Events
Wine, beer, and whiskey are all poured frequently at events held around the globe, and here at Drinkhacker we tend to patronize many of them. This category offers our tasting reports from these events — as well as announcements of upcoming events that you the reader may be interested in attending. Watch especially for discount codes and freebies, which we often cross-post to our Contests section.
Top Events Posts:
Tasting Report: Bourbon & Beyond 2018
Tasting Report: WhiskyFest San Francisco 2018
Tasting Report: Bordeaux and Sauternes, 2015 Vintage
Wine events are a dime a dozen, particularly in Northern California, but Matter of Taste, launched in 2014 by Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, is something worth your consideration. The idea is simple: With a focus on (but not exclusive to) Pinot Noir and Chardonnay from California, Oregon, and New Zealand, every wine poured at the…
It was another unforgettable year at 2015’s WhiskyFest, with some of whiskydom’s most cherished icons on tap for tasting, and plenty of old friends to mingle and catch up with. Of course, many of those old friends come in liquid form, and I had ample opportunity to revisit plenty of classic whiskies while spending time…
If you’re a fan of Jordan, you need to make a point to get out to the winery during harvest season, when the winery puts on its annual series of harvest lunches, beautiful buffet spreads that pair well with Jordan’s signature chardonnay and cabernet. I recently attended lunch here — the final harvest lunch of…
The West of West Wine Festival is all about wine at its westernmost terminus in the United States: The Sonoma Coast, where dense fog and craggy conditions make growing conditions ripe only for a few prized varietals — chardonnay, pinot noir, and syrah. Recently I spent an afternoon at the WoW grand tasting, working through dozens…
What, you’re not drinking Lugana wines every night? You can be forgiven if the name doesn’t ring a bell. Lugana is a tiny region in the north of the country, nestled between the better-known areas of Lombardia and the Veneto, snug against the southern shores of Lake Garda, the largest lake in Italy. It’s here…
This year marked my sixth consecutive in attendance at Whiskies of the World, a fantastic event that’s typically held on the San Francisco Belle paddleboat, docked in San Francisco Bay. I asked organizer Douglas Smith why it seemed so empty this year, and he told me it was an optical illusion: He pushed the distilleries’…
If you like good pinot noir, there’s one wine tasting experience you don’t want to miss: In Pursuit of Balance, a consortium of producers who eschew overblown, extracted wines in favor of more delicate, nuanced wines that show off what pinot (and its Burgundian cousin, chardonnay) can really taste like. Only pinot and chardonnay are…
Cheese and wine (and beer) go hand in hand (in hand), so putting these together on a balmy March evening in Petaluma, California, made perfect sense to me. Recently I attended the California Artisan Cheese Festival’s “Chef vs. Chef – The Best Bite” competition, where about 20 restaurants vied to woo the public each offering…
The annual “Above the Fog” tasting of wines from Napa’s decidedly inhospitable Howell Mountain region is a showcase for some of the most luxurious — and expensive — wines produced in California. This year producers showed off a wide range of bottlings ranging from 2009 to 2012 releases — with some library wines thrown in…
Like wining and dining? There’s another way to do it aside from booking a table at a restaurant and driving from one winery to another. Event’s like the Taste of Yountville, part of the Yountville Live! extravaganza, give you the chance to nibble and tipple in the confines of a few city blocks. Recently I…