Rocky Mountain Wine and Food Festival High

With apologies to John Denver.

It was the opening night of the 12th annual Rocky Mountain Food and Wine Festival yesterday and once again the BMO Centre at Stampede Park was filled with vendors and attendees sampling great food and potent potables.

It is a great opportunity to learn about new spirits, wine and beer.  You can taste, compare and ask questions from the helpful folks manning the booths.

Although it was unplanned, my evening tended to focus on spirits. In fact I got so distracted by all the new flavours I was indulging in, the only food I tried was a delicious piece of gravlox from the Billingsgate Fish Co. (#615)

Here's some highlights from my experience that you might want to check out if you are heading down today or tomorrow. The numbers are for the respective booth. 

• The Gold Medal Marketing booth (#522) has a wide array of Scotch Whisky making it the perfect place for a relative  novice like myself to learn a lot. Try the peaty smokey finish Kilkerran Work in Progress or the much softer finishing Tullibardine Pedro Ximenez Finish.

• At booth #307 you can sample Amrut a fine whisky produced in Bangalore, India. It impressed my Scotch-loving-friend so much he picked up a bottle at the on-site liquor store. 

• The pbbeverages booth (#231) may just have been my favourite of the show. This Edmonton-based company has an impressive line-up of spirits from around the world in their booth. You can sample a 21-year-old rye from Utah's High West Whiskey or the full range of Alchemia Polish Vodka. The Wild Cherry was quite good. It was here that I found Port of Barcelona Gin. Produced by a Spanish distillery that also produces absinthe (which the booth also has) it has a flavour that finishes with a herbier liquorice flavour rather than the juniper berries you tend to get from other gins. It had me visiting the retail outlet to get a bottle to take home.

The Calgary edition of the Rocky Mountain Wine & Food Festival continues Friday and Saturday.