San Francisco, CA

How San Francisco Became The World’s Most Important Whisky Competition

Published

2 years ago

June 22, 2024

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How San Francisco Became The World’s Most Important Whisky Competition

Some of the Double Gold whiskey medalists from the 2024 San Francisco World Spirits competition

Photo, courtesy Kaitlyn Tucker Photography/Tasting Alliance

Over the last five years, the San Francisco World Spirits Competition (SFWSC) has become the world’s largest spirits competition. In 2024, more than 6,000 entries were submitted from beverage companies worldwide. In the process, the SFWSC has also become the world’s largest whiskey competition. Recently, I sat down with Amanda Blue, President of the Tasting Alliance, the company that organizes the SFWSC, and Stephen Beal, whiskey’s eminence grise and the founding and longest-serving judge of the SFWSC, to talk about the role of the competition in the global whiskey industry.

According to Blue, more than 1,800 entries were submitted in the whisky category in 2024, a record level of submissions. “It’s our single largest category,” added Blue, noting that “roughly 2/3rds of the submissions are from American distillers, but the rest come from thirty other countries worldwide.

Per Steve Beal, the SFWSC has become critical to both the established mega-brands and up-and-coming craft distillers. “The big established brands,” he noted, look to the San Francisco competition to test new concepts and validate aroma and flavor profiles.” “It’s also an excellent way to showcase new ultra-premium expressions,” he added. “This year, we had a 45 YO Talisker entered in the competition”, he observed, “you just don’t see those kinds of submissions in international spirit competitions very often.” “By the way,” he added, it was a fantastic whisky.

Beal was Diageo’s first Senior Master of Whisky and played a pivotal role in the growth and development of Bulleit Frontier Whiskey and has been referred to as the “Godfather of Bulleit Rye”. His portrait is displayed in the entrance of Bulleit’s new distillery in Shelbyville, Kentucky. Widely recognized as one of the world’s leading whiskey experts, he was a founding member of the Council of Whisky Masters and served as chair of its Advisory Council. He was inducted as a Keeper of the Quaich in Scotland in 2010 and the Whisky Magazine Hall of Fame in 2015. He has also been a fixture in international spirit competitions for several decades, having judged virtually every major global competition.

“The SFWSC is equally important for up-and-coming craft distillers,” states Beal. The history of the San Francisco competition is full of iconic stories of little-known brands that broke onto the national stage and saw exponential increases in their sales volume due to winning top honors in the competition.

The final “Sweeps” judging around at the 2023 SFWSC

Photo courtesy Kaitlyn Tucker Photography/Tasting Alliance

It’s not just the craft distillers who look to San Francisco for legitimacy,” notes Beal. The US whiskey market is the single largest in the world; “If you want to be a world-class player, you need to have a significant presence in the US market,” added Beal.

“That’s why we had 90 whiskey submissions from Australia’s burgeoning whisky industry and more than 110 submissions from Irish whisky producers”, noted Blue. “That’s more submissions than any other US competition; in fact, it’s more submissions than any other international competition.”

“It’s not just established whisky-producing countries like Ireland, Japan, Scotland, or Australia,” she added. “This year, we received entries from as far afield as China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Denmark, Peru, Iceland, and Nepal.”

Approximately 25% of the whiskey entries, 452, scored Double Golds, although only five entries in each category made it to the final or “sweeps” round, where the whiskeys are tasted and scored by all judges.

The SFWSC Medals

Photo, courtesy SFWSC

I asked Beal whether he was concerned about the number of Double Gold medals awarded this year. “Not really”, he noted:

Remember, this is the world’s largest, most competitive whisky competition. If you are going to enter the SFWSC, you are going to do so with your best expressions. I’ve judged rounds where every single entry, ten different expressions, received a Double Gold. They were that good! The judges at the SFWSC are among the most knowledgeable, most competent whisky judges you will find anywhere. Many are considered world-class experts. If three of those judges consider an entry a Double Gold medalist, you better believe that is one outstanding whiskey!

With over 6,000 entries, I asked Blue if the competition was at risk of getting too large.

It’s a possibility”, she observed. “Even with the world’s best judges, 1,800 whiskeys are a lot of whiskeys to evaluate, not to mention the other 4,000+ spirits being judged. She added, “It’s entirely conceivable that at some point in the future, we will have to cap the total number of entries in the competition.”

Blue also noted that the Tasting Alliance, the SFWSC’s parent, is developing additional programs, scheduled to roll out in 2025, to help craft distillers by providing them with evaluations from its expert judges and marketing and distribution advice.

The results of the whisky judging, including the finalists, will be announced by category in July. The final winners from the San Francisco and other competitions organized by the Tasting Alliance will be revealed at the Tasting Alliance annual Gala on October 5 in San Francisco. The Gala is open to both consumers and the beverage trade and will afford an opportunity to taste spirits from 70 Double Gold winning medalists.

