Julie Dalton

Coming Up

Wine service is where Julie Dalton built her base: on the floor, in the room, and under the pace of a working shift. At Texas A&M University, while she was still in undergraduate studies, she worked as a wine professional and waited tables. That kind of front-line service teaches timing, language, and how to read a guest without overplaying the moment. For Dalton, it also established a practical foundation that was as hands-on as it was technical. The cellar side of the work deepened alongside graduate study. While completing a biotechnology program at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, Julie Dalton kept working in wine bars and restaurants, adding repetition to observation and study to service. That mix of tasting, listening, and table work shaped a palate built through use. The next step took her to Mastro's Steakhouse in Houston, Texas, where she served as Advanced Sommelier, operating in a high-level service setting with a broader and more demanding wine conversation.

Where They Are Now

At The Post Oak Hotel and Stella's Wine Bar, Julie Dalton works in the register of breadth and precision. As Chef Sommelier at The Post Oak Hotel and Wine Director at Stella's Wine Bar, she is dealing with a category that still resists easy familiarity. Her own measure of the field is blunt: “I’ve tasted more Grand Cru Burgundy and classified First Growth Bordeaux in the past year and a half than I have in my entire life.” The scale matters here. In this line of work, more experience does not shrink the subject; it widens it. Wine remains, for Dalton, an open system of regions, styles, and textures rather than a closed canon. That is the useful part of the work: continuous comparison, constant recalibration, and a willingness to keep learning from the bottle in front of you. The language around her practice stays measured because the job itself demands it.

In Their Words “I’ve tasted more Grand Cru Burgundy and classified First Growth Bordeaux in the past year and a half than I have in my entire life.” “The world is so enormous, I just became enamoured with all the pieces and parts of wine.”