Fiore taking reservations for Christmas dinner

We're seeing more and more of these Christmas dinners at various mid-Atlantic wineries. Fiore Winery in Pylesville, Md., is one of those, charging $65 per person for a dinner from 6 to 9 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 5, that will include the wine, food and entertainment. Prepaid reservations are required at 410.879.4007.

So what's coming out of the kitchen?

Hors d'oeuvres: Antipasta of cheeses, vegetables, dips, and spreads, with artisan breads, crackers,pita, crostini
paired with Apple-lucious, Sangiovese

Seated Dinner:

Butternutsquash ravioli with sage, rye, and cream.
paired with Pinot Grigio

Baked salmon with roasted pepper sauce and spinach orzo.
paired with Chardonnay

Spice beef round with roasted green beans and grape tomato.
paired with Proprietors Reserve Chambourcin

Seasonal salad with fruit, nuts, and cheese, vinaigrette.
paired with Vidal Blanc

Christmas pudding with hard sauce.
paired with Maryland Merlot

State wine trails, stores ring in the Nouveau

Wine moves to the forefront this week across the state, and not just because it's nearly Thanksgiving and you figure to be buying a few bottles or cases for your dinner table.

It's also Nouveau week, the first release of the 2009 vintage. The state makes it a big to-do Thursday when the Duboeuf Beaujolais Nouveau goes on sale and is complemented by a number of free tastings through the weekend. A number will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday throughout the Philadelphia suburbs and west to Lancaster and Harrisburg. You have a pretty good selection of wines to pair up with your Thanksgiving food, and one of those on the list is the Beaujolais.

This Beaujolias release on the third Thursday in November has become a regular event on the wine calendar in France and the United States. What is becoming more the standard among Pennsylvania wineries is a similar release, accompanied by plenty of hoopla and food pairings.

One will take place along the Lehigh Valley Wine Trail, where Nouveau Weekend will be held Saturday and Sunday. In addition to being able to taste and purchase the wines, trail members are expected to offer Thanksgiving-themed food pairings, live entertainment, and more.

Nouveau Weekend will be held at all nine wineries on the Lehigh Valley Wine Trail from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. A few wineries will be open as late as 6 both days. According to a release sent out on behalf of the trail, here's what some of the wineries are planning:

Big Creek Vineyard in Kresgeville is recommending a warm Spiced Apple as an aperitif and Nouveau Red with the big bird.

Blue Mountain Vineyards of New Tripoli suggests its 2008 Riesling - a refreshingly dry, intensely fruity and crisp wine with a very long lingering finish.

Cherry Valley Vineyards of Saylorsburg will serve its award-winning Cranberry Blush, a semi-sweet that is crisp and clean, similar to a white zinfandel with intense cranberry flavor. It starts sweet and finishes with a well-balanced citrus zest.

Clover Hill Vineyards & Winery of Breinigsville offers its new release 2007 Oak Vidal Blanc – upfront rich butter and cream flavor, the finish bursting with lemon and zesty acidity.

Galen Glen Vineyard & Winery, Andreas: Cellar White is a cuvee of the vineyard - Vidal, Riesling and Cayuga. Created in the style of German wines, it is an arrested fermentation (all sweetness is natural and from the grapes) with an elegant wild flower nose and brightly layered fruit ending.

Vynecrest Vineyards & Winery of Breinigsville will serve the Gamay Beaujolais Nouveau 2009 vintage wine, a perfect accompaniment to your holiday meals.

Thirty-five wineries part of next New York event on Dec. 6 in Lower Manhattan

Have occasionally chatted with executive director Jim Trezise of the New York Wine & Grape Foundation, so I don't mind snatching from his weekly e-letter when I see item pertinent to my audience. Here are a couple entries from the one that arrived this morning.

VINTAGE 2009 is one of the longest, slowest, and latest in recent memory, but is also surprisingly good under the circumstances (particularly the fall harvest season), according to the final edition of the “Veraison to Harvest” e-newsletter published by Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) and underwritten by the New York Wine & Grape Foundation.

Statewide Extension Enologist Chris Gerling wrote an excellent wrap-up with comments by winemakers in various regions like Christopher Tracy of Channing Daughters on Long Island: “What we have will be super, there’s just not that much of it” (reflecting a smaller than normal crop). The weekly e-newsletter is a timely and valuable resource for grape growers and winemakers alike, and now CCE is launching a sequel called “The Cellar Dweller” to provide up-to-date information for winemakers on cellar techniques to maximize wine quality.

