A 5OS Project wine should have heaps of drinkability but not at the expense of varietal, regional and vintage characteristics. They should also look the part, embracing the talent of the respective artists whilst encouraging them to find their own beat. I think we are pretty good here, we started with wine and my gut tells me this is where we’ll finish… at least someone will, maybe one of my lads as I’ll be in a Chesterfield with a Tesseron Lot 29.
I’ve loved BMX’s from the time it was my tool of trade as a morning Paper Boy in Carrum. 5am every morning, 2 milk crates ‘occy strapped’ to the handlebars so I could quickly release them to ride to school then the track. I saved enough of my $8.20 a week, got a decent one or two in those years, but nothing compares to these beauties built indulgently by Matt and his crew at Little Black Bike. Now I am without doubt the worst rider with the best kit… and yes there’s a word for that, but I do have cool friends.
‘How many surfboards does one person need’? ‘They’re not mine, it’s a 5OS Project I’m doing with Simon Jones from Morning Of The Earth.’ “As if… tell me when you sell one’. Still no word on the latter, but that’s not the point, these are pieces of art, made by one of the best guys and board makers going around. I won’t deny temptation has had the better of me a couple of times, so it should, and how could it not. These boards are the perfect embodiment of The 5OS Project and to answer the first question… ‘I’ll let you know when I get there.’
Although I obviously love everything at 5OS, working with illustrators, painters and graphic designers to develop wines labels is without doubt my favourite. I’ve spent a long time in the wine industry and having complete creative freedom, a disdain for commercial reality, and the type of talent we’ve met and worked with is so far from the real world it’s immeasurable. We don’t get all of the artwork spot on but that’s half the fun. “They” reckon there’s diamonds under the Hagen Arms, a truckload at least, and metaphorically Gilbert St to me feels the same.
Zimmer is growing our oil and whilst he no doubt has wicked trees and varieties growing across the road from our place, he happens to share my love of sparkling ale long necks and as such we really struggle to get past the ‘we should do a 5OS Project Olive Oil from your trees this year… makes sense us taking your Grenache fruit, being mates, neighbours and all.’ Let’s put this in the WIP category, yes we have oil, yes it’s good and yes I’m sure it’ll be legit going forward. In the meantime it’s in the hands of 2 less than reliable blokes with the very best intentions.
We do have a legitimate furniture business, and within The 5OS Project that’s really saying something… the guys in the workshop are not only good lads but they are super talented and committed to making furniture of the very highest order. We all keep telling them they live in Hollywood with all this beautiful timber and Rolls Royce equipment but deep down we walk past the door of their theatre each day pondering on how much we’d love to be able to do what they do, all whilst knowing there’s no hope… well from my personal perspective anyway.
Gabi cooks, we eat.
Jim cooks, we eat.
Jess grows, we eat.
One day we’ll work out how to get it beyond our gates, until then Kate’s happy so we’re happy.
Probably should have led with this to deflect a bit flack about my creative intentions… we’d just started thinking of how to fit out Gilbert St, Gabe Ash was helping me and I said ‘we need your brother to make us the best lights ever, in the 5OS colours, and whilst he’s at it, let’s get some carafes and sake glasses to match’. And so he did and they are awesome, like the fella himself, I think he gets another mention later so I’ll give him a further nod then. And no you cannot buy the sake glasses, and yes we could get Welly to make some more but we’re waiting, because we think it’s better we do so.
