To quote Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, “Good company, good wine, good welcome, can make good people,” Queer Wine Night in Toronto embodies that welcoming atmosphere.
As of this month, Paradise Grapevine will be hosting Queer Wine Night at their Bloor Street location on the first Tuesday of every month (April 5 will be their next run). If you’re unfamiliar, Queer Wine Night has been around as a word-of-mouth event since September 2021, and prior to Paradise Grapevine, Queer Wine Night was being hosted at Nice Nice on Mondays when they were closed.
They quickly outgrew the space as the event grew more popular, and Paradise Grapevine has a larger venue to host Toronto’s growing queer wine community. Maria, who runs Queer Wine Night in Toronto, has worked in wine and hospitality for several years. As a queer person, she was disappointed to see that there was no recognized queer-wine community in Toronto’s wine scene, and she wanted to create a safe space for queer folks to get into wine.
Wine training events and classes are often white male-driven and can be intimidating spaces to explore, especially with the often pretentious and fussy discourse associated with the wine world. Maria’s goal is to break this binary of wine-learning to be an inclusive space, and with a lack of queer bars in the west-end, especially after The Beaver closed down, it’s understandable why Queer Wine Night is such a popular event with Toronto’s non-binary community.
Currently, Queer Wine Night is a social gathering, oftentimes with music, and is a great place to meet with your friends or even come alone (they have other alcohol and non-alcohol options as well); however, look out for more upcoming events and experiences in the wine world for the queer community on their Instagram (including educational experiences, pop-up events, fundraisers, tastings, and more!).
