As my most favorite of Pinot Noir loving friends who read this blog — all 3 of you — you can save $80 off a ticket to attend The 10th Pinot Noir Summit if you act now.  The 10th Pinot Noir Summit will once again be held at the Hilton San Francisco Financial District on February 25, 2012.  Last year was the first time I attended and this year I also participated as a judge.  The Pinot Noir Summit is unique in that this event is where the attendees become the judges and “pit their palates against the expert panel.” The Showdown consists of the 40 top wines from 50+ different appellations.  The rest of day consists of workshops conducted by winemakers, viticulturalists and wine educators.

If you use my Insider’s Discount Code below you can receive 50% off the published price. No one will have better priced tickets, ever.

There are 2 types of tickets available:

• All Day Ticket including The Showdown, Workshop, Sparkling Wine Reception, and Grand Awards Tasting & Ceremony ($130 Full Price – $100 until February 1st)
• Grand Awards Tasting & Ceremony Only ($85 Full Price)

If you buy tickets to the All Day Summit before February 1st, you can save $80 per ticket (YOUR cost is only $50!).

To purchase tickets to The 10th Annual Pinot Noir Summit click here, or enter http://affairsofthevine.com/shop/

Use my Insiders Discount Code: PNS50 to receive 50% discount.  The discount code is in effect now through February 18th.  You must click on Apply Discount Code and enter PNS50 to receive the discount.  At that time, if the event is not sold out, all tickets sold will be at full price.

You’re welcome.

AGENDA:

Full Day: 1:30-8:30 PM
Pinot Noir Showdown ~ A Blind Tasting
1:30-4:00 PM ~ A distinctly different format and atmosphere from other wine-tasting events, attendees blind taste and judge 40 of the top wines. Male and female votes are tallied separately and announced at the Grand Awards Ceremony.

Pinot Noir Workshops
4:15-5:15 PM 
Ellen Landis, Moderator ~ “Sleek, Silky and Seductive – Pinot Noir”
OR
Sid Sall, Moderator ~ “What Makes a Great Vintage”

Sparkling Wine Tasting
5:30-6:00 PM - Wines That Dance on Your Tongue ~ Sparkling Wine Reception includes an international selection of cheeses and other tasty tidbits.

Grand Awards Tasting & Ceremony
6:00 -8:30 PM - The Bay Area’s favorite meteorologist and celebrated wine aficionado, Spencer Christian of KGO/ABC will emcee the Grand Awards Tasting & Ceremony. Top Pinot Noir winemakers will showcase their wines with a pinot-friendly selection of light hors d’oeuvre. The winners will be unveiled and final results will be announced by wine lover, Christian at 8:00 PM.

One of the many challenges of participating in a “Grand” tasting is the basic fact that there is just too much wine.

“Shut yo mouth, fool!  There is no such thing as TOO MUCH wine!” I say to myself. ( I have a bad habit of truly talking to myself and doing so in Mr. T-isms ) – Cosentino Winery, one of the new brands I currently work with in Napa, used to have a tagline that stated “Never enough wine.”  Well, as much as I love wine, you CAN have too much, your palate can burn out and then you become pissed off when you get home and realize that bottle you thought you liked tastes horrible.

So, yes, you can have too much wine.  Especially, when you know that you’re probably only going to find a good handful that really please your palate.  At the annual Rhone Rangers Grand Tasting in San Francisco there were approximately 100 producers pouring about 5 wines each for a total of 500+ wines and only 5 hours to go through them all.  Well, I didn’t get to them all and I’m not going to cry about it.  In addition to speed tasting wine, there was plenty of food to be tasted.  Note to self: don’t try the short ribs with super spicy BBQ sauce in the middle of tasting.  That really kills the palate.

Every 10 feet there is also a friend or two to stop and chat with, a winemaker to ask questions to and perhaps a potty break in there somewhere.  I know, TMI.  Whatever.  Thanks to technology, I was able to take a few snapshots of some of the wines I thought really stood out for me.  I have no tasting notes to go along with them because my hands were full with a plate, a glass, a phone and a spit cup.  But, I often refer back to my camera roll when purchasing wine.  Take a look and let me know if you’ve had any of these wines and tell me what you think.  You can always check my Flickr stream for more label shots.

In one month I have now heard and read multiple people compare recent public wine tasting events to “frat parties” and, quite frankly, it pisses me off.  As a member of a national fraternity (Phi Kappa Tau, builders of men…) I take some offense to this loose description people apply to sloppy, drunken puke fests such as has apparently been witnessed by event-goers at both Wine Road Barrel Tasting weekend and Taste Washington.  See articles and blog posts here and here.

Certainly I have experienced my share of overindulgence, puking and waking up in the bushes outside of the fraternity house and we knew how to throw some serious parties.  However, there were over 50,000 students of which maybe 3-5,000 (6-10%) were active members of a fraternity.  I am also quite certain that the other 90% of students in college engage in drinking too much, public intoxication and other general debauchery.  The likening of these wine tastings to frat parties is pure stereotyping and is probably coming from folks who were never in a fraternity, sorority or similar clubs and it’s probably the rationalization they’ve been using ever since they were denied a bid in college themselves or perhaps had a bad experience with a fraternity member and assumed it applied to all.  Yes, some fraternity members are as$#@les and can give the rest of us a bad name.  Funny, it also sounds just like the same generalizations many of these folks make about wine bloggers.  Hey, whatever you gotta do to get eyeballs, I get it.

