Terroir Is A Love Language | Vicki Tomiser | Barrels and Roots

In this episode, I sat down with Vicki Tomiser, a wine consultant, hospitality veteran, and self-described "winosaur" whose love affair with wine started not in a cellar but in a buying room full of middle-aged men in gray suits. 

Vicki takes us deep into the world of terroir - the idea that the soil, sun, fog, and stress a grapevine experiences shapes everything about the wine in your glass, and she explains it in a way that finally made it click for me. We talked about her wild career arc from Gallo Winery to sourcing Burgundy and Champagne for international airlines, and how a global pandemic sent her pivoting toward something more intimate and personal. Vicki breaks down why the wine industry has spent decades making people feel dumb for not knowing what a black currant tastes like, why your scent memory is actually your greatest wine superpower, and why a good Merlot deserves way more respect than Sideways ever gave it. This one is equal parts education, passion, and a genuine reminder that wine is supposed to be fun.

If you were a wine, would you be a "juicy, fireplace-vibe" Merlot or a "zingy, rock n' roll" Riesling? Let me know why in the comments!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I think we all should live our lives by unreasonable hospitality, by the way. It's not just about, I think, people in service, but uh to adapt that in a tasting room environment. Again, for too long, especially high-end wineries, it's like you pay your money, you come in, it's very stiff. You know, you're tasting, you're supposed to know some rules that maybe you do or do not know. You know, don't wear perfume and don't want, and by the way, we're judging you if you are, and if you ask certain questions, we're judging you. Um, I'm like, let's have fun. Let me listen to you. Like, I'm noticing that you seem to really be gravitating toward that wine. What it what is it that you like about it? Instead of me sitting here and pontificating about what you're tasting, why don't you tell me what you're tasting? Our scent memory is our strongest memory. And um, it's the last memory we have before we go. It's so strong. So scent and sound together, I'm also crazy about music. Um so I try to link. I used to do a tasting for one of my clients who was also a big music person. I would send out a survey to someone. So they would come in and they would they would book a they'd book a tasting and I'd say, tell me your three favorite music memories and your favorite wine memory or whatever, and I would put together a playlist for them. So that playlist would be playing while we were tasting, and then they could take it with them, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Welcome everybody back to the Barrels and Roots podcast. I am your host, Sean Trace, and I have a very awesome guest with me today. Would you like to tell people who you are and what you do?

SPEAKER_00 1:53

I am Vicki Thomaser. Uh, I do a lot of things. We were just talking about wearing different hats when we were like jumping in. Um, I am the founder of Wine Flight Consulting and Wine Flight Society, which is uh consulting. I work with small family-owned wineries on sales strategy, on digital media marketing, on any kind of how do we get out into the world that's maybe not just um waiting for someone to walk through the your winery tasting room door or receive a club shipment. Like I like to call it other DTC. How do we do it? Um, so I help people do that. Uh and I love that. And the Wine Flight Society is a consumer-facing subscription base. You can come be a member of the society and we do things like when I say we, my mom used to say uh whenever I would use the royal weed, do you have a mouse in your pocket? I, I mean, I am the company. Uh I I do um curated itineraries for visits to wine country. I have been in this industry that I adore for, I just am gonna own it and tell you over 30 years, um, in wearing lots of different hats and doing lots of different things and learning and um meeting great people along the way. So when you do that, I know like where are the really cool unknown places to go, maybe a little off-the-beaten uh path. So I do those itineraries. We do some fun educational things. Eventually, I hope this year, we'll also be sending out what I call the flight path, which is uh curated wine offerings from some of these small family-owned wineries that I'm working with. So that's currently what I do. Uh and I'm a mom of a 16-year-old uh daughter, so that's a huge part of my life as well.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

