Pure Craziness With The Producers Of Bottle Shock...and Now The Game.

0:01 Time for Wine Talks with Paul K. Fascinating story. This is Robert Mondavi from the Michael Mondavi Winery. I taste a lot of wine having a conversation with Shark Tank, Kevin O', Leary, Michael Silachi, Opus One Winery. Incredible conversation with Dr. Mia Ruth. No matter what, you're definitely gonna feel better. Sit back and grab a glass. It's Wine talks with Paul. Hey, welcome to Wine Talks with Paul Kay. And we are in studio today about to have an amazing conversation with the authors of the game Bottle Shock Introductions in just a moment. Hey, have a listen to Charles Smith, the famed Charles Smith. This is one intelligent, bright, risk taking winemaker in the state of Washington. Now the preeminent maker of wine in Washington just released Incredible story. But since we're talking about Bottle Shock today, have a listen to Bo Barrett, the current president of Chateau Montalanta was working in the cellar when Mike Girgich made the famed wine that won the judgment of Paris in 1976. And as well the famed architect of such tasting, said tasting. Steve Spurrier was on the show many years ago just before he passed. An amazing conversation about the history and the sort of the culture of wine, the lifestyle of wine. And don't let that outshadow the conversation I had with George Tabor who was the only journalist to show up and he'll tell you on the podcast, I just might have gone down the Champs Elysees and just took a detour into a brasserie and never made it to the

1:33 show. And I'm glad I did and made his career. But welcome to the show. This is Flint Dilley, Randall Miller and Jody Savin, authors of the game Bottle Shark. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having us here. I mean, it's already been a spirited conversation about what's going on. Yeah, I think we said all the good stuff in the green. Yeah, well, that's what I try to avo void. Right. Making sure. And you can see there's a book right here, the Judgment of Parish. Yeah, that's really cool. That's George Tabor's book right there. Yeah, it's a. Yeah, it's. We have a lot of history with that and it's not about me today, it's about you. So we're going to talk about the game. Let's just start with this. I am beginning deluged with ads. Okay. And I, I didn't turn them off though. So it was good, right? Good, good. Thank you.

2:14 I like that on this show movie Bottle Shock. And I have a lot of history with the family. With the Barrett family. In fact, Beau would tell you that they celebrated this one when Jim got home with a bottle of Merceau, which is odd because it's French Chardonnay, which he believes was purchased at my dad's shop at the time that they did. Wow. Wow. So there was a lot of history there. So tell me, are you guys wine people by. By sort of your enthusiasm or your inspiration for the thing, or you just thought an idea for a show? What. What prompted this idea to make a game? Well, first of all, we. Jody and I made the movie Bottle Shock, and we like wine. We're not like. We didn't say we're like the biggest wine drinkers, but we love great stories more than anything. And the story of the Judgment of Paris is a pretty phenomenal story. So that was sort of the origin for us for how we got involved. Right? Yeah. I mean, because movies are about characters, and the minute we met Beau and Jim, we thought, there's a movie here. There's a father son story. There's.

3:19 You know, wine is an art form, and these guys were scrappy artists who turned. How did you stumble across the idea that this existed, that the story. Did you read the book? No. First thing was we had a movie prior to doing Bottle Shop, we had a movie called Marilyn Hotchkiss, which had. Was Merce Tomei, Robert Carlisle, a bunch of great actors, John Goodman, and it played at the Sonoma Film Festival and at Sonoma Film Festival. It's. A lot of people are into wine, obviously. We met the people who ran the festival, Brenda Lormer and Mark Lorimer at the time, and they had this. They had this story, this script that they. That they said, hey, will you guys look at this? And it was about.

4:02 It was a rough draft of sort of the tale of what Bottle Shock would eventually become. And so then what happened was, is that we said, okay, well, this is kind of an interesting story. Let us look into it more in detail to see, you know, the authenticity of it and try and figure out, is there a real movie to be made here? Right. And that's when we went to. To meet Beau and Jim up in Calistoga. And the thing that struck me, I don't know about you, but, was that they were. And on the one hand, they loved each other, but they bickered all the time. They were like, you know, no, it didn't happen this way. No, it happened this way. And it wasn't like that. And it wasn't like this. No, the wine Was good. No, the wine wasn't any good. It turned brown. It didn't turn brown. It was all this stuff, you know, and we thought, you know, there's a real story here with these two guys, if we can really capture that. And that sort of was the origin. Right. Yeah.

4:55 And also where. I mean, we make a lot of movies about inadvertent artists, like people who have a dream, and then what the dream actually becomes was not necessarily the seed that they thought they were planting. Right. And this was definitely true. You know, in Chateau Montelena, they had a dream of making fine wine in Napa. And that seemed like such an outrageous. And Jim wanted to make. Wanted to make Cab. He didn't really want to make chardonnay. Well, they've always been a red house in general. That's what they're supposed to be, but. Right. And it was this white wine. He really didn't want to be in the great business. Sorry to interrupt you. He. They. They bought Montelani because it was a tax deal. They were looking at. They were looking at cotton and fruit and all kinds of stuff. And. Oh, yeah, this. This winery up there called Chateau Montalane, it was. Had been shuttered for years.

5:46 He was an attorney. That was, as you know, that was very. I don't think he left the practice for like, 12 years after that one. Yeah, well, we kind of took a little license with that. Supported him. Yeah, yeah. Right. Well, yeah. Look, everybody knows in this business, you know, that's the old adage. If you want to make a million dollars, you know, in the wine business, start with 2 million. It's just. Yeah. Exactly. Possible to do, except when that happens. But. So. But you were intrigued by the story by meeting these guys. But were you looking for stories at that time? Were you looking for something to do? Have you thought about the wine industry? We're already always looking for stories. Like, we're like. We're always like, you know, people will tell us something, and we'll think, God, is there a movie there? Can we tell that story? What is that story? Is it an interesting world to be involved in? And when you look into what happened with the Judgment of Paris, it really was like, it created a sea change in the whole, you know, business in a way. And. And so that made it really great. It was an underdog story about these California guys who, up till then, a lot of people would just think, you know, box wine came from California and, you know, good wine came from France. That was basically what most people thought. My parents thought. And, you Think, you know, it's interesting because wine. If you. If you ask a hundred thousand people in America, do you drink wine, it would. It's rumored by the Institute, the wine Institute, that 25,000 would raise their hand. But that includes, you know, somebody that goes to the Olive Garden and gets the house Chianti. You know, they drink wine, but they're not gonna watch a movie or listen to a

7:18 podcast on that. So the funny thing about Bottle Shock was we. When we made the movie, okay, when we were talking to people about making the movie, all the vintners and people in California would say to us, there was. There was two major things that really changed the business of wine for them. One was this thing about this plight of the. Of the vines. And the second thing was sideways. Sideways. Sideways had a gigantic, you know, impact on the business. Like, nobody could do Merlot anymore. Everybody could do p. Not. That was basically what happened was sideways. I mean, vineyards were ripping out there. Merlot based on Sundays. Don't I know it. Because I was trying to sell that stuff. In fact, I would have. I would. I would adjust that list of three things. Phylloxer, of course, very important. In fact, in France, we were in Bordeaux just last week. One of the gentlemen said, yes, we have American rootstock here. Because, you know, it went back and forth.

