?" And he says,"Yeah, I'm interested in these wines. How do I really like them? I'm willing to pay." And at the time, it was in kunas, but he said the equivalent of€1 a bottle.

1:08:19⧉ And I just—so I have to say, "Look, some of these hills are like this. It's pure rock. You get a half a kilogram to a kilogram. Everything's done by hand. Mate." Impossible, yeah. It's impossible. It just doesn't work. Because that's what I'm willing to pay." And they say, "Well, nobody's willing to sell it to you." Okay? So that's going back 15, 16 years. And then two years ago, like I said, I was there, and I got a lot of interest. And we even got some journalists writing about the Croatian wines.

1:08:52⧉ There was an article in the Financial Times within the last six months that talked about what great wines we have here and listed even Testament here in that as one of the top choices. So that's a huge, huge difference in a decade and a half that I've seen, where it's still a select audience. A lot of sommeliers maybe know about wines that are coming out of here, maybe some restaurateurs, maybe a few experienced wine consumers that have been here. But it's still early days. But yeah, changing. And I love to be a part of that. Nice. So tell me, how did you actually—how did you learn the process of winemaking? And can you, in short, give us how do you go from grape to a wine? Yeah, interesting, because I didn't study,right? I read every book I could, but you don't really learn how to do it until you do it. And I made a lot of mistakes. My wife can tell you how many times I called her crying.

1:09:54⧉ "What did I do wrong?" But I was very fortunate to meet a couple of young winemakers that helped guide me. And I'll never forget the biggest lesson I learned, and you don't get this in the book,right? And I read a lot of good books at the time. I was in the third or fourth day of fermentation of the Babič. And a friend of mine who's a wine consultant, Luka Čulina, ran into the cellar. And Luka is a madman during the harvest season because he's got a number of different clients. So he's driving from doing clients all the way from Šolta to Vodice to Split. So the guy's working 20 hours a day. And he runs into my cellar, and he says, "I don't have time. I don't have time to talk." He walks up to the—runs up to the tank. He presses his nose against the stainless steel tank and says, he says, "Destillage, destillage. I don't have time to explain." And he runs away. I'm like, "What? What is this guy talking about?

1:11:05⧉ What is he talking about?" So I get to my book, and I'm like, "Destillage and destillage." And then he sends a text, and it says, "Pull everything out. Beat the hell out of it for an hour. Give it oxygen and slam it back into the tank." Something to that effect. And I'm like, "This is crazy." But what I learned there was the sense of smell is so, so important,right? Also, when you pick it,right? Because the ripeness has to be dead on. And the sense of smell in the fermentation, particularly in red wine—and I learned that from Luka, just from that one experience. And now, and I was lucky because I had an intern this year who's actually studied oenology. So she's actually got the science. What she said at the end of the season was, "I learned about smell from you. I didn't learn that in school." So I was very fortunate in understanding during the fermentation process when oxygen has to come in and when it doesn't,right? And that's something you get from experience and judgment. And it's not all the same with every different wine. So you have to—so it's a living creature, if you will. It is all the way, even when it's in the bottle,right?

1:12:16⧉ But in particular, during fermentation, you're guiding a process that happens naturally,right? And you can help it, and you can help steer it by what you do. But it's a process that's going to happen with or without you. It's either going to turn into vinegar, or a really bad wine, or a really good wine. So you're just kind of nudging it one way or another. Now, I do everything naturally,right? So this becomes a little bit more tricky in terms of guiding it, as opposed to an industrial process where you can use additives and whatnot and control the whole fermentation process. And then even if it doesn't turn outright, maybe adjust it so that it meets the palate that becomes your supermarket wine,right? But when you're doing it naturally on a small scale, you really have to use both an understanding of what's happening biologically, i.e., the science, and then a bit of judgment and intuition on how to— A lot of experience, I suppose. Experience, and you're just nudging it one way or another.

1:13:23⧉ We had one wine this year. So Sammy was my intern. By the way, what are we drinking here? This is Testament's Babič. Ah, okay. Nice. And it's an excellent example. Yeah, it's very nice. The thing that I really admire and thank Testament for is not just the wine, but Testament really helped put Babič on the world wine map. They export a certain quality. But back to that concept of the label, if you look at some of the labels, they're so approachable for a tourist or a foreigner. It doesn't hit you in the face with the family name. Oh, there's the Dalmatian dog,right? Dalmatian dog, you have Testament as a brand. You have the original Zinfandel.

