About Grande Passione

JC Viens

Gourmand & Storyteller

Wine begins with pleasure. For me, it always has—a way to discover places, understand cultures and bring people together around a table.

I’m JC Viens, a French-Canadian living in Verona, Italy. Before entering the wine world, I spent more than twenty-five years in international business, building and managing a Hong Kong-based company connecting manufacturers in China with clients worldwide. Those years taught me to look beyond a product to the people, choices and cultures behind it.

Wine gave that curiosity a new direction. I became fascinated by how a landscape, a producer’s vision and generations of craftsmanship find expression in a glass—and why certain bottles and encounters remain with us for years.

I created Grande Passione to explore and share these stories. Through writing, education, tastings and conversation, I help people understand wine more clearly and find greater confidence in their own experience of it. L’Atelier is the home of Grande Passione’s wine courses, tastings and events—a place to turn curiosity into shared experience.

My book, Reading Wine, brings this approach to the glass, offering a framework for noticing, understanding and describing wine with greater confidence.

Verona is home to this work. Here, among Italy’s wine regions, the connections between wine, food and everyday life offer a constant source of discovery. Grande Passione is an invitation to join me: to taste, question, learn and enjoy.

Knowledge enriches wine. Pleasure gives it meaning.