On the Road with the Grape Guy
Report from - California Wine Fair ... Monday April 6, 2009
13 Apr 2009- Details
- Category: On the Road with the Grape Guy
The 29th installment of this annual bacchanalia was held once again at the Royal York in downtown Toronto. This year, as last, I got a chance to feed my face on California's dime, at their seventeenth annual "Toast to California" luncheon. Salmon, steak, cheese were all highlights of the menu, along with a few nice wines (listed below) - but the real highlight for me was guest speaker Joel Peterson, winemaker and master of Zin at Ravenswood winery. Regular readers know, I’m a fan of good Zinfandel and there's no better show to find such taste treats … but to listen to one of the head Zin-makers of California, well that's a treat unto itself.
Choice Quotes …
"We live in a fantastic time of wine and people's acceptance of wine."
"When you make a wine recommendation you can change a whole life." In reference to a bottle of 1945 Chateauneuf-du-Pape and his son’s own wine company: Bedrock Wine.
Zin-istory and Zin-bits …
Zinfandel started its life in Croatia moved to Vienna than to New York and Boston before finally founding a home in California during the gold rush in 1851.
The 1883 Harrod’s catalogue has a Zinfandel for sale listed as “good wine” and during prohibition it was mainly Zinfandel that home winemakers were making their allotment from.
During the Nobel prize ceremony in Oslo, Norway this year Zinfandel was served.
ZAP (the Zinfandel Advocate and Producers) first met twenty years ago, poured approximately twenty wines and had approximately 50 people at the tasting; today that get together is a weeklong festival with over 300 wineries pouring more than 900 wines to well over 9,000 people... (As for the wines - Read more)
