Episode 25
· 53:10
When I was reading another interview you gave, I did find it hilarious that you said Nabilah has resting bitch face. Why do you feel that way?
Nabilah Rawji:Nabilah is a hard wine, but it's also one of the most charming. Right? But it's not about being an aggressive or tough wine. It just it has some serious structure to it, and it's where it starts. So your first encounter with a sip of Nabilah is very much
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah.
Nabilah Rawji:But it's just a wine being entirely itself. And it's also some of the most charming and aromatically intriguing and wonderful wines that you can have. So it's just it's just resting bitch face. It's not mean. It's just doing its thing.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Nabilah, thank you so much for being here.
Nabilah Rawji:Thank you for having me.
Alex Abbott Boyd:So you originally trained as a field biologist?
Nabilah Rawji:I was in that stage between bachelor's and I was trying to get as much experience as I could before buckling down for a PhD. So, I didn't have any higher ed beyond that, but I had spent many a season as a field grunt.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Okay. Do you think that the scientific background gave you a unique way to approach and think about wine?
Nabilah Rawji:I think so. And I'm definitely not the only person from a life formerly in science that has fallen into wine. I feel like there's quite a few of us in that category. But it definitely is a thing that still draws me the biochemistry of what's happening in wine, a lot of stuff about what's happening in the vineyard, and all that stuff really draws my interest and attention. So, it tends to be the type of cause and effect questions that I ask when I'm in front of a winemaker or when agents are unfortunate enough to have extra time with me and I start asking the nerdy questions, this is where my brain goes.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Is there anything that's similar between being a scientist and especially maybe one getting out into the field and being a wine lover in a sommelier.
Nabilah Rawji:Yeah. Because it does sound like kind of a really bizarre transition, but wine actually encapsulates and working as a sommelier encapsulates a lot of the things I loved about working in the field. I knew early on that I would wanna pursue science as a young person, But I was working in a lab setting and I was much more focused on science activities that would keep me indoors. And then I very quickly learned that I didn't like that at all. I really needed to be outdoors.
Nabilah Rawji:And I loved being in nature and I wanted to pursue field biology for that reason. And I was looking at animal behavior and ecology projects, and that was the direction of what I had envisioned my doctoral thesis was going to be. But that means that you have to be really good physically and outdoors. You have to be good with a lot of physical labor and a bit of discomfort and loving to be outdoors. And you also have this vast theoretical knowledge base that you need to master in order to put it together.
Nabilah Rawji:But you really can't succeed in that domain if you only have one piece. And wine is similar in that way. You have the physical components of wine that you need to rely on your five senses and perceiving it in the glass, being able to translate that back and forth for a guest. But you also have this vast knowledge base in theory, you know, learning that has to back all of that, and you can't really be successful if you're only operating in one half of that sphere.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah.
Nabilah Rawji:So if for sure there's it's weird, but all the things I love about field biology, I'd say 80% of it, I have found in wine. And I think that's why it's been a career that I've been happy to commit to even though I was so invested in the science of it before. Everything about my life was built around this idea of completing a PhD and moving on to postdoc studies in ecology.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I think one of the things that I like about wine too is there's this mix of you get to satisfy your academic side, but then I'm also not sitting still. I'm driving all over the city, going into restaurants, meeting people, doing tastings. But this mix of both, if you wanna be outside and moving and if you wanna study too.
Nabilah Rawji:A 100%. And in some way, I thought that moving into wine would at least theoretically give me the option to travel as part of Newark, and that has been true. Maybe not as much outdoor time or traveling time as I maybe anticipated in my younger years, but things that I appreciate about wine every time I get the opportunity.
Alex Abbott Boyd:And if this PhD was such an important life goal, what was it about wine that made you give up on that?
Nabilah Rawji:It was the forced decision. I had my last field work experience in, I think, 2012. And both prior to that and then immediately after that experience, I used Toronto as kind of a a third home base. I would go home to California. I'd spend time with my family.
Nabilah Rawji:I would grab a field job somewhere off in the world and off I would go. And in between all of that, I would come home to Toronto where my grandmothers and all of my aunties and extended family were. And on one of those trips home here, my grandmother had a serious stroke. And so it fell on me to stay back and take care of her. And that's something that was like a defining experience of my mid and late 20s.
Nabilah Rawji:But it meant that I needed to find work in the city. So, I did a whole bunch of different odd jobs and I'd done a ton of advocacy in university around women's rights and women's health. And so, I ended up working for an adult literacy learning center that was attached to a part of a nonprofit organization here in the city that operated emergency shelters, addiction treatment centers. And that was the work I saw myself moving into as a temporary. And then the need to stay put kept expanding and expanding.
Nabilah Rawji:And eventually, my grandmother got to a place where I felt I could try moving back into biology and try again. And so that's when I went off this last time. And when I returned, she wasn't in such a good state. So I kind of came back to the exact same work, went back to work for the exact same organization. But these nonprofits move and live at the mercy of a lot of public funding and granting.
Nabilah Rawji:And if you are the last person in the door, you are the first person out when funding disappears. And that was just the unfortunate case for myself. And I was sitting home unemployed, and I watched the Somme documentary on Netflix. And I had some awareness of wine in the background. I enjoyed it.
Nabilah Rawji:I rushed to take my wine tasting classes when I could in university as soon as I turned 21. But it was something that was in the background that I was like, oh, when I want to be, like, functionally retired in my sixties, maybe I'll go figure how to make wine because I was gonna go home to California. I had this everything in the background of wine exists. I know about it. I've been to vineyards, but that's a thing for much later.
Nabilah Rawji:And it had never occurred to me what other career paths exist within wine and watching that documentary made me realize that it kind of had some of the pieces I really liked about science and it had an active job. Super nerdy. Let's be honest, I think all of us are some brand of neuro spicy. So, yeah, then I was like, I'm gonna just try this. I was like, Toronto is a thriving restaurant city.
Nabilah Rawji:I'm stuck in a big city. What do I do?
Alex Abbott Boyd:No. First off, I just think it's so commendable that you were willing to step in for a family member in need and give something up. That's not everyone would do that.
Nabilah Rawji:I think that's just without I think that's without question. And I think that maybe is a cultural background thing. You've married into a South Asian family as well. It just you take all the good and the difficult with it. Those things come together, and it's part of being a family and a community.
Nabilah Rawji:And, yeah, for sure, hard and defines the sacrifice of that and the difficult pieces of that define my twenties, but also the love and the care that I could give to my grandmother that I had received back in earlier stages of my life. And it was very meaningful for me to be able to offer her that care and to be with her in her last years. We were very close.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. Well, it's nothing more important. Right? Yeah. So you saw the Saw movie, though?
Nabilah Rawji:I did.
Alex Abbott Boyd:How did you go from watching that movie to entering the industry and beginning your your formal studies?
Nabilah Rawji:So, I'm trying to remember how much time elapsed between me watching that and actually signing up for my intro. But I think I had made the decision pretty quickly. And at least in that movie, it is so much covering this specific journey through one certification body. So I found that I looked at that. I looked at WCET.
Nabilah Rawji:I'd found CAPS at the time. And the only thing that was financially feasible for me, especially since this was gonna be completely new endeavor, I have no idea if I like this or not. Right? It was like CMS intercourse two day crash course. And I knew that it might be throwing myself into the deep end because I've never worked in restaurants at this point, have no wine experience of any kind.
Nabilah Rawji:But it was like, if I throw myself in in two days and I'm like, this is great, then that's worth pursuing, and I will figure it out. So I did that. I still remember my course was, I think, down at the ACC, and it was Bruce, Jen, and John who taught it. And I was like, this is awesome. I was like, give me more.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Do you study beforehand?
Nabilah Rawji:Yeah. I remember getting ahold of the list of grapes that you were meant to know about and some of the basics of the country. And I used Wine Folly relentlessly. That was such a primary resource for me in the beginning. And I would taste, I'd have my now husband pull random bottles and glasses of wine for me, and I would make notes and just try to engage with it.
Nabilah Rawji:And I still have some of my early tasting notes, and it's so funny to go back and read them and see how I was coming to wine. And you're almost like you can see how you try too hard in the beginning and it's really forced. And then from there, I was like, okay, it has to be restaurants. I have never worked in one. I applied for dishwasher positions.
Nabilah Rawji:I applied for server, bus, or everything. I just hit the ground running, turning in resumes, talking to people. I think I cold messaged maybe 60 Psalms, people I could find working as sommeliers and wine people in Toronto on LinkedIn. Two of them replied and ended up being really helpful and instrumental. And one, just giving me some perspective of what to expect of the industry and being a woman to come into this industry.
Nabilah Rawji:And they helped me out. They were crucial in me getting first jobs. They became good friends and mentors. They're people I still keep in touch with and see now and then. Yeah.
Alex Abbott Boyd:It's an organized som who's on LinkedIn. Most times if I find a som's LinkedIn bio, it's five years out of date.
Nabilah Rawji:They probably were significantly out of date, but I was just like scattershot approach at this point and we'll see what sticks. And so I took my first for the first several years, I worked two to three jobs in restaurants at the same time. So my very first job was, I think, busing and running food at Mercado down on Bremner. And then shortly thereafter, at about the same time, I'd picked up as a floursome at Tarrone at Price Street, which that is a busy floor. Yeah.
Nabilah Rawji:It's busy.
Alex Abbott Boyd:That's actually a few blocks from my house. Yeah. And until recently, I was the only place in the neighborhood with good foods. Yeah. You get everyone.
Nabilah Rawji:I remember my first servicer being a Friday night and I had my corkscrew and I had my notes in my pocket and all the things I'd studied because that list is very specific, right? And the Somme who was helping train me was just like, here we go. And that was it. But I learned so much in a volume environment like that. I opened so many bottles of wine, got all my sales skills started out there.
Nabilah Rawji:I crash course hard into restaurants for the first few years.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Was it a bit of a shock? Like, when you watch Psalm and you see these guys studying and tasting and having fun together, you don't really just see the grind of showing up every day in a restaurant in that movie. Was it what you had expected?
Nabilah Rawji:I have only ever worked very physical manual labor jobs my entire adult life. And so that piece of it, the hard stuff, was just not hard. It's objectively a little bit hard. You always feel the tiredness. You feel the endurance that's needed to be on your feet in that way and constantly on.
Nabilah Rawji:But I had just come back from the Amazon and I would work twelve hour days hiking through, like, the heat and the bugs and all the things. And it's like being on my feet for long hours was just normal.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Okay. Yeah. Toroni service, nothing compared to hiking through
Nabilah Rawji:the Amazon. Not even that. Is a brief moment where in one of the odd jobs I had here in Toronto, I worked for a very high volume surgical veterinary clinic in Scarborough. And I used to pull thirteen hour shifts there, scooping shit and cleaning cages and dealing with people who are not having a great day because their pet is at the vet and they now need to spend money they don't have. Like, I would say that's actually the hardest job I have ever had.
Nabilah Rawji:So, yeah, the restaurant life. If someone had told me when I was 22 that I could make more money in restaurants than I was making as a poop scooper in a vet clinic, working days like that, what was I doing?
Alex Abbott Boyd:So how did the studies go? Because you you Yeah.
Nabilah Rawji:I came up pretty fast.
Alex Abbott Boyd:The intro and then, yeah, with it, it was 2019 you passed advance.
Nabilah Rawji:Yes. So my journey from intro to certified was pretty quick. I always tell people from zero to certified was about eighteen months. And I passed through advanced everything on my first go. So, of it was that.
Nabilah Rawji:But between certified and advanced was this phase where CMS had a real backlog of candidates. So I actually was in a holding pattern for several years where I couldn't get a seat at advanced. That whole from 2018 to 2020 is this weird smush of things that happened in that two year span that I don't exactly remember in which order of operations. But me and my partner got married. I'd switched jobs.
Nabilah Rawji:I'd passed my advanced. We traveled, and then all of a sudden, the world was locked down.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. A lot happened.
Nabilah Rawji:So, yeah, pretty quick. I definitely credit the a really good study group. I have two women that I studied with, Carolyn Balig and Rachel Pickard, who are my other brains forever. But we met every Sunday for years to prep for advanced. And I was so thrilled to be able to go to Advanced with Carolyn.
Nabilah Rawji:And we both passed on that trip. Was just highlight of my life. Lives in a top 10 moment for me.
Alex Abbott Boyd:That's awesome. What did one of those study days look like?
Nabilah Rawji:Our Sundays were often we would each bring a quiz. So we would have gone out, covered the set material we decided on for the week. We would come together, do all of our quizzes together, and then go over that material, and then we would taste. And we were usually tasting anywhere between three to six wines in a day. So it's the bulk of a Sunday for us.
Nabilah Rawji:But outside of that, actually studying for advance, like the big theoretical stuff you need to clear, that was squeezed into every moment I could find. And it never felt like enough. And it never does. Right? You always feel stretched and at the edge of your abilities, and you feel like you're failing the whole way.
Nabilah Rawji:But you well, then when you get to a point, you're like, oh, actually, I really learned a lot there. Yeah. But it's not comfortable. No. No.
Nabilah Rawji:I was like, if anyone's describing a very comfortable experience while they're studying for a big exam, I don't even care what domain you mean in, then something's a little bit off.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Probably you're overconfident. Yeah. Do you think the academic background was helpful in the theory study?
Nabilah Rawji:I had a I definitely had an academic bent. I was good in school, but I wasn't a good test taker. I'm great if you give me a project. If you want to give me something that's bound and you want me to prove it all for you and show you this is how I'm doing it and this is why I'm justified the whole thing, then that's great. I do really well in those kind of academic tests.
Nabilah Rawji:But if you're talking about a multiple choice and a short fill in test, especially multiple choice, bane of my existence. Because you always get two answers that are clearly wrong. And then you are like left with b and c. And you're like, depending on which way I stretch the logic of your question, one of these fits better than the other, but there's no true answer here. I had to learn a lot about myself.
Nabilah Rawji:And I had to try a whole bunch of different ways of studying in order to be effective at that theory exam.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Switching gears just a little bit to Restaurant Lucy, where is currently how you spend some of your time. What's your title?
Nabilah Rawji:Just sommelier. I am the only wine person in the building, that's what I am.
Alex Abbott Boyd:The restaurant recently just went through a big refresh, new chef, tweaked the concept. So for anyone who's maybe not been to the new Lucy, could you share a little bit about what it's all about now?
Nabilah Rawji:Yeah. You know what? It's not exactly a massive refresh so much as it is an expansion of the ways in which you can come in and enjoy the restaurant and the concept and the food. For sure, there is a different bent to the food since it is a different chef. And I love fine dining.
Nabilah Rawji:I love the tasting menu concept, but it's kinda narrow. Right? We're all food and wine people. And how often do you go out for a tasting menu? Probably a few times a year.
Nabilah Rawji:Yeah. It's kinda tough. Right? So it is a move back to a la carte. It is still has a tasting menu concept that is we call it the carte blanche.
Nabilah Rawji:It's blind. There's really great bar food program being built out in ways that you can come and have a lovely cinque cassette with raw bar and great caviar service for ridiculously reasonable. We're just creating new opportunities and new ways you can come in and enjoy the restaurant without taking away the things that were wonderful and that everybody enjoyed about it before. So, I have seen now at this point, we're a couple months in, we've cleared a summerlicious. So, I have seen every variety of guests and the folks who have come to us in the past under the previous chef's cooking and the previous regimen are still loving everything that they come and experience or having a great time.
Nabilah Rawji:And people who felt like they couldn't come before because it was just they wanna choose for themselves or the price was a bit of a barrier to come in just for a tasting menu, they get to come in and have a great time. And we have folks who are starting to return to office in those towers. So I think as people return more so in fall, they'll see that you can come and hang out here. It's not a place that's only for a special occasion.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Has the wine program shifted much?
Nabilah Rawji:Yeah, for sure. They've experienced a lot of changes over the last few years in terms of the way that the wine program has been built out. And the challenge for me in the process right now is fusing together two fairly different identities and building something that's cohesive and has this full spectrum. Like, I have depth and interest in terms of the special occasion wines and if you want to come out and have a baller evening. But I'm also working hard to provide things that are at the other end of the spectrum that are just delicious, and you don't have to worry about it.
Nabilah Rawji:You don't have to think about it, and that you can be like, yeah. I'm gonna come downstairs from my office and have a tartare and a glass of wine.
Alex Abbott Boyd:This is the tasting menu. Was it mostly wine pairings?
Nabilah Rawji:Did tons of pairings. I would say, actually, the only place I've ever been where more volume in my wine sales was going through pairings than anything else. And now there's, I think, a healthier balance between the segments of wine that sell through the restaurant. We also do offer corkage. And so we have a number of guests who come and they will bring a bottle, buy a bottle, bring something special from their cellar that's red and they're joining friends for a fancy dinner.
Nabilah Rawji:And then they'll start with us with and cocktails and a light white wine or what have you. So I'm happier to see that kind of balance across segments instead of only one sort of version of the seller being hit. Yeah.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. Is it it's gotta be hard to have wines that are gonna go good with people doing the carte blanche tasting menu, a la carte, and then just showing up for some caviar and oysters.
Nabilah Rawji:I actually don't find that to be an issue at all in that, like, one, we have great local options. And so I'm trying to build out and offer more and more local wines. And we do so many different wine styles locally that I'm able to find really reasonably priced delicious wines that fit most of the things we're doing. And I would say that the seller is already relatively well balanced between sort of white reds and classics. So for me, I'm finding all of the fun wines from France.
Nabilah Rawji:I am sticking explicitly to French wines and then local because I think there's great value wines and interesting stories and cool terroirs that are way outside of the classics like Bordeaux and Burgundy.
Alex Abbott Boyd:And so
Nabilah Rawji:while I have those things, it's like, come and enjoy all the other stuff.
Alex Abbott Boyd:What are you enjoying pouring now?
Nabilah Rawji:I am pouring a delicious sparkling wine from Q that I am obsessed with. I love it. It's one of their Blanc de Blancs. They have been a favorite sparkling house of mine for a long time, and I'm glad to see that through the transition to Arterra, the quality has really stuck so far. And then I have some of the beautiful Montemps on Serre that I have just a few bottles left of, but it's one of my favorites.
