Wine talk with trade scars and human stories.
Wine Talks with Paul K. treats wine as culture, craft, business, and memory, not just tasting notes. Its conversations move from Spanish caves and Napa history to restaurant legacies, filmmaking, social media, and the emotional risk of choosing a bottle.
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Wine Talks with Paul K. is an interview-driven wine show with the feel of an experienced trade conversation that happens to keep a glass within reach. It is warm, loose, and often skeptical of the ways wine makes itself harder to love. The show cares about bottles, but it cares just as much about the choices, histories, and accidents behind them. Recent conversations range from biodynamics and long-aged Spanish sparkling wine to Napa icons, Saint-Emilion prestige, Chateau d'Yquem, restaurant legacy, and independent filmmaking. The through line is people. Wine is treated as agriculture, art, science, business, hospitality, memory, and sometimes a source of needless intimidation. The host asks practical questions and then follows the answer wherever it leads. That can mean talking about Spanish caves sealed through war, the travel grind of representing a famous winery, or why a shopper who wants something different still hesitates in front of an unfamiliar label. The show likes concrete detail. Regions, restaurants, vintages, grapes, closures, price points, documentaries, and retail aisles all become evidence. It also has a plainspoken impatience with prestige for prestige's sake. Classifications, awards, and rituals matter only when they help explain pleasure, craft, or meaning. The result is more tasting room table than polished lecture. It can wander, but the wandering is usually the point. A chef's memory of working with ingredients can sit beside a winemaker's account of vintage variation, and both fit the same larger argument about honest work. Listeners hear from figures tied to Gramona Winery, Vega Sicilia Winery, Chateau Quintus, Chateau d'Yquem, Mozza, and the filmmaking world. The conversations are built for people who want wine demystified without having it flattened. Beginners can follow the human stories. More experienced drinkers will catch the trade details. The show is at its best when it challenges the snobbery around wine while still defending the depth that makes wine worth talking about.
Made for: Best for curious wine drinkers, restaurant people, collectors, makers, and food-culture listeners who enjoy long, conversational interviews. It also suits newcomers who want wine explained through stories rather than rules.
What sets it apart: The show blends producer interviews, tasting-room specificity, retail realism, and cultural argument in one relaxed conversation. It respects wine tradition while repeatedly questioning the rituals and prestige signals that keep people at a distance.
All you knew about wine is about to bust wide open… We are going to talk about what really happens in the wine business, and I'm taking no prisoners. Learn more at: https://www.winetalkspodcast.com/.I am your host, Paul Kalemkiarian, 2nd generation owner of the Original Wine of the Month Club, and I am somewhere north of 100,000 wines tasted.How can Groupon sell 12 bottles for $60, and the wines be good? How do you start a winery anyway and lose money? And is a screwcap really better than a cork? Sometimes I have to pick a wine at the store by the label and the price... and I get screwed.Subscribe now and prepare to be enlightened.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Paul Kalemkiarian connects wine culture to filmmaking through conversations about documentary structure, screen representation and the people behind both crafts.
Wine Talks with Paul K. treats wine as a story carried by people, places and images, giving Paul Kalemkiarian an unusual route into TV & Film. His interview style moves from practical questions about production and commerce to the way wine is represented on screen.
A sealed Spanish wine cave turns your next glass into a history lesson, minus the homework.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A loose, people-first wine conversation about labels, confidence, and who feels welcome choosing a bottle.
Wine Talks with Paul Kay uses a conversation about millennials and wine to ask who actually feels confident choosing a bottle. Paul Kay and Isis Daniel move from the idea that wine needs to be good into the quieter pressure of leaving a familiar choice behind.
A sealed cellar carries Gramona's case for patience, Charelo, and Spanish sparkling wine.
Gramona's sparkling wine is framed through patience, survival, and the uneasy history behind a sealed cellar. Ana Lopez recounts how the winery hid three underground floors of bottles during Spain's civil war and the Second World War, leaving them untouched for 15 years.
A patient conversation about finding an ending when real life keeps moving.
Chris McGilvray's conversation with Paul Kay draws a clean connection between filmmaking and wine: both depend on patience, accumulation, and the nerve to let work mature in its own time.
A warm wine conversation that finds its real depth in the people, places, and memories behind each bottle.
Wine Talks with Paul Kaye turns a visit to Boilo Vineyards into a warm argument for wine history as human drama. Trevor Durling links changing vintages to rain and drought, then opens the conversation toward terroir, family memory, and the people who shaped Napa Valley.
Nancy Silverton traces a restaurant life back to raw ingredients, early hospitality, and the pleasure of feeding people.
Wine Talks with Paul Kay is at its best when Nancy Silverton talks about how cooking first became a form of hospitality. She recalls the pleasure of handling raw ingredients, her mother's sense that she would make something with her hands, and the dorm-room meals that drew…
A glass of wine leads into a candid look at restaurant costs, supplier leverage, and the work behind hospitality.
Wine becomes the doorway into a conversation about taste, place, and the pleasure of noticing what grapes and earth can do, before the glass lands beside the harder arithmetic of keeping a restaurant open.
Bourbon talk, barrel stories, messy good pours.
Bourbon reviews with memory, candor, and community.
Everyday life, thought through together.
Violet Grgich discusses the importance of storytelling in wine, her family's legacy from the Judgment of Paris, and her father's philosophy of making friends.
Host Paul Kalemkiarian interviews Chef David Slay about evolving wine trends and restaurant realities.
["Isis Daniels tells Paul Kay on Wine Talks with Paul K.
["Ana L\u00f3pez says Gramona left Cava because the label was method-based rather than place-based, so Penedes did not read as a distinct origin on the bottle.", "Corpinat, registered in Brussels in 2019, now has 22 wineries, requires 100% organic fruit, hand picking, and 90% local historic varieties, and L\u00f3pez says about 85% of the wine is consumed in Spain.", "L\u00f3pez also says Gramona has long-aged sparkling wine in a cellar library that reaches back to the 1930s, and that the family sealed its caves for 15 years during the Spanish Civil War and World War II before finding the wine had improved.", "The later discussion turns to biodynamics, where Demeter, cows, chickens, sheep, beehives, olive trees, and more than 200 soil samples are presented as soil stewardship rather than a style trend."]
Chris McGilvray says he dropped out of USC Cinema School, finished UC Santa Cruz with a linguistics degree, and built a career in branded films and documentaries.
Pablo Alvarez discusses the global expansion of Vega Sicilia winery from Spain to Tokaj and his current promotional trip in the US.
Nils Vaincot, National Sales Manager for Château Quintus, discusses the importance of wine as a simple pleasure and shares his experience as an official partner of the Oscar ceremony.
Trevor Durling, speaking with Paul K.
Paul K interviews Lorenzo Pasquini, director of Château d'Yquem, about the iconic Sauternes wine, its human connection, and its place in the wine world.
Nancy Silverton and Paul K.
An interview with Dominique Arangoits about Bordeaux wine, terroir, and his personal journey into winemaking.
Laurent David discusses his transition from Apple to the wine industry, blending tech and winemaking to innovate.
Chef David Slay discusses wine trends, innovation, and restaurant realities in an interview on Wine Talks.