I have enjoyed drinking wine for quite a while, but I only started learning about wine in the past few years. When I was working at the 49ers, my boss mentioned someone in our Business Operations group needed to support the team owner, John York, on his wine vision for Levi's Stadium. I immediately volunteered given my love of drinking wine. When I met John for the first time, he told me he wanted to call the program Appellation 49 and I didn't even know what an appellation was, so I knew I had a lot to learn.
Over the course of three years working on the program, I met winemakers or owners from over 150 high quality wineries in California. I got the opportunity to travel with John to visit wineries in Napa and Sonoma to talk about the program and along the way participated in many amazing barrel tastings, vertical tastings, and fun winemaker dinners. I also got to learn a lot about the business and regulation of wine as we talked with proprietors about their businesses and worked through the regulatory hurdles from the ABC to enable online sales and a tied house exemption. It was a really amazing opportunity to learn a ton about the California wine industry very quickly.
I'm excited about this class to dive deeper into the pieces of the wine business I haven't experienced yet such as filling in my wine knowledge about regions outside of California and diving deeper into components such as supply chain and import/export rules. I'm also excited to taste some new wines with all of you!
Very cool way to learn about wine! Sorry for being naive, but what's the difference between a barrel tasting and a vertical tasting?
ReplyDeleteA barrel tasting is tasting wine right out of the barrel, usually as a way to get a sense of how a wine will taste once it's ready to be bottled.
DeleteA vertical tasting is tasting the same wine across a number of vintages to understand how the wine has changed over time. It's a really fun way to see how weather and aging contribute to differences in wine taste.
This sounds like and amazing project! What does the "wine experience" at the stadium look like today?
ReplyDeleteThe premier wine experience is in the highest end suites in the stadium where we have 6 wineries conduct wine tastings on gamedays.
DeleteIn all suites, fans can order wines from a tablet app we developed and have a selection of over 100 wines to choose from.
Finally, in all parts of the stadium, there are some high end wine locations where you can buy select high end wines by the glass that rotate each game!
Definitely keep an eye out for these wines if you are at an event at Levi's Stadium :)
How do we get these tickets?!
Delete