I got about 25% in and was just bored? I felt like nothing was happening and there wasn't much going on. I wanted to love this but the beginning really dragged for me and I found myself not wanting to pick it back up.

Not quite sure how to feel about this one. I usually love books about female friendships, backgrounds into industries I know little about, and also about wine. Thessaly and Wren are young women and wine importers in NYC. The novel tells the story of these who women from very different backgrounds as they battle in this male-dominated business.

Positives:
The cover
Interesting look into the world of wine and wine making
Strong writing about female friendships
The ending and how everything came together

Negatives:
Mostly just a forgettable story for me

I am not a wine drinker at all but found this story interesting of the wine business & more importantly of female friendships. It was a quick read but one I think those who like wine will appreciate more than I.

I think the last wine-related media I consumed was the movie Sideways, so I don't know much about the world of wine. I feel like I learned so much reading this book and I had no idea how much drama was going on behind the scenes of the wine business. I also learned that this is a very male-dominated business, with politics and gossip, etc. I found myself getting annoyed with the unfairness Thesally and Wren encountered throughout the book.

I enjoyed the friendship between Thesally and Wren and how early on in the book, their relationship becomes about uplifting each other rather than competing. I also enjoyed how their stories and characters evolved on their own, rather than being dependent on each other and making the women a package deal. It was nice to see some self-actualization and different paths being forged.

I do wish we explored Thesally's issues more. The issues relating to her and Nick's downfall seemed to be a struggle one minute, then just disappear. The issue with Alice also seemed to have been resolved a little too neatly and quickly.

Overall, this was an enjoyable and informative read. I just would've liked to explore a lot of these characters and plot points a bit more to give the story and characters more depth.

Thank you Zibby Books and Netgalley for the e-ARC and Libro.fm for the ALC.

This is a very heavily detailed story that includes every imaginable aspect of wine. It covers everything from the wine making and selling, to the tastings and distribution.

What I liked most the juxtaposition of two main female POV’s and their unique strengths. I was drawn to them both right away and thought they were both wonderfully complex characters. However, I struggled with the last 1/4 of the book and I can’t even articulate why that was. I found myself not being as interested in the what was going to happen and, maybe, that was just me (mood reader problems) and life being so busy lately.

I do think this will be a good fit for those who love wine and want to learn all they can about it!

Thank you Zibby Books for the arc via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

Going into this book, my knowledge on wines was really limited and I did feel like that left me at a disadvantage. Not only because I didn't always understand parts of the dialogue, but it also limited my ability to connect with the characters. I felt like I read a book that finally got going around the 70% mark and it rushed what I would have been interested in reading.

Wine People has a lot of characters and they blurred, especially in the beginning. There are also big jumps in time that you don't know are coming until Wren or Thessaly say something like, "I haven't seen so and so in three years..." and it was jarring.

To sum up the book in one word, I'd use forgettable.

I appreciate access to this ARC.

“Thessaly had no interest in children herself, and secretly thought there must be easier ways to live than trying to please several dictators at the same time.”

For anyone who is not a wine drinker and wondering if this book is for them, let me be the first to assure you that it is. I know basically nothing about wine and while I would like to enjoy a glass of wine from time to time, I just don’t. And yet I was still carried along by the story. The wine industry was just the backdrop for a story of friendship and female empowerment.

Thank you Zibby Books for the gifted book and ALC through Libro.fm

Rating:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Read if you like:
Wine (of course!)
Women in business
Female empowerment

Wine People
By: Michelle Wildgen
4🍷🍷🍷🍷
Wren and Thessaly are colleagues and rivals who end up starting a wine importing business.
🍷
They came from different backgrounds. One with a more privileged background and one who worked hard to learn the with male dominated business. What will they each have to overcome in a male dominated business.
🍷
I enjoyed this novel about the wine business.

Thank you @zibbybooks for this wonderful book and all the goodies.

