Sommelier of the Year

Jill Spoor Wine Director, Fairmont Hotels, fairmont.com If you’ve ever had a taste of Tavel at the Empress, tried a glass of 2010 Bordeaux at the Hotel Vancouver, or thrown back a quick splash of Siduri pinot from Oregon at the Fairmont Vancouver Airport before a flight, then you’ve tasted Jill Spoor’s influence. If you’ve gone to Botanist for aspecial occasion and splurged on abottle of Raphaël et Vincent Bérêche Brut Réserve or any other of her selection of impossibleto-source grower Champagnes, then you’ve tasted her passion. In this city that fetishizes the small-scale, hand-selling sommelier, Spoor is an anomaly—a wine professional who’s able to combine a wine nerd’s love of all things esoteric (don’t get her started on her former stomping grounds in Northern Italy) with a position as wine director for the region’s Fairmonts that allows her immeasurable influence over how vast swaths of locals and visitors interact with wine in the city.