Of Icons and Unicorns

00:00:00: [Music]

00:00:16: Welcome to Just Another Wine Podcast. I'm Emily Harman.

00:00:22: I'm Jamie Good.

00:00:24: I'm Doug Rake.

00:00:26: Today we're talking about icons and unicorns.

00:00:30: We are indeed, and cult wines. I put that in brackets.

00:00:34: These are three of my least favourite wine terms, as it will emerge.

00:00:39: But we all have our different opinions.

00:00:42: Icon wines. What does that mean?

00:00:45: I think the word is overused and somewhat abused.

00:00:49: So the original meaning of an icon is a religious image.

00:00:52: An icon is a wine. When we talk about iconic wines,

00:00:57: and if we were to talk about them accurately, we talk about the label

00:01:01: and what the label represents, rather than the wine itself.

00:01:05: And I find that quite frustrating, because me, I believe that the label is one thing,

00:01:10: but what's inside the bottle is everything that is important.

00:01:14: And when we talk about unicorn wines, we talk about wines that are rare,

00:01:21: where the demand outstrips this meager supply,

00:01:26: which are perhaps highly critically regarded,

00:01:31: and everyone wants to have them, but no one can have them.

00:01:36: And therefore, their reputation soars, particularly on things like social media,

00:01:41: but also as a result of the auction market and the grey market.

00:01:48: So before I sort of disappear down my own rabbit hole,

00:01:52: I want to open out the discussion and ask Emily first,

00:01:57: what do you understand by icon wine?

00:02:01: Icon wine. And icon wine, yeah, I think you'll point around it being a label

00:02:06: or a name or a recognisable name, but I think it's more than just a label, actually.

00:02:13: I think it is sometimes about what's in it.

00:02:16: But however, because of the hype that surrounds it,

00:02:19: the essence of the wine or the contents of the wine gets forgotten.

00:02:24: So I would say that an icon wine simply for me would be a perceived prestigious wine

00:02:31: or a perceived high quality wine that's maybe representative of something.

00:02:36: So it could be that it could be an icon of a specific region.

00:02:40: So let's say it's a certain producer making the best Chéverie Chambretin,

00:02:45: almost like a reference producer, perhaps, but not necessarily

00:02:49: because that rule doesn't run far and wide.

00:02:53: For example, for some people like Opus One might be an icon wine.

00:02:57: Would that necessarily be considered the best example of that region

00:03:03: or an icon of that region?

00:03:05: That's where it gets a little bit murky for me and there's a grey area.

00:03:09: I think there are some really intriguing icons,

00:03:12: but also there's some very un-intriguing icons.

00:03:15: Yeah, and in some ways I think, for me, icon is about the intent of the producer as well.

00:03:21: A producer that's aiming to make a wine that is very high quality

00:03:25: but then they're looking to luxury goods market rather than the geek market.

00:03:31: I know there's a funny distinction there.

00:03:33: But do you think, for example, to challenge that as a theory,

00:03:36: Dovissa as a producer, kind of an icon in Chablis, no?

00:03:41: Dovissa is an icon, but Dovissa is almost like, it's not a unicorn,

00:03:45: but I think Dovissa is recognized to be one of the very best in Chablis

00:03:50: and consistently performs and is highly sought after.

00:03:54: But I don't think there's any intent on the part of Dovissa to be like the most famous one.

00:04:01: I think when we're going to icons, I wouldn't call that an icon wine.

00:04:04: I'd say that was like a...

00:04:06: Who's the icon producer of Chablis then?

00:04:08: I don't think there are icon producers in Chablis.

00:04:11: I mean, Ravno and Dovissa are the two most famous and that's what the rich Americans want,

00:04:15: so the prices go up.

00:04:16: But there's almost a bit of the unicorn about that in the sense that demand and supply

00:04:21: is what pushing the pricing up rather than the intent of the producer.

00:04:25: But there's a grey area where they kind of blur into each other's concepts, right?

00:04:29: So let's go away from the grey area.

00:04:30: It's like to pick on some examples of icon wines and discuss those.

00:04:34: And I think one great example would be Dom Perignon.

00:04:37: So Dom Perignon, you've got a wine that's packaged in a way that's instantly recognisable.

00:04:44: It's produced in large quantities so that the pricing is not driven by supply and demand.

00:04:50: The pricing is driven by the intention of the producer, LVMH, to put Dom Perignon.

00:04:57: It's not the most expensive wine in Champagne, but it's an expensive at the icon level.

00:05:02: It's produced in quite large quantities and it's a sort of wine that people who don't know much about wine would recognise.

00:05:09: And if you see it on the table, you recognise it's someone's a high baller because they've got a bottle of Dom on the table.

00:05:14: And that's, I think, a really good example of an icon wine.

00:05:18: If you go to California, then I think Screaming Eagle or Harlan would be the icon sort of wines.

00:05:25: Because they're super expensive, they're good quality, of course.

00:05:28: But then Doug mentioned the idea of the quality in the label.

00:05:31: But sometimes the label changes our perception of the wine itself.

00:05:35: So we think this is a very famous and prestigious wine.

00:05:38: That will not only bias us in our analysis of the wine, but actually as we drink the wine, our perception is changed by the knowledge that this is a very high quality, high status wine.

00:05:48: But then you see this in Bordeaux with the first growth.

00:05:50: So I think they would be seen as icon wines.

00:05:53: And of course now the first growth, so if you go to Primo a week, they won't let you taste the wine blind.

00:05:58: All the fancy chateaus and not just the first growth, the fancy, ambitious chateau in Bordeaux make you go there to taste the wine.

00:06:05: So you get the stage manager experience.

00:06:07: It's not necessarily just about what's the liquid in the bottle.

00:06:11: It's about the stuff around it.

00:06:13: And they're not leaving anything to chance there.

00:06:15: You know what you're tasting when you taste it.

00:06:17: Other examples of icon wines, well, the Champagne is quite a few.

00:06:22: You know, there's almost like a tier of Champagne now as prestige coup vay is designed to be the icon wine and set out with the intention of the producer putting a high price tag on it.

00:06:31: You know, whether or not there's market demand for that, there's almost an intention at the beginning to put a high price tag on it to make it an icon.

00:06:38: So this was almost aspirational, like buying into the aspiration of the product for the consumer and for the producer, right?

00:06:46: Like they're all like it's something to be held up.

00:06:49: Well, it's wine playing in the luxury goods market and which is very different market.

00:06:54: Like, I mean, who buys a Rolex because of its ability to tell the time nobody, you know, you buy it because of the branding and the prestige of the brand.

00:07:03: You're right, Emily, about aspirational.

00:07:05: You know, you don't buy Don Perignon because you want to be seen to be drinking it.

00:07:10: It's probably not something you just drink at home out of sight.

00:07:13: No, 100%.

