Multi-Course European Wine Dinner feat. Bad-Ass Importer Mary Taylor
Sun, Apr 10
|The Carriage: Florence
We're excited to expand upon our popular wine dinner series by welcoming our friend & bad-ass wine importer Mary Taylor to The Carriage! Join us for a decadent multi-course meal with hand-picked wine pairings from Mary's impressive European catalog. Don't sleep on this one. Tickets will go fast!


Time & Location
Apr 10, 2022, 6:00 PM CDT
The Carriage: Florence, 121 E Mobile St, Florence, AL 35630, USA
About the event
We're excited to expand upon our popular wine dinner series by welcoming our friend & bad-ass wine importer Mary Taylor to The Carriage! Mary has worked with European wine and vintners for more than two decades and has built a ridiculously good and approachable portfolio of suprisingly affordable wines from little known rural regions and grape varietals across the EU. It's her mission to "demystify European appellation wine". You might not recognize every grape you see on her wine labels, but you can be sure that they have been selected for the right reasons and you can have confidence that quality is never in question when you see the Mary Taylor name. Join us April 10, 2022 in Florence for a decadent multi-course meal featuring hand-picked wine pairings from Mary's impressive European catalog and spend a little time with special guest - Mary Taylor, herself! Don't sleep on this one. Space is strictly limited to 30 attendees.
Featuring:
- 5 Hand-Selected European Wine Selections from the Mary Taylor Wine Portfolio
- Multi-Course Dinner Pairings
Special Guest:
- Mary Taylor, importer, Mary Taylor Wines
Tickets**:
- $100/person + fees
*Features and instructors are subject to change without notice.
**Attendees must be 21+ years of age and present valid, government-issued identification upon entry to the event. All ticket sales final.
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A Note From Mary:
Having worked with European wine for over two decades, I’ve come to love the nuance and diversity of Europe’s extraordinary wine regions, from the tiny villages of France and Italy, to the countryside vineyards of Portugal and Spain. As a result, I also love the European system of “place name” or “appellation,” which designates the geographical origin not just of wine, but cheese, olives, and butter as well.
To me, it’s the beautiful complexity of European wines that makes them so enjoyable. Even after all these years, I’m still endlessly fascinated by way each village’s expression reflects its own unique “terroir,” or sense of place. That said, I’m also well aware that the European model can be confusing for most Americans. With all those hard-to-pronounce names and unfamiliar regions, it’s no wonder that so many us look for a cartoon critter or a familiar grape on the label to guide us!
I created Mary Taylor Wine because I don’t think you should have to be a serious wine expert to experience the kind of honest, authentic wines that the Europeans have been enjoying for centuries.
Our simple White Label series is here to serve as your guide through the rural backroads and winding country lanes of the European wine route. Whenever you open one of our bottles, you’ll know you’re getting more than just another commercial brand or standard Chardonnay or Merlot. That’s because every Mary Taylor Wine is a genuine “wine of place,” sourced from some of Europe’s most classic regions and, best of all, priced according to the “Old World” view of wine as an accessible everyday luxury.
Cheers! Mary
About Mary Taylor Wines:
The first thing you’re bound to notice when you pick up a bottle of Mary Taylor Wine is the lack of a familiar grape on the label. No Pinot Noir or Cabernet, no Chardonnay or Merlot.
That’s because we, the team of lifelong wine lovers who make up the Mary Taylor company, think about wine differently than the usual brands lining the shelves of your local supermarket or big box store. To us, the name of the grape only tells part of the story of what wine is supposed to be. The missing key, which the great winemakers of Europe have known for centuries, is “place.”
When Mary first fell in love with wine in the early 1990’s, it was the European classics that truly spoke to her and stole her heart. As a young professional selling French and Italian wine, first in the New York wine auctions and then as a merchant, she quickly learned to appreciate wine in the “Old World” way— not as a luxury good reserved for special occasions, but a living agricultural product that belongs to everyday life.
This awakening eventually led her to move to the storied region of Burgundy. There, deep in the heart of rural French wine country, her experiences living and drinking among the area’s independent artisan growers cemented her understanding of wine as a form of liquid culture, reflecting the people and places where it has been lovingly crafted for generations.
A specific French term exists for this romantic notion that, in addition to tasting delicious, wine should tell us something about the area from which it came. Although impossible to translate literally, this concept of “terroir” has sometimes been described as a “sense of place,” or “somewhere-ness.” It explains why the Pinot Noir from one village in Burgundy will taste noticeably different from the same grape grown in the next town, or even the next vineyard over.
It’s also the reason why most European wine regions label their wines not according to the grape variety, but the “place name,” or “appellation” where it was grown. Whether known in French as appellation d’origine protégée, in Spanish as denominación de origen, or in Italian as denominazione di origine controllata, the basic idea is the same: each designated area imparts its own special identity, no two expressions alike.
After many years working with the wines of Europe, Mary arrived at an important insight. Left in the dark by decades of simplistic marketing efforts that placed grape above geography, American consumers needed a brand they could trust to decipher the complex notion of terroir in a clear and straightforward way. Out of this realization, our elegant “White Label” was born.
Today, it is our mission to unlock the world of European “appellation” wines by working with individual growers in multiple villages— from Bordeaux to Nîmes to Valençay— who produce exceptional, regionally-distinctive wines at extremely accessible prices.
In the traditional spirit of the “Old World,” each Mary Taylor Wine has been selected as a faithful ambassador of its geographical origin, true to local traditions and the vision of the individual farmer who bottled it. We are proud to offer affordable wines of genuine quality and integrity (no shortcuts) that will bring the magic of their “terroirs” to life wherever you choose to enjoy them: at a dinner party, next to the grill, or even just on a quiet night at home. Cheers!
The Mary Taylor Wine Philosophy:
In addition to caring deeply about the stakeholders involved with our company, our wine selection process is as such: We partner with grower-producers who farm their land respectfully and who are true artisans. While the majority of our wineries are independent, we also work with two small co-operatives (one in Bordeaux and the other in Saint-Pourçain) whose viticulture practices align with our values of sustainability, minimal intervention, and artisanship.
Like many small-scale vignerons, our growers often cannot afford to certify themselves as organic or biodynamic, yet they nonetheless adopt farming practices that would meet the criteria for certification. At a minimum, we prefer to partner with producers who follow the sustainability standards outlined by the Haut Valeur Environmentale (HVE), an environmental certification for farms adopted by the EU. These tenets include extremely conservative use of water, minimal use of fertilizers (and those made only of natural compost) and mildew treatment, holistic pest management, biodiversity, and comparatively low yields. The growers who we mention as biodynamic are self-declared; they work by the moon schedule and they treat their land with the utmost care so that the plants are healthy and happy.
In terms of winemaking, our foremost priority is to highlight the true diversity of terroirs. As a result, our producers uniformly employ little to no filtration, limit the amount of sulfur added before bottling, and choose to carry out their fermentations via natural or local yeast strains. They also avoid the use of overly intrusive young oak in order to emphasize the underlying expression of vintage, grape, and place.
We seek out partners, customers, growers, employees who are committed to equal opportunity, integrity of all living beings, and a strong sense of stewardship for this beautiful earth.
Tickets
ADMIT ONE
($100 ticket price + $3 convenience fee) This ticket is good for the admission of one (1) adult to the Multi-Course European Wine Dinner feat. Mary Taylor on Sunday, April 10, 2022.
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