The Wine World Needs to Wake Up: Jean-Charles Boisset on Biodynamics and Breaking Rules

0:00 We are all one. So wine is, as you just said, Paul, brings unity and brings diversity, brings equality, brings all of us within this unbelievable vessel that is the glass, the expression of all our cultures. And I think it's fabulous because wine eventually can bring peace. Sit back and grab a glass. It's Wine Talks with Paul Kaye. Hello. Listen to that beautiful sound.

0:40 Beautiful. We love the Baccarat line that you've produced. Oh, thank you so much. We love, we love the Baccarat Hotel. Fabulous. Isn't it great? We love it. Yeah. We love it. I mean, not right now in New York, but for those who— Eventually. For the folks that don't know what's happening, Monsieur Jean-Charles Boisset just walked into the room, and apparently that's when he walks walks in the room, everybody knows. Is that what happens? Well, because I make a lot of noise and I carry it back out. Yes, it carries. Listen to the sound. Oh, that is beautiful. The depth is beautiful. It's insane. Actually, I'm looking for the— I'm looking for the martini glasses. I heard they're not out yet. Well, it's coming, it's coming. Obviously, you know, many factories and manufacturers were closed as well in France. And, you know, Baccarat is made in the town of Baccarat, right outside of a beautiful town, you know, very well named Nancy.

1:35 They've been making Cristal there since 1764, and they were closed for a little while, so they got delayed, but we're launching it in January. Okay, I'll look forward to that because— We cannot wait. I, I, when I read about the Baccarat Hotel being the, the only licensed name for a hotel, and then I read about the town, like 4,500 residents, and they, that's all they do is make Cristal there. And then we saw your product line. Marta brought it to us. Thank you. And I'm like, okay, I gotta get some of this. 'Cause I wanna be the only one on the block that has it, right? Absolutely. Well, and we wanted Paul to create the ultimate glass. So, the one and only, the only glass you need for white, rosé, and of course, red wine, and whatever type of red. Thank goodness. So, the width is 9.5 centimeters. The opening around the mouth is around 8 centimeters. And then you have a lip, which allows you, as you're looking at me here drinking, go directly into the middle of the tongue, the umami area.

2:37 Mm. You see, it goes right in. Yeah. So we've calculated the height of the glass to penetrate your mouth in such a way that it goes right in the middle. It's perfect. And that's what we were trying to achieve is perfection to accompany the movement, the geste, as you know well in French. Absolutely. The movement is everything as a winemaker. as tending the vineyards, as obviously tasting wine. It's all about how we behave. If you do kickboxing, the geste. If you do tennis, the movement. Yes. It's all about how we move. I don't think, I don't think, and, and I get this question all the time, that people understand the value of the glass when it comes to tasting and enjoying wine. Right.

3:21 How important that is. And I have tasted wines. I said, okay, just take this, take a plastic tumbler and put a, put an 1881 Cab in it and put it in one of these glasses. And you tell me that they don't taste different, that the The experience at least is different, right? That's right. So, this is beautiful. It's fundamental. Thank you, Paul, for mentioning that. There's, I believe, 3 things which are essential. One, the glass. 2, the decanter. Yes, very important to have a great decanter. And 3rd, the association, the understanding, and the love of all one another. That trifecta, that tri-mingle relationship of the glass, the decanter, and the person. And I've collected over 5,000 decanters in my life. Really? Which are— where's that collection? I wanna see it. Well, there's 75 of them at 1881. Yes. On, on, in the museum.

4:12 And there's around 800 at Buena Vista and the balance in all our different wineries. Wow. And I've collected glasses. And to your point, Paul, tasting in different glasses is a very different experience. It's like traveling in a different car, which is like being in a different decorated house. Yes. And I really believe the glass, as you said, said is essential, the movements, the celebration, the respect of the wine, and at the same time, how it goes into your mouth, how it creates the mouthfeel, and what we call the retro-olfaction, which means the wine you swallow and you inhale it, and it goes back in the back of your nose, into your nostril again, through the back end. Covers all the senses. All the senses. And I think a glass which is one-dimensional, is a sad moment because one, it doesn't respect the actual wine being made. Two, it doesn't really help the pleasure and unveiling of the wine.

5:14 And third, it's not as tactile. I mean, look at the centrality. That's right. That was my next point. I know you love to touch. That was my next point. Touch and feel and caress. That was my next point. Use your fingers for something. The weight. And you know what I like? I always say, Paul, to people, If you don't want to swirl in the air because you've never done it, use the table. That's right. Go clockwise to create energy, a vortex, and go counterclockwise to create cows. The yin and the yang. Oh, that's interesting. I've never done both ways. I'm sort of a counterclockwise guy. Well, look, yeah, I'm sort of a counterclockwise guy. I don't know, is that a good thing? Well, it's a great thing.

