Friday March 5th: Italian Wine Tasting & Pairing with Appetizers at Mediterranean

“Italy at Your Table”

We have invited Filippo Bartolotta, an Italian sommelier, to offer us a total of four evenings of entertainment and fun around the foods and wine of Italy.

Mediterranean Restaurant

Friday, March 5th | 5 to 7 pm

$75

Special prix fixe dinner to be offered following wine tasting.

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In addition to this wine tasting event, two Italian Experience Dinners are being offered - click here for more information about the Italian dinner event at Saltwater Restaurant - click here for information about the Italian dinner event at Park Corner Bistro.  Both dinner events will include courses paired with the rare Italian wines.

Filippo will share his endless knowledge and stories about small traditionally-based organic wineries from all over Italy as he transports us to the Italian world.  Guests will taste a variety of rare and sought after wines.  Each night will include a “wine challenge”, creating a fun and entertaining way to learn about wines and their characters.

Special Offer from The Hob Knob Inn

March 5, 6, 7 | $125 per night

~ includes farm fresh breakfast & afternoon tea ~

Visit www.hobknob.com for reservations

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Why Italian wine and products?

Italy is a culture steeped in food traditions. Italians are intimately tied to the products not just of their country, but of their region or even more correctly of their home town. They take a special pride in the olive oil grown in the nearby countryside, the special fish found only in their bay or the grape varietal grown only on their hillsides. This special connection between food and culture is what has made movements like Slow Food resonate so deeply in Italy. It is why Italians still shop at the local open air market on Fridays or prefer to buy the prosciutto raised nearby to one trucked in from Spain.

Wine making in Italy in some ways has been modernized. There are some monocrops of vineyard or wineries producing over a million bottles… but on average, the landscape of Italy is still a patchwork of thousands of small family run vineyards, interspersed with olive oil crops, vegetables, and woodlands. The average vineyard in Italy is a mere 2 hectares, an entirely different scale than the mega-wineries in the “new world”. These small wineries have passed down wine making knowledge from generation to generation. Many never even transitioned to using chemicals, so they were “organic” before even knowing the buzz word existed (and still might not even bother to mention it on their label). Filippo is an ambassador of this wine world, and comes with endless knowledge of this patchwork of wineries all over Italy. He will transport you to the world of small producers, wine on the family table, special grape varietals and old and new wine making techniques.

Filippo Bartolotta is a wine journalist, writing for major European and American wine publications such as Decanter and serving as the editor for the bestselling L’Espresso Italian Wine Guide (English version). He also teaches about wine at the prestigious University of Siena and hosts countless wine events each year in Italy and abroad. Filippo works with the winemakers association “Vini Veri” (“Real Wines”) a group of organic and biodynamic producers and he has attended their alternative to Vinitaly, a special wine expo of “natural” wines outside of Verona. Filippo strives to connect participants at his events and visitors to Italy with a sense of place, the real Italy, through careful exploration of authentic tastes and towns. He has developed a series of unique events with the Siena Tourism Board creating an emotional connection for participants between a specific Sienese wine, food, work of art and the territory of Siena. Through their senses, participants experience the land and its products, both artistic and agricultural. His unique, entertaining style and his incredible breadth of knowledge create the ideal environment for anyone to fall in love with wine and in the process to fall in love with Italy.

Visit Filippo’s Website

Read about “ITALY AT YOUR TABLE” in Washington D.C.