Nicolas Mendiharat’s Post

That adrenaline feeling we have when we pop one of our best #bottles and we hope for the best outcome. We should grant this amazing ballerina a sip of those magnums after completing such a difficult walk. What humans invent with #wine #bottles is limitless. Happy Sunday! Credits: Italy Sommelier via IG

Team work like we should do it. Obviously this doesn’t happen to us without proper training and probably lots of misses. I love how they celebrate afterwards. Whether we like golfing or not, it doesn’t matter, this summarizes pretty much everything what needs be for our success: concentration, coordination, effort, team work, repeat iteration and probably a bit of luck on the way. Happy weekend everyone!

What makes us so amazed by very old #bottles? Considering we have stored them properly (as well as prior guardians), we can only be in awe when they still taste delicious and please our #palates. The age of the relics in this video defies any old #finewine bottle contest. These were part of a jaw dropping historical, and certainly -once in a lifetime for a happy few - tasting which happened a month ago in Provence. There are so many things we can respect in old bottles that it’s hard to list them all here. For me the main 3 things I’m passionate about them are: - nature: how wine is a living and changing thing which can live for centuries and still taste awesome. - human artistry: how the winemaker intended the wine to become in the future. - palate delight: old wines have unique smells and taste and can express incredible secondary aromas and new balances impossible to find in new wines, expressing a mix of terroir and winemaking decisions. Only problem is to get invited to such tastings… Courtesy of François Audouze, founder of the “Academie des vins anciens”, who shared this video and whom you can follow on his Instagram account where he pops amazing old bottles.

I love #pranks because they wake us up from our biased vision of the world. I would even say from our ready-to-think marketing version fed to us daily through our screens. This one doesn’t just go further in the prank itself, it uses a screen we believe too much to represent the #truth to disrupt it, the viewers have all the reasons to be shocked for sure. We need more of these to remind us to question the status quo, to question what we see or read all day on our screens, to make our own critical view of events. This will become particularly important in the new world of #AI imagery and videos. What we see won’t be real in most cases and we will only be able to make a difference by proving sources or do proper due diligence. Except maybe when the truth is physically falling out of our screens in front of us 😉

When we have lived and worked on several continents, we naturally compare business and societal practices because it matters a lot to us, our lifestyle and our decisions. Maybe it’s because we want to justify our choices or just because we’re seeking to adapt, but one thing I noticed: people with an international career are more curious and have interesting ways to analyse patterns from a different angle. Prof Scott Galloway’s musings might be controversial and his bets have been wrong sometimes, but I agree very much on this one. I’ve lived in the US for more than 8 years now, and as a French-German citizen who has had an entrepreneur life on both continents, I can relate a lot to what he says here. Reality is of course more blurred than that, but if we look at the past decades and the present, the US offers a more compelling positive ground for the ambitious people and entrepreneurs while Europe is too money and business conservative in my opinion. The differences are mostly cultural and political. A few examples which are representing these differences: - Germany has one of the lowest VC investment rate compared to GDP. A very risk adverse country. - France is having new elections and the current political debate isn’t about whether the country should have more or less State and taxes weight while it’s already at record deficits, but rather how to spend more and more. But then life is also more balanced and diversified in Europe, you can’t have it all…

When we’re trying our best and we get a setback, those are the toughest moments in #sport, #business or in life. We just have to swallow it, try again and move on with our thing. But how without making us nervous or unhappy? My 2 cents on the #mental game is this: - Setbacks are part of the process to get where we want. It’s a necessary step. - Like the famous saying says “we learn from our mistakes” we need to apply. When we ask ourself the question of what we just learned, we get positively distracted from the failure that just happened. - Focus on why you’re here in the first place. Because you like the sport, because you like the company, because you like your job etc… - More importantly, we should all focus on the future success, on the reward we will get if we try hard enough. - Be proud of what you’ve accomplished or where you got already. In most cases we’re far advanced already in the process, like this golf player is probably a pro in the top 0.001% of the best players in the world. - Have perspective on where you are in this world and that this little setback is nothing compared to your lifetime, hence mankind or the universe. - Take a moment and breathe, walk a tour, meditate or whatever is possible in that moment and makes you feel better. Sometimes let a day or a week pass before you get back to it. There are some exceptions to this process: if we’re not motivated about the greater story after having thought it through and we’re not trying again with convinction, maybe that moment was meant to disrupt our path and it’s time to think differently. Now we’re ready to hit the ball right and have better luck.

What’s our psychology behind choosing wine? Why do we go for the “second cheapest” in a restaurant or even on a shelf? This short clip is funny, but it’s trying to call out a very common situation from wine ignorance: considering the insane margins practiced in the US generally in restaurants, the majority of non savvy people go for the 2nd cheapest (which is usually priced so to produce the highest margin by restaurant managers trying ton optimize their P&L). Trying to decipher what makes our #wine decisions in different cases: 1. For the knowledgeable drinkers, we usually go for a combination of the following: - what will be the nice pairing and best choice for the party, whether a date or a group of people. - what’s the best value considering the supposed price range/budget we have - other considerations: vintages, favorite regions, producers we have tasted before. - and then finally some sommelier talking, advice if the restaurant provides one. Note: I don’t want to sound snobbish because I don’t think I’m a wine snob, but one of the most annoying things for wine connoisseurs is when you have a supposed sommelier who doesn’t know what they’re talking about and tries to sell you a wrong overpriced bottle… 2. For the vast majority who just want to enjoy a good bottle the mental process is more complex: - fearing making the wrong deal or spending too much money on a wine we won’t enjoy. - the burden of feeling embarrassed not knowing which wine to choose. - the complicated relationship with a sommelier trying to guess what we like and the budget we have while we can’t explain it openly. This is why in the end a lot of us end up with the second choice. How to solve the problem: there are a lot of avenues such as having your taste deciphered with AI and blind tasting, a #technology we developed with Palate Club. Another way is people using apps such as Vivino to check prices and what people say but that has its own limits since retail and restaurants pricing are very different and other people’s taste don’t say much about your own, hence critic scores are completely biased. I’ve seen some rich people just go for the most expensive one, to make sure they have a good wine… The best solution in my opinion is the perfect pairing you sometimes get on #gastronomy menus. It’s usually very well thought and so you don’t have to think and have the paradox of choice. But when we don’t have that, we might as well take the second cheapest wine.

I have posted a couple of top mixologist videos before, but when we witness that level of mastery, our senses get aroused quickly. Sommeliers and mixologists can perform at the highest level like in any other disciplines or sport. There are levels of expertises we as “normal” human beings can just be in awe of. The difference with #finewine is that it’s more about the cocktail creation itself than the wine growing creation. In the case of cocktails, it’s #artistry applied at the end of the process, while in the case of wine it’s artistry applied at the beginning of the process. With mixologists, it’s all about the show and the moment. With #sommeliers it’s a lot about the story. But together it’s all about the pleasure and the taste. Cheers.

It’s that time of the year where we get ready for the #summer. Whether we take a short or long break, it’s always a good time to reflect on our recent work and #achievements. One of the most underrated boosters for our positive #mindsets is to celebrate our wins. I love this trick shot video particularly (credit: Hulett Brothers) because they’re showing an exploding joy when succeeding a shot. And because it’s a team’s success. We don’t necessarily have the same dose of adrenaline when achieving a business deal or having built a great product over many months, but we should stay happy, celebrate strongly and stay inspired by our own successes. It keeps us motivated for the next hurdles. It enhances team work and our own performance. It gives us more reasons to anticipate the next celebration. And it makes us enjoy more that deserved break in the summer ☀️ Happy weekend everyone!