00:07:15: So it's associating yourself with a prestigious brand.

00:07:20: But some of the other wines, some of these Californian or super Californians, whatever, is that not associated with wanting to have wanting to be near something rare as well.

00:07:33: You know, the Scream Eagle, for example, I'm assuming there's not a lot of that knocking around to say that you have a bottle.

00:07:40: It's like to say you've succeeded.

00:07:42: I think it's about status rather than scarcity with that particular wine.

00:07:47: To be a little bit provocative, are there any unintended icons?

00:07:51: Is there such a thing then?

00:07:53: Can you think of one?

00:07:54: Unintended icons.

00:07:56: Well, I mean, you referred to some sort of shabby producers who don't actually set out to make, you know, wines which, I mean, they're trying to make the best possible wines they can and are highly uncompromising.

00:08:10: And I think that amongst people who respect the amount of work that goes into making great wine, they have become iconic, but that wasn't the intention to create something like that.

00:08:20: So the wines have a certain immortality in their own right.

00:08:25: But you talked about something flashy that just becomes famous.

00:08:30: Well, I think I've got an example that would be.

00:08:35: So back in 1955, I think it was Max Schubert made the first vintage of Penfold's Grange.

00:08:42: And this was, you know, in an era where Australian wine was dominated by fortifieds.

00:08:48: And he kind of went to Bordeaux and looked at how they made wines and wanted to make a table wine that was high quality.

00:08:56: And Grange over the years then developed this reputation as being a particularly fine wine.

00:09:02: But even when I started out drinking wine in the mid to early 90s, Grange was not that expensive.

00:09:09: It was 35 pounds of bottle in your local threshers. You could go and buy it.

00:09:14: Threshers?

00:09:15: I bought the BIN 389 at £11.99. I was a cheapskate, you know.

00:09:20: But then suddenly in the mid-90s, suddenly what was effectively had developed a track record of aging well.

00:09:28: You know, I've tried vintage from the 70s of beautiful wines.

00:09:31: Suddenly took on a new life as a new company with a corporate mentality, you know, got hold of it.

00:09:37: Decided this was going to be a prestige icon wine.

00:09:40: So suddenly the price went up quite considerably now. It's about £700 a bottle. It's really expensive.

00:09:45: It's still the same wine. Well, it's not the same wine.

00:09:48: It's the concept behind it. It's still the same multi-regional blend.

00:09:52: But now it's much riper and bigger and more umfy and maybe won't age as well.

00:09:59: But it's very famous now and that's become a celebrity icon wine and immediately.

00:10:04: Do you think that's standard marketing?

00:10:06: I think that what happened is the wine was made as a premium wine.

00:10:11: But it wasn't. As I say, you could buy it for £35 a bottle in 1993 in the high street in South London.

00:10:20: And then suddenly it's gone to this position where it's now in rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous and Penfolds are using luxury goods branding to advertise it.

00:10:28: You know, they're taking the luxury goods route. There's even TV advertising for Penfolds now.

00:10:33: And you know, it's definitely been repositioned as an icon.

00:10:39: Whereas initially I think it was not necessarily thought of as being an icon.

00:10:43: It's just the big company mentality is like we can make lots of money out of this and it's prestigious and it's famous.

00:10:50: What about a tiny estate like Chateau de Le Pen in Pomerol that rose without trace?

00:10:55: And you could buy vinegars from the 70s at the time for under £10 a bottle.

00:11:00: What made it so into the stratosphere?

00:11:03: Is it just critical approval to critics make wines or make the reputations of wines?

00:11:10: I think there was a period when Parker had the ability to be a king or queen maker.

00:11:14: You know, he would like give a relatively unknown wine a very high score and then suddenly it would become famous and sought after.

00:11:21: Then later on in his career, his scores crept up like everyone's scores crept up.

00:11:25: And then as he's kind of waned a little bit and lots of other critics came along as well,

00:11:29: suddenly none of the critics really now has that ability to do what he did originally when he was starting out,

00:11:34: which is to make something really famous with a very high score.

00:11:38: Because everyone's dishing out high scores like candy these days.

00:11:42: But I guess it's got to be first of all, you maybe need the, let's say the PR approval,

00:11:46: but then you also maybe need the demand, right, like for buying it because you can get the acknowledgement from somebody rating it.

00:11:54: But if people aren't following and actually buying it, are you going to put the price up?

00:11:58: I think that something like that, the pricing is following the market.

00:12:03: And this is the classic border way, I think, is what they're with Primers,

00:12:07: which is why Primers are struggling now is that they've always tried to make the margin that someone else could make on their product smaller.

00:12:14: So they'll price to the point where there's not much of an upside for anyone else to make their margin.

00:12:21: Yeah, the resale margin. And that's actually, I suppose it's clever in one way, but it's like it's killing Primers,

00:12:27: because basically you know you can buy the same wine for the same price a few years after release.

00:12:33: Is the perception that something is rare is also very powerful.

00:12:37: I'm going to just talk about border, but I'll take a talk about something that was huge in my youth,

00:12:42: which is Clowdy Bay Sauvignon.

00:12:44: Oh yes.

00:12:45: And Clowdy Bay Sauvignon was considered to be, because it was on allocation,

00:12:49: it was considered to be really difficult to get a hold of because you were allowed only just a certain few cases.

00:12:55: But there was nearly a million bottles of this wine being made.

00:13:00: And if you bought it directly from the importer, it was like seven pounds of bottle,

00:13:07: but you're buying it through middlemen or sort of brokers almost.

00:13:12: And it was like suddenly it was 20 pounds.

00:13:14: And then restaurants thought it's such an amazing wine because it's so expensive.

00:13:20: They were marking up three or four times even in those days.

00:13:23: So suddenly the wines, that Sauvignon, New Zealand Marlborough Sauvignon was on a list for 70 pounds in the 1990s.

00:13:31: It's pretty extraordinary.

00:13:32: But isn't that part of marketing, but also part of perception of value or that something is perceived as rare,

00:13:42: therefore it must be good because it's rare?

00:13:46: Yeah, or just maybe just a very basic concept of I get to try something that, like, it's the exclusivity piece,

00:13:53: I think that comes into that.

00:13:55: Like, I get to be one of the few people that get to experience this thing.

00:13:58: I'm privileged because of that or I'm very lucky to have that.

00:14:02: So I think it's like playing into that.

00:14:04: Like, I mean, you know, when somebody gets a flight upgrade or access to a business class lounge or something that's unexpected,

00:14:10: how special it feels, right?

00:14:12: So I think it's this idea of feeling special because you're part of a limited few that get access to that.

00:14:20: I think it's like a very, like almost like a, it's very capitalistic.

00:14:24: It's when something's being talked about.

00:14:26: So I think Cloudy Bay is very interesting.

00:14:28: So I remember that because I was like, so amazed when I first tried it, it was like, this is actually quite different.

