Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Episode 188: Honey Spencer

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

Honey Spencer is a wine expert who has two little boys aged 6 and 1. She and her husband Charlie run a neighbourhood restaurant called ‘Sune’ in Hackney in East London, which she describes as feeling ‘wholesome and right’.Honey told me that Georgia is the birthplace of wine, and how she is a fan of ‘skin contact’ wine. She also described how vineyards are like the ‘canary in the coal mine’ of climate change.Honey has written a book about natural (organic) wines and is the wine director of Eurostar. She told me how pregnancy gave her a superhero palate, and we debated the wisdom of eating ginger biscuits during wine tasting… Listen to the podcast to come to your own conclusion!Spinning Plates is presented by Sophie Ellis-Bextor, produced by Claire Jones and post-production by Richard Jones. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Sophia L'Exter and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it all work. I'm a singer and I've released eight albums in between having my five sons, age between seven years old and nearly 22, so I spin a few plates myself. Being a mother can be the most amazing thing, but it can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions. I want to be a little bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. Welcome to Spilling Plates.

Morning. I say morning. It's morning when I was big into you. It's 9 o'clock on Saturday. And that little sound you can hear is me whisking batter. Because on Saturdays, I make pancakes. So I'm in the kitchen making some pancakes. My adorable little chair of Mickey, who is up, well, he got up at like 8,

which you think, okay, that's not so bad. Not so early. But then I realized he didn't go to sleep at about midnight last night. I'm thinking this kid is going to be tired. I let him step and wait for me because I hadn't really seen him this week. I'd been away since Tuesday. So I'm briefly after school.

Well, I say after school time. Schools have been shut, thanks to the heat wave, when I landed back home again. But then I went to the school with Richard. We went to a lovely party, actually, that they gave as a send-off to the head who is leaving after 11 years. and yeah there was a band full of our mates actually who did a bloody brilliant job and um

the school looks so pretty and uh they had Mexican food and cocktails that's the butter in the pan guys and um yeah I got up and sang a few songs uh I was asked I promise I'm not just like give it that microphone and yeah it was just really really cute it was a nice evening And I wonder what time they went on to, because as soon as I'd finished singing, I kind of did, is it a French exit? I always won't forget Irish. Whichever one where you leave, fairly sharpish. In a nice way, I'd been there for a few hours and I'd seen lots of lovely people, but

I'd been away since, I've been away since Tuesdays, which I just wanted to get back to the babies when you were waiting out for me. And then it was just so hot, and they were all so lively, they ended up having kind of like a sort of second wind of family time and watching a program together that Mickey really lights but yeah I remember being with him and the clock striking midnight and thinking hmm I should probably be getting my seven-year-old to bed at some point but we were just so hot anyway I hope you're coping all right if you are subjected to this heat wave this week I left Amsterdam yesterday morning lunchtimeish it was 38 39 degrees and I'd gone for a

little walk I really wanted to go and see Anne Frank's house again and my word It was so hot. I was like, what am I doing? Get back in the shade. And, yeah, I know it's been really hard. I just saw one of my cats lying outside. I mean, even though it's 9 o'clock, it's already kind of, I don't know, 28 degrees or something crazy.

I'm sure the cat's not what they're doing, don't they? I'm not going to worry. They can come in when they want to, and we do have some cool spaces in the house. Anyway, sorry, I'm really rambling. I guess I missed you. I wanted to fill you in. I've had a few gigs this week. I had

a gig in the south of France on Tuesday which was lots of fun then on Wednesday and Thursday we did two shows full band shows in the Netherlands one in a beautiful park with a little amphitheatre called Zada Park

and another one in a festival called concert at sea which is literally on the coast and it's really cool European festivals are pretty awesome actually they really know what they're doing so that was my last few days

and then yeah I've got a relatively busy weekend but quite a nice one anyway you're like when is she going to talk about the podcast now now guys so this week this guest came to me an unexpected way but a pretty cool way actually

because a couple of seasons back I interviewed the formidable former New Zealand Prime Minister. Justinda are done. Hold on two seconds. Yep. There's my thing. They'll come here soon.

And when Carolina replies, I'll let you know and I've got a pancake in the pan already for you. Look. Let's flip it. I'm going to do two. I've just done one so far. I took off my t-shirt because I'm so bloomin hot next.

I'm not naked. I just want to sustain it. Oh, you're taking your top off too. Do it. Do it. Who are you talking? I'm talking to anyone who's decided. to listen to my podcast this week. Love you too, bugger.

Anyway, so last year I interviewed Jacinda, who was incredible, and if you haven't listened to that episode, it's amazing. I mean, imagine being the youngest female prime minister and you're also only the second woman to give birth whilst in office, her and Benderzee, Bouto. So have a listen to that.

Anyway, I digress. I was asked after I did that podcast to host a little Q&A at a screening of Jacinda's documentary film, Prime Minister and, sorry, that's more butter in the pan. And while we were having dinner, while the film was screening,

I was sat opposite one of the producers of the film, and she started talking about how her daughter was training to be a sommelier under the wing of a really impressive sommelier called Honey Spencer. And my ears, pricked up because I thought, firstly, what a fascinating job. Secondly, I think of that as quite a,

when I think of a sommelier, in my experience, a few times I've been in a restaurant, you know, where someone comes over to recommend wines, it's invariably a man. In fact, I think I've only ever had it be a man. And so I was thinking, that's, you know, what leads, what led honey to that path. And also she's done impressive things. She chooses the wine for Eurostar. She and her husband have their own restaurant, which I must try, because it sounds incredible. And they're looking to have a second location with a bigger spot and a bigger, more ambitious plan for the next round. So, you know, she's doing really cool things as soon as the name of their restaurant. They have two little boys who are one and six. And yeah, she was absolutely brilliant. And, I'm

fascinating and I'm sorry not sorry you are going to want a glass of wine after you listen with this all right see you on the other side come on mickey soon a bit this is honey spencer thank you it's so nice to meet you honey thank you for coming here um are you at london a born and brett i was just trying to work that out no i grew up in barckshire so not a million miles away grew up in barckshire in sunningdale which is near ascot and then went and stepped a little bit closer into london for university went to kingston My parents were about 45 minutes away and I just, I wanted to kind of be close-ish, but a little bit further into London. And then I moved to East London when I graduated.

Yeah. Now it feels like your home life and your work life is very entwined in that part of the city. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And it's such a vibrant area. And how has the area changed for you since you've had sooner, your restaurant? Because I imagine that would bring in this whole new community and purpose.

Yeah, absolutely. And also, thank you for you're probably the second person that has ever produced. announced sooner correctly. Everyone says soon, even people really close to the business. So thank you. It is just a wonderful kind of community in general. And I think when I first started working in East London around 2012, that was really when specifically kind of Hackney was taking off and kind of becoming more what it is now.

Lots of people were moving to the area. There were lots of artists, lots of really cool talent. and I was working in this little wine bar and there just weren't wine bars in Hackney at that time. And then being part of that kind of original kind of chapter of kind of food and wine in East London and then kind of seeing it now and actually our restaurant is just around the corner from the wine bar

that I helped set up in 2012. And it's gorgeous. I mean it's a complete neighborhood restaurant And, you know, we use the coffee from Clemsons just down the road in the kind of market, two blocks from us. We use the fishmonger, the butcher. So it's very, we try and keep things as close to the restaurant as possible. And it's not just because the quality is, you know, world class. It's also because we always wanted to foster those kind of relationships and always wanted to, you know, have people pass and wave out the window.