8:14 He goes, that was the end of fine wine when we took back American rootstock. It was your rootstock in the first place. Yeah, yeah. What are you talking about? But actually, sideways, the judgment of Paris. I'm sorry. Yes. Judgment, Paris. And Morley Safer's 199060 Minutes, when the Mediterranean lifestyle suggested you should drink red wine at night. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And my wine sales changed from red to white almost immediately. Really? Yeah, yeah. Well, people. People were like, well, yeah, we want to be involved in a movie because Sideways was so impactful for them. Right. But please tell me you're not doing, like, against Prino or something. Yeah. Like you're now going to shift our business again for. Yeah, yeah. And that just goes to show you how. How much impact movies and culture have on people's attitudes. And we'll talk about the game now, as well as probably a game about the subject. I mean, Merlot, I can tell you, because I bought and sold a ton of wine.

9:13 Pinot Noir is hard to find immediately after that. If you found it, it wasn't any good at the prices that you were used to paying. And Merlot was. You could buy it for nothing. I mean, literally, for. I would say it took 12 to 15 years to recover. Right. Wow. When you consider Chateau Petrus, probably the most expensive wine out of the bottle is 100 Merlot, generally Chateau Cheval Blanc, Chateau Angel d'. All. Merlot, Right. There's nothing wrong with merlot, everybody. Yeah, it's okay. It's just a couple of scenes in. In sideways that just did it in. It's just one 30 second scene, right. He spits it all out or something, I can't remember. No, he's in the. He's in the parking lot and he goes, I'm not drinking Merlot. No fucking Merlot.

9:54 And the guy goes, okay, okay. And then we made the Chardonnay movie. Yeah, Then you make a Chardonnay movie, which is kind of interesting. And. And it did. It did really do a lot. The shark, you know, so it's funny about a movie. Like it's a wine movie, right? But it was. It's been seen millions and millions and millions of times by people who aren't even into wine. Yeah, that's true. You know, it was huge on the airlines. Like, they had whole, like, wine tasting things on airlines, which was like. And ships at sea. What did you see when you were doing this about the lifestyle of wine? Here you saw the two, the brother, I mean, the son and the father bickering a little bit and, you know, it kind of seems a little counterculture. But what did you find culturally with the wine business that you thought was different than what you expected when you started talking to them? Well, these people. The people are farmers first and foremost, the ones who are actually making the wine. So they really care about the dirt, the terroir. And Jody can say it better than me because he's.

10:50 But it was like they really cared about the essence of what goes into the. What you do with your hands to make wine. That's what I thought was really interesting because you don't really think about that when you go to an expensive wine shop in New York or someplace. You don't think of where it actually came from. And it came from these people who really care about the details. So that seems really interesting to me, you know, and then. And then it's. It's. It's really. It's an art. It's like you taste a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and you vary it a little bit more and. And it suddenly becomes something great, that there's something really interesting about that. And it's hard to harness all the elements because nature's involved. So it's an Art form, that there's a lot of variables involved.

11:34 So you're a farmer, you're a chemist, and in the end, you're making something that speaks to people as a form of art. It's pretty interesting when you think about it. And they all come in a similar bottle, so the differences are really what's inside. It's not this other thing that is the undefinable part of wine. Because bourbon, you don't do that with bourbon. You don't do it with beer. The math. Did I say something? The brewmaster's job is to make it taste like it did last year. And it's the distillery master's job to make sure Jack Danis tastes the same every time. And here, wine is not supposed to be that, unless you buy something off the supermarket shelf, is supposed to represent a different time and place. Maybe that's what connects to the human soul. I don't know. Can't be defined really. But it's an interesting part of wine. Yeah. So culturally, when you go into a place like. Like most wine people I speak with, particularly all farmers, they're like, God, how do we sell this stuff? You know, like, that's a whole different job. Right. And I don't really want to be part of that. I just want to make it and express myself best I can as an artist. And now I gotta go sell it. Yeah. Well, that's one thing that Beau said to us, you know, a number of times when we've talked about. He'll say, it's really not that expensive to make a bottle of wine. It's really hard to sell a bottle of wine.

12:59 Yeah. So you stumbled across that part of the industry, studying film. Yeah. And people really, you know, appreciate the fact that, you know, what a movie can do. You know, like, after the movie, when it was successful, there were tour buses that were, like, following the route of where we made our movie. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? You know the Bottle Shock Tour, there was a boxing ring that we did one scene. It was. We built it. We built it on the Kundi estate. Right. Yeah. Anyway, so. But people would have weddings at the boxing ring or try to find the boxing ring to have their, you know, corporate event or whatever it was. That's an interesting cultural part of. Of this. Not only wine, but we went. We were in Paris recently, and I tracked down the scenes from Midnight in Paris, sat in the steps, went to the hotel, you know, kicked that off, you know, went to Rodin and, you know, it's kind of interesting that you had that impact when you make a movie like that. Well, people have a fond memory of it, and they. In there and they imagine what it would be like to be there, and then they go there and then they. They see the place. Sometimes it's bigger or smaller than they imagine or. Or it doesn't look the same way because we filmed it at exactly perfect time. You know, do you think people, when they play this game. And we're going to talk about the game now, that. That. That's part of the connection is maybe going back to the day that this thing happened or end up at the winery, because it's about Chateau Montalain. What's the anticipation of the fallout? That's. That's the idea. That's what. That's what we've been talking about. And that's what, you know,

14:30 Flint is so good at, is creating sort of the. The notion of you're in this place and shock the game. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's. It's really funny how it came to be. And I mean, with me, I. I am not a wine expert by any means. I have friends who are, and they have a habit of inviting me. A friend of mine, Doug Lagerstrom, you know, has invited my wife and I to, you know, tastings and blendings, and, you know, we make our own friend blend and. And all that, but, I mean, I have zero expertise. Okay. And. But he did tell anybody that. Oh, except for we went to it. Yeah. Well, that changes. That's the problem is when you start actually designing a game, you have to try to figure out how it works, at least mechanically. And then you start knowing, and sometimes maybe more than you want to know. But this all started out when Doug had purchased, at some charity auction, a sommelier to come over and present wines to us. And, well, you know, I'd done that before. You know, I'd been through three or four of the. Okay, now take a look at the legs, the color and the clarity. Okay. To the nose.

