Doctor Dreams to Wine: Ian Cauble’s Journey for Choosing Quality Wines Revealed! Pt. 1

Welcome, welcome to the best five minute wine podcast with Forrest Kelly. If you want to become a master sommelier, remember only 5% pass the exam. Let's meet one of those five percenters. The best five minute wine podcast. Hello, Ian Cobble, master sommelier. You might know me from the movie Somm and I've owned a business called The Cobblest, what I consider the price to quality wines in the world. The web address is? The Cobblest. So my last name is spelled C-U-B-L-E-I-S-T. Has to do everything with the wine I've learned in the last 25 years. I spent a lot of time traveling in Europe, all over the world, discovering great producers. And, you know, since the movie SOM, welcome to hundreds of cellars all over the world. And people open up great wines, locations. And I have a chance to share that with the world through The Cobblest. Stay in touch with my travels. We offer small production wines that are usually organic and biodynamically farmed that are kind of, you know, drinking the special art pieces of the world versus the mass production. What is the just off the top of your head at a ballpark figure? What is the ratio of American meeting that category that you just said, as opposed to, you know, France and Italy and Europe? You know, there's some America. I think a lot of the great values are coming from Oregon and there's some great stuff from the coast of California, the 20 to 40 range that are great. But for me, most of the great wines of the world come from the classic area. I talking you know Spain France Italy Greece Germany You know the tariffs have been a slight challenge recently but you know a lot of the importers I working with you know some of the distributors from the countries and the areas are offering discounts to keep them in a good suite But in general, I'd say about 6% of the wines that I sell on the Cobblest are from Europe because you love the classics. but there are a lot of California, Oregon, Washington, and a few other small pockets around the country that do make wines in a cloud expression without too much makeup, too much oak, too much sweetness. You graduated from what university in 2003? I was in Sonoma State University. Yeah. So I was, I grew up in Huntington Beach, Southern California, went to Sonoma State University. I was going to be, I wanted to be a doctor. And then it was just, the sciences were just didn't really appeal to me. Quickly turned to a Spanish study and international wine business. So I spent about five years at Sonoma Wine and Language. And then I had a job offer for $2 an hour in Portugal, worked for the oldest porthouse in Portugal, there's an hour up the Douro River and yeah, ate and drank. And you know, they would, they would pass around these paint thinner containers full of like local red wine. And we would drink that with local bean stews and work 15 hours a day for that, you know, Time was about $39 US and I would have done it for free, but I had this incredible experience. And then I had some money, saved teaching, you know, traveled around North Africa, Europe and India for about a year and a half and got back, you know, completely broke and borrowed some money from my dad. And I walked into the wine merchant of Beverly Hills and got a job selling some of the great wines of the world and the rest is history You know not to paint it with a broad stroke that doctors don take jobs that are two dollars an hour i think you made the right choice you know i i you know i have a lot of doctors as clients and lawyers and a lot of them on my job there you know i think but you know we need people that are and help us uh you know help us with uh with our lives and uh you know i uh i provide them with uh with a nice glass of wine at the end well was there a moment when you decided to go, you know, lean into the wine thing? Because, you know, when everybody starts college, you really don't know what you want to do with the rest of your life and you got to pick a major. You know, was there a time? You know, there was, there was. So I was at Sonoma State University about to go there. My sisters were going there. I think I was 17 or 18 at the time. Of course, shouldn't have been drinking wine, but I remember going with my dad and one of his friends to lunch. And we went to this place in the Russian River Valley. And we had a glass of Sauvignon Blanc from, what was it? It was Frog's Leap Sauvignon Blanc from Rutherford, Napa Valley, goat cheese and some fresh basil on this local, beautiful, like dark purple tomato, right? With a little bit of sea salt. And I had a little bit of this Humboldt Fog goat cheese, if I remember correctly, a little bit of the basil, this tomato and this glass and this little taste and like something just struck my soul. It was just like, this is amazing. Like me and I grew up in Southern California with that Tex-Mex, you know, your hard shell, you know, ground beef taco with sour cream. Like there's nothing wrong with my mom's tuna casserole that she, you know, brought from Illinois But you know we all we all lived this American melting pot of a of a of a childhood I think And in Orange County it was great I mean I surfed a lot all that had this incredible childhood but that whole high end of that effect on my palate hadn really been struck That cordon hadn't been struck on my palate yet. So that bite was just like, wow, like there's so much pleasure to be had and these intricate flavors and flowers and wines. And so that was at 17, I kind of woke up and I was like, started to watch Food Network and I went to Sonoma State University, played tennis and I was always hungry because I was working out four hours a day and I would just come home and I'd go to Oliver's Market and pick up whatever I could afford and started teaching tennis so I could afford more stuff. And I ended up just, you know, eating and drinking every dollar I had and started drinking like Klein Zinfandel and Klein Old Vine Movedre because that's all I could afford. And then I started drinking other things and I really just, it was right when I was about 2021, started hanging out with a lot of friends that had families that were winemakers and, you know, brothers that worked at wineries. And so we'd sit around the fire at their houses up in Glen Ellen and Sonoma Mountain and, you know, pop these bottles on some really great Napa Cabernets. And I started just opening my mind up to these great flavor experiences. And, you know, Napa Cabernet is just the beginning of it. And all these flavors are so approachable for a young palate where there's these beautiful oak flavors and these nuances of boysenberries and blackberries and a lot of these fruit forward characteristics of different Pinot Noirs from Russian River Valley, for example. And it's a great place for people to start. 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