Over the past few years we’ve attended quite a few wine events. On some occasions these have included hors d’oeuvres or even dinner. It looks to us like the trend is to pour as much wine into the guests as possible, feeding them very little. The guests can then be called “wine drunks.” Dinners have become tasting menus, but the wine flows freely. We first noticed this at Pinot Paradise (see Pinot Paradise Lost). Then at the World of Pinot Noir at the Cliffs Resort in Pismo Beach, the tasting menu featured “courses” arriving one hour apart. But there sure was plenty of good wine. The late evening is pretty foggy in retrospect. If we attend WOPN next year, we only plan to go to the two Grand Tastings and skip the rest.
More recently we attended a dinner at one of our favorite wineries. We had gone to the same event last year and were delighted. This year: tasting menu and gallons of wine. Even worse, they saved the really good, newly released, wine until the end of the last course. (I’m not going to name the winery because they generally do a very good job and make terrific wine. But they know who they are!)
Give us poor folks a break. More food, less wine, please!