00:14:33: This is actually a remarkable expression of Soviet.

00:14:36: I was quite, you know, new to wine at this stage.

00:14:38: And so, you know, we were really looking out for it.

00:14:41: And the scarcity factor was a big draw because it's like, if you thought this is amazing wine,

00:14:47: you just turn it off and go and find the next amazing wine.

00:14:49: There's lots of amazing wines around.

00:14:50: But the fact that it was scarce made it, you want to get hold of it really badly.

00:14:54: I think that scarcity is a real draw.

00:14:57: But it was a scarce brand, which is sort of quite ironic when you think about it because brands, brands,

00:15:03: well, you alluded to this in Penfolds, Penfolds is a brand.

00:15:07: And yet it's sort of like, it's not a parallel, it's a luxury brand.

00:15:11: People want to be associated with it.

00:15:13: In those days, of course, the word of mouth was really interesting.

00:15:17: Nowadays, of course, we have social media and we're so exposed to wine.

00:15:23: That I'm wondering whether icons are less of an issue now,

00:15:30: whether so many great wines out there that we don't sort of confer exalted status,

00:15:36: particularly to some over the others.

00:15:38: I still think some get talked about.

00:15:40: It's not just wine.

00:15:42: I remember there was a period where a Montgomery Cheddar was being talked about quite a lot.

00:15:48: Neil's Yard was selling this Montgomery Cheddar.

00:15:50: It was on every restaurant, wasn't it?

00:15:52: It was on the newspaper.

00:15:54: One newspaper, and then basically the news cycle picks it up.

00:15:57: And when the news cycle picks something up, everyone wants some.

00:16:00: And I remember they were at St. English Street giving people a little taste of Montgomery Cheddar.

00:16:04: It was very exciting.

00:16:06: And the rest of it now probably, Montgomery Cheddar, people have forgotten that it was famous for a while.

00:16:10: It's still a fantastic Cheddar.

00:16:12: It's just spicy, sort of like almost exotic quality to it.

00:16:17: It's like, I think it's some wines suddenly have their 15 minutes of fame.

00:16:21: And Claddy Bay now is still a little more expensive than other Sauvignon Blancs,

00:16:24: but you can get hold as much as you want.

00:16:26: You know, it's like that veneer of scarcity, whether it was real or invented, has disappeared.

00:16:32: My point of view on your question is that I think icons are still very relevant.

00:16:37: I think they're less relevant in our wine sphere that we work in.

00:16:41: Because I think the sommelier world has grown a lot.

00:16:44: And a lot of these brands and icons are maybe not so needed.

00:16:50: And also, I think there is maybe a little bit less demand from consumers in certain parts of the world.

00:16:55: Like if we look at East London, for example, like no one's going to be drinking any of those bottles,

00:16:58: or really interested in those bottles, they're going to be looking for weird stuff.

00:17:03: But I think there's still a lot of consumers.

00:17:07: Like if we get onto the wine that we're going to open shortly,

00:17:10: like if I go into Surrey, where I'm from, to Rygate,

00:17:15: the amount of people that would talk about whispering Angel Rose,

00:17:18: like it's something like the best Rose that they could possibly have,

00:17:21: and oh, their boss gave them a bottle for Christmas, and they really, they feel that it's special.

00:17:26: I don't think the way maybe our wine world has evolved,

00:17:30: that the trickle down effect hasn't happened yet, that still these are really important.

00:17:35: Like when it was my mum's 60th, she'd never tried Dom Perignon,

00:17:39: and she'd been going on about it to my dad for like, as long as they'd been married,

00:17:43: about how one day she'd like to try it.

00:17:45: Right, because she wanted to have access to this thing that she'd heard so much about,

00:17:49: that when I put a bottle in my fridge and she saw it, she was like, oh, you've got that,

00:17:54: you've got that in there, what's that in there for?

00:17:55: I'm like, well, it's obviously for your birthday.

00:17:57: She didn't know me well enough to know that I wouldn't be drinking it for myself necessarily.

00:18:01: But like for her, that was like a very special moment to be able to have access to this thing

00:18:06: that felt in some ways like, it's that aspirational piece,

00:18:10: it's something she could aspire to having or trying.

00:18:13: And I think that's, people buy into that still.

00:18:16: Oh, they don't have to have the wine. Basically, this is the idea of the wine.

00:18:20: The idea of the wine represents.

00:18:22: So you mentioned, you mentioned Whispering Angel.

00:18:25: Well, that's a brilliant example of transforming a category through instilling prestige into wines.

00:18:32: And so, Sachelos Chien, and this is now being bought by LVMH.

00:18:36: Interesting, you're talking about the prestige champagne.

00:18:38: They're obviously experts in luxury goods market.

00:18:40: But what Sachelos Chien did was very clever, was Whispering Angel is a brand that's basically a negotiation rose.

00:18:48: They're making more than four million bottles of when I last visited, probably more now,

00:18:54: and selling at an elevated price that's beyond the price of most other wines in the region.

00:19:00: Provence Rose is retail, I think in the UK, so that's 16, 17 pounds.

00:19:05: And people have heard of it and the packaging is fantastic. The wine's pretty good.

00:19:09: It doesn't need to be great. It just needs to be good enough, I think.

00:19:12: And but also what he did is extending the brand with the ladders up to the point where this wine that we're trying now, the Garrus.

00:19:19: And so this is the Garrus 2022 from Chateau de Clin.

00:19:25: This weighs in at 14.5% alcohol. It's recommended retail price at 120 pounds a bottle.

00:19:32: But you can buy it from Barry Brothers and it's about 103 pounds a bottle.

00:19:36: 14.5% for a Provence Rose. That's pretty panicky.

00:19:40: This is pushing Rose into a new stratosphere, and I think there's been other wines now that have tried to match this prestige pricing.

00:19:48: It's positioning something, making something that has organoleptic qualities that are recognized to be high quality.

00:19:56: So this is barrel fermented and they put cooling devices within each barrel to kind of monitor fermentation temperature.

00:20:04: Lots of cares taken to this wine.

00:20:06: I'd love to know the cost of those barrels.

00:20:09: But what it's about is it's about creating from the ground upwards an expensive wine that fills into this icon category.

00:20:16: That's pushing the boundaries of, I mean Domain Ought were making some pretty smart wines, but there would be like 35 pounds a bottle.

00:20:22: And in Provence this was the first one to really push the boundaries.

00:20:26: And so we'll try it and see what it's like.

00:20:29: And I think now we've got Gérard Petrander with his Clos de Tampes.

00:20:32: Yeah.

00:20:33: It's about 240 euros retail, which is taking these, that's in Longa Doc as well.

00:20:37: You know, it's very interesting.

00:20:39: So this is like, not the market, he didn't release the wine and the market something went crazy.

