2008 Woodie Awards
Wine club adds class to drinking
Julia Mckinnon
Issue date: 3/2/06 Section: Features
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Like many students at Middlebury, Sean Breen '06 went abroad during his junior year, made phenomenal friends and gained life experiences and new skills. But instead of becoming fluent in Arabic or Russian, Breen became fluent in another language - the language of wine. Breen has brought his newfound passion back to Vermont in the form of the Middlebury Wine Circle, a group he founded for wine lovers and experts.
Breen's intrigue for wine was first sparked by his father during his sophomore year in college, when they travelled to Burgundy, France, together. Back home in New Jersey, Breen met Chris Cree, one of a select 23 "Masters of Wine" in the United States. Cree helped arrange for the Breens to meet with various well-known wine makers, such as Daniel Rion and Joseph Drouhin, in France. Throughout their trip, Breen and his father visited various wine merchants and vineyards around the French countryside, opening the door to Breen's future as an oenophile and leading him to begin reading extensively on the subject.
After his whirlwind tour of Burgundy, Breen next travelled to study abroad at Oxford University in England. Oxford has a long-standing affinity for wine that goes back a long way. Each college within the university even has its own wine cellar. There, Breen joined the Oxford University Wine Circle, a club whose membership involves an application process. He and roommate Daniel Phillips '06 were accepted and soon became members of the Oxford Wine Circle.
Within this society Breen began his involvement with the Blind Tasting Team. Each week, members of the team became acquainted with various wines in preparation for a competition that is held each year between the Cambridge and Oxford University teams. This event is "the oldest wine tasting competition in the world," and only six members of the team are selected to taste at the match. Breen was one of the lucky few selected to compete on the Oxford team. In the weeks before the competition, Breen compared his training to that of a rigorous crew team. Five or six nights a week, the group met for a few hours sampling six or seven different wines at each sitting.
Breen's intrigue for wine was first sparked by his father during his sophomore year in college, when they travelled to Burgundy, France, together. Back home in New Jersey, Breen met Chris Cree, one of a select 23 "Masters of Wine" in the United States. Cree helped arrange for the Breens to meet with various well-known wine makers, such as Daniel Rion and Joseph Drouhin, in France. Throughout their trip, Breen and his father visited various wine merchants and vineyards around the French countryside, opening the door to Breen's future as an oenophile and leading him to begin reading extensively on the subject.
After his whirlwind tour of Burgundy, Breen next travelled to study abroad at Oxford University in England. Oxford has a long-standing affinity for wine that goes back a long way. Each college within the university even has its own wine cellar. There, Breen joined the Oxford University Wine Circle, a club whose membership involves an application process. He and roommate Daniel Phillips '06 were accepted and soon became members of the Oxford Wine Circle.
Within this society Breen began his involvement with the Blind Tasting Team. Each week, members of the team became acquainted with various wines in preparation for a competition that is held each year between the Cambridge and Oxford University teams. This event is "the oldest wine tasting competition in the world," and only six members of the team are selected to taste at the match. Breen was one of the lucky few selected to compete on the Oxford team. In the weeks before the competition, Breen compared his training to that of a rigorous crew team. Five or six nights a week, the group met for a few hours sampling six or seven different wines at each sitting.