And it just feels really wholesome and really right. Yeah. I wonder as well if that sort of harks back to sort of, I don't know, the roots of London a bit actually. Because when you're talking about that, I imagine there's been people that have embraced that localities. Yeah. That's a way for like, you know, centuries. You can definitely feel anonymous in London in a good way and in a bad way. I mean, I've lived in neighborhoods where you can go to the same pub every Sunday and you'll just have someone look straight through you.

And I never wanted that. I always wanted to feel like that. What is the saying about London? that it's a thousand villages. Yeah. I always wanted to feel like I was in a village in London. And now I definitely am, which is just, it's heaven. Because I want to be part of this beautiful community.

And I want to know everyone. Not necessarily know everyone's business. Like I can stay out of people's business. But I want to just, you know, be able to know the names of everyone that walks bars, you know, their kids' names. Yeah. And so you're primarily known as a wine expert. You've worked in the hospitality. It sounds like since you sort of started dabbling it when you were like teenager.

That's right. What are like the main skill sets you think you've needed to do what you do? I think, yeah, I mean, I'm a, I'm a similiate by trade. So I'm a wine expert and I, in my sort of day-to-day role, I have to do, I have to know about the wines of the world, which is an absolutely amazing job. And I'm still so thrilled that I went down this path, albeit fairly accidentally. But I suppose I'm a hospitality and I look after people I always have, you know, even from, you know, when I was very little, my mum used to throw these garden parties for, like,

for elderly women, you know, these tea parties and I would be there serving. And I just love that. And I love, I love looking after people. So I think that's kind of first and foremost, you know, you need to have this kind of want to serve and to kind of, yeah, to just to nourish people, I suppose. empathy and kind of emotional intelligence as well. Physical, being able to move around a very, very busy dining room without smashing stuff and dropping stuff, I suppose, on a very basic level, that kind of thing. Which is hilarious because I was once a very clumsy person, but there's something about stepping into a restaurant, I just change, just become this kind of almost ballerina. It's very rare that I make any sort of physical mistakes now, which I'm quite impressed with. Impressive playing, honey.

I like it. And then there's the kind of the more intellectual side about the wine and, you know, various kind of freelance projects that I work on curating wine lists for restaurants or writing about wine in my book or in articles. That's the kind of, that's where the kind of more intellectual side of my role, my job kind of comes out. So it's a nice kind of interplay of a lot of different things, which I really enjoy. Yeah, I mean, the more I thought about the job of a sommelier, the sort of broader it. got in my head because I was first intrigued to speak to you because I thought, how does somebody become a sommelier? How do you develop and trust your palate? You know, how does the learning side of it go? But also, I started to really unfold it. And I thought, actually, it's to do with so many things,

culture and history and travel and climate. And I was thinking, you know, can you even be a if you're not also an environmentalist because you're you're so ingrained with the natural world and what resources have gone into the soil to get to the point where there's the great but i sort of hadn't i that's what i started it was like the more i thought about it the sort of deeper it went yeah and also it must be permanently evolving totally and you can't i think you're you're so bang on and i think that's why i loved i when i started kind of scratching the surface of being a similei i thought I had a marketing degree. This is my early 20s.

And I was working in a restaurant and there were these sort of similias. And I was sort of looking at them and I was like, hang on. So they get to do this amazing job where they're kind of sworn around a restaurant identifying amazing wines for people. But they're also travelling and seeing these vineyards. But they also have an understanding. By understanding wine, you know, similias have this understanding of, like you say, like, you know, history, culture, of course, kind of environment. sociology, psychology. And it's just absolutely fascinating.

And you also need to stay in it because every year things are changing slightly. You know, like for example, Shabli's had a bit of a rough time the last kind of five years. And, you know, if you weren't, you know, if you don't have your finger on the pulse, then you might miss what's going on. You might miss the kind of broader changes in the world. I mean, certainly, I mean, there's a quote about how vineyards are like the canary and the coal mine. of climate change because if a vineyard starts to change or things start to happen in a specific wine region it can be quite telling of what is happening in a broader sense in the

environment wow that's actually a really impactful thing and I can totally understand why that's the case but it's also quite uh yeah I suppose you're very close to and you know seeing the changes and and watching how climate is affecting all these all these vines and also you know you go into a vineyard, especially in there are certain areas where you can walk into a vineyard and the vineyard that you're visiting is like, you know, luscious and green and there's grass and it's easy to walk because it's not, you know, it's not kind of mangled by a load of tractors and it's just this kind of kind of picture perfect paradise, viticultural paradise, and then maybe the neighbor's vineyards next door and it's like you can see the contrast. It can be quite barren.

And it can be, because, you know, the focus is just monoculture, you know, grow those grapes to make that wine. And it is quite telling sometimes. And I think in terms of my own wine preferences, I mean, I love classic wines and I love fine wines. But I've become a bit of a champion of natural wines because you go into those vineyards and you see those grapes. And the winemaker is telling you, like, I don't want to add a load of stuff. into my wine. I want these grapes to express themselves and to express the place that they're from the best that they can. And I don't want to manipulate the process. And so you're like, of course, that makes complete sense. And then you try these wines and they're like, you know, they're often raw and wild and untamed and delicious and you wake up the next day and you actually feel better,

not worse. And so I have come to really be a bit of a staunch supporter of those styles of wines. both from an environmental perspective but also just from a health perspective as well. Yeah, I was actually listening to you speak another interview and I heard you saying about how you tend to not get the same next day feeling from natural. They should start with that with natural wine. I know. I know. Everyone's so scared about like getting the science wrong and sticking their neck out. But I mean, you know when you've had a bottle of terrible rosé and a bottle of good wine.

Like you can tell the difference. Some wine tastes like a headache when you first drink it. Yes, totally. And that usually is pub rosé, to be honest. It's so true. Yeah, I mean, I usually, sometimes I think I can just get over myself. If I'm in the sun and there's nothing else, I'm like, I'm just going to, maybe I'll just this all in my head.

And then I'll have half a bottle and I'll be like, oh, my, I can hang over by the time. I've finished the half-first glass. You can taste the hangover in the glass. You can taste that kind of almost that ethanol that comes with really bad rosé. But yeah, so it's definitely not in my head at all. So with your. It's funny. I was talking to my band and crew last weekend about the fact that speak to you. And there were some, I would say, misconceptions thrown up about your work.

One person was saying, oh, if you're a sommelier, you can't ever eat garlic or brush your teeth. Oh, okay. And I was thinking, I've never heard those. No, I was thinking, surely that's just if you're going to be tasting wine. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, usually the one that comes up is smoking because, you know, interrupt your palate. Okay, no, garlic. I mean, certainly I wouldn't eat a clove of garlic and then go to taste thing.

Or, I mean, everyone knows what it feels like when you brush your teeth and then you taste something delicious and you're like, this just tastes like toothpaste. I realize you wouldn't do it just before. Yeah. Oh, I love that there are all these kind of these false myths about what the wine industry. That's so good. Well, I guess the biggest one is that you're pissed all the time. Yes.

I'm sure that's one of the first things people might think. But I think also that one of the things I realize is a big skill set. And you've touched it already, but is empathy, is the ability to read people. And from hearing you talk about your relationship with hospitality, it sounds like you get your battery quite charged up from those human interactions. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I'm surprisingly, I'm actually a complete introvert. I'm, I really, I charge my batteries by staring at a wall at home on my own, which is actually why having children, I find it quite hard. Because it's always a background noise.

