Thursday, November 12, 2009

It's called RESEARCH

My boss, Ray, my coworker, Katie, and I were sitting around tossing about ideas for our upcoming Thanksgiving post and of course the conversation turned to food and wine pairings. This holiday seems to create anxiety for many people who have a tough time trying to pair wines with all the variety of foods served at Thanksgiving. Naturally, we started thinking of which Windsor Vineyards wines would go best with some of the more traditional food and eventually we got to dessert. What do you usually have for dessert on Thanksgiving? Pumpkin pie seems to be the hands-down favorite. Heck, pie in general is what makes dessert so special. And the wine to pair with pie? Well, the 2008 Windsor Vineyards Late Harvest Riesling that we just got in today is the obvious choice. It’s so new in fact, that we don’t even have it on our website yet. I’ll be sure to post the link as soon as we have it available.

“Have you tasted it,” asked Katie.

“Well, no,” Ray replied. I added, “But we need pie to try with it.”

With a McDonald’s right next door, the solution to this little dilemma seemed obvious.

“I’ll pick up some pumpkin pie,” says Ray and heads out.

Katie says, “I’ll grab the bottle of wine,” and immediately heads back into the warehouse. Isn’t research fun?

Ten minutes later, we’re sitting in the conference room with two McDonald’s hot apple pies and two pumpkin pies. If you don’t get out too often to the Golden Arches supper club, the pumpkin pie is a seasonal thing and actually quite tasty.

But the big question was: how did they pair with our newest dessert wine? Actually, quite nicely. The Late Harvest Riesling is like a liquid apple pie itself with a nose of baked apples and nutmeg and just the right balance of sweetness and acidity to easily pair with a tart and sweet apple pie, as well as a spicy more subtle pumpkin pie—even the fast food version. It’s so good, in fact, that we’ve found just the recipe to pair with this wine and we will post it along with our wine recommendations in the next couple of days. Look for it.

With research complete, it was time to write up our results. I know, it’s a tough job, but I’m willing to take one for the team in the interest of expanding your knowledge (and my waist size.)

No comments:

Post a Comment