VinePair Podcast: How TikTok is Changing the Game for Drinks Influencing

For more stories on TikTok, check out our whole series here.

TikTok’s influence on popular culture continues to grow and change, and these days, the platform is taking the drinks world by storm. While in 2020, some of the biggest trends involved flair bartending and performative pours, 2021 is showing a few different sides of the social media platform. Whether it’s a whimsical snow cocktail made by a world-famous chef, or voices that didn’t break through previously, the drinks space on TikTok is rapidly evolving.

That’s what Adam Teeter and Zach Geballe discuss on this week’s episode of the “VinePair Podcast”: why different styles and voices seem to be flourishing on TikTok, why the cocktail space in particular is so dynamic, and why there’s still incredible untapped potential for beer and wine influencers to find a foothold.

Listen online

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

OR CHECK OUT THE CONVERSATION HERE

Adam: From Brooklyn, New York, I’m Adam Teeter.

Zach: And in Seattle, Washington, I’m Zach Geballe.

Adam: And this is the VinePair Podcast. Zach, man, what’s going on? What have you been up to?

Z: Well, you know, it’s been a chaotic-ish week, as always. My wife and I are house hunting, which you know the fun of that.

A: How adult of you.

Z: I know. Well, we have a kid, so we figured we probably should buy a house eventually. Yeah, it sucks. I hate doing this. I mean, I look forward to eventually having a house, but everything else about the process is zero fun. Not zero fun — it’s like 8 percent fun. I think it would be a little more fun if it wasn’t Covid. But it’s like everything about going to look at houses is just so much more complicated, and you’re on like an incredibly tight window. It’s like you have exactly this time, you cannot do this, you have to do that, which is all well and good as it should be. There should be stringent protocols, but it does make it a lot more stressful to just even find time to fit in house visits. Just everything about it is more stressful than I think it would be during other times. But this is when we’re deciding to buy a house, so that’s what we’re stuck with. But it does mean that I’ve been having to drink to deal with the stress.

A: Oh, so what have you drunk?

Z: I’ve actually been weirdly on a beer kick lately, which sometimes happens for me. Caitlin was actually just commenting. She’s like, “You’ve been drinking beer more than wine lately.” I think it’s been a couple of things. We do have wine open a lot because of classes and stuff I teach, but I’ve been more just wanting a beer at like 5 o’clock more than I have necessarily been wanting wine with dinner. We’ve also been having a lot of weird pulled-together meals because Caitlin’s super busy with work. So it’s been like, what can we get quickly? The beer has just been kind of a good fit. There’s a lot of breweries near me, and a couple that I’ve been really enjoying. There’s a brewery called Reuben‘s that I actually just tried last night. Their Secret Crush, which was put out for Valentine’s Day, is the latest they have. They have this whole series of “crush beers,” which are all kind of the same base beer with slightly different hopping regimens. So, yeah, it’s interesting to try that. The other brewery by me, Lucky Envelope, had a pineapple sour that they put out as part of their Lunar New Year celebration, and that was super tasty. I really enjoyed that beer. What have you been drinking?

A: So it’s interesting you say this. I feel like I do go through phases. So I’ve been doing a few things. One, I have been drinking more beer. I had a pretty good IPA earlier in the week. It was from Tröegs, and I think Tröegs is great. They sent me one of their new releases, and it was really tasty. The other thing I’ve been doing is, I’ll just have a glass of whiskey. He’s gonna love that I’m giving him credit, but Aaron Goldfarb turned me on to this.

Z: Lots of love for Aaron on the podcast lately, from both of us.

A: I’m just hoping his mom sees this because I think she reads everything about him. Anyway, he has these Glencairn glasses, and he drinks a little dram of different things in the evenings. He actually drinks beer out of them too, sometimes, just because he likes the glass. But I’ve been doing a little dram — I’ll pour to the curve, and it’s nice. I’ll either have it before or after dinner because yeah, you’re right, it’s not every night that I want to open a bottle of wine for dinner. I have other shit going on, and like, also the stress of cooking and stuff; it’s not as easy to do. So I have been doing that, and it’s really lovely. I’ve kind of revisited some bourbons that I like, some Scotches that I like, and obviously, I’m always willing to try others (for those of you out there in the podcast land.) The other thing I want to ask you really quickly about drinking is, have you thought about moving out of Seattle? Because, you know, Zach, we have had more positive reaction and more emails to the small town or small city podcast than we ever have before — from somms, chefs, etc., writing in and talking about how they had left New York, Houston, or Denver to go to other places and start restaurants and shops. So I was just curious, has it got you thinking maybe you should leave Seattle?

