11th Annual Nantucket Wine Festival
For over a decade, the Nantucket Wine Festival has held an annual spring event that has since become one of the east coast's premier wine events, featuring some of the best wine varietals, and Montesquieu was proud to be a part of the cultural wine experience. This year, the festival that Montesquieu participated in was held in downtown Nantucket, making all of the wine events within walking distance of one another. Nantucket Island is prized for its remarkable architecture, historical whaling background, natural, rustic beauty, and its internationally sophisticated cuisine and dinning experiences. During the eleventh annual Nantucket Wine Festival, the city became the nation's wine capital, featuring innumerable chefs and over 150 of the world's best wineries, including Montesquieu.
The Nantucket Wine Festival began with an Opening Reception, in which the host community greeted winemakers and toasted them and the festival with Champagne. The opening reception included live music from the city's major talents and musical hotspots. During the event, several other wine and food activities took place, and the local community also participated, extending the festival beyond the designated tour stops. Mid-festival, guests took part in a myriad of winemaking symposium for every varietal, from Chardonnay to Bordeaux. A different wine authority headed each symposium, giving the varietals a different and exclusive perspective. Every year, the Grand Tasting is the highlight of the Nantucket Wine Festival, and each participating winery offers its best selections to be tasted by the public and the critics. This year, the wine tasting was held at one the city's history-rich landmarks: the Yacht Club. Montesquieu was proud to present some of their best wines for the event, pouring numerous bottles for the four tasting sessions that occurred during the event.
Before the Nantucket Wine Festival weekend began, winemakers from all over the US came to Nantucket bringing with them their best wines to pour at the multi-cultural celebration of wine and food. The Grand Tasting was the focal point of the event, at which over 150 wineries poured their wine, but the event featured much more than wine tasting. Renowned chefs from across America also converged on the city for this event, bringing with them their culinary talents and exotic and flavorful concoctions. Besides the wine seminars and cooking extravaganzas, the town of Nantucket offered multiple opportunities for the guests of the event to enjoy new experiences and palatable excursions of the historical city. Other activities for the festival's guests included specific sessions on particular wine varietals as well as more general wine sessions, such as how to choose and enjoy a wine in restaurant, which teaches the audience how to pair wine and food. Cat Silirie, the Wine Director at No. 9 Park, is a passionate and knowledgeable speaker on the subject of wine, terroir, and the pairing of food and wine, and she gave an introductory session on the subject of choosing an enjoyable wine, especially ones using biodynamic farming. After her session, sommeliers, wine directors, and wine makers followed, making the festival one of the most educational experiences of which Montesquieu had been a part.
Montesquieu relished the chance to be a part of the multicultural event that transcended so many others in the historical experience the festival offered. Every year, the Nantucket Wine Festival hosts the major players of the wine, food, and restaurant industry; and this year, Montesquieu was an active participator in the event.