Elizabeth Schneider

After graduating from Wesleyan University and embarking on a decidedly non-wine career in high tech, Elizabeth Schneider realized that her heart was more in her hobby than in her job. She undertook a course to learn how to taste and appreciate wine, earned her MBA from the University of North Carolina and embarked on a decidedly non-high-tech career focused on wine. She’s a Certified Sommelier (Court of Master Sommeliers), a Certified Specialist of Wine (Society of Wine Educators) and, after UNC, worked for the largest winery in the world, launching several successful brands and co-authoring a training program for restaurant servers. Seeing the elitism in wine even at the big winery she worked for, Elizabeth decided to be an advocate for normal people and she created a resource for nice, smart wine lovers (and likers): Eight years ago she became the host of an international, award-winning podcast, "Wine for Normal People". Reaching listeners from 60 different countries, she focuses on translating the wine world to make wine accessible and fun to everyone from novice to enthusiast. She hosts live and online wine education classes and events for everyone from CEOs of Fortune 10 companies to normal people in the middle of South Dakota. Elizabeth is the co-founder of Underground Wine Events, which connects consumers with small, mom and pop wineries with little marketing power but fantastic wine. Her book Wine For Normal People, exploring wine fundamentals in a way that makes wine fun, easy and normal is available on pre-release and will be published by Chronicle Books in mid-2019.

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