Wine and food pairing.

While there are no hard-set rules about pairing wine with food, there are a few guidelines that you may wish to follow when selecting the perfect mate for your tasty dish.

You can decide whether you would like to compliment or contrast your wine to your meal. Both can make for excellent pairings. For example, if you were having sea salt and pepper chicken wings, you could pair the wings with a sweet riesling. The sweetness of the wine would provide a nice contrast while toning down the saltiness of the wings or you could also pair the same sweet riesling with cheesecake where the cheesecake would bring out the less sweet flavours of the riesling that you may not have noticed otherwise.

The old rule: Red wine with red meat, White wine with white meat does not always apply today.
If you are having steak and potatoes you will probably want to enjoy a wine that will stand up to the steak in terms of flavour and weight. You would not put Steve Urkel in a boxing ring with Mike Tyson so why would you pair a big meaty steak with a wimpy wine? Just like in a boxing match, heavy goes with heavy, light goes with light.

For steak, you might want to go with a big Cabernet Sauvignon from California, an Italian Brunello Di Montalcino, or a french Côtes du Rhône. These big wines can handle a hearty, flavourful steak.

If you are eating a mildly spicy dish, I would suggest pairing the food with a sweet or off-dry wine such as a Gewürztraminer from Germany or Alsace. The sweetness in the wine will "cut" the spice of the food making for a delicious pair. If your dinner is spicy enough to make you sweat, or make your nose run, I suggest drinking something other than wine all together. Maybe some refreshing mojitos!

When you are finished your entrée and are ready to move onto dessert remember this; your wine should be sweeter than the dessert. If you have a wine that is not as sweet as the dessert, the sugar in the dish will make the wine taste tart. For my fellow chocolate lovers, I strongly suggest you try port with your next chocolate treat, the match is heavenly!

At the end of the day, you should always follow your palate. If one of my suggestions does not jive with your tastebuds, then it may not be right for your palate. Something I love you may think tastes like spicy dirt, and vice versa. There are no right or wrong answers with wine, it is 100% personal.

Wine and Stampede!

Stampede is here and the city is swarming with cowboy hats, jeans, belt buckles and boots! This is my first Stampede as we just moved to Calgary a month ago. I have purchased a hat, belt and bandannas in every colour imaginable.

I will be hosting weekly wine seminars for the serving staff at work so my blog will be updated much more regularly. My first wine seminar is this Saturday. We will be tasting 4 bottles of wine, two whites and two reds. I am going to pick two very different whites and two very different reds. My goal for the seminar is to make the servers more comfortable and confident with selling wine when they are at their tables. This Saturday I will cover the following topics, How to properly taste wine to get the full experience, How to describe specific flavours detected in a wine, and some wine and food pairing guidelines.

During the tasting process, once you are past the swirl and smell process and you actually get to taste the wine there are 3 phases once the wine is in your mouth, the front, middle, and back palate.

The first phase is the initial impression that the wine leaves on your palate. You will not notice flavours in this phase but rather weight and texture. You will feel the wine in your mouth for a second and notice whether it is light like water or heavy like milk. Whether the tannins are strong (That pucker feeling) or soft and subtle, if the wine is very acidic (tart) or flat and the overall sweetness level of the wine. Is the wine very dry or slightly sweet? If the wine's alcohol content is too high, too low, or just right. The weight, tannins, acidity, sweetness and alcohol levels should be well balanced, one should not dominate over any other. If everything is well balanced it is a good sign that you are tasting quality wine.

After the first impression you will start to notice the distinct flavours of the wine on your palate. This is the second phase. Let the wine roll around on your tongue for a few seconds and concentrate on what distinct flavours you are detecting. If you are tasting a red wine, do you taste berries, smoke, chocolate, plums, coffee, pepper, raspberry, etc...?
If you are tasting a white wine, do you taste butter, citrus fruits, grass, flowers, apples, pears, herbs, etc...?

In the third and final phase of the taste properly referred to as "The finish" You will see how long the flavour impression lasts after it is swallowed. You will also notice if any other flavours present themselves during the aftertaste. If the finish is long and pleasant, it was probably a pretty decent wine.

Hello Calgary? It's me, Andrea.

