My Wine experience

Over the weekend Jack and I (thanks to a wonderful Christmas gift of 2 tickets) attended the St. Louis Food & Wine Experience at the Chase Park Plaza. So my theme this week is a whole bunch of what I can remember from this event. (I'm sorry there's not more tasting info, I didn't take notes, I just remembered what I liked...there was alot of wine to taste ;))
The wines we tasted and enjoyed:
-Ravenswood is an old favorite of mine, and we got to try the old vine Zinfandel. MMMM.
-Mad Dog's & Englishmen Shiraz Cabernet Monestrell I do enjoy blends...and this one was yummy
-Rancho Arroyo wines
-One of my favorite things was finally getting to try some Bonnydoon wines. I have admired the company for their sooper-fun website for quite some time, but haven't had the opportunity to try any of the actual wine. I tried the Cardinal Zin and the Cigar-something (which was only available in the VIP lounge-hoighty-toighty). Very good. Check out their campaign to get rid of corks.
-Also, in the VIP lounge, we tried Ice Wine for the first time (sorry don't recall a maker). It was soooooo sweet. 2 sips was enough. I mean there was a certain green-ness to it, but wow...it was like candy.
-Guenoc Reserve Wines
-Another first...Norton wines. We usually skip over the Missouri wine section at the store, because there's this stigma of being too-sweet grape-juice like wines and the dreaded white zinfandel-esque crowd pleasers. But since we were trying new things, we tried Chaumette winery's Norton, and it was delish! Quite different...very fruity and juicy without being sweet.
-Coppola Wines, which besides being yummy, had this wonderful film-geek item-A giant wine bottle with an apocalypse Now DVD in the base! Oh man, when they come out with the Godfather ones, look out...there goes my savings account.

Okay, on the food part. There wasn't very many food booths.
-There was Father Dominic the Bread Monk, though. He did a presentation and book signing. I love his show...I whish PBS would start it up again.
-The Chef from a new St. Louis restaurant Red Moon was there, too, but we missed his presentation. The restaurant, however gets a hearty recommendation from my good pal (and frequent diner-outer) Kelly.
-McArthur's Bakery provided some divine sweets. We kept making excuses to "pass by" that booth. Tiramisou, Brownies, Strawberry Shortcake....slurp.
-And jack was very excited to touch a real-live Viking range. Our next food field trip will be to the Viking Culinary Center here in town.

I'm probably forgetting things and omitting essential details, but it was a great experience. Like exploring. And can you blame me, I mean it was pretty much a bottomless wine-glass kind of situation...I chose stem in hand over pen in hand. I encourage you to explore your food favorites, whether it be wines or soups or chocolate or whatever. You'll have fun, and probably learn some stuff. Go on an adventure!