I love it. Well, there's a couple things. There's so much to dig into there, and I love it because I I love the idea of people come to wine country, you know, whether they go to any of the different wine countries, you know, if you go Napa, Sonoma, or up in Oregon or Paso, wherever, and there's the big places they go, right? And yet, do you know one of my favorite places? I I am originally from not originally, um, but I've lived in Napa in St. Helena uh for a long part of my life. And I used to love, and I still go out there, I filmed a music video out there with my wife. If you go uh out this one road and you just keep going, it's like off a Silverado Trail, and you just go deep, deep, deep back off this road and near Meadowwood. Near Meadowwood, it's like there's this little road that goes up and out, and it takes you out to the backside of Lake Hodges. And you might not, if you don't know like what's out there, like you're gonna drive out there and be like, where are we going? There's nothing here. But you go deeper, you go deeper, and suddenly you come out on this beautiful, beautiful lake. And it's absolutely stunning. And there's this tree that just this beautiful oak tree that's in this area where people will sit and you can watch the the the birds, it's like a nature, like natural location. But one of the reasons I bring that up is that that is one tiny little place. There are so, so, so many things that if you aren't asking the right people, you'll never know, you know, and so I love what you're doing. Like that offering is so cool to me because you just are can open doors for people that they might not like. I live in Vietnam now. If you ever come here, don't do not look on the internet and see what are the good places recommended. No, no, you ask me, and I'm gonna take you to some places that you you're gonna be like, wow, this food right here is good. That's the way it should be.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

I think anytime you travel, it is that way. I've spent, I've had the great good fortune of being able to spend a lot of time in France and Spain and Germany. And it's always like the the places that tourists go or know about, they're getting like a similar experience, you know. Sometimes I'm just like, wow, I could be like in San Diego or something, right? So it it's really beneficial. And and that's really why I had the idea for itineraries. I've lived, uh, I'm from Kentucky originally. So I have people come out, they always tell me that they're coming to visit me in Napa, by the way. And I live in Sebastopol. I live in I live in Sonoma County. I'm like, you're not coming to visit me in Napa. We'll for sure go there. I love it. Um, but uh Napa, for better or worse, is like the Band-Aid, right? Like when people think of wine country, they think they're going to Napa somehow. Like some from, but you know, there's some, as you said, Oregon, Washington, well, the beautiful central coast of California, the amazing. And then some like even up in Low Die and that kind of thing, some really interesting things. But to your point about like that off-the-beaten track, you wouldn't know it was there thing. If you come out and you get on Highway 21 in Napa, you could go, you know, you'd be like, whoa, Robert Mondavi, you know, go in there. Oh, Catherine Hall. And all of these places are fabulous places, like zero, zero shade for to to go there. They're beautiful and wonderful, but but how cool it is to like have an insider tell you, oh, but if you go this way and you're okay for the windy road or that kind of thing, you're gonna come out here and find this uh hidden gym. One of the families I work with, the the tasting room is where their production facility is, which is uh across from a climbing gym, right? So it's not like they're not all some on some, you know, great estate looking over vineyards. That's beautiful part of the experience, but it's the wine and it's the people and it's the story. Always for me, wine is a story. Um there's, you know, where's it grown? Who are the people? Why did they make those choices? Uh, what's their story of getting into wine?

SPEAKER_01 8:36

I I had some wine wineries that were asking me to do some video for them. And one of the things, and I was like, that's great. And they're like, we want to start with a drone shot. And I said, no. No, no, don't do that. And they're like, why not? We have a beautiful location. I said, people don't give a crap about that. They give a crap about the wine, they they care about the people that are making it. And I said, if you're gonna start off with the the person who comes up, like, you know what? I um I love uh the types of videos that start with like you know the marketing video I would make for a winery? Start off with like the alarm goes off, 6 a.m., you know, 5 a.m., whatever time it is. And then the the guy you you show the the winemaker pouring his coffee, walking out, you know, and doing doing whatever he's doing or out there with the grapes, because that that's that's the reality, you know, and that's cool. That's really interesting to see. And that to me is the heart of the um of what it's all about. So let me let me put this out there because I want to ask, I got so many questions. We're already going off on a tangent, but I I I love it. When did wine stop being a drink and start feeling like a calling to you? Was there a moment or a bottle that flipped that switch to you?

