Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Fine Wine

Episode Date: March 28, 2023

Pinkies up and wallets out for this week's quaffable "cult": the elitist, jargon-packed, ritual-soaked world of fine wine. Amanda and Isa were always highly intrigued but knew very little about this top-shelf "cult" until chatting with special guest Cristie Norman, certified sommelier, Wine Enthusiast's "educator of the year," and creator of The Online Wine Course. The fine wine world is certainly mysterious and exclusive, but how "dangerously culty" is it? Drunk on Cristie's insights, we're ready to find out... To support Sounds Like A Cult on Patreon, keep up with our live show dates, see Isa's live comedy, buy a copy of Amanda's book Cultish, or visit our website, click here! Thank you to our sponsors! Visit article.com/CULT for $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. Visit AURA.com/CULT for a 14 day free trial. Get 10% off your first order sitewide with code CULT at OSEAMalibu.com.

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The content here should not be taken as indisputable facts. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Oh, right. We're supposed to be drinking wine right now, but obviously we did not prepare. It's also pretty early in the day. Yeah, it's literally one PM, I just woke up. I don't know if I'm ready to be turnt. And here's the thing, when we drink wine, we finish the bottle.

We do, we do be do be. I do have some flat old champagne in the fridge, but I'm too old. That would give me the headache of my life. Yeah, and it's like, is flat champagne too old? And I was like, no, that's just white wine. I know. Why are non-carbonated beverages acceptable, but once-carbonated beverages that have gone non-carbonated disgusting?

I don't know, but for some reason that reminds me of when someone loses their virginity and then they want to be a born-again virgin, and then they are a born-again virgin, and you're like, you can't do that. So they just put their virginity through the soda stream? Yeah. Yeah, and just like that, soda became a slut. It lost its bubbles. I don't know if this makes sense, but it feels like it does.

Yeah, it literally makes no sense. Anywho, did you do anything culty over the weekend? I haven't seen you since last week. I know, I'm like, what day of the week is it even? I think it might be Thursday. Well, it's your birthday. It's actually my birthday. And if you are a listener of the podcast, yes, it was also her birthday when we interviewed

someone, we record multiple episodes a day. Yeah, how about that? We work hard. Actually, I did do something culty. I know you did. Oh, you remembered what I did better than I did. I went snowboarding in Colorado, which is definitely culty. Yeah.

I flew to another state with huge luggage and then drove two hours to a mountain village and then got on a little chair in the sky to go up mountain. And then we my way down with a bunch of men who all look alike. Oh, yeah. I stayed at a cabin with a bunch of guy friends from college and they were all in a frat together and they all looked the same. And I was like, what's going on here? Am I going to get laid?

Did you? No. They're all little bitches and like none of them made a move on me. Stupid. Ew. I know. What are they thinking? And I'm like, I'm not going to make a move on a man.

I'm bisexual. I make moves on women and men make moves on me. Yeah, it's just math. Yeah. It is just social calculus. Exactly. Learn. Study.

I did something really culty. I was actually in a mountain town as well on the other side of the country in Vermont because I was giving a talk at a college. Shout out to the college students who were nice to me while I was there. I know you're going to mention the college you just said. Oh, Middlebury. To the general college population. Shout out to college students.

But Middlebury is like the teeniest, tiniest little town, very quaint. I ate a lot of baked goods while I was there and was very cold. My nose was cold the whole time. My god, you're so tiny. I feel small of me. But as I was walking around this tiny town, we're totally poisoned in the mind to see cults everywhere because I was just like looking from store to store being like cult, cult, cult.

Well, the northeast is like witchy. It's witchy. Which is culty. Yes. Yes. Every building that I was in felt haunted in a good way. I love ghosts. Don't believe in them.

Love them though. Yeah, I do believe in them. What? You don't believe in ghosts? Well, I believe in the mind's ability to create a ghost. Amanda, ghosts are so real. Get with it. I do go on so many ghost tours and I'm like constantly hunting for a ghost. But I don't believe in literal ghosts, but like potato, potato.

Do you believe in literary ghosts? Yeah. Okay, that was a dumb joke. Please show me this picture. Okay. This is a haunted Baptist church right next to an establishment that had a sign in it that was like grand opening today. It's called the Breadloaf Mountain Zen community.

Oh, that's a cult. I know. Breadmakers, bakers are culty. And then this is, oh wait, that also like, oh, it's next to a Baptist church. I was like, that looks like a church. That is a church. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like the new style of worship and the old style of worship back to back.

It's like the Baptist church on the left and then on the right. Breadloaf Mountain Zen community. Yeah, which I was like, I don't know what that means, but I am so intrigued. And this is why cults are so good at marketing because I'm like, Breadloaf Mountain Zen community means absolutely nothing, but I want to learn more. Me too. I bet you the bread isn't even that good. There's no way they have bread.

Don't know how to bake really. I'm spreading that rumor right now. But you know what cults do know how to do? To aromatize you? Ferment. Oh, ferment. Yes, the cult of fine wine. Today we are talking about the cult of fine wine.

Cheers. Wow, that was beautiful banter. How about that? This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm Issa Medina, a comedian touring all over the country. I'm Amanda Montell, author of the book, Cultish the Language of Fanaticism. Every week on our show, we discuss a different culty group from the zeitgeist,

from doomsday preppers to Disney adults, to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? A banter. What is fine wine? What the hell is fine wine? Well, what's your experience of fine wine? Do you have any? Yes, actually.

My experience of fine wine is when I go visit my rich uncle and he just buys nice bottles of wine. Okay. And I actually did experience this at a fairly young age, like 16 is when I started going abroad to that uncle's place and tasting good wine. And so I've always liked wine because I thought it all tasted that good. But then I came back to America and it was like Franzia vibes. And I was like, it's disgusting and I have a headache.

I also love your pronunciation of Franzia. And then I came back and I had this Franzia. I tried these out of the box and slap the bag. Slap that bag. My experience just to sum it up is I have had good wines, but I know nothing about them. I just know when a wine is good because I'm like, mmm, yummy. Yeah.

Because you can tell with your mouth. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Wow. I'm really spicy today because I'm 31. I'm under my sexual peak. Oh my God. It's so true.

It's women in your 30s. Yeah. Get at me. Yeah. Sex cult. Pop off. I mean, just stop. Pop off.

