Portuguese Duck Rice and Rich Reds at Aldea (European Wine Bloggers Conference Kickoff)

Last week a bevy of NY bloggers attended the European Wine Bloggers Conference kick-off hosted by Catavino and ViniPortugal at new Portuguese restaurant, Aldea, in Union Square. I was pumped for the opportunity to taste Chef George Mendes’ food and discover Portuguese wines, which I’d only had a handful of in the past. It was great to engage with old blog buddies like Lenn Thompson and Rob Bralow and meet new ones too.

It was a casual affair in the upstairs space at Aldea. We sampled signature dishes, each paired with a few wines. I started with a clean, lightly cured Spanish mackerel with a hint of smokiness, topped with crunchy soy, excellent with an Anselmo Mendes Muros Antigos 2008 (Alvarino). The Quinta da Aveleda Vinho Verde 2008 (made from Trajadura, Loureiro and Alvarino) had lovely lemon zest, high acid and effervescence, displaying how food-friendly these Portuguese whites can be.

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NY Toast of the Town 2009 (My Five Faves)

While I try to keep the self-promotion on here to a minimum, I have to comment on how wonderful Toast of the Town (our annual wine/restaurant tasting event at Lincoln Center) was last night. Even in a down economy we still had 1400 people in attendance, sipping hundreds of wines and noshing on flavorful bites from thirty different restaurants. Between friends, family and business associates I was hob-knobbing for hours, but the night flew by. Toast of the Town is always an evening that makes me proud and this year was no different.

It’s hard to choose just a few favorites, amongst fierce competition, but here’s mine, in no particular order:

Food:
luscious salmon tartare in phyllo cups (Avra Estiatorio)
chicken satay, potato paneer croquettes with 4 dipping sauces (Pranna)
truffle-scented spring vegetable risotto (Nonna)
lager-braised short rib w/ Napa cabbage slaw on sourdough toast (Beast)
tacos of suadero-braised brisket, tomatillo salsa and avocado (Toloache)

Wine:
Sonoma-Cutrer 2003 Founder’s Reserve Chardonnay
Pio Cesare Barolo 2004
Merryvale 2004 Profile
Perry Moore 2006 Beckstoffer Dr. Crane Single Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon
Hall 2005 Kathryn Hall Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon

New York was the final stop in a 4-city Toast of the Town tour this year. We also hit Atlanta, San Francisco and Chicago. I just loved walking around listening to happy people make comments, “this is SOME event”, I heard people say. Kudos to all of us at Wine Enthusiast, for making it happen.

Did you attend? What were your favorite wines and dishes?

TasteCamp EAST: Wolffer and Channing Daughters

A month after the trip, I am finally onto my last post of TasteCamp East, the wine bloggers’ marathon tasting event in Long Island, hosted by Lenn Thompson. Though it has been some time, I can’t let the trip pass without mentioning our trips to Wolffer and Channing Daughters on Sunday.

We spent our time on the North Fork until Sunday, when a brave few of us plowed on to the South Fork. I can speak for everyone when I say we were not only pleased to have stayed, but felt that the others had sorely missed out in heading home early.

Wolffer is a well-established winery in Long Island with a loyal customer base of Hampton-ites, from what I’ve heard. Their German-born winemaker, Roman Roth, gave us a private tasting of their Estate Selection 2005 Chardonnay, 2004 and 2000 Merlot, an Amarone-style Cabernet Sauvignon and a late-harvest Chardonnay. We tasted a vertical of Wolffer on Friday evening so I did have some experience with the wines. As I did Friday night I preferred the 2004 Merlot which had rich black fruits like plums and blackberry with a hint of spice and a nice, smooth finish. The 2005 Claletto Cabernet Sauvignon demonstrates a bit of that risk that Long Island winemakers are taking. Some of the grapes were allowed to dry further on the vine creating that rich, raisin character that Amarone has. (A true Amarone goes through a process called rasinate, where the grapes are dried on straw mats.) While the wine certainly had a lot of character, it’s hard to argue for an $85 “Amarone-style” Long Island wine, when a real Amarone can be found for $60. Nevertheless, this small production wine will have a loyal enough fan base to sell through the lot.