5:59 And the way you're doing it— are you ambidextrous? Uh, yeah, pretty much, right? Well, I could see you're very good with both. So what I recommend is you go clockwise with your left hand. Oh, good idea. Very simple. And counterclockwise with your right hand. You put between 2 of your fingers the stem, right? Very simply. I like that. And then you bring the glass to your nose at around 1.5 centimeters. You could dive into— this opening is great because you could really dive in. Yes. Look at my nose. See? Right? I'm very ripped, Sean. Nose like the Greek philosophers. You look like Socrates.

6:45 Aristotle. Plato. You're the man. Sound like him too. But you know what I'm interested with this nose of this glass? Because I like to move from the top to the bottom of the glass. I like to feel what's going on around me. That's what you mean. This glass is uniform. And you move very well. And I'm talking about your beautiful wife who's with us. Thank you. Yes, she is beautiful. Well, and Paul, you just mentioned something essential. Think about a Catholic cross. Verticality, horizontality. That's right. What you want The mouth, the tongue is created on the front, is a sensor. It's a sensory analysis.

7:25 So your front is salt, sugar. The back end is bitterness, acidity. The side is fatness. Yes. In the middle is what the Japanese call umami. You want what I call always horizontality and verticality. And the French are very big in that. When you learn how to taste wine, I mean, for me, I've never learned how to taste wine because my My mother gave me wine from her breast. Well, I suppose that's— Yeah, it's a very— You could have experienced different types of wine that way, but— Yeah, she made sure that I— It was a Vougeot, no less. Well, Vougeot, can you believe, Paul? My mother acknowledged to me many years later, I was born in Vougeot, in the cradle of the Grand Cru, looking at the Clos Vougeot, the Musigny, the Chambolle-Musigny, the Connemare, the Echazeau.

8:19 And she said only like— and then you've met my mom, probably very conservative lady, but she said, Jean-Charles, I need to confess within all the movements of what now we have to put on the back label. I was pregnant with you. I never stopped drinking wine and smoking. Well, maybe that explains a couple of things. Who knows? The way it was. When did she admit this to you? Was this recently or— This was 10 years ago when I turned 40. When I turned 50, she acknowledged a lot. more things that I cannot repeat. So tell me about those days. Vujoh, you were— you came here when you were 11. You went to Buena Vista. Well, thank you for asking. So, Thayne was telling you certainly about his background, and he will more about being raised in a great state of America, which I love, one of my favorite states with wonderful people, very similar to me.

9:12 So imagine Vujoh, born in 1969, literally in the leaf of the vineyards of Vujoh. My parents had started the winery in the living room. My bedroom was on top of the winery, as well as my sister, who's 4 years older and a great sister, really very inspirational. And basically, I made wine since birth. I was playing hide and seek in the barrel room. I was like, if your parents have a restaurant, you taste it all, you're on the menu. Yep. You know probably everything about cooking. I was raised there. But what I want to stress Paul, to you, who's very human, extremely great personality, and very turned to others, very altruistic, very similar. 180 people in the village, still the same number today. Phenomenal. You knew everyone. I was born next to the bakery. The baker started to bake at around 3:00 AM. By 6:00 in the morning, you could get a fresh croissant. Oh, wow. You know everyone in the village from the age of 5 years old to Roughly close to 105 years old, because people live long in Burgundy, don't they?

10:20 Well, they drink great wine. Beautiful wines. And that was my life. So raised with my grandparents next door. My grandparents were schoolteachers. And those grandparents that you're referring to very kindly took me to the US when I was 10 and a half. Why? They were resistant in the war, very close to American soldiers. They were obviously there for D-Day. And helped, of course, as much as they could because they had been 5 years in the conflict. Loved America. Unbelievable. And they said to my sister and I, we're going to take you to the US on a 10-day trip. In fact, close to where you are. We did from LA, one of the big missions of Los Angeles, Monterey, all the way to Sonoma. And we came to Buena Vista as the last visit of the trip. We tasted wine, 3 Chardonnays. I touched the building and I said to my sister, this is where we need to come. Isn't that great? And I felt that missionary— Yeah. Ocean.

11:21 Right. My body was vibrating and I'm not exaggerating. The first thing I said to my parents when we came back, I said, one day we— I was 10 and a half. Yeah. We've gotta make wine in America. This is gonna be the place. We tasted wine with calibers of Chassagne-Montrachet, Meursault. Right. Maybe not Meursault, a Corton-Charlemagne or Bâtard-Montrachet or Chevalier-Montrachet, but maybe even Puligny-Montrachet. And those 3 wines we tasted from 3 areas of the Russian River and Carneros as white Chardonnays were amazing and they were magnetic. So that was the beginning. So this is interesting to me because you're born into the industry, you're born in what the greatest, you know, I consider one of the greatest wine regions of the world. Thank you.

