Last night the Puck Building was filled to the rafters with hundreds upon hundreds of bottles of award-winning Italian wines, hundreds and hundreds of sparking wine glasses at the ready, and hundreds and hundreds of food and wine writers, restaurant owners, wine industry insiders, sommeliers and foodies. To top it off, the Puck was gorgeously adorned - with loads of handsome, chic Italian wine distributors and vineyard owners.
Ahh...The Annual Tre Bicchieri Wine Event, a celebration of vino awarded the prestigious Tre Bicchiere (Three Glasses) by Italy's most authoritative wine guide, Vini d'Italia 2004 (Italian Wines 2004, edited by Slow Food and Gambero Rosso). Heaven to oenophiles or lovers of fine Italian men. Hell to those with fear of crowds or lovers of wine in a box.
Following what I call "The Epcot Strategy," after my posse and I dropped our coats at the coatcheck, we headed straight to the back of the Grand Ballroom to work the tables in reverse order. Needless to say, we barely made it out of the room to the other parts of the Puck before all the bottles ran dry.
Once our sipping began at about 5:15pm, we were quickly joined by a fellow food blogger who was charmingly inebriated (and who will remain nameless to protect the reputation of the not-so-innocent). Lucky for us, he is infinitely more knowledgeable about wine than yours truly, and even in his soused state (which admittedly was due to a Wildman Grand Tour tasting event at lunch combined with a "trade" 2pm arrival at this one) adeptly weaved us through the tables to hit the best of the bunch. Some of the highlights:
*Syrah
Yay for wine tasting. Funny you should mention wine in a box. I was doing some grocery shopping at our local chain grocery store and walked PASSED the wine in the box selection saying to myself, "wine in a box? That isn't wine." We have an older gentleman here, a crazy scientist, he drinks wine in a box here at work saying something about helping with Alzheimers. I'm thinkin', dang if you must drink wine for medication, wouldn't you want to drink something worth your time and effort? Well, maybe he likes making puffy balloons of the empty wine bladder. You have to admit, those are fun.
Posted by: Dr. Biggles | March 17, 2004 at 08:04 PM
It was a great tasting nonetheless - and fun. And I was just in a good mood. Of course following it up with Aquavit for dinner and Craft today for lunch makes it a nice "weekend". Glad you enjoyed your time there and glad I could be of help.
Posted by: Inebriated Blogger | March 17, 2004 at 11:13 PM