day 17 :

monday, 15 september

We had another wonderfully informative class this morning, this time teaching us about food and wine pairings. We attempted to answer the question: how does food affect wine? Many people don't try to answer that question, but instead try to pair food and wine in one of two ways:

1. Copy whatever people already do in some region of the world. The problem with this is that the food ingredients and wine varieties are usually not the same as the regional food and wine, so the pairing isn't really the same.
2. Mirror the colors and flavors of the food and the wine. For example, if the wine is full-bodied and has a distinctive blackberry taste, then serve a steak with a berry reduction.

Chef Jerry Comfort led us through a number of simple tasting experiments. We each had a plate with salt, pepper, lemon, apple, meat, fish, and a chicken-broth-like liquid. We also had a flight of wines - Sauvignon Blanc (un-oaked), Chardonnay (oaked), Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Port - which basically represented the five types of wine.

The main thing we learned is that dominant food tastes cancel out similar tastes in wine. Let's say you haven't eaten anything, and you take a sip of wine. The wine will taste like the winemaker intended it to taste. Then eat something sweet. Take another sip of that wine, and whatever sweetness was in the wine gets dramatically lowered, revealing all of the other components. If you were drinking a sweet wine (like port or Madeira), you wouldn't notice much of a difference. But if you were drinking a cabernet sauvignon, the little bit of sweetness it had is removed and you're left with the remaining components - typically, it'll become a very acidic, tannic, bitter wine that makes your mouth pucker.

Conversely, acidic food (say, foods with lemon or vinegar) makes wine taste softer, even sweeter. Why? Because the sour taste of lemon cancels out the sour taste component in the wine (that typically comes from oak), leaving mainly the sweeter component. The wine will taste softer, more rounded, less harsh.

Here are some random other tidbits from this class:

• Hillside vineyards typically have a lower grape yield than other vineyards; they also have better drainage, smaller grapes, but also more potent grapes.
• Cooler climates produce wines with higher acidity (like pinot noir).
• Cellaring strong red wines makes the wine softer over time as wine becomes less tannic.
• Salt makes bitter food softer.
• Cooking with wine makes a dish more sour.
• You can pair a light wine (with little oak) with spicy food. The wine will stay sweet, but it still allows you to taste the spice in the food.
• If you pair a big, oaky wine (like a cabernet sauvignon) with spicy food, the whole meal will taste more spicy.
• Olive oil will "destroy" a big red wine because olive oil represents the savory component (umami).

So, the lesson from all of this is that to best match the food that you're cooking to a wide variety of wines, you need to properly season and balance it. The food "goes" with the wine when the balance is good and the flavors in the food don't drastically change the wine from the way it was intended to taste.

The next part of this class was learning how to make mozzarella cheese. Assuming you don't have access to buffalo milk curd (and not many of us do!), you start with a block of cow's milk curd. At this point, the curd could be turned into a number of kinds of cheeses. We saw that it didn't take more than some hot water and some salt, a little technique to make the cheese more pliable, and a bit of folding to turn the curd into little mozzarella balls (see a video of the process - 735K).

Finally, we made it to the wine and cheese, and wine and dessert pairing segment of class. Cheese take-away: evaluate the cheese based on its sweetness, saltiness, and acidity, rather than its origin, texture, or firmness. The key to pairing wine with dessert: the dessert wine needs to be sweeter than your dessert, so that it still tastes sweet. This certainly makes sense, based on the canceling effect the food has on the wine.

We had some free time that afternoon, then were shuttled that evening to Constant Winery at the top of Diamond Mountain. After a game of bocce ball with Tor, we had the pleasure of taking a rollercoaster ride through the vineyards in Fred Constant's Pinzgauer troop-transport vehicle (see our movie - 1.7M). After surviving the ride, we enjoyed a spectacular sunset view, got to hear a bit about the vision and creation of the winery over the past 10 years, and then sat down to a wonderful meal prepared by chef Richard Reddington of Auberge du Soleil. We also sampled a number of great Constant wines throughout the evening. Our hosts had a particularly difficult time tonight getting us to leave!