Buying a car can feel like guesswork. Is it really the right price or should you wait? With car gurus you get unbiased deal ratings, price change history and trusted dealer reviews so you can spot a great deal and buy with confidence. Go to cargurus.co.uk for complete vehicle details without any surprises. That's C-A-R-G-U-R-U-S.co.uk. Car gurus.co.uk. Car gurus. Search. Buy. Sorted. Changes in sexual performance are more common than most people realize and support doesn't need to feel awkward. With MedExpress everything happens privately online. Start by completing a short consultation reviewed by UK registered clinicians. If eligible treatment is delivered discreetly to your home with ongoing support whenever you need it. You're not alone in this. Visit medexpress.co.uk slash podcast to learn more. I'm in the kitchen with Charlie Bigham. So what have we got here Charlie? My brand new pan-fried pad thai noodles. Noodles? But you're Mr Fish Pie Guy. Guilty. And while ovens rule at roasting. The pan is king of noodling. Whether it's pad thai, yaki sabre or laxa finding that perfect texture is a bottomless noodle rabbit hole. But all I have to do is stir it in the pan for six minutes right? Bingo. Try the new Charlie Bigham's Asian Pan-Fried Noodle Range handmade in my kitchen. Pan-fried in yours. Welcome. Welcome to the best five minute wine podcast with Forrest Kelly. Imagine a wine that tastes like southern France and feels like doing something good in the world. That's flying whale wine. Born from tradition, built on innovation, and driven by a man whose passion for craft is only matched by his commitment to giving back. Let's go. Hi, I'm Mababa. I'm the founder of Flying Whale Wine. So the name Flying Whale is an homage to the Dogon, the Dogon people. They were a tribe in West Africa that their whole architecture and belief system was based on the serious star system, serious A and serious B. It's not until the 40s that we as humanity know of the existence of serious because it's a white dwarf. It's not only naked to the invisible to the naked eye. It's also it was invisible to every telescope that we had until the Hubble telescope was invented. Yet somehow this ancient tribe knew of its existence. So we had these two French anthropologists, Marcel Grillo, went down to interview the last four Dogons back in the 40s when they realized this mystery. And that's how we know of their tradition. They wrote a beautiful book called The Pale Fox about it. And so there is not that many pure Dogon left, if any. And I called it Flying Whale because they believe that coming from the serious star system was an extraterrestrial being, an amphibian being called the normal, who flew from serious B to Earth to drop off the first humans and restore harmony and peace on the planet. And they flew in a whale-like shape, so in a flying whale. So that's where that comes from. And we don't need to get into the specifics, but sperm whale is my favorite whale. I just like the ergonomics and the way it looks. There are a million different kinds of whales, right? That's right. Yeah, many, many. Yeah. So what's your interpretation of the whale? I always been fascinated with whales breaching. I grew up in Senegal in Dakar. I grew up diving a lot. I've been very close to the ocean my whole life. And I've always been fascinated with whales breaching. And I taught at the same time, what if the whole evolution of whale obviously is not scientifically, but just as an imagination, what if the whole evolution of whales was to get out of the ocean and they keep trying and they fall back in. So it is fascinating when they breach, yeah, that mammoth body coming out of the water and it's just, like you say, yeah, they're trying to get out, but they can't do it. Yeah, but they can't do it. So I give them wings, you know. So Senegal, refresh my memory. It's the western part of Africa. Yeah, explain to us a little bit. Say you're standing on your house. You're standing on the house. What are we looking at here in Senegal? Well, Dakar, where the city where I was born and raised is a peninsula. So it's surrounded by the ocean. You're looking at the Atlantic as the most west you can possibly be on the African continent, literally digging into the Atlantic. You're looking at the beach. You're looking at baoba trees, white sand, culture, beautiful colors, great music, great food. This is the country of the Teranga. Teranga means hospitality. So it's a country of hospitality. Everybody eats together. Okay, is there a shipping port here since you're right on the ocean? Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's a port. There is the port of Dakar. There is also the Goree Island that has a lot of history. I think a few US presidents visited. Yeah, it's a cultural hub. So that's where you were born. And so you've got that reference point. And then what projected you into France, you know, where we'll get to that right while we're recording this year in New York. So hey, you're a world traveler. Yeah, yeah, definitely always been a world citizen, traveled a bunch. I just been a serial entrepreneur. And what always pushed me was curiosity overall and learning. I find meaning, I find different meanings for life in different things that I've done. And in this case, it was the time for wine. I got an opportunity to meet a great wine maker in the south of France in El Naye, France. It was not planned. About three years ago, I was in Miami, having a meeting for something completely different. I went there for a film festival. And at the same time, I had a meeting because I'm a filmmaker. I make movies as well. And so at the same time, I had a meeting for something different. I'm a huge WNBA basketball fan. And I wanted to meet with some people talking about WNBA. But when I sat for lunch, I learned that the both people I was meeting used to have a wine company. So the meeting turned into the chat about wine. I always loved wine. I always loved the culture around it, how old of a tradition it is, how it brings people together. It's always been fascinating to me. I didn't know much about it. I just knew what I liked. I knew my palate, even though I couldn't really talk a lot about it, you know, it was still intimidating. So it was a great opportunity to learn. I asked one of the person at the meeting and she told me that she knew this great wine maker in the south of France. This was June of 2022, in August, I was in the south of France getting introduced to DJ Rodriguez, whom we developed a great friendship. Okay, we got a lot to unwrap here. So we're talking about what stands in Senegal and flying whales. And the WNBA comes into the picture in less than two months. You're in France, you know, you skipped a lot of the good stuff there. So the woman told you about these great French wine maker. And then you called them and they said, you got to come and Oh, no, absolutely not. So she told me about the great wine maker. That was mid June. I had to make a documentary film in Senegal in July. And so I told the woman, let's meet up in France after I shoot this documentary, since I'm already going to be in Senegal. And she was she was down for it. She was cool to do that. And so after Senegal, I went to a flu into Barcelona, because the one maker is in was in Perpignol at the time, which is super south of France, about an hour and a half, two hours from Barcelona driving. So I flew into Barcelona rented a car, met with her there. And she introduced me face to face with the with the one maker. What about that meeting said, okay, I want to align my vision for this wine with a particular person. First of all, there was no language barriers as he French, he speaks French. Second, he was so welcoming from the get go and seeing the enthusiasm in my eyes and what I want, how much I wanted to learn. It was a synergy because he was right at the time when he started a little story about him, he started with doing wine quirks. That was his entry point in wine. And then he graduated to having a wine plant, where he would bottle wine for wineries all around his area. So he bottles about three to four million bottles a year, but he didn't have a winery. And so when I met him, I came into the plant, and he was like, yeah, let's do it. Let's work together. But at first, what we were doing is we will use the juice from wineries around him and try to manipulate that juice in ways to get the taste that we wanted, you know, but that didn't work. I couldn't get what I wanted. And so I told him I need to build it from the ground up. Like I want and on top of that, I don't just want to juice. I want to understand the whole system. And it was just a synergy thing because he also independently of me have been wanting to own his own winery for a long time. That was always his goal with his family. And so he was like, then we have to acquire a place. And that's how it happened. We start looking and start looking and get very lucky with the men's opyre, which was about a fifth generation going 120 years over a century year old winery that was already making premium French wine. Some of the vines are 80 years old. The roots go super deep in that tough soil, but it gives you less fruits, but very dense. And in a nutshell, that's kind of how it happened. It took about a year of me going back and forth and working with the juice from other wineries to realize that he couldn't do it that way. So we ended up acquiring the winery. Interesting. What was the documentary on that you were filming? The documentary was about a wasteland in Dakar where all the trash goes from the city of Dakar. It's this small city, a trash city called Bubbas. It's literally a city of trash. Like there are people who live in that city. It's