Wine, Work, and Passion

Wine, Work, and Passion


Episode 3 – Curtis Mann – Albertsons

May 27, 2021

In this episode of Wine, Work & Passion, we’ll talk to Curtis Mann, Master of Wine, Group Vice President – Alcohol (Wine, Beer & Spirits). Curtis shares insights about working on the retail side of the wine industry and provide actionable advice to help you in pursuit of your wine industry career.  He’ll also share his experience as one of only 52 Masters of Wine in the US/Canada.




Book a career coaching session with Karen: https://go.oncehub.com/KarenWetzel



[00:00:00] Karen Wetzel: [00:00:00] Welcome Curtis. Can you please tell our audience who you are and what you do in the wine industry?
[00:00:03] Yes,
[00:00:03] Curtis Mann, MW: [00:00:03] Karen, my name is Curtis Mann. I am the group vice president for alcohol, so beer, wine, and spirits at Albertsons companies. And that means I lead up a national team for buying for all three of those categories, and I'm also a master of wine.
[00:00:13] Karen Wetzel: [00:00:13] Great. Yeah. Thanks for that. Those are two really big subjects, right? Master of wine and being the wine buyer for the second-largest grocer in the US, so tell us how you got the bug to even get in the wine industry. Before we get into the specifics about the company and your master of wine, how'd you get your, we're just start.
[00:00:25] Curtis Mann, MW: [00:00:25] I started way back in the day in the early two thousands at UC Davis as an undergraduate student and as a student, right. When I turned 21, I became really interested in wine. I had a lot of friends that were winemakers, and so I got my start in the wine industry and a tasting room. So I worked as a tasting room employee at ZD wines, and that really got me the bug going there.
[00:00:38] They taught me a lot about wine at ZD, and then I just tried to attend as many tastings as I could to learn about it. And that's really, once I got the bug, as a lot of you probably know it just built and built and built.
[00:00:45] Karen Wetzel: [00:00:45] Yeah, exactly. And when you started at ZD, did you have any wine credentials per se, any initials after your name or things you could brag about?
[00:00:51] No,
[00:00:51] Curtis Mann, MW: [00:00:51] I didn't. I was 22 and they just saw this kid that was passionate about selling wine. I was passionate about wine before I started ZD and I really try and find a job and they hired me to work one day a week. And the great thing about ZD was, is they committed a lot of time for the tasting room employees to learn about the wine making process with the wine maker.
[00:01:03] And they also paid for some wine education. So I. Was able to take the first level, the Sommelier, a through Z D wine. So I learned a tremendous amount there in the tasting room and it helped really build my structure for a lot of my wine knowledge going forward.
[00:01:12] Karen Wetzel: [00:01:12] So Curtis, tell us how pursuing your credentials, which ultimately led you to becoming a master of wine.
[00:01:15] How did that help you in pursuing the job that you have today? The VP of alcohol for the second largest grocer in the U S
[00:01:20] The
[00:01:20] Curtis Mann, MW: [00:01:20] master of wine is a certification that was built out of the UK retail trade in the 1950s. And so a lot of it is geared directly towards. What wine buyers do day in and day out for me, the theory exam is a lot of what I do on my side from understanding how the wines are made, how they're processed, how they're sold, and that's very relevant to my day in and day work.