15:39 You know. You know, going through the routine. And this was just a particular. Maybe I was in a bad mood, or maybe it was a really tedious afternoon, but I'm thinking, I want to do this. I can do this. I can be the sommelier. And then it occurred to me, everybody wants to, because, I mean, what's a game? A game is something where you get to be something you aren't really. I'm not really a world conqueror, but when I play Risk, I can be a world conqueror. I'm not a detective you play Clue. You can be a detective. I'm not a slumlord, but I can play Monopoly, you know. You know. You know, and. And do it. And so it's like everybody wants to play Somalier. And. And so I was trying to figure out, well, all how or. Or be the person doing it. And then there's the question lurking. I think, in a lot of ways, it's sort of the question of this era of human history. But you can apply it to wine, too. And that is what's real and what's not. I mean, you listen to the poetic, philosophical, and almost theological soliloquies in Bottle Shock or Virginia Madsen and Sideways and. Or any of the Grapes of God or Blood of God or whatever that thing were. Yeah, yeah, the people are talking about wine like, you know. You know, it's poet stuff, and it always has been poet stuff. Okay, but it's wine. I mean, basically, you know, it's a neurotoxin with different flavors in it, but nevertheless, wow, you really just broke it down as root level, didn't. Yeah,

17:12 but that's okay. That's. That's what you have to do because. And so I was approaching it, you know, and, like, you smell. And people. Yeah, I'm smelling burnt rubber and, you know, and blueberry and, you know, a bit of tobacco. And, you know, I'm like, you know, not smelling any of that, you know, I'm smelling. Smells like wine to me. Okay. You know, and so I was thinking how much this is real, you know, because when you work in, you know, I've done games that are virtual reality and alternate reality and augmented reality, but you get to this. You get to a real reality question, okay, how much of this is stuff people are imagining? How much of it's really there? And I started out fairly cynical, and then the more you do it, the more I realize, no, you know, there's something there, and you definitely can tell what's good and what's not. You know what I mean? And what you like and what you don't like and how much of it's just what's marketed to me. But I think people really learn. I mean, a lot of people really learn by doing.

18:09 Okay. And so this is. In this game, you get, you know, bottles, and you put them inside a bag so you hide the identity of the bottles. And there are a lot of variants on how you can. How you can play it, whether the. The people of the sommeliers know what they're pitching, what they don't. But, yeah, Everybody will host a tasting and they'll give their review of it and they'll position it and all that. And. And they're encouraged to do all the above. They can have romantic, philosophical statements about it. They can act like they're a marketing person. I would drink this on the beach on a windy day and in, you know, Gibraltar, you know, watching the ships go by, you know. You know. Or no, I'm in a dark French bar. Real Jim Morrison was just here, like, right before he died. His last point. You know, whatever, you know, however you want to view it, because you actually can taste things. And the best advice somebody gave me is you sip the wine and you ask yourself what the first image that comes to your head is.

19:08 And that's been very successful for me in identifying what the wine is. Now, is that real or is that my imagination? Obviously it's my imagination. I want to stop with it for a second. That's really interesting stuff, because when people ask me to help them wine, and there's no right answers for one, right. And two, it's your point of view. All the years of history you've had with food, whatever you've done, whatever. Like, I sat in a brasserie in Paris not too long ago, and they brought me a quiche and I freaked out. I went back like 50 years because it was the smell my mom's quiche made. Wow. And I hadn't smelled it for 50 years, you know, so this so memorable. A smell and taste is so memorable. Right. But you said something really interesting I thought was really fun because everybody's intimidated by this. And I think the wine industry self propagates the intimidation by doing this, swirling around and showing it. I don't smell that. And then you're like, oh, I must be an idiot because I don't smell that. Right. When there's no right or wrong answer. And I always tell people, whatever you say, say it with confidence. Right. This smells like, you know, Lucky Charms. That sounds official.

20:17 That is our game. Yeah. Okay. To try and make it work for any level of. Of connoisseur. Like, if you're just beginning, it works for that. If you want to do a more advanced version, we have that version too. So it's like. And if you're a total bullshitter, you might win the game. You might win the game on that, or you might get lucky and just simply have the best bottle. And so it's not. Yeah, you might. You might, you know, because you might like to make any game that anybody can play. You have to be luck to it. Yeah. That's why. Well, you know, cards. This is so. This is really fun. I'm dying to do this because the regular traditional home tasting, you do the brown baggie, the score sheets. I used to give these things away. Boxes of. Actually, it's a short story. A guy called me because I have 5,000 home wine kits for people to play and not play, but do a home wine tasting. I got the bags, the pencils, the score sheets. I can't sell them to save my life. Nobody really wanted them, and so I got them for free and I gave them away. People thought it was the world's fair because I give them this stupid kit. But they never use it either because it's too much intimidation in it. And. And there's too much like, I'm wrong about this. But if you're playing a game. Yeah.

21:21 Where everybody knows it's a game and you can take any direction you want, it's giving a whole new avenue to the idea of tasting one. Because that's the whole thing. Because there's stakes when there's a game. You have winners and losers, but you. And. But it forces you to pay attention to stuff. Yeah. You know, and that's it. It brings you to the immediacy and. And in this game, you know, like Randy been saying, you gotta have trivia stuff. And hearing that, I'm going, I'm a real game designer. I do not put. I finally worked, you know, and now I know why it's essential because it is going to be educational. People will know about wine when they've done this. You know, and obviously you can have wildly different difficulty levels, but this design. So you have different difficulty levels at the table.

22:05 But as much as anything, it's experiential. And. And when you have to explain why you think this is the greatest wine in the world, um, you know, camera's rolling. Or, you know, conversely, you know that we have a version of it too where, you know, you're trying to rig it. Right. And so people are saying things that are disingenuous and. And they're trying to get their bottle to win. You'll be keeping your real score for what you think the bottle is for later on because there's an interesting capper to the game. There's a whole clip at the end of. Let's get to the practical side of that because you said a lot. And that's. This is. I'm not a game. I'm not a game writer. Right. I've never had A person on the show that was a game writer. Yeah, they were pretty rare animals. Yeah, but yeah, I think. So to put levels of in a game and to put different approaches, practical approaches to the game and still make it fun.

