Hip Tastes Blog

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About Courtney

Courtney Cochran is the Founder & Principal of Your Personal SommelierTM, through which she offers personalized wine services to adventurous wine collectors, purveyors and enthusiasts, often venturing to clients' homes or offices to entertain with her fresh and unique take on wine. Courtney is also the founder of HIP TASTES Events, through which she offers fun and stylish wine tastings to the general public in San Francisco.

Courtney grew up in California's Central Valley, where she gained an early appreciation for wine and food while sampling the abundant produce at local farmer's markets and traveling frequently to the state's numerous wine regions on vacations with her family. A summer exchange program in France cemented her interest in both the French language and the country's finest export, its award-winning wines. A semester at the Sorbonne during college led to extensive travel through France's most renowned wine regions and contributed to her decision to pursue a formal education in wine tasting and evaluation.

Courtney holds her sommelier certification from the International Sommelier Guild and the Master Sommelier Guild of America. She has passed levels 1 and 2 of the Master Sommelier diploma and continues to work towards that designation. And, much less exciting but nonetheless helpful, she graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BA in English and French from the University of California, Los Angeles and is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa society. She also holds an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management, where she studied marketing and entrepreneurship and was president of the school's wine tasting group. When she is not working, Courtney enjoys golfing, traveling, rummaging through flea markets and vintage boutiques, kibitzing with friends over long lunches, and drinking good wine.