A good friend visits

The best part of our job is all the great people we meet along the way. All of you, our customers, have been so welcoming and we love bringing new wines and new winemakers to you on a regular basis. We also get to meet wine professionals from around the world. Whether they are coming to town for our monthly winemaker events or when they come to the shop to present wines as potential inventory, we get to meet a lot of great people. Winemakers and winery owners, distributors, brokers and importers all have wonderful stories to tell. Many know dear friends and colleagues of ours, all of which adds to the fabric of the story behind each and every bottle we present to you. The majority of the time you get to know these folks at the various tastings and wine dinners we hold with our great restaurant partners at Fleur de Sel.

From time to time we have the pleasure of hosting a good friend for a second, or even multiple times, over the years. After all, we have been holding winemaker dinners with Fleur de Sel now for over seven years. Next month we will have just such an opportunity when our good friend Marc Cutino comes to town. We have known Marc since he represented Talbott Winery many years ago. From the first time we met him we knew Marc would make a great partner. His wine knowledge is immense, his manner is modest and he is one of the kindest people we know in the big world of wine. Talbott sold to the Gallo family several years ago, and sadly Marc left during that transition and we lost contact with him for a bit.

Last fall our friends at Idaho Wine Merchants mentioned they were bringing a representative from Morgan Winery by to taste us on their latest offerings. Morgan is located not far from Talbott, around Carmel, Calif., and they both get a fair amount of fruit from that area, including the Santa Lucia Highlands appellation in the hills to the east of Carmel.

Sure enough, when our distributor sales person showed up Marc was with them, now representing Morgan. Morgan has a great lineup of wine. We have carried them on the shelf for some time. The portfolio includes the varietals that we and you, our customers, love, with Pinot Noir, a nice assortment of Rhone varietals and a stellar assortment of white wines. All are made with balance and restraint, which allows them to present well with food, and all are priced at fair levels given the caliber of the juice in the bottle. Morgan offers wines over a variety of price points, allowing all, regardless of budget, to access their wonderful productions.

All of this left us thrilled that a good friend and a true pro like Marc would be working with us to bring you the wines here in North Idaho. We booked Marc right then for one of our winemaker dinners and a shop tasting. We booked Marc over six months ago, but as these things go, we had to reschedule just a couple of weeks ago and move him up from the May slot to the April events.

Marc will be at Fleur de Sel for a winemaker dinner on Thursday, April 4 and here at the shop for a tasting on Friday, April 5. It is a great chance for you to not only taste the delicious wines that Morgan puts out, but also to meet one of the really great wine professionals in the business and to hear all he has to offer, not only on Morgan but also on all he knows of the wine-grape producing regions in and around Carmel, since he has worked decades in that area.

If you would like to attend either of these events or if you would like to get on our email list so you receive notice of all of our winemaker events in the future, you can email me at george@thedinnerpartyshop.com. We always strive to bring you a creative menu of winery events here at the dinner party, but it is a really special bonus for us and a great opportunity for you when a dear friend like Marc is the “headliner.” We hope to see you then!

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George Balling is co-owner with his wife, Mary Lancaster, of the dinner party, a wine and gift shop in Coeur d’Alene by Costco. The dinner party has won the award for best wine shop in North Idaho twice, including for 2018. George is also published in several other publications around the country. After working in wineries in California and judging many wine competitions, he moved to Coeur d’Alene with Mary more than 10 years ago to open the shop. You can also follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/#!/dinnerpartyshop.