The Wine Centric Show

This summer, Wine Enthusiast named North Carolina one of seven up-and-coming wine regions to watch, on the same list as Bolivia. Nicole Chesney, executive director of the North Carolina Wine & Grape Council, makes the case for going there to taste it. Nicole walks Matt Weiss through a four-day North Carolina wine trip, from the muscadine producers of Johnston County to the Yadkin Valley, Hende...

Lars Maack says the farm was offered to his family over drinks in a pub, for about the price of a double garage in Germany. Today Buitenverwachting, known in the US as Bayten, is one of the best-known Sauvignon Blanc estates in Constantia. Recorded in the vineyards at Buitenverwachting, on the back slopes of Table Mountain, Matt Weiss talks with Lars Maack, who took over the estate from his parent...

Kanonkop opened its 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinotage to celebrate 50 years of bottling its own wine, and Johann Krige says both were stunning. Recorded in the garden at Kanonkop in Stellenbosch, Matt Weiss talks with Johann Krige, who co-owns the estate with his brother Paul. Johann explains how the family pulled out Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir and Riesling to focus on Cabernet Sau...

Before every blend, De Toren's cellar master writes three or four words on a sticky note. The final wine has to taste like them. Recorded in the vineyards of De Toren in the Polkadraai Hills of Stellenbosch, managing director Albie Koch and cellar master Charles Williams tell the story of South Africa's first five-grape Bordeaux blend. Albie made his first vintage in 1999, at 22, and explains how...

The South Africa Series, Episode 2 of 5. Taaibosch makes one wine. No second label, no entry-level bottling, just Crescendo, a Cabernet Franc-led blend from the slopes of the Helderberg. Recorded in the Taaibosch cellar in Stellenbosch, Matt Weiss talks with cellar master Schalk-Willem Joubert, Petri Venter, winemaker at Le Chant, and Heinrich van der Watt, winemaker at Pink Valley. Schalk-Willem...

Jacques Viljoen & Greg Guy: Boschendal, South Africa's 340-Year-Old Wine Farm The South Africa Series, Episode 1. Boschendal celebrated 340 years of winemaking history last year, and its wines sell in more than 70 countries. According to Greg Guy, America is still the missing piece. Recorded on the estate in the Cape Winelands, Matt Weiss talks with Boschendal cellar master Jacques Viljoen and...

Olivier Krug isn't interested in putting Champagne producers in a box. Arthur Larmandier says that at La Fête du Champagne, no one is above anyone. The house and the grower join Matt Weiss before La Fête returns to New York City, October 14 to 17, and Chicago, October 22 to 24. The Wine Centric Show is presented by InVintory. InVintory scans a wine label, pulls up the bottle's details and shows yo...

For years, Champagne's great houses and its small growers didn't share a room. La Fête du Champagne changed that. Co-founders Peter Liem and Daniel Johnnes, and Laurent Champs of Vilmart & Cie, take you inside the festival before it returns to New York City, October 14 to 17. Peter and Daniel share how La Fête began over dinner, the Burgundy tradition of La Paulée that inspired it, the first y...

Offers to buy Chappellet? The family has said no. Cyril Chappellet, CEO and Chairman of Chappellet, explains why the winery is worth more as an asset than as cash flow. Cyril tells the story of Robert Mondavi calling his father on a party line to offer his tanks and presses, and why the first Chappellet vintage, 1968, carries no vintage date. He names his five First Growths of Napa, explains why 1...

Nicole and Xavier Rolet bought a 900-year-old ruin in the hills above Provence and turned it into one of the Rhône's most talked-about wine estates, a property critics have called the world's first "Super Rhône." They built it inside a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve on Mont Ventoux, where wolves and wild boar walk through the vineyard at harvest and eat the grapes right off the vine. They still won't sp...

Rudi Pichler has a rule: act, don't react. It's shown up in every decision he's made since he came home from working a harvest in Napa Valley and took over his family's small, struggling vineyard in 1997 — including the year he deliberately cut two-thirds of his own harvest, the year his twins were born, just to make sure there'd be a handful of bottles waiting for them thirty years later. Matt ta...

Madeline Puckette didn't set out to build Wine Folly. She lost her graphic design job in the 2008 recession, followed a boyfriend to Reno, and picked up a stack of wine encyclopedias from a bar owner who needed help on slow nights. None of it was the plan. Nearly two decades later, she's the Co-Founder and Chief Design Officer of one of the most recognizable names in wine education, co-author of a...

