Fellow wine lovers,
In reading these blog posts, I'm not sure any of my reasoning for attending this class is unique or original. It's not that complicated - I love wine and find the industry super interesting!
I grew up in a wine-loving family, and that shared experience was an important part of our bond as a unit - still is. Wine is still the thing I splurge on at restaurants, and I love to learn and try different varietals, particularly local wines while traveling.
I've also always been interested in wine making as a career. This path never seemed more possible than when I saw the Parent Trap (the one with Lindsay Lohan, obviously), and her Dad's character casually owned a vineyard and winery in Napa. At the ripe age of 9, inspired by the rugged charm of a young Dennis Quaid, I decided that owning a winery was the career for me.
Things have changed since then, and my naivete around this career path has been made abundantly clear to me, but the industry as a whole still intrigues me. How do wineries define and differentiate their own value for their customers in such a crowded space? How do they think about what customers might prefer and how tastes might change when dealing with a product with so much lead time? To what extent are they even able to do product "planning" per se, given the factors that affect the quality of a harvest are mostly beyond our control? Are there ways to consolidate the fixed costs of wine production across wineries to reduce overhead for small shops? How can SMEs in wine think about changing tastes in China, for example, and to what extent should they change to meet those needs or expect tastes to "mature"?
These are just a few of the questions I have, and I know that some of my classmates have some of the answers. At first I thought my lack of unique reasoning for taking the class could be a bad thing, but I'm seeing that once again, wine is creating common ground, bringing me together with some amazing humans. I'm happy to have the chance to use it as a vehicle to learn more about the industry and you all!
In reading these blog posts, I'm not sure any of my reasoning for attending this class is unique or original. It's not that complicated - I love wine and find the industry super interesting!
I grew up in a wine-loving family, and that shared experience was an important part of our bond as a unit - still is. Wine is still the thing I splurge on at restaurants, and I love to learn and try different varietals, particularly local wines while traveling.
I've also always been interested in wine making as a career. This path never seemed more possible than when I saw the Parent Trap (the one with Lindsay Lohan, obviously), and her Dad's character casually owned a vineyard and winery in Napa. At the ripe age of 9, inspired by the rugged charm of a young Dennis Quaid, I decided that owning a winery was the career for me.
Things have changed since then, and my naivete around this career path has been made abundantly clear to me, but the industry as a whole still intrigues me. How do wineries define and differentiate their own value for their customers in such a crowded space? How do they think about what customers might prefer and how tastes might change when dealing with a product with so much lead time? To what extent are they even able to do product "planning" per se, given the factors that affect the quality of a harvest are mostly beyond our control? Are there ways to consolidate the fixed costs of wine production across wineries to reduce overhead for small shops? How can SMEs in wine think about changing tastes in China, for example, and to what extent should they change to meet those needs or expect tastes to "mature"?
These are just a few of the questions I have, and I know that some of my classmates have some of the answers. At first I thought my lack of unique reasoning for taking the class could be a bad thing, but I'm seeing that once again, wine is creating common ground, bringing me together with some amazing humans. I'm happy to have the chance to use it as a vehicle to learn more about the industry and you all!
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