12:09 Being what it is and its granularity and its, you know, the monks were, you know, harvesting in the 12th century. they knew what they had. And you come to the New World, so to speak, and you end up in Napa, which is in its early days of winemaking, and you fall in love with their Chardonnay. Yes. And how does— you know, it's like that, a new experience, like an ethereal experience. Ethereal. This is— I got— Well, I fell in love with what America means. I fell in love with you as the people who really constitute and bring the energy to this amazing land. Without you as great people, there's nothing here. nothing, just a landscape. It's not enough. So when you come to America as a foreigner, you magnetize, you energize, you inspire, you excited, you have your level of energy going way up on the Bovis scale to thousands of units. Because of what you perceive being a young village, as a young person in a young village. A great nation where innovation, pioneering, Transcendenting what you know and going for what you don't know, allowing to say you don't know. I come in a place where the French typically are ashamed if they don't know. They don't like to ask questions because they're afraid to be judged. So here it's a nonjudgmental country, or at least was.

13:34 And the feeling— Yeah, if you want to watch the news now, then you're— Yeah. And that's sad to see. But I really believe America is the best place on the planet still today. I really feel America changed my vision of who I am very early on. And I got fortunate, I got to travel and come to this amazing country that is the dream of the world to come to America. Here's how Jacques Lardier put it, 'cause I was actually talking to him and I said, well, we don't have, you know, we don't have foods growing up in Burgundy like you did. You had the wines and the foods that went with it in Bordeaux. and in Tuscany. Those things happen. America doesn't have that. We don't even have indigenous grapes. And he says, yes, but you have the New World. You get to start from scratch and try and experiment and make things happen with what you do have. And I thought, that is a fascinating explanation because I looked at it the other way. I'm like, oh, we're restricted. We don't get that. And you know, Paul, there's something we need to be very proud in the US. And I say we, I'm obviously pretentious thinking that my 3 decades here are really helping, but you've achieved so much in a short period of time. You've done so much to the world in general, not only in wine, because you're helping greatly in wine today. Look, we have a team of 28 winemakers worldwide. Wow. Many you've met.

15:03 Very talented, like Thayne. And today we look as much at American innovation as we do at European innovation. So America what I love pushes it, pushes it to the point that, one, it's not that new. Remember, America has been— you know, humans have been around here. Yeah, that's true. We discovered it recently, but it has so much to offer. And number two, it has that what I refer to as non-judgmental society, which is so important. You go to the UK, to Germany, from who you are to what your family has done, you already are prejudge to what you can, cannot do, how you're perceived.

15:48 In America, it's the opposite. Do you think that's just from the thousands of years of mankind being in those areas and that's just the way it's going to be? Well, I think it's a combination of both. Yeah, I believe the spirit of America, which I never want to see going away, is that sense of always being very Cartesian, meaning raise table. You erase what is on the table or on the canvas, and you're willing to throw the dice and start again from scratch. That is it. Admiring it. I mean, look at today, the sense of— and I have goosebumps telling you that— of entrepreneurship that there is in America, irrelevant of what the world is saying.

16:39 The world always criticizes because the world is always jealous. But America is the leader, is the most powerful economy, is the most exciting place on the planet, has the most diverse geography, group of people, and energy. And I really believe America leads not only by being strong and powerful, but by example, by innovating, by doing. Absolutely. And I would leave you with that thought. The world belongs who are audacious, who want to take risk, and who want to go beyond the establishment or the established status quo, and who are willing to question. And that's what I love in America is you feel, as you get up in the morning, you breathe, and you can do it. Her mother is an immigrant. My father came from Cairo with a degree in pharmacology, got a degree, master's, became a pharmacist, fell in love with wine in 1958 when Quinlan Elizabeth came and Dwight Eisenhower poured her at lunch, not at the state dinner, a '59 or '60 Charles Krug Special Select or Vineyard Select. Wonderful. Nice. And, you know, the first president ever to pour at a state dinner was Johnson after him.

17:55 But the point I'm making is there's a guy named George Mardiki, and he was a chef who came to America. You know the guy, right? Yep. Omar Khayyam is his restaurant. I'm just reading his book. It's a fabulous book. Amazing. That moment that he sees the Statue of Liberty and describes his feeling coming here after what he came from, you get shivers, just like you said. You get shivers because it still stands for that. It still can stand for that. It still is that. I don't know if we're reminded constantly of what it stands for. So you from Egypt originally, one of my favorite country. I've been there 15 times. Car. Car. Well, I've gone all over Egypt. And when you look at this civilization followed by the Greek and then the Romans and et cetera, you have those amazing cycles of 3, 4, 5 centuries. Yes. Where nations are born, they rise, they mature, and eventually they decline. I hope America is still, and I believe it is, on that that great growth swing. Take my home nation, France. Yes. Take the 18th century, which is a time everybody loved France. It was ruling the world. Louis XIV, followed by the XV, really went all around the world, went and helped obviously the independence of the English in America. Of course. Needless to say, we won't forget that. But really where

19:28 innovators in their own way and put France on the map. Today, France is the 7th, 8th, 9th economy of the world, and it's certainly not what it used to be. So I think we need to look at it as a life cycle of soil, of vines, of wines. Well, I think so. Yeah, sure. Why not? And today, America is the place. I'm energized though that I think America has succeeded to go a step beyond, as the Greeks have. I mentioned Socrates, Plato, and many others. America is representing a lifestyle and a way of life, a way of living. Which is still envied.

