AFTER LEAVING VIETNAM AS A REFUGEE IN 1979.

Cuồng Phạm yearned for the familiar taste of fish sauce-the umami-rich foundation of Vietnamese cuisine.

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Yet he found it lacking in America, his new home. So in 2006, he purchased a family-owned barrel house on Phú Quốc island and in 2011 launched Red Boat, a brand that helped not just fish sauce but Vietnamese food as a whole take off in mainstream American food culture.

"Red Boat is tied directly to my background," Phạm explains of his mission at the time. "It's a nod to the boat people-that journey they took-as well as the first important step of making fish sauce, which actually happens on a boat." Pham's approach to fish sauce, or nuoc mắm, returned to the most elemental methods of production. Fresh anchovies are salted on the boat to preserve flavor, then barrel-fermented on land for over a year. The resulting first press is bottled at 40°N (a high nitrogen grade), sans dilution or additives, which yields a complex, naturally savory, amber-hued condiment, a clear expression of Phú Quốc's terroir across ocean, air, and time.

"Terroir is so important in nuớc mắm," Phạm says. "It's the fish specifically from the Gulf of Thailand, the climate, the fermentation-all of that plays a part. You can't try to make fish sauce anywhere else in the world and expect the same result." This winemaker-esque attention to detail earned Red Boat a particularly strong reputation among chefs. Over the past decade, the brand has exploded across national retailers, and acclaimed chefs such as Stuart Brioza and Bryant Ng have collaborated with it. Today, Red Boat is a pantry essential in Michelin-starred restaurants and home kitchens alike.

Some 10 years into the business, Phạm began to feel another calling. After perfecting one essential ingredient, he wanted to create something that could sit alongside it at the table. Before launching Red Boat, he had worked as an engineer at Apple.

In the early 1990s, that job relocated him to Napa Valley, where he grew familiar with wine, particularly Cabernet Sauvignon.