The research and extension provided by Cornell University and the Geneva Experiment Station have been a vital part of the dramatic improvement in quality of New York wines, and we are delighted to support their efforts.

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2,500 WINE GLASSES disappeared yesterday at the New York State Fairgrounds. That’s great news: Everyone who attended the first-ever Pride of New York Harvest Fest in Syracuse got a complementary “Uncork New York” wine glass, which means over 2,500 consumers attended in just one day. We had to put in an emergency order for 2,000 more to cover today’s anticipated crowd, having thought the original 2,500 would cover Friday through Sunday.

The Department of Agriculture & Markets, State Fair, and New York Wine & Grape Foundation partnered on this venture, which far exceeded our expectations. With about 50 wineries and 50 food producers scattered in the spacious Horticultural Building, it was hard to judge the size of the crowd, so the wine glasses gave us the most accurate count. To my knowledge, this was the largest single-day crowd of any event we’ve ever been involved in, and there’s still today!

The “locavore” and “locapour” trend seems alive and well in the greater Syracuse area, as people were not only sampling but buying, stocking up on New York wines and foods for the holidays. Between my seminars (Wine & Chocolate, Wine & Cheese), I sampled a wide array of wonderful local foods—cheeses, chicken meatballs, sausage, sauces, pastries, wine ice cream—which reaffirmed that New York Farm Country is a gold mine for fabulous fare.

Now we just need to have consumers ask for New York wines at liquor stores and restaurants, and New York foods at grocery stores. New Yorkers supporting New Yorkers: It just makes $en$e.

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SIP, SAVOR & SHOP AT CITY WINERY is our next event on the afternoon of Sunday, Dec. 6 in lower Manhattan. More than 35 wineries from throughout the State will be joined by a dozen artisanal food producers and several restaurants to give participants a taste of New York while listening to a popular jazz trio from Long Island.

Tickets are only $45, and available at www.citywinery.com/events/40934. For more information on the participants, go the home page of www.newyorkwines.org.

No Nouveau, but the old standbys should make visitors plenty happy at Pinnacle Ridge

Lehigh Valley Wine Trail will be among several in the state that will hold Nouveau Weekend NEXT weekend, a day or two after the Beaujolais from France is released in the state stores. You probably recognize the term even if you pay little attention to wine. Nouveau is, obviously, new wine that only a month or two ago was hanging out in clusters on the vine. All nine wineries will be participating in the promotion, which will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the 21st and noon to 5 p.m. on the 22nd.

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Pinnacle Ridge Winery will be one of those wineries, indeed open until 6 both days, only you won't be getting the Nouveau when you exit the Krumsville exit of I-78 and drive the half-mile or so to the tasting room. Had a chance to bust on winemaker and owner Brad Knapp on Thursday about Nouveau Weekend without the Nouveau, since he decided not to make it this year after producing it since 1995. The reason? Simple. Lots of effort for minimal reward.

"I had made a few from Chambourcin," Knapp said by phone, talking about the grapes he incorporated into his previous Nouveaus. "Which is troublesome because it's so late [to harvest]. It's hard to get the wine made in time. And then I was purchasing some Dornfelter, which is an early ripening German red variety, which works reasonably well. But I was not real happy frankly with the sales of that style."

Knapp said that he and wife Christy were touring wineries on Long Island when they entered Macari Winery, which "put out a wine called early Chardonnay, I think it was called. And it was an oaked wine, released very early. I think it was November. And they did very well with it and we decided to try it. They pitched it as an Austrian pub wine. . . . the taverns around Vienna will serve this newly fermenting wine in the fall. So we pitched it that way, that this was an Austrian-style Nouveau. And that actually did well. Slightly sweet and very fruity."

But, he added, no matter what he made, it was a lot of work to produce a small quantity of wine that just didn't have much appeal. "The bang for the buck was low, let's put it that way," Knapp said.

So what you'll get instead will be a few of Pinnacle Ridge's award-winning line of wines paired up with Turkey Day foods. They'll match up their 2008 Chambourcin and slightly sweet, fruity 2008 Chambourcin Rose with smoked turkey breast piled on lightly toasted baguettes. Those will be topped with a variety of Robert Rothschild spreads: Caramelized Onion Balsamic Spread, Champagne GarliC Honey Mustard or Raspberry Cranberry Horseradish Sauce.

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Check out the Web site to see the wide array of food to be served at Customer Appreciation Weekend on Dec. 5-6 and the chocolate and red wine pairing event the following weekend. Knapp said there have been plenty of customers to appreciate this year.

