We have posted these individually in the forums, but here are our recent documentaries on three regions of Italy. Keep an eye out for a French series around the end of the year.
https://vimeo.com/88372900
https://vimeo.com/87250296
https://vimeo.com/87745403
The power of buying wine and the politics of managing a beverage program make for odd business relationships. Sometimes these relationships can become contentious. Eleven years managing a complex on-premise wine account has caused me to realize that a...
The Certified Sommelier Examination was introduced in December of 2005. Previously students who passed the MS Introductory examination could apply directly to the Advanced Course after waiting the required years’ time. More often than not first time students did poorly on the Advanced Exam for any number of reasons. Each student is unique so the three parts of the examination will always pose different challenges…
In the fall of 2013, several Guild sommeliers accompanied Fred Dexheimer MS on a trip to Chile, sponsored by Wines of Chile. Following are their observations about Chilean wines and wine culture today.
When I first learned that I had earned this trip to Chile, I felt almost guilty because I originally thought that there would be so many people who would have a more interesting time…
When Francis Percival wrote recently about the rise of the “American ‘Somm’” in the new online drinking-culture online magazine Punch, likening American sommelier communities (largely online) to college fraternities...
This is the first installment of a three-part series on the wines from Southwest France, a huge area that begins at the Basque border and runs northeast past Toulouse, all the way to Rodez in the Aveyron department. Driving on the autoroute at 70 miles an hour, this west-to-east journey of 360 miles would take approximately 5 hours. To put this into perspective, driving from Chablis to Mâcon in Burgundy takes about half…
In early November, the Guild of Sommeliers invited ten candidates for the Court of Master Sommeliers' 2014 Advanced Exam to spend three days in Napa and Sonoma counties. The event's primary sponsor was Jackson Family Estates' Spire Collection, and the trip to wine country included visits to some of the portfolio's top wineries, including Vérité and Cardinale, and some excellent stops in the vineyards of Howell Mountain…
San Diego is the eighth-largest city in United States and the second-largest in California, yet it rarely garners a mention in the gastronomic press. The climate is pretty much perfect year-round, there is a historic walkable downtown less than a 10-minute cab ride from the airport, you're never far from a beach, a taco, an orca or a mating lemur, and you can get good seats to a visiting Giants baseball game at a fraction…