1:14:12⧉ They're very approachable. So I think what Testament has done for us locally is say, "This is a great varietal." They make other ones, but they help put it on the map. So when I sell a bottle of wine, Babič, I get some recognition, probably because they've already been introduced to it here. And also, they have to drive by my place before they get to Testament, so.

1:14:43⧉ Maybe, maybe. Maybe that helped a bit. Maybe that helps. Thank you, guys. So the thing about—to answer your question from start to finish, and we'll go into all the detail. So you only grow Babič? I also grow a bit of Plavac mali, and a bit of the original Zinfandel that comes from Croatia here, that we call Tribidag or Soljenik.

1:15:11⧉ And the reason I grow those other two grapes is to blend into a cuvée with Babič. So my focus is Babič. I make a rosé, I make a cuvée, and then I make a straight Babič. What I like to do is age it in different types of oak barriques. So my style is mostly traditional, or maybe if you were, kind of a lot like Grassen would do, or a French style, where you'd let two or three years in barrique. Not the rosé, of course. But I also made a fruit-forward one, which is more modern style, which is a bit more like what Testament would do with the Dalmatian dog. So I'm trying to hit different taste profiles, even though I'm super small scale, so that people can really experience the grape. Right,right. So yeah, focused mad and crazy about Babič. So what were some—I'm sure there were plenty—but what were some of the cultural shocks that hit you in the face when you came, like, really living here? And I mean, was there even any? No. I'm just joking a bit, but. No, no. It's a huge difference. And apart from the language, so

1:16:27⧉ I don't think many, especially older people in the Otratovac, speak any English. How would you even communicate with them? Well, that's crazy. With all, like, signs and Google Translate or something? Your language. It's beautiful, isn't it? It's beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful. And this is not just Croatian, but it goes all the way up to all the Slavic languages. Because my wife is Polish, so they have this concept of declinations, and nouns, and adverbs, and adjectives. And you just don't have that in English. We have conjugations, where the verb changes tense, of course, which you do. But we don't change every bloody word in every sentence, depending on the context. And this is so hard for somebody that has not been

1:17:24⧉ taught in this sort of grammatical structure. If I'm going to put together a sentence with five words, I may know the entire vocabulary, those five words, but I just don't know how to declinate it,right? So I tried to study the grammar. I just couldn't get it into my head at this age. And now I'm like a child, and I copy. And I don't try to understand why. Are you trying to learn it actively? I mean, do you take classes or? No, I don't. I don't take classes, but I did some time ago. So now I'm like a child, and I just copy. Now, with respect to your question about how I communicate in the village, think about what you might communicate to somebody that's 70 or 80 years old in the village. You talk about the weather. You talk about how far you are harvesting the olives, how your grapes are doing.

1:18:17⧉ And you talk about the weather again. So now, I can put together that conversation quite easily because I've been doing it for 18 years. And me and my neighbor will say the same thing over and over. Oh, over and over. Right? I think she said in the last two weeks, every day, "Dobro jutro. Are you done with your maslina yet?" And I'm like, "No, no. One more day or two more days." So it's pretty much the same thing,right? And it's just a friendly expression. Basically, "How are you doing? The Bura is coming." Ima kiša.

1:18:55⧉ It's not a big challenge because we're not talking about politics. We're not talking about philosophy. When you get under a certain age, then the fluency in English is amazing. I do some volunteering at Trocat, which is the technology center here, aimed at teaching young people, mostly under 30, technical skills so they can get employment either locally or internationally, but be able to stay here instead of having to migrate to get a good job. And it's been wonderfully successful, actually, because the director and the technical director and the staff, amazing.

1:19:37⧉ People have really come out with a lot of knowledge. Now, when I teach there, I teach in English. And I can't think of one student there that isn't completely fluent in English and can comprehend maybe a few words. Especially the younger generations. The younger generation. And technology is an English-based language. So even if you're programming, you program in approximate English because if you're a programmer, it's not really English. It's English words or commands. So you have that. So language-wise, I learn every year, every week, hopefully a little bit. I can go to the store, but I'm not particularly good. But yeah, it's formidable language in terms of the declinations and the grammar. But it's wonderful. And it indicates what I particularly like. I always say, "I'm not learning Croatian. I'm learning Dalmatian,"right? Because Dalmatian is very distinct, both, as you know, in the way that they shorten

1:20:48⧉ certain words, bilo, you know? Not bilo, you know? There's some wonderful shortening. But also in the vocabulary, the fact that we say pomodori instead of račiće,right? This is an indication of the different times that Italian or Latin-based languages were infused with the Slavic language. And it makes a real richness to it. Incidentally, those are the words that I can remember that are easier for me than Italian ones. Because a lot of them have the base root with Spanish, which I know. So you get that. And there's also a lot of Italian and Latin. A lot of Italian and Latin.

