They call it the Great Lounge at the Ahwahnee Hotel, and that’s not even a scintilla of upsell, especially if you’re there for one of the eight annual Vintners’ Holidays held each November and December. The room itself, and the entire National Historic Landmark hotel, are what insiders dub “park-itecture,” which features lots of stone, wood (which may be fire-safe concrete made to look like wood), windows, and blazing hearths — think Frank Lloyd Wright goes Native American. But it’s not just the room that awes, for as you’re sipping your way through the seminars, you can look over your left shoulder, out the window, and indeed, that’s Half Dome fringed in snow. It’s as if both the natural and manmade worlds are conspiring to teach you a lesson in beauty.
A spoonful of Yosemite can help anything go down, and that’s what these two- or three-day events make clear, as they have for 30 years now. Everything, it seems, takes on historic dimensions at the Ahwahnee. At a recent “meet the winemakers” reception, George Bursick of Villa Toscano Winery addressed the crowd from a balcony: “People of the Ahwahnee, go forth and gather nuts and berries; we’ll reward you with wine.” And when Ed Sbragia of Sbragia Family Vineyards claimed, “You’ll be hearing things you’ve never heard from winemakers,” it was pretty easy to believe. It was an opinionated group that had earned that right — the four winemakers had almost 200 years of experience among them, helping shape enological giants like Duckhorn, Mumm, Beringer, and Ferrari-Carano. They were led by emcee/host Evan Goldstein, who was the eighth American to pass the Master Sommelier test and went on to consult for Auberge du Soleil in Napa and Chez Panisse. (Goldstein’s best line might have been his aside, “Pinot grigio is the vodka of wine, what people who don’t want to taste anything drink.”)