• 9th Annual Sommelier Poll: Best New Sommeliers
There are plenty of contests and exams these days that highlight the greatest talents in the sommelier world. Are any contests, however, as discerning as the judgment of one's peers? These are the people who see their colleagues in action, conversing with guests, choosing bottles to complement an esoteric dish while juggling wine keys, waiter duties and cellar inventory. We've asked the top sommeliers across the US to name the most promising new talents in the business today—the people they want working for them or waiting on them.

Meet the Best New Sommeliers of 2011.

The complete article is available in the print edition of Wine & Spirits.

• New & Notable San Francisco Bay Area Bars & Restaurants 2011
Our New & Notable Restaurants share one critical premise: Their wine and beverage programs are as strong and dynamic as their food. Like us, their chefs and sommeliers believe that wine with food is twice as good as wine on its own.

In preparation for the W&S Top 100 tasting in San Francisco this October, when the elite of the wine world will be milling around the Bay Area looking for great places to dine, we canvassed our colleagues in San Francisco about where they were eating and drinking now. Then we did our own research, eating and drinking our way through the buzz of new openings. In the end, these eleven restaurants rose to the top, while five new bars proved to be worth-a-detour destinations. If you live in town, let us know your own favorite new spots. And if you're going to San Francisco, stash these contacts in your phone.

The complete article is available in the print edition of Wine & Spirits.

• With Raúl Pérez at Full Velocity
85 miles per hour. That's what the speedometer reads on the dash of the little black sports car. At the wheel, Raúl Pérez, one of the brightest stars in the Spanish wine constellation, drives with the comfort and calm of someone chewing gum. We take the next curve flanked by mountains painted a furious green, the steep hillsides below breaking apart behind stone retaining walls.

The complete article is available in the print edition of Wine & Spirits.

• Crossing Borders: Chablis Beyond Oysters
"There's no doubt that Chablis is the best chardonnay-based wine from anywhere in the world for Thai food," says Bank Atcharawan, wine director of Lotus of Siam in Las Vegas, one of the country's greatest wine-and-Thai-food destinations. I thought of his comments at a recent Thai dinner, when a bottle of fresh, nervy 2009 Chablis Premier Cru Butteaux from Domaine Servin responded to the flavor collisions in the food.

The complete article is available in the print edition of Wine & Spirits.