This month we’re helping our SipScout members get ready for the holiday season by showcasing two of our favorite wines, from Jax Vineyards, for your Thanksgiving and Christmas table. We also have a robust discussion about food pairing principles and how to think about selecting other drinks, like cider or beer, for your holiday dinners.
From Jax Vineyards:
Brother and sister team, Trent and Kimberly Jackson collaborated with their vintner “green thumb” father to found their first label in 1996. Over time the two identified their unique niche among next generation wine enthusiasts. Outliers from the dominating short list of old school napa wineries, the two saw an opportunity to buck the “en vogue” winemaking style of their day to focus on the unique terroir of their family vineyard. After all, “change comes first at a small scale driven by the smaller more nimble producers.” Soon after, cult Winemaker Kirk Venge was recruited to create balanced wines reflecting varietal character and a sense of place. Passionate about our vineyard site, integral to our clone and root stalk selections, and now 15 years in, Kirk has reinforced their instinct that focus should always be on “sense of place” to understand the nuances that allow us to make great wine.
Ready to visit or buy some of the delicious featured craft booze for yourself? Good thinking! Visit https://store.jaxvineyards.com/
About Your Hosts
The Crafty Cask celebrates and supports craft alcohol makers through engaging consumer content, events, virtual tastings, and online education. We help craft enthusiasts drink better and craft makers market their brands better to build thriving small businesses that keep #TipplerNation drinking well!
Your hosts for this event, alongside the featured maker, are Suzanne Henricksen, Founder of The Crafty Cask and Evan Rothrock, sommelier, certified cider professional, mixologist, and bespoke wine tour guide.
======================================================
Click below to SUBSCRIBE and not to miss a single video from The Crafty Cask! https://www.youtube.com/c/TheCraftyCaskChannel?sub_confirmation=1
======================================================
Visit our website: https://thecraftycask.com/
Subscribe to Tippler Nation: https://thecraftycask.com/subscribe/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecraftycask/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecraftycask/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/TheCraftyCask/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thecraftycask
This video: https://youtu.be/hYzvzX6SYuY
SipScout Party Holiday Wine Pairing Session with Jax Vineyards
Hello, hello everyone and happy thirsty Thursday welcome to another edition of SipScout it is Thursday night as most of these are and we’re looking forward to a delicious Thanksgiving meal next week yeah yeah it’s crazy how quickly this um holidays sneak up on us even though they’re at the same time every year
It’s crazy how that happens today we’re gonna be talking about wine and other beverage pairings with all the delicious spread of the foods that you might find on the Thanksgiving table yeah absolutely we’ll be talking about great food pairings for the holidays so we’ll talk a little bit about Thanksgiving and you know
But also Christmas and New Years and all these things and really just dive in deep for the tenants of food and wine pairing or food and beverage pairing because it is something that we feel you know a lot of people think that they food and wine pair
Think that they food and beverage pair simply because they often have a glass next to them while they’re eating you’re eating and drinking at the same time therefore and you know one of the things we try to teach people is eating and drinking at the same time is not actually pairing
And so we’ll talk a little bit about that tonight while sipping on some delicious wines from Jax Vineyards one of our favorite family family vineyards out there um so we’ll be telling you a little bit about them and sipping on their wonderful Y3 Chardonnay and Y3 Pinot Noir
And we’ll tell you why these are two of our favorite holiday wines to have on our table um there’s a couple of reasons actually very much so uh but first off for those of you who might not have been here before I’m Evan I’m a certified sommelier and certified cider professional
That whatever mixologist boozy expert wine is my first love and I’m excited to talk to all of you about wine tonight and I’m Suzanne I’m the founder of The Crafty Cask where we are all about celebrating and supporting craft alcohol makers like the wonderful Jax Vineyards and
Many others that we share through our Sip Scout kits and speaking of SipScout kits I like to in the beginning of our sessions give a quick little preview to our upcoming hit and this next one that um is coming out for December is a doozy isn an exciting one
Because it’s our holiday mixology party we always love this one yeah so we do this every year and you get your nice little SipScout report of course but here yeah maybe um you’re gonna get this allow me this nice I’ll be the Vanna this nice kit here that has
Your spirits that you need some really fun mixers for holiday drinks some garnishes some fresh limes so everything you need to make two each of three holiday festive cocktails and these are really fun cocktails that Evan has created so he over the past week or so a couple weeks
I guess it was a while back but he created a couple of fun recipes for us so the cocktails we’re gonna be whipping up for a little preview especially for those of you who aren’t members if you wanna get in on this kit um we’re gonna be making a spiced cranberry gimlet
Which is tart and fresh and wonderful um and then we’re gonna be making a s’mores old fashioned which it’s my favorite like that’s gonna be that’s gonna be one of my cocktails all season long yeah um so the S’mores Old Fashioned is really quite fun and then we’ll also be whipping up
A gingerbread espresso martini um and for those of you who’ve been following The Crafty Cask for a while you may remember that we often like to make our espresso martini’s with rum instead of vodka um and so it has even I don’t know more nuance depth to it
Um and so that’s gonna be a really fun one as well as with that gingerbready flavor in there yeah ginger coffee this particular um has like pronounced molasses characters yeah very fun so we’re very excited we always get all decked out in our holiday gear I love the holidays
Evan is a Christmas Eve baby so we have some festive stuff coming up for us um so yeah we get all decked out in the holiday gear and it’s a great way to kick off the holiday season we’re actually gonna be doing that event on a Friday night um so
To kind of help squeeze it in and have it a little bit earlier than usual but makes enough for two so you can invite your friends along have a little mini holiday party of yourself or you can grab it as a gift to send to someone for a gift yeah so join us
December 15th I think so Friday yep and we’ll teach you all about these delicious cocktails oh my gosh this s’mores old fashioned is so good yeah yeah we’re excited about that but let’s get back to our regular programming for tonight and talk a little bit about wine shall we do a little cheers
Everyone hey thank you for joining us happy almost Thanksgiving hmm hmm so got oh no jinx you owe me a Coke you owe me a bottle of wine okay um yeah the purpose of tonight’s event is really to kind of talk to you about um food and wine pairing primarily
