726. - Dan Keeling

All right, this episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by Stateside with Kai and Carter, a new podcast from The Guardian. And they are using this podcast to slow down the news and wrestle with the questions that we all have about what's happening in the world. And they do it three times a week, Jason. Does that sound familiar to you? We don't really talk about, you know, a lot of international global news items and climates and cultures and sports and things like that. We do talk about fashion and wellness, but for everything else, Kai and Carter are a great place. All right, so who couldn't use more news? Listen wherever you get your podcast. or watch on YouTube. How long gone? Wednesday morning in beautiful Miami, God's country, as I like to call it. God ain't here, brother. I didn't see God last night, but I'm looking for him today. How late did you stay out? Because I left you at midnight, and I feel like you might have kept it going. I did not keep it going, really. I just hung out in the lobby. I was running up the lobby. There was the club. We're staying at the addition, beautiful addition, Miami. And the club downstairs, basement. you know there's a line and i was like i don't know i can't do the line and then we ran into stevie he gave me a wristband and said you can cut the line but then at that point you know my spleef was really starting to call my name i was like you know i shouldn't i should save my I saved my chutzpah for tonight where I actually have to DJ and be there. That's smart. No, no, that's smart. I'm glad that was a mature decision. But I got to hang out with Trevor McFedrus, DJ Skeet Skeet, and he was posted up in the lobby. Okay, so he wasn't DJing. He was just hanging out in the lobby before he DJed or after? He had already finished and he was leaving. Oh, wow, that's perfect. So you accomplished all your goals without having to actually go into the club. Exactly. He was wearing a nice Slipknot tee. I felt overdressed. I felt a little...

I mean, that's the funny thing about the Art Basel, excuse me, Miami Art Week is what it's been rebranded for us old heads. But that's the most interesting thing about it is that it's one of the worst dressed events you could possibly attend, sheerly because of the range of the participants. Like you've got kind of like... The regular good-looking European guy in a sweater and jeans and is on runnings that is at the fair during the day. Or even some common projects shoes on the feet. Something a little better. No, no. The look for the official art guy is very normal and kind of buttoned up and then some sort of hoka or on, like a very comfortable sneaker because they're on their feet all day. Sure. It's very interesting. It's really taken over. But then it's combined. with like the worst people you've ever seen in your life you know and and those aren't the worst people okay got it no i would rather look at a guy in a black v-neck sweater and hokas than a guy in a fucking weird hat with a [redacted address] around that's that's what i saw i saw this guy in the lobby yesterday i think i've seen him on social media he's he dresses in he dresses kind of like willy wonka okay but all the clothes are like are like louis and gucci like monogram So he'll have a curious purple top hat, but it'll have the Gucci monogram. I don't know if it's a custom piece or if that's from the Gucci store. It could have been handcrafted by an artisan that's outside of the Gucci family. The Maison de Gucci. It could have been a third party. It's more of, yeah. It's like when we used to get our hats embroidered in downtown LA. You just kind of take it down to a back room somewhere and they take care of it for you. No, the looks here are something else. It really is. It's as good as the airport for me. um as far as the people watching go but i love the people of which is yeah that's a high bar i love the people of miami because everyone is just like hey bro we're in miami this is kind of funny right and so there's like a little there's a little air of like we're not taking life too seriously here which is kind of nice it's like i guess there's a little hawaiian feel to it because it feels i mean it's a peninsula but it feels like you're on this remote part of the world where you're just like we're all here man we're all together

We're just trying to look at some Latina's asses. You know what I mean? Sure, sure. I didn't realize. Have a little mofongo. When we had dinner last night with Dizza and Eric, it was just him explaining, him and Erica explaining, like, how late you can stay out here. For some reason, I'd, like, never thought about it. That you could just be at space till, like, 9 a.m. and then hit Waffle House. Yeah. I just didn't. I didn't. I don't know why. I didn't think about that. There's places that still exist where there's at least. two or three spots that can stay open all night and you can, you know, maybe you can't drink for an hour, but it's still, it's good to go most of the night. It's crazy. I've, I've only done it a couple of times, 11 space, all those places, but you know, it's, it's also kind of the same problem. Like you were saying how it used to be versus now. And I think everyone sort of knows about those clubs and everyone wants to go and the, you know, I've gone a few times, and I'm looking around at the other club goers, and it's not really giving me the energy that I should stay. Oh, wow. Okay. I'm feeling repelled by the bridge and tunnels. So you look around at 7 a.m., and you're not seeing. I mean, that doesn't really surprise me completely. It doesn't surprise anyone. But, you know, I've been to a lot of late-night parties that go. with cool music and cool people around and you're like oh this is a good happy environment but you know the a giant super club in miami that's open until noon yeah on a tuesday yeah you know the the type of characters you're going to run into are unsavory no shade to space unfortunately i also think there's like uh for me any music played after midnight most of the time is not for me In those situations. So it's not really going to keep me. Unless Bruce goes over his curfew, you don't want to hear anything. You know I'm not a Bruce guy. I mean, I appreciate Bruce, but somehow that one missed me a little bit. So I can't wait for the movie. Speaking of movies, I still am predicting this Timothy, Bob Dylan movie is a damn stinker.

Is it out yet? No, I think they just did. It's not out yet. He just did something at the Gotham Film Festival, so he was wearing like an ugly suit, but he was around. And I think it's coming. It's coming very. Oh, this is for Gotham? All right, I'll get my ugliest suit. Got it. Well, they kept calling it. I saw a few people calling it a mod suit because it was like a six-button double-breasted. And I'm like, that's not. I don't think of that as mod. As people who know what that is, that's not how I think of it. Maybe I'm wrong. I'll have to take a look at it. I mean, double-breasted, yes. I don't know who's going six-button. Kim Jong-un? Yeah, it looked Kim Jong-un custom. I'm sure it was St. Laurent. Also, shout-out to all the homies in South Korea going through it right now. We hope the martial law is cleared up and we can get back to our regularly scheduled programming of being cool Korean people. I agree. And also, breaking news, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare just got shot dead in Manhattan. Yeah, I saw a little trickle of that. And what's going on there? It started with, you know, I'm going to Blue Sky. Then it went to I'm canceling my Amazon Prime. And now it is. I really want to know. I'm going to shoot the CEO. This has to do with Blue Sky. I'm going to shoot the CEO. I'm going to shoot the CEO of my. my least favorite company. It's gone. You know what I mean? We're abandoning Twitter because we don't like Elon. We're abandoning Amazon because we don't like Jeff Bezos. And now instead of abandoning healthcare, we're just going to kill this guy. Which is... It's a wild path we've wove. So do you think that this is a disgruntled policy holder pulling the trigger? Or do you think this could be something a little more... orchestrated by some higher ups on the ladder no i'm not a you know i'm not a conspiracy theory or is it just love gone wrong like that guy in san francisco who was killed because he was tricking on tricking off on the low i think he i think he just got popped by someone who knew who he was and where he was going to be which feels like not hard to find out necessarily like you don't need to be a fucking gumshoe sleuth to figure out

