WHO ARE YOUR MODERATORS

[Jerry D Mead]

MEAD'S BIO

Jerry D. Mead, Senior Moderator

Jerry D. Mead writes America's longest running syndicated wine column, Mead On Wine, now in its 32nd year of continuous syndication. Its author was named "Wine Writer of the Year" in 1985 by Wines & Vines magazine and the California Association of Winegrape Growers and received the prestigious "Perpetual Trophy for Excellence in Wine Writing."

In addition to writing the column, Mead is also editor-publisher of The Wine Trader magazine and founder of the wine appreciation organization Wine Investigation for Novices and Oenophiles (W.I.N.O.).

Over the years Mead's work has appeared in many publications nationally, including The Wine Spectator, Wine Entusiast, Wine World, International Wine Review, Wine & Spirits, Wines & Vines, Baltimore magazine, Phoenix magazine, Orange Coast magazine, Inland Empire magazine,Inland Empire Business Journal, Southern California magazine, This Month on the Monterey Peninsula and too many more to mention.

His regular syndication appears in publications in California, Nevada, Hawaii and Virginia and in the nationally circulated California Visitors Review. Individual articles have appeared in such newspapers as the Dallas Morning News, Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun.

Mead was a founding director of the non-profit, educational organization American Wine Alliance for Research & Education (AWARE) and is a long time champion of the healthful benefits of moderate wine consumption. He is at the forefront of the battle against the currently fashionable, but totally misguided, neo-Prohibition movement.

A professional wine judge, Mead is one of a handful of such experts to have judged professionally on three continents as well as on the island nation of New Zealand. Also in the judging realm he was a founder of America's largest and most highly regarded judging of California wines, the Orange County Fair Commercial Wine Competition where he served as chairman and chief judge for 16 years. Mead is also founder of the New World International Wine Competition.

A frequent speaker on a wide variety of topics and issues, he has been an advisor to the California Senate Select Committee on Wine and his views have been presented to the National Conference of State Legislators. His writing has been reprinted in the Congressional Record and as a major proponent of the First Amendment rights of wine and other commercial products Mead is proud to be known as "The Wine Curmudgeon."

In his spare time Mead visits the wineries and vineyards of the world and occasionally enjoys a glass of nature's most perfect beverage.