Major Crush

It's finally time to share our full-length interview with director Jason Wise of SOMM TV! We've waited so long to share this interview, so we're extra excited about adding this episode to our collection. Jason is one of the best storytellers the wine world has to offer. So we want to invite you to dive into this episode head-first with Meredith and Lou and discover for yourself how delicious a conversation with Jason Wise can be! New episodes of Major Crush will begin dropping later this summer, so be on the look out! CONTACT US: If you have any questions or comments for Meredith and Lou, and you’re listening on the Anchor App, you can contact us directly through the app. If you’re listening to this podcast on any other platform, and you want to reach out, email us at info@majorcrushwines.com // Follow us on Instagram: @majorcrushwinecast // Be sure to check out all six seasons of Major Crush, plus get the latest episodes of Season Seven wherever you’re listening now!

It’s been a minute since we’ve shared an episode, but we’re glad you’re still here! We are excited to tell you about a full-length Major Crush episode that drops on Thursday, April 6th — it’s our latest interview with director Jason Wise of SOMM TV. It’s long overdue, but just like a well-made wine, a good story changes with time and when you finally open it up, there are so many beautiful layers to discover. Technically, this interview launches us into our seventh season, but the remaining episodes won’t be out until later this summer. We’ve decided to be extra choosy this season and part of that means that we be recording most of our interviews LIVE with our guests instead of remotely. But we will still be posting updates, fun facts, and helpful food and wine information on social media, so if you haven’t started following us yet, find us @majorcrushwinecast

Boy, do we have a fun little tease for you as our last episode of Season Six! Have you ever heard of the film SOMM? Or maybe you've heard of SOMM TV? We got to do a remote interview with Jason Wise, an American filmmaker known for his wine documentaries, Wait for Your Laugh featuring Rose Marie, The Delicacy about sea urchin divers, and the streaming service SOMM TV. This is just a short intro interview for now, but this summer, we plan to drop a full-length interview with Jason after the premiere of his latest film project for SOMM called The Whole Animal. So be sure you've subscribed to our show so the interview will be waiting for you in your episode queue! www.sommtv.com CONTACT US: If you have any questions or comments for Meredith and Lou, and you’re listening on the Anchor App, you can contact us directly through the app. If you’re listening to this podcast on any other platform, and you want to reach out, email us at info@majorcrushwines.com // Follow us on Instagram: @majorcrushwinecast // Be sure to

One of our most popular episodes of all time was when Meredith & Lou gave our listeners some tips on coming to the Wine Country. So we thought it was time to do a reboot of that show in this post-pandemic world to give you all a few more pointers on how to make the most of your time exploring the glorious world of wine!! So please enjoy this fun episode and then be sure and let us know how we can answer any of your questions or help you build your itinerary for YOUR visit to the California Wine Country! CONTACT US: If you have any questions or comments for Meredith and Lou, and you’re listening on the Anchor App, you can contact us directly through the app. If you’re listening to this podcast on any other platform, and you want to reach out, email us at info@majorcrushwines.com // Follow us on Instagram: @majorcrushwinecast // Be sure to check out all five seasons of Major Crush, plus get the latest episodes of Season Six wherever you’re listening now!

We’ll be back next week with a brand new episode!

One of our favorite things to do on the show is to take our listeners to a tasting room in the middle of Wine Country and invite them into our experience! That’s exactly what we did for this sit-down with James Frost, the winemaker from Auburn James Winery in Napa. He’s a soft-spoken gentleman with an amazing talent for making wine, and a genius way of explaining everything he does! If you want to learn more about his wines — including his stunning Auburn James Artist series — check out his website: www.auburnjames.com CONTACT US: If you have any questions or comments for Meredith and Lou, and you’re listening on the Anchor App, you can contact us directly through the app. If you’re listening to this podcast on any other platform, and you want to reach out, email us at info@majorcrushwines.com // Follow us on Instagram: @majorcrushwinecast // Be sure to check out all five seasons of Major Crush, plus get the latest episodes of Season Six wherever you’re listening now!

We are always thrilled when we have access to a winemaker we hear about all the time in the California Wine Country, and so when we were formally introduced to Ross Cobb, for us, the crush had started long ago! Ross Cobb is a humble and passionate person who arguably makes some of the most famous Pinot Noirs in all of Northern California. His story starts with joining the family tradition of making wine in the basement, but his love of the soil and his curious and open mind guide him into a career as one of the most noteworthy curators of wine we've met to date. If you want to learn more about Cobb Wines, be sure to visit the website (www.cobbwines.com) CONTACT US: If you have any questions or comments for Meredith and Lou, and you’re listening on the Anchor App, you can contact us directly through the app. If you’re listening to this podcast on any other platform, and you want to reach out, email us at info@majorcrushwines.com // Follow us on Instagram: @majorcrushwinecast // Be sure to check out all five se