"Our business is phenomenal," he said. "We're doing great. My take on it is that most of us, myself included, there's a strong element of entertainment. And we're inexpensive entertainment. And we're local entertainment. So folks are getting in their car and driving around the countryside and spending a few bucks on buying a few bottles of wine instead of hopping in a plane to go somewhere or doing something more expensive."

Soups, pasta highlight menu at two Maryland wineries this weekend

Wanted to loop in a couple of events going on at Maryland wineries the next couple of weekends before focusing on what's on tap in P-A. Soup in the Cellar starts tomorrow (Saturday) in the 1830s wine cellar at Boordy Vineyards in Hydes, and coming off several days of rain and chilly temps, the timing couldn't be better.

This event will run from 1 to 5 p.m. the next three Saturdays. In addition to the wine and soups pairings and organic bread, you'll get a tour of the winery, some music, and a chance to toast marshmallows over an open flame cauldron. Expect a choice of the following soups: Southwest Shrimp and Corn Chowder, Tomato Cheddar Bisque, Mulligatawny, and Double Smoked Bacon & Black Lentil Soup. The winery is located 15 minutes north of the Baltimore Beltway.

Over in Frederick County, the already multi-decorated Black Ankle Vineyards has plenty cooking heading into the holidays. The year-old winery that already has produced Maryland's "wine of the year" in 2008 and 2009 Governor's Cup judging will be serving as host of another in a series of wine and dinner pairings at 5:30 p.m. on Sunday. Chef Paul Dongarra of Dionysus Kitchen will produce a three-course meal including pasta that will pair up with Black Ankle wines. Cost is $35 and $8 for a kid's plate. You can find out more by e-mailing Melissa Schulte at melissa@blackankle.com or calling 619.203.8230.

Next weekend the winery will have its chefs on location to answer questions about Thanksgiving foods and the wines that go best with them, plus Maryland-based artesian chocolate company Parfections will be in-house to build customized boxes of truffles for folks wanting to add some sweetness to their dinner table. A unique promotion called Family Photo at the Farm ($25 per session) will take place the day after Thanksgiving.

Owners Ed Boyce and Sarah O'Herron note on their Web site that supplies are dwindling on several of their wines, including their medium-bodied red blend called Passegiata (two cases left), their 2007 white blend called Bedlam (a winner of the 2008 Maryland Winemasters' Choice award, there are four cases left), and their white varietal called Gruner Veltliner (3 cases left of the '08 vintage).

Finally, back to the business of blogging

Forgive the lapse in posts. One week vacation seems to translate in almost two weeks out of pocket with all the work that accumulates.

Wanted to start anew by first thanking those who sent recommendations, etc., to me for our trip to Paris last week. Ate at a couple of the restaurants, saw a few of the suggested sites. I'd go back in a heartbeat. We didn't run into a single case of the rudeness that has long been associated with traveling through France. Whether it's the new climate created by Barack Obama or the fact it was the offseason or just, well, things have changed, I don't know. Maybe the global economic meltdown has softened the edge. But all our questions were politely met with the answers we needed to get where we need to go.

Had two restaurants I wanted to recommend, one with a name I'm still trying to track down. The other was La Varangue in Rue Cler, near the Eiffel Tower. Offered up as a place to go in Rick Steves' Paris book, it's a tiny eatery along a side street that seats around 25 on five or six tables. Philippe Mollay, who ran a French catering shop in the Philly suburbs for three years during the early part of this decade, brings over his chalkboard and reviews all the offerings for the evening in detail. Steves wrote that the cuisine is simple and cheap, and he was right on both counts. Add a thumbs up for the house wine and the chocolate cake, which Phillippe makes. And if you stop by, you might run into Phillippe's daughter, who pitches in as a waitress.

Have plenty of entries to post; some from interviews that go back a few weeks. See if I can't clear my notebook by the end of the weekend.

Galloping Goose can't keep enough Cabernet Franc on the shelves during first weekend

Told from across the Mason-Dixon Line that several wineries should be opening in Maryland over the next few months, according to the executive director of the Maryland Winery Association. Kevin Atticks wrote in an e-mail Monday that Galloping Goose Vineyards in Westminster sold out of its Cabernet Franc at its grand opening this past weekend.

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He noted that late winter/spring opening include Knob Hall Winery in Hagerstown, DeJon Vineyards in Hydes (in Baltimore County, near Boordy Vineyards), in addition to two others on the mid/lower Eastern Shore.