@WineWithJon

This week: Amanda McCrossin —SommVivant — on why the wine industry doesn’t have a simplification problem, ithas a translation problem.Amanda is a certified sommelier who ran the wine program at PRESS in Napa and has since built an audience of roughly half a million people by making wine feel approachable without dumbing it down. She and Jon talk about her path from a non-drinking household outside Philadelphia to one of America’s great wine lists, why she started filming a winery a day in 2015, how she handles brand partnerships without losing trust,and what she notices standing quietly in an ordinary wine shop — the label doing all the marketing, 91 versus 92 deciding the sale, and shoppers who are moving faster than we think. Plus her fix: a wine store organized around how you actually live.New episodes Tuesday mornings.

Four guys at a steakhouse order bourbon, an old fashioned, and a beer — and the guy who actually wants the Barolo orders bourbon anyway.This week's essay is about that hesitation. Wine is five thousand years old and was never gendered anywhere — until, in about forty years, American culture quietly stamped it pink. Jon walks through the numbers (only ~16% of American men who drink prefer wine; in France and Italy men out-drink women on it), the three forces that did it — marketing, media, and the culture of expertise — and what it's costing everyone, including the women it supposedly belongs to. The fix isn't camo labels and rugged fonts. It's de-gendering wine entirely, and giving everyone permission to not know yet.New episodes Tuesday mornings.

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.

In 1993, a working actor planted five acres of pinot noir at the bottom of the world, in a region most people said was too cold to grow anything serious. His neighbors thought it was ahobby.Sam Neill died last month, and two completely different sets of obituaries ran for the same man — one for the movie star, one in the wine trade press. This week’s essay is about the secondone, and about the strange arithmetic of a grapevine: plant it today, get nothing for years, and the best fruit arrives long after you might. Which means nobody plants a vine for themselves. Then a story out of southern Ukraine — a winegrower tending vines with a rocket buried in a row of chardonnay — makesthe point unavoidable. Wheat feeds you this winter. A vine is a bet that there will be winters worth surviving for.New episodes Tuesday mornings.

What did your parents actually drink — not what they taught you about wine, but what was in the fridge? This week is a solo essay about that question, and the pattern it reveals: every generation rejects the wine its parents loved. Jug wine became Robert Parker's scores. The boomers' big Napa Cabs gave way to Gen X skepticism and then the millennial natural-wine rebellion. And now Gen Z, who aren't rejecting a style of wine so much as opting out of wine altogether. Jon walks through why that's happening, why chasing them with cans and edgy labels backfires, and what actually works instead — making space, and getting out of the way. The bottle changes. The table doesn't. New episodes Tuesday mornings. 

This week: Karen MacNeil —author of The Wine Bible, creator of WineSpeed, and founder of Come Over October — on the improbable road from a runaway teenager drinking 89-cent Bulgarian reds to the most decorated wine writer in America.Karen grew up poor in the Nevada desert, ran away at fourteen, and taught herself wine over the cheapest bottles in the shop. She landed in 1970s New York with six dollars, collected 325rejection slips before her first sale, and — to earn a seat tasting with the men who ran wine then — agreed not to speak for six years. She and Jon talk about the book she wished she’d had, why wine education got too standardized, Come Over October, and why wine belongs to well-being and connection, not theabstinence-vs-abuse binary.New episodes Tuesday mornings.

This week: Michael Amorosia — founder of The Amorosia Cellar and former frontman of the faceless hardcore band REACTIONS — on why “wine is failing the room,” and how to make it the move for the next generation.Michael went from covering his face on stage (so fans reacted to the music, not the image) to putting a face on a wine industry that’s been faceless forever. A whiskey guy who fell for wineon a delayed-honeymoon Napa trip, he now argues that wine has been turned into a test — credentials, vocabulary, performance — when it should be a bottle at the table that opens your night. He and Jon talk aspiration vs. accessibility, what the U.S. can learn from Europe, and how to build a room newcomers actually want to walk into.New episodes Tuesday mornings.

The most personal essay Jon has shared on this show.It starts at a graduation — a giant fairground hall, his son crossing a stage on a monitor from thirty rows back, eighteen years condensed into a four-second walk. After the ceremony, Jon drove back to a Hilton Garden Inn next to a freeway because he'd sold the house. His ex-wife turned to him and said, "I don't know what to do." Neither did he.Out of that quiet came this essay — about the three stages of a life. The first: dreaming, pure desire for a life you haven't lived yet. The second: building — career, kids, marriage, the years you stop asking "what do I want?" and start asking "what do I need to do?" And the third — the one English calls "empty nest" and Spanish calls tercera edad — the stage without a real name, where the obligations lift and the dreams come back.Jon walks through all three using wine as the through-line: grape, barrel, bottle. He talks about law school, a freezing Maryland harvest, COVID-era Burgundy obsessions, his mother's three stages (Chicago, Cleveland, and an Arizona realtor's license with a biker boyfriend), Colombia and two-and-a-half-hour meals, a lake house he's building mostly as a trick to see his grandkids more — and a wine bar he didn't need, but wanted.This is the origin episode. The one that explains the person behind all the others."The grape doesn't know it's going to be wine. The barrel doesn't know what it's building. But the bottle is where it all makes sense."Host: Jon Frutkin (@winewithjon) — lawyer turned collector turned wine bar owner, Preface Wine in Delray Beach, FL.

This week: Hillary Cole — former Air Force intelligence officer and author of Vineyards of War — on what wine and warfare have always had in common.Hilary spent ten years in intelligence (a Russian linguist reassigned to counterterrorism on 9/11) before a glass of Barolo rerouted her life into wine. Now a French wine scholar living in Albania, she joins Jon to talk about reading a wine the way she once read a battlespace: why Champagne became the drink of celebration in a region leveled by war every century, theKosovo full-circle moment that bookended her two careers, and why she teaches beginners structure and history instead of tasting notes — because “tasting notes can’t give youhumanity.”New episodes Tuesday mornings.

This week: Kelli White — wine writer, decade-long sommelier, and director of education at Meadowood — on Napa as a conversion engine and why the way we talk about wine keepsturning newcomers away.Kelli went from a Howard Hughes Fellowship in neurogenetics to writing two of the most talkedabout wine books of the last decade: Napa Valley Then & Now, the encyclopedic history, andWine Confident, which argues there’s no wrong way to enjoy wine. She and Jon talk about what living among the growers taught her (wine is agriculture, full stop), why tasting-note “winespeak” makes people feel like they’re failing a test, and why a first trip to wine country might be the best thing that ever happens to a curious drinker.New episodes Tuesday mornings.

Jon walked into a BMW dealership and put a deposit down on a car that hadn't arrived yet. He didn't need the salesperson to explain anything — the brand had spent decades showing him the ladder. Then he walked into his local Publix wine aisle and watched the whole system fall apart.Five hundred bottles. Five hundred unrelated labels. What no consumer can see is that many of those bottles are owned by the same companies — and that a ladder exists. Constellation owns Josh, Robert Mondavi, The Prisoner, and Schrader. Gallo owns Barefoot, Apothic, William Hill, and Orin Swift. Thearchitecture is already built. The industry just refuses to make it visible.Jon calls it the Josh Problem. In this essay, he walks through howMercedes, Rolex, and Tudor get this right; how LVMH actually does it in wine with Veuve Clicquot and Dom Pérignon; how Coca-Cola makes its portfolio legible under the exact same distribution constraints wine claims it can't overcome;who pays the price when the ladder stays hidden; and why the work of building it now falls to wine bars, retailers, sommeliers, and the people building places like Preface Wine."Wine hides the ladders. And then we wonder why people feel lost. The ladders exist. Someone just needs to turn on the lights."Host: Jon Frutkin (@winewithjon) — lawyer turned collector turned wine bar owner, opening Preface Wine in Delray Beach, FL. 

