Fine Wine and Spirits

Pair food and wine is not easy task. Let's face it: the selection of a wine to go with dinner is often limited to what wine happens to be in the house that evening. Still, a consensus has developed over the years that the taste of many of the foods we eat is enhanced when the food is matched with certain wines.

Since the pairing of food and wine is a subject that seems to be a source of anxiety for many people, we have tried to lay out some general thoughts on the subject. We have also listed a number of common dishes with wine suggestions (many of which we have in stock).

Picture Credits - www.adamswineguide.com

Bear in mind that, mercifully, taste is unique to each of us, and you may disagree with the information described here. If so, great! Send us your own ideas for the perfect match. We're always interested in new ideas.

Examples of pairing food and wine

In general, the weight and intensity of the food should match, or complement, the weight and intensity of the wine you have selected. That's essential when trying to pair food and wine correctly.

Example 1:
A grilled New York strip steak is a heavy dish with a lot of flavor. A dish of this type needs to be paired with a full bodied, flavorful wine like a Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Zinfandel, or a red wine from France's Rhone River region, such as a Gigondas from the south or a Cotie Rotie from the north.

Example 2:
Broiled filet of sole served with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice is a very light dish that would be blown away by the wines described above. A dish of this nature needs to be paired with a lighter, more delicate wine like a Sauvignon Blanc, Viognier, Vouvray, or Pinot Grigio.

Relatively fatty dishes, fried foods, or dishes with cream sauces, can benefit by being paired with wines with a relatively high acidity that can cut through the fat and cleanse the palate. In this case, the wine acts more as a contrast to the food, rather than as a match.

Example 1:
Fish served with a rich cream sauce can be paired nicely with a dry Alsatian Riesling or with a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand or France's Loire River Valley.

Example 2:
Grilled sausages go really well with red wines such as Chianti or Beaujolais, that are relatively acidic.

Foods that are acidic themselves (tomato sauces, vinaigrettes, the above mentioned filet of sole with lemon juice) also benefit from matches with acidic wines.

Example 1:
Pasta or pizza served with a tomato sauce naturally goes well with Chianti (what a surprise!).

Example 2
The lemon juice in the filet of sole seems to call for an acidic white wine like a French Sauvignon Blanc (Sancerre, Pouilly Fume). In this case, the pairing serves as a contrast rather than a match or complement. Note that Chardonnay is generally not very acidic, and may not perform well in this example.

Simple foods are best matched with simple wines unless you are really trying to showcase the wine. Conversely, complex sauces go well with complex wines, as they can make simple wines taste bland or flat.

Example 1:
A simple roast chicken dish could go well with an un-oaked Australian Chardonnay or a French Chablis, but would be overwhelmed by more complex white Burgundies or high-end California Chardonnays.

Example 2:
Escalopes de Veau Sautées a l'Estragon (Sauteed Veal Scallops with Taragon) would be a great match for full-flavored white Burgundies or high-end California Chardonnays. 

Use these examples of pairing food and wine and enjoy your time. Try some wine cocktails like sangria and you will get instant summer portion of refreshness for sure.

Tips on making great homemade wine

The well known Porto Cobbler wine cocktail is really loved by all fans of fine wine and cigars. The combination is perfect for great relax and enjoying of life. So, straight to the point. Check below what you are going to need to prepare your Porto Cobbler wine cocktail and the exact steps that you have to make.

You need the following ingredients:
- Fortified red wine - 80 ml
- Dry red wine - 40 ml;
- Watermelon syrup - 30 ml;
- Light cocoa liquor - 15 ml. 

To prepare Porto Cobbler wine cocktail you must have a Boston shaker, strainer, jigger and spoon.
All the components are mixed in a shaker, then pour the ready drink through a strainer into a glass and decorate with mint, raspberry or blackberry. This cocktail is served with a spoon for better taste.
 
The cocktail goes perfectly with fine cigars and you will quickly realize that even afer your first smoke. The unique taste of the fortified wine and the watermelon syrup will make your evenings really perfect. If you manage to follow the wine recipe carefully then you will feel the taste of prunes at the end the end of your sip, something very strange because they absent in this wine cocktail. It is just one of the miracles of the wine mixology - combine the ingredients and get new unexpected flavors.

Porto Cobbler wine cocktail will make your life better if you are huge cigar lover. Try it ones and you will see the slight difference between it and the rest of the cocktails which you have already tried.

Do you want to make quality wines in your home? Winemaking in home is not as difficult process as most people think. The procedure can be quite easy – certainly, even for beginners. All that is necessary would be the proper apparatus plus some grapes. Obviously, you need to adhere to specific directions.
In any other case, your wine might not turn into something you’re going to be pleased with when it is time for your wine-tasting get together. If you are on course, and as long as you possess the patience (the procedure can be quite time-consuming), then you are off and away to creating among the best home-based wines.

How to make wines from home? First, you need to know how the entire procedure for creating wine in your own home works.

Procedure for Winemaking

If you wish to make a fantastic homemade wine, you need to remember that it’ll really begin by selecting a great number of grapes or even fresh fruits. Obviously, you will find options that are well suited for wine making if you would like to head into a wine enterprise. If you wish to grow grapes for the wine beverages, then you better go for these variations ideal for winemaking.
Safe-keeping is yet another component that will help you make your own wine beverages tastier. The lengthier the actual keeping period, the greater your wine beverages may taste, therefore time is actually a key aspect.

Bear in mind too that when you need to head into creating homemade wine beverages, you need to take a look at a few laws and regulations which control homemade wine making. Take notice that we now have government regulations that manage as well as restrict how much homemade wine you may make in your own home, therefore it is much better to look them over in order to avoid issues concerning the law.

Additionally, ensure that your own operating work space for your wine making is actually clean and disinfected so that you can be certain that there aren’t any impurities and of course, to prevent your wine from going bad.

How to make wines from home?

Smash the fruit manually in the poly pail and put in one quart of sterilized water. Combine well. Smash one camp den tablet and break up the power within 1/2 mug of warm water and combine along with pulp. Leave the combination for one or two hours. Just a little discoloring may occur. Following this, get 1/3 of the sugar for use and boil this for one minute in three pints of drinking water. Enable this syrup to cool after which mix it into the pulp. You can now add the yeast (or some other source of nourishment) and ferment for seven days.

After seven days, strain the pulp through fine cloth and wring it as dry as you possibly can. Place the strained homemade wine directly into a gallon container and dispose of the pulp. After that boil 1/3 of the sugar in a pint of drinking water for about one minute and when cooled combine it with the rest. Cover the top of the container with 100 % cotton wool or fit a fermentation locking mechanism and pursue to ferment the home made wine in a warm place for an additional ten days.

It is possible to modify your fruit-based homemade wine even more before bottling. This is how numerous fascinating versions of your fruit-based wine can be created, in accordance with your own flavor preferences. However, to generate a great mixture you need to check what you expect to do to your wine in small amounts first. By doing this you prevent spoiling the whole set you just created using your brand-new ideas.

Wine rating or scoring is both an art and science. Experts called in to rate have substantial responsibility. There is a lot of money in the industry and their scoring can either raise or lower the value of a particular brand; it is important that their rating is fair and accurate.

Most experts are aware of this and do a fair and unbiased job. But even when they do a good job, there will always be a difference of opinion and some criticism from people who do not agree with their scores. Experts test wines on a number of characteristics. Attributes like taste, smell, color, finish and overall drinkability are taken into account. Each of these qualities is scored.

The scores are summed and then rated. All aspects of the wines contribute to the score. It is not enough for a wine to be just tasty, smell great, or look colorful. It has to score well on all the attributes to get a good rating from the experts. Try rating the wines that you come across so that you can develop a scorecard for future reference. You can also recommend some wines to your friends and acquaintances based on your expertise from developing your own scorecard.

Just as the experts do, you can have parameters or qualities that you deem important. You can test each one and assign points. Total the score for each wine to arrive at its specific rating.

To rate fairly, you need to group wines in the same category while testing them. Grouping can be done in terms of price range, the region from which they come or the state where they are made and so on. Grouping them together would make your rating fairer and even.

You also need to remember that you should not be biased when testing particular wines. That is the reason most people do their tasting and reviewing totally "blind". They strip the labels off and have no information whatsoever while tasting it in order to be non-biased. To make the rating more objective, you can also do it as a group. The average score from the group can then indicate the rating for the wine, which would be fairer.

So remember that while expert raters have, sometimes, decades of experience and palette fine-tuning behind them, you too can impress your friends and wine aficionados with your rating skills. Just follow these simple tips outlined above.