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Welcome, welcome to the Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast with Forrest Kelley.
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If you want to become a Master Sommelier, remember, only 5% pass the exam.
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Let's meet one of those 5%ers.
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The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast.
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Hello, I'm Ian Cobble, Master Sommelier.
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You might know me from the movie Somme, and I've also got a business called The Cobblest,
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what I consider to be the best quality wines in the world.
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The web address is The Cobblest, so my last name is spelled C-O-B-L-E-I-S-T, has to do
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everything with the wine I've learned in the last 25 years.
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I spent a lot of time traveling in Europe, all over the world, discovering great producers,
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and since the movie Somme, I've come to hundreds of cellars all over the world, and people
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open up great wines, vacations, and I have a chance to share that with the world through
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Stay in touch with my travels.
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We offer small production wines that are usually organic and biodynamically farmed
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that are kind of, you know, drinking the special art pieces of the world versus the mass production.
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What is the, just off the top of your head, a ballpark figure, what is the ratio of American
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meeting that category that you just said, as opposed to, you know, France and Italy
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You know, there's some great America.
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I think a lot of the great values are coming from Oregon, and there's some great stuff
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from the coast of California, the 20 to 40 range that are great.
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But for me, most of the great wines of the world come from the classic area.
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I'm talking, you know, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Germany.
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You know, the tariffs have been a slight challenge recently, but, you know, a lot of the importers
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I'm working with, you know, some of the distributors from the countries and the countries are offering
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discounts to keep them in a good sweet spot.
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But in general, I'd say about 60% of the wines that I sell on The Cobblest are from Europe
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because I do love the classics, but there are a lot of California, Oregon, Washington,
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and a few other small pockets around the country that do make wines in a classic expression
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without, you know, too much makeup, too much oak, too much sweetener.
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You graduated from what university in 2003?
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I was in Sonoma State University, yeah.
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So I was, I grew up in Huntington Beach, Southern California, went to Sonoma State University.
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I was going to be, I wanted to be a doctor, and then it was just the sciences were just
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didn't really appeal to me.
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Quickly turned to a Spanish study and international wine business.
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So I spent about five years at Sonoma State, wine and language.
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And then I had a job offer for $2 an hour in Portugal, worked for the oldest port house
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It was an hour up the Douro River and yeah, ate and drank and, you know, they would, they
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would pass around these paint thinner containers full of like local red wine and we would drink
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that with local bean stews and work 15 hours a day for that, you know, time was about $39
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US and I would have done it for free, but I had this incredible experience.
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And then I had some money saved teaching, you know, traveled around North Africa, Europe
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and India for about a year and a half and got back, you know, completely broke and borrowed
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some money suit from my dad.
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And I walked into the wine merchant of Beverly Hills and got a job selling some of the great
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wines in the world.
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And the rest is history.
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You know, not to paint it with a broad stroke that doctors don't take jobs that are $2 an
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I think you made the right choice.
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You know, I, you know, I have a lot of doctors as clients and lawyers and a lot of them on
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But you know, we need people that are help us, you know, help us with, with our lives.
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And you know, I, I provide them with, with a nice glass of wine at the end.
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Was there a moment when you decided to go, you know, lean into the wine thing?
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Because you know, when everybody starts college, you, you really don't know what you want to
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do with the rest of your life and you got to pick a major, you know, was there a time
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when you said okay?
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You know, there was, there was, I, so I was at Sonoma State University about to go there.
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My sisters were going there.
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I think I was 17 or 18 at the time, of course, shouldn't have been drinking wine.
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But I remember going with my dad and one of his friends to lunch.
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And we went to this place in the Russian River Valley.
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And we, we had a glass of Sauvignon Blanc from, what was it?
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It was Frog's Leap Sauvignon Blanc from Rutherford, Napa Valley, goat cheese and some fresh basil
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on this local, beautiful, like dark purple tomato, right?
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With a little bit of sea salt.
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And I had a little bit of this Humboldt Fog goat cheese, if I remember correctly, a little
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bit of the basil and this tomato and this glass and this little taste and like something
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just struck my soul.
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It was just like, this is amazing.
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Like, I mean, I grew up in Southern California with that Tex-Mex, you know, your hard shell,
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you know, ground beef taco with sour cream.
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Like, there's nothing wrong with my mom's tuna casserole that she, you know, brought
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But, you know, we all, we all lived this American melting pot of a childhood, I think, in Orange
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I mean, I surfed a lot, all that, had this incredible, you know, childhood, but the whole
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high end of that effect on my palate hadn't really been struck, that cordon hadn't been
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struck on my palate yet.
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So that bite was just like, wow, like there's so much pleasure to be had in these intricate
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flavors and flowers and wines.
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And so that was at 17, I kind of woke up and I was like, started to watch Food Network
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and I went to Sonoma State University, played tennis and I was always hungry because I was
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working out four hours a day.
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And I would just come home and I'd go to Oliver's Market and pick up whatever I could
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afford and started teaching tennis so I could afford more stuff.
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And, and I ended up just, you know, eating and drinking every dollar I had and started
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drinking like Klein's and Zinfandel and Klein, Old Vine, Movedre, because that's all I could
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And then I started drinking other things.
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And I really just, it was right when I was about 20, 21, started hanging out with a lot
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of friends that had families that were winemakers and, you know, brothers that worked at wineries.
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And so we'd sit around the fire at their houses up in Glen Ellyn and Sonoma Mountain and,
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you know, pop these bottles on some really great Napa Cabernets and I started just opening
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my mind up to these great flavor experiences and, you know, Napa Cabernet is just the beginning
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And all these flavors are so approachable for a young palate where there's these beautiful
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oak flavors and these nuances of boysenberries and blackberries and a lot of these fruit
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forward characteristics of different Pinot Noirs from Russian River Valley, for example.
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It's a great place for people to start.
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