Joining the Aphrodise sparkling wine party<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nIt’s just the nature of Champenois produced wine and that Chardonnay grape that makes a beautiful champagne is such that you just can’t consume a lot of it in the heat or humidity in the sun.<\/span><\/p>\nTraditional Champagne vs Aphrodise Sparkling Wine<\/h3>\n It just isn’t the type of forgiving libation that lets you function afterwards and you don’t feel good.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe yeast isn’t good for a lot of people. Not everybody’s impacted the same way but, a large portion of the population doesn’t do well with champagne and heat in sunlight\u00a0 as a day drink.<\/span><\/p>\nThe recovery profile isn’t something that people look forward to.<\/span><\/p>\nAphrodise from the grape varietal called Xenomavro<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nI discovered that I’d had that problem myself for years. The yeast wasn’t working for me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSo when I discovered Aphrodise, it was a grape varietal called Xenomavro.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nA high altitude grape, Greece’s most noble grape.<\/span><\/p>\nIt’s a very forgiving drink.\u00a0 In a sparkling format, it’s something you can drink in the heat, it’s something you can drink in larger quantities, I can tell you that the recovery profile, for me and for many others, is exceptionally good.<\/span><\/p>\nMeaning you can drink a lot of it and bounce back and go again.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAs a wine producer, that’s music to your ears. But it’s also nice knowing I’m making people feel better. I’m not putting something in the market that’s going to make you feel sick after overconsumption.<\/span><\/p>\nAt a party enjoying Aphrodise Sparkling Wine<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nJoe Winger:<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nJust to give a little backstory.\u00a0 Frank, I hope you’ll talk to us a little bit about one of your first adventures.\u00a0 You mentioned you’re an internet entrepreneur, you had some success with website domains.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nCan you explain a little bit about that and maybe a lesson you learned from that journey?<\/span><\/p>\nFrank Schilling:<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIt’s a lesson that some of your listeners and viewers probably have some experience with.<\/span><\/p>\nI registered a domain name back in the dot com era. Then I registered 2 [dot com names], then 10 and I got some generic names like wine.com , cars.com.\u00a0 Names like those.<\/span><\/p>\nI started to realize, wow, these names have value.<\/span><\/p>\nI wound up registering a lot of generic names and then I had difficulty managing them because in those early days of the Internet, it was all very unwieldy. The infrastructure for managing those names.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSo I created a lot of that management infrastructure.\u00a0 Then in the process, grew that business over a 20 year horizon and wound up selling the 3 companies that comprised that enterprise to a company called GoDaddy, which we’ve probably all heard of.<\/span><\/p>\nSo some of their infrastructure was my infrastructure and is now their infrastructure.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nTo the extent you like the new GoDaddy offering for managing domain names, you’re welcome, for the small part I played in helping that become a reality.<\/span><\/p>\nIn the old days, I was traveling a lot. I had an office in Manchester in the United Kingdom, one in Newport beach in California and my main office here in the Cayman Islands.\u00a0 I would travel between the offices, New York, Miami and many other cities, just for work all around the world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nEnjoying Aphrodise Sparkling Wine<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nAt the beginning of COVID that all came to a grinding halt.\u00a0 I sold those businesses and decided that with my love of food, if I was going to stay in the Cayman Islands, I realized I’m gonna have to eat at home more and I realized, the offerings of restaurants wasn’t the depth was hoping for.<\/span><\/p>\nSo I built the restaurant, as a result of that that then led to Aphrodise.<\/span><\/p>\nJoe Winger:<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI love the full circle of it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSince we’ve mentioned the restaurant once or twice. Can we hear more about your restaurant <\/span>Mykonos Cayman?<\/span><\/p>\nFrank Schilling:<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSure.\u00a0 During COVID lockdowns, there was a new plaza going in on the beach and I had mentally designed a restaurant years ago, but sold the real estate for it.<\/span><\/p>\nSo when I saw the plaza going up, I was crestfallen. These guys built my dream on their land.\u00a0 My fantasy of what a place would look like. But then I was happy to learn that the plaza was a strata titled affair. It wasn’t owned by one conglomerate.<\/span><\/p>\nSo I bought into that plaza so I could control the real estate. Then once I had the real estate I did a sort of \u201cmoney no object\u201d fit out that left a very residential-looking restaurant really quite beautiful.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI love the culture of Greece and I love the idea of the long lunch and the lack of pretense in the party and [being] all welcoming, with children, grownups will dance on the table and get really carried away.<\/span><\/p>\nThe kids are running around. It’s all very loving and family oriented.<\/span><\/p>\nWhereas, Ibiza is a little more drug fueled and party, ragey and a little more intense.<\/span><\/p>\nI loved the soulful day party of Greece. We’re on an island and the Greeks are on islands. So I thought how nice it would be to bring some of that to my reserved island here in Grand Cayman. Grand Cayman is more of a place you quietly go to escape and enjoy the beach and family.<\/span><\/p>\nIt’s not really a St. Bart’s where you go to seek out a great party. I always hoped that there’d be room for at least one place like they have in St. Bart’s here.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSo I built a really big place, 320 seats, super residential, relaxed, welcoming, But completely devoid of pretense.\u00a0 You can come in, flip flops and shorts, or you can come in a beautiful gown as we’d hope in the evening.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBut we don’t have a lot of structure and posture around it. We want you to feel free when you come. So that, I built that venue here, and you can see it online.<\/span><\/p>\nIt’s called Mykonos Cayman. We have an Instagram where people can learn about the restaurant.<\/span><\/p>\nWhen you come, please come for a glass of Aphrodise on me. Mention Frank said I could have a glass of Aphrodise<\/span><\/p>\nJoe Winger:<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nYou introduced Aphrodise at the Las Vegas Wedding Show.\u00a0 How did it go? \u00a0 Why do you think Aphrodise is the best drink to have at a wedding?<\/span><\/p>\nFrank Schilling:<\/b><\/p>\n