Z: No, because we’re looking to buy a house in Seattle, so probably not. My wife also works in Seattle. My wife makes more money than I do, so her job takes priority. Even within a city or a broader metro area like Seattle, I do think that what we have seen, along with this possible trend of people moving out of these places in the first place, is that a lot of what’s exciting, potentially, in food and drink is not in the kind of classic downtown cores. You and I will have to do an episode down the road, maybe as things get closer to more fully reopening, when the pandemic has subsided more, about the transformation that’s going to happen in a lot of these downtown cores, because it really is, I think, going to be pretty revolutionary. It’s going to be hard for restaurants that have traditionally relied on a combination of business, travel, and tourism to make a go of it fully. I think some of those things will come back sooner than others. But I do think that it does mean that there is a lot of interest. I have some interest, and I think lots of people do, in saying, “Hey, can I set up a wine shop, a restaurant, a wine bar, a craft beer bar, or something that’s serving a community that is not completely detached from a larger city, but is far enough away from the existing centers, where it’s going to be enticing to that population base to not drive so far to have the same experience?” For me, it might not be moving to places that are significantly outside of Seattle, like Bellingham or Olympia or something like that, but it might just be going 15, 20 miles north of Seattle doing something that’s a little more for those people in those areas who don’t have a lot of other options. So I don’t know, I’ve been thinking about it. But it’s true that the response has been really positive — thank you all for writing in. It’s always [email protected] if you have feedback. We always really do appreciate it and give it a lot of thought.

A: A few people we might have on the podcast, which is cool. What you bring up makes me think about (which we didn’t talk about because it’s not really a small town) how the Charleston scene is booming. When you and I were together and did the live podcast for the Charleston Wine and Food Festival last year, we went to North Charleston, which actually is 15 miles north of Charleston. That really cute little downtown area that has Stems and Skins, which was one of the best wine bars I’ve been to in the country. We were asking, who’s the clientele? Are people driving out of Charleston to come? Just as I know this is for the people who decide to move out here because it’s more affordable and they’re commuting to Charleston for work. I thought that was super interesting that, as you’re saying, it was this little opportunity. There’s a little amazing neck of business; there’s one really good Neapolitan pizza restaurant, another nice restaurant, a coffee shop, that’s just for that community. And I love that. I think what you’re talking about is really interesting and definitely worth thinking about for those entrepreneurial restaurateurs out there and wine shop and spirit shop people.

So we did something crazy here at VinePair. We decided, under the editorial leadership of Joanna Sciarrino, who’s our new executive editor, as well as the rest editorial team: our senior editor, Cat Wolinski, and Katie Brown, our associate editor and assistant editor, and then also Tim McKirdy, senior staff writer. We decided to take on this idea of a massive package of content around TikTok. We have all been talking in editorial meetings about how impactful TikTok has been, and that it really seemed to turn this massive corner in the pandemic. Now you have so many people joining the platform. So we asked not only our in-house team of writers, but also a lot of well-known contributors like Aaron Goldfarb and Dave Infante to examine and write articles about what TikTok looks like right now. The entire package is called Tapping into TikTok, published today on the site at VinePair.com/tapping-into-tiktok. There are like 13 articles, plus this podcast, that all look at the world of TikTok through different lenses. There are some profiles of really interesting people on the platform. There are some business stories, there’s some trend pieces. It’s a really good read that I encourage everyone to take a look at, because I think we’re at a sort of an inflection point here with what’s going to happen with this platform as more and more people join. So if you have ever been wondering what’s going on, or who you should be following, or who some of these people are, you definitely have to read these stories. They’re really, really fun as well. You’ve got amateurs, you’ve got professionals, etc. So Zach, we want to take the fact that this is the week that this entire package publishes, (and we happen to have our podcast debut on the day the package publishes) to talk about a larger theme: What is going viral on TikTok, what is so unique about what is going viral, and what are we seeing that’s so crazy about TikTok? And one of the biggest, most recent trends, obviously, is snow cocktails. Snow cocktails are all the rage, but there’s a lot of stuff on TikTok now that has taken off and had its moment, and we’ll discuss why we think that is. First I’d love to get your reaction — what do you think of the snow cocktail trend? I kind of think it’s awesome.