That's what you say when you open wine. Yeah. Pop off. Pop it. It all comes together. Because you learned it when you were 16. Yes. By drinking wine.

Exactly. Yep. We get it now. We get it now. Okay. Full circle. Yep. Yeah.

I started tasting wine when I was really young too because when I was a teenager, I started dating a predator alcoholic. Oh, yes. Yes. Oh. And so I was like, drugged you with espresso. I drink coffee more often. It's so fun.

I mean, I love chemicals, whether I'm talking about coffee or alcohol. So anyway, yeah, I started drinking, you know, kind of good wine with my alcoholic boyfriend. Now I still drink good wine. Yeah. And I would say I've gone wine tasting quite a bit living in California and all. Yeah. I'm still intimidated by wine culture and will never be rich enough to be in the cult. Yeah.

But out of all the cults we've covered, I would say it is one of the ones that could maybe get me. Yeah, but you know what the wild thing is? I totally thought at some point I would be well off enough to be in the cult of fine wine and be like, oh, I know, and then we interviewed our guests who you guys will hear from in a bit. But she was like, oh, you know, nice wine can range anywhere from $500 to $20,000. I thought the 500 was the expensive range. I thought she was going to say to $20. And I'm like, I will never be in this cult.

No, that's the thing is that when we first set out to do this episode, and I forget exactly how we were inspired to do it. I've watched a bunch of documentaries about the cult of fine wine and I've always been really interested in the ritual aspect of it and the extremely insidery jargon of it. But I too didn't quite realize the tax bracket of this stuff. So let's maybe for some background talk a little bit about what the fine wine community is, what we mean.

So we're mostly talking about the market for ultra rare and exclusive wines where prices start out at the bargain basement a few thousand dollars and go up over a hundred thousand dollars for a single fucking bottle. Yeah. And if there's one thing that's culty, it's spending money on unnecessary things. Dude, spending money on a liquid that's actually pretty cheap to make this agricultural product that some people just keep in a basement their whole life and never even pop and never even drink because the second you open a bottle of wine, it's value diminishes.

Isn't that nuts? Yeah. And it's also kind of like up to interpretation and opinion based. And it's this thing where like you could be waiting years and years to open this bottle of wine and like if it's bad, are you going to admit it? It's very culty to do something like that. You know, it's like once you've invested all over this time, are you going to go back on your word and say you made a mistake?

No, it is like the ultimate vessel literally for sunk cost fallacy. Yeah. Like if the wine itself only has value based on like hype and money and exclusivity, who even cares what it tastes like or if it's really worth what you spent? Yeah. And in this episode, we're not just going to talk about the idea of fine wine itself, but it's also the community surrounding it. It gets so culty because it gets so exclusive.

And in order to become a part of these circles, you have to... What's the word that means like become like them? Conform. Yeah. You have to conform. We can keep that question there because sometimes I forget my words. So let me just give a little reference point of how pricey and exclusive this cult can really be. As one example, the most expensive type of wine is largely considered to be this product called

Domaine Leroy Musigny Broncrou, which has an average retail price of above 40K. According to Psalm TV, what makes this Pinot Noir special is that it quote, unquote checks every box that a wine investor could dream of. It's like a super limited supply. It's universally praised by critics and it includes a bunch of perfect scores, which as you'll hear from our interview, who's scoring these things real people with biases. Critics who serve a sort of cult leaderish role, which we'll talk about in a second, but also this wine is so valuable because apparently every vintage,

God, the vocabulary, every vintage since 2000 has appreciated between 361 and 2848.5% over the past five years, so it's super profitable for collectors. It's like better than stocks. See, this is the thing. I could not start collecting wine. I would just like have a bad Monday and be like, oh, let's pop bottles and drink it. I know, dude. You want to find that sweet spot between enjoying it at an old age and not enjoying it like with

Alzheimer's. You know what I mean? Like it's like you can't be too old or else you won't be able to handle the hangover and also you just won't enjoy it. Oh my God. Well, I was going to say people with Alzheimer's are really present, so maybe they would enjoy it more, but then you'd forget how much you were drinking. Yeah. We're not doctors. We really don't know how it works, but here's the thing. I know how to drink wine.

You do. Because I went to the University of Virginia, which is next to a bunch of wine places. What are those things called? Vineyards. Vineyards. Yeah. And that's where I like learned that day drinking shouldn't happen with shots. It should happen with casual, delicious wine throughout four hours. Yes.

But the best kind of tipsy is when you are drinking wine and you don't realize you're getting drunk and then all of a sudden you're like, wobbles. You have the wobbles. The wobbles. That does sound fun. We should go wine tasting sometime. Yeah. So interestingly, the term cult wine actually exists in the fine wine world according to an article in WineEnthusiast.com. It's defined by scarcity, high prices, and quality.

Many consider Napa Valley the birthplace of the cult wine phenomenon. And so its most famous grape, Cabernet Sauvignon, comprises many of the world's most sought after cult wines. Oh, that adds up. Essentially, shocker. The US has made fine wine a cultier industry than it really ever was before. This WineEnthusiast article by Jeanne Gaither said that it wasn't really until the second half of the 20th century, so recent history, that Americans really developed a taste for fine wine

and fine wine reviewers really played a kind of cult leader role in establishing which wines became cult followed. Of course that makes sense. I mean, basically wine became another thing for the very, very, very rich, wealthy people of the world to obsess over and gatekeep. And as we'll discuss with our guests, a lot of people who actually make the wines don't like how elitist the industry has gotten, but billionaires do be billionaires. And as niche as the wine world is, there is a shit load of money and prestige in it.

Yes. So as an example of how wine becomes cult wine, we learned from this WineEnthusiast piece that in 2008, this one billionaire bought six magnums of wine from a brand called Screaming Eagle. A magnum. A magnum is a 1.5 liter wine bottle. So that's double the size of a standard bottle. We're going to learn a lot of terms throughout this episode. It was the winemaker's 1992 birthday Cabernet Sauvignon and each bottle cost, wait for it,

half a million dollars. That is wild. Dude. Like half a million dollars. That's a lot of money. Yeah. I'm confused by those numbers. So only 225 cases of this wine were ever made. That's very, very few.

