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

Davie Piña grew up in a long Napa Valley tradition of vineyards and winemaking. He and his brothers ran one of the Valley's first vineyard management companies, helping to drive the enormous changes in Napa's reputation from the 1960s to today. They eventually launched their own family winery, Piña Napa Valley.

Davie's family first arrived in Napa in 1850, the same year California became a state. One of his great-grandfathers, Lafayette Stice, was a winemaker at Inglenook in the early 1900s. His sprawling family here includes first-cousin Chuck Wagner, whose family founded and still operates Caymus Vineyards.

His stories of vineyard work include how grape growers in the scrappy '60s and '70s would game the system to eek more income out of a profession that offered very slender profit margins. He talks in this episode from personal experience of the joys of working alongside his brothers and being part of Napa's transformation from a rural farming community into a world-class wine region.

It's a great ride – enjoy!

Learn more:

Pina Vineyard Management

Pina Napa Valley

Meghan Zobeck grew up in a Colorado cow town, graduated valedictorian of her senior class, studied for a career in medicine, and after college pivoted to a high-energy job with the Denver Broncos, negotiating player contracts — not your average pathway to Napa Valley winemaking.

Her professional career took a new turn while on a getaway to California's Central Coast. Here for the first time Meghan saw vineyards and winemaking up close, which sparked a lasting interest.

In this episode we learn about her early home winemaking projects and her first steps in the industry that eventually led to a career in wine in Napa Valley, where she was recently named the director of winemaking at Opus One.

It's an amazing journey with one of Napa's brightest lights that we think you'll absolutely enjoy!

To learn more visit:

• Opus One
• Camp Wapiyapi (a place close to Meghan's heart)

It's hard to believe that we recently lost Tom Rinaldi. He had a big impact on Napa wine and beyond that was a great friend and a fantastic human being.

Tom grew up in San Francisco, where he experienced the Summer of Love —think Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead. He tasted wine in Napa Valley on motorcycle trips here starting when he was 16.

Later, he signed up for the Navy before entering UC Davis where he studied winemaking — and the rest is history. He essentially invented Napa Valley Merlot as we know it today.

He was winemaker for Round Hill, Duckhorn, Provenance, Pellet Estate, and others. In this episode we recorded in August of 2020, during those early months of Covid, his sense of adventure was intact and he looked forward to many more vintages to come. We'll miss him.

Long before Joe Czerwinski reviewed Napa Valley wines for Robert Parker Wine Advocate, he spent two hours a day reading about wine, visiting local wine shops, and making decades-long friendships on first-generation wine forums in the early 2000s.

The journey to his current position took him through archaeology, a wine retail job in Manhattan, and a long career writing and editing medical and science textbooks before he landed his first wine writing and reviewing gig at Wine Enthusiast.

In this episode Joe talks about how he approaches tasting thousands of wines per year while balancing his other loves: family, hockey, fly fishing, and football.

For more, visit: Robert Parker Wine Advocate

Third-generation vintner Violet Grgich tells an incredible family wine story that spans a century and includes a world war, daring escapes, and a years-long journey to Napa Valley.

In this classic episode first posted in 2022, Violet tells how her grandfather was a winemaker in their small town in Croatia, a passion picked up by her father, Mike Grgich. Mike escaped threats in communist Croatia and made his way to Napa where he helped put the region on the world stage, producing the Chateau Montelena Chardonnay that won the famed Judgement of Paris.

He went on to start Grgich-Hills Estate, where Violet essentially grew up and where today she is president. Enjoy!

For more visit: Grgich.com

In 1972 Bo Barrett was a surfer in Southern California when his father bought a historic winery in Napa Valley called Chateau Montelena.

After finishing college Bo went from beach life to cellar life, working full-time at the winery, located near Calistoga. In this classic episode (posted originally in Sept 2019) he talks about what he’s learned about winemaking, vineyards, economic cycles, parenthood, and how movies, such as Bottle Shock, are made.

