The One "Don't Miss" San Diego Wine Event of the Year
The Annual San Dieo Bay Wine and Food Festival
California is a great state to live in if you love wine. There are so many great wine producing regions here that visiting wineries is a breeze. Many of our local restaurants carry so many California wines on their respective wine lists that choosing a bottle to go with your dinner is easy. My one "pet peeve" about our state (and especially Southern California) is that we lack a lot of first class " urban wine festivals". For years it seemed that the best wine festivals in the country were in New York, Chicago, Miami and Las Vegas. It never made sense to me. Perhaps it was just that event organizers figured that with so many wineries within a few hours drive, there was no need to have wine fairs in the urban areas. Such logic never made sense to me. A good wine fair will have dozens, if not hundred of wineries present. One could never get this much breadth when visiting wine country. Also, wine festivals tend to have wines from many regions, whereas when one visits "wine country", you are limited to a few square miles of the state. I love visiting wine country (Napa, Sonoma, Santa Barbara, Monterrey, Paso Robles, Temecula, etc), but I also love a good wine festival.
This brings us to our topic at hand; The San Diego Bay Wine and Food Festival. It is an annual event held at the Embarcadero area downtown next to San Diego Bay. They invite hundreds of wineries to showcase their wines, and feature food tastings from many local restaurants. The event lasts the entire week, and features cooking demonstrations, charity wine auctions, lectures, and the so called "Grand Event". If you are only going to go to one day's festivities, it should be the Grand Event. It is going to be Saturday November 15th from noon to 4 PM and approximately 150 wineries will be pouring, and a whole slew of local restaurants will be providing tasting samples off their respective menus. Don't miss this event. It's a San Diego classic! Click here to visit the event web page for more information and to purchase tickets.
I rate this event a solid 5 stars!
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Post-script: After having attended the event for the Saturday "Grand Event" and the Friday night "Reserve tasting and auction", I can say without hesitation that the event lived up to it's billing and remains the premier Southern California wine and food festival. Although great wine tasting was a "sure bet", what really blew me away was the outstanding quality of the restaurant tastings during the Saturday event. Everything was absolutely top notch. Here is my list of the highlights from the event:
VINOCRITIC'S Best of the Fest:
Best Value Priced Wine: 2004 Chateau Chevalier Cabernet Sauvignon (Napa Valley, Spring Mountain District). This was an easy call. I love red wines from the Spring Mountain Area (Pride Vineyards, Paloma Vineyards, Sherwin, etc.). Normally, cabenet from Spring Mountain sells for $45 and up. Chateau Chevalier sells their cabernet for $15 at Trader Joe's. This is a "no brainer".
Best Winery from a "non-traditional" region: This award has to go to Le'al Vineyards, in Hollister, California (San Benito County). I only had a chance to taste (from a barrel sample) their yet to be released 2006 "Godsend" Cabernet, which is essentially their estate grown reserve cab. It was every bit as good as a great Napa luxury cab. It retails for $75. They also produce estate meritage and standard cabernets for about $30. Check their website for more info.
Best New Napa Winery: The easy winner of this category was Fantesca Winery, a new estate vineyard and winery in the Spring Mountain region of Napa Valley. The wines up until now have been made by famed winemaker Nils Venge. Starting with the 2007 vintage, the wines will be made by ultra-famous winemaker Heidi Peterson Barrett (who has made wines for Screaming Eagle and Dalle Valle, to name a few). The vineyards are overseen by famed vineyard manaer jim Barbour. With talent like that working good Spring Mountain fruit, this is an "no-lose" proposition. Visit their website for more info and on-line purchasing.
Runner Up: Best New Napa Winery: Crauford Wine Company. This winery was started in the year 2000, and received new owners in 2006. They have a Zinfandel, a Sauv Blanc, and an outstanding Caberent from their estate Maroon Vineyard on Howell Mountain. I tasted the 2003 cabernet which was excellent, and retails for $38. It is carried by Cardiff Seaside Market.
Best "funky" wines: Check out the desert wines from Quady, a winery near Madera California that is producing outstanding desert style wines (think Port and Sauternes). Click here for their website.
Best Wine Name (for an excellent wine). This award goes to the 2005 "Great Legs" meritage from Robinson Family Vineyards in Napa Valley. The wine is roughly half cabernet sauvignon, 25% merlot, and 25% cab franc. This was an excellent Bordeaux style wine which is drinkable right now, and retails for $32 per bottle. Click here for the website.
Best Pinot Noir: Tandem Winery. Unfortunately, the Pinot Noir offerings at this year's fare were fairly sparce. Nevertheless, the Sonoma County Pinots being poured by Greg La Follette from his Tandem Winery in Sebastopol were outstanding. I had the 2005 Chris Lee Vineyard pinot from Tandem and found it to be the best Pinot at the festival.
Best foreign wine: 2003 Wolf Blass Black Label (cab/shiraz blend). There was not a lot of foreign wineries at the festival this year, but the clear winner was the Wolf Blass Black label wine from Australia. It is 58% cabernet, about 40% shiraz, and a little malbec. A solid 4 star wine.
Best Paso Robles Winery: Cass Winery. This was a hard call, since there were dozens of great Paso wineries at the festival. The wine that blew me away was the 2006 Rockin One. It was a blend of 50% syrah, 32% mourvedre, 14% Grenach, and 4% Petite Sirah. Also very good was a soon to be released wine from Cass called Edge, which was an immediately drinkable Bordeaux Blend. Click here for more info.
Best restaurant offerings: This category is impossible to define, since there were so many great restaurant tastings at the festival. The most memorable to me were as follows:
Soleil at K (Gaslamp): Mushroom risotto with hanger steak.
9-10 Restaurant (La Jolla): Curry Crab Salad
Dussini Medittaranean Bistro (Gaslamp): An awesomely prepared steak with grilled caramelized onions
Rubio's: Yes, Rubios was there and had a new goumet shrimp taco that beat the heck out of every other fast food shrimp taco I've ever had.
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