About JC…

Wine begins with pleasure.

For me, it always has.

Long before wine became part of my professional life, it was a source of curiosity. It was a way to discover places, understand cultures, meet people, and create memories around a table.

Over time, I came to see that wine offers something far richer than technical knowledge alone. At its best, wine tells the story of a place, the values of a community, the vision of a producer, and the countless choices that transform nature into culture.

Grande Passione was created to explore those stories.

My name is JC Viens. I am a French-Canadian living in Verona, Italy.

My path to wine has been anything but direct. Before entering the wine world, I spent more than twenty-five years in international business, building and managing a Hong Kong-based company that connected manufacturers in China with clients worldwide. Those years gave me a front-row seat to the ways cultures meet, collide, and create value together.

They also taught me that behind every product lies a human story.

Wine became the language through which I continued to follow that human story.

What holds my attention now is why some landscapes produce wines that feel unmistakably themselves — and why certain bottles stay with us long after we’ve forgotten how they tasted.

Through writing, education, events, and conversation, I explore wine as a gateway to culture, hospitality, craftsmanship, food, travel, and belonging. My goal is to help people understand wine more clearly while staying close to the pleasure that makes it worth exploring in the first place.

Verona has become the natural home for this work. Situated between some of Italy’s most historic wine regions, it offers a daily reminder that great wines are inseparable from the people and places that give them life.

Grande Passione is the space where this way of seeing wine becomes a shared experience.

Knowledge enriches wine.
Pleasure gives it meaning.