Napa Wine-Date Night Cabernet & Vere Chocolate Tasting in Calistoga

The event is complimentary and open to the public.

Solage Resort is located at 755 Silverado Trail, Calistoga (94515, www.solagecalistoga.com).

This summer Memphis-based wine blogger Frederick Koeppel tried Date Night Cabernet with several of the Veré chocolates and wrote: “…this sumptuous wine’s combination of black fruit flavors and its elements of mocha and dried ancho chilies and its vibrant mineral character---with the Veré chocolates--- made us feel as if our timbers had been shivered, our socks turned inside out and fires lit along the little watchtowers of our taste buds. This was a seriously seriously good match….” “This is how we thought of teaming up for an event,” explains Suzanne Phifer Pavitt.

Kathy Moskal founded Veré in New York City to be a producer of organic, gluten-free, low-glycemic artisanal chocolates, which are made from 75% sustainably-grown Ecuadorian beans. More at www.veregoods.com.

Suzanne Phifer Pavitt and her husband Shane launched Phifer Pavitt Wines with the introduction of 300 cases of the 2005 Date Night Cabernet Sauvignon in October 2008. The wine sells for $75.00 to their mailing list, through the winery’s website by mail order (www.datenightwines.com or www.phiferpavittwine.com).

The 2006 vintage will be released in the spring of 2009.

The winemaker is Ted Osborne; the wine is sourced from Arthur Spencer’s Lakespring Vineyard in Pope Valley. Arthur Spencer designed and planted this vineyard ten years ago and farms it organically, producing small, intensely flavorful berries. The vineyard sits at 670 feet, in loam soil, with the vines spaced at 7x5. The farming incorporates many features which support its organic dedication---barn owl boxes, indigenous legume cover crop for beneficial insects and soil fertility, ladybug plantings and night harvesting. The grapes underwent extended cold-soak maceration and wild-yeast fermentation before spending 17 months in barrel (65% new French).

This project is a dream of Suzanne Phifer and Shane Pavitt who hatched the idea of their own Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon over several years of ‘date nights.’ Why ‘Date Night?’ “We’ve enjoyed fleshing out the idea behind the wine, which keeps romance and sanity in our lives,” Suzanne and Shane explain. “Every big decision we ever made together was on our once a week “Date Night.” Date Night is not just our wine, it really is a way of life,” they say. They live in Calistoga with their two young sons.