Key West Food & Wine Festival: Grand Tasting

The construction of the Key West Aquarium began in 1933 as a WPA project.  Due to the scarcity of fresh water, the concrete was mixed the more abundant salt water from the Key West harbor just feet away.  It opened in 1935 as the first open-air aquarium with hopes that it would serve as a research facility for the study of local sea life, however when Flagler’s railroad was destroyed by a hurricane later that year thereby curtailing land access to Key West, those hopes fell apart.  The building was leased to the armed forces during WWII and was gutted to be used as a firing range.  Though in 1946 it was restored and reopened for its original purpose.

On Friday evening this was where the Turtles & Sharks & Mermaids Oh My! Grand Tasting was held.  What a fun location for an event!  The aquarium’s walls are full of built-in tanks containing specimens from local waters, while the center of the elongated structure holds shallow pools filled with stingrays and nurse sharks, with fiberglass replicas of large sharks hanging overhead.  Perched along the outside rims of the central pools were the wine tasting stations, and the guests sampled their offerings while moseying between the tables and the wall tanks.

Chef Paul Menta created his Extreme Stone Crab sourced from only locally available ingredients:  a stone crab claw piercing a slice of fried green plantain through a spread of jack fruit custard and the claw meat was half-coated with black sapote (a soft fruit originally native to eastern Mexico) reduction with a pinch of sea salt – an edible sculpture.

The Fin Caribbean Small
Plates restaurant offered
a shrimp ceviche made
with Key West Pinks set
over a mojito-flavored gel
and topped with cilantro
micro greens – a beautifully
designed morsel.

And since this is a wine and food festival, I did get to try two wines:

The first was Rutz Cellars’ 2006 Maison Grand Cru Russian River Valley Pinot Noir which was aged in the winery’s custom dug wine caves.  I liked the balanced and medium body and good acidity of this wine – though I’ll wait until I finish my WSET wine classes before I start analyzing the specifics of any wine.

The other wine was Clif Family Winery Gary's ImProv Zinfandel 2007.  Yes, Clif, the same people who make the nutritional snack bar.  Now, Zins have been a long-time favorite of mine and this full-flavored California wine did not disappoint.

On the outside deck next to the pens containing large ocean predators, members of Fancy Pants Entertainment, costumed in burlesque-inspired finery (including K.P. as a very tall merman), sang, danced, and there was even a sailor boy striptease.

I hadn’t been to the aquarium for years and this event was a great reason for a return trip.