22:54 I mean, what does that mind do to do that? How would you take that in a practical sense and say, look, we're make a game out of this. It's, it's. We got to cross all, you know, dot all these eyes and get rid of these cross T's because people are going to be bored with those. What? Well, I mean, I mean, only just because I have kids that are like 20. Well, 23 and 21. And we played a number of these games today are do this a lot. There's like wingspan and there's botany and these various games that have come out that are like these kind of games where you can play it on one level in the game the way the rules are. You can play a very simple version of it that plays like in an hour, let's say. Or. Or you can. These are how games work. Or you can do the more complicated version of the game where suddenly a card means two or three different things and you have various ways you can go in your game. So there's complications there in this game. We've also added the fact that let's say you want to go the Sommelier Extreme version, which is what we had something called the Sommelier Extreme version.

23:56 They're really difficult questions that you have to have an experience like you have of having lived in wine to be able to answer the questions. And that's so that you can have your snobby friends come and play the game and be, you know, and be intrigued. But you don't have to play that level. You can play the simpler level. That's kind of. That's kind of how it works. Now, as far as how he designs it, I can't speak to how he designs it, but he's a professor of games, so he knows all about this stuff. Well, it takes a mind to break it down, break the dances, granular forms and reassemble them into an entertaining environment. And a lot of testing, which is fun. With this game, it's all about testing and iteration and even the end user. Remember, when we release a game, it's just our approximation. We think it's going to be fun. We have a lot of ways you can tune it and vary it for what you think is fun and play that up and play down the stuff you don't think is fun. And Play as you get to be more experienced and better at it. What did you do to research for this? We're talking about drops of God and some other. Would you watch movies? Yeah, I've watched pretty much every, you know, wine movie I could come across in the documentaries and, and all this. But I mean, part of it, I mean what I'm really interested in right now is making social games. You know, games where people bring in their friends and interact with each other. I just thought since COVID everybody lost their social skills. And secondly, people want to do stuff where they're all in the room playing, you know, you know, you know, doing, you know, engaging each other. And so we're trying to

25:29 do this with no apps. I mean the default in every case. Well, you have your app, which you wouldn't want to do that. No phones, lose the screens. This is two or three hours with your friends, you know, you know, door to door. You're probably not trash because of the, you know, amount of wine is you're consuming is actually not much unless you're, you know, know, you know, doing ultimate. I don't want to play. We do have where you can get the, the pour. It can be double pour. We have that complete with the 1 oz pourer. Okay. So in theory you can have the double pour if you want. If you play the game by its rules, any version of it, you will not be get a DUI on the way home. But I mean, you know, as far as researching it, what it, what it really is is you just sort of watch all this stuff.

26:13 You, you and you start out with an initial intention, you know, and kind of a fun goal. And my fun goal was to let everybody, you know, be. Pretend to be the, the person, you know, the, the psalm, reviewing and promoting or demoting the, the wine. And they get to be something they're not. They pretend to be an expert. Because when you pretend to be an expert, you actually do learn stuff. Okay. Even if you're just BSing your way through it, you're. It's impossible to make a good game that people don't learn from. I mean, I was making fun of Clue, but who didn't learn deductive reasoning from Clue? Yeah, right.

26:53 Who didn't learn thinking in advance from tic tac toe? I mean, you probably had to play 20 times before you realized how to get a cats game. Every time. Everybody learned capitalism from Monopoly, even though the game was made to be anti capitalist. But anyway. But everybody did. But not slot machinery. Yeah, slot machine. Well, you learn what Sherry's like, look like, you know, you get a rapid and brutal education into probability playing slot machines. But so, you know, so basically, you're learning while you're doing, and you're hanging out with your friends, drinking wine, and how bad can that be? But you're also evaluating each of the wines and giving your sense of it and, you know, why you like it and why you don't like it, for what reason, and rating it against others and your developing skills. You learn what notes are. And then, you know, there's a moment you go, yeah, okay, I see that BlackBerry. You know, I thought that was phony when I first heard it.

27:50 Well, I can tell you a funny story. Up in Napa, I was with some friends. Now they're. They're with me in Bordeaux, and they're like, wow, you know, had lots of things to say about the wines in Bordeaux. But at that time in Napa, I said something like this. You know, I get little hints of dark chocolate. It's like, you know, what you say is my friend one of my best friends? I go, what are you talking about? He goes, I don't believe any of that. I said, well, let me just ask you this question. You're tasting these two Wines. They're both 2014 Cabernet. They're from two different properties, same winery, same winemaker. Do they taste different to you? He said, yeah. I go, you just got started. Yep. Because you can't define the difference, but you recognize the difference. Did you find, like, I do. And I'm gonna show you a sizzle before you guys go. That I created, that almost all wine stuff is boring as hell, and that it's snobbery in this worst. I mean, it can be snobbery. That is exactly the impulse we were attacking. I was attacking. When I started designing the game, I was absolutely convinced that I could go in with one bill fill or swill or one bill swill or two buck Chuck.

28:55 And you could have, you know, Chateau, you know, expensive on the other side of it. And French accent. Expensive. People could. Yeah, right. That's French for expensive. And I just make up French words. Okay. Blue Chevy. Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Exorbitant. You know, Anyway, so, you know, so I just went in there and thought, oh, it'd be really funny to try to con people. We know we're going to have four different levels and price points of wine, four different ratings on any objective thing, and see if people can really tell the difference. Yeah. And I went in totally cynical, thinking that a charismatic Person could sell one bill Swill, you know, to, you know, to people or something great or vice versa.

29:39 You could be really, really brown mouthing something really good and people think, oh, it really does taste bad. I don't necessarily believe that anymore. I flip back and forth about every two weeks into what I, what I really think. But that's why it's intriguing because, I mean, it's like any really great puzzle. It's like there is objective truth in there, there is subjective opinion, there is romantic opinion, and it's what you were talking about. Smell is the most powerful, you know, cognitive influencer. In other words, it brings back memories. The best. Right. It's like any kind of cologne or like, you know, you know it's spring because of what it smells like. Right. You don't smell bit of swarm and you know, la in the middle of summer very often or, you know, I mean, so it's very important to us. And it's all hidden in there. This stuff's real and there, there are. So there are objective values, there are subjective values and that is the stuff of social gaming. And then, you know, and, and what is real and what's not. And that's the issue of right now. I mean, we're being told videos we saw on TV were fakes. Okay. You know.

