Mighty Taco wine pairing

Video by Melody Flammger

Okay, so the new Mighty Taco opened up recently in Henrietta, NY and I couldn't help it.  I wanted to see if the Opera Prima Sweet Pink Wine went as well with spicy food as it said it did and that was the perfect excuse.

Geographical challenges

Screenshot Captured by Melody Flammger

I wish this could have been a post with video of a virtual tasting with my best friend from childhood, Brianna Cole who is currently working and living in Chiba, Japan.  The idea was that we would break down the geographical barriers with something that is seemingly available everywhere- wine.  It turns out my assumptions about wine were false to begin with.  Due to the enormous amount of wine on the market, each person has a relatively limited selection of wine in their area and short of ordering a specific wine, it seems that the virtual tasting is not so simple to do.  The other thing I found was that different wineries make different wines available in specific geographical locations.  Determined not to disappoint, I'm still working on the problem.  We may resort to deciding on a wine and ordering it if that's what we have to do.

Pinot noir: trends and tasting

Video by Melody Flammger, Editing by Melody Flammger, Tasting by Melody Flammger... EVERYTHING by Melody Flammger- except the wine.

Mead is different

Wine making notebook
Photo by Melody Flammger

Recently, my wine making partner and I started making wine again.  We've been wine making partners for years, with our first batch having been started when we took our first wine dating back to early 2010.  The first wine we made came from a kit- it was a Strawberry Riesling.  Since then, our operation has become slightly more sophisticated and we tend to make our wines from scratch.  This time we made a mead.

Because most of you already know how to make your own wine or even have, I'm just going to share my experience making the mead with you.  For more information on wine making, please read my post Wine Making 101.  

Mead is different from other wine making ventures because instead of using grape juice or fruit juice for a sugar source, it uses honey.  The use of honey somewhat complicates the wine making process.  Rather than essentially adding yeast to juice there is a bit of preparation that happens.

Differences in preparation:

Removing the raisins
Photo by Melody Flammger

• Egg is used.  
• Raisins are added
• The honey, water and egg are boiled during the preparation process

 The differences added up to having to boil the three ingredients (honey, water and egg) and stir constantly until the "scum" rose to the top of the batch.  This was presumably to allow the egg to bind to the impurities in the honey and remove them from the finished product.  After the boil, raisins were added and the "must" was allowed to sit overnight.  We assume they were added for flavor- we are following a recipe as this is our first mead.  The picture to the right depicts me in the process of straining out the raisins as the must is being added to the carboy for fermentation (this is only a 1 gallon batch).  The cloudiness in the carboy is because the yeast solution has already been added.

Mead in the carboy with airlock
Photo by Melody Flammger

 With only a few differences from traditional wine making, mead is relatively simple to make.  This was a practice batch for a larger 5 gallon one to come.  1 Gallon batches are used to test the techniques, yeast used and additives without potentially ruining a large volume of supplies and I find are a more cost effective way to experiment in wine making.  me

Pro-tip: Always keep a log of your wine making so that you know what techniques worked and what techniques didn't.  We use ours to also plot potential costs of supplies, cost of the batch, recipes and more.  The scientists in us wouldn't have it any other way- but it helps to know what you did if your batch is successful so that it can be easily replicated for success every time.

Wine-making 101

The illustrious hobby of wine making:

This post covers the very basic principals of wine making.  It's a very in-depth topic and will be discussed in more detail later on. If you’ve never made your own wine before it may sound like an arduous process. Most think back to the Romans, stomping the grapes with their feet and pressing it into wine. Luckily, the wine industry has advanced signifigantly since those times and making wine is easier than ever.

First, a little background information:

“Alcohol is what results when yeasts metabolize with the natural sugar in grape pulp.” 

Using this principlemaking wine is almost as simple as adding some yeast to some grape juice. Granted, it’s slightly more complex than that. After all, there are different styles of wine and different types. Nonetheless that is how wine is made with a few extra steps in between.

Mechanical Harvester
Photo courtesy of AP Images

Usually, in order to get the grape juice/pulp in question there is a harvest that is done. Originally, all harvests were done by hand. However, in this technological day and age we now have mechanical harvesters which most farms use to obtain their grapes. From the harvester, the grapes are usually placed into the crusher/stemmer. This device squeezes the juice out of the grapes and removes the stems. Crushing is done in different ways. Many wineries will just use the “free-run juice” that comes off before the first crush. This is for higher quality wines and white wines usually. When making red wines, we will save the skins and ferment them with the juice. More crushing of the grapes is usually to get more color and/or flavor from the skins of the grape.   

If you're just starting out, you'll probably want to purchase a kit for your first time.  They come with step by step instructions to ensure that your first wine is a success.

Now that we have juice, we need to turn it into wine. It is important to note that most places have ambient yeast (meaning that the juice will in fact ferment on its own if we do nothing).

 “A winemaker, however, may choose to use cultured yeasts, thereby gaining control over the onset and rate of fermentation. Something as simple as the speed at which fermentation proceeds can profoundly affect the flavor of the wine, with slower fermentations often producing more complex wines.” 

Many home wine makers will also want to select a cultured yeast from a lab such as Lalvin. This allows you to select a yeast that is going to impart the specific flavor profile you are looking for in your wine.  The selection process can be intensive and it is best to use a manual such as Scott Laboratories Fermentation Handbook.

