Cidermaker, wine buyer, cook - Samantha Chamberlain is a woman who appears to do it all.

Sam is that friend - the type who effortlessly whips up a loaf of foccacia, the best you’ve ever tasted - fermented and baked with haphazard effort with but a microwave oven as her only tool. (This actually happened, and was the favourite dish of the dinner party we attended later that day. She’s now stored in my phone as “Focaccia Mommy”.)

Sam’s foray into winemaking began with a tasting room stint on Vancouver Island in Comox, BC circa 2016. It wasn’t her ideal, but working with people and talking about fermented things was her driving force. After a short stint, she was asked to help in the cellar. Management continued to entrust Sam with increasing responsibility, and over time, she was overseeing most of production.

Casually brainstorming on how to reach a wider audience led to Sam pitching cider as a new category, which she was greenlit to explore. Cold calling all over the Okanagan produced a shipment of apples, successfully made into cider Sam sold locally, and kegged for restaurants.

Soon, Sam was itching to leave the island, and began to consider applying for head cidermaker positions elsewhere. Crossmount Cider Company, in Saskatoon, offered her a full time role, a cidery experimenting with cold hardy apple varieties and grapes.

After a few years, the lack of upward mobility pressed Sam, calling her back to wine. Sam took a job with Metro Liquor as a Senior Product Consultant in January of 2020. The pandemic hit, and everything changed. Equipped with a wealth of education and experience, Sam jumped feet first into entrepreneurship.

Sam still calls Saskatoon home. Though the prairie city isn’t regarded as an epicurean mecca, Sam is actively redefining what it means to reside in Saskatchewan beyond Pilsner, bunny hugs and the Roughriders. A trifecta of local pop ups, wine tastings, and dinners, hosted in her home has grown a loyal following of devout fans, with her events selling out in mere hours.

I’ve long known Sam via Instagram. We’d chat often, bonding over a mutual love of fashion, travel, and of course, wine.

It wasn’t until several years later that we had the chance to meet on Vancouver Island, where we shared a guest house at Emandare Vineyard in the Cowichan Valley, spending slow, luxurious, sunny days sipping wine, smoking weed, and periodically cooking amazing food that she largely helmed.

Sam’s a low key person with a painful humility that might make you doubt her talents - until she finds her way into the kitchen, and cooks some of the most killer food you’ve ever tasted.

Over the years, Sam routinely shared her dream of cooking for others, but couldn’t figure out a forum that felt right. She muses, “I was joking with my husband over dinner one night, with a wine we randomly selected from our cellar. I wished that we had more people at our table. I decided to see if I could sell a few tickets, get people to pitch for the food, and advertise it as a dinner party. So we did, and people actually came.”

Sam’s goal is elevated curation that is authentic, not pretentious. The main driver is connection – though at times, she worries this can feel generic, “I’m so passionate about food and wine - the theme that I’m trying to model is how I live my life – simplicity.”

People often go looking for a certain type of feeling from restaurants or wine bars. Unless there’s an unusually knowledgeable sommelier on staff with ample time to sit and talk - it’s rare to feel a deep sense of connection when dining out. This is what Sam aims to bridge.

Beyond eating out, one could hypothetically enroll in seminars or courses - but nothing in between really exists, and it’s this intermediary Sam provides.

“The physical experience of connection, in-depth knowledge, beautiful food and ambiance - all without a classroom setting is what I’m marrying. I am creating the experience I want to go to. I love dining out, but I am consistently let down. I might as well cook at home. I don’t find any substance in the restaurant industry anymore.”

Sam believes good hospitality should be theatrical – but that passion in a post-Covid world is lost - it’s become a sea of young people who’ve never worked in hospitality. Sam shares, “A city like Saskatoon doesn’t have a huge pool to pull talent from, and it’s even trickier post pandemic.”

Sam’s dinner series are intentionally small, hosted mid-summer, and capped at 8-10 people. Served family style, she joins her guests at the table, engaging and connecting. “Nobody likes to be talked at.”

“There are always people who are excited who come to my home, and there’s always half the people, who after a few glasses of wine, share they thought it was weird to come to some random’s place. Generally, 40-50% are skeptical at first. They always share, though, that their doubts were dispelled. When you host small groups of people like I do, they’re all friends by the end of the night. I’ve even made friends - half the people who’ve come to my dinners I’ve kept in touch with.”

For larger events, Sam hosts at Citizen Café, a local bakery owned by Brittany Brown, who she met through mutual friends, a group who hired Sam to host an in-home wine tasting.

In addition to hosting her events, Sam recently launched a YouTube channel, demonstrating simple meals people may buy generically or frozen, showing how they can easily elevate them.

“Take skillet or pan pizzas, for example. Instead of buying a frozen pizza or ordering out – I’ll show you tips to finding the right ingredients, and how within 30 minutes, you can make your own restaurant quality pizza, like infusing tomato sauce with tons of flavour, garlic, herbs, etc. It’s all the small things that make a world of difference.”

Learn more about Sam here.

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