From Wolffer we made our final stop at Channing Daughters. Though I was feeling chilly and wet from the rainy weather (read: miserable) I quickly perked up when we met dynamic Christopher Tracy and their adorable Labradoodle, Remy. Channing Daughters has a vast portfolio of wines, including many unique white blends like their Mosaico, a blend of Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon Blanc, Muscat Ottonel, Tocai Friulano, and Gewurztraminer. They even make a Blaufrankisch softened by a touch of Merlot. Tracy seems to have a real sense of adventure and passion as he told about how they like to model themselves after the Friuli region of Northeastern Italy, rather than Bordeaux, a comparison that other Long Island wineries make. The wines were so vibrant and and Tracy was so charming that most of us lined up to make purchases following the tasting. I went home with the Mosaico, a Cabernet Sauvignon Rose and two diverse Chardonnays: Scuttlehole 2007 (all stainless steel fermentation and no malolactic to preserve the crisp, purity of fruit) and L’Enfant Sauvage which was barrel-fermented, yielding a luscious, buttery style of Chardonnay. I should mention that Tracy also boasted to everyone about how they don’t send their wines for ratings, and don’t make their wines for big scores. He was playing this up to please the crowd but it’s a bit of an embellishment. They have, in fact, sent their wines to us in the past and Susan Kostrzewa has given them nice ratings. Maybe the lack of a 90+ score caused some bitterness. I hope not, as these wines deserve to have their voice heard and a write up in the magazine is a great way to make that happen.

I hope that passion, restraint and risk that I felt visiting these wineries, came through in my stories. It was certainly evident during the trip. I cannot wait for TasteCamp EAST 2010, in the Finger Lakes!

TasteCamp EAST Coming to Long Island This Weekend

After a fantastic Wine Bloggers Conference in Sonoma last Summer, a bunch of us East Coasters decided that waiting a year to hang again (and travel across the country) was too long. An idea was born by Lenn Thompson, to have a reunion this Spring in Long Island Wine Country. It started with a few of us and a very long email chain and has now morphed into a real 30-person event with a logo, generous donations of time and wine from wineries in the region, and even a Wine Enthusiast sponsored goodie bag ;) Time has certainly flown, and I’m excited to announce that the trip is now only a couple of days away!

Our schedule of events includes tastings at Raphael, Roanoke, Paumanok, Shinn Estate, Bedell Cellars, Wolffer Estate and Channing Daughters.

It’s a mixed bag of some wineries that are new to me, and others that I visited last Summer on a trip with my girlfriends. Nevertheless, the experience will be entirely new since I’m going with a whole team of new blog buddies:

Rich Auffrey of Passionate Foodie
Becky Borichevsky of SmellslikeGrape
Rob Bralow of RBWinePost
Bryan Calandrelli of Niagara Escarpment
Remy Charest of Winecase
Dale Cruse of DrinksAreOnMe
Melissa Dobson of FamilyLoveWine
Lyle Fass of Rockssandfruit
Robbin Gheesling of Vineyard Adventures
Deb Gioquindo of HV Wine Goddess
Nick Gorevic of Home Wine School
Michelle Lentz of Wine-Girl
Diane Letulle of LovesWine
Joe Roberts of 1WineDude
John Witherspoon of AnythingWine
Tom Mansell of IthaCork
and of course, Lenn Thompson of Lenndevours who is putting the whole thing together!

If you’re a Twitter user, look for the tag #tastecamp, for the latest happenings at TasteCamp. It promises to be a weekend of great wines with fun peeps. Stay tuned for a full roundup.

