Seems like it was just Christmas…but the good thing about time flying by and the arrival of Spring is it’s time for Wichita’s River Festival! This years Festival is May 29 through June 6, 2015. Get your Riverfest button in advance and get ready for a great week of community fun with concerts, the beloved food court, fireworks, activity on the river and so much more family FUN.
Regardless of what it’s been called over the years, Riverfest has always been about bringing people together. From the beginning, as part of the City’s Centennial celebration in 1970, the goal was to bring the entire community together, to build community pride and focus on Wichita’s beautiful natural resource, the Arkansas River.
Ann Keefer, Vice President for Development at Wichita Festivals joins us to talk about the history and evolution of this great community event, what’s new this year and the many opportunities available this year.
Learn more about this year’s River Festival and plan your week of FUN!
Joining me for the Wine of the Week is Carol Shelton aka “The Mistress of Zinfandel” and producer of the wine of the week this week.
Carol Shelton
Carol Shelton is widely cited as the most awarded winemaker in the United States. She has won countless medals for her wines and has been honored as Winemaker of the Year numerous times. After years of working with some of the industry’s top winemakers and wineries, Carol continues to win awards and accolades for premium Zinfandels produced under her own brand, Carol Shelton Wines. www.carolshelton.com
Notorious for Zinfandel, Carol makes a wide range of wines from up and down the coast of California. I recently judged at the El Dorado County Fair commercial wine competition and had the opportunity to taste many great rose’ wines. Always a fan and even more after last weeks judging. So many great pink wines, not the often maligned sweet pink, but serious quaffs that are easy to drink, lighter in alcohol and dry. Food friendly and fun…
Good Life Guy’s Wine of the Week:
2014 Carol Shelton “Wild Thing” Rendezvous Rose’
From Mendocino County this wine is 82% Carignan, 10% Viognier, 2% Zinfandel, 2% Cabernet Sauvignon, 2% Pinot Noir and 2% Petite Sirah. Light cranberry color, juicy strawberry-watermelon fruit aromas, nice mineral, hint of pink grapefruit. Refreshingly crisp and dry. Great with almost any food, from sushi to salmon to BBQ!
You can taste Wild Thing Rose and many other PINK wines this Saturday between 2:00 – 6:00 p.m. at Jacob Liquor Exchange on North Rock Road here in Wichita during their “Pinko d’ Mayo” sale and tasting.
Produced and bottled in Arkansas City, Kansas with grapes from the Suisun Valley. The Suisun Valley AVA is an American Viticultural Area in Solano County, California, located just east of the Napa Valley wine region in the Coast Range. It has touches of spice, generous fruit and perfectly integratd oak flavor and aroma from twenty four months in new French oak barrels.
Barry Estabrook, author of the New York Times bestseller Tomatoland, now explores the dark side of the American pork industry. Drawing on his personal experiences raising pigs as well as his sharp investigative instincts, Estabrook covers the range of the human-porcine experience. He embarks on nocturnal feral pig hunts in Texas. He visits farmers who raise animals in vast confinement barns for Smithfield and Tyson, two of the country’s biggest pork producers. And he describes the threat of infectious disease and the possible contamination of our food supply. Through these stories shines Estabrook’s abiding love for these remarkable creatures. Pigs are social, self-aware, and playful, not to mention smart enough to master the typical house dog commands of “sit, stay, come” twice as fast as your average pooch. With the cognitive abilities of at least three-year-olds, they can even learn to operate a modified computer. Unfortunately for the pigs, they’re also delicious to eat.
Triga is the new project between Jorge Ordonez and Rafael Canizares. The vineyards for Triga are sandwiched between the towns of Pinoso and Salinas in Alicante. A blend of Tempranillo and Cabernet Sauvignon, the wine displays intense black and blue fruit aromas with nuances of spice and florality. A deep wine with rich flavors and long spice on the palate, which gives way to a focused finish.
