The turn.
After ten years of hosting tastings at Terralsole, Athena noticed something.
People were drinking well. They were not tasting well. They had been taught, by magazines, by sommeliers, by wine culture, to describe what they were drinking in language they didn't own. They would swirl a glass, sniff it, and then look at her. Waiting to be told what they were supposed to be noticing.
The moment that changed everything was small. A guest at a dinner put down her glass and said: “I don't actually know what I like. I just know what I'm supposed to like.”
Athena thought about that sentence for a year.
Wine Wellness was the answer. Not a wine course. Not a sommelier program. A practice. A way of using wine as the vehicle for something older, sensory intelligence, body trust, the permission to taste what you actually taste and like what you actually like.
She enrolled in advanced meditation training. She completed senior leadership certification with the Tony Robbins organization. She designed what would become Wine Wellness Wednesdays, the retreat programs, and eventually the Vivanti membership. She did not retreat from the world. She returned to it, more fully.
