Somm-antic Drift
Eric Degerman is president and CEO of Great Northwest Wine LLC, a journalism business that publishes to its eponymous website and produces a quarterly print magazine. Eric began writing about the Pacific Northwest wine industry in 1998 while working as a sportswriter for the Tri-City Herald, a daily newspaper in Washington state’s Columbia Valley. He helped create Wine Press Northwest, the newspaper’s quarterly wine and lifestyle magazine, with now-retired author Andy Perdue.
In 2000, they created the Platinum Awards. It is an October judging of wines made with Pacific Northwest-grown fruit that have received a gold medal at a respected wine competition anywhere in the world during the previous 12 months. Along the way, Eric has judged more than 20 North American wine competitions.
Great Northwest Wine LLC owns and operates two international wine competitions, conducts the Idaho Wine Competition in collaboration with the Idaho Wine Commission and serves as a consultant to several other Pacific Northwest judgings. In 2020, Degerman began a freelance relationship with The Seattle Times to spearhead coverage for its annual Wine Issue of Pacific NW Magazine.