What Inspired Me to Take This Class

Prior to moving to California, I didn’t know a lot about wine. I had aged out of pub plonk and the box wine of Philadelphia BYOs, but I didn’t really “get” wine. Wine seemed like something for folks well above my pay grade -- that one friend who came back from study abroad and was subsequently insufferable about Malbec notwithstanding.

But then I moved to California and everyone seemed to know things and have opinions about wine, not just “fancy” people. It was a revelation -- wine was so much cheaper and more accessible, because, well it was right in our Northern California backyard. It was also the point that I realized that so much of wine is storytelling and history, which intrigued me as a marketer and former liberal arts major.

While I’ve done some exploring on my own, I’m in this class to dive deeper into the reality behind those stories. How to build a great brand, what the regulatory environment looks like, how do you think about a product that has a lifetime of years for production, what does the supply chain look like, etc. I am also interested in the class because I’m more of a generalist by nature. Unlike the other classes I’ve taken as an MBA1, I wanted to take a class that looked at an industry and the different functions within it, rather than comparing businesses across a function like finance.

Finally -- to be perfectly honest -- I’m also taking this class to be able to talk a better game about wine professionally. Being handed the wine list at a business dinner always feels like a test I’m publicly failing. I want to be able to use what I learn here to be able to have conversations about wine with others.