Bern’s Winefest: A Really Big Deal in Tampa
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Bern’s Winefest: A Really Big Deal in Tampa
Talk about Florida’s amazing wine cellars and Bern’s Steak House in Tampa comes to mind. Talk about wine festivals and Bern’s may not pop into your mind, but it certainly should. I learned this last weekend beginning with the Winefest Saturday Soiree held at Sidebern’s, the hip sibling to the big brother steakhouse. Guests arrived wearing fedoras, keeping with the Old Tampa theme. Cigar rollers, who looked as if they’d stepped out of Ybor City, entertained along with a hot Latin band. Wine flowed and so did the rum mojitos and daiquiris. Bern’s chefs impressed with dishes like shrimp enchiladas and rabbit calzones — and a sinfully sweet tres leches.
However, it was Sunday’s Grand Tasting that drew serious wine connoisseurs to the huge tents connected to Sidebern’s and Bern’s Fine Wines & Spirits shop. With more than 200 wines to choose from, I made my way through the first tent sampling wines from the Southern Hemisphere (Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa) and the United States, while tasting crawfish and gator gumbo and roasted suckling pig along the way. At the Moet Hennessy Oasis tent, women in floral dresses poured Moet & Chandon Ice Imperial from pearly white bottles. In the next tent I found wines from Spain, Italy, Germany and France. Tampa’s food and wine guru Chris Sherman tipped me off to the 2009 Chateau Beaucastel Chateauneuf-du-Pape (big flavor and great tannic balance) and on the opposite end of the taste meter I found a 2009 Trimbach Gewurtraminer from Alsace that was both floral and fruity. I sat in on a Plumpjack and Cade seminar, cork versus screw-top, and tasted wine from both. (For me, the corked wines had a better nose and more body.)
Before hitting the dessert table, where Bern’s pastry chef Kim Yelvington outdid herself with salted caramel éclairs, I was blown away by the artisanal cheese station, where I sampled: Coolea cow milk cheese from Ireland, Bonne Bouche goat milk from Vermont, Reypenaer cow milk from the Netherlands and Cantalet cow milk from France.
My final stop? The wine store to buy a bottle of Trimbach Gewurtraminer.
Mark your calendars for next year. Tickets sell out fast.
Tags: Bern's Steakhouse | Bern's Winefest | Sidebern's | Tampa
