While we were in Grand Rapids, the other site that we wanted to see was Art Prize.  Art Prize is an annual, international art competition.  As they say it is a celebration of ideas, conversations, and experimentation.  This year, there was $600,000 to be awarded to artists, in the form of grants, juried prizes and public votes.  The grand prize was $125,000; second prize $75,000 and third prize $50,000.  The exhibit was huge and spread over a couple of hundred blocks, so we didn’t see every piece of art, as the art was on sides of businesses, inside of businesses, and in parks.  We had to go to Art Prize headquarters to get a walking map and even then, we realized that it was too much to conquer in a day, so we tried to go to high cluster areas.

The nice thing was, that we ended up passing many watering holes around the city and while one of the monikers for Grand Rapids is “Beer City,” we passed on that sobriquet and looked for wine dispensaries.  The evening after the Meijer Gardens we met some friends and had dinner at Bistro Bella Vita and we have dined there before with them on one of our other trips to Grand Rapids.  Though, since the last time we had dined there, they had moved to a bigger venue and sometimes that can be fatal for a business, but it seemed that they were fine.  My Bride and I started by sharing an appetizer of Sea Scallops with cauliflower gratin, peas, dukkah, dill pistou and lemon agrodolce.  My Bride had Faroe Islands Salmon with potatoes, peas, kale, farm beans and smoked salmon vichyssoise.  I had the Saffron Risotto with shrimp, crab, sausage, broccoli, red pepper, parmesan and Calabrian chili aioli.

After having cocktails before our meal, we ended up with a bottle of Azienda Vitivinicola Tiberio Trebbiano d’Abruzzo 2020.  Riccardo Tiberio found a very old plot of sixty-year-old Trebbiano Abruzzese vines, which is a rarity and almost forgotten varietal.  In the year 2000, he bought the eight-hectare plot and an additional thirty-one-hectares of land suitable for single estate wines; on property 350 meters above sea level, twenty-three miles inland near the town of Cugnoli. On the thirty-one-hectare property he meticulously planted cuttings of indigenous vines suitable for each soil sample.  His first vintage was in 2004, and his minerally whites and fruit forward reds were immediately appreciated and lauded.  Trebbiano d’Abruzzo is grown mainly on the eastern side of central Italy and is a distinct variety from the other Trebbiano varieties.  There is debate as to whether it is the Bombino Bianco variety, but it hasn’t been proven, so the DOC law hedges a bit, and allows a minimum of eighty-five percent of Trebbiano d’Abruzzo, Bombino Bianco and/or Trebbiano Toscano since 1994.   The wine is a pretty golden-yellow and offers notes of ripe peaches, lemongrass, and chamomile.  On the palate tones of white fruit in a light and balanced wine that had a nice medium count finish of lemons and minerals.  I thought it was perfect with our entrée choices.