About Wine Dispensary

Wine Dispensary is built around a simple idea: community comes together around great local foods and beverages. As a retailer, we want to honestly help you discover something worth drinking, understand why it is worth drinking, and feel genuinely welcome while you are doing it.

Today, that idea is shaped by Co-Owners and Beverage Directors Jessica Barrand and Jennifer Maglieri, alongside founder and CEO Hunter Rudd. Together, they bring beverage expertise, independent retail experience, hospitality, entrepreneurship, technology, and a shared belief that shopping for wine, beer, spirits, and fine foods can be more personal, more useful, and a lot more interesting.

Jessica and Jennifer lead the beverage and retail side of Wine Dispensary. Hunter leads the business, technology, and digital side, while also serving as one of the company's most visible voices online. The result is a modern bottle shop built around human judgment, supported by technology rather than replaced by it.

Two Beverage Professionals, One Shared Vision

Jessica Barrand and Jennifer Maglieri met in 2017 while working at Mondo Vino, one of Denver's best-known neighborhood wine shops. They arrived in the beverage world through different paths, but quickly discovered that they shared the same frustration with conventional retail and the same ambition to build something better.

Jessica came to wine after a career in international corporate tax. What began as intellectual curiosity developed into a profession centered on understanding wine through producers, farming, place, and the decisions made in the cellar. Her formal training includes Certified Sommelier credentials through the Court of Master Sommeliers and WSET Level 3 with Distinction.

Jennifer came through hospitality. Her background spans restaurants, wine retail, spirits, cocktails, and craft beer, including work in Austin and later at respected Colorado beverage retailers. That experience gave her a broad understanding of not only what makes a product compelling, but how people actually shop, entertain, cook, drink, and discover something new.

Together, Jessica and Jennifer developed a retail philosophy built on curiosity, approachability, and careful selection. Expertise should make shopping easier, not more intimidating. Great products should earn their place on the shelf. And a recommendation should start with the customer, not with whatever needs to be sold next.

From Boulevard Bottle Shop to Wine Dispensary

In December 2021, Jessica and Jennifer became business owners.

Using their savings, they took over a struggling liquor store near Sheridan and Alameda in Lakewood and transformed it into Boulevard Bottle Shop. The store became their first opportunity to put years of beverage experience into practice entirely on their own terms.

They focused on thoughtful wine, craft beer, spirits, interesting foods, locally made products, personal recommendations, and the stories behind what was on the shelf. Just as importantly, they created a shop where people could ask questions without feeling judged and discover products they would never have found in a supermarket aisle.

That experience became the retail foundation for what Wine Dispensary would become.

Building Wine Dispensary

By late 2024, Jessica and Jennifer joined forces with entrepreneur and Somm Says founder Hunter Rudd to build Wine Dispensary Inc.

The partnership brought together complementary strengths. Jessica and Jennifer brought deep beverage knowledge, buying experience, hospitality instincts, and firsthand experience operating an independent bottle shop. Hunter brought entrepreneurship, business strategy, technology, digital marketing, and a willingness to rethink how a modern beverage retailer could connect with customers.

The goal was larger than opening another liquor store.

Wine Dispensary set out to build a better way to shop for wine, beer, spirits, and fine foods: one where professional beverage buyers could make deliberate choices, independent producers could earn attention on the strength of what they make, customers could receive useful guidance from real people, and technology could extend that expertise beyond the walls of the shop.

Today, Jessica and Jennifer serve as Wine Dispensary's Co-Owners and Beverage Directors and lead the buying philosophy that defines the assortment.

Meet Jessica Barrand

Jessica leads Wine Dispensary's wine program with an emphasis on wines that say something meaningful about the people and places behind them.

Her approach to buying centers on producer identity, farming, regional character, value, and the decisions that shape a wine from vineyard to bottle. She has a particular interest in wines from growers and smaller producers whose work offers a clear sense of origin rather than a standardized house style.

Jessica's role extends well beyond purchasing. She helps guide Wine Dispensary's wine education, tastings, private sommelier services, wine club, and the professional tasting content used in Somm Says.

Her philosophy is straightforward: learning more about wine should make it more enjoyable, not more exclusive.

Meet Jennifer Maglieri

Jennifer brings a hospitality-first perspective to Wine Dispensary and co-leads the company's beverage buying alongside Jessica.

Her experience crosses wine, beer, spirits, cocktails, restaurants, and specialty retail, giving her an unusually practical understanding of how beverages fit into real life. She also leads Wine Dispensary's beer program, bringing the same curiosity and selectivity to breweries and styles that the team applies to wine and spirits.

