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

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

Blake Van Treese has one of the best vantage points in the wine business. As president of Last Bottle, First Bottle, Last Bubbles, and several other online wine retail brands, he sees firsthand how consumers are discovering, purchasing, and talking about wine.

Growing up in Napa Valley, Blake's connection to wine runs deep. After first pursuing his love of music in college, he returned to Napa and discovered his path in the retail wine business. Along the way, he also became Doug's son-in-law, marking the first time we've had a family member on the podcast.

We had a great time discussing wine trends and technology, the importance of producer relationships, and how the Last Bottle and First Bottle business models are changing the way people discover and buy wine.

In another first on the podcast, Blake is offering a promo code that can be used on Last Bottle, Last Bubbles, and First Bottle. It is good for $15 off $100 or more for new customers only and expires on September 1, 2026.

The code is: TASTE15

Learn more at:

LastBottleWines.com

FirstBottleWines.com

LastBubbles.com

Invino.com

CAWineClub.com

GoldMedalWineClub.com

WineOfTheMonthClub.com

WineScout.com

The city of Napa was once better known for its car dealerships and dive bars than for top-tier dining. That changed in the late 1990s when a young chef named Greg Cole, against the advice of others, rolled the dice on launching a small restaurant called Celadon. When Celadon became a sensation, he followed it up by opening the now-legendary Cole’s Chop House.

Chef Cole’s path to helping reinvent Napa’s food scene started in a Southern California diner and included stops at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe, the restaurant at Chandon, a brewery, a stint as a cellar worker, and more.

What he started in the 1990s has become a full-blown food renaissance in Napa.

Cole is an incredible storyteller, and we had an absolutely unforgettable hour with him. Enjoy!

For more on the restaurants he founded, visit Celadon Napa and Cole's Chop House.

Nile Zacherle was once advised he needed to choose between making wine and brewing beer. Fortunately he didn't take that advice.

Instead, he takes a winemaker's approach to producing an array of phenomenal beers under the Mad Fritz brand that he manages with his wife, Whitney Fisher.

At the same time, Nile crafts gorgeous wines for David Arthur Vineyards, located in Napa's renowned Pritchard Hill area.

We had a great time learning how Nile first fell in love with wine and beer at a young age and went on to work at wineries and breweries for many years after earning his degree at U.C. Davis. These included stints at Chateau Montelena and Barnett Vineyards.

Recently, the Mad Fritz brand welcomed a new world of flavor by introducing single origin coffee.

We get into all of it in an episode that we absolutely loved recording.

For more on the beer, visit: MadFritz.com

To learn about David Arthur: DavidArthur.com

Check out Whitney Fisher's family winery: FisherVineyards.com

Where wine, community, and technology converge, you'll find the phenomenon of CellarTracker and its founder Eric LeVine.

The numbers are staggering: 1.1 million registered users have tracked 200 million wines and posted more than 12 million reviews.

Eric takes us through the story of CellarTracker's beginning with his years at Microsoft, which coincided with his growing love of wine. As his personal cellar expanded, he grew frustrated trying to manage it using a spreadsheet. Putting his coding skills to work, in March 2003 Eric created CellarTracker in a rudimentary form.

Within months he opened the website up, at no cost, to other users. And In a move that pre-dated Facebook and the coming social media boom, CellarTracker incorporated a sense of community with its shared tasting notes.

Collectors flocked to the site and by 2018 CellarTracker had racked up more than 7 million tasting notes and had tracked 100 million bottles.

Over the past 23 years the site has evolved, offering collectors greater freedom to share their wine impressions with each other and more ways to enjoy their cellar holdings. Eric lays out what's coming for the site, including exciting new features powered by AI.

Learn more: cellartracker.com

Winemaker Robert Foley knows exactly when wine won him over – it was 1969 when he got the rare chance to visit the cellars at Inglenook and taste classic wines out of casks. With this inspiration, he went on to study winemaking at UC Davis with a who's who of future winemaking stars.