20:11 Very much so. Throughout the world. Very much so. We can keep it that way. We can't keep it that way. And I think— I'm sure we can if we continue the respected debate as it used to be done in the Greek amphitheater. And hence the amphitheater. It's a circle place where ideas move around. They're not static. And you respect the fact that we may disagree on a topic, we may evolve thanks to a topic, and we may change each other's mind. Because the biggest sign, I think, of intelligence is to know how to change your opinion if you believe you've been wrong. That's absolutely right on.

20:52 It's not very French though, is it? Well, I believe— The Gilets Jaunes, et cetera. And all that. And I believe the right of striking and the right of, without looting, of course, but the right of expressing yourself in the street, like Hyde Park Corner in the UK and others. Right. Yeah, for sure. Self-expression is very important. However, I feel the French often became caught in their own history and became very static and very afraid of any sense of being themselves. And I think the true face of America, it's allowing you to be the self that you ought to be and to become eventually what you dream to evolve into. Well, it sounds like having come here when you're 11 and living the dream to buy Buena Vista when you were old enough and in a position to do that, along with other wineries like Raymond, et cetera. I was telling Thayne that the Raymond brothers used to pour when I used to start, when I started tasting wine in the late '80s. I'd go to the tastings, the Raymond brothers were there, very nice guys. They both stand there together, just like, it was like, you know, fricking frack, you know? Salt of the earth, really. I mean, just amazing people. They were amazing people. Like cornerstones of the valley. The fact that you could evolve that into what you're doing today. And now I wanna discuss a little bit But the

22:23 biodynamic movement, the organic movement, I get it all the time. I get the stuff that tastes like wet, you know, horsehair. It's, you know, and I love the biodynamic idea as well as organic, but some people just aren't doing it right because I don't think you need to suffer the experience of a good glass of wine just because it's organic or biodynamic, right? Right. You should be able to enjoy this. If you're gonna make it in your closet at the dorm, that's organic, is it not? I mean, what else is it? There you go. So, well, how did you come across deciding to do that for your wines and then, embrace it so vividly? Well, I think I'm going to talk about the history and we'll let Stijn— Okay. —to explain how he embraced it because he's more of a scientific young man than I am, having done scientific studies from physics to chemistry. So he comes from a more intellectual engineering background, if you wish. I come from a very simple background in a sense that my grandmother, Paul, at 7 years old, had me, which was great, as well as my parents, do the garden, pour compost that we would create, which was the alchemy of birds, horses, and cow, in order to compensate the nitrogen or potassium level of the soil. Yes. And really bring the energy back to the soil, the life to the soil. So, in other words, what I'm telling you in a long way is I was very lucky to learn the meaning of nature as my best friend, treating like I would want to be treated,

23:54 and really respecting her to the depth of her energy all the way combined with what surrounds the culture you're trying to bring to a site or to terroir. So let me be more specific there. The philosophy of organic is simple. No pesticides, no herbicides. Up to now, it's simple. It's going back to what we used to do pre- World War II. You know, we invented synthetic products, and the French, unfortunately, so many that we became genetically modified and we became, unfortunately, very much synthetic products oriented. The French in the '60s and '70s were crazy, and we would spray everything. It was becoming an 8-to-5 life. So I realized very quickly thanks to my grandmother, who was a schoolteacher and a resistant in the war and an amazing lady, and my grandfather, that the world was much larger than the Earth. In other words, you could think, fit thousands of Earths in Jupiter.

25:02 The sun is 109 times larger than the Earth, and the moon as well is larger than our space. Mm-hmm. So I learned very fast, Paul, that there was a key magnetic interaction between the sun, the moon, and obviously the Earth. When you stay in the United States, you realize the Aztec and the Mayans in the 12th, 14th, 15th century used to live according to the solar and lunar calendar. You go to Asia, and obviously the Chinese today still live according to the lunar calendar. February 6th or 7th is— Yeah. the New Year. So what is so important is Rudolf Steiner put it on paper in 1924. Mm-hmm. Maria Thun exemplified the application of the lunar calendar into an agricultural calendar. But what is key is at 7 years old, 8 years old, 9 years old, 10 years old, I was in the garden, I was in the vineyards.

