February has flown by despite most of us still being locked down from the COVID pandemic. The OCWS has been doing their best to keep our social connections by hosting not one, not two, not three, but FOUR different seminar tracks with our Sunday Winter Seminars, our Monday night Varietal Hours, our monthly Friday night […]

The Commercial Wine Competition Committee is continuing to move forward with the planning of the 2021 Commercial Wine Competition. It is scheduled for the weekend of June 5-6, 2021. Of course, our volunteers are critical to its success! We understand there is still uncertainty with the COVID-19 pandemic and we are working with the OC […]

The OCWS is greatly honored to have Ondine Chattan, Head Winemaker of Share a Splash Wine Company’s Cannonball and Angels & Cowboys labels as our winery program presenter on March 12th. We are extremely proud to truly consider Ondine a member of our family, as she is a veteran judge for the OC Fair Commercial […]

The four weeks prior to writing this column just seemed to get away from me and, to be honest, I didn’t prepare as well as I should have. So, in my haste to write this article, it dawned on me that I have a simple “best of” recipe that is often requested when I attend […]

January has sure started off with a “bang,” and not just with New Year’s fireworks! We have a new United States President, and time will tell how this will all play out over the next months and years. During the past 10 months, the Wine Society has been paying a lot of ongoing expenses, which […]

A Couple of  Wine Facts  Though likely invented decades earlier, the world’s first corkscrew patent was filed in 1795 by English Reverend Samuel Henshall. To make a firmer fit with the cork, he added a flat button of metal to the helix. His corkscrew was so useful that it has been widely utilized for over […]

Friday, February 12, 2021 @ 6:30 pm Via Zoom Webinar Platform Brett met future wife Andrea Henkel in 1993 while working at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite Valley. Brett was not much of a wine drinker back then, but Andrea cured him of that, introducing him to red wine. Andrea’s family had just planted a […]

The Commercial Wine Competition Committee has decided to move forward with the planning of the 2021 Commercial Wine Competition scheduled for June 5-6, 2021. We understand that this has been a challenging time in so many ways, and the coming months will likely bring more challenges our way. Be assured that we prioritize the safety […]

What started out as an idea to create a monthly culinary column highlighting the best of OCWS Mini-Tastings’ award-winning recipes and wine pairings has now become, thanks to great interest in recipes from the Seminar Series’ wine and food presentations, a Best of OCWS Recipes and Wine Pairings. I will continue to review Mini-Tastings from […]

I want to wish you all a Happy New Year, as we all look forward to an ending to these pandemic lockdowns that we have all endured. This past year has certainly been one to remember, and we have all been saddened by the lack of social interaction with our friends and families, and get-togethers […]