Speaker Biographies
BACK TO LIST- Karen MacNeil
Karen MacNeil is the Chairman of the Center for Professional Wine Studies at the Culinary Institute of America in the Napa Valley.
For the last 25 years, Karen has been a writer and educator whose articles on wine and food have been published in more than 50 U.S. magazines and newspapers including: The New York Times, Food & Wine, Saveur, and Town & Country. She is the author of the award-winning The Wine Bible - one of the best selling wine books in the United States, with more than 380,000 copies sold since it was released in 2001. Karen's second book, Wine, Food & Friends was published in the fall of 2006. Karen is the host of "Wine Food and Friends," a 13-part PBS series and the first televised series on wine in the United States. She also recently launched WineTasteTV.com, the first Internet Channel devoted to wine and food.
In 2004 Karen MacNeil received the highest honor awarded to a wine professional in the United States when she was named "Outstanding Wine and Spirits Professional of the Year" by the James Beard Foundation. Also that year, TIME called Karen America's "missionary of wine." The following year she was named "Wine Educator of the Year" by the European Wine Council, and received the prestigious Golden Goblet Award for Women Who Inspire. In 2007, she was awarded the renowned Wine Literary Award for her "significant contribution to the literature of wine in the English language." Karen holds an Advanced Certified Wine Professional Degree.