Nabilah Rawji:And when you get those guests who are like, you just vibe with and you have a great conversation, you're like, I have something really special for you. You know what I mean? So, yeah, I have know I there's a few different things.
Alex Abbott Boyd:That's the kind of wine that when I've done CMS events, they'll pour, but not all of it. And then you see the master sommes at the end with those bottles at the back just enjoying the rest of them.
Nabilah Rawji:100%. And I'm not even a huge Sauvignon Blanc fan, but, like, that wine, that particular crew is just so lovely.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. How do you find people responding to you pouring Canadian wine?
Nabilah Rawji:Generally great. It's been a while since I've been on the Fleur Rate. Comparing it to my last experience where it literally broke people's brains for me to pour them Canadian wines. People now are very open. And I think maybe based on where we are location wise, we do catch a decent number of tourists who are, like, explicitly want to try local wines.
Nabilah Rawji:So for me, I think it's great. I don't have the pushback from guests that I did the last time I was on the floor.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Okay. Yeah. It's tough. I hear mixed things about this, but I can even an experience I had last week, someone a song was asking me, do you have any chardonnay? I'm like, I have this.
Alex Abbott Boyd:She's like, no, I need something more California like. Oh, I have this great Niagara wine, a little New Oak. It's a little riper. It's so good. Crickets.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Just, I don't want to talk.
Nabilah Rawji:That's tough.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Niagara, I can't talk about.
Nabilah Rawji:Yeah. I guess it depends on the venue you're at. I can see it and maybe some of depending who your clientele is. I I have before poured someone a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and a Ontario Sauvignon Blanc side by side blind because I had poured two at the time by the glass. And the guests liked the Ontario one better.
Nabilah Rawji:And when I let her know that was the Ontario one, showed her the bottles, she just could could not compute, and then she's still stuck with her New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. So this is one of those things that I wanna see Ontario wines champion more, but it is not something that sits solely with psalms or with guests. This is this little dancing act that has to happen to kind of move us forward because I'd be irresponsible to keep bringing something in if my guests are not asking for it, not wanting it. You know, I give the people what they want. But at the same time, I see a lot of criticism of soms who are not buying more Ontario wines or not championing them more.
Nabilah Rawji:It's like the demand also has to come. If you like Ontario wines, when you see it on a list, let the somm know that. Let the people in the restaurant know that you are so happy to see local wines. Because otherwise yeah. Like you said, it's crickets.
Nabilah Rawji:You're not sure what to respond to.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. At Lucy, you're on the floor but not full time.
Nabilah Rawji:Yes. I have this amazing, for me, arrangement with them that I am on the floor two nights a week, sometimes three. And I am in and out of the building as needed otherwise in order to run the wine program. And wherever I have the ability to give them extra days, I certainly do. The GM who joined since the changeover is from Aubert Che Poumier, really lovely gentleman named Fred who is quite capable as well.
Nabilah Rawji:So it doesn't matter what day of the week you come into Lucy. There's gonna be someone there who can really help you out with wine. And I have a couple of folks on staff who've taken more of an interest and are happy to keep learning a lot about wine. So I'm really happy and excited for what the future of wine looks like at that restaurant.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Okay. Like me, you are someone who's a parent and working in hospitality. Was it hard to negotiate with Lucy? Was it hard to find that kind of arrangement?
Nabilah Rawji:Yeah. For sure. And actually, with Lucy, it wasn't hard to arrange that at all. Like, I I went in and spoke with the team and with Yanik and I'm very upfront. Like, I know that the circumstances of being a parent who has a limited number of evenings that they can give you, that's a really particular arrangement.
Nabilah Rawji:It's tough. And I completely understand when and where that doesn't work for a restaurant. Of course. Right? So I was like, really hedging.
Nabilah Rawji:Was like, this doesn't work. That's okay. Please just be upfront with me. I'm happy to be upfront with you. This is how I can work with this.
Nabilah Rawji:And they were like, no, this is cool. Let's do this. It's like I greatly appreciate the vote of faith that I'm was worth having around that it made sense for them to work with my schedule and my needs. I'd like to think that I'm bringing value despite I only have a little bit of time to give on the floor.
Alex Abbott Boyd:What days are you?
Nabilah Rawji:Usually Friday, Saturday. So that's been pretty much it since December. So I'll hit the core nights. If we have a big event or a wine dinner, things like that, then I'll also come in where I can. But I try really hard not to do more than three evenings away from my kid.
Nabilah Rawji:Like, I can see the difference in them when I kind of cross that threshold and it's hard on my partner. Like, you do a similar balance. Like, single parenting in the evening is just tough, especially if you've worked a full day by yourself.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I guess what advice would you have to any other parents, especially mothers, to try to make it work in hospitality?
Nabilah Rawji:I think that keep getting out there to build your relationships and just network because I found that the longer that I stayed out because I didn't have an explicit reason to be out at a tasting or engaging with someone or going to talk to someone because I saw a job posting. You mean, like, the more I made the choice to stay out because I didn't see the obvious way in or I knew that what they were exactly asking for wasn't something I could match, just meant I started to fall further and further out of the active wine industry in Toronto. The more my network staled out, the more difficult it was to see how I could get back into it. Because it's like that time away you're like especially when my daughter was young, was like, who's taking care of her? Can I ask my husband to take time away from his, like, crazy busy schedule, or can I pay someone to be with her so I can go to the thing, but it's not directly bringing me money?
Nabilah Rawji:It's the the keeping your skills fresh and being out there and maintaining your relationships is valuable because when things do get easier and when you do feel that you can come back to work in a more significant way, that's the piece that you need ready. Yeah. And without it, it's really tough. I had applied for and went on the CMS Women's Symposium mentorship trip when Isla was, I think, eighteen months closer to two. And that was a sea change for me because just by coinkering, it happened that most of us on the trip were moms with kids between a few months old and maybe seven or eight.
