Meet the Friend

Martina Litta is the Foreign Trade Manager of INAVI, Uruguay's national viticulture institute. In this interview, Amanda Barnes discovers what brought Martina into the world of wine and why she gets excited when she meets someone trying Uruguayan wine for the first time.   What is your first memory in wine?  The first memory that comes to my mind is being very young, around five or s...

Neil Palmer is the Founder and Director of organic wine importer Vintage Roots, which he founded at the age of 26 with his friend Lance Pigott. In this Meet the Friend interview, Amanda Barnes finds out how Neil’s harvesting experiences in his 20s sparked a lifelong passion for wine and reggae.   What got you into wine?  Well, it was Dad who first showed me how to use a corkscrew. He liter...

Sylvia Petz is a Friend of the Circle with her prominent, and eponymously named, agency in Austria. In our Meet the Friend interview, we discover why she realised the value of top-quality Austrian wine at a young age and how she strives to drive forward organic wine production through her agency.   How did you get into wine? My grandfather already attached great importance to good wine at ...

Sarah Hargreaves specialises in PR and communications in southern France with her company In The Mood PR. She explains in this Meet the Friend interview how she developed her career there and why she finds the Languedoc-Roussillon one of the most fascinating regions to work with. Amanda Barnes also learns about Sarah’s favourite way to discover new wines and some the vineyard ambles that Sarah is ...

Paul Mabray is one of the wine industry's foremost thinkers in bringing wine into the digital space. He has worked in important developments at wine.com, and founded vintank.com and winedirect.com, and today is focused on the development of pix.wine — a new wine discovery platform. Amanda Barnes interviews him as a new Friend of the Circle to find out what makes him tick, and how he envisions the ...

Ross Carter has worked in many different areas of the industry over the years but most recently is becoming known for his work at The Drinks Trust (the drinks charity formerly called The Benevolent) as CEO. In this Meet the Friend interview, Amanda Barnes finds out how the parameters shifted for the charity during the pandemic and learns about its key campaigns for 2022. She also discovers how Ros...

Alan Aboud is the creative director of Fine and Rare's new FONDATA publication (which features Member Jancis Robinson MW on the cover in its first edition). In this Meet the Friend interview, Amanda Barnes finds out how the fine wine market has changed during the pandemic, the concept of a 'journal of adjacencies' and why moving from Black Tower to Meursault has been great for his palate but not h...