Chester Osborn from d’Arenberg sits with Steve Davis at the Duke Of Brunswick, to reflect on the Surrealism that embodies his remarkable Cube filled with Salvador Dali’s melting clocks, exploring how an array of surrealist art, quantum physics theories, and 23 single vineyard shiraz wines challenge our relationship with time, while they taste the Vociferate Dipsomaniac 2010 that evolves like a living thing in the glass.
When a winemaker builds a giant Rubik’s cube in McLaren Vale, fills it with Salvador Dali sculptures and art, and creates wines that pair with songs and poems, you know you’re about to discover something extraordinary. Chester Osborn has constructed what shouldn’t work but absolutely does – a surrealist manifesto planted in the heart of South Australian wine country that would make André Breton proud and the Márek Brothers, those Czech surrealist pioneers who shocked Adelaide in 1948, absolutely delighted.
Our SA Drink of the Week flows directly from the architect of this impossible vision, as Chester pours his Vociferate Dipsomaniac 2010 – a wine that transforms before our very palate, revealing violet gardens and a scattering of spices whilst teaching us that great winemaking is really just the elegant management of faults. Like the Cube itself, this shiraz demonstrates that the most revolutionary act might simply be saying “yes, and” to the impossible.
The Musical Pilgrimage takes an unprecedented turn as we hear both Chester’s stream-of-consciousness theory connecting wine to quantum physics and time dilation, followed by Steve Davis’ original piece called “Folded Clocks” – a meditation on Salvador Dali’s persistence of memory, created in response to his visit to the Cube where he experienced its artistic revelations firsthand.
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Running Sheet: Surrealism In Wine And Life With Chester Osborn
00:00:00 Intro
Introduction
00:01:56 SA Drink Of The Week
The South Australian Drink Of The Week is d’Arenberg‘s 2010 The Vociferate Dipsomaniac, which Steve tastes with winemaker, Chester Osborn at the Duke Of Brunswick, which has a full suite of these intrepid wines.
The name alone suggests Chester Osborn’s approach to wine nomenclature – dreamt up, he cheerfully admits, during morning toilet contemplation whilst reading the dictionary for “really interesting words.” This particular shiraz demands vigorous pursuit because it’s so compelling you’ll vigorously drink it, potentially earning the archaic designation of “dipsomaniac” – an alcoholic, for those unfamiliar with the term’s English parlance.
What unfolds in the glass defies every expectation of a fifteen-year-old wine. Where vintage wines typically announce their age with that slightly pruny, sweaty character, this Vociferate Dipsomaniac reveals itself like a perfectly adjusted doona on a winter’s night – balanced, enveloping, with tannins that recline gently into your tongue like a tired person settling into an armchair. The secret lies in Chester’s philosophy of elegant fault management: picking at relatively low sugar levels to avoid shrivel, eschewing nitrogen fertilisation since the nineties, and using super-light toast French oak that lets the 34-to-56-million-year-old limestone terroir speak its chocolatey, bloody truth.
As the wine breathes – and Chester insists it breathes better in the bottle than in the glass, for complex reasons involving condensation and molecular romance – it evolves from subtle violet gardens to dark chocolate and beyond, revealing why this particular vineyard, nestled beside the d’Arenberg Cube, consistently produces the only wine in their 23 single-vineyard collection that always carries a whisper of violet. After our toast to Queen Adelaide and an hour of conversation, the wine has transformed into something resembling an IMAX cinema experience for the palate – bigger, bolder, more ornate, yet somehow more at home with itself.
00:21:21 Chester Osborn
Chester Osborn has achieved something that should be impossible: he’s built a giant Rubik’s cube in McLaren Vale that functions as both architectural marvel and alternate reality museum, creating a space where Salvador Dali’s melting clocks teach visitors about the fluidity of time while wine ages gracefully in barrels around the sprawling property. The d’Arenberg Cube stands as testament to the “yes, and” principle of improvisational theatre – that beautiful concept of taking an idea and running with it, which Chester has literally fermenting in his cube through careful design.
When Chester woke up in the early hours and abandoned plans for another “fake heritage” homestead in favour of “something iconic, something like the Opera House,” he wasn’t just changing architectural plans – he was embarking on a surrealist manifesto. The Cube doesn’t merely showcase wine; it’s an Alternate Realities Museum where eight parameters of weather transform into real-time sound as you approach, where hundreds of Chester’s sculptures tell stories connecting rocks, flowers and fruit to wine, and where 30-second surreal videos play on loop in a 360-degree room, each one representing a different wine in their collection.
The building itself challenges conventional wisdom at every turn. Engineers, architects and builders all declared various elements impossible, leading to the invention of new glass sealing systems, wind tunnel testing in Melbourne, and the development of facade techniques that won national glass awards. “There is nothing impossible,” Chester declares, channelling his mother’s wisdom that “out of every bit of bad that happens, twice as much good happens.” This philosophy permeates not just the Cube’s construction but his entire approach to winemaking, where managing faults becomes an art form and time dilation theories merge with tannin structure.
What makes the Cube truly revolutionary isn’t just its architectural audacity but how it functions as a catalyst for unexpected conversation. Chester describes watching visitors – including tourism professionals who know each other well – suddenly following tangents, becoming more open to possibility when surrounded by surrealist art. It’s as if Dali’s telephone with a lobster on top starts conversations about what we might be when we’re talking, whether we’re boiling away like lobsters, whether some people really do chew our ears off. The Cube becomes a space where lateral thinking flourishes, where Chester’s Asperger’s brain – storing wine knowledge in imagination rather than automation – finds kindred spirits among visitors ready to embrace the extraordinary in the seemingly ordinary.
Perhaps most remarkably, Chester pairs each of his 85 wines with a specific song and poem, creating a multimedia sensory experience that will be captured in his forthcoming book. For the Vociferate Dipsomaniac, he’s chosen The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm,” paired with his own poem connecting Morrison’s soft voice to wine’s penetrating vigour. It’s this integration of art, music, literature and wine that transforms the Cube from novelty to necessity – a place where South Australians discover that their square metre of earth punches well above its weight, where time becomes malleable as Dali’s clocks, and where saying yes to the impossible becomes the most natural thing in the world.
01:03:20 Musical Pilgrimage
In the Musical Pilgrimage, we listen to Folded Clocks by Steve Davis and his Virtualosos.
The Musical Pilgrimage takes an unprecedented turn with a dual revelation of consciousness and creativity. First, Chester shares his stream-of-consciousness theory recorded whilst driving – a spontaneous exploration of how energetic wines might age slower through quantum mechanics, where tannin tension creates light-speed vibrations that literally slow the aging process. His “Energetic Wines Explained Theory” suggests that great wines contain atoms vibrating near the speed of light, creating time dilation effects that preserve the wine’s essence – a notion that would make Salvador Dali proud with its beautiful impossibility.
Following this quantum leap of imagination, we hear “Folded Clocks” – Steve’s original meditation on time, memory and surrealism created in response to experiencing Dali’s sculptures within the Cube. Using virtual tools to bring his words to musical life, the piece captures that transfixing quality of standing before art that refuses to be easily categorised, where melting timepieces suggest that our rigid relationship with chronology might be the real illusion.
Here’s this week’s preview video
There is no video this week.
SFX: Throughout the podcast we use free SFX from freesfx.co.uk for the harp, the visa stamp, the silent movie music, the stylus, the radio signal SFX, the wine pouring and cork pulling SFX, and the swooshes around Siri.
An AI generated transcript – there will be errors. Check quotes against the actual audio (if you would like to volunteer as an editor, let Steve know)
415 TAS MIX.output
Steve Davis: [00:00:00] Thanks for listening to episode 415 of the Adelaide Show, or perhaps episode 4 1 5 is listening to you. I’m Steve Davis, and in this episode, time Will bend around a cube in McLaren Vale Salvador. Dali’s Clocks will teach us how to live and will discover that the most revolutionary act might be saying yes and to the impossible.
Our South Australian drink of the week flows from burg, where Chester to Osborne has built architecture that shouldn’t work but does. And where wine carries time in its belly from soil to soul.[00:01:00]
We have a rather special essay drink of the week for this episode [00:02:00] because not only am I sipping on something here that I’m really enjoying, um, the man responsible for it is sitting with me. Chester Osborne from D’Arenberg Chester, welcome to Adelaide Show. Hi,
Chester Osborn: Steve. Nice
Steve Davis: to
Chester Osborn: be here.
Steve Davis: Yes, and I, um, I, I, before you arrived, I went through this list of D’Arenberg Wines available here at the Duke of Brunswick, and I chose the Vociferate Dipsomaniac, and I think it’s perfectly matched for me in, uh, body and perhaps in name.
Where did this name come from?
Chester Osborn: Well, um, I used to say that I never came up with a name before. Two o’clock in the morning, always after a, a few drinks. But as I got older, it ended up actually being when I’m sitting on the toilet in the morning. And so I got the body, I got the body. And so I suppose I was still processing it, the alcohol lettuce and, and uh, and, but I, um, and so I read the [00:03:00] dictionary often.
Uh, on the toilet. And when I come up with really interesting words, I just have a whole file of interesting words. And then when I need a new wine name, I go through all of them and I sometimes combine them together. And this wine is so good that, you know, you’ve really gotta vigorously seek it out, you know, and you vigorously drink it.
’cause I’ve got, oh, I wanna taste it again and again and again. So, uh, ate meaning vigorous and it’s so good that you will actually maybe be, uh, have that much of it that you’ve termed an alcoholic. So, DSO maniac is someone who really, uh, can’t, can’t go
Steve Davis: without drinking quite a bit of alcohol. And it’s an archaic term these days.
I’m told the dip mania is not as in common parlance as it used to be, but, or maybe you’d hear it more than I do
Chester Osborn: in England. I heard people were being called Dip sos quite a lot and in my very youth I remember people saying he’s a dip. So, um, but never do I hear it nowadays but dip so short for Dani.
Steve Davis: Yeah. Now just a quick tangent and by the way, we should um, do our formality first ’cause we are drinking [00:04:00] a, a wine and we should taste a toast Our late patron Queen Adelaide. So just a To the queen. To the queen, absolutely. All right. I was gonna say, I love the fact that you’ve embraced that head on with that name, because in many wine and beverage circles, it’s, people are too scared to mention having a few extras or that buzz that you get.
Leonard Cohen was quoted many years ago, he was drinking a really famous French wine and he said, why do I like it? I could go on about all the different things, but really it makes me feel fantastic, and I wish more people would just talk about that aspect.
Chester Osborn: Absolutely. Well, that, that’s what it’s about really.
I mean, uh, why for thousands and thousands of years people have been drinking wine is because it makes you feel great and it tastes great, which makes you feel great. And obviously it stirs conversation. I hopped into quite a few good old burgundies and Bordeaux last night actually, and a group of us went and saw Led Zeppelin or.
Cover, man. Yes. And, [00:05:00] uh, we had to preempt, uh, our, get our attitude in the right space. And so it, it worked out well.
Steve Davis: Wow. Um, now on the palette, I’m just gonna say this, I’m glad I chose this one because this is almost like it’s, we are moving to an era in the world of DNA based medicine where they actually make medicine perfectly just for you.
This wine is made for my palate. It, I, I, I can’t describe it. It goes right across my tongue. With this beautiful, uh, symmetry and just sinks heavily on it and there’s no great cloying sweetness there, but there is a low level buzz of fruit. And then it just seeps in like a beautiful first rain of the season into my palate with a, a smidgen of tannin.
It is so beautifully balanced. It’s like when you get the [00:06:00] duna just right at night. That’s what I’m getting on this. It’s,
Chester Osborn: I’m hot blooded, so I don’t use a duna anyway, but I, I know exactly what you’re talking about. I can tell you why it tastes that way. Yeah. Um, so one of the problems with a lot of wine makers is they like to pick grapes very ripe, and then you get a little bit of shrivel in the vineyard.
A little bit of shrivel in the vineyard will give you quite a lot of texture in the wine that shortens the palate. But you get that thick g loopiness at the, at the beginning part and, and if it’s really over ripe, then you get a lot of it, and it looks quite attractive as a very young wine. But when it’s only a few years old, it sort of turns into sump oil.
I call it sump oil. It’s this. Thick, oily, awful. Not fruity at all. You know, it’s gone past jam. It’s starting to even turn into prunes. Mm-hmm. And it’s a really unattractive thing that finishes with a p pr it and a, and a flabbiness and an oiliness and, and not the vibrance. You can see there’s still a nice acidity.
There is a fine tannin in this. [00:07:00] It’s not your okie tannin. So that’s the other thing. There’s no toasted oak in this at all. So super light toast means that I don’t get that, uh, caramel or, uh, smokiness or dense, chocolatey, um, things of oak, uh, and, and all that. I don’t get all that pla um, so, and timber, because I’m really into really quite low infiltrating oak.
But this is all old French oak. So it’s particularly designed, this is one of our amazing sites, wines. We have 23 single Vineyard Shiraz wines. And, and so this is one of them. And, and, uh, the idea is that you can see the terroir in each of them. They’re all different. So this one is right next to the Daren D’Arenberg cube to the north of the vineyard, uh, and is, uh, limestone.
So it’s a, uh, 34 to 56 million year old limestone. And the limestone always gives you a lot of, um, blocky sort of tannins and, and there’s a lovely chocolate in us also. The is coming into it and, and, and the [00:08:00] red brown earth on the top gives you quite a bit of richness as well, and a and a slightly blood likelike character.
An irony like character, the vineyard right alongside, it’s the same age. This is a vineyard that’s 60 years old. The vineyard right alongside is the same age and is actually on sandstone. Which is only 2.4 million years old, very different, um, stone and the roots are down deep in that. And, uh, it’s only being only 2.4 million years old.
It gives a lot of micronutrients to the vine that that set the limestone can’t ’cause it’s much older, it’s been depleted. So you’re getting boron, zinc, manganese, and all of these, um, uh, micronutrients are influencing the flavors of the grape to give tannins that are much wider. Uh, in character from very fine ts to very lovely, rich, chocolatey ts.
And then it’s got a gray line on top, which also is earthy as well. But anyway, I’m getting sidetracked ’cause we’re really talking about this one here. But, but the trick is, is that it, it’s got real terroir because we’ve kept nitrogen away so we don’t have to get it too ripe ’cause [00:09:00] nitrogen, you know, you’ve gotta get things even riper.
So that you get fruit character, right? But we, we’ve got very low nights not being fertilized since the nineties, and so that we are getting ripe fruit character at actually relatively low sugar levels. So we don’t get any shrivel. So we don’t get the oiliness. Uh, we’re getting real tir. You can really taste the soil that, uh, uh, chocolate and pea from the soil.
So I actually say oak, toasted oak is like fake terroir. It’s like where you’re cheating, where, and, and of course as it ages, oak doesn’t turn into anything. The tannins from oak just turn into oak tannins, you know, whereas, uh, wine tannins, they’re like the, they’re like the time of the wine. It’s, it’s to open up years later and it gradually opens up to open up more fruit and more flavors and more complexity, and so it can be quite tight and closed.
And then that just keeps opening up because of these beautiful tannins in the wine.
Steve Davis: What they do on my palette is that if you’ve ever watched a, an older person or a tide person gently fall back into an armchair, that’s what they. [00:10:00] Do they just sort of, they recline back into your tongue. They’re not trying to draw attention.
In fact, they’re just trying to say, I’ve done my job now, sunshine. Thank you very much.
Chester Osborn: Yep, exactly. Yeah. No, and, and the, the big chunky ones sort of disappear and the very fine ones hang in there the longest. And so the older it gets, the bigger chunky ones, smooth out to the roundness and the very fine ones stay that very late.
As you see this wine airing more and more air you put in it and more we get toward the end of this discussion and then you’ll see it gets more and more peppered and finer, finer tannins and more, uh, open. They’ll open up slowly ’cause it is 15 years old, so it needs time.
Steve Davis: Yes. Now, I did splurge out and get us the 2010 on this one, and yet this, if, if you were to just open this for me, there is no way I would’ve picked this as 2010 because there’s normally a.
Vintage wine profile that I get that you’ve gotta work through. And I don’t always like it.
Chester Osborn: No, I don’t like it at all. That character? No. The pruners, I call it sort of like old wine, [00:11:00] sweaty pruny. Yeah. Awful thought sort of things. That this is not here, this is No, and and there’s, there’s a smidgen because I’m familiar with it.
Steve Davis: Yeah.
Chester Osborn: Okay. But, but it, it’ll blow away quite quickly within sort of 10 or 20 minutes, the more air you put into it. The more will completely disappear. And then of course eventually after hours and hours, it’ll start coming back again because it osis
Steve Davis: scientifically. I hope we get to a second bottle, ’cause I’d like to go back to start again and see what it was like as we, as we get that far.
Um, now was there anything else with this particular Oh, yes. With, I mean, by the way, I just a little footnote. You’ve got 23 single vineyard just shirazes, is that right? That’s right. You are like a Roman Catholic family of, of the wine world. Um, you pair these wines with songs and poems.
Chester Osborn: That’s right. Yeah.
So each wine, all 85 wines that I would make, there is an ideal song that I’ve said that you should listen to when you’re drinking this wine and read the [00:12:00] poem that ties the song to the wine. And so it’s a whole connection. Actually, this is all coming out in a book. So, um, it’s got the design journey of the Darby Cube in there.
It’s got two science fictions and then two a four pages for each wine. So it’s got the art piece that I’ve made mm-hmm. For, that’s in the Danburg cube. So there’s an art piece of sculpture that I’ve made for each wine. Some of ’em, we got three or two. And, uh, and then it talks about how that relates to the wine.
There’s the art piece that we commissioned one of the top cartoonists of Australia to draw caricatures of each of the, so one of them’s in there. Uh, there’s, um, 360 degree video room as well has a 300. There’s a short 32nd video in the Darby cube of each of the label names. So, so there’s a link to that with a little picture of that.
There’s a word puzzle, uh, and the song course you should drink. So it’s when you, when you, when you eventually go to the Darby Cube and we’ve got the book out. Then you’ll have it open on that page and you can really become one in, in the wine with, with my mind really in time.
Steve Davis: And I love it. And do those things happen, those connections [00:13:00] happen post facto, or are they involved as you are making the wine?
When, when does the relevance of, or is it on the toilet? At some, it’s just random. Random point.
Chester Osborn: Anyone think I’m on the toilet a long time? Which my partner wouldn’t actually say that’s possibly true, but, uh, but uh, no. Um, so of course the wine. Comes first, like the vineyard comes, first, tastes the grapes, and go, wow, that’s great.
You know, make it in the winery and go, oh yeah, that’s gotta be one of our amazing sites, Shiraz, that’s extraordinary. You know, it really shows the, and, you know, we’ve gotta bottle that separately. Oh, by the way, there’s only like six or 10 barrels that go to make up these wines. Oh. And then the rest of the barrels go to make the dead arm.
So the dead arms, the collection of all of the ama of these amazing sites, really. Uh, so, uh, not every year we make all 23. There’s usually about 15, you know, depending on the year. ’cause some come and go depending on the year. Just, you know, how, how our seasons change things. Um, but anyway, I am. Yeah. So, um, it, it, the, I don’t come up with a name for the wine until the wine’s [00:14:00] made, and then I have to go, oh shit, I need a name.
