Last weekend’s French Connection Tasting in San Francisco was a very memorable event. The sun came out early despite monsoon rains the day before. (An adjacent parking was actually still flooded.) The weather was even better under the two big tents with wines from Mouton-Rothschild, Château d'Yquem, Laurent-Perrier, Dom Perignon and many more, about 60 producers in all. Ralph Sands, Clyde Beffa and Keith Wollenberg came up from Redwood City to man the Bordeaux and Burgundy tables. Mulan Chan from SF (wo)manned the Rhône table. The food wonderful food came from Cheese Please and CoCo 500, with Chef Loretta Keller from CoCo 500 stopping by to see how things were going. All the while the staff from Cheese Please kept things moving right along. Their bleu cheese was perfect complement to the wines that we were pouring from the Loire valley. Check-in went quite smoothly and more than 200 people attended. Kerri Beffa did a great job organizing the event and kept everything moving smoothly. I questioned over two dozen customers and the consensus was that the event was great fun, the wines were great and the food excellent. The weather did make the tents slightly warm but, an afternoon breeze wafted through some of the open tent walls and cooled things off a little. By 4:00 p.m., the tents began to empty out and the San Francisco store became pandemonium. The customers were fantastic and waited in the long lines very patiently. Everyone was in a festive mood, had a good time and will (hopefully) enjoy the wines that they purchased. Special one-day pricing only was an added incentive to purchase wines after the tasting. Many thanks go to the attendees for making these events a lot of fun!

Coming soon…Bubbly tasting in Los Angeles!

Scott Beckerly