I'll drink to that where we get behind the scenes of the beverage business.

I'm Levy Dalton.

I'm Erin Scala and here's our show today. So, to So today I thought it would be interesting if we talked about a really special person.

Her name was Elizabeth Bird and she was born about 110 years ago in New York City.

And why is she so special and why should we care about her?

Well, Elizabeth Byrd was most likely in New York City's first female Somalier.

Elizabeth Byrd was born around 1900 or 1907.

We don't really know her age because when she was interviewed

by a New York Times reporter in 1943,

she said, put it down as 35,

which leads me to believe that she might have been a little bit older, but you never know. When I first heard about Elizabeth Byrd, I was so just fascinated by this woman,

because all the quotes that the New York Times article from

1943 quotes from her she just seems like she has so much personality she describes

pairing wines with food she says well serving a big red wine with fish is like a man wearing an overcoat in July.

She just seems like she would have been a really fun person to know and I wish I could have met her.

So Elizabeth Byrd became a waitress sometime

around 1921. By the time that she became a Somalia in New York City she'd been

working in the industry for about 22 years. Before she came to New York, she spent some time in Bermuda

working in restaurants there.

While she was there, she started reading books about wine

and asked to become a Somaliaalier at this Bermuda restaurant.

And I thought to myself, why would she have been in Bermuda

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