For the past nine years, Pebble Beach plays host to over 100 top chefs and 250 wineries at the Pebble Beach Food and Wine, making it the West Coast’s premier food and wine event. Over four days, there are countless events such as cooking demos, wine tastings, and dinning events. We had the good fortune of getting tickets for Sunday’s top two events, The Big Bottle Bubbles champagne seminar, and the Lexus Grand Tasting.
We started off at the Inn at Spanish Bay for our Big Bottle Bubbles seminar at the early hour of 10:00 AM. Held in the Grand Ballroom at the Inn, we arrived stylishly late (some confusion about the location on our part) and sat down to a beautiful spread of nine champagnes to taste! We quickly knew we were with hundreds of like minded folk when the host of the seminar opened the talk with saying that 10:00 AM is a perfectly acceptable time to be drinking nine glasses of champagne because:
“Champagne is breakfast in a glass.” - Kim Beto
All of the champagnes we tasted were from magnum bottles, which is 1.5 liters (equivalent to 2 regular 750ml bottles). This size is preferred for aging by many winemakers and sommeliers. This seminar was super fun and we learned so much that we will be doing a longer post on all the great info we got from our sommelier hosts. So stay tuned! We also found our new favorite champagne, Lanson, which happens to be one of the oldest champagne houses. More on this also to come!
After the seminar, we headed straight to the Lexus Grand Tasting. We met our wonderful parents at the door, and began our 3 hour culinary adventure! With over 300 wines to sample and 30 top west coast chefs’ bites to try, we made a game plan to stick with bubbles and sample as many bites as possible. Limiting ourselves to one type of wine helped us to not ruin our palate by switching from reds to whites constantly. Plus, we love bubbles (obviously). If we go back next year, we will definitely go for both days! It was impossible to try everything in the 3 hours. Next year is the 10th anniversary and we are sure it will be an event not to be missed!
Here are a few fun facts we learned at the events:
Over 1 ton of butter was purchased for this 4 day event.
One sommelier suggests drinking champagne with In-N-Out burgers.
Chocolate covered chicharrones are now our favorite bar snack thanks to Tarpy's chef Todd Fisher.
