Good Grape Wine Company

February 21 2010

Dessert Wine, Four Famous Wine People and Me

File in:  No good publicity goes unacknowledged.

I am very pleased to be featured in the March/April edition of Imbibe magazine as a part of their cover story on real-world wine pairings. 

The thing I like about Imbibe (I’m a subscriber) is it’s not just a wine magazine, but a beverage magazine with wide ranging, human-interest based coverage of wine, spirits, coffee and tea.  They cover the au courant aspects of drinks culture in a highly educational, very approachable fashion with enough moxie to stay above the fray.

In fact, there are two magazines that help keep me culturally aware of what’s happening in my dual interests of music and wine and Paste and Imbibe magazine do a very similar and very nice job covering their respective genres.

On newsstands now, Imbibe can be found at your local Borders or Barnes and Noble.

The specific piece in which I’m featured is a, “What’s your favorite wine & food pairing” call-out alongside Kevin Zraly, Randall Grahm, Marnie Old, and Leslie Sbrocco.

I’m sure for the rest of them, my inclusion makes it seem like they’ve mistakenly stumbled upon open swim for the caddies at the country club, but I’ve never been opposed to crashing a party.

And, ironically enough, as a 15 year resident of Indianapolis, I’m right below Randall Grahm’s quote in the featurette where he says:

“Many, many years I did a winemaker dinner in Indianapolis where the chef paired a quail molé dish with a still, red pinot meunier that we produced at the time.  The pairings of the wine and the food was so unbelievably cosmic that the patrons in the restaurant spontaneously rose from their seats and began to applaud.  I’ve never seen that happen before or since.  Indianapolis?  Go figure.”

Yeah, Randall.  Indianapolis!  Though, I’m used to that kind of attitude from both the east and the west coast.  Two words, Randall:  Banana slugs.  As a resident of the greater Santa Cruz area, Randall can’t talk much about high-minded food and wine culture, especially with his UC extension nicknamed the Banana slugs. 

I’ll take a Hoosier against a Banana slug in an ass-kicking contest of any sort.

My quote says:

“I like to follow the ‘drink what you like with what you eat’ school of casual thought, but my favorite pairing, hands down, has to be a white late-harvest dessert wine from California with a cheese and fruit plate.  You don’t have to over-think the pairing, either – I like to think of white dessert wines with a cheese plate as more of an ‘experience’ than a hard and fast pairing with rules.”

I didn’t have to think much about this one – my favorite pairing is indeed dessert wine.  It’s the Rodney Dangerfield of the wine world, but it’s a pairing that is the most forgiving and yields the greatest dividends.

To me, dessert wine is like sushi.  Nobody in the U.S. just stumbled into a sushi restaurant for the first time.  You have to be introduced to it.

Dessert wine is the same.

Anymore, it seems like guests are quick to beg off of dessert of any sort, but pull out some dessert wine glasses, a late-harvest dessert wine and a cheese and fruit plate and watch some eyes light up.

Over at Palate Press this past week, Becky Sue Epstein wrote a nice piece about Quady, winner of the 2009 London International Wine and Spirits Competition (IWSC) Trophy for USA Wine Producer of the Year.  Incidentally, the Quady Essensia is the dessert wine I most recommend to newcomers to dessert wines – it’s very good, it’s reasonably inexpensive, it’s consistent from year to year and it’s widely available in most cities across the country.

Grab a salty cheese like a gruyere, dried apricots, cocoa roasted almonds, some good quality chocolate and a piece of fresh fruit like an Asian pear and watch people get totally in tune with dessert wines.

It’s almost magical.

I like to serve dessert wines in funky drink vessels like egg cups, but anything will do.

Thanks to Imbibe for including me and make sure you try your own dessert wine pairing as winter winds down!

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