Founded in 2000 by the late Anthony Dias Blue, the SFWSC is the oldest spirits competition in North America and among the oldest in the world. A total of 70 judges from around the world evaluated approximately 6,000 spirits from April 4-6, 2024.

The competition is organized by the Tasting Alliance, which also hosts spirit competitions in New York and Singapore, wine competitions in San Francisco and New York, and Beer and RTD competitions.

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San Francisco, CA

Thousands in one San Francisco neighborhood heading into another day without power

Published

8 hours ago

December 23, 2025

Press Room

Thousands in one San Francisco neighborhood heading into another day without power

While many people in San Francisco have their power back, there are still thousands without it.

At a press conference Monday afternoon, Mayor Daniel Lurie said 4,000 PG&E customers in the Civic Center area are still in the dark. One of them is Parvathy Menon.

“We haven’t been able to take showers or use the bathroom,” said Menon. “Our electricity is out. I think all our food started rotting about a day in.”

She lives at 100 Van Ness. She said she’s grateful she’s going out of town tomorrow, but even that’s posing some problems.

“I actually have to pack for a trip tonight, and we’re doing it in full darkness,” Menon explained. “We are using our phone lights, we are using our laptops to charge our phones.”

Her apartment is pitch black, except for the small amount of streetlight coming through the windows. She said the apartment complex has been doing all they can to help, like providing some food and water.

They have a small generator to power some lights in the lobby and one elevator for the nearly 30-story apartment building.

Menon said she is most upset about the lack of communication from PG&E.

“Initially, when this started, we were supposed to get power back within the day, then it went to the next day and now they just stopped calling us completely,” said Menon.

San Francisco City Hall was closed for the day because of the outage, but Mayor Daniel Lurie held a press conference with Supervisors Matt Dorsey and Bilal Mahmood.

Lurie said what residents have gone through is unacceptable, and he’s lost trust in PG&E’s estimated times for repair.

“They gave us a timeline that they believe in, but it’s not one that I can have confidence in any longer,” Lurie said. “So, we don’t have full faith that 6 a.m. is the time tomorrow.”

“Shame on PG&E for having this happen,” said District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey. “This is a company that has had a lot of reliability issues and the jury is out on what happened, but if this is negligence, I think it’s going to be really important for people to understand they have rights as customers.”

Leaders encourage everyone who lost anything to file a claim with PG&E; they could be eligible for reimbursements. Mahmood is calling for a hearing after the new year to get some answers for PG&E.

“What went wrong, why weren’t they able to address it this weekend and what steps are they taking to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” said Mahmood about the question he has for the utility company.

PG&E said the outage happened after a fire at its Mission Street substation left significant damage, but the cause is still under investigation.

Meanwhile, Menon has been refreshing social media looking for good news, but she’s starting to lose faith.

“They’re really doing nothing to help us here, so I’m losing hope,” said Menon.

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San Francisco, CA

San Francisco blackout: What we know

Published

20 hours ago

December 22, 2025

Press Room

A fire at a Pacific Gas & Electric substation in SoMa knocked out power to as many as 130,000 customers starting Saturday, leaving thousands in the dark heading into the holiday season and a week of intense storms. Here’s what we know about the outage and state of restoration.

What happened?

The fire began shortly before 1:10 p.m. Saturday at PG&E’s Mission substation at Eighth and Mission streets, initially affecting 40,000 customers. As firefighters worked to suppress the blaze, crews de-energized additional portions of the electric system for safety, causing outages to peak at approximately 130,000 customers.

The fire damaged critical equipment, including a circuit breaker — a safety switch designed to de-energize the system when problems are detected. Firefighters faced unusual complexities suppressing the fire in the multilevel building, including ventilating carbon monoxide before crews could safely enter.

When did power come back?

Firefighters made the building safe for PG&E crews to enter by 6:15 p.m. Saturday. Restoration efforts began immediately. Nearly 32,000 customers were reconnected by 8:45 p.m. Saturday, and about 100,000 — roughly 75% of those affected — were up by 9:30 p.m.

By noon Sunday, 90% of affected customers had power restored. PG&E initially projected full restoration by 2 p.m. Monday; however, a spokesperson said the utility was extending restoration times (opens in new tab) for the remaining 4,400 customers without power. No time frame has been announced.

A PG&E map Monday afternoon shows lingering outages in the Civic Center and SoMa neighborhoods, as well as scattered pockets in the Outer Sunset and Marina District. | Courtesy PG&E

What sparked the fire?

PG&E says it doesn’t know. COO Sumeet Singh said Monday that the extensive equipment damage makes it difficult to determine a root cause. The utility has hired Exponent, a Bay Area-based engineering firm, to conduct an independent investigation.

“We will determine what occurred to ensure it never happens again,” Singh said at a press conference outside the damaged substation.

Was the equipment properly maintained?

PG&E completed preventative maintenance at the Mission substation in October and conducted its most recent bimonthly inspection Dec. 5. Singh said neither inspection identified any problems.

