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Jerad

This is Jared and Mike from TBD to be determined. A low intervention wine and craft spirits podcasts. This is episode number four and I want to introduce test Bryant from Test Bryant selections.

 

Tess Bryant

All I'm doing great. Thank you. Glad to be here.

 

Jerad

Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for sitting down and hanging out with us for a little bit. Give everyone a little bit of the intro of you know who you are, How you got into the wine business, You know, a day one.

 

Tess Bryant

Okay! Well, in terms of the immediate, I started my own business in 2018. It's a small portfolio of mostly Australian wines that I called natural wines and a couple French wines & Californian wines as well. But I've been in the business for most of my adult career. I worked in wineries in California and then ran a wine shop in San Francisco for a while and then worked for another New York based importer for a long time before I branched out on my own a couple of years ago. So it's been...it's been certainly an exciting wild ride to learn the ropes myself and to kind of start from scratch. And remake the wheel, or whatever the expression is. I just have decided to kind of go completely for the wines that I'm excited about in life or with people who I respect and want to spend time with in general. That means I have an extremely focused small..for me delightful..business that I have been very, very slowly building.

 

Jerad

Cool. And did you start with Australian wines?...

 

Tess Bryant

I did! I started entirely with Australian wine, particularly as I said before, natural Australian wine. So wines that are from at least organically farmed fruit that are hand harvested, fermented with native and have generally no additions in terms of sulphites or preservatives. My background was not in Australian wine at all. I've actually studied and drank French wine for many years and Spanish and Italian and Californian and was certainly a total snob about not being interested in Australia or New Zealand or most new world wines and then tasted some of the new generation of what people were doing over there and was totally put in my corner and proven wrong. There were a lot of beautiful, vibrant and exciting wines that were being made there that just hadn't necessarily been exported or at least in the US. Some of them would have been in Japan or in London, but they hadn’t made it over here. So it seemed I had a lot. I still have a lot of friends who are importers from Europe, and they're running round together, going to all the same wine shows and parties in Paris or wherever. And it was sort of exciting to me to have a more undiscovered country to wander around in.

 

Jerad

Yeah, I I think Australia's got just...I don't know how the word it, but yeah, like New World. But I think Australia doesn't get the credit it deserves yet. I think there's some really cool, like, mind blowing stuff coming from Australia.

 

Mike Amidei

Yeah, how do you define what they're doing there that's different. What sets them apart from other areas of the world that are making low interventional wines?

 

Tess Bryant

Well, just in terms of having a sort of fun or reverent attitude, but also a focus on serious natural wine. And by that I mean not making wine specifically to tick boxes, that making wine should be good and delicious and community building and fun and not just a weird mousy bottle to throw on the table with a cute label. That's not really my thing or what I'm interested in. And so what I found in Australia is that people who I've met are sort of talking the talk and walking the walk. They're growing their own gardens and focusing on the local community and really exploring what long term organic or biodynamic farming means for the land, rather than just sort of trying to find random vineyards that maybe are certified. But they secretly spray roundup under them or something like that. So I'm not saying that this is the entire country. It's a huge place and a huge wine industry, but in this small section of winemakers, I think that they do a really amazing job of not just making natural wine to fill a category and to put a little sales button on it but actually live a life and trying to have really beautiful culture around wine drinking.

 

Jerad

Yeah, that's what I love about. It’s not contrived. It's like, This is how I live. This is what I'm doing. And whether I’m selling wine or not, I'm probably going to be living this way either way, right? 

 

Tess Bryant

Exactly. I mean, they all are like, Well, okay. When we know the most recent world crisis started happening. They’re not making that much wine and they want to keep selling it, of course, over here. But it's also like they're happy to drink it, each others wine over there and support each other.

 

Jerad

So you concentrate mostly in the South Australia and Adelaide and those are your biggest regions?

 

Tess Bryant

Yes. So the Adelaide Hills in particular, South Australia and within that Adelaide Hills. There's a really beautiful community there who have been now making wine sort of at least the same community, whether it’s in the same shed or not. But it's certainly birthed a lot of small wine making projects that are exciting to watch develop there. There are exciting producers in other regions there that are more sort of sprinkled around and spread out. This Adelaide Hills region just happens to be a little bit more concentrated. I also work with a producer in Western Australia, Sam Vinciullo, and he's in the Margaret River. But he's the only one in the West who was making entirely natural wine. I mean, there's a lot of people who make natural wines, but not everything that they do necessarily fits in that category and then closer to Melbourne or even Sydney, there's a few other producers, and I'm looking at working with some of them down the line. But for the moment, most of the people I work with are around Adelaide.

