Jas goes to the Women's Wine Down

03/19/2010

This March marked a milestone: the first annual Knoxville Women's Wine Down. I have no idea who's brainchild the Wine Down was, but that person is a genius.

The Wine Down adds a new dimension to the already wildly popular commercial event that is the Women's Expo by serving up a wine tasting to 500 lucky guests - and all the proceeds go to charity. It gives people a chance to sample 7 different wines, try some amuse-bouches from local area vendors, and raise money for a good cause.

Everybody wins when women wine.

This year's cast of characters:

-- Celebrity Host -- Top Chef cheftestant Fabio Viviani

(my personal favorite cheftestant ever & owner of Cafe Firenze http://www.cafefirenze.net/)

-- Featured Winery -- Gnarly Head (http://www.gnarlyhead.com/Wines/)

-- Local Foodstuffs -- Salsaritas, Brixx Pizza, Avanti Savoria (http://www.avantisavoia.com/) and The Crown and Goose (http://www.thecrownandgoose.com/kitchen.html)

-- Plus all the local area vendors who usually show up at the Women's Expo --

Upon entering the Wine Down area each person is given a wine card. This card lists off each wine that is available along with a short description. This year all of the wines came from one winery (the aforementioned Gnarly Head) which can be a good thing or a bad thing. If the winery is subpar, then all of the wines will be too. However, if the winery is generally good, then all the wines should be as well. Luckily, Gnarly Head is one of the latter and while I've had better wines, I would recommend any of theirs (especially the Cab. Sauv. & the Merlot).

Hard-core wine connoisseurs will find the Gnarly Head wines completely fine - but for a 500 person wine tasting Gnarly Head was the perfect choice. They had a good selection of both reds and whites, and every single one was completely unoffensive. It takes a true buff to love the extremes of any kind of wine (ie. Chardonnays tend to be very dry, Merlots can be a bit spicy and earthy, etc), but all the Gnarly Heads were completely middle-of-the-road: a necessity to be a crowd pleaser! The guests at the Wine Down had 2 hours to go to different booths scattered around the convention center and get a glass of wine and have their wine-cards stamped (so each person could only get one glass of each wine).

I was slightly disappointed, however, with the selection of food paired along with the wine. Salsaritas had chips and salsa (boring) and Brixx had spinach dip & some crusty tomato bruschetta (definitely NOT tasty). I was pleasantly surprised by Avanti Savoria; a local Italian import store that has an excellent selection of olive oils, cheeses, spreads and etc. At the Wine Down they provided a fabulous cheese table (I had seconds!), and I will be visiting their store sometime in the future. Last but not least was my favorite: the Crown and Goose's watermelon/tuna ceviche. This Mexican-Asian fusion food consisted of diced watermelon, tuna, cilantro and black & white sesame seeds all tossed with lime juice and some sort of light sauce (rice wine vinegar? olive oil? whatever it was it was perfect) and served over a seaweed salad. I could have eaten buckets of this, it was that amazing (please see the picture at the very top). I hope that next year, every restaurant decides to put forth something interesting like the Crown & Goose and Avanti Savoria, and I also hope the Wine Down organizers find a few more places willing to participate.

The highlight of my evening, though, was the celebrity host: Fabio Viviani. I am a die-hard Top Chef fan and Fabio has always been my favorite chef on the show because of his passion, his general nice-guy-ness, and his sexy Italian accent. He did not disappoint at the Wine Down! At the beginning of the evening he gave a short cooking lesson (which I unfortunately missed), and then spent the rest of the night going back and forth between taking pictures and giving autographs. Guests were able to get their pictures taken with Fabio in a photobooth for $10, (all the proceeds of which went to charity) and Fabio was signing copies of his cookbook (which was conveniently for sale nearby, which I bought, and which I completely love). Having a celebrity host most definitely added to the excitement of the evening and Fabio was the perfect choice!

In short, I had a fantastic time at the Wine Down, and I hope all of you get the chance to go next year.