And so then go and find
Steve Davis: something and then off you go to the toilet. Once
Chester Osborn: I’ll go to my, my, um, uh, stock of wine names that I’ve got in my, in my phone and, and then, uh, and then of course, oh, now we’ve got to come up with an art piece, and now we’ve gotta come up with a caricature, get someone to paint a caricature and the story and whatever.
So, yeah, it’s just, it all comes afterwards. And why do you do that? Um, I, I love wine. I think that’s really the, the number one. Uh, point of it all. I’ve always wanted to make wine all my life. I blame Len Evans because Len used to come and stay with us. Um, you know, the guru of wine, my father actually helped employ him.
My father was running the wine industry in the sixties for one Brandy Producers Association, and, uh, and he, uh, employed Len in the, in the, uh, well, I think it was, yeah, very early sixties, uh, as a writer over in Sydney. And, and anyway, Len used to come and stay with us. He was, he was quite a bombastic, quite intimidating Welshman.
And [00:15:00] I remember sitting on his knee about seven or eight years old, and uh, he said to me, uh, when you grow up, what sort of wine are you gonna make? I’ve said a yummy one, but I was intimidated. I couldn’t tell him, oh, he says I’m gonna be a wine maker. So I blame him because I went, I better not let him down.
Now it’s said I always wanted to be a wine maker. But yeah, I, I, I make so many wines because, uh, I can and because I get much more enjoyment. I remember exactly what these grapes taste like when I was out in the vineyard before picking them. Each year. I remember it very clear. I remember the weather leading up to this point and everything, and so it, it, I just get really fixated
Steve Davis: on it.
So that’s like us. Uh, I might hear a song, I’m listening to an audio book and I’m walking past some, you know, lilac bushes or whatever when I go past them again. I remember that passage from that book. That’s, I guess that’s how our mind works. That’s how it remembers things.
Chester Osborn: Yeah. Spatially, I think you, um, in wine knowledge.
Well, I think I, um, store all of my wine knowledge in my imagination. [00:16:00] So every time I have a wine, I reference it against all of my imagination there. It’s quite, quite available. It’s quite, you know, up in the top part of your brain instead of right down in your, um, um, uh, hypo al whatever the, the, well you know the thing at the back Yep.
The hippocampus? No, no. That’s at the front of the Oh, that’s at the front. Yeah. Uh, no, the, uh, what’s it called at the back, down the bottom? It’s got 90% of all your neurons and all of your automation all happens from there. Well, mine actually got disturbed when I was born, apparently, or sometime afterwards or whatever.
Anyway, and it doesn’t quite work properly, so, um, um, that’s why I’m Asperger. And so, so Asperger people use. Their main brain on top of their head, which is used for normally, uh, processing and retrieving things. Yeah. Uh, storing things and retrieving, so it goes in waves. When you, when you’re pulling something out, it comes from the back to the front, and when you store, it goes from the front to the back.
And, and, but because of my, my, um, um, cerebellum, the cerebellum at the back is not formed correctly, then all of the automation things have to [00:17:00] happen with. Thought in your main brain, which means you really have to think about things a lot. Uh, it means you can, because, you know, you know, Federer would sit there hitting a tennis ball and it just automatically happens.
Well, I’m hopeless at it because I have to think about it before I can do it. So it’s a bit slower.
Steve Davis: You’ve got like an overloaded ram.
Chester Osborn: It’s like that. Yeah,
Steve Davis: it was just probably many of them in New Zealand.
Chester Osborn: Um, oh yeah, I did actually get into trouble over in New Zealand, uh, uh, last year, uh, telling jokes, uh, on the panel of, amongst the wine trade.
Oh. And we’d done four days of, you know. Two winemakers from New Zealand, two from Australia. And I, um, uh, and the last day we were in Auckland, we were getting pretty familiar with each other, so we were giving each other a hard time. And that day the number of sheep that are in New Zealand and the number of sheep that are in Australia came out.
And there was a lot more in Australia, like, you know, and there’s like 38 million and there’s only like 26 million in New Zealand. But also the same figure, uh, figures came out saying that [00:18:00] New Zealanders are losing people that are coming to Australia, they’re losing their population. And I, I said, well, it’s obvious because there’s more, more sheep over there and they’re all virgins.
Not a person laughed. Not one person laughed. And I said to my agent afterwards when we were leaving, said, do you think I upset them? He said, oh yeah, absolutely. Do you think it’ll affect sales? Oh, absolutely. I thought, oh, that’s not very good, is it? Australians are a little bit different, aren’t we sometimes.
Steve Davis: Um, just for the record, for our New Zealand listeners, I did not smirk Len.
Chester Osborn: Yeah, sorry. New Zealand. Now you’re reading Australia long enough. You probably actually get our
Steve Davis: humor. Look, um, thank you for that, Jane. I was just having, because you said wait for it to blow off a little bit. Um, probably a little bit premature, isn’t it?
To be blown off. What do you think? No,
Chester Osborn: no, I think, I think it’s starting to blow off nicely and, and every time you go back to another port, so don’t, don’t put any more in that glass Okay. Until you finish it. It. Yep. ’cause it’s breathing in the bottle too. And actually the breathing in the bottle sometimes is even better.
And especially [00:19:00] each time you go back to, it’ll be a little bit more breathed and then it’ll breathe a little bit more in your glass and gets better and better that way.
Steve Davis: Um, two things. How can it breathe better in the bottle? ’cause it’s such a small opening that you’ve got there, whereas the glass is quite open.
Chester Osborn: It’s complex, isn’t it? Um, I actually dunno whether anyone even knows why. Um, you know, otherwise, why would you pour it into a decanter and leave it into decanter? Why don’t you just pour it all in the glasses all around, but, but it actually breathes maybe too fast. Like some of the nuances don’t, are are lost when it’s in the glass.
Uh, all the time. Whereas it’s slower probably in the, in the bottle. And, and of course you’re also looking at, um, aromas, uh, you know, above the wine and then maybe higher and higher, and they’re condensing and falling back in and all. I mean, there’s so many complex things that, uh, you know, we could, we could spend a whole, um, segment on it, but probably don’t need
Steve Davis: to look.
We could, but, um, I just wanna throw one more thing in a, first of all, beautiful legs. Might I just say,
Chester Osborn: well, thank you. I’ll [00:20:00] put my pants back on shortly.
Steve Davis: Um, well I did interrupt you mid wine label thinking, um, but tell me if I’m wrong here, but I feel like I’m getting something different now. A bit like a little, um, I’m walking past, there’s some violets, a little hedge of violets have suddenly appeared.
And if I continue with that original. Um, analogy of, of that being on that flat land. I was at the cube for that special event two weeks ago where I got to meet you for the first time, um, at nighttime. And just watching that cube illuminated at night is what this is like, these violets, they’ve sort of appeared and they’re there.
Chester Osborn: I I’m really glad that you found that character because this wine is the one wine out of all of those 23 that always has a little bit of violet. Oh. And it’s the only one that does really have that violet character. They all have a unique character and, and, but this one always has a little bit of violet and it, you know, at 15 years old just show a little bit of violet.
It’s a lovely thing [00:21:00]
Steve Davis: that’s, I want that on a t-shirt. Um, all that’s left to me to say for this segment is the Vociferate Dipsomaniac by Daren D’Arenberg is the South Australian drink of the week. Cheers.
So Chester Osborne, he’s built what is essentially a giant Rubik’s cube in the middle of McLaren Vale, filled it with Salvador Dali’s melting clocks and other works, and making wine that takes years to mature. While the rest of us are frantically checking our phones every 30 seconds. I’m starting to think.
That you, Chester might be having the last laugh about our relationship with [00:22:00] time because you’ve taken this surrealist manifesto, that beautiful description of conventional reality, which that is planted it right in the heart of South Australian wine country and you’ve created something that would make Andre Breon proud and probably leave the Marek Brothers, those Czech surrealist pioneers who shocked Adelaide back in 1948.
Absolutely delighted. And that’s what I want to explore with you in this interview, this surrealism that you’ve brought to our part of the the world. Welcome formally to the Adelaide Show now. Thank you, Steve. Great to be here. Now, it was a couple of weeks ago, I watched you host us at the um, from the Visitor Information Centers from around South Australia at the Cube at nighttime.
It was fantastic. It was like an illuminated beacon. It’s like the bus driver couldn’t drive anywhere else in that night that she had it over there. We went between the different floors of the cube. There was artworks, there were conversations, and in fact, I was with these [00:23:00] people. There was surprising tangents coming out in the conversation.
There was eclectic energy in that room. And I put it down, it’s not just the wine, ’cause wine can often do that. There was more than that. Um, I felt like we were practicing. I, I did a bit of improvised theater back in the day, so yes. And. Is the core process that makes that work is Yes. And that whole concept of taking an idea and running with it, is that something that you ferment in the cube with the way that you’ve designed it and created it?
Chester Osborn: Definitely. When I came up with the idea of this building, um, in uh, early hours of the morning when we were going to build, um, fake old homestead over where DE’s Randa restaurant is, old homestead and we were just going to build on there more old fake or that’s a homestead, but we’re gonna build fake homestead next for our tasting room ’cause it needed to be a lot bigger.
And then I just woke up and [00:24:00] I went, um. Oh no, we need something iconic, something like the Opera House. Something that really speaks of place and, uh, and so our label names is such a puzzle to work out. Wine is such a puzzle to work out, so that’s why I chose the Rubik’s Cube. ’cause you know, it’s the iconic puzzle than it is.
But I’ve put puzzles on the outside instead of colors and it’s, it’s the Daren Boot Cube. It’s a much harder toy to fit to, uh, to do, which we actually sell it as a, a toy too. People can try and solve it, but. It was much more than that. I always wanted the building to be a very unique, um, surreal, um, experience that, um, really excites your senses.
