Organic Wine Podcast

Greg Jones is my guest for this episode. Greg is the CEO of Abacela winery in Oregon and is a world-renowned wine climatologist. For over thirty years his research has firmly linked weather and climate with grapevine growth, fruit chemistry, and wine characteristics in regions all around the globe. His work was also one of the first to tie climate change to fundamental biological phenomena in vines and the resulting influences on productivity and quality. His groundbreaking work has informed...

My guest for this episode is Mike Appolo and he tells us all about how he is growing a no-spray vineyard in New Hampshire less than an hour from Boston. Yes, I said “no spray.” You may have heard it’s impossible. You may smugly reject the possibility of success. But Mike is growing wine grapes in New England without sprays and has been for over a decade at his estate winery Appolo Vineyards. Appolo Vineyards was just this month named the New Hampshire’s First Winery in the Sustainable Craft...

My guests for this episode are Aaron and Holly Puhala, the owners of Vineyard Innovations in Ohio. Aaron & Holly met in school where they both studied chemical engineering… this chemical romance blossomed into a life where they breed new varieties of grapes that the world has never seen before. They’ve been at this for 20 years now, and have a handful of varieties to share with the world, as well as some really great ideas about how to make grape breeding a profitable venture for more...

My guest for this episode is Isabelle Legeron. Isabelle is the founder of the RAW Wine Festival, which, if you haven’t heard of it, is the premier natural wine festival on the planet. She’s also the author of the book Natural Wine: An Introduction to Organic and Biodynamic Wines Made Naturally. Isabelle’s career is dedicated to promoting the same farming-first wine culture that I want to cultivate with the Organic Wine Podcast, so she was a natural choice for the 100th episode. This episode...

My guest for this episode is Randall Grahm. If you haven’t heard of him, Randall was New California about 20 years before the wave of New California winemakers. Young winemakers now who have never heard of him are just quote unquote discovering and trying things he did in the 1990s. Alternative packaging? Randall was one of the first advocates in America for the screw cap and staged The Funeral for the Cork at Grand Central Station in NYC in 2002. This elaborate event included a buick...

For this episode I got to interview a real life super hero – The Bat Man. Dr. Dave Johnston is an Adjunct Associate Wildlife Ecologist and Bat Biologist at H. T. Harvey & Associates. Dave is a vertebrate ecologist who specializes in the foraging ecology and conservation biology of bats. He has studied bats for over 30 years and for the past 15 years he has focused on renewable energy and transportation projects in California and Hawaii. He also has ongoing research projects involving the...

My guests for this episode are Tara Gomez and Mireia Taribó of Camins 2 Dreams winery in Lompoc, California. In some partnerships one person will have the greater passion for or experience with wine, while business or marketing savvy may be the forte of the other partner. In Tara and Mireia’s case there are two partners who caught the winemaking bug early in life and have spent their entire lives, both apart and together, learning about and gaining experience in winemaking… and both...

My guest for this episode is Steven Thompson of Analemma. Analemma is a winery located in the Columbia Gorge AVA in the Columbia River Valley in Oregon. Steven views himself as a vigneron, with a holistic perspective that sees winemaking as a year round process that begins in the vineyard. Steven and the Anamlemma team have practiced biodynamic, regenerative farming since its inception and the entire farm has been certified as a biodynamic orgnaism since 2017. I think you’ll love Steven’s...

My guest for this episode is Max Paschall. Max owns Shelterwood Forest Farm and wrote the article The Lost Forest Gardens of Europe, a deeply researched piece on the polycultures that included grapes and wine and covered much of Europe for thousands of years. Max talks about why these agriculture systems were so resilient, and why they've been marginalized by modern agriculture. Topics covered include: Assisted migration of species, The spirit of trees, communication and intent, What a...

My guest for this episode is Laurel Marcus. Laurel is the Executive Director of the California Land Stewardship Institute based in Napa, California, which administers the Fish Friendly Farming and Climate Adaptation Certifications for vineyards and other farmers. Among her many responsibilities, Laurel works with farmers to conduct studies and gather data on farming practices that prevent erosion, preserve soil moisture, increase soil organic matter, and sequester carbon. Her findings...

