The rapid-fire rundown: Joe Phelps began his search for the perfect cool-climate site in the 90s. The two estate vineyards behind the vineyard-designate wines are Quarter Moon and Pastorale. Before this year's national release, the wines were only available winery direct or through the Phelps Preferred membership.

The 2024 Pastorale Chardonnay carries an oceanic signature — Forrest's notes say saline breezes, Justin says salt air, and they call it close enough. That leads to the best moment of the episode: Justin admits even winemakers struggle with wine adjectives. His advice? If something creates thought provocation and you keep wanting to drink it, that's the clear-cut sign of quality. Skip the fluffy wine words. Make it accessible for everyone — which is exactly what The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is all about.

More from the hot seat: Joseph Phelps joined the Moët Hennessy side of LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy) in 2022 — the LV side is fashion and perfume, Moët Hennessy is wine and spirits. The two natural forces shaping the Freestone microclimate: the Pacific Ocean and the Petaluma Gap, funneling marine air and fog into Sonoma County. The tiny town of Freestone sits off a quiet highway heading toward Bodega Bay. Joseph Phelps farms roughly 500 acres across nine estate vineyards. The most accessible bottle in the lineup, the 2023 Freestone Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, comes in at $75. And the 2023 Quarter Moon Pinot? For lovers of savory texture, depth, and ageability. Mic drop.

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What does success actually look like five years into building a non-alcoholic wine brand? For Anto, founder of CLINQ ZERO, it's simple: becoming the bottle people keep in the fridge for weddings, baby showers, and pizza nights — and converting soda and beer drinkers to sparkling red along the way. In this final installment, Anto talks candidly about life after two decades in the corporate world, why he genuinely enjoys talking to strangers about the brand, and what separates CLINQ ZERO's ingredient list from competitors that compensate for lost flavor with sugar. He also shares the practical details: the Sparkling Blanc is available for pre-order now at CLINQ ZERO, with delivery expected late summer, and early supporters can lock in founder pricing — 30% off, the lowest price the brand will ever offer.

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Why Pinot Noir? For Justin, it's the flavor and the challenge — a difficult grape to grow and a difficult wine to make, which makes a phenomenal vintage from Quarter Moon or Pastorale that much sweeter. He believes with every fiber of his body that Pinot Noir is one of the most food-friendly wines on the planet: it ages beautifully, but you can drink it young and still sense the quality. Having your cake and eating it too.

Justin's advice for anyone just getting into wine: starting with a price point is fine, but don't stop there. Get out of your comfort zone and be willing to spend a little more — that's how you discover the full range of quality out there. He's watched friends do exactly that with Freestone wines, and the reaction is always the same: holy cow.

Then the news — this year Freestone made its first small domestic release of the single-vineyard wines into the national market. The Pastorale Pinot Noir, Quarter Moon Pinot Noir, and Pastorale Chardonnay are now in 11 markets including New York, Chicago, and Florida (Miami, Orlando, Tampa) — roughly 500 cases each, pulled from the Phelps Preferred club allocation. Justin explains the direct-to-consumer double-edged sword: it's the most profitable route, but the greater world doesn't know you exist. Long-term growth means getting into top accounts and top restaurants — slowly and consistently.

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Did you know San Pellegrino comes out of the ground already sparkling? Anto shares that detail in this CLINQ ZERO conversation, right before walking through the brand's full product lineup: Sparkling Blanc, Sparkling Rosé, and Sparkling Red, each offered in a traditional 750ml glass bottle and a 12-ounce can. The two also dig into why cans resonate with consumers who want portion control — no recorking, no spilling, just a controlled pour, hot or cold. Anto explains his bigger vision for the sparkling red as a potential alternative to soda or sparkling water, and reflects on what's been most satisfying about building in a growing category: the curiosity from consumers, and CLINQ ZERO's mission to bring transparency to a space where not every brand is being honest about what's really in the bottle.

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Forrest asks the question wine lovers wonder in the store aisle: what's the story behind the price? Justin lays it out plainly. Freestone employs its own in-house vineyard staff of 12 to 15 people — with benefits, 401k match, retirement, vacation, and paid holidays. That's high-touch, high-detail farming, and it's part of every bottle's price. Lower-priced wines often farm vastly differently: farming for quantity, machine harvesting, contracted labor instead of in-house crews.

Location matters too. The Sonoma Coast's proximity to the ocean means protecting the fruit can take dramatically more vineyard passes than warmer inland sites — Justin ballparks 35 sprays versus maybe 10 on the Napa Valley floor. Add barrel programs like 100% French oak, and the true cost of a bottle comes into focus.

Then Forrest asks the emotional question: does it ever get old watching someone taste your wine for the first time? Never, says Justin. Memories are created over the wines his team makes — and humans have been fermenting and gathering around the table since we started walking the planet. A meal, an amazing bottle, and laughs: the communal ritual we should never lose.