But certainly professionally, I think, you know, the original, I mean, I'm a restaurateur as well. well as a sommelier now and I love that and and the original word restaurateur comes from the Latin to restore and I always remind myself of that you know people they walk into my restaurant and I want them to feel better than they could imagine when they leave or certainly better than they felt when they walked in through the door so that's always kind of mine and and my team's number one priority and that's interesting with wine because wine is it's often quite I mean it's a fun job. It's a kind of luxury job finding someone a bottle of wine to have with their dinner. But you sometimes you want to challenge people to try something new or sometimes you've got to get

guests who just wants to have what they've always had. Or they pick something that wildly clashes with their food and you have to know when to go actually, do you know, do you try this? I think you might really like it. And you also have to know when to leave them alone, you know or if there's some dynamic going on at a table you know there's a big alpha male who always orders the wine that kind of thing you know you take kind of the emotional intelligence kicks in where you go okay i'm not going to disturb this dynamic i'm just going to leave it be they can have their barolo with their oysters you know i'll just i'll let that happen um but yeah reading each guest and trying to figure out how to make their day better whether it be through a new

discovery or just kind of quietly assisting in making their evening pleasant. I think that's the key. Yeah, I mean, well, you mentioned your small children. We will come back to that because I do first just want to, you mentioned about when you go to a table and there's a sort of alpha male choosing the wine. And I think actually I did wonder to what extent, because my first thought would be, you know, I mean, you were, you know, starting out as a young woman in that wine world, I'd imagine a lot of the wine is quite an old school, quite old boys club element to it.

But then I thought maybe I'm wrong because obviously you've got, there's always new people coming in to refresh things. But what's been your experience of going into that world? And to what extent is that true? I mean, certainly in the, you know, when I was becoming a sommelier, I was in my early 20s, it was 2010. I was a first graduate. There were very, very few women around.

I mean, we have a kind of industry matriarch. Her name is Janice Robinson. She is the Anna Wintel of wine. I mean, even sort of looks and sounds the same. Sort of Anna Wintel meets like Joan Didion. And she's absolutely epic. But in between, it looked to me when I was kind of looking at the wine industry from the outside,

it looked like if you're a man, you could have a really senior cool role, like a sommelier or a buyer or something like that. And if you're a woman, you were a kind of glorified secretary. You worked in admin. And actually, if you look at wineries, the setup was almost identical.

You'd have the bloke being like the winemaker, the cool guy that traveled around. And then the wife or the sister or the kind of female members of that family and business would all run the business kind of from the back office. And maybe, you know, maybe I'm being a little bit too harsh and maybe that also was catering for kind of family dynamics, collecting kids from school, just kind of enabling women to have a little bit more flexibility. But it was, it was quite, I found it quite unsavory. But I managed to navigate it, I think,

really well. I mean, I just worked really, really, really hard. And I'm, I fortunately didn't come up against any kind of very nasty people, which is quite, I think it's actually probably quite an unusual. It's quite unusual that it didn't. But I worked ferociously hard. I also, I had, you know, I was with my husband for the entire time. So I think I actually managed to escape but maybe a lot of attention that I might have otherwise got if I wasn't married. So that was always sort of a secret weapon. But actually, it has changed dramatically in the last 10 years at least. You know, there are so many women, I mean, I make a habit of hiring women, but even looking at wineries now, so many winemaker's daughters have stepped up and they've taken over. And so

that the whole, you know, this whole landscape has changed. And some of my best friends are, are wine, winemakers, vineyards, who are women. And I'm connecting with those people. And so the things are changing. And actually, if you look at London now, I mean, I was one of the first wine directors in London for its beautiful independent restaurant group in 2020 to 2020. And since then, if you look around, there are so many female wine directors in London now. And it's great.

And I'm so, I'm so proud of. of how the industry has evolved. But I think it's kind of, it's been like step by step, you know, a few more women showing up in different departments and then before you know, and then it's easier to hire women because it's not, you know, I always think, being an empath, I always think, you know, boys get, men get on with men. Like, there's nothing wrong with that.

But you need to let some women in to be able to kind of facilitate this kind of cultural change. And luckily that has happened. But there is still some very dark corners, of the wine industry, certainly, where it's, you know, it's like the, we call it, like, the Red Trouser Brigade. Probably, and it sums up so well. And probably, you know, it depends where you are in London.

I was going to say, I can't imagine there's too many of them where you are. No, no. They come for their hipster, hipster night out, I think. You know, it's a bit like going to Brooklyn and being like, oh, yeah, into Williamsburg. But, yeah, certainly, certainly there's less, let's call it pomp in East London. Yeah. kind of people doing their own thing, not necessarily too worried about, what, how should we call it, like prestige or doing things a certain way or, and I think that's quite liberating.

And I think that's what wine needs as well. You know, this is a very expensive product. And a lot of the old, a lot of the old-scale ways of doing things or, you know, even wines that people used to like Bordeaux. And it's all very expensive now. and there's not enough people to drink them. So wine does need to have a little bit of a rethink and a rebrand and a re-image. Definitely.

And I think you're right. Incrementally, I can see the change. Even we go quite a lot to the south of Italy and Puglia and a friend of ours, whose husband runs a studio that my husband's band have used. She did exactly what he described to her. She had a vineyard called Claudio Quota. And then he passed it to her and she became like the youngest female Italian vineyard. I know when she was in her early 30s.

Amazing. But she really knows her stuff. She's grown up around it. Yeah. She probably has to know much more than her brotherhood or... Exactly. Because she's constantly talking to people who go, oh, sorry, are you the wife or are you... Exactly.

Oh, you're the daughter. Yeah. And I think, like, when you're saying about, you know, you worked really hard so you know your stuff. Yeah, she reminded me of Anna Hoare who I spoke to, who works a chef, you know, who has the restaurant Myrtle and is now doing Master Chef. She's one of the judges. But she was like, you know, she's like five foot something. and she was like, I had to just try other techniques to assert myself in the kitchen so that all the sort of toxic elements, they've been there for a while that no one's benefiting

from, could just dial it down in my kitchen. I mean, there's that thing, isn't it, about leadership? You can either kind of try and be a man, which I kind of feel like always happens like in politics, like when there's a, you know, they have to kind of try and be quite masculine about it in order to deal with the image that they have or they're trying to shake off or whatever or to get what they want. But I think in kitchens, if you want to get all. in kitchens, in restaurants, if you want to be done with that kind of that historic toxicity that

we've had, then you need to try something else. And, and, you know, it's, it's tough. Because, you know, there are, you know, men respond to certain, you know, stimulus and, and, and aggression is one of them. And certainly, you know, the kind of old school, old school sort of fashion of kitchens. Yeah, but I think it's, when you were speaking about it and about, I was thinking actually, like, as well, I think sometimes we, when we're young, we can, a table, a restaurant table, I will often let, like, defer to the sort of older man to choose the wine because that's quite a sort of traditional way to do it. But actually, I love, I love knowing what I like and trying new things. Yeah. So it's really, it's lovely to be confident with exploring wine.

