Big Rick's Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack Podcast 7 15 23

Big Rick Stewart hosts the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack Podcast, featuring fun music and great information. He shares the news that Anchor Steam, a popular San Francisco beer, is closing down due to financial difficulty during the COVID-19 pandemic. He also gives tips on keeping cars and houses cool during hot weather, and announces ticket giveaways for upcoming concerts in Napa Valley. Additionally, he discusses the success of Elton John's Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, which has grossed nearly a billion dollars and is the highest-grossing tour of all time. Finally, he highlights the contributions of Michael Benedict in changing California's Pinot Noir game by proving that the grape variety could thrive in the state. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack Podcast. You know on Saturdays we play fun music and we feature great information at 993thevine.com. With me, Big Rick Stewart and music from my time at Live on the Five and at KFOG. We also mix in some stories that I find kind of interesting whether it's local music or food or tech or just kind of some cool things I think you ought to know about. It's always lots of fun. Fun music and great information happens every Saturday at 993thevine.com and the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack Podcast features great information like this. Hey, it's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack. Fun music and great information. I'm Big Rick Stewart. Got a beer story for you, all you beer fans. Isn't there some saying that making great wine takes lots of beer? You work really hard making all that wine and cleaning stuff and shoveling out stuff and you need a nice cold beer. You may not be able to have your Anchor Brewing, Anchor Steam beer anymore. You may remember a few weeks ago I said that they were cutting back their distribution across the U.S. and they were kind of canceling their Christmas ale. They're canceling everything. Owners Sapporo, yes the big Japanese beer company that's got the famous name, they own Anchor Steam in San Francisco. It's been around for 125 years but they say this is it. They are going to shut everything down, laying off all the employees. Evidently during COVID times got really tough, of course, and one of Anchor's biggest customers happens to be bars and restaurants. Well, when those weren't open or at full capacity or whatever, when they closed, there goes a whole bunch of their business. And brewing Anchor Steam beer was kind of an expensive process and it just wasn't happening. They said they tried to sell it to some other beer companies. They didn't have any buyers. So they're gonna close shop in, I think, 60 days is what they said. Maybe some miracle thing will happen again like Napa Valley's own Fritz Maytag who bought Anchor Steam from, I believe, bankruptcy and kind of got the whole thing going again. It has quite a legend. I don't think Fritz Maytag is back into the beer business. He's done his thing and we thank you, Fritz. And I love Anchor Steam beer. I actually had some tours there from some friends that brewed and I hate to see them go. But that's business, they say. And well, fingers crossed somebody buys Anchor Steam and keeps it alive. I'm Big Rick Stewart. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack at 99.3thevine.com. Hey, I'm Big Rick Stewart. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack. Fun music and great information. We do this every Saturday, whether it's raining. Remember a few months ago, pouring rain every Saturday. Oh, when will it end? It has ended. Little hot. I'll try to help you keep everything cool. Now, this goes for your house and also for your car. Now, never leave kids or anybody, dogs, pets, cats, rabbits, anything. Don't leave it in your car, just even like for a few minutes. Just, you know, don't do that outside when it's really hot. All right, you knew that. Now, one of the keys to keeping your car cool can also work for your house. That is to cover your windows. And now, we've all seen those big windshield screens that you put on the inside of your car, right? Did you know some people also make some custom fitted window screens for your other windows in your car? Because after all, you cover the windshield. Okay, that's good, but then everything else is covered. A company called WeatherTech, and there might be some more, but I know WeatherTech because I have them for mine. They actually make custom cut screens for windows of cars. So, you know, the passenger, the driver's side, big window, the little window, the one in the back if you have a hatchback, whatever. They sell like a whole kit for your car. It's pretty cool. I mean, it's literally pretty cool. It's an amazing difference. And it doesn't take that long to just push inside the window when the doors are all closed. Same idea for your house. Just keep those windows closed. Don't let the sun come through. And even, you know, maybe custom fit some cardboard or something in the windows. He might look like some kind of a hillbilly, but whatever. He won't be that hot. Keep rooms closed if you don't need to cool them with your air conditioner. And if you do have air conditioning for everything, invite your friends over for an air conditioner party. All right, check it out. WeatherTech, the company where I got my custom fitted window screens for my car. I'm Big Rick Stewart, the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack, at 99.3thevine.com. I'm Big Rick Stewart. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack. Thanks for hanging out with me today. Elton John's Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour has come to a close. It's his farewell tour of touring and doing live shows. But maybe not live shows forever, because he's kind of holding out. Yeah, I could do a one or two off here and there, but as far as like going on the road for a long time, this all started in September 2018 in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and wrapped up this week in Stockholm, Sweden. 333 concerts worldwide since 2018 for this tour. In attendance, lots of famous people, and by video, Chris Martin of Coldplay, who checked in with his band while they were also doing a show in Sweden. And Chris Martin said, hey, Elton John, thank you so much for all the inspiration and all the great music for all these years. Now you might be thinking, wow, that long of a tour, that many shows? He probably made some pretty good money on all that. Well, Billboard Magazine counts up to about the last week or two of shows and says that the Elton John tour has grossed over $910.4 million. That's almost a billion dollars. It's the highest grossing tour of all time. If you didn't see the show in San Francisco, the Chase Center, I think that's where it was. I saw the show in Vegas, and it was really good. Lots of great songs, of course, Elton John's awesome. They filmed the shows at Dodger Stadium for a documentary that will be released soon. And we thank you, Elton John, for all the great music, all the great causes, all the great inspiration. A trillion dollars. Don't know if that includes T-shirts and merch or not. Hey, don't spend it all in one place. I'm Big Rick Stewart. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack at 99.3thevine.com. It's 99.3 the Vine and the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack. I'm Big Rick Stewart. Man, Napa Valley's got some live music going on this year, huh? There's like a ton of shows and festivals and things. Wouldn't it be great if we could give away some tickets? We can. Are you ready for some contest information? I'm gonna give it to ya. Maybe you haven't heard these yet. All right, now you don't have a lot of time to do this. So, you know, when it's safe and you're not driving or something. You know, just do this right away. Don't be thinking, oh, I'll do that later, man. Do it as soon as you can. All right, here we go. A couple of contests for you, ready? To see Train at the Oxbow River Stage. I love San Francisco's train. I sing along to all those songs just like you do. Text TRAIN to 844-333-6993. Got that? 844-333-6993. All right, those are the train tickets up for grabs. I'll give you another one. Coming the end of this month to Silverado is a really fun three-day Blue Note Jazz Festival. Man, the lineup is stellar. It is awesome and what a great place to see a show, right? Wouldn't that be cool if you could get in for free? Well, you can if you win the contest, but you have to text FESTIVAL, like the Blue Note Jazz Festival, FESTIVAL to the same number. 844-333-6993. All right, so TRAIN is TRAIN. 844-333-6993. And the Blue Note Jazz Festival is FESTIVAL. 844-333-6993. And there you go. I'm Big Rick Stewart. Good luck on these tickets and go support some live music. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack at 993thevine.com. I'm Big Rick Stewart. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack. We do this every Saturday here at 993thevine.com. I saw this article over at Wine Enthusiast and I thought, I'm gonna share this because I gotta give some credit to Michael Benedict because as the headline says, he changed California's Pinot Noir game. You may find it unbelievable, like way back when, people didn't even drink Pinot Noir, not California Pinot Noir. In fact, they couldn't really find any good places to grow Pinot Noir. Well, along comes this guy, Michael Benedict and he's working on an island. I know, this is crazy. Santa Cruz Island off of Santa Barbara. And he learns that that island, Central Valley, a pretty small place, was once home to a large commercial vineyard. So he's surprised that grapes could grow right next to the ocean, right there, you know, off the coast of California. And then he starts thinking about an area that he knows really well, the Santa Ynez Valley. He's like, well, it's kind of similar. It has cool ocean breezes and some warm weather during the day. He teams up with this guy, who's a sailing friend of his, Richard Sanford, who has a background in geology. All right, so they start cruising around Santa Ynez Valley, Bealds and Lompoc and all those places. And they end up founding Sanford and Benedict Vineyard in 1971. This grows into kind of a big deal. Sideways was filmed there and marked Pinot Noir in California. But it wasn't there before these guys started. It was kind of full of bean fields and other agriculture. And as Wine Enthusiast says, his work helped prove that Pinot Noir and Chardonnay could thrive in this cool corner of California. So if you're familiar with vineyards like Sanford and Benedict, and maybe places like Fiddlesticks and Seasmoke, you know, all that great Pinot Noir from California down there, you can thank Michael Benedict for changing California's Pinot Noir game and getting the whole thing started. Okay, now I'm thirsty. I'm Big Rick Stewart. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack at 99.3thevine.com. Hey, I'm Big Rick Stewart. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack. Fun music and great information. Did you watch the show MASH? If you're young, you're kind of like, what? What was that? But come on, it was a big, big, like really big deal. And it holds up really well on reruns. It was a comedy set in the Korean War, but it wasn't always funny. I mean, it was kind of a serious take on things, but it was kind of lighthearted. Well, listen, one of the stars, Alan Alda, played this guy Hawkeye. The whole part of MASH was like a medical thing where they would take care of people. All right, so he actually wore dog tags and boots on the show. These were actually worn by veterans before they were used on the TV show MASH. And Alan Alda wore them for 11 seasons. It's the only thing he took home after the series finale, which was at the time, record-breaking and everybody watched it. Goodbye, farewell, and amen. That was the name of the last episode. He's now auctioning these off to raise money for the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. Kind of cool. And he talks about them and says, I put these boots on every day that we shot MASH for 11 years and the dog tags too. Every time my foot found its way into one of the boots or the necklace of the tags over my head, I remembered someone had worn these once in a real war. He thought about it. It really meant a lot to him. And he's auctioning them off. And currently there's about two weeks left on the bidding, about 10 days and they're up to about $25,000. So it's a good cause. And it's interesting that he didn't have Hollywood props. He had the real thing. And he's given props to lots of the military veterans. If you're a veteran, thanks for your service and thanks for tuning in to the radio show today. The Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack at 99threethevine.com. Well, those are some stories that I have featured on the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack. Tune in at 8 a.m. every Saturday at 99threethevine.com. I'm Big Rick Stewart. Hear music from my days at Live 105 in Cape Fog, some current songs, lots of surprises and more. It's always lots of fun. We have a 10 at 10, a Beatles brunch at noon, and it happens all day. The Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack and the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack podcast. Tell your friends and thanks for listening to this podcast and thanks for checking out 99threethevine.com.