I don’t even know where to begin in writing this post, partly because I did indeed sample 71 wines in three days and that tends to have an effect on my memory, but mostly because this weekend of wine and outstanding food was simply out of this world. Before I begin, a bit of a warning for those who are die hard BBQ lovers, this post is a bit of a different style but rest assured there is some grilling action in here, and hey if you like BBQ, chances are you also like to hear about oodles of drool-inducing wine and food…
Kelly and I were supremely lucky enough to get on the list of an invite only wine and food event in Las Vegas. So with that said, here’s how the weekend went down… The welcome reception started with us sitting at Michelin Star awarded restaurant, Aureole in Las Vegas, sipping some fine wine and accepting canapés offered to us directly from James Beard award-winning Chef and restaurant owner Charlie Palmer himself. We started with two wines and six canapés, my favorite being the spicy ahi tuna cannoli with avocado.
We figured the reception was just about done when the General Manager came over and invited us into the restaurant. The next few hours were spent blind tasting 8 wines from around the world with instruction and commentary from wine maker Michael Mondavi, Master Sommelier William Sherer (aka Willie) as well as Master Sommelier and ‘MOF’ (a designation given only to France’s finest artisans) Christophe Tassan. I must admit, I quickly developed a man crush on Christophe for his colourful descriptions on wine and his great sense of humor (or more likely the fact that he liked my sense of humor).
Me and Christophe (notice he didn’t put his arm around me, I think he picked up on my man crush)
Now, full disclosure here: I like wine, but by no means do I consider myself a wine specialist or anything like that. I like it a lot and I probably drink too much of it, those are my credentials. I particularly love big bold red wines, but up until now, I always stuck to a few favorites from California, Australia and South America and never really much explored old world (European) wines with the exception of some fruity whites from Germany. There’s less than 200 Master Sommeliers in the world and I had two of them standing next to me, not to mention Michael Mondavi, who has been making award-winning wines since 1966. So, if I was going to learn and expand my palate, I was certainly learning from the best.
Since there were only about 40 of us at the event, it was quite interactive and Willie picked our table first to help identify one of the initial wines. My extremely intellectual response was, “Well, it’s definitely a white wine.” Yup, it sure was and after being given a hint that it was an old world wine, I added; “Yes, I’d say this is definitely from…Europe, and I really like it.” For a split second I felt like I was about to become the honourary Rodney Dangerfield of the weekend, but everyone laughed and I quickly learned that it doesn’t matter how much a wine costs, where it’s from, or what label is on the bottle. All that matters: do you like it? In fact, Michael Mondavi said the three most important things about being at a dinner table are the following (in order of importance):
- Being with family and friends
- Having some good food
- Having some good wine
Please note that he worded it much more eloquently but I’d had a couple glasses of wine by the time I wrote that down so my chicken scratch note says “fams eat food + wine.” Clearly I’m not a journalist.
I won’t bore you with the details of each wine in this post, but in this one afternoon, I learned a TON about what to look for, what to smell, and what to taste in each glass of wine that I sample/enjoy.
Eight wines for the blind tasting (the second one up on the left is the ‘white wine from Europe’)
We ended around 5pm and I felt like we just floated back to our room (I was kinda numb) for a quick rest in preparation for dinner later.
If you’ve been keeping count – we’re at 10 wines so far today.
I’m pretty sure this was the capon breast, but honestly, this was 11 - 13 wines into the dinner so I could be wrong. Either way it was damn tasty!
We stumbled to our rooms at around midnight and were asleep by about 12:01am. I dreamt of wine and weight loss.
Weekend Wine Count so far: 28
Stay tuned for parts two and three of this amazing weekend which will include a Mexican Ranchero breakfast, a wine blending event taught by Michael Mondavi, a giant paella that was cooked outside over a fire, grilled ribs, and of course...
43 more wines!
Click here for Part Two.
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