September 24, 2015 Antiques Roadshow luncheon, Chile and Wine Festival to the trade wine tasting, and Antiques Roadshow reception and dinner at the Balloon Museum

September 23, 2015 Antiques Roadshow luncheon, Chile and Wine Festival to the trade wine tasting, and Antiques Roadshow reception and dinner at Balloon Museum 

I went to the National Hispanic Cultural Center and bought two two day passes for Globalquerque at 10:00.  Then at 11;30 we went to Artichoke for the Antiques Roadshow lunch with Marsha Bemko, Executive Director of the Antiques Roadshow, who is in town to promote the Roadshow’s three showings of its visit to Albuquerque during the next three weeks, starting Monday evening, September 28, 2015.

I took Suzette’s picture with Marsha Bemko and then took photos of the assembled guests who included mostly sponsors, like Suzette, museums that had been featured in the show like the International Folk Art Museum and the Georgia O’Keefe Museum, and KNME staff who had helped produce the Albuquerque Roadshow and helped organize this series of events to promote it.  

  Marsha Bemko in white dress at Artichoke Luncheon for Roadshow sponsors

Here are some pictures.  

   Apple and Bleu cheese salad 

   Raviolis 

  The luncheon party with Suzette standing and director of KNME walking 

We had a lovely three course meal of an apple and Bleu cheese salad, a choice of goat cheese stuffed Ravioli garnished with a kale and tomato sauce or a crepe of the day.  I took the ravioli, as did Suzette and we both agreed that it was a little too spicy for our taste, and a slice of flourless chocolate torte for dessert.

Marsha spoke and we went around the table introducing ourselves Suzette told them about the Center for Ageless Living and I told them a little about my Lower Rio Grande water Adjudication case.

During the meal I asked the two women from the Santa Fe museums to discuss how they came up with the collaborative themes of Summer of Color and Fall of Modernism. 

At 1:30 the lunch broke up when we bolted for the door to drive to Santa Fe to pick up my Birger Sanzen watercolor and attend the Chile and Wine Wine Tasting for the trade.

Here is a picture of rain over the mountains and Santa Fe as we drove into Santa Fe.

   Here is a picture of the newly framed Birger Sanzen.  The frame is the most traditional method used by Santa Fe galleries; red clay on wood and then gold leaf over the clay that is then burnished  on the picture surface side to a luster to reflect more light onto the picture surface.

  The wine tasting is an annual event that we always attend held in conjunction during the Chile and Wine Festival.  Since the Wineries and Distributers and providing wine for free for the festival, this event provides them the opportunity to let the restauranteurs and package store owners to taste their wines.  The Chile and Wine Festival is one of the premier wine and food events in the country with wineries and Distributers coming from all over the country and world, so there is a lot of interest in this event and it is usually a show place for the introduction new wines and wineries.

 This year the number of wineries and distributors pouring  has grown so large that the event had to be held in Sweeney Convention Center.  There must have been 100 wineries and Distributers, each with five to a dozen wines each.  With this number of wines being served it is impossible to taste all the wines, so we made some simple rules: only new wines we had never tasted and those we love of a new vintage. Even so we only got through about ¾ of the wineries in the two hours we were tasting.  We saw a lot of old friends like Kaunie and Byron and of course all of the wine merchants from Southern, that is providing much of the wine for the show and to Suzette’s Greenhouse Bistro and Bakery in Los Lunas. 

Here are photos of some of the new wines I liked:

    The Gramena/Gramona.? La Cuvée Gran Reserva Brut is the first gran Reserva Cava I ever tasted

    Another fine Spanish wine producer, this time from Rioja

There was also a table of food this year with really interesting apps like fish ceviche in a bowl made from a deep fried wonton and a small tart shell filled with shredded lamb. 

We ate when we finished the first half of the tables.  

Finally at around 5:00 we grabbed our second or third bottle of chilled Iceland water and staggered back to the car.   Suzette drive back to Albuquerque and only had one near miss of crashing into another car on I-25.  At around 6:00 we arrived at the Anderson-Abruzzo Balloon Museum.  When  we arrived the reception for those affiliated with the Albuquerque Antiques Roadshow was in full swing with a long table of hors d’ouvres and folks sitting eating dinner.  We filled our plate with grilled cheese sandwiches, roast beef wrapped around julienned red, yellow and orange bell pepper sticks, a poached salmon in croute, cheese slices, and mini quiche squares.  We filled a plate, grabbed glasses of water and walked outside.  We were invited by Carole to join them at their table on the lovely patio overlooking the balloon park and with an exquisite view of the sun set on the Sandias.

As it turned out Carole was the star of the evening.  She had gone to Spain as a young woman and fallen in love with the Spanish impressionist painters of the early 20th century.  When she returned and married she had bought a painting in a New York gallery by Ann Peterson called the answer of a young woman with a broken necklace and letter sitting at a desk; a very colorful and interesting painting, for $150.00 in the early 60’s.  The painting was given an appraisal of replacement value of $300,000 at the Albuquerque Roadshow last year and made Carole an instant celebrity.

After dinner we were seated upstairs at the Balloon Museum and shown a 28 minute preview of the Albuquerque Roadshow and then Marsha spoke and the Carole told the story of her Ann Peterson painting.  I sat beside George Saunders who had been filmed with his first edition of Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man.  It was a lovely evening with a mix of volunteers and persons whose items had been selected for airing on the Roadshow.  Finally, at around 8:30 after a long day of festivities, we drove home and fell into bed.

Bon Appetit