2016 Int'l Alsace Varietals Festival Educational Session -SOLD OUT

Date: Saturday - February 20, 2016
Time: 8:30 am - 12:30
Price: $50.00
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Come listen to and interact with winemakers from around the globe as they discuss winemaking and grape growing specifically for Alsace varietals. Light Breakfast will be served.  

Educational Session Program:

8:30am          Welcome – AVWA President, Joe Webb, Foursight Wines

8:35am          Introduction 
Moderator:     Glenn McGourty, M.S. Farm Advisor UC Cooperative Extension, Mendocino County
    
8:45am          Riesling Rediscovered - Bold, Bright, and Dry
Speaker:        John Winthrop Haeger (Author)
        Riesling is the world’s seventh most-planted white wine grape variety and among the fastest growing over the past twenty years. It is a personal favorite of many sommeliers, chefs, and other food and wine professionals for its appealing aromatics, finesse, and minerality; for its uncanny ability to reflect terroir; and for its impressive versatility with cuisines of all types. It is stylistically paradoxical, however. Now usually made dry in most of Europe and Australia, and assumed dry by most German consumers, Riesling is made mostly sweet or lightly sweet in North America and is believed sweet in the American marketplace irrespective of origin. Riesling is thus consequently—but mistakenly—shunned by the mainstream of American wine drinkers, whose tastes and habits have been overwhelmingly dry for two generations.
 
This discussion and panel tasting will look at the present state of dry Riesling on the west coast: where it is grown and made, what models and objectives vintners have in mind, and what parameters of grape growing and winemaking are essential when the goal is a delicious dry wine. 

Panelists:
Chris Williams – Brooks Winery, Oregon
Nicolas Quille – Pacific Rim, Washington
Graham Tatomer – Tatomer Wines, Central Coast, CA
Alex Crangle –  Balo Vineyards, Anderson Valley, CA

10:00am    Food and Wine Pairing 
Speaker:    Francois de Melogue, Chef and Author
This session will explore pairing a selection of Alsace Varietals with food. Francois will serve delectable samples to showcase the effect of foods on the wines to be tasted. 

                                     
11:00am    Grand Cru Grapes, Globally interpreted
Speaker:    Evan Goldstein, MS 
Taking the cue from Alsace, Evan presents a look at the four noble grapes (Riesling, Pinot Gris, Gewürztraminer, and Muscat) with different unexpected duets per grape variety. A tasting panel will explore two different unexpected geographical interpretations of each along with the audience. 

Evan Goldstein, President and Chief Education Officer Full Circle Wine Solutions Inc.
Evan Goldstein, MS, is one of the nation’s most prolific food and wine industry veterans. His food and wine career started at age 19 in the kitchens of the Restaurant Le Saintongeais and the Hotel Lancaster in Paris, Auberge du Soleil in Napa Valley, and Chez Panisse Café in Berkeley, California. In 1984 he joined his mother Chef and Author Joyce Goldstein in opening the celebrated San Francisco restaurant Square One where as sommelier his wine lists received myriad awards. In 1987, he became the eighth American and youngest ever at the time to pass the prestigious Master Sommelier examination. Since 1990, Evan has created education programs, wine training and service hospitality schools with Seagram Chateau & Estates Wines Company, Diageo, Allied Domecq, and most recently, as the Vice President of Global Wine & Brand Education at Beam Wine Estates. In addition, Evan continues to train and examine candidates for the Court of Master Sommeliers as a Founding Board member and former Chairman. In his role as Chief Education Officer for Full Circle Wine Solutions, Evan is responsible for all content development and oversees all execution, either directly or via one of the select educators the company works with regularly.

Evan is the author of Five Star Service: Your Guide to Hospitality Excellence (On Premise Communications Inc. publishers) and the critically acclaimed books, Perfect Pairings: A Master Sommelier’s Practical Advice for Partnering Wine with Food and its sequel, Daring Pairings: A Master Sommelier Matches Distinctive Wines with Recipes from His Favorite Chefs, both published by the University of California Press. In addition, Goldstein co­ authored numerous books with his mother Joyce Goldstein, including ‘Wine and Food Pairing’ in the Williams Sonoma Lifestyles series. His latest literary undertaking, ‘Wines of South America: The Essential Guide’, UC Press), was published in fall 2014.

Evan has been a contributing editor for Wine & Dine and Indulgence magazines in Singapore, is the American wine correspondent for Wine Review, South Korea’s leading wine and food magazine, and was a recurring guest wine expert on NBC’s syndicated television show “In Wine Country.” He has made regular guest appearances on the top­rated “Ronn Owens’ Show” on KGO Radio, and on Saturday morning television’s KPIX “Eyewitness News”, both in San Francisco, and on the nationally syndicated Martha Stewart Radio, hosted by Sirius.

Panelists:
Haley Guild - Stock and Bones Group in SF - Haley Moore has spent the majority of her life in restaurants. Her career galvanized in 2007, when she became the Wine Director at bacar in San Francisco at the age of 24. In 2009, she became the Lead Sommelier at the nationally acclaimed Spruce, overseeing a Grand Award Winning wine list comprised of 2,600 selections. It was during her tenure at Spruce that the restaurant earned one Michelin star. In 2012, she joined Stock & Bones as their Beverage Director overseeing four restaurants: Town Hall, Salt House and Anchor & Hope in San Francisco and Irving St. Kitchen in Portland. Haley has been featured in articles both locally and nationally including: The San Francisco Chronicle, Wine & Spirits Magazine, Wine Enthusiast, MORE Magazine, The Sommelier Journal, and was named one of Restaurant Hospitality Magazine’s ‘Top 30 under 30’ Hospitality Professionals of America.
 
Michael Ireland - Wine director at Bar Tartine in SF and soon to be owner of High Treason Wine Bar in SF - Ireland began his career along the San Francisco Bay Area’s Peninsula at Parcel 104 in Santa Clara under Master Sommelier Randall Bertao and then as Wine & Spirits Director at Viognier Restaurant in San Mateo, where the wine list he authored earned Wine Spectator’s “Best of” Award of Excellence. In 2006 Ireland moved to the Napa Valley and joined The French Laundry as Sommelier. During his time there, Ireland helped to attain the restaurant’s Michelin three-star status and achieved the Wine Spectator’s Grand Award, becoming one of only 74 restaurants in the world to be recognized with that distinction. He later joined Quince as Head Sommelier. More recently, Ireland was the opening Sommelier, alongside Master Sommelier Yoon Ha, at Benu in San Francisco where he received rave reviews from San Francisco Chronicle’s Restaurant Critic Michael Bauer.  Most recently, Ireland worked as Wine Director of The Restaurant at Meadowood, a Three-star Michelin in Napa Valley. He stepped away in 2012 to welcome his new daughter to the world, study for the Master Sommelier exam and concentrate on other projects. Most currently, he is now in charge of the Wine and Beverage program at Bar Tartine and is working diligently to open a new venture in San Francisco’s Inner Richmond district slated to open this year.

Ireland brings more than fifteen years of hospitality experience. Currently an Advanced Sommelier with The Court of Master Sommeliers, he is an Advanced Certified Wine Professional through the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone and was the recipient of the inaugural Bordeaux Scholarship from the Guild of Sommeliers in 2010. Most recently, he attained the California Wine Appellation Specialist designation with honors from the San Francisco Wine School.


Location: Mendocino County Fairgrounds - 14400 Highway 128, Boonville CA 95415


 

          No Children - No Pets - Please