This week we are pleased to share the recording of our Insight Series Re-inventing restaurants, rethinking wine lists, recorded on the 2nd of March 2021.

With the insight of 6 international experts and guest star co-moderator James Tidwell MS, we start to imagine the trends and levers of change that will allow restaurants to re-surface, and decipher how they will affect restaurants’ wine lists going forward.

+ Antoine Abou-Samra - Founder, A Table for Two, Lebanon

+ Ray Isle, Executive Wine Editor, Food & Wine Magazine, USA

+ Stephan Leuschner – Director International Key Accounts, Rational, Switzerland

+ Tinashe Nyamudoka - Sommelier and Founder, Kumusha Wines, South Africa

+ Jon Pepper MW, Managing Director, Tenuta del Mundo, Italy

+ Laurent Plantier, Co-founder, Alain Ducasse Entreprise, and Partner, FrenchFood Capital, France

What can Fine Wine learn from coffee? And what, in turn, can coffee learn from Fine Wine?

This week ARENI speaks to Peter Giuliano, the executive director of the Coffee Science Foundation, to explore what two of the world’s favourite beverages can offer each other.

This week we meet popular food writer Alicia Kennedy, who is currently at work on a history of veganism, to be published in 2022.

We discuss food and the many issues surrounding it, from politics and labour to hospitality and sourcing. In exploring what the future holds for ingredients, recipes and the restaurant experience, we consider their impact on the future of restaurants and their wine lists.

This week we meet Véronique Pardo, food anthropologist and director of France's Observatoire des habitudes alimentaires ("Eating Habits Obeservatory"), where she heads two major programmes on food behaviours, cultures and human/animal relationships.

We discuss with her the values of eaters today and how the current crisis has changed some of the foundations of our food systems. How has human food become an object of such moral concern in Western societies? Are the criticisms of meat eating, and the trend towards vegetarian and vegan consumption, redefining our food model and our vision of the world? If we are what we eat, what do our Western eating habits say about who we are?

The following conversation is in French. For a written transcript in English, please follow the link to our website.

This week we meet Dr. Constanze Stelzenmüller, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. Her areas of expertise include transatlantic relations, German foreign policy, NATO, the European Union’s foreign, security and defence policy, international law, and human rights.

We discuss with her what is at stake for international diplomacy in 2021 and what the global challenges ahead mean for us as citizens and wine trade people.

This week we feature not one but two guests to discuss collective action in the Australian and New Zealand Fine Wine scenes, and whether they can become a model for the future. Andrew Caillard MW, founder of the Langton’s Fine Wine classification looks at what brings organised gatherings together and walks us through colonisation and how its impact is still felt today.

Peter McAtamney, principal of Wine Business Solutions, then shares inspirational ways to rise above self-interest. He defines what the “common good is” and illustrates how the Fine Wine community can benefit from collaborative working.

This week we meet French researcher Emile Servan Schreiber to discuss the power of collective intelligence, and the different ways to harness, measure and maximise the efficiency of our joined brains. As we navigate our way through the "wisdom of crowds", we also explore how women and diversity can help build better and smarter organisations.

Dr Emile Servan-Schreiber holds a PhD in cognitive psychology from Carnegie-Mellon University in the US, as well as undergraduate degrees in mathematics and computing. He is the managing director of Hypermind which operates in both France and the US, and creates prediction markets.

This week New York-based wine marketer Erica Nonni facilitates a conversation between Eric Asimov and Stephen Satterfield about the language of wine.

Eric Asimov is the New York Times’ Wine Critic. His weekly column appears in the Food section of The Times. He is also the author of How to Love Wine: A Memoir and Manifesto, and Wine With Food: Pairing Notes and Recipes From The New York Times.

Stephen Satterfield is a food writer, multimedia producer and founder of Whetstone Magazine, a beautiful publication about food origins, culture and the anthropology of food.

These two leading voices in the wine industry share a curiosity and sense of responsibility when it comes to how we communicate around the complex topic of wine. Does language provide or hinder access to wine information? How does it relate to the assessment of wine and to regionalism, fundamental to traditional wine producing areas? Should there be a universal language in wine?

This conversation, which took place at the July 2020 edition of Fine Minds 4 Fine Wines, touches upon so much more than language, not just how we talk about wine, but the greater impact it has on our culture.

This week we are extremely pleased to welcome a trio of Fine Wine legends. Acclaimed journalist Elaine Chukan Brown meets living icons Bill & Will Harlan, for an exclusive and very intimate discussion on transmission where Father and son discuss their evolving relationship through Harlan Estate’s and Promontory’s milestones. As Will prepares to take over from his dad, they share with us the next steps of their 200-year plan.

This interview was recorded prior to the fires currently devastating Napa and Sonoma wine countries, affecting some of Bill and Will's properties. As we are sharing this interview, we want to send our thoughts to both of them, and to the Napa and Sonoma wine communities. We are here and ready to help.

Today's episode is a recording of a conversation facilitated by Trisha de Borchgrave between Ambassador Anthony Gardner and Dr. Robin Nibblett on regulations, trade and tariffs that took place during the July 2020 Fine Minds 4 Fine Wines Global Think Tank. 

Ambassador Anthony Gardner, whose illustrious career straddles international finance, politics and law, served as one of the most successful US ambassadors ever to the European Union, from 2014-2017 under President Obama. He's also a member of the Council of Foreign Relations in the US, and produces wine in Tuscany. 

Dr. Robin Nibblet is the beloved director and chief executive of Chatham House since 2007. Prior to that he was Executive VP at CSIS in Washington DC, another one of the US's leading foreign policy think tanks, where he also ran the Europe programme and led its initiative for a renewed transatlantic partnership. 

Trisha de Borchgrave, is a current affairs writer and senior associate at the Global Women Leaders Strategic Philanthropy Project, a group of over 100 women working on private public initiatives to empower women and girls in the humanitarian and development area through access to education, healthcare and economic opportunity. 

In today's episode, this panel of exceptional talent and insights discusses the future of the transatlantic relationship in modern times and the geopolitics of fine wine.