James Dawson - Grape Juice King

Full transcript: James Dawson on London Real

0:16 Alright, you ready to rock and roll? Let’s do it. Holy shit, welcome to London Real. My name is Brian Rose and joining me is my extremely good-looking co-host, Mr. Nick Gabriel, and in studio today with us is the equally as good-looking Mr. James Dawson.

0:29 Hi, guys. And before we get going, just wanted to thank our sponsors, which is onit.com’s Alpha Brain, and as usual, everyone here at the table is on Alpha Brain. It’s probably gonna hit James a little bit later, so if he starts talking rubbish, then you’ll know where I came from. where it came from. I was actually at a dinner party last night for Thanksgiving and the woman that was hosting it, this very old-school Indian lady, she looked at me and she’s like, is that for real, Brian? I thought it was a joke. So I’m here to say it’s not a joke.

0:57 I get these emails saying, Nick, do those smart pills really work? I’m like, come on. Can I take you that far? Yeah, I guess so. The rest is natural.

1:09 Yeah, so if you go to London Real TV and click on the ad there, you’ll go to on it calm and if you type in London Real as a customer code, you’ll save 10%. And then you’ll be super smart. I like the label. It says mental dominance. So it says, it says that razor sharp lucid checkmate. Have you dominated anyone mentally? Right? I have been dominating everyone. Well, not everyone, but mostly. So, so there you go. Anyways, I’m going to turn it around on you.

1:38 Who is this guy in your house? Oh, this guy in my house. This is Mr. James Dawson, and I’ve known James for many years through a variety of ways. But I saw him the other day.

1:49 I hate to say this. I saw him the other day in the locker room. And you said? Half naked. Half naked.

1:54 Which house? Pretty hard. Oh, no. And you said something like, I got to London with 50 quid in my pocket, or something like that. So I thought that might be a cool way to start.

2:06 What did you mean, and when was that, And where are you from? Well, I think we were discussing what people are upset about in today’s culture, and what makes them tick, and how they feel they haven’t had the opportunity to progress themselves. And I came to London in 1997. I had 50 pounds in my back market. And just the world to work hard, and the world to succeed.

2:31 And today, I’m fairly successful. I have my own properties in South Africa, and London, and I have my own business and I have a great job and I started with nothing 11 years ago. And it’s about wanting to succeed and wanting to do something to make a difference and just absolutely never giving up. And I’m sure a lot of the people out there today that are in a bad place, if they could just push themselves a little bit harder and eventually start feeling a little bit of success, then sooner or later that’ll happen and then it just kind of reinforces itself.

3:07 It’s just not giving up in the first place. So you have no time for the Occupy people. Is that what you’re saying? I have very little time. I think that’s unfair.

3:16 I may have been lucky and succeeded, but I think that you make your own luck when you work really hard. So I think a lot of those guys could be successful if they already put their minds to it, but they’re choosing not to. And it’s becoming the rest of the people who are paying taxes probably to pay for it, which is also unfair. It’s interesting, because they occupied this building across from UBS. And I was walking back there the other night, Friday night, and there was three bankers that had had a couple pints, and they walked down to the door, and I just walked over and just sat on the corner, and they were having arguments back and forth.

3:46 With the occupiers. With the occupiers, yeah, and they were pretty cool. The bankers were a little pissed, but they were like, okay, so why are you mad at UBS? Why aren’t you mad at BP, you know, these other big corporate giants? And one of the guys was like, I’m mad at them too.

4:00 And then they were asking a bunch of questions, then all of a sudden a load full of Domino’s pizza came to the door, like 20 boxes. Yeah, for the occupiers. Yeah, for the occupiers. No. Yeah, got to eat.

4:09 And the guys were like, what’s this? A corporate greed. And they were like, let’s just give us our pizzas and stuff. But the guys were like, look, all those libraries that are shut down, they’re like, we paid for those over the last 10 years was all tax dollars. And now you’re saying it’s going away.

4:22 But it’s like all these things were paid by tax dollars that was generated. I mean, 20% of the income of the UK is from the London city, isn’t it? Tax records. It’s a library anyway though, right? I know what you mean.

4:32 I mean, just get yourself a laptop or a Kindle and you connect it to every piece Yeah, that’s true. And they were kind of complaining about a bunch of things and the guys were trying to make an argument. And that lasted for about 20 minutes and then the guys were like, okay, you guys are drunk and we’re going away. Who do you think would want if it had come to like a fight? Well, they had, they were like 100 deep in the building.

4:50 So they were swam them. They could have come out. But you bankers are dirty fighters, eh? These guys probably would have fought. Pint glass in the head, that kind of thing.

4:59 So James, I’m gonna ask you straight up because we’re from the same country. Are you, do you ever get homesick for South Africa, or? I do, I live South Africa, it’s a fantastic place, but I think I’ve become so European in the last 10 years, it’s been very difficult for me to ever move back. South Africa is a little bit like a mini US, it’s quite commercial and people there tend to be quite materialistic. You guys bought from Cape?

5:25 I know you’re from Java. I’m from right in the middle, I’m from a small town called Bethlehem, in the mountains. Is that as different as Kansas and New York City? It’s pretty much a little different. If I go back to South Africa now and have discussions with some of my friends from school over there, it’s kind of difficult to be on the same wavelength.

5:45 It’s kind of hard. And living in Europe has been a fantastic experience. It’s very, you know, what I call three-dimensional. You know, people are from all walks of life. People are, you know, into many different things. There’s always someone doing something extremely interesting. And the thing I love about London is you can meet someone extremely rich who drives around in a voxel corsa and he doesn’t really care about it. But in South Africa or the US, if someone’s got a little bit of money, it’s got to be the fleshiest, fleshiest car you’ve ever seen in your life, which is, which is dull. You make a good point there. That is premature in the state stuff. Maybe in New York or LA, you might see some guys, they would dress it down.

