The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast
The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast provides quick wine education for busy enthusiasts. Host Forrest Kelly interviews sommeliers, winemakers, chefs, and wine experts, sharing practical tips, pairing advice, tasting notes, and insider secrets from Napa Valley to Bordeaux. It was voted one of the best wine, food, and travel podcasts.
Episodes
Can You Ace the CLINQ ZERO Pop Quiz? Find Out Now!
WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:- The inspiration behind the name CLINQ ZERO- Anto's previous corporate experience- How CLINQ ZERO differs from traditional wines- The business model of non-alcoholic wine- Future plans for CLINQ ZERO varietiesTIMESTAMPS:[00:00] Welcome and Introduction[00:06] Overview of CLINQ ZERO and Anto's Background[00:30] Round 1: The Making of CLINQ ZERO Begins[04:00] Round 2: The Business
The MBA Means Almost Nothing to Her. Here's What Does Pt. 3
India, twenty-some years ago: the site manager who addressed her male employee instead of her
Aggressive versus assertive — and the word that gets used on women
Guilt aimed at driven mothers; Canada's six-month, now one-year, maternity leave
Working the day she gave birth to her second child; back at the desk after two weeks
"Well, ask a man"
Being the only woman in the room, routinely
Forrest on
You Missed the Mark on the Wine Industry — Jeanine vs. Hydro Flask Pt. 3
This part is where the numbers come out. Jeanine wanted twelve to fifteen hours of chill, driven by a specific need: she and her husband keep a second home in Albuquerque, the drive runs through desert heat, and she favors black vehicles, which is one more thing working against the wine in the back. What the finished product actually delivers exceeded her target — the twelve-pack holds for twenty-
Graduated High School at 16, Bought a House at 19 - Victoria Pt. 2
The Canadian tell — "out and about"
Growing up in Calgary; talked into the University of Calgary at sixteen despite offers elsewhere
Scholarship in hand, room and board free, and moving out anyway that first semester
Relocated to Toronto straight out of university, later to the US
One, two, sometimes three jobs at a time through school: banking, a doctor's office, acting and commercial work
Four o
They're About the Beers and the Bros — Why Wine Coolers Don't Work Pt. 2
Every product story has a stretch in the middle that nobody puts in the marketing copy, and this is Jeanine Lum's. Her first project manager had never had a drink in his life, which made explaining the value of what she was trying to protect a losing battle from the start. He took her concept, produced designs that failed, then redesigned and remolded without consulting her — and charged her for a
Adopted at 4, Unstoppable by 14 - Victoria Pt. 1
Getting the name right, first thing — P-E-L-L-E-T-I-E-R
Only child, gifted kid, self-described loner: the bike as an instrument of exploration
Streetlights as the only curfew, and what kids lose without that
People-watching from a bicycle seat, and inventing stories about strangers — a habit that never left her
First job at eleven: booking appointments, running cash, sweeping floors, launderin
Wine Mule Replacement: Jeanine Lum's Journey to Building 3rd Bottle Pt. 1
Jeanine Lum never set out to become an inventor. A W2 employee with no manufacturing background, she stumbled into her business idea the hard way, through a series of wine mishaps that most collectors will wince at. A bottle left in a car in Paso Robles pushed its own cork out from heat. A year later, a cardboard box holding roughly $1,400 worth of wine tipped over on a winding road trip. Those tw
Applied for a "Warm Body" Job 1995. Now He Runs a World-Class Winery Pt. 1-9
Justin Ennis, Senior Director of Winemaking for Joseph Phelps Vineyards in Sonoma County, responsible for the Sonoma Coast wines under the Freestone brand — a role he's held for 20 years. Justin shares how he grew up surrounded by vineyards, with a wine-loving grandfather on one side and a family vineyard in Healdsburg's Russian River on the other, yet never considered wine a career until his step
The Engineer Who Built CLINQ ZERO - Inside the Wine Industry Pt. 1-5
From a family bakery in Sicily to founding a non-alcoholic wine brand in Dallas, Anto's path to CLINQ ZERO runs through aerospace engineering, Fiat, agriculture, Tetra Pak, and five years selling winery equipment across North America. In this full conversation with Forrest, Anto shares the story behind the CLINQ ZERO name, the mixed reaction from friends and family back in Italy where wine traditi
Winemaker on the Hot Seat: 10 Rapid-Fire Questions, Zero Hesitation Pt. 9
The rapid-fire rundown: Joe Phelps began his search for the perfect cool-climate site in the 90s. The two estate vineyards behind the vineyard-designate wines are Quarter Moon and Pastorale. Before this year's national release, the wines were only available winery direct or through the Phelps Preferred membership.
