Meet Rachel, The Wine Nerd

Hi, I’m Rachel and I am so excited you’ve joined me on my journey to be nerdy and learning about wine. I get asked quite often how I started in wine, why I have an Instagram of graphs, and what my long term plans are. This blog post aims to share my current answers to those questions, although this is a journey that I expect to continuously evolve along the way.

How did I get into wine?

I’ll admit to being intrigued by wine and loving drinking it ever since I legally was able to. An iconic moment for me was when we ordered off one of those wine discount magazines and received a case of varietals I’d never heard of. It came with tasting cards, and I remember this being my first introduction into the fun world of wine knowledge — like knowing that Syrah and Shiraz are really two names for the same varietal but from different regions and different styles.

I then spent the summer of 2018 backpacking in Europe for three months — surrounded by wine culture and access like I’d never had before. In my downtime on trains, plains and busses, I started listening to a wine podcast: Wine for Normal People. This is when I discovered how many doors and amazing conversations can open from just knowing and appreciating a little bit about wine. Many moments stand out, but none better than chatting with a wine shop owner in Florence, Italy about her family’s history in the esteemed wine region of Tuscany, a conversation that all began with me knowing that the primary white wine produced here was Vernaccia di San Gimignano.

How did The Wine Nerd start?

Following that life-changing trip in Europe, I moved to San Francisco and started my new job is as a data scientist at a big tech company. I also started reading more about wine, attending tastings, visiting wine country, and even posting photos of bottles I’d liked on a casual instagram account I’d created — @the.wine.nerd. My brand grew quickly amongst my friends as “the wineo”, so it was incredibly rewarding to start carving out a niche of knowledge and expertise.

I don’t remember exactly what came first — the project idea, the wine curiosity, or the desire to just make some graphs, but there was a distinct weekend where I started thinking about how cool it would be to merge the skillset I use at my day job with my passion for wine. Selfishly, I thought as long as I was practicing data science skills, it would be worth my time — nothing had to come out of it from the wine perspective.

So now what is The Wine Nerd?

My plans are constantly evolving with the brand itself based on the work that I find interesting and rewarding. My ultimate goal is to help solve some of the key pain points in the wine industry, through analyzing data, conducting insightful research, and building great products. Some of the pain points I believe need solving are:

• Lack of easily accessible end-to-end data for the wine industry, from production to consumption
• Sparse, fragmented and biased data on the quality of wines that inform what people choose to drink
• Difficulty and a lack of guided exploration of new types of wines, new producers, and new winery experiences
• Existing barriers to expanding wine knowledge include needing to read books and go through expensive coursework

The Wine Nerd blog and instagram itself was conceived as a platform to serve as a testing ground for some of these ideas, while building up the expertise and brand for the future. The two main goals for The Wine Nerd blog are:

• Educate my audience using data and stories.
• Connecting my audience to great wineries and great wine.

Some of the great experiences that have come with The Wine Nerd:

• Judging at the California State Fair Amateur competition
• Wine tasting in Napa, Sonoma, Lodi, Santa Cruz Mountains, Willamette, Yakima, Texas Hill Country and Michigan
• Starting down the WSET path with Level 1 certification
• Meeting and chatting with various forces in the wine industry: James Suckling, Peter Neptune, Ken Wright

And I can’t wait to see what experiences lay ahead! As always, I’d love to hear from you — rachel.thewinenerd@gmail.com