Mar 10

Mar 10 Josh Garver, Summerland Winery

Location: Summerland, Santa Barbara County, California
Title: Director of Retail Operations / Tasting Room General Manager

Years in the Industry:
In total I've been 20+ years in the wine, beer, and spirits industries. Prior to joining Summerland Winery, I was the General Manager for one of the largest breweries in Sonoma County. In January 2021, my wife and I decided to take a break from drinking, and more than two years later, we are both alcohol-free and loving every benefit that comes from not imbibing.

My Top 3 Challenges to Wellness:

Finding a realistic balance of sleep, diet and activities that nourish your heart, mind, and spirit. (Not to get all hippy dippy on everyone. Ha!)
Learning to prioritize and mapping out a daily timeline to your mental and emotional wellbeing, which is something we should all strive to accomplish and make a mandatory practice. Find time to play music, find time to work out, find time to read, find time to tune out and not tune in to a television set or other form of digital doldrum default.
Surrounding myself with people that nurture my wellness endeavors and grow my support group. It’s a magical endeavor when you find people that are likeminded and kindred souls. Only when we really find the time to nurture this internal relationship do you really find the ability to find it in others around you.

How I Keep it Together To Stay Well:
Who says I keep it together? Ha! You must have a sense of humor, be able to laugh at yourself, and not always take everything in life so seriously! This is my mantra:

Understand that you will have hard days.
Understand that you are human and it’s completely natural to feel the ebb and flow of wants and cravings, but holding to your convictions is so utterly important.
Treat yourself with love and look after your endeavors. When you slip, you catch yourself and pick yourself up. Avoid negative self-talk in hard moments. Know that you are human, and things will get better.
Exercise, healthy eating, and a good night’s rest. engage in healthy habits.

What Inspires Me:
The chance to push boundaries and create fresh and exciting moments in my personal and professional life. A complacent life is a life unfulfilled. I create as an act of inspiration within myself and hopefully within others who I engage with. I LOVE eccentric people. If you’re left-of-center, I want to know you. I'm inspired by people who live with a constant element of surprise to everyone around them, who see colors more vividly, people who hear music more intricately. People who dance more passionately, or more goofily. Vibrant lively people who have an outlook that’s peering through a different lens that can show the world in a new and exciting light.

A Quote I Love:
“We are all broken, that’s how the light gets in.” Ernest Hemingway.

You can connect with Josh at LinkedIn and via email.

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Cathy Huyghe

Cathy Huyghe is a dynamic media professional with a special interest in wine and the spirit of hospitality. She is also an effective, engaging public speaker on subjects ranging from wine and gastronomy to digital media and entrepreneurship.

Cathy is the co-founder and CEO of Enolytics, a big data startup providing business intelligence for the wine industry. She also currently writes for Forbes.com about the business and politics of the wine industry, and for Inc.com about entrepreneurs with a special focus on women. She is the author of the award-winning book Hungry for Wine: Seeing the World through the Lens of a Wine Glass; she was a finalist for the 2016 IWSC Wine Communicator of the Year award; and she won the 2016 Innovator of the Year award from Diaz Communications.

Cathy's writing has appeared in print and online for both general-interest and wine industry publications including the Harvard Business Review network, The Atlantic, Decanter, Food52.com (where she was the "Wine, Unfussed" columnist), DailyBeast, The Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Wine Enthusiast, GlobalPost, Grist.org, and Daily Candy. She has also been featured on the BBC, WNYC, WGBH, and Nevada Public Radio.

Cathy is the founder of 365daysofwine.com and Red White Boston, a digital media company for the wine industry. Red White Boston produced daily content, monthly tasting events, and a location-based iPhone app of video wine recommendations from their network of 30+ local partner stores. While in Boston, she also managed the wine cellar at WGBH public broadcasting station and managed wine events for donors and the public.

Cathy’s restaurant experience started when she knocked on the kitchen door at Chez Panisse in Berkeley. She also has worked for Jean-Pierre Vigato in Paris (at Natachef bistro and at his two-star restaurant, Apicius) and for Thomas Keller at Bouchon in Las Vegas. She studied at La Varenne École de Cuisine in Burgundy, France; she completed the Wine Studies program at Boston University; and she received Advanced Certification from WSET (Wine and Spirits Education Trust).

Cathy received a master’s degree from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard in 2004 and a second master’s degree in Journalism in 2010, also from Harvard. Before that, she received a master’s degree in comparative literature from the City University of New York in 1998 and a bachelor’s degree from Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania in 1995. She is also a trained mediator, and worked for two years at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School on a project in the Middle East.

In April 2008 she founded the Harvard Alumni in Wine and Food special interest group, which provides educational and networking services to the Harvard alumni and current students. She has also served as the President of the Harvard Club of Georgia, and she has begun a term of service on the Board of Directors for the Harvard Alumni Association.

Her other non-profit involvement includes the Women's Solidarity Society at the new National Center for Civil & Human Rights (Atlanta), grant reviewer for the Food Well Alliance (an Atlanta-based organization that supports the local network of 350 urban farms and community gardens), Coach at GOTR (Girls on the Run) in Atlanta, Board Member at the Greening Youth Foundation (Atlanta), Board Member at The Food Project (Boston), and Mediator at the Neighborhood Justice Center (Las Vegas).

She lives in Atlanta with her husband, their twin boys, and their Bernese Mountain dog, Coco.

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