Beyond Organic Wine

My guest for this episode is Justine Belle Lambright of Kalche Wine. Together with Kathline Chery and Grace Meyer, Justine has founded Kalche as a worker cooperative. If you’re wondering what it would mean for a winery to be built as a worker owned business, that’s exactly what we talk about in this episode. Justine goes into detail about what is involved in setting up and running a winery as a wo...

Thank you to everyone who responded to the first episode about how to make clean, delicious natural wine. Your feedback was both encouraging and helpful. It became clear that there was a desire for this kind of information, and that there were things I needed to further explain from part 1.  This is a technical, detailed explanation of some of the important aspects of making wine naturally. If you...

For this episode I have the pleasure of talking with two of my favorite authors on soil and our utter dependence on it, Anne Biklé and David R. Montgomery   David R. Montgomery is a MacArthur Fellow and professor of geomorphology at the University of Washington.  He is an internationally recognized geologist who studies the effects of geological processes on ecological systems and human societies....

This is natural winemaking 101, from a technical, principles-based approach, by Adam Huss, the host of the Organic Wine Podcast and the winemaker for Centralas Wine in Los Angeles, California.  Adam presents a vineyard to bottle, step-by-step how-to that focuses on protecting and expressing the beautiful ecosystems from which the fruit comes. He offers tips and processes to make this job of winema...

For this episode I had the pleasure of talking with Kendra Knapik of Ellison Estate Vineyard, a vineyard of American grapes on Grand Isle in the middle of Lake Champlain Vermont. Kendra and her husband Rob practice animal grazing integrated regenerative viticulture with a flock of sheep and organic practices, and make an array natural wines. Kendra talks about the joys and challenges of embracing...

My guest for this episode is Tom Plocher. Tom has been growing and breeding grapevines and making wine from them since 1980. He was a longtime friend and mentee of Elmer Swenson, and lives and grows grapes in Minnesota just north of the Twin Cities. Tom has bred several varieties of grapes that are patented and available for sale out in the world… and you’ve heard about at least one of them – Peti...

My guest for this episode is Diana Snowden Seysses. Diana studied Viticulture & Enology at UC Davis, and went on to work in both California and French cellars with Robert Mondavi Winery, Mumm Napa, the Araujo Estate, Château La Fleur de Boüard, Domaine Leflaive and Ramey Wine Cellars. And also for the last 20 years, Diana has been an enologist and part of the family at Domaine Dujac in Burgundy, a...

My guests for this episode are the father and son team Doug and Andrew Becker of Montpelier Vineyards in Montpelier, Vermont. Montpelier Vineyards is currently the only certified organic winery north of the Mason-Dixon line that I’m aware of, though there may be more in the process and soon to be certified. As a quick clarification, a certified organic winery must have two certifications: one for...

My guest for this episode is Eric Shatt. With his wife and partner Deva, Eric is the owner of Redbyrd Orchard Cider in the Finger Lakes Region of NY. I love that Deva and Eric put the orchard first in their name and in their philosophy of cider making. In fact, Eric is an apple breeder and preservationist. He grows over 150 varieties of apples in his 4-acre orchard and is cultivating trees propaga...

My guest for this episode is Brian McClintic. For many people in the wine world, Brian needs no introduction. He’s one of the co-stars of the Somm documentaries where we watch him go from being a young, ambitions lover of wine, to becoming a Master Sommelier, and then his further evolution as global wine expert. Then, perhaps even more significantly, Brian became disillusioned with his membership...

My guest for this episode is Drew Herman. Drew is the Vineyard Manager at JK Carriere Wines in Oregon, and, wow… listening to him makes me want to drink anything made from fruit that he helps grow. Before we recorded this, Drew gave me an outline of things that he wanted to talk about, and he titled it Microbial Democracy, and what he discusses here blows open doors of understanding about the way...

My guest for this episode is the bestselling author of Drinking & Knowing Things, he's a Certified Sommelier with the Guild of Master Sommeliers, a Certified Specialist of Wine, and a Master of Wine Candidate with the Institute of Masters of Wine. His final blind tasting test is this month. He runs the wildly popular Drinking & Knowing Things wine blog which has been adapted into now 3 books. He o...

