Coffield Appiah, the sake buyer for the Winehouse, is orchestrating another Sake-paired dinner at the store in West Los Angeles. For those of you familiar with the Winehouse’s sake tastings, it’s usually a full gourmet dinner with sake pairings masterfully selected for each course.
What makes Coffield’s events interesting however is that he usually has the actual BREWERS of the sake on hand at the dinner flown in from Japan – no joke. And I’m not talking about Ozeki or ShoChikuBai or Gekkeikan. These are actual ‘Jizake’ or microbrewers from Japan that produce extremely high quality, highly refined sake. Some produce fewer than 10,000 bottles a year. And the representatives present are usually, very high level individuals: The last dinner had the Vice President & heir-apparent to the sakagura Presidency of one manufacturer. (He represented a sake so good that I imported a $220 bottle through Coffield on the spot that night.)
Anyway, on April 11th (it usually starts at 7:30PM) Coffield’s doing something special: He’s bringing John Gauntner to the Winehouse to talk about sake. John’s become rather famous for being one of the largest proponents of Japanese sake in America.
An author of several English-language books on sake (a rarity for certain) John has spoken at most of the world’s largest sake-related events. (It doesn’t hurt John’s popularity that there’s a complete dearth of English-speaking sake specialists and connoisseurs in the world.) He runs the rather popular Sake-World web site at http://www.sake-world.com along with a very good monthly newsletter.
But back to the event itself: You’ll also get to meet Coffield who’s a genuinely nice guy and a hilarious host at times. Coffield tells me that he’s going to do something special and orchestrate a full tasting of sorts PRIOR to the Sake-Paired Dinner. It’ll go for $10/person to sample the different sakes. I think if I heard him right, they’re going to start this EARLY… as in at 5:00PM to let people settle in until 7:00PM for dinner so get there early.
Lord knows, people are gonna be bubbly as all hell by then, so you won’t wanna miss this gig for certain. It’ll be completely focused on sake with several brewer representatives, John Gauntner speaking, full glass tastings, as well as a paired dinner after everything.
Oh yeah – and it’ll be on a FRIDAY so you can feel free to get blitzed out of your mind and not worry about work the next day. <grin>
BTW: The dinner is $90/person with food prepared by the chef of "Upstairs 2", the gourmet tapas restaurant that sits right atop the Winehouse. Call 310 479 3731 or 800 626 WINE to register. I’ll see you there.
