Episodes

Heidi Barrett has produced extraordinary wines for clients including Screaming Eagle, Paradigm, Dalle Valle, and many more. One of her Cabernets holds the record as the most ever paid for a single bottle of wine -- $500,000 at Auction Napa Valley. Today she has her own wine brand, La Sirena, and another with her husband, Bo Barrett of Chateau Montelena, called Barrett & Barrett. On this classic episode of the podcast first posted in 2018, Heidi takes Doug through one of the most fascinating car...

It's harvest here on the West Coast and this week we're letting our winemaking friends focus on picking their grapes. We thought this would be the perfect moment to rerelease a classic 'Taste' episode that we recorded with our friend, the great actor and vintner, Kyle MacLachlan. Since we recorded this episode in October, 2018, Kyle has continued to produce outstanding wines with his Pursued by Bear label -- a winery name he took from an inspired moment in a play by Shakespeare. His acting car...

In the early 1980s, Lee Hudson, still in his 20s, was one of the first to recognize the promise of Los Carneros, Napa Valley's gorgeous southernmost growing region. He came to Napa Valley by way of Texas, where he grew up and fell in love with agriculture. After earning a degree in horticulture he learned the intricacies of grape growing during a stint in Burgundy before studying in the enology Masters program at U.C. Davis. Putting his Texas spirit to work in Carneros, he began growing Chardonn...

James Hall proved that you actually can go home again when, in 2024, he bought back the winery he'd sold nearly 10 years earlier. We had a great time talking with James, getting the background on a fascinating career and learning more about Patz & Hall winery in Sonoma. He grew up in Santa Cruz, California, where his father was an English professor. On family travels in Europe, James was first introduced to the joys of wine. It was an unforgettable glass of Meursault Charmes that really turned ...

Jeb Dunnuck's journey to becoming a globally recognized wine critic took an unexpected path, starting in Indiana farmland, where he grew up, then through an early career as an engineer for NASA, working on high-profile projects such as the Kepler Space Telescope. Along the way though, he fell in love with the wines of the Rhône Valley and putting his engineering skills to work built a website and newsletter called The Rhône Report, focused on wines produced from Rhône grape varieties around the...

Judd Finkelstein's earliest memories are all about life at a Napa Valley winery. In the 1970s his parents started Whitehall Lane Winery, later selling and moving across the Valley to launch Judd's Hill Winery. Judd says like so many who grow up here, he had to move away from Napa Valley to truly appreciate it. Initially after college, he worked in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles until feeling like a better life would be one working with his family in the wine business. Back in Napa he ...

We first got to know Pat Monahan when he and his Grammy-winning band Train filmed much of the 2012 music video for their hit song "Drive By" at Shafer Vineyards (which has earned more than 200 million views on YouTube). We knew right away that Pat was a wine fan based both on our interactions with him that day and because we learned that he helmed the successful "Save Me San Francisco Wine Company," whose sales raised millions for Family House, a haven for families of critically ill children. I...

Bobby Stuckey loves creating welcoming, inspired spaces in his restaurants both for customers and employees, seeing hospitality as a mission as much as a career. Bobby’s story starts in Arizona where he grew up “a dyslexic, ADHD kid,” who wasn’t finding success in school. Fortunately he landed a position as a busboy in a local restaurant and soon realized that pouring his energy into that job came with real rewards. The world of restaurants has been his home ever since. Along the way he fell in...

Suzanne Deal Booth is a fairly recently name to Napa Valley in that her first released vintage was 2018 from Bella Oaks winery, a property with a rich legacy. More recently she purchased Wheeler Farms on Zinfandel Lane, just south of St. Helena. Her story, though, begins not in wine but in art restoration and preservation, a passion that has taken her to iconic sites around the world. Today she combines that love for art, history, and wine into her properties and her wines, which are earning gre...

The story of MacDonald Vineyards begins with a deep, foot-dragging, don't-make-me-do-it reluctance to get into the business of grape-growing four generations ago, a historic hand-shake deal with Robert Mondavi, and accidents of history, fate, and weather. Ultimately though, it is the inspired passion and incredible work ethic of two brothers, Alex and Graeme MacDonald. As children they played in this Oakville vineyard that one day they would turn into some of the most celebrated wines in Napa Va...

James Molesworth often finds his way into a wine through anthropology, which was his major in college. As Wine Spectator's lead taster for California (Cabernet and Pinot Noir) and Bordeaux, James talks about the importance of learning the underlying culture of a region and a winery to fully understand a wine. Besides tasting wines in the traditional sense, he spends time in vineyards with producers learning the stories of a vintage, a site, and its people. James has been part of the culture at W...