The 2024 Pastorale Chardonnay carries an oceanic signature — Forrest's notes say sal
The Brand That Wants to Replace Your Soda- CLINQ ZERO Pt. 5
What does success actually look like five years into building a non-alcoholic wine brand? For Anto, founder of CLINQ ZERO, it's simple: becoming the bottle people keep in the fridge for weddings, baby showers, and pizza nights — and converting soda and beer drinkers to sparkling red along the way. In this final installment, Anto talks candidly about life after two decades in the corporate world, w
Wine That Goes With Everything (According to the Man Who Makes It) Pt. 8
Why Pinot Noir? For Justin, it's the flavor and the challenge — a difficult grape to grow and a difficult wine to make, which makes a phenomenal vintage from Quarter Moon or Pastorale that much sweeter. He believes with every fiber of his body that Pinot Noir is one of the most food-friendly wines on the planet: it ages beautifully, but you can drink it young and still sense the quality. Having yo
The Three Products Launching Under CLINQ ZERO Pt. 4
Did you know San Pellegrino comes out of the ground already sparkling? Anto shares that detail in this CLINQ ZERO conversation, right before walking through the brand's full product lineup: Sparkling Blanc, Sparkling Rosé, and Sparkling Red, each offered in a traditional 750ml glass bottle and a 12-ounce can. The two also dig into why cans resonate with consumers who want portion control — no reco
The Real Price of Wine: 401ks, Living Wages, 35 Sprays a Season Pt. 7
Forrest asks the question wine lovers wonder in the store aisle: what's the story behind the price? Justin lays it out plainly. Freestone employs its own in-house vineyard staff of 12 to 15 people — with benefits, 401k match, retirement, vacation, and paid holidays. That's high-touch, high-detail farming, and it's part of every bottle's price. Lower-priced wines often farm vastly differently: farm
The Reason CLINQ ZERO Comes in a Can AND a Bottle Pt. 3
What actually gets removed when you dealcoholize wine — and what gets left behind? In Part 3 of this CLINQ ZERO conversation, founder Anto explains how the distillation-based process specifically targets alcohol molecules, leaving natural compounds like resveratrol intact, without leaning on artificial wine flavoring to fake what's lost. He also covers the regulatory upside of going alcohol-free:
Why He Lets Pinot Ferment Wild but Never Chardonnay Pt. 6
Forrest asks the question on everyone's mind: is AI finding its way into the vineyard? Justin embraces technology on the business side — presentations, emails, efficiency — and sees real potential in equipment applications like smarter sorting and earlier detection in the vineyard. But when it comes to handcrafting wine, he's protective. To Justin, AI is a recipe: put in the parameters, get a resu
The Process Behind CLINQ ZERO Will Surprise You Pt. 2
Why does a wine with no alcohol cost more to make, not less? In Part 2 of this CLINQ ZERO conversation, founder Anto walks Forrest through the real economics and technology behind the brand. The name itself carries meaning — "clink" for the universal, joyful sound of a toast, "zero" borrowed from the soda world's shorthand for "without." Anto shares how the idea landed with friends and family in I
2 Vineyards, 1 Winemaker — Why the Wines Taste Nothing Alike Pt. 5
Justin breaks down what's actually in the glass — Pastorale Pinot Noir is fruit-forward and flashy with red cherry and strawberry notes and a long finish, while Quarter Moon, sitting closer to the ocean and the Petaluma Gap, leans Old World: spicier, darker, with bigger tannins and more structure. Thicker skins and smaller clusters mean a higher skin-to-juice ratio in the fermenter, and deeper col
Sicily to Dallas: CLINQ ZERO Saw the Gap in the Wine Industry Pt. 1
Most people who launch a non-alcoholic wine brand come at it from the wellness world, the beverage startup world, or the "I gave up drinking and couldn't find anything good" world. Anto Li Brizzi came at it from none of those places.
