Cystic Fybrosis Foundation Fundraiser, A Customized Grape Event

The Grape at Downtown at the Gardens in Palm Beach Gardens recently hosted a fundraiser for The Palm Beach County chapter of The Cystic Fybrosis Foundation. The Grape welcomed almost 80 guests for the event with all proceeds benefiting the great work done by The Cystic Fybrosis Foundation. The Grape custom designed the event to provide a unique tasting of wines from our over 120 selections. Upon arrival, guests were individually guided through The Grape Classification system and then prompted to create their own "personal and unique" wine tasting to enjoy. Also provided was a fantastic array of gourmet food selections from The Grape Bistro menu for everyone to enjoy while they were experiencing The Grape and The Single Greatest Night themed event. Throughout the evening there were models displaying the elegant clothes from Laurence Rassin, shoes from Renee Caovilla, and the space was adorned with artwork from Laurence Rassin. All of the evening festivities were captured by Florida Wise Magazine in the elegant and comfortable surroundings at the Grape.......a wonderful backdrop for an Art Show with Fashion. Remember, if there is any type of an event on your mind for professional groups, civic association, or friends and family The Grape is at your service to customize a wine and food experience that will be as unique as you are.....for at The Grape Your Taste is all That Counts and your event is ours to customize.

The Grape Gift Card - Purchase Online!

You asked for it, we delivered. You can now purchase Grape Gift Cards via a secure website. What are you waiting for? Click here to purchase now.

Fine Wine and Fine Music

Enjoy The Grape Experience with live music this Friday and Saturday night at your local Florida Grape location.

The feature this week is Nightfall. They will be performing at The Grape at St Johns Town Center in Jacksonville from 8 - 11 pm (Friday and Saturday). In addition to their diverse, ever-expanding library of genre-crossing original compositions, NightFall's repertoire draws from timeless jazz classics as well as their own arrangements of songs from the likes of the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, and Earth, Wind & Fire. Simply stated, NightFall plays jazz with a touch of elegance.

Located outside of Florida? The weather is warming up around the Southeast. Check with your local Grape to find out when they will be offering live music.

Wine Trends

Wine is becoming more and more popular in the United States, in fact industry statistics predict that the United States will be the #1 country for wine consumption in the world by the year 2010. Recent press about wine continues to be in the mainstream in America as evidenced by the recent cover of Fortune magazine: "Drink Red Wine and Live Longer". Graduating from college and getting first jobs, my peer group was not real educated about wine (they did turn to me since I entered the business at 23) and there were not alot of resources for them to discover wine. The young professionals today have a whole new wine world to experiment from and at the Grape one of our core goals is "edutainment"....this is the combination of learning/experimenting/discovering the wonderful world of wine while being in a chic fun environment. At The Grape you can experiment through our selection of wines with our "try before you buy philosophy", our "Grapes by the Bunch" tasting format, and once you make that special "discovery"....you can make a purchase (How about a 3Sum) in the Seller to take home and enjoy with family and friends. Best of All, you can come back and start all over making new discovery after new discovery! Let's all work together and see if we can make the USA #1 by 2009.

Let’s have a wine tasting!

It seems everyone’s been to a wine tasting, but I have often been struck by how wine tasting means different things to different people. So….here is the definitive (and only, I think) guide to different types of wine tastings.

The Hedonistic Tasting – This is the most common and the one that we all started with. Someone, somewhere hands you a glass of wine, you take a sip and say; “Delicious, I will have more!” or “It’s okay, what else do you have?” or “Yuk, can I have a sweet tea?”. The hedonistic tasting is simply how much (or little) you like a wine. This tasting is at the heart of The Grape’s philosophy.

The Restaurant Ritual – The scene: A fancy restaurant. The players: A tuxedo clad, straight backed fellow with what looks like an ashtray around his neck. You and your friends feeling distinctly out of place. The ‘sommelier pours a taste and waits for you to nod sagely and say “Yes, that will be fine.” In fact the restaurant ritual was designed for you, the host, to check for any of about five flaws in a wine (more about that in another missive).

The Deductive Tasting – There exists a not so mythical organization of super wine tasters called The Court of Master Sommeliers. These super heroes of wine not only know everything there is to know about wine, but have the temerity to be able to blindly taste a wine and identify; the grape variety, the country of origin, the region of origin, the appellation, the vintage and even the producer! I have seen them do it and there is no sleight of hand (tongue?) involved.