Uh with kind of the you know spotlight being on these two delicious and very versatile expressions of Chardonnay or Pinot Noir and Chardonnay from one of our favorite producers Jax Vineyards these are the Y3 bottleings which is essentially any of the wines that they don’t make from their own family estate but um
Food and wine is kind of the focus here so please chime in and let us know what challenges you might have or questions about the ideas of pairing food with well anything really wine is kind of the primary topic here tonight but if it’s something else that you’re wanting to serve
And have a bottle open on your table and are curious what kind of foods might be you know shine and and show that particular beverage off cause it’s kind of a fun interplay sometimes the wine is the highlight and sometimes the food is the highlight and the food enhances the wine
And the wine enhances the food um and so yeah and so our goal for you for this holiday season is you know we all take pride in our food and make yummy food and so everyone usually leaves talking about how good the food was but this year we want everyone leaving your house
Or leaving the party that you’re going to talking about how good that wine was with that food or how good that cider was with that food or how you know that like that’s cause it can really enhance a whole meal so we have lots to talk about
When it comes to the food pairings and I in particular have lots to talk about on this topic because I feel like you know this is something I’m very passionate about and over the years living with a Somali a living with someone who really knows wine
And has been teaching me a lot about my palette I’ve gotten quite good at finding food she’s gotten so good and I’m gonna teach you a couple of tricks and how I’ve gotten good at it spoiler alert drink a lot of wine eat a lot of food haha try stuff um but yeah
I’m gonna give you a few tips and tricks and we’ll talk about that but before we do that we wanna talk let’s talk a little bit about Jax Vineyards and these specific wine so everyone’s oriented they know if they wanna open one bottle or both bottles they can figure that out um
And if you do wanna open both bottles but you don’t wanna drink both bottles tonight um yeah grab our our trick for saving bottles you don’t need a fancy thing you don’t need anything to like make it expensive um obviously if you have a core oven for those of you
It’s like a needle that you put in so you can just pour a glass at a time that’s your best bet but that is a fancy expensive tool um but if you don’t have one of those all you wanna do is downsize your wine so all this head space here might
Maybe you can’t see that one as well um you know that air in there you don’t want any air in there so you wanna downsize it to whatever size container and you know this is a little bit more specifically purpose than maybe quote unquote fancier than yeah yeah your ball jar
But we’ve had plenty of line in just fine yeah anyway you can remove the headspace the oxygen or the air in the oxygen they’re in is going to help preserve any kind of wine that you’ve opened so if you want to open these tonight and it really if you do this
And if every time if you only drink half of this when you open this downsize it again right and so if you keep doing that and if you keep them in the fridge even your red um they will stay good for I’d say like three days if you’re really diligent about it
Two or three days yeah and sometimes they kind of transform a little bit but in a fun way so you can that one night and then the next night you say oh it is a little different but that’s kind of interesting that this note is coming out of it now
Whereas it was absent last night and so it can kind of be a fun experiment as well so but yeah just keep in mind this as Suzanne you know alluded to wine is perishable and so like anything you can keep a tomato on the counter until you cut it open
Yeah and once you open to get a bottle of wine it’s probably better to put it in a container and put in the fridge yeah absolutely so those are tips so you can open both of these or if you’re saving them for your Thanksgiving meal that’s okay too
We’ll talk to you about them and you’ll learn all about them yeah so Jax Vineyards is a winery that was opened and or created I guess by two siblings Trent and Kimberly Jackson uh for a while is called Jackson Ridge and after a little while I got a seasoned assist letter from a
Winery that many of you may have heard of Jackson Family Wines uh I e Kendall Jackson and decided well instead of losing all our you know family’s money by hiring attorneys that are gonna yeah immediately drain that by fighting a big big company like Jackson Family Wines
They decide to change the name to jacks uh Jackson’s located in which I feel like fits their personality so much more it’s kind of like fresh and young and approachable and Trenton Kimberly the siblings who run this are fresh and young and approachable and hip and cool and live in San Francisco
And you know so I feel like Jack spits them perfectly it would be funny for me to think of them as Jackson Ridge like that feels a little right formal and Jackson Ridge was when you know they were up in Napa Valley and that’s where they grew up
And that’s a fun part of their history while they have a beautiful tasting room that kind of encapsulates Napa Valley right in downtown San Francisco really close to the Giants Stadium in fact if you want to have a drink before going to see the Giants play but you know
They were raised in Napa Valley and have a lot of close familiar connections to wine makers and Vineyard owners in Napa Valley and that’s one of the things that allows these two wines to come to life uh in a pretty special way as well as their estate wines so again
Jax has a brand has basically two brands um the first is Jax and that primarily encapsulates their estate wines and then in more recent years single Vineyard wines um and then why 3 is a collection of wines that are made from vineyards across California basically um
And it’s curious because Y3 as a brand is actually literally from the family’s brand of their cattle ranch um they have a cattle ranch in the northern part of California and Y3 is how they would brand their cattle so it’s quite literally a brand um
And these two wines and all of their wines I feel like The Crafty Cask appreciates because of the value that is inherent in the quality that you find for the price that you pay yeah just to wet my whistle while I’m talking there you go and I’m gonna throw up a few pictures
From Jax while you’re while you’re talking here cool um can you as I mentioned growing up in Napa Valley and the familiar connections that are with Trenton Kimberly and their father Jess I’m sorry not Jess I can’t remember I can’t remember it would be so disappointing it will come to you
It will come to you brain fart um include their primary wine maker um spelled by the name of Kirk Vengie and who is our rock star who is a rock star in the in the wine making world people know his name for sure yeah Kirk is um the son of one of the
I guess the most more important people in the lore of Napa Valley Neil’s Vengie was the first wine maker to score 100 points at least the first American wine maker to score 100 points when he was working at Groth in the 1980s and his son Kirk is following very closely in his footsteps
He runs a winery his his own winery that’s something called Vengie but also makes wines for a number of other wineries in Napa Valley including Jax and Trenton Kimberly and Kirk went to school together and so like high school right like young yeah you know the Jackson family was growing grapes
