Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/376390
8 / the tasting panel / september 2014 UP Then she lapses back into a bit of her shtick and says, "The trouble with these wines is you don't realize how much you're drinking! It's dangerous! They should come with a warning!" Gifford was here a year ago, and the Scheids showed her the properties and set out a variety of wines for tasting. "Here's the thing about it," she says: "If you're going to partner with somebody, their name is at stake every bit as much as my reputation. Everybody had to be happy. And that all starts with the product. They're 40-year veteran winemakers, and they're not going to slap a product together that they're not proud of." Then Gifford looks at you as if to tip you off that a zinger's coming, and she says, "They're going to be around a lot longer than I am . . . which could be any day now," she laughs. Gifford is obviously proud of the wine, and she's happy that it's at a price that makes it affordable to most people, just a bit south of $20 a bottle. Of course there's a Regis story to tell about the wine, too. Gifford and the family were celebrating her son Cody's 24th birthday at a little restaurant in Greenwich, Connecticut, where she lives. The restaurant had just made GIFFT its house wine, and a newly engaged couple had a bottle of the Red Blend on the table for the occasion. Regis was working the room and went up to them and shouted in his mock-outraged way, "Why don't you like the white?? What's wrong with the white???" The kicker came when their party finally sat down to dinner, and Regis ordered . . . a Cosmo. "I said, 'Put that crap away, you are not going to have a Cosmo!'" Reg wound up having three glasses of Red Blend. "He didn't even like red wine," Gifford says, and then she waits a beat to add . . . "He does now. He'll never order another Cosmo around me again!" "These are the things we want to share," she says. The label on the back of the bottle explains that the GIFFT name is both a play on Kathie Lee's last name, and that friendship, love and laughter are gifts to be cherished. Here, she is pictured with Heidi Scheid. Kathie Lee in the Scheid vineyards. The Scheids own ten estate vineyards along a 70-mile swath of the Salinas Valley, from Soledad to Bradley. PHOTO: JOHN CURLEY PHOTO: JOHN CURLEY