26 Oct Please The Palate Pick of the Week: Jordan Vineyard and Winery Halloween Party

Considered one of the best wine industry parties of the year, one of the most coveted invites to receive and something that I have been trying to attend for the past few years, I finally made it to Sonoma for the epic Jordan Winery Halloween party. Food, wine, cocktails, music and incredible costumes, the Jordan Halloween Party is the Please The Palate pick of the week. Jordan Vineyards and Winery, located in the Alexander Valley in Sonoma, hosts an annual Halloween Party each year. This party is not open to the public. It is an exclusive invite to the wine media and wine trade. Each year there is a theme and this years theme was Animale, inviting us to return to our kingdom. First came the save-the-date, a video. This was no ordinary video. If you know Jordan Winery, you many know their music videos. The entire Jordan team participates as they do a parody of a popular song. For the save-the-date invitation, the three-minute video, inspired by The Lion King, was a call to the entire animal kingdom to mark their calendars. A month later came the invitations. A box arrived in the mail and when I opened it, there was an extra-large box of animal cookies, the kind I loved as a child and an invitation. I immediately rsvp’d and booked my travel. Then it was time to come up with a costume. Everyone comes in costume in theme and there is so much creativity and artistry in putting them together. After a lot of research, I decided to be a peacock. I pieced together items found on Amazon and came up with a colorful and feathery costume. And, the day of the event, we went to the local pumpkin patch where we found a face-painter to do our makeup. The party was epic. Upon arrival, we were handed glasses of Champagne and photos were taken. We wandered through the winery which had been converted to a wild jungle. A women dressed as a leopard hung from the ceiling and would spin around with a bottle of Champagne in hand, filling up our glasses. There were oysters stations, a caviar station, tables filled with cheeses and charcuterie and candy tables. We ate, we drank, we danced. And the most fun of all was looking at the creative costumes and then trying to figure out if you knew the person behind it. An epic party! A fun celebration! I had so much fun at the 2019 Jordan Halloween Party and that is why it is the Please The Palate pick of the week.