Jennifer's approach to buying is rooted in discovery and usefulness. A product needs more than an impressive label or industry reputation. It needs a reason to be on the shelf and a customer for whom it can become exactly the right bottle, beer, ingredient, or new favorite.

Together, Jennifer and Jessica give Wine Dispensary something that cannot be replicated by an algorithm alone: experienced beverage professionals making deliberate decisions about what deserves a place in the store.

Meet Hunter Rudd

Hunter Rudd is the founder and CEO of Wine Dispensary Inc., the founder of Somm Says, and one of the most visible public voices of Wine Dispensary.

If you follow Wine Dispensary online, there is a good chance you already know him. Hunter is highly active across the company's social media channels, regularly talking about bottles, producers, new arrivals, the beverage business, Somm Says, and what is happening inside Wine Dispensary.

That public-facing role is an important part of how the company operates. Wine Dispensary believes expertise should be shared, discussed, questioned, and made accessible rather than hidden behind the counter.

Hunter's role complements Jessica and Jennifer's work as Beverage Directors. While they lead the product and retail side of the business, Hunter focuses on entrepreneurship, technology, digital strategy, and building systems that can make expert beverage guidance more useful and accessible.

The three perspectives work together: beverage expertise, hospitality, entrepreneurship, and technology, all pointed toward the same goal of helping customers make better discoveries.

Where Somm Says Fits In

Somm Says grew from Hunter's interest in making wine education more interactive, personal, and useful.

Rather than simply telling people what they are supposed to taste, Somm Says turns wine tasting into a game. Customers can explore aroma, body, acidity, tannin, oak, sweetness, flavor, and perceived value, then compare their impressions with professional tasting notes.

At Wine Dispensary, Somm Says creates a bridge between the expertise behind the shelf and the person opening the bottle at home.

Many wines in the Wine Dispensary collection feature Somm Says tasting games accessible through QR codes. Customers can taste along with friends or family, record their impressions, learn about their own preferences, and compare their experience with notes created by beverage professionals.

That interaction also gives Wine Dispensary another way to listen to customers.

Feedback from Somm Says can reveal patterns in what people enjoy, how they perceive value, and which bottles resonate most strongly. Jessica and Jennifer can combine that information with their own professional judgment when evaluating the assortment.

Technology does not replace the beverage director. It gives the beverage director another way to understand the customer.

Wine, Beer, Spirits, Fine Foods, and the People Behind Them

Wine may be in the name, but Wine Dispensary was never intended to be only a wine shop.

Jessica and Jennifer's approach to beverage retail has always been broader: find excellent things made by people worth knowing, understand why they matter, and help customers find the ones that belong at their tables.

That can mean grower Champagne or an affordable weeknight bottle. A local craft beer or a classic European lager. Whiskey, agave spirits, amaro, vermouth, liqueurs, cocktail ingredients, non-alcoholic options, pantry staples, snacks, and fine foods that make opening a bottle feel like the beginning of the occasion rather than the entire occasion.

We care about provenance. We care about value. We care about how something was made and who made it.

But ultimately, we care whether the person buying it is going to be glad they did.

A Different Kind of Bottle Shop

Independent beverage stores have to offer something a supermarket shelf, warehouse retailer, or endless online marketplace cannot.

For Wine Dispensary, that something is judgment, hospitality, curiosity, and connection.

It is Jessica remembering the style of wine you loved last month. It is Jennifer pointing a dedicated IPA drinker toward a beer they never would have chosen on their own. It is Hunter introducing a producer or bottle online and giving customers another reason to become curious about it. It is a tasting that introduces you to something new, a Somm Says game that teaches you something about your own palate, or a recommendation that solves the simple but surprisingly difficult question of what to bring to dinner.

Wine Dispensary exists to make discovering better beverages easier.

Not by deciding what you should like.

By getting to know what you do.

Our Mission

Wine Dispensary is built around thoughtful curation, genuine hospitality, continuous education, respect for producers, and respect for the customer.

We believe talented beverage professionals should have the opportunity to lead. We believe independent producers deserve knowledgeable advocates. We believe technology should strengthen human expertise rather than replace it. And we believe shopping for wine, beer, spirits, and fine foods should be one of the enjoyable parts of your day.

Come curious.

Tell us what you love, what you hated, what you are cooking, what you are celebrating, what you want to spend, or what you want to learn next.

Jessica, Jennifer, Hunter, and the Wine Dispensary team will take it from there.