SPEAKER_00 10:03

Every wine person, and and I know you've spoken to a lot of them. If you say what was your aha wine, so we all have one of those, but I also think that for me, the answer to your question is beyond my aha wine. Um, I my degree is in theater. I I my brother was in theater, I loved it, I still love theater. Um, I thank God for wine because I can still like live and pay my bills and take care of my child. Let me put it that way. I don't think I'd be doing that with theater. Um, however, that led me to tending bar, as it does a lot of people who study theater. Um, and so I was tending bar, and I had the opportunity. Uh again, I said I've been in this business a long time. So this was in the 90s, early 90s, maybe even late 80s, to go to a wine tasting, which it was not like it is now. Like, you know, wine tasting is very widespread. You can go in, people are doing wine dinners, not so much back then. And um, so I took it, I was really excited to go. I went with the manager uh of the restaurant who knew that I was really into, you know, exploring things, and it was Trephethin. And I tasted a Trepethin Cabernet, and I smelled it, and I could smell blackberries, and I could smell, I was like pencil lead and flowers, and they were like, wow, like you have like, do you do this? Or what I'm like, I don't do it. And I was so like excited by that idea, like maybe this is something I'm like good at that I started down this rabbit hole of reading. And there wasn't ton out there to do, to, to read and even learn about then. Um Kevin Zrayley's Windows on the World, that was my Bible. Of uh, there is something that Karen McNeil has the wine Bible. My Bible was Kevin Zrayle. Uh, and then later in my study, Andrea Robinson's um, Andrea M. Robinson's books are like web how I like got into wine. But years past that time. I mean, I'm loving wine, I'm studying it, but like to say it's my calling, I still would not have done that. I was tending bar again, still, still like, you know, how I how I lived and ate, but I now he's in Orlando, Florida. And one of my regulars was Arnold Palmer, the golfer, greatest golfer in the world. Uh, and the the nicest man too, he and his wife would come in and sit at the bar. And he said, I think that you should come run my wine program at the Bay Hill Club. And I said, Mr. Palmer, you're a 26-year-old bartender with a theater degree. I don't think so. I don't know anything about that. And he said, I know people, come see me next week. And I did. And next the next week, I was the beverage director of the Bahill Club. And as a young woman, um at that time, there just there weren't many women in the rooms where I was. Now I was in a place of like buying power. There were there were middle-aged men in gray suits, a lot of middle-aged men in gray suits. I was um but I was serious about what I was doing, and I was serious about making it happen. And it really was because Mr. Palmer believed in that I could do it, and I was gonna make sure I did it. Um and I, because I had this buying power, got invited by wineries to come out here. This is when I knew it was my calling. Um, Mondavi, I brought that the the the they took me up in a helicopter looking at the vineyards. They I got to stand in Oakville and taste a cabernet from Oakville, and then go over to just not even like a stone's throw away and taste another Cabernet under that different soil and understand terroir. This is when you see me get all jazzed up because terroir makes me crazy. Like it, that's when I fell in love, and that's when I knew I was gonna do this. So it was a little bit of a journey, but that was really it. The soil uh is my love language.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

All right. I had a list of questions, but I want to hear about the soil is your love language. Talk to me about that because I I I I want for people to to understand this. There's something really interesting that you see. Like, I live in Vietnam, and it's interesting that the Vietnamese here and the Vietnamese Americans, they look different. Their sizes are different, their builds are different, and like you get a group that grows up in two different places, and they grow up physically different from different diets, different things. And and it's the same with grapes. You put these grapes in two different locations, and people will look different and grow different, you know, or the the plants will grow different and the flavors are different. Talk to me about that.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

So one of my very favorite um uh tasting experiences for people is to be able to say this this is the same vintage. So we're talking about, you know, so you're not gonna say this has more bottle age or not, or there was more rain that year, whatever. This is the same vintage. This is made by the same winemaker, this is the same grape, but it comes from three different places. And to watch talk about the aha moment of people going. Like, I don't even believe, and sometimes oh I don't even believe it's the same grape, right? Uh a Pinot Noir from the Russian River, which is more inland, and maybe, yes, still gets fog, but gets a lot more sun, and however they treat that, it may be more juicy, jammy, sexy, fireplacey. And but you go way out to the cold Sonoma coast, very cool, very windy, um, very different. Uh what the grape has to do to shield itself from that kind of experience. They have to pick at different times. They have to pray that it gets ripe, but then those grapes are zingy, mineral, acid, um, but more of the high-tone reds, where that Russian river might be, where this might be like cranberry and strawberries. That Russian river is going to be maybe blackberries and um blueberries, kind of if we talk about fruit expression, and then go to Oregon and talk about like the earth component. Um, we the Donlins have uh a Pinot Noir, they have a beautiful Pinot Noir from Russian River, Bennett Valley, and then they have one that up in the wild Mendocino Mendocino Ridge, they're wildly different in expression. And it's so fun. And that is how much sun does it get? I I do a little thing, which I can't do for you because I'm but like I am the great vine, right? I am the vine, and everything that is underneath me and immediately around me is my tiroir. So how far down do my roots go? And am I getting water? Is somebody feeding me water? So then I'm going this way with my roots, or do I have to like dig and dig and dig and go down to get it? And if you have to dig and dig and dig and go down to get it, you're getting in all the other parts of that soil while you're looking for that water. So that's cool. Um, that's why people talk about dry farming, etc. Uh is the sun on my face, you know, at a certain time during the day? How long does the fog stay in? Um, what it what's the average rain for the area that I'm in? All of those things tell me what the grapes that I make from that vine are gonna taste like and be like. Uh and that's where it all starts. Like wine starts there.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

