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President's Message

President’s Message

By Carolyn Christian

In 1976, a group of home winemakers decided to embark on a journey to support wine education. That journey was the beginning of the Orange County Wine Society. In partnership with the OC Fair, they started the OC Fair Wine Competitions, one focusing on amateur wines and the other on commercial wines. 

Nearly half a century later, we are still going strong, with over $940,000 in scholarship donations to eight different California colleges and universities. As president of this organization, I have had the privilege of working with hundreds of members who selflessly dedicate their time to present stellar wine programs. It is one of my greatest honors.

To the outside world, it is difficult to explain the OCWS. We have a variety of events, from small, intimate dinners at members’ homes to the amazing 23-day run of the OC Fair where we serve thousands of people. Of our 1,000 members, so many bring the same passion they have for their personal lives and jobs to the organization. It is sometimes hard to believe that we do all that we do with very few paid staff.

And we are all on our own wine journeys. One of my favorite parts of our organization is our focus on wine as an approachable pastime that doesn’t require large sums of money to enjoy. Many of us are always searching for that great everyday wine that packs more flavor than belies its price point. 

One of the beautiful aspects of the OCWS is watching the organization foster the development of its members’ palates as they spend time learning about new varietals, new wineries and new winemaking techniques. Education is woven into almost every aspect of our organization, from the Winery Programs where we hear stories of the humble beginnings of wineries that we know and love, to the articles in The Wine Press that call our attention to an interesting wine region or varietal. 

Our annual Commercial Wine Competition is always seething with delectable wine knowledge, as we spend the weekend with notable winemakers who share the latest industry trends and their latest vintages. No less educational is the Home Wine Competition, with its entrants and judges sharing valuable information on how to improve their next batch of wine. Sometimes we don’t realize how much we know until we are asked to share it with others.

It is always amazing for me to see our members standing at the counter of The Courtyard at the OC Fair, sharing their knowledge with the public and marveling at how much they didn’t realize they had learned over the years.  While we support formal wine education through our scholarship program, we also support collaborative learning through our events.

As we approach our busy season, I strongly encourage you to sign up for our many volunteer opportunities. In addition to contributing to the success of our events, you will be adding to your wine knowledge base and continuing forward on your wine journey.

Volunteer sign-ups for both of our competitions are already open. Go to OCWS.org and log in to your account, then choose competitions at the top to access the Commercial Wine Competition and/or the Home Wine Competition pages. Each competition has its own volunteer form to complete.  Sign-ups for The Courtyard at the OC Fair are also open.

Remember, for all our events, the earlier you sign up, the better choices you will have. 

And there are even more opportunities when it comes to wineries. Help us promote the OC Fair Wine Competition by dropping off a brochure at your favorite tasting room or emailing your wine clubs. The deadline to enter wines in the Commercial Wine Competition is May 16. Email this link to your favorite California wineries:   ocws.ws/OCWineCompMessage.

If you have already volunteered at some point this year, I thank you for your time!

As we approach our 50th anniversary next year, I also invite you to share your memories of the organization and share your ideas on events and souvenirs to help us commemorate this milestone. Use this link to share your ideas: ocws.ws/50th.

For new members… welcome to your wine journey. I encourage you to sign up for the OCWS Friends Program to pair you with one of our seasoned members who can introduce you to others and show you the ropes.

 I am truly blessed to lead this organization of over 1,000 members (one of the largest wine enthusiast groups in the nation). Wine is a very social endeavor. We are all on separate wine journeys together, and that makes each wine event more special. I look forward to seeing you at one of our future events. Cheers to you all!

Categories
50th Anniversary History

History of the OCWS Mini-Tastings

By Hank Bruce – Member of the 50th Anniversary Committee

The OCWS was founded in 1976. Early OCWS wine programs included wine and food pairings by founding member Judi (Collins) Brady and near founding member Jane (Mc Grath) Goodnight. Even up to the late 1980s, the near monthly OCWS wine tastings at local hotels were not accompanied by food service, and the Board of Directors disapproved of members bringing food to these events. Sam Puzzo was elected to the BOD in fall 1989. He and a small group of OCWS members had long discussed food pairing with wine. Sam has been officially credited with being the driving force responsible for mini-tastings.

His idea of having 30 or 40 people meet at one home to sample a group of wines was approved by the Board. The OCWS bought tables and chairs and they were transported to different homes for each mini-tasting. Board member Carol Stiglbauer suggested group size be trimmed to 16 people and to have groups meet at several sites simultaneously to sample identical wines at each location with potluck foods. This eliminated the need for the OCWS to move tables and chairs. Sam Puzzo ran the mini-tastings for the first three years. Bob Prill and Ron Gottesman hosted the first two mini-tastings at their homes.

