In Memory of Patrick ‘Chip’ Cassidy

Patrick "Chip" Cassidy
Patrick ‘Chip’ Cassidy

The San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition has lost one of their long lasting professional wine judges, Patrick “Chip Cassidy”. Bob Fraser reports, “I first met Chip at an early Sonoma County Harvest Fair Wine Competition at the El Rancho Tropicana in Santa Rosa in the late 1980’s. Chip, at that time, was the chief wine buyer for Crown Wine & Spirits in Florida, and had this contagious enthusiasm for evaluating wines. From that time on, Chip was integral part of the judging team at both the Harvest Fair, the early years of the Cloverdale Citrus Fair Wine Competition, and the last twenty years of the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition. After Chip’s stint at Crown Wine & Spirits, he started the wine education program at Florida International University’s Chaplin School of Hospitality. Chip was an outstanding wine education professor and mentor to many graduates of the wine program at FIU.

I would honestly say that Chip Cassidy is on my “top-ten list” of all time professional wine judges in the last 30 years. More important to me, Chip was a person vital and integral to a credible professional wine competition – a person with utmost optimism, energy, humor, credibility, and a wine judging mentor of new judges to the wine competition. Chip was forever thankful, grateful, and appreciative of the competition management team and organizers hospitality – never taking anything for granted. From my personal experience with Chip, at the early Harvest Fair El Rancho Tropicana venue judging, to last year’s Chronicle’s Cloverdale judging in January, Chip has been a valued friend of mine and his fellow judges and staff. He will be sorely missed and remembered so fondly with all of us”. Chip was 72.

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