After earning a degree in Sustainable Agriculture, Kristin got her start in restaurants cooking in the Bay Area. She joined the front of house team at Saison, where she was first exposed to French wine. She has been a sommelier at Straight Wharf Restaurant in Nantucket, Husk Nashville, Osteria Mozza and Gigi’s Los Angeles. She is the Founder + CEO of Nomadica Wine where she thoughtfully curates a selection of high quality canned wine and one of 2021 Wine Enthusiast’s 40 under 40. She is passionate about working with high quality, small producers who focus on sustainable practices. But this is today. Like any good story, Kristin’s journey took twists and turns. For many of us who yearn for deeper, richer experiences, it’s easy to get burned on the path of learning how to love yourself. Sometimes those lessons reach us in mysterious ways. And in the case of Kristin: via a former U.S. President.
After earning a degree in Sustainable Agriculture, Kristin got her start in restaurants cooking in the Bay Area. She joined the front of house team at Saison, where she was first exposed to French wine. She has been a sommelier at Straight Wharf Restaurant in Nantucket, Husk Nashville, Osteria Mozza and Gigi’s Los Angeles. She is the Founder + CEO of Nomadica Wine where she thoughtfully curates a selection of high quality canned wine and one of 2021 Wine Enthusiast’s 40 under 40. She is passionate about working with high quality, small producers who focus on sustainable practices.
But this is today.
Like any good story, Kristin’s journey took twists and turns. For many of us who yearn for deeper, richer experiences, it’s easy to get burned on the path of learning how to love yourself. Sometimes those lessons reach us in mysterious ways. And in the case of Kristin: via a former U.S. President.
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[00:00:00] Kristin: Where have I been in my life? Like I'm not showing up for myself. Like I'm not respecting myself. I'm just doing anything I can to push down my bad feelings and not actually looking at my life and the relationships that I have and what, what am I putting into those relationships? What are other people putting into those relations? God. I remember just feeling like crazy that day. Like, like something had snapped right in my head. And like all of [00:00:30] a sudden it was obvious to me that I just had never valued myself in any relationship I had been in, and I don't know what happened. I just stopped valuing myself and it just degraded over time. And. I played an active role in how people treated me. And, and I think that's what was so hard about it before is I [00:01:00] didn't want to believe that I had played an active role in my abusive relationship. I wanted to feel bad for myself and feel like all of these things happen to me and I had no control over them. But I, I did and remembering that I had the control and then I did take back the control and I stopped beating myself up for staying and started congratulating myself for leaving, which is it's, it's insane that a former [00:01:30] president's words to his daughter in a moment of comfort, like provided me with so much comfort, but they really did.
[00:01:45] Jordan: Welcome to the Prix Fixe Podcast, a podcast where the new voices in the food and beverage world share their stories and journeys in their own words. Show is produced and edited by me, Jordan Haro in Los Angeles, California.[00:02:00]
What does it mean to love yourself? Is it eating right? Doing yoga every day, meditating, hugging yourself? Well, surely any of these may help, there's no one prescribed answer that works for all. Loving yourself is hard work. It's not always easy to see the work that needs to be done even if that answer might be sitting in front of us. More people seem eager to talk about this phenomenon today more than ever. And thankfully they can [00:02:30] hold a captive audience. Meet Kristin Olszewski the sommelier and owner of Nomadica, the best canned wine on the market. You might be rolling your eyes right now. Canned wine? Come on. Yes. Canned wine. Kristen meticulously selects the best juice from biodynamic farmers across California and packages it into an attractive eight ounce can capable of accentuating your multi-day backpacking trip or take you on a mental vacation to a sweeping Mendocino coastline from the [00:03:00] comfort of your living room. Plus aluminum weighs less than glass, which means it is more environmentally sustainable than traditional wine bottles. Still skeptical? Go to an LA Rams game at the SoFi Stadium, and you'll find Nomadica there as well as in many other places across seven different states and counting. Kristen works as a mentor to female winemakers. She's also currently running the cannot-miss wine list at Gigi's, one of the hottest restaurants in Hollywood. But this is today. Like any good story, [00:03:30] Kristen's journey took twists and turns. While studying in Harvard's pre-med program. She realized she was deeply unhappy and instead chose to live her best life as a sommelier, working in some of the most exciting restaurants in America. For many of us who yearn for deeper, richer experiences, it's easy to get burned on the path of learning how to love yourself. Sometimes those lessons reach us in mysterious ways. In the case of Kristen, via a former United States President. [00:04:00] I'm super excited to share this interview with you as it was my first podcast recording. We made it happen in August 2020 before this project had a name. I like to think it informed a lot of what I'm trying to do here and the stories I'm interested in sharing. Heads up: the names of a former US President and First Lady were bleeped out due to a nondisclosure agreement. With that out of the way let's listen in.[00:04:30]
[00:04:32] Kristin: So I always loved farming and growing things. And then I had two other completely useless majors. So what do you do with that? You move to San Francisco and you work in restaurants. And so I started cooking all over the city as like the baby line cook that got constantly yelled at, um, like 60 hour days. And did that for a year, decided that kitchens were not my thing, not [00:05:00] for me. And I went to this restaurant called Saison, which was like this edgy one Michelin star. You had to like park. I biked. I parked my bike down this dingy street covered in trash. And you walk through this gate and all you see is this little coffee shop. And then you like keep walking in and then there's this beautiful one, Michelin star open restaurant, super casual though. And fun. There was a [00:05:30] tree inside. There was a hearth. Everything was cooked by fire and walked in there and basically begged for a job to had no experience front of house. And they let me be a back server there. And that's kind of where wine first came into my life in a big way, because before that I never even drank wine. I drank beer or I didn't really drink very much actually, to be honest. And, and I was really lucky to make friends with this woman Carlin Karr. She is now [00:06:00] the wine director for a group of restaurants in Colorado. She's very successful. She's an advanced sommelier. And she had just taken over a wine program and we were just buds and she needed to taste a lot of wine. So I would drink really nice wine with her. And she had a scent kit cause she was studying for her sommelier exam. So it's like 45 different vials filled with everything from like deer musk to strawberries, to fresh cut grass. And I would help her practice by testing her [00:06:30] on scents and then started to realize that I really liked it, too. But so then I was like, I want to try something else. I'm going to go run a restaurant. A bunch of people were working at this restaurant called Sons and Daughters, which is in Knob Hill. And it's so cute. They have a farm now that supplies all of their produce. They were opening up a fast casual restaurant called Sweet Woodruff. And I was their GM. And then I learned a whole other set of things. Um, basically everything that I didn't want to. [00:07:00] I never realized how much being a general manager involves you literally dealing with human shit. Like people would just poop outside the restaurant and like, you're the GM you've got. You're the one that has to clean it up. You can't ask somebody on your staff to clean it up. Like, and it's so funny because no matter what city I'm in, I always see GMs have to deal with this problem. Every restaurant without fail. Had never worked that hard in my life. And so I started thinking like, if I'm capable of working this hard, which I [00:07:30] didn't even know because I was a little like crust punk-farm-bike-weirdo, um, most of college, and post-college just skating by, I thought I should go back to school and become a doctor. And so that was my new plan. I was like, I'm going to move back to Massachusetts where I'm from. Harvard has an incredible post-bac program. Um, I could afford it. I saved up [00:08:00] money and the person I was dating at the time we moved back to Cambridge and I started school and also started volunteering at Dana-Farber Cancer Hospital and committed my life to that path for three years. I think it had a lot to do with the fact that I was the first person in my family to go to college and people really mistreat restaurant workers. Your [00:08:30] constantly talked down to spoken to like a servant, seen as someone with lower intelligence or like lower ambition. But at the time, I was just so insecure and wanted people to think that I was smart and respect me. And I was like, I should be a fucking doctor. Like, then everyone's going to respect me. And so clearly thought about this for maybe two months. Just moved all my stuff back. Cause I don't ever think of anything. I just like do it and am [00:09:00] probably the most miserable I have ever been in my entire life. I didn't drink, I didn't smoke weed. I studied all the time. I worked, I was forced into a level of competition and just sheer, like, I'll kill you to get an 'A' over you. I'll literally give you the wrong answer as you're sitting outside studying, cause I want to throw you off. I had never been in an environment like that. My [00:09:30] majors were english and gender studies and sustainable agriculture. Those are all very community oriented majors. And so it, it wasn't for me. And when I would volunteer at Dana-Farber, which was amazing, I would feel sick and cringy every time I'd walk into the hospital and I have these waves of anxiety wash over me, and I felt like I was just fighting upstream at something that I didn't want to be good at, but I felt like I had to be good at it. At the same time I really lucked out. This was one of the [00:10:00] luckiest moments in my life. I met this guy working at a restaurant that I was working on a couple of nights a week. I was just waitressing. And he's like, you should come to Nantucket for the summer and be a waitress there. And Nantucket 1% vacations there, it is a beautiful small island. It's like where Moby Dick was based. It's so idyllic. And you make crazy money in five months, I was like, I was paying for my own school and I was like, great. Like, let's do it. I'll go [00:10:30] out there and make like 40 grand in three months. I'll take the summer off, like this is going to be amazing. And so I forgot how much I loved restaurants and the culture of these restaurants that I was working at there everyone was so kind and compassionate and you're living in this really small island community. And so, you know, everyone, you know, all the other restaurant workers, you know, the boat people, you know, everyone it's - wine came back into my life in a big way there. I was working at an Italian place. Some of my, [00:11:00] you know, most loved Italian wines that I, now as someone who with a lot of expertise in Italian wine, I think back on how I tried them there. And again, it was like, oh, this is so fun. So anyways, I go back to school, I go back to Nantucket. I go back to school again, finished school, finished my program, started playing to med schools. And now I'm working at this like little wine bar in like right outside of Boston. And this was. [00:11:30] Like she was years ahead