Aspen Food And Wine Classic Takes Wine-Taster Around The World

Collin Szewczyk of the Aspen Daily News attended the Aspen Food and Wine Classic and came back with a full report on the quality of the food and wine. The majority of his body never left Colorado, but his tongue traveled to a variety of locales.

Like many travelers, my first stop was at something I know and love in the Woody Creek Distillery. An empty stomach can be a foolish location to deposit spirits, but the siren song of an oyster and vodka shooter lured me across the west tent during Saturday’s grand tasting.

The generous shot went down smoothly, and I knew I was being smiled upon as I strolled through Aspen’s great Dionysia.

Next Collin tasted the offerings from Iowa’s Maytag Daily Farms, bleu cheese topped with bourbon pecan and smoky caramel, and from Oregon’s van Duzer Winery he sipped a Pinot grigio he described as “heavenly.”

Aloft on delightful aromas, I circled the tent and stopped at the Amaro table to sip some Lucano. The Italian spirit is very unique, with hints of Angelica, orange bitters, and wormwood.

By now the warm touch of Dionysus was upon me, and I chose a glass of Sauvignon gris while Jacques Pépin smiled at festival-goers from behind the extreme terroir South America table.

Szewczyk waxes poetic about the food he eats so deeply that you have to wonder about him. He calls the MouCo Truffello cheese he consumed “the closest thing to a religious epiphany I’ve experienced” and says the Jamón Ibérico Puro de Bellota “changed my relationship with pork forever.” Is he gonna marry a pig now?

Well, the important thing was that he had fun. He closed out the day at the much less exotic Mustard Girl table, where owner Jennifer Connor explained that her mustard is an old recipe that its original creator became too old to recreate, and that she had to revive, it being the best mustard she’d ever tasted.

The Aspen Food and Wine Classic took place from the 19th to the 21st of June, in Aspen, Colorado.