The Slow Food and Wine Festival

Saturday afternoon we took a drive to Hopewell, NJ near Pennington to attend the 1st annual Slow Food and Wine Festival. It was held on the grounds of Hopewell Valley Vineyards with participating wineries Alba Vineyards, Cape May Winery, Laurita Winery, and Unionville Vineyards.
There were restaurants in attendance as well selling small portions of their favorites. BA and I sampled a delicious slow cooked beef on pumpernickel (shown left) that was out of this world. A live Jazz band kept the crowd going although there is no mention in the program of who they were! Hopefully they will correct that in the future. Finally seminars and a wine tour of Hopewell Vineyards were on the schedule as well. The Hopewell tour was led by the owner, Sergio Neri, whose family have owned a vineyard in Tuscany and go back generations. The tasting room has gifts, as well, and they sell their own olive oil made by the Neri family in Italy.
We did get to taste many of the wine selections from all the vendors and came home with a few bottles we liked. Although most of them display their award winning tags the reds, from most of them, seemed a little off for me. Of course I am no expert!
The ones we liked were Cape May Winery's Isaac Smith Port, and their Pinot Grigio, Laurita Winery's 2003 Classic Chardonnay and Their Relaxing Red, Down The Shore. BA loved that one.
Alba Winery's Mainsail Chardonnay, and Unionville Winery also had a port I liked. It seemed a last minute seminar not listed on the program was given by a young man who is a certified organic farmer. I think it may have been his first lecture but he handled it well.
You can see some other shots including Sergio Neri giving the lecture while holding a wine glass that never left his hand by clicking here.