Wine Tasting

Last night I went to a wine tasting at Vino's. It was what I would consider, a "crash course" in wine tasting. When I say "crash course" it was like tasting 7 wines and learning how to compare it to dishes in 45 minutes... literally. It was pretty cool though, I learned about how to pair wines with a shrimp dish and veal dish. I learned that acidity and lemony qualities are good, but bitterness is not-so-good. However, I don't think one needs a 45 minutes class to tell you that. Anyway, I learned that with shrimp, if a wine tastes "light" or "citrus-like" that it is good and that you do not want to drink a wine that overpowers the food.

Our second dish was a veal cheek, which was very tender and fatty but tasted really delicious. Some factoid, if the meat is soaked in wine overnight, the tannins breaks down the marbling of the meat, which makes it tender. For the pairing with the veal we had a bottle of Zinfandel, Pinot Noir and Riesling, my favorite. One would think that a red wine would compliment the veal the best, however, not so... my favorite, the Riesling stepped up to the plate and was by far the best pairing of the three wines. The wine was called CF, which was a Euro-Asian Riesling... delicious.

I learned with with a steak such as rib eye go with a red - Cabernet... with a less fattier meat such as a filet mignon, a lesser red such as a Zinfandel would work and finally, for pork and chicken a lighter white wine works best. A Riesling would work well with Asian cuisine such as kalbi.

It was very interesting as it was pointed out that in the beginning of the class, everyone was segmented into their own groups, but by the end of the class, we were all brought together... our commonality for the passion for the love of wine seemed to have brought everyone together. The class started at 6:00 and ended at 6:45, but we didn't leave there until 9... five of us sat there just talking about wine, traveling, life, etc... it was great.