Proudly Presenting: Our JBF Dinner Event Wine Producers
Special Event Management and PR Team Member Rachel Murphy presents updates on the wine for the James Beard Foundation event located in Village in New York City. The TuttoToscana team offers a delicious sneak peek of the recipe testing for the contemporary Chianti-themed demonstration. Just who are the wineries involved with the dinner gala?
The dinner at the James Beard Foundation will have about eighty guests in attendance for the TuttoTosaca five-course meal. We have four vineyards that we will be showcasing throughout the dinner by our wine service team. Since our theme for the upcoming events is called “Contemporary Chianti”, all the wine is from Chianti region or mostly within Tuscany.
Mazzei is the first producer that will be introduced at the reception part of the dinner. Their mission is to “offer wine drinkers and wine lovers the world over one of the best examples of a Chianti Classico and of Italian wine-making in general.” The Mazzei family has owned the winery since 1435 and has 1,606 acres with 289 devoted to five specialized vineyards. Fonterutoli was the point where travelers would stop between Florence and Siena. There is a popular legend in the early thirteenth century that the lords of Florence and Siena would feud over the Chianti region and that the boarders would be decided by a horse race. This race would start when the rider heard the crowing of a rooster; the Florentines chose a little black rooster that was skinny, starved, and constantly crowed out of hunger. The day of the race this rooster crowed long before dawn allowing the rider to almost reach the outskirts of Siena, at Fonterutoli. Florence formed the Chianti Military and Administrative League, whose symbol was a black rooster. The wines at Fonterutoli are fermented in steel vats and then aged in small oak barrels, bottled and aged for a few more months before being sold to the public. On the day of the dinner we will be serving the Mazzei Belguardo Vermentino, IGT, 2011.
Capannelle is produced in Gaiole in Chianti, stretching about 49 acres. Capannelle is located at a farmhouse dating to the 16th century where Raffaele Rossetti began producing wine in 1974. Today, James B. Sherwood is the owner and the winery produces roughly 80,000 bottles of wine a year. The wine is fermented in stainless steel and then again in smaller barrels (about three years for red, about one year for Chardonnay), and finally in the bottled aged for two years. Our secondo is using the Capanelle Chianti Classico Reserva 2007, DOCG to braise the lamb shank along as the wine pairing for this course.
Salcheto believes in a synergy between earth and all growing things, including man. Their vineyards are found in Montepulciano, Tuscany and have 81 of their 113 acres devoted to the grapes. Their vineyards range from 5-27 years old and recently did a study of their estate and it divided into 22 micro-zones. Salcheto has almost no carbon footprint in their facilities and uses the force of gravity to allow their wine to flow from each fermentation stage (from the top of the building to the bottom, where the wines are bottled). We have a total of three Salcheto wines that are paired with the reception, primo, and dessert.
Nearby Siena and Perugia there is a town called Cortona where the Santa Christina wines are grown. They give great care to the wine making process and continue to look for innovative was to deal with indigenous and international varieties. The combination of these two allow the family owned winery to produce different products of the same style and the important link between vineyard, terrior, and man’s work. Santa Cristina Rosso di Toscana IGT, 2011 will be served and used in the Antipasti dish.
Look for the next post which we will discuss more about the Santa Cristina wines and talk to one of their representatives, Alessia. More information about our events based on a Chianti theme at the James Beard Foundation can be located by visiting the JBF website for the lunch on October 26, 2012 or for the dinner on October 27, 2012.
We will be sending updates, news flashes, and behind the scenes sneak peaks over the coming weeks. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook!