Local sommelier to launch wine club on Valentine’s Day

A Blaine resident who is a sommelier and wine expert is planning to launch a new wine club on Valentine’s Day to help Whatcom County residents discover new wines.

Amberleigh Brownson, who lives in Blaine and is the director of operations and sommelier at Leader Block Wine Co. & Eatery in Ferndale, plans to launch the new wine club on Friday, February 14 through the restaurant where she works. Leader Block is an Italian restaurant that opened in September 2018 and is located at 2026 Main Street in a 100-year-old building that used to house a speakeasy during the Prohibition era.

Those who sign up for the wine club will be able to pick up two specially chosen bottles of wine each month. They will also be able to enjoy free corkage at Leader Block, as well as a series of educational classes, wine and food pairings and winemaker and whiskey dinners.

“Wine is definitely my niche and my passion,” said Brownson, who has years of experience in the wine industry and has received recognition from Wine Spectator and other industry publications.

Brownson moved to Blaine in 2006 from Southern California. She was already familiar with the Pacific Northwest because her grandparents lived in B.C. Growing up, she would spend two months every summer visiting them, and she eventually decided to relocate to Blaine to be able to spend more time with them. “The northwest was always in my blood,” she said. “I felt roots here for sure.”

In Blaine, Brownson got her start with wine at the Semiahmoo Resort, where she worked at the resort’s old restaurant, Stars Fine Dining. “There was a 40-page wine list, and I realized I couldn’t really recommend any to my guests,” she said. “So I started putting together tasting groups with the staff. We educated each other. I learned more about wine and ended up becoming the restaurant sommelier.”

After the resort received a multimillion-dollar renovation, Brownson became the resort’s restaurant outlet manager, overseeing the resort’s Pierside Kitchen and Packers Kitchen and Bar restaurants. She developed the wine and cocktail lists, and in her free time, she started serving as a wine judge for Great Northwest Wine, a wine publication that highlights wines from the Pacific Northwest region.

Brownson eventually left the resort and helped open EAT Restaurant and Bar in Bellingham in January 2016. The restaurant offered a farm-to-table menu of French cuisine with a Pacific Northwest twist. Its opening wine list had 80 selections, and the wines were chosen to showcase the food. Although EAT recently closed, Brownson said it was a success while it lasted.

Nine months after the opening of EAT, Brownson decided to move on to become a full-time consultant and wine judge. In her career, she has judged wines for Sip Northwest, SavorNW, the Seattle Wine Awards and the Bellingham NW Wine Festival. “I travel to a location with other industry leaders and we taste up to 100 wines in a day,” she said. “We sniff, swish, swirl, sip, write down everything and decide whether to award a medal or not.”

Brownson got to know some winemakers in Blaine who had started GLM Wine Company at 1678 Boblett Street. “I helped make wine with them a few times,” she said. “I helped separate stems and press down the wine once it was fermenting.”

At one point, GLM was planning to bottle a new wine. They were going to call it Jackalope, after the mythical animal of North American folklore. “I thought the name was awful, so I suggested that they use my name,” said Brownson. “I offered up my name after having half a glass. It was a harebrained idea, and I’m surprised they said okay.”

When GLM designed the label for the new wine, Brownson sent them pictures of herself for consideration. “My mom is a local photographer, so she had a whole bunch of pictures of me, and we sent over like 10,000 for them to choose from,” she said. “They ended up using this almost Mona Lisa-esque picture of me on the bottle. I don’t get any royalties, though.”

Brownson first joined Leader Block as a consultant about a year and half ago, when it was just a wine bar with 25 selections and cheese and charcuterie. “The owner [Robert Pinkley] had wanted to open an Italian restaurant, and so I helped him with the planning and procuring of permits. We put together a wine list of over 100 wines, a chef, a staff and all of the things that come along with that,” she said.

More recently, she helped the restaurant install a penny floor. About 41,000 pennies were laid down and poured over with epoxy. “We did it ourselves,” she said. “It matches the artwork of one of the owners, Brett Wiltse, who does copper artwork in the dining room. It also ties in nicely with the dining room, which is adorned with empty wine bottles along the upper ledge.”

The restaurant recently received an award of excellence from Wine Spectator magazine, which recognizes “restaurants whose wine lists feature a well-chosen assortment of quality producers along with a thematic match to the menu in both price and style.”

For the past four years, Brownson has volunteered as a sommelier at an annual wine auction hosted at the Chateau Ste. Michelle winery in Woodinville. The annual auction has raised millions of dollars for the Seattle Children’s Hospital, the oenology program at Western Washington University and other initiatives. She’s planning to do it again later this year.

Brownson said that she has enjoyed introducing Whatcom County residents to the joys of wine, including here in Blaine, where she once helped sommelier Shanna Manning of The Shenanigans open The Vault Wine Bar and Bistro. “I would love to introduce people in Blaine, Birch Bay and Semiahmoo to what I’m doing at the restaurant in Ferndale,” she said.