I know I have been talking about the big move to Cowtown for quite some time but it's finally here and I am thrilled. Our one month visit with friends and family in Vancouver has been nothing short of wonderful but we are definitely ready for the next stage of life.

I hope to meet some fellow wine lovers in Calgary that I can share my nerdy love of the delicious grape juice with. My husband is a very good wine drinking buddy but does not have quite the same passion for it that I do.

In my search for a job in Calgary (Via google) I applied for several jobs which sounded interesting. A potential employer reviewed my resume and stumbled across the "Interests and Hobbies" section (Which until now I thought no one ever read) where I mention my wine tasting and guitar playing interests ,and emailed me telling me that he too shares a passion for wine and also plays guitar! It was a relief to hear that there is hope for me to meet people with common interests. It can be scary moving to a new city but also very exciting because it is a fresh start.

Luckily, I have Rob or the transition would be rather lonely.

Okay, on to the wine part (Because that's what this blog is supposed to be about).

One of the nights we were visiting with some good friends in West Vancouver and we shared a bottle of Hartford Court Pinot Noir (2005) which was fantastic. It had a sort of leathery nose with black cherries. The cherries followed onto the palette with a long finish of spicy mocha flavours. The tannins were pretty soft and the wine was light. It was quite a well rounded wine that I would certainly recommend to anyone who is partial to Pinot Noir.

Goodbye Saskatoon, we will miss you.

In the last 3 years that Rob and I have lived in Saskatoon, we've met some pretty amazing people which makes it hard to leave, but we also have a lot of amazing friends and family on the coast that we're dying to see so the move will be bittersweet.

One of our Vancouver friends came for a visit in Saskatoon the same weekend that some Sask friends threw a winter barbecue (the ultimate Saskatchewan experience). Our poor friend Kathy (the Vancouverite) was a little shocked to see that we would have a barbecue/dance party outside in the snow, complete with generator (for music and lights) in February, in Saskatoon. Although she was a little scared at first she had a great time dancing in the snow and we have the pictures to prove it! We brought with us a couple of bottles of wine to drink with our hot dogs from the barbecue. A couple of friends were even clever enough to find an appropriate place to drink the newest trend...wine in a can.

The first bottle we opened was Francis Coppola Diamond Collection Black Label Claret, which is a bordeaux style wine with about 90% Cabernet Sauvignon, 3% Merlot, 3% Cabernet Franc, 2% Malbec, and 2% Petit Verdot. The wine was a deep dark garnet red with purple edges. The aromas were chocolate, liquorice, and blackberries. The chocolate and liquorice followed on to the palate with plums and more berry flavours. The finish was soft but lingered long with pepper spice and mocha. You can pick up a bottle of this wine at most liquor stores in Saskatchewan for about $26 a bottle.

The night was perfect and ended with cocktails and dancing at BarKingFish downtown Saskatoon to celebrate our friend Erika's birthday. It was truly an experience that could only happen once in a lifetime with great friends in a great city.

Cheers,

Andrea

Hester Creek Late Harvest Pinot Blanc

My husband and I were in Vancouver for the holidays visiting family and friends and had a lovely time. While there I stopped in to the Mark Anthony's store that I used to work at to check out what was new since I left 2 years ago. The selection was incredible! I forgot that Vancouver liqour stores and fine wine stores are able to get pretty much any wine from almost any winery. Saskatchewan has an alright selection and it's getting better but it doesn't even compare to Vancouver.

While there, I purchased a bottle of Hester Creek, Late Harvest Pinot Blanc. I will admit that the design on the bottle lured me to it. It has this beautiful orange mosaic of a dolphin swimming above a person on the bottle. To my delight the wine was delicious.

I opened it on New year's eve at a party we went to with some friends that we know from Saskatoon who were also visiting family in Vancouver. When I poured the wine I immediately smelled pear and vanilla. The pear definitely followed onto the palate with some other tropical fruit flavours. It had a nice finish and was very soft on the palate.

As much as I will miss Saskatoon, I am looking forward to moving to Calgary in June for a number of reasons, one being the wine. Calgary has a few specialty wine shops that I am excited to shop at.
I have heard as a pre-requisite for moving to Calgary, I have to purchase a cowboy hat. I'm ok with that because most of us girls look pretty cute in cowboy hats, cowboy boots are totally ok too. I will NOT however where anything with tassles on it!