Z: Yeah, I really enjoyed it. We actually had some decent amount of snow in Seattle this past weekend. I was like, “I’m going to do this.” It seemed like a fun idea. I had a good time. I made myself what I call a “Snow Fashioned,” which is literally just a snow Old Fashioned. I think that the whole snow cocktail trend is like a perfect example of when TikTok really works. The concept is really simple in a lot of ways, and it’s an incredibly broad palate — you could basically do anything with it. It’s not intimidating for most people. It can be as simple as just putting snow in a glass and pouring your favorite liquor over it, if you want to be that simple, or you can make a fancy drink. It was connected with the fact that when most of the country got a lot of snow or at least some snow, it was very easy for people to glom onto it. I think that’s fantastic. What was interesting is that it was almost such a broad palate — and I’d be curious if you felt this, too — it was hard to kind of get a sense of it besides just “it’s cocktails plus snow,” as opposed to, “here’s a specific drink or type of drink that’s going viral.” And that, I think, is what’s interesting about TikTok. For me, with these drink trends, it feels almost like it’s not always really about what’s even in the glass, it’s kind of everything that’s going on around it.

A: Totally. It’s about the vibe. It’s about who the person is. I think that’s what’s so interesting about these trends that we’re seeing. Some of them are obviously more about the drink. I think the snow cocktail was a really good example. At the end of the day, they all kind of look the same, right? It’s snow, and you’re dumping stuff with snow, right? So it’s like, are you dumping a Negroni on top of snow? We’ve written about this to the Togroni trend. Those guys who created the Togroni trend were dumping Togroni in snow and being like “ah, check out the Togroni!” I also think it still looked the same as when José Andrés made his cocktail, if you saw this one, which was amazing. He took mezcal (which he kept calling tequila, and going back and forth) and mixed it with vermouth. José Andrés is a national treasure.

Z: I would say he’s a global treasure.

A: Yeah. He’s the best. So he goes to add vermouth to his cocktail, and his vermouth is empty because he’d been drinking it inside. And he was like, “Oops, finished the bottle.” That was so good. But I think what was awesome about the snow cocktails is because they all look the same (I mean, yes, there is a different color poured over the snow, but they’re very similar, maybe different glassware) it’s about the personality who is fun to watch — who can be self-deprecating, like José Andrés, who is funny, those types of things. Whereas there’s other things that take off on TikTok that are really more about the drink itself or how crazy it is. That is how it really started. I think that we’re evolving to the people. But at the beginning of the pandemic, it was like, how crazy can this shit be? How many insane candy cocktails can you make? Like, can you take gummy worms and infuse them with vodka and get wasted? That’s where it started, and now it’s kind of moving. I love how it’s happened; I think what makes TikTok so compelling is that it’s people copying each other and updating. You even saw that with the snow cocktails. It was like, “Oh, you can do that? I can do a riff on it. Here’s my version of your cocktail.” That’s really fun. I’m really excited to hopefully start seeing that happen more in wine, and beer, too. It’s starting to break out a little bit, but it doesn’t make sense. I feel like the spirits people have discovered this platform and they’re really owning it. And I’m just waiting for wine to get there, and for beer to get there, because bourbon TikTok is nothing besides people sitting around talking about bourbon, and sharing bourbons. Why can’t that be wine TikTok too?

Z: I think what’s really interesting here are two components to it that have struck me lately. One of them is this idea of riffing that you mentioned. To me, it’s like this perfect example of how TikTok is not just recycling trends. It’s doing the past 30, 40 years of cocktail culture, all in a span of a couple of months. You’ve gone from the flair bartending period of the 1980s and early ‘90s. Now we’re in this period where people are doing what was so exciting in craft cocktails in the early to mid-2000s. They are sharing drinks, they are sharing ideas, and the innovation is super fast-paced. Now in 2021, someone can upload a video of a cocktail that they’ve made that you’ve never heard of. You can understand how it’s made and you can go, “Well maybe if I don’t have all those ingredients, I can make a version of that with these ingredients instead, or I can riff on it in this way.” It’s the same kind of process that took months because a cocktail had to travel through a sort of informal whisper network in bars around the country. Now it’s like it can happen in a matter of days, which is super cool.

