By Tim Griton
Ville Voice Eats Correspondent

How are you at wine and cheese events?

For me, it’s mostly about the cheese because I’m a teetotaler, but I usually find a way to participate by ordering a Sprite or Sierra Mist and having a bit of cranberry juice poured into it. If I’m lucky and no one notices that soda bubbles are three times the size of wine bubbles, it looks like a blush and I can look like I’m the one guy at the party who never seems to get drunk. Is it the reputation I want? No, but it serves.

So how would I fare at a wine and cheese event held at one of the most prestigious addresses in Louisville, namely 1400 Willow? Perhaps I would have to step up my game and use ginger ale and pomegranate juice while enjoying a cube of Caciocavallo Podolico.

Okay, so that’s mere speculation, but there is an event coming to 1400 Willow this Sunday, May 31 at 2 p.m.  Sponsored by the Cherokee Triangle Association, and is called “Wine and Cheese and Trees.” Along with the vino and fromage, there will be a discussion of the upcoming tree census being conducted by the Kentucky Division of Forestry.

As Louisville residents are painfully aware, given the tree debris cleanup project after the January ice storm, many shade trees have been lost in recent years. The Association will have an expert there to speak to the ginger ale and pomegranate crowd and long-term plans will be discussed, too. The CTA is pretty good at long-term, originating in 1962 and achieving Historic Preservation District status for the Triangle 10 years later. As you might imagine, they take their neighborhood pretty seriously.

If you’ve made plans to go, it can be inferred that you are into trees. Perhaps you’re into birds as well. If so, you could bid on a tree and bird painting by artist (and 1400 Willow resident) Fritz Hilton that will be auctioned off. The proceeds will go to the Cherokee Triangle Association tree committee. Wow. No neighborhood I’ve ever lived in had it’s own tree committee. Or its own wine and cheese events.

And I bet no one from any of my old neighborhoods has ever even tasted pomegranate.