Latest / Dos Amigos / “Mixology 101 with Bartender Josh Suchan”
Transcript
- 0:10Speaker 1: I wanted to start by pointing out that you're wearing
- 0:12Speaker 1: some really clean temps.
- 0:14Speaker 2: Oh, thank you very much.
- 0:16Speaker 1: Yeah, these teams are the right amount of urban.
- 0:20Speaker 3: Ah. Yeah yeah.
- 0:22Speaker 2: The last show I did, I wore a suit, but
- 0:24Speaker 2: I used to wear tims whenever you wouldn't see my
- 0:27Speaker 2: feet on screen.
- 0:30Speaker 1: I don't know how to do it, bro, I can't
- 0:32Speaker 1: do this long term.
- 0:33Speaker 4: Bro.
- 0:34Speaker 1: Those are heavy, and they're like, they don't even ban Bro.
- 0:37Speaker 2: You know, growing up in Chicago and having these since
- 0:40Speaker 2: I was in high.
- 0:41Speaker 3: School, you just get used to them.
- 0:43Speaker 2: If he gets used to my wife. You know, my
- 0:45Speaker 2: wife says you still dress exactly like you did in
- 0:48Speaker 2: high school. And I was like, what are you talking about?
- 0:52Speaker 2: And then all of a sudden, I'm getting Damn, she's right.
- 0:55Speaker 1: You have different color. I have a pair of brown.
- 0:57Speaker 2: And but but the classic Yeah.
- 1:00Speaker 1: But I mean there's like every cut, yeah, every color. Now,
- 1:03Speaker 1: were you ever a Tim guy? I gave it a shot. Yeah,
- 1:06Speaker 1: but people thought I was false advertising, So why I
- 1:11Speaker 1: don't know. I went back to Ali Davins and you know,
- 1:13Speaker 1: biker boots and uh and Lee jeans and uh.
- 1:16Speaker 2: So if you're from Venezuela, you're not allowed to have
- 1:18Speaker 2: tims on.
- 1:19Speaker 1: I just don't. I don't think that at the time
- 1:21Speaker 1: that I grew up there they had ever made the
- 1:23Speaker 1: cross around the pond, you know. Yeah, But but I
- 1:27Speaker 1: love the tims. It's I do have tims right now,
- 1:29Speaker 1: you know. So whenever I feel a little hip hop, Yeah,
- 1:32Speaker 1: little hipp a little hip hop, I put my tims on.
- 1:35Speaker 1: What are we zipping on right now?
- 1:37Speaker 3: Littlecito here?
- 1:39Speaker 1: And that might change, Salud, that might change. I want
- 1:42Speaker 1: to welcome everybody to those amigos. I am Wilmer Valderrama.
- 1:45Speaker 3: I am Freddie Rodriguez.
- 1:47Speaker 1: And uh, today we have an interesting episode as we
- 1:50Speaker 1: get into topical things, you know. You know, for us Latinos,
- 1:54Speaker 1: we like celebrating life, you know, and when it comes
- 1:56Speaker 1: to celebrating life, we get quite a run at it.
- 1:59Speaker 1: We get a lot of a lot of moments to
- 2:01Speaker 1: celebrate life and living and and you know, and what
- 2:04Speaker 1: we love about life. Were you Were you someone that
- 2:07Speaker 1: did you go out a lot when you were young?
- 2:09Speaker 2: You know, had I had children at a very early age,
- 2:12Speaker 2: so maybe not as much as a lot of the
- 2:15Speaker 2: people from our generation did, but you know, I went
- 2:17Speaker 2: out here and there.
- 2:18Speaker 1: Oh yeah, when I first, you made me out a
- 2:19Speaker 1: few times I did. This is a great opportunity to
- 2:24Speaker 1: introduce my friend Josh, so you can.
- 2:27Speaker 3: Josh was good.
- 2:28Speaker 1: Josh, Josh. Everything is good when Josh is in the building,
- 2:33Speaker 1: It really is good. Josh has been someone who had
- 2:36Speaker 1: taught me so much about about liquored and about drinks
- 2:40Speaker 1: and appreciating the craftsmanship of drinks. You know, at the beginning,
- 2:43Speaker 1: when we started, you know, our celebrating life careers, we
- 2:49Speaker 1: technically didn't really you know, whatever it was we were drinking,
- 2:52Speaker 1: you know, and yes, you know, it was what it was.
- 2:55Speaker 1: But but as I got older, I started realizing the craftsmanship,
- 2:59Speaker 1: the history, you know, the legacy of of of of
- 3:01Speaker 1: these alcohols, and and the history it was attached to.
- 3:05Speaker 2: You know.
- 3:05Speaker 1: So when I met Josh, you know, Josh actually came
- 3:08Speaker 1: and did a whole whole class, like a like a
- 3:12Speaker 1: drink making class, mixologist class for for my for my
- 3:16Speaker 1: lady's birthday one year, and it was the best experience.
- 3:20Speaker 1: He's incredible. So you know, he's a curator of of
- 3:23Speaker 1: incredible restaurants and hotels, and you know, the guy makes
- 3:28Speaker 1: the most delicious drinks for you know, all the bars
- 3:31Speaker 1: and and all that. So I you know, not only
- 3:33Speaker 1: he's a dear friend of us, but he's helped me
- 3:35Speaker 1: celebrate so many special moments of my life. So he
- 3:38Speaker 1: will be our third amigo in this episode. Josh, Josh, Hey, Josh. Question,
- 3:45Speaker 1: So tell us a little bit about your your passion
- 3:47Speaker 1: and like what what you know what led you to
- 3:49Speaker 1: your company? And tell us a little bit of your
- 3:51Speaker 1: about your company too.
- 3:52Speaker 3: Well.
- 3:52Speaker 4: You know, my background academically is an architecture and design,
- 3:56Speaker 4: So I started bartending during college to help pay for it,
- 3:58Speaker 4: and it was all nightclub stuff, which was a blast.
- 4:00Speaker 4: We're talking about previous life, nightclub stuff.
- 4:04Speaker 5: And then when I.
- 4:05Speaker 4: Graduated, it was that recession, the financial crisis of two
- 4:08Speaker 4: thousand and eight nine, so no architecture going on.
- 4:12Speaker 5: So I just continued bartending and eventually kind of found
- 4:15Speaker 5: my way.
- 4:15Speaker 4: To the more craftier sider mixology or whatever you want
- 4:17Speaker 4: to call it these days, and from there all the
- 4:20Speaker 4: creative wheels just started spinning again. You know, you have context,
- 4:23Speaker 4: you have history, you have culture, you have all this
- 4:25Speaker 4: kind of stuff all combined. It's just that now my
- 4:28Speaker 4: platform is in a glass in a space, kind of
- 4:31Speaker 4: curating that kind of experience versus you know, kind of
- 4:36Speaker 4: creating a space in architecture. So it was an interesting transition.
- 4:41Speaker 4: I wouldn't say it was like the smoothest initially, but
- 4:44Speaker 4: once I kind of got into the feel of it
- 4:46Speaker 4: and the rhythm, now it's like the back of my hand,
- 4:49Speaker 4: and I love it like I'm an everyday learner, and
- 4:53Speaker 4: I just like coming up with stuff that is, you know,
- 4:56Speaker 4: it's all historically amazingly relevant, but also fun and trendy
- 5:00Speaker 4: and knew and exciting for new people.
- 5:02Speaker 2: What inspires those drinks, Josh, it can come from anything,
- 5:05Speaker 2: I guess, you know, any experience that you have, or
- 5:08Speaker 2: maybe there's an interesting like flavor affinity that I haven't
- 5:10Speaker 2: thought of before.
- 5:12Speaker 5: Maybe it's.
- 5:14Speaker 4: Traveling is huge, you know, anytime I'm traveling and checking
- 5:18Speaker 4: out new cultures and what they're working with.
- 5:21Speaker 2: When was the last time you were somewhere that inspired
- 5:23Speaker 2: a drink?
- 5:23Speaker 4: Greece probably, Yeah, Greece playing with a lot of they
- 5:29Speaker 4: had passion fruit everywhere.
- 5:31Speaker 5: What it was almost like.
- 5:32Speaker 4: That season or that year, but they had passion fruit everywhere.
- 5:35Speaker 4: And that's an ingredient that I love but never really
- 5:38Speaker 4: like dove into that much.
- 5:39Speaker 5: And so it was one of those things.
- 5:40Speaker 4: When I came back, I was like, I'm going to
- 5:41Speaker 4: deep dive into passion fruits. So I'm starting to clarify
- 5:44Speaker 4: and carbonate it and you know, even distilling it whatever
- 5:47Speaker 4: it is to kind of like turn it into something
- 5:49Speaker 4: that is different.
- 5:51Speaker 5: Different.
