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

Please join us in celebrating the podcast's 100th episode! For this milestone we thought it was finally time to bring on our most-requested guest, Doug Shafer.

Today, Doug talks about how his father, John Shafer, went from flying B-24 bombers in World War II to buying a vineyard in Napa Valley in late 1972. He talks about how as a 17-year-old he made the adjustment from living in Chicago to life in very rural Napa Valley, and he reveals the early steps and missteps involved in establishing Shafer Vineyards.

We bring in surprise questions and stories from Doug's brother, Brad, and his longtime partner in winemaking, Elias Fernandez, as well as a series of thoughtful listener questions.

The episode covers a 50-year-span of the Napa Valley story that Doug speaks to from lived experience, weaving it all together with insights, insider storytelling, and a sense of humor.

Don't miss an episode we've been looking forward to making for a long time!

Todd Ricard's one-of-a-kind journey to Napa Valley winemaking started in rural Ohio and took him through a stint as an Army satellite operator in Japan. He discovered wine while later stationed near Paso Robles. What started as a way to celebrate weekends quickly turned into a vision for a career.

On the Central Coast, he not only pursued a viticulture degree at Cal Poly but also got his hands deeply purple in cellars of all sizes, learning the craft of winemaking.

Today, Todd and his team are producing some of the Valley's most high-profile blends at The Prisoner Wine Company, located just a few miles south of our studio. As director of winemaking, he oversees a wide-ranging portfolio of wines including Corrections, Unshackled, and the newest label, Grail.

We had a great hour with Todd — don't miss this one!

Learn more at: The Prisoner Wine Company

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: https://www.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: http://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

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.