Looking for something delicious to do Sunday night? You might want to hop to it and nab a reservation for what’s shaping up to be a momentous melding of local wine and food at the Pridwin Hotel’s Cab Franc Forward Winemaker Dinner on Sunday night, Oct. 19.
Cabernet franc grows beautifully on Long Island, but the red grape also seems to love New York in general, with wine regions from the Hudson Valley to the Finger Lakes producing beautiful expressions of the wine. It’s why Gabriella Macari of Macari Vineyards and Max Rohn of Wölffer Estate Vineyard cooked up the year-old movement, Cab Franc Forward.
With eight core New York wineries in the CFF mix — Macari, Wölffer, Paumanok, Fjord Vineyards, Boundary Breaks, Malea Estate Vineyard, Dr. Konstantin Frank and Hermann J. Weimer Vineyard — and others joining in for trade and consumer tastings, dinners and other events, it seems cab franc is the little red that could in the Empire State.
Dinner Sunday is a pretty exciting ticket — a six-course extravaganza with autumnal flavors at the core.
Executive chef Todd Ruiz collaborated on a pairing menu that’s one for the memory book, with dishes like Sailor baby oysters with a cab franc mingnonette paired with the delicate Fjord Vineyards 2023 Cab Franc Rosé, dry-aged local tuna with carrot confit, petite carrot salad and umami crumbs (paired with the glorious 2022 Paumanok Cab Franc) and rosemary-kissed, rich duck ravioli with butternut squash and aged manchego cheese cozying up to Wölffers glorious 2023 “Caya” Cab Franc.
You also get to meet and greet with the winemakers and winery owners. On hand Sunday night will be Rohn and winemaker Roman Roth from Wölffer, winemaker Kareem Massoud of Paumanok, Oskar Binke of Hermann Wiemer and the wonderful Casey Erdmann of Fjord in the Hudson Valley, whose husband Matthew Spacarelli is the winemaker.
Dinner starts at 6 p.m., so you’ll even catch a little Pridwin sunset, too. Tickets are $155 per person. Reserve yours here.
