Paul Hobbs' wine story began with a secret.

His mother didn't allow alcohol at the family dinner table. But one winter evening in 1969, his father arrived with Dixie cups filled with a mysterious yellow-orange liquid and asked the family to taste it. Paul's mother declared it the best juice she'd ever tasted.

The bottle was 1962 Château d’Yquem.

Paul was headed toward medical school, not the wine business. But his father's interest in vineyards and an influential professor at Notre Dame helped redirect him toward UC Davis. In 1977, his research into French and American oak helped land him a position at Robert Mondavi.

What followed was an extraordinary career.

In this episode of Uncorking What's Next, Jeff Zacharia talks with Paul about working with Robert Mondavi, joining the team behind the earliest vintages of Opus One, and experiencing firsthand the collision between California's questioning, experimental culture and Bordeaux's deeply established winemaking traditions.

From there, Paul's search for great vineyards took him around the world.

One of the most consequential stops was Argentina. Paul recalls questioning the accepted wisdom that Malbec was primarily useful as a blending grape. Working with Nicolás Catena and experimenting with old vineyards, different farming practices and barrels, he helped produce a Malbec that attracted the attention of the first wave of American wine press visiting Argentina in the early 1990s.

The conversation travels further, to Armenia, where Paul encountered the challenge of developing wine in a place without the modern infrastructure or trained workforce he was accustomed to, and eventually back to the Finger Lakes, bringing his career remarkably close to where his father's original wine ambitions began.

But this isn't simply a retrospective.

Paul and Jeff discuss what the wine industry needs to do differently today: how younger consumers discover wine, why traditional critics no longer control the conversation as they once did, and why the industry has to adapt its communication to a world of social media, smartphones and new voices.

Paul also reflects on how his own definition of success has changed. After decades of pursuing vineyards, countries and new challenges, he argues that the next generation should pursue what matters to them, take risks while they can, and be willing to break rules.

In this episode:

• Paul's first wine: 1962 Château d’Yquem served in a Dixie cup
• Why he nearly became a doctor instead of a winemaker
• UC Davis and joining Robert Mondavi
• What Robert Mondavi understood about building Napa Valley
• The fascinating cultural clashes behind early Opus One
• Challenging accepted thinking about Malbec in Argentina
• The risks behind some of Paul's biggest breakthroughs
• Making wine in Armenia and the impact wine can have on a community
• Returning home to the Finger Lakes
• How the next generation is changing wine communication
• Why Paul's definition of success has evolved
• His advice on taking chances and breaking rules
• Why wine, ultimately, is about connection

Connect:

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Email: jzfinewine@gmail.com

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Carlos de Jesus of Amorim Cork joins Jeff Zacharia to explore how the cork industry fought its way back from the crisis of TCA, cork taint, and why the humble cork may matter more to wine's future than most of us realize.

For centuries, natural cork was virtually synonymous with fine wine. Then came TCA.

As cork taint damaged bottles and consumer confidence, the cork industry faced an existential challenge: could a natural product produced by the billions ever achieve the extraordinary consistency demanded by modern wineries?

Carlos de Jesus has spent more than 20 years at Amorim, the world's largest producer of natural cork, at the center of that transformation. In this conversation, he explains how Amorim combined preventative measures, new production methods and increasingly sophisticated testing to address contaminants at concentrations measured in parts per trillion.

Then the conversation moves from the winery to Portugal's cork forests. Carlos explains why harvesting cork doesn't require cutting down the tree, how cork production supports a much larger environmental and economic ecosystem, and why sustainability has become central to the case for natural cork.

In this episode:

• What TCA is and why humans can detect incredibly small amounts
• How Amorim approached the cork-taint crisis
• Quality control measured in parts per trillion
• How natural cork has changed over the past two decades
• Cork vs. screw caps
• The relationship between closures and wine aging
• Why Portugal's cork forests are environmentally significant
• Cork recycling and second-life applications
• Why an ancient product continues to evolve through modern science

Carlos also takes us into the cork forest itself, where a harvest still uses techniques with roots stretching back thousands of years.