- 5:51Speaker 1: So you really so you really say you grab an
- 5:54Speaker 1: ingredient and you evolved that ingredient to serve as a
- 5:57Speaker 1: number of objectives for your creations. Is that how you're like,
- 6:01Speaker 1: You're just you play with this ingredient.
- 6:03Speaker 5: And that's what you wanted to do.
- 6:04Speaker 4: If I sink my teeth into something like that, like
- 6:06Speaker 4: I will just dissect it until there's nothing left to
- 6:09Speaker 4: take apart, you know. And so it's one of those
- 6:11Speaker 4: things that like, uh, sometimes I like to keep it classic,
- 6:14Speaker 4: tried and true and just let it be what it is,
- 6:16Speaker 4: and sometimes like, well what can it be?
- 6:18Speaker 5: Just let your imagination run wild? Yeah?
- 6:21Speaker 1: Yeah, So I mean and listen, I'm a I'm a believer.
- 6:25Speaker 1: Josh comes in and he preaches that that a little
- 6:28Speaker 1: bit of that, a little bit of this, you know,
- 6:30Speaker 1: smoky this, and yeah, garment that you're like, all of
- 6:33Speaker 1: a sudden, it's like wow, it's effortless, but it took
- 6:36Speaker 1: me to a different dimension. Yeah.
- 6:39Speaker 2: No, I love sort of the artistic angle that you
- 6:42Speaker 2: have on for sure. Yeah, instead of like an average
- 6:45Speaker 2: and there's nothing wrong with it, like an average bartender.
- 6:47Speaker 3: I mean, you take it to a next level.
- 6:50Speaker 4: And I think that's what's cool about the industry, you know,
- 6:52Speaker 4: like you can take it as far as you want to.
- 6:54Speaker 4: Maybe that's with every industry, but especially a creative industry.
- 6:56Speaker 4: You know, as a bartender, you can pour shots and
- 6:59Speaker 4: beer and be be the rest of your life.
- 7:00Speaker 5: And that's totally fine.
- 7:02Speaker 4: Or you can take it to the nth degree and
- 7:03Speaker 4: all of a sudden you find yourself doing the consulting
- 7:06Speaker 4: for bars and restaurants and resorts.
- 7:08Speaker 5: And stuff like that or whatever it is. So it
- 7:11Speaker 5: really is endless.
- 7:12Speaker 1: It's so interesting, so to great that it's interesting because
- 7:15Speaker 1: when you go to a restaurant or a resort, or
- 7:18Speaker 1: you go to a hotel in the city, or you
- 7:20Speaker 1: go to a boutique you know, speak easy and you
- 7:22Speaker 1: go to the bar and you have a menu. Right,
- 7:25Speaker 1: somebody had to be the scientist behind this hero menu.
- 7:29Speaker 1: We never think about it because they're like, you know,
- 7:31Speaker 1: it's like, okay, this is this is it feels like
- 7:34Speaker 1: a like a martine but with a spin, you know,
- 7:36Speaker 1: and you start thinking about who is this individual who
- 7:39Speaker 1: comes in here and who's tried so many different types
- 7:43Speaker 1: of ingredients and then different configurations to kind of achieve
- 7:47Speaker 1: what the you know, the taste maker that's that's creating
- 7:51Speaker 1: the environment for that bar. You know that that individual
- 7:55Speaker 1: who's saying this bar needs to feel a little bit
- 7:59Speaker 1: smokey us, a little bit of this, and then he
- 8:01Speaker 1: has to translate all the ingredients, the decor, you know,
- 8:05Speaker 1: the music that's played there, and translated into an experience
- 8:10Speaker 1: on that glass. I mean, did I know that?
- 8:12Speaker 5: Or you're not wrong at all.
- 8:14Speaker 4: It's basically a piece that becomes more than the some
- 8:16Speaker 4: of his parts when it's all put together.
- 8:18Speaker 5: You know, it's it's it is.
- 8:19Speaker 4: Oftentimes the beverage program or the cocktail program, whatever it is,
- 8:23Speaker 4: can be overlooked and you know, people either feel it
- 8:26Speaker 4: consciously or subconsciously. But when it all comes together at
- 8:30Speaker 4: that same quality level, like that's when people are just
- 8:33Speaker 4: kind of like whether they know it or not, they
- 8:35Speaker 4: leave feeling that thing that you want them to leave with.
- 8:37Speaker 1: You know, this thing restaurant first, So, oh, so I'm
- 8:41Speaker 1: curating in the restaurants bar, what is the most common
- 8:43Speaker 1: drink that the manager wants on that menu.
- 8:46Speaker 4: I mean, it kind of depends place to place, but
- 8:48Speaker 4: I would say, especially in Southern California, the margarita. And
- 8:51Speaker 4: we're going to be warming up with a margarita variation today.
- 8:59Speaker 1: What I was not expecting this today.
- 9:02Speaker 5: Tahuila here.
- 9:05Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say the margarita is just like probably
- 9:07Speaker 4: the most popular cocktail in the world, and so especially
- 9:10Speaker 4: in Southern California, we do love our agave spirit.
- 9:12Speaker 5: So making sure you take that and.
- 9:14Speaker 4: You just bat it out of the park, even if
- 9:15Speaker 4: it's just a classic margarita, you know, just like making
- 9:18Speaker 4: sure you have that dialed in.
- 9:19Speaker 2: What's the most creative margarita you've ever created?
- 9:24Speaker 5: A version of what I'm going to be doing right here.
- 9:26Speaker 4: So basically what I am doing is taking I kind
- 9:30Speaker 4: of make a lime acid solution by making like a
- 9:32Speaker 4: lime oil tea and then that way it's perfectly crystal
- 9:37Speaker 4: clear when I'm serving it with the drink, and I'm
- 9:39Speaker 4: topping it with a like a Grand Margnier alo foam
- 9:43Speaker 4: because I feel like the Cadillac margarita like, everyone orders
- 9:47Speaker 4: a Cadillac margarita. Everyone knows what it is, right, but
- 9:50Speaker 4: at the same time that dream just gets messed up
- 9:52Speaker 4: so many places that you go because there's no like
- 9:55Speaker 4: standardized recipe for it necessarily and so you might order
- 9:58Speaker 4: a Cadillac margarita fied different places are going to get
- 10:01Speaker 4: five different Katellac margaritas. So like I'm what I'm trying
- 10:03Speaker 4: to do with this is take something we all think
- 10:06Speaker 4: we know and love or hate, I don't know, and
- 10:09Speaker 4: then then turning it into something that is genuinely special
- 10:13Speaker 4: and worth that premium price point, worth that premium experience,
- 10:15Speaker 4: all that kind of stuff.
- 10:17Speaker 1: If a bartender were to ask you for the best
- 10:20Speaker 1: advice you could give him to make a consistently good margarita,
- 10:26Speaker 1: what would you say one is the most common mistake
- 10:30Speaker 1: that bartenders make, meaning like a little bit too much
- 10:32Speaker 1: of that or a little bit too little of that.
- 10:36Speaker 1: And what would be the one thing that you feel like,
- 10:38Speaker 1: could they could walk away from this conversation and say, oh, man,
- 10:42Speaker 1: like yes, I'm gonna my my marita game is going
- 10:44Speaker 1: to go up to go up two levels.
- 10:47Speaker 4: I would say the biggest mistake is and something we're
- 10:50Speaker 4: gonna hate this answer, but not measuring what you're putting
- 10:53Speaker 4: in there right right, Like when they're working with a
- 10:56Speaker 4: multi component recipe, you kind of got to pay attention
- 10:58Speaker 4: to what those ratio are. And like some people can
- 11:01Speaker 4: do it by counting, some people can't, some people use jiggers,
- 11:04Speaker 4: some people don't.
- 11:05Speaker 5: Whatever it is.
- 11:06Speaker 4: But as long as you know your measurements are on point,
- 11:09Speaker 4: that's going to get you so much closer to the
- 11:10Speaker 4: finish line that you want to be at. Yeah, And
- 11:13Speaker 4: I would say, like if you really want to up
- 11:15Speaker 4: the like your cocktail game, like a really good way
- 11:17Speaker 4: to think about how to make a great cocktails understanding
- 11:20Speaker 4: like having the quality of ingredients, the quality of your recipe,
- 11:24Speaker 4: like make sure your sources are right, because I mean,
- 11:26Speaker 4: the Internet is full of misinformation, including in the bar
- 11:29Speaker 4: industry and stuff like that.
- 11:31Speaker 5: So quality of the recipe, quality ingredients.
- 11:33Speaker 4: And then probably the biggest thing, and this is why
- 11:35Speaker 4: I do a lot of consulting, is the quality of
- 11:37Speaker 4: the technique. You know, not all ice is created equal,
- 11:40Speaker 4: Shaking different ways will produce different results, like all this
- 11:43Speaker 4: kind of stuff.
