Meet Adelaide Cross, a 68-year-old retired wine industry consultant from Sonoma, California, who transformed her commercially constrained expertise into a fulfilling life of cultural preservation and traditional winemaking education among the ancient vineyards and family producers of Tuscany, Italy. After 42 years of building successful wine marketing campaigns while watching the industry become increasingly focused on profit over tradition, Adelaide’s courageous decision to prioritize cultural heritage over commercial success proves that sometimes the most important vintage we can develop involves cultivating our own understanding of how professional expertise can serve community heritage and agricultural tradition rather than simply maximizing market returns and profitable transactions.
