It was not until the decade of 1970 that Americans really became interested in wines.  It was a new generation and like all before them wanted to invent their own life-style and interests.  
      The wine industry responded with new wineries, more plantings, new varietals and as the result a new interest in wine tasting.  With all this new attention soon to follow were wine writers like yours truly.  Actually the dean of all wine writers in Southern California was the late Robert Balzer, then writing the first wine column appearing in the Los Angeles Times.
     In knowledge about wine Robert was way ahead of his time and often conducted wine courses for consumers and of course attended many wine tastings.  I  often sat with him at  these tastings and  at one recall saying that we had already heard much about these wines and varietals.  Robert responded by saying that he never went to one of these events without learning something new.  He summed it up by saying that "there is always something new to learn about wine."
     This proved to be a remarkably true statement which explains why we recently attended two seminars at the Simply Italian Great Wines tour conducted at the SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills.  This proved to be an all day event with five different seminars, then a three hour tasting with twenty two Italian wineries participating.
     The first seminar we attended was entitled "The Sparkling Life-Fresh & Fun from Fruili".  The Friuli Venezia Giulia region in located in the far northeastern part of Italy and includes the provinces of Pordenone and Udine.  The "Friuli Grave" appellation in recent years now enjoys a large D.O.C area thanks to some wines of the highest quality.  We tasted nine wines some made from local varietals like Glera and Ribolla gialla.  Popular for the region is Pinot Grigio and we tasted some that were 100 percent of this varietal.  All the wines we tasted were white with one exception, a Antonutti Spumante Rose Extra Dry which included Merlot and Refosco.  Its bright pink color most attractive.
     Conducting this seminar was Master Sommelier Tim Gaiser.  We had the opportunity to chat with Tim and learned that he had, until recently, made his home in San Francisco.  We had to add that this was our home town as well where we grew up.