Let's sell some Italian wine

I lived in Italy until I came to Stanford in fall 2015 and, as most Italian children, I was exposed to wine from a (very) early age. I enjoyed it occasionally at lunches and festivities with my family but never really paid attention to it. In my teenage years I turned to beer and cocktails as most of my peers.

Everything changed when I arrived at Stanford. As most expats, I was looking for something to keep me in touch with my home country and I stumbled upon the Stanford Wine Society. Given the importance of wine in Italian culture, I thought that getting to know more about it would serve as a way to stay connected to my country so I joined.

It has since become one of my favorite moments in the week and this year I decided to take an active part in helping to organize it. Our mission is to present wine to students by cutting all the pretentiousness which most non wine drinkers associate to it, in an effort to teach a healthier drinking style (compared to the chugging frat drinking culture). However, participating in the wine club has exposed me to some of the controversies of wine. I have observed people approach wine believing that it is pretentious and snobby, judging a bottle only based on price, or treating it as a status symbol (champagne…), just to name a few.

Professionally, I took this class to understand more about the marketing of wine and how that may have affected all the previously mentioned factors. This would help me think about how wine (possibly Italian) could be presented to the young generations for what it really is.

Personally, I hope that this class will aid in expanding my knowledge of all the different wine regions, especially beyond the old world, which is my “comfort zone” for now. I am particularly interested to learn about China. They are so big, I bet there must be an amazing wine region waiting to be discovered somewhere in there.