30:43 Yeah, right. You know, and all kinds of fronts. Now if you get something that's as subjective as what we're talking about, and yet there is an objective component to it, you know, whether we agree they taste different, we all agree that what tastes good and bad is a matter of opinion, sort of. Then you get the snobs. And I was really kind of curious. Am I ever going to meet somebody who really can, you know, taste? Oh, yes. The terrier of this. Our plan is once we get through this Kickstarter, which is on right now. Kickstarter good. Yeah. Is we're going to get a, you know, Bo Barrett, maybe Heidi Barrett and a few other vintners and have them play the game. Oh, that'd be the high level version version of the game. And then film it. Film them and just do whatever. Have them bullshit each other, basically. Yeah, you get real experts. It's gonna be great. I wanna get designers doing it, figuring out how they outgame each other to be right or wrong. I find the more I play the game, the better.

31:46 At first I thought I can't identify anything, but the more times I play the game, the better I am at identifying the differences between the wines. But there is another element of this game that's just pure fun. Yes. Which is that, you know, there's a bullshit. You know, you're assigned a role and you're assigned a different role. Yeah. You're a judge, you're a rig judge, you're a vintner, you're a landowner, you're trying to get people to vote for the wine you want to win. Yeah, stuff like that. I think that that is going to be the game changer for people to play. In other words, if, like I said earlier, if you bring up the word wine, you've already taken 75% of the people out of the game. Like, I'm changing the name of this podcast because I'm going to do a lot of immigration stories. It's incredible stories to tell that come from this thing. But if I put wine talks out there, 75% of people are going, I don't really, you know, I don't want to talk about wine when it's not going to be about wine. Right. So I want to. I want to focus my marketing the show to all bigger audiences. And so the idea that you're going to just have fun and that in some cases, look, sounds like you're mocking the idea, which is perfectly fine. You can that way or you can go at it exactly the opposite way. And then. Yeah, that's. I think that's valid because people like my buddy saying it's what you're talking about, and all of a sudden, and you said something important, which, the part, the experiential part of, like this meal I had in Paris, somebody's going to play this game and then one day at a restaurant, taste the wine and go, gee. And they're going to go back

33:17 to the day they played this game. Maybe the second time or the third time. Yeah. And use some of the phrases or use some of the thoughts or use some of the notes. Yeah, definitely. Because the other thing, too, that I think is really important in why this game works right now is the very nature of it is incredibly experiential and mindful. I mean, you have to be right here right now and notice where you are and what you're doing and what just went into your mouth. And, and, and people don't do that very much. 90% of the wine I drinks at some party goes into a glass loop, you know, and unless there's something striking about it, don't notice it. When you stop and notice it, the entire world starts unlocking all the way around you. You know, it is a mindfulness presence of mind for A, you know, perpetually distracted civilization right now. I mean, you know, I. I mean, we've all turned off our phones, but imagine the aggregate number of messages and calls we've received, notifications we've received since we started conversation. And so part of this is about just stepping back. You want to, like, if you do it, ideally you redo your living room or your backyard and you, you know, almost anybody backyard, any environment can look like some kind of winery.

34:26 You know, one of the most fun places I do has nothing but vinyl albums, but it's basically inside a, you know. Inside a, you know, storage facility. Yeah. And. But, I mean, that works too. And so you all sudden think your environment is. What would it be in this. The wine environment. And then the wrinkle we've added onto it happened at our first play test where, you know, we've done it in our backyard. And our backyard can kind of look like you're somewhere in, you know, France or somewhere probably in like, more Spain. But anyway, it's in fact in Los Angeles. Yeah, it's Pacoima, France. Have you heard of that is very nice. You have windows which are some only found in la. They're gothic windows with a Moorish frame around them. Okay. Because we live in a country that was, you know, founded by a bunch of Moors and Visigoths. Right. You know, I mean, a state in Los Angeles. That's why you got all this Spanish architecture here. And that's what I didn't know. Here's. But anyway, go ahead. This is. This is my father. So this is probably circa 1972. This actual brochure, swirl, sniff and sea sw. My dad would go lecture and it tells you all the things here, which is probably in. In this game. Right.

35:42 Those are the things everybody does all the way through. I mean, I had to define early on. I'm doing a wine tasting game, not in a wine appreciation game. And they aren't mutually exclusive. But the skill you are going to learn is how to evaluate it. That's the first thing you're going to learn. I've evaluated, using the word evaluated, probably four potential games that come to market. And they're all like, really boring to play. And they all basically played off of this, right? Yeah, it was boring. This, this patch here, Les Amie Divan was a group in the 70s all over the country. I have anecdotal story about the founder, but, you know, they would get together and it was just a big event. You know, the women would wear their meek stoles. They'd Come to Palos Verdes, they'd go to Marineland, and they'd have dinner in the fancy room, and Robert Madhavi would speak. And so that aristocracy of what's going on. And here, you.

36:33 You. You're creating an environment that everybody can approach and possibly pick up on what this is. Because it. For me, the stigma of what we do is our own problem. We've created it. And there are some people in this industry that would love for it to continue that way because it gives them an edge on something else. Like, for instance, and I love this comment from one of the great LA wine guys named Ed Masiana. You know, I certainly can appreciate the fact that a master of wine or a master psalm can identify a region, you know, of a wine or vintage or grape. That's. That's great. It's fun. It's part of the academia. But so what. I mean, really, so what that you have the talent to do that? What about the talent of, like, choosing wines people might, like, understand who you're selling it to, Being able to explain it to somebody who doesn't understand the words themselves.

37:27 I think that's the part of wine that needs to change, if it ever will change. Yeah, well. And also let people participate in it. You know, the world's changed a lot. There were a lot of things that you could only be an observer of, and now almost anything you can participate in it. You know, like most sports, you know, I mean, for our kids, what's kind of bad is everything is so professionalized by the time you're nine that, you know, I mean, you know, the club sports. Yeah, yeah, the club sports and all that stuff that, you know, everybody knows who, you know, the next, you know, you know, if Tom Brady's going to be. But the. There are now all sorts of things you can go do. Okay. And. And just deem yourself an expert and you just deem yourself a wine expert. Be for. And subjectively all are. We call these influencers. But even in the movie he says. Alan Rickman at the end of the movie says the democratization of wine. That's what. And we did that. What was that? 2007, 2008.

38:26 I mean, we were saying even in China they'll be making wine. And of course, that just predicted what, you know, came along and happened. Georgia, China, China, Chile, Argentina, China. We are focusing a lot on the wine tasting. There is a very important part of this game, the overwhelming part of this game, where it's just pure fun. Yes, yes. You know, where you're Coming. And you're assigned a character. You pick from the beginning. Your character. You're bluffing. You may not be bluffing. You may be the legitimate character, but a lot of the characters are posing and bluffing and trying to trick everyone else. So there is a part of the game that. Because you were kind of making fun of what you're talking about with the first version of the mystery game, we really are setting it in 1977, you know, because the judgment of Paris was 1976. Right. And the judgment of St. Helena is 1977. And kind of down the road. Yeah. People. People want to read the results. Right. And our judgment of St. Helena is fabricated. Obviously, it's the game judgment, because Judgment of Paris. I mean, here's a trivia question for you. Does anybody know what Judgment of Paris is upon on? I mean, it's a reference to.

