The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast

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 or five hours of sleep at twenty — and what sleep looks like now

Her son's objection: "but then you have no social life"

The tuition bargain — maintain the GPA or repay the semester

C-suite, decoded: chief executive officer, chief operating officer, and the functions that reported to her

Recruited at twenty-four as COO and general manager, three months into new motherhood

Everything but finance in her remit, in a lean outsourcing P&L where mistakes cost money

Confidence read as competence — "rightfully or wrongfully so"

Just over forty M&A and divestiture transactions across the career

Twenty-six years in B2B professional services: outsourcing, consulting, technology

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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 new mold every single time. A year and several molds later, she was ready to quit.

What she says next is the part that stops you. Twenty years in law enforcement, and she had never cried as much as she did during that first year of design work.

She found a second manufacturer, and the difference was immediate: they didn't charge for redesigns, and their engineers apologized for not having reached her solutions first. Three mold revisions, billed once. Running alongside all of it was a patent process that went nearly as badly — the first attorney turned her away claiming a conflict of interest so fast she's certain he never opened her email, the second loved the product but couldn't hold to deadlines, and the third, who also doesn't drink, turned out to be the one who saw it. She now holds a design patent, a utility patent, and two registered trademarks.

Then Forrest asks the question that gets to the heart of it, and Jeanine explains the interlocking ice pack system — a modular grid that freezes flat enough to fit an RV freezer, then slides together inside the bag, with pieces you can remove and reposition to make room for food and charcuterie. She designed it that way because she and her husband have lived with small refrigerators on a boat and in an RV, and because the coolers already on the market weren't built with wine in mind at all. Most of them, as she puts it, aren't even tall enough.

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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, laundering towels

 Babysitting at $2 an hour

 Assistant manager at fourteen, coaching adults decades older

 "Turtle shell outside, marshmallow inside — somewhere between don't mess with me and do you want a hug"

 Why the all-business mask came first, and why vulnerability came later

 Adopted at four out of a violent early childhood

 "Tori, you need to do better than us" — and the crucial distinction between better than where I came from and better than any person

 No money for the high school graduation trip

 Book five arrives September 16

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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 two moments sent her looking for a real solution, and she quickly discovered that nothing on the market actually protected the wine itself, only the bottle.

What follows is a candid look at the long road from idea to finished product. Jeanine talks about working with a project manager who had never had a drop of wine in his life and struggled to understand what she was trying to protect, the costly cycle of redesigned molds, and the patent attorneys who came and went before she found the right partner. She eventually landed on an interlocking, modular ice pack system inspired by an ice pack she received in a box of chocolates, built specifically to accommodate the height of wine bottles, something she says most coolers on the market completely ignore.

Forrest and Jeanine also dig into the practical side of the product, from the six-pack and twelve-pack ice systems and how long each holds its chill, to the zipper lube that keeps the airtight seal easy to manage, to why she intentionally avoided pre-filled gel packs in favor of simple water. Along the way, she shares a great story about a conversation with Hydro Flask's Travis Rosbach, who admitted his industry had missed the mark entirely on wine drinkers. It's a fun, honest conversation about persistence, unexpected mentors, and building something from a problem nobody else thought to solve.

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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 stepfather (then at Kendall-Jackson's Hartford Court) suggested harvest intern work. His first vintage was 1995 under winemaker Dan Goldfield, doing the unglamorous cellar-rat work: power washing, punch downs, barrel cleaning. The revelation? Working alongside interns from Portugal, France, and Australia through the CAEP agricultural exchange visa program — and realizing winemaking could be his passport to the wider world.

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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 tradition runs deep, and the process that sets the brand apart: starting from premium wine, dealcoholizing at ambient temperature, and skipping the sugar and artificial flavoring most competitors rely on to mask what's lost. The conversation also covers the bigger picture — alcohol consumption dropping globally, the opportunity that creates for non-alcoholic wine, and CLINQ ZERO's three-variety lineup of Sparkling Blanc, Sparkling Rosé, and Sparkling Red, available in both glass bottle and can. Anto closes with his five-year vision: CLINQ ZERO as the brand people keep in the fridge for weddings, baby showers, and pizza night, with founder pricing available now on pre-order ahead of late-summer delivery.

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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 saline breezes, Justin says salt air, and they call it close enough. That leads to the best moment of the episode: Justin admits even winemakers struggle with wine adjectives. His advice? If something creates thought provocation and you keep wanting to drink it, that's the clear-cut sign of quality. Skip the fluffy wine words. Make it accessible for everyone — which is exactly what The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is all about.

More from the hot seat: Joseph Phelps joined the Moët Hennessy side of LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy) in 2022 — the LV side is fashion and perfume, Moët Hennessy is wine and spirits. The two natural forces shaping the Freestone microclimate: the Pacific Ocean and the Petaluma Gap, funneling marine air and fog into Sonoma County. The tiny town of Freestone sits off a quiet highway heading toward Bodega Bay. Joseph Phelps farms roughly 500 acres across nine estate vineyards. The most accessible bottle in the lineup, the 2023 Freestone Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, comes in at $75. And the 2023 Quarter Moon Pinot? For lovers of savory texture, depth, and ageability. Mic drop.

