Norman Hardie, @normanhardiewinery, is the owner & winemaker of Norman Hardie Winery in Prince Edward County, Ontario, making some of the best Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and other Burgundian varietals in North America.
Learn more about Norman with the show notes here.
Norman is an incredibly well traveled winemaker with a highly trained palate. Having started his career as a sommelier with Four Seasons Hotels his intrigue of making the wines he loved so much, particularly Pinot Noir & Chardonnay, grew so much that he decided to go on a journey of working twelve harvests in six years in both hemispheres.
When the search for a vineyard site came to a close in 2003, he found himself in Prince Edward County, Ontario, Canada where the Norman Hardie Winery resides today. Making what chefs like David McMillin of the famed Joe Beef in Montreal call the, “finest white wines in all of North America,” Norman has an approach to winemaking that is not only classical in style but unusual at the same time.
We’ll get into some of the extreme tactics that Norman and his team have to employ simply to keep their vineyards alive, but one of my favorites he mentions is having helicopters hover over the vineyard to ward off frost. We chat about Norm’s story, planting a vineyard, keeping it alive, winemaking, and many other things in this conversation, which I thoroughly enjoyed and I highly recommend you grab a few bottles of his wine on their website, NormanHardie.com
Jennifer Reichardt is the founder and winemaker of Raft Wines, a small production wine label based in Santa Rosa, California with a heavy focus on Rhone Varietals.
Learn more about Jen with the show notes here.
You may wonder where the name Raft comes from, as you’ll find out in the episode, Jen’s background is based in the duck business and a raft is a dense flock of swimming birds.
In this episode, we dig into Jen’s story, how she got into wine when being raised in a household that was all about ducks, why and how she makes the types of wines she does, and the exciting and rewarding work that she is doing with Rebuild Wine Country, and a new project with the help of Liberty Duck and Tonnellerie Radoux, to help those who have been horrendously affected by the recent wildfires.
We also dig into all of the fundraising and work that she and Rebuild Wine Country are doing to help those in Northern California that were so devastatingly affected by these fires.
If you feel so inclined to donate and/or volunteer with Rebuild Wine Country, you can go to RebuildWineCountry.org
Chelsea Boss, @seaboss on Instagram, is the general manager of Senses Wines who make fantastic small production pinot noir and chardonnay based in Occidental, California and one of the founders of Rebuild Wine Country, an organization that is working with Habitat for Humanity of Sonoma County to raise $5 million dollars in order to rebuild owned & rented homes lost in the Sonoma, Napa, Solano, Mendocino, and Lake County wildfires.
You can learn more about Chelsea with the show notes here.
The name Senses may sound familiar as we had one of the founders, Chris Strieter, on in a previous episode.
But in this episode, I wanted to dig into the operations, marketing, sales side of running a wine business and Chelsea’s experience and perspective on doing just that as a GM. We also dig into all of the fundraising and work that she and Rebuild Wine Country are doing to help those in Northern California that were so devastatingly affected by these fires.
If you feel so inclined to donate and/or volunteer with Rebuild Wine Country, you can go to RebuildWineCountry.org for more information.