6:23 Do you, do you have similar, you’re from Cape, so that’s a bit different than say, what he’s from but I mean it’s completely like that analogy you said between Kansas and New York City that’s pretty close I mean I haven’t been to Bethlehem but I understand it’s a it’s a pretty small place right yes pretty small in the mountains gets cold minus 15 in the winter I once had a camping trip with my parents when I was young in the caravan we woke up in the middle of the night and the water in the kettle was frozen well inside the caravan not good you know what I find whenever I go home and I haven’t been home for a couple of years now but it’s great to arrive in Cape Town and see all my friends and family and then after a couple of weeks I’m just bored and I think it’s a symptom of having lived in London for so long because the level of stimulation that you’re exposed to in this city it’s very hard going to back to a place like South Africa to me it seems like I don’t say downgrade but it’s a it’s almost like a step back it is and it’s the level of conversation and what people are into and what they’re doing there and you know it’s there’s only so many times you could talk about the stuff you used to do at school where it’s like okay so what are we doing now what’s happening what’s happening in the world how’s the world changing what’s it gonna be like in ten years time how are we gonna shape it what are we doing to make it better and not just hey dude

7:43 Yeah that was really great when we were 18 and we all get smashed up and climbed a tree. I find that whenever you’re with someone and you start talking about memories from the past or you talked about remember the time we used to that the conversation just is going nowhere you know because if you’re with a good friend you’re talking about current stuff okay you might tell a story about something that happened but you know he’s kind of talking about something new that’s going on the present you let me I’m stumbling upon happiness when he speaks about how we our memories we pretty much change them to suit our our own ends I find that I’ll get you a copy of it but it’s a cool book James he just says something basically you can’t even trust your memories because your mind can’t keep a track of every minute in your life. So it has to summarize certain events and package them and then it repackages them. So you remember this great time it happened and at the time it wasn’t great or maybe you remember something that happened and your brain just kind of fits it in to its own place and package to tell a story.

8:37 Yeah. It’s crazy. Well, you have to. I mean, your brain is like a hard drive. You can only store so much information. So it’s actually brilliant that your mind selectively forgets stuff.

8:46 If you were to remember every hamburger you ever ate, and the flavors and the textures and the structures of it, your mind would be overloaded. So you have to cut that down to like three or four. Our minds are built to run on stuff that’s generalization and heuristic. So whenever you come into a brand new scenario, you immediately, like in a split second, immediately translate it into something that may or may not be correct, but you don’t have to overthink it and overcomplicate it.

9:12 You just immediately know what to do. Apparently, I’m not, I think we might have mentioned this on a previous show, but your senses are assailed with 4 billion bits of information per second, but you can only process 2000 bits per second. So think how much you’re filtering out, not even of the past, just of the present moment. So we’re all like, I mean, reality, reality is just electric impulses, as Morpheus says in The Matrix, he’s like, what is real? It’s just electrical impulses in your own brain.

9:40 It’s quite a realization that your reality is it’s just your brain telling you what’s going on That’s very true We’d look about that mind thing what was that Scorsese movie with DiCaprio where he’s on that island and he’s going he’s going crazy Shut around shut around in the end you find out that he’s constructed this whole Reality in himself to cover up this horrible event happened where he killed his kids or something and his and and you see that to an extreme in these hardcore patients where the brain protects itself. Man, what I spoke about last week in the show, I was on this magic mushroom trip last time I was in the state. Oh, you told me that.

10:18 And I remember we were sitting… That alone will show you that reality is just a chemical process in your brain. So true. All right. We were…

10:27 The sky was driving and me and my buddy were high off the magic mushrooms and the driver was sober. And we were driving through this highway in, well I think it was the Pacific Coast Highway, there were a bunch of trees, tall trees in the side, and I was like freaking out, you know, I was constructing all these like paranoid delusions in my mind, like oh I’ve taken too much mushrooms. Did you see any squirrels with little bass books? Yeah, a whole bunch.

10:53 And then I remember this thought that popped through was, Nick, it’s all in your head. And I realized, you know, that carried over. Even when I serve it up, I remember I started to understand how much, whether it’s like a relationship, like some anger you’re holding onto from a relationship or some memories of your childhood, your dad smacked you for doing something, whatever, you construct so much. That was quite a profound realization for me. Was it humbling?

11:20 Yeah, pretty much. I mean, yeah. Strong. Yeah, strong. You know what, if I can get to know that, what I do find humbling is, this one of my favorite authors, Neil Strauss, he was saying just how, he was talking about how fragile mental states actually are and he was saying, he was talking about this, when he was younger he knew about a major league baseball player who, he was in a bar and someone spiked his drink with acid and like the guy spent the rest of his life talking to telephone poles kind of.

11:58 Wow. And just think about that man. How fragile our grasp of reality actually is. It’s just all it takes is one little neurological misfire or rewiring and bro you can spend the rest of your life in an asylum. I think about that sometimes or if you have some crazy traumatic experience like a bunch of guys grabbing a piece of shit out of you or whatever and then that two minutes So your life could traumatize you for the rest of your life.

12:20 But the interesting thing about that is it doesn’t matter what happens to you in life. It’s always your choice how you react and behave and think about that specific event for the rest of your life. It’s you that makes what happens for the rest of your life happen. It’s not someone making that happen to you. If I walk up to you and punch you in that particular minute of your life, you have the choice to have a happy day for the rest of the day or to be all angry and fucked up about it and beat yourself up and ruin your own life.

12:46 The guy who bounced you, it’s your choice. Yeah, between a stimulus and he responds, the window is your power. And Victor Frankel, have you read any of his books? Yeah. I found that very interesting.

12:59 He was the guy who was in a concentration camp and he basically said, look, these people can do whatever they want to me, but they cannot gain control of my own mind. And while everyone was getting depressed and dying and whatever, he remained mentally strong throughout it. And I think it ties back into what you said. Are you are you talking about a specific experience? Sounds like you are. They call the reframe or something. No, not a reframe. You know, I’ve read a lot of books that you guys are speaking about, and I did a master’s degree in psychology. Oh, yeah. So it’s something that sticks with you for the rest of your life. And I often have conversations with people who are really mad and angry about stuff. You know, the boss said this, or my wife did that, or this guy almost hit me when I was driving my bicycle today, and they angry like five hours later and I’m like dude you’ve just wasted five hours of your life being angry and you could have chosen not to be and you could have had a fantastic day yeah it’s just you’re just ruining yourself yeah I when someone says that the phrase I got screwed on X I always just it’s just such a victim mentality I always just part of my mind says okay let’s move on to the next person because I just I don’t hate the victim mentality kills me maybe that’s part of this occupy thing where there’s a victim but you know no I can kind of see you’re coming from without I mean some people are victims you know like

14:19 Someone who’s abused as a kid or who knows you know like this but they have choose to be a victim don’t they I mean sooner or later it doesn’t matter what happens to your life sooner or later you have to make a choice if you have a terrible childhood and things are really awful sooner or later you’ve got to go okay now the power is in my hands and I can choose to make my life better or I can just lie there and be a victim for the rest of my life until the day you have to make a choice and that’s what’s you know that’s what’s part of being an adult and part of being a human being on the planet is like let’s make a choice let’s choose not to pollute the planet let’s choose not to victimize people let’s choose to do the right thing let’s choose not to let our past totally ruin our future let’s choose to do that and that’s how we should live our lives we if we don’t then we only have ourselves to blame coming coming off what you just said let’s choose not to let our past ruin our future David the Angelo says something along those lines, and he says, most people keep living out their past in their present and future over and over again, and I’ve seen it with myself, like patents, you make certain decisions based on previous experiences, whereas you should be responding to the present with the tabula rasa, so it’s interesting you said that.

