Ep. 731 Melanie Young | Voices

Welcome to the Italian wine podcast. I'm Cynthia Chaaplin, and this is voices. Every Wednesday, I will be sharing conversations with international wine industry professionals discussing issues in diversity, equity, and inclusion through their personal experiences, working in the field of wine. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and rate our show wherever you get your pods. Okay. Hello, everybody. I have Melody Young with me today. She has a long and illustrious career in wine, food, hospitality, and marketing. She's originally from Tennessee, and she's a prolific wine writer, which I appreciate. She owned her own PR events agency for twenty years and served as the director of the James Beard Foundation Awards, which she helped to create. Melanie and her husband David host the popular weekly radio show called the Connected Table in the US, And she's also a certified holistic health coach and an eleven year breast cancer survivor with an award winning book called Getting Things Off my chest. Excellent title. So hi, Melanie. Thank you for joining us today. Hi, Cynthia. Good to hear you. I'm always happy to talk to somebody who's sort of from the middle of the states as I am from Ohio myself. You're originally from Tennessee, as I said. And I'm just wondering, sort of back in the day, nobody in Ohio or Tennessee knew much of anything about wine. So how did you get interested It's a great story. My dad was a wine educator for thirty five years. Mel Young, was a CPA by profession, but he, due to a passion for travel fell in love with wine. And because there was really no wine back in the seventies when he started collecting, he self educated and then decided to offer a wine course at the University of Tennessee at Chad Nuga, and he became known as Chad Nuga's wine professor. That's incredible. That is how I started. That's fantastic. Yeah. He used to teach me about wine. Well, there's there's nothing wrong with learning about wine from your father as it I'm an educator myself, so all of my children have learned about wine at my knee. And I think that's the best way to do it. So you you were interested as a fairly young person then. Oh, I have a funny story. I was so interested. It was my special bond with my father. And even though he's passed, it still is when I drink a fine bottle of wine because he would take me to the cellar and taste with me, even though I was underage So when I was fifteen, I decided for a public speaking class that I wanted to teach my classmates how to properly open a bottle wide, and I had my test event, and my corkscrew, my bottle. And it was a great presentation, but because I was underage, they wouldn't let me open the bottle of wine. I considered myself a wine sophisticated at an early age. That's excellent. I love that. So taking that love of wine and the joy that you found, you know, as a young person, How did you get from that point of a fifteen year old delinquent illegal wine drinker to a career in wine and and your own, public relations agency? I originally wanted to be a a journalist or a magazine editor, and Helen Gerley Brown, who was the owner and founder of cosmopolitan, was my my dream job. But it was hard getting a job. Everybody wanted to be a journalist. In those days, it was after Watergate, and everybody wanted to be a journalist, So I fell into public relations because it involves a lot of writing. And, I have a natural ability thanks to both my parents who organized fundraisers and are very social of just a natural innate ability to connect people and make people feel at ease. So I fell into public relations, and then because I was a woman, I fell into the hospitality end of the business because that's in Atlanta where my first job was. That's where the women tended to have assignments versus science and business and other things. And because I loved eating and drinking and ate and drank with my parents at great restaurants, when we traveled a lot, it was a natural fit. So that was the progression. And I was very fortunate to work with some top hoteliers, which is my original start was in restaurants and hotels. And that's how I evolved into the wine aspect of it. So when did your your own PR agency start? That's a brave and bold move. When did that happen? Well, I was working in Atlanta, and my company was bought a agency was bought by a big agency in New York. So I decided to join New York and see what New York was all about. I had that big New York dream to make it there. And I did really I think all of us Midwest girls had that. Yeah. And and I was doing great, but then something happened. It was really important. My grandmother who I adored dropped out of a massive heart attack. While I was working for a big company. And I went down to the funeral and decided to spend a few extra days. And when I got back, I got a written reprimand that I didn't ask permission to take time off to meet my family. And that's when I decided I needed to work for myself. And then something fell into my lap, I, a good friend of mine in the food end of things, recommended me to Chris Kimball, the publisher and founder of Cook's magazine. They were looking for someone to help them with a program called the Who's who of cooking in America. Which later evolved in the James Beard Awards. So I was brought on as a consultant to work on that, which was my first client to give me the leap to start my own company. And I my first job was to write the biographies of all the who's who members. So I love to write. I love food. I got to know everybody. And then that kind of evolved into helping produce the the event. And then when Cook's magazine folded, I was left with all the files for the Whoseoo and helped