where one of these guys is yeah that is true you know it was it was potentially an orchestrated premeditated hit but i'm saying do you think this is a guy who's like uh i got hit by a bus and my insurance couldn't cover it and now i'm homeless and then my family's addicted to fentanyl and i'm gonna kill this motherfucker or is it like you know the the illuminati higher power pulling the strings you know i think it's a disgruntled he's been he's been removed i think it's like my son has cancer and he's gonna die because you guys won't pay the right right right that that's mine i gotta pay eighteen hundred dollars a pill for his medication yeah exactly three three cents in every other country this is but this is taking me back to some vegan direct action this is lighting the factory farm on fire you know and this is this is the it's an interesting Obviously, the guy shouldn't have gotten killed. That's a little extreme. But it's wild that people are taking matters into their own hands like this. Hey, we don't know what he did. But on first glance, I agree with you, yes. He could have been a monster. He could have been a monster. That's true. That's true. And we'll never know. But I love when we get breaking news on the podcast, especially when it involves murder. Yeah, we got all kinds of breaking news. The Timothee Chalamet movies. Probably not going to do good. We were talking about yesterday. It's one of those things where it has to be a home run or else it is a failure. It cannot be a B plus or under. It has to be an A or else it is a travesty for even thinking that you could take this little breakdancing man child. and put him in the role of our world's greatest folk storyteller that's alive. You know what I mean? But there's also the whole other interesting part where all these people had to sign off on it for a reason. And it's not necessarily because this movie is going to make $10 billion in China. You know, it's not going to be... No, it's because the people running the studio are fucking boomers who love Bob Dylan and think this is their chance to impress him. Okay, there is that angle. But I mean, more so just like the estate of Dylan and all of the people and the management and all the people who are like, you know what? Timothee Chalamet is so good at playing...

Bob Dylan, it is undeniable. We have to agree with this project. It is magic. I don't think they had any say in who got cast. I think they might have had to approve the script, maybe. But I don't know what it's based on. I don't know if it's based on a book or if it's an original screen. Just a guy who's rambling around town, man. It just doesn't. It's about a Jewish guy in New York who has a guitar and a dream. It doesn't look good. But who knows? Look, I've been surprised before. But the thing with all this stuff is you're truly guessing until you are in a screening room watching it. Do you know what I'm saying? No matter how many high-level executives are making decisions and the best casting director, you're like... Still guessing based on some pieces of paper you read and some tapes or some other performances you saw of actors. You know what I mean? There's no way. There's no real way. It's a crap shoot. It always is a crap shoot. Well, I was actually maybe a little spliffed yesterday thinking about this when I was scrolling my Delta media center on the back of the seat in front of me. And, you know, most plain movies are awful films that you didn't even know existed, never got a theatrical release straight to the tarmac, as it were. And so many times I was looking at these pictures of movies with huge celebrities on them, big movie stars, and the movie is awful, unwatchable, sloppy, never heard of it. And I just like that once somebody films and edits and releases a movie, when it's done, you just have to put it out. even if it's bad yeah yeah i mean like there's no one like tom cruise can't just be like no no this sucks don't put it out it was happening a little bit there's a couple movies that haven't come out because of because basically it was a better tax write-off to to scrap it like i think cat woman yeah like one of you that was happening a little bit but yeah you're right i mean you're right you're like yeah we're 50 mil in we got to put this thing out it's just so funny how much how it's like you know yeah let's do this project and

When the movie comes out and it sucks, you just have to be like, this is it. This is awesome. We did it. It's so bad, but it's funny. We have a guest today. We're the same way with our pod. Dan Keeling. We even released the bad ones. Dan Keeling is here. Dan Keeling is here. Dan does Noble Rot, the magazine, the books, the restaurants. He was also... At one time in his life, the head of A&R at Parlophone Records and managing director at Island Records. So we have a lot of shared interest areas with our boy, our new friend, Dan. So let's get into it. This episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by a new podcast from The Guardian stateside with Kai and Carter. This is covering a lot of our bases, Jason. It's trying to slow down. The news and wrestle with the questions we all have about what's happening in the world. And I know you particularly have quite a lot of questions. A lot of questions. But how often? Because we do this podcast three times a week and that's a sweet spot. How many times do they do? Three times a week. And I have a feeling just based on the platform and these talking points that they're maybe going to be covering different stuff than we do. That's just a guess. The Guardian is not some billionaire owned. They're not afraid to say what they want to say, brother. Yeah, Rupert ain't sniffing around in what journalists Kai Wright and Carter Sherman are up to over there at Stateside. But yeah, listen wherever you get your podcasts. You can watch it on YouTube. It's three times a week. And who couldn't use more news? You know, especially when it's not, you know, from here, let's say. Give it a listen. Give it a listen. All right, this episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by Quince. Jason, the temps are warming up. It's getting hot out there. Summer always changes how I get dressed. I need pieces that feel lighter, more breathable, and they're just easy but still put together. I don't want to look like a slob. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on high-quality essentials that feel and look amazing. Breathable linen and soft organic cottons. Well-made basics but without the luxury markups. That rare balance where everything feels elevated.

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as your competition, if not more. So... Head to squarespace.com slash howlong for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use offer code howlong to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain. I got headphones on, yeah. Do you want me to chip on my video on? I mean, we just do for the convo. Yeah, yeah. Oh, whoa, you got your little spatial shit on, though. Wow. Jason, did you see that? That was very cinematic, the way it panned towards you. Yeah, I feel like I'm in an Amazon.co.uk commercial right now. Well, thank you. I do make an effort, yeah. How about you? I do make an effort. We're good. We're in Miami in a hotel, so that's always nice. It's relatively warm, so I might get to put my feet in the sand in a couple hours. I won't be going to the beach because I'll be reading this all day long, Daniel. Good to see you. What a fine book it is. I wouldn't consider your book a beach read necessarily. You've got to keep that in the cellar with you. Yeah, more of a cellar read. It's light. Yeah, I've seen people read it by the pool, though. They send their pictures over showing off that they're sitting by the pool reading the book or the magazine. Always good to see. That is nice. Yeah. That is nice. That is nice. It's nice when people can read. That's my main takeaway from that. You can look at the pictures too. Yeah. There's imagery available as well if that's more your speed. Absolutely. The book is heavy, but I feel like I'm going to get through it because there are a lot of nice photos, which is helpful for readers like me. Absolutely. There's a guy, my friend, the photographer, Ben McMahon, did a brilliant job. A lot of wine books that you've seen won't have had consistent photography throughout, so it's a real beautiful thing to have. Oh, I see. So you had to do all the work, because I know that with cookbooks, at least, the photography part is laborious, to say the very least. Yeah, yeah. Well, there's a lot of different trips over a lot of different years. So we've been all over, you know, France, Italy, Spain, lots of Europe. Not so much America, not so much... Australia so much, but yeah, all over Europe. Do you have a problem with the Pinots of Oregon, Dan? We have a great wine culture here in America, you hater. What the fuck? Absolutely. It's not the exchange rate, guys. We're paupers. Don't blame the pounds. Don't blame the pounds. Yeah, I don't want to hear, we're paupers. My wine distribution company is really going through it right now. It's tough.

