Hi! I’m Elizabeth.
Thanks for stopping by! I’m the founder and the only full-time employee of Wine for Normal People. I created Wine for Normal People as a podcast, wine education, and media company with the single goal of providing well-researched and accurate wine content that distills hard-to-understand concepts into clearly communicated, fun loving podcasts, classes, videos, and live events for anyone who is eager to learn about wine.
Wine for Normal People is based on a few of my core beliefs…
I want to teach you about wine so you can make your own judgments and feel great about your opinions because they are based on fact, and based on your ability to clearly articulate your ideas about wine. Armed with knowledge, wine becomes fun and fascinating, not boring and exclusive.
Wine concepts don’t have to be intimidating, complicated, or confusing.
You should be able to understand your hobby, do wine travel, and feel great about wine without having to choke down thousand-page wine encyclopedias or take classes meant for industry pros.
Good communication tells you what you really need to know.
Flowery language and unnecessary descriptions don’t add to your understanding. This kind of communication stops many people from loving wine. “Straight talk” allows you to get wine, and then makes you want to know more.
Wine doesn’t have to ruin your confidence or hit your wallet hard.
FACT: the more you know about wine, the less you’ll spend per bottle and the better stuff you get!
Sound too good to be true? There is a caveat: WFNP is personality-driven.
My brand of opinion, frankness, and injection of New York-style humor is not for everyone. The information is fact but the interpretation is opinion and it is interwoven in all I do. If it’s not for you, there are dozens of other resources and I encourage you to find the right wine person for you – please click off the page, turn off the show, and move on. I’m here for anyone who wants to learn and engage in a positive way but I use my years in the industry and in business and my own ideas about right and wrong to make judgments.
If you’re planning to stick around and you’re curious: Here’s my wine story…
Born and bred on Long Island, New York, my parents spent a lot of time schlepping me into Manhattan and Brooklyn, their native homes, so I got the best of both worlds growing up — the burbs and the city.
After majoring in international politics, taking a semester in Italy (where I learned to love wine and food), and being teased enough to get rid of my awesome LI accent, I graduated from Wesleyan University (CT) and started my career in high-tech in Boston.
In Boston, I went to a lot of wine tastings, bought a lot of nasty wine, and felt pretty bad about myself for what I didn’t know. Nevertheless, my love of wine persisted.
Trips to the wine shop often yielded awesomely poor (but hilarious) results, so my sister and I finally took a wine tasting and appreciation course at the Boston Center for Adult Education. At last, we had someone spell out the confusing fundamentals of wine. That class started me on my wine journey because I looked at the teacher and thought: I want to do that!
I wanted to teach other smart, professional, normal people about wine and open the same door my teacher opened for me!
Not long after the class, I took a “life sabbatical” and spent 8 months in St. John in the Caribbean waiting tables, learning about how people order wine from a list and how restaurants make their lists, sleeping in a shack with a mosquito net, and figuring out what I wanted to do next.
Business school was always a goal, so my time on the island was followed by a great two years completing my MBA at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (where I met M.C. Ice, my podcast partner and husband). After school I worked at a big, hulking industrial wine producer as a brand marketer. During that time I learned about the wine world – the product, the industry and how wine really shouldn’t be made [industrial wine is the worst]. It was a tough four years but it gave me a perspective few wine writers/podcasters have.
I don’t think wine credentials mean much but I’m Certified Sommelier, Certified Specialist of Wine, I’ve run an online wine school since 2014, and I have spoken for top CEOs, executives, and groups of normal people around the world. My podcast and book have been written up in all sorts of great publications and I’ve even been on TV a bunch.
Now I live in Raleigh, North Carolina with M.C. Ice, our two daughters, and Ellie, the best and most spoiled Welsh terrier in the world.
My goal is to share everything I know about wine and to foster critical thinking and thought provoking conversations about wine. Why write for publications and industry people? I’d much rather hang out with my dedicated community of fellow normal wine people, like you. So that’s what I do.
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Wine For Normal People® translates wine into normal terms that you can relate to through an award-winning podcast, acclaimed book, awesome live online classes, and in popular public corporate and association speaking events.