negotiate for the James Beard Foundation to take over the program, which started the seeds of what became the James Beard Awards. That's an amazing story. A fantastic first client, lots of lots of good fortune there. So you must have been doing something right. Yeah. I I I was scared to death. I was gonna fail, fear of failure made me work harder. I mean, I I was determined to just work as hard as I can to make everything a success, and I happen to like what I was doing. Everybody's great in the business. So I was having fun doing it. That's it's always beneficial when you enjoy what you're doing, especially if you're an entrepreneur and doing it all on your own time and and a lot of the time on your own dime as well. So that's an amazing success story. You did go on to, you know, produce bon appetit magazines, wine and spirits, focus tour in virtually every major city in the US. And as you said, creating the James Beard Awards. Where did you get the idea for that? How did it become so prestigious? Well, it, it was originally the who's who of cooking in America. And then the, Peter comp, the founder of the James Beard Foundation called me, and he said, we had to resuscitate the who's who had gone a year without happening because the magazine cooks magazine to fold it. So I helped negotiate the deal that arrange for the Beer Foundation to legally acquire the rights to the Who's who. And then coincidentally, a lot of this is serendipity. The the book award started because the book committee, decided to leave the organization that housed the book awards. They had a big rift widely publicized rift, and they approached the Beard Foundation and said would you take on the Beard Awards? And then coincidentally, Seagram, Joseph Seagram and Sons, which was the sponsor of the Book Awards said we're gonna reallocate our money now. Because of all this mess. And they said, let's start some restaurant awards with the Beer Foundation. So between Seagram reallocating its funds, the James Beard Foundation, deciding to take over the Who's who. The former IACP book awards coming to the Beard Foundation to say take over our awards it all kinda came together. And Peter Come said, let's go create a program. And there were four or five people on this initial committee. And my job was to figure out how to make all this come into one awards program, get the sponsors, figure out how to produce the events, and turn it into a program. The first year was hard, but it took off like wildfire and grew over the years and over the years and over the years and over the years. And then when Time Time Magazine called it the Oscars of the food industry, in a big article. That was it? Well, it was it's been obviously a fantastic success. I mean, it's the goal of every chef to be nominated. So you you took something that was just a seed of a rather dead idea and turned it into something that's thriving. That's that's incredible. During during all of that, you also became a member of Leidan Descoffier and wine media guild and women of the Vine spirits who I actually judge for in London. How did that transition take place to you becoming member of of these sort of off spring grooves, and and what do you do for them now? Well, it was Cynthia, actually, it was a slow evolution. So as the Beer Foundation grew, my company, I had an agency, and Young Communications also grew. Bon Epatit was a sponsor of the Beard Awards. They liked our programs. They asked us to produce all their events. Wines from Spain took note and asked us to produce all their events. That was our first big foray deep diving into the wine business as a single client and not a culinary event. We became the agency of record for wines from Spain. And that led to Ben Vanuto Brunllo and on and on and on. And so the wine followed the food. They're always perfect companions. I was invited to be a member of Odanda Skaffier in the mid nineties. He's an invitational organization, and I also served as president. I only more recently joined women of the vine because it's a newer program, and Wine Media Guild, when I, started writing more about wine. At the time, I was running at a company with twenty something employees. So my writing was really more geared for our clients, and I was running a big, bigger company. So the writing evolved later when I started publishing more under my own byline. As for what I do, I'm on the membership committee for Wine Media Guild, and we are looking for new members. I'm less active than women of the vine right now just because there's a lot of corporate members And I'm a small company, really. So, a lot of the programs I talked to them about that. I'd like to do more to help smaller businesses. That's where I'm hoping to go in twenty twenty two. And for Ladom, I've organized a lot of program to serve as president for two years and which is your term. And then in twenty twenty one, I organized a big webinar on dressing sexual harassment in the industry. Wow. That's fantastic. It's such a timely and really important topic. How how did that go? Did you have a big audience? And how many speakers did you have? Oh, it was it was fabulous. It was free because I did not want anybody to have to pay to hear this. And it was in a That's that is a very good way of being inclusive. Exactly. And it was in January. And I had six really hard core panelists representing different areas of legal HR, advocacy, self defense programs, communications and people who had been harassed. It was a very good program. I think it's still I think they still have the program on YouTube, but it was, called breaking the silence because so, women, women are fearful of speaking out, and now they are less fearful. Thank goodness. I I think things like this