The margins on alcohol are only 85%. It's really difficult. Is that not what we're here to talk about? We are. Jason and I were in an Uber last night going to dinner, and we were talking about you and your whole operation. And as a novice, I was asking, well, how does it work? When someone is hired to do wine for a restaurant, is it like a flat fee? Do you upcharge the bottles? How do you put money in your pocket? In terms of the margin or if you're hired as a sommelier? Let's say here's a hypothetical. I open a new little bar that's serving bowls of anchovies for $14 and really cool olives and fresh bread. I don't know anything about wine. You do. and I say, hey, I want to have the Dan Keeling Noble Rot stamp of approval wine list on my menu, how are you making money on it? Is it a flat rate? Like, give me 10 grand, I'll come through and tell you what bottles to get? Or is it like, we're going to provide you, we're going to service you, we're going to do the whole thing? It's a different business model to a lot of other wine importers. The way it will happen is if we come in and we work with another restaurant, it would be exclusively supplying the wines to that restaurant. And we will be using the wines that we import, but also a few importers that we work closely with. But we would take a discounted price from those other importers. And then so basically the person that runs the bar is not, you know, haven't got extra expense. They're paying the fee they would normally get from that importer. But we're taking a discounted price and putting on their list. So it's a bit of an interesting business model. We do it so we're not ripping people off, basically. I prefer to rip people off, so I'm a little upset to hear that. I thought that was kind of the whole point. There's a lot of places that do rip people off, and that's kind of one of the reasons that we started Noble Rot in the first place, because we're wine lovers and we go to other restaurants. And when you see a lot of wines...

so marked up at the top of a list i don't know who buys them i mean people who don't care about money obviously but um it's important to us as wine lovers that people come in and drink wine and not just look at the list and think it's got all the right wines on there but not being able to afford to drink them has it has it gotten has the pricing gotten out of control or is that just sort of is that restaurant's trying to flex. Like, they don't even expect anyone to buy it. It's just to have it on the menu. Just hoping a crypto guy comes in and gets the $8,000 magnum of some bullshit. You gotta pray. Put a sparkler in it. I mean, I guess it's about different people's clientele as well. There's restaurants and hotels I've been to recently in Italy, for example, where the guests are very, very rich, and I don't think they even look at the prices. And when I spoke to one of the owners of this very famous hotel, I said, what's your margin at the top of the list? He says, I haven't got a margin. I just kind of put it on for what I think I can sell it for. That's cool. That is one end. What's a margin? I like you asking him, what's your margin on this bottle of wine? And he's like, what's your margin, motherfucker? Sorry for interrupting, Dan. What was the name of that hotel again? I can't say possibly. Okay. Hopefully I've been. That's all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It'd be rude for me to point it out. No, I agree. I agree. Okay, well, I guess going back to prices, like we were at an Italian restaurant last night in Miami. Food was very good, and there was wine on the menu that I wasn't sure about the price point, if it's worth the money or not. One of the glasses was $36. I mean, I'm not talking about crazy. you know, special bottles that we're opening for a special occasion. But for like, you know, good wine by the glass, where do you think we should max out at? I mean, it's a good question. I mean, one of the things that I don't like about wine is that the price is at the top of the pyramid. You know, these crazy prices have escalated during lockdown.

You know, a lot of burgundy and champagne went up to extortionate rates. So the barriers to entry are kind of up here. It's not like music or film or literature where you can go to, you know, your local bookshop and buy a great novel or get onto Spotify and, you know, download all of Iggy Pop's back catalogue, for example. You've got to drink Romani Conti or to drink some of these really amazing wines. You've got to pay a lot of money. So the idea of what's the most you should pay for a glass of wine is all down to the person that is what they're prepared to pay. And on our Instagram boards, we call them at Noble Rock, we have a lot of wines that we use a Coravan and they'll take like one glass out. So people could try a very rare bottle for, you know, some of the glasses will be £100 for a glass of wine. I mean, is that wine better than the wine that's... 30 pounds a glass or 20 pounds a glass maybe maybe not but you're paying for scarcity you're paying for reputation you're paying for all of these other things but you will get you will be able to educate yourself and you know have tasted that wine and make your own mind up But it's a lot of money, no doubt. It's a very expensive hobby. I feel like it's the end of the road for rich people, where it's like, all right, fuck it. Let's do this. I got a basement. I got a basement. I'm sick of drinking. Children's blood is not that good on the nose. Exactly. I don't love the notes. What about yachts? What about yachts and sports cars? Come on. Actually, that's actually true. Yachts are probably the final frontier. Yachts are a good point. We're doing that every five years. We're getting a new yacht. We're talking about the day-to-day goings-on of Jay-Z and Beyonce where they have to buy... It's not a Tuesday night dinner unless I've spent $180,000 on white burgundy. But I like that yachts don't appreciate. So it does make it a better...

stupid. You know what I mean? It's completely like, I'm going to lose money on this, no question. Whereas wine, if you come on hard times, if you go to jail for insider trading, you can unload your whole collection. There's somebody willing to buy it at all times. Potentially for a profit. Most people, if they collect wine, they buy too much. It's like anything. They get into the ritual of doing it and they end up with thousands and thousands of bottles. Even if you're a proper alcoholic, it's going to take you a long time to get through 10,000 bottles. Push through that. There's only so many dinner parties where you show up with a bottle that you can go to in a lifetime. There's only so many. Does that mean that you and your business mates are always on the hunt for a poor sap who's got to liquidate his seller and you've got to go down there and make him an offer he can't refuse? Storage Wars style? Storage Wars, exactly. Have you got anything to sell? I knew it! Well, send me the list and I'll come down. Looking to buy cellars, absolutely. The dream is to find the cellar that somebody has died many, many years ago, someone's inherited it, and they don't know what they've got, but you find things that just aren't available anywhere else. That's the thing. Wine gets drunk, and as it gets drunk, less of it is around. So it's hunting out those special experiences. So you don't necessarily need somebody who doesn't know what they want. You just want somebody who's like... This is the wine cellar room. We really need to put in the baby. You know, we got a new baby coming in. We got to get this all out of here and just give me a price. Yeah, yeah. I mean, a friend of mine lives in Bone in Burgundy. And he said that he tried to hire a cellar the other day to put some of his own wine in off of a family that he knows. And they've had this building for hundreds of years. And they said, yeah, you can have the cellar, but you're going to have to move out the wine that's already there. And he was like, well, what wine is this? And there was a collection of wine that had been there since 1795, including some very many rare bottles from the 19th century. So now he's the custodian of an even better seller. Wow. So they're like, this stuff is really heavy. If you could just get it out of here, we want to start clearing out. That's a real storage wars story. That really is.