Don and Petie Kladstrup are two of the most accomplishedjournalists to ever turn their lens toward wine.Don is a three-time Emmy winner who covered the fall of theBerlin Wall, wars in the Middle East, and the battle against apartheid for CBS and ABC. Petie won the Overseas Press Club Award and served as protocol officer for the U.S. Ambassador to UNESCO. They moved to Paris in the late 1970s almostby accident — and have been living and writing in France ever since.In 2001, they wrote Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, andthe Battle for France's Greatest Treasure. Twenty-five years later, it's still in print in roughly twenty languages, and it's arguably the most important wine book ever written — partly because it's not really a wine book at all. It's a war story told through wine.In this 25th-anniversary conversation, Don and Petie sitdown with Jon to talk about the accidental Paris move that started it all, how two Americans got French families to open up about a chapter the French themselves wouldn't touch, why the book's second-biggest market is Germany, a 1914 Pol Roger tasting that shouldn't have been possible, a Soweto Christmasparty near the end of apartheid where someone tasted champagne for the first time, and the winemaker who told them: "Our wines evolve slowly and nobly…this gives us a taste of eternity."Guests: Don andPetie Kladstrup — authors of Wine and War, Champagne, and Champagne Charlie.Based in Paris and the Dordogne.Host: Jon Frutkin(@winewithjon) — lawyer turned collector turned wine bar owner, opening PrefaceWine in Delray Beach, FL.

Georgia Panagopoulou was a chemical engineer. Then she walked away from a "safe corporate job" in the middle of Greece's financial crisis, moved to Santorini, and enrolled in a Master's program that took her to 30 wine countries in 18 months. She documented the whole thing on Instagram — andaccidentally became one of the most followed wine voices in Europe.Today she runs Wine Gini, a digital marketing agency that helps wineries across 25+ countries tell their stories online. She's 10 years deep in the digital wine world, and she's blunt about what the industry keeps getting wrong.In this conversation, Georgia and Jon get into why every wine account online used to be "just pictures of bottles," why wineries say they want to be authentic and then reject the content that actually is, the difference between treating wine as the topic versus the glue, her CSV framework (Consistency, Storytelling, Value), what Greece is teaching the traditional wine world — and her free consulting for Jon as he opens Preface Wine: show the backstage, document the chef-vs-sommelier argument, and stop reciting cherry-and-strawberry tasting notes nobody cares about.Guest: Georgia Panagopoulou (@wine.gini) — Founder, Wine Gini | Digital WineMarketer & Creator | Athens, GreeceHost: Jon Frutkin (@winewithjon) — lawyer turned collector turned wine barowner, opening Preface Wine in Delray Beach, FL. 

My grandfather went from kerosene to AOL. One life. That kind of speed creates a craving for something slower — something that anchors you to a specific time and place. Wine might be the most powerful nostalgia machine ever invented, because every bottle carries something almost nothing else does: a year. In this solo episode, I explore why that year matters, how wine bridges generations at a dinner table, and why a bottle of 2019 will still taste like 2019 long after we've forgotten what that year felt like. In a world moving at the speed of light, wine moves at the speed of seasons. That's not quaint. That's essential.

The wine industry has a generational problem — and almost nothing it believes about it is true.Pauline Vicard runs ARENI Global, the leading international think tank on the future of fine wine. Her team studied how young people in six cities — Paris, London, New York, Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai — actually get into fine wine. They started with six hypotheses. Only one held up.In this conversation, Pauline and Jon get into what the research actually says: why parents don't pass wine down (friends do), why women enter at equal rates and then disappear in their 30s, why the "$18 glass" problem is quietly killing wine's consumer base, why Succession and White Lotus have done more damage to fine wine than any health study, and why the industry's bottle-selling business model may be reaching its expiration date.Plus — Pauline's free consulting for Jon as he opens Preface Wine: how to curate a room, why young people don't go out for wine (they go out for each other), and how to "monetize friendship" without making it feel transactional.Guest: Pauline Vicard — Co-Founder & Executive Director, ARENI Global (https://areni.global)Host: Jon Frutkin (@winewithjon) — lawyer turned collector turned wine bar owner, opening Preface Wine in Delray Beach, FL.

