For too long, wine has been sold from the top down — critics, scores, famous bottles you'll never afford. Side by Side starts somewhere more useful: with you, your friends, and two glasses, right where you are.
🍷 Wine isn't complicated. Wine language is. · Follow us @sidebysidewine · 🥂 "Wine is bottled poetry." — Robert Louis Stevenson · Experience first, language second. · 🍾 Two glasses. One big lightbulb moment. · Follow us @sidebysidewine · 🍷 Wine isn't complicated. Wine language is. · "In wine there is wisdom." — Pliny the Elder · 🥂 Your palate. Your rules. · Follow us @sidebysidewine · 🍾 Experience first, language second. ·
How it works
The most powerful way to learn wine is side by side.
Ever stared at a wine list and just pointed at a few words that seem vaguely familiar? You're not alone. Side by Side flips the script. You taste something — that drying, gripping feeling, that bright mouthwatering zing — and then we give it a name. By the end of the night you don't just have new vocabulary. You have a better understanding of your own palate. And that goes everywhere with you.
01
Two glasses, one focus
Every pairing is curated to zoom in on one element of the wines. With two glasses in front of you, that one thing comes into sharp focus in a way a single glass never could.
02
No wrong answers
Is it tart? Sweet? Earthy? Do you like it? The worksheet guides you through what to notice — and there's no wrong answer. Every response is just more information about your palate.
03
You choose your favorite
At the end of each pairing you choose your favorite. Not the group's favorite — yours. Every choice tells you something real about what you actually like.
04
You leave with a cheat sheet
The booklet is yours to keep. By the end of the night you'll have a clearer sense of your own palate — and that goes with you everywhere. Next time you're staring down a wine list, you'll know exactly what you're looking for.
"You already have opinions about wine. You just need someone to decode the language and help you own them."
Wine gatekeepers protect their industry and expertise by building walls of confusing vocabulary — appellations, vintages, terroirs, varietals — and convinced all of us that we had to climb to the top to have a real opinion.
Side by Side breaks down the walls and builds something better in its place: experience first, language second. You taste the contrast between two wines, you notice what's different, and then the word for it arrives — as a label for something you already felt, not an abstraction you're asked to memorize. That's how real expertise is built. And it turns out it's a lot more fun this way.
Private tastings
Bring Side by Side to your people.
Birthdays. Dinner parties. Team nights. Date nights with ambition. If you have a group and a curiosity about wine, Side by Side comes to you.
Available for private events
California vs France
The perfect introduction to the Old World vs New World difference — told through four side by side pairings of the same grape grown on opposite sides of the Atlantic.
More tasting experiences are in development. Or if you have something specific in mind — a region, a grape, a question you've always had about wine — get in touch and we'll build something together.
Tasting dates, wine tips, and new Side by Side experiences.
Straight to your inbox. No jargon, no gatekeeping — just good wine made simple.
Hi, I'm Katie 🍷
About Katie
Pull up a chair. There's always room.
It started when I was about five years old. My dad would pour a tiny splash of wine into a cordial glass, more water than wine, so my sister and I could raise a glass with the family at holidays. Salute. I didn't taste much. But I felt everything. Wine wasn't something out of reach. It was something that brought people together. That feeling never left me.
A few years later, for my 21st birthday, I carried two very heavy jugs of Carlo Rossi Paisano and Pink Catawba many blocks to my apartment. I was playing at fancy, mirroring that little girl clinking glasses with her family, without knowing much more about wine than she did.
Good fortune put me in the path of Dominick and his wine shop, Good Mansion Wines, in Wheeling, West Virginia, where I got a real education in Old World wine and eventually started leading tastings myself.
Back in Pittsburgh, I turned a big row house on the North Side into a monthly gathering. East North Wine Tastings, twenty-five people around the table, good wine, good cheese, good company. People came from all different corners of my life and left having learned something real. Friends still quote those tastings when we open a bottle together. That's what I'm most proud of. Not the wine knowledge. The fact that people learned something and kept it.
Then big jobs, a growing career, a pandemic. Wine moved to the back of the shelf. In 2022 I quit my job without much of a plan, just a feeling that something needed to change. It took a while to figure out what that was. I think I've figured it out now.
I want a crowded table. I want everyone to feel like they belong there. And I want wine to be the joyful thing in the glass, not the intimidating thing on the list. That's what Side by Side is for.