A: It is really funny. I hadn’t thought about that. That’s a good point. I wonder, too, do you think that is kind of what’s happening with wine right now? What I saw happening on the platform with wine — initially is there were some people who were reviewing wines. The biggest trend in wine right now is people going to their grocery store and saying, “buy this bottle, don’t buy this bottle, buy this bottle, don’t buy this bottle.” A bunch of people have taken this trend and are copying it — I’ve seen a lot recently. So I’m going to walk in the aisle, and I’ll be like, “I love this bottle. It was delicious. I had it with roast chicken. Hated this bottle. It was too big for me, or too high alcohol, or bitter.” A lot of it is amateur wine drinkers, which I love. I don’t mean amateur in that they’re amateurs, but they’re not professionals, which is cool. They’re talking about what they love. That is the way I think you could connect it to what we saw nine months ago with DrinkTok, or BarTok, where basically the first thing you saw was the way that most of us start drinking when we’re close to 21 — it’s basically like dumping everything into a bucket and seeing what happens. The first time I ever bought wine was just by going into my grocery store and being like, “OK, I’m in Georgia, I’m in college. They sell it in Publix. Is this one good, or is that one good?” In Atlanta, I started getting more into wine and would be like, “Now I’m of age. I’m going to go to the wine store. Maybe I’ll talk to somebody because I’m not still intimidated.” I wonder if we’ll see that evolution, and if we’ll also see similar in beer, where we’ll start going through the phases of what you go through as a wine drinker, in the same way we’re seeing the phases of what you go through as a cocktail drinker.

Z: One of the things that I’ve been racking my brain about a little bit is: With Instagram, it was clear what made for compelling-ish wine content initially. But even then, I feel like wine Instagram was very focused around bottle shots. Basically, the innovation is what else is in the picture with the bottle of wine? There was this big trend, I’m sure it’s still going on, where wineries posed the bottle with all these different things, fruits and things like that, that supposedly you would smell or taste in it. It was like a whole visual representation of the experience of drinking the wine, which is very compelling. It’s also an incredible labor to put together. But with TikTok, I would be curious to see if reviews take hold. I think what will be maybe more powerful than that, potentially, is not necessarily “here’s 10 seconds on this wine” or “here’s 10 seconds on why you should drink this wine and not that one” but instead “here’s 20 seconds about a wine that I really like.” Here’s the story of this wine in a really concise format, and maybe it’s cleverly shot or edited. With TikTok you want that pop of information, but you also need to be entertained. I think that one of the challenges that comes with this grocery store format is like, if you’re not in that store or in a similar store, you might not have the same wines on your shelf. I mean, yes, there are wines that are on pretty much every grocery store shelf. But if you’re trying to do something, especially as a professional, that’s a little more insightful than which mass-produced red blend you should be drinking. It is hard to find a purchase with TikTok. I’ve thought about this a lot for myself, personally. It’s hard to know what you would say that is not incredibly glib, but also doesn’t bore people.

