February 20th, 2010
Looking for an awesome food and wine event next week in Dallas? On Sunday evening February 28th The Dallas chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier is hosting their 2010 Raiser Grazer, Silent Auction and Cork Pull at the Fashion Industry Gallery in downtown Dallas. The Women Stars of Wine and Food is a who’s who of women who have defined a new era in wine and the culinary arts featuring wine women from California and Texas, as well as food samplings from over twenty of the Dallas chapter chefs and culinary professionals. Tickets are $45 in advance and $50 at the door. Purchase tickets at the Les Dames website. Mary Kimbrough, co-owner of Food Roots, is a Dame and a member of the Dallas chapter.
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February 20th, 2010
Saturday, March 27, 2010 10 AM to 4 PM
Did you know that Texans are growing olive trees and making olive oil? If you are in the San Antonio area on March 27th come on out to the Second Annual International Olive Festival of Texas 2010 sponsored by the San Antonio Chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier and H-E-B. The 2010 festival will be held at Sandy Oaks Olive Orchard located at 25195 Mathis Rd., off of I 37, near Elmendorf, Texas (20 minutes south of San Antonio). Everyone is invited. Enjoy numerous vendors, gourmet food and Texas wine concessions, cooking demonstrations, health and nutrition seminars, entertainment and an olive buffet featuring olives from around the world to sample and compare. Tickets are $10 at the gate. Advanced tickets are available at San Antonio area H-E-B stores. Proceeds benefit Les Dames d’Escoffier scholarships and community outreach programs. For more information visit Sandy Oaks Olive Orchard.
Sandy Oaks Olive Orchard is a 10,000 tree olive ranch. Owner Sandy Winokur planted her first trees in 1998 and has transformed her love of Mediterranean olive groves into one of the largest olive orchards in the state of Texas with over a dozen varieties of olive trees. Sandy presses Texas olive oil, sells nursery stock trees and makes oil into various hand-crafted skin care and spa products.
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January 23rd, 2010
I want to eat more grass-fed beef but I don’t know how to cook it. We hear that a lot. Well, if you live in North Texas help is here. Burgundy Pasture Beef in Grandview is offering cooking classes on selected weekends. Their class last weekend, COOKING WITH GRASS FED BEEF & MORE, featured Chef Nick Amoriello and Burgundy Pasture co-owner Wendy Taggart demonstrating and discussing fundamental cooking techniques for braising, roasting and sautéing grass fed beef & lamb. Chef Nick is Executive Chef of Potager in Arlington and a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park New York. Burgundy Pasture Beef is a 100% grass-fed beef ranch with their own butcher shop, store and grill. The Taggart’s raise and pasture their cattle on native and select cultivated grasses at their ranch south of Fort Worth. At the Boucherie (butcher shop) they dry-age and cut their own beef for optimal flavor and tenderness. The Boucherie is the first exclusively pastured meats butcher market in the D/FW area. The cooking class included a cooking demonstration, tastings, lots of interaction and Q&A, and a 10% discount on all meat purchases so you can practice what you learn. The Burgundy Boucherie is at 800 McDuff in Grandview, TX just east of I-35W about half way between Fort Worth and Hillsboro. Information is on their web site
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January 9th, 2010
The Texas Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (TOFGA) is hosting its annual conference, All Things Local January 28th through 30th, 2010 in San Marcos, Texas. A must-do event for organic growers, the conference features information for organic ranchers, farmers, commercial plant growers, retailers, wholesalers, processors, distributors, consumers, gardeners, and anyone desiring to support the organic industry in Texas. For all the details go to tofga.org
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January 9th, 2010
The 2010 Annual Conference is set to be hosted February 18, 19, and 20 at the Dallas Richardson Renaissance Hotel just north of Dallas. Registration, schedule and a list of sponsors and vendors for the Annual Conference is available online at txwines.org.