But also with women, we're taught to be people pleases. And, you know, you probably were thinking about, you know, which. of a man you're with wanting to, you know, give him that little ego stroke or whatever. It's like, he does this. And so, you know, and I'm not, I'm not against, you know, I'm not the kind of person who would just want women to do everything. I think there are certain, certain things that are lovely about respect and wanting to make people happy. But I think, I think it's absolutely incredible that women can now know as much about, as much as men about amazing things like wine and take the list in a restaurant and order confidently. And even if, you know, what happens to

me, I suppose the little micro thing that happens to me every time, especially if I'm abroad as if I order a bottle of wine and then it's presented to my father-in-law or my husband. Right. Like, oh, come on. Bring it over here. But that's, you know, that's, yeah. And the essence of it, what is it about wine that has kept you so entranced? I just love the taste. That's enough for me actually.

I was thinking about this recently actually because I've actually, you know, my husband and I are not drinking anywhere near as much as we were a few months ago. We just had to kind of hit this, hit this wall, I guess, where we were just like, let's just take a set back and like, you know, because it's, you know, when you have a restaurant, you know, you're, even if you're at work, you're tasting wine and then your friends come in and you have a glass and then you want to have a beer with your team when you sit down. And then when it's your day off, you're like, oh, of course I need a glass of wine. It's my day off. So it just, it becomes, it's an occupational hazard. But it's always nice every kind of once in a while to check yourself and be like, remind yourself that alcohol is not the answer.

You know, you can figure out, you know, you can make your life really joyful and fulfilling without it. So, but I was thinking like, what is it about, you know, whenever you give something up, you're obsessively thinking about it. It's not necessarily wanting it, but just like trying to, you know, understand the basis of, of your enjoyment of it in the first place. And I think it is, is the taste and how it works with food, I think. And I think, you know, the alcohol industry is having a rough time at the moment because a lot of people are drinking much less.

But I think it's unfair to kind of group wine in with alcohol as such. Because wine is this beautiful historic product that has, you know, been going for millennia, really. and has always been a very, very important part of culture, you know, and it's an agricultural product that it's just, you know, it's just grapes essentially. And it has been served alongside food and, yeah, compliments food beautifully. So I think, yeah, certainly the taste. But I think also just, you know, being able to, what it signifies when you have a glass of wine with a friend. Yeah, I was going to say. And that's actually, yeah, it's quite hard to not drink when you're meeting up with a friend because often your friends think,

oh, I thought we were doing this together, you know, having this. It's like breaking bread. You're kind of, you're on the same level if you have a glass of wine with someone. It's not exactly the same if someone says, oh, I just have a diet Coke. You're like, God, I wanted to tell you about my day and how shit my job is. You're like, you can't, you know, you feel a bit let down if someone's kind of just. Yeah. Yeah.

Not on the same. It's so true. I mean, I really enjoy wine. I don't really drink any other alcohols these days apart from wine. And for me, it's punctuation. That's why I think it's like a signifier of like, right, now that part of the day is done. Yeah. Yeah.

So I never drink before work. I would never have a drink before I have a gig. But it's a way of saying, right, we've switched off from that. Yeah. So it's like a comma or a dash into something else. Yeah. And I really love that feeling. Yeah.

But I was thinking, you know, if we're thinking of it as that punctuation, what was going on in your working life when you had your first baby and how? How did it impact on your working world? Yeah, I mean, I was living, I lived in Denmark for five years with my husband. We lived in Copenhagen and I was working for an amazing wine importer called Suna. And we actually named the restaurant after him. And Charlie was working at Noma. And I found out I was pregnant and I had just, just taken a new job working for this really cool, really cool restaurant company in Copenhagen.

found out that I was pregnant, it was a complete surprise to me and to everyone. And like, wow, this is okay, this is happening. And I mean, being in Denmark, I mean, it was just wonderful. It felt very, very, it's a very family-centric society. So after I kind of got over the initial hurdle of, you know, telling my bosses, sorry, I know it started last week, but I'm pregnant, you know, after that, it was all very calm and very exciting. So I'm very grateful that I was in Denmark in that moment because, you know, I was able to get maternity leave. I was going to say they have much better. Yeah. Maternity and paternity regulations, don't I? Practically a year fully paid. I mean, it's, yeah, it makes you cry. I think it's one of the

best in the world, actually. I think they're in Norway maybe. They have just, yeah, exceptional. It does make you want to cry. If you haven't, yeah, if you, if you come from that. But then I love Denmark full stop. And whenever I go there, I'm like, they've just, they've just sort of sorted this. They have just, they've just, they've just, thought holistically about individuals and everybody looks really healthy and well. And I think, God, they must look over at us and just think, what are you guys doing? What a mess? What a scruffy life? Have you given this no thought?

Yeah. We're like, sorry, what? It's a very, I mean, all of Scandinavia is very, it's about the society as a whole rather than the individual as such, you know. And in that sense, you know, a huge amount of importance is placed on families. I think even when your kids are sick, you know, you don't. don't have to use a sick day. You know, it's because your kids are it's different. It's a huge amount of kind of understanding and compassion around kind of family life in Denmark,

which is wonderful. It is. So anyway, I felt very, very held. And that was a really nice experience. But the, when Leonard my first was born, he was born in the hospital there, on the radio, this was New Year's Eve, 2019. On the radio, there was something about Wuhan. And I was like, oh, that's weird. I've never heard that, you know, of that place before. And then very, very quickly, the world kind of started to unravel all of the... I look back on this now, I think it's so hilarious. All of the Noma front of house all lost their sense of taste and smell. And it was kind of at the time, it was like, oh, no one can, you know, I just think it was

only, it was a very short amount of time. But now, of course I look back and I'm like, wow. Of course everyone must have had COVID. Yeah. And no one got, you know, I don't think anyone got that ill. But it was just one of those things that you think, oh, oh. right, that's what that was. And so it was actually quite, you know, we talk about like matrons and like becoming a mother. And I, you know, when you, when you have your first child, when you have a child,

or any number of children, you know, your life kind of stops. Your world stops spinning. You know, your identity is maybe on hold. And I felt quite lucky that as my world stopped spinning, the world stopped spinning. So I kind of felt selfishly like, but weirdly like, weirdly like, Like, wow, everybody's really. It was kind of losing kind of a sense of gravity. I'm like, ah, everyone's floating. It's not just me. And I was in this lovely bubble of feeling, not feeling too petrified about it.

Like I, I mean, certainly if I had run, if I had my restaurant now, and it was 2020, I would have had a very different experience. That would have been utterly terrifying. So I'm very, very grateful that I was in a very strong country, you know, I was able to just have this incredible maternity situation. And actually, Charlie was off the entire. high time. I think he must have had something like seven months, you know, just with our, you know, just together, which was really, really lucky. But certainly, we moved back to London

when Leonard was seven months old. It was in between lockdown one and lockdown two. And we just weren't really sure what was going on. No one really was and I felt the need to be close to my parents, both sets of our parents. And so we decided that we were going to lead this amazing utopia. and go back to London and eventually try and open a restaurant, which is kind of a crazy thing to even have even been thinking at that time, given what was happening across, you know, the world and specifically in hospitality, everything was closed. But that had always been the wider dream for us.

So we moved home and I had thought, I wasn't really sure what I was going to do. Charlie had got this job working as a general manager for a really nice Michelin-style restaurant in East London. and I had thought, okay, I don't think I can progress my career right now. I'm probably going to have to take one or two steps back working as a waitress part-time. But I got a message asking if I wanted to be a wine director for this incredible restaurant group. And so I was like, you know, I'd only, until that point, I'd been a head similar of a restaurant. This was probably two steps up.

