Last week, we attended the Master Wine Class Dinner co-sponsored by world-renowned wine educator Kevin Zraly and Sherry-Lehmann. This particular event, held at Park Avenue Cafe, featured two well-respected chateau owners, M. Prats from Cos d’Estournel and M. Hubert from Chateau Angelus, both from Bordeaux. The reception began with a tasting of each chateau’s second label wine as well as Lucas Carton champagne (poured from magnum). The champagne was especially nice with the lobster roll hors d’ouerves.

Moving into dinner, we were given a sample of one wine from each chateau with each course, with the Angelus from Bordeaux’s right bank served on the right and the Cos from the left bank, poured on the left. The first pair was from the highly vaunted 2000 vintage. Both wines were wonderful, but I was partial to the Cos. The other pairs were drawn from older vintages as far back as 1986.

While both chateau consistently receive high scores, the ability to taste them side by side was especially useful as the Cos is typical of other left bank Bordeaux in that it is heavily Cabernet Sauvignon dominant, while the Angelus (as with most Pomerol and St. Emilion wines) was more Merlot focused. Accordingly, the tasting provided the opportunity to see how the different blends play out in the finished wine, allowing for stylistic differences among wineries.

As a notable highlihgt to the evening, we had the good fortune to meet Kevin Zraly and discuss our wine school venture with him. He was most gracious in his willingness to speak with us and share his own experiences. He has long been someone I have admired and I still have the 1985 edition of his Windows on the World Wine School book. If you don’t own his book, you can look for more recent editions (2005?). It is a terrific resource for wine lovers at all levels. Finally, we also worked up the courage to introduce ourselves to Michael Aron of Sherry-Lehmann letting him know that we have been including his wines in several of our previous newsletters. All in all, it was a fabulous event and added much to our own education.

This week we were priviledged to be featured on Dr. Harvey Passes public access show, "Harvey Passes Presents…", on Cablevision. Although I’ve appeared on television previously, this was my first studio taping; the other pieces had been filmed in my home. The Charlie Rose style set was both formal and inviting, providing a nice setting in which to conduct a casual conversation about wine and a brief tasting of four Long Island wines.

After the taping, we raced back to the city to attend the Rose Avengers & Producers (RAP) event, which featured ~30 rose wines from the U.S. (including Long Island), France, Spain and others. We were able to quickly taste through approximately 10 wines, with a particular emphasis on completing our May newsletter, "Everything’s Coming Up Roses." Three of those wines were ultimately written up for this purpose.

By now it was 5:30 PM and I had just enough time to get uptown to my Diploma of Wine & Spirits class. That evening’s class was facilitated by Larry Perrine of Channing Daughters Winery, whom I had briefly met earlier at the RAP event. The session was quite interesting as Larry discussed both the text book aspects of wine finishing and maturation processes, along with the reality of what actually happens in the winery. Accordingly, I learned a lot about that aspect of vinification and hope to successfully convey this information to my students in the same way.

Returning home after class, I changed my clothes and poured myself into bed, the end of the day finally at hand. Despite my exhaustion, filling the day with the world of wine had been both fun and educational.

As a relatively recent arrival to the professional side of wine, I am in awe at the life I am currently living. I hope always retain this sense of wonderment, as experienced this past weekend.

Saturday night, after returning from a trip to South Africa to visit the winelands there, we had the pleasure of joining a noted winery owner for dinner. We had hoped to meet him when we visited his winery, but he was out at the time. Instead, noting that he would be in New York the following week, he invited us to dine with him and some other wine professionals. The meal was quite delicious and each course was accompanied by two-three wines, most of which were from his vineyard. One wine was from the vineyard of another dinner guest. Most of the wines were new to us, but as we enjoyed them very much, I am sure we will seek them out again. At the conclusion of the meal, we had the continued pleasure of our host’s company as we joined him for an additional bottle of wine at a second restaurant, as we walked in the direction of his hotel. This more intimate discussion centered on our own impending vineyard, with our new friend sharing his viticultural advice with us. An hour later, we deposited him safely at his hotel. We then hailed a cab for ourselves and floated home, giddy in the excitement of having been included in such a special evening.