ADVERTISING: Advertorial — Our Fall Events Resume
Through the spring and early summer we did not hold most of our events, winemaker dinners and tastings, as the circumstances and restrictions of the coronavirus unfolded. We resumed our events this past week with great success. Are they different now? You bet! Here are the changes.
With our restaurant partner, Fleur de Sel, we have reduced our capacity at the dinners from 60 to 44. This gives Laurent and Patricia the room to spread out the tables, allowing all to be comfortable and still enjoy the evening. Our tastings here at the shop have been split into 45-minute increments and we’ve limited each time slot to 18 guests, again giving everyone enough room to spread out and be comfortable.
As you might guess, with the reduced capacity and our efforts to keep everyone comfortable, the events are selling out very quickly. Our adjustments are not the only reason for this though. We also get the sense from our wine club members and guests that everyone is eager to be out at events like these. We are thrilled we can hold them again!
Our events this past week were with Andrea Pucci from Antinori in Italy. We were thrilled that Andrea was able to make the trip and we thank him for his great work in taking us through the backstory of the Antinori family that has been making wine for over 700 years and 26 generations. Our dinner and tasting lineup included wines from the Antinori properties in Napa, Tuscany and Piedmont, and the wines were incredibly well received.
In October, November and December we will be hosting winemakers and importers from Cade and Plumpjack out of Napa, Lux Imports from Italy and Daou from Paso Robles, respectively. This is an extraordinary lineup and we appreciate all of our winery partners travelling to make these events special. While our wine club members get preferred access to our events, we hope you can join us as well.
The lively crowd at the winemaker dinner had some great questions regarding wine and our events, more specifically. The fires burning across the west are in the forefront of everyone’s mind and we received many questions on the effects, especially in California, where the fires are by far the worst. Sadly, as things develop, the news could not be much worse. With the fires hitting so early, virtually all of the red and some of the white varietals are still “hanging.” Projections suggest that 90% of the grape crop across Northern California could be lost to smoke taint. Our hearts break for all of our friends in wine country and pray they will be able to salvage some of the crop.
Across the Northwest the news from the vineyards so far is better, but clearly the harvest is not ensured by any stretch. We will keep everyone posted as we know more.
At our wine dinners we get questions about how the food pairings are developed. While Laurent, chef and co-owner at Fleur de Sel, is always gracious about our importance in this process, it is his great design and preparation that leads to wonderful pairings. As far as the actual process that leads to the selection of the wines and ultimately the food pairings, we start a couple of months in advance of the dinner by looking at the full portfolio the winery produces. We then narrow that down to the wines we want to taste based on what varietals we have featured in recent events and what new things we can bring into the mix. We also look closely at the cost of the wines so that we have a selection of different price points.
After this “first cut” we then taste through those selections with our distributor to determine which wines really stand out, reducing the selections to the five wines we will ultimately use in the dinner and tasting. When we are tasting through the wines, we write our tasting notes on the aromatic and flavor profiles. We then forward our notes un-ordered to Laurent with any suggested food pairings we think might work.
From there, Laurent goes to work designing his menu. This is where his creativity and expertise really shine. He designs each course and orders the wine to work with his choices, then forwards his menu to me, always with a note about any suggested changes we might have. We rarely have any. That is how the menu is developed, and based on our response in the many years we have been working with Laurent and Patricia, we think we are onto something!
We hope you can join us soon at a winemaker dinner or tasting here at the shop. They are great fun and a wonderful way to join in our community.
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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.