DATE: Sunday, May 11, 1997                  TAG: 9705070043

SECTION: FLAVOR                  PAGE: F8   EDITION: FINAL 

COLUMN: WINES & SPIRITS

SOURCE: BY M.F. ONDERDONK, WINES & SPIRITS CRITIC 

                                            LENGTH:  105 lines

WINE SHOPS COME AND GO, BOTH ON PENINSULA AND IN SOUTHSIDE

AS TO what's going on with small wine shops these days - there's good news. The Pottery Wine and Cheese Shop should be opening in early June in Old Hampton, in the space vacated by 22 Wine Street Gourmet in February.

The new store will specialize in competitively priced wine and gift items that are the signature of its other locations in Williamsburg and Richmond. A gourmet deli will feature pates and cheeses, and there will be wines poured by the glass and finger foods to go alongside. Owner Mike Long also promises that the 22 Wine Street University classes led by John Keating will continue under the aegis of the new shop. Even the phone number is a holdover - 722-VINO.

And there's bad news. Tim and Terry Gudge, proprietors of East of Napa in Virginia Beach, have announced they will close their doors at the end of June.

Citing increased competition from grocery stores, Terry says: ``I really believe it will turn around and people will go back to the small stores. But we just can't afford to keep investing until it does.''

More immediately and happily, there will be an Italian wine tasting at the shop, 3101 Virginia Beach Blvd., on Thursday. Foods and wines representing 10 regions in Italy - including Tuscany, the Piedmont and Friuli - may be sampled, at a cost of $20 per person.

Meanwhile, the store's closing sale is under way, with discounts of 15 percent on the entire inventory. Phone 463-0212.

Oasis, one of Virginia's best-known wineries, has built a well-deserved reputation for excellent wine dinners hosted at various times of the year by various restaurants in Hampton Roads.

Coming up on May 21 is the annual spring Oasis dinner at Le Chambord, now an eight-year tradition. A five-course menu will showcase classically inspired cuisine by executive chef Alain Jacqmin, matched to selections from three vintages. Typical of the pairings will be striped sea bass in gewurztraminer sauce, with the well-regarded '95 Oasis gewurztraminer, and filet mignon with jumbo lump crabmeat, montrachet cheese, asparagus and bearnaise sauce alongside a 1994 merlot. Cost is $55 per person. Phone 498-1234.

Enophile and chemist Roy Williams, subject of a recent Flavor profile, is in the news again. The Old Dominion University professor will give a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington D.C., on Monday. The subject of the presentation will be his work with trans-resveritrol, a phenolic compound found in wine.

Funded by the Wine Institute, a non-profit private organization in California, Williams' research has shown a link between this compound and the eradication of cells associated with breast cancer. The luncheon at which he will speak launches the institute's annual Washington Week, when American vintners meet with congressional and administrative leaders to persuade them that wine really can be good for this country.

Salad days are here again, and so's that most puzzling of questions for wine lovers - how to get it to taste good with wine? This notoriously difficult pairing - dressings, especially vinegar-based, typically fight the vino - has inspired Fetzer Vineyards to mount a recipe competition. The Mendocino winery's fourth annual Great Salad Toss is on, complete with $40,000 in prizes. Contestants may chop and spin their way to a $5,000 jackpot or a free trip for two to Fetzer. For a copy of the rules, phone (800) 846-8637, or click on the Fetzer Website at www.fetzer.com.

In spring, the fancy turns to thoughts of - well, if not love, then fun out-of-doors. On May 31, things get corking at Vintage Virginia, a two-day wine festival billed as the biggest on the East Coast. Set for Great Meadow Field Events Center in The Plains (outside of Washington, D.C.), the event will showcase about 250 wines from 40 Virginia wineries, including new releases from the '96 vintage. There will be food from 30 restaurants in the greater D.C. area, as well as seminars, live music, an arts and crafts show - and stuff for the kids to do, too.

Since Vintage Virginia drew around 40,000 people last year, wise wine drinkers may want to consider staying in D.C., and taking the Metro to Vienna, where they can hop the festival's shuttle bus. Admission is $16 in advance and $19 at the gate, with a $2 break for designated drivers; members of the under-21 set pay $5, and children age 2 or younger get in free. (There is an additional charge for shuttle bus.) Phone (800) 277-CORK, or check out the festival website at www.vintagevirginia.com/wine.

Call it wine one-upsmanship among the Founding Fathers. Not one to merely stand by as Thomas Jefferson gets venerated for his love of wine, George Washington is getting in on the act. Mount Vernon, which overlooks the Potomac River and where Washington planted wine grapes (like Jefferson, with mixed results), is set to host its first Wine Tasting Festival and Sunset Tour, Friday through next Sunday. To be held from 6 to 9 p.m. on each of the three evenings, the fest will include pourings by a dozen Virginia wineries as well as live music and a tour of the mansion and the cellar where Washington stored his wine. As Thomas and George themselves can't be on hand, they'll be represented by modern-day impersonators. Tickets are $18 and reservations are advised. Phone 703-799-8604.

No, Jefferson, is never out of the Virginia wine news for long. A tour package retracing his long-ago wine-tasting travels through France sold for $6,500 at the Jefferson Virginia Wine Classic Auction last month in Richmond. The unnamed bidder who bought the six-day tour will hit some of the third President's favorite watering holes - er, chateaux - in Burgundy and Bordeaux. Proceeds from the auction, new this year and set to become an annual event, benefit Poplar Forest, a Jeffersonian retreat outside of Lynchburg. The Jefferson tour drew the single largest bid at the event. MEMO: M.F. Onderdonk is a free-lance food writer in Norfolk. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/The Virginian-Pilot file

Roy Williams of Old Dominion University will hold a press conference

in Washington, D.C., on Monday to talk about his work with wine.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu