Ep. 1536 Beth Brickenden | Voices With Cynthia Chaplin

Since twenty seventeen, the Italian One podcast has exploded and expects to hit six million listens by the end of July twenty twenty three. We're celebrating this success by recognizing those who have shared the journey with us and giving them the opportunity to contribute to the on success of the shows. By buying a paper copy of the Italian wine unplugged two point o or making a donation to help the ongoing running costs, members of the international Italian wine community will be given the chance to nominate future guests and even enter a price draw to have lunch with Stevie Kim and Professor Atigioshenza. To find out more, visit us at Italian wine podcast dot com. Welcome to the Italian wine podcast. I'm Cynthia Chaplin, and this is voices. Every Wednesday, I will be sharing conversations with international wine industry professionals discussing issues in diversity, equity, and inclusion through their personal experiences working in the field of wine. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and rate our show wherever you get your pods. Hello, and welcome to voices. This is Cynthia Chaplin, and today I am very excited to welcome Beth Brickenden to the show. Beth has worked at the forefront of London's wine scene with some of the most celebrated restaurants, wine bars, chefs, She has a degree in drama and theater arts, and she holds WSET level three award in wines. But the real reason I wanted to get her own voices is due to her recent career path in alternative wine tastings, which really appealed to me. She now has her own company called my corkscrew and I, creating unusual and accessible tasting events for corporate and public and private clients. And in two thousand and nineteen, she founded dragon wine, where she teams up with drag queen, vanity von Glow, for some incredibly fun and outrageous wine tasting. So I'm super excited to talk about this, Beth. Thank you for coming on the show today. Thank you so much for a wonderful introduction. Well, it's always a pleasure when I have guests on that I'm really excited about, which is ninety nine percent of the time. But, when I I sort of stumbled across an article about you, and I thought, oh my god, this is just amazing. I have to talk to you. So I know you came from a solid background in the hospitality industry, and you were working as the wine director for, street priests and fiend, and, lots of other places well known across London. So what gave you the idea to move into alternative tastings? I mean, I know your mission is creating alternative wine tasting events and removing proverbial white table cloths. I'm one hundred percent into this idea. So how did you move from sort of traditional hospitality into alternative tastings? Gosh. Well, I suppose I have always found the humor in hospitality and the characters behind hospitality and the characters that are guests. So I've always found this really interesting sort of thread of of theater in amongst all the hospitality sort of spaces that I've worked in. But particularly, street fees sort of nurtured a lot of creativity for me. So street fees was a really interesting job that I had. And what we used to do was take over big derelict car parks and warehouses, and we build these big street food venues. And within them, we had these lovely wine bars. And what we used to do was serve sort of incredible, you know, first growth bordeauxs and redial glassware, but in these really interesting spaces. And I think I love that sort of dichotomy between luxury and in these really interesting sort of theatrical rough around the edges kind of spaces. And that sort of spurred on this creative drive to combine the worlds of, you know, luxury and and creativity and theater and humor. And I always wanted to make wine accessible, and that sort of helped me spur on these sort of creative events. Well, it's it's such a great idea. I am anyone who listens to me regularly knows that this is one of my big bug bears sort of taking the pretentiousness out of out of wine. And it's meant to be fun. You know, we've we've been drinking wine, sharing wine for, you know, thousands of years. It shouldn't be this stuffy thing. How did you originally get interested in wine. I know you're from the West of Ireland. How did you get to London and get interested in wine? Well, I had my first job in hospitality when I was about fourteen years old. So I think we all did. Yeah. Worked, pulling Pints in the local pub at fourteen, and, and, and I worked in hospitality since then, you know, alterate university. And I studied theater and then came to London and like every struggling actor worked in hospitality. And whilst I was in London, I realized you could have a career in wine, and you could study it. And I fell in love with it. And I fell in love with the theater of wine, you know, I think wine is inherently theatrical, that sort of rituals and theatrics of opening a bottle and the descriptors and just the nature of wine. And it all kinda came three sixty for me. With theater and with wine and spurred on this, sort of hilarious career that I've created for myself, really. But, yeah, London has nurtured that creativity, and it's an incredible place to test out ideas that you might have. It's really fantastic. It's just a melting pot. Well, I loved the years that I lived in London. So, I completely understand it is much more about a free space in terms of giving you room for a creative voice and and experimenting. I I love what you said about why I'm being theatrical. I think that's really true, and and we tend to forget that. The joy of the actual acts of opening the bottle and pouring and sharing and tasting. But now I I have to get to the crux of this because I'm trying to be calm, but I really I really have to hear how on earth did you come up with dragon wine? I know, you know, you you've been doing these things on Amazon Prime with the three drinkers. You know, I am a huge fan of the three drinkers. I've had Helen and Nicklyn as a guest on voices in the past. So is that where you met, Vanity von Glaux? You know, what's the backstory here? How did we get to drag and whine? So Vanity and I have been friends for a long time, actually. So we we