He came at it from the winery floor. As head of North America for an Italian capital equipment company, Anto spent years selling the machinery that wineries use to ma
Why Joseph Phelps Expanded to the Sonoma Coast — Freestone Vineyards w/ Justin Ennis Pt. 4
Justin Ennis explains that you can't talk about Napa Valley's red table wine history without talking about Joe Phelps, who founded Joseph Phelps Vineyards in 1973 after building a national construction company, Hensel Phelps, with his father's business out of Greeley, Colorado. Phelps released the first vintage of Insignia in 1974, Napa's first Bordeaux-style blend, and was also among the first to
Maryse Wrote the Book on Wine Smart — Now Take the Quiz
Rusty Cellars is back behind the quiz desk, and this time the subject is the one guest who literally wrote the book on wine talk. Maryse Chevriere — certified sommelier, illustrator, and James Beard Award winner for the gloriously funny @FreshCutGardenHose — gets the full Pop the Quiz treatment as Rusty turns her interview series into two rounds of trivia and translation.
Round one tests how close
32 Harvests, Here's the Real Path - Justin Ennis Pt. 3
Justin Ennis explains that his path into winemaking didn't run through a four-year degree program, but through 32 harvests of hands-on, ground-up learning that started at age 19 with the least glamorous jobs in the building: cleaning tanks, floors, drains, and barrels. From there, progression came step by step, learning to run the crush pad, organize the barrel room, and operate equipment like pum
Premium Blend Is Giving Away Product — For the Best Possible Reason
Henry Santos of Premium Blend joins Forrest to talk about Raise a Glass for Colombia, the company's earthquake relief campaign. Premium Blend has deep roots in the Colombian community, and just two months before the earthquake they launched Brisa Ardiente, a wine-based Colombian aguardiente created with the community's support. Now they're giving back in a big way. Henry explains that the campaign
From the Vault: Keith Urban, Golden Road Era Pt. 3 — The Finale
Then things get playful: Keith cheerfully ad-libs an Outback Steakhouse tagline ("Crikey, I just threw that one in myself"), before a rapid-fire lightning round turns up Citizen Kane, a love of tattoos, chocolate over vanilla, and his dad as his athletic hero. He signs off by picking Who Wouldn't Wanna Be Me — the same song that opens his show every night — ahead of the Farmhand benefit at the Hou
Why Every Winemaker Needs To Travel First - Justin Ennis Pt. 2
Justin Ennis dives into the long tradition of international exchange programs in winemaking, where interns and foreign workers move between wineries to share techniques, equipment innovations, and processes that have developed differently across regions. He recalls starting in the cellar at eighteen years old, working alongside people from completely different countries, languages, and backgrounds
Wine-Based Cocktails, a Cuban Escape — Premium Blend Pt. 1-5
What does it take to build a 35-year-old spirits brand from scratch when nobody believes in your product, you have no industry experience, and a liquor license costs seven figures in your market? Ask Gino Santos.
Premium Blend Cocktails for one of the most wide-ranging, personal, and genuinely fascinating guest conversations in TB5MWP history.
The Business Concept Premium Blend produces wine-based
1 Harvest Changed Everything: Freestone Winemaker Justin Ennis's Sonoma Coast Story Pt. 1
Justin Ennis, senior director of winemaking for Joseph Phelps Vineyards and the steward of its Freestone brand along the Sonoma Coast, where he's spent the last twenty years shaping the wines. Justin grew up surrounded by wine without ever planning to make a career of it — his grandfather kept a full table, and his mother's family in Healdsburg tended an old field-planted vineyard in the heart of
Keith Urban: Golden Road Interview — Guitar Heroes & Hidden Tracks Pt. 2
Keith talks his TV run on Leno and The View, a fan poll that had him wanting to see him on the big screen (right behind Faith Hill), and previews the next single, Raining on Sunday, written by Radney Foster and Darrell Brown. Keith geeks out over guitar heroes Lindsey Buckingham and Mark Knopfler, his love of Bob Seger, and reveals the surprising story behind But for the Grace of God — co-written
New Products, World Cup, Holiday Table: Premium Blend's Next Chapter Pt. 5
Thirty-five years. Same 800 number. Still picking up.
That's Premium Blend in a nutshell — built on relationships, consistency, and a product that just keeps finding new audiences. In this final episode of the series, Gino Santos gives Forrest a full picture of where the brand is headed and what it looks like at home.
