A collection of first-release wines, farm fare, original works of art, and toe-tapping tunes will be showcased during Vintimate at Kirkland’s Heathman Hote; in Washington. The January 28 event, to be held from 5 to 8 p.m. in the San Juan Ballroom, offers guests the rare opportunity to be the first to taste Chef Brian Scheehser’s Piggyback Cellars 2012 and 2013 Amber Roussane and Syrah wines. Guests will also be able to view local artwork from two artists—Kim Wheaton and Mark Hussein. Scheehser has also crafted a seasonal selection of tastes inspired by freshly picked items from his 18-acre farm, as well as other local farms he enjoys.
Piggyback Cellars was established in 2011 as a micro-négociant specializing in very limited production wines often known as “vins de garage” or garage wines. With each growing season, they only produce 55 cases of each varietal per vintage year. The winery is family owned and operated in Seattle. Winemaker Scheehser likes to focus on the terroir of the land as he does with his 18-acre farm, and when he’s cooking in the Kitchen at Trellis Restaurant. Piggyback cellars was born from the support and partnership of the Washington Wine Community. From the beginning, its Syrah and Amber Roussanne grapes have come from Yakima Valley AVA.
As a visual artist, Hussein has been expressing himself with photography and writing for over 50 years emphasizing his commitment to recording and preserving the natural environment. Influenced by the French Impressionists and the great 20th century American black and white photographers, Hussein's images convey the simplicity of place, time, and mood. His work was selected for presentation in “World In Focus,” an exhibition of photography designed to expand awareness of the world's endangered environments and cultures.
Since 1997, Wheaton has lived and painted in the Columbia Basin region of Eastern Washington with her family, dog, and horses. Shortly after arriving, Wheaton was immediately struck by the subtle, magnetic landscape. She found its scale and vastness irresistible with its endless horizons, strong shapes, subtle colors, and interesting textures. Wheaton wanted to distill them down to their essence without sacrificing the realism of the landscape. She was exhilarated by the challenge of taking a simple palette of primary hues to create the subtle, muted tones of far distant fields and rich vibrant foregrounds and finding ways using color, light, and shadow to communicate the wonder she felt by a landscape that often goes unseen because it is perceived as bleak and monotonous.