would have met when I first came to London. My brother, Duncan Brickendon, he was the artistic coordinator for pride in London. And he is a an incredible musician. He's a pianist. And whilst he was studying in the Royal Academy, he was accompanying a lot of musicians and a lot of the drag queens in Soho. And me being the younger sister who arrived in London, spent many many a night hanging around the piano's wigs flying everywhere, and holding the bar up So I've been infiltrating the drag queens of soho for about twelve years now altogether, and Vanity and I became very good friends. And Vanity is this incredible drag queen from Scotland as well, so has a brilliant Celtic, lean into humor, very witty, and an incredible, incredible, sort of theatrical, fantastic boys, things live, and really interfered in wine. So Over the years, we've shared many a bottle together, and I just realized as I was creating these wine tastings, I was like, you can you can have these incredible wine tastings. But the second you bring a drag queen into any situation people relax and just know it's going to be a bit of fun, and you're just going to inject that, that crack and that rock is humor. And we just started to test it out, and then went from there. Such a great backstory. I just I love it. This is wonderful, and I didn't realize that Duncan Brickendon was your brother. So, queued us to him for being the coordinator of London Pride, which is one of the biggest in the world and, and one of the most important and inspirational. So give us a quick peek into a dragon wine event. You know, who are your guests? How do you run the tastings? What's the banter like between you and vanity? How does this go? I mean, I have got to attend. That's that's definitely on the card. Oh, we'll get you over. Absolutely. So, we do we do shows for anywhere from sort of small private, you know, twenty guest shows where we might be doing super tuscans all the way up to shows for for we'll be doing a tasting for two hundred and fifty people. So there's a real spectrum that we work with. Are you enjoying this podcast? Don't forget to visit our YouTube channel, Mama jumbo shrimp. For fascinating videos covering Stevie Kim and her travels across Italy and beyond, meeting winemakers, eating local foods, and taking in the scenery. Now back to the show. And we've sort of mastered adaptability. We have a structure of the show and of the tasting, but really, it's Spanatee and I add living and playing with our audience. So we'll taste through a structure of wines and we'll use, you know, the WSTT as a kind of backbone to to teaching people how to taste although we, definitely diversify, quite a lot from the language, but we have a very sort of, set structure, and we've really refined it. But everything sort of in between all the meatiness is very much based on our audience and our guests and size of our audience and how much we play with them. And then the banter between Vanity and I is, is a lot of fun. We, because of our, the nature of our friendship, we we thread the line with each other a lot, and we surprise each other a lot. And we have a lot of fun together. And our whole thing is about being friends with the audience and accessibility there. It's not us presenting to the audience. It's us enjoying the show and the wine with the audience and very much interacting and engaging. So it's a lot of fun. It sounds so appealing that kind of ability to to make the audience feel is if they're included, they're not just listening or not just watching, they're actually participating and engaging. And it's not easy to do, and I present a lot of wine events too. And it takes time and effort to put yourself out there and be open and draw people in and and get them as you said, playing along with you. So this is, you know, something that's a real skill that I think people don't appreciate sometimes. So Obviously, your theatrical background would play into it. So I can imagine I can imagine this. So I know that you took Dragonwine to Edinburgh a fringe festival for people who don't know the fringe festival. That is a festival that I am a huge fan of. Some of my daughters have lived in Edinburgh. So I've been able to attend a couple of times. It takes place in August and is comprised of all these pop up locations all over town, doing all kinds of poetry and theater and drama and acting and comedy and everything you can ever imagine. Really great. And I know that you went last year, and you're scheduled to go this year. So you must be going shortly because I know it it opens soon. So Tell us how it went last year. What the reception was? The Edinburgh crowd can be a a tricky crowd. How did it go for dragon wine at the fringe last year? It was brilliant. It was, it yeah. We we have no idea what to expect. And I suppose that's that's the risk you take with the Edinburgh fringe, but it's also fantastic because it's the perfect place to test out your material and see how how people react to it And I must say Edinburgh was thirsty last year, and we had so much fun with them. I mean, the the population of the city grows by, I think, something crazy, like, two million every year with the fringe. But the the thing about the fringe and the wonderful thing about the fringe is that people who go to the Edinburgh fringe go with a fantastic, attitudes for its shows and an and an incredible open mindedness And there's a sense of adventure when with people who go to the fringe because a lot of the fringe is, is, you know, you you walk off the street into a random little spot and you don't know what you're going to get. In terms of performance, and it could be awful. It could be fantastic. So when you go, you have to have this sort of this open mindedness and and that sense of adventure of not of unknowing. So We loved doing the fringe last year, and we're going back again this year. And we're doubling our capacity. We're in a new venue. We're gonna get in some guest performers this year as well. We're working with some new wines. So we're really, really excited. And I think the fringe just brings this incredible energy to to Edinburgh. It's fantastic. It it really is. It's it's one of my favorite things to do, and just the opportunity to be completely spontaneous for a few days and popping in and out of various things. So so how does how does it work for Dragonwine? Do are your your audiences wine tasting during your performance? What kind of wines are you dealing with? Who's who's gonna be your guest performers or if it's a secret, we won't we won't blow the surprise. But how does it work? Like, how does it actually function? Because I've been in some of these places. Some of the venues are tiny. Some are big. How are you doing wine tasting? So we tend to work with, restaurants or, sort of venues that have the capacity to, to host wine tasting. So less of that kind of theater style venue where people are sort of facing us, I much prefer to host in big restaurants with tuscan tables that have people in groups that will then engage with each other as well. So it brings a little bit more life to it, and it's less of us presenting and much more sort of people engaging with each other as well. And we incorporate a lot of our venues sort of narrative and style into our show. So last year, we worked with a gorgeous Italian a restaurant called mono. Unfortunately, it has closed. But we so we worked with, Liberty wines predominantly and had some fantastic Italian numbers. We worked with Donifugatta, so sisai sicilian wines, fantastic winery, I have to say. Fantastic winery. And, we worked with Amina as well, that winery from Puya. Yes. So we did some great sort of off the beaten track Italian wines, and people would taste three per show. So, you know, we'll kick off. We'll do white and rosy red. We'll do a really fun wine pairing in in there as well, and then we do tasting no competitions, but we try and work in collaboration with our venues to make sure to make sure we we get across the narrative of the space as well. And I find that's really, it's fantastic because it means every different venue we work with and every space we work with creates a different show. So this year, we're working with a venue called Monbado. So it's in the Hilton, in the Double Tree Hilton, which is in the shadow of the castle. It should be fantastic. We're we're really looking forward to a new venue, a new space. It'll be a hundred capacity. So when we have a packed out show, you can imagine the energy is, great. And we'll have some fantastic guest performers like local, other local drag queens, but also we'll bring in some local fringe performers as well. Who can promote their own shows, they can come in and do a little set or come in and have a glass of wine with us and the audience sort of thing. So, yeah, we're switching it up and testing some new bits out this. That sounds fantastic and exciting. I mean, I love the energy in your voice when you talk it because it's, it's not easy to do to perform. I know people don't really realize how long the fringe goes on for and to, you know, have a a tasting element in there. I love the wine tasting notes competition. That sounds fun. It's a lot of fun. Yes. So last year, we we were doing it that we were we were handing out these little tasting cards, and people were writing down their tasting notes, and we collect them and and read them out But, people would also write in their their accents. So it would be really fun to read out tasting cards. This year, we have a, a live feed. So people have will have a QR code on their on their tables, and they'll be upset in live tasting notes, which will come up in this big feed that we'll be able to read out. So it's a lot of fun. They can write tasting notes on wines, on on fantasy, on myself, and, on each other, it becomes quite hilarious. That sounds epic. I'm I'm delighted about this. And I I hope it goes really well. I will definitely be telling my little clutch of of Edinburgh friends and family and colleagues that they need to check this out since I can't get there this year. What's what's coming next for dragon wine? After, the festival, I'm sure it'd be exhausted for a while. How are you gonna grow this, like, incredible idea? You know, it's an amazing brand. How are you gonna move it forward? What are your hopes and dreams for next moves. So we're testing out a new show this year as well. We're sort of on the on the sidelines of the fringe, on the fringes of the fringe. We're testing out drag queen whiskey tasting. Oh, okay. Yeah. We're diversifying a little bit. So we're gonna test it out, see how it goes. We're gonna, link up with two fantastic whiskey makers and suppliers in Scotland and see how we get on. And and I think we'll we'll work from there, but we've streamlined and we refined our our show the drag queen wine tasting. And I suppose the next move next year as we're looking at, at heading international, which will be difficult because Vanity is always known as internationally ignored superstar. But if we go international, you won't be internationally ignored. I think that might be something she's willing to drop if you shoot a claim. Gosh. She can have that one. So so, yeah, so we're gonna diversify a little bit in spirits as well and and look at international shows and just keep keep growing, keep developing, keep adding new materials, working with new with new wineries and suppliers as well. That sounds amazing. I can't wait to see where this goes and and how it grows. I hope that it does turn a little more international. You know, I can see this being a Vegas hit for sure, but lots of other other ways to grow upwards and outwards, with this amazing idea. And I can't thank you enough for being so creative, so open and so accessible, bringing people in. I loved what you said about letting them walk away from the framework of the WSET tasting structure, which is, you know, just that. It's a good framework to learn from, but the fun and the excitement comes when you start to make it your own. So I'm sure you have done that, and I'm really looking forward to catching up with you in person as soon as I can make it to London or to Edinburgh. So all our very best wishes. Oh, thank you so much. Likewise. And thanks for coming on today. Absolutely pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for listening. And remember to tune in next Wednesday when I'll be chatting with another fascinating guest. 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