- 11:44Speaker 5: So it's all those little nuances.
- 11:46Speaker 4: So when you're able to kind of if you feel
- 11:48Speaker 4: like dissecting it to that level, go for it. You're
- 11:51Speaker 4: just gonna end up with a better product and like
- 11:53Speaker 4: surprise yourself every since.
- 11:54Speaker 2: But you have obviously, I mean, yeah, are you are
- 11:56Speaker 2: you actually there testing shakes out?
- 11:59Speaker 5: Would share develops what thousand?
- 12:02Speaker 4: Yeah? And there's books on it from people smarter than
- 12:05Speaker 4: I in the industry and stuff. So it's one of
- 12:07Speaker 4: those things, like I say, is if I if I
- 12:09Speaker 4: never thought I would geek out so hard on anything
- 12:11Speaker 4: like this in my life.
- 12:12Speaker 5: But if I'm going to kick out on something, it's
- 12:14Speaker 5: booze and it's fun.
- 12:17Speaker 1: Is your favorite margarita an an yejo base or a
- 12:22Speaker 1: blanco base? Blanco so much easier to drink, right, And.
- 12:27Speaker 4: It's also it's just got It's just it's it's tequila
- 12:30Speaker 4: in its natural state. It's got those vegetable notes. It
- 12:33Speaker 4: just play so well like you you really do taste
- 12:36Speaker 4: you know, the origin of the product kind of thing
- 12:39Speaker 4: as soon as you start barrelaging it. I love it
- 12:41Speaker 4: for different reasons, but for my margarita, uh, definitely a blanco.
- 12:46Speaker 1: Yeah. So when people I also I was thinking, so
- 12:48Speaker 1: you Nique, when people use like just because they want
- 12:51Speaker 1: the most expensive shot in the in the in the margarita,
- 12:55Speaker 1: they'll ask for like an Anejo and he's such a climb.
- 12:59Speaker 1: It's such a crime to drop a shot of a
- 13:02Speaker 1: really good and yeho inside you know, water ice, and
- 13:08Speaker 1: it's just it's like you lose the point of aging
- 13:10Speaker 1: it for that long. I I what do you think
- 13:12Speaker 1: about that?
- 13:13Speaker 4: I mean, I don't get it in the margarita personally,
- 13:15Speaker 4: I think it is kind of a social flex.
- 13:17Speaker 5: But don't get me wrong. Some people do love you.
- 13:20Speaker 4: Know, ah, you know aneo tequil on the margarita's it's
- 13:24Speaker 4: not my drink.
- 13:25Speaker 5: I don't care go for it, you know what I mean.
- 13:27Speaker 4: But that said, in Los Angeles, I have made one
- 13:29Speaker 4: hundred and twenty five dollars margaritas before and round for people,
- 13:32Speaker 4: you know.
- 13:33Speaker 1: And and is that is that what makes it expensive?
- 13:36Speaker 1: Is it that.
- 13:38Speaker 4: You're getting that you know, limited release, you know, addition
- 13:41Speaker 4: from a distillery that you know aren't going to produce
- 13:44Speaker 4: any more of that thing, and they're having a business
- 13:46Speaker 4: meeting and boom, just lay them out there. So I
- 13:48Speaker 4: mean they're still getting a great product for all the
- 13:50Speaker 4: reasons we talked about the ingredients technique, et cetera.
- 13:53Speaker 2: But but you're saying, heyquila like that is is more
- 13:56Speaker 2: meant to be sipped as opposed to using it as
- 13:59Speaker 2: a mixture or shooting it back right, you know, in
- 14:04Speaker 2: order to enjoy the taste and the process.
- 14:07Speaker 4: And I would say, yeah, it's like anything that you're
- 14:10Speaker 4: trying to really kind of sit back and taste the
- 14:14Speaker 4: you know, the quality of the product and its origins
- 14:15Speaker 4: and history and all that kind of stuff. Sipping it
- 14:17Speaker 4: is going to give you a bit more of an
- 14:20Speaker 4: opportunity to appreciate it.
- 14:21Speaker 1: Like that.
- 14:22Speaker 4: That said, I love taking shots, you know, back in
- 14:25Speaker 4: the day, and I love taking tequila shots, you know.
- 14:27Speaker 4: So it's, I guess, to each their own. But in
- 14:30Speaker 4: my advanced years here, sipping is the way to go.
- 14:34Speaker 2: What's the what's the worst hangover you've ever had?
- 14:37Speaker 5: Oh jeez, what were you?
- 14:38Speaker 3: What were you drinking?
- 14:40Speaker 2: The absolute worst hangover you ever had?
- 14:43Speaker 5: Because of.
- 14:45Speaker 4: What I do for a living, I've probably had a
- 14:47Speaker 4: few hangovers that have knocked years of my life.
- 14:49Speaker 1: Off for a couple of dog years.
- 14:55Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly exactly.
- 14:57Speaker 4: I would say usually my worst hangover are the ones
- 15:00Speaker 4: where I'm you know, at some sort of events where uh,
- 15:06Speaker 4: you know, you're just kind of drinking what you're giving
- 15:08Speaker 4: in its own open bar kind of situation, you know.
- 15:10Speaker 1: What I mean.
- 15:10Speaker 5: Weddings, great example, Oh.
- 15:12Speaker 1: Yeah, everyone's happy, everyone wants the bartender to drink with them, right, yeah, even.
- 15:17Speaker 4: If I'm just a guest at the at the the wedding.
- 15:19Speaker 4: You know, it's like how many glasses of one did
- 15:21Speaker 4: you have?
- 15:21Speaker 2: Oh?
- 15:21Speaker 4: I don't know, because the glass was never empty, Like
- 15:23Speaker 4: they just keep coming around. So kind of the same
- 15:25Speaker 4: thing with an open bar situation like.
- 15:28Speaker 5: Those are? Those are?
- 15:29Speaker 4: I can't say I can't pinpoint a specific one because
- 15:31Speaker 4: trust me, there's been like a handful where like you know,
- 15:34Speaker 4: you just you just want to fast forward, you know,
- 15:39Speaker 4: just that they lead that night.
- 15:40Speaker 5: Yeah exactly.
- 15:41Speaker 1: So wait, so what what I don't know? I'll tell
- 15:43Speaker 1: you there's one of a couple of things that I
- 15:45Speaker 1: have a tough time sometimes with is saki. H yeah,
- 15:48Speaker 1: this choice me the next day. Really, that's why I
- 15:51Speaker 1: just don't drink. I mean, look, no transparency, I don't
- 15:54Speaker 1: drink you know often at all anymore? Right, I get
- 15:58Speaker 1: I used to celebrate and I haven't drink, you know,
- 16:00Speaker 1: at dinner and all the stuff from now. It's all
- 16:02Speaker 1: about like, what is the purest form of hduo that
- 16:05Speaker 1: I can find at a place?
- 16:07Speaker 5: You know?
- 16:08Speaker 1: But but but yeah, back in the day, I will
- 16:10Speaker 1: go to these amazing sushi restaurants and then they will
- 16:13Speaker 1: want to pair this saki with the courses. Right, they
- 16:16Speaker 1: do this four or five six course meals, and then
- 16:19Speaker 1: they paired the saki with it, and man, that I
- 16:22Speaker 1: mean just doesn't agree with No, it doesn't agree with me.
- 16:24Speaker 1: For in champagne, for some recent champagne, I can't, oh
- 16:27Speaker 1: cheap champagne.
- 16:28Speaker 3: Yeah, cheap champagne.
- 16:30Speaker 1: Yeah, it'll destroy you. So this so this techia, this
- 16:35Speaker 1: margarita you're making today, do you have a name for it?
- 16:39Speaker 5: Really?
- 16:39Speaker 4: It kind of goes by a couple of different names
- 16:41Speaker 4: because I'll have like variations of it in different places.
- 16:44Speaker 5: But basically I call it the pimped out Cadillac margarita.
- 16:48Speaker 5: You ever see pimped my ride, pimp my ride with yeah,
- 16:50Speaker 5: exhib it back.
- 16:50Speaker 4: In the day, take those beaters and turn it into
- 16:52Speaker 4: these low riders and stuff.
- 16:55Speaker 5: It's kind of what I'm doing. I'm taking the Cadillac
- 16:57Speaker 5: and I'm pimping it out.
- 16:58Speaker 2: Oh okay, okay, okay, okay, all right, man, there's there's
- 17:02Speaker 2: no Boons farm, is it right? We're doing a little
- 17:06Speaker 2: bit better a Mad Dog twenty twenty or yeah, okay.
- 17:10Speaker 5: That's that was one of the hangovers.
- 17:11Speaker 4: Like now that we're and you guys reminded me when
- 17:14Speaker 4: I was living in South Korea teaching English, sold you.