a whole ecosystem surrounded around trash. And we wanted to make the documentary because there is this big movement from the World Bank to basically change the systems of trash and greenify it for lack of a better word. But without really taking into consideration the generations of people and families who live off that trash and the ecosystem that's already there. So we wanted to give a voice to those people. Does the trash have that bird, that huge bird? Yes, yes, yes. What is the bird called? I don't know the word in English actually. I saw some of them birds though. Yeah, they're huge. They're like looking birds and yeah, they wanted to get rid of them and they were like, no, they have a function. Yeah, I did a paper or a report about the trash and it's, oh, it's just, it's disgusting. Yeah, it's tough. It was tough. It was really tough to shoot there for 14 days with masks. It was hard. Oh my goodness. Yeah, here in California, they've finally banned plastic bags and everybody's complaining and it's like, shut up. Do you know what these bags do and how far around the world they go and that's insane. I'm shocked that people are complaining. Oh, really? Well, the paper bags, they tear and they don't have a handle. So they're like, oh my goodness. Wah, wah, wah. You're, but anyway. So you did the documentary and then this is, you know, a little bit of history about you as we take a convergence. You mentioned that you've got this fascination with basketball and then you've got fascination music and then now you're making documentaries and what is your role in the documentary? Producer, yeah. So I'm a writer, producer. I'm a member of the Writers Guild of America East and I'm an independent filmmaker. Basically, I've been making movies since 2010. Oh my goodness. You're multi-layered. What is the native language? I'm all over the board here. I'm just... Yeah, Walloff is the native language in Senegal. The most spoken one and then French is the colonial language. Are the languages similar in style and, you know, with French, you know, they can sell you anything. Yeah, I think Walloff sells even better. It's a very playful language, but it has nothing to do with French. He was there before the French came. I'm in the kitchen with Charlie Bigham. So what have we got here, Charlie? My brand new pan-fried pad thai noodles. Noodles? But you're Mr Fish Pie Guy. Guilty. And while ovens rule at roasting, the pan is king of noodling. Whether it's pad thai, yakisoba or laxer, finding that perfect texture is a bottomless noodle rabbit hole. But all I have to do is stir it in the pan for six minutes, right? Bingo! Try the new Charlie Bigham's Asian Pan-Fry Noodle Range, handmade in my kitchen. Pan-fried in yours. You got the vineyard and is the vineyard ready to go? Oh, yeah. No, the vineyard been ready to go. The vineyard never stopped. The vineyard was already going. DJ and his family are running it really well there. There is a restaurant on the vineyard that's wonderful, independent of the vineyard, but it's a collaboration. And it works really well because it brings people onto the vineyard quite often on top of the the one. And so the vineyard never, never stopped working. It just changed hands. Okay. So outside of being the promoter of the flying whale wine, and I could see why that, why that came about, what else do you do in the business on a day to day basis? Well, I had to work on getting the juice that we have. So basically, the deal that DJ and I have is that DJ makes his wine under Domain Soul Pirate and we together make the wine under Flying Whale. It's a different juice. I was happy with the red and the rosé that we have. I always been a big California cab fan. And so I wanted to mimic sort of a big body California cab, but with less tenants and make it a bit more silky, a bit more juicy, less dry, you know, so you can have it a little chill. And for the rosé, that one took longer to work on. I did a lot of back and forth and a lot of work on it on the winery to get it to where it is, because I never been a big rosé drinker. So I wanted to make a rosé more for big body red drinkers. So it's a full body rosé, dry and silky, very round. And so right now, what I'm working on is the white wine. It's a Vignonier. But I decided I wanted to do a Vignonier because it's not the easiest grape to work with. But once you get it right, I think it's a beautiful grape. I love the flower that you can taste on it, but it can be a bit too acidic for me. And so I'm trying to make a Vignonier that flows more, that has the buttery of a chardonnay, but still has the flower aspect of a Vignonier. So I will go back to work on that at the winery until I get it right. Looking at the website flyingwhailwine.com, are you in those pictures on the flash? Yeah, yeah, that's me. You can see founder. I'm under that picture. The beginning video