And selling them from their Kalistoga estate uh which is the very northern end of Napa valley uh for many years to other wineries and Trent Kimberly decided that they wanted to start their own winery and tapped Kirk to the north you know we’d either want a cake maker or something like hey
We got this great fruit that we don’t really know who else thinks we’d rather have make it have make it um and he said okay yeah yeah by then he was already making these like hundred point one highly rated wines and yeah so um
Jax I believe started in the early 2 um and um he hadn’t been making wine for long I believe that Vengie um so a little bit of backstory um Nils Vengie his father has a winery called Saddleback and started a reserve label called Bengi um for his you know higher Echelon lines
And that existed for a while and I believe 2003 is when Kirk um proposed and essentially bought his dad out and said I want to take that label and continue it uh and that was around the time that he started acquiring these other roles as a wine maker or consulting wine maker
Sure uh in in Napa Valley for brands like Pacho Divino and Bellavinia and um the sellers there’s a ton and they’re all really good um but the cool thing about Jax is that because he’s a family friend um these wines are remarkably well priced yeah and that’s always a beautiful find cause craft
Anything you find yourself it’s yeah you find yourself getting into a territory where you’re like well it’s a little bit more than I want to spend but I know it’s gonna be good because I’ve had it before right and so that’s a beautiful thing about Jax Wines
And even more so why three wines is that these wines are made by someone that has such a precision and like a nose and a capability of making wines that if you’ve opened either of these you can immediately tell the quality um like the yeah and Kirk has kind of I don’t know
Admonished Trent and Kimberly over the years yeah the way I I kind of remember it or like to hear it is that he basically goes to them out like every couple of years and that’s like listen guys you could be charging so much more for this and I could be charging you like
These are great what like what these would get in the market if they put a different label you know and they’re just like that’s not what we’re about man like we just wanna make wines that are approachable we wanna make wines that are so good but that people don’t like
Pause about opening it on a Tuesday night you know and that’s what Kimberly and Trent’s approaches and certainly the Jax Vineyard line is happy because they’re single single Vineyard a lot of times they’re state fruit and you know things of that nature but there’s you know they’re still very affordable there
For what they are like their cab yeah they’re Napa Valley cab single Vineyard you know it’s the Jax estate I believe it’s $60 of the bottle which you know that’s maybe not it’s not Tuesday night wine for most people but Napa cabs are usually like 100 to find it to find a
Sixty dollar to find a single Vineyard Napa cab for under $100 is kind of a rarity and so yeah uh we esteem them um as being you know virtuous in that and that stalwart endeavor and you know Kirk’s doing fine yeah yeah he’s and Kimberly and Trent are doing fine
They’re like we don’t need to make a ton more like it’s okay like we’re all doing good here and so we love that ethos because that’s really what like I love about Evans approach to wine you know there are plenty of wine people out there especially Somalis who are very good
Like at steering you to 250 dollar bottles of wine that they’re gonna knock your socks off right like that’s that’s easy to find it right bottle that’s gonna knock your socks off at that price point and you know there’s a lot of like snobbery in it and kind of and Evans approach
Has always been I want amazing lines for good value right and he’s he’s done a really good job at like sniffing those out and finding those and figuring out what regions and what years and what you know he has a really good kind of way about that and we can talk
More about that way yeah later yeah and so this is one of our favorites and for the holiday table it’s really great and actually oh that’s a different liner we’ll tell you about that deal after um but you know they often have really great deals where if you get a case
They’re really affordable things like that for the holidays they’re killer they’re great um the chardonnay Wanna talk a little bit about the chardonnay I do I love the chardonnay partially I’d love to see in the chat if you guys wanna throw in where you are on the spectrum of chardonnays
If you like buttery chardonnays or if you like lean chardonnays or if you’re kind of somewhere in the middle um but for a long time I was like anti chardonnay and probably cause I lived in Northern California and a lot of the chardonnays I was tasting were these kind of big butterballs
You know that California got a very big reputation for Chateau 2 by 4 yeah exactly and and that was the California Chardonnay reputation for a very long time that I kind of hit you over the head with the butter and the malactic acid and you know all that good stuff
And that’s what people loved about it and that really didn’t work for me after a couple sips a couple sips I could appreciate but after that it started to just like be too much for me and this one and so for a while once I started finding the lean Chardonnay’s
Which I found them by going to France so should we um I find usually are much more lean and the way that they’re made and so I started really going in the other end of the extreme and saying like that’s the kind of shirt that I like
And now I’ve kind of settled out I think I would say would you agree like more towards the middle where I like a little bit of that butter but I also like the like stringent kind of crisp cleanness of it and this one is like perfect basically like that for me
I feel like it’s right in the middle for me yeah I I agree I think that that is kind of the direction that I’ve seen your palette go where and since I’ve known you yeah super bright crisp lean chardonnays are like oh that’s chardonnay and that’s a very common
Response to a lot of people that have been exposed to one type of chardonnay and you know chardonnays are really interesting animal it’s um it’s a grape that inherently does not really have a lot of characteristics that are indicative of it the grape itself um it’s a relatively neutral grape
Which is the reason why it’s the primary grape that’s used to make a lot of the best champagnes in the world yeah it’s kind of funny if you think about it because when you think about Chardonnay and what it tastes like and then you think about champagne and what it tastes like
They don’t they don’t drive necessarily there’s a little conflict here yeah and a a big part of that is so because it’s a relatively neutral palette um much of the yeah I guess profiles characteristics the descriptions that you can find about it are primarily because of the way it’s made
So first it’s a blank canvas a template for the wine maker to kind of like draw his yeah flourishing signature um but when you’re talking about champagne and one of the reasons I bring this up is this when you’re making champagne you take Chardonnay and you ferment it and you ferment it
Hot and fast and that kind of burns out even like the little bit of characteristics that the great might have so that you have a even more of a bleached white palette and canvas for the champagne maker to show off what the you know techniques of making sparkling wine can or can