The Wine Press first reported on mini-tastings beginning in November 1991. In the 2000s mini-tasting hosts would meet as a work party to open the cases of delivered wine, bag the wines, label the bags and gather supplies into bins, including plates, napkins and 1 oz. pour spouts. Bins were brought to host sites and reusable supplies were returned to the office after the tastings. Chris Cunningham arranged for purchases of a lot of the wines in the 2000s and supplies would be picked up at his home.

A detailed log of mini-tasting venues and host names from March 2011 to December 2024 has been compiled and maintained. Mini-tasting themes besides Gold Medal Wines have included specific grape varietals, Pinot Noir and Cab Sauvignon being most popular, Rhone-style wines and specific wine-growing regions. Over the years members responsible for the mini-tastings have included distinguished OCWS alumni. George Cravens has done an outstanding job organizing mini-tastings from 2018 to 2024.

In the three years since our activity limitations due to COVID-19 precautions ended, on average seven sites have been available for each of the four mini-tastings held per year. The most popular tasting has always been the tasting of OCWS Gold Medal Winners from our own Commercial Wine Competition.

Our current mini-tasting chair, Don Mayer, provides hosts with supplies and bagged wines. Hosts welcome up to 16 guests. Individuals and couples bring potluck food, that is coordinated by the host, sufficient to provide small portions for 16 people. In addition to rating the wines, typically in 5 flights, participants vote for Chef of the Evening, who is awarded a gift bottle of wine. Guests are each requested to bring two wine glasses for sampling the wine. Participants vary from those seriously focused on tasting and analyzing the wine, to those primarily interested in socialization with others while enjoying a variety of foods, both solid and liquid. 

Categories
Auction

Going Once, Going Twice… SOLD!

Wine Auction By Carolyn Christian

2025 has been a great year for the OCWS Wine Auction!  I am so proud of this year’s amazing Wine Auction committee and the event volunteers who worked so hard to present an incredibly successful event. Despite a few behind-the-scenes challenges this year, the event ran smoothly. We don’t have the final figures yet, but our gross revenue was 9.6% more than projected. This was achieved despite having only 5.5% more wine lots than last year.

Many thanks to our donors for the Special Auction this year:

Hall Wines
Walt Wines
Venge Vineyards
Larkmead Vineyards
MacRostie Winery
Booker Wines
Emercy Wines
Turley Wines
Future Perfect Wine
Parrish Family Vineyard
Alma Rosa Winery & Vineyards
Denner Vineyards
Crown Point Vineyards
DeFalco Damily Foods & Wines
Wine Guy & Wine Gal
Edgar Allen Poe Speakeasy
Ortiz Fire Protection
Shelton Fire Protection
Hands On Wellness Center
Sue England
Ellen Flynn
Cathy & Lee Painter
Michael Sun
J’anna Jennings
Carolyn & Damian Christian
Adrienne & Dino Amico
Tricia Shelton

Liquid Farm

Hundreds of volunteer hours went into the preparation of our second largest fundraiser of the year. I would like to recognize a host of people who made the event a great success.

A BIG Thank you to my Wine Auction Committee (I affectionally call the Wine Auction Warriors) for the amazing job they did this year:

  • Adrienne Amico – Verbal Auction
  • Dino Amico – Wine Ops – Security
  • Chris Bruce – Computers/Data Entry
  • Hank Bruce – Wine Ops – Warehouse
  • Damian Christian – Wine Ops – Auction Floor and Workers
  • Kevin Coy – Advisor
  • Stephanie Djang – Verification
  • Sue England – Volunteers
  • Ellen Flynn – VIP Experience
  • Fran Gitsham – Advisor
  • Scott Green – Computers
  • Shannon Jestin – Check-in
  • Laurie Kjar-Reiss – Checkout
  • Cathy Painter – Event Food and Wine
  • Lee Painter – Wine Ops – Verification
  • Rochelle Randel – Administration
  • Bill Redding – Advisor
  • Janet Riordan – Checkout
  • Tricia Shelton – Special Winery Experience Auction
  • Daniel Vlahovic – Wine Ops – Verification
  • Jolen Zeroski – Check-in

A special thank you to Bill Redding and his dedicated team who catalogued and prepared the wines prior to the event. And to Kevin Coy for overseeing the crew to move over 4,300 bottles of wine from the cellar to the auction floor. This crew included a number of students from the OCC Culinary Arts program that we support with our Scholarship Fund. This year they moved the wine in record time and finished that portion of the setup by 9:45 a.m.

Hats off to our top 10 spenders for their generous bids that made this event successful.