Nabilah Rawji:And so, hearing from other moms that the things that I was experiencing were exactly the same. Like this was not some unique set of challenges that I was stuck with made me feel more okay about the whole thing. But be creative, be okay with moving off of your direct skill set, Reach out to other moms and other women with kids who are working in the industry because if we can make a connection, if we can there's an introduction to be had, if there's any advice to be given in that moment that's tough or just the witnessing of I hear you and I see you, It's really important to have that kind of broad networking community because I don't know how the hell you do it otherwise.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Community is key. And I feel like the It Takes a Village is not only literally the raising of the kids, but it's like this to support the parents through the process too.
Nabilah Rawji:Yeah. Parenting is the trenches, man.
Alex Abbott Boyd:But also the best thing ever.
Nabilah Rawji:A 100%. I am so I'm so glad for the decision that we made to have a child. I absolutely adore my kid. They are the most wonderful, quirky, little weird person ever. It's great.
Nabilah Rawji:But, yeah, it's also in the fucking trenches. Yeah.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I mean, on that point, I there was a a hangout slash networking in the park and you brought your daughter Yeah. Two weeks ago. Right?
Nabilah Rawji:So you I brought her to that two two times, maybe three even. Okay. And the first time she was young. That oh, that's actually the other thing. Please just bring your kid to these things.
Nabilah Rawji:And if you or any other wine people who are seeing a mom bring their kid to this event to the whatever, be like you're awesome and don't glare at them. Don't be a jerk. Because working moms, it means having kids around sometimes. I brought my when I some of the odd jobs I took when I first started, I did a little bit of writing for Jamie Drummond, and I took Isla to a tasting on my back. She was like maybe 12 13.
Nabilah Rawji:And I packed her up and off we went to one of Thomas Batchelder's Tastings. And it was great. It was fine.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Oh, you inspired me. I think last year I didn't make it to that hangout in the park because I was on childcare duty. I'm like,
Nabilah Rawji:Now bring this.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I think it could have been yes and. There's a
Nabilah Rawji:playground right there. Was like, the first time I brought Isla, of same thing. I had to kind of go back and forth and socialize a little bit when ran around the playground with her. It was great. And she has great memories of it too because after that, my husband came and met us at the top of the park.
Nabilah Rawji:We went over and had some Korean barbecue afterwards. And she's she remembers that evening. She had a great time.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. I thought that was awesome.
Nabilah Rawji:Cool. Thanks.
Alex Abbott Boyd:How do you then fill out the rest of your time?
Nabilah Rawji:So I have my hands in a few different buckets, and I'm doing a few different things at the time. Education has been a significant component of the work I've done over the last few years, having taught with Bruce, teaching the CAPS program. That program has been on hiatus in this past year, will start again in September. So education is one piece of it. I've put together a seller management company and a wine consulting company.
Nabilah Rawji:So I have been building out that part of my business for the last two years. And I would say I do about an even amount of private tasting, corporate tastings, that kind of thing, as well as seller work for private clients. And I am happy to keep expanding my three domains relatively easily evenly. I have a few things that I'm working on that will launch in September. I have the CAPS program that will start back up in September.
Nabilah Rawji:So, yeah, education, seller work, and restaurant life.
Alex Abbott Boyd:How does the CAPS program differ from say what Bruce offers at Sommelier Factory?
Nabilah Rawji:Part of it is the length and the number of contact hours. Bruce, of course, was education director, so we worked closely together on both those pieces in the programs. CAPS is almost a full year program. You're actively in lectures once a week, six and a half hours every Monday from September through about June is where the program suspends. And then you end up with about a six week window where it's on you to review self study.
Nabilah Rawji:And then you come back in August for your certification exam. Bruce's certified courses are eighteen weeks. They're shorter lectures. It's very much like for folks who are really comfortable self studying, that's an amazing route to go. For folks who want more structure and who really need classroom time, who want to have a really constant ongoing availability and access to an instructor, CAPS is really fantastic.
Alex Abbott Boyd:What was it like launching your own business and figuring that out, landing your first customers?
Nabilah Rawji:Falling into it, being dragged into it, like it happening as I'm going because I was just taking these things off the side of my desk and just kind of ad hoc. And I was like, come on. I like this. I need to work for myself. I want to have more control over my schedule.
Nabilah Rawji:And if I'm struggling, like, on the struggle bus so much, it needs to be for myself. So I put it together pretty late after being like, I think I've got a collection of things I can do now. I still am, like, almost uncomfortable holding the title and the role of, like, I'm an entrepreneur. This is a thing I've done. But that's just impostor syndrome, I think.
Alex Abbott Boyd:100%. Yeah. No. You've started a business, and you have multiple income streams coming in.
Nabilah Rawji:Yeah. That is the fancy way. I should feel so I'm such a boss.
Alex Abbott Boyd:So what are some of your favorite things that you do with your own business?
Nabilah Rawji:I have this one client who came to me early. They've been with me for pretty much the last two years, maybe going closer to two and a half. And I do once a month tasting with them and their clients, and I love it. They're the greatest people. They are just interested in having great wine stories and people stories in front of them.
Nabilah Rawji:And so I get to pour them the coolest stuff. And we get to talk about all of the wonderful things happen like against the backdrop of wine and viticulture, but that almost have absolutely nothing to do with it. Right? Because wine is wine. It's just fun.
Nabilah Rawji:It's not rocket science, but at the same time, it binds people together and there's culture that's developed so infused with it. There's farming and people's lives happen across this multigenerational span of wine and vineyards. And there's some great stories and it's very human. You can talk about a bunch of different themes that are highly relatable and you can show people super cool places. And this is a company that gets to travel as part of their work.
Nabilah Rawji:So a few times it's just been like, hey, here's a few places that are gonna be nearby where you are for work.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Sounds so fun.
Nabilah Rawji:Yeah. I absolutely adore that. They're it's great. Like, how lucky.
Alex Abbott Boyd:What was it like deciding what to charge for that?
Nabilah Rawji:And I think I'm still figuring that out. I have figured out what I think is the best way to present the numbers in a way that people can understand. And I am literally the worst at doing work for free. I have a great difficulty and unease with asking for money. So still figuring it out, but I have a solid price structure around what I do offer.