I love that.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

So it's pretty exciting.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

It's super exciting.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

I'm totally not a farmer, and I'm totally not a winemaker, and I don't even play one on TV, but I love to talk about it.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

That's awesome. I mean, but it's passion, it's where your passion lies. And I mean, one of the things that I love that you had talked about is that you had described wine as people and stories. Where did that belief come from?

SPEAKER_00 19:15

I think that's innate to me, and maybe why I um continued the the route I went through hospitality. To me, every time you open a bottle of wine, you are opening a story because that bottle of wine is about where where did the grapes come from? How were the decisions made uh to whatever happened in the winery? That's some winemaker story. How did that winemaker decide that he wanted to do this? If it's a family involved, which so many of the wines I work with now are, like, how did they fall in love with wine? Those questions you're asking me. I every time I go to a uh into a project with another family, uh, I feel like I'm starting a new Netflix show. So it's like, gotta get get to know the people and what are the dynamics and you know, what's the story today? It keeps me on my toes. But there's um every bottle of wine is a story. And not just the boutique y small production ones, although those are my favorite stories right now. Those that's but I worked for the Gallo Winery for 11 years. They were like so good to me and really um helped me in my training and all of those kinds of things. And those those larger production wines have their own story, you know. Some of them, you know, are made in a marketing room, but like a lot of cool people get into this for lots of different reasons. The people are the people are my favorite part of the whole journey, even though I love drinking the wine very much.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Right. The people are the important part of the journey. I we need a we need a reality show, real winemakers of wine country or something. I mean, that would be at least a little bit. Then they would like overdo it and and it would be a little bit wild, but it's not that it's not that glamorous, though. Real housewives of Orange County, it was always the drama. Like I think the drama with I think it would be much more akin to dirty jobs, you know, like uh just showing their own.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

That would work better.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

It would work way better. But like uh you I you have some seriously interesting things you've done. Like you were sourcing wines for airlines early earlier in your career as well. That's such an unusual entry point into the industry. Talk to me about that.

SPEAKER_00 21:48

Um that was after Gallo. And so I left the largest winery in the world to go be the fifth employee for uh a broker who uh specialized in Selling wine to airlines and cruise lines. And my job was to source the wines, meet with the consultants for wineries. But a lot of a lot of people, when they think about wine on airplanes, they think about the little 187 bottles, which that is certainly a part of it. There's so much more to it. I mean, mostly what I was sourcing was 750s. I was in Burgundy. I was in Bordeaux, I was in Champagne, because all of those wines fly uh on the airlines. And so the dynamic of meeting the consultants, which for the big airlines are masters of wine and master smaliers, so like very serious wine people. Um, but also the niche of it has to be a certain production level, right? Um, people, I mean like 5,000 cases to be able to say you can like say I can give you 5,000 cases for a program. Some wineries, the Donlin Winery makes 5,000 cases of everything they do a year. So while so it's it's a lot to be able to like find the quality level, the production level, and the price level that you need and um put that all together because a lot of something like 1,600 wines, let's say for one program, get put in and 12 wines get chosen at the end of the day. For one tender, and it's a one-time a year tender. It's a very niche thing. Um, but they're so there's once-a-year tender, but there's once a year for Delta, once a year for United, once a year for American. So, I mean, there's plenty of stuff to like keep you always going. I learned so much and the travel was amazing. And I would have in my, you know, I would have done that forever and then pandemic. And what you don't want to be doing in a pandemic is be in charge of sourcing for selling wines to airlines.

SPEAKER_01 24:10

Right. That's wild. But you know, one of the things too that's like you you then transitioned more into a different direction. But I also wanted to ask you, like the You had said something about hospitality. Like what does the word hospitality actually mean to you in a wine context? Because and how has your definition of it evolved?

