Tom Gearing, CEO and Co-Founder of Cult Wines

33:17Interesting. And who are the individual figures or I guess maybe the media outlets who can swing the popularity and probably the value of a wine? In the art market, there's a few kind of players who if they suddenly express interest, suddenly the stock of a painter goes up 100%. Are there people like that in the wine world who can just sort of pull levers and things happen? Yeah, yeah. So I mean, the legendary one, the one that's talked about the most and really kind of revolutionized the wine market is Robert Parker. Robert Parker, for those who aren't aware of him, he was a lawyer working in the US and back in the 70s, 80s as a collector, started writing his own, I suppose, magazine.

33:56I don't know if it was Determiner magazine back then, but anyway, started writing a sort of monthly, like a journal, I suppose. And it was called The Wine Advocate. and yeah he introduced a 100 point score and you know that really revolutionised the market the idea that you could actually give a numeric score to a wine and it was just him was it? I mean he started that scoring system but he was deciding the first ones yeah yeah he was like the pioneer and obviously now today you know every wine critic scores wines on a scoring basis most people have adopted his scoring system some people like Francis Robinson who's a very well known British critic she uses her own 20 point score but I'd say the vast majority of critics use the 100 point score that he created so that just shows like how much of an impact he's had on the market but he retired in 2014 i think now so almost over 10 years ago but he was so influential at one point that there was what people call like the parkerization of wines right which was kind of especially in bordeaux there was a period sort of late 90s throughout the 2000s and probably up until the point that i started working in the industry from like 2009 2010 where there was a shift in the winemaking style and approach of a lot of bordeaux estates to kind of make wines that were going to appeal to his palate so you know the the argument is the parkerization is that you know he liked riper fruit he wanted slightly more extracted wines he had a little bit more pumping over in the winemaking process to extract more flavor and more color this resulted in wines that you know had a little bit more body had high alcohol content had maybe high sugar content it was resulting in people kind of harvesting a little bit later because they really wanted to get in the top end of the ripeness which when it went wrong ended up in kind of jammy wines and losing some of that kind of freshness that you expect from like bordeaux wines but anyway that resulted in some controversial wines where there's a particular estate called chateau pavie where i think the 2003 vintage he gave it 100 points and jancis gave it like the equipment i mean it was on a 20 point score but i think she gave it equipment like 80 points right and it was like a real yeah tete-a-tete around sort of like him really driving this type of style of wine and you know she represents a kind of more traditional view of saying well this doesn't really taste like Bordeaux this isn't what Bordeaux is it should be more classical which have lower alcohol that's what people expect from a Bordeaux wine not this kind of super powerful over extracted wine style that he kind of his palate kind of leans towards but in answer to your question especially when I started the industry if he gave a wine 100 points the value could double overnight wow so during on primeur you know the critics go out they taste the wines in barrel they usually give a barrel score which is kind of an estimate so they taste the wine they say okay I think this is gonna be 96 to 100 points.

36:19Are they tasting this blind, by the way? Or do they know what it is? So there's only one wine critic I'm aware of that tastes blind. That's James Molesworth, who works for the Wine Spectator. And actually a lot of Chateau now don't give him wine because he tastes blind. There's an argument that says when it's an unfinished wine, it's important not to taste it blind because you kind of need to know where it's come from. Where it's come from. And that kind of gives you an idea of where it's going to go. So it's a bit of a controversial topic again. I don't really have an issue of it being non-blind at Empremeur.

36:45But, you know, they give their score. And then when the wine's finished, in bottle two years later they retaste the wines they give the score so every year when robert parker was you know still professionally writing when he released his scores was a massive moment in wine market every year and in a way it was almost like speculative betting especially for us at the time where we would kind of look at everything that was scored on from a look all of his like read like in detail reading like his wording he'd used compare it to previous years where he'd given 100 points see if we could create any sort of correlations between like the type of terminology that he was putting in and like what he might have said and i remember one example was chateau cline 2009 he scored it a 96 to 100 and that was in 09 where the vintage was incredible he gave loads of potential 100 points but we remember reading this one particular line in the original tasting note that compared it to the 89 and the 90 from cline which were two wines that had famously you know scored extremely well they were worth three and a half thousand pounds a case on the market this was about 600 pounds a case and he said you know that 89 which i think he scored 100 points you know was the only other vintage that scored 100 points so on that basis like we said okay let's go really large on clean a because we felt like that had a really not much downside at that price point as well because it's going to be scored really well regardless but if it gets 100 it could really skyrocket in price he published his notes the scores came out it got 100 points and the wine literally doubled in value within minutes of it being published wow from 600 pounds a case to a minimum of 1200 pounds a case and then upwards from there wow and so we haven't really had anyone as influential like that on the market and i think a lot of people argue that today it's better that we don't have someone who has so much power and influence and i think you've seen a stylistic change in border in the last 10 years that parkerization has dissipated a little bit yeah we're moving more to consensus view there's still critics today that are influential neil martin in particular is one of the most influential critics uh there's a young writer the now editor in chief of the wine advocate ironically william kelly who is very influential in particular regions like Burgundy and Champagne.

38:40And there are examples at the moment where he's given wines 100 points or he's really got behind a particular brand like Ulysses Collin, one of the champagne producers that he loves and really scores well. A lot of the value of those champagnes have gone up a lot in value. There are pockets of that happening still, but not to the extent that we used to see at Robert Parker. And I think today what we're seeing in the modern era is, as I said, a bit more consensus driven where collectors and investors and drinkers are looking to the critics that kind of represent them most. So even when I'm tasting wines, I'll look at the different critics' scores and their tasting notes and kind of see that I align more with one critic than another, just from a tasting perspective.

39:19And then the other thing, I think, from a technology perspective is how community-driven scores really now play a big part in it. So you have, obviously, people will know Vivino, which I'd say is a good platform, but I think for the top end of the investment, collector market isn't as influential because of their scoring system is a little bit more basic, but generally the audience is very, very large and not necessarily experts for tasting. There's another platform called Cellar Tracker that has over 10 million community-driven tasting notes on there. But the great thing about that platform is it's actually the people that are going out drinking these really expensive rare wines on a regular basis.

39:51So one of the biggest challenges sometimes is, let's say you have a Burgundy Grand Cru from Domaine de Romani Conti. You might have two or three critics that have tasted that wine, but they tasted it 10 years ago. So the relevance of that tasting note is relevant because they're saying, oh, they thought it was a great wine, but it was 10 years ago. Whereas if you go onto a community-driven platform now, you might have 30 or 40 people that have tasted that wine in the last 12 to 18 months. And that's actually going to give you a bit more of a better steer in terms of like, is it mature now? Is it ready to drink?

40:18Should I still leave it in the cellar a little bit longer? And generally kind of what people think about it in terms of, oh, I think it was a bit overrated 10 years ago or I think it's actually coming around. Actually, I think it's better than what they said originally. And I think that's where the market's also getting driven towards, which is more this kind of community-driven review area. Definitely. This episode of the Gentleman's Journal podcast is brought to you by Lin, the long-time maestros of exceptional home audio and makers of some of the most emotionally impactful speakers imaginable.

40:48At Gentleman's Journal, we've had many opportunities to test out Lin's kit and we've been almost literally blown away by the ridiculously crisp and clear sound and chest-thumping bass that their speakers produce. In particular, I can recommend Lin's Magic System, which allows you to have that lifelike studio quality sound in your living room. It's the most accessible distillation of the whole Lynn range, but one that produces the most gorgeous and clear sound. It will even make this podcast sound great. Head to lynn.co.uk for the best and most captivating audio systems on the planet. I wonder what your own relationship with wine is like now, because you're so close in so many ways to so many elements of the industry.

41:29you've got all this knowledge in your head, all this data. Are you still able to just sort of crack open a middle market bottle of wine on a Thursday evening and love it? Or is everything a bit like a busman's holiday, to so speak, when you're drinking wine? No, I think I very much can still enjoy all types of wines. And I think that's a really important thing to endeavour to do. I think if you end up getting stuck into a situation where it's like, oh, I can only enjoy the most rarefied wines in the world. I think one, it's a bit pretentious thing to say, firstly. And secondly, I think that that would be doing a disservice to all the other amazing places in the world that are making incredible wine at a much lower price point and probably with a lot less fanfare.

42:10And so I think that's something I actually try and personally do, which is make sure I'm exploring new regions, new producers, new grape varietals, and making sure I'm not just always drinking the top Burgundy's and the top wines from Bordeaux and the top wines from the most popular regions. Yeah, I'm going to ask you the question that people probably ask you whenever they find out what you do at dinner parties. What's your sort of stock tip? What have you got that's up and coming that I can get involved in? What do you think is an exciting new region or grower or area or style that you would put your money in if you had to?

42:41From a pure just enjoyment factor in terms of drinking the wines or for... Well, let's say investment for an investment purpose if we're going to be really mercenary about it. Yeah. If you want to make the most money possible. Right, okay. Yeah, in the next thing. What would I put my money into? Yeah, if you were betting, man. I'll caveat this. On a percentage basis, I think the top German Rieslings are very much undervalued. Interesting, because Riesling in this country has an association with bad 70s tall bottles and sweet wines. Well, the thing about German Riesling, which up until the early 2000s, 90 % of German Riesling was sweet.

43:19Then you had the revolution where a lot of dry Rieslings were starting to be created and they've become incredibly popular over the last 10 to 15, 20 years. And a lot of vineyards and a lot of producers are now moved to kind of, they were almost entirely sweet. Now they're 50-50. Some have even gone completely the other way. But I think the Grand Cru system that they've established in the last 10 to 20 years, the vineyards that had the incredible Terrade are now making dry Rieslings. You know, the quality of those wines are absolutely phenomenal. But the other thing is a lot of these wines haven't got to kind of 30, 40, 50 years of age and they've got the capacity to age for that long.

43:50And I just look at it on a comparative basis. If I look at white wines, I think generally white wines are still becoming more and more popular. And really, the tip of the pyramid is white burgundy. And white burgundy is extremely expensive. So what's the next comparable to white burgundy? I think the only next comparable is Riesling in terms of the quality, in terms of the potential for aging. And, you know, I look at, you know, producers like Donhoff, for example. Donhoff, you know, their Grand Cru's are scoring between 98 to 100 points from critics. and again, not just like one critic, multiple publications, but you can pick these wines up for like, okay, 45, 50, 60 pounds per bottle.

44:27So you're buying a Grand Cru dry Riesling for one of the best producers in Germany that's got 100 points or 98 points for like 50, 60 quid a bottle. You think to yourself, what would the equivalent of that be in Burgundy? You're talking about probably a Mont-Rochet for one of the top producers that's going to cost you four figures. And so there's a massive disparity between the two. Fascinating. I'm literally making that note. So how does it work then? And I'll be asking this question even if we weren't recording. If I come to you and I've got, say,£1 ,000 and I want to start a plan with you, do you let people in for that little money?

45:01What's the sort of, can I come in with£100 and do it? And does someone sit down with you? What's the process, I guess? If I tell you I like a certain style of wine, how does it work at Cult? So we have two products and services. One is the branding, Cult Wine Investment, which is kind of our original foundational business, It's the one that I've talked a lot about already. That's kind of the best way to describe it. It's like a private bank for fine wine. So we do have a minimum investment level, like a private bank would open an account and you get an investment advisor who is dedicated to your account.

45:29A very consultative process in terms of the type of questions, obviously, is how much capital, what's your risk profile, what's your liquidity profile, and what's your objective? Is it purely financial versus a bit of enjoyment and financial? Can you say what the limit is? So the minimum investment for us is$25 ,000 into that product. And so we have a data science team. We've got transactional data going back for the last 10, 15 years, plus our own models around how we evaluate wines. For example, if someone said, you know, I'm looking for a portfolio over the next 7 to 10 years. I want it to be low risk.

46:00I need it to be really high liquidity. Based upon those parameters, our universe of wines will change and the types of wines we would recommend in your portfolio will change depending on those requirements. Now, obviously, if you need high liquidity, we assume that you might need to be able to get your money back quite quickly. so that means we're only going to invest into the wines that have a certain level of trading on the secondary markets that might just completely exclude a big portion of like for example the donhoff riesling might not be something we put into a portfolio that's low risk high liquidity because it's not well established enough even though i think it has the biggest opportunity to grow in value the secondary market's big it not big enough right now so liquidity is not quite there and the reliability in terms of how long it's been going for you know hasn't got the same track record as a drc now if someone came along to me and said i'm going to be in the next seven to 10 years i want to take high risk you know i'm looking for those speculative returns and i'm also not that bothered about liquidity like if it takes me six months or 12 months to sell a wine when i eventually decide to sell i'm never going to need this money back tomorrow this is my i'm happy to have in my wine collection we're again we're going to choose different wines in a different proportion of different allocations to different regions so again you're asking questions about kind of up and coming regions yeah you know therefore we might have a bigger exposure to south american wines you might have a bigger exposure to wines from oregon we might have a bigger exposure to wines from you know german riesling producers versus say more the established typical wines you would find in a wine portfolio so that's normal process for cult wine investment and then you know you have access to an app and online platform where you can look at your portfolio you have access to the wines all the typical sort of wealth management tools you would expect from any other investment products and then on the other hand we have a self-directed marketplace which is called cult x where you need to download an app and effectively we have over 13 ,000 different markets that are live where you can bid an offer and acquire wines.

47:42Now, that product is, there's no minimum requirements to opening it up and starting an account. And effectively, the lowest amount you can invest is whatever wines are on that platform to meet your investment criteria. So by the case or by the bottle? I mean, some stuff is by the bottle, some stuff's by the case, but generally speaking, we do everything by the case. It's in bonds, so it's tax and duty free. But it's all fully integrated on that platform. So all the wines are already in the warehouse, they've already been checked, all the provenance, all the the authenticity. When you buy the wine, it's a fully digitized process.

48:09You buy the wine, it immediately updates the storage records in the warehouse and assigns that ownership to the new owner of that wine. You don't have to worry about delivery, you don't have to worry about inspection, you don't have to worry about any of those things. If you wanted to resell that wine the next day, you could do. You could put it up for sale, someone could come buy it off you. You can actually see live bids and offers, you can see trades, you get notifications when wines trade on your account. But can you use it, could you use it to obviously have that optionality, but because you use it to start building a seller as well in bond.

48:36So, I mean, where we are with that platform is it's very much kind of like a self-directed marketplace where I think at the moment you need a certain level of experience and knowledge. But again, with our data science team at the moment, we're building out sort of AI tools and portfolio generator tools that are basically going to take people on a journey whereby you could go through an onboarding process where you say, I'm an absolute beginner. I know I want to allocate, you know,£500 a month to my wine collection and like an investment plan, seller plan approach. and based upon that we're going to make tailored recommendations on a monthly basis depending on your deposit and your profile and what you're looking to invest into or what you're listening to collect and that would just be like an automated ongoing process so these are the type of ideas we want to explore as we as we go down the line but they're certainly you know they're not you know years away features these are features we're working on at the moment that hopefully in the next month or two or at least in the next quarter we'll start to be pushing them out into the market yeah but i think very much of i think what you're angling at here which is kind of like if you're a beginner with a low amount of capital, with how accessible can this market be?

49:33And that's one of the things that I've been really driving towards for the new generation, making this as easy as possible for people to get involved and start collecting. And is the range of wines slightly more limited on the Colt X platform? No, so Colt X platform's got about 13 ,000 different wines on it. So that's what I mean at the moment. It's got all the data and the tools anyone would need to make a decision, but you also need knowledge. And so what we're working on now is that kind of, for that beginner journey for that new investor, new collector journey. We're really trying to think about how do we take people on that journey and provide them the tools and the help they need to.

50:03In fact, I mean, I was looking at this new, in the US, there's a new fintech app called TickUp, I think it is. And effectively, it's kind of like doing the same, but for the stock market, which is like, look, there's thousands of stocks you can pick, but how do you kind of make that process simpler and easier for beginners and their products is really interesting because it uses the user profile and their persona and the answer they're given but it kind of makes recommendations on a daily basis around stocks that might be interesting to them but has all the information that's in a digestible easy to understand way yeah and i think that is the future really for investments in general whether it's you know stuff like the stock market or stuff like alternatives i think it's about making it more accessible yeah reducing the friction and making the experience really engaging for new users and also i think making it kind of tangible so presumably with this and you can tell i'm thinking about a lot presumably with this say i'm getting married next year if i bought an amazing case of wine it's going up in value i suddenly think right i want to drink 36 bottles of that at my wedding yeah i can take it out you can deliver it to me and i just pay the the duty then and delivery yeah i mean everything you own the line assets in the in the warehouse but again the upside of doing that is that you've got immediate access i mean it's almost next day delivery in the uk obviously other regions and other locations take slightly longer but i always talk about it from the set to kind of optionality yeah that's my word of the year by the way I hear optionality all the time and I love it in life you just want optionality everywhere yeah I don't want to be tied down not you know emotionally of course but in general I think optionality is like what most people at a certain point are kind of after right yeah and I think the optionality I think about in wine is if you're buying wine and you're storing it and collecting it you might as well have it in a bonded warehouse where you're not paying the duty and taxes until you decide to drink it so that's saving you money straight away rather than taking delivery paying all the duty in taxes and then not ending up drinking it and then trying to resell it in auction five or six years later and also worrying about it if you've got it in your cellar and worrying about it flooding or something like well what if you don't have a cellar what if you don't have a wine fridge what if you don't have enough space in your wine fridge what if you can't guarantee the temperature all these things you know I think for the modern person or for the younger generation you might not have a property that has enough space to even you know have these things or have the right storage conditions so that's a big thing that it gets around and then the other element is if I own wine and I don't know today whether I'm going to resell it for the economic benefit, if it's gone up in value, or I want to drink it for the experience of drinking it, it doesn't really matter because in both instances, you want the same things for your wine.

52:28You want your wine stored in the perfect conditions, temperature controlled, humidity controlled, and you want the wines to be untouched in their original packaging that have moved around the least. Because by doing all those things, the taste is going to be maximized and the value is going to be maximized. So actually, regardless of whether you want to drink or you want to resell for profit, the actions you should take to maximise both are the same things. Therefore, by buying and collecting in a manner that enables both to be true, I think that gives you the most amount of optionality. And that's why we also then have built in a system with all the bids and the offers and the notification system, which is to then say, instead of this old school way of having a seller at home and going, well, maybe I should reduce how many bottles I've got and then basically inventorying it, sending off to an auction and it then comes back to you, you've got that whole process digitised.

53:11You might wake up on a Sunday morning and you look at your phone and you've got a notification saying, oh, this bottle of, you know, burgundy that you bought seven years ago, someone's just traded it for£1 ,000 and you bought it for£250. And that suddenly might change your decision to go, actually, do you know what? It would. I bought it seven years ago and I'm not actually going to drink it. And do you know what? If I can sell it for£1 ,000 today, I'm going to sell it. Yeah. But the upside I find is that wine might have been really difficult to source. It might have been really difficult to find.

53:35There might be someone else in the world who's been desperate to find that wine. Yeah. And so it's kind of like the way I think about it. It's almost kind of making it easy to see where the bodies are in a graveyard. Yeah, okay. I know it sounds like a strange anecdote. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Otherwise, everything is so obscure and you'd have to knock on a thousand doors. Now you can see where everything's are and make a bid if you want. That's really, really interesting. Something I've done very recently, I've got a couple of godsons and it was one of their christenings on Sunday. It's hard to buy for a six-month-old child.

54:06So I went to a very old-school wine merchant, essentially, really lovely, and I put some bottles aside and burned for them. and they gave me a lovely printed letter. It was a great sort of experience. But I think stuff like that is really... I don't even have a question here. I was going to ask you specifically whether you think that was a good investment with that wine, but I don't necessarily want to say that on the air. Do you do stuff like that as well where people can put stuff aside for other people and in their name? Because I think that's such a lovely thing. Like you had that bottle put aside for your 18.

54:34It turns out not to have lasted very long. Yeah, exactly. That's more my dad's fault. I think the answer to your question is yes. And I think it's a thing that a lot of people have done. and actually sometimes for people that are completely new to wine that's actually quite a yeah well held belief by a lot of people if you know don't if even if you don't know a lot about wine and wine investment people already have a belief of oh i know that sometimes people buy wine for children in the future because they know it's going to go up in value and that's kind of like a fundamental truth that a lot of people have around wine you can kind of build a base of knowledge around wine as an asset class or wine as an investment from i think the interesting thing about the experience you had and kind of like how I would imagine it in the future well of course you're going to have technology like NFTs and blockchain that can take that piece of paper that was written down what happens if you lose it what if the family you know the two gods on that family they move house or they move to a different country and they forget where it is and then suddenly everyone's a bit like well how do we get the records for that so I think what we will see in the future is that kind of process turning into a digitalized process as I said blockchain NFT but even I was thinking the other day you know how like with the new Apple iPhones you can like swap files if you put them close to each other.

55:38At the moment I've got bottles of wine in my cult ex portfolio and let's say you're a cult ex user, it'd be so cool if we could just put our phones together and I could transfer you one of my bottles I mean that would be good as a present or as a tip or as a both or just like oh I've got six, you know be you asked me earlier a Riesling, I could be like do you know what I've actually got a spare few bottles of that Riesling let me just transfer one over to you I just thought that would be quite interesting use of that technology almost like an airdrop of wine but then if you think about that for like you know a present for a godson or a present for anyone or a gifting for anyone it's the same you know that so it's just it's thinking about something that people have done for years but thinking about how can you do it with the new technology that's makes it maybe a bit more fun a bit more engaging but probably something that the new generation are going to do more than have a piece of paper stored away in a box that i'll be honest my dad still prints out every email and documentation he ever gets even for like he gets insurance for like going on holiday and he'll print it all out and have like a folder he takes away with all the paper and i'm like you've got it on email yeah and even if you lose it you can just call them up they're going to have it in a database somewhere they're going to have it on the cloud but he just feels comfortable having in paper but that's the older generation nice i think our generation is probably a lot more comfortable with not having anything on paper and everything being digitized yeah and so that's why i think it's just re-envisioning the way that people have thought about these things in the past and doing it in a more modern way yeah absolutely the sort of big question if we really zoom out is what role wine will pay in 50 years in this world of ai when everything seems to be artificial and not real either we're going to absolutely love these real world things that an algorithm cannot grow grapes and make wine or a new generation will come through and with no understanding and think why would i care about this when i can put a headset on and suddenly be in some sort of i don't know weird nirvana and not want real world experiences this is kind of asking you where you think well society will be in 50 years time but where do you see yourself in that journey where do you see wine in this crazy age of change we're allegedly in well obviously you're talking about it and obviously we're sitting in like a audio equipment store yeah and i think the best analogy for this for an adjacency category is the rise of vinyl over the last five or ten years and there's already like a lot of vinyl players that i can see or walk past earlier yeah you know probably people thought that as a medium for music it was going to die out especially when it went from cds to mp3 and obviously now with streaming but actually we're seeing you know it grow again and that market grow again and more artists releasing into vinyl and i think that kind of plays into what you were talking about which is as everything becomes more digitized the real world products that you can't replicate become more valuable and even more interesting and therefore there might be an even greater desire for those types of products or experiences that can't be replicated in a digital world so i have that faith in that wine will follow it i think the biggest challenge really today in the wine market is you know we are seeing declining consumption of wine and i say wine i'm talking about wine in general you know i see fine wine that what we deal with is like 1 % of the market.

58:27There's the other 99 % of the market, the mass-produced wine. We are seeing less people drink alcohol. We're seeing the increase in low-alcohol products, whether it's low-alcohol beers or no-alcohol beers and other types of products like that, which are becoming more popular. Obviously, there's a generational shift. People are more health-conscious. So that's certainly going to put pressure on the general big wine market. My general feeling now is that fine wine will be very well protected from that just because of the supply-demand side. We are talking about such tiny quantities produced of the wines at the very top end of the market.

59:00And they have been around for such a long period of time. And I think it is a brave person that bets against the vice category. So it's not like I think that's ever going to disappear. But I think where wine will become under more pressure is at that bottom end of the scale, where I think people will be more willing to give up that£10 bottle of wine that they buy at the supermarket because of the various different reasons I just mentioned. so I do think we'll see you know the market kind of restructure itself and I think the people at bottom end of the spectrum trying to think of ways to re-engage people around wine as a product and I think that will only be a troubling aspect for the fine wine market because generally speaking that's the consumer on ramp I suppose if you don't have a gateway into fine wine and generally the gateway into fine wine is obviously just normal wine at a much lower price point if that starts to get impacted then you could argue that maybe there's less mobility up towards the fine wine end of the spectrum.

