Then he mentioned the concrete frog ponds.
He said it in passing and moved on. It was plenty for me. I am old enough to have dissected one in a school biology lab. The moment I heard concrete frog ponds, I knew what had been raised in them and who had been buying.
Schools mostly stopped years ago. Anybody in that tasting room young enough to have gone through school in the last couple of decades had no reason to know any of it, and the whole thing would have gone straight past them.
Patrick R. Dunn · from the Vianarra newsletter
Every place has a Vianarra.
Not every place knows how to tell it.
Hospitality storytelling for wineries, boutique hotels, and restaurants. Guided tastings and wine country trips for private groups and corporate events.
For winery owners, hotel GMs & restaurateurs
Staff Workshops
Three hours with the whole team on carrying the story to the guest. It starts with a visit the staff does not know about.
For properties with a story nobody has written down
Brand Communications
Ongoing writing that puts the story into the channels already running. Wine club letters, newsletters, social, menu copy.
For planners, corporate groups & private hosts
Tastings & Travel
Four wines with a story behind each one, at your venue or ours. Wine country itineraries and hosted trips.
WSET Level 3
Advanced certification in wine, spirits, and tasting
Published columnist
Senior ResQ, Edible Reno-Tahoe, and Edible San Fernando Valley
Stop Leading on Empty
Archway / Simon & Schuster, April 2026
“What you captured so beautifully was something much larger: the care, intentionality, and genuine hospitality that our team strives to deliver every day.”
Michele Smith, Director of Marketing, Edgewood Tahoe Resort
Why me
There are plenty of people who will train your staff. Sales trainers, service consultants, mystery shopping firms, sommeliers who run a session on the wines. Most of them arrive with a program built somewhere else and fit your place into it.
I spent more than a decade as a National Park Service interpretive ranger, which is a job about reading a room before you speak to it and knowing what a place is actually about before you try to explain it. Thirty years after that ran crisis and resilience teams across four continents, where reading a room fast was the whole job and getting it wrong was expensive.
What that means in practice is that the session gets built after the visit, not before. I see how the welcome lands at your place, on a normal day, without anyone performing for me. Then we work on what I saw.
Beyond the tasting note
A tasting card sits between a team and a guest. Memorizing descriptors does not connect anyone to a wine. It gives staff something to recite and gives the guest something to nod at.
The alternative is a team that can read a room, adjust when it changes, and tell a guest about the soil, the weather, and the person who decided when to pick.
Read something
Pour Story Society
Wine stories every other Monday. One bottle, one person behind it, and the Meet the Winemakers interviews. Free.
The Vianarra newsletter
Wednesday mornings, for people who run wineries, hotels, and restaurants. Where the frog ponds came from.
Next steps
patrick@vianarra.com · +1 (650) 418-0507