A friend from college is running for city council here in NYC. He has a fund raiser tonight and he was able to get a well regarded published cookbook author to demonstrate/prepare several gourmet courses for the guests at tonight’s event.

When he and I first spoke about the event I thought how fabulous it would be for me to pair each of the courses with a wine. He loved the idea, but sadly, in the end the logistics made doing this too complicated. The response to this fund raiser was so overwhelming that the guests will be seated but will not have table space. They will be holding their plates on their laps and we ultimately decided that managing the food while also trying to hold onto a glass of wine would prove to be problematic.  So we came up with what I believe was the next best option – sparkling wine.  Nice and refreshing on a warm summer day, and said to be “food neutral” the Yarden 2000 Blanc du blanc would be served as the guests arrive.

Although I’m confident that we came up with the best alternative to each course being paired with a wine, and I am really looking forward to this event, I still want to sneak in some wine (I won’t). The more I come to learn & appreciate wine, the more I treasure a well paired wine with good food. The best meal in the world without any wine is simply void of what I believe to be a critical element in culinary appreciation. While I fully understand the complication inherent for today’s event, I believe that any food related event MUST have wine to compliment the food/meal.

On a completely UNrelated note, I just finished reading another very nice article written by a wine writer whose pieces I’ve really come to like. I have linked & mentioned pieces by Laurie Daniel before, and here she talks about New Zealand Pinot Noir.  Pinot is a HOT varietal (still) and one that I tend to either love or…well, not hate, but if I don’t really like it I generally don’t care for it at all. Daniel discusses the huge increase in Pinot planting and production in recent years and discusses several specific New Zealand Pinots (all rather expensive with the cheapest being $21). A nice quick & simply read with some good suggestions for the Pinot lover. Enjoy!

Happy Wine & Food pairing!

WTG