If you’ve heard it’s a bad idea to pair high-alcohol wines with spicy-hot foods, read on… you may be surprised.
At Team Great Big Reds, we eat a lot of spicy-hot foods, and we love to pair them with higher-alcohol, lower-acidity wines that we call ‘Great Big Reds’. (See recommendations for syrah/shiraz and zinfandel below.)
(We promise to keep it simple!)
Continue reading Why High-Alcohol Red Wines Pair Well with Spicy-hot Foods – According to Science
Coming March 26 and 27, 2019: big wine-tasting events featuring 17 American wineries’ Rhone-style wines at City Winery. Over 60 wines to taste.
Hot on the heels of 2018’s Rhone in the USA event at the Smithsonian, here come the Rhone Rangers — back, and with reinforcements!
These three categories make red wine easier to understand:
– Big, luscious
– Big, craggy (‘structured’)
– Light-bodied
By ‘big’ we mean 1) lots of flavor, and 2) full-bodied, usually due to higher alcohol levels.
By ‘luscious’ we mean smooth and easily approachable — not high in tannin or acidity.
By ‘craggy/structured’, we mean high tannin — leaves your mouth feeling dry after you swallow — and high acidity — puckers the lips like eating citrus fruit.
Like superheroes, wine makers all have origin stories. In this case, we even call the wine makers “Rhone Rangers”, though no one wore a mask.
David Margerum’s story involves being a fourteen year-old boy traveling with parents. And, oh, try some wine! In Chateauneuf-du-Pape.
Shannon Horton’s story involved “punching down” the grape skins as a ten year-old.
Randall Grahm’s story is more about journey than origin: can you make a quantum leap to achieve something beyond yourself? In winemaking.
Free wine tasting at the Smithsonian? That’s a hard sell. (Not.) Maybe if you throw in Randall Grahm pouring his 30-year anniversary Le Cigare Volant…. Oh. Randall Grahm will be there, pouring that wine. (Please note that by “hard sell”, I mean “sign me up”.)
The bad news is that there’s already a long waiting list.
The good news: Team Great Big Reds will be there, and we’ll give you the play-by-play on how good all the wines were.
Seriously: two events… a free wine tasting / seminar on Monday afternoon (6/18, 3-5pm), and Tuesday evening (6:30pm-), a fundraising four course dinner (plus dessert), with each course designed to match the accompanying wine.
Continue reading Rhone in the USA Events at Smithsonian National Museum of American History
The fires got to me.
Sonoma and wine generally are — were — my respite from worldly woes: hurricane after hurricane after hurricane and mass shootings, politics, family health matters, terrorism, and all the rest.
And then the fires.
We hope to help you find wines you will enjoy, as well as find new grapes and blends to try.
1) If you see a review here, you know the wine is *big* — feels big in the mouth and has lots of flavor — and that we’re enthusiastic about it.
If you think the glass matters not….
Spoiler alert! [delicious.com.au]
A corkscrew from a company called HiCoup is a terrific upgrade over anything I’ve experienced before.
Why? This makes pulling a cork easy. Who knew that one corkscrew could be easier to use than another?
Continue reading HiCoup Corkscrew: A Fourteen Dollar, Very Expensive, New Favorite
See Wine Folly’s “Styles of Port and Their Pairings“. Tip: Late Bottle Vintage ports will keep a few weeks in the refrigerator after opening, while Tawny ports can last a month.
