Francesca Mathewes

When she first started stepping into the wine world several years ago, 27-year-old Estefanía Bermúdez recalls feeling stifled.  As Bermúdez—who’s now the beverage director at Logan Square’s bustling Mi Tocaya Antojería—would open a bottle of wine, the tasting notes frequently spoke to her from her earliest memories, flavors like tamarind, watermelon or passionfruit. But this was often met with skepticism, or even derision, from her primarily white counterparts.  “I was constantly saying or pronouncing things wrong, because English is my second language,” Bermúdez said. “I constantly thought that things tasted some way to me, but they weren't right to a white man.”   So when Bermúdez started building out Mi Tocaya's first-ever wine list, she knew she wanted to do things differently. Empowered by the restaurant's mostly-Latino staff (including chef-owner Diana Dávila Boldin), she set out to craft a wine program that pairs the restaurant’s diverse range of Mexican cuisine with an equally inventive and wide-reaching wine list—and one that doesn't rely on classical tasting notes and rigorous methodology. “It was like, ‘How do I make this feel safe for myself and safe for the people that I work with?” she said. Bermúdez recalls feeling immediately welcomed by Chicago’s Mexican community when her family immigrated from Medellín, Colombia, more than 20 years ago, and wanted to replicate that feeling of embrace for the patrons and staff at Mi Tocaya. “If you taste something, and it re