Meet Ariel
Location | Pasadena, CA
There are people who find wine and there are people wine finds. Ariel is the latter. She is a wine enthusiast, equity advocate, and the kind of storyteller who makes you feel like you’ve been missing out on a conversation that was always meant to include you. I met Ariel through the Wine Unify Welcome Initiative in 2025 and knew immediately — as a fellow Latina, she needed a seat at this table. I am so glad she said yes to this feature.
Wine found Ariel long before she had the words for it.
When Ariel was growing up, she watched her grandfather the way most children watch people they love — closely, quietly, and with a lot of questions. He would open a bottle of wine or whiskey and the room would shift. Stories would spill out alongside his pour. Lessons about life, about Mexico, about who he was and where her family came from and as she got older, she stopped watching…and started asking. What is that? What does it taste like? What are you experiencing? Eventually, she got to experience his joy for herself with him through a shared glass that became something sacred.
For years, she channeled her curiosity around wine into a hobby like Friday Night Wine reviews on Instagram, just for the joy of it. But it wasn’t until she became a mother, until something in her shifted and expanded, that the dream changed shape. Three years ago, she was accepted as an ambassador for Latinas Wine Club and the world she thought she knew cracked open into something so much bigger.
She shows up for the people the industry has too often looked past.
Ariel’s work sits at the intersection of two things she is deeply committed to: amplifying equity in the workplace and amplifying equity in wine. Over the years, she learned that over 13,000 wineries exist in the United States and less than 1% are Latino-owned!! And yet, the agricultural workforce that makes so much of this industry possible is made up predominantly of Latinos (that is not a footnote — it is the whole story!).
So she made a choice. To not just share the beautiful, approachable, fun side of wine but to also name what isn’t right and to be intentional. When she walks into a wine shop or sits down at a restaurant, she’s looking for bottles built by people of color, by women, and by Latinas. She lifts those stories and celebrates the winemakers, the writers, the educators, the content creators who are working every single day to make space where space wasn’t always given. As a Mexican American woman, she honors her culture by pairing wine with the food she grew up eating and sharing that on her platforms, unapologetically and with pride.
One afternoon in Pasadena changed something in her.
She was following a Latina winemaker out of Paso Robles and truly fascinated by her methods and her story. When she learned this winemaker was hosting a tasting in her hometown, and that it was being held at Monopole Rx, a women-owned wine shop she had been wanting to visit, she bought her ticket and took herself on a solo date on purpose because she wanted the experience to be entirely her own.
Nancy Ulloa of Ulloa Cellars, who was named in Wine Enthusiast’s 40 Under 40, opened up that afternoon in a way that felt rare to Ariel. No gatekeeping. No performance. Just a woman sharing her story, her methods, and her wine, where each bottle was tied to something personal, and something that could not be replicated. Ariel left feeling held by someone who didn’t even know her name when she walked in yet Nancy said something to her that day that she’ll never forget (she doesn’t remember the exact words but the message was simple and it landed hard): just go for it!!!!
She Ariel did. Without knowing what “it” was, she went for it anyway. And it led her to a WSET Level I certification, to brand partnerships, and to being featured right here on this platform.
When the seasons slow down, she reaches for a Syrah.
She fell in love with it in her early twenties. Bold and full of tannins. There’s something about the way it holds chocolate and smoke in the same breath, a complexity she understood instinctively and still reaches for when the days get quieter and colder.
But when wine isn’t the answer, she turns to canelita which is cinnamon tea, sometimes stirred into coffee. It’s the taste of her childhood. Her parents. The warmth of gathering with the people she loves. Her husband has become the one who makes it now and it’s one of the few things that makes her genuinely look forward to the cold.
A message to everyday consumers.
“You don’t have to be an expert. You don’t have to know appellations or vintages or tasting notes but you can be intentional”. She wants consumers to choose a bottle from a small producer or wine made by a woman of color.
The curtain has already been pulled back on the inequities in this industry — years of Latina winemakers, businesswomen, writers, and professionals have made sure of that. Their voices got louder. Their presence expanded. What Ariel wants now is for the everyday consumer to meet that effort halfway. Because the path has been built. She’s walking it. And she’s out here making sure others know it exists.
Now the TFLUXÈ dinner table is set and Ariel’s version of it is exactly, perfectly her.
Ariel shared that the guest list makes no conventional sense, and she knows it, but she doesn’t care even a little (and I love that for her!). Joining her would be Britney Spears, Shel Silverstein, her grandfather, and her husband. Four people who represent the full range of who she is — the pop anthems and the childhood poetry, the unconditional love and the hard won wisdom. In the background, Britney is playing. Obviously!
The table is set in her own backyard, in the spring, when she can be outdoors the way she loves most. The menu is a love letter to herself: a perfect Caesar salad to start, followed by those sweet corn tamale appetizers — yes, the Cheesecake Factory ones, because her husband loves them and this is her dream dinner. Then a proper steak with mashed potatoes, balsamic glazed carrots and asparagus, a second entrée of cordon bleu because why not, and crème brûlée to close. Wine is woven through every course — a zesty Grüner Veltliner or Pinot Grigio to open, a warm-climate Chardonnay to carry through, a Syrah with dinner, and a Moscato at the end.
It is a dinner that tastes like who she is. Shared with the people who made her that way.
Ariel’s story is unique, fun, and very much her own. As a fellow Latina, I was so happy to share her journey through wine. Give her follow on Instagram at winearoundtherose
xoxo,
Ty-Juana L. Flores