Rajat Parr - Superstar Somm Turned Farmer

This week: Raj Parr — one of the most influential sommeliers America has produced — on why he left the dining room for the dirt.Raj ran the wine program for the Michael Mina Restaurant Group, co-founded Sandhi and Domaine de la Côte, helpedlead the push toward balance in California wine, and co-wrote the James Beard Award–winning Sommelier’s Atlas of Taste. Now he farms by hand at Phelan Farms in Cambria. He and Jon trace the improbable path — Calcutta to culinary school,65 rejection-adjacent job offers, a borrowed one-way ticket, and Larry Stone’s blind tastings — then the harder second act: regenerative farming, the one-shot-a-year math of winegrowing, and why the industry’s conversation has shifted from the cellar to the soil.New episodes Tuesday mornings.