And now Screaming Eagle has become one of the most coveted wine brands in the world. But the thing is they never intended to make cult wine. Reviewers are really the ones who determine what a wine is worth. They score wines out of 100 points and it's to your point totally subjective based on their individual taste, but rich wine people love hype. And after this one reviewer decided he really loved Screaming Eagle, all of these culty collectors started foaming at the mouth for it. So it'd basically be like if Kim Kardashian suddenly decided that she was obsessed with

some lip balm that like a lady in Vermont sold on Etsy and thrust this humble person into the cut throat, like hyper capitalist cult of the beauty industry against her will. Yeah. I mean, that goes so well with just the term collectors because you see that in art too, you know, like there's these specific people who usually come from wealth and privilege and they have the ability to become taste makers. And then they just literally pick like whatever they want, whatever they like, and all of a sudden that pushes forward.

Yeah. It's true. Although like the fine wine world is on such a high shelf that the rest of us like everyday consumers can't even get it. Like we don't even know what's going on. Dude, my version of fine wine is like I talked to a Trader Joe's employee once and you know how like Trader Joe's founded in California, listen to that episode. Wine there is like super cheap and sometimes you'll buy a random bottle and it will be like

so good. And then you go back for that same bottle and it's gone. It's because some new wine makers try their wine out at Trader Joe's and in California, because it's their first couple bottles, you can get it for really cheap. But if it sells really well, then they stop giving it to Trader Joe's at a low price and they start selling it at a higher price at an actual wine store. Oh, fascinating. So if you live in California, just try some wine at Trader Joe's and you might be lucky

in a year, it might be like more expensive. Ooh, that's a cute hot tip. Yeah. So that makes me think that there are these different attitudes toward fine wine. There are winemakers in Napa who specifically want to create ultra rare and expensive cult wines, of course, because they only sell them to super rich people, the Harlan estate is one of these cult wine brands that is very, very intentional about making a fucking profit. But then there's also this quote unquote new guard of young Maverick winemakers who don't

want there to be ultra expensive fine wines at all who are these farmers and artisans who want it to be pure and accessible. I love that. But do you think they actually want it to be accessible? Because I don't know why but the term farmers next to the term artisans is to me giving like exclusive E. I don't know. I think probably each one of them are different, but they are at their core like craftspeople

in the vineyard who are having like a really, really intimate relationship with the plants versus like these billionaires who like don't want to get their fucking boots wet, you know? Yeah. Yeah, it kind of reminds me again, a little bit of art because there are these artists that make beautiful art for the nature of people looking at the art and enjoying the art. And then there are the collectors who buy the art and then put it in a warehouse for no one to view just to like make money off of it.

And it's like the artist is the winemaker and they're like, why would you just not enjoy the wine? Like I made this beautiful thing. Totally. So wine is really a spiritual thing. It has spiritual roots. It was long considered a gift from the gods. The ancient Greeks had a specific wine god that they worshiped and remnants of that religious

reverence toward wine still persists in the rituals and language. The sort of snobby rituals and highfalutin terminology not unlike prayer are kind of what keep fine wine enthusiasts believing in the cult. They're what turn wine from just a beverage into a whole religion with rules and uniforms and meaning. Yeah, I found this really funny article on deliciously called reasons why wine tasting is a bit of a hoax by Rupert Taylor. And it shows that idea pretty well.

He writes, the hollowed ritual begins as some sommelier pours precious liquid into a glass. The wine snob holds it up to the light and swirls it around declaring it to have good legs. It must be swirled. The connoisseur declares so the wine can breathe. Next comes the bouquet, the smell to the rest of us. There are ancient sacraments to be honored. A sip is taken and eyes are closed.

It's just like a really ritualistic practice. And the vocabulary that wine enthusiasts use to describe the wine is so pretentious and ridiculous. This deliciously article talks about how the person will take the sip and report, very complex. I'm getting notes of gooseberry, lavender, and caramel. The mid-palatism used by the wine's insouciance and there's a slight impertinent corrugated iron finish.

That just reminds me of how you can talk out of your ass about anything. Like, that's as if, like, weathermen were like, oh, it's not just going to be sunny. There's going to be a stream of light pushing through the clouds as though the wind perpetuated the streams into your brain and eyes wear sunglasses. That's amazing. Have you been to Napa? Uh, yes. The sign when you enter into Napa says that the wine is bottled poetry.

Like, there's just so much religiosity infused into this beverage. And I really find that there are, like, few special interests with as robust and absurd a vocabulary as fine wine. Because that's all they have. That's all they have is, like, vocabulary to describe a liquid. A liquid. It's like, okay, it's the blood of Christ. Just relax.

I know. Yeah, it's not that serious. But honestly, like, the language is what gives them that sense of superiority because the liquid itself can't do that. And the only reason they can do that is because, like, it's an activity that is so easy to do. You can read while you do it. Yeah. You can drink wine and read.

You can poop and drink wine. Do you do that? Not at the same time. Sometimes they'll drink coffee while I'm pooping. Pooping. Yeah, I could see. Well, you're always drinking coffee, so I could see that. But something that makes fine wine kind of culty is their leaders and their gurus.

Mm-hmm. So we mentioned reviewers a bit who play a one-of-a-kind cult leader role. But there are also the sommeliers, of course. Or, like, the wise men of fine wine. And also, by the way, it's pronounced somaliers. As a rebellion, call it sommelier. Yeah, the sommeliers go through an extremely intensive culty process in order to earn different levels of psalm, master, of course, being the highest.

Yeah, the court of master sommeliers currently recognizes only about 275 master sommeliers in the whole world. But the psalm cult has, of course, unsurprisingly, long been heavily dominated by white men. And while these guys are definitely knowledgeable and impressive, they're basically in this homogenous boys' club where they're regarded as not only celebrities, but influential gurus, and they make a lot of money. We found in a 2021 Wine Searcher article that sommelier wine endorsements have become more powerful than critics' ratings.

The article mentioned that some of the ways these sommeliers make big bucks is through fancy wine brand sponsorships. Opening their own restaurants or founding private wine clubs. But what's interesting is that this Wine Searcher piece also noted that the pandemic and modern social justice movements have kind of shaken up the cult of the psalm power structure. So as we'll learn a little bit in our guest interview, the people who have influence in the fine wine world might finally be diversifying at least a teeny, teeny, tiny little bit.

Yeah, I mean, there was a New York Times expose in 2020 talking about how the wine world's most elite circles has a sexual harassment problem. Yeah, that was the headline of this piece by Julia Moskin. And it really was the first sort of like bombshell coming forward of the few women who have any amount of power in the wine world. Yeah, I mean, it's just important to like look at these numbers. Master sommelier is the most prestigious title in American wine, and only 155 people have achieved that honor since 1997 of those 131 are men.

