Record Crowd On Hand For A Taste of Wine & Roses
By Sheila Ehrhardt
The morning skies were gray and filled with rain on Friday, June 24. As Julie Barnes Foster, Rick Mesenburg and your director met for a last-minute planning session about noon we began to think that this “Taste of Wine & Roses” would be the one to break the great weather charm that had held true for the past five years.
Preparations continued as Rick and his crew readied hundreds of gourmet hors d’oeuvres and created a gigantic palm tree dotted with all kinds of fresh fruit. Julie and the staff at the Barnes’ Garden Center transformed the gigantic white tent into a veritable English garden, complete with hydrangeas, flowering shrubs, ferns and dozens of vases filled rainbow-hued roses.
With the help of my “Chamber right hand,” Marge Billman and a small army of volunteers, I found myself mostly looking to the skies for a positive sign.
About 4 p.m. the skies cleared and a cool breeze helped create the type of marvelous summer evening that you only find here in this Great Lake Place.
By 5:30 p.m. guests were lined up waiting to come in and they kept coming until nearly 8 p.m., creating a record-setting crowd for the Chamber’s annual wine tasting event.
A broad sampling of many of Ohio’s award-winning wines that have made their mark in the U.S. wine industry were provided by Chateau Tebeau Winery, Firelands Winery, Hermes Vineyards, Matus Winery and Paper Moon Vineyards.
Terri Bergman of The Kitchen’s Bounty, provided samples of her gourmet food products and information about the cooking classes she is offering. A big hit were the triple chocolate “Reserve Biscotti” specially created as a compliment to a glass of fine wine.
As the evening’s festivities wound down, guests were sent off with a cup of specialty coffee made with beans roasted by Julie Dreffer Spitzley, a Huron native who operates her own roasting company.
The first year of the event, Julie Barnes Foster came up with an original poem that she used in a scavenger hunt that took guests around the nursery grounds. It was so popular, that she’s created a new poem and contest each year.
Silent auction items included A Day at Put-In-Bay, a huge basket of wine goodies, a framed collage from the Showboat Restaurant, a basket of decorating accessories from K & K Home Interiors and Tastes of a Great Lake Place, with certificates from seven terrific area restaurants.