Contribute um so in the middle of the mountains when you grow it in the right place and y Three’s Chardonnay is grown in the Los Carnaros region of Napa Valley this is the coolest region of Napa Valley but one of the warmer climates with regard to
The comparative elements that you find in uh Burgundy um first place by the by Burgundy Chablis Suzanne mentioned earlier both of those place both of those wines are places and they’re named the wines are named for the place they come from but they are made from Chardonnay they’re cooler climate though
And so they’re a little leaner because the grapes don’t get quite as right and therefore they have a little bit more acidity if you think about eating an apple that you have an apple in your backyard you eat one in you know in October and then you eat one in November
And the ripening that’s occurred in the acidity that you find earlier compared to later in the harvest give the wine the same acidity and this wine I feel like it has a really bright acidity yeah I agree and still has a little that wine making influence
And I think that that’s the thing that’s fun about this one of the things that’s great about Chardonnay is because of its spectrum the versatility that you can find with different food pairings um is pretty broad it’s one of the reasons that we’re highlighting here today Pinot noir as well uh
When you’re looking at the Thanksgiving spread or you know Christmas Day feast um there’s a lot of food on the table yeah uh not a rich food and and yeah a lot of rich food but just like some different variety yeah yeah spectrum and and they even like cranberry sauce
There’s a lot of different types of cranberry sauce like some people do the wrong mixing mixing it with with orange zest and peel and juice and the fresh one and then we also love one that’s cooked that has spicy red pepper flakes in it and Fresno chilies in it
And has like some real heat to it as well and I’ve had them that have ginger now the major component of them um and so you got this whole palette of like flavors on on your table and having something that is acceptable is really or not acceptable but like uh
Pairs well with um it’s really helpful yeah so um I wanna talk about what’s going on in the chat a little bit because I had something covering it for a minute I asked you guys to chat to me and then I had something covering it it wasn’t even paying attention
Um yeah so buttery shards um more minerally lean ones yeah and so that’s where like depending on and especially if you’re in a couple of one of you likes one and one of you likes the other finding those ones that kind of meet both is can be challenging
Another one that I feel like fits in this category is I just had the name and I blinked on it what’s my favorite one with popcorn Labrochelle Labrochelle chardonnay’s are also something worth hunting out if you are looking for those are really fun delicious words those are a little more buttery
I would say typically I mean not all of them yeah but and when it comes to buttery Chardonnay so like I said before I used to be like no on the buttery Chardonnay please remove rhombower from me thank you right and cause rhombower is known to be very buttery and people love it
What I’ve found is if you get a buttery chardonnay if you have a buttery chardonnay at home that you open and you didn’t think that’s very true best thing to eat it with the best thing that makes the butteriness of the chardonnay kind of go down and the buttery like is buttered popcorn
It’s pretty good I’m telling you like it sounds like it’s gonna be too buttery it sounds like it’s gonna be like butter overload but they just like balance each other out and it makes me like I actually we buy buttery chardonnays now on purpose to on purpose hair with butter popcorn well
Cause it used to be like I don’t know and butter buttery shortages were like so denigrated yeah gonna stop for a long time for a long time and now I’m looking for them you know and so some of LA Rochelle’s I feel like are more buttery and with popcorn for movie night
It is like I have a hard time eating popcorn without Chardonnay now honestly um it’s so delicious so so one of those fun components about like the tenants of food and wine pairing um that is exemplified by that idea is that you’re always kind of at a high level
Looking at how you can have a pairing that is contrasting or complimentary yeah and you know obviously the buttery buttery buttery buttery popcorn those are complimentary but the cool part that’s um existing in that compliment are compliment is salt and acid really really well together
So the fact that you have a kind of acidic buttery Chardonnay and then a salty buttery salty popcorn the salt and the you know acid in the wine those go great and then the butteriness you have a combination of the complimentary idea of pairing and the
Contrasting idea of pairing at the same time um another great way to do that is uh champagne and fried Popeyes fried chicken yeah champagne and fried chicken is a great great pairing we like to do we like to do high we like to do high class low class pairings like Little High
Low like yeah champagne and fried chicken yes please um Jay had a good question yeah he did what’s immediately clear that like the wine’s going to be good is there some sort of the thing that you can look at taste label um one thing to immediately like dispel when you said look at
Um there’s a common conception oh yeah that’s good in this world where after you stop swirling to see the tears or the lakes or the church windows forming and falling on the outside of the glass and I feel like popular media has media has I don’t know what’s uh
I feel like in movies a lot they talk about the legs you know in movies there’s like a wine person being like the legs on this are really quite lovely you know and it makes you the suggestion there is that that is indicative of quality and it’s not they’re pretty to look at
They can tell you some stuff about the wine like alcohol contents or sugar level where it might have been grown as a result sugar level and alcohol content but nothing about the quality so moving on Jay the question about like is there a way to kind of assess
The quality level with any kind of immediate markers and I would I would say probably no but you it seemed like you were gonna I was just thinking when we teach tasting techniques and if anyone wants us to go into tasting techniques later um there is there is one thing
But this is you know it’s not in the store at the shelf it’s once you open it because it’s something that takes a little bit of practice to received yeah and so it’s referred to as the finish right so after you take a sip you swirl it around a little bit
Enjoy it in your mouth get it coated everywhere swallow it down and you’re paying attention to the next ten seconds 30 seconds after you swallow it and we’ve all had you know taste of something where you take a sip you swallow it and you kind of get a like oh
There was like a sharpness there or it like burned a little bit or like something that’s a little jarring and then we’ve also had things and this is where you don’t notice it as much to Evans Point where it takes some practice when you swallow it down and 15 seconds later
30 seconds later it’s still you can still taste it in your mouth a little bit and it’s pleasure has like the measure of acidity that caused a little bit of salvation here right after I swallowed it but it has a nice like yeah velvety kind of sandpaper
Texture of the tannins that are keeping my mouth dry despite the fact that I’m salivating and I’m still smelling and tasting all the delicious like cherry Cola and bright tart sweet baking spices and it’s it’s been almost a minute now yeah so yeah that’s a good point because the
