Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/490558
28 { THE SOMM JOURNAL } APRIL/MAY 2015 { real somm stories } OUR FIRST ANNUAL CIA SOMMELIER SUMMIT IS COMING, but not before a couple of very busy weeks for our campus. As I sit in my office at the Rudd Center for Professional Wine Studies, discuss- ing with my co-worker, Associate Professor Christie Dufault, educa- tion plans for just one week—including Mastering Wine with Karen MacNeil, three weekend wine enthusiast courses, Accelerated Wine & Beverage Certificate graduation, a mixology quiz for our Advanced Wine, Beverage and Hospitality Bachelor's Degree Students and a his- torical California wine dinner for one of our great supporters—it all seems like so much, and it also seems like we've come so far! Twenty years ago when we opened the Greystone campus, we began offering continuing education classes for wine professionals. Twenty years later, wine and beverage education have become a major part of our identity as a college, to wit, a school within the school. With thousands of culinary grads who have studied wine at the CIA, plus hundreds of Certified Wine Professionals and five years of AWBP grads, we feel we have so much more to share and teach, so we've created the CIA Sommelier Summit as a way to bring them all together into a community of people who love wine and hospitality as much as we do. One of our motivations is that we know we've built a beautiful facility, we've worked with incredible instructors, and we've gotten support from all aspects of the industry, but now it's time to break out of our little still house to convey that we are bigger than its walls. Plus, secretly, we miss all those familiar faces who have learned to accurately analyze a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon, expertly open a bottle of Champagne and create wine lists to match everything from classic cuisines from around the world to the rapidly fusing flavors of modern chefs whose kitchens have no boarders, sometimes literally, and whose palates and spirits seem to have no limits. What better way to bring them back, and continue the journey, than gathering top minds and tasters, many of them our very own graduates, to discuss the lives we live as sommeliers in America? We hope to inspire each person who joins us, with their many levels of experience and education, to move more confidently along their own path and to find their successes many, many times along the way. We hope that you'll be one of them. The SOMM Journal is a proud media sponsor of the CIA Sommelier Summit. CIA SOMMELIER SUMMIT Presented by The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone April 26–28, 2015 Register today! www.ciasommeliersummit.com THE FIRST ANNUAL CIA SOMMELIER SUMMIT by Traci Dutton, Manager of Public Wine and Beverage Studies at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE CULINARY INSTITUTE OF AMERCA