In 2023, Tim Cole and Jeffrey Coleman channeled a mutual passion for wine to form the social and educational platform Milwaukee Wine Academy. The catalyst was their own experiences and observations: Wine is wonderful, but it’s not accessible or inclusive for everyone.
Through classes, tastings, wine scholar programs and casual meetups like their monthly wine book club, the software executive (Cole) and the Iberian studies professor (Coleman) are hoping to move the needle.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
Tell me about your mission.
Jeffrey: It’s pretty simple. We want to make wine more accessible, approachable and fun for the Milwaukee community. We have a particular focus on women and people of color as the folks who are more excluded from the wine industry. However, our classes, events and certifications are open to everyone. There’s a lot of gatekeeper mentality in the industry, so we’re giving folks the language and the vocabulary to advocate for themselves, whether they’re ordering off a wine list at a restaurant, a wine bar or in a wine shop looking for a bottle for a celebration or just a Tuesday night dinner.
What are some of the ways you demystify wine and wine culture?
Tim: We want to bring wine right there into your home and your favorite activities. We’ve had the opportunity to pair wine with music, and we’re actually doing an event pairing wine with sneaker culture. We’ve done wine with flower arrangements and really want to combine it with cinema. We want wine to not be seen as this exclusive thing but as something to be shared and enjoyed with the people around you.
At the Black Wine Expo you held in April, guests were able to try wines made by Black-owned wineries. That underscored another accessibility problem.
Jeffrey: The idea for [the expo] came out of the fact that Milwaukee is a minority-majority city. Why don’t we have more representation of Black winemakers? Why aren’t distributors and importers and shops promoting them more, not just during Black History Month, but during the whole year?
You also offer an education program to become a Spanish or French Wine Scholar. What makes this unique?
Jeffrey: The Wine Scholar Guild has been around for almost 20 years. They’re based out of D.C., and their certifications are specialized on particular countries – France, Italy, Spain, and they’re launching Germany this year. Milwaukee Wine Academy is the only wine school in the state approved to teach these courses, and for the Spanish one, when I taught it in January, we were the only school in the Midwest to teach it. And it’s a deep dive. I mean, you’re learning wine law, culture, all of the appellations, all of the grapes, how they fit together, geology, geography, history. It’s an intense experience, I will say.
OK, it’s Friday night. What are you drinking?
Tim: For my mom’s 69th birthday, I made lamb chops and reached for a gamay, made by Maison Noir and [Oregon sommelier] André Hueston Mack. That light-bodied red paired so good with those lamb chops. It was absolutely fantastic.
Jeffrey: If I’m coming home from campus and it’s been a long day, I am more than likely going to reach for a medium- to full-bodied red or an incredible bottle of sparkling wine – not Champagne, because I don’t make that kind of money in education!