15:32 Man, I want to ask you about your company, the Humble Grape, can you tell us a bit about that? So Humble Grape, I got a gentle obsession with wine about maybe 10-12 years ago and started getting into it. Was this when you lived in Paris? When I lived in Paris, yeah. Is that where you?

15:49 Yeah. A friend of mine’s father was one of these guys. He won an award called the Mire Urir de France, which basically means the best worker in France in a certain category. And you have them for butchers, bakers, all this kind of stuff. And this guy was a shocker to a fantastic chef, and he taught me kind of how to combine wine and food.

16:12 Back in, you know, back 10, 12 years ago, I was still drinking beer from a tin, didn’t really know much about wine. Just tell me a little bit what Paris was like, and did you learn to speak French there? Yeah. I mean, Paris is interesting. I was 24 years old.

16:25 I was sent out there on a second route by HSBC to set up their government bond business from the operations of the technical side. I had a flat in the middle of one of the most beautiful squares in Paris, my own flat and everything paid for and yeah I spent two years there. It must have been cool. It was fine. So I mean you’re a young guy out in a new city and I must say I love the contrast. The thing that really blew my mind is the complete contrast between London and Paris. The beauty of the city and the spaces and everything and I didn’t have this history with the French where I hated them or anything like the English do and I got really into the culture and I really enjoyed being there and I enjoyed the food and I enjoyed you know the wine and everything else and I really enjoyed living in Paris. I enjoyed living there. They enjoyed living right. I used to get up in the mornings and just walk for hours and hours and just such a beautiful city stunning and it’s just so amazing and I mean I went to the most amazing even like the nightclubs and stuff and I got into this underground culture where you know you You can go to these clubs and meet people from you know, all over all over France and they would meet me and they would go You can’t be from South Africa. You’re not black and I’m like, dude, you must you must have heard of apartheid

17:42 There’s white guys down there They didn’t know that they didn’t know that and it was like it was funny I and and you know, what is the thing? I had this there was a Puerto Rican guy who’s a good friend of my purse and He was unfortunate for two reasons. He was Puerto Rican and he was gay Okay, and Difficult is that a bad combo Because we’d be walking down the street on our way out somewhere to do something and he’d get picked up I mean the cops would pull up like much worse inside the cops would pull up Throw him in the back of the van come on in searching. I’m talking. This is like seven eight nine years ago Yeah, come on color We get to clubs. They wouldn’t let him in. I mean the guy had a hard time. Wow, it’s crazy and Racism is still widespread in them in France I mean coming from Africa and I mean we did some bad things you know back in the day and I’m proud to say that I’m not a part of it but I thought that Africa South Africa was bad but when I came to England and France I saw some some pretty pretty weird stuff.

18:45 Yeah you know when I was in Australia I spent six months in Australia and man incredible racism. really yeah really to what towards what the local chinese or just everyone towards anyone is not white okay you know um it’s a big problem over there but you know what um tell me if you agree with this james but you know there’s that stereotype that uh the french and in particular perisians are incredibly arrogant what i realized one of my best buddies is perisian i visit him a couple of times a year and he’s introduced me to his social circle and without question these are all very, very cool people. And it’s what I worked out is French people aren’t rude.

19:24 What happens is a lot of them don’t speak English and then they get these like American tourists or British tourists who try to speak to them in English and they become so anxious or nervous about being unable to communicate fluently that they just climb up or they appear a bit standoffish. Or they offended that you’re using a different language in their country. I’ve got a slightly different take on that. Hit me. when I lived there most of the French people I knew they did speak English really yeah they did but not great so whether they were nervous of speaking it or not but I would imagine that if you’re in a country that used to be like England you’d have the British Empire center of the universe like America thinks they are now and you’re in France they are it used to be the center of the universe it did right and you’ve got someone walking up to you going being a leader in some language you don’t understand. It’s like, dude, you’ve come to my country, you know, we’ve been here for thousands of years, you’ve come here, the least you could do, you know, the least you could do is learn how to say hello in French. Yeah, or excuse me, I don’t speak English in French. And then we can move on to the next level, but just wandering up to me and charting something in American. It’s not the way forward. Yeah, it can be some, some due to that. The thing about Parisians is they’re quite cultured they’re intelligent they have a

20:42 Different you know different lifestyles they’re not interested there’s not this bar culture where you know everything breaks down and we go out and have a few drinks and we get drunk and we start hanging each other and stuff like that is that a British thing you’re saying British thing you know I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it I’ve embraced it completely British have taken things drinking to the next level they perfected the French are a bit more culture that they’ll go out and I’ll have dinner they’ll have two drinks and it kind of spreads into the rest of their life as well. And it’ll take them a while to get to know you. They’re quite reserved, they’re quite cultured and sophisticated and interesting in terms of people. But once they get to know you, and you’re on the up and up, and you won’t get to know them by going out and getting hardly drunk with them, because it’s not, you know, traditionally what they do, it’ll be based on mutual respect and, you know, stuff that you share, like interesting conversation, you know, they’re into the arts and culture and wine and all that kind of stuff. And if you’ve got something interesting to say and they’ll get to know you better. Even if you’re just very open-minded and interesting, they’ll talk to you and get to know you better. But it won’t happen quickly. Whereas for me, the American culture is completely the opposite. You go over there and the first thing you see,

21:45 Everyone’s like, wow, so nice to meet you buddy, really great. But after a few months you realise he doesn’t really mean that. Two seconds after he said, nice to meet you, how’s your day going? He doesn’t really want you to respond, it’s going fantastic, how’s yours? He doesn’t want He just wants to say how’s your day going and then he wants to move on.

22:05 It’s a courtesy thing in the US, it’s just to have a nice day, how are you, that kind of thing. But it is, it’s, you’re right, it’s not per se genuine, it’s just a different culture I think. So a question for you guys, what did you do during the day? I have a day job so I’m just wondering what you get up to all day long. Well I’m writing writing works out, eats healthy food.

22:27 I do. I Vitamix. I train. I used to work in the city. Tell them about your skincare routine.

22:34 What I like to do is exfoliate, first thing. No, I’ve been, honestly, the last six or seven weeks, it’s been 24-7 of this wonderful podcast. And promoting it, getting guests, doing all the technical stuff, editing all that stuff. But before that, I was wandering the earth after I left the city in January. Fighting crime.

22:53 Yeah, fighting crime and fighting Nick once every couple of weeks. But yeah, that’s it. I’m London Real a hundred percent right now. And, uh, that’s all that’s cool. Yeah.

23:03 No plans to do anything else in the immediate future. So, uh, how about you? Hey man, we said that for the next show, right? But seriously, you were telling us an interesting, um, about humble grape and where it was going. So, um, humble grape is, uh, a wine business and it’s called humble great because I developed a passion for wine about ten years ago and I was telling you about my friend in Paris who taught me how to mix the wine and food thing and I came back to London and I was really into wine and I’d go into a wine shop and there was always someone massively snooty if I got something slightly wrong like I didn’t know that Chablis was Chardonnay or something like that they would just talk down to you and make you feel like really uncomfortable. You’re in a wine shop or a restaurant trying to water some wine and you just feel like a complete idiot so I thought okay and then I went on I went online I looked at all the websites and stuff and you’ve got like you know these big wine companies with Her Majesty’s Seal on and it’s got like thousands of years of tradition and there’s a guy in his smoking jacket selling you a case of wine for 50 grand and I’m like that’s not what it’s about is it it’s about why don’t we take this to a slightly different level why don’t we give people you know everyday people who are developing a passion for this let’s give them access to it. Let’s explain it to them on their terms and let them enjoy it. So the name came to

24:23 Me humble, humble grape, something relaxed and chilled. It’s not like the pompous grape. Come here and be humiliated. It’s more like, you know, it’s grape juice. People will stand on these grapes a while back. It’s grape juice. So let’s bring it down a level and let’s make it accessible and let’s so what we do is I’ve been around all over the world tasting wine at different vineyards in Australia, South Africa, all over France and I have a huge passion for French wines Italy, Spain you know I’m mostly old world but what we try and do is you know and over the last 10 years I’ve discovered a lot of what people call other benchmark wines so you’ll have a a white burgundy that’s, you know, 35, 40 pound a bottle, Pouligny Montrachet.

25:12 People love that, you know, and there’s many different ways of pronouncing it. So if you say Montrachet, then it’s a bit of an insult. If you should really say Montrachet. Thank you language. There’s a lot of stuff going on.

25:24 But anyway, so we’ll find a benchmark wine like that, and then we’ll look for wines all around the region, all close by, that are like half the price, and are just as good quality but don’t have the branding. Don’t have the branding, did you say? Don’t have the branding and they don’t have the big name and they don’t have these big suppliers and distributors and they don’t have the big marketing machine behind it. So you get it from the farmer for 10 quid and you sell it in under for 12.

25:50 Whereas the other model is you’ll buy it in, you know, you’ll buy it from the vineyard in France for like 15, 20 quid and then it’ll come over here and you add all the marketing and the branding and everything and all the distribution costs and all the guys are getting their palms greased all the way through. And when you look again, it’s like 60 quid a bottle. And then I put my 15 quid bottle next to that 60 quid bottle. The quality is the same. Sometimes mine is even better, but it doesn’t have the branding.

26:15 It doesn’t have the brand awareness and doesn’t have everything else behind it. But it’s extremely good quality for what it is. And to top that off, we select small vignettes like family-owned because you know that if there’s a man and his wife and some of the children and some of the people that have been working with them all their lives on two or three hectares of land with their vines, that’s what they live and breathe. They love that, they respect that, they can be so much better at doing that than any big brand that’s got 500 hectares and a bunch of people that they’re whipping around to do stuff and they’re trying to manufacture a wine almost. Whereas the wines that we do are more living, breathing, you know, they have personality. They’re not always the same. A lot of wine companies will try and create something that’s consistently the same, tastes the same over and over again to create a brand that the clients can be aware of, but most of the wines we sell and promote are different from year to year, vintage is a different, the years are different, things are always going to be slightly different, they can’t blend stuff in from all over the show to make them taste the same, it’s about…

27:19 Do you have to go to one of his tastings? I will, I really will. You know I’ve been to so many wine tastings in the past and I used to go to Notting hill and it had these wine tastings and you sit around and the guy talks about how there’s you know faint hints of leather and all this and he’s pronouncing mushrooms first floor and they spit it in a thing and there and it’s just I just always felt yeah like a like it was not the humble grape it was the river they were just it didn’t feel like inviting I went to James and James gets up there and and I’ll be like what’s a pool if you may or something he’d be like dude that’s just a different name for like I’m probably getting that’s wrong the seven-year bond grape or that’s the French way of saying the chardonnay great that’s all it is and I’m like oh I get it and he just breaks it down it’s like look if you like the wine or you don’t this is why we like it and then he serves really good treat though and cheeses and it’s just like I just feel like I can really relate when you were speaking about how you can pretty much get this as the same product on the shelf for a fraction of the cost 15 quid versus 60 quid the first thing I was reminded of is that psychological phenomenon of perceived value. Studies have shown like, yeah the people go into a wine store and they’ll see two very similar looking wines and they’ll probably choose the expensive one because they’ll think this costs more it

28:38 Has to be better and that’s kind of sad. I mean I hope you don’t lose customers because of that. How do you combat that? I mean there’s a lot of funny psychology. People don’t understand numbers and statistics very well so there’s perceived value as you said and the interesting thing about like restaurants for example, if a restaurant can buy a bottle of wine for 10 quid from a merchant or from wherever they get it from, they’ll sell it for somewhere between 50 and 70 in the restaurant. It’s quite a mark-up, huh? It’s a massive mark-up. So you know that restaurants are running primarily on the margins from from their alcohol business. I’ve heard about that. If you do yourself a favour, when you go into a restaurant, the next time you’re looking at the list, there’s a lot of psychology going on there. So the wine at the bottom of the list is your house wine then you’ve got one slightly above that well we’re not going to go into regions and stuff but imagine there’s five wines on a restaurant so the bottom one is your house wine then the next one up is the second one up from the house wine and you’ve got your middle and then say you’ve got your second from the top and your top mm-hmm the wine that 80% of the people will choose is the one second yeah they’ll go in there they’ll look no sorry second from the bottom on the bottom so we’ll go in there they’ll look at the wine list and I’ll go, I can’t choose the house one, that’s too cheap.

29:51 That’s not gonna work very well. I’m gonna up it a little bit and I’ll be safe. It’s a game theory. Everyone knows that. Everyone knows that, the restaurants know that.

29:58 So that’s where the wine with the biggest margin on. Second from the top. Interesting. The house wine, sorry, second from the bottom. The house wine is gonna be very decent and the restaurant’s reputation is at stake.

30:10 They’ve gotta have a decent house wine, usually. So that’s quite safe. So if you wanna choose wine and a restaurant, choose the one right at the bottom, or choose something in the middle, or if you’re really wild about the wine and you find it on there and it’s at the top, choose it. But the one second from the bottom is an absolute no-go. Interesting.

30:26 So, you know, James, I’ve got a question for you. I have a very unsophisticated palate. Wine is something I know nothing about. And for the first, up until I was about 30, I never really drank alcohol at all, but now I’m just starting to get into it. I really, red wine is pretty much the only alcohol that I treat myself to.

30:43 I really like the buzz I get off it. I would like just a couple of tips for the layman, like one thing that my landlord, we chat about it, he’s big into wine, he’s always saying to me how the cheap wine has a lot of preservatives in it and that causes hangovers and it’s obviously not good for you. So if I’m, let’s say I go into a bottle store and I want to buy a decent bottle of wine, not too expensive, how do I know that the grapes haven’t been treated or that there’s no preservatives, is there a way to know that? It’s really hard, I mean there’s this whole natural wine movement going on at the moment, which everyone’s all over and I’m not really convinced by the whole natural wine movement thing because they they are doing some good stuff but they’re trying to eradicate sulfides completely from wine and if you don’t have some sulfides in wine it doesn’t preserve well and it doesn’t travel well and it can go off pretty quickly.

31:36 Okay. So that’s kind of complicated. I think if you’re, you know, you’re You’re quite a fit guy, you work out quite a lot, you’re careful about what you put into your body and you’re looking for a wine that can complement that. I think what you need to do is you need to do some self experimentation and see what works on yourself. You know, I’ll just interrupt you there, the other day, this chick was over and she bought a bottle of wine and I had one glass and I got this chronic headache and I never get headaches.

32:04 Is it red? Red wine. And you know, I have a few glasses a month and I never get headaches and that really shocked me. got to be doing something to me. Yeah absolutely, so maybe it’s strong tandem, was it red? Yeah. Do you remember the grape? Okay so what we should do, for example if you came to me and said James I like red wine, I don’t drink a lot, I just want to experiment a little bit, I’d mix up six bottles of something for you, I’d stick to the lighter red grapes like Pinot Noir, Merlot.

32:36 I remember it was a lighter red. We’d throw a couple of those together for you like maybe two bottles of each cenotone and then you try those over a course of three or four weeks and then you come back to us with what you really like and then we can build something around that but there’s there’s a lot of kind of delicate sort of red grapes that have you know really lovely you know non-stressed kind of ways of making the wine they’re not heavily oaked and stuff like that we should get you to a tasting to man I’m gonna go but 6th of December, we’ve been invited, right? You should come, 6th of December.

33:10 There’s Humble Grapes doing a wine tasting for, it’s based around Christmas day. So on Christmas day, in the UK, traditionally it used to be all about fish and you’d have oysters and this is going way back. And then it was all about goose and then it was all about turkey because turkey was cheaper. But if you go way, way back, it’s all about fish. And now a traditional Christmas day will be some fish, maybe a goose or turkey or a roast lamb and then stuff after. So what we’re doing at our Christmas tasting is we’re teaching people how to pair food and wine together on a Christmas day. So that’s cool. When you arrive at your Christmas day feast you want a glass of champagne. Standard, right? Standard operating procedure, a glass of champagne or some nice sparkling wine. And then you’re going to have some fish. Two types of fish, know the very light kind of non kind of sourced fishes and then the more kind of sweeter like scallops kind of stuff that might have a little sauce or something.

34:12 A little oilier. Yeah exactly the oilier one. So the lighter fish you’re gonna put something like a gruner velve ligner from Austria or a sauvignon blanc and white wines and then the heavier ones you’re gonna you’re gonna mix in a chardonnay or something like that or maybe a chignon blanc from the law and then Then you start with the lighter meats, like turkey for example, Pinot Noir goes fantastically well with turkey. It’s classic. This reminds me of something, I had Thanksgiving feast at my house last year and I had about 12 people over and James did the wine, so he brought it all over and it was just nice because people drink wine, they don’t know much about it and he was just like okay here’s a sparkly wine and he said a few things about it, people were like oh that’s cool and then we had a Pinot Noir with the turkey, of course I had bought seven yablanc and James was just like.

34:58 Don’t do that! He’s like, I’ll sort you out. So he brought the pinot noir over, it was like a light red, and it was, it was really nice. Something I found quite interesting was, you know, we’ve got a lot of fight fans in the show, a lot of Jiu Jitsu guys, and George St. Pierre at GSP, he was telling me that he has a glass of wine every night after training. Really? Yeah. Because he says, yeah, that’s my reward.

35:26 You know, I trained really hard to put my body through a lot and you know You obviously know red wine’s got resveratrol and resveratrol has been found to be one of the best antioxidants available. It’s So there is an argument for surprise. Yeah, he’s the boy UFC Walter weight champion right now cage fighting But another good point that red one is good. Yeah I mean in in France because my brother lives in Geneva Which is very French part of Switzerland and it’s like I asked him he’s American But he lives there now and I said bro because he ordered the wine when I was once I said, bro Would you ever have food without wine and he looked at me like what do you grow?

36:01 Would you ever brush your teeth without toothpaste? I mean, it’s really that it’s like that in France, right? Yeah, it’s just part of the enjoyment right absolutely as you know, cuz we grew up in this country that alcohols to get pissed It’s become so much fun It’s like you’re having a dinner party But now you get you’re gonna have all these wines at the right places And then like on Christmas Day after the turkey with the Pinot Noir, if you’re not doing turkey you’ll be doing lamb. You need a red Bordeaux which is Cabernet based on the left bank or more Merlot based on the right. And then for dessert, you know, for cheeses for example you could have an Italian wine called Amaroni which is a bit more kind of, it’s a fuller and it’s made from dried grapes. Or you could have an aged vine, something maybe you know from from the 80s or the 90s and an older vintage and then for dessert a sweet wine he brought the sweet wine to my Thanksgiving that was like it was a gavut strum and a vandang stardiv which means a late harvest picked so what happens is the grapes dry up so completely that they almost shriveled and kind of like raisins almost yeah and they’re just full of concentrated grape juice and sugar and they make wine from that mark makes a sweet wine it’s unbelievable. James tell me what is like on your journey into the into wine what is can you tell us like some of the most interesting things you’ve learned or some

37:20 Some fallacies that that you were shown or miss that were busted anything like that? I think the most important thing is that you should never go somewhere and have someone tell you what you have to drink I think the most important thing all of us have to have to know everyone doesn’t matter how educated you are not about wine drink what you like okay and get involved and If you find something that you like, whether it’s a Merlot or a Spanish wine or a Greek wine, whatever it is, drink that wine and then start experimenting around the borders of that. Don’t let people tell you what to drink and don’t be too aggressive on the whole food and wine matching stuff.

37:53 If you find a wine that works well with the food for you, then do it. You can’t be too strict with that. So that’s one of them and there’s a fallacy that’s not true. You don’t have to spend a ton of money like 50 to 100 pounds on a bottle of wine to get something that’s absolutely excellent. You can get extremely good examples of wine anywhere between 10 and 15 pounds. Now if you start going below the six pound mark the problem you have there is for a six pound or a five pound bottle of wine you’ve got one pound eighty one of duty and then you’ve got the price of the cork, the price of the bottle, the transport, the storage, the label. When you look again in a five pound bottle of wine you’ve got about 30p of wine.

