Like many people, Julie Dalton got into wine by accident. She discovered her passion for wine while waiting tables during her undergrad days at Texas A&M University. A career in biotechnology took her to Maryland where she continued to study wine and work in wine bars and restaurants part-time while completing a Biotechnology graduate program at Johns Hopkins University. 

When she finished grad school, a friend was opening a restaurant and wine bar on which she cut her teeth in the wine business by night while still working in the land of PCR and Western Blots by day. For four years she lived both lives and still achieved the Advanced Sommelier certification through the Court of Master Sommeliers as well as the Certified Wine Educator through the Society of Wine Educators.

She finally said goodbye to the biotech industry in 2010 when she joined the team at Skurnik Wine & Spirits to represent the Terry Theise portfolio. It didn’t take long for her to realize that hospitality was where her heart was, so she came back to that world just a year later at the Four Seasons in Baltimore to work with Chef Michael Mina and Raj Parr. Fast forward to 2017, Tilman Fertitta hired a team to build a Grand Award-winning wine list from the ground up, so back to Texas she went.

For four years she was the Lead Sommelier then Wine Director at Mastro’s Steakhouse at the Post Oak campus in Houston. In the winter of 2021, she transitioned to the Forbes 5-star Post Oak Hotel as their Chef Sommelier and Wine Director of the hotel’s newest addition – Stella’s Wine Bar – which still carries the same Grand Award-winning wine list. After ten years and nine grueling attempts, she finally completed the Master Sommelier Diploma in 2022. When she’s not running the show at Stella’s Wine Bar, she is on the road teaching the next generation of sommeliers or in a hot yoga studio.