Highlights include:
A new Aguardiente (Colombian-style spirit) launching just
Greets You With… But Hits You in the Face: Inside Wine Drawings Everyone Loves Pt. 6
Maryse Chevriere's illustrations — a little figure she simply calls "my little dude." He's intentionally universal, someone anyone can see themselves in, though she'll add a ponytail, a bow tie, or a mustache when a drawing calls for it. Forrest zeroes in on a favorite: a "greets you with… but hits you in the face" illustration featuring the character at a microphone under a spotlight, arms up as
We Didn't Come Here to Take, We Came Here to Give" — Gino & His Father's American Dream Pt. 4
Every great business has a moment when the founder walks into a stranger's establishment and has to sell the dream from scratch. For Gino Santos, that pitch had three parts: increase your margins, keep your customers coming back, and make your wait staff more money — all with just a beer and wine license.
In this final installment of the Premium Blend series, Forrest gets the full story:
Why Pre
Certified Som Flashcards to James Beard Award — Maryse Origin Story Pt. 5
The series wraps by going back to the beginning. Maryse Chevriere opens with the closure debate and dismantles an old-school myth: you absolutely can have great wine under a screwcap — some of the world's best Rieslings are sealed that way. She gets the confusion, since screwcaps are also a cheaper closure found on inexpensive bottles, but her position is simple: if the wine is good, she doesn't c
Keith Urban: The Golden Road Interview — From the Vault Pt. 1
In Part 1, Keith laughs through a surprise call to a bed-and-breakfast in his hometown of Caboolture, Australia (where the locals are more sure about the Crocodile Hunter than the future superstar), talks about flying his mum and dad over for the CMAs, and admits the Aussie beers he still misses back in the States. He opens up about the Farmhand drought-relief broadcast beamed to Australia via sat
100% Blue Agave in Jalisco — But It's Not Tequila. Premium Blend Product Line Revealed Pt. 3
What started as a workaround for the cocktail licensing gap has evolved into something much bigger. Premium Blend's Agave Wine Collection isn't just a tequila substitute anymore — California restaurants are doing bottle service with it, customers are taking shots, and people are drinking it straight because at 48 proof, it's smoother with none of the burn.
In this episode, Gino Santos walks Forres
Good Legs and Sniffing the Cork: Wine Myths a Somm Wants Gone Pt. 4
Maryse Chevriere a five-question, multiple-choice wine quiz, and her answers double as a myth-busting crash course.
Why do sommeliers have you taste before pouring the full glass? To check whether the wine is corked or flawed — and, honestly, to catch whether you simply don't like it. Maryse would rather figure that out early, pour the bottle by the glass, and steer you toward something you'll lov
Coast Guard, Cold Milk, and a Cuban Kid's First Taste of America Pt. 2
Sandwiches and cold milk. That's what greeted a five-year-old Gino Santos when the U.S. Coast Guard pulled his family off a sinking shrimp boat and brought them ashore in Key West. For a kid who had just spent the crossing crammed into a shrimp hold with his grandmother, it was heaven. That same resilience and hunger would define Gino's path decades later when he and his brother Henry built Premiu
Golden Retriever Energy: Wine Book Throws Out the Snob Rules Pt. 3
The best way to learn wine, Maryse Chevriere argues, isn't to read about it — it's to pour two glasses and taste the difference. In this episode she walks Forrest through the drinking games tucked into How to Sound Wine Smart, designed to make abstract concepts click through direct comparison. Think a wine you assumed was sweet suddenly revealing itself as dry when set beside an actually sweet one
No Liquor License? No Problem. Premium Blend Cocktails Is Disrupting the Industry Pt. 1
Ever wonder why your favorite neighborhood restaurant doesn't serve cocktails? Chances are it comes down to one thing: the liquor license. In many states, a full liquor license can run well into six or seven figures on the open market — making it virtually impossible for small and mid-sized venues to offer a full bar program.
That's exactly the problem Gino Santos and his brother Henry set out to
NYC Wine Bar to San Francisco: How Maryse Cracked the Wine Code Pt. 2
Some people are trained into wine. Maryse Chevriere talked her way in on pure enthusiasm — and it turned out to be the perfect qualification. In this episode she tells Forrest Kelly how a manager went to bat for her despite her being "green," echoing the philosophy her chef husband lives by: give him someone hungry to learn over someone he'd have to un-train.
From there, Maryse walks through the p
The Chef Who Turned Cancer Into a Culinary Calling — Quiz Edition
Grab your scorecard, wine lovers — Rusty Cellars is popping the quiz on one of the most fascinating guests in show history. Chef Chuck Hayworth spent 35 years in professional kitchens before a rare stomach cancer diagnosis changed everything, launching a private chef career that began when fellow patients in his therapy group asked him to cook for them. In this two-round, ten-question challenge, R
How to Sound Wine Smart — The Author Behind the Book Tells All Pt. 1
Maryse Chevriere's wine story doesn't follow a straight line — and that's exactly what makes it worth hearing. In this first installment, the author of How to Sound Wine Smart (out now from Simon Element) tells Forrest how a food-website waiter with an affinity for drinks talked her way into the wine world.
