For twelve years, between 1994 and 2006, I worked for the Santa Fe Wine and Chile Fiesta. I would love to say that I was a leader, a key player in that now venerable celebration of food and wine; but I was not. I was a laborer, a bit player, a facilitator, and eventually a vital cog in a machine that grew each year until it encompassed some 135 wine and food events held over five days in the beautiful and historic city of Santa Fe. Even after I moved away from Santa Fe in 1997, I would return each September to my beautiful adopted home town to lend a hand in putting on one of the great wine and food shows on planet earth. I returned to live full time in Santa Fe in 2004, after being away for six years. I continued in the employ of the Fiesta until 2006, when my new job as wine buyer for Café Pasqual’s caused me to shift my role in the Fiesta from staff member to exhibitor. I have always felt a deep connection to the Fiesta, whether I was helping to stage events or attending them as a participant or an exhibitor.
My heart has always been here in the Southwest, having grown up here part time as the son of a cultural anthropologist who worked extensively with the Navajo people of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. I spent the bulk of my youth in Chicago, where I first learned of the joys of food and wine. My interest grew as I became involved with the Fiesta. During the course of my twelve year tenure as a logistics coordinator, I was fortunate to have many opportunities to discuss wine and winemaking with a wide variety of industry professionals. I suppose in time that I may have learned something, though the more I have studied wine the more apparent it has become to me that wine knowledge is endless: for wine encompasses the study of viticulture and enology, but also geography, geology, culture, government, bureaucracy, gastronomy, meteorology, botany, and ultimately philosophy - hence this blog takes its title, The Oeno-philosopher. The study of wine is truly a lifelong endeavor, full of beauty and symmetry, but also fraught with stark realities and contradictions.
The first thing the visitor realizes about the Santa Fe Wine and Chile Fiesta (SFW&C) is how distinct it is from other wine festivals in the US. Though almost every event at the Santa Fe festival presents wine in some format, rather than the typical offering of (hopefully) artisanal cheeses and cracker/crostinoid starch elements, SFW&C makes a herculean effort to offer food prepared by a master chef to complement the wines presented. There are exceptions to this of course: for instance certain seminars rely on wine alone to drive interest. I will relate my experience at one such event--the Vega Sicilia/Oremus seminar that I attended last Wednesday (9/23)-- in the next installment of this blog. But by and large, SFW&C maintains a substantial and unwavering commitment to its core principle: that the highest expression of a fine wine is as an enhancement and complement to imaginatively prepared food. It is part of what makes this event so special, and utterly unique in the myriad wine festivals that have emerged over the last two decades in the US. Thus the Wine and Chile Fiesta reflects and even expands on Santa Fe’s title as “The City Different.”
My first experience with SFW&C came in 1994, when I was hired by the event’s executive director, Greg O’Byrne, to help run logistics for wine seminars held at the Hilton Hotel, which was then the principal site of the 1-day event. My first assignments involved running the wine seminars held in the small meeting rooms at the Hilton. I have very pleasant recollections of these because they marked the beginning of my wine education. I remember working for several years with Jeff Hunsaker, then national sales manager for Joseph Phelps Winery, on the Vin du Mistral Rhone blending seminar. It was great fun to taste as many as eight Rhone single varietals, even the more obscure such as Bourbolenc, Cunoise, and Alicante Bouche. Participants were encouraged to create a blend based on the more familiar workhorse grapes, Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvedre, adding through a titration tube tiny, precisely measured amounts of the minor varieties in order to taste one’s personal blend against the Phelps blend developed for release. On the Fiesta staff, we referred to this perennial favorite as the “Mr. Science Seminar,” and to Jeff as “Mr. Science.” I loved every minute of it, and learned a tremendous amount from it. Once I have fun delving into an art or a science, I am hooked for life, and wine was no exception.
Next in my inexact and non-linear recollections comes a more direct learning experience. About five years ago I was pouring at the VIP reception, held annually at the Governor’s mansion high on a hill on the far north side of town. The mansion commands magnificent vistas of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the east, and of the Jemez range across the Rio Grande Valley to the west. This event motivates the distributors and their suppliers to provide their most notable (and expensive) wines for the perusal of the Fiesta elite. As we set up the wines for the reception, in walked Joe Spellman, M.S., who now works for Justin Winery in Paso Robles. We had decided to arrange the wines according to weight, from the lightest whites to the heaviest, most ponderous reds.
