With today’s heightened interest in fine food and wine, not to mention a growing commitment to sustainability practices and emphasis on local culture, it’s little wonder if the typical winery tour or banquet spread may no longer be enough to satisfy everyone’s appetite.
“Boot Camp” where participants learn the secret of wine blending to create their own unique vintages? Or staging a five-course
dinner at a Mexican resort where the menu is based on the ancient foods of the Aztecs and Mayans?
These experiences and many others are fast becoming available options at meetings destinations throughout the West, a region always on the cutting edge of ways to wine and dine.
Cultural Traditions
When it comes to staging events immersed in local culture and flavor, it’s hard to top Harith Productions, the recent winner of two SITE Crystal Awards for imaginative catered dinners held during incentive programs in Los Cabos, Mexico, and Canada’s Yukon Territory.
“When we do an event, we try to make the food and beverage aspect experiential—an integral part of the entire program,” says Harith Wickrema, president of the Philadelphia-based event planning company. “It should be something that is really tied into the destination. It should entice, educate and excite.”
Harith Productions took this approach when designing a catered event for Endo Pharmaceutical’s 2006 President’s Club winners at the Westin Los Cabos. Planners of the event did extensive research on traditional Mexican foods and recipes, including some dating back to the ancient Mayan and Aztec civilizations.
“We traveled to Guadalajara, Los Cabos and surrounding villages to talk with people about their traditional foods,” Wickrema says. “We did a lot of Internet research about Aztec and Mayan cultures. Then we double-checked with people to make sure we had it right.”
Working with the hotel staff, the five-course meal included a salad tossed in xonxonostle, a vinaigrette made from prickly pear cactus. Other menu items included a Mayan liqueur made from Yucatan honey, a traditional pumpkin soup and fillet of beef flavored with pulque sauce, a type of agave extracted from maguey cactus.
Table settings and decor also played on the theme. First courses were served on locally made charger plates imprinted with Aztec sun calendars, while three-dimensional menus in the shape of the Chichen Itza pyramid explained the cultural significance of each course.
“We used as many local foods and crafts as we could,” Wickrema says. “It’s a way of supporting the local economy, plus it provides a richer experience.”
Vintage Events
While winery tours and tasting sessions have long been a popular staple of meeting agendas, the approaches to wine-related education, team-building and entertainment have taken off in all sorts of innovative directions. Instead of just observing the winemaking process and sampling the results, attendees can become active vintners themselves.
Affairs of the Vine, a Sebastopol, Calif.-based company that plans wine-related events for groups in locations worldwide, combines team-building with wine education in activities that include the Wine Boot Camp. Held at various wineries, Wine Boot Camp is a hands-on experience where, according to season, participants can position vines or help with the grape harvest.
“We look for wineries where the vintners have a real passion for sharing their knowledge of winemaking,” says Barbara Drady, owner of Affairs of the Vine. “The difference between this and a typical winery visit is like the difference between buying a dress directly from the designer as opposed to buying it from a store.”
When time is limited, events can be tailored to take place in a conference room or hotel ballroom. Along with participatory workshops on wine blending, food and wine pairing and aroma identification, Affairs of the Vine recently began offering the Shoot-Out, which enables attendees to do blind tastings of top-rated wines and compare their own ratings with that of the experts.
“We teach people to trust their own palates—even if your tastes differ from the experts, it doesn’t mean that you’re wrong,” Drady says. “The idea behind the workshops is to make people more confident about wine, to take away any intimidation they might feel. Wine is such a big part of corporate entertaining these days, so there’s tremendous interest in this.”
At the Artiste Winery, which is just north of Santa Barbara in Santa Ynez, Calif., and expanding soon to a second location north of San Francisco in Healdsburg, wine and art are fused together during the winery’s signature Painting Party and Team Blending events. A major component of the winery is an art gallery featuring the work of seven artists.
“Groups can be divided into two teams, with one team creating a wine blend and the other creating a painting that will be used to make a label for the wine,” says Christina LoCascio, marketing manager for Artiste Winery. “Or sometimes groups will just do a painting party together, during which they make a wine label and taste some wines along with it,”
At Landmark Vineyards, a winery situated on a 20-acre estate at the base of Sugarloaf Ridge in Sonoma County, group events range from “You want to be a wine critic?” seminars to Vinolympics, a series of activities that include bocce ball, croquet, badminton, horseshoes, and catch-and-release fishing. During the seminars, budding wine critics compete to determine the wine varietal and characteristics of unidentified bottles of wine.
“We’ve noticed changing preferences among winery visitors, especially younger people, and we’re adapting to them,” says Bruce McKay, director of consumer sales and marketing. “Young people want wine education, but they want it without pomp and circumstance. They want it to be active and fun.”
Iron Chefs
Inspired by TV shows such as the Food Network’s Iron Chef, chef’s culinary food demonstrations are being kicked up, as Emeril Lagasse would say, another notch.
More hotels and resorts are offering increasingly creative and interactive chef’s events. For example, at the CopperWynd Resort near Phoenix, Executive Chef Tom Pristash has devised “Copper Chef” competitions in which teams shop and help prepare various courses for the evening’s dinner. He also teaches customized classes on culinary techniques and presides over made-to-order food stations at banquet buffets where he talks with attendees and creates dishes to their liking.
“People really want to be involved with their food these days, especially CEOs and executives—they’re very hands-on,” he says.
