Jessica Barrand did not come to wine through the front door. There was no family vineyard, no inherited cellar, no preordained path waiting for her. Her journey began instead in public accounting, international tax law, and a life measured in deadlines, travel itineraries, and Excel formulas.
Her first real brush with wine came during a semester abroad in Italy. She drank it, enjoyed it, and moved on. Years later, while working as a CPA at KPMG and rotating through Taipei and London, wine resurfaced in a different way. Client dinners and long restaurant wine lists sparked both curiosity and unease. She didn’t want to bluff her way through them. She wanted to understand what was actually in the glass.
That instinct led her to a part-time job at a neighborhood wine shop, taken initially as an educational side project. Instead, it changed everything. Wine revealed itself not as a luxury object, but as an intersection of agriculture, history, chemistry, and human decision-making. It was serious, joyful, and endlessly complex. And people were building entire lives around it.
What followed was anything but linear. Jess left public accounting, drove from Orlando to Miami every weekend for months to study wine far beyond her experience level, and committed herself to formal wine education. There were moments of deep doubt, including a full-blown panic attack just days before leaving a stable career for good. There were also defining highs: passing her Court of Master Sommeliers Intro and Certified exams, earning WSET Level 3 with Distinction, and traveling through South America with wine as the central lens, an experience that cemented her lifelong love of Chilean wine.
She learned the business from the ground up, working tasting bars, managing retail teams, and spending countless hours talking directly with customers about what they loved, what intimidated them, and what they were curious to try next. In 2021, she co-founded Boulevard Bottle Shop, putting her philosophy into practice as an owner.
Today, Jess serves as one of the two Beverage Directors at Wine Dispensary Inc, where she leads the entire wine program. Her role spans far beyond bottle selection. She oversees the wine club, curates private sommelier services, and shapes the company’s education program, including in-store tastings designed to make wine feel accessible, engaging, and deeply human. She is also the voice behind the tasting notes for Somm Says™, Wine Dispensary’s wine tasting games, translating professional insight into language that invites play, curiosity, and confidence.
At the heart of Jess’s approach is a steadfast belief in winegrower wines, wines made by producers who control every step of the process, from farming their own grapes to making the final decisions in the cellar. These are wines that reflect intention rather than formula, individuality rather than standardization. For Jess, they offer the clearest expression of place and the most honest connection to the people behind them.
That philosophy is foundational to how Wine Dispensary Inc serves modern consumers. Today’s drinkers aren’t just looking for variety or prestige. They want transparency. They want to understand who made their wine, why it tastes the way it does, and what values shaped it along the way. Jess’s background, equal parts analytical rigor and lived experience, allows her to bridge that gap with clarity and warmth.
Her personal tastes lean expressive and character-driven: Riesling with tension and precision, Cabernet Franc with lift and restraint, grower Champagne, amaro, and oxidative or fortified wines that reward curiosity. These are not trends for her. They are reflections of a deeper respect for producers who choose integrity over convenience and storytelling over sameness.
In building Wine Dispensary’s wine program, Jess advocates for bottles that invite conversation rather than intimidation. Wines that respect the intelligence of the drinker without demanding expertise. Wines that create a sense of place and personality, even when enjoyed thousands of miles from where they were made.
Jessica Barrand’s path into wine was neither accidental nor inherited. It was chosen deliberately, questioned often, and earned through study, risk, and persistence. That perspective shapes everything she brings to Wine Dispensary Inc: curiosity, honesty, and a commitment to connecting people not just to great wine, but to the hands, soils, and decisions that shaped it.
Because for Jess, wine has never been about having the right answers. It’s about asking better questions and making sure the story in the glass is worth telling.