of her time. Like every wine bar that I go to now in LA or New York was, is like this wine bar. She had all the hipster wines, like everyone's talking about, you know, Frank Cornelissen magma, volcanic Sicilian wine. She had that on the list like before anyone even knew about it. And she took a really, really, really special interest in me. Um, her name was Flea. She was from Baton Rouge. She had the most charming drawl. And [00:12:00] she rode motorcycles and raced bicycles, and like race Porsches, loved oysters, came out to a very religious family, very young, like was just on her own fucking path constantly. And she would have me taste with her all the time. She opened up incredible bottles from her seller and she developed my confidence in thinking that I could ever even work in wine or had a good enough palette for it. And while I was kind of [00:12:30] reconnecting with wine in this really big, meaningful way, Flea got diagnosed with ALS and pretty bad, like she did not have a lot of life left to live. And this was a woman who was like 41 and just crazy healthy, had so much energy. You can't even imagine anything could ever knock this person down. I decided to not be unhappy anymore in my life and to just, to just do it. And at that time, the person that I had dated for [00:13:00] four years, um, we ended it, he was back in San Francisco and I called up that restaurant owner that I worked for in Nantucket and asked him if I could be a sommelier that summer, I - like a month before summer season started. Like there wasn't even any jobs at that point. And so he was like, "you know what? Just come here. We'll figure it out. You can like work at a couple of the restaurants and you can like do it one day a week sometimes. And you have to like [00:13:30] unpack the wines." And so I started doing that and studying every day, decided to not go back to school and not go back to Boston to just commit myself to just spending the season on Nantucket. I'm just going to ride this wave. And I met these people who owned a restaurant group in Palm Springs. And they were like, "oh, you should come to Palm Springs for the winter. This will be so fun. You can be our wine director." And that was truly an amazing experience. It is not as [00:14:00] cosmopolitan in terms of wine tastes as Nantucket was, of course. But I got the opportunity to run several restaurants. Um, do some wine programs at hotels and a catering company. So I was in Palm Springs and there's just a series of tests that you sign up for. So I was like, "yeah, I might as well do it, but-" sign up for the level one. Went, took it. It was awesome. Sign up for the level two. [00:14:30] I made friends with this guy that ran this really swank hotel, like $800 a night. They're trying to have like this crazy Michelin-style dining room, to blind taste with me like four times a week. And so after work every night, cause we worked like literally steps away from each other. We would go to either my restaurant or his restaurant and just blind taste each other for about an hour and a half. And I got so good at blind tasting. Cause we weren't [00:15:00] just blind tasting. I don't know if you're familiar, but you're, there's a certain set of grapes that you're, that are testable. And we were doing everything we were doing, like, you know, weird wine from Greece that you think is Nebbiolo from Italy. Cause it's so tannic, but you like have no idea or. Ah man, just anything like very strange Italian varietals, like Fianno and it's the things that you would never be tested on as a somm, at least not for your level twos. [00:15:30] And so, crushed that. It was really fun to take my level twos. I called up the woman that I worked for in Nantucket. And she was like, have a drink before your service, because how is it structured is there's theory in the morning. So it's like, you know, naming rivers and mountains and the years of aging for some required naming of wines, et cetera, et cetera. And then your blind tasting, and then you take a break and then you go in and you do your service, which [00:16:00] is really hilarious because there's one master sommelier sitting at a table and you have to pretend to serve him and do all the right things. Thank God for that advice, because if she didn't tell me to do that, I never would've done it, but you know it took the edge off a little. And then I was a level two somm, I mean, I agonized over the decision and also everybody told me I was dumb. My parents, even like one of my mentors was like, "be a doctor, dude, you did all the [00:16:30] hard work. Keep going like you just devoted three years, but you know, you can do it now. Just do it. You're making a huge mistake." More people told me not to do it, then told me to do it. I think Flea the woman I was referencing before and like one of my crazy artist friends are the only two people that told me to go for it. Both of those individuals, I started thinking about their lives and how if I had their lives, I would be so happy. They had successful [00:17:00] relationships, um, careers that fulfilled them that were interesting and engaging and off the beaten path. I was like, "fuck it. Like, I'm not going to take advice from people whose lives I don't want," that I don't. I look at, and I'm like terrified by the sheer amount of how mundane it is. I don't, I don't want that life. I'm just gonna do it. And yeah, I've. I've actually never regretted it once I did it. Cause you know, [00:17:30] when you're unhappy, you can feel it. And it, it creeps in and you don't realize how, how deep it is and how it's just taken a hold on you. But one day you wake up and you realize you have no joy left in your life and you are miserable. And that is what I was like. So I love wine and it's a great career. Um, I feel like um, in a lot of Murakami novels, his [00:18:00] narrators like all of a sudden switch into the right path. They switch into the right gear and then life gets so topsy turvy and doesn't make sense, but it's all right. And that's what I felt at that moment in Palm Springs. I remember just being so, so, so happy. Sun was shining then.
