Unreserved Wine Talk

Thomas Bachelder is a Canadian winemaking superstar on a mission when it comes to cool-climate Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. After studying in France and having a successful winemaking career in Canada, Thomas started his own label where not only does he make wine in Ontario, but he also has vineyards in Burgundy and Oregon. The Bachelder project started with the 2009 vintage with the three terroirs...

What exactly is organic wine? Is it better for you? In recent years, organic wine has moved from the realms of health nuts and hippies to the mainstream, where it now represents one of the fastest-growing categories in the liquor store. But is it really that different from conventional wine? With Earth Hour coming up on March 30 and Earth Day on April 22, I'm dedicating today's episode to organic...

Lesley Brown has been a part of the Canadian Wine Industry for the past 17 years and works with several high profile wine agencies. She holds an International Sommelier Diploma and has taught wine courses to hundreds of students. Lesley is currently the BC Regional Sales Manager for The Bacchus Group and she also sits on the board of directors for the Import Spirit and Vintners Association and has...

Are men from Bordeaux and women from Burgundy? In my 20 years of studying and writing about wine, I've encountered a lot of differences in how men and women approach the subject. There are also several studies that show the same thing. In honour of International Women's Day this week, I'm diving deep into "women's wines", whether they're actually any good and how wines marketed to women are affect...

Charles Louis Back is the third generation owner of South African wine and cheese producer Fairview, in Paarl in the Western Cape Province. Charles Back studied winemaking at Elsenburg Agricultural College in Stellenbosch. He officially joined his family's company in 1978 and took over full control in 1995 after the death of his father, Cyril. Today, Charles Back is known as one of the great entre...

It's unbelievable to consider that there's a huge industry of specialists dedicating their lives to wine in the form of writers, sommeliers and critics. Why has wine inspired us in a way no other food or drink does? In this episode, I explore the questions around why we score wine in the first place, whether they really matter and if you should trust them.   To learn more about the resources menti...

Katie Kelly Bell has been writing about food, wine and travel for over a dozen years, with her writing appearing in publications such as Forbes, USA Today, Modern Luxury, Decanter and Southern Living. Her experiences have taken her from the vineyards of Argentina to the press houses of Champagne. In between, she has co-authored a travel guide to Ireland, The Everything Guide to Ireland , written a...

Do you want to seduce someone this Valentine's Day? Forget the lingerie, lipstick and silk-tie handcuffs - just share a glass or two of wine with your amour. Just in time for Valentine's Day, I'm going to share with you my favourite wines for seduction, including some melt in your mouth pairings with chocolate.   To learn more about the resources mentioned in this episode, visit the show notes .

Ezra Cipes is proud to carry on the family legacy at Summerhill Pyramid Winery. Since the Cipes family moved from New York to Summerhill Vineyard in Kelowna, British Columbia when Cipes was five, he has grown up in the wine industry and feels blessed to now lead a company dedicated to creating beauty in collaboration with nature. After reconnecting with the winery and the land, Cipes knew he neede...

I have to confess: I am obsessed with Alicia Florrick, the successful attorney on The Good Wife, and Olivia Pope, the high-powered Washington D.C. "fixer" on Scandal. In this episode, I'm going to share with you my secret obsession with the wine drinking habits of these women on television and what I believe that says about our cultural relationship with wine.   To learn more about the resources m...

Bianca Bosker is an award-winning journalist and the author of the New York Times Best Seller, Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste , which has been hailed as the " Kitchen Confidential of wine." Bianca has written about food, wine, architecture, and technology for The New Yorker online, The Atla...

Are you curious about what's behind the covers of my book, Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass Audio Edition (which you'll hear me refer to as "RWD")? In this episode, I'm inviting you to pull up your most comfortable imaginary chair for a secret book club reading of the juiciest bits of RWD, which was named one of the best books of the year by the Globe and Ma...

Dr. Edward Miller is a board-certified physician, author, & researcher and he has been passionate about wine since taking a wine appreciation course 30 years ago during medical school. He is a regular attendee at The International Wine-Heart Health Summits and a member of The Renaud Society, an international society of medical professionals investigating the role of wine in health. Dr. Miller is a...

Have you ever wondered how an audiobook gets made and then sold via Apple Books, Amazon and Audible around the world?   In this episode, I'm sharing my journey from idea to audiobook and we'll go behind the scenes of creating the new audio edition of my book Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass (RWD). I'll also share with you some terrific sparkling wines that p...

Sommelier and author Marnie Old and winemaker Jean-Charles Boisset of Domaine de la Vougeraie, have co-authored a book, Passion For Wine: The French Ideal and the American Dream, which has some truly innovative ways to help you understand why you like certain wines and not others. In this episode, Marnie and Jean-Charles share with us why it's so hard for people to identify their personal preferen...

As I mentioned in the introductory episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, every other episode I'll be doing a solo episode where I offer up some of my personal wine confessions. This is the first of these special confessional episodes. Many of these stories I've never shared publicly. Some will be funny, others will be funny, and a few will be embarrassing. I've decided to share these confes...

Peter Hellman is a New York-based wine journalist and best-selling author. His writing has appeared in Wine Spectator, The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, New York Times, New York Sun and his bestselling books include In Vino Duplicitas: The Rise and Fall of a Wine Forger Extraordinaire and Chief!: Classic Cases from the Files of the Chief of Detectives and When Courage Was Stronger than Fear...

Welcome to this special introduction to the Unreserved Wine Talk Podcast! My name is Natalie MacLean and I've been writing about wine for twenty years. Growing up in a small Nova Scotia town, I used to think that wine was just for fancy people. However, I now know that the pure pleasure and passion of wine is for everyone. This podcast serves to help you take the journey I've taken with wine. One...