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Festival Pavilion
In the past, the most popular wines for most Americans were the Chardonnays and Cabernets. In grape-oriented northern California, that hasn’t been the case for quite some time. Thousands show up at Fort Mason Center for Zinfandel Advocates and Producers’ big ZAP Zinfindel tasting and the annual San Francisco Chronicle wine tasting, also held here, brings a vast variety of wines for sampling.
On Saturday, March 18, another major wine tasting event comes to the Festival Pavilion — the Rhone Rangers 9th Annual San Francisco Wine Tasting. Nearly 200 wineries that produce wines from Rhone-style varietal grapes pour the best of the Syrah, Mourvedre, Petit Sirah, Grenache, Viognier, Marsanne, Roussanne, and others.
The American Rhone-style wine movement began in 1970 with a few experimental plantings from France’s Rhone River Valley. In 1988, 18 California producers met to share information and encourage further growth. In 1997, Rhone Rangers, a nonprofit educational organization, was formed.
To qualify as a Rhone blend, the wine must contain at least 75 percent of one of the 21 traditional Rhone grape varieties approved in the Cotes-du-Rhone by the French government.
From the Rhone Rangers web site, this telling quote: “... these upstart wines are full of fruit, light on oak, make great matches with today’s more casual and diverse dining trends. Not that Rhone-style wines aren’t serious; it’s just that you don’t have to wait a lifetime to drink them, or take out a second mortgage to afford them.”
For more information, see the March 18 calendar listing, and visit www.rhonerangers.org. For tickets, call the Fort Mason Center Box Office at (415)
345-7575.
– Ronald Tierney
Photo: Courtesy of Rhone Rangers
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