Beauty and Brains: Miss USA Enters Herbal Wine with Nana Meriwether

This episode of The Urban Vino Podcast with Jena Domingue features Nana Meriwether, former Miss USA and Founder of Navina, an herbal wine brand that continues an age-old tradition dating as far back as ancient Rome, Greece, China, and Egypt. Their first releases include Hibiscus Wine and Marigold Flower Wine.

Nana shares her amazing journey, how she founded Navina, and her roots in athleticism (she trained for the Olympics!) and pageantry. She also talks about her internship at Harper's Bazaar and living the Devil Wears Prada life for 3 years.

Using flowers for wine is steeped in tradition and Nana's goal is to bring it to the mainstream, especially in the USA where wine tradition is ripe for adoption. She empowers women to enter winemaking and hopes her story inspires others to follow suit too.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Navina: A play on words and starting American herbal wine culture
• Growing up an athlete and becoming Miss USA
• Internship at Harper's Bazaar and entering tech
• Product development for Navina and making herbal wine mainstream

QUOTES

Nana: "I started product development in 2020 and I had been apprenticing with this distiller, she also does wine on the North Fork of New York in 2019 and then I told her I wanted to build a business around this and so, she agreed to help me."

Nana: "In 5 years, I am hoping to be a mainstream wine brand. And what that means is that when someone purchases my product, they're not just buying the wine of flowers, they're buying into a lifestyle and into the storytelling that I'm hoping to really put out there."

Nana: "Winemaking itself was a tradition of women. We were mostly the ones making wine and now over 90% of winemakers, and thank you for existing, our men, so I'm hoping through my work and through my storytelling to empower women to winemaking."

Nana: "Find community within the space that you're building. I've learned that, just from day-to-day, business-building is very much an exercise in personal development that you're not really fighting a market or trying to find your way in market, it's really in your mind. All fear on business-building stems from the founder."

Reach out to Nana, Navina, and Nana’s foundation in the links below:

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nana-meriwether-6176a184/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drinknavina/
• Website (Navina): https://www.drinknavina.com/
• Website (Meriwether Foundation): https://www.meriwetherfdtn.org/

Connect with Jena by following the links below:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jena-domingue-87642b48/
• Website: https://urbanvino.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urbanvino/