Today Bo is CEO of one of the most venerated wineries in the U.S. Enjoy!

For more visit: montelena.com

Andy Hoxsey has Napa Valley in his DNA.

His great-grandfather bought the family's first Napa Valley vineyard in 1903 with a $10 gold coin. His grandfather helped usher in the 1968 Ag Preserve, which has protected the Valley from development.

Andy created the modern version of custom crush at Napa Wine Company and established Ghost Block Wine Estates with vines planted in the footprint of George Yount's 1839 vineyard that was Napa's first vineyard. His children are, today, continuing to define what it means to produce wine here.

This episode is a true celebration of Napa Valley. It's a look at how the generations of one family remain in conversation with each other and how the past shapes the present and plants the seeds for the future.

We hope you enjoy this special episode as much as much as we enjoyed spending time with Andy.

To learn more, visit:

Ghost Block Wine Estates

Napa Wine Company

Had you met Karen Cakebread in the 1980s, when she worked in an accounting role at Hewlett-Packard, you might be forgiven for not predicting she'd go on to have a long career in Napa Valley wine. But within a few years, she married Steve Cakebread and began representing Cakebread Cellars in markets across Asia.

Back in Napa Valley, she worked in a variety of roles at Cakebread, including tasks in the cellar and vineyard, while also focusing on international marketing and culinary programs.

In the late 1990s, Karen helped organize a women-led philanthropic foundation to raise funds for breast cancer research. The group supported the cause by taking on challenges together, including summiting Mount Kilimanjaro.

In 2008, following her instincts, Karen moved on from Cakebread to launch Ziata, her own Napa Valley wine brand, enlisting the help of winemaker (and former podcast guest) Nile Zacherle. When Nile moved on to David Arthur Vineyards, Karen received a strong recommendation for a new winemaker from her friend Heidi Barrett.

Today, Ziata is a partnership between Karen and her friends at Trinchero Family Estates. She also continues to support the vitality of the wine industry as president of the Napa Valley Grapegrowers.

For more visit:

• Ziata
• Napa Valley Grapegrowers
• "Grown in Napa Valley" - the Grapegrowers podcast

In this episode, we welcome our longtime friend David Ilsley, whose family has been part of Napa Valley's grape-growing and winemaking community for more than 70 years.

David's grandfather purchased the family's first vineyard in 1954. Since then they have expanded their acreage and moved into vineyard management and winemaking along the way.

David grew up in the heart of Napa Valley and attended local schools where he earned a reputation as a top football player. He went on to play at the University of Washington during one of the program's greatest eras, eventually competing in three Rose Bowls.

When he returned to Napa, David followed two previous generations of the Ilsley family into vineyard work and in 1998 became director of vineyard operations at Shafer Vineyards, a position he's held ever since.

We had a great time catching up with David and learning how vineyard work has evolved over his lifetime, becoming both more of an art and a science, and ultimately helping to capture Napa Valley's poetry in a bottle.

To learn more, visit Ilsley Vineyards and Shafer Vineyards.

Enjoy!

Cuong Pham has one of the most remarkable stories we've ever heard on the podcast. He escaped Vietnam in 1979 and lived in a refugee camp in Malaysia before making it to the U.S. Here he became an engineer at Apple in its early days where he built a long, successful career.

In the early 2000s, with a longing for the flavors of his mother's cooking, he began the work of creating Red Boat Fish Sauce company, which has become a global phenomenon.

Cuong's most recent adventure began when he and his wife, Ann, purchased a hillside property on Soda Canyon Road in Napa Valley. With his new vineyard established, Cuong has launched a winery called Doi Da, which is Vietnamese for "Rocky Hill." We learned about the wines both from him and his highly regarded winemaker Nova Cadamatre.

We also learned a host of surprising similarities between making fish sauce and producing wine, involving terroir, harvest, fermentation, aging, and more.

We were riveted by this one.

Learn more at:

redboatfishsauce.com

doidawine.com