So I mean, just like looking at the dynamics, it just creates more possible power of abuse. If you want to read more about it, again, the article is called The Wine World's Most Elite Circle Has a Sexual Harassment Problem. Yeah, we'll link the pieces that we quoted in this episode in our episode description. So before we get into our guest interview, which we are so excited about today, we want to talk about the two cultiest parts of wine bitches. I just want to call them fine wine, I mean, sorry, wine bitches, fine wine, something is wine secret societies.

Oh yeah, like the Freemasons or the Illuminati, there are these elite clubs all over the world, both for wine makers and wine collectors. And shocker, most of the members are again, the super, super rich middle-aged white men. So one example is if you watch Shark Tank, you might have heard Kevin O'Leary, Mr. Wonderful, talk about how he's a member of this super pretentious burgundy club called the Chevalier du Testuvan, which means the fraternity of knights of the wine tasting cup. They have chapters all over the world, but only seven or so members are accepted to the New York chapter every year, so it's very exclusive.

And I also want to point out it's fraternity of knights spelled K-N-I-G-H-T-S, not evenings. Think suit of armor, men in armor. So the whole shtick of this club is that they host these extravagant dinners where they drink thousands and thousands of dollars worth of wine while talking about, I don't know, whatever the fuck the family in succession talks about. And there are these initiation ceremonies where inductees drink from the Testuvan, this goblet, while wearing elaborate red and yellow robes. Oh, can men just like chill with the robes, like stay home and take care of the kids in a robe,

but stop making societies with robes. Men do love wearing a dress and passing it off as something else. Yes, it's like, just say you want to dress like a woman, it's fine. Or just accept that clothing has no gender and we all want our junk to breathe. Oh my god, put that on a shirt. Actually, put that on a skirt. Incredible. Clothing has no gender, we all just want our junk to breathe.

Okay, so there is one worst case scenario that we're going to talk about today, which is fine wine fraud. Fraud. So there is this incredible Netflix documentary that talks about fine wine fraud. It's called Sour Grapes. It's a silly name, but it's one of my favorite most underrated Netflix documentaries. And it documents this fascinating story of a guy who masqueraded as this fine wine savant. He was rubbing elbows with the world's most prestigious wine collectors,

but he was actually running this operation where he was faking valuable bottles and he got away with it for a really long time. Whoa, it's like, again, the art documentary. You would think that fine wine and fine art are really comparable and in some ways they are, but I found this 2022 piece in The Guardian talking about fine wine fraud, and it said that although wine is often compared to art, a painting is either by the artist or it isn't. But with wine, where the line is drawn between acceptable rule of bending

and wanton criminality or full-blown fraud can depend on who you ask since almost everything about wine's value is made up. Where it came from and the terroir and the this and the that and the notes and blah, blah, blah, it's easier to fake than art. It kind of got me thinking with the way that like science has evolved, LOL when you're talking technically. But like, you know how there's like artificial flavoring and everything? I bet you people could make like artificial wine taste like fine wine.

Bro, they do. And so then it's like, what's the difference if it's getting you tipsy? Literally, yes. Okay, so here's the wacky thing is that fine wine fraud is increasing. This Guardian article said it may be a low priority for the police, but as wine has become more valuable, wine related crime has been on the rise. People are adulterating it with these flavorings, mislabeling it, etc. In 2019, thieves bored a hole into a cellar beneath a Paris restaurant

and made off with 600,000 British pounds worth of wine. Today, it's been estimated that as much as 25% of all the wine in the world is fraudulent in some way. That's like the Italian job of wine. Straight up when the car is underneath and they just like burn the hole. I was like, yes. Wow, I want to steal wine. Dude, in the UK, the fake wine, beer and spirits sector is estimated to cost Britain's economy more than 600 million pounds annually.

Basically, fine wine fraud is becoming a major, major fucking problem. I feel like it's only becoming a problem because we're letting it become a problem. Yeah, it's just like relax your cares. It's like there are actual problems in the world and the fact that the government is even spending money on it. If rich people care enough to care about this, then they should put their little investigator pants on and hire private investigators. They're an investigator robe.

But why would we allocate public funds to something that only affects 0.00? Well, that's why this category of documentary, this true con documentary category is my favorite because it doesn't actually matter. But it is fascinating to analyze from a culty lens because what makes this culty is that essentially wine is, as we mentioned, a cheap agricultural product to make that is then warped by all this wealth and all this ritual and basically turned into a talisman whose value is based on faith more than anything else. And that makes me realize the reason the government probably cares about it is because

they tax on that real wine. At least for countries like France, it's like a huge export. And so it's like, if that's getting in the way of France making a dime via taxes, then it's like, of course, they're going to have a whole little department of wine, dinosaur, and talisman. So actually, there are currently tech bros up there in Silicon Valley who are trying to come up with more sophisticated and affordable ways to test for wine fraud because historically, the only way to test if a wine is fake or not is to open the bottle and that eliminates its value.

Yeah. I'm like, can they figure out how to quickly test for STDs so we can not use condoms? Focus on the important stuff. Well, that's like the Elizabeth Holmes world of it all. I know. But is someone working on that? OK, so now we're going to talk to our very special guest. Her name is Christy Norman.

Christy Norman is a sommelier. She's a sommelier. She's a wine educator. Wine enthusiast magazine that we were quoting earlier named her wine educator of the year and 40 under 40 in the wine world. So she is a real leader in the space. And we got to talk to her about some of her firsthand experience in the cold of fine wine. Spring is literally the perfect time to refresh your skincare routine.

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We love you and we know you will love them. Article believes in delightful design for every home and they have an online only model. They have a beautiful assortment of mid-century modern coastal industrial boho designs. And a lot of them are like super city friendly. A lot of things come with storage. Also, if you get multiple items, they all go really well together. That is so true. I got my little Scandi style swivel office chair.

