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| Volume 3, Number 5 |
December 20, 2012 |
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Dear Culinary Friends,
Looking for a spectacular celebration to start off the New Year in style? Or for the perfect gift for a spouse, lover, teenager, grandfather, best friend, newlywed?
With Christmas just a skip and a jump away, we have a whole array of treasures to offer you or your loved ones. As the culinary arts can serve to guide us throughout our entire year, what better token than a gift of gustative travel or a hands-on do-it-yourself session, or yet again an elegant wine experience?
Pause right now to pour a glass of your favorite beverage and browse the options below. I hope you will join us along the culinary trail...
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| Asheville Wine Experience Réveillon |
The Asheville Wine Experience will launch at long last on New Year’s Eve, December 31st, with the first in a series of ultimate dining experiences, combining a wine expert with a top chef in a spectacular location to elevate your senses to the utmost. So don your most elegant attire and join us as we welcome in 2013 with a stellar selection of players!
Chef Denny Trantham and Wine Expert Kevin Schwartz, both long-time revolutionary presences at the Grove Park Inn, will be joining forces for a luxurious French-style réveillon, each dish corresponding with a sigh for the year behind and a wish for the year ahead, in an exclusive tenth floor suite at the Hotel Indigo.
From 8pm till midnight, ten courses will be served, along with five exceptional wines, to the musical illustrations of celebrated jazz vibraphonist Paul Babelay. A spectacular view of Asheville will stretch out below you and if you register on or before Christmas Eve, you will have the possibility, through a one-time drawing, of being awarded your own night at the Indigo.
Benefits will go towards creating a scholarship for 12-21 year old youths seeking culinary and taste education. The number of spaces is limited, so reserve quickly! For further information, visit www.ashevillewineexperience, or contact ashevillewineexperience@gmail.com 828-301-2792 / 828-777-8916.
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Paris at any time of year is magic. In June, the poppies are in full splendor, silhouetted against fields of golden wheat from which the baguettes whose fragrance reels you in at every street corner are fashioned.
Come join us for 4 days of discovery (June 26-29, 2013), with market strolls, wine tastings, hands-on culinary sessions, bistro jaunts, and exploration of one of the most beautiful cities on the planet, with a token expedition into the countryside as well. To find out more, visit our website.
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| Asheville, Heart of Appalachia |
Our stellar week in Asheville (July 14-20, 2013) will involve, as always, the top chefs of Western North Carolina, coupled with renowned wine experts, and a surrounding that is pastoral, flanked by blue mountains, and reeling with music and dance as a backdrop.
Our theme for 2013 will revolve around the riches of Appalachia and how they define who we are while providing us with tremendous resources from which we may help inspire a world of food enthusiasts, rethinking all that we know and love.
Each day centers around a 3-hour class with master chefs, a gourmet lunch, and a wine tasting afternoon/evening session. The music in the background will be the drone of bagpipes and the lilt of flute and fiddle, as the Swannanoa Gathering's Celtic Week enhances the colors on our plates. Culinary students are welcome to join in evening festivities which last often until dawn breaks over the hill.
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The Finger Lakes region of New York is swiftly becoming one of THE places to be if food and wine and farming is your passion. With more than 90 wineries flanking the shores of glacially-carved lakes, and the delightfully quaint college town of Ithaca which has more restaurants per capita than New York City, if you haven't yet discovered this pocket of the country, it's time you joined us. And if you have, and just want more of a good thing in the company of other enthusiasts during the height of fall coloring (October 2-5, 2013), you're on the right track as well!
Visit our website for an idea of places we will explore.
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Ah, Sonoma! The rolling hills which range from reminiscent of the Scottish Highlands to redolent of the South of France...only footsteps away from San Francisco, through a corridor of redwoods, there are wines, cheeses, oysters, and olives a-plenty, all cultivated in the space of one of the most diverse counties on the globe.
Wine lovers who have already discovered Napa or who seek a more personal introduction to California's wines must visit the richness of Sonoma's terroirs before their time is up. From December 4-7, 2013 we'll explore vineyards, creameries, markets, and oyster farms, and we'll enter wine-makers' domains, indulge in hands-on sessions with local chefs, savor pinot until we can tell the difference between grapes grown on the coast and those grown further inland, and marvel at all this country has to offer if only we are ready to taste!
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Looking for a material gift to round out the stocking? You might want to consider a selection of specially chosen knives in a streamlined SSCA knife wrap to give your kitchen an extra touch of class. Or a trilogy of cookbooks to color up your shelves. Or yet again an SSCA apron in a lovely shade of green or a blue brushed cotton SSCA cap to add a little jaunt to your look. Visit our website to simplify your Christmas quandaries!
Looking forward to seeing you at one of our wondrous events ahead...
Cheers, and may the closing of the old year and beginning of a new bring you much joy,
Susi
828-301-2792
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