really support an effort to give women back their voices to give them the strength and the courage it takes a lot to be brave and to to address that. So, you know, conferences like that are gonna make all the difference. Are you carrying on with that conference? Will it be an annual thing? It was a webinar, not a conference. So probably not because Ladam wants to diversify their programming as well. But I personally I I serve as an advocate for women. I have all my life. It was not easy starting my business. I had a lot of discrimination against me starting with trying to get a bank loan, trying to build a business. So I, you know, had to fight my way through that to grow. And, I have a strong soft spot for helping women who are venturing out on their own and helping them have the confidence and the belief in their self worth not to be undervalued or let anyone undervalue them. So that's an amazing role model to to put out in the world, especially these days when people should be jumping up and down and shouting about those sorts of things. So I think that's that's an excellent thing to be doing particularly in in the wine industry, which can be very male dominated as we all know. Oh, it's tough. It's tough. And and, you know, very male dominated, particularly in specific areas, And you just have to really stand for what you believe in and and and know your worth and do your homework. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, going on from that, you you stepped away from your PR agency and and now you're hosting, the connected table with your husband, David. What what was the transition? I know you said you wanted to move to being more supportive of smaller businesses. How did this how did you move away from the agency and get into connect to table? It's it it was like a tsunami of things that happened. I had worked myself to the bone. I was I I had put my business first. I had had a lot of success, and then we had a lot of bad years as well. You know, in the in the PR business, you you win, you win client to lose clients. There's not a lot of long term loyalty. You're constantly chasing receivables. I found, you know, I had a client that I won't say who, but it was a big experience entity that hung me for four hundred thousand dollars, which was, I think, when I said I'm done, I had to chase that money down for two years. And, and during that time, I became ill. And eventually, I, was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was she on a wine business trip to Italy in Nobley de Montepulciano when I found the lump in my breast. And that was two thousand nine. And so I was diagnosed with breast cancer in August two thousand nine. I had just rebuilt my company after suffering a seventy five percent drop in income in two thousand seven. The same year I got married. I had a and then we had the recession. So I had, like, many weathered a huge tsunami of loss of business. I rebuilt worked myself to the bone, and then I was diagnosed with breast cancer. And, went through treatment, didn't tell anybody for fear that I would lose on my business again. Here's that fear word. And when I got out on the other side, and there is a big other side with all of this when you go through some intramatic, I said I'm done. I don't wanna do this anymore. It is absolutely harrowing, pale. I think that's gonna resonate with a lot of our listeners because I I know many women who've been in similar circumstances where they've worked hardy, they're raising a family or in a career, and then have have had a traumatic illness and kind of reassessed. So so your reassessment was to to head towards connected table. Is that how that happened? Well, that evolved also. So my reassessment was this. I started writing a blog because I had really bad chemo brain, and I couldn't tell remember, I kept my diagnosis secret for two years. And so I wrote as therapy. And as I wrote, I developed the following. And I started to write a book. I wanted to write a book to help women who were newly diagnosed with breast cancer with the information that I couldn't find, which was like a cliff note or the lonely planet guide to the journey you don't take. I'm a passionate traveler. I couldn't find what I wanted to make my life manageable and stay in control while going through, you know, with practical information. Everything was either very soulful or religious or technical. So I wrote this book, getting things off my chest to survivor's guide to staying fearless and fabulous in the face of breast cancer, intended to help women say, I I am going to do the best I can to take the best care of myself, be informed about what I need to do, but also I wanna be in control the best I can and have what I can be a normal life with within reason. And the book, I the book contract came just as I was finishing a year long contract with, Bill Deutsche, helping them with a big corporate thing. And I and they said we we contracts over, and we've hired someone in house. I said, well, that's fine. I got a book contract. So I set out originally to write that book and start over. And in process was on media tour conducting interviews and a lot of radio interviews, and everybody said you're a natural. And then the aha came when I decided that I wanted to become a storyteller and have my own media. I was a media expert in PR, but I wanted to control my own message and have my own voice. So that's how the connected table started, and also my other show fearless fabulous hue, which is for women and supports women entrepreneurs in health. The connected table I co host with my husband, David Ramsom, who also was finding his voice because he was part of the company I closed. And we, one day, guest hosted on somebody else's radio