Category: Wine Events

2008 Spark & Napa Valley Vintners "Nightlife Napa Valley"

Spark 2008On Thursday night 03/13/08, international womens charity organization Spark and the Napa Valley Vintners lit up the Rotunda and accompanying floors of San Francisco City Hall and provided quite a night of charity, wine and beats. "Nightlife Napa Valley," hosted by the Napa Valley Vintners to benefit Spark was a huge and sold-out success. Spark was started in 2004 by Founder and Founding President, Maya Garcia. Along with fellow co-founders Nealan Afsari, Rohini Gupta, Karen Hennessey, Fiona Hsu, Mona Motwani and my long-time friend Kathleen Kelly, Garcia set out to start empowering and celebrating young women around the world who are trying to change their local communities for the better. Their work covers four areas of support: Community Building, Education, Advocacy and Grant-Making. In just a few short years, Spark has had a tremendous number of global successes, starting with providing desperately needed support to a burgeoning support group by and for Rwandan genocide widows, to most recently beginning grant support for the local OASIS for Girls that holistically supports young immigrant and low income girls with no-cost resources and programs that span the arts to job and leadership training in the SOMA district of San Francisco.

Art Show & Wine Tasting at Artisan Wine Lounge and Cafe

Artisan Events PosterI made it back over to Artisan Wine Lounge and Café last Saturday with a big group of friends in tow. We were attending the latest event that Lena Chu had lined up at her superb destination venue in downtown Walnut Creek, CA. The event was a showcase of two artists, Katey Shockey, the artist currently showing at the lounge and Sones Cellars, a family boutique winery from Santa Cruz. Katey has had her work featured in the lounge since Beth and I first visited the relatively new wine spot, which I wrote about here. Since that first visit, Beth, myself and our friends have grown quite attached to the lounge and have been regularly visiting the wine joint. It's conveniently located near BART, as well as one of the stops on the CC Free Ride bus that runs it way through the downtown shopping districts, starting at Walnut Creek BART.

Artisan Wine Lounge and Cafe

Artisan Wine Lounge and CafeBeth and I had a free Wednesday evening the other week so we decided to head over to one of the newer local wine destinations in the East Bay, Artisan Wine Lounge and Cafe. The lounge sits just off the much busier Locust St in downtown Walnut Creek. The map says Stave Wine Lounge and Cafe, because the business partners that own Artisan, Lena Chu and Kevin Ng, also own Stave, situated in Napa. Lena chooses wines from small and cult California wine producers, as well as those that remind her of her years living in Spain. This is also shown in the great small plates menu that they offer. Beth and I weren't that hungry the night we were there, so we just chose a couple "Small Bites" to nibble on, the Marinated Olives and the Artisan Cheese Plate. We really liked the Manchego cheese, which went quite well with just about every wine we tried that night. The stronger blue cheese that was offered was also outstanding, but we had to leave it towards the end when we had some tastes of the dessert wine.

K&L Wines UGC Bordeaux (2005) Tasting

Union des Grand Crus de BordeauxOn Saturday 01/19/08, I had the outstanding opportunity to attend the latest K&L Wines Bordeaux tasting, fortuitously all from the very well-regarded 2005 vintage. I have to thank Jason & Kim for the chance to attend and big shout out to my friend Spesh (WL) who first notified me of the event. It was held in the hall of the old Federal Reserve Building in San Francisco. I hopped on BART at 2pm and headed out to the first major French tasting that I've ever had the chance to attend. Stepping back a little, I had a bit of confusion when I first heard about the event. I initially saw an email that said it would include all Classified Growths from Bordeaux, which was actually in error. There is an organization of Bordeaux Chateaux separate from the Bordeaux Official Classification of 1855 (Grand Crus Classes en 1855), somewhat misleadingly called Union des Grand Crus de Bordeaux. It is made up of both classified and unclassified growths of Bordeaux vintners. Regardless of my misinterpretation of which Chateaux would be pouring, I had a brilliant time tasting all of these wines, particularly the ones that I will probably never be able to afford, ever again.

Great Wine 2.0 "New Release Only" Event!

Jason Moore, Modus OperandiI had the rather outstanding opportunity to go to my first Wine 2.0 event last Thursday, their "New Releases Only" wine-tasting at Varnish, a wine bar and art gallery in San Francisco. I've been to Varnish a lot over the years since it opened to grab a break from working at the Wednesday happy hour party Qoöl at 111 Minna Gallery around the corner. As a nice aside, it also doubled as a great way to spend the night of my 30th birthday. So, I grabbed my friend Alberto from Minna and we headed over to the party. Wine 2.0 is, essentially, a wine industry networking group that intends to push wine into the open source and social networking new world that is "Web 2.0." Really though, that's kind of a stuffy description for what is a really cool and vibrantly active group of young wine entrepreneurs and aficionados. I kind of think of them as the next generation of "Wine Brats," but taking a different sort of approach than that organization (though Wine Brats is still going strong!). Despite this younger crowd pushing this movement, I was happy to see a widely diverse group of 200+ patrons that at the event that were all over the age map.
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