So cute, so comfy for the derriere. You're going to want to check out what article has to offer. And article is offering our listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. To claim, visit article.com slash colt and the discount will automatically be applied at checkout. That's A-R-T-I-C-L-E dot com slash colt for $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. My name is Christy Norman. I became a certified sommelier when I was 21 years old. And I got hired at Spock of Beverly Hills,

which is known for having a huge wine program. We had about 3000 SKUs up to 20,000 bottles when I worked there. And I didn't know anything, but I started learning and taking higher level certifications. And I created an online wine course for beginners. It's the online wine course. It's like a driver's ed course for wine. And I won wine educator of the year for that and 40 under 40, which is super cool from wine enthusiast. And then I moved to Las Vegas to open Delilah at the Wynn,

which is one of the biggest wine programs in Las Vegas. So I'm running that. Wow, congratulations on all your success. I know, impressive. Were you like a whino little kid? Like how did you for it's not like something at church where you're like, hmm, this tastes nutty. No, no, I did listen to your podcast about the youth groups,

but that was not me. That was not my upbringing. Oh, good. Good for you. No, I actually was obsessed with tea and I got my first job at a tea house. And I was tasting and recommending all these different teas to people when I was like 16 years old, and I was working at a barbecue restaurant and I was like, I want to make more money.

And I saw this fancy steakhouse. So I was like, I want to work there. And I was 19 and I walked in there and I was like, I want to be the best server you guys have ever had. And they were like, you can be a bar back and like mop the floors. So I did that. So and then I was learning about wine and I realized how similar it was because like, if you think about it, tea, you know, has all these different varieties,

very similarly to wine like Cabernet and Merlot are like different types of grapes. You have like caramel or whatever for tea. It just doesn't have the alcohol in it, but it has like caffeine, which is, you know, also a drug. People love to taste coffee. Well, we actually sometimes make the analogy on this show because we have our cult categories,

live your life, watch your back and get the fuck out. Sometimes we say that caffeine is a live your life, alcohol is a watch your back and meth is a get the fuck out. So you're in, you're in the world of watch your back, but you started in the world of live your life. You know, I, it's, it's really crazy because like, I try not to drink too much outside of work. I almost don't at all.

Like I'll have like one glass of wine, but it's like when, if you want to make a career out of this and being in the alcohol industry, it's actually really terrifying because you can just go down that slippery slope and I've seen it with people. You have to like have a lot of self control if you're going to like rock this for a long time. I guess like bartenders would have the same issue. Right.

And that's why I don't listen to podcasts actually. You'll OD on it. Yeah. Okay. So when we say the world of fine wine is culty, what immediately comes to mind for you? Is it the exclusivity, the barriers to entry, the jargon? Like what springs to mind?

Well, wine is literally a different language. And I think people should look at it that way when they're going into it because 99% of the population thinks that they don't know a lot about wine. And like I'm a professional and I don't know that much about wine in retrospect to how much there is to know, right? And so people get really nervous, I think. And so they look for these kind of guiding lights

in their life, in the industry, right? So for consumers, that guiding light, a lot of the times is reviewers or like publications. So for instance, this year they announced the wine of the year, which was a double diamond, right? But next day, I could not get it. That's like so crazy. It just goes like insane.

And so reviewers are like one person a lot of the time. Sometimes it's like a panel, like a publication will have like, oh, it's our panelists of judges. It's like 20 people or whatever. But it really only matters if you actually align with what that reviewer likes. So for instance, if I like big, bold reds, and I don't really like whites that much,

as a reviewer, I could score things that are like really low that are like the best things ever. And it's so crazy because people just like eat it up and listen to it. And they're like, oh, that's 100 point wine. And my question is always like, by who? Like literally anybody on any website can say, oh, this wine is 100 points.

And then people are like regurgitating that information. And it's so funny because like consumers with just like a little bit of wine knowledge or like a little bit of a certification, like they're actually the most dangerous because they think they like know it all and they like tell people what they shouldn't drink. Oh, you know, this reviewer says that, you know,

this isn't a really good wine. So therefore it's not a good wine. And they like influence people. So that's really crazy on the consumer side. But then on the sommelier side, you have like very specific, like almost like wine celebrities, like master Psalms, people that have passed the master Psalm exam, which is really, really hard.

You know, they are kind of the people that they worship and they drink everything that they want to drink and you know, they'll follow them, whatever they do. And if you're a consumer and you want to drink wine now, like it's so expensive. Like you have to spend so much money to taste these like iconic wines because everything's like quadrupled in price.

Since I mean, I've been a Psalm for seven years. So in the seven years that I've started, I've seen things double, triple, quadruple in price that are like everyday things that are super cool and unique. But I'm just not used to paying that much for it. You know what I'm saying? It's really weird because like the emergence of the internet and like everyone sharing all this information

and having this information makes certain things like really sought after. And if there's not a lot of product, it just like goes crazy. So I don't know. That, no, that point you made about on the consumer side of like the people that just have one certificate or that just have a little bit of knowledge and like spread their knowledge far and wide.

That is so culty. Culty. Like that is literally how like cults start. It's like one person who took a self-help class and now they're like, I can help everybody. Yes, exactly. Oh my God, exactly like that. I swear.

And actually people like that get really scared of sommeliers and people with like higher level certifications because they're nervous that they've gotten something wrong and they really don't have like a deep amount of knowledge. It's like if you study abroad in Italy for like five months and then say that you're like, you know, an Italian history educator or something, right?

It's just like all the dots don't connect that fast, right? It takes a really long time to get it. I still get it, you know? But they're really dangerous consumers and it's hilarious because they even a lot of times in the face of an experienced professional, like I sell wine to people, right? Like my job is to help people find wine,

whether it's like $500 or like $20,000. I love how 500 is the cheap end for you. I thought you were going to say like $500 or $20,000. And then you went $500 or $20,000. And I'm like, yeah, no, I'm going to Trader Joe's. I still find that $200, okay? Like it's no shade, but I'm just in Vegas. So it's kind of a different place.

Like you're at spend on a different type of level. But you know, I'm helping people find wine and literally people will be like, oh no, that's a 2017. Like that's a terrible year. Like in what region are you talking about? Like it's not a terrible year. They're like 2017 was actually the year

after Trump won the election. And thus the vibes were just not good. It's absolutely hilarious to me because even my birth vintage is a really terrible wine year in a lot of places, like in all of like the major places. But there's still places where it was good. So like you can't just like put a blanket statement. It's like the entire coast of California for instance.