Persistence of a line is probably the single best you know overall indicator of quality yeah and I do think you know if you’re sitting there you took a sip and you’re immediately wanting to take another sip right away I feel like sometimes that is an indicator that like
There’s something going on with the finish that you’re trying to actually like clear out and like while it’s in your mouth it’s delicious and then okay let me take another sip let me take another sip whereas when it has a nice long finish like that you aren’t reaching for your glass again
Quite so quickly you’re appreciating it cause it’s still alive in your mouth a little bit you’re still getting that like enjoyment from it um and so that’s something you know if you’re at a party and you’re tasting through wines and deciding which one you want to pour yourself a full glass of
Just do that taste through and kind of just see how it you know lives on for a second um yeah alternatively if you have a sip and then you’re like early well I need to take another you might be enjoying a very nice glass of wine it also just might be Monday
Sure you might just need need fast sips um yeah let’s get into the pairing Jay Jay was asking best pairing for a charcuterie plate let’s talk a little bit about pairing and we’ll talk about charcuterie as part of that but I want to show this for a minute
What I’ve kind of done here and I’m going to encourage you all to go so village lighting here so no basically what I have on here the lighting is not gonna work for us there’s a bunch of goodies but so what I do is I go into the cupboard and I tell him
This is honestly how I do a lot of when we when we have a glass of wine now it’s all on a white plate I should have put it on a darker plate but basically this is what I do a lot of times when we open a bottle of wine
I go in our cupboard I go in our fridge and I kind of pull out a little mix of things just different things that I think might go well with it might be interesting with it and so what I have um is I have two slices of lemons oh
We’re gonna move the camera that seems risky all right it was a suggestion from Tom still so we have pecans we have pistachios we have three different cheeses over here that are kind of the same color and we have two wedges of lemons basically so what we
Good luck getting that set back again now we’re crooked I’m on it but so what we and the point of this is is the more things you try with each glass of wine the more you’re gonna start to learn what there is well with things
And so I like to do a variety of things and so if I have three cheeses in the fridge I’m gonna cut a few slices of each cheese and I’m gonna try each one with it and start to learn what works what doesn’t work why I think that is
And then the next time I have a chardonnay I have a little bit more information from what went with that one and I get to kind of keep advancing that um the lemon trick is a particular you want to talk about why this is popular with kind of pairings to do the
Like lemon in your mouth and then yeah you know uh cleansing your palette in a lot of different ways um can be questionable and very advantageous but when you’re talking when you’re learning and understanding food and wine pairing um playing with something that is pronounced at here
Anything at the ends of the spectrum and the spectrums I’m talking about are acid bitterness sweetness salt and umami fat um umami that makes sense yeah I mean umami the flavor is not the yeah yeah and so so those kind of 4 5 I keep saying questionably like 4 5 5 3
There’s the the jury is out whether or not umami is I think it actually a thing but there’s also like two more past that there are no in discussion um so the lemon is a proxy for acid basically and it’s like a pure acid
Where is goat cheese that I have on the plate is also acidic right and so that companies also has some fat to it and so that has some like extra layers and so a lot of times also people will do hummus plain hummus because that’s a very like straight flavor to like
So things that are a little bit more plain as you’re starting to learn how to pair that can really help you isolate like oh something salty goes nice with this something a little sweet goes nice with this now let me add sweet and fat let me add salty and fatty right
And so you start to kind of build on it and so let’s talk about how to actually pair food because like we were saying at the beginning just eating and drinking together that’s not actually pairing that’s enjoying a glass of wine with your mouth but when you want to pair food
And so what we’re looking for when we pair food is you know some foods when you pair them together actually makes one thing worse right it actually makes the wine taste flat it makes it kind of have a bite to it makes the food taste a little sour that does something weird
That like oh that was more enjoyable on its own so that can happen to just one of them or they can both taste worse they can both be like I enjoy those so much better separately and so that would be a bad pairing right a neutral pairing would be great
Doesn’t really do much for either one of them like doesn’t make it better doesn’t make it worse and those are perfectly acceptable those are great to just like that’s eating and drinking yeah yeah you don’t have to have them in your mouth at the same time but they go very well together
A great pairing the pairing that when you put it in your mouth makes you be like oh like really like that is what a great pairing does is it makes the wine come alive in a different way it brings different flavor profiles out on the wine that you didn’t notice before
And it does that for the food too and so once you try it that way you’re like oh I don’t wanna eat those separately and it can make just one better or it can make both of them better both of them better is a little harder to find
But those are three great parents um and so that’s kind of what you’re trying to assess and the only way you can assess that is we have to have both of them in your mouth at the same time and so the way that you do this is
We always recommend trying the wine first on its own we also recommend trying the food by itself on its own right you need a baseline for each one of them then you want to put a little bit of food in your mouth partially chew it chew it about halfway
And then take a swig of the wine and finish chewing it not as a big swig oh yeah not like you know spitting wine out with your food choking yourself but take a little bit of wine in your mouth and finish chewing with the wine in your mouth just interject their
Swig or sip totally depends on how big of a bite of food you take and so if you’re eating a dish that has like you know fried prosciutto and um risotto and it’s a big bite yeah it’s like a big bite all the flavors you need to have a cup
Like the amount of wine that you have in your mouth is directly relational to how much food you have in your mouth you’re taking a tiny little taste of caviar you want to take a similarly tiny taste of whatever champagne ideally yes champagne that you’re sipping with
And so while they’re both in your mouth you wanna just be paying attention so this is not the time to like be really intently listening to someone else’s story about like right I’m having a conversation right here yeah you’re having a conversation with your wine and your food and you’re really figuring out
And a lot of times when you go out to eat at a restaurant what I like to do is there’s three or four different components on your plate do this this is how you learn again there’s a trial and error piece do it with every single thing on your plate separately
