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52 { THE SOMM JOURNAL } DECEMBER/JANUARY 2018/2019 { wine scholarships } TREASURY WINE ESTATES may have a global portfolio, but according to Education Manager Gillian Ballance, MS, the company has strived to maintain an outlook that's locally minded and personal. "We like to stay engaged with the somm community," says Bal - lance, a WSET Certified Educator who also holds a Diploma in Wine & Spirits from the organization. Partnering with SommFoundation and The SOMM Journal to add an educational component to the com - pany's annual seven-city Luxicon wine tour has proven vital to that mission. Prior to each Grand Tasting—a walkaround introduction to the luxury brands Treasury Wine Estates represents—Ballance leads a seminar on deductive tasting followed by a blind-tasting competi - tion. The top three scorers each receive $1,200 schol- arships to apply to their own rigorous studies in wine. To illustrate the initiative's success, Ballance recalls a recent encounter with a woman sitting for the Court of Master Sommeliers Advanced exam who told her, "I won the scholarship money in San Francisco last year, and that's why I'm here." "That's the goal, right? Or you can take the cash and buy a bottle of Krug," Ballance jokes. Of course, whether or not they end up claiming victory, professionals attend with a goal to brush up on their tasting technique with the best in the busi - ness. On every stop of the tour, which this year visited Washington, D.C., Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, and Dallas, Ballance invites a fellow Master or Advanced Sommelier to serve as a co- instructor—not only to "create a bit of a local draw," as she puts it, but to reassure attendees that there's no one right way to study. "Everybody has different methods," she explains. "You can be wrong a lot, and it's a very humbling process," but eventually "you ar - rive at what a wine is by knowing what it's not." Treasury Wine Estates Education Manager Gillian Ballance, MS, sets up for the blind tasting in Seattle. TREASURY WINE ESTATES OFFERS SIPS AND SCHOLARSHIPS ON ITS NATIONAL LUXICON TOUR by Meridith May, Ruth Tobias, and Deborah Parker Wong TIME Treasured