38:35 Actual wine juice. If you take that up to seven pounds, you’ll have two pounds thirty worth of wine juice. If you take it up to ten, then you’ve got some proper quality. Now what goes into making the wine and why is it so expensive is if you’ve got a piece of flat land on a plane, you can have machines running up and down and harvesting the vines. It’s much cheaper than having people doing it.

38:59 But the problem with that is you’ve got lots of water collecting there and the grapes are big and fat and they’re not concentrated so the juice isn’t interesting. As soon as you go into the slopes where there’s less less there’s more drainage and the vines have to struggle a little bit the the the grapes are actually smaller more collected more like tiny berries more concentrated but more difficult to access people have to go and handpick them and and that kind of thing it starts becoming more expensive okay and then what happens as well is if you’re really careful about how you’re making your wine you don’t just go pick a bunch and throw it throw it into the fermentation. You pick the ripe bunches, so you go through many different times through the vineyards. It’s very manually intensive. Go through the vineyard, pick all the ripe vineyards, all the ripe grapes, put them on a conveyor belt and then you have people hand picking the bad grapes out of those bunches. Okay. Hand picking thousands and thousands of those. Then it goes through and then you only have the best grapes going into your wine. And then if it’s a red wine and it’s going into oak, a barrel where you mature that wining could cost seven to eight hundred euros just for the barrel.

40:04 Just for the wood, huh? Just for the wood. Then it has to be in the wood for 18 months to two years, you know, all the cash flow implications of that. So that’s why, you know, some wines are very expensive because A, they’re extremely good quality wines because of the soil that they grown on and it’s just right for that particular grape and others are much cheaper so you know like in some of the new world places you’ve got these machines picking the grapes and they’ve got hector litres of stuff getting collected and all gets chucked into a tank and you’re basically making a big bunch of juice and you’re just blending it all together whereas the small vineyard guys like especially in the old world in France they’ve got these tiny vineyards maybe seven or eight hectares and these tiny vineyards are all split into many different regions and the guy knows that But from this little subplot, this is where my best stuff is coming.

40:54 And that’s where he’ll make his single vignette wine from the best stuff. But he can only make 2,000 or 3,000 bottles from there, you know? And it’s special. It’s not like he’s making 500 cases. And it takes these guys many, many years, I mean generations and generations of people to actually work a farm or a vignette to discover which grapes work best in what regions.

41:19 And then to understand how that all fits together, and sometimes they just have the grape on its own, or that juice, and sometimes they blend the pastels together depending on how the vintage was. So there’s a lot of work going into that, and that can make wine either very expensive or very cheap, depending on how much work you decide to put into it. Man, that was really illuminating. You know what I find interesting? Because again, alcohol has never been a big part of my life, but until now, I’ve got feeling he’s opened up Pandora’s box now and next time I’m not sure I’m going to be pissed.

41:51 I mean it’s an obsession, it builds over years and it’s like something that you’ll carry with you to the grave. It takes time, I mean you don’t really even start thinking about wine till your late 20s or late 30s and then it takes you years to figure out what you like and who appreciate the subtleties. One thing I never knew about alcohol was I always just used to think that beer, tequila, wine, whatever unit of alcohol all had pretty much the same effect like you’d start to get more drunk and then I’ve started to understand that like the buzz you get off a glass of wine is very different to the buzz you get off a beer. I had no idea that that was the case and you know a couple months back I was with a friend of mine we were at a pub somewhere in London and they ordered a bottle of wine and I was like no I don’t want to drink it you said just have one glass you know I had this one glass of wine and man it put me like remember that was the night I called you know I was like Brian I’m so happy we’re doing London Real and I was like who’s this crazy it gave me such a euphoric sensation you know and I’m maybe I mean how much of your love for wine comes from that and how much of it is about the taste actually that’s yeah that is that is quite interesting I don’t think I mean for me now it’s about everything that goes into it it’s like people you know you develop a true relationship with the brand or with something that you love and you know

43:17 The feeling of you know euphoria or a little bit of drunkenness that you get from alcohol for me that’s not what wine’s about for me it’s about you know imagine that you understood everything that you were putting into your mouth where it’s coming from what it’s gonna taste like how it should taste like before you actually put it into your mouth and then you can actually experience something on a mental level as well as a physical level when you actually put it in your mouth. So if you understand that piece of meat that you buy from the local butcher, where it comes from, the farm it gets grown on, how they rear the cars, what they get fed on, and you know the flavor because you’ve taught yourself to understand the flavor. You have an image in your mind before you even put that into your mouth of what it’s going to taste like and then your image and your reality actually coalesce together and it’s It’s like a connection, it’s like a lightbulb feeling that when I test the wine, like for example if I have a burgundy from a red burgundy from the north, if I can show my tongue or something like that and I’m expecting to get some mushrooms and forest floor and all this kind of stuff and I know that.

44:30 And you’ve been there as well. And I’ve been there and I put it in my mouth and I taste it, it’s almost like a connection with something. It’s a connection with the earth, a connection with… It’s difficult to explain but it just makes it… I really appreciate that. I want to make a quick analogy to that. The only thing I was thinking about when he was saying that is when I watch a proper title fight in the UFC, when I watched Nick Diaz vs. BJ Penn, and let me finish here, and you know the whole backstory about Nick Diaz, you know he has triathlons, you know that he hates the media, hates the press, and you’ve also trained Jiu-Jitsu, so you trained jutsu for six years, you’ve been on the mat, you know what it’s like, you know all the training that he’s done, you’ve trained boxing, you’ve gotten your head beaten on, you know how hard it is to take a punch and you know the backstories of both guys and then you get in there and you watch them fight for me and I’m like it just means so much more to me because I know the whole back story, I know what it’s like to sweat, I know how hard they train and I’m like wow this is a really big moment for me and when James is talking about that that’s the only analogy ahead. Yeah that’s cool, when he was talking about that to me what I was thinking about is I read a book called The Son of God, but S-U-N, like S-U-N.

45:42 This guy was explaining how in one of the chapters he was talking about food and he was saying how important it is to eat consciously, you know, because I know for me for a long time food was just this fuel, I would just think about the nutritional value, is this going to help me get towards my goals or not? The taste was secondary and I just shoveled it into it and that was the end of it. And this guy was explaining, he said, like, I think he used the tuna sandwich as an example and he was like, think about this little fish was swimming in the sea, you know, like, and some fishermen caught it in a net or, and the wheat that was used to make this bread was in a field and the sun was shining on it and some guy chopped it down and it was ground and when you, when you think about it that way, it’s, it’s similar to what you were talking about, you know, James.

