by Andrew Chalk
Max’s Wine Dive, the happening wine bar in Uptown that thinks you should eat more chicken with your Champagne (and vice versa) has started holding wine dinners. They will take place about once a month, although the precise schedule is still bubbling up in their LEED Certified schedule producing machine. To break the ice (somewhat literally) last week, they hosted Red Mare Wines from Napa Valley with Dallas-based owner Jim Striegel in attendance.
Striegel’s association in Napa Valley goes back a long way. As a young man he helped his father plant vineyards in the Stag’s Leap District when there were only ten wineries in Napa. After a successful business career he returned to start his own winery in the mid 2000s. He called the doyenne of California winemakers, Heidi Barrett, for recommendations on a winemaker. Barrett recommended her assistant at Paradigm winery at the time, Anne Vawter, and Vawter began a winemaking and partial ownership relationship with Red Mare that continues to this day. Continue reading
