Wine

…with writer Wanda Mann ’90 and vintner Jason Haas ’91

For Wanda Mann, wine is more than just a feel-good beverage.

“It’s a powerful link to history and culture,” says the founder and editor-in-chief of Wine With Wanda “Wine opens up the world and has the power to bring people together.”

A revered industry expert, Mann has traveled the globe to explore the story of wine. Also the East Coast editor of The SOMM Journal , her writing has been published in Food & Wine, Decanter, and NAPA.

In this installment of “Let’s Discuss,” Mann is interviewed by Jason Haas, the second-generation proprietor of Tablas Creek Vineyard in Paso Robles, California. Haas learned the wine business at an early age, accompanying his father, Robert, on European wine-buying trips and spending summers working at Château de Beaucastel, a historic winery located in the southern part of France’s Rhone valley.

JH: What was your track to wine? Was wine on your family table when you were growing up?

WM: Wine wasn’t on my table because my mom wasn’t much of a drinker, but my dad was a personal chef. He grew up in North Carolina but trained in New York and learned to prepare classic French cuisine. So I always call it the foie gras and grits childhood. I had the best of both worlds because my dad made amazing North Carolina pulled pork—but don’t you ever call his beef bourguignonne “beef stew,” because you’d get in trouble for that!

It was my dad who actually bought me my first bottle of wine when I was 16 and said, “Don’t tell your mother.” Because we always had that relationship—even in my rocky teenage years when I was a bit of a handful, we could always communicate over food. My professional career in events planning led me to producing some wine tastings for a private club in New York. I was invited by one of the importers to come to a tasting on my day off.

That was back in 2010. I sat across the table from a winemaker, and I was just blown away because I had never thought of wine in that way. He’s talking about the grapes like they’re his children and he’s throwing out terms I didn’t know, like malolactic fermentation. I’m jotting it all down, thinking, “I’ll Google this later.” But it lit something in me. I started going to more wine tastings on my own, buying books, and just learning as much as I could. I was already writing at that point, but more about lifestyle, fashion, and beauty. Then I just started writing about wine.

JH: You studied anthropology in college. How does that tie into writing about wine?

WM: I can’t say I went into my anthropology major with the grand vision of what career I would have. I honestly didn’t know, but I was drawn to learning about different cultures—linguistics, religious rituals, history. All those things appealed to me, and there was writing and research involved. Writing about wine is like a reflection of place and culture. There are wines that have survived wars and families that have given everything to preserve a vineyard. Even now—you know better than anyone—each year, you’re praying to Mother Nature were also the wines that were just naturally a part of what we experienced.

JH: New York was where my dad got his start. He was a retailer and importer. And his discovery of California wine, gradually in the ’70s and ’80s, was what set the stage for Tablas Creek. But even me,

Let’s discuss more at andover.edu/magazine, where you can watch Haas’s full video interview with Mann, courtesy of Tablas Creek. Follow Mann at blackdresstraveler.com and on Instagram @winedinewanda, and visit Haas at tablascreek.com and on Instagram @tablascreek