An Evening in Wine Country – An Event to Benefit Boys & Girls Club of Northeast Florida

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An Evening in Wine Country -  An Event to Benefit Boys & Girls Club of Northeast Florida

What

Your senses are sure to be delighted as we offer a fun-filled evening for over 500 guests featuring a fabulous selection of international wines to delight every palate paired with heavy hors d’oeuvres and an array of tantalizing fruits, cheeses, and desserts. Groove to the sounds of live smooth jazz inside the grand banquet room, and enjoy acigar and beer or port as you party to the rhythms of a steel drum under the stars on the outer deck.  End your fantastic evening by taking home an awesome raffle prize.  All proceeds benefit Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Florida, helping provide a safe, positive place for 3,600 youth in Duval, Nassau, & St. Johns counties.

Click here for more info/to purchase tickets.

 

Where

Adam Herbert University Center at UNF

 

When

Friday June 14th 6-10pm

An Evening in Wine Country -  An Event to Benefit Boys & Girls Club of Northeast Florida

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Taken: The Wine Bottle Warning Device!

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Have you ever had a bottle of wine “Taken?”
Introducing the Liam Neeson “Taken” wine bottle warning device!
Simply print and cutout the template below, and hang it on any bottle you don’t want your friends, family, roommates, house guests or friendly Eastern-European terrorists to touch. It’s sure to send the right message!

Taken: The Wine Bottle Warning Device!

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Kupljen “Spirit of Svetinje” White Wine Blend, Jeruzalem, Slovenia.

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Kupljen-Spirit-of-Svetinje-Slovenia-wine

 

Grapes

34% Chardonnay, 33% Renski Riesling, 33% Pinot Gris

 

Facts

Kupljen “Spirit of Svetinje” White Wine Blend, Slovenia.

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The World in Wine – INFOGRAPHIC

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Wine infographic brought to you by: www.wild-grapes.co.uk

The World in Wine - INFOGRAPHIC

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23rd Annual Jacksonville Foodfight

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23rd Annual Jacksonville Foodfight

 

What

Each year volunteers representing the local restaurant community host an event called “The Jacksonville FOODFIGHT” that features 60 of Jacksonville’s finest restaurants and beverage wholesalers/distributors who come together in friendly competition to “take a bite out of hunger” by raising funds and awareness for Second Harvest North Florida. More than 1,200 guests are tempted to taste everything they see from the glorious variety of the finest foods and spirits displayed throughout two floors of the fabulous Touchdown Club East at EverBank Field. Live musical entertainment and two exciting raffles round out the evening.

General admission tickets are $60 if purchased in advance (if ordered by phone before 4 p.m. on the day of the event) and $70 if purchased at the door.
All tickets purchased will be left at the Will Call table in the lobby of the Touchdown Club East and available on the night of the event, beginning at 5 p.m.

 

Where

Touchdown Club East at EverBank Field
http://www.jacksonvillefoodfight.org

 

When

Thursday June 6th 2013

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EVERYTHING Pairs With Pinot!

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Pinot-Noir-Food-Pairing

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Wine Down Every Wednesday in May.

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Wine Down Every Wednesday in May.

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Sauternes – Ain’t Nobody Got Time Fo’ Dat!

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Sauternes – Ain’t Nobody Got Time Fo’ Dat!

Even though Bordeaux remains the Old World wine of choice for many with new money to burn, their tastes are no-doubt changing.

When people think of Bordeaux, sweet wine is more than likely the LAST thing on their mind!

Sauternes and Barsac, in the Bordeaux region of France, make a very different kind of wine than people have come to know Bordeaux for; namely, sweet and white. But growers in the region have slowly started to move away from producing sweet whites, after they’ve seen it fall out of fashion with the general public.

“It’s sad because Sauternes has never been better,” said Andreas Larsson, a Swede who won the “Best Sommelier in the World” competition in 2007. “But that’s the way the world is going. There’s no market for sweet wine.”

Adding to the woes of Sauternes was a disastrous 2010 vintage, in which some of the top properties, including D’Yquem, decided not to make any sweet wine at all, saying the grapes lacked the necessary concentration.

What is different now is that some chateaus are giving up entirely on sweet wine, and outsiders are moving in, looking to make dry wines in the area.

Olivier Bernard of Domaine de Chevalier, which produces some of the greatest dry red and white wines in Bordeaux, from the Pessac-Léognan appellation, said “Sauternes is one of the greatest white wine terroirs in the world, for sweet or dry wine, but what the market wants now is dry wine.”

Click here for the full article from the New York Times.


My Thoughts…

I always have the hardest time selling/tasting people on sweet dessert wines…actually…let me rephrase that: Wines in the “dessert wine” category are no problem to sell, it’s more their levels of sweetness within that category.

Not all dessert wines are created equal, and people have a hard time coming to grips with the fact that Moscato and Sauternes are in the same category, since they have very different levels of sweetness.

I guess what bugs me is that I keep reading these articles from numerous “well-respected authors/sources” saying that tastes are changing and people are gradually moving into drier styles of wine. I don’t know where they’re getting their information, but I couldn’t disagree more! The recent Moscato craze should help to – at least partially – backup my theory.

As with most of these “issues of taste” in the wine industry, I put it down to educating the consumer i.e. no-one knows what to do with Sauternes! Do you drink it like table wine? Do you sip it like brandy? Do you pour it over your ice-cream? What do you do with it?!?!

Those, at least, are the problems I personally see from my time spent “in the trenches” (and by ‘”trenches,” I mean running a wine bar…)

I hate to say it, but this story is just another example of French wine producers wailing “Woe, is me!” after they have rested on their laurels, struggled to move with the times and failed to continue to educate wine drinkers on their product.

Wine consumption is at an all time high. There should be no excuse for slow sales of ANY wine category. Problem is, now that Sauternes producers have dug themselves into a hole, digging their way out is going to be quite the struggle. On second thoughts, maybe they can convince a rapper to write a song about it! Hmmmmm….now let me think….what rhymes with Sauternes….???

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Baldacci Cabernet, Stags Leap District, Napa Valley.

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Baldacci Cabernet, Stags Leap District, Napa Valley.

 

Grapes

100% Cabernet

 

Facts

 Baldacci Cabernet, Stags Leap District, Napa Valley.

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True Story.

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True Story.

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