Ep 210: The Biz of Wine v Weed with George Christie

Wine for Normal People

Alcohol, Lifestyle, Arts, Education, Food, Wine, Dining, Grapes

4.6 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 2 December 2017

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Some in the U.S. wine industry say cannabis legalization will create a war between wine& weed for limited resources & consumer interest. But George Christie, from the Wine Industry Network (the leading business resource for the wine industry), thinks collaboration could lead to great things for both parties. After you hear his ideas, you may just agree.

Here are the show notes:

1. We discuss how George acquired expertise on this topic, through a hugely successful "Wine and Weed Symposium" (http://wine-weed.com) that brought wine producers and cannabis professionals together in a room in the North Coast of California.

2. We talk about the wine press and its portrayal of "Cannabis Cannibalization" -- meaning the weed industry is taking essential resources from the wine industry like water, land, and especially labor. We parse what's true and what's not.

3. We talk about the overlap between the wine and weed industries -- the differences, and why wine and weed are being linked rather than beer and weed or cigarettes and weed. We cover:

The money involved in both industries
Distribution challenges
Lobbying
Track and trace issues/govt' control
Evolution of the industry -- big v small guys

4. We'll hypothesize about some things for the future:

Potential for import/export and how that will evolve
The fact that weed has a much more flexible growing season(s) and can be grown indoors (we can cover the indoor v outdoor quality issue/terroir), making it far more profitable and flexible, and harder to regulate!

Thanks to this week's sponsor who makes the podcast possible!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for
0:08.0	downloading Wine for Normal People Radio,
0:10.0	the podcast for people who like wine but not the snobbery that goes with it.
0:14.0	I'm Elizabeth Schneider, a certified Silmaier and certified specialist of wine.
0:20.0	And I'm MC Ice, just a wine-loving normal person.
0:24.0	Today, the podcast that everybody's been waiting for,
0:27.2	George Christie, who's actually not from the weed industry,
0:32.2	but is going to tell us all about wine and weed.
0:34.7	He's from the wine industry network, which is a B to B resource for people in the
0:39.5	wine industry where you do marketing and you hold symposia and that's really how you got into this whole
0:45.8	wine and weed thing right that's exactly right it's good to be here Elizabeth
0:49.2	thanks for having me on the podcast yeah it really started because of the, you know, once we voted in California
0:56.5	to legalize adult use of cannabis, you know, the folks in the wine industry
1:00.4	were curious and I can always describe it as they're really curious because
1:05.3	there's a lot of real entrepreneurial type of people that are in the wine
1:08.5	industry and they're looking at as this incredible opportunity potentially
1:11.9	but there's an equal amount of
1:13.7	curiosity on the other end of the spectrum which people are scared and they're
1:16.6	nervous and despite what a lot of people think the wine industry is a very tough
1:20.1	business it's very competitive it's very challenging and you know you have to
1:24.8	work very hard to maintain those margins and I think there were people that were
1:28.2	nervous about how the legalization of adult use cannabis might affect wine sales and overall profitability and so it
	...

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