What a discovery. But do people even want to drink wine from the 19th century, or is it more I want to own that bottle of wine? Well, he wants to drink that wine, and he, I guess, is exploring, like all of us involved in Noble Rot, exploring wine. So to drink wine that has been perfectly stored for that amount of time, it tastes totally different. pre phylloxera this louse that kind of wiped out the whole of kind of french and european vineyards in 1870 so some of these wines they have a slightly different style to the wine of today and really really old wine is a is it is often that it's quite dead and there's nothing to it and it's vinegar but sometimes it's when it's good it can be completely mesmerizing i love that it's like buying pokemon cards you might get the good one you know what i mean if you buy if you open the pack There could be the one you want in there, but maybe it's vinegar. Yeah, of course. And that's part of it, isn't it? That's part of the buzz, you know, not knowing what you're going to get, the uncertainty. And when it hits... I get that. I get that. When you open a bottle from the 1800s, what is the over-under on it being a wonderful red wine vinegar that you can put on your salad and being, you know, a transcendental wine mouth experience? What's the likelihood? I mean, it comes down to so many different factors. You know, when it was bottled, I mean, every... No, I'm talking about in your personal history of all the 100-year-old bottles that you've had, how many of them were done and how many of them were drinkable and amazing. I went to a dinner a little while ago in Burgundy again, and it was a very venerable cellar, and they bought out wines from... 1923 so 101 years old and one of them was a a wine from bone so quite a humble appellation around the actual town and i gotta say it was completely delicious it was kind of unbelievable how fresh it still was at 101 years of age i mean other wines that were younger than that from the 70s and the 60s weren't as impressive they didn't have the harmony they didn't have the richness the fruit had all gone and they were just a bit you know they weren't nice but

I mean, the oldest wine I've ever had was in sherry and it was from 1723. And that was not just an intellectual kind of experience. That was something that was still very, very delicious. It was a very, very old sweet sherry. It was like a sludge or a treacle at the bottom of a barrel. And to think that, you know, that was made with the same kind of rays of light, kind of ripening the grapes as your great, great, great, great, great, great granddad or great grandma. puts it in context. That was amazing still. It tasted brilliant. I love that, actually. I like that it works out sometimes. You guys deserve that after you've dedicated your life to this. You deserve a little cookie sometimes at the end of the rainbow. I just like the idea or what is interesting to me is that there's millions of people who are able to enjoy wine currently. But the amount of people who are alive, like somebody like you, the amount of people who have had wines from the 1700s or the 1800s is such a small amount of people. So is anybody able to actually talk about this stuff? Because it's like us discovering another planet, and you're like, yeah, let me show you what Jupiter is like. Are you even able to understand what's going on? Are there people who are like, I'm the guy who you talk to about 200-year-old wines, you know? I don't know. I mean, the more I've got into wine, the more I've kind of delved into this kind of mysterious puzzle of wine, the more I've realized that there's no kind of certainty at its core. And that's kind of part of its kind of appeal. So, no, there's not these Jedi masters who know everything about wine. And the actual kind of thought that everyone can know something, everything about wine, is just kind of quite ludicrous, you know. I think it's just one of those subjects, you know, the greatest thinkers of, you know, like Buddha and, you know, Socrates. The conclusion they come to at the end of their life is all they know is they know nothing.

And, you know, it's kind of the same with wine. The more you delve into it, the more you realize that this, you know, your kind of knowledge of it is a drop in a kind of vast ocean of like these crazy obscure wines. things that have happened in the past but this is a very obscure part of wine we're talking about and you know our everyday at noble work does not revolve around 300 year old bottles of wine it revolves around a lot of young wine and i think a lot has been made of kind of people not being so interested in in wine or people drinking less wine but it's definitely not what we see in london and when i see when i come to new york or you know the states the people that are into wine They're probably younger than I was when I got really into wine because it's become more accessible. And there's many, many... It's because there's so many cool wine bars where hot chicks go. I think that's kind of what it actually comes down to. I think that plays a big part of it. The rise of sardines and olives and fresh bread and a chunk of Parmesan with hot chicks. The wine is the last ingredient you kind of add to that. I think what Dan is talking about, the hot chicks are not a plenty. I've been to some raw wine festivals and things like that. Young people really latch on to wine because of its, like, DIY crafty art kind of thing. And getting you drunk is just a wonderful byproduct of this, like, cool art project that we're doing. And, you know, we're working with our hands, and it's tangible, and we're in the sun, and it's, you know, it's romantic. I think that's a little bit more of it. Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, there's so many great wine regions that have kind of come back into focus after years of obscurity. Like Tenerife, for example, or Ribeiro Sacro in Galicia in northern Spain. You know, so many parts of Spain, actually. And they make wines that are accessible, that aren't stupid prices, that, you know, you could pick up a bottle for $35 or whatever that's going to be delicious. How come the bottle designs are so unnecessarily quirky? That's what I'm trying to get to the bottom of, you know, because I go to these stores and I'm like, what twee motherfucker designed this?

fucking label but maybe that works you know maybe that works and and i'm i'm wrong there's a reason it's marketing i think i think it's there's a reason it's a trend i think it's uh added to its accessibility you know natural wine i think more than uh traditional wine there's kind of you know the designs are more like an old ray flyer or something like that and i i think that that has broken down barriers in itself I think that's a good thing. I mean, there's some funny designs out there, but I'm all up for that. I'm up for it, too. It just seems like it's just a funny trend where you're like, are these people trying to outdo each other for kind of the most over the top is what it is, what it feels like. But again, that probably works. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Have you seen you? There's one called You Fucked My Wine. No, I haven't. That's quite a good one. That's a good one. It's called You Fucked My Wife? Wine. You fucked my wine. It's a play, Jason. It's a play on the famous phrase, you fucked my wife. Got it. Got it. So you fucked my wine by making it natural? Is that what I'm learning? I think the guy that makes it is quite natural, yeah. Yeah, it's got a barnyard funk to it. I mean, I've always felt that when you go to a wine store and there's a thousand different bottles and some of them are old and new and natural and funky and cool and Eric Warham did some of them, but not all of them. And I always am drawn to the label that is the worst graphic design as possible. They're using Comic Sans. There's like a... thick figure drawing that the the guy's wife made for it yeah or his little kid drew on whatever it is i always say like the more time you spend on the wine the less time you're spending on the branding and marketing and label and social media and my tiktok page and blah blah blah if you just shit out the dumbest comic sans label that means you're in the fields you're smelling

You're tilling the soil at all hours of the night. What do you think about this? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's like music. Back in the day, records that weren't over-designed a lot of the time were the kind of greatest records, and the ones that come in gatefold sleeves with four different bits of vinyl that are all colored, that's somebody's fourth album, like Marillion's fourth album. It's going to be shit, isn't it? So, yeah, so in some ways, the heavier the bottle, not always, actually, because this is a massive generalization, but those kind of heavy bottles. That's kind of what we do here. That's what we do here. Yeah, go ahead. No need to stipulate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, yeah, the more marketing heavy stuff that goes into a wine, then, you know, sometimes the blander it is. And, you know, prog rock, you know, is represented by wine in that kind of taking itself too seriously way as well. But then, like you say, the ones with the comical fonts, the ones that are just almost white labels because the guy is actually doing some work in his vineyards. Those are the ones that you lost after. Oh, this is huge for me personally. This episode of How I'm Gone is brought to you by TaskRabbit. Oh, baby, let me tell you something. This is not a joke. I use TaskRabbit a lot because I can't do anything. You need some art hung? TaskRabbit. You need something put together? A cabinet? Got to reach that cheese grater on the top shelf? TaskRabbit. Anything you need, TaskRabbit can take care of it for you. How it works, TaskRabbit connects you with skilled taskers in your area. They can help you move. They can assemble furniture, repairs, yard work, mounting, and more. You can search for a tasker based on cost, skill set, availability, and past client reviews so you know exactly who's showing up and can have confidence that they know what they're doing because taskers have assembled over 3.4 million pieces of furniture, completed 700,000 home repairs. handled 1.5 million moves, and the numbers are just going up, Jason. Yeah, throw a little money at the problem. It's not so expensive, and that job that you really don't want to do is something that another person out in the world is very good at doing and would gladly do it in exchange for a little bit of money. So when life happens, your to-do list grows. Get ahead of it now and get $15 off your first task at TaskRabbit.com or grab the TaskRabbit app.

using promo code howlong. Taskers book up faster, especially for same-day tasks. So book Trusted Home Help today. That is $15 off your first task using promo code howlong with the TaskRabbit app or at TaskRabbit.com. Hi Talk House Network listeners, it's your old friend Nels Klein from Wilco here. Wilco is touring this summer and we'd love to see you somewhere on the road. We're playing shows this June and July in Rochester Hills, Michigan, Chautauqua, New York, Lafayette, New York, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Vienna, Virginia, Forest Hills, New York, Portland, Maine, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Memphis, Tennessee, La Grange, Georgia, Charleston, South Carolina, Virginia Beach, Virginia, Wheeling, West Virginia, and Columbus, Ohio. Plus, there are even more dates, some with Willie Nelson that I didn't even mention here. So please go to wilkoworld.net to see the full list of dates. We'll see you on the road this summer. This is what everyone's talking about. Everything's on the table. This is what champions come to take. This. is what everyone came to see. No do-overs. No second chances. No more Mr. Nice Guy. This is Winner Take All. The NBA Finals continue on ABC and the ESPN app. You know, I met a winemaker recently. I forgot about this. uh a new friend like a new friend's husband and i was like oh what do you do you know we're meeting for the first time and he tells me he's a winemaker and i have to say i was fascinated and couldn't stop asking him questions because i'm like how the fuck do you get into this chief like what's the like how do you you just got a plot of land somewhere you go till i don't you live in la i don't understand how you do it he had a lot of he had a lot of great answers for me any any but i i did i did feel like he lived a very nice

kind of quiet romantic life he had a very nice he had a very nice way about him that i feel like it's because of his chosen hey well all it takes is one drought and he's not going to be having fun anymore that's true make their living through winemaking you know the people i write about in the book They've either started their estates from nothing, which is a really hard thing to do, especially when you're an outsider going to a new region. Or they've taken over family estates as well, which is, as we know, families can be challenging. And then you add in all the kind of climatic kind of things that are going on at the moment. It would make me anxious to be a winemaker. You don't make any wine? You don't dabble a little bit in the garage? Yeah, I've got a bit of Mercer that I make. No, I don't. You've got to put a cover on the Porsche so the red doesn't stay in the seats out in the garage. I get it. I get it. No, but like I say, I am in awe of these people, but it's a big undertaking. And then the difference also, like what you're describing, Chris, with somebody who maybe does it as a bit of a pastime and somebody whose whole living is in it as well. you know they'll have years where like 2024 this year has been terrible in so many regions you know some of these um regions aren't making hardly any wine at all so that's a really hard thing to deal with as a as a profession um so it's it's up and down but i guess a lot of the People that I really respect, they're kind of dreamers, and they're making their dream wine at the center of why they do it rather than profits, which is just a different way of looking. I wish I could do anything without thinking about profits. I would probably sleep better at night. I don't see that in my future, but I'm glad that you presented that today. That's nice for me to remind you. Dan, when you said, you know, I have my goal, my vision is to make my dream wine and not make... you know, not by my dream Aston Martin. Do you think that there are people out there who really have an idea of their dream wine and exactly how to make it the same way that Matty Healy hears a song in his head and turns it into a 1975 song? Do you think there's somebody out there who's like, I can visually sense my perfect dream wine and I know how to reverse engineer that? Yeah, absolutely.

God damn it, really? Yeah. I was hoping you were going to say no. Fuck, bro, come on. Absolutely. Well, now I just have palate fatigue is what it sounds like. Sorry, go ahead. I mean, obviously, it's not an exact science, but people... have researched it and they did i mean i think number one with that question is you've got to be able to have drunk quite a lot of good wines to know what wine you want to make it's like if you you know if you're being an artist you've got to listen to a few bands to know you know where you're going to fit or same with being a painter or an artist but yeah so i think actually um that is maybe the biggest part of it the starting point is knowing what is possible and then working out how to get there is the next bit and that's the more sciencey bit um and some of my friends have become winemakers and they've spent a lot of time with their heroes you know they've got to know some of the greatest winemakers in France and Italy and Germany gone to their wineries tasted with them a lot and seen the different the hundreds of little decisions that get you know made to make a wine every year And each of those little decisions adds up to the finished thing, and that can be ruined at any time. It could be ruined in transporting the finished bottle to another country. And the thing is, it could be ruined at any time. Okay, so this is no different than Blackjack after too many vodka sodas. Exactly, yeah. I see where you're going with this. And there's nothing more difficult to watch than just pallets and pallets of bottles of wine falling. falling and smashing to their demise you know what i mean i'm sure we've all seen the videos of yeah you know napa valley during an earthquake or something like that and just all getting left to the dockside in like a really hot day for a day or two you know just to bake stuff stuff like that so it turns up in another country it looks like it should do and it pours and it tastes like you know toilet water it's been sat on a dock for two days It was stuck in Moroccan customs and now the whole year is ruined. Doc storage doesn't seem great for wine of any kind. This is awful. Dan, I don't drink and I find non-alcoholic drinks obnoxious and corny. And people have been pushing non-alcoholic wine on me. And I'm just like, is that not juice? Can you settle this argument?

for me I don't know I mean it's not my my definition of wine is not non-alcoholic wine I mean that's right it's just like why would you want to eat a sausage that's kind of trying to be meat as well that's made out of some other chemical composition just just have some vegetables and have some water but I would say that the category of soft drinks that I really my man that I really that I really like and it's there's a wine it's not a wine and what am I talking about it's um it's It's grape juice, a grape must before fermentation. And it's blended with a bit of apple juice. It's called Antidote. And it has some herbs that are macerated in it as well. And it's a really delicious drink. And it's quite complex in its own way. But it gives it a sensation a little bit like wine without pretending to be wine. So it's kind of, yeah. I appreciate that. I appreciate. Yeah. Creating something completely new. Yeah, Chris, I think that you're complex in your own little way. I am complex. Much like a non-alcoholic aperitif in a can, I am complex in many ways. Yeah, well, I think you'd like antidote. Okay. Try that. All right, you got stake in this shit, or what's going on? You a stockholder? Yeah, I'm a 50% holder, yeah. Not even a little bit. I own half of this thing, actually. I own half of this thing. Well, Dan, Chris mentioned being sober. I am not. I'm assuming you're not either. But in reading the book a little bit, there was the sentence that stuck out to me that I want to ask you about, the process of replacing the rave with what you're doing now. And we mean that in the literal sense of raving or not, just the overarching rave as in having a party. Yeah, I mean, that was a phrase that my cousin-in-law, Damien... Harris came up with for an article he wrote about Norman Cook back in issue two of the magazine. And what he meant, and I think John Niven, who's our agony uncle in the magazine. He talks about noble rot as well, and he said, well, instead of noble rot, you could have called it, you know, we used to do drugs, but now we like food and wine. So it's this kind of idea that, you know, a lot of our generation. A little wordy, but it's descriptive. It's not quite as catchy, I agree. John Niven did the podcast a little while ago. Sorry for interrupting. I heard, yeah, yeah. No, it's very interesting. So, yeah, this idea that a lot of our generation, you know, I mean, some people are still raving now.