00:20:43: And he had to up his price to keep his margin and stop other people getting it.

00:20:48: It was expensive from the outset.

00:20:50: But also isn't there like those rock angel, like there's a whole other range that riff off the whispering angel thing as well.

00:20:56: There's rock angel, then there's Chateau de Clin, then there's Eclin.

00:21:04: And you're climbing the price profile all the time.

00:21:08: The thing that he actually nailed was the packaging. It's like, it looks sensational.

00:21:14: It looks a bit like a bank.

00:21:16: Of that heavy glass.

00:21:17: No, no, that's another discussion.

00:21:19: Definitely not environmentally friendly.

00:21:21: Imagine many of the customers aren't too worried about their carbon footprint.

00:21:25: While they're motoring their yachts out of central pay.

00:21:28: But expensive wine and expensive bottles, it's the packaging that is all important.

00:21:33: But this actually is quite interesting because if we bring this over to another industry, televisions and television remotes, right?

00:21:39: So have you ever noticed the expensive TVs?

00:21:41: If you go to a like a electronic shop, their remotes are always heavily weighted and they've done that intentionally because people associate the weight with more value, like the weight of gold, like being heavier.

00:21:52: That's why there's actually a thing that like people will pick up that bottle and feel that it's better.

00:21:57: Not knowing that actually has nothing to do with the product inside, right?

00:22:00: I did a job in Miami, Florida, where I set up a wine list there about four or five years ago on South Beach.

00:22:06: And I spent a month in Florida working.

00:22:09: It's quite interesting. It's like it couldn't be more different to Berlin.

00:22:12: I don't know, maybe anywhere in Europe.

00:22:14: But the demand for Whispering Angel in every bar, like if you went to most bars, it was magnums, double magnums.

00:22:21: People were ordering them in swimming pools and they were like double the price than what they are here.

00:22:26: But it's a status thing of like, look at me with this big bowl of rose that you know is really cool.

00:22:31: I need to be seen with it.

00:22:32: I think the watch comparison is amazing comparison for that.

00:22:36: But it really like it's mad that in certain places these wines actually dominate certain markets.

00:22:42: This does taste quite expensive, doesn't it?

00:22:44: I mean, it's got this spicy woody quality that integrates quite well with the very rich pear and peach fruit.

00:22:51: It's quite heady.

00:22:53: I think we've taken a bit of alcohol on that because it does have alcohol.

00:22:56: This reminds me of a once a judge at the Ticanta World Wine Awards and we were doing flights of rose.

00:23:04: And to be fair, nothing was sort of scoring very highly with the panel I was on.

00:23:11: And the very last wine of the day was some 50 quid de Monts Rose from one of the estates you already mentioned.

00:23:19: And I thought, okay, it's not bad actually.

00:23:24: There's a lot of volume in the mouth, very flashy wine.

00:23:28: Let's give it a gold and go home.

00:23:30: Anyway, so given that we've given no medals at any description, gold, silver or bronze, this is like quite a departure.

00:23:38: The super juror of the day, or sort of invigilating our panel, was the great juror of usse.

00:23:46: And he was begging us to give something a medal, please give something a medal.

00:23:52: And I said, "Gerald, I think we've got a winner here."

00:23:55: I think, you know, like three of us say gold and he picked up this wine, this pretentious, okay, overpriced.

00:24:04: So he kiboshed the only one we would give a medal to.

00:24:08: And sometimes like you think, but that's true in a way.

00:24:12: It's like it's trying too hard to be to impress you.

00:24:16: And surely a rose is delicious, evanescent, refreshing.

00:24:21: It's like, do I need to sort of sit up, sit back in my chair and be amazed by the wine making technique?

00:24:27: I taste technique in this.

00:24:29: There's a lot of technique, I think, as Jeremy said.

00:24:32: And it is like impressive in a superficial way in that some wines can be impressive.

00:24:38: But then do we want to be impressed necessarily by wine?

00:24:42: Perhaps we don't because of the business we're in.

00:24:45: Or also maybe we're impressed for different reasons.

00:24:48: I'm not in the audience for this wine.

00:24:50: I recognize its qualities. It's very well put together in this style.

00:24:54: But, you know, it's not necessarily for me, but that's fine because I'm not the audience for this.

00:25:01: I can give it a score and a fair score.

00:25:04: But that's that. So maybe we should then turn to the topic of unicorn wines because I think unicorn wines are quite different.

00:25:11: Can I already open this and we just at least pour it without mentioning it?

00:25:14: Yes.

00:25:15: Yeah, okay. It'd be nice to actually...

00:25:17: We have one of the unicornable unicorns here.

00:25:21: courtesy of Sir Dog Race.

00:25:23: Unicorn with hen's teeth.

00:25:24: Yes.

00:25:25: Our hen has teeth.

00:25:31: It even sounds different when it's poured.

00:25:34: Well, we'll come to this in a moment.

00:25:42: Okay, so what is...

00:25:44: What's a unicorn wine, Emily? What would you say a unicorn wine is?

00:25:47: I would say a unicorn wine is a rare wine that's highly desired where there's a big demand for it.

00:25:53: It's the scarcity factors very high.

00:25:56: Sometimes I think you mentioned cult wines.

00:25:59: A unicorn could be a cult wine, but it's they're not not every unicorn is a cult wine.

00:26:05: Every cult wine is a uniform.

00:26:07: A unicorn uniform.

00:26:09: Freudian slip.

00:26:10: I'll have to dig into that later.

00:26:11: In the case of what we're trying now, I definitely say this would be both a unicorn and a cult wine.

00:26:16: I think scarcity is one of the key things because obviously there aren't that many unicorns out in the wild.

00:26:21: So that's the name suggests that it's like, are you sure this actually exists?

00:26:27: Because we can't get hold of it.

00:26:28: So I think scarcity is definitely a factor, but scarcity cup of a demand because obviously you could make 30 bottles of a wine.

00:26:35: And if someone's demanding it, then you can't really call it a unicorn.

00:26:38: It's just a one of 30 bottles.

00:26:42: And quite interesting going on to the economic piece because you mentioned it before around how with a lot of icons,

00:26:48: the wine makers already pitch that wine at this high price point that it doesn't necessarily get flipped for more.

00:26:54: Maybe with unicorn wines, these are the wines often sometimes we're seeing on the secondary market much more where they like multiply, multiply, multiply.

00:27:05: Over what the price of what the wine maker sells to the importer, maybe much more than icons.

00:27:09: I think they acquire a mythological status and a mystery behind them, which makes it which sort of amplified by people sharing stories about wines that they possibly never even tried.

00:27:22: So I think the difference.

00:27:24: I mean, for me, a unicorn, and this is entirely subjective, is usually a rare wine, which has some real value, some intrinsic value,

00:27:36: rather than a reputational value, which is what icons do.

