After spending most of my career in specialty coffee as a roaster, quality manager, competitor, and consultant, I made the transition into fine dining and wine, where I now work as a sommelier and restaurant manager in a Michelin-starred environment.
This talk is not about wine. It is about what I learned when I left the coffee industry and discovered a completely different approach to quality, hospitality, and value.
Through personal stories and observations from both worlds, I will explore:

• Why coffee and wine are more similar than people think, from terroir and agriculture to sensory evaluation and storytelling.

• What wine does exceptionally well, including hospitality, creating perceived value, building trust with guests, and understanding that people remember experiences more than technical details.

• What coffee does better than wine, particularly around transparency, innovation, sustainability, and producer relationships.

• The biggest surprises I encountered moving from coffee into wine, including the realization that guests care far less about technical details than professionals do.

• Why hospitality matters more than technical perfection and why the most important skill in service is often reading people, not tasting.

• What I would do differently if I returned to coffee tomorrow, and how coffee professionals can create more meaningful and memorable experiences for their guests.