Nabilah Rawji:And sometimes they sit there and I will call a friend and be like, please tell me to hit send on this invoice because I feel uncomfortable. And then my friend will be like, No, here you go. Just press send. It's okay.
Alex Abbott Boyd:You have expertise, right? You gotta get paid for it.
Nabilah Rawji:I know, but this is the piece. Know, but impostor syndrome 100% objectively hold that because I feel like I've just spent this last ten plus years accruing all this information, but it's just been the norm, the order of my life. And it's not this thing that I'm uncomfortable with holding that expertise over someone. And so then when you get to a point you're like, yeah, but I need to put a number to it because now I'm just doing it for myself and this is it. It is something that took ten plus years to gather the experience and the skill set to do, but it's hard to look at it and and quantify it and feel comfortable with it.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Oh, a 100%. Although I would just say look up what a disgraced politician charges for their speaking engagement. Someone who was a bad politician and was kicked out, I bet they still charge 10 k to share.
Nabilah Rawji:Oh, I'm sure they do. I am sure that they do. And yeah. And I think that every once in a while I think because I'm still in the earlier stages of my business world, building up the client base is a really important thing. I can get requests that are sometimes unfeasibly low for me to accept the job, and I sometimes struggle with doing it.
Nabilah Rawji:And I have to remind myself that if I take that and I get another inquiry or I've got another client coming along, I have now made myself unable to actually make money or the number of hours that go into setting up for these private tastings and going to someone's location and all that stuff. Those are hours that I can't take other work. And so it helps me a little bit to reframe and calibrate around being comfortable asking for those things.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I did see that you're also one of the founders of Inequity. I'd love to hear just a little bit about the organization, what inspired you to found it, and how it's going.
Nabilah Rawji:We founded in 2020, in summer of twenty twenty. So it came on the heels of the murder of George Floyd and the sort of reckoning that unfurled in The US. And it started to spread into the wine industry in The US. And we were seeing people talk about some of the very salient issues around being a racialized person working in wine or broader, the bevalk industry. But it was crickets here.
Nabilah Rawji:No one was talking about it. And I looked at it, I'd reached out to a couple of peers and friends working in wine. And I was like, Hey, can we just talk about this? And at the time I just had this small vision of it. I was like, We know a lot of people between the three of us.
Nabilah Rawji:Maybe we can get some agents and some wineries to cobble together some funds, and we can put this towards a small scholarship or something to help folks in Toronto wine or in Ontario to access the education they need or whatever materials. Because training and wine, doing wine education is really expensive. And then it spun into a greater conversation about if we're gonna do this, we should do it properly. And so there we are, federally registered nonprofit for VanEquity, and we started out with a pillar of a database to highlight the already talented professionals working in around wine who are BIPOC and to do scholarship and mentorship. And it's evolved over the years, and we've really just pared back partly out of capacity to focus entirely on scholarship and on highlighting the folks who are working.
Nabilah Rawji:So our database of BIPOC pros and wine continues to grow. It's a place that when employers reach out or like, hey, we have this posting. We're like, here's a 150 wonderfully qualified people that you can reach out to who have the skills that you're looking for. So it's a great way also for people to find each other. Part of it was like some of the women that I met in that context of that summer was like, you've been working in wine.
Nabilah Rawji:I've been working wine. How have we never run into each other? Yeah. You know what I mean? It was like, you feel isolated.
Nabilah Rawji:So it was like, we need to find a way to bring us together and have community and be able to support each other. And now rolling into our fifth year, we're, like, frankly, in a place of struggle. We have seven original cofounders plus three more lovely board members who joined us last year. And racism is solved. Right?
Nabilah Rawji:So it's not the hot topic. It's not the thing that people wanna pay as much attention to. We are seeing a broader scaling back and paring back of the resources dedicated to DEI work. We're seeing corporations and companies decide that that they can't touch this anymore and that there's no pressure
Alex Abbott Boyd:for the consumer. Yes. Trump that, like, it's everything is getting rolled back in The US, but people are using it as an excuse.
Nabilah Rawji:Like I think you just see it as a quieting down of, like, it's not such a big deal anymore. And, like, there's a lot of you. And like to be clear, I can see the visible changes in our industry since I started. I would often walk into a room at a trade event and be the only person of color and or the only woman of color in the room. So I absolutely see the difference now.
Nabilah Rawji:I like to think that the NECU has been part of that sea change, but it's not the easiest thing to get folks to continue to put funds towards this issue. But it is not something that is like a one time fix or a fix and solve and it's done. But we've seen people come into scholarship and mentorship who have moved through multiple stages of their career as beneficiaries, getting resources from VINEquity. And that's amazing. We have people who came in who were like mentees that now have their own businesses, thriving private tasting and corporate education businesses, and people who have come in as servers and moved on to floursome roles and then to wine buying roles and getting to take more leadership within restaurants.
Nabilah Rawji:This is how like, it's great to want change and be like, your ad diversity is great, but you need material resources to make that happen.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah.
Nabilah Rawji:So actually, we have our AGM tomorrow. So we're meeting as a group to plan and strategize for the next year. But this is frankly like a do or die year for us. So if anybody who's watching has benefited from Vinequity or appreciates the work that we do, which is entirely volunteer based, by the way, even if it's 15 or $20, man, we'd appreciate it. And we keep over 95% of what we bring in donations going directly back out to community members in the form of scholarship primarily.
Nabilah Rawji:So it's directly going to training the professionals that you work with and are you going to hire.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. I think the audience is mostly hospitality folks and other agencies.
Nabilah Rawji:So yeah. And if if there's ever questions about the work that we do or how things get spent or any of that stuff, all of us are relatively visible and available. And info at vinequity.ca is a monitored inbox, Especially right now, have a summer student, so it's like we're extra on top of it. But reach out. We're delighted to find different ways to partner with people, but we don't want this to fade off after this year.
Nabilah Rawji:That's the risk that we're at.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I hope everyone listening donates. Just to make it super explicit, the scholarships, those could be used for CMS. Could be used for WCET, CAPS courses.