My guest for this episode is Tim Graham of Left Bank Cider in Catskill, New York on the bank of the Hudson River. Tim’s cider project is a joint effort with his wife Anna Rosencranz and partner Dave Snyder. The three of them are making local cider from local apples, both wild and cultivated, and serving them at their local bar along with other local ciders, beers, wines and liquors of NY. It was s...

My guest for this episode is Greg La Follette. Just when you think you know something about wine, you meet someone like Greg. Talking with him about wine is like having the sun rise suddenly while you’re walking a path at night with only a flashlight. I apologize in advance to anyone who is trying to listen to this while doing something else, because you’re going to want to take notes. Even if you...

This episode is a bit unusual for this podcast. It’s about how to purchase real estate, and my guest is Rural Mortgage Banker for United Ag Lending, Brady Shepherd. I’m very grateful to Brady for the time he spent with me preparing for this episode, and I think you’ll find this episode packed with potentially life-changing ideas. Why “life changing?” Because, for better or for worse, the US econom...

Colin Blackshear and Aaron Brown of Bardos Cider are my guests for this episode. This is their first podcast, and I’m honored to be able to spread the word about what the remarkable work they are doing. They have built Bardos Cider since 2019 to a significant production, of over 150 barrels, by gleaning fruit from abandoned, forgotten, and derelict old orchards from the late 1800s and early 1900s....

Recorded on, and released in honor of, Caesar Chavez Day. My guest for this episode is Gabriela Fontanesi. Gabriela has one of the most unusual and unique paths into wine that I’ve ever encountered. Because of that, she brought questions and perspectives that have incredible power to transform the way you see and think about this industry and that led her on a journey of being a vineyard worker, a...

It’s time for an end of the imperialistic colonial culture that we’ve all had plenty of by now. It’s time to recognize that there are indigenous grapes that grow best in every location on the lands of this earth, and they don’t need chemistry to survive because they evolved in those lands. And beyond that, great wine doesn’t have to be only about grapes. There are amazing fermented beverages from...

Jack Sporer is the owner of Fres.co Wine and Magnolia Wine Services. This interview is a great episode for a beginning winemaker thinking of starting their own brand and considering how to make that dream a reality. Because Jack is the owner of a custom crush winery facility. Unless you are independently wealthy or inherited a vineyard, you are likely going to start your winery in some sort of a c...

My guest for this episode is Darek Trowbridge. Darek is the mind and body behind Old World Winery. He refers to himself as a soil farmer rather than a grape farmer, and this earth-first approach had led him to coin the term “Pastoral Winemaker” … because Darek has been making Natural Wine since before anyone called it natural wine. That’s right, Darek is a pioneer in the natural wine movement, and...

Hidalgo, Wetumka, Norton, Cloeta. If you haven’t heard these names before, they are American heritage or American native wine grape varieties. And they are just a few of the dozens of native grape varieties being grown at TerraVox or Vox Vineyards, just outside of Kansas City, Missouri. Missouri is the site of America’s first and oldest AVA, by the way, so it has a long and fascinating wine histor...

Ian Thorsen-McCarthy is my guest for this episode, and he has made wine on both coasts… first in California and now in New York. His project is Artemis Botanical, and you can probably tell from the name that he doesn’t just make wine. Vermouth and now cider are part of his repertoire, and he is equally thoughtful about them all. Ian is deeply rooted in natural winemaking. So much so that if you te...

“The blood of the land” is how Jason Kesselring refers to wine. Jason grows grapes and makes wine in a place that sounds like it’s from Game of Thrones, where winter temperatures drop below 30 degrees … below zero, and summer temps can get over 100, where wind blows viciously year round, and tornados are common in the summer, and where last year at the end of May the temperature dropped to minus 2...

It was such a pleasure to geek out with Martha Stoumen about making wine for this epidsode. This conversation gets highly technical, and even more highly helpful for anyone, at any level, who is making wine or thinking about it. If you want to take your wine making to the next level, listen closely. I have learned multiple new things from Martha every time I’ve re-listened. The ostensible subject...

Stephen Hagen and Andrew Smith are my guests on this episode, and we’re talking about Antiquum Farm in Oregon. Antiquum is Stephen’s family farm where Andrew runs the cellar, and where they practice Grazing-Based Viticulture, or what Stephen calls Joy Based Agriculture, and I believe he’s doing for grape farming what Joel Salatin has done for regular farming. Antiquum is a vineyard ecosystem speci...