Ian Harris interviews Regine Lee

I first met you when you joined WSET in 2012 – what attracted you to the wine industry?

After university in California, I worked in management consulting for three years – then I started spending a little time in Napa and Sonoma on day trips with friends, and that sparked a real interest in wine…. and food!

I thought that it would be wonderful to work in a sector that I absolutely loved, was passionate about, and had people who were very passionate as well.

I moved to the UK in 2010 to be with the man who is now my husband, Adam. We had met when I was studying in London for a year, and it came to the point where one of us had to move, so I gladly moved to London. I applied for loads of jobs in consulting and also sent out my CV to many places in the wine industry. Eventually I got offers to join a couple of consulting firms, but only one company replied from the wine industry – Liberty Wines, who had a vacancy for a Customer Services role. I thought this was a big risk, but everyone's got to start somewhere so I went for - and got - that job at Liberty and never looked back.

A family friend gave me one piece of advice, and that was to take WSET courses, as it would demonstrate commitment and help to build my knowledge, and Liberty put me through WSET Level 3, which I passed!

The move to WSET came when I saw a job advertised as International Development Advisor in WSET’s Asia-Pacific team. I thought the role would be perfect for me because it used my Chinese heritage, I speak Mandarin, and I've got family in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan. So, the role combined a lot of my cultural backgrounds and my understanding of Chinese and Asian culture.

 

              

You were one of the founders Women in Wine – what was your motivation behind this?

We didn't have any grand plans. Sula Richardson (my friend and colleague at WSET) and I were chatting over a glass of wine - there was a burgeoning contingent of women who were career-focused, wanted to learn more, and to be connected to other women. So, it started off as a simple idea - we just wanted to get people together and the first event was just getting our friends together and having some wine in a restaurant and everyone was very positive. So, we thought: OK, we've got something here that could work, so let's do an event on innovation. It would be a panel discussion, and we just called or emailed people to be on the panel.

They didn't know us and had no reason to believe we had anything to offer. The first was Sunaina Sethi who was one of the founding members of JKS Restaurant Group. The second was Ruth Spivey, who started the ’wine car boot’ and the third was Lulie Halstead, who had founded Wine Intelligence.

So, we got three fantastic women for our first event, and it was clearly something which resonated with people because we just did some social media to advertise the tickets, created a web page, and we sold out - it just grew from there.

What drove you to take the big leap to tackle the Master of Wine qualification?

I finished my WSET Diploma in 2013 - I had a great experience and met people who have remained my friends. I learned so much about the tasting aspects but doing the MW programme was never in a grand plan.

I took a few years out before I did the MW - I wanted to do it because it would push me to learn more, but during the first seminar of the first year at the MW programme, you have a mock exam and I failed that mock exam – and really badly - with 33%, but it made me think: “OK, I've got some work to do”.

The key to success is not to take setbacks personally but just look at them as a way to be better, to learn a little bit more and change what you do. I think that adaptability is the most important aspect of passing the MW.

And of course, I think the MWs themselves that run the seminar don’t want anyone to fail - everyone's very constructive with their criticism and feedback - it is a classic master and apprentice relationship.

How did you balance your MW studies with the pressures of having a young family?

I was lucky in my timing as when I was pregnant with our first child, I was doing my 3rd year research paper.

After I had finished the programme, the intensity of new parenthood didn't hit at that time, but I saw fellow students on the programme with young children. Sometimes they would bring their partners and their babies to seminars, including Victoria Daskal with her husband and her newborn baby. A student turning up to an MW programme with their baby would not have happened 20 years before – it was very inspirational.

And I've seen it more recently in the wine industry, when Indigo had an Argentinian winemaker in the market, and I had arranged for him to meet a journalist for lunch. The journalist was running 30 minutes late, and when she arrived, everyone understood immediately why, as she was pushing a push chair.

During the meeting with our winemaker, she was tasting wine, and at one point was holding her baby, then feeding her baby, and eating her lunch, all the time listening to the winemaker - I found that very uplifting.

How are you finding your current role as Managing Director of Indigo Wines?

It was a hard decision, but I got amazing advice from you and other people who I consider as mentors.

I did face some challenges - there was a great group of people working there, and any scepticism that they had was not about working well with me, it was more like, ‘so, what's next now we've got a new MD here; what does that mean for us as a company?’

So, it wasn't about the team, but more about me trying to help immediately with what they were doing and being supportive rather than being antagonistic. The challenges were more that we were trying to transform a small company into a better, more efficient, better-run company and needed to put in the foundational building blocks of a sustainable company.

It started with revamping the credit control process, chasing up payments and keeping an eye on cash flow. We changed our ERP system to give us better management of finance, sales order processing and inventory. Day-to-day the business doesn't look different from an outside customer point of view, so it looked like were gliding on the surface, but underneath we were paddling like crazy. But two years in, the business has stabilised although other things have evolved with team changes in sales and marketing.

What will benefit Indigo is that we have a very differentiated portfolio providing a lot of interesting, unique wines, but when looking at what we do strategically going forward, do we stay very premium and stick with the premium side of the market or do we try to diversify into lower price wines just to get some diversification of our portfolio and diversification of our customer base – that’s the key question that we are asking!

You have just been appointed as a member of the Board of Trustees of WSET – what value do you feel you can add?

It does feel like going full circle to be part of the governing body having been a member of the WSET team!

I know how it works from the inside and, having been on the international team, I've seen it operate globally, and understand how the global footprint of WSET evolved under your tenure so I have had insight into the challenges and the opportunities WSET is facing. I know the way that WSET presents itself and how it operates in practice throughout the world. I think having worked at WSET gives me a huge appreciation of what it does, and I am looking forward to being a member of the Board of Trustees which is made up of such a diverse group of people with huge collective experience.

And although WSET is an educational charity, and a qualification awarding body, it's still a business.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years’ time?

I do love the wine industry, and I think that's why I never left. I love working with the people who are in this industry, and wine of course continues to fascinate me, and the industry is constantly changing and evolving.

I imagine I am going to be in the UK indefinitely and foresee myself hopefully continuing to be involved in many aspects of the wine industry, like supporting Women in Wine, London, being more involved at the Vintners Company (I am very proud to be a Freeman) and of course in my new role at WSET.

But from a career perspective, I see myself continuing to manage and leading a company to help navigate these very tricky waters. As an industry, we have to be very adaptable in this constantly changing world.