Julia has spent the last 16 years writing about and talking about wine, and if there's one thing she's learned, it's that what most people find most intimidating about wine is the vocabulary. What does it mean when a wine is "austere?" What about tasting notes of "pencil shavings" or "pear drop"? How can we read between the lines on a shelf tag or professional review? If you've settled into some favorite regions and wine styles, but still find yourself lacking the words to explain your tastes and describe the wines in front of you, this class is for you. Julia will walk you through a delicious tasting while helping you interpret common wine terms, build your nose-to-memory connection, and develop a wine language that is meaningful to you.
This class will begin at 6:00pm on Tuesday, January 14 and run for approximately 90 minutes. Wines tasted in class will be available for purchase with a discount available to attendees only. Seating is limited.
Julia has been working in the wine industry since 2008, when she wandered into a small Niagara Escarpment winery for a tasting and left with a job. Her roles since then have included wine (and beer) writer and editor, vineyard worker in Southern Wisconsin, retail buyer in Chicago, harvest intern in Stellenbosch, South Africa, and communications/education manager for Willamette Valley Wine. She is now Flatiron's events manager and buyer for New World wines.
A passionate educator, Julia has been teaching classes, seminars, private events and tutoring sessions on wine for over a decade. She is a certified WSET instructor and holds a WSET Diploma in Wine & Spirits as well as an Italian Wine Professional certification. Julia believes in the power of wine to facilitate important conversations about sustainability, agriculture, labor, memory and psychology, and she has never fallen out of love with wine's ability to combine topics from geography and microbiology to language, politics and history in unexpected ways.
2025 is about to be our most exciting year yet at Flatiron Wine School! Instructors Julia Burke, Annie Edgerton, and Ren Peir have all prepared a killer lineup of learning opportunities. Check out all class descriptions below, and bear in mind that classes do sell out.
Grower Champagne-quality sparklers are starting to pop up in unexpected locales. We've seen them appear in places you’ve heard of, like California (Ultramarine). Now we are seeing them in a place you’ve never heard of: Plešivica. That’s just a few miles southwest of Zagreb, in Croatia.
When we got the chance to visit, Patrick Bize of Domaine Simon Bize was still a culty magician in Savigny les Beaune (not yet the widely acknowledged master he became), making wines that transcended the (then) grossly undervalued village. What a chance to learn about the ins and outs of Burgundian farming and winemaking!
