By Virginie Boone

This Saturday, March 8, TEDxSonomaCounty returns to the Jackson Theater at Sonoma Country Day School for a day of inspiring speakers, including one member of the Sonoma County wine community, Ross Halleck of Halleck Vineyard, with a talk called “Time Traveling with Wine.”

A non-profit that “believes powerful ideas, powerfully presented, move us,” TED started in 1984 as a conference on technology, entertainment and design where speakers deliver talks on a range of subjects, from science, engineering and economics to humor, farming and dance.

From that first year on, the talks went viral and a movement sparked. Subsequent events have led with the mantra, “Where Curiosity Meets Community.”

The similarly named TEDx was created in the spirit of TED’s mission of “ideas worth spreading,” to support independent organizers who wish to create TED-like events in their own communities.

In Sonoma County the event is organized by local wonder women, executive producer Marilyn Nagel and Emcee Anisya Fritz. Fritz is also the proprietor and director of customer experience at Lynmar Estate.

It was in fact a March 24, 2022 TEDxSonomaCounty talk given by Sonoma County Winegrowers President and CEO Karissa Kruse called “Drink the Good Stuff,” that inspired this very column, as well as a weekly radio show on KSRO by the same name.

Over the years, TEDx Talks have often touched on the subject of wine. Taking place all over the world, many have had wonderful speakers tackling interesting facets of wine culture.

It’s hard not to love first Asian Master of Wine Jeannie Cho Lee’s “How Wine Keeps You Slim, Healthy and Humble,” a TEDx talk she gave in Hong Kong where she traces her journey of learning about wine the way she learned to speak English.

Dr. Gregory Jones, Ph.D. tackled “Climate, Grapes and Wine,” at TEDxRoseburg in Oregon. The discussion of wine made it to Fargo, North Dakota in Sam Wai’s 2023 TEDx talk about “Wine in Culture and Agriculture.” Farther afield, Kailash Gurnani detailed “What Winemaking Taught Me About Life,” about being one of the top winemakers in India.

In 2018, Madelyn Meyer, a Swiss wine expert whose mission is to simplify wine communication, confronted the subject in a TEDxZurich talk called “The New Wine Language: A Simpler Concept.” In it, she discusses wine’s unique ability to intimidate and her contrarian desire to create a more lighthearted wine world.

That same year closer to home, fifth-generation winemaker Karl Wente of Wente Family Estates talked about “Wine and the Senses,” at TEDxEmeraldGlenPark, California, where he asked himself questions like, “what is wine?” and “what’s quality?”

Ten years before that was popular wine influencer/Wine Library TV founder Gary Vaynerchuk’s rousing talk titled “Do What You Love (No Excuses!).” That same year, The Billionaire’s Vinegar author Benjamin Wallace’s “The Price of Happiness,” recounted how he sampled some of the best food, wine and experiences to determine their true worth.

Leo Johnson (former English Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s brother) in Brixton, England comically described how he found happiness by making wine as a way to get to know his neighbors in “Make Unthinkable Drinkable Wine with your Neighbors.” The talk was so successful, Johnson started a community initiative called “Unthinkable, Drinkable Brent,” to encourage people to make homegrown wine together everywhere to avoid the loneliness epidemic.

Sometimes a speaker gets more technical. Australian mechanical engineer and entrepreneur Brian Murphy’s 2021 “Making White Wine Crystal Clear,” explored the inefficiencies of wine production and some specific ideas for overcoming instability in white wines.

In addition to wine-specific talks, there are moving conversations about agriculture. Mark Jackson of Jackson Farms is a fifth-generation Iowa farmer and head of the American Soybean Association. His moving “Personal Story about Farming and the Future of Agriculture,” is a riveting tale of remaining sustainable over generations.

Or there’s “Without Farmers, You’d Be Hungry, Naked and Sober,” by Eric Sannerud in St. Cloud, Minnesota, about the impact of farming in local communities around the world and how farmers in the U.S. are retiring faster than they’re being replaced.

Thus there’s a long list of meaningful content and things worth contemplating within the TED and TEDx library, even around the subjects of farming and wine. Consider attending in person to truly be inspired within the folds of a focused audience or dig deep into the treasure trove of ideas out there waiting to be explored.