So right from the very beginning when you see the building, even walking up to the building, you can hear the weather. There’s eight parameters of weather being turned into sound as you’re walking up in real time. So this is what the vines are hearing now. You’re hearing it, you know, and they, they’re hearing it as well so they can feel it as well.
Um, as, as the sun comes out, they’ll hear this sound [00:25:00] change. You know, they’ll feel the sun on the leaves and then, and then, and, and you, there’s heap of gnomes there that you can see for our wine. There’s Stephanie the gnome with rose colored glasses, and, and there’s surreal, the whole, the whole art gallery.
I call it the, um. Alternate realities museum. And really that’s every, every floor, but we call the downstairs that area that, but now there’s hundreds of sculptures in there of my own, and there’s four other exhibitions in there as well of great surrealists. Uh, and, and the idea was that we, we just, uh, got your senses so high that when you got to the top floor and you’re, you’re tasting the wine, it actually tastes a lot better than it really is.
’cause your senses are so high and excited. So you buy a lot more. That’s the idea. That’s all it was. It’s all just capitalism. No, I, I did want to, um, I did just want to, um, uh, really, uh, have a place that everyone had to come along to, and everyone had an experience that, that is their own unique experience as well.
’cause people come there at Hub [00:26:00] US 10, they leave at five and they say, I haven’t seen everything. I need to come back again. And, and lots of people have been there six times and they say every time I go there, I find something out. Uh, that I hadn’t seen and, and I’m always adding sculptures anyway, so that’s gonna happen anyway.
But there’s also a room where, on the ceiling, down the downstairs area. There’s my old tasting bench of 20 years ago. I missed it. It’s, and it’s got about a, a tasting of, uh, five different groups of, uh, Shiraz V. So their glasses upside down ’cause all benches upside down. And they’ve got, um, uh, rocks and flowers and fruit in each glass.
’cause that’s what wine is. Rocks, flowers and fruits. It’s soil character and flowers and fruit. And that’s really more or less it is. And so that’s what I’m looking for. And the aromas that I’m looking for in there are all around that room in flags. There’s 40 different flags with like violets or, uh, capskin or, um, you know, chocolate or whatever.
And you can blow these, the, uh, the, the barkhorn on candle bars to smell the, uh. Smell of the aroma and again, get you excited, get [00:27:00] your senses going. And then the right, the next room is the 360 degree video room, which has a 32nd video of each label names. So that then is also getting your mind going. And, and it’s a surreal, it’s all surreal that that artwork that’s in there, it’s, it’s not a, it’s not like a video saying, oh, you know, it tastes like this.
Or, you know, my father’s a great bloke and all that, you know, whatever he is. But you know, that’s another whole thing. But, but, uh, it’s more a feeling and it’s just got a little bit of music and maybe like the one wine we have called the, uh, Aran theme. Uh, Amant thinks the color purple, and it, uh, means everlasting.
It’s a big wine. And, uh, and there’s ants in army tanks going along the ground. Of course, you know, you can’t kill an ant, you turn on an ant, they don’t die. You gotta keep doing it over and over. Imagine an an ant in an army tank. You’re never gonna kill that, eh? So it’s just
Steve Davis: sort of this surreal world. I missed all of those things you just mentioned.
I did not see them on that night. Um, by the way, capsicum, do you want that as a a, a flavor note in wine?
Chester Osborn: Well, all wine, every [00:28:00] wine has faults in it. All of them. Uh, we are just managing faults as wine makers. That’s the whole thing all the time. And a little bit of all of these faults makes the wine complex.
So every wine has volatile acidity. A bad wine has too much volatile acidity, and it tastes like nail polish remover. Uh, and every wine has bread in it. Ses, which is a spoilage yeast. Uh, but you know, we only can smell it at about 450 parts per million. So under that, it’s, you know, you don’t really notice it much.
But, but, so all of these things all add complexity, everything. If the acid’s too high, it’s gonna be too acid. If it’s got sugar left behind, it’s gonna be sweet. And, you know, you don’t want that. So, so we are just managing faults as wine makers. And,
Steve Davis: and you know what, as humans, that’s what we’re doing too.
We’re managing faults. Yeah, we’re, we’re all a collection of faults and we manage them in different ways.
Chester Osborn: And, and of course, um, there’s one, uh, means by which this happens. And that’s through time. Uh, time is the, is the essence. And I know you, you’re a big lover of time. We talked about the clocks there of Dali.[00:29:00]
Yes. Um, yeah. And, uh, and it’s, it’s only by time that, that all of this management happens.
Steve Davis: Wow. I wanna come back to that right now actually. ’cause, um, Dali’s work was there and I, I, I wanna come back to this point. People were having unexpected conversations. I know these people, I, I’ve MCed that conference for a few years now.
I know them. They followed tangents. They were open to that. Do you think there’s something about standing submerged in surrealist art? That shifts the goalposts of, of what is Orthodox or what is the normal pathway of conversation?
Chester Osborn: Yeah, look, there’s absolutely no doubt about it when, uh, data started, data is, you know, and, uh, and with really the, you know, the, the front of of surrealism, it changed the art movement a lot.
And he got a lot of abuse for that, you know, and, and, uh, as in they just thought, [00:30:00] this isn’t art, you know? But of course it, it, it inspired people to talk a lot, you know, looking at a toilet, sitting there, you know, in an art world, you know, it’s just a toilet. But, uh, it had something else on it as well, you know, and Dali, you know, with his phone, with a, with a, um, lobster on the top, you know, like, what’s the lobster doing on a telephone?
And, and so that’s amazing art because you start thinking about, well, what if I had the lobster against my ear? What would it do? Like my bite my ear, and, or are we. Are we like lobsters when we are talking? Are we like, are we just boiling away like a lobster’s red? Have we been boiling our information out?
I mean, and some people, some people chew our ears off on the phone. That’s exactly right. So you can find whatever you want and it just very simple things put together. And that’s what all my art, there’s all these just junk art all put together to tell a story. Um, and most of the time artists don’t tell you why they did the thing they did, but I do in my case, because I want it to relate to the wine.
So it tells the story of the wine, but, but other people will look at it and find something else. And [00:31:00] often when I’ve put a, a piece of art together. I don’t even really know why I did it, you know? And then I, it isn’t there. I just make up a story and, and then later I go back and I look at it and I go, oh, actually I think there’s another story in that.
You know? So, yeah. That’s what’s so good about surrealism.
Steve Davis: Well, it’s interesting ’cause David Lynch is famous. One of the things he said was, people would say, I didn’t understand how this episode in Twin Peaks meant, what, how it ended. What it meant. And he said, I’m never gonna tell you because the moment I tell you, your brain goes right.
I’ve sorted that I can close that file. And he does not want that file closed. Is that you with your art both for yourself and for other people? Well, unfortunately, I tell people about it because
Chester Osborn: every art piece has a QR code, so you can go and listen to me telling you or you can read it. But actually I, I like to think that, um, people won’t take that as the only way.
I think that’s a doorway to actually them now starting to think even more laterally because many people are not that lateral. They don’t wanna be [00:32:00] lateral. There’s people out there who look at my art and go, oh, that’s just a waste of time. You know? I think that’s, most of my employees actually, they just go, oh, that’s just weird.
And, you know, use away with the fairies or something, you know? But, but then there’s people who, who like to be lateral, who look at it and can see a lot in it. But, so if you, if you’re a little bit open and you’d hear the story about what I’ve, why I’ve done that art piece, then you go, wow, yeah, that’s really cool.
And then you see the next piece of art and maybe don’t listen to the story and go, and then you can start thinking like me, and you’re basically becoming my brain gide in my brain, which most of my friends say with the Darren B cube. You know, uh, they, they say, oh, you should have drugs when you go in there.
And then they’ve been there for like, you know, five minutes or two minutes and they go, oh no, you don’t need drugs. No, you’re
Steve Davis: on drugs. Well, you don’t, I mean, there is the saying that the unexamined life is not worth living. I kind of feel like to, to have lived life without, I. Being in front of something that you don’t quite get.
But if you’re open, I, and I don’t wanna be snobbish about it either, because, you [00:33:00] know, fair enough, if someone says it’s a waste of time, it’s a waste of time, so be it. Um, but what I love about it is it just opens possibilities. It’s a, it’s a could rather than a should. Yeah. In life.
Chester Osborn: Yeah, exactly. And that, that is really what art is.
Yeah. Yeah. And, and, uh, I mean, no one’s born with an understanding of art. You know, we’re born with no idea of anything. And so, so it’s only up to your own self as to whether you want to go down that road or not. Yeah.
Steve Davis: Now the cube, it sits in a landscape where time is, well, it’s measured in wine years more than human years, really, when you think about it, that slow, organic, um, pace.
Was that itself some sort of intentional surrealism or did surrealism find you?
Chester Osborn: I’ve always been a big believer in surrealism art and being, you know, crazy. I mean, all my friends over the years always thought I was a little crazy because I’d always, um, find, uh, mix up words. I mean, I spoke [00:34:00] dyslexic anyway.
Okay. And, uh, but, but I would also mix up words when I hear someone say something. ’cause they’ve got long hair, I often can’t hear what they’re saying exactly. And I, and I think they said something else and I’d say it and I’d throw a completely different word in there and change the whole menu. And I say, oh, I thought you said such.
And they, and they go. Oh my God. Where, why are you on? Like, but they think, but it becomes quite funny, you know, when you start changing a word in a sentence and, and it’s suddenly a more surreal, uh, phrase,
Steve Davis: what’s a gateway to creativity? I mean, when you’re stuck you say, okay, well let’s, let’s add an elephant to this
Chester Osborn: now
Steve Davis: what do we come up with?
And the brain’s got a magical way of sort of finding a way to connect things.
Chester Osborn: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it’s amazing. Yeah. It’s, uh,
Steve Davis: now I wanna just come back one more time on this improv, um, juxtaposition of saying yes and to things. Looking at the current world at the moment, it’s pretty bleak to read the [00:35:00] news, do you think?
