The Fizz #33: Brittany Galbraith of Vermont's Dedalus Wine is focused on accessible wine education
I spoke to Dedalus' Director of Wine Education, Brittany Galbraith about the future of wine in Vermont, her thoughts on wine education, and why she focuses on storytelling.
For the 33rd issue of The Fizz, I interviewed Brittany Galbraith, Director of Wine Education for Dedalus in Burlington, Vermont. Brittany comes from a formal wine education at WSET and the Court of Master Sommeliers. She has worked as a sommelier, a wine director, and now is the Director of Wine Education at the Burlington staple Dedalus. Brittany runs the Dedalus blog, YouTube page, and publishes the wine education newsletter, as well as runs virtual classes. She also trains the Dedalus staff and speaks with guests on the floor.
In this issue, Brittany and I speak about the future of Vermont’s wine scene and potential wine regulations in the area. We also go in depth into wine education, and why storytelling—not leaning on tasting notes—is the most powerful way of communicating with guests.
Margot: Can you tell me a little bit about how you got into wine?
Brittany: I fell in love with wine because I fell in love with farmers. In college, I studied cultural anthropology with a focus in food studies, and I had a minor in organic farming and organic agriculture, and I was living in upstate New York. There was this really vibrant young farmer community there. It was a generation of farmers who weren't from farming families, but were farming because it was emotional and political and they felt like they wanted to change the food system. So I was just constantly surrounded by that energy. I learned that agriculture has a lot of story and a lot of importance.
With that came a ton of potlucks in college. Wine was sometimes on the table, but it wasn't something that I was really drawn to at first. My family didn't really drink wine. My friends weren't super into it, but there was still a connection to this idea that when you know more about what you're consuming, it's more nourishing for you. So I was already kind of aware of this concept, and I ended up working for a restaurant in upstate New York and started to experiment with beverage and food pairings. For the foods that I really loved and the farm to table movement that I was a part of, I realized that can extend into beverage too.
Margot: How’d you end up at Dedalus?
Brittany: I'm a total nerd, so as soon as I learned that wine is something that you could study, I jumped into it. I decided to start studying wine and where I was in upstate New York, I was actually just a ferry ride away from Burlington, where there was a person who was teaching for the WSET. School was always a way that I could stay engaged, so I did the program and I completed level two and three. After passing the WSET level three, I ended up stopping in at Dedalus to get a bottle to celebrate with some classmates. I'd never even heard of them.
I very distinctly remember going there and a tasting was going on and my boss now, Jason Zuliani, our CEO and founder, was there. I started asking some really nerdy questions and he invited me to their blind tasting group. It basically evolved into him offering me a position as a sommelier. I joined the team and helped open the wine bar on Pine Street and my introduction to the world that I'm now in was the team bringing me up to speed and just pouring bottles, hearing farmer stories. It really brought it full circle for me—wine is this agricultural product, just like the agricultural products I represented before.
Margot: It sounds like you were really supported on your journey to where you were.
Brittany: Yeah, I've been incredibly fortunate with the mentorship that I've had during my time at Dedalus and just in the wine community in general. It's been great. It's been really exciting to see this side of wine. I get to work with producer stories and get to know the people behind the wine.
Margot: How long have you been at Dedalus?
Brittany: It's approaching five years. Wow. I think next month, September would be my five-year anniversary in Vermont. Then the location officially opened in February of 2017.
Margot: How do you feel that you've grown in that position in the last five years?
Brittany: Oh, boy, I've definitely grown a lot. I started as a sommelier, and I remember it being a really fun time, constantly discovering wines. There's a transition that can happen too, where you're doing all of the studying and late night flashcard making and trying to learn all the producers and the stories that you can end up lecturing tableside a little bit, you know? My table presence is very different than what it used to be.
That's definitely something that was always really funny to me. And I'm seeing it with other people who are new to wine, but I definitely learned how to read people and customers and guests and find those aspects of the producer story or of the wine's personality that clicks in with what that person needs or wants in that moment.
And learning—I mean, everything from body language to eye contact, to excitement—when someone gets really excited about a wine that we're doing a food pairing with, I’ve learned how to really curate that experience so it's super personable, while still sharing the producer story. Especially now with my role as Wine Educator for Dedalus, we rarely use aromatic and flavor descriptors to sell wine. It's always rooted in the producer story. A lot of that comes from a place of respect to other drinkers, because really when we're describing a way a wine smells or tastes, we're just putting our own language to compounds. So I may smell guava another person may smell strawberry, and neither one of us is wrong. We’re both correct.
[Producer stories] work best and it gives a better experience and represents what we love about the wine and why we fell in love with it. Of course, our knowledge of wine helps us also sell by analogs. If someone loves Pinot Noir, we know what that means structurally. We know a little bit lower tannin, elevated acidity. Let's get that person super stoked on Frappato, for example. That's been something that I've learned how to do first, because when you first get into wine, there are these descriptors that we lean into. I'm grateful that my evolution is rooted more in sharing stories.
Then after being a sommelier for just a couple of years with the company, I ended up taking over the wine program and I was the Wine Director, which evolved into then also observing the wine bar management position. Then in November of this past year, I was able to become the Director of Education, which is really where my heart is.
Margot: Why does that feel like the right position for you?
Brittany: I love teaching. I just really love connecting people to wine and removing the intimidation factor of wine for people and making them feel connected to the producer. Our job is to amplify producers stories. This is something that I take very personally.
Something that I see a lot in the sommelier community is that it can be really easy to put certain producers up on a pedestal, you know, because there's allocations, which is just the reality of the situation. There's this kind of this attitude with wine that can be a little culty, just like anything, right? Wine is no different. What reminds me to not be that way is when I have the luxury of being able to talk to Daniel of Domaine Tempier, a producer that has earned his place in wine history. Talking to Daniel and asking him about his wines, he goes, “do you like them”? He's like “my hope for the wine is that it makes you happy. And that the only time you notice the wine is when you reach for it and it's gone because you're having lunch and you're all talking with your friends and it's delicious and you just need more wine”.
That's the story. That's what I want people to be able to enjoy. So many of our customers, even my wine 101 classes, or if I bring over champagne to the table, sometimes there's this reaction of “oh, don't waste that on me. I don't know enough to be able to drink that”. That's why I'm so connected to education to break those walls that people can put up around wine. You want people to feel the words of Daniel.
Margot: Wow. It's painful for me to hear that a guest would say “don't waste that on me”. That just makes me want to cry. We, sommeliers, brought wine to this place where people now feel like they're not worthy of it, or they shouldn’t be drinking the “good stuff” because they don’t have the context, like it's this magical thing that you have to be up here to get, or to enjoy or to appreciate, and here's this guest saying, oh, don't waste that on me.
I don’t know what I would do, I would feel like just apologizing. You know what I mean? How could we have gotten this amazing product, this very human product to a place where some people feel so excluded that they don't feel worthy of enjoying it. That’s on us.
Brittany: Yes, and it's been really interesting working for Dedalus because as you know, we're based in Vermont, and this is really to the credit of Jason over the past decade of really growing the wine culture here in Vermont. It felt like wine 101 every night when someone sat down, and we prioritize coming from a place of kindness. There might be obscure words on the wine list that people might not recognize, so there was always this place of creating trust and being warm and inviting to our guests. That immediately forced me to not make wine complicated. It just needed to be delicious. We have the power in new markets, but also as a company, to help shift that culture around wine, so that sentence “don't waste it on me” doesn't have to exist anymore.
Margot: You’re in the middle of this growing New England wine scene. The growth that is happening in the region that you're in has been amazing to watch. What has that been like for you?
Brittany: It has been really great. We're really excited. Talk about being at the intersection of storytelling and agriculture. It's been really cool to see the development and the cultivation of these hybrid grape varieties and these cold hardy varieties and to get to know their personality. When I've worked with some of the winemakers here in Vermont and have hosted panels, it's been really interesting to have conversations about terroir and looking at these grape varieties and thinking about what will be the style that Vermont will be known for?
