Echolands Winery

Doug 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. The Wine Spectator has bestowed the accolade of Master of Spirits on Mr. Frost. With Dale DeGroff, Steve Olson, Paul Pacult, Andy Seymour and David Wondrich, Frost created BAR (Beverage Alcohol Resource) in 2005. He was awarded Beverage Innovator of the Year 2009 by Cheers Magazine, and he continues to teach and examine for BAR and within the Master Sommelier and Master of Wine programs. He is the author of three books, Uncorking Wine (1996), On Wine (2001), and Far From Ordinary: The Spanish Wine Guide (third edition 2009) and is a contributing editor of the Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails, due to be released in 2020. Frost is the Emmy Award winning creator and host of the KCPT-TV hosted short series called FermentNation. He is also the founder and director of the Jefferson Cup Invitational Wine Competition, a twenty-year-old national competition, and he is Head Judge and founder of the Mid-American Wine Competition, in its thirteenth year.

Taylor is a Whitman College cum laude grad (anthropology with minors in biology and chemistry) and has a Masters in Wine Microbiology from Washington State University. After finishing his degrees, he worked for years at Seattle’s famed Esquin Wine Merchants where he was able to taste some of the world’s most sought after wines. He was most recently at Mark Ryan Winery where he managed the wine lab and helped the guide the team through all aspects of winemaking, and he values time that he has spent working harvests at Gramercy Cellars, Rotie Cellars and Waters Winery. His publications include papers in the Journal of Applied Microbiology and the American Journal of Enology on the character and control of Brettanomyces. A native of Alaska, Taylor lives in Walla Walla with his wife Michaela and their twin girls.