  • Kathy & William Schymick
  • Eberhard & Mary Anne Neutz
  • Dewey & Diana Davide
  • Sandi & Danny Jones
  • Lou & Shelley Cohen
  • Robert Maloney & Joey DeLeon
  • Taylor & Steve Alber
  • Robin McCormick
  • Mark & Jody Theissen
  • Mike & Cathy MacKenzie

The Wine Auction requires an army of volunteers and workers. My sincerest thanks to every person who donated their time. Your contribution made a big difference in the success of the event. Special thanks to those who stepped up to assist with verification and checkout.

This event is so crucial to our organization and would not be possible without our members who attend this event each year. Thank you to nearly 200 attendees who patiently waited while we verified that each bidder had the correct lots in their boxes.   At the end of the day, we didn’t have a single lot missing!

We hope you enjoy the wines that you purchased at a fraction of retail and thank you for supporting OCWS and its educational mission. We will see you next year to do it all over again!

Categories
Education Wine Education Wine Wisdom

Beaujolais Rocks!

I recently attended an education seminar on Beaujolais Appellations d’Origine Controlee (AOC) and was immediately struck by their emphasis on SOIL. Their welcoming poster boards read: “To understand our terroir, we must go back 180 million years ago to the marine invasion of the Jurassic Period”; “It took 300 million years to form our terroir;” “The soil in our region originated 400 million years ago, with the eruption of underwater volcanoes.”


Then when the seminar began, they spoke of the two grapes, gamay noir à jus blanc and chardonnay, grown in the two regional appellations (Beaujolais and Beaujolais Villages) and the 10 Beaujolais Crus and how over 300 different soils, the dominant rocks being the 180-million-year-old limestone, the 300-million-year-old pink granite and the 400-million-year-old blue stone have produced the amazing variations of Beaujolais wines.


The Gamay grape, a natural cross between Pinot Noir and Gouais Blanc (which interestingly are the same parents of Chardonnay), ripens early and makes a bright red and lively wine with aromas of raspberry, strawberry, blackberry and black cherry. But enough verbiage … how about a quiz?

Categories
Members Corner

Volunteers needed before, during annual event

It’s hard to believe it’s time for volunteer signups for the 49th OC Fair Commercial Wine Competition. We have signups online this month, same as in previous years. CLICK HERE TO SIGNUP.

We try to flexible and ask the same of our volunteers. We can work together to make this another fun event. There are many areas where volunteer help is needed, stewarding, glass washing, drying and bagging a few days before the event.

Continuing the efficiency, the computer room, scoring verification and medals mailing will be assigned. A sign-up form is included on the website that identifies stewarding days, bagging nights and other work parties with times and dates. To qualify for stewarding, you are required to sign up for two additional work parties. We offer bagging, moving of wine to and from the competition site and sorting post competition.

We need your support for our work parties to run a successful competition. The good news is that we have hired help for heavy lifting. No training is necessary as newer members will be teamed with competition veterans.

Carrying trays of glasses is required if you volunteer to steward. It’s physical and can get tiring. Along with stewarding, you need to be prepared to assist your steward captain by opening wine bottles at the required time, preparing glasses for tags and cleaning up the judges’ tables as needed, while listening to your captain for direction. We are expecting to have carts this year, more than we had last year, as we found this increased our effectiveness greatly.

It is imperative that the wines are NOT opened first thing in the morning as has happened in the past. We have been asked to have as much consistency in timing for the opening of the wines per flight, so all are open as close to the same time as possible. 

If you have any questions, please feel free to phone me at (562) 822-3382 or email at robyn@ocws.org.

We look forward to your participation in this very important event. Thank you.

—Robyn Strom, Volunteer Coordinator

Categories
Members Corner

What to know about Courtyard Volunteering

It is once again fair time. The Orange County Fair is set to run July 18 through August 17 and is our organization’s largest fundraiser of the year. This year’s theme is “Find Your Happy.”Not only does The Courtyard provide operating revenue for OCWS, it is the face of our organization to the fairgoers (1.13 […]

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Categories
Members Corner

RBS Training

The OC Fair is just around the corner. The largest OCWS fundraising effort of the year will be taking place for a total of 23 days, Wednesdays through Sundays, July 18 through Aug. 17.Volunteering at The Courtyard is a unique and fun experience. All courtyard volunteers handling wine in any capacity are required to be […]

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Categories
Members Corner

Volunteers Needed for Home Wine Competition

The 49th Annual OC Fair Home Wine Competition will be held on Saturday, June 7, at the OC Fair and Event Center. The OCWS Winemakers Group sponsors this event, which is one of the largest amateur winemaking competitions in California.

We need volunteers in many areas to help make this event a success. No experience is necessary. New volunteers will be paired with competition veterans. In return, you’ll get a hot breakfast and lunch, courtesy of our OCWS Cook’s Caucus. You’ll also get the opportunity to taste many of the award-winning wines at the end of the event. LOTS of FUN will be had by all!