We’re keeping things international in this episode of Major Crush, but the amazing part is that our friend, Mary Taylor of Mary Taylor Wines thinks like an American through and through! It was such a blast to sit down with Mary in New Orleans earlier this year to hear all about her (quite literally) crazy journey into the world of wine! In her own words, Mary’s approach to wine is completely informed by her "broke 24-year-old self" — which makes this one of the purest and most authentic discussions we’ve ever had about wine. If you want to find a local shop in your area that carries Mary Taylor Wine, use the zip code finder on her website: mt.wines  You’ll thank us for the hook-up because Mary Taylor Wine is absolutely crush-worthy in every possible way! CONTACT US: If you have any questions or comments for Meredith and Lou, and you’re listening on the Anchor App, you can contact us directly through the app. If you’re listening to this podcast on any other platform, and you want to reach out, email us at info

In honor of Easter, we wanted to share a different kind of episode with you - one where our producer, Sonja Zant, turns the tables on Mere & Lou by putting them in the "hot seat" with a challenge she already knows they'll find difficult: pairing wine and chocolate! But when you source the chocolates from the very best place, and you intentionally pair each bite with wines you already know you love, an adventure like this was certain to be fun!  We'd like to thank The Chocolate Cow in Sonoma for helping us pick out the most mind-blowingly delicious chocolates (thechocolatecow.com) and Three Fat Guys Wines (threefatguyswines.com) for contributing so much to this experience! Additionally, special thanks to Pere Pons for introducing us to our favorite Cava ever: Miquel Pons! (Talk about a major crush!!) If you'd like to learn more from Meredith on how to go about pairing chocolate with wine, check out this YouTube (https://youtu.be/kCiHgrUS_Po) we created for our Crush Collection members -- it's full of surpr

It was an incredible honor for us to interview Pere Pons -- a beautifully spoken and kind-hearted winemaker from Spain! He is our very first international winemaker interview, and boy was he fabulous and fun to get to know! Join Meredith and Lou as they learn all about Cava and the DO of Penedès. Be sure to check out our Instagram feed this week, too, because we will be posting pictures that Pere shared with us so you can have a visual insight into how this family of winemakers has been making their Cava and still wines for 250 years! And unlike many of the wines that we feature on the show, you might be able to find Miquel Ponz wines at your local wine shop -- as Pere's wines are imported by Winebridge Imports and have a presence in 48 states! For more information: www.wbimports.com/miquel-pons // Music featured in this episode: As I Figure - Latinesque by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/   Source: http://incompetech.com/

There are a lot of winemakers to admire in the Napa Valley, but for us, there's this one person in particular who makes us stop in our tracks: Cathy Corison. She's been making wine since the 1970s when things really started to take off in the Valley, and so adding her story to the mix of interviews feels like more than just an honor. It feels like a privilege. Cathy's passion for Cabernet Sauvignon is something you can taste in her wines, but listening to her recollections and perspectives is a totally valuable use of time -- especially if you consider yourself to be a "Cab person." We recorded this interview when Meredith was in NOLA, Lou was in Monterey, CA, and Cathy was at her winery in St. Helena, proving, once again, that wine connects people no matter where they are! To learn more about Corison Winery and all of Cathy's wines, visit her website: www.corison.com CONTACT US: If you have questions or comments for Meredith and Lou, and you're listening on the Anchor App, you can send them to us directly. I

It's our first episode of a brand new season and we really wanted to kick things off with an interview that helps us define the reason we do this show. Our sit-down interview with Dan Fishman, Vice President of Vineyards & Winemaking at Donum Estate is just such an interview. When a winemaker goes out of his or her way to express something poignant and finite from the soil, the vines, the grapes, and the wine itself, that's the making of a story we're gonna want to help them tell! After listening, if you want to learn more about Donum Estate, visit their website at www.thedonumestate.com /  CONTACT US: If you have questions or comments for Meredith and Lou, and you're listening on the Anchor App, you can send them to us directly. If you're listening to this podcast on any other platform, and you want to reach out, you can email us at info@majorcrushwines.com // Follow us on Instagram: @majorcrushwinecast. // Be sure to check out all four seasons of Major Crush -- plus get the latest episodes of Season Six

A brand new season of the Major Crush Winecast starts next Thursday! So be sure to like and subscribe so you won't miss a thing! CONTACT US: If you have questions or comments for Meredith and Lou, and you're listening on the Anchor App, you can send them to us directly. If you're listening to this podcast on any other platform, and you want to reach out, you can email us at info@majorcrushwines.com // Follow us on Instagram: @majorcrushwinecast. // Be sure to check out all four seasons of Major Crush -- plus get the latest episodes of Season Six -- on Spotify, or wherever you access your favorite podcasts!