Maryse opens up about her three months working the harvest at a Domaine in Alsace — no real
N. Carolina's Medical Meal Chef Reveals His Last Meal on Earth Pt. 1-6
Chef Chuck's 26-year journey from kitchen cook to medical meal chef after a rare stomach cancer diagnosis
How cancer treatment forced him to relearn the four basic tastes and rebuild his palate from scratch
The difference between medically-ordered diet clients and "longevity" wellness clients
Why he stocks healthier snacks like date-almond bites instead of processed convenience food
His approach t
Back Label - The Payphone Call That Saved Journey's Biggest Hit
Before "Don't Stop Believin'" filled stadiums, it lived in a notebook. Jonathan Cain was out of money and out of hope when he called his father from a Los Angeles payphone and asked if he should give up. The advice he got back sat in that notebook for a year — until Cain joined Journey and the band needed one more track for their album Escape. In this episode, we break down how Steve Perry turned
The Comet, the Pizza, the Wine: Chef Chuck's Perfect Last Supper Pt. 6
Chef Chuck Hayworth wraps up this conversation by getting personal about why he does what he does — sharing the joy of medical meals and longevity cuisine with people who need it most. He leans into the old Southern saying "you are what you eat," explaining how it shapes every pairing and every plate he creates. He talks about how North Carolina's seasonal diversity, from spring berries to farmers
Boone's Farm at the Drive-In to Château Pétrus — The Wine Coach's Incredible Journey Pt. 1-4
Laurie Forster has always used humor to disarm people — it's a skill she traces all the way back to growing up in New Jersey, where you learn fast that a sharp wit is your best defense. On this episode of The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast, Laurie shares how that instinct, combined with a supply chain degree from Penn State, a high-stakes career in Fortune 100 tech sales, and a terrifying night perfor
A Wine Tasting at a Rodeo in S. Dakota — It Was Better Than You'd Think Pt. 4
Wine tastings at rodeos. The Hank Williams Museum. A first sip of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill at the drive-in. In the final part of her conversation, Laurie Forster wraps up one of the most entertaining and wide-ranging wine conversations the show has ever hosted — and she saves some of the best material for last.
Laurie's corporate tasting work has brought her to venues she never put on her buck
Dinner Guest Who Got It So Wrong, Chef Chuck Had to Step In Pt. 5
Chef Chuck's method for finding out why a client is resistant to wine
Mocktail and kombucha alternatives for clients avoiding alcohol
The cardiovascular benefits of resveratrol in red wine, in moderation
Why his tasting pours are kept small — four ounces or less, down to 2.5 oz for dessert wines
The real purpose of a wine pairing: accenting the food, not overpowering it
A story about a dinner gues
The Wine Coach Who Turned Hecklers Into Stars of the Show Pt. 3
Laurie Forster has performed her wine comedy show Something to Whine About in some of the most iconic entertainment venues in the country — and in Part 3, she walks through exactly what that experience looks like from the stage. Audiences at Carolines on Broadway, Caesars Atlantic City, and the HBO Women in Comedy Festival have all discovered the same thing: wine education is infinitely more effec
Back Label - 1 Take, 1 Payphone, 1 Song That Refused to Die
In 1980, Jonathan Cain stood at a payphone on Sunset Boulevard, broke and ready to quit music for good. His father's answer became the seed of the biggest sing-along anthem in rock history. In this Back Label Story, Forrest Kelly traces how that phrase aged in a notebook for a year before Cain joined Journey and the band built "Don't Stop Believin'" around it for the Escape album. Along the way, y
She Walked Into a Cooking Class to Meet Men, Left With a Chef Husband Pt. 2
Before Laurie Forster became The Wine Coach, she was a Penn State supply chain graduate selling multimillion-dollar inventory planning systems to Fortune 100 executives — and getting quietly humiliated every time a wine list landed on the table. In Part 2 of her conversation, Laurie traces the full arc from corporate boardrooms to Australian vineyards, sharing the chain of decisions that led her t
N. Carolina Chef Tasted a Dozen Chardonnays So You Don't Have To Pt. 4
Building a tasting menu isn't a weekend project. For Chef Chuck Hayworth of theresortchef.com, the spring menu alone took nearly a year to develop — tasting over a dozen Chardonnays and half a dozen Sauvignon Blancs from across North Carolina before locking in every pairing. Every wine on the menu comes from within 60 to 75 miles of his home base in Boone, the kind of farm-to-table commitment most
New Jersey Jug Wine to Certified Sommelier — Laurie Forster's Wild Ride Pt. 1
Laurie Forster — The Wine Coach — has built her career on a simple but powerful conviction: wine should be fun, accessible, and completely free of snobbery. In Part 1 of her conversation with Forrest Kelly on The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast, Laurie shares the full arc of her journey, from jug wine in New Jersey to certified sommelier, from corporate software sales to comedy stages, and from formal
Why Your Kids Are Getting Sicker Younger Pt. 3
Chef Chuck Hayworth has spent 26 years doing battle with the American food supply — and his clients keep getting younger. Chef Chuck opens up about his own cancer survivorship, why a diabetes diagnosis is the beginning of a health journey rather than the end of one, and how he brings entire families along on the medical meals process to make lasting change sustainable for everyone at the table.