It’s the color of love. It’s a beautiful color of red.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWe took it to the wedding show because I thought that wedding planners would share the same pain point that I discovered as a restaurateur.\u00a0 Which is, if you want to buy a bottle of great champagne, easy, you go to the liquor store.<\/span><\/p>\nBut when you start getting up there and you need 100 cases for an event or a series of events, getting that quantity consistently and getting a good product is actually quite difficult. And expensive.<\/span><\/p>\nSo we thought we’d introduce Aphrodise.<\/span><\/p>\nKnowing that we could go directly to the wedding planners and help their fulfillment and execution and deliver a better product.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSomething that people could really lavish in the heat or at an after party where you’re really enjoying the bubbly and then feel better in the morning.\u00a0 That was really the goal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nMy first champagne experience was at a wedding and I drank a little too much.\u00a0 For the next day or two, I was laid up.<\/span><\/p>\nSo we try to bring something to market that is good for people or at least makes them feel good in the moment and helps them recover.<\/span><\/p>\nWe had a line all day.\u00a0 I poured a 5,000 servings of Aphrodise that day. People loved it.<\/span><\/p>\nLet me tell you, that’s a lot of work, opening bottles. It looks very glamorous. But when you’re really going at velocity, my hands hurt at the end of the day.<\/span><\/p>\nWe got a lot of upstart business out of that. People were like, \u201cWow, this stuff is actually quite good.\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nJoe Winger:<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nLet\u2019s talk about flavor profile.<\/span><\/p>\nPouring out 5,000 samples, what’s the most common feedback we get about the flavor, aroma, the mouthfeel, what are we experiencing?<\/span><\/p>\nFrank Schilling:<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSo when you sip a drink and you talk about mouthfeel or we have a glass of wine or champagne and you have a sip and there’s a little bit of a yeasty, gamey after taste.<\/span><\/p>\nFor some people in red wine, it can be somewhat desirable.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIn champagne, unfortunately it stays with it as well.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhen you’re having champagne, which is more of a celebratory libation, that’s not a desirable quality. You want to have something that finishes clean in your mouth.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIf you have lots of sips, you’re going to get a good buzz. You want to be able to recover quickly and elegantly without that headache that comes from the yeast and all those elements that bring its flavor.<\/span><\/p>\nSo the taste of Aphrodise is a very clean mouthfeel and it finishes with a light crisp apple or cherry. Some people taste strawberry.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIt’s a small bubble. Very light charmat, produced in small vats, a naturally produced bubbly effect. It lives in tanks for 3 months and it gains its bubbly in a natural way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nA little more expensive to produce that way.\u00a0 Prosecco, for example, will carbonate.\u00a0 They’ll add carbonation just like you would to a can of soda.<\/span><\/p>\nWe don’t carbonate. We allow the bubbly to form naturally through the fermentation process, which is how it should be.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nCo-Founders of Aphrodise Sparkling Wine<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nJoe Winger:<\/b><\/p>\n
When it comes to food and wine pairing.\u00a0 What would be your favorite dish to pair with a glass of Aphrodise?<\/span><\/p>\nFrank Schilling:<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAphrodise is literally the only thing that I drink, and I’m crestfallen when I can’t find it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIt’s a dark ros\u00e9 so it goes nicely with meat \u2013 a burger or a steak.\u00a0 Chicken or fish. It’s also a great dessert drink.<\/span><\/p>\nI like Aphrodise as a warmup libation and as an after dinner, like celebratory drink if you’re having a party, there’s an after party.<\/span><\/p>\nJoe Winger:<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nYou’ve done a lot in your life. You’ve had a lot of adventures, a lot of successes.<\/span><\/p>\nAny inspiration or lessons you can share with the audience?<\/span><\/p>\nFrank Schilling:<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe answer is love for people and love for living your best life, love for conviviality. I have a lot of love for the people that I encountered that have helped me in my journey. Those who’ve just been a part of my life, there for a season or there for a reason, as the saying goes, I try to embrace everybody.<\/span><\/p>\nSee the good in everybody. There are people you click with more than other people. I say yes to everything unless it hurts me. I have a real lust for life and a good energy level.<\/span><\/p>\nJoe Winger:<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIf you’re loving Frank\u2019s energy and his positivity, you wrote an amazing book. Would you mind giving us a summary of the book and what it was like writing it?<\/span><\/p>\nFrank Schilling:<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIt’s called Omnia Vincent: the universe wants you to win.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI wrote the book as I’d sold my businesses. It was during COVID lockdowns and everybody was [going through a] \u201cThe end of the world\u201d mood type thing at that time.<\/span><\/p>\nYou write a book like this for your grandchildren. If one day they want to know more about grandpa and did our success come from or where did our financial wealth come from?<\/span><\/p>\nIt’s nice for them to know a little about the person who tried hard and maybe you can see something in yourself.\u00a0 So I really wrote it for my future ancestors.<\/span><\/p>\n