26:06 I saw what not should be done in the most expensive vineyard in the world, Burgundy. Yes. Because we went into an intensive compaction of the soil, obviously treatment in the vineyards from herbicides to pesticides, which will end up in your glass of water because it penetrates pipes. It goes in everywhere. It's like very cancerous. And finally, I really understood that the rhythm of Mother Nature is not dictated by us. But by the interaction of the lunar solar calendar and the Earth. When you get this, Paul, you get it all. So I was very lucky. I was 11, 12 years old.

26:47 We were cultivating the best gardens of Burgundy. And luckily, my sister and I planted many vineyards together, and we were physically working a lot the vines and the soil. And we cannot— Yeah. Be blind. When you see the results of respecting Mother Nature, working with her in symbiotic relationship with her own rhythm, her own cycle, you embrace her. And I would like to tell you very early on, and I applaud my daughters who are young twins, they love to work barefoot because early on I kept repeating the old Native American saying, take off your shoes and caress the skin of Mother Nature. And I think this says it all. I believe we cannot imagine today witnessing what I'm seeing outside of the window and temperatures which are out of whack, heats which is out of control, weather patterns which are totally dysfunctional, to obviously everything that we're combating because of the excess we've created. That's true. And I would plagiarize the Pope who said it 2 years ago, we are creating our own outcome. And he's right on the fact that we, for so long, have pushed Mother Nature on an extreme level that is not right.

28:15 And you could see us as a winery, 28 wineries, Raymond Vineyards, where we are today, where Thane obviously expresses himself beautifully, as well as 1881. All organic, all biodynamic, the largest estate in Napa Valley. We started 10 years ago. The soil, the life of the vines is the best there is ever made in Napa. Our property is totally solar paneled, water management— Sustainable too. 100%. Wow. We recycle glass, we recycle every single cork that we reblend. We reduce, reuse, and recycle. We are truly— and I could look at myself in the mirror on a daily basis and say, we're doing everything for Mother Nature to preserve what she has granted us to have.

29:07 And I think it's very important, Paul, as you are yourself, you have an incredible palate, you have fabulous judgment, and you know wine inside out. We're not enjoying what we have in our glass because we're great winemakers. It's because we're great stewards. Yeah. steward of the land. Let's be humble for a sec. For sure. 80% of a great wine is made in the vineyard, right? And it's thanks to the soil. It's thanks to everything that is given to that beautiful cluster. Of course, you need fabulous winemakers like Thayne to take it to the next level, no question about it. But without the clear passionate friendship that you have with Mother Nature. Why we are honestly, and I'm gonna say pretentiously, good at what we do.

29:57 I mean, we have 300 wines over 92 points in every single magazine, 300 per year. We have an— That's pretty good, Thayne. It's huge. Excuse me. We have an amazing team, amazing team, and we have amazing vineyards who are cultivated Paul, what you have yourself is great magnetism. You have passion. Why do I want to be with you? Because you're passionate, you're electric, you have radiation that are very positive coming out of you. You love what you do, you know what you do, and you do it with a smile. Thank you. And I say that with all my heart because it's so critical today. And you have a big influence with your great podcast as well as our JCB Live, where we'll gladly as well podcast it too, is we need to be true to where we come from. We are not Martian, we are not aliens. We come from Mother Nature. We are a product of her. We need to be respectful of her. You know, you're very, you're very, I'm not gonna say fortunate.

31:03 One of the most profound comments I hear from wineries all over the world, the wine, the mayor of Montefalco, what's his name? Valentino Valentini. Is that a name for the movies or what? Valentino Valentini. Great name. No, I love Valentino as a person. Yeah, Valentino Valentini, mayor of Montefalco. He makes Sagrantino. It's a gorgeous grape. He makes it biodynamically. And he says, why would I put pesticides? My kids are playing in that vineyard. Just like you're playing, right? Why would I do that? That's right. And then you take the next step of that, and I was talking Piero Incenza, his grandfather started Ornalaya or Sasagaya. And this is what you were talking about. He says, the gravitational pull of the moon alone moves oceans.

31:57 For sure, the ebb and flow. Right. So how would we not consider that when it comes to agriculture? It's a really powerful force, right? Yes. How would we not consider that? Our whole body is 90% water. Right? So, such an important thing. And the fact that you're able to— Well, yours has a little bit of wine with it. Yeah. Yeah. But the fact you're able to create wines that meet the standard of today's point system and all the rest of the stuff that we have to deal with is pretty amazing in that realm. That's amazing. Well, and what is amazing, I'm gonna give you an example of where we are right now. So, you are in the epicenter of the Napa Valley. There's a special philosophy that I've been following because I've been doing pendulum energy since birth. At 7 years old, I was identifying water source, water current. I was really identifying magnetic patterns within the soil.

