This Friday and Saturday morning at 7 am I will be joining a group of sommeliers from across the US to taste and decant wines for the Wine Spectator's Wine Experience. We will assemble both mornings to begin the task of opening, tasting and decanting the hundreds of wines that will be featured for the various seminars. It is a chance for us to taste wines that we might not be able to taste in our day to day lives. Penfolds Grange 1990, Pichon-Longueville 1989, d'Quem 1987, Lafite 1988, Haut Brion 1990...It is fun to see wine friends that you only see at events like these and of course tasting the wines is the reward for when the alarm rings at 6 am and I have to get up while it's still dark outside. I will report the tasting highlights next week.