Last year was the first wine festival that Jess and I missed since we started dating. I will say we had a pretty good excuse, I was wearing a big white dress and he was looking mighty fine in a tux. If it was up to Jess not only would we have vowed to love each other, but to never have to miss another wine festival. So, we celebrated our anniversary by drinking copious amounts of wine and having a great time doing it.
This is actually the first time that we went into the festival with a plan. After talking to Mike from Market Wines about a few booths that we had to check out, we quickly looked over the entire list and marked our map. This was probably the best decision that we made, besides the comfortable shoes. This allowed us to focus on what we were really interested in tasting…. FYI, I am not a wine connoisseur. I drink what I like, so my descriptions will be pretty none existent.
We started at Cline Cellars, which was surprisingly not busy. The two stand outs were the Late Harvest Mourvedre and Mourvedre Rose (perfect on a warm summer day). From there we moved on to Truchard Vineyards for their Roussane, probably our favorite white of the day.
This is where we stopped taking notes and moved on to taking pictures. Which I am questioning if this was a good thing. Toward the end you can see how our choices might have started getting questionable. The pictures are in the order that we tasted them.
2007 Clos Du Mont-Olivet Cotes du Rhone, Varene, was our favorite of the whole day (top left of the collage). A surprise was the the Biltmore Estate Pas de Deux–Sec. It is much sweeter than we normally drink, but good. Jaqk Cellars (middle bottom) had excellent marketing materials but their wines were a little lackluster. Their labels are interesting. Their promotional items are good, except for having to pay for them (6.00 for a deck of cards). Unfortunately the wines seemed young and thin. My final wine of the afternoon was the Zinzilla. At the time I thought it tasted good, but I am thinking I probably should revisit.
In honor of our anniversary and because I almost stole a deck of cards (I am not kidding, they were just sitting out like all the rest of the freebies), I will send the first person that comments with the correct answers a set of bicycle cards…What is the name of the room that Jess and I got married in and it’s original use?
If I remember right…It was the Continental Ballroom and it was originally the main restaurant in the hotel with an ice skating rink. Beautiful and perfect for your wedding!
I should know this!! It wasn’t the gold room upstairs…crap. It’s going to come to me this afternoon.
And fwiw, we really liked the Cotes Du Rhone that you suggested we go taste. It’s really amazing though that I think we tasted totally different wines at the festival! I can’t remember any of the other ones you have pics of!
We still havent decided on going to the wine festival. We spend a lot of time tasting wine at Market wines and City Cellars and after talking to a few of the reps at Market wines we realized they dont always put their best foot forward unless they are a new winery attempting to draw business/ i see a lot of our typical favs on your photo list, so I might have to try it next year!
The wine festival is worth doing, although the price has gotten pretty steep. My favorite thing is the silent auction — instead of just drinking for a few hours, I get to bring home some bottles that I never would have bought at the store. One of the wines in the lot I won this year happens to be your favorite of the night, that Cotes du Rhone.
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