Ep 134: How to Become a Winemaker with Ryan Schmaltz from Bella Winery

Wine for Normal People

Alcohol, Lifestyle, Arts, Education, Food, Wine, Dining, Grapes

4.6 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 30 June 2015

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, we have a great story for you! Ryan Schmaltz, podcast listener and chemistry Ph.D turned winemaker at Bella Winery and Wine Caves in the Dry Creek Valley of Sonoma shares his fascinating transformation.

Ryan contacted me a few years ago, telling me about his plan to switch careers from the life of a chemist to that of a winemaker. Fast forward a couple of years and he made his dream a reality.

In this podcast, Ryan shares his story of tenacity, hard work, and risk taking, which paid off. You'll love hearing about his path and then the dork outs about working with Zinfandel, Syrah, and Grenache and the challenges of each grape.

A fascinating conversation, we hope you enjoy and learn!

Transcript

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0:00.0	MC Ice, guess what?
0:02.0	Today's podcast is brought to our listeners by audible.com.
0:05.0	Yep, and they can get a free audiobook download at
0:08.0	W.W.
0:11.0	www. Audible Trial.com, forward slash wine for normal people there's over a hundred thousand
0:14.7	titles to choose from and those are for your iPhone Android Kindle or MP3
0:19.0	player go get a buck let's get to the show. Thanks for listening to wine for normal people.
0:27.0	The podcast for people who want to learn about wine
0:31.0	but could do without the attitude that seems to go with it.
0:35.8	I'm Elizabeth Schneider, a certified Silma Yea and certified specialist of wine.
0:39.8	And I'm MC Ice, just a wine-loving normal person.
0:43.0	We are so fortunate to have met a wonderful podcast listener and also a winemaker when we went
0:50.7	to Sonoma. We have today Ryan Schmalts who is a assistant winemaker at
0:57.8	Bella Wine Caves. Is that how they call it? The Bella Wine C the bellowice winery and wine caves anything like that is just fine
1:06.4	really besides Ryan being a really awesome guy
1:10.1	he's a super dork well he is a super dork and Well, he is a super dork.
1:13.3	And so we-
1:14.3	That's about as high a compliment as I can pay.
1:17.3	It's about as high a compliment as any of us can pay here.
1:21.4	But not only is he a super dork, he's got such a very interesting story and
1:26.6	it's a question that a lot of people, including you Ryan, asked me, asked me about how to sort of like make the move into the wine industry and
1:35.9	you discovered it and you figured it out so I am interested in you know figuring out
	...

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