http://miamiwinefestival.org/ en tastings@gmail.com Copyright 2012 2012-03-14T15:24:38+00:00 http://miamiwinefestival.org/blog-entry/best-in-glass-month-kicks-off-with-big-sips http://miamiwinefestival.org/blog-entry/best-in-glass-month-kicks-off-with-big-sips#When:15:24:38Z This week we begin Best in Glass month - a great prelude to the Miami Wine & Food Festival. I'm starting making my rounds of participating restaurants for wonderful wine tastings. The participating restaurants are all featuring Gold Medal winning wines from the Best in Glass Challenge and there are some great deals to be had. I'll keep a travel and tasting journal here in the coming days. I'm off tomorrow to two restaurants in Ft. Lauderdale, the Wine Room at the Ritz-Carlton and Market 17 so keep an eye open for some tasting notes on a lovely Sangiovese/Syrah blend from Italy called Sasyr and the Crios Torrontes from Argentina. Sommelier Don Derocher selected these as two of his favorites for the Ritz, and I'll see what Kirsta Grauberger picked when I get to Market 17 on Thursday. Stay tuned, and better still, join in the fun. You can win prizes by tasting the Gold Medal wines - see the Miami Wine & Food Festival's Facebook Page for details! normal 2012-03-14T15:24:38+00:00 http://miamiwinefestival.org/blog-entry/a-letter-from-paris http://miamiwinefestival.org/blog-entry/a-letter-from-paris#When:16:56:51Z For a wine lover, a journey to France is a pilgrimage. Despite the development of a thriving wine industry in the United States, it’s a widely held view among wine lovers that France remains the nexus of all things wine and my December voyage did nothing to dissuade me from that view. It rained nearly every day but that only served to give the City of Lights a bit of a glow, and fueled my quest for wine breaks in the midst of chilly perambulations through museums, parks and ancient neighborhoods It may be obvious, but it’s still worth stating that in France wine is not an end in and of itself, it’s inextricably linked with food, with each serving as a vehicle for enjoying the other. You notice this everywhere in the city beginning with the number of wines by the glass (and the pichet, the small pitcher in the photo that’s more rustic and bistro-like than a carafe) at even the humblest of restaurants. There is nothing in Paris approaching the craft beer movement that is sweeping the US, but there is a much saner approach to wine. It’s part of every meal and it’s meant to be enjoyed. That means every restaurant except the stuffiest outposts of French cuisine have wines covering a broad range of prices. In the US, most restaurants seem to see wine as a necessary evil. Unwilling to admit how expensive their food really is, they keep menu prices low and subsidize their operations by pricing wine at three to four times the wholesale cost.  This makes it difficult for most American restaurants to offer a good selection of lower priced quality wines by the bottle or by the glass. In contrast, Paris bistros generally offer a 50cl pichet (a ceramic pitcher holding two-thirds of a bottle) of a decent, regional wine for around 8 Euros (about $10 at today’s exchange rate). The glassware is usually forgettable but the wines often are memorable. I had a lovely Côtes-du-Rhone the other day with my steak and fries and the entire meal was less than $20. Because Paris is not in the midst of any significant wine region, restaurants and bistros there tend to feature wines from throughout the country. Alsace, the Rhone, Languedoc, the Loire, Burgundy and Bordeaux were all represented by good regional wines at the spots I visited and other than the Alsatian wine, a pinot blanc, all were labeled only with their region of origin with no mention of a grape variety. In most cases the producer was unnamed on the menu as well – the restaurant put its own reputation behind the wine. In addition to the regional wines that form the backbone of offerings at many bistros and popular restaurants, most restaurants also have a more extensive list of wines for sale by the bottle. At top restaurants the lists can be quite extensive and eclectic, but most restaurants in Paris stock primarily French wine. I went to dinner one evening at a widely acclaimed local hangout where the wine list (scrawled on a blackboard) offered 30 bottles, only one of which was not from France (it was from Chile). All of the wines were intriguing, and all were reasonably priced, with the average bottle selling for just a bit more than the average main course Interestingly, the wines are invariably served at a good temperature – reds much cooler than we usually get them in the States and whites chilled