 

Jerad

cool. Are you planning on expanding? I guess this is the question that I think everyone is asking, with everything that's going on in the world, what is your take on it? Are you just business as usual and or are you...

 

Tess Bryant

I would address that in two different ways. I don't think anybody can be doing business as usual. So in the meantime, no, certainly not business as usual, and it's sort of like everybody is taking, or for me at least, it feels like taking a huge breath and just holding it. Hopefully just a few months, but potentially longer, but also planning for a positive future. I mean, I don't think that the world is going to shut down forever. And so I am still on the lookout for people to work with. I still have two producers who I am planning to work with in the future. Assuming that, you know, people keep buying wine in general, and that's possible. But I am adding producers to the portfolio slowly and awfully thoughtfully. People who I enjoy spending time with, people who I like drinking what they make and people who kind of come in at the right time in terms of being a part of these communities that we’ve been talking about. You know, I'm not interested in finding somebody who has the flashiest instagram who's sending me messages asking me whatever it is they're asking. So I started with a pretty strong group of about 10 producers who I'm extremely happy with working with them. And then, since like 2018 when I started, I've been trying to grow very, very slowly with the idea that every producer that I start working with this is with a great amount of intention. That I can do them a service instead of just adding more wine.

 

Jerad

Yeah, because if you can't support it, what does it really matter, Right? 

 

Tess Bryant

I don't want to buy one person's pink pet nat just because that's what everybody's excited about drinking right now, I buy everything that people make. Everything that their personal creative, winemaking is offering them or the vineyards. And it's really important to me to continue to be able to do that as anything that they want to sell me that’s not bad or fucked up, you know, let's go for it.

 

Jerad

Speaking of which, you guys are bringing in some really cool ciders as well. There is the Manon, then there is Limus. Yeah. Obviously you like the ciders as well. How do you feel about that? Do you think it's just a good way for them to diversify or

 

Tess Bryant

Yeah!. You know, I think cider has been totally trashed, deservedly, over the past you know, recently...because it's often sweet and bad and full of junk. And for these farmers who happened to have, you know,  their neighbors had some trees or whatever it is, it's, um, first of all, It's fun for them to diversify and experiment and try something new. Like Limus was making a cider where he was taking all the riesling skins he pressed off from the recent vineyard that he takes care of and adding it to the barrel. And it was a really fun, delicious and affordable thing to try. And Manon makes as you mentioned a really beautiful cider from quince and apples and pears that are wild trees that they press through, um, they have all these grasses that they gather from around the vineyard, grasses and wildflowers, they dry them and then press the fruit through that. And so it's just I think , like, another creative outlet for them. And I mean, I'm interested in delicious beverages. It doesn't have to be wine. Somebody who makes beer, who I'm trying to figure out how to work with him as well, who's making beer all made with native yeast and with the hops that he grows. And it's the same idea as the wine in terms of extreme local, extreme natural just happens to be beer. And that's great.

 

Jerad

Yeah, that's great. Cool. So when you first got started, what was the most difficult part of going out on your own?

 

Mike Amidei

And what triggered the decision after working in the wine industry for so long

 

Tess Bryant

Jump in in terms of starting my own company?

 

Mike Amidei

Your own business? Yeah.

 