Without flogging a dead horse, which would be a wonderful piece of art, um, I. Is there something of this surrealist mindset that would help us cope in this time where you’ve got Trump doing what he’s doing over there, Putin doing what he’s doing? You’ve got, um, the Middle East is in turmoil. Is there any salvation to keep us sane that comes.
From a surrealist mindset,
Chester Osborn: uh, I think there’s absolutely no doubt about that. And you know, a lot of, um, history says that, uh, out of out of wars, war zones, artists, um, are people’s relief. Give them relief. There’s a lot of, a lot of proof in that. And, uh, and when I was young, I was quite troubled by the media.
In fact, for two years, I, um, didn’t listen to a commercial radio station, didn’t have a television, didn’t get the newspaper, and just listened to the university show, which was a [00:36:00] very warped sense of the world because it had, well, um, there was a prison show where inmates rang in and asked for a song.
There was the, uh, gay collective, uh, there was, um, uh, the metaphysical show, um, and whatever. So, um, and anyway, I, I just wanted to get away from all the negative in the world. So I did it for two years and then I realized when I was, um, out and talking with people and whatever. They’d say something like, oh, what about the family?
You know, you know, that’s been, and I’d go, what family are you talking about? And I realized that I actually couldn’t communicate with anyone ’cause I don’t have anything to say to anyone. And so I realized that I needed to actually listen to what’s going on and listen to the news and whatever. But I’d al also got over my phobia of, of the negativity.
And so I’d reset myself. But, and it was also a big time of, when I was really practicing transit, did a meditation a lot. And so that was very helpful as well. And, and the gym was getting a lot of use as well. So, so everything was all positive. And, and nowadays, [00:37:00] you know, I don’t have a problem. My partner can’t believe me watching the news all the time and, and any, you know, movies where people get shot and killed and smashed up and whatever.
And I said, it was just a movie. It’s art, you know? And so, but, but I can move. I’ve moved on, I’ve grown up enough to that.
Steve Davis: Well, it’s almost like you can have a foot in and a foot out at the same time to keep that balance.
Chester Osborn: Yeah. You basically, you just separate it in your brain from reality.
Steve Davis: Because if you think about it, the way we’ve evolved.
We, we don’t have the brain capacity to cope with every ounce of tragedy from the whole surface of this planet.
Chester Osborn: That’s exactly true. And, and actually they scientists are suggesting that. Evolution right now is heading toward everyone being Asperger, because where in Asperger you actually get into the detail a lot and, and you can really, you like detail and you go into it in a big way.
And you, so you’re used to processing lots and lots of information all the time. And so, you know, people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and, you know, Bryce Johnson, even Trump, you know, all, all as [00:38:00] aspect of people who, who can just, you know, who process a lot of information don’t, don’t necessarily get it right.
But I can, I’m not, it’s not a political show. This one, let’s leave that alone. Yes. But, uh, but um, yeah, but um, yeah, they say that, uh, that um, the amount of information we have to process, we’ll have to have a brain that can do a lot more than what the normal brain does. Now.
Steve Davis: We can’t look at the reality of what we’ve got and think.
It’s not gonna change. There’s gonna be some sort of change that takes place. Before my next question, I want to talk meta level. I’ve diligently followed your advice, Chester and I finished my glass of wine. Would you mind just pouring some more in, ’cause I’m curious to see if I’ve got an overgrown bed of violets or whether something else has supplanted that.
So
Chester Osborn: have a look at it. Yes, you’ll see. Give it a little bit of s swirl and you’ll notice it’s really freshened up again. Now it’s really breathed in that bottle and it’s now got, oh really? Even you can start to see the crushed ants and the, and the uh, and more pepper of the [00:39:00] Shiraz. And it’s really opened up beautifully, hasn’t it?
Steve Davis: In fact, you know what it’s like I’m watching the same movie, but they’ve shifted me from Cinema One, which is a standard cinema into cinema four, which is an iMac screen on the nose alone. It’s bigger all around.
Chester Osborn: Yep.
Steve Davis: Seriously.
Chester Osborn: Yeah. And the next time you do it, it’s like going to, having a massage, watching a movie, which I did in China with my Chinese guy next to me.
He sees a reclining chair and we’re having this ma, these masseuses ma mass massages while we’re watching Terminator. So relaxing.
Steve Davis: I would’ve chosen perhaps a slightly different movie, but what a great idea.
Chester Osborn: Well, I suppose you must as well fit everything you can in, you know, only in China you can, you can get anything in China.
Steve Davis: Okay. I’m gonna, oh, oh, oh. There’s another elusive profile that just hit my tongue. I’m gonna process that, but I wanna ask you this question. The Marek brothers, um, they brought surrealism to Adelaide in 1948. They scandalized [00:40:00] South Australia when they did that. You’ve crafted the cube, you’ve got Dali and McLaren Vale, and I think pretty much to a person, we’ve welcomed that with joy.
Have we changed to South Australians, do you think? We have a pallet that can cope or do you just attract the people who are like that? What, what do you get? ’cause you would hear all sorts of feedback and um, there could well be some dissenters. I’m not aware of.
Chester Osborn: I hear a lot of people, even the Uber driver last night who’s been there six times, you know, and he’s an Uber driver.
He, he’s also a, um, doing his masters in it, which is quite quirky. But anyway, um, but um, most
Steve Davis: Uber drivers are
Chester Osborn: actually doing a Masters in it. It’s very quite interesting to talk to them. I like it. But, but, um, I think it, it can be both ways. There’s people who just want to go there ’cause it’s art and they love it and they keep going back there.
And then there’s people who go there because, well, they’ve got, you know, nothing to do and they go, oh, that sounds interesting. And they go there and then it starts inspiring them [00:41:00] to get deeper into. Surrealism art and to understanding Dali. ’cause there’s a lot of people who don’t know Salvador Dali, which, you know, to me is obscure because I, I’ve known him for ever since I could, um, look at an art piece I suppose, you know.
Uh, but I traveled the world always. Whenever I sold wine all over the world, I always made time to go to the Contemporary Art Museum. So I’ve sort of seen a lot of, lot of realism art. Why,
Steve Davis: why did you, I’ve gotta ask why you did that. Because I do a fair bit of travel for my work and up until recently I was just blinkered focused on do my work and then turn off recharge batteries, go back to work again.
I kick myself at how much of that extracurricular depth. I’ve just let slip through my fingers. Like time, I can’t claim it back. I can’t waste time thinking about it. What gave you that wherewithal to actually drink deeply from wherever you [00:42:00] were?
Chester Osborn: Well, I think even from the very first time I went somewhere, uh, interstate or overseas and I had spare time and I’m on my own, what do I do?
Well, because I loved, I always made art. Since I was a child. So, uh, and, and surrealism was my, my, my type of art from as a child. So, um, I, I just went, oh, let’s see what contemporary art museums show. And, and I, I actually get a lot of inspiration. I write a lot of notes after being an art gallery, I come up with ideas that I can do.
I’ve got, um, uh, 600 art pieces, uh, that I’ve hypothesized written down on pages. So there’s 35 pages of like one lines, you know, and, and a and a reference to an email date. And the, all the email, all the information’s in the email so I can go back and find it. And, and, uh, so, and I’ve pri pri prioritize them.
I’ll get it right in a minute. And, uh, and then, uh, and so they’re all, um, uh, I’ve got ones that I really wanna do. And then every now and then I’ll come up with a whole new one and that just gets in the [00:43:00] way. And I just do that one, and then, then I have to go back and do the others. Can
Steve Davis: you take an idea out of the deep freezer and defrost it and make it years later?
Chester Osborn: Oh, absolutely. Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. Oh, and, and sometimes better. Um, in fact, often what I do is I’ve got a whole idea and I’m working on that for a while, and I like to actually put it into the deep freeze for a bit, maybe not deep freeze, maybe just the fridge and, and, and then, um, come back to it.
And while I’ve done doing other ones and I go, oh, I can combine these two to tell a much better story and it’s a much more interesting art piece. And, and then I go, oh, that’s that wine now that’s gonna really work for that wine there. You know, so, so yeah, that’s sort of what I end up doing.
Steve Davis: Has any of these art ideas actually given you something to aim for in blending a wine?
Or is that too, we’re getting too abstract at that level? Yeah. No, it follows the other way around, I think
Chester Osborn: with wine. No, the vineyard makes the wine. Yeah.
Steve Davis: Okay.
Chester Osborn: So, um, yeah, [00:44:00] understanding and it takes a long time to understand, um, a vineyard. Uh, you know, you only get one go a year. Imagine, you know, when you have to make some, a complex, um, dish in your, in your, um, home.
Mm-hmm. And, and imagine that the ingredients change every year. So every time you do it, you’ve got a different ingredient. Imagine how many times, you know, you, you’re only gonna get 20 or 30 times if you’ve started like 30 years old. You know, you’re 60 years old, um, and you’ve had 30 goes at that vineyard, basically.
And so, you know, you’ve gotta try and pick it up pretty quickly if you can. And, and, and so, yeah. But, um, that’s why multi-generational families are so useful, be in the wine world because you’re gonna have your offspring coming there. They’re gonna spend their whole life there and, and they, you can pass everything that you’ve learned on.
Whereas in a winery where they’re just employing a wine maker. And he or she works there for five or six years and then goes, oh, I’ve gotta work in a better winery. You know, moves on and then someone else comes in. All that information is lost all the time and it’s gonna [00:45:00] start again each time. And it, it, there’s a, you wine is a very complex thing.
Steve Davis: Do you get to know? Your vines, like it is almost like they’re not so much named, but you, is there, or, or vineyard in particular that you just get to know,
Chester Osborn: you really get to become one with a vine.
Steve Davis: Really. Yeah. You really do. At a vine level or at a vineyard? More of vineyard level.
