Every wine recommendation you've ever been given came from someone with an interest in it — a shop with stock to move, an agent with a portfolio, a critic with a case of samples on the doorstep. I hold no inventory, represent no producer, and take no commission. You pay a flat fee, and the only interest served is yours.
Not what you're supposed to like, not what scored 94 points, and not what needed to leave the shelf this month. Everything downstream depends on getting this one thing right.
A structured ninety-minute session that identifies what you genuinely respond to — acid, tannin, oak, fruit weight, texture, age. Most people have never been asked properly, and the answers are rarely what they expected.
Your preferences become a working document: styles, regions, producers, price bands, formats, what to avoid and why. It is the reference every later recommendation is measured against.
Named bottles, sourced or shortlisted, with a reason attached to each one. Over time the profile sharpens as we learn which calls landed and which didn't.
A shop's advice is worth exactly what it costs you: nothing, and it comes attached to their inventory.
That isn't a criticism of retailers — I spent twelve years as one, and the good ones are very good. But a retailer can only recommend what's on the shelf, and is measured on what leaves it. That is a structural limit on the advice, no matter how honourable the person giving it.
Working on a flat fee removes the limit entirely. If the right bottle is in a competitor's shop, at a lower price, from a producer nobody stocks, or is a bottle you should simply not buy this year — I can say so, because nothing about my income changes either way.
It also means I will tell you when to stop spending. That conversation does not happen at a till.
Most clients begin with a single piece of work. Nothing here requires a subscription, and nothing requires a commitment before you know whether the advice is worth having.
Billed monthly. The annual rate applies on a twelve-month commitment. You buy your own wine, always, direct from the retailer — see below.
Worth reading before you engage anyone for wine advice — including me.
Twelve years in wine, and the WSET Level 4 Diploma completed with one of the highest marks in my cohort.
I spent three and a half of those years as general manager of a Calgary wine retailer, responsible for the buying, the margin, the inventory and the team. Before that, a decade on the floor. I have recommended a great many bottles to a great many people, and I know precisely how much of that advice was shaped by what happened to be in the building.
The Diploma took years of technical study alongside a full-time management role — blind tasting, viticulture, vinification, and the commercial machinery behind all of it. It is the qualification immediately below the Master of Wine, and there are not many of us in Alberta.
Curated Wine Advisory exists because the most useful conversations I ever had with customers were the ones where I told them not to buy something. Those conversations are difficult to have while standing behind a till, so I stopped standing behind one.
Tell me what you drink, what you've been disappointed by, and what you're trying to build. If a Palate Fingerprinting session isn't the right first step, I'll say so.