46:26 And I think in every aspect of your life, you know, if you’re just more conscious about things, your enjoyment improves. And again, as with most things, it comes back to meditation. The more you meditate, the more of that mental window you have to experience things for what they are. Do you meditate, James? Not consciously.

46:45 I would like to, but I think when I do meditate, it’s at 3 or 4 am every morning when I wake up and can’t go back to sleep for a few hours, which is 90% of the time. Really? I’m sure I’m doing a lot of meditating there. By the way, I just want to get your website out there. Is it thehumblegrape.com?

47:04 It’s humblegrape.co.uk Okay, and I think you’re running a promotion for your next tasting, is that right? Yes, for the London Real fans. For London Real fans, we’ve got two free tickets for the first two guys who apply. Okay, we’ll have to come up with a question for that. On the 6th of December, and then 25% off for everyone who books from then on, and all they have to do is go to humblegrape.co.uk, Click on the events tab, monthly events.

47:32 The next one is 6th of December. Book that and type London Real in the coupon code and you get 25% off. 25, that’s awesome. Is that for just this next tasting or is this for another one after that? No, just for this next tasting, but if it proves successful and…

47:45 You can do more, because that one’s coming up very quickly on Tuesday. No, you’ll get to meet Brian and I, because we’ll be there, right? Yeah, we’re gonna go on Tuesday. You’re gonna be able to make it? Yeah, I’ll come.

47:54 What time is it? 6.30 and then we’ll finish at 8.30. Let’s do this. Yeah, that’d be great. So you can meet us.

47:59 That’ll be fun. I’d really like just to feed experience because it’s just fun and she’s like okay This is what it’s all about like you said it and it’s it’s such a user-friendly experience It’s right on the Thames to this beautiful, this is what London Real is all about We’ll teach you a little bit about the wines and you’ll have a fun time and we’ll mix it up with nice chorizo and cheeses We’re not going to preach to you, we’re just going to show you something interesting and help you and guide you into discovering stuff that you really like. Exciting.

48:37 Nice. Yeah, I’m really looking forward to that, you know? James, when you were coming over here, I was just thinking about how I know you. And I was just thinking about, I was just thinking about male relationships and how strange they are. And I just wanted to get your guys calling them because, you know, Nick and I have one, you and I have one.

48:53 I think I find that some of my best friends are I didn’t I didn’t even like them for a long time and it’s just men are like dogs they circle each other for a few years and he’s not that dangerous actually you know I could work with them and then they get closer the next of each other’s bottoms and then the next thing you know they’re good friends it’s true I mean James I think you know James and I knew each other at work for a long time then finally he’s like hey dude let’s go out for dinner and I was like what he’s like let’s go out for dinner and I was like yeah why not and it it took a while and you know you’re I’m quite a private cat. I am. I might seem like the most social guy on the podcast, but I’m pretty private, and I’m not the most extroverted guy in the first place, but it’s like if you put the time in or if guys like James or you put the time in to get me out of my shell, there’s something there that’s like a synergy or something that’s created.

49:43 Like attracts like, and sitting on the train over here, it was a question I was going throw out but then I change my mind I thought maybe I don’t know James well enough I was gonna say what are the issues in your life and for me like coming back to what you said like male relationships you know I’ve realized like two of my very close friends we just we had me and them or just drifting apart and I’ve realized it comes back to that thing we speak about about growth you know like how people get uncomfortable when you grow you know because they have to reflect on themselves and you need to build a future together too yeah and I always say to my friends you know like I’m like man I’m on this trip I want to experience life I want to squeeze the juice out of it you know I want to I want to grow I want to be the best person I can be and I I want my friends to come with me I don’t want to do this on my own you know and that’s what with us I notice we’re kind of on a similar path and some of friends I can see they’re they don’t want to come on this path with me and it’s it’s difficult and it makes them uncomfortable to watch you do that sometimes do you find that the other thing I’ve said about it before with episodes is it I hate to say it but every relationship has a beginning a middle and an end and I think some people you talk about in life that are having problems as they’re hung up on these old relationships that have changed and

51:06 They’ve not they’ve not learned to move on and I have two very good friends in New York City and Dev and Dan and I at one point consider them my best friends but you know we don’t see each other anymore and I don’t think you can maintain a friendship on the phone for years. I think you need to be with each other and have experiences and I need to kind of let that go and be like okay let’s form new relationships with people around you. Do you have that experience? Yeah I mean my experience of that is my two best guy for himself back in South Africa and you know I was best friend at Frank’s wedding recently and I love him to bits and he’s such a fantastic guy and I’m really pleased for him and it’s it’s difficult being away from him and you know I know that if we if we meet up again and we together it’s like nothing happened but we’re missing out on sharing experiences together and building a future together so I’m kind of hoping that at least once a year we can try and do a holiday or something but it’s hard with the company and it’s hard with the Yeah, now you have kids and I had a one of my buddies dev came into London a few months ago And we sat down at the bar in Browns and five minutes later We were transported back ten years from where we were it’s like Almost it was like hot tub time machine. We were like right back He calibrated and then he was gone and it’s just like I it’s a shame too because I missed

52:22 You know doing that once a year is fun, but I wish he was here, you know, but you know Brian it’s opportunity cost because You could go for you as well James. You could be at home with Frank But then you’ve I’m sure you’ve got buddies that you’ve friends that you made over here experience and that’s that’s life, bro We can’t you can’t have it all. That’s true. I know my parents I haven’t seen my mom and dad for two years, bro, you know, and I’m starting to forget my parents So it’s it’s it’s crazy. And like you said, you can’t keep a relationship going over

52:54 But think how much you know, I really do believe we all have one thing in common here and that is we’ve gone and started a life for ourselves in a different country and that is man what an experience think how different we all are from doing that you know you grow up really quickly when you realize that the chips are down and if I don’t earn money I’m on the street yeah very soon and mom and dad on here to look after I can’t go back to my little bedroom with my little posters on the hall yeah is that you can’t go back cuz you don’t want to you don’t want to admit defeat is that it exactly yeah and there’s and there’s no to hug you when things are tough and you just got to make it right and then you had kids recently James what the hell is that like as I knew him as a swinging single and you know James that you know James can whoop it up like the best of Probably still Ken, yeah, James can take care of the business in the night light.

53:54 So, my wife is legendary. I’ve got tons of respect for her. She’s very cool, mate. She’s the most wonderful woman I’ve ever met and she’s really interesting, actually. I really have a lot of respect for her.

54:05 Does she have it on your sister? No, unfortunately not. For you. Come on, boys. If you hadn’t said that, I knew something was wrong.

