Courtney Cochran's journey as Geisha and Sommelier

Courtney Cochran’s journey as Sommelier “Geisha”

If writing about wine is usually fun why is it then that reading about wine is more often than not boring? What’s the disconnect? The truth is there simply aren’t that many writers who can take this delicious subject and leave us with what seems like a long finish of intimacy and compatibility. One of the clear exceptions to this is Courtney Cochran.

That she possesses a sommelier certification from the International Sommelier Guild and the American Court of Master Sommeliers is impressive, that much is certain, but what makes her truly special is that this body of knowledge gets translated so effectively and brought to millennials in a very accesible manner. It was Jessica Yadegaran in Alder Yarrow’s Vinography blog who wrote of Hip Tastes when it was released in 2007 Hip Tastes is one of few wine books that doesn’t make you feel like a loser for lacking the cash or know-how, for that matter, to invest in Chateauneuf-du-Pape or a temperature-controlled cellar. Cochran assumes you live in a shoebox of an apartment ” she does ” and validates closets and other dark nooks for bottle storage. She’s practical about nearly everything when it comes to wine, and it’s refreshing, especially for the novice. There are only a handful of other young women who have this same grasp on our wine reality. After Katie Pizzuto, Jesse Altieri and a few others the list grows short.

Her resume goes on. In addition to her wine education, Courtney graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BA in English and French from the University of California, Los Angeles and is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa academic honor society. She also holds an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management, where she studied marketing and entrepreneurship and was president of the school’s wine tasting group. She’s also written about wine for Maxim and managed to do it without being salacious.

When one becomes a Personal Sommelier one also takes on many more roles. There is both a personal and entertainment aspect to it. The sommelier is a host, a host who is expected to be shaman, thespian, the walk-on Geisha ready to rock n roll with our palate and leaving us wanting more. Cochran does. We asked for our interview at a time when multi-tasking was almost out of hand, even for her. She maintains a schedule and pace that seems non stop.

As a writer you see how the editorial landscape in wine is changing. Given the emerging power and profound impact of social media what are the implications for legacy or traditional media?

Gosh, to be honest I think everyone would love to know the answer to this ? right now! I don’t have a concrete answer – I’m no genie, after all – but I CAN offer that what we’re seeing is mainstream media looking to evolve along with changes in social media/new media/web 2.0/whatever-you-want-to-call-it in order to play in this sphere, too. And so I don’t think legacy media is going away, not only because of these efforts to evolve and participate in emerging forms of communication but also because of the strength of their brands. Brand equity is something that’s traditionally built over time, and as time goes by trust and authority come along with it. And while new media e.g. blogs etc. have buzz and plenty of other perks going for them, they’re simply too fragmented and their audiences too small at this stage of the game to supplant traditional players. I do hear buzz of blog aggregation engines or portals in the works in various subject areas, and I’m sure wine will be no exception. The popularity of the Wine Bloggers Conferences held to date are proof of the popularity of wine blogs and the (albeit disparate) audience share this group has been able to muster.

What I’m tentatively excited about in the evolving wine editorial landscape is the emergence of new voices and influencers. I think there has long been a disconnect between the few “authoritative” publications on wine and the large and extremely heterogeneous audience that drinks wine in this country. I mean, few things we consume with such gusto or spend so much of our hard earned cash on have so few points of mainstream reference. Particularly with the rise of the Millennials and the aging of the Boomer population, fresh new voices in wine commentary are desperately needed; and while I wish I could point to a host (or even several) strong candidates emerging to step into this role, I’m sorry to say that I can’t. Mutineer Magazine is the exception to the rule in this case, the lone strong new voice in wine emerging in this admittedly chaotic media landscape. May they fare well and be around a long time! And may other interesting voices with sway and informed, edgy and UNSAFE (yes, I said it – let’s get a little weird where wine is concerned!) content arise along with them. As a final point here, I’d also like to see more lifestyle crossover with wine – more content developed that highlights wine alongside interesting people, trends, activities, and the like for which wine is just a part of the whole picture, as opposed to entire articles written exclusively about, say, a single grape variety or the rote wine and food pairing pieces that crop up over and over again. Which wine would Carrie Bradshaw drink to help her get over Big for the fifth time? And – as important – which pair of Manolos would she be wearing at the time? Inquiring (and non wine GEEK-y) minds would like to know!

Something must have happened early on in your life to make you this passionate and dedicated to wine. Care to share?

I think, for me, my love of wine really began with my love of words and language. I grew up writing constantly and have always been keen to find the perfect descriptors for things around me, yet when it came to wine here was something that demanded description (so many aromas! so many flavors!), yet I had no vocabulary to describe it. My parents drank a lot of wine when I was a kid and hosted a regular wine tasting group, so I was heavily influenced by that; then I spent a summer as a French exchange student at 17 and a semester in Paris at 20 and things were pretty much over after that. I was SOLD not only on the French language but also on its prolific wine and food culture. Problem was, I still had no real insight into how to talk intelligently about wine, and so I just felt stuck. Not surprisingly, I started taking wine classes at night soon after college, and – to make a very long story short – the rest is history. I found a way to put words and language to something that already felt extremely personal and close to my heart, and when it all aligned and I became “fluent” in winespeak, I discovered I wanted to speak that language every day. So here I am.

