The Taste with Doug Shafer – a Podcast About Wine, Food, and Friends

Todd Ricard's one-of-a-kind journey to Napa Valley winemaking started in rural Ohio and took him through a stint as an Army satellite operator in Japan. He discovered wine while later stationed near Paso Robles. What started as a way to celebrate weekends quickly turned into a vision for a career. On the Central Coast, he not only pursued a viticulture degree at Cal Poly but also got his hands deeply purple in cellars of all sizes, learning the craft of winemaking. Today, Todd and his team are

Davie Piña grew up in a long Napa Valley tradition of vineyards and winemaking. He and his brothers ran one of the Valley's first vineyard management companies, helping to drive the enormous changes in Napa's reputation from the 1960s to today. They eventually launched their own family winery, Piña Napa Valley. Davie's family first arrived in Napa in 1850, the same year California became a state. One of his great-grandfathers, Lafayette Stice, was a winemaker at Inglenook in the early 1900s. Hi

Meghan Zobeck grew up in a Colorado cow town, graduated valedictorian of her senior class, studied for a career in medicine, and after college pivoted to a high-energy job with the Denver Broncos, negotiating player contracts — not your average pathway to Napa Valley winemaking. Her professional career took a new turn while on a getaway to California's Central Coast. Here for the first time Meghan saw vineyards and winemaking up close, which sparked a lasting interest. In this episode we learn

It's hard to believe that we recently lost Tom Rinaldi. He had a big impact on Napa wine and beyond that was a great friend and a fantastic human being. Tom grew up in San Francisco, where he experienced the Summer of Love —think Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead. He tasted wine in Napa Valley on motorcycle trips here starting when he was 16. Later, he signed up for the Navy before entering UC Davis where he studied winemaking — and the rest is history. He essentially invented Napa Valley Mer

Long before Joe Czerwinski reviewed Napa Valley wines for Robert Parker Wine Advocate, he spent two hours a day reading about wine, visiting local wine shops, and making decades-long friendships on first-generation wine forums in the early 2000s. The journey to his current position took him through archaeology, a wine retail job in Manhattan, and a long career writing and editing medical and science textbooks before he landed his first wine writing and reviewing gig at Wine Enthusiast. In this

Third-generation vintner Violet Grgich tells an incredible family wine story that spans a century and includes a world war, daring escapes, and a years-long journey to Napa Valley. In this classic episode first posted in 2022, Violet tells how her grandfather was a winemaker in their small town in Croatia, a passion picked up by her father, Mike Grgich. Mike escaped threats in communist Croatia and made his way to Napa where he helped put the region on the world stage, producing the Chateau Mon