June 22, 2018 Lunch – PPI Turkey Divan. Dinner – Vintage Albuquerque

June 22, 2018 Lunch – PPI Turkey Divan. Dinner – Vintage Albuquerque

What a food and wine day!

It started simply with granola, yogurt, milk, and blueberries.

Then for lunch I de-stemmed a handful of chard leaves and lay them in a pasta bowl and lay the PPI Turkey Divan on top and poured about ¼ cup of Turkey stock on top of the turkey, covered the bowl with Saran and heated it in the microwave twice because I became busy with a transaction.

When I returned to the meal it had boiled twice and become a rich liquified stew of mashed potatoes, gravy, turkey, chard, and asparagus tips.  It was a really delicious hot stew.

At 4:00 Suzette returned home and we drove to the Balloon Museum at 5:00 for Vintage Albuquerque.  We love this event because it features food booths serving interesting dishes by most of Albuquerque’s best restaurants and wines from many good producers like Banfi and Gruet, as well as importers.  This year there was an abundance of good Italian wines from regions other than Tuscany, such as Campania, Puglia, and Sicily made from grape varieties I had not ever tasted, such as Aglianico.   What fun.

We roamed the food tables and wine tables for 1 ½ hours until we were exhausted and full of wine and food.  My favorite food dish was a pile of deliciously tender pulled pork on a bed of creamy whipped potato and celeriac by Savor, a local caterer.  They are doing pop up meals at Gruet, so I hope to sample more of their food in the near future.

There were lots of good runner ups.  The boys at Seasons and Savoy offered seared Aji with wasabi and shredded cabbage tacos that were delicious and a decadently rich and tenderly cooked pork rib on a bed of marinated lettuce salad topped with a housemade BBQ sauce.  Each restaurant offered food within it specialty area, Blue Azul, a Mexican Restaurant served chicken mole in a crisp taco shell, for example. Zacatecas served small glasses of spicy watermelon soup. Here is Suzette checking out the watermelon soup.

Vintage Albuquerque is a multi-day event, but we only go to the to the trade tasting starting at 5:00 on Friday because it is free and Suzette can taste and talk to the wine importers about prices, which is its purpose.

Then at 6:00 the doors open to the flood of public foodies and frenzy of gastronomy ensues.

We saw lots of old friends like Suzette’s friend Linda and Anthony, who has run the Quarters Wine store at Wyoming and Montgomery for over 20 years.

We said hello to Stephanie and Walt, who publish Edible Santa Fe and of course Byra and a couple of the other serious winos.

My favorite wine table was Banfi, with something for every one from Oregon Chinen Blanc priced at less than $10.00 per bottle that Suzette loved to its stellar flagship Banfi 2013 Brunello di Montalcino that is ranked above 90 points by all and sells for $60.00 and up that I loved.

My favorite new wine was an Italian pink prosecco, Lunetta Rose, that was dry and hinted of its red grape origins at the same time.  Here is a picture of it.

At 7:00 I drank 20 oz. of cold water to sober up enough to drive home.

At 7:15 we returned home and were in bed by 8:30 to sleep off our wine and food stupor.  I awakened at 2:15 a.m. refreshed.  The food and wine must have been good, which is amazing because the temperature was over 100 degrees on the field where the tents were set up.

Bon Appetit