Tess Bryant

Yeah. So, I had a nice, cozy job with another wine importer as I mentioned and was one of those jobs where it was like,  I have a retirement fund and like in 10 years, this will happen in 20 years this will happen. And I went to Australia and saw and tasted and met these wines and people and was super, super excited, really inspired. I mean, after having been at the time, 10 years in the white business, I was sort of like, ok, am I just gonna have a job for the rest of my life, or am I going to figure out somewhere else like some other industry I work in? And I didn't expect to be reinspired and reinvigorated, and that's what happened. And so I came away from my first visit to Australia just like, what the fuck just happened, and that was super cool. Like I didn't you know, I came back to California and told everybody about it...and I met this person, this person, this person and it was like, people were interested, but also didn't really get it. It was like, Oh, that's great that you're excited, but this sounds sort of weird or two different or too far away or really? Australia? You know, there was a lot of, um, disbelief in general, and I sort of had this feeling, that this was my personal opportunity, like this is now or never. Do I wanna have a safe job with a retirement fund? Or do I want to jump off a cliff and take a risk. I was really excited, and so that's what I chose to do. And it was, terrifying. And, you know, in terms of the financial aspect it is certainly scary to look at numbers that are, like six figures, and i’m like, “what!?”. So, learning how to start a business by Googling it was sort of funny and asking people to lend me money. It was an extremely humbling thing. I am the sole owner of my company. So I just took on loans from family and friends and interested people to get started and just the minimum amount to sort of scrape by to try not to take on too much debt. And figuring all those things out was certainly an adventure. But I knew that at the end of it, there were these farmers and winemakers who were relying on me and excited for me. I was delighted, have someone who they were excited to work with in the US. There were a lot of rewards to trying to figure those things out. And a lot of safety in that as well. Like, I knew that my taking risks and figuring out, sometimes stumbling all these people were there on the other side of the world, but there are all these people supporting me and rooting for me and knowing that if I did make a mistake, it would be fine. And we figure it out together. Everybody was, you know, down  to be flexible and, yeah.

 

Jerad

Yeah, Thank you! Because when I first met Tess, we met at Wild World in New York and I was like, Oh, man, there's all these really cool Australia….because, before I started distribution here in Nevada, I was like, What am I gonna do? I need to figure this out. Just trying to get access. And we were like, well, I can open a wine bar, I can try to import, or I could do this. And I was like, I was always interested in Australia, but I had no idea where to start. But there was all these producers that I was like, man, how do we get our hands on this? And then I saw Tess, and Tess was doing it and actually like walking the walk. And so when I met her in New York at Wildwood, I was like, hey, you have my dream job. Like you went down there, got all these badass producers and are sharing it with the U. S. Market, which is really cool. I don't know what it is about Australia for me personally, but, maybe it's just the way of the water. The water turns the other direction when it goes down, so I don't know, but it's crazy how the fruit, if it's well taken care of, can express these flavors that you just can't get anywhere else in the world. It's exciting. So yes. So thank you Tess! Cool... So is it just you? Do you have any employees?

 

Tess Bryant

I don't. I have one woman in New York that helps me part time sell some wine. And that's been really fantastic to have someone to talk to you about what it is that this strange endeavor that we’re doing. But mostly I've been, um, out on the road on my own and starting to partner with some really great distributors and states where I didn't previously have connections. So I've sold wine, all over California for a really long time and then in New York a little bit. But now, there are some other places who are kind of raising their hands and saying, we're excited too. In particular, Massachusetts has been a lot of fun to visit, I’ve been to Boston a few times in the past, Warm up into early 2020 and last year to visit Violette Imports. There's this woman, Sophie, and her dad, who are running a really lovely small family operation there who were doing an amazing job getting wines that they import out and also the ones that I imported. It's I mean, New York and San Francisco and L.A. are super fun like I said, I've been traveling there a lot, but it's been super exciting to go to like, Portland, Maine, and, uh, visit Drifter’s Wife, and Maine and Loire and places like this that are a little bit more off the regular people path and to see how excited people are, not just about natural wine, or Australian wine just good wines from good people. In the beginning of this year, when the tarif situation with Europe in particular was happening. I started getting a lot of phone calls from Idaho and Iowa and Nebraska and Kentucky, Tennessee, and it was like, what is going on? But there were people all over the country who were like, we've heard about these wines we want to try them. How do we get our hands on them? And it was so heartwarming for me because it felt like, definitely when I started, a lot of people were like, “this is weird”, “what are you doing”? If you just focus on that and if you're so specific and so,  this is their word, not mine, “rigid” in terms of the wines you want to work with you will fail. I had a lot of people telling me that. They were mostly in a different demographic than I am. They felt like their experience taught them that taking a risk on something super specific was a bad idea and that I needed to have $10 rioja or $12 sancerre, or  whatever it is, and I totally understand that perspective. But I was like, I don’t give a shit about those wines anymore. I have sold those wines for 10 years now, and I don't care, I just want to sell wine. I don't want to sell tires. I want to sell the wines I'm excited about. And starting my business was the ultimate opportunity to do that for the wines I'm excited about. And if people don't like them, then that's fine. But a lot of people have.

