Wine Not? A Wine Lover's Search for Meaning

On a cold winter morning in my first months after moving to San Francisco, I hopped into my friends’ car at 8 am (well before I wanted to be awake after a long week of work) and trekked across the foggy Golden Gate and along the CA-37 to consume wine before lunch. At the time, this felt like an absurd pastime, but I begrudgingly agreed to accompany my friends Lexi and David on this “cultural excursion” – my first trip to Napa Valley. Little did I know that this one day would change my relationship with wine – one that would define my next few years significantly.

We visited a number of vineyards that day – Honig, a family-run Rutherford vineyard known for its sustainable farming practices, deep single-vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, and crisp but attainable Sauvignon Blanc and where Lexi’s sister had just worked the harvest; Merryvale, where we did a vertical tasting of 5 years of Cabernet Sauvignon, analyzing the differences that the weather and the age made to the richness of the wine. I was transformed. For me, wine represented everything I thought love to be – history and family, hard work and passion, challenge and surprise. And what a great love it has turned out to be. 

Vertical tasting at Merryvale Vineyards in 2015.

I have always been motivated by analyzing and deeply understanding the difficult to decipher – problems that are not easily solved, that are art and science. My passion for wine feeds this innately connected analytical and creative need within me. There is always more to explore, more to understand, more to learn. A wine journey is never done.

Growing up, wine had little significance in my family. My mother enjoyed wine and drank it on occasion with dinner; my father did not. What it did represent, however, was pride in where I came from. From a Kiwi family, I have always felt a deep respect for a crisp, homey New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc – a Cloudy Bay, a Kumeu River. New Zealand, in the eyes of the rest of the world, is very much an “underdog.” Wine was an area where I saw my people shine. My father, in spite of his lack of knowledge of wine, would proudly take a bottle of NZ Sauvignon Blanc to family friends when they had us over for dinner, eager to share New Zealand’s best. It was not until I would make my own pilgrimage back home to NZ this past winter break to tour the famous wine region of Otago (Marlborough, luckily, is on the docket for next visit!) that I would understand this sense of pride for country that wine could represent. To me, a delicious Sauv Blanc or Pinot is home – and that is powerful.

A wine flight in Central Otago, New Zealand.

This summer, I had the privilege of interning at Duckhorn Portfolio in Napa and Sonoma in Strategic Finance, working with some of the brightest minds in wine. I worked with the CFO and the Vice President of Finance to improve internal processes around finance and sales data analysis and long-term forecasting capabilities. I also worked closely with the CMO (hopefully a future class guest!) and Head of Direct to Consumer to analyze competitor tasting rooms and make recommendations for Duckhorn’s most critical line of business (and the door to their future wine club members!). Living in wine country made my passion and interest for wine grow exponentially, and I know it will always be a part of my life (personally, and perhaps professionally). I look forward to sharing more of the specifics on my learnings from the summer with you all in a subsequent post!

Over the course of the quarter, I am eager to add to my love of and knowledge of wine throughout the world – to explore and analyze new regions, their characteristics, what makes them shine. To see what makes wine feel like home for the people of this region, just as a NZ Sauv Blanc feels like home to me. I am eager to learn about the special character that makes a wine region or specific vineyard stand out to the world – in the eyes of critics and the consumer. I am eager to further my knowledge of the economics of wine – specifically with respect to long-term financial forecasting. To me, wine is an industry ripe for disruption, that can hugely benefit from big data, but the level of innovation has remained low (according to my former boss, both due to antiquated regulations that govern parts of the supply chain – like the 21^st Amendment – and due to difficulty of recruiting top business and analytical talent). My summer gave me the fuel and desire to want to change that, and I am excited to further my learnings, my idea, and my passion for wine over the course of the next ten weeks.

For now, I’ll take another sip.