The Rating Tasting – Experienced tasters often rate wines on a scale. I have seen 100 point scales, 20 point scales, stars, clouds, x’s, +’s, words (Great, Very Good, Average, Fair, Poor), school grades (A-F). The idea is to compare different wines to each other. Often this is promoted as a service to consumers. Periodicals hire wine tasters to rate wines so we know what to buy. Often this tasting is combined with the ‘’analytical tasting’.

The Analytical Tasting - Here the professional writes their descriptive notes regarding a wine in order to communicate how a wine tastes through words. Unless we all agree on the definitions on those words (my pear aroma might be your quince) it can be challenging to understand it. These types of notes and tastings are best used by an individual for their own use, the one time that sharing is not the best thing. Reading tasting notes can be pretty boring.

Which brings us back to the Hedonistic tasting. Do you like the wine? How much do you like the wine. Enough to buy it? At The Grape all wines are available to try before you buy, no tasting notes or ratings by the experts telling you what to buy. Or what you should smell/taste in the wine.

E-nofile

The Grape announces the new 3sum ~ The Grape's 3-bottle case!

Hot Off The Grape Press:

The Grape announces the new 3sum ~ The Grape's 3-bottle case!

Purchase three wines of a kind from The Grape's selection of over 120 wines and enjoy a special case discount of up to 20%. Light weight and convenient for buying on the go, The Grape's 3sum allows you to enjoy full case savings on mere trios of your favorite vino. 3sums also make great gifts for friends and fellow wine lovers. Ask for a 3sum at The Grape Retail Seller nearest you.

Win A Cruise!

The Grape Experience with Travelocity - Visit The Grape at Pointe Orlando on Wednesday, January 24th, Wednesday, January 31st, and Wednesday, February 7th, join WLOQ from 7-9pm for live jazz and a chance to win a Travelocity prize pack. Everyone that comes out is automatically qualified to win a seven-night Western Caribbean cruise for two from Travelocity! Go here for more information: http://wloq-fm.fimc.net/article.asp?id=334581&spid

Twistin' The Night Away

It used to be a joke, “did that wine come with a cork or a screw cap?” And even though most consumers now accept screw caps for inexpensive wines, many still believe that a cork finish indicates a wine of higher quality. But just wait a minute there. Screw caps or ‘Stelvin closures’ as they are known in the trade, are used primarily to prevent cork taint rather than for economic reasons. Industry studies show that up to five percent of corks develop a compound known as 2-4-6 trichloranisole (TCA) which makes a wine smell musty or similar to wet cardboard. Imagine that accepting a 5% failure rate! More insidious to winemakers is the idea that a consumer may not recognize the off odors and flavors and decide they don’t like the wine and never buy it again. So the odds are if you have pulled corks on twenty wines at least one of them was tainted. More and more wineries are using Stelvin on their better quality wines. Try the Four Sisters Chardonnay, Merlot and Shiraz they use the Stelvin closures and you never have to worry about a corked wine.

*We need a nickname for this writer....suggestions welcome!

Wine Facts and Passion

Having been in the wine business since 1984 I have been very fortunate to taste some great wines (some awful ones as well), visit some spectacular locales, and to meet some of the most fascinatingly intriguing people across the winemaking world. Over the years I have heard all kinds of different questions regarding wine, its heritage, and its future......with that in mind I thought I might list some of my favorite "fun facts" about wine:

~ 1 full grape cluster produces enough wine for 1 glass
~ 1 full grape cluster contains approximately 75 grapes
~ 4 full grape clusters produce enough wine to fill a 750 ml bottle
~ A very vigorous and healthy vine can produce up to 40 clusters
~ A "barrel" of wine is usually 60 gallons
~ A "barrel" of wine contains approximately 25 cases of wine
~ Bottle sizes are defined as: Standard = 750ml, Magnum = 1.5 liters, Jeroboam = 3 liters, Rehoboam = 4.5 liters, Methuselah = 6 liters, Salmanazar = 9 liters (a whole
case of wine), Balthazar = 12 liters, Nebuchadnezzar = 15 liters of wine.

As you can tell I am passionate about all things wine.......fun facts, trivia, history, etc..... but what I am most passionate about when it comes to wine is the myriad of flavors and tastes that the wine world offers us on a daily basis. The great thing about my job is that wine changes everyday and that means a new experience of discovery every time I encounter wine. At The Grape, because "Your Taste is All That Counts", you have the opportunity to experience wine in new and exciting ways according to what you like, what you taste, and what you determine to be your favorite.......for that day of course because tomorrow will bring new experiences and adventures.

