TEAM SPIRIT

In Atlanta, wine is a team sport. Meaning, it’s best experienced communally – with friends and teammates, both as a consumer and as a member of the trade who are responsible for shepherding wine into the hearts and glasses and retailer shelves all around the city. As the latest city reviewed by the Michelin Guide, Atlanta has amped up the zhuzh of its wine profile and embraced the very wide diversity of its wine-loving community.

The communal nature of wine in Atlanta is perpetually on display, both “on camera” and behind the scenes, in a myriad of forms. The underground “supper club” beginnings and ongoing friends-just-hanging-out vibe is palpable at local favorites like Staplehouse in the historic Old Fourth Ward, and at Gunshow where the chef who prepared the dish presents it themself to the guest at the table, and at the high-interaction Bovino After Dark, where guests perch on 14 seats at a bar facing the open kitchen.

Further underscoring the communal atmosphere of Atlanta’s wine and food landscape are the member-based clubs dotted throughout the city, including the Buckhead jewel of Warhorse and the latest upstart The Vine Club in Adair Park. They tap into a consumer desire for exclusive familiarity: curated, self-selected, limited-access, IYKYK (“if you know, you know”), all while showcasing some of the best drinks and kitchen talent in the city.

The wine trade itself has their own landscape of welcoming spaces throughout Atlanta to commune with other professionals. Chelsea Young, founder of The Oenophile Institute, points to the top-tier sommelier and blind-tasting events that bring competitors to Atlanta from around the world. Mixologist Keyatta Mincey Parker established A Sip of Paradise Garden for bartenders to grow their own ingredients and also take a meditation or yoga break during planned community events. There are also restaurants and wine bars that “bridge” wine trade and consumer experiences, such as Octopus Bar, a late-night venue that welcomes consumers and also caters to servers, chefs and other hospitality workers after their shift ends

Super league

If wine is a team sport in Atlanta, then women are its MVPs (“most valuable players”). Amanda Kimbrough, top-performing salesperson at wine wholesaler and importer Avant Partir, started the now-powerful Women in Wine ATL network in the fire pit of her apartment complex with a handful of colleagues. “It’s about community, not competition,” says Jesse Kirkpatrick, director of customer experience at Elemental Spirits Co. in the Poncey-Highland neighborhood. “We hire each other for jobs, and recommend each other for jobs. We give each other feedback and intel, like this place is good or this other place left me hanging. It feels like a group of women who have felt unaccepted at some point, and we’ve banded together because of it.” The group has also crowd-sourced funding for members to prepare to take the barrier-breaking sommelier exams, whose heavy price tag has traditionally been an obstacle to career growth.

The Women in Wine ATL network has grown into an exceptional, inclusive, trusting, supportive resource for Atlanta’s community of wine stars and stars-to-be. Its members also represent the evolution of wine locally, from a staid, divided and crusty lineage to one that is far more dynamic, welcoming and curious. Fitzpatrick and others at Elemental Spirits Co., for example, comprise an almost all-female staff; Cory Atkinson, the shop’s owner, intentionally created an environment where women feel safe and comfortable shopping and are not greeted by a security guard at the door.

It’s a very different and Atlanta-specific feel, especially compared to times past. Tim Willard of Dive Wine Bar, an exceptionally successful series of local pop-up wine bars, says that today “we are pushing, racing and clawing our way past the barriers, and may just be on the cusp of becoming something all our own.”

Kaitlin “Jett” Kolarik is a bartender at Commune wine bar, which is described as a wine bar and listening room made for enjoying music together. Kolarik says that Atlanta is a “huge market for people who aren’t the old-school wine types [see: old white guys] which leads to way more creative events, shops, etc. We are minority-led, and I think that makes us wildly unique and welcomes way more people to the table. We don’t have to be a market like New York or other places that have their own vibes and standards. We get to set our own.”