Tag Archives: chocolate

Tasting, not Drinking – Intoxication, not Drunkenness

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Many people drink for the sheer ‘pleasure’ of getting drunk.  I don’t understand that, or why becoming drunk would even be an objective for anyone, but I have seen it occur many times.  I gave up hard alcohol by the time I was 30 because I could not handle it, nor did I enjoy it.  I still drink the occasional beer, especially on a hot summer day, but beer bloats me if I have more than a few.

Wine is my drink of choice for many reasons, and I almost exclusively drink wine now.  I have never been drunk from wine, nor would I want to be.  I enjoy drinking wine for the taste and flavor and for its diversity of grapes and styles.  I can drink multiple wines in an evening, and sharing time and food along with the wine with friends for a great experience.

But I ‘taste’ my wine, not indiscriminately drink it.  I take the time to swirl it to open the bouquet and increase the pleasure of nosing it, fulfilling my sense of smell.  I then pour it onto my palate and experience the taste as it impacts my taste buds – but I do not swallow immediately!  I enjoy the wine as it warms up further in my mouth, releasing more new flavors and sensory (if not sensual!) perceptions.  I let my tongue and taste buds pick up on the sweetness, bitterness, or whatever flavors it finds.  I might keep the wine in my mouth for 1 – 3 minutes before actually swallowing it!

I also love to match up wine with foods, or just chocolates or cheeses, and having some food nourishment along the way helps to reduce the impact of alcohol also.

This process and experience intoxicates me, and it constrains me from getting drunk.  I drink less because I get more flavor and satisfaction out of each sip of wine and I slow down the amount I drink over any period.  This is similar to the advice of chewing your food 25 times before swallowing.  You pick out much more flavor and nourishment from your food, become more satisfied and ultimately, eat less.

Drunkenness is not a state I enjoy during or after drinking, and I avoid it.  Avoiding drunkenness comes easily for me since I taste my wine while drinking and before swallowing, combine it with food which further absorbs and disperses the alcohol content, and enjoy it and let it satiate me along the way.

I recommend you do the same.  You will enjoy your wine far more and treat your body far better along the journey!  Remember to taste, not drink (or guzzle) your wine to become intoxicated, not drunk!

 

Steve Shipley, author Wine Sense, out early 2014. Published by InkIT Publishing
© 2013.  Steve Shipley
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Twitter:  Steve Shipley @shipleyaust;   InkIT Publishing @inkitpub

 

The wines of my 60th birthday were fine indeed!

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It was quite a birthday weekend overall, with guests flying in from the US and Melbourne to join those of us already based in Sydney.  We started with a Friday evening pre-birthday dinner celebration at Fish at the Rocks (with our out-of-town visitors) with some great wines, including:

  • 1992 Waverley Estate Semillon;
  • 2007 La Belle Voisine Chassange Montrachet;
  • 1996 Lindemans St George; and
  • 2005 Chateau Haut Beregon Sauternes

This on its own was a great line-up!  Then on Saturday, I tasted three wines while being a guest on Food in Focus with Natascha Moy.  By the time I returned from the show, I had a bit of a buzz having consumed almost 750 ml by myself (one needs to make sure they are voicing the right opinions when one is serving the public like I was that day)!

By the time I arrived home, Jay Huxley, Masterchef, had arrived and was preparing dinner, and what a dinner it turned out to be.  A number of our guests (including most who had attended Deanna’s 40th birthday several years ago) thought it was the finest meal they had ever had!  They felt that the wine drinking for Deanna’s 40th was the best wine drinking experience they ever had and it came with a great meal, but my 60th was the reverse – the best meal they ever had with a great line-up of wine.

It was my intent to make my 60th birthday the second best wine tasting meal I ever had, but I admittedly fell short.  There were two main reasons for this.  The first that being my 60th birthday, it was really tough to get birth year wines (1952) that were truly outstanding compared to Deanna’s 40th which had a birth year of 1971 when we had:

  • 1971 Lindemans Limestone Ridge;
  • 1971 Penfolds Grange; and
  • 1971 Chateau D’Yquem

each bottle easily being in the Top 10 bottles I have ever drank!  But the most important reason was that Jay had developed such an awesome menu that it was actually difficult to match the very best wines with the food!  For Deanna’s 40th birthday dinner, I presented the nine wines I wanted to drink to the chef and he did a magnificent job matching the food to the wine.  But for my 60th birthday, I let Jay have total freedom and while he created a killer food line-up, it was difficult to match great wines to every course.

I had been working for a couple of months to pick a line-up of great wines for my 60th birthday, including thinking it was time to have our last bottle of the 1981 Penfolds Grange, and do that just after the 1991 Grant Burge Mesach (given to me for my 59th birthday BTW!) and the 1992 Henschke Hill of Grace.  My original line-up of wines for my 60th, included:

  • 1998 Pommeray Louis Champange
  • 1990 Waverley Estate Semillon
  • 2001 Grosset Polish Hill Riesling
  • 2007 La Belle Voisine Chassagne Montrachet
  • 2005 Chateau Brane-Cantenac
  • 1991 Grant Burge Mesach
  • 1992 Henschke Hill of Grace
  • 1981 Penfolds Grange
  • 1997 Chateau D’Yquem
  • 1967 Lindemans Vintage Port

However, once I saw Jay’s menu, I knew I needed to back off the big reds (especially the Shiraz) and I also ‘downgraded’ some of my choices, including moving from the 1990 Waverley Estates Semillon to the 1992 Waverley Estate Semillon (which we had the night before at Fish at the Rocks), and I also decided to drink the 1980 Lindemans Vintage Port instead of the 1967.  I only have two bottles of the 1990 Waverley Estate Semillon left and I needed a good bottle and a back-up bottle to share with my wife’s boss who I greatly admire and who is a Semillon fanatic, and I wanted to sip the 1967 Lindemans Vintage Port over several months instead of ‘gulping’ it down at the end of a boozy meal, which I have mistakenly done with some iconic Ports previously.

But the key thing about Jay’s menu is that it demanded more whites than reds and the reds had to be more refined than the big Shiraz’ that I had nominated for the evening.  Therefore, I eliminated the:

  • 2005 Chateau Brane-Cantenac
  • 1991 Grant Burge Mesach
  • 1992 Henschke Hill of Grace
  • 1981 Penfolds Grange

I also decided upon seeing the desserts and having some guests who would never have the experience again to go with the 1975 Lindemans Porphry instead of the 1997 Chateau D’Yquem.  I only ended up using two wines from my original list being the 1998 Pommeray Louise Champange and the 2008 Grosset Polish Hill.

So what was the menu and matching wines for the evening?  It was as follows:

  • Upon arrival – Bollinger NV Champagne
  • Tian of Alaskan King Crab, black caviar and radish – 1998 Pommeray Louise Champagne
  • Sousvide Pork Fillet, red cabbage, cauliflower puree and lentil pear salad – 2008 Grosset Polish Hill Riesling and 2007 La Belle Voisine Nuits St George (Pinot Noir)
  • Tomato heart and gin shooter, in tomato tea and basil oil – finishing off the 1998 Pommeray Louise Champange and 2008 Grosset Polish Hill Riesling
  • Smoked eel, jamon croquette with beetroot and apple – Rose Vin de Pays du Vaucluse
  • Vichy Asparagus with citrus and olive crumb and sousvide duck egg yolk –  2009 Bouchard Perrin & Fils Puligny Montrachet
  • Charcoal octupus in romesco sauce and verde oil – 2007 McWilliams Mount Pleasant Maurice O’Shea Shiraz
  • Confit duck in mushroom sauce, abalone and star anise consume – (we continued to drink whatever wines we had going at the time!)
  • Canon of saltbush lamb in minted pea soup and taro – 2000 Moss Wood Cabernet Sauvignon
  • Spiced poached pear crispy wonton, salted caramel and double cream – 1975 Lindemans Porphry
  • Death by Chocolate – 1980 Lindemans Vintage Port and Bailey’s NV Rutherglen Muscat

As you can imagine, we were quite satiated by the end of the evening!

This post has become quite a bit longer than I had expected, so I will leave my review of the food and wine matching and descriptions to the next post.  I just wanted to let you know that this was a very special meal – the best meal I have ever eaten thanks to Jay Huxley and his team, and among one of the best wine drinking experiences I have ever had.  Not every meal is like this though.  Tonight I am having a Chinese pork bun and drinking a 1997 Rosemount Show Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon.  But it is still great as I am sharing the evening with my loved one over good food and good wine.  What could be better?

Wyndham Estate Wine and Chocolate Masterclass

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Yesterday, Deanna and I ventured out to partake in one of the many events during the June Hunter Valley Wine and Food Festival.  We visited Wyndham Estate winery just past Branxton, NSW.  As I mentioned in my blog, ‘Wine Tasting Technology Perspective’, I met a ‘friend’ on FaceBook who shared a common interest in wine plus a particular interest in the Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon as he was a rep for Tyrrell’s at the time.  He now works at Wyndham Estate and posted about their Wine & Chocolate matching Masterclass, so we decided to attend.  Another good example of business being conducted via Web 2.0!

The class had 4 wines (all by Wyndham Estate) which were a Bin 333 Pinot Noir, a Shiraz / Grenache blend (the Grenache really came out, especially with the Raspberry-infused chocolate), a Bin 555 Sparkling Shiraz, and a Rutherglen Muscat.  The chocolates where a Raspberry-infused dark chocolate, a Belgian chocolate, and an Orange-infused chocolate.  Not every combination worked well as you might be able to imagine, but some were really a treat!

The Pinot was fine with the Raspberry-infused chocolate and the Grenache from the Shiraz / Grenache blend really picked up the flavors from the Raspberry-infused chocolate even more.  I personally did not like the Sparkling Shiraz with any of the ‘infused’ chocolates as there was just too much chaos going on in my mouth, but several others in the class liked it.  The Muscat with the Orange-infused chocolate worked extremely well together also.

Both Deanna and I were really interested in what may go well with a Chile-infused chocolate and Cameron Davies, our instructor for the day, had the answer – a big, robust Shiraz!  Wyndham Estate has a great Shiraz, called Black Cluster which is made from 40 year old vines.  We had the 2007 (current vintage) and it was a great wine and good value at $60 per bottle.  And the spice and pepper of the Black Cluster really brought out the chili in the chocolate and the chili really brought out the spice in the Shiraz – it was a wonderful and full-on experience.  Deanna blurted out that “it was like having an explosion in my mouth”!  For me, I will remain a bit more refrained and repeat – ‘it was a wonderful and full-on experience’!

A lot of people have learned a bit (and some a lot) about matching food and wine, and it does, in many cases, truly enhance the dining experience in my opinion.  I also like matching wine and cheese and while any good wine will go with any good cheese, there are combinations that really work much better than others.  The same is true for wine and chocolate.

When we have a 3 – 4 course dinner party, we often start with a Sparkling Shiraz on arrival for drinks until we sit down and get into the first course and the first matching wine.  However, I learned yesterday that a Sparkling Shiraz can go well with chocolate and think it would do very nicely as an alternative to a more traditional desert wine to match up with heavy (or mud) chocolate cake or chocolate truffles to finish a meal.  That is one of the lessons I learned yesterday.  Thanks Cameron for the Masterclass!