024: Shaunt and Sam from Living Wines Collective

Four winemaker friends came together and created The Living Wines Collective.  This conversation begins with Shaunt Oungoulian, in whose parents' basement is the winery where all wines are produced, and then Sam Baron joins us midway to hear help explain the Reverse Rose.  Shaunt, Sam, and their other partners met at UCDavis while studying viticulture and enology, went off to work at some impressive estates across the globe, and then returned to California and launched the Populis, Les Lunes, and Ama Cellars that now encompass the natural winemaking efforts that bind their efforts and aspirations.  

"What can I not do?"  Asking this question throughout all of the winemaking, Shaunt describes their definition and practical applications of natural winemaking.  We take time to wade through the methods employed to hold true to those intentions and the thoughtful ways they use SO2.   This young team is making wines from organically farmed, select vineyards, treating the wines as naturally as possible in the cellar, and releasing them to the the world at affordable prices, an uncommon formula which pits them with the perception of something less serious.   It is precisely the combination of these tenets that sets their wines apart and that hustle is very serious.