Gina Chersevani's novelty drink: wine over frozen cubes of Tuscan sangria. Photograph by Matthew Worden.

After her sophomore year at the University of Maryland, Gina Chersevani begged her parents to let her go to a summer bartending school. “It was fake school,” she laughs. “The only thing I learned was to mix a drink the same way, every time.”

Now Chersevani, 31, is the mastermind behind cocktails at the five Northern Virginia restaurants owned by the Neighborhood Restaurant Group: Evening Star Cafe, Rustico, Vermilion, Tallula, and EatBar, where she’s based. She’s often in the kitchen quizzing chefs and testing new drinks—cooking down fruit, making purées in a Vita-Prep, rolling out ribbons of alcoholic strawberry-and-coriander “fruit leather” with a pasta cutter.

Chersevani, whose father is a chef, recently debuted a summer drink that took two years to perfect. “My baby lives in a tray,” she says, displaying an ice tray filled with frozen cubes of Tuscan sangría made of vin santo, Chianti, lemons, limes, and oranges.

Tableside or at the bar, she stacks a few of the cubes in a glass and pours wine—red or white—over them from a carafe. “The choice of wine makes it a completely different drink,” she says. “Or it’s great with gin and a splash of Champagne. Then it’s a cocktail.”

Frozen Sangria is available at EatBar, 2761 Washington Blvd., Arlington; 703-778-9951.  

This lovely wine defies the seasonal description of crisp, refreshing whites as “summer sippers,” for it is really worth drinking year-round. From southwestern France, this is a blend of two-thirds Gros Manseng, with the rest Petit Manseng and un petit peu of another little-known regional grape called Corbou, fermented and aged primarily in stainless steel. It bursts with flavors of white peach and juicy melon and coats the palate with a velvety texture and a long, fruity finish. There’s a smidge of sweetness to round out the fruit (if you just wondered, “How much residual sugar?”—get a life!).

Wine collectors tend to favor big-ticket reds—first-growth Bordeaux, cult-favorite Napa Cabernets—that have massive structure and tannin that allow them to age gracefully for decades. Besides, they’re so expensive and special that one tends not to want to drink them. When thinking of aging wines, we tend to ignore the cheap ones.

Mariano Fernández knows otherwise. Fernández is the ambassador from Chile and a major wine lover, and he recently proved his point to a group of local wine writers at a dinner at the Chilean ambassador’s residence. The dinner featured eight vintages of Cousiño-Macul Antiguas Reservas Cabernet Sauvignon, from 1992 going back to 1960.

Wine lovers seeking value for their house tipple should look to Argentina, and to Familia Zuccardi. This family-owned winery produces a bewildering array of wines that combine consistently high quality with extremely reasonable prices.
            
José Alberto Zuccardi is currently at the helm—the winery near Mendoza, in the Andean foothills of western Argentina, was founded in the early 1960s by his father—and José Alberto’s eldest son, Sebastián, is in line to take over as the third generation. A gregarious man in his late fifties, José Alberto is a walking party. Fun follows him around the way paparazzi swarm TomKat.

Proof server Annie Satsanapuckdee offers up the tarragon-flavored gin fizzes created by Central bartender Justin Guthrie.

There’s a holiday for just about everything these days. There’s Bunson Burner Day (March 31), National Hugging Day (January 21) and—fittingly— Make Up Your Own Holiday Day (March 26). Now there’s one to really say cheers to— World Cocktail Day. And raise your glass, because it’s today.

World Cocktail Day celebrates the first known instance of the use of the word “cocktail,” which was May 13, 1806 in the Balance, a New York newspaper. To celebrate the holiday, Penn Quarter wine bar Proof hosted a dinner last night that featured cocktails from some of the area’s most creative bartenders, including their own Sebastian Zutant, plus Derek Brown of Komi, and Gina Chersevani of EatBar. Read on for the best moments of the night.

Reason for the buzz: The dinner was a fundraiser for the Museum of the American Cocktail, which opens a permanent exhibit this July in New Orleans. 

A very happy hour: The evening kicked off with a cocktail hour that featured five specialty cocktails created just for the event. The drinks included Lady Randolph’s Revenge, a reinvented Manhattan, by John Hogan of Hudson, and the Zenzero Apertivo, a sparkling wine based drink with limoncello, ginger, and absinthe, by Chantal Tseng of the Tabard Inn.

Drink that could be the official cocktail of Ghostbusters: The Tarragon Gin Fizz by Central Michel Richard’s Justin Guthrie that was served during cocktail hour. The neon-green colored drink— Hendrick’s Gin infused with tarragon and lemon juice, then topped off with a tarragon soda that made it the color of Slimer—was far more delicious than the Green Ghost.

Next weekend, some of the nation’s keenest beer aficionados will be in DC. The occasion? Savor: An American Craft Beer & Food Experience. Forty-eight breweries from across the country will take part in the controlled bacchanal celebrating the art and science of pairing good beer with good cuisine. Guests will be treated to a reception of 35 food tastings, each with a suggested beer pairing. Representatives from breweries will be on hand to give seminars and talk up their favorite pints.

Every brewery that comes will be bringing one or two craft beers, each to be paired with the appetizers (supplied by Federal City Caterers). Some of the most interesting pairing ideas include Sexual Chocolate Imperial Stout with crostini of figs and prosciutto (Foothills Brewing Co., North Carolina), Liquid Sunshine Blonde Ale with steamed Thai turkey dumplings (Hoppy Brewing Co., California), and a Tartanic Scottish Ale with crème brûlée (Blackfoot River Brewing Co., Montana).

In my May column for The Washingtonian, I highlighted several European wines that remain terrific values at less than $20 despite the current exchange woes of the dollar. This month, I’ll build on that theme by highlighting wineries from around the world that continue to score high in what wine geeks call QPR, or quality/price ratio. In other words, bang for the buck.

This week’s Winery of the Week is Leo Hillinger, from the Burgenland region of Austria. Look especially for the 2007 Pinot Grigio ($11), which is from an unusually ripe vintage for Austria. The wine is darker in color than you’d expect for this grape, rich and ripe in flavor, with an impressively long finish. Not exactly a refreshing patio white—this one needs food.

The 2006 Small Hill Red ($15) is a great summer red for grill season. An unusual blend of Pinot Noir, Merlot and St. Laurent (an Eastern European red grape related to Pinot Noir and similar in texture, though its taste may make you think of Syrah), the wine will appeal to Rhône lovers for its perfume and its silky mouth-feel. Fantastic value at a price Rhône wines can rarely match these days.