Greg O’Byrne
Born in Chicago the fifth of ten children of an Irish-Italian Catholic family, O’Byrne learned at an early age the joys of sharing a meal at large gatherings. While living in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late-seventies, O’Byrne initiated his wine palate with Joseph Phelps Riesling sipped from bota bags at Grateful Dead and Santana concerts at Winterland.
After graduating UC Berkeley in 1982 with a degree in Computer Science, O’Byrne developed software in San Francisco for two years and then moved to Paris in 1984. Over long lunches while living and working in Paris as a software engineer, O’Byrne discovered the triumph of Cote de Provence Rosé with Vietnamese spring rolls and the sublime pleasure of slightly chilled Cru Beaujolais with duck confit and baby peas. Realizing there was more to his future than computer coding, O’Byrne left Paris on his bicycle and followed the siren call of wine - riding through the wine regions of France, Switzerland, Greece, Italy and Spain before moving back to San Francisco for a career in the restaurant business. Since 1987, O’Byrne has been a steady presence in the Santa Fe restaurant scene as restaurant manager, event director, wine writer and educator. As the Executive Director of the Santa Fe Wine & Chile Fiesta since 1994 and owner of the Taos Winter Wine Festival since 1998, O’Byrne has curated more than 300 wine seminars. He was the weekly wine columnist for the Santa Fe New Mexican daily newspaper for 12 years and has contributed to Decanter Magazine and the Wine Spectator.
A Certified Sommelier in the Court of Master Sommeliers program, O’Byrne has taught an annual wine course to Santa Fe restaurant students for the past 25 years. In 2004, O’Byrne helped start Santa Fe’s Slow Food chapter with chef/author Deborah Madison. When not producing his own wine events, O’Byrne was a regular guest sommelier The Masters of Food & Wine, Pebble Beach Food & Wine and LA Food & Wine. The past two years he has enjoyed joining the somm teams at the World of Pinot Noir and Big Sur Food & Wine.
O’Byrne has worked harvest and helped make wine at Domaine Drouhin Oregon, Beaux Freres and Brick House in the Willamette Valley and at Ridge Vineyards in Santa Cruz. In 2021 he opened the Bottega del Vino wine bar at Chomp food hall in Santa Fe and curates and manages the wine list while hosting wine seminars.
He continues to enjoy riding his bike through new wine regions, most recently Sardinia, Sicily, New Zealand, Corsica, Galicia, Tenerife, the Rhone Valley and of course an annual ride down the Pacific Coast through Big Sur.
O’Byrne believes in wine with dinner every night and when sipping a Riesling he still tastes “bota bag” and hears the high notes of Carlos Santana’s guitar.