But when you get to, you know, 50, if you're still raving, then you might not have much longer to go generally. But I think a lot of the people that were into music and going out and popular culture were all into using our senses. So whether it's wine, food, films, it's such an overlap, which is kind of what the magazine is about. Using our senses. Well, I don't... How did you – because you were famously in the music business, which is one of our favorite subjects on this show. And then it sounds like, to me, you followed your passion into becoming an alcoholic and made it a job. And I'm just – I'm very – I'm really impressed by that. I'm really impressed by that because I think it's hard to leave because you had some success in the music business. It wasn't like you were a fucking – you were in the mailroom. You did pretty well. Yeah, yeah. No, it was good. I joined A&M Records in 97, 98. I was a talent scout. So, you know, out and about every night seeing five bands. Then I got a job. 97, 97, 98. Who's on the cover of NME? Just give us give us the lay of the land. Fucking hell. So I was at Manchester Metropolitan University and I remember coming down to do the interview for the job. and i just listened to detroit techno in chicago house at that point so i was thinking fuck i wonder what band they're in and i remember picking up uh enemy and i think it was kenicky were on the cover and i thought oh god do i go into this interview and say that i like kenicky i had no idea what they sounded like and you couldn't just go go online so um i i didn't bullshit though um so i just but yeah it was around that time Anyway, A&M got folded. They got folded into Polygram. And then I started a Parlophone, which at the time was the Rolls Royce of British labels. It had radio heads just put out. OK, computer blurber on the sub label and the Beatles back catalog, Beach Boys. You know, I'm not religious, but I remember praying that I got that job before after the interview. And then I was there for seven or eight years and worked my way up to head of A&R.

And my big signing there was Coldplay. That was the first thing I signed, like six months in. And a few other bands, one called Athlete, which had a number one, and Lily Allen as well. Just as I left, I signed with another friend. Well, in my experience in the music business, if you sign one Coldplay, you can kind of coast forever. That's enough to have a job for the rest of your life, correct? Yeah, I mean, it was, but I took a risk. I left. there were certain things that you know didn't work for me at EMI they were getting bought at the time as well there was this firm called Terra Firma and they were pretty arrogant kind of what they called People would come in and splice up companies. Anyway, they'd taken over a few companies before, like Odeon Cinemas. They said they'd saved Odeon Cinemas because Odeon Cinemas, the employees used to think that they're in the film business, but they came in and told them they're in the popcorn business, like some big revelation. Hey, you guys sit down. You guys sit down. We got to talk. And then they started saying things. And I left at that point. I went to Island Records. But they were saying things in the press at that time, like a lot of the artists are a bit lazy. So you imagine how that went down with, like, Tom York and Kate Bush. What are you talking about? So you're saying they're in the Guardian saying Tom York and Kate Bush could work a little harder. Yeah, they could do three more albums a year would be good. So anyway, so I left my roster at that time, and then I went to Ireland. So, yes. You could stay somewhere and coast. But the music industry is so different now to what it was 25 years ago. It's unbelievable. Yeah, it sucks now, and it used to be cool. Not that music is bad. I think music is really good. I just think the industry part of it is, I mean, I'm sure you got your taste for wine from using the company card at restaurants with bands. I'm sure that's how you were exploring the cellar. You probably used to be able to smoke in your office and all kinds of cool things, right?

Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, weed smoking used to go on every day, and it would be all the bands would get blamed, you know? People would say, oh, Supergrass had just come in. They left earlier, and they'd just sit and get skunk. Fucking Supergrass came in again. Call the cleaning crew. Those fucking bastards came in again. Have the Manic Street Preachers been here again? It smells awful. It is. I remember a, like, our, when I managed about our product manager was beloved and she was amazing. And she'd like work with the beastie boys and like Wu Tang. She was kind of like a, a New York like legend and her and I got along really well. And she couldn't tell us any details, but she'd gotten a job at the fucking white house. Like she was going to work for the president. And so she, on her last, like on her last day, we were really trying to get her to smoke weed in the office and she would not do it because she was afraid that maybe the White House would find out. And I was like, that's the only good reason I've ever heard for not smoking weed in the Sony building in 2007. Yeah, it's a good one. So you grew up listening to a lot of electronic music, like you said, Detroit techno, 90s house stuff, maybe a little acid house, whatever. What do you think about electronic music in 2024? Is there anyone that you're sniffing around, checking out into, or has that ship sailed a long time ago? No, I pay attention, not as much as I used to, but the new Jamie XX album, I really liked that. There was a track on it called Falling Together, and I didn't go to Glastonbury this year, but it showed him doing his set, and it was the last thing he played, and it was so Glastonbury, it was kind of... quite um cinematic track but with a 303 and it kind of reminded me a lot of those kind of records from like the 90s underground resistance and things like that so i think there's still some very good electronic music being made of course yeah a lot a lot of vortex stuff yeah you know i just i don't pay as much time as i used to uh i appreciate that i appreciate the sheer britishness of these answers though you're really supporting your guys i like that you're you're a fucking patriot

Aaron Skrillex, of course. Yeah. Let me do that. Let me diversify with Skrillex. Look, this whole thing was just to get you to say the word Skrillex, so I think we've got it. Thank you so much for talking to us, Dan. No, I'm just kidding. Okay, that's good. Well, you mentioned you did not go to Glastonbury this year, but you have a rich history of attending over the decades, I'm assuming? Yes, yes, been many times. Yeah, but last time was 10 years ago. I would like to hear a story about you at your worst, please. Sorry. Oh, God, Glastonbury is a really good place to be at your worst. That's kind of their tagline when they're putting the tickets on sale. The best place to be at your worst. Yeah, it's a good one. Somehow they've all been kind of erased from my memory. I don't know if it was just having too good a time. Sure, sure, sure. I can imagine. I can imagine. Blink twice. I really want to go, part of me, because it's something I've known about. forever but then I know that it's just the opposite of everything I like and I would want to kill myself I hate I hate dirt. I hate camping. Honestly, I hate music at that point. It's togetherness. Oh, I hate togetherness. Togetherness is top of the list. I'm sorry. Those are out of order. But you know what I mean? I just think that if you go when you're young, like you probably did, it's just you know how to do it, and it's easy to plug back in if you have to. Yeah, and a lot of it is actually not being at the stages as well. There's so many different fields. It's quite an expansive place. Yeah, there's lots of places to lay in the grass and look at the stars while you're on drugs. rugs i i know that's a big part of it it's absolutely huge so yeah it's i mean i want to go back but um i mean my kids are much more grown up now they're 15 and 11 and i think they're angling that we go next year so uh i don't know it's not gonna be a very different experience hopefully bill hopefully billy eilish headlines maybe there could be a noble rot pop-up

noble rot pop-up tent you can do some pours maybe yeah yeah so do your kids are you are your kids into cool stuff are they into like stuff that you're like damn i gotta help you guys out like is it is it bad or is it they naturally like you're 15 year old what are we talking about lana del rey um you know okay that kind of stuff going to reading festival that's the kind of um okay the rites of passage that's when i got my gcse results everyone picks up their gcse results and then heads off to reading festival So mine was in 1991, and I was lucky enough that I think the best gig I ever saw was Nirvana in 1991, and they were playing on the second stage at, like, 3 o'clock in the afternoon. So, yeah, I think that that's kind of... Right place, right time. And now, not a cell phone in size. A 15-year-old in Talana Del Rey is pretty good, I feel like, because I feel like any time that we talk to any parents, it's always Billie Eilish or, like... There's never another answer except Billie Eilish. I just feel like we can do better. Well, I have got that as a second answer, actually, because we did go and see Billie Eilish at the Camden Electric Ballroom. And I was surprised, and it shows how old I am, but I was surprised at how many people weren't watching the gigs just holding up their phones. I mean, there's a small venue. It's like the only time you're going to see an artist that big in a small venue, and you're videoing it. And I know that's half of the course nowadays, but it was just insane. Yeah, I think people value having the footage of the exclusive concert to share on their social media more so than experiencing it because that's intangible and they're afraid of... having a cool memory like that yeah not to bring it down sorry if you can't if you can't if you can't share it with your followers what's the point i mean that's what i say every every decision i make is about kind of share if billy eilish played a show for 300 people in the forest and and nobody saw it did it happen you know what i mean exactly exactly you know we because we do we do shows and it's really interesting jason i don't think i can think of a time where we've ever seen a video clip

of us on stage yeah it's usually just photos i looked for it i could i look i look for some on google and i couldn't see any and i feel like it's just because our our audience is like our grown-ups kind of and they're like we're here to get drunk and have fun and watch this thing but we don't need to capture this so i feel like there's because like i would if you go see like i went and saw sunny day real estate or something reunite there ain't no phones up in that crowd either you know what i mean those guys those guys can't get their androids to video anyway so it's a little easier I'll take one picture of the backdrop with their logo on it, put my phone back in their pocket, and that's it. Because I feel like Billie Eilish is the ultimate, like, that generation, like the phone generation that is their artist. Yeah, that was the epicenter. I could not believe it. I was dumbfounded. I mean, I feel like you can rediscover a lot of music through the eyes of your child, you know, and I hope that you're playing Billie yourself when you're driving to the office, you know, on the low. Yeah, yeah, whooping. On the low. You don't have to share with her. Well, I wanted to talk a little bit about the book as we're closing out, Dan. I'm really into food. I know a lot about food, and I consider myself to be a good cook. And wine and coffee have always been really huge blind spots for me. So I'm excited to get this book, and I think I will learn. I've only read about a quarter of it, and it's helping me out a lot. What do you think the best way or like what advice would you give to somebody whose brain is just sort of unable to remember when you like something or not? I mean, other than, you know, taking a photo of the label in a drunken stupor or something like that. How do you like what advice would you give somebody like me? who has had a lot of great wine over the years, but I just don't remember what it was and what it is and whatever. Dan, I don't want to interrupt, but Jason, I would say maybe consuming less marijuana could help with this. Dan, go ahead. Sorry. That's kind of a baseline memory thing. This is the problem that I had before on my marijuana addiction, just to clarify. Go ahead, Dan. Okay. All right. All right. I think produce is the number one thing besides the marijuana. I mean, marijuana is obvious, but...

knowing producers so like when you got into the music you know you found that band that you love say it was um you know david bowie and then you looked at who produced david bowie and you saw it was brian eno and from that then you can trace that they then he went and did a bowie knew iggy pop and then they knew craft work so it's all these kind of like i think it's joining these dots between producers so once you know that you like say um Ridge Montebello, for example, for a Californian wine. That's a very famous Californian wine. But if you've had it once and you've loved it, you know, when you see it again next on the list, they make other wines and you'll see them on wine lists. So try one of those. And I think it's just about building up this kind of, in your head, this kind of list of producers that you can trust. Like you would with music. It's only the same thing. Skrillex, Fortet. Well, exactly. Fred again, you know, you check out Fred again. No, I'm not sipping anything from the Fred again vineyard. From Fred Estates? No, Fred Estates ain't in my house. Not a Fred fan. Okay, fair enough. No, no, no. We like to make fun of Fred, though, and I think he deserves it. He's an easy target. He's laughing all the way to the bank. He ain't thinking about us. Yeah. We've spoken for 45 minutes, judging on my personality, sense of humor, and looks. What is a producer of wine that you think I should look into? Prescribe him a producer. So one from Chianti called Tanuta di Carleone. So it's a guy from England, actually. You see, very patriotic. Interesting. Another white man. Queen send you? Like, why are you here? Actually, let's scrub that. How about Suerte del Marquez? It's a Spanish wine from Tenerife. And Liston Blanco is a grape, which is called Palomino down in Sherry. And this estate, this guy called Jonathan, he's Spanish, he's not English, and I've not got any shareholding in this estate whatsoever. Okay, thank you for your honesty. Thank you for your honesty. Okay, well, I'm going to stop you really quick, Dan. I've already forgotten every word that you said. Jason, you can write it down in editing. You can write it down in editing. I will, I will. Put it in your moleskin. You just said a bunch of words that are really interesting, and I'm like...

Which word did you switch off at? I heard and observed all of them, but when you say the name of the first Italian guy who was actually a British guy. Yeah, that's never going to stick. How do you remember this shit, bro? Come on now. Like, come on now. What are your tricks? Because you just love the game so much. Or are you about to start pitching us on a Noble Rot app that saves all the labels or something? Yeah, I need Duolingo Noble Rot app. Yeah, yeah, combo. Yeah, yeah. No, you just. Montepulciano. Yeah. I think it's just rep. It's just rep. Repetition and obsession. Okay, so we're back to this. Sorry, Chris. So the Spanish. named Jonathan Jonathan so Tenerife so Tenerife is a is a really interesting case in point because Tenerife is not so much a emerging wine region it's a re-emerging wine region because back in the 17th century they used to export millions of liters of wine back to to Great Britain and a lot of kind of British ships would stop there and stop at the Madeira and the Azores and stuff and then it fell out of fashion for 200 years nobody wanted it And a lot of these vineyards were kind of left just discarded. They had a rough 200 years, you're saying, and now they're okay. They did. Bit of a speed bump. And then, you know, they went into, you know, banana plantations. Yeah. And then a couple of the states, and there's another one called En Vignate as well. So I would say En Vignate and Suerte del Marquez are the two producers that you want to check out from Tenerife. But they make these very smoky, stony wines on volcanic soils. And Tenerife is the north bit where the wines are from. It's one of the most beautiful wine regions in the world. And it's on the same latitude as the Sahara Desert. So you think, how the fuck do they make wine there? Oh, that's a twist. That's a twist. Yeah. And, you know, Tenerife is not somewhere that you think of when you think of great wine, but it is. And Spain as a whole, over the last 10 years, has just been, you know, such a revelation with so many different regions kind of doing interesting things. This is good information because Jason discovered recently that he has some Spanish blood. So he's really going to lean into this.

think uh and make it his personality which which brings me to a question chris great segue brings me to a question what do you think the uh do you think there's any correlation to prescribing wines to people based on the heritage of where on earth their family lineage is from you know what i mean yeah dan can you do you know any southern georgia united states producers that i could look into like do i mean obviously Obviously, the Italian people drink wine from Italy, but I live in California. I grew up here, but I found out that I have some, whatever, the ancestry in the Iberian Peninsula of Spain. Do you feel like I will have some type of... cosmic DNA, spiritual connection to grapes from that soil? Or is that just a fun, intangible thing to think about? I think you should go and find out if you have. But I think you're not going to know unless you go. You've got to get out there, Jason. We're about to go sideways mode, bro. Yeah, I mean, it makes so much sense when you go there and you see it. And, you know, if you go to Burgundy and you see you go to a town that's called Nuit Saint-Georges and you're like, Wow, I've seen that on so many bottles of wine, but now it makes sense. drinking in Nuit-Saint-Georges, in Nuit-Saint-Georges. That's your Spanish heritage. Whereabouts are your ancestors from, Jason? It's a small region called Orange County. It's very small. You can see it on the map. But I went to Spain over the summer. I was in San Sebastian, and I kind of drove between there and Barcelona. pull over on the side of the road, grab some soil, and sniff it and let it run through my hands, you know? Dig a hole in the dirt and fuck it. It felt good. It felt right. I found my ancestors in that hole, you know? I found my ancestors in the hole. But the way you said that, like, I got married in Italy, and we had, like, a little friends, like, a close rehearsal dinner thing at a restaurant in Molta Pucciana. And now...

