30 Under 30: Talia Baiocchi | Wine Blogger, NYC - Wine & Spirits Magazine

30 Under 30: Talia Baiocchi | Wine Blogger, NYC

by    •  September 27, 2011

The daughter of a château owner. A sommelier. A golfer. The son of a photographer…There’s a lot of young talent in the wine business, coming from different directions. These 30 are rising to the top.

We canvassed our colleagues in the world of wine to find the most creative and accomplished young talent in wine today. All of them are 30 years old or younger; some of them make wine, while others sell it. All of them are names to know: This is the next generation in wine.

It’s become a rarity in the food and wine world to go a week without seeing a link to one of Talia Baiocchi’s witty and conversational articles. The 26-year-old wine journalism Jedi had no intention of writing about wine when she began her political science major and journalism minor at NYU. Baiocchi first opened up to the possibility while working as a maître d’ at The Mermaid Inn, where she was able to sneak sips of various bottles at staff trainings. “People turned me on to great wine there, and it turned out I had a memory for wine, like I did art history,” says Baiocchi. Working the 2006 harvest in Piedmont sealed her fate as a career wino, and when she returned, she took a job as a portfolio manager at Italian Wine Merchants. She kept her love of writing alive through a blog about music and wine.

Baiocchi took to pro writing when her boss, August Cardona, mentioned that a London-based website called WineChap was looking for a writer. After taking on the editor position for the New York chapter, it wasn’t long before Baiocchi had her hand in websites such as Serious Eats and Eater, and eventually in newsprint, at the San Francisco Chronicle.

“I think I discovered her the way all people are found nowadays,” says Jon Bonné, wine editor of the Chronicle. “On Twitter.” Since then, Baiocchi has become an asset to Bonné and the Chronicle. “When I need someone who can appreciate the nuances of regional European wine or who can cut through the usual junkety claptrap, I absolutely turn to Talia,” he says.

With only five years of legal drinking under her belt, Baiocchi maintains her freelance phenom status and is currently at work on her own complete beverage and lifestyle website, liquidantidote.com, scheduled to go live later this year.

This story was featured in W&S Fall 2011.

This story appears in the print issue of fal 2011.
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