The Wine Makers on Radio Misfits

Some wineries make great wine. At Bedrock Wine Co., they also make great winemakers.

This week we sit down with the next class out of Bedrock U, Allison Badar and Casey Barton, two of the key players behind Bedrock, who somehow found time between harvests and tending ancient vineyards to build brands of their own. They both took non-linear paths to the wine business, but based on their own wines and their work at Bedrock, they’re clearly here to stay.

Allison’s Intertidal Wines are beautifully focused: Carignan from the legendary Evangelho Vineyard, one of California’s most iconic old-vine sites, and Riesling from the remarkably rare old vines of La Jolla del Norte Vineyard in St. Helena. Allison takes us on her journey from professional dancer to raising her pet snail on the backroads of California.

Casey’s path to wine also took some twists and turns, from deep-diving into ampelography instead of studying for her college finals and obsessing over wine maps of the world on oil company time, to pounding the pavement with a distributor and ultimately finding herself tending some of California’s most historic vineyards. Fittingly, Helia Wine Company digs old-vine Zinfandel. She’s farming Sonoma’s historic Puccini Vineyard, scythe and all, and putting her own stamp on California’s legacy.

So crack open your textbooks and a bottle from some old vines, because class is in session and the next generation of Bedrock U has arrived. [Ep 433]

Keith Beavers is a busy man. He’s a podcaster, wine educator, and tasting director for VinePair, one of the most widely read drinks publications in the world. He also hosts VinePair’s Wine 101 podcast, making the unnecessarily intimidating world of wine a little more approachable. Since Keith was last on the show, he’s been crisscrossing the country, exploring the ever-evolving American wine scene and releasing the first six episodes of The Great American Wine Tour, visiting a half-dozen iconic and emerging wineries along the way.

We pull the corks on a few old bottles from Sonoma Valley and the Moon Mountain District, dive into what makes these wines so special, and generally expound on the virtues of California wine with a little age on it. The episode also features a cameo from Phil himself, because there was no way we were going to pilfer bottles from his stash without him showing up to drink them and tell us a thing or two.

So sit back, pop a bottle of something American, preferably with a few years on it, and give this one a listen. It’s a fun one! [Ep 432]

Barbara Gorder, Managing Partner and Keynote Chair of the Direct-to-Consumer Wine Symposium, joins The Wine Makers to talk about the event’s 20th anniversary celebration, happening January 19–21, 2027, at the Hyatt Regency Monterey in California. This year’s theme, “The Masterclass,” brings together winery owners, marketers, and industry professionals for 3 days of fresh ideas, practical advice, and conversations about the future of direct-to-consumer wine sales. Featured speakers include sommelier and Maison Noir Wines founder André Mack, Jermaine Stone of The Wine and Hip-Hop Show, and award-winning advertising creative director Vinny Warren.

Barbara gives us a preview of what’s planned, including sessions on AI, e-commerce, tasting room sales, hospitality, and customer retention, along with hands-on workshops and plenty of opportunities to connect with others in the wine business. There’s even a cocktail party at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and some golf at Del Monte. The symposium also serves as the primary fundraiser for Free the Grapes!, the nonprofit working to expand legal direct-to-consumer wine shipping across the country. After 20 years, there’s still plenty to talk about when it comes to getting great wine directly into the hands of consumers. [Ep 431]

Registration: https://dtcwinesymposium.regfox.com

S.O.R.B.E.T. is back! The Sonoma Organic Regenerative Educational Tasting returns to Fort Mason November 8th, 2026.

We sat down with old friends Katie Bundschu Tynan and Morgan Twain Peterson, who together conjured SORBET with our own Sam Coturri when some shit-talking messages about greenwashing vineyard “sustainability” got out of hand and turned into a full-fledged tasting event.

Now they’re bringing it all back to where it started for one of the most unique and forward-thinking tastings we’ve ever seen. Expect more than 30 wineries and vineyards, hundreds of wines representing dozens of varieties, and every winemaking style you can imagine. What brings them all together? They’re all from Sonoma Valley, and they’re all farmed organically, regeneratively or biodynamically.

SORBETWINE.org

This week we sat down with Robyn Sebastiani from SVVGA, Tim Zahner from the Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau and Mark Bodenhammer from the Chamber of Commerce to lay out the upcoming Vintage Festival.

The Valley of the Moon Vintage Festival is California’s oldest wine festival, with roots dating back to 1897 in Sonoma, the birthplace of California winemaking.

The festival began when local playwright and Sonoma Union High School principal Ben Weed staged a theatrical pageant called The Vintage Festival at the Gundlach family’s Rhinefarm in 1897. The play featured Bacchus, the Greek god of wine, resolving local problems in a festive, Bacchanalian celebration. The 1897 event was deemed “a great success” by the local press. In 1898, Weed returned with another Bacchus-themed drama, set in a natural amphitheater, where Bacchus and his followers helped a young man win a romantic contest.

For decades, Sonoma residents celebrated the grape harvest with the Vintage Festival, even during Prohibition (1920–1933), when alcohol was banned. According to a 1927 newspaper account, the festival continued with “dancing, games and feasting” using grape juice.

The Great Depression and World War II caused the festival to lapse for several years. The festival was revived in 1947 with a full-scale community celebration: costumed participants, a parade of horse-drawn wagons, and live music from Mexican bands. This marked the start of the modern tradition, organized by local residents, and supported by philanthropic groups.