Chester Osborn: Vine level. What? Yeah. The edges of the vineyard are very different to the middle.
There are different parts of the vineyard. You walk down the row, I walk down the row and I can taste where the soil changes without even seeing the soil change. And, and, and you can see in the, in the vineyard as well, in the vine sometimes as well, you know, so vigor changes sometimes, but, but, um, the, uh, you know, the vine, we talk about the vine being that vine that we see.
Above the ground. Yeah, of
Steve Davis: course.
Chester Osborn: But that’s really just for sex and solar collecting, uh, for energy. That’s all it does. That’s, that’s
Steve Davis: my Tinder profile. By the way.
Chester Osborn: You’re a grapevine
Steve Davis: just for sex. And is
Chester Osborn: that dead arm we’re [00:46:00] talking about that wine that I have. No, anyway. No, that’s a life arm that makes the wine.
Remember, it’s the same with babies anyway. Um, the, but no, it’s all underground. That’s where it all happens. And so a vine or a tree, anything, whatever’s above, it’s about the same size as what’s underneath in the root size and under underground. So plants actually, um, were in the sea a billion years ago.
It took them 500 million years before they could get onto land and live on land. And yet, um, uh, fungi. They got under land a billion years ago and lived here for 500 million years without plants. So plants worked out. The only way they can survive on the land is if they work with fungi in a symbiotic relationship, and that’s what happens.
And so a plant will go in its roots, send out a chemical message and say, I need some magnesium, a fungi that has magnesium. Will come along, go, here’s some magnesium, gimme some sugar. So it’s made the sugar from the leaves, [00:47:00] so it gives him the sugar. So it’s like this symbolic relationship and it gets the magnesium that it needs, uh, or any, any, um, thing that, you know, it needs.
And they, and they communicate that way through chemical messages, under underground. And that’s why it’s very important to have a living, breathing soil that is not sterilized all the time where you’re killing everything and no carbon in it, you know, because you’ll suddenly get a lot less fungi and bacteria and yeast and it becomes a dead zone.
And that’s when the vines start really dying back. And people don’t realize, they think, oh, you know, the vines are 50, 60 years old, they’re buggered, pull ’em out. No, they just have to understand the health of the, of the soil, and they can keep those vines alive for hundreds of years and keep producing great wines and even better wines.
Steve Davis: So fungi is the Uber of the, uh, botanical world.
Chester Osborn: Lots of different Ubers
Steve Davis: down there. That, okay. You’ve just blown my mind. ’cause. You’ve just made me think here I am, Mr. Metropolitan. I’m enjoying Dali, I’m enjoying all this surrealism and I’m walking past with just a surface [00:48:00] level appreciation for the vegetation that makes this drink that I enjoy.
Chester Osborn: Yeah, it’s pretty wild, isn’t it? It’s humbling. And, and now that we’ve got, when I was born there was 320 parts million CO2 in the atmosphere, and now there’s 420 parts million. A vine has got a whole new world it’s in that is now using carbon, of course, to make sugars. Yeah. And, and grow leaves and roots and everything.
It’s got a completely different regime. And you know, it’s, it’s not just temperature that we’re talking about that’s changed the plant’s world.
Steve Davis: This wine just changed on me again. It’s like, um. You know how people live in a house for a number of years, then they put it on the market and so they quickly do a makeover, new, new lick of paint, velvet hanging from the window, or it depends what, how their real estate agents like.
But this has just decked itself out. It’s just become more ornate all the way around. I just,
Chester Osborn: wow. Yeah, you [00:49:00] can see how it’s opening up and you’re getting all those beautiful pepper and fennel and uh, uh, even dark and licorice characters in there too. And still with the violets, it still got the violets all in amongst there.
It was a little bit all the time and, and, uh, and all those, the. Deep base of, uh, Pete and Dark Chocolate, which is Old Vine, which is the geology. That’s the geology and it’s all of these, um, bacteria and yeast and fungi that are influencing the, these, those characters in that wine. That’s where they’re all coming from, from the inter relationship that they’re doing.
And a vine just can’t go and get those minerals out of the soil. It has to use fungi to get it.
Steve Davis: And interesting. I dunno if you ever remember being in this situation of going to a new place or a new school or whatever, and you’re a bit timid and then you start to make some friendships and you relax and open up more.
The tannins, I feel, are feeling a little bit more at home now. I’m actually, they are expand, not, not [00:50:00] heaps, but they’re a little bit more, a little bolder than they were still fairly light tannins, but they’re just settled in at home. They’re, they’re starting to. Make a joke or two.
Chester Osborn: Yeah, yeah. No, that’s a beautiful thing about wine is is it evolving in the glass, you know, and you never decant burgundy.
Burgundy evolves in the glass beautifully, but Barolos always decant, you know, they need that time in the decanter. And we are, we are this wine, it’s sort of like halfway between. Um,
Steve Davis: I’m just, okay, you’ve created this impossible architecture at McLaren Vale. A cube. That shouldn’t work, but it does. It looks good.
Is that actually the essence of, um, surrealism? I. And do you think making the impossible feel inevitable, is that the message that you should strive for the impossible? There’s nothing that should really hold you back or am I putting words into your mouth now?
Chester Osborn: Oh, well, I no, you’re certainly not. You’re the exact opposite.
Actually. I, I don’t believe in impossible. It [00:51:00] doesn’t, it’s not one of my words. Right? There is nothing impossible. If you put your mind to it, you can overcome anything. And my mother was a amazing woman. She was a, a really, very wise person. Um, uh, she was a very good physio. She was day Margo Fontaine’s private physio for two years in the fifties with Rudolph re following around two years, all over Europe.
She was a private physio and preferred physio of the royal family in England for a while too. And so, and she, but she, uh, uh, married my father in McLaren Vale and, you know, became a physio there and had my sister and myself. And uh, but uh, she had this expression, um, that out of every bit of bad, that happens twice as much good happens.
And when you. Live with that. And I’ve always had that as a motto too, then it is really quite surprising that there really isn’t bad. There’s just something different to what you expected. And so, uh, I know it’s gonna, a lot of people are gonna have a problem with that and they’ll say, well, you know, their relative died or whatever, we’re [00:52:00] all gonna die.
You know, it’s gonna happen anyway. And it’s unfortunate. If it’s early, there will be some positive that comes out of that. That is, that would not have happened if, if that didn’t happen. You, you just have to look for it.
Steve Davis: That just reminded me. There’s a beautiful quote by Seth Godin who says that some of us suffer from nostalgia for the future.
You know, we already think this is what’s gonna happen when it doesn’t. It’s, ah, I think we’re just saying the same thing. That’s exactly what
Chester Osborn: I said. So the, here we are. We’ve, we’ve, we are expecting something to happen, you know, uh, there’s a probability line of what everything’s gonna be, okay, and we’re going along that probability line a hundred percent.
But, you know, things don’t go a hundred percent all the time. So we go up on the 98% or the 96, you know, if you go up around 90, it means there’s something really. Knocked you off that, that line, and you’re in this other way altogether. But, you know, sometimes it’s actually quite fun to get right out there and, you know, be 50% and doing, exploring those, uh, those edges.
So I’ve always [00:53:00] got this philosophy that, uh, life is not in the middle. It’s at the edges. That’s where everything’s amazing. So imagine going on a holiday, you sat on the beach for the whole week, you got home. Everyone said, oh, how was your holiday? Oh my God, it was so good. I just, the beach was so beautiful and Yeah, yeah.
You know, what’d you do? Oh, the beach was a beautiful, you know, they, they yawning and then moving on. But, you know, you go away on a holiday and actually the plane had to land on a different airport and you got stuck somewhere for three days and you met these people. You went out for dinner, stayed this accommodation was really quirky, and you got all these stories, and you come home and you go, you feel like you’ve really been on a, on a, on a holiday, on a, on a change.
And, uh, and uh, and, and it’s really entertaining. That’s where life is. It’s at the edges, not in the middle.
Steve Davis: You are dead. Right? My wife and I lived in Napa Valley for a month every year for a few years in a row. ’cause she used to work for treasury wine estate. I’m going to, before you drain that bottle, I’m, we
Chester Osborn: don’t have, have some empty that glass because I’m not gonna empty this one.
Steve Davis: You run a, you’re a hard task master.
Chester Osborn: [00:54:00] Yeah. You, it should go out with me. Well, you know, you shouldn’t really, because my partner.
Steve Davis: No. Um, and one day we were walking on a Friday night into Napa, the town and there was a, a bottle shop there and they were having a sideways wine tasting. Remember that movie Sideways?
It was all about, I think Merlo was the, no, Pinot Noir was their favorite thing. Yeah. Merlo was the one they hated. Yeah, that’s right. And whereas other way around, I think Pinot is overrated. But um, uh, however, uh, we thought, well, let’s go and let’s do this. Let’s try every wine from that movie. And a couple was sitting across from us, locals, we just got chatting.
We fell under the trance, this wine, they said, look, you know what? Come to Kohl’s chop house. It’s our best restaurant here. And you know, we think of Kohl’s as a supermarket. It was the most beautiful French restaurant, French influence restaurant. We became friends, we stayed together, and it was just that happenstance that happens.
And heaven forbid wine was the little connective tissue there. That’s
Chester Osborn: it. Exactly. [00:55:00] That’s why wine has been around for thousands of years and, and you know the difference between Neanderthals and hobo sapiens. NALs were actually stronger and more practical. Uh, uh, they were really quite clever, but they were not social at all.
And so homo sapiens were social. And so we could, um, have others look after our children. We could talk and communicate so we could teach each other. So eventually we did become more intelligent. And, and so that’s why homosapien prevail and that’s what we have. But, but it’s why it’s through wine that enables this a lot of the time.
That, uh, is the catalyst, you know, to go that little bit further than just sitting there without just having a glass of water.
