Come with me and you’ll be in a world of Pure Imagination. Take a look and you’ll see into your imagination. – Willy Wonka
Twenty years ago, the Triangle wine scene had everything that I could ever possibly imagine. It’s as if I were Charlie Bucket seeing the candy and chocolate room for the first time and Wine was the great Willy Wonka. All that I started to read about wine—Bordeaux, the Rhône, Napa…
As many of us stare down the barrel of...
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…