Proctors winefest may be The Next Big Thing

William M. Dowd photos
(J Maxwell photo courtesy Fox.com)

Noted wine author Kevin Zraly speaks with a fan while autographing his books.
SCHENECTADY, NY -- We may have seen the start of a whopper of a wine festival today.

The event was the inaugural Capital Region Wine Festival at Proctors, a splashy wine and food event that drew local and national celebrities as well as 800 or so visitors to the historic Proctors theater complex in downtown. The likes of J Maxwell (left), the Clifton Park chef who has so far survived four rounds of Gordon Ramsay's bellowing on this season's Fox Network show "Hell's Kitchen," and wine expert and author Kevin Zraly were among the faces spotted making the rounds.

More than 60 wineries as well as various food merchants, restaurants and caterers doled out tasting samples to a crowd that included 650 pre-sold tickets and several hundred more walk-ups at $50 a head for the grand tasting rounds that took up two full performance and public spaces in the complex. That's not counting the crowd at a dinner gala Friday night.

In addition, a series of paid and free seminars was held in the main theater to set up the day, with a nice crowd attending the finale -- a two-man dog-and-pony show by yours truly and Fred LeBrun, a journalism and wine judging colleague.

Since the overall theme of the event was "Romancing the Grape," we stayed under that umbrella with "Grape Expectations ... and how to achieve them," a half-hour seminar on how to extract the most enjoyment from the lands and the people who produce the wines you try, how to travel well in wine country foreign and domestic, and how to create home winetasting events that expand the fun aspects of wine sampling.

As far as timing is concerned, holding such an event in February picks up the torch laid down, or dropped, by The Desmond, the Colonie, NY, convention/hotel complex that had a nationally renowned wine festival each February for years but stopped it several years ago.

The board and management of Proctors, as the cultural heart of Schenectady and one of the Capital Region's premier performing arts spaces, was smart to seize on this gap in the social schedule. Drawing both young and mid-life wine lovers to an event in such numbers bodes well for this to become an annual attraction as big as The Desmond's had been.

Even without packages created as tie-ins with local hotels and other businesses, something the Proctors staff will be looking at for next month, this was a great start.

Some glimpses from the event:

Chef Denny DeLorenzo (right), whose new Schenectady restaurant is in the works, speaks with friends outside the GE Theater, part of the Proctors complex.

That's not a grape stomper, but it is the blowup symbol of Barefoot Wine and Bubbly, the Modesto, CA, winemaker.

Charmaine Ushkow pours a sample of wine from Heron Hill in New York's Finger Lakes.

Food played a prominent role in the wine festival, as can be seen in this buffet line for Riverstone Manor, restaurant and banquet caterer in Glenville, NY.

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I'm baaack

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Mmmm. Cheeseburger in Paradise!

I just returned last night (Wednesday) from a business trip to St. Croix, in the American Virgin Islands, thus the lack of recent posts until I set loose a flurry of them today.

Thanks to the gazillion readers (actually 1.87 gazillion by show of hands) who kept checking back in that quiet period. It was nice you were reading while I was enjoying a cheeseburger and a tropical breeze.

Since I was one hour ahead of the continental U.S. (much of the Caribbean goes by Atlantic Time), I have looked into the future for you. I can report that ...

What's that? I'm not allowed to reveal the future? OK, Sarah Connor, if you say so.

And now, we return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

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LEED winery building a NY first

New York is about to get its first LEED-certified winery building, in the Finger Lakes.

The Red Tail Ridge Winery, owned by the married team of Nancy Irelan and Mike Schnelle (right), was opened near Penn Yan in 2007 after they moved from California.

LEED is the acronym for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a Green Building Rating System that encourages and accelerates global adoption of sustainable green building and development practices through the creation and implementation of universally understood and accepted tools and performance criteria. Certification is done on a third-party basis and can be achieved at various levels.

With vineyards, it can include strategically located diversion and drainage ditches that direct stormwater runoff to an irrigation pond. Red Tail Ridge is working with the New York State Energy Research and Development Agency (NYSERDA) to certify such green measures as:

• Locally-sourced and recycled-content building materials
• A geothermal system
• Efficient lighting
• Natural daylighting

The building was designed by Edge Architecture of Rochester, with Sustainable Performance Consulting Inc. as part of the project team. The target is for completion of the new building to be open in time for the fall harvest.

Details of various LEED rating systems are available online.

Ireland and Schnelle have planted such Finger Lakes grape staples as pinot, chardonnay and riesling, but also planted teroldego vines. As Ireland explains it on the Red Tail Ridge Web site:

"We ... believe that experimentation is an important step towards unlocking our vineyard's, and the region's, potential. For this reason, we have planted teroldego — a red Italian grape variety grown primarily in the northeastern region of Trentino-Alto — in our vineyard and are optimistic about the future of these vines. Wines produced from teroldego have been compared to zinfandel due to their deep color, brambly blackberriness, solid acidity and moderate tannin structure. We are eager to see how these vines and wines develop, and we look forward to more experimentation in the future."

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Anti-tax protest doesn't make a splash

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Presidents and master distillers from some of Kentucky's leading distilleries joined a protest Tuesday in Frankfort over a proposed retail tax on all alcohol products. However, on Wednesday the bill they were fighting received approval in one section of the state legislature.

The current liquor taxes include an 11% wholesale tax on packaged liquor, a 6% tax on drinks purchased in bars and restaurants, an 8-cent-per-gallon tax on beer, a 50-cent-per-gallon tax on wine and a $1.92-per-gallon tax on distilled spirits.

The protest was in reaction to a House committee approval for a 6% additional tax on alcoholic beverages in stores. The measure then passed the full house Wednesday and is expected to go to the full senate by the weekend, according to Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville.

More than 400 people — many of whom work in Kentucky's signature bourbon industry — attended the Tuesday rally, which culminated in the bourbon "tea party," a play on the Boston Tea Party, the most famous American colonial tax protest.

A convoy of trucks from breweries and distilleries circled the Capitol building while individuals such as Wild Turkey's iconic master distiller Jimmy Russell (shown above in cap, leading a tour group at the distillery) poured bottles of bourbon on the Capitol's front steps in protest.

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Champagne sales lose some bubbles

There doesn't seem to be much to celebrate these days, what with social unrest, economic doldrums, terrorism and civil war. So, it should come as no surprise the beverage most associated with celebrating is suffering a sales slump.

France's Champagne Vintners' Committee this week announced shipments of Champagne within the country and abroad fell 4.8% in 2008 compared to the previous year.

One consolation may be that the 322,453,852 bottles sold is slightly more than in 2006.

The industry group said in a statement that exports to European Union consumers outside France were down 6.5% per cent in bottle terms, and non-European exports were down 6.2& per cent in 2008. Shipments within France were down 3.6%.

Daniel Lorson, a spokesman for the committee, said the 2008 figures also suffer by comparison to 2007's which he termed "a record year in all senses.''

To support that view, one need only look at the 2007 figures which show France's wine and spirit industry scored record exports with an especially strong performance from Champagne, the country's leading French wine-producing region. Champagne exports were worth $3.06 billion in 2007, a 10.4% surge year-over-year.

"We have all the assets to resist the crisis over the long term," Lorson said. "The boat is solid, the sails are solid, the crew is solid. We can weather this storm."

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