Liquid Love Letter: Vine to Mind

Cathy

Imagine “everything data science, and data science for everyone” – and apply it to WINE, and you’ll start to get a sense of the scene at last Friday’s “Vine to Mind” symposium, hosted at the Harvard Data Science Initiative in Boston, Massachusetts.

“Everything data science, and data science for everyone” is in fact the motto and aspiration for the Harvard Data Science Review, whose founding editor-in-chief, Xiao-li Meng, was one of the co-organizers of the symposium. But why did Meng and co-organizer Don St. Pierre choose WINE as the focus of their conference?

The short answer is that they clearly love wine and the community they’ve built through wine over a lifetime of professional experience, Meng as the Whipple V. N. Jones Professor of Statistics at Harvard and St. Pierre as co-founder of AdaptEdge, a strategic advisory and investment company focused on the wine and spirits industry.

The longer answer, though, is that wine is a business with a wide range of disciplines and challenges feeding into its success. Many of those disciplines were on display at the Vine to Mind conference last Friday: AI technologies, climate change, consumer behaviors and preferences, economics, marketing, psychology, wine and health.

So, too, on display was an intentionally open sharing of information by C-suite professionals at globally significant wine and spirits companies including Constellation, Gallo, Total Wine, Groupe Bollinger, Catena Zapata, Pernod Ricard and Château Lafite Rothschild.

It was pretty heady stuff, with a lot of cerebral energy directed toward WINE.

Personally, I walked away from the day’s sessions – and the wine-prioritized reception and dinner afterward – encouraged by the dedication to research and problem-solving by some of the country’s and the world’s leading thinkers.

Wine-loving consumers may have noticed some angst in the media recently over reports of decreasing sales of wine. Though there are some elements of truth to that angst, they were more than offset by the clear messages that this community is ON IT. On, that is, to the tasks of addressing the most challenging issues the industry is facing, from climate change to automation to faulty public health claims to the fluctuations of consumer demand.

The most encouraging message of all was apparent to me as the evening went on. Yes, this gathering featured prominent thought-leaders and decision-makers. Even more important than that, though, is the fact that the gathering was full of wine lovers who will flat out refuse to give up on the deep pleasure that wine brings to life, despite the work it takes to sustain it.

Now that is thought leadership that I can get behind.

Matthew

Have you ever wondered how the AI version of yourself would answer a question?

It opens a total can of worms, but this is something I've pondered for years.

I get closer each day to funding the development of an "AI Matthew Kaner" chatbot. I'm blessed to get texts, emails, IG DMs, and phone calls weekly from friends and people familiar with my work asking where they should go when they travel to specific countries or wine regions. Sometimes it's hard to keep up with, but I love doing it. Imagine if I had a personal helper, built around my own sensibility and expertise, to help lighten the load...

That said, you are always welcome to hit me up for recommendations anywhere in the world. I'll happily send you wineries, restaurants, hotels, et al. I want you to travel in style and visit the raddest places all over the globe.

But one day, and one day soon, you might be getting an AI response from the robot version of me 🤖