but not freezing – they were usually about the same temperature as the air outside. In a week of dining, I was never offered an ice bucket – the assumption seemed to be that I’d finish the wine before it got too warm. Besides, most of the restaurants were too packed to offer space for an ice bucket. Few American wine servers have a clue about proper temperature and those that do report they get complaints from a customer if they offer a white wine without an ice bucket. Both consumers and servers need some education here. And where do the French need some education? In the film A Good Year Marion Cotillard plays a bistro owner who lectures Russell Crowe on how to be a server. “Remember,” she says, “In France, the customer is always wrong.” I didn’t find anything quite that extreme but I did notice that in more than a dozen meals not once did a server or manager ask me how I enjoyed the food or the wine. I’m not sure it’s because they didn’t care, they just took it for granted that I’d like the food so why discuss it? That was true most of the time, but with a couple of meals perhaps they just didn’t want to hear about something that didn’t work. It does work most of the time in my experience, and France is still the ultimate destination for a wine lover who wants to restore a sense of proportion where wine is appreciated, even admired, and invariably kept in context as part of a meal. I’ll have more thoughts from Paris next week Santé, Lyn normal 2011-12-26T16:56:51+00:00 http://miamiwinefestival.org/blog-entry/celebrating-the-holidays http://miamiwinefestival.org/blog-entry/celebrating-the-holidays#When:15:32:52Z With the gift giving holidays just around the corner, I figured it would be useful to offer some thoughts on gift ideas that will please anyone who loves wine. Gifts that encourage the recipient to share some wine with you are even better. Following the logic that if you give someone a bottle they can share it once but if you give them ways to find many bottles, there’s more for all of us, I’ll start with a great book idea (I've included links to most of the gift ideas below - just run your cursor over the item name). Elyse Luray, one of the “History Detectives” on PBS, had her interest in wine cultivated by several appearances as auctioneer at our Miami Wine & Food Festival. She now shares her enthusiasm for wine in a wonderful book called Great Wines Under $20. It carries the cheery subtitle “Be the Toast of the Party Without Breaking the Bank,” and that pretty well sums up her philosophy that there is a lot of great wine out there worth discovering and it needn’t cost a fortune. At $15, the book costs even less than many of her recommended wines. Elyse writes with a sense of flair and enthusiasm without any stuffiness – this is a book that will appeal to newcomers to wine as well as those with a lot of bottles, ahem, under their belt. One of the biggest obstacles to enjoying wine in my experience is the hassle of opening a bottle. Traditionalists argue that that a bottle with a cork is traditional and romantic, though I fail to see the romance in a broken cork at home or a wrestling match between a tough bottle and a frustrated server in a restaurant. I like screw caps on many wines, but since most bottles still have corks we all need a good corkscrew. There are dozens of corkscrew designs out there so here’s a tip: whatever design you go for, be sure the screw that goes into the cork is a wide spiral and not a narrow bore that looks like a real screw. Those auger type screws have a hard time getting a good grip on a cork so skip the unwieldy winged corkscrews and invest in a good design. My favorite is called the Screwpull and it comes in several designs, all of them easy to use without demanding a huge amount of muscle power. My favorite home model also includes a foil cutter to remove the capsule on a wine bottle, and Screwpull even makes a pocket version I’ve given to several grateful flight attendants. Glassware is important, and as attendees saw clearly at Max Riedel’s recent symposium for the Miami Wine & Food Festival, there are a lot of options in glass design. I like the “Key to Wine Tasting” set of tumbler style glasses that Max demonstrated, but those come with a caveat.  