SPEAKER_00 24:34

So I start because I did start out in restaurants, and that was my like feeling of hospitality then. Um, and especially wow, to be a bartender, a server at high-end restaurants, and then in hotels and that kind of thing beyond that. You learn hospitality in this way of like everything is taken care of, you you want the guests to, you want to have it for them before they even know that they need it, that kind of experience. But to me, how hospitality has evolved has been perhaps like how my life has evolved, so much about listening. It's not about, you know, just is your table setup perfectly aligned and are the glasses in just the right place? To me, I think in the beginning that's how hospitality was taught. But now it's like listening to the people and surprising them, surprise and delight. There's a book uh by Will Gadara called Unreasonable Hospitality. And I listen to that on audiobooks at least once a year. Uh, I think we all should live our lives by unreasonable hospitality, by the way. It's not just about, I think, people in service, but uh to adapt that in a tasting room environment. Again, for too long, especially high-end wineries. It's like you pay your money, you come in, it's very stiff. You know, you're tasting, you're supposed to know some rules that maybe you do or do not know. You know, don't wear perfume and don't want, and by the way, we're judging you if you are, and if you ask certain questions, we're judging you. Um, I'm like, let's have fun. Let me listen to you. Like, I'm noticing that you seem to really be gravitating toward that wine. What is what is it that you like about it? Instead of me sitting here and pontificating about what you're tasting, why don't you tell me what you're tasting? And one of um, our scent memory, this is one of my favorite, favorite things. Our scent memory is our strongest memory. And um, it's the last memory we have before we go. It's so strong. So scent and sound together. I'm also crazy about music. Um, so I try to link. I used to do a tasting for one of my clients, but who was also a big music person. I would send out a survey to someone who so they would come in and they would they would book a they'd book a tasting and I'd say, tell me your three favorite music memories and your favorite wine memory or whatever, and I would put together a playlist for them. So that playlist would be playing while we were tasting, and then they could take it with them, you know.

SPEAKER_01 27:31

I wish that we could have a little bit more rock and roll in uh some of the wine tasting rooms. I wish we could have a little bit more spirit and zest. And there are people that are doing it. I'm gonna say that there are some wineries that are um that are starting to change up the game and to start looking at ways to make it more fun. Because at the end of the day, you know one of the crazy things is the last couple tastings that I've been on weren't fun. They were like very stiff, and the wine was phenomenal, but the experience was just like, you know, I felt like I was going through this motion, and like but the reality is is that my my favorite tasting ever was, and I mentioned this on my the podcast uh uh a little while ago. Uh I had a friend who worked in one of the tasting rooms, and we rolled up in there, and he was working with people, and he's just like, Settle in, man. You're welcome to stay here as long as you want. And he started pouring us different wines. He's like, Try some of this. And we were there, we were chatting, we were having fun, we were just, and the people that were coming in, everyone was like really having a peaceful fun time. And it was a small tasting room, and everyone felt welcome, and we were joking and having fun, and it was just this communal thing, people that didn't know each other, and we were all having fun and laughing together. And I was just like, this is the way it should be. And you know, it was like we were there for a long time, we tried so many different wines, and never once did anyone tell me what I was supposed to be tasting. Never once did they tell me what the flavors were supposed to be, what I was supposed to. There are hints of this. Man, I don't even know what a black currant tastes like. You know, it's like, and I don't know how many times I've had someone say black currant or like hints of raspberry. And I'm like, I don't taste any raspberry in this. Like, this tastes like there's one fruit here in Vietnam that's called sabote. Uh, and uh the Western name was sapodilla. It tastes a little bit like pumpkin pie, apple pie, and something else mixed up in a fruit. It's a wild flavored fruit. It is wild.

SPEAKER_00 29:38

And like I have to get some of that.

SPEAKER_01 29:41

Yeah, it's so good. It is so like it's like a pumpkin pie fruit, and yet it has like applesauce vibe in it too. And you'll eat it and you're like, wow, that's amazing. But you know, those are the flavors I have. If someone came up and said, there are hints of this in it, and I was like, no, man, it's like a little bit like root beer, too. Like there's a little bit of root beer flavor. It's wild. And so those are my associations.

SPEAKER_00 30:04

Sasparilla.

