Fine Wine Confidential Podcast

Send us Fan Mail In my career, I learned many valuable lessons about business and life that I share throughout my book, Fine Wine Confidential. In Episode #15, I recount a small sampling of the lessons that helped shape my successes, which were not necessarily apparent to me at the time. This Episode will give you a feel for what I experienced, and I will let my record speak for itself. My Tell-Al...

Send us Fan Mail Episode #14 is focused on the principle and importance of maintaining brand relevance. In my case, this episode takes you into a Sonoma-Cutrer board meeting back in 1988, at which I proposed what was thought to be a radical idea at the time: to take Chardonnay off the front of the label, à la Burgundy, France, and put the vineyard name in its place. I had only been VP of Sales &am...

Send us Fan Mail Episode #13 will take you into the room where Ken Starr was the guest speaker to a group of interested winery owners and personnel to discuss the next steps to take just 90 days after the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Granholm v Heald that opened up direct shipping of wine from the producer to the consumer in most of this country back in 2005. I was a participant at this lunche...

Send us Fan Mail Episode #12 takes you through the event that led up to what became a fitting tribute to Bill Bonetti and his retirement from winemaking, not just at Sonoma-Cutrer, where he was from the beginning back in 1981, but from his illustrious 42 years of winegrowing. I had always looked at Bill as the Leonardo da Vinci of the wine business. He was always tinkering, trying to find another...

Send us Fan Mail Episode #11 details the testimony I gave at a joint hearing of the California State Senate & Assembly on the Direct Shipping of wine to consumers in November of 1997, when I was President & CEO of Henry Wine Group in California. Henry Wine Group was the only Wholesale Distributor of wine in the country at the time and to this day still, which spoke out and backed the right...

Send us Fan Mail Episode #10 is about my thoughts on why most Founders of wineries or wine brands are not the brilliant or savvy business people they would like you to believe they are. No,  more often than not, their success, if they have any, is usually attributable to timing or causes outside of their control. I use my experience with Brice Cutrer Jones, the Founder of Sonoma-Cutrer Vineyards,...

Send us Fan Mail This episode delves into a defining moment from February 1986 that catapulted William Hill Winery into the spotlight. At that time, I was Vice President of Sales when Frank Prial, in his popular New York Times column "Wine Talk," made a misstep with his less-than-favorable comments about the results of our blind tasting event. During this event, we pitted our wines again...

Send us Fan Mail Episode #8 is an insider's view of the Henry Wine Group Board Meeting in the fall of 2007, when I was President & CEO. While reviewing some sales data for several of our top-end California producers, I noticed a disturbing trend that alarmed me. When I opened the meeting, I said, "Gentlemen, I have noticed some significant slowing down of the sales for a number of ou...

Send us Fan Mail In this Episode #7, I detail how I unwittingly jumped in and tried to make a significant change in the wine industry by trying to undo the Franchise Law protection that the alcoholic beverage wholesale distributors have in this country. These Laws are a vestige of the repeal of Prohibition and harm the wine producers in the most unfair way possible in well over half of the states...

Send us Fan Mail Episode #6 describes my initial encounter with the bureaucracy in the wine business. It was when I went to work at William Hill Winery back in 1984 and was introduced to the world of Franchise Laws.  Franchise Laws come in many shapes and sizes in the country, but essentially, what they are written to do is protect the alcoholic wholesaler distributors in this country. In the case...

Send us Fan Mail This Episode shares a firsthand account of some of my early wine-buying visits to top California wine producers in 1981 & 1982. It is just a small sample of what I encountered at a time when the early wine producers were just beginning to become well known on the East Coast, thanks to my and my best friend Jim Arseneault's efforts as we introduced them to our respective w...

Send us Fan Mail In this snippet from my upcoming book, I share a story about my first time on the streets of New York, calling on accounts and selling William Hill wines in only the second week after I had taken the position as VP of Sales for the  Eastern Division at William Hill Winery. Some Division, I was a one-man show and responsible for half of the country east of the Mississippi.  In this...