 

Jerad

That's the great thing about owning your own business, right? You get to make your own decisions and work with the people you want to work with. That's the thing I think I'm most thankful for. By owning my own business is kind of like, you have those old I don't know, what do you call them? The Internet calls them boomers, I don't know. But these old industry people that are like, you will never survive, you'll never make it. You have to do this, this and this and you have to fit in these boxes. And I think everyone in our generation is kind of proving like, no, that's bullshit, fuck off. We can do this and it's happening. Which is cool. I think it’s exciting. Especially at times like this, and I’ve been saying this a lot now, even more than ever...we really have to vote with our pocketbooks. In this situation, even more than ever, I have to think about every single purchase, from toiletries to clothing to the wine and food that I put in my body. It's like, who is this supporting? How is this helping my vision for what I wanna support? 

 

Tess Bryant

Yeah, and you know, when I was out showing wines, because I haven't been doing that recently, for obvious reasons, but I was out opening bottles for people, and people would say, oh, this is like, you know, this is really cool. This is delicious, it’s great, but It's a little bit more expensive than I expected for Australia. Because a) They had a preconceived notion about what was coming out of Australia and also what natural wines should cost. The best way that I felt for myself to describe why the wines cost what they cost,  besides how they are farmed and how much care goes into them, is it’s the same as going to the farmer's market. If you're willing to spend a little bit more for a tomato that's beautiful, grown by the person who's selling it to you and just a totally different beasts than a, you know, plastic carton at whatever big chain grocery...It's the same idea. So voting with your dollar, I think I agree, is really important. Not wasting them and, you know, just being thoughtful.

 

Jerad

What do you think is the biggest misconception about Australian wines

 

Tess Bryant

That they're bad. I think that a lot of people, you know, including myself,  when I was in college bought inexpensive wines, whatever it was at the local grocery store and people just expect them to be either cheap, light, insipid sauvignon blanc with a screw cap, or super fruity, rank, intense red. And there is everything in between. There's a huge spectrum, just like from France or California or wherever else. And maybe there are still a lot of wines made in those categories, and that's fine. Everybody should be free to drink whatever it is they want to drink. But I was personally really excited to find this whole other category that for me was really vibrant and sort of nourishing. I mean, the first time I went to Australia, I stayed sort of with...I stayed with a lot of vegetarians or if they weren't vegetarians they bought a whole animal and were storing the pieces in their freezer and being super thoughtful. Again, not just about the wine, but about what they were eating and growing. Their kids were eating...and it was really wonderful to see that. Having grown up in California I saw some of that, but I had never seen sort of the whole package of...

 

Jerad

that level…

 

Tess Bryant

Yeah, that level and I was really excited about it. Wow, this is a community I want to be a part of.

 

Jerad

Yeah, that's the thing I really like about the whole movement as well. It reminds us to kind of go back to basics, you know? Do we really need a ton of, whatever, meat, or obviously processed foods. Sometimes we do it for the sake of convenience, but at the end of the day, it's like, at what cost? Not just monetary cost, but like health and environment.

 

Tess Bryant

Yeah. And you know, the reality is there are a lot of these wines yet, and there are more being made generally, but this is still just...again, like the tomatoes at the farmer's market. It's a relatively limited thing, and not everybody has access to it and I hope that in the future it is something that is more accessible in terms of both price and quantity being made. I mean, at home, we talk a lot about what it would be like to make 10,000 bottles of affordable, delicious natural wine. And it's just not quite there yet in terms of…

Jerad

Do you think it'll ever be there? Do you think it's possible to scale up?

 

Tess Bryant

Um, yes, and no. I go back and forth, to be honest. I mean, if you look at, like, how  Walmart sells organic yogurt or something, that's really, really different. Even if it has an organic stamp on it, than something that's made down the street from cows people are milking. You know, something a little bit more romantic, but I think that there are ways to scale up, to to the extent it can scale up. I don't know exactly what the threshold is, but there is certainly a level where people start making compromises. I have decided what, if any, compromises for me and for my business I'm willing to tolerate, and I think it's a relatively low list. Everybody has their own threshold, and I think that as long as people are honest about what they're doing, you know, if they're saying “we’re NOT adding sulphites”, BUT, this fruit isn't entirely organically farmed, then people are being honest, it’s OK. People should work the way they want to work, but masquerading as something that you're not I find to be pretty disturbing. And I think there are a lot of people who are riding on the natural wine coattails in the world. Um, and I hope that transparency and honesty prevail.