SPEAKER_01 30:05

It's like a sabote. I think it's like uh uh I think there is a connection to sarsaparilla or something. Maybe I'm completely wrong, but it is delicious.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

If you well, you said root beer, so I I lean that. That sounds so interesting. And now, see, you are what you just said touched on exactly where I was going when I when my squirrel brain took me someplace else. But because your scent memory is so strong, if three of us were sitting in a room tasting the exact same wine, we would describe it a different way if we weren't afraid. People get afraid. Nobody walks in the kitchen and somebody's baking a pie. You don't go, I think that's blueberry pie, but I'm afraid to say I think it's blueberry because what if I look like a dummy if it's right. Nobody does that, but they do it about wine. And you know, honestly, wine people, that's it that's on us. I it's not on me. I've never been that wine person, but you know, this idea of somehow it's so elite, and only those of us who have been tested and all that kind of stuff can like talk about it. I mean, it's grape juice at the end of the day. Now, it's cool, fun. There, a lot of work goes into that grape juice, but it is, and I think that we need to get over ourselves. But because of where you live and what you've experienced, and like how I grew up in a small town in Kentucky, and maybe somebody else that's tasting is from uh I here in California, right? Anything. So what we're smelling, we're going, we're going, that's our scent memory. You're gonna go back in your scent memory. That's why somebody sometimes people will say, I don't know, I use pie a lot. I'm from Kentucky. I can describe almost any wine in pie terms, at least a little bit. There's key lime pie, and there's blackberry pie, and there's like certain crumbles. It's a different experience. But like that, what you're just talking about, that would be very unique to your experience. Like most people that I would be tasting with would not have had that, right? But so you could say that, and I love that. I talk about um Queen Anne's lace a lot in some wines because it's not that you taste Queen Anne's lace, but you smell it, and it's all connected back here. What you smell and what you taste is all connected. That's why when you have a cold, you can't taste things.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

Yeah. I love what you're talking about too, because so this weekend I'm doing an episode uh with two of my like returning recurring guests, and we're gonna do the celebrity wine challenge. Essentially, I'm gonna name a bunch of different celebrities, and they have to say, if that person was a wine, what wine would they be?

SPEAKER_00 33:01

And so Oh my gosh, please have me on sometime to do that.

SPEAKER_01 33:06

That sounds so fun. Oh no, I'm not gonna do that for you. I'm gonna if you want to come on and do it, I'll have you on in a heartbeat. But we're gonna do music and bands. So I would pick a band, and then you you would have to tell me what band that is, but we got to get at least two people. So if you want another person, you know another person who's into music and wine, let me know, and we'll pull in and make it a little bit of a competition. Because I'll think on that.

SPEAKER_00 33:29

I'm sure I do.

SPEAKER_01 33:30

We have an episode on here that we did like Harry Potter characters and wines, and like if they were in like different Harry Potter houses, what would they be? My point being, like, we have to look at a different way to approach it because there's so many different ways to look at this. And I think that, you know, if you can work with people on things that they already understand, it just makes it a lot easier for them to kind of enter that world, you know? Um, so that's just some thoughts. But I want to ask you this because you work now mostly for small family-owned wineries. What do those families usually get wrong about their story when they're trying to connect with customers?

SPEAKER_00 34:11

Um sometimes you can't get out of your own way, I think, when Right? Right. You're you're in your own little bubble. You you see other people doing things. Maybe you're trying to do things like that. What I talk about all the time, and I hope that, I hope that my my folks, a lot of them will listen to this and they'll be like, that's for sure. She does talk about it all the time, is brand voice. So it's not about so-and-so does that and they do it successfully. Maybe that is really not your jam, and maybe it really does not make sense for you to do that. I like to look at all the things that people do, but I like I want my people to be who they are into in every kind in whatever they're doing on social media, if they're putting out emails, if they're pouring wine at a table at some event, lean into who they are. What's the brand story? What's the brand voice? What do we stand for? Who are we? And you don't have to stand for everything, you shouldn't stand for everything, but but be what is authentic to you. And I authentic just came out of my mouth just then. I, you know, like anytime somebody comes, there's a great idea and we start reading about it or whatever, and then the word becomes so overused. I do, I'm a little tired of authentic. People can be inauthentic in their authenticity. Like they're trying so hard to like seem authentic. Just be who you are.

SPEAKER_01 35:48

Hey, I'm cool too. We're the cool kids. And you're like, what are you doing, man?

SPEAKER_00 35:54

If you have to say you're cool, you're not cool, dude.

