Pairings Wine & Cheese

Sometimes you just know you’re right.  It is with pride and excitement that we learned that one of the cheeses we have featured in a Pairing was awarded the Best of Show at the American Cheese Society.

The Pleasant Ridge Reserve from Uplands Cheese Company in Wisconsin walked away with the coveted award for the third time the first two were given in 2001 and 2005.

Last Fall, we paired this award winning cheese with an El Dorado County (CA) white wine blend from David Girard Vineyards, 2007 Coeur du Terrior.  It was a stunning combination.

Kudos to all of the local (Northern California) cheese producers who won recognition in their given category.  Many of these cheeses have been featured in a past Pairing at www.PairingsWineandCheese.com

It is nice to know!

For the complete list of winners go to www.cheesesociety.org

Pleasant Ridge Reserve

You’ll recall that in my last post I made the following statement: “we are…now enjoying temps in the 90’s and low 100’s.  And we LOVE it!  But not only do we love it…think of the grapes.”

Apparently, while we were all outside soaking up as much of the warmth as possible, the grapes were soaking up too much sun.  According to an article in today’s local newspaper, “In previous weeks, growers had taken aggressive action to stop bunch rot, a destructive mold that was triggered by this summer’s unusually cool, foggy weather.” So “Growers had pruned back leaves to expose fruit to maximum sunlight in an effort to dry out grape clusters during the day. That strategy prevented bunch rot, but left grapes susceptible to overexposure, said Kyle Cameron, who manages two small vineyards in the Russian River.”

So it seems that the jury is still out on the weather impact on this years harvest.

If you’d like to read the article you can find it at:

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20100825/ARTICLES/100829686/1349?Title=Heat-wave-adds-to-harvest-s-weather-woes&tc=ar

Such is the life of farming!

While the rest of the country has been melting under record-breaking, scorching, rubber-sole melting temps, we here in wine country have been building fires in our fire places, running the heaters, and wearing those long ago packed but now unpacked winter sweaters.

Since July 3^rd we have awaken to sunshine only once—that is until yesterday.  Our mornings have been so foggy, damp and cold that when I venture out to walk the dog and cat (yes, the cat goes for a walk with us), I’ve been donning a long sleeve t-shirt, a heavy sweatshirt all topped off with a fleece jacket.  I’ve actually considered wearing gloves but refuse on principle—who wears woolly gloves in July or August in Sonoma County??

Alas, we have a reprieve from the cold weather and are now enjoying temps in the 90’s and low 100’s.  And we LOVE it!  But not only do we love it…think of the grapes.

I watched a news broadcast the other day that featured a conference organized by Napa Valley grape growers who wanted to put to rest the idea that this vintage will be ruined by the cold summer.  They assured the viewers that the fruit is ripening- albeit a little slower than normal.   And I recently talked with a grower in Dry Creek (Sonoma County) who had the same to report.  The solution?  The fruit will hang longer on the vines.  The only concern with that?  Early rains.

But we will keep a positive outlook on the vintage and for now return to the deck to soak up the long missed sunshine that promises to be here for at least one more day before it slips behind the dense, wet marine layer the Bay Area is famous for.

Cheers to warmth…and not needing a fleece jacket to attain it.

Agriculture and climate – -  two topics that seem to be on our minds more and more these days.  People are looking for ways to improve their lives and one way focuses on how our food is produced and the impact that production has on our environment.

In a recent North Bay Business Journal article it was reported that one of Sonoma County’s goat dairy farms would be going solar.  Redwood Hill Farm, known for its yogurts, cheeses and kefir, has jumped through all of the hoops (permits, lease extensions, loan applications, utility company requirements, and on and on) in order to be able to install a 586-kilowatt solar photovoltaic system at their processing facility in Sebastopol.   What this means is that they will use the sun to generate over 800,000-kilowatt hours of electricity a year while saving the company $1.5 million in utility costs over the next 10 years.

“Like a lot of people, we’re concerned about climate change. We’ve always been concerned about how much energy we’re using to make our products,” said Jennifer Bice, the company’s owner and cheese maker. “We’d love to be able to ship our products by train, but we don’t see a solution to this yet. Switching our whole creamery to solar will help mitigate the fact that we have to transport our products to distant areas.”

Thank you Jennifer for going through the arduous process of going solar.

