today we are having our second annual black wine producers class uh we had this last year in 2024 uh to kick off Milwaukee wine weekend and we decided to do it again this year as part of our Black History Month events so this is probably our largest event of the Year we're expecting over 70 people last year we had almost 90 and it it's a celebration of black wine producers black people involved in the wine industry uh whether they are Somalia Distributors wine makers wine Growers and all the things that help make wine so great in the United States less than 2% of wine makers are black we're African-American and globally it's less than 1% uh there are a few black wine makers in Italy and South Africa Germany France Etc the majority of black wine makers around the world are here in the United States um but there aren't very many so being able to celebrate those people and their contributions to wine is so important and to be able to do it in a city like Milwaukee that has such a rich black history and black culture is makes it even better Baker family wines which many people don't know uh MLB lifer player manager Dusty Baker has his own Winery James and I'm like our co-founder we just found this out in December of 2019 we went to visit Dusty actually on some other business and he took us to his Winery we went out to dinner I just asked Dusty I said have you ever thought about having your wine distributed throughout the Midwest he said yes I just don't know anybody who can do it and I said well James and I can do it and and that's that's what brings us here today once we started doing some research we found that uh obviously there aren't many black wine distributors throughout the country or alcohol distributors period black people in the wine and alcohol industry make up 2% of the owners and Executives once we found found out and started doing some research we saw that we would be the first black distributors in in the state of Wisconsin and Dusty was was very excited about that as well and uh we're just here to provide great service and and great wine surprisingly Milwaukee is a very big wine City there's number of wine bars and wine shops across the city um that are all doing amazing programming and Retail uh have retail operations that are doing quite well uh and new ones are popping up all the time in terms of what we are trying to bring it's about education right so we're we're not in the business of selling wine we're not making wine we want to teach people about wine so that they understand what they're drinking and why and what it is that they love about it and even the things that you don't like being able to articulate why we've been around since September 2023 so we are pretty uh in still in our infancy um and you know we're learning with every event and every class that we teach um we're still growing we're trying to get more instructors on board uh we just launched a certification course in January on Spanish wine hoping to launch some certifications on French and Italian wine later this year and we do our monthly classes uh twice a month and we have classes for consumers kind of like this but at a smaller scale I've always been a fan of wine and so when I had the opportunity to be like hey you know you seem to have kind of an affinity for this would you be interested in like learning more or getting a certification or possibly teaching and that's when I kind of expanded and I'm actually currently in the process for studying for my own uh Spanish wine scholar uh certification so um from there I was able to teach my first class last October on sweet wines from around the world and it was so much fun I love the fact that I've watched them grow from being able to just teach a few classes here and there to now they're expanding and they're already certified to be instructors and they're training like right in this moment training up the next group of certified win Scholars and so to be able to get that level of um support and engagement in Milwaukee to be able to expand the wine community in Milwaukee and Milwaukee has already had like you know we have have a a good food and wine scene here already and so we're finally starting to get some Spotlight on oh like there's stuff going on in Milwaukee and the fact that Milwaukee wine Academy is able to kind of like you know gear up the next uh wave of wine enthusiasm industry experts is super cool we usually do between four and six wines at every class and we're going to teach folks about what is it that they're tasting where are these wines from who are the people making them the ways in which these wines are proded but then also you know there's lots of maps I'm a big map nerd so you'll always see maps in my classes we're going to talk about the different grapes and then also work through tasting wine right so what is acidity what are tannins what does body mean you know the difference between a fruity wine and a sweet wine right not all wines are sweet even if they smell sweet right and so I'm helping people distinguish those terms that they when they go out into the world whether it's a a restaurant a wine bar a wine shop they know how to articulate for themselves what they like and don't like we have our second Milwaukee wine weekend we wanted to coincide with 414 day um and our and celebrate Milwaukee and so we will start on April 10th with a happy hour at Fel M Carol wine Merchants here in Walker Point uh and then we have a couple other events that are still in production I don't want to give too much away today um but it will be April 10th through 13th I would say don't feel intimidated by wine uh we are the space to come to if you want to learn if you're curious in any way shape or form com on out to any of our events our classes or maybe even you want to you know launch yourself into a certification this is the space for you it is open to everyone and we want everyone to be drinking good wine