In March of this year, we started a new club tradition of “Fifth-Thursday Wine Tasting,” with a taste of the wines of Sicily. On September 29 (a fifth Thursday), Ron Fenolio will lead us in a tasting of the wines of Sardinia. Ron will present an overview of the wines of Sardinia, emphasizing the varieties of the different grapes, climate conditions, soil and other factors which determine the quality and taste of the wine. The individual wines we will be sampling are: Cannonau di Sardegna (a.k.a. Grenache/Garnacia), Vermentino (the only DOCG in Sardinia), and Carignano del Sulcis (a.k.a. Carignan, Carinena, Mazuelo). The SFIAC will prepare a special lunch menu, and there will be a $20 surcharge for the featured wines and paired menu. RSVP is required to plan for wine and food.
Ron comes from a historic winemaking family. His great-grandfather was a vineyard owner in Friuli (northeast of Venice) in the 1880s, and in the early 1900s his grandfather and a great-uncle both started vineyards in Eastern Contra Costa County. Ron and partners started his beloved Veedercrest Winery in 1972, at a time when there were fewer than 50 wineries in Napa. In 1976, Veedercrest was one of the participants in the historic “Judgement of Paris” wine competition, where the California wines bested the French wines, to the dismay of the French (as dramatized in the movie “Bottle Shock”).
Ron is now sole proprietor of Veedercrest, an award-winning Napa Valley Cabernet producer and 2017 Winery of the Year at the American Fine Wine Invitational. He is also a member of the California Wine Institute and is Chair of Family Winemakers of California, a winery trade association of 350 California wineries. Veedercrest is currently the second largest west-coast-based importer of Portuguese wines. Ron has been an investor in and owners’ representative for restaurants in California, Oregon and Hawaii. He also attended cooking school in Verona, Italy, and lectures and writes extensively about food-and-wine pairing and wine topics, including Il Cenacolo’s very own food blog: “Vino e Cibo: Secrets of the Italian Home Cook.”
This cost of the lunch is $65, and includes a $20 surcharge for the wine and paired dishes.