WOPN Moderators

Frederick L. Dame, MS
Vintage Burgundy Dinner

Frederick L. Dame, Master Sommelier brings an impressive blend of experience, expertise and enthusiasm to the world of wine and cuisine.  He is the first American to have served as President of the Court of Master Sommeliers and assists restaurateurs and hoteliers in developing their wine programs in his role as Vice-President of Sales, Heirloom Wine Group, the Luxury Division of Treasury Wine Estates. He is currently the President of the Guild of Sommeliers Education Foundation.  Dame's ability to transmit his passionate interest in wine make him a natural teacher.  One of just seventy-three Americans to have passed the Master Sommelier Examination, Dame was the first to successfully pass all three parts in a single year.  This feat and his high score won him the coveted Krug Cup of the British Guild of Sommeliers in 1984.  Dame founded the American Branch of The Court of Master Sommeliers in 1986 and has played an active role in the expansion of the Master Sommelier program throughout America since that time. He founded the Guild of Sommeliers in 2006.  The Guild has amongst its many educational programs TopSomm, the United States Sommelier Championships.  As Cellarmaster of The Sardine Factory in Monterey, California for twelve years, Dame created a wine list which won the Wine Spectator Grand Award.  He is active in the culinary arts serving as an Honorary Trustee of The American Academy of Chefs, the honor society of The American Culinary Federation. He was awarded the Antonin Careme Medal and was made a Supreme Knight of the Knights of the Vine in 2000.  He was elected to the prestigious National Restaurant Association College of Diplomates in 2004.   In 2006 he received Sante Magazine’s Wine Professional of the Year as well as Starwine's Lifetime Achievement Award.  He was named to the American Academy of Chefs Hall of Fame in 2010.  A sixth generation Californian, Dame graduated from Washington and Lee University with a degree in journalism and communications. A European trip after high school piqued his curiosity about wine and food.  Since then, he has applied his considerable persuasive skills to the service and appreciation of fine wine.

John Winthrop Haeger
Beginning with Bubbles
Natural Winemaking - Highest Respect or Neglect?

If I were a grape, and someone wanted to write a book about me, I'd pray that someone was John Winthrop Haeger. Haeger's singular work, North American Pinot Noir, is a model of precise scholarship translated into cogent and flowing narrative. Thankfully devoid of the purple prose syndrome so prevalent in writing about Pinot Noir (for example, Oz Clarke calls Pinot "seductive, sultry, steamy, sinful if possible," while Serena Sutcliffe says that "to unlock the flavors and smells of fine Burgundy is to attain a hedonist's nirvana."), the volume should serve as the prototype for sober, in-depth wine writing and belongs in every wine-lover's library.

North American Pinot Noir was published in 2004, the same year the Pinot-centric movie Sideways was released. Since then, the relevancy and value of the book has, if anything, increased as the interest in, demand for, and production of Pinot Noir in North America has exploded.

William (Rusty) Gaffney, M.D.
Technique vs. Terroir - Vineyard, Vintage, Winemaker - Cubed

Rusty is a former ophthalmologist who has had a love affair with Pinot Noir for over forty years.  When he retired in 2001, he decided to devote his energies to writing the PinotFile, an online newsletter that was the first wine publication exclusively devoted to Pinot Noir. You can check it out at princeofpinot.com.

Rusty tastes and drinks Pinot Noir almost daily, reads about Pinot Noir constantly through all of the available sources on wine, and visits Pinot Noir producing regions frequently.  He also leads wine tours, organizes wine tastings, and corresponds on Pinot Noir for the most popular podcast on the internet, Grape Radio.

Over the years, upon his urgings, a number of die-hard Cabernet drinkers have developed a preference for Pinot Noir.  They would often remark, “Rusty, you’re such a ‘prince’ for introducing them to Pinot Noir.”  The moniker, “Prince of Pinot” stuck.

Allen Meadows, Burghound.com
Burgundy From The Ground Up

Allen Meadows was a finance executive for 25 years, holding a variety of positions, including stints as the senior vice-president and director of corporate development for Great Western Financial and as chief financial office for Fidelity National. In 1999, he retired in order to write a book on Burgundy but in 2000 decided to found Burghound.com, a quarterly review that is devoted exclusively to Burgundy and US Pinot Noir wines. Burghound.com was the first to offer specialized and, more importantly, exhaustive coverage of a specific wine region. The first issue was released in January 2001 and there are now readers in 45 different countries.

Meadows spends almost 4 months each year in Burgundy and visits more than 300 domaines during that time. He also lectures widely in both the US and abroad.