32:49 So what did we do with the new Raymond? As you know, we bought all the properties around us and we're finishing the road that you probably have seen on Highway 29. Yes. So what did we do? We took the pattern of Leo in the sky, which is a repetition which happens at this time of the year, pre-harvest. So Leo, the alignment of the stars that we gridded from the entrance to the first turnabout. Really? Which represents the moon and then the sun and then the alignment of Napa Valley in relationship to the Vacas Mountain, Maikamas, and Mount Santelina. Phenomenal. And I will explain all that in a few weeks when we unveil the actual measurements of why we've created this. We believe we all here as friends to create additional energy.

33:43 We're here to create vibration. We're here to bring a form of positive energy to all of us. And the whole idea was, as you turn on Highway 29 to Raymond, you embrace the half-moon circle of the entrance wall that would take you into it, you'll have a variety of crystals of significant sizes attracting you to your destination and bringing a certain chakra alignment to your body. And I think it's going to be amazing because I think a winery needs to take you from your roots all the way to your vision, meaning your third eye, and allow all the senses in between to do this. Yes.

34:31 And I'm excited to tell you that— That's going to be really something to watch and see. To watch and see, to watch and feel. feel. And we purposely made the road wide because I know yourself and your lovely wife will stop on the side of the road and you're going to say, I got to see this. What the hell is this? And you got to be like this, opening your hands like the priest at church, and you're going to say, I want to receive the energy I'm feeling. And I think it's very important that we take what I call geomancy, geobiology, and obviously The additional level of what we do here is using the golden rule to advantage, the golden ratio, or the divine proportion. So to do things according to certain measurement, like the Pantheon in Rome, like the Giza Egyptian, obviously, pyramids, like Chichen Itza or Ixmal, all those proportions that are really unique, like the Mona Lisa face is done in a certain way. Yes. Like the Dalí Last Supper is is designed according to the measurement of 1.618033, the Fibonacci repetition. Yes. We even have barrels here in the JCB Phi that we're releasing this week that is right here, as you could see it over there. That is that barrel that is made respecting the divine proportion. The shape is different. Yeah, it's very different. So, Paul,

36:02 I want to lead you to the thinking of something very important, and I think all the listeners need to really digest and take their time to think of it. Sustainability, organic, biodynamic, geomancy, understanding energy or feng shui of a site, orientation and vibration, and the level of what you feel within a certain site. And often you would say heat, It's magical. There's a very high level of energy here besides the table, the orientation, the way we feel, the way we are. And I think it's very important. It's the predisposition of then opening your senses to wine. And all that, I believe, has to be taken into account as a whole because the world is much larger than we think. Yeah. So we just talked about, I think, all the very important phases of what surrounds us and what we need to take into account to create something that is magical. Okay, so you're the only guy that I think is going to get this subject because I've asked this question 1,000 times and it's just a conversation starter, usually. But now we're well into this. You don't get this growing pineapples. You don't get it growing apricots. You don't get it when you make

37:34 plum wine. You don't get it when you make sake. But you get it when you make wines from grapes. Noah landed the ark on Mount Ararat in Armenia, planted grapes, got drunk, and that's the end of the story, right? But what is this ethereal value that makes us want to pursue this, this dream that you're having in this way we're going exaggerate the value of a bottle of wine and the soil it comes from. What's this ethereal thing that allows us to sit down with our friends and our family and make conversation that we can't sell ourselves short on putting an inferior bottle of wine in front of? We must drink— like, it all boils down to life's too short to drink bad wine, right? But this is bigger than that. It's bigger than that. Well, I think we need to ask I'm gonna ask Thayne to serve you this wine. Okay, so let's do that. And I'll start the explanation here.

38:28 Yeah, Thayne, if you could serve our friends these beautiful wines. So I'm gonna start and Thayne obviously continue, 'cause I speak always way too much. But what I wanna say on this question is we are offered a divine, miraculous, gift of gods, whichever god you believe in. You could be Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hinduist, Catholic, Protestant, don't want to know. It's present everywhere. It's a gift of the most noble fruit that is offered to us that transforms itself. Wow.

39:11 Just like a butterfly. So, I believe why wine is so phenomenal and inspirational and allows us to have within us multitudes of thoughts as we drink it because it's a gift of civilization. It's a product of culture. It is art, architecture, design, senses, emotion, personality, identity. It's everything at one. Wine for me is the catalyst of energy. It brings energy within your own self from the sense of observing to the sense of— Right.

39:54 All the senses. Smelling to the sense of touching it with your mouth. These glasses, I have to say, are phenomenal for— The magic to the sense of listening and to the sense of allowing you, thanks to wine, to think, to reflect, to somehow, if you allow it to be, to bring you to another dimension and to inspire you. So— That's it. It's inspiration. It's true inspiration. True inspiration. So, Faye, maybe you wanna complete this, but this is really why I believe wine brings people together. And this is our big message. We're launching a great package, which will be called Unité. Because I don't believe in anything but we are one, irrelevant of our skin color, irrelevant of our religion, irrelevant if we French, American, African, or Chinese, we are all one. So wine is, as you just said, Paul, brings unity. Yes. And brings diversity, brings equality, brings all of us within this unbelievable vessel that is the glass, the expression of all our cultures. And I think it's fabulous because wine eventually can bring peace.