A: A few things that you mentioned are really interesting to dig deeper into. The first is obviously Instagram versus TikTok, which we covered in one of the VinePair packages. One of the profiles everyone should read is a profile on the woman behind the account SpiritedLA. What she says is really fascinating. She makes beautiful cocktails. I think she’s probably one of the people making the best cocktails on TikTok. What she said, though, is that when she got on Instagram, she was very methodical about the formula. Like, “this is what you do. This is the lighting, this is how it has to look for it to do well in cocktail Instagram.” Wine people were doing the same thing, like, “This is how you have to talk about it here. These are the hashtags you have to use.” She has around 42,000 followers on Instagram. She said when she joined TikTok early in the pandemic, she was like: “I’m going to make really fun cocktail videos. I love fashion and I love dressing for the party. So I’m just going to wear really cool outfits that match the drink and I’m going to make the same drinks I’m making on Instagram.” She showed herself on Instagram, but not a lot — it was really the drink. She has this great personality that kind of comes off like she’s in the ’50s, almost like she has this really cool, classy air to her. She talks about a bygone era of cocktails, and she gives you the history and all that stuff. She has 243,000 followers on TikTok. She said she didn’t follow a formula or anything, she was just herself. I think that’s what’s been really fun about TikTok — a lot of people are able to be themselves and are just able to say, “This is what we do, and you either like it or you don’t.” One of these other accounts that we profile in the package is the account JonesnMann. And JonesnMann are a duo that are usually on YouTube together reviewing bourbons and other spirits. But on TikTok, only Mann wanted to do it. (And also, they refuse to give their first names. This is part of the characters they play. So it’s not that I don’t know their first names, they actually don’t even give them in the article.) So Mann was like, “We should be on TikTok.” He is super entertaining. His whole tagline is “drinkin’ the comments” and you tell him like a cocktail you’ve made and he’ll make it. He’ll also talk about spirits. If you say, “What do you think about Crown Apple?” He’ll talk about why he likes Crown Apple, or he’ll talk about Blanton’s. He’s this fun person that people like to watch. On the other side, when it comes to wine, I think, one, there hasn’t been a personality that’s burst out yet. I think that that’s going to be what it takes. Two, I think if someone’s going to be really successful as an influencer on tape talking about wine, I think they need to really watch what’s happening in one specific subset of #DrinkTok, which is the bourbon TikTok channel. The communities are similar in the fact that a lot of time they talk about wines, obviously, that you and I will never be able to find or try. They talk about Pappy. I’ve had Pappy once in my life, you and I’ve had 10 year. I’ll probably never have the 23. That is what they all talk about, in the way the wine people talk about DRC or Petrus, or other wines. But then they all love to talk about these finds that they get that are regionally specific. You would be amazed at how many bourbons people have that are regionally specific. They prop each other up, and they have certain people in the community who have become these personalities that are really engaging and fun, and help educate. One of the people — who I’ve just been waiting and waiting and waiting for someone in wine to be like – is this guy, Steve Higdon, who is 60 Second Bourbon Review, and he refers to himself as “the boomer of bourbon TikTok.” I think he’s just so down to earth and funny. People in the bourbon community love him because he feels like their dad. It’s mostly people who obviously are younger, but they have embraced him and he has tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of followers. He’s one of the most popular, if not the most popular, person in the bourbon TikTok community, and everyone kind of defers to him. They’ll be like, “I know Steve said he liked this bourbon, but here’s my notes,” and it’s great. I think there is that opportunity for wine, it’s just figuring out who those personalities are that can feel approachable, and not “somm-y.” You can’t be somm-y, because it won’t work on Tiktok. In Instagram if you had a somm following, you could have other somms and people who want to be like somms following you and that would be fine. But because the algorithm on TikTok is so democratic in the way that it throws out your content and sees what people love, you have to be approachable, and you have to be providing content that people feel they can relate to. Or, you can create content people hate, which I’ve also seen go viral, but you don’t want people in your comments being like, “You’re the worst person. You’re such a jerk. No one wants to follow what you like to drink because you’re a snob about it.” I think that’s also interesting. So who knows, man? It’s a fun platform, for sure.

Z: You make a really good point. I wanted to ask your opinion. With Instagram, it’s always felt to me like one of the things that is rewarded on that platform is a very specific visual aesthetic, right? Yes, we all know it. In the early days, it was the filters. Now, I would say it’s that, but it’s also just you want your pictures to look a certain way, whether you’re in them or not. And I wonder, my sense of TikTok — and you’re deeper in it than I am — is there is less of that, because it’s video, and not static to some extent. It is a thing where — maybe just because it’s newer and there isn’t as clear of a “here is how you get the most interaction on the platform” — I just wonder, does that also create space for drinks that are inherently less visually grabby? We all know that one of the things that’s true about what’s happened in drinks culture because of Instagram is (and in food culture too) is increased emphasis on visual appeal from the get-go. It’s why craft beer labels have moved the directions they’ve moved. All that kind of stuff. On TikTok, yes, the thing has to look good if you’re going to see it, but you’re never going to get the same quality. Most people don’t have the same quality lighting. It’s a video, so things are moving. In most cases, it’s always going to be a little bit less polished. I wonder if it does create space for people who are not going to be able to produce professional-quality photography at their house, and might not be able to produce professional-quality videography, either, but can be a professional-quality personality, I guess.