- 17:18Speaker 5: Like that it was cheaper than water over there.
- 17:21Speaker 1: I just want to make it internationally known that he
- 17:24Speaker 1: just well, first of all, that shout out to my
- 17:26Speaker 1: daughter running up in the roof of our podcast, as
- 17:30Speaker 1: she always makes an appearance on these episodes.
- 17:32Speaker 2: Four.
- 17:33Speaker 1: Yeah, she used the fourth and little but small flags
- 17:38Speaker 1: you used to teach English and South Korea? I sure did, man.
- 17:42Speaker 5: Yeah. Actually, my wife now is my girlfriend at the time,
- 17:45Speaker 5: and we're both just not in love with what we
- 17:49Speaker 5: were doing in Portland, Oregon.
- 17:50Speaker 4: We're like, we want as big a change as possible, right,
- 17:53Speaker 4: and so we uh packed up with South Korea for
- 17:57Speaker 4: a year English and just I mean loved it.
- 17:59Speaker 5: I learned a good amount of Korean while I was
- 18:02Speaker 5: over there.
- 18:02Speaker 1: Oh no way, Yeah, why Korea?
- 18:04Speaker 3: Why did you choose?
- 18:05Speaker 5: Like I said, I wanted to?
- 18:06Speaker 4: We wanted something that was so different, you know, so
- 18:10Speaker 4: like not not a romanized language that we could pick
- 18:12Speaker 4: up on terribly quickly, like really kind of push ourselves
- 18:14Speaker 4: outside of our comfort zones because we really felt like
- 18:16Speaker 4: Portland was just too comfortable for us at the time.
- 18:18Speaker 4: We were craving more adventure and it definitely shook things
- 18:22Speaker 4: up and we loved it.
- 18:23Speaker 5: Had a blast exploring Soul while we were there.
- 18:26Speaker 4: And but we would you know, we were actually in
- 18:29Speaker 4: this town outside of Soul about forty five minutes and
- 18:31Speaker 4: we'd take the metro in and uh, every weekend to
- 18:34Speaker 4: go to the night life.
- 18:36Speaker 5: We were like twenty five years old, you know, so
- 18:38Speaker 5: like twenty five years old on a.
- 18:40Speaker 4: Teacher's buzzet budget saving money over there, We're getting six
- 18:43Speaker 4: back packs of you know, the sixteen ounce bottles of
- 18:45Speaker 4: soju for like less than six dollars, and so you're
- 18:49Speaker 4: just playing drinking games with that.
- 18:51Speaker 5: And I swear the next day like there was no cure.
- 18:54Speaker 5: There was no cure.
- 18:55Speaker 1: Really, no, you have to let it wreck you that way.
- 18:58Speaker 5: It broke me like that.
- 18:59Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, what has sowed you exactly?
- 19:01Speaker 5: It's a it's a rice distill it predominantly. Yeah.
- 19:04Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, there's different sak' So saki is the wine
- 19:09Speaker 4: is brewed.
- 19:09Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's yeah, I'm sorry one one time. What's
- 19:15Speaker 1: the difference between sake and instead of.
- 19:17Speaker 4: So Basically, saki is brewed like a like a wine
- 19:22Speaker 4: or a beer essentially, and then to take it to
- 19:25Speaker 4: that distilled kind of soju level, you would actually run
- 19:28Speaker 4: it through a still right, and so it becomes higher proof.
- 19:33Speaker 4: Similar to how like if you take a beer and
- 19:35Speaker 4: you distill it, you get whiskey, or you take wine
- 19:38Speaker 4: and you distill it, you get a brandy.
- 19:40Speaker 5: Uh, same deal.
- 19:44Speaker 2: And is there are there different qualities of soju?
- 19:48Speaker 5: For sure? Like I'm not knocking soad you as a whole.
- 19:51Speaker 5: I'm just knocking myself for buying the chiefest planet.
- 19:54Speaker 1: The year old. So yeah, yeah. When when when you
- 20:00Speaker 1: all your travelers around the world, where when you're working,
- 20:02Speaker 1: whether you're shooting movies or TV shows or you're just
- 20:05Speaker 1: out there promoting internationally, is there a restaurant that you
- 20:11Speaker 1: went to that you that you remember having it drink
- 20:15Speaker 1: and you're like, wow, all of this ellen man start
- 20:17Speaker 1: coming together creating an unforgettable memory.
- 20:21Speaker 2: Man, I wish I could remember the name of this restaurant.
- 20:24Speaker 2: I was in Mexico City, and I figured, well, if
- 20:26Speaker 2: I'm in Mexico City, I want to try some of
- 20:28Speaker 2: the mescal. And we asked the waiter to bring some mescal.
- 20:32Speaker 2: And I was like, what's the best mescal you have?
- 20:35Speaker 1: And I kid you not.
- 20:35Speaker 2: The guy came with a bottle and it was dusty
- 20:40Speaker 2: and the name of the mescal was like written by
- 20:43Speaker 2: hand on there.
- 20:44Speaker 3: Wow.
- 20:44Speaker 2: And he came with like a platter full of orange
- 20:48Speaker 2: slices and different and a variety of salt. And I'd
- 20:55Speaker 2: never had mescal that way and it was the absolute
- 20:58Speaker 2: best mescal I ever had in my life my school city.
- 21:01Speaker 1: That's amazing.
- 21:02Speaker 3: What about you for me?
- 21:04Speaker 1: Let me see, we thank you so much. But what
- 21:07Speaker 1: do we have here, sir?
- 21:08Speaker 5: So? Like I said, this is our crystal clear.
- 21:12Speaker 4: And then we have that Grand Marnier Allo phone floating
- 21:14Speaker 4: floating over the top, so you kind of still get
- 21:16Speaker 4: that Grand Marnier float.
- 21:18Speaker 1: Look at how beautiful this Look at this thing, salute
- 21:23Speaker 1: sal look at this thing. This doesn't even salute to Vermelia.
- 21:32Speaker 1: For those who are listening to this episode, would you
- 21:35Speaker 1: mind describing what you're seeing?
- 21:37Speaker 2: Let's see here, there's some phone, there is a piece
- 21:41Speaker 2: of lime. Is that correct on the on the top
- 21:44Speaker 2: and and it and it looks pretty clear on the bottom.
- 21:47Speaker 3: That's quite delicious.
- 21:48Speaker 1: I just have is that one cube?
- 21:50Speaker 5: One cube inside of there?
- 21:52Speaker 1: Oh that's great. I love the one cube for many
- 21:56Speaker 1: an amount of reasons. All right, what you years, Salon,
- 22:00Speaker 1: Let's see what this is. Let's check this conversation turns
- 22:03Speaker 1: into three or four of these.
- 22:08Speaker 6: Oh man, wow, coming off of dry, Jedyary me, yes,
- 22:18Speaker 6: quite literally.
- 22:21Speaker 1: Dry? What well, No, we just got some rain, We
- 22:24Speaker 1: just got some rain.
- 22:26Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 22:27Speaker 2: So what about you, Wimar, Have you been incredibly impressed
- 22:40Speaker 2: by a drink you've had at a certain city, at
- 22:42Speaker 2: a certain restaurant.
- 22:43Speaker 1: Yeah. So I went to Japan, oh, you know, and
- 22:48Speaker 1: Japan Tokyo is my probably top two favorite cities in
- 22:53Speaker 1: the world. It's a place that I love so much.
- 22:55Speaker 1: It's a place that reminds me so much of some
- 22:59Speaker 1: of the most precious moments into my life. That's when
- 23:01Speaker 1: Amanda and I said I love you to each other
- 23:03Speaker 1: for the first time in Tokyo and Tokyo wow. And
- 23:06Speaker 1: that's when that kind of became a possibility. That's when
- 23:08Speaker 1: we said to each other that a family is what
- 23:10Speaker 1: we wanted with each other. So we went to this
- 23:13Speaker 1: one restaurant that looked like a Jaan'spond restaurant. The door
- 23:16Speaker 1: just opened up. It was carved out of stone, you know.
- 23:19Speaker 1: You went downstairs and it was this underground restaurant, twelve
- 23:23Speaker 1: course meal, and halfway through, she accidentally says I love you,
- 23:26Speaker 1: and I said, it's all good, no worries, no word.
- 23:28Speaker 1: What do you mean Accidentally She's like, well, you know,
- 23:31Speaker 1: we used to make you know, we used to make
- 23:33Speaker 1: the best bite, Like we got a fork and put
- 23:35Speaker 1: a little bit of everything on our plate. Yeah, and
- 23:38Speaker 1: give that best bite for the you know, to me
- 23:43Speaker 1: or to her. She said, you know I love you
- 23:45Speaker 1: because I she froze. It's like, you know, I was like,
- 23:51Speaker 1: and then she was like, she's like, I just what.
