eXTReMe Tracker

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Interesting Evening

I get a fair amount of press releases from PR people. I did PR in my first real job out of school, and it sucked. So I empathize with those who do it. Journalists typically aren't a nice bunch; they often speak ill of those who e-mail out a release and close it with, "I'll follow this note with a phone call next week."

I don't mind it. They're doing their jobs, and I'm glad that some cat named Charlie was doing his job last week because it allowed me to attend a pretty cool event Monday night.

Jim KochRemember those radio commercials in the 1990s, where you had a very polite-sounding man named Jim Koch talk about the beer he loves so much? Yeah, that Jim Koch (pictured right, standing, speaking, with beer in hand, being rich as hell).

The proud founder of Samuel Adams was at a pretty hot American restaurant called davidburke & donatella on the Upper East Side to tout a new product and to introduce some food pairings with some of his already well-established beer flavors.

About 40 people -- mostly hungry media folks -- gathered Monday, including seven at my table. We were all pleasantly surprised at how well the beers complimented the appetizers. My favorite was the Samuel Adams winter lager with the lobster risotto.

Koch and restaurant chef and co-owner David Burke spoke before each pairing was served, passionately describing the food and drink we were anxious to inhale. Koch was actually pretty funny and you could tell he loved beer so much because the first words of each of his four or five short speeches were always something like, "Sorry to interrupt your drinking, but next on the menu is . . . ."

The last of the many highlights of the evening was the blind tasting of Koch's new Utopias beer, a 54-proof number that tasted more like a cognac or a brandy. Servers delivered three snifters -- one with a cognac, another with the Utopias and the third with a port. The cognac, we later learned, is rated one of the world's finest, tho I can't remember its name. Same with the port, which was a 1994 Fonseca, as if I know what that means. If it's not beer or Ketel One vodka, I'm hardly an alcohol expert, but apparently that 1994 Fonseca is the shiznit, in technical terms.

But this Utopias, according to Charlie's press release, is an uncarbonated drink that blends several brews -- some aged more than a decade -- and it ended up getting more votes than those other two highly acclaimed liquors. It's still considered a beer, and apparently will make a great gift for alcohol lovers this holiday season. They're available in a collectible, brew kettle-shaped, numbered bottle and will retail this season for $120-$140, despite that eBay listing above that at last check had it at more than $300. Only 12,000 bottles will be available.

And of course I couldn't be out at a social event without embarrassing myself, so . . . the lovely gal at the restaurant next door who directed me to DBD four hours earlier was still outside when I came out, so we resumed our conversation. In her heavy Italian accent, we talked about Europe and foreign languages. Again, I'm a little buzzed at this point, so after she told me that Spanish and Italian have many language similarities, I started dropping my limited Espanol on her. And when two tourists approached us, I assumed they were Italian as well, so here's how my introduction went: "Me llamo Juan; mucho gusto." Her reply: "I'm Israeli, but that's cute Juan."

Labels:

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home