#winepeople, #michellewildgen, #zibbybooks, #zibbyambassador, #bookreview, #booksconnectus, #bookstagram, #stamperlady50

Wine People is an engaging entertaining look at female friendships and the wine industry.Following the ups and downs of the competitive wine industry and a look at the relationship between the two young women drew me in kept me turning the pages.#netgalley #winepeople

Thank you Zibby for another book that really examines nuances in women's lives; I admit that though I enjoy a glass of wine and a wine tasting, I know little about wine as an industry and one that need more women and diverse voices in general. What really stands out to me is that this becomes a story of two strong women, never enemies as much as savvy respectful industry competitors, who build on their professional trust to become friends, to open new pathways for themselves. The main characters have a lot of depth as well, I appreciated the exploration of self-esteem/confidence and how that plays out in a male dominated space and within a complex career environment
What also stood out was the richness of detail, Wildgen is clearly an author familiar with wine and the broader industry, the details about the work environment, about wine and knowing/selling/importing wine were great, it really made me appreciate that this was a book intentional about it's setting and contexts, not just oh wine is fun but hey reader, this is an industry that sells to women but is a hard place for women to work... that's worth reading about.

Thank you NetGalley and Zibby Books for the eARC in exchange for my honest review!

"And then there were the lifers. Wren was a lifer, and she knew the rules. To stay in wine, you had to be both romantic and pragmatic, never losing the love of this ancient substance even as they figured out how to balance its excesses with ruthless physical economies. She nursed the same dream they all did: fifty years in the business and dying upright at the table, a glass of her ideal wine in hand."

I'm not a wine connoisseur by any means, but by the end of this book I really felt like I was one with Wren and Thessaly. I really had no idea about the wine importing business prior to reading Wine People, and I thought it was so fascinating! Michelle Wildgen's writing kept me engaged the entire way through and loving ALL of the characters (Legs, Gavin, Jonathan, Sabrina, Nick..just to name a few). I wish a wine pairing was included with the book for each of the four parts it was divided into. I was really impressed with the ending and how nicely everything came together. Wine People was such a fun read and I highly recommend!!

I love wine and books about wine. Last year I read CORK DORK, a non-fiction deep-dive into tasting and evaluating wine. Earlier this year, I read DRUNK ON LOVE, a romance set at a winery. In WINE PEOPLE, I saw another aspect of the industry: those who buy/import and sell wine.

Wren and Thessaly start on different sides of the coin: one in sales, one in operations. One grew up poor and discovered a natural gift for wine; the other grew up in a family-owned winery. Yet despite their differences and built-in competition, the two women let their guard down and talked: what if we teamed up? What if we helped each other instead of competing against each other?

I enjoyed the two women's friendship and how they evolved to find their calling, living up to their potential and daring to exceed their own expectations.

But the friendship, ah, that was the best part. Sitting beside a kindred spirit, a person you trust, exploring an exceptional bottle and talking about everything and nothing? That’s the good stuff. As is this lovely, just lovely story.

Another gem from a new publisher, Zibby Books! Thanks to them and NetGalley for a review copy of WINE PEOPLE.

Wine People is an eye-popping, intuitive glimpse into the business of importing wine, the pursuit of friendship, and the underlying impact of alcoholism. Michelle Wildgen, like a personal guide through wine country, melds operating and financing in the wine import industry with tasting rooms and vignerons. Learning about a myriad of wines along with the stock wine types in the industry are a bonus to the central plot.
Through main characters Thessaly and Wren, Wildgen creates tension and empathy, but also the stress of mixing competition in business with burgeoning friendships. Thessaly, daughter of a Sonoma grower, golden girl of the industry and wine importing’s version of a supermodel is competing against Wren, with only five years restaurant experience, no special memories of food or childhood, but desperate to learn from observation. Both young women are coping with father issues. Wildgen uses Wren’s absent, alcoholic father and Thessaly’s famous father’s ‘nothing ever good enough’ approach to illuminate their anxiety, fears, and dependencies. Wren’s mask is competitive forthrightness and Thessaly’s excessive drinking.
Thessaly and Wren: “lifers” in the wine industry, learning to trust each other, eager to beat the ‘great men’. Ambitious, aggressive “Women in Wine.”
Wine People by Michelle Wildgen, highly recommended and enjoyed reclining on a chaise with a chilled Rosé.

What a smart, interesting story this was! Exploring work, relationships and adult friendship alongside a less glamorized version of the wine industry than I've sometimes read or seen in media, this was fascinating. It's definitely more character driven (the emphasis is on the "people" in the title), as readers go along through the years as Wren and Thessaly grew and changed, pursued their ambitions and failed in various ways, and made connections.

I know wine people, not the particular ones in Michelle Wildgen's excellent WINE PEOPLE, but close enough to recognize their dreams, ambitions, and lives in her well-drawn protagonists Thessaly and Wren as well as their colleagues in the industry. The characters, the sensual detail, the exquisite impossible of conducting serious business based on the pleasures of fine wine, all of it combined for a delicious, memorable read. Few books so brilliantly lay out the difficult balance between personal and professional relationships, the drive to succeed, and the lush reality of wine country and a tasting room. I enjoyed every minute of this book, was sorry to see it end, although that, too, was pitch perfect. I received a copy of this book and these opinions are my own, unbiased thoughts.

What I liked the most about Wine People was the strong, firm friendship between Wren and Thessaly. I loved Thessaly’s name.
They supported each other in the competitive wine world and backed each other up.
Every woman, no matter what career or vocation needs at least one loyal friend.
A lot of the wine stuff just meandered to the back for me since I’m not a wine connoisseur but it provided a good context for the plot.
I liked all the different locations because they gave flavor and texture along with the wine.

Wren & Thessaly both work in the NYC wine industry. It's a male dominated business, but they are trying to make their way to the top. Wren grew up in the MidWest, Thessaly on a farm in California. They continue to encounter men moving ahead in the business while women stay the same.

This is an interesting look at the back side of the wine business - how wines are stocked and sold across the country and the world. We are clearly able to see that this is a male-dominated world and Wren and Thessaly decide to split off on their own venture.

An enjoyable novel about the wine industry and the complexities of female friendship in life and in business. An enjoyable and informative read.

3.5 stars

Thank you to the author, Zibby Books and NetGalley, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This books offers a fascinating look into the lives of two young women trying to make their way in a very competitive, male-dominated industry - wine distribution, i.e. fostering relationships with vintners, finding and acquiring wines from around the world, and then selling them to restaurants, shops etc. Beyond that, this is a story about female friendship against the odds, and I loved seeing how each opened up in their own way and learned to trust the other, while discovering step by step more clearly who they are as their own person, and how they can strengthen one another.

Wine People is a look inside the male driven world of wine imports, sales and production, as told over a series of years by two main characters, Wren and Thessaly. Having come from very different backgrounds, these two women form an unlikely bond and alliance during an interoffice competition for a promotion. As the years go by their relationship and friendship changes, as they both decide what choices in life are right for them. This book takes you on a mini vacation into the world of wine, to Europe, California, NYC and the mid west. The descriptions into this world definitely show how much research the author put into learning about this line of work, which is a clearly a way of life. I enjoyed the dynamic between these two strong women, who learn to make difficult decisions in their professional and personal lives, and even when their paths diverge, still have an deep respect for each other. Thank you to NetGalley and Zibby books for an early copy of this book, all opinions are my own.

WINE PEOPLE by Michelle Wildgen: Even if I weren’t on a mission to read all of the @zibbybooks, this one still would have made my TBR. As a wine writer, owner of three wine bars and certified sommelier, a book about “wine people” is obviously right up my alley.

WINE PEOPLE follows Wren and Thessaly, ambitious employees at a wine import firm who find themselves forging an unlikely alliance amid rumors that their boss will soon seek a successor. To delve into more detail risks giving away the outcome, but it’s safe to say that this book chronicles the women’s personal and professional evolutions over time, as well as the peaks and valleys of their complicated friendship. The descriptions of wine (and the accompanying food) are absolutely gorgeous; if you’re not already an avid wine drinker, I suspect this book will lure you into becoming one. The professional wine trips the women embark on reminded me of some of my own overseas wine adventures, and their colleagues and rivals mirror so many people I’ve met over my 15 years in the industry. That’s to say: This book rings true. I may be more on the hospitality side than Wren and Thessaly, but I still could deeply relate. The author certainly did her homework. In the end, though, I’d say this book is even more about friendship than wine itself.

I read this ARC via @netgalley; big thanks to @netgalley and @zibbybooks for the early look. Pub date is 8/1/23.

P.S. Just before I published this review, I noticed on Amazon that the audiobook is read by Christine Lakin — one of the six people I included on my recent “kickass narrators” post! So I don’t doubt that this audiobook will be excellent as well, if you prefer audio to print.

Read this book if you like:
🍷 Wine … duh
🍷 Stories about female friendship
🍷 Behind the scenes glimpses of specific industries
🍷 Lovely descriptions of wine + food
🍷 Any of these movies: “Bottle Shock,” “Sideways,” “Somm”