He
Back Label - One Man's Palate Was Worth Millions — Here's How
In 1978, Robert Parker launched a free wine newsletter out of Baltimore with no industry connections and no advertising, building his reputation on a simple 50-to-100 point scoring scale borrowed from the American school grading system. That simple idea ended up reshaping how the entire world drinks wine, giving one man's palate enough influence to swing a bottle's price by millions and turn a 100
Chef Turns Your Kid's Uncrustable Into Superfood W/O Them Noticing Pt. 2
Chef Chuck Hayworth of RealMedicalMeals.com doesn't just cook — he heals. In Part 2 of this conversation, Chef Chuck pulls back the curtain on two upcoming books: the C5 Longevity Cuisine Cookbook and a Hidden Vegetable Cookbook designed to quietly restore nutrition to the American diet. Can't afford personalized medical nutrition services? He's writing these books for you.
Chef Chuck also walks t
Rare Cancer Diagnosis to Private Chef: How Chef Chuck Learned to Taste Wine All Over Again Pt. 1
What would it take to completely relearn how to taste food and wine? For Chef Chuck Hayworth — the Thankfully Local private chef and resort chef based in North Carolina — the answer was a rare stomach cancer diagnosis that changed everything 26 years ago.
In Part 1 of this conversation, Forrest and Chef Chuck dig into the origin story: how a chef already 35 years into kitchen life had to go back t
Back Label - He Punched His Brother — Then Built an Empire
The front label said Robert Mondavi, the man who put Napa Valley on the map. The back label said a fistfight over a mink coat, a decade of lawsuits, and two brothers who didn't speak for years. In 1965, Robert and Peter Mondavi came to blows at Charles Krug Winery, the family business their father Cesare had bought in 1943. The fallout sent Robert into a six-month leave and eventually out of the c
Pricing Psychology, Tested: How Many Did You Get Right? Claire Wang
Ten questions, two rounds, and a whole lot of uncomfortable truths about why you pay what you pay. Rusty Cellars hosts this Pop the Quiz episode pulled from Claire Wang's appearance on the show, covering everything from MRI brain scans proving price changes the actual experience of taste, to why a $5 wine beat a $45 wine in blind taste tests, to the single sentence a Chateau Pichon Baron director
Pricing Strategist Walks Into a Wine Show-Blows Everything Up Pt. 1-4
What does a pricing strategist know about wine? More than you'd think. Claire Wang joins Forrest Kelly to break down the psychology behind why we pay what we pay — and why our brains are doing a lot more work than we realize every time we reach for a bottle.