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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, why he genuinely enjoys talking to strangers about the brand, and what separates CLINQ ZERO's ingredient list from competitors that compensate for lost flavor with sugar. He also shares the practical details: the Sparkling Blanc is available for pre-order now at CLINQ ZERO, with delivery expected late summer, and early supporters can lock in founder pricing — 30% off, the lowest price the brand will ever offer.

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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 your cake and eating it too.

Justin's advice for anyone just getting into wine: starting with a price point is fine, but don't stop there. Get out of your comfort zone and be willing to spend a little more — that's how you discover the full range of quality out there. He's watched friends do exactly that with Freestone wines, and the reaction is always the same: holy cow.

Then the news — this year Freestone made its first small domestic release of the single-vineyard wines into the national market. The Pastorale Pinot Noir, Quarter Moon Pinot Noir, and Pastorale Chardonnay are now in 11 markets including New York, Chicago, and Florida (Miami, Orlando, Tampa) — roughly 500 cases each, pulled from the Phelps Preferred club allocation. Justin explains the direct-to-consumer double-edged sword: it's the most profitable route, but the greater world doesn't know you exist. Long-term growth means getting into top accounts and top restaurants — slowly and consistently.

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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 recorking, no spilling, just a controlled pour, hot or cold. Anto explains his bigger vision for the sparkling red as a potential alternative to soda or sparkling water, and reflects on what's been most satisfying about building in a growing category: the curiosity from consumers, and CLINQ ZERO's mission to bring transparency to a space where not every brand is being honest about what's really in the bottle.

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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: farming for quantity, machine harvesting, contracted labor instead of in-house crews.

Location matters too. The Sonoma Coast's proximity to the ocean means protecting the fruit can take dramatically more vineyard passes than warmer inland sites — Justin ballparks 35 sprays versus maybe 10 on the Napa Valley floor. Add barrel programs like 100% French oak, and the true cost of a bottle comes into focus.

Then Forrest asks the emotional question: does it ever get old watching someone taste your wine for the first time? Never, says Justin. Memories are created over the wines his team makes — and humans have been fermenting and gathering around the table since we started walking the planet. A meal, an amazing bottle, and laughs: the communal ritual we should never lose.

And his favorite from the lineup? No hesitation: "Pinot Noir is my amour." His deserted-island wine, through and through — with a deep love of Chardonnay right behind it.

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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: no distributor required, no age-21 disclaimer, and a direct-to-consumer model that's opened the door for CLINQ ZERO to sell straight to customers in the U.S. Anto gets candid about the bigger picture too — alcohol consumption is dropping globally, and he sees non-alcoholic wine as both an opportunity for the wine industry and a chance to chip away at the stigma still attached to the category. The episode wraps with the thinking behind CLINQ ZERO's packaging: a glass bottle for celebratory, premium occasions, and a can built for tailgates, beaches, and anywhere glass isn't practical.

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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 result. Wine's beauty lives in vintage variation, challenging seasons, and a little chaos. Strip out the creativity and you're making formulaic, boring wines.

Then the conversation turns to Justin's minimalist, low-intervention style. His philosophy: high-detail, attentive farming delivers fruit so good the wines nearly make themselves. He picks for natural acid and alcohol balance and avoids additions when he can — not hands-off, not lazy, just letting the vintage and the site dictate quality instead of heavy-handed winemaking.

One fascinating detail: the Pinot Noir ferments naturally on native yeast, but the Chardonnay gets inoculated — because every time he's let Chardonnay go wild, the fermentation got stuck. Adapting to what the circumstances give you, in action.

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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 Italy, where tradition runs deep and non-alcoholic wine was a hard sell, even to his own mother. He also details the process that separates CLINQ ZERO from other dealcoholized wines on the market: starting from premium wine, processing at ambient temperature with no heat damage to aroma or flavor, and avoiding the sugar and natural flavoring most competitors add back in to compensate. A touch of CO2 for the sparkle and a hint of grape juice to balance acidity — that's it. Real sparkling wine, gently dealcoholized. Not a shortcut, not a compromise.

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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 color in the bottle. Same farming, same winemaking — the site does the talking.

On Chardonnay, Justin makes what he calls "varietally correct" Chardonnay: high-acid, fruit-driven, fermented in large-format oak so the wood supports the wine without smothering it. No butter bombs here.

Then Forrest asks the hard question: is there anything positive to take away from a decade of California wildfires? Justin is candid — nothing positive except the lessons. He recounts the 2017 Tubbs fire that shattered his sense of the industry's invincibility, and the 2020 LNU Lightning Complex fires that forced Freestone to abandon its entire harvest. Grapes breathe, smoke binds into the berry, and those burnt flavors can't be removed — so rather than compromise quality standards, they walked away from the vintage. And he throws no shade at winemakers who made a different call to keep their businesses afloat.