The fact is, most fraternities adhere to strict codes of conduct and most members conduct themselves in socially acceptable ways, participate in philanthropic endeavors, and go on to become highly successful members of society.  Its more likely that those not in a fraternity have to learn the hard way how to carry themselves in society and are probably still behaving like they are 19 at these events.

Bottomline is that there are always going to be irresponsible individuals and unfortunately require someone else to control their behavior in some way because they cannot control themselves regardless of class, sex, or college organization. But, to compare these events to frat parties gives these people way too much credit.

Pinot Noir (pee-noh nwahr), to this writer, is the most versatile grape and the source of much enjoyment and memorable experiences in recent years. The grape is fickle, delicate and the most expressive of terroir. Yes, I used that word… I think you know what I mean. So, it should come as no surprise that I inform you of a day-long event dedicated to Pinot. Entirely Pinot. And YOU be the judge.

The main event starts with the 9th Annual Pinot Noir Showdown, hosted by Affairs of the Vine, where the attendees become the judges and “pit their palates against the expert panel.” The Showdown consists of 64 wines from 56 different appellations. This is a smackdown of epic proportions! Furthermore, Tim Hanni, MW will be taking this data and applying his Taste SQ algorithm to match attendees’ tastes with those of the judging panel to see whose palates they align best with.

The rest of day consists of workshops conducted by winemakers, viticulturalists and wine educators. Yours truly will be moderating the panel devoted to Winemaking 101 with Greg Freeman (Hahn), Steve McIntyre (McIntyre) and Patrick Murray (PARO Wines). Oh yeah, this could get interesting in a hurry.

You can also attend the Pinot Noir Shootout Grand Awards tasting where the winners will be announced. Finally, there is a Winemakers’ Dinner with a menu prepared by Chef James Aptakin, winner of the Food Network Caterers Challenge.

This is a can’t miss event if there ever was one! Please pass it on.

What: The Pinot Noir Summit

When: February 26, 2011

Where: Hilton San Francisco Financial District

750 Kearny Street

San Francisco, California 94108

Purchase tickets at this LINK …. OR better yet, add a comment below about why Pinot Noir is your favorite wine and I’ll draw a random winner this Friday, February 18, 2011 at 9pm PST for a 2-for-1 voucher to the main all-day Summit event!

Stay Pinot, my friends.

Perhaps I should change the name of this blog to something that has the words Pinot Noir in it.  I can’t get enough of the stuff!  Don’t let the rainy forecast deter you from immersing yourself in the elegant juice that is Russian River Valley Pinot Noir by attending Pinot on the River 2010.  When you get there be sure to seek me out, send me a tweet or check-in via foursquare so I know that you are here, so we can finally meet in person and raise a glass together.

See the list of over 100 participating wineries HERE, which include many of my favorites that I have mentioned on my blog over the years.

Pinot on the River Fan Page

Below is a summary of the event schedule, but for more details check out the website link above or the Facebook Fan page.

Friday (TODAY!), October 22, 2010:

• 6pm Pinot On The River’s “Friday Night Out In The Valley” Dinner

Saturday, October 23, 2010:

• 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. – Seminar Program at our host hotel in Healdsburg.

• 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. – Seminar #1: A Vintage Retrospective – How well do Western Pinot Noirs age? We’ll explore that topic with three top Pinot producers each showing their Pinots from three vintages of their choice. Our goal is to have at least wines from 2000 through 2005. (Wineries and panelists to be determined.)

• 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. – Seminar #2: Vintage Focus: 2009 in Western Pinot Regions – 2009 in Western Pinot Noir looks to be an even better vintage than 2007 has turned out to be. We will taste wines from six great winemakers representing Pinot regions up and down the West Coast. PinotReport Editor & Publisher Gregory Walter to moderate this session. (Wineries and panelists to be determined.)

• 1 p.m. – Light Buffet Lunch – Join us for a light casual lunch. Get to know other Pinot lovers and winemakers and share your thoughts about Pinot and the morning seminars.

• 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. – Take a Break!

• 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. — “A Taste Of Pinot” — We are partnering with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Sonoma County to create our first annual “A Taste Of Pinot” dinner at the Hotel Healdsburg in Healdsburg. The event will feature Pinot-inspired tastings of unique small bites prepared by Charlie Palmer’s Dry Creek Kitchen paired with limited production & reserve Pinot Noirs from 10 fine Pinot producers.

Sunday, October 24, 2010:

• 12 noon to 4 p.m. – Artisanal Pinot Noir Grand Tasting – Taste current releases, special bottlings and library wines from over 100 top Pinot producers from up and down the West Coast at this “full immersion” walkaround tasting.

A full weekend of Pinot Noir, what more could you ask for?  See you there!