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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels November 23, 2004 A passion for wine could make a Jacksonville man a Master of Vintages By Jennifer Squires Ashland Daily Tidings "I'm known as a local wine nut, wine collector, wine snob," Cond� Cox says. On the table sit two bottles of wine, a 1997 Bourgogne Rouge by Domaine Leroy he opened the night before with friends and a 1989 Domaine de Chevalier is from the Graves region in France that the waiter at Lela's uncorked for Cox to enjoy with lunch. Cox, a retired lawyer from Austin, Texas, turned expert Northwest wine writer, brought both bottles to the restaurant with him. Conde Cox has been accepted into a masters of wine program that could make him the only Oregonian with the title. Andrew Mariman | Ashland Daily Tidings "My life today is spent studying and tasting wine," Cox explained. "I'm involved in a lot of groups trying to learn about a subject that is just a bottomless pit. It's a lifetime of just trying to scratch the surface." Cox has dug deeper into the world of wine than most, spending years writing a wine column for newspapers in Austin before moving to Southern Oregon four years ago to retire. He and his wife picked the area because they wanted to live between Oregon's Willamette Valley and the Napa Valley in California, what he considers the two greatest wine regions in North America. His home in Jacksonville acts as a home base where he can be fully focused on wine writing. "It's not hard to write about something you're fooling with anyway," Cox says, pulling out a folder stuffed with his latest wine writing from Northwest Palate, Southern Exposure and Wine Press Northwest magazines. One, from the March/April issue of Northwest Palate, delves into the shift to "rich, powerful, seductive wines with strong blue fruit," that began in Southern Oregon with the 2000 vintage. Another discusses the importance of Pinot Gris to the Oregon wine market. His work earned him one of the three nominations for the James Beard Foundation Award in 2004, honoring the best spirits, wine or beer magazine writer in the country. The piece Cox wrote about Pinot Gris, "Amazing Gris," garnered the nomination, though Colman Andrew won the award for an article he published in Saveur magazine. "In Oregon, especially in Portland, where James Beard was from, most food and wine types know well the James Beard Foundation and its awards," Cox said. "If you write a cookbook and it wins the award, then it is a pretty darn good cookbook and generally regarded as the best of the prior year's published cookbooks." Taking it a step further Urged by friends in the local wine community, Cox applied for and was admitted to the Study Programme at the Institute of Masters of Wine. The three-year course of study involves written testing as well as blind identification of wines. In the 50 years the Master of Wine designation has been offered by the Institute, only 242 people have successfully completed the program. "The Masters of Wine represents the most rigorous, the most well-respected, the most exciting formal institute," Cox said, explaining only 20 people in the U.S. have earned MWs and, though four Oregonians have been accepted into the program, no one from Oregon has finished it yet. "Anyone who's admitted into that and successful in that has demonstrated, as much as a human can, a mastery of wine," he said. "It's very tough, but we'll see." Cox will go through blind tastings where he must name the region and type of wine, write analytical essays about the industry, attend seminars to learn more and, eventually sail through five days of testing at one of the three examination sites in London, Napa and Melbourne, Australia. To prepare for the testing, and just because he enjoys it, Cox spends some evenings blind-tasting wine with aficionado friends. For example, twice a month, he and a group mostly composed of area doctors get together to blind-taste 20 wines wrapped in paper bags. "I'm one of many people who are a part of a growing serious wine community in Southern Oregon," Cox said. "Not just people who drink wine or pay attention to wine, but who are dead serious about wine." DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2004 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Click Here Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams