About Navarra Gastronomic Week
The Navarra region in Spain visits New York in 2011 to present its unique food and wine. Restaurants feature special menus and events are scheduled highlighting the unique Navarra gastronomy. Chefs, enologists and wine experts will be conducting wine tastings and culinary exhibitions to demonstrate Navarra’s rich history that spans centuries producing a cuisine of complex flavors and mixed textures.
Climate and topography make Navarra an extraordinarily fertile region…an historic distinctive cuisine with multi-national influences. Navarrese cooking incorporates local products of the highest quality, with a great variety of mushrooms and other fungi; superb meats, game, and fowl; Cantabrian fish; regional cheeses like Roncal, Aezcoa-Valcarlos and Idiazabal; and locally produced olive oil.
Navarra in the North of Spain, bordered by France, Castilla, Aragon and the Basque Country is a vital part of the Route of Saint James (Camino de Santiago). Its rich history is celebrated today with many festivities that attract visitors world-wide. The best known is perhaps the Festival of San Fermin in Pamplona, celebrated each July with eight animated days of bull running and immortalized by Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises.
Expert chefs and wine experts from Navarra are available for cooking demos and wine tastings.
Featured wine experts:
JORDI VIDAL
SEMBLANZA JORDI VIDAL. GERENTE CONSEJO REGULADOR D.O.NAVARRA
Jordi Vidal (Madrid 1968) was educated in both France, the Faculty of Oenology of the University of Bordeaux, and Spain, the School of Agronomy of Madrid. He has more than 10 years experience in the vitivinicola sector where he has worked in both private and public institutions. These include: Director of the Spanish Union of Wine Tasters, Secretary General of the Association of Grandes Pagos of Spain, Product Director of a DOC Rioja Winery, regular collaborator of the Spanish Federation of Oenologists and other specialized press. He participated in the creation of a small winery in the DO Mentrida in Toledo and has been a judge for international wine contests.
Since 2007 he is the Managing Director of the Board of Directors for the Denomination of Origin of Navarra (Association of Navarra Wine Producers).
ROBIN KELLEY O'CONNOR
Robin Kelley O’Connor has been passionately involved in every sector of the wine and spirits trade: marketing, sales, educating, and tasting wines and spirits from throughout the world. His experience spans all aspects of the business: sommelier, importer, marketer, wine writer, international wine judge, and spokesman.
For the last seventeen years, Mr. O’Connor has traveled the United States, Canada, and Mexico as the tireless ambassador and spokesperson for the Bordeaux Wine Bureau, representing the Conseil Interprofessionnel du Vin de Bordeaux (Bordeaux Wine Trade Council) and its 10,500 growers, 53 cooperative cellars, 400 shippers, and its more than 6,000 châteaux. He aims to market the diversity, quality, and accessibility of Bordeaux wines to all sectors of the wine trade including university and culinary school students, business, law and medical schools, banking professionals as well as consumers. Since 1989 Mr. O’Connor has conducted over 1800 seminars spreading the word about Bordeaux wines. In 2002 Mr. O’Connor launched the Bordeaux Wine School USA. To maximize national exposure and geographic diversity he created the concept of a Bordeaux Wine School on wheels. He achieved this by forging strategic partnerships and alliances with organizations such as The Society of Wine Educators, The Institute of Culinary Education (New York City), Disney Epcot Annual International Wine & Food Festival (Orlando, FL), The Collins School of Hospitality Management California State Polytechnic University Pomona, House of Glunz (Chicago), and Boston University School of Hospitality Administration.
In addition to his Liaison role for the Bordeaux Wine Bureau Mr. O’Connor accepted a wine emissary position from WOSA-Wines of South Africa in the spring of 2005 to create educational modules for the trade.
A Maryland native, Mr. O’Connor credits a series of wine courses at the University of Maryland for sparking his interest in the wine profession. His initial study of wine was that of the Burgundy region. Fortuitously for Mr. O’Connor, his professor, Dr. Hamilton Mowbray was a passionate scholar of Burgundy wines. In addition, the University, conveniently located on the outskirts of Washington D.C., afforded Mr. O’Connor easy access to some of the best Burgundy wine merchants in the entire country. On Mr. O’Connor’s first visit to France he went to Burgundy for an extensive study exploration of the vineyards from Dijon through the Côte d’Or , Côte Chalonnaise to the Mâconnais.
Subsequent to his university studies, he worked as a student winemaker for two years in Libourne, France at Etablissement Jean-Pierre Moueix’s various Châteaux in the Pomerol, Fronsac and Saint-Emilion regions as well as their famed Château Pétrus. He also produced Champagne with the House of Krug. Further, he spent a harvest in Côtes du Roussillon, as well as Vevey in the Lavaux on Lac Léman in Switzerland and a year making wine in the Northern Spanish province of Navarra.
Mr. O’Connor has written a weekly wine column for The Trenton Times. He sits on several wine magazine tasting panels. Mr. O’Connor holds a diploma from the Wine & Spirits Education Trust (DWS) in London, has passed the Society of Wine Educators Certified Wine Educators (CWE) exam, Certified Specialist of Wine (CSW) exam. In October 2003 he became President of the Society of Wine Educators. He is on the Board of Directors of The New York Chapter of the American Institute of Wine & Food. Recently he passed the Court of Master Sommeliers’ Certified Sommelier exam. For sixteen years has been a regular panelist every June at Food and Wine Magazine’s Classic in Aspen. He annually lectures on Crystal Cruise Line. In January 2005 O’Connor was invited to join the Governing Wine Sterling Committee of the Los Angeles County Fair ‘Wines of the World Competition’ (the nation’s oldest professional wine competition). In the spring of 2005 he was the sole American judge at the Vinitaly International Wine Competition in Verona.
He is an active member in many wine and food societies, including several professional sommelier associations and the Commanderie de Bordeaux. Mr. O’Connor has been inducted into the prestigious Commanderie du Bontemps de Médoc- des Graves et de Sauternes-Barsac, the Jurade de Saint-Emilion and Les Hospitaliers de Pomerol.
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