Postcards in a Glass

The summer of 2026 provided a fortuitous bit of serendipity, the highly regarded Champagne house of Billecart-Salmon combined two events into one grand celebration: the company's 200th harvest in 2018 with the 250th anniversary of the United States Declaration of Independence in 2026. Despite these dates being eight years apart, because the Billecart Vintage 2018 needed eight years to mature befor...

My guest this episode is Philippe Rolet, a winemaker who began his career in Chablis but who for more than 30 years has been one of the most influential winemakers in South America. His is General Manager of Los Vascos in Chile and Bodegas CARO in Mendoza's Uco Valley. The story began in the mid-1980s, when French company Domaines de Baron de Rothschild Lafite (better known simply as DBR) decided...

Bordeaux is France’s largest fine wine producing region and produces one of the most collectible categories of wine in the world. Located in Southwest France and only a short distance from the Atlantic Coast, Bordeaux has a classic maritime climate with rainfall coming anytime during the year. It is the unpredictability of the weather, and the impact of that weather on ripening grapes, that has tr...

Winemaker Julien Fayard trained in the South of France and Bordeaux before relocating to Northern California in the early 2000s when he worked as an intern at Quintessa. After working with acclaimed viticulturalist and winemaker Philippe Melka, he moved to the US fulltime in 2006, working as Melka's director of winemaking for eight years before setting out on his own. He consulted for many high-en...

Barolo is the most storied spot for wine lovers in the Northwest Italian province of Piemonte. Here, where Isidoro Vajra’s ancestors had been growing grapes since the 1880s, the family built a winery in the early 1970s rooted in tradition but also in innovation. Vajra was the first organically certified winery in the region, they have pioneered the renaissance or, as Isidoro says in Italian, the R...

Winemaker Weston Eidson of Westborn Wines has created wines that have received extraordinary praise from top wine writers like Jancis Robinson and Jeb Dunnock. They have been struck by the extraordinary quality of Westborn's portfolio of sparkling wines. Made using the traditional method, the same process as used in Champagne and Franciacorta, Westborn's wines are uncommonly refined and elegant. T...

Nearly 500 years before sauvignon blanc was planted in Marlborough, New Zealand, Pierre-Etienne Mellot was tending his vines rooted in the stony soils of Sancerre. These vineyards tended by the Mellot family have been producing generation after generation of exceptional wine. By the end of the 17th century, César Mellot was advising King Louis XIV on wine and now, 513 years after the family began...

Portugal's Douro Valley is the oldest geographically designated wine region in the world - it's boundaries were formally set in the mid-1700s and for more than two centuries the international image of the region was based on sweet, fortified wine. Classic tawny and ruby ports still play an important part in the Douro's wine production but since the early 1990s dry red and white wines have also pla...

Chile is an amazing country for wine lovers. It has a vine growing area nearly 1000 kilometers in length with three distinct zones from West to East - a cool Coastal Region on the Pacific, a warm Central Valley and in the east of the country, the foothills of the Andes Mountains. Altitude can give respite from the Central Valley's heat, so there is nearly every climate possible somewhere in this f...

Widely referred to as "The Vine Whisperer," Greg La Follette is a California legend, a grape grower and wine maker who has worked with dozens of wineries, made hundreds wines and, for nearly six decades, has been an essentail part of the engine driving the maturation of the California and American wine industries. A one-time seminarian, medical researcher and plant biologist, he first made his mar...

In this era of climate change, many wine growers are cultivating vines in areas once thought to cool for grapes. One of these pioneers is Adrien Pélissié, who has resurrected the vineyards originally planted by Louis XIV on the sprawling grounds of his palace at Versailles. On a similar latitude as Champagne, Versailles, in suburban Paris, is an unlikely but stunning venue for growing grapes and t...

The Coravin has revolutionized wine for many folks. Greg Lambrecht, a physicist and inventor of medical devices, used his expertise – "I'm very good with needles," he says – to create a device that has revolutionized wine service and wine sampling. Students of wine, sellers of wine and all lovers of wine have been impacted by the Coravin system that allows us to sample multiple bottles without hav...

Winemaker Paul Hobbs has seen, and done, it all in the world of wine. He grew up on a farm in upstate New York, considered a career and medicine and, thanks to a few unplanned detours, ended up making wine in California for Robert Mondavi. He was on the team that created Opus One, the first French-American joint wine project, then became head winemaker at Sonoma’s influential Simi Winery. He went...

Few wines have as strong a sense of place as Champagne, so it's a treat to delve into what makes a great Champagne with the Chef des Caves (chief winemaker) of Champagne Pommery, Clément Pierlot. Clément joins host Lyn Farmer to chat about all things Champagne. We explore Pommery's 190 year history, a wine he is making to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Madame Pommery's introduction of the firs...

The legendary Jean-Guillaume Prats, once owner of Bordeaux's Château Cos d'Estournel, has worked in every facet of the wine industry, from creating Moët-Hennessy's wine portfolio in China (and overseeing LVMH's properties in eight other countries) to managing Château Lafite. Today he is managing partner in a dazzling enterprise in Provence, Château d'Estoublan, producers of Roseblood, a new and br...

In this second episode of Postcards in a Glass, wine educator and journalist Lyn Farmer shares a postcard of France’s Languedoc region with winemaker and wine philosopher Gérard Bertrand. Owner of 17 chateaux and wine estates in Southwestern France and one of the world’s leading proponents of biodynamic agriculture, Bertrand shares stories of his time as a top level rugby player on the French nati...

Our first Postcard in a Glass is a beautiful picture of Russian River Valley, home to some of California's best Pinot Noir (and Chardonnay too!). In the inaugural episode of the program, educator and journalist Lyn Farmer shares thoughts on cool climate wines and chats with Heidi von der Mehden, winemaker at Merry Edwards Winery & Vineyards in Sonoma's Russian River Valley. Heidi grew up in So...

In Postcards in a Glass, James Beard Award-winning wine and food journalist and WSET wine educator Lyn Farmer shares his favorite thing about wine: every good wine takes you somewhere, it shares with you something of the region it hails from and of the people who raised it. This is the best kind of armchair traveling, an unpretentious look at the joyful pursuit of wine, how it pairs with food, how...