Meet Stacey Gibson: Sommelier, Women in Wine OR President, and more

This interview has been edited for clarity and was featured in the April 5, 2023 issue of Merobebe.

Stacey Gibson

My name's Stacy Gibson. I am a sommelier and I own Parallel Food & Drink, a food and wine event company with my husband, who's a chef. We focus on wine pairings and dinners, and we work with a lot of wineries. I also do monthly wine clubs, so we do that and specialty retail.I am also the president of Women in Wine, Oregon, which is a 1-year term, and have been on the board for a few years. 

Merobebe

You don’t have enough things going on!

Stacey Gibson

I know. Even with Parallel, I have so many ideas! There's a lot of stuff that we're working on to grow it much bigger.

Merobebe

Let's start at the beginning. What first interested you in wine and actually working in the wine industry?

Stacey Gibson

I went to college, got a Political Science degree, and lived and worked in D.C. for about a year and a half. I even went to graduate school for public policy for a semester. But I just saw no future. Nothing in it was what I wanted to be doing.My best friend was working at a restaurant in the Flatiron District of New York, and she was like, Just move here, work in my restaurant, live with me – just come to New York. And I thought, You know what? That sounds great. So I was a hostess at a restaurant, and that’s where I met my husband. He went to culinary school right out of high school, so he had worked in a bunch of restaurants. But it was my first restaurant job and that’s where we met almost 15 years ago.

I really liked working in restaurants – It's just really fun. It wasn’t boring, it wasn’t an office job, and I love talking to people. In restaurants, you work really hard, you get to talk to people, and you get to make people happy. I love hospitality. I want people to be happy all the time!

Once I realized that I wanted to stay in restaurants, I was trying to find my niche and gravitated towards wine. I've always loved wine, even when I didn't know anything about it.  It’s so easy to get sucked into because there’s so many elements to it. I’m a Polisci girl, so even the bureaucracy of wine is fascinating. It's annoying, but it's fascinating – the way each country does it, the way the EU does it, the way they determine who gets to put what on each label, the history of how they came to be. It's so, so interesting. But again, I love people, so it's nice to have the human element of wine, too. It’s so multilayered and I found that I loved every part of it.  I [decided that I] wanted to be a wine director, so I was looking for positions that would get me there.

I was working at some fun restaurants, but not well-known restaurants, and then I started working at Momofuku Má Pêche when it opened. I was a hostess then a server, but they knew I wanted to do wine so it went from there. That was how I got into my career. It was about a three year process from when I started working at restaurants, took all these courses [and got my WSET Level 3], and then really started as a wine director.

I eventually was a wine director at Má Pêche, but only for about like nine months. I think I did a good job, but I definitely felt over my head in the wine world. I didn't know the producers as well as I needed to. I was just really young. Then, one of my bosses at Má Pêche became the director of operations for Laura Maniec’s CorkBuzz, a wine bar in Union Square. Laura is a master sommelier, so I jumped over to open CorkBuzz as a somm and I worked there for a couple of years. While I was there, I took Levels 1 - 3 of the Court of Master of Sommeliers. 

Merobebe

What does it mean to be a restaurant wine director?

Stacey Gibson

It can be the same as a sommelier, but ultimately the wine director is the one selecting the wine, buying the wine, putting it on the list, making sure your costing is right. You're also in charge of the finances so when you buy something, you have to price it correctly, put it on the list, make sure that the list is printed correctly, that the button in the computer is charging the correct amount, and that you are storing the wine in a way that your team can find it. It's making sure all those systems work well. But ultimately, the fun part is you get to make the decision! You get to have tasting appointments with [wine sales] reps and decide if you’ll take a case of this or put something on the glass list.

Once you make a selection, it's mostly a job of logistics and making sure the whole program is running how you wanted and how you envisioned. If a guest comes in and they want a sauvignon blanc by the glass but you don’t have it, you need to have something else that the customer will enjoy. So you’re also filling in holes and making sure you have something for everyone – you want to make sure everyone is happy when they come into your restaurant.

In big restaurants, there will be a wine director that has a team of sommeliers, and the sommeliers will be the ones talking to guests and opening wine for guests.

Merobebe

As the wine director, do you work closely with the culinary team so that if there's a menu update you can adjust the wine list?

Stacey Gibson

That depends on the restaurant but ideally, that's exactly right. Sometimes, they just tell you that they’re adding a menu item and to make sure the wine goes with it. That's also something that we do with Parallel that is a little different and is why it's so much fun. My husband loves food and cooking – he's passionate about it. He gets excited about wine pairings, especially as a chef, and one of his favorite things is for me to pick the wine and then work backwards. It’s an extra little challenge for him that is fun. But that is really rare. Usually, the food comes first, and then the wine. It depends on the restaurant. Sometimes, like at CorkBuzz, all of the food is incredibly wine friendly.

Merobebe

It would be fun to have a wine flight with a food pairing instead of the other way around!

Stacey Gibson

That’s why we started Parallel. We started with pop ups where we started with the wine first and then built the menu around it. We had a lot of fun with that and then transitioned to catering and now we've been doing more different styles of events, but we want to do more pop ups because they’re so fun and we get to do great pairings.

One of our favorite pairings was from a Portland-based winery called Teutonic. They buy a lot of their grapes from around the Willamette Valley and make a wine they call their Red Blend. It’s gewürztraminer left on the skin, so it’s red, which is then co-fermented with Pinot Noir. It was highly aromatic and we made a seafood curry soup with it.[My husband] was literally making a dish for this wine, which is just so creative and cool. The wine is just wild and I don't think it would have worked the other way – to have a dish and then be like, You know what would go well with this? A skin contact gewürztraminer that’s co-fermented with pinot.  It just wouldn't work that way.

That's the kind of stuff that gets us excited that we've been a little away from.

Merobebe

You have Parallel, you're an advanced sommelier, have been a contributing writer for Serious Eats, and worked at various restaurants. Have you faced any challenges being a woman in the male-dominated field of wine and food?

Stacey Gibson

I have a lot of answers depending on the angle. I've had really good male mentors and bosses when I was coming up in the industry. I felt very supported. I felt like there were a lot of men who saw my potential and supported me – but that was also in the wine bubble within the restaurant.

I will say with restaurant management, it's tough because it's hard being a boss in general. When you’re a manager, sometimes you have to make decisions that people are not happy with. I have this distinct memory – I was the GM and wine director at a restaurant here in Portland, and that was definitely hard for me because it wasn't a wine restaurant and no one appreciated my wine background at all, which was fine. It was also good for me at the time because it's right when I had my daughter and it worked out with scheduling, so I was happy to be working there. It was a really big staff and there were a lot of men on the staff that were mean and I know they still don’t like me. I definitely feel like if it was a man telling them the things I told them, it would have gone differently. There’s still very much the stigma of being shrill, for example. Instead of being a strong boss, you’re a bitchy woman.

There's also still those times where people don't think that I’m the boss. I used to own a wine shop, and one time we had agreed to have a Netflix show film at our shop. It was really cool. Me and one of my employees were clocked out and having so much fun. We were just tucked into a corner, drinking beer and watching. It was such a blast. And the whole night, we were talking to one of the crew members and helping him with whatever he needed, like making sure the AC was shut off and whatnot. Later in the night, one of our regular customers was walking by and he came in to check it out. We were just chatting when the crew member came over and asked the customer if he was the owner. I was like, This guy? No, I’m the owner. This guy doesn’t even work here.

It was kind of bizarre. A white man walks in and you jump to that? You’ve been talking to the owner for 5 hours!

Merobebe

How has it been to be an entrepreneur and working in events with a child?

Stacey Gibson

It is such a challenge and it’s not the same for everybody. Our biggest one with events is inconsistency. I wish we could book a babysitter for every Thursday night, for example, but instead I need this random Saturday and this random Wednesday. That’s a really big challenge and I will tell you, we bring our daughter to events a lot.

It depends on the client, but almost all of our winery clients are 100% supportive of us bringing our daughter. It does mean that she's sitting with the iPad in the corner usually, but she can come. Sometimes we've had events where the event director says, Oh, my kid's going to be there too, so they can go play Legos over there. It's been fun for us because she also likes to help. There are a few times recently that she has put on an apron, stood next to her dad, and helped hand food to people. She'll be like, Can I run the food? And she'll go run the food. It’s very cute.

So it is really hard and it's a giant logistical juggle. It’s always worked out, or it’s worked out by bringing her which is also tough because I’m front of house and he’s back of house. We’re so small that we can’t delegate. We hire people [for the event], but we don’t have employees. When we figure out staffing, we also have to figure out childcare. If someone can watch the kid, then I’ll be the server. If someone can’t watch the kid, then I’ll do that and he has to find somebody else. It's tough because with events, it’s really hard to delegate cooking. He’s the chef, and it’s really hard to delegate that. Same thing with my wine clubs [and tastings], which are monthly. So it's really hard.

We are a unique couple, though, because my husband was back of house and not making a lot of money when we had our daughter, so he was a stay at home dad. I only had about three weeks of maternity leave after I had her, but it was kind of nice because even after I went back to work, it felt okay because she was home with her dad. We really split the childcare situation. It’s always like, Who’s the primary caregiver at that moment? We've talked about it, but we also check in with each other.

Merobebe

I love that. Communication and teamwork!

Stacey Gibson

I can't imagine having more than one kid and not having a partner who has a stake in it with you. It's really important.

 Merobebe

You're the president of Women in Wine, Oregon. Tell us a little bit about what the organization does and why the work you do there is so important.

Stacey Gibson

I’m super jazzed about the work we're doing. It started about five years ago as an annual conference and that's the centerpiece of what we do. But over the five years, we've grown to include year-round happy hours and events, and we're launching a mentorship program. We switched to a membership program where you pay an annual fee and get discounts to the conference and to the happy hours. We also do virtual events that we're going to stick with because they've been pretty successful. It also helps because we really want to be a statewide organization and members down in southern Oregon can participate in the virtual events which are free for members.

We only launched the membership program a year ago and we're going to be doing renewals this year so we're looking forward to getting feedback from members. It’s really exciting! We're definitely continuing to grow.  We have our first paid staff member as of six months ago, which is huge on an all-volunteer board.

That's a level of growth that was completely necessary and is really big for us. I’m excited to see where we keep going. Every president has to lead the ship, and I'm surrounded by a lot of really passionate women. We happen to only have women on our board, although we have had men on our board and we would absolutely let men come to any of our events. We've had some men come to the annual conference. It's really about just being inspired and getting together.It’s really great for the women in the wine industry because I think of my experience, too – not just breaking up the old boys club but when you put women in a room together, they're going to do some cool stuff.

That's a lot of what Women in Wine Oregon does. Creating connections to get women in a room together and then let some magic happen because in a lot of ways, you just need to get information. You get different people that wouldn't have necessarily met each other to talk together.I love hearing people say, I met this woman at an event and now I have a job offer because I was able to get my resume to the top of the pile. That is exactly what we want to do. 

Merobebe

It’s not the boy’s club anymore, it’s our club! Now we can drink wine and get together and come up with our own greater, better ideas than the men and execute them because, you know, women get shit done.

Stacey Gibson

Yeah, we really do. And not just in the wine industry but across the world. We always talk about how when you put women in charge of a community, they are going to work hard for everybody. It's funny because there are so many great men out there, really, truly.

But sometimes when you see women winemakers and business owners, especially small business owners, they really care about their community and they want to make sure they're taking care of their employees. They're more intentional about how they see their employees and how they're providing for their employees.

Merobebe

What are some other ways that you think that the wine industry can better not only support but also promote the work of female wine growers and business owners?

Stacey Gibson

I don't know. Hm. I would never do this, admittedly, but I love when you hear about all female wine lists or when it's noted on the wine list. I wouldn't do that because it’s not the hill that I want to die on in terms of equity and the like.

But I think women are already doing really amazing things and sometimes it’s just letting other people know, with marketing and PR – pushing women to the front. For women winemakers, sometimes that’s just access to sales channels or capital and the ability to hire someone to run their tasting or hire someone to do national sales while they’re doing the [winemaking]. I also think women tout themselves less, so we need to find a way to be like, Here’s my brand, and really putting it out front and building confidence.

I mean, there’s so many ways but I think a lot of it goes back to access to capital because you could be the best winemaker in the world who's making 100 cases a year. But if you don’t have the money, you can’t buy more grapes to make more wine, or to market it. I think that’s also just a small business issue as well. And then it’s, how do I take the next step? How can it sustain you personally? How can you live off of it? And a lot of that is marketing, which can be expensive. It’s important to let women tell their stories!