Devin Reed | Episode 009 | “We Don’t Have Time”

An In Good Company Feature  |  By JermConnects

A sommelier, a hip hop head, and a wine consultant walk into the same room. They're all the same person.

Fifteen years ago, Devin Reed was working in the shipping department at Wally’s Wine and Spirits in Beverly Hills. His job was simple: take the orders customers placed, pack them up, and ship them out the door. No wine background. No industry connections. Just a kid from St. Louis who grew up drinking Andre and bottom shelf bottles.

Then one day, two bottles came in that looked identical. Same shape. Same label style. One was a William Fevre Chablis Premier Cru. The other was a Grand Cru. The difference in price was about $300.

“They looked the exact same,” Dev said. “And I was like, what is happening? Why is one bottle $300 more than the other?”

That question changed everything.

Today, Devin Reed is Dev The Somm. A Certified Specialist of Wine who studied at the Court of Master Sommeliers, WSET, and UCLA. He managed at Wally’s, consulted for NBC’s Grand Crew, worked with LeBron James’ UNINTERRUPTED, wrote what’s believed to be the first hip-hop song entirely about wine, and shot the music video with Cedric the Entertainer. Wine Spectator has covered him twice. He runs a wine concierge company called 59Wines and produces a YouTube interview series called Wine & Culture LA.

When I read him his resume during our conversation, he laughed.

“I forgot I did all that….,to be honest.”

The Shipping Dock

Dev grew up in St. Louis. He describes himself as someone who was always curious, always good at a lot of different things, but couldn’t pin one thing down. A self-described Virgo and a nerd. If he hadn’t discovered wine, he thinks he might still be out there trying to figure it out.

That curiosity found a runway at Wally’s. He went from shipping department manager to store manager, then to helping manage the wine list when the restaurant opened. It was tedious, detail-heavy work. Inventory nightmares. But the education was happening in real time, in one of the most iconic wine rooms in the country.

And the clientele was unlike anything he could have imagined.

The Rooms He Walked Into

Wally’s sits in the center of Beverly Hills. Drake. Leonardo DiCaprio. Elon Musk. LeBron James. Jay-Z. Dev was there for all of it.

“The first time I was in a room with Jay-Z, I was like, what is going on?” he said, laughing. “We had this little laughing moment. I always tell people, he was laughing with me, not laughing at me.”

It wasn’t just the star power. It was what it represented. These cultural icons were showing up and showing their appreciation for wine. Dev started noticing a shift. Baxter Holmes was writing articles on ESPN about NBA players discovering wine. Greg Popovich, CJ McCollum, LeBron James. Something was happening in the culture.

“Damn, something’s happening in our culture,” he recalled thinking. “That’s when I kind of tried to start doing some more content and report on some bottles.”

There was something else, too. Dev was one of the only Black employees in the building. When he saw people who looked like him walk through those doors, it validated his own curiosity. It confirmed that he belonged in this space.

“When I got to see some people that did look like me, I was like, damn, this is dope,” he said. “It kind of validated me being where I was at the time.”

Wine, Wine, Wine

At some point, Dev looked around and asked a question nobody else had: why hasn’t anyone made a hip-hop song about wine?

“I said to myself, I don’t think anybody’s done this,” he said. “I was like, I’m gonna do this.”

He reached out to a friend whose cousin was a producer. DJ Asan sent him a beat. Dev started writing. Within three months, the song was recorded and on Spotify. “Wine, Wine, Wine” references 42 different wines, regions, and brands. It’s believed to be the first hip-hop track written entirely about wine.

Then came the music video. His friends told him he had to do it. He woke up one day and decided they were right. He called Cedric the Entertainer, a fellow St. Louis native, who came through and delivered a comedic intro at the top of the video. Wine Spectator covered the song. Then they covered the video. Men’s Journal ran a feature.

“A lot of moments I just be like, where am I?” Dev said. “I’m standing next to Cedric and he’s cracking jokes about wine. And I’m just like... where am I?”

Stop Hating on Gen Z

I asked Dev about the current state of the wine industry. The numbers look rough on paper. Consumption is down. Headlines blame Gen Z for killing wine. Dev isn’t buying it.