For the entire article go to http://www.northbaybusinessjournal.com/22962/redwood-hill-launches-large-solar-project/?tc=ar

Or visit the Redwood Hill Farm website at http://www.redwoodhill.com/news

Well, we are heading into the final stretch of the 2010 FIFA World Cup and what an exciting two weeks we have experienced. Filled with upset—who would believe that Brazil would not make it to the final round; intrigue—will FIFA implement the instant replay rule after the goal/no goal snafu in the England v. Germany game; and a constant loud buzzing sound permeating from the television speakers—vuvuzela has become a household term the globe over.

One of the best parts of this competition though has been my venture down memory lane remembering a wine trip to South Africa taken 3 years ago.   We had the pleasure of meeting and staying with some of the top winemakers of the country: Kevin Arnold of Waterford Estate; a fabulous young winemaker whose name escapes me of Rupert & Rothchilds; and Danie de Wet of De Wetshof.

While staying in the apartment at Waterford Estate, we had awesome views of their estate vineyards and the hills that surround them.  We learned that birds are only one pest during harvest.  The other?  Baboons!  

From these beautiful hills….

…come these beautiful pests!

In a recent article published on the Africa on MSNBC website, it seems that baboons have taken a real shine to Pinot Noir “which sells for more than the average bottle of merlot or cabernet sauvignon.”  The most common practice used to deter the baboons, electric fencing, does not seem to stop them.  Baboons have good taste!

The de Wet family took us to their weekend house in Cape Agulhas, the southernmost tip of the African continent, where the Indian and Atlantic oceans collide. 

What a site and what an experience.  Not to mention some amazing wines.  Danie de Wet is a pioneer in the South African wine industry and is best known for his Chardonnay.  If you can find some, buy some.  You won’t be disappointed.

I must admit that eating fine foods and drinking fine wines was great but the real highlight of our time in South Africa was the 3 day safari we took in Kruger National Park where we were charged but a very unhappy bull elephant:

Thank goodness for the quick reflexes of our safari guide who got the jeep started, into gear, and in motion before the little bugger could reach us.

We also had the pleasure of watching a giraffe drink from a watering hole.  This, we were told, is very unusual to see because a giraffe is in its most vulnerable position when drinking.

And the crème de la crème was a black rhino availing himself of a sturdy log to scratch his very itchy underside:

I set my little digital camera on rapid shoot and have close to a hundred pictures of this guy scratching his belly.  When I look at them fast enough it looks like a video.

We finished off our stay in South Africa with a couple of days on the waterfront where we took in glorious views of Table Mountain and it surrounds:

South Africa is an amazingly beautiful country with great wines, awesome food, amazing people, and now the story of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. 

While watching the final game, we’ll be enjoying some of our favorite wine and cheese.  Maybe even a South African wine.  Will you?

Curried Peach and Shrimp Salad with a New World Riesling!

I came across this lovely recipe in our current issue of Sunset Magazine:

http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1995659

and decided to give it a whirl.

Flavorful white peaches are starting to show up at the market; the weather almost demands salads for dinner; and I had an open bottle of the Torzi Matthews 2007 “Frost Dodger” Riesling from Australia in my fridge.

WOW!  It was a homerun.  The salad has a bit of a kick to it with the addition of a serrano chile—that, along with the curried peaches, mellows the acid and pairs perfectly with nectarine and almond notes of the wine.  It was sublime!

The Torzi Matthews Riesling may be a little difficult to find.  Other good choices would be the Muddy Water 2008 James Hardwick Riesling or the Huia 2008 Riesling, both from New Zealand.

Summer – always a great excuse for a salad and wine.

We received a fun daily calendar from a good friend a few months ago.  It is the What Do You Know About Wine? calendar.

This calendar has lots of interesting information related not only to the making and consuming of wine, but also historical information such as “What was significant about the Champagne served at the baptism of Clovis I, the first French king in 496?”

Anyway here is some info that I thought would be good to share:  “Your newly opened wine smells bad. Really bad, like cooked cabbage or rotten eggs or perhaps even sewer gas.  What can you do to fix this problem quickly?”

Now, before I reveal the answer, I think it is important to point out that if your newly opened wine smells bad, really bad — like John Isner’s socks after hour number 10 in his unbelievable Wimbledon match this week—that is probably a corked bottle of wine and should be returned to your wine merchant.

The answer to the question about rotten egg odor though is this: “These smells indicate the presence of too much hydrogen sulfide, an inorganic compound containing sulfur.  Luckily it is easily remedied.  Drop a clean copper penny – or copper coin from any nation—into the wine.  The penny’s copper plating will react with the hydrogen sulfide, quickly turning it into odorless copper sulfide.  If you are unsure of where your penny has been, a silver spoon will also do the trick, turning it into silver sulfide instead.”