In my non-scientific but extensive experience, people drink more wine from a tumbler style glass than from a stemmed glass. Perhaps it has to do with the feeling in the hand, the subconscious sense that it’s “just a glass,” that keeps my friends hoisting, but I’ve learned to use these glasses in small groups or, at a party, to pour less expensive wine! Our symposium was a big hit, and now I see on the Riedel website that the glass set is out of stock. There’s no question the glasses work, but you should opt as well for a few stemmed wine glasses – there is beauty in tradition. Believe it or not, how you pour wine into your glasses makes a difference as well. The first time you pay the laundry bill for spotting a favorite tablecloth you’ll wish there were a way to avoid having droplets spill from that thick lip on most wine bottles. There is a way. In fact there are several. The easiest and least expensive way is to purchase Drop Stop pouring spouts. These simple and inexpensive ($5 for two) Mylar discs roll up and slide into the neck of a wine bottle creating a quick, easy and drip-free spout. Another handy type of spout aerates the wine as well as directing its drip-free flow. True Fabrications makes one type ($20) that is inserted like a stopper in a wine bottle. As you pour through the spout, a series of perforations creates airflow within the wine, rapidly oxygenating the wine as you pour. In a few seconds this mimics the effect of letting the wine breathe for an hour or two. It’s not recommended for older wines, but for young bottles (say, less than five years old), it makes a remarkable difference in the wine’s flavor and texture. The “Vinturi” is an even fancier device with the same principle of creating airflow (the process is called the Venturi Effect, hence the punny name that cracks up only wine loving physicists). It costs more and is a bit more awkward to use but in my experience it does an even better job than the pourer-style aerator. There is even one model that comes with a fancy stand that no doubt is much admired by wine-loving interior designers. And of course, you cannot go wrong giving a wine lover a bottle of wine, can you? Well, perhaps. Not every wine lover loves every wine so it helps to know something of the recipients taste (or lack of it) in selecting a bottle. The closest thing to a never fail gift is to select something so esoteric that your recipient can’t help but be impressed by your effort, like a bottle of Madeira from his or her birth year. That can be a bit challenging to locate, so may I suggest something that has both the allure of age and the vitality of youth like a tawny port? Many producers offer tawny port in versions that are 10, 20 and 30 years old. My preference is usually for the 20 year old where you still have the fruit of a youthful wine with well balanced sweetness and lots of the nutty character that is the hallmark of a great tawny. Graham’s and Fonseca are two brands to look for and since tawny port is that rare wine that can be paired with chocolate, you can’t go wrong throwing in a bit of bar of Valhrona or some almonds as well. No holiday wine roundup would be complete without my at least mentioning Champagne, the wine that is unabashedly my favorite. There are many sparkling wines available to us these days, but there is only one Champagne, the sparkling wine from the Champagne region of France. If it isn’t from there, it isn’t Champagne. This is the wine on everyone’s mind for New Year’s Eve but keep in mind that Champagne is first and foremost a wine. While it is the beverage of celebration par excellence, Champagne plays the same role as any wine – it goes beautifully with food and I can think of no more joyous celebration of wine and romance than having a gorgeous rosé Champagne with someone special on Christmas Eve, or for brunch on Christmas Day. A little smoked salmon and, if you can find it, a chunk of Chaource, a cheese made in Champagne, or a rich double or triple crème cheese like Explorateur or Brilliat Saverin (both are available at good gourmet markets) and you have the makings of a brilliant romantic event. It never hurts to have a bottle or two of Champagne in your fridge for offering to friends who stop by, so don't forget an often neglected item in the wine lover's toolkit - a Champagne stopper. There are many designs but a single purpose - keeping the bubbles in your bubbly until it's all gone. True, mine tends to go before a stopper can be inserted, but if you are pouring your Champagne glass by glass, pick up a simple and inexpensive stopper. Unlike still wines, Champagne with its abundant carbon dioxide gas will maintain its freshness under a good stopper for several days. Not that I've ever been able to test the theory, of course.... There are other Champagne options as well, but I’ll save those for another post. For now, I’ll raise a glass and wish you happy holidays. normal 2011-12-20T15:32:52+00:00 http://miamiwinefestival.org/blog-entry/holiday-leftovers http://miamiwinefestival.org/blog-entry/holiday-leftovers#When:16:12:50Z Leftovers - every