SPEAKER_01 35:57

Right. A hundred percent. Right.

SPEAKER_00 35:59

There's the there's the mom from Mean Girls. She's like, I'm the cool mom. And my daughter got me that t-shirt one. So I'm like, hmm. Oh, so also t-shirts though. I did wear this for you, although you can't see it. So I'm gonna try to get it where you can see it. Winosaur.

SPEAKER_01 36:17

There you go. Winosaur. I love that. I got uh, oh man, I love cool shirts and hats. I got some I got some barrels and roots hats made the other day, and I love them. And so I I rock them everywhere. That and my full battery media hats.

SPEAKER_00 36:32

Merch is cool. I'm excited to do some wine flight merch. I haven't done any, but I'm going, I'm going to.

SPEAKER_01 36:39

I love that. Well, one of the my questions too, because I love the idea of DCC. It's such a big buzzword in wine right now. But what does great direct-to-consumer experience actually look like versus one that just goes through the motions?

SPEAKER_00 36:56

I mean, you basically said it right there. Wine, let's go back to being the cool kids, right? This is wine. We should be the cool kids. But unfortunately, it's something this industry um has been very stuck in doing things the same way all the time, right? And I think a great DTC experience is one in which they're listening to their people, they're not afraid to do something different, they're bringing, they're bringing people in for experiences because the wine cannot do all the heavy lifting. Now, the wine has to be good. I mean, that has to be, you know, that's the understood part, right? Uh, and some people are gonna like your wine and some people aren't, no matter what you're doing. If you're, you know, standing on your right foot under the full moon and chanting it uh whatever you're doing, some people are gonna like it, some people aren't gonna like it. But what you can offer them is hey, we're gonna have some fun, we're gonna engage you, we're gonna make you think, but it's gonna be fun. I love gamification with wine now. It's something that's really coming on. But pay attention to your audience. And by the way, your audience is all different. People that walk in, like, how old are they? Where do they live? What's their experience with wine? Ask them all of those questions and curate. Curation in direct-to-consumer is, I think, so important. And people are really thinking outside of the box now as far as like what does a club look like, or what am I trying to do with them in my mailing list? You can have a lot more fun with that. I'm not sure if you've ever um spoke, you probably have. I may have I may have Ed Ed from Tank Garage. Have you talked to Ed Ed?

SPEAKER_01 39:01

Ed's super cool, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:02

He's amazing. So to me, he's um uh to me, Ed's kind of my guru of of that thing, and not just Ed. He has a team and and that, but I know Ed because he and I are on the steering committee for the direct to consumer wine symposium. But I love what Tank Garage does. They they really are actively putting a fun spin back on wine and how they are how they talk about it, how they present it to their people. The experience you have when you walk in there is fun. Um so they're not one of my clients. So this is a free one for you, Ed. But they're doing um something I they just sent it to me. I'm on their mailing list where you just they nobody wants to run out of rose, right? So they're like doing like a their tank garage, so a rose fill up situation, I guess. Like, hey, I'm down, like fill me up with rose. That's it. Like, listen to your people and don't be afraid to do some fun stuff, right?

SPEAKER_01 40:13

Yeah, I I love them. And I I I absolutely love Ed and the way they're changing up because it's fun. They have made wine fun again in a way that a lot of people do not get that or feel that it's not okay to do. And I'm like, why not? You know, it's like get out there and make it fun. Like it is a fun beverage. Drinking wine is a fun thing to do. And so you don't have to fight the fact that it's fun. And I think that's my biggest challenge is that first off, we've lost that idea of fun. And that is a bad, bad, bad thing. And I I think that I have an idea that I'm I'm working on with Ed that is absolutely awesome. I can't say anything yet to make sure I I want to make sure it goes through first. But if and when it goes through, you'll be like, that was awesome. And it's just so outside the box. It is so outside the box that it's really fun. And it it's just because at the end of the day, why can't we have fun with what we're doing? Like, you know, and I mean, that's the thing. Like, was the last glass of wine you had a fun experience? Right? Are you asking me that?