Steve Davis: Now I’m gonna take, I’d love this conversation ’cause I’m gonna take stuff away that’s going to influence me. Um, especially that idea that when something bad happens, you know, there’s, there’s the chance for two positive things to happen.
Not sugarcoated positive, just the ability to create some [00:56:00] new opportunities. They’ll be
Chester Osborn: there, you’ll find them if you think about ’em. Yeah,
Steve Davis: I, I like that, uh, because. Life’s short time is, time is. Well. We’re gonna talk more about time in a moment, but, um, when you were crafting this whole concept of the cube, what constraints did you place upon yourself?
Chester Osborn: Not many. No. I had enough from my father and his brother and sister and my staff. None of staff wanted the building to be like, it is. I mean, they wanted the building. Well, they didn’t think they would ever pay. In fact, one of the board members actually resigned and whatever. He just said, oh, it’s a bad idea.
And, and, uh, but, but, and then the others never wanted the art that’s in there and what all the art that’s everywhere and whatever, sort of been on my own there, you know, really. But that’s all right. They’re just you, it’s just new to them, that whole world, you know? Um. Uh, but it was difficult to get my father and his brother and sister over the line, and I knew it would be ’cause I, I basically at a board meeting, presented them with a model about half a meter high with soldiers in it and, and in a [00:57:00] vineyard, uh, with exactly the building that it is, 22 years ago, I, I, uh, presented it to them and, uh, they thought I was crazy and that it’ll never happen.
Uh, of course. Well, it did happen. They still think I’m crazy actually. They don’t think at all. They’re all dead now, but, right. But, but they did think I was crazy for a while, but, uh, and it has actually worked, actually, so that’s a bit of luck in the end. Um, but, uh, uh, yeah. Um. I, what was the question again now?
Sorry. Well, I,
Steve Davis: I just wanted to know what constraints you worked within yourself. ’cause you don’t strike me as someone who gives in lightly to constraints.
Chester Osborn: Um, I listen to everyone though. Okay. Absolutely. And, and that can influence you. Um, in the right way, or, or you go, no, they’re wrong. You know, it can be both, you know, so, or you can just adjust it slightly.
Um, but, uh, but you know, it, it’s, you’ve gotta put it all in perspective. But, um, the, uh, and, and, um, there are some things that I’ve certainly modified in the building a [00:58:00] little bit, but yeah, you have to read the book when, when my book comes out, okay? The design journey of the Darren Cube, it goes into quite a lot of detail about all the, the problems that I had along the way with people saying, no, you can’t do it.
In fact, the builder, the architect, the engineer all said, no, you can’t, this can’t be done. Lots of things. They said, this can’t be done. And I’d go off and I’d come back and we’d have another meeting the next day and I’d draw a picture of say, look, it can be done. They go, alright, it can be done. It just hasn’t been done before and it’s gonna cost a lot more.
And I said, it’s not gonna cost a lot more. It’s just gonna take more drafting and it’s still made in a factory. It’s still gonna, workshop’s still gonna come out and it’s not gonna cost a lot more. And they went, all right. So anyway, they, they loved the, in the end, you know, the. Engineers loved the p the process and the building and the, and what happened.
You know, I got every, every column, every beam, every tiny little bit of that building, the facade, everything. We won the National Glass Award for it. We had invented a whole new way of ceiling on the, uh, on the facade, all the glass and all the puzzle that had to be a whole new, uh, type of, [00:59:00] uh, glass ceiling system, which had to be sent over to Melbourne to be wind tunnel tested at $50,000 to see that it actually worked and it failed because of the, the silicon was wrong.
But anyway, they just got the silicon right and it was all right. But, but yeah. So it was, it was really quite a, a beautiful journey, but there was a lot of, so read the book sometime.
Steve Davis: Look, I will, uh, especially once I believe Nick’s writing a preface for it.
Chester Osborn: Yeah. Nick Ryan is, is doing a forward, yeah. Yeah.
And, and Anthony Madigan also, they’re both doing a forward for me.
Steve Davis: Yes. Hurry up boys. Um, this can’t be done if that was on a t-shirt. Why would you wear it? Because that seems like a really important thing. I dunno if it’s, is it a stick to hit things with or is it a, uh, a thing to say? No, this is where we’ve just gotta dig deeper.
Chester Osborn: Yeah, yeah. Everything’s possible and, you know, and we, it’s really, you know, we can come back to time because the only reason that time exists, the way we perceive it, is because we’re flesh and blood and we can [01:00:00] only move forward in one direction. And it is in this sort of timeframe that we work in, of course our perspective of time is very different when we’re young to when we’re old.
Because when you’ve been on the planet for five years, uh, a year of your time is 20% of your life. So the holidays take forever in, in the summer, which is great ’cause you love holidays when you’re five. Yes. But when you’re 50 years old, it’s 2% of your life and they, they go very quickly. And I think, you know, when you’re really a hundred years old.
Listening to people talk is actually quite difficult because they’re talking their normal speed and you’re now processing everything, even half again compared to 50. And you go, I just can’t actually talk. They’re talking too fast. You know? And it’s ’cause time is their perception. So, and, and, and it all comes.
It’s all because of how long you’ve been on the planet, and obviously to do with adrenaline and all these other things. I mean, adrenaline is just one of the things we use. It’s hundreds and hundreds of things in there that are influenced by, by, uh, mood and, and character. And obviously wine is part of the ones that helps to make that time work.
Well,
Steve Davis: last question. If [01:01:00] Salvador Dali walked into the cube today, what would surprise him most about how his ideas have landed in South Australia?
Chester Osborn: Well, I don’t know whether it’d be that surprised. I think he’d be honored and I think he’d be happy. And, and, and I think he always knew that he was a, a great, um, artist.
And I mean, I’ve told him, so it was pretty easy. Um, and, you know, he was the one who came up with, uh, doing uh, 350, um, copies of each of his sculptures, or 29 sculptures. And so they were going to be sold. And when they’re all sold, they, that’s it, you know, which was three or four of them outta the 29 have been sold out.
The molds have been broken, and you know, so they’re there to be bought and then they’re gone. But, um. So I think he’d, he’d be honored and a, and, and hopefully he’d like my art. I mean, I think he would, because he’s, you know, mine’s all surreal as well. So, so yeah, it’d be great to meet him
Steve Davis: and, uh, without notice, midnight in Paris, a movie by Woody Allen.
I think it’s the best he’s ever made. [01:02:00] Dali Salvador Dali is one of the characters and it, have you seen that movie?
Chester Osborn: No, I don’t think I have, but I have heard about it before. I keep forgetting to watch it.
Steve Davis: Uh, this would be magnificent. Um, I’d even like to watch it with you. We’ll arrange for masseuses to come and that sounds
Chester Osborn: great.
I can bring the wine.
Steve Davis: Yes. Uh, seriously, please. E even whether, no matter how you feel about this, this movie. Is magnificent and Dali features. I think it’s, I, I, I think it just be a fitting way to drink some wine to,
Chester Osborn: we have. He’d be, um, he’d be honored now that his, um, movie that he did a collaboration Ronald with, you know, in the thirties he did a collaboration with Walt Disney and Walt, when it was done, hated it.
He said, we are a kids, um, uh, company, uh, and uh, and it’s really dark and surreal and I don’t like it and hit it away. And it was like 50 or 60 years later that they, um, that they found it and, and, and, uh, put it out there. So disdain, I think it’s called, [01:03:00] uh, uh, at Destin. And, and it’s really surreal. It’s really fun and it’s all animated and, and we have it playing in the Danburg Cube all the time.
It’s on a loop. Oh, there’s another thing I missed.
Steve Davis: Just, uh, you’re just doing this to make us go back, aren’t you? Of course. Uh, just thank you so much for being part of the Adelaide
Chester Osborn: too, Steve. Always a pleasure to have a chat.
Steve Davis: The musical pilgrimage continues, and this time, uh, we’re gonna play a song. Well, it’s some words that I wrote having experienced your Cube Chester, uh, and, and my, I’m like a moth to a flame with those folded clocks that Salvador Dali painted. There’s sculptures of them in your, um, cube as well. And, uh, the track we’re about to listen to.
I’ve, I’ve used some virtual [01:04:00] tools to bring to life with voice and music. We’re gonna hear that in a moment, but before we get there, you were saying when we had to listen to it earlier, that there was some synchronicity because you pulled over on the side of the road with some ideas that tend to marry these things together.
Chester Osborn: Oh yeah, I, um, I, uh, actually, I don’t think I did pull over the side of the road. I think I was just driving along the road and I was, and it was just recording. I, I said it recording when pulled over, said it recording, and then drove off. Yes. And just spoke out loud. And the phone just recorded, um, my, uh, understanding of wine and time dilation, uh, and uh, and energy basically.
And I, I, I’m not sure, I haven’t got really a title, but Energetic Wines Explained Theory is what I said. Mm-hmm. I don’t know. I, I, I really haven’t, in fact, I haven’t even read it since I wrote it back in March 25th of March. Says, uh, and, uh, and so I, I’ll read it out, see, see whether this means anything.
Steve Davis: And I’ll note that in using these sort of tools in transcribing, [01:05:00] there might be some typos in there yet
Chester Osborn: we Yeah.
You know what? Yeah. Um, series like or whoever it is who’s copying it here? I dunno. Okay, here we go. Which mouse is in there? What we see in an object is a result of layering of quantum interference patterns. Okay. How light is interfered to give the object mass, just like complex wave slot experiments give rise to many different patterns and I’m getting pretty deep.
I’m sorry about that. Mm-hmm. Um, the universe itself is a result of in finite reflection of event horizons. Wow. So, yeah. Okay. So now time dilation is where something moving at the speed of light doesn’t age.