It's like, it's not going to be the same everywhere. There wasn't a fire in every single part of California. Well, cults are famous for oversimplifying logic and passing off opinions as scientific facts. This reminds me so much of Keith Ranieri, the leader of Nexium who like read one science book one time and then started an entire cult. But then was famously afraid of the Dalai Lama

because that was like an actual spiritual authority. It just really parallels a lot of what you're saying. And I'm curious about your thoughts on like, who are these overconfident consumers who are claiming to have all of this knowledge? There's always a group. It's usually men that are between the ages of like 40 and 70 years old and they get together at local restaurants.

Happens everywhere all over the country on any given day, whether it's a Friday or a Tuesday or Wednesday. There is a wine group that gets together and they all have to bring a wine. So you have people that bought those wines upon release like 30 years ago where it wasn't that expensive. And then you have people who just started collecting and have to pay like thousands and thousands of dollars

in order to be part of this group. And they like make a deal with the restaurant, right? And so they'll get like a little tasting menu and they get to open all their wine for free or like for a small fee and they all sit around and they try to like guess what they are. So they have all of these psalms, all these wine professionals, you like pour the wines blind for this group of consumers.

Like these are all doctors, lawyers, whatever. And it's the funniest thing to me because it exists everywhere in the exact same way. And these guys all come together. Sometimes there's a female, but very rarely have I ever seen a female in one of these groups as like the main people and they all sit around. And so like as a wine professional,

you have to like dump all of the wines out into specific decanters or like glass vases, right? And you have to like mark them and then you have to pour them in the same order and you have to be 100% sure that you got it right. And they're all like guessing with these like notes of paper and they're all like pontificating and arguing like what's better and stuff like that.

And it's absolutely hysterical. Like that's like a weird ritualistic thing that happens. Yeah, that is so ritualistic. I mean, and they're all probably like majority like white men, probably dressed the same. Oh, I'm sure. Wearing blindfolds. I mean, are you kidding?

That sounds like a cult. Dude, I'm sure they're not wearing blindfolds, but they just don't know what the wines are. So we call it blind tasting. Oh, in my mind, they're wearing blindfolds. They're wearing blindfolds and like silk pajamas. I actually served a group a few times called the eight blind men and that was the whole thing that they did.

And they brought crazy wines like you're like wines that are 100 years old. It was super cool to be able to taste that stuff. But also, you know, you taste things that are, you know, super, super expensive now and you're like, would I pay that for it? Maybe not. If you have all the money and privilege in the world,

maybe you would because like the earth is your playground. You know, like that's the, that's one of the most culty aspects of the fine wine world as opposed to maybe like the natty millennial wine bro world is that like it is just like so gatekeeper-y. I also think something that's so fascinating about being into old wines and 100 year old wines is that what if it's bad?

You know, like what if you waited like 100 years for this like special moment and someone passed down this like expensive bottle of wine and then it's horrible. It almost makes me feel like that's why people like resell bottles because you're just increasing the value and then it could be like bad. You're scared it's going to be bad.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of times they don't know. A lot of times it's about the moment and the people that they're with. And if someone asks my opinion, I'll give it to them. Like there's a fungus that infects corks. It can sometimes reach the bottle. It happens about 5% of the time. And it just makes the wine kind of taste like

it's a moldy basement. I don't know. It just doesn't taste like great. It's like if you painted it gray. All you had to do was say fungus and I'm like, yep, don't want that taste that bad. Yeah, yeah. And it's really, it's normal and it's natural

and it doesn't hurt you. There's nothing like bad that will happen to you if you drink it. But most people just don't notice at all. And so a lot of times like people will drink these wines and if the wines haven't been 100% stored properly, this can like increase the effect. I'm not saying that it causes that necessarily, but like if it's already present,

it will like heat or something will like exacerbate it. And so it's just really sad sometimes because a lot of people don't know what the wine is supposed to taste like in the first place. You know, there was a guy there. They weren't there 100 years ago. Well, it just really, it just makes me think of how so much of what is considered valuable in cult environments

is just hype. It's like what the other people surrounding you in this cult think. And so if you're all sharing in the delusion that this is a good wine, even though it tastes like a fucking gray, moldy sock, that type of delusion can extend to more spiritual cults. It's just that in this environment,

it has to do with the taste of a really old liquid. Yeah, and also there's a huge power of influence when someone tells you something. So if I tell you to taste chocolate in the wine, you're going to taste it, right? And so when you have these consumers that are very vindictive in whatever opinion that they have, it's amazing how they can influence the group

where suddenly everyone's favorite wine is their favorite wine, even though other people had other opinions at the beginning. And it's really crazy because I practice blind tasting for exams and stuff where you don't know what the wines are, you're trying to figure it out. And if somebody says something, you'll taste it, and sometimes you'll make it up completely.

And so wine professionals have to train over and over to be able to identify things in wine so that you don't get lost, because your imagination can actually make you taste things. When I had COVID, I thought that I could taste stuff. It was like day five or six, the first time that I had COVID, and I smelled a bag of coffee, and I was imagining it, but it wasn't actually there.

Yeah, the mind is so fucking powerful. Let's say I got invited to a fancy dinner party at some rich person's house, and they made this whole ordeal about how they were gonna open an old bottle of wine, and they were like, this is such a special occasion. I'm opening this bottle of wine that my grandmother gave to me 100 years ago or something.

I don't know, don't do the math. Then everyone in the table was like, hmm, this is so good. I would be like, hmm, yummy. Dude, I would not be like, ew, disgusting. I'm not gonna disrespect them like that. Well, it reminds me too of some of the early psychology studies that were done on cult influence,

where they would get a group of students in a room and show them all a series of lines, one of which was shorter than the rest of them. I'm gonna have to look up what this actually was, and everyone in the group would have to identify which line was shorter, and everybody in the group would be in on the experiment, except for one person.