WBC Live Blogging: What We Tasted

I’m finally taking some time to check back in and reflect on the killer weekend we all had at the Wine Bloggers Conference. As I sort of expected, I couldn’t get a coherent post together during the conference because I was always too busy meeting other geeky winos or too tipsy to open up my laptop. I guess that’s a good thing, right?

In any case, I figured I could at least post notes from the live blogging segment, when I was motivated and actually taking notes. One of the points of controversy being discussed during the conference was whether or not people should post ratings for bad wines. Alder Yarrow, in his breakout session, put a stake in the ground, saying that he never posts negative reviews. I get the whole “why waste time discussing bad wines and making enemies” idea, but I’m not sure that I agree with it. I don’t rate many wines on here but in terms of my restaurant reviews, I talk about poor experiences as often as great ones. I don’t enjoy complaining but I think that if the service sucks and the food is overpriced in a restaurant, people deserve to know. That’s my philosophy on wine as well.

That being said, we all tasted the same wines and a laundry list of notes for all of them is probably boring. I’m going to take Alder’s approach this time. So here are the notes for my 5 favorites, and if you were at WBC with me, what did you think?

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The Small Vines Wines– 2006 Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir is going to be released to mailing list members next month, so this was a sneak peek at this elegant Pinot. It showed soft raspberry and cocoa with a bit of earthiness on the nose. On the palate it was lean and well-balanced with a lingering finish of more soft, red berries. Only 150 cases were produced.

Kanzler Vineyards 2007 Pinot Noir from Sebastopol was another sneak-peek for the bloggers and another small-production beauty. This Pinot is more decadent than the Small Vines with sweeter aromatics like baking spice and some plum, almost reminiscent of a fruit cake. The palate is super fruit-forward with a ton of black cherries. It’s medium-bodied with a silky, rich mouthfeel.

Bonterra Single Vineyard WineMakers Blend 2004, $45
What a neat wine with a real complex profile. It’s crafted from organically grown grapes, comprised of
60% Merlot/26% Cab Sauv/14% Petite Sirah from Mendocino
Each time I sniffed this blend I got something new. At first it began with blackberries and spice, then some oak aromas kicked in with hints of vanilla. Then I started to notice some vegetal funky stuff like green pepper. There was some continuing oak on the palate and more pronounced blackberry. The length on this wine really impressed me, I wrote “very long!” in my notes.

Dark Horse 2006 Zinfandel Treborce Vineyard Dry Creek Sonoma County, $34
Hello meat! This Dry Creek Zin has a real smoky, meaty nose with some spice lingering underneath. The alcohol clocks in at 15.4% and you do feel the heat a bit on the palate. It’s a big Zin with a lot of depth.

James David Cellars 2007 Muscat, Paso Robles $18
The nose on this dry Muscat made me anticipate a sweet wine. It’s got lovely honeysuckle and white flower aromas with succulent peach. But then it’s refreshingly dry on the palate with some lingering peach. This is a unique, easy-drinking white that seemed to be a crowd pleaser.

Wine Bloggers Conference– Here I Come!

I’m currently sitting in the brand new Jetblue Terminal 5 with Lenn Thompson, waiting to board our flight to Oakland for the first ever, North American Wine Bloggers Conference in Sonoma. Greeting us there will be over 170 wine bloggers and other industry folks who will be taking part in an action-packed weekend of tasting, seminars, hiking and of course, a little partying here and there ;) I was torn when I first caught wind of the event because I knew I have both a wedding and the birthday of a close friend on the same weekend. I debated for a couple days until deciding of course, I had to go. As buzz in the Twitter circle and OWC roars on, I know that I won’t regret my decision. I think we’re in for one hell of a time!

I’m mainly excited to geek out with all of those crazy Twitter users that I chat with nearly every day and night but have never met in the flesh. How will we even recognize each other? I’ll try to keep you all abreast of the hilarity that’s sure to ensue… if I can find a few minutes to be sober enough to write a post ;)