They were driving into San Francisco when they heard it on the radio: Nelson Mandela was about to be released. They turned the car around and went back to South Africa.

In this episode of Read Between the Wines, Pierre Ferland returns to South Africa for the first time in nearly four years to sit down with Kathy and Gary Jordan of Jordan Wine Estate in Stellenbosch — an economist and a geologist who built one of the Cape's most celebrated estates not by following the industry but by reading the land beneath it.

Gary talks geology the way most winemakers talk grapes — test pits, 600-million-year-old granite, the precise boundary between two soil types where they put their roads. Kathy talks about economics the way most winemakers talk about harvest — supply chains, stock flow, and why running out of wine for even a week means a restaurant will never put you back on the list. Together they make wines that span four cardinal directions and 250 metres of altitude on a single estate — and somehow make it all look inevitable.

The conversation covers the Timepiece Range and its old-vine philosophy. The Chameleon conservation bursary funding PhD research into endangered Cape Dwarf chameleons. The bold climate adaptation plantings — Assyrtiko, Mencía, Cinsault — and what a 20-year quarantine period looks like when you're trying to bring an ancient Greek grape variety to South Africa. Their UK project, Mousehall Country Estate in England, where they're quietly building something on the same geology as Champagne. And the art-versus-science debate, settled definitively by two people who happen to have degrees in both.

A bonus conversation with Kathy and Gary — an additional 30 minutes of discussion available exclusively at readbetweenthewines.com.

Featuring: Jordan Wine Estate, Stellenbosch, South Africa, Assyrtiko, Chardonnay, Cabernet Franc, Mousehall Country Estate, English wine.

She was recovering from severe COVID. She needed something to keep her mind working. She made a puzzle.

That puzzle is now sold in over 40 countries.

In this episode of Read Between the Wines, Pierre Ferland sits down with Sanna Yamit Viitaoja-Malmberg, sommelier and co-founder of Water & Wines — the wine-themed puzzle company that went from a kitchen table idea to a global brand in a matter of weeks. What makes Water & Wines different isn't just the subject matter. It's the obsessive attention to detail that only a sommelier could bring to a 1,000-piece product — the kind of accuracy that makes wine professionals stop and look twice.

Yamit talks about the journey from concept to company, how sustainability became a non-negotiable part of the business model, why play is one of the most underrated tools in wine education, and what the data says about which wine region sells the most puzzles worldwide. The answer is not what you'd expect.

Featuring: Water & Wines, wine puzzles, wine education, sustainability.

Some sparkling wine producers release their wine after eighteen months. Ambriel waits six years.

In this episode of Read Between the Wines, Pierre Ferland sits down with Wendy Outhwaite, co-founder of Ambriel — an English sparkling wine producer in West Sussex built around a single, unfashionable idea: patience. Their wines don't leave the estate until they're ready. Not market-ready. Actually ready.

Wendy walks through the five-year search for the right vineyard, and why greensand — a rare, ancient soil type found beneath the South Downs — became the foundation of everything Ambriel does. She talks about hand-picking, blind blending, and a "palate, not wallet" philosophy that shapes every decision from vineyard to disgorgement. And she explains the name: a nod to angels, ambrosia, and a quip attributed to Pope Gregory the Great that has quietly informed the estate's identity ever since.

Oh, and the corks say "Huzzah!" — because why wouldn't they.

Featuring: Ambriel, West Sussex, English sparkling wine, greensand terroir, Great Britain.

Tuscany's largest organic winery isn't run by a corporation. It's run by a family in its tenth generation — and their most important business principle has no KPI attached to it.

In this episode of Read Between the Wines, Pierre Ferland sits down with Santiago Marone Cinzano of Col d'Orcia in Montalcino, Tuscany, Italy — a winery that has been farming the Val d'Orcia since the fifteenth century and has spent the last several decades turning 540 hectares into what Santiago calls a "biological oasis." No pesticides. No herbicides. Tuscany's largest certified organic estate.

Santiago talks about the specific decisions behind that transformation — not as a marketing exercise, but as a conviction that began long before organic wine was fashionable. He goes deep into the Val d'Orcia terroir, what distinguishes Brunello di Montalcino from every other expression of Sangiovese on earth, and the winemaking philosophy that underpins everything Col d'Orcia produces.