A: Yeah, I think that it does. Let’s talk spirits, specifically. You have two different kinds of people. You either have the person who has a full set up, almost like they’re standing on a set. They’re making their drinks in a way that feels very polished. They probably went out and bought some equipment to hold the phone steady and things like that. Spirited LA is like that, right? Her setup looks beautiful — she has a beautiful kitchen. You could take her videos and with a little bit more work be like, “I could see this on Food Network or something.” Then there’s Johnny Drinks, which actually is this father and son from Jersey who I think are the most followed account in drinks TikTok. They’re up to almost 800,000 followers. It’s a father and son. They knew not a lot about drinks before they started TikTok. They’re learning about drinks together. They’re just like in the basement of their house in Jersey. I think the son is home from college because of Covid. He started filming with his dad. His dad’s real job is something in insurance, I think. (I haven’t got to read the profile yet. I’m really excited to. We’re recording this prior to all publishing.) They’re in the basement, where the dad has this bar that used to be just for hanging out. There’s a pool table down there, whatever. It’s not set, you know — the camera’s shaky, but they’re just two people trying to learn how to make drinks, and talking about it to people, and showing people how to make drinks. They’re just a good personality. I think people love that it’s a dad and a son. There’s like this connection between the two of them. The son also asks the dad about life advice. These things are resonating with people watching who want to be entertained. People are looking for good entertainment, in the same way they were looking for that on YouTube years ago. Whereas Instagram has more and more and more felt plastic to a lot of people. We’re all sick of the fact that like, that’s not what your family looks like all the time. Come on. You’re not having fun 24/7. These articles are being published about how Instagram specifically is causing people to have massive amounts of anxiety, and to be depressed, because they feel like this friend has a perfect life and they don’t. Meanwhile, you don’t know that the friend also is having issues with their job, or with their health, or any of these things. But when they’re posting on Instagram, it looks like everything’s perfect. I think people like TikTok because there can be those little mistakes. It just feels more real.

Z: You can have already drunk all the vermouth, as it turns out?

A: Exactly! Right. You know, it’s all there. And that’s why people like it. I can’t stress this enough — I think it’s a platform that if you’re in the drinks business, you need to be paying attention to. It’s funny because I feel like there’s been a lot of noise over the last week or so about another platform, Clubhouse. I’ve played around on it. It’s the same people that were on a lot of these different platforms initially. There’s like a group of — I don’t wanna say illuminati, but like, you know — it’s the same wine people that are on Twitter having conversations about wine. They’re not bringing anyone new into the conversation on Clubhouse. I didn’t see anyone new when I jumped into these rooms. This is probably worth a podcast of its own down the road, but I don’t see any new voices on Clubhouse. It’s the same voices I hear on Twitter, whereas TikTok is really new people, or there are people who yes, had some success on Instagram, but not like this. Again, SpiritedLA, she’s the perfect example. Yeah, she had some success on Instagram — 40,000 followers on Instagram for a cocktail account is nothing to sneeze at. There are people who have massive cocktail followings. But she has 200,000-something followers on TikTok. That’s just insane.

Z: Alright, so when are we taking the podcast on TikTok, Adam?

A: The second you can figure out how we can cut these episodes into small bits.

Z: Isn’t that what we have interns for, damn it?

A: I definitely would encourage everyone to read as many articles as you can on the site, if you want to scroll through all of them. Also, a shout out to Josh and Danielle, who built the site for this package. It looks like you’re actually scrolling on a phone on TikTok when you’re scrolling through the stories. It’s super cool. It’s just vinepair.com/tapping-into-tiktok. Hit us back and let us know what you thought of this podcast, what you think of TikTok, and what you think of the package at [email protected]. Again, we’re excited about the platform. We think it’s interesting, and it’s something that everyone should be paying attention to. We’d love to know if you have paid attention to it, or if you just checked it out in passing. Let us know what you think, because I think it’s going to only get bigger. That’s my prediction.

Z: I can’t argue with that.

A: Zach, see you back here next week.

Z: Sounds great.

Thanks so much for listening to the “VinePair Podcast.” If you love this show as much as we love making it, then please give us a rating overview on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or whatever it is you get. It really helps everyone else discover the show. Now for the credits. VinePair is produced and recorded in New York City, and in Seattle, Washington, by myself and Zach Geballe, who does all the editing and loves to get the credit.

Also, I would love to give a special shout out to my VinePair co-founder, Josh Malin, for helping make all this possible and also to Keith Beavers, VinePair’s tastings director, who is additionally a producer on the show. I also want to, of course, thank every other member of the VinePair team who are instrumental in all of the ideas that go into making the show every week. Thanks so much for listening, and we’ll see you again.

Ed. note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

This story is a part of VP Pro, our free platform and newsletter for drinks industry professionals, covering wine, beer, liquor, and beyond. Sign up for VP Pro now!