Read Between the Wines Podcast

In 1910, a farmer from Abruzzo travelled to Naples to see an ear specialist and came home with twenty hectares and a fifteenth century lookout tower, bought from Baron Zambra in instalments, with no guarantee. More than a century later, Gambero Rosso's Vini d'Italia 2026 named the family winery, bottling since 1961, its Emerging Winery. For episode 105 of Read Between the Wines, Pierre Ferland sit...

A valley once dismissed as too dry and too stony for anything worth drinking, now home to some of the most decorated wine in New Zealand, named after an actual spy base down the road, on purpose. For episode 104 of Read Between the Wines, Pierre Ferland sits down with Amanda Johnson, Managing Director of Spy Valley, to find out what happens when a family vineyard built on land everyone else had wr...

In 1980, a Swiss couple on a Christmas visit to Tuscany noticed one hillside in Chianti sitting in full sun while the whole valley around it disappeared into fog. They bought that hill the following year. They liked the light, nothing more. In this episode of Read Between the Wines, Pierre Ferland sits down with Barbara Widmer, Winemaker and CEO of Brancaia, in Castellina in Chianti, Tuscany, Ital...

What does it take to fix a problem an entire industry had quietly decided was unfixable? Greg Lambrecht, inventor, founder, and chairman of Coravin, joins Pierre Ferland for a conversation that starts in a wine shop at sixteen and ends up rewriting how the world drinks by the glass. An MIT-trained engineer who spent his career designing chemotherapy needles and spinal implants, Lambrecht looked at...

Why does a 155-year-old empire keep reinventing itself — when coasting was always an option? Mireia Torres Maczassek, Director of Knowledge and Innovation at Familia Torres, joins Pierre Ferland for a conversation recorded live in Montreal at a Primum Familiae Vini gathering — and it is exactly as good as that setting sounds. Fifth generation of one of the most recognised wine dynasties on the pla...

In 2001, a bottle of Clos des Épeneaux 1996 landed on our podcast host's table and changed the course of his wine life forever. It didn't simply introduce him to Burgundy; it changed the way he understood wine, place, patience, and beauty. The man who made it had no idea. While that bottle was beginning its journey around the world, Pascal Marchand was in Burgundy, celebrating the birth of his sec...

Sixty years before "drink less, but better" became an industry mantra, one man in Tuscany was already living it. His grandson has spent his whole career proving him right. In this episode, Pierre sits down with Giovanni Folonari, of Ambrogio e Giovanni Folonari Tenute, the family behind four distinct Tuscan estates built on a single conviction: that quality can't be rented, it has to be owned. The...

In 1985, Ferruccio Ferragamo went looking for game in the hills between Florence and Arezzo. He came home having found a thousand-year-old medieval village instead. Years later, his son Salvatore rode a bicycle into those same hills and saw something his father hadn't: a valley whose soil told an entirely different story in every direction, sandstone in one corner, clay rich with sea fossils in an...

Sara Lecompte Cuvelier swore she would never work in wine. Then in 2018, she became Managing Director of one of the five Second Grand Cru Classé estates in Saint-Julien. Her sister Anne had already been there for thirteen years, building something from nothing. That is the story of Château Léoville Poyferré — and neither of them planned any of it. In this episode of Read Between the Wines, Pierre...

In 1935, a viceroy ordered a vineyard planted in the hills between Florence and Arezzo. Not to make wine. To mark a military conquest. Ninety years later, that same vineyard is producing one of the most celebrated Sangiovese in all of Tuscany. This is the story of Tenuta Sette Ponti — an estate that began as a hunting retreat, became a family obsession, and is now home to Oreno, a wine that has go...

In 2015, a Champagne house gathered the UK wine press at a Westminster Abbey tomb — before a single vine had been planted. That is how Domaine Évremond announced itself to the world. And it tells you everything about what kind of project this is. In this episode, Pierre sits down with India McGrath, daughter of co-founder Patrick McGrath MW and the person now carrying the Domaine Évremond story fo...

Château Latour-Martillac has been a Grand Cru Classé de Graves since 1953. The Kressmann family has been here since 1930. And somewhere in their vineyard, there is a parcel of vines planted in 1884 that should not still exist — but does, and has become one of the most compelling white wines in all of Bordeaux. In this episode, Pierre sits down with Edouard Kressmann, Technical Director and fifth g...

She was a veterinarian. Then one phone call from her mother changed everything. In this episode of Read Between the Wines, Pierre sits down with Monica Raspi, owner of Fattoria Pomona — a small, family-run organic winery in Chianti Classico, Tuscany, on the border of Castellina in Chianti and Vagliagli. Six hectares. Organic since 2009. Minimal intervention in the cellar. And a point of view that...