His story is legendary. Straight out of Davis, he landed a job at Heitz Cellars, working with Joe Heitz. He went on to help launch Markham Vineyards, where he became one of Napa's first to craft indelible Merlots, igniting the Merlot boom. He then helped launch Pride Mountain Vineyards, where he learned the intricate vine-by-vine approach needed to make wine from high atop Spring Mountain, overlooking both Napa and Sonoma valleys.

Today Robert Foley produces wines of beautiful character and distinction from another Napa Valley mountain source – Howell Mountain. He pours decades of experience and care into his wines, whether for his own Robert Foley Vineyards or for clients such as Hourglass and Padis.

Bob is also a talented, longtime musician, performing and touring with lifelong friends in the Robert Foley Band. Check out their albums on Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Music.

For more on his story and his wines, visit robertfoleyvineyards.com.

In this classic episode, Paula Kornell takes us on an exceptional journey spanning two continents, one war, and more than 60 years of Napa Valley winemaking.

Her father, Hanns Kornell, a third-generation winemaker in Germany, managed to escape a Nazi concentration camp, make his way to America, and found a winery near Calistoga specializing in sparkling wine.

Paula was born the year after the winery launched and grew up in the Napa Valley of the ’60s and ’70s. She later worked with top wineries such as Robert Mondavi and Joseph Phelps. When we first posted this episode in 2019, she had come full circle, debuting her own sparkling wine brand — which is going stronger than ever today.

Learn more: paulakornell.com

In this classic episode, Robin Lail of Lail Vineyards takes us on an unbelievable family journey.

Her roots in Napa Valley span nearly all of winemaking history here – from her great-grand-uncle, Gustave Niebaum, establishing Inglenook in 1879, through her father, John Daniel, rebuilding the winery after Prohibition in the 1930s, to the birth and boom of Napa's current era, working with names like Robert Mondavi and Bill Harlan.

Her story is one of success and stunning setbacks, heartbreak and resilience, and of finding the courage to start over – more than once. Today, Robin's winery, Lail Vineyards, produces wines of outstanding deliciousness and distinction. You won't want to miss this captivating episode told my a master storyteller.

For more, visit: www.lailvineyards.com

Markus Bokisch has spent his life savoring the best of two worlds.

As a kid in Los Angeles, he spent his summers in a small village on Spain’s Mediterranean coast, where his family’s roots run deep. Later, after studying winemaking and viticulture at UC Davis and then working with the vineyard team at Joseph Phelps, Markus and his wife, Liz, set off on an adventure across Spain—living out of a 1967 VW bus and moving from vineyard job to vineyard job. Along the way, they immersed themselves in Spanish wine, culture, and community.

Markus wanted to bring the best of Spain to his life in the U.S.—and a big part of that was wine. After living and working throughout the United States, he discovered that the wine region of Lodi, California, most closely reflected the self-reliant culture and sense of work and family they loved in Spain.

Today, through Bokisch Vineyards, they champion Spanish varieties grown in California soils. In this episode, we learn about Markus’s favorite varieties, including Xarel·lo, Albariño, Graciano, Macabeo, and, of course, Tempranillo. For more, visit bokischvineyards.com.

Jeff Smith grew up in Napa Valley where his dad, Ned Smith, sold real estate in the 1960s. In the early '70s, Ned moved into the hotel business building Napa's first luxury hotel, Wine Country Inn, and simultaneously planted six acres of grapes. Like many kids who grow up here, a future in the wine industry wasn't Jeff's first dream – his was music. He pursued a successful career centered in the Bay Area, performing with the indie rock group, Noonday Underground.

At the age of 26 when his father passed away, Jeff took a hiatus from music to focus on helping his mom back in St. Helena. One thing they had to deal with was his dad's six-acre "hobby vineyard," which needed to be replanted if it was going to survive. His mom wanted to sell the property but Jeff – who knew next to nothing about growing grapes and making wine – proposed that he would oversee replanting to Cabernet and starting a wine label. To which his mom said, you have to choose music or wine. You can't do both. You have be to 200%.

Jeff agreed to go the wine route and eventually launched an incredibly success winery called Hourglass.

Our hour with Jeff was a fantastic time – hearing behind the scenes stories of Napa from the '60s to today including the wild inside story of launching Hourglass. For more on Jeff and his outstanding wines visit: https://www.hourglasswines.com/