SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - Jun 6, 2011) - More than 500 acclaimed pinots will be poured at the 7^th Annual Pinot Days San Francisco, June 13- 18, 2011. A renowned pinot noir wine event with annual tastings in Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, Pinot Days connects wine enthusiasts and winemakers creating a unique opportunity for new and seasoned wine lovers to taste and celebrate pinot's stylistic diversity and meet the artisan winemakers who produce it. This week-long San Francisco event includes a "Best of Oregon" tasting, a Williams-Selyem Horizontal tasting, a "Twelve Noble Stars" tasting featuring 12 acclaimed wines and winemakers like Pax Mahle, Richard Sanford, Michael Browne and Brian Loring, and a number of smaller events around the city. Pinot Days culminates with the Grand Festival at Fort Mason Center on June 18. The Pinot Days Grand Festival is a wine tasting event which gives wine lovers the opportunity to experience and enjoy the best pinot noir from California, Oregon, Burgundy and New Zealand, and interact directly with the more than 200 acclaimed winemakers who produce it. Tickets for all Pinot Days events can be purchased at www.pinotdays.com.

Founded by The Bay Area Wine Project with the ultimate goal of advancing the profile of pinot noir, Pinot Days is a celebration of pinot noir's breadth of style and its most brilliant winemakers, the vineyards, the grapes, and the often-bewitching process of urging the noble pinot grape into great wine. At Pinot Days, the winemakers and winery owners do the pouring, creating a uniquely engaging experience where wine enthusiasts can interact, ask questions and learn the stories behind what goes into making great pinot noir.

Pinot Days producer Lisa Rigisich believes pinot's popularity is in part due to its stylistic diversity. "No other grape variety ranges in style like pinot noir. It's a fragile, thin-skinned grape, and it is precisely because of its fragility that pinot noir is able to offer up the land from which it comes and the hand that crafts it in a way that other grape varieties cannot. So depending on its winemaker and when and where it is grown, a pinot noir can be elegant and lean, rustic and earthy, or fruit-forward and fuller-bodied. Whichever the case, there is nothing more compelling than a well-made pinot noir. No matter which style you prefer, taste them all and you'll discover that there is a pinot for every palate and every food pairing under the sun."

Pinot Days San Francisco includes three thematic Focus Tastings, more intimate events in which attendees sit among the famed winemakers while tasting flights of wines within the given theme. Featured wineries include Copain, Kosta Browne, Archery Summit, Wind Gap, Clos Pepe, Siduri and Dutton-Goldfield, and personalities include Richard Sanford, Francis Mahoney, Greg LaFollette, and Jean Charles Boisset. This year's event also includes a special Producer Spotlight tasting featuring the renowned wines of Williams-Selyem, and tastings at popular wine venues including Bar Adagio, Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant, and Ottimista Enoteca. Visit www.pinotdays.com for event details.

In addition, Pinot Days, which is a non-profit in its own right, raises monies to support one IOCC charity each year. This year's Pinot Days Charity Auction Beneficiary is the Water Well Dig Project for the Turkana people of Loupwala in East Africa. 92% of the monies raised for this cause will go directly to providing food to people in the greatest need. Pinot Days has raised over $97K to date for various beneficiaries.

Pinot Days is an event that connects wine enthusiasts directly with winemakers creating a unique opportunity for new and seasoned wine lovers to experience, enjoy and deepen their knowledge of pinot noir. Produced by the Bay Area Wine Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of pinot noir, Pinot Days was created by Steven and Lisa Rigisich out of their love for the "the noble grape." The Bay Area Wine Project holds annual events in San Francisco, Chicago and Southern California. Pinotdays.com provides information about and access to wine-related events, wine education opportunities and wine trivia -- including articles about outstanding wine personalities, winery profiles, reviews of wine events, restaurant wine lists, formal tastings and more. For more information visit www.pinotdays.com.