Amber Nixon Fills Her Cup
From motherhood to business, travel, and of course, wine, Amber’s passions keep her spirit aflame.
Happy New Year, Prohibitchin’ readers! Before we dive into the first feature of 2023, I first want to thank you for your support throughout the two (!) years it’s been since re-launching this column on Substack. Since January 2021, Prohibitchin’ has covered two dozen amazing people from all corners of the globe, each making their own incredible mark across wine, beer, cider, spirits, and hard seltzer. I’m deeply humbled and grateful for each person who has entrusted me with telling part of their stories, and to you for reading them each month.
I’m committed to keeping Prohibitchin’ going in 2023 (and beyond) as well as keeping it free to access, thanks to Prohibitchin’ sponsor Reverend Nat's Hard Cider. (Want to become a sponsor as well? Email me!) Please keep reading, sharing, and supporting these stories, and as always, send your nominations for women or non-binary people working in beverage alcohol who deserve the spotlight. Onward!
“For a long time, I used to think that I wasn’t creative,” says Amber Nixon, a wine enthusiast and educator based in Atlanta, Georgia. She held that self-perception until she began her graduate studies at Clayton State University, where she took a class about creativity and how it manifests itself differently in every person. By the end of the class, “I was shocked,” she says. “I didn’t believe that I thought outside the box.” Discovering and nurturing that out-of-the-box thinking helped her launch Wine With Amber, a curated wine education service tailored to teach curious, but inexperienced wine drinkers about wines from across the world. It’s not her full-time job (yet), but she hopes to one day open a wine shop and bar to expand her mission of education and empowerment even further.
Wine knowledge is wine power, and Amber is claiming hers. But for as much as she loves passing on her knowledge to others, she admits it’s not always easy to do so. “I’m very much an introvert,” she claims. So when it’s time to initiate a conversation about wine, it’s her passion and foundation of experience that give her the necessary push to spark that connection. “Wine is something that helped create the conversation for me,” she explains, with a hint of relief and a sparkle of mirth in her voice.
However, put Amber on the phone or in a room with any of her loved ones, and she’s instantly in her comfort zone. “Family is just how I grew up,” she says, along with plenty of dirtbikes and 4-wheelers ripping around her home state of Georgia. The need to nurture those familial bonds has only gotten stronger with time. “The older I get, especially now that I have a child, now I understand,” she says. Despite living four hours away from most of her relatives, Amber stresses the importance of remaining close. “[The drive] is always worth it. There’s always laughs. There’s always conversation. You are in a safe space, because you’re family.”
She points to her dad and grandmother as particularly influential members of her family that have helped her grow in unique ways. “My dad is hilarious,” she says. “We can sit on the phone for hours, just laughing… we are one and the same, almost!” But it’s not just laughter that Amber says has cultivated a strong bond between her and her father. “My dad is a great listener and very understanding, but also someone that will correct me when I’m wrong—but he knows how to do it in a way that I’ll receive it… my dad allows me to be who I am.”
Her grandmother also helped raise her, teaching her the value of honesty and support for each other, no matter what. It’s something Amber has never taken for granted, and now as a mom to a one-year-old son, she’s able to pass down the wisdom she received to her own child. “Being a mom is one of the things I love the most outside of wine,” she says, adding that motherhood and her career in human resources have taught her more about people and humanity than any school ever could.
These influences have guided Amber’s trajectory both personally and professionally, sometimes to unexpected places. As a child, she looked to her father and grandfather as independent business owners and thought between her love of math and them as role models, she’d eventually become an investment banker. “I told people that all the time,” she laughs. “I felt like I wanted to learn how to invest and teach other people how to invest their dollars.”
Instead, that desire to teach ultimately culminated into wine education. After an accidental (and very fortuitous) discovery of a wine professional giving a talk on Instagram, Amber decided to learn more about the distinguished beverage. By 2019, she was hosting tastings for a wine company as an independent consultant, educating guests about the story behind certain wines and the regions they come from, how climate affects grape harvest, proper serving temperature, and everything else an aspiring cork dork might want to know.
After around a year and a half, Amber realized she had outgrown promoting a single portfolio. She decided in order to get her foot in the door of entrepreneurship, she had to create her own doorway, launching Wine With Amber to offer a wider variety of products to curious students on her own terms.
“I ultimately wanted to share with other people, especially those that were interested in wine, and now for people who have no idea. I'm always excited to share what I know,” she says. Eventually, she hopes to open her own brick and mortar location to take her efforts to the next level. Eventually, she stresses.
“I love, love my nine-to-five career,” she says. But she can envision what she wants to build: “I want people who are already interested in wine to come to my venue and enjoy some really good quality wines, but also [it will be] for people who aren't very knowledgeable in this arena to be able to come and not feel as though they have to know everything. We’re going to teach you.”
The wine industry isn’t exactly known for inclusivity or patience with novices, and like many others, Amber initially struggled with confidence when beginning her wine journey. Through Wine With Amber and eventually her own space, she hopes to change that.
As she works towards building this future, her own education is far from over. She’s currently studying to take her Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) Level 3 exam and hopes to check a few spots off her travel bucket list in the meantime. “In relation to wine, I really want to go to France and Portugal,” she says, adding Aruba and Maldives as other aspirational destinations. As long as she can be outside, Amber is ready. “If I’m in the house too long, I go insane,” she laughs.
Towards the end of our conversation, Amber insists again it was the power of wine and building both a vocabulary and confidence through education that helped light the path of her destiny. “Wine, for me, took me out of being an introvert,” she says. “[Now,] I know what I’m talking about. I know how to explain it. It fills my cup. It must be something that’s part of my purpose.” New year’s resolutions or not, I hope more people find their own special purpose in 2023.
Follow Amber on Instagram at @winewithamber or her website at winewithamber.com.
What I’m Reading
It would be unfair (and frankly, inaccurate) to compare Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin to Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, but I couldn’t help recalling some of my favorite parts from the 2011 book when reading the 2022 novel. Both depict humanity and relationships through the lends of video games, both describe tortured relationships (and occasionally romance) between gamers, and both bring readers on a wild ride with vivid emotional arcs and not always the happy ending you hope for. Tomorrow is so popular it’s currently out of stock on Bookshop.org (it really is that good), so check your local library.
What I’m Writing
By the next Prohibitchin’, I will have turned in my book manuscript for The Craft Beer Lover’s Guide To Cider to the publisher!!! So, I’m still just plugging away at that for now. But after taking a couple months off of my regular freelancing in order to finish the manuscript, I sorely need to bulk up my bylines (and bank account) back up again as soon as possible. Wish me luck on this final stretch.
Fun (?) Fact
John Parsons is one of the more unique life stories I’ve heard recently. He helped invent liquid- and solid-fuel rocket technology throughout the 1930s and 1940s and is widely considered one of the most groundbreaking rocket scientists in U.S. history. He was also a noted occultist, was expelled from high school after blowing up toilets, was convinced he once successfully summoned the Devil into his bedroom, cheated on his wife with her sister (who left him for L. Ron Hubbard, who founded the Church of Scientology), and died when his lab mysteriously exploded in 1952, not long after he was accused of espionage. Also, his first name was actually Marvel, so it is admittedly very disappointing that this bizarre character decided to go by John and/or Jack. Fun? Perhaps. Eccentric? Undoubtedly.
Do you know of a woman or non-binary person working in beverage alcohol who hasn’t seen the spotlight—and should? Nominate them for a future feature!