Beer Girl Wants to Learn About Wine

There’s nothing more relatable, more ordinary and extraordinary, than grabbing a cold one at the local spot. Nothing that makes you stop and connect like getting tipsy with new friends and learning the particulars of a country’s craft. Beer is at its core only four ingredients: malt, water, yeast, and hops, but it’s incredibly complex in its simplicity. I’m a big believer that every beer has a story – from the fruity, funky farmhouse ales of Belgium to the delicate, disciplined rice beers of Japan, you can’t deconstruct a local beverage without learning something about the people and country that created it. It’s a powerful lens through which to experience a culture for the first time.

I wrote this in my beer blog back in December of 2016 when I was about to take off on a 6-month beer backing trip across the world. Craft beer has been a big part of my life for the past 5 years. I fell in love with the art and science of brewing after working with local breweries in San Francisco as the Food and Beverage marketing lead at Eventbrite. I became a homebrewer, and weekly Sunday night beer pairing experiments with a local chef gradually turned into a business – a beer pairing education supper club in SF called Amuse Booze.

The most rewarding part of my job and of running the supper club was getting to introduce people to amazing local brews and the communities behind them. So when I suddenly found myself with several months free on my hands before GSB, I decided to spend them visiting countries where I knew nothing about the beer scene, meeting as many people as I could, and writing about it. I had some of the most incredible experiences of my life -- meeting brewers but also makers across all facets of the craft beverage industry. I shadowed a hop farmer in Tasmania, I brewed with an expat in Vietnam, I learned about bootlegged liquor in Indonesia, and yes, met winemakers in South Africa.

I see wine as an untapped area of learning for me, the other side of the craft beverage coin. I would love to learn more about the wine industry, and specifically about how geographies and cultures shape the products that are created. I’m also interested in this class because I can potentially see my future career being in the food and beverage industry, and I’ve struggled with marrying what I love about beer and wine -- this authentic passion and joy of bringing people together -- with building a successful business. Like the supper club, my favorite experiences and products often seem inherently unscalable. I’ve seen so many brands that become behemoths and lose what made them successful in the first place. I want to explore what it is that makes a brand authentic, and how I can I bring people together around local experiences and products at scale without losing this authenticity. I’m looking forward to dropping the pint glass and picking up the Gabriel Glass this quarter to see where it takes me.