If you're a chef and would like to improve your wine and food matching skills, enter our competition and you could win a trip to California.

Caterer, thanks to the generosity of California’s Trinchero Family Estates, is pleased to give chefs the chance this autumn to head to the Napa Valley, heartland of the US wine industry, where Trinchero is running a five-day wine-tasting and food-matching programme at its base at Sutter Home.

As the winner of our competition, you will take part in a lively, hands-on course which includes cooking and matching challenges, quizzes, and the opportunity, among other things, to blend your own wine. You will be taken through identifying key wine aromas – vital for successful food and wine pairing – and receive tips on how to increase wine sales.

How to enter

To enter the competition you need to be a chef, over 23 years of age, and working full-time in the hospitality industry.

If you are, all you need to do is to come up with recipes for two dishes, one to partner each of two Sutter Home wines – Unoaked Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon.

Entrants can obtain free wine samples by contacting Paul Shelton at Sutter Home’s UK agent, PLB. Telephone 01342 336563 or email
paul.shelton@plb.co.uk.

Alternatively, you can use the following tasting notes:

• Sutter Home Unoaked Chardonnay - Produced from grapes grown in California’s premier coastal growing regions, this is an elegant and crisp wine with aromas and flavours of fresh apple, pear, peach and lemon.
• Sutter Home Cabernet Sauvignon offers aromas of fresh red cherries and sweet vanilla with a light herbal touch. Medium-bodied and juicy, the red berry flavours are supported by soft tannins and a toasty wood character.

The judging panel will include Ronan Sayburn, executive head sommelier of Gordon Ramsay Holdings; Barry Wiss, wine educator for Trinchero Family Estates; and Jeffrey Starr, chef for Trinchero Family Estates.

Send your entries to “California competition”, Caterer and Hotelkeeper, Quadrant House, The Quadrant, Sutton, Surrey SM2 5AS or email them to catererfeatures@rbi.co.uk

Deadline for entries is 5 September, and the winner will need to be free to fly out on 1 October and return on 6 October.

Terms and conditions

Entries must be received by 5 September. The prize includes a return flight for one from London to San Francisco for travel on 1 October 2005 returning on 6 October 2005, four nights’ accommodation at Sutter Home Victorian Inn and one night’s hotel accommodation in San Francisco. Airline to be confirmed. UK Air Passenger Duty and UK Departure Tax are included. The winner must be over 23 years old and a chef. The winner is responsible for ensuring that he or she arranges travel insurance, passports and visa and travel to and from the departure airport at his or her own expense. Usual Reed Business Information terms and conditions apply.