Eric LeVine found wine "hopelessly intimidating" — until a 1999bike trip through Tuscany changed everything. A few years later, he built CellarTracker during a Microsoft sabbatical. It's now the world's largest wine community: 13+ million tasting notes, 175 million bottles tracked, nearly a million users.We talk about what two decades of community data reveal about how people actually engage with wine, why he avoided gamification, and what the industry gets wrong about welcoming newcomers.Guest: Eric LeVine — Founder & CEO, CellarTrackerWineWithJon — new episodes every Tuesday.Connect: @winewithjon | [email protected]

What does a $25,000 bottle of Burgundy have to do with the $14 Pinot Noir at Trader Joe's?More than you'd think.Most people assume the fine wine world is a parallel universe for rich people — disconnected from the wine the rest of us actually drink. In this essay, Jon makes the opposite case: the top of the wine world is the reason the rest of it works.Using the Ferrari-and-Toyota analogy — the kid with the Ferrari poster on his wall who grows up to drive a Civic but still cares about cars — Jon argues that aspiration builds categories. Champagne's mythology fuels its mass market.Bordeaux's classified growths made Napa possible. Burgundy's prestige launched Oregon's 700+ wineries. Remove the top of the pyramid, and the bottom doesn't get stronger — it gets flatter."Fine wine and everyday wine aren't two separate worlds. They're the same world at different altitudes. The mountain is the reason the valley has a view at all."Host: Jon Frutkin (@winewithjon) — lawyer turned collector turned contentcreator, opening Preface Wine in Delray Beach, FL.

Sam Capaldi liquidated her savings at 22 to go to sommelier school. Today she's the "No Snob Somm" — 300,000+ followers, a wine club, a wine label, and a community built by pairing wine with Taco Bell instead of white tablecloths.In this episode, Sam and Jon get into why the wine industry keeps losing the next generation, what COVID virtual tastings taught her about what people actually want, the role vulnerability plays in her brand, the story behind FaffWine Co., and the advice she gives anyone who's curious about wine but feels like they don't know enough to start.If you've ever felt like wine wasn't "for you" — this one is.Guest: Sam Capaldi (@samanthasommelier) — Certified Sommelier, Founder ofSamantha Sommelier, Co-Founder of Faff Wine Co. Website: https://www.samanthasommelier.com Faff Wine Co.: https://www.samanthasommelier.com/faffHost: Jon Frutkin (@winewithjon) — lawyer turned collector turned wine barowner, Preface Wine in Delray Beach, FL. 

Joe Emmett came from music into wine — and landed at Berry Bros & Rudd, Britain's oldest wine merchant. 326 years of history.He works with a younger clientele, giving him a unique perspective on how a historic institution connects with a new generation. We recorded this in person at their St James's Street original HQ in London.We talk about what younger clients want, how to balance heritage with accessibility, and what wine can learn from music.Guest: Joe Emmett — Account Management, Berry Bros & RuddWineWithJon — new episodes on Tuesday mornings.Connect: @winewithjon | [email protected] 

Chris Zago went from running food and beverage at a premiercountry club in St. Louis to pursuing his true passion — wine. For the past seven years, he’s been the Director of Advisory Services at UOVO Wine, the largest wine storage and collection services network in the United States. He works with everyone from first-time collectors to people with legendary cellars.In this conversation, we talk about what it actually takesto start collecting wine, the misconceptions that keep people from getting started, and how his hospitality background shaped the way he thinks about making wine feel welcoming.Topics covered:• Making the leap from hospitality to wine full-time• What “Advisory Services” actually means for collectors• How the wine collecting world has changed in seven years• The misconceptions that keep people from starting acollection• What the wine industry gets wrong about reaching newpeople• Lessons from country club hospitality that apply to wineWineWithJon is a podcast exploring how we make wineinteresting and compelling for the next generation. New episodes every Tuesday morning.—Guest: Chris Zago — Director of Advisory Services, UOVO WineWebsite: uovo.art/wineConnect:Instagram: @winewithjonEmail: [email protected]

The Surgeon General says loneliness is as deadly as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Young people are spending 70% less time together in person. And at the exact same moment, we'veconvinced them to stop drinking — removing one of humanity's oldest tools for connection.In this solo episode, I make a case. Not for drinking more. But for understanding what we've lost, and what wine might help us find again. Wine as social infrastructure. Wine as a practice of presence. Wine as a reason to stay at the table a little longer.This isn't a defense of alcohol. It's an honest conversation about connection in a world that's starving for it.