39:35 In mythology. Was it like Napoleon or something? No, it was ancient Greek mythology. The gods or goddesses were having an argument about which of them was most beautiful. It was like Venus and Artemis and Hera maybe. I can't remember what the three were. But anyway, that's a little snobby. And they get Paris in there. They get Paris who? Not Paris, the city. Paris was the guy who, you know, later. And the prize was you get the most beautiful woman in the world. Okay. Paris picks Venus and he gets Helen of Troy. And from that comes the Trojan War and all that. I mean, you know, the Judgment of Paris was the biggest event in. In probably mythology. And you could argue literature ever. Nobody knows what it was and.

40:20 Yeah, never heard of it. We have the judgment of St. Helena, and you're going to have to do some research to know what it. But it is mythologically just as solid and maybe a little more sinister. It's kind of like there's a little bit, to tell the truth in this. Yes, there is. There's a little bit of that. Yes, there is. And you get to play characters if you want to play. And, yeah, obviously, the host decides how much they want to take this literally. Like, I went to a 60s party for a guy who was playing who had turned 60s, but he was a guy who was like this heyday in life was six a while back was in the 60s. And I showed up and all these people were dressed like it was the 60s at the party, and so was I. And it was eerie. I mean, it actually really worked. I mean, oddly enough that what they were dressed in looked more 70s to me, but they were actually there in the 60s. And I so tell me what this looks like. Do you. Are you standing around? Are we. Do we have bottles on the table? Are we swirling stuff? Is there sort of interactive cocktail party at the time going on while you're doing this? It's a. It's a game that has, you know, there's rules to the game, obviously, so the host decides whether it's a white wine or red wine night, and then four bottles are brought. You can play with more people, but let's just do the basics. So four bottles are brought. They're put in blind bottle bags, they're opened. Nobody knows which bottles which. You pick characters. There's like 16 characters to pick from. Like he described. They're all different levels of characters. I love the graphics, by the way. Different people are cool. Yeah, really cool. So there's all these different characters and there's different agendas. Everybody has different agenda, you know, that they. They.

41:51 They're like, want to get theirs to win. They're. They're losing their chateau. They need to get. They need to win because they need the wine to win. Or they're the vintner that has a problem with phyllo. It's all explained as the character. It's all in the character. Yeah. Are you picking the character by. By. You want random? It's random. You're random. The host can assign them to you. They can send them to you ahead of time. How you get the cards up to you? Well, you're. You either, okay, put on a hat, or you just say, pick one ahead of time. The host can send you a card and say, this is your character. You can send it to you physically. Script analysis. Right? I mean, well, and. Well, if you'll see a picture of the person, they're all pretty easy to understand. And kind of depends if people want to show up in costume. They can.

42:34 If they're mixing. That's what I'm thinking. And then there's. And then there's a. There's a setup card which is random as to whether you're. You're a rig judge or whether you're an honest judge or whether you have this or we have that. And then. And then as you go through the various stages, there's four rounds of tasting, basic rounds of tasting. During the rounds, there's different things that happen in the game where you pick cards and you. You answer questions and whatnot, but you also have to taste the wine and give your analysis of the wine as you're tasting it for the other people. And you're. You're giving clues which are things from your cards to other people to tip them off of whether you're a rigged judge or an honest judge. And they're trying to figure it out because you're saying, you know, I feel that this has, this has a bit of BlackBerry in it, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah. And you're obviously brown mouthing yes. And the BlackBerry would be. If somebody asked me about BlackBerry, I know this is the other rigged judge. Basically it's a riff on the game Mafia that every Gen Z so how does it. So then what happens is there's scoring the various rounds. There's some scoring that's going on and what does the score represent? The scoring of the wine, the scoring of the person that you. It could, it could be, it could be whether you get, you get answers right on these trip some of the trivia questions. It could be whether you pick the particular wine. And then at the end of the four rounds, through the four rounds also you're voting people off the island basically there's a, there's a bit of like well you know, I really think he's a rigged judge because of this and that. Now he may be an honest judge but you want to

44:05 get rid of him because you know he's against you in the game. And so you're, you're lying and saying well he's obviously, you saw what he said about the BlackBerry and he knows something that he's not supposed to know. You know, you're playing games with each other which is stealth education. Right. You know, because you find out what's true and what's not true. Right. But then this all came from my daughter and a friend of hers. You know, these are a couple Gen Z kids both having the idea because they know they want to talk about wine for four hours. Right. You got to put a mystery in here, you know. You ever played mafia? And I said yeah, I played mafia in five different, 5,000 different variations of it. But it's a game where every kid under a certain age knows how to play it and you learn it inside two seconds where you're trying to get. There are three people on that are mafia and then everybody else is. Is a villager and everybody. You're the mafia guys win if they kill all the villagers and the villagers win if they nail the three mafia guys. But you're going from clues from the people and all that and we just put content on top of that. But it's basic very play pattern. So you're doing that in between the Wine tastings, which just kind of makes it fun because the whole thing, any kind of social game is people get people talking to each other.

45:18 Yeah. Right. That otherwise wouldn't be talking to each other. So you have that element. And then wine loosens the lips a little bit. Exactly. And then round five, which is after the four rounds, round five, all the bottles. All the bottles of wine are switched into other bags. And you're. Now you're trying to say. Well, I think. I think wine one was Ryan number two last time. Wine three is Ryan number four. Wow. In other words, it makes it really the second time. Yeah. Randy trying to get one right. Jody nailed it. You know, and you get more points for. You get points for. For getting those right. Most really experienced wine people, if they've tasted enough, there's only four bottles should be. Let's say. Yeah. Yes. Yes. But it's not always, you know, Jody get nailed it. I got you. Right. And the last time we played the game, he took me many and a guy. Look, I know it's very difficult to do anyway. Okay. Right. The wine to cans in the meantime too. Yeah, of course it'll change. Yeah. Let's. Let's talk the business of wine for the business of this of games. You know, very popular show on history is the. The games that changed America are the games that change the world. The food, all that. And they've all these amazing games that we grew up with have peculiar histories.