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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 make wine. He understood the production process, the industry dynamics, and the category from the inside out. When he saw the opportunity to build a better non-alcoholic sparkling wine — one that starts as real wine and is gently dealcoholized rather than constructed from juice, sugar, and flavoring — he had the knowledge and the credibility to do it right.

In this first episode, Forrest traces Anto's full origin story:

• Growing up in Sicily in a family defined by bread, bakeries, and the rhythms of Italian outdoor life
• Studying aerospace engineering — bachelor's and master's degrees — before pivoting to the corporate world
• A career path that took him from Fiat to agriculture to Tetra Pak and eventually to a front-row seat in the wine industry
• The move to the US eleven years ago, becoming an American citizen, and making Dallas home while still traveling back to Italy multiple times a year
• And the founding insight behind CLINQ ZERO: real sparkling wine, gently dealcoholized — not grape juice with bubbles, not a drink rebuilt with additives, but something that starts exactly where great wine starts.

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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 varietally label Syrah in California after Prohibition. Working alongside his first winemaker, German immigrant Walter Shug, Phelps experimented widely across varietals including Riesling, Johannesburg Riesling, Pinot Noir, and Syrah, tearing out plantings that didn't meet his standard and starting over until he found the quality he wanted. Justin connects this same relentless pursuit of excellence to the founding of Freestone Vineyards, born from Phelps' love of Burgundy wines and his desire to make a true Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in a cooler climate. That search led the Phelps team to the West Sonoma Coast, where they planted two estate vineyards, Pastoral at 60 acres and Quarter Moon at 40, totaling 100 acres roughly seven to eight miles from Bodega Bay and the Pacific Ocean, complete with a separate winemaking facility and staff dedicated entirely to the Freestone project.

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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 closely you listened: her grape-stomping fall in Alsace, the humor award she won as an illustrator among writers, the Ian Cauble "fresh cut garden hose" line that named her brand, learning to drive at fifteen in Houston, and the all-Riesling wine list that gave her a big break in New York. Round two flips the glass and quizzes the language itself, busting the cork-sniffing ritual, decoding what legs really reveal, defending screw caps, and translating what "approachable" actually means when a sommelier says it with a smile.

It's the perfect capper to the Maryse series and a 5-minute crash course in sounding wine smart without a single ounce of snobbery. Tally your score, grab the book, and pour something friendly.

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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 pumps, forklifts, and cranes before eventually taking on bigger responsibility. He stresses that interns benefit most from working at high-quality, technique-focused wineries rather than high-volume producers, since that's where the best habits get built. Justin describes winemaking as a true lifestyle career rather than a 9-to-5 job, comparing it to professional sports in terms of the all-in commitment it demands, since farming and winemaking run year-round with no real clocking out. He wraps up by walking through the cyclical rhythm of his year, from the relatively quiet stretch of leafing, shoot positioning, and crop estimating in the vineyard right now, to the upcoming July bottling and the harvest prep that follows, all while Mother Nature ultimately dictates the timeline.

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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 has grown beyond its original scope: rather than just Colombian restaurants, Premium Blend is challenging all of its customers to host a one-evening fundraising event and dedicate cocktail proceeds to earthquake victims. Premium Blend supplies the product to make those cocktails at no cost, and the company has opened its Miami warehouse as a receiving center for donations being gathered and shipped to Colombia. Henry also shares the good news that his friends and contacts in Colombia are safe, while acknowledging that not everyone was so fortunate. Restaurant and bar owners can get involved by visiting premiumblend.com or calling 800-899-0331 and asking for the Colombia package.

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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 House of Blues in Anaheim. A warm, funny, generous farewell to a genuine star on the rise.

Show notes

• The story behind the forgiveness line, and writing by stream of consciousness
• Keith riffs a full Outback Steakhouse ad-read on the spot
• The lightning round: speed limits, favorite videos (Landslide), and drinking as a sport
• Dad as his athletic hero, Citizen Kane, tattoos, and chocolate over vanilla
• Picking Who Wouldn't Wanna Be Me to close — the song that opens his live show
• One last plug for the Farmhand benefit at the House of Blues, Anaheim

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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, and how that experience opened his eyes to how much more there was to learn beyond what he'd seen at home. Justin challenges the assumption that American winemaking is automatically the best, pointing out that Old World regions like France have been refining their craft for centuries longer. He explains why harvest season, typically August through October, requires an expanded labor pool and round-the-clock monitoring of fermentations as fruit comes in at all hours. He also talks about why internships matter so much for young people entering the industry, giving them a low-stakes way to explore winemaking, vineyard work, hospitality, or sales before committing to one path, and how he now gets to pass that same mentorship forward at his own winery.