00:27:39: It doesn't mean that every unicorn is a great wine, but I think the effort and precision in terms of farming and winemaking makes these wines beautiful and unique.

00:27:50: And that's what in a way confers extra status upon them.

00:27:55: So maybe it's a good time to mention the wine that's now in our glasses because this maybe is the most one of the most relevant unicorns in our current time.

00:28:05: That tells about this one.

00:28:07: So this is Domaine de Miroir in the southern part of the Jura region.

00:28:13: The great variety is Chardonnay on limestone.

00:28:18: And the cuvee name is Sonorité du Vend, and the vintage is 2019.

00:28:25: And the wine maker is Kanjiro Kagami, Japanese producer who first worked in the wine industry.

00:28:34: He first worked in Cornass.

00:28:37: I think he worked in Cornass. I don't want to like that.

00:28:41: I'm just kidding.

00:28:43: And then I bought a bit of a vignale from Jean-François Ganeva, and currently farms around 3 to 4 hectares, planted to the mixture of Chardonnay,

00:28:56: trousseau and brousseau, makes a tiny bit of red, mainly chardonnay, a little bit of

00:29:03: sauvignon, and in a sort of, you'd say in a sort of more sort of modern style of

00:29:08: Jura, in the sense that everything is topped up, there's no sort of Suvois

00:29:12: au van Jone style, but for all that, and yes this is Jura and Jura in itself, is

00:29:18: like got unicorn iconic status cult status, but the wines themselves are

00:29:25: completely unique, it doesn't, going back to what we said in a previous episode

00:29:29: about terroir, there's something about these wines, and I don't know what it is,

00:29:33: maybe it's the wine maker, but they have this Imami sense, mixed occasionally with

00:29:43: reductive, like a reductive character, and there's this incredible interplay, the

00:29:50: wines are very sort of, always constantly moving in the glass, between reduction,

00:29:54: and sort of like the savoury element, back and forth, back and forth, it would be

00:30:02: very interesting, the wines have fantastic acidity as well, natural acidity, very

00:30:07: interesting to sort of, to count this wine, serve it across the evening, try to

00:30:12: pretend it was like, you know, evolving over five to ten years, to see what

00:30:17: character comes out, but I suggest, and when I'm taking this, it goes back in

00:30:23: its shell, it peeps out, goes back in its shell, peeps out, this is intriguing and

00:30:28: enchanting, and I think that a lot of people, when they buy a wine, they don't

00:30:33: want like this block of flavour, which is six glasses of identical wine, they

00:30:38: want one wine that is multifaceted, protein literally can be six different

00:30:45: glasses of wine, or ten different glasses of wine, that to me is rare, like a

00:30:51: unicorn, I mean, well unicorns are rare, they don't exist, sorry, that really

00:30:56: exists in a wine, that it can evolve like so incredibly, it can be

00:31:04: transparent and yet incredibly deep as well, and I find it sort of

00:31:09: enchanting, and sometimes I'm not even sure if I like the wines, you know, or love

00:31:13: the wine, but I'm totally involved in it, totally enveloped by the aromas and

00:31:19: flavours. When you described that, I made me think of the first time I tried the

00:31:24: white Mangebel from Frank Connellison, but a while ago, like ten years ago, and it

00:31:29: was like opening this lava lamp wine, and then really going on a journey of

00:31:34: like sometimes a really strong dislike, and then other moments of intrigue, and

00:31:38: it was a challenging wine actually for me, and I wonder as well when you

00:31:43: said something along the lines of people want a wine that's like changing, I

00:31:51: don't know if everybody wants that, I think some of us do, other people find

00:31:55: that terrifying a wine like this, like because if I think there's quite a lot

00:32:00: of conditioning of having like expecting wine to be this homogenous product

00:32:04: from a consumer, let's say a guest perspective sometimes, I think for the

00:32:09: nerds like us, and definitely like I speak for myself in this, it's like the

00:32:14: journey of this like understanding the facets, it's a little bit like getting

00:32:18: to know a person, like when I sit here with you, maybe you've got a view or

00:32:22: some habit that you do that's a bit annoying, right? Yes, but there's like

00:32:26: other things, but no, but there's other things that are like truly wonderful

00:32:30: about you and very alluring, where I'm like I need to know more about that,

00:32:33: looking at the picture of a whole like an unsymmetrical face that becomes more

00:32:37: intriguing, that like the mole that's on the cheek or something like that, but

00:32:40: actually becomes part of the beauty of a product. That's because I'm a unicorn and

00:32:45: not an icon, if you want consistency. You actually are true definition of a

00:32:49: unicorn, I know no one anywhere close to you. If you want consistency, like icons

00:32:54: are brands, I think I would not say Domain de Miroir was a brand, I'd say it is

00:32:59: something of itself and you know the fact that its intangibility is what makes

00:33:04: it the unicorn, it's like you're reaching after something that is so

00:33:08: evanescent, it's so sort of like extraordinary and playful, that I think

00:33:12: that's what that's what I think we like, I'm not saying everyone likes it, but I

00:33:17: don't say everyone would necessarily like this wine, if you want consistency

00:33:21: you're not going to get consistency from glass to glass. Well an icon, Chase, if they see this

00:33:26: wine at the current market price of this, they might, a rich person might buy this

00:33:30: and take it onto their yacht in Sanderpay and then be very disappointed

00:33:33: because this doesn't meet their expectations at all, because this is not

00:33:38: beginner's wine, this has got a little hint of volatile acidity that works

00:33:41: really well, it gives that sweetness to the acid line, but this is

00:33:46: not, this is a wine for contemplation by people who... The unicorn, it's like you're

00:33:50: reaching after something that is so evanescent, it's so sort of like

00:33:54: extraordinary and playful that I think that's what I think we like. I'm not saying everyone likes it

00:34:01: but I'm saying everyone would necessarily like this wine. If you want consistency

00:34:05: you're not going to get consistency from glass to glass. Well at Nikon Chaser

00:34:09: if they see this wine at the current market price of this they might a rich person might buy this

00:34:14: and take it onto their yacht in Sandropey and then be very disappointed because it doesn't

00:34:18: meet their expectations at all. Because this is not a beginner's wine this has got a little hint

00:34:23: of volatile acidity that works really well. Yeah it gives that almost sweetness to the

00:34:28: sweetness to the acid line but this is not this is a wine for contemplation by people who really

00:34:33: love wine and this is where we need to recognize well talk about the the reality of the secondary

00:34:37: marketplace for wines and especially natural wines because for me this jars the idea that someone

00:34:43: is selling this you know he's not looking at the market price and then setting his price he's setting

00:34:49: his price you know what it's worth for what he is a fair price for this product and if I was

00:34:55: making wine like this I would feel very upset that I to see it being someone else making a huge

00:35:00: margin on it. I remember researching an article about this for for Little Wine. Christine asked