I couldn't believe it. I was like, oh, wow, this is such a, this is such an opportunity. So I remember going, but I remember they said, do you want to meet? And I remember going, oh, they don't know. I've got a kid. And so I had to go and meet them. And in my head, I thought, I'm not going to take the job. I'm going to maybe just meet them because I'm really like the restaurants.

And maybe I can introduce them to someone that they might, you know, want to work with. And so I guess I kind of went into this interview feeling just a bit detached from it. But actually, that's often quite helpful in interviews because you come across quite confident, I suppose. And so I was just saying, oh, yeah, this is what I'm doing. And it's how I feel about that things and wine. And they said, oh, when can you start? And I said, I've got a baby actually. And they said, no, no, we know about that.

How many hours do you want to do? And I was like, wow, this is incredible. So I ended up taking this job. And actually, I think it saved me from having a proper identity crisis because I'd had this lovely first chapter with Leonard and kind of being quite safe in Copenhagen. And then suddenly, you know, it was presented this very, very profound. opportunity to manage an entire

air and I think there was seven, six kind of restaurant wine bars I was looking after all of those and it was just great and it was all in Soho so I was commuting into Soho.

I think the thing that I the less the less glamorous part of that chapter was the child care we didn't ever really have any proper childcare so it was this kind of hodgepodge of one of us would have the baby and the other one would be working a shift in the restaurant

and then the and then my parents would take leonard for over wednesday thursday and i remember i was living in deep dark east london at that point on the central line place called layton and every wednesday i would commute through central london down to waterloo down to woking where i'd pass my baby to my dad on a train platform who and then i would commute back in go to Soho. I'd work a double shift. So that's more or less. That's like a 10 a.m. We were opening a restaurant at the time called Evelyn's Table, which was a very, very ambitious 10-seater restaurant, which was, you know, mission and aspiring at the time. And I would work a double shift and then I would get the last train home back down to my parents so I could breastfeed at, you know, two in the

morning. And then I get back up and basically do the same thing again. Oh my gosh. And I look back on man, how on earth did we do that? But there was such, I was so determined to make it work in my role. And also there's a, you know, a lot of women in hospitality who think that they have to graduate out of the industry in order to have a family. And I've always been really determined to prove that that's not, you know, it doesn't have to be like that. You know, you just have to kind of, it's not, it's certainly not as linear as I've sort of just outlined, but it is possible to make it work. And. so I was just so determined to kind of be this

almost role model to other women. I mean, it's not very, it wasn't very glamorous the weeks, but you know, and then things change. They open up and you can afford a bit of childcare, you know, things always kind of tend to evolve a little bit anyway. So I just kind of kept going and I was enjoying my job so much and I was really enjoying finding my identity and, and you know, because I, so much of,

I guess so much of my self-worth is wrapped up in, in my career and I'm really proud of, you know, how hard I've worked and the things that, you know, we've been able to achieve. So we just, just kept going. Yes, it's funny, isn't it? When you look back and you think, that looks exhausting to me now. I did that for ages, like running on empty. Running on empty, completely. And how did it affect your palate, pregnancy and new motherhood? Because were you at all worried about that, your ability, you know, your relationship with flavours? Well, actually, pregnancy, it heightens your sense of flavor. So I actually was tasting

wines, especially with my second pregnancy, I was tasting wine better than I ever have. I mean, I was picking up on notes that I, yeah, it was really amazing. It was just a bit, there was a little bit of a disconnect because I didn't want to drink for the wine because I was feeling so ill.

But I was like, wow, just very, very hypersensitive. So I guess I lost a bit of the love for the, you know, kind of swallowing any wine that I really liked. but certainly from a tasting perspective, I felt like I was a bit of a kind of, yeah,

a bit of a tasting superhero at a time. Wow. And I suppose your sense of smell as well can be really heightened as well. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, it really is. Do you ever, when you were pregnant, do you remember if it's like smelling someone's breath

and their breath was pretty bad and you'd be like, oh my God, that just is so foul because it's so accentuated. I think for me things like, If someone had like a black coffee or a whiskey near me, I'd be like, I cannot even. Yeah. Just too strong. Yeah, it is. Yeah.

Yeah. But also for me, not with every baby, but with some, I couldn't even drink tea. Like, it just tasted really wrong to me, which was very insulting because I love tea. Yeah, that's hard. That's hard. That's hard. That's really, I quite like the idea of you feeling almost quite superhero about it. Yeah.

Well, unfolds like an accordion. Yeah. All these new levels unlocked. Well, we had to, when I, so with my second pregnancy with Ernest, I became the wine director of Eurostar at the same time. So we got the restaurant and I think my book had come out the year. I got the restaurant and then I published my book about natural wine. And then the year after that, I became the wine director,

had similar for Eurostar. And part of my role was essentially fielding or tasting all of these wines at home. So I was sent something like, oh God, it must be 150 bottles of wine to my house, which sounds like a dream to anyone. The delivery person must have been like. Yeah, all right, love. And, you know, my amazing, I've got two friends who used to be my sommeliers in my old job, and they came over and helped me taste through all of these. But I had the worst morning sickness at the time. And I didn't have told anyone about it.

And I just remember just being like, this is absolutely horrendous. And some of the wines are quite bad. So you had to taste all of them. And then my role was to taste them and then make a sort of shortlist and then take those wines to go and present to Eurstar. And then we taste them all again. And I remember doing this more or less, it was over 24 hours because I'd try and bunched. I just thought, okay, if I'm going to have this hellish period, I might as well just make it over one day instead of over. And so I remember presenting all of these wines in a room where there was no, I think there was no aircon, it was a really hot day, there were no windows and tasting these wines.

And I bought these ginger biscuits with me because I felt so ill. And everyone had picked up on these ginger biscuits that I just got out of my... It's the big old thing, we must have ginger biscuits in between the wines. So, I haven't told them ever about this and they're going to find out, obviously, now if this gets a part of the podcast. But I told them it was a wine, it was a hack. And being able to taste. And actually my best mate had looked it up. And she then, I got back home.

So everyone had one. Everyone was like, oh, we need to her size shit. I was giving my ginger biscuits out. I love that. And I said, oh no, my just ginger biscuits are now gone. I still feel horrendous. And I got back home and I told my best friend Tegin. And she looked it up on chat, cheap, be teared.

And it said something like, you know, there was a reason why you could eat ginger biscuits. I was like, this is legit. Okay, I got away with this. And I forgot about it. And then we did the same process the next year's and they brought ginger biscuits. They got all of this really nice. Like, the typical thing to have when you're tasting wine is like watercracker, something with no flavour. And they got the selection of different ginger biscuits. And one of the, someone, it was someone really high up at Euristar had come to be part of the tasting. And he hadn't been part of this original process. So then I had to explain to him, I was like, well, he was like, Why ginger biscuits? That doesn't really make any sense.

So, oh, and it was, yeah. Did you keep it up? I can't remember. Actually, it really heightened your... Yeah, I think I did, I didn't lie, but I think I tried to move the conversation on quite quickly. Oh, so don't you, ginger biscuits? I know. I feel like it might be this thing that's just carried forward, and we're going to be seeing them at kind of national tastings now. I think that's brilliant.

