June 17-20. Fabulous food and fabulous wine. Event is sponsored by Food and Wine Magazine. Lexus and Chrysler are sub-sponsors. They will have cars here on display. Tickets are $1,075 each. Lodging as of today (5-13-07) is 90% booked, so there is still space available. http://www.foodandwine.com/ext/classic/home.html
This year was our first Aspen Food & Wine Classic but hopefully not the last. It was the 25th anniversary of the event. It was more upscale with better wines and winemakers than the Santa Fe Wine and Chile Fiesta that we attended a few years ago. Aspen limits the sales to 5,000 people. There are about 20 events that you can go to over 3 days. Two Grand Wine Tastings on Friday and Saturday, and one on Sunday. Six seminars featuring tastings of food and/or wine on Fridays and Saturdays and two on Sunday morning. The events were scattered among about 20 locations and there were 5 or six to choose from at each time slot. The people from Europe were pretty much all F1 fans. Had a Ferrari hat on and many came up to me to talk racing. Lots of fun. the Spaniards were Alonso fans. The English were Hamilton fans. and the Italians were Ferrari fans of course. The cost this year was $1,075 per person. My wife and I were volunteers so it was free for us. Had lots of fun and met some great people who also like wine. There are many jobs. Our job was to set up the tastings for some Spanish wines at Little Nell resort. We will also help out at the volunteer "thank you" party on Wednesday. Got to meet the winemakers and/or owners of some of our favorite wineries. And got to taste wines that are not available for one reason or another. On the last day we went to "cook off" where two sets of two chefs and their assistants have 20 minutes to prepare a meal from "surprise ingredients". Very creative and lots of fun. The had an auction for who would assist chef Bobby Flay. The top bid was a record $37,000. The top bidder was a mother and daughter. Well, it's Aspen. Here are a few pictures. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Judith Light (TV star) on far right first pictured was a chef's assistant. She also owns a gourmet restaurant in Aspen called D19. She and her chef "lost" in the voting to the Aspenites who bid $37,000. The event was held in the ballroom of the St. regis Hotel. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Volunteer appreciation party. Glad to see Aspen is still a pretty jumpin place! Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