Once the juice is fermented successfully it is officially wine. However, it is still not ready to drink. The next step is to stop the fermentation process to make sure that a secondary fermentation does not happen in the bottle (this can lead to messy explosions if not done properly). Many modern wineries use pasteurization to kill off the remaining yeast while others rely on additives or micro-filtering. For home wine makers, a campden tablet per gallon and a potassium sorbate or sulfite additive will do just fine. Some wine makers would not consider the wine nearly complete at this stage.  Many wines are aged for years in oak and home wine makers might use oak barrels or additives to simulate the ask flavoring which would be acquired by barrel aging.

Corker
Photo by Melody Flammger

Now that we have wine that won’t explode when we bottle it, we must now clarify the wine. Who would want to drink wine with floating masses in it? In order to do this, many rely on clarification agents, however this can also be done through filtration. Different filters can be used for different effects. For instance, if you are trying to filter out leftover yeast, you may want a micro-filter which filters to 1 micron thick. That way, none of the yeast can pass through the filter. If you are just filtering for aesthetics, you can use a coffee filter or a wine filter you can find in any supply store where you go for your wine making needs. For clarification, I like the use of sparkoloid powder. After adding this clarifiying agent you would want to let the wine sit for an additional week or so to give the agent time to pull the sediment to the bottom of your fermenter. I do recommend use of a filtration method along with the clarifying agent to ensure better looking wine once it is bottled.

Source: MacNeil, Karen. "Where It All Begins, How Wine Is Made." The Wine Bible. New York: Workman Publishing, 2001. 7,32. Print.

Hope for new wine drinkers (and not so new ones alike)

After reading the latest Wine Spectator article by Matt Kramer, I couldn't help but share with my readers.  The article makes the point that in order to have a good palate, you don't necessarily need to be able to identify wines blind or know the most about wine.

"Judgment and insight are the hallmarks of a good palate. Everything else is a technicality."

The cool thing is that experience will give you both judgement and insight if you allow the wine to tell you about itself.  I tend to try not to read the descriptors on the bottle when I'm tasting because they can alter your perception of the wine.  Instead, I just use my 4 S's and experience the wine that way. As you taste more wine, the differences and little nuances of each wine will float to the surface and your palate will develop.

Keep tasting!

Trip to the liquor/wine store

The New York section at a local store
Photo by Melody Flammger

Last time I had occasion to go shopping for wine, I considered the possible causes of one of the statistics we heard in my Wine, Beer and Spirits Marketing class at RIT.  The statistic was that 24% of wine consumers are overwhelmed when they walk into the liquor store.  That is a huge market share and to harness it would be...well... a marketer's paradise.

Considering carefully the potentially less knowledgeable wine consumer, I proceeded with caution.  Walking in, immediately there were cluttered shelves and displays of featured wines.  The wines not being featured were arranged by region.  That arrangement is fine if the consumer knows which region they want a wine from or knows what they are looking for- but as I began to consider the arrangement I honestly felt overwhelmed by the possibility of having to look over the entire store if I did not know which region(s) produced the style of wine I was looking for.  This may be just one reason some consumers are overwhelmed.

Worse yet, when I got to the New York section I realized that I had no idea what I wanted because I was on a budget and wanted to try something new but did not know what.  As I carefully scanned the bottles looking for a wine to call out to me- a wine salesperson did.

In the past, I'd had good experiences with salespeople and accepted his help.  I explained I was looking for something different and was intent on getting a New York wine because I wanted to support our local wineries.  I suggested maybe I try a red or a rose, those being wines that New York is not well known for.  Instead of helping me in my quest, the salesperson felt the need to insert his opinion- which was very pointed about New York wines.  It was totally off-putting- and yet that may be another reason consumers feel overwhelmed.  If the people who are supposed to be there to help you do a poor job of being receptive to your taste or choices, it only serves to make the selection process even harder.

Eventually coming out of the store with my three selections for around $20, I thought about it.  If someone less stubborn than myself had been listening to that wine salesperson they would most likely do one of the following:

• Walk out without buying anything
• Follow the salesperson's advice and buy a European wine instead
• Buy a New York Riesling (as that's apparently the only thing NY does well?  REALLY?)
• Never seek the advice of a salesperson again

What would you do?

Zinful steak

Zinfandel and Sirloin Tip Steak Pairing
Photo by Melody Flammger

Most people try to follow a set of textbook rules when it comes to food and wine pairing.  I'm here to tell you that everything you've heard/read is probably okay to follow- but to make a truly great pairing you have to take some risks.  Some say that the best food and wine pairings are when you take your favorite food and your favorite wine, put them together and they enhance each other.  Others just say to play around with it to see what works together.  It's definitely a mixture of both, so don't be afraid to challenge old rules!

Zinfandel
Photo by Melody Flammger

The Wine:

2007 Robert Mondavi Private Selection Zinfandel

• See/Swirl: Very deep garnet color, visible legs though this is a red wine they don’t stain the glass.  No sediment.
• Sniff: vanilla, black cherry, currant, charcoal/ sweet barbeque, strawberry
• Sip: surprisingly mellow and velvety (soft tannins, dark fruit), definite acidity and toast on the tongue.

Steak
Photo by Melody Flammger

The Steak:

Angus Choice Sirloin Tip Steak prepared with Montreal Steak Seasoning and pan seared until rare.  This works best if the steak is allowed to acclimate to room temperature before cooking.

Together:


The acidity in the wine cuts through the fat in the steak- one of the main reasons this pairing works well together. The steak seems to bring out the toastiness in the wine more (from oak) and gives the spices on the steak a backbone to stand against.  The surprisingly mellow tannin didn't overwhelm the delicate flavor of the rare steak like a bolder wine may have.