And his favorite from the lineup? No hesitation: "Pinot Noir is my amour." His deserted-island wine, through and through — with a deep love of Chardonnay right behind it.

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What actually gets removed when you dealcoholize wine — and what gets left behind? In Part 3 of this CLINQ ZERO conversation, founder Anto explains how the distillation-based process specifically targets alcohol molecules, leaving natural compounds like resveratrol intact, without leaning on artificial wine flavoring to fake what's lost. He also covers the regulatory upside of going alcohol-free: no distributor required, no age-21 disclaimer, and a direct-to-consumer model that's opened the door for CLINQ ZERO to sell straight to customers in the U.S. Anto gets candid about the bigger picture too — alcohol consumption is dropping globally, and he sees non-alcoholic wine as both an opportunity for the wine industry and a chance to chip away at the stigma still attached to the category. The episode wraps with the thinking behind CLINQ ZERO's packaging: a glass bottle for celebratory, premium occasions, and a can built for tailgates, beaches, and anywhere glass isn't practical.

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Forrest asks the question on everyone's mind: is AI finding its way into the vineyard? Justin embraces technology on the business side — presentations, emails, efficiency — and sees real potential in equipment applications like smarter sorting and earlier detection in the vineyard. But when it comes to handcrafting wine, he's protective. To Justin, AI is a recipe: put in the parameters, get a result. Wine's beauty lives in vintage variation, challenging seasons, and a little chaos. Strip out the creativity and you're making formulaic, boring wines.

Then the conversation turns to Justin's minimalist, low-intervention style. His philosophy: high-detail, attentive farming delivers fruit so good the wines nearly make themselves. He picks for natural acid and alcohol balance and avoids additions when he can — not hands-off, not lazy, just letting the vintage and the site dictate quality instead of heavy-handed winemaking.

One fascinating detail: the Pinot Noir ferments naturally on native yeast, but the Chardonnay gets inoculated — because every time he's let Chardonnay go wild, the fermentation got stuck. Adapting to what the circumstances give you, in action.

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Why does a wine with no alcohol cost more to make, not less? In Part 2 of this CLINQ ZERO conversation, founder Anto walks Forrest through the real economics and technology behind the brand. The name itself carries meaning — "clink" for the universal, joyful sound of a toast, "zero" borrowed from the soda world's shorthand for "without." Anto shares how the idea landed with friends and family in Italy, where tradition runs deep and non-alcoholic wine was a hard sell, even to his own mother. He also details the process that separates CLINQ ZERO from other dealcoholized wines on the market: starting from premium wine, processing at ambient temperature with no heat damage to aroma or flavor, and avoiding the sugar and natural flavoring most competitors add back in to compensate. A touch of CO2 for the sparkle and a hint of grape juice to balance acidity — that's it. Real sparkling wine, gently dealcoholized. Not a shortcut, not a compromise.

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Justin breaks down what's actually in the glass — Pastorale Pinot Noir is fruit-forward and flashy with red cherry and strawberry notes and a long finish, while Quarter Moon, sitting closer to the ocean and the Petaluma Gap, leans Old World: spicier, darker, with bigger tannins and more structure. Thicker skins and smaller clusters mean a higher skin-to-juice ratio in the fermenter, and deeper color in the bottle. Same farming, same winemaking — the site does the talking.

On Chardonnay, Justin makes what he calls "varietally correct" Chardonnay: high-acid, fruit-driven, fermented in large-format oak so the wood supports the wine without smothering it. No butter bombs here.

Then Forrest asks the hard question: is there anything positive to take away from a decade of California wildfires? Justin is candid — nothing positive except the lessons. He recounts the 2017 Tubbs fire that shattered his sense of the industry's invincibility, and the 2020 LNU Lightning Complex fires that forced Freestone to abandon its entire harvest. Grapes breathe, smoke binds into the berry, and those burnt flavors can't be removed — so rather than compromise quality standards, they walked away from the vintage. And he throws no shade at winemakers who made a different call to keep their businesses afloat.

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She had good reason to be distracted. Sara arrives listing off everything new in her life — a new album, a new baby, a new house, a new tour, and a new shirt, the last of which turns out to be the only one she's willing to discuss at length. There's a running joke about her age that she refuses to concede, a stretch where she takes over the broadcast entirely to plug her own record, and a genuinely strange detour into reading the temperature, the humidity, and the dew point off the studio screen, at which point she asks the question every radio person has privately wondered about their own weather reports.

Forrest had interviewed her once before, a few years earlier, right around the time "Born to Fly" was arriving, and he spends this visit cheerfully collecting on that debt. Sara notices immediately. The result is two people trying to get a straight answer out of each other and failing on purpose, which is exactly what makes twenty-year-old vault tape worth keeping. This is Part 1.

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