1:21:28⧉ So what do you think of Šibenik from your perspective? Do you spend any time there? It's like. Šibenik is my favorite place. And I'm not just saying that because I live here. I chose to live here. There's a couple of reasons why. One, it's got the history like you have in other cities, Zadar and Split and Dubrovnik. But it hasn't lost its character,right? It hasn't become overwhelmed with tourism or become too big. So you've got this, from my perspective, and maybe it's my age or what I'm interested in, it's big enough to have everything that you need. It's got the history and the diversity, but it's small enough you can walk down the street and know people and sit down and have your coffee for an hour and a half or whatever it is. And you can pretty much walk all around the city. You don't necessarily need a car. I mean, you need a car, but yeah, it's not too huge. You have an influx, again, of these ideas of the modern world and external influences that are translated into something specifically Dalmatian.

1:22:39⧉ You look at restaurants like Nostalgia. You look at Rudy's Restaurant, Pellegrini. You look at Azimuth Bar. These are all modern interpretations of a very Dalmatian food, culture, lifestyle done very, very well. When was the last time you were in Azimuth? This summer.

1:23:05⧉ But I mean inside. Inside, yeah, yeah. Did you notice that the whole place is like inside of a huge well? It used to be a well. Yes, of course. And then when you go. But it's so funny. I mean, it's like. Well, if you go up to Pellegrini Restaurant, you go to their outside area. Ah, yeah, you can see the shafts. The well is actually the one that goesright down into Azimuth. Yeah, that's so cool. I mean, a lot of people don't, even from Šibenik, don't know it, but it's awesome. The water system, of course. The first electrical system for street lighting. You have all this history here that's amazing. Yeah, but that's kind of a misconception. It's the first electrical system, but on the alternating current. So places like Paris and London had it way before, but. DC. It was DC, yeah. So okay, this was the first on AC. But sometimes it gets confused that Šibenik had the first electrical lighting, public lighting, which isn't true. It would be cool if it was, but it's not, yeah. But the. But the AC, yeah. The main point, yeah, because it ran all the way from Krka, didn't it? And DC wouldn't go that far. Yeah, it was actually Tesla that spearheaded the whole project. I mean, it must have been quite an undertaking.

1:24:17⧉ It was like the beginning of the 20th century or something, so maybe even before. And to even build it and to talk into the local guys here back then to do it, wow. I mean, Tesla was a great man. I'm probably biased because, as you know, my genes and my blood is 100% Croatian, even though I was born in America. So I'm probably biased. Yeah, I saw that on your site. So you're actually descendant from Croatia. Maybe you got those genes. Yeah. So what probably makes me a bit biased, but for such a small country in terms of population, what are we now, around 4 million, it punches above its weight in so many ways. Not just sporting. Sports, obviously, but winemakers. I'm biased as hell. A lot of the good wine making came, it's not just France. And just for our French audience, Dalmatia was making wine before France was. So just bear that in mind.

1:25:21⧉ And the Greeks wrote about it. So yeah, I'm probably biased, but this is one of the things I admire so much about Croatia is the contribution that the culture has made in other cultures and abroad and in sciences. And I'm always amazed when I go into Trocat, the volunteering, the teaching that I've done there, the capability of the young people is amazing in technology. And statistically, if you look at Europe, you'll see the technical comprehension is higher than the average norm across the countries in Europe here. Why is that? I don't know. But I've been so impressed with the people that have been in classes that I've taught, or sometimes I do lectures and seminars, and it's amazing.

1:26:11⧉ Maybe they're just highly selective and they get the best people. But I'm always very impressed with the people that are under 30, even in their early 20s. And the funny thing is, very modest, which is a nice part of the character. You have modesty, intelligence, great technical skills, great math skills, and an attitude. We've got this great attitude. I think the problems are well known. A lot of people, a lot of young people leave to go to other countries for economic opportunities. And that's starting to change.