- 23:53Speaker 1: I was like, No, it's all good. I mean it's
- 23:54Speaker 1: it's you know, I you know, you have nothing to
- 23:58Speaker 1: worry about it because I love you too. And it
- 24:00Speaker 1: was this moment which she was like and I was like,
- 24:03Speaker 1: like we can get back, we can take it back now.
- 24:06Speaker 3: And were you dating?
- 24:07Speaker 1: We were dating for I think at this point we're
- 24:10Speaker 1: probably eight months or something. Yeah, you know, and we
- 24:13Speaker 1: had just been traveling everywhere and we went and took
- 24:16Speaker 1: you know, a bunch of our dear friends and to
- 24:20Speaker 1: Japan and experienced this beautiful thing there. Anyways, my point
- 24:23Speaker 1: is that they had me taste is Japanese whiskey, and
- 24:28Speaker 1: there was something about the Japanese whiskey that just took
- 24:32Speaker 1: me to a different Oh yeah, it's just different. Yeah,
- 24:35Speaker 1: it's just different. And you can taste almost heritage. You
- 24:39Speaker 1: can taste the wood, you can taste you know, you
- 24:45Speaker 1: can take so many things that this liquord multi generationally
- 24:50Speaker 1: just has become. And the way they do it, you know,
- 24:53Speaker 1: it takes thirty plus years just to get one of
- 24:56Speaker 1: the batches, you know, like some of the whiskey is
- 24:58Speaker 1: really really it takes a long time, you know, to
- 25:02Speaker 1: to to achieve and it just changed my life.
- 25:04Speaker 2: That makes sense because when we first started hanging, you
- 25:07Speaker 2: were really heavy on on Japanese whiskey. You know, I've
- 25:11Speaker 2: had it before, but the first time I've really ever
- 25:13Speaker 2: had it, had it was was with you.
- 25:15Speaker 3: You introduced me to it. I love it.
- 25:17Speaker 2: I think I think it's incredibly smooth and cool, but
- 25:20Speaker 2: it has such a deeper meaning for you and your
- 25:24Speaker 2: your family, that's for sure.
- 25:25Speaker 1: I also think that the way the Asian culture cultivates
- 25:30Speaker 1: their their liquor and what that liquor is supposed to
- 25:33Speaker 1: represent and what it does, you know, the way it
- 25:37Speaker 1: tastes makes the experience and where you're you know, you're partaking,
- 25:40Speaker 1: whether it's a dinner, a celebration, and his whiskey is
- 25:43Speaker 1: just a different level, and you know, and you can
- 25:46Speaker 1: feel it, you can feel it that it was it
- 25:48Speaker 1: took hundreds of years to get this whiskey to where
- 25:51Speaker 1: it is, you know. So that's something that I really
- 25:53Speaker 1: appreciated and really loved very much.
- 25:55Speaker 3: So that that was that was my nice What.
- 25:58Speaker 1: About you judge? You like you like Japanese whiskey?
- 26:03Speaker 5: Yeah?
- 26:03Speaker 1: I do. What's your favorite house?
- 26:06Speaker 3: Is really good? Story time?
- 26:08Speaker 5: Yeah, it's I don't know, I like all of them.
- 26:12Speaker 4: It's one of those things it's getting increasingly hard to get, really,
- 26:17Speaker 4: but it's but it's also well worth it for those
- 26:19Speaker 4: celebratory reasons for oh yeah.
- 26:21Speaker 1: And you know you're not you're only allowed to buy
- 26:23Speaker 1: one bottle sometimes, right and if you're going to bring
- 26:26Speaker 1: one from Japan, you're not allowed to bring more than two,
- 26:28Speaker 1: right because because a limited batch's learned batch that they want.
- 26:34Speaker 3: Guys westbers so shoes.
- 26:35Speaker 5: I want to margrat to.
- 26:38Speaker 3: Fourth Amiga.
- 26:38Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the fourth Amiga's out here wildly house. She's
- 26:42Speaker 1: I think she can smell the you know, the foam
- 26:45Speaker 1: of this delicious margarita. So when you're in Japan, you're
- 26:49Speaker 1: only allowed to buy one bottle at a time, and
- 26:51Speaker 1: that's because they want as many people to experience this
- 26:53Speaker 1: as as possible, you know. But but you know, it's
- 26:56Speaker 1: even hotels. Hotels, they got to have different dealers, you know,
- 26:59Speaker 1: different ores, you know, to be able to get their
- 27:02Speaker 1: hands on some of these bottles because they're just really
- 27:04Speaker 1: hard to find.
- 27:05Speaker 2: Are you Are you a wine guy at all?
- 27:07Speaker 3: Do you like wine or champagne or.
- 27:09Speaker 5: I do have deep dive into it as much.
- 27:13Speaker 4: Definitely, not as much as I have with spirits and
- 27:15Speaker 4: cocktails and stuff like that at this point, mostly because
- 27:19Speaker 4: not mostly because I don't want to throw it under
- 27:21Speaker 4: the bus. But my wife Jessica said somewhere along the
- 27:23Speaker 4: lines or someone along the lines of if you geek
- 27:27Speaker 4: out on wine the way you geeked out on spirits
- 27:29Speaker 4: and cocktails, I will not go wine tasting with you.
- 27:32Speaker 5: I was like, oh, okay, fair enough.
- 27:34Speaker 1: Why is that why?
- 27:35Speaker 4: Because there was a period where I was just I mean,
- 27:38Speaker 4: I think I think a lot of the like serious
- 27:40Speaker 4: bartenders at a certain point kind of get in a
- 27:42Speaker 4: phase where like even when you sit at the bar
- 27:44Speaker 4: top like you're egalized, like you're looking watching everything movements.
- 27:47Speaker 4: She wouldn't even let me face the bar restaurants if
- 27:50Speaker 4: we went out to eat, you know, to face.
- 27:51Speaker 2: The towards the window, because you'd be judging it.
- 27:55Speaker 5: I get distracted.
- 27:57Speaker 1: Yeah, too much, too heavy, too heavy on the phone, Yeah,
- 28:03Speaker 1: exactly exactly where you're going, too long in the smoker.
- 28:06Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 28:08Speaker 4: Uh So when she told me that about wine and
- 28:10Speaker 4: wine tasting is our happy place like passer roadblaze love,
- 28:13Speaker 4: oh cool, you know when we love them in a
- 28:15Speaker 4: big way to Oregon wine country where we're from, Like
- 28:18Speaker 4: Jessica's parents live up there.
- 28:20Speaker 1: Love that.
- 28:21Speaker 5: And so that was kind of a clear point to
- 28:24Speaker 5: me to not geek out.
- 28:25Speaker 4: But that said, I kind of have her blessing now
- 28:27Speaker 4: to go through the court of Somalia's so I'm gonna
- 28:30Speaker 4: start working my way through that process.
- 28:32Speaker 1: If I were to go to a restaurant or a hotel,
- 28:36Speaker 1: then I went to ask for this margarita. How much
- 28:38Speaker 1: would this margarita be?
- 28:40Speaker 5: Uh, that's probably gonna be around it.
- 28:43Speaker 4: It depends on where you go, anywhere between probably nineteen
- 28:45Speaker 4: in La anywhere between nineteen and twenty four, probably right
- 28:50Speaker 4: twenty four.
- 28:50Speaker 5: It depends on the spirit that you're putting in there,
- 28:52Speaker 5: you know what I mean?
- 28:53Speaker 2: So, yeah, what kind of tequilas listener, this one was
- 28:56Speaker 2: called rail Devia.
- 28:58Speaker 5: Okay, it's relative. Shouldn't they really something to the market anymore?
- 29:01Speaker 5: But it's nice to one hundred percent of gave.
- 29:04Speaker 2: Uh.
- 29:04Speaker 4: And what I mean by that is it's like completely unadulterated,
- 29:07Speaker 4: because even one hundred percent of gaves can add up
- 29:09Speaker 4: to one percent of different additives.
- 29:11Speaker 5: And there is certain tastes like vanilla.
- 29:14Speaker 1: Yeah, to talk a little bit about that because I
- 29:17Speaker 1: you know, one of the when when when Freddy and
- 29:19Speaker 1: I went to dinner with Jay that night at Carlitos,
- 29:22Speaker 1: we were talking about, you know, uh, liquor companies and
- 29:27Speaker 1: all these you know, all these incredible companies out there
- 29:29Speaker 1: that are have showcased their brand and such a level
- 29:32Speaker 1: that have become billion dollars, billion dollar empires. But at
- 29:36Speaker 1: the heels are not so great tequilas tequila is that
- 29:39Speaker 1: when you really know the craftsmanship of tequila and in
- 29:42Speaker 1: the purity of his recipe, you know there is this
- 29:47Speaker 1: you know, there's a compromise when you're mass producing it
- 29:50Speaker 1: or you're trying to appeal to most and the recipe
- 29:53Speaker 1: gets gets morphed into something else. And you know, you
- 29:55Speaker 1: said the word vanilla, and I wanted, I wanted, I
- 29:58Speaker 1: wanted you to take a second to to put us
- 30:01Speaker 1: to school a little bit on what some of these
- 30:03Speaker 1: companies do to make to mask right, their inability to
- 30:08Speaker 1: make it good to keep it.
