Discover Wine Trends & Secrets of Wine and Food pairing from international wine and hospitality expert Marisa D'Vari, CSW        Imagine yourself hosting a dinner at a restaurant for clients or special friends. The sommelier hands you a wine list and panic sets in. What to order? Will your choice go well with the cuisine? What if your guests don't notice the expensive choice you made, or worse, think you are cheap?

     Enter Marisa D'Vari, a professional "wine entertainer" whose mission is to demystify
wine and promote the pleasures of the grape. What does a wine entetainer do? "Educate
people about wine in a fun entertaining way, whether I'm giving a corporate talk or writing
an article for Robb Report or London's Financial Times," says D'Vari, who interviewed many
chefs and winemakers such as the late Robert Mondavi and Julia Child, Daniel Boulud,
Adam Tihany, Charlie Palmer, Todd English, and dozens of others on her weekly television show.

     D'Vari travels constantly, usually dragging along an enormous wine atlas (Jancis Robinson,
anyone?). In a recent six week period she sipped the finest Burgundy wine at
Grands Jours de Bourgogne, freaked when an ancient ghost vaporized her Blackberry at Lake
Como's five-star Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni, strolled the Big Easy's famed Bourbon Street,
lunched with several Bordeaux wine-making families, and scampered sea-sprayed streets
of Cinque Terre in Italy.

     A So Cal gal (and UCLA grad) D'Vari was awarded the coveted title of "Certified Sommelier"
by the internationally respected Court of Master Sommeliers and is completing her Diploma for
the Wine and Spirits Educational Trust out of England, with the intention of going forward to
her Master of Wine. (See all academic wine credentials here)

     Now Wine & Spirits Editor for Taste Magazine Cincinnati and wine reviewer for
Smart Wine Plus (formerly Wine Investor's Buyer's Guide), D'Vari contributes to hundreds
of publications including the San Francisco Chronicle, Sante, and Quarterly Review of Wine,
and cover stories for the the Financial Times How to Spend It luxury magazine and Robb Report.

     D'Vari is Vice-Chair, Programming, for Manhattan's prestigious Wine Media Guild,
syndicates her 600 word A Wine Storywine review column to various publications, and
has reviewed restaurants for the New York Press, Quarterly Review of Wines, and
Beacon Hill Paper (Boston). Earlier, her lifestyle column, A Taste of Luxury, was syndicated
internationally to many newspapers and web sites by the Paradigm Syndication Group. 

     D'Vari is the publisher of AWineStory.com, and the corresponding blog AVineStory.com.
Before developing an interest in wine and food, she had been an executive at many
Hollywood studios, working with screenwriters to develop stories. "People love stories,"
D'Vari says. "As a wine educator, I use very entertaining and dramatic stories about wine
to help them learn." Her two books on storytelling (listed below) are published and available
at bookstores and Amazon.

     In Boston, D'Vari taught a diploma level course at the Cambridge School
of Culinary Arts, served on the board of the Roger Saunders School of Hotel Management,
and taught diploma level classes at Harvard and Emerson college. She is a member of the
Society of Wine Educators, International Association of Culinary Professionals, American
Sommelier Association, a Fellow at the James Beard organization, a long standing member
of the American Society for Journalists & Authors, National Speakers Association, and
Member of the Magazine Publishers of America.

Note: if you would like to send wines for D'Vari to review for her column,
click here

Below are books authored by Marisa D'Vari