holiday has them and for a wine lover, they are either a bonus or a problem. Turkey can be made into sandwiches, casseroles and burritos, and I love them all, but I have horrifying memories of recycled vegetable leftovers in my childhood. As an adult, I dread wine leftovers, but they exist - you have some friends over, everyone brings a bottle and in the scramble to taste a bit of everything, you end up with a lot of bottles, each with a glass or two remaining. Despite the belief of many of my friends to the contrary, I do not always drink everything in sight. I can open a wine for dinner and have just a glass or two and not finish the bottle. That wine does not want to be left in that bottle any more than I want to leave it there. Wine isn't like milk, which, with refrigeration, remains relatively unchanged for several days after opening. Once opened, wine changes and usually not for the better. Once oxygen touches the liquid an inexorable chemical process begins. It's called oxidation and the easiest way to understand it is to think of wine like an apple. An apple in its skin, like wine in a bottle, can last for quite a while, but once you open the bottle, it's like cutting into the apple. It is the process called oxidation that almost immediately begins to turn the apple's flesh that unappealing brown. If you leave the cut surface exposed for any length of time, its flavor and aroma also change from fresh apple to the smell of apple cider and then to a metallic, almost rusty smell. The same thing happens with wine, and initially, it's a good thing, as oxidation helps a wine "open up" and gain more rather than less aroma. This is what happens when you open a bottle or put a wine in a decanter to "breathe." For a couple of hours, all is well, but if you leave wine in the bottle overnight, the aroma starts to fade and the flavor becomes thinner and more metallic. Putting the cork back in the bottle is no help - there is a sizable pocket of air (oxygen) in the bottle with the wine, and the process will continue. Putting the wine in the refrigerator will slow the oxidation slightly, but not enough to keep the wine bright and fresh until the next day. There are simple several devices you can use to remove some of the air from the bottle, creating a vacuum and reducing the amount of oxygen in contact with the wine. It doesn't prevent oxidation but it slows it down quite a bit and for inexpensive and moderately priced wines, this may be sufficient to leave you with a wine you will still enjoy the next day. There is still a difference, though and if your wine is complex and has those layers of aroma and flavor we wine nuts enjoy, you'll find that even with a good vacuum stopper that your wine loses its edge over the next 24 hours. There are three options I can suggest, all of which reduce the contact between oxygen and wine better than the vacuum seals. First, buy some wine in half-bottles and use those on occasions where you know you won't finish a full bottle. Often, a half-bottle is enough and there is no left-over wine. Second, keep some empty half-bottles around. Wash them and the next time you have two glasses left over in a full bottle, pour the wine into the half bottle and stopper it - with almost no oxygen space left, your wine will keep in the refrigerator until the next day. A third option is to buy some marbles or the sort of ceramic beads used to weigh down pie crusts while they're baking. If you take a glass from a full bottle of wine, use the marbles to take up the space left by the wine - again, you'll have only a tiny air space at the top of the bottle and with a good stopper, your wine is protected for a day or two. There are several products that pump nitrogen, argon or other inert gases into wine bottles that leave the air space, but fill it with a gas that won't react with the wine. These can be tricky to use and can be expensive as well, but it's an option worth exploring with your favorite wine shop. And then there is the most foolproof method of handling leftover wine - get thirstier friends and finish off the bottles when they're first opened. normal 2011-12-02T16:12:50+00:00 http://miamiwinefestival.org/blog-entry/good-glasses-improve-your-wine-vision http://miamiwinefestival.org/blog-entry/good-glasses-improve-your-wine-vision#When:19:00:56Z We all know (especially after a certain age) that glasses help us see better. Can they help us smell and taste wine as well? Enhancing the wine experience has been the mission of Austria’s Riedel family for generations. Today, Riedel glasses are icons in the wine world and the number of glasses available has grown to absurd limits. When I first met George