The newest hotel on The Strip is Fontainebleau Las Vegas and normally we don’t go to The Strip anymore, but we were meeting one of our son’s friends who has moved out to Vegas, has his own show at a casino, published a book, and recently got married.  I suggested the Fontainebleau for brunch, as I still have a magnificent memory of the finest Corned Beef Hash and Eggs that I have ever had and it was at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach, and it is amazing how some memories are forever with you.  I had forgotten though how much of a labyrinth parking structure are adjacent to the casinos; architects probably specialize in just creating these mazes, and we lucked out and found a parking spot almost immediately off of the first entrance to the hotel.  This hotel, was totally classy and did not feel at all like a Vegas casino.  In fact, there were these huge moving murals dedicated to the original hotel with the founder featured along with great images of Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley, both who also were headliners in Vegas, but they were scenes from the early Sixties.  There was also a great series of photos being played out, when Auric Goldfinger was playing cards and cheating at a table poolside at the Miami hotel, and how James Bond figured out his method of cheating and alas the eventual demise of Jill Masterson; such great memories to me.  As we walked around, we passed the casino, which was a departure from the other casinos on The Strip, past the wonderful shopping and we finally found the restaurant Vida, where the four of us were going to meet. 

We arrived early at the restaurant, as the other couple do not drink, so we ordered our drinks at the bar, as we waited for them.  My Bride decided that she would get a classic interpretation of Eggs Benedict, so I decided on a wine that I thought would work very well.  She had a large pour of Diatom Chardonnay Santa Barbara County 2022 by Greg Brewer, the Wine Enthusiast magazine’s Winemaker of the Year 2020, and under the umbrella of the Jackson Family Wines.  Diatom is named for the diatomaceous earth, which is a plankton fossil found in the oceanic landscape of Santa Barbara County.  The wine is from the Bar-M Vineyard in the Los Alamos Valley of Santa Barbara County.  The wine is made from a single block, and all of the same clone from the vineyard, and the wine formerly was labeled as Diatom Bar-M Chardonnay.  The fruit is harvested over a three-week period at night, with soft pressings and the juice is chilled immediately, until all of the block has been harvested.  The juice is then all blended with Cold Fermentation and no Malolactic Fermentation, a quick time of aging in Stainless Steel and then bottled.  The wine is a soft golden-yellow that offered notes of pear, lemon, lime, and wet stones.  On the palate there were tones of tropical fruits, white florals, a dash of pepper, in a bright, balanced with that had a medium count finish offering tones of terroir.  A very refreshing wine and definitely no signs of Jackson Family Wines intervention.

Since, I was kind of crushed about no Corned Beef Hash, I decide to go with a dish that I probably wouldn’t encounter the whole time we were on holidays.  I had the Vida Prime Bacon Cheeseburger with Cheddar Cheese on Brioche with hand-cut crispy fries.  I selected the Roth Estate Heritage Red Wine Sonoma County 2021, which is part of Foley Food & Wine Society.  The Roth Estate was founded in 2001 in the Alexander Valley using site specific vineyards for the different varieties used to make this wine, hence the use of the Sonoma County AVA.  The wine is a blend of seventy-seven percent Cabernet Sauvignon, fourteen percent Merlot and nine percent Petit Verdot.  The wine was aged for seventeen months in American Oak, of which six percent was new; with just over two-thousand cases produced.  This dark inky-burgundy colored wine offered notes of cherries, molasses, tobacco, and some chocolate.  On the palate there were tones of black cherry, currants, plums, chocolate, rich tannins, and a nice finish of dried cherries.