The degree and importance of the human role in winemaking is often up for debate. The human relationships in representing, selling and enjoying wine, however, is essential. Floraison Selections is a team of dedicated and passionate professionals united in our commitment to nurturing and maintaining the human relationship in wine throughout its trajectory. From a responsibly farmed vineyard in a tiny corner of the world, to its professional distribution and finally, in the hands of a curious consumer.
Our Story
Floraison Selections was founded by Nadia Dmytriw in Spring 2017, during the great wildflower super bloom in her native California. Nadia created the company to continue the work she has been doing since 2009 in a more meaningful, satisfying, productive, and healthier environment. It is a way for her to lead a company according to the morals and values she and her growers, sales team, and community share.
We are the talented wine, cider, & beer growers and makers, and passionate sales team formerly associated with Joli Vin Imports. We are a partnership of French wine growers & their California based sales people who banded together in a time of potentially divisive upheaval. We are committed to supporting each other and creating a better environment for the contributors on both sides of the Atlantic to work and grow together. In the face of chaos and division, we are those who have chosen to move forward together in camaraderie and let our collective dedication and joie de vivre for our chosen work continue to shine and grow under more positive and productive circumstances.
Our Team
Nadia Dmytriw - Founder, Owner, Manager
A native San Franciscan, Nadia has worked in the wine industry since 2001. She holds a B.A. from U.C. Santa Cruz in Language Studies and her passion for foreign languages and cultures led her to work in various aspects of the wine trade in both France & Russia. She lived in France for 5 ½ years and cut her teeth in the industry while living in Bordeaux working as a tour guide and educator for two grands Crus in Pauillac - Pichon Longuville Baron and Chateau Lynch-Bages. Upon returning to the Bay Area she worked for the retailer K&L Wines, the respected importer Martine’s Wines, and has repped wine in the Bay Area since 2008. She has been with Joli Vin Imports since 2009 and the Managing Partner since 2011.
Nadia’s first serious encounter with wine took place in a public school cafeteria in Bordeaux, France. Ever present on the teachers’ table, wine was not an accessory or a pretension but an active participant in the meal. It generated conversation, sparked debates, eased nerves, and broke barriers. Like France’s sacred hour and a half lunch break, wine with one’s meal was a daily reminder that it is the process of our daily endeavors and the way one nourishes oneself and others that give meaning to life. It is that elusive balance between the transcendental and the daily experience that Nadia continues to pursue through her life and work. Nadia is also a dancer and moves in many worlds – when not laboring over this website or hawking bottles, you may find her letting loose at a Flamenco jam session or Cumbia party, or foraging local seaweed and mushrooms and preparing them in her ridiculously small kitchen for a ridiculously large group of friends.
Johan Churchill - Sales, Bay Area
Johan moved to the Bay Area seven years ago after planning to stay for only a summer. A few years later, he met the sommelier who would eventually become his wife. As he fell in love with this wacky girl, he also began to take increasing interest in her exciting profession, tasting wine samples along with her late at night and helping move countless boxes of wine with her as a token of his affection. It was also during this time that Johan experienced his first trigger wine (1990 Le Piane Bocca) and made the decision to embark on his own career in the wine industry. Adding to a longstanding background in music, a liberal arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College, and fairly extensive retail and restaurant experience, Johan followed his newest passion to a job at Arlequin Wine Merchant (one of the preeminent wine shops in the Bay Area). By the end of his two-year tenure with the wine shop, he was already running the monthly wine clubs and managing the shop's social media across various platforms. Seeking to continue fine tuning his career in the wine industry, Johan then accepted a sales position with Joli Vin Imports, where for over a year he has gratefully worked with a carefully selected cast of some of the finest French wines and ciders produced without chemical inputs. He could not be more excited to continue representing these growers through Floraison Selections.
John Koehnen - Sales, Los Angeles - east-side
Roni Ginach - Sales, Los Angeles - west, east & south bay
The Name
"Floraison" is a botanical term in French which means blooming or blossoming and can also be used figuratively. The etymology of the word "floraison" is quite meaningful - “flor” is the latin for flower and “raison” means reason. The name first came to Nadia during the great 2017 wildflower super bloom in her native California, a spectacular once in a lifetime event that happened to coincide with the birth of the company. Nadia's colleagues at her first wine job in France was "little flower", no doubt due to her long hair and hippie ways. Nadia chose this name in part because Floraison Selections is in fact a new blooming of her former company Joli Vin Imports. She also felt the name captures her own personal growth and blossoming as a business owner and as a woman in a male dominated industry.