Ep. 817 Julianne Farricker Interviews Amanda Courtney | Clubhouse Ambassador's Corner

This episode is brought to you by Vinaiteli International Academy, the toughest Italian wine program. 1,000 candidates have produced 262 Italian wine ambassadors to date. Next course is in Hong Kong, Russia, New York, and Verona. Think you make the cut? Apply now at vinitoliinternational.com. Welcome to this special Italian wine podcast broadcast. This episode is a recording of Clubhouse, the popular drop in audio chat. This Clubhouse session was taken from the Wine Business Club and Italian Wine Club. Listen in as wine lovers and experts alike engage in some great conversation on a range of topics in wine. If you enjoy listening, please consider donating through italianwinepodcast.com. Any amount helps cover equipment, production, and publication costs. And remember to subscribe and rate our show wherever you tune in. Okay. Here we go. I am back. My name is Stevie Kim. Hello, everybody. I'm back from Paris Last night, I actually decided to take a train for the first time. It's very, for the first time, I've taken a train from Milan to Paris. It takes about seven hours, and it is absolutely fantastic. I highly recommend it if anyone would like to try. Ciao, Julie. Ciao. Ciao. Hello. How are you? Ciao, Amanda. Welcome. I'm doing well. How are you? Great. Ciao. Ciao. So, you know, welcome, everybody. This is the Italian wine club at Clubhouse, and it is a series that's called Ambassador's Corner. Today, it's it's more like a fireside chat, as you know, with the favorite producers chosen by the Italian wine ambassadors. We have here on stage, Eulaika, a clubhouse manager. Of course, Enjoy, our Italian wine podcast producer because, these rooms do get replayed on the Italian wine podcast. So, Laika, is this is our thirtieth episode for the ambassador's corner. Is that correct? Yes. That's correct. And, who's on next? Who's on next week? Alright. So we're we're going to have next week, which is actually your birthday, we'll have Ashley Howell, who's going to interview. Long, long. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you for the reminder. And so Ashley is going to interview Pierluca Proietti, from Avianova. So, yeah, that's for next week. Okay. Fantastic. Enjoy. Ciao, Joy. Are you on? She's just right next. Yes. Hi, Joy. Hi. You weren't expecting that. Right? I really wasn't. So listen, Joy, can you tell for those who are unfamiliar when the, when this episode will be played on the podcast? How does it work in general? Give give them the lowdown. Oh, the lowdown. Essentially, I try and get the clubhouse that is, most recent up the following week. We do have a couple before. So this will be played somewhere in, I think, March, probably the March 10. But please don't hold me on that. Okay. Alright. We won't. Not not far ahead in the future. Just a couple weeks. So yeah. So tell tell us a little bit about the, the the performance of these ambassadors, Kona, because it's been it's I'm pretty shocked. Not that the ambassadors aren't good and the producers aren't excellent in terms of the conversation, but I thought and an hour episode, I thought it would be a little bit, challenging for our audience. And instead, surprise, they're the I I would almost dare to say that they're the most well performed episodes. And Yeah. I know. Your opinion. No. No. It's true. This has been going on for around nine months. And at the beginning, everybody thought you were nuts. Yeah. I know. Everybody does all the time. All the time. A great idea because, yeah, repurposing the clubhouses, just puts it out to everybody. And we've had some incredible actually, the most listens goes to clubhouse. It's, you know, 4,000, 5,000 listens after a few weeks. Like, it's Yeah. And it has a long, shelf life. Right? Because it goes on for it can it can the listens continue. It's not just, immediate. So it's it's it's a bit like social media, but a little bit long, I think, outstanding, I would say. Clubhouse has also contributed to overall listens because we're almost at 2,000,000 listens. Like, we're still god. When is that going to happen? Well, I mean, obviously, you and I have, like, bets on that my my my my my number scale doesn't really work, but I am going to bet that 2,000,000 in the next This is very exciting. I know you guys were kicking out on the stats because if you think that on in twin 2017, we only had 23,000 listens the entire year. So getting up to 2,000,000 in a very short time, it's it's very, very, it gives us some satisfaction because as you know, I keep on saying this is a labor of love. Okay. Onto the show now. So I see some of the ambassadors. Big shout out to our ambassadors at Lodge. So let me introduce you the the mod squad today is Julie, who is actually the, Aneo. She has been coordinated as the Taiwan ambassador, New York edition. I met Julie, Julianne is her full name, Julianne Far Farriker. Is that correct? Is that the correct pronunciation? Farriker, but Farriker. Sorry. Okay. Oh, yeah. You're so easygoing. And I met, Julianne because I did kind of an Insta a contest right, on on Instagram to give up some books away. And she she was the first one to I can't remember. To guess the grape? Yes. Yes. It was a name grape. Yes. So and then we sent you the book. And I met Julianne actually on Instagram. Go figure. And then she has since, done the course in July in New York edition last year, and she's now our very own Italian wine ambassador. She's also the owner of everything Italian. In fact, her owner of the wine shop it's is called the Italian cellar. Is that correct? Yes. The Italian cellar. Does that mean you only sell Italian wines? Yes. We are 100% exclusively Italian. And how many how many SKUs do you have, Marla? So it really depends because, of course, we've been, you know, hitting issues with supply chain right now. But our goal is to represent all 20 regions. So at different times, we have, and it's just very interesting to keep up with our inventory. But we have represented all 20 regions at some point. So, you know, you're a very good student because also you're a very good teacher. Right? Is that what are you teaching? So I am also in my eighteenth year as an English and history teacher for high school students. Oh, watch out. Okay. So that's my day job. So I hope to see you again very soon. Are you coming to, Vinitali? Yes. I will be there. Excellent. So I'll see you very, very soon. We're going back, by the way, to we are we have another edition of the Italy International Academy in New York coming up in March in in couple of weeks' time, actually. So if anybody wants to sign up or I see some of the ambassadors there, if you want to freshen up your your Italian wine, studies or want to become an expert, please get in touch with us with Jacopo and Cynthia. I see Cynthia in in the audience. You can reach out to them for additional information. So I always ask why you choose your you you have chosen your favorite producer. This time, it's Amanda Courtney. Why did you choose her to be your favorite producers to be interviewed today? So it's interesting because I had read about Amanda a few years ago in Forbes magazine because she also has a wine, like, tourism company. Mhmm. And my business partners and I, we thought that the next time we traveled to Italy, which would have been May 2020, at that time, we thought that we would meet up with her and get to know more about, you know, Piemonte. And, of course, we know what happened in 2020, unfortunately. So we wanted to just make sure that we, you know, met up with her again in the future. So then when we did finally meet up with her in October, so about four months ago, we traveled around, Piemonte, we went to, some Barolo producers, some Barbaresco producers. We were talking more about the native grapes. And for me, it was just interesting to see an American in the wine business there thriving. And, you know, Amanda had such a passion about her region. And of course, as someone, my roots ar