About The Author

Gil Schwarz, considered to be one of the premier power brokers, dealers, and collectors in the Wine & Whisky industry, founded The Wine Institute of Las Vegas (TWILV) in early 1999 to serve as that great city’s foremost wine education and consulting business.

Originally from Denmark, Gil spent over a decade living and working in Hong Kong in addition to having more than 35 years of Senior Management experience in the Beverage industry. He holds an MBA in International Marketing from Hong Kong University Business School and is fluent in multiple languages. He has also spent the past three plus decades refining his wine knowledge and tasting skills, specializing in Bordeaux, Burgundy, and the Fine & Rare Whisky market in general and worked directly with some of the biggest players in the industry.

By traveling to the world’s major alcohol-producing regions several times a year, he has in-depth knowledge and hands-on experience with the making, tasting, and selling of Wine and Whisky. Gil is also considered to be an expert on US Wine & Spirits Distribution, having worked 15 years with Southern Wine & Spirits and having founded their Fine & Rare division in Nevada. He has worked as an authenticator of Fine & Rare Wine & Whisky, having spent more than 25 years amidst the world’s greatest wine & whisky cellars, collections, and properties, while identifying and authenticating bottles of fine & rare wines and whiskies.

Gil was a judge at several prestigious International Wine & Spirits competitions in the past 25 years, of which International Whisky Competition (IWC) is the latest.

From 1999 to 2016, Gil was the Wine & Spirits Columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal – Nevada’s largest newspaper, where he wrote a weekly column and numerous special features on wine (more than 950 in total). He has also written freelance articles on wine, whisky, and other related topics in many of the world’s top trade publications. He helped publish a renowned book, “John Kapon – The Compendium” (Fine Wine Editions, 2012) that focused on tasting the world’s greatest and rarest wines.

The Wine Institute of Las Vegas (TWILV) has consulted for a variety of different operators in the Wine & Whisky business, from retailers, hotels, importers, and distributors to major chateaux and producers in the Bordeaux region.

Gil has also consulted for Acker Merrall & Condit, the world’s top auction house for wine, where he set up their operations in Hong Kong in 2008, auctioning off hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Fine & Rare Wine & Whisky as an auctioneer.

In 2020, Gil founded The Distinctive Spirits Company (TDSC), an independent bottler of Whisk(e)y and Rum, as well as a trading entity specializing in the Finest & Rarest in the Whisky business. To date, TDSC continues to service global retail markets with Single Cask releases of the greatest Spirits in the world. All are exclusively drawn from the extensive holdings of casks and barrels owned by TDSC; none are ever brokered or re-sold and all bottlings are done directly for TDSC.

Honored by the French Government with the high honor; Ordre du Merite Agricole (Officier), Gil is also a member of the most prestigious Wine & Gastronomic societies across the globe. He became the youngest person ever to hold all these distinctions simultaneously.