KT Winery Goes Worldwide with American Airlines Announcement

If you’ve ever woken up with a wine hangover, you know just how cruel the vino can be on the morning after. There are a number of reasons wine hangovers have earned this reputation — congeners like tannins, histamine and sulfites are prime suspects. Then there’s that staple of the American diet: sugar.

Wine doesn’t necessarily have more sugar than beer or spirits, but it can mix with the aforementioned ingredients to worsen that infamous wine hangover.

The team at KT Winery, a Black-, Asian-, and women-owned wine company launched in Charlotte, is pushing back on this bad reputation. With its two brands, Mom Juice and KT Signature, KT Winery is showing that you don’t need all those extra ingredients to make a good wine.

All of KT Winery’s wines are low-sugar, gluten-free and vegetarian. But that’s just the start, says co-founder Kristin Taylor.

“They’re always made with less than nine ingredients versus the 74 ingredients that [other brands] don’t have to disclose to consumers,” she explained. “That can be things like formaldehyde or hydrogen peroxide, which no one would expect would ever be in their wine, but commonly are … I think we firmly fall into the ‘better for you’ category.”

Living in Charlotte at the time, Taylor founded KT Winery in 2020 with business partner Macie Mincey. Having since moved to Denver, Colorado, Taylor continues to connect with Mincey, a Charlotte native who remains in the Queen City, remotely. Their wine is produced in Napa, California.

Upon originally meeting in Charlotte, the duo bonded over a shared mission to serve the modern, health-conscious wine drinker while addressing the lack of diversity in the wine industry. From there, the idea for their wine was conceived.

Taylor said the process behind KT Winery’s recipes came about as a sort of happy accident; they stuck to common-sense ingredients and had no idea other brands weren’t doing the same.

“I’ll be real, because we didn’t inherit this, right? We created this,” she said. “We didn’t know what [other companies] were putting in their wine. We didn’t know that the reason we feel icky sometimes in having wine made in the US is because there’s no regulation or controls around those types of things.

“We didn’t know that people were doing it, so we just didn’t do it,” she continued. “And we made the wine clean because, as far as I know, wine should be made of grape juice, sugar, basic things.”

The clean approach has paid off, gaining recognition from the James Beard Foundation while seeing success in stores across the country.

Building on the popularity of its more informal Mom Juice brand, five years into the business KT Winery products are sold in more than 500 locations online; at select retailers such as Target, Total Wine, and Safeway; and at various bars and restaurants throughout the US.

In January, American Airlines announced that it would begin serving KT Winery’s Signature Collection, considered an elevated wine-tasting experience from its affordable store brands, on its long-haul, international flights. The announcement was an unexpected next step in an expansion that has come rather quickly for the two entrepreneurs.

“It’s just been the most beautiful journey,” Taylor said.

KT Winery founders take inspiration from fellow entrepreneurs

Wine and food have long been a passion of Taylor’s, who credits her mother with passing those interests down to her.

KT Winery is not Taylor’s first venture into winemaking, as she had first helped with the launch of The Guilty Grape, a Black-owned wine company founded by sisters Nichelle and Nicole Nichols. It was in that process that she also had the opportunity to learn from the McBride sisters, who created the Truvée wine collection.

These experiences helped her see a path for herself in what’s long been known as a white industry.

“I got to see people like the McBride sisters and The Guilty Grape, women of color really succeeding,” she recalled. “I felt the passion to start a wine company.”

With this desire already in mind, Taylor went on a blind business lunch date with Mincey. The two bonded over their shared interest and frustrations with the lack of diversity in the industry.

It didn’t take long for the Mom Juice idea to form out of that meeting.

“The name Mom Juice really comes from being with other women in the community, sharing a glass of wine at Girls Night,” Taylor said. “And that was the phrase we said. We started having kids, and people started to go, ‘Oh, no, that’s your mom juice.’ All of this has happened in a really organic way. We’re not puppet-mastering things. We’re really listening to what women say.”

Read more: How to Shop for Wine as a Beer Lover (2023)

The difference between KT Signature and Mom Juice is fairly simple: KT Signature is more prestigious, having been served at the James Beard Foundations 30 under 30 dinner in 2022. Mom Juice is a bit more casual. Taylor has an even better explanation for it, though.

“I think KT Signature is the rich auntie wine,” she said. “And then Mom Juice — we make wine for the girlies, regardless if you have a kid or not.”

KT’s Signature Collection takes to the sky

When the pair released KT Signature, it took off quickly. They had a “baby launch” at Kimpton Hotel in Uptown Charlotte in May 2022, the same year Taylor moved west. What they had in stock quickly sold out, which was a pleasant surprise for the entrepreneurs, who weren’t sure just how they’d follow up on the success of Mom Juice.

“It’s been fun to be able to grow this family of brands together,” Taylor said.

As 2025 started, Taylor and Mincey were contemplating which direction to take the KT Signature brand in. That’s when the announcement came from American Airlines that the brand would be added to its international flight menu.

The announcement offered the opportunity for new audiences to experience “what we call ‘affordable luxury in a glass,’” stated Mincey in announcing the new partnership. “As a mom of four, I love that busy moms get to experience premium wines like those in Mom Juice and Signature Collection in a welcoming community where they are seen and known.”

The pair worked with Julia Coney, a well-known wine and travel journalist whom Taylor referred to as the “OG Black sommelier in the world,” throughout the selection process for American Airlines.

Far from letting the journey overwhelm them, Taylor called every step of the ride a dream, with the two “pinching” themselves at every turn.

With Mom Juice having built a solid consumer base, the culmination of the KT Signature brand being selected for service on American Airlines flights has established a trustworthiness that may not have previously been apparent within the business and industry aspect of the brand.

“The more you can show up and you provide and actually do what you say you can do, it really changes the opportunity to present it because people know they can trust you now, and they believe that you can deliver when they give you big opportunities,” Taylor said. “It’s been really validating from a business perspective.”

With new doors being opened to them, the duo have nowhere else to go but up. One thing is certain: they’re going to stick to what works for them and their consumers — clean wine without all the added ingredients.

“Let’s be honest, no one has time for headaches,” Taylor said.