It's OK to spit at Taste Washington

How do you sample food from more than 100 restaurants and taste wine from more than 160 wineries in four hours?

The answer is - you don't, at least not unless you want to waddle and stagger out of the eighth annual Taste Washington. The biggest wine event in the state will be held from April 8 to 10, culminating in the big taste at the Qwest Field Event Center (Seahawks Stadium) on April 10.

Tickets are $125 and can be purchased at www.tastewashington.org/ tickets.cfm. Don't forget that Taste Washington Spokane will be held June 5 at the Davenport. Although smaller in size, the Spokane event provides a more intimate experience. Look for more information on the Spokane Taste Washington in future articles.

Recognizing that the event has become so large it is nearly impossible to taste and eat everything, Taste organizers have created a new theme for the event - "It's Hip to Spit."

Regan Sheehy, communications director for the Washington Wine Commission, said staff members will wear buttons with that logo to encourage spitting. "We want people to enjoy the wine and food, but in an event this size, spitting is OK in order to taste so many wines."

The best plan to attend Taste Washington is to check out the room and see which wineries are represented, paired with which Washington restaurants. Take notes and start a list of the food you would like to sample with a taste of wine. These are the wines you will actually swallow.

The second step is to look at the list of wineries and pick out as many as you want to taste. These are the wines you'll be spitting in a "dump bucket." This guarantees that you will be able to distinguish more than five wines in your mouth. Pick wines you have never tried, rather than those you know.

If you were drinking all that wine, your mouth might tell you the wine is red or white, but your palate and tongue will have checked out after the fourth or fifth taste of wine. You'd probably think all of the wine was great, but you would miss the wonderful nuances in the latest releases.

Besides, for those of us who were taught not to spit as children, spitting as an adult gets to be quite fun. There is an art to it so practicing ahead of time might prevent splattering the stranger standing next to you, or wearing your wine. Do not wear white to a wine spitting event.

Once you have tasted and spit out all the wines you listed in your notes, go back to the original list of food you wanted to taste with a particular wine. These are the samples you want to savor.

The three-day celebration of Washington wine begins on Friday, April 8th with a kick-off party at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center in Seattle. On Saturday, food and wine seminars will be held for the novice and expert by panelists well known in the wine industry.

Taste Washington was held on one day until last year, when the commission expanded it to include an education day for those who wanted to learn more about wine production.

"That has been the best part of the expansion - the workshops and seminars," said Steve Burns, interim executive director for the Washington Wine Commission. Burns left last summer to pursue a wine import business in Northern California. However, he was asked to fill in recently after the commission's replacement, Jane Baxter Lynn, resigned for personal reasons last month.

For additional information on the event, go to www.washingtonwine.org.

LONE CANARY TO RELEASE A NEW BARBERA

One of my favorite food wines will have a local connection - Lone Canary will release a barbera wine at the spring barrel tasting the first weekend in May. If you have never tried this grape before you are in for a treat. Barbera is a bright, crisp wine, generally dark ruby in color with full body and low tannins. The grape originated from Italy's Piedmont region.

What makes this such a great food wine is its high acidity and low tannins. The best wines have berry-like flavors and a rustic, brambly characteristic that works well with all types of food. Winemakers have been leaving the wine in barrels a bit longer to beef up the tannins for aging, but a barrel taste of Mike Scott's barbera from Lone Canary proves to me there is little reason to take such a great food wine and turn it into a cabernet sauvignon.

Scott also recently released his 2003 Sauvignon Blanc. This is a delicious wine, selling for around $9 to $10, which will also handle and complement food quite well. The flavor profiles include a unique pear juice in the mouth that is so crispy and appealing one can imagine sipping this wine on a beautiful spring or summer evening on the deck with a shrimp or fruit salad.

Lone Canary has three popular red wines - Rosso (Italian style with sangiovese, merlot and cabernet franc), Rouge (Bordeaux blend style with cabernet, merlot and cabernet franc) and Red (American style with cabernet, merlot and syrah) that are garnering attention from wine critics. Most of the fruit from this wine comes from the Yakima Valley.

"Fruit from the Yakima Valley is elegant and well structured," said Scott. "I am not a big believer in highly extracted wines: I want lots of flavor but I don't want to battle the palate to death with such big wines that they won't work with food."

The winery is looking for a new location, in or near downtown, as they are outgrowing their current location in a storage area just east of downtown at 109 S. Scott St., No. B-2. Lone Canary is open to the public on weekends and by appointment. The phone number is 534-9062.

ONLY SMALL PERCENTAGE OF AMERICANS GET WINE EDUCATION

I recently met an Italian gentleman now living in Spokane who told me a story of growing up in a small farming community in Central Italy, where wine was always an element of daily meals and was as second nature to meal planning as was the meat, pasta or eggs.

His family made wine for their own consumption and he recalled his first taste of wine as a young child.

That experience is unusual in the United States. In a recent gathering of professional wine writers in Napa Valley, Calif., it was clearly acknowledged that 80 percent of the American public has little connection with wine as a part of the dinner table. Most wine writers are read by only about 20 percent of the public.

Wine education does not need to be so lofty that it intimidates. It needs to be fun. While moderation is always the key, making wine a part of the dinner experience - like a food - should also be the challenge to those of us who follow the wine industry.

My question to readers is how to pull in some of that 80 percent of the American public that has little connection to wine. What needs to be done to make wine a part of the daily meal? I would be interested in your suggestions at winewriter@comcast.net.

Copyright c 2005 The Spokesman-Review
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.