Autumn is just around the corner, and so is one of the Wine Road’s premier tasting events—Wine & Food Affair on November 5th & 6th.
Picture yourself meandering along vineyard-lined roads with the autumn sun illuminating the vines bursting with fall colors. Each tasting room visit rewards you with delicious wine and food pairings, plus additional wines to savor. This is Wine & Food Affair, and why it’s such a beloved event. Add in the bonus of cooler weather so stocking your car with wine isn’t a concern, and you now have the perfect weekend getaway.
The Wine & Food Affair of Olde
Wine & Food Affair 2022 returns to wine tasting as before. You’ll select a winery to start your adventure, and from there onward, where you go and how long you stay at each winery is decided by you, in the moment. Unlike last year, you won’t have to select all your stops when you purchase your tickets and stay on a predetermined timetable. It’s always good to have a wine tasting path in mind, but you can now be spontaneous and change course on a whim.
Useful Information
The Wine Road’s website offers plenty of information to help you plan ahead and learn all the options for the weekend. This year some wineries will be offering an event on Friday night, like Live Music at Baldassari Wines, or a Sunset Cabernet Library tasting with the winemaker at West Wines.
Wineries also have special activities during the weekend. Balletto Vineyards is offering vineyard tours, and at Merriam Vineyards, you can have a vineyard and winery tour. Other wineries have opportunities for you to meet their winemaker or their chef. Pech Merle Winery is offering a seminar both Saturday and Sunday on How to Build a Wine Cave.
Let’s Explore
I’m a planner who often changes course when presented with updated information. Looking through the online Wine & Food Affair program gives me the option to make a flexible plan for the weekend.
The first things I noticed in the program are a few new wineries I need to check out, and they are close to each other so they will be easy to fit in to my weekend wine tasting exploration. Bellacana Vineyards has a tasting room in the town of Windsor just a few doors away from several other participating wineries. After Bellacana, it’s just a quick walk to Baldassari Wines. A few blocks further, in a shared tasting room, you can check out Mengler Family Wines and J. Cage Cellars, who are also fairly new wineries along the Wine Road.
After checking out the wineries around the Windsor Town Green, it’s a quick five-minute drive to Bucher Wines, whose tasting room is located at the Grand Cru winery collective. Bucher specializes in estate-grown Pinot Noir from the Middle Reach of the Russian River Valley appellation. I’m intrigued to try their pairing of turkey sliders with Bucher Pinot Noir cranberry relish. Always looking for new recipes for Thanksgiving.
Tantalizing Food Pairings
The Wine & Food Affair program not only lists participating wineries and their locations, it also tells you the food each winery is serving, and it makes me hungry just reading through it. Here are just a few highlights, for every winery has a great pairing:
Fancy Loaded Tater-Tots at Bowman Cellars – Can’t wait to try them!
Tati’s Lasagna at Colagrossi Wines – Any easy stop between the wineries at the Windsor Town Green and Bucher Wines.
Miniature Sausage Rolls from BurtoNZ Bakery at Zouzounis Wines – These sausage rolls are legendary with the locals, and Zouzounis is on the way to Colagrossi Wines!
Pizza at Bellacana Vineyards, D’Argenzio Winery, Longboard Vineyards, Orsi Family Vineyards, and Ramazzotti Wines – Each winery will have a different type of pizza so you can enjoy comparing and contrasting the pizza styles.
Masa Harina Waffle with berries and crème fraiche at Stephen & Walker – Not a typical pairing, but sounds delicious!
Mushroom Cauliflower Bolognese Crostini at Amista Vineyards – Just too interesting not to mention.
These are just a few of the many, many food offerings. When you peruse the program, you’ll find plenty of beef, pork, veal, turkey, chicken, and lamb dishes, as well as vegetarian options, a few soups, spring rolls, sausages, and tacos. So many great food pairing to try with fabulous wines, it’s going to be tough to decide where to go.
Event Map
Even if you aren’t familiar with where the wineries are located, the Wine Road website offers an excellent online map just for Wine & Food Affair. The wineries are color coded by appellation, and using this map will help you determine how far apart your destination wineries are located, and what would be the most sensible path.
Even if you aren’t familiar with where the wineries are located, the Wine Road website offers an excellent online map just for Wine & Food Affair. The wineries are color coded by appellation, and using this map will help you determine how far apart your destination wineries are located, and what would be the most sensible path.
Keep in mind, some rural portions of Sonoma County have very spotty cell service. If you don’t already have a Wine Road map, be sure to pick one up at your check-in winery to help you guide you when your phone shows no bars.
Past Wine & Food Affair Pairing Recipes
All the food pairings served at Wine & Food Affair from 2013 through 2019 are located in a fabulous online recipe database. Last month’s blog, In Pursuit of the Perfect Recipe (and Pairing), took a closer look into the recipes available in Wine & Food Affair recipe database. The most amazing part of the recipe database is all the ways you can search for recipes — by categories such as appetizers, soups, main dish, desserts, and more. The database also allows for searching by main ingredients, by wine pairings, and by the winery or lodging that submitted the recipe. Finding vegetarian or gluten-free recipes is also a breeze for each has their own searchable field.
Tickets
If you’re ready to sip and savor along the Wine Road once again, or for the first time, be sure to get your tickets now! Advance ticket sales end on October 31st, and there are no ticket sales during the event weekend. Hope to see you there.
Happy Sipping!