Steve Davis: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Chester Osborn: Imagine you are, uh, giving a speech in a big amphitheater and someone at the back of the, uh, on the left of the back corner moves at the speed of light to the back right [01:06:00] corner during that time period, they haven’t aged as they left that back corner.
Um, they looked at the clock on the wall as they moved at the speed of light. The light waves from the clock would never reach them. Of course that’s ’cause they moving be light. So they’re looking back at the clock where they left from and, and, and which would be fixed. Yeah. In their perspective. ’cause the light is moving the same speed of them.
Yeah, it’s always the same time. So they don’t age. Um, the light waves from the clock would never reach them and therefore, uh, not change the time. But for us, we have aged a bit, a little bit because we’ve watched ’em do it, but we’ve actually aged in the clock. You can look back at the clock and it has actually changed.
Uh, let’s, um, relate light waves to sound waves. When a train is coming towards you at, uh, a right angle, you’re, you’re on right angles, you’re bit away from the track. You, you, you can hear it obviously coming along and it’s making a noise, you know, [01:07:00] uh, and, and the sound waves are compressed, um, with quite a short distance between the waves ’cause it’s coming toward you.
So the, the, the short, so the sound is, is high, and then as it goes past, the sound goes low. Uh, of course. Uh, ’cause the waves have moved apart. So, so sound waves and light waves really working in exactly the same way, is, is what I’m trying to say here. Um, uh, uh, I just go, I actually didn’t bother reading it.
I just decided to explain if, if the train is moving at the speed of sound. The waves would elongate such that there would be no sound as the waves would never reach us. Yes. So it’s the same with light?
Steve Davis: Yes. Okay. It’s a sound version of what we just experienced with light. Yeah. Go on. Exactly.
Chester Osborn: Uh, so photograph of me moving at the speed of light, you’ll never see me.
Some scientist say that when you explore atoms, the smallest [01:08:00] particles are just pure waves of energy. This is quite pertinent right now. A lot of people talk about this, uh, they’re called waves of light effectively. So if the vibrating waves are moving at the speed of light, does that mean that the cell does not age?
If the vibration, if the, within that little cell, that moving so fast, it doesn’t age. Um, is that why some humans age fast and some humans age slow? I don’t know. Just an idea. Mm-hmm. Um, particularly people not thinking people do more thought provoking jobs live longer than those in basic jobs. I mean, we all know that that’s a proven fact.
What if an energetic wine, and we often talk about wine, having energy, like the tannins are tight and whatever, uh, anyway, what if an energetic wine has light energy waves vibrating near the speed of light? Does that mean the wine ages slower? Um, so it is the tension between the tannins and [01:09:00] the rest of the molecular makeup of the wine that makes these waves vibrate so fast that the wine does not age.
That’s my idea. If the definition of great wine holds true, that the greatest wine is the one that ages the longest, then the one with the most energy is the wine where the atoms are vibrating the fastest and therefore aging the most gracefully.
Steve Davis: Wow. This is okay. On the way to the conference IM cd, which got me to the cube, I accidentally listened to a podcast that talked about quantum mechanics and quantum physics.
It blew my mind to pieces.
Chester Osborn: Quantum entanglement.
Steve Davis: Yes. Isn’t
Chester Osborn: that, that’s the thing. Yeah.
Steve Davis: And all the multiverse, potentialities just, I almost drove off the road. I, my brain was thickly absorbed in
Chester Osborn: this read my science fiction that I’ve written where, um, I describe how we have souls from the Big Bang, they’re created during the Big Bang, and that we are [01:10:00] emitting them all the time.
The, uh, each of our cells is vibrating and giving off a wave that’s oscillating at 20 trillion times a second. This is my idea. It’s it’s science fiction. And, and an egg gets fertilized by a sperm and before it can start dividing, it has to hit, get hit by one of these waves to make it vibrate, to start actually vibrating, to start dividing.
And then that’s the energy it has all the time. That’s the soul it has. And it’s not just a normal, uh, soul, uh, uh, sine wave that is. Purely smooth. It has lots of barbs on it, which is what it gets collected by, you know, like, whereas full enlightenment would just be perfectly smooth and never get picked up ’cause it needs the barbs to be picked up.
But anyway, in my book, these appliances end up with souls. I’m gonna make a short version of this, and they’d rule the life of this winemaker. And they appliances, uh, only zeros and ones there. And so therefore, they’re not constrained by time they can move down every probability line they want. So they end up ruling the world.
And this court cases, there’s murder, the sex, and, and they make the most unbelievable grenache. They help them make the winemaker make this unbelievable grenache. And that’s what the, [01:11:00] the book’s called is the Unbelievable Grenache.
Steve Davis: I I, okay. Uh, do we have to drink Grenache while we listen while we read the book?
Best Idea. Best Idea. It will, it’ll make you wanna drink Grenache when you read the book. Anyway. I really hope that happens because I’m not the biggest fan because I love heaviness.
Chester Osborn: Oh, well I, you, you, you’ll be a convert when I show you some amazing Grenache. Really? Absolutely. I’m open to that. Cool.
Steve Davis: Alright. Um, Chester, that is mind blowing. This is the most mind blowing musical pilgrimage segment we’ve ever had because you’ve just given us your stream of consciousness. We’re about to listen to mine. This is called folded clocks. It’s inspired by Salvador Dali’s, variations of folded clocks, which I saw and absorbed and was transfixed by at the cube.
Let’s have a listen.[01:12:00] [01:13:00] [01:14:00] [01:15:00] [01:16:00] [01:17:00] [01:18:00]
Okay. Thank you for enduring that, Justin.
Chester Osborn: Great. All fun.
Steve Davis: Um, thank you very much for being part of the Adelaide Show. I’m
Chester Osborn: glad that I could read it and make sense of it. Ish. Ish,
Steve Davis: I think ish is the theme.
Chester Osborn: That’s right. Throughout
Steve Davis: this whole episode. Um, thank you very much. You’ve, you’ve baited the hook to go back to the cube again and again.
No. Cool. Uh, really? Bravo. Thank you for bringing what you do to the work there. One last bit, we should finish it. There’s
Chester Osborn: a little bit left here.
Steve Davis: I know that there’s a splash in my glass. I’ve broken a rule.
Chester Osborn: It wasn’t much. It’s alright. There
Steve Davis: wasn’t much. So actually just before we sign off, I want to have one last taste.
Chester Osborn: I better tell you the song that I selected for this. Oh, please do. The only problem is [01:19:00] it’s gonna take a little bit of time to find it because, um, uh, well,
Steve Davis: let me just, um, while you’re doing that, I just, there was something elusive that I was picking up in this wine, by the way. Even, I don’t think you just tune in the middle of a podcast, but this is the Vociferate Dipsomaniac that we’re drinking, uh, from D’Arenberg.
And this is about an hour and a half in, hang on, it’s lighter or round. Do you know when they have in some big events that young people go to, they have a big tar hall and, and they’ve got people all around the outside. And someone sits in the middle and everyone around the outside lifts up this tarpole and lets them sort of fly into the air and come down again.
This is what’s happening in my palette with this wine Chester. It’s, it’s really transformed. I know we talk about that happening with wine, but this is happening in real time.
Chester Osborn: How beautiful is it now? It’s so bright, isn’t it? So much pepper, so much beautiful fennel flavors and, and licorice and, and, and all these [01:20:00] beautiful edges of spice, herbs and whatever.
So the song that I selected for, uh, that you should listen to when you drink this wine is The Doors Writers on the Storm,
Steve Davis: one of my favorite songs of all time.
Chester Osborn: Isn’t it amazing? And this is the poem that I’ve written that ties the, the song to the Wine Morrison’s so Soft. The last song doth bring just a very faint sing, yet the message is strong as murderers abound.
In a world unfound like the Storm of hope, with ceno sil phobic, we cope as the next glass is poured with penetrating vigor. We can only applaud what great vine dos bringeth. Now it, it’s a bit deep. They all are. Uh, they’re supposed
Steve Davis: to be read mos lots of times when we leave the Duke, duke of Brunswick. I will listen to that.
Uh, I think it’s a beautiful song to have chosen. [01:21:00] I think it’s got the depth that beautiful. It starts with writers of the time. Now we can’t do all that ’cause of the copyright. Well, don’t sound
Chester Osborn: good.
Steve Davis: Yeah, I can’t wait for that. Um, do you know what I just got on my palette? This might shock you. Irish moss.
Oh yeah. Beautiful. I just got a little trace of Irish moss. Yeah.
Chester Osborn: There’s always a mintiness in beautiful wine. You know, there always should be a slight mintiness of some form of herbal, you know? Great. Um, uh, Shiraz has to have it. Great. Cabernet always has to have some leakiness, you know, that’s what you really pick it by that, you know, but, uh, but, and, and should have often eucalyptic
Steve Davis: type of leafs often.
Yeah, it can be. Yeah, you can be, yeah.
Chester Osborn: So, yeah. And you know, capskin sometimes, you know, in Cabernet, you know, or, but, um, but, um, I, I love the Shiraz, isn’t it? Yeah. This is for us, but, but it all, all wine needs to have some amount of leakiness or of mintiness or of something like that to be great. It’s, [01:22:00] it’s, it just gives that extra lift to the fruit.
Otherwise it’s just raw fruit. It has to have the leafy edge to be that extra lifted, flowery, uh, leaf area and leaf length.
Steve Davis: Well, someone wise did say to me that rock, uh, fruit and flour are the three components of wine. Any idea who that was?
Chester Osborn: Yeah, me. There’re in the cube, everywhere. That’s all there is.
The soil, the fruit, and the flour. That’s all you need.
Steve Davis: I look forward to going there and tooting your horn sometime. Cheers. Thank you very much, Chester again. Until next time, it’s goodnight from me. And goodnight Don.
Chester Osborn: Goodnight Don and Steve. Cheers and everyone.