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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 spirits that are legally classified as wine — meaning any venue holding a basic beer and wine license (as low as $400 in Florida) can serve them. No six-figure liquor license required. The products are formulated to taste like the spirits they replicate: tequila, rum, vodka, mezcal, and more — and when mixed into cocktails, they're virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.

The Product Line The flagship Agave Wine Collection is made from 100% blue agave sourced in Jalisco, Mexico — the same region as the world's finest tequilas — and includes Tequesta, Ginete (blanco-style), Guitarron, Guitarron Classico (reposado-style), Zapotec (mezcal-style), and El Guitarron Cristalino. At 48 proof, the line has evolved from a cocktail mixer into a sipping spirit in its own right. Additional products include Rumbero (rum-style), Clear Red (vodka-style), Santos Sangria (100% Spanish origin, grandmother's family recipe), Failing Irish Cream (produced in Ireland), and Cafe Luna coffee liqueur. A new Aguardiente (Colombian-style spirit) is also in the pipeline.

The Origin Story Gino and his brother Henry were born in Cuba. Their father Orestes — a celebrated Cuban singer-songwriter — was anti-Castro, thrown in jail, and eventually escaped with his family on a shrimp boat stolen by an uncle. The U.S. Coast Guard rescued them mid-ocean as the boat was sinking, bringing them ashore in Key West to sandwiches and cold milk. From Newark to Miami, through Stetson University and an MBA from the University of Miami, Gino ended up on the road selling Oscar Mayer products when he spotted a wine-based spirit that no one was marketing correctly. He and Henry saw the gap and built Premium Blend to fill it.

The Pitch and the Hustle The early years meant self-distribution across Florida in plastic bottles (glass breaks; plastic doesn't), cold-calling venues with no distributor support, and doing trade show samplings to get skeptical buyers to try the product. The sales pitch Gino still stands behind: Premium Blend increases your margins, improves customer retention, and makes your wait staff more money — all without a liquor license. Blind taste tests against actual rum and tequila have been closing deals ever since.

The Legacy Gino closes the series reflecting on his late father Orestes, who told his sons when they arrived in America: "We didn't come here to take, we came here to give." Premium Blend now employs a team, operates in multiple states, and has helped countless small restaurants stay in business on the strength of their cocktail margins alone.

📞 Premium Blend toll-free: 800-899-0331 🌐 premiumblend.com

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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 the Russian River Valley. It wasn't until his stepfather, who worked facilities at what's now Hartford Family Winery, nudged him toward a harvest internship that everything changed. Justin signed on as cellar help for his first vintage in 1995 under winemaker Dan Goldfield, expecting little more than hard, unglamorous labor: power washing, barrel cleaning, and punch-downs. What he found instead reshaped his entire worldview. That first harvest, he worked alongside cellar hands from Portugal, France, and Australia, brought to the United States through agricultural exchange visa programs like CAEP. For a young guy from what he calls an "insular" Sonoma County, the camaraderie and global perspective of harvest work opened a door he hadn't known existed — one that would eventually take him as far as New Zealand using that same visa program. Justin reflects on falling into winemaking purely by chance, simply applying for a job that needed warm bodies, and discovering a calling he never set out to find.

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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 with two members of the Go-Go's. A warm, funny, guitar-obsessed snapshot of Keith Urban on the rise.

Show notes (timestamped highlights)

• Rebecca Lynn Howard calls in — Somebody Like You is her favorite on the radio
• How fast the single caught on, before the record was even done
• The TV whirlwind: Leno and The View, and winning over a non-country crowd
• The fan poll that wanted Keith on the big screen, right behind Faith Hill
• Guitar talk: Dire Straits, Lindsey Buckingham, Mark Knopfler
• Previewing the next single, Raining on Sunday (Radney Foster / Darrell Brown)
• The Bob Seger shirt and playing Against the Wind
• The Go-Go's story behind But for the Grace of God
• Co-writing Somebody Like You with John Shanks — and that banjo riff

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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 ahead of the FIFA World Cup, with Miami games on the schedule and Premium Blend accounts already lining up launch parties
• The long-term retail vision: getting agave wine and other products onto shelves at stores like Ralph's so consumers can take them home
• The Santos family holiday table — roast pork, black beans and rice, and the Cuban flag in food form, shared with three generations across Miami, Jacksonville, and Nashville
• The full drink lineup for that dinner: Santos Sangria (100% Spanish origin, grandmother's old family recipe), rum and Cokes made with Rumbero, vodka sodas made with Clear Red, and after-dinner pours of Failing Irish Cream (produced in Ireland) and Cafe Luna coffee liqueur
• Why the margarita quietly became America's number one cocktail — and what the tequila boom means for Premium Blend's agave wine collection
• How Premium Blend supports its accounts beyond the sale: recipe books, promotional materials, and hands-on drink-making help

A fitting close to a five-part series packed with business insight, immigrant grit, family pride, and genuinely great product storytelling.

