The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast

Thomas Jefferson didn't just like wine — he was consumed by it. He walked the vineyards of Bordeaux, shipped Sauternes to George Washington, advised four presidents on what to pour at state dinners, and kept obsessive records of every single bottle he ever purchased. Over three decades, that total reached 20,000 bottles.

So in 1985, when a German wine dealer named Hardy Rodenstock surfaced with bottles of 18th-century wine etched with the initials "T.J." — allegedly discovered behind a bricked-up wall in a Paris building — the story was irresistible. A 1787 Château Lafite went to auction at Christie's and sold to Malcolm Forbes for $156,000. Still the highest price ever paid for a single bottle of wine.

American billionaire Bill Koch bought four more. Then in 2005, he called Monticello to authenticate them — and everything unraveled.

Jefferson's foundation said the bottles had no place in his meticulous records. Forensics experts examined the etched initials and concluded they'd been made with an electric power tool. A Dremel drill. In the 18th century.

Koch spent over $35 million investigating. He sued Rodenstock — whose real name turned out to be Meinhard Görke — sued Christie's, sued auction houses across two continents. Investigators uncovered a label forger in Germany who had been printing fake provenance labels for Rodenstock for years. Rodenstock refused to appear in an American court. A judge ruled against him in absentia. He never paid a cent.

The front label tells you what they want you to know. The back label tells you everything else.

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Maba designed the bottle immediately after his first winemaker meeting in August — the creative energy was instant. 

The bottle's medallion design was intentional: he wanted it to feel like a collector's coin, something giftable and meaningful

The label tells the story of the Dogon people — an ancient West African cosmology involving beings who traveled to Earth in a whale-like vessel through the ocean. Design philosophy: "striking simplicity" — influenced by his storytelling and film background

 The tasting notes on the website (color, nose, palate, finish) took far longer to write than the visual design — condensing complex ideas into simple, evocative language is the real challenge. Maba references the Blaise Pascal quote about a long letter: "I didn't have time to write a short one" — brevity is the hardest craft. He keeps notebooks everywhere, including bedside, to capture early morning ideas (often 4–5am)

Forrest relates — both he and Maba are early-morning creative thinkers who chase ideas before they disappear. 

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What you’ll learn:

Why restaurant experiences are built on more than just food

How Shared Spirits works from login to drink redemption

Why it’s essentially “Venmo for cocktails”

How drink gifting creates new marketing opportunities for bars and brands

The power of real‑time redemption data

How restaurants can see pending drink credits and market to those customers

How unused drinks can be forwarded to someone else

How brands deploy 100–200 drink campaigns through ambassadors, reps, and influencers

Why this data becomes extremely valuable for suppliers and operators

Key takeaway: Shared Spirits isn’t just a gifting tool — it’s a data‑driven hospitality engine that connects customers, restaurants, and brands in a completely new way.

Guest: Sherman Mohr — Co‑founder of Shared Spirits.

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In 1805, a 27-year-old French widow was handed a struggling wine business, a mountain of debt, and a legal system that said she had no right to run either. Her name was Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin. You know her today as Veuve Clicquot.

What she built in the decades that followed didn't just save a family business — it changed how every bottle of champagne on earth is made.

In this episode of The Back Label, we follow the widow's journey from a stone house in Reims to the Russian Imperial Court — through Napoleon's blockades, a revolutionary invention made from a simple wooden board, and a shipment of 10,550 bottles that beat every competitor to market by weeks.

And then — the full pour. Nearly two hundred years after her death, a group of Finnish scuba divers found something at the bottom of the Baltic Sea that nobody expected. Her champagne. Still good.

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Flying Whale Wine - Maba Ba

The Gold: This wine boasts a beautiful color, with a deep garnet hue. Its complex bouquet reveals ripe fruits, particularly cherry, complemented by subtle notes of vanilla-spiced aromas. Rich and well-structured, this cuvée, with its silky tannins, offers a pleasingly long finish. 60% Grenache Noir | 40% Syrah 

THE ROSE GOLD: This wine boasts a beautiful color, with a deep garnet hue. Its complex bouquet reveals ripe fruits, particularly cherry, complemented by subtle notes of vanilla-spiced aromas. Rich and well-structured, this cuvée, with its silky tannins, offers a pleasingly long finish. 70% Grenache | 30% Syrah

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