Dan Keeling is a co-founder and partner in the Noble Rot restaurants and Shrine to the Vine retail shops in London, "Noble Rot" Magazine, and Keeling Andrew and Co., an importer of wine into the United Kingdom. He co-authored "The Noble Rot Book: Wine From Another Galaxy".
Dan admits to some of his obsessions, namely food and music. He describes how a friend's accident allowed him the chance to start a nightclub in Manchester. He talks about his early jobs writing about music, and then progressing to working in A&R for record labels. He signed Coldplay to Parlophone Records, marking a huge win, but admits that at first he wasn't that taken with the band. He then succinctly breaks down the elements that contributed to Coldplay's massive success. That success propelled Dan to a Managing Director job at Island Records, but eventually that career high gave way to a career transition, as Dan found himself without a job and wondering what to do next.
Dan met his now business partner Mark Andrew at a wine shop near the Island Records office, and they quickly established that they shared a sense of humor and a fascination for the same wines. They went on to begin a wine magazine (er, fanzine) titled "Noble Rot" in 2012, working together on Mark's old computer. Writing for the magazine led to introductions to vigneron, some of whom joined the import portfolio of Keeling Andrew and Co. The magazine also led to the start of a wine focused restaurant group, today encompassing three Noble Rot restaurants in London. Dan talks about being a restauranteur who is not a chef, and about the emphasis of the restaurants on wine.
Dan discusses how the writing and graphics in the "Noble Rot" magazine are designed to stand out from other publications about wine. He talks about contextualizing wine amongst other aspects of culture, such as food and music. He rejects the idea of trying to be objective or encyclopedic about wine. Instead, Dan emphasizes the importance placed on humor in his wine magazine, as well as finding insights. He further describes how he developed an interest in certain kinds of wines, favoring idiosyncratic and different wines over corporate, homogenized examples.
Dan talks about wine tasting trips to Burgundy, to the Jura, and to Spain, sharing some of what he learned along the way. He discusses the pricing situation for Burgundy wines today. He also discusses the wines of Bordeaux, and of Greece. Dan stresses the importance of finding the characters in wine for his own work, and then shares some advice that he would give to the next generation.
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[00:00:20] distinguish a great online buying experience from a mediocre one. Dan Keeling on the show today, he is the co-founder and co-owner of Noble Rot Magazine, the Noble Rot wine bars and restaurants, as well as Keeling, Andrew, and Co, and also the retail shop Shrine to the Vine in London. Hello, sir. How are you? Hi, Levy. You were born in London, but you moved out of there when you were three. I was born in a place called Watford, which is just on the outskirts of London.
[00:01:43] My wife likes to say that the whole family are from London, except for me. curry and three types of curry and rice for like six quid or seven quid, but it's just the most beautiful home cooked style. So that was kind of an obsession at that time. It was good curry. When you were a kid, your dad used to make a good curry. My dad would cook occasionally, but not very much, but he'd make a big song and dance when he did. And our next door neighbor was, he was an Indian guy who could cook. So he kind
[00:03:03] of showed him how to do it. But my may do in the 80s with processed food. One of the things I recognized in you was that you liked food. I was like, Oh, this guy likes food. It's a way of talking about it. Food is one of those things. I mean, some people maybe don't look forward to their next meal as much as I do or you do, but I can writing about electronic music. And there was a magazine called Jockey Slut, which is a fanzine about electronic music. It got set up around the same time, and I started writing about house and electronic kind of music and techno from Detroit and stuff like that around that time.
[00:05:40] And it was really to meet the musicians.
[00:05:43] I really wanted to kind of find out more music is kind of like writing about wine. It's difficult to really bring it home. Frank Zappa said that quote that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, which is a quote I often come back to because trying to describe smells and ethereal kind
[00:07:00] of sensations very, very hard.
[00:07:03] And I think that's where a lot of wine timing and good people around you, it does happen. You often have pursued the kind of business that people say, oh, you're not going to make
[00:08:20] any money in that. Oh, that's hard. That industry is going to eat you up and spit you out. You've
[00:08:25] often found yourself doing exactly those things. How did that happen and what happened when you were there? So I was A&M Records before as a talent scout. I was there for a year and a half. I learned some good stuff there, but A&M was not a hip label and they had people like Brian Adams. And it was a good time, but it was getting my feet under the table
[00:09:40] of a record company for the first time
[00:09:42] was a huge learning curve.
[00:09:43] You know, I'd come down from Manchester,
[00:09:46] my boss, the day I started, the area. I didn't know all the different venues you have to go to. I didn't know the managers you had to speak to. I didn't know there's so many things that you need to know. And that year and a half was just trying to find my bearings. You know, it was a very hedonistic industry, like A&R record label at that time is the Rolls Royce of English record labels. It had the Beatles catalogue, it had the Beach Boys, it had Radiohead OK Computer just come out, which was kind of my target of what I wanted to do in A&R was to sign a band with the credibility and the
[00:12:22] commercial kind of the success of Radiohead. Kyl around and You know you'll bump into something Which is all very easy to say and then you know a year and a half later the first band they signed was Coldplay So that was a great start and Coldplay most of them were a year younger than I was
[00:13:41] So it wasn't like being a 45 year old A&. And Chris was handing out curly whirlies down the front of the gig to his mates from UCL. And I remember thinking, God, the Rolling Stones would never do that. And I saw them call and then try and kind of get out of the venue as quick as possible.
[00:15:02] A few months later, I was in Manchester again, I lived over in East London 25 years ago, and he was there with the bass player. So I kind of got down there, sharpish, and then had a few beers and then kind of went from there and tried to woo them to Parlophone, which I did have an advantage because Parlophone was such an amazing label.
[00:16:20] And I think any band would have wanted to be on that roster at that time.
[00:16:25] I really haven't listened to Parachutes for a long time, transport you somewhere. The hairs lift on the back of your neck and you feel the energy and that can be like you know the change from a chorus into a mid-late or you know those kind of moments I think in songs where you have something unexpected happens that're never going to be that big. It has to be everything in. Sometimes going all in works out great. And sometimes things fall apart anyway. So
[00:19:02] it was going from mega success to, you know are exclusively distributed by G3 Enterprises. Ready to ensure the lifespan of your wines? leaving and they were going to go to Mercury Records, there's another part of the universal music group and you were coming in and you were kind of tasked with finding the next U2 in short order. Yeah, and trying to find a hit straight away is a high pressure job and you get paid money, you get paid a good amount of money. But A&R, when at Island Records, I put my good clothes on. I don't know why, but the first person I met, other than the guy that was showing me round, who was actually the MD at the time, but who was going to become president, took me into the marketing department and Naomi was there. So yeah, there you go. I obviously knew
[00:23:02]