“Hi Joe,” I said. “I suppose you’ll want to go directly to the big reds.” I gestured to my left, where the first growth Bordeaux and cult cabs and merit ages were arrayed.
“Not so much,” said Joe. He perused the arrangement of wines, and pointed himself in the direction of the medium weight reds: the Tempranillos, the Barberas, the Red Burgundies. “These,” he said, “are the wines that are most difficult to make well, and the ones that share the stage most gracefully with the widest variety of food.”
I was suitably chastened, and apologized for my presumption. Joe then patiently and generously explained how the wine press has in some cases over-valorized the weightiest reds to the exclusion of those varieties and regions that produce wines of the greatest finesse and elegance. He also stressed how neglected the great white wines of the world have become in the current clamor for gigantic, rockstar reds.
In my studies since this lesson, I have come to understand it in terms of a stage/performance metaphor: great wines, like great actors, make all who share the stage with them (i.e. food) better; they give generously of themselves in a way that subsumes ego, and allows the synergistic flow of the performance to reach the audience most directly. To extend this metaphor in a negative direction, huge, over-concentrated reds are like very talented but unpolished actors; while their talent is formidable, their needy egos preclude the unfettered sharing of a performance with their fellow actors and with their audiences.
Finally, I remember the last year that we held wine seminars in the Hilton. We held one dealing with synthetic closures versus cork. At the time, the vented screw cap and the Stelvin closure were not yet in use, so the discussion was limited to natural versus synthetic stoppers. I remember the discussion vividly because it brought up issues that remain quite relevant today, and will remain so into the future as winemakers search for more efficacious and environmentally friendly methods by which to seal their containers. In this case the issue was eventually distilled to the following: natural cork closures permit a much higher likelihood of spoilage, but also allow notable reds the micro-aerification they need to develop over time in the cellar. While a certain percentage of bottles will spoil, others may become superior exemplars precisely because of the “imperfect” seal offered by natural cork. As to synthetic cork, the panel found consensus as to the corollary: Synthetics mitigate spoilage, but limit the development of exceptional bottles by the very efficacy of their seal. The fact that new closure technologies and solutions have today rendered the above discussion obsolete testifies to the speed at which the wine industry is developing viticulturally, enologically, and technologically. Watch this blog for a more detailed discussion of reusable container technology and how it may begin to impact the wine business into the future.
Keep checking this blog for the next installment: a chronicle of this year’s Wine and Chile Fiesta complete with pictures. ~~
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My heart has always been here in the Southwest, having grown up here part time as the son of a cultural anthropologist who worked extensively with the Navajo people of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. I spent the bulk of my youth in Chicago, where I first learned of the joys of food and wine. My interest grew as I became involved with the Fiesta. During the course of my twelve year tenure as a logistics coordinator, I was fortunate to have many opportunities to discuss wine and winemaking with a wide variety of industry professionals. I suppose in time that I may have learned something, though the more I have studied wine the more apparent it has become to me that wine knowledge is endless: for wine encompasses the study of viticulture and enology, but also geography, geology, culture, government, bureaucracy, gastronomy, meteorology, botany, and ultimately philosophy - hence this blog takes its title, The Oeno-philosopher. The study of wine is truly a lifelong endeavor, full of beauty and symmetry, but also fraught with stark realities and contradictions.
The first thing the visitor realizes about the Santa Fe Wine and Chile Fiesta (SFW&C) is how distinct it is from other wine festivals in the US. Though almost every event at the Santa Fe festival presents wine in some format, rather than the typical offering of (hopefully) artisanal cheeses and cracker/crostinoid starch elements, SFW&C makes a herculean effort to offer food prepared by a master chef to complement the wines presented. There are exceptions to this of course: for instance certain seminars rely on wine alone to drive interest. I will relate my experience at one such event--the Vega Sicilia/Oremus seminar that I attended last Wednesday (9/23)-- in the next installment of this blog. But by and large, SFW&C maintains a substantial and unwavering commitment to its core principle: that the highest expression of a fine wine is as an enhancement and complement to imaginatively prepared food. It is part of what makes this event so special, and utterly unique in the myriad wine festivals that have emerged over the last two decades in the US. Thus the Wine and Chile Fiesta reflects and even expands on Santa Fe’s title as “The City Different.”
