Talk with Jermaine Stone

Tell us a bit about your background.

I was born and raised in the Bronx, New York. Originally, I started out wanting to be a rapper. When I was six years old, I began writing other artists’ lyrics and selling them to my friends at school, and by age 12, I was writing my own raps. In high school, I did everything from radio interviews on Hot 97 to XM Radio to being on BET, mixing and mingling with different rappers. I was even rapping in LL Cool J’s basement as a teenager!  Then I graduated high school, and being in the hip hop world, I was around too much street life. Friends I was rapping with started going to the wayside—people started getting locked up, things were getting real.

How did you get into wine?

I never expected to get into the wine industry—I didn’t even know there was a wine industry, per se! My parents were like, “look, you can still rap, but we need you to have a plan B and at least pursue college,” so I signed up but had no intention of taking it seriously. To support myself through school, I took classes at night and got a full-time day job as a shipping clerk at Zachys Wine Auctions, which was where I was first introduced to the intricacies of the world of wine. I realized I didn’t have to deal with the BS of street life, I could just rap for fun and rap because I love it, so I decided to lock in on the wine business. I literally started from the bottom at the lowest level job and finished at the highest level job that I could have with the company. By the time I left Zachy’s I was a wine auctioneer and auction director.

Where did you head to next? 

When I left wine auctions, I began independent consulting. I also started a podcast called The Original Wine & Hip Hop, where I could bring together my two passions, stand out, and remain in front of my key clientele.  At that point in 2017, people didn't realize that all of these collectors were super cool, and that everybody likes hip hop and or hip hop culture. Hip hop culture was—and still is—really definitive of American culture. I realized I had plenty of friends that were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on bottles in nightclubs, but wouldn't spend $50 on a bottle in the store. So in order to expand my client base from wine auction people, I needed to create a new culture around wine, and because of my background, I understood that I already had a leg up to utilize hip hop since I was already in the space.

Tell us more about The Original Wine & Hip Hop Show…

Every episode, I sit down with influencers from the wine or hip hop world and ask them to pick a song or bottle of wine that’s special to them, then I curate a pairing to go with what they bring so that we can have an organic conversation about the two. I still have people say “I don’t know about hip hop” or “I don’t know about wine,” and I say that’s cool, you talk about what you know and I got the other. That’s what the show’s all about. I still have plenty of friends in the hip hop world who went on to become multi-platinum producers, radio hosts, and rappers, and I also had many friends that were winemakers, distributors, and people in the wine space, so it all made sense. I realized that if I could bring the two groups of people together, I could create a new lifestyle around wine.

You also created other avenues to bring wine and hip hop together… 

With Street Somm, I link up with different foodies in each featured city and am taken on a culinary journey through the city’s DNA. It really helped me realize the connections with wine and people, and how you can really learn a lot about the culture of a city through its food—after all, everybody eats! With Street Somm, I wanted to change the way people approach and think about wine, so on each episode, I create a dynamic, unconventional food and wine pairing—unconventional pairings from an unconventional sommelier, if you will.  For example, in one episode, I paired The Prisoner red blend with spicy fried chicken. People don’t usually blend spicy food with wine overall, especially reds, but honestly, it was my favorite pairing of the whole series.

How do you feel the industry has changed in twenty years? 

There’s been a bit more of a call for diversity and understanding for the necessity of diversity, even though people don’t quite know how to do it just yet. They understand it needs to happen, but don't really know how to do it, which is a big part of why I move the way that I do. The motto that I live by is that I can show you better than I can tell you. When I first started doing content, I didn't make a single dollar from it—I was doing it to show people what change could look like, then the world caught up, and that’s going to continue to happen a lot more. You have companies that want to change, and you have wine drinkers in the street who are curious, and the curiosity is where I think the wine industry will ultimately begin to find ways.

Where are some areas that you think the industry could still improve?

Taking themselves a bit less seriously! The wine industry as a whole needs to stop talking and start listening more. We can’t just lock in on just what things taste like. The key is adapting culturally and putting wine in the spaces where people are and attach that to cultural impact. The spirits industry has been doing this for years! Wine and hip hop are both of my life’s loves, and the spirits industry has been putting bottles in music videos for decades and reaping the benefits. The wine industry isn’t doing that, it hasn’t embraced the festival element of it all. Go to culture, don’t wait for culture to come to you, that’s what I mean by taking yourself less seriously. For example, so many wineries still just do the same old things to get themselves out there: hosting dinners, having a winemaker speak, and telling you what the wine tastes like. Your average person cannot tell four bottles of wine apart. I liken it to Kendrick Lamar’s recent hit records. 98% of people who listen to them don’t even realize the complex metaphors he’s saying, they just simply like the record, and wine can be that way too.