I've heard a little about celebrity wines - those who are wealthy enough to invest in their own vineyards and wineries. However, I never gave them much thought until I read Mike Veseth's, Extreme Wines, a book that "seeks out the most outrageous wine people and places." There was no mention of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's Miraval wine from Provence, but it's one of the few celebrity wines I've seen in Tokyo. I decided to picked myself up a bottle and try it out. I was a little worried about the price since I had seen the average price as ¥7,000 on the Vivino wine app, but I was able to get for the bargain price of ¥3,000 - a ¥2,500 to ¥3,000 price tag gets you a decent bottle of wine in Tokyo. I absolutely loved it, especially since it's been scorchingly hot and humid all week!

For those who've requested my Sunday luncheon recipes, here they are for you to try on your own. I find many of my recipes from the Food Network, Martha Stewart and the New York Times, but I always end up tweaking them, especially when it comes to adding more pepper or decreasing sugar.

I type up my recipes in a simple format so that they're easy to read and print out. For photos of the plated dishes, you can see my previous post. Enjoy! 

For today's luncheon, we started off with a arugula salad with blueberries, pecans and feta cheese drizzled with balsamic dressing and a watermelon gazpacho. After, the pasta dish was a pesto linguini with zucchini and ricotta. The main was one of my favorite dishes to make, Chicken Provençal with red onions and lemons. Finally, we finished up with a peach-pecan torte with lemon glaze served with vanilla ice cream. 

Here a list of the wines from my luncheon, as well as the tasting notes for them. I didn't think the five of us would make it to the Amarone della Valpollicella for after dinner, but we sure did without any trouble at all. 

I love having friends over for wine pairing luncheons and dinners a few times a year. Since it's 35˚C in Tokyo now, I wanted to keep the luncheon and wines light. I never thought that a group of five would make it to a dessert wine, but I did finally get to pop open my Amarone della Valpolicella. It's not a dessert wine, but it did stand alone deliciously well after the peach torte. 

One of my guests asked about the Amarone grapes, and there is always ones of the grapes from the blend that I forget! This time it was Rondinella. I definitely need to remember Corvina, Corvinone, Rondiella and Molinera for my upcoming exam!