show, and it kind of clicked. We, we found chemistry on air as well as in person. That is a tremendous recovery story, taking, you know, not not just physical recovery, but also recovering from business trauma and and all the emotional and philosophical, as you described it, a tsunami. I love that word of of having had cancer. That's I I love the book title and and I do I love the connected table as well. What are your goals with the with the program? Well, first of all, I have to thank a fellow, a wine educator writer, Susanna Gold, for even having me come up with the idea of the connected table, because she was freelancing for me, and she looked at all my member rolodexes. And she said, you are so connected in this industry. What are you gonna do now? That you're closing Amyoung communications. And the light bulb went, the connected table. That's it. I didn't know what I was gonna do. I just created the name. The show is, in its eighth year, it is live to podcast. So it's a live radio show, Wednesday is at two pm eastern in the States, and this podcast around the world, IHeart's probably the biggest. We are storytellers. We profile leaders, legends, and legacies in wine foods, spirits, and hospitality. So people who have made a long term impact in the industry, either their family, you know, you know, Italians, multi generational theaters, and we call legends, you know, the Jacques Pepeds and and a, you know, in the in the chef world. And we we tell their story. It's a conversation kind of based on even though he's disgraced now with Charlie Rose's show, you know, some of those are inside the actor's studio. And that's what the show is about. It's not about the latest release. It's not about the newest this. It's about the person and the person's story and what they're about. And then we have a separate, more content focused, program called the Connect to Table SIPs were shorter, more trend focused. So those those are customized so that we have some income because the connected table we created is the labor of love right now. Which is which is very merited. I'm a big fan. It's a it's a great it's a great program. So, I'm I'm very inspired by everything that's happened on connected tables. So hopefully, some of your mentorship will flow over into voices. And I'm so glad you gave a shout out to Susanna Gold. She's also an Italian wine ambassador with Venus International Academy. So she's a colleague of mine, and and it's great that she helped you arrive at that point where you could come up with this light bulb moment. I love that. Well, she's great. And and I've, you know, I'm I we've helped each other with light bulb moments and, you know, light bulbs. The the key is, keep the lights on. That's a wonderful saying. That's that is absolutely a great philosophy. Yeah. You don't want to have to make the light bulb come on. It should be on all the time. I I like that. Well, you've you've gone on after all of this to become a certified holistic health coach. Tell me what that means. How how is that playing into your very busy life? Well, it's probably secondary right now, but it was very primary when I decided to do it. Because here I was, I'd written a book. Here I am a cancer survivor writing an expert book on surviving cancer, and that's, you know, managing your cancer treatment. So I felt that to walk the walk and talk the talk, I needed to go back and get proper educational training on nutrition and holistic health because I was right I was being asked to write a lot of articles and speak. And so I enrolled in the Institute of Integrated Nutrition, which has now a great online program to teach you very much all aspects of holistic health, which is really what I stand for, not one size fits all, dieting or this. It's it's how you live because I'm a big believer. It's not all about what you eat and drink. It's how you address what's eating at you, stress management. So I did the program. I've done some coaching. A lot of people have coach that become coaches. And then I realized the kind of coaching I really love to do even more than health is helping people figure out how to move on and reinvent their lives or how to take their business to the next level if it's a startup. So I've been doing more of that type of coaching, which I really love to do because it's helped it helps people as I say figure things out. That's incredible. That's amazing. Again, I this I see this long thread of mentorship through everything you've discussed. You you obviously have a have that ingrained in your personality, and it sounds like you're spreading the joy everywhere, not only through wine and food, but also through this much more humanitarian effort to to support people. It's it's really inspiring, and I'm I'm glad to hear the story. I know that our listeners will enjoy it too. So I I'm gonna ask you for some words of wisdom because obviously you've got them, and you have probably earned them through many scars. What kind of words of wisdom would you give to women who want to enter the wine and food sector, either as writers or as sommeliers or be it as it may. It's not an easy sector to get into as we both know. You know, it's not. And it is very male dominated, and everybody wants you to have prior experience. And I actually went on a I I've actually done interviews where people said you have no experience, and I've had to say, but I do have experience. Let me explain how. You need to really know your value and really put together a package that is appealing. So if you don't have any wine experience, but maybe you have sales experience, right, go in that door. If you don't have, you know, it starts with, do you have any experience? And if you have none, get in the back door by learning