This is an episode about far more than pulling a cork. It's about trust—and how an industry nearly lost it, then set out to earn it back.

00:00 Cold open and introduction

00:40 Carlos's background — from political science to Amorim

02:56 Why cork felt like something bigger than a job

05:35 What TCA is and what it does to wine

07:33 How Amorim combined prevention and cure to defeat cork taint

11:16 The dark years — when the market couldn't yet see the progress

13:26 The cork forest: 40 million years of native species

15:24 The 43-year timeline from planting to quality cork

18:17 Why even everyday wines benefit from cork

21:52 Cork's second life: flooring, aerospace, and the NYC recycling project

25:02 Premox and what the research actually shows about cork's role

28:48 The closure wars: where things stand in 20 years

31:33 The cultural relevance of the cork pop — and what's at stake

34:34 Early wine memory: a vertical of Château Latour

36:25 Breakout moment: Jancis Robinson's article on his birthday

38:20 Advice for anyone who feels they don't belong in wine

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Contact: jzfinewine@gmail.com

In 1981, someone had the nerve to plant Cabernet and Merlot on the Tuscan coast in a place no one thought could grow great wine. Forty years later, Ornellaia is one of the most celebrated estates on the planet. Lamberto Frescobaldi joins Jeff Zacharia to tell the whole story and to explain why the best may still be ahead.

About Lamberto Frescobaldi

Lamberto Frescobaldi is the head of the Frescobaldi family wine estates, one of Italy's most historic wine dynasties with roots in Tuscany dating to the 14th century. Under his leadership, Frescobaldi acquired and built Ornellaia into a global benchmark, alongside celebrated estates including Masseto, CastelGiocondo, and Nipozzano.

In this conversation

— How Bolgheri went from an afterthought to one of Italy's great wine regions

— The 1998 Wine Spectator Top 100 moment Lamberto calls "a rocket" for Ornellaia

— What Ornellaia actually feels like; warm, polished, Mediterranean in spirit, never asking you to dress up for it

— Why Lamberto refuses the "Super Tuscan" label, and why he's grateful Americans invented it

— Walking a vineyard and seeing not a cluster of grapes but a bottle with a label already on it

— The new generation of wine drinkers, more open, more curious, less beholden to old hierarchies

— Why people will drink less wine in the years ahead, and why that is not a bad thing

— The line Lamberto says he would put on the back of every bottle: ‘forbidden to drink alone’

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction

01:35 Growing up Frescobaldi — countryside, cellars, and no pressure

05:45 An early sip through a straw and the feeling of being grown up

08:30 It all starts in the vineyard — a connection to Graeme MacDonald

11:27 How Ornellaia began: Bolgheri, Cabernet, and a radical vision

14:25 The 1985 first vintage and the road to recognition

15:24 The 1998 Wine Spectator Top 100 — the moment everything changed

16:40 How to describe Ornellaia: warmth, balance, and a wink

19:45 Super Tuscan — a label Lamberto never uses but is grateful for

25:26 How the luxury wine consumer is changing

28:26 The future of wine — opportunity, tension, and staying hungry

31:05 Bolgheri's continued potential and the challenge for new producers

34:34 The long view — investment horizons and generational thinking

35:10 Stewardship: echoes of Lafleur and Laura Catena

36:41 Authenticity: seeing a bottle hanging in the vineyard

39:03 Place matters more than ever — every bottle is a trip

40:52 Wine is not something you drink alone

42:01 Early wine memory: a straw, a bottle, and a room full of oil-sealed wine

44:06 Breakout moment: the best has yet to come

45:34 Advice for anyone who feels they don't belong in wine

Related episodes

Ep. 001 — Omri Ram, Château Lafleur

Ep. 004 — Graeme & Alex MacDonald, MacDonald Vineyards

Ep. 006 — Dr. Laura Catena, Bodega Catena Zapata

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La Tête d'Or