Kia Ora está en La Mar

Nobilo - Marlborough SoundsOK, so they don't speak Spanish in New Zealand...they speak Kiwi English. I know this, but based on my love of Spanish food and my experiences along the coasts of both Spain and Portugal (diff language, I know!) last Summer, they might as well speak that Romantic language, what with the bright, quality wine that they put out with each vintage. Seafood is the phenom pairing for the vast majority of these wines and I'm happy to throw them together on the regular. Now clearly, I've always been a fan of NZ wines, so let's just get that experiential bias right out in the open. So when I heard that would soon be a winemaker dinner that not only paired some classic NZ winemakers alongside some fervent wine bloggers, but also some extremely tasty Peruvian seafood with said winemakers' wines...I said [frak] yeah, I'll come!

The Renaissance of Huge Bear & Knights Bridge

Huge Bear WinesDespite the 460+ years that separate modern times from what many scholars consider the end of the Italian Renaissance, we still hear the term "Renaissance Man/Woman" tossed around with great regularity. Heck, running around learning stuff, spouting verse with a paintbrush in my hand sounds great. Luck in love aside, I had a chance to share some food and wine with a fascinating man for these modern times and one whom is a true Ren-man: Timothy F. Carl, Ph.D, Co-Founder of both Huge Bear Wines (WineLog, Twitter) and Knights Bridge Winery (WineLog).

Wild Horse Dinner with Winemaker Clay Brock

WIld Horse Winery & VineyardsI've been a fan of the good value found in third label wines of Wild Horse Winery & Vineyards for some time now. Their baseline Wild Horse line of wines are always a good bet for high QPR every vintage, particularly the widely available Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. I had yet to ever try their two high end labels however, so when I was invited to have dinner with their Director of Winemaking and taste through their top wines at the tasty Local Kitchen in San Francisco, I jumped on BART and headed over.

Skalli: South of France at CAV

Skalli Family Wines AmericasLast April Fool's day, I received what seemed to be a nicely written, yet rather surprisingly nifty wine event invite in my inbox asking if I'd like to meet with Laurent Sauvage, winemaker for the leading family of wines from the Languedoc in the South of France, Robert Skalli Wines. We were to meet with Laurent at CAV, the outstanding wine bar and restaurant along Market in the Opera District of San Francisco (and part-owned by none other than Doug Cook (Twitter), founder of Able Grape).
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