54:14 The cool thing about Hayley is that she somehow knows what’s best for me. I would have been quite happy to wait another three or four years before we had kids. As soon as we got married, Hayley said to me, when we get back, I’m getting a puppy. The day we were back, I was at work and she called me at 11.30 that morning. I just thought of puppy. I got home that night there was a puppy at the house. Rufus, the dog. Anyway, so then like we’ve always discussed the kid thing and then basically we ended up having children and trying to have children and having children. And then I was comfortable. I was comfortable spending another two or three years, you know, doing the same thing, traveling all over Europe, all over the world, having fun, going to restaurants, hanging out, having parties on the weekend, whatever. And that part of your life is gone. And Hailey was like, no, that’s over now. And she actually what was best for you. She didn’t know what was best for me. And then we had the kids and I must say like, it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever experienced. I think if you don’t have children in your life, then you’ve only lived half a life. That’s interesting.

55:21 And I was really quite thinking that, you know, it would be okay if I didn’t have kids. I could live the rest of my life not having them. And I must say that my best, the best part of my day is early in the morning, I get up at six o’clock in the morning, I quickly run downstairs, make their milk, get all this stuff ready, make sure they’re changing match and stuff is out, and then I go upstairs and I fetch the twins. I can’t carry them both down anymore at the same time because they’re getting quite big now. They’re almost a year. But I fetch them down one at a time and seeing their little faces first thing in the morning and how they cling to me like two little chimpanzees when I’m taking them down. And they don’t really talk but they make these little googling sounds and then I’ll change a little nappy and I put them down and then I’ll go fetch the other one and I get them down in little chairs and I feed them their little milk bottles and they’re just such wonderful little human beings and you know the one looks just like me and the one looks just like Hailey and they’ve got completely different personalities even though they’re identical twins and you know I actually cried on my motorcycle about two weeks ago when I was leaving for work. I’ve got this big VFR 800 Honda at this 300 kilometers now I’m caught hot and I’m on my bike and I’m about to leave and I’ve got the drive door coming down and little Chloe is at the back window and she’s doing

56:39 This oh my god for the first time is my little daughter she’s not even a year old and I’m like that’s just unbelievable and your heart goes right up into your throat and it’s it’s it’s been an incredible experience it’s it’s it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life and I’ve done some pretty tough stuff but it’s also the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. What do you think about that? You’ve got some thinking to do, you’ve voiced me. Terrible, bro.

57:05 You do, I’m curious what this guy thinks. I called my buddy, the Parisian guy, Anthony, the other day and he’s my age, we started doing jiu-jitsu together. We like, when I met him, he just had a girlfriend and you know, he wasn’t married or anything and then bam, bam, bam, he got married and now he’s at his third kid and I called him the other day, I’d just woken up. It was like Saturday morning, I was still lying in bed at 10.30 and he was like, you know, he was trying to put the shoes on his one kid and the other kid was throwing something and the little baby was crying.

57:35 Man, I was on the phone and I was like, thank you, Jesus, I’m so, so glad I’m not in that situation right now. But I know, like, maybe, man, I’m 32, maybe, how old were you when you had your kids? So, I was 38. Yeah, man, I’m thinking 38, 40, maybe it’ll be time to do that, but now- Don’t wait too long, dude, the stuff might not be working anymore. Cut me real deep, bro.

57:59 We’ll see, we’ll see. So you consider it. Man, not now. Okay. Man, that is the worst thing that could happen to me right now.

58:06 I’d probably agree. That’s what you think, but when it happens, it’s completely different. That’s another good point. You always imagine something’s going to be how it is. I don’t think, as a single bloke, I don’t think you can possibly imagine what it’s like having kids until it’s actually there on your doorstep and you’re handling it.

58:19 It terrifies me. There’s no other way. It terrifies me. I believe you. My buddy in New York just had his first kid, and we were talking a couple years ago, and he’s like, you know what, I’m here for the human experience.

58:30 And he said, I’ve done everything else, and believe me, he has, or we have. And he’s like, this is the one big chunk of the human experience. I was like, what’s the point in living and not at least exploring it? And I was like, and we were both sworn, never going to have kids kind of guys, and he has a point. But the problem is that’s, well, not the problem, but the thing about that is, it’s It’s an experience that’s not like doing a bungee jump or taking a trip to France.

58:54 This experience… It’s like doing a bungee jump and you can never untie the string from your ankle for the rest of your life. But you’re still here hanging upside down. This is like a minimum 18 to 21 year commitment experience. Man, I’m just too selfish right now.

59:10 That might change but… I agree, you are. I can vouch for that. I can take sort of no one, right? Ooh.

59:17 So maybe in a few years. No, I mean, the wrong time. I mean, I think what James says is right. I mean, when it happens, it is the right time, but I mean, I know what you mean right now. I would feel like he would just be holding you down, right?

59:29 But then I see, like, I see a buddy of mine with his little kid and he’s on the jujitsu mat and showing him something little kids learned to do and I’m like, God damn, that would just be so cool. I was training with you one time. There was a guy there with his daughter. She must’ve been five or six and he was training jujitsu with her and he’s like, he told, he’s grabbed the guy and he’s like, dude, that’s really cool. You know?

59:48 And then she comes home with some like biker at 16 and it’s like, that’s a problem, that’s a big problem. It’s a massive problem for me, I already have images of shotguns and baseball bats through all across the house and the first thing, the first guy that comes to our house is like… And pulls some attitude. Where are you from? You’re going to get into space.

1:00:11 Did you know that I was in the Special Forces? You did know that you’ll be back by 10, weren’t you? Excellent. I’ve already planned this talks in my head John Candy film called Uncle Buck Yeah, I know that and he’s like he’s looking after his his niece who’s like 16 and there was this like Super emo cool dude, and he was like I have an axe in my car. That’s so sharp. I could circumcise a gnat

1:00:40 So you already rehearsed the talk so he has obviously someone coming to visit his daughter for the first time so the guy comes along and he says welcome son come inside have a chat that pulls him a nice big fat whiskey they’re having a chat and then he says ah you’ve had a drink sorry you can’t drive my my daughter out to the movies you’re gonna have to uh you’re gonna have to get yourself a cab and go home and maybe you guys can go out some other time and man if you’re using trapment bro that’s Guys, I hate to put a wet towel on things, but that’s our hour. That was fun. It was fun.

1:01:25 Cool dude James. Thanks guys. Thanks for coming. Great stuff. Really informative on the wine.

1:01:30 Yeah. Really good stuff. So that’s humbledgrape.co.uk. And if you type in London Real, you get 25% off and come on the 6th of December. I’ll be there.

1:01:38 Yeah. We’ll be going for the tasting. So fantastic. I hope we see some fans out there. Okay.

1:01:43 Yeah. It’s about the journey. Damn right it is. See you guys later. Alright, thanks guys.

1:01:48 Cheers guys.