Our Team
Lee Seeger
Education has always been a top priority for Lee. Whether educating herself on the specifics of a particular wine or winemaking technique or educating guests on what makes each brand of wine distinctive, Lee’s goal has been to make herself the subject matter expert and to share her knowledge in a meaningful way that engages both guests, staff and students. But’s Lee’s impact goes far beyond her knowledge of wine and the wine industry. As a passionate educator, she is known for her ability to create fun, interactive and educational experiences that have drawn rave reviews from participants.
Currently, Lee is wine educator, virtual tasting specialist, and brand ambassador for House of Smith in Washington state. She has spearheaded numerous educational programs that ramped up new hires faster and enriched front-line staff, sales staff, and distributors with product knowledge and confidence to become stronger brand ambassadors. Creatively enriching the staff’s knowledge, she facilitated monthly live Q&A sessions with the Vice President of Winemaking and Viticulture to discuss current topics in the winery and vineyards. She also created a weekly in-house newsletter, ‘The Friday Flash,’ which highlights newly released wines, explains winemaking techniques, viticultural aspects, information on Washington’s AVAs, and the specific House of Smith vineyards—an educational and promotional tool, that due to its popularity, reaches not only the front-line staff, but hundreds of distributors and customers across the U.S. today. Leveraging her perspective as passionate educator, she produced and directed a four- part, in-person tasting program at the Jet City Winery in Seattle, which received 5-star reviews from participants. This event, a ‘grape to glass’ series, has transformed into a four-part training module for tasting room staff. Lee is House of Smith’s traveling ambassador, providing tasting events to businesses, clubs, and wine enthusiasts, throughout the U.S.
Prior to joining House of Smith, Lee was at Robert Mondavi Winery, where she oversaw the visitor’s center and provided gracious hospitality to the 180,000+ guests who visited the property annually. One highlight of her tenure at Robert Mondavi Winery was creating a new tour program called “Art in the Afternoon.” Cataloging and researching the extensive winery art collection, Lee developed a highly successful tour, which received accolades from Forbes magazine and winery visitors. Before joining Robert Mondavi, Lee was at Wente Family Estates, where she created memorable wine experiences for guests and exclusive wine club members for the prestigious Livermore Valley wine producer. She has served as a WSET Educator at Spirited Grape, an approved program provider in Issaquah, WA for the WSET organization, where she delivered a meaningful education program to hundreds of students, teaching Level 1, 2 & 3 WSET courses. Most recently, she has joined the staff at Commonwealth Wine School as instructor in their San Francisco school.
Lee’s personal study of wine began in 2005 in California. Her education has included immersion in the Viticulture and Enology program at Las Positas College, where she made the Honor’s list. Continuing her journey of learning, she received the WSET Level 4 diploma, one of the most prestigious accreditations within the wine industry. Rounding out her experience and knowledge, Lee has conducted extensive wine tasting around the world, inclusive of Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Italy, France, Hungary, Austria, Germany, and the UK. She has a strong knowledge of the wines of the Pacific Northwest (British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon) as well as extensive knowledge of California wines.