My Favorite Mistake: Business Lessons from Failures and Success Sommelier and Consulting Firm Partner Michael Juergens on Wine Mistakes and More
Episode page: https://www.markgraban.com/mistake135
My guest for Episode #135 of the My Favorite Mistake podcast is Michael Juergens. He is a senior partner with a Big Four consulting firm, where he runs the Winery Solutions practice, overseeing the portfolio of services the firm provides to wineries.
He is also a certified specialist of wine, a certified sommelier, and a Stage 2 candidate to become the 59th American to qualify as a Master of Wine, if he can “pass the damn exam” as he says on his website.
Michael is also the author of two books in the “Drinking & Knowing Things” series (under his pen name, Michael Amon).
He is the founder of the Bhutan Wine Company, and is leading the development of the wine industry in this magical Himalayan country.
He owns the award winning SoCal Rum Company, which was recently awarded the highest point score in history for any silver rum (95 points).
Michael also is a professor at the Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California Irvine. He's a punk rock drummer and an adventure race addict
In today's episode, Michael answers the “what is your favorite mistake?” question a little differently. He draws a bit on Buddhism to question whether anything is really a mistake, if whatever happens was meant to be. That said, he thinks that drinking certain wines is a huge mistake. So we talk about that in a wide-ranging and fun conversation.
We talk about questions and topics including:
- You failed the tasting portion of the Master of Wine exam four years in a row, would you be upset if you failed again?
- You also started the entire wine industry in the Kingdom of Bhutan in the Himalayas — tell us about that…
- Failing forward in Bhutan — Buddhist influence?
- What is “winedouchery” and why are you so opposed to it?
- Snobbery? Average price under $10? People who don’t like wine?
- Champagne just for celebrations?
- Starting the distillery??
- COMMON THEME —> “Self-limiting beliefs”
- What sparked that passion about wine?