📞 Premium Blend toll-free: 800-899-0331 🌐 premiumblend.com

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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 if shielding himself. Maryse explains the improv-style thinking behind it — "greets you with" is the chill, gentle version of describing a wine's notes, while "hits you in the face" is the version where lemon, lime, and green bell pepper smack you so hard you can't miss it. The whole thing is built around a punchy Sauvignon Blanc (or, in Forrest's Boston translation, a "Savvy B").

Then the practical heart of the episode: who is the book for? Maryse describes it as ideal for newer wine appreciators looking to level up, or anyone who wants a fun, flip-through companion for a glass of wine — originally imagined as a coffee-table book. It's rich with 101-level information, but polished enough that professionals will recognize their own wine-speak and chuckle. Above all, it's a wine book that doesn't feel like a textbook, and a great gift for anyone who loves wine.

Maryse takes the open mic to acknowledge the people behind the book: her mom, aunt, and in-laws (who bought and promoted copies), her publishers who finally saw a vision she'd carried for years, her friends Annie, Jess, and Laura, and especially her husband, who held her together while she wrote and illustrated the book through her pregnancy. There's a warm, funny riff about family members enthusiastically promoting her at local wine shops — her mom being the biggest cheerleader of all — and even getting her book and drawings into a charity silent auction.

She closes with where to find everything: Instagram at Freshcutgardenhose, prints and custom work at fcghstudio.com, and the book at Amazon, local bookshops, and Barnes & Noble — or search "How to Sound Wine Smart" at SimonandSchuster.com for every retailer. A warm, generous send-off to a standout series.

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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 Premium Blend launched in plastic bottles — a practical shipping decision when you're self-distributing across Florida with almost no capital
• Why plastic has actually become a selling point for bars and restaurants where dropped bottles are a real cost
• The three-part sales pitch Gino used to walk cold into venues: higher profit margins, increased customer retention, and bigger tips for waitstaff
• How Premium Blend sales presentations work — Henry and Gino would show up with bags of product like they were moving in, letting everyone taste everything
• Blind taste tests against actual rum, tequila, and more — and why the cocktails are indistinguishable
• Pricing breakdown: roughly $8–$10 per liter depending on state alcohol tax
• The philosophy behind the business: owning a company, not just having a job
• A moving tribute to their late father, Orestes Santos — the Cuban musician who said "we didn't come here to take, we came here to give" — and what he would think seeing his sons build something that employs people and sustains small businesses across the country

Learn more at premiumblend.com

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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 care how it's sealed. Corkscrews have more flair, sure, and she offers a pro tip on the trickier wax-topped bottles — drive the corkscrew straight in rather than trying to peel all the wax off first.

Then a quiz question with real teaching value: when an expert calls a wine "approachable," they mean it's easy to drink and enjoyable right now — friendly, no curveballs. Not a polite way of saying cheap, though your greatest Barolo, Bordeaux, or Champagne probably isn't "approachable" in the same way. Think Tuesday-night wine rather than Friday date-night bottle.

Maryse also shares the human side: the close-minded customer she'd love to secretly test with a box wine, her genuine modesty about calling herself an illustrator ("I like to draw... it was a hobby"), and the James Beard Award she won in the humor category for the media awards — standing out as an illustrator among writers.

The payoff is the full-circle reveal. Forrest plays a mystery voice, and Maryse immediately identifies Master Sommelier Ian Cauble. It turns out her whole project traces back to him. While studying for her certified sommelier exam and clicking around Instagram, she was struck by how visually evocative — and delightfully silly — wine language can be. Coming to wine a little later herself and not always feeling like she fit in with the somm crowd, she found her own way to contribute. And Ian's iconic line — that a wine tastes like fresh cut garden hose — was so perfect it named the whole thing.

A fitting finale for the Wine-Curious: proof that the most memorable wine language comes from having fun with it.

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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 satellite, his love of Farm Aid and Willie Nelson, and where his best song ideas tend to strike — the shower. Plus a caller phones in about the Somebody Like You video with Niki Taylor. A warm, funny, genuine snapshot of Keith Urban on the rise.

Show notes (timestamped highlights)

• The montage intro and the "urban legend" welcome
• The surprise call home to Caboolture — and Gloria's Crocodile Hunter mix-up
• Bringing mum and dad over for the CMAs
• The Aussie beers Keith misses: VB and Coopers (and a shot at Fosters)
• Anaheim House of Blues and the Farmhand drought-relief satellite broadcast
• Farm Aid, Willie Nelson, and why helping farmers touches everyone
• Songwriting in the shower — and the "wet trail to the tape deck"
• A caller rings in about the Somebody Like You video with Niki Taylor

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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 Forrest through:

• The philosophy behind product development — Gino won't sell something he doesn't believe in himself
• The full Agave Wine Collection lineup: Tequesta and Ginete (blanco-style), Guitarron (reposado-style), Guitarron Classico, Zapotec (mezcal-style), and El Guitarron Cristalino
• Why the products are made from 100% blue agave sourced in Jalisco, Mexico — the same region as the world's finest tequilas
• The evolution from masking the product in cocktails to serving it straight — and why that shift matters
• How "wine snobs" remain a persistent challenge, and why the term "wine-based liquor" is a deliberate positioning decision
• What Gino's day actually looks like as president: strategic, legal, and financial vision — thinking about next year, not today
• A telling detail: Forrest signed up on the Premium Blend website and had samples at his door within 24 hours

The product has come a long way since the trade show days of convincing skeptics one sip at a time.

