By Ada Brunstein
 
The world of wine has two faces.
 
There’s the exotic face of wine which evokes the distant plains of France or Italy or Spain, where vines are tended by speakers of languages whose vowels dance on the tongue.
 
Then there’s the local face of wine – the people in your neighborhood who bring these wines to the wine shop around the corner, or to your favorite restaurant down the block.
 
On October 28, at the Rialto restaurant in Harvard Square’s Charles Hotel, five of these local faces of wine came together for an event as rich in sensory experience as it was in community spirit.
 
The evening, entitled The Next Vintage, started with a private tasting for Red White Boston readers. Kelly Coggins, Rialto’s Wine and Beverage Director, made the surprising choices: two rosés, a 2007 sparkling LINI 910 Lambrusco, and a Edmunds St. John’s 2007 Bone-Jolly Gamay Noir. This is another duality of the wine world – there are the wines we feel we should drink and the seasons during which we think we should drink them. Then there are the wines we drink at home when no one is looking. Coggins, who has been described as “the consummate Southern gentleman and self-proclaimed ‘wine geek,’” tells us that many people are put off by a chilled rosé in the fall. But he reassured us that there’s no shame in it. On the contrary.
 
In fact his description of these Rosés was so delightful that I want to quote him every time I have a Rosé: “It’s fascinatingly cool and eminently delicious.” And he’s right. The sparkling Lambrusco, comes from the Emilia Romagna region of Italy. Its steep hills make this is a topographically “stressed” region, says Coggins, but you’d never know it from the playful nature of the wine.
 
The Edmunds St. John’s Gamay Noir features with a Grateful Dead-like drawing on the label. Both rosés were fun, and light, and they made quick friends of strangers.
 
After the tasting we turned to the dinner itself, and Chef Jody Adams introduced the menu. There aren’t enough adjectives in the world to do justice to each of these courses so I’ll leave them unadorned for now:  porcini salad, black squid ravioli, venison, Cevrin cheese and a pan-roasted pear dessert.
 
From the floor to ceiling windows that line the dining room you can see a picture of Adams’s face lit up on a sign outside the Charles hotel. She is the external face of Rialto, frozen on that sign. But inside the restaurant she is a warm presence, moving from table to table, talking with the people for whom she and her chefs have cooked this exquisite meal.
 
In between the five courses, Coggins introduced the four other wine directors who each paired a wine with a course (as did Coggins himself). These five young connoisseurs were the real superstars of the evening. On average they each taste between 40-70 new wines per week. Their palates are no less impressive than a musician’s ear or a painter’s eye. Each can identify the most nuanced elements of their craft and combine them to form a work of art.
 
Daniel Motsinger, a bartender turned wine expert, wanted a wine that was bold, but fresh and juicy to play off the vinaigrette in the porcini salad. His choice: a 2006  Sablet Domaine de Piaugier Rhone. Thomas Tietjen, an artist turned wine expert, chose the NV Oloroso Sherry Bodegas Hidalgo “Faraon” from Jerez, Spain, a paring that “shocked” Coggins, but worked well with the squid. Coggins’s 2004 Freisa G.D. Vajra “Kyè” from Piedmont was the kind of deep red I would have year round with anyone and anything. Julie Cappellano from Fromaggio selected the cheese and the 2003 Vouvray Moelleux Lemaire-Fournie from the Loire, for a pair that seemed to be destined for each other.
 
The final wine was Theresa Paopao’s choice. If the pairings of the evening were each works of art, Paopao’s was a masterpiece. The dessert and the wine each seemed better together than they did on their own, and to me “togetherness” captures the very spirit of wine. Paopao chose the only American wine of the evening, a 2005 California Moscato from the d’Andrea Robert Pecota Winery in Napa.  In Napa Valley the vowels may not dance on the tongue, but the wine definitely does.