Pairings Wine & Cheese

Back in October 2009, we posted the following about the supplier of our wine and cheese accessories.  We think it is worth re-posting.  What is not mentioned in the original blog is the reason we choose Carrol Boyes as our supplier.

The Pairings we offer at www.PairingsWineandCheese.com are not only tasty, they are specially-selected and unique hand-crafted cheeses and wines.  The artisan wine and cheese accessories made by Ms. Boyes and her team are as unique as our Pairings.

We think you’ll agree.  Be sure to check out the goods at http://www.pairingswineandcheese.com/003-cat.html.

October, 2009

Fun with Wine and Cheese and Good World Citizens—Part One

One trip through our PairingsWineandCheese.com website and it may or may not be obvious that we have a philosophy here at PWC to try to do the right thing.  How we achieve this is something we talk about at every meeting.

One way is to support an artist in South Africa who in turn has created jobs for over 350 people.  Here is a brief story of Carrol Boyes as noted on the Handcrafted Accessories page of our website:

Inspired by and firmly rooted in South Africa, Carrol Boyes artisan products, imbued in their own eccentric soul, have seduced imaginations the world over.

The corkscrew, cheese boards and cheese knives offered at PairingsWineandCheese.com are truly pieces of art—functional art.

We hope you will use them and share the enjoyment and inspiration they provide us.

The weather here in Sonoma County is far from summer-like. Oh sure. We had some warm weather a couple of weeks ago, but that was just a tease.  In the past few days we have had rain, wind, and clouds to keep our temps in the low to mid-60s.

Nevertheless, the calendar tells me that summer is just around the corner and the big kick-off is next weekend when we take some time to remember the soldiers of the past, present, and future.

Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial start of, in the words of Nat King Cole, “those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.”   We’ll be spending it with family and friends, barbecue grills and iPods, and of course, wine and cheese.  And I’m sure that the subject of what Memorial Day is truly all about will come up.

No matter your opinion of war, the men and women who voluntarily sign up to fight on foreign soil and battle the war on crime on our nation’s streets deserve respect, recognition and remembrance on this day.  We will be raising our wine glasses to toast and thank those who have served, are serving, and are training to serve in the US military, police, firefighters, EMTs, and everyone who makes our daily lives safer.

Here’s to a Happy Memorial Day!

There are several ways to know that it is spring in Sonoma County:  the laundry we do; the medications we take; and, most importantly, the wine we consume.

Here in Sonoma County, when your days’ worth of accumulated laundry includes shorts, heavy jeans, t-shirts, long-sleeve shirts, tank tops, sweaters, heavy socks, swimsuits, sweat pants, it is blatantly obvious that Spring has arrived.

Just as with our mixed laundry, we have mixed weather.  Only 48 hours ago we were basking in the warm sunshine in our shorts and tanks, all doors and windows open to receive the warm ocean breezes.  Today we sit inside next to the wood-burning stove with turtle neck sweaters, jeans and heavy socks to protect us from the rain and howling winds.

With this mixed weather comes what we affectionately call the 3-B’s: buds, blooms, and blossoms that send pollen into the air and noses to the nearest drug store. One of the exceptions to this, of course, are the buds of the millions of grapevines planted throughout this county—no pollen from those, just the beginning of what will be some of the best wines in the world.  Regardless of this, though, the most frequent sound one hears while walking the streets of a Sonoma County town is “Ahh-choo!”  Anti-histamines are the drug of choice right about now.

But most importantly you know it is spring when you open a bottle of white wine, for example a  2006 Hermann J. Wiemer Dry Riesling from the Finger Lakes region of New York (yes, you read the correctly—New York), on a Sunday evening and by Tuesday the bottle is gone because it pairs perfectly with every meal you’ve planned for the past three days (by the way, there is only one daily wine consumer in this house).  Spring in Sonoma County means meals with fresh artichoke, shrimp, asparagus, spring greens, fish, etc.–everything that pairs perfectly with white wine.

Oh sure, white wine is just as good in the winter season with creamy dishes and, of course, always the perfect cheese pairing. Like many people, I enjoy red wines more often in the colder weather alongside of meals that are heavier with meats, creamy sauces and root vegetables.

But now, with the warm season heading our direction it is time for the perfect in between wine– Rose!

So much has changed in the 40 years since the launching of Earth Day—we can buy hybrid or electric cars, plastic bags are outlawed in some cities, recycle bins are common in offices, homes, and public places–  yet it seems we have so far to go.  Here at Parings Wine and Cheese we spend a good amount of time talking about ways to decrease our impact on the planet.  What follows is Our Green Pledge, found on our website, www.PairingsWineandCheese.com:

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.

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

Happy Earth Day. 

From our April club shipment newsletter:

Spring is in the air in Sonoma County. Everything is blooming, the grapevines are budding out, the baby lambs, goats and cows are frolicking in the fields and another growing season is here. Shelly, Howard and Jenny spent a couple of days volunteering at the 4th Annual Artisan Cheese Festival in Petaluma recently. We had the best time (helping out, of course) nibbling our way through two large tents of cheese, chocolate, olive oil and bacon. Our favorite was the gelato made with Point Reyes Farmstead’s Original Blue Cheese; the one made with Mt. Tam wasn’t too bad either. It may sound a little unusual, but the blue cheese was just subtle enough. We swooned at the idea of enjoying it with straw- berries bathed in Balsamic!

