|Chadds Ford People|
My continually emerging love affair By Rachel Rhan Contributing Writer As it is with many great love affairs, my love affair with wine was unplanned. When I first graduated from West Chester University in 2015, I began the search to find my dream job – editing – and I searched high and low for it while working part time at a university bookstore. When the job results yielded nothing and the bookstore went out of business, I found myself without drive, without purpose and without a path to take. Eventually, my best friend Amanda recommended that I apply for a part-time position at Chaddsford Winery. My experience with wine before that time had been extremely limited — a glass here and there with friends or family – but the real truth was that I didn’t particularly enjoy wine. Without any other options in front of me, I decided I had nothing to lose by filling out an application. In the summer of 2016, I received a call from the winery to come in for an interview. Knowing practically nothing about wine or the industry that I was about to join, I accepted a position as a part- time associate, thinking that my time here was meant to be only a blip in the slideshow of my life. My first days at Chaddsford were interesting, overwhelming, and all-consuming, but it was during those early days, however, that all of this exposure was leading me towards an astounding revelation that I felt destined to be drawn into. Wine, I was discovering, is awesome. With every grape, every vintage and every blend that Chaddsford presented me with came the need to immerse myself further into the world I was now a part of. I quickly 38
Chadds Ford Life | Spring/Summer 2022 | www.chestercounty.com
devoured the training materials Chaddsford gave me and was soon on to my next tasting notebook, the next stack of flashcards and the newest edition of Wine Folly. I became a fountain of information, and began arriving at work by asking my colleagues, “Hey, do you want to know a fun fact?” All I could think about were grapes, the different styles of fermentation, and the difference between Bordeaux and the Loire Valley. With each tasting, each note I took and every fiber of knowledge that I had started to collect, the management team at Chaddsford recognized my new found love and put me and a few others into a WSET Level 2 class in the Fall of 2017. After that class finished, I knew I had found my career. I wanted to be a Sommelier. Shortly after that class, I started to become a foundation Continued on Page 40
