Oh, yes, and eating dinner at with Neal & Janice at their Rockn’ N B&B. You can’t be too busy to spend time with friends. Isn’t that just beautiful? Tonight was a wonderful evening there.

But – I was suddenly motivated today when I read about yet another great restaurant that is adding not only Texas wine to their wine list but wine made from grapes from Bingham Family Vineyards. If you live close to Houston, you should check out Dolce Vita Pizzeria Enoteca and have a glass of Duchman Family Winery Trebbiano while you are there.

They serve Italian wines, so the Trebbiano is a natural. And if you don’t live close to Houston you can check out the Duchman Family Winery to order some Trebbiano. Duchman also has our Viognier, Vermentino, and you cannot forget their double gold medal winner at the San Francisco International Wine Competition, 2008 Dolcetto. We really liked growing that Dolcetto grape.

Blessings,

Betty

The dinner was held in a building at the winery that is used to host special wine tastings.

What a beautiful setting.

Beautiful and enchanting…

Good friends were there…

Wonderful food and lots of barrels. Isn’t that just one of the most beautiful backdrops for decorating that you have ever seen! I didn’t even start to count how many barrels of wine are stored there. But I do love walking by and seeing one with “Bingham” written on it.

Back to the food. My mother taught me to not take more food than I can eat, so here was my plate.

Here is My Honey’s plate. His mother taught him the same thing, and he ate everything on his plate. I can vouch for him. It was delicious!

It was so delicious that I went back for seconds. Yum!

We had the pleasant company of Becker people and other grape growers.

Robert spoke to everyone and encouraged us for working together to make really great wine.

Brett agreed.

Then we ended with wonderful pies with Becker port and Clementine. The Clementine has our late harvested Viognier grapes in it

Wonderful and enjoyable evening. Thank you, Robert & Bunny, and the whole crew at Becker!

Blessings,

Betty

I like New York. I haven’t been there in over 40 something years, but way back when, I actually lived there. I was two or three at the time; but hey, I actually did live there.

I even have a picture of the house we lived in. My sister was recently visiting New York and drove by our old home to take a picture. It really is a cute little thing, isn’t it? I lived there with my mom and dad and two sisters and a brother. At least that’s what I been told. I really don’t remember the house at all.

So on to things that I do remember. The Gridiron Classic was really such a great way to get to experience some New York wines without going all the way there. Actually that was one of the critiques of the whole affair was that there were many wines from New York that we couldn’t put into the tasting because of the laws regulating buying wines and taking them across state lines.

My Honey and I made it through Dallas traffic just in time to make it to the start. Seems like there were lots of people driving to the actual New York Giants vs. Dallas Cowboys football game that night and not just to the taste-off. But we wanted to make it to the New York vs. Texas wine taste off. Doesn’t that sound like more fun? There was a big screen TV in the background to keep everyone up to date with the game.

Then we had this massive task in front of us. The wines were paired either by varietals or by similar types of varietals. There were eleven wines from each state. That made for 22 wines to taste!

We would taste the two wines up against each other, one Texas and one New York, and then we would take a vote choosing the best between the two. Texas did have the home turf advantage since there were more Texans tasting than New Yorkers.

Then the results were tallied on the board. The scores ended up being Texas 8 and New York 3. Texas winning by a landslide! But then remember that Texas did have the home field advantage.

We grew grapes that made the Duchman Dolcetto and the Brennan Viognier. Each of these wines won their prospective categories.

There was Russ Kane and Jeff Siegel hard at work.

This was a blind tasting, so Jeff would announce each wine after the votes were tallied.

Here we have Fred LeBrun from Albany Times Union, Jeff Siegel of The Wine Curmudgeon and DrinkLocalWine.com, Jim Trezise the president of the New York Wine & Grape Foundation, Texas wine blogger Russ Kane, and Richard Leahy of Richard Leahy’s Wine Report.

This was a wonderful learning experience for me to actually be there, but there are so many great writers telling the tale. So, next time you’re ready to sit back and enjoy a great Texas wine, why don’t you read some of their thoughts and descriptions about the 2010 Grape and Gridiron classic?

Russ Kane – Vintage Texas:

http://vintagetexas.com/blog/?p=2624

Dallas Observer:

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/cityofate/2010/10/how_bout_the_wineboys_at_least.php

Sidedish from DMagazine:

http://sidedish.dmagazine.com/2010/10/26/texas-trounces-new-york-in-monday-nights-grape-gridiron-face-off/

Wine Curmudgeon (Wine as a Spectator Sport/Texas, New York and regional wine):

http://www.winecurmudgeon.com/my_weblog/2010/10/texas-8-new-york-3.html

http://www.winecurmudgeon.com/my_weblog/2010/10/texas-new-york-and-regional-wine.html

Richard Leahy’s Wine Report:

http://www.richardleahy.com/2010/10/28/texas-wine-beats-new-york-8-3-in-dallas-blind-tasting/

Duchman Family Winery Dolcetto (that is made with Bingham Family Vineyards grapes!)

http://duchmanfamilywinery.com/2010/10/26/duchman-family-dolcetto-helps-texas-to-beat-new-york-in-grape-gridiron-classic/

News Release from the Texas Department of Agriculture:

http://www.texasagriculture.gov/agr/media/media_render/0,1460,1848_17053_41126_0,00.ht

Dallas Morning News business:

http://m.dallasnews.com/tdmn/db_20958/contentdetail.htm;jsessionid=4C4C814FBE740C99CD8EB9E936311C8B?contentguid=HWqzfwMo&detailindex=2&pn=0&ps=3&full=true

Blessings,

Betty