Maybe they'll serve them on the Euro style. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And must have accompaniment to your... A complimentary side of ginger. biscuits for all he's kind of tasted. But we do funny things, don't we?

When we're, those early stages of pregnancy, when you feel you're most horrific, but you're not really telling anyone. I know. And you're, you know, and also, you don't, you know, you feel very kind of fragile and very vulnerable. You're just trying to get through the day. And it's just a bit where actually it'd be the most helpful to just say, oh, can I just tell you what's going on?

Yeah. But you're just thinking, I can't, I've got to push on. I had a very, very, very weird thing happened to me in that exact same sort of time, you I must have been about, I don't know, eight or nine weeks or something. And I went to do a TV program in the Netherlands where I actually think it's been banned now because it was really un-PC. The host pretended that she was a Japanese presenter. Oh, right.

Yeah. So I'm embarrassed for her. It says it's about 10 years ago And I luckily knew it was a spoof But I wasn't supposed to know It was supposed to be like a surprise And so I was in this room with her With this sort of terrible bad pretend Japanese accent

And like fake teeth and stuff And then she got spliffs and got really stoned And was trying to give it to me So I was trapped in this hotel room For over an hour of filming As the room got thicker and thicker with smoke and I was thinking I don't want to be in here but because they were filming as a sort of like secret camera thing I was just trying to pretend that it was all a bit

a bit confusing a bit madcap but here I am I was thinking this is awful I just don't want to be and of course they didn't know no oh they would have felt horrendous if they knew I wonder if any of that footage still exists stick it out I for one would like to see that I honestly don't think that program is still running can you imagine that No, I can't. I can't. It's like a... It was really bizarre. If Little Britain's not running, then that's definitely not running.

Yeah, yeah, I know, yeah. But it's... So, plotting the... By the way, I love both your boys' names. They're really sweet. But you were saying, so you had your first baby, and then you have this sort of year of like the, you know, the lockdown, emerging into this amazing job.

What then made the next bit, then the right time to open your restaurant? And as I understand, you and your husband Charlie even spoke about it and about your first date. Yeah. Which I think is amazing. Yeah. All those years later and you're like doing it. But how did it feel?

How did you know that was the right time? How did you know to take the plunge with opening a restaurant? Because it's a big deal. Yeah, it's a really big deal. And it's, it felt certainly like a lot of kind of, let's call it, like consumer confidence was kind of coming back to restaurants. People were eating out a little bit more. There was certainly everyone had ditched the masks. and it felt like everything was recovering quite nicely.

Certainly in neighbourhood restaurants, there were still a lot of people working from home. And I guess that's one of the upsides of lockdown and COVID is that people put an enormous amount of investment back into their neighborhoods. You know, I think, you know, back in the day, if you lived in this lovely neighborhood like we are here and then you commute into London or into the centre of town for work, you'd probably stay in the in center of town and then you'd just come home to sleep or whatever and maybe you'd go to your neighborhood restaurants on the weekends but i think everyone really

realized that they had an opportunity to you know really kind of like put money and put love into the areas that they lived in um and so neighborhood restaurants were really thriving and we had been doing this this big sort of not big commute but this commute from east london into soho every day and thought okay we want to do something where we are and there was a really really really gorgeous neighborhood restaurant around the corner from us called Bright and and that closed and they they were great there they were sort of it was an Australian led restaurant and it was just it was wonderful and the hospitality was amazing and that was at the other end of Broadway market and that when that closed it was like okay we need to open a

restaurant because there's a there's a there's a there's a gulf now there's of really good hospitality um in in in that exact kind of neighborhood and we we knew we wanted to be around Broadway market because it's such a lovely bustling part of London and and this this site came up and so I think we we were just looking at this site and and Charlie and I would you know we don't really we we agree on lots but in terms of kind of you know where should we live or like you know looking at flats a few years before and stuff we really didn't agree on anything until we found the one and then we both knew straight away and it's really similar for looking for a restaurant site. You know, Charlie is, I mean, my husband, he's such an amazing person. He's very, very

optimistic and he's a big dreamer. And I, by default, have to assume the role of quite pessimistic, quite, you know, because otherwise, you know, goodness knows what would happen. And so I was always the one being like, oh, no, I'm picking, you know, picking these options apart. And actually, when we saw this site, we both thought, my God, this is amazing. This is at the mouth of Broadway Market. It's a beautiful site flooded with light. We could just see it. And it was this really, it was, it was quite enough Japanese restaurant. The kind of, the kind of Japanese restaurant or the kind of restaurant that has a laminated menu and like a thousand things on the menu. How do you cook that from your tiny kitchen? Yeah. And what do you actually do well? Because it can't be all these things.

And it had sticky floors and like, you know, it was a bit ramshackled. But we just completely saw the potential in it. And so we just decided to hit go. And, and, you know, it was a bit ramshackled. And, It just felt instinctively like that was the right. Yeah. And I guess both of you had so much experience at that point. You kind of already had probably unfolded a lot of it in your mind of like the sort of ambiance and what you were trying to create. And I really love the idea of also knowing that I didn't actually know that restaurant come from a store. That's such a nice, that's such a perfect words to serve what you hope to experience as a customer.

And we forget that now as well. You know, there's so many like concept driven restaurants. restaurants where you know you go for a particular thing you're like oh let's go out for about tonight and you're not thinking about you're not necessarily thinking about having this lovely nourishing experience service wise but for us it was always about that it was not about we always wanted to you know be able to serve absolutely delicious world-class food but it was so much for us about looking after people and making people feel really good so the early years was so much focused on establishing you know the vibe in the room you know everything from like the

playlist to the music to, of course, the service. We're really lucky that we've had more or less the same front of house team since we opened. That must be a pretty key when you've got your personnel. Yes, but it's practically unheard of. I was going to say, because the turnover is normally very quick. And also, from the little I know about running your own restaurant, it can be the case that if it's not the two of you there present, it just doesn't have, knowing that you can trust the people that are there to maintain it, keep it consistent. Absolutely. I mean, we've been very, very lucky to find some seriously like-minded people. A lot of the people that work with us have, we've worked with in previous jobs as well.

So our general manager used to be the general manager of the barbary, which is one of the restaurants that I was looking after as wine director. And my bar manager was bar manager of the, of the Palomar, which is one of the other restaurants. So they, when we opened sooner, they both kind of came along and said, hey, what's, you know, what's up? You're like, oh, yes, come on. Let's make this work. So that synergy there is lovely,

and you already know that you have shared values and you can work together. Yeah. But definitely one of us is there because it is important. People come to see you. And I think we're lucky that we live so close. Often when we have people come to visit

on the rare chance that Charlie and I both of will usually just get in the cargo bike with the kids and just go and say hi. I was going to say, do the kids have its part of their world too. Totally. Oh, that's so sweet. And they're growing up in it. And it is lovely to see it.

I think my oldest is a little bit cocky. He'll come in it because we did this flat bread. It's amazing. But he'll come in it, you know, in between services and go up to the kitchen and be like, I joke and I have a flatbread. You're like, no, poor chef. He's just trying to like get ready for the next service. So I am quite wary of that.

But I'm also kind of proud that he's got these social skills, you know, with people of all ages. So I would regard that as a little bit of a perk for him, I think. Definitely. Flatbread's on the mark. Exactly. Yeah. And what a nice thing. I mean, do you, so do you have sort of rules about how you make sure you have time for each other as well?