Riedel 20 years ago, practically no one knew the Riedel name and he was working 16 hour days to persuade people that the shape of a wine glass has a significant impact on how a wine smells and tastes. Today, millions (maybe tens of millions) of glasses later, George’s son Maximilian is the CEO of Riedel Crystal of North America, showing consumers across the country the same “magic” introduced by his father two decades ago. Maximilian joins us at the Coral Gables Museum next month for one of his legendary “glass tastings” in which he’ll conduct an immensely entertaining seminar in which, using five glasses and two wines, he will demonstrate everything a conscientious wine lover needs to know about glassware. Maximilian’s intriguing tasting draws on an innovative “Key to Wine” set of five wine glasses (which Max also designed). He shows how and why wines are better in some glasses than others and while you may not find five glasses essential (two good glasses will very nicely meet 75% of your needs), those extra glasses do add some wonderful dimension to the wine drinking experience. When I did my first tasting with George Riedel I asked him to let me try it a second time because the whole experience was so amazing. Today, the concept of a glasse's shape impacting a wine's flavor and aroma isn’t new but it has lost none of its power to astonish. Mostly, having the right glass helps me get the most value for my wine, not because it adds anything to the wine but because it doesn't take anything away. Why would I spend an extra $10 or $15 or more for a great wine over an average wine only to serve it in a glass that mutes everything that is special about it? I suspect you will find a glass tasting with Maximilian Riedel to be an exceptional investment in wines you already own and those you purchase in the future. Why? Because at the end of the glass tasting, you take all five glasses home with you, all part of the ticket price. We will also have extra sets available for purchase at a special Miami Wine & Food Festival discount as well, forever improving your wine vision. I bought my first set of Riedel glassware the day after my first tasting with George Riedel, and I’ve bought quite a few additional glasses since. I don’t have a different glass for every wine I drink, but I have enough glasses that no one wants to stay and help me wash up after a tasting at home. Oh well, that’s a small price to pay for knowing that when I taste a wine, I’m tasting everything the winemaker wanted me to find. And in some cases, faults they would prefer go unnoticed. Yes, glasses are a good thing. Santé, Lyn Lyn Farmer, CWS, CSP Director, Miami Wine & Food Festival normal 2011-11-21T19:00:56+00:00 http://miamiwinefestival.org/blog-entry/putting-wine-first http://miamiwinefestival.org/blog-entry/putting-wine-first#When:17:13:04Z Welcome to our new website! The United Way Miami Wine & Food Festival has been around for 17 years, but a new website gives me an opportunity to give a fresh welcome to everyone who shares our love of wine and food, and especially for how the two go together. This is also a good time to point out that we put wine first – it is, after all the Miami Wine & Food Festival and not the other way around. Over the years we’ve added spirits and just last year craft beers to our mix, and extended the festival not only to four days in April, but to an ongoing celebration throughout the year. Increasingly, the life of our festival is feeling like life at a winery – a winery gets most of its attention when it makes a release, but the day of release represents an entire year of work in the vineyard and in the winery. It’s much the same for us with similar planting (of ideas), nurturing (of people and events) and careful planning to have a successful “harvest” at the festival in April. As part of our new website, you will find many ways to keep in touch with us and to keep up to date on all the events under our wine umbrella. We’re just now putting the finishing touches on our second Wine Walk and Shop in Coral Gables (more on this in my next post), and we are also completing all the planning for a great “glass tasting” event with Maximilian Riedel. Please join me often for news not only about the United Way Miami Wine & Food Festival but about the world of wine. I’ll be posting at least twice a week, including tasting notes, interviews with wine makers and news of upcoming events. I look forward to welcoming you to this blog, to our new website and of course to the many events that put wine first at the United Way Miami Wine & Food Festival Lyn Director, United Way Miami Wine & Food Festival normal 2011-11-12T17:13:04+00:00