Read Between the Wines Podcast

In 2001, a bottle of Clos des Épeneaux 1996 landed on our podcast host's table and changed the course of his wine life forever. It didn't simply introduce him to Burgundy; it changed the way he understood wine, place, patience, and beauty. The man who made it had no idea. While that bottle was beginning its journey around the world, Pascal Marchand was in Burgundy, celebrating the birth of his second son. That bottle and the story behind it, is where Episode 100 of Read Between the Wines begins.
Pascal arrived in Burgundy in 1983 as a young merchant marine from Montreal with no vineyard, no family name, and no wine pedigree. Two years later, at just 22 years old, he became only the second non-Frenchman ever appointed to lead a Burgundian estate, taking the reins at Domaine Comte Armand and its legendary Clos des Épeneaux. Over the next fifteen vintages, he helped shape one of Burgundy's most iconic wines. One of them changed our host's life.
In this special centennial episode, Pascal and host Pierre Ferland travel through four decades of Burgundy: the generation of young vignerons who reshaped the region together, the lessons he learned from Henri Jayer, why he embraced biodynamics long before it became fashionable, and why terroir still matters more than technique. In their intimate conversation, they explore the personalities of Chambertin and Mazis-Chambertin, the quiet brilliance of Burgundy's centuries-old classification system, the realities of climate change, and the challenge of preserving identity in a world where harvests arrive a month earlier than they once did.
But this conversation reaches far beyond Burgundy. They talk about prestige and speculation, about whether great wine is becoming a luxury asset instead of something meant to be shared, and about what happens when younger generations drink differently than those before them. Pascal's answers are thoughtful, deeply human, and ultimately hopeful. His reflections on pleasure, generosity, and the role wine plays in our lives may be the most important part of the entire conversation.
Episode 100 was always going to be personal. For our podcast host, it was always going to be Burgundy.

Featuring: Pascal Marchand, Maison Marchand-Tawse, Clos des Épeneaux, Domaine Comte Armand, Gevrey-Chambertin, Chambertin Grand Cru, Mazis-Chambertin, Pinot Noir, Côte de Beaune, Côte de Nuits, Moray Tawse.

Sixty years before "drink less, but better" became an industry mantra, one man in Tuscany was already living it. His grandson has spent his whole career proving him right.
In this episode, Pierre sits down with Giovanni Folonari, of Ambrogio e Giovanni Folonari Tenute, the family behind four distinct Tuscan estates built on a single conviction: that quality can't be rented, it has to be owned.
The conversation moves through Nozzole, the Chianti Classico estate where clay soil and history run deep; Tenute del Cabreo, the Supertuscan project that dared to plant Cabernet, Merlot, Chardonnay and even Pinot Noir on Sangiovese ground; Campo al Mare, the family's late but decisive bet on Bolgheri; and Tenuta La Fuga, the smallest estate in the portfolio and home to a Brunello Riserva named for two sisters. Along the way, Giovanni talks candidly about the family decision to walk away from an easier, more recognisable business, what it actually takes to grow Pinot Noir outside Burgundy, and why hospitality became part of the estate's identity long before the rest of the wine world caught on.
Want more? A bonus episode, going deeper into the family's history, the technical side of the cellar, and a side of Giovanni that has nothing to do with wine at all, is available exclusively at readbetweenthewines.com.

Featuring: Chianti Classico, Supertuscan, Bolgheri, Brunello di Montalcino, Tuscany, Sangiovese, family winery, Italian fine wine, terroir, wine and hospitality.

In 1985, Ferruccio Ferragamo went looking for game in the hills between Florence and Arezzo. He came home having found a thousand-year-old medieval village instead.
Years later, his son Salvatore rode a bicycle into those same hills and saw something his father hadn't: a valley whose soil told an entirely different story in every direction, sandstone in one corner, clay rich with sea fossils in another, the memory of an ocean that vanished millions of years before anyone planted a vine.
This is the story of Il Borro — a family better known for shoes than soil, who spent three decades turning a ruin into one of Tuscany's most decorated organic estates, and who are now writing a second chapter in Montalcino.
Salvatore Ferragamo, Vice President of Il Borro, sits down with Pierre Ferland to talk about the Valdarno di Sopra, an appellation the estate helped bring back from obscurity, the single vineyard behind Alessandro dal Borro, named for a Medici military commander built on an unusually large scale, the horses that plough Nitrito instead of tractors, and Petruna, a return to ancient amphora winemaking that strips Sangiovese back to something almost nothing else in Tuscany attempts.
And at the very end, Salvatore says something about Pinino, the family's newer estate in Montalcino, that he didn't have to admit. But did anyway.
The bonus episode, where Salvatore goes into the years before certification, the business case behind the vineyard's solar fields, and what actually earns a second bottle of wine, is available exclusively at readbetweenthewines.com.
 
Featuring: Il Borro, Valdarno di Sopra DOC, Tuscany, Italy, Sangiovese, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Chardonnay, Pinino, Montalcino, Brunello di Montalcino.

Sara Lecompte Cuvelier swore she would never work in wine. Then in 2018, she became Managing Director of one of the five Second Grand Cru Classé estates in Saint-Julien. Her sister Anne had already been there for thirteen years, building something from nothing. That is the story of Château Léoville Poyferré — and neither of them planned any of it.
In this episode of Read Between the Wines, Pierre Ferland sits down with Sara and Anne Cuvelier at Château Léoville Poyferré in Saint-Julien, Bordeaux, France, for the first of a two-part conversation. The Cuvelier family has been in wine since 1804, beginning as négociants near Lille in the north of France, acquiring Léoville Poyferré in 1920, and extending the family story all the way to the foot of the Andes in Mendoza with Cuvelier Los Andes in 2003.
The conversation covers what it means to inherit something you did not build. The demi-wolf on the label that belonged to the Lawton family and was kept without question. The family motto borrowed from Le Petit Prince: the essential is invisible to the eye. Anne building wine tourism at a classified growth estate before Bordeaux believed that was possible. Sara arriving with a background in human resources and discovering it was exactly what the job required.
And the word Sara says you need to remember about this estate. Not prestige. Not history. Precision.
Part two, where Sara and Anne go deep into the vineyard, the wines, and what Bordeaux still needs to say out loud, is available exclusively at readbetweenthewines.com.


Featuring: Château Léoville Poyferré, Saint-Julien, Médoc, Bordeaux, France, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Second Grand Cru Classé.

In 1935, a viceroy ordered a vineyard planted in the hills between Florence and Arezzo. Not to make wine. To mark a military conquest.
Ninety years later, that same vineyard is producing one of the most celebrated Sangiovese in all of Tuscany.
This is the story of Tenuta Sette Ponti — an estate that began as a hunting retreat, became a family obsession, and is now home to Oreno, a wine that has gone toe to toe with the great Bordeaux blends of France. Blind. And won.
Alberto Moretti Cuseri, third generation of the Moretti Cuseri family and Export Director of the estate, sits down with Pierre Ferland to talk about the Valdarno di Sopra, one of Italy's oldest wine zones, certified fully organic and still largely unknown outside serious wine circles. The conversation covers the Vigna dell'Impero and its 90-year-old vines, the portfolio from Crognolo to Oreno, a pure Merlot called Sette, and a Trebbiano that makes a quiet argument for one of Italy's most underrated white grapes.
And at the very end, Alberto says something about wine and identity that lands differently than anything else in this conversation.

Featuring: Tenuta Sette Ponti, Valdarno di Sopra, Oreno, Crognolo, Vigna dell'Impero, Tuscany wine, Super Tuscan, Sangiovese, Italian wine podcast, Alberto Moretti Cuseri