Before her maternity leave kicks in this week, Jo Gilbert took a moment to pause and reflect with Pierpaolo Petrassi MW, who has now departed his category leading role at Waitrose for pastures new.

There is a timely symmetry to my conversation with Pierpaolo Petrassi MW, one of the most enduringly influential names in modern drinks retail, who officially said farewell to the Waitrose team on Friday after 16 years as head of drinks at one of the UK’s most forward-thinking grocers.

For myself, a new chapter is looming too – one which involves switching drinks launches and midnight taxis for a very different version of late nights.

As Petrassi reflects on his newly found freedom from the grocery treadmill, our conversation inevitably turned to family, work and maintaining an equilibrium between the two.

“For many years, my kids knew that Sunday night was not the evening for a film night, because I’d inevitably be on my laptop getting ready for Monday morning trading. It’s just what you have to do in grocery retail,” he shares.

For the first time in many years, those Sunday evenings now belong to Petrassi again. And although he is pleased with his new-found freedom, he is clear that the adrenaline of juggling customers and suppliers was – for a long time – what drove him.

“You have to love what you do. If you’re not passionate about it, if you don’t love the idea of standing in front of a customer and chatting to them about what they’re thinking or what they don’t like or what they love, then you’ve picked the wrong industry,” he says.

“It’s a bit like studying for your MW… you have to enjoy the journey. If you sit down and try and work out the hours versus the job, the maths simply doesn’t work.”

It’s been a quite ride for Petrassi. Across roles at both Tesco and Waitrose, he has spent more than two decades helping to shape how supermarkets think about drinks, from premium wine and craft beer to whisky, alcohol-free innovation and the ever-expanding grey areas in between.

Like many in the trade, Petrassi’s career has been intertwined with his personal life. Petrassi met his wife, PR guru Astrid Lewis, at a Dom Pérignon tasting while he was studying for his MW qualification back in 2003. Together, the pair have five children.

“Having someone there who understands what you’re going through makes an enormous difference. The thorny things you need to talk through, the things you need to decompress about at the end of the day – those are made much easier when your partner understands the dynamics of the industry,” Petrassi says.

The couple would go on to build both a family and a formidable drinks-industry partnership. Though Petrassi’s journey in the wine industry pre-dates that era. Following roles at International Wine Services and Waverley TBS, he joined Tesco in 2006 during what he describes as one of the retailer’s most exciting periods.

“It was incredibly dynamic,” he recalls. “I almost had a little bit of fear on my first day, because I knew this was the big show. You’d wake up in the morning to an email saying we’d just bought 60 hypermarkets in Korea. The international expansion was incredible at that time.”

More importantly, Tesco taught him how large-scale grocery retail really worked.

Petrassi adds: “I couldn’t have done the Waitrose job without Tesco. I learned how scale works, but also the limitations that come with scale. It’s an incredibly well-oiled machine, but everything has to justify its place.”

When Waitrose came calling, it offered a different opportunity to help to shape the category as head of trading for beers, wines, spirits & soft drinks.

At the time, Waitrose already enjoyed a formidable reputation for wine, which had “all this history, authenticity and provenance attached to it”. In the end, and under Petrassi’s leadership, Waitrose became as renowned for premium spirits, craft beer and emerging categories as it was for fine wine. Meanwhile, retailer’s strength in whisky, cognac, tequila and premium bottled ales consistently outperformed its overall market share.

“I was fiercely proud of the fact that we were more than just the wine department,” he says.

Petrassi helped shape the game here. Long before Waitrose was introducing hybrid RTDs and alcohol-free alternatives, he was pushing the drinks aisle philosophy to extend beyond established categories.

“The most exciting thing in grocery retail is when you taste something and think, ‘Wow, that’s amazing,’” Petrassi says.

“Then you scratch your head and say, ‘Where the hell do we put it?’”

Finding a place for those products that don’t fit neatly into established categories, is a challenge Petrassi clearly relishes. Throughout his career, he has consistently championed areas of the market that might not always be the most commercially obvious, with dessert & fortified wines, plus lesser-known regions and niche categories all benefiting from a cultural willingness to look beyond immediate trends.

“There’s always a balance,” Petrassi says. “You want to celebrate those less commercial parts of the market while also recognising where customer demand is moving.”

The same principle applies to one of the most significant shifts the industry has witnessed in recent years: alcohol-free drinks. Unlike some traditionalists, Petrassi sees the category’s growth as entirely positive.

“There should be no stigma around ordering something that’s alcohol-free. I come from Italy, where you’ll see two people standing at a bar drinking premium-looking drinks and you’d have no idea whether they contain alcohol or not. That’s always existed in parts of Europe. There’s no reason it shouldn’t exist here,” he says.

Yet despite the innovation and excitement, Petrassi remains realistic about the challenges facing the wider drinks market. Faced with long-term declines in per-capita alcohol consumption and other pressures, his message is clear: “No one needs to buy what we sell. Everything is discretionary. You have to earn every penny the customer spends with you. Today’s shopper isn’t just choosing between one bottle and another. You’re competing with household budgets, children’s activities and Netflix.”

As for the future, there is currently no grand plan for Petrassi. Instead, he speaks enthusiastically about advisory work, industry projects, travel and the luxury of having time to think.

As we end our chat, one takeaway rings in the ear: enjoy the journey. I’ll take that advice with me as I sign off for a while, and look ahead to the next chapter.