About · Tacoma & the South Sound
I know a lot about wine. I won’t make it weird.
I’m Kat Shapiro. I hold the WSET Diploma, I teach, I pour, and I have never once told anyone they were holding the glass wrong.
How I got here
Twenty years, mostly on my feet
[[ YOUR STORY — three or four sentences. Where you started, what made wine stick, and what made you go and get the qualification rather than just keep drinking well. Write it the way you’d say it to someone at a table, not the way a bio reads. ]]
What I came out the other side with is a fairly unusual pairing: the credential that says I could talk about wine at the most insufferable possible level, and absolutely no interest in doing that. The people who taught me best were never the ones performing. They were the ones who handed me a glass and asked what I thought.
That’s the whole approach. I’ll tell you why a wine tastes the way it does, in words you’d use yourself, and then I’ll let you decide whether you like it. You’re allowed to not like it. That’s information too.
The credentials, briefly
What the letters actually mean
Qualifications matter less than whether the evening is any good. But people ask, and it’s fair to want to know who’s pouring — so here they are, translated.
WSET Diploma
The level below Master of Wine. Years of study, a brutal set of exams, and the reason I can taste a wine blind and tell you roughly where it’s from.
I teach it too
I run WSET Level 2 courses here in Tacoma. Teaching a thing is how you find out whether you actually understand it.
Champagne
My favourite thing to pour and the thing I’m asked for most. If you want me genuinely animated, ask why the bubbles are smaller in the good stuff.
Twenty years
Restaurants, wine sales, and a great many hours on the floor. The part that taught me how to read a room, which is most of this job.
What ZenWine is now
Three things, done properly
ZenWine started as a wine club and ran as one for years. It was good, and it was also a warehouse operation disguised as a wine business — boxes, labels, shipping runs, and less and less of the part I’m actually good at.
So I stopped. The club closes with its final collection, and what’s left is the three things worth my evenings:
- Events. Classes you can book a seat at, tastings in your own kitchen, and sommelier-led sessions for teams. Have a look.
- Travel. A week in wine country with someone who can read the label and order the lunch. Where we’re going.
- Seasonal boxes. A handful of bottles a few times a year, chosen for right now. No subscription. This season’s.
All three have the same thing in common: I’m in the room, or I picked the bottles. Nothing here gets handed to somebody else.
The best rooms I’ve ever poured in were full of women who’d been talked down to about wine at least once.
Sip & Circle
A room where nobody performs
Sip & Circle is my all-women tasting series, run with my mentor Reggie Daigneault. Themed evenings, a real tasting, and a room where asking the obvious question is the point rather than the risk.
It came out of noticing how often women arrive at a wine tasting already braced — expecting to be corrected, or to be the one who doesn’t know. An hour in, that’s gone, and what’s left is a group of people arguing cheerfully about whether they smell green pepper. It’s the most fun I have all season.
Editions are announced as they’re scheduled. They show up here alongside everything else.
Say hello
Tell me what you’re trying to do
A party, a team, a trip, or just a question about something you drank last week and can’t stop thinking about. I answer my own email, usually the same day.
kat@zenwineclub.com