1:26:52⧉ So I hope in the future that more people are able to get the opportunities here in business and their careers locally. I think it's happening already. Yeah, especially with businesses now. You can work from home, and there's much more flexibility in that. So I think a lot of people are staying and even businesses opening up here. I don't know. I helped orchestrate a UK company to set up a shop here. In Trocat. In Trocat. And they have, I think, 16 employees now out of the courses that they helped impact the curriculum. So they actually spent their time helping develop the curriculum alongside some of the local instructors and really influenced the people. And then the great thing about it was some of those young people got jobs, and they get mentored by a counterpart that has a lot more experience in the UK. So either they come here and help mentor, or they got an online connection with them. And it's a wonderful example of what we could do on a bigger scale here.

1:28:01⧉ And then it's good for the company as well. They make a big investment, but maybe the cost differences in terms of a local salary versus what they'd have to pay in the UK. But more importantly than that, because I don't, the costs are really not that cheap here when you look at other outsourcing opportunities. Yeah, that's true. And they're getting higher every year,right? So it's not that what I remember saying to the CEO of this particular company, "One thing that you may get," which a lot of other situations where you're outsourcing some of the technical work is longevity of the staff. And that's really, really important because if you think about it, you train somebody, you bring them on in a complex thing like data science, which is what they're focused on, and a connection to artificial intelligence. These are complex things to teach, and you don't get it overnight. Now, if you spend and invest in a person for a year and a half, two years, in the UK, what happens? A bigger company comes along and gives them more money and takes them. So you've spent all this time getting them up to the skill level that you really need to get

1:29:16⧉ a return on your investment and somebody just scoops them. What I presented to this particular company was, "What if you got somebody that actually wanted to stay here and had such a high quality of life because Šibenik has such a high quality of life, their family is here, and you invest in them, and they get a job that they don't have to go to Berlin or Munich or wherever." So all of a sudden, you have the best of both worlds. You get longevity. So you don't have to worry about, I think out of the 18 people they've hired, one or two have moved on to other companies. And that's over the course of three years. So this is potentially a great payoff for them because quality of life,right? People come here as digital nomads because of the quality of life from abroad. So that sort of model is quite interesting.

1:30:10⧉ Yeah, so I would like to see that replicated on a big scale. I think it's happening in Zagreb. We have examples of RIMAT Automotive. Apparently, they have well over 1,000 engineers there in, well, now it's broken into three different companies,right? But RIMAT Automotive, my understanding is they have somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 engineers, and many of those are from other countries,right? So here all of a sudden, and they're suppliers,right? All of a sudden, you have opportunities local. And he had an opportunity to move this to China, move his company elsewhere, and he chose to stay here. And that's brilliant,right? Because think of all the ecosystem of opportunities that creates for people that have been born here, want to live here, have their families here, but they also want a good paying job in a modern technology,right? So all of a sudden, boom, this is what's happening. That's very exciting. Yeah, it is exciting. So what are your plans for the future? Do you want to maybe mentor someone else?

1:31:22⧉ Have you ever thought about that? I've done some mentoring, and I really enjoy it. Yeah, sharing knowledge is awesome. Sharing knowledge, especially with somebody that's really eager to get it,right? Yeah. And I want to get it, of course. Yes. I was fortunate enough to have some influential mentors in my life. And if I can do that as well, that's so gratifying to say I can give something back. I was very fortunate at critical times in my life that I had somebody help guide me. And if I can help do that with somebody else, fantastic. And it's exciting when you see somebody. That's eager to learn. Eager to learn. I remember, I'll just tell you one story. I'm not going to name any names, but when we first did the initial hiring, this company I mentioned from Trocat, they had just gone through six months training in full-stack development, as you know, which is both backend and frontend in technology.

1:32:22⧉ And I convinced an ex-customer who works at this company to come over. He wasn't the director, but he's on the board. And he's quite an interesting guy, probably the most intelligent guy I've ever come across in my life. But he's a bit, he doesn't speak a lot. He's kind of a reserved, bigger guy. And he can look a little bit intimidating and gruff, but his intelligence level is super. I was one of super, super programmer, self-taught, brilliant. Done some amazing things. And I had him as a customer years ago in the UK, back in the early days of digital video, where he designed his own video compression software that worked better than anything at the time. There was none of this on the market at the time. But anyways. What was the software? It was a compression software. Yeah, but which product? It was a bespoke, but it was a company called HomeChoice, which was now bought later than it became part of Virgin Media Group. But HomeChoice was the first company in the UK that was streaming video.