“I didn’t start drinking wine until I was almost 30,” he said. “We was drinking Grey Goose. We was drinking Mad Dog. Nobody was drinking wine when we was 21. So I think we have to give Gen Z time to grow and time to mature.”

His analysis was sharper than most industry takes I’ve heard. Wine consumption was on a steady climb for years. Then 2020 hit, everyone was stuck at home, and it shot straight up. What we’re seeing now is a market correction, not a collapse. Add in the rise of legal marijuana, the health-conscious movement, and a generation still figuring out its relationship with alcohol, and the picture is more complicated than the doom headlines suggest.

But Dev also had a warning for the industry.

“As long as wine isn’t elite, isn’t exclusive, and isn’t just intimidating, we’ll be fine,” he said. “If you keep it elite, if you keep it exclusive, and you keep it intimidating, nobody’s gonna wanna drink wine.”

He practices what he preaches. One of his most popular pieces of content was putting ice cream in wine. Some people were horrified. A lot more were intrigued. That’s the point. Keep it fun. Keep it accessible. Stop gatekeeping.

Drink What You Like

When I asked Dev what belief he holds that most people in wine would disagree with, his answer was immediate. Not everything is for everybody. Our palates are all different. And for 50 years, the wine industry has been telling everyone they should be drinking dry red wine.

“A lot of African Americans, we have an affinity for sweeter things,” he said. “We like Moscatos, we like some bubbles, we like a little Pinot Grigio, something that’s got some fruit on it. I didn’t grow up knowing what cassis was. I didn’t have no damn boysenberry.”

He laughed when he said it. His grandma might have had some boysenberry jam. But the tasting notes that dominate wine education and wine media weren’t built for the way he grew up eating and drinking. And that disconnect, he believes, is part of why wine still feels intimidating to so many people.

“It’s really about enjoying it on your own,” he said. “Don’t let somebody tell you that what you’re drinking is not what you should be drinking.”

The Jay-Z Blueprint

I asked Dev who shaped how he thinks about work and life. He started with his dad, who served in the Air Force and showed him there was another world outside of St. Louis. He’d visit every summer and see different places. That early exposure cracked something open.

But for a North Star in business? Jay-Z. Without hesitation.

“I just look at the empire he’s built,” Dev said. “Taking a talent that he had and just extending himself into all different areas. It’s like a tree and the roots just go down in the soil and just branch out. You look up and he’s a billionaire because he brings value to so many different things.”

It’s not hard to see the parallels. Dev took one skill and branched it into media, music, entertainment, consulting, concierge services, and content. The same blueprint, applied to a completely different industry.

Don’t Wait

When I asked Dev what he’s stopped doing that’s made him better, his answer cut deep. Stop depending on other people.

“Waiting on other people, you’ll miss the bus,” he said. “Waiting on someone to help you with your dreams, you’ll never get off the ground.”

Then he shared something that stuck with me. His biggest fear isn’t failure. It’s lying on his deathbed and realizing that because he listened to somebody, because he waited on somebody, he never got his dreams off the ground. And then finding out all those years later that the person never had his best interest in mind.

“You should have just got up and did it and not waited on people,” he said.

He closed that thought with a Kobe Bryant quote that he thinks about every day.

“The biggest mistake that we make is thinking that we have time.”

One Question for the World?

Every In Good Company guest gets the same closing question: if you could ask the world one question and get an honest answer, what would it be?

Dev’s answer was one word.

Why.

He explained it with a clarity that matched his entire conversation. People do things in the dark. Tragedies happen without explanation. Slights go unspoken. If he could just get an honest answer for every motivation, every decision, every move made behind closed doors, he could finally understand the world better.

“So many times we don’t know why,” he said. “Simple question. I’d ask them why.”

What’s Next for Dev

Dev just came off NBA All-Star Weekend, where he ran a wine and basketball activation over three days. He’s remastering old episodes of Wine & Culture LA with plans to rerelease them on Instagram. He’s got hosting gigs lined up, travel on the calendar, and projects he’s not ready to announce yet. The train, as he put it, is still moving.

Follow Dev at @devthesomm on Instagram. Stream “Wine, Wine, Wine” on Spotify - Here. And next time someone tells you that wine has rules, remember what Dev said.

Just do whatever the hell you want. Those are the type of things that keep wine fun.