Today, the Valley of the Moon Vintage Festival is held each September in the historic Sonoma Plaza—the largest town square in California and the site of the 1846 Bear Flag Revolt. It blends a free daytime street festival with wine tastings, artisan markets, live music, the sausage toss, and the signature Grape Stomp competition, alongside ticketed harvest dinners and the Grand Tasting at the Sonoma Barracks.

The festival is both a celebration of Sonoma’s winemaking heritage and a living link to its agricultural and community traditions, drawing generations of Californians to honor the region’s “grape bounty, community spirit, and rich history.” {ep 429]

We hope you can come join in the festivities.

www.sonomavalleywine.com

This week, Jan Krupp from Krupp Brothers Winery joins the podcast to talk about his new book, Forging Eden, out Oct. 27. The book offers a front-row seat to the evolution of Napa Valley over the past 4 decades and Jan’s thoughts on where the region, and the wine industry as a whole, are headed next. It also tells the remarkable story of how he walked away from a successful medical career to chase an “impossible” dream: turning 750 acres of volcanic rock and barren mountainside into Stagecoach Vineyard.

Experts told him the land would never produce world-class grapes. They were wrong. Stagecoach became one of Napa’s most influential vineyards, supplying fruit to Caymus, Duckhorn, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, Spottswoode, Pahlmeyer, Hall, and many others, while Jan and his brother also built Krupp Brothers Winery. Forging Eden is the story of the enormous risks, crazy engineering challenges, and sheer persistence it took to build a vineyard that plenty of people believed could never survive. [Ep 428]

kruppbrothers.com

This week, we’re joined by “Rainbow Valentine” and her father, “Walter Lemur,” of the wildly popular podcast Disorganized Crime: Smuggler’s Daughter. Over the span of 10 episodes, Rainbow’s podcast tells the story of growing up in the drug-smuggling hippie counterculture of 1970s and ’80s Marin County.

Walter was a particularly successful smuggler, and like many of his counterparts, he needed ways to launder all those ill-gotten gains. Some people bought vintage cars, art and antique jewelry, or made cash deals that skirted tax and banking laws. Walter did some of that, but early in his smuggling career he discovered a much more enjoyable way to invest his cash: fine wine.

Once he connected all the dots, we invited Thesaly and her dad to come on the show and tell some of his stories of wine “collecting.” We get into how “Walter” got into the business in the first place, some of the many dangers and complications along the way, and plenty of other meandering rambles. Most importantly, we dig into the wines he was investing in and what the world of fine wine was like in that heady era.

“Rainbow” and “Walter” also brought a surprising treat: the last of six magnums Walter bought of 1952 Krug Champagne, supposedly from Rémi Krug’s personal cellar.

The wine, like the stories, defied all logic and took us on a journey we could not possibly have predicted.

Listen to Disorganized Crime and other great Rainbow Valentine podcasts here -> https://rainbowvalentine.com/ (we highly recommend Psychadelic Women)

Listen to the specific episode about wine buying and other cash cleaning tactics here -> https://bit.ly/4crw8HU

Follow Rainbow/Thesaly on Instagram-

This week we talked about nothing… And everything. Harvest is upon us, so we are a bit tired, and punchy, which is evident in our dialogue. One of our favorite wine club members and his wife joined the chaos.

RIP Dolly Parton & Tim Curry

Follow @trickingoffainteasy

thewinemakerspodcast.com

Monica Riebli has spent her career working in fundraising for nonprofits and through the years has popped a lot of corks of Champagne celebrating the success of those nonprofits. Monica believes that sparkling wine should be thought of as an everyday beverage, not just for special occasions. So she decided to do something about that by starting a Champagne Club. It might sound like a good excuse to travel to France and meet some of the 15,000 growers/producers, and find some of those that have the same passion and excitement that she has for Champagne and bring those wines to the states. For the launch of Champagne Cowgirl, Monica brought two producers to meet some of her members and we are lucky enough to have them on the podcast this week. [Ep 425]

Clara Lete – Champagne A.Lété

Tom Lempereur Champagne Harlin Père et Fils

champagnecowgirl.com

Blair Guthrie showed up to an idyllic fundraiser dinner in the middle of a historic vineyard, pulled out a glass sake jar of white wine and said in his disarming Kiwi twang, “Bra, you gotta try this!”

This episode was born out of Blair, friend of the pod, bringing a couple of four-packs of Bronco 1973 California White Wine to the SORBET dinner at Rossi Ranch. Questions abounded. What’s the blend? Where did the fruit come from? Wait, I thought Blair was an El Camino guy, not a Bronco guy? How come he didn’t bring more?

Blair and Bronco Wine Co. CEO Dom Engels sat down with the crew and brought more Bronco 1973 (thank God), along with a bunch of other projects Blair is working on. We dig into the storied history of Bronco Wine Co. and the Franzia family. Record scratch: Yes, that Franzia family, the original owners of the ubiquitous boxed wine brand and purveyors of Charles Shaw.

But there were some real questions to answer. How did Blair find himself working with Bronco? What does a guy like Dom, with a background in beer and food, know about winemaking? And how are these seemingly disparate parts actually a strength?

We answer those questions and more. More importantly, we explore what happens when you combine the winemaking ethos Blair brings to Guthrie Family Wines and Stewart Cellars, Dom’s perspective from outside the wine industry, and Bronco’s production power. Could this unlikely combination actually help drive some of the changes the wine industry desperately needs?

So fire up the El Camino and burn out into episode 424 of The Wine Makers Podcast. [Ep 424]