The next Wine Walk & Shop is coming up July 10 – Don’t Miss It!
For our Summer Wine Walk & Shop on Miracle Mile, retailer Jeffrey Wolfe and Miami Wine & Food Festival Director Lyn Farmer have gathered a collection of wines that are ideal for a warm summer evening. Our tasting begins at Seasons 52 restaurant with Honig Sauvignon Blanc, a beautiful and elegant wine from Napa Valley that Stephanie Honig describes as, Juicy, refreshing, (and) medium bodied” filled with “aromas of honeysuckle, grapefruit, and lemongrass mingled with mango, kiwi, peach, and grapefruit rind.” It’s a veritable fruit cup waiting to start you off on our tasting.
Next comes Vietti’s Arneis, a lovely and slightly floral white wine from Italy’s Piedmont Region. In an area best know for red wine, this is a white that has a lot of character; it’s crisp and refreshing and, if you haven’t encountered Arneis before, you are in for a treat. After the Arneis, our wine tour on the Mile takes you to Argentina and the country’s iconic white wine, Torròntes. This very aromatic wine smells juicy but is wonderfully crisp and dry in the mouth. The Coqueña winery is in Salta in the far north of Argentina where the Torròntes flourishes in high altitude vineyards. It’s very elegant and, dare we say, downright sexy.
At our next stop we start our transition to red wine with a beautiful rosé from Spain. Bodegas Muga produces an outrageously good dry rosé from a blend of both red and white grapes: Garnacha, Viura and Tempranillo. It gets just a kiss of oak from two months of barrel age so it stays fresh and delightful.
The first of our red wines is from Sicily, a region that, like South Florida, knows how to stay refreshed in warm weather. COS is a winery that is getting rave reviews for all its wines, and especially for a delightful red made from the indigenous grape called Frappato. One reviewer said this wine made her want to “call all your friends and invite them to come round to share the pleasure.” Come to think of it, that’s what we’re doing with Frappato at our Wine Walk.
The next red wine is from Northern California’s Edmunds St. John winery located just north of San Francisco. Winemaker Steve Edmunds is making a delicious wine from the Gamay grape, the same grape used in France to make Beaujolais. His wine, called “Bone Jolly,” has lots of fruit and a hint of black pepper; it is, Steve says, “fun to drink and complex at the same time.”
Our final red before the sparkling finale is a beautiful Malbec from Argentina. Tikal’s “Natural” Malbec is made with organic fruit to produce a very pure, natural expression of all the blackberry and mocha flavors for which Malbec is so popular. What I love about this wine is its balance – it feels big and opulent but isn’t over the top or jammy, it is just fruit and elegance in a glass.
We wrap up on Wine Walk & Shop at Wolfe’s Wine Shoppe where owner Jeffrey Wolfe will be pouring an exceptional Champagne, Chartogne-Taillet’s Cuvée Ste.-Anne. This is one of the currently fashionable “grower Champagnes,” produced by a family that grows all their grapes and makes all their own wine. It is a stunning Champagne and a great way to end the Wine Walk. Except that isn’t really the end: when you’ve finished your taste of Champagne, feel free to purchase any of the wines you’ve tasted on the Wine Walk – Jeffrey has them all at a special discounted price for our imbibing strollers. Then, collect your gift bag and head across the street from Wolfe’s to Angelique’s Euro Café where many of the wines on the tour are featured and available for a dinner with other tasters you’ve met along the way. And don’t worry – when you arrive for the tasting, go ahead and valet your car at Seasons 52 – it will still be delivered to you at Angelique whenever your are ready to wrap up your evening. All in all, we’re expecting to have a great time – I hope you can join us
Lyn Farmer, Wine Lover and Director, Miami Wine & Food Festival