SANDESTIN, SUNDRESSES…LOTS OF WINES!

When I think of Destin, I think of the sun, the white sand, the emerald coast and my cute flip-flops.

When I think of sundresses, I think of myself girly, pretty and sexy.

When I think of lots of wines by the sea, I think of the Annual Sandestin Wine Festival!

Please hold your breath, take a minute and enjoy this view:

Are you ready for some fun and lots of wines from all over the world? Should you need one more minute to re-group and convince yourself that, yes, you could be there too?

Well, I'd love to share with you the best wine event in the Southeast that is coming next month to Destin, Florida. The 24th Annual Sandestin Wine Festival will take place at The Village of Baytowne Wharf, on April 23, 24 and 25, 2010. It’s a three-day festival dedicated to celebrating wine. It can’t get better than that, right?

This year, the featured events are the Winemakers & Shakers walkabout at Wine World Destin, Whiskeys around the World, Celebrate the Flavor! - a look at goat's and sheep's cheeses and the new added value of the Culinary Pavilion, featuring gourmet food specially paired with wines. How amazing is that!

The Grand Wine Tasting event will run both April 24 and 25 featuring the winning wines recognized by the Sandestin Wine Festival, plus the other 600 domestic and international wines showcased. This will be a great opportunity to learn more about the finest labels in all varieties and styles from all over the world. You will also get a commemorative wine glass, a taster’s guide and a retail wine tent where you could buy the new wine that you just fallen in love, for a better price.

So, if you want to enjoy the Sandestin Wine Festival but also take advantage of the beach and the incredible views of the bay, you should then stay at the Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort, located on the Northwest Florida’s Emerald Coast, featuring the best golf courses, tennis courts, spa, fantastic swimming pools and many other wonders. The white sand beach and the pristine bay front are 100% spectacular, and the hotel is also just a few steps or complimentary tram ride away from The Village of Baytowne Wharf which is full of boutique shops, fine dining restaurants and nightlife.

I can’t wait to be there. It’s a woman's dream come true!

So call your girlfriends this week and offer them a “girls’ weekend out at the beach” and start packing your summer hats and sun protection. Nothing sounds more perfect than a weekend by the sea and the great chance to enjoy the best wines of the world only in one place.

Roses, Champagne, Sauvignon blancs, Pinots, Chiantis, Cabs, Chablis, Vinhos Verde and much more.

The perfect girly women weekend…

PLEASE JOIN ME AT THE SANDESTIN WINE FESTIVAL!
To book tickets and accommodations visit www.sandestin.com.
For a list of the 2010 winning wines and guide to festival events visit www.sandestinwinefestival.com.

ARIC’S MONTHLY WINE REPORT

Tour de France I – Pinot Noir, nobility among the wines

In this edition I will highlight what is classically referred to as the “Nobel” grapes of France which could be red or white variety. For that reason we will take a short imaginary tour to France, starting with the Rouge (red) Pinot Noir.

The great red grape, known as Pinot Noir derived from the French words for “pine” (Pinot) and “black” (Noir), alluding to the varietals that are dark purple pine cone-shaped bunches of fruit.

The ancient Romans knew this grape since the first century AD and is most commonly found in Burgundy (Bourgogne) and Champagne regions in France. Today this type of grape is gaining popularity and a strong foothold in Napa California, Oregon and New Zealand.

This fickle grape prefers the cooler growing climates of the Carneros district of Napa, California and the South Island of New Zealand, specifically Central Otago produces some of the most amazingly fruit forward Pinot Noirs on store shelves at extremely good values.

All about ‘Aroma’ and ‘Texture’, this little gem is difficult to grow but can produce incredibly aromatic wines with seductive ruby colors and extraordinary layers of black cherry, raspberry and exotic spicy overtones. Its silky texture is very refined however, most particularly with Pinot’s from Oregon, they can also be earthy with organic scents sometimes referred to as forest floor or "barnyard”.

Some people don’t think of Champagne as being made from a dark-skinned grape, however you may be surprised to learn that Pinot Noir is one of the 3 authorized grapes used in the sparkling wine produced in the Champagne region of France.

You could pair Pinot Noir with grilled salmon, roast beef and any dish that features mushrooms as its main flavor. Pinot Noir is almost part of the traditional French Coq au Vin (chicken cooked in red wine) and Boeuf Bourginon (beef Burgundy).

Katerina recommends:

This week, let’s celebrate the end of winter time, with a good glass of Pinot Noir and a fantastic poultry or mushroom dish!

Put away your scarf and gloves and start feeling the change of the season with a great 2008 Pinot Noir Villamette Valley, Oregon. Wine Spectator gave it 88 points and described it as ”silky with pretty raspberry, root beer and floral flavors riding easily through a fine, delicate frame”. This Pinot Noir is produced by The Duck Pond Cellars (www.duckpondcellars.com) in the Valleys of Northern Oregon and eastern Washington. A wine that you can’t miss trying it!

WILD, ROMANTIC, WHITE WINES

My friend, Kioka loves to attend wine tastings, and she is now a regular attendee at the WineStyles store located off Cascade Road, in Atlanta. Last week she fell in love with a 2007 Rhumba wine of the Dancing Coyote wines from California. As she described it, this wine was crisp and exciting. I found out that it is true. It is an off dry blend of Gewurztraiminer, Riesling, Chenin Blanc and Orange Muscat, which offers sweet honeysuckle fruit flavors that, according to her, can make you want to dance!

Dancing Coyote?...

