A Napa Valley sparkling wine with a special place in U.S.-China diplomatic history was poured Thursday night at the White House state dinner for President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.<\/p>\n
Guests in the East Room toasted with\u00a0Schramsberg Blanc de Noirs,\u00a0from the Calistoga winery whose sparkling wine was served at President Richard Nixon\u2019s 1972 dinner with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in Beijing.<\/p>\n
The selection was\u00a0part of a three-course menu\u00a0that the White House described as combining American ingredients with a \u201csubtle Chinese influence.\u201d<\/p>\n
The dinner came during Xi\u2019s first visit to Washington in more than a decade, a high-profile encounter between the leaders of the world\u2019s two largest economies at a time when their governments are still negotiating over tariffs, trade and critical minerals while competing over artificial intelligence and advanced technology.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Among those attending were Supreme Court justices, members of Trump\u2019s administration and Bay Area tech bigwigs, including\u00a0Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk,\u00a0Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Apple executive chairman Tim Cook and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.<\/p>\n
Schramsberg\u2019s records identify the wine served during Nixon\u2019s 1972 \u201cToast to Peace\u201d as its 1969 Blanc de Blancs, made from Chardonnay. Thursday\u2019s Blanc de Noirs is a different style, made from Pinot Noir, but comes from the same winery.<\/p>\n
Schramsberg traces its roots to 1862, when German immigrant Jacob Schram established a winery on Diamond Mountain in what is now Calistoga. Jack and Jamie Davies bought the property in 1965 and revived it as a producer of California sparkling wine made in the traditional Champagne method.<\/p>\n
The winery\u2019s breakthrough came in 1972, when Nixon took Schramsberg\u2019s 1969 Blanc de Blancs to China.<\/p>\n
Jamie Davies recalled later that she did not know for certain where the wine was headed until a friend called and told her to turn on the television. There was journalist Barbara Walters, holding a bottle of Schramsberg during coverage of Nixon\u2019s visit.<\/p>\n
Schramsberg says its sparkling wines have since been served at more than 90 official White House and state functions.<\/p>\n
Thursday\u2019s dinner opened with the Napa sparkling wine, followed by a yellow squash\u00a0velout\u00e9 served with\u00a0wild mushroom fricassee, crispy\u00a0pancetta and scallion oil.<\/p>\n
The second course was sesame-crusted sea bass with braised baby bok choy, roasted garden eggplant and sauce verte.<\/p>\n
Dessert was vanilla cr\u00e9meux with White House honey ice cream, walnut frangipane and sour cherry confit.<\/p>\n
The room was decorated with red linens and red flowers, including dahlias and ranunculus, reflecting the color\u2019s longstanding cultural significance in China. The tables were set with the Reagan State Service from the White House collection.<\/p>\n
The evening\u2019s entertainment was headlined by tenor Christopher Macchio, who performed at the 2025 presidential inauguration, along with musicians from the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Army.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Napa Valley sparkling wine with a special place in U.S.-China diplomatic history was poured Thursday night at the White House state dinner for President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Guests in the East Room toasted with\u00a0Schramsberg Blanc de Noirs,\u00a0from the Calistoga winery whose sparkling wine was served at President Richard Nixon\u2019s 1972<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[58,57,71,27703,92,555],"class_list":["post-32073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-wine","tag-food","tag-us-and-world","tag-wine","tag-wine-country"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/vive.im\/@dc\/117335906277995509","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}