Pride in Wine: Miranda Elliot
Miranda Elliot is the owner and founder of Elliot Wine School, a school she launched herself in November 2020. She identifies as queer.
When did you know you were LGBTQ?
I came out when I was about 14. My friend described her sexuality to me as "falling in love with the person regardless of the gender," and without thinking, I blurted out "me too!" So, I kind of came out to her and myself at the same time. I then had a crush on her that I never told her about, fell in love with multiple straight female friends, and eventually had my first relationship my senior year in high school.
How did you discover your love of wine?
Food has always been really important in my family, so I grew up going to restaurants with my dad and my sister. Wine came a bit later, once I realized how a great wine pairing with food can elevate both the food and the wine experience.
What challenges do you think are unique to LGBTQ people in wine?
I started in the wine world as a sommelier and the restaurant world can still be pretty regressive in terms of gender, especially when you're talking about fine dining. We have a lot of "ladies first" kind of language, as well as addressing groups of people as "ladies" or "gentleman." I think that this forces servers or sommeliers to guess people's gender in really problematic ways. I also have just experienced quite a few people in the wine industry who can understand "straight" or "gay"/"lesbian", but those of us who prefer terms like "queer," "bisexual," "pansexual," or just don't fit into neat identity categories don't make sense to them.
If you had to choose just one, what would be your favorite wine so far?
1996 Jamet Côte Rôtie. I was lucky enough to work at a French restaurant called Les Nomades where we had a really great French cellar with quite a few back-vintages. I've always loved Rhône wines, but I think this showed me how Syrah can age, with it's delicious bacon-y, gamey, black peppery flavor.
What is your go-to wine and food pairing?
Basically any red wine from the Rhône Valley with any lamb dish. It's almost cliché to me at this point but still so good. If I'm feeling fancy, maybe a Côte Rôtie or Hermitage, maybe a Châteauneuf-du-Pape, or if it's a weekday night, I'll grab a Côte du Rhône.
What does the future of queer people in wine look like to you?
The future of queer people in wine looks like queer people making connections with each other, supporting each other, and standing up for one another if issues arise. I think it's also really important for us to recognize intersectionality in any advocacy work we do, to make sure that we're considering issues of race, class, disability, gender, religion, and any other marginalized group within the wine industry.
As a queer person in wine, do you ever feel that your visibility leads to being treated like a token or being pigeon holed?
I don't think I would call it pigeon-holed or tokenized, but I would say that sometimes people do reach out to me to ask me questions essentially on behalf of LGBTQ+ people in ways that I don't feel comfortable with, since I can really only speak to my own experiences.