Wine Tasting Success!

The Imperial Valley Desert Museum's annual wine tasting event, "Art, Music, Wine", has come and gone, and was a tremendous success! We had 162 guests, who enjoyed wine from Baja Wine + Food, hor d'oeuvres from Sobe's Restaurant, music from Wilson Jr High School's orchestra, and an art exhibit featuring the work from the Imperial Valley Artists Collective.

The star of the event were the wines!

"Wow! I was so impressed with the wines from Guadalupe Valley." was one comment.

"I loved all three red wines, but the third one was my favorite." was another.

While sampling wine, the guests were able to participate in a silent auction. The proceeds from both the auction, and the wine tasting went to our National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant. This grant is building our Endowment Fund, which will provide two staff positions when fully funded. The National Endowment for the Humanities matches the money raised 3:1, helping us reach our goal of one million dollars by 2019.

Got the Wine List Today!

The Art, Music, Wine event tomorrow at the Old Post Office Pavilion in El Centro should be very cool if it is anything like this article, "Catching the Buzz on Baja Wines a Q&A with Fernando Gaxiola." He is from Baja Wine + Food, who will be bringing the wines tomorrow night!

"I have curated a portfolio of wines from the most prestigious, high-quality and consistent Baja wineries. This wines have been carefully selected based on hundreds of tastings in the U.S. and [knowing] what the American palate likes; it has also been validated by Master and Advanced Sommeliers. This portfolio is complementary where not a single wine is competing against another. This portfolio is imported by Truly Fine Wine (a local importer/distributor with the highest credentials in the wine industry), where I am a partner. So, I am involved in the import/distribution side of the business. TFW holds the most important alcohol licenses like import, distribution, online, direct-to-consumer and even retail [in the Bay Ho area].

Valle de Guadalupe wines featured at a recent tasting led by Gaxiola [Photo by Kate Kelly of Mixte Communications]

As [proprietor of] Baja Wine + Food, I focus more on the marketing, PR and everything promotion related things. My strategy is, again, to partner with the local cuisine (Baja-Cali region) and create cross-border culinary experiences. We also produce our own events. We participate in dozens of festivals, expos, competitions locally and nationally. We bespoke culinary traveling experiences to Valle de Guadalupe, which is now one of the most important components of the company because it’s also a great opportunity to sell wine at the winery with home delivery in the US, and that way the restriction of crossing one bottle per person every 30 days is irrelevant. Traveling is very special for us because there is nothing like connecting with the terroir of Valle through its wines and food. Some of my clients have B&Bs, restaurants, stables, spas, etc. which allow us to deliver a holistic experience of Valle (most experiences are culinary, but we do corporate, spiritual, artistic, etc. – all tailored to our clients. "

We just got the descriptions of wines that we will be tasting, and they sound GREAT!:

Good Day for Clay!

We are having a big coil clay day today with staff running booths at both the Campo Environmental Fair and at the Earth Day fair at La Posta. This might be the first time we have been spread out at two events, but Angelina, Edgar, and Marcie were all excited as they packed the History on the Go car this morning at 8:30am and headed for East County San Diego.

Coiled Clay at Fairs and Festivals is one of the largest public outreach activities that we do. These will be two of the last events of the season, but so far since January 1,048 youth have learned how to create a ceramic olla at one of our booths. And all most all of them had fun!  

De Anza Field Trip

~Marcie Rodriguez, Education Coordinator

Field trips are an integral part of life at the Imperial Valley Desert Museum. Today, we hosted a field trip that was a little different from our norm - with both 1^st and 3^rd graders. The students came from De Anza Magnet School, which is an elementary school in El Centro, California, which focuses heavily on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). We divided them up into 4 groups, and had them do rotations of history, art, and two science sections.

The history section, “Masters of the Desert,” takes students into a specific part of the museum, to talk about artifacts and exhibits that match what students are learning. For 3^rd graders, they looked at the resources that exist within the Imperial Valley, and how humans adapted to use those resources. 1^st graders on the other hand, use this time to compare the way people live in the Imperial Valley today versus a 1,000 years ago.

During the science sections, 3^rd graders were able to explore how plants adapted to live in our environment through the propagation of ocotillos in our cactus gardens. At the same time, 1^st graders were able to learn which plants grow here in the Valley. They also, planted a couple cacti in the garden!