Brenna Quigley was in the midst of a “little quarter-life panic moment” while finishing her master’s thesis in geology at UCSB in 2015. The Minnesota-raised grad student was unsure of how to follow in the footsteps of her father and older brothers, who were already big names in the realm of rocks and natural resources. So she started working in the tasting room at Kunin Wines just for some extra cash, unknowingly stumbling into a world that craved her earth expertise.
“I met people who thought geology was cool,” said Quigley. “All of the sudden, there was this industry that was really hungry for knowledge. I couldn’t believe how passionate they were and how badly they wanted to understand details about all of these things.”
Hanging out with wine industry innovators, folks such as winemaker/sommelier Rajat Parr and importer Ted Vance, Quigley began traveling regularly to Europe and soon was consulting for vineyard owners in both France and California. But she wanted a broader audience, and she considered publishing a booklet in the vein of those Roadside Geology books that seemingly every American geologist collects. “I always wanted there to be some resource for the wine community, because driving through wine regions is how we spend so much of our time,” she said.