Michelle J. Baker contributes wine articles to this website and she hosts the Sonoma County Wine/Wineries Forum. Baker also writes about wine for Wine Country This Week, Spotlight’s Wine Country Guide, Jane and Jane magazine. She also serves as a PR/Marketing consultant for various wineries and she sits on the wine tasting panel for the San Diego Index-Tribune's website. When she’s not busy writing about wine for work, Baker likes to relax and have fun by writing about wine for her blog winerybuzz.com.
Some of her original articles for the About.com Santa Rosa website include:
- Most Romantic Wineries in Sonoma and Napa
- Top 10 Wineries in Santa Rosa
- San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition
From Michelle J. Baker:
“It all started in 1992. Before that, I never cared about wine, thought about wine, or drank wine. After all, the wine I knew came in a jug, then later a box, that sat on the top shelf in my parent's fridge. As a kid, part of my dad's Saturday errands included a stop at the liquor store, where he picked up a jug of Almaden or Gallo, usually white in the summer and red in the winter. Offered the occasional sip, I obliged, and then scowled from the bad taste.
“I went to a beer-swilling college (Georgetown), and then graduate school (University of Colorado-Denver) in, arguably, the home of the microbrew. It was back in 1992, at a dinner party with some friends, that I discovered wine. I wish I could say my epiphany came with a sip of a 1982 Mouton Rothschild first growth Bordeaux. But it was actually—snicker if you must—a modest 1989 Columbia Crest Reserve Merlot that made my taste buds go hmmm. (The 1982 Mouton would come 14 years later) That Merlot was the first delicious wine I’d ever had; full of cherry and berry flavors, with plush tannins and subtle oak and smoke.
“That wine started me on the way to exploring wine any way I could. "Any way" led from tasting hundreds of wines from around the world to working a retail sales job in wines for five years in Denver. Then in 2000, I followed my passion for wine to Sonoma County.
"I keep busy with wine writing and promotions. But, whenever I can, I pour wine at Passalacqua and talk to other wine lovers. When given the chance, I like to share a bit of knowledge with the neophytes. And if they ask for advice, I point them to the best Pinots, Zins, Cabs, and yes, even the best Merlots.”