SPEAKER_00 41:26

Yeah, I'm asking you that was your last glass of wine fun? Well, I'll tell you, um maybe not fun, but I did enjoy it. So I, you know, I am I'm I'm a single mom, and I will definitely have a glass or two of wine, and I don't I am of the um life is too short to dance with ugly men and drink bad wine uh mindset. So so um I uh so I don't. I and I really enjoy what I drink. And last night I I had the experience of I helped a dear friend um pour wine for an event that she was she was contracted to do and she needed a little help. So we were a two-hour drive down and a setup and an hour and a half of pouring wine and breakdown and a two-hour drive back. So I got back here knowing I had to do this podcast this morning, but I did have a glass of wine. So that was my last glass of wine, and it was delicious.

SPEAKER_01 42:40

That's super awesome. Now I want to ask you this. Um, one last question. Um, your tagline, and I love this, we are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of a wine of wine. Tell me about that line. Where did it come from, and why does it still resonate with you?

SPEAKER_00 42:59

Well, uh, I read it on a wine list at the top about 25 years ago. And I it was one of those things that like I went back to in my head all the time. And um I believe, I believe a philosopher said it now. Like I did, I just thought some cool person who wrote the wine list because it did it wasn't attributed. Um so I to me that's that sums up wine, how wine makes me feel. You know, that feeling, that first kiss feeling of like all the butterflies and the lead up to it and the you know, the giddiness of it. Um, you know, and then your second glass of wine. I don't know if you've ever watched those uh videos of where bill like three women are out together. They're like, this is my first glass of wine, and they're talking, and then this is my second glass of wine, and this is my third glass of wine. Well, the third glass of wine takes you to a different place. That second glass, that's your that's nice little nirvana space. And um I love that. I wish for everybody that they could go through life feeling like the first kiss in the second glass of wine.

SPEAKER_01 44:25

I love that because the um, yeah, you're right, it does hit different. That second glass does hit different. And I remember um my first car. And my dad handed me the keys. I would just graduated high school, and it was a beat-up old Subaru. It was actually clean lines and everything, but it was just an old car. But man, I remember the first drives in that with no AC rolling down the windows, and and yet it was beautiful. And I think that that present moment experience is so powerful. And you know, those first kisses, those second glasses of wine, those those dances that we do are so beautiful, but you have to be be there and you gotta give your space to do it. And I want to ask you one one more last question. Someone who's not into wine and you're pouring them three glasses. What are the three glasses you're pouring?

SPEAKER_00 45:25

I think aha wine experience is a beautiful dry Riesling because it's the way it smells is heaven. People hear Riesling, they think it's gonna be sweet. Even sometimes when you smell it, you think it's gonna be, but instead, it's all of these um citrus and floral and peachy tones. And if it's like maybe I would say a fine herb, a medium dry Riesling for someone new, new. Um, it but it finishes drier and crisper and with minerality and acidity, and you don't expect it, it's mouth watering. I think that's um that's heaven, and it's definitely something I would do. And we're taught that it's not cool to like Riesling, but the cool kids love Riesling. And uh Merlot again, sideways taught us that we're not supposed he didn't mean to teach us that we're not supposed to like Merlot, but you know, I love Merlot. We that happens.

SPEAKER_01 46:33

Merlot is hands down my favorite wine.

SPEAKER_00 46:36

I love Merlot. I and I think Merlot can a good Merlot is a revelation in um in for red wine. Um I think cab can go too far, especially for uh for if you're new to wine, right? Like people want to jump to Cabernet, and especially if they're drinking it too young or something like that, it's too austere, there's too much tannin, you're you're not getting it. I love a beautiful Merlot with a couple of years of bottle age. Um and then Pinot Noir, and probably like the like where I think a lot of the heart of Pinot Noir, I personally love to drink like Sonoma Coast, Oregon, that kind of thing. But I think I would pick a beautiful Russian river Pinot Noir. Um I love it. It's yeah, those would be my three. But you didn't ask me my desert island wine. I like I like your choice better because you have to think outside of like how someone who's been drinking wine for 30 years drinks to how someone who you want them to love it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:49

Where can people go to find out more about you and what you do?

SPEAKER_00 47:54

Uh well, thank you for asking. Um I'm on all I'm on all the stuff. Uh so uh I'm on Instagram. I have I have I have three accounts on Instagram. I shouldn't, but anyway, I'm at Vicky Tom1 on Instagram, and I am at WineFlight Society on Instagram. And if you just need a third Vicky Instagram account, I am at drinksfor a living, and that's four spelled out. I mean drinksforaliving.com. That started when I was starting to blog. Um, and I am you can find out about Wineflight Society at my website, which is wineflightsociety.com