Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/776532
january/february 2017 / the tasting panel / 55 been involved from the very beginning. As our wine editors will tell you, it's really more of an experience than educational tasting; yet, each year Leicht has still found room to improve, fine-tuning this experience. Now moving into its fourth year, the evolutionary hop this round however is more than slight. CAC has partnered with the Wine Scholar Guild (WSG), an organization that provides study and certification programs specifically regarding the wines of France, Italy and Spain. Says Leicht, "We've always been thrilled to work with the Guild of Sommeliers and their educational focus, but the Wine Scholar Guild represents another layer of bandwidth and another group of people who are interested in wine. Perhaps many of them [WSG members] are trade, but it's also open to people who are not necessarily wine professionals, so we see this as a nice way to expand the offerings of CAC to a broader audience. We also love the fact that WSG's Italian Wine Scholar program is endorsed by the Italian Trade Commission. This, compounded with CAC focusing solely on Cru Artisan's Italian wines, is going to make the whole program very enticing. Italy can be a challenging place in the world of wine. It doesn't always come across as clearly to students, and we really want to give a leg up to the Italian wine scholars." CAC will also have access to the extensive depth of WSG educational resources, one of the very reasons for which the WSG is so widely praised. Says WSG Education Director Lisa Airey, "The Wine Scholar Guild is providing the content for Cru Artisan College's study material in 2017. It is an honor to be entrusted with the foundation upon which this lecture series is built. By taking excerpts from our Italian Wine Scholar manuals on all the topics covered in the CAC tour, we will give students the background they need to appreciate the insights provided by the winemakers. We will set the stage for the show!" Finocchiona, Pecorino Fulvi and Pecorino Toscano; duck liver mousse with toasted filone; coppa ham with Piave Vecchio and Radicchio Castelfranco; and stracciatella with toasted filone from the CAC New York City campus at restaurant Marta. Enrico Cerulli, family proprietor of Cerulli Spinozzi, represent- ing Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, at the University of Houston in Houston, TX. PHOTO: FELIX SANCHEZ PHOTO: DOUG YOUNG