There is a moment in time, just before a cork gives way to the swiftness of the sword, when the entire world leans in.
Brookhaven resident Quentin Wilson has built a company designed especially for that very moment.
Q10, is a Crémant de Loire made the old way. Méthode traditionnelle. A second fermentation. Years of patience before a single glass is poured. But to call it wine is to miss the point. Quentin, its founder, will tell you gently that the bottle is only a vessel. What he is really making is a bridge.
“Q10 is a bridge between Atlanta and the Loire Valley,” says Quentin, “It is a bridge between strangers and friends. A bridge between a Tuesday dinner and a memory you keep for the rest of your life.”
The story begins, as the best ones do, with a father. Not a wine man. Something rarer. A man who never met a stranger, who refused to wait for the right moment to savor his own life. When he passed, Quentin understood how often we postpone our joy. Q10 became the answer. Life itself is the occasion.
French wine runs on generational access — vineyard land, cellar names, doors that open only for the familiar. Quentin inherited none of that. What he built instead was trust. He found his partner in Langlois, a storied Loire house within the Bollinger family through shared meals and long conversations — the slow work of two people earning each other's faith. As a Black wine founder in an industry that rarely makes room at that table, he did not wait to be invited. He pulled up a chair and widened it for everyone watching.
There was no Napa. No inherited French surname. Quentin’s curiosity, consistency and the belief that a remarkable glass can connect people who were never meant to meet fuel Q10 and set it apart from other sparkling wines.
The Loire has always lived a little in Champagne's shadow, same discipline, less applause. For Quentin, “excellence, quietly pursued, opens doors no one expected.”
“I hope Q10 is known not simply for exceptional sparkling wine,” says Quentin, “I hope that it is also known for the relationships, conversations and celebrations it has helped create around the world.”
The Occasion is now. And now deserves to be celebrated. Gather your people. Let it sparkle. Because life, as Quentin reminds us, is already the occasion.