Or you can just take it back to your wine merchant.

And the answer to the question about the Champagne served at Clovis’ baptism?  “It was probably red wine and certainly contained no bubbles.  It would be a thousand years before bubbles would come to be seen as desirable in Champagne’s famous white wines.”

Hopefully you’ll never need to drop a penny into your wine, but if while playing Trivial Pursuit you get the question about Clovis’ baptism you can consider yourself prepared.

Cheers!

Without a healthy planet, we might not be able to enjoy great artisan cheeses and delicious wines from fantastic vineyards. That’s why Pairings Wine & Cheese is committed to maximizing our environmentally friendly ‘green’ impact and minimizing any negative impacts on the environment.

All of our wine and cheese shipments are packed with care using materials and containers made from 100% recyclable materials that can be used again to help protect the environment. By choosing these environmentally friendly products we are diverting waste fiber from landfill or incineration, displacing alternative products that are not biodegradable, using renewable and sustainable resources and providing you with recycling options.

Our Á la Wine & Cheese Carte Pairings and Club shipments are packed with frozen gel ice in an insulated bag, both of which can be used for picnics and other activities that require safe transport of food.

We offset 100% of our carbon emissions with our membership in CarbonFund.org, the country’s leading carbon offset and carbon reduction organization.

I’ve been a member of the same book group for the past 13 years and in that time I have read some great books and some not so great books.  One of my favorites was Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

The book was published in 2006 and while he covered a lot of ground (pardon the pun) the overarching thesis of it is the importance of eating locally produced vegetables and meats while minimizing our dependence on super-processed foods.

The “locavore” movement seems to be taking hold.  As I drive around Sonoma County and other parts of Northern California, I’m noticing an increasing number of home gardens.  Not flowers and shrubs, but vegetables and fruits.  In fact, there are some yards where the flowers have been removed and been replaced by vegetables (ours is one of those).

Gardens in schools also seem to be on the rise – thank you Alice Waters.  One of our local primary grade schools has a beautiful courtyard lined with about 20 half wine barrels (after all, this is wine country), all with tomatoes, herbs, lettuces, and other gorgeous plants peeping over their tops.   It is a sight to behold.   As I drive by I can’t help but think about the articles I read about gardens popping up in inner-city schools; how exciting it is for those kids to plant the seed, water and nurture it to its full potential and then bite into the freshly harvested item—the juice of the tomato dripping down their chins.  Yes.  I’ve seen a picture of a kid eating a tomato as though it were an apple.

While the wines and cheeses that we select for our Pairings are not always local to Northern California, where Pairings Wine and Cheese is located, many are picked for their sustainable approach to production following the edict of do the least amount of harm to the land.

If this year you’ve planted a garden for the first time then, as they say in New Zealand, “Good on ya!”  If you’re a seasoned pro at the task of hoeing, planting, weeding, nurturing, and watering…you are our inspirations.

Thank you.

When we started importing wines from New Zealand…waaaaaay back in 1999, we thought the highest hurdle we would have to jump would be convincing people that New Zealand produces excellent, world-class wines.  And it turns out that was a hurdle, but not as high as the hurdle of convincing people to try WHITE wine.  Turns out people are open to imports, just not to white wine.

You see New Zealand’s number one wine export into the US during the early 2000’s was Sauvignon Blanc.  And believe it or not, the most requested wine at a consumer wine-tasting event was, and probably still is “red wine, please.”  Not even a particular varietal, simply red wine.

And here at Pairings Wine and Cheese we see that same preference.  There are more One & One Red Club members, than One & One White Club members.   People just seem to prefer red wine.

Admittedly, my conclusion of people preferring red wine is not scientific, but it always left me curious about the possible reasons for what I’ve observed.

And then it dawned on me (see a light bulb above my head?):  White wine is a little more difficult to serve properly.

Most red wines are fine served at room temperature, but rarely are they as good when served chilled out of the fridge.  Therefore, it is easy to store a red wine in a closet or pantry, and open it moments before serving.

White wine, on the other hand, benefits from being chilled to a specific temp.  It is a rare white wine that shows its best qualities served at room temp, and when served too cold, the flavor of a white wine is simply dead.

Call me crazy, but I think if people could get their white wines chilled properly, there would be more white wine fans.