Chloe Miranda is the sommelier at Birdie Gs Restaurant in Santa Monica, California. Birdie G’s is one of our favorite restaurants, not just because the food and wine is amazing, but also because they use a significant percentage of organically grown ingredients and feature many wines grown organically (or better).

Chloe is my favorite sommelier. She’s a consummate and egoless professional, asks good questions before trying to suggest a wine, offered us tastes of multiple wines so that we could sample before committing, and generally put us at ease with the entire wine selection process. When Chloe is our host, We always end up drinking more wine than we thought we would, which I think would make Chole’s bosses happy too.

The other thing I like about Chloe is that she’s self-taught and has not gone through the traditional certification process to get to become a sommelier. In this interview she discusses some of the pros and cons of taking this path, and how she continues to educate herself about wine. We also talk about some of the market trends with regard to organic wine, and some of Chloe’s perspectives that help make her successful as a sommelier.

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