- 30:10Speaker 4: Basically by having those additives, it's just like you're saying,
- 30:13Speaker 4: you're trying to appeal to a broader market kind of thing.
- 30:16Speaker 4: It also gives them the opportunity to harvest the agaves
- 30:20Speaker 4: prematurely a bit right, which is going to yield them
- 30:24Speaker 4: an inferior you know, juice essentially that they're then going
- 30:27Speaker 4: to distill.
- 30:28Speaker 1: But it's a faster turnaround.
- 30:31Speaker 4: Exactly because like nagave is going to take like minimum
- 30:34Speaker 4: six to eight years to mature minimum right, so they're
- 30:37Speaker 4: trying to get on the lesser end of that timeframe
- 30:40Speaker 4: and then doctor it up before selling it.
- 30:42Speaker 5: To the to the market. And don't get me wrong,
- 30:44Speaker 5: like they killed it, they killed it, they're.
- 30:49Speaker 1: Selling about it, they're selling a bottom.
- 30:51Speaker 5: Yeah, so it's one of those things, like I guess
- 30:54Speaker 5: it's trying to each their own.
- 30:56Speaker 4: I personally look for brands that are unadulterated, and I
- 31:00Speaker 4: also kind of as much as possible, like to know
- 31:02Speaker 4: where the money's going. Is it going into the pockets
- 31:04Speaker 4: of the investors that are from the United States, or
- 31:07Speaker 4: is going into the pockets of the people and the
- 31:09Speaker 4: villages producing it, and you know, even up to like
- 31:14Speaker 4: different sustainability efforts things like that. So obviously that is
- 31:19Speaker 4: kind of the kind of stuff that the abje consumer
- 31:21Speaker 4: just doesn't have time to really digest.
- 31:23Speaker 1: And I get it.
- 31:24Speaker 5: That's totally fine. So yeah, that's just like, no, it's.
- 31:29Speaker 1: So important you say that, because you know, most people
- 31:31Speaker 1: are sold like, oh man, I love you know, and
- 31:34Speaker 1: we're not going to bash any bottles right now, but
- 31:37Speaker 1: I can tell you one of the bottles or two
- 31:40Speaker 1: of the bottles that you know are the most exciting
- 31:42Speaker 1: to buy, you know, because of either lineage or name
- 31:46Speaker 1: or whatever. You know, they've changed distilleries and therefore they're
- 31:50Speaker 1: trying to mass produce because now they're distributing so much
- 31:54Speaker 1: worldwide that you need more, you know, and you're talking
- 31:58Speaker 1: about it than you has to import, uh tequila for
- 32:04Speaker 1: the planet. Yeah, for the planet. So at some point
- 32:10Speaker 1: it's gonna it's gonna have to be mass produced. And
- 32:12Speaker 1: some of these big brands, which look really fancy on
- 32:16Speaker 1: a bar, you know, have to mask their inability for
- 32:19Speaker 1: it to you know, be hed enough that eventually ferments
- 32:23Speaker 1: the way they're supposed to. But but but I think
- 32:26Speaker 1: that that you know, you talked about the vanilla astract
- 32:29Speaker 1: that sometimes people put a little vanilla and you're like,
- 32:32Speaker 1: oh it, guys like this tones of chocolate and vanilla finished,
- 32:35Speaker 1: and you think that like, oh, that's what a tequila
- 32:37Speaker 1: is supposed to tastes like right, like oh cool, it's
- 32:39Speaker 1: like sweet and so smooth, And really what it is
- 32:42Speaker 1: is it's like vanilla. It's just you know, you're putting
- 32:44Speaker 1: in a little sugar in it, so, you know, so
- 32:46Speaker 1: it goes down easier, you know what I mean. And look,
- 32:49Speaker 1: it doesn't say maybe it's tequila's not drinkable. I'm saying
- 32:52Speaker 1: it's fine. You're drinking it and you're loving it and
- 32:54Speaker 1: know it's what it is. But but when we go
- 32:56Speaker 1: down to a conversation of a zipper, yeah, you know
- 33:00Speaker 1: of something where you're investing into not just the quality
- 33:04Speaker 1: the heritage, like Josh pointed out so eloquently, you know,
- 33:08Speaker 1: most importantly what you get in return for the investment
- 33:12Speaker 1: of that shot. You know, and you talk about some
- 33:15Speaker 1: of the Sometimes they'll sell you a shot of tequila
- 33:17Speaker 1: for seventy five dollars or eighty five dollars or ninety
- 33:20Speaker 1: five dollars, and it's the tequila I'm talking about. It's
- 33:23Speaker 1: the tequila that's like not you know, it's like that
- 33:26Speaker 1: you know, not in in yeahoo.
- 33:27Speaker 2: That you're like, okay, well this is this tastes really sweet,
- 33:30Speaker 2: and that's the stuff that gives you the that gives
- 33:32Speaker 2: you the hangovers, right in many ways as the additives
- 33:35Speaker 2: and all that, I.
- 33:36Speaker 4: Would say, yeah, that that can definitely play a role
- 33:39Speaker 4: for sure, just kind of the hand of the producer,
- 33:42Speaker 4: how much care and for after they putting into it. Yeah,
- 33:46Speaker 4: it really is about like the heritage, especially in a
- 33:48Speaker 4: spirit that's like so special, like.
- 33:50Speaker 5: A Skyal tequila. I know, I sea all these things
- 33:54Speaker 5: down there are you.
- 33:55Speaker 2: Are you more of a spirit guy as opposed to
- 33:58Speaker 2: a wine or pain.
- 34:00Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd say so, I'd say so. I mean I
- 34:03Speaker 1: can appreciate a gray wine. Like when I went to
- 34:05Speaker 1: and shot this movie called A Sudden Case of Christmas
- 34:09Speaker 1: with Daniel on Hulu on Hulu available for everybody right now.
- 34:15Speaker 5: Uh.
- 34:15Speaker 1: The it was a beautiful summer Christmas movie with Danny
- 34:19Speaker 1: de Vito and Lucy de Vito and Antonella who plays
- 34:23Speaker 1: my my little daughter. She's incredible, Annie McDonnell and a
- 34:27Speaker 1: bunch of amazing people and Peter who directed uh the movie,
- 34:31Speaker 1: Sarahen Dibity And it's a beautiful movie and I like,
- 34:36Speaker 1: highly recommend it. We shut it up in the Dolomites
- 34:40Speaker 1: in North three, Italy, so we we were shooting up
- 34:44Speaker 1: in the Rockies and the mountains of you know, the
- 34:47Speaker 1: and it was just so special, you know. But anyways,
- 34:50Speaker 1: being in Italy for two months, you know, you got
- 34:53Speaker 1: to really understand how you accessorize your pasta, and that
- 34:58Speaker 1: is with a good wine. You know, it's part of
- 35:00Speaker 1: the Yeah, the olive oil.
- 35:02Speaker 2: You know.
- 35:02Speaker 1: It was just a beautiful and not by the way,
- 35:04Speaker 1: the Italian culture is it's the closest to latinos that
- 35:08Speaker 1: I could ever imagine. Really, they're just family number one
- 35:12Speaker 1: sharing a meal, number two and number three, cell. I mean,
- 35:16Speaker 1: I say number three is number one, celebrating life, like yes,
- 35:19Speaker 1: be happy that we're doing this, and you know, and
- 35:22Speaker 1: it was really beautiful. Every lunch that we had at
- 35:25Speaker 1: in this movie, every every every time that we had
- 35:28Speaker 1: a you know, a lunch, it was what you expected.
- 35:33Speaker 1: Olive oil, bread, you know, pasta's soups. You know, it
- 35:40Speaker 1: was just like a beautiful, beautiful spread. And therefore, so
- 35:43Speaker 1: like yes, So I think that I really got to
- 35:46Speaker 1: really appreciate wine. And I went to Florence and Tuscany.
- 35:49Speaker 3: And I super Tuscans around.
- 35:51Speaker 1: Yeah, And I went to two places where, you know,
- 35:54Speaker 1: they were like a family owned that you in order
- 35:56Speaker 1: to get these bottles, you have to buy them from
- 35:59Speaker 1: them because it's not distributed it anywhere. And I really
- 36:02Speaker 1: got to appreciate how beautiful, you know, the tradition of
- 36:07Speaker 1: wine is. And I really got to appreciate it. In
- 36:10Speaker 1: Gray Wine, your work up the next morning, it's fine, right, Yeah.
