What is your favorite drink?
I have written more than once about my growing interest in wine. These days it’s somewhere between a passion and obsession.
As a young adult, I had friends who were wine lovers. One of my friends got his first job as a winemaker when visiting my home. My relationship with him has opened up many opportunities to sample some great wines as well as chat about wine more generally. Then through business living in South Australia, Australia’s largest wine producer, I had a number of clients in the wine industry. All of these contributed to an interest, but it really was my PhD that investigated the non-financial characteristics of family wine businesses that moved wine to the forefront.
Through my PhD, and before that my Honours project, I had the opportunity to visit a number of wineries, both in South Australia and Australia. I also took the opportunity to meet and discuss wine with families in Italy and the USA. Their stories were fascinating. Their connection to the land, a sense of place, a connection to their community, as well as an emotional connection, led to the title of my thesis – The story is in the bottle. The title was borrowed from an interview I conducted in my Honours project with the managing director of a multigenerational family business which sadly no longer exists.
My PhD gave me access to family stories as well as, the opportunity to go back stage at a number of Australia’s family wine businesses. Some of these family wine businesses are household names with generations of history, while others are early on their journey.
The result was a desire to learn more about wine itself.