00:35:04: me to write about the the natural wine and the secondary market and this was a great example

00:35:09: because one major retailer in the UK had all these wines this is a couple of years back retailing at

00:35:14: 600 pounds and I checked with you Doug and you hadn't supplied these wines to them so they bought

00:35:19: them on the secondary market and then as a retailer as a famous fine wine retailer they decided this

00:35:24: is the market price these wines going to sell them at that price and I think that's like I feel

00:35:29: very uneasy about that because it's like and now you showed me earlier that there's one really good

00:35:36: retailer in the UK that has this on their site for £1,015 for a bottle so they bought that from you

00:35:41: for I think the price has gone up but the trade price yeah the trade price so you that's they've

00:35:48: got the wine for 60 bucks yeah and they're selling it for a thousand and fifteen and I think that's

00:35:54: you know what they've probably only got one bottle so they're trying to make the most of it but it

00:35:58: just feels to me unethical it just feels like the wine growers should be making that money and not the

00:36:05: not the retail chain totally and and it's like this is the sort of people who are going to splash

00:36:10: a thousand pounds for a bottle of wine are going to be disappointed with this wine generally this

00:36:14: is not their wine this is not this is the problem with price comparison websites is that people in

00:36:20: the end know the value of no it wasn't like the cost of the price of everything and the value of

00:36:25: nothing yes I noticed that one pretty famous fine wine merchant was selling a miroir wine like three

00:36:33: bottles at 1800 pounds so the thousand pounds one was not expensive relatively speaking and I looked

00:36:41: at the cuvée and it's a really hardcore orange wine that they make called I need the sun I'm thinking

00:36:48: like the person who buys this wine eventually is going to be shocked when they open it and I thought

00:36:53: maybe they're not going to open it they're going to sell it on on a on a tertiary market maybe and so

00:37:00: like we would start it as a thousand pounds and it ends up as two or three thousand pounds

00:37:04: and no one is tasting the wine and it so gets traded like like a Bordeaux index markets

00:37:11: and it has an index of value which as Jamie says it's like it's a 60 pound wine

00:37:19: and if anyone deserves the credit it's the vineyard but the vineyard is too humble to sort of like

00:37:28: suggest that this is the wine that we should be selling at X

00:37:31: X pounds per whatever and I do know that a lot of genre vineyards are heartily pissed off with

00:37:42: with this sort of secondary market because in a way in a way of course you make wine for people to

00:37:47: drink not for people to to trade like playing cards there's a slightly cynical opinion I have on this

00:37:53: which I wouldn't mind share is that don't you also think I'm when we say the person that gets that

00:37:59: that bottle a thousand or 1500 or whatever it is that they're going to be disappointed do you really

00:38:05: think that that person paying that bottle buying it kind of blindly is even going to know that this

00:38:11: isn't what they want like do you actually think are they discerning enough that they're even going

00:38:15: to think about it like because maybe they're so attached with the idea like is that a possibility

00:38:21: and then the next point or maybe question open question to you both is is any wine worth that

00:38:27: money I would say I have a limit how much I'll pay for a bottle and it's well below that I think

00:38:34: generally speaking I mean I do buy wine quite a lot yeah and probably the most I spend is in

00:38:40: restaurants but my ceiling is around 100 pounds in a restaurant so pretty much every good restaurant

00:38:47: has got really interesting wines for 100 pounds or less what about you yeah I mean I agree I look for

00:38:55: the the bottle of wine which delivers the most flavor for the least amount of money and then you

00:39:00: make discoveries because you realize you don't have to pay hundreds of pounds I think I wonder if

00:39:05: some people parent that he says he won this parenthetically whether some people when they taste

00:39:09: an expensive bottle of wine let's say a Bordeaux from a from a crew class say whether they taste it

00:39:17: to be better than it is and they want to be really good so the wine tastes great they want them

00:39:23: apparently want to be great you know life-watering experience they taste it they think yeah it's

00:39:28: a luxury thing and I feel like I feel really good about this whereas this wine I mean I'm saying

00:39:33: the other wines aren't have some sort of intellectual value this wine is quite an intellectual

00:39:38: difficult wine as Jamie said and if you're not prepared to engage at that level if you're not

00:39:44: if you put yourself in front of the wine rather than letting the wine come to you

00:39:49: trying to experience it at a deep and subtle level as you can I think you're going to you're

00:39:56: going to miss it and you're going to wonder you're going to wonder why it's so expensive but it wasn't

00:40:02: intended to be expensive it's intended to be a pure example of what it is but it can't be put in

00:40:08: the box it's a natural wine you know it's like made without anything and you know the result of

00:40:12: phenomenal farming but if you don't think that's what wine should be then it's not going to be

00:40:17: interesting to you but if you think that wine should be this sort of block of flavour that you can

00:40:23: talk about it identify it it's really clear you can communicate about it very easily then that's

00:40:31: that's your bag and you'll probably enjoy a wine which is even very expensive it's from me it's the

00:40:37: opposite way around I don't want to know it if I do know it really quickly I feel like ripped off

00:40:42: because there's nowhere to go with the wine I want to have to tease out the meaning of something

00:40:47: there's like great poetry or great art if it's just like a cartoon or you can see it instantly

00:40:52: what's the point but if you have to look and look and look again or taste and taste and taste again

00:40:58: that for me is the definition of the unicorn it's something really really intriguing yeah I I mean

00:41:03: I'm with you on that in terms of my approach to wines like this and actually just the kind of

00:41:08: wines I love and they don't necessarily need to be unicorns right for that but I just wonder if the

00:41:13: person spending a thousand bucks in a restaurant if they're even looking for a block of flavour I

00:41:19: think there are those people that are looking for that they want the concentration the thing and

00:41:23: all of that where it's like it feels like that heavy watch or that heavy remote or whatever

00:41:28: but do you like I wonder as well there are people that just like oh yeah I've got this just I've

00:41:32: heard that's good I'm just going to pay it that they don't even engage with the wine even enough

00:41:36: that it's just like it's a bit like the blossom hill drinker but like the other the pendulum on

00:41:42: the other end of the spectrum of just like I'm just consuming it I'm just spending a significantly

00:41:48: more amount of money on it think about an area where you you don't have category expertise

00:41:54: but you shop in occasionally I'm trying to think so like for instance I like quite like coffee but

00:41:59: I've not got category expertise in coffee and if I wanted a really great experience of coffee I might

00:42:05: be tempted to go somewhere that offers me a super expensive coffee that's rare and part of my thrill

00:42:11: of that experience will just be that I'm tasting something that's rare and expensive and whether

00:42:16: I mean whether I actually like it or not or whether I understand it is separate I'm just kind of curious

00:42:22: to try something that's kind of talked about and rare and expensive so we're kind of going to the

