Will Travel for Food
San Antonio New World Wine and Food Festival
By Mick Vann, Fri., Nov. 10, 2006
San Antonio New World Wine and Food Festival
Nov. 5-12
210/223-2881, www.nwwff.org
For devoted wine-and-food aficionados, this week's New World Wine and Food Festival in San Antonio should be a major blip on the foodie radar screen. Designed to promote San Antonio as a premier destination and a culinary gateway to Latin America, this year's seventh annual event focuses on "Old World vs. New World: The Reign of Spain." Coinciding with the 275th anniversary of the arrival of Spanish Canary Island settlers in San Antonio, the festival reinforces the culinary relationship between Spain and the Americas through a series of winemaker luncheons and dinners, as well as educational workshops and tastings, culminating with Sunday's all-day Totally Tejas event.
Local and visiting celebrity chefs will interact in San Antonio restaurant kitchens to trade ideas and concepts while producing cutting-edge cuisine matched with some of the world's finest wines and their winemakers. Such luminaries as Miguel Torres Jr., the "King of Spanish Wines," will host a comparative tasting of his family's wines from Spain and Chile. Laurent Drouhin of Chateau Joseph Drouhin will compare wines from his family's vineyards in France and Oregon. Grupo Osborne, one of Spain's leading wine and spirits producers, will be there with selected samples from their full line. More than 250 local, regional, and international wineries will be represented.
Noted author, teacher, and Spanish cuisine expert Janet Mendel will be hosting seminars on Spain's finest cheeses and olive oils, as well as cooking a dinner of Seville's best offerings, a dinner concentrating on the dishes of La Mancha, and a tapas seminar. Some of San Antonio's top chefs will be cooking multicourse dinners matched with flights from various elite wineries. Famed Mexican chef and cookbook author Zarela Martinez will have a cooking class based on regional dishes from her books.
Saturday night's Grand Tasting will have 30 San Antonio chefs offering nibbles of their culinary creations, along with more than 100 wines to sample. The Totally Tejas event features Texas wineries, breweries, chefs, and food producers, combined with seminars, demonstrations, and entertainment. For details on every event, information on each of the companies and chefs in attendance, pricing, and directions to the venues, visit the NWWFF Web site. This is an opportunity not to be missed, and it's just a short hop down I-35.