photo courtesy of SF Chronicle

Matt Morris is an Emmy-Nominated filmmaker, photographer, and vintner making Charbono based out of Saint Helena, CA.

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When you discuss wine, context is everything. Whether the topic of conversation is a specific region, grape varietal, producer, the context in which that topic is discussed leads the participants and audience to understand what the story and purpose is. In order to tell a story, how do you create that context?

Insert Matt Morris. For over a decade Matt has been working with some of the top wine and food producers and brands in northern California such as Abreu, Bond, Cornell, Heitz Cellars, Herb Lamb, Lorenza, Realm Cellars, The Restaurant at Meadowood, Charter Oak, Press Restaurant, Quince, Noma in Copenhagen, Goop, Skywalker Sound, and many many more. His work has focused on telling stories visually in a not-so-obvious manner by providing audiences the context of a deeper meaning. In recent years, Matt made the leap into winemaking originally with winemaker Benoit from Realm Cellars and now Francoise Peschon of Arujo, Vine Hill Ranch, and Cornell. Matt & Francoise are focusing on the revival of Charbono, a grape originally from northwestern Italy, but now only 70 acres remain and they all happen to be planted in Napa Valley.

Before we get into the episode, I want to say that I hope you are healthy, safe, and taking the right precautions when it comes to the current coronavirus epidemic. However, if you are in an area where small businesses are open, I implore you to go support them. And if you can’t physically get there, see if they will deliver to you, get take out, or have them courier or ship to you. Not only does our current situation mean that we are practicing a lot of social distancing, but it also means that small businesses are losing revenue billions across the country every day. Over seven million hourly employees aren’t being paid a wage as they’ve been laid off, yet life goes on and they still have bills, rent, food to put on the table, family to look after.

By not continuing to support these small businesses, whether that is a wine brand, boutique shop, restaurant, local farm, winery, hotel, further employees will be let go and scariest of all businesses will completely and utterly shut down the establishment that they have painstakingly just started or been running for generations. Economic forecasts indicate that restaurants and the foodservice industry could sustain $225 billion in losses and eliminate 5-7 million jobs over the next three months. The National Restaurant Association is a unified voice that is listen to the small independent restaurants by petitioning both Congress and the President to provide aid. The petition is to support the National Restaurant Association restaurant recovery plan.  A plan that provides direct and targeted relief designed to benefit restaurant and foodservice businesses of every size in every corner of the country. To learn more about it please visit restaurant.org.

You can also purchase dining bonds for various restaurants around the country to use at a later date, which will bring in cash flow now to help support their operations. To do so please visit supportrestaurants.org.

Supporting restaurants not only provides a bit of relief to their employees, but in gives the operations the ability to stay open and hopefully weather this storm. As many of us know, restaurants are some of the large buyers of wine in the world. Every year I alone for my wine program at Barndiva in Healdsburg, California purchase hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of wine that is produced around the world. If we lose restaurants, everyone in this country will be affected, not just us in the hospitality industry. I hope you will stay positive and optimistic in these times, support these businesses that need you, give someone an air hug, and listen to more podcasts.

In this episode we mention…

Long take from the film Annie Hall that inspired Matt into film
Single Vineyard Charbono that Matt makes with Francois Peschon
Chapel Hill Wine Company
Herb & Jennifer Lamb
Realm Wines redesign
Byron Hoffman, Design by Offset
Rustic Canyon
Shypoke Vineyard
Tofanelli Vineyard
August Briggs Wine

Follow Matt On…
INSTAGRAM
PHOTOGRAPHY WEBSITE
WINE WEBSITE

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