My first experience with SFW&C came in 1994, when I was hired by the event’s executive director, Greg O’Byrne, to help run logistics for wine seminars held at the Hilton Hotel, which was then the principal site of the 1-day event. My first assignments involved running the wine seminars held in the small meeting rooms at the Hilton. I have very pleasant recollections of these because they marked the beginning of my wine education. I remember working for several years with Jeff Hunsaker, then national sales manager for Joseph Phelps Winery, on the Vin du Mistral Rhone blending seminar. It was great fun to taste as many as eight Rhone single varietals, even the more obscure such as Bourbolenc, Cunoise, and Alicante Bouche. Participants were encouraged to create a blend based on the more familiar workhorse grapes, Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvedre, adding through a titration tube tiny, precisely measured amounts of the minor varieties in order to taste one’s personal blend against the Phelps blend developed for release. On the Fiesta staff, we referred to this perennial favorite as the “Mr. Science Seminar,” and to Jeff as “Mr. Science.” I loved every minute of it, and learned a tremendous amount from it. Once I have fun delving into an art or a science, I am hooked for life, and wine was no exception.
Next in my inexact and non-linear recollections comes a more direct learning experience. About five years ago I was pouring at the VIP reception, held annually at the Governor’s mansion high on a hill on the far north side of town. The mansion commands magnificent vistas of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the east, and of the Jemez range across the Rio Grande Valley to the west. This event motivates the distributors and their suppliers to provide their most notable (and expensive) wines for the perusal of the Fiesta elite. As we set up the wines for the reception, in walked Joe Spellman, M.S., who now works for Justin Winery in Paso Robles. We had decided to arrange the wines according to weight, from the lightest whites to the heaviest, most ponderous reds.
“Hi Joe,” I said. “I suppose you’ll want to go directly to the big reds.” I gestured to my left, where the first growth Bordeaux and cult cabs and merit ages were arrayed.
“Not so much,” said Joe. He perused the arrangement of wines, and pointed himself in the direction of the medium weight reds: the Tempranillos, the Barberas, the Red Burgundies. “These,” he said, “are the wines that are most difficult to make well, and the ones that share the stage most gracefully with the widest variety of food.”
I was suitably chastened, and apologized for my presumption. Joe then patiently and generously explained how the wine press has in some cases over-valorized the weightiest reds to the exclusion of those varieties and regions that produce wines of the greatest finesse and elegance. He also stressed how neglected the great white wines of the world have become in the current clamor for gigantic, rockstar reds.
In my studies since this lesson, I have come to understand it in terms of a stage/performance metaphor: great wines, like great actors, make all who share the stage with them (i.e. food) better; they give generously of themselves in a way that subsumes ego, and allows the synergistic flow of the performance to reach the audience most directly. To extend this metaphor in a negative direction, huge, over-concentrated reds are like very talented but unpolished actors; while their talent is formidable, their needy egos preclude the unfettered sharing of a performance with their fellow actors and with their audiences.
Finally, I remember the last year that we held wine seminars in the Hilton. We held one dealing with synthetic closures versus cork. At the time, the vented screw cap and the Stelvin closure were not yet in use, so the discussion was limited to natural versus synthetic stoppers. I remember the discussion vividly because it brought up issues that remain quite relevant today, and will remain so into the future as winemakers search for more efficacious and environmentally friendly methods by which to seal their containers. In this case the issue was eventually distilled to the following: natural cork closures permit a much higher likelihood of spoilage, but also allow notable reds the micro-aerification they need to develop over time in the cellar. While a certain percentage of bottles will spoil, others may become superior exemplars precisely because of the “imperfect” seal offered by natural cork. As to synthetic cork, the panel found consensus as to the corollary: Synthetics mitigate spoilage, but limit the development of exceptional bottles by the very efficacy of their seal. The fact that new closure technologies and solutions have today rendered the above discussion obsolete testifies to the speed at which the wine industry is developing viticulturally, enologically, and technologically. Watch this blog for a more detailed discussion of reusable container technology and how it may begin to impact the wine business into the future.
Keep checking this blog for the next installment: a chronicle of this year’s Wine and Chile Fiesta complete with pictures. ~~
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