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September 30th, 2009
A one-day seminar for ranch owners, ranch managers, grass farmers, grass fed beef marketers and anyone interested in sustainable ranching.
Join Jon Taggart, co-owner of Burgundy Pasture Beef, for a first-hand tour of his operation in Grandview, Texas. Always a cattle rancher, Jon specializes in raising and finishing exclusively 100% Grass Fed cattle. Jon has a BBS in Agriculture from Texas A & M University and a Ranch Management degree from TCU. He and his wife Wendy have been producing and marketing Grass Fed Beef for 10 years, and have owned and operated a USDA certified processing facility since 2004.
When: Saturday, October 24, 8:30 am until 3:00 pm, lunch is included
Where: Meet at the Burgundy Pasture Beef store, The Burgundy Boucherie, at 800 McDuff Ave, Grandview, Texas. From there we will go to the ranch about 4 miles east of the store. Grandview is 30 miles South of Ft Worth, just off I35 W.
To register go to: burgundypasturebeef.com or call Burgundy Pasture Beef at 817-866-2247.
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August 29th, 2009
The Dallas Wine Trail is hosting its Grand Tasting Part Duex on Saturday, September 5 2009 from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Visit Inwood Estates Vineyards, Calais Winery, Fuqua Winery and Times Ten Cellars. Jump to the info here.
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August 29th, 2009
One of the things that make Texas wineries so interesting is the people behind the wine. We first met Benjamin Calais at his Dallas Deep Ellum winery. Calais Winery has a cool Deep Ellum wine lounge vibe but Benjamin is serious about his wine and wines from old world and new world artisanal wine producers. Benjamin, a cool young French winemaker, makes his own wine that he names after streets in Deep Ellum and he sources wines that he personally selects from around the world, offering tasting and purchase by the bottle. Take a seat at the tasting bar and Benjamin will tell you about what he is doing and why. He will also recommend his own picks and tell you about the source and why he likes it. For his own wines Benjamin is straight forward about his grape sources. Right now most of his grapes come from California because Texas grapes have a limited supply and are more expensive. Benjamin tells us he never could have started his own winery in France so we all benefit from the Texas wine laws that allow young winemakers to start small. For more info on Calais Winery check out calaiswinery.com. The Calais Winery tasting bar is a comfortable place to increase your wine knowledge and get to know the new generation of Texas winemakers.
Benjamin Calais on Food Roots Eat Green DFW Tour July 11, 2009
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August 20th, 2009
Drinklocalwine.com was started by Jeff Siegel and Dave McIntyre to discuss regional wine, defined as wine that is not from California, Washington or Oregon. Among many other writing activities Jeff and Dave write The Wine Curmudgeon and the WineLine blogs. Regional wine is regional because it is distributed regionally, locally or not at all (some is available only at the winery). Texas wine clearly falls into the category of regional wine, and on August 15th drinklocalwine.com held its first-ever conference and tasting in Dallas. Called the GO TEXAN DrinkLocalWine.com Conference, the all day event, co-sponsored by the Texas Department of Agriculture’s Go Texan program, focused on Texas wine and featured some of the state’s best wines, top winemakers, and leading growers. We were fortunate to be asked to participate. Mary sat on the first panel of the day discussing Texas wine trends from an agri-tourism and locavore perspective. I thought a big point of the day was hit home when high plains grower Neal Newsom stated the volume of his high yield and a guy from California laughed out loud and said “That’s not high”. Growing grapes in Texas is way different from growing grapes in California. Each grape growing and wine making region in the U.S. has its own unique challenges, successes and failures and the guys from drinklocalwine.com want to talk about it. And talk they did. The day ended with a Texas Twitter Taste Off with a room full of some of the best wineries in the state each pouring two of their wines and wine and food writers from all over the U.S. Twittering and blogging about it. Check out some of the Tweets here and view a couple of YouTube videos here and here. You can also read more on the conference on Jeff’s and Dave’s blog.
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