Quady Winery owner Andrew Quady, left, talks with Florida Winefest visitors Madelyn Mramor of Sarasota and Letia Short of Costa Mesa, Calif., on Friday morning at the Sarasota Ritz-Carlton.
[Times photo: Joseph Garnett Jr.]
The four-day Bern’s Winefest drew big crowds to a maze of air-conditioned white tents to taste wine and sample grand meals of wild boar and braised rabbit.
Among endless weekends, the longest must be the five wine-soaked days that come in the middle of every April, when both Sarasota and Tampa throw their most ambitious wine festivals.
This past weekend was no exception. From Thursday through Monday night, winemakers and distributors raced up and down I-75 between the glittering parties of the Florida Winefest at the Sarasota Ritz-Carlton and a maze of air-conditioned white tents at the Bern's Winefest.
To the wine industry, the double magnum weekend of festivals signifies the growing size and sophistication of the local taste for wine, now a top market in Florida, which is itself a bigger and bigger part of wine buying in the United States.
"It's never been stronger," said Michael Degnan, who has sold wine around Tampa Bay for years. "The resaturants are doing a better job, . . . the quality of wine is way up, and it's a competitive market so there's aggressive pricing. It's a beautiful thing for the retailers and the consumers."
And the festivals' long wine lists and elaborate menus, from stuffed lamb to pistachio chocolate cremes, drew 1,000 in Tampa and twice as many in Sarasota.
"It's a great thing for a small brand like me to get in front of so many people," explained Anthony Bell, once a winemaker for giant Beaulieu Vineyards and now a regular here pushing his own label. He makes only 7,000 cases a year, and already Florida is his third-largest market.
For local wine lovers willing to chip in $50 and more to charity, the weekend of wine proved that life can be a bowl of cherries - more specifically, the bowl is a large balloon wine glass filled with California pinot noir.
Although both festivals gave special salutes to America's beloved zinfandel and the rediscovered pleasures of Spanish wines, and wine merchants poured Cakebread chardonnay and high-end Chianti and brunello, pinot noirs stole both shows.
The decades when the red grape of Burgundy was supposedly too temperamental for American wineries to grow and too hard for consumers to pronounce ended officially with the 2001 vintage. It was a great year for all California reds, and especially thrilling in pinot noirs.
In four days of tasting, pinot noirs from several years, many regions and all price points delivered happy tastes of red cherries and berries with dashes of pepper and spices in light, silky wines. And, with hundreds of acres of pinot vines being planted in cool spots from Oregon south to Santa Maria, there is more to come.
Credit some of it to the same thirst for anything-but-cabernet reds that led Americans to merlot and syrah. Chalk the rest up to a new no-fear attitude toward pinot noir in the past 20 years that has led to a lot of cooperation, innovation and enough grapes to experiment with.
"I heard a lot about how difficult it was, but I just applied what I knew from being a farm boy growing hay in Michigan," said winemaker Todd Anderson.
Now he has a beautiful $48 Conn Valley pinot with delicate color and explosive flavor. "Merlot's pretty boring; pinot can be exciting. It goes with everything. Even when I have a big peppercorn steak. I don't want a heavy cab."
La Crema winemaker Melissa Stackhouse is equally proud of the success.
"In the last eight years, we've finally found which clones are best and how to make it right" by using the most appropriate strains of vines and finding the right locations. She makes pinot noirs from three regions, all around $20.
"We learn more every year," said veteran Sonoma grower Ed Seghesio, whose family is long famous for zinfandel. Pinot noir takes careful pruning all season, however, so "we drop a lot of grapes on the ground."
The wines they make range from pure cherry fruit to more Burgundian styles, with earthier, leathery tones, but there is no denying a new level of quality. At the top are wines like reserve pinot noirs from Morgan and Fess Parker, and the Belle Gloss from Caymus Vineyards.
But wine tasters found good ones for much less, all the way down to an $8 pinot from Rex Goliath, the big player in the low-price market.
"I don't think we really have to pay $50 for a pinot noir," said Adam LaZarre, winemaker for Rex and parent Hahn Vineyards. "It's made pinot noir accessible to masses."
There were ample wines in Sarasota and Tampa for partisans of other varieties: lots of shiraz from Australia and California imitators, a few German rieslings, sparkling wines and a long list of sauvignon blancs.
At both festivals, most wines were domestic, with the largest import delegations from Australia and Italy. Many of them were newer labels seeking attention. Grand old names are less common on the festival tours.
Certainly, there was still an abundance of cabernet sauvignons, merlots and Bordeaux blends, enough to stir the debate over vintages: If 1999 and 2001 were so great in California, is 2000 worth buying?
Absolutely, if you pick from top makers such as Philip Togni, B.R. Cohn, Sterling and Merryvale, which still make handsome wines. Choosing one over another is as difficult and unnecessary as picking which of the weekend's festivals was best, each with its own menu of grand tastings, small seminars and $100 dinners. Both were improved this year by reorganization that allowed more room for both consumers and vendors.
The Florida Winefest is older - now in its 12th year - and larger and consists of three nights of elaborate dinners. It is a major stop on the national wine calendar for winery owners and winemakers. It was played out in the ornate gilt of Sarasota's Ritz, using all of the city's finest chefs, with Ferraris, Rolls-Royces and Hummers out front.
Bern's Winefest started five years later, scheduled a few days later so that visiting winemakers could swing by Tampa and Sarasota in the same weekend. Many still make both festivals, and local distributors beefed up the sampling menu for Bern's grand tasting with a large number of top-price brands.
There was only one Maserati on display at Bern's, and the cooking was solely in the hands of Bern's executive chef, Jeannie Pierola, and her crews.
That was more than enough. Pierola directed three grand meals, including a lunch matching Poderi Colla wines from the Piedmont region of Italy with the likes of braised rabbit, morel mushrooms and tomato tortellini.
Food for Sunday's standup tasting is traditionally a project for the staffs. This year, they turned out a tasting of Russian and American caviars infused with saffron and wasabi with "foams" of avocado and potato-bacon as well as boar chops with cinnamon couscous and lobster-sweet potato stacks.
Too bad that prudence, budgets and the calendar force us to choose between such pleasures. Like picking through the current crop of pinot noirs, it's a lovely dilemma.
- Chris Sherman, who writes about food and wine for the St. Petersburg Times, is the author of "The Buzz on Wine" Lebhar-Friedman Books, $16.95. He can be reached at (727) 893-8585 or sherman@sptimes.com
Pick of the pinot
American pinot noir grows best in cooler regions. Look for pinot from vineyards in California's Russian River, Alexander Valley, Sonoma Coast, Carneros and Monterey areas, plus the southern vineyards of Santa Maria, Santa Lucia and Paso Robles around Santa Barbara. With food, pinot ranges much wider, matching happily with shellfish and salmon, chicken, pork, pasta or steaks.
Here are some favorites from recent tastings, arranged roughly by price.
EXPENSIVE (more than $40): Oregon's Archery Summit is near the top with its dark, peppery Renegade Ridge. Anderson's Conn Valley has a deceptive pale strawberry color and smooth texture but full-bodied fruit flavors spiked with pepper and leather.
Carmel Road makes a smoky, rich pinot in Monterey, and Merry Edwards crafts one gentle red cherry pinot in the Russian River and a rich, darker one heavy with blueberries and blacker fruits from her Klopp vineyard.
MIDRANGE ($20 to $40): Sweet cherry flavors in Belle Gloss from Caymus led the pack. Fess Parker's Bien Nacido pinot was next best, plummy with warm, earthy notes.
Seghesio's Keyhole Ranch combines black and red fruits with a spicy nose and taste, with dark color and soft texture. Morgan's Rosella pinot has a rosy nose, deep purple color and ripe, jammy, dark berry flavors.
AFFORDABLE ($20 and under): La Crema shows the best range for the price, from an easy-drinking wine with blueberry flavors and merlot texture from the Anderson Valley to an earthier Burgundian style from Russian River. Its Carneros pinot is crisper and cleaner. Wente's Monterey pinot has a brick red color with a mouthful of cherry and vanilla.
Rex Goliath's Central Coast pinot is a less-than-$10 bargain but doesn't stint on flavor, rich with cinnamon and cloves as well as a basket of berries. An alternative easy-drinking pinot noir is flowery Faraon from Argentina, with hints of vanilla.