46:34 But now we have things like Kickstarter. So you can. You can put that up there. What do you get for Kickstarter for contributing the way. The way it works. The way it works on. The reason people do Kickstarter in general is you need to show the. Like the Bev. Let's say it's BevMo or Total Wine or the Wine Club. You have to show the world that this is something that's viable that people like. Right. So that's part of the reason why games are actually really successful on Kickstarter. I didn't know this a year ago. I realized this when we start to work with Flint is that it's been very successful on Kickstarter. The whole game concept. And so what happens on this is we're selling the game at a reduced price because we want people to buy the game and then we can show the world, hey, this is really viable. And this is how this somebody put up money to prove. Yeah. Well, we have the game.

47:32 We have a step of the game. We have the prototypes. And what we'll do is we're deciding whether we print, you know, 500 games or we're making a thousand copies. And then ultimately, is this something that's sold at retail? And if so, where is it sold? At wine shops? Is it sold the wineries. Okay, do we do custom scenarios of the game for the winery where you're doing an Agatha Christie at, you know, a winery that, you know, wants to sponsor, you know, that kind of thing? Because I've had many people sit in the chair that come into the wine world and they think they have a better idea, but the wine world is like 12,000 years old. And there's. Yeah, there's not too many new ideas, but their ideas today are mostly contemporarily packaging them. Right. Like.

48:12 Like tetra packs or small bottles or things that aren't revolutionary. It's always about what's in the glass. And the reason I said that was they. They clearly don't care. So they're building a brand around a packaging so that they can build it up and sell it to and take, you know, sell off some market share. You know, get some market share, sell back. Is that happen in the game business where you. Well, that's not really what we're up to. Mount Milton Bradley. Even if they even exist anymore. The other part of Hasbro now. But yeah, they still exist. Well, I mean, like everything else, you know, the game business is kind of in. Well, the tabletop game business has been booming lately, you know, since COVID and. And all that. And people actually want to be around. It's like the vinyl record business just came back. Yeah, all the businesses. Yeah, all the entertain businesses are having their own kind of crisis right now and in their own nature. And, you know, and I mean, with Bottle Shock, what's great about is, first of all, the. The title sounds like a game. Yeah, right. You know, and I mean, you know, there's the System Shock and Bioshock and, you know, that's good. You know, games that are not that many. I mean, people expected to be, you know, you're throwing bottles at people. We're not. We're going to dissuade them from that. But the, you know, so, I mean, games are like. They're just great to superimpose on stuff.

49:33 I mean, you know, you know, everything's about gamification right now. And, you know, and. And with this, it just gets you to notice it and play it. It gives you a reason to care. Even that's an extrinsic reason until you know enough to intrinsically care It's a great. It's a. It's just a great way to have a party. It's got so many angles, so many fresh angles, and it's. I think it's gonna be a refreshing shot in the arm for the industry. The industry of wine is in bad, bad place, and there's a lot of reasons for it and bore you with them now. But online sales are off. I didn't. I didn't sell my company because I was making too much money. Yeah. And, you know, so I think this is an opportunity, really potentially huge opportunity for. To get wine into the hands of people that really have been intimidated by it. They get to play a game, and they realize it's not so intimidating. Yeah, well, it would be. The dream would be, obviously, to be this game sitting there at BevMo or Trader Joe's or wherever, you know, and people pick up eight bottles of wine to play this game. So, like, the vintners and all the wine people, you know, they're like, hey, let's be the bottle shock this week of our flight of wine. We can't sell alcohol. Obviously, we're in the game business. But, I mean, I would love to see, you know, because if. If people would, you know, brand different bottles of wine, they have, you know, you know, certain ways or label them certain ways, we could actually use them as game objects and then their whole other, you know, parts of it. I mean, it started with those, remember, 13 crimes

51:07 when you. Yeah, right. Ar thing where you're looking at the guy. I mean, I have no idea whether the wine's greater. Kidney squeeze. But what I do know is it got me to stop. I liked it in my aisle at the. Sorry, I'm giving an evil eye because you said I liked it. Yeah, right. That's a technical term. Right. Kidney squeeze. I'm not sure about that, but it got me to stop in the aisle, you know, Ral, you know, hold up my thing. Oh, wow. The guy's talking to me. Well, I mean, imagine you start. You. Because wine needs to get its mystique back. You know, the problem is anything that turns into a commodity is. Has no mystique. I mean, that's why people want vinyl records now. They. I mean, you know, you want. You want to own the physical object and sit around there and read the lyrics like you're looking at the Rosetta stone back like we used to, and, you know, we'd buy a record. You know, it's also, I have to say, really validating. Yeah. Because it validates Your own taste. Yeah. Right. Yes. Because we have played the game several times where we were shocked by our community assessment of the wines, which had nothing to do with the price point. And now you realize you want bottles and James. Wine coolers. No, but I mean it. But, I mean. Yes, you're tasting things at all different levels, you know, and you're saying, oh, I get it. What's the difference here? Well, that's what you hope happens. Yeah, we hope happens. And this is something very important because my philosophy. And I've done this 35 years. I sold 17 million bottles of wine in my career. I've tasted a hundred thousand.

52:30 So I. I learned something. Yes, A lot, but I learned something. Well, at 10,000 hours, you'd already learned. Yeah, exactly. So I think what's happening, and this is very important for the game, that we are going back to my dad's era of the experiential side of wine. Yes. You saying I bought a bottle of wine on the Internet for three bucks through Groupon is not an experience. And it's not a story. It's not a story you want to tell at dinner time. Is there a less romantic story you can tell? Because that's. What's the other thing Great. About Bottle Shock is what's the wine really about? It's like you're the afternoon. You're sitting out there with the beautiful blonde, and she's trying to wine and, hey, you know what? Yeah, well, that day. But that was a different day. That was like. It was cloudy, and we were kind of inside a different day. But, you know, the. You know, I mean, but it's attaching the whole romance to it. Yeah, no, that's true. You know, it's the most important part of it. Yeah. And. And they don't want to, you know, and. And that's very hard to sell at three bucks on the Internet, it doesn't exist. There's no story behind it. And people get. Well, I'll tell you a funny story. I tasted. I was written up by Punch Drink, the online beverage site. She came and actually watched me taste one day, and I said, let's taste this. Somebody sent me a sample in between the regular crowd that comes in, and it was Saturday Night Live Beaujolais. It's called 10 Live Beaujolais. It was bottle for something for Saturday Live, and it was a current vintage. It wasn't like. Because Beaujolais doesn't last long in the bottle, but it was Beaujolais from France. And we opened it, and it was horrible.