The name in itself sounded fantastic, therefore I researched their wines, and I found a pretty cool story about the name of this California vineyard.

…” Legend has it, each year at the beginning of the growing season, a band of coyotes from the nearby foothills, sneak into our vineyards, and for no apparent reason other than treachery, chew on our irrigation lines with wild abandon. Following these scandalous acts, they have been known on occasion to join paws and dance around, howling at the moon in celebration”…(http://www.dancingcoyotewines.com)

This white wine belongs to the Clarksburg appellation, located on the Sacramento River in the Yolo County, California. The land there has a great climate system as the sun heats up during the day and at night the cool breeze from the bay, allows the vines to enjoy warm summer days with cool evenings. This type of climate is absolutely perfect to grow different white varietals.

My friend’s experience made me realize that I do not know much about this type of white blend, so I want to share with you what I learned:

Gewurztraiminer: Rhine, Alsace. It’s an aromatic wine grape variety with a pink to red skin color which makes it a white wine grape. This variety has high natural sugar and the wines are off-dry which match perfect with Asian food.

Riesling: Rhine, Alsace. It’s a white grape, perfumed and with high acidity. It may have aromas of green apple, grapefruit, peach and honey.

Chenin Blanc: Loire, France. This white grape can be used to make sparkling and dessert wines. The aromas include honey, peach and apple.

I might not be a coyote, but as a woman, I do love to drink a white wine, while dancing with my man under a magical white moon, barefoot, in the middle of a California vineyard…

It can’t get more romantic than that, right?

VINTAGE WINES FOR VINTAGE GIRLS?

Bordeaux - France

This past week, it seems that every other girl in town has been talking, at some point, about vintage dresses, vintage jewelry, vintage brooches or vintage purses. It reminded me that wines can be vintage too.

Yes! Vintage refers to the year that the grapes were harvested, and it’s also a way to track a wine’s potential for aging. The word vintage comes from the French word vendage meaning grape harvest. On one hand, the vintage wines are mainly superior quality wines, and its production has matured in a separate way. On the other hand, table wines are not dated and the production from more than one year may be blended too.

An important consideration in assessing a vintage wine is the weather conditions under which grapes are grown. It all depends on the annual rainfall, the sunny days and the night time temperatures which all clearly affect the grape harvest every year.

Now, when wines producers blend grapes harvested in different years they call those wines non vintage. The aim of combining grapes is to achieve a consistent result. For example, if you liked a great Chardonnay last fall, you'd probably like to find it again. That’s why most of the wineries now produce blends, so that people can find the same wine in the future years. Vintage wines are limited to the exclusive year that they were harvested.

If you are planning to have a cellar some day, then you need to think about starting to collect vintage wines and a trick of the trade said that Bordeaux wines has the largest variance in vintages!

I appreciate vintage objects as they bring back in time some “antique” feeling, and I can’t wait to have a glass of a vintage wine.

Does anybody have a bottle of a 1960 Corton, Grand Cru Magnum, red Burgundy? Please let me know!...


Tip of the week:
Wines that get better within time are red and white Bordeaux, Burgundy, Barolo, Barbaresco, Rioja and some California Cabernets.

TO OAK OR NOT TO OAK…

This past weekend my dearest Spanish friend had just come back from Madrid, and we got all together to celebrate her return with a couple of fantastic, full bodied red wines: Cuatro Pasos from El Bierzo (Spain) and Evodia from Calatayud, Aragon (Spain). Both wines are spicy and fruity with an intense black cherry aroma that kept us up until one o’clock in the morning. Great Spanish night!

Continuing my international weekend, on Saturday night we tried an outstanding French wine, J.Vidal-Fleury, 2006 Cotes du Rhone. As soon as the bottle was opened, I totally fell in love with its aroma. I’ve never had before such an “oaky” red wine, so I decided to go deeper and find out as much as possible about this wine, as its French flavor totally seduced me in one second…

So going through my notes, I found out that this French red wine is 50% Grenache (origin: Alicante, Spain), 30% Syrah, 10% Murvedre (origin: Mediterranean coast of Spain), 10% of Cinsault (origin: Languedoc, France) and Carignan (origin: Carinena, Aragon Spain). Also I researched the vineyard that produced this wine and I found that J. Vidal-Fleury is a well known Rhône negociant, founded back in 1787! With over two centuries in operation, it is the oldest wine firm in the Rhône Valley. And guess what? One of its claims to fame is that it was visited by Thomas Jefferson. Totally amazing!

Now the key to this wine, or at least what got me enchanted was the strong aroma of the oak. As you might know, the oak barrels are utilized like a “seasoning” to add flavor and palate appeal to a wine. Oak provides flavor and aromatic support, adding richer, fuller impressions to the wine. The oaky aroma also brings to its flavor, some kind of clove, cinnamon, nutmeg and spices mix which is fantastic.

Did you know that the two most common types of oak barrels are American and French oak? American oak barrels are cheaper and have lower wood tannins; they often impart vanilla nuances with a little sweeter palate. French oak barrels are considered the “gold standard” as they offer higher wood tannins and tighter wood grains which tend to produce less influence on the aroma and flavor of a wine.

Therefore, to oak or not to oak…That is the question.

For me it’s already answered. Vive La France! I loved the oaky 2006 J.Vidal-Fleury Cotes Du Rhone.

Tip of the week: Let it breath.

Pour a glass of red wine and let the bottle and the glass sit for at least 15 minutes before serving. This will give the oxygen a chance to mix with the wine and enhance its flavor.