The Wine Tasting Association (WTA) was founded in 1990 to educate folks about wine and related topics. We have adopted the Progressive Approach to wine created by Mark Phillips. The five tenets are:

1. Wine should be fun. Hey, it's just grape juice with alcohol. Anyone who is snobby about wine shouldn't attend our events.

2. Good wine is not objective. Robert Parker, the Wine Spectator and others have no right to tell you what good wine is. Besides, in a blind tasting, you’ll rarely agree with them. Good wine is any wine YOU like.

3. Along those same lines...the idea of assigning a wine a numerical score is silly. A wine that costs $10 and gets 90 points doesn’t taste anywhere near a $200 bottle of wine that gets 90 points..but they have the same score. There is no accounting for cost / value. We believe that the price is integral in rating a wine. Mark Phillips has created a system to reflect that.

4. The idea of using glasses of different sizes and shapes for different wines is also silly. Four independent studies (including one commissioned by Riedel) along with Mark's research show that it makes no sense to match a certain shape / size glass to a certain type of wine...despite what Riedel and other glass manufacturers say.

5. We don't believe it makes any sense, and sounds downright snobby, to describe wines with all those crazy adjectives...nuances of this, hints of that and undertones of whatever. Mark has developed a much easier way that enables you to better, and more accurately describe wine. Take the Tasting Wine Like a Pro class to learn the system.