So this is kind of where my life took a really strange [00:18:30] turn. Here I am. Palm Springs. Flying high, really stoked. I was single. I was living on my own in a beautiful one bedroom that had been built for the cast and crew of a Marilyn Monroe movie in the fifties. It was so Palm Springs, looked like Melrose Place. There was a pool in the middle with beautiful, like vintage fireplace inside. Started going rock climbing, had a lot of friends and I didn't really date very much. And this was the first time in my life that I haven't [00:19:00] been in a serious relationship in years. And of course I meet a guy, of course that's what happens. And he was at the start, really great, really charming, like really well-dressed, really put together. Much younger than me. I knew about one kid that he had. He had another kid that I didn't know about that he didn't tell me about until later. And he was like really [00:19:30] successful at a young age and honestly, just really good looking. And I think I just fell for that and would really pay a lot of attention to me. Like dote on me, send me flowers all the time. Like. Worship the ground I walk on, take me out to like crazy expensive dinners. Like treated me in this way that I had never been treated by any of my hipster boyfriends that I had had. Who would be like, "Babe, let's go ride a bike and like drink some PBRs in a park," um, which are both great, but you know. And so I [00:20:00] get really caught up in him and I'm supposed to go back to Nantucket. My job in Palm Springs is ending it's the end of the season. I've been planning on going back, being a sommelier at this amazing restaurant that I had always worked at. I was so stoked. I was gearing up for a great summer, a great place to live. And he was like, "please stay." He begged me to stay, begged me to stay. Told me that like, "there was no other option, but to stay, if I didn't stay, then it was over," you know, like he wouldn't hold out a couple months, [00:20:30] um, and I made a really bad decision to stay. That was one of those moments where if I could like go back and change one thing that I've done in my entire life, it would probably be that moment. So then I work at a hotel with him as a food and beverage director at this really fancy hotel. He's the general manager of this hotel. He hires me and we don't tell anybody we're dating. We were like living together. I went on a trip. To go visit my parents in Colorado, went on a big hiking, camping trip to [00:21:00] Utah with one of my best friends, went back to Massachusetts and came home after three weeks of being away. And I showed up and the apartment was filthy like a crazy mess with like trash everywhere. And it, it looked like a crazy person, like-hybrid-several raccoons lived in this apartment. Like I was like, "what the fuck did I return to? Who is this person that I like, I have an apartment with?" He's comes home. He like, wasn't expecting me home. He's like, so thrown off. [00:21:30] So off kilter. And then it came out at that moment that he actually had another person who he had a kid with who he was like in the process of breaking up with, to be with me. And he was still like going to see her in like San Diego or Los Angeles or wherever where she lived, on the weekends sometimes when I thought he was with his daughter and I was like, fuck, I'm so dumb. I just gave up on my favorite job I've ever had. And I'm stuck here. [00:22:00] And so I just doubled down because that's what you do when you are crazy and went and worked at the hotel. He ended up getting a job in Nashville. He got offered a really good job in Nashville. And I was like, you know what? Like, this is my life now. I'm not passionate about being a food and beverage writer at a hotel and I'm just gonna keep going on. And like, I'll just move to Nashville with this guy because I, he makes a lot of money and I'll just be able to find something that [00:22:30] I like to do, because I won't be worried about money. Something that was great is this guy, Matt Kaner who owns a bunch of wine bars here in Los Angeles.
He owns like Bar Covell and, um, Augustine. And a lot of, a lot of things. I knew him and I reached out to him, the wine community is so small. And I was like, "Hey I'm moving to Nashville. If you know of any where I could work or anything I could do." And he got me in touch with all these crazy high up people. And I got a job at Husk, when Sean Brock was still there, which is great. Cause then I had a [00:23:00] job at arguably the best restaurant in Nashville. And at the same time, things are getting like really bad at home. Like dark. When we were driving out to Nashville, we spent a couple of days in Austin. I see a couple people I went to high school with. Cause a lot of people I went to high school with work or are like bartenders in Austin. I don't know why it's just a weird thing. And one of them, I guess, was attractive or something. And, I [00:23:30] knew him - I knew him when he was like a baby. He was younger than me. And I didn't even know. He's like a little baby to me, always will be. And we got back to the hotel room that night. And my boyfriend at the time accused me of like flirting with other men in front of him. And at some point it got so physical. I have never been a violent person. Um, I just, it's like not worth the effort. It never has been. And I don't like it. So I remember just coming to and [00:24:00] realizing that he was straddling me and just punching me in the face, like just like one side, another side, one side, another side. And I was like, like I, no one's ever hit me ever in my life. I just bit on his shoulder so hard to get him off me that I like tore into his shoulder and blood came out and he picked me up and just threw me against the wall, like so hard. And I ended up like cracking some ribs and it was - [00:24:30] the hotel security gets called. I get moved to another room. I'm like in this hotel room, all my stuff is with his stuff on a truck to Nashville. I don't know. I was just sitting in my room thinking about how did I get here with my life? Like, how did my life take such a drastic turn within the span of two and a half months? Because that's literally what it had been from what I had turned my job down to being in this hotel room in Austin. [00:25:00] And again, I decided to just double down, I was like, you know, I don't have any money. Cause I wasn't making very much money in Palm Springs and I, you know, certifications are not cheap. And I was so embarrassed that I had, I had chosen so poorly, such an insane partner, someone who went through my phone all the time and I didn't even take it as a red flag. Somebody who cheated on me and lied to me and was physical with me. And [00:25:30] so the next day, the thing that always happens, happens, and, you know, he said, "sorry," a lot. Um, but also said that I had started the fight. Completely gaslit me on that and just tried to guilt me. And then I do not even understand what happened like the next four months. Like I think about those four months, and I cannot believe that I, as somebody who has been like fiercely independent and [00:26:00] so strong, always willing to move, always willing to make a change, such a risk taker. Somebody who would like skateboard down a huge hill in the middle of the night without a helmet on somebody who would like skinny dip and jump off a huge tree in a reservoir that you're not supposed to be swimming in. Somebody would stay in a relationship that was so, so toxic and violent and bad. It only got worse. Obviously. We lived in a hotel room in the hotel that [00:26:30] he was managing for a month and we bought a house. I then became this weird housewife version of myself because he wanted me home for dinner. Um, didn't want me to hang out with any of my new friends that I had made at Husk. Was so possessive. Was so controlling. Wouldn't let me go home to see my family; would tell me that if I did that, that it was over between us and there was nothing to come back to because I was such a person that was unworthy of his trust. One night, somebody from Husk texted me [00:27:00] about wine class and it was a man. And he went through my phone and thought that I was cheating on him and dragged me out of bed by my hair, dragged me all around the house by my throat. And I was like, I was sure that I was going to die. Like I, I'm not super strong and I'm not as strong as a man who is like grown up playing football. Who's six-two, and works out all the time. Like, I, [00:27:30] I couldn't defend myself and he had me like pressed on the floor against the wall and he was just kicking me. And I was like, "this I'm gonna fucking die. Like, I literally let this go until this moment. And I'm going to die right now, like this. Like how, how did I get here?" And then I called my friend that I worked with at this restaurant, and I said, "can I come stay with you tonight?" Packed [00:28:00] up my shit really quickly. And I got out of there and I went to work the next day and could like barely move. Oh my God. My back was like so scarred. And there was so much blood bruising under the skin. It was. And like, I could barely move my, it was just like so painful. I didn't realize, you know, like had my makeup on and I go say hi to the general manager of the time at Husk. [00:28:30] And he's like, "you have some mascara on your face. Like you have a bunch of mascara on your face." And I was like, "whoa, what so weird." So I go down and look in the bathroom and I just had this gigantic black eye. And it's coming in like every second harder and harder. And I do not have the makeup skills to cover it up and I'm like, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. So I'm like I have to work service. I have to work. I have to like be here and get through this moment. And it was so obvious what [00:29:00] had happened to everybody around me and. I was like, "I got into a bike accident, like blah, blah, blah." And I, at one point that day, the, it was two o'clock. I had been there for a couple hours. That general manager pulled me aside and was like, "Think you should take the rest of the day off. I think that if you need me to go somewhere with you and get your stuff, I will take off of work right now. We can, we can go. I don't want you to go alone." And moved out. My friend [00:29:30] Taylor, let me move in with them. I stayed with him for a month and I decided to leave Nashville because nothing good was happening there. My ex was stalking me and saying these violent, cruel, awful things. And. Oh God, he'd like come into my restaurant. Like, oh, it was just awful. It was so awful. The only solution was to leave. And honestly, I love Nashville. I love Husk. I had some really great friends there, but it [00:30:00] wasn't teaching me anything about wine. I needed to be in an, a wine city, a food city where people took it seriously and people spent money on wine in a restaurant. So I could, I could do that. And I thought LA was cool. I interviewed for a couple of jobs in New York city that I got, I thought about moving back to San Francisco, but Los Angeles was just like this itch I had to scratch or something. When I lived in Palm Springs, I came out here a couple of times and I don't know, it just seemed like a wine scene that hadn't defined itself yet, which I would also say it was [00:30:30] probably true about the food scene. Like. There is no definition for what Los Angeles food is like. It's it's everything. And so I just moved here.
