This story originally appeared in California Winery Advisor. When we go wine tasting, so much of what we remember are the experiential tastings. A walk in the vineyard, a barrel tasting, one-on-one with the winemaker and food and wine pairings are all experiences that one will recall once they get home. I found two memorable wine tasting experiences in Santa Barbara that took food and wine pairing to another level. Cheese is the most common wine pairing at a winery. There are also pairings with tapas and chocolates, as well as with molecular gastronomy spoon bites in which an entire meal is deconstructed and then reconstructed into one bite that mimics the dish. I once found a pairing with snack foods. The common theme with most wine and food pairings is that the wine is paired with savory bites. But the key with wine and food pairing is to have fun and try different things to see what will work. So, if you have a sweet tooth, here are two fun wine tasting Santa Barbara experiences - with cookies and cupcakes.
19 October, 2017

Summer has passed and here we are in the fall of 2017. Another year is flying by! At Please The Palate we are going nonstop with events and writing. I...

17 October, 2017
This story originally appeared in the Napa Valley Register.
Last week, I wrote about the dry riesling found in Nahe, Germany and the fact that 90 percent of German wine is dry. But fruity, sweet wines do still exist in Germany, specifically produced in the Mosel, Nahe and Rhinegau regions.
When we talk about “sweet” wine in Germany, we are not talking about overly sweet, cloying wines. We are talking about wines of finesse. These are wines with fragrance, fruity acidity and a mineral undertone. We are talking about riesling, considered the king of wine grapes in Germany. Of all the white wine grapes, riesling grapes produce the most intense and flavorful wines.
Unlike the dry riesling which is categorized under the VDP (“Verband deutscher Prädikatsweingüter”) system, the sweeter wines are classified under the traditional Pradikatswein. The levels of sweetness will vary and are dependent on when the grapes are picked. There is trocken (dry), kabinett (off-dry), spatlese (late harvest), auslese (select harvest), beerenauslese (berry select harvest) and trockenbeerenauslese (“dry berry select harvest”).
To differentiate between these different styles, it was best described to me by a winemaker who likened these styles to bananas. Kabinett is described as the perfectly yellow banana whereas spatlese is a banana with brown spots. Auslese is the banana that is almost entirely brown and trockenbeerenauslese is a dehydrated, concentrated banana.
04 October, 2017
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