00:42:27: icon territory a little bit as well as with the the sort of the unicorn territory sort of there's

00:42:33: the blurred line again but you know I think there is a blurred line a bit because I remember with

00:42:37: them an example of this like so somebody doing nicely when with rare wines like for instance the

00:42:43: Ganava stuff now is bundled so like when you sell it you sell it in cases of 12 where you get maybe

00:42:50: one or two bottles of Ganava with a load of other really good wines as well was that no I mean we

00:42:56: had to do that during during lockdown that was your know because I because I remember I bought like

00:43:00: I tried to getting some cases from LeCave and and they said no you can't have them it's like

00:43:07: they're so it's so hard to get hold of you know it's okay and so I so actually a trade colleague

00:43:12: went and got a couple of cases on my behalf you obviously weren't emailed I'm not important

00:43:19: no they're not important enough but anyway so because actually they got the offer I didn't

00:43:24: see the offer this this trade colleague got the offer and said can Jamie get a case as well as

00:43:28: then the person who was like I said no no he can't it's just for you guys so he got he got one for

00:43:33: me but anyway so the idea of the bundling so I didn't go the right way obviously I didn't think

00:43:40: of that I went down to this restaurant in St Lenards near Hastings called Farm Yard which is

00:43:46: fantastic place like a and and we were there and we saw on the top shelf there was some Ganeva

00:43:54: right they got really good wine list anyways like the sort of thing where the wines are on the shelf

00:43:59: and they've got prices marked on them and there's plenty of fun you can have there without but I

00:44:05: saw the Ganeva so I asked the guy I said those for sale he said I better ask my wife and so you

00:44:12: called his wife and he said yeah you can buy one of those um and but you got a drink here so it

00:44:19: does fine yeah yeah so like um so we chose one I was with Chardonnay I can't remember what it was

00:44:24: um and I was like I didn't ask the price and then when the bill came it was like 96 pounds which is

00:44:29: like not um retail price plus 20 or something you know it's like or probably retail price

00:44:35: and I thought good on you I was expecting to be hit with 200 for that bottle um but they they

00:44:41: actually did the respectful thing and they sold it um to to be drunk you know which is I think

00:44:47: ultimately what if you're a wine grower you want to make a living yeah um but beyond that you want

00:44:53: your wines to go to places where they're being drunk rather than being traded by speculators

00:44:57: and I think this is a maybe I'm too old-fashioned about this but it's like you know kind of you

00:45:03: kind of you're in in the setting in the natural wine authentic wine wine with that makeup ecosystem

00:45:09: that we tend to spend a lot of time in there's a it's a human thing it's it's about values it's about

00:45:15: respect it's about um almost a spiritual appreciation of wine as much as let's see how much money we

00:45:22: can make we're not in this business necessarily to make as much money as we can when this business

00:45:26: because it's really interesting we want to make a living because we need to survive the sustainability

00:45:30: but um I think it's that's sort of that's sort of sense of fairness and playing nicely

00:45:37: really matters and when people come in and they just buy the wines or get the wines on

00:45:41: gray market and then just see how much they can ring out of the market for those wines

00:45:45: I think it's deeply disrespectful to the growers but it's also interesting that like for instance

00:45:50: Domendula Romani Conti when they sell wines in the UK through Corning and Barra their agent

00:45:54: they take quite a lot of measures to try and stop people just flipping the wines

00:46:00: because they're selling the wines at a high price but it's below the market price

00:46:05: and so the bottle's all numbered if you get an allocation for Corning and Barra the understanding

00:46:10: is that should you need to sell the wines there's a ledger you sell it back to Corning and Barra

00:46:17: in the in the first instance and should you decide to sell the wines within two years of

00:46:22: having bought them Corning and Barra will assume you're not a genuine buyer you're a speculator

00:46:27: you won't get any more allocations so it's very much a sense of we want these wines to go to

00:46:33: people who are going to drink them not people who are going to trade them and they also make

00:46:36: sure they sell a lot of wines to restaurants as well and the really extreme example of Charles's

00:46:41: show he he does some very I think Noble Rotter that they're Keeling Andrew are doing that agency

00:46:49: for him now but his expectations are very very extreme about how he wants these wines just to

00:46:54: go into restaurant wine lists and every bottle is traced you know so idea that this is this is

00:47:00: wines that people should be drinking yeah but Jamie to challenge that a little bit I agree with you

00:47:05: that there's like it well we know that's a fact but how does somebody who's a grower with a finite

00:47:14: budget and finite amount of time and their small scale how do they can't like how does he do that

00:47:20: like that's not possible for every unicorn producer right to have that traceability but I think the

00:47:25: good thing is selling to selling to like half yeah who don't do the gouging yeah but then I guess

00:47:31: it's the cost job to to choose to they sell to well this is like overnight you were how do you

00:47:37: do with it yeah in the end because it's such a finite product that you learn over the years who

00:47:42: are what we call the the magpies the people who just want the glittering jewels you only see them

00:47:47: once a year or twice a year and they sort of descend on you when they they hear about these

00:47:53: particular products now if we're allocating one or two bottles because that's all we have to

00:47:58: play with per account it's not of interest to a fine wine merchant to stick a bottle on a website

00:48:04: yeah they may make 500 pounds on it but it's not doesn't interest us either because in we that wine

00:48:12: won't be drunk by anyone that we know whereas if you if you give it to a restaurant or sell it to a

00:48:17: restaurant you know that someone will order it and hope and enjoy it like your experience with

00:48:24: farmyard we had we had some mirror are open at charwah and it's when it was just before about to

00:48:33: close and over and on stuff like that and we opened it by the glass because we didn't want anyone to

00:48:39: buy a bottle but we wanted it to be accessible to as many people as possible that's very radical

00:48:44: selling a normal margin but yes normal yeah so you could buy it like a 20 pounds or do a

00:48:50: coravan or something yeah yeah i mean like there's something that would be under coravan that one

00:48:54: there's something yeah there's something so spawned you know the spontaneity of having

00:48:58: a wine open there but there are people there um we had we got wise to this because there are people

00:49:04: there who who literally when they heard before we started decided to do the mirror by the glass

00:49:10: the other way about the glass we were doing it by the bottle and it's a very reasonable price

00:49:15: the people there individuals would come sit at the bar and just order one bottle of that one bottle

00:49:21: of the other one bottle of canima and just drink it like camels as if they could take it with them

00:49:26: into the next world which is probably where they were going or just like you store it for years

00:49:31: and i think like you're not enjoying the wine though i mean it's just because you're drinking it

00:49:35: doesn't mean you possess it you don't possess its soul or spirit because you've consumed it

00:49:40: and it's such a weird thing to do i think you know enjoyment is is in a way you have to treat

00:49:47: every wine on its merits and make sure you're in the right situation to get the most out of it

