Speaking & education
Available for seminars, keynotes, and team education.
Alongside the advisory work I take speaking and teaching engagements on the commercial side of wine and spirits, and on the cultural fluency the trade runs on. In English or French.
Cultural adaptation
Adapting the product to the market is one thing. Adapting the approach is another.
A wine that sells itself in Paris can stall in New York for reasons that have nothing to do with the wine. How a deal is opened, how a relationship is built, how a price is discussed, what a buyer expects left unsaid. These differ across the US, France, and the UK, and they decide outcomes more often than the liquid in the bottle. I help teams and audiences read those differences and work with them rather than against them.
Market culture
How the US, French, and British trades actually behave, and what’s normal in one room but a misstep in the next.
Negotiation & relationship norms
Where directness reads as confidence and where it reads as rudeness, and how trust is built in each market.
Trade expectations
What importers, distributors, and buyers assume you already know: the unwritten rules that gate access.
Language & register
Working credibly in English and French, and knowing which register a given room expects.
Formats
How I can help
I build each session for the room it is going into.
Keynotes & talks
Trade events, conferences, and consumer-facing evenings.
Seminars & workshops
In-house sessions for sales teams, importers, and producers.
Panels & moderation
Contributing to or chairing trade and cultural discussions.
Tastings with context
Guided tastings framed around market and cultural strategy.
Delivered in English or French.
Academic & university
Equally at home in a lecture hall.
Before wine, my background was academic. I hold an MSc in Language Sciences and Neuroscience from University College London, held a research post at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, and spent a short period as a PhD candidate. I mention it not as a headline, but so it is clear the door is open if a teaching or lecturing brief would fit.
- MSc, Language Sciences & Neuroscience, UCL
- Research post, École Normale Supérieure, Paris
- Former PhD candidate