Some of the best conversations we’ve had at Wine Scribes started with an unexpected email. Phoenix Dai reached out to us not long ago, and her message stood out immediately — a Certified Sommelier (Court of Master Sommeliers), holder of the WSET 4 Diploma, and currently deep in her MBA at Cornell’s world-renowned Johnson Graduate School of Management. On paper, impressive. But the story behind it is even better.
It doesn’t begin in Ithaca. It begins in the cellars of Napa Valley, detours through New Zealand, winds through the mountains of Montana, and eventually lands in the Finger Lakes — one of the most underrated wine regions in the country, and the place Phoenix now calls home. Throughout our wine journey’s, we’ve met plenty of somms-turned-winemakers, but seldom do we come across the inverse.
We sat down to talk about blind tasting, hospitality, what restaurants get wrong, and why you should be paying attention to Finger Lakes Riesling.
Wine Scribes: Let’s start at the beginning. How did wine first come into your life?
Phoenix Dai: My oldest memories of wine come from watching my mother bring bottles home for family gatherings. I’d see her carrying bottles in and I was always fascinated by how wine seemed to carry meaning beyond just being a beverage. It represented celebration, culture, connection. A lot of things behind just the bottle.
WS: Walk me through your academic path. I heard it started at UC Davis?
PD: I actually started in New Zealand, at Lincoln University on the South Island, studying viticulture and enology. I was there for about a year and a half. It gave me a really strong cool-climate foundation — Marlborough and Central Otago. But I wanted to understand warm-climate winemaking too, so I transferred to UC Davis for an exchange year and then stayed.
WS: After Davis, you went into harvest work?
PD: My first position was a harvest internship in Napa — that gave me firsthand exposure to the technical and scientific side of wine production. My second harvest was at Treasury Wine Estates, also in Napa.
After production, I shifted to the hospitality side. I worked as a sommelier at the Yellowstone Club in Montana for a winter season — managing a cellar of over a thousand bottles, running wine education for staff. Then I worked with Raymond Vineyards and Benziger Family Winery as a fine wine specialist, focusing on sales, guest engagement, and wine education.
WS: That’s an unusual path — production into service and then into business school. Why the change?
PD: While I value my production experience deeply, my long-term path is especially rooted in wine education, wine marketing and hospitality leadership.That’s why Cornell made sense.
Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration is genuinely one of the best hospitality programs in the world, and their wine curriculum is serious. What I didn’t know until Phoenix mentioned it: she’s on Cornell’s blind tasting team, and was preparing to fly to Switzerland to compete in a world-level blind tasting competition when we spoke.
WS: I respect that. A lot of folks think its a rosy romantic dream but once you do a harvest you realize how much dirty work and cleaning is involved! Switching gears here–You clearly love blind tasting. Why do you think it works as a tool for bringing people into wine?
PD: Blind tasting combines intellectual challenge with sensory discipline. It pulls you away from labels and forces you to think critically about structure, balance, and regional expression. And it’s incredibly humbling — there’s nothing quite like getting everything wrong in a lineup to remind you how much there still is to learn.
She makes a good point. I’ve tasted blind with Master Sommeliers and Advanced Sommeliers over the years, and every single one of them has a story about a catastrophically wrong guess they’ve never forgotten. The humility is part of what makes it a useful exercise.
PD: A lot of younger people are curious about wine but feel like they need deep knowledge before they can participate. Blind tasting removes that intimidation factor. You’re just using your senses. The wine communicates directly.
We incorporate blind tastings into dinner parties at home sometimes, and the moment you watch a non-wine person suddenly get deeply engaged — really thinking about what’s in their glass — is one of my favorite things about wine.
WS: You mentioned wanting to make wine more accessible, particularly for younger drinkers and women entering the industry.
PD: In the sommelier world especially, women are still underrepresented. Long term, I want to contribute to mentorship and education — to be a visible female leader in this space, and to help make the industry feel welcoming to people who might otherwise feel like it’s not for them.
WS: What do you think most restaurants get wrong about wine hospitality?
PD: Technical knowledge alone isn’t enough. The most memorable wine experiences don’t come just from what’s in the glass — they come from how people are made to feel. True hospitality is about anticipating what guests need before they even articulate it. In the wine world specifically, hospitality is where technical expertise meets storytelling, and the human connection is what makes it meaningful.
WS: Let’s talk about where you live. You’re in Ithaca — gateway to the Finger Lakes. What’s your take on the region?
I love their Rieslings. Genuinely — I can’t forget about them. I remember pairing one with local New York goat cheese and being struck by how right it was. The acidity, the aromatics — it just complements the freshness of the cheese beautifully.
I really like a producer named Wagner Vineyards, and specifically their Niagara — a varietal that doesn’t show up on many radar screens outside the region.
Niagara is highly distinctive, really memorable. I’d pair it with lighter dishes, fruit-forward desserts, cheese boards — perfect for summer outdoor tastings.
Niagara is a native American labrusca hybrid closely related to Concord, widely grown in the Finger Lakes and New York State. It’s intensely aromatic — floral, grapey, bold — and worth seeking out if you’re visiting the region. Wagner Vineyards is one of the Finger Lakes’ established producers with a long history in the area.
WS: Is the quality on par with Napa or New Zealand?
PD: The quality is absolutely there. The challenge is national awareness. The region has a strong reputation among wine professionals, but many consumers outside the Northeast still aren’t very familiar with the Finger Lakes. Someone trying wine for the first time might only think of Napa cab — that’s the shortcut people default to. The Finger Lakes needs to do more work to communicate what makes it unique: the climate, the food-friendly style, the authentic hospitality experiences.
More consumer education, more years of building that story. The long-term positioning will come.
That’s exactly the gap we’re trying to help close at Wine Scribes. There are exceptional wine regions all over the world that don’t get their fair share of attention simply because they’re not Napa or Burgundy, and the Finger Lakes is absolutely one of them. Phoenix is our guide into the region — and if you want to explore it yourself, her recommendations are a perfect starting point.
Phoenix Dai is a Certified Sommelier (Court of Master Sommeliers) and WSET Diploma holder currently pursuing her MBA at Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management in Ithaca, New York. She has trained and worked across New Zealand, Napa Valley, and the Finger Lakes, and competes internationally in blind tasting. She is a featured sommelier whose recommendations informed our Finger Lakes Wine Guide — bringing genuine on-the-ground expertise to a region she knows and loves firsthand.