I had no money again, like really no money again. And Mozza was hiring. Obviously I knew about Osteria Mozza. That is, I would say one of the two most important wine [00:31:00] lists in Los Angeles to have an 85 pages of all Italian wines. Like how do you even navigate that? I never worked with a list like that in my life and I, and I wanted it and I wanted to work with somebody better than me because I hadn't really worked really closely with anybody amazing. Um, and just to soak up all of their knowledge and the wine director for the Mozza group, Sarah Clarke, was that. She [00:31:30] really mentored me. I remember from day one, I sat down and interviewed with her and I was like, "look, I, I want to learn, I've ran wine programs before. I can do it. I'm good at it. I want to learn how somebody else does it. Cause you've done it for 10 years and you're a better sommelier than I am. And you know, so much more than I do." And she hired me and I love her. She took me to Italy for my 30th birthday on a wine trip with a bunch of other wine directors. And we got to [00:32:00] taste all these amazing wines and, God, bought me coffees every morning. She's just an angel. And Mozza was the lifesaver that I needed. It was a place where you could lose yourself. There are so many employees there; they call it Mozza-plex. You meet a hundred people in a day, just staff, you, it's so hard to remember people's names and I'd never worked for such a celebrity chef before. Nancy Silverton is iconic. I mean, I'd worked for great chefs, but Nancy's. [00:32:30] Uh, a league of her own, and she's such a force with her sunglasses coming in, wearing this couture and then getting on the line and cooking in it. And you're just like, who are you? I also, hadn't seen somebody that owned their restaurant consistently work the line. And the cold line; work with the youngest cooks in the restaurant. I had the opportunity to taste iconic, iconic, amazing, expensive, rare producers through vintages. I had the opportunity to learn [00:33:00] about weather patterns and soil structures and how this all could vary vineyard by vineyard, cru by cru. And it was amazing. If I had one addiction it's work. It's the source of how I measure, how I feel about myself, how I see myself, the source of all my stress, the source of most of my joy. Unfortunately it is something that I also need to realize that there's a middle it's okay to be high-performing, but it's [00:33:30] also okay to have a middle and to have a life and to take care of yourself. Definitely was just blocking everything out when I first moved here, like did the classic LA thing. Went on a million dates was constantly out; going to Malibu every time I had a day off and I'd go on these like vibey, beautiful hikes, and then go swim in the ocean by myself after, and then drive back through the canyon, like listening to, oh, I got always, I [00:34:00] haven't listened like definitely a lot of Fleet Foxes and a lot of Sufjan Stevens and yes. And also, I mean, it's kind of crazy how it all literally happened in a little more than a year from Palm Springs to being in LA again, is insane to me because it was so, left, such a residue on my entire personality and self cause I [00:34:30] definitely felt so bad about myself. I would, I would do anything to avoid looking at myself or feeling myself. It was like, I had put everything in this lock box inside of me and I just didn't touch it. They were negated by the fact that like I stayed in an abusive relationship and I let somebody make me feel so small. And so insignificant. That I lived in, in terror of expressing myself. That [00:35:00] I multiple times let somebody violently beat me. Like that it's like still kind of shocking to me. And I almost don't even feel like I'm talking about myself. Cause it it's just so unlike the person that I've always been. And I felt so angry that I stayed for so long. I felt so angry that I didn't just call my parents who love me, who would have helped me and who wouldn't have judged [00:35:30] me. I'd, I didn't call any single one of my friends. To talk about what was happening in my life that I felt like I had to just, you know, take it on the chin literally and, and keep going. Cause it was, it was worth it to have a handsome, wealthy boyfriend that paid for everything and owned a house, like that is so psychotic. And I, I could not come to terms with that for the first year of living in Los Angeles. I didn't even [00:36:00] touch it.
Oh man. I had been at Mozza for four months and Kate Green and my wine director came and they were like, "Hey, do you want to work lunch tomorrow? I think you probably want to work lunch tomorrow. We can't tell you who's coming in. You want to work lunch tomorrow for them? They will. We're going to have. Be seated in the private dining room at the [00:36:30] Osteria. And they will get food from the Pizzeria. But if they're doing, if they're pulling out the stops for that, cause I had never seen somebody allowed to dine at the Osteria for lunch at the Pizzeria, that was nuts. They will be on their own. And I was like, "oh my God, it's definitely like [OMITTED], I just a feeling that it was going to be him. And he came in, said hello to . Everyone, shook our hands, looked us in the eye, thanked us for being there and thanked us for making so many accommodations for him. To allow him to have a private lunch with his daughter. [00:37:00] Like crazy energy, like magnanimous. There are some people that joked that I got chosen to do this because I am very east coast sometimes. And I would wear these like Hillary Clinton dresses is what they called them. So I guess I looked like a young politician on the floor, um, with my like navy blue wool Theory dresses. But so I had one of those on looking like a young politico with my blazer on, in the back of the [00:37:30] room. And. Then they sat down and he focused all of his attention on her. The manager of the Pizzeria and myself were just standing there. And we, well, actually I didn't even really do anything. Alan did all the work. He like served them and took the order. But, uh, he was like, stay here. I was only there just in case he wanted wine, but he didn't have wine. I was just standing there. I got him an ice tea. So I'm just standing in the back of the room while [OMITTED] and his daughter is sitting there having [00:38:00] lunch. I am just eavesdropping so hard and I can't help myself, but I'm in, I'm in a room with them, you know, I'm like in the back of the room, what am I supposed to do? I can't look at my cell phone cause I'm not trying to have that vibe. And she had been talking about our relationship problem that she had had. Her boyfriend cheated on her and he responded to her the same way one would respond to an adult friend that you, that you care for deeply and respect and think that they have [00:38:30] the emotional intelligence to understand you. And he was saying, "you know, that sucks." He's like, "I don't think cheating is like an automatic reason to break up with someone. I think people all make mistakes. We all behave poorly. We all do the wrong thing. But you have to look at everything else besides the mistake. If you have a deep trusting, respectful relationship, [00:39:00] one mistake doesn't damage it. But if you don't and it hasn't been very long and you haven't had the time to build that, that person probably doesn't care about you and the way that they should. And, you know, you need to think about what's right for you." Yeah. Yeah, [OMITTED]. Like you're right. Where have I been in my life? Like I'm not showing up for myself. Like I'm not respecting myself. I'm just doing anything I [00:39:30] can to push down my bad feelings and not actually looking at my life and the relationships that I have. And what, what am I putting into those relationships? What are other people putting into those relationships? God, I remember just feeling like crazy that day. Like something had snapped right in my head. And like all of a sudden it was obvious to me that I just had never valued myself and any relationship I'd been in and I don't know what [00:40:00] happened. I just stopped valuing myself and it just degraded over time. And I played an active role in how people treated me.
And I think that's what was so hard about it before is I didn't want to believe that I had played an active role in my abusive relationship. I wanted to feel bad for myself and feel like all of these things happened to me and I had no control [00:40:30] over them, but I did. And remembering that I had the control. And then I did take back that control. And I stopped beating myself up for staying and started congratulating myself for leaving. Everyone looks at [OMITTED] and [OMITTED] relationships and they're like, "whoa, how do I have that with somebody? Like, how do I have this relationship where both people are high achievers, where both people respect each other so deeply?" Where both people just look out for [00:41:00] the other one so hard. And so fiercely. Which is it's, it's insane that a former president's words to his daughter in a moment of comfort, like provided me with so much comfort, but they really did.
Okay. So, [00:41:30] Nomadica. A buddy of mine met my co-founder and he was like, you need to meet each other. She wants to start a wine company. You are a wine professional. You're both women. You'll like each other. You're both kind of crazy. And I was like, cool. Okay. Set it up. So I show up after my shift in my lady suit to Tabula Rasa to meet her, and she tells me she wants [00:42:00] to start a wine in a can company. My first reaction to this was, "Oh God, like disgusting." I just had the lowest opinion of wine in cans. Emma is very stubborn and I told her like, "I'm not interested. Thank you. No, thank you." Um, went and found a wine maker she knew I really liked on the central coast. He had like half a barrel of pinot [00:42:30] noir and she canned it and brought it back to me, left the can with me. It was this beautiful can. So abstract, like all these blue paint smudges, and it looked very chic. And I was intrigued, but I let it sit in my cabinet for two months because I would open up really nice wine on my days off of work. And one night I didn't feel like opening up a bottle. I was like, "I guess I'll try this can, why not?" I'm [00:43:00] by myself, like, I don't want to drink a whole bottle of wine by myself. And had the wine. Was shocked by how good it was. Also, I'm like a sucker for central coast,pinot noir. I like live in Europe with my wine taste, but there is something about the texture and just pure red fruit, like the pure clean crystallized strawberry that exists in a central coast pinot noir is like, it's so good. It's so good. It's like just what you want. Slight chill on it. [00:43:30] Perfect texture. It's like silk in your mouth. You're like, oh, fruit bomb. But then it's like 14% alcohol. So. I love this wine. I think it's really good. I was so taken aback and I went into it genuinely wanting to dislike it. And I, and I liked it. And I had this realization that people were just putting bad wine in cans. And that can wine wasn't bad. Should put good wine [00:44:00] in cans and canned wine will be good. And so Nomadica was born. And I would work on Nomadica all day, every day. And I'd go to work at night at Mozza. And I was so tired all the time, but also felt this like strange sense of satisfaction because I mean, at this point, and I, and I do love the list at Mozza, but at some point you like are autopiloting, right? You know, the producers, you can really dial it in. This Nomadica thing was, you know, [00:44:30] fundraising and growth and marketing and branding, and thinking about all these other things that I had never even contemplated or thought about as work. And it's so exciting. And I mean, even recently I was going through my emails and just to see how much I grew from 2018 to now; that was my biggest growth year. I took on a lot more responsibility instead of just [00:45:00] selling wine. I became really invested in the company. I started raising money. I realized I was really good at raising money and I liked it. I started realizing that I had really good gut ideas about my product and how to sell it and the overall general business of it. And so we started selling in California. We got approached by the W Hotel to do a national deal with them in-room. And that allowed us to expand to a ton [00:45:30] of other states. So we started rolling that out this past year, and we were able to fundraise a little bit of money and hire a team. And I can't believe I just only went full-time in August. Has not even been a year and we have done so many things and I feel like every day I'm conquering my imposter syndrome again, like figuring out what kind of web [00:46:00] developer I need and how does one even build a website? And when we're really talking about, you know, e-commerce marketing, what does that mean? How does, how do we go about that? Like, what is a marketing plan? I had no clue what that was before this. I love it. And I love being a leader. I love having teammates that I care about and support and being the type of boss that I've always wanted and seeing it work. I frequently hear that I'm like a great boss and that feels really nice and kind of crazy.[00:46:30]
We are THE premium can wine and communicating that to people, the form factor alone, like people think if it's in a can, it should be cheap. Or they expect it to be cheap or expect it to be bad. And then I always encourage people to drink it out of a glass first, because I'm not afraid. I don't have to hide [00:47:00] behind my can. Like you can pour the wine into a wine glass. Wine is meant to be enjoyed from a wine glass, but if you have to drink it out of the can, drink out of the can. It's also good there. I love the idea of you can go to a random, middle of nowhere liquor store. In some like small, not famous urban area. Have the opportunity to experience wine that somebody has really taken the time to pick out, like has tasted hundreds of wine to think about which one is the [00:47:30] best one at this price point. Um, with really easily approachable and, and loved flavor profiles. Like the wines are designed to be enjoyed by anyone, whether you're an expert or a novice. And I firmly believe there's a, there's a category of wines that can function in that space that just genuinely everyone likes. And instead of having to spend a hundred dollars per person and sitting down in a white tablecloth and getting so