54:02 And I thought to myself, the poor person that bought this wine at the store, wherever they want, oh, we're going to celebrate Saturday Night Live. We're going to watch the show, we'll pour a glass of wine. Cannot tell the story like this is great because it's not. And so the whole thing blew up in their face that they bought this wine in the first place. And that's we. And I think part of that going to the wine side of this, what I heard in Bordeaux this last trip was just these people need to stay the course. You can't deviate from your, your plan, your idea for what you want to produce in the vineyard. Get in the bottle. The industry will come around to it. When you do things where you experience it enough and people go, wow, this was really something interest.

54:46 Putting a kidney sweet on the shelf in front of with and putting a Snoop Dogg's picture on it, you know, is not the experience that people are looking for with wine. And so you're giving a chance with this game for people to experience. Yes. Make it fun and then communicate it. Yeah, because that's the other thing that's happened when you turn the wine into poetry. You know, I mean, we have people doing slogans, we have people doing. Yeah. You know, some of the people we had. Amazing. I love that stuff. It was crazy. They were saying stuff. That's what this age is about. I mean, ever since AI came in rem, everybody was supposed to get a degree in, you know, STEM, you know, for the last 20 years. Okay, AI, whoever writes the best prompt wins. Who are you going to recruit for jobs next year? Yeah, right. Find every poet you can available. That, that is who's going to write AI. Okay. And we're in an age now where we have to connect with our, our emotions and our feelings, which is actually all we care about and communicate it to other people and have fun doing it, you know, because if you're, if you're not having fun doing it, I see that it's not worth doing. Right. I see that. And all of a sudden you're putting the fun back into it. But all the components of fun, you know, I mean, yeah, we could do a module of it that's a stand up comedian module that has jokes on the back of the, of the bottle where, you know, you're, you could do the wine roast if you wanted to, but. And that, you know, that may be, you know, you know, fifth expansion pack, but, you know, it involves a lot more wine. We'll get the really big pour Pour. Measure. Yeah. That's a different kind of wine. That's like, you know, that's eight ounce pour, you

56:16 know. But I mean, you can go endless directions with this, but it's all about people relating to and wine. You're shooting fish in a barrel because it's innately social. You share a bottle of wine with people. And honestly, we've done tests where somebody wanted. Didn't know anything about wine. They were just really good at playing the game. Yeah. The game part of it was great wine. Part game, part, you know, hidden identity, all that stuff people like to. It's a key component. You have to have that. Yeah. You have somebody. Yeah, yeah. All of a sudden it's something for. I mean, we have people, friends that have allergies to wine. Have friends that, you know, are an aa. They can be there too, you know, doing the mystery part of the game or the other social part of the game. Wow. And so you're not booting anybody out of the experience, which is good because you bring people into the wine world that don't have a. You know. Well, it's going to be. I think I just read that it's going to be the final exam for the master sommelier test, that you play the game and win it. And that's how, you know, we do have the master sommelier edition coming out. Yeah, that's. That's the ultimate stretch for all three of them that exist in the world. You know, you gotta. That's.

57:31 We've conquered that audience think they are. That's. That's the target market for that. But we're already on an hour. Oh, if you can believe that. I would like to do this again. Yeah. And peel it back a little further as. As the campaign gets going. As I play the game at my home. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Because I just think about all the variations. What have. I know it so far. You know, the. The four wines. You could structure the game around like just very special things. Very like, let's say Armenian wine. I'm Armenian. Yeah. There's a whole new culture of Armenian wine. And so you could play it under different cultures. You play absolutely different regions. Yes. Yeah. No, the tipsy gypsy one, that worked perfectly. You know. You know, I mean. Yeah, you can. But the host can say crooks in the wine business. Yeah. Crooks in the wine business. Yeah. And the host could say, I want to have all four Armenian wines tonight. Yeah. Or I want to have this. And then. And then the.

58:25 The people who go that are part of the game, they Go find that wine. They go out, destroy the wine. That's. That's another part, the experience of going shopping, talking. They told me to find a cabernet that's like this. You get to talk about it. Yeah. And you build up the lore for all these wines, because you got to encourage them to do that, because they have to build the mystery in the lore. I mean, you know, where I learned a lot about. You know, I mean, where I learned most things in life, but especially this was in the frat house. Okay. Our idea of what to serve at frat parties. Pour it all together, trash can, zombie, all that stuff. Right. We did that. Then one of the. Our social chairman said, we're gonna have a wine and cheese party. He was relentlessly. Matter of fact, he was known as Wine and cheese for the rest of the time. He was in college. However, you know, all of a sudden, sorority girls showed up, actually wanted to be there. Nobody was having any vomiting for distance contest in the backyard. Yeah. That was actually a very civil, civilized night. Yeah. So where was this? That was at Berkeley. Oh, berserkley. Yeah.

59:21 Imagine a berserkly frat in the 70s. Yeah, that's what it was. Yeah. Yeah. And, yeah, the. The house had three previously been thrown off campus because they put something other than wine in their punch, and we have a whole separate conversation. Yeah, there's a lot of that. USC was a very different experience. Yeah. Well, we'll get into it. Yeah, yeah. You know, there was. It would be fun. And I'll close with this, but be fun. You know Rudy Kirwan, the guy that's got thrown in. Yeah, yeah. He's back at it, apparently. And so I got a text from a friend who's out in Singapore at the time, this is recently, shopping money for a real estate deal. And he had dinner with Rudy, and he had this. He had this idea. Back to doing wine again.

1:00:04 Yeah. He's not in jail anymore. No, no, he's back. He's back in Thailand or wherever he's from. And so the guy's idea was, what if we created a brand around Rudy's formulas and called them Rudy's Lafitte and Rudy's Margaux and Rudy's Beaujolais, you know, and people would buy this because it's just. Because it's a fraudulent. Yeah, right. So there could be the Rudy Kirwan version. Yeah, exactly. Yes. The game gives you all the kinds of different hustles. So. Fun stuff. That's the fun of it. Yeah. Yeah. Con artists we even have wine detection agencies that may or may not exist in the real world. And you know that, know that there are people that are, you know, that's actually a very popular thing.

1:00:44 Yeah. Well, great to have you folks in. I don't want to take any more of your time, but I, I, I suspect we'll get together again. Sounds good. Yeah. Have some fun with this. Yeah. And I would love to see comments from the, the listeners too, you know. Yes. If they have good ideas, we'll appropriate them. Yeah, of course. Give them no credit, but. Yeah. Yeah, that'd be good. I'll publish it shortly and then we'll, we'll gather that up and, and it's available right now on Kickstart. Everybody should just go get it. It's great. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Bottle Shock, the wine game. It's pretty creative about the title. Yeah. The Mystery Is the The Judgment of Sand. Elena. Yes. Cheers. Thank you. Thank you for having us.