 

Mike Amidei

That’s the problem with naming to. You get into this topic of, like, how do you market..or wow do you set yourself aside from the other producer so that the consumer knows what they're getting? And, you know, with his legislation in France where they're coming up, the Vin Methode Natural and stuff like that, you can you can abide to the letter of that law and still be a big company so that you're going against the spirit of what it was all about in the first place.

 

Tess Bryant

Well, exactly. Yeah. I don't know what is going to happen. I'm not super optimistic about the idea of scaling. I think that more people making small quantities of better wine is the hopeful outcome. But I think generally this is not something that people get into to get rich off of, with with the sentiments have been talking about in terms of taking care of your farm and your family. But, you know, I'm certainly not in charge.

 

Mike Amidei

Maybe you should be!

 

Jerad

Yeah, Tess for president. I guess the thankful thing that I've seen and I know it's getting harder every day, but the bullshit detection is pretty high, right? Even with a consumer, sometimes even with a newer consumer..and I'm generalizing here, obviously there's gonna be cases that are gonna go either way, but I'm pretty confident that most consumers, if they see - I don’t know about most. Hopefully, MOST consumers if they see a bottle of wine and there's like a huge, like, organic certified logo on it. Well, it's hard to say, but usually like your bullshit detector goes off, you're like yeah, this is maybe organically grown fruit, but that doesn't mean it's made any differently. Does that make sense?

 

Tess Bryant

I would hope that people would know that, but I think that there's still a lot to learn generally. The general way that we sell wine as a country, as a wine business,  is pretty confusing. It is hard to decipher,  I think the conversation that people are starting, well started with Kermit Lynch and are continuing now in terms of following importers, I think is generally good. That's has nothing to do with natural wine necessarily, but in terms of taste and trusting someone to help make choices for you.

 

Jerad

Yeah, that's for..

 

Mike Amidei

Curated, period.

 

Jerad

I grew up as a deejay, pretty much my whole life. And sometimes you go to Amoeba  and you're there all day. For everyone that doesn't know, Amoeba was a record store. You can’t always listen to everything you want. So when you're buying music a lot of time, you're looking at that label, that record label, and you're like, you know what, everything I've bought from this record label has been really good. I think that definitely works with what you're saying with importers as well. What's great to me, is when you see people shopping for wine and they don't even really look at the front label, a lot of times they’re just looking at the back.

 

Tess Bryant

Yeah, I buy wine that way, certainly when I'm out. I used to taste wine all the time when I was buying for a wind shop. 90% of the wines, I went into San Francisco and I had the opportunity to taste them. These days, I'm just not in the same position. So I 100% rely on a back label and labels that I trust, like Percy selections or Scuola di Vino or people like this who  I just know I like. It’s not, you know, all the time, but most of the time I really enjoy what they're selecting and what they're bringing in. I think that as a consumer who is not in the wine business, there's a lot of information out there. It's too much. There’s a reason people do this professionally is that it takes years and decades to figure out wine regions and producers and grapes and all the stuff. And so you have to have some kind of shortcut in order to just get something tasty to bring home for dinner which is often the point.

 

Jerad

Cool. Do you have any new things that you want to talk about or anything new coming out that you're excited about that you like to chat about?

 

Tess Bryant

Well, Australia as I mentioned, has been my focus but I am actually trying to work on some more domestic projects,  I guess you could call them. So, working with people in Humboldt who are making really beautiful, easy, juicy, delicious California wines. Myles Garrett & Chad Hardisty. Working on, I recently relocated to Washington, so I'm trying to figure out some cider situations here that are made in this way as well. You know, I love dry cider Pet Nat, and there's so many beautiful apple trees here. So Australia, in terms of the general enthusiasm, continues for me. But I don't want to force working with new people there if I'm not excited about the wine. So I sort of decided a couple of months ago to keep working with the people I’m with and  there's a couple people trickling in, but that can be this sort of special thing on its own. In terms of scaling up like we've been talking about, working with hopefully some more domestic producers who can make affordable natural wine. I think is really exciting, even if it's not in a large quantity. Even if it’s just a couple 100 cases. That’s something I am focusing on helping proliferate.