To sign up, please go to the OCWS website https://ocws.org/home-wine-competition/

Look for the volunteer signup page under the “Members” heading.

Categories
Members Corner

A Family Affair

Years ago, a chance encounter at a home in Northern California led to a newfound hobby that has played an important role in the McCormick family.

It was there that Richard McCormick heard about the Orange County Wine Society and the opportunity to make wine. For those who knew Richard , they know that he turned winemaking into a passion which is ever so apparent at the family home in Laguna Beach.

It’s been 10 years since Richard passed away, but his winemaking legacy perseveres thanks to his son, Michael, and the OCWS Home Winemakers Group that has mentored him along the way.

“One of the best things about winemaking is the community part of it,” Michael said. “It’s a ton of work but these guys become mentors and have helped us continue the tradition. It’s a really nice feeling.”

It’s hard to imagine a better place to make or store wine than the tri-level McCormick home that sits across the street from the beach with stunning views of the Pacific Ocean.

Once inside, there’s a wall adorned with numerous ribbons and plaques from the California State, Los Angeles and Orange County fairs honoring McCormick Winery and Cellars for its wines in the respective home wine competitions.

In order to meet the demand of his winemaking, Richard built a 400-bottle cellar in 2002. The bottles, both commercial and homemade, are tagged to help for easy reference. Another room is used for bottling and storage.

“His first ribbon was a silver for a Pinot Noir,” Michael said of his dad. “It just grew from there.”

Added mom, Robin: “I learned more about wine than I wanted to.”

Richard also was very meticulous, probably in part due to his mechanical engineering background. “Every single thing he did, he wrote it down,” Robin said.

His binders can still be found in cabinets around the house that chronicle the winemaking process and the adjustments. Blending probably was Richard’s favorite because he enjoyed the aspects of chemistry that would result in a great tasting wine.

After Richard died, there was plenty of wine that needed to be bottled. That’s when the home winemakers group rallied and helped out.

“Wine requires a lot of attention,” Michael said. “It’s a big (OCWS home wine) community. They rallied around our family. They were godsends.”

Much like his dad, Michael has caught the winemaking bug. Production averages around 20 to 25 cases a year that are typically dominated by Pinot Noir and Zinfandel.

Despite the amount of energy to make wine, Michael is proud to follow in his father’s footsteps.

“It’s not only about the enjoyment of drinking something you made and hitting your tongue for the first time,” he said. “It’s about sharing it with other winemakers and getting their input. It’s definitely fun to make something and seeing how it turns out.”

Categories
Members Corner

President’s Message

By Carolyn Christian

It seems like just yesterday we were wrapping up The Courtyard at the OC Fair and hosting holiday events in December, but here we are in April, getting ready for another Wine Auction, OC Fair Wine Competitions (Commercial and Home) and the fair. 

These are the organization’s flagship events. They make us who we are and keep us running.

As we approach our busy season, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of volunteering for these four events. You will not find another organization that provides these opportunities to buy wine at a discounted price, meet winemakers who make the wines we enjoy, taste the latest vintages, learn more about wine and share your wine knowledge with the public.  What an incredible opportunity this organization presents to its members.

My challenge to you as an OCWS member is to get just a little more involved this year. Volunteer at the auction to break up the day of food and wine, sign-up to steward at one or both of our wine competitions or sign up for one of the hundreds of shifts at The Courtyard.  Sign-ups for the auction are already open, and we are still in need of dozens of volunteers to make the event run smoothly: ocws.ws/AuctionVolunteerForm.

Volunteer sign-ups for the competitions are already open as well. Go to OCWS.org and log in to your account, then choose competitions at the top to access the Commercial Wine Competition and/or the Home Wine Competition pages. Each competition has its own volunteer form for you to complete.

Remember, the earlier you sign up, the better choices you will have. 

And there are even more opportunities when it comes to wineries. Help us promote the OC Fair Wine Competition by dropping off a brochure at your favorite winery or emailing your wine clubs. Email this link to your favorite California wineries: ocws.ws/OCWineCompMessage

If you have already volunteered at some point this year, you have my heartfelt gratitude for keeping our organization humming along. Our volunteers are truly our greatest asset.

As we approach our 50th anniversary next year, I also invite you to share your memories of the organization and share your ideas on events and souvenirs to help us commemorate this milestone. Use this link to share your ideas: ocws.ws/50th

For new members, I encourage you to sign-up for the OCWS Friends Program to pair you with one of our seasoned members who can introduce you to others and show you the ropes. And if you joined after January 1, 2024, and haven’t attended a New Member Mixer, don’t forget to sign-up for the upcoming mixer on April 27.

            I am truly lucky to lead this organization of over 1,000 members (one of the largest wine enthusiast groups in the nation). I look forward to seeing you at one of our future events. Please stop by and say hello. Cheers to you all!