On Monday, Jenny and Howard participated in the Cheese Festival’s trade-only day and met some new up-and-coming cheesemakers and some second and third generation dairy farmers turned cheesemakers. We also learned about animal versus vegetarian rennet, good and bad molds (stay away from fluorescent colored molds!), cow comfort, and methane digesters, to name but a few of the topics that came up. Just let us know if you have any questions about any of these subjects and we’ll gladly reply.

Meanwhile, Joel went to the Rhone Rangers tasting in San Francisco and tasted his way through a huge pavilion of Rhone- style American wines. He loves these wines and we know a few of them will be recommended for future Pairings.

Mother’s Day is coming up next month… an A la Wine & Cheese Carte Selection will make a perfect gift for that special lady in your life.

OK.  So I finally did it.  I just this morning tossed into the giant blue recycle bin multiple years’ worth of cooking magazines.  Including—wait for this— the last year’s collection of Gourmet (gasp!).

In case you haven’t noticed, I am a foodie.  Not only do I enjoy eating, but I LOVE to cook.  When the latest editions of Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, Cooking Light, Cooks Illustrated, even Sunset, arrive in my mailbox, my husband knows where he’ll find me  in the days following  each arrival: on the deck if it is sunny or near the fire if it is cold and rainy, reading, absorbing, and conjuring.

And it never fails, there is always a recipe or two that I intend to try, so each magazine gets filed (or shall I say “piled”) in my pantry awaiting my culinary sojourn.

But this is how I know that time goes by so fast.  Suddenly a new edition has arrived and there are even more recipes added to my “to-do” list.  Before I know it I’ve got years of ideas, dreams and goals, all accumulating.

This is not to say that I don’t try some of the recipes.  Most of them I do.  But rarely do I make them twice (they have to be “out of this world good” to make that list), mostly because each month I gather a whole new list of them.  After all, there are only 365 days in a year, so how many recipes does one really need?  And how much food can one eat?

“It’s clone 828 –favored in Burgundy” “This wine is cloying and has beautiful notes of petroleum,” “blah, blah, blah.”  Well, that is what it began to sound like when I was first in wine buying meetings as a wine importer.  I quickly panicked thinking, “Geez!  I think I’m supposed to know this stuff.”  Well I didn’t.  The only thing I knew was that I really enjoyed wine and loved it even more when it was paired perfectly with food and friends.

Don’t get me wrong.  All of that information has a purpose but to the everyday wine consumer, it can be very intimidating when the person standing next to you takes a sip of wine, making a loud slurping sound and proceeds to describe the feel of the wine on all points of his or her palette and then goes on to talk about the “leathery, cherry, fruity, stringent, steely, balanced, depth, tannic, vegetal” flavors of the wine.  What does it all mean?

That is why it is so exciting to read about a new movement in wine merchants who aim to “put patrons at ease.”   One merchant is quoted as saying, “I love getting questions from customers, and I just try to bring wine down to a human level.”

This is what we at Pairings Wine & Cheese mean when we say, “Forget the rules and enjoy the fun” on our home page www.PairingsWineandCheese.com and in our video  www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cf8EQFm-qk

I must admit, though, the wine language did begin to creep into my vocabulary after a few years in the wine business.  It becomes a cultural event similar to the words “like, OMG, BFF, and you know” with adolescents, as in “OMG! Like, I can’t believe my BFF gets to, like, go to Disneyland during spring break.”  I do diligently try not to sound too much like a wine snob when enjoying wine with my BFF, like, you know.

When I was a little girl (many moons ago!), my mother would feed me cream of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich whenever I was sick.  Looking back on it now, it was truly one of my first favorite pairings.  And it always made me feel better.   It mattered not at all that the soup came from a can with an Andy Warhol image on it, and the cheese on the sandwich was a slice of good ol’ American cheese.

As an adult with a food and wine habit, my cream of tomato soup is now homemade and the cheese on my sandwich is usually an artisan cheese such as goat cheese or brie or a nicely aged cheddar.

Now I’ve come to learn that April is National Grilled Cheese Sandwich month.  Check out the sandwiches in this article http://www.womansday.com/Articles/Food/10-Greatest-Grilled-Cheese-Sandwiches.html and not only will your stomach instantly start growling from hunger (just look at those pictures!), but you will never think of grilled cheese sandwiches in the same way.

My favorite wine with tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich—an off dry Riesling.

Looking for other fun pairings?  Be sure to check out our website at www.PairingsWineandCheese.com

OK.  I’m totally a skeptic when it comes to wine glasses that are promoted as making wine taste better.  Skeptic?  Yes.  But not completely close minded about these things.  So when we received a pair of beautiful Eisch Breathable wine stems from a dear friend for Christmas I was excited to do a taste comparison with the other glasses I have in my stemware inventory.
A couple of nights ago I opened a 2007 Unoaked Chardonnay from one of my favorite New Zealand Hakes Bay wineries, Alpha Domus.  I poured my first glass into the Eisch Breathable stem and was pleasantly surprised at the fruit that came through, not only on the palate, but also in the bouquet.  Considering the age of the wine, I expected the fruit to be somewhat dumbed down all the way around.
For my second pour, I used a regular wine glass that one could purchase at any house wares department store.  WHAT AN AMAZING DIFFERENCE!! In this glass, the wine had a much more acidic bouquet and the fruit was definitely harder to detect.  The wine in this glass was good, but the Breathable Glass definitely made it better.
Kind of like our Wine & Cheese Pairings:  the central California coast goat gouda offered in our current White Delight selection at www.PairingsWineandCheese.com would probably pair ok with most California Chardonnays.  But we believe that pairing it with the 2007 Starkey’s Court Chardonnay made it a better—a perfect pairing.