Meet Madeline, Cofounder of Wine Folly

Madeline Puckette

Hi, I’m Madeline Puckette, a musician and graphic designer gone wine geek. Before I started Wine Folly I was an electronica producer and graphic designer in Los Angeles. During my years as a musician, I released some amazing house and electronica tracks, you can find out about my music career on soundcloud. During my days at art school, I took a liking to wine. I spent my days studying music programming and nights were reserved for enjoying a bottle of Côtes du Rhône.
 

Cofounder and Wine Expert on Wine Folly

I started Wine Folly on December 25, 2011 with my two best friends. The inspiration for Wine Folly was based on an observation I’d made while serving. Basically, people want to know more about wine but they don’t know where to start. The goal of Wine Folly is to share wine knowledge in a way to encourage and inspire new drinkers.

In July of 2012, we released the first of our wine infographic called “How to Choose Wine”. After that, we created “Different Types of Wine” (see below) which was featured in the Washington Post.
 

 

What makes you an expert?

Since starting the site in 2011, I’ve written over 500,000 words on the topic of wine and each article we’ve done requires a lot of knowledge resources (from books, people, data sources, etc). And, although I could yammer on about the technicalities of oak-aging, microbes or yeast types in wine, this doesn’t really help people. So, if you want to know more, you’ll find most of the articles include data sources, contacts and contextual information, so you can check into these on your own.

Besides being a certified sommelier, my personal education include advanced seminars, tastings, and traveling to wine regions of the world. Below are a few of my personal credentials.

If you want to see what wine commissions I’ve worked for and places I’ve travelled, check out the About Us page and click on ‘credentials’ by my name.
 

 

What’s the craziest wine you’ve had?

Oh man… There have been a lot of crazies out there. My first Taurasi is up there. It’s an esoteric wine made with a grape called Aglianico (Olli-AHN-nico). The wine tasted like pepperoni! I recently tried Cayuse “En Cerise” Syrah which blew my mind because it was light like a Pinot Noir (secret motivation for that mega Washington Syrah post) Once, a good friend brought over a bottle of 1986 Dunn Vineyards Howell Mountain Cabernet, it was like washing your mouth out with a cigar. I loved it.
 

Do you have an ultimate food/wine pairing?

This is going to sound weird but I love so many foods made with yeast. That includes cheese, bread, wine, beer, kimchi, oolong tea, tempeh… I want to have a feast with all of them and bask in the glory of fermentation.
 
Otherwise, Port and Stilton may just be the best pairing in my world.

What’s your favorite wine-related movie?

Hey Hollywood make more wine movies! I do love Blood Into Wine with Maynard James Keenan from Tool. Maynard started making wine in the least likely of places in the world: Arizona. The documentary is extremely well filmed and motivates me when I’m editing the featurettes for Wine Folly.
 
I really enjoyed Somm.

Describe your dream wine drinking experience

See above “Ultimate food/wine pairing” You can come, just bring one of the items listed above.
 

Name your top 3 wine bars

West Street Wine Bar,Reno, NV This was my original wine stomping grounds.

The Punchdown, Oakland, CA It was a “Natural Wine” bar. All their wines were “natural,” “orange,” or organic. Unforunately, not all super geeky things take off. I think they’ve since closed down.

Bar Ferdinand, Seattle, WA They are in a terrific spot where all the Seattle foodies hangout. Sometimes I wish they had a more focused selection.

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You can read another article about Madeline on GrapeCollective by Jameson Fink it covers more neat stuff about the creation of Wine Folly and our posters.

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[superquote]So how did you get into wine?[/superquote]