Name: Joe Asks Maynard James Keenan About His Vineyard
Uploaded: 2022-10-25T17:55:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Asks Maynard James Keenan About His Vineyard' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-10-25. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Asks Maynard James Keenan About His Vineyard' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-10-25. Transcript available.

But when you decided to do this in 2000, when you had, you must have had some
sort of an esoteric appreciation.
Yes, 100%. I just couldn't describe that to you and I couldn't map out what
year was what wine.
I could just tell you that everything about this wine is inspirational in some
way.
Whether it's like the age on it, the acid structure, something, all the pistons
were firing in terms of like,
all the sensory alarms that are going off in my mouth, the length of the
experience, like how it's changing in the glass.
Yeah, that was very inspiring to me.
As far as actually being able to map that out for you, I'm an idiot. I couldn't
do it.
Did you go through any sort of education in terms of like what is involved in
the creation of a wine that you appreciate?
No, I just thought time in cellar, spending time in Adelaide Hills at Penfolds
for a very short amount of time.
Seeing it happening around the world, going to wineries while on tour, while
they're trying to time it where I can go when they're going to actually harvest
today
to see what's the equipment they're using? What are you doing? Like how are you
doing this thing?
Like when did that spark get ignited?
99.
So it was like right before you started?
Mm-hmm.
So before that, were you a wine connoisseur? Were you a wine appreciator?
I started appreciating wine maybe around 96.
Really?
Yeah.
So just a few years later, you own a vineyard?
Yeah.
That's crazy.
Yeah, it just resonated. Whatever it was, it just clicked. Right?
It's like, you know, going back to, I was talking to Donald today.
Like he walked into Hickson's place on Pico back in the day. Henry Akins walked
in the same week that I walked in to Hickson's Academy back in 95.
Henry Akins is one of the best black belts I've ever met. I can barely tie my
belt.
It resonated with him.
It resonated with him. It made sense to him. It clicked and it went. And there's
no way you can figure out what that is to make, you know, make him what he is.
Right?
I was not that guy. I had to work harder on it. Wine was like I'd been doing it
my whole life.
Almost instantly.
It made sense.
And then slowly backing up and understanding the chemistry of it, working with
people to go action, reaction, and logging that in to develop that, you know,
constantly.
But the process, just the basic logistics of making wine made sense to me
almost instantaneously.
And this was from 96?
No, my first wine that I, you know, actually was involved in making was 2004.
Oh, but, but in 96, when you first started getting interested in it, you went
to a vineyard?
It was just dinners. Like, you're, you know, you start to all of a sudden went
from a dude who, you know, woke and grew up in a, you know, lower middle class
family with teachers on, you know, teach, parents or teacher budget, you know,
cutting wood for the winter to being on tour with a band.
And all of a sudden I can afford a bottle of wine that was more than $50.
You know, going, oh, this is cool.
Seeing all the, all the agents and the, the lawyers and the fucking promoter
and the manager and the fucking accountant all backstage having a nice glass of
wine while I'm drinking Bud Light over here.
Going, what the fuck's that?
Mm.
And I want to know.
And I grabbed a glass and tried it and went, this is the new thing.
This is something I want to know about.
And when was the first time you actually went to a, do you remember the first
vineyard you visited while they were doing all that?
Um, I want to say it was like 97, I think, 98.
It was, um, Pegasus Bay in New Zealand.
In New Zealand?
Yeah.
Watching, watching the process, watching.
No, that was, I think they were doing, um, Saint Blanc, I think.
It might have been Pinot.
I think it was Pinot.
But they were de-stemming and I was watching the stemming process going, okay.
Okay.
Machine.
I can afford a machine.
And you just thought, one day I'm going to do that.
Yeah.
And then the wheels started getting into motion.
Yeah.
Wow.
How many people around you are going, Maynard, what the fuck are you doing?
All of them.
All.
It just seems like such a fucking intensive, complicated endeavor.
Yeah.
But it's rewarding.
I mean, it's work.
You're grounding.
There's setup, there's cleanup, there's logistics.
Like, Tim and I are like the logistics Nazis.
Like, we, it's, we have to, there's, there's a way to do it, to not get in your
own way,
to understand the 16 steps.
Like today, dealing with that triangle, I kept getting my foot caught up and
trying to
get the leg around the head.
Because I was getting in my own way.
I didn't, I didn't shift enough to make it so that I wasn't in my own way.
Right.
In the cellar, I'm not in my own way.
I'm thinking five steps ahead and I'm not going to put a thing down.
And in the way that I have to move and add six steps to getting to the next
step.
And this is a thing that you get better at.
I get, I get better at it with every, with every harvest.
But I was already naturally inclined that way as far as logistics, like Tetris
is my thing.
Hmm.
Wow.
That's wild.
Because there's nothing like that in my mind that, that I'm fascinated by, that
I would want
to go and start developing a company that makes these things.
It seems like it's just so rare that something like light bulb goes off and you're
like, I need
a wine press.
Yeah.
Wow.
So when you like crack open a bottle of wine today, do you ever open one and go,
I should
have waited?
I mean, yeah, there's, there's those instances or I open up some of my, some of
the stuff
from before and go, yeah, I, I fucked that up.
This is a good bottle.
It's okay.
But I know that I could have done better on this bottle.
And what would you have done to do better?
Well, it depends on the grade, depends on what I did.
And it depends on the thing, but you know, there's adjustments that I've made
over the
years that have made it so that there's a, there's a higher percentage of
success for
that, for that year.
What are those variables?
It's all depends on the, you know, it depends on the grape, depends how we
picked it, depends
on what it did.
Is it too much oak?
Is it not enough oak?
You know.
Oak in the casket?
Yeah.
Well, in the casket, you know, when you're putting stuff in barrel, is it too
new?
Is there too much flavor?
Are we imparting too much flavor on the, on the wine?
Now, you know, going back and tasting some of the stuff I early did, it's
because they
were new.
I just bought the barrels.
So there, there's a lot of oak on some of the earlier wines that I did that it's
not
there now because now they're older barrels and no longer imparting that flavor
of oak.
So in hindsight, I, I, you know, I can't change it.
It's done.
But I might've.
Aged the barrels?
Yeah.
Get, get more, I get a couple new, but buy some neutral ones from somebody
instead so
that like there was just a kiss of oak on it rather than a lot of new oak.
So there's a company that specializes in creating barrels?
No, you just go, you go to some of the other wineries that are, that are
cycling through
some of their barrels and you can buy used barrels from a reputable winery.
Because I was going to ask you next, do you reuse your barrels?
I use as much, as much as I possibly can because I don't necessarily want the
oak influence on
the wine.
But does the wine that was in the barrel influence future wines?
No, you're rinsing it out pretty good.
You know, you know, you're cleaning them out.
What do you clean it with?
Steam.
So it's no chemicals or no nothing, just water?
Steam and water, yeah.
Wow.
How the fuck do you have time for all this?
I just don't understand this.
Logistical time management.
I understand, but I don't understand where it's coming from.
I'm looking at a clock.
I'm going, okay, this goes around.
Yeah.
There's 12 of those and then there's another 12.
Like, where the fuck is the time?
Thank you.