There is a kind of unwritten rule, that one should not write a blog article that is too long, hence I am writing a series of shorter articles, because there was so much to encounter and savor.  I also feel that this is a way to let the reader perhaps decide that next year they will venture to the Culinary Extravaganza as a way to try a myriad of different restaurants, dishes and wines at one venue.  One table that one has to visit while at the event is The American Harvest, which is the restaurant run by the culinary school on the campus.  They were serving a Smoked Pork Loin with red cabbage and it was a good dish for the students to prepare.

We then proceeded to have some more wine.  My Bride tried Birichino Malvasia Bianca 2012.  This is a white wine, which is similar to the Muscat Blanc varietal which can be made into sweet, dry or sparkling wines.  This wine was dry and came from the Monterey area.  I tried a red wine from the same region; Autumn Flight Barbera NV from Paso Robles.  This is an area that I enjoy, but I thought that for a Barbera wine it was on the light side, perhaps better with an outdoor event.

We also tried the MGM-Detroit offering, which is one of the three downtown Detroit casinos.  They were serving Braised Pork Belly with skin over a risotto cake with cauliflower.  This was another case of my enjoying the dish and my Bride who didn’t.  The next table we stopped at was a restaurant near us in the city of Plymouth, which I have not written about as of yet.   This is the Fiamma Grille, an Italian Steakhouse and they were serving butternut squash ravioli.  A major hit with my Bride, and not so much with me, but then my Bride has never met a squash that she does not enjoy.  I guess I am too much of a carnivore.

We then stopped and had some more wine, and what a delight at this table.  We stopped and tried four different wines from this purveyor.  We were told that we had to have this one white wine, as he was almost out of it, and he only had the one bottle of it for the afternoon, and we are glad that we took his advice.  We had a glass of Calamares Vinho Verde 2011 from the Minho Region of Portugal.  Calamares means “local food or local wine” and Vinho Verde means “green wine” and this is a fresh young wine that is meant to be drunk young, as there is a slight natural effervescence to it and it was a very refreshing wine. This wine is made from Arinto, Trajudura and Louretro varietals.  We then tried a Condado de Eguren Tempranillo 2009 which is from the Castille area of Spain and had the brass chicken wire wrapping that is usually seen on bottles of Rioja Reserva, which is fine as Tempranillo is the varietal that Rioja is famous for. We also tried El Malbec 2010 de Ricardo Santos.  This is an Argentine wine from Mendoza and it was one of the fullest bodied wines that I had that afternoon.  Then we tried a Tenuta Giglio Montepulciano d’Abruzzo 2007, which is a region and a type of wine that I always enjoy.