It's been a year since the murder of American George Floyd, a crime that galvanised widespread protests and political organising in the US. The world took notice and conversations, protests and other actions against racism spread internationally.

Twelve months later, we meet Dr Akilah Cadet, founder of Change Cadet, a US-based change management and organizational development consulting firm supporting diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in the workplace.

We take a moment to look back, measure the progress and ask what the next steps could be. What would true diversity mean for Fine Wine?

Money is not the most comfortable of topics in the wine world, though fair remuneration is the key to increasing the diversity of voices and talents.

In this episode, we meet Andrew Jefford, an award-winning journalist, wine writer and educator, and one of the only major figures in an otherwise opaque industry to publicly reveal his revenue and earnings. We discuss writing, negotiation power and transparency, and how to define one's worth in today's wine world.

Professor Shirley Mueller has had two careers. Her first was a practising neurologist and a tenured professor at the University of Indiana in the United States. She left both practice and academia to become an investment advisor, and began writing for Physician’s Money Digest about the neuropsychology of investing.

Along the way, she developed a deep passion for Chinese export ceramics and became an ardent collector herself. We meet to discuss her latest book, Inside the Head of a Collector – Neuropsychological Forces at Play. 

In this fascinating conversation, we explore the question of what drives collectors.

Celia Tunc is Secretary General of France’s Culinary College. The association, founded by 18 of the most renowned and influential French chefs – including Alain Ducasse, Joel Robuchon and Paul Bocuse – aims to represent, promote and transmit artisanal culinary heritage through tradition and innovation.

Celia emerges from a year that shook France’s relationships to gastronomy, restaurants, producers and winemakers, with the belief that the future of the world requires a new relationship to food, based on craftsmanship and diversity,

We meet her to discuss the challenges that lie ahead.

The three tier system regulates the distribution of alcohol within the United States. The Federal framework stipulates that a spirits or wine producer (the first tier), should sell first to a distributor (the second tier), that will in turn, sell to a retailer (the third tier). This retailer must have a license to sell alcohol either in a shop (off-premise) or in a restaurant (on-premise). This Federal framework changes at the state level, with each local government putting in place specifications and regulations according to their interpretation of the Federal requirement.

This system, established since the end of Prohibition, makes distribution of alcohol between local zones, counties or state borders extremely difficult.

What if there was a legal way to work alongside the established three-tier system in the US to create a disruptive route to market, based on convenience, while working within the system? What would it take to build a distribution channel that would allow consumers to directly order cocktails - or wine- on their phone, and receive it a mere three hours later at their door?

What would this new “non-premise” channel mean for spirits and wine brands alike? How could it address the upper-end of the market and not only offer convenience but create bespoke, premium experiences?

We talk to Tim Angelillo, founder and CEO of Sourced Craft Cocktails, and discuss how he used his 20 years of experience working for tech giants to create an efficient data and information based system that answers these questions.

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.