Chris and Josh Phelps are a father-and-son team who have worked together unofficially for a long time. While Josh was a kid growing up in Napa Valley, Chris was the inaugural winemaker at Dominus before moving on to make wine at Caymus, and then Swanson and Inglenook before starting his own wine brand Ad Vivum Cellars. When Josh got out of college in the mid-2000s he launched Taken wine brand before selling and starting again with the hugely successful Grounded Wine Company. Today Chris and Jos...

Whoever said crime doesn't pay, didn't know John Caldwell. When John bought his 54 acres (and three houses) in the Coombsville area of Napa Valley in the late 1970s, he thought he was getting into the real estate business. But when the County placed a moratorium on development, he had to figure out something else to do with his land and decided to grow grapes and make wine. What came next is one of the wildest stories in the wine industry, involving smuggling and close calls with the law. Today ...

Doug Shafer and Chef Tom Colicchio first met in the early 1990s on board a nearly empty cruise in the Baltic Sea in what turned out to be an unforgettable few days. In this episode the two catch up and talk about Tom's new bestselling memoir, "Why I Cook," along with his early years in the New York City restaurant scene, his 22 seasons hosting the Emmy-winning Bravo TV show "Top Chef," his work in food advocacy, raising kids, and everything he's doing today, overseeing restaurants in New York, L...

Glenn Salva has been at the heart of Antinori Napa Valley since the mid-1980s when the renown wine family, the Antinoris, who'd been making wine in Tuscany for 600, decided to expand into the New World. The story as Glenn tells is filled with challenges and incredible opportunities -- including the moment when they bought their own mining equipment and dug their own wine cave. More than anything, we learn how the Antinori family's century old experience in the wine industry infuses their approac...

Early in his career Dave Phinney redefined the look and feel of winemaking and marketing in Napa Valley when he created a red blend called The Prisoner. Simultaneously he founded and remains involved with Orin Swift, working in partnership with Gallo. After the sale of his original brands, Dave went on to forge his own path establishing the spirits maker Savage & Cooke and most recently began crafting Pinot Noir and Chardonnay on the Central Coast under the Our Lady of Guadalupe label.

Growing up in one of Napa Valley’s most celebrated winemaking families, Chelsea brings a wealth of personal knowledge to her professional success. After graduating from UC Davis she gained real-world experience working in wine regions around the world and in wineries of all sizes from large to small. Today she is winemaker at Napa Valley’s Mattera Cunat Family Vineyards and Aviatrix, crafting wines with her mom, winemaker Heidi Barrett. Don’t miss previous podcast episodes with Chelsea’s grandfa...

Born in Switzerland, Jean Hoefliger worked in vineyards and wineries throughout the world before landing in Napa Valley in 2001 and his first job here at Newton Vineyard. Since then he’s made wine with numerous brands including Alpha Omega Winery and AXR Napa Valley as well as with his long-time friend Michele Roland.

Her journey in wine took Emma Swain from Francis Ford Coppola’s Neibaum-Coppola Estate to wineries owned by Sonoma’s Sebastiani family before taking the reins at Chanel-owned St. Supèry.

Third-generation vintner Violet Grgich tells an incredible family wine story that spans a century that includes a world war, daring escapes, and a years-long journey to Napa Valley. Her grandfather was a winemaker in their small town in Croatia, her father came to Napa and help put the region on the world stage and started a winery, Grgich-Hills Estate, where today Violet is president. Enjoy!

Hugh Davies lives in the same house he grew up in at Schramsberg Winery here in Napa Valley and, in a case of history repeating itself, it’s where he and his wife are raising their own family and making world-class wines. Hugh does a great job of weaving together 150 years of stories about family and winemaking on Diamond Mountain. Enjoy!

Hugh Davies lives in the same house he grew up in at Schramsberg Winery here in Napa Valley and, in a case of history repeating itself, it’s where he and his wife are raising their own family and making world-class wines. Hugh does a great job of weaving together 150 years of stories about family and winemaking on Diamond Mountain. Enjoy!

Hugh Davies lives in the same house he grew up in at Schramsberg Winery here in Napa Valley and, in a case of history repeating itself, it’s where he and his wife are raising their own family and making world-class wines. Hugh does a great job of weaving together 150 years of stories about family and winemaking on Diamond Mountain. Enjoy!

In 1975 John Williams arrived in Napa Valley with a return bus ticket and $40 in his pocket. He fell in love with wine and never used that return ticket – instead launching Frog’s Leap Winery. Today John and his son Rory (who also owns Calder Wine Co.) are running Frog’s Leap together and on the podcast, they discuss the joys and challenges of family business.