Registration to TexSom, the world’s best wine conference (with tastings!), is open – and seats to the tastings are going fast for the August 9-10 conference

Texsom, the wine education and tasting conference designed for both sommeliers and the general public, is also the world’s best weekend wine conference, and it’s headed back to the Four Seasons Las Colinas August 9-10.

Anybody who is interested in learning about wines can attend, but you have to register for the seminars now… and several of the top tasting programs are almost sold out.

TexSom was founded more than a decade ago by wine pros (and now master sommeliers) James Tidwell and Drew Hendricks. It bills itself as one of the leading wine education opportunities available to sommeliers wine lovers in the country. I love it because normal people like you and I can attend, sip and swirl with the pros, and learn a whole lot about wine through guided tastings and conferences.

In addition to a selection of wine and spirits seminars, TexSom wraps up on Monday night, August 10, with a 250-wine Grand Tasting that’s open to somms and the public. Those tickets are going fast, too.

If you’re already in the industry or just want to learn an effective method to taste and describe wines, you might want to take one of the Court of Master Sommelier’s intro course. If you’ve already passed the intro, or you’d like to learn a whole lot more, WSET courses and the CMS Certified exam are also being offered at TexSom.

New to the program this year is a day-long intensive workshop for somms on how to taste and evaluate wines like a master sommelier. If you’ve already taken (and passed) the Introductory Course (a two-day intensive workshop), you can register for the eight-hour course of  20 guided tastings of classic wines from around the world.

“The course will focus on “cause and effect” analysis of each wine, which will help students understand why classic wines taste the way they do,” says the Guild of Master Sommeliers, which is teaching the seminar. “Themed flights of wine have been put together to help calibrate the student’s palate tovarying levels of alcohol, acidity, oak, and tannin, as well as define regional and varietal markers. This new Deductive Tasting Workshop is geared toward students preparing for the Certified and Advanced level exams.”

More info and registration hoohaw is all here.  The entire event takes place at the Four Seasons Resort Dallas in Las Colinas.