Events, Past and Present

John On Wine – Events, past and present

Originally published in the Ukiah Daily Journal newspaper on Thursday, September 18, 2014

Winesong was fun. If you aren’t familiar with Mendocino County’s largest wine event, Winesong is a three hour wine tasting followed by a spectacular auction and lunch, held at the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens as a benefit fundraiser for the Mendocino Coast Hospital Foundation.

These were the wines I poured during the tasting, we also donated wines for the lunch

With 1,800 guests tasting wines from over 125 producers and food samples from over 45 top purveyors from 11:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m., the mood was quite happy when the live auction began at 2:00 p.m., and the bidding was breathtaking.

I called Michael Coats, who handled PR for the event. He sent this note in return: “Bidders at the sold-out live auction helped raise significant funds, with a projected gross of over $650,000 coming in from the two-day event.  After covering production expenses, the Winesong net return will be used to assist the Mendocino Coast Hospital purchase needed equipment.  The highlight of the auction was the “Fund-A-Need” lot which brought in $174,000 in a matter of minutes, with nearly every paddle raised to donate a record amount toward the purchase of new and much needed Cardiology equipment!”

Congratulations to everyone involved, especially all of the volunteers, who made this event a spectacular success.

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If you were not at this year’s annual Testa Blending Party, you missed a great time. Maria Testa Martinson is a wonderful hostess, and her husband Rusty is as good as it gets around a barbecue grill. The wine is famously good, and the food, catered by Bella Ciba, paired perfectly. McKenna Faith is a gem, Ukiah raised a genuine star, and with her band she served up a healthy dose of great music.

There were 25 tables full of happy party guests, and each table created their own blend using Testa’s 2013 vintage reds: Cabernet Sauvignon, Petite Sirah, Zinfandel, and Carignane. I sat with judges John Buechsenstein, John Dickerson, and Heidi Cusick Dickerson. Heidi wrote this column before I did, and will be returning to the UDJ (hurray!) to write a new column about Leadership Mendocino.

This was a table filled with talent; I sat there too

I tasted through the 25 blends with John B. and John D., and we each picked our top seven. Next we found that there were five wines that two or more of us had in common on our top seven lists. Heidi joined us as we retasted those five, we each ordered them from top to bottom, and averaged our results.

My top five order was coincidentally the same order that averaging our judge rankings yielded, which may suggest that I have a spectacularly average palate. Seriously, we agreed on almost all the best, except one notable exception, where a wine I gave a “yes” to was a wine that received a “Hell no” from John B., who had the best palate in Calpella that night.

The 2013 Testa Black SIX, inspired by the night’s winning blend, is going to be delicious. You will also want to make a note to grab up some 2013 Testa Carignane when it is released; light, bursting with strawberry, cherry, and raspberry, all four judges loved it as a base wine, unblended.
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I visited Campovida in Hopland, while owners Gary Breen and Anna Beuselinck were celebrating their 11^th anniversary together, and I wandered their property.

The grounds of Campovida, site the old Fetzer Valley Oaks Hospitality Center, were immaculate. I keep forgetting to pick up my prize from a “where is our winemaker Sebastian in this picture” contest win, but I was rewarded with a lovely and calming walk through the restored gardens, around the renovated buildings, and by the remarkably pristine lawns beside the beckoning bocce courts. Of particular visual interest were the teepees set up in an open field behind the winery area, as they made me think of earlier inhabitants of the property.

DO Lecture Teepees

Campovida will be hosting The DO Lectures in Hopland again, beginning today, September 18, 2014, and running through September 21, 2014; the property is shining in readiness.

Ross Beese, producer of this year’s Do Lecture USA wrote to me and shared more about the event, “The DO Lectures is a four day intimate experience filled with inspirational talks, hands on workshops and long conversations over shared farm fresh meals.  We keep the experience to an intimate 100 folks with only 15 speakers/50 attendees and the rest are volunteers.

It is a volunteer run organization founded in the UK, with events now in the USA and Australia. It has been named one of the top 10 idea conferences in the world by the Financial Times and by Brain Pickings.  So for now we are gathering an incredible group of speakers, athletes, musicians, artists, cowboys, entrepreneurs, poets…in general DOers.

There are some fascinating people speaking and attending this year – from the Award winning local chef John Ash to the Hollywood Screenplay Writer and Director Peter Farrelly (dumb and dumber, There’s Something About Mary) to Tom De Blasis (Design Innovation Director – Nike Foundation) Maria Popova (@brainpickings) and Zach Klein (co-founder of Vimeo, now founder of DIY) plus 12 other inspiring speakers and 40 amazing attendees that could be speakers.”

I wish the Doers a great time when visiting Mendocino County this week. A reminder for the lecturers, In Vino Veritas, and a wish, may all your conversations here in wine country ring with truth.