Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/188061
TexSom co-founders James Tidwell (left) and Drew Hendricks enjoy a bit of Texas white wine outside of the Taste Texas Wines Hospitality Suite. A t 9:30 in the morning on Sunday, August 11, I took my first sip for the day: Real Ale's Hans Pils Pilsner. It was hoppy. And it was delicious. And it was just a bit unexpected because this was TexSom, one of the country's premier wine professional gatherings—and there I was drinking beer. But I wasn't alone. TexSom—the Texas Sommelier Conference—has grown from an intimate, mostly under-the-radar gathering of wine industry professionals into a popular, highly anticipated gathering of winemakers, distributors, retailers, media and everyday oenophiles from all over the country. This past August, 500 participants, including about two-dozen Master Sommeliers, crowded into the ballrooms, conference rooms, lounges and suites of Four Seasons Resort & Club, Las Colinas for the two-day event. Now in its ninth year, TexSom has gotten big. "Logistically, it's a much more complex conference," said James Tidwell, Master Sommelier and Beverage Director for the host property, which is about 15 miles northwest of Dallas. "We expanded the conference offerings this year, and consequently it doubled in size." Tidwell is a co-founder of TexSom, along with Drew Hendricks, Master Sommelier and Vice President of Marketing and Sales for Rudd Winery. From year one, the goals were to forge and maintain camaraderie within the state's beverage community while building upon the growing influence that the Lone Star State wields on the national and international adult beverage industry. "This year we expanded from using one seminar room per time slot to four. It's a huge logistical undertaking just to get the rooms turned," Hendricks told me. It also meant getting more educators and more companies to participate, which required much more coordination on the ground. "We couldn't do that without our amazing volunteers. Their dedication is impressive." An Expanding Scope TexSom is, of course, for wine professionals, but it clearly demonstrates that running a beverage program is a lot more than just sipping wines and writing lists. True, many of the seminars have always focused on emerging and classic wine regions, restaurant wine trends, and specific grape varietals; but over the years, as TexSom's popularity grew, so too did the scope of its offerings. So, at the beer seminar, as I've said, I wasn't alone. The conference room held a sizeable crowd while Melissa Monosoff and Andy McNamara, both Master Somms, tag-teamed the beer subject from a global perspective. We sipped and savored British and Belgian ales, American porters and Bavarian dunkel lagers. We discussed hops, malts, yeasts, glassware and IBUs. And, despite being a beer-lover, it took this seminar to drive home a very salient point for me: Terroir is important for beer, too. Climate and soils are as integral for hops as they are for grapes. And that's why we have different styles and flavors of beer around the world. So, you see: I learned something—and I'm quite certain others enjoyed their own "a-ha" moments in october 2013 / the tasting panel / 147 TP1013_104-152.indd 147 9/23/13 10:37 PM