Doug Frost MW MS

Jury Member

dougmsmw

Jack of All Trades, Master of Two (or Three)

Doug Frost is a Master of Wine and Master Sommelier as well as an author and wine consultant based in Kansas City, Missouri. Frost is one of three individuals in the world to hold simultaneously the Master of Wine and Master Sommelier titles, achieving his MS in 1991 and MW in 1993.

In 1991 he passed the rigorous Master Sommelier examination and two years later became America’s eighth Master of Wine. He was the second person in history to complete both exams and more than a quarter century later he is still one of only three people in the world to have achieved both these remarkable distinctions. According to USA Today, “Frost likely knows as much as anyone in the world about how to make, market, serve and identify wines.”

The Wine Spectator has bestowed the accolade of Master of Spirits on Mr. Frost. In 2006 Frost, along with partners Dale DeGroff, Steve Olson, Paul Pacult, Andy Seymour and David Wondrich created BAR (Beverage Alcohol Resource), a spirits and cocktail educational organization; Cheers Magazine selected BAR and its founders as Innovators of the Year for 2007. Frost was awarded Beverage Innovator of the Year 2009 by Cheers Magazine. He continues to teach and examine for BAR and within the Master Sommelier and Master of Wine programs. In the past, Frost was a fine wine wholesaler and importer for fourteen years and represented many of the best wineries and estates from America and the world.

Frost, along with business partner, Brad Bergman, has launched Echolands Winery in Walla Walla, Washington. The winery owns almost 400 acres of land in the Walla Walla Valley, with 25 acres planted on the Oregon side of the valley, and 10 acres planted on the northern Walla Walla Valley, in the area known as the Foothills of the Blue Mountains. Each one of Echolands wines have received scores of 92 points or higher since the launch of their first wines from the 2018 harvest.

Frost’s first book, Uncorking Wine, was released in the summer of 1996, and Frost’s second book, On Wine, published by Rizzoli International, was released in the fall of 2001. The Washington Post called it “fabulous, witty, engaging and wise... conveys more accumulated wine wisdom than most books 10 times as thick.” Frost’s most recent book, Far From Ordinary: The Spanish Wine Guide, was released in October 2005; the third edition was released in 2011. He is contributing editor for the Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails (2022).

Frost is also a contributor to the Oxford Companion of Wine, Opus Vino, The World Atlas of Wine by Hugh Johnson, Lonely Planet Wine Trails, The Wine Report (edited by Tom Stevenson), and the Sotheby’s World Wine Encyclopedia. He has written about wine and spirits for many publications including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Underground Wine Journal, Arts Culinaire, Drinks International, Feast Magazine, Fine Cooking, Fine Wine, HER Life, Practical Winery & Vineyard, Wines & Vines, Wines & Spirits, Cheers Magazine, Sante Magazine, Hemispheres Magazine, Missouri Life, Sommelier Journal, Epicurious.com, Le Pan, and the Kansas City Star.

Frost is the creator and host of the KCPT-TV hosted short series called FermentNation; the show has won two Mid-American Regional Emmy® Awards, in 2015 and 2017. His previous TV show, Check Please, Kansas City!, was also nominated for a Mid-American Regional Emmy® Award. He appears as a featured judge on Public Television’s The Winemakers, PBS’s first nationally broadcast reality show. After seventeen years, Frost continues as United Airlines global wine and spirits consultant, selecting tens of thousands of cases of wines and spirits each year for service aboard the world’s most important worldwide carrier.

He is the founder and director of the Jefferson Cup Invitational Wine Competition, a twenty-three-year-old national competition. He consults with many retailers, restaurateurs, wineries and distillers in the realms of marketing, merchandising, sales, education and sensory perception. Mr. Frost lives with his wife in Kansas City, near his two children and one granddaughter, where he spends his spare time listening to his massive punk rock, vintage jazz and weird music collection.

As President of the Best USA Sommelier Association, Frost leads an august group of wine professionals who help train and select the USA's top sommelier. BUSA is the US member organization of the Association de la Sommellerie Internationale (ASI).

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