The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast

What you’ll learn: Why Shared Spirits is built as a progressive web app (PWA)

How saving it to your home screen makes it behave like a native app

Why wineries and tasting rooms could use this tech to drive foot traffic

How drink gifting works during wine tours, proposals, and special events

Why digital gifting is now normal thanks to Amazon, Starbucks, DoorDash, and Uber Eats

How Shared Spirits uses digital signage, social media, and marketing partners

How wineries, distributors, and restaurants can reach out and get involved

The revenue model: free for consumers and restaurants, funded by supplier campaigns

How restaurants can deploy drink credits to influencers, ambassadors, and VIP patrons

The surprising stat: one bar customer spent $22,000 in a single year

Key takeaway: Shared Spirits isn’t just a drink‑gifting app — it’s a flexible hospitality tool that can expand into wineries, tasting rooms, and any venue that sells bottles or glasses.

Guest: Sherman Mohr — Co‑founder of Shared Spirits.

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In this Wine Wednesday Back Label Story, we take you to the Caucasus Mountains of the country of Georgia — home to what may be the oldest evidence of wine on earth. Clay jars called qvevri, buried in the ground and stained with 8,000-year-old grape residue, tell the story of a human relationship with wine that predates the pyramids and the Roman Empire.

But the real twist comes from the Greeks and Romans themselves. Despite building entire cultures around wine — complete with gods, poetry, and legendary philosophical drinking parties — they considered drinking wine straight a sign of barbarism. Every symposium, every gathering, every social occasion ran on wine cut with two or three parts water. Drinking it undiluted? That was something the Scythians did. Barbarians. The people you never wanted to be compared to.

So the next time you reach for a glass of water alongside your Cabernet, raise it. You're not being cautious. You're being civilized — exactly the way the ancients intended.

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The Flying Whale rosé is a Grenache/Syrah blend — fuller body than a typical rosé, dry, with strawberry and peach fruit balanced by citrus, finished with that signature silky texture. Maba's word for his entire wine lineup so far: "silky" — it's the through-line he's chasing across every bottle. He rejects the idea of "rosé season" — he designed this wine to work year-round, from poolside in summer to fireside in winter; he calls it the "all season" wine. The third wine (White Gold) is a Viognier — inspiration struck at Miami Vine Expo after Napa tastings had him leaning toward Chardonnay. His goal: a Viognier with the floral nose and finish of a classic Viognier but the buttery, almost greasy mouthfeel of a Chardonnay — a challenge his winemaker partner initially resisted. 

The partnership dynamic: Maba brings a beginner's mind and bigger dreams; his French-trained winemaker partner DJ brings deep Old World tradition — the tension is productive and fun

 Maba notes that long experience can sometimes mean thinking inside a very rich box — his outside perspective is what keeps the collaboration exciting.

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What you’ll learn:

How Nashville’s bachelorette scene inspired the “Party Pack” model

Why Shared Spirits struggled pre‑COVID — and why everything changed afterward

How QR codes, Instacart, DoorDash, and Uber Eats trained customers for mobile transactions

Why people now trust text‑based drink gifting

How the app notifies recipients, customizes messages, and handles number masking

Why mobile‑first behavior made “buying someone a drink” digitally feel normal

How the backend logistics evolved to support campaigns, gifting, and redemption

Key takeaway: COVID didn’t just change restaurants — it changed customer behavior, paving the way for Shared Spirits to thrive.

Guest: Sherman Mohr — Co‑founder of Shared Spirits.

@thebestwinepod
Discover More from The Best 5 Minute Podcast Network:
Wine Podcast
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Thomas Jefferson didn't just like wine — he was consumed by it. He walked the vineyards of Bordeaux, shipped Sauternes to George Washington, advised four presidents on what to pour at state dinners, and kept obsessive records of every single bottle he ever purchased. Over three decades, that total reached 20,000 bottles.

So in 1985, when a German wine dealer named Hardy Rodenstock surfaced with bottles of 18th-century wine etched with the initials "T.J." — allegedly discovered behind a bricked-up wall in a Paris building — the story was irresistible. A 1787 Château Lafite went to auction at Christie's and sold to Malcolm Forbes for $156,000. Still the highest price ever paid for a single bottle of wine.

American billionaire Bill Koch bought four more. Then in 2005, he called Monticello to authenticate them — and everything unraveled.

Jefferson's foundation said the bottles had no place in his meticulous records. Forensics experts examined the etched initials and concluded they'd been made with an electric power tool. A Dremel drill. In the 18th century.

Koch spent over $35 million investigating. He sued Rodenstock — whose real name turned out to be Meinhard Görke — sued Christie's, sued auction houses across two continents. Investigators uncovered a label forger in Germany who had been printing fake provenance labels for Rodenstock for years. Rodenstock refused to appear in an American court. A judge ruled against him in absentia. He never paid a cent.

The front label tells you what they want you to know. The back label tells you everything else.

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