She says wine saved her life.

An advanced sommelier and much, much more, Kat "The Wine Goddess" Thomas is our guest this week on Nevada Week In Person.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week In Person is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

-Welcome to Nevada Week In Person.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

A business owner, motivational speaker, and registered yoga teacher, she's also the lead sommelier at Ada's Food + Wine, which recently won the award for Most Original Wine List in the World.

Kat "The Wine Goddess" Thomas, thank you for joining Nevada Week In Person.

It sounds like I'm introducing you like a fighter.

-I'm like, That's awesome!

I feel good right now.

That's great.

-How did wine save your life?

-Wine saved my life in a few different ways, but initially it was a dedication and devotion to one thing.

So instead of being, you know, scrambled here and there to figure out what I wanted to do with myself and my time each day, I had something to rely on.

And having it be focused around beverages that were alcoholic, it in some way steered me towards a better version of myself.

And I saw the potentials to go down the wrong path, which probably took a few of those in those years still, but it always brought me back to this center, this calm, and it helped me realize that I wanted to be the best version of myself.

-That's really interesting.

So by seeing what could happen, it made you change how you went about life, I guess?

-Mm-hmm.

-Okay.

You wrote that in a blog post that I filmed about wine saving your life.

And then you said, when you tell people that, it is, quote, then the choice to dubiously laugh or peer at me with squinted eyes.

The choice is made as if to punish me for such a detrimental thought.

Why detrimental?

-Well, especially now with alcohol being on the, the focus of not so good for you, I think people wondered, how can somebody say wine saved their life?

And until you realize the things that I was doing while I was studying and preparing for different exams and jobs and just my own mental clarity during those times, it's hard to understand really what I meant.

It just, it really saved my life.

I don't expect that for everyone, but when I am mentoring new, you know, I call them kids, going into this industry, I tell them, it's going to help you gain discipline and focus and genuine pride in what you're doing with yourself.

You could do that with any field.

So I just happened to fall in love with this field.

So anybody that's doing it, and I hope that they can see why I would say it saved my life.

-How do you combine wellness and wine?

That's part of your business model when I talk about being a business owner?

-Yes.

So during pandemic, of course, I created CORE Body¦Mind, and the intention was to help the same thing that I was going through when I started in the industry.

I didn't know that you could balance your life with health, wellness, and the industry of hospitality, because nobody talked about it.

Nobody taught me that.

It wasn't something that's embedded in any kind of hospitality up until that time.

Now there's a lot of businesses that are trying to incorporate that, which is great.

And I realize that it's not just about yoga.

Although that, to me, is another thing that helped me tremendously in my life.

But that if you take care of your mind and your body, all the other great things that you're trying to accomplish in your field are definitely going to sort of intertwine at some point.

So the more that you stay consistent with both of those, the better and the brighter it's going to become.

I was doing yoga quite a while before I got into the specifics of becoming a sommelier, and it wasn't until I actually started meditating, I understood what the yoga practice was really more about for me.

And that's when things started shifting in my world.

So I was-- I realized, wow, it does work.

-And so you share this with other people with wine tastings and yoga combined?

-Well, I-- -Am I right?

-I haven't yet done the yoga and wine from my own standpoint, because I try and keep those worlds separate.

But I did just teach yoga classes at a beverage conference this past weekend, and it's the first one in the country that incorporated an actual class as a choice for the seminars for the attendees.

So to me, that was an amazing experience, waking up, getting people motivated and refreshed, whether they understand the philosophies of yoga.

We got them kind of ready to start their day, learn, get the juices flowing.

So to me, there is semblance of having yoga and wine together, just I usually don't serve wine right after.

I may soon.

Definitely not before.

-No, that's my fault.

I thought, wellness and wine, you're combining the two?

But it's more about wellness with wine.

-Yes.

-Okay.

And when you said that you were going through something when you began to form this, what was it you were going through that I think other people in the hospitality industry probably go through as well?

-Yes, definitely.

I was lost in what my dedication to myself was.

And even at-- I think I was 36.

So that, to me, was young, but a lot of people consider that old to not know what your passion is and who you want to be to appear to other people.

I knew I was really good in hospitality, but it was almost mindless, and because it came easy to me.

I love people, mostly.

And it's easy for me to interact with them.

But I wasn't.

I was faking it.

I was, I was feeling lost inside, and I was doing other things that I shouldn't have done to be a healthy, wealthy, prosperous human being.