I'm really curious, and it's been so fun to be part of the experimentation with winemakers here and how they are showcasing the varieties. I've seen a lot of folks working with these very aromatic varieties, like Brianna or La Crescent, seeing skin contact and skin maceration. There's been a trend right now where a lot of winemakers are wanting to extract those phenolics from the skin and have the aromatics really pop, where in other cases, it seems like sparkling wine might be the direction that our region is going in. It's been really cool to be a part of that development and the wine identity of Vermont, and not only just Vermont, but of these hybrid varieties, because we have winemakers here who are really at the avant-garde of that, which is super cool.
There's also more wine professionals coming to this region. When I first started five years ago, I couldn't find a study buddy for my certified exam. I was one of the first people in Vermont to go for the advanced exam. I remember the first day people said wow we have someone here from Vermont? Now I'm so giddy that Dedalaus has become kind of a hub for those professionals. There's just an explosion of wine here from production to consumption, to service and hospitality.
Margot: What do you think is going to be the future of wine in Vermont or wine in New England? Should we expect an AVA out here?
Brittany: I would say yes. I'm sure that there will be distinct areas that we'll be known for in wine production. It will be really interesting to see how regulations form and what those styles end up looking like. When you pick up a bottle of La Crescent, what is going to be the most classic version of it?
Maybe I'm reaching for needing to put something in a box like that, but I think that there is potential here for it. Even just looking at climate change, and looking at how other regions are developing, I think there's a lot of opportunity. I think people here, just by living in Vermont, maybe this is too much of a stereotype, but people in Vermont get the idea of “know your farmer”. Understand the farm to table process. The excitement from local people to want to drink Vermont wine is going to continue to drive that growth and drive that excitement.
Margot: What do you think about that kind of regulation? Do you think it would be helpful or detrimental to the culture of winemaking that Vermont is currently growing?
Brittany: I’m thinking about some young, experimental European winemakers in regions where there are very strict regulations and we’re seeing IGP or IGT designations on their labels instead of the AOC or the DOC/DOCG. I think the reason why that's happening is that if you’re not hitting certain guidelines as far as aging or vineyard management or alcohol percentages, then it's kind of a way to say, well, I'm just going to go rogue and make the wine that I think is the best representation of what I'm doing. And so they get declassified or have the IGT or Vin de France label on their wines.
[Brittany is talking about European wine laws here. In Europe, there are very specific rules around how to make wine depending on where you are in which region. For example, if you’re in Champagne and you want to have “Champagne” on your label, you can only make wine with certain grapes in a very specific way. These rules regulate everything from the grapes you use to how you prune the vines. Some winemakers choose not to follow these rules, but then have to be “declassified” or cannot add the regional labels—”Champagne” or more specifically, AOC/DOC etc. Choosing not to follow the rules may mean that your wine is less competitive in the market, but this is actively changing. In the United States, we have AVAs such as “Napa Valley AVA” which have some regulation to them. Here’s some more info on French AOCs for more context.]
I haven’t really thought about this until now, but I'm wondering how much that type of regulation controls that type of experimentation. I'm saying this acknowledging that regulation has defined the wine world. It has supported an entire history. It has allowed us to say things like “this is a red Burgundy”. What's special about tradition and regulation is that you get to preserve this culture. You get to preserve history and it's almost like a time capsule in some ways. There's something really special and magical about carrying on something that generations before had done.
However, looking at a place where there's not a lot of history of wine making here in Vermont—we are the beginning of that. It would be really interesting to see. I think what it might do is put parameters around what we can expect from those wines. Thinking of some of the winemakers here who are experimenting with skin contact, like pet-nats, oxidative almost sherry-like styles of making wine. I think if we put rules on too soon, we might suffocate any opportunity to figure out who we really are. So much has happened since I've been here in the last five years, that I can't imagine what’s going to happen as these vines age.
Old vine Marquette—that will be really wild to see. The other thing that is interesting is hybrids with cider—that is definitely a part of our terroir. It's part of what grows here and is made here. I'm really curious to see how that plays into it as well. I’m wondering if those types of blends would be regarded as wine, how that would settle.
Margot: That’s so interesting to me. There’s a big future for wine coming out of New England, and what will that look like as it becomes more and more internationally and professionally recognized? What does your work as Director of Education look like? This feels like mostly a new role that wine folks could see themselves in for their futures.
Brittany: As the Director of Education, my job is split mainly 50/50. Half of my time is really invested in staff education. Just recently, we invested in an LMS or a learning management system. Because education is so important to us, I was able to pitch this to the company because as we scale, we really want to make sure that our employees know wine, and they have information about the wines and the producers that we love. This has given us the opportunity to educate with scale.
It is a virtual platform, which is really cool. We can build courses, and I can have interviews with producers populated into these courses, hand drawn maps, producer stories, food and wine pairings, all of this information. A big part of my job is to give our employees confidence, but it also allows us to hire based on culture and cultural fit. It allows us to directly have a hand in raising a culture of wine professionals because it gives people the opportunity to be able to learn. If an employee is really looking for very formal education, we have sponsored people through the court of master sommelier and also through WSET.
If we have someone who says I haven't worked in wine, but boy, am I excited and ready to study. All right, let's go. I got you. Let's start from the beginning. You can start with the basics and bring them all the way up to being able to discern the differences between different Grand Crus of Burgundy.
Then the other part of my job is really focused on public education. That comes in the form of classes, both in person and virtually, and through our blog. We have a YouTube channel where we'll talk about things like orange wine or grower champagne. We’re continuing to build this culture with our customers, so that they can feel empowered with knowledge. A big part of my job is to generate that content.
Margot: Have you thought about opening up your LMS to the public?
Brittany: Yeah, it's still kind of new for us, and it's a platform that definitely allows us to do that, which is why we were pretty attracted to this particular company. You can set different parameters around information. There is a way that you can open it to the public. We have been kind of flirting with this idea and how we can connect more people to wine, beyond people who can physically come into our shops.
Margot: That's really interesting to me, because I feel like when you're a person who is starting to get into wine, you have a few things that you can do. You can go to the court or to the WSET and pay a bunch of money, or you can look online for resources. There's a lot in terms of blog posts and some YouTube videos and classes, Instagram Lives, which are great but often not as in-depth. It would be great to have some sort of course that is easily accessible and free that actually teaches you the nitty gritty. You could have diverse representation on those courses, giving different perspectives. I think you're coming up on something really cool.
Brittany: It's been something that I've been running into more and more, you know, when we were hiring new employees, a lot of them would bring in different books they've ordered, or podcasts, just trying to find resources. We're pretty dedicated at Dedalus to remain really warm and welcoming, but also come at it from a sense of education as well. I designed a five course series called Wine 101 to get people to what they need to know. In the first class, which is called the building blocks, we taste the different components, like acid, tannin, sugar, alcohol, in isolation, and we learn how does this actually feel in your mouth? Where does it come from? We go all the way through food and wine pairing in that course. I want to empower people to fully understand what they're consuming and that comes down to the basics and science of winemaking and terroir.
Margot: A lot of wine education is centered around the grapes and the producers and how wine is made, but there are also things in the wine process that aren't talked about like labor and the treatment of people and different chemicals and what they do. Are those things that you're considering as a part of your education?
Brittany: Yes. Those are definitely things that we teach to our staff, and even in wine 101, we talk about native yeast. The reality is that these winemakers are farmers who have concerns and have real life issues, with the weather and climate change and how they're choosing to farm. We try to talk more about farming with wine. For whatever reason, I have found that consumers might really care about having organic food in their shopping basket, but then I'll be spying on them in the store and they’ll grab wine that I know is just completely riddled with chemicals. This is such an interesting disconnect. I don't think we talk about the relationship between farming and wine enough.
I was part of a seminar in Burgundy and due to changes in climate they think maybe Syrah needs to be grown there. These are major changes. We need to talk about farming and how the land is treated. That goes beyond environmental sustainability, but human sustainability too. We need to be producing wines that are made with fair labor practices and sustainable wages. That's also really important.
We're really proud to work with Jane Lopes and Jon Ross—two master sommeliers who started an Australian importing company this past year called Legend. They talk in depth about labor practices in Australia and the actual cost of production and how people should be treated.
Margot: Thanks so much for talking with me today, and see you up in Vermont for a glass sometime soon!
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You can support Brittany by following her on Instagram and signing up for her classes. Find Dedalus on Instagram here. Dedalus supports the non-profit King Street Center, that annually serves 120 children and families in the Burlington area. Donate to this important organization here.
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