Then start to take bites of things together and do it right and so that’s really what you wanna do here um and so I would encourage all of you to go run to your cupboards run to your fridge and just grab random stuff and like for it like pickles try cornichons dried fruit
Nuts cheeses um crackers even if you have different flavored crackers um sauces if you have sauces you can just do a little dab of like mustard and then do yeah um and it really you know and see what you’re gonna learning with this J to your suggestion earlier charcuterie is a charcuterie
Plant it is I feel like designed to be really versatile and there’s some things that arguably go better with some types of wines and beverages some that go better with other if you’re talking about fruit like prosciutto and Coca Cola and your actual cured and salted and smoked and dried meat products generally
You want something that’s a little higher in tannins tannins offset the fat component that you’ll get from something fatty like that the same goes for different types of cheeses however um the fattier cheeses that are like softer sometimes the tannins alone uh don’t like way well with the other component
So it’s better with protein yeah um but that’s why you know big cats kind of snickler about wine and cheese cause while the you know everyone’s like all one Instagram wonderful yeah Instagram Instagram Pinstock talk based you know wine and cheese is great it is but not all wine goes great
With all cheese great and as you start to play with that because I was definitely wouldn’t he first said that to me years ago and he’s like my not all wine and cheese go well together and I was like what wine and cheese are you eating what
But as I started to pay attention to that he’s absolutely right you know there are certain cheeses that go great with pinos there are other cheeses that are better with cabs there are a lot of cheese the buttery soft cheeses I really like with Chardonnay’s I really like with whites
A little bit more and I totally agree with that in the most part but I have to do this next time we see it which might not be for a while we’ll find a lot of really good soft cheeses here where we have nevertheless one of my biggest complaints about living here
There’s a soft white cheese from the homeland of Burgundy and this is one of the most like directly contradictory things to the concept that I often talk about with regard to food and wine pairing which is what grows together goes together um because by enlarge Chardonnay and Pinot Noir
Which both come from Burgundy pair very well with things that are also found natively in Burgundy like mustard in the town of Dijon which sits right in the heart of Burgundy and truffles troubles grow natively in the uh oak forests that are right outside of there and it’s the question of whether
Or not the decision to grow and make wines with these grapes and in this way came from the food that was you know kind of prevalent around there or that dictated what food was cultivated is a question um but there’s a cheese going back from Burgundy called epoise I love epoise
And I think it’s the most terrible food pairing ever with a Chardonnay that grows there that you find in I I believe it’s Mariso in the southern part of the coat of bone um it’s it’s it’s very conflicting for me because I really like that ideology of preparing food and wine
And I think it’s one of the more important ones that I’d love to like convey because across the board there are examples of food that come from a region where there is similarly a wine that is most notable of that region and they invariably go together because why wouldn’t they
Like they would have figured that out by now uh and so if you’re looking to pair food and wine look for the place where that kind of food came from and then the wine that is native to that region and vice versa like if you really like Cabernet sauvignon
Go look at the food types that have developed over 600 years in the really for the cabernet regions right cause that’s the tricky thing nowadays right is it you’re like well they make cabernet everywhere right and so going back to like where are the really like amazing cabernets coming from
You know where are the like where are the best versions of that coming from and that’s kind of helps you narrow down a little bit I would say for charcuterie boards I do tend to really like temper neos and like mall backs for charcuterie boards I just feel like there’s something very like
Approachable to them and I don’t know maybe it is because in those cultures you know like in stain the pinchos and the little food bite that have a lot of meats in them a lot of time and then Tina they are really well known for meat there I feel like those are really
Approachable lines that work with quite a few different charcuterie yeah yeah I would agree those those would be fantastic with most things that you see on the kind of standard charcuterie oh I like fun pairings like this Jay we these are fun pairings if you guys don’t follow Wine Folly
You should follow Wine Folly cause they sometimes do these weird no but what pair is best with my local Big Mac hey Jay is your local Big Mac different than our local Big Mac haha um so that was an island dressing is what you this is a good this this brings up
A good point see you think you’re being kind of funny but we we can we can teach about this it’s really true so with something like this where you have a fair bit of you know fat you’ve got the cheese and the meat you want something that has some grip
And so we’re already straying into the land of like big reds covering some of you on being a pretty exemplary example that people are familiar with exemplary example exemplary example that’s that’s a thing yeah but it’s very true the Thousand Island and particularly the vinegar component with the pickles and I mean just
Thousand Island so I guess most of that zip is from pickles no um having acid to pair with acid is super helpful um if you think about something like San Giovesi which comes from Tuscany and is a red wine grape that’s pretty high naturally in acidity um but it also has
A fair bit of Tanner structure compared to Keverney Sauvignon which has less acid but tomatoes have a lot of acid and acidity pairs well with acidity so we are talking about acidity pairing all with salt earlier with the buttered popcorn and buttery Chardonnay acidity also goes very well with acidity which is why
The classic grape of Tuscany which is kiante which is very high acid wine very high so grape goes so well with the food in Tuscany which is tomatoes are not just Tuscany but you know tomatoes are very high acid fruit vegetable and the mother sauce your marinara yeah mixed with something that’s bright
And vibrant like county um is another really important component of food in my opinion that just goes to exemplify why what grows together goes together is such a big thing Chardonnay with mushrooms and mustard and um truffles Sandia Basie with tomatoes um yeah yeah it’s a really nice very helpful but to summarize
Kind of this newer piece that you just brought up though basically what I’ve been saying is kind of sauce trumps everything like to some like not everything maybe but if it’s a saucy dish if there is sauce on something that’s all I was talking about was like mustard and tomatoes yeah what’s
With it and so people you know back in the day people used to say you only drink white wine with fish and you only drink red wine with meats and like that’s not necessary because most of the time you’re not just eating a piece of fish you’re not just eating a piece of