Learn more at premiumblend.com

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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 love than watch you pay for a bottle you'll never finish. And that returned bottle needn't go to waste: if it isn't faulty, let the staff taste it so they can sell it by the glass as a special. Everybody wins.

"Good legs"? It's about sugar and alcohol content — not quality, not price, and definitely not a Boston Marathon qualifying time. Maryse calls it a phrase you don't really need anymore, though it opens a lovely tangent about her dad, an old-school wine lover whose family hailed from Bordeaux and who was sure those were simply the best wines there were. As she learned the subject herself, she realized his confidence came from a narrow lens — but he enjoyed wine and had a good time, and sometimes that's its own kind of bliss.

Why swirl? To release the aromas — the contact with air wakes the wine up. She half-loves Forrest's alternate theory that you're summoning the flavor gods. On tasting technique, she suggests drawing in a little air like sipping through a mini cocktail straw (no gargling required) and letting the wine touch all points of your palate, since you taste different things in different places — without getting too fancy about it.

And sniffing the cork? Mostly theater. A cork smells like cork. If you want to know whether a wine is tainted, smell the wine in the glass, not the stopper — a lesson she picked up early in her training.

For the Wine-Curious listener, it's five minutes of permission to stop being intimidated by the rituals — and to understand what's worth doing and what's just for show.

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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 Premium Blend Cocktails from nothing. In this episode, Gino walks Forrest through:

• The harrowing details of the family's escape from Cuba — a stolen shrimp boat, Soviet-era communism, a Bay of Pigs connection, and a Coast Guard rescue
• His academic path through Stetson University and an MBA from the University of Miami
• How a sales job with Oscar Mayer led him to discover a wine-based spirit product that nobody was marketing correctly
• The origin of the Premium Blend partnership with his brother Henry, who was running a Colombian mining equipment company in Miami at the time
• The critical role of Florida Distillers and a mentor named Chris Mitchell, who took a chance on two unknown entrepreneurs with no industry experience
• Why education was Premium Blend's biggest early challenge — and how "getting the liquid to the lips" at trade shows and samplings changed everything

The wine-based cocktail space has exploded since the 90s, and Premium Blend was there at the beginning — grinding through skepticism one margarita at a time.

Learn more at premiumblend.com

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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, a shy grape next to an aromatic Gewürztraminer, or one bottle tasted at first sip, again at thirty minutes, and again at two hours to feel what time and air really do. There are no winners, no losers, and no test — just an experience built to make the lesson stick and get people genuinely excited to drink wine.

Maryse also pulls back the curtain on making the book. Illustrating it took five or six months — most of them while she was pregnant — and proved trickier than expected. On Instagram, funny tasting notes hand her ready-made visual ideas; for the book she deliberately chose the generic, professional terms people actually use, which meant figuring out how to paint something as abstract as "rustic," "silky," or "leathery." Writing was its own slow burn, since she's a self-described fiddler who can't move on until a line sounds exactly right.

Asked for her home run, she points to the "character" chapter. Instead of the technical checklist of fruits, non-fruits, and "medium-plus" this-and-that she was trained in, she gives readers something more relatable: a wine that's friendly, that's giving golden retriever energy. It's a warmer, more human way in.

Forrest names the throughline — she's not dumbing wine down, she's making something genuinely complex feel approachable. This isn't soda off an assembly line; it's the product of an enormous amount of craft, and she wants more people to feel welcome to it. Maryse agrees, wondering aloud why wine intimidates people in a way that describing a restaurant dish or a piece of art simply doesn't. The stigma, she says, is what wine has had to work hardest to overcome — and helping people get past it is the whole point.

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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 solve with Premium Blend Cocktails. Their wine-based spirits are legally classified as wine — meaning any venue with a basic beer and wine license (which in Florida costs around $400) can serve them. The result? Cocktail-style drinks, no liquor license required.

In this episode, Gino explains:

• Why liquor licenses are so expensive and hard to obtain
• How Premium Blend products are formulated to qualify legally as wine
• The difference between a liquor license and a beer-and-wine license — and why it matters for thousands of venues
• How his family escaped Cuba thanks to an uncle who literally stole a boat
• Growing up bilingual in Newark and Miami with a famous Cuban singer-songwriter father

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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 pivot that shaped her path — leaving New York not because she'd outgrown the wine bar, but because she was ready for a new experience and drawn to the easy access to wine country that San Francisco offered. She admits she wasn't overthinking the cross-country move in her late 20s, which she figures is exactly the right way to make big decisions: try it, and change course if it doesn't work.

