We welcome the Prince of Penedès Pepe Raventós. Since taking over the family business in 2001, he has transformed Raventos i Blanc into one of the greatest sparkling wine houses in the world. We sample dueling Champagne-style wines made from predominantly red grapes, a livewire single vineyard offering from rare Catalan varietals and a local bottle from one of the Finger Lakes' finest. Pepe talks about understanding your territory, letting the wines speak for themselves, and rescuing his region from industrialization. ("Don't hate the players. Change the game.") We reflect on the difference between the wine market stateside and in Europe, honoring the moment of tasting, and the company we keep as the most important form of wine pairing. We close out with a poem from Joan Margarit and discuss the future of his estate.

We welcome Emmy Award-winning broadcaster and local institution Eun Yang to the studio. We enjoy dueling Albariños from the grape's birthplace in verdant northwestern Spain and closer to home among Maryland's outer-lying suburbs. Eun talks about the centrality of food to her upbringing in a Korean immigrant household, considers how her love of dining out has shaped her career as a broadcaster, and imagines an appropriate local news headline for her wine of choice. We share our love of buckwheat tea and kimchi backs, reflect on life in pandemic lockdown, and reveal what we love about living, working, eating, and drinking in the Washington area. We close out with a bit of verse from Korean-American poet Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello and discuss our hopes for the future.

We welcome the incomparable Ntsiki Biyela, the first black woman winemaker in South Africa post-apartheid. We open her luxurious Cabernet Sauvignon blend "Umsasane" alongside a local Bordeaux blend from Virginia's Linden Vineyards. We consider how the character of a place and its people conveys through wine, discuss her journey from rural KwaZulu Natal to study a beverage she didn't drink in a language she didn't speak, and develop some non-Eurocentric tasting notes and pairings. We close out with a bit of verse from South African performance poet Lebogang Mashile, and Ntsiki celebrates wine as a "place to share."

We welcome cookbook author, podcast host, and Renaissance man Mathew Ramsey to the studio for our inaugural episode, sharing Spanish vermouths from El Bandarra and Priorat Natur. We discuss the history of vermouth from the birth of wine to its contemporary revival, dish on our favorite ways to drink it, and cover Mathew's former life as a self-described "burger pervert" and co-host of the podcast "Shift Drink." We close out with a bit of verse from an ancient Greek lyric poet, and Mathew talks about his latest work as a cannabis cook and budtender.