JC Restrepo and his wife Joanna came from Colombia with nothing and built one of South Florida's most beloved wine destinations — Happy Wine Calle Ocho in Little Havana. The New York Times named it to their Top 25 Miami Restaurants list in 2024. They did it without marketing budgets or PR campaigns. Just live music every night, graffiti-covered walls, cheap corkage, and a philosophy the Times summed up perfectly: "serious about the wine, but not about how to enjoy it."In this conversation, we talk about what it really takes to build a wine business that feels welcoming, why the biggest threat to wine isn't other alcohol — it's marijuana and health perception — and what gives him hope that the next generation will still embrace wine.Topics covered:Building a wine bar without marketing or PRWhy the real competition isn't spirits — it's cannabis and wellness cultureCreating a space where everyone feels welcomeWhat the wine industry gets wrong about younger drinkersAdvice for anyone opening a wine barWine with Jon is a podcast exploring how we make wine interesting and compelling for the next generation. New episodes every Tuesday at 5:30 AM.—Guest: JC Restrepo — Happy Wine Calle OchoLocation: 5792 SW 8th St, Miami, FL 33144Instagram: @happywinecalleochoConnect:Instagram: @winewithjonEmail: [email protected]

Lucina Sinclair went from Soho House — one of the world’s best membership organizations — to 67 Pall Mall, one of the world’s best wine clubs. She did it without a traditional wine background. When she joined, she immediately started her WSET certification — learning wine while running membership at a world-class club.Before wine, she worked in the music industry, including with Pete Tong. She knows how to make people feel like they belong. That’s a skill the wine world desperately needs more of.In this conversation, we talk about what membership really means, how to make wine feel welcoming instead of intimidating, and what the traditional wine world could learn from places like Soho House.Topics covered:• Going from Soho House to 67 Pall Mall• Learning wine while running a world-class wine club• How to make people feel like they belong• What the wine industry gets wrong about welcoming new people• What Soho House can teach the wine world• Breaking down the intimidation barrier in wineWineWithJon is a podcast exploring how we make wine interesting and compelling for the next generation. New episodes every Tuesday at 5:30 AM.—Guest: Lucina Sinclair — Head of Membership, 67 Pall MallWebsite: 67pallmall.comConnect:Instagram: @winewithjonEmail: [email protected]

Matt Horkey has uploaded over 2,000 videos to YouTube since 2015, building his brand into one of the most respectedwine channels on the platform. His tagline: "Bringing FUN back to the world of wine."In this conversation, we talk about what it takes to build a wine YouTube channel, why lesser-known regions are more approachable than the classics, and what the traditional wine world still gets wrong.If wine content can be fun, maybe wine can be too.

Welcome to Wine with Jon, a podcast for wine professionals thinking about the future of our industry.I'm Jonathan Frutkin—wine educator, collector, and owner of Preface Wine Bar in Delray Beach, Florida. In this first episode, I share my journey from food enthusiast to wine obsessive, and why I believe we need to have honest conversations abouthow to make wine compelling to younger generations.This isn't your typical wine podcast. We're not doing tasting notes or vintage reports. Instead, each week I'll sit down with sommeliers, winemakers, retailers, importers, and content creators to explore one question: How do we welcome new people into wine?In This Episode: • My origin story: from cutting vineyard vines to opening a wine bar • The intimidation gap that keeps peopleout of wine • Why I designed Preface as both a wine store and wine bar • How technology and AI can extend (not replace) human connection • What's coming next on this podcastIf you work in wine and you're thinking about these questions, this podcast is for you. Let's figure out the future together.Follow Wine with Jon: Instagram/TikTok/YouTube: @WineWithJon

A new podcast from @winewithjon. We explore the wine trade with industry leaders. Today we announce or new podcast series. Coming in April! Subscribe now.