The conversation lingers on a standout wine-country memory — a Napa producer pouring an unexpectedly aromatic Grignolino, a grape you rarely see, that felt gloriously out of type for the region — though her heart belongs to cooler-climate Sonoma Pinot.

Then Forrest turns to the main event: How to Sound Wine Smart. Maryse explains how her Instagram account revealed that wine's real barrier isn't the wine — it's the language. People freeze at the shop or restaurant, unsure what they're being sold, and just nod along. Most wine books bury terminology in a tiny glossary at the back; she wanted to flip that, building a fun, visual, genuinely useful resource that reads like a friend talking over a glass rather than a textbook. Forrest praises the book's approachable breakdowns — like how to actually taste a glass of wine — and Maryse sums up her whole mission in a sentence: make it easy to digest, and make it sound human.

For the Wine-Curious listener, this one's a permission slip: you don't need to be trained, and you don't need to fake it. You just need the right words.

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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, Rusty tests your memory on Chuck's go-to Niçoise salad dressed with cold-pressed Georgia olive oil, his resort chef tasting menu based in Boone, North Carolina at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the brilliant pairing of a Yadkin Valley orange wine from Hanover Park with slow-braised short ribs. You'll also revisit his four-cheat-days-a-month philosophy of sustainable healthy eating, his 2014 book The Chef's Recovery, his observations on entire generations opting out of alcohol after Covid, and his last-meal-on-earth answer: a margherita pizza and his finest bottle of French wine, shared with the people he loves. Plus a bonus question about uncrustables that had to be heard to be believed. Score yourself, share your results, and remember — life's too short for bad wine and wrong answers.

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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 paycheck, but all the wine she could drink and a hands-on crash course she calls the best "fall camp" of her life. From literally stomping grapes to learning alongside fans, pros, and travelers from around the world, it cemented her identity as a hands-on, visual learner.

Then there's Terroir Wine Bar in New York City, where owner Paul Greco took a chance on her. With around 50 wines by the glass — every white a Riesling — Terroir taught Maryse the art of the confident pivot: you want a Chardonnay? Here's a Riesling that fits the bill. More importantly, it taught her how to talk about wine in a way that's fun, not snobby — the philosophy that now defines her work and her new book.

Also in this episode: surviving life with a 10-month-old until that first evening glass, why there's zero shame in a Trader Joe's bottle, and why getting paid in wine is a very real industry tradition.

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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 to making healthier "uncrustables" for kids using sourdough, chia, and seasonal fruit

The post-COVID shift away from alcohol and how he adapts with mocktails and fermented non-alcoholic beverages

Inside his Yadkin Valley spring tasting menu at The Resort Chef in Boone, NC

How he found the perfect orange wine from Hanover Park to pair with a 6-hour stewed short rib

His pushback strategy when clients are resistant to wine pairings or stuck on sweet wines only

Upcoming books: the C5 Longevity Cuisine Cookbook and a Hidden Vegetable cookbook

His PhD in progress and what's next for Real Medical Meals, The Resort Chef, and Thankfully Local Private Chefs

The "last meal on Earth" question — margarita pizza, a great French bottle, and a comet

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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 a father's encouragement into a masterpiece: why he chose "South Detroit," a place that doesn't exist, purely because it sang better; how the song shattered songwriting convention by holding its chorus until the final 50 seconds; and how the band captured the instrumental live in a single take at Fantasy Studios. From the Sopranos finale to the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress, this is the story behind the anthem that refused to fade — told in five minutes, no filler.

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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 market produce, keeps his menus constantly evolving throughout the year.

Then comes the fun part: the classic last-meal-on-Earth question. Chuck doesn't hesitate, picturing a margarita pizza fresh out of the oven, shared with family and his closest people, paired with the nicest bottle of French wine in his collection, all while watching a comet streak across the sky.

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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 performing stand-up comedy at the DC Improv, quietly assembled everything she needed to become The Wine Coach.

Her one-woman show, Something to Whine About, is unlike anything else in wine education. Audiences arrive to find a flight of wines waiting at their seats and leave having competed in the Cork Dork Challenge, earned their drinking names, and watched a self-proclaimed wine snob get gently humbled by Laurie's blind smell test. The show has played Caesars Atlantic City, Caroline's on Broadway, and the HBO Women in Comedy Festival, where Laurie took over a Boston theater and ran a live wine tasting during intermission.

Off stage, Laurie hosts The Sipping Point, a weekly podcast featuring chefs, winemakers, and culinary personalities. She leads international wine tours to destinations including Bordeaux and Tuscany, and her free Wine Coach app (available on iPhone and Android) puts her wine picks, podcast, and Q&A access in one place. For upcoming shows, tours, and her newsletter, visit thewinecoach.com. Find her on Instagram and Threads at @thewinecoach and on Facebook as The Wine Coach.