Not really. I mean, not really. It's just like an amorphous, the week just flows and see how you're doing. I mean, certainly the last couple of months. I mean, with Ernie, our youngest, he's very, very clingy and that has been a different experience altogether. You know, our first was so Leonard, even now, he's very, He's very serene. He's quite stoic. He's, you know, things can happen to him and he just, he won't, he's not bothered. He's just really cool about stuff. And you could just sort of pass him around, even as baby. But this baby is very different. And I think my mom always says that if you had the second child first, you wouldn't have more. I don't know how you feel about that. Because you've got five. Actually, I am the second child, so I'll try not to take offence of that. But it's definitely true in my case. Like, God, this is a bit of a handful.

So in terms of prioritising each other, no, we haven't been very good at that, but we are getting better. You know, now we've persuaded a few people to babysit and stuff. And when you go to restaurants for fun, is it like when I go to a gig, we are like picking up and everything? I like that. I might try that. That doesn't work. Don't do that. What do they call it a bus man's holiday? It kind of, it depends. If we're going to, I mean, we know an increasing amount of restaurant owners. So if you go to support their restaurants, you're kind of like, you kind of always feel like a bit like you're in work mode. But I often love going somewhere where I don't know anyone and just sit in the corner and like, you know, just not be seen or, you know, not have anyone come up to you and be like.

Just let someone else look after you for a minute. Exactly. Yeah. And not worry too much about, you know, what you look like or, you know. Yeah. Yeah. That's what it should be like. Get into a heated conversation.

Exactly. And do you guys have like dreams to sort of keep building? or is it more like just sort of putting one foot in front of the other? We've always known that we needed to grow actually. We, I mean, sooner is a, what is it, 38-seat restaurant in a neighbourhood. And we also have, we're actually three business partners. And we've always known that we needed to grow. Growth has always been sort of part of our plan.

So we're actually, we're opening somewhere later this year, which is hugely exciting, a big six, thousand square foot sort of multi-restrient venues, slightly further into London, which we're hugely, hugely excited about, which we are going to announce any minute now. So, yes, we've known we needed to do something else, and ideally something in a slightly different part of town with a different clientele, just to make ourselves a little bit more kind of robust. So yes, that's hugely exciting, but I just have no idea how that's going to work. I mean, we definitely need childcare now, I think.

I think I've kind of, we've held off for long enough. But certainly, yeah, we're going to need to figure it out. Yeah, but I guess everything you're doing is like laying like pathway to the future anyway. Yeah. So we're part of it all. They're entwined, aren't they? Yeah. I keep saying the only way out is through.

I don't know if you've ever had an experience like that. I'm like, I have to get through this. And the only way, the only way of coming out or by, the only way of being successful in restaurants is by having a few of them, I think. and so we have to, this is the process that we're going through. But it's actually very, this one, this time round it's actually very exciting. I think with Sooner it was all of our own effort, all of our own money. We did everything on a shoestring and it's all very, very, very personal. And you're doing everything.

I mean, even now Charlie's waking up at 7 in the morning and answering all of the emails. So it is very, it's a very family run, but it's all consuming. And I think with this, this place, it's because of it's scale. Yale. Yeah, the next one will be a different vibe. A different vibe. You know, being able to, you know, hire people to, you know, lend out their amazing skill set. So you're not doing everything. I think it's been in some ways it's already a much more enjoyable experience because, you know, you can rely on other people to do things and outsource to incredible talent instead of like trying to figure out how to design a website of 5.30 in the morning as once with the case. Well, I'm excited for you. I think it sounds really. glorious and I definitely want to visit Zuna as well please please do I have two well I really want to talk to you about your experience with Sarki as well because I was understanding of Tremusaki so maybe I'll ask you a couple of things about that and then have one natural wine question um with Sarki

how did you find that different to your experience with I don't know what you've got traditional wines yeah well Saki is interesting because I mean I got into Saki because this uh restaurant that I was helping to set up in 2020, 2020, 2021, Evelyn's Table, which was a microscopic, it is a microscopic restaurant, it's a 10-seater restaurant at the bottom of a pub in Soho. And the chefs were the called the Selby brothers. They're absolutely three gorgeous brothers. And one of them, the head chef, Luke Selby, had won the Roo Scholarship and gone to Japan. So a lot of his food was very, you know, it had these definite kind of accents, Japanese accents in them.

And we'd started pouring sake. And the general manager or the manager for the restaurant that I had hired, Aiden, was a complete Japanophile and mad about sake. And then I hired a head sommelier to go into the mulway, which is a wine bar on the floor above the pub, so on the first floor. And she had level three understanding,

a level three qualifications in sake. So I found myself being their boss with absolutely no idea what they were talking about. And I thought, okay, I need to learn about sake. So we, I remember, I did this crash course in Saki in the, in the Wine and Spirit Education Trust buildings in London Bridge over a week. And I sent Leonard and Charlie down to Charlie's parents for a week. And I was trying to learn, you know, you've got these, all these amazing, like, candy symbols.

And it was almost like homeland, you know, when Claire Daines has all these like, mad links and, like, you know, post-it notes all over the wall and trying to, it was a bit. like that. I was like, I need to kind of get into this. Like a crash court. I can get it into my brain. And I think you can, certainly you can enjoy sake in the same way that you can enjoy wine, but I think it's less about, it's less about terois, which is quite interesting. And it's a lot more about kind of production methods. So I mean, people, some people will say it's about like the great, the kind of, the rice type or about the water. But actually,

it's not so much about that. And I found that quite hard to get my head around because especially with if you most familiar as if you really really love wine it is so much about like the earth and the ground and stuff and they're kind of removing yourself from that is was a little bit kind of challenging from me but actually really enjoyed learning about this you know because japan had just got this absolutely gorgeous way of doing things that whole like you know you find your they call it a kigai like your kind of reason to be or mason d'etra and at rosal detra and you're like you know you you you work at it you work at it you work at it you work at it and i think that the way that Saki has made, it's so much more about the hands of the people that make it

and their kind of decisions and things like that to make this beautiful product. So I just kind of, yeah, it gave me a respect for process, I suppose. That's very Japanese, isn't that? Very Japanese. Yeah, I really respect that. Yeah. It's a very different way of living. Totally. And it's so delicious. And in terms of food, like, yeah, Aiden said to me right at the beginning, he said he sees wine is like a, Oh, is it? Wine is like a, like something you add to food, like kind of, like a condiment. Yeah.

Whereas sake is more like, you know, you could add like a pinch of salt or like a bit of MSG or it just brings out different flavors in food. And I found that really interesting. We've always had three sarkas on at Suna. And, you know, the uptake isn't massive, but people really engage with it. It's really, really nice. And we do, you know, a few different events during the year.

And it's just such a, it's such a gorgeous category. Quite a nice thing to just have on the menu as well just to make them think. a bit differently about their choices, which I like. And it's a really fun drunk as well, if you're drunk on sake. There's something about it. I get really, I get really thirsty for sake. When I'm drinking it, I can drink it quite fast. And then I'm like, God, I need to go home. But it's a really nice, it's a nice buzz for anyone that's listening that wants it. Yeah, I concur. Okay, my second thing was about natural wine. I heard you speaking about it on another podcast. And skin contact was mentioned a lot. And I never quite understood what that meant.