Well that explains the wine part of your gig. As a writer who did you read that most inspired you to want to write yourself?

That’s a tough one! I think the urge to write really came from within, sort of like a calling I couldn’t refuse, though I have of course read and love a ton of authors. My all time favorite is Edith Wharton, because she sometimes writes things that are so very true about the human condition that I realize I knew them to be the case all along but had never put those truths into words – not even in my own mind. It takes a lot of courage, intelligence and self awareness to get to that place as a human, and for this reason I am in awe of her as a person, first of all, and as a writer and entertainer second. Plus she loved Paris and lived there for many years, so how could I not love this woman?!

It occurs to us that you have two different brands going simultaneously, Hip Tastes and Courtney Cochran. Let’s talk about brand Courtney Cochran. Here we get both sommelier and wine personality and the difference between the two is rather like the difference between being a movie star or a fine actor. Would you agree and how do you play it?

Well, I’m a little embarrassed at the references here, because I’m really just a person who knows how to talk and write about wine, far from actor (in fact, when I played Alice in a theater production of Alice in Wonderland when I was 10 I was perhaps the worst Alice ever!..Turns out I was the only blonde in the company, bad luck). But what I think you’re getting at is that being a wine “personality” so to speak calls for a different skill set than that required to be a sommelier – which is also a demanding job. I certainly agree that they are different; in particular, one thing I learned early on after founding Your Personal Sommelier and appearing on TV and in front of groups talking about wine is that an element of theatricality is definitely called for in these instances. To wit, it’s less important that I know by heart every single Grand Cru in Burgundy (I don’t) than that I know how to read a room and to play to the subtle themes therein and the needs of the audience. Doing so is fun but requires a lot of focus and intuition, and experience helps a lot, too. The more I do this the better I get. Of course, it’s far easier for me to bring a little theatricality to the table when I’m talking about something I know well and love – wine, of course – than playing a part on stage. So when I’m in Your Personal Sommelier mode I’m always absolutely myself (so no acting, thank god), but I definitely “bring it” – meaning a certain amount of theatrical flair. This is wine, after all – we’re not saving the world, we’re having a good time and getting buzzed along the way.

Hip Tastes is interesting and that it has evolved over its life. What began as a blog is now something much larger and has been fascinating to watch. Talk to us about the big picture.

Well, I started Hip Tastes in 2006 as an events company through which I hosted wine tasting parties in San Francisco nightclubs and hot bars. Every tasting had a theme, and I tried hard to do things that were different or that hadn’t been done before; for example, an early tasting was Old School, in which I paired wine with tater tots, mac ‘n cheese, PB&J, gooey chocolate cake and the like. I also hosted Saints & Sinners (light whites & big reds), South X Southeast (Asian fare) and Salty & Sweet, though my all time favorite was the most recent, Rock & Roll. I basically just wanted to have a wine party where people got to really party, so I paired up sushi rolls with wine and arena rock music; the whole thing turned into a massive dance party which was incredibly fun – and definitely fit my goal of hosting outside-the-box wine events with lots of Millennial appeal. The success of the events and blog (hiptastesblog.com) led to a book deal with Penguin (hiptastesbook.com), and I’ve had a lot of other interesting opportunities come my way since. I’d definitely like to get more involved with social media and perhaps an iPhone app, and am currently looking at some interesting opportunities in this space, as well as some other related avenues for the brand. So you might say I’m in a transition phase, which is both exciting and uncomfortable, as these things always are.

Wine, it seems to us, is a subject that is so ripe for media exploitation in film and books. Pretend that we’re producers at either Paramount or New Line. Pitch us your brilliant project, the concept we can’t possibly turn down.

I feel like in films and books people are always running away from their hectic city lives to run a winery in podunk wherever. What if there was a film that did the opposite – showed wine country refugees fleeing the stress of life among the vineyards (too much rain! inconvenient frost! poor fruit set!) and seeking refuge in urban enclaves? There, they would start urban wineries that would inspire their shallow city-dwelling cohorts to reconnect with their lost agrarian pasts, meet and fall in love with their reflections in (urban) others, and make a handsome profit along the way. Ultimately these newly married, rich winos would return to podunkville and bring their hip urban perspectives to the natives there, in doing so advancing these country folks’ pop culture awareness by leaps and bounds while providing gainful employment in the winos’ new tech-savvy, web 2.0-connected winery ventures. They would not only enliven wine country, they would democratize the winemaking process there, too, providing accessible custom-crush facilities at their wineries to area natives, so the entire population would become actively engaged not only in the hand-wringing over harvest, but in the economic outcome of it all, too. This would be a wine country utopia-world of sorts, and it would be broadcast live via the Internet at all times for the rest of the world to see, and its inhabitants – now wine producers and Perez Hilton fans, all of them – would be available for commentary 24/7 at Twitter (live!), too, hash tag #WeRWineUtopia. Come to think of it, that would be the title of the film, too.