 

Mike Amidei

Plus, I imagine the logistics are a little easier.

 

Tess Bryant

Oh, yes,

 

Jerad

Yeah, Australia is very far away.

 

Tess Bryant

It's very far away. It's very expensive. It takes a very long time. I placed my recent orders the first week of January, and they got here the last week of March. So that was interesting timing. Yeah, California or Washington, it’s a whole different ballgame.

 

Mike Amidei

Are there a lot of people that you have to choose from that are good at transportation from those distances? Or is it a pretty small subset of...

 

Tess Bryant

It's a very small list. Yeah, I put together a full container because there are not many people bringing in refrigerated containers over from Australia.  So I buy quite a bit of wine at once in order to make it make sense in terms of the cost of shipping. So  it's not like from Europe, where you can bring over just a pallet or from California where you can pick up 10 cases or something. It's more like 1000 cases at a time.

 

Jerad

So what's your favorite part of the job? Is it finding new wines, sharing new wines with new retail customers, or tasting? What gives you the most joy? 

 

Tess Bryant

There's two parts, one is being at the farm or the winery or the winemakers house and just getting to spend time with them and be a part of their life and family, whether it's for an afternoon or a couple days and really sort of absorbing what it is that they're doing and making. I find that really inspiring and I feel really, really lucky to be able to see a lot of these places first hand. More recently, something that's bringing me a lot of joy has been what I touched on earlier, going to cities I had never thought I would necessarily even travel to in my lifetime and meeting people in wine bars or wine shops who are just stoked to be drinking these wines, and it seems like they would just be interested in, you know, something a little bit more commercial...and they've done their research, they looked up the winery, they've been waiting to taste them. And it's just really, really cool to see people taking the time to educate themselves and learn about something interesting and off the beaten path.

 

Mike Amidei

As a by-product of that question, how do you break down your time? Basically as a business owner. How much of your time is spent doing those things versus sales, versus paperwork?

 

Tess Bryant

Um, yeah, I'm still figuring that out!

 

Mike Amidei

As small company it's got to be kind of tricky...

 

Tess Bryant

The past month has been, you know, obviously very different. I've just been at home and on the computer, which is unusual for me. I was settling sort of into a pattern of every two weeks or so going on a one week trip somewhere in the US. And that was a hectic feeling, but also good. My intention was to travel quite a bit in the first few years of starting the business, to just meet as many people as I could and sort of get the word out there and get bottles in people's hands and and in their glasses. So I've been the last year and a half traveling quite a bit. At one point, I hadn't spent more than two weeks in any one place for over a year. That was pretty strange. Yeah, full Nomad. It's nice try to think about starting to settle a little bit in terms of doing more things like this. I'm talking to people on, um, using technology as a tool and traveling of course. I’m also relying on people to go to their local wine shop and start picking up bottles. I'm just exploring and taking a chance on something that they might not recognize.

 

Jerad

Yeah, I think now it’s more important than ever. You know, for us in Nevada, you've got to really support. You know, those things that you like? Or they might not be there. This goes for food, wine, coffee, you know, everything. Cool. Thank you for sitting down and chatting with us. It's been really cool. Do you have any social handles that you'd like to let everybody know about, or web address?

 

Tess Bryant

Yeah, My instagram is @tessbryant.wine and I tried to put up a lot of stories. I  don't post that often but when I'm in Australia in particular I love posting about my travels. I just love sharing that component. So, yeah, feel free to check that out.

 

Jerad

Cool. Thanks for having a chat with us. And, you know, hopefully we'll get you out to Vegas real soon. Maybe after the summer, or who knows? Unless you like the heat.

 

Mike Amidei

Yeah, as soon as it’s 

 

Tess Bryant

Yeah. Thanks. Thank you, guys. 

 

Jerad

My name is Jared J and thank you for listening to TBD to be determined a Wine and Spirits Podcasts

 

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End Transcript

**The views and opinions expressed within this podcast are those of the hosts & guests, and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of their respective employers or associated businesses. Any content provided by our guests and hosts are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any group, club, organization, company, individual, anyone or anything.