- 36:13Speaker 2: I've done two wine movies, man, So I got to
- 36:16Speaker 2: spend a lot of time in a Walk into Clouds.
- 36:19Speaker 3: My first movie was a wine.
- 36:20Speaker 2: Movie, and I did a movie called Bottle Shock with
- 36:23Speaker 2: me Alan Rickman, Chris Pine, Bill Pullman, and we drank
- 36:30Speaker 2: a lot of wine.
- 36:34Speaker 1: Research. You have to understand what face to make when
- 36:36Speaker 1: they say, you know exactly.
- 36:39Speaker 2: But man, I went to a lot of those different places,
- 36:42Speaker 2: a lot of the different little family owned wineries. You know.
- 36:47Speaker 2: It's funny, man, there's a lot of producers who used
- 36:49Speaker 2: to be who have retired and have started wineries out there.
- 36:54Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, the producer you and I
- 36:55Speaker 2: both worked with Darryl Frank. His father owns I think
- 37:00Speaker 2: family wine not there.
- 37:01Speaker 1: You're right, I just remember, yes, I never.
- 37:05Speaker 2: I never.
- 37:05Speaker 1: By the way, shout out to their friends. Really, dear dear,
- 37:09Speaker 1: dear friend of ours. We should take him to dinner.
- 37:11Speaker 2: With Alvi Calvi, Yes, talv Oh red Amblet.
- 37:15Speaker 1: I love those guys. Yeah.
- 37:17Speaker 2: Yeah, his pop has a winery. The guy who wrote, uh,
- 37:21Speaker 2: the guy who wrote A Walk in the Clouds created
- 37:24Speaker 2: karate Kid. Karate Kid is his story, and he owns
- 37:27Speaker 2: a winery called Cayman Wineries out there.
- 37:31Speaker 3: But I got to take some of the most.
- 37:32Speaker 2: Amazing you know, prior to that movie, Like, I never
- 37:36Speaker 2: knew what the big deal was. You know, you'd go
- 37:38Speaker 2: someplace to a party of a wedding, somebody serves you
- 37:41Speaker 2: a glass of wine.
- 37:42Speaker 1: You're like, I don't know, I'm sleeping. Yeah, exactly right.
- 37:46Speaker 2: And but when you go there and like you're experience
- 37:49Speaker 2: in Italy and they start to pair the wines with
- 37:51Speaker 2: the food, and it was the most amazing experience.
- 37:55Speaker 3: I ever had.
- 37:55Speaker 1: And that's what it is. It's an experience.
- 37:57Speaker 2: Right.
- 38:08Speaker 3: What's the name of your company? Oh?
- 38:10Speaker 5: My company is called Ice and Alchemy.
- 38:12Speaker 3: Ice in Alchemy.
- 38:14Speaker 2: Wow, that's a great name, Thank you. And what what
- 38:16Speaker 2: is it?
- 38:17Speaker 3: What does your company do? Exactly?
- 38:19Speaker 4: So the company, it basically started off quietly in Los Angeles,
- 38:24Speaker 4: just helping places establish better menus and training for their
- 38:30Speaker 4: their bar programs.
- 38:31Speaker 5: When I moved down to l ah you know, Las
- 38:34Speaker 5: such a.
- 38:34Speaker 4: Big city geographically, and so many restaurants and bars want
- 38:37Speaker 4: to be doing it right, but they just didn't quite
- 38:39Speaker 4: know maybe how to how to get there. And I
- 38:41Speaker 4: just happened to have you know, the right about experience
- 38:44Speaker 4: and ambition and all that kind of stuff that people
- 38:47Speaker 4: were taking notice of what I was doing and now
- 38:49Speaker 4: it's a full fledged bar consulting firm where I do
- 38:51Speaker 4: predominantly southern California, but other states as well.
- 38:54Speaker 5: And you know, there's some international proposals out there right
- 38:57Speaker 5: now too.
- 38:58Speaker 1: Are there.
- 38:58Speaker 2: Every time that you go in a restaurant, you look
- 39:00Speaker 2: at the menu, and there are times that I'm super
- 39:02Speaker 2: impressed by it. By by the drinks that they have
- 39:05Speaker 2: on there. I can tell it's been you know, well
- 39:07Speaker 2: thought out, and they're just like somebody throwing drinks on
- 39:10Speaker 2: the menu. And and so this is this is sort
- 39:13Speaker 2: of the behind the scenes of what happens. Yeah, someone
- 39:16Speaker 2: comes in and they it's almost like a good director
- 39:18Speaker 2: or somebody right coming in and and and implementing their.
- 39:22Speaker 5: Vision hundred percent. Yeah, kind of kind of joining them
- 39:26Speaker 5: from concept to reality.
- 39:28Speaker 1: I guess, my, my, my, My last question in the
- 39:31Speaker 1: mixology universe is when Josh goes to a restaurant, okay,
- 39:39Speaker 1: and he's ordering his food and they said, can I
- 39:42Speaker 1: get you a drink?
- 39:43Speaker 4: Oh?
- 39:43Speaker 1: Yeah, what do you?
- 39:44Speaker 2: What do you that?
- 39:45Speaker 4: I usually jump for a classic simple drink first, And
- 39:49Speaker 4: what I mean by simple is like three ingredients. You're
- 39:52Speaker 4: talking your old fashions, your Manhattan's or dackerie, you know
- 39:55Speaker 4: something like. And the reason is this, there's nothing to
- 39:58Speaker 4: hide behind, right Like, if you mess up one of
- 40:02Speaker 4: those ratios or one of those ingredients, or choose the
- 40:04Speaker 4: wrong you know, spirit or whatever it is, it's going
- 40:08Speaker 4: to show right away.
- 40:09Speaker 5: First.
- 40:09Speaker 4: If I ask for like a twelve ingredient tiki drink
- 40:12Speaker 4: and you kind of mess it up a little bit,
- 40:13Speaker 4: it's like it's sill gonna pass. So I get a
- 40:15Speaker 4: really simple drink and I, you know, just want to
- 40:18Speaker 4: make sure it's on point. And then from there, once
- 40:21Speaker 4: I sit that drink, that tells me, okay, this is
- 40:23Speaker 4: the place where I do get a cocktail, or my
- 40:25Speaker 4: place where I get a glass of wine, you know,
- 40:27Speaker 4: or maybe it's a place, maybe it's a shot in
- 40:29Speaker 4: a beer place.
- 40:30Speaker 5: Whatever it is.
- 40:31Speaker 1: You know, it's a defence mechanism. I see. It's a
- 40:36Speaker 1: oh I see.
- 40:37Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting. So you're you're an old fashion man, Okay, yeah,
- 40:41Speaker 2: it's funny you say that. My wife lately has been
- 40:44Speaker 2: ordering drinks since she's like, wow, they're.
- 40:46Speaker 3: Just too strong.
- 40:47Speaker 1: What do you mean lately?
- 40:50Speaker 2: Le's elaborated, you know, just the last couple of times
- 40:53Speaker 2: we've gone to a restaurant. They've made her drinks really
- 40:57Speaker 2: freaking strong. Interesting, And on one hand you're like, hey,
- 41:00Speaker 2: thank you, I'm.
- 41:00Speaker 1: Grateful that you gave me a good because she's a
- 41:02Speaker 1: confident looking woman.
- 41:04Speaker 2: I agree, I agree, but but yeah, they've been super So,
- 41:08Speaker 2: you know, to your what you were explaining about the
- 41:11Speaker 2: ratios being off, it almost just seems like they're just
- 41:14Speaker 2: like that, put a bunch of alcohol in it, she'll
- 41:17Speaker 2: be she'll be happy with it.
- 41:19Speaker 1: What about you? You go to it, You go to
- 41:21Speaker 1: a you go to a restaurant, Okay, thank you. What
- 41:23Speaker 1: do you want to you know, you look at the manual?
- 41:26Speaker 3: Can I get you a drink? My wine? Guy? Man
- 41:29Speaker 3: first and foremost?
- 41:30Speaker 2: Yeah, I think maybe maybe because, like you know, doing
- 41:33Speaker 2: these wine movies since I was like nineteen, and I've
- 41:36Speaker 2: learned so much about it.
- 41:36Speaker 1: You're better than me, that's what you're saying. So you're
- 41:39Speaker 1: saying you're better than me. Oh that's great. So quickly
- 41:44Speaker 1: became one over here? No, No, not at all. Okay,
- 41:48Speaker 1: So I just became. I just came that.
- 41:52Speaker 2: I just became accustomed to it, you know, and the
- 41:55Speaker 2: pairing aspect. But I used to be like a good
- 41:58Speaker 2: I used to be like a heavy cab guy.
