Benefit from my years learning and selling wine . . .

I developed my first restaurant wine list in New Orleans in 1995 and continued on to start wine programs for my restaurants in Costa Rica, Nova Scotia, and France. I have thus seen the world of wine from different geographies and jurisdictions. I also established and planted a vineyard in southern Spain that had official recognition from the European Union.

For my wine lists, I like to have some geographical depth --like emphasizing Bordeaux for my list at Trout Point Lodge, for example -- but also always feature wines and grapes many people may have never encountered before. Variety is the spice of life, after all!

I have backed up my decades of practical experience chosing wines and acting as a sommelier with academic study, mostly online, as well as through in depth immersion in wine regions such as Bordeaux, France and the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York.