Fritzie Diez’s 18th birthday celebration is still being talked about up to now and is regarded as Iloilo’s dinner of the year. The dinner took two months of planning, taking all logistical possibilities and parameters into consideration. The JD group took on the services of Chef Toto Erfe and Adrian Lim of the Center for Asian Culinary Studies and Chef Remy of the Emillion Restaurant who took care of sourcing and shipping the dinner items including the proper wine glassware for the dinner of eight parts and cocktails.

Choice wines from boutique importers such as the Viento Sur Torrontes (a white wine from Argentina known for its highly perfumey, jasmine-like, and tropical fruit characters) were served. In fact, all the remaining stocks of the Torrontes were cleaned out by this occasion, so only a few from our capital city have had the opportunity to try this wine.

The wines floral attributes paired well with appetizers like the wasabi gel cubes and the dryness of the smoked salmon served. This was the same with the homemade artisanal crackers (tinted red and green with vegetable purees) and the black crackers made with squid ink that were dipped in smoked fish, spinach, and anchovy with sundried tomato. A vibrant, fruity, with a creamy finish Tosso Prossecco sparkling from Veneto was also paired with the crackers to complement the dips. The wine turned it into a worthy appetite enhancer.

For soup, an extraction of fresh Roxas City oysters with a float of a fried, crisp prawn dumpling for texture was served. To add an exotic nuance, a streak of Kaffir lime leaf and basil puree was added. It also partnered well with the character of the Torontes.

As a palate cleanser, a pineapple granite with hints of fresh rosemary was concocted by the kitchen team.

For the meat courses, a Carmenere Reserva aged in oak was chosen from Chile. This grape variety from the Sta. Rita vineyards is now Chile’s chosen national adopted grape (it almost went extinct in the 1980’s). Carmenere is a wonderfully complex, fruity, and spicy wine that pairs with a large range of food.

At the dinner, it went with the creamy caramelized onion sauce and with the slightly stronger flavors of the roasted native chicken supremes, which were refreshed by the fruitiness of the grape and olive salad served as a side garnish. The wine also went very well with the rich Argentine Entraña Steak made even more sinful with a sliver of pan-fried foie gras and rounded out with truffle-scented meat glaze.

For the dessert course and pralines, the last bottles of old Torres Moscatel de Oro were bought out. Chosen as the best muscatel of the world three years ago, it was the pick to match the fruit and the floral scented ylang-ylang custard sauce. The spicy, honey, “raisiney,” caramel, toffee-like character of this fortified wine lent itself to the custard, meringue, and fruit but also to the dinner ender which were handmade Belgian chocolate pralines.