Food and Wine pairings are one of my
passions. Putting the perfect morsel together with whatever wine I'm
considering for the evening is a habit of mine that drives my other half
crazy sometimes. But on a particular night in July when @winetwits
paired up #GDandburgers – the man was oh so happy to indulge.
French wine and sliders – he was in heaven.
It was all Eat. Drink. Love.
With a little wrangling, and more than
a few tweets culminating in receiving our tasting kit in
Charlottesville, VA at the Wine Bloggers Conference, without ever
meeting the great guy who had hauled it all the way from New York –
(sheesh, thanks for all your hard work with that – love Ohio
shipping laws!) We brought home a box of Georges
Dubœuf wines and some
killer recipes from Chef Bob Waggoner. Ever the purist, I set out to
purchase all the necessary ingredients from our local vendors to make
slider representations of all 3 recipes to pair with the three
wines... we invited a few neighbors over and it was on.
All wines were chilled for 3 hours
before serving, and then set out to gradually warm. The Julienas was
decanted and then chilled.
First wine paired was the 2009
Beaujolais-Villages, for which I prepared angus sliders stuffed with
bacon, shallots, rosemary and New York aged sharp cheddar. This was
the easiest “drinker” of the wines – and conversation flowed
around the smoothness of the gamay and the price ($9.99 retail) –
making this a crowd favorite for an everyday wine.
The grilled portabella slider was the burger favorite – topped with eggplant, green onion and tomato after
basting in some beaujolais, it was hard not to love this burger. I'm
not exactly a mushroom fan, but have a feeling this one will reappear
on my menus. When paired with the 2009 Brouilly, I found it to be
absolutely divine. With a retail price of $13.99, this fitted into
most “good dinner” budgets in the room. It was chewy, very berry
and very much a stand out wine. Dubœuf
believes this one can lay down for about 24 months – based on the
tannins, I'd agree with that assessment, but I wouldn't go much past
that.
The last burger (wow... three huge and
delicious sliders... I could already hear the elliptical downstairs
calling my name) was a turkey burger with sundried tomato and basil
sauté.
This one also called for arugula and grilled red onion stuffed into a
pita. While I had some trouble finding pitas that were not too big,
and not too small (cue Goldilocks here....) I did find a work around
and got all of that goodness stuffed into an appropriate package.
This one was paired with the 2009 Julienas Chateau des Capitans which
showed a spicy richness and tight tannins, along with pepper and
licorice on the palate. Although we decanted this one for several
hours prior to serving, it was still very tight and not the favorite
of the evening. I left it decanted overnight however, and found it
much more open and flavorful the next day. At $17.99 retail, it was
closer to a “special night in with a steak” sort of wine for this
group and with all the decanting needed, the consensus was that this
was one to buy and keep for a few years to let it settle down.
Preparing the burgers just before showtime was the key to making it all happen. I heartily encourage anyone doing a twitter tasting to dedicate someone to tweeting, recording and snapping pictures, as it is nigh on impossible to host an event and do any sort of substantive tweeting. We did manage to participate in the conversation, though our video feed of Chef Bob never did work properly - but it was a struggle even for my multitasking brain.
Many
thanks go out to our neighbor Becky, who provided positively
scrumptious cheese filled dates wrapped in bacon as an appetizer.
They paired very well with the Brouilly and the Villages wines we were
sipping pre-gnosh. Compliments to the vendors from West Side Market in
Cleveland for providing all my ingredients from one amazing local
source – save the fresh herbs, which came out of my balcony garden.
And also to Winetwits for
getting this all together – absolutely loved the pairings and the
idea.
Lets
do it again!
Eat.
Drink. Love.
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