My guest for this episode is Ryland Englehart. Ryland co-founded Kiss the Ground in 2013 and leads the organization as Executive Director, producer of the Kiss the Ground film, and host of the Kiss the Ground Podcast. As a 15-year entrepreneur, he is also the co-owner and prior Mission Fulfilment Officer of the nationally recognized plant-based restaurants, Cafe Gratitude and Gracias Madre, located here in Southern California. And so much more. I met Ryland at a vineyard in Santa Barbara...

My guest for this episode is Mark Shepard. I’m so excited to share this conversation with you because Mark has a perspective on viticulture and agriculture in general that is revolutionary… while also being incredibly common sensical. He’s as funny as he is passionate and that passion comes from wanting to share an incredibly important message not only for producing wine, but also for our survival. Mark is the author of Restoration Agriculture which is a top 10 Amazon best seller in...

This is episode is something a little different, and it’s sponsored by Centralas Wine. Centralas is my winery and the first chapter of this two chapter episode is a recording I made while driving around los angeles, as we angelenos are wont to do, so I apologize for the quality. But the content is pretty fun. The context is that I’ve stopped listing grape varieties on the labels for the wines I make and sell through Centralas. Since I made that decision, I’ve become hyper aware of how...

My guest for this episode is Paul Dolan. Paul Dolan has always been a pioneer leading the industry towards a more sustainable future. While a winemaker and then president at Fetzer, Paul proved to the California wine industry that wineries and grape growers can preserve and enhance their environment, strengthen their communities, and enrich the lives of their employees without sacrificing the bottom line. He introduced Bonterra, the first nationally distributed wine made with 100 percent...

Los Angeles was once known as the City of Vines. Vineyards stretched for thousands of acres over a rolling landscape at the foot of the towering mountains. The river wound a shady, tree-lined course through verdant alluvial plains, watered by frequent floods. French and Spanish were spoken as commonly as English, if not more so. And wine was the biggest business and export of this colonial burg, enough wine to quench the thirst of an entire nation. My guest for this episode is Stuart Byles....

Guest Interviewer Chiara Shannon (@theyogisommelier www.theyogisommelier.com) interviews the creator and producer of the Organic Wine Podcast, Adam Huss. Adam talks about what he is doing with wine and vines in South Los Angeles with his winery Crenshaw Cru and his estate urban polyculture winegarden Crenshaw Cru. Some of the things that we talk about include: how viticulture is actually a form of agroforestry, how my urban polyculture winegarden known as Crenshaw Cru embodies a vision for...

In this episode I get to talk to the co-founders and winemakers for RAS Wines - Dan Roche, Joe Appel and Emily Smith. Dan, Joe, and Emily make a dry sparkling wine from Maine wild blueberries, and we talk about some of the incredible aspects of this unique wine culture. Maine wild blueberries are one of the few fruits indigenous to and perfectly suited to the challenging terroir of Maine. Even though they occur naturally – thus the “wild” aspect – they are actively tended as a commercial...

Kelly Mulville’s life has been guided by an awe and respect for the natural world and a deep appreciation for its beauty. This led him to want to learn how to farm in a way that protected or enhanced the natural world, and made him a better listener and observer of what made ecosystems work. Through his years of farming he has attempted to answer the question of how we can turn agriculture from one of the most destructive forces on the planet into the method we can use to repair that damage...

My guests for this episode are Nicole Dooling and Michael Frey. Nicole and Michael helped transition Nicole’s parents’ mountain top vineyard in Medocino into the first ever Savory Institute Global Land To Market Verified regenerative vineyard in the world. We talk in depth about the Land to Market cerification, which is results based, rather than process based like most other certifications, and takes most of the work of certification off the farmer’s to do list. And we talk about Nicole and...

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 worker cooperative. Because of the hard work they have already put in with their co-owners,...