Steak right like there’s some sauciness going on there’s and so you really want to think about like does the sauce have mushrooms in it is the sauce like tomato based is the and that’s what you want to help lead your choice um gosh I feel like I have to chime in with it
An actual kind of pairs best recommendation yeah we’re not gonna let you off the hook for that I’m not trying I’m volunteering um so and I feel like with that so if I want to make tannins and I also want a vicinity the other thing I think I want is high alcohol
Because I think that alcohol and accentuates flavors it accentuates spice it accentuates um saltiness um and it’s something to be aware of like you don’t want to necessarily have a shot of tequila with the spiciest Mexican food you can find out um it also accentuates sugar so that’s the reason why
A lot of pastry chefs add spirits to like different kinds of pastries that they make and desserts that they make but with a Big Mac I think I would do it’s pretty full bodied red zinfandel I was thinking zinfandel too for some reason yeah Malbec would work I think because both
Of those have also that peppery spice on the back palette and the one thing that I feel like I miss in something like a Big Mac is it’s not spicy enough and that’s why I have sport peppers when I go to in and Out Burger and I get my cheeseburger you know you
Just said something that made me realize that it’s an issue I’ve had with Mexican food for a long time cause I love Mexican food I love margaritas but I’ve always from a very like when I was younger even in my 20s if I would go and get the big Margarita
And then get Mexican at a restaurant I would be able to take like three bites of my food and I would just kind of feel nauseous and I nauseated and I would kind of like not be able to finish my food and so I start I stopped ordering margaritas
When I began it was like so sad for me and I think it’s what you’re saying maybe because I am I’m a little sensitive to like really big flavors like if things are very flavorful I get a little like my palette gets blown out after a few bites and I start to
Feel full um but I think the fact that there’s spirits in the Margarita and that’s heightening my like the flavors of the food and Mexican food is already very flavorful right but that’s probably what’s going on there for me interesting yeah that totally makes sense no it’s fascinating Jay please report back
With there’s infidelity back expendation experience let’s talk a little bit about the Pinot and then we can open it up and turn everyone’s cameras on I did try this with the lemon it’s interesting it makes the lemon kind of sweet like it makes the lemon almost taste like a sugared lemon with a
Chardonnay um and actually makes the chardonnay kind of taste a little sweeter as well I think well cool I’m gonna try that it was kind of fun the pecans and the pistachios kind of neutral like didn’t make anything better or worse I would say um oh no you didn’t do that full
And then the goat cheese is a is a nice pairing it doesn’t again I’d say it’s it’s a neutral pairing and I also have an apricot cheese there and a cheddar that I haven’t tried yet so but I did the the lemon was was pretty fun I thought yeah that’s way cool right
It almost reminds me of like those lemon drop shots when we were all in college like that sugar and lemony kind of flavor when after citrone came out like the first flavored vodka out there you just like squeeze lemon and put sugar on them yeah uh Steph likes it too
Yeah I mean it’s it’s fun to just and I I and that’s the encouragement Suzanne was putting forth there is that like if you find a wine that fascinates you and you’re like finding yourself spending money oh I haven’t even tried it yet it’s been 20 minutes now cause I’m just
At least that’s for me and then in the meantime in those 20 minutes Suzanne’s looting through the cabinet and fridge and the freezer and finding all the things and she’s like what do you think it would taste like with this I’m like I don’t know I haven’t tried it yet no
And I and I would encourage you to like pull some things that you’re like there’s no way this would be good like this is really weird but like I just have a feeling or I have a hunch and I just wanna try it anyway um because those sometimes can really shock you
And really blow your mind and I’ve come across some of those or like watching a movie or something or all just all of a sudden put something in front of Evan and he’s like what and then we try it like oh damn that is fun um so just the more
The more you do it the better you get out of practice practice makes perfect practice makes perfect permanent yeah um so the Y3 Pinot is perfect from a single Vineyard in the Russian River Valley owned by a family that has I believe the largest number of non contiguous acres of vineyards
In Sonoma County um this is very high quality fruit that for whatever reasons whatever metrics the family has and I I don’t know if I can comfortably tell you the name of the Vineyard yeah but I just tell them tell them why tell them what the
There is fruit that they sell at a certain price that they go through and they meticulously analyze every cluster and they are so on top of it and that’s the first pass through the New Year because that fruit goes into their own winery and also to other wineries that purchase their fruit
And those are adorned with the name winery of the family Vineyard so like on the bottle it would say the name of the Vineyard that the wine though the grapes come from and that carries a financial cache that the family doesn’t want to dilute because they will then go through the Vineyard
And do a second pass a second pass harvest and crop the rest of the stuff that on the day that they felt was exemplary and they initially picked a few days later they’re still really good fruit that is coming to fruition a little bit late and they go through and they pick it
And they can’t they don’t want to sell it at that same price point so and they well they can’t sell it at the same price point but they can’t put their name on it at the price point that they would otherwise sell it so they sell it declassified effectually
And so this is called in the industry you’re buying declassified fruit from the Vineyard which basically means you can buy this fruit you can make a single Vineyard wine from this fruit but you cannot put the Vineyard name on your bottle because it was harvested two days later
It’s not it’s not the premium best fruit that was harvested at the perfect party right like and as a result because they have because Trenton Kimberly are friends with his family they received uh the opportunity to buy this fruit I think that makes such such a good pinot uh
Pinot as far as like again the dinner table around Thanksgiving um this is something that is very versatile but it also can be overpowered and washed out because it’s comparatively delicate some chardonnays are much more robust and can withstand more this one without its oak influences a little bit more
Reserved I think this pinot can really stand up to a nice smooth drumstick like something fatty and pretty hardy because this is I mean try this because I feel like I’m doing my last food pairing with my Chardonnay I’m being diligent over here sorry um I’m familiar with these wines
And this particular vintage of the Y3 Pinot Noir um is I think a little bit more prominently tannic than other ones that I then previous vintage yeah and it’s actually quite pleasant particularly with this kind of idea in mind of being able to stand up to something fatty
