Everything I know about wine, I learned before I ever tasted it. And that’s exactly why I can share it the way I do.

I grew up learning to play piano, then trombone, then bass guitar. And somewhere along the way, something clicked that changed how I see almost everything.

There’s not an infinite number of notes. There’s a finite set. And once you understand how they relate to each other — the patterns, the intervals, the way certain combinations just work — you can build almost anything with them.

That idea never left me.

I paid my way through college doing real estate appraisals. Specifically farmland. And what I discovered was that soil types determine value — that what’s underneath the surface shapes everything that grows above it. The land tells a story if you know how to read it. I wasn’t just assessing property. I was learning to read patterns in the earth itself.

Then came my career in IT and software design. Same thing. Code has patterns. Systems have patterns. The syntax changes, the language changes, but the underlying logic? It rhymes. I wasn’t starting from scratch every time — I was pulling from a library of principles I already understood and applying them somewhere new.

And then wine found me.

The moment I started learning about wine seriously, I realized I’d been here before. Terroir is just soil science — the same soil science I learned walking farmland as a young woman paying for her education. Flavor profiles are just patterns, the same systems thinking I refined in IT. The way grape varieties express themselves in different regions is the same pattern recognition I developed learning three instruments as a kid.

It all flows.

But here’s what I see happening with most wine lovers: they spend hours Googling pairing suggestions, collecting recommendations, bookmarking lists. And they still freeze when they’re standing in front of their own wine cabinet trying to decide what to open for dinner.

Because Google gives you the what. It doesn’t give you the why or the how. And without those, pairing never becomes instinct — it stays a scavenger hunt.

The goal isn’t to know that Chardonnay pairs with chicken. The goal is to understand why it works — so that you can walk into your own kitchen, look at what you’re making, open your own cellar, and build something beautiful around what you’ve already got.

That’s a completely different skill. And almost nobody is teaching it.

Here’s what I’ve realized: most people were never taught to see wine this way. Nobody showed them that wine isn’t a separate, intimidating world full of rules to memorize — it’s a pattern language you already partially speak. And food pairing isn’t magic. It’s the same finite set of flavor principles, organized and applied, that can elevate every single meal you make.

That’s why I share wine the way I do. I’m not handing you a list of regions to memorize or rules to follow. I’m showing you the notes in the library — finite, reusable, and incredibly powerful once you understand how they work together.

Because once you have the pattern? You can create anything.

If this resonated with you, I’d love to have you join my community of wine lovers who are ready to truly understand what’s in their glass. Click below and let’s explore wine together — the way it was meant to be learned.