that was the launch because we finally launched in August. We just launched. And then at the bottom video, I believe is me and DJ at the winery. It's very nice, very aesthetically pleasing. Okay, so you've got three products or two, right? And then coming soon. So tell me about the Black Bottle. Yeah, so the Black Bottle is the Flying Whale Gold. That's the first one that I worked on. It's my red blend. It's inspired by a big body California cab. That's what I was trying to achieve because I'm a big fan. I always get a big fan of big California cabs. But I wanted to make one with less tenons. So it comes up more silky and rounder. You know, when you have some of the big California cabs, sometimes when you drink it, it kind of dries out your mouth a little bit. And that's why it's so nice to have with a juicy steak or something that waters your mouth to balance it. Instead, I wanted to make one that you can have with those big meals, but you can also have a little chilled and it's more fluid, it's more round and silky. And I achieved it by mixing Grenache Noir and Siwa together as a blend. How long has it been out? Yeah, I started producing this. So this is the 2023 vintage, but we just launched it in August of 2025. This past August, we just launched. Before that, we were just doing private tasting, etc. So we soft launched at Aspen Food & Wine in June, but the wine itself was not yet in the States. We just had samples at the time. We were bringing a hundred bottles at the time just to kind of like gauge the audience and gauge the people, etc. And then fully launched in August. Tell me a little bit about the design process of it because it's very clean and subdued. Visually, you're not hit with all of this information on the bottle. You're looking at it and it's just this black, rich bottle and then a gold, looks like it's stamped on kind of like a gold medalist attached to it. Yeah. Tell me about that. As I say, I come from a storytelling background and I learned that the most complex thing to achieve is simplicity. And so everything that I tried to do, I tried to find the simplicity in it. The design here is the first thing that I did. Like after that meeting in June, once I knew that in August, I was meeting a wine maker. I got so excited and I started to design the bottle right away. I was like, Oh, I got to look like this and it's going to tell this story. So the story aspect came very natural to me. It had to be a medallion. I create in the mornings, sometimes around four, five AM, I just wake up with ideas. And that's just how this one happened. I knew I wanted to tell the story of the doggone, people, the normal trying to earth in a well like ship. I knew you have to do something with the oceans. Like all of those things are so true to me, but I didn't know exactly how I was going to show it. And I also knew that I want to achieve simplicity and striking simplicity. And so I let it marinate and it came to me. I think about a week later, the idea of having just a medallion, just a coin, because it's almost like a collector's item to have and it's like a gift to give to create a coin like that. And then from there I started designing the regard to what it is now. That simplicity, you've nailed it very well because you're not overwhelmed on the website. So when you're looking at it, and I've been over a few wine websites, and this is the first time that you get the explanation and I love this. We're talking about the gold and it's the breakdown of color, nose, palate and finish. For instance, color, you say a rich deep red with hints of purple like a bold sunset after a long day. Excellent. You know, that sets the mood and then you go down to nose, palate and finish. You had to narrow that down, correct? I don't want you to first start. Oh my god. The writing is definitely the hardest part. The visual is one thing, but you go, I think it was, who was it? I think it was Pascal, who there was a philosopher that was doing correspondence with, it was a French philosopher and a gentleman from England. And they kept writing letters to each other. And one of them, one day wrote a letter and at the beginning of that letter, he apologized to his friend and said, I'm sorry I didn't have time to write, so this letter is going to be really long. So basically, it's like to condense your ideas and make them very direct and simple in writing is the hardest thing. That's why it's easier to write a long paragraph. So that took longer, that took much more time to narrow down to really get the point across, but in very simple ways. That was a lot of back and forth. But again, you can't really beat your head on that. At least I can. I go as far as I can. And then I trust that inside of my body is working, even if I'm not actively working on it. And then usually early morning, something comes up. And I just, I just make sure that I'm