Tannins and fat play very well together there’s a reason that uh you add cream to your coffee or you add cream to your tea the fat and the cream the tannins that you find in tea and you find coffee when you were a little kid
You would have a piece of apple and a piece of cheese and there’s tannins in the skin of the cheese and I do that all the time you do like that Travis but also the you know it’s there’s no that’s the reason why
Big cabernets and just want a big fatty steak with them and that is like delicious right yeah like it’s that same idea too and there’s nothing like I mean you’re not gonna find something quite as big and fatty as like a grilled rib eye on you know
Most of it but cheese Turkey legs it’s Christmas you might find a big rib eye we did we did a big rib eye Turkey legs like you could have like a really like really fat and crusted skin and crusted Turkey leg that’s plenty fatty
And having a little bit of tannins is really helpful it kind of like it just peels that that that texture and that like weight of the the oilyness or the greasiness and whatever kind of protein you’re eating off your mouth and then introduces your palate to the next bite
Especially if it’s got some good acidity like this does so that you’re then salivating and then after the fat is pulled back the saliva kind of opens your mouth up again for the next bite is this Carnaros as well or is this this is in the Russian River Valley um
It is more tannic than I remember yeah past you know not unpleasantly yeah I think it’s a really kind of welcome shift I think I’ll make it in particular given the context that we’re talking yeah and even better if we turn 1 if we were drinking this in uh April I’d like well
I wanted something that I could just you know chill and drink by the pool you know um yeah and I really I really tend to like bigger Pinos and I don’t like the super light ones and so this is this is nice and that regard
Yeah I think this would be great with dark meat Turkey 100% I actually think strangely this this is kind of what I do I think this would be good with like the sweet potatoes with marshmallow for some reason I’m not sure why the sweetness might be a little much for it
But there’s something about the sweet potatoes that I think would kind of work well with this um gravy I think would work very well with this as well so whatever you know who cares about mashed potatoes the gravy the gravy would go well with this um stuffing
I think would go well with either of these honestly maybe a little better with the Chardonnay one thing to keep in mind since Suzanne mentioned earlier like sauce trumps everything something that you think about when you think about sauces is you know some of them are more herbal yeah driven
And some of them are more spice and that’s a you know an important difference is with Peter Noir um something that’s complimented with this more often is spices they might be sweet spices baking spices nutmeg clove you know cinnamon things like that um Chardonnay on the other
Hand might be better complimented with more herbaceous component that’s really more dependent on if it’s an oakier chardonnay which I don’t know can compliment you know shorten or caramel try this with the lemon the lemon kick I mean it’s just and I think that’s the value of doing things like that
Is like the pureness of it really helps you identify I know what I think it does for the lemon but and yeah so then with the pinot things that are dried and bark and root driven so sage yeah stuff saying sage yeah that that I agree those characteristics with pinot
Those are and then with Chardonnay you’re thinking things like um dill and um maybe you know maybe fresh rose Rosemary garlic Rosemary I’m thinking yeah but I’m also thinking like herbaceous I see so like fennel fennel frond and like keeping that in mind when you’re making dishes like if you’re making it
If you’re making root vegetables and then you’re putting a bunch of dill and fennel frond on it and think about that and some butter yeah chardonnay and then with your stuffing with your dressing for the evening sage and Rosemary and thyme and nutmeg and clove and cinnamon and thyme
Spice and stuff like that you know and honestly Thanksgiving is the perfect time of year the holidays are the perfect time of year to pour yourself a small glass of something and go take a bite of everything that’s out there with that thing and then pour yourself a glass of something different
And take it like it’s it’s it is the perfect like pairing experimentation platform because you’re supposed to be eating all day you’re supposed to be gnoshing all day and there’s lots of booze around and so you can just like play with it all and then you can tell everyone
Like the fun things you’re trying cause that’s really fun when you find something that like breaks your neck a little bit and you’re like whoa what’s that going and telling your family or friends like didn’t try this with that and then getting them to experience it it can be really a lot of
Understood hey did you try this with a lemon you didn’t try this with a lemon thanks for not listening sorry hey peanut butter and pizza how does the tomato sauce acidity in the tomato sauce on the acidity of peanut butter and then the some peanut butter is this one
Having a little bit more can of structure to kind of brace the oiliness that I mean I’ve had pizzas where I have to like either put a bunch of Parmesan cheese on top of it or put a napkin on top of it the tannins that you buy in this would perfect yeah
Hundred percent yeah for sure all right I think we should open it up to happy our style what do you think so people can just get on camera and tell us what they’re planning on I’d love to see your faces yeah we’d love to see your faces
We’d love to hear what you’re planning on for Thanksgiving we invite you and let’s let’s check cause we and let’s let’s do I know a lot of times some people drop off cause it makes them a little nervous that we’re letting people turn but you don’t have to turn your camera on
You can still say incognito but in case you do have to drop off thank you for joining us tonight we hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving and we hope that this encourages you to try a lot of different wines with foods and figure out like what works and what doesn’t and report back
Let us know what you find that’s kind of shocking or surprising or we hope that these two are as accessible as possible because I do feel like they’re very versatile and the fun is branching out from these ones and if you like them if you go online and order them now
Like we said they are very reasonably priced so which is perfect for the holidays because as people drink throughout the day you don’t want to have like these super crazy expensive bottles out there right these are really nice for that and I think maybe if you order today
You you might be able to get them in time for Thanksgiving next week they’re pretty on it with the shipping and they turn things around very quickly so um yeah I think that might be Easter so if you like them and don’t forget if you aren’t a SipScout member currently
We have the amazing holiday experience coming up next month so order that by the end of the month so that we’ve got a s’mores old fashioned a spiced cranberry gimlet and gingerbread espresso martini we’re gonna have a lot of fun for that so alright I’m gonna um
You’ll get a notification on your thing that you can be upgraded to panelist happy holidays until we say Happy Holidays next Happy Thanksgiving and then we’ll say Merry Christmas next time but cheers everyone