41:16 It's fabulous. It's through the millennial it's done that. They found King Tut with his— we know what the best vintages of his era were because he was obviously buried with, as the king, right? He gets buried with the good stuff, right? It's through Millennial. And this is the part that, that I think the consumer learns or feels when they come here. And now what you're gonna build, they're gonna feel it even more. But our job is to create that feeling, to get that inspiration into the hands of the consumer. It's not with €1 per liter wines that I have to deal with in my industry. It's with quality, Thought-stimulating, inspirational wine, right? And a sense of place, right? A sense of time and place. So what we're having right now, the Spring Mountain Cabernet, the 1981. Oh, Spring Mountain.

42:10 Wine is really about bringing your own creation and sharing it with somebody else. It's unique everywhere that it's made in the world. It has its own markers. It has its own characters, style, flavors, aroma. It has its own energy no matter where it's from. Because this The nose is so complex. And so this whole concept for 1881 really ties in with the whole conversation of place, because we really dive down into Napa Valley and we're 100% Cabernet, somewhat taking the winemaker myself out of it, stepping back a bit and making all these Cabs in the same way.

42:55 And any differences that you pick up are truly that terroir, that place, the soil, the microclimates, really are all this driving that difference in the Cabernet, just perpetuating the story of uniqueness in the valley. The length of this finish is phenomenal. Right? And so Spring Mountain, just on the other side, right behind us right now, Spring Mountain, it's up above the valley floor, 800 feet and up. It gives you that wonderful resinous character that you can even see it, just you see the trees and you see the vineyards up top and that rich mineral-rich soils up there really pour into this glass. And you can taste that place as you taste these wines. And Thain is really demonstrating as well, Paul, what is so important that you alluded to earlier. The world is a fabulous place. Vines can probably go everywhere.

44:00 I had a school teacher on viticulture who used to say, look around Wherever you are in the world, it's most likely vine. Mm-hmm. We just prune it, cultivate it differently. And what Thayne is mentioning here in Napa Valley with 1881 is magic in terms of hilltop, mountaintop. So, in many ways, we could have thought the philosophy in Napa Valley was different. It's just the valley floor and maybe a few little hillsides. But we have, like in the South of France, the amphitheater of wine. Hilltop, or mountaintop, as we love to call it, hillside, and unbelievable valley floor. Yeah. For wine. And you could see here this unbelievable elegance and depth in this wine. Who would've thought that Spring Mountain, which is surrounded, hence the name, with amazing water springs, would be so phenomenal for wine? and you could see the richness, the depth of this amazing wine. The complexity is amazing. Oh. And here's what, here's what, what it's telling me now. I taste a lot of wine, obviously, somewhere north of 100,000, 300 a month. I get a lot of Napa Cabernet. Yeah. And it's sort of almost become, I'm not gonna say generic because it's very special, but there's nothing interesting with some of the things.

45:27 There's no expression. It's the typical, you know, a little bit of cassis, camphor, some good weight, nice balance, and we're done with it. But this is showing so much more with the complexity, the spiciness, the minerality, the length of the finish is phenomenal. And that's what you want. To elevate, to elevate past the ubiquitous, right? To have something that really has its own stamp and flavor to it. And you know, when we think about wine, Paul, in a deep sense. What I had people do specifically from outside of Europe in Burgundy is I had them taste in our vineyard the rocks. I literally had them— Lick the dirt? Well, my chest first.

46:24 But it's amazing when you correlate at Raymond Vineyards where we are here. Yeah. And 1881, we have 16 soil profiles. So, Paul— 16? Just different soils of Napa Valley. So you look at Oakville and then you look at Rutherford, 2 different soil compositions, and you taste it not with someone like you who tastes and is an expert on wine, but with someone who is learning about wine. And you know exactly what I'm gonna say. Wine is made in the soil, in the roots, in the unseen. You taste someone a Spring Mountain soil profile versus St. Helena, Oakville, or Rutherford, and you have them look at the soil.

47:11 And I had probably hundreds of people who look at me deep in the eye and say, I understand. Mm-hmm. So the visual of the correlation of the soil with the taste of the wine allows you to understand the complexity and the diversity and the uniqueness of what wine is about. And I think that's what thing you just talked about, which is so cool. And this is why you're in Napa Valley as well. You know, not Oklahoma, you mean? Well, okay. Oklahoma, the beef is the best, isn't it? Yeah. I'm a huge fan of the cattle. Yes. You know, sales, but it's so cool to be able to show someone You know, I, Paul, I have to do that a lot because I'm obviously from Europe. So a lot of the people, including close friends of mine, think Napa is one dimension, or it's that great wine at $150.

