The most frequent suggestion for improving the quality of Texas wines is for
Texas winegrowers to plant grape varietals more suited to their respective
climates rather than just growing Chardonnay and Cabernet grapes whose wines
are popular in the marketplace. To that end, Block Distributing’s wine expert
Woody de Luna recently held a Warm Climate Varietal Tasting for the Texas Hill
Country Winegrowers Guild com-plemented by an authentic
proven�al meal at Jean-Luc’s French Bistro. Guild members sampled
warm climate vintages from Australia, Portugal, the Languedoc Provence, and
southern Rhone regions of France made with marsanne, syrah, grenache, shiraz,
cinsault, carignan, and mouvedre grapes.

Back Home and Cookin’

Stop in to Bottega della Pasta at 4201 S. Congress and ask chef/owner Rino
Lanzalotti about his recent 12-day, 2,200-mile eating tour of Italy with his
wife and son. Though they were fed incredible meals by family members, the trio
still made room to sample seafood, pesto and olives in Liguria, seafood and
handmade pasta under the cone-shaped limestone roofs of Apulia, and great pizza
and affordable house wines all over Tuscany. Back at home, Rino is busy
updating his menu and enlarging his charming S. Congress pasta shop.

Tastes of Summer

Rhode Island native and former quahog-er (clam digger) chef John Lucas
of the Omni Hotel will present an authentic New England Lobster Boil at Central
Market Cooking School on Thursday, July 11. Lucas will serve up everything but
the cool breeze off the Atlantic. Call 458-3068 to register… Beat the heat
with homemade ice cream Saturday, July 13 at a White Mountain Ice Cream Freezer
demo in the original Breed & Co. on 29th St., 11am-2pm. They’ll be
demonstrating how to use both the hand-cranked and electric models, dishing up
the results for customers to sample. The next afternoon, July 14, Austin’s ice
cream queen, Amy Miller of Amy’s Ice Cream, will give a free ice cream-making
class at Central Market from 2-2:30pm… For all the devout lovers of Larry
Butler’s Smoke-Dried Tomatoes, the first batch is off the smoker and available
for sale at the farmstand at Boggy Creek Farm, 3414 Lyons Road. Check the farm
stands from Dripping Springs to Georgetown this weekend for the only fruit crop
that survived the drought: Watermelons!

Keep on Jammin’

Curious about how your very own jams and jellies would rate with the best in
the state? Contact the office of the State Fair of Texas at 214/421-8744 for an
entry form and full set of official competition rules for the Jam and Jelly
Competition at the State Fair which runs Sep. 27-Oct. 20 in Dallas. Entry forms
must be submitted by Aug.1 and entries are due by Aug. 25.

Beat the Heat

Home Shopping Alert! Austin cooking teacher and consultant Marie Claire
Quittelier will appear on QVC-Home Shopping Network on Tuesday, July 16 at 2pm,
demonstrating the GLOWMASTER Heat Induction Cooking System that she represents.
For Texas cooks, the most attractive feature about induction cooking would be
the lack of radiant heat generated by the cooktops.

This article appears in July 12 • 1996 and July 12 • 1996 (Cover).

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