Julie Dalton of Mastro’s Steakhouse is the winner of the 2018 Periwinkle Foundation Iron Sommelier competition.

From Sandra Crittenden’s blog Wine Thoughts:

Iron Sommelier 2018 was held last night at The Houstonian Hotel, Club, and Spa. Iron Sommelier is Houston’s most important competition for local beverage gurus with some of the city’s best sommeliers competing for the title. There was great excitement in the room when Julie Dalton of Mastro’s was named this year’s Iron Sommelier.

Dalton is the first female to ever win the title. Her theme of “Drink Gneiss Schist” was a clever play on words with all of the wines she chose coming from grapes sourced from metamorphic soil types. “The wines that have made me take pause or cry or have a come to Jesus moment have all been wines from metamorphic soils,” she shared. She explained that gneiss and schist are both metamorphoses of shale and slate created from pressure and heat. “I just find the wines to be so expressive, there is electricity on the palate.” She said that she was not anticipating to win as a newcomer to the city, ” I was honored to even be invited to be a participant and I chose something really geeky, I wasn’t expecting that at all.”

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Image via the Iron Somm Facebook.