Nabilah Rawji:So two of the things that we feel extremely strongly about when it came to building up the way our scholarship work is one, it has to be a really straightforward single application process because there's this whole feature of the nonprofit charity world that really sucks the time off of people who are already time strapped and to do so many different versions of applications. So, it's one application that you can do. You as an applicant can define the dollar amount that you need and for what activity. There are drop downs in the application that are like suggestions. And if you don't see what you're looking for there, that's okay.
Nabilah Rawji:You can still be like, no, I want I need one k towards this very specific wine scholar guild topical program. Or I found this online MBA wine business management certificate that I'd like to do and its correspondence and it's three ks. So, we award in amounts from two fifty up through 5,000. This year, our scholarship run is a little bit smaller. The applications have already closed.
Nabilah Rawji:The team is already working on combing through the applications that came in and figuring out who's going to receive those this year. But the fact that it is a smaller scholarship this year because we needed to keep the lights on and this is what we could expend. I hope next year we're back up to doing a 25 k scholarship round.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. The wine certifications, even just doing doing the advanced course was I forget, could have been close to $2. But then you factor in the hotel and the flights down there and going out to restaurants and it gets expensive quickly.
Nabilah Rawji:It absolutely does. Yeah. Yeah. So any bit of help that we can give to people, all for it.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Awesome. When I was reading another interview you gave, I did find it hilarious that you said Nabilah has resting bitch face.
Nabilah Rawji:Yeah. I remember that one. I think that was like Youngblood Psalms or something with Jamie.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Why do you feel that way?
Nabilah Rawji:Because it's Nabilah is a hard wine, but it's also one of the most charming. Right? But it's not about being an aggressive or tough wine. It just It has some serious structure to it and it's where it starts. So, your first encounter with a sip of Nabilah is very much, but it's just a wine being entirely itself.
Nabilah Rawji:And it's also some of the most charming and aromatically intriguing and wonderful wines that you can have. So, it's just resting bitch face. It's not it's not mean. It's just doing its thing. No.
Nabilah Rawji:There's something about that I I really appreciate. It's definitely my favorite grape. So yeah.
Alex Abbott Boyd:What is your favorite expression? Barolo, Barbaresco?
Nabilah Rawji:No. Alto Piemonte. I love the wines of Lisona and Bramatera, in particular Lisona. I had visited there
Alex Abbott Boyd:Who have you visited there? Because I import I used to import Massimo Clarico.
Nabilah Rawji:Okay. So funny enough, I had visited him. So I it was, I think, 2018 when I went. And I had tacked it on to a few days ahead of a trip that I was joining with Serge and his crew that was mostly going to be in Tuscany. And so I had gone north first into, and I didn't even stop in Alba.
Nabilah Rawji:Was just a straight drive from the airport out to Lassona. I had made an appointment with Marco Rizzetti of to Notesala. And I get there and he had everything open for me. He opened me everything he possibly makes and was so incredibly generous of his time, took me out to the vineyards. And then as we're driving back into town, he's gonna drop me off where I parked the car and he's, what are you doing for dinner?
Nabilah Rawji:And I was like, I have no idea. I'm gonna go figure it out. And he's like, you're coming to dinner. And he was meeting with some friends who were other winemakers who were relatives, and I joined them for dinner. And then he's like, you have other things planned?
Nabilah Rawji:And I was like, I'm just gonna figure it out. And he's just handled it me. Passed me around to his cousin who makes wine, to his friend who makes wine. We visited another Barolo maker in a nearby village and tasted through their wines. And it was just this wild and crazy wonderful experience.
Nabilah Rawji:And I remember arriving, it was probably early spring, and everything was in bloom. And there's these flowers that climb the trees and everything just it was such a sensorial complete experience. And so, yeah, I tasted with Tannuta Sella. Massimo Clerico was one the friends he brought me to. He's got a really steep vineyard when you go and it's just a small kind of humble tasting room.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah.
Nabilah Rawji:And I remember that his wines were built in such a different way than Tannuta Sella's or anybody else. I would visit La Previstura, and they just they're burly and beastie and it's like you need to see them so many years on to see the potential. But that trip was really impressed by the entire experience and all the different wines and the variations I was experiencing.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. That sounds so wonderful. That's the best travel, right? When you have a little bit of a plan and then you're just free to discover and be introduced.
Nabilah Rawji:And I remember having another friend of his that he was introducing me to who made wine. They were keeping the wines out of their home in the basement. We barrel tasted. And he had such a great Nebula Rose that I immediately went home and tried to figure out who has this. I don't think anybody in Ontario does, but I found it in Sacramento.
Nabilah Rawji:So on one of my trips home with my parents, I was trying to get that wine there. Couldn't make it happen. Store was out. But it just the wine stuck with me that much. And I still have a rock on my desk that's one Lasona, one Bromatera, and they're like my little side by side rocks above my my study nook.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I love that. Our our library is full random rocks that I brought back from all over the world.
Nabilah Rawji:Yeah. I'm like, we're kind of squirrels, aren't we?
Alex Abbott Boyd:Oh, definitely a little bit. And it makes me so sad because the Lisona wines are so beautiful, but I just I don't think I'm gonna order Massimo's wines again. I brought them in two or three times. It's just because right now they're in this $60 to $90 range. And I would rather drink them over Barolo almost any day because there's just more lightness, freshness, and elegance versus power and structure.
Alex Abbott Boyd:But they're priced high enough some are just like, people want Nebbiolo, they're gonna be disappointed if they mostly used to suffer from long And this is not a cheap wine. What am I gonna do with it?
Nabilah Rawji:No. It is like, I adore the wines, and I've had a really hard time ever buying them in for any program that I was in charge of for exactly those reasons. I think the only place that moves a meaningful quantity of Alto Piemonte wines is Chironi because they've made that part of their that is part of their ethos. And I love it. If I want Alto Piemonte wines, that is exactly where I'm going.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Okay. That's a good tip. I mostly just get the French Accorta there.
Nabilah Rawji:Contati Castaldi is delightful. But, yes, I have a lot of respect for the program that they've built, and I think that they've really done a lot to introduce the Toronto audience to Franticarta, to carve out space for the Alto Piemonte category. Like, it's good stuff. Right? That's not easy to pull off as we're seeing otherwise.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. Are there any other trips that you've been on that were similarly magical or filled with discovery?
Nabilah Rawji:The one I just went on, I was just in Crete a couple of weeks ago with a great little crew of women in wine. I was with Renee Sverazza. I was with Beverly Crandon and Marlena Perone. And the four of us just had a magical trip through Crete. And part of it was I had no idea what to expect exactly.
Nabilah Rawji:I knew it was gonna be amazing because island and the med, but it produces a relatively small amount of wine. It's not one of my core classic regions that I have yet to be able to visit, and there are many of those. If I were traveling for myself, it wouldn't have been high near the priority list. And my partner hates the heat. The idea of dragging him to an island in the med with very little shade in the summertime, that is not happening.
Nabilah Rawji:So there we went, and they left enough open space in our schedule for there to be just discovery. And we did a whole bunch of tasting and just being able to spend time on the island seeing it and experiencing it really cemented so much about what I understand about the terroir dynamics and the winds and everything happening in that part of the Mediterranean, and it was that was magical to experience. Sunrise every morning, we would swim in the seas and to be standing in the ocean. And you know that the winds have some dynamic here with the ocean. And they even just looking at Greek mythology would talk about it as confused seas or fickle gods of the ocean.
Nabilah Rawji:And you're standing put and you can feel underneath you the water, cold water and hot water and cold water and hot water hitting you. And you're just standing in one place. You can really intimately feel how if you were living in this place so many hundreds of years ago, that you would come up with such a complex pantheon of mythology and creatures and gods who It control it is. Yeah. So, it just incredible in that way.
Nabilah Rawji:And then also the winds to Meltemi winds are such a defining feature of Greece when you're learning about the terroir and how things work there. But then you go to this island, lots of things are familiar. There's olives, there's lavender, there's rosemary, there's thyme, there's all this sort of oregano, all the herbs we otherwise use from French and Italian cooking as well. Everything's smaller because of the wind. Right?
Nabilah Rawji:In that context, they get tiny and the volatile oils increase. And so you have these incredibly potent and flavorful versions of a whole bunch of other familiar items you already know. And it just it's such a completely embodied understanding of what's happening and what terroir means in that space. And there was a diversity of grape varieties being done in quite a few different styles that I had no expectation to find. Yeah.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Have they moved back to their indigenous grapes? They're not trying to grow Chardonnay there, are they?
Nabilah Rawji:Yeah. There's a little bit of international varieties and some international plus native blends similar to the rest of Mainland Greece. But there's just a lot of other stuff happening. Being able to taste through a bunch of different examples being vinified in different ways with that, starting to understand how these grapes can behave, and that there is a lot of potential. They're responding to small changes, like geographically moving from one slope to another because the winds alternate to both sides of the island in very different patterns and they can be quite fierce.
Nabilah Rawji:The potential for small changes in distance to create magnified changes in the glass, that's it's exciting. Right?
Alex Abbott Boyd:That's a terrible stuff to get nerdy about. Usually goes a crash course in viticulture. All those intense aromatic oils, do they go from the rosemary and lavender and land on the grapes just Australia and eucalyptus? Like you can always tell if there's a eucalyptus tree in your
Nabilah Rawji:They can. I'm not sure. I would imagine that it's much the same and we describe the same phenomenon of a reg in Southern Rome wines. And I'd say that there's a similar imprint of herbaceousness in the wines, but I can't tell if that's just something specific about the variety or if it's the place. And think because so many of these are indigenous varieties that occur mostly almost exclusively there, though, you'll never know.
Nabilah Rawji:They are unto each other.
Alex Abbott Boyd:No. That sounds like a magical trip.
Nabilah Rawji:Also, give me time to float in the ocean. I'm the happiest ever. I'm like as happy as an otter.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I know. Yeah. I just a different island, but my family made it to Majorca a month or so ago and it was lovely being there.
Nabilah Rawji:Delightful. Did you explore some of the local gins?
Alex Abbott Boyd:No. I was I was mostly focused on the wine.
Nabilah Rawji:Okay. What? Primarily white, I'm assuming?
Alex Abbott Boyd:White and red. There was a grape Cayette that could almost describe it like Mallorquin Pinot because it was medium bodied, red fruited. It was still had some great freshness. The red fruit and the herbal complexity was all there. There were stunning ones.
Nabilah Rawji:Yeah. Amazing. Those are my favorite. Know what? Almost just going anywhere, point of it is just to be in a new place and without any expectations of seriousness around the wine leaves so much open room to discover.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. Yeah. Oh, a 100%. Is there any other favorite moments in wine that you like
Nabilah Rawji:to It's the people moments and they're ordinary and relatively frequent, but I love the way that wine brings people together. That's kind of cringe, but it is. Right? It's the great moments that you get to be a part of when guests are engaging with each other or it's the connections I get to make with soms who are working in completely different markets than me. And part of the one part of the best experiences of my career have all been around getting to meet soms, working in completely different markets than me and learning from each other, and also just getting to bond and commiserate over similar life experiences and choices.
Nabilah Rawji:If you work restaurants, you're committing yourself to a very specific path, and it takes you away from being able to socialize and interact with a lot of people in your life who work more normal nine to fives. And so it yields very particular experiences. And it's nice to be able to call up a som who's in a different market and be like, hey. What about this experience? Or what did you think?
Nabilah Rawji:Or what would you do in circumstance? I took a call with a friend in New York the other day and asked them for advice. It was just isn't that the best? You're not just here. You end up with this really global network of awesome people
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah.
Nabilah Rawji:Who know things that you don't know and yeah.
Alex Abbott Boyd:That's a beautiful way to describe it. I've often described wine as a connection, but I've said it connects you to the person who made it, the place it's from, and to who you're with at the moment. But you're also kinda adding another layer to it. It connects you with everyone who loves wine and is serious about wine. There's just even more connection in it.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah.
Nabilah Rawji:And, like, maybe that's just like, I let my nerd flag fly freely, so, like, maybe it's just that. But, like, it's fun to nerd out with people, and now I get to nerd out with people across a distance.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. Thank you so much My for your
Nabilah Rawji:pleasure. Thank you.
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