About

I am an active member of the Society of Wine Educators where I obtained certification as a Certified Wine Specialist and the Wine Scholar Guild where I am one of just over one thousand individuals world-wide to have obtained certification as an Italian Wine Scholar. Achievement of these certifications was the culmination of many years of interest in wine, food, and working within the wine industry.

My first exposure to upscale wine was in graduate school in Colorado working part-time in a boutique wine shop over Christmas and spring breaks.  Purportedly, in the early 1980’s this was the only wineshop in the entire Mountain Time Zone.  And remarkably, this shop, The Vineyard, housed in the Cherry Creek North section in Denver is still in existence.

While working in banking, I was able to finance a start-up winery in Washington state that was producing small-batch, though quality wines, made from Bing cherries, Granny Smith apples, and Anjou pears.  This was in the days when Chateau St. Michelle Winery was getting national wine recognition and at the forefront of the explosive growth of wine-making in the Pacific Northwest.

In the subsequent years of living in Southern California, the exposure to wine and food, many visits to wineries throughout Northern California and the Central Coast, multiple wine classes, and learning to cook and pair food with wines, I found a true love of something that was outside of my staid banking career. The final step of my wine journey was as a controller for a sparkling wine company headquartered in California and helping to raise several million dollars in equity to expand a wine company that started in a woman’s garage, growing to nearly $10 million dollars in revenues.  And finally, when moving to Santa Fe over four years ago working for a wine retailer, I quickly realized that people were interested in learning about food and wine but there was no one to turn to for answers.

Kevin Yanoscik