Community

Since a young age, community has been very important to me. Growing up, I would always see my parents host events and while they would provide their house and all the food, everyone would bring a wine to contribute. I began to think of this ritual as people sharing one thing they love with everyone they love. I thought of it as extremely intriguing to see what brand and type of wine people would bring each event. I began to associate wine with those key memories of community.

While in college, ensuring I had a close community like I did growing up became extremely important to me. So I decided to do what my parents did so well, host wine nights with my friends, my community. Despite what food we had at dinner, whether it was steak or pizza, someone always brought a bottle of wine to share with the group. Now looking back, while our choices of wine were not the best given our college budgets, the conversations had and memories formed over wine were ones that I will never forget.  

Fast forwarding a few years to joining Boston Consulting Group, I was excited to find out the role of wine still remained the same even in the work setting. While consulting, we had wine at every networking event, dinner event, social event, and client event. While I gratefully upgraded from my amateur palate, I realized that while I had so many fond memories over wine, that there was so much left to discover. I gratefully began to try learn more about wine from other consultants and sommeliers.

While I have gotten to experience wine from the consumer side, I am interested in understanding more about it from the business side. Thinking through what is the branding and marketing that made my parents’ friends for instance buy and bring a certain wine to share with their community. Thinking through the price of wine such as the lower prices that were consumed during college versus the higher priced wine consumed in consulting and how those products target different consumers. Overall, I am excited learn more about the industry and form a community with this class over wine!