aware enough to catch those ideas and write them down. I have notebooks everywhere on the side of the bed, etc, etc, to just keep notes down. I think, yeah, I have to do that too. Because you think your memory is going to remember that is because it's a great idea. And then you're eating your sandwich and you're thinking, what was that idea I had? I have no clue. Exactly. Yeah, it's gone. Yeah. As we move on to the second bottle, a soft glowing pink with a hint of gold. It's got fresh strawberries, peach and a splash of citrus. What are you talking about here? Yeah, like I say, it's a mix of Garnache and Cira. This one is a fuller body rosé, but it's still a rosé. So the strawberry is still going to be there. The peach fruitiness is still going to be there, but it's dry. And that's where the hint of citrus comes in to really balance out and not make it too sweet like the usual rosé. So it keeps it really balanced, dry, and the Garnache makes it, it gives it still that silky feel. I think to describe my wine so far and what I'm going for, I think my word is silky. I love that, that feel of silky liquid going and both of those wines do that and that's what I'm trying to achieve also with my white and then the rest of the wines come in. As is, we're doing this in your in New York. You encapsulate everything here. You say this wine is great for rooftop hangs, beach days, or doing absolutely nothing, which encompasses it all. That's right. That's right. I call it the old season rosé. I think it is so ridiculous that people have created this idea that rosé is only for certain seasons. Like there's rosé season and not rosé season. I mean, look, it's through their own. I am not against it, but personally, I wanted to make a rosé that I believe is for all season. It's a full body rosé. You can have it by the fireplace when it's cold and you can also have it by the summer on the rooftop or by the pool on the summer day. So that was kind of the idea there. So you've got the two and now you're working on a third. What inspired the third entry? The third entry is the white gold. That one, to be honest, first I went to Napa, went around a bunch of wineries, did a bunch of tasting, and I was going towards a Chardonnay. I think our politics here is already geared towards Chardonnay. It's one of those you love it or you don't. The butter feel of a Chardonnay has always called me to an extent, as long as it's not too buttery. But then I went to Miami Vine Expo and I tasted a few wine there and I really knew that I liked the floral aspect of a vionier. Like I haven't had a grape. Maybe one of the Verde in Portugal come close, but a good vionier, the floral notes that you taste are so, especially on the nose and even when you're drinking it, I feel like I have a bouquet of flowers. And once I saw that, I wonder, how can I make a vionier that smells and has the finish of the floral vionier, but drinks like a Chardonnay, still with that butter feel, that almost a greasy feel of a Chardonnay. And you know, it sounded crazy. And so to me, it was a great challenge and it's still a great challenge to achieve that. And so that's the inspiration behind the white wine, the white gold. Do you get much pushback from your co-partner? Oh my God. Yeah, it's nonstop. It's nonstop. It's a negotiation. It's a discussion. You know, it's work, but it's fun. It's fun. He likes, you know, he likes challenges. At the end of the day, it's sort of like doing chemistry with this natural, very old plant. It's working with the earth. It's farming. It's still fun to do. But yeah, I get a lot of pushback because, you know, I come with a fresher mind. I come with a beginner's mind. I come with bigger dreams. And I think he also, that's why we connected the way we connected, because a lot of times when you have been doing something for a long time and you have learned from people who've been doing it for a long time, you may sort of think in a very rich box, but you're still in that box, you know. And so I think it's amusing to him and we talk in France, you know, they have a tradition of wine, old world for a long time. So I think it's amusing and fun also for him to have someone like me who come in with just with bigger ideas and we, and he saw that we achieved some of it with the red and the rosé. It's fun to work on, but yes, long answer, but I get a lot of pushback. I'm in the kitchen with Charlie Bigham. So what have we got here, Charlie? My brand new pan-fried pad thai noodles. Noodles? But you're Mr Fish Pie Guy. Guilty. And while ovens rule at roasting, the pan is king of noodling. Whether it's pad thai, yakisoba or laxer, finding that perfect texture is a bottomless noodle rabbit hole. But all I have to do is stir it in the pan for six minutes, right? Bingo! Try the new Charlie Bigham's Asian Pan-Fry Noodle Range, handmade in my kitchen. Pan-fried in yours.
