I'll Drink to This: The Best Wine Podcasts | Wine

II came pretty late to podcasting, especially when it came to my niche topic of wine, but a lot of my friends are fans. One of them was keen for us to collaborate on a podcast, so I knew I needed to keep up with the latest.

I've spent the last few weeks listening to them in any spare minute I have while driving, sitting on trains, or washing dishes – the great advantage of podcasts over blogging is that you can do something else while listening to them, rather than staring at a screen.

These shows seem to fall into two main groups—one that basically consists of an interview with a winemaker or other wine expert, and is generally a bit quirky, and another that’s more like a talk show with lots of raucous banter between the hosts. Then there’s the weirder group, like Levi Dalton’s I’ll Drink to That! (known in the podcasting world as IDTT), the most professional of all the wine podcasts, which includes in-depth investigations like a well-documented hour-long program on the Aligoté grape.

The Q&A format is likely to appeal to you if you’re already a wine lover, although A Glass With…, hosted by friendly Saturday Kitchen host Olly Smith, takes a broader approach, talking to celebrities about their lives in general while sipping their favourite wines. (Andy Oliver, it turns out, loves sherry, and Claire Balding loves meursault.)

Good examples of the interview format are Heritage Radio's In the Drink, hosted by wine expert Joe Campanale (although, like many other American podcasts, you have to endure a long period of commercials before you get started), and Lawrence Francis's Interpreting Wine in the UK, which surprisingly manages to get aired almost daily (there's a great session with Joe Fattorini of Wine Show).

Of the more raucous Bantz model, which might interest less wine-obsessed listeners, I like the no-holds-barred Natural Disasters (U.S. Again) hosted by Bon Appétit wine editor Marissa Ross; and It's the Drink Talking hosted by Ben McFarland, Sam Cabourn and Tom Sandham, which covers the full range of drinks and categorizes them as “spit or swallow.”

So, now that you’ve caught the podcast bug, have you said “yes” to my friend (and Master of Wine) Liam Stevenson? You have. Our podcast is called Bâtonnage, which refers to the process of stirring spent yeast cells into wine to add texture and flavour (stirring – get it?) and it launches this month. Wish us luck!

Four Types of Wine to Sip With Your Favorite Podcast