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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 bucket list and wouldn't trade for anything. Through all of it, her mission has never wavered: help people think different and drink different by trusting their own taste rather than deferring to wine culture's unwritten rulebook. While she's tasted bottles most wine lovers only dream about — Château Pétrus, Barolo, aged Sauternes — what genuinely excites her most is tracking down a killer wine under $25 and sharing it with an audience who didn't know it existed.

Find Laurie on Instagram and Threads at @thewinecoach, on Facebook as The Wine Coach, and download her free Wine Coach app on iPhone or Android for wine picks, podcast access, and direct Q&A. Upcoming shows, tours, and events live at thewinecoach.com. And as Laurie would say — Cheers.

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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 guest who pushed back hard against the chef's fixed wine pairing menu

How 30 years in the industry shaped his approach to expanding guests' palates

Why eastern North Carolina diners tend to prefer sweeter wines like muscadine and moscato

Using blueberry and strawberry wines as a bridge for sweet-wine-only clients

Early signs of success this spring in shifting client palates toward the full tasting experience

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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 effective when everyone is laughing and has four glasses in front of them.

The show is built to disarm. Guests get drinking names and chances to come onstage, competing in games like the Cork Dork Challenge and a blind smell test that has an impressive track record of humbling even the most confident wine snobs in the room. Laurie's secret weapon for dealing with hecklers? She built them into the show before they could cause trouble.

Off stage, Laurie hosts The Sipping Point, a weekly podcast featuring chefs, winemakers, and culinary storytellers, and she leads wine tours to destinations like Bordeaux and Tuscany. You can find her events, tours, podcast, and newsletter at thewinecoach.com.

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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, you'll hear how Steve Perry wrote like a sommelier — capturing a smoky bar room not by how it looked, but by how it smelled, that heavy swirl of wine and cheap perfume — and why he invented South Detroit, a place that doesn't exist, simply because it sang better. Forrest breaks down the song's rule-shattering structure, with a chorus that doesn't arrive until the final 50 seconds, and the legendary session at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley where the band captured the instrumental live in a single take. From the unforgettable cut-to-black of The Sopranos finale to becoming the best-selling digital rock song of the 20th century and its 2022 preservation in the Library of Congress National Recording Registry, this is the full pour behind an anthem that refused to let the glass run dry.

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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 to walk away from a six-figure tech career and never look back.

Along the way she reveals how a cooking class became a life-changing moment — not just because it deepened her love of wine and food pairing, but because it introduced her to Chef Michael, now her husband, whose New York-New Jersey wit matched hers from the first sarcastic exchange across a kitchen counter. After a three-month sabbatical in Australia exploring wineries and reimagining her future, Laurie was handed a severance package and given the greatest gift of all: no reason to return.

Today Laurie leads wine tours to Bordeaux, Tuscany, and beyond, and continues to build a community of wine lovers united by curiosity, affordability, and a complete absence of attitude. Learn more at thewinecoach.com.

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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 restaurants only talk about.

The spring menu features courses like asparagus, lemon seared trout, spring chicken with ancient grains, goat cheese, and a lemon olive oil cake for dessert — each paired with wines from the region, including a Linville dry white. And the summer menu, coming the second or third week of June, brings in heirloom tomatoes, mountain berries, and a whole new slate of North Carolina pairings.

But the episode highlight might be Chef Chuck's search for the perfect wine to accompany a 5-to-7-hour braised short rib. His answer: orange wine from Hanover Park in the Yadkin Valley — one of the first producers of orange wine in North Carolina, crafting French varietals with a spicy back-palate finish that bridges the world between red and white. It's the pairing nobody expected, and it works.

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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 wine education to creating a one-woman show called Something to Whine About.

What sets Laurie apart isn't just her credentials — it's her philosophy. After years of studying wine the traditional way, she realized audiences don't want a lecture; they want a great time. Armed with that insight and a surprisingly transformative comedy class at the DC Improv, she learned to meet wine lovers exactly where they are, using humor and interaction to make the education stick.

Catch Laurie live as she performs Something to Whine About on July 10th at The Room at Cedar Grove in Lewes, Delaware. You can learn more about Laurie and her work at thewinecoach.com.

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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 also weighs in on the seismic shift reshaping the restaurant industry: whole generations of adults opting out of alcohol entirely, pushing beverage programs toward craft kombuchas, mocktails, and low-fermentation options. And yes, he still programs in four cheat days a month — because real life deserves a cheat sheet.

Then things get seriously delicious. Chef Chuck walks through his Resort Chef tasting menu, rooted in Boone, North Carolina, where Appalachian and Blue Ridge mountain culinary traditions run hundreds of years deep. The menu pairs hyper-seasonal local ingredients with wines from the Yadkin Valley — one of the most undersung wine regions in the country, growing nearly every domestic grape variety you can name.

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