Aaron Watty, the man behind Big Tar Wines, can seem to contain multitudes. A bear of a man at well over six feet, he’s a waiter at bouchon, was a wine buyer at Wine Cask, served as assistant winemaker for Longoria Wines, and even once worked as a model. But all that doesn’t negate his dramatically failed first attempt to pass a UCSB communications course.
“The class in Campbell Hall was basically as big as my hometown,” said the Incline Village native. “So I had to do a speech — it was something easy like arguing for electric cars — but I was so nervous that I passed out and bounced my chin off the podium.” He came to, ran to the men’s room, and never returned.
The next quarter, hoping to expunge the grade, he convinced some friends to take the class with him. “Day one, the professor says there’s a speech everyone has to do, and it isn’t a huge deal, but last quarter someone passed out, and we haven’t seen him since, so we hope he’s okay,” explained Watty. “At that, my friends sitting with me pointed at me and said, ‘He’s right here!’” That quarter, he handled the speech fine and earned an A.