San Francisco, CA
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
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
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
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.
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — A recent Civil Grand Jury report has identified wildfire risks in San Francisco’s Glen Canyon, warning that vegetation management is needed to reduce the potential for a fire in an area not typically associated with wildfire danger.
The report focuses on the canyon’s large population of Blue Gum eucalyptus trees, an invasive species originally imported from Australia.
Historical photographs show Glen Canyon was largely treeless in the late 1800s, when the land was used primarily as a dairy farm.
The eucalyptus trees were planted after investors believed the fast-growing species could be harvested for timber.
“And these people were so stupid, they didn’t realize they were going to build railroad ties and use the wood for building, and it’s worthless. It warps, it splits. it has no commercial value,” said Rick Carell, a member of the Civil Grand Jury.
While the timber venture failed, the trees remained.
Today, their flammability is a concern for fire safety officials and grand jury members.
MORE: 600 goats graze Poplar Beach in Halfmoon Bay to reduce wildfire risk
“The leaves have a lot of oil in them, and so actually, if it’s very hot, and it’s been very, very dry, they actually explode, because it’s highly flammable. And so, you can see here, look at all the debris right next to this road. So somebody throws a cigarette out into there, and you have a potential fire,” Carell said.
Carell said assessments of the trees have raised additional concerns.
“They evaluated something like 427 eucalyptus trees and 80% of them, back in 2012, were in bad shape,” he said.
Although CAL FIRE has repeatedly rated San Francisco’s wildfire risk as low because of the city’s cool, foggy climate, the grand jury report points to the 2025 Pacific Palisades fire in Los Angeles as an example of how fires can occur in urban areas where vegetation management is inadequate.
The report notes that Glen Canyon has only two fire hydrants, one near the Glen Park Recreation Center and another near a day camp building.
However, San Francisco’s Emergency Firefighting Water System provides additional resources through reservoirs, high-pressure hydrants and underground cisterns.
One nearby cistern at Chenery and Surrey streets can supply 75,000 gallons of water. Based on a fire engine’s typical pumping rate of 1,500 gallons per minute, that amount of water would be exhausted in about 50 minutes. Additional cisterns are located in surrounding neighborhoods.
MORE: CAL FIRE urging Bay Area residents to create defensible space as wildfire season begins
Despite the concerns, the report concluded that removing all eucalyptus trees is not a practical solution because of the canyon’s steep terrain. Large-scale removal could increase the risk of landslides. Instead, the report recommends managing vegetation by clearing brush and fallen debris and removing diseased trees.
“To remove any brush that might be a fire hazard, if something could really ignite quickly. We’re going to raise up the branches, the lower branches of the tree because that’s where a lot of the problem is for the spread of the fire, and if there are any dead trees that are really hazardous or branches that may hang over the roadway, that we can take them out as well,” said Rachel Gordon of the San Francisco Department of Public Works.
Public Works officials are expected to coordinate closely with CAL FIRE on vegetation management efforts.
“CAL FIRE guys, they train in the type of environment, and so what they do, they get their chainsaws out, they eliminate. They limb the trees, they bring out the debris and that sort of stuff so this is an ideal training site for them,” Carell said.
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which manages a small portion of the canyon, has already removed trees on its property to prevent them from falling across O’Shaughnessy Avenue, a potential emergency evacuation route.
The agency has also hired habitat experts to remove non-native vegetation and replace it with fire-resistant native species, including coast live oaks.
“That has all these tannins in the foliage that resist fire. You can put a lighter right under that thing in the middle of the hottest day of the year, and it will not burn like these willows. They will not burn, and so that’s what we want to load our parks with instead of having things like the eucalyptus and the pine — which, as we all know, they just burn like a crazy Christmas tree fire,” said Habitat Specialist Josiah Clark.
The majority of the 66-acre canyon is managed by the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department, which agrees that improved coordination among city agencies is essential to maintaining fire safety in the area.
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Presidio Heights is proving to be a center of gravity as luxury housing supply in San Francisco vanishes and the city’s well-to-do scramble to claim their slice of the artificial intelligence industry’s nerve center.
On the same day last week, the city recorded two home sales in the wealthy neighborhood for $9.2 million and $10 million.