Claire unpacks the famous Stanford and Caltech MRI study that proved people's brains literally experience more pleasure when they think they'
Back Label - The $250 Trick That Fooled Wine Spectator
The front label said Award of Excellence. The back label said $250 and a voicemail box. In 2008, writer and researcher Robin Goldstein invented a restaurant from scratch — complete with a website, a Milan phone number, and a reserve wine list built almost entirely from Wine Spectator's own lowest-rated Italian wines — to test how seriously the magazine vetted its restaurant wine award. The fiction
Why $9.99 Tricks Your Brain — Wine Pricing Psychology Pt. 4
Guest: Claire Wang, an international pricing expert
Book: The Price of Influence — available September
Topics covered:
Charm pricing: why $9.99 outsells $10.00
The Stanford experiment proving price changes how wine tastes
Anchoring effect: seeing a high price first makes the next one feel like a deal
Why "limited time" scarcity is mostly psychological
Free shipping vs. price cuts — which m
Your Brain Lying to You About Wine — The Stanford MRI Experiment Pt. 3
Guest: Claire Wang (Pricing Strategist)
Upcoming Book: The Price of Influence — September
Topics covered:
The Stanford/Caltech MRI wine experiment — identical wines, different price tags, measurably different brain activity
The "marketing placebo effect" — believing you paid more makes you genuinely enjoy more
Journal of Wine Economics blind tasting study: untrained drinkers preferred cheaper
Back Label - Why "Mighty Fine Wine" Is the Only Tasting Note That Matters
What does a bullfrog have to do with Barolo? More than you'd think.
In this Wine Wednesday Back Label Story, Forrest Kelly uncorks the surprisingly rich wine philosophy hidden inside Hoyt Axton's 1971 classic — the song Three Dog Night rode to six weeks at number one. The line that stuck? "He always had some mighty fine wine." No credentials required. No auction catalog. Just the stubborn, booming
Why Your $30 Bottle of Wine Is Actually a Bargain — Pricing Strategist Explains Pt. 2
Claire Wang was in Bordeaux for a business trip when she visited Château Pichon Baron, part of the AXA Millésimes portfolio — one of the world's largest insurance companies, which also happens to own a remarkable collection of wineries across Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Portugal. She sat down with managing director Christian Seely and asked him point blank: how do you price your wine?
His answer stopp
Pricing Strategist Walks Into a Wine Show — Blows Your Mind Pt. 1
Ever wonder why a $18.99 bottle feels like a deal but $19 feels like a splurge?
There's a reason for that — and it's not an accident. Claire Wang is a pricing strategist with two decades of experience helping major brands put the right number on everything from phone plans to foreign exchange rates. She's also the author of an upcoming book, The Price of Influence: How to Move Anyone to a Yes.
In
True/False: Can You Send a Drink From Your Phone Right Now? Quiz Show
Quiz master Rusty Cellars is back, and this time he's turning everything you heard in the Sherman Mohr interview into a full-on game show. Two rounds, five questions each — a warm-up round that eases you in, and a second round with a little more bite.
Topics covered include how Shared Spirits actually works (hint: no app store download required), how the COVID-19 pivot shaped the business, what ha
Truffle Hunting, Mt. Etna Wines, and a Bed That Gives You a Hug
Episode Summary In this episode, host Forest Kelly is joined by Paul Cullen, former bass player for Bad Company, and Sofia Hedman, Group Travel Manager at Accent on Travel. They share the details of an upcoming, exclusive luxury wine cruise aboard the Oceania Allura, sailing from Rome to Venice in April 2027. Learn about the private performances, curated vineyard tours on Mount Etna, and a special
The App That Lets You Buy Someone a Drink - Shared Spirits Pt. 1-6
Sherman Mohr is co-founder and COO of Shared Spirits, and Over50Pros.
In this episode Sherman cover how wine brands fight for placement at restaurants and retail stores, how Shared Spirits works as a mobile platform for buying, sharing and redeeming drinks at restaurant partners, how Sherman's promo agency grew to 1,700 events a year doing retail wine and spirits sampling activations, the surpris
From a Library Pamphlet to $5.3 Billion: The Ernest Gallo Story
Ernest and Julio Gallo founded E. & J. Gallo Winery in Modesto, California in the fall of 1933, just after the repeal of Prohibition. Their starting capital was less than $6,000 — $5,000 of it borrowed from Ernest's mother-in-law, Teresa Franzia. Their winemaking education came from pre-Prohibition pamphlets retrieved from the basement of the Modesto Public Library. With a single tractor running b
Pop The Quiz: Flying Whale Edition — No Mercy, Just a Wine Quiz
Hosted by Rusty Sellers, producer of The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast and resident quizmaster of the Pop The Quiz segment
Flying Whale Edition — ten questions based on the Maba Ba interview series
Round One: Multiple Choice (5 questions)
Which African tribe inspired Flying Whale Wine? (Dogon)
Which star system did the Dogon base their belief system on? (Sirius)
Where did Maba Ba grow up? (Dakar
Spirits to Second Acts: Sherman Reinventing Your Income After 50 Pt. 6
Sherman Mohr has spent years placing brand ambassadors for spirits and wine companies — and the data kept pointing to the same thing: the best ones were over 50. That pattern sparked a new venture called Over 50 Pros (over50pros.com), a platform dedicated to helping people in that demographic understand that their experience has real market value — they just need a new narrative for delivering it.