Elisabetta Gnudi Angelini wanted Caparzo. Eleven partners owned it, and getting them all to say yes took four and a half years. She didn't walk away. That patience became the foundation of one of Tuscany's most quietly powerful wine families. Matt Weiss talks with Elisabetta and her daughter Alessandra about how they built a portfolio that runs from Brunello di Montalcino to Chianti Classico to th...

Wine tech has a problem nobody talked about until Josh Daiter's father pulled a shelf out of his wine fridge in Florida, watched the bottle he was hunting for roll off and shatter on the floor, and called his son the next morning fed up. That broken bottle became InVintory, now one of the leading platforms in wine collecting. This is the first episode of The Wine Centric Show to go deep on cellar...

Paul Michael didn't plant his first vines by choice. He was seventeen years old, on a family holiday in California, when his father climbed out of a rented Cadillac in the middle of Knights Valley and announced they were coming back to plant. That was 1982. What followed is one of the great origin stories in American wine. Paul and his wife Emily join Matt Weiss to talk about the multigenerational...

Pepe Raventós is a 21st generation winemaker who walked away from the appellation his grandfather helped build. Cava had become a commodity. The name carried the wrong story. So he left. What followed was a decade-long fight to prove that Penedès — a poor, rural corner of Catalonia with more than 3,000 years of winemaking history — deserves its own appellation and a seat at the table with the grea...

 Bobby Stuckey has spent twenty years telling Americans that the most important wine region in Italy isn't Tuscany. It isn't Piedmont either. It's Friuli. As co-founder of Frasca Food and Wine and one of the most respected Master Sommeliers in the country, Stuckey has watched food journalists question whether fine dining still has a place in American culture. He has a clear answer: they don't know...

When the most powerful man in the world imposed tariffs that threatened to put his business under, Victor Owen Schwartz did what almost no one else was willing to do. He sued. And he won. As lead plaintiff in VOS Selections v. Donald Trump, this 40-year wine importer took the fight from the Court of International Trade all the way to the Supreme Court — winning at every stop. 3-0. 7-2. 6-3. On the...

Bruwer Raats planted his flag in the Polkadraai Hills when nobody else wanted to be there. The soil was granite, the land was cheap, and the two varieties he chose — Chenin Blanc and Cabernet Franc — were widely considered the least exciting grapes a winemaker could possibly champion. His colleagues called him a mad hatter. That was 2000. Today, Polkadraai Hills is a declared ward on the label of...

Fifty years ago, a 25-year-old with no money, no connections, and a lot of nerve showed up at an office on the 18th floor of the World Trade Center every single day for two and a half weeks until someone finally let him in. That someone was Barbara Kafka. The place was Windows on the World. And what Kevin Zraly built there over the next 25 years became the greatest restaurant wine program this cou...

A UC Davis professor once told Cathy Corison she would never be a winemaker in the Napa Valley. As a woman, it simply wasn't done. She didn't argue. She just went and did it anyway. Nearly five decades later, Cathy is one of Napa's most respected voices — and her daughter Grace Corison Martin has come home to build on what her mother started. Matt talks with both of them about Kronos Vineyard, pla...

Carmel Greenberg didn't come to Clos du Val to make bigger wines. She came to make better ones. As head winemaker at one of Napa's oldest estates — and the first Israeli woman to lead a Napa Valley winery — Carmel has worked alongside some of the valley's most respected names: Cakebread, Dominus, Buccella. What she took from all of it wasn't a formula. It was a point of view. In this episode, we g...

Most world-class wine programs live in big city restaurants. This one lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains — and that changes everything. Tyler Wesslund, sommelier at High Hampton, pulls back the curtain on the art and strategy behind wine list curation, guest-centered service, and the evolving role of the modern sommelier. From Bordeaux vintages and the rise of Spanish wines to decanting techniques,...

Bonus Episode — Breaking News Update  Supreme Court has issued a ruling on U.S. wine tariffs — a meaningful development in a long-running legal battle. But despite the headlines, the industry is not out of the woods yet. Millions of dollars have already been paid in tariffs. Importers have faced severe cash flow strain. Jobs across distribution and retail remain exposed. And future trade actions c...

Sebastián Zuccardi is one of the defining voices behind the modern revolution of Argentine wine. As the third generation leading Zuccardi Valle de Uco, he helped redefine what’s possible in Uco Valley, transforming high-altitude vineyards into some of the most respected sites in the world. In this episode, he breaks down why the vineyard matters more than the winery, how extreme elevation shapes t...