WSET Team
All Instructors have completed the WSET Diploma, are Approved WSET Assessors and are also highly qualified professionals in the grape and wine industry. Brock is pleased to be a program provider for this internationally recognized certification.
Meet the WSET Coordinator
Barb Tatarnic
Coordinator of Continuing Education and Wine Educational Events for the Cool Climate Oenology & Viticulture Institute (CCOVI). Barb has been with CCOVI since the very beginning and with the university for more than 25 years now.
For more information or to discuss your individual needs please contact her at:
905-688-5550 ext 4652
E-mail: ccovi@brocku.ca
Meet our Instructors:
Peter Bodnar Rod
A twenty-three year veteran of the food and drinks business as wine educator, award-winning sommelier, wine sales & marketing associate, restaurant manager and winery consultant, wine has always been a big part of my life. I completed my B.Comm. in 1989 at the University of Guelph and two years later, earned my sommelier certification through the Canadian Sommelier Guild in Toronto. I completed the intermediate and advanced certificates of the WSET in the mid 90’s and earned my WSET Diploma in 1999.
I’ve been an instructor with the International Sommelier Guild since 2000 and am now a Curriculum Department Head. I’ve also taught the WSET Intermediate Certification and have been an approved assessor of the Advanced Certificate since 2003. In 2008 I was a sessional instructor of wine studies at both the University of Guelph and Niagara College. In March of 2009 I was awarded the prestigious VQA Promote the Promoters Award for Education.
As sommelier & restaurant manager, I have worked at fine establishments in Ontario and British Columbia known for their world-class cuisine and innovative, award-winning wine programs. In 2004, I won the Toronto Renaissance Blind Tasting Challenge and have also won bronze at both the 1997 Canadian finals of the Grand Prix de Sopexa du Sommelier and the 1998 Canadian finals of the World Sommelier Championships. In 2000, I was named top sommelier by the BCRFA and two years earlier was named one of Canada’s top sommeliers in Wine Access Magazine. I was also named Top Sommelier in Ontario at the Ontario Wine Awards in 2006.
I’ve had the great honour of judging the Canadian Wine Awards twice and am also on the selection committee for the Ontario Hostelry Institute Top 30 under 30. As wine salesman, I had the pleasure of working with Mission Hill Family Estate winery for almost 4 years as Director of Trade Development in Eastern Canada and more recently spent two and a half years helping Tannin Fine Wines Ltd. to establish and develop a sales office in Ontario.
Robert Power
Rob is a southern Ontario native; born in Peterborough, grew up in Owen Sound and Guelph. After high school he went to the University of Toronto and meandered aimlessly through an Arts and Science degree, graduating in 1985. This degree led to gainful employment in restaurants (in order to pay off some onerous student loans) until in 1989 he was lucky to be hired as a bartender at the venerable Le Select Bistro, despite answering truthfull to an interview question about his wine knowledge with the pithy comment "White and Red". For those of you unfamiliar with it, Le Select had (and has) one of the largest, most comprehensive wine lists in Canada. As a result, Rob's vinous ignorance was short-lived. He was promoted to bar manager and spent the next 8 years studying and tasting wines from around the world, culminating in a diploma from the Wine and Spirit Education Trust in the UK.
In 1997, by now far more interested in great French oak than great French restaurants, Rob starting looking for a place to study winemaking. Fate again intervened when Brock University opened the Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute. Rob graduated at the top of the first graduating class from the Oenology and Viticulture program. He was hired as assistant winemaker at Creekside Estate Winery in late April, 2000 - he started the day after his graduation ceremony (sporting a monstrous hangover!).
In 2002, Rob and cellarmaster Craig McDonald were asked to take over the winemaking reins at Creekside when the founding winemaker moved back to Australia. Making wine with the Creekside team, while dealing with the slings and arrows of outrageous climate and recalcitrant machinery, remains one of the pleasures of his life.
Receiving many wine awards (four Cuvee Gold at the 2009 awards ceremony) are all taken in stride by this humble winemaker. Accolades are all met with his infectious sense of humour and zest for all things "pithy".
Rob and his wife Ann live in Niagara near Creekside with an enthusiastic pack of quadrupeds!
Christopher Waters
For the past ten years Chris has worked as a professional wine writer and educator based in Ontario. As co-founder and editor of VINES, a consumer wine magazine distributed across the country, I oversee the story development, assignment and packaging of each issue as well as specific content created. In addition Chris is a staff member of the Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute teaching Wine Appreciation I and II and the Introduction to the Wines of Ontario along with his new duties as an approved assessor for the WSET.
Chris is also a tutored tasting consultant for Gourmet Food & Wine Expo in Toronto and has been a wine judge for the Ontario Wine Awards, International Value Wine Awards, Canadian Wine Awards, the International Eastern Wine Competition, the Cuvee Wine Awards and the Experts' Tasting.
His affiliations include a weekly wine column, Waters & Wine, is syndicated in The St. Catharines Standard, Niagara Falls Review, North Bay Nugget and other Sun Media newspapers in Ontario and online at watersandwine.com. A bi-monthly column appears in Hamilton Magazine, Kingston Life, Niagara Magazine and Simcoe Life, which are regional magazines in Ontario. Lastly, but certainly not least - Christopher is also a Member of the Wine Writers Circle of Canada.