This might be the biggest interview we’ve ever had on Major Crush — and, it might also be the most major Major Crush we’ve ever had! Getting to interview Karen MacNeil was such a privilege because without her book, The Wine Bible, so many people in this world would still have no idea how to even get started with wine. In this very charming and inviting interview, Karen walks Lou & Mere through her origin story and shares so many details about her experiences, and she definitively proves to anyone who listens to this episode how wonderfully she welcomes people into the world of wine. This is our final episode of Season Five and to end on such a high note is so much fun! And as Karen shares her perspectives and life experiences with us, we’ve gained even more passion for what we’re doing and for all of the ways wine simply makes life better! So we will see you in early 2022 for Season Six, but until then, Cheers! And thanks for listening! You can follow Karen MacNeil on Instagram @karenmacneilco, and the Th

It's a pretty rare thing to meet a winemaker who has made THREE 100 POINT WINES, but that's how we roll! (Just kidding!!) But seriously? We were so honored to sit down to interview Phil Steinschriber of WaterMark Wine for our final winemaker interview of the season. In addition to making fantastic wine, Phil and his wife, Diane, are two of the kindest people you'll ever meet. They opened up their home to us and shared their wine, the story of Phil's journey into his career as a premier winemaker, the origin story of their relationship, and their mountain top estate as well. We always want you to experience the wines we feature on the show, but Phil's style of winemaking takes Cabernet Sauvignon to another level! So for listeners of our show, if you go to www.watermarkwine.com and tell Diane you heard about WaterMark on Major Crush, you'll get an extra 10% off! But we also have a very exclusive collection of wine that Meredith & Lou curated for our good friends Billy & Nick from Vint (Season Five, Epis

Hey Everyone and welcome back to another episode of Major Crush! If you’ve been a long-time listener of the show, then you know that the motivation behind the Major Crush Winecast is a genuine love of all things wine, and so as we’ve moved through five seasons, we’ve interviewed all kinds of crush-worthy people who have added so much to our show, and who have constantly reminded us why we love the world of wine so much! But this episode represents something brand new for us — it’s an interview with Christian Fitzgerald, the creator and founder of the Orion Cooker, the best backyard bar-b-que smoker, and a new Major Crush partner. Now without this intro, you might wonder if Mere and Lou have taken a detour away from their focus on wine, but nothing could be further from the truth. For us, one of the best parts about crushing on wine comes into focus when we start talking about food. And that, of course, leads to how to pair food with wine, which eventually leads us to the best part of all: how to transform win

We'll be celebrating Thanksgiving this week but we will be back NEXT Thursday with a brand new episode! Until then, HAPPY THANKSGIVING! We are so thankful for our listeners! CONTACT US: If you have questions or comments for Meredith and Lou, and you're listening on the Anchor App, you can send them to us directly. If you're listening to this podcast on any other platform, and you want to reach out, you can email us at info@majorcrushwines.com // Follow us on Instagram: @majorcrushwinecast. // Be sure to check out all four seasons of Major Crush -- plus get the latest episodes of Season Five -- on Spotify, or wherever you access your favorite podcasts!

We were so honored to be able to sit down with Executive Chef Luis Alvarez from Folk Table Catering in Sonoma, CA. He's a beautifully kind "friend of the pod" who has a pretty impressive origin story that starts with work in the kitchen pantry that quickly transitioned into being a highly sought after chef working for some of the most well-known celebrity chefs in their restaurants and behind the scenes on some reality chef shows we're sure you've watched! But it is his passion for food that makes him such a wonderful person to interview, and some of his ideas for how to approach cooking for the people you love this holiday season are guaranteed to inspire you (and make you very, very hungry, too!) So it is our pleasure to offer up this episode just before Thanksgiving -- and one thing we are sure thankful for this year is a new friend who really knows how to share his love in his amazing dishes! CONTACT US: If you have questions or comments for Meredith and Lou, and you're listening on the Anchor App, you ca

It was such a pleasure to be able to interview a fellow podcaster like Sarah Malouf on our show! Sarah is the host of the Well Being, Well Said podcast and is an up-and-coming recipe developer who is relatively new to wine. After a visit to the Wine Country to visit her "affection uncle" -- our very own Lou Zant -- Sarah and her husband, Matt, left with a whole new appreciation for wine and all of the ways it can be added to life. In this interview, Meredith, Lou, and Sarah talk about the art of Southern hospitality, her impressions of the CA Wine Country, wine pairings, and one of Sarah's most popular recipes and how to pair it. To follow Sarah and to find her recipes, follower her on Instagram @sarahmalouf__  CONTACT US: If you have questions or comments for Meredith and Lou, and you're listening on the Anchor App, you can send them to us directly. If you're listening to this podcast on any other platform, and you want to reach out, you can email us at info@majorcrushwines.com // Follow us on Instagram: @ma

It was such a pleasure for Lou & Mere to interview Gracie Peter, Director of Operations, Kentucky LouVino locations and a Level 2 Certified Sommelier. Gracie is also the co-host of her own wine podcast called Better With Wine (Season One available now wherever you listen to your favorite shows). Chatting things up with Gracie added a unique perspective to the second half of Season Five because right now, we are all about wine and hospitality! And what better resource to find out exactly how it's done than the person who is in charge of making every moment of your time at her busy wine bar and restaurant, LouVino, her number one priority! We invite you to check out the LouVino website and peruse their incredible menu and wine list after you listen to our interview -- we promise you won't be disappointed! https://louvino.com/ CONTACT US: If you have questions or comments for Meredith and Lou, and you're listening on the Anchor App, you can send them to us directly. If you're listening to this podcast on any