Yeah, so skin contact is, it's actually probably the most ancient way of making wine, funnily enough. So in Georgia, Georgia is the birthplace of wine. They've done 8,000 vintages or something like that. I actually didn't know that by Georgia. Absolutely extraordinary wine history. They've got 595 native varieties that have never really been taken out of Georgia and put anywhere else, which is fascinating. Am I right? It's the place people are now heading for wines now.

Like, I guess it's becoming quite fashionable. Totally. And now there's a direct flight path that's only been established over the last year from London to Tbilisi. So there's a lot, yeah, a lot of people going there now. But in the kind of, there's like an ancient artefact, I guess they call it now, of an old animal hide. And in it, there was this kind of resin and it was a white grape skin and pips, which kind of show that this sort of skin contact was the first wine. But what it is essentially is you use the same grapes as you would if you're making a white wine.

So it can be any grape that you choose, any variety that you choose. And instead of just pressing the grapes and throwing away the skins and just finifying the juice left over as you would to make white wine, you actually leave the grapes into, leave the skins and the stems and pips and stuff to macerate with the wine. It's like making a cup of tea. It's, you know, if you those kind of people that, you know, you put your tea bag in and you take it out straight away. way, that's white wine. And then if you leave it in five minutes or you have an app on the sofa and then it's left in for an hour, that's skin macerated wine, orange wine. But the original way of naming that was amber wine. That's how the Georgians call it. Oh, that's really interesting.

So it's a really interesting category and so many people, especially kind of like the baby boomer generation, they'll always be like, oh, this new orange wine, it's just a fad. And I'm like, it's not a fad man. It's like the first ever wine. It's actually a story. Really, really historic. But the flavors are very different. And I always encourage people to, people trying orange wine for the first time skin contact wine, is to just detach a little bit, dissociate your experience from your experience of drinking other categories of wine. Because it doesn't, skin contact wine doesn't taste like a rosé or a white or a red.

It tastes like something completely different. A lot of the flavors are a little bit more savory, more kind of herbal notes, more kind of almost like tea leaf. notes. And so if you're trying to liken it to something that you've already tried, you're not going to be able to enjoy the experience for what it is. I always just say, just it kind of experience it like it's this new category of drink altogether. It's very beguiling. But so beguiling. But it's, there's a huge range of them. And I always just say, just keep trying. Like, if you, if there's a place that you go to that you're, you know, that you really vibe with a sommelier or bartender or waitress, you know, just always, a lot of us to try them because it's going to be one that you

like. Yeah. But actually I remember, I mean, speaking of motherhood, we went to, I, I curated the wine list for this gorgeous new opening in Mayfair that opened this year. And I had to, as part of my sort of research and development, went over to Georgia last July with my three month old for a week driving all around this amazing sort of ancient land trying like countless skin contacts while my baby was in these wineries and like learning to almost, I think he was kind of rolling over at that point. So I will always look at skin contact really fondly because that's, yeah, it was incredible opportunity to go to the birthplace of wine. And again, just be like, well, I have to take my kid. I was breastfeeding. So it was, yeah, it was extraordinary. Oh, that's such a

lovely, like, romantic image I have in my head. Yeah. The vineyards and the sun setting and the yeah. Yes, it was kind of like that. Apart from the absolutely hellish for our trip on a, we had to get back to, I think we come from the countryside and the west and had to get back to Tbilisi by the evening. And it was just four hours of just chaotic crying. I know. No, I know. I'm sorry. I've shattered that image for you. But you know, it's not all, you know, there's not all kind of sunshine and rainbows there are these moments of motherhood where you're like, what the fuck am I doing? Why have I, what am I doing? Like, why, there's a reason that people don't do this. Yeah, this is why. I definitely, I definitely emerge from the car.

with like, I've got this kind of streak of gray that's appearing on the left side of my head. And it's just kind of like hair by hair. And now it's almost this quite profound streak. And I think that that car journey is sort of like that was the turning of the tide. Like just, yeah, we're going great. I know. Look back at these moments as well, you're like, God, I don't know, what was that? Oh.

Yeah. Spread so thin. Yeah. And trying to like do it all. But we want to have it all. And I think that's, I think that's a really delighted. thing and I think if you love what you do in your job you you have to push through and you have to make it work and I yeah um I I'd never wanted to be one of those people that you know

couldn't uh you had to give up what I was doing yeah I just wanted to I selfishly wanted to have it all and sometimes there are these pinched moments where you just go that was a bit of a mistake I shouldn't have tried that but then you've got to try it sometimes you find yourself and everybody's eating ginger biscuits yeah thank you so much I'm Yay, honey. What a hoot. I loved her story about the ginger biscuits and all those people laying out the ginger biscuits as part of the tasting process. And I think also my favourite thing might have been when I said, you know, what keeps you so, you know, what is it? Like enchanted by working as a sommelier. She's like, the taste. I just love wine.

Cheers to that, honey. and I fully plan on visiting sooner and also trying more of those delicious wines that she was talking about because I really, I like wine too. And I'm also intrigued about the idea of not really giving as much of a hangover. I mean, I don't really drink enough for a hangover these days, but still, anything that's a little bit cleaner for your body sounds good to me. Anyway, the pancakes have been served and in the gap, I realized I had a couple of, cute things just to drop into our little chit-chat and our little catch-up. One, which is that Richard and I celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary this week and we managed to finish the gig that we were

doing in the Netherlands by six. We got into a car, drove about an hour and a half to Amsterdam. Actually, I think we left later than that because we didn't get that to about eightish. And then we stayed in a hotel and had supper there and a little bit of. of a wand around the streets and I'm just really glad we did that and I was thinking this morning I wish I'd taken a picture of Richard across the table from me at every anniversary we've had since we started I'd have it would have been really cute to see like the passing of time but um maybe I could start now but yeah I do feel very lucky that we have so much fun together and I saw when I posted a little picture by our anniversary I saw a lot of other people saying that they had their

anniversaries around now, so if that's you, then sending you congratulations to. And the other thing was that when we did this gig last night, Richard hopped up and played bass when I was doing murder and dance floor at the school. And this morning, one of the moms had very thoughtfully sent me a little video of us on stage and I didn't have the sound on. So what I had was like the little visuals. And I was thinking, Richard looks great when he's playing bass guitar. See, normally when I'm on stage, I can't see him. He's like to my left and also I'm looking out at the crowd. or whatever I'm doing. But I was like, that's cool.

Anyway, there's just two sides. I thought I share. I guess I'm just in that kind of mood today. I hope wherever you are, you are staying cool. I want to say a big thank you to Richard for editing my podcast. He has another two gigs this weekend. So thank you, darling. I know that you'd probably rather just be chilling watching your iPad as you travel

rather than sitting on your laptop in a car. But thank you, thank you. Thank you to Claire Jones, who has done a brilliant job with her production, even though she's been having her own things going on. She's got family projects coming up next week. And I think her bedroom leaked during the week as well, thanks to a bit of a building on her neighbour's side. So thank you to you.

I'm sure you would sometimes be getting your bedroom back to normal. Thank you. Thank you to Ella May, who also she has, as I gather, bridesmaid duties this week. So thank you to her for still getting the artwork done, even though she's had other things going on, and also her beautiful bubba. And thank you to you for lending me to eyes and fitting me into whatever is happening in your world as well.

And nobody needs busy lives, and I'm very grateful to be a little part of yours. So sending lots of love out there. And, yeah, the podcast continues. I think we've got another, is it, two or three weeks and some lovely guests waiting in the wings. So thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, honey. Thank you to you.