48:07 And when they come here, they're blown away. It's only 47,000 acres of planted vineyards. It's only this, it's only that. And then they start to taste the different AVA. And they say, I cannot believe it. I never thought under such a— such disbelief, there's such diversity. And you come from like the most diverse place in the world when it comes to wine, like across the street. Yes. You know, things change, right? And here we are. And I, so I'm gonna get a little wine geeky, just a little wine geeky. There are some thoughts of saying, well, you know, Highway 29 here kind of separates the 2 alluvial fans coming off both sides of the mountain. And maybe there ought to be an East Rutherford and a West Rutherford and East Oakville and West Oakville.

48:52 As a wine geek guy, you know, just for the people that are listening that wanna know this, is there validity to that? You think that what does— I'll start on this one because I'm the oldest and I come from the oldest place in the world of wine. Right. Again, for sure. So I would like to tell you, Paul, that so many people have asked me, why do you spend so much time in the, in the US? My interest in the US is to create the map of the future. I feel like a pioneer, like the monks of Burgundy that you alluded to from the 11th, 12th century that created the beginning of a map that we kept improving and refining over the last, you know, 1,000 years. Mm-hmm.

49:33 So, I'm excited about what you just asked. I really believe it will get there, and I will encourage it because even though here we have 300-acre estates, with another amazing vineyards across the street and many others all over the place. There's enormous diversity into all our blocks. We could be in Rutherford, in Santa Elena. There's diversity, as you said, East Rutherford, West Rutherford, hillside. Which side of it are you on? The sunset side, on the sunrise side? Should matter. It should matter. It matters immensely, as you said. So I believe I believe we haven't— we've barely started.

50:13 And again, I represent Burgundy all my life. This is where I'm from. I'm a product of Burgundy. Yeah, but you're growing Cabernet. Well, 738 different appellations in Burgundy today, from Lieu-dit to Vignoble Designé. That's right. So you take Burgundy at large, Chablis, Chablis, Côte Chalonnaise, southern Burgundy, Mâconnais, as you said, Côte de Nuits, Côte de Beaune, include Chablis, of course, and Meulemes, which is very old, fabulous area north of Dijon, at the end of the Vix, you know, famous vase that represents the Roman in the 3rd century making wine there. We have a very big diversity. And I believe you're gonna tell me, Jean-Charles, Okay, push it. I'm gonna push it. Clos Vougeot, 140 acres, 82 owners. I venture to say in the Clos Vougeot that I know by heart, I live there, I was born there. I tried so much Clos Vougeot. Yeah. Every producer. I would tell you that within that small, tiny space surrounded by a wall, not to be extra geeky, but I could be even more geeky than that. Well, it's— You would, you would imagine probably probably 15 different styles of wine, really strongly different. Why?

51:37 We used to say that what surrounds the château goes to the Pope, the most important man. That's right. Of course. Number 2 circle goes to the King of France. Of course, you want to please him as well. Clovis. Exactly. And the third remains to the monks who really makes things happen. So They've identified those 3 circles as early as the 16th, 17th century, and we've identified further and further. So I feel your question not only is a very astute one, it's a work in progress. I would like to quote my good friend, Antonio Galloni, that I interviewed on the JCB Live, similar to you. Yes. And he showed us on this live show all the different maps that he's creating, and he shows you how the importance of place is and matters.

52:32 So I believe, Paul, as often, we've done the obvious. We just started. We are on our way, but there's so much more to do. Well, we'd like to be in tow. We'd like to be right there, right behind you, leading the pack, see what's going on. 'Cause I think you're right on with what's happening. We need to educate the consumer. We need to tell 'em these stories. We need them to understand the value of what you're doing. Thank you. And that's the critical thing. And we are so honored to be with you. Well, thank you. And to do things together. And I cannot believe that, you know, all the audience you're building and the great podcasts you're doing and the interest. You are a blessing to the wine world because you, as a great palate and as a great historian, because you love history, you love stories, as a great disciple the Egyptian. That's right. Is where we come from. That's right. Let's not forget that this is really the beginning of time, and this is the importance of time.

53:42 To where we going, we need all of us to bring to people the love of wine. With wine— Cheers. Comes a smile. With wine comes great food. With wine comes great civilization. And I want to toast to yours. Not too long ago, I was in Alexandria. Oh, wow. You know, in that 1,000-hectare incredible vineyard south of Cairo, where the Egyptians have made honey wines to dessert wines to phenomenal wines all along. And I think, Paul, it's very important as we have a cheer, to cheer to civilization, to cheer to history, to cheer to what we've learned, all the way up to where we are today.

54:29 Because without a great past, there's no good present, and there's certainly no great future. And here's to your path because it's inspirational, it's exciting. Can't wait to see the next, the next generation of Jean-Charles Boisset. Thank you so much. Thank you, Paul.