How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Live Blogging - For #IFBC17

Charge your devices Find a WiFi Backup

Sacramento is once again the host of the 2017 International Food Blogger Conference.  This little blogger is so excited to get to see, taste, explore and lucubrate all the bounty the conference organizers have gathered.

The agenda item I am most excited about is the Live Food Blogging.  With nine years of past attendance at the Wine Bloggers Conference, I have learned to love that portion of the event.  It wasn't always the case.

How I learned to stop worrying and love Live Blogging...

Keuka Springs Gewurtz has a fun evangelist

Here are some quick Live Blogging Survival Tips:
1, First, make sure you have your devices with you and they are charged.  A handy thing to have is a device with cell service or Mifi in case the conference center infrastructure gets hit with too many tweets flying out at once.

2, Second make sure you have a stack of business cards handy.  Since the time with the producers is so limited, it's great to have an easy way to make a connection.

3. IFBC put the names of confirmed presenters on the website at this handy link. Take a sec and follow them now, and as a bonus you can get a sense of what they are doing currently.  It also makes it easier to tweet/Instagram/Facebook later.

4. Fifty minutes. Ten presenters.  Five minutes per visit means it will go by superfast.  Some presenters are naturally good at this format.  They come with signs

Life goes by fast.  Live blogging is supersonic!

imprinted with their soc media info and offer hashtags they would love for you to amplify.  Others need some coaxing .  They are experts in their field, but today, they are running the gauntlet of all our splendid blogger diversity.  Others know exactly what they want to present and have fun doing it.

5. Get a table rhythm going.  Hopefully one that doesn't savage the presenters.  No one likes a "MeanGirl". I mean unless that's your thing...no judgment... #judgment,  For the record I sometimes buy Bandit Wine after seeing the Bandit rep expertly handle some drunk, obnoxious wine bloggers. She knew her stuff!

Post like the smartest person you know

6, It can be hard to know what to post.  Some of the presenters may be focused in areas not of interest to your audience.  Whether you are a promoter or a critic, a nice picture and a snappy update are usually easy to find. After all, these passionate producers invested in connecting with us and our audiences. Find something new or fun or interesting. take a snap and post.

7, With live wine blogging, tasting lineups might range from dessert wine to a Pinotage to a cult Cabernet; this has given me vinous whiplash.   No hours at home to sip, swish and repeat. Just a few minutes to listen, experience, learn and comment.  It challenged me to quickly sample and comment even more quickly.  Be prepared to move fast.

I am very curious to see if live blogging wine and food together is easier or harder.  Mostly I am looking forward to seeing all the tweets/grams/posts. And also to seeing all the attendees.  See you in SMF!

If you're doing it right, it gets messy

Happy 5778! Celebrate with Kosher Rosé from Baron Herzog

Baron Herzog Rosé of Cab Sauv $10 Kosher Wine

 Shana Tova! Or Happy New Year.   Wednesday 9/20/17 at sundown marks the start of the Jewish New Year celebration known as Rosh Hashana.   Jewish people throughout the world celebrate the new year with sweet foods, a visit to the synagogue and hearing the shofar.  The Shofar is a horn that is blown with a dramatic and somewhat plaintive call during High Holiday service.

As  gentiles and Jews alike,  we ring in the  new calendar year with one evening of drunken revels and the regret of a (sometimes painful) hangover the very next day.

The Jewish religion also celebrates Rosh Hashana. This opening of the New Year chased ten days later with Yom Kippur, an official day of atonement, gives celebrants a goodly slice of time to consider their year and how to make 5778 their best year ever.

Knowing how I run around on December 30th, I wanted to offer a short cut to a delicious Kosher wine and a wonderful salad to help you if you are doing the same on Rosh Hashana Eve, or if you are just curious about a great rosé.

Rosé of Cabernet Sauvignon, Baron Herzog Wines, California - 2016 ($11) Made from Cabernet Sauvignon grapes, this wine is a watermelon pink, my favorite for celebrations.  With aromas of red fruit and and subtle strawberry notes in both aromas and flavors.  The wine has a freshness with an enlivening tartness that I enjoyed both as an aperitif as well as with charcuterie. This time of year, when in the SF Bay Area we never know if it's going to be rainy, foggy, or broasting hot, rosé is a great choice both to welcome guests and to pair with food.   We agreed the the wine would have both held up to more substantial fare, as well as had the freshness to pair with salad.  I love a versatile, pretty wine for less than $10!

 Herzog Cellars currently located in Oxnard, CA, makes only  Kosher wines.  They have an amazing story of tenacity and survival spanning  six centuries and many countries.  Having escaped the Nazis, the Herzog family landed in New York in the late '40's.  Initially Baron Philip produced  both Kosher as well as non-Kosher wines.  With dedication and investment, the Herzog family worked together to shape Royal Wines into production of European style wines, .  Eventually they gravitated to California in the mid '80's, where they currently produce delicious wines that are also Kosher.  I throw around the phrase "history in a bottle" like a punchline, but in this case, the interesting, sometimes poignant, story flavored the wine for me.  I hope you get a chance to try some.

I recently had a life changingly good salad when Nancy Silverton took over the kitchen in San Francisco's Cotogna.  If you have seen the Netflix series, "Chef's Table" featuring Nancy, you cannot help but crave an opportunity to try her food.  Her new cookbook "The Mozza CookBook" features recipes that enable the home cook to recreate these delectable dishes in the context of Nancy's experiences in SoCal and Italy.  Lots of yummy, deceptively simple dishes where what you invest in prep time and pursuit of the best ingredients pays off in ease-filled entertaining.

 While the full recipe for the salad is only in the book, the ingredients for the salad dressing are online here.

Find and arrange the freshest, tender squashes you can and marinate them in the ingredients.  One tip from the book, add fresh oregano right before serving. Since honey is the flavor enabler to coax out the sweetness of the squashes, it's a perfect dish for Rosh Hashana.

Part of the Rosh Hashana celebration involves eating apple slices dipped in honey to symbolize wishing your fellow celebrants sweetness in the upcoming year.  Honey is an ancient food and consuming it connects us with the past as it wishes us good things to come in the future.  We can all use a great salad, a fun, sub-$10 rosé, and a wish for sweet blessings in the year to come.

Shana tova!

I received this wine as a sample

Southern Indian Food and Rias Baixas Albariño - Perfect Pairs at Dosa-SF

Dosa in San Francisco's Fillmore District is an airy, elegant restaurant that focuses on Indian cuisine.  The balance of Indian dishes with heat and sour and tang and sweet compels me to eat, but not so much to pair with wine.  Finding wines to handle that challenge is usually to drink beer---not that there's anything wrong with that.  Indian cuisine has a history going back seven thousand years and spanning a huge country, whose culture has not always been wine friendly.  And given the climate, my first rule of wine pairing "Grows with ...goes with" doesn't apply either.  I was most excited to attend the Rias Baixas lunch to see what would happen.

Turns out, an amazingly tasty ringer was waiting to be discovered: Albariño from Spain's Rias Baixas region.  Typically this wine is low in alcohol, redolent with minerality, and fruity.

Master Somm, Yoon Ha of Benu teamed with Dosa Wine Director Todd Smith to fine tune the pairings and showcase the possibilities.  Todd has a love of Indian cuisine and skill with wine.  He gave us a master class on Southern Indian food styles the best way possible, by serving it.  We could tell the pair enjoyed the exercise of bringing the wines into focus with the specific food of Southern India.

The first item brought out was called "bread and water" in which a crispy husk of dumpling was filled with tamarind-cilantro chili water.  For once I paid attention and devoured the flavorful concoction in one bite.  A flavor explosion ensued with the tangy sweet, brightly herbal, spicy water matched with the texture of the dumpling.

Dish after dish of texturally interesting, exotically spiced delights came out in waves.  Initially I was skeptical during Yoon Ha's presentation, but when I tried the wines, good, great and synergistic matches happened.

The Eponymous Dosa

Savory Shrimp

Classic Wada

Spicy Scallops

Some of these contain more than forty ingredients, so these wines got put through their paces.  Many are easy to find and will be on my summer rotation

First a little about the region.  Rais Baixas located in Galicia it has a maritime climate with lots of rainfall and lots of sun, each in balance at the right season for grapes.  The soils are great with lots of granite.  99% of the wines from the Denominacion de Origen (DO) are white.  And the thick skinned, scrappy, and we found delicious, Albariño, is key variety.  The Tastemakers brought some great Albariños:

Martin Codax 2015 ($15): Aromas of apricot, subtle yeasty notes, freshness and apple.  Full bodied but still bright and refreshing with a kick of honey in the midpalate and a long apricot finish.  2g/l of residual sugar made this wine sing with the spicier dishes.

Pazo de Señorans - 2015 ($21) Aromas of apple, papaya with lime, honeysuckle and yellow grapefruit.  Freshness was the topnote in aromas and flavors.  It managed to be rich and crisp at the same time.A pleasant floral herbal note in the finish and no leesiness.  Medium plus body with an apricot laden finish.

Mar de Frades, Ramon Bilbao - 2015 ($14) This wine had a brightness with vinous aromas along with jasmine, apricot and coconut.  Nice complexity marked by a touch of sourness that really helped cement the pairings. Round texture with a hint of salinity in finish, I found it to be a wine I kept going back to try more.

Bodegas Vionta, You and Me - 2015 ($18) Aromas of white flowers, honey and stonefruit.  Bright with acidity and rich in texture but lithe, this wine has a pleasant bitterness in the finish, which makes diners go back for another bite, says Todd.

Valmiñor - 2015 ($14) This wine was more of a medium yellow, which was darker than the paler colors of the previous wines.  Aromas were pear and bay leaves.  Flavors were apricot, yellow grapefruit, an touch of beer-iness and a flash of green.  A full bodies wine with an unctuous texture, it held apricot and a surprise: Maldon salt in the finish.

Pazo San Mauro - 2015 ($18)  Medium yellow color.  Vinous aromas.  Full texture but shot through with the most pronounced acidity of the batch

Pairing these wonderful wines with such exotic tastes was a great experience.  Look for Albariños from Rias Baixas next time you order in.  Or better yet, make time to visit Dosa and taste their expertly prepared food stylings.

Many thanks to Gregory White PR for hosting the lunch.