Wine & Spirits magazine throws one heck of a party. The annual “Top 100 Wines” soiree was on Wednesday night in San Francisco. You do not want to miss it. Quite simply, where else are you going to taste a 1988 Veuve Cliquot Champagne, Shafer’s Hillside Select or see a bottle of bubbly opened and disgorged under water.
That’s right. Not just opening the bottle. Disgorging it too (expelling the yeast sediment), all under water, right before you drink it.
Uncork change. That’s the goal of the new collaboration between Penfolds and (RED). It’s the first time (RED) has partnered with a wine brand in the global effort to eradicate AIDS worldwide. When I think of (RED), Gap comes to mind. So why not wine?
I interviewed Penfolds Chief Marketing Officer Francesca Schuler, who says, “it’s exciting to be in a partnership that has global impact and saves lives.” She approached (RED) about Penfolds joining the roster of brands in the fight against AIDS. Schuler worked for Gap and is familiar with that (RED) campaign.
The French have it, the Italians have it, but does America really have a wine culture all its own? You bet we do. It took awhile for this to develop, but in 2010, for the first time ever, we Americans drank more wine than the French. Quite an accomplishment.
How did we get here? How has wine become a part of our culture? That’s the focus of How Wine Became Modern: Design + Wine 1976 to Now, a current exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
The Himalayan Mountains and the Sonoma County wine country couldn’t be further apart. But not to one sommelier, so inspired by a man who leads expeditions up and down Mt. Everest, that she put his name on a wine label.
Meet Ngima Sherpa. Nepalese by birth, with family in Tibet, he now has a wine named for him, Ngima’s Cuvee. Last night Ngima (pronounced knee-ma) was at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in San Francisco for the launch of this wine.