- 42:01Speaker 1: I was about to ask you what what? Yeah, we
- 42:04Speaker 1: had that cab that night.
- 42:06Speaker 2: At your you had that wonderful dinner at your house
- 42:09Speaker 2: with that great chef by the way, Yeah, Carlos, Carlos, Yeah, man.
- 42:15Speaker 2: But but lately I've been uh late lately, I've been
- 42:18Speaker 2: just chilling out.
- 42:18Speaker 3: Period.
- 42:19Speaker 2: But if I do like a good pino noir man,
- 42:22Speaker 2: just something lighter, you know, just good, just been going
- 42:24Speaker 2: a little lighter.
- 42:25Speaker 3: What about you.
- 42:28Speaker 1: I'm a martini guy. Yeah, yeah, And you know what
- 42:32Speaker 1: I paid attention when I ordered martini because I order
- 42:35Speaker 1: it a little dirty with three olives.
- 42:37Speaker 2: Where a ginner or or vodka.
- 42:39Speaker 1: It depends, Yeah, it depends, like if I'm going to
- 42:42Speaker 1: do it doesn't. This doesn't what I'm about to say.
- 42:46Speaker 1: It doesn't have to make sense to anyone else, but
- 42:48Speaker 1: somehow it makes sense to me. If I'm going to
- 42:50Speaker 1: have a steak, yeah, I'll do a I'll do a vodka, Okay.
- 42:58Speaker 1: If I'm going to do a fish, I do a right.
- 43:01Speaker 1: I mean, and and honestly, I know what I'm gonna
- 43:04Speaker 1: get when I go to these restaurants, Like I feel
- 43:06Speaker 1: like a steak tonight you know, but I pay attention
- 43:10Speaker 1: to a couple of things. You want to make sure
- 43:13Speaker 1: like you know, they shake it, you know, but like
- 43:17Speaker 1: you know, they don't. They don't overshake it when they're
- 43:19Speaker 1: just serving you the water. You're trying to have them
- 43:21Speaker 1: cool down liquor, you know, and like and it has
- 43:24Speaker 1: to be to the rim my biggest pipe with the
- 43:27Speaker 1: with the with the Martinez. When they bring you a Martine,
- 43:29Speaker 1: you know what I'm talking about.
- 43:31Speaker 5: On the glass size they get, they get cheap, and.
- 43:34Speaker 1: It's like like, yeah, a Martine is supposed to be
- 43:38Speaker 1: like a piece of glass, like a piece of ice,
- 43:40Speaker 1: you know. In my opinion, but I love to hear
- 43:44Speaker 1: judge's opinion about how Martinez is supposed to be served.
- 43:47Speaker 1: But to me, the martini is supposed to like somebody
- 43:50Speaker 1: should be able to say the proportions of what I'm
- 43:53Speaker 1: using eyes versus you know, the vodka, yeah, versus the
- 43:59Speaker 1: dirty like whatever it's shaken. Yeah, the last drop she
- 44:06Speaker 1: stayed she ended at the rim. Yeah, you know what
- 44:10Speaker 1: I'm saying.
- 44:11Speaker 4: I understand what you're saying. It's a whole like it's
- 44:13Speaker 4: it's it's it's almost like a perception of value. Kind
- 44:15Speaker 4: of thing, you know, like when you're looking at it
- 44:18Speaker 4: and this halfway you know, below the line or below
- 44:22Speaker 4: the rim.
- 44:22Speaker 1: It's little, but a good martini is like that. The
- 44:25Speaker 1: bartender it's looking at you, it's talking to you. He's
- 44:29Speaker 1: shaking you martini and the last drop drops and when
- 44:31Speaker 1: you look at that glass is literally perfectly aligned to
- 44:34Speaker 1: the rim. Yeah, that's that.
- 44:36Speaker 2: You feel cheated if if it If it doesn't.
- 44:39Speaker 1: I just not not cheated because the liquors in there.
- 44:41Speaker 1: But I do feel like I know where I'm at now.
- 44:45Speaker 2: Ah, So that's your that's your barometer.
- 44:48Speaker 1: Just like he has, like I'm gonna get something simple
- 44:50Speaker 1: and see what kind of plays I'm at and what
- 44:52Speaker 1: am I gonna trust? I know where I'm at. That interesting,
- 44:56Speaker 1: And you know I got that a lot from believe
- 44:59Speaker 1: or not growing up and watching James Bond drink this
- 45:01Speaker 1: martiniz And I didn't understand the martini game until way
- 45:04Speaker 1: later in my life when I realized how special it
- 45:07Speaker 1: is to start your evening with the martini. You know,
- 45:12Speaker 1: it's so it's so clean and also light that it
- 45:16Speaker 1: allows you to still enjoy your dinner. You know, it
- 45:19Speaker 1: doesn't it's not gonna overpower anything. But yeah, so that
- 45:22Speaker 1: to me is it's a martini. But I'm a James
- 45:25Speaker 1: Bond guy.
- 45:26Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I love how James Bond inspired that drink.
- 45:31Speaker 2: But then but then you actually liked it like you
- 45:33Speaker 2: had it here.
- 45:34Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I mean Martine's I mean I would I
- 45:36Speaker 1: do it express a martini? Yeah, if I'm in yeah Cabo,
- 45:40Speaker 1: and you know, and we've been at the Sun all
- 45:43Speaker 1: day and it's a six pm and we're gonna go
- 45:45Speaker 1: to dinner, I stay up. Yeah, we do it, you know,
- 45:48Speaker 1: express martini. But yeah, but yeah, martini is my thing.
- 45:51Speaker 1: That's the first thing you order.
- 45:52Speaker 3: I love it. I love it. I could do a
- 45:54Speaker 3: good martini too.
- 45:55Speaker 1: Well that's next.
- 46:02Speaker 5: I got that couch.
- 46:04Speaker 1: Well, Josh, We're so grateful that you spend the time
- 46:06Speaker 1: today and I appreciate it.
- 46:08Speaker 5: Guys, thanks for having me.
- 46:09Speaker 1: You know, it's beautiful here. The craftsmanship that goes into it,
- 46:12Speaker 1: most importantly, you know, the work, the thought you know
- 46:16Speaker 1: that goes into the creations that you've made for so
- 46:18Speaker 1: many people, and you know, I think about you know,
- 46:23Speaker 1: the environment that you have created for probably thousands of
- 46:28Speaker 1: people in your career, Josh that have had unforgettable, beautiful
- 46:32Speaker 1: celebrations not just about life, but special moments in their life.
- 46:36Speaker 1: And uh, and I count my my personal beautiful memorable
- 46:40Speaker 1: moments of my life because you've been there for some
- 46:43Speaker 1: of the most beautiful moments of my life. And you know,
- 46:46Speaker 1: some of these moments can only be commemorated when you're there,
- 46:49Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, yeah, so, so I'm really grateful to
- 46:53Speaker 1: you and and and you know your team also because
- 46:56Speaker 1: they're my family too. Those those are my guys as well.
- 47:00Speaker 1: But yeah, I'm excited to, you know, to see what's next.
- 47:04Speaker 3: You know, and I've seen Martini in your future.
- 47:12Speaker 1: Well, to everyone who joined our evening, our escapade or
- 47:16Speaker 1: afternoon wherever you're listening or watching from, thank you so
- 47:19Speaker 1: much for being with us here your show, Those Amigos
- 47:23Speaker 1: with Wilmer Valderama, Freddie Rodriguez, and and Josh Succan. We'll
- 47:27Speaker 1: see you guys on the next episode of Those Amigos.
- 47:35Speaker 2: Dose Amigos is a production from WV Sound and iHeartMedia's
- 47:39Speaker 2: Michael through That Podcast network. Hosted by me, Freddie Rodriguez,
- 47:43Speaker 2: and Wilmer Valdorama.
- 47:44Speaker 1: Those Amigos is produced by Aaron Burleson and Sophie Spencer's Abbos.
- 47:49Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Wilmer Valdorama, Freddie Rodriguez, Aaron Burlson,
- 47:53Speaker 2: and Leo Klem at WV Sound.
- 47:56Speaker 1: This episode was shot and edited by Ryan Posts and
- 47:58Speaker 1: mixed by Sean Trace and features original music by Madison
- 48:02Speaker 1: Devenport and Hello Boy.
- 48:03Speaker 2: Our cover art photography is by David Avalos and designed
- 48:07Speaker 2: by Deny.
- 48:07Speaker 1: Holtzclaw and thank you for being there third Amigo today.
- 48:11Speaker 1: Appreciate you guys, always listening to those amigos.
- 48:13Speaker 2: For more podcasts from my Heart, visit the Rhart Radio app,
- 48:16Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
- 48:19Speaker 1: Is you next Week