wine /wīn/

A sleepy New England summer. Sweet, bright, ever so slightly musty. Viscous streams of purplish maroon congealing down my legs. This is a different kind of war -- the kind with the blood of grapes. One of my childhood friends hails from a family of amateur winemakers, and we are twelve and  stomping and dancing away, stuffed in barrels we were barely able to jump into.

Although my twelve-year-old self did not taste the fruits of my labor, wine captured my imagination from a young age, and I am incredibly excited to learn more about the production process of wine through this course. 

Now, as a research assistant at the Stanford Food Design Research team at the d.school, I am also ever more aware of wine's extraordinary grasp on the future of the food and beverage industry. Through this course, I hope to learn about how wine will intersect with the future of restaurants, which is the primary topic of my research at the d.school.

Having worked in marketing, sales, and video strategy for food and beverage-related brands, I am also deeply interested in wine branding and marketing strategies, and I am excited to explore these further in this course. For instance, Inniskillin's international marketing and strict pricing strategies fascinated me; I am looking forward to continuing to delve into what makes and breaks luxury wine brands.

I do not know if I will end up in the wine industry, but I am eager to learn about wine from a business perspective (which I believe will help develop my own sense of what goes into creating and expanding robust businesses) and from the vantage point of an interested consumer. Through this course, I want to better understand and appreciate wine.