This March in Charleston, South Carolina, Julee had the great pleasure to co-host two seminars at the Charleston Wine and Food Conference. The seminar Boost the Booze was on fortified wines, with Lynette Marrero and Bruno Almeida. Bruno and Julee spoke on the wine regions of Jerez, Port, and Madeira, while Lynette mixed up stellar cocktails, based on the wines that had us all wishing for a beach. The Truth about Vermouth, co-hosted with Matt Tunstall stretched the attendees to think of vermouth outside the mixing component and taste 6 boutique and complex vermouths from Europe and America. This often overlooked, fortified wine is pretty amazing, and we think it’s time to take vermouth out of the shadows. Dry or sweet, vermouth has been used as a drink steeped in history and is the perfect complement to food.

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Boost the Booze: fortified wines

The Truth about Vermouth

Resistance is meant to stop something. Its forces come in doubt, fear, or nature, the aim is to kill our creativity, love and life itself. Nature has it's own force of resistance, the tension that exists within a bud as it breaks forth each Spring, and the rooting down through layers upon layers of soil in search of water. For Piero Incisa della Rochetta it started with a sip of wine, tasted blind at Wine Spectator's Wine Experience, the red elixir ignited his senses with a tension of ripeness and expression of fruit, old world or new? A Pinot from Patagonia (read more here).

Part of the Blend

I have a sheet of paper in the back of my journal, a bucket list of hopes, dreams, and moments I'd like to achieve in this lifetime. Many have been crossed off, some simplistic, or complex. Learn to make a perfect egg, see all of my girlfriends meet the man of their dreams, and be wooed with wild passion. Swim with whales and not get eaten, and learn to make wine. Well, this past month, I can confidently cross that one off my list.

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