Every time I drink a bottle of wine from there, I'm like, oh, yeah, I've been to the town. I've been to the town square where this wine is from. And you experience it in a different way. Dan, I also enjoyed that meal in Montepulciano. And the wine guy was one of the most annoying people I've ever encountered. So I don't mean to attack your people. What did you not like about him, Chris? What was the problem? He talked. And this is coming from me, who talks a lot. He talked too much. He talked too much about stuff that no one was interested in. You know what I mean? You've got to read the room. I don't care how much factual knowledge you have about wine. We're not here for that. We're here for a rehearsal dinner. Yeah, yeah. No one likes to be bored about wine. Food was delicious, and I'm sure the wine was amazing, but the talking was not. Yeah, you've got to read the room. Yeah, he did not need to be – he didn't want to be led down into the cellar to smell. the old bottles and like oh when was this well built that's so fun yeah yeah he was telling us he was telling us when like the stone was was there you know i'm like all right dude sure i see the walls this bottle is before christ you know well Dan, do you have time for other interests? I feel like you have so many things going on with Noble Rot. Obviously, you have a music background, but do you have any interesting hobbies that you could share? Anything that's a little... Well, like stamp collecting or coins? Yeah, sure, coins, stamps. I mean, do you work on cars? Do you love to cut the grass? Because you seem so laser-focused, so I always wonder what people do. Yeah, no, I love cooking. I mean, it sounds like it's something I'd write on my CV, but I love cooking. I love swimming. I love swimming. Great for the joints. Great for the joints. Not very English of you. Not very English of you. The first thing that's not English about you. Do you think? Do you think the English aren't good swimmers? I think of the English as drinkers and eaters. I don't think of them as getting up at 6 a.m. to hit the pool. Have you not known of Duncan Goodyear? No.

who's that is he yeah yeah from years ago yeah no of course of course you have olympians i just mean because of the weather i think it doesn't come to mind no i love i love swimming it's good to you know i do it like four times a week five times a week you've got to kind of balance out you know the drinking do you do you listen to music when you swim or you do silence no no no no that's cool okay if you want do you wear headphones when you go swimming No, but I know people who swim like laps that do have like waterproof so they can hear music. We know we know a couple of psychopaths who have to swim with headphones on. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you should be left alone with your thoughts. But this is the same thing with people who run marathons with no music. Like that seems fucking crazy to me. But I also am jealous. Yeah. You can do that. Yeah. I've often thought wonder what those headphones are like in a pool. It must be pretty bad. Well, if you have your own pool, you can just add the sound system in the pool, obviously. And then no headphones needed. You know, you got this. Yeah, but I'm sure that listening experience is pretty awful. I'm not going to listen to some Tchaikovsky on those guys, but maybe more of a podcast instead. I'll listen to the Joe Rogan experience where the fidelity doesn't matter as much. On lap 14, the Joe Rogan podcast is going to push me to get a PR. No question. But when you're underwater and you can't skip the commercials when you're underwater, oh, AG1, that's tough. That's going to kill us. I'm impressed here. Swimming, swimmers always impress me. always very like that it seems like a more it's more difficult than a lot of kinds of exercise not just physically but like You have to get there. There's so much stuff involved in doing it. Yeah, yeah. It always makes you feel better, though. Unless you have a pool at your house. That would be amazing. But like running, you go outside, you run, you're done wherever you are. Swimming, it's like if you're traveling, you're not going to be able to – it's going to be difficult to find a place to do it. It involves public nudity oftentimes. Exactly. Then you've got to find a pool, and finding a pool in New York, for example, is not that easy. Come check out the YMCA on Bowery and Houston. It's –

The Chinatown YMCA, it's known for its lap pool. A lot of people are members there because it has full court basketball and a pool, like an Olympic swimming pool. But it does make the entire gym smell like chlorine, so my membership did laps. Right, right. Okay, I'll check that out. Just something to consider. I'm sure that... That morning, jump into the cold pool, cold British pool with a hangover that probably snaps it right out, doesn't it? Yeah, I mean, I've got some friends who go up to Hampstead Heath and they get into the pond now and it's six degrees. And they stay in there for two minutes and they come out. But, I mean, you could have a heart attack doing that kind of stuff, right? Especially when you get older. Right, right, right. I don't mind cold water, but I don't need freezing cold water. I was just going to say that there's another pool up at Hampstead as well called the Parliament Hill Lider. And it's a huge pool, but it's unheated. And as the temperature goes down as we get into the autumn, you know. There's a fine line between you being able to swim a few lengths and then not. And the last time I went, you know, people say they get a real buzz when they go in cold water. When I got out, I just felt fucking terrible for like two hours and just couldn't get my body back up to the right temperature. You're like, I hear you, but I don't get it. I hear you, but I don't get it. You did a cold plunge. It made you ill. Yeah. Thank God you're still with us. Where would we be? Dan, lastly, aside from a dip in the River Thames, what is the ultimate hangover cure for you, culinarily speaking? So my ultimate hangover cure involves a swim. That is part one. Two, a lot of water. We have Vichy water at Noble Rock, and we have one called Shattledon as well. I love a Vichy. I love a Vichy. Yeah, you can't sometimes be just a pure Evian. What's it called? The Dyrilite. You know the stuff that when you've got diarrhea, a sachet of Dyrilite, so to rehydrate yourself. And then the last ingredient is a glass of really good brower champagne.

So the combination of those three things tends to snap you out of the hangover and back into feeling pretty good about life. Wow. That did sound like expert advice, I have to say. I learned a lot. Evian, diarrhea, champagne, and bomb. Off we go. Dyrilite. Dyrilite. Whatever you say, Dyrilite. Get those electrolytes. Okay. So no full English. No full English for you, then. You could have maybe some bacon, maybe a tomato. That could add to it, yeah. Okay. I'll just bite into a tomato like an apple then and see if that works for me. Thank you, Dan, for joining us. We really appreciate it. The book is out now, correct? It is, yeah, out now. And the magazine, you can subscribe. I'm sure you can go eat at the restaurants. I mean, there's so many options to participate. in what Dan is offering. So we, we appreciate it. Yeah. Well, thanks for having me on guys. It's been a pleasure. Of course. We'll talk to you soon. Have a good one. Thanks a lot.