A man wearing a PG&E hard hat and safety vest speaks at a microphone stand with various news outlet logos, while others in safety gear stand behind him. — PG&E COO Sumeet Singh offers an apology Monday outside the damaged substation at Eighth and Mission streets. | Source: George Kelly/The Standard

Why were the estimated restoration times wrong?

Many customers were irate as they were repeatedly given estimated restoration times that came and went. Singh acknowledged the failure and said PG&E’s estimation systems typically perform well, with more than 91% accuracy systemwide.

“It obviously did not work effectively in the circumstance over this weekend,” Singh said. “We are committed to understanding exactly what happened, why it happened, and owning the fixes.”

Were other substations damaged?

Residents have observed a large presence of workers at a substation at 24th Avenue and Balboa Street since Sunday, but the utility has not shared details on what is being done there.

Six hulking diesel generators, which one worker said cost $600,000 to operate daily, were parked outside the substation Monday afternoon. The generators are needed to feed power to the grid while both substations are not fully operational. Crews said they are expected to run for at least two to three days.

Two workers said the substation is undamaged and still online, but its output is diminished because it is fed power by the much larger substation at Eighth and Mission.

However, another said one of the substation’s transformers blew out after a power surge following the fire, and the generators are needed to compensate while workers “update the system” of the west-side substation.

How will customers be compensated?

PG&E plans to offer an expedited claims process for affected customers to seek compensation for losses, including spoiled food, lost business revenue, and hotel costs. Singh said details will be available soon on the utility’s website and through customer service.

He declined to specify compensation limits or provide immediate financial relief, saying customers would need to file claims that PG&E would process quickly. The utility opened a community resource center in the Richmond and partnered with 211 to provide hotel accommodations and food vouchers for vulnerable customers.

Could this happen again?

Singh said PG&E has identified no vulnerabilities at other substations and has made significant upgrades systemwide. Two strong storms forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday (opens in new tab) could bring 4 to 10 inches of rain to Northern California; he said more than 5,500 PG&E workers and contractors are positioned to respond.

The outage occurred 22 years to the day (opens in new tab) after a mass blackout at the same substation in 2003, raising questions about aging infrastructure that Singh did not directly address.

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San Francisco, CA

Fortune Tech: The sheer scale | Fortune

Published

1 day ago

December 22, 2025

Press Room

Good morning. Extremely lean and mean (well, merry, really) for the rest of this week as we head into our annual winter break.

We’ll hang things up for the year on Dec. 24 and pick things back up on Jan. 5.

Happy holidays. (Yippee-Ki-Yay.) —AN

Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Fortune Tech? Drop a line here.

What happened when Waymo robotaxis met a San Francisco blackout

A Waymo robotaxi unable to detect traffic lights after a major power outage in San Francisco, California on December 20, 2025.

Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu/Getty Images

An extraordinary experiment happened over the weekend in San Francisco.

What would a fleet of autonomous vehicles do when a widespread power outage knocked out traffic lights across one-third of the city?

We quickly found out—and the results were plastered all over social media.

On Saturday afternoon, Waymo vehicles throughout SF opted to stop where they were or pull over and throw on their hazard lights—“blocking intersections” and “compounding gridlock,” observed the San Francisco Standard—leading the Alphabet-owned robotaxi operator to suspend service throughout the city. (It resumed Sunday evening.)

In a statement, Waymo said that its vehicles are “designed to treat non-functional signals as four-way stops” but “the sheer scale of the outage led to instances where vehicles remained stationary longer than usual.”

As locals worked through the outage, a moderate debate about the robotaxi fleet continued online. Was it so wrong to expect Waymo’s vehicles to play it safe when infrastructure stopped working? After all, aren’t human drivers predictably chaotic when things go sideways? What exactly should robotaxis optimize for: traffic flow or citizen safety?

And: Just how safe is stopping if you prompt traffic to go around you?

Waymo resumed service Sunday evening, no doubt grappling with these questions (and what city officials might have to say about them). “We are already learning and improving from this event,” it said. —AN

More tech

—Pirates scrape Spotify. Activists Anna’s Archive release hundreds of terabytes of music and metadata via torrent files.

—Shield AI: Sitting at a global inflection point for fully autonomous warfighting.

—SoftBank cashes out to back OpenAI. The Japanese conglomerate is looking under every rock to fulfill its “all in” OpenAI funding promise.

—Chaos at CISA. A failed, unsanctioned polygraph by its acting director has the U.S. cybersecurity agency in disarray.

—PE firms acquire Clearwater Analytics for $8.4 billion. Permira and Warburg Pincus lead the investor group seeking to buy the fintech firm.

—Uber goes to London. A robotaxi trial in partnership with Baidu will begin in the first half of next year.

—Data center deals reach $61 billion worldwide in 2025, according to S&P Global.

—Chatbots’ uncanny valley. Making AI agents more human-like creates cognitive dissonance and trust issues, researchers say.

—Daylight between David Sacks and tech lobbyists. Tech reps say the AI czar’s push to use Trump’s executive order to suppress state AI regulation is the right idea, wrong execution.

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