And, you know, depression and going through just not acknowledging those things led to some downfalls in my personal world that, amazingly, I was able to bring myself out of.

And I had a lot of support.

And it wasn't anything that I couldn't have-- I don't want to say "controlled," but I definitely made those things happen, so I could learn from them.

And I don't want other people to have to always make those things a lesson for themselves.

I want them to kind of get the information first and know that it's okay to not be okay all the time.

It's okay to be annoyed at work, but voice your yourself and let people know, and then maybe somebody can offer assistance.

That's like the best part, I can say.

-The need for mental health and wellness within your industry, do you think that's well-understood?

-No.

-Why is that?

-Because people don't want to admit that they might have something wrong.

Maybe the younger generation now, I think they've got a better grasp, maybe a little too much, of what could be wrong.

But once we find that balance where it's okay to talk about, Hey, I feel really horrible today; I just don't want to be around people, and finding a way to kind of manage that in business-- and that's going to take time.

But if we just keep this stigma that it's not okay to not be okay, then it's never going to shift, and we're going to battle with having people just taking--how do I want to put this--just taking time off.

And we as the employer don't know why.

We don't understand.

We think maybe they're just calling out because they went and partied too much.

If we're okay talking with our team and they're talking with us about these things, I mean, maybe that psychology background kind of sticks out a little in my head, but-- -That was what you went to college for?

-Mm-hmm.

-In Atlantic City?

-Well, I was born and raised in Atlantic City, New Jersey, went to Rutgers in New Brunswick.

So all in New Jersey.

-And then moved to Las Vegas in 1997?

-Yeah.

-Okay.

You told me it was to meet your real mom?

-Yeah.

-How did that come to be?

-Well, she-- I had gotten her phone number from my next-door neighbor, and she said, You're old enough to make your own decisions now.

And I was like, okay, cool.

And I know I waited awhile.

And I went back to school, and I'm sitting with a bunch of my girlfriends.

And it was still a corded phone back then.

And we put her on speaker, and I just hear "Hello."

And I was like, click.

It was me; I could hear myself.

And then when I met her, it's me.

We look the same.

We have the same mannerisms.

I mean, not knowing her for all those years, I didn't know her at all.

And then to meet her and we're pretty much the same human, and it's amazing.

I've never left.

She's my best friend.

-You ended up staying?

-Yep.

-Okay.

And you win this tremendous award.

I mean, you're up against several other countries, and its "Most Original Wine List."

It seems like it fits into who you are because you reference yourself as a tiny giant a lot.

And I think that's part of how you select wines is you try to uplift winemakers who may not be as well known.

What did the award mean, and what is your process like?

-It's really fun.

It's really simple now at Ada's Food + Wine, because all of the people that like to show me wine in hopes that I'll buy it, they don't even ask me what I need.

They actually bring things that they feel will fit the space.

And we blind taste through everything; I don't like to know pricing, sometimes not even where it's from.

My team gets to taste.

The chefs get to taste.

So we make it a really communal feel.

But that's the fun part of it.

There's no corporate feeling, and I'm very fortunate for not having that aspect.

And it is about the small voice that is not yet heard or has been heard and forgotten.

I was just in Republic of Georgia, just for one example, and they've been making wines for 8,500 years, the oldest winemaking region in the world.

-Wow!

-Yes.

And nobody has them on this side of the planet.

So we will have some Georgian wines from amazing people very soon in Las Vegas, Nevada.

I'm very excited about that.

-Wow!

That reference to being tiny, that obviously made an impact on you, your size.

How tall are you?

-I'm four-eleven.

-And so, I don't know, the "tiny giant," has that come out of a, I don't know, need for compensation?

Where do you think it stems from?

Do you uplift other small people?

-The ones that aren't physically small as well.

But as I mentioned to you earlier, I forget how small I am until I see a photo of myself, and then I'm like, wow.

But I have a big voice.

Again, New Jersey, this is something that happens to people that are born there.

We are louder than some.

We're more boisterous than some.

When I was very young, I did feel the need to kind of speak louder than most people, and that didn't really go away ever.

My partner, Jeffrey, has given me that title, tiny giant.

And it's so fitting, and it's done with love for me.

But I know that it came from like, Wow.

-Can you, in 15 seconds, tell me who gave you the name "Wine Goddess"?

-Kat Thomas.

-Yea!

All right.

Kat "The Wine Goddess" Thomas, find her at Ada's Food + Wine at Tivoli Village.

-Thank you.

-Thank you for joining Nevada Week In Person.

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