intimidated, [00:48:00] um, where I have to like bend over backwards to make the guests feel really good about talking to me. Because it's so intimidating to talk about wine cause people feel like they don't have the language, they don't have the skills. They don't, they don't know. They don't want to be made to feel stupid by somebody. And you, you skip that. You walk into a liquor store and you spend 21 bucks and you have like a liter of wine that is honestly more sustainable just [00:48:30] because of shipping weights. And aluminum is a lot, it's more recyclable than glass. And. I just, I think it's, it's crazy. It, I hate the, I hate this word, but it's democratizing wine in a way it's making it accessible and less falutin. And how dope would it be to walk into, on your road trip up to Oregon, a random Safeway and be able to get something good, like to have the access to it? [00:49:00] It was so funny because at first I wanted to just sell our wine and these really boutiquey, high-end specialty shops. And then the more I get into the business, the more I'm like, "no, I need to put my money where my mouth is." Be the other in these spaces that I never saw us existing in. The spaces that I don't necessarily buy wine. And also California, like the wine landscape here has changed so much and it is like exploding right [00:49:30] now. One of my most favorite projects that I'm working on is we're going to start doing limited additions through our website. It's like part of our wine club and it's going to be from really amazing California winemakers who are, you know, our age and buying vineyards, like helping people farm their vineyards, pushing regenerative, farming, organic agriculture, biodynamic practices, migrant worker wages. I think we [00:50:00] have a long way to go, but there are some people doing it really right. And I think there are more people starting to do it right in California than there was 10 years ago, because I feel like people think of California wine and they think of Napa Cabernet Sauvignon. And now maybe they don't, maybe they think of like some cool funky skin contact wine from Shasta Cascade or a piquette or Sonoma chardonnay. It's not French Chardonnay [00:50:30] and it's not this overly Oaked buttered, uh, God, just sweet oak bomb that destroys your palate, but it's not afraid of being what it is. It's not afraid that it's a little bit riper. It's a little bit more textured. It's a little bit more voluptuous and maybe it does see a little bit of oak? So many cool things are happening. A great wine maker makes great wine in a bad vintage. So even if the grape crop is not amazing, they know how to [00:51:00] do the right things in the cellar. That'll, that'll make a great one. But when you get really into wine and you start learning about how in Friuli, the Adriatic Sea is right there and how that influences the way that those wines taste and why. And what the, what the hillside structure is like and how much sun exposure they have. And. The elevation that they're at and the temperatures, the shifting temperatures between night and day. [00:51:30] It's so crazy to think about it too, because it's so something we take for granted so much, you know, the sun rises and sets and we live where we live. And there's just all these factors that then when you put them into a, a product like wine, the wine just speaks to that, that year, that, that place where it was born, and that place where it was you know, bred and created. And I think it's the story of the, of the winemaker of what they're doing. I'm a sucker [00:52:00] for that. I feel like you can, you can taste people's energy in their wines. The story feeds into that for me in a big way. And then wine creates such a sense of place and time. And I think one of the reasons why I love it so much is because you open a bottle of wine and every single bottle of wine, it's different, depending on the, on the day, the, the mood, the biodynamic calendar, I'm a firm believer in and you know, there's root and fruit days and you open a bottle of wine and you're committing to [00:52:30] drinking this wine as it is. Right now. And it would definitely taste different in a week. It'll taste different in a couple of years, but you're, you're drinking it right now and it's going to change and you're going to watch it change and you're going to be with it while it changes. And you're gonna notice the small, like, "oh, the violets are coming out now. Or, ah, the texture just completely changed. The tannins have softened and kind of given way to more voluptuous, [00:53:00] silken texture. The acidity is popping right now." And you have to hold the world still with your wine.
I want everything to be perfect. All the time. And I have like completely unrealistic standards for myself, for my business, for all of it and it's, but then we have moments like our last collection that we did, I could not be more proud of and what they retail for. [00:53:30] I'm like, dare, I dare you. Like, show me another wine that costs this, that tastes this good. Like. I'm so proud of, of how we've been able to keep our wine affordable and still do the right thing, like source from people that are making wine well, sustainable vineyard practices, not using pesticides, which I do think negatively affects the wine sometimes when it's, when it's overused, not using copper in their vineyards, not over sulphuring [00:54:00] the cans, just little things, but they make a difference in your . Product.
[00:54:12] Jordan: Thank you for listening everyone. For links and resources about everything discussed today, please visit the show notes in the episode. If you want to support the podcast, the most effective way to do so would be to hit the subscribe button on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other platform that you're listening in from. [00:54:30] Sharing the show with your friends on social media is always appreciated.
Shout out to Shawn Myers for creating the original music and to Jason Cryer for creating the graphics. The show is produced by me, Jordan Haro with help from Homecourt Pictures. You can always reach out to me at Jordan H-A-R-zero on Instagram and Twitter. Follow the show @prixfixepod on Instagram or e-mail us [00:55:00] at prixfixepodcast@gmail.com.
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