1:33:32⧉ Now we have that now,right? But when you go back 20, 24 years, that was unheard of because of the bandwidth limitations. So Darren was one of the guys that figured out how to solve some of those problems,right? So well ahead of his time based on his intellect and skill. So I bring Darren over, and we have five potential candidates for interviews. And I'm hoping one or two gets hired,right? Just praying. So Darren being himself, and he's sitting here, and the candidates here. And I sit in on the interviews because I can help facilitate, because Darren, like I said, he sometimes is less talkative. So I thought, okay, maybe to help bridge the cultural gap.

1:34:26⧉ So I'm sitting here, Kenneth's here, and the first guy, lovely guy, also very intelligent. He says, "So, typical, tell me a little bit about yourself before we begin." And he looks down at the floor at his feet, and he says something like, "Well, I was studying in economics, and I dropped out." That's a great beginning.

1:34:58⧉ Talk about humility. And I say, "So, what did you do then?" He said, "Well, I stayed up all night playing video games." I'm like, "Okay. This is not going the direction that I want, this interview, because I'm trying to impress this guy to give this guy a job." And I know this guy's good,right? Because he's gone through the training, and he's good. And I said, "So how did you get interested in technology?" And he says, "Well,

1:35:28⧉ because I was staying all night playing games, I started to connect to people internationally. And then I decided to develop a gaming platform. And so I programmed it." I'm like, "Okay, well, how did you learn to program?" He goes, "Well, I went to YouTube." Do you realize you're a genius? You're looking at your feet. You should be looking. This is incredible what you've done. Steve Jobs dropped out of school. Bill Gates dropped out of school. This is amazing what you've done. You've dropped out of school, you stayed up all night, taught yourself programming, and developed a gaming platform that you can communicate with people and game internationally. What?

1:36:12⧉ Do you realize how amazing? You should have opened with that. Amazing. Stop looking at your feet. The funny thing is, so we went through these five interviews, and it was more or less the same. Not everybody exactly the same, but it was more or less very much humility, very much not, and the English was fine. So it wasn't a linguistic barrier at all. And not really being able to present themselves. So I then go away, and I'm sitting there with Darren, and I'm thinking to myself, "Oh my God, these were abysmal interviews. These guys are amazing, but they just didn't put it across." So I say to Darren, "Sorry about that.

1:36:56⧉ I don't think they're used to maybe presenting themselves like we do in our culture or whatever." He says, "I'll take all of them." So bang, five guys get jobs. And I was like, "Wow." And I said, "Well, why is that?" And he says, "Well, you can tell the way they think they're problem solvers. And that's what we need. We need that ability to take on a challenge. And all of these guys and their stories about themselves did that by their own." He said, "That's really important to us,right? Because I can't babysit them. I need somebody that can solve a problem, maybe in a context that they've never been in. And these guys are thinkers. I'll take the whole lot." And I was just like, "How about that? Amazing." Again, that shows you the caliber of the people that we have here.

1:37:46⧉ So yeah, mentoring people like that, if you can contribute in any ways, very gratifying. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. So Mike, thank you for your time. How can people find you? Do you have an Instagram, a Facebook account, or something where your winery is? Delusional wine. Delusional wine, okay. So are you on any of the platforms like Instagram? Instagram, definitely. I use that a lot. I have a very rudimentary website, which is kind of funny. I did it in 45 minutes.

1:38:20⧉ I'm very impressed. And the interesting thing about that to me is it is really not very good. It's super simple. And I had an offer from a gentleman that came to visit and liked my wine. And he was a retired website designer. And he said, "I really can do this for you for free. Your website is horrible." So he made a mock-up, and it was actually quite good. I didn't put it up yet. And the next year, I had visitors, and I said, "Have you seen my website? It's really a bunch of rubbish." And they said, "No, no, no, we really like it." And I said, "Well, why is that?" Because I talked to my customers quite in-depth. And they said, "Well, the thing is, it's simple. You get all the information. We're not overwhelmed with text, and it's very sincere.

1:39:14⧉ We're looking to discover a small winemaker, and your pages say that, basically." So kind of, it's almost like reverse marketing. It's like, "How can you have a rubbish website that people like?" I never changed it. And even though the guy, his mock-up was brilliant. And I thought, "Oh, maybe I'll just keep it." I've kept it ever since. So Delusional Wine. And I'm always around in the village somewhere doing something. Okay, make sure to drop by to have a little bit of wine tasting. Drop by, exactly. Buy a couple of bottles. And also make sure to visit Testament. This is quite a nice place. And once again, thank you for graciously allowing us to film here. And Mike, thanks a lot. Thanks a lot, Vladimir. It was a real enjoyment talking to you. Okay, me too. Bye, everyone.