and doing identity public relations. Right? So Start with your toolkit. What are your best talents, your tool? And how can you use them and merchandise them to get into the wine business? Are you a good writer? Are you a good salesperson? Are you good at technology and social media? Figure out the what you can offer people in the industry and go in that way because a lot of people in the business, particularly the companies will hire people who have the related skill sets, but not necessarily the knowledge of wine. And then you get in that way. If you have a knowledge of wine, you know, one of the best, one of the best careers to be in right now that pays well, because writing does not, is public relations. There are a lot of people who are hiring in that end of the business right now, or with wineries, tasting room management and club management, where they're looking for people who know how to connect with people. There are so many jobs in that area right now. It's amazing. I'm so glad I asked for your words of wisdom. I knew you would have some, and those are really valuable strategic ones, not not sort of airy fairy, but actually quite, you know, quite precise. Yeah. It may not be, you know, that first job may may not be the exact one you want, but you it's all about creating stepping stones. And avoiding roadblocks. Exactly. Exactly. You just said something that we all know. Writing doesn't really pay these days. What advice would you give aspiring wine writers? Have a day job. Not really. If we're wine rating will not pay. I've tried it. It doesn't pay. I love doing it. I do it. It's but we gotta find another these days, we all have to find other avenues for income stream. And it's perfectly okay. It's perfectly okay. And it may be unrelated. I know many wine writers who have other jobs, totally unrelated to wine, but it they're just different lives. I mean, for me, one of the great things is a again, one of the reasons I also pursued health coach certification and coaching is that gives me another area to write and talk about so that if one isn't doing as much as I'd like financially, I can go in another. I also love and started a media, a coaching and communication training program so that I can create and help people have the tools to be better communicators and coach them when they do need to do interviews. And that I haven't marketed enough, but that is a service I started this past year because I could do it virtually because we all had to find more to do virtually. And so I, you know, again, I dug deep into my toolkit and thought, where can I go earn some more and better money while I'm still writing, which I love to do, but I also, you know, wanna make sure the bills pay? So you've gotta think about, again, go back to that toolkit and figure out how you can monetize every aspect of it in in different ways. And don't be afraid to take jobs that are unrelated. It's perfectly okay. Yeah. Well, I'm gonna have to get the details of your coaching contacts so we can put those in the show notes because I suspect, as I said, a lot of this conversation is gonna resonate with a lot of our listeners who've either been impacted by COVID negatively financially or lost their job, or you know, saw COVID as a moment to really think their lives and their priorities and are looking to do something new. So I will I will make sure that that goes into the show notes so people can find you. Well, you said you like to travel a lot, and I really hope that you can make it here to Italy in the new year. And I know you've obviously had the chance to drink a lot of fabulous wines all over the world. So I have to ask for Italian wine podcast. What's your favorite Italian wine? You know, I love them all, but I will say close to my heart will always be Bernela de Montalcino for many reasons. It was a client for many years. And we brought Benvenuto Bernelo to the United States. Thank you, Tony Mae, who was my partner in it initially. I love that man. He opened a lot of doors for me in Italy, the rest director of Tony May, and I started working with the consortium in nineteen ninety nine, or two thousand, and and it was crazy because in two thousand and one, we had the terrorist attacks, and we had to convince the consortium to come. And because of that, I became very immersed in Montalcino went many times. We We had a lot of wine left over. So my husband and I had a lot of brunellos for the years. So I have a soft spot. How tragic. So we yes. We and we believe in drinking anytime. And I got to know a lot of the producers. I mean, since then, I've gotten to know a lot of other wonderful producers from other regions of Italy, but I I think that, you know, it it was always that first kiss. I'd say Brinella de Montelcino was my first Italian kiss. Oh, I don't think we're gonna be able to top that. Brinella de Montelcino was your first kiss. I love it. I think we're gonna have to just leave it at that Melanie. I I really appreciate you coming on today and sharing so openly so many massive milestones in your life positive and negative. It's really beneficial to to our listeners to hear how you got from being a fifteen year old opening a wine bottle in your classroom in Tennessee to where you are now. I've really enjoyed the conversation. So thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you, Cynthia. I really enjoyed it as well. You're doing a great job. Thank you for listening, and remember to tune in next Wednesday when I'll be chatting with another fascinating guest. Italian wine podcast is among the leading wine podcasts in the world, and the only one with a daily show. Tune in every day and discover all our different shows. 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