The Taste with Doug Shafer – a Podcast About Wine, Food, and Friends

Suzanne Deal Booth is a fairly recently name to Napa Valley in that her first released vintage was 2018 from Bella Oaks winery, a property with a rich legacy. More recently she purchased Wheeler Farms on Zinfandel Lane, just south of St. Helena. Her story, though, begins not in wine but in art restoration and preservation, a passion that has taken her to iconic sites around the world. Today she combines that love for art, history, ...

The story of MacDonald Vineyards begins with a deep, foot-dragging, don't-make-me-do-it reluctance to get into the business of grape-growing four generations ago, a historic hand-shake deal with Robert Mondavi, and accidents of history, fate, and weather. Ultimately though, it is the inspired passion and incredible work ethic of two brothers, Alex and Graeme MacDonald. As children they played in this Oakville vineyard that one day ...

James Molesworth often finds his way into a wine through anthropology, which was his major in college. As Wine Spectator's lead taster for California (Cabernet and Pinot Noir) and Bordeaux, James talks about the importance of learning the underlying culture of a region and a winery to fully understand a wine. Besides tasting wines in the traditional sense, he spends time in vineyards with producers learning the stories of a vintage...

Chris and Josh Phelps are a father-and-son team who have worked together unofficially for a long time. While Josh was a kid growing up in Napa Valley, Chris was the inaugural winemaker at Dominus before moving on to make wine at Caymus, and then Swanson and Inglenook before starting his own wine brand Ad Vivum Cellars.

When Josh got out of college in the mid-2000s he launched Taken wine brand before selling and starting again with t...

Whoever said crime doesn't pay, didn't know John Caldwell. When John bought his 54 acres (and three houses) in the Coombsville area of Napa Valley in the late 1970s, he thought he was getting into the real estate business. But when the County placed a moratorium on development, he had to figure out something else to do with his land and decided to grow grapes and make wine. What came next is one of the wildest stories in the wine i...

Doug Shafer and Chef Tom Colicchio first met in the early 1990s on board a nearly empty cruise in the Baltic Sea in what turned out to be an unforgettable few days. In this episode the two catch up and talk about Tom's new bestselling memoir, "Why I Cook," along with his early years in the New York City restaurant scene, his 22 seasons hosting the Emmy-winning Bravo TV show "Top Chef," his work in food advocacy, raising kids, and e...

Glenn Salva has been at the heart of Antinori Napa Valley since the mid-1980s when the renown wine family, the Antinoris, who'd been making wine in Tuscany for 600, decided to expand into the New World. The story as Glenn tells is filled with challenges and incredible opportunities -- including the moment when they bought their own mining equipment and dug their own wine cave. More than anything, we learn how the Antinori family's ...

Adam Lee comes from a family of devout Texas teetotalers. In college, however, Adam not only tasted his first wine, he became passionate about it. He and then-wife Diane Novy moved to California and founded Siduri, making outstanding Pinot Noirs from vineyards site that ranged from Santa Barbara to the Willamette Valley in Oregon. After selling Siduri, Adam has gone on to start several exciting new wine projects. Enjoy!

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Early on Donald Patz thought he’d pursue a medical career. After college, however, he landed a wine sales job and one thing led to another. By the 1980s Patz met James Hall in Napa and they created Patz & Hall, a winery celebrated for outstanding Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. In 2016, they sold the winery and Patz moved on to several exciting new wine projects – including his first venture into Cabernet.

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