00:49:52: and sometimes it'll disappoint you and sometimes it'll give you an epiphany you know it's interesting

00:49:57: i had that i had an experience i won't name the place i won't shame the place but it was a

00:50:02: one of the first natural modern day natural wine bars in hackney and it was after one of the real

00:50:07: wine fairs and i was actually there with a bunch of growers and i think i was there with david your

00:50:11: colleague and a bunch of spanish growers and we were there and we were really really into drinking

00:50:16: a bunch of jurist stuff right so we ordered a few bits and and i think actually madz who's the

00:50:23: somat noma he he was there too so there was a bunch like a real nice bunch of us and we were

00:50:28: obviously like the best crowd for like wine appreciation like natural wine producers similiates

00:50:35: you love natural wine ordering natural wine and like nerding out about it around a table right

00:50:41: some bottles came and and when i looked at the wine list i had been there maybe three weeks

00:50:46: three or four weeks before and i had drank a bottle of au beenoir pulsard which is one of my

00:50:52: desert island wines and but now i'm kind of a bit resentful about it because i can never drink it

00:50:58: she can't buy any bottles anywhere and then if you do find them anywhere there's so overpriced

00:51:04: that you're like i'm not going to buy them but at this point because it was maybe like eight years

00:51:08: ago on a wine list it would be around 80 85 pounds right and every time i saw it i was like oh this

00:51:14: is a celebration moment i can't wait to drink this and i would it would never be a bottle i would

00:51:19: drink alone except one time i did order it alone in japan but i shared it with the staff because i

00:51:23: feel like with these wines they're not wines you should be greedy about they are wines that you

00:51:28: should share with people to really make it a moment and make it meaningful anyway we're there we're

00:51:34: ordering a bunch of wines and when we got to pay the bill um one of the wines was out of stock that

00:51:40: we had ordered and we got offered something else then when we went to pay the bill it was much

00:51:45: more expensive right and he was like oh well yeah but this wine the wine that we replaced it with this

00:51:49: much more expensive as i could have let me know and i made a kind of snarky remark because when

00:51:56: i'd looked at the wine list i saw au beenoir pulsard on the list for 170 pounds at a time when it was

00:52:02: 80 to 90 pounds everywhere else and i just made this little comment of like i would have ordered

00:52:08: that instead but then i realized it wasn't a magnum so i decided not to order that which is why we

00:52:12: took your teams recommended and i got really a little bit like bitchy about it but it would

00:52:17: sort of really make a point because i actually just felt like it's irresponsible to be doing that if

00:52:21: you're talking all about like i'm an independent place i've got these values i care about these

00:52:27: growers if you're overpricing wine that doesn't necessarily reflect that and i think i'm personally

00:52:33: quite sensitive to it because i think in the wine world we there's such a strong sense of community

00:52:39: that when somebody doesn't act in a way that's community driven it feels very edgy and very

00:52:45: uncomfortable there's like a betrayal yeah but also i don't see the point when you have one or two

00:52:49: bottles of wine you know what is the point in selling it for a huge amount of money um i think

00:52:56: you want to make wines like this as accessible as possible we work with uh with a gastropub in

00:53:02: in sington and the guy puts a cash margin drapes arms yeah drapes arms and i was you know uh

00:53:10: nick was telling me nick from drapes um that when he put the um mirror on the list for i think was

00:53:16: 100 or something pounds 50 40 there's like incredible by far the cheapest you'd find in

00:53:20: london i'm guessing uh that a person who's having their birthday there sort on the list and almost

00:53:28: wept tears of gratitude you can't buy that sort of moment i think and that's wouldn't you like to

00:53:37: give someone like extreme pleasure rather than know that you'd rip them off i mean for me it's

00:53:41: a innocent so win win for everybody of course yeah and that mentality but i mean i think it's

00:53:46: also an ethical thing um i hate wines being overpriced i respect the work that goes into a wine

00:53:54: but i still think wine is a drink for us all you know and that we should all have the chance or

00:54:00: opportunity if there was enough wine for a unicorn wine if there was enough of it we could all afford

00:54:06: to buy a bottle in our lifetime rather than like hunt it to extinction or or pay through a sort of

00:54:14: third party some obscene price i think there's a point where i guess a healthy attitude towards

00:54:21: the icons is when you see them so the the unicorns is when you see them and their affordability price

00:54:28: that's joyful enjoy them some wines become out of reach some wines become impossible to find some

00:54:34: wines it's kind of like a no longer available to us and that's the point where we have to have peace

00:54:39: and and go and make our own discoveries because there are so many great wines out there holding

00:54:44: that sort of tension between loving the the chase of the unattainable and finding it and

00:54:51: attaining it and yet at the same time just loving the the qualities of the wines you come across

00:54:57: that aren't famous and being able to so is that being able to participate in that tasting experience

00:55:03: and imbue value into that wine because it's really good and it doesn't matter that it's not widely

00:55:09: recognised this wine is amazing but if you find something amazing be able to have that joy in

00:55:13: appreciating the qualities of that wine and and and being fully satisfied without the need of the

00:55:22: approval of the fact that the people are hunting for this well isn't this true of icon wines as well

00:55:27: i mean we all drink grove champagne and yet and yet sommeliers will ask us well i think things

00:55:35: are changing now sommeliers will ask for a brand and support for the brand um the number of sommeliers

00:55:42: who've asked us for and a very expensive rose of a certain name which is 40 pounds of bottle

00:55:51: and if you say but we've got a wonderful biodynamic rose from frivolse which is 20 pounds they're

00:55:58: not interested because they think they're responding to their customers who are aspiring to drink a

00:56:06: famous name they're not aspiring to drink a better wine though which is quite odd so we so we got a

00:56:13: lot of overpriced wines on lists throughout the world because they're aspirational and not real

00:56:19: whereas i think the the unicorn wines well they're real wines i mean i i feel uh but they maybe they

00:56:26: may be so rare and unfortunately a lot of people are pricing them ridiculously because of their

00:56:33: rarity and not for any other reason they just want to make you know they're saying well i might as well

00:56:41: make a profit on it because why wouldn't i want to make a profit on it rather than looking the other

00:56:46: way around is why wouldn't i like to give someone an amazing experience at a reasonable price well

00:56:53: i think to finish this episode off because we're running near the end of our time limit we should

00:56:57: give a little toast yeah to all those but maybe give Doug a little bit more because you've short

00:57:02: thawed him so that happens to be in restaurants so it's toast to true unicorn yes douglas rag

00:57:12: yes so doug i feel like a unicorn tonight thank you everybody for tuning in hope you enjoyed

00:57:20: this episode um you can stay in touch with us by finding us on instagram at just another wine podcast

00:57:27: well remembered thank you i'm emily harvin i'm jeremy good and i'm Doug reg cheers cheers

00:57:43: you

00:57:49: (upbeat music)