Hi, everyone, and welcome to a new episode of Women Who Travel, a podcast from Condonast Traveler.

I'm Lale Aricoglu, and with me, as always, is my co-host Meredith Carey.

Hello.

Pandemic life has given us the space and time to rethink many parts of our lives, and for many women, it became

a time to reimagine their relationship with drinking. Women who travel contributor Rebecca

Pepler published a story a few weeks ago about that very trend, speaking to women who have both

explored sobriety and more thoughtful alcohol consumption, alongside women who are also creating

low ABV and non-alcoholic

drinks. Today, we're joined by two of those amazing women that Rebecca spoke with to dig a little

bit deeper into the subject. We're excited to speak with Piera Jaladi, a Brooklyn-based entrepreneur

who has spent the last year examining her relationship with alcohol, and Melanie

Mazarin, founder of Gia, a spirits-free aperitif company that hit the market in 2020.

Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having us.

So to kick things off, I'd love to hear a little bit about what sets you both on a path to re-examining

your relationship with alcohol and exploring different ways to drink recreationally and

what that means.

I actually started not drinking very much on and off because I was exploring just my diet overall. When I moved to the

United States, I started having digestion issues and I started really looking into our food system

here and what could potentially be a trigger versus not. And I did this big elimination diet to try to get

better and realized alcohol was not the trigger, but I felt so much better without it. And so

I would sort of go not drinking during extended periods of time, sort of using the excuse of the

elimination diet to justify my non-drinking, which sort of, you know, acted as like a shield for

...