Back Label - 1 Station Wagon, 1 Crazy Bet, The Birth of Oregon Wine
David Lett didn't discover the Willamette Valley — he invented it as wine country. When he arrived in 1965, Oregon was timber and berries. Nobody was planting Pinot Noir there. Nobody serious, anyway. Lett and his wife Diana set up in the Dundee Hills and did it anyway, with no roadmap, no guarantee, and no backup plan.
For years they were written off. The market wasn't interested in Oregon wine.
Senegal to Napa: How a Filmmaker Built a Wine Brand Worth Talking About Pt. 1-5
Maba Ba — founder of Flying Whale Wine, based in New York; originally from Dakar, Senegal; serial entrepreneur, filmmaker, WNBA enthusiast.
The Flying Whale name is rooted in the Dogon people of West Africa, whose ancient cosmology centered on the Sirius star system — they believed an amphibian being called the Nommo flew to Earth in a whale-like ship to deliver the first humans
Maba grew up
Wine Tech You Didn’t Know You Needed: How Shared Spirits Could Change Tasting Rooms Pt. 5
What you’ll learn: Why Shared Spirits is built as a progressive web app (PWA)
How saving it to your home screen makes it behave like a native app
Why wineries and tasting rooms could use this tech to drive foot traffic
How drink gifting works during wine tours, proposals, and special events
Why digital gifting is now normal thanks to Amazon, Starbucks, DoorDash, and Uber Eats
How Shared Spirits us
Back Label - The Oldest Wine Evidence on Earth Is in a Museum — The Story Nobody Tells
In this Wine Wednesday Back Label Story, we take you to the Caucasus Mountains of the country of Georgia — home to what may be the oldest evidence of wine on earth. Clay jars called qvevri, buried in the ground and stained with 8,000-year-old grape residue, tell the story of a human relationship with wine that predates the pyramids and the Roman Empire.
But the real twist comes from the Greeks and
The Wine That Works by the Fireplace AND by the Pool Pt. 5
The Flying Whale rosé is a Grenache/Syrah blend — fuller body than a typical rosé, dry, with strawberry and peach fruit balanced by citrus, finished with that signature silky texture. Maba's word for his entire wine lineup so far: "silky" — it's the through-line he's chasing across every bottle. He rejects the idea of "rosé season" — he designed this wine to work year-round, from poolside in summe
How COVID Accidentally Launched a Cocktail Tech Revolution — Shared Spirits Party Pack Pt. 4
What you’ll learn:
How Nashville’s bachelorette scene inspired the “Party Pack” model
Why Shared Spirits struggled pre‑COVID — and why everything changed afterward
How QR codes, Instacart, DoorDash, and Uber Eats trained customers for mobile transactions
Why people now trust text‑based drink gifting
How the app notifies recipients, customizes messages, and handles number masking
Why mobile‑first b
Back Label - Wine Forgery That Cost a Billionaire $35 Million — And Nobody Went to Jail
Thomas Jefferson didn't just like wine — he was consumed by it. He walked the vineyards of Bordeaux, shipped Sauternes to George Washington, advised four presidents on what to pour at state dinners, and kept obsessive records of every single bottle he ever purchased. Over three decades, that total reached 20,000 bottles.
So in 1985, when a German wine dealer named Hardy Rodenstock surfaced with bo
The Ancient Myth Hidden Inside This Stunning Wine Label Pt. 4
Maba designed the bottle immediately after his first winemaker meeting in August — the creative energy was instant.
The bottle's medallion design was intentional: he wanted it to feel like a collector's coin, something giftable and meaningful
The label tells the story of the Dogon people — an ancient West African cosmology involving beings who traveled to Earth in a whale-like vessel through the
App That Lets You Buy Someone a Cocktail From Anywhere — Why Restaurants Love It Pt. 3
What you’ll learn:
Why restaurant experiences are built on more than just food
How Shared Spirits works from login to drink redemption
Why it’s essentially “Venmo for cocktails”
How drink gifting creates new marketing opportunities for bars and brands
The power of real‑time redemption data
How restaurants can see pending drink credits and market to those customers
How unused drinks can be forwarde
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