59:52So I think they're the biggest challenges really for wine today. Interesting. I've got a couple more questions because I know we've got to go. But you have so much knowledge. I'm so envious of you because I'd love to know this much. Is there a book that you often recommend to people or maybe new team members? Is there a way that we can sort of, I don't know, get a really good overview of wine as it is now or wine historically? It's a great question. I don't think there's one particular book that I recommend i think i think the difficulty wine as you maybe asked at the very beginning of of of this conversation is it is quite intimidating and i think you either get two types of books around wine which are either going to be the super detailed really intimidating types of books which are going to be great for someone who's a geek and wants to really learn about wine but maybe not a good entry point and i think at the entry point it's almost too dumbed down so you kind of have two extremes and i'm really struggling to think of like where that middle ground is I think that there's you know some interesting publications like Noble Rot which has come out in recent years again very much written from a experienced perspective but I think the way that they communicate is a much more modern approach to communication so I think Noble Rot magazine is probably something that people should look out for as a publication to follow and even a friend of mine who's not massively into wine but is getting more into it you know I went around to his flat the other day and I saw that they had he had the recent Noble Rot book that they published who's afraid of roman content yeah yeah yeah exactly seriously yeah exactly so i think you know that that was a good indication to me is someone in the wine world that someone outside the one might found that engaging and found that interesting actually paid money to to buy that book so i think probably that's the one i'd recommend okay amazing and finally is there a holy grail wine that you've yet to try that you'd love to or one that maybe you have tried which you think is to you going to be the number one forever in your in your own personal experience one that means the most to you yeah yeah burgundy's where my heart is it's obviously probably where i spend the most amount of money and have had the most amazing venice experiences of being around burgundy wines and i think there's one producer on rigia who i haven't had a chance to drink or try a lot of the wines i was very fortunate to try a village vormini from 1993 about 10 years ago i've also had a wine made by george a in 2002 where he actually did a vinification process even though it's got the different label on it he actually made the wine so that's probably the best wine i've had from him technically what was it about it that you love particularly can you still recall what it kind of made you feel what it tasted like yeah i think that when you get the best burgundy wines they have this ethereal presence that is very hard to describe but multi-sensory but without being overpowering and i always come back to the the analogy of like you know the iron fist and a velvet glove it's all about balance it's all about delicacy it's kind of like you can imagine like a beautiful ballerina kind of tiptoeing across the stage and that's kind of like the wine tiptoeing across your palate and it kind of always feels like it's super intense but without ever feeling heavy or overpowering and it always has complexity and length and then i think the final thing for me is a wine that you kind of have moments like three four days later maybe even a week later we just have a moment where you can just suddenly recall the flavor of the wine it's almost like oh you've gone back to that moment and I think the best wines in Burgundy the best producers I've ever had have always been able to capture all of those different elements and I think Henri Jaya even though I've tried only two of the wines is a producer that was able to do that there's a few others that are able to do that I've been fortunate to try a lot more of those other wines but Henri Jaya is probably the one that is mythical he passed away in 2005 so it's kind of from an investment perspective not a nice thing to say but almost has the death effect that you see in art these wines are never going to get there's never going to be more of them there's only be less of them over the years and his richebourg the grand cru is probably one of the most iconic wines in burgundy so i'd love to one day try either the vore romani crow parent too which he also made uh or his richebourg they're the two that i go for and actually the vore romani crow parent too may be the one that i would try out of the two the one i want to try most just because it's got a really interesting story in that yeah that vineyard didn't actually wasn't actually a vineyard before it used to be a vegetable patch wow and he basically uh ripped up the vegetable patch replanted it with wines and turned it into a premier crew and started making wine from it.

1:04:05So it has a really interesting backstory as well. Very, very cool. But it's arguably, you know, one of the best wines that's ever been produced. I love it. Well, we've got a bottle of it here. No, I wish we did. Surprise. Amazing. Well, Tom, I love this. I could talk about this stuff all day and hopefully we'll continue off mic. But thanks very much for doing this. It's been fascinating. And I encourage everyone to go check out Colt Wines and everything they do. It's brilliant. Fantastic. Thank you very much.

1:04:39This episode of the Gentleman's Journal podcast is brought to you by Lin, the longtime maestros of exceptional home audio and makers of some of the most emotionally impactful speakers imaginable. At Gentleman's Journal, we've had many opportunities to test out Lin's kit, and we've been almost literally blown away by the ridiculously crisp and clear sound and chest-thumping bass that their speakers produce, In particular, I can recommend Lin's Magic System, which allows you to have that lifelike studio quality sound in your living room. It's the most accessible distillation of the whole Lin range, but one that produces the most gorgeous and clear sounds imaginable.

1:05:15It will even make this podcast sound great. Head to lin.co.uk for the best and most captivating audio systems on the planet.