Serious applicants only please. It has come to me through the top-secret grapevine that Linda Murphy, long-time wine editor at the San Francisco Chronicle just announced her imminent departure. This surprise move opens up one of the most prominent wine writing positions around.

The weekly dedicated Wine section of the San Francisco Chronicle is the only one of its kind in the nation, and most recently won the 2004 James Beard Foundation Award for Best Food and Wine Section in any U.S. newspaper. It also has an incredible amount of readership outside of the San Francisco metro area, making it one of the most visible outlets for wine newspaper journalism in the country.

Of course, it’s also my home paper, so I will be very interested to see the fallout from Linda’s announcement, and will be eagerly anticipating the potential for a new voice in the San Francisco wine scene.

Anyone willing to stick their neck out and nominate potential candidates? Rod Smith just left his editorship at Wine & Spirits, so theoretically he’d be a ( to my mind, fantastic) possibility, though I’m not sure he’d be keen on commuting to the city from Sonoma County for weekly editorial meetings.

Anyhow, you heard it here first: the Chronicle is looking for a new chief wino.