LOVE AND MERITAGE WINE BLENDING PARTY
Greeting and thanks very much for stopping in today for my Love and Meritage Wine Blending Party.
Last year for Valentine’s Day Brad and I joined our dear friends, Lisa & Tony, in Healdsburg, CA for a really fun weekend. I waited until now, a year later, to tell you about it so you too might plan a similar Valentine’s Day celebration this year. It’s a Love & Meritage Blending Party put on by Topel Winery. This year, the 9th annual event will be held on Sunday, February 12th at 12 noon. Sorry for the last minute notice, but if you live in Northern California or plan to be in Sonoma County and wish to attend, you’ll have to make your reservation today, the last day to register for this very special event.
Last year the event was held at the charming Hotel Healdsburg, but this year I’m really wishing I could go because it’s being held in the winery’s own Barrel Room. They’ve hired the wonderful Gerard’s Paella to cater the event. Gerard makes fantastic and authentic Paella, so good that he beat Bobby Flay in a Paella Making Throwdown. I know it’s good because Girard catered my son’s wedding rehearsal dinner and we enjoyed the best Paella I’ve ever eaten outside of Spain.
In any event, let me show you what Topel’s Love and Meritage Wine Blending Party is all about. We arrived to find we had been assigned to a table of 4 couples. They had decorated the tables with silly Valentine trinkets that we actually had fun playing with.
We were then introduced to Donnis & Mark Topel, the delightful owners of Topel Winery. Mark talked to us about the art of blending wine and introduced us to the wines we would be working with. He then set us loose to create our very own special blend. Each couple was given all the paraphernalia needed to measure & mix using 3 different bulk wines from Topel’s Meritage collection of red Bordeaux-style wines.
Beakers of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah were provided for our blending pleasure. The idea was to mix various ratios of the 3 varieties of wine, taste each blend and then decide which blend was our favorite.
Measuring by the milliliter and making a fairly good mess of things, we carefully recorded our trials 1, 2 and 3. We eventually decided that a 50/50 blend of Cabernet and Syrah was our favorite. It surprised me because normally Merlot is my preferred red wine.
Lunch was served, wine was consumed and lively conversation made for a very enjoyable way to celebrate Valentine’s Day with my hubby, old friends and the new friends we made that day. At the conclusion of the blending session each couple was invited to watch as a bottle of their very own blend was prepared as a souvenir to take home.
Using our own recipe the wines were carefully poured into a bottle.
A cork was inserted…
and was topped off by a foil cap.
Our bottle was then personalized with our own Celia & Brad labels, as was the bottle for our friends, Lisa & Tony.
In addition to going home with our special bottle of wine, Donnis Topel handed out personalized Valentine cakes and heart shaped marshmallows dipped in chocolate as delicious and decadent Valentine’s Day party favors.
We liked our blend so much that we ordered another 6 bottles to be prepared and shipped to our home. Since then we have shared a bottle with family at Christmas, and given a bottle to Brad’s sister for her birthday. Everyone loved it!
I must say our Love and Meritage Wine Blending Party surely was one of the most enjoyable and memorable Valentine’s Days I’ve ever spent. I really wish we were going again this year! If you’d like to attend you can reserve here:
donnis@topelwines.com
phone: 707-433-4116
The event date is Sunday, February 12th
Reservations are required no later than today!
Cost is: $75/person; $100/couple. This price includes your own bottle of blended wine to take home.
So there you have it: LOVE AND MERITAGE WINE BLENDING PARTY
Thanks so much for dropping in!
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All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Unless otherwise noted, all photos are the original property of Celia Becker @ www.AfterOrangeCounty.com and may not be reproduced without specific permission.
