Melt 1976: A Napa Valley Wine Dinner

On Sunday, October 25, we’re going back 50 years for MELT: 1976 — a five-course dinner inspired by the food, music and culture of one extraordinary year.

And for the wine, we’re partnering with Napa Valley’s Matthiasson. Their elegant, restrained, food-driven wines deliberately nod to the California winemaking of the 1970s and ’80s — making them an especially fitting partner for a dinner built around the Judgment of Paris.

In 1976, that now-famous blind tasting put California wines head-to-head with some of France’s most celebrated bottles. California took the top spot in both the red and white categories, stunning the wine world and changing the way American wine was perceived almost overnight.

Matthiasson’s connection is especially compelling: they farm Chardonnay in Napa’s West Oak Knoll area, in the same pocket of Napa where Chardonnay fruit associated with the 1976 Paris-winning wine was grown.

Nostalgia, remastered.

The menu takes its cues from the dinner-party classics and special-occasion dishes that defined the era, then remasters them with better ingredients, exceptional cheese and a little Wedgewood irreverence. Think shrimp cocktail, proper fondue and Black Forest Baked Alaska — familiar, but not frozen in time.

And because playlists didn’t exist, every course will be paired with an album released in 1976 — back when you put on a record and listened from side one to side two. It was the year of Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life, David Bowie’s Station to Station, the Ramones’ debut, ABBA’s Arrival, ELO’s A New World Record and the Eagles’ Hotel California.

Five courses. Five albums. One incredible winery.

MELT: 1976
Sunday, October 25 4:30pm or 7pm