Send us Fan Mail Episode 2 provides a brief overview of what my book is about and my goal in writing it.  To sum it up quickly, let me say that I have been fortunate to have had many unique and challenging experiences in my 46-year wine career, and I want to share these with anyone who is interested and curious about what really happens behind the scenes in the wine industry from growing grapes, p...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode I share a story about one of the actions I took early in my career that change the course for me.  It was 1979 and I had just been hired 5 months before at a Retail Wine Merchant in Washington, DC. I was promoted by the owner of A & A Wine & Spirits, Harry Cook, to be the American Wine Department manager.  I wanted to test him right away to see if I had bot...

Send us Fan Mail The Fine Wine Confidential Book Podcast is a series of audio excerpts or snippets from my upcoming book, titled Fine Wine Confidential.   This new Podcast series will share insider information about what really happens behind the scenes in the Fine Wine business. Everything, from the up-close look at how marketing, sales, and pricing decisions are made to the sometimes crazy notio...

Send us Fan Mail Here is Part 2 of my in-depth interview with Lucie Morton where we continue to discuss the differences between Norton and Cynthiana grapes.  We also cover her attempt to reclaim another Virginia native grape, Cunningham which one of her familial ancestors is connected to here in Virginia.  Finally, Lucie will describe her proverbial Ah Ha moment when she decided that she would pro...

Send us Fan Mail Lucie Morton is the World's most preeminent Ampelographer, if not the only one still living that practices this art in the wine industry. I know, you are asking yourself what is Ampelography? Well, Lucie will explain that in some detail in this episode.  In fact, this interview was filled with so many insights that I have chosen to break it up into 2 parts. In Part 1 we touch...

Send us Fan Mail It is safe to say that Kendell Anderson the featured winemaker in this Episode #20 started his career in the Wine Industry in a most unconventional way. He graduated from William & Mary with a degree in Kinesiology and Health Science, not the traditional degree you might associate a winemaker with. It was a girl friend of his that got him interested in wine when she began to t...

Send us Fan Mail Tom Payette is one of the veterans making wine here in Virginia. The upcoming 2025 harvest will mark Tom's 40th. While most of Tom's career has been in Virginia he has been involved some years ago on the west coast in California as a result of his position at Prince Michel. The then owner Jean Leducq owned a vineyard on Elhers Lane in Napa Valley. Tom has been recognized...

Send us Fan Mail Dustin Minor and Nokesville Winery are a relatively new addition to the Norton scene in Virginia. His first full fledge vintage was 2021 when he made wine in the basement of his house after getting his winery license. Today he only produces a little over 1,000 cases of wine but from what I have tasted the quality is high and the future is bright for this new upcoming Vintner. Dust...

Send us Fan Mail Lexington Valley Vineyard is a hidden gem in the Virginia lineup of wineries. I virtually got lost the first time I went to check it out. I had to keep checking my Navigation app to be sure I was headed in the correct direction. However, once I found it, I was impressed with the wines I purchased that day back in August of 2022, especially their Marchel Foch along with their Norto...

Send us Fan Mail I always enjoy sitting down with Shep Rouse and getting his viewpoint on winegrowing in Virginia and wine in general. He has been making wine for close to 45 years. First in California in the early '80s and then in Virginia first in 1986 at the old Montdomaine winery and then founding his own winery Rockbridge in 1992. Although Shep doesn't produce a Norton every vintage...

Send us Fan Mail Burnley Vineyard was first planted in 1977 making them one of the early winegrowing pioneers during the formative years when Virginia wine was just beginning to re-emerge after a long slumber from the years of Prohibition and its repeal.  C. J. Reeder, Lee Reeder's father purchased the land in 1977 and Gabriele Rausse who had just begun to plant Barboursville Vineyard down th...

Send us Fan Mail This is a fascinating interview because Anna Want, the General Manager and daughter of the founders openly embraces the idea that Casanel has both Norton and Cynthiana vines planted in their vineyard. There is beginning to be a more robust open debate about whether the Cynthiana grape vine is Norton under a different name, or a completely different species of grape vine. I persona...

Send us Fan Mail Rob Cox had a dream of being a professional baseball player early in his life and when that didn't pan out, he found himself in the business of Golf. Not the usual way in which a person becomes a winemaker, which eventually he did. Now almost twenty years later he guides the winemaking at both Paradise Springs Virginia winery and their wine making operation in Santa Barbara,...