And then there is La Filosofia della Pazienza — the philosophy of patience. At Col d'Orcia, patience is not a virtue. It is a discipline. A framework for every decision from pruning to release, built on the understanding that Brunello does not respond to urgency. It never has. It never will.

A bonus conversation with Santiago — over 30 minutes of additional discussion — is available exclusively at readbetweenthewines.com.

Featuring: Col d'Orcia, Brunello di Montalcino, Montalcino, Tuscany, Italy, Sangiovese, organic viticulture.

For more information about our Podcast, visit us on the web: https://readbetweenthewines.com

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Dog Point's Sauvignon Blanc ages for fifteen years. Their Section 94 sits in bottle for five before release. Their cellar door is a tea room where the vineyard crew occasionally can't get their cup of tea. And they have never entered a wine competition. In this episode of Read Between the Wines, Pierre Ferland heads to Marlborough, New Zealand to sit down with Matt Sutherland — General Manager of Dog Point Vineyard and son of its founders, Margaret and Ivan Sutherland, who began planting vines in 1979 when almost nobody was paying attention to Marlborough. Matt is the kid who grew up on the farm, went to boarding school, decided he wanted nothing to do with grapes, studied viticulture anyway, spent years in sales and distribution across New Zealand, Australia, and London, fell in love with family wine estates in Burgundy and Barolo, and came home. The conversation covers what makes Dog Point's Sauvignon Blanc genuinely different — estate-grown on clay soils in the Southern Valleys, whole bunch pressed, four months on lees, built for fifteen years of cellaring in a category famous for drinking young. Matt explains the Section 94: one vineyard, eighteen months in eight-year-old barrels, released five years after harvest, made in the style of Chardonnay but emphatically not tasting like it. He talks about the philosophy of restraint, the decision to spend travel budget instead of competition entry fees, and why New Zealand wine's greatest strength and greatest weakness is exactly the same thing — distance. A bonus conversation with Matt — covering sustainability, screwcaps, Pinot Noir, and Dog Point's eight planted varieties — is available exclusively at readbetweenthewines.com. Featuring: Dog Point Vineyard, Marlborough, New Zealand, Sauvignon Blanc, Section 94, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, organic viticulture.

The winery is named after the limestone rocks they pulled out of the ground. The same limestone found under Burgundy and Bordeaux. The architect who designed the building now works on Canada's Parliament. And the president will debate the physics of cork versus screwcap until the cows come home.

In this episode of Read Between the Wines, Pierre Ferland sits down with Ed Madronich, owner and president of Flat Rock Cellars on the Twenty Mile Bench in Niagara, Ontario, Canada. Ed is a self described wine geek who goes down to the lab to ask the winemaker what she is doing not because he does not trust her, but because he genuinely cannot help himself.

The conversation covers the limestone terroir of the Niagara Escarpment, Flat Rock's four pillar sustainability philosophy, the Project Nature Nurture experiment on wild versus cultured yeast fermentation, the Twisted blend that beats hundred dollar wines at Decanter, and the case against cork built entirely on physics.

Quality is not a hope. It is a cost of entry.

Featuring: Flat Rock Cellars, Twenty Mile Bench, Niagara, Ontario, Canada, Riesling, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay.

Someone ruined a treasured Barolo. The culprit was not the winemaker, the vintage, or bad luck. It was a storage unit set to the wrong temperature.

In this episode of Read Between the Wines, Pierre Ferland sits down with Marshall Tilden III, head of wine storage at Wine Enthusiast, for a practical and surprisingly personal conversation about what happens to wine between the cellar and the glass.

Marshall breaks down the four enemies of wine: temperature, humidity, light, and vibration. He explains what each one actually does to a bottle over time and what the right conditions look like whether you are storing six bottles on a countertop or six hundred in a dedicated cellar. He also clears up the most persistent misconceptions about wine storage, including a few that cost people wines they can never get back.

A useful episode for anyone who has ever bought a bottle worth keeping.

Featuring: Wine Enthusiast, wine storage, wine aging, wine cellar.

Before Mark Beaman made wine, he lived in East Africa without electricity or running water, hauled 55 gallons of water by oxcart, built a rainwater catchment system that occasionally got stolen, and vagabonded from Tanzania down to South Africa after his Peace Corps commitment ended. Then he got a haircut, put on a tie, and interviewed at a winery in Washington State.

In this episode of Read Between the Wines, Pierre Ferland travels to Sonoma, California to sit down with Mark Beaman, head winemaker at Kenwood Vineyards — a winery founded in 1970 on a pre-Prohibition site that still uses a 1906 barn as its tasting room, and the only producer with exclusive rights to fruit from the Jack London Ranch.

The Jack London Ranch is worth understanding before you press play. Jack London — the writer, the sailor, the oyster pirate — bought 1,000 acres on Sonoma Mountain at the turn of the century, planted eucalyptus trees for shipbuilding timber, built a house, wrote some of the most adventurous American fiction of his era, and died at 40. The eucalyptus trees are still there. So are the vineyards. And so is the unique geology — two colliding soil types from the Sonoma Volcanics sitting on a fault line of the San Andreas — that produces Cabernet, Zinfandel, Syrah, and Merlot that Mark has had exclusive access to for every vintage.

The conversation covers the Pacific Ocean's influence on Sonoma's diverse terroir, the difference between Pinot Noir from Burgundy and Russian River, the philosophy behind Kenwood's five wine ranges, and a glyphosate disinformation campaign targeting California wine that Mark traces back to its actual source — a laboratory in Colorado making money from the panic it created.

A bonus conversation with Mark covers barrel regime, cellaring potential across the full Kenwood portfolio, and the sustainability practices behind their California Certified Sustainable Winery certification — exclusively at readbetweenthewines.com.

Featuring: Kenwood Vineyards, Sonoma Valley, California, USA, Jack London Ranch, Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel.

In 1972, Pip Goring arrived in England from South Africa, newly married, and convinced she'd found a country with wall-to-wall sunshine. She had not. But she had found a piece of land on chalk that runs in an unbroken geological band all the way from Sussex through Kent and directly into Champagne. She spent the next 34 years waiting to plant vines on it.

In this episode of Read Between the Wines, Pierre Ferland heads to West Sussex to sit down with Kirsty Goring, co-owner and Brand Director of Wiston Estate, and Marcus Rayner-Ward, their winemaker — to explore one of the most compelling stories in the English wine renaissance.

Wiston is a fully functioning farm, a restaurant called Chalk, a cellar, and a winery built around a 52-year-old wooden Champagne basket press that requires pitchforks, a full team, and sounds — Marcus says — like an African drum when it runs. When Pip heard it for the first time in 2008, she says she felt truly connected to her new homeland for the first time. The juice that came out of that press reminded their French consultant of the wines his father made in Champagne forty years ago.

The conversation covers the geology of the South Downs and why it mirrors the Côte des Blancs, the philosophy of championing acidity rather than hiding it, the 2011 Blanc de Blanc that won Best in Show at Decanter World Wine Awards out of 16,500 wines and put English sparkling wine on the international map, and a 2010 library Blanc de Blanc that Kirsty describes as walking a tightrope while an orchestra starts playing underneath — currently £130 a bottle, bought by the case, with very little left.

And Marcus's answer to what makes a great wine: it's the little things. All of them. Done by everyone. Every time.

Featuring: Wiston Estate, West Sussex, England, Great Britain, English sparkling wine, Blanc de Blanc, Chardonnay.

For Episode 61, we bring you a special conversation with Estelle Burgan from La Cave Garibaldi. Estelle and her husband Eric run a unique boutique in France that specializes in promoting and selling Italian wines, but their passion doesn't stop there. They also curate bespoke wine tours in Italy, guiding travellers through the country's hidden gems and lesser-known regions. This isn't your typical tourist experience—Estelle and Eric focus on authentic, intimate journeys that connect visitors with local winemakers, artisans, and breathtaking off-the-beaten-path destinations. In this episode, Estelle shares the story behind La Cave Garibaldi and her unexpected journey from French wine expert to an ambassador for Italian wines. She discusses the importance of building genuine relationships with winemakers and the joy of uncovering Italy's diverse viticultural landscapes, from the hills of Umbria to the coastlines of Liguria. We also explore the challenges and rewards of running a wine business as a couple and why they prioritize stories over statistics when choosing wines. If you're dreaming of a wine-fueled Italian adventure or simply curious about what makes Italian wines so captivating, this episode is tailor-made for you. Tune in and get inspired!

For more information about our Podcast, visit us on the web: https://readbetweenthewines.com Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/betweenthewinesmedia Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/read-between-the-wines