The first reflected the fortunes being created by the AI industry. Venture capitalist Kenneth Wallace and his wife, Moriah Lewis, sold their five-bed, 4,755-square-foot home at 3875 Clay Street for $9.2 million. Josh McAdam of Sotheby’s International Realty represented the seller. The property last sold for $6.8 million in 2021.
The buyer initially kept their name hidden behind a Delaware-incorporated LLC named after the property’s address. However, according to public loan documents, the LLC is managed by Daniel Berrios and Kimberly Tan, a couple in their early 30s who graduated from Stanford into the San Francisco tech sector. Berrios works on special projects at OpenAI, and Tan is an investing partner with blue chip venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Wells Fargo Bank provided a $5.4 million loan for the purchase.
Ten blocks east, sellers Herbert and Shwu-Ling Wei sold their six-bed, 5,000 square-foot home at 2881 Jackson Street for $10 million. Kyle Vineyard, a CPA with Realize Tax Advisors, is the trustee of the buyer, RKLA Trust. It is unclear whether Vineyard’s involvement is purely professional or if he’s connected to the trust.
The home last sold in 2014 for $6.8 million.
Presidio Heights, the neighborhood that runs along Presidio Park at San Francisco’s north end, has experienced a hot streak during the first half of 2026. Earlier this month, two mansions in the area sold for a combined $32 million, marking the fourth and fifth sales this year to eclipse $10 million. There were seven sales above that benchmark in Presidio Heights in all of 2025, according to Zillow data.
San Francisco, where the median home sale fetches $2.2 million, is dealing with its own version of champagne problems: a mansion shortage. The AI boom has attracted a wave of high-paid employees, apparently leaving the city with more millionaires than mansions. Steep capital gains taxes have made some mansion owners hesitant to let go of their property. Others are holding out for the expected spike in luxury home demand following Anthropic and OpenAI’s initial public offerings of stock, which are expected to come later this year.
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Staying safe at San Francisco’s Pride festivities
The SFPD has announced that officers from all districts, stations and specialized agencies will be positioned along the route for the Pride Parade to ensure the event is safe for attendees. The annual parade will be held this Sunday and is expected to attract hundreds of thousands of people from around the world.
San Francisco – San Francisco city and police officials said Wednesday that they want people to enjoy Pride festivities this weekend — including the popular parade on Sunday — and that they will be on the lookout for criminal activity.
“All of the leaders up here know how important this weekend is, and we are ready,” Mayor Daniel Lurie said while flanked by a host of officials at a news conference at San Francisco police headquarters.
Lurie said his message is simple: “Look out for one another. Report anything concerning and know that every first responder, city worker and volunteer has one goal: to help everyone celebrate safely.”
Hundreds of thousands expected at SF Pride Parade
What we know:
The annual Pride festivities and parade on Sunday are expected to draw hundreds of thousands of people from around the world to San Francisco. Police say they’re working with state and federal partners to monitor any potential threats while making sure people enjoy themselves.
“You’ll see many of our officers – including me – wearing Pride patches,” said Police Chief Derrick Lew, gesturing to a multicolored patch on his shoulder. “As always, we’re excited to showcase San Francisco, and our longstanding status as a safe haven for members of the LGBTQ+ community.”
No tolerance for hate, DA says
What they’re saying:
District Attorney Brooke Jenkins says she and other city leaders will have no tolerance for hate.
Just last week, she charged a man with a hate crime for allegedly spray-painting a homophobic message outside a Castro District flower shop and punching a witness.
“There will be accountability if anything like that happens here, and so as much as we want to be joyous, we also have to take this occasion very seriously,” Jenkins said.
Suzanne Ford, executive director of SF Pride agreed, saying, “I think we all have the responsibility of demonstrating that we can work together to make sure that the LGBTQ community is centered for this weekend.”
Sheriff Paul Miyamoto said those who don’t behave will go straight to jail.
“The one mode of transportation we want to make sure all of you avoid this weekend is the party buses that the sheriff’s department will have out there,” Miyamoto said.
City officials are urging everyone to celebrate responsibly, don’t drink and drive or accept drinks from strangers and to report any suspicious activity.
Henry Lee is a KTVU crime reporter. E-mail Henry at Henry.Lee@fox.com and follow him on X @henrykleeKTVU and www.facebook.com/henrykleefan
The Source: KTVU reporting, San Francisco police and sheriff, district attorney’s office
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