Born in Manila, Philippines Rowena Dumlao, moved to Italy in 1999. Here she started the path to Italian gastronomy through creating the blog, Apron and Sneakers. Soon after, worked as a recipe writer for online sites like Honest Cooking Magazine, She Knows, Mode Media, Thanksgiving, Skinny Ms., A Luxury Travel Blog, and some food companies that needed recipes created with their products.

Her path to wine started in 2015 after attending some wine press tours in Eastern Europe. From 2015 to 2017, attended and passed the three-level sommelier course of Associazione Italiana Sommelier in Italy. From 2017 to 2018, took the French Wine Scholar course and passed the test in Avignon, France. In 2022, took a short course about Langhe Wines at the Barolo & Barbaresco Academy in Piedmont, Italy.

She wrote for China Wine News with regards to wine events in Italy from 2017 to 2019 and contributed to The New Filipino Kitchen: Stories and Recipes from Around the World. She currently writing for her own sites, The Chosen Table, Apron and Sneakers about wines and restaurants in Italy. Rowena served as judge at wine competitions such as Radici del Sud and Concorso Enologico Internazionale Vermentino of wines. She also studied at Bordeaux Agro Sciences for a short agronomy course.