Like many young people, Vanessa Conlin was led to New York to pursue a passion. She was on a “hard-core path to be a classical musician,” so she went to the Manhattan School of Music. But once she was in the city—as is the case with many transplants—she developed a love of food and wine.
While developing these passions, Vanessa says she found an overlap between the two. “[Both are] something that we each appreciate individually with our senses,” she tells Grok Nation. “It’s just like going to the same concert as your friend or sharing a bottle with someone—they might find different things in it that they enjoy or don’t enjoy. Then it’s such an interesting discussion to talk about how we all react individually.”
But despite the similarities, after earning her master’s degree in music, Vanessa knew she wanted to pursue wine alone. And she started at the bottom—working in restaurants, for a distributor, and as a sales person at a wine store. She eventually received her WSET diploma and, in 2010, relocated to Napa with her husband to learn about vineyards and production.