The Wine Maven

The Tasting

I Joined the Grape Team back in 2001. Today, I taste wine with 4 other wine pro’s and I tend to evaluate the quality and flavors of the wine at my desk, rather than the far off wine vineyards of Europe, South America, Australia, and South Africa. I just finished tasting an Italian American wine (that’s a Californian produced wine made with grapes you normally find in Italy). It’s so outstanding, I jumped up out of my chair (this never happens). Its rich fruit balanced by Mendocino soils and just enough oak, is amazing. The color is rich and dark, and it smells like heaven. The Il Montaggio as it is called will retail for about $50.00, one of our most expensive wines. The Grapes 3 Sum, our special three pack case, will cost just about $120.00. There are only 100 cases in the world, so stay connected to this blog to know the day it arrives.
The Wine Pusher (& Taster)

Trends

With New Years Eve having just passed and Valentine's Day right around the corner, many wine lovers thoughts continue to be pre-occupied with Sparkling wines and Champagne. One of the great wine trends that is developing in the United States is that people are drinking more and more Champagne, and no longer is it just a "special occasion" wine. Classified as an 8 Grape, Champagne is one of the most versatile wines produced in the world and has many styles that will pair wonderfully with different foods, for example: The De Venoge Cordon Bleu is a perfect match for the Atlantic Smoked Salmon appetizer, the De Venoge Brut Rose would stand up nicely with the Grape Mini Crab Cakes, and an outstanding dessert would be the De Venoge Demi-Sec with the Grape Senusal Chocolate fondue. What better way to have a memorable night out than an all champagne affair and to make celebrating an everyday occurrence!
*To learn about the history of Cordon Bleu Champagne from De Venoge click on the photo

Usher and The Grape: Two Great Brands Unite!

Entertainment Superstar Usher joins The Grape family. Click on the photo on the left to see a video about this exciting relationship.

*Photo credited to the AJC.

A Message From The Wine Pusher

Every day someone tells me of a wine they had that was the best wine ever. They continue to explain that they have been unable to find the same bottle or any other wine that might be nearly as good. My response to this statement is always “where were you when you had this extraordinary wine.” To this question I’ve heard everything from “On my honeymoon” to “At my retirement party.” The central line is, without exception, the wine was outstanding whilst having an extremely positive experience. Over the years I’ve recognized that the inverse is also true. For instance, “the wine at my in-laws is always awful, they serve cheap wine.” From these experiences I’ve learned two very valuable lessons. First, the environment at The Grape must be relaxing and enjoyable, with attentive and friendly staff. 2ed, the wine must be so outstanding, that the flavor and style of the wine overpowers the stressors of a long work day. This logic holds strong for this “Wine Pusher” (after years in the wine business my customers tend to introduce me to their friends and family as ‘The Pusher’). This afternoon, its already been a great day, I’m going to follow up with a glass of Zolo Torrantes. It’s a wine with lively fruit, and frankly its just refreshing. Normally I’d have just a single glass, but today I’m planning on two. Here's to having a great day and ending with a great wine!

Food and Wine Pairings

Too often people worry needlessly about food and wine pairing, the plain fact of the matter is that most foods go with most wines. There are glaring exceptions but quite often the issues are personal taste or individual chemistry. I once read about oysters and red wine, about 60% of the population found the pairing to be awful with a very metallic taste occurring and ruining the wine and the oyster, however the other 40% found nothing wrong with the wine and food combination. Here are a couple of experiments which help demonstrate the effect of wine and food on each other. Taste a very crisp, tart white wine (like our One Grape Chatelain Sancerre), then bite into a wedge of lemon, try the wine again and notice the apparent change in flavor of the wine. Next taste a very tannic, harsh red, a young cabernet for instance (Six Grape Zolo Cabernet), then bite into a green olive and try the wine again. Suddenly the wine tastes smooth and velvety. Here are some other experiments. Try a salty food like a blue veined cheese, with both a tannic red and a sweet white (One Grape Kreusch Spatlese Riesling). Any fruit with any wine, you will probably notice the wine does not taste as well, due to the sweetness and natural acidity of the fruit. When it comes to dessert items the types of wine to pairing with it are wines that are sweeter than the dessert. Try any dessert (The Grape Cheesecake) with a dry wine (Two Grape Mount Langi Pinot Gris) and you will immediately notice a bitter character in your mouth, or not, depending on Your Taste.

Red Wine Wonder Drug?

CNN recently did a study on the health benefits of red wine. See the video by clicking on the bottle of Oriel VQM on the left.

Sidenote: The Oriel VQM is one of our superstar red wines from South America