Meet John Thomas Hoty, V&O wine buyer

Meet John Thomas Hoty, our wine buyer. John started out as a bartender on the shores of St. Pete Beach, Florida, where he learned a great deal about mixology, customer service, and pairing drinks with food.  As that interest developed, he went to work as an account representative for Southern Wine & Spirits in Tampa where he sold both spirits and wine. From there he accepted a position as the Marketing Copywriter for Global Wines, a smaller distributor of international wines (predominantly South American labels).  During his time with Global Wines, not only did he write about the wines the company sold, his words became the product literature printed on the labels of Fingerprints Wines from Argentina. 

After moving to Iowa in 2012, John went to work managing a local wine lounge called The Grape Life that hosted weekly features of various varietals intended to expose the customer base to more world class wines.  In 2014, John was enlisted by a more upscale venue, Gendler's Black Ram, as their resident Sommelier.  His duties there were to educate the staff on the wine list, as well as to be on-hand to consult with customers on the wines they selected to pair with their meals.  On Friday nights at Gendler's, John also hosted the weekly wine tasting event that showcased some more prolific labels. 

While John spends the majority of his days now at the head of a high school Language Arts classroom, he still keeps his hat in the wine ring as a consultant and wine buyer for Vine & Olive, hand-picking the wines on our shelves (after tasting them, of course!) and providing many of our tasting notes.    

Vine & Olive

John Thomas Hoty