If everyone before you chose a line that was clearly not shorter, you were much, much more likely to choose an answer that you knew was wrong just by the power of group influence. It is so compelling. That's hilarious. I've seen that happen so many times, and it's so funny because people also don't want to share

their wine with people who aren't in and will appreciate it, and so sometimes people will have a wine for the people who are in the wine people, and then they have regular people wine, because they're like, oh, they're not gonna appreciate the nuances and stuff. This is a very common, and I feel bad for doxing people, but at weddings for wine people,

there's always a wine people's table. That's so funny, and you know this because you probably work with them. Yeah, I think people when they're alone individuals actually can know what they like, and they can identify whether something's good or not, but it's other people that make you question a lot of these wine critics and stuff

really huge, powerful Cabernets from Napa, which no shade, but when you're drinking wine a lot, when you're tasting wine a lot, it becomes like drinking those super heavy wines all the time is really taxing on your palate. Like you just don't want to drink stuff that's so high alcohol sometimes. You need a break,

and so you'll appreciate other things like champagne or white burgundy or whatever that's lighter. Higher acid, it just feels nicer, and a lot of those wines will get terrible scores. I love this idea that participating in the Cult of Fine Wine at one of these events or tastings or whatever, if you're lucky enough to be there, is really fun and so emotional,

but if you're getting down to what you actually think, you have to drink fine wine alone, but who wants to do that? Yeah, I get horny when I drink wine, so I can't drink it alone. And so I'm never going to know if I like wine or not. We talked a little bit about this, but what do you think the clicks and tears of power are,

so to speak? Well, the publications are always number one for consumers. Master Psalms who have passed these really high-level exams, like people worship them and will do anything they say, and once you pass the Master Psalm exam, you don't have to pass again. So these individuals are very smart, but the test has changed so much since whenever they started,

let's say 15 years ago when somebody passed, it's different than somebody that passed last year. It's a completely different exam. Wine makers, I feel, are number one, but they're farmers, and they don't want anything to do with people, and it's so funny because I know so many wine makers that hate going on the road and meeting Psalms

and talking and selling their wine. It's just not their thing, and they're not necessarily personable people. I know wine makers that are really awesome, but there are some people that they're just like, I want to make a wine. Why? It's so crazy that people worship them and want to come up, hug you and do all the stuff,

and it's just because they like... They're honest, humble, salt-of-the-earth people. Yeah, yeah. It's really interesting, the dichotomy, because some liais like myself, they can just pontificate wines and judge wines and stuff and decide what we're going to sell or whatever, but at the end of the day,

it's juice that somebody made that they're proud of, and it's crazy that these publications or whatever, they try to reduce wine to just something that can just be scored on a rubric. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. If someone's entire life or their family's history

or whatever, you're really drinking history in a glass when you're having a lot of these wines, and it's really cool to see how the laws and the political climate has affected the wine and the glass. It's really like drinking history, and I don't know, maybe I'm just a purist and maybe I'm part of the cult,

but I really think that it's amazing, and you can't judge it all on the same wine, but I also don't worship the same way that some people do. Some people just worship the same exact wines for their entire life, and that's all they drink. Whereas I'll drink everything, like I'm not part of one facet, because there's the cult Cabernet people,

and then there's the champagne-only high acid, and the F, that's shit. Champagne-only, that sounds dizzy. Yeah, I mean, and it's really expensive, and people just try to flex on each other all the time. I think anytime I go to a party or an event, I have to bring a wine, and it's like you can't just bring something like Kalybian,

you know, like you can't buy or bring something like that. Yeah, you can't, I can. Yeah, because I mean, it's not like every wine person is judging you by the wines that you drink, but they do. You know, if you, don't buy wine for a wine person. That also reminds me of like- Totally.

Unless I reach like a certain level of wealth, like I will always just buy like a normal bottle of wine at like a grocery store or something, because one time I bought this like $25 wine, and I took it to a Shabbat, and then everyone like chugged it, like it was no big deal, and I was like, dude, this is the nicest bottle of wine I've ever bought,

and none of you are appreciating it. This is actually a fascinating conversation, because it's something that is really pertinent to this show, like where is the line between a really, really passionate, special interest and a cult? And I think you articulated it pretty well. I mean, obviously there is no line, this is all subjective, what even is a cult,

but maybe like it starts to become a little too cultish for comfort when people just on principle, even though this is also subjective and there's no right and wrong, when people on principle will not engage with that, because that is inferior, where you're just like,

I have an appreciation for this art form in general, I will not write something off just because I have this us versus that mentality. Yeah. Yeah, and a lot of things that are really popular with the consumers are like really, like they have a lot of additives in them, same with tequila,

like some of your most popular tequila brands in the entire industry, have like vanilla flavoring and like extra sugar added and stuff like that, so that it tastes better, right? And that's the same for wine, but I don't really hate on them that much. I mean, I still sell some at the restaurant.

I'm here to make money and I'm not here to like put my principles on other people because there's some people where it's like, that's the only wine that they want to drink, no matter what, like I could have 20,000 selections and that's all they want to drink and they'll be unhappy if I don't have it,

so I have it, you know? Yeah, and that's the beauty of being pro-choice, like that's what it's all about. That's what it sounds like you're saying is you're like, you have the option to choose, but I am providing a variety because like everybody's different. Okay, so we touched on this a little tiny bit.

The fine wine world seems absolutely full of super culty rituals. What ritual of the fine wine world do you personally think is the cultiest and could you explain it for us? If you're gonna drink something or eat it later, like the fact that wine people put wine into a vessel and leave it out in like the open air

for many hours before they drink it is kind of weird to me. Like I get, okay, like when you pour wine into a vessel like a decanter, it's supposed to give it air, right? And I think some people view the oxygenation of the wine. It's kind of like when an apple browns on the counter, but if you want an apple to brown,

like after you slice it, you don't like throw it around the room, right? So people are like shaking this stuff. I've had guests call me and be like, Christy, can you please open my wine at 2 p.m. And our dinner is at like nine or something. And you're like, sure, but it's like, I don't know. I just think it's really weird

that they leave their wine out for like five to seven hours. Like that's a little bit long. Decanting, you know, giving wine some air, sometimes like it changes, right? Most wine doesn't necessarily benefit from decanting. It actually like messes up some old wines if you do it too early, it'll like, all the fruit will be gone in like an hour.

You're like, oh my gosh, that tastes like not as good as it is. Yeah, it's super weird. So you got to be like careful about it. But again, some people just believe that you should decant everything for like five hours before. You know, there's fruit flies and stuff that it gives. Articles in the air, I don't know. Like I just didn't want like my sugary sticky liquid like out.

Yeah. Not in Los Angeles. Air is full of fucking car exhaust. Yeah. Have you ever done the thing where you like put it in a blender? Somebody sent me one. They was a company and they sent me one. And so I did many experiments on it

and I did not think that it improved the wine. Like again, if you cut an apple and you want it to brown, like if you want the wine to have some oxygen or whatever, you don't like throw it, right? You don't put the apple in a blender if you want it to brown, right? You just wait. Yeah.

Dude, it's such solutionism that exists in like so many culty spaces like the tech industry or whatever. You like create a solution for a problem that doesn't exist and the solution doesn't exist. It's skincare. It's all these industries that we critique. It's like so fucking silly. How do you protect your self-esteem like in this fine wine world?

It sounds like really demoralizing sometimes. Yeah. So when I was 21 and, you know, I was just coming up and learning, I was so intimidated by people and I was so uncomfortable because everyone knew more than me and it was like, people who don't know a lot are the first ones to make you feel like shit. Like if you mispronounce something,

they're the first ones that are like, oh, it's more shea. Like, oh, like, oh my God, I'm so sorry when I mispronounce it. That's how you learn. You know, you have to be around like smart people in whatever business that you're doing and you want somebody that gives you honest feedback and is like real with you, but doesn't do it maliciously to hurt you.

And like a lot of people are really insecure about their wine knowledge, so they like lash out and it can get really nasty sometimes. And that's why I've always tried to be like really chill and it's not what I'm about. This is such a good tip in general, wherever people are searching, whether they're searching for like a new age guru

or someone to learn about wine from, if that expert so-called is making you feel stupid for no reason, that's such a cult leader red flag, right? Yeah. Yeah, because they are making it seem like they're the only one who knows or who is all-knowing. Have you ever felt like people who are snobby and who are kind of know-it-alls succeed more in the industry?

Because I've found with like industries where there can be a lot of wealth and pretension, people associate like snobbiness or rudeness with elitism almost, you know what I mean? So how do you like fight the urge, if you have it, to conform to that? You know, I think that snobby like rude people generally in the wine industry are not succeeding anymore,

but they did. Like this was a very new shift for the wine industry. I always say like the wine industry is five-ish years behind like the rest of the world, if that makes sense. And like, you know, now there's a lot more leadership in terms of like women and people that come from different walks of life where it was before, it was like there was a very stereotypical

like this is what a sommelier is. And so there's lots of different types of personalities. Like even three or four years ago, people were so uncomfortable with me like posting pictures of myself, like I'm wearing a dress that like covers everything, have a wine glass in my hand, and people were like, what the fuck is she doing? And it was, I was a very controversial and like,

fast forward now, like I co-founded a charity that's given out like $1.3 million to wine professionals. But like I was a controversial person because I was like doing things on the internet and I, you know, made goofy videos and I like didn't take myself so seriously. It was, I was like trash in Facebook groups. Like people would like post my photos and stories

in Facebook groups and like just trash me like for hundreds of comments. It was crazy. Oh my gosh. But now it's like I'm a really celebrated person because I'm different and people actually are like, oh yeah, you know, she speaks her mind and says things and she cusses sometimes. Oh my God, like they were so conservative

not even five years ago. It's so crazy to see where the industry is now. And so I think people are realizing like, you know, I run one of the biggest wine programs in the country. Like I do a lot of stuff in the wine community and like I put on classes and all this stuff. Like I am not that mean stereotypical person

and when there's more people that are doing things in their space and like in their own authentic way, I think like more people are seeing that that's okay and that's allowed. And it was honestly really toxic. Yeah, it seems like, I mean, it's an area of culture that has historically been run by white men.

So yeah, red flag. But a green flag is that it is allowing change and that people like you are able to slowly change the culture so hopefully it can get to a place where like everyone feels comfortable exploring wine like I do every night for $2 and 50 cents. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast. If our listeners want to find you or follow you,

where can they do that? On Instagram, it's KristiNorman, C-R-I-S-T-I-E-N-O-R-M-A-N underscore S-O-M-M, S-O-M. That's how you guys do it in the podcast. Yeah, I always listen. And on Facebook, KristiNorman. Cool. Well, thanks again for coming on the podcast.

All right, Amanda, out of the three cult categories, live your life. Watch your back and get the fuck out. What do you think the cult of fine wine falls under? I mean, I think it's like a gentle watch your back. Yeah, we were just saying how like, it feels like a watch your back or get the fuck out just because it's so annoying.

And it's like, shut the fuck up. But it's, I think, a live your life gentle watch your back for women or groups that haven't predominantly been a part of it because there is space for abuse of power. It's just not like a major threat to society. Like the people who are being most exploited outside of like the sexual harassment stuff,

which is fucked up, the people who are being sort of like financially exploited or like psychologically made to feel like they're less than or whatever are mostly these like rich white billionaire men. And I just feel like they are fine. Yeah, we don't care about them. And just going on walks.

I mean, look, it's like one of the biggest most flagrant cult red flags that indicates something is closer to a get the fuck out is exit costs in my opinion. Yeah. And other than like, you know. Exit costs are sobriety. Yeah, high key.

I mean, I think that of general alcohol consumption in everyday mainstream societies is culture than the fine wine world. We're all acting like it's like not a drug. Yeah, 1000% and we're, you know, yeah. I think the exit costs are not very high other than the women who've sort of like dedicated their lives to this group that then can turn around

and harass them. If you're like a rich man, like the world is your oyster. Yeah, go sailing in the middle of the ocean. Far, far away. Oysters and wine sounds delicious. Yeah, I would say it is a gentle watch your back. I would say that wine documentaries are lit. And that is our show.

Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back with a new cult next week. But in the meantime, stay culty. But not too culty. Sounds like a cult was created, hosted and produced by Issa Medina and Amanda Montell. Our theme music is by Casey Colt. This episode was edited and mixed by Jordan

and more of the pod cabin. To join our cult, follow us on Instagram at sounds like a cult pod. I'm on Instagram at Amanda underscore Montell and feel free to check out my books. Cultish, the language of fanaticism and word slut, a feminist guide to taking back the English language.

And I'm on Instagram at Issa Medina, ISAA, M-U-D-I-N-A-A, where you can find tickets to my live stand up comedy shows or tell me where to perform. We also have a Patreon and we would appreciate your support there at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult. And if you'd like our show,

feel free to give us a rating on Spotify or Apple podcasts. And if you don't like our show, rate other podcasts the way you rate us. I came here to pick up my recorder the other day and I was like talking to Casey and I was like, I'm really hungry. And he was like, you want a coffee?

And I was like, I'm not Amanda. I don't want to eat coffee for lunch. Oh, God, all right. Your career is one of the most important decisions that you'll ever make. Choose a program that leads to a meaningful career in social, community, or justice services. You can make a difference.

We are here to help you succeed. Apply now at humver.ca slash make a difference.