Austria has been making world-class wine for centuries. The world is just now catching up. In this episode of Read Between the Wines, host Pierre Ferland sits down with Wolfgang Hewarth, Winery Director at Esterházy Wein in Burgenland, Austria — one of Central Europe's most historic estates, with winemaking records going back to 1612 and a cellar master hired from Burgundy in 1758. The name alone...

What does it take to keep a family name alive for nearly four centuries in the same valley, on the same hills, with the same grapes — and still have something new to say? Welcome to Tedeschi Wines, one of the oldest family estates in Valpolicella, Veneto, Italy — with roots stretching back to the 17th century and a philosophy that has never confused age with complacency. In this episode of Read Be...

What if the most elegant wine in Bordeaux doesn't announce itself at all — it simply holds the entire room? Welcome to Château Haut-Bailly, a Pessac-Léognan estate in Bordeaux, France, with vines over 120 years old, three perfect 100-point scores from three different critics, and a philosophy that has never chased power — only finesse. In this episode of Read Between the Wines, Pierre sits down wi...

What if the most exciting white grape in the world has been hiding in plain sight, just south of Barcelona? Meet Xarel·lo — mineral, textural, age-worthy, and criminally underrated. And meet Joan Cusiné, co-owner of Parés Baltà, a biodynamic estate in the Penedès, Catalonia, Spain, with roots going back to 1790, where wine is never complicated and never a punishment. In this episode of Read Betwee...

Some wineries take themselves too seriously. Poderi Cellario forgot to — and somehow makes some of the most honest wine in Piemonte because of it. Playful labels. Litre bottles. Crown caps, not corks. If you judged this estate by its look, you'd walk right past it. That would be a mistake. In this episode of Read Between the Wines, we head to the western edge of the Langhe, Italy, to meet Simone C...

Wine is being put on trial. And almost nobody is asking who's actually building the case. For most of human history, wine wasn't a question. It was just there — at the table, in the ritual, in the gathering. Now it's a headline, a health warning, a culture war. Something shifted. Few people can tell you exactly what, or why, or who benefits from the shift. Felicity Carter can. In this episode of R...

Sangiovese does not just reveal terroir. It reveals the winemaker. In Episode 86 of Read Between the Wines, Pierre Ferland sits down with Federico Cerelli, head winemaker at Castello di Gabbiano, one of Chianti Classico's most historic estates in Tuscany, Italy, to unpack what freshness, drinkability, and "modern classicism" really mean in Tuscany today. From Federico's first move at Gabbiano in 2...

In Episode 85 of Read Between the Wines, Pierre Ferland sits down with Cristián Vallejo, the winemaker who helped build Viña VIK in Chile under owner Alexander Vik — starting from absolute zero. No vineyards. No cellar. Just 4,500 hectares of wild land in the Millahue Valley and an ambition that practically screamed, "We are not here to make normal wine." This is a deep dive into terroir precision...

Can a wine be both unmistakably Bordeaux and unmistakably not Bordeaux at the same time? In Episode 84 of Read Between the Wines, Pierre Ferland sits down with Anselmo Guerrieri Gonzaga of San Leonardo Family Estate, one of Trentino's most iconic names, in the shadow of the Dolomites, Italy. It's a lively, story-driven conversation that moves from history to terroir, and from bottle ageing to the...

A doctor walks into the wine debate — and brings the data with her. In Episode 83 of Read Between the Wines, Pierre Ferland sits down with Dr. Laura Catena — physician, fourth-generation vintner, and the voice behind In Defense of Wine. She's spent years watching headlines flatten decades of research into a single, terrifying sentence. This episode is her rebuttal. We go straight at it: the World...

In this episode of Read Between the Wines, Pierre sits down with Andrea Kaiser, winemaker and daughter of the late Karl J. Kaiser, co-founder of Inniskillin and one of the two pioneers who built modern Canadian winemaking with vinifera grapes. Andrea grew up among the vines in Niagara, Canada, watching her father measure sugars with a refractometer, tasting early batches, and debating acidity, swe...

Four years ago, Stone Eagle was a cult label. Today it's a winery, an estate, a restaurant, and a statement. In this episode of Read Between the Wines, Pierre Ferland catches up with Adam Pearce — the winemaker behind Stone Eagle Winery and the celebrated wines of Two Sisters in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada. Four years after their first conversation during the pandemic, Adam returns with a...