Women in Wine: Savor Spain Wine Seminar

Come see, touch, taste, smell & hear

about what makes Spanish wines so unique with Spanish wine expert & educator, Nicole Andrus!

Each Savor Spain attendee will be receive a free Spanish recipe book, a take-home Spanish gift and will enjoy tapas with their wine at the event. 

Hosted by Spainsh Wine Ambassador: Nicole Andrus

Nicole Andrus 

Nicole was raised in the Napa Valley of California where her parents, Gary Andrus and Nancy Duckhorn, founded Pine Ridge Winery in 1978 and Archery Summit Winery in Oregon in 1994. Knowledgeable in all aspects of winemaking, Nicole began as a celler rat in her parent’s wineries, performing everything from pitch-forking grape stems, to scrubbing labels off bottes, pumping over & punching down tanks to racking barrels and performing lab analyses. Over time, she began to assist her parents with the sales and marketing of their wines in both the domestic and foreign markets. Through these experiences, Nicole developed a great interest in travel and new cultures and while in high school spent an exchange year in Switzerland, where she learned German and developed a love for the European lifestyle. In college she helped her father out in his new venture, Archery Summit Winery, and during her sophomore year decided to spend another semester overseas in Ecuador, where she developed a keen interest in the Spanish language, the Galapagos Islands and botany.

Upon her return to the U.S., Nicole obtained an undergraduate degree in Biology and a Master’s degree in Molecular Plant Systematics, where she studied the origin of a plant genus endemic to the Galapagos Islands. While she both enjoyed and excelled in her chosen field of botany, after time she yearned to return to her roots in the wine business and to once again live overseas. She thus accepted a position in the Research and Development department at Bodegas Miguel Torres in Catalunya, Spain, combining her scientific background with her longtime affinity for wine.

Nicole worked at Torres for two and a half years, and then served as an independent wine consultant for various Spanish wineries interested in exporting their wines to the US market. In 2005, Rob Mondavi of Folio Fine Wine Partners contacted Nicole about his new company’s (Folio Fine Wine Partners) interest in importing Spanish wines into the U.S. Nicole was thrilled with the opportunity, and by 2008 had helped Folio to negotiate agreements with ten estates from Spain: Fillaboa, Palacios Remondo, Comenge, Vall Llach, Cims de Porrera, Capafons-Osso, Clos Dominic, Mas de l’Abundància, Artadi and Leda. Currently, Nicole serves as Folio’s Spanish Imports Specialist, where she divides her time between liaising with producers, hosting groups in Spain, creating new material for Folio’s marketing department and assisting Folio’s sales team by traveling to the U.S. four times per year in order to educate American accounts and consumers on Folio’s top- notch portfolio of Spanish estates. In 2009, Nicole co-founded Niso Wine Tours (www.nisowinetours.com), a high-end Spanish wine tourism agency offering VIP wine tours in many of northern Spain’s most renowned wine regions.

Today, while Nicole continues to consult for Folio, her contact base within the Iberian wine community has grown significantly and she now assists several other American and Canadian importers create quality-driven Iberian wine portfolios and competitively- viable Spanish and Portuguese private, or control labels, with the additional help of her newest venture: the Iberian wine consulting company, United Vintners Abroad, or
U.V .A.