Wine(d)ing down for Summer

The New Orleans Wine and Food Experience(NOWFE) kicked off this week all over town with wine dinners. NOWFE is our premier wine event that marks the start of summer season with a five day festival featuring wines from all over the world. Our Hemingway dinner group(yes we are fancy and literary) chose a place close to home in Rizzuto's. Rizzuto's is a reimagined restaurant in a suburban neighborhood location in Lakeview and designed to resemble a comfortable suburban residence.

Surprisingly there were over 60 people at this event making it a sellout. I use the term "surprisingly" because Rizzuto's is in a section of NOLA away from the plethora of restaurants in the Quarter that normally house these types of events. As it turns out, the locals do want more restaurants away from the Quarter for these dinners.

The featured wines were from Freemark Abbey which is a 130 year old Napa Valley winery now owned by the Jess Jackson family the makers of the famous Kendall Jackson Brand.. Rizzuto's took great care in matching the 6 course dinner with perfect wine selections. We started off with Prosecco and then journeyed through several white wines before coming to our favorite reds. Our pick of the evening was the Freemark Abbey Knights Valley Cabernet served with the Osso Buco which is the house specialty. Of course being our favorite, this wine was created in such small quantities that there is none available in the city at this time. I think the wine reps were just teasing us so we would explore more reds the next time we were shopping for their wine at our local haunts. A homemade Limoncello from Rizzuto's concluded our special night and went well with the unique "Creme Brulee" style custard.