The After Festival Festival Festivities

So the Cincinnati International Wine Festival came and went, and while it all tends to be a whirlwind when it comes to town, the event I have unfortunately always missed was the little shindig our friends at Cutting Edge Selections throws at the warehouse right after the CIWF Trade tasting.

So let me explain just a little bit.  Cutting Edge Selections is a local wholesaler that’s been around as long as I can remember, and their portfolio of wines has always been spectacular.  But what sets them apart from the rest of our purveyors is a combination of things – passion, intelligence, whimsy even, and the intense desire to show WHY we are all in this great business of selling wine in the first place. 

The gathering was a way to show a lot of the wines that couldn’t make the CIWF, and it was a way for retailers and restaurateurs to gather, talk with winemakers and reps from wineries from around the world, eat some great food (which this year was all catered by local rock star chef Jackson Rouse, currently of downtown Cincinnati’s Bauer) and even sit in on a couple of SKYPE tastings, boasting Gerard Casale (from the legendary band Devo) and his new Pinot Noir project – the 50 by 50 –  in California, Maria Sinskey and Jeff Virnig from Robert Sinskey, and sake specialist Jonathan Edwards from Vine Connections.

Some of the standout wines for me were:

1. Everything on the Elk Cove table (including the Elk Cove Mount Richmond Pinot Noir 2013 – always one of my favorites from Oregon);
2. Everything on the Cadence table (especially the Cadence Tapteil 2012);
3. Chateau Musar Rouge 2008;
4. Revelry Aerials Block 19 Syrah 2013;
5. Mountain Ranch “Icarus” Zinfandel 2013;
6. Biscarelle Chateauneuf-du-Pape Rouge 2012;
7. Von Schleinitz Weissenberg Riesling 2015;
8. The 50 by 50 Pinot Noir 2014;
9. Robert Sinskey P.O.V. 2012;
10. Moon On The Water Fukucho Junmai Ginjo.

To be sure there were A LOT of great wines there.  And it was almost like a Wine Country Communion going on.  The spirit of our friend Mark Maher was 

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