We are delighted to announce the expansion of Wine Review Online’s all-star lineup of contributors with the addition of Rebecca Murphy and James Tidwell MS. Rebecca and James will be reviewing wines on a regular basis, and you should also watch for pieces by them in the WRO blog space. They are among the most highly respected wine professionals in the United States, and indeed both have earned international reputations over the years.
The first set of reviews from Rebecca and James will appear on WRO’s “Reviews” page this Wednesday, August 15. You’ll find their names linked to each of their reviews, as is always the case on WRO, which never runs a review or a point score without explicitly indicating the author. And by the way, if you haven’t noticed already, each of our reviewers writes with a distinctive voice based on an independent but highly trained palate. There’s no “party line” at Wine Review Online, which operates on a very simple editorial model: Engage the very best tasters and writers, and then let them do their own thing.
As you’ll soon see, Rebecca and James definitely fit that bill, and we couldn’t be more pleased to provide a forum for their outstanding talents. Here are brief biographical sketches that will provide an indication of their accomplishments…but only an indication, as their full CVs are far too extensive to reproduce here:
Rebecca Murphy was the first female wine steward in Texas, and has gone on to found and 
produce The Dallas Morning News and TexSom Wine Competition. She is also handling the operations for the newly established Sunset International Wine Competition, and has judged many national and international wine competitions. As a writer, she has contributed a weekly feature to The Dallas Morning News for many years, and has written for Wine Business Monthly and Wines & Vines in addition to furnishing entries for The Oxford Companion to Wine and the sixth edition of The World Atlas of Wine.
James Tidwell, MS, CWE, is currently Beverage Manager and Sommelier at Four Seasons 
Resort and Club in Irving, Texas. He is a sommelier representative on Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts’ core wine committee, and is the Lead Sommelier on the corporate beverage committee. In 2009, he passed the